work_25hs2d72xba4digihyzg6mmv7a	----	Distance education for gifted students: leveraging technology to expand academic options Patricia Wallace * Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore Technological advances and widespread access to the Internet are facilitating new educational approaches that go beyond the traditional face-to-face classroom setting. Distance education has emerged as a valuable option for a number of special populations of learners whose needs are more difficult to meet in the classroom, of which gifted students are one. This paper explores the many varieties of distance education and the technologies that support them and examines research on the effectiveness of the approaches in different settings. Research on the distance education programs offered by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth is summarized and best practices, based on the findings, are proposed. Introduction Meeting the special needs of students with extraordinary academic ability is a continuing challenge for educators, parents and society in general. A number of options are available, both within the school environment and outside it, including special gifted and talented programs, acceleration, differentiation, summer programs, such as that offered by Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY), and others. Now, with access to the Internet and information technologies becoming widely available in homes, schools, libraries and other settings accessible to students, another alternative can be offered to these students: distance education. Distance education has grown dramatically in the last decade, particularly as educators have improved strategies to leverage the power of communications technologies. In the USA, for example, the majority of institutions of higher education now offer some form of distance education, and enrollments have soared (Waits & Lewis, 2003). Most of the enrollments are at the undergraduate level, but *Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21209, USA. Email: pwallace@jhu.edu High Ability Studies Vol. 16, No. 1, June 2005, pp. 77–86 ISSN 1359-8139 (print)/ISSN 1469-834X (online)/05/010077-10 # 2005 European Council for High Ability DOI: 10.1080/13598130500115288 graduate courses and programs offered at a distance are growing as well. For pre- collegiate students distance education options have also expanded (Carr & Young, 1999). For example, virtual high-schools have opened in which students can take one or more courses online, and even earn a high-school degree. Administrators view distance education options partly as a means to reach specialized groups of learners who are unable to enroll in regular classes or who may not be well served in larger classrooms in which the curriculum targets the majority of students (Berman & Tinker, 1997). For the specialized group of learners who are academically gifted, distance education offers unique opportunities to supplement and expand academic programs available locally. Specially developed virtual learning environments may provide a means for highly able students to take on more advanced work on flexible schedules, obtain guidance from geographically distant instructors and interact with their intellectual peers around the world. While distance education programs may benefit gifted students, there is considerable variety in the nature of distance education programs and debate over the effectiveness of distance education in general. This paper examines the issues surrounding distance education and describes the CTY model. Defining ‘distance education’ Terms such as distance education, distance learning, E-learning, telelearning, virtual learning environments and distributed learning are now in common use, but their definitions are not entirely clear (Garrison & Shale, 1987; Verduin & Clark, 1991; Keegan, 1996; Rekkedal & Qvist-Eriksen, 2003; Wallace, 2004). Programs identified by the same term may differ substantially in many ways and programs with different names may be quite similar. A wide range of technologies have been used to support the programs and definitions of distance education have been muddled by the particular technologies that were used. Although these technologies can have important influences on the success and effectiveness of the program, they are not necessarily connected to the terms listed above. Consider, for example, the use of interactive videoconferencing to interconnect geographically separated classrooms. A teacher is in one of the classrooms with 10 or 20 students sitting in rows of desks and a camera transmits the teacher’s image to the remote students, located in other classrooms, typically in different schools. Cameras in the remote sites transmit images to the teacher’s class and may zoom in when one of the remote students has a question, so everyone can see who is talking. The class, with its three separate locations and one teacher, meet each day during a regular class period. This model has been deployed in many school districts to offer a wider range of courses to students in the school setting, when enrollments would be quite small in each school and only one teacher is available. Classrooms connected through interactive video in this fashion have been mistakenly equated to the entire universe of ‘distance learning’. Nevertheless, this model is considerably different from other models of distance learning, such as web-based online courses or self- paced computer programs. 78 P. Wallace A commonly used framework to characterize distance education programs stresses the dimensions of geographical location or space and time (Figure 1). The lower left encompasses the typical classroom environment, in which students and teacher meet in the same place at the same time. The other three quadrants show learning environments which separate students and the teacher geographically, in terms of time or both. Although a simplified taxonomy is helpful to better understand how learning activities occur outside the face-to-face classroom environment, many of the most effective distance programs incorporate elements of more than one quadrant. Increasingly programs are ‘hybrids’ that blend elements together to create a richer learning experience and to meet the needs of a specialized population of learners. Technologies used for distance education Various technologies have been used to support distance education programs and each one can produce educational experiences that are quite different from one another (Taylor, 2001). Technology is often used to deliver content, through online lectures for example, and also to support and enhance the media richness of the communication channels used for interactions. Figure 1 provides examples of common technologies mapped against the space and time dimensions and shows that certain technologies are best suited to support a particular quadrant. Interactive videoconferencing supports the ‘different place, same time’ approach, while a web- based discussion forum, in which students read posted messages and make contributions at any time, supports ‘different place, different time’. Figure 1. Distance education matrix and supporting technologies Distance educational for gifted students 79 Most programs use more than one type of technology and blend them together in ways that create an optimal mix. For example, a web-based course in which most of the interaction among students and with faculty is through an asynchronous discussion forum may also include scheduled virtual meetings. Students might simultaneously log onto an interactive whiteboard in which all can see and contribute to a shared online workspace. Technologies found useful for distance education have also begun to penetrate traditional educational settings, often as supplements. Course web sites have become common in higher education, for example, and instructors use them to post lecture notes, assignments, syllabi and other material. They often include discussion forums as well, in which students can interact asynchronously. Comparing distance education and classroom instruction Considerable research has been conducted to compare the effectiveness of distance education and classroom instruction (for recent reviews see Jung & Rha, 2000; Berge & Mrozowski, 2001). Much of this research involves comparisons of individual courses taught at a distance to a counterpart taught in the classroom. Results from these studies have been quite varied: many show no differences in outcomes such as student satisfaction and student achievement, while others show advantages for distance education or for classroom instruction. Unfortunately, most studies suffer from one or more methodological flaws, such as lack of random assignment of students, the use of different teachers or different course materials, variation in course requirements or expectations, among others. More recently, several meta-analyses of the research have been conducted in an attempt to quantitatively synthesize the results from the large body of heterogeneous research findings. Again, the results have been mixed. Shachar and Neumann (2003) examined 86 studies and found that, overall, student performance was higher for the distance education students. Allen et al. (2002) found slightly higher levels of student satisfaction for classroom instruction in their study pool, but no differences in other outcomes. Bernard et al. (2004) examined 232 studies and found essentially no differences in student achievement, student satisfaction or student retention. However, this major study did find a very high degree of variability in the effect sizes, indicating that many distance education settings far outperform their classroom counterparts, but many others perform far worse. Another intriguing finding was that asynchronous distance education settings were associated with higher student achievement compared with classroom instruction, but the reverse was true for synchronous distance education settings. Most studies comparing distance education with classroom instruction involve higher education, but some analyses have been performed on distance education for K-12. Cavanagh (2001) conducted a meta-analysis of studies in which classes taught via interactive technologies, such as the interactive video example described earlier, were compared with regular classroom instruction. No significant differences in student achievement were found. 80 P. Wallace From the findings and trends described above it becomes clear that efforts to compare distance education and classroom instruction have led to few if any conclusive results. The studies fail to capture the range and richness of the variety of both classroom and distance education settings. A more fruitful approach is to examine the range of alternative educational strategies that have, through advances in information and communications technologies, become available to reach special populations whose educational needs are not fully met. How should distance education be used to create rich learning environments that supplement classroom settings, but not necessarily replace them? What benefits can distance education offer gifted students that may not be available at all through regular classrooms? CTY’s distance education program for gifted students, described in the next section, takes this approach. The Center for Talented Youth distance education program The CTY at Johns Hopkins University began a pioneering distance education program for students of very high ability in 1984, with a writing course developed through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since then the program has grown to more than 6000 enrollments per year and offers more than 45 courses in writing, mathematics, computer science, biology, chemistry, physics, psychology and other subjects. Students come from over 50 countries throughout the world and work on their courses from their homes or schools. Mathematics courses are available to students as young as 5 years old and writing courses are open to Grade 5 and up. Teenagers have many options for advanced courses, including a wide range of advanced placement courses. Students become eligible to enroll in CTY’s distance education based on their performance on above grade tests (Brody & Mills, 2005). Those who show advanced ability in the verbal area are eligible to take courses in writing, humanities or the social sciences. Students who qualify on the quantitative portion can enroll in mathematics, computer science or science courses. CTY’s philosophy is to focus on nurturing each student’s strongest areas. CTY’s program is not intended to be a substitute for a full curriculum. Instead, the program provides gifted students who are attending school with year round options for advancement, acceleration and enrichment in the students’ strongest subjects. Some students, with support and guidance from their own teachers and school administrators, use CTY distance courses to replace a regular course at school and earn credit and/or placement. Instead of attending the regularly scheduled mathematics course, for example, the CTY student goes to the computer laboratory and works on a more advanced course appropriate to the student’s ability. Other students take distance courses as supplements to their regular school curriculum, and a great many enroll during the summer. CTY distance courses have also become integral components in the curriculum for homeschooled gifted children. Distance educational for gifted students 81 Analysis of the program Enrollment patterns in distance education courses indicate strong growth trends, with increases of over 12% per year for the past 3 years. Since the program’s inception students from more than 50 different countries have enrolled. Approximately two-thirds of students re-enroll and take one or more additional courses through CTY’s distance education program. Students enroll in CTY distance courses for a variety of reasons, such as a desire for greater intellectual challenge, a strong interest in the subject or an interest in obtaining advanced standing or credit in their schools in subjects in which they are most able. Depending on the subject, their intentions vary significantly. For example, 50.6% of students enrolling in mathematics courses report seeking credit or placement, compared with 37.9% of students enrolling in writing courses. The mean age at which students enroll has changed over time. Initially most students were in middle-school, but as more students in elementary school became eligible and more courses were made available to them, the mean age of students declined (Figure 2). Enrollment patterns by gender show that boys tend to be more likely to qualify in the quantitative area than girls and also tend to choose courses in that area, especially mathematics. In 2004, for example, boys constituted 64.1% of Figure 2. Mean age of students enrolling in CTY distance education courses since 1985 82 P. Wallace enrollments in courses requiring a qualifying score in the quantitative area. In contrast, courses requiring a qualifying score in the verbal area, such as the writing courses, have gradually become more balanced in terms of enrollment by gender since the mid 1990s. Student evaluations of the distance education program show that students find these courses very challenging, and 75% reported that their course was either ‘demanding, yet appropriate for me’ or ‘very demanding, and tested my limits’. Students rate their distance education very positively: over 90% report being ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with their experience in distance education. Overall satisfaction levels are significantly correlated with the students’ evaluation of the instructor (Table 1), highlighting the importance of the instructor’s role in distance education for gifted students. Very few programs offer distance education courses for young students in elementary school. However, CTY’s experience demonstrates that gifted younger students perform very well and enjoy their courses as much as students in upper grades. Comparisons of course evaluations for younger and older students reveal no significant differences with respect to overall satisfaction levels or instructor ratings. Significant differences, however, emerged between lower and upper level students on ratings involving the length of the course and the intellectual challenge involved. Younger students were more likely to report that they thought their course was too short and that they would have been able to handle more challenge. CTY distance education program: key elements and best practice In the two decades since the program began much has been learned about best practices for reaching gifted students through distance education. CTY’s approach has evolved over time, especially as computers and the Internet have become much Table 1. Correlations among student attitudes toward their distance education courses Overall I am satisfied with my academic experience Instructor’s overall effectiveness as a teacher Instructor’s knowledge of the subject Instructor’s ability to explain difficult concepts Overall I am satisfied with my academic experience 1 .488(**) .347(**) .408(**) Instructor’s overall effectiveness as a teacher .488(**) 1 .502(**) .620(**) Instructor’s knowledge of the subject .347(**) .502(**) 1 .563(**) Instructor’s ability to explain difficult concepts .408(**) .620(**) .563(**) 1 ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). n51340 Distance educational for gifted students 83 more widely available and feedback from students and parents was received. As discussed earlier, there are many approaches to distance education, but the CTY approach stresses certain key elements that have been found to be successful with gifted students. The role of instructors Students are individually assigned to an instructor, most of whom have advanced degrees in the subject they are teaching, including a Ph.D. Students get to know their instructors in the context of a mentoring relationship. Instructors are trained on pedagogical techniques appropriate for gifted students by CTY and provided with instructor guides. For many distance education programs the ‘class’ is the dominant metaphor and students are grouped into large sections with one instructor. In that model students may interact frequently in large groups, but have fewer opportunities for individual interaction with the instructor. CTY, however, stresses the one-to-one relationship between instructor and student. Although students are often grouped into virtual workshops or classes so that they have opportunities to interact with one another, all students frequently interact with the instructor, who provides timely, individual feedback to each student. Instead of a ‘class’ metaphor, CTY’s approach emphasizes individual tutoring. Clarifying expectations Requirements for a course and expectations about student conduct must be made very clear to each student, and also to parents. These include expectations about assignments, deadlines, grading and other course matters, as well as rules of conduct for online behavior and interactions. Expectations for instructors must also be very clear on issues such as performance evaluation, student interactions, timeliness and student evaluations. Academic content and pacing Academic content and course materials must match the gifted student’s need for challenge and rigor and must allow each student the flexibility to pursue his or her personal best in the subject. Typical distance education courses in which material is presented at a predetermined pace and students proceed in lockstep regardless of ability are not ideal for gifted students, who vary considerably in their ability and interest levels and also their time commitments. To meet these challenges, CTY has developed courses in different formats. Mathematics and computer science courses are individually paced and students work under the guidance of their instructors to proceed through a course at a speed appropriate for the student. Writing courses are more structured in terms of time, but assignments and instructor feedback for each student are closely tailored to the student’s ability level. Course materials are selected or developed to engage gifted students and avoid unnecessary drills and 84 P. Wallace repetition. Many courses make extensive use of multimedia CD-ROMs and online material and students have extensive control over the actual pacing of the presentations. The role of technology CTY’s approach avoids ‘bleeding edge’ technologies to ensure that the learning curve and set-up time are as short as possible. Most technologies support asynchronous interactions (web-based discussion board, E-mail), but a synchronous interactive whiteboard is a common feature of mathematics and science courses since it easily supports mathematical symbols and diagrams. Support services CTY provides various types of support for distance education students and instructors, including academic advice and counseling, placement tests and technical support. Students also have access to CTY’s Diagnostic and Counseling Center, CTY summer programs and other CTY programs and services. Support services for instructors are also critical to a successful distance education program. CTY provides a variety of training materials and programs for instructors and supports both in-person and online forums for instructors to discuss program- related matters, share best practices and assist one another. Instructor supervisors provide training and mentoring and also review many of the communications between instructor and student. Community building Highly gifted students often find themselves with few or no intellectual peers in their local school and CTY’s distance education program can provide them with opportunities to interact with other gifted students. These interactions may take place within the context of the course, such as in writing courses in which students critique one another’s work. They also occur in more general forums in which students discuss a wide variety of topics and often engage in creative projects. Conclusions As CTY’s experience demonstrates, distance education can be a highly effective educational approach to meet the needs of the special population of gifted learners. By leveraging information and communications technologies now widely available, distance education can reach gifted students throughout the world throughout the year and engage them in learning activities appropriate to their ability levels, without taking them away from their local school environment. It can create a community of learners who are intellectual peers, capable of advanced academic challenges in particular areas, without regard to the geographic location of the students. Distance educational for gifted students 85 The CTY program does not attempt to juxtapose distance education against classroom instruction nor does the program attempt to mimic a classroom experience. Instead, it recognizes the different advantages of each type of setting and emphasizes the use of distance education to supplement, enrich and enhance each student’s school-based learning environment. References Allen, M., Bourhis, J., Burrell, N. & Mabry, E. (2002) Comparing student satisfaction with distance education to traditional classrooms in higher education: a meta-analysis, American Journal of Distance Education, 16(2), 83–97. Berge, Z. L. & Mrozowski, S. (2001) Review of research in distance education, 1990 to 1999, American Journal of Distance Education, 15(3), 15–19. Berman, S. & Tinker, R. (1997) The worlds move the limit in the virtual high school, Education Leadership, 55(3), 52–54. Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P. A., Fiset, M. & Huang, B. (2004) How does distance education compare with classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature, Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 379–439. Brody, L. E. & Mills, C. J. (2005) Talent search research: what have we learned? High Ability Studies, 16(1), 97–111. Carr, S. & Young, J. R. (1999) As distance learning boom spreads, colleges help set up virtual high schools, Chronicle of Higher Education, 46(9), A55. Cavanaugh, C. S. (2001) The effectiveness of interactive distance education technologies in K-12 learning: a meta-analysis, International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 7, 73–88. Garrison, D. R. & Shale, D. (1987) Mapping the boundaries of distance education: problems in defining the field, American Journal of Distance Education, 1(1), 4–13. Jung, I. & Rha, I. (2000) Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of online education: a review of the literature, Educational Technology, July/August, 57–60. Keegan, D. (1996) Foundations of distance education (3rd edn) (London, Routledge). Rekkedal, T. & Qvist-Eriksen, S. (2003) Internet-based e-learning, pedagogy and support systems. Available online at: http://learning.ericsson.net/socrates/doc/norway.doc (accessed 9 January 2005). Shachar, M. & Neumann, Y. (2003) Differences between traditional and distance education academic performances: a meta-analytical approach, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Education, October. Available online at: http://www.irrodl.org/content/v4.2/ shachar-neumann.html (accessed 9 January 2005). Taylor, J. C. (2001) Fifth generation distance education. Available online at: http://www.usq. edu.au/electpub/e-jist/docs/old/vol4no1/2001docs/taylor.html (accessed 9 January 2005). Verduin, J. R. & Clark, T. A. (1991) Distance education: the foundations of effective practice (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass). Waits, T. & Lewis, L. (2003) Distance education at degree-granting postsecondary institutions: 2000– 2001, NCES 2003-017 (Washington, DC, US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics). Available online at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003017.pdf (accessed 29 December 2004). Wallace, P. (2004) The Internet in the workplace (New York, Cambridge University Press). 86 P. Wallace 
work_226zrb6dyjbr5o5icqf43e6bna	----	No Job Name Situational interest, computer self-efficacy and self-regulation: Their impact on student engagement in distance education_1157 191..204 Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun and Robert Rueda Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Education and Center for Teacher Education at National Chiao Tung University. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Center for Scholarly Technology at University of Southern California. Address for correspondence: Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun, Center for Scholarly Technology, University of Southern California, 650 W. 35th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2571, USA. Telephone: (323) 963-3389; fax: (213) 740-7713; email: csun@usc.edu. Robert Rueda is a Professor in the Rossier School of Education at University of Southern California. Address for correspondence: Robert Rueda, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, 3470 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089-4036, USA. Telephone: (213) 740-2371; email: rueda@usc.edu Abstract This study investigates possible relationships among motivational and learning variables (interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation) and three types of student engagement (behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement) in a dis- tance education setting. Participants were 203 students enrolled in online classes in the fall semester of 2008 in the Schools of Gerontology and Engineering at a large research university in the south-western USA, who completed an online survey assessing their levels of situational interest, computer self-efficacy, self-regulation and engagement in distance education. Situational interest and self-regulation were found to be significantly correlated with three types of engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive), while computer self-efficacy did not appear to be associated with any of those engagement variables. Results suggested that online activities and tools such as multimedia and discussion boards may increase emotional engagement in online learning, although they do not necessarily increase behavioural or cognitive engagement, that educators should identify students who are taking online courses for the first time and provide necessary technical help to increase their emotional engagement, and that it is impor- tant for educators to offer students strategies for increasing their self-regulation in dis- tance education environments. Introduction Distance education technology allows students to take advantage of the convenience and flex- ibility of taking classes at the times and locations they prefer. Although distance education is convenient and can potentially employ rich multimedia materials, there are unresolved issues related to students’ engagement in the learning process. In contrast to the environment in tra- ditional educational settings, distance education instructors and peers are not physically present in a classroom, so students may lack opportunities to interact, collaborate and receive feedback and social support, thus leading to less engagement in learning activities (Tuckman, 2007). Moreover, distance education provides students much more freedom in how and when they interact, and therefore, their ability to regulate their own learning seems to be critical. Given the potential limitations associated with limited supervision, monitoring of student progress and opportunities to provide feedback to students, it would be useful for distance British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 191–204 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01157.x © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. education instructors and course designers to have a better understanding of what factors influence student engagement. There have been many studies indicating that motivational and learning factors such as interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation are positively linked to student engagement levels (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007; Dembo, Junge & Lynch, 2006; Kanuka, 2005). However, little research has empirically explored how these factors may influence specific types of engagement. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the motivational and learning variables (interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation) and their effects on student engagement in a distance learning setting. In the current study, as outcome measures, we used Fredricks, Blumenfeld, Friedel and Paris (2005) and Fredricks, Blumenfeld and Paris’ (2004) conceptualisation of engagement as being composed of behavioural, emotional and cognitive components. In addition, the following con- structs were included in this study as independent variables: personal and situational interest (Hidi, 1990, 2006), computer self-efficacy (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007) and self-regulation (Dembo et al, 2006; Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). A brief conceptual model of the research is shown in Figure 1. The overarching research question of this study was: how do interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation influence engagement of distance education learners? Literature review There is a significant body of research findings that support the connection between motivational variables, learning strategies, self-regulatory behaviour and academic achievement (Bandura, 1997; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001). Therefore, there is increasing attention to motivational and learning variables as factors influencing student outcomes in online settings that have been less studied than traditional classroom settings. The following section provides an overview of the key variables examined in the study. Situational interest Situational interest refers to the interest activated by the immediate environment (Hidi, 2006; Schraw & Lehman, 2001). In this study, the environment referred to distance education. There have been very few studies of interest and engagement in distance education environments. Most studies have been conducted in the context of traditional classrooms. For example, researchers have found that novelty enhances students’ situational interest as well as engagement in the Self-regulation Computer self-efficacy Situational interest Emotional engagement Cognitive engagement Behavioural engagement Figure 1: Model of research questions 192 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. classroom setting (Chen, Darst & Pangrazi, 1999; Flowerday, Schraw & Stevens, 2004). The classroom context literature is valuable because results of distance education can be compared with results from traditional classroom education. Computer self-efficacy Self-efficacy is defined as ‘[P]eople’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances’ (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Although there are many motivational constructs, self-efficacy is central to promoting students’ engagement and learning. These context-specific and domain-specific beliefs affect behaviour by influencing the choices that people make and the courses of action they follow (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2004). Compeau and Higgins (1995) defined computer self-efficacy as one’s perceived ability to accom- plish a task with the use of computer. Many researchers (Compeau & Higgins, 1995; Kinzie, Delcourt & Powers, 1994; Stone & Henry, 2003) have found that training and experience play important roles in computer self-efficacy, suggesting that students’ computer self-efficacy is higher if they receive training or have experience using computer technology before taking distance education courses. In a recent research, Bates and Khasawneh (2007) found that students with higher computer self-efficacy tended to spend more time using online learning technology and were therefore more engaged in the learning processes. Research on computer self-efficacy has focused on how antecedent variables affects students’ self-efficacy and how self-efficacy influences outcome expectancy (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007; DeTure, 2004; Stone & Henry, 2003). Antecedent variables include previous success, acquired skills, instructor support and encouragement, while outcome expectancy refers to beliefs about the outcomes people desire after accomplishing specific tasks (Bandura, 1986). Self-regulation Research has suggested that self-regulated learning incorporates cognitive, motivational and metacognitive dimensions and suggests the importance of self-regulatory skills in academic achievement (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001). In the context of distance learning, research on self-regulation and distance education focuses on how students self-regulate their learning activi- ties to become successful distance education learners (Wolters, Pintrich & Karabenick, 2005). Previous research has indicated that since distance education learners lack direct encouragement from instructors, they may be less self-regulated in engaging in class activities (Dembo et al, 2006; Kanuka, 2005; Wang & Lin, 2007; Whipp & Chiarelli, 2004). The review also showed that social cognitive processes play important roles in self-regulation (Pintrich, Schunk & Meece, 2008). Online activities that focus on interaction, such as discussion boards, debates and brainstorming, can potentially facilitate online learners’ social cognitive effects such as improved engagement and increased self-regulation (Kanuka, 2005; Seaman & Fellenz, 1993). Engagement In academic settings, engagement refers to the quality of effort students make to perform well and achieve desired outcomes (Hu & Kuh, 2002; Richardson, Long & Foster, 2004; Richardson & Newby, 2006). Previous research has indicated that several factors, such as the use of course tutors (Richardson & Long, 2003), the quality of technology (Webster & Hackley, 1997) and motivational factors (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007; Dembo et al, 2006; Kanuka, 2005) are posi- tively linked to student engagement levels in distance education environments. The concept of engagement has attracted increasing attention in the research of motivation and student achievement (Fredricks et al, 2005, 2004). This study sought to further explore how motivational and learning factors may influence specific types of engagement. The three types of engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement) identified by Fredricks et al (2004, 2005) were used to frame the investigation of engagement issues. Student engagement in distance education 193 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. In summary, previous studies suggest that motivational and learning factors are positively linked to student engagement levels (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007; Dembo et al, 2006; Kanuka, 2005). However, work to date has not examined distinct components of engagement. Furthermore, only limited research has been conducted to empirically explore the motivational and learning vari- ables (interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation) and their effects on student engagement in a distance learning setting. Therefore, this study explores how motivational and learning factors were related to student engagement in a distance education setting. It was hypothesised that situational interest, computer self-efficacy and self-regulation positively affect three types of engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement) of students participating in distance education classes. Methodology Research context Data were gathered from students enrolled in online classes in the fall semester of 2008 in the Schools of Gerontology and Engineering at a large research university in south-western USA using an online survey sent to them via email. The university’s provost announced an initiative to promote technology-enhanced learning and distance learning in 2006 to promote and enhance teaching and learning experiences through the use of technology and distance education. Both the School of Engineering and the School of Gerontology were among the facilitators of this initiative. The participating schools incorporated dedicated sections to undertake the develop- ment of distance education courses delivered through BlackBoard, a popular e-learning system. Participants Of the 203 students who participated in the survey, the female students (n = 67) represented 33.2% of the participants in this study, while the male students (n = 135) represented 66.8% of the participants. Their mean age was 29.67 [standard deviation (SD) = 7.28], which may be slightly underestimated because 10.8% of the participants indicated they were older than 45 and their ages were treated as 45 in the mean calculation. Most of the participants were graduate students (95.6%) who classified themselves as domestic students (96.6%). The majority (83.3%) took the courses in a completely online environment, meaning they did not attend any lecture classes. The rest of the students (16.7%) took the classes in a mixed environment; in other words, they still went to campus for lectures but have the option of viewing the lectures online. Although the mixed environment classes required in-class attendance, they included a significant online component. The majority of the students (71.8%) had prior experience taking distance education classes, and 68.6% had taken such courses two or more times previously. According to the students’ self-reports, they logged on to the online course management system 3 hours per week on average. The 98.5% students who took the courses with a webcast feature (video-recorded lectures) spent an average of 2.46 hours per week watching the video-recorded lectures. Instrumentation The instruments used in this study were adapted from existing validated scales: the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990), the Situational Inter- est Scale (Chen et al, 1999), the Web Users Self-Efficacy Scale (WUSE) (Eachus & Cassidy, 2006) and the Engagement Scale (Fredricks et al, 2004, 2005). All of these scales used 5-point Likert rating (5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 2 = disagree and 1 = strongly disagree). Self-regulation measure The MSLQ was developed by the National Center for Research on Improving Postsecondary Teaching and Learning at the University of Michigan in 1986 (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia & 194 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. McKeachie, 1991). The subscale self-regulation in this instrument was used to measure distance education student levels of self-regulation. The internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s a) was 0.677 for the self-regulation scale. Situational interest The Situational Interest Scale is a 24-item Likert-scaled instrument developed by Chen et al (1999). The total interest subscale in its Interest instrument was used to measure the levels of situational interest exhibited by the distance education students in the present study. The internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s a) was 0.825 for the self-regulation scale. Computer self-efficacy The WUSE is a 5-point Likert-scaled instrument designed to measure an individual’s confidence in using the Internet (Eachus & Cassidy, 2006). WUSE addresses four domains of Internet self-efficacy: (1) information retrieval, (2) information provision, (3) communications and (4) technology. Questionnaire items are divided into four subscales based on these four domains. The technology subscale (computer self-efficacy scale) was used to measure distance education student levels of self-efficacy in relation to technology. The internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s a) was 0.831 for the self-regulation scale. Engagement The Engagement Scale was adapted from a 5-point Likert-scaled instrument developed by Fredricks et al (2005; 2004) measuring three types of engagement: behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement. Because the Engagement Scale was designed to measure children’s levels of school engagement, some of the items had to be modified to measure engagement levels of graduate and undergraduate students in a distance education setting. The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s a) were 0.880 for the emotional engagement scale, 0.746 for the cognitive engagement scale and 0.462 for the behavioural engagement scale. Since the internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s a) of the behavioural engagement scale resulted in an unacceptable value (a = 0.462), exploratory factor analysis was used to analyse the 19 items on the engagement scale in order to determine which items loaded on which types of engagement. Results showed that three factors (emotional engagement, cog- nitive engagement and behavioural engagement) most distinctly described the variance in the data. Table 1 presents the factors, factor loadings, communalities and reliability statistics. The revised behavioural engagement scale included items BE-1, BE-5 and CE-1, the revised emotional engagement scale was composed of items EE-1, EE-2, EE-3, EE-4, EE-5, EE-6 and CE-8 and the revised cognitive engagement scale included items CE-2, CE-3, CE-4, CE-5 and CE-6. Procedure In order to ensure that the confidentiality and human subjects requirement was met, the study passed the institutional review board process before data collection was initiated. The survey questionnaire was sent to 139 students in the School of Gerontology and 1261 students in the School of Engineering by emails, resulting in 203 valid responses. Results A summary of demographic variables including gender, school enrolled in, degree objective, international or domestic student (IoD), times taking distance education courses (TT) is presented in Table 2. In addition, a summary of the means, SDs and Pearson correlation coefficients of the motivational and learning factors (interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation), three types of engagement variables (behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engage- ment), age and first time taking distance education courses (FT) are listed in Table 3. Student engagement in distance education 195 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. Ta bl e 1 : R es ul ts fr om ex pl or at or y fa ct or an al ys is of th e en ga ge m en t sc al e It em Fa ct or lo ad in gs M SD h2 a Fa ct or 1 Fa ct or 2 Fa ct or 3 B E- 1 I fo ll ow th e ru le s of th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .0 7 9 0 .0 9 8 0 .5 4 0 4 .4 3 0 .6 0 5 0 .5 2 1 0 .8 4 9 B E- 2 I h av e tr ou bl e u si n g th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .1 4 9 -0 .1 5 8 -0 .9 4 4 .0 5 0 .9 5 8 0 .5 8 4 0 .8 5 6 B E- 3 W h en I am in th e on li n e cl as s, I ju st ‘a ct ’a s if I am le ar n in g. 0 .1 0 4 0 .1 0 1 0 .1 7 4 3 .6 4 1 .0 8 7 0 .3 9 2 0 .8 5 6 B E- 4 I am ab le to co n si st en tl y pa y at te n ti on w h en I am ta ki n g th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .1 9 7 0 .0 1 7 0 .1 5 1 3 .1 3 1 .1 1 0 0 .6 9 2 0 .8 4 8 B E- 5 I co m pl et e m y h om ew or k on ti m e. 0 .0 7 6 -0 .1 2 3 0 .7 8 8 4 .4 6 0 .7 5 3 0 .6 8 2 0 .8 5 1 EE -1 I li ke ta ki n g th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .6 8 6 -0 .0 1 3 0 .1 4 5 3 .9 4 0 .9 6 3 0 .6 0 6 0 .8 3 9 EE -2 I fe el ex ci te d by m y w or k at th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .7 7 7 0 .1 9 9 0 .1 3 8 3 .6 0 0 .9 8 2 0 .7 1 7 0 .8 3 5 EE -3 T h e on li n e cl as sr oo m is a fu n pl ac e to be . 0 .8 2 0 0 .1 9 9 -0 .1 1 8 3 .0 8 1 .0 5 7 0 .7 4 1 0 .8 3 9 EE -4 I am in te re st ed in th e w or k at th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .7 3 5 0 .1 3 1 0 .2 7 5 3 .7 9 0 .9 1 6 0 .6 8 5 0 .8 3 5 EE -5 I fe el h ap py w h en ta ki n g on li n e cl as s. 0 .8 2 2 0 .2 1 6 0 .0 0 2 3 .2 4 0 .8 8 6 0 .7 4 3 0 .8 3 7 EE -6 I fe el bo re d by th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .4 4 2 0 .0 9 8 -0 .0 1 3 3 .1 1 0 .9 2 2 0 .6 3 7 0 .8 4 1 C E- 1 I ch ec k m y sc h oo lw or k fo r m is ta ke s. 0 .1 7 6 0 .2 7 5 0 .7 1 8 4 .1 3 0 .7 4 0 0 .6 3 6 0 .8 4 6 C E- 2 I st u dy at h om e ev en w h en I do n ot h av e a te st . 0 .1 3 7 0 .5 3 0 0 .3 8 8 3 .4 7 1 .1 4 9 0 .6 3 1 0 .8 4 5 C E- 3 I tr y to lo ok fo r so m e co u rs e- re la te d in fo rm at io n on ot h er re so u rc es su ch as te le vi si on ,j ou rn al pa pe rs ,m ag az in es ,e tc . 0 .0 7 8 0 .7 6 6 0 .0 2 0 3 .5 9 1 .0 7 5 0 .6 5 4 0 .8 4 6 C E- 4 W h en I re ad th e co u rs e m at er ia ls ,I as k m ys el f qu es ti on s to m ak e su re I u n de rs ta n d w h at it is ab ou t. 0 .2 1 3 0 .6 5 6 0 .0 8 0 3 .5 2 0 .9 3 0 0 .5 3 5 0 .8 5 0 C E- 5 I re ad ex tr a m at er ia ls to le ar n m or e ab ou t th in gs w e do in th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .1 9 3 0 .8 4 1 -0 .0 3 7 3 .3 8 1 .0 6 7 0 .7 4 9 0 .8 4 6 C E- 6 If I do n ot kn ow ab ou t a co n ce pt w h en I am le ar n in g in th e on li n e cl as s, I do so m et h in g to fig u re it ou t. 0 .0 0 3 0 .4 8 5 0 .3 2 4 4 .1 1 0 .7 3 3 0 .6 0 0 0 .8 4 6 C E- 7 If I do n ot u n de rs ta n d w h at I le ar n on li n e, I go ba ck to w at ch th e re co rd ed se ss io n an d le ar n ag ai n . 0 .2 8 4 0 .2 5 9 0 .0 7 4 3 .9 2 1 .0 0 4 0 .3 3 0 0 .8 4 6 C E- 8 I ta lk w it h pe op le ou ts id e of sc h oo la bo u t w h at I am le ar n in g in th e on li n e cl as s. 0 .5 2 8 -0 .0 1 4 0 .3 5 5 3 .5 2 1 .0 5 5 0 .4 4 8 0 .8 4 8 U n iq u e fa ct or lo ad in g >0 .4 0 ar e in it al ic s. A n al ys is is ba se d on 2 0 3 ob se rv at io n s. En ga ge m en t it em sc or es ra n ge fr om 1 to 5 ,w h er e 1 in di ca te s th at su bj ec ts st ro n gl y di sa g re ed an d 5 in di ca te s th at su bj ec ts st ro n gl y ag re ed w it h th e st at em en t pr ov id ed .I n te rn al co n si st en cy es ti m at es fo r fa ct or s 1 ,2 an d 3 w er e 0 .8 8 0 , 0 .7 5 1 an d 0 .6 2 9 re sp ec ti ve ly . a , C ro n ba ch ’s al ph a co ef fic ie n t if it em de le te d; B E, be h av io u ra l en ga ge m en t; C E, co gn it iv e en ga ge m en t; EE , em ot io n al en ga ge m en t; Fa ct or 1 , em ot io n al en ga ge m en t; Fa ct or 2 ,c og n it iv e en ga ge m en t; Fa ct or 3 ,b eh av io u ra le n ga ge m en t; h 2 ,i te m co m m u n al it ie s at ex tr ac ti on ;S D ,s ta n da rd de vi at io n . 196 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. Two of the motivational and learning factors, interest and self-regulation, were significantly correlated (r = 0.454, p < 0.01), indicating that those participants with higher levels of interest also had higher levels of self-regulation. The correlation coefficient of 0.454 may raise concern about a multicollinearity problem between interest and self-regulation (Studenmund, 2006, p. 259). Thus, a variance inflation factor (VIF) was computed. Because the values of VIF (1.260 for interest and 1.268 for self-regulation) were lower than the conventional threshold (10), it was concluded that no multicollinearity problems existed. In the analysis of intercorrelations between engagement variables (behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement) and both independent variables (interest, self-efficacy and self-regulation) and control variables (participants’ demographic information) in the research model, it was found that interest and self-regulation were significantly correlated with all types of engagement. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no significant correlation between the participants’ levels of computer self-efficacy with any of the engagement variables. Demographic variables that significantly correlated with emotional engagement or cognitive engagement were school enrolled in, FT, age and degree objective. Hierarchical regression analyses showed how the motivational variables of interest and self- efficacy and the learning variable of self-regulation predicted each engagement variable (behav- ioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement). Interest was only a significant predictor of emotional engagement. However, at the bivariate correlational level, interest had a relationship with all types of engagement. Self-regulation was a significant predic- tor of all types of engagement. Contrary to our expectations and previous research that students with higher computer self-efficacy are more engaged in the learning process (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007), the participants’ computer self-efficacy was not a significant predictor of engagement variables. Scatter plots between self-efficacy and all dependent variables (behavioural engage- ment, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement) were used to examine whether non- linearity evoked in the form of a curved band or a big wave-shaped curve, for example, but non-linearity was not found. The results of hierarchical regressions are presented in Tables 4–6. Table 2: Frequency and percentage of the participants by gender, school enrolled in, degree objective, IoD, and TT n (%) Gender Female 67 (33.2) Male 135 (66.8) School enrolled in Gerontology 31 (15.3) Engineering 172 (84.7) Degree objective Certificate 4 (2.02) Bachelor 5 (2.5) Master’s 188 (92.6) PhD 6 (3.0) IoD International 7 (3.4) Domestic 196 (96.6) TT First time 57 (28.2) Two or more times 145 (71.8) IoD, International or domestic student; TT, time(s) taking distance edu- cation course(s). Student engagement in distance education 197 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. Ta bl e 3 : M ea ns , st an da rd de vi at io ns an d Pe ar so n pr od uc t co rr el at io ns fo r m ea su re d va ri ab le s V ar ia bl e M St an da rd de vi at io n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 In te re st 3 .5 6 0 .7 8 — 2 Se lf -e ffi ca cy 3 .9 6 0 .6 4 -0 .0 4 1 — 3 Se lf -r eg u la ti on 3 .4 8 0 .5 5 0 .4 5 4 ** -0 .0 8 8 — 4 B eh av io u ra le n ga ge m en t 4 .3 4 0 .5 3 0 .2 1 9 ** -0 .0 6 1 0 .3 8 6 ** — 5 Em ot io n al en ga ge m en t 3 .4 7 0 .7 2 0 .7 6 0 ** -0 .0 7 7 0 .5 5 7 ** 0 .3 4 1 ** — 6 C og n it iv e en ga ge m en t 3 .6 2 0 .7 1 0 .3 4 9 ** -0 .0 4 4 0 .5 8 9 ** 0 .3 3 2 ** 0 .4 0 1 ** — 7 G en de r 1 .3 3 0 .4 7 0 .0 6 7 -0 .2 4 2 ** 0 .0 5 3 0 .0 4 6 0 .0 6 7 0 .0 1 4 — 8 A ge 2 9 .6 7 7 .2 8 0 .1 9 5 ** -0 .0 8 5 0 .2 2 3 ** 0 .1 1 7 0 .3 0 6 ** 0 .3 1 6 ** 0 .0 3 2 — 9 FT 1 .7 2 0 .4 5 0 .0 6 4 -0 .0 6 6 0 .0 5 4 -0 .0 3 6 0 .1 9 3 ** 0 .0 4 4 0 .0 4 7 0 .1 4 5 * *p < 0 .0 5 ;* *p < 0 .0 1 . G en de r (1 ,m al e; 2 ,f em al e) ;F T, fir st ti m e ta ki n g di st an ce ed u ca ti on co u rs e( s) (1 ,y es ;2 ,n o) . 198 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. In summary, among the motivational and learning variables, interest was only a significant predictor of emotional engagement; self-regulation was a significant predictor of all types of engagement and computer self-efficacy was not a significant predictor of all types of engagement. Discussion Factors influencing behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement Study results indicated that interest and self-regulation were positively correlated with all types of engagement, while self-efficacy was not correlated with any type of engagement. Specifically, emotional engagement was most strongly correlated with interest (r = 0.760, p < 0.01), suggest- ing that it is important to facilitate emotional engagement by increasing student interest. Most of the students in this study took courses with a webcast feature (video-recorded lectures) and they agreed that multimedia helped them learn more. Previous research has also indicated that multimedia increases students’ situational interest (Chen et al, 1999), number of interactions, participation and motivation (Guzley, Avanzino & Bor, 2001). Multimedia appears to be an important tool for educators who want to increase student emotional engagement in online learning environments. Table 4: Hierarchical regression analysis predicting behavioural engagement from motivational variables (interest and self-efficacy) and learning variable (self-regulation) Step and variable R2 B SE B b Step 1 0.051** (Constant) 3.984 0.289 Interest 0.148 0.047 0.217* Self-efficacy -0.043 0.057 -0.052 Step 2 0.152*** (Constant) 3.089 0.330 Interest 0.038 0.050 0.055 Self-efficacy -0.022 0.054 -0.027 Self-regulation 0.347 0.071 0.358*** *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. b, standardised coefficient; B, unstandardised coefficient; SE B, standard error. Table 5: Hierarchical regression analysis predicting emotional engagement from motivational variables (interest and self-efficacy) and learning variable (self-regulation) Step and variable R2 B SE B b Step 1 0.580* (Constant) 1.177 0.260 Interest 0.701 0.042 0.758* Self-efficacy -0.051 0.051 -0.046 Step 2 0.635* (Constant) 0.284 0.292 Interest 0.591 0.044 0.639* Self-efficacy -0.031 0.048 -0.028 Self-regulation 0.346 0.063 0.264* *p < 0.001. b, standardised coefficient; B, unstandardised coefficient; SE B, standard error. Student engagement in distance education 199 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. The current study indicated that FT was significantly correlated with emotional engagement, suggesting that first-time distance education takers may have had higher anxiety level and were therefore less engaged emotionally in the online environment. In addition to the negative effect on reduced emotional engagement, previous research has shown that anxiety is negatively correlated with computer self-efficacy (Wilfong, 2006; Zhang & Espinoza, 1998). The results of previous research are in line with Bandura’s (1986, 1988, 2001) social cognitive theory, which argued that higher anxiety produced lower self-efficacy and vice versa. The mechanism may be that students with higher computer anxiety feel less comfortable in using computer technologies and therefore demonstrated relatively lower levels of computer self-efficacy. To reduce the nega- tive effects that may be encountered by first-time distance education takers, such as low emo- tional engagement and computer self-efficacy, educators should identify those who have never taken a distance education course previously and provide necessary support through a help desk or extra training to ease their anxieties. Situational interest and engagement The variable FT was used as an indicator of novelty in this study. Contrary to results of previous research (Chen et al, 1999; Flowerday et al, 2004), the current study found that novelty was not correlated with interest; however, it was negatively correlated with emotional engagement. In other words, the students experiencing the novelty of distance education (first-time users) had lower emotional engagement. Two factors in this study might explain how this result differed from those of previous studies. First, the context of this study (distance education) was different than the educational contexts of previous research. Second, FT was the only variable used to determine the participants’ levels of novelty, which may be a weak measurement of the construct. It is also possible that other factors such as cognitive overload (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006; Sweller, 1988, 1999), which results from the built-in limitations of working memory capacity of the human cognitive system, may be a result contending with anxiety and other extraneous factors unrelated to learning. Consistent with previous findings (Chen et al, 1999; Flowerday et al, 2004), interest was shown to be a significant predictor of emotional engagement in hierarchical regression analyses. At the correlational level, there was a positive correlational relationship between interest and all types of engagement (behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement), sup- porting the hypothesis that the students who were more interested in distance learning were Table 6: Hierarchical regression analysis predicting cognitive engagement from motivational variables (interest and self-efficacy) and learning variable (self-regulation) Step and variable R2 B SE B b Step 1 0.122* (Constant) 2.617 0.370 Interest 0.316 0.060 0.347* Self-Efficacy -0.032 0.073 -0.029 Step 2 0.356* (Constant) 0.809 0.383 Interest 0.093 0.058 0.102 Self-efficacy 0.009 0.063 0.008 Self-regulation 0.701 0.083 0.544* *p < 0.001. b, standardised coefficient; B, unstandardised coefficient; SE B, standard error. 200 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. more engaged in that environment. The correlation coefficient between interest and emotional engagement was higher than the correlation coefficient between interest and each of the other two types of engagement (behavioural engagement and cognitive engagement), supporting Fre- dricks et al’s (2004, 2005) results that interest is one of the key factors in emotional engagement. Both behavioural engagement and cognitive engagement include ‘effort’ in their definition: The effort associated with behavioural engagement involves behavioural effort such as physically performing a task, and the effort in cognitive engagement emphasises effort to use cognitive learning strategies to master the learning process (Fredricks et al, 2004, 2005). This implies that educators should keep in mind that adding features such as multimedia to an online program to increase student interest may not lead to increased behavioural engagement or cognitive engagement. Computer self-efficacy and engagement In this study, students in the School of Engineering had higher computer self-efficacy than those in the School of Gerontology. Considering that engineering students may have had more prior experience using computer technology, this result was consistent with the results of previous studies (Compeau & Higgins, 1995; Kinzie et al, 1994; Stone & Henry, 2003). Contrary to results of previous research (Bates & Khasawneh, 2007), however, the current study indicated that computer self-efficacy was not a significant predictor of the engagement variables of behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement. At the correlational level, computer self-efficacy was not found to be significantly correlated with engagement variables either. When considering this result, it is important to examine the role of self-efficacy in previous research (Bandura, 1986; Bates & Khasawneh, 2007; DeTure, 2004; Stone & Henry, 2003). It is possible that self-efficacy may have mediated the relationship between antecedent variables and outcome expectancy in the previous studies. In the current study, however, it was hypothesised that computer self-efficacy had a direct relationship with engagement. Results showed that without considering other factors, such as instructor support and acquired skills, computer self-efficacy had no direct effect on student engagement. This suggests that antecedent variables may be important factors in increasing distance education student engagement. Self-regulation and engagement Although the current study did not use a control group to compare the effects of student self-regulation in a distance education environment with those in a traditional classroom, the study did indicate that self-regulation was significantly correlated with all types of engagement included in the study (behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engage- ment). Specifically, students with higher levels of self-regulation demonstrated higher levels of engagement. Previous research has indicated that certain online activities and tools, such as discussion boards, online debates and brainstorming, can potentially facilitate online student self-regulation in the learning process (Kanuka, 2005; Seaman & Fellenz, 1993). This study suggests the role of self- regulation as a significant predictor of engagement, implying that it is important to include such online activities in order to facilitate student engagement. This agrees with Bandura’s (1986, 1988, 2001) social cognitive theory, which views human learning as triadic reciprocal interac- tions among three factors: personal factors, behavioural factors and environmental factors. In a distance education environment, personal factors such as self-efficacy, self-regulation and inter- est are influenced by persons, their behaviour and their environment through reciprocal inter- actions. Therefore, online activities not only provide an opportunity for interaction in online environments but may increase student motivation and engagement. Student engagement in distance education 201 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. Conclusion In summary, the study suggests that it is important to facilitate emotional engagement by increas- ing student interest, that first-time distance education takers may have had higher anxiety levels and therefore were less engaged emotionally in the online environment, that students experienc- ing the novelty of distance education (first time users) had lower emotional engagement, that students who were more interested in distance learning were more engaged in that environment, that computer self-efficacy was not a significant predictor of the engagement variables, and that students with higher levels of self-regulation demonstrated higher levels of engagement. Based on these findings, and consistent with other work (Chen et al, 1999; Guzley et al, 2001; Kanuka, 2005; Seaman & Fellenz, 1993), it was concluded that the use of online activities and tools such as multimedia and discussion boards may be important ways to increase student engagement in an online learning environment. Adding these types of features to the online program increases student interest and emotional engagement but does not necessarily increase behavioural or cognitive engagement to a significant degree. Educators should identify students who are taking online courses for the first time and provide necessary technical help in order to ease their anxieties and increase their emotional encouragement levels. Finally, it is important for educators to pay attention to young students’ needs for strategies that will increase their ability to self- regulate their learning in distance education environments. Limitations of the study An important limitation of the study is a possible selection bias. Participation was voluntary so the students who chose to participate (14.5% of the total survey invitation recipients) might have had higher levels of motivation than other students. If so, the study would not register the effects of low motivation. It is possible that these students may have experienced even higher levels of anxiety or lower self-efficacy, although the reasons for their non-participation remain unknown. Future studies can seek to minimise this by recruiting participants on a random basis. In addition, the study included only university-level distance education students so results should only be generalised to demographically similar students in similar environments. Recommendations for future research The current study looked at motivational and learning variables of situational interest, computer self-efficacy and self-regulation, engagement variables of behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement and demographic control variables (eg, age and school enrolled in). Future studies can address other variables involved with student engagement. For example, Webster and Hackley’s (1997) research investigated the relationship between quality of technology and student engagement in a distance learning environment. In addition, recent work has suggested that academic emotions may mediate the relationship between motivational variables and engagement, and thus may be important to assess (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun, Elliot & Maier, 2009). Factors such as cognitive load (Kirschner et al, 2006; Sweller, 1988, 1999) may be important factors as well, especially for novice participants. Also, the results of this study indicated that engineering students had higher levels of computer self-efficacy and less variance in their responses [ mean (M) = 4.05, SD = 0.56] as compared with gerontology students (M = 3.45, SD = 0.83). It may be that engineering students had more expe- rience using computer technology, thus having higher computer self-efficacy. Future studies could recruit participants from more sources to form a more diverse sample in which participants have different levels of self-efficacy to see whether the efficacy variable has any significant effects on a heterogeneous sample. Lastly, the participants in the current study included only students in distance education program. It would be useful for future studies to add a control group of traditional classroom 202 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. 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Pekrun, R., Elliot, A. J. & Maier, M. A. (2009). Achievement goals and achievement emotions: Testing a model of their joint relations with academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 1, 115–135. Pintrich, P. R. & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 1, 33–40. Pintrich, P. R., Smith, D. A. F., Garcia, T. & McKeachie, W. J. (1991). A manual for the use of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan. Pintrich, P. R., Schunk, D. H. & Meece, J. L. (2008). Motivation in education: theory, research, and applications (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. Richardson, J. C. & Newby, T. (2006). The role of students’ cognitive engagement in online learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 20, 1, 23–37. Richardson, J. T. E. & Long, G. L. (2003). Academic engagement and perceptions of quality in distance education. Open Learning, 18, 3, 223–244. Richardson, J. T. E., Long, G. L. & Foster, S. B. (2004). Academic engagement in students with a hearing loss in distance education. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 9, 1, 68–85. Schraw, G. & Lehman, S. (2001). Situational interest: a review of the literature and directions for future research. Educational Psychology Review, 13, 1, 23–52. Seaman, D. F. & Fellenz, R. A. (1993). Effective strategies for teaching adults (2nd ed.). New York: Merrill. Stone, R. W. & Henry, J. W. (2003). The roles of computer self-efficacy and outcome expectancy in influenc- ing the computer end-user’s organizational commitment. Journal of End User Computing, 15, 1, 38–53. Studenmund, A. H. (2006). Using econometrics: a practical guide (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Addison Wesley Pearson. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12, 2, 257–285. Sweller, J. (1999). Instructional design in technical areas. Camberwell: ACER Press. Tuckman, B. W. (2007). The effect of motivational scaffolding on procrastinators’ distance learning out- comes. Computers & Education, 49, 2, 414–422. Wang, S. L. & Lin, S. S. J. (2007). The application of social cognitive theory to web-based learning through NetPorts. British Journal of Educational Technology, 38, 4, 600–612. Webster, J. & Hackley, P. (1997). Teaching effectiveness in technology-mediated distance learning. Academy of Management Journal, 40, 6, 1282–1309. Whipp, J. L. & Chiarelli, S. (2004). Self-regulation in a web-based course: a case study. Educational Technology Research and Development, 52, 4, 5–22. Wilfong, J. D. (2006). Computer anxiety and anger: the impact of computer use, computer experience, and self-efficacy beliefs. Computers in Human Behavior, 22, 6, 1001–1011. Wolters, C. A., Pintrich, P. R. & Karabenick, S. A. (2005). Assessing academic self-regulated learning. In K. A. Moore & L. Lippman (Eds), What do children need to flourish? Conceptualizing and measuring indicators of positive development (pp. 251–270). New York: Springer. Zhang, Y. & Espinoza, S. (1998). Relationships among computer self-efficacy, attitudes toward computers, and desirability of learning computing skills. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 30, 4, 420– 436. Zimmerman, B. J. & Risemberg, R. (1997). Self-regulatory dimensions of academic learning and motivation. In G. D. Phye (Ed.), Handbook of academic learning: construction of knowledge (pp. 105–125). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Zimmerman, B. J. & Schunk, D. H. (Eds) (2001). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: theory, research and practice. New York: Springer-Verlag. 204 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 2 2012 © 2011 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 Becta. 
work_23jrecl2sfa3rpcdvjruuphepq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_23znfpm7afh2fhkmt76rl7odly	----	DILLON92.PDF 1 Dillon, C.L., Gunawardena, C.N., and Parker, R. (1992). Learner support: The critical link in distance education. Distance Education, 13(1), 29-45. Learner support: The critical link in distance education Connie L. Dillon, Charlotte N. Gunawardena and Robert Parker This study evaluates the Oklahoma Televised Instruction System, through an analysis of the student support services to include the resources available to the learner, the communications process characterized by the coordination services provided among the on-campus and distance sites, and the communication process characterized by the mechanical and electronic transfer of information. The study also compares the attitudes and performance of the participating on-campus and distance students. Introduction One important means of analyzing the effectiveness of the teaching-learning experience in a distance education system is through the analysis of the learner’s support system. ‘ Support systems contribute to the “ process” of a course as do the learning materials’ (Hodgson, 1986: 56); and support systems developed in recognition of student needs help the distance learner become competent and self-confident in learning, social interactions and self-evaluation (Rae, 1989). According to Garrison and Baynton (1987), the learner support system comprises both resources the learner can access in order to carry out the learning process and resources which relate to the mediation of the communication process. The resources of the learning process apply to both distance and on-campus students and include the availability of and access to courses, teachers or facilitators, learning materials, library facilities, media equipment and community experts. Among these resources 'The role of the teacher/facilitator is of primary importance in the issue of support' (p. 7). The need for resources associated with the mediation process results from the geographic distance between the teacher and the learner, and requires some type of mechanical or electronic transfer of information through telecommunications or mail to carry out the two-way communication in the learning process. This study analyzes the learner support system in a state-wide distance education system from the perspective of the distance learner. As such, the study examines the attitudes of distance students in the Oklahoma Televised Instruction System toward the following: a) the resources available to the learner which are directly related to learning including availability of courses, access to learning materials, and opportunities for interaction among teachers and students; b) the recourses available to the learner which are indirectly related to learning and include counseling, advisement and job placement services; c) the communication process characterized by the co-ordination services provided among the sending an communication process relating to the mechanical and electronic transfer of information. Finally, the study compares the attitudes and performance of the participating on-campus and distance students toward the teaching-learning experience. The Oklahoma Televised instruction System (TIS) was established by the Oklahoma State Regents of Higher Education in 1970 in response to legislative mandate. This system, which links Oklahoma's public and private colleges and universities, junior colleges, and technical institutions has become an integral part of the State System of Higher Education. 2 The system currently links ten transmitting institutions with over 120 classrooms at 70 locations in 36 communities throughout the state. All programming is transmitted live from regularly scheduled on- campus classes. The signal that originates in the campus studio classroom is routed through the closed- circuit network to the distant site. The network comprises point-to-point microwave radios, remote controlled switching equipment, and Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) transmitting and receiving systems. The switching equipment is maintained by the Televised instruction System engineering staff of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. The talkback from the remote sites is transmitted to the on campus studio classroom via microwave radio or leased telephone lines. A daily courier service provides for the exchange of homework, examinations, reference materials, and other educational materials between the transmitting institutions and the remote sites. Although the system has been operational for eighteen years, the distance students have not previously participated in an evaluation of the system. A State Regents Task Force charged with the responsibility for making recommendations relative to future operation of the enhanced TIS system sought that input, thus providing the impetus for tile study. Methodology Because this study is designed to provide a broad base of data supporting future improvements on the system, the mail questionnaire was selected as the primary data collection technique. The design of the questionnaire was based upon the Total Design Method (Dillman, 1978). During the Spring 1989 semester, surveys were administered to 453 distance students enrolled in courses on the Televised Instruction System. Of these, 193 were returned, a response rate of 43 per cent. Similar surveys were mailed to the participating on-campus students, with 499 surveys returned from the approximately 1220 on-campus- students, a response rate of 42 per cent. Responses were received from each of the 39 receiving, sites and from each of the 9 sending sites, indicating a representative return. A panel of professionals representing both the transmitting and distance sites and TIS staff participated in the survey design. The surveys were piloted early in the semester using both on-campus and distance students enrolled in TIS classes. The questionnaires included both closed-end items with ordered choices using a five point Likert scale, with five high, and open response items. In accordance with the purpose of the study, the analysis of the responses was primarily descriptive, using means, standard deviations and frequency distributions. Comparisons of the attitudes between the on- campus and distance students utilized T-tests and Chi Square statistics. Analysis of the open-ended response items employed content analysis techniques (Guba and Lincoln, 1983). Results Overall, the distance students gave the Televised Instruction System a high rating, as 88 per cent would recommend TIS courses to a friend (with a mean of 4.2 on the five point Likert scale with 5 high). Likewise, the distance students expressed a very high level of confidence in their course performance (as measured by expected grade), with 65 per cent anticipating an A (excellent) and 30 per cent, a B (above average). Nearly two-thirds of the distance students (63.1 per cent) did not feel that the on-campus students were at an advantage relative to course performance. A Cronbach's alpha was calculated upon two similar sets of questionnaire items, those items relating to technical support services and those items relating to student support services to determine the questionnaire's internal consistency. The technical support items received an alpha = .86 and the student support items received an alpha = .93, indicating a very high level of internal consistency within the questionnaire. 3 Forty-eight per cent of the distance students responding to the survey gave the researchers permission to release actual grades. Based upon this input, the mean grade point average of the distance student was a 3.59 on a four point scale (4.0 = excellent), with a standard deviation of .57. The grade point average by course level can be found in Table 1. Students at the lower division are in the first two years of college; students at the upper division level are in the last two years of college; and students at the graduate level have received a college degree and are pursuing graduate study Resources directly related to learning Resources directly related to learning include access to courses, interaction, learning materials and libraries. Students do not have access to courses if they do not know that they exist. One student's comment that the system is the state's best kept seems to be quite accurate, as marketing efforts appear to be, at best, random. Nearly one-half (49 per cent) of the participating students learned about TIS through word-of- mouth, compared with 25 per cent who found TIS courses listed in the college class schedule. Only 15 per cent saw a TIS bulletin. Interactions include student interactions with the teacher and student interactions with other students. The distance students were very positive about the concern and helpfulness of the instructor, giving this item a mean rating of 3.23 on a four point scale. Likewise, the distance students are generally satisfied with the interaction opportunities available on the system. The most important form of interaction for the distance students is the interaction with the instructor during class, as eighty percent cited this as important or very important to the learning process, while 83 percent indicated that they were able to interact with the instructor during class always or most of the time. in contrast, only 47 per cent of the students felt that interacting with the instructor outside of class was important or very important, and only 25 per cent were able to do so most of the time or always. Twenty per cent never tried to contact the instructor outside of class. Interactions with other students, whether in class or outside of class, were considerably less important to the distance students, since only one-third rated these interactions as important or very important (36 and 33 per cent respectively). As expected, the distance students were able to interact with other students more during class (38 per cent were able to do so most of the time or always) than outside of class (27 per 4 cent were able to do so most of the time or always). Again, twenty per cent never tried to contact other students outside class. Access to library recourses is very important for distance students as many (57,3 per cent) indicated that success in course required the use of the library. The quality of the library services provided seemed to be a significant barrier to distance students as the student ratings of these services were among the lowest mean responses on the survey, giving the receiving campus library services a mean of 3.17, and the transmitting campus library services a mean of 3.22. Mean responses throughout the survey ranged from 3.1 1 to 4.20 on a five point scale. (All are five point scales, with five high unless otherwise indicated.) The distance student responses underlined the importance of local library support, as 66 per cent of the students reported using either the local public library or the library at the receiving site. In contrast, 24 per cent used interlibrary loan, 13 per cent received library materials via the courier service and 12 per cent travelled to the library at the sending site. The courier service responsible for the delivery of course materials likewise received a relatively low rating, 3.27, and only 31 per cent of the students stated that they always received materials on time. Textbook services received a mean rating of 3.57. One student may have pinpointed the problem by stating that 'perhaps the courier materials pass through too many hands', a process in which materials pass from the instructor to the sending site coordinator, courier, the Televised instruction System headquarters, courier, receive site coordinator and, ultimately, the student. Resources indirectly related to learning The resources indirectly related to learning include advisement, counselling, job placement services and student activities. The distance students gave the advisement services provided by the transmitting campus a mean rating of 3.41, compared with a mean rating of 3.1 1 for counselling services, the lowest rating given on the entire survey. The distance students did not feel at a disadvantage due to a lack of job placement services or student affairs, as over fifty per cent indicated that the on-campus students did not have an advantage in these areas. However, with regard to advisement services, two-thirds of the students (66,9 per cent) indicated that the on-campus students have an advantage, indicating that efforts must be made to improve the advisement services for the distance learner. The communications process A third component of student support services includes the mediation of the communication process which involves the co-ordination and technical services provided by the participating institutions. When asked to rate the services provided by the receiving site, the distance students seemed most satisfied with the TIS enrolment process, giving this service a mean rating of 3.95. The mean rating for the overall helpfulness of the receive site coordinator was 3.61, followed by 3.59 for the provision of course information at the receive site. Communications with the sending campus received a mean rating of 3.56, and co-ordination of course materials closely followed with a mean rating of 3.5. Less satisfactory were library and counselling services, with mean ratings of 3.17 and 3.1 1 respectively. The State Regents' staff have primary responsibility for technical support. Tile technical problems reported by the distance students related more to the quality of the equipment and courier services rattler than to the nature of TIS staff response to problems. The primary barrier seems to lie with the audio signal transmitted to the main campus from the remote sites which received a mean rating of 3.13, followed by the courier service (3.27). In contrast, the TIS responsiveness to technical problems received a mean rating of 3.89, followed by the quality of tile video reception (3.7 3), talkback capability (3.66), and audio from the sending campus (3.6 1). 5 Comparisons with on-campus students Comparisons of both tile attitudes and performances of the on campus and distance students provides further insight into the perspectives and problems of the distance student. Tile data used to assess performance was the final grade which was obtained front the registrars of each of the ten colleges and universities transmitting courses. Because the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 stipulates that colleges and universities cannot release personal student information without the written consent of the student, the questionnaire requested permission from each student for the release of' the final grade with a signature, which was distributed to each registrar. of the total respondents returning questionnaires, 86 per cent of the distance students and 38 per cent of the on-campus students gave permission to release final grades. The attitudes and education related characteristics of those who refused to release their grades were very similar to those giving permission among the on-campus group. The percentage of the distance students giving permission for release of the final grade was sufficiently large that comparisons with those not releasing their grade was unwarranted. Comparison of the actual performance of the two groups found a significant difference in favour of the distance students using an Aspin-Welch test (t = 2. 1, p = .04) (see Table 2). However, no attempt was made to control for prior knowledge or level of motivation, meaning that the distance students could have come into the course with more knowledge or could have made a greater effort during the progress of the course. The reader should also note that with an effect size of approximately .25, the difference, though statistically significant, cannot be considered of practical importance due to the large variance in grade point average within each group. (Note: GPA refers to total grade point average, a number which reflects the average grade based upon the following values: A = four points, B = three points, C = two points, D = I point, and F = 0 points). Because graduate and upper division classes often focus upon the higher levels of learning, such as synthesis, analysis and problem solving which depend upon the more interactive strategies, the researchers were interested in the analysis of actual performance by level of course. Comparisons of the actual performance of the distance and on-campus students revealed no significant differences at the graduate level (t = .32, p = .75) nor at the lower division (Freshman and Sophomore courses) level (t = -.46, p = .64). However, the distance students completing courses at the upper division (Junior and Senior course work)level significantly out-performed their on-campus counterparts (t = 2.28, p = .03) (see Table 3). 6 When comparing the performance of the two groups by area of study, significant differences were found among those students enrolled in business courses, with the distance students out-performing the on- campus students (t = 2.55, p = .02). No differences were found between the two groups of students completing courses in engineering, education, maths and science, and social science. Contrary to the norm of this study, the on-campus students completing humanities courses out-performed the distance students. Although this difference was considerable, it was not significant (t 1.70, p I 1) (see Table 4). The attitudes of the distance and on-campus students toward support systems was also examined. Ratings of student services differed little between the two groups, particularly with regard to advisement, admission, enrolment and textbook services. As expected, significant differences existed between the ratings of library and counselling services, with the on-campus students rating these services higher (t = 5.0 1, p = .00 I and t = 3.69, p = .003 respectively) (see Table 5) 7 Although both groups indicated that interaction with the instructor during class was important or very important (80 per cent for the distance students and 82 per cent for the on-campus students), the distance students actually reported more opportunities for such interactions than the on-campus students, as 83 per cent of the distance students were able to interact with the instructor during class most of the time or always, compared to 73 percent of the on-campus students. One factor which may have influenced the on- campus students' perception is the 'expectation' they have of interaction opportunities available in a traditional classroom. Although the distance students reported significantly fewer opportunities for interaction outside class with both the instructor (X = 132.49, p = >.001) and other students (X = 43.78, p = >.001), they also indicated interacting with the instructor outside class was significantly less important (X = 28.365, p = >.001) as was interacting with other students outside class (X = 17.65 1, p = >.OO 1). Comparison of the two groups' assessment of the instructor also showed small differences. The on- campus students gave this item a mean rating of 3.36 (on a four point scale), compared to a somewhat lower mean rating of 3.23 from the distance students. Analysis of the open ended response items reported later in this study provides additional insight into the distance students' perception of the instructor. When asked about study habits, the responses for both groups were similar, with the majority preferring to study alone (71 per cent of the on-campus students and-73 per cent of the distance students) rather than in groups (20 per cent of the on-campus students and 23 per cent of the distance students) or with an instructor present (eight per cent of the on-campus students and four per cent of the distance Students). The distance students were slightly more confident with their expected performance in the TIS course, although the majority of both groups expected to receive an A (see Table 6). 8 As expected, the distance students who responded to the survey were more likely to be graduate students, taking the course for job related purposes, and had been out of school for a longer period of time. Finally, the distance students were more likely to have access to a personal computer, modem, communications software and a video cassette recorder than the on-campus students. Nearly two-thirds of the distance students (63.1 per cent) did not feel that the on-campus students were at an advantage relative to course performance. However, when asked which services provided the on- campus student with an advantage, the distance student placed considerable importance upon access to the instructor and the library, with means of 4.31 and 4.04 respectively. Access to the book store (3.85), advisement services (3.81), laboratories (3.79), study groups (3.76), student activities (3.47) , and finally job placement services (3.40) followed in ranking. Analysis of open response items The open response items ought to provide additional insight into the attitudes of the distance students toward the TIS system including their opinions relative to: 1) the services that assisted them most in learning the course content; and 2) the significant factors that hindered their performance in the course. The survey also elicited student suggestions for improving the student support system. Of the 193 students returning surveys, only 19 students (10 per cent) did not respond to the open-ended items, indicating considerable interest in contributing input into system improvements. Of the 193 surveys returned, 104 (54 percent)described services which supported the learning of course content. These responses were analyzed according to Moore's (I 989) types of interactions in distance education: 1) interaction between the student and instructor, 2) interaction between the student and other students, and 3)interaction between the student and content. The analysis also included references to print-based support, student support services, and technical support. Within the 'interaction between student and instructor' category, the majority of responses described the importance of the instructor's style or method of instruction. Typical comments included the instructor's 'willingness to explain things more than once', the instructor 'mailing information directly to my home', and 'the personal attention' given by the instructor. The focus of responses centred upon their interpersonal communications-between student and teacher, rather than upon the delivery of course content or instructional strategy. The students commended the instructors who visited the remote sites and appreciated the easy access to instructors by telephone. A majority of the students responding within this category commented that the print-based support provided by the instructor such as reference materials, course syllabi, study guides and supplemental materials assisted them in learning the course content. Some students discussed the importance of interacting with other remote students during class 'without the standard classroom restrictions'. Others were able to interact at work, both with students currently enrolled and with students who had attended the class in prior semesters. A few students discussed the importance of interaction with course content, citing the importance of motivation assuming responsibility for one's own learning '... it's up to the students, not the system'. Regarding the importance of other support services, the student cited the regular maintenance of the system , the remote site co-ordinator, registration and programme information, and access to library materials. Of the 193 surveys which were returned, 138 (71 per cent) discussed significant factors that hindered student performance in the course. Results indicate that among the more formidable factors were: a) technical problems associated with the telecommunication system, especially in relation to poor audio from the transmitting and receiving sites; b) instructor style or method of instruction; and c) the lack of library resources. Other factors include poor co-ordination at the remote sites; an inadequate courier service which was not only late in delivering handouts, assignments and exams, but sometimes delivered 9 them to the wrong site or lost them completely; unruly behaviour or 'idle talking' by some students at the remote sites, which hindered several students from attending to the lectures; and inadequate physical facilities, especially classroom facilities at the remote sites. A few of the students mentioned the lack of the interaction between students and content, that is, the lack of the study skills and self-motivation. Others cited the lack of interaction among the students, available to the on-campus students, which provided group support for term projects and assignments. Some felt uncomfortable using the phone, while others felt left out because they could not hear the on-campus students. Likewise, a few students suggested that the lack of interaction with the instructor outside class hindered their performance in the course. The lack of such interactions 'led to an impersonal feel in a subject that needs much explanation and discussion'. It is important to note that, while instructor-related interactions including style and method of instruction were cited by many students as assisting them in their learning, a considerable number of students indicated factor related to instructor style as a hindrance to their performance in the TIS course. Typical comments concerned factors related to the instructor’s inability to use the medium of television effectively - a factor which has considerable implications for faculty training relative to the use of the medium. 'The instructor was unintelligible and simply read from the book', and 'give [the instructor] more option ' s besides just sitting at a desk' and 'the instructor should write legibly' were typical comments. Other remarks referred to the instructor's inability to finish the class or achieve closure during the scheduled 'on- air' time 'so that we can't hear the final comments'. Some students indicated that the instructor did not provide tile remote students with the same materials as the on-campus students, and others complained that the instructors failed to offer any feedback on assignments and exams. A few students mentioned that the instructors' negative attitudes toward the distance students was a hindrance to their performance in the course and urged the training of instructors who teach on the system. Representative comments include 'it is obvious that some instructors dislike teaching on the system and it comes across' and 'While most instructors are willing and desire to cooperate and work with us, a few do the bare minimum ... leaving the student to sink or swim on our own'. Many of 'the incarcerated students voiced unique concerns including pressure from the prison staff, missing classes due to guard counts, prohibitive cost of textbooks, lack of study time, study space, and typewriters. One student stated 'in relation to prison, many people are against convicts getting education beyond a G.E.D. [General Education Degree] or High School diploma'. Of the 193 students returning surveys, 107 (55 per cent) made suggestions for improving support services. Responses to this item are discussed within the following categories: a) interaction between student and instructor; b) interaction among students; c) library, counselling and textbook services; d) remote site co- ordination; and e) TIS administration. The most frequent comments within this section related to student interaction. The instructors have difficulty ‘ relating to the remote students’. The instructors ‘should make an effort to understand our problems’, specifically in regard to library access and courier delays for assignments and exams. Suggestions for improving this interaction included telephone office hours, study guides and supplemental study materials. Other students expressed a desire for more interaction opportunities with the on-campus students which might be facilitated with a list of telephone numbers of all classmates. Improved library support was the most frequently cited suggestion relative to support services. Students suggested lend/lease arrangements between the transmitting and receiving institutions’ libraries, placing texts and supplementary reading on reserve at the receiving site libraries and requiring to libraries to provide the distance learner the same services provided for the on-campus student. 10 Other students requested counselling services for advice on degree plans, course selection, careers, financial aid and coping with pre-test anxiety. Some students described problems receiving the textbooks on time and suggested that each transmitting site provide the receiving sites with textbook information before the first class. A few students requested local site tutors. The most frequently cited concern related to remote site co-ordination was the courier service. The students urged the TIS administration to improve the service or provide an alternative means such as facsimile equipment. Other improvements included providing the distance students with an orientation an prior to the beginning of class to include enrolment procedures, classroom location, library access, and equipment operation. Co-operation between the transmitting and receive sites could be improved by hiring a single person to be responsible for all remote site coordination including the proctoring of exams, coordination of course materials, and other related functions. other suggestions included improved proctoring, notification about cancellation of class, and coordination of holidays among the sites. The most frequent suggestions for improving the classroom environment included more space, better acoustics, improved lighting, more comfortable chairs, eliminating interference from adjacent classes and better ventilation. Suggestions for improving TIS administration include providing video tapes of classes, improving the courier service, and providing a free watts telephone line for calling instructors and for transmitting information to the on-campus business office. Discussion The data provided by this study, supports the conclusion that the Televised Instruction System provides for effective learning experience as measured by the distance students' attitudes toward the system, confidence in course performance and actual performance. The distance students not only equalled the performance of their on-campus counterparts, but often surpassed the on-campus students in terms of Final grades received. However, this evaluation provides information concerning specific areas which should be targeted for improvement. Library services are a prime concern to the distance students and the telecommunications technologies provide many opportunities to bridge the gap between the campus library and the distance learner. The implementation of on-line searching capabilities, supported by statewide library networking, inter-library loan and facsimile services should be a system priority. The provision of advisement and counselling services should also be explored to include on-line access to college and university academic programmes, degree requirements, and advisors or counsellors. Placement services and student affairs appear to be only of secondary importance to the distance students, although these services may provide an important service to the incarcerated student. Other options which should be explored include increasing the opportunities for interactions among instructors, distance and on-campus students using voice-data systems for telephone conferences, computer conferences and electronic mail. One important, but often overlooked feature of a support system is simply making the opportunity known to prospective students. Courses are not available through a system when students do not know the system exists. Improved marketing efforts designed to inform prospective students about the opportunities available through this system will increase access to educational programs. The difficulty of long distance interaction is exacerbated by the audio problems of the Televised Instruction System. This is a problem which is certainly not unique in instructional telecommunications systems, as the audio component often plays second fiddle to the more costly video component in interactive television systems. However, the ability to interact via audio is of upmost importance, since it is through this interaction that the students explore, probe, debate and clarify misunderstandings. Weston and Cranton (1986) suggest that it is the interactive strategies, including class discussion, discussion 11 groups, group projects and peer teaching which are most effective for supporting analysis, synthesis, and problem solving skills. A system in which interaction is discouraged is a system which forces its participants to rely on teacher-centred strategies such as lectures which focus upon information learning at the expense of higher order learning learning. To adequately serve the learning needs of the information society, interaction must be an opportunity provided by a distance learning system rather than a barrier. Because the current system provides no incentives for 'receive site' participation in the Televised Instruction System, the effectiveness of' the receive site co-ordination is quite variable. While sonic receive site coordinators appear to be very committed to the distance student, others appear indifferent. Policy should address potential incentives for receive site participation which would encourage more energetic co-ordination and marketing at the distant site. Although the distance students gave the instructors a high rating overall, analysis of the open-ended items uncovered sonic evidence of' inferior teaching. The transmitting institutions should incorporate distance teaching within existing faculty development programmes or create faculty development programmes designed to address the unique problems of the distance teacher and learner. The faculty development programme must extend beyond mere training, to include integration of distance teaching within the institutional reward system. The distance students emphasized the importance of effective interpersonal communication between student and teacher. Faculty, training should, therefore, focus not only upon the use of the particular medium employed, but should also emphasize the communication process, encouraging the teacher to assume a more active role in communicating with the distance learner. Although the results of this study show a number of positive Findings relative to learner support services in general and to this system in particular the reader is cautioned not to infer from the findings beyond the limited scope of this study. These findings relate to the utilization of one particular telecommunications system and thus are not necessarily generalizable to other systems. Questionnaires form an important means of gathering data relative t; study of distance education. The issues, related to privacy, intrusion and varying institutional policies are factors which are not unique to this system, but which need to be explored further if questionnaires are to be considered a viable data collection technique. One solution is to replicate this study in similar systems. If replications find similar results, the implication for reliability will be much stronger than that provided by offering demographic comparisons between the nonrespondents and the population. Conclusions Contrary to the prevailing opinion of many teachers, administrators and accrediting agencies, distance students are not adversely affected relative to course performance; in fact the evidence provided by this study indicates that the reverse may be true. Whether this difference results from a more motivated or informed distance student is a question which warrants further attention. However, these 'findings are consistent with the predominance of media comparison studies whose results show 'no significance' when the media is the independent variable, indicating that telecommunications media likewise do not adversely affect student performance. To restate the summation made fifteen years ago by Chu and Schramm (1975), the question to be asked is not whether the media can be used to teach, but rather how best to use the media. This study provides a portrait of the role of the learner support system in one distance education system, while attempting to link theory with practice. To the extent that this analysis has evolved from the prevailing theoretical work in the field of distance education, this study provides a framework which can be replicated within other systems. An important area for research in distance education lies in 12 comparative studies, since the identification of differences and similarities among diverse systems supports both improves practice and progressive focuses research. From this study emerge additional questions. To what extent do corresponding studies of other systems find similar or disparate results? How does the role of interaction between distance student and the distance teaching institution relate to the design of interactive technology, specifically audio and computer systems? What are the cost benefits of' the various media as these relate to the accomplishment of specific learning outcomes? What are the skills required for distance teaching? Are these different from the skills required by the traditional on-campus instructor? What institutional policies support or hinder distance teaching? References Berdie, D.R. and Anderson, J.F. (1974) Questionnaires: Design arid use. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Chu, G. and Schramm, W. (I 975) Learning from television: What the research says. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service ED 109 985.) Dillman, D.A. (I 978) Mail and telephone surveys: The total design method. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Fink, A. and Kosecoff, J. (I 985) How to conduct surveys. BCVCTIV Hills: Sage Publications. Fowler, F.J. (1984) Survey research methods. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Garrison, D.R. and Baynton, M. (1987) Beyond independence in distance education: The concept of control. The American Journal of Distance Education. 1(3), 3-15. Guba, E.G. and Lincoln, Y.S. (1983) Effective evaluation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Gunawardena, C.N. (1988) New communications technologies and distance education: A paradigm for the integration of video-based instruction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Hodgson, V.E. (1986) The interrelationship between support and learning materials. Programmed Learning and Educational Technology, 23(1), 56-6 1. Keegan, D. (1986) The foundations of distance education. London: Croon] Helm. Mcore, M. (1989) The editorial: Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1-6. Rae, M. (1989) Successful distance learners: Sonic New Zealand correspondence school strategies. in A.Tait (Ed.) Proceedings from Interaction and independence: Student support in distance education and open learning. Downing College, Cambridge, England (ERIC Document Reproduction Service ED 279 338). Weston, C. and Cranton, P.A. (1986) Selecting instructional strategies. The Journal of Higher Education, 57(3), 259-288. 
work_24gmxgwktraw7k4lizjfupkwny	----	Elmousadik2020 103 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Retour d’expérience d’un enseignement à distance en temps de crise COVID-19 : cas d’un public d’adultes allophones Ibtihal El Mousadika*& Malika Abentaka aIbn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco *ibtihaleelmousadik@gmail.com mailto:ibtihaleelmousadik@gmail.com 104 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Retour d’expérience d’un enseignement à distance en temps de crise COVID-19 : cas d’un public d’adultes allophones Résumé Sous le joug de la pandémie du COVID-19 et à l’instar d’autres pays ayant connu la suspension brutale de l’enseignement en présentiel, la France a décrété une série de décisions dans l’espérance de freiner l’épidémie. Ces résolutions ont touché plusieurs secteurs, y compris celui de l’enseignement. En vertu de l’arrêté ministériel du 15 mars 2020, des restrictions et des mesures rigoureuses ont été mises en application. Dans ce cens, les écoles, les universités et les organismes de formation ont opté pour l’enseignement à distance afin de maintenir la vivacité de l’activité pédagogique en cette situation de crise. Dans cette contribution, nous allons présenter notre expérience d’enseignement à distance qui a duré du 01/02/2020 au 30/05/2020. Nous avons dispensé un cours de langue française axé sur les quatre compétences (compréhension écrite, compréhension orale, production orale, production écrite) à un public d’adultes de nationalités variées. L’objectif de ce cours est la préparation de ce public au passage du DELF A1 et A2 en vue de son insertion dans la vie sociale et professionnelle en France. Dans ce sens nous nous demandons : jusqu’à quel point l’enseignement à distance a pu se substituer à l’enseignement en présentiel ? Mots clés : Covid-19 - enseignement à distance - public d’adultes - enseignement en présentiel. Abstract Under the yoke of the covid-19 pandemic and following the example of other countries that have experienced the brutal suspension of face-to-face education, France has decreed a series of decisions in the hope of curbing the epidemic. These resolutions affected several sectors, including education. 105 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Under the ministerial order of 15 March 2020, strict restrictions and measures were implemented. In this regard, schools, universities and training institutions have opted for distance learning to keep educational activity alive in this crisis. In this contribution, we will present our experience of distance learning which lasted from 01/02/2020 to 30/05/2020. We provided a French language course focusing on the four skills (written comprehension, oral comprehension, oral production, written production) to an audience of adults of various nationalities. The objective of this course is to prepare this public for the DELF A1 and A2 exams with a view to their integration into social and professional life in France. In this article we will try to answer the following question: how the distance learning been able to compensate the face-to-face learning? Keywords: Covid-19 - distance learning - adult audience - face-to-face learning. Introduction Pour faire face à la montée vertigineuse de la propagation du Covid 19, considéré comme une pandémie par l’OMS, le gouvernement français a annoncé, le 16 mars 2020, la suspension des cours en présentiel dans tous les établissements dédiés à l’enseignement et à la formation. En cette situation particulière, et pour se plier aux directives liées au confinement, les enseignants étaient appelés à assurer une continuité pédagogique et à pallier l’absence du suivi en présentiel en basculant vers la formation à distance. Nous témoignons ici, en tant que formatrice ayant contribué, au sein d’un établissement d’enseignement du français langue étrangère, à l’intégration sociale, professionnelle et culturelle des apprenants allophones. Cette expérience particulière en temps du COVID-19 nous a amené à concentrer nos efforts sur la recherche de ressources pédagogiques et de méthodes susceptibles de contribuer à la mise en place de 106 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 classes virtuelles et à la réussite de notre première expérience d’enseignement à distance. Devant cette situation particulière et nouvelle pour nous en tant que formatrice non préparée et non formée à l’enseignement à distance, plusieurs questions nous taraudaient l’esprit : quel plan d’action pour préparer la mise en place de la formation à distance en ce contexte de confinement ? Comment procéder pour garder le lien avec nos stagiaires ? Jusqu’à quel point les stagiaires impliqués seraient assidus, actifs et acteurs de leur apprentissage ? Quels obstacles mes stagiaires et moi- même risquerons de rencontrer ? Serons-nous capables de les surmonter ? Évolution de l’enseignement à distance Contexte historique de la formation à distance Nipper (1989) met en avant un aperçu historique de l’émergence et de l’évolution de la formation à distance : jadis, l’imprimé représentait les premiers pas vers la formation à distance et initiait aux cours dispensés par correspondance. Le début des années 60 marque l’avènement du multimédia ; cette période a connu la diffusion et l’usage de divers médias à savoir la radio, le document audiovisuel, la télévision. Ces outils sont exploités pour atteindre les objectifs pédagogiques ciblés. Aux Etats-Unis, on se servait des émissions éducatives à partir de la première moitié du XXème siècle, en revanche, elles n’étaient considérées comme étant intrinsèques aux cours d’éducation à distance qu’à partir de 1970, et ce au moment où les télédistributeurs et la télévision par câble ont connu une expansion. À la fin des années 1980, l’essor des micro-ordinateurs et des réseaux télématiques ont donné un nouvel élan à l’enseignement à distance. Deux nouvelles formes de technologies ont vu le jour : le multimédia et les télécommunications. Ces 107 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 outils proposent des formes d’enseignement/apprentissage et de partage de connaissances plus novatrices comme la visioconférence, la correspondance par courriel, les sites web servant d’auto-apprentissage et d’autoévaluation. Au cours des dernières années, le recours massif aux technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) que ce soit pour dispenser des cours en présentiel ou à distance, a ouvert le champ à des dispositifs de formation et à un mode d’instruction novateur. Les études effectuées dans ce sens vantent les avantages des TIC dans la mesure où elles offrent une multitude de ressources et de contenus de formation assez diversifiée. Il est question de la formation hybride ou de la formation totalement à distance. Ces dernières dévoilent des dénominations équivoques qui rendent parfois difficile la distinction entre ces deux types de formation (Gérin-Lajoie et al., 2019). Avec l’évolution des réseaux télématiques et l’introduction de la formation à distance, nous sommes rentrés dans un espace virtuel qui est considéré par Daniel Peraya1 comme étant « un environnement unique intégrant différentes fonctions d’information, de communication (synchrone ou asynchrone), de collaboration, de gestion et d’apprentissage » (Peraya, 2003). Définition L’enseignement à distance est considéré comme un dispositif de formation ayant pour visée la transmission, par un organisme, des connaissances, sans la présence effective du formateur et de l’apprenant. Dans cette perspective, l’Association Française de 1 Pour plus de détails sur l’historique du développement des dispositifs de formation, se référer à (Peraya, De la correspondance au campus virtuel. Formation à distance et dispositifs médiatiques, 2003) 108 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Normalisation (AFNOR)2 précise que la formation à distance est « conçue pour permettre à des individus de se former sans se déplacer sur le lieu de la formation et sans la présence physique d'un formateur. La formation à distance [...] est incluse dans le concept plus général de formation ouverte et à distance ». Etant donné que la formation à distance agit différemment sur l’espace-temps des activités d’enseignement / apprentissage, il semble à cet effet que l’acte pédagogique est réalisé en déphasage prenant l’allure d’une formation médiatisée (Peraya, 2005). Dans ce sens, l’enseignement à distance reflète un investissement alliant technologie, pédagogie, et relations humaines. Typologies des cours à distance Les travaux inhérents à la typologie des cours à savoir ceux de Frank Mayadas, Gary Miller et John Sener (Coswatte, 2014 ; Sener, 2015) nous éclairent sur les différentes catégories de cours qui tracent le cheminement de la mise en place de la formation à distance, allant des cours en présentiel sans recours aux TIC jusqu’à l’instauration d’une formation plus souple qui s’adapte eux exigences actuelles. Sener (2015)3 et ses homologues ont classifié les cours selon huit typologies : 2 AFNOR (Association Française de Normalisation). Formation à Distance [en Ligne], Disponible sur : http://www.educnet.education.fr/dossier/eformation/distance4.htm, [consulté le 2 juillet 2020] 3 Sener, J., `` Updated E-Learning Definitions ", [consulté le 20 juillet 2020] sur: https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/, 2015 https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/ 109 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 • En classe ou en présentiel : cours dispensés dans un espace, selon différents aspects (exposé, cours magistraux, travaux dirigés, etc.), pouvant reposer sur les TIC pour visionner, animer, … ; • En présentiel augmenté : cours assurés en présentiel, mais qui peuvent impliquer des formes d’apprentissages ou d’évaluation réalisés sur un site web ou une plateforme dédiée ; • En classe avec extension en ligne : cours dispensés en présentiel, et présents aussi en ligne à travers la visioconférence ; • Hybrides : caractérisés par des cours en ligne qui viennent se substituer à certains cours dispensés en présentiel, selon une modalité synchrone ou asynchrone ; • En ligne asynchrone : repose sur des cours dispensés en différé, sans la présence virtuelle du professeur concomitante à la présence de l’apprenant. Le fonctionnement est régi par la correspondance électronique ou autre moyen d’échange de message ; • En ligne synchrone : cours dans lesquels les apprenants sont présents au même moment que l’enseignant. Le déroulement est réalisé par le biais de visioconférence, entretiens téléphoniques ou en classes virtuelles via les applications de communication de groupe ; • Hybrides en ligne (Blended) : cours offerts en ligne alternant modalités synchrones et asynchrones ; • Flexible, comodale ou HyFlex : pour ce type de cours, l’apprenant a la possibilité de choisir entre un processus de suivi à distance ou en présentiel. 110 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Objectifs et finalités de la formation à distance Après avoir clarifié la FAD (formation à distance) et fourni un bref aperçu historique autour de cette notion, il est question de présenter les objectifs qui sous-tendent la mise en place de la FAD : • Maintenir et renforcer les acquis ; • Préparer les stagiaires aux examens ; • Favoriser le désenclavement et l’autonomie des stagiaires ; • Initier les stagiaires à l’utilisation de l’outil informatique ; • Renouer le lien avec l’établissement d’enseignement ; • Expérimenter un nouveau canal d’apprentissage et de nouveaux outils d’enseignement susceptibles d’être pérennisés après le confinement ; • Évaluer le degré de réussite de la FAD et la possibilité de l’instaurer pour le long terme. Critères de mise en place de la FAD Parvenir à l’atteinte des objectifs visés par la mise en place de la formation à distance, requiert un investissement et une volonté sans faille que ce soit de la part des stagiaires ou du formateur. Le formateur ne peut obliger un stagiaire de suivre les cours si le stagiaire n’éprouve aucune motivation. Dans ce sens, un stagiaire qui n’est pas motivé se trouvera incapable de : • Développer son autonomie pour éviter l’isolement que ce type de pédagogie pourrait surement engendrer ; 111 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 • Gérer les diverses situations auxquelles il devrait faire face (maniement des outils informatiques, compréhension des consignes, utilisation de la messagerie électronique,). Pourtant, le rôle du formateur, mis à part la transmission des savoirs est : • De rehausser la motivation des stagiaires en leur expliquant les avantages qu’ils vont titrer de cette expérience ; • D’accompagner progressivement les stagiaires et leur faire imprégner vaille que vaille la culture numérique. Description de notre expérience de la FAD Public Le public sur lequel l’expérience a porté est composé de 14 stagiaires, dont la tranche d’âge se situe entre 19 ans et 50 ans, de nationalités différentes (4 de nationalités marocaines, 1 de nationalité péruvienne, 1 de nationalité yéménite, 4 de nationalité turque, 1 de nationalité pakistanaise, 2 de nationalité afghane, 1 de nationalité soudanaise). Il est à signaler que ces stagiaires ont déjà eu l’occasion de suivre des cours de français en présentiel et ont besoin d’acquérir les quatre compétences langagières (Compréhension écrite, production écrite/ compréhension orale, production orale) pour pouvoir réussir la passation du DELF A1 et A2. Nous tenons à spécifier que le niveau des stagiaires est disparate, 57,14% doivent atteindre le niveau A2 et bénéficie en l’occurrence d’un parcours de 250 heures, contre 42,85% qui doivent atteindre le niveau A1 et bénéficie d’un parcours de 350 heures. Selon le CECRL (Cadre Européen Commun de Référence pour les langues), au niveau A1, l’apprenant doit être capable d’interagir quand il s’agit d’une question 112 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 simple ayant trait à son identité ou à des questions directes liées à la vie quotidienne et aux sujets qui lui sont coutumiers. Au niveau A2, l’apprenant est capable d’interagir et de poser des questions simples liées aux situations de la vie usuelle : transport, achat, réponse à une invitation, …l’apprenant est censé aussi appliquer les structures quotidiennes de politesse. Déroulement des cours Avant le confinement et lors des cours en présentiel, nous agissons en termes de pédagogie différenciée en constituant des sous-groupes avec les stagiaires ayant le même niveau. Avec le passage à la formation à distance, il est primordial de maintenir la même pédagogique et d’individualiser l’enseignement pour s’adapter au rythme d’apprentissage des stagiaires. Nous tenons à mentionner que la durée du cours que nous dispensons lors de la formation en présentiel est de 7h. Les cours dispensés vont permettre aux stagiaires d’obtenir une certification en langue française qui atteste du niveau A1 ou A2. Les cours que nous dispensions étaient principalement des cours axés sur le développement des quatre compétences langagières( compréhension écrite, production écrite, compréhension orale, production orale) en se référant au CECRL, Nous n’étions pas soumis à un programme défini, nous disposions d’une certaine liberté dans la mesure où nous pourrions diversifier les activités sous réserve qu’ils soient conformes aux compétences attendues au niveau A1 et A2, et ce dans une optique d’obtention d’une certification en langue française attestant de l’un des niveaux cités. Lors du passage à l’enseignement à distance, nous étions appelés à assurer la même charge horaire qu’en présentiel, même si sa réalisation s’avère contraignante. D’une part les stagiaires n’étaient pas toujours productifs et concentrées, et d’autre part le problème de compréhension des exercices et de maniement de l’outil informatique 113 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 était contraignant pour les personnes âgées. En outre, l’explication des règles de grammaire et de conjugaison était très ardue sans matériel (tableau ou TBI). Et même la correction des exercices en visioconférence (ZOOM) n’était pas toujours réussie à cause des problèmes de connexion et le manque de qualité sonore, en plus l’application ZOOM n’offre que 40 minutes, ce qui perturbe la continuité du cours. Une autre contrainte réside dans le fait que l’enseignement à distance ne nous offre pas la possibilité de développer la production orale des stagiaires avec la même interaction. Nous nous sommes contentés de stimuler l’oral lors des visioconférences en privilégiant la méthode interrogative (questions/réponses) pour pouvoir réguler la prise de parole, ou en entretien téléphonique en optant pour la méthode active. Notre but était de plonger le stagiaire dans des situations de communication réelles. Malgré tous ces écueils et ces limites inhérentes à l’enseignement à distance, nous avons pu motiver les stagiaires et maintenir leur assiduité jusqu’à la fin de la formation par différentes manières à savoir : • Appeler les stagiaires en permanence et les aider à faire les exercices lors des premières séances ; • Leur poser des questions par rapport à leur sentiment face au confinement et les laisser s’exprimer ; • Être indulgente par rapport à l’heure de remise des travaux et leur laisser le temps de s’habituer à cette nouvelle méthode d’apprentissage ; • Renforcer l’acquisition du vocabulaire en travaillant sur des chansons pour détendre l’atmosphère ; • Corriger les exercices de manière individuelle à l’égard des personnes qui éprouvent la difficulté de s’exprimer en groupe ; 114 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 • Prendre contacter avec un membre de la famille du stagiaire qui maîtrise la langue française. L’objectif est de discuter avec lui des difficultés du stagiaire en question et lui proposer des solutions susceptibles de l’aider à dépasser ces entraves ; • Privilégier les activités qui suscitent l’intérêt des stagiaires comme les jeux de rôle : à la gare, chez le médecin, à la réception de l’hôtel, à la banque.... Nous procédons par simulation en jouant l’un des rôles et en amenant le stagiaire à interagir selon la situation en question. Ces activités intéressent les stagiaires vu qu’elles répondent à leurs besoins et leur facilitent leur intégration dans la vie quotidienne. Déroulement de la FAD Notre étude cible principalement un public d’adultes de différentes nationalités ayant suivi une formation à distance en France durant la période du confinement. Pour répondre aux questions préalablement annoncées dans la partie introductive, nous nous sommes basées, en plus de la description et de l’analyse de notre expérience, sur l’analyse d’un questionnaire que nous avons administré aux stagiaires vers la fin de la formation et sur des documents mis à notre disposition (travaux rendus, présence, remontées positifs ou négatifs). Recensement des besoins Avant de se lancer dans l’expérience de l’enseignement à distance, il était indispensable de collecter les données nécessaires à la concrétisation de cette expérience. Le premier critère que nous avons considéré important est le matériel possédé par le stagiaire. Un recensement a été effectué auprès des stagiaires et les résultats ont démontré que 100% de la population dispose d’un Smartphone avec accès à internet (débit limité ou fort). 115 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Même si ce matériel ne s’avère pas, suffisant à lui seul, au bon déroulement des cours, il permet au moins de poursuivre les acquisitions et favoriser le désenclavement des stagiaires. Précisons que seulement 28,57% des stagiaires disposent d’un ordinateur. Adhésion des stagiaires Avant d’intégrer un stagiaire à un groupe, il est nécessaire d’avoir son approbation sous forme d’une confirmation par mail, WhatsApp ou par Sms. Dans ce sens, nous avons pris contact avec l’ensemble des stagiaires, mais seuls 58,33% ont adhéré à la charte de la formation à distance. Les stagiaires n’ayant pas pu suivre les cours à distance ont soit des contraintes liées aux responsabilités familiales ou ne disposent pas de l’équipement et des conditions propices pour apprendre à distance. Planning des cours Pour que le stagiaire ait une vision plus claire du déroulement de chaque séance, un planning hebdomadaire a été conçu et transmis aux stagiaires, via mail ou WhatsApp. Ce planning comporte les éléments suivants : • L’heure d’envoi des travaux ; • Le temps consacré à l’explication des consignes ; • La précision de la durée de réalisation des exercices et de l’heure de la remise des travaux ; • Le temps dédié à la classe virtuelle et à la correction des exercices ; • Les noms des stagiaires convoqués à l’entretien téléphonique. L’objectif était de pousser les stagiaires à s’organiser pour respecter le temps alloué à chaque activité et pour ne pas déroger au règlement. 116 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Suivi pédagogique En guise de traçabilité, nous étions amenés à rendre compte du travail effectué à l’issue de chaque séance, il s’agit de la préparation d’une fiche : • Pédagogique avec les exercices envoyés ; • Synchrone pour chaque groupe (A1/A2). Cette fiche a pour objet de montrer le degré d’assiduité et d’implication du groupe, la présence ou non à la visioconférence ainsi que le nombre et la durée des entretiens téléphoniques réalisés ; • Asynchrone pour chaque stagiaire, afin d’exposer l’état d’avancement du stagiaire, la remise ou non des travaux, le temps de présence, les difficultés rencontrées et les remédiations à apporter. En fin, il fallait rassembler tous les exercices rendus et les classer dans les dossiers des stagiaires. Assiduité et implication des stagiaires Après avoir rassemblé tous les éléments qui rendent compte du travail des stagiaires, nous avons constaté que 41,66% des stagiaires rendent le travail demandé en entier. La qualité des travaux rendus et l’assiduité dont ils ont fait preuve s’expliquent par le fait qu’ils ont le niveau de français requis pour comprendre les consignes et respecter les règles. Une minorité 16,66 % de la population, quant à elle, était incapable de maintenir le même rythme d’implication et de réalisation de toutes les activités demandées. Deux raisons expliquent cette incapacité. D’abord, leur niveau en langue française ne leur permettait pas de comprendre les consignes. Ensuite, l’usage des outils informatiques et de la messagerie électronique leur faisait défaut. 117 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Au fil des séances, les difficultés rencontrées que ce soit par nous ou par les stagiaires se sont atténuées. En effet, les modalités d’envoi des exercices (l’heure d’envoi, le canal d’envoi) étaient respectées par 78,5% de la population. De même, les stagiaires n’hésitaient pas à nous informer ou à nous prévenir dans le cas d’un accès limité à la connexion, ou à un impératif familial qui pourraient les empêcher d’être présents. Cependant, il est à préciser que le maintien d’un certain degré d’implication des stagiaires n’était pas une tâche anodine, nous étions toujours contraints d’appeler certains d'entre eux pour s'assurer qu'ils ont commencé la réalisation des travaux, voire s'ils ont compris les exercices. Nous essayions aussi d’aider ceux qui n'arrivaient pas à rejoindre la visioconférence à rattraper le retard. Nous avons aussi accompagné ceux qui avaient du mal à réaliser une activité. Rappeler ceux qui ont oublié de rendre leurs travaux et ceux qui n’ont pas achevé les devoirs envoyés était aussi des tâches de plus que nous avons assumées. Nous étions conscientes du fait que les stagiaires avaient besoin de s’imprégner de cette nouvelle méthode de travail, et nous estimons que les efforts qu'ils ont fournis étaient louables. Degré de satisfaction Les résultats montrent que 92,85 % des stagiaires sont satisfaits du fait que la FAD leur a permis de garder le lien avec le monde extérieur. Cependant, en dépit de cette satisfaction, une grande partie de ces stagiaires : 78% de la population préfère les cours en présentiel et impatiente de reprendre les cours en présentiel, synonyme pour elle de liberté. Par ailleurs, 85,71% est satisfaite d’avoir appris, grâce à la FAD à : • Installer et à utiliser l’application zoom ; • Utiliser la messagerie électronique ; 118 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 • Établir une correspondance avec la formatrice. Nous avons constaté aussi que 55% des stagiaires estiment que la formation à distance leur dégage du temps pour s’occuper de leurs enfants, et leur permet de concilier entre l’apprentissage et les tâches quotidiennes tout en limitant les déplacements et les frais de transport. Tous les stagiaires ont pu continuer à suivre les cours à distance, excepté un stagiaire qui a abandonné au mi-chemin vu qu’il ne disposait pas d’une connexion internet. Conclusion Ce basculement vers l’enseignement à distance se dévoile comme une suite logique à la situation de crise sanitaire que traverse le pays, voire aux directives données par les autorités politiques et sanitaires françaises, pour faire face à la prolifération du covid- 19. A cet égard, il s’avère que cette expérience d’enseignement particulière fait émerger de nouvelles pratiques et initie à une continuité dans l’exploitation de nouvelles formes d’enseignement hybride où l’introduction des TIC et l’imprégnation d’une culture numérique constituent les piliers de cette initiative. La transition de la formation en présentiel à la formation à distance n’est pas un chemin sans embûches, surtout que nous n’étions pas confrontés auparavant à la nécessité de dispenser ce type d’enseignement et dans de telles circonstances. Ainsi, des efforts inestimables ont été déployés par les différents acteurs de cette expérience afin d’adapter leurs établissements et leur enseignement à ce contexte de pandémie inhabituel. De notre part, nous nous sommes fortement mobilisés pour l’élaboration de ressources didactiques et à la mise à disposition des stagiaires de contenus adaptés à leurs besoins cognitifs. 119 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 Malgré toutes les entraves et les écueils auxquels nous nous étions butés, notamment les inégalités des stagiaires et leur enclavement dans l’usage des TIC, nous avons déployé des efforts particuliers pour que ces derniers ne perdent pas leurs acquis, et ne régressent pas. Dans cette perspective, et eu égard aux retombées de cette expérience sur l’enseignement nous suggérons de : • Concevoir un programme qui répond aux exigences et aux concepts de l’enseignement à distance ; • Mettre à la disposition des enseignants et des formateurs des didacticiels numériques (vidéos capsules, brochures numériques etc…), illustrant les différentes étapes à suivre pour le bon usage des plates-formes dédiées à l’enseignement à distance, à titre d’exemple, comment partager des documents avec les apprenants et répondre à leurs questions ? Comment les évaluer à travers des devoirs, des quiz, des auto-évaluations, etc. ? • Utiliser des applications qui concordent avec la plate-forme Moodle et qui permettra d’assurer une formation à la fois synchrone et asynchrone au profit des apprenants indisponibles en ligne ; • Privilégier les outils numériques et les applications mobiles que les stagiaires ont l’habitude d’utiliser ; • Former les enseignants à la conception pédagogique dédiée à la formation à distance ; • Concevoir un manuel avec correction des exercices à l’usage des stagiaires n’ayant pas accès à internet et programmer des appels téléphoniques pour les accompagner dans cette démarche ; • Concevoir des capsules vidéo ou des podcasts comportant le cours de l’enseignant et les mettre au service des stagiaires sous forme d’un CD-ROM ou 120 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 dans une clé USB pour leur permettre de le visualiser dans une télévision ou dans un support mobile ; • Créer des plateformes proposant des activités pédagogiques bien ciblées et former les stagiaires à leur utilisation. De surcroît, les établissements d’enseignement devraient former les apprenants à l’usage judicieux des technologies de l’information et de la communication et créer un environnement propice au bon fonctionnement de ces outils. « Il n’existe pas de bonnes ou de mauvaises technologies mais de plus ou moins bonnes pédagogies utilisant les technologies » (Lameul, 2008, p 80). Par ailleurs, il est crucial d’instaurer graduellement la FAD pour qu’elle soit perçue comme semblable aux autres modes d’enseignement. De même, la personnalisation des cours ainsi que la disparité en termes d’équipement informatique et de connexion internet doivent être prises en considération pour ne pas pénaliser les personnes distantes géographiquement ou culturellement. Bien que l’expérience d’enseignement à distance soit fructueuse, il reste indéniable que le e-Learning et les modalités d’enseignement à distance remplacent l’enseignement en face-à-face, ce qui convient à dire que beaucoup d’efforts doivent être poursuivis dans ce sens afin de rendre ce dispositif plus efficient sous peine d’une prochaine épreuve. Références [1] ASSOCIATION FRANÇAISE DE NORMALISATION., `` Référentiel des bonnes pratiques, Technologies de l’information. Formation ouverte ", lignes directrices. La Plaine Saint Denis : AFNOR, p.p. 63, 2004. [2] Capitanescu Benetti, A., & D'Addona, C., `` Les parents, enseignant dans la classe à l'heure du Covid-19 ", N'Autre École Hebdo, no 1, pp. 19-24, 2020. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:134617 http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:134617 121 The Journal of Quality in Education (JoQiE) Vol.10, N°16, November 2020 [3] Conseil de l’Europe., `` Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues: apprendre, enseigner, évaluer ", Paris: Didier, 2001. [4] Coswatte, S., `` Updated E-Learning Definitions ", [consulté le 26 septembre 2020] sur : https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions/, 2014. [5] Gérin-Lajoie, S., Papi, C., Paradis, I. `` De la formation en présentiel à la formation à distance: Comment s’y retrouver? ", 2019. [6] Hantem, A., `` Les conditions de l’enseignement à distance pendant le confinement dû au COVID19: Cas de l’enseignement supérieur au Maroc ", Alliance Des Jeunes Démocratiques Et Économiques (ajde), Agir Iscae-Rabat, 2020. [7] Lameul, G., `` Les effets de l’usage des technologies d’information et de communication en formation d’enseignants, sur la construction des postures professionnelles, Resumen. Savoirs ", pp. 71-94, 2008. [8] Loisier, J., `` Mémoire sur les limites et défis de la formation à distance au Canada francophone ", [consulté le 28 septembre 2020] sur : http://www.refad.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/Limite-FAD-Mars-2013.pdf, 2013. [9] Moore, J.L., Dickson-Deane, C., &Galyen, K., `` e-Learning, online learning, and distance learning environments: Are they the same? The Internet and Higher Education ", pp. 129–135, 2011. [10] Nipper, S., `` Third generation distance learning and computer conferencing ". In R. Mason& A. Kaye (Eds.). Mindweave: Communication, Computers and Distance Education Oxford: Pergamon, pp. 63-73, 1989. [11] Peraya, D., `` De la correspondance au campus virtuel: formation à distance et dispositifs médiatiques ", dans B. Charlier, D. Peraya. (Ed.). Technologie et innovation en pédagogie. Dispositifs innovants de formation pour l’enseignement supérieur. Bruxelles, Belgique, 2003. [12] Peraya, D., `` La formation à distance: un dispositif de formation et de communication médiatisée ". Une approche des processus de médiatisation et de médiation, TICE et développement, n° 1, 2005. [13] Sener, J., `` Updated E-Learning Definitions ", [consulté le 26 septembre 2020] sur : https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/, 2015. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions/ http://www.refad.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/Limite-FAD-Mars-2013.pdf https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2 
work_2k7qgbq5wvdf3m5popg46jtwlu	----	ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Originally published in ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology Vol. 18, No. 3, November 2010 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 9 TRANSFORMING DISTANCE EDUCATION CURRICULA THROUGH DISTRIBUTIVE LEADERSHIP Mike Keppell, Carolyn O’Dwyer, Betsy Lyon and Merilyn Childs The Flexible Learning Institute, Charles Sturt University, Albury, Australia ABSTRACT This paper examines a core leadership strategy for transforming learning and teaching in distance education through flexible and blended learning. It focuses on a project centered on distributive leadership that involves collaboration, shared purpose, responsibility and recognition of leadership irrespective of role or position within an organization. Distributive leadership was a core principle in facilitating the transformation of learning and teaching through a Teaching Fellowship Scheme that empowered leaders across a regional distance education university. In parallel, a design-based research project analyzed the perceptions of the Teaching Fellows in relation to blended learning, time/space, peer learning, innovation and equity issues in relation to distance education. KEYWORDS flexible and blended learning; distributive leadership; design-based research; fellowships; transformative change; transformative learning I. INTRODUCTION Universities in the twenty-first century need to be responsive to the changing needs of societies by providing accessible and equitable learning and teaching options. Distance education universities, in particular, have traditionally been sensitive to the need to provide equitable options for their diverse range of students spanning the global multi-cultural educational community. To fulfill their mission effectively within this environment, a university needs to be continually evaluating, transforming and redesigning teaching and learning and undertaking curriculum renewal on a regular basis to ensure ongoing improvement of learning. In order to achieve these goals, traditional distance education universities are diversifying the range of teaching and learning options by utilizing online teaching and learning and blended learning options in an attempt to be responsive to the changing needs of students, faculty and the organizational mission. Because “the centerpiece of any organization is the curriculum it offers its students” [1, p. 41], the design of curricula needs to be carefully considered to embrace the needs of students, and provide equitable teaching and learning options for the university community. This paper outlines an institutional initiative to redesign courses (degree programs) and subjects in relation to flexible and blended learning in an attempt to transform the curriculum so that it best meets the needs of higher education students. A Teaching Fellowship Scheme was conceptualized and implemented to focus on the development (redesign of courses and subjects) by the academics involved in the Teaching Fellowship Scheme and individual development of the academics‟ knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning. The transformative learning [ 2 , 3 ] of the individual academics was examined through a series of semi-structured interviews undertaken at the beginning of their project, midway through their project and at the conclusion of their project. In addition, the distributive leadership role of the academic in changing teaching and learning within their school was also examined to gain insight into the leadership role of the Teaching Fellow in relation to strategic change. Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership 10 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 II. DISTRIBUTIVE LEADERSHIP IN RELATION TO FLEXIBLE AND BLENDED LEARNING Distributive leadership focuses on collaboration, shared purpose, responsibility and recognition of leadership irrespective of role or position within an organization. The term „distributive leadership‟ has been circulating in educational discourse for some years, particularly in the context of primary and secondary education where it is often used interchangeably with „distributed leadership‟ [4]. In the schools context it is largely used to describe a broadly disseminated pattern of leadership operating throughout a school and school community, the organization being led collaboratively by many participants rather than by a single authoritative being with the power of delegation. The central premise is that good leadership is foundational to good learning and teaching practice. In a university setting, „distributive leadership‟ coheres with this horizontal model but also carries more layered connotations, focusing upon the „collegial sharing of knowledge, practice and reflection‟. Identified characteristics of distributive leadership include the building of trust, the creation of a learning culture and the sharing and dissemination of information [4]. It is the contention of the authors that the sole use of hierarchical models of leadership is inappropriate in higher education to foster strategic change. New forms of leadership focused on principles of distributive may have potential in creating widespread strategic change. The architects of the Fellowship Scheme have been committed to a distributive leadership model, perceiving the scheme as a powerful conduit for the sharing of knowledge, skills and information within and between schools and an enabling strategy for the development of communities of practice across the university as a whole. It attempts to empower academic staff at all levels and fosters change across a discipline area. Within the Flexible Learning Institute, distributive leadership is a key component or style of leadership across all aspects of its work, with the Teaching Fellowship Scheme being the signature project of the Institute that focuses on capacity-building of academic staff and the redesign of subjects and courses using flexible and blended learning. For the purposes of this paper, a caveat also needs to be entered here regarding the ambiguous – and sometimes interchangeable – usages of the terms „blended‟ and „flexible‟ in the context of learning and teaching. Blended learning utilizes both physical and virtual environments and may be defined as “a design approach whereby both face-to-face and online learning are made better by the presence of each other” [5, p. 52]. Garrison and Vaughan further identify it as a “fundamental redesign that transforms the structure of, and approach to, teaching and learning”. Blended learning and teaching can occur at four levels of granularity: activity-level blending, subject-level blending, course-level blending and institutional-level blending [6]. A blended learning design may also be enabling incremental or transformative. Enabling blends would address issues of access and equity to provide equitable opportunities in face-to-face, blended and fully online learning environments. Enhancing blends focus on incremental changes to the existing teaching and learning environment. Transformative blends focus on a major redesign of the teaching and learning environment (e.g. online problem-based learning). Blended learning in higher education is becoming increasingly relevant to the tertiary sector and may be understood as the various course design elements that enable the ethical and educational principles of Flexible Learning and Teaching to be articulated. Dziuban, Hartman, and Moskal [7] describe blended learning as a form of flexible learning – providing students with a means of learning flexibly in the way distance education has previously offered flexibility. Flexible learning offers flexibility in the time, pace and place of the study; and in the content, including, at times, flexible entry and exit and differing assessments. The flexible learning model emerged in part due to globalization and its associated market forces, changing student demographics, the demand for increased and constantly changing employment knowledge, decreasing government and increasing private funding for universities, and improvements in communication technology and a shift towards different learning spaces – both physical and virtual. III. TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE In this development research [8] project, academics in the areas of education, environmental science, Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 11 communication, computing and mathematics, commerce, philosophy and sociology participated in a Teaching Fellowship Scheme with the dual goals of transformational change of teaching and learning of courses/subjects using blended learning and transformative learning in relation to their beliefs about teaching and learning. The specific projects undertaken by the fellows related to the redesign of courses and subjects through blended learning and involved colleagues in each of their respective schools to assist in the process. It was essential that each fellow remained within their school for the fellowship as organizational transformation as an “organizational learning process extends incrementally across all levels of the organization, from the individual staff member to groups” [9, p. 121]. The development and research project attempted to maximize the positive impact of the teaching and learning initiative for the individual academic, school, faculty and university. Covey‟s [10] principle of „Think Win/Win‟ or principle of mutual benefit was a powerful concept in the conceptualization, design and implementation of the Teaching Fellowship Scheme. The ability to think at the systems level and examine all aspects of the initiative was essential. Effective strategic leaders in higher education must utilize „whole of organization‟ approaches and focus on “organization intervention that enables integration and linkage of people, ideals, priorities and goals as a means of achieving sustainable transformative change” [9, p. 125]. In addition, Roche [9] also suggested that strategic leaders can only achieve these changes when they have a political power base in the university environment. In this instance the project was championed by senior management, supported by heads of schools and shepherded by a teaching and learning Institute. A number of other examples provide insight into the historical basis for the conceptualization, design and implementation of this project. Previous transformative change projects have demonstrated the need to work on sustained, immersive projects on strategically important areas to achieve organizational goals [11, 12]. Keppell [11] described the transformation of a traditional medical curriculum and the organizational structure that was put in place to facilitate these changes. It discussed the management, design, development, evaluation, and training that was implemented in order to create web-based and computer-facilitated learning modules for the curriculum. The approach used systems thinking as a unifying framework for management, instructional design and training. Systems thinking is a conceptual framework that examines the interrelationships between the often discrete aspects of management, design, development and evaluation of multimedia and online resources. Integral to this systems-based approach are aspects of building shared vision (goals, values and missions that are understood); accounting for mental models (deeply ingrained assumptions of how we understand the world); team learning (thinking together, achieving something that cannot be achieved alone); and personal mastery (continually learning and improving). [11, p. 69, 13] In another implementation at the institutional level, Keppell [12] examined the role of the instructional designer in transformational change in a Hong Kong context. It focused on the role of the instructional designer as a change agent in the university context through the process of brokering [14]. By acting as brokers, instructional designers translate between different communities of practice – in a way similar to a language translator – and coordinate multi-disciplinary projects that foster connections across and within communities of practice. The instructional designer has a unique vantage point that may allow new possibilities for innovative design and professional development, and allow for the transformation of practice within the institution. Brokering is defined as “connections provided by people who can introduce elements of one practice into another” [14, p. 105]. Five essential aspects are required of the instructional designer in the brokering process: translation; alignment between perspectives; recognition of legitimacy to influence the development of practice; reliance on the individual to have diverse identities; and suitability for certain individuals [12, p. 72-3]. In this initiative, each of the Teaching Fellows implemented change using a number of these principles. The early stages of the work by the fellows appear to be achieving impact in enhancing communication across the school, providing in depth Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership 12 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 discussion of the scholarship of teaching and learning and sensitizing academic colleagues to innovative ideas that could be used in the teaching of the specific discipline. The research side of the project is examining how they are achieving these goals and how they are transforming their own learning throughout the process. Parrish et al. [15] evaluated the development of leadership capacity through the Leadership Capacity Development Framework (LCDF) for teaching and learning in higher education. Four Australian universities were involved in the project that involved mentoring of academic participants. The evaluation of the project suggested that successful aspects of the LCDF included: professional development activities; authentic learning activities; reflective practice; dialogue; and cultivating appropriate professional networks. In a similar way the Teaching Fellowship Scheme focused on professional development, reflective practice, dialogue and networking through authentic learning. It also attempted to create a community of practice to support the work undertaken by the Teaching Fellows. An important similarity between the leadership program and the Teaching Fellowship Scheme is that they were under-taken for a sustained period of time to allow academics to transform their learning over time and provide exposure to a diverse range of activities. A major focus of the LCDF was the development of potential leaders across multiple levels of the university. The scholars in the LCDF suggested that broadening their understanding of what leadership can be and how it can be developed was a major benefit of the project. In a similar way, the Teaching Fellowship Scheme, by using principles of distributive leadership, is attempting to create champions who can initiate strategic change within their local school setting and through the redesign of subjects and courses using flexible and blended learning. IV. TEACHING FELLOWSHIP SCHEME In 2008 a Teaching Fellowship Scheme funded through the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) commenced at Charles Sturt University (CSU). The Fellows were seconded to work either with the Flexible Learning Institute (FLI) or the Education for Practice Institute (EFPI). This paper deals specifically with the FLI Teaching Fellows. The appointed Fellows have undertaken projects including curriculum/learning, program review and development, course and subject redesign, development and evaluation of learning tools/strategies/management programs, and scholarship in educational priority areas linked to the goals of the FLI and the EFPI. In 2008 (the first year of implementation) the Fellowships focused on blended learning and teaching, in conjunction with the use of CSU Interact (in- house name for the learning management system) and face-to-face teaching and learning. The scheme was planned with broad intent, its purposes including but not limited to the following aims:  The support and encouragement of the development of potential leaders across multiple levels and multiple areas of the university in line with the principles of distributive leadership.  The facilitation of collaborative professional relationships between the FLI and the various schools and faculties and the strengthening of collaborative bonds between the schools themselves.  The proactive development of course-relevant and subject-relevant blended learning systems at the university.  The specific promotion and facilitation of CSU Interact as a pivotal teaching and learning hub. The 2008 Fellowship projects were designed to build upon existing understandings of the transformative role of blended learning in ways that promote staff development and strategically improve the quality of teaching and learning in subjects and courses throughout the university. It is anticipated that there will be benefits to the Fellows in terms of career development given the enhanced opportunity for research output and for a discipline-specific investment in the scholarship of teaching and learning. It is further anticipated that there will be a natural accrual of benefit to each school and faculty and to the university overall. The original conception of the scheme envisaged the eventual participation of Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 13 all 24 schools at the university through the targeted annual appointment of Teaching Fellows over a three-year to five-year period. Eight FLI Fellows from eight different schools were appointed to commence in July 2008. The 2008 Fellows concluded their appointments on 30 June 2009 and the next round of six Fellows began their appointments on or around 1 July 2009. In January 2010 a further eight fellows began their appointments and will conclude in December 2010. In 2011 a further six fellows have been funded and will commence in January 2011. The Fellowship scheme provides a 50% release from regular duties over a 12-month period enabling academic staff to develop strategic learning and teaching projects. The decision to construct the time frame of the Fellowship program in this way, rather than as a full-time release over six months was carefully considered. Prior to the commencement of the scheme it was recognized that it would be impracticable and would place undue pressure on faculties and schools if outstanding teaching staff were entirely unavailable for the period of the fellowship. It was also felt that a continuing engagement in teaching throughout the period of the fellowship might provide an ongoing practicum where their investment in the scholarship of teaching and learning through their involvement in the scheme might draw upon and enhance their professional practice and their research project. At the highest level of functionality the Fellowship program offers an opportunity for quality teaching staff to meld practice and research innovatively, providing distributive leadership within their own area of professional expertise and generating sanctioned change within the institutional boundaries of the university environment. In practice the Teaching Fellowship Scheme adheres to the design principles for transformative learning. Transformative learning is defined as a process by which previously uncritically assimilated assumptions, beliefs, values and perspectives are questioned and thereby become more open, permeable and better justified [ 2 , p . vi ] . The scheme is working to establish intersecting and collaborative communities of reflection and inquiry throughout the university, enabling the development of technological and pedagogical skills through distributive leadership. The roles and perceptions of the Teaching Fellows are providing data for a research project focused on the transformative role of blended learning to improve teaching and learning in subjects and courses throughout CSU. In addition to interviews throughout the fellowship, individual interviews will be conducted with Teaching Fellows six months after the conclusion of their Fellowship term. The intent is to identify and record any changes or developments in the post-Fellowship period and to offer a further time and space for guided reflection. The scheme‟s approach to blended learning coheres with the core principles of social justice and ethical practice elucidated in CSU‟s 2007 University Strategy document. An institutional investment in the quality provision of flexible learning and teaching is foundationally underpinned by a commitment to access and equity across social, cultural, geographic (distance), generational and ability groupings. It is relevant to note here that some of the research projects of the individual fellows have drawn attention to specific issues relating to access and equity. The research project focused particularly upon the transformative role of blended learning to improve teaching and learning in subjects and courses throughout CSU. Transformative change with regard to the Teaching Fellows and, for the purposes of the research project, is understood to be expressed in ways that include, but are not limited to, the following:  An enhanced understanding of pedagogy and of their own pedagogical approach.  An increased capacity and willingness to reflect upon their own practice.  A w i l l i n g n e s s to think critically about received ideas and conventional approaches.  Readiness to innovate, to accept technological change and to build effective pedagogic connections between face-to-face and online teaching strategies.  Renewed confidence with regard to leading and adopting change and innovation among their peers and within their own schools.  Being empowered to negotiate perceived technological and institutional barriers to change.  Preparedness to maximize the time/space opportunity of the Fellowship to actively Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership 14 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 engage in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual context. To record these and other changes, the project utilized a development-based research process as outlined by Reeves [8]. The information provided by the Teaching Fellows in interviews and focus groups formed the basis for the research. The initial proposal for the Teaching Fellows Scheme identified it as a university wide strategic and transformative project that should promote innovation, transform educational practice in flexible learning and teaching, foster research based teaching and develop applied research outputs relevant to innovation in flexible learning and teaching. The methodology adopts a multi-case study approach and applies several different strategies to examine the role of blended learning and the Fellows‟ own perceptions of blended learning. Input was also sought from the educational designers working with the Fellows. The strategies included:  One pre-Fellowship audio interview with each Fellow.  One mid-Fellowship audio interview with each Fellow.  One post-Fellowship audio interview with each Fellow.  Two face-to-face meetings with Fellows and designers during the 12-month  Fellowship (one at the beginning of the Fellowship term and one at its completion).  Two teleconference focus groups with the Fellows.  Analysis o f i nc u mb e nt F e l l o w s ‟ r e f l e c t i ve j ou r n a l s ( bi-monthly r e f l e c t i ve journals about the project).  Analysis of information gathered in discussion during the 12-month Fellowship.  Completion of a short final report (with guided questions) at the conclusion of the Fellowship term. The Transformative Change research project will run for the duration of the Fellowship scheme over a three-year to five-year period. The feedback from the Teaching Fellows in the context of the transformative change indicators offers valuable insights into the direction the project is taking. All of these observations and individual interviews were recorded and transcribed throughout the Fellowship. V. DEVELOPMENT-BASED RESEARCH The rationale for choosing the research methodology of design-based research/ development research (the terms refer to very similar approaches and will be used interchangeably in this paper) is that it provides a methodology for progressing both pragmatic and theoretical aims of practice [16]. Development research [17] aligns with the concept of „use-inspired research‟ [18] that considers how our developments benefit the user, group or society and how our developments provide design principles for the academic community. Design-based research advances design, research and practice concurrently [16]. It has five characteristics, being: pragmatic; grounded; interactive, iterative, flexible; integrative; and contextual [16]. Wang and Hannafin define design-based research as: A systematic but flexible methodology aimed to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation, based on collaboration among researchers and practitioners in real world settings, and leading to contextually sensitive design principles and theories. [16, p. 7] Development research is defined as research “focused on the dual objectives of developing creative approaches to solving human teaching, learning, and performance problems while at the same time constructing a body of design principles that can guide future development efforts” [8, pg 25] (see Figure 1). It is ideal in the context of the Teaching Fellowship Scheme that has parallel aims of developing innovative teaching and learning and the investigation of theory in relation to transformative change at an institutional level and transformative learning of the individual academics. The research Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 15 intends to develop design principles suitable for the next iteration of the project and add to the body of literature on innovation in flexible and blended learning. The research goals are interpretivist in nature and “focus on portraying how education works by describing and interpreting phenomena related to teaching, learning, performance, assessment, social interaction and innovation” [8, p. 23]. A number of key principles will also be generated to foster further development in relation to flexible and blended learning within the university. These principles will guide future iterations of the project and are essentially development goals. The strength of this approach for investigating the Teaching Fellowship Scheme is that the researcher collaborates with the participants (Teaching Fellows) in the design and implementation of the project. The whole process will impact on the pragmatic and theoretical aims in relation to the practice. Furthermore the Teaching Fellowship Scheme is using anthropologically driven design-based research. Bell [19] suggests that: anthropologically driven design-based research seeks to understand the nature of the introduced changes and their consequences from the perspective of the participants, and often it provides them with a voice and a source of influence on shaping changes to their settings. [19, p. 245] Figure 1. Development research process as outlined by Reeves [8, p. 25]. The Teaching Fellowship Scheme applies this principle of understanding how flexible and blended learning is introduced in the redesign of subjects and courses and the consequences of this introduction from the perspective of the Teaching Fellows. In this project, the Teaching Fellows are active agents in shaping the landscape of their discipline using flexible and blended learning. The project focuses on an intervention that will impact the: localized nature of the practices and norms of the social groups investigated as they actually occur in their specific settings. Such a focus allows for detailed study of how new designs are appropriated, resisted, or even repurposed by groups that are assumed to already have significant cultural momentum before any intervention begins. [19, p. 249] VI. TEACHING FELLOWS’ PERCEPTIONS As suggested previously, the research project focused on transformative change with regard to the Teaching Fellows. Six predominant themes emerged through the perceptions of the fellows. These themes are discussed in the following section. An enhanced understanding of pedagogy and of their own pedagogical approach With regard to the Teaching Fellows‟ understanding of pedagogy, especially with regard to blended learning, and of their own pedagogical approach, the following remarks were made at the conclusion of the 12-month program: So I guess the interesting amalgam of ideas around different modes of learning and … different modes of learning as a part of students learning experience … is … a crucial aspect – that the notion of retaining or sustaining or maintaining student learning is pivotal to a conception of Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership 16 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 blended learning … [This] has been where the real learning has come for me … This Teaching Fellow focuses on student learning while redesigning subjects using blended learning. They believed that the fellowship allowed them to understand the importance of this focus. I started off with the perception that flexible learning was about a pile of different online technologies and I think I‟ve increased my appreciation of blended learning or it‟s a lot more strategic than just having a pile of information out there, it‟s about … the best course for information … and the best way of delivering that teaching … This comment suggests that this Teaching Fellow has gained an understanding of design. They mention a strategic intent and the need to make a decision about how to optimize teaching and learning in a blended learning environment. My understanding [of blended learning] has not changed, as when I first came into the program my perception was that it was a form of pedagogy, that it was a business strategy and it was a form of work organization. I think my experiences over the last twelve months have reaffirmed that. What I have gained is an understanding of how it is applied at CSU. This is an insightful perspective of blended learning as too often we only focus on the teaching and learning benefits. With every new initiative we implement in the university environment, we need to be aware of the implications for the work practices for the academic as well the inherent benefits and disadvantages for the organization and the workforce. An increased capacity and willingness to reflect upon their own practice The Teaching Fellows also commented on the ability to reflect upon their own practice: .… you have the opportunity to think about things that you might not ordinarily have the time to do and you‟ve got the space … I‟d say the biggest advantage is probably the potential to get a time break – to actually step back and think of the big picture, the forest. The fellowship program attempted to provide space for each fellow to examine how they could redesign their subjects or courses more effectively. Instead of layering further work on top of the current workload of the fellow, the fellowship program provided a 50% buyout of their current duties. This principle was essential for each fellow to reflect on their current work and examine innovative ways to progress their learning and teaching. It was interesting to read around and to think … about my own experiences during the fellowship … about how people actually conceive of flexible learning and the relationship between issues of technology and the students‟ learning, and to see how that‟s something which people are grappling with in a really interesting and a robust way … So I suppose that‟s been the really big substantive piece of personal learning that I have taken away. This fellow was able to see that learning must come first before the technology. Technology is simply an enabler of learning. Starting from scholarship of teaching … I‟m about to rediscover … scholarship in teaching, pedagogy and curriculum. … So the fellowship has just been terrific to make a space for that quality process to take time … Creating space for working on the fellowship allowed this fellow to network and rediscover pedagogy and curriculum. Busy academics with heavy teaching workloads often struggle to reflect on their teaching and learning. A willingness to think critically about received ideas and conventional approaches Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 17 The readiness to innovate, to accept technological change and to build effective pedagogic connections between face-to-face and online teaching strategies is also increasingly in evidence. I‟ve got a new found respect for the work that the educational designers do, like having to engage us as academics with ideas or different ways of doing things and trying to get that on to other people‟s agendas. This fellow has recognized the complex role of working across a disciplinary subculture as opposed to completing individual academic work. This fellow may be able to champion this perspective and assist in influencing positive change in teaching and learning. The issues of flexible learning are foregrounded in a way in which they haven‟t been in the past for many of the staff members who have been involved within the school and I think having that forum … has been a useful vehicle to actually promote the ongoing conversations about the nature of our learning as well. It is notable that there is a renewed confidence among some of the Teaching Fellows with regard to leading and adopting change and innovation among their peers and within their own schools. And then there‟s peer learning and I think this has been the bigger aspect for me, that you know this fellowship has enabled me to work with my own peers a lot … more than I had thought I would and that‟s been quite gratifying and illuminating … There was readiness to innovate, to accept technological change and to build effective pedagogic connections between face-to-face and online teaching strategies. In addition, there was also a renewed confidence with regard to leading and adopting change and innovation among their peers and within their own schools. Being empowered to negotiate perceived technological and institutional barriers to change Some of the Teaching Fellows became intermittently dispirited about difficulties in their path, but others clearly felt empowered to negotiate perceived technological and institutional barriers to change … [When] there was a technical barrier … I was able to talk to a lot to people about that particular technical barrier that I had to get over. This need to solve a complex issue in the use of the technology provided a means for the fellow to influence the progress of learning and teaching through the learning management system. Another means of empowerment was the discussion that occurred in relation to teaching and learning: … One colleague … came in only this morning for about fifteen or twenty minutes – to ask about technology and techniques and also about the pedagogy underpinning the redesign of their subject. So that‟s an ongoing collegiality. Preparedness to maximize the time/space opportunity of the Fellowship to actively engage in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual context Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership 18 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 Most of the Teaching Fellows expressed a real determination to maximize the time/ space opportunity offered by the Fellowship to actively engage in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual (school/faculty/campus/cohort) context. It [the Fellowship Program] certainly does give a higher status to teaching within the institution which is traditionally the poor relative of research. I think the program in that sense puts it on more of an even par in terms of status and significantly in terms of resourcing. This comment demonstrates the need to initiate projects in the university environment that clearly show the importance of teaching and learning. By allocating substantial resources to teaching and learning, university senior management send a clear message to the entire academic community that good teaching and learning is valued. … you‟re right; that ripple effect means that … the more people who know what I‟ve been doing … means that I can talk to more people. Equity and access Equity for rural and remote students was a concern expressed by all of the Teaching Fellows consistently throughout interviews and discussions. One of the more valuable observations here addressed the fact that equality and equity are not necessarily the same thing – specifically that an equitable experience needs to be adjusted to circumstance and not to be rendered exactly the same. I think the idea that we have to treat pupils in different cohorts equally might take us down some paths we don‟t really want to go. I‟m going to suggest that what we should be concentrating on is equity and what is equitable is that we provide for our students the best possible education we can give them in their chosen mode of study – that‟s the equitable thing to do. Nevertheless legitimate issues were raised regarding access to university systems and resources particularly for the most potentially compromised student groups (remote, indigenous, or those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds). There is concern that what we design simply will not be able to be accessed by our rural and remote students. Throughout the project, the conceptual basis for the fellowship program was continually refined by the feedback obtained through the interviews with the Teaching Fellows. At its core, the architects of the fellowship program believe that by empowering individual academics to think deeply about learning and teaching, particularly in the area of flexible and blended learning, they will begin transforming their perspectives about learning and teaching. The use of professional development over the fellowship provided a focused approach in assisting academics to begin questioning their current beliefs about teaching and learning while being immersed in the redesign of their teaching. VII. CONCLUSION The Teaching Fellowship Scheme utilizing distributive leadership has transformed teaching and learning using flexible and blended learning. By focusing on redesigning subjects and courses, Fellows have engaged in innovative and relevant research to enhance their own professional development and pedagogical scholarship. By being involved in a community of practice focused on peer learning and building collaborative partnerships with academic colleagues, the Fellows have generated a number of Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 19 outputs including presentations, publications and professional development in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Schools and faculties have also enhanced their understanding of blended learning through the Fellowship project. Teaching Fellows within their school have widened the awareness of flexible and blended learning strategies through discussion, presentations, informal and formal dialogue. Schools and faculties have also benefited from innovative options of teaching and learning using blended learning that should benefit student learning. The university has also benefited from the development of design principles that should guide future developments in the provision of innovative and sustainable practice in flexible learning and teaching through this project. The learning community at the university now has a range of learning options, which should assist in developing the university as a model of excellence in flexible learning and teaching in the global academic arena. In this project, distributive leadership was utilized as a catalyst for curriculum change. It demonstrated how Teaching Fellows, through mentoring and sustained professional development, can instigate strategic change. By carefully managing the strategic process, the Teaching Fellows learned about the relevance of flexible and blended learning for the redesign of subjects and courses in a university context as well as leadership principles. A series of workshops and mentoring sessions provided a framework for empowering the fellows and assisting them to achieve their goals within their own school and discipline context. This approach has implications for professional development in higher education as the teaching fellows acted as distributed leaders implementing their own professional development with colleagues throughout their fellowship. The use of a contextualized, focused within university sabbatical for academics provided a mechanism for changing beliefs about learning and teaching, infusing innovation into the redesign of subjects and courses, and instigated a change process about learning and teaching at the university level. Effectively this project has extended the reach of a learning and teaching institute in addressing its goals of strategic change throughout the university. VIII. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Mike Keppell is currently working in the roles of Director, The Flexible Learning Institute and Professor of Higher Education at Charles Sturt University. Prior to this, he worked at the Hong Kong Institute of Education as Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology (LTTC) from 2003 –2007. Before joining the Institute of Education, he was Head of the Biomedical Multimedia Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Science, The University of Melbourne from 1998-2002 and Head of the Interactive Multimedia Unit, Division of Distance and Continuing Education, Central Queensland University from 1994-1998. He has a background in teaching and learning, curriculum, evaluation and more specifically instructional design. His research focuses on learning spaces, blended learning, learning oriented assessment, authentic learning and transformative learning using design based research. He is widely published and has completed numerous keynote and invited presentations. He is currently President of ascilite http://www.ascilite.org.au/. Carolyn O’Dwyer has taught in the Department of English at the University of Melbourne. She was employed by the Flexible Learning Institute to support research into the development of a standards framework for flexible learning and teaching at CSU. Her related work involves research into academic literacy and multiliteracies. Carolyn is an Associate member of the Society of Editors (IPED), and provides freelance writing and editing support to early career academics and developing writers. Betsy Lyon has a background in Secondary and Adult Education before joining the Flexible Learning Institute, Charles Sturt University as a Research Assistant and Project Officer in 2008. She has been a Research Assistant on projects related to transformative learning and leadership. She now complements this with work as an Education Designer with Learning and Teaching Services in the School of Business at Charles Sturt University. Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership 20 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 Merilyn Childs is Deputy Director of the Flexible Learning Institute and in this role supports the development of institutional change in relationship to the adoption of blended and flexible learning at CSU. In 2010 she was also the Director of Curriculum Renewal, and played a role in a number of curriculum and pedagogy change processes at CSU. During 2000-2009 Merilyn was Co-Director of the Centre for Learning and Social Transformation at the University of Western Sydney, where she managed projects valued at over $1million. She was a key investigator in an ARC Discovery Grant (Wiggins, Childs and Fogarty 2007) that investigated Cognitive Features of Decision Support System Interfaces (the human dimensions of time pressured decision making). She has written and co-written a number of papers on leadership and decision making in a range of industry settings. IX. REFERENCES 1. Tierney, W.G. Building the responsive campus: Creating high performance colleges and universities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999. 2. Cranton, P . Understanding a n d p r o m o t i n g t r a n s f o r ma t i ve l e a r n i n g : A gu i d e f o r educators. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2006. 3. King, K.P . Both sides now: Examining transformati ve learning and professional development of educators. Innovative Higher Education 29, no. 2: 155–74, 2004. 4. Brown, N. and Littrich, J. Using a cross institutional collaborative model to deliver a n a t i o n a l r o u n d t a b l e c o n f e r e n c e o n a s s e s s m e n t : A c a s e study. Journal o f University Teaching and Learning Practice 5: 8, 2008. 5. Garrison, D.R., and Vaughan, N.D. Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principles, and guidelines. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, John Wiley & Sons, 2008. 6. Graham, C.R. Blended learning systems: Definition, current trends, and future directions. In the handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local designs, ed. C.J. Bonk and C.R. Graham, 3–21. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2006. 7. Dziuban, C . D .; Hartman, J.L. and M os kal . P.D. Blended l ea r ni ng. EDUCAUSE. Research Bulletin 7: 1–12, 2004. 8. Reeves, T . C . Socially responsible educational technology research. Educational Technology 40, no. 6: 19–28, 2000. 9 . Roche, V. Professional development models and transformative change: A case study of indicators of effective practice in higher education. The International Journal for Academic Development 6, no. 2: 121–9, 2001. 10. Covey, S. The seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Free Press. 1989. 11. Keppell, M. Creating quality multimedia and online learning: Blending management, design, development, evaluation and training. In Eight contributions on quality and flexible learning, ed. H. Hansson, 69–89. Report 1:2002. Distum: Swedish Agency for Distance Education, Nybrogatan, 2002. 12. Keppell, M.J. Instructional designers on the borderline: Brokering across communities of practice. In Instructional design: Case studies in communities of practice, ed. M.J. Keppell, 68– 90. New York: IGI Global, Hershey, 2007. 13. Senge, P.M. The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. London: Currency and Doubleday, 1996. 14. Wenger, E. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 15. Parrish, D.; Lefoe, G.; Smigel, H. and Albury, R. The development of leadership capacity in higher education. The Green Resource. Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), 2008 16. Wang, F., and Hannafin, M.J. Design-based research and technology-enhanced learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development 53, no. 4: 5–23, 2005. 17. van den Akker, J. Principles and methods of development research. In Design methodology and developmental research in education and training, ed. J. van den Akker, N. Nieveen, R.M. Transforming distance education curricula through distributive leadership Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 15: Issue 4 21 Branch, K.L. Gustafson, and T. Plomp, 1–14. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1999. 18. Stokes, D . E . Pasteur‟s quadrant: Basic science and technological innovation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997. 19. Bell, P. On the theoretical breadth of design-based research. Educational Psychologist 39, no. 4: 243-53, 3044. 
work_2l2w2uo3g5fxzdcol4vt3wyf4m	----	Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden Vol.:(0123456789) Technology, Knowledge and Learning https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-020-09470-6 1 3 O R I G I N A L R E S E A R C H Covid‑19 and Crisis‑Prompted Distance Education in Sweden Nina Bergdahl1  · Jalal Nouri1 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract This study represents the first research effort to explore the transition from traditional teaching into distance teaching in Swedish schools enforced by covid-19. Governments made gradual and injudicious decisions to impede the spread of the pandemic (covid-19) in 2020. The enactment of new measures affected critical societal functions and included travel restrictions, closing of borders, school closures and lockdowns of entire countries worldwide. Social distancing became the new reality for many, and for many teachers and students, the school closure prompted a rapid transition from traditional to distance education. This study aims to capture the early stages of that transition. We distributed a questionnaire to teachers’ (n = 153) to gain insights into teacher and school preparedness, plans to deliver distance education, and teachers’ experience when making this transition. Results show that the school preparedness was mainly related to technical aspects, and that teachers lack pedagogical strategies needed in the emerging learning landscape of distance education. Findings reveal four distinct pedagogical activities central for distance education in a crisis, and many challenges faced during the transition. While preparedness to ensure continuity of education was halting, schools and teachers worked with tremendous effort to overcome the challenges. Results expand on previous findings on school closure during virus outbreaks and may in the short-term support teachers and school leaders in making informed decisions during the shift into distance education. The study may also inform the development of preparedness plans for schools, and offers a historical documentation. Keywords Covid-19 · Distance education · GDPR · School closure · Sweden 1 Introduction Sudden and unforeseen changes to society may have a significant impact on critical func- tions and services. In the wake of covid-19, many people found themselves in quarantines, working and studying from home (MacKenzie 2020). The news was continuously updating on the events, informing of deaths, imposing on restrictions and limiting civil rights, which also could have increased the hamstring of food and supplies (Bayham and Fenichel 2020). After overcoming the initial chock, many governments decided that central functions in * Nina Bergdahl ninabe@dsv.su.se 1 Computer and Systems Sciences Department, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6591-205X http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9942-8730 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10758-020-09470-6&domain=pdf N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 society, like compulsory education, should make a shift into distance education (Zhang et al. 2020). By March 18,107 seven countries had made country-wide decisions to close school impacting 861,737,696 learners (UNESCO 2020). Previous research on school clo- sure (as an effect of government response to halt the spread of epidemic diseases), and the requirement of transitions into distance learning, has shown that schools interpret the new conditions in varied ways, indicating that officials need to prepare for transitions and com- municate guidelines with clarity (Klaiman et  al. 2011). To date, Swedish teachers have not had any previous experience of pandemics and school responses to build on. While research highlights how critical it is for the educational sector to have preparedness plans to ensure safe and functional education in times of crisis (Faherty et  al. 2019; O’sullivan et  al. 2009; Olympia et  al. 2005) teachers and decision-makers cannot wait until the out- break is over to make decisions. It is imperative that information is distributed in a timely manner in order to be useful. This study aims to capture teachers experiences in the very early stages of the crisis- prompted transition into distance education. By investigating teacher preparedness and choices when implementing distance education, including the challenges they face, we hope that the study may support teachers and decision-makers in Sweden, and elsewhere, in making informed decisions to aid the transition into distance education as well as devel- oping preparedness plans for future pandemics. The ambition is also that this study may serve as a historical document that reflects this unprecedented event. With this intention the study raises the following four research questions: • How are teachers and schools preparing the transition into distance education? • What digital tools are used to meet the needs of distance education in extra-ordinary situations? • What are the pedagogical activities that distance education in extra-ordinary situations require? • What are the challenges of distance education in extra-ordinary situations, as identified by teachers? 2 Background 2.1 Pandemic Flues from an Educational Perspective 2.1.1 Previous Pandemics Pandemic flues have become a recurring threat to everyday life in the twenty first cen- tury, with the Bird flu, Swine flu (H1N1), foot-and-mouth disease, SARS and Zika (Nikiforuk 2008). The current spread of covid-19 includes a record number of schools and learners affected. Unlike previous flues UNESCO estimates (March 18) that the cur- rent state of school closure affects a record number or some 49% of the learners at pre- primary, primary and secondary levels of education worldwide, due to attempts to slow the spread of the virus (UNESCO 2020). Executing nation-wide school closure and an unprepared transition into digital education, for the whole school sector, implies that challenges will arise and need to be overcome without delay. While, teachers have been required to use digital technologies to initiate and facilitate at-home learning to prevent Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 the spread of previous outbreaks (e.g. SARS, H1N1) (Fox 2003, 2007; Woodhead and Kennedy 2010), the impact across the globe, and educational levels are unparalleled. 2.1.2 Distance Education and Crisis‑Prompted Temporary Distance Education The closing of schools due to covid-19 have raised uncertainties and disagreement about what and how to teach, (Wang et  al. 2020). While this crisis-prompted transi- tion into distance education technically could be classified as traditional distance educa- tion, researchers have forward suggestions to not use the term (e.g. Hodges et al. 2020). The argument follows that there are differences in quality expectations due to limited planning, technological aspects like accessibility, security and copyright, and learn- ing outcomes. To recognise the intra-period education responses, we aim to identify the early education responses marking the transition into crises-prompted temporary distance education. We choose the pre-fix “temporary” to discern the phenomena from traditional distance education, as practices either return to “normal”, or will transform into regular distance education, during which time it is no longer a crisis-response. In essence, distance education is characterised as remote teaching and learning - where the learner is physically separated from the teacher (Rumble 2019) while participating in a planned learning activity (Holmberg 2005). For the purpose of this article, and similarly to Raes et al. 2020, we also recognise modes of blended learning that combine distance education with traditional teaching. For example, a classroom that connects both on-site students and remote students during synchronous teaching, is referred to as a hybrid classroom, and related teaching practices as hybrid forms of teaching. 2.2 The Situation in Sweden 2.2.1 Nationwide Educational Crisis Response Current research has noted that the Swedish government employed a “rather relaxed” attitude toward the corona-outbreak; “encouraging” people to respect the 1.5–2 m social distance, to stay home if feeling unwell, when other countries enforced a full shutdown (Andersen et  al. 2020; Qi et  al. 2020). However, when the decision to close schools, nationwide, was made in Sweden, this only affected upper secondary schools (UNE- SCO 2020), and primary schools were left to make their own decisions based on their own interpretation of the situation. Perhaps, it was due to the decentralised decisions, and due to the pandemic being framed a health and economy crises s (Danielsson et al. 2020) that no one took the responsibility to investigate and provide a reliable overview of the extent of the crisis-response and transition into temporary distance education. The lack of information of the current state of education was for example reflected in news reporting on (primary) schools being both kept open (e.g. Dagens Nyheter 2020) and closed (SVT Nyheter 2020), and the department of education dismissing that there could be a need for hybrid teaching solutions, that as schools should remain open, and sick children should stay home without schooling (Olsson 2020b). Hence each school had to decide on how to respond to the crisis, and without proper guidelines, it was often up to the individual teacher to find pragmatic solutions in the reality they faced. N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 2.2.2 Digital Technologies and Digitalisation In 2016, 98% of the Swedish students used the Internet daily, and 41% of the Swedish adolescents owned multiple devices including tablets, computers and mobile phones (Inter- netstiftelsen 2016) and most Swedish (and European) schools have digital strategies and agendas (European Commission 2019; The Swedish Department of Education 2017). Un-related to the covid-19 situation, the Swedish government expanded the right to adopt remote and hybrid forms of teaching and learning during specific circumstances, for exam- ple, one type of remote teaching manifests when students sit in one class room and the teachers connects from another physical location, (as a response to the lack of teachers in certain subjects in certain rural areas), or a type of hybrid teaching, where the teacher synchronously instructs online and on-site students, (as a response to educational needs for student whose absenteeism are related to physical or psychological illness) (The Swedish Department of Education 2020a, b). Thus, during the time of the covid-19 outbreak, primary and secondary schools in Swe- den were already seeing different modes of blended learning in emerging hybrid class- rooms. Perhaps, it would seem like, from a knowledge and access perspective things “were in place”, and the “only” remaining obstacle was to test the capacity of the national IT infrastructure when Sweden would “go online” for work and education (The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, 2020). However, Scandinavian research on hybrid teaching solu- tions had thus been ongoing for prior to covid-19 (Børsting et al. 2019; Culén et al. 2019). Such research build on well-established theories of learning, in which the learner is viewed as socially situated in a community of other learners, and there engage in varied learn- ing activities that enable polysynchronous interaction such as, planning, conceptualising,, re-conceptualisation, peer modelling, reflection, feedback and scaffolding (Dalgarno 2014; Hattie 2009; Laurillard and Derntl 2014; Lave and Wenger 1991).This initial research points out that students with long-term illness and social isolation may benefit from being socially included in the class through the use of digital technologies (No Isolation 2020). Research constantly highlight that the social aspect of learning with technologies are criti- cal for engagement (Bergdahl et al. 2020). Despite potential, emergent research on effects of the hybrid teaching thought to redeem social isolation, revealed that the students did not always feel socially included (Svensson 2019), which indicates that merely employ- ing technical solutions may not be sufficient to redeem a problematic situation. This initial research points out that students with long-term illness and social isolation may benefit from being socially included in the class through the use of digital technologies (No Isola- tion 2020). However, during crisis-prompted temporary distance education, teachers might not have the time, insight or preparation to re-design or adjust their teaching in accordance with online requirements for effective community supportive learning. 2.2.3 Discrepancy Between Institutional Response and Digitalisation of Education Reviewing the intra-period debate, there seems like there was at least two separate under- standings of the current situation in Sweden. On the one side, a bill acknowledging hybrid and remote forms of teaching had been passed (The Swedish Department of Education 2020a, b), and received critique for already being outdated, with demands raised for a more modern legislation that would enable distance education, post corona (Skolvärlden 2020), simultaneously as the teacher union highlighted the covid-19 solutions forced their Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 member (teachers) to work twice as hard due to hybrid teaching forms (Olsson 2020a). On the other hand, the Swedish National Agency for Education stated that schools should not offer hybrid solutions, as there was no need as schools should remain open and sick students should stay at home and receive no schooling (Olsson 2020b). Not only until June 30th, after the covid-19 affected semester ended, the educational department updated their website acknowledging the hybrid classroom, and added that teachers with symptoms were allowed to engage in remote teaching from home (The Swedish National Agency for Edu- cation, 2020). 2.3 Emerging Responses to Tackle the Covid‑19 Impact on Education Schools can learn from previous events to sustain continuity of education better. Research have repeatedly pointed to a need to develop preparedness plans for education in order to sustain schooling in times of crisis (Faherty et  al. 2019; O’sullivan et  al. 2009; Olympia et al. 2005). However, during the SARS outbreak in 2003, research reported that teachers felt unsure about how to use digital technologies in education (Fox 2003). For instance, few teachers expressed they did not know how to re-think their strategies even though digi- tal technologies had been continuously used for learning. The study identified key factors that could have eased the transition from traditional teaching into crisis-prompted distance education was: (1) on-the-spot technical support, (2) teachers’ pedagogical strategies for distance learning and (3) students being introduced to distance modes of teaching and learning and related collaboration strategies (Fox 2003). While specific experiences of edu- cational technology from the SARS outbreak might not be relevant to inform teachers of today a general need of supportive structure and a lack of guidelines and policies identified then (Cauchemez et al. 2009; Fox 2003, 2007) may yet be relevant today. 3 Method During the outbreak of the covid, many teachers were required to make a shift into distance education. The researchers followed lively discussions in media and teacher online forums and decided to capture this transition in a timely manner by distributing a questionnaire in six Swedish Facebook groups used by teachers. We employed snowball sampling, to reach as many teachers in as short time as possible, to maximise insights. To achieve this, we shared the linked in online forums, and promoted teachers to share the link with col- leagues. To target relevant online forums, we selected all Swedish Facebook groups, that in their title indicated there would be members affected by the transition: “Distance educa- tion in Sweden”, “ICT tools”, “ICT pedagogy and School development”, “ICT for English teaching”, “Year 4–6 tips and ideas”, “iPads in pre-schools and schools”. We posted a brief description of the purpose and scope of the study, which was to promptly provide teach- ers with an overview of the current situation. To enable this, we gathered data between the 19th and the 27nd of March 2020. While most Facebook groups were already estab- lished, we found that we received the most response (in the commentary field) from the group “Distance education in Sweden”. This group Facebook group created on March 15, had no fewer than 17,000 members after two weeks, with teachers seeking collegial sup- port to response to the crisis of covid-19 (“Distance Education in Sweden,” 2020). Teach- ers were also encouraged to share the link to the questionnaire in their schools. The ques- tionnaire did not survey from which forum of distribution the teachers had accessed it. N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 However, we included an option to disclose the geographical location. The 153 teachers, were working in 14 cities across Sweden: Alingsås, Falköping, Göteborg, Kristianstad, Linköping, Malmö, Norrköping, Stockholm, Södertälje, Trosa, Torsås, Uddevalla, Umeå and Vetlanda. The questionnaire which included four background questions (see Sect. 3.1) targeted four general areas, namely (1) strategies and preparedness for implementing dis- tance education; (2) digital tools used for distance education and what they support and their limitations; (3) pedagogical adaptations when transiting to distance education; and (4) general challenges faced when implementing distance education in crisis. The full list of questions: • Which level are you teaching? • What is your level of experience in distance education? • To what extent do you have access to digital learning resources? • To what extent do you usually teach using digital learning resources? • Which digital learning resources are you using for distance education? • How are you making sure that distance education is accessible for all students? • Which functions and digital support do you need to deliver meaningful distance educa- tion? • Which needs are met with current tools and which are not? • Which challenges do you or your students face when using digital tools for distance education? • Which pedagogical adaptations are you doing to transit to distance education? • How are you and your schools preparing for distance education? • How are you planning lessons today in relation to the school schedule? • Do you or your school have a strategy for transiting to distance education? • Which pedagogical activities are important in distance education in the situation cre- ated by covid-19? • What have gone well and what bad in the transition to distance education? • Share your best recommendations to other teachers that plan to transit to distance edu- cation The data was analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Both authors worked closely to conduct the analysis using Nvivo (version 11.4.3) and post-it notes. Each author analysed half of the data set. Then, in depth discussions were made with regards to the identified themes. These insights guided the structure and re-structuring of themes and sub-themes. The process is best described as iterative as discussions triggered revisiting of the analysis, and clarification of the identified themes. For example, an initial idea was that distance education seemed to be troublesome for at risk students. During in depth discus- sion, it became clear, that the learning landscape had transformed: that the students, and not only at-risk students, would respond in differently than during traditional teaching, and that foreseeing this change was hard. We also recognised that there was a changed in the teacher role, in the emerging learning landscape. 3.1 Respondent Background Information A majority of teachers reported that they had no or limited experience in distance educa- tion (see Fig. 1). The average age of the teachers was 26 years. Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 About a third of the teachers said that they did not have access, or only limited access to digital learning materials, and not at all, or only to a limited extent, used digital learning materials. Noteworthily, while twenty teachers reported they did not have access to digi- tal resources to teach their subject in their school, only one third three reported that they never used digital learning resources. This suggest that teachers either use general learning resources (not subject specific), or that they include other learning resources not provided by their school. About half of the teachers (45–50%) expressed that they both had high, or very high, access to digital teaching materials and used these accordingly (see Fig. 1). 4 Results We identified four over-arching themes: (1) School and teacher preparedness; (2) Strategies when shifting to distance education; (3) Central learning activities for distance education in a crisis and (4) General positive experiences and challenges. These themes are presented below. 4.1 School and Teacher Preparedness We identified two sub-themes under the category School and teacher preparedness: (1) Choosing digital technologies and considering the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and (2) Mapping student access to digital technologies and school policies. 4.1.1 Choosing Digital Technologies and Considering GDPR Teachers work intensively to adapt their planned learning activities to fit distance educa- tion. Therefore, we asked the teachers what applications they use in the transition from Fig. 1 Teachers’ experience of digital technologies and distance teaching N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 traditional to distance education. The result was 152 different applications. Fifteen appli- cations, dominated (see Fig.  2). A closer analysis revealed that the most common tools (and requested functionality), were applications that enabled real-time video-conferencing (Zoom, Google Meet & Hangout, Microsoft Teams), pre-recorded seminars (YouTube), communication and collaboration (Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom), sharing materi- als (Google Classroom, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams), and digital learning resources in Swedish (Gleerups, Bingel). Many teachers and schools take GDPR into account when choosing platforms and tools. Teachers frequently pointed out that some Google applica- tions met the emerging pedagogical needs in a better way than other applications on the market, while also pointing out that the use of these may be illegal if GDPR agreements are not signed. Many teachers expressed frustration at the municipalities’ strict adherence to the GDPR, which enforced a use of tools and platforms with limited functionality (with which the municipalities had contracts). At the same time, many teachers seem to con- sider GDPR a secondary factor when selecting tools, with the justification that exceptions should be possible in a crisis if needed. This reasoning, in turn, rests on two main argu- ments expressed by teachers; first, that many schools, up until now, have not had a reason to secure data privacy agreements for tools and platforms suitable for distance education; and second, that the existing tools and platforms with which the municipality had contracts to use, and which were recommended for distance education did not meet the pedagogi- cal needs. Data suggests that many schools use accessible applications despite not having GDPR agreements in place. 4.1.2 Mapping Student Access to Digital Technologies Implementation of distance education requires that students have access to computers or tablets and internet connection. Although many students do, some students have to share Fig. 2 Applications chosen by teachers to enable transition into distance teaching (*URPlay is a govern- ment-supported educational play channel, ** Sli is an online repository with media and film for educational use, SLearning platform, is one of the major distributors of learning platforms (Skolplattformen)) Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 one device with others in the family; other students may have a limited data plan or unsta- ble internet connection. These factors are prerequisites for daily use of video conferencing tools. The answers from the teachers show that many schools had not yet surveyed student access to devices and internet, and were currently doing so. Schools that had identified students who could not participate online, solved this in different ways. They either invited the students to study in school, directed them to the local library for internet, or sent out printed learning materials via traditional post and matched these with telephone support. 4.2 Strategies When Shifting to Distance Education We identified two sub-themes related to strategies when shifting to distance education: (1) School and teacher strategies and (2) Approaches to individual work and interaction in Technology-enhanced Learning, reflected below: 4.2.1 School and Teacher Strategies “Strategy ?!!– We got 24 h” Asking the teachers if they had a strategy and what that strategy entailed, the majority of the teachers reported that their school had no strategy to implement distance education, less a strategy to respond to a school closure (which is quite understandable given the swift change that covid-19 implies). Some teachers reported they had allocated time to prepare with colleagues, while others expressed they were left to their own devices, with little or no support. Some teachers confirm that schools have digital strategies and agendas, but point to that policies or guidelines were outdated, or that digital strategies were not sufficient during a pandemic outbreak. Instead, teachers worked pragmatically with what they had to intensely expand on their experiences and gather new skills. The results reflect disperse and incoherent ways for schools to tackle this nation-wide extra-ordinary circumstance. Learning becomes increasingly complex as teaching and learning transfers from the physical classroom, to synchronous and asynchronous interactions across platforms. While schools might not want to strive for a coherent approach to interaction given the variation in contexts, social distancing generates negative effects on general well-being regardless of age and context. Redeeming social isolation by through digital technologies does not guar- antee a student feels socially included. Thus, social aspects of learning may impact gen- eral well-being, and may be particularly important during social isolation. This warrants the exploration of approaches of the balance of individual work and interaction in TEL. Exploring planned designs of learning, from an interaction and social aspects perspective, we identified three themes: (1) synchronous teaching and learning, (2) synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning, and (3) asynchronous teaching and learning. 4.2.2 Synchronous Teaching and Learning About a third of the teachers planned for continuous synchronous teaching with teacher-led lessons which included planned peer-to-peer interactions, available teachers, short instruc- tions and individual work and feedback. When teachers shared their views on individual work and interaction in Technology-enhanced Learning, there was considerable variation in time and interaction. Time refers to the time allocated for interaction. The most common view was that students should work individually during regular lesson time. N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 4.2.3 Synchronous and Asynchronous Teaching and Learning A combination of synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning was the most common. However, some teachers had the opinion that a minimum time should be allocated for interaction; that students should follow instructions previously sent out. A combination of synchronous and asynchronous teaching here refers to the balance between individual work and synchronous peer-peer/peer-teacher interaction. Exam- ples of synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning, is for example when there is less teacher-student interaction (and this is not replaced with peer-to-peer interac- tion) than during synchronous teaching and learning. As seen in planning independ- ent individual studies during class with results shared either at the end of the class or asynchronously. 4.2.4 Asynchronous Teaching and Learning While a substantial number of teachers planned to emphasise individual work, about a sixth of the teachers planned for written instruction and asynchronous submission, with no interaction. Disparities reflect that there is no coherent view on how to teach students, in terms of meeting the need for social interaction in a time of crisis. 4.3 Central Pedagogical Activities for Distance Education in a Crisis Four sub-themes were identified: (1) Video-based communication, (2) Distribution and sharing learning material and exercises (3) Student interaction and collaboration and (4) Assessment and examination: 4.3.1 Video‑Based Communication A majority of the teachers who had initiated distance education, expressed a need for video-based communication. They placed great emphasis on tools that enable communi- cation in both asynchronous and synchronous ways, and expressed that digital technolo- gies, for educational purposes, should allow for a variety of functions: that everyone can communicate between themselves, using both audio and video, in a full class, in smaller student groups and individually with the teacher. For these purposes, teachers now used tools such as Zoom, Google Hangout and Microsoft Teams. However, some functionalities were missing. (1) Many of the teachers emphasised that they needed to be able to record introductions and instructions that students could access later. Teachers highlighted that recorded materials may assist students who miss an introduction, and may be helpful for students who benefit from repetitions and/or prefer controlling the pace. Many teachers pre-recorded learning materials to re-use. (2) In this context, the importance of being able to share educational video resources, and make these available online, was also emphasised. While pre-recorded material has the disadvantage that the interaction between teacher and student is limited and that the student cannot ask questions, it also saves the teacher’s time in the long-run. (3) The importance of discussion forums has also been emphasised by the majority of teach- ers, as well as (4) tools for sharing instructions with parents (when applicable). Many Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 of the video communication tools used by teachers today include chat functions, but it was pointed out that in some applications, these chat functions only allow for synchro- nous communication. (5) Several teachers expressed a need for tools to also support asynchronous chat; as this would enable a later response in case the time in class was insufficient to reply to all students. Some teachers point out that text chat can be useful when video conferencing tools are lagging, crashing or when the internet connection is unstable. Thus, teachers request chat features for asynchronous communication as a supplement. 4.3.2 Distribution and Sharing Learning Material and Exercises Several teachers say that they try to follow exiting schedules to instil a well-needed minimum level of familiarity and predictability for the students. Other teachers express that adjustments to the schedule are made, with joint start-up, some review, self-study and joint follow-up. When striving for students to recognise the lesson structure, teach- ers emphasised the need to share learning resources and information with the students. These may be instructions, exercises or other resources needed for learning. Many teachers used The Learning Platform (a specific learning platform: Skolplattformen), and Google Classroom, (see Fig.  3) to distribute semester planning, schedule, tasks et cetera. However, there were a number of teachers who still relied on the physical mate- rials for students to pick up at school or that would be sent out by posts. Fig. 3 Distribution of learning materials N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 4.3.3 Student Interaction and Collaboration Regarding support for collaboration, the majority of teachers consider collaboration areas to be important for students, partly because it facilitates for the teacher that the students work and help each other but also that the importance of the students’ social interaction is emphasised. It was not straight forward for most teachers how to enable student interaction and collaboration using the different digital technologies at hand (which may explain some of the diversity seen in Fig. 3). Many teachers also expressed that it would be helpful to support collaboration with other teachers for joint planning, sharing lesson material and reflection. 4.3.4 Assessment and Examination Many teachers requested support for attendance control, which was lacking in the exist- ing tools, especially the learning platforms and video communication tools. The teach- ers who had just initiated distance education used hand-in assignments and confirma- tory questions to confirm attendance, and considered these satisfactory. Some teachers also asked to differentiated way to mark attendance, when students are present in the physical classroom, and when they attend via digital technologies. Teachers were inse- cure of how to conduct diagnostic tests in distance learning, and also expressed that semester grades might be suffering, as there was a lack of tools to support secure digital examination: that existing tools and platforms either lack such functionality or do not fully meet the actual needs. 4.4 General Positive Experiences and Challenges The teachers described the transition as a tremendous change, with “hysterically many things to juggle simultaneously” and well-experienced teachers express they “felt like a novice teacher”, and that they had “a job that never ended”. Despite this, the major- ity of teachers are positive and reported that while the technology has limitations, they worked around this and that lectures had run surprisingly well. Teachers expressed being surprised to discover better student contact and reacted positively to seeing stu- dents in their home environment. Teachers’ responses reflect discovery of a learning landscape in which social interactions and conditions for learning are not the same as in the traditional classroom; placing new demands on the role of teachers. Many teachers were surprised to discover that students may react and respond differently than in the physical classroom. For example, it was hard to foresee which students would attend distance education. Some students who had functioned well in the traditional classroom would start displaying disengagement behaviours. In contrast, teachers report that some (expected) at-risk students, i.e. school refusers, silent students, tech-savvy students, and students with autism, would increase their participation in learning activities when attending via technologies as these was seen to work in their favour. The transition to distance education revealed that the overall attendance in several teachers’ classes were higher than when requiring a physical presence. Moreover, teachers reported that stu- dents working from home could often concentrate better as they were not distracted by peers in the classroom. Many teachers were generally pleasantly surprised with the engagement, motivation, patience and technology expertise most students displayed, Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 and expressed that the transition had gone overwhelmingly well. At the same time, there were more cautious teachers, who pointed to the novelty of the situation, and warned that adverse consequences might emerge later. The teachers also noted several challenges. For instance, applications or connections that are unstable; that students need technical support when it comes to remembering their login details; that some students do not have the skills needed to manage the technolo- gies effortlessly for learning, and that some students struggle to understand written instruc- tions. Furthermore, not all students had parents to support them, and teacher experienced that providing technical support from a distance was hard. Moreover, teachers too lacked technical support. Teachers struggled with taking attendance, and were unsure of how to perform legally sound assessments and examinations. Furthermore, the shift from the tra- ditional classroom to virtual classrooms may impede the insights into students’ learning processes, making it more challenging to identify students that need support. In addition, many teachers found that video-conferencing were fraught with challenges due to a lack of netiquette among the students (e.g. talking simultaneously, muting each other’s micro- phones and logging out peers, and so on). Extended hours were also identified as challeng- ing as many students lack the patience and motivation to be seated in front of a screen for a longer period of time. At the same time, students react differently when learning from home: some students began to display distress from isolation; some displayed difficulties with motivation and discipline, saying that they missed school and friends and were dis- tracted by concurrent activities at their homes. Teachers also expressed concerns that stu- dents might not keep track of schedule and tasks, and may participate in lessons from unfit environments (e.g. hanging outdoors with friends during a video lecture). 5 Discussion We raised the question “How are teachers and schools preparing the transition into distance education?”, and forward that while most schools have digital agendas (European Com- mission 2013, 2019), results indicate that the strategies needed in the covid-19 crisis are different (Anderson 2020; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020; Fox 2003), which reinvokes earlier callings for school preparedness plans (Olympia et al. 2005). After all, the transition is not a well-prepared long-term shift to distance teaching, but an unpre- pared rapid change that risk becoming increasingly complex as it includes teaching stu- dents who may experience negative consequences of the virus and/or social isolation, i.e. distress, depression, illness or even loss. We also raise d the question “What digital tools are used to meet the needs of distance education in extra-ordinary situations?” and indeed found that school preparedness was mostly technical; i.e. focusing on available devices and applications. Yet, outdated guidelines, impeded uses that adhered to GDPR, and while Google products was the most commonly used, teachers expressed that there were many technological issues that limited their practice. Despite this, there were little reflection on pedagogical preparedness; instead results reveal disperse and incoherent ways for schools to tackle this nation-wide extra-ordinary situation. Exploring the question “What are the pedagogical activities that distance education in extra-ordinary situations require?” we found that school personnel displayed tremendous effort and creativity to develop prag- matic solutions. Wanting to support students to not fall behind in their education, many teachers took it upon themselves, during spring, to accept students to attend in class via digital technologies, and in some schools, where 50% of the students were kept home N. Bergdahl, J. Nouri 1 3 by their parents, not offering hybrid solutions was not an option. The activities that were emphasised were communication, collaboration, sharing learning materials and uploading of student work, assessment and examination. Lastly, we raised the question “What are the challenges of distance education in extra-ordinary situations, as identified by teachers?” Results revealed that many teachers lacked previous experience of using digital tools to support these activities. Thus, teachers were put into a situation that emphasised a need for certain activities, that they felt ill-prepared to deliver. Based on the views and opinions of a majority of teachers, we also conclude that teachers very quickly realised that distance education in this situation renders a new teaching and learning landscape with unique con- ditions and requirements, sometimes very different from ordinary classroom teaching. The new situation includes changed roles for both teachers and students. Some students who had functioned well in the psychical classroom, might start to disengage, and others were seen to benefit from attending via digital technologies and could concentrate better when working from home. Further research is warranted to in depth, investigate the implications of the new teaching and learning landscape. 5.1 Preparedness Plans While schools were not pedagogically prepared for the transition into temporary distance education, less hybrid forms of teaching, during the outbreak of covid-19, experiences gained, and lessons learned, may be gathered and collectively evaluated to form the basis of pedagogical plans, for use now and in developing preparedness plans for the future. Based on the findings here, and other research and reports we propose that prepared- ness plans for schools should be developed and take critical aspects into consideration. First, social distancing requires that more people work and study from home, which in turn requires stable and high-speed internet connectivity. Thus, having a well-developed Internet infrastructure is a pre-requisite to enable the masses to work and study from home (European Commission 2013), but not sufficient. Schools need to ensure that students also have a device for educational purposes. Second, the risk of distress and depression needs to be considered, as social distancing might affect student general well-being (Faherty et  al. 2019). When physical social interaction is redrawn, students may feel invisible, excluded, even when participating via online technologies, and the designs of learning activities must take this into consideration, especially during social distancing, when isolation affects all students, regardless of age. Third, conditions for special needs students need to be con- sidered along effective strategies informing teachers on how to support special needs stu- dents during distance education. Fourth, a future school preparedness plans must include a selection of digital tools that function well for distance education—that also take these central activities into account. These activities should also be considered by developers of educational technology. The challenges many teachers face when using available edu- cational technology, for instance, risk of breaching GDPR, a lack of secure digital exami- nation tools or communications tools that are tailored for pedagogical activities, provide support for this recommendation. Fifth, the closing of schools due to covid-19 have raised uncertainties and disagreement about what and how to teach, (Wang et  al. 2020). While it is common that frameworks applied within distance education apply theories that build on learning as a social phenomenon (Hattie 2009; Laurillard and Derntl 2014; Lave and Wenger 1991), the emergent learning landscape dramatically challenges the teaching prac- tices when transferred to online learning environment, where learning should be orches- trated synchronously and asynchronously across multiple platforms (Dalgarno 2014). Not Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden 1 3 knowing how to exam students have also negatively impacted European students’ possi- bilities to re-enter a state of normal, i.e., being able to plan their (educational) future, post corona (Burgess and Sievertsen 2020), and Sweden when schools tried to support students to participate in school even when isolating with symptoms, by offering hybrid teaching and learning - such effort was deemed unnecessary by the department of education (Olsson 2020b). Future preparedness plans ought to objectively survey the long-term consequences of pragmatic practises before accepting or dismissing them. Conclusively, as covid-19, was mainly framed as a health and economic crises (Daniels- son et  al. 2020), the skewed focus may have led to overlooking the need for educational preparedness plans and teacher’s professional competence to respond to online or hybrid forms of teaching. Teachers’ critical function in society during a pandemic must not be underplayed. Students may experience distress, depression or even loss, in social isolation during a pandemic. While it is essential to uphold the teaching-routines during a crisis, it is equally, or even more important to consider students’ psychological well-being. In addi- tion, teachers experience of the transition into temporary distance education are critical to explore when developing an informed preparedness plan for Swedish education. 6 Limitations Several limitations must be considered when interpreting the results of this study. This study employed an intense data collection method under a few days to respond to the acute crisis of the covid-19 situation and transition into distance teaching for Swedish teacher. The data-collection was limited to Facebook groups and uncontrolled sharing of the link by respondents, and thus, would not access teachers excluded from those channels. Yet, the groups were large with tens of thousands of participants. However, considering that data- collection took place in the midst of an historical and dramatical pandemic, which create challenges for participant selection, we would argue that its rather cumbersome to succeed with an optimal participant selection. Moreover, this study reflects the earliest phase of the transition, and as such is not capturing how things might develop, which should be fol- lowed up with future studies. Funding Open access funding provided by Stockholm University. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com- mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. References Andersen, A. L., Hansen, E. T., Johannesen, N., & Sheridan, A. (2020). Pandemic, shutdown and consumer spending: Lessons from scandinavian policy responses to COVID-19. arXiv :2005.04630 . Anderson, J. (2020). 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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. http://www.noisolation.com/global/research/the-impact-of-av1-on-children-with-long-term-illness-and-absence/ http://www.noisolation.com/global/research/the-impact-of-av1-on-children-with-long-term-illness-and-absence/ https://www.dn.se/sthlm/studie-bekraftar-fa-barn-svart-coronasjuka/ https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X00007044 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X00007044 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-1474 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-1474 http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01575 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103682 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103682 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429288661 https://skolvarlden.se/artiklar/lagforslaget-om-distansundervisning-ar-redan-foraldrat https://skolvarlden.se/artiklar/lagforslaget-om-distansundervisning-ar-redan-foraldrat https://pedagogsajten.familjenhelsingborg.se/nar-eleven-ar-en-robot-om-att-ga-i-skolan-pa-distans/ https://pedagogsajten.familjenhelsingborg.se/nar-eleven-ar-en-robot-om-att-ga-i-skolan-pa-distans/ https://www.regeringen.se/4a9d9a/contentassets/00b3d9118b0144f6bb95302f3e08d11c/nationell-digitaliseringsstrategi-for-skolvasendet.pdf https://www.regeringen.se/4a9d9a/contentassets/00b3d9118b0144f6bb95302f3e08d11c/nationell-digitaliseringsstrategi-for-skolvasendet.pdf https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/lagradsremiss/2020/02/fjarrundervisning-distansundervisning-och-vissa-fragor-om-entreprenad/ https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/lagradsremiss/2020/02/fjarrundervisning-distansundervisning-och-vissa-fragor-om-entreprenad/ https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2020/02/fler-elever-ska-kunna-erbjudas-fjarrundervisning/ https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2020/02/fler-elever-ska-kunna-erbjudas-fjarrundervisning/ https://pts.se/sv/om-pts/krisinformation/ https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-emergencies/coronavirus-school-closures https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-emergencies/coronavirus-school-closures https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30547-X https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30547-X https://doi.org/10.4018/jea.2010070105 Covid-19 and Crisis-Prompted Distance Education in Sweden Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Background 2.1 Pandemic Flues from an Educational Perspective 2.1.1 Previous Pandemics 2.1.2 Distance Education and Crisis-Prompted Temporary Distance Education 2.2 The Situation in Sweden 2.2.1 Nationwide Educational Crisis Response 2.2.2 Digital Technologies and Digitalisation 2.2.3 Discrepancy Between Institutional Response and Digitalisation of Education 2.3 Emerging Responses to Tackle the Covid-19 Impact on Education 3 Method 3.1 Respondent Background Information 4 Results 4.1 School and Teacher Preparedness 4.1.1 Choosing Digital Technologies and Considering GDPR 4.1.2 Mapping Student Access to Digital Technologies 4.2 Strategies When Shifting to Distance Education 4.2.1 School and Teacher Strategies 4.2.2 Synchronous Teaching and Learning 4.2.3 Synchronous and Asynchronous Teaching and Learning 4.2.4 Asynchronous Teaching and Learning 4.3 Central Pedagogical Activities for Distance Education in a Crisis 4.3.1 Video-Based Communication 4.3.2 Distribution and Sharing Learning Material and Exercises 4.3.3 Student Interaction and Collaboration 4.3.4 Assessment and Examination 4.4 General Positive Experiences and Challenges 5 Discussion 5.1 Preparedness Plans 6 Limitations References 
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work_2mf5iah2wvf4raorcydimg3oay	----	208 Е К О Н О М ІК А ін ф о р м а ц ій н і т ех н о л о гі ї в е ко н о м іц і БІЗНЕСІНФОРМ № 7 ’2012 www.business-inform.net колдовський м. в. кандидат економічних наук севастополь Дистанційне, як і електронне навчання вже дав-но перестало бути екзотичним варіантом доне-сення знань до цільового слухача.На сучасному етапі розвитку інформаційних технологій можна знайти достатньо можливостей для того, щоб отримати знання віддалено і за допомогою інформаційних технологій, проте з’являються нові можливості розвитку як елек- тронної освіти в цілому, так і дистанційного навчання зокрема, і вони, на наш погляд, незаслужено ігнорують- ся. До таких технологій слід віднести: передачу потоко- вого контену з комп’ютера викладача в режимі реально- го часу, створення спільнот у соціальної мережах, або ж створення власної спеціалізованої соціальної мережі, можливість спілкування слухача з лектором як в режимі реального часу, так і офлайн режимі. Розглянемо остан- ні здобутки інформаційної індустрії в контексті впро- вадження їх в систему віддаленого навчаннята надамо рекомендації щодо їх використання. Проблема впровадження якісного дистанційного та електронного навчання досить актуальна не лише на теренах України, але і далеко за її межами. Серед вітчиз- няних науковців, що займаються проблематикою розви- тку і впровадження електронного та дистанційного на- вчання, слід відмітити: Триус Ю. В., Самойленко О. М., Ляховська Л. Л. та ін. Проте науковці не проводять чіткої межі між електронною освітою, та дистанційною, а також не приділяють значної уваги сучасним техноло- гіям, що розширюють можливості дистанційної освіти, та недостатньо уваги приділяється спілкуванню лекто- ра із слухачами курсів. Мета статті – розмежувати поняття електронної освіти та дистанційної, проаналізувати недоліки тради- ційних підходів у дистанційній освіті, надати рекоменда- ції щодо їх вирішення та запропонувати новий підхід до проведення занять за дистанційною формою навчання. Досить часто науковці у своїх дослідженнях не розмежовують поняття дистанційної та електронної освіти. На наш погляд, ці поняття потрібно розмежува- ти, оскільки поняття електронної освіти більш широке і охоплює не лише дистанційну освіту, але і проведен- ня очних занять з використанням засобів комп’ютерної техніки, наприклад, використання презентацій, вну- трішніх засобів автоматизації навчання (інформаційних системи на зразок внутрішніх корпоративних сайтів, або спеціалізованих систем проведення тестування) тощо. У той же час, дистанційна освіта не обов’язково по- винна бути електронною, тобто завдання до слухачів, як і матеріали лекцій, можуть пересилатися засобами пошто- вого зв’язку. Згадані підходи продемонстровані на рис. 1. Однак у сучасних реаліях, як правило, будь-яка, дистанційна освіта є електронною. Відповідно в наших дослідженнях будемо дотримуватись такого ставлення до даних понять, і під дистанційною освітою розуміти саме електронну освіту, що надається віддаленим ко- ристувачам засобами сучасних інформаційних техноло- гій через мережу, як правило, мережу Інтернет. Переваги дистанційного навчання перед традицій- ним досить очевидні. Однією з основних переваг, звичай- но, є вибір часу та місця як для вивчення матеріалів, так і для виконання контрольних робіт, чи тестових завдань. Однак зрозумілими є і недоліки у вигляді досить низько- го рівня контролю слухачів, також при традиційних під- ходах до провадження дистанційного навчання слід від- мітити недолік у вигляді відсутнього зворотнього зв’язку із користувачем. В останньому випадку мається на увазі не зворотній зв’язок у вигляді контролю знань, а зворот- ній зв’язок у вигляді уточнюючих запитань лектору. Розглянемо можливі варіанти усунення вищезга-даних недоліків. Недолік у вигляді неможливості провести контроль знань слухачів вирішується або ж особистою присутністю слухача на контрольному за- мірі знань (яскравим прикладом можуть виступити кур- си компанії Cisco), або ж цікавістю та необов’язковістю курсів (наприклад, додаткові заняття з поглибленого вивчення певних дисциплін, програмних продуктів тощо). Згаданий недолік у вигляді відсутності зворот- нього зв’язку, як правило, вирішується або ж тестовими заняттями або практичними заняттями. Слід зазначи- ти, що при досить широкому розповсюдженні курсів, за якими навчаються одночасно тисячі користувачів у різних часових поясах і на різних мовах використання УДК:378.147:004 НОВАЦІЙНІ ПІДХОДИ В ДИСТАНЦІЙНІЙ ОСВІТІ Рис. 1. Різні підходи до дистанційної та електронної освіти Електронна освіта Дистанційна Очна Дистанційна освіта Електронна Застарілі засоби зв’язку 1 2 http://www.business-inform.net Е К О Н О М ІК А ін ф о р м а ц ій н і т ех н о л о гі ї в е ко н о м іц і 209БІЗНЕСІНФОРМ № 7 ’2012 www.business-inform.net заздалегідь розроблених практичних і тестових завдань, є єдиним можливим виходом. Проте переважна більшість дистанційних курсів розроблена для викладання однією мовою, і для слуха- чів, що знаходяться в одному часовому поясі, в такому випадку, на нашу думку, доречним буде скористатися послугами таких сервісів проведення трансляцій в ре- жимі реального часу, як: Justin.tv, own3d.tv, ya.tvта ін. Хоча переважна більшість даних сервісів зорієнтована на ігрове середовище, вони ідеально підходять для про- ведення трансляцій навчальної тематики. Таким чином, такий підхід дозволить в режимі реального часу слуха- чам задати уточнюючи питання, подивитися від першої особи на практичне виконання поставлених завдань тощо. Звичайно проведення трансляцій в режимі реаль- ного часу дещо зменшує можливості слухача обрати час для навчання, проте запис проведених трансляцій може бути збережений на сервісах зберігання відео, напри- клад, youtube.com, а використання системи коментарів до розміщених на сайті матеріалів і форум підтримки дозволить слухачам, що не змогли задати питання під час трансляції, отримати відповіді. Деякі із перелічених сервісів проведення трансляцій в режимі реального часу дозволяють в автоматичному режимі записувати відео- матеріали на канал youtube.com. Таким чином, наше бачення в сучасному підхо-ді до дистанційної освіти полягає у створенні веб-порталу, який міститиме курси визначеної структури за напрямками, додатково до курсів тесто- ві завдання, та лабораторні. Крім того, по кожному з курсів обов’язково повинна бути проведена трансляція (серія трансляцій за темами), впроваджена система ко- ментарів до всіх матеріалів на сайті, а також форум для спілкування як із лектором, так і з іншими слухачами. Додатково можливо бути розроблена підсистема оцінки якості матеріалів на порталі. Загальна прощена структу- ра порталу така (рис. 2). Рис. 2. Спрощена структура порталу для дистанційної освіти Веб-портал Курси визначеної структури Сховище із записаними трансляціями або пояснюючими відео Форум для оффлайн- спілкування Лекції Тести Лабораторні Коментарі (окремі для кожного матеріалу) Відео-трансляції за темами лекцій ВИСНОВКИ Таким чином, даний підхід запропонує слухачу традиційні дистанційні курси за дистанційною формою навчання із розширеною підтримкою у вигляді оффлайн- спілкування та спілкування в режимі реального часу під час проведення відео-трансляцій відповідно до тем лек- цій. На нашу думку, це дозволить заохотити слухача не лише до активного вивчення запропонованого матеріа- лу, але й до його поглибленого вивчення.  
work_2oo274uewzbqblwowil2kopx3i	----	200 BOOK REVIEW MACRO-LEVEL LEARNING THROUGH MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOCS): STRATEGIES AND PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE Edited by Elspeth MCKAY and John LENARCIC Murat ARTSIN Distance Education Department Bahcesehir University Istanbul, TURKEY ISBN 9781466683242 (Hardcover) 9781466683259 (e-Book) Publication Date March, 2015 Publication Formats Hardcover, e-Book Publisher IGI Global INTRODUCTION Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future is edited by Elspeth McKay and John Lenarcic. This book was published by IGI Global in 2015 also this book has 306 pages. The book consists of 14 chapters in four thematic sections. These sections and chapters are: • Chapter 1-4: Policy Issues in MOOCs Design: Emerging Technology and Change Management Issues for eLearning in the MOOCs Environment • Chapter 5: Social Networking and Collaborative Learning: Building MOOCs Communities • Chapter 6-7: ePedagogy and Interactive MOOCs: ePedagogy and Students’ Use of HCI – Integrating Interactivity into Asynchronous MOOCs • Chapter 8-14: Rich Internet Applications and Educational Practice of MOOCs: Educational Training Design REVIEW OF THE BOOK Chapter 1: Mining a MOOC: What Our MOOC Taught Us about Professional Learning, Teaching, and Assessment by Sandra Milligan and Patrick Griffin (2015). This section begins with a course at the University of Melbourne, ATC21S, and provides an overview of a MOOC development and teaching process in general. Also it includes answers to how to create MOOC designs and MOOC environments. To my view, the visuals and tables in this section are useful for understanding the subject. Chapter 2: Quality Assurance for Massive Open Access Online Courses: Building on the Old to Create Something New by Justin Walls, Jo-Anne Kelder, Carolyn King, Sara Booth and David Sadler. In this section, quality assurance is examined in the context of the assessment of MOOC quality. Quality assurance Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE January 2020 ISSN 1302-6488 Volume: 21 Number: 1 Book Review 2 201 was addressed using a MOOC at the University of Tasmania. In my opinion, the quality assurance process is important for the recognition of MOOCs in higher education. Chapter 3: Professional Learning through MOOCs? A Trans-Disciplinary Framework for Building Knowledge, Inquiry, and Expertise by Jason M. Lodge and Melinda J. Lewis. In this section, the authors focus on the expertise needed by MOOC participants. Again in this section, the major roles of MOOCs are emphasized. Chapter 4: MOOCs and the Art Studio:A Catalyst for Innovation and Change in eLearning Development and Studio Pedagogies by Howard Errey and Megan J McPherson. In this section, the authors refer to the challenges faced by the MOOCs in the context of openness, in addition to the management, design and policies of the MOOCs. Chapter 5: Internationalising Social Work Education Using Massive Open Online Courses by Linette Hawkins, Jennifer Martin, Elspeth McKay and Supriya Pattanayak. In this section, community building processes in MOOCs mentioned. However, a supporting case study mentioned. Chapter 6: Learning Theories: ePedagogical Strategies for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Higher Education by Eileen O’Donnell, Seamus Lawless, Mary Sharp and Liam O’Donnell. In this section, e-pedagogical strategies for effective use of MOOCs in higher education are reviewed. The section discusses e-pedagogy and interactive MOOCs. Chapter 7: Beyond the Phenomenon: Assessmentin Massive Open Online Courses(MOOCs) by Amit Chauhan. In this section, the types of MOOC participants, MOOC completion rates, student interactions and evaluation processes mentioned. Chapter 8: What is Best for the Learner? Are MOOCs the Answer? by Carole A. Bagley and Janet Weisenford. This section is based on the question of what is best for students. The advantages and benefits of MOOCs are discussed in this section. Chapter 9: Deceptive Promises: The Meaning of MOOCs-Hype for Higher Education by Stefan Popenici. This section has been a synthesis of issues that researchers and other stakeholders have been focusing on since the first day of the MOOCs. In this section, scientific researches, blogs, reports and media bulletins about MOOCs are examined. I found this section remarkable, which has an analysis of expectations for MOOCs. Chapter 10: Redefining the Classroom: Integration of Open and Classroom Learning in Higher Education by Shikha Gupta, Sheetal Taneja and Naveen Kumar. This section provides an evidence of the impact and traces of MOOCs on higher education. In my opinion, this chapter can give readers a perspective on the revolutionary advantage that MOOCs provide. Chapter 11: MOOCs: Evolution and Revolution by Kenneth Ronkowitz and Lynnette Condro Ronkowitz. This section focuses on the history of distance education and the evolution of MOOC also it focused on the discussion on research questions about MOOCs. To my view, this section will be useful for people who want to have an idea of the future of MOOCs. Chapter 12: The Evolution of Online Learning and Related Tools and Techniques toward MOOCs by Drew Parker and Kamal Masri. This section discusses the development of MOOCs. In addition, there has been a discussion about the technologies that can be used for MOOC development. Chapter 13: MOOCs in Initial Teacher Training: Perspectives and Learning-Teaching Needs by Calos Monge Lopez, Patricia Gomez Hernandez and David Montalvo Saborido. This section is about teachers’ attitudes and needs towards MOOCs. It is stated that teachers can benefit from MOOCs. Additionally, it is stated that teachers do not have knowledge about MOOCs. In my perspective, it is very important that the teachers of the future should be educated with MOOC culture. Chapter 14: Challenges about MOOCs in Teacher Training: Differences between On-Site and Open University Students by Patricia Gomez Hernandez, Carlos Monge Lopez and Alba Garcia Barrera. In this section, the study carried out with university students. The current situation is presented with a case study. It can be said that the distinction between students at distance education universities and traditional universities is quite remarkable. 202 CONCLUSION The revolutionary innovation provided by the MOOCs is effective in all higher education. Change has been inevitable for students, teachers, administrators and policy makers.MOOCs with flexible access are discussed in many different ways from the book Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future written by Elspeth McKay and John Lenarcic. Information on the place of MOOCs in higher education, policy studies, network community process, practices and their reflection on traditional universities are presented. Completion rates and learner profiles in MOOCs have been the subject of many studies. In this book, in my opinion, there is little emphasis on studies on completion rates in MOOCs which is an issue to be considered in follow-up studies and, as a final remark, I believe that the book can be a good resource for researchers who is willing to learn more about MOOCs. BIODATA and CONTACT ADDRESSES of AUTHOR Murat ARTSIN, has been working as a Education Technologist in Bahcesehir University, Distance Education Department. He completed his bachelor degree in Sakarya University, Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology in 2016. He completed his master degree in Anadolu University, Distance Education Department in 2018. He has been continuing his doctoral education in Bahcesehir University, Department of Education Technologies. He is interested in massive open online courses, self-regulated learning and learner- content interactions. Murat ARTSIN E-mail: artsinm@gmail.com URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Murat_Artsin URL: https://independent.academia.edu/MuratArtsin REFERENCES McKay, E., & Lenarcic, J. (2015). Macro-Level Learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Strategies and Predictions for the Future (pp. 1-306). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978- 1-4666-8324-2 
work_2pbmbnutpvhcjj3nghaz7th72u	----	This is the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for pub- lication in the following source: Black, K.E. & Bonner, A. (2011) Employer-based support for registered nurses undertaking postgraduate study via distance education. Nurse Ed- ucation Today, 31(2), pp. 163-167. This file was downloaded from: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/43798/ c© Copyright 2011 Elsevier Notice: Changes introduced as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing and formatting may not be reflected in this document. For a definitive version of this work, please refer to the published source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2010.05.012 http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Bonner,_Ann.html http://eprints.qut.edu.au/43798/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2010.05.012 EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 1 of 10 ABSTRACT Previous literature has focused on the need for support of undergraduate nursing students during clinical placements. Little is known about the support provided by employers for registered nurses (RNs) who pursue further education This study sought to identify and describe the types, levels and perceived need for support in the workplace for RNs as they undertake further postgraduate nursing study by distance education (DE). Using an exploratory descriptive design a self-report questionnaire was distributed to a convenience sample of 270 RNs working in one acute care public hospital in Tasmania, Australia. 92 questionnaires (response rate 34%) were returned with 26 (28%) reporting being currently enrolled in further study by DE and a further 50 (54)% of RNs planning future study. Results revealed that 100% of participants with a Masters degree completed this by DE. There were differences between the support sought by RNs to that offered by employers, and 16 (34%) who had done or were currently doing DE study, received no support to undertake DE. There was an overwhelming desire by RNs for support; 87 (94%), with a majority believing some supports should be mandatory 76 (83%). This study may encourage employers to introduce structured support systems that will actively assist nurses to pursue further study. KEY WORDS Nursing, post-graduate study, distance education, workplace support EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 2 of 10 BACKGROUND There is general recognition of the importance of continuing or life-long learning for all nurses (Department of Education Science and Training [DEST] 2002; Jarvis 2005; Royal College of Nursing Australia [RCNA] 1998). Following completion of initial nursing courses leading to registration (commonly at an undergraduate level), post-graduate education has been suggested as the appropriate avenue for development of expertise in nurses (Pelletier et al 2000). In Australia, the Nursing and Midwifery Labour Force Survey has defined further education as including hospital-based certificates and tertiary qualifications in nurse management, clinical practice and nursing education while excluding in-service/continuing education sessions, refresher or re-entry courses or courses of less than 6 months duration (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] 2008). The continuing and expanding provision of post-qualifying courses for nurses is a clear demonstration of the acceptance of the value and importance of further education. In recent years, other reasons for further education in nursing have included an increasing shortage of nurses, competition in the labour market, and recruitment and retention issues (DEST 2002). The ‘Magnet Hospital’ principles in the United States note the importance of education support for nursing staff as essential to staff satisfaction and consequent staff retention (Kramer & Schmalenberg 2005; McClure 2005; Westendorf 2007). The Australian Evaluation and Quality Improvement Program [EQUiP 4] for hospital accreditation, recognises that staff educational support, to achieve skills and maintain competence, is essential for quality health care (Australian Council on Healthcare Standards [ACHS] 2008). Quality health care should also be based on evidence at planning, development and delivery stages (ACHS 2008), and there has been a trend towards emphasising the importance of evidence-based practice within clinical nursing. This is now paralleled by recognition of the importance of evidence-based nursing education (Clark 2005; Yonge et al 2005). Benner (1984; 2004) contends that development of expertise occurs within the practice setting. The importance of clinical and workplace learning has thus long been recognised. Increasingly, distance education (DE) is the vehicle for the delivery of further education for nurses (Cook et al 2004). Distance, time and ability to attend classes are factors that limit nurses’ ability to engage in post-qualifying study, and DE is seen as an obvious solution to this (Cook et al 2004; Oehlkers & Gibson 2001; Pym 1992). Education providers and students are finding that the increasing use of information communication technology is conducive to DE (Adams & Timmins 2006; Bruskiewitz & De Muth 2005; Hollis & Madill 2006; Janes 2006; Shovein et al 2005; Zalon & Meehan 2005). DE takes many forms but can include video conferencing, resource packages along with on-line components (such as discussion boards, Wikis, podcasts, and email). DE, especially online, offers increased access to education for nurses who find it difficult (or impossible) to attend traditional on-campus classes. Previous studies into DE for nurses’ have focussed on support structures provided by education providers (Lawton 1997; Oehlkers & Gibson 2001; EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 3 of 10 Pelletier et al 2003; Pym 1992). According to Fortin (2007), students who studied via DE frequently reported feeling isolated and had to develop routines to foster self-motivation and study habits without the structured routine and collegial support provided in a classroom. Other authors acknowledged that to study by DE whilst working is problematic for life/work balance (Cragg, Andrusyszyn & Fraser 2005; Evans et al 2007; Oehlkers & Gibson 2001; Pym 1992). One of the ways DE students aim to achieve this balance is with help or support from a variety of sources. Oehlkers and Gibson (2001) classified support as formal (provided by the educational institution) or informal (provided by family, friends, mentors, colleagues, employers). Cragg, Andrusyszyn and Fraser (2005) previously examined the support received by professional women whilst studying by DE. Findings concluded that support comes from the woman’s family, the educational institution and their employer; however Cragg et al’s study focussed more on the support received from the family and educational institution rather than workplace support. The nurse education literature reveals limited discussion on the place of employment-based support for nurses undertaking post-qualifying study by DE. In separate reviews, Long and Johnson (2002) and Yonge et al (2005) found little on learning in practice and no research specifically on workplace support for RNs undertaking study by DE. Against the background of the promotion and, in some states, the mandating of further education for RNs in Australia, this is a significant omission. There is clearly a need to examine how work-based education support can be effectively provided. Workplace support needs to be identified and described, thus allowing employers to seek ways to create or strengthen support structures. This paper reports on a study into the importance of workplace-based support from the nurses’ perspectives whilst studying by DE. METHODS Study Design and Aims This study sought to identify different modes of employer-based support for RNs who were undertaking further study by DE, and to explore, from the point of view of participants, whether the existence or absence of such support had any bearing on the uptake, ease or difficulty of undertaking and completing a formal program by DE. In this study, DE was defined as education that was not time- or place-specific and included correspondence courses, televised or videotaped lectures, online courses (internet and e-mail), where the education institution was different to the employing institution. Sample and Setting In June 2008, a convenience sample of 270 Registered Nurses (RNs) employed at a major metropolitan hospital in Tasmania, Australia was provided with a self- report questionnaire. The sample was drawn from four wards (medical, surgical, Emergency Department and Anaesthetics / Peri-Operative Department). These were selected to provide a range of nursing contexts and also to capture areas where there was no or limited local provision of further education. EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 4 of 10 The Tasmanian Human Research Ethics Committee provided institutional ethics approval. Information sessions were provided in each area to inform RNs about the study and to extend an invitation to participate. Flyers were posted in ward offices and staff rooms to encourage participation. Packages containing the questionnaire and associated explanatory information, including informed consent and ethics approval, were mailed internally to potential participants. Data Collection A questionnaire was specifically developed for this study. Content validation of the questionnaire was determined through a pilot study with 13 RNs from one work area (Nephrology Department) who were asked to complete the draft questionnaire specifically looking at readability and applicability. The questionnaire was modified based on the feedback. It became apparent from the pilot that some RNs had done more than one DE course. Thus the question on types of support sought, received or offered, during a DE course was replicated. The final questionnaire comprised three sections. Firstly demographic information such as location of initial nursing education (i.e. hospital or university); number of years as a registered nurse (RN); current level (position); main role in current job; and nursing qualifications held. The second section focussed on relevance of qualifications to current job; whether the qualification was undertaken by DE; current enrolment in nursing related study; types of course (i.e. bachelor degree, postgraduate certificate, postgraduate diploma, masters, doctorate); and relevance to work. Gender, age and specific area worked were intentionally omitted to ensure anonymity due to the possibility of later identification by the first author. The third section focussed on workplace support with fifteen support types specified plus a category for ‘other’. Prior to data analysis, the types of support were grouped as i) cost related (fees, study leave and material resources purchased); ii) system related (clinical placements, roster requests, study group, material resources available and preceptorship); iii) academic related (study skills, IT assistance, literature searches and formal, e.g. proofreading and referencing); iv) social / emotional related (emotional, study buddy, sounding board and mentor); and v) other. The questionnaire enabled nurses to indicate different responses if they had undertaken more than one course by DE. Data Analysis Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 14.0) was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics including cross tabulations and Chi Square analysis were computed: significance was set at p < 0.05. RESULTS Demographic Data, Qualifications and Distance Education The response rate was 34% (n=92). Sixty four percent of participants were initially tertiary educated, while 83% held a minimum of a bachelor degree and over 40% have further nursing qualifications, 22% of these were gained by DE. In this study, 66% of participants were level 1, 20% level 2 (both levels are clinically-based) and 13% level 3 (management or education). Over half the EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 5 of 10 participants (n=52, 56%) had more than 10 years full-time equivalent (FTE) nursing experience (see table 1). 28% of participants reported being currently enrolled in further study by DE, with the majority in either a post-graduate certificate or a post-graduate diploma. 88% of participants studying by DE reported that the qualification would be relevant to their current job. Almost half the study participants (46%) plan future study by DE. Table 2 reveals results for distance education. Workplace Support for Nurses Studying by Distance Education In this study, fifteen types of support were identified including course fees, study leave, resources purchased or available, roster requests, clinical placements, study buddy, sounding board, study group, study skills (literature searches, Information Technology and formal), mentorship, preceptorship, emotional, plus other. Participants indicated a low level of employer support. 28% of participants who had done, or were currently doing DE, received no support, whilst a further 19% received only one type of support. Of these same nurses 59.5% had sought support whilst for 71.4% no support was offered. Table 3 illustrates the types of support reported during current / most recent course and earlier course (for those who have done more than 1 by DE). In current / most recent: study leave (36%), course fees (31%) and roster requests (31%) were the support types most frequently received; while the most frequently sought were: mentor (24%) and study buddy (24%). The most frequently offered were study leave, study group and emotional (each 10%). Also of note was the number of support types that were sought more often than received. Study group was the only support offered more than it was sought. For those participants who have completed more than one DE course, mentorship (30%) was the most frequently received support. Study leave, sounding board and mentorship (each 20%) were the most frequently sought types of support. No support was offered to RNs during earlier DE courses. A comparison between support sought and offered in this study highlights the gap between the two with very little support of any kind offered for either current or previous DE students. According to participants in this study, there was little support offered by nursing management or from the health department for DE study. Support for Distance Education in an Ideal Workplace The final aspect explored was the support nurses would like or believe should be mandatory, with 94.6% of participants reporting they would like to receive (liked) three or more types of support and 73% believing some forms of support should be compulsorily provided by the employer (mandatory). Table 4 shows support RNs would like or they believe should be mandatory. Support liked and mandatory were compared between those currently enrolled (n =26) with those who have previously undertaken DE study (n =21). There was a difference between liked and mandatory support to this question. The most frequently liked support types were; course fees (74%), roster requests (61%), study leave (60%) and study groups (58%) whereas mandatory support types were; study leave (75%), clinical placements (62%), roster requests (60%) and formal clinical EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 6 of 10 supervision (preceptorship) (47%). However, none of these reached statistical significance. DISCUSSION Fostering further study amongst nurse employees is an important recruitment and retention strategy for hospitals (Kramer & Schmalenberg 2005; McClure 2005; Westendorf 2007). Encouragement and support for nurses to undertake further study is also a key characteristic of ‘Magnet’ hospitals (Kramer & Schmalenberg 2005; McClure 2005; Westendorf 2007). This study found that in this workplace nurses received little support for further study by DE. There were clear differences between what nurses wanted and what they received by way of support. Little was offered and what was received was apparently a result of nurses’ initiative, demonstrated by the nurses having to seek support. In addition, the majority of nurses would either like or believe support should be mandatory and yet only a minority of nurses actually received or were offered support. Some of the differences in frequency seem to be related to whether the support is cost, system, social/emotional or academic-related. Oehlkers and Gibson (2001) described support as resources that nurses received to enable them to undertake further education (e.g. fees, roster support). In this study some cost-related support (fees and resources purchased) were generally reported with greater frequency under sought and liked than offered and mandatory. Similarly Cooley (2008) found that when nurses pursued further education more support in terms of study leave and funding was needed. Cost issues in health and education have been identified as a constraining factor in supporting clinical learning (Wellard, Williams & Bethune 2000). Interestingly study leave was more frequent under mandatory than liked and almost identical under sought and offered, with a relatively high frequency under received. This indicates an expectation from the participants for this type of support. Having an expectation that support ought to be provided may reflect the nurses’ in this study belief that study leave is part of the current leave allowance entitlement. While study leave is provided for residential (on-campus) components of courses and to sit examinations, it is not recognised by employers that study leave is also needed to complete courses through DE modes of learning. This is an interesting and hidden aspect to DE courses and that RNs undertaking these course seem to be disadvantaged. In this study course fees and resources may have been more frequent under mandatory had the question posed ‘an ideal workplace’. The Tasmanian Department of Health recently announced the availability of post-graduate scholarships for RNs wishing to undertake post-graduate certificates or diplomas through the University of Tasmania. It could be inferred by the provision of scholarships is the purported increased staff satisfaction and the flow on to the department due to higher staff retention rates and lower overall staffing cost-savings (Westendorf 2007). However, RNs wishing to study at other universities are not supported, and this will hinder some nurses undertaking post-qualifying courses in some specialty fields. This study found that the system-related support (roster requests, preceptorship and clinical placements) had very similar frequencies for liked and mandatory. This was an unsurprising result given that participants would recognised the ease EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 7 of 10 with which such system support could be provided. However these forms of support were sought far more frequently than offered, indicating that reality does not yet reflect need in this workplace. Definitions of support have included advising, counselling, enabling and advocating (Lawton 1997). Although Lawton was referring to the educational institution as support provider these could equally be provided in the DE student’s workplace through the aegis of informal collegial relationships. In this study, social and emotional-related support (emotional, mentorship, study buddy, study group and sounding board) was generally sought more often than offered or received and also more frequently liked than mandatory. A majority of participants may believe social-emotional support cannot be mandated, as they are all dependent on naturally occurring, inter-personal relationships. A workplace culture can, however, be cultivated in which further study and care of colleagues are highly valued. Such a culture would in effect provide an employer mandate for less formal modes of support such as these for nurses undertaking further study. A values statement at institution level, backed by action at all nursing levels, promoting further study and collegial support would be of benefit within the workplace. In this study, digital information and communication technologies were referred to as information technologies (IT) as this term was in general usage at this hospital. Within nursing workplaces IT support is generally systems orientated, for example electronic patient records or online pathology results (Eley et al 2008; Simpson 2007). The specific IT support needed by nurses as they study may be more oriented towards less workplace specific programs such as word- processing and spreadsheet skills. The reasons for study skills (IT assistance, literature search and proof reading / referencing) being reported more for liked than mandatory are likely to relate to the academic nature of the support. Respondents may have believed this type of support is more within the remit of education providers than that of employers and that these are not readily available within the workplace. Occasionally these types of support may appear serendipitously if a colleague has the ability, time and willingness to assist. A formal relationship between workplace and education providers may increase access to these forms of support for nurses who are studying. Lawton (1997) contends that a structured approach to supporting DE learners will ensure the support is more effective. If employers develop formal frameworks within their systems to identify and support nurses who are studying through DE, the learning outcomes can be enhanced. A system of support must start at the level of organisational culture and look at cost-benefits associated with increased staff expertise, satisfaction and retention. A system can be designed to value workplace study and encourage collegial support and should include formal partnerships with education providers. The corollary for the employer will be better prepared practitioners with improved recruitment and retention rates. Limitations This was an exploratory study using convenience sampling from one hospital, and although we had a response rate of 34%, the sample nevertheless is consistent with the demographic profile of the Australian nursing workforce EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 8 of 10 (AIHW 2008), so the potential for non-response bias is slow (Polit & Beck, 2010). We do, however, caution that the generalisability of these results to other countries may be limited. In addition the scope of the study did not explore support for RNs who had studied traditional on-campus courses. Lastly, there were low numbers of participants who reported withdrawing from DE courses thereby limiting the ability to explore the relationship between support and the non-completion of a DE course. Potential Contribution of This Study These research findings can help employers and distance education providers improve their understanding of the factors that impinge on working RNs when they undertake further study by DE. Such understanding will allow systematic planning of support networks with specific areas of responsibility lying within the remit of the workplace or education provider or both. Employers seeking to improve recruitment and retention of experienced RNs may be encouraged to further develop workplace cultures that value study, through direct action not simply inert ‘values statements’. Future Research The findings of this study warrant further research. For instance, whether workplace support has a direct effect on the uptake and completion of study by nurses, either by DE or face-to-face course delivery and how workplace support impacts on nurses’ stress levels when they study. Rural and remote nursing employees may be at a disadvantage in terms of access to face-to-face further education. This aspect warrants further research to determine the impact of workplace on the provision of workplace support for RNs studying by DE. CONCLUSION Employer support for RNs studying by DE has generally been absent in the extant nurse education literature. From the nurses’ perspective, current support arrangements do not correspond to what is desired or should be required. If employers are to be credible advocates of further education this study suggests that there are simple and practical measures that could be taken to support nurses as they study by DE. EMPLOYER-BASED SUPPORT FOR REGISTERED NURSES UNDERTAKING POSTGRADUATE STUDY VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION 9 of 10 REFERENCES ACHS – see Australian Council on Healthcare Standards Adams, A., Timmins, F., 2006. Students’ views of integrating web-based learning technology into the nursing curriculum: a descriptive study. 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work_2pd7lfyfp5a77pcek2vahxajuy	----	PII: S1096-7516(02)00158-6 In search of higher persistence rates in distance education online programs Alfred P. Rovai* School of Education, Regent University, 1000 Regent University Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23464-9800, USA Received 15 July 2002; received in revised form 2 October 2002; accepted 1 November 2002 Abstract Tinto’s [Rev. Educ. Res. 45 (1975) 89; Tinto, V. (1987). Leaving college. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press] student integration model and Bean and Metzner’s [Rev. Educ. Res. 55 (1985) 485] student attrition model have been influential in explaining persistence and attrition in higher education programs. However, these models were developed with on-campus programs in mind and, although they are broadly relevant to distance education programs, their ability to explain the persistence of online students is limited. Distance education students have characteristics and needs that differ from traditional learners and the virtual learning environment differs in important ways from an on-campus environment. This article draws chiefly from Tinto’s and Bean and Metzner’s models and the results of research into the needs of online distance education students in order to synthesize a composite model to better explain persistence and attrition among the largely nontraditional students that enroll in online courses. D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Persistence; Dropout; Retention; Attrition; Online; Distance education; Adult education 1. Introduction Persistence, that is, the behavior of continuing action despite the presence of obstacles, is an important measure of higher education program effectiveness. Applied to adult education, 1096-7516/02/$ – see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII: S1096-7516(02)00158-6 * Tel.: +1-757-226-4861; fax: +1-757-226-4857. E-mail address: alfrrov@regent.edu (A.P. Rovai). Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 persistence can be defined as the length of time an adult attends classes (Quigley, 1997). Adults choose to participate in educational programs to meet their learning goals while school children participate because of mandatory attendance requirements. Consequently, the persistence rates of adults in postsecondary programs are often substantially lower than children attending public schools and are strongly related to the ability of educational programs to satisfy adult needs. College enrollment in the United States is on the increase. Snyder and Hoffman (2002) reported enrollment in public and private degree-granting institutions increased by 17% between 1979 and 1989. Moreover, enrollment increased 9% between 1989 and 1999 despite a slight decline in enrollment from 1992 to 1995. They also reported that the persistence of undergraduate students who enrolled in 4-year colleges in 1995–1996 was 77% by spring 1998. That is, 23% of students who started their undergraduate studies in fall 1995 had withdrawn from school by spring 1998. Historically, most undergraduate students are from the traditional student population, that is, students who entered college immediately after graduating from high school and attended college full- time. Horn and Premo (1995) analyzed data from the 1992–1993 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study and reported that the traditional path to a college degree, generally viewed as enrolling in college immediately after high school and attending full-time until graduation, is becoming the exception rather than the rule. They pointed out that in 1992– 1993, for example, although 57% of undergraduates had enrolled in postsecondary schools immediately after high school graduation, only about one-third attended full-time for the full 1992–1993 academic year. They cited these statistics as evidence that the US is moving toward a higher proportion of nontraditional students in its postsecondary programs. Furthermore, Villella and Hu (1991) reported that persistence for nontraditional students in on-campus programs was approximately 68%, 9 percentage points lower than for all undergraduate students. The definition of a nontraditional student has been the source of much discussion in the professional literature. Bean and Metzner (1985) identified age, especially being over 24, as one of the most common variables in studies of nontraditional student attrition. Students over 24 years old represent a population of adult learners who often have family and work responsibilities that can interfere with successful attainment of educational goals. Other characteristics typically used to characterize nontraditional students are part-time student status and full-time employment. The lower persistence of nontraditional students in college has implications for distance education, since students enrolled in programs at a distance are typically viewed as nontraditional. For example, Wood (1996) reported over 70% of recent graduates enrolled in distance education programs were employed in full-time jobs. Carr (2000) noted that persistence in distance education programs is often 10–20 percentage points lower than in traditional programs. She also reported significant variation among institutions; with some postsecondary schools reporting course-completion rates of more than 80% and others finding that fewer than 50% of distance education students finish their courses. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–162 Persistence is an issue of increasing importance for both traditional and distance education programs in view of the increasing enrollments of nontraditional students in both programs. Moreover, Borrego (2002) wrote that the US Department of Education is placing added importance on higher education retention issues. She reported that US President Bush’s emphasis on quality through the examination of outcomes-based education could extend to the postsecondary level with added emphasis placed on persistence. She also reported that the US Department of Education intends to examine retention policies and examine ways to use federal money as an incentive to reward programs that work. The need therefore exists to examine ways of increasing persistence in postsecondary programs because of: (a) the increase in numbers of nontraditional students and the lower retention rates typically associated with these students; (b) the increase in the number distance education programs that typically consist of nontraditional students; and (c) the added importance that the US federal government places on student retention. Accordingly, this article analyzes several influential models used to explain the persistence of adult learners and the results of research into the needs of online students in order to show that existing persistence models are not entirely suitable for use with an online population of adult learners. Information is then synthesized into a composite model that better explains persistence and attrition among the largely nontraditional students that enroll in online courses and programs. 2. Psychological models of persistence During the past few decades, several theoretical models of higher education student persistence have emerged. The earliest attempts to explain persistence were based on psychological models. These models (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) theorized that a student’s decision to persist is largely based on previous behavior, attitudes, and norms that drive behavior through the formation of intent to learn. Corno and Kanfer (1993) suggested that volition is the mediating force between intentions to learn and behaviors to learn. Accordingly, they defined volition as those thoughts and behaviors that are directed toward maintaining one’s intention to attain a specific goal in the face of distractions. Heckhausen and Kuhl (1985) depicted volition as a psychological state characterized by thoughts about the implementation of goals into action and empha- sized self-regulation in the context of persistence. They asserted that motivation may be sufficient for students to enroll in educational programs, but students in programs that require sustained effort may encounter declining motivation, particularly in the face of adversity. At this point, volitional processes become important in explaining persistence. More recent models, although grounded in these psychological models, explain persistence and attrition through student-institution ‘‘fit’’ by looking at student, institutional, and environmental variables and specific themes, such as the social integration of students into campus life. Two important and influential models in this genre were developed by Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) and by Bean and Metzner (1985). A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 3 3. Tinto’s student integration model Perhaps, the most influential attempt to explain the process of persistence in higher education as a function of student-institution ‘‘fit’’ was put forward by Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) (see Fig. 1). He theorized that the primary determinants of successful persistence can be broken down into: (a) factors that are drawn from experiences prior to college and individual student characteristics and (b) factors that are drawn from experiences at college. Experiences before college and student characteristics are input variables that cannot be affected greatly by schools. However, student experiences subsequent to admission, which Tinto referred to as ‘‘integration’’ variables, are affected by school policies and practices. Tinto (1987, p. 123) suggested that ‘‘the more central one’s membership is to the mainstream of institutional life the more likely, other things being equal, is one to persist.’’ Typically, postsecondary education persistence studies find that academic integration has an important impact on persistence (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Consequently, persistence is often viewed as a measure of how well students integrate into a particular school. Tinto’s student integration model explains the student integration process as mostly a function of academic and social experiences in college. He measured successful academic integration by grade point average (GPA) and evaluated social integration by the development and frequency of positive interactions with peers and faculty and involve- ment in extracurricular activity. Tinto found that integration along these two dimensions Fig. 1. A conceptualization of Tinto’s (1975, 1987, 1993) student integration model. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–164 produced stronger student commitment to their specific institutions and increased their persistence. He wrote, In the final analysis, it is the interplay between the individual’s commitment to the goal of college completion and his [or her] commitment to the institution that determines whether or not the individual decides to dropout from college and the forms of dropout behavior the individual adopts. Presumably, either low goal commitment or low institutional commitment can lead to dropout. (Tinto, 1975, p. 96) Tinto also argued that insufficient interactions with peers and faculty and differences with the prevailing value patterns of other students are likely to result in dropouts. In other words, students who feel they do not ‘‘fit in’’ and have low sense of community tend to feel isolated and are at-risk of withdrawing. He asserted ‘‘a person will tend to withdraw from college when he [or she] perceives that an alternative form of investment of time, energies, and resources will yield greater benefits, relative to costs, over time than will staying in college’’ (1975, p. 98). If external activities become more attractive than college completion, a student will drop out. The more a student’s experiences serve to integrate the student socially and intellectually into the life of the college, the more likely the student is to persist until degree completion. In more recent works, Tinto (1987, 1993) emphasized the importance of learning communities that facilitate collaborative work so that students learn together rather than apart and the use of classroom assessment techniques that encourage discourse about learning. Tinto’s model validates the need for schools to assume a proactive role in a student’s integration process. Accordingly, many colleges include a ‘‘freshman experience’’ orientation that Koutsoubakis (1999) showed can increase persistence. These orientations are used to: (a) assist new freshmen in making the transition from high school to college; (b) orient students to the services and culture of the college and its campus; and (c) integrate students into an intellectual community of students and faculty. Additionally, Hashway, Baham, Hashway, and Rogers (2000) provided evidence that completion of remedial education programs increased first-year retention rates among academically at-risk students. Positive effects were also found for students completing a summer transition program (Wolf-Wendel, Tuttle, & Keller-Wolff, 1999). However, educators who desire to study the persistence of nontraditional students may find that the Tinto’s model has limited applicability since it is best suited to institutional analysis of the persistence of traditional undergraduate students (Maxwell, 1998; Rendon, Jalomo, & Nora, 2000). Tinto’s model is not as useful for studying the attrition of older students, for whom academic and social integration within the university may be less influential (Bean & Metzner, 1985). Additionally, Yorke (1999) suggested that Tinto’s theory has relatively little to say about the impact of external factors in shaping students’ perceptions, commitments, and reactions that he feels are important. Nonetheless, the work of Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) has been particularly important in establishing the role of the school in promoting an environment for student integration and remains relevant in this regard. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 5 4. Bean and Metzner’s student attrition model As mentioned above, distance education students are very likely to be nontraditional, and even traditional programs are moving toward higher numbers of nontraditional students. As nontraditional students become a more prominent segment of the student body, researchers must examine whether the findings of research on the persistence of traditional college students hold true for nontraditional students as well. This is especially important regarding the notion of social integration. Nontraditional students are usually associated with living away from campus, belonging to social groups that are not associated with the college, having dependents, not being involved in campus organizations, and attending college part-time. Because these students manage their time among their classes, work, families, and roles in the community, there is often little time for campus involvement outside the classroom (Graham & Gisi, 2000). Bean and Metzner (1985) proposed a model (see Fig. 2), grounded on Tinto’s model and earlier psychological models, to explain attrition of nontraditional students, whom they defined as ‘‘older than 24, does not live in a campus residence (i.e., is a commuter), or is a Fig. 2. A conceptualization of Bean and Metzner’s (1985) student attrition model. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–166 part-time student, or some combination of these three factors; is not greatly influenced by the social environment of the institution, and is chiefly concerned with the institution’s academic offerings (especially courses, certification and degrees)’’ (p. 489). They argued that older students have different support structures than younger students and since they have limited interaction with other groups within the college community they draw more support from outside the academic environment ‘‘because their reference group of peers, friends, family, and employers exists outside the institution’’ (p. 506). This is in contrast to traditional students, where on-campus students and faculty represent their most important support group. Accordingly, Bean and Metzner’s model is more relevant than Tinto’s model in explaining the persistence of distance education students. As with Tinto’s model, Bean and Metzner’s (1985) model attempts to predict student persistence based on student-institution ‘‘fit.’’ In analyzing attrition factors for nontraditional students, Bean and Metzner identified four factors that affect persistence: (a) academic variables such as study habits and course availability; (b) background and defining variables such as age, educational goals, ethnicity, and prior GPA; (c) environmental variables such as finances, hours of employment, family responsibilities, and outside encouragement; and (d) academic and psychological outcomes while at the college. In particular, they concluded that ‘‘students’ reports of financial difficulty were positively related to attrition from college’’ and ‘‘many older students expressed concern about the ability to finance a college education’’ (p. 503). These variables, many of which are outside the control of the school, may push students out of school by putting too much pressure on their time, resources, and sense of well being. In more recent research, Metzner and Bean (1987) found that while integration variables were not significant for nontraditional students, GPA and institutional commitment directly affected persistence through their impact on perceptions of a postsecondary education’s usefulness in gaining employment, satisfaction, and opportunity to transfer. Based solely on a student satisfaction survey, Parker and Greenlee (1997) studied persistence at a suburban university in southeastern Virginia that consisted of a commuter- oriented student body, a high percentage of nontraditional students, and low to moderate admissions criteria. They reported that, in order of importance, financial problems, followed by family complications, work schedule conflicts, and poor academic performance were the most important factors that explained why students did not persist. These findings support the importance of environmental variables in Bean and Metzner’s model. Henry and Smith (1993, p. 29) interpreted this model as follows: When both academic and environmental variables are favorable, students should persist. When both variables are unfavorable, students are likely to dropout. When academic variables are positive, but environmental variables are negative, the favorable effects of academic variables on student goal attainment are suppressed or attenuated. . . Students may dropout of college despite strong academic performance if they perceive low levels of utility, satisfaction, or goal commitment, or if they experience high levels of stress. Cabrera, Castaneda, Nora, and Hengstler (1992) found significant overlap between the models of Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) and Bean and Metzner (1985). They confirmed the A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 7 positive effects that commitment to the school, goal commitment, and social integration (Tinto, 1975) had on persistence and affirmed the impact that forces external to the institution (Bean & Metzner, 1985) also had on student attrition. Thus, they identified two highly significant predictors, one from each model, to help explain persistence. They concluded that the interplay between institutional, personal, and external factors needed to be considered in developing programs to increase persistence. Furthermore, in a study of nontraditional adult students, Ashar and Skenes (1993, p. 96) found that ‘‘classes that were professionally more homogeneous, and thus socially more integrated, and smaller classes lost fewer students than less socially integrated and larger classes.’’ These results provide additional evidence that social integration, a component of Tinto’s model, is also relevant for nontraditional students. Consequently, a synthesis of Tinto’s and Bean and Metzner’s models may be a better predictor of the persistence of nontraditional adult students than either model by itself. However, these two models were designed with traditional course delivery in mind, that is, traditional and nontraditional students who attended classes on campus. Although they are relevant for online programs, they should be adapted to the needs of online learners in order to better explain persistence and attrition in distance education programs. 5. Composite persistence model Fig. 3 synthesizes the persistence models of Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) and Bean and Metzner (1985) with the skills required by online students (Rowntree, 1995; Cole, 2000), the special needs of distance education students (Workman & Stenard, 1996), and the require- ment to harmonize learning and teaching styles (Grow, 1996) into a single composite model. This model is divided into student characteristics and skills prior to admission and external and internal factors affecting students after admission. 5.1. Student characteristics prior to admission Student characteristics such as age, ethnicity, gender, intellectual development, and academic performance and preparation prior to college can affect student persistence (Bean & Metzner, 1985). For example, minority students may feel isolated in online courses, a risk factor associated with dropouts. Murguia, Padilla, and Pavel (1991) found that social integration into college was enhanced for ethnic groups when they had ethnic clubs or enclaves available. Ross and Powell (1990) reported that females tend to be more successful in online courses than males. Rovai (2001) found similar gender-related differences in an online course and explained them as differences in communication patterns and sense of community. He found that the majority of men (and some women) exhibited an independent voice and the majority of women (and some men) used a connected voice in the communication patterns of messages they wrote. Those with the highest sense of community were more likely to write messages using a connected voice while those with the lowest sense of community tended to write messages using the independent voice. Low sense of community, which is related to A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–168 feelings of disconnectedness and isolation, is believed to adversely affect student persistence in online courses. Several researchers also noted a significant relationship between previous academic performance and completion of distance learning courses. Schlosser and Anderson (1994) explained this relationship by theorizing that students who completed more formal education or received higher grades had more fully developed research and study skills and more realistic expectations of the requirements and the effort needed to fulfill their educational goals. 5.2. Student skills prior to admission Successful learning at a distance using the Internet also requires special student skills. Rowntree (1995) claimed that students require skills in: (a) computing, (b) literacy discussion, Fig. 3. A composite persistence model that synthesizes the persistence models of Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) and Bean and Metzner (1985) together with relevant research in online student skills (Rowntree, 1995; Cole, 2000) and needs (Workman & Stenard, 1996) and the requirement to harmonize learning and teaching styles (Grow, 1996) to explain student persistence in online distance education programs. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 9 (c) time management, and (d) interpersonal interaction. He also observed that the focus in online learning is often less on the content than it is on the cognitive process of ‘‘offering up ideas, having them criticized or expanded on, and getting the chance to reshape them (or abandon them) in the light of peer discussion’’ (p. 207). Additionally, Cole (2000) identified the added importance that online distance education placed on reading and writing skills and the need for online students to have strong skills in these areas. Since online students largely work independently, they also need the information literacy skills to ‘‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’’ (American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Lit- eracy, 1989, p. 1). Deficiencies in these special skills can lead to academic difficulties and attrition. 5.3. External factors affecting students after admission Naturally, the experiences of students subsequent to college admission can have a profound effect on a student’s persistence decision (Tinto, 1975). These experiences are divided into external and internal factors. The external factors of the composite model draw heavily from the environmental variables contained in Bean and Metzner’s (1985) model, such as finances, hours of employment, family responsibilities, and outside encouragement. Tinto (1993) also acknowledged that going to college might be only one of many obligations that a student will have. Consequently, he suggested that persistence might be seriously weakened by external factors when institutional academic and social systems are weak. Accordingly, additional demands on the time of nontraditional students such as life crises, e.g., sickness, divorce, loss of a job, etc., can adversely affect persistence. 5.4. Internal factors affecting students after admission Many of the internal factors were taken from Tinto’s (1975, 1987, 1993) and Bean and Metzner’s (1985) models as described above. However, both Tinto and Bean and Metzner conceptualized integration from the perspective of college students who attended class on campus. The research literature suggests that students who take classes at a distance have additional needs, and these needs are also depicted in Fig. 3 as internal factors. Workman and Stenard (1996) analyzed the needs of distance learners and identified five specialized needs. The degree to which these needs are satisfied will also influence the persistence of online students. The first need is consistency and clarity of online programs, policies, and procedures. Distance learners may not have a good understanding of school policies and practices and other students, staff, and faculty may not be readily accessible that can provide students with the information that they seek. Consequently, the e-learning system should contain detailed information about the school, educational programs, and courses that is immediately accessible to students as well as an online student manual that covers the e- learning system in detail. Moreover, the names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of online instructors, advisers, and technicians should be readily available. E-mail that school personnel receive from students should be quickly answered or, if that is not possible, the A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–1610 student should receive e-mail that acknowledges receipt of each student query and provides a date when the student can expect a full reply. The next distance learner need identified by Workman and Stenard (1996) is self-esteem. They suggested learning may be slow until students develop a heightened sense of self- esteem. A distance learning program can build self-esteem by requiring students to participate in an orientation program prior to their first course that includes mastery of the online tools used in the e-learning system. Additionally, positive self-esteem can be nurtured during coursework by identifying precisely stated and measurable learning objectives and providing students with timely teacher-to-student and student-to-student feedback regarding mastery of these objectives. The third need is to feel an identity with the school so students do not view themselves as outsiders. This need is closely related to sense of community and what Tinto (1993) refers to as institutional commitment. Workman and Stenard (1996) suggested that a simple but effective way of establishing identification with the school is to issue identification cards. Such cards can facilitate entry into school facilities when personnel are on campus and can offer discounts from various online merchants, particularly those selling books, computers, and software. More importantly, these cards provide online students with a connection to the college. The fourth need is the requirement for social integration, that is, the need for students to develop interpersonal relationships with peers, faculty, and staff. This need is also closely related to sense of community. Kember, Lai, Murphy, Siaw, and Yuen (1992) provided evidence to suggest that in distance education classes ‘‘students who achieve social integration find it easier to come to terms with their academic demands’’ (p. 296). The final student need identified by Workman and Stenard (1996) is the requirement for ready access to support services such as bookstores, library, financial aide offices, and advisers. They suggested that distance learners also value services such as tutoring, study skill training, and particularly an orientation on the technology used for course delivery. The distractions created by technology must be minimized. Consequently, telephone service is often more user friendly and more effective for online students than is interactive computing for responding to student problems and advising students. Online students also expect a pedagogy that matches their learning style. Kerka (1996, p. 1) wrote that the medium used for online distance education courses ‘‘supports self-directed learning-computer conferencing requires learner motivation, self-discipline, and respons- ibility.’’ Grow (1996) developed a model for matching a student’s self-direction ability with teaching style. Although Grow did not extend his model beyond teaching style, it is possible that his model might also be used to match self-direction with the distance education delivery mode. He theorized that as students become more self-directed, both the teaching style and the curriculum can become less directive. As self-directed learners, students should have the ability to: (a) identify and set personally meaningful goals for their own learning; (b) develop and use a wide range of learning strategies appropriate to different learning tasks; (c) work independently and with others to achieve their learning goals; and (d) persist to overcome obstacles in order to achieve their learning goals (Radloff & de la Harpe, 1999, as cited in Price, 2000). Students who are not self-directed A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 11 will likely perform better in a lecture format, while students who are self-directed can do independent projects with the teacher functioning more as a consultant. Self-directed learning recognizes the significant role of both motivation and volition in initiating and maintaining learners’ efforts. Sherry (1996) reported that students at a distance are required to take greater responsibility for their own learning, as online learning results in greater learner control and learner- centeredness. Accordingly, learner autonomy, that is, the concept of independence and self- direction, has been a hallmark of adult education and an assumed characteristic of the nontraditional students enrolled in distance education programs. Moore and Kearsley (1996) suggested that online students will perform better if they utilize a self-directed, information- seeking approach. Such self-directed learning is often described as ‘‘a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, to diagnose their learning needs, formulate learning goals, identify resources for learning, select and implement learning strategies, and evaluate learning outcomes’’ (Knowles, 1975, p. 10). In traditional courses, students tend to rely on the instructor for all content and assignment reminders. However, there is a greater responsibility on the online student for organizing his or her time and meeting all deadlines. Students who lack self-direction and self-discipline and are dependent learners may be less likely to succeed in online courses, particularly if the instructor manifests the teaching styles of a facilitator, consultant, and delegator rather than that of an authority and coach (Grow, 1996). To promote self-directed learning in students, Taylor (1995) suggested involving students in decisions concerning what is to be learned, when and how it should be learned, and how it should be evaluated. In addition, learners should be allowed to pursue their own interests so that learning becomes more meaningful. However, the research on the role of self-direction in online learning is mixed. The image of the capable adult distance learner may not be accurate (Paul, 1988). The experiences of many distance educators have revealed that part-time adult distance learners require all the support they can get to succeed. Paul (1988, p. 50) wrote ‘‘. . .distance education institutions bear considerable responsibility for helping its students to cope with the difficulty inherent in this model of education.’’ Moreover, some studies characterized the successful distance student as an autonomous, independent learner (e.g., Tucker, 2000), but others found no correlation between learning style and learning outcomes. There is a growing belief that self-directed learning is situational, that it is not always the best approach of instruction for all adults, and that there are times, places, and circumstances when it should not be used at all (Grow, 1996). Such a belief supports the view that online courses should support multiple learning styles. 6. Conclusion There is no simple formula that ensures student persistence. Adult persistence in an online program is a complicated response to multiple issues. It is not credible to attribute student attrition to any single student, course, or school characteristic. There are numerous internal A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–1612 and external factors that come into play, as well as interactions between factors. Houle (1961, p. 80) wrote, Efforts to explore the reasons why some people become continuing learners has made it clear that there is no simple answer to this complex question. Each person is unique and his [or her] actions spring from a highly individualized and complex interaction of personal and social factors. However, there is a growing consensus on several important factors to explain persistence in online programs. These factors are included in the composite model shown in Fig. 3. Administrators of distance education programs should be able to use this model to help them identify students who are at risk to become dropouts. Additionally, this model can be used to identify topics for student interventions. Deficiencies in academic preparation and online student skills can be remedied through early intervention efforts. Remediation and integration efforts can be presented either online or on-campus in a hybrid blend of face-to-face and distance education technologies. Hybrid programs promise the best of both worlds, offering most of the convenience of all-online programs without the complete loss of face-to-face contact. The hybrid model assumes that online learning can be enhanced during one or more face-to-face sessions that foster academic and social integration with the school. Accordingly, an initial face-to-face residency that precedes an online program can be used to deliver early intervention programs, to include addressing prerequisite deficiencies in computer and information literacy and student reading, writing, and study skills. Additionally, such programs can introduce students to the school and its services and help integrate them into the academic and social life of the school, similar to a ‘‘freshman experience’’ orientation. Once students enroll in an online program, the composite model identifies important external factors that help explain student persistence. Regardless of students’ academic preparation and existing skills, if they cannot pay for college, make adequate child care arrangements, or adjust their work schedules, they are unlikely to persist in school. College administrators should therefore ease external risk factors (i.e., nonschool factors that conflict with academic life) in helping students realize their educational aspirations. This goal can be achieved through outreach programs that make students aware of college programs and services and provide support, such as counseling services, for students who are concerned about whether or not they made the right choice in pursuing a college education. Internal factors after admission are also important. Students’ involvement in and attach- ment to their school are essential elements for success. Accordingly, the first year experiences of new online students are critical. Early counseling is essential to establish expectations and to give a sense of the college community (Cullen, 1994). These experiences should quickly dispel any assumptions by students that online courses are easier, less demanding, or less time-consuming than regular courses (Hardy & Boaz, 1997). There is also an important need to create a learning community (e.g., Rovai, 2001; Tinto, 1987) that encompasses the needs of all students, connects them to each other, to the institution, and to the resources that they need to succeed, and allows them to get responsive help (Workman & Stenard, 1996). Most successful retention efforts include program elements that focus on increasing academic A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–16 13 integration consisting of active participation and satisfactory experiences where students personally interact with faculty and each other. Personal attention, a staff willing to listen, frequent contact with the faculty, and assistance with personal and financial problems are hallmarks of an effective online program (Smith & Bailey, 1993). Success in online courses typically requires a high level of discipline and self-direction, and enough time each week to complete all assignments. Comprehensive, multicomponent strategies are required. There is a need to avoid simply providing information to online students. Good instructional design and pedagogy are at the core of high-quality online courses. Moreover, good instruction tailored to the medium and to the learning needs and styles of the students served is required. The experiences of an unfamiliar learning environment demand significant coping skills for nontraditional learners. It may be necessary for online learners to develop a repertoire of learning styles, and for online faculty to encourage that development. Because classes do not meet in the traditional sense, some students must be motivated to begin course work on time, keep up with assignments, and actively participate. Besides learning from course materials and their online instructors, students should also be encouraged to learn from each other, and schools delivering instruction at a distance should actively encourage the formation of study groups among online learners. An initial face-to-face residency can be a great opportunity to address these coping skills and facilitate the formation of informal study groups for new online students. All such efforts have the potential to increase persistence. References American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy (1989). Information power: build- ing partnerships for learning. Final report. Chicago: American Library Association. Ashar, H., & Skenes, R. (1993). Can Tinto’s student departure model be applied to nontraditional students? Adult Education Quarterly, 43, 90–100. Bean, J., & Metzner, B. (1985). A conceptual model of nontraditional undergraduate student attrition. Review of Educational Research, 55, 485–650. Borrego, A. 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A factor analysis of variables affecting the retention decision of nontraditional college students. NASPA Journal, 28(4), 334–341. Wolf-Wendel, L. E., Tuttle, K., & Keller-Wolff, C. M. (1999). Assessment of a freshman summer transition program in an open-admissions institution. Journal of the First-Year Experience, 11, 7–32. Wood, H. (1996). Designing study materials for distance students. Learning Materials Centre. Retrieved Novem- ber 25, 2002, from http://www.csu.edu.au/division/0LI/di-rd/occpap17/design.htm. Workman, J. J., & Stenard, R. A. (1996). Student support services for distance learners. DEOSNEWS, 6(3) (Retrieved July 3, 2002, from the Distance Education Online Symposium Website: http://www.ed.psu.edu/ acsde/deos/deosnews/deosnews6_3.asp). Yorke, M. (1999). Leaving early: undergraduate non-completion in higher education. London: Falmer Press. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 1–1616 http:\\www.csu.edu.au\division\0LI\di-rd\occpap17\design.htm http:\\www.ed.psu.edu\acsde\deos\deosnews\deosnews6_3.asp Introduction Psychological models of persistence Tinto's student integration model Bean and Metzner's student attrition model Composite persistence model Student characteristics prior to admission Student skills prior to admission External factors affecting students after admission Internal factors affecting students after admission Conclusion References 
work_2pkf5nb56jdotmp3vhhllkrw6u	----	Learning Interactions in Rural and Remote Contexts 1 The tyranny of remoteness: Changing and adapting pedagogical practices in distance education. Tom Lowrie Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia Robyn Jorgensen Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia Abstract Distance Education (DE) learning environments are considerably different to those of typical classrooms where students engage on a face-to-face basis with their teachers and peers. In remote settings, these face-to-face opportunities are limited and sometimes nonexistent. This investigation focuses on the influence of new technologies on the pedagogical practices of teachers and their students in remote DE settings. A place pedagogy framework was utilised to consider the changed practices of DE teachers using satellite communications for lesson delivery. Findings of the study detail the initial hopes and aspirations of these teachers, the realities of their new practice and the challenges and demands of teaching in DE settings. Keywords: distance education; pedagogical practices; Information Communication Technologies. 2 Introduction Australia is a diverse country—not just socially and culturally—but also geographically. Although a large proportion of the Australian population live in capital cities along the east coast, approximately one-third reside in communities outside of capital cities (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). In remote areas of Australia, schooling is often considerably different in nature and context than that of the experiences of students in cities, or indeed in regional areas. Although there seems to be an adequate number of schools to cater for students, irrespective of where they live, school children of all ages from rural and remote areas are disadvantaged in terms of access, the availability of transport, levels of family income support, and even the quality of education they receive (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2000). In terms of equity and student performance, Australian students living in remote areas consistently performed below the Australian average on measures of mathematics achievement (Ministerial Council for Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA], 2005). The classifications of rural and remote are generally associated with geographical position, population and distance from urban areas. Students, especially those in primary grades, studying in remote settings are commonly more than 3 hours from their nearest local school and sometimes much further than this (Stokes, Stafford, & Holdsworth, n.d.). Along with the challenge of distance, students and teachers face problematic technology and communication issues, minimal face-to-face contact between students and their teacher, not to mention a range of social issues associated with living in rural and remote areas (Lowrie, 2007). For students studying in distance education settings, most face-to-face interactions are limited to students’ attendance at “camps” or mini schools. These are generally framed around subjects such as physical education, art and drama. There are a number of reasons for such operational planning including the fact that students are accustomed to working on a one-to-one basis with their classroom teacher in the subject areas of mathematics and English. Thus, these core curriculum subjects are not typically (re)presented in dynamic, socially connected, ways. Instead, learning experiences are framed within pedagogies which use technology-based tools to foster and enhance learning opportunities and teacher/student engagement. These restricted dynamics, if nothing else, create different learning contexts to traditional classrooms where up to 30 different viewpoints are likely to be considered in any mathematics lessons. Teaching and learning in Distance Education (DE) requires specific and different forms of pedagogical practices and student interaction than those commonly found in “typical” classroom settings. Since classroom teachers in DE have face-to-face contact with their students only four or five times per year, learning discourses and pedagogical practices require blended (typically a combination of paper-based and digital) or digital resources. Studies which focus on such pedagogical practices provide a snapshot of how new forms of communication might be enacted in the future. At the same time changes in technology, and practices using technology, have created new opportunities to analyse new pedagogical practices. 3 Research background Increasingly, there are calls for teacher education programs to more adequately prepare new teachers to be abreast of the latest Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and equip their graduands with skills that allows them to utilise new technologies into the future (Boylan, 2004) and to ensure that beginning teachers have sound technology-content practices (Crump, Tuovinen, & Simons, 2005). As remote communities gain increased access to new technologies and networks, generally through advances in satellite communications (Lowrie, 2006), those teachers working in remote settings have the opportunity to dramatically change the pedagogies currently being offered to children in these communities. It could be argued that these disadvantaged students require access to such technologies even more so than those students living in metropolitan areas—especially given the fact that their out-of-school exposure to new technologies and the internet is far more limited than their metropolitan counterparts. Therefore, teachers can utilise ICT opportunities to compensate for the lack of readily accessible resources usually found in schools and larger, more connected, communities. With new ICTs being rapidly developed and created, these technologies not only offer choices about teaching practices and the subsequent delivery of learning opportunities but also new ways to support learners and home supervisors (those supervising the student remotely) in more meaningful partnership arrangements. Despite such advances in technology, the remoteness of some families in Australia has resulted in such access being either limited or non-existent (Crump, Tuovinen, & Simons, 2005). The student’s (own) knowledge base, the supervisor’s view and understanding of the learning process, and the engagement with pre-designed learning materials become more influential learning processes than would be the case in more typical classroom experiences. Thus, some of the common social, environmental, and cognitive dimensions of classroom engagement cannot be replicated. Moreover, the everyday social perspectives so influential in learning (Cobb & Bauersfeld, 1995) are restricted by the influence of the dominant medium of communication—that is, a blended or digital resource base. Consequently, teachers may feel somewhat disconnected to the students they teach. It is certainly the case that building a strong rapport with a student you only see for a few weeks in the year is extremely challenging—and while such situations could occur in any classroom–these issues are intensified in DE contexts. With the classroom teacher having limited opportunities to provide explicit instruction, the supervisor’s influence over the learning process becomes both dramatic and fundamental to the development of the learner’s mathematics understandings. As Goos and Jolly (2004) argued, the structure of schools delineates the nature and scope of parental involvement with mismatches between the home-school partnership. The failure to recognise parental diversity can cause barriers within these relationships. It could be argued that teachers are failing to utilise parents to their full potential, and that additional barriers will develop as technology becomes a more influential component of the pedagogy. International trends in DE learning have highlighted integral connections between pedagogical practice and contextualised instructional design (New South Wales Department of Education and Training [NSW DET], 2010). Essentially, it is how these dimensions are put into practice which dictates productive engagement and learning. 4 The NSW DET (2010) argued that as new technologies are introduced it is necessary that they are embedded within strong pedagogical principles. This study considers the challenges of DE as new technologies and more connected communication practices influence pedagogy. Specifically, this study aims to discover the extent to which new technologies influence pedagogical practices and the way in which these practices, over time, evolve and challenge the educational focus within these learning contexts. Method The methodological framework for this study is drawn from Somerville’s (2010) emerging ‘place pedagogy’. This framework encompasses three principles: “our relationship to place is constituted in stories (and other representations); the body is at the centre of our experience of place; and place is a contact zone of cultural contact” (p. 335). Accordingly, the data collection process for this research project included collecting the ‘stories’ of school administrators, teachers, home supervisors, and students, who were all working and studying in a distance education setting. Other forms of representation, or artefacts, collected during the research included audio transcripts, lesson observations and focus groups. The research participants in this study were chosen from a cross section of participants which included students, parents and teachers. Given the fact that data collection involved ethnographic field work in homes, it was necessary for the parents to volunteer for participation in the study. Participants and protocols The school site From an organisation perspective, schools of distance education operate in a similar manner to non-distance schools in Australia. The school site was one of the largest DE schools in Australia and was located in regional New South Wales. The school had a principal, other senior teachers and classroom teachers who were assigned to specific grade levels—with associated support staff (including resource teachers, teacher/librarians and learning support teachers). From a context perspective, DE schools are quite different to most other schools in Australia. Typically, the students would not meet (face-to-face) with their classroom teacher for more than 10 days per year—and as a consequence, teachers need to establish an important partnership arrangement with a home supervisor (in most instances, the student’s mother). All home sites were provided with computers and satellite communications as part of a national initiative to redefine communication practices in these schools. Teacher interviews Interviews were conducted with the school principal, and with a mathematics teacher, along with informal discussion with other teaching staff who were available during the visit. Teacher focus group An audio-taped focus group with 8 teachers was conducted, who taught across all preschool and primary grades (including one teacher who also taught up to Middle 5 School Years 7-8), and including a Primary Assistant Principal, and a Preschool Assistant Principal. Home supervisor and student interviews Audio-taped interviews were undertaken with a home supervisor (mother) and Year 5 student, who were living on a remote property a considerable distance from a small town. Two older siblings spent extended time travelling on buses each day to attend schools in larger communities. Both older children had previously spent time being either home-schooled or schooled via distance education. Classroom observations (school site and home site) Observations of two mathematics lessons were also conducted: one teacher was observed conducting two separate one-on-one sessions with students (both in Year 8) via telephone; the other teacher was observed conducting a lesson with one Year 5 student via satellite. Analysis of data Somerville’s (2010) framework of place pedagogies constituted the theoretical underpinnings of the data analysis. Within this framework, an ethnographic study was conducted at two sets of sites—namely the school site and the home site. Semi- structured interviews were analysed through the stories and experiences of the participants and collated through more informal ethnographic procedures (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007), with formal observations that took the form of lesson studies. Both the formal and informal data collection was considered simultaneously as we analysed audio-recordings, photographs, and our notes from the respective sites. These data were categorised into themes and interrogated through researcher group discussions. Thus, the first layer of analysis summarised the respective contexts and the second layer framed these themes within storylines which considered both the respective sites (school and home) and the specific education community. Results and Discussion Three main themes emerged from the data analysis, namely the: (1) hopes and aspirations of the school community; (2) realities of practice experienced by the teachers and student; and (3) pedagogical and learning challenges faced by teachers and students using technology in DE settings. Hopes and aspirations The advent of a new form of practice provides opportunities and a sense of excitement. In the initial stages of planning and development teachers used a number of technology- based tools to enhance the learning environment and to initiate more connected classroom interactions with the students. Particular technology tools being used in the school include: Bridgit (collaborative web-based tool), Moodle (learning management system), interactive whiteboards, podcasts, and DE Voice (for providing feedback and some oral lessons). As the principal of the school explained: 6 …with the increase of technologies that have been available in DE, [we have] more opportunity to provide classroom opportunities for kids via the technologies and we use that and we’re constantly trying to build [on] that because the kids love to work with other kids and they love to see other kids work and in particular in the primary, parents love to see the work of other students as well, because they’re constantly assessing… where their child’s at. [principal interview] The capacity for the teacher to now observe and monitor the students in their class (via video and web cameras) creates opportunities for immediate feedback in relation to student engagement. Previously, teachers were not able to see students and thus could not pick up on important gestural cues as students solved tasks. Furthermore, teachers were able to display (and post) images of other students work so that other class participants could gain insights into approaches others took to solve similar tasks. This form of communication became much more interactive and more in line with typical pedagogical practices. It is important to note however that while the teacher could “see” the students, the students were unable to see the teacher. Nevertheless, this one-way visual communication was a leap forward for classroom engagement. As one teacher reported: T7: So over the years that has definitely increased [access to technology] and that makes our job a lot easier because we can actually email them, we can use Moodle, and we can actually have different forms of conversation. Crump et al. (2009) found that, overall, most teachers were positive and enthusiastic about embracing the new technology and adapting their pedagogy, “putting the technology into the background as the facilitator rather than the driver of the lesson content” (p. 5). In other words, they were able to use technology to enhance their teaching and learning materials, rather than finding that the technology was the deciding factor when preparing lesson content. Most teachers indicated that new technologies would broaden the richness of classroom interactions and engagement. By contrast, they did not assume, or consider it necessary, that increased capacity for internet use would be a beneficial supplement to satellite capabilities. Perhaps they were unwilling to relinquish more control over the learning process. This proposition was based on the assumption that the technological challenges of teaching delivery were in itself problematic and dynamic and that the lesson and content needed to be quite structured. In this way, the tool and therefore medium of delivery, was seen to be dynamic within a controlled environment. Although the teachers recognised the steep learning curve they faced in effectively utilising these new technologies, they too had a high disposition for engaging with this medium of delivery. Teachers were of the view that an increased technology capacity would allow learning material to be modified to students needs more easily or at least remain more current in their presentation. In terms of DE it has been noted (see Crump et al., 2009) that an increased range of technology options enhanced engagement, ‘interactivity’ and ‘connectivity’ in lessons for both teachers and students. These higher levels of engagement would have appeared almost ground-breaking compared to the medium of delivery used previously including telephone conversations. In fact, the two telephone lessons observed during the research were in clear contrast to the satellite lesson—the sessions conducted by telephone were 7 traditional pen-and-paper worksheets, while the satellite lesson was more interactive with both the teacher and student able to observe the learning materials on the screen. As time went on, however, the realities of using unreliable technologies became increasingly disruptive and the promise of increased interactivity did not come to fruition. As the principal noted, the students missed the physicality and sense of accomplishment derived from using print-based learning materials and that it was easier to go off on tangents in the online environment. The reality of practice Although there is a suggestion that the use of technology improves learning more readily than using print-based materials, Guri-Rosenblit (2009) points out that “meaningful interaction” is instead the key to learning. She defines this type of interaction as a process that “stimulate[s] the learners’ intellectual curiosity, engage[s] them in productive instructional activities, and directly influence[s] their learning” (pp. 111-112). Although the role of technology is ‘neutral’, a tool; the role of the teacher is critical—it is the teacher who decides how to best shape the curriculum for the student, who chooses the appropriate technology to facilitate the lesson, and who collaborates with the student to find real-life application of the concepts. It is understandable that teachers revert to previous ways of knowing (Cooney, 1999; Smith, 2006) when their work loads are high or when new practices fail to deliver or do not achieve intended outcomes. The following excerpts from the teacher focus groups highlight some of the frustrations: T2: The change has been that now we are aware of what could be available to these more [geographically] isolated children...we know what is possible, and they’re not being able to access it. It means that limits, so we go back to what is a tried and true means. [teacher focus group] T6: There are kids that don’t live far from a town, but they might be in a hilly area, and they actually, their entire household is run on a generator, so they prioritise their electricity use. [teacher focus group] T7: And family values as well. I had one little boy, and his father was up on the roof, dishing the snow out of the [satellite] dish so that he could have his satellite lessons, so he really did value his lessons. [teacher focus group] During the observation of a satellite lesson, we noted a range of audio issues which altered the flow of the lessons. Before the following transcript the teacher had posed a question to the student and she had responded correctly. T: So Josie replied then but I couldn’t hear her. I: Oh, right. T: But I could hear her changing the frequency of the – like, it went buzz for a sec. So, I know Josie’s trying to talk. Josie, I couldn’t hear you. Okay, I just try and call you on again Josie. Alright, do you want to say hello again? [satellite lesson observation] With the student not receiving immediate feedback from the teacher, she felt that her response was incorrect. Furthermore, the diverted conversation (in order to ascertain 8 that the audio was working) not only delayed the lesson, but also interrupted the student’s train of thought. The student also experienced difficulty when trying to write her answer to a question on the SMART notebook file as she had not been able to locate the equipment needed for writing on the screen: I1: That does look hard doesn’t it? I2: Yeah. Especially the eights. T: Yeah. I’ll ask her if she uses a mouse or graphics tab and pen. But I think she’s using a mouse. Alright, can you tell me – oh, you’re still writing. It’s a bit tricky – are you using a mouse or your graphics tablet and pen? S: Um, I’m using the mouse. I probably should use the thing but we can’t find the pen. T: Oh, dear. Okay, it is tricky with the mouse isn’t it? S: Yes it is. [satellite lesson observation] The process of writing numerals with the use of the mouse made responses to questions both laborious and futile. At another point during the lesson, the file that the student was working from froze and the teacher had to re-boot the page before the student could continue working. T: Ooops, oops! Wait on. We’ll just go–hold on–don’t touch anything. You couldn’t wait to see what’s coming up, could you? Alright, now click on your shape. S: I was pressing the arrow keys. T: Yes, sometimes it’s a bit naughty. Okay. You can grab the tools again. [to observers] Yeah, it’s a bit sensitive. See how it can take a long time – like if you were in the classroom, they would’ve done that by now. [satellite lesson observation] This feedback delay combined with the slow pace at which the student was able to manipulate objects on the screen as part of working out the answer, contributed to a lack of opportunity to go beyond routine tasks: T: Okay, so just write the sum for one of them. [waiting for child to work out answer] [to the observers] Unfortunately, you sometimes take shortcuts, like really she should be learning to use that language and writing down the units of measurement, which is something that they’re all are very bad at – I1: Mmm. T: they forget. Um… I1: But you can see with this format – T: It’s very hard. 9 I1: …it actually makes it more difficult to do. [satellite lesson observation] Given the harsh reality of using the new technology, it was evident that teachers were still predominately using print-based pedagogies for instruction. Where teachers have utilised new technologies, their practices have accommodated the technological advances rather than allowing the technology to lead curriculum development. As one teacher commented: T2: The spectrum is leaflet intake, and contact every month or so, to those that have satellite instant email, blended learning with Moodle, units sent on CD. So you’ve got that huge spectrum and we must continue to cater for those, in all areas, in a variety of ways. I don’t think that will ever change while the gaps are there. I can’t see it changing. [teacher focus group] This approach has been established mainly due to the unreliability of access in terms of both functionality and bandwidth capacity. Additionally, many of the technology-based resources promoted a drill and practice mentality where students were more inclined to guess answers rather than think through the mathematical processes or were using technology-based tools (such as a mouse) for purposes for other than what it was designed for (i.e., drawing on the screen without a pen). There is also the view that even reliable technology resources (e.g., Moodle) needed to be presented in a blended form. To this end, even when teachers encouraged students to use the technology—or when students utilised it due to its availability—it fragmented or even restricted learning opportunities. From a zone of cultural contact perspective (Somerville, 2010), teachers encouraged the use of technologies not because they were necessarily the most appropriate form of technology, but because they offered a shared contact experience. This rationale had much merit since it helped personalise learning contexts. Similarly, students utilised the technology resources to substitute for the lack of tacit connectivity—and the inappropriate or cumbersome use of the technologies perhaps added to the frustrations of the distance divide. The notion of difference (Somerville, 2010) was played out with teachers wanting students to use the relevant technologies (in one case a digital pen) with a student compensating for not having the resource available (they had misplaced it) by using a mouse when realistically it would have been much easier to simply type the numeral on a keyboard. Furthermore, these tensions created a “void-like” space which established an emptiness which exasperated the already challenging time loss associated with slow connectivity and unreliable internet services. According to Somerville (2010), place and space are considered collectively since it is not possible to interpret one without the other. Indeed, the shared space of teacher and student—which was established through online engagement—could be considered a point of connection or a bridge between “spaces”. However, the contextual space inhabited by the student could not be easily understood since the teacher (despite the technology) was so removed from what was actually happening. Challenges and demands Generally, teachers felt they needed to utilise the technologies provided irrespective of the pedagogical benefit. Thus, the utilisation of these technologies for new teaching practices is one dimension of changed practice however a less obvious but more salient 10 dimension of technology remains in the background. This dimension involves practice changing expectations where students, parents and other members of the education community expect instantaneous and seamless communication because the technology is now available. The focus group discussions revealed an underlying challenge for teachers and the school with demands that moved well beyond the fixed school day: T8: You might get emails where they’re demanding you to do a phone lesson, or whatever, because they didn’t turn the generator on in time, not thinking that you’ve got 14 other children that you’re supposed to be dealing with right now…that you’re supposed to be dealing with in the next hour, and their child didn’t turn up, and they were supposed to. [teacher focus group] T7: And then we had the ones that wouldn’t buy the cartridges to put into the printers or pay for the paper, even though we supplied them with the satellites and everything else. They wanted the printers, the cartridges supplied, and they wanted the paper supplied. [teacher focus group] T1: And sometimes we’ll say it’s coming, you know, this is what you are going to be getting, so therefore they do expect to be getting it straight away, not realising that there might only be one poor old technician that has to service everybody. Other times it’s just an awareness, look guys, this is out there, but this is just for your own information. [teacher focus group] Although it could be argued that all teachers face similar experiences in their professional lives, these challenges are more confronting in a DE environment since there are so few opportunities for face-to-face contact with the students and their parents. As Somerville, Plunkett and Dyson (2010, p. 42) recognised, “the intersection of multiple, and often contested, stories in a contact zone of difference” creates a new space (i.e., the technology) which potentially results in a loss of meaning or engagement—especially when transformation is not possible. This is certainly the case in distance education environments. Conclusions and implications Distance Education is at the forefront of communication initiatives and technological advances (Guri-Rosenblit, 2009). However, the lack of reliable connectivity (largely brought upon by the tyranny of remoteness) constrains pedagogical opportunities that are commonly afforded to teachers and students living in metropolitan areas. The findings of this study revealed a disconnect between the essentialness of implementing a communication medium that fostered engagement and a practice that (currently) is not attainable to those teachers and students who need it the most. In other words, the most advanced ICT’s are essential for DE learning and yet the implementation of such environments is far more attainable in metropolitan areas. Three themes emerged from the study. It was certainly the case that teachers and other members of the DE community had high hopes and aspirations for the advent of new technologies. Despite the time consuming process of reframing learning opportunities and indeed the curriculum to accommodate a new learning environment, teachers were more than willing to dedicate the time to incorporate the digital technology into their 11 practice. However, the realities of this changing practice took hold quite quickly. Although our findings showed that teachers embraced and certainly welcomed new communication opportunities, it was evident that they were increasingly putting technology in the background as they came to terms with the pedagogical challenges of utilising unreliable technologies. Consequently, the demands of teaching in DE settings outstripped the capacity to engage with new forms of communication. Distance Education schools of today could be considered as a window into what all schools may look like in 30 years time. That is, learning environments that are not bounded by structures (including four walls) that have been present for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged that it may be fruitless to use DE settings (despite the obvious need for these learning environments to be technologically rich) as “pilots” for new technological advances. The changes to pedagogical practices are enough of a challenge for teachers without the burden of the technology failing. Classroom teachers require professional development opportunities that better equip them to utilize the satellite technologies now available to students in these isolated areas. Indeed, they need permission to reject the technology when it does not value add to their current pedagogical practices. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Tracy Logan, Kim Woodland and Lauren Carlson for their insights, support and advice on the collaboration of data and dissemination of research for this article. The work represented in this paper was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Grant [DP0987253]. The views and ideas drawn from the research are that of the authors and not the ARC. 12 References Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). Australian social trends: Population distribution (cat. no. 4102.0). Canberra, Australia: Author. Retrieved from http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1F6CDA9A1D5E6E9DCA 25748E001292BF/$File/41020_2008_1.pdf Boylan, C. (2004, November). Putting rural into pre-service teacher education. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference, Melbourne, Australia. Cobb, P., & Bauersfeld, H. (Eds.). (1995). The emergence of mathematical meaning: Interaction in classroom cultures (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrance Erlbaum Associates. Cooney, T. J. (1999). Conceptualizing teachers’ ways of knowing. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 38, 163-187. Crump, S., Tuovinen, J., & Simons, L. (2005). wIDeLy and rapIDeLy: A report into Interactive Distance eLearning in New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Orange, Australia: Centre for Regional Education. Crump, S., Twyford, K., Anderson, A., Towers, L., Devlin, B., & Hutchinson, A. (2009). ‘Opening our eyes’: Project report: Australian Research Council Linkage project on interactive distance e-learning. Newcastle, Australia: University of Newcastle. Goos, M., & Jolly, L. (2004). Building partnerships with families and communities to support children’s literacy development. In I. Putt, R. Faragher, & M. McLean (Eds.), Mathematics education for the third millennium: Towards 2010 (Proceedings of the 27th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, pp. 279-286). Townsville, Australia: MERGA. Guri-Roseblit, S. (2009). Distance education in the digital age: Common misconceptions and challenging tasks. Journal of Distance Education, 23(2), 105- 122. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles and practice (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. (2000). Recommendations: National inquiry into rural and remote education. Sydney, Australia: Author. Lowrie, T. (2006). Establishing school-family partnerships in distance education contexts: Pedagogical engagement in isolated settings. Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 96-114. Lowrie, T. (2007). Learning engagement in distance and rural settings: Four Australian cases. Learning Environments Research, 10, 35-51. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA]. (2005). National report on schooling in Australia 2005. Carlton South, Australia: Author. http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1F6CDA9A1D5E6E9DCA25748E001292BF/$File/41020_2008_1.pdf http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1F6CDA9A1D5E6E9DCA25748E001292BF/$File/41020_2008_1.pdf 13 New South Wales Department of Education and Training [DET]. (2010). Discussion paper: A vision for distance learning for the 21st century. Bathurst, Australia: Rural and Distance Education, Equity Programs and Distance Education Directorate, New South Wales Department of Education and Training. Smith, T. J. (2006). Self-study through narrative enquiry: Fostering identity in mathematics teacher education. In P. Grootenboer, R. Zevenbergen, & R. Chinnapean (Eds.), Identities, cultures and learning spaces (Proceedings of the 29th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Vol. 2, pp. 471-478). Canberra, Australia: MERGA. Somerville, M. (2010). A place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(3), 326-344. Somerville, M., Plunkett, M., & Dyson, M. (2010). New teachers learning rural and regional Australia. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 39-55. Stokes, H., Stafford, J., & Holdsworth, R. (n.d.). Rural and remote school education: A survey for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Melbourne, Australia: Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne. Retrieved from http://www.hreoc.gov.au/pdf/human_rights/rural_remote/scoping_survey.pdf http://www.hreoc.gov.au/pdf/human_rights/rural_remote/scoping_survey.pdf 14 Author contact details and bio notes Corresponding author: Name: Professor Tom Lowrie Address: RIPPLE, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga NSW 2678, AUSTRALIA Electronic mail: tlowrie@csu.edu.au Telephone: +61 2 6933 4328 Facsimile: +61 2 6933 2962 Authors: Tom Lowrie Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia. Email: tlowrie@csu.edu.au Tom Lowrie is the Director of the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE) at Charles Sturt University. A large body of his research has investigated the extent to which communication technologies impact on the education community including teachers, children, and their parents, as well as children’s engagement in out-of-school settings. Robyn Jorgensen Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Email: r.jorgensen@griffith.edu.au Robyn Jorgensen is Professor of Mathematics Education in the Faculty of Education at Griffith University. She has focused her work in the area of equity, particularly focusing on the social practices that contribute to the patterns of success (or not) of social, cultural and linguistic groups. Her strong interest in equity has been in the area of social class, Indigenous issues, and language and culture. mailto:tlowrie@csu.edu.au mailto:tlowrie@csu.edu.au mailto:r.jorgensen@griffith.edu.au 
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As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_2rlha5nq2jcubnhswtglopghae	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_2s2d2rgcdfbjzofkq3itm3ey2a	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_2uo67w2ojrbd7prt5s2qeih2d4	----	Astronomy for Developing Countries IAU Special Session at the 24th General Assembly, 2001 Alan H. Batten, ed. Distance Education and Self-Study Barrie W. Jones The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom, B. W.Jones@open.ac.uk A b s t r a c t . Distance education and self-study are defined and described and their possible application to developing countries is discussed. 1. I n t r o d u c t i o n It is not my purpose to specify how distance education and self-study should be used to teach astronomy in developing countries — my teaching experience in such countries, though not negligible, is rather too limited for that. I do, how- ever, have extensive experience of distance education in the U.K., and therefore my purpose in this article is to display the characteristics of distance education, and of self-study, in order to promote debate about how they can best be used in astronomy education in the developing world. Distance education has the potential to overcome - a shortage of astronomy teachers - a shortage of non-human resourses - difficulties that students face in attending a campus. Additionally, distance education materials can be used to increase self-study on campus, and hence overcome the first two of these problems. 2. W h a t is D i s t a n c e L e a r n i n g ( a n d S e l f - S t u d y ) ? The main defining characteristics of distance education are t h a t - it allows students to study at home or in their work place - it allows students to study part-time or full-time - course materials are delivered to students mainly by mail, or electronically - face-to-face contact with a teacher is limited, even absent. Face-to-face contact with other students can be less limited, particularly in urban areas, if several students of a course live or work near each other. 131 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core mailto:W.Jones@open.ac.uk https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core 132 B.W. Jones Self-study is that aspect of any learning process where students study on their own, i.e. without real-time human contact. In distance education, self- study accounts for a far larger proportion of the student's study time than it does in conventional education. However, it is vital to realise that if distance education is to be effective then the student must be supported — sending out materials and letting the student get on with it is a recipe for failure. Forms of support include - preliminary advice to the student about which courses best match the student's needs, and in what order the courses should be taken - a clear specification to the student of the knowledge and skills that the student should bring to each course - course materials (printed or electronic) that are suitable for self-study - a clear study guide for each course, with a study timetable, including as- signments to be completed at specified times throughout the course - a personal tutor, in telephone, e-mail, mail or (limited) face-to-face con- tact, who also marks the student's assignments, but as well as grading them, provides copious teaching comments on them - student self-help groups, with telephone, e-mail or face-to-face contact - residential schools in mid-course, with a focus on practical work in science (just a few days a year is of enormous benefit). Even with all of these forms of support, distance education is not easy for teachers or for students. The students need to be motivated and determined, and the tutor needs to acquire the special skills needed to teach in this way. But distance education provides the possibility of education where otherwise there would be none. At its best, distance education can provide an education as good as any obtained by conventional means. Experience in the U.K. and elsewhere is that any scepticism about whether this is an effective way to teach science in general and astronomy in particular, is completely unfounded. 3 . D i s t a n c e E d u c a t i o n in Science around t h e World Distance education is rapidly spreading, in developing and developed countries. It is almost entirely targeted at students at least 18 years of age, and there- fore distance-teaching is mainly through universities and colleges, rather than schools. But the level of courses and qualifications need not be at degree level, and indeed many are not. Increasing numbers of conventional institutions are offering the option of distance education, though this is often a rather small part of their activities. In addition there are institutions dedicated to distance education, and many of these are national bodies. The first large national institution was the U.K. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core Distance Education and Self-Study 133 Open University (UKOU), which admitted its first students in 1971. It now has about 170,000 students. T h e majority are studying for undergraduate degrees, but some are aiming for masters' degrees, and others are not aiming to get degrees at all. The countries with the largest national institutions include (in alphabetical order) China France India Indonesia Korea South Africa Spain Thailand Turkey U.K. Among the national institutions worldwide, few teach science of any sort, and even fewer teach astronomy. Therefore, there is a great opportunity for expansion, though it will be necessary to convince the institutions and potential students of the value of an astronomy education, not just the cultural value, but particularly the economic value arising from the wide range of scientific and other skills that are well taught through astronomy. Astronomy need not be taught on its own. It can be included within science courses where it acts as an attractor of students, as a motivator, and as a rich source of fascinating examples. This builds the case for astronomy to be taught in places where, on its own, it might be seen as lacking relevance to the needs of a developing country. Another argument for distance education in developing countries is the ex- perience of many institutions that the total cost of producing a graduate by distance teaching is roughly half the cost of producing a graduate by conven- tional means. This reduction in costs is achieved when at least several hundred students enrol for a particular course. An important type of student is the school teacher; distance education has enormous potential to increase the number of teachers in a developing country who are willing and able to teach astronomy in their schools. From such grass- roots teaching, much can grow. 4. T h e P r o d u c t i o n of Effective D i s t a n c e - L e a r n i n g Courses I address here the preparation of a course rather than a complete degree pro- gramme. In the UKOU a course can typically account for anything from about 3% of a degree to about 18%; these are 10-point and 60-point courses respec- tively. Students are free to take just a single course, for which they are awarded a certificate of completion. 4 . 1 . T h e course t e a m At the heart of course preparation is the course team, and experience worldwide has shown that this is the single most important way of achieving quality and effectiveness in a course. T h e success of the course team approach rests in the discussions that define the course structure and content, and on the comments that an author receives from several others on the first and subsequent drafts of any material (s)he produces. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core 134 B.W. Jones For all but the shortest courses at the UKOU, a typical course team has the following membership - four to six academics, one of whom chairs the course team; they are respon- sible for the academic design and structure of the course, and they either produce all drafts of all the academic material (printed and any electronic material), or produce the final draft of material provided by consultants - a course manager, who is responsible for the day-to-day running of the team, and who liaises between the team and the various design and pro- duction agencies for the course material - an editor, who puts the final gloss on printed materials, e.g. by checking for consistency and by advising on literary style - various other people depending on the course components, e.g. a TV producer if there is any TV or video, a software expert if there are any CD-ROMs or internet usage. The course team might use consultants to prepare first drafts of certain materials, and there should always be one or more external subject experts and education experts to comment on the drafts. It is possible for an astronomy course, or a science course with an astronomy content, to be prepared or adapted by a course team with rather few members from a developing country. This is important given the shortage of astronomy educators in some countries. But at the very least there should be one academic from the developing country, otherwise the course might not be shaped to serve the students' or the country's particular needs. 4.2. Course c o m p o n e n t s A common misconception about distance learning is that electronic media are the chief conveyors of course content. This is unlikely to be the case even with the emerging e-university approach (see below), and it is certainly not the case at the moment. Printed texts typically carry most of the course material. Electronic media, which include videos, CD-ROMs, and broadcast TV, are very good for certain teaching functions, but unless they already exist they can be expensive to produce, particularly CD-ROMs. These media also require the student to have access to the appropriate equipment. In science, and notably in astronomy, a course component of great value is a kit of very simple items for practical work. Indeed, the 'kit' here need be nothing more than a list of items that a student can readily obtain. There must, of course, always be a clear description of how the practical work is to be carried out. At the UKOU we have found that high-order skills can be developed in this way, e.g. recording relevant details, tabulating data, graph plotting, analysis of results including estimating uncertainties, report writing. Successful practical projects for which we have sent out no equipment have included measuring the length of the sidereal day, a quantitative study of light pollution, measuring the luminosity of the Sun, and many more. An essential feature is some sort of interaction with a tutor — more on this in the next section. In addition, a residential school of up to a week, with a focus terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core Distance Education and Self-Study 135 on practical work, is of enormous benefit, but can be expensive to set up, and it might be unfeasible for students to travel to it. However, if it is a requirement of course accreditation that there is supervised practical work then a residential school will be essential, and it will almost certainly be more feasible to have a single, week-long school than, say, three week-end schools. 4.3. A c t i v e learning It almost goes without saying that the course materials must build on prerequi- site skills and knowledge that are clear to the author and to the student. But even when a student comes to a course adequately prepared, it is essential that the course encourages the student to engage in active learning. One feature of active learning is in one's approach to reading a text — we attempt to teach active learning skills such as note-taking, highlighting, and summarising. Another feature of active learning is to test whether what has been studied has been understood. This must not only involve recall, but the application of knowledge and skills in situations that are new. UKOU science materials typically include three types of active-learning self- test. First, there is the 'stop-and-think' device. This is a short question, clearly delineated, and placed at any point in a text (print or electronic). It tests whether the student has understood the immediately preceding material. It can do this by requiring recall, or a simple application, or that the student continues the 'story'. The correct response immediately follows the question. Second, there are questions placed at the ends of sections. These test un- derstanding of a greater span of material. A full, acceptable response is always given (usually at the back of a text), along with comments that can be extensive. Third, there is a longer piece of work, often called an 'activity'. There are fewer of these than of the questions. Examples include summarising an extended piece of material, solving an extended problem, carrying out a practical investigation, building a conceptual model. Acceptable responses plus comments are again normally included at the end of the text. We design science courses so that if an average student does all the self-tests (as they are strongly encouraged to do), then about 25% of the total study time will have been spent on them. Time spent on assignments that are graded by the tutor is additional to this. Most textbooks are rather weak on active learning. End-of-chapter ques- tions are often about as far as it goes, and it is common to get just a single number as an answer to a numerical question, and no answer at all to other questions. Some UKOU science courses do however use textbooks at the higher levels of study, along with a specially prepared study guide that, among other things, provides an opportunity for active learning. 5. T h e Effective D e l i v e r y of D i s t a n c e - L e a r n i n g C o u r s e s As much care needs to go into the delivery of a distance learning course as into its production, otherwise many students will not complete the course who otherwise would have done. The academic aspects of delivery are in the hands of a presentation course team, much smaller than the production course team. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core 136 B.W. Jones The first requirement (as mentioned above) is that prerequisite skills and knowledge must be specified to the student beforehand, and the course must be built only on these. Among the skills are those for the self-study that is at the heart of distance learning; these study-skills need either to be specified for entry, or they need to be taught within a course. They include - time planning - active reading (notetaking, highlighting, summarising) - dealing with difficult material (including how not to get unduly 'hung up') - written communication (including essay writing, but other forms too) - problem solving, mathematical and otherwise. To assist students with time planning there must be assignments throughout the course. These will be prepared by the course team, new ones for each presentation of the course. The student has to send the completed assignments to the tutor by clear deadlines. In the UKOU a course lasting nine months will have at least four such deadlines, roughly equally spaced. There will then be an end-of-course examination. The UKOU assignments are graded by a tutor, and the overall grade, along with the examination mark determines the student's course grade. This gives the student a strong incentive to meet the assignment deadlines! 5 . 1 . Tutors Tutors have a crucial role to play in raising the quality of course delivery. In the UKOU a tutor of a course will have about 20 students, though this number could be increased. The tutor, by writing clear and copious comments on the student's as- signments, targeted at the student's individual needs, thereby carries out an important teaching function. The UKOU physics and astronomy courses have been much praised in the recent round of external review of university teaching for this aspect of tuition. The tutor also has an important teaching function through other forms of contact. There might be a few hours of face-to-face tu- torials, but more extensive contact is usually by telephone, and increasingly by e-mail. Tutors must clearly be trained to help deliver a distance-education course, not only in their general role, but also sometimes in the subject they are tutoring. In the UKOU, tutoring a single course, even a 60 point course, is a part-time job, so most of our tutors have full-time jobs in universities or in schools. We have found that for the more introductory science courses, teachers of senior-school science make admirable tutors. Some of the tutors of our introductory astronomy course initially had very little knowledge of astronomy - many had backgrounds in physics or in geology. Therefore, in developing countries, the shortage of astronomers to act as tutors for an introductory astronomy course might not be a major problem, provided there are adequate numbers of willing senior school science teachers. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core Distance Education and Self-Study 137 5.2. C o m p l e t i n g t h e feedback l o o p To achieve high quality it is essential that there are systems t h a t encourage feedback from tutors and students to the presentation course team, and it is equally essential that the course team takes swift and appropriate action. Errata in course materials, problems with assignments and with the examination, can then be put right for the current cohort of students. It might only be possible to correct other problems, such as a course being overloaded or out of date, in time for the following cohort, but without feedback some problems are unlikely to be corrected at all. About every four years a course should be thoroughly reviewed by subject experts, to see if any updating is required. The course team should also look out for opportunities to use new media, notably electronic media. 6. T h e e - U n i v e r s i t y An e-university is one that relies on the Internet for a substantial proportion of its teaching operations. An e-university need not necessarily be a distance teaching institution, but many distance teaching institutions are moving in the direction of becoming e-universities. Quite at what point the UKOU could be called an e-university is a matter for a not very relevant discussion; some say that it is already an e-university. An e-university offers great promise because it could enable students in any country to study the distance-learning courses of an institution in another country. The drawback is t h a t the student needs ready access to the Internet. It is sometimes claimed that all aspects of study should ultimately be han- dled over the Internet. This is not a desirable goal; there are things for which the Internet is not the most appropriate medium. These include - anything that could as well be on a CD-ROM - long texts - the end-of-course examination. Let us look at each of these in turn. Unlike the Internet, a CD-ROM is not subject to slow telephone lines and to loss of connection. Regarding long texts, there are problems with reading from a screen for long periods, and only to be able to access most of a course via the Internet is quite a restriction on flexibility of study. It is not proper to suggest that the student overcomes this problem by printing out the text - this would load huge costs for colour printing on to the student. An end-of-course examination needs to be such that the resulting student award is credible. Therefore, some form of invigilation is required, and so a credited invigilator would have to be present throughout the examination. It would be impractical for an invigilator to travel to a single student's home or place of work, and so, to use the Internet, there would have to be a sizeable group of students in a room equipped with many terminals, and the invigilator would have to be able to ensure that each student was not getting inappropriate terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core 138 B.W. Jones help from the Internet. This could well be impractical and so a conventional examination would then be required. Appropriate uses of the Internet include - information on a course - registration for a course - delivery of assignments by the course team to the student; delivery of completed assignments by the student to the tutor; the return by the tutor to the student of the assignment grade and teaching comments - e-mail between student and tutor and between students, including 'notice- board' discussions - delivery by the course team to the student of errata, stop-presses, updates, and other news - feedback between the course team, the students, and the tutors - guided use of databases - use of robotic telescopes - use of on-line journals. The issue of the credibility of an award does not arise in relation to the assignments provided that the award system requires threshold performances in the assignments and separately in the end-of-course examination. Clearly an e-university could bring astronomy education to a developing country, provided that the problem of Internet access can be solved, and provided t h a t conventional invigilation for examinations can be provided. 7. S e l f - S t u d y of A s t r o m o n y on C a m p u s Course materials designed for distance education can be used to great effect on campus to alleviate a shortage of astronomy teachers and a shortage of non- human resources. This is because self-study reduces the number of contact hours required for a learning outcome, and because certain distance education materials can reduce the need for high cost resources, e.g. laboratory space. It is however essential for the student to be acculturated to the use of self-study for acquiring core content. Such contact hours as are available can be used for higher quality forms of contact, such as - inspirational lectures (rather than lectures to deliver core content) - problem-solving classes - small-group tutorials. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core Distance Education and Self-Study 139 All in all, it is my view that distance education has considerable potential for extending the teaching of astronomy in developing countries on campus as well as off it. D i s c u s s i o n Dworetsky asked if the costs quoted were the full costs or only the fee charged. Jones replied that the figure he gave (approximately 50% of the cost of producing a graudate by conventional means) included all costs. Gerbaldi, speaking from her own experience of distance-education commented that costs should not be reduced too far since distance-learning is much more effective when there is an on-line tutor (working through e-mail). She also felt that a tutor was needed if students were using distance-education material on a conventional campus. Finally, she pointed out that methods of learning differ from country to country for both cultural and political reasons. There is need for caution in extending the use of distance-learning to some countries. In reply, Jones reiterated that his 50% figure included provision for a tutor. He agreed that students using distance-education materials on campus needed some tutorial help, but it is also important to acculturate students to self-study. He agreed that cultural and political problems could arise in the use of distance education in some countries. In fact, many of the U.K. Open-University materials had been used successfully in a variety of countries. More experience is needed, especially in astronomy, and might lead to the production of several versions of a course, to take account of local conditions. Orchiston mentioned that the Swinburne University of Technology in Mel- bourne and the University of Western Sydney now offer courses in astronomy. It is possible to take adult-education courses that lead to both bachelor's and master's degrees in astronomy. Jones replied that he had not discussed adult- education courses on campus, although they are certainly an important means of offering astronomy to a wider public. The University of Central Queensland used to offer distance education, but he was not sure if it still did so. Pasachoff commented that, in the U.S.A., several venture capitalists are funding major on-line courses. He is most familiar with GEN, the Global Edu- cational Network, which is now putting together some dozens of courses in a wide variety of fields, which will be delivered over streaming video (this apparently saves some copyright expenses compared with providing images on CD-ROM or the Web, since legally no copies are being made. They hope to sell these courses for $300-$600 apiece, not mainly to traditional 18-22 year-old University stu- dents but, rather, to advanced-placement high-school students or alumni some years or decades past graduation. He also commented on Jones's remark that on-line courses free academics for higher-level work. Pasachoff felt that that requires good faith on the part of the institution. It is all too possible that once a course is on tape, or on the Web, staff could be made redundant or not rehired, or that the steady-state of faculty and staff could be lower than it otherwise was. He knew of at least one faculty union was wary of the faculty tape-recording courses for a remote campus, because of the possibility that the faculty member would not be rehired. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core 140 B.W. Jones He also asked how much a single course cost at the Open University? Jones replied that a full degree, three or four years' worth of courses, is about £3900 pounds. T h e fee to a student for a single course £300, which is probably about half the total cost to the Open University. T h e figures are roughly comparable to those quoted by Pasachoff. terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:55, subject to the Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S0251107X00000535 https://www.cambridge.org/core 
work_2urucyns4fdgzeuc5opxs6foay	----	http://www.hts.org.za Open Access HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies ISSN: (Online) 2072-8050, (Print) 0259-9422 Page 1 of 9 Original Research Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. Author: Jennifer J. Roberts1 Affiliation: 1Institute for Open and Distance Learning, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Corresponding author: Jennifer Roberts, buckjj@unisa.ac.za Dates: Received: 30 Nov. 2018 Accepted: 03 May 2019 Published: 26 Sept. 2019 How to cite this article: Roberts, J.J., 2019, ‘Online learning as a form of distance education: Linking formation learning in theology to the theories of distance education’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 75(1), a5345. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v75i1.5345 Copyright: © 2019. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Introduction The theme of this special edition of HTS centres on the Online Educated Human (OEH), and poses the question whether the use of online technology can be used to either teach or supplement basic content delivery. Many studies have been conducted showing the importance and success of teaching the hard science subjects, such as physics, mathematics and other content-heavy courses, in an online environment. One only has to look at the proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) that are available, and even with their low throughput rate, it still educates more learners than face-to-face teaching. We need, however, to distinguish between online courses that are machine taught – in other words, there is no teaching presence at all and those where the teacher does indeed mediate and communicate directly with the learners. Very few studies have focused on the teaching of the humanities subjects, particularly ethics, morality and spirituality. Hoffman (2010) asserts that the humanities will indeed be affected by the migration of courses from a face-to-face lecture hall to an online environment. This will include the field of theology and, in particular, the training of clergy and lay people in the church. Writing in The Conversation, Byrne (2012) challenges that MOOCs should be able to provide easy assessment practices for subjects where there is a simple right or wrong answer. The challenge will come from subjects such as philosophy, the social sciences and politics, to name but a few. Distance education (DE) has a long and complex history. It accounts for more than one-third of all higher education students in the world and, because of its very nature, has produced some of the top graduates worldwide who were unable to study fulltime and on-campus for various reasons. One of the most prestigious graduates of the DE system was the former state president of South Africa, the late Nelson Mandela. Online learning is a form of DE and fast becoming the preferred method of instruction and delivery. Critiques of online learning, and of DE itself, will argue that, because of the separation of the teacher and the student, only academic skills can be taught and learnt using this medium. The so-called ‘softer skills’ – those that focus on the development of the person – are best taught in a face-to-face, traditional environment. This article focuses on a review of DE theories and models. A particular emphasis is placed on online learning theories, and how the teaching of formational learning skills can be successfully incorporated into this educational setting. The article draws from a range of studies that have been conducted, based on conceptual and empirical research evidence from various authors. Drawing from Garrison, Anderson and Archer’s Community of Inquiry framework for online education, it presents key elements that relate to the formational (spiritual) training of theology students. The article examines research that both supports and cautions against online learning for formative development. It concludes by suggesting a blended model of both face-to-face and online learning, where meaningful interactions between the learner and teacher take place, is desirable. The article highlights the important role that DE (and specifically online education) can play in developing the human component of education. Keywords: Distance education; Online learning; Formation; Theological education; Community of inquiry. Online learning as a form of distance education: Linking formation learning in theology to the theories of distance education Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. Note: OEH: The Online Educated Human: Teaching values, ethics, morals, faith and religion at a distance, sub-edited Ignatius Gous (University of South Africa). http://www.hts.org.za� https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7084-4036 mailto:buckjj@unisa.ac.za https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v75i1.5345� https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v75i1.5345� http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.4102/hts.v75i1.5345=pdf&date_stamp=2019-09-26 Page 2 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access According to Brabon (2014), and as observed in Figure 1, the social sciences, arts and humanities are underrepresented in the MOOC course mix in Europe and, by deduction, in online courses in general. They can, however, make a significant contribution to the creative community through developing the soft skills of employees. Methodology To address the question of formational teaching in theology education through online courses, the author first addressed the academic field of Distance Education (DE) and offered an analysis of the most important DE theories. This was done to contextualise formational theological training within the DE environment and create a better understanding in the field of DE. Thereafter, a review of literature on formational teaching in a DE environment was undertaken and analysed within the DE theoretical framework. This article is therefore a systematic literature review combining both the fields of DE and specifically online education, and spiritual and character development in theological training. The results from the review of the literature are then synthesised to provide a possible way forward for teaching formation in theology education. Terminologies Distance education As an introduction to this article, the concept of DE is discussed, highlighting the various different terminologies that are banded around. There are many similarities but also subtle differences, and these need to be understood to fully appreciate this field of study. So what exactly is distance learning? In its simplest form, DE refers to teaching and learning that takes places where there is a physical and geographical separation between the teacher and the student in both time and place. Keegan (1996) describes DE as a process whereby the learners are taught and learn while separated from the teacher. According to Holmberg (1974), there are two basic elements essential in defining DE. Firstly, he describes the separation of the teacher and the learner, which is fundamental to all forms of DE, whether it is online, print-based or even media- based. He further asserts the importance of the structuring of the learning material in a way suited to the separation of the teacher and the student, and highlights the fact that DE is offered through an accredited institution and not through self-study or other means. Holmberg (1995:47) placed the learner in the centre of the education process when he stated, ‘A basic general assumption is that real learning is primarily an individual activity and is attained only through an internalizing process’. In what is generally referred to as ‘guided didactic conversation’, Holmberg emphasised the importance of the relationship between the teacher and the learner, suggesting that the learner is not solely responsible for his or her learning and that the contribution of the teacher is as important. Wedemeyer (1981) also emphasised the importance of learner independence in the process and put forward strategies that included anytime and anywhere learning (asynchronous). In addition, Wedermeyer placed emphasis on the fact that learners need to take responsibility for their own learning. This ties in with the various theories of self-directedness. Knowles (1975) stated that self-directed learning takes place where the learners, themselves, take accountability for their own learning process, goal setting and resource management. Mezirow (1985:17) asserts ‘no concept is more central to what adult education is all about then self-directed learning’. Moore (1973) argued that DE comprises a cluster of various instructional methods, with the emphasis on the fact that teaching normally takes place apart from the actual learning. Teaching would therefore be facilitated by the use of print, electronic or other media, rather than through direct face-to-face contact with the learners. He does not exclude the possibilities of two-way communication, but rather suggests that it might be done in an asynchronous manner. Flink (1978) expounds on this by stating, ‘Distance Education is a learning system where the teaching behaviours are separate from the learning behaviours’. Following on from Wadermeyer’s assertions that the learner is central to the learning process, Moore (1983) introduced the concept of a ‘transactional distance’ that exists in DE. Transactional distance refers not only to the geographical distance between the learners and the teacher, but also includes a communication and psychological gap and provides a platform for misunderstandings between the teacher and the learner. Distance education is therefore the all-encompassing term for the provision of education where there is a geographical and cognitive separation of the learner and teacher. Figure 2 provides a measurement of the effects of dialogue and structure in the educational process. It illustrates that as one increases, so the other decreases. Therefore, a more 130 91 90 90 64 Subject 50 43 12 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Sc ien ce an d t ec hn olo gy Ap pli ed sc ien ce s So cia l s cie nc es Bu sin es s Hu ma ni� es M at he ma �c s Na tu ra l s cie nc e Ar ts Fr eq ue nc y Distribu�on of MOOCs by subject Source: Vogl, H., 2015, European MOOCs scoreboard, Open Education Europa, viewed 05 June 2018, from https://elearninginfographics.com/european-moocs-scoreboard-infographic/ MOOCs, massive open online courses. FIGURE 1: Distribution of massive open online courses by subject in Europe. http://www.hts.org.za� https://elearninginfographics.com/european-moocs-scoreboard-infographic/ Page 3 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access structured course requires less dialogue and, conversely, the more the dialogue, the less the required structure of the course. Moore and Kearsley (1996) states that it is the physical distance that determines the communication gap, which can lead to misunderstandings between the learner and the teacher. However, one of the advantages of DE is that it encourages a platform for asynchronous learning to take place. This has the benefit of including all learners in the program at a time that suits them best. Ascough (2002) suggests a further benefit – he states that many of the more introverted learners are often hesitant to join in live discussions and sometimes have difficulty mustering up the courage to speak up in a group situation. This is particularly relevant in courses where self-introspection and spirituality are key features, and very often are intensely personal. Other DE theorists have discussed structural and institutional aspects of D.E. Peters (1983) expanded the above theories and definitions to include an element of industrialisation, particularly in the production of high-quality teaching materials for teaching a large number of students. His conceptualisation of DE as a form of massification of the education system forms the basis of the model used in many large DE institutions still today, particularly in developing countries. According to Daniel (1996), a DE university with a student population of over 100 000 at degree level can be referred to as a mega university. Table 1 shows a summary of the top 10 mega universities in the world. From Table 1 it can be seen that all of the top 10 mega universities hail from developing countries, where DE serves an important role in bringing Higher Education (HE) to a large number of students who would otherwise not have access. These figures are taken from the United Nations Human Development Report (2016). One of the measuring devices used to determine whether a country can be classified as a developing county is the Human Development Index (HDI), which was developed by the United Nations. This index quantifies life expectancy, education and income into a standardised number between 0 and 1, and most developing countries have an HDI of below 0.8. To put this into context, there are around 1.1 million HE students in South Africa in 2016 (South African Department of Higher Education and Training 2017) of which just over one-third are studying through the distance mode of learning. Distance education can therefore be seen as an educational process whereby the learner and the teacher are separated not only geographically, but also cognitively. Various technologies are used to provide the tools to narrow this distance. Historically, teaching took place using paper and pen – the correspondence mode. The first DE teaching university was opened in 1946 in South Africa – the University of South Africa (Unisa) and today still functions primarily as a correspondence-based university. Taylor (2001) presented the use of different media in DE through what he termed the ‘5 generations’ of DE. 5 generations of distance education delivery Table 2 is a summary of the different generations of delivery of DE over the years, starting with a single correspondence mode to a fully online delivery mode. All generations of DE delivery are still in place today. However, online education is fast becoming the most widely employed (Lee & Nguyen 2007). This has led to the concept of e-learning, which is often mistakenly used interchangeably with the term DE. E-learning is simply the use of electronic media to facilitate the delivery of DE teaching, and corresponds to the fifth generation according to Figure 2. E-learning focuses on the juncture between teaching, education and the use of electronic media (Friesen 2009). Guri-Rosenblit (2005) states that e-learning is the use of electronic media for a variety of learning purposes that range from add-on functions to the full substitution of traditional delivery by online encounters. more How the variables of dialog and structure determine transac onal distance can be shown in a simple graph Dialog less le ss le ss Ca pa ci ty fo r in di vi du al iz a on Tr an sa c on al dis tan ce in cre as es m or e m or e St ru ct ur e Source: Moore, M., 1993, ‘Theory of transactional distance’, in D. Keegan (ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education, pp. 22–38, Routledge, London FIGURE 2: Moore’s theory of transactional distance. TABLE 1: Top 10 mega universities. University Number of students Country HDI (2015) IGNOU 4 000 000 India 0.624 Open University of China 2 700 000 China 0.738 Anadolu 1 974 000 Turkey 0.767 Allama Iqbal 1 326 000 Pakistan 0.550 Bangladesh OU 650 000 Bangladesh 0.579 Terbuka 646 000 Indonesia 0.691 Shanghai Open University 610 000 China 0.738 Dr BR Ambdekar 450 000 India 0.624 Unisa 350 000 South Africa 0.666 NOUN 300 000 Nigeria 0.527 Source: Roberts, J., 2018a, ‘Personalised learning in developing countries – Is Higher Education ready?’, Electronic conference proceedings, 10th European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) Research workshop, 2018, A. Volungeviciene, A. Szucs & I. Mazar (eds.), European Distance and E-Learning Network, Barcelona, Spain, 24–26th October HDI, human development index. http://www.hts.org.za� Page 4 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access The generations of delivery do not need to be looked at rigidly, and in many courses and institutions, a combination of generations is used. This is referred to as blended learning. In DE, blended learning refers to a delivery method that includes both traditional correspondence and online learning. This blended model is used by many traditional DE universities (e.g. Unisa, Indira Ghandi Open University [IGNOU]). This is where the courses are available in both a correspondence mode and online, and the learner has the choice of which mode they would prefer to use. Blended models are not to be confused with the hybrid model of education, which includes elements of both face-to-face and distance learning. In recent years, many traditional face- to-face institutions have included a distance learning element to their teaching models. In most cases, the model of delivery for the distance element is through online teaching that employs the best characteristics of online learning together with face-to-face instruction (Martyn 2003). The iron triangle John Daniels According to Sir John Daniels, the former head of the Commonwealth of Learning, DE can be represented through the analogy of an iron triangle (Daniel 2013). The iron triangle links the notions of access, quality and costs. Lane (2014) posits that the use of technology in DE presents the possibility of widening access to HE, while at the same time lowering the costs without compromising the outcomes. Figure 3 shows the basic triangle, as presented by Daniel (2013), with the three factors all being of equal length. The assumption is that as one of the sides of the triangle increases, so the others will diminish. Taking into account scalability, there is little room to increase student numbers without incurring additional costs. Daniel and Uvalic-Trumbic (2013) assert that e-learning, because it is not constrained by physical limitations, is able to change the triangle and can provide quality education for a far greater number of students and, at the same time, reduce the associated costs. This triangle can then be optimised, as shown in Figure 4. The Community of Inquiry framework for online education This model for teaching and learning in an online environment was put forward by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) and draws on the earlier works of Dewey (1938). They state that when the three presences of social, cognitive and teacher presence intersect, then a collaborative, constructive learning experience occurs (Figure 5). Costs Qu ali ty Access FIGURE 4: The optimised iron triangle. Social presense Instruc�onal design model eLearning (Garrison et al. 2000) Community of Inquiry Theory Congni ve presense Engaement with par cipants Se�ng climate Educa�onal experience Suppor ng discourse Interac on re: goals/direc on Interac on re: goals/direc on Collabora ve Construc vist Learning experience Teaching presence Regula ng learning Source: Garrison, D.R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W., 2000, ‘Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education’, Internet and Higher Education 2(2–3), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6 FIGURE 5: Community of Inquiry framework. TABLE 2: The 5 generations of distance education. First generation Correspondence. Single print medium Second generation Radio and television broadcasting Third generation Combination – correspondence assisted by broadcasting Fourth generation Tele-learning, interactive audio and video conferencing Fifth generation Online delivery Source: Taylor, J., 2001, ‘Fifth generation distance education’, e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) 4(1), 1–14 Costs Ac ce ss Quality FIGURE 3: The iron triangle of distance education. http://www.hts.org.za� https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6� Page 5 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access Social presence occurs when the learners are able to project their own characteristics in to the group and present themselves as real people. Garrison (2009) suggests that social presence can be defined as ‘the ability of participants to identify with the community, communicate purposefully in a trusting environment and develop inter-personal relationships’. Prestera and Moller (2001) and Hutchinson (2007) place importance on the online instructor, teacher or facilitator. They emphasise the significance of clear instructions and facilitation in the learning process. Anderson et al. (2001) see the teaching presence as the design and facilitation of both the cognitive and social presences to promote meaningful learning. The role of the distance educator The role of the discussion forum is central to the Community of Inquiry framework as it is in this space where the presences intersect and promote a collaborative, and not an independent learning environment (Swan & Ice 2010). There is thus a need to identify how the roles of distance educators are changing in line with the move towards online education. Roberts and Bezuidenhout (2017), through a systematic literature review, identified 10 roles that have emerged as being key to distance educators. These roles include subject specialist, researcher, mentor, student support, technology expert, instructional designer, facilitator, management and administration and being a team player. Roberts (2018b) carried out an empirical study where teaching staff at Unisa were asked to rank the importance of each of these roles currently, and also projected 5 years into the future. The results indicated that the roles of the distance educator as a technology expert and online instructional designer escalated in importance between current and future roles. Although the role of a subject specialist remained top of the list, technology moved from number 7 to number 2, and instructional designer progressed from number 9 to number 5. Delamarter and Brunner (2005) advance the importance of the roles of distance educators further by stating that maintaining an online teaching presence throughout the course (refer to the Community of Inquiry framework), and facilitating student engagement, remains important. Without the sustained involvement of the facilitator/teacher, learners could well lose interest in the course. All of this places additional time pressure onto the teachers, and that aspect needs to be addressed when developing a course. Savery (2005) confirms this by stating that without meaningful dialogue on a regular basis, it is difficult to establish trust, comfort, meaningful interaction and personal growth in an online setting. Thus far, the discussion has centred on the academic field of DE and some of the relevant theories that support the current discourse in DE. We have looked at the basic tenets around DE, the main one being the separation of the learner and teacher, not only geographically, but also cognitively (Moore 1983). Also addressed was Taylor ’s (2001) classification of 5 generations of delivery of DE. The fifth generation indicates that learning and teaching will be carried out fully online. This has given rise to the term ODeL (Open Distance and electronic Learning), which places the emphasis on the use of electronic media for teaching and learning. The ‘Iron Triangle’, as put forward by Daniel (2013), addresses the economics of DE and, in particular, the relationships between access, quality and costs. Daniel and Uvalic-Trumbic (2013) suggest that to address an increasing number of students, without compromising outcomes and growing costs, the use of technology needs to be heightened. These theories all lead to the increasing importance of online courses and teaching. In their Community of Inquiry framework, Garrison et al. (2000) emphasise the importance of the intersection of social, cognitive and teaching presence to promote a meaningful learning experience. The online educated human The question that needs to be addressed is whether teaching in an online environment is possible when more than just content needs to be delivered. Can ethics, morals and spirituality be taught online – can we produce an OEH? In the next section, the aspect formational development of the OEH will be investigated, with regard to the teaching of theology and, in particular, formation development in theology students. Formational teaching is a concept used to describe the character development and the process that a person follows to grow spiritually in a Christian religious context. Hockridge (2013) describes spiritual formation as the development of character and spiritual maturity. Willard (2002:22) quotes that formation is a ‘Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself’. This can be achieved through various educational and nurturing activities. White (2006) suggests that although technology and Jesus seem to be incompatible, through the use of creative ways, spiritual formation can be nurtured in a DE environment. He suggests that greater attention should be paid to the affective and relational components of online instruction. There are many who suggest that formation training can only be carried out in face-to-face environment. The concern whether formation can occur in DE is well described in the literature (Cannell 1999; Palka 2004; Patterson 1996; Ravoi, Baker & Cox 2008, Willard 2002). Many of these critics assert that learner-to-learner and learner-to-teacher interaction cannot be attained in an online environment. This is linked to the Community of Inquiry framework that was discussed earlier, where the importance of social, cognitive and teaching presence is essential for a collaborative, constructivist learning experience (Garrison et al. 2000). http://www.hts.org.za� Page 6 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access Lowe and Lowe (2010) state that profound disagreements exist in theology circles around the delivery of theological education in a distance setting. An example is the article by Ravoi et al. (2008) in which they assert that on-campus training is vital for formation and cannot be delivered via a distance mode. Drawing on research carried out at a theological seminary in Russia; Egorov and Melanina (2017) state that face-to-face interaction is essential. Another critic of online theological education is Kelsey (2002). He questioned whether the disembodied nature of online education is inconsistent with a pedagogy based on Christian anthropology. Contrarily, Cannell (1999) stated that traditional face-to-face teaching does not necessarily guarantee a spiritual community any more than DE does. Gresham (2006) counters this by saying that the concept of the ‘divine pedagogy’, that is, the manner in which God teaches the human race: provides a model of adaptation to students, cooperation in a learning community, active student participation and use of multiple media for teaching that can provide a theological justification and guide to online learning. (p. 26) From a biblical perspective, one can draw from the example of the Apostle Paul. His letters show how spiritual formation was achieved even when there was a geographical distance between him and his followers. Timothy 3: 16–17 indicates that correspondence from Paul to his early believers was directed by the Holy Spirit and that Christians were able to grow spiritually through reading those letters. Severs (1993) confirms this by saying that the geographical distance between the Apostle Paul and his many churches did not inhibit his ability to form them spiritually even though they were not in a face-to-face situation. Paul’s letters or correspondence bridged this physical distance. Lowe and Lowe (2010) position formation in Christian education within Bronfenbrenner’s Ecology of Human Development Theory. This model views formation in the ecosystem that can be situated in physical, spiritual or cyberspace environment. Bronfenbrenner (1979:127) contended that ‘development never takes place in a vacuum; it is always embedded and expressed through behaviour and it is embedded in a particular environmental context’. Lowe and Lowe (2010) provide evidence to suggest that spiritual formation of learners is possible in an online DE setting. They suggest that Christians, who study together in a DE environment, have a common bond that actually transcends physical time and space. They contend that the Holy Spirit transcends the barriers of time and space. This is supported by Hess (2000), who put forward the notion that online education does not lead to a disembodied form of education. Russel, as early as 1999, in a review of 355 studies, found that there were no significant differences in the method of course delivery (face-to-face vs. technology enhanced). Twigg (2007) supported Russel’s assertion that educators need to focus more on effective learning rather than the technology used to deliver that teaching. There have only been a handful of empirical studies undertaken on formational issues in distance or online theological education (Graham 2002; Heinemann 2006; Hockridge 2013; Lynch & Pattison 2005; Naidoo 2012; Nichols 2011, 2015, 2016; Palka 2004; Reissner 1999). Some of these articles show evidence from empirical studies that indicate that DE is a suitable mode of delivery for theology studies and, in particular, formation. In this regard, the articles by Palka (2004), Hockridge (2013) and Nichols (2011, 2015, 2016) will now be discussed where they present evidence and insights into theological training via DE. In a study conducted by Palka (2004), he provided results that showed that 56% of students surveyed at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, the United States, indicated that their spiritual development occurred outside of the seminary. This study showed that external church communities play a much bigger role in formation than the actual classroom setting. Hockridge (2013) investigated distance and online education in the Australian theological education sector. In her study, she used a questionnaire and interviews to explore theological educators’ understandings of formation and the educational practices that can be used to develop student formation. The results of this study indicate that theological educators in Australia have concerns centred on communal–relational and ministry–pastoral facts of formation. Hockridge (2013) suggests that these concerns are not necessarily centred on the debate between face-to-face versus DE, but rather that formational learning is complex, regardless of the mode of delivery. In his 2011 article, Nichols (2011) makes a distinction between the concepts of akademeia and ecclesia in theological education. His hypothesis is that akademeia (the academic content knowledge) is well suited to online DE, and that ecclesia (church community and spiritual growth) is better suited to face-to-face teaching. Using a quantitative survey questionnaire that applied the Christian Spiritual Participation Profile (CSPP), Nichols (2015) compared the spirituality characteristics of both on- campus and DE students at Laidlaw College, New Zealand. The same course is offered both on-campus and in a distance format. He found that there were no statistically significant differences in formational maturity or spiritual growth between the on-campus and distance students. In fact, he suggests that formation learning might be enhanced through a distance format. The reason for this is that spiritual growth is often provided through the students’ own local church fellowship and their own life experiences, and not only by the educational institution. In addition, in many cases, the students in DE often already possess a high level of spiritual maturity. http://www.hts.org.za� Page 7 of 9 Original Research http://www.hts.org.za Open Access Expanding on this study, Nichols (2016) carried out in-depth interviews with a selection of the students who participated in the survey to investigate their actual formational experiences. One of the important findings from this study confirms that church fellowship provides an important context for formational learning as indicated in his 2015 article. Nichols (2016) explains that on-campus learners are more likely to be separated from their home fellowship groups as they have moved away from home to the city where the campus is situated. This results in fewer opportunities for spiritual growth. This is in contrast to the DE students, who usually remain in their hometowns and study while continuing their normal lives. These students maintain their existing fellowship circle that leads to continued spiritual growth of formation. Naidoo (2012), who states that many DE students are embedded in their own local communities, supports this notion. Leaving students in their own environment and spiritual community provides them with a level of theological training (Delamarter & Brunner 2005). These sentiments about using online learning as a tool for theology training have been echoed by Burnham (2018). In his thanksgiving address at the Windermere Centre for spiritual and theological training, Burnham suggests that it is time for the church to start using new resources and technological tools for theological training. He states that ‘There’s now a different educational and training world out there and though the Church has dipped its toes in the water – it’s time we took the plunge’. He states further that the use of online resources, online discussions and debates, webinars and online seminars is already happening and the church theological training needs to continue this trend. Hege (2011) suggested several strategies for maintaining the relationship between technology and pedagogy, based on his experience of teaching theology courses at a seminary. These include the maintenance of a safe and vibrant virtual community through sustained online engagement with the learners by the instructor. Naidoo (2012) sums up all of the debates by stating that community can, indeed, occur in an online context. However, she suggests that this might occur best in a blended environment where there is a balance between face-to-face and online communication: As online education grows in popularity across the spectrum of institutions of higher education, it is incumbent upon those who are called to teach in such settings to recognise the possibilities and potential pitfalls inherent in such a model of education in order to provide the best possible learning experience for students in our digital age. (Hege 2011:19) Conclusion The question being asked in this article is whether it is possible to teach theological formation in an online DE environment. The methodology for addressing this was through a systematic literature review of both online DE and formation teaching via online methodologies. Firstly, an examination of relevant theories and frameworks from the field of DE was presented. Drawing on the Community of Inquiry framework of Garrison et al. (2000), the aspects of social, cognitive and teaching presence were then observed in the context of formational learning in the field of theology. Currently, there is still much debate on this topic. In this article, the literature from both the proponents and the antagonists of online theological education has been examined. Although many studies carried out in recent years indicate that there is no statistically significant differences between face-to-face and online teaching and learning, I would argue that the ideal model still seems to be a blended, hybrid approach such as the one put forward by Egorov and Melanina (2017). They propose a mix of content-rich information delivered through online learning, which is scalable, instructor-mediated communication directly with the students, and formational learning carried out within the church community. What is needed now is for theological training providers to develop courses based on the hybrid model. This can be done by placing the content-rich courses into an online platform for large numbers of students, and an online facilitator-mediated course when the student numbers are more manageable. Formation learning can be achieved through face-to-face contact with the learners, enhanced by their involvement in their own fellowship communities and church. Acknowledgement Competing interest The author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. Author contributions I declare that I am the sole author of this research article. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Data availability statement Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. 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work_2wa4ubu6u5ftbkvn7exhqduyly	----	183 Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education Janusz Szymas Department of Clinical Pathology, Karol Marcinkowski University of Medical Sciences, Przybyszewski Str. 49, 60-355 Poznan, Poland Tel.: +48 61 8691498; E-mail: jszymas@ampat.amu.edu.pl. Our experience in creating and using telepathology system and multimedia database for education is described. This program packet currently works in the Department of Pathol- ogy of University Medical School in Poznan. It is used for self-education, tests, services and for the examinations in pathology, i.e., for dental students and for medical students in terms of self-education and individual examination services. The system is implemented on microcomputers compatible with IBM PC and works in the network system Netware 5.1. Some modules are available through the Internet. The pro- gram packet described here accomplishes the TELEMIC sys- tem for telepathology, ASSISTANT, which is the adminis- trator for the databases, and EXAMINATOR, which is the executive program. The realization of multi-user module al- lows students to work on several working areas, on random be chosen different sets of problems contemporary. The pos- sibility to work in the exercise mode will image files and questions is an attractive way for self-education. The stan- dard format of the notation files enables to elaborate the re- sults by commercial statistic packets in order to estimate the scale of answers and to find correlation between the obtained results. The method of multi-criterion grading excludes un- limited mutual compensation of the criteria, differentiates the importance of particular courses and introduces the quality criteria. The packet is part of the integrated management in- formation system of the department of pathology. Applica- tions for other telepathological systems are presented. Keywords: Telepathology, teleeducation, automated score, teleteaching 1. Introduction Teleeducation is the use of multimedia communi- cation components in teaching, education, and ex- amination at a distance. The most important factors, which have influenced the distance education, were broadband telecommunication links and development of electronic multimedia techniques [5,10,14,15]. The speed of exploring new technical, biological or social information is increasingly combined with the task of shortening the gap between theoretical explo- ration and practical application. The period of transfer- ring the collected information from specialized centers to interested students has to be shortened, and those countries that can provide their students with the lat- est science in the shortest time are in an advantage. In addition, the absolute and relative number of stu- dents is increasing. The more detailed the education, the more specialized teachers are needed, and, consec- utively, the more expensive is the education. Teleedu- cation is an appropriate technical solution fulfilling the needs of economy and essential application [2,11,14, 17]. Education is closely associated with results in sci- entific research. The volume of medical information is constantly growing, being estimated to double every 5 years. As a consequence, an increase in the demand for rapid access to the latest results of scientific research, new therapies, and effects of new medicines to be im- plemented in related education systems is observed. To solve this problem on a continuous basis, it is appropri- ate to develop a system of central medical information that would be accessible to students, trainees, or doc- tors at any time. Such a system should offer access to various sources of information by means of electronic mail or on-line communication [1,6,7,13]. There is the conviction that expanded network sys- tems in medicine will become, apart from the indus- try or service sector, the main force enhancing the de- velopment of digital and broadband telecommunica- tions. Research results of these institutions must be available for medical education immediately. The nat- ural application of teleeducation is the use of video- conferences for transmitting a surgery course or for re- mote access to multimedia databases. In addition, med- ical professionals require continuous education and training to maintain and improve their skills. Applica- tion of teleconferencing can accomplish official train- ing programs from specialized medical centers located Analytical Cellular Pathology 21 (2000) 183–191 ISSN 0921-8912 / $8.00  2000, IOS Press. All rights reserved 184 J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education in large cities to local hospitals, private institutes and homes. It could be used in training of specialized med- ical staff: physicians, nurses and therapists. Patient’s relatives can be trained by observation and interactive guidance to care for the patient at home or in small care units. The appearance of new diseases and outbreaks of epidemics following natural disasters require imme- diate access to information of treatment and methods for adequate examination and prophylaxis. New tech- nologies allow the transfer of knowledge from the most accomplished scientific personalities and lecturers to persons who have never entered a lecture room [2,10]. Without any technical difficulty it is possible to or- ganize telelectures with interactive telecommunication between the teachers and students who could attend the presentation at home. These offerings will alter the world of education and training by specific distributed networks and digitized interactive television sessions. 2. Telepathology The development of computer science and dissem- ination of microcomputers permit the use of the tech- niques of electronic data interchange in all departments of pathology. Production and communication of dig- ital images is now daily used among pathologist in- volved in histopathological diagnosis, for staff meet- ing, for continuous education or for second opinion [7, 10]. Due to decrease in price of the imaging systems, new range of users will have the opportunity to share image information locally, abroad or global. Static- imaging and dynamic-imaging are the two major com- peting technologies of telepathology [10]. Telepathology is the diagnostic work of a patholo- gist at a distance using telecommunication links [10]. It includes specific application fields, which require specific technical solutions. These include frozen sec- tion service, expert consultations, remote control mea- surements, and education and training. Applications effect, all aspects of diagnosis, especially those in- volved in the daily workflow of a pathologist [7]. The image quality, transfer rates, and screen resolution of telepathology systems are sufficient for an additional or primary judgment of histological slides and cyto- logical smears. It is, therefore, possible to include this technique into inter-laboratory quality control of all steps of diagnostic procedures and to use this technique for quality assurance and control [7]. Telepathology is, therefore, not a substitute of conventional diagnos- tic procedures but a real improvement in the world of pathology [6–10]. It is of importance to consider the fact that pathology is a unique scientific specialty, which requires complex and careful testing, comparative studies, and ethic con- trol in new diagnostic strategies. Moreover, there is a need for a rapid exchange of information within the framework of cooperation between various clinics of a particular specialty or specific units of pathology such as neuropathology, dermatopathology, lung pathology, etc. The main relevance of telepathology lies in its ca- pability to link electronically pathologists in remote hospitals to larger or specialized pathology institutes. This may become even more important due to cur- rent increase in sub-specialization and the demand for more precise diagnosis and consultation in diffi- cult cases [10]. A network connecting small clinics or laboratories to larger and more specialized units, and to highly specialized reference centers may im- prove the professional standard of health care ser- vices and education. For a wider use, a technologi- cal standardization will be required, since the exis- tence of several types of computers and numerous im- age manipulation programs have resulted in a prolif- eration of file formats. However, every potential user or client of telepathology should keep in mind, that standardization also includes legal and ethic issues such as patient confidentiality or potential malprac- tice [10]. An adaptation of work guidelines and proto- cols is required. For the transmission of the digitized images from a telemicroscope to the remote diagnos- tic video monitor, different technologies such as or- dinary telephone lines, broadband telecommunications channels, or the Internet can be used. The transmit- ted images may serve for primary pathological diag- nosis, teleconsultation, quality assurance, proficiency tests, or distance learning. Some countries have intro- duced and consequently fund projects for telepathol- ogy for education in pathology as a project of rele- vant national interest. For example, such a project is headed by the Institute of Pathology at the University of Udine, and currently involves additional four Ital- ian universities (Ancona, Bari, Ferrara, Sassari). Such activity will allow collaboration among participating pathological departments and will also boost other medical disciplines, becoming in this way a model which can be adopted for problem-based medical edu- cation [1]. J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education 185 3. The Internet The installed network is based on standard proto- cols and communication tools, with particular atten- tion to the Internet. Both main sets of its protocols, i.e., e-mail and WWW, allow the pathologist easy ac- cess to network resources. The main network activi- ties are: development of collaborative research projects based on telematic tools; creation of multimedia case archives for education and continuous education; col- laborative authoring of multimedia educational mate- rial; quantitative pathology studies, study and applica- tion of telematic methods for quality control in surgi- cal anatomic pathology. The Internet allows a direct interaction and real-time discussion between the stu- dent and the professor at any distance. Increasingly, nearly every field of human knowledge and informa- tion is available on the Internet, often presented in an attractive manner. Telecommunication in science will prepare the field of combined research and might bridge the increasing gaps between the scientists work- ing at the bases in the different specialized research ar- eas such as molecular biology. Relatively inexpensive tools may allow pathologist to increase collaboration, not only in the now traditional telepathology fields such as telediagnosis and remote consultation, but also for educational and quality control aims. Furthermore, every form of collaboration has a secondary effect on continuous education of the students and pathologists. 4. Telepathology as a tool for medical education 4.1. Practical course of Gross Pathology on Web server The information service on Web server can be used for the course of gross pathology with weekly classes during the semester curriculum. Standard technologies like HTML and JavaScript may be used for the in- formation service. As soon as the results of an au- topsy were available, a short clinical description of the case was presented on the pathology’s web site (http:// www.mi.med.uni-goettingen.de/PathologieLehre/) to- gether with a small number of questions guiding the students through the case [6]. These questions were discussed in the subsequent class. The evaluation was carried out with a semistructured questionnaire. The answers were subsequently classified and analyzed by descriptive statistics. The study was performed to de- termine the feasibility of a comparative, objective as- sessment of the learning outcome in users and non- users of the service. With a relatively simple, straight- forward technological approach, a favorable response of the students has been achieved. A majority of the students uses the information service on a regular basis and considers it a useful information source. The tech- nologic and organizational design of the service per- mits a flexible improvement of contents on the basis of the survey results and of the teachers’ experiences. 4.2. Virtual slide as teaching tool A virtual slide is a fully digital representation of the histological specimen by means of a series of static color images (800 × 600 pixels, 24-bit) taken at low (5×), medium (10×, 20×) and high power objective (40×, 63×). The implemented architecture of the sys- tem is constituted of two modules. The first module al- lows the acquisition of images by an automated capture of image of the entire specimen. All images are storage on magnetic or optical devices. In combination with clinical and radiological data a construction of the vir- tual case is possible (Fig. 1). The second module per- mits the examination of the virtual case, and consists of a user-friendly interface. The pathologist can select and visualize all images of interest. The software mod- ules are written in Java. The users interface is based on the TELEMIC system [16]. By viewing a virtual slide, the students can screen the slide at low-magnification, and examine areas of interest at (Fig. 2) higher mag- nification. The student examines the slide similar to a consultant pathologist and renders a remote diagnosis by examining the slide through a robotic microscope. The aim of this tool is to provide the students with case-based information for the practical experiences in pathology and the next higher class is specifically pre- pared for these causes. The students perform the pre- sentation, and the teacher can more effectively focus an differential diagnoses and the diagnostic strategy. 4.3. Continuous education Continuous education in pathology is possibly by and of the international servers dedicated to cooper- ative work and to publish images (Fig. 3) and clin- ical reference databases by a telepathology network. The first step, the cooperation was achieved by def- inition of communication standards as a set of uni- vocally identified high quality JPEG images, a coded data sheet and a clinical document. For this new tools for accessing, communicating and displaying images 186 J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education Fig. 1. Screen of data base of text and image files for the construction of virtual case. Management system is based on MySQL, HTTP and PHP languages. associated with clinical data activity also developed. The intercommunication server allows the exchange of standardized folders through the Internet or ISDN. It also provides archiving facilities. Until now, the inter- communication server – ADICAP server at CRIHAN- ROUEN – is used by 600 pathologists and hematol- ogists through 200 workstations [2]. It allows the ex- change of information for scientific publication and for second opinion service. Three series of publication has been launched: An atlas of pathology, distributed worldwide by the Springer-publishing company, Sémi- naires de Pathologie (mainly yearly French scientific communications distributed through scientific associa- tions) and Tutorial Series. Editing is made by an scien- tific association or by the individual author. The pub- lished volume measures about 1000 folders of ten im- ages per year. 4.4. Multimedia database for self-education and testing A prime concern of evaluation is to monitor the stu- dents’ experiences with the information service, en- abling its continuous and systematic improvement. For evaluation of students’ knowledge most departments use test questions. The test questions have been used in our Department of Pathology for over 25 years to ver- ify the students’ knowledge. They had been collected in a preliminary note and issued some years ago. This edition enclosed 1412 questions [3]. However, it was not in a friendly form for teaching aid, for both the self-education of students and their self-determination. The elaboration included neither the right answer, nor the images. Therefore, the idea emerged to establish a system, managing the multimedia examination ques- tions databases. The program packet was implemented on microcomputers compatible with IBM PC which works under the network system Netware 5.10 (Nov- ell) for 50 users. The software is written in Clipper and Pascal languages. The packet consists of two function- ally individual programs: ASSISTANT, which is the administrator for the databases, and EXAMINATOR, which is the executive program [4]. These two pro- grams are implemented in the technique of pull-down J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education 187 Fig. 2. User’s interface of TELEMIC system for the display of virtual slide with visible area of interest at the higher magnification. menu, message and selection windows. This way it is easier to be operated by inexperienced users. 4.5. System of multi-criterion grading of students When classifying students according to the arith- metic mean of their scores served disadvantages have to be taken into account [12]. The new procedure di- vides students into categories related to the accepted grade scale. This procedure takes into consideration the importance of particular sections and the influence of the assistant in charge of particular course compart- ments. We suggest the division of students into five cat- egories, each consisting of two subcategories. In addi- tion, this procedure qualifies some students beside the multiple-choice exam for an oral exam inactive in or- der to give them a better grade. Exemplary application of this method was tested on a group of 358 dental stu- dents previously graded by “the method of mean” in pathology. The method of multi-criterion grading ex- cludes unlimited mutual compensation of the criteria, differentiates the importance of particular courses, and introduces a quality criterion that was not used before, i.e., the category of person conducting the course sec- tion. It allows to define the group of “questionable” students who should take an additional oral examina- tion in order to be graded properly. Creating and using the system of multi-criterion grading of students in the pathology course is an improvement and given a more objective and flexible time [12]. 5. Examples of the program use This program packet is currently working in the De- partment of Pathology of University Medical School in Poznan. It is used for self-education, tests, services and the examination in pathology, for all dental stu- dents in the Medical Department and for self-education and individual examination services for medical stu- dents. The results together with the notes obtained for their activities in practical classes create the basis to credit particular sections and the final examination. The implementation of this packet with test question set helps to standardize the teaching results in pathol- ogy in Poland. This packet is part of the integrated management information system of the pathology de- partment [13]. 188 J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education Fig. 3. Gallery of microscopic pictures of basic pathology of the central nervous system at the WWW server. 5.1. ASSISTANT The ASSISTANT program creates and defines any database [4]. It enables the import of text files and im- ages, which will be displayed on request. The images are stored in separate files. The program has no restric- tion concerning the image file format because it uses the external-display program. It is also an instrument to understand the database administration, which in- cludes the questions. Regarding the possibility of many thematically different databases, it enables to create a separate configuration for each of them, which is called the project session. This project includes answer mode, the time of answering, number of the question, method of question selection from the base, and masking them. Except these functions, the ASSISTANT program en- ables to review the reports of the sessions that have been hold before and also to prepare the data for statis- tical analysis. 5.2. EXAMINATOR The EXAMINATOR is an executive program cre- ated for self-education or examination of students. The configured file created by the ASSISTANT program is the base of this program operation. This file is invisible to the user. After calling the executive program it starts to work according to the session project which had been created before. The program ask for the name of the student and informs about numerical buttons which may be used by the examined person in order to an- swer the questions. The number of the answer buttons must be in accordance with the number of available an- swers. If a picture is available, picture key is visible in the message line. After every answer, the system in- J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education 189 forms whether the answer is right and indicates the ac- tual percent and numerical answer account of the ex- amined person. The examination ends by display of the examination time and the results. This information is then stored (see also Figs 4–6). 5.3. NOS NOS is software for the above-described system of multi-criterion grading of students [12]. It allows recording and updating personal data from students, their grades from particular course sections and from the final examination. It also allows to store data from previous years in the so-called archives. The main screen consists of three parts: the main menu, which contains basic options, the working part, and the bot- tom line with information about conducted operations. The main menu consists of six commands, i.e., add, find, delete, review or modify the data about assistants into running the courses. The Dentistry command can add, find, delete, review, and modify data of students. The data contain the following fields: credit book num- ber, group, name and surname, assistant, year of stud- ies, choice of exam dates (repeats), and the final grade. The Calculations command allows to perform: Clas- sify and Results. The first one classifies all students from the group processed, the second one allows to search for certain categories. Fig. 4. Beginning of the exam with giving the family and first name. Below the information about conditions of an examination mode established by ASISTANT program is displayed. Fig. 5. Display of summary of final result at the examination end. 190 J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education Fig. 6. Implementation of EXAMINATOR program on the WWW server for self-testing, available through the Internet. NOS co-operates with the database about students, set up in STUDENT [15]. Classifying a student into a proper category is obtained by choosing the com- mand and establishing the access paths to the database and the archives. After typing the credit book num- ber, the monitor displays a window of dialogue with the student’s data and suggested final grade. If the stu- dent is to take an additional oral examination, the grade will be accompanied by the comment: suggested. This grade can be changed later. The procedure also allows to store in a current catalogue only data about students who are not yet classified. Outranking coefficients can be displayed, which may appear helpful in case of doubts about the correctness of classification. 5.4. TELEMIC This telepathology system is based on a fully auto- mated microscope Axioplan2 that is directed by JAVA programs through a standard Internet browser. The re- mote microscope can be is assessed through a web- page on the website (http://mic.amu.edu.pl/). The ma- jor functions include the control of the stage and the control of microscope. The microscope and camera control software was integrated into an Internet server. The server executes these commands, converts the cap- tured images into compressed JPEG image files and distributes these image files to the all connected telemi- croscopy clients. The number of students that can be connected to one microscope server is limited only by capacity of RAM memory. Each function can be con- trolled either by the mouse or the keyboard. The use of the Internet is not a necessity for the telemicroscopy software. The system is used in a local area network (LAN), which connects classrooms with the laboratory of the Pathological Department. Further features of the telemicroscopy system can be seen on the WWW page http://ampat.amu.edu.pl/. 6. Perspectives The major gains in health in the 20th century were primarily the result of improvements in public health including sanitation and immunization. Global health improvements will occur in the 21st century by improvement in information gathering and shar- ing. One way to improve health training and research is to improve the education. One of the most impor- tant aspects is the globalization of education. In the J. Szymas / Teleeducation and telepathology for open and distance education 191 next century transnational training and global lecture- shareware training will be available. Faculties will thus share their best, most passionate multimedia data on the Internet. Quality control systems and statistical quality assurance on the Internet will take place to monitor lectures given by experts all over the world. References [1] V. Della Mea, P. Cataldi, A. Marzola, L. Mariuzzi, G. Mas- sarelli, R. Ricco, M. Scarpelli and C.A. Beltrami, The Ital- ian Network of Telepathology: principles and first results. Ab- stracts. Vth European Congress on Telepathology, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 6(2) (2000), No. 002-12. [2] J. Diebold, C. Got, J. Hémet and E. Martin, Continuing Educa- tion and Telepathology. Abstracts. Vth European Congress on Telepathology, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 6(2) (2000), No. 002-12. [3] P. Gabryel, J. Szymas, W. Salwa-Zurawska and M. Gawron- ski, Test Questions on Pathomorphology. Part I. Examination Questions, Poznan, 1990 (in Polish). [4] M. Gawronski and J. Szymas, The packet of teaching programs – ASSISTANT and EXAMINATOR version 2.5. Operating in- struction, Poznan, 1992 (in Polish). [5] K. Kayser and C. Kayser, Telepathology – aspects of social in- fluence and quality control, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 3(3) (1996), No. 963-04. [6] K. Kayser, G. Kayser and S. Zink, New technical aspects in telepathology, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 6(3) (2000), No. 003-04. [7] K. Kayser and G. Kayser, Basic Aspects of and recent de- velopment of telepathology in Europe with specific emphasis on quality assurance, J. Anal. Quant. Cytol. Histol. 21 (1999), 319–328. [8] K. Kayser, Telemedizin, Wiener Klin. Wschr. 108 (1996), 932– 940. [9] K. Kayser, Telepathology in Europe. Its practical use, Arch. Anat. Cytol. Pathol. 43 (1995), 196–199. [10] K. Kayser, J. Szymas and R. Weinstein, Telepathology. Telecommunication, Electronic Education and Publication in Pathology, Springer-Verlag, 1999. [11] F. Leiner and L. Füzesi, Internet-based Support in Medical Ed- ucation: Practical Course of Gross Pathology. Abstracts. Vth European Congress on Telepathology, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 6(2) (2000), No. 002-12. [12] R. Slowinski, B. Wolynska, M. Kaczalski and J. Szymas, The method of multi-criterion grading of students in course of pathomorphology. Second National Conference “Computers in Medicine”, 1994, Lodz, pp. 101–106 (in Polish). [13] J. Szymas and R. Dubiel, The integrated management informa- tion system of pathomorphology department, in: IX National Conference of Biocybernetics and Biometrical Engineering. Conference Materials, Vol. II, Gdansk, 1992, pp. 315–318 (in Polish). [14] J. Szymas and M. Gawronski, Multimedia data base and man- agement system for self-education and testing the students’ knowledge on pathomorphology, Pol. J. Pathol. 44 (1993), 183–188. [15] J. Szymas and J. Jelonek, STUDENT – Computer management system for didactic in department of pathology, in: Second National Conference “Computers in Medicine”, Lodz, 1994, pp. 111–116 (in Polish). [16] J. Szymas and G. Wolf, Real-time microscopy through the In- ternet, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 4 (1998), No. 983-07. [17] B. Wolynska, M. Kaczalski and J. Szymas, Computerized eval- uation of students’ knowledge in a course of pathology, Elec. J. Pathol. Histol. 6(2) (2000), No. 002-05. 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work_2zutjgfpcfgurbcl36pofvw74q	----	9e.xps Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research 15 (10): 1396-1400, 2013 ISSN 1990-9233 © IDOSI Publications, 2013 DOI: 10.5829/idosi.mejsr.2013.15.10.11615 Corresponding Author: Kortunov, Russian State University of Tourism and Service, p. Cherkizovo, Main, 99, Moscow Region, Russia. 1396 Russian World View: Using the Cultural Experience of the East and the West Vadim Kortunov and Alexander Fedulin Russian State University of Tourism and Service, p. Cherkizovo, Main, 99, Moscow Region, Russia Abstract: The author reflects on the prospects of the use of cultural experience of the East and the West in the outlook of citizens of modern Russia. The juxtaposition of the two types of culture is based on the fact that they determine man's place in the world and human origins in different ways. The Eastern tradition has overcome anthropomorphism inherent in the Western worldview. Man is seen as part of nature. Western culture is characterized by rationalism and individualism in a relationship with the world. A different type of thinking is cultivated by Eastern culture where non-rationalistic mechanisms of cognition dominate. Personality subordinates its interests to common interests. The author concludes that economism inherent in the Western world view has become all-pervasive in a modern life. This leads to tragic consequences, the growth of spiritual impoverishment, the alienation of people from each other and consumerism. That is why Russia needs a critical approach to Western tradition. The advantage of oriental culture according to the author is its role of incentive for personal self-improvement, besides it suggests a reverent relation to the national culture, nature and human. But this way is also unacceptable to Russia because of our inherent distinctive traditions and social experience. Russian philosophy of XIX - early XX centuries has absorbed all the best from the spiritual development of the West and the East. The author is confident that the policy of Russia in XXI century will be based on the world view that combined the best experience of two cultures. Key words: Philosophical and cultural concept Socio-cultural type West East Anthropocentrism Rationalism Irrational and mystical approach Cosmocentric views Extrovert type of culture Introvert type of culture The idea of reincarnation The non-rational mechanisms of cognition Empathy Passive contemplation Rational and economic way of thinking Total economism Non-rational view of the world Universal and organistic (holistic) thinking INTRODUCTION Carl Gustav Jung, studying the world view of the The division of the world into East and West, of centers of culture may be considered in terms of course, is conditional and the least actual in terms of extroversion and introversion. Extrovert type of culture geography. This, first of all, has the philosophical and and human means "turning outside" and is aimed at cultural nature and represents two fundamentally different transforming the world; introvert type, in contrast, is worldviews and ways of cultural development. The basis turned inwards. It is difficult to disagree with Jung: for this division was largely the opposing paradigm indeed, for centuries we have seen active and energetic underlying the West European and East Asian cultures. character of the West, seeking to subjugate the world and In its classic form the generalized socio-cultural type of to impose its own "rules of the game." In the East, the the West was formed in the era of Modern times and was dominating principle is prohibition of a hierarchy of life expressed in the global ideological orientations to strict elements: everything in the world is of equal worth and is anthropocentrism and rationalism. The standard of the one and indivisible space. When an eastern person is eastern type of culture may be Ancient India (in particular, facing the contradictions between the self and the world Buddhist religious and philosophical system very around him, he is guided by the rule "change yourself." common in the East), which managed to formulate the The trend to a different perception of the world and cosmocentric views and irrational and mystical approach to the definition of man's place in the system of being was to man, society, nature and the cosmos. formed in as far back as in ancient times and may be East and the West, came to the conclusion that these two Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 15 (10): 1396-1400, 2013 1397 clearly seen in the mythological consciousness of Two ways of thinking are two cultures, in many ways Eastern culture and the ancient world, which can be the polar opposite. Russia, however, according to regarded as a forefather of modern Western civilization. Slavophiles, is no stranger either to the West or to the Whereas the Vedic tradition rather quickly overcame the East and therefore is able to accumulate all that is anthropomorphic ideas and personification of God, in valuable in these two so dissimilar civilizations. Hence, the ancient culture both became the foundation of the Slavophiles concluded about a special place of Russia in world picture. While the Eastern world used complex historical process and its special way of socio-political transcendent concepts solving the question of the development. relationship between space and the individual soul, the Analyzing the contemporary spiritual life, we can say ancient world created a pantheon of gods, like two peas that today, the political, legal and interpersonal relations in a pod, similar to humans. It is appropriate to remember are based on a comprehensive implementation of the the words of Voltaire: "God created man in his image and rational and economic way of thinking. But, strictly likeness and the man paid him the same." speaking, the so-called "economic thinking" has already The man in the eastern outlook has always remained gained the upper hand not only in politics, but also at all a part of nature which is proved by the idea of levels of the spiritual life of mankind. According to the reincarnation. The myths of the origin of man in the non- principle of mutual benefit the states implement their European countries emphasize the idea that people have foreign and domestic policies. Countries of the former nothing that would allow them to rise above nature, or to Union focus on the priority of economic interest. Even in consider themselves as superior value. Moreover, for the sphere of interpersonal relationships this principle non-European mythology even some human detraction is from the category of necessity is steadily turning into a typical: according to Egyptian mythology a man is born dominating one. By itself, economic thinking, of course, from the tears of Ra; in the ancient Indian version he is not something sinful. On the contrary, as a result of arises from the remains of a dead human body of titan centuries-old practice, it is the greatest product of the Purusha; and the Chinese mythology suggests that man rationalistic mind and as a regulator of social relations, of evolved from vermin crawling over the body of the dead course, carries a tremendous constructive charge. The god Pangu. The ancient Greeks proclaimed that man is the trouble is not that economism has entrenched in our result of purposeful activity of the gods and arose, neither minds. The trouble is that economism having penetrated more nor less, from the ashes of the titans. in our consciousness has become total. In theory, the As far back as in the first half of the XIX century economic way of thinking is just one of the ways of Chaadayev and, after him, theorists of Slavophilism saw thinking in general and, therefore, is nothing more than a and theoretically thought over the fact that the manifestation of the "abstract principles". And any civilizations of East and West perceive and learn the abstract principle, raised to the absolute, because of its world in different ways. Since the era of Modern times, hypertrophy is inevitably doomed to self-denial. In Western civilization has been built on the principles of practice, such a self-negation is observed even today and rationalism, which leads to individualistic bias in the it becomes quite clear that the civilization of the XXI questions of relationship between man and the world century will either exist on different foundations, or will [1, 2 and 3]. Hence there is the peculiar hierarchy of not exist at all. values, where the supreme is the individual’s being. The history of the twentieth century has taught Hence there is the dynamic and agile character of Western mankind a vivid and tragic lesson: as long as the mind is society that allowed achieving unprecedented success in based on the principles of absolute rationalism, science, technology and production. comprehension and creation of an essential part of the In the East, non-rational mechanisms of cognition spiritual life and hence, the main representative of the and perception of the world prevail. Based on these spiritual principle – man, inevitably falls out of the mechanisms the distinctive oriental culture was created. functions of policy. On the basis of economic rationalism Here individuality is absorbed by the universe and the it is possible to build the economic world or the law- person’s being is focused on the subordination to the governed state, but never – the moral or perfect one. For interests of the whole - the community, the state, the it is already a sphere beyond rational. macrocosm. Eastern worldview rests on other categories: knowledge is often opposed to understanding, learning – The Question Arises: what alternative can be offered by to empathy, active thinking – to passive contemplation the ideas of Slavophiles? Is it to push the thinking on the and reflection – to experience. path of irrationalism and to give the policy to the power of Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 15 (10): 1396-1400, 2013 1398 emotions, intuition and religious mysticism? Is it worth education, the formation of one mind, one calculation, abandoning the proven logic of Western civilization while without any regard to the instinctual (i.e. non-conscious, solving the most important political issues? non-rational - auth.), involuntary impulse of the heart, in Of course, without logic and common sense can be short, a science without religious feelings of love can neither thinking nor any activity at all. Call for achieve the highest degree of development. But having irrationalism as a way of doing politics would be the developed in a selfish direction, constantly meeting the height of folly. It is a different question: you can not build needs of the people, anticipating all their physical desires, a policy on the basis of total rationalism, on the basis of it will deprave the person and the flesh will master the absolute rule of logic and the notorious "common sense." spirit..." [6, p. 70]. Ecology, global security, the "third According to Odoevskiy, "Sooner or later the experience world" countries, in short, the whole mankind are will make people abandon the strange phantom, called sacrificed to calculation (or progress). reason, understanding and so on; people began to notice The economic way of thinking is a kind of the result that as imperfect word, syllogism is nothing but the killing of keen rationalism. And this approach to understanding of thought; one is no longer able to play the toy, which and creation of reality will inevitably lead to ignorance of amused the ancient Sophists and scholastics; and he the whole layers of the spiritual life of people. Since the feels that behind syllogism there is something else that policy has played a huge role in the organization of social neither satisfies the human soul, nor fills it" [4, p. 81]. N. life and can have a direct influence on the spiritual climate Berdyaev asks, "How do we know that the truth can of the society, the right choice of a certain style of always be proved and the lie can always be refuted? political thinking is especially important. Incomplete, Perhaps lie is far more demonstrative than truth. Evidence one-sided analysis of the actual processes and political is one of the temptations which shields us from the truth" program created on its basis is fraught with unpredictable [5, p. 83]. And in fact, fascism had not only its own and often irreversible consequences. Economic ideology, but also its own logic, to some extent very rationalism, like any total rationalism, has never led to the compelling. Stalin's repressions and concentration camps desired objectives, whatever the strong reasoning was were also in their own way a very logical embodiment of behind it. All the time it was like turned inside out, the "scientific" theory of amplification of the class bringing the policy of "common sense" to the obvious struggle. But morality, on the contrary, cannot be absurdity. And there are plenty of such examples in understood solely by means of logic; the rationalized history. ethics inevitably degenerates into law, which, as the The lecture "The Spiritual Crisis of the Russian experience of social and political life shows, is an Intelligentsia" more clearly expressed the reason for imperfect regulator of interpersonal and international degradation of our morals: it is an imitation of the West relations. and adulation. I.A. Ilyin noted: "This crisis has been The Scripture Says: "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt century, when the Jacobin revolution in France produced not steal." Few people take the responsibility to refute some ideological seeds and a great European war with these commandments. But when the rational mind Napoleon scattered them across Europe and Russia; and approaches the issue, it turns out that killing and stealing when the Russian intelligentsia in dialogue with Europe is not only possible, but necessary, if required by some breathed in the air of Rousseau and Voltaire, Byron and higher, well-established target. Similar situation occurs Parny, so that, having accepted their charge, they could with aesthetic values: the rationalized art turns into such then help the left Hegelians, Hugo and Louis Blanc, ugly phenomena as social realism, social art and Lassalle, Marx and Engels. And... we imitated and idolized conceptualism and, ultimately, leads to the collapse of the until one half of us was slaughtered and the other was ideals, taste, to the realm of disharmony. forced to dance around the golden calf of communism..." We must frankly admit that the important moments of [7, p. 42]. people's existence have the meaning beyond rational. And We have witnessed at first glance paradoxical ignoring them today has become the cause of a number of phenomenon. The theory of the communist global crises. After all, a policy based on rational and transformation of society has been developed. On its economic way of thinking, turns not only individuals, but humanistic orientation there is nothing equal. It accepted the entire countries and continents into parasitically a man, his spiritual and physical perfection as the main minded consumers. One and a half centuries ago, Duke objective and at the same time the value. More than one V.F. Odoyevski warned mankind: "Just financial thousand volumes were written in support of this theory brewing for a long time; it was born in the early XIX Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 15 (10): 1396-1400, 2013 1399 and its logical consistency. In practice, however, this At any contradiction between the individual and his theory has cost millions crippled destinies, has led to the complete degradation of both spiritual and material life of the people, to a burst of unprecedented cruelty and to the disappearance of the person. And it seems that the problem is not a logical fault and not the original "depravity" of Marxist ideology. Indeed, the currently observed crisis does not fit into the framework of a particular social system. Even in places where the level of life is high and where everything seems to be done to human well-being, even there the degree of alienation of individuals has become alarming, the number of suicides is increasing, general state of depression and loneliness have become a norm and moral nihilism has reappeared. There is a world process of impoverishment of the spirit. However, it would be wrong to assume that the modern world has been steadily moving towards its collapse and it is absolutely inappropriate to fill the historical process with eschatological content. Western civilization is doomed only so far as it is a purely economic civilization. Structure of the Russian soul, according to N. Berdyaev, "contains the polar poles and holds in the middle with difficulty" [8, p. 108]. He denied the Russian people of the ability to think rationally, talked about the sharp antipathy of Russian spiritual type to formalism and legal approach in culture, to authority in religious life, to rational basis in thinking, to the predominance of external organization over internal organic life. That is why Western culture is alien to the Russian people. But who said that the Western way of development is the only possible way? We have just had a look at the West and now it is very time to look at the East. Eastern culture in general is based on the non- rational view of the world and a man of this culture has always been alien to the one-sided rationalization and even more so, economization of thinking as its extreme manifestation. At that we should bear in mind the close unity of material and spiritual sides of the human psyche. In this context, the following statements of Erich Fromm are very true: "If a man was merely a disembodied intelligence, he would have achieved his goal of having at his disposal a vast system of thought. But since it is a unity of mind and body, he must respond to the dichotomy of existence, not only by thought, but by the whole process of life, feelings and actions. Therefore, each satisfactory orientation system includes not only intellectual elements, but also elements of the senses and perception, which are shown in relation to the object of devotion" [9, p. 482]. environment, eastern philosophy gave unequivocal advice: change yourself. Such a principle, cultivated for centuries, of course, raised the public's sense of social passivity. But not only passivity. It gave a huge incentive for self-improvement, for a disinterested attitude to nature, society and people. While Western rationalist science was building the capacity of knowledge, Eastern culture has learned to understand the world. While the West was going to the "post-industrial society", sweeping away everything on its way, the East carefully and patiently listened to the existence, trying to understand its meaning at non-rational level. As a result, at appearance of an urgent need to transform the economic structure of society, the East was able, without going through a long and torturous Western way, to achieve fantastic results. It is no accident that the economic breakthrough became possible precisely in Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, that is, in the countries with non-traditional outlook. Careful preservation and multiplication of irrational non- economized ways of development of the world has allowed the East to benefit from the development of the world civilization without the horrendous costs, which would be inevitable in the case of a simple duplication of the Western model. Japan, for example, did not set the task to lift its economy at any cost, by any means (as it was in Europe, or, say, as it happens in our country). And in the end, the phenomenal growth of material well-being takes place here on the background of reverential attitude to the national culture, nature and man. The trend towards dehumanization in culture has wonderfully intertwined with the birth of a society of true humanism. However, we should not idealize the eastern world and raise it to the power of unquestionable authority. It is also unacceptable to us as an ideal or a model of potential development of Russia for the simple reason that we have our own unique culture, tradition and finally, the experience of social order. And the ideology of suppression of the individual principle in the name of the whole for a Russian man is a moral death (that is evidenced by all the "Soviet" period of our history.) The phenomenon of the eastern breakthrough in the economy is worth considering not to replace the cult of the West with the cult of the East. The above example is only a clear confirmation of the idea that the Western path of development may have an alternative; that the economization of thought is though straight, but not the best road to a healthy economy; that the non-rational means of the world development have constructive elements; and that, finally, respect for the own culture and Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 15 (10): 1396-1400, 2013 1400 careful study of the foreign experience can sometimes the spiritual development of the West and the East. It prove to be more productive than the mindless copying of combined the rationalism and irrationalism, having created other people's schemes. a global organistic theory based on a real spiritual Knowledge is not only the possession of information experience and distinctive style of thinking of the Russian on the origin, rise and fall of a civilization, but also the people. This way of thinking has not been in demand ability to use it. To know means to own [10]. among modern politics yet. Although perhaps it is what In fact, what can we expect in the future, if we still embodies the thinking of the XXI century. focus on the West and, therefore, continue to economize our thinking? Obviously, in this case, we condemn REFERENCES ourselves to a long and painful road, not escaping the further exacerbation of society; and moral and aesthetic 1. Western culture. Access Views 4. 07. 2013. values will remain in the background for a long time. The www.answers.com. distance between us and the West will inevitably 2. Lawrence, S.S., 2013. Western Culture. Sience, No. 2. continue and therefore, any competition with the West on Access Views 4.07. 2013. www.ehow.com. a purely economic basis would be meaningless. We take 3. Greek influence on Western Culture. Access Date 4. a risk of entering into the XXI century as an economic 07. 2013. www.conservapedia.com. power in which different cultural values will be 4. Odoyevskiy, V.F., 1982. Psychological Notes. On dominating. We risk remaining the embodiment of the past Literature and Art. Moscow, pp: 81. for a long time. 5. Berdyaev, N., 1989. Philosophy of Freedom. In I.A. Ilyin argued that the crisis of Russian culture in Philosophy of Freedom. The Meaning of Creativity. the XX century is deeper than the crisis in the domestic Moscow, pp: 83. economy and politics, as it affects the fundamental basis 6. Odoyevskiy, V.F., 1982. Psychological Notes. On of our spirituality. However, he said with surprising Literature and Art. Moscow, pp: 70. optimism: "I deeply and firmly believe that the Russian 7. Ilyin, I.A., 2006. Coll. Works: Fairness or equality? people will cope with this crisis, restore and revive their Comp. And Comments by Lisitsyn, Y.T. Moscow: spiritual strength and resume their glorious national PSTGU, Vol. 27, pp: 42. history" [11, p. 629]. 8. Berdyaev, N., 1993. Soul of Russia. In Russian Idea. Thinking of the twenty-first century must become Moscow, pp: 108. more universal and organic. It must fit into a single socio- 9. Fromm, E., 2003. The situation of Human - the Key to cultural environment, based on an overall picture of the the Humanistic Psychoanalysis. In The problem of world that goes far beyond the rational-economic sphere. Man in Western Philosophy. Moscow, pp: 82. Truth can not be separated from axiology, moreover from 10. Said, E.E., 1979. Orientalism. Vintage Books. the truth of practical political action. Russian philosophy 11. Ilyin, I.A., 1956. Our Objectives: In 2 volumes. Paris, of XIX - early XX centuries has absorbed all the best of 2: 629. 
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work_34ky46ehj5fn5luqp5uw6etm7i	----	Learning Interactions in Rural and Remote Contexts 1 The tyranny of remoteness: Changing and adapting pedagogical practices in distance education. Tom Lowrie Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia Robyn Jorgensen Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia Abstract Distance Education (DE) learning environments are considerably different to those of typical classrooms where students engage on a face-to-face basis with their teachers and peers. In remote settings, these face-to-face opportunities are limited and sometimes nonexistent. This investigation focuses on the influence of new technologies on the pedagogical practices of teachers and their students in remote DE settings. A place pedagogy framework was utilised to consider the changed practices of DE teachers using satellite communications for lesson delivery. Findings of the study detail the initial hopes and aspirations of these teachers, the realities of their new practice and the challenges and demands of teaching in DE settings. Keywords: distance education; pedagogical practices; Information Communication Technologies. 2 Introduction Australia is a diverse country—not just socially and culturally—but also geographically. Although a large proportion of the Australian population live in capital cities along the east coast, approximately one-third reside in communities outside of capital cities (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). In remote areas of Australia, schooling is often considerably different in nature and context than that of the experiences of students in cities, or indeed in regional areas. Although there seems to be an adequate number of schools to cater for students, irrespective of where they live, school children of all ages from rural and remote areas are disadvantaged in terms of access, the availability of transport, levels of family income support, and even the quality of education they receive (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2000). In terms of equity and student performance, Australian students living in remote areas consistently performed below the Australian average on measures of mathematics achievement (Ministerial Council for Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA], 2005). The classifications of rural and remote are generally associated with geographical position, population and distance from urban areas. Students, especially those in primary grades, studying in remote settings are commonly more than 3 hours from their nearest local school and sometimes much further than this (Stokes, Stafford, & Holdsworth, n.d.). Along with the challenge of distance, students and teachers face problematic technology and communication issues, minimal face-to-face contact between students and their teacher, not to mention a range of social issues associated with living in rural and remote areas (Lowrie, 2007). For students studying in distance education settings, most face-to-face interactions are limited to students’ attendance at “camps” or mini schools. These are generally framed around subjects such as physical education, art and drama. There are a number of reasons for such operational planning including the fact that students are accustomed to working on a one-to-one basis with their classroom teacher in the subject areas of mathematics and English. Thus, these core curriculum subjects are not typically (re)presented in dynamic, socially connected, ways. Instead, learning experiences are framed within pedagogies which use technology-based tools to foster and enhance learning opportunities and teacher/student engagement. These restricted dynamics, if nothing else, create different learning contexts to traditional classrooms where up to 30 different viewpoints are likely to be considered in any mathematics lessons. Teaching and learning in Distance Education (DE) requires specific and different forms of pedagogical practices and student interaction than those commonly found in “typical” classroom settings. Since classroom teachers in DE have face-to-face contact with their students only four or five times per year, learning discourses and pedagogical practices require blended (typically a combination of paper-based and digital) or digital resources. Studies which focus on such pedagogical practices provide a snapshot of how new forms of communication might be enacted in the future. At the same time changes in technology, and practices using technology, have created new opportunities to analyse new pedagogical practices. 3 Research background Increasingly, there are calls for teacher education programs to more adequately prepare new teachers to be abreast of the latest Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and equip their graduands with skills that allows them to utilise new technologies into the future (Boylan, 2004) and to ensure that beginning teachers have sound technology-content practices (Crump, Tuovinen, & Simons, 2005). As remote communities gain increased access to new technologies and networks, generally through advances in satellite communications (Lowrie, 2006), those teachers working in remote settings have the opportunity to dramatically change the pedagogies currently being offered to children in these communities. It could be argued that these disadvantaged students require access to such technologies even more so than those students living in metropolitan areas—especially given the fact that their out-of-school exposure to new technologies and the internet is far more limited than their metropolitan counterparts. Therefore, teachers can utilise ICT opportunities to compensate for the lack of readily accessible resources usually found in schools and larger, more connected, communities. With new ICTs being rapidly developed and created, these technologies not only offer choices about teaching practices and the subsequent delivery of learning opportunities but also new ways to support learners and home supervisors (those supervising the student remotely) in more meaningful partnership arrangements. Despite such advances in technology, the remoteness of some families in Australia has resulted in such access being either limited or non-existent (Crump, Tuovinen, & Simons, 2005). The student’s (own) knowledge base, the supervisor’s view and understanding of the learning process, and the engagement with pre-designed learning materials become more influential learning processes than would be the case in more typical classroom experiences. Thus, some of the common social, environmental, and cognitive dimensions of classroom engagement cannot be replicated. Moreover, the everyday social perspectives so influential in learning (Cobb & Bauersfeld, 1995) are restricted by the influence of the dominant medium of communication—that is, a blended or digital resource base. Consequently, teachers may feel somewhat disconnected to the students they teach. It is certainly the case that building a strong rapport with a student you only see for a few weeks in the year is extremely challenging—and while such situations could occur in any classroom–these issues are intensified in DE contexts. With the classroom teacher having limited opportunities to provide explicit instruction, the supervisor’s influence over the learning process becomes both dramatic and fundamental to the development of the learner’s mathematics understandings. As Goos and Jolly (2004) argued, the structure of schools delineates the nature and scope of parental involvement with mismatches between the home-school partnership. The failure to recognise parental diversity can cause barriers within these relationships. It could be argued that teachers are failing to utilise parents to their full potential, and that additional barriers will develop as technology becomes a more influential component of the pedagogy. International trends in DE learning have highlighted integral connections between pedagogical practice and contextualised instructional design (New South Wales Department of Education and Training [NSW DET], 2010). Essentially, it is how these dimensions are put into practice which dictates productive engagement and learning. 4 The NSW DET (2010) argued that as new technologies are introduced it is necessary that they are embedded within strong pedagogical principles. This study considers the challenges of DE as new technologies and more connected communication practices influence pedagogy. Specifically, this study aims to discover the extent to which new technologies influence pedagogical practices and the way in which these practices, over time, evolve and challenge the educational focus within these learning contexts. Method The methodological framework for this study is drawn from Somerville’s (2010) emerging ‘place pedagogy’. This framework encompasses three principles: “our relationship to place is constituted in stories (and other representations); the body is at the centre of our experience of place; and place is a contact zone of cultural contact” (p. 335). Accordingly, the data collection process for this research project included collecting the ‘stories’ of school administrators, teachers, home supervisors, and students, who were all working and studying in a distance education setting. Other forms of representation, or artefacts, collected during the research included audio transcripts, lesson observations and focus groups. The research participants in this study were chosen from a cross section of participants which included students, parents and teachers. Given the fact that data collection involved ethnographic field work in homes, it was necessary for the parents to volunteer for participation in the study. Participants and protocols The school site From an organisation perspective, schools of distance education operate in a similar manner to non-distance schools in Australia. The school site was one of the largest DE schools in Australia and was located in regional New South Wales. The school had a principal, other senior teachers and classroom teachers who were assigned to specific grade levels—with associated support staff (including resource teachers, teacher/librarians and learning support teachers). From a context perspective, DE schools are quite different to most other schools in Australia. Typically, the students would not meet (face-to-face) with their classroom teacher for more than 10 days per year—and as a consequence, teachers need to establish an important partnership arrangement with a home supervisor (in most instances, the student’s mother). All home sites were provided with computers and satellite communications as part of a national initiative to redefine communication practices in these schools. Teacher interviews Interviews were conducted with the school principal, and with a mathematics teacher, along with informal discussion with other teaching staff who were available during the visit. Teacher focus group An audio-taped focus group with 8 teachers was conducted, who taught across all preschool and primary grades (including one teacher who also taught up to Middle 5 School Years 7-8), and including a Primary Assistant Principal, and a Preschool Assistant Principal. Home supervisor and student interviews Audio-taped interviews were undertaken with a home supervisor (mother) and Year 5 student, who were living on a remote property a considerable distance from a small town. Two older siblings spent extended time travelling on buses each day to attend schools in larger communities. Both older children had previously spent time being either home-schooled or schooled via distance education. Classroom observations (school site and home site) Observations of two mathematics lessons were also conducted: one teacher was observed conducting two separate one-on-one sessions with students (both in Year 8) via telephone; the other teacher was observed conducting a lesson with one Year 5 student via satellite. Analysis of data Somerville’s (2010) framework of place pedagogies constituted the theoretical underpinnings of the data analysis. Within this framework, an ethnographic study was conducted at two sets of sites—namely the school site and the home site. Semi- structured interviews were analysed through the stories and experiences of the participants and collated through more informal ethnographic procedures (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007), with formal observations that took the form of lesson studies. Both the formal and informal data collection was considered simultaneously as we analysed audio-recordings, photographs, and our notes from the respective sites. These data were categorised into themes and interrogated through researcher group discussions. Thus, the first layer of analysis summarised the respective contexts and the second layer framed these themes within storylines which considered both the respective sites (school and home) and the specific education community. Results and Discussion Three main themes emerged from the data analysis, namely the: (1) hopes and aspirations of the school community; (2) realities of practice experienced by the teachers and student; and (3) pedagogical and learning challenges faced by teachers and students using technology in DE settings. Hopes and aspirations The advent of a new form of practice provides opportunities and a sense of excitement. In the initial stages of planning and development teachers used a number of technology- based tools to enhance the learning environment and to initiate more connected classroom interactions with the students. Particular technology tools being used in the school include: Bridgit (collaborative web-based tool), Moodle (learning management system), interactive whiteboards, podcasts, and DE Voice (for providing feedback and some oral lessons). As the principal of the school explained: 6 …with the increase of technologies that have been available in DE, [we have] more opportunity to provide classroom opportunities for kids via the technologies and we use that and we’re constantly trying to build [on] that because the kids love to work with other kids and they love to see other kids work and in particular in the primary, parents love to see the work of other students as well, because they’re constantly assessing… where their child’s at. [principal interview] The capacity for the teacher to now observe and monitor the students in their class (via video and web cameras) creates opportunities for immediate feedback in relation to student engagement. Previously, teachers were not able to see students and thus could not pick up on important gestural cues as students solved tasks. Furthermore, teachers were able to display (and post) images of other students work so that other class participants could gain insights into approaches others took to solve similar tasks. This form of communication became much more interactive and more in line with typical pedagogical practices. It is important to note however that while the teacher could “see” the students, the students were unable to see the teacher. Nevertheless, this one-way visual communication was a leap forward for classroom engagement. As one teacher reported: T7: So over the years that has definitely increased [access to technology] and that makes our job a lot easier because we can actually email them, we can use Moodle, and we can actually have different forms of conversation. Crump et al. (2009) found that, overall, most teachers were positive and enthusiastic about embracing the new technology and adapting their pedagogy, “putting the technology into the background as the facilitator rather than the driver of the lesson content” (p. 5). In other words, they were able to use technology to enhance their teaching and learning materials, rather than finding that the technology was the deciding factor when preparing lesson content. Most teachers indicated that new technologies would broaden the richness of classroom interactions and engagement. By contrast, they did not assume, or consider it necessary, that increased capacity for internet use would be a beneficial supplement to satellite capabilities. Perhaps they were unwilling to relinquish more control over the learning process. This proposition was based on the assumption that the technological challenges of teaching delivery were in itself problematic and dynamic and that the lesson and content needed to be quite structured. In this way, the tool and therefore medium of delivery, was seen to be dynamic within a controlled environment. Although the teachers recognised the steep learning curve they faced in effectively utilising these new technologies, they too had a high disposition for engaging with this medium of delivery. Teachers were of the view that an increased technology capacity would allow learning material to be modified to students needs more easily or at least remain more current in their presentation. In terms of DE it has been noted (see Crump et al., 2009) that an increased range of technology options enhanced engagement, ‘interactivity’ and ‘connectivity’ in lessons for both teachers and students. These higher levels of engagement would have appeared almost ground-breaking compared to the medium of delivery used previously including telephone conversations. In fact, the two telephone lessons observed during the research were in clear contrast to the satellite lesson—the sessions conducted by telephone were 7 traditional pen-and-paper worksheets, while the satellite lesson was more interactive with both the teacher and student able to observe the learning materials on the screen. As time went on, however, the realities of using unreliable technologies became increasingly disruptive and the promise of increased interactivity did not come to fruition. As the principal noted, the students missed the physicality and sense of accomplishment derived from using print-based learning materials and that it was easier to go off on tangents in the online environment. The reality of practice Although there is a suggestion that the use of technology improves learning more readily than using print-based materials, Guri-Rosenblit (2009) points out that “meaningful interaction” is instead the key to learning. She defines this type of interaction as a process that “stimulate[s] the learners’ intellectual curiosity, engage[s] them in productive instructional activities, and directly influence[s] their learning” (pp. 111-112). Although the role of technology is ‘neutral’, a tool; the role of the teacher is critical—it is the teacher who decides how to best shape the curriculum for the student, who chooses the appropriate technology to facilitate the lesson, and who collaborates with the student to find real-life application of the concepts. It is understandable that teachers revert to previous ways of knowing (Cooney, 1999; Smith, 2006) when their work loads are high or when new practices fail to deliver or do not achieve intended outcomes. The following excerpts from the teacher focus groups highlight some of the frustrations: T2: The change has been that now we are aware of what could be available to these more [geographically] isolated children...we know what is possible, and they’re not being able to access it. It means that limits, so we go back to what is a tried and true means. [teacher focus group] T6: There are kids that don’t live far from a town, but they might be in a hilly area, and they actually, their entire household is run on a generator, so they prioritise their electricity use. [teacher focus group] T7: And family values as well. I had one little boy, and his father was up on the roof, dishing the snow out of the [satellite] dish so that he could have his satellite lessons, so he really did value his lessons. [teacher focus group] During the observation of a satellite lesson, we noted a range of audio issues which altered the flow of the lessons. Before the following transcript the teacher had posed a question to the student and she had responded correctly. T: So Josie replied then but I couldn’t hear her. I: Oh, right. T: But I could hear her changing the frequency of the – like, it went buzz for a sec. So, I know Josie’s trying to talk. Josie, I couldn’t hear you. Okay, I just try and call you on again Josie. Alright, do you want to say hello again? [satellite lesson observation] With the student not receiving immediate feedback from the teacher, she felt that her response was incorrect. Furthermore, the diverted conversation (in order to ascertain 8 that the audio was working) not only delayed the lesson, but also interrupted the student’s train of thought. The student also experienced difficulty when trying to write her answer to a question on the SMART notebook file as she had not been able to locate the equipment needed for writing on the screen: I1: That does look hard doesn’t it? I2: Yeah. Especially the eights. T: Yeah. I’ll ask her if she uses a mouse or graphics tab and pen. But I think she’s using a mouse. Alright, can you tell me – oh, you’re still writing. It’s a bit tricky – are you using a mouse or your graphics tablet and pen? S: Um, I’m using the mouse. I probably should use the thing but we can’t find the pen. T: Oh, dear. Okay, it is tricky with the mouse isn’t it? S: Yes it is. [satellite lesson observation] The process of writing numerals with the use of the mouse made responses to questions both laborious and futile. At another point during the lesson, the file that the student was working from froze and the teacher had to re-boot the page before the student could continue working. T: Ooops, oops! Wait on. We’ll just go–hold on–don’t touch anything. You couldn’t wait to see what’s coming up, could you? Alright, now click on your shape. S: I was pressing the arrow keys. T: Yes, sometimes it’s a bit naughty. Okay. You can grab the tools again. [to observers] Yeah, it’s a bit sensitive. See how it can take a long time – like if you were in the classroom, they would’ve done that by now. [satellite lesson observation] This feedback delay combined with the slow pace at which the student was able to manipulate objects on the screen as part of working out the answer, contributed to a lack of opportunity to go beyond routine tasks: T: Okay, so just write the sum for one of them. [waiting for child to work out answer] [to the observers] Unfortunately, you sometimes take shortcuts, like really she should be learning to use that language and writing down the units of measurement, which is something that they’re all are very bad at – I1: Mmm. T: they forget. Um… I1: But you can see with this format – T: It’s very hard. 9 I1: …it actually makes it more difficult to do. [satellite lesson observation] Given the harsh reality of using the new technology, it was evident that teachers were still predominately using print-based pedagogies for instruction. Where teachers have utilised new technologies, their practices have accommodated the technological advances rather than allowing the technology to lead curriculum development. As one teacher commented: T2: The spectrum is leaflet intake, and contact every month or so, to those that have satellite instant email, blended learning with Moodle, units sent on CD. So you’ve got that huge spectrum and we must continue to cater for those, in all areas, in a variety of ways. I don’t think that will ever change while the gaps are there. I can’t see it changing. [teacher focus group] This approach has been established mainly due to the unreliability of access in terms of both functionality and bandwidth capacity. Additionally, many of the technology-based resources promoted a drill and practice mentality where students were more inclined to guess answers rather than think through the mathematical processes or were using technology-based tools (such as a mouse) for purposes for other than what it was designed for (i.e., drawing on the screen without a pen). There is also the view that even reliable technology resources (e.g., Moodle) needed to be presented in a blended form. To this end, even when teachers encouraged students to use the technology—or when students utilised it due to its availability—it fragmented or even restricted learning opportunities. From a zone of cultural contact perspective (Somerville, 2010), teachers encouraged the use of technologies not because they were necessarily the most appropriate form of technology, but because they offered a shared contact experience. This rationale had much merit since it helped personalise learning contexts. Similarly, students utilised the technology resources to substitute for the lack of tacit connectivity—and the inappropriate or cumbersome use of the technologies perhaps added to the frustrations of the distance divide. The notion of difference (Somerville, 2010) was played out with teachers wanting students to use the relevant technologies (in one case a digital pen) with a student compensating for not having the resource available (they had misplaced it) by using a mouse when realistically it would have been much easier to simply type the numeral on a keyboard. Furthermore, these tensions created a “void-like” space which established an emptiness which exasperated the already challenging time loss associated with slow connectivity and unreliable internet services. According to Somerville (2010), place and space are considered collectively since it is not possible to interpret one without the other. Indeed, the shared space of teacher and student—which was established through online engagement—could be considered a point of connection or a bridge between “spaces”. However, the contextual space inhabited by the student could not be easily understood since the teacher (despite the technology) was so removed from what was actually happening. Challenges and demands Generally, teachers felt they needed to utilise the technologies provided irrespective of the pedagogical benefit. Thus, the utilisation of these technologies for new teaching practices is one dimension of changed practice however a less obvious but more salient 10 dimension of technology remains in the background. This dimension involves practice changing expectations where students, parents and other members of the education community expect instantaneous and seamless communication because the technology is now available. The focus group discussions revealed an underlying challenge for teachers and the school with demands that moved well beyond the fixed school day: T8: You might get emails where they’re demanding you to do a phone lesson, or whatever, because they didn’t turn the generator on in time, not thinking that you’ve got 14 other children that you’re supposed to be dealing with right now…that you’re supposed to be dealing with in the next hour, and their child didn’t turn up, and they were supposed to. [teacher focus group] T7: And then we had the ones that wouldn’t buy the cartridges to put into the printers or pay for the paper, even though we supplied them with the satellites and everything else. They wanted the printers, the cartridges supplied, and they wanted the paper supplied. [teacher focus group] T1: And sometimes we’ll say it’s coming, you know, this is what you are going to be getting, so therefore they do expect to be getting it straight away, not realising that there might only be one poor old technician that has to service everybody. Other times it’s just an awareness, look guys, this is out there, but this is just for your own information. [teacher focus group] Although it could be argued that all teachers face similar experiences in their professional lives, these challenges are more confronting in a DE environment since there are so few opportunities for face-to-face contact with the students and their parents. As Somerville, Plunkett and Dyson (2010, p. 42) recognised, “the intersection of multiple, and often contested, stories in a contact zone of difference” creates a new space (i.e., the technology) which potentially results in a loss of meaning or engagement—especially when transformation is not possible. This is certainly the case in distance education environments. Conclusions and implications Distance Education is at the forefront of communication initiatives and technological advances (Guri-Rosenblit, 2009). However, the lack of reliable connectivity (largely brought upon by the tyranny of remoteness) constrains pedagogical opportunities that are commonly afforded to teachers and students living in metropolitan areas. The findings of this study revealed a disconnect between the essentialness of implementing a communication medium that fostered engagement and a practice that (currently) is not attainable to those teachers and students who need it the most. In other words, the most advanced ICT’s are essential for DE learning and yet the implementation of such environments is far more attainable in metropolitan areas. Three themes emerged from the study. It was certainly the case that teachers and other members of the DE community had high hopes and aspirations for the advent of new technologies. Despite the time consuming process of reframing learning opportunities and indeed the curriculum to accommodate a new learning environment, teachers were more than willing to dedicate the time to incorporate the digital technology into their 11 practice. However, the realities of this changing practice took hold quite quickly. Although our findings showed that teachers embraced and certainly welcomed new communication opportunities, it was evident that they were increasingly putting technology in the background as they came to terms with the pedagogical challenges of utilising unreliable technologies. Consequently, the demands of teaching in DE settings outstripped the capacity to engage with new forms of communication. Distance Education schools of today could be considered as a window into what all schools may look like in 30 years time. That is, learning environments that are not bounded by structures (including four walls) that have been present for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged that it may be fruitless to use DE settings (despite the obvious need for these learning environments to be technologically rich) as “pilots” for new technological advances. The changes to pedagogical practices are enough of a challenge for teachers without the burden of the technology failing. Classroom teachers require professional development opportunities that better equip them to utilize the satellite technologies now available to students in these isolated areas. Indeed, they need permission to reject the technology when it does not value add to their current pedagogical practices. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Tracy Logan, Kim Woodland and Lauren Carlson for their insights, support and advice on the collaboration of data and dissemination of research for this article. The work represented in this paper was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Grant [DP0987253]. The views and ideas drawn from the research are that of the authors and not the ARC. 12 References Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). Australian social trends: Population distribution (cat. no. 4102.0). Canberra, Australia: Author. Retrieved from http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1F6CDA9A1D5E6E9DCA 25748E001292BF/$File/41020_2008_1.pdf Boylan, C. (2004, November). Putting rural into pre-service teacher education. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference, Melbourne, Australia. Cobb, P., & Bauersfeld, H. (Eds.). (1995). The emergence of mathematical meaning: Interaction in classroom cultures (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrance Erlbaum Associates. Cooney, T. J. (1999). Conceptualizing teachers’ ways of knowing. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 38, 163-187. Crump, S., Tuovinen, J., & Simons, L. (2005). wIDeLy and rapIDeLy: A report into Interactive Distance eLearning in New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Orange, Australia: Centre for Regional Education. Crump, S., Twyford, K., Anderson, A., Towers, L., Devlin, B., & Hutchinson, A. (2009). ‘Opening our eyes’: Project report: Australian Research Council Linkage project on interactive distance e-learning. Newcastle, Australia: University of Newcastle. Goos, M., & Jolly, L. (2004). Building partnerships with families and communities to support children’s literacy development. In I. Putt, R. Faragher, & M. McLean (Eds.), Mathematics education for the third millennium: Towards 2010 (Proceedings of the 27th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, pp. 279-286). Townsville, Australia: MERGA. Guri-Roseblit, S. (2009). Distance education in the digital age: Common misconceptions and challenging tasks. Journal of Distance Education, 23(2), 105- 122. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles and practice (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. (2000). Recommendations: National inquiry into rural and remote education. Sydney, Australia: Author. Lowrie, T. (2006). Establishing school-family partnerships in distance education contexts: Pedagogical engagement in isolated settings. Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 96-114. Lowrie, T. (2007). Learning engagement in distance and rural settings: Four Australian cases. Learning Environments Research, 10, 35-51. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA]. (2005). National report on schooling in Australia 2005. Carlton South, Australia: Author. http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1F6CDA9A1D5E6E9DCA25748E001292BF/$File/41020_2008_1.pdf http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1F6CDA9A1D5E6E9DCA25748E001292BF/$File/41020_2008_1.pdf 13 New South Wales Department of Education and Training [DET]. (2010). Discussion paper: A vision for distance learning for the 21st century. Bathurst, Australia: Rural and Distance Education, Equity Programs and Distance Education Directorate, New South Wales Department of Education and Training. Smith, T. J. (2006). Self-study through narrative enquiry: Fostering identity in mathematics teacher education. In P. Grootenboer, R. Zevenbergen, & R. Chinnapean (Eds.), Identities, cultures and learning spaces (Proceedings of the 29th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Vol. 2, pp. 471-478). Canberra, Australia: MERGA. Somerville, M. (2010). A place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(3), 326-344. Somerville, M., Plunkett, M., & Dyson, M. (2010). New teachers learning rural and regional Australia. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 39-55. Stokes, H., Stafford, J., & Holdsworth, R. (n.d.). Rural and remote school education: A survey for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Melbourne, Australia: Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne. Retrieved from http://www.hreoc.gov.au/pdf/human_rights/rural_remote/scoping_survey.pdf http://www.hreoc.gov.au/pdf/human_rights/rural_remote/scoping_survey.pdf 14 Author contact details and bio notes Corresponding author: Name: Professor Tom Lowrie Address: RIPPLE, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga NSW 2678, AUSTRALIA Electronic mail: tlowrie@csu.edu.au Telephone: +61 2 6933 4328 Facsimile: +61 2 6933 2962 Authors: Tom Lowrie Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia. Email: tlowrie@csu.edu.au Tom Lowrie is the Director of the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE) at Charles Sturt University. A large body of his research has investigated the extent to which communication technologies impact on the education community including teachers, children, and their parents, as well as children’s engagement in out-of-school settings. Robyn Jorgensen Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Email: r.jorgensen@griffith.edu.au Robyn Jorgensen is Professor of Mathematics Education in the Faculty of Education at Griffith University. She has focused her work in the area of equity, particularly focusing on the social practices that contribute to the patterns of success (or not) of social, cultural and linguistic groups. Her strong interest in equity has been in the area of social class, Indigenous issues, and language and culture. mailto:tlowrie@csu.edu.au mailto:tlowrie@csu.edu.au mailto:r.jorgensen@griffith.edu.au 
work_35juh662afemngwj5lboc3p25m	----	A Research about Distance Education Students’ Satisfaction with Education Quality at an Accounting Program Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2733 – 2737 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.556 WCES 2012 education quality at an accounting program Filiz Angay Kutluk a *, Mustafa Gulmez b a Akdeniz University, b Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey Abstract The aim of this paper is to Data is collected by first degree data collection method. Data contains students at Accounting Distance Education Program in two universities of Turkey. Frequencies of distance education notions and means and standard deviations for statements, T-test and One Way Anova analyses are performed. Students are pleased about Accounting Distance Education, but not pleased in the dialogue interaction opportunities for other students or instructors. Females, vocational high school graduates and full time working students agree with some of the statements more than others do. It is thought that students are satisfied with this education system which provides great convenience in time and cost. The deficiencies and defective points of distance education are also detected with this study and suggestions are offered to practitioners. 12 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance education, accounting 1. Introduction Recently, a growth in distance education programs can be seen because of the time and space restriction of face- to-face learning system. It is also economically advantageous and preferable by working students. One of the definitions of United States Distance Learnin organizational framework and process of providing instruction at a distance. Distance education takes place when a teacher and student(s) are physically separated, and technology (i.e., voice, video, data, or print) is used to bridge the inst 45). Web based distance education systems should have some characteristics such as user identification and user management, preparation of course contents, course management, starting student specific programs, setting/delivery of homework and project, preparation and holding examination and test, monitoring and analysing student behavior, determination of student success status, establishment and management of interactive communication environment (Al & Madran, 2004, p. 266-268). the technology and their ability to overcome interactive problems have been found to be important factors that can influence distance education experience (Salisbury et al., 2002, p. 66). Albrechtsen et al. (2001, p. 107) indicate that distance education courses have been available since the beginning of the 19th century in the form of the * Filiz Angay Kutluk, Tel: 00 90 242 4432067 E-mail address: angay@akdeniz.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 2734 Filiz Angay Kutluk and Mustafa Gulmez / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2733 – 2737 correspondence course which offered education and degrees to students who were not able to attend a school as traditional students. But there were problems like the long delays in communication, the lack of interaction, the inability to monitor the progress. However, distance education has overcome many problems with the advent of new technologies, like satellite technology, video-conferencing, and the internet in particular. Salimi (2007, p. 19) indicates that that are entire accounting degree programs which offered online at the undergraduate and graduate the course needs to have the active presence of the instructor, the development of an online sense of community, participation and discussion by the students, a rich set of online presentation materials and study aids and inclusion -20). Murphy & Crosser (2010, p. 19) mention the retention in online class by stating that about 40% of undergraduate students complete the courses with grades of C or better, when compered with on-campus students; twice as many distance students fail their courses. She also discusses about some casuses of retention, such as wrong type of student (e.g. lower-achieving student) and low-self regulation student in distance education. The purpose of this paper is to examine the satisfaction of the students of distance education in accounting program in terms of education quality. In Turkey, three universities have distance education in accounting programs two of which were included in this study. 2. Literature Review The study of Zarghami & Hausafus (2002, p. 297,304-305) measured the satisfaction of students enrolled in different interactive televised (ITV) courses offered both as origination sites on-campus and at a distance remote site. ITV courses were taken in content areas such as human development, political science, agriculture education, family and consumer sciences, administration, economics, business and mathematics. According to results, both origination and remote students were satisfied-remote students were more satisfied-with their experiences, agreed that facilities and technologies promoted effective communication and learning, the content of the courses was well organized and instructional materials were relevant and helpful. Popovich & Neel (2005, p. 231, 239) surveyed business school deans at institutions accredited by the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) on distance education programs offered at their respective schools and examined sixteen characteristics of the distance education programs such as the number of business schools with distance education offerings, schools not offering distance education programs, future plans, degree level of programs, number of years offered, number of graduates, length of programs, public or private institutions, grant funding, faculty qualifications and student faculty ratio, method of delivery, use of a librarian, geographic areas served, tuition rates, availability of financial aid, and the successful aspects. This study provided evidence that there were positive aspects to AACSB International business school distance education programs. The results of the study may be helpful in making decisions about new distance education programs and in developing existing programs. Gagne & Shepherd (2001, p. 58-64) analyzed the performance of two class sections in an introductory graduate level accounting course; one section was a traditional campus-based class and the other section was distance education class. According to the results, the performance of the students in distance course was similar to the performance of students in the on-campus course. The students' evaluations of the course were similar, but students in the online course were less satisfied with instructor availability than the on-campus students. Perdue and Valentine (1998, p.29-30:40) examined the beliefs of certified public accountants (CPAs) in the state of Georgia about using distance education in continuing professional education. CPAs believed that distance education was an effective learning method. They also believed that the technological capabilities necessary to participate in distance education were available. 3.Method There are distance educations accounting programs in only 3 universities in Turkey. All of them were tried to be reached, but only from 2 of them had answered. There are 102 students in distance education accounting program of the 2 universities. Data collection method is non-random sampling. A survey is sent to the students by e-mail and 34 2735 Filiz Angay Kutluk and Mustafa Gulmez / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2733 – 2737 surveys were returned. (Rate of return is 33%). The survey is organized by previous studies which examined the satisfaction level of the distance education students (Bennett, 2010; Pizarro, 2010; Zhang, 2009; Zarghami & Hausafus, 2002; Mayzer & Dejong, 2003) and by the authors. Survey includes 2 sections: One section consists of 16 questions about distance education and demographic specialities of the students. Second section of the survey includes 12 Likert type questions with the scale interval of 5: Strongly Agree to 1: Strongly Disagree. The Cronbach Alpha level of reliability analysis is 87,1%. Frequencies of distance education notions and means and standard deviations for statements about satisfaction of accounting distance education are shown in the tables. T-test and One Way Anova analyses are performed to detect the differences of the opinion of the students. 4.Findings The highest frequencies of the demographic specialities are written below. Descriptive statistics for the notions about accounting, means and standard deviations for for Statements about Satisfaction of Accounting Distance Education, t tests and One Way Anova analysis results are shown in Tables. Table 1: Descriptive statistics for notions about accounting Item Variable f % Variable f % Receiving any training to prepare for online learning Yes - - No 34 100 Thinking to have adequate training to take the online accounting course Yes 2 5,9 No 32 94,1 Presentation and delivery appropriate for the way he/she learns, especially in the presantation of financial statements. Yes 14 41,2 No 20 58,8 Having access to online course material from home Yes 24 70,6 No 10 29,4 To experience any technical difficulties Yes 7 20,6 No 27 79,4 If the course materials and online resources were adequate Yes 19 55,9 No 15 44,1 To have a previous experience taking web-based education courses before taking distance education courses Yes 33 97,1 No 1 2,9 Preferred method of learning Face to face Web-based/Face to face 23 9 67,6 26,5 Web-based Do not have one 1 1 2,9 2,9 Rating of overall learning experience with the accounting course taken on web A pleasant experience Challenging experience 18 12 52,9 35,3 A bad experience Other 1 2 2,9 5,9 Overall experience regarding of the content of distance education accounting courses Excellent Good Adequate - 8 20 - 23,5 58,8 Below average Very poor 3 1 8,8 2,9 Overall experience regarding of the delivery of distance education accounting courses Excellent Good Adequate 1 - 27 2,9 - 79,4 Below average Very poor 2 2 5,9 5,9 Log in online course server interval in a week when taking online course Every day Five times Three times 2 9 7 5,9 26,5 20,6 Twice Once 3 11 8,8 32,4 Most of the students are female (64,3%), over 27 years old (55,9%), graduated from Vocational High School (88,2%) and working full time (73,5%). According to Table 1, their preferred method of learning is mostly face to face (67,6%), but most of them think that accounting course taken on the web is a pleasant experience (52,9%) and most of them log in online course server once a week (32,4%). As can be seen in Table 2, students mostly agree the meaningful dialogue interactions the either through e-mail, telephone, online chat, and/or 2736 Filiz Angay Kutluk and Mustafa Gulmez / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2733 – 2737 Table 2: Means and standard deviations for statements about satisfaction of accounting distance education STATEMENTS Mean SD 1- 4,76 0,83 2-It is easier for me to read the overhead camera rather than a blackboard, especially the financial tables. 4,28 1,14 3-I learn accounting courses more in a distance education environment than I would in a traditional classroom. 3,19 0,97 4-There are adequate opportunities to have meaningful dialogue interactions with the instructor of the course, either through e-mail, telephone, online chat, and/or face to face. 2,91 0,62 5-There are ample opportunities to have meaningful dialogue interactions with other students in the course. 2,38 1,26 6-Instructor encouraged me to participate in the class. 2,88 1,19 7-Instructor was enthusiastic in teaching accounting courses. 3,91 1,00 8- 4,16 1,05 9-Distribution and collection of accounting courses documents were organized. 3,87 0,99 10-The use of interactive multimedia was helpful to understand the content. 4,34 1,00 11-Distance accounting education is more effective than traditional accounting education. 12- 3,53 3,00 1,41 1,16 Table 3: t-test between gender and statements of satisfaction of accounting distance education Statements Group n Mean* St. D. t test p Accounting instructor was enthusiastic in teaching accounting courses. Male 10 3,20 1,135 -3,046 0,005 Female 22 4,23 0,752 Distribution and collection of accounting courses documents were organized. Male 9 3,22 1,093 -2,532 0,017 Female 22 4,14 0,834 Distance accounting education is more effective than traditional accounting education. Male 10 2,40 1,075 3,589 0,001 Female 22 4,05 1,253 *Scale interval-5:Strongly agree 1:Strongly Disagree p<0,05 As can be seen in Table 3, Females are more agree with the mentioned statements than males. Table 4: t-test between graduation and statements of satisfaction of accounting distance education Statements Group n Mean* St. D. t test p It is easier for me to read the overhead camera rather than a blackboard, especially the financial tables. Gymnasium 3 2,33 1,528 -3,675 0,001 Voc. high sch. 29 4,48 0,911 Accounting instructor was enthusiastic in teaching accounting courses. Gymnasium 3 2,33 1,528 -3,302 0,002 Voc. high sch. 29 4,07 0,799 Distribution and collection of accounting courses documents were organized. Gymnasium 2 2,00 1,414 -3,141 0,004 Voc. high sch. 29 4,00 0,845 The use of interactive multimedia was helpful to understand the content. Gymnasium 3 2,67 1,528 -3,571 0,001 Voc.high sch. 29 4,52 0,785 * Scale interval-5: Strongly agree 1: Strongly Disagree p<0,05 Table 4 shows that there are differences between graduation and the statements of High school are more agree with the mentioned statements than students graduated from Gymnasiun. As shown in Table 5, there are differences between working status and the two statements mentioned above. than a blackboard, especially class 2737 Filiz Angay Kutluk and Mustafa Gulmez / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2733 – 2737 Table 5: One Way Anova between working status and statements of satisfaction of accounting distance education Statements Working Status n Mean* St. D. F p It is easier for me to read the overhead camera rather than a blackboard, especially the financial tables. Full time 23 4,65 0,714 6,481 0,005 Part time 4 3,75 0,957 Not working 5 3,00 1,871 I learn accounting courses more in a distance education environment than I would in a traditional classroom. Full time 23 3,43 0,662 4,837 0,015 Part time 4 2.00 1,414 Not working 5 3,00 1,225 * Scale interval-5: Strongly agree 1: Strongly Disagree p<0,05 5.Conclusion and Suggestions The purpose of this paper is to examine the satisfaction of the students of distance education in accounting program in terms of the education quality. Student think that distance education in accounting is important for those nd using multimedia is helpful to understand the content. They are not pleased about opportunities to have meaningful dialogue and interactions with other students and instructors. Females and the students who were graduated from vocational high schools are more agree about some statements such as documents were organized. Full time working students agree more than part time working or not working students in some of the statements such as reading from the overhead camera is easier than blackboard and learning accounting courses more in a distance education environment than in a traditional classroom. Accounting teachers should offer more opportunities to students for a meaningful dialogue by using multimedia. Murphy & Crosser (2010, p.19) state that one of the characteristics of students in distance education is low self regulation, so accounting teachers should focus on the low self regulated students to enhance their effectiveness. Distance education is an alternative to traditional education, especially for working people. But to offer a qualified education, technical infrastructure, course design and teacher education for using multimedia should be planned well. This study reached two universities in Turkey. It is suggested that more universities in different countries should be reached and the effectiveness of the distance education in accounting should be compared. References Al, U., & Madran, R. O. (2004). Web-based distance education systems: required features and standards. 5(2), 259-271. Albrechtsen, K., Mariger, H., & Parker, C. (2001). distance education and the impact of technology in Europe and Japan. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(3), 107-116. Bennett, K. W. (2010). A case study of perceptions of students, teachers, and administrators on distance learning and music education in Newfoundland and Labrador: A constructivist perspective. Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada. Gagne, M., & Shepherd, M. G. (2001). Distance learning in accounting: A comparison between distance and traditional graduate accounting class. T.h.e. Journal, 28(9), 58-64. Mayzer, R., & Dejong, C. (2003). Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 14(1), 37-52. Murphy, A. & Crosser, R. (2010). Solving self-regulated learner issues. Strategic Finance, 91(9), 19-20. Perdue, K.J. & Valentine, T. (1998). Beliefs of certified public accountants toward distance education: a statewide Georgia survey, The American Journal of Distance Education, 12(3), 29-41. Pizarro, R. A. E., (2010). The lived experience and perceptions of being a distance learner: A phenomenological study of a web -based education program in Latin America (Web-Latina). Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New Mexico State University, New Mexico. Popovich, C. J. & Neel, R. E. (2005), Characteristics of distance education programs at accredited business schools , The American Journal of Distance Education, 19(4), 229-240. Salimi, A. Y. (2007). The promise and challenges for distance education in accounting. Strategic Finance, 88(7), 19-21. Salisbury, W. D., Pearson, R. A., Miller, D. W., & Marett, L. K. (2002). The limits of information: A cautionary tale about o ne course delivery experience in the distance education environment. Indiana University Pres e-Service Journal, 1(2), 65-81. USDLA, United States Distance Learning Association, Glossary. Retrieved November 26, 2011, from http://www.usdla.org/assets/pdf_files/Glossary_Distance.pdf. Zarghami, F. & Hausafus, C. O. (2002). Graduate student satisfaction with interactive televised courses based on the site of participation. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 3(3), 295-306. Zhang, J. (2009). Exploring education major focused adult learners' perspectives and practices of web-based distance education in sixteen universities. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New Mexico State University, New Mexico. 
work_35y3k2gd4zg3hcchsscfvthkfy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_3anvdmlw4fd3fimivlm7qlv7ma	----	Journal of Research on Technology in Education 427 A Comprehensive Look at Distance Education in the k–12 Context Kerry Lynn Rice Boise State University Abstract This review provides a comprehensive examination of the literature surround- ing the current state of K–12 distance education. The growth in K–12 distance education follows in the footsteps of expanded learning opportunities at all levels of public education and training in corporate environments. Implementation has been accomplished with a limited research base, often drawing from studies in adult distance education and policies adapted from traditional learning en- vironments. This review of literature provides an overview of the field of distance education with a focus on the research conducted in K–12 distance education environments. (Keywords: Distance education, distance learning, virtual schools, cyber-schools, K–12.) Adult distance education is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years a growing number of distance programs have been aimed at primary and second- ary school students. National policy initiatives focused on expanding educa- tional opportunities for all students (Hassell & Terrell, 2004; U. S. Department of Education, 2004; Web-Based Education Commission, 2000), funding short- ages, overcrowded brick and mortar facilities (Fulton, 2002; Clark, 2001), and exploration of alternative routes for education (Collins, 2001; Herring, 2004) are just a few examples of the forces fueling the expansion of K–12 distance education programs and schools. This article presents a comprehensive examination of the literature surround- ing the current state of K–12 distance education. Despite the noted lack of quality studies in distance education in general (Bernard, Abrami, Lou, & Borokhovski, 2004; Phipps & Merisotis, 1999), the research base in K–12 dis- tance education continues to expand and includes both comparative studies and studies that attempt to identify the factors associated with instructional quality and effectiveness. In conducting this review, a general search of the literature was performed in numerous databases, journals, Web sites, and bibliographic resources using the descriptors: distance learning, online learning, Web-based instruction, distance education, online education, interactions, virtual K–12, virtual program, virtual school, e-learning, cyber school, and cyber charter. Electronic searches were conducted in the LILI-D, ERIC, Wilson Education, and EBSCO databases. In addition, a systematic search of the journals specifically related to distance education and/or educational research was also conducted. These included Re- view of Educational Research, Distance Learning, International Journal of Distance Education, American Journal of Distance Education, Educational Technology, Jour- 428 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 nal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Educational Technology and Society, and Open Learning. More than 20 national and state Web sites relating to distance learning and/or virtual schools were searched, including the U.S. Department of Education and The National Center for Education Statistics Web sites. OVErVIEw OF THE FIELD Distance education, distance learning, e-learning, Web-based instruction, vir- tual schools, and online learning are all terms used interchangeably to describe this broad, somewhat confusing, and constantly changing field of nontradition- al instruction (Carnevale, 2001; Saba, 2005). Although distance education has been defined from a variety of perspectives (Kaplan-Leiderson, n.d.; National Center for Educational Statistics, 1999), perhaps the most comprehensive defi- nition is that offered in a published monograph by The Association for Educa- tional Communications and Technology (Schlosser & Simonson, 2002). They define distance education as: Institution-based, formal education where the learning group is sepa- rated, and where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources, and instructors. (p. 1) According to Schlosser and Simonson, four main components are critical to this definition. First, in order to differentiate distance education from self study, dis- tance education must be institutionally based. Second, there must be a separation of teacher and learner in terms of geography, time, and knowledge of the concepts to be taught. Thirdly, some form of interactive telecommunications must be avail- able for learners to interact with each other, with the resources of instruction, and with the teacher. In this case, telecommunications is defined as “communicating at a distance” (p. 2) and does not necessarily mean the use of electronic media but can also include non-electronic forms of communication such as the postal system. The final concept stresses the inclusion of instructional environments and resources that facilitate learning experiences and promote learning. The means by which distance education is accomplished are varied and may include video conferencing, audio conferencing, Web-based communications, or any combination of electronic communication and management tools (Rural School and Community Trust and the State Technology Directors Association, 2003). In addition to the variety in types of media tools used, the instruction may be delivered synchronously, with students and teachers communicating in real time, asynchronously, with students working at different times, or any combina- tion of the two, often with the inclusion of phone conversations, online chats, or face-to-face meetings. Distance education programs may also be self-paced, struc- tured to fit into the traditional academic calendar, or fall anywhere in between. As in adult distance education programs, K–12 distance education exists on a continuum from traditional “home study” or text-based correspondence programs to programs that utilize the full potential of technology-mediated instruction. Distance education programs targeting grade levels K–12, often re- ferred to as “virtual schools” or “cyber schools,” are operated by a variety of enti- ties that may include states, school districts, charter schools, consortia, higher Journal of Research on Technology in Education 429 education institutions, for-profit companies, or nonprofit organizations (Fulton & Kober, 2002). Researchers have attempted to define the multiple methods in which distance education programs may be organized within traditional state and local educational systems. Watson, Winograd, and Kalmon (2004) have identified five basic types of on- line programs that exist across two dimensions. One dimension concerns how the program operates within the state’s educational hierarchy, such as statewide, multi-district or single district. The other concerns whether the program oper- ates as a cyber school where students are enrolled and garner credits and diplo- mas, or provides supplemental online courses to students who are enrolled in another school. Table 1 (below) outlines five types of online programs (Watson et al., 2004). Table 1: Five Types of k–12 Online Programs Type Description Statewide supple- mental programs Students take individual courses but are enrolled in a physical school or cyber school within the state. These programs are authorized by the state and overseen by state education governing agencies. District-level supple- mental programs Are typically operated by autonomous districts and are typically not tracked by state agencies. Single-district cyber schools Provide an alternative to the traditional face-to-face school environment and are offered by individual districts for students within that district. Multi-district cyber schools Are operated within individual school districts but enroll students from other school districts within the state. This represents the largest growth sector in K–12 online learn- ing. Cyber charters Are chartered within a single district but can draw stu- dents from across the state. In many cases they are con- nected in some way to commercial curriculum providers. In addition to defining potential organizational schemes for K–12 distance education programs, descriptive, anecdotal, and survey evidence identifies a broad population of students served by this nontraditional form of education. Distance education programs can serve entire populations of students that tra- ditional classrooms do not by providing increased opportunity through choice, tutoring, and supplemental services to: students who live in remote areas, stu- dents in home school settings, those who are hospitalized or homebound for health reasons, professional athletes, students who are incarcerated, students who need flexible schedules for employment, or students who want to enrich their education, move at their own pace, or experience learning that fits their particular learning style (Bogden, 2003; Chaney, 2001; Patrick, 2004). Virtual schooling provides flexibility to meet scheduling demands, offers an opportuni- ty for students to take courses over holiday or summer breaks, and can provide 430 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 remediation and tutoring on demand (Fulton & Kober, 2002; Rural School and Community Trust et al., 2003; Setzer & Lewis, 2005). In 2001, it was estimated that 14 states had “a planned or operational state-sanc- tioned, state-level virtual school in place” (Clark, 2001, p. 1), with an estimated en- rollment of 40,000–50,000 K–12 students. A 2003 report by the Education Com- mission of the States (Long, 2004) estimated 60 cyber charter schools in 13 states for the 2002–2003 school year, a number that was double that of the previous year. The estimated enrollment for that year was 100,000 students (National Association of State Boards of Education [NASBE], 2002). Although exact numbers are dif- ficult to determine, a more recent report estimates that virtually every state now has some form of cyber-school operating within its boundaries (Long, 2004). Despite the potential for expansion of distance education programs at all lev- els, several factors have been identified that may limit growth. These include: course development and/or purchasing costs; limited technological in- frastructure to support distance education; concerns about course qual- ity; restrictive federal, state, or local laws or policies; concerns about receiving funding based on student attendance for distance education courses; or some other reason. (Setzer & Lewis, 2005, p. 15) In addition to the impediments identified in the NCES study, factors associ- ated with equity, access, and accountability have also been identified (Fulton & Kober, 2002; Watson et al., 2004). Policy initiatives at all levels and by a variety of entities and organizations continue to address these issues and will be dis- cussed in detail below. POLICy Leading the way in efforts to promote a change in traditional views of edu- cation in the K–12 environment is the National Education Technology Plan published by the U. S. Department of Education: Toward a New Golden Age in American Education: How the Internet, the Law and Today’s Students are Revolu- tionizing Expectations (2004). The plan proposes seven main objectives to assist schools in implementing systematic change: (1) strengthen leadership, (2) con- sider innovative budgeting, (3) improve teacher training, (4) support e-learning and virtual schools, (5) encourage broadband access, (6) move toward digital content, and (7) improve achievement through student data management. Particularly relevant for this report is the plan’s emphasis on e-learning as one of the key issues facing federal, state, and local education agencies. Their recom- mendations for states, districts, and schools include: • Provide every student access to e-learning. • Enable every teacher to participate in e-learning training. • Encourage the use of e-learning options to meet the No Child Left Be- hind requirements for highly qualified teachers, supplemental services and parental choice. • Explore creative ways to fund e-learning opportunities. • Develop quality measures and accreditation standards for e-learning that mirror those required for course credit. (p. 42) Journal of Research on Technology in Education 431 The emphasis on virtual schools in the National Education Technology Plan is no coincidence. Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (U.S. Depart- ment of Education, 2001), virtual schools are considered a legitimate option for school choice: “A virtual school can be among schools to which eligible students are offered the opportunity to transfer as long as that school is a public elementary or secondary school as defined by state law” (U.S. Department of Education, 2004, p. 13). In fact, virtual schools may present the only option for districts that lack the resources necessary to meet the school choice require- ments of NCLB with traditional brick and mortar classrooms (Hassel & Terrell, 2004). The current and predicted trend in online course enrollment seems to underscore this need. Implementing these and other similar recommendations has been the topic of numerous state-level, local-level, and organizational policy briefs, initiatives, and existing distance education program evaluations (Freedman, Darrow, & Watson, 2002; Fulton & Kober, 2002; National Association of State Boards of Educa- tion, 2001; National School Boards Association, 2002) But, researchers from the NCREL (Watson et al., 2004) concluded from empirical data as well as anecdotal evidence that only a few states have established policies in place for the develop- ment of K–12 online learning programs. Further, they found that in most cases, online learning is little understood by policymakers. The result is the application of existing policies—policies that address the needs of physical schools—to online programs, which may not fit well and thus may not be in the best interests of stu- dents. They urge states to “develop appropriate mechanisms to provide a frame- work of sustainability and value that will enable online education to flourish and to meet the diverse needs of students” (Watson et al., 2004, p. 7). Many of the issues addressed in the preceding policy guidelines have been driven by evaluations of fully developed programs already in place. Perhaps the earliest and most widely known K–12 online education programs are the Flor- ida Virtual School, a statewide program, and the Virtual High School, created by the Hudson, Massachusetts Public Schools and the Concord Consortium, a collaborative endeavor between 125 high schools across the United States (Clair, 2002; Freedman, Darrow, & Watson, 2002). Although these programs and other states with mature K–12 online education programs offer compre- hensive program evaluations, they offer little guidance in the way of standard- ized policy development. Of the 11 states included in the first NCREL study (2004), California and Minnesota had developed the most extensive policies regarding online education. A subsequent report, published by NCREL in 2005, further elaborates on the findings in the initial report by examining state level policy and practice in all 50 states (Watson, 2005). In this update, the author concludes that “about 50 percent of all states have one or both of: (a) a statewide online learning pro- gram with developed policies and practices; (b) state-level policies that govern online learning programs across the state” (p. 120). In addition to these general conclusions, several recommendations are offered. First, although no single state has an ideal set of policies, those policies that have been developed can serve as examples for other states. Second, basic research examining the effectiveness 432 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 of online learning and the costs associated with it is needed in order to inform policy decisions. Associated with this recommendation is the call for common measures across states and programs to benefit research and policy, and the use of data gathered from several states with reporting requirements already in existence to inform future policy decisions. Third, although there has been and continues to be an informal sharing of ideas and best practices, there has been no formal attempt to document best practices across programs. These reports and others underscore the need for the creation of a central body to facilitate the standardization of online education through the sharing of information regarding policies and practices. The North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) (2005), founded in September 2003, is the result of efforts by those involved in the early development of virtual schools and the need for communication and interaction among them. NACOL represents the inter- ests of administrators, practitioners, and students involved in online learning. Major initiatives include: conducting research to enhance K–12 online learn- ing, encouraging collaboration among stakeholders, and promoting the success and effectiveness of online learning. In addition, one of the strategic objectives of NACOL is the creation and management of a K–12 online learning knowl- edge base that contains current, accurate information about online learning in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As an example, NACOL currently lists more than 144 online schools or programs in its online learning database. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) (2005) has also taken on the role of disseminator of information related to effective online learning practice and policy. As part of their Educational Technology Cooperative, the newly devel- oped Online Learning Task Group is one example of their efforts to develop and improve implementation of quality e-learning programs in the K–12 context. k–12 DISTAnCE EDUCATIOn rESEArCH Although research in the areas relative to general technology and Internet use in schools is fairly abundant, a paucity of research exists when examining high school students enrolled in virtual schools, and the research base is smaller still when the population of students is furthered narrowed to the elementary grades. In an attempt to present a complete picture of research in this field, studies for this review were drawn from a variety of resources, including refer- eed journals, conference proceedings, government reports, dissertations, unpub- lished studies, and reports from public and private organizations. With such little available research, and the intent of an exhaustive and evaluative review, only strictly anecdotal studies were deemed inappropriate for inclusion. Unlike early research that focused more heavily on distance technologies that involved audio and video conferencing (Downs & Moller, 1999), current re- search focuses more closely on Web-based technologies, delivery systems, and the specific attributes of those systems and their relationship with student learn- ing outcomes. In this review, research was categorized into two broad categories: (1) Comparative studies examining student performance in distance education versus student performance in traditional, face-to-face classrooms and (2) stud- ies examining the qualities and characteristics of the teaching/learning experi- Journal of Research on Technology in Education 433 ence. This category was further narrowed into the areas of learner characteris- tics, learner supports, and affective learning domains. Comparative Studies As with the research in adult distance education, the starting point for most studies in K–12 distance education is an analysis of student achievement rela- tive to traditional face-to-face instruction (Cavanaugh, 2001). Media compari- son studies in K–12 distance education appear to support the same “no signifi- cant difference phenomenon” reported in adult studies (Phipps & Merisotis, 1999; Russell, 1999). Analysis in this area is particularly difficult due to a lack of consistent experimental comparative methodologies that control for a mul- titude of confounding variables. Studies in this area are also often challenged with issues of small sample size, dissimilar comparison groups, and differences in instructor experience and training (Kozma et al., 2000; Mills, 2003). McLeod, Hughes, Brown, Choi, and Maeda (2005) attempted to limit these challenges by controlling for student demographics and academic characteristics in their study examining academic performance of students enrolled in Algebra I classes in three virtual schools and two face-to-face schools in three different states. Six teachers and 81 students participated in the study. The findings in- dicated that virtual students outperformed students in traditional face-to-face classes. Particularly noteworthy about their findings is that students in the face- to-face classes were much more likely to be in a college preparatory program than virtual students, and virtual students were more likely to be enrolled in the math course because of a previous failure. Unfortunately, a number of addition- al variables, such as early dropout and voluntary testing in the virtual school, raise questions concerning the causality of the findings. Fortunately, two meta-analyses exist that may assist in generating a better understanding of the findings of research studies that have examined student achievement through comparative studies (Cavanaugh, 2001; Cavanaugh, Gil- lan, Kromrey, Hess, & Blomeyer, 2004). Meta-analysis is an appropriate meth- odology because it allows comparison of different studies by computing an effect size for each study, as well as investigation into the relationship among study features and outcomes. According to Krathwohl (1998), “a meta-analysis can plot the nature of causal relation, show how it is affected by other variables, and determine where evidence is needed for more complete understanding” (p. 152). In a meta-analysis conducted in 2001, Cavanaugh analyzed the effect sizes of 19 experimental and quasi-experimental studies (n = 929) examining student academic achievement in K–12 interactive distance education settings in the research from 1980–1998. The findings indicated higher effect sizes consistently reported in distance education environments characterized by smaller sized groups, shorter duration, and distance education that was used to supplement or support traditional classroom instruction rather than as the primary mode of instruction. The significance of the findings have been called into question, however, because at the time the initial meta-analysis was conducted, the K–12 virtual environment was so new that no achievement data from students in fully online programs were available (Blomeyer, 2002). 434 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 A subsequent meta-analysis published in 2004 by Cavanaugh, Gillan, Krom- rey, Hess, and Blomeyer examined 116 effect sizes on nearly 40 factors from 14 Web-delivered K–12 distance programs between 1999 and 2004. Using only studies that fit the definition of scientifically-based research as defined by the U.S. Department of Education in its call for evidence-based program decisions through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (U.S. Department of Educa- tion, 2001), 14 studies with 116 outcomes were examined (N = 7,561 students) The findings from this study support previous findings of adult online educa- tion programs that suggest there is no significant difference between courses de- livered online and those delivered in traditional face-to-face classrooms (Phipps & Merisotis, 1999). The researchers concluded, “As distance education is cur- rently practiced, educators and other stakeholders can reasonably expect learning in a well-designed distance education environment to be equivalent to learning in a well-designed classroom environment” (Cavanaugh et al., 2004, p. 20). In addition to the findings, the report contains extensive recommendations for future research, policy, and practice. The authors encourage policy makers and evaluators to move beyond questioning whether distance education is as effective as traditional face-to-face instruction and begin to evaluate the specific characteristics of effective distance education programs in the K–12 arena. Fol- lowing in the footsteps of the national call to action for those in the adult dis- tance education field (Web-Based Education Commission, 2000), the authors of this report call for the use of comprehensive program evaluation planning to lead the way for quality research agendas in K–12. It is the authors’ contention that the detailed collection and reporting of data can only begin when common goals are identified by policy makers and evaluators. The recommendation by Cavanaugh et al. to redirect research efforts has been echoed by others in the field. Roblyer and Knezek (2003) suggest that com- parative studies tend to be one dimensional in their design, focusing only on the delivery medium (the use of technology vs. no technology) rather than the multidimensional aspects of teaching practice and the learning process. These arguments are also supported by research in adult distance education. Sener (2005) and Bernard et al. (2004) argue that even when significant differences are found, they are more likely to be attributable to factors unrelated to delivery mode, such as instructor experience and quality, or variations among student cohorts. Indeed, Bernard et al. also found differences in results based on meth- odological features used. For example, studies that involved researcher-made tests favored distance learning over face-to-face, while studies using teacher- made tests favored face-to-face classrooms over distance learning. Calculated ef- fect sizes favored distance learning while estimated effect sizes favored the class- room. Although none of the effect sizes in his meta-analysis were significant, the differences illuminate the larger problem of confounding variables inherent is this type of research. The undeniable fact is that some students succeed in the virtual educational environment and some fail just as they do in traditional classroom environ- ments. The key lies in understanding the critical components in an educational context that promote and encourage student success, not the media that was Journal of Research on Technology in Education 435 used to deliver the instruction (Clark, 1994; Gunawardena & McIsaac, 2004). Blomeyer (2002) suggests In final analysis, online learning or e-learning isn’t about digital technologies any more than classroom teaching is about blackboards. E-learning should be about creating and deploying technology systems that enable constructive human interaction and support the improve- ment of all teaching and learning. (p. 19) Critical Components in Teaching and Learning Building upon the findings of comparative studies are a variety of studies that examine the qualities of both the learning experience and teaching practice in on- line environments. Although the majority of comparative studies may present only a one-dimensional approach, the studies in this realm are an attempt to address the criticisms mentioned above—the failure of most comparative studies to take into account the complex systems in which distance education operates. Rather than comparing, these studies attempt to identify the important variables that cre- ate successful and effective online learning environments and make real efforts to transform learning experiences and teaching practices. Research in this section of the review has been categorized into studies that examine three areas: (1) Learner characteristics, (2) learner supports, and (3) affective learning domains. Learner Characteristics The relationship between personal variables, (i.e., learning style, self-esteem beliefs, demographics, etc.), and success is the focus of studies in this area. We have learned from adult research that many factors coexist and may be respon- sible for promoting student success in distance education environments. For example, greater learner autonomy and student responsibility are characteristics often found in successful distance education students (Fjortoft, 1995; Morris & Wu, 2005; Parker, 1999). In examining distance education studies, however, Cavanaugh et al. (2004) warn that it is important to differentiate between adult learners and learners in K–12 classroom settings. Young learners may present fundamentally different characteristics than their adult counterparts. In addi- tion, although most adults have developed these characteristics to some extent, younger students need to acquire necessary skills through careful instruction. What are the characteristics of the typical distance education student? Ac- curate statistical data of younger students participating in distance education is difficult to locate. In his evaluation of a Midwestern virtual high school, Mills (2003) examined frequency counts of 2,600 online student enrollments and found that the typical online student was just as likely to be male as female, and was an A or B student who was either a junior or senior. Roblyer and Mar- shall (2003) found that of the students who participated in their study of the Concord Consortium’s Virtual High School Project (N = 135), about half were female, most were 16–17 years old, and 70% identified themselves as white. What seems to be more important than specific demographic descriptors are learner attributes that may indicate a student’s potential success or failure in dis- 436 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 tance education environments. Most reports examining characteristics of online students hypothesize that a combination of factors may contribute to student success. As with comparative research, the research examining student charac- teristics consists mainly of studies that are descriptive and anecdotal in nature. Studies that examine reasons for participating in distance education may offer insight into the relationship between motivation and student success. Students across studies appear to enroll in online courses for similar reasons. Convenience, flexibility in scheduling, credit recovery, accelerated learning op- portunities, conflict avoidance, and the ability to take courses not offered at a local school are just some of the reasons identified in the research (Mills, 2003; Tunison & Noonan, 2001) Research also indicates that factors such as student attributes and their choice of course delivery method may also influence mo- tivation (Roblyer, 1999; Tunison & Noonan, 2001). Hypothesizing that there is a relationship between student attributes, motivation, and success, Roblyer and Marshall (2003) used the results from an educational success instrument to predict student success in online courses (n = 94). Success was defined as pass- ing with a grade in the course of A, B, or C (n = 73). Students who withdrew or received a D or F in the course were not included in the passing group (n = 21). Seventy items within four major factors thought to be related to successful behavior in online environments were constructed and presented as a survey to students enrolled in virtual high school courses. Descriminant analysis of the 70 items indicated that the instrument was successful at predicting student success with 100% confidence, or failure with 95% confidence. The first factor in the prediction instrument, achievement and self-esteem beliefs, revolves around the degree of locus of control and self-efficacy beliefs that students have. This factor is important to the success of students because of the degree of self-motivation necessary to complete work in an online environ- ment. The second factor, responsibility and risk taking, centers on the degree of individual initiative and taking responsibility for one’s actions. The third factor, technology skills and access, assesses how skilled students are in using technol- ogy and their degree of access to the technology. The final factor, organization and self-regulation, centers on study skills and the necessity to approach tasks in an organized way. Qualitative data in the form of instructor input was also examined and corresponded to each of the factors mentioned above, with the exception that good parental support was mentioned by teachers as contribut- ing to good work habits. In addition to these factors, the researchers also ex- amined personal characteristics of students (i.e. grade level, age, job status) and their relationship with student success or failure. The only statistical difference occurred when the number of hours spent in outside school jobs was examined (t = 2.73, p < .01). Not surprisingly, students who are successful spend fewer hours working in jobs outside of the school environment. One finding illustrates the potential of distance education and motivation in the development of learner autonomy. Tunison and Noonan (2001) examined online high schools students’ first experiences in an online course. They looked at the demographics and perceptions of learner experiences of 126 students en- rolled in courses offered through a virtual school created as an alternative school Journal of Research on Technology in Education 437 within an existing district in a mid-sized Canadian city. The researchers report- ed an emergent theme of student appreciation for the feeling of empowerment and freedom in the direction of their learning. The most common student response to the question of benefits of a virtual school course was their appreciation of the autonomy and freedom. Although most students identified the teacher as the ultimate source of information, many students enjoyed the opportunity to work on their own and to figure out things for themselves without having to wait for their teacher to tell them what to do. (p. 503) In addition to this finding, students reported appreciating most the fact that they could work ahead and at their own pace and the opportunity to develop new skills. Finally, students stated benefits in their interpersonal relationships. Students also reported disadvantages in taking an online course. Time manage- ment was an issue, as were technology problems. Although in general the re- searchers concluded that students enjoyed their online experience, they did point out the need for student supports as a major challenge to online instruction. Learner Supports Learner attributes appear to play a role in the success of students in distance education, but what about meeting the needs of students who may lack those qualities? In addition, even if students are highly motivated and self-directed, in a distance education environment they can still find the experience isolating, difficult, and discouraging. In adult research, instructional support, technical support, services that promote a sense of community, and the design of the learning environment have all been found to influence student success (LaPad- ula, 2003; McLoughlin, 2002). What components of this type have been found to affect student outcomes in the K–12 arena? Unfortunately, in this review of the research, very few studies were found that address the specific needs of K– 12 students in the form of student supports. The few studies that were located tend to be descriptive in nature and function as an initial inquiry. Similar to the Tunison and Noonan study discussed above, a study conducted by Frid (2001) concluded, in the descriptive study referenced previously, that experi- ences in a distance education environment can actually improve learner autonomy and independence but also indicates the importance of student supports. In this case, the amount of engagement by the adult supervisor seemed to influence the amount of and quality of participation by students. Participants included 28 stu- dents ranging in grade level from two to seven and in age from 7–12 years old, living in four different Australian territories or states. Participants who did not have an adult supervisor either did not finish the course or exhibited a marked decrease in the amount and quality of participation. Finally, interactions with peers ap- peared to have an effect on the results; when evidence of interaction with peers was apparent, students were more likely to persist with a challenging problem. Weiner (2003) examined information gathered through surveys and inter- views in a qualitative, descriptive case study that revealed students’ attitudes to- 438 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 wards learning, motivational issues, academic achievements, and strengths and weaknesses of Web-based instruction. In summarizing the results she reports, The research findings confirmed that a high degree of student-teacher interaction, including feedback and summaries to the students, are a necessity in the virtual classroom, otherwise students felt ignored, lonely and lost in their courses. (p. 49) The role of the teacher has been the topic of a significant number of adult distance education studies as well as studies associated with traditional K–12 classroom environments. Several studies indicate the most influential factor in student success or failure in traditional environments, even when accounting for minority and socio-economic status (SES), may be teacher quality (Ascher & Fruchter, 2001; Darling Hammond, 2000; Sanders & Rivers, 1996). Not surprisingly, it has also been posited that teacher quality plays a significant role in distance education outcomes (Cavanaugh et al, 2004). Indeed, one of the motivational influences for the development of distance education programs in K–12 education is the notion of increased access to highly qualified teachers. Hughes, McLeod, Brown, Maeda, & Choi (2005) examined student percep- tions of the learning environment in a comparison study of an online high school algebra class and a face-to-face course and the relationship not only with student outcomes but with teacher professional development (face-to- face students, n = 85; online students, n = 31). Major findings indicated first that students in the traditional class perceived significantly higher cooperation, student cohesiveness, and involvement than their virtual counterparts. Sec- ondly, students in the virtual class perceived significantly more teacher support than students in the face-to-face class. Although the authors cautioned against generalizations because of the “small sample size in the sample (n = 7),” it is important to note that there was a significant relationship between the number of professional development experience hours and three of the student support components (p. 35). There was a significant relationship between the number of hours of professional development in mathematical content and perceived involvement (r = 0.872), between teaching mathematics and perceived teacher support (0.852), and between teaching technologies and perceived student co- hesiveness (-0.819). Once again, however, this study is plagued by unanswered questions. For example, an examination across locations indicates significant variation in cohesiveness across virtual schools. Because of the lack of descrip- tive information regarding course structure and learning activities, it is impos- sible to make inferences about the nature of this variation. Advocates of computer-based learning have traditionally advocated a shift in the theoretical foundations of pedagogical practice from that of behaviorist teacher-centered instruction to more student-centered constructivist approaches (Herring, 2004; Hill, Wiley, Nelson, & Han, 2004). At the heart of this shift is a change in the way we view the role of the teacher. The interaction models that are considered characteristic of today’s technology-rich learning environments and the increasing emphasis on Journal of Research on Technology in Education 439 synthesis and application of knowledge to authentic tasks and project- based student work most often are described as being student centered. Students often work independently as individuals or in groups. The teacher’s role changes from being the primary source for knowledge and direction to become something more like a facilitator of learning or (speaking metaphorically) a kind of ringmaster in a circus of learn- ing events. (Blomeyer, 2002, p. 8) Herring (2004) examined the issues surrounding this shift in teaching prac- tices. In a Delphi study conducted using the Web, a panel of experts in uni- versity positions from 13 states was asked to identify core constructivist-based experiences or elements necessary for their implementation in distance educa- tion settings. The result is a list of pedagogical guiding practices for curriculum and professional development activities that promote the tenets of constructivist learning environments. Perhaps a more important outcome from this study was an acknowledgment of the primary role of the instructional process in distance education rather than a focus on operational issues such as time management, classroom management, interaction, and delivery mechanisms. Although in theory we may know what to do, it is more difficult in prac- tice to implement. McLoughlin (2002) provided insight into how the core principles of effective instruction espoused by constructivist tenets may be implemented in a distance education setting through a detailed examination of scaffolding and associated technological tools. “Effective support would need to include the encouragement of reflective thinking, provision of social support for dialogue, interaction and extension of ideas with feedback from peers and men- tors on emerging issues” (p. 152). There is general agreement that distance education presents an opportunity to move toward a restructuring of education, but this move requires a shift in the role of the teacher (Vornberg & Maris, 2003). In reality, however, there are often barriers to implementation that may include: inadequate professional de- velopment, lack of time for development of course content, problems with the technology, and resistance to change. There is some evidence that once barriers are removed, there is a potential for change and positive outcomes for students (Collins, 2001). Affective Learning Domains Related to student supports and instructional quality and effectiveness is a body of research that has investigated the realm of affective learning domains and their effects on student performance, satisfaction, and retention in distance education environments. One of the greatest concerns surrounding distance education may be the lack of social interaction and the potential harm this may cause, especially to younger students The perception of student isolation in the virtual environment is often seen as one drawback of this form of education (Fulton, 2002). Improvements in distance education technologies that assist in providing enhanced opportunities for interaction, such as threaded discussion boards and real-time audio and video communication tools, are examples of our perceived need to replicate classroom interactions as closely as possible. For this 440 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 reason, social dimensions and affective learning domains continue to generate interest in both traditional and virtual learning environments. Of particular interest is research that examines student performance through the lens of the theories of transactional distance, interaction, and social presence. The research provides evidence that interaction in distance courses involves a complex array of variables: social, instructional, and technological. Interac- tion also plays a role in social presence, and Wolcott (1996) confirmed that psychological distance is a problem inherent in most distance courses. Moore (1989) posited that distance is not a matter of geography but rather psychology, and although geographical or physical distance may be increased in distance education settings, its effect can be decreased. He suggested that the interchange within a distance education context is characterized by three different types of learner interactions: learner-to-content (appropriateness of the course material and delivery vehicle considering the objectives and learners), learner-to-in- structor (types of communication and feedback, access and support, etc.), and learner-to-learner (types of communication and feedback, support systems, and procedures for dialogue, etc.). Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena (1994) add an additional mode of interaction related directly to distance education; learner- to-interface, where interaction is related to user access to and competency with the specific technology employed. In online courses, there are often a variety of interaction types. Current computer-mediated communications (CMC) research identifies two broad cat- egories of communication: synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (delayed- time) (Romiszowski & Mason, 2004). Typical distance education synchronous communication tools would include the telephone, instant messaging or chat tools, and virtual classroom tools that allow file sharing, audio, and even video communications. Asynchronous communications encompass those technologies that typically involve a delay in when a message has been sent and when it has been read. Letter writing, fax, e-mail, and threaded discussions are all examples of asynchronous communications. Preventing dropout behavior is a critical concern of online programs. As with online programs that serve adult populations, K–12 virtual schools and programs have relatively high dropout and failure rates; as much as 50% in some cases (Carr, 2000; Roblyer & Elbaum, 2000; Simpson, 2004). Studies of interactivity involving adults enrolled in online courses reveal that students have a real need to make connections with their instructor and their peers and research consistently supports the concept that faculty-to-student and student- to-student interactions are important components in student satisfaction and student retention (Downs & Moller, 1999; Kuh & Hu, 2001; Muirhead, 2001; Picciano, 2002; Stein, Wanstreet, Calvin, Overtoom, & Wheaton, 2005; Stith & Fitz, 1994). But does the same hold true for younger students? The research concerning persistence of at-risk youth tends to support this notion. Lee and Burkham (2001) examined a variety of factors associated with persistence and concluded that although other factors such as curriculum and school size are important, the most important factor in student satisfaction and persistence may have more to do with the social organization of the school than Journal of Research on Technology in Education 441 with any other factor. In short, students who experience consistent, positive relationships with their teachers were less likely to drop out. Students who don’t experience these kinds of positive relationships often become disconnected and drop out (Zweig, 2003). Although no research could be located that addresses this relationship in the context of distance education in K–12, there is no rea- son to believe that the findings would not be consistent across instructional mo- dalities. Passey (2000) suggests the basis for implementing distance education in K–12 should reflect the need to strengthen social supports rather than “provid- ing a cost-effective solution which lowers levels of social interaction” (p. 48). Unfortunately, there is very little research examining the relationship between K–12 interaction that directly relates to student performance, satisfaction, and retention in a distance education context. An internal evaluation of a virtual high school in Illinois, with a retention rate of more than 95%, does highlight the importance of interaction to some extent. Using interview transcripts, classroom documents, memos, and survey results, evaluators were able to establish that the qualities most responsible for success could be attributed in part to high quality materials and frequent teacher-stu- dent interaction (Vrasidas & Zembyas, 2003). Studies are also beginning to appear that attempt to evaluate some of the lat- est computer-mediated communication tools for evidence of the quantity and quality of interactivity. Through observations and interviews of one teacher and 20 high school students using a Web-based synchronous tool, researchers exam- ined the types of interactions occurring within and among the teachers and stu- dents participating in six separate class observations (Murphy & Coffin, 2003). Although each of the three types of interactions described by Moore (1989) and the fourth interaction described by Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena (1994) occurred with use of this tool, no data were gathered examining the relationship between interaction and student achievement or satisfaction. The relationship between interaction and student achievement is less support- ed in the adult research base as well (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2006) but there are indications in adult studies that the use of interactive, asyn- chronous tools such as discussion boards may be linked with higher achieve- ment (Kawachi, 2003) and the development of higher-order thinking skills (Meyer, 2003). Lapadat (2002) argues that the text-based, nonlinear character- istics of threaded discussions may provide increased opportunities for reflection and sense-making based on constructivist cognitive foundations. In essence, this type of communication allows students to “write one’s way into understanding” (p. 27). No research could be found in the K–12 context that directly addresses this issue but there may be indications of a relationship between student-to-stu- dent interaction and learning. Frid (2001) concluded, in the descriptive study referenced previously, that increased interaction influenced motivation and engagement in activities that resulted in increased student persistence with a challenging problem. Roblyer and Wiencke (2003) asserted that identifying observable behaviors with interactive qualities is essential in studying the effect of interaction. They have formulated a rubric designed to assess the interactive qualities of online 442 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 courses. Preliminary results from a formative evaluation suggest the rubric was shown to exhibit usefulness in defining and clarifying expected interactive per- formance. Hirumi (2002) also suggests using an approach grounded in learning theory in developing interactive experiences and provides explicit guidelines for doing so. Research in the social dimensions of distance education is complex and a comprehensive evaluation of the field is beyond the scope of this review. Simon- son et al. (2006) summarize that, “although interaction seems intuitively im- portant to the learning experience, interaction should not be added without real purpose” (p. 81). Additionally, “Focusing on building collaboration and group interaction may be more important than focusing on individual participation” (p. 81). The limited research base and the descriptive nature of existing research in the K–12 realm makes it difficult to present even a basic summary. Obvious- ly, more research is needed to determine the relationship between the affective domains of distance education and student performance and whether the use of asynchronous and synchronous technology tools may lead to enhanced learn- ing, but it can be surmised that ineffective practices used in traditional class- rooms will also be ineffective in distance education. Translating a lecture course to the Web, for example, will likely not generate the interest and motivation in students that a highly interactive course might. In addition, care must be given when generalizing adult research to the K–12 student population. As stated earlier, younger students need to be provided guidance in developing charac- teristics of successful distance students. Common sense would dictate that this applies to the social domains as well. Enhanced computer-mediated communi- cation tools cannot substitute for well-designed instruction and opportunities to engage in purposeful, interactive learning activities. COnCLUSIOn The current state of distance education research, in general, has been de- scribed as one of confusion (Saba, 2005). It is apparent from this review that research in the realm of K–12 distance education is following closely in the footsteps of adult distance education. The research is limited and many of the studies reviewed in this report provide only limited insight into the complexities of the field. Some of the blame for this has been placed on the doorstep of the research community for a lack of a theoretical rationale for most distance edu- cation research as well as a lack of adequate training for new researchers in the field (Bernard et al., 2004; Saba, 2005). The complex nature of the field only adds to the confusion. One thing we do know is that the effectiveness of distance education ap- pears to have more to do with who is teaching, who is learning, and how that learning is accomplished, and less to do with the medium. At the very least, work such as that by Roblyer and Marshall (2003) and Simpson (2004) should continue and expand on prediction instruments and methodologies that assist in identifying those students who are less likely to succeed. Simpson suggests collecting demographic data on student cohorts, linking results to achievement/ completion data, and performing logistic regression analysis on the results of Journal of Research on Technology in Education 443 a previous student cohort to assist in predicting the future cohort results. This would require a concerted effort to collect, organize, and manage data on stu- dents. His current efforts attain 65% accuracy in predicting whether students will pass or fail and efforts are under way to improve this accuracy rating. The Kozma et al. (2000) study is also a good example of a program evaluation that has followed this lead and taken a more comprehensive view of the poten- tial factors responsible for student success in distance education. While painting a more comprehensive picture, this study also illustrates the difficulties in isolat- ing complex interactions that occur in both face-to-face and distance education environments. The development of valid and reliable tools designed to identify expected behaviors associated with interactivity, such as the rubric developed by Roblyer and Wiencke (2003), will likely assist in this process, as will the work by Hirumi (2002) into guiding principles of interactive experiences through the lenses of learning theory and instructional design. Technology in and of itself may have no special powers to improve learning, but it has been argued that distance technologies could offer more powerful learning opportunities than their face-to-face counterparts when embedded with instruction that addresses the cognitive and social processes of knowledge construction (Kozma, 1991). Quality research in this area would not only expand our knowledge of distance education but would be a valuable contribu- tion to the knowledge base of existing research into teaching and learning in general. The question of the effectiveness of student supports is critical in the K–12 context, especially when considering the alternative nature of the educational experience and the proclivity for its attractiveness to at-risk student populations. The characteristics identified as successful with at-risk students—instructional environments that are self-paced, personalized, utilize diverse instructional methods, and are facilitated by competent, caring adults (Barr & Parrett, 2001)—are the very characteristics that have been lauded in distance educa- tion circles. Research examining the relationship between student supports and at-risk student needs in relation to distance education is essential in answering questions about the benefits or drawbacks of distance education not only for this special population of students but for all students. We can only expect the myriad aspects of distance education to become more complex as technological improvements are made in such areas as speech pro- cessing, gaming, 3D simulations, and automated speech translations. This con- tinued expansion of distance education opportunities for primary and second- ary students, particularly distance education that uses Internet or Web-based technologies, warrants a comprehensive examination of the needs and issues facing national, state, and local education agencies, policymakers, and research- ers. In addition, responsibilities cannot be examined from just a proprietary or centralized perspective. The advances that are made encourage and influence education policy and practice on a global scale (Lin, 2003). The results of this investigation are useful in that they provide a frame of ref- erence from which to view this complex and rapidly evolving field. A summary of the findings suggest a need to: 444 Summer 2006: Volume 38 Number 4 • Improve the quality of research that examines the critical components of learning directly related to younger learners. • Continue and expand on the development of prediction instructions that help identify successful learner attributes. • Develop organized student evaluation systems to facilitate consistent data collection. • Investigate the relationship between student supports and at-risk student needs in relation to distance education. • Investigate the social and cognitive aspects of distance education and the effect on knowledge construction. • Develop valid and reliable tools for identifying interactive qualities in course design and instruction. Contributor Kerry Rice is an instructor and course developer for the online master’s pro- gram in the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University. 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work_3c4wdkyc4jfmfpflkk3qfz2frm	----	Realization of Distance Educational Technologies on the Basis of Automated Informational System Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 89 ( 2013 ) 436 – 439 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu, Near East University, Faculty of Education, Cyprus doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.08.873 2nd Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research, (CY-ICER 2013) Realization of Distance Educational Technologies on the Basis of Automated Informational System Baigusheva K.M.a*, Baigabylov N.O.b, Jarassova G.S.c , Akanova A.S.d a L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National UniversityFirst , 5 Munaitpasov Street, 010008, Astana, Kazakhstan b L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National UniversityFirst , 5 Munaitpasov Street, 010008, Astana, Kazakhstan c S.Toraigyrov Pavlodar State University , 64 Lomov Street, 140008, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan d S.Toraigyrov Pavlodar State University , 64 Lomov Street, 140008, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan Abstract The implementation of distance technologies at the university is an important goal of education today. Use of distance technologies gives ample opportunities for getting an education and professional development for a wide range of the population. For the realizing distance technologies of training is developed the automated information system "e-Learning CDT". The reached results create conditions for wider use of distance technologies in the conditions of continuous education. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and or peer-review under responsibility of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zehra Özçınar, Ataturk Teacher Training Academy, North Cyprus. Keywords: 1. Introduction Emergence of telecommunications and the computer changed traditional and most conservative views on educational process. Along with dynamic development of information and telecommunication technologies vocational training of specialists is improved. Development and modernization of methods, forms and technologies of training led to emergence of distance learning. Distance learning is developing rapidly in many regions of the world. It is possible to list a large number of large universities of the world which develop distance education: China Central Radio and TV University (China), Indira Gandhi National Open University (India), Payame Noor University (Iran), Korea National Open University (Korea), University of South Africa, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (Thailand), Anadolu University (Turkey). Application of distance technologies gives ample opportunities for education and professional development for a wide range of the population, and also for persons with limited opportunities, on the job, regardless of geographical remoteness, with flexible hours. The long-term purpose of development of distance education in the world is to make possible for each pupil, in any place, to study the program of training of any college or university. It assumes transition from the * Corresponding author: Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu, Near East University, Faculty of Education, Cyprus ScienceDirect Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 437 K.M. Baigusheva et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 89 ( 2013 ) 436 – 439 limited concept of physical movement of students from the country to the country to the concept of mobile ideas, knowledge and training with the purpose to distribute knowledge by means of an exchange of educational resources. 2. "E-Learning CDT" automated information system Necessary condition for realization of distance educational technology is the uniform educational information environment. The distance educational technology (further DET) in educational process of S.Torayghyrov Pavlodar State University (further university) is applied since 2008 and is realized on 8 specialties: Power Engineering, Automation and Management, Information Systems, Social work, Economy, Management, Account and Audit and Finance. For the introduction of DET the following tasks was defined by the university: - Development of regulatory documentation; - Choice of optimum distance educational technologies and development of educational and methodical ensuring educational process. - Adjust material and technical provision of educational process with application of DET; - Professional development of tutors. Organization work on DET implementation based on the principles of realization phase and controllability of achievement of results of each stage is conducted in the following directions: - Improvement of educational process quality; - Formations of full and available educational and methodical provision to students, - Increases in role of students` independent work, - Improvement in the mark and rating monitoring system of knowledge for distance learning, - Connections of all educational and methodical documentation and educational process to the university quality management system. At the university uninterrupted functioning of the hardware-software complex, demanded level of information security is provided, information and technical support of computer aids and the software is carried out, access to world information resources is provided. All buildings of the university are united in a uniform local network on the basis of fibre-optical communication lines. The wireless network access to the Internet (Wi-Fi) functions. For the last 3 years the park of computer facilities is considerably updated, the most modern equipment and the license software is acquired. The created telecommunication provision of the university allows carrying out regularly scientific and technical videoconferences on the basis of video conferencing. Information and technical support on deployment of DET at the university is carried out by means of developed distributed automated information system (further AIS) "e-Learning CDT". AIS "e-Learning CDT" is intended for automation of management processes of the university, realization of educational technologies, it also provides information security from unauthorized use. AIS "e-Learning CDT", as any information environment, has the methodology, ideology, navigation and features. AIS "e-Learning CDT" includes the following subsystems with the corresponding functional: 1) Private office of the teacher – ensuring transparency of educational process and controllability of its main indicators within credit technology, and also for granting to teachers of opportunities of distance on-line and/or off- line interaction with students, receiving, processing and transfer of necessary information for work; 2) Private office of the student ─ implementation of access to the handbook, registration on disciplines, viewing of the list of the teachers fixed on disciplines, schedules of studies, electronic educational and methodical materials, testing organization on discipline for an assessment and a self-assessment of knowledge, viewing grades for the current semester, for the previous academic periods, using a web chat for distance on-line interaction with teachers and with students in group or individually; 3) Planning – formation of curricula, catalogues of elective disciplines, the academic calendar, etc.; 4) Staff – drawing up the list of teaching staff of a department on the basis of normative and planned documentation; 5) The educational and methodical complex (EMC) – network base of an educational and methodical complex of disciplines and an educational and methodical complex of the specialty, formed by teaching staff; 438 K.M. Baigusheva et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 89 ( 2013 ) 436 – 439 6) Registration on disciplines – a subsystem for students registration on disciplines of the following course with the purpose of following the rules of the organization of training on credit technology; 7) The contingent – all information on the contingent of full and part-time undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students; 8) Orders – formation and processing of orders on the organization and management of educational process on the basis of information, accumulated and dynamically updated in the base of distributed IS; 9) Students educational achievements (SEA) – formation of mark sheets and reporting documentation; 10) The electronic register of students educational achievements (ER of SEA) – formation of monthly and weekly reports on students progress in the SEA in the register form, filled in the Internet or the network Intranet by the teachers teaching the corresponding courses; 11) Administration – management of the purpose of access rights to modules, generation, change of passwords and codes; 12) The schedule – formation of study schedule; 13) Applicant - formation of the contingent of the first course, input of applications for competition, enrolment a conclusion of statistical information on applications for the enrolment, reference on input of applicants, generation of applicants acceptance orders; 14) Testing – carrying out different types of students` attestation by a computer testing method; 15) Anti-plagiarism – check of degree, course, master and other types of works on existence of a text loan; 16) Web chat (system of an instant exchange of messages) and a board of joint using – the organization of dialogue communication. At present active work on expansion of functionality of AIS the following modules conduct “e-Learning CDT” for development of DET: - Bulletin board for students; - Tests editor for teachers; - The organization of intermediate students testing through teachers and students private office; - Web chat with video and audio communications opportunity of a teacher and a student, virtual rooms for carrying out classes’ in-group with desktop translation; - Introduction in web-chat elements of social interaction: vote, questioning, and polls; - Organization of control of online classes according to the schedule. All listed modules of AIS "e-Learning CDT" allow a student and a tutor to communicate in off-line and on- line mode. Students have access to electronic educational and didactic materials on disciplines. Developed electronic educational editions in Kazakh and Russian languages in the directions: information technologies, natural sciences, law, technologies in mechanical engineering, technology, economy and business, the humanities, education, social sciences, technical science, services, language disciplines, are the knowledge base, both for the student and for the teacher. For the period 2008-2012 45 electronic educational editions are examined. Advanced training courses for teaching staff on the use of information and communication technologies are systematically carried out. In private offices of teachers and students access to 35 electronic training courses on disciplines of general education and main disciplines is open. 3. Conclusion and Recommendations Thus, one of the important conditions of successful realization of distance educational technology at the university is developed by automated information system "e-Learning CDT". Work on expansion of functionality and provided services are conducted constantly. Further realization of distance technology in the field of retraining of specialist for the industrial sphere is planned. 439 K.M. Baigusheva et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 89 ( 2013 ) 436 – 439 References Andreev A.A. (2000). Introduction to distance learning. Materials of the IV International conference on distance education – the Eurasian association of distance education. Retrieved from http://nnov.rgotups.ru/files/uch_lit/dopmat /broshur/broshur.htm Development of distance education in the world. (1997). Open education, 2. Retrieved from http://www.e-joe.ru/sod/97/2_97/st075.html 
work_3cnuhh337bctbcxvz5qj3th3z4	----	The Problems of Development of Distance Education in Kazakhstan Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 ( 2015 ) 15 – 19 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.729 4th WORLD CONFERENCE ON EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY RESEARCHES, WCETR- 2014 The Problems of Development of Distance Education in Kazakhstan NurmukhametovN.a, TemirovaA.b, BekzhanovaT.c* aNurmukhametov N.,Sh. Ualikhanov St. 11, Astana 010011, Kazakhstan bTemirova A.,Sh. Ualikhanov St. 11, Astana 010011, Kazakhstan cBekzhanova T., 29-31-75, Aktau 130003, Kazakhstan Abstract The purpose of the research is the identification of the most efficient approaches to the organization and management of distance education in the field of humanitarian education with the use of Internet technologies and the development of practical suggestions for their implementation and improvement. Methods of obtaining, processing and interpretation of information, including document analysis, the method of observation, expert interviews and questionnaires were used in the study. The analysis of formation of the system of distance education in our country and abroad enables to conclude the interdependence and interrelation of correspondence and distant educational technologies and provides reasons to believe that the experience, accumulated in the field of distance learning today, is the basis for the formation of the modern model of distance learning. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center. Keywords: distance learning, education 1. The problem of the study The relevance of the researched topic is due to the necessity of implementation of innovative approaches and methods of distance learning in the modern education system and solutions of the problems related to the use of fundamentally new opportunities in the work of scientists and teachers, aimed at the realization of education and self-education of the representatives of various social groups in terms of information society development. Modern scientific and technological progress and its social consequences lead to rapid obsolescence of the knowledge and require constant updating and replenishment, creating a qualitatively new system of non-stop * BekzhanovaT. Tel.: +7-10-7-7292-42-57-77; fax: +7-10-7-7292-42-57-77. E-mail address: toty_bekzhanova@mail.ru © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.729&domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.729&domain=pdf 16 N. Nurmukhametov et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 ( 2015 ) 15 – 19 professional education. At the same time, nowadays there is a real opportunity of focused training and retraining of people with different physical disabilities, almost regardless of their age, skill level, health status, working conditions, etc. Such training can be implemented by providing the educational services remotely, using new information technologies and the Internet that will allow raising the general educational level of the population; create the conditions for successful socialization of people with disabilities; open new ways for training and retraining of specialists in various fields of knowledge and realize many other ideas. It should also be noted that today the distance learning develops in the field of technical education mainly, which is mainly connected with the character of educational material of humanities disciplines, which is difficult to formalize and, secondly, with greater competence of scientific and pedagogic staff of technical education in the use of new information and communication technologies and modern software. In the field of humanitarian education, the first steps are only done in the investigated area. The purpose of the research is the identification of the most efficient approaches to the organization and management of distance education in the field of humanitarian education with the use of Internet technologies and the development of practical suggestions for their implementation and improvement. 2. Methods During the study of the problem, an interdisciplinary comprehensive analysis, including the sociological and historical, and other approaches, as well as research methods and techniques of management and education were applied. Methods of obtaining, processing and interpretation of information, including document analysis, the method of observation, expert interviews and questionnaires were used in the study. The development and application of distance education technologies is becoming increasingly important.The progress in this area is an important factor of the reform and improvement of the national educational system, which brings it into the compliance with international requirements and integration into the international educational space. Its provision should be considered as an urgent task, and one of the main aspects of the state policy in the field of education, which is fully correspond to the strategic objective of entering Kazakhstan the top fifty most competitive countries in the world, aimed by The Head of State NursultanNazarbayev. The large-scale introduction of high technologies of distance education in Kazakhstan represents the actual and urgent task, for its solution the real prerequisite sare created. The following facts are saying about it. Nowadays literate population of Kazakhstan is 99.5%. According this indicator, we are in 14th place out of 177 countries. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, in the course of an international monitoring "Overcoming inequality is the main role of governance" Kazakhstan won the 1st place among 129 countries on the index of the development of education for all by indicators such as "Primary school enrollment", "The literacy rate for adults" , "Gender index", "Survival rate to grade 5."According to the Human Development Index (HDI) of our country has moved from the 93rd to the 73rd place for 12 years. All this testifies that the population of the country as a whole is prepared for the introduction of new educational technologies based on the latest achievements of scientific and technical progress, particularly, on information and telecommunication technologies (Grebnev, 2010). At the same time the education system itself issufficiently prepared. The state allocates the significant and increasing volume of funds on its development. So, in the past 2008, the public expenditure on education increased by more than 2.8 times as compared with 2004. Their share in total GDP was 3.7%, which is quite high indicator. An updated legal and regulatory framework was created within the framework of the reform of the education system. It is based on: the new Law of Kazakhstan "On Education", adopted in July 2007; State Program of Education Development in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2005-2010; State Program on development of technical and vocational education for 2008-2012; State program "Integrated computerization of the education system of Kazakhstan for 2007-2010." 3. Results The positive attitude of scientists, professionals and students to the prospects and expediency of application of online distance learning technologies in the field of humanitarian education, especially in the field of supplementary 17 N. Nurmukhametov et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 ( 2015 ) 15 – 19 and the second higher education, and in the improvement of qualification for education of people with physical disabilities, people, who wish to study abroad, and people living in remote areas or forced to relocate frequently was identified in the study. Contemporary Education, based on the distant IT-technologies, goes beyond the national boundaries, transforming into an open space, providing the opportunity to obtain high-quality education for every person around the world, regardless of its location and accommodation. At the same time it is an additional opportunity for each country to declare itself in the international environment, to spread its cultural and political influence, to increase their competitiveness. For Kazakhstan, the introduction of high-quality distant educational technologies and open education is also a solution of important social problems. Our republic has a large territory, which at a relatively small population determines its low density in the country. The considerable part of population lives in villages and towns which are far from cities, regional and district centers. There are settlements in which small schools operate. There are such settlements where there are only primary schools. With the emergence of small peasant farms and livestock farms in remote pastures the family groups are formed, children in such groups do not have opportunities to attend school. In such cases it becomes a very complicated problem to provide people with even compulsory general secondary education. The disabled and people with disabilities are also experiencing difficulty in obtaining an education. The Similar problems can be observed in the professional education. The institutions of technical professional education (colleges and universities) are concentrated mainly in the big cities, where there are highly qualified teaching personnel. Mean while, on the periphery there is a shortage of specialists of all categories which cannot be satisfied without solving the problem of providing the opportunity for the population in obtaining a professional education, without leaving home. These important social problems in which there is an element of a violation of the constitutional rights of certain categories of citizens, and discrimination on the basis of their place of residence and physical health. Understanding it, the government is seeking opportunities and taking all measures to solve these problems. At the same time, the introduction distant educational technologies are considered to be the priority. The practice shows that the leading position in this matter is occupied by the educational institutions that provide higher education programs. Nowadays the majority of universities, in the one way or another, introduce elements of distance education based on modern information technology and telecommunication systems. The electronic and the educational resources in the form of e-learning systems, virtual laboratories and simulators, electronic textbooks, etc. are created and implemented. Today practically every university has its representation in the Internet that allows introducing distance learning elements. Only the low activity of individual higher education institutions remains a problem that can be explained by the lack of well-developed resource base and highly qualified specialists in the field of information technology and distance learning at their disposal (Kunanbayev, 2007). The most advanced on the part of the introduction of distance learning technologies such institutions as KazNTU named after K.Satpayev, East Kazakhstan State Technical University named after D.Serikbaev, Atyrau Oil and Gas Institute, Karaganda State Technical University, Karaganda Economic University, South Kazakhstan State University named after M. Auezov can be considered. The certain achievements can also be marked in the system of secondary education. Today, more than 60% of the subjects of the school curriculum are digitized. For comparison, in Estonia the figure is 80%; in the Netherlands is 96%. In order to execution of the order of the President on the implementation of systems of training in on-line regime in 2007, 1,600 schools were equipped with interactive classrooms, in 2008, 1,000 more schools were added to this number. The work on the creation of the Kazakhstan resource for interactive lessons in three languages is being done. The systematic training of teaching staff on the use of interactive technologies in the educational process is carried out. On September 3, 2007 the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan held an interactive lesson for students in 1000 schools across the country. Since last school year, the best teachers of the republic began to hold such lessons weekly. Currently, the public authorities at the level of ministries and agencies hold interactive lessons on the President's Address weekly. 18 N. Nurmukhametov et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 ( 2015 ) 15 – 19 4. Conclusion and recommendations The analysis of formation of the system of distance education in our country and abroad enables to conclude the interdependence and interrelation of correspondence and distant educational technologies and provides reasons to believe that the experience, accumulated in the field of distance learning today, is the basis for the formation of the modern model of distance learning. The use of computer and of Internet technologies allows us to pass to a new stage in the development of the distributed cooperation and integration of educational institutions in the organizational, educational and scientific research areas in different regions of Kazakhstan and all over the world, and the most efficient model of distance education in the field of humanitarian education is scientific methodological associations that are basic for a number of educational institutions, which use the Internet, serving the specific integralelement of a common information space. At the present time a long-term program for the development of education until 2020, in which the questions of computerization of education, including the introduction of distance educational technologies are considered as a priority, is being developed. Within the Program of reducing the information inequality in the Republic, the Kazakh educational portal was created. Its main purpose is to provide a communication link to the whole population with of MES RK, the implementation of the rapid exchange of information between the regions, the automation of a number of important procedures for information exchange. It is assumed that Internet - broadcasting of educational programs of educational television will be done through the portal. Based on experience in the field of electronic and distance learning, the basic guidelines of long-term education development program up to 2020 in terms of computerization of education have been identified. This program stipulates that by 2020, the Kazakh education system will operate as part of a global informational and educational space. At the same time technologization of educational process, its personification with orientation to an individual learning path, transparency and access to education will be provided (Koustova, 2009). The computerization of education on the basis of world achievements in the field of IT-technologies will provide a template of innovative advanced development of Kazakhstan's education. Taking this into account a consistent system policy on the main directions computerization of education is defined as a strategic objective. These trends include: regulatory support; computerization and updating of computer park; software; internet access for educational institutions and management; creation of domestic digital educational resources; automation of system for monitoring, analysis and management of educational institutions; training of teaching and managerial staff. The strategy in the field of computerization focuses on achieving global indicators of educational institutions with modern computer technology to meet the needs of educational practice. The software front provides the preferred use of software tools, based on the ideologies, principles and means of the open systems of the international community Open Source Community, as well as the recognized world leaders’ products. Policy in the field of using Internet in the educational institutions and educational management at all levels is aimed at comprehensive development of information and communication of the educational environment.100% connection of educational institutions and administration to a global network based on different communication channels (satellite, dedicated, mobile, broadband, wireless, etc.) of high through put should be provided. The establishment of zones of wireless Internet access, and research and education network based on technology Wi-Fi and Wi-Max on the territories of educational institutions and their subsequent association in the area of continuous coverage of territories of educational institutions on the national scale is planned. Introduction and development of Wap-access technologies to Internet resources through mobile phones of cellular communication, integration of regional information and education of corporate computer networks into a single countrywide information and education computer network is envisaged (Kunelekova, 2006). In the structure of the global Internet, Kazakhstani educational segment with its own infrastructure and its own 19 N. Nurmukhametov et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 ( 2015 ) 15 – 19 educational content, adapted to the system of distance education in Kazakhstan must be implemented. The creation of domestic industry of digital scientific and educational resources is considered as the strategic priorities. In Kazakhstan, the production of its own electronic educational resources that meet the needs of the education system and meet the qualification requirements should be established. According to available information, the need of vocational and technical education in the modern electronic educational resources only on subjects of professional and special training cycles is currently about 2780 units. The need of colleges in vocational subjects and special cycles - 7,455 units, for higher educational institutions in the disciplines of basic and profiling cycles it amounts 5,347 units. All resources must be developed in three languages - Kazakh, Russian and English. One of the strategic directions of computerization of education in the Republic of Kazakhstan is the creation of high-tech automated system of monitoring, analysis and management of educational institutions. It should provide an efficient documentary interchange and support of system database of strategic data corresponding to the reporting forms of educational institutions. Qualitative monitoring of the objective state of the education system as a whole and for each area of production and educational activities should also be provided. A key role in the field of information and education is given to pedagogical managerial staff. In accordance with the strategic objectives, it should be focused on the widespread use of IT-technologies in their professional activities. The courses on the methodology of education, based on IT-technologies, are recommended to be introduced in the curriculum of teacher training in secondary, technical and vocational, and higher education. These strategic directions cover all the practical aspects of the computerization of education, development of distance and open education. This is evidence of an integrated approach to solving the problem, which allows hoping for success. We must consolidate our joint efforts for their fruitful implementation. References Grebnev L. (2010). Russia in the Bologna Process: the middle of a long journey, Higher Education in Russia, 317, 31-34. Koustova N. (2009). Bologna process: a look at the problem, University Vestnik. Paper #A21. Kunanbayev S. (2007). Bologna Convention and international scientific and educational space - a round table, Economics Vestnik, 121,64-67. Kunelekova G.(2006). Distance Education in Kazakhstan, Megapolis, 85, 35. 
work_3dody72cwneepkyj5ivugb3v24	----	The Effects of Online Interactive Games on High School Students' Achievement and Motivation in History Learning | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2012100108 Corpus ID: 40188405The Effects of Online Interactive Games on High School Students' Achievement and Motivation in History Learning @article{Lin2012TheEO, title={The Effects of Online Interactive Games on High School Students' Achievement and Motivation in History Learning}, author={Kuan-Cheng Lin and Y. Wei and J. C. Hung}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2012}, volume={10}, pages={96-105} } Kuan-Cheng Lin, Y. Wei, J. C. Hung Published 2012 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Many studies demonstrate that Digital Game Based Learning DGBL can foster learning effect. The purpose of this study is to survey whether the online game in junior high school students can encourage learning effect in Taiwan's History. So, the research applied Interactive Game-based Learning System IGLS to junior high history teaching as an ancillary tool to enhance users' learning motivation and academic performance. After a four-week experiment conducted on eleven students, the paired sample… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 7 CitationsBackground Citations 2 View All Topics from this paper Interactivity Experiment One-way function Login 7 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Differences in Motivation and Game Scores between Middle School Students Completing Digital Game-Based Learning Tasks with and without Supports of Autonomy and Structure J. Harmon Psychology 2016 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Changing entrepreneurial intention and behaviour: a digital game-based learning environment dedicated to entrepreneurship education Katharina Fellnhofer Psychology 2015 10 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Mental Rotation Ability and Computer Game Experience Zeynep Gecü, K. Cagiltay Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Game Based Learn. 2015 4 PDF Save Alert Research Feed What Influences Chinese Adolescents’ Choice Intention between Playing Online Games and Learning? Application of Theory of Planned Behavior with Subjective Norm Manipulated as Peer Support and Parental Monitoring Jia Wang, R. Liu, Y. Ding, Y. Liu, L. Xu, R. Zhen Psychology, Medicine Front. Psychol. 2017 2 Save Alert Research Feed From experiencing to critical thinking: a contextual game-based learning approach to improving nursing students’ performance in Electrocardiogram training Ching-Yi Chang, Chien-Huei Kao, G. Hwang, Fu-Huang Lin Psychology 2020 4 Save Alert Research Feed Facilitating decision-making performances in nursing treatments: a contextual digital game-based flipped learning approach G. Hwang, Ching-Yi Chang Psychology 2020 Save Alert Research Feed A Resource Website for Game-Based Learning G. Phillips Computer Science 2015 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 25 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Building an Online Game-Based Learning System for Elementary School Yuh-Ming Cheng, P. Chen Computer Science 2008 International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing 2008 6 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Developing a Web-based and Competition-based Quiz Game Environment to Improve Student Motivation Kuan-Cheng Lin, Ting-Kuan Wu, Yu-Bin Wang Computer Science J. Networks 2011 4 Save Alert Research Feed Game, Motivation, and Effective Learning: An Integrated Model for Educational Game Design Bradley S. Paras, J. Bizzocchi Psychology, Computer Science DiGRA Conference 2005 176 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Motivation techniques in elearning C. Taran Computer Science Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'05) 2005 32 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Digital game-based learning M. Prensky Computer Science CIE 2003 3,313 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Web-Based Appreciation and Peer-Assessment for Visual-Art Education Kuan-Cheng Lin, Shu-Huey Yang, J. C. Hung, D. Wang Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2006 14 Save Alert Research Feed Evaluating Educational Technologies: Historical Milestones Laurie F. Ruberg, M. Calinger, Bruce C. Howard Sociology 2010 3 Save Alert Research Feed Southern Skies Distance Education Academic Exchange Project: Building a Community of Practice C. Bossu Political Science 2013 1 Save Alert Research Feed A Cross-Cultural Validation of the Selwyn's Computer Attitude Scale (CAS) T. Teo Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2010 5 Save Alert Research Feed Teaching Culture and Communication with Online Media K. Amant Computer Science 2005 2 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... 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work_3e66bfkgmzgefjabt3n3qfe56a	----	AJDE1603.vp This article was downloaded by: [Universitetbiblioteket I Trondheim NTNU] On: 22 October 2014, At: 02:34 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK American Journal of Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hajd20 The Relationship of Social Presence and Interaction in Online Classes Chih-Hsiung Tu & Marina McIsaac Published online: 07 Jun 2010. To cite this article: Chih-Hsiung Tu & Marina McIsaac (2002) The Relationship of Social Presence and Interaction in Online Classes, American Journal of Distance Education, 16:3, 131-150, DOI: 10.1207/S15389286AJDE1603_2 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1603_2 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions The Relationship of Social Presence and Interaction in Online Classes Chih-Hsiung Tu The George Washington University Marina McIsaac Arizona State University The purpose of this research was to study social presence in the on- line learning environment. Dimensions of social presence were ex- amined using quantitative and qualitative methods. Three dimen- sions of social presence—social context, online communication, and interactivity—emerged as important elements in establishing a sense of community among online learners. The privacy factor was also an important element in the level of comfort for students online. An in- crease in the level of online interaction occurs with an improved level of social presence. This can be fostered by considering charac- teristics of the learners, by selecting the appropriate computer-medi- ated communication medium, and by applying appropriate instruc- tional elements to course design. Social presence is a measure of the feeling of community that a learner ex- periences in an online environment. To examine social presence in online classes, the relationship between media and the sociocultural construction of knowledge should be explored (McIsaac and Gunawardena 1996). Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) regarded social presence as the most important perception that occurs in an environment and stated that it is fun- damental to person-to-person communication. Therefore the area of social presence, particularly in the online environment, invites further inquiry. Because of the lack of traditional communication cues in the electronic classroom, researchers are interested in examining ways to enhance the two 131 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 16(3), 131–150 Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Requests for reprints should be sent to Chih-Hsiung Tu, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University, 2134 G Street N.W., Wash- ington, DC 20152. E-mail: ctu@gwu.edu D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 components of social presence: intimacy and immediacy (Argyle and Dean 1965; Wiener and Mehrabian 1968). These components can be further bro- ken down into dimensions that can then be expanded individually in the on- line environment (see Figure 1). It is hypothesized that using strategies to improve social context, online communication, and interactivity will in- crease interaction of online students and instructors in online classes. These three dimensions of social presence will be explored in this study. The phenomenon of social presence was described initially in face-to-face (FTF), audio, and closed-circuit television encounters. How- ever, the computer-mediated communication (CMC) environment presents very different characteristics from the FTF classroom. How does social pres- ence theory apply to CMC systems? How can social presence affect online learning? Answers to these inquiries may assist instructional designers to de- velop more interactive and successful distance education courses. There is not a clear definition of social presence for CMC in the litera- ture (Rafaeli 1988; Walther and Burgoon 1992; Svenning and Ruchinskas 1984; Walther 1995, 1996, 1997). This research proposes to define social presence for online settings, develop guidelines for improving online social learning environments through interaction, and promote sound instruc- tional design in distance education. The research questions were as follows: 1. Is there a relationship between social presence and online interac- tion? 2. How do social relationships affect online interaction? 3. How does online communication impact interaction on CMC? 132 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES Figure 1. Social Presence and Interaction D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 4. How does interactivity impact online interaction? 5. Do issues of privacy influence online social interaction? 6. Does the use of CMC intensify social interaction among online learners? Literature Review Definition of Social Presence Social presence has been defined as the degree of awareness of another person in an interaction and the consequent appreciation of an interper- sonal relationship (Short, Williams, and Christie 1976; Rice 1993; Walther 1992; Walther and Burgoon 1992). Biocca (1997) stated, “The minimum level of social presence occurs when users feel that a form, behavior, or sensory experience indicates the presence of another intelligence.” Factors that contribute to the degree of social presence in an FTF encounter are fa- cial expression, direction of gaze, posture, dress, nonverbal cues, and vocal cues. Perception of social presence, initially seen as an attribute of the me- dium (Short, Williams, and Christie 1976), varied among users (Gunawardena 1995; Perse et al. 1992; Young 1999) and should be viewed as a subjective quality, depending on the objective quality of the medium (Walther 1992). Degree of Social Presence The degree of social presence is based on the characteristics of the me- dium and the user’s perception. Normally, users are asked to assess the de- gree of social presence in a particular situation (Perse et al. 1992; Walther 1992). Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) measured social presence through the semantic differential technique and used a series of bipolar scales: sociable/unsociable, personal/impersonal, sensitive/insensitive, and warm/cold. Tu (2002) argued that current social presence instruments (Short, Williams, and Christie 1976; Gunawardena and Zittle 1997) were unable to capture a thorough perception of social presence because several important variables were not considered (e.g., privacy, recipients, topics). Two Concepts of Social Presence Intimacy (Argyle and Dean 1965) is a function of such things as eye con- tact, physical proximity, and topic of conversation. Communication with 133 TU AND MCISAAC D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 maintained eye contact, proximity, body leaning forward, and smiling con- veys intimacy (Burgoon et al. 1984). When an uncomfortable degree of in- timacy is encountered, the participants will attempt to alter their behavior to maintain an optimal comfort level, called equilibrium (Short, Williams, and Christie 1976). Immediacy (Wiener and Mehrabian 1968) is the psychological distance between a communicator and the recipient of the communication. Immedi- acy is conveyed through speech and associated verbal and nonverbal cues (Walther 1992). Therefore, the user may alter immediacy. Three Dimensions of Social Presence Three dimensions of social presence were proposed from previous stud- ies: social context, online communication, and interactivity (Tu 2000, 2001). Social context. Social contexts, such as task orientation (Steinfield 1986), privacy (Champness 1972; Steinfield 1986), topics (Argyle and Dean 1965; Walther 1992), recipients/social relationships (Walther 1992; Williams and Rice 1983), and social process (Walther 1992) contribute to the degree of social presence. When the conversation is task oriented and more public, the degree of social presence will degrade. Walther (1992) proposed that different social processes, settings, and purposes are compo- nents of social context and affect social presence. Task types influence the degree of social presence and communication processes. Steinfield (1986) found that task complexity, task interdepen- dence, environmental uncertainty, and the need for communication across distant locations were positively associated with increasing task orienta- tion in CMC messaging. Hollingshead and McGrath (1995) identified four different task types associated with CMC—to generate, choose, negotiate, and execute. Walther (1992) argued that social relationships could stimulate changes in interactions. CMC users tend initially to have less relational communi- cation. However, as time passes, CMC users are driven to develop social re- lationships by forming impressions of others through the text-based infor- mation conveyed. Participants became more social toward the latter part of a CMC conference than during the initial stages and exchanged more per- sonal messages at that time (Gunawardena and Zittle 1997). Haslam’s (1995) four social relationships—communal sharing, equality matching, 134 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 authority ranking, and market pricing—can be applied to online learning environments and redefined as Love, Information, Status, and Services. Privacy affects the degree of social presence. A less private setting re- sults in a decreased perception of social presence by users. Champness (1972) reported that users felt more public in a videoconference and per- ceived less social presence. A camera in operation may be seen as intru- sive, electronic eavesdropping and produce negative reactions (Ryan 1976). Steinfield (1986) reported that users were reluctant to employ e-mail for confidential matters, so privacy may not have affected their use of e-mail. Online communication. Online communication is concerned with the attributes of the language used online and the applications of online lan- guage. The text-based format requires CMC users to possess some level of computer communication literacy such as typing, reading, and writing. People without these skills develop communication anxiety (Gunawardena 1991) when text-based communication is required. Therefore, text-based communications should be initiated with some light or casual topics or in- troductions. Training students to use the medium comfortably is crucial to the success of collaborative learning. Garramone, Harris, and Anderson (1986) concluded that the degree of social presence on computer bulletin boards was perceived as higher for users who were more interactive than for those who were not. Perse et al. (1992) found a positive relationship be- tween social presence and a student’s perception of his/her own computer expertise. Interactivity. Interactivity includes the activities in which CMC users engage and the communication styles they use. The potential for feedback contributes to the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction. Immediacy is a component of interactivity. Because responses in asyn- chronous CMC are delayed, and not immediate, a feeling of low interactivity can diminish social presence. Communication styles may im- pact social presence. Norton (1986) identified eleven communication styles (impression-leaving, contentious, open, dramatic, dominant, pre- cise, relaxed, friendly, attentive, animated, and communicator image) that may be associated with online communication. Gunawardena (1995) dif- ferentiates interactivity and social presence, arguing that social presence requires users to add one more step to awareness of interactivity; in short, when users notice it, there is social presence. 135 TU AND MCISAAC D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 Research on the Impact of Social Presence Immediacy relates positively to a number of instructional processes. Christophel (1990) reported that instructors with higher social presence were viewed as more positive and effective, leading to an increase in affect toward the instructor and the course. Kelley and Gorham (1988) found a positive relationship between immediacy and cognitive learning at the level of short-term recall. Gorham (1988) concluded that teacher verbal immedi- acy behavior correlated with affective learning and cognitive learning. Lack of immediacy results in a lack of social presence, resulting in frustra- tion, a critical attitude toward the instructor’s effectiveness, and lower af- fective learning (Rifkind 1992). Sallinen-Kuparinen (1992) suggested that using stylistic behavior could contribute to the perception of teacher effectiveness. Gunawardena (1995) felt that instructors should develop interaction skills that create teacher im- mediacy and a sense of social presence as well as offer encouragement to participants (Gunawardena and Zittle 1997). Methodology Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to understand the students’ perception of social presence. Fifty-one students enrolled in a graduate level course were the participants. Quantitative Method The CMC Questionnaire (Tu 2002), evaluating e-mail, bulletin board, and real-time chat, was used to measure online social presence and privacy. The questionnaire contains seventeen social-presence items and thirteen privacy items, each with a five-point Likert scale, and twelve demographic identities. Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Bartlett 1950) was applied to in- crease the validity because of the small number of participants. This tested whether the correlation was statistically different from zero by comparing the correlation matrix (R) and identity matrix (I). If R ≠ 1, the correlation was significant and then factor analysis could follow. The power of the Bartlett’s test of sphericity is that it is sensitive to sample size (Knapp and Swoyer 1967). Therefore, if the zero correlation is rejected by a small sam- ple, there is greater validity. Exploratory factor analysis was utilized. Humphrey-llgen Parallel Anal- ysis was applied; two data matrices are analyzed simultaneously and their 136 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 eigenvalues were plotted. Additionally, Cattell’s Scree test and Kaiser’s Criterion were used to determine the number of factors to extract. Pearson correlation was computed to explain the relationship of the numbers of messages sent/received and the social presence. Qualitative Method Participant observation method with a dramaturgy perspective was used to understand social presence in CMC from the student’s point of view. Dramaturgy is a theatrical metaphor used to understand social interaction. Goffman (1959) contended that humans construct their self-presenta- tions/impression management and carry them off in front of others. It is an intentional motive behind the planning and execution of human perfor- mances that are accomplished with an eye toward presenting the best im- pression of themselves in the view of others. In other words, people con- struct some images intentionally and provide others inadvertently. A dramaturgical perspective sees actors engaging in manipulative behavior designed to manage impressions. Therefore, the researcher should take a manipulative role (Mead 1934). Tu (2001) argued that participant observa- tion is best suited to the dramaturgical perspective because it enables the re- searcher to capture a wide range of acts. FirstClass, a computer conferencing system providing e-mail, bulletin board, and real-time chat functions, was used for class communication. The data were collected through casual conversation, an in-depth inter- view, direct observation, and document analysis. The casual conversation was conducted between the researcher and students in different settings, the researcher’s office, the classroom, online real-time chat, and any conve- nient location. Observations were conducted in the classroom, the com- puter laboratory, the graduate assistant’s office, and through online asyn- chronous and synchronous class discussions. The researcher applied a dramaturgical approach by using different communication styles, for- mal/informal communication styles, paralanguage, emoticons, and so on, with students to observe their responses. Eight semistructured in-depth in- terviews were conducted with students to explore particular concepts in so- cial presence, such as “How do you feel when you communicate with someone who dominated the conversations?” and “What are your relation- ships with online participants?” Document analysis included all messages delivered on FirstClass and on e-mail. In-depth analysis began after acqui- sition of some preliminary data, giving the researcher a better idea of where to focus further data collection. Three dimensions from the quantitative 137 TU AND MCISAAC D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 data results and specific studies, Haslam’s (1995) four social relationships, Hollingshead and McGrath’s (1995) four task types, and Norton’s (1986) eleven stylistic communication styles provided a foundation for qualitative data analysis. Triangulation methods were utilized to achieve a better understanding about the students’ perceptions of social presence, not as a validation pro- cess. Data triangulation consisted of time, space, and person triangulation. Method triangulation consisted of class observation, lab observation, on- line discussion observation, interview, and questionnaires. Results Demographics Forty-three of 51 participants responded to the online questionnaire. More than half of the participants (28, or 65.12%) were female, and 15 (34.88%) were male. Multiple age groups were represented with a spread of 18 years to 45-plus years. The ethnic mix was 31 Caucasians (72.09%), 4 Latinos (9.30%), 4 African-Americans (9.30%), and 4 Asian and Pacific Islanders (9.30%). Quantitative Results An exploratory factor analysis was performed on thirty questionnaire items. Five factors (social context, online communication, interactivity, system privacy, and feeling of privacy) were retained. These five factors ac- counted for 76.74% of the variance and were extracted using varimax rota- tion. Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for these five factors ranged from .82 to .71. The factor analysis was conducted for each of three CMC sys- tems—e-mail, bulletin board, and real-time discussion. The coefficients and factor structures are similar in all three CMC systems. The main discernable difference is that the order of extraction differs for the individ- ual samples. The perceived social presence (M = 3.32, SD = .39) and privacy (M = 3.08, SD = .52) on CMC was high. However, correlation between social presence and privacy was insignificant with r = 0.286. One-way repeated-measures, analysis of variance (ANOVA), were com- puted for three CMC systems and five factors. It indicated a significant dif- ference in the level of five factors and CMC systems (see Table 1). 138 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 One-way repeated-measures, ANOVA, were computed for the level of privacy of three CMC systems and indicated a significant difference in the level of privacy among the three systems: F (2, 41) = 10.32, p < .05. E-mail received the highest rate (M = 3.15, SD = .58), followed by the real-time discussion (M = 3.13, SD = .49) and bulletin board (M = 2.97, SD = .48). Because the ANOVA overall test yielded a significant result, three pairwise comparisons among three CMC systems were conducted to assess which means differed from the others. Two of the three pairwise compari- sons were significant, controlling for familywise error rate across the three tests at the .05 level, using the Holm’s sequential Bonferroni procedure to minimize the chances of making a Type I error. The smallest p value was for the comparison of e-mail-bulletin board and bulletin board-real time discussion, and its value of 0.001 was less than the p value of 0.05 / 3 = 0.0167 and, therefore, the differences between the means for these two sys- tems was significant. The last comparison, between e-mail and real-time discussion, was not significant (p = 0.44). One-way repeated-measures, ANOVA, were computed for three CMC systems and five factors emerged from the previous factor analysis. The re- sults indicated a significant difference in the level of all five factors among these three CMC systems (p < .05). A Pearson correlation between mean social presence rating and fre- quency of messages produced a correlation of r = –.004, and this correla- tion was not significant at ( α = .05, r (41) = –.04, p > .05. The frequency of CMC does not vary with the level of social presence. Qualitative Results The data analysis began with three dimensions and privacy factor as de- rived from the quantitative results and the literature. The three basic dimen- sions and the privacy factor remained unchanged. However, the qualitative 139 TU AND MCISAAC Table 1. Multivariate Tests: Five Factors Effect Wilks’s λ Value F d.f. Error d.f. Sig. η2 CMC Social context .58 14.84 2 41 .00* .42 Online communication .66 10.38 2 41 .00* .34 Interactivity .42 27.97 2 41 .00* .58 System privacy .83 4.21 2 41 .02* .17 Feeling of privacy .71 8.39 2 41 .00* .29 Note: Sig. = statistical significance of the F value; CMC = computer-mediated com- munication. *p < .05, two-tailed. D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 E. F. Haghish E. F. Haghish data analysis indicated that there were more variables that contribute to so- cial presence. Social presence theory is more complicated than previous studies indicated (Gunawardena 1995; Gunawardena and Zittle 1997; Tu 2002; see Table 2). Discussion Social presence positively influences online interaction; however, fre- quency of participation does not represent high social presence. Three di- mensions of social presence—social context, online communication, and interactivity—clearly emerged quantitatively and qualitatively. These three dimensions positively impact social presence. Social context was con- structed from the CMC characteristics and their perception of the CMC en- vironment. Online communication consisted of the attributes of the lan- guage used online and the applications of that online language. Interactivity includes the activities in which CMC users engage and the communication styles they use. Therefore, social presence is the degree of feeling, perception, and reaction of being connected by CMC to another in- tellectual entity through a text-based encounter. Participants felt a high level of privacy on CMC; however, the correlation to social presence was insignificant. Three Dimensions Social context. Social context is constructed from the CMC users’ characteristics and their perception of the CMC environment. Analysis of the qualitative data reveals that this dimension appears more complicated than suggested by the quantitative results. The degree of familiarity with participants appears to be critical in qualitative data that did not load on so- cial context in the quantitative data analysis. The following items may have positive influences on social presence: • familiarity with recipients, • informal relationships, • better trust relationships, • personally informative relationships, • positive psychological attitude toward to technology, and • more-private locations. 140 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 141 Table 2. Variables Identified in Qualitative Data Dimensions Variables I. Social Context II. Online Communication III. Interactivity IV. Privacy 1 Familiarity with recipients Keyboarding and accuracy skills Timely response Formats of CMC 2 Assertive/acquiescent Use of emoticons and paralanguage Communication styles Access and location 3 Informal/formal relationship Characteristics of real-time discussion Length of messages Patterns of CMC 4 Trust relationships Characteristics of discussion boards Formal/informal 5 Social relationships (love and information) Language skills (reading, writing) Type of tasks (planning, creativity, social tasks) 6 Psychological attitude toward technology Size of groups 7 Access and location Communication strategies 8 User’s characteristics Note: CMC = computer-mediated communication. D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 When the senders are familiar with the recipients, they tend to be more informal and are more willing to share personal information, thereby achieving greater interaction—although this issue did not load on factor analysis. Therefore, it is recommended that a dedicated time for introductions be integrated into the course design at the beginning of the semester. The more-assertive students may not be aware that their communication styles create a negative impact on other students’ ability and willingness to communicate, resulting in unequal participation in real-time discussions. In this case, instructors can use a casual communication style to encourage more-reluctant students. Inherently, students perceive that the relationship between teachers and themselves is more formal. Clearly, when students communicated with their peers, the conversation tended to be more casual because students felt that they are “at the same level.” Trust issues played a very critical role in online interaction among stu- dents. In the CMC environment, it requires more time for students to be- come acquainted and to develop a trusting relationship. Therefore, students must develop a method of gaining trust before attaining a higher level of so- cial presence. The qualitative data reveals that social presence is impacted by the stu- dents’ social relationships. Four major social relationships emerged from this study: demonstrating caring, exchanging information, providing ser- vices, and maintaining existing status, in that order. Caring and information exchanges in social relationships were found to impact online interactions positively, while status and service relationships resulted in negative for- mal communications. Students’ perceptions of CMC technology were based primarily on their cultural backgrounds, their particular situations, their previous experi- ences, or their psychological attitudes. Individual students perceived that the same CMC system can have different attributes at different times, at dif- ferent places, in different situations, and in different contexts. The location from which students could access computers is a critical el- ement. Students accessing CMC at home had the conveniences of privacy, a more relaxed atmosphere, a strong familiarity with their own computers, and the ability to exert greater control and flexibility over their schedules. These advantages permit a greater willingness and a higher motivation to engage in CMC activities. Students whose only computer access is in a computer laboratory may be less willing to confront the difficulties im- posed by CMC access. Inconveniences include waiting in line, lack of pri- 142 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 vacy, and the likelihood of losing the computer workstation during a rest room break. Online communication. Online communication refers to the attrib- utes, application, and perception of the language used online. This was sup- ported by five variables in the quantitative data analysis: CMC (1) is stimu- lating; (2) is expressive; (3) conveys feelings and emotions; (4) is meaningful; and (5) is easily understood, as confirmed by qualitative data such as keyboarding skills, expressiveness, characteristics of discussion, and language skills. Keyboarding skills clearly influenced the students’ efficiency in syn- chronous communication because immediate responses were required; but the impact was less noticeable in asynchronous communications. The in- structor should examine students’ keyboarding skills and utilize the appro- priate CMC systems, either synchronous or asynchronous. When students have fewer keyboarding skills, asynchronous communication, e-mail, and bulletin board are more appropriate. Accuracy was another area of concern. Typographical errors occurred frequently and may have interfered with un- derstanding or caused misunderstandings. In the CMC environment, the delivery channel is lean. Therefore, plain text may not be capable of delivering the desired level of stimulation, and one may find it more difficult to express intended meaning. “Misunder- standing” was a major concern for many students. Therefore, increasing the familiarity among students was important. The process of conveying feelings and emotions is necessary in human communication. CMC users are constantly searching for expressive ways to generate and deliver their feelings and emotions. Students used emoticons and paralanguage to compensate for the lack of social context cues in the online communication environment. Most students expressed positive responses to the use of emoticons and paralanguage. Many students reported that they felt lost in the multithreaded discus- sion environment. They became confused and frustrated, having difficulty determining “who” was talking to “whom” about “what.” The large num- ber of messages and the ever-increasing number of topics made it impossi- ble to maintain the discussion speed, regardless of typing skills. Generally, students were motivated to “withdraw” or “just observe.” These reactions would create a negative impact on online communications, such as creating “discontinued” feelings and interfered with the student’s ability to think and reflect on the messages. Two strategies were proposed (Winiecki and Chyung 1998): using strategic snipping to simulate conversational over- 143 TU AND MCISAAC D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 laps and using formulations and indexical repairs to emulate conversational practice. Interactivity. Interactivity consisted of those cooperative activities and communication styles used by CMC users. The quantitative data consisted of four variables: CMC (1) is pleasant, (2) is immediate, (3) promotes re- sponsiveness, and (4) allows the student to be comfortable with familiar topics. The qualitative data included issues that involved CMC response time, communication styles/skills, and the size of discussion groups. Issues that have positive influence are as follows: • timely response to CMC messages, • use of stylistic communication styles, • casual conversations, communication strategies, • appropriate message length, • planning, creativity, intellectual, decision-making, and social tasks, and • appropriate communication group size. The response time was an issue that was critical to the online interaction, particularly in asynchronous communication. If the person did not respond within the time frame expected by the sender or did not respond at all, the sender perceived less social presence. Three irregularities resulting in a de- layed or absent response to a message were pure technology delays, per- sonal technology use difficulty, and the sender’s perception regarding late/no response. Stylistic communication styles were found to have a very positive im- pact on students’ feelings toward others and influencing learning. Nine of Norton’s (1986) 11 stylistic communication styles (attentive, impres- sion-leaving, relaxed, acquiescent, friendly, open, animated, dramatic, and personal) were identified to be useful in increasing interactive com- munication. The level of formality influenced the students’ willingness to respond. When the message was perceived as more formal, immediacy was sacri- ficed because the psychological distance between the correspondents was increased. Informality decreased the psychological distance and people felt closer to each other. The use of formal and informal styles depended on the situation. One female participant expressed her feeling about a formal mes- sage: “Fancy paper makes you feel like changing your clothes before you read it.… It comes across as cold when it’s really just formal.” 144 SOCIAL PRESENCE AND ONLINE CLASSES D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 The findings from interviews suggested that instructors use several so- cial communication strategies to enhance interactive communications: ini- tiation of conversation, greeting, praise, inviting tones, and so forth. Initi- ating communication showed the recipient that the correspondent was willing to build a friendship as well as share concerns. This made people feel friendlier, more personable, and warmer. Message length exerted influence on students’ interactions based on in- terviews. Real-time discussion is more like oral conversation, and is there- fore shorter. E-mail is more like a “causal written conversation.” The bulle- tin board was perceived as more formal writing, so it tended to be longer, the writing style more formal, and the word choice less oral. Sentence structure and grammar should be more rigid since the message was perma- nent and in public. Several task types that influenced the online interaction were identified: planning, creativity, intellectual, decision making, cognitive conflict, and social tasks. Four tasks were identified as more desirable in the area of cog- nitive learning. Social tasks contributing to social learning formed the foundation for all of the different tasks. Ideally, in a learning environment, “generate” and “choose” will provide a better environment for interaction. Being familiar with the topic of the discussion exerted a great impact on a student’s interaction. When the students were more familiar with the dis- cussion topics, they felt more comfortable participating in the discussions; otherwise, they felt intimidated and were reluctant to join the conversation. Therefore, it was recommended that, if applicable, one should allow stu- dents to exercise some control over the selection of the discussion topics. The size of the discussion group exerted a major impact on students’ in- teraction, particularly in real-time discussions. It is recommended that the real-time discussion group or chat be limited to two or three participants, if possible. If a larger group is necessary, a strategy that provides equal turn-taking must be applied. Privacy System privacy and a perception of privacy emerged as major variables. Quantitative data analysis provided what was associated with the privacy factors, whereas qualitative data analysis addressed how students per- ceived online privacy issues. Among three CMC systems, it appeared that e-mail was ranked as the most private, followed by one-to-one real-time discussion, then many-to-many real-time discussion; bulletin board was considered the least private. It was concluded that one-to-one discussion 145 TU AND MCISAAC D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ite tb ib lio te ke t I T ro nd he im N T N U ] a t 0 2: 34 2 2 O ct ob er 2 01 4 was a more personal form of communication, such as e-mail; therefore, it was more private. Many-to-many discussions have a more public access and are perceived as less private. The location from which students accessed CMC had major influences on their feelings of privacy. When the location was more public, as in some computer laboratories, the students perceived less privacy. The correlation between social presence and privacy was insignificant. Students responded that it was “risky” to share personal information on CMC in the interviews. However, students perceived CMC systems to have high levels of social presence in the questionnaire. This reaction can be ex- plained as “risk-taking” behavior (Witmer 1997). Students know that it is risky to share personal information online, but they feel that it will not af- fect them negatively. Recommendations The results of this study revealed that social presence is much more complicated than previously imagined. The current CMC instrument (Tu 2002) must be revised to include additional variables identified in the qual- itative data. The format of CMC systems, e-mail, and real-time discussion should be examined in different formats: one-to-one e-mail, one-to-many e-mail, one-to-one real-time discussion, and many-to-many real-time dis- cussion. Social learning requires cognitive and environmental determinants. So- cial presence is necessary to enhance and foster online social interaction. Therefore, the relationships between social presence theory and social learning theory require further examination. The correlation between pri- vacy and social presence was insignificant although both were highly per- ceived. It deserves further examination. Conclusions Social presence was redefined as the degree of feeling, perception, and reaction to another intellectual entity in the CMC environment. It is clear that social presence is a vital element influencing online interaction. This study examined the issues in social interactions and provided a foundation for future CMC studies. CMC is unlikely to replace FTF communication in the learning environ- ment despite its acceptance as an educational tool. 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work_3fxoir4vpfh7ldkhyi3opch45m	----	Z:\Pagination\T&F\US\HAJD\HAJD24(2)\Finals\HAJD_A_460934.dvi The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education, 24:81–91, 2010 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 0892-3647 print / 1538-9286 online DOI: 10.1080/08923641003604251 Online Versus Face-to-Face Accommodations Among College Students With Disabilities Lucy Barnard-Brak and Tracey Sulak Baylor University Abstract: Although both the number of online learning opportunities and students with disabilities in higher education has increased over the last two decades, students with disabilities may be overlooked. The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online learning environment among college students with disabilities compared with requesting accommodations in the face-to-face learning environment. Accommodations refer to those adjustments and modification made to instructional and/or curricular requirements in order for students with disabil- ities to fully participate in a course (Rehabilitation Act of 1973). Results indicate that students with disabilities did not have significantly different attitudes toward requesting accommodations as a whole in the face-to-face versus online learning environments. Results, however, do indicate that students who report having visible disabilities appear to have more positive attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online versus face-to-face learning environment compared with students who report having hidden disabilities. The number of online course delivery options in institutions of higher edu- cation has exploded over the last two decades (Allen and Seaman 2006). Although the number of online course delivery options has increased, the num- ber of students with disabilities enrolling in institutions of higher education has tripled over the last twenty-five years (Olney et al. 2004). In efforts to improve and create more online learning opportunities efficiently for students, institutions of higher education may overlook the needs of students with dis- abilities (Edmonds 2004). As noted by Schmetzke (2001), the idea that online distance learning represents a transition of higher education being available anytime and anywhere is quite accurate but not necessarily to everyone. In this sense, students with disabilities can experience a second digital divide Correspondence should be sent to Lucy Barnard-Brak, Department of Educational Psychology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97301, Waco, TX 76798. E-mail: Lucy_Barnard-Brak@baylor.edu 82 BARNARD-BRAK AND SULAK (Burghstahler 2003). Thus, despite their increasing numbers, students with disabilities can become outpaced in the online learning environment without necessary assistive technologies. Online learning environments created with persons with disabilities in mind can increase access for all users (Burghstahler 2006). Elements to increase accessibility can be built into the online learning environment from the initial design phase, making the retrofitting of the learning environment to accommodate persons with disabilities unnecessary (Kinash and Crichton 2007). Although this proactive approach to the design of online learning envi- ronments would appear to be the most effective, for environments already in existence, retrofitting may be the only option. As such, guidelines produced by agencies such as W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (2008) have been uti- lized by educational institutions to ensure that online courses are as accessible to persons with disabilities. When guidelines for online learning courses have not been implemented by an institution, accommodations for online courses have to be made on an ad hoc basis and, as a result, may be subject to the discretion of the instructor, the department, or the university. Since providing accommodations in higher education revolves around issues of access, such disparate accommodations may affect the educational institutions’ compliance with legal statutes. Increases in the number of students with disabilities in higher educa- tion can be viewed as the result of these legislative statutes and mandates (Metcalfe 2003). The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibit universities from discriminating against students with disabilities—acts that ostensibly include courses delivered online (Wall and Sarver 2003). These legislative mandates concerning higher edu- cation, however, are in contrast to laws (e.g., Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) governing elementary and secondary education for individu- als with disabilities. In elementary and secondary education systems, public schools must seek out and identify students with special needs and provide them necessary accommodations and services. Accommodations refer to those adjustments and modification made to instructional and/or curricular require- ments in order for students with disabilities to fully participate in a course (Rehabilitation Act of 1973). In higher education, students with disabilities must request these accommodations from their university in order to receive them. Although students with disabilities may experience difficulty with this shift of responsibility in receiving accommodations and services, this difficulty does not appear to be more evident with respect to the online learning environ- ment. In examining 604 college students with disabilities enrolled in courses delivered at a distance, Moisey (2004) notes that only 7% of these students did not request necessary accommodations in the online learning environment. As such, students with disabilities do not appear to have any specific difficulty requesting accommodations in the online learning environment. ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES 83 Students with disabilities, however, may have different levels of comfort reflected in attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face-to-face versus online learning environments. In a study completed in Australia, uni- versity students with learning disabilities claimed to feel embarrassed and guilty about requesting accommodations (Ryan 2007). These attitudes toward requesting accommodations are indeed important as universities would appear to strive to be dedicated to the well-being and success of all students in all learning environments. If students with disabilities revealed more nega- tive experiences or attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online learning environment compared with the face-to-face learning environment, universities must be concerned as student-centered institutions and with respect to possible legal ramifications. Students with disabilities, as a nontraditional student population, represent a growing and diverse group of learners whose needs can vary according to the specific disability and its corresponding severity. Many other characteristics, however, can also impact their higher-education experiences and outcomes. Visibility of an individual’s disability, for instance, can influence how per- sons without disabilities interact with him or her (Smart 2001, 2009). Persons with visible disabilities (e.g., visually impaired, physically impaired, or hear- ing impaired), whose disabilities may be apparent to others, generally report to have more positive interactions with persons without disabilities (Smart 2001, 2009). Persons with hidden or nonvisible disabilities—for example, learning disabilities, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or health-related impairments—upon disclosure of their disability generally report having fewer positive interactions with persons without disabilities. As such, the fewer posi- tive interactions that persons with hidden disabilities experience can be viewed as a result of cognitive dissonance on the part of the individual without a dis- ability. As a result, persons with hidden disabilities are more often suspected of malingering a disability (Smart 2001, 2009). Such faculty attitudes and perceptions can also impact whether a person with a disability requests accom- modations in higher education. Training in accommodations and disabilities for faculty members has been associated with positive perceptions toward students with hidden and visible disabilities (Murray et al. 2009). The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online learning environment among college students with disabilities compared with requesting accommodations in the face-to- face learning environment. To achieve this purpose, we examined two research questions: 1. Do students with disabilities have significantly different attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face-to-face versus online learning environments? 2. Do students who report having visible disabilities have significantly dif- ferent attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face-to-face and 84 BARNARD-BRAK AND SULAK online learning environment compared with students who report having hidden disabilities? METHOD Participants Approximately seven hundred students (2.9% of the student body) are cur- rently registered with the on-campus office of disability accommodations at the large public university located in the southwestern United States studied. Those students who are registered may or may not request accommodations. There is an additional unknown number of students with disabilities who are not registered with the on-campus office of disability accommodations and thus do not request accommodations through any official or formal channel. The study consisted of eighty-three students reporting to have a disability who self- selected to participate. Participants were assured as to the confidentiality of their responses. Approximately 65% of the participants identified themselves as female (n = 54) and 90.4% as white (n = 75). A total of twenty-three dif- ferent academic degree programs were represented. There was a roughly even distribution of participants by level of study (i.e., freshman, sophomore, etc.). The majority of participants reporting have one disability (57.8%, n = 48) followed by two disabilities (37.3%, n = 31). The disability category with the highest frequency reported by participants was learning disability (38.6%, n = 32). Approximately 63% (n = 52) of participants considered themselves as having a hidden disability, whereas approximately 37% (n = 31) reported having a visible disability. Measures For the purposes of this study, attitudes refer to those cognitive perceptions that precede behavior that may be considered influenced by a variety of factors including but not limited to social, emotional, and behavioral needs of the individual. To measure attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face-to-face learning environment, the Attitudes Toward Requesting Accommodations (ATRA) scale was utilized. The ATRA is a thirty-five-item, Likert-type scale constructed to measure attitudes toward requesting accommo- dations in traditional face-to-face learning environments with values ranging from strongly agree (1) to strongly disagree (5) (Barnard-Brak, Davis, Tate, Sulak 2009; Barnard-Brak et al. in press). The ATRA was coded so that higher total scale scores indicate more positive attitudes toward requesting accommo- dations whereas lower total scale scores indicate more negative attitudes. In a previous study, the ATRA revealed an acceptable internal consistency of scores ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES 85 for the data obtained with a Cronbach’s alpha value of α = .907 (Barnard, Lan, and Lechtenberger 2008). In the current study, the scale revealed a similar acceptable level of internal consistency of scores for the data obtained from the scale with α = .912. To measure attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online learning environment, we adapted and modified items from the ATRA. The developed scale consisted of twelve items with a Likert-type response format with values ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. This revised ver- sion of the ATRA contextualized to the online learning environment revealed an acceptable internal consistency of scores for the data obtained with a Cronbach’s alpha value of α = .938. An exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring as the method of extraction followed by a Promax rotation (Kappa = 4) revealed a one-factor solution accounting for 74.48% of the variance. Visual examination of the scree plot supported the conclu- sion of a two-factor solution. We have included both scales in their entirety in Appendices A and B. Procedure Students were contacted via a university Listserv for registered students with disabilities and were invited to participate in an online survey. The same respondents completed both scales regarding face-to-face and online accom- modations. The response rate (11.8%, 83 out of 700) was low. Yet, as we recruited participants via the Listserv, we do not know how many students were actually able to open their e-mail messages to consider the study. Additionally, these electronic messages may have been sent to a junk or spam e-mail folder. We then summed and standardized the total scores for both scales for each individual. All analyses were performed in SPSS (ver. 16.0). Approximately 4% of the cases revealed missing data (n = 3). Values for missing data were handled using a linear trend at point as the method of imputation. Multivariate outliers were examined by calculating Mahalanobis distance indicating that such outliers were minimal and were retained in the analysis (Mertler and Vannatta 2005; Tabachnick and Fidell 2006). Analysis In examining our research questions, we performed a two-way mixed design analysis of variance. Our first independent variable consisted of attitudes toward requesting accommodations repeatedly measured across participants with respect to the face-to-face and online learning environments. Our second independent variable was visibility of disability as reported by the participants. Participants could report that their disability (or disabilities) was either hid- den or visible. The assumption of the homogeneity of variances was met for 86 BARNARD-BRAK AND SULAK both the ATRA and revised ATRA scale scores, respectively, F(1, 81) = .441, p = .50 and F(1, 81) = .435, p = .51. The assumption of sphericity did not need to be evaluated as the study consisted of only two measurement repetitions (face-to-face vs. online attitudes). In performing our 2 x 2 mixed design ANOVA, Cohen’s d was calculated as the measure of effect size. Cohen’s d values of .20, .50, and .80 or larger indicate small, medium, and large effect sizes, respectively (Cohen 1988). RESULTS With regard to our first research question, results indicate that attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face-to-face and online learning environ- ments are not significantly different among college students with disabilities, F(1, 81) = 1.232, p = .27. Post hoc power analyses were performed in G∗ Power (Faul et al. 2007) indicating an acceptable level of statistical power achieved, 1 – β = .89. Regarding our second research question, results indicate that students who report having visible disabilities have significantly different attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face-to-face and online learning environment compared with students who report having hidden disabilities, F(1, 81) = 5.784, p = .019, d = .38. This value of Cohen’s d indicates a small to medium association between visibility of disability and attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online versus face-to-face learning environ- ments. Specifically, students who report having visible disabilities (MD = .37, SD =.62) have significantly more positive attitudes toward requesting accom- modations in the online learning environment versus in the face-to-face learn- ing environment compared with students who report having hidden disabilities (MD = .07, SD =1.49). DISCUSSION The results of this study indicate that students with disabilities do not have significantly different attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the face- to-face versus online learning environments. This result suggests that students with disabilities do not have any more negative or positive attitudes associated with requesting accommodations in the online learning environment compared with the face-to-face learning environment. We should note that this result may be exclusive to students with disabilities studying at the institution in this study. Future research will have to replicate the study to determine whether these results are generalizable to other institutions of higher education. This result does, however, offer a positive insight to future research that students with disabilities do not appear to have more positive or negative attitudes ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES 87 toward requesting accommodations in the online versus face-to-face learning environment. With regard to our second research question, the results of this study also indicate that students who report having a visible disability have more positive attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online learning environ- ment versus the traditional face-to-face learning environment. For college students reporting having hidden disabilities, there was minimal difference in attitudes toward requesting accommodations in the online versus face-to-face learning environments (MD = .07, SD =1.49). For students reporting visible disabilities, there appeared to be a preference for—or at the very least more positive attitudes toward—requesting accommodations in the online learning environment over requesting these accommodations in the face-to-face learning environment (MD = .37, SD =.62). Although research has indicated that persons with hidden disabilities may experience fewer positive interactions with persons without disabilities upon disclosure (Smart 2001), it appears that students with visible disabilities may not desire involuntary disclosure despite more positive interactions. The results of the current study suggest that individuals with visible disabilities may simply prefer online courses given that their fellow classmates would possibly never know that they have a disability unless they chose to disclose this information online. Individuals with visible disabilities may want to avoid any stigma or negative interactions on behalf of peers regarding their disabilities. Individuals with hidden disabilities (e.g., learning disabilities or ADHD) would appear not to encounter stigma or negative peer interaction unless they chose to disclose this information. Additionally, individuals with visible disabilities may be more comfort- able requesting accommodations in an online learning environment than in a face-to-face environment, where necessary assistive technology may have to be transported between classrooms. Students with limited mobility (e.g., wheelchair-bound) may also prefer the flexibility and convenience of courses delivered online. Future research should consider examining why students with visible disabilities may have more positive attitudes toward requesting accom- modations in the online versus face-to-face learning environment as a function of these variables. Several limitations emerged as part of conducting this study. First, it should be reiterated that not all students with disabilities register with their university’s office of disability accommodations. The results of this study are thus limited in their application to those students with disabilities who choose to register with their university’s office of disability accommodations and who volunteered to participate in the study. Future research should consider a qual- itative approach that would begin to deconstruct why students with visible disabilities appear to prefer the accommodations process in the online versus face-to-face learning environment over students with hidden disabilities. Upon conducting further qualitative research in conjunction with the results of this 88 BARNARD-BRAK AND SULAK study, the practical implications may be considered numerous such that online courses may be well suited for learners with visible disabilities due to perceived stigma, greater accessibility, or some combination of these factors. Thus, the primary implication of this study may be that online course options could be associated with greater access to higher education among persons with visible disabilities in particular. REFERENCES Allen, I. E., and J. Seaman. 2006. Making the grade: Online education in the United States. Needham, MA: Sloan-C. Barnard-Brak, L., T. Davis, A. Tate, and T. Sulak. 2009. Attitudes as a predic- tor of college students requesting accommodations. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation 31: 189–198. Barnard-Brak, L., T. N. Sulak, A. Tate, and D. Lechtenberger. In press. Measuring attitudes toward requesting accommodations: A national multi- institutional study. Assessment for Effective Intervention. Burghstahler, S. 2003. Web-based distance learning and the second digital divide. In Design and implementation of Web-enabled teaching tools, ed. M. Hricko, 83–97. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing. ———. 2006. The development of accessibility indicators for distance learn- ing programs. Research in Learning Technology 14 (1): 79–102. Cohen, J. 1988. Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences, 2nd ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Edmonds, C. E. 2004. Providing access to students with disabilities in online distance education: Legal and technical concerns for higher education. The American Journal of Distance Education 18 (1): 51–62. Faul, F., E. Erdfelder, A. G. Lang, and A. Buchner. 2007. G∗Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods 39: 175–191. Kinash, S., and S. Crichton. 2007. Supporting the disabled student. In Handbook of distance education, 2nd ed., M. G. Moore, 193–204. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Mertler, C. A., and R. A. Vannatta. 2005. Advanced and multivariate statistical methods: Practical application and interpretation, 3rd ed. Glendale, CA: Pyrczak. Metcalfe, A. 2003. Overcoming organizational barriers to Web accessibility in higher education: A case study. In Design and implementation of Web- enabled teaching tools, ed. M. Hricko, 190–208. Hershey, PA: Information Science. Moisey, S. D. 2004. Students’ disabilities in distance education: Characteris- tics, course enrollment, completion, and support services. Journal of Distance Education 19 (1): 73–91. ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES 89 Murray, C., A. Lombardi, C. Wren, and C. Keys. 2009. Associations between prior disability-focused training and disability-related attitudes and percep- tions among university faculty. Learning Disability Quarterly 32: 87–100. Olney, M. F., J. Kennedy, K. Brockelman, and M. A. Newsom. 2004. Do you have a disability? A population-based test of acceptance, denial, and adjust- ment among adults with disabilities in the U.S. Journal of Rehabilitation 70: 4–9. Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Pub. L. 93–112. 26 Sept. 1973. H.R. 8070. Ryan, J. 2007. Learning disabilities in Australian universities: Hidden, ignored, and unwelcomed. Journal of Learning Disabilities 40 (5): 436–442. Schmetzke, A. 2001. Online distance education: Anytime, anywhere but not for everyone. Information Technology and Disabilities 7 (2): np. Smart, J. 2001. Disability, society, and the individual. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. ———. 2009. Disability, society, and the individual, 2nd ed. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Tabachnick, B. G., and L. S. Fidell. 2006. Using multivariate statistics, 5th ed. New York: Harper Collins. Wall, P. S., and L. Sarver. 2003. Disabled student access in an era of technology. Internet and Higher Education 6: 277–284. W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. 2008. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. World Wide Web Consortium. Available online at http://www. w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/ 90 BARNARD-BRAK AND SULAK Appendix A. Attitudes Toward Requesting Accommodations (ATRA) Scale Items Item Accommodations are unfair to other students. I want to prove I can do college. Accommodations are for academically weaker students. I want to stand on my own two feet. Accommodations are for lazier students. Students should try to get along without accommodations. I have never felt like I needed accommodations. I don’t like to admit that I have a disability. I don’t like talking about my disability. I don’t want professors to know that I have a disability. I don’t like people knowing private and personal information about me such as my disability. The cost of talking about my disability to get accommodations outweighs the benefits. I have a right to privacy regarding my disability. I don’t want friends to know that I have a disability. My family doesn’t think I am disabled enough to need accommodations. I don’t think I am disabled enough to need accommodations. I don’t know sometimes whether I am really all that disabled. I prefer to be treated as a nondisabled person. I want to be like other college students. I want to have a normal college experience. There’s nothing wrong with me. I was afraid of being labeled. People don’t think I am disabled. The Student Disability Services office was unhelpful. The Student Disability Services office was unapproachable. The Student Disability Services office did NOT assist me. I don’t trust Student Disability Services to keep my information confidential. I don’t trust professors to keep my information confidential. I didn’t know anything about disability accommodations when I started college. Going to Student Disability Services is awkward. Requesting accommodations from professors can be awkward. Student disability services were NOT discussed at my new student or transfer orientation. ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES 91 Appendix B. Revised Attitudes Toward Requesting Accommodations (ATRA) Scale Items Item Online courses make accommodations easier. Online courses make it more difficult to get accommodations.a Online courses allow me NOT to have to ask for all accommodations I would usually request. Online courses make it easier for me to be accommodated due to my disability. Online courses are better for me in terms of talking to professors about my disability. Online courses are better for me in terms of working with fellow students. I prefer online courses for requesting accommodations. I prefer online courses so I can choose how much to say about my disability. I prefer online courses because others will not know that I have a disability. I do better in online courses with accommodations than face-to-face. I feel more comfortable in online courses in requesting accommodations. I prefer online courses for accommodations. aIndicates item to be reverse-coded. 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work_3g7ve3nwqfcp5ca6smeuxjerum	----	International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT) ISSN: 2249 – 8958, Volume-8 Issue-6, August 2019 5356 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Factors Influencing Preference for Certification Courses Delivered Through Technology-Driven Distance Education Ansuman Sar, Satya Narayan Misra Abstract: As per the Merriam Webster dictionary, the definition of the distance learning is - “It is a method of study where teachers and students do not meet in a classroom but use the Internet, e- mail, video conference, audio conference mediums of the study. The assessments and doubt clearing also happen online and still there are some planned face to face interaction programs with the students.” In the late 1900s, correspondence courses started coming into the picture. These courses were mainly introduced for the working professionals and for the people who wish to go for competitive examinations as travelling to the university is difficult if it is far off. This is to enhance the access and reach for the learners. Many of the tutorial companies and coaching centers also use distance learning model to cater to the needs of IIT JEE/Civil services aspirants in India. However, distance-learning courses have much better acceptance in the western countries. In Europe and America, they have wider acceptance and several studies done have proven the need of the distance courses and the perception of the people about the distance courses is really good. Keywords: distance learning, technology-enabled education, online courses, E-learning I. INTRODUCTION Initially distance courses involved a lot of mail transactions between the faculty and the student. With the technological disruption/interference, the options for distance education have greatly inflated. Long back , as mentioned in the book of Distance-Learning: Principles for Effective Design/Delivery & Evaluation by C.M. Mehrotra, C. D. Hollister & L. Mc-Gahey, radios( two way communicating) were used for the teaching. After that, gradually different kinds of technological-delivery instruments were involved in online distance learning. The Examples of these are Cable television/Closed circuit/interactive TV/Audio-visual recordings/Telephones/Mobiles/personal computers and desktops, mobile devices and applications etc. Earlier distance learning was very slow and expensive and it was run or conducted for learners who are at a relatively shorter distance. With the satellites and development of scientific electronics, education-programs were accessed all over the world from any university in any continent. Today, live interaction with the counsellor, live doubt clearing classes and online-proctored assessments are possible with the use of technology innovation and high speed internet. These days considering the rapidly moving world and requirement of multiple skills in profession, access to education and increasing employability, distance-learning courses are in huge demand. Revised Manuscript Received on August 25, 2019. Ansuman Sar, Student, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India. Dr. Satya Narayan Misra, Dean (Academics), Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India. It is also seen that there is a consistent rise in the number of registrations for these distance courses in India. However, in India it is still not considered as a mainstream education. We hope that with the use of technology, we can increase the effectiveness of the distance education and make this a success. In this research paper, the objective is to find out the main reason for choosing the online courses is and what are the correlations of these reasons with the gender/age and employment status. The brief history of distance education from eighteenth to twentieth century has been tabled below. Figure 1.Brief history of distance from 18th to 20th Century (Source: Master Studies, Global trends of Distance learning) ThereishugeincreaseinthenumberofenrolmentsacrosstheIndia nuniversitiesinthe distance learningcourses.Overaperiodoftime,ithasgrownlikeanything. As perlastyear's statistics shared by Coursera-(world’slargest openeducationprovider): I. 13 lakhonlinelearners were fromIndia II. Total numberoflearners – 180 Lakhs ThenumberofIndianlearners haveincreasedby70% innumber.Indiangovernmenttriestoincreasetheregistrationsfo rtheseonlinecoursesandthisis practically not doable by establishing more regular/conventional universities. Factors Influencing Preference for Certification Courses Delivered Through Technology-Driven Distance Education 5357 Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Theresponse to this is online educationsystem. Figure 2. Student enrolment data related to distance education (Source –Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India) Today,notonlygraduationorpost- graduationdegreesarerequired-weneedalotofskill enhancement coursesandthecourses whichcanhelpusrealtimeforincreasingour employability.Whiletraditionaldegreeslikeabachelors ormastersmight bethevalid-proofof youreducationandisrequiredduringinitialscreening.Stilltheyd on'tactuallyfocusontheskills thatareveryimportantaretheneedofthehour.Hencetheskill- GAPisfilledbythesewiderange of online –customized courses.Onecanchoosethecoursesas perhis/herchoice.Thesecoursesarenormallynamedascertificat ecourseornanodegreecourseorskill enhancementcourse.Thereare examples ofprofessional certificationcourses. i. Awards-certification ii. Certified Developers iii. Googlegivescertificateswhoprovetobeexpertsin multipledomains Nowconsideringthesetrends,it isprettyunderstoodthatdistanceeducation wouldbean essentialtoolinmeeting theneedsofthepeopleinIndiaand itssuccessand effectivenessifof primeimportant.However,inIndia,itisstillnotthemainstream educationandfacultiesand studentsstill questionits effectiveness. Hence,a research study was carried out to determine, what arethe perceptionsofthepeopleabout thedistancecoursesand howwe enhancethesameusing technology ? There waslimited scope of ourstudyto thestudents only. Thesestudents arefromtheStateOpenUniversity of Odisha, an eastern state of India.Surveyquestionnairehas been used forthesameand51 students’ response has been takenwhoaredoing theBasic Computer Knowledge Certification Course through distance mode. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Educationrequiresapersonalcontactofhighlyqualifiedteacher swiththelearnersasit isasocialactivity.Thedemand foreducationinIndia(whichisoneofthedeveloping nations) hasgone-upas educationcontinuestobetakenasansignificantbridgebetweens ociety, economicconditions,culturaland politicalscenariosinthis nation.Due to infrastructuraland socio-economicissues,quality educationis not accessibleto all;especiallytothoseinremote regions.InformationandCommunicationTechnology(ICT)ha sthetremendouspotentialto discardandremove thesebarriersthatarecausingthe problemsoflowereducationalspreadand effectiveness ofeducation.ICTcanactas acatalyst to overcome the belowissues. i. Cost issuesasthe educationcan be spread throughtechnology/costs dueto distance would beminimized ii. Lack of faculties(TeachertoStudentratio isverypoor) iii. Time and distance constraints iv. Quality oflearning /topicdelivery As validated byUNESCO (2002),students of21stcentury would need latest information and communicationtechnologiesintheir educationand learning(acrosstheworld- poor/developingordeveloped).Newtrendsintechnologyarepl ayingaveryimportant rolein educationsector.National PolicyonInformationandCommunicationTechnologyinSch ool Educationfor the year 2012giveemphasisupontheIC TliteratecommunitysothatallI CT resourcesare used inteachinglearning process. International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT) ISSN: 2249 – 8958, Volume-8 Issue-6, August 2019 5358 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 NPICT in School education( National policy on Information and communication technology) stresses upon ICT literate community to use ICT resources in learning /teaching process. TAM- the Technology Acceptance Model developed by Davis(1989) takes into account of social psychology theory of reasoned action, used for modelling user acceptance of information systems. TAM is based on two major factors- i. Perceived Usefulness means if you use the system it will increase the task performance ii. Perceived ease of Use- it should be effortless to use the targeted system Many research studies say that the perceived usefulness is a substantial determining factor of behavioural intention towards technology. Hence, the user behaviour is explained by Technology Acceptance Model.(Horst et. al. 2007; Venkatesh et. al. 2003) Figure 3.TAM, Source:Perceived Usefulness and IT User Acceptance,Ease of Use Quarterly, 13-3, page no.-339,Davis, F. (1989). Venkatesh&Davis(2000)exploitedmoret heTAMmodelandproposedasecondmodel called TAM2. Theyexplainedas below.  Dependent Variables-Perceived usefulness and usageintentions  Independent variables - cognitive instrumental processes and social influence process. Thetheorycanbedepicted asbelow. The social influence process- It hhighlightsthe impact of three inter-related social forces in selecting or rejecting a technology system- i. Subjective norm ii. Voluntariness iii. Image Thecognitiveinstrumental processtalks aboutthe individual’s job relevanceand quality of theoutput. Foruseracceptanceotherimportant fundamentalfactors are: Results Demonstrability and Perceivedeaseofuse. Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) was conceived by Venkatesh(2003) . UTUAT is relied upon similarities based on abstract across various TAMs. The theory conveys that IT user acceptance & usage are explained by four factors viz.Effort Expectancy, Performance Expectancy, Facilitating conditions and Social Influence.(Venkatesh, 2003) Effort expectancy is the degree of comfort or easiness associated with the use of the system. Performanceexpectancy measurestheindividualbeliefthattheuseofsystemwillhelp theuserinincreasing the task performance. Socialinfluenceis theextenttowhichanindividualperceivesthatitisimportantthat others should alsorecommend forusing thesystem. Facilitating conditions measures the belief that necessary infrastructure are in place in order to helpuseofthesystemforknowledgegains. Behavioralintentionmeasures theindividual's decision regardinguseofthe system inthefuture. Usebehaviortalks about theactual usageof thesystem. Performanceexpectancyisthemostinfluentialpredictorofinte ntionandremains substantiallyprominent inbothvoluntary and mandatorysettings,during allthe steps ofmeasurement. Effortexpectancyisprominentinbothvoluntaryandmandatory usagecontexts (duringthe beginningstageonly). Social influence is important in volunteer-based contextbut not significant in compulsory circumstances. Facilitating conditions impacts linearly to usage in addition that is explicated by behavioral intentions exclusively. Society of Information Technology is primarily a result of continuing development in new technologies andthe needs ofpeople who use computerScience technologies. In this current era, educational systems seek to prepare teachers and students for the work force and computer literacy becomes so important in all levels of education. ICT reduces time required imparting knowledge. Attitude of students engaged in the class positively influences students’ engagement in the class. This also shows that ICT will increase the student engagement in the class.ThisstudyunderstandsICTisessentialinplanningcomput erbasedcourses asresearched andfound.(Mahat, Jamsandekar& Nalavade,2012) Indeveloping nations, thetruepotentialofdistanceeducationliesinexpandingacross horizonsandreachingto peopleacrossdemographics(Crooks,1983). TheinclusionofDistance Education in nationalpolicyconsiderationson awiderscalewouldopenuptheprospectof studentshavingtheoptionofchoosingtheircoursesby home tuitionanddistancelearning. Based on the study of various literature, a literature review matrix has been tabled below. Factors Influencing Preference for Certification Courses Delivered Through Technology-Driven Distance Education 5359 Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Author & Year Topic Summary Scope Volery & Lord, 2000 Critical success factors in online education. Important components found are: The instructor (attitudestowards students, instructor technical competence and classroom interaction); andthe previous use of the technology. Dependency of Online education towards classical education could have been explored. Krishnan, 2012 Study on Top levelmanagement education through technology-enabled distance education in India. . User satisfaction is a significant predictor of learning outcomes. The reasonsfor undertaking web based executive education programs, the contributors to learningeffectiveness of such a program, the individual and organizational expectation forundertaking or supporting such a program are still not well understood in the Indian context. Berking & Gallagher, 2016 Trends of Online Learning in Higher Education: How Online Learning Will Shape Higher Education. There is a strong need to choose an appropriate LMS in higher education institutions in order to enhance faculty teaching and student learning. The instructor should be able to add content created. (More Customization required) There is a scope of study effect of collaborative learning at multiple levels. III. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES Themajorobjectives ofthepresent studyarestated below: I. To find out the reason for choosing online courses by working and non-working professionals. II. Gender perceptions and preferences about the E- learning course Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course and finding outcorrelations ifitexists. III. To find out theareas whereimprovementisrequiredineLearningin distance mode. Research Gaps The research gaps pertaining to factors influencing the preference for technology-driven distance education are summarized. The ContributorsofLearningEffectivenessintechnology- drivendistancelearningin India- NotmuchresearchhasbeendonetofindthisoutinIndia.Inwester ncountries, the research on thistopicisprevalent.PerceptionofStudentsaboutcurrenttechno logyinterventionindistancelearningin Indiaistobe studied- itwouldalsorevealwhystudentschoosethe distancelearning coursesand what are themain reasonsbehind it.Genderperceptions towards online or technology-driven distance education. Hypothesis The main hypothesesformulated for the present studyaregiven below: H1:There is significant relationship betweenthe age of learnerand the reasonforjoining the course H2:There is significant relationship betweenthe genderof learnerand the reason forjoiningthe course H3:There is significant relationship betweentheemployment statusand the reason forjoining thecourse IV. METHODOLOGY In total of 51 Students from Open University of the state of Odisha, a state of India (two distance learning centers namely SAFE and NIAT Computer Education) were the respondents of the survey. They are doing a technology-driven distance education course which is the recognized de-facto standard certification course for IT Literacy certified by the university and delivered through e Learning Mode through its Distance Learning Centers like SAFE and NIAT. Following arethe researchdetails pertaining tothestudy. In this research, Descriptive methodology has been used with convenient sampling as Sampling method. Measuring instrument is Structured Questionnaire with 5-point Likert Scale.  Researchtype: Descriptive  Sampling method : Convenient Sampling  Measuringinstrument :StructuredQuestionnaire  Scale: 5-point Likert scale Reliability Test Reliabilitytestwasconductedfor32itemsandCronbac h’salphawasfound to be 0.85 and necessary factor analysis. The questionswith theLikertratingare selected forthis and otherquestions that don’t have quantifiable answersare ignored. (ordinalquestions oropenended questions) Demographics of sample The average age for the group of students comes out to be 23.6 or 24 years. This also includes the assumption that some of the respondents who have not given their age, we have assumed it as zero. This assumption may be correct as we have considered some as outliers and have still included them while calculating. There are respondents who have the age of 30, 35, 37,47, 60, but mostly people are of the age of 22/23/24 and hence the average age is around 23.6 years. This means most of the students are either Graduates or are going to be the International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT) ISSN: 2249 – 8958, Volume-8 Issue-6, August 2019 5360 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Graduates. (Male: 47%, Female:53%). Out of the total respondents – 3 are working( 5.88%), 47 are not working(92.15%) and 1 person is retired( 1.9%)- Majority of the students from the sample are not working. Figure 4. Employment Status of the sample Figure 5. Gender breakup of the sample V. WORK EXPERIENCE Out of 51 people, 46 are not working and only 5 people are working. Out of those 5, 2 people have maximum two years of experience, one person has 3 years and the other person has 6 years of experience. In addition, an outlier has 37 years of experience. So, it is evident that most of the respondents are not working and they have the intentions of getting a job and enhancing their skills to become the employable. Educational Background The majority of the students are graduate students. However, we have almost equal representation from the 12th and post-graduation. Two students have completed their 10th and one student has not completed the 10th class event. Figure 6. Work Experience Status of the Sample TABLE 1: Univariate Analysis Particulars Range Min. Max. M SE SD Variance Student feedback on E- learning(3.1,3.2,4.1,4.2,4.3,4.4,4.5) 1.29 3.43 4.71 4.2409 0.03699 0.26417 0.07 Student feedback on technology used in evaluation-7.7 5 0 5 4.0196 0.15464 1.10436 1.22 Student feedback on new technology intervention in the course(8.1 to 8.14) 2.14 2.36 4.5 4.084 0.04758 0.33978 0.115 Sample Size(N)= 51, Mean = M, SD= Standard Deviation, SE=Standard Error Overall student feedback on course structure and content is very good - 4.24. Most of them strongly agree or agree. Feedback on course content and coverage 4.24> feedback on technology intervention 4.0518 (average of 4.0196 & 4.084)- in Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course technology intervention is required. Factors Influencing Preference for Certification Courses Delivered Through Technology-Driven Distance Education 5361 Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Figure 7. Mean Rating of Students' Feedback People are satisfied with the overall aesthetic aspect of the course content. Most of the learners have also accepted the fact that the technical quality of course material is good. However, if we go by the rating it becomes evident that the availability of technical support can be improved and this demands for more of counselling and doubt clearing classes by the technically strong faculty. Some of the learners have taken the neutral stand may be because they could not get adequate support for this. Voice and quality of narration (mean 3.49) is not convincing, whereas satisfaction levels with the narration is good as most of the learners have agreed-(this is because of the course content). Variable 3.1 is referred here. Figure 8. Comparative Rating Graph From the comparison of Parameters, it is pretty evident that, the Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course, quality of examples are the highest rated. That also states that the course is interactive and has been accepted well by the students. However, the students just agree or they take a neutral stand regarding the pace of the online learning factor. Probably we need to see that there is appropriate pace in which the course runs so that it will be well interpreted and understood by the students. 4.1176 4.196 3.98 4.04 3.49 4.07 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 technical quality of course materials overall asthetic of course content and materials rate the availability of technical support satisfaction levels with the narration of the course voice and quality of narration in the course amount of narration 4.02 4.196 4.275 3.863 3.6 3.8 4 4.2 4.4 Perception about course coverage Understanding Course Expectations The quality of Examples The Pace of E-Learning Course International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT) ISSN: 2249 – 8958, Volume-8 Issue-6, August 2019 5362 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Figure 9. Response based on Technology Friendliness The backbone of any course is the faculty base- from the ratings it is evident that, State Open University does not have a good faculty base or set of instructors. 92% of the learners said that they would expect a better faculty set or instructors for the course. Ease of Access parameter has similar trend as that of technology friendliness. However, for Technology Innovation, most of the learners took neutral stand instead of suggesting for improvements. TABLE 2: BIVARIATE ANALYSIS (CONTINGENCY TABLES for V3 and V51) Chi-Square Tests( V3 and V51) Particulars Value df Asymptotic Significance (2-sided) Pearson Chi-Square 7.659 3 0.054 Likelihood Ratio 7.915 3 0.048 Linear-by-Linear Association 6.066 1 0.014 N of Valid Cases 51 Interpretation: The chi-square value of 7.659 shows that there is hardly any relationship between the gender and the reason for taking the Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course . The bivariate analysis between gender and reasons for joining: i. Employability ii. Skill enhancement iii. Requirement in the present job iv. Out of interest v. Others TABLE 3: BIVARIATE ANALYSIS (CONTINGENCY TABLES for V2 and V51) Particulars Value df Asymptotic Significance (2- sided) Pearson Chi-Square 86.107 a 51 0.002 Likelihood Ratio 81.506 51 0.004 Linear-by-Linear Association 9.472 1 0.002 N of Valid Cases 51 In SPSS- Variables are V3(Gender) and V51 (Reason for registering the course) Interpretation: The chi-square value of 86.107 shows that there is A STRONG relation between the AGE and the reason for taking the Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course .Bivariate Analysis between employment status( working and not working) and the main reason for taking the distance learning course- V5 and V51. TABLE 4: Correlation Table Particulars V51 V2 V3 V5 No response 2% Yes. Improvement Required 90% Can't say 8% Technology friendliness Factors Influencing Preference for Certification Courses Delivered Through Technology-Driven Distance Education 5363 Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Pearson Correlation V51 1.000 0.435 0.348 -0.028 V2 0.435 1.000 0.063 0.031 V3 0.348 0.063 1.000 0.098 V5 -0.028 0.031 0.098 1.000 Sig. (1-tailed) V51 0.001 0.006 0.422 V2 0.001 0.329 0.414 V3 0.006 0.329 0.246 V5 0.422 0.414 0.246 N V51 51 51 51 51 V2 51 51 51 51 V3 51 51 51 51 V5 51 51 51 51 ThePvalueof0.157whichis greaterthan0.05 means thereisnot significantrelationship betweentwo variables-thisis alsosupported bythelow chi squarevalue of 9.314. Figure 10. Graphical representation of Bi-variate analysis Description of Variables:  V2-Age, V3-Gender, V5-Working/Not Working, V51- Main reason for joining the Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course .  Dependent Variable- V51.  Independent Variable- V2,V3,V5 Interpretation  V51 has maximum correlation with V2 ( age) which is supported by bivariate analysis too. However – it is negatively correlated to V5.  Positive correlation between the reason for registering for the Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course and age - 0.435 positive correlation between age and reason for doing Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course - .348.  Zero or little Negative correlation between the employment status and reason for choosing the course From the above study, hypothesis H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected which means there is significant relationship between age and reason for joining the course. Hypothesis H2 is rejected and the null hypothesis is accepted. This implies there is no significant relationship between Gender and reason for joining the course. Hypothesis H3 is rejected and the null hypothesis is accepted connoting that, there is no significant relationship between employment status and reason for joining the course. International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT) ISSN: 2249 – 8958, Volume-8 Issue-6, August 2019 5364 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number F9051088619/2019©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.F9051.088619 Figure 11. Improvement suggested w.r.t. Good instructor / Faculty SUMMARY OF SUBJECTIVE FEEDBACK 43.14 % ofthe respondents suggested improvementrequiredinevaluation pattern.13.72 % of respondents indicated that, the duration of the Basic Computer Knowledge Certification Course which is 3 months at present needs to be increased to at least 4 months.Rest respondents indicated no improvement required in the course. SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY Further study can be done on other Open Universities in other Indian states and make a comparison (KSOU, Symbiosis distance University, Sikkim Manipal etc.) with State Open University. Studies also may be done for long term courses as well and try to find out how technology implementation increases their enrolment. The survey for the present study was conducted for 51 students only as the time was limited. We could have gone for more number of students with more number of courses. Personal interaction with the respondents and more of qualitative research can be done. VI. CONCLUSION Integration of Technology is University Courses in India is still at very nascent stage. From the study, it is found that, students expect human touch along with technology-driven learning for facilitation. However, overall feedback on course was good but some students indicated for improvement in Evaluation pattern. The findings of the study may be useful to administrators and higher education planners at national level and state level for formulating correct policies and strategies with regard to the modernization and application of Information Technology to meet the rising educational needs. REFERENCES 1. Albirini, A. (2004, August 18). Teachers' attitudes toward information and communication technologies: the case of Syrian EFL teachers. Elsevier. Retrieved from www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu 2. Alharbi, A. M. (2013). Teacher's Attitudes towards Integrating Technology: Case Studies in Saudi Arabia and the United States. Thesis, Grand Valley State University. Retrieved from http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/theses 3. Alkana, F., & Erdema. (2010, January 12). The attitudes of student teachers towards educational technologies according to their status of receiving teaching application lessons. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2523-2527. Retrieved October 30, 2017 4. Ang’ondi, E. K. 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F., Abu Bakar, K., & Ismail, R. (2015). Factors predicting teachers’ attitudes towards the use of ICT in teaching and learning. 24. Morrisa, D. (2009, December 10). Are teachers technophobes? Investigating professional competency in the use of ICT to support. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 4010-4015. Retrieved October 28, 2017, from http://www.sciencedirect.com 25. Mukerji, S., & Tripathi, P. (2005). quality education in india: a mission revisited for distance education institutions. Asian Association of Open Universities Journal, 45-51. 26. Muthomi, M. W. (2014). Reactions of schools’ head teacher toward computer use in teaching and learning in secondary schools in tharaka-nithi county in kenya. International Journal of Information Science and Education, 3(1), 7-14. Retrieved from www.ripublication.com 27. Nair, I., & Das, V. M. (2012, March). Using Technology Acceptance Model to assess teachers’ attitude towards use of technology as teaching tool : A SEM Approach. International Journal of Computer Applications, 42(2), 1-6. 28. Ó Buachalla, S. (1989). Distance Education as an Element of Policy. European Journal of Education, 73-78. 29. Oldfield, A. (2010). A summary of teacher attitudes to ICT use in schools. Futurelab. Innovative Technologies for Engaging Classrooms (iTEC). Retrieved October 31, 2017 30. Padmavathi, M. (2013, November). A Survey of Secondary School Teachers’ Perceptions, Competency and Use of Computers. International Journal of Education and Psychological Research (IJEPR), 2(4), 7-16. 31. Panigrahi, G., Das, A., & Basu, K. (2011). A study to increase effectiveness of distance learning websites in India with special reference to the state West Bengal to increase the present GER of higher education through incorporation of E learning facility in a better way. Procedia Social & Behavioral Sciences, 1535-1539. 32. Paul, A. A. (2016). Higher secondary teachers attitude towardsthe use of ict in teaching learning process. IERJ, 2(7), 1-2. Retrieved October 2017 33. Redmond, P., & Brown, K. (2004, March). Are We There Yet? The Journey of ICT Integration. International Journal of Science and Research, 1-8. 34. Sabzian, F., & Gilakjani, A. P. (2013, January 13). International Journal of Applied Science and Technology, Integration, Experience, Anxiety, and Literacy in English Language Teaching and Learning. International Journal of Applied Science and Technology, 3(1), 67- 75. 35. Salleh, S. (2015, October 25). Examining the influence of teachers’ beliefs towards technology integration in classroom. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 33(1), 17-35. Retrieved from www.emeraldinsight.com/2056-4880.htm 36. Sanchez, A., & Marcos, J. (2012). In Service teachers' attitude towards the use of ICT in the Classroom. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1358-1364. Retrieved October 2017, from www.sciencedirect.com 37. Shirvani, H. (2014, April). Pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward using technology in schools. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 15(1). 38. Singh, K. S. (2012, July 12). Teachers' Attitude Towards Information and Communication Technology. Shodh Sanchayan, 2(2), pp. 1-4. Retrieved October 30, 2017, from www.shodh.net 39. Teachers’ Attitude and Competence Towards the use Of ICT Resources: A Case Study Of University Of Agriculture Lecturers, Abeokuta Ogun State, Nigeria. (2013). The Information Manager, 13(1 & 2). 40. Verma, A. (2016). Distance Learning Systems of in India. Splint International Journal of Professionals, 116-122. 41. Yadav, R. (2015). Attitude of secondary school teachers towards the use of information communication technology in education . International Journal of Education and Information Studies, 31-33. First Author details Ansuman Sar, Student, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India. Mr. Ansuman Sar has experience of more than six years in Social Project Management. He is doing his Ph.D. at KIIT School of Management (KSoM). His area of research is ‘ICT in Education’. He did B. Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering and pursued Post Graduate Program leading to Degree in Management. Presently, he is working as Program Manager at Odisha Knowledge Corporation Limited, a special purpose vehicle under Higher Education Department, Government of Odisha. He is proficient in executing community development and social programs involving planning, operational analysis of policy framework and execution. He has expertise in improving Techno-Education System and spearheading Government Projects including PPP projects in e-Governance sectors. He has orchestrated development in rural arears of Odisha by implementing ICT@Schools project and boosted IT based education on a Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) basis. He has used innovative method of teachers’ training developing situational-based training modules in the form of episodes telecasted as television serial on Doordarshan Odia. He has built e Content in Odia for 9th and 10th Standard. He has identified and motivated the young entrepreneurs of Odisha, built their capacities for spreading IT Literacy as well as Skill development programs in order to bridge the Digital Divide among the masses and promoting Digital Citizenship. Second Author details Dr. Satya Narayan Misra, Dean (Academics), Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar (Odisha), India. Prof. S.N.Misra, did his MA in Applied Economics with International Trade and Statistics as his special papers with first class. He did his Ph.D. (Economics) on “Challenges, Before Self-Reliance in Critical Defense Technology”, a pioneering area on the subject. Initially he was the Indian Economics Service (1976-79) when he did Cost Benefit Analysis of World Bank Projects and handled International Development Agency (IDA) desk. Thereafter, he was an Officer in the Indian Defense Accounts Service (1979-2012), when he served as Director (Finance) with DRDO, Financial Advisor and Joint Secretary to Indian Air Force & JS (Aero Space). He authored the Defense Procurement Manual (2005), drawing encomiums for the Prime Minister’s Office. Before voluntary retirement in 2012, he was Principal Controller of Defense Accounts (Navy) & PCDA (Southern Command) in the rank of Addl. Secretary to Govt. of India. He was trained in IRBM, California, Defense Acquisition University, Washington, Marshall Institute of Strategic Studies, Munich, IIMs, Calcutta and Bangalore. 
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As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_3iqqfss345dsvkjz27gl6tvqla	----	Teacher Responsibility in Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Future Academy® Cognitive Trading doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.02.042 ScienceDirect Future Academy®’s Multidisciplinary Conference Teacher responsibility in distance education Ilona Semradova a, & Sarka Hubackova a* aUniversity of Hradec Kralove, Rokitanskeho 62, 50003 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic Abstract This paper is focused on characteristics of education, including distance education and comparison of the extent of teacher responsibility. We are researching whether, and if so, how the scope and the content of teacher responsibility change in connection with the implementation of ICT into the educational process. The question is whether teachers in distance education bear greater responsibility. The issue of teacher responsibility is often addressed in declarative documents, codes of ethics, and legal regulations. The aim of this paper is to capture different levels of responsibility and the tendencies in the perception of teacher responsibility in connection with the changing concept of education and with the use of ICT in distance education. The paper primarily uses hermeneutic approach, the interpretation being based on a frequency analysis of motifs from students´ essays. Surveying teachers was used as a complementary method. our results are based on a frequency analysis of motifs from essays written by students of pedagogical faculties in 2013 and 2015, and their interpretation. They are complemented with ideas which occurred in a survey carried out among teachers at the Pedagogical Faculty and the Faculty of Informatics and Management in 2013. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of Future Academy® Cognitive Trading. Keywords: Teacher responsibility, ICT, distance education; Motto „If all responsibility is imposed on you, then you may want to exploit the moment and want to be overwhelmed by the responsibility; yet if you try, you will notice that nothing was imposed on you, but that you are yourself this responsibility.'' Franz Kafka * Corresponding author name. Tel.: + 420493332302 E-mail address:sarka.hubackova@uhk.cz © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Future Academy® Cognitive Trading http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.02.042&domain=pdf 545 Ilona Semradova and Sarka Hubackova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 1. Responsibility and education Responsibility is usually defined as a political, criminal, legal and ethical category which expresses complementary connection between a person´s action, their consequences and his or her consciousness within the ethical system accepted by him/her. Within the context of a reflection on so-called global problems, the concept of responsibility does not only refer to a person´s responsibility towards himself/herself, to responsibility of a person to another person, a group of people, a community, a nation, humankind, but also to responsibility for the whole biotic and abiotic environment, biosphere and ecosystem. The issue of responsibility is dealt with in one of the most significant books of the 20th century – „Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation“ by Hans Jonas. Although it was first published in 1979, it has not been exploited enough in the area of education. In addition to responsibility for human actions and responsibility for the past, Jonas also defines the need for responsibility for non-human life forms and inanimate nature, in the meaning of curator’s / custodian´s responsibility. With regard to responsibility defined in this way Jonas reformulated Kantian categorical imperative like this: “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life". This Jonas´ maxim is also referred to in a recent monograph „Morální odpovědnost a její aspekty“ (Vlastimil Hála et al., 2013), mainly in connection with social functioning and the authenticity of an acting human. The relation between this new “jonasian” ethics to the previous ethics is not a negative one, it is complementary. This imperative and concept of responsibility is becoming very up-to-date in connection with our civilization´s considerable independence on ICT, which is also naturally reflected in education (Semradova, Hubackova 2013). Education, which is perceived as continuity, communication and differentiation, and the content of which is always closely related to the ability to understand one´s period, one´s world, its context and its value dominants, is currently more and more often realized not only through face-to-face forms, but also through distance forms using ICT. 2. Frequency analysis of motifs from student essays on the issue of teacher responsibility in distance education In 2013 and 2015 the issue of teacher responsibility (especially moral responsibility) in distance education became the subject of reflection for students of the Pedagogical Faculty - future teachers. 100 essays were available for further analysis each year. A number of subjects for reflection and discussion were collected (students mentioned a number of relevant motifs in their works). The content of the essays was derived from the topic of the essay and from sub-questions which the students were supposed to concentrate on. Besides defining responsibility, its dimensions, manifestations and connections, the students were also asked to reflect upon the question whether teacher responsibility is the same in both face-to-face and distance education, or whether teacher responsibility in distance education is diminished or greater. Based on the frequency analysis of motifs contained in the essays, a typology of re-occurring statements was compiled. Summary of the overall results of the frequency analysis of student essays 2.1. Concept of teacher responsibility Table 1. Concept of teacher responsibility 2013 2015 We distinguish between criminal, legal liability and professional, moral responsibility. 32 30 We are responsible for our actions, we bear the consequences. 24 28 We have to take responsibility for our decisions. 24 25 We bear responsibility even for unintended consequences of our actions. 24 25 Responsibility is a quality which allows a person to face problems and situations he /she encounters. 21 24 Responsibility is an ability, willingness to accept the consequences of one´s own actions. 19 21 546 Ilona Semradova and Sarka Hubackova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 A teacher is responsible for his/her professional results. 19 18 A teacher is responsible for his/her behavior and actions. 19 17 A teacher bears responsibility for the respect and dignity attributed to his/her profession. 13 18 We are responsible for our pupils and their motivation to learn. 13 15 We are responsible for the reach of our pedagogical actions into the future. 13 14 We must not forget that we are responsible for promoting a certain ideal of education. 12 14 We are responsible for maintaining our own and our pupils´ authenticity and integrity. 11 13 We are responsible for the quality and ethics of communication between ourselves - the teachers and our pupils. 10 12 A teacher is responsible for the development of pupil competences. 10 11 A teacher is responsible for the development of his/her own professional, methodological, social and personality competences. 10 9 2.2. Connection between responsibility and competence Table 2. Connection between responsibility and competence 2013 2015 The scope of responsibility is derived from the content and range of competence. 25 28 A responsible teacher is supposed to be competent, to fulfil his/her duties in compliance with the code of ethics, and to promote his/her school´s good reputation through his/her actions. 22 27 The greater the competences, the greater the responsibility. 22 27 A person is responsible for things within his/her competence. 20 26 A good teacher uses his/her competence to behave in a responsible way. 19 21 A teacher is responsible for fair evaluation of his/her pupils. 14 20 A teacher is responsible for keeping to the professional code of ethics and for not exceeding the limit of the minimum threshold of acceptable behavior. 13 15 Authentic students´ statements (2013, 2015) -„Competence and responsibility are interconnected. As I have some competences, I am responsible for their fulfilment. As I know that I am responsible for them, I try to act in a “competent” way (i.e. in compliance with rules, codes and legislation), not to be punished. …“ -„From what has been mentioned it is clear that in an ideal case competence should go hand in hand with responsibility, but in common practice it is rarely that way.“ -„A person is responsible for many things and actions in his/her life, but only a fraction of them are under our control, in our competence …“. -„A teacher is responsible for keeping up-to-date in his/her field.” -„A teacher, just like other professionals, is responsible for the quality of his/her teaching, for evaluation of pupils and for notifying their parents in an adequate way …“. -„Responsibility combines with competence into the ability to identify ethical problems and avoid them.” -„If a teacher is authoritative, he/she bears the greatest possible responsibility.“ -„A teacher is responsible for handling conflicts between professional and personal activities, between his/her professional and personal interests.” 547 Ilona Semradova and Sarka Hubackova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 -„We need to keep in mind that there is lack of clearly defined rules of relations between competence and responsibility; each of us even understands the concept of competence in a different way …” -„Competence means authorizing someone to make decisions, delegating responsibility for a particular task.” -„Responsibility is an ability to bear the consequences of one´s actions and decisions, making oneself aware of proper and improper behavior; competence also involves connecting morality and reality.” -„A teacher´s consciousness is an important aspect of competence.” -„A teacher should act in the same way he/she would like his/her pupils to act. He/she is responsible for that.“ -„A teacher is responsible for observing the code of ethics, for being trustworthy, and for correct treatment of his/her pupils.” -„A teacher is obliged to observe the code of professional responsibility, including the rule that he/she is not allowed to do anything which could harm the people entrusted to him/her.” -„The first rule of teacher´s profession, just like medical profession, is “NOT TO CAUSE ANY HARM”. This lies within each teacher´s competence and responsibility. What does it mean “NOT TO CAUSE ANY HARM”, though? -„Responsibility and competence – it is a closed circle, one is based on the other.” -„Responsibility and competence are interconnected. Based on my occupation, I have certain competences and responsibility arising from them.” -„The most important of all competences is responsibility for entrusted pupils.” -„A teacher´s irresponsible decisions upset the inner balance in the class.“ -„As a teacher I am responsible for the selected style of teaching and treating pupils, at the same time I am also responsible for the choice of style I have made.” 2.3. Teacher responsibility in connection with ICT implementation into the educational process Table 3. Teacher responsibility in connection with ICT implementation into the educational process 2013 2015 It is the same in terms of both content and scope. 51 49 It is greater if the teacher is also the author of the course in distance education. 47 48 It is diminished if the teacher uses courses prepared by another author. 12 3 Previous research is complemented by capturing motifs from interviews with teachers, or from responses given in an electronic survey. Surveyed teachers suppose that their responsibility is greater or the same if they use distance education courses not only as their authors, but also as user of existing courses. They compare this responsibility to the responsibility for using textbooks. If, at the same time, they are the authors of the courses, they also emphasize their responsibility for the quality of their “digital” instruction and competence. 2.4. Motifs concerning the issue of responsibility taken from responses by 18 teachers (10 from Pedagogical Faculty, 8 from the Faculty of Informatics and Management). -responsibility for making use of everything the teacher knows and can do for the students´ and his/her own benefit -wide general knowledge, expertise in his/her main field -fairness – not to show fairness or antipathy through marking -individual approach -openness to different opinions and attitudes -creative approach to teaching (new methods, alternative approach) -humor (not irony and cheap joking about pupils, but fitting witty remarks may liven up teaching; avoid mockery and derision; situational humor) -distinctive style, being a strong personality, a model in thinking, in opinions, in treatment of pupils 548 Ilona Semradova and Sarka Hubackova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 -allowing space for expressing oneself, for activity, but NOT boundless benevolence -leading and organizing teaching, use of ICT -preparation for lessons, teaching, effort to get feedback, creation of courses for distance learning -assessing and solving disciplinary problems -responsibility for the choice and condition of teaching aids -for the manner of communication with pupils, parents, colleagues and other staff at school -communicating information in such way that enables students to understand the subject matter; in case of unclarity, it is necessary to add further explanation -education is not a mere transfer of information, it is also an important aspect of socialization; teachers should not be interested only in their students´ test and exam results, they must pay attention to their behaviour in the group, too, and help to solve possible problems. -for reliability and accuracy of information which is passed on -for personal attitudes and opinions which are included in his/her teaching -understandability of communication -moderateness and adequacy of the content of teaching -to guarantee fulfilment of a certain minimum by all pupils -for the procedure and form of teaching -key responsibility is to enable pupils to understand the topic and the teacher -explication should be made interesting for students -additional questions and feedback mechanisms -a teacher should not force pupils into parroting, unquestioningly repeating his/her opinion, on the contrary, he/she should help the pupils develop their own opinions -for making preparation conceptual: the complete content of the course, division into individual lessons, units, formulation of the overall goal and partial goals, inclusion of revision and checking, a specific timetable to make it clear from where, where and why we are going to proceed -for making learning enjoyable for pupils, helping them remember as much as possible - for pupils´ knowledge, but only to a certain extent -for establishing pleasant environment at school -anything that happens in the classroom in the teacher´s presence, is a subject of his/her responsibility (or even in his/her absence if he/she was supposed to be in the classroom and he/she is not e.g. was late) -for good behavior and language both on his/her part and the part of his/her pupils; a joke may be suitable every now and then -for the discipline in the classroom -for maintaining his/her authority -for making explication comprehensible and interesting or entertaining, if possible -for ensuring that he/she teaches something to his/her pupils, which will widen their horizons, for ensuring their good behaviour -for preparing them for their future life -however, a teacher cannot be responsible for failure of a pupil who does not want to study, who is not trying, who is not interested, who is indifferent -for pupils´ education, health and safety, although the greatest responsibility should be borne by parents -a teacher should pay attention to pupils´ possible mental problems, if detected, he/she should get in touch with the parents, school psychologist, … -for making sure that no one feels oppressed, humiliated, ridiculed -for providing pupils with reflection, for letting them know about their results and in case of younger/underage pupils for letting their parents know IN TIME -for environment of good pedagogical quality 549 Ilona Semradova and Sarka Hubackova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 -deeper responsibility: to make their pupils better people (this cannot be achieved by the teacher alone) -respect and rapport in relation to pupils -providing help to pupils. Authentic teachers´ statements (2013) “Teacher responsibility is always the same. It is always equally high. It educates new and new generations, either directly or via computers. In eLearning I see less opportunity to fulfil that responsibility.” “eLearning is focused only on instruction, I do not have to deal with organizing things or with pupils´ behavior, I receive their results straight away … There is greater responsibility for formal presentation, for using all tools which are available. A pupil must understand without the opportunity to ask and check task instructions, for example. Copying and using unauthorized aids in tests is easier.” “The main pluses of traditional (in-class) teaching include personal contact. The possibility to perceived facial expressions or gestures enables understanding whether the subject matter has been comprehended or not even without words. Many examples of ambiguity may occur in explication, eLearning lacks the personal component!” “A teacher who prepares for traditional teaching has great responsibility in terms of passing an inaccurate or incomplete piece of information, which may happen unknowingly. It is also because he/she is responsible for conducting the lesson including pupils´ behavior, solving disciplinary issues. We can say that in this respect a teacher preparing eTeaching has less responsibility. In his/her case, however, much greater emphasis is put on accuracy and clarity of information which is passed on by him/her. He/she might face the “only the written word remains” approach, and he/she does not have a direct possibility of correction. Therefore, I am not able to determine who bears greater responsibility, but I would say that it prevails in traditional teaching, after all.” “A teacher preparing for traditional teaching. He/she does not have such possibilities as those provided by the computer, and does not have to communicate with pupils face to face. If something unexpected arises, a teacher in the classroom must react immediately. A teacher at a computer may think his/her action much better.” “Misunderstanding may arise much more often in computer communication. No matter if the teacher teaches in a traditional way or through eTeaching, he/she must always prepare properly for it and pass as much information as possible to his/her pupils.” “A teacher should be responsible for silence within the area he/she teaches in - such atmosphere should be induced where pupils can concentrate, the teacher should induce harmonic relationships and cooperation. No one should feel left out - everyone should be given space to express themselves. The teacher should have solid knowledge of the subject matter (required education) and should be able to reply to questions (or explain the subject matter in another way).” “Responsibility in traditional teaching is greater than in eTeaching. The teacher does not have to reply to questions immediately, does not explicate the subject matter in person, does not have to care about good environment for teaching - he/she, however, has to provide learning material.” “In my opinion, the difference between traditional teaching and eLearning is huge. The teacher has much less responsibility; he/she does not have to take care of pupils. There is no responsibility for their behavior. He/she does not have to teach them manners; of course, even in the electronic form he/she has to use proper language and require the same from his/her students. Preparation, in my opinion, does not change, but it is simpler. There is no direct confrontation - was the subject matter interesting for them and has it been treated well, or is it completely boring?” „The advantage of a virtual learning environment for teacher is that he/she is left to work in peace, he/she does not have to be concerned about behavior in the class, but his/her responsibility is much higher because he/she cannot 550 Ilona Semradova and Sarka Hubackova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 217 ( 2016 ) 544 – 550 “see” that his/her students do not understand his/her explanations, and he/she cannot clarify anything further if need be. There is also a problem with attendance - how to check it.” - “A teacher does not have to bear responsibility for pupils´ safety. Even in a virtual course, though, the teacher has responsibility for students´ results and education. Responsibility for preparation of teaching and study materials is greater. There is a greater possibility of non-comprehension and non-understanding in a virtual environment. Therefore, in my opinion, both eLearning teacher and traditional teacher bear a similar amount of responsibility, which lie on different levels, though: - in traditional teaching there is higher responsibility - in eTeaching for study materials, for meeting deadlines, for thorough reflection and feedback on performance -in internet teaching, teacher responsibility is lower, the teacher should have only as much responsibility as he/she has power, the power to influence student´s learning on the internet is undoubtedly smaller; the responsibility is taken over by the students themselves, or by the parent who are aware that their children are taking part in self- education. -internet teaching provides the teacher with a longer reply time, when he/she is supposed to answer questions; he/she can prepare better and in peace; it is less demanding, there is less responsibility.“ 3. Conclusion In their essays students - future teachers express their opinion that teacher responsibility in connection with the implementation of ICT into the educational process is the same or higher if the teacher is also the author of a distance education course. The surveyed teachers assume that responsibility in traditional face-to-face teaching is generally higher than in distance education. The stated outcomes do not aspire anything else than to point out a number of different approaches and their justifiability. References Jonas, H. (1979). Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1979. Hála, V. a kol. (2013). Morální odpovědnost a její aspekty. Praha: Filosofia, 2013. Semradova, I., Hubackova, S. (2013) Incentives to develop the use of ICT in the process of education. In Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences by Elsevier Ltd., Volume 89, 2013, Pages 517-522. ISSN: 1877-0509. Retrieved Februar 15, 2015 from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042813030164. 
work_3jh24vacfnc57m42ymnyf2kw54	----	Distance Education Vol. 26, No. 3, November 2005, pp. 385–404 ISSN 0158-7919 (print); 1475-0198 (online)/05/030385–20 © 2005 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI 10.1080/01587910500291496 Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online: Quality program design, delivery and support issues from a cross-global perspective Faye Wiesenberga and Elizabeth Staceyb* aUniversity of Calgary, Canada; bDeakin University, Australia Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_129132.sgm10.1080/01587910500291496Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2005Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.263000000NOvember 2004FayeWiesenbergFaculty of EducationDeakin University221 Burwood HighwayBurwoodVictoria 3125Australiaestacey@deakin.edu.au This reflective paper began with a discussion of the online program design and delivery experiences of three senior faculty members at the University of Calgary (Canada) and Deakin University (Australia), which was recorded at Deakin University. After drawing on this recording in their research and practice, one faculty member from each institution decided to review and expanded upon their intervening experiences in terms of issues of quality program design, delivery, and support issues when teaching, and learning in different cultural contexts. The authors discovered that these issues are as important today as they were when they met to record the interview, and have concluded their discussion here with thoughts about the teaching, student, and administrative supports that institutions engaged in online program delivery cross-culturally must address in order to successfully deliver quality online programs worldwide. Introduction … two adult learning principles that really come alive in computer-mediated classes are self-directedness on the students’ part and … true facilitation [on the teachers’ part] … computer-mediated classrooms literally demand this. (Hutton, Wiesenberg, & Stacey, 2003) This was the overall theme of a recorded discussion between three experienced online teachers involved in a collaborative academic relationship between the University of Calgary’s Master of Continuing Education (MCE) and Deakin University’s Master of Professional Education and Training (MPET) programs. This academic discussion, which raised a number of common issues between these * Corresponding author. Faculty of Education, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia. Email: estacey@deakin.edu.au 386 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey two countries, was recorded in Geelong, Australia at the end of 2001 following a research seminar presented on this topic (Hutton, Wiesenberg, & Stacey, 2002). Recent analysis of the transcription of this recorded interview revealed that the key issues discussed then (program design, program delivery, cross-cultural issues) are still very relevant 3 years later. In this paper, the authors (two of the original three discussants) further explore these issues, relating them to the current research literature, as well as to their current practice. In the process, it is apparent that these issues are, today, even more critical as more adult learning programs move “online”, and institutions fail to appreciate the complex nature of the systemic support required to deliver quality online learning both nationally and cross-globally. In fact, it appears that while the number and variety of courses and degrees becoming available through distance education has increased dramatically in this short time-period (Howell, Williams, & Lindsay, 2003), a common theme in the current research literature on this topic is the apparent lack of a concomitant improvement in quality, effectiveness, and bene- fits of online learning from both the learners’ (Murphy & Coleman, 2004) and the academy’s perspective (Caplan, 2004; Parker, 2004). Background In 2000, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was signed between the University of Calgary and Deakin University, with three overall objectives: to develop and nurture an ongoing collaborative academic relationship between the University of Calgary’s MCE and Deakin University’s MPET programs; to share academic resources to the benefit of both faculty members and students in these two programs; and to engage faculty members in mutual exchanges in order to expand research and development opportunities in both institutions. The authors acted as the coordinators of this MOA for their respective institutions, with their first task to implement the second objective through the sharing of academic resources. This sharing of academic resources took the form of allowing students registered in both the MCE and MPET programs to register in selected online courses developed and delivered by each institution. In effect, this created four “cross- global” classrooms in which 40 students located in Canada, Australia, and parts of South East Asia interacted online cross-globally to learn together. Table 1 presents the numerical distribution of the student population in the pilot exchange project. The Deakin University group studying Canadian courses was drawn from a volun- teer group, and all were female (one took both Canadian courses), achieving in the MPET program at varying levels. Three of the Canadian students (all female) were from the same cohort in the MCE program, were all from eastern Canada, and had met face-to-face during their intense 3-week summer school—and the one male, living in western Canada, was a doctoral student selecting coursework units as elec- tives from the Masters program. Demographic information gathered portrayed a diverse set of students: 30% were between the ages of 31 and 40 years, 30% between 41 and 50 years, and 40% between 51 and 60 years. The number of online courses Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 387 respondents had previously taken ranged from 1 to 10, with the average being 4.5 courses; the number of years of computer experience among students ranged from 3.5 to 20 years, with the average being 10.6 years. Courses involved in the exchange project were as follows: ● University of Calgary, Canada – Career Development in Organizational Settings – Multicultural Issues in Adult Education ● Deakin University, Australia – Media, Text and technologies in Open and Distance Education – Teaching and Learning with Computer Mediated Communication While enriching students’ and teachers’ learning/teaching experiences in many ways, this pilot course-sharing also revealed a number of key institutional issues related to how to best support this kind of distributed teaching approach in order to maximize the benefits for students and faculty members alike. This article draws more on the second objective of the MOU, to engage faculty members in mutual exchanges in order to expand research and development opportunities in both institutions, and reflects the comparative possibilities of this academic relationship. The analytical method used with the recorded discussion that served as a basis for this paper was not intended to emulate a research methodology, but was used as a framework to explore important issues that were noted as common in online teach- ing in both Australia and Canada. These issues were analyzed from the authors’ cross-global perspectives, and were then further informed by extensively searching the literature about online learning and teaching that also explores the issues raised. The paper first discusses each of the three key program design and delivery issues that surfaced during the original discussion in 2001, and then elaborates on how each is tied into the overarching issue of the quality of institutional support required for such an initiative to succeed. Much of this latter discussion is supported by the comprehensive evaluation of this pilot course sharing conducted by the authors (Wiesenberg & Stacey, 2001). Program Design Issues The program design process is a complex one, depending on several intersecting factors and strongly influenced by intangible variables that often become apparent Table 1. Summary of student population Course Total Canadian Australian Career development 4 2 2 Multicultural issues 12 8 4 Media, text, and technologies 11 1 10 Teaching and learning with CMC 17 4 13 Total 44 15 29 388 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey only after the initial design process is completed and program facilitation is under- way (Caffarella, 2002; Sork, 2000). With extensive program design and delivery backgrounds (both face-to-face and online) within cross-cultural adult learning contexts, the three faculty members who initiated the MOA project held similar assumptions about program planning, as well as a shared view of the pedagogy of teaching and learning online (Stacey & Wiesenberg, 2002, 2004). The issues related to program design that surfaced in this taped discussion essen- tially confirmed their shared approach to online program planning and delivery, as well as added new layers of understanding of this topic as considered from each participant’s country’s perspective. In this regard, five central themes appeared from the analysis of the transcription: the need to spend considerable time in the pre-deliv- ery phase of program design, the more complex nature of teaching in a more complex online learning environment, the effect of different communication media on communication dynamics, the value of asynchronous communication for in-depth critical reflection and analysis, and the importance of empowering students to take responsibility for their learning. The overriding theme in the program design phase was to design the course using teaching approaches and techniques that effectively engage all students in the learning process to build a successful “learning commu- nity” online. Theme 1: Time spent in the course predelivery planning phase reduces time spent solving course delivery problems once the course is underway When Susan and I taught those first online courses we hadn’t fully worked out all the bugs in the first class for us and so there were lots of technical problems that took some- times weeks to solve. (Hutton et al., 2003) Caffarella’s (2002) research-based interactive model of program planning for adult learners consists of 11 preprogram delivery steps, beginning with researching the people, organization, and wider environmental context of the program to be deliv- ered, and focusing on the iterative nature of the whole planning process. Sork (2000) describes the importance of being sensitive to diversity in terms of cultural, social, and political differences in negotiating, sometimes, several different stakeholder agendas in the preprogram planning process. If coteaching, Wiesenberg (2004) points out the need to formulate fail-proof communication and problem-solving strategies before the course begins, to minimize the amount of time required to problem-solve once the course is underway. Other teachers experienced in distance education agree that an extensive predelivery planning phase is essential to maximiz- ing the success of any distance program (Ally, 2004; Caplan, 2004; Koszalka & Ganesan, 2004). Ally (2004) describes how it is the instructional strategy, not the technology, that determines the quality of the learning within a distance classroom, and that the design of these strategies must follow sound design principles. He and other workers (see Anderson, 2004) conceptualize “online learning” as including numerous vari- ables that must interact in a logically sequenced manner to produce a high-quality Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 389 program. Koszalka and Ganeson (2004) recommend that logical sequencing alone is not sufficient and that course philosophy, learning expectations, and features of the course management system all have to be well matched. Due to this complex nature of a program delivered by advanced communication technologies, Caplan (2004) recommends a centralized team approach to distance program design that ideally includes different professionals to fulfill these functions—subject matter expert or author; graphic designer; Web developer; programmer; and instructional designer. More realistically, in most institutional settings online, teachers fulfill all of these functions by themselves. In the Canadian experience, the teaching team planned a carefully designed period of intensive face-to-face classes to introduce students to conceptual ideas of the program, as well as orienting them socially and technically to their ongoing online courses. In the Australian program, because students were distributed more broadly geographically, print materials were developed for the conceptual introduc- tion, and multimedia materials (both CD-ROM and online help) were provided to introduce students to the online system. This meant that in the first weeks of the new Australian academic year new distance learners sometimes struggled with access and system learning problems and, although supported, this sometimes slowed their initial interaction rate online until such problems were solved. In comparison, the Canadian students, with on-campus online training, were more quickly interactive communicators, and required less assistance online with accessing courses from their various sites across Canada. Theme 2: Several different teacher roles are needed in online teaching to deal with the differing issues that emerge as specific to the online learning environment Numerous researchers refer to the importance of taking on new social, managerial, and technical roles when teaching online, expanding considerably the traditional face-to-face teaching skill base (Anderson, 2004; Berge, 1995; Caplan, 2004; Rodriquez & Nash, 2004; Salmon, 2000). Anderson (2004) discusses the need to be learner-centered (sensitive to the diversity of students’ learning needs and styles), knowledge-centered (providing the “big picture” scaffolding from which students make knowledge discoveries), assessment-centered (motivate, inform and provide feedback to students), and community-centered (facilitate the building of a learning community). Caplan (2004) describes the technical skills that faculty members who use technology to teach must develop as including everything from basic PC skills to being able to use all of the software applications available to students. Salmon’s (2000) model of online facilitation requires teachers to take on a progression of tasks as he or she moves through each of five progressive phases: welcoming and motivating students to access the course, providing students with online social skills to build a learning community, supporting their use of learning materials, facilitating the knowledge construction process, and supporting student independence from the teacher and interdependence upon each other in the learn- ing process. 390 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey … [there is a] technical role that the online facilitator needs to, if not take, at least attend to and this is really the whole idea of making the technology invisible so that the students can get on with the process of learning. Not an easy task sometimes and probably the one that’s the most daunting for a novice online instructor. (Hutton et al., 2003) Developing an effective online course requires a teacher learning how to navigate and manage it, and then teaching students the essential technical skills required for successful online learning. This is a very challenging new task for novice online teachers. This course development role becomes especially difficult when institu- tions do not recognize the importance of providing technical support (for teachers and students) in a manner that makes the teaching medium invisible, thus allowing learning to proceed unhindered by troublesome technology (Wiesenberg & Stacey, 2001). Both Caplan (2004) and Rodriquez and Nash (2004) recommend that a Web course development team work with the teacher to both develop the course and support its delivery. Berge’s (1995) extensive review of the online teaching literature in the early 1990s identified four roles essential to successful online facilitation: pedagogical (content expert), managerial (designing and implementing course structure and procedure), social (engaging students in appropriate, as well as critically reflective, online dialogue), and technical (making the course delivery media invisible to the learners). More recently, Wilson and Stacey (2004) identified a similar set of online teacher roles that include manager/administrator (concerned with issues of learner registra- tion, security, record keeping, etc.), technical (helping students to navigate the online learning environment), pedagogical, and social (providing a scaffold for the students’ development of independence online). Theme 3: A “blended” approach to program delivery makes building community online easier than a strictly online approach When we designed the program we thought long and hard about the combination of face-to-face and online learning and teaching … and decided that for this program we would start the students in a face-to-face learning environment. Therefore, they come together for a three weeks face-to-face institute in a couple of different locations in Canada, and then it’s only after this face-to-face piece that they start the online part of the program … in total they have two face-to-face segments that are interspersed, one in the beginning of the first year, one in the beginning of the second year, but in between they do all their work in computer-conferenced courses. So the needs of the student; the learning goals of the program dictated that particular structure. (Hutton et al., 2003) Pappas and Jerman (2004) state what many in the field of distributed learning believe, which is that a blended model of online instruction is the way of the future. Even for students within commuting distance to their traditional campuses, they see short face-to-face courses on weekends and/or evenings at convenient workplace or community sites supplementing primarily online instruction. Ander- son (2004) believes that we are “entering an era where streaming video, video and audio conferencing, and virtual worlds are readily available for educational use” (p. 7). Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 391 We believe that for experiential learning and critical reflection … one of the real keys of creating a safe trusting community is … for students to meet each other and work together face-to-face … to build some trust on common ground [from which] to begin the online dialogue. (Hutton et al., 2003) As described in this comment, the University of Calgary program was a blended approach that used the initial and mid-point face-to-face sessions to establish and consolidate a sense of community. Due to wide geographical distribution of the Deakin student group, who were often located internationally, the Deakin program was mainly taught online, with communication by email and telephone also available. If face-to-face sessions are not possible in globally delivered programs, Stacey (2002) believes that the planning must involve a careful introductory online learning phase of establishing social and teacher presence. We know that in a textural medium like this that people respond in quite strange ways sometimes misinterpreting words … when I suggested that they then use another medium … and talk it through [by phone] they discovered they actually had a lot of similarities. (et al., 2003) The online teacher plays an important role in developing an atmosphere of socially responsive discourse by modeling social encouragement with content discussion. This begins with the teacher’s first messages and interactions that model and explain communication strategies and tools that enhance social presence and develop group cohesion, as well as continuing by threading students’ messages (best done with humor and self-disclosure) into easily accessible discussion topics. By playing an active monitoring role in large and small group discussions, organizing topic threads, and suggesting that students use multiple communication media (such as telephones, online synchronous chats, and group discussions), the teacher is instrumental in moving the discourse forward in a productive and responsible manner. Garrison (1997) calls this online conference moderation contextualizing, where the teacher provides the communication model as well as organizing and focusing the online discussion. While Garrison recommends initial face-to-face meetings of program participants and teachers to facilitate the community-building process, when not possible (as in Deakin University’s program) the teacher’s ability to moni- tor small group interactions using multiple communication technologies becomes very important. Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, (2000) defined a “community of inquiry” model that holds the teaching presence as an important factor in structuring and facilitating active learning. Stacey’s (2002) research demonstrated the impor- tance of this role in establishing a social interaction pattern that enables the social presence of the online participants to build an environment of trust and supportive response. Planning and designing these strategies into the course ensures that a sense of online community is established (Stacey, Smith, & Barty, 2004). Theme 4: Asynchronous communication encourages critical reflection and analysis One of the things that we do address in our first face-to-face piece in the institute is critical reflection and critical analysis … in a familiar and more comfortable context … 392 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey helping at the beginning [to build those skills] … then continuing that process online. (Hutton et al., 2003) While introducing students to the concept and practice of critical thinking may be best done in a familiar face-to-face classroom, the very nature of asynchro- nous communication acts to encourage more in-depth critical reflection and anal- ysis by allowing more time for students to gather their thoughts offline and write and edit these thoughts before posting them for discussion (Anderson, 2004; Biggs, 1999; Burge, 1994; Feenberg, 1999; Heckman & Annabi, 2003; Wiesenberg & Hutton, 1996). In this way, students who tend not to participate in face-to-face complex discussions are often much more involved in such online discussions. … being the intellectual guide for your students online … doesn’t really look very differ- ent online than it does face-to-face … other than needing to be perhaps more explicit and direct online helping students to weave concepts together and teaching them how to do the linkages. The threaded aspect of the (online) discussion … (more easily facili- tates this). (Hutton et al., 2003) Anderson (2004) stipulates that the skillful e-teacher can provide the intellectual scaffold for students to then take advantage of the Internet’s expanded opportuni- ties to explore knowledge resources more deeply than before. Biggs (1999) believes that the Internet, when used by a skillful teacher, can promote critical thinking by engaging students more meaningfully in online dialog, which Burge (1994) supports in her analysis of online graduate classes from a student perspective. Heckman and Annabi (2003) think that students achieve higher levels of abstract thinking online than in traditional face-to-face classrooms, because the asynchro- nous medium allows them to develop more careful, formal, and reflective responses. This ability of asynchronous communication to encourage more reflec- tive responses may be the result of the fact that “most people formulate ideas more easily in written form than in speech in front of an audience” (Feenberg, 1999, p. 7). This is one of the conclusions that Wiesenberg and Hutton (1996) came to when comparing their teaching experiences in computer-mediated and face-to-face courses in the MCE program. At the same time, however, the lack of visual cues in an online learning environ- ment can make giving critical commentary effectively more challenging, as comments alone, devoid of friendly gestures or facial expressions, can encourage the feedback recipient to interpret words more negatively than intended. Therefore, skillful critique and inquiry skills have to be explicitly taught by teachers to students to enable them to be analytical and critical without unintentionally offending their online classmates. [To help students strengthen their arguments we designed] … a three weeks module wherein everyone does the primary posting in the middle week so that there’s more offline reflection. I found from the beginning there was not a good balance between online time and offline reflection. If we want critical reflection we must build in some points within the course where they are not having to be online … I’ve just been surprised by the depth of the analysis. (Hutton et al., 2003) Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 393 Theme 5: It is critically important to use instructional approaches and techniques that engage and empower students to take responsibility for the learning process The role of the teacher is dramatically different and the role of the student is dramati- cally different as you move from the traditional face-to-face to what we do online. … in order to work well, the teacher moves away from being an expert and moves very much into the role of being a guide and a coach and sort of a co-learner and the student has to be … a much more active part of the learning and teaching process. … this approach is “developmental”, … grounded in constructivist theory in terms of the learner, the students understanding evolves as they relate the new stuff that we’re teaching in the classroom to their own previous knowledge. Instructional approaches based on adult learning principles have long been recog- nized as critical to the success of face-to-face programs designed for adult learners (Caffarella, 2002; Kiely, Sandmann, & Truluck, 2004; Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). Chickering and Ehrmann (1996) describe how advanced communication technologies have enhanced the implementation of their original seven principles for good practice by increasing opportunities for interaction between and among students and academic staff. They describe how study groups, collaborative learn- ing, and problem-solving groups can all be dramatically strengthened through communication tools that facilitate such small group activities. Of Pratt’s (1998) five perspectives on teaching adult learners, a combination of developmental and “intellectual” apprenticeship approaches appear most compatible with creating online learning environments that places the student into an active learner role (D. D. Pratt, personal communication, January 17, 2003). Based on a constructivist theoretical framework, the developmental approach views the teacher as a resource and guide, creating bridges between the students’ previous knowledge actively moving them towards more complex understanding. At the same time, it uses experiential instructional techniques to engage students in the learning process by linking theoretical constructs to students’ own lives, bringing alive the theory, and allowing students to integrate it into their own world views (Kolb, 1984). The “intel- lectual” apprenticeship approach resembles situated learning in its focus on the reciprocity between individuals and the social group, as the individual learner learns the skills of online communication and facilitation from the teacher by engaging in the process to become a skillful practitioner. In a group of 24 we typically break the class into smaller groups to work online with each other as moderator teams, to take over one of the [weekly] discussions topics, and/ or to work on small group projects online and then report back and engage the rest of the learners. So it actually doesn’t matter what total size of the class you have, you can do smaller group collaborative kinds of things [to engage everyone]. (Hutton et al., 2003) Burge’s (1994) study of online learners identified challenges related to handling large quantities of information and discussion fragmentation, lack of visual or aural cues, and generally feeling out of synch with the discussion in Web-based classrooms. Face-to-face instructors know that small “sub-groups” of students more effec- tively engage in the learning process in traditional classrooms (Brookfield, 1990; 394 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey Johnson & Johnson, 1997). Many experienced online teachers have discovered that using small groups skillfully works equally effectively (if not more so) in the online classroom (Hiltz, 1994; Palloff & Pratt, 2001; Stacey, 1999). Working on online projects in groups of three to five allows students to more effectively relate to each other in sometimes intimidating large faceless online classes devoid of visual or audio cues to help them decipher their classmates’ text messages. Engagement in the learning process is self-motivating, and the first step towards taking more direct responsibility for one’s learning (Brookfield, 1990). Program Delivery Issues As well as sharing assumptions about program design, the authors typically approach teaching generally, and teaching with distributed communication technologies in particular, as “new learners” in terms of being open to students’ feedback, engaging in critical dialog with students and colleagues (Brookfield, 1999; Jarvis, 1999; Wiesenberg, 1999; Zinn, 1998), and continually reflecting on and revising the underlying assumptions of their individual “theories of practice”. Four themes specific to program delivery that arose were as follows: A “develop- mental/apprenticeship and experiential” approach to course delivery works well in an online teaching context; deliberately creating a safe “community of learning” online, as well as building students’ online communication skills, is essential; being very well-organized online, as well as modeling what this looks like to students, is critical; and the huge diversity of students cross-culturally requires a breadth of carefully selected teaching interventions. Theme 1: A “developmental/apprenticeship and experiential” approach to online course delivery is a very effective way to engage students in the learning process Always, there is a requirement for students to be active online and it will vary a little bit from course to course … many of us instructors do not just ask them to respond to questions and interact in conversations, but also to moderate part of the discussion so they take an act of sort of apprenticeship teaching role in the programs as well. (Hutton et al, 2003) The value of an experiential approach (Kolb, 1984) situated within a developmental/ apprenticeship teaching approach (Pratt, 1998) was discussed in terms of program design (see Theme 5 in the previous section). A combination of teaching strategies from all three teaching approaches seem especially well suited to an online learning environment. Additionally, encouraging students to take an “apprenticeship role” in the teaching/learning process helps them to move towards Salmon’s (2000) Stage 5 of independence from the teacher and interdependence upon each other as online learners and critically reflective thinkers (Brookfield, 1986). … student [discussion] moderators are responsible for introducing the topic to the rest of the students and moderating the discussion for the length of that topic … [and doing] some clarification and summarizing and perhaps threading together ideas and then Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 395 ending up summarizing of the topic at the end … my students tell me that initially they are nervous about it and they sometimes don’t want to do it, but at the end of that experience they all say that was when they were the most engaged in the course and they are very appreciative of having had an opportunity to do that. (Hutton et al., 2003) Brookfield (1999) describes how engaging learners in discussion helps them to develop critical thinking skills in a number of ways, most notably by connecting them to the topic, and helping them to become co-creators of knowledge by learning collaboratively. This style of learning also fits with Salmon’s (2000) Stage 5 interde- pendent learning style. Theme 2: Deliberately creating cafe “community of learning” online, as well as building students’ online communication skills, is essential to the online course’s success To learn a new skill you first have to become aware of it, break it down [for example] … pausing that minute or so before you send your message … to reread it, to make sure it says … what you intend to say. (Hutton et al., 2003) When online learning programs first became available, many students entering these programs had never used a computer for interactive dialog (Wiesenberg & Hutton, 1996). They came into the program quite anxious about their ability to learn online, and often needed a fair amount of reassurance from instructors in their first few weeks when faced with technical difficulties and feelings of social isolation (being “out there in cyberspace all alone”). Creating an online classroom environment that felt safe, interconnected, and navigable, as well as becoming skillful online commu- nicators, was critical to their retention and eventual success. Meaning-making happens through … good interpersonal communication skills … and since learning in a CMC environment is highly interactive dialogue, interpersonal skills are very critical. Modeling it along the way [and using] direct instruction … within the context of the course is powerful to students. (Hutton et al., 2003) Theme 3: It is critical to be very well-organized online, as well as help students to become so through modeling what this behavior looks like online Text takes time to enter and … to read. So … start to look at your life schedule. Where are you going to block the time? Because from either a facilitator point of view or a learner point of view one of the initial things I think we’re not up front about is the extraordinary demands on our time as compared to a face-to-face. Most learners and instructors report similarly that they like CMC because it’s asynchronous primarily … the huge advantage of flexibility also comes with the cost of usually twice to three times more time investment. … to prepare people one of my strong pieces of advice [is to] not underplay the enormous investment in time and organisational skill that people will need. (Hutton et al., 2003) A number of experienced online teachers describe how online communication takes up to three times as much time than does face-to-face communication (Stacey & Rice, 2002; Wiesenberg & Hutton, 1996), and therefore how important it is to both develop good time management skills as well as teach students these same skills. 396 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey Otherwise, teaching and learning online can become so time-consuming that both parties feel overwhelmed. What I’ve tried to do is always put the comment in the group forum so that it means that I don’t always have to multiply that response [to students individually] … [which] adds to our workload. (Hutton et al, 2003) Describing and modeling time-efficient online communication strategies, such as using group forums to communicate information to all students at once, reserving more time-consuming private email communication for confidential messages, shows students how to be skillful time-managers. This is an area of distance educa- tion that needs much further research as institutions shift to virtual communication in many additional administrative functions, such as providing online registration and online student support services. Theme 4: The increased cultural diversity of students in programs offered cross-culturally, requires a breadth of teaching interventions (“Culture” is defined as ethnic, geographic, and gender, and a number of related issues surfaced in this discussion regarding respecting cultural differences by using different teaching approaches and communication media.) Younger students right out of the Asian postsecondary system or secondary system [find that going from didactic to collaborative learning is a] hard transition for them to make … based on my research … and discussions with Japanese colleagues for whom the concept of collaborating online is totally foreign. (Hutton et al., 2003) Wiesenberg’s (2004a, 2004b) cross-cultural research with Canadian and Japanese university students indicates that these two cultural groups use computers in very different ways. Canadians engage in interactive messaging more often and more skillfully than their Japanese counterparts, who tend to use computers for one-way communication more often. Also, certain subgroups within these cultures behaved differently—with younger male Canadian and Japanese students demonstrating far more tendency to use the Internet to learn in an independent manner, while younger female students of both cultures appeared more comfortable and willing to use the Internet to learn in a more “discussion-based” or collaborative manner. In cultures that are not used to collaborative learning approaches, the challenge of becoming an effective online learner within a discussion-based environment can be enormous, requiring a carefully blended teaching approach that combines more traditional didactic with collaborative strategies. Our western students tend to … multi-task [or] … do everything at once. If they’re trav- eling they take their laptop, if they … work … late [they find time to study there]. They’re online regularly because we require fairly regular postings at least once a week. [But] the work style and pattern of the Asian students was much more linear and compartmentalised. Requiring them to be online every week did not work. [When] out of the country on a project they focus on that. So a modular format … [without] the highly interactive CMC on line … fits [them better]. (Hutton et al., 2003) Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 397 [With Asian students] … there still is that view of the teacher more as the expert, more didactic, more lecturing with not as much freedom … [to discuss/debate]. … they were comfortable [discussing/debating] face-to-face and it would be my belief, with more time to build enough of a community [face-to-face], that we could model and encour- age the online dialogue. But it seemed that the more entrenched culture of teacher-as- expert [prevails] when we weren’t there physically. Pratt’s (1998) research on cultural differences in teaching approaches with adult learners confirms that Asian students prefer more “teacher-centered” teaching styles than do western students, who are more familiar and therefore more skillful with “student-centered” teaching styles. Successful CMC interactions lean far more towards the feminine way of communica- tion, and in fact, males may be disadvantaged unless we … skill-build by using students’ names, quoting part of what they said (to acknowledge them), and bring it back to the topic … some people and cultures are going to need to learn that to build that social presence (online). (Hutton et al., & Stacey, 2003) Hutton (Wiesenberg & Hutton, 1996) describes communication differences between women and men in the typical face-to-face classroom that result in the male students’ voices being more evident and credible. Due to the different nature of online communication, this seems to be reversed in online classrooms, where a “female” communication style that is naturally more collaborative and uses more listening and affirmation skills seems to better facilitate community building and subsequent free-flowing critical reflection/analysis. In summary, across the program design and program delivery phases, it appears that the need for more time (for both course design and delivery), the increased complexity of the learning environment (due to the nature of the medium and of the learner populations), and the importance of using a developmental/apprenticeship approach (to teach course content, as well as online learning skills) are common challenges facing teachers seeking to become skillful online instructors, and institu- tions seeking to offer high-quality online programs cross-globally. Critical Support Issues that Emerged The authors’ reflections on teaching cross-globally revealed three inter-related support issues facing institutions seeking to deliver quality online learning: The necessity of providing quality professional development and ongoing teaching support to the teaching staff involved in cross-global program delivery; the necessity of providing quality learning support to the students learning in cross-global virtual classrooms; and the necessity of providing quality administrative support to both faculty members and students before, during, and after their online teaching/learning experience. Quality Teaching Support The first of these issues is the need to provide high-quality professional development and ongoing teaching support to faculty who teach online/at a distance so that they 398 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey fully understand the new roles and responsibilities that online teaching requires. The MOU evaluation report revealed a higher than average level of “online teacher absence” in one course, which resulted in lower course quality ratings (Wiesenberg & Stacey, 2001). The teacher in this course experienced quite a number of technical difficulties, exacerbated because she engaged in this pilot on her own initiative, not as a member of her postsecondary institution, and therefore lacked any institutional support from her site in the northeastern United States. She was also perceived by students as lacking awareness of this group of culturally diverse online learners’ “social and cultural” needs. This discovery raised the coordinators’ awareness of the need for all instructors to have a strong institutional technical support, excellent online teaching/learning skills, as well as an inclusive philosophy of teaching and learning online. Moving from face-to-face classrooms to online ones requires a period of developing an online “theory of practice” that is best done through self- reflection, engaging in dialogue with more experienced colleagues, soliciting feedback from your students as your courses proceed, and having administrative support to experiment with new methods and strategies. It’s very important to be aware of what your key assumptions are about the teaching/ learning process so that you can be consistent in terms of what your [theory of …] practice is … Then I would say it would be important to look to what others who have more experience have found effective. It is about adopting strategies and techniques that have been already demonstrated to be effective before then moving on to sort of reflecting on your own experiences as you move through the teaching process, and then formulating your own theory of practice around what is effective for you in your class- rooms, given your students and your learning goals. Always listen to what your students are telling you and then … always ask them how things are going. So, be in their sort of critical dialogue with your students all the time. (Hutton et al., 2003) The research literature on online teaching/learning provides ample evidence for the need for specific professional development for teachers shifting from the tradi- tional face-to-face classroom to the virtual classroom (Hiltz, 1994). Given that all three teachers in this pilot evaluation were experienced online teachers, it was assumed that this professional development was not necessary—but the pilot evalua- tion indicated that, regardless of previous online teaching experience, ongoing professional support, continuous professional consultation, student feedback, and regular formative evaluation is still critical (Wiesenberg, 1999). If you haven’t [taught online] before, we tend to have some kind of an apprenticeship… or a co-teaching role that we always recommend … [first] the instructor consults with the students and gives the rationale that this person is considering teaching the next course or will be involved, and [obtain] permission for them to be a guest for two weeks. In that case because it’s virtual, you want to ask the [guest] specifically to introduce themselves online and enter the discussion once in a while. (Hutton et al, 2003) Caffarella and Zinn (1999) describe four factors that can either provide barriers to or supports for initial engagement in, and ongoing professional development for, teaching staff: people and interpersonal relationships (i.e., personal support systems at the workplace), institutional structures (i.e., necessary resources for professional Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 399 development), personal considerations and commitments (i.e., support of family and friends), and intellectual and personal characteristics (i.e., to provide excellence in the workplace). Each factor has the potential to enhance or hinder a teacher’s ability to engage fully in the teaching/learning process, deal with challenges that arise, and succeed in any learning environment. Quality Learning Support The second issue is the quality of learning support readily available to the online/ distance student. This issue was reflected in numerous comments made by students in the pilot evaluation regarding their frustration with the technology’s occasional breakdown, specific elements of courses that were different from those they were used to in their “home” program, social learning challenges that they had not encountered before (such as dealing with very “verbally demanding” classmates from the other country), and administrators who did not always appear to be listen- ing/responding to their concerns and needs (Wiesenberg & Stacey, 2001). The research literature on student support requirements in face-to-face classroom leaves no doubt that providing quality learning support is a critical issue within the tradi- tional university (Keierleber & Hansen, 1992; Schlossberg, Lynch, & Chickering, 1991). Institutional neglect of this need for online/distance students can result in student dissatisfaction and program withdrawal (Wiesenberg, 2000). As postsecondary institutions move online with programs, the lack of necessary online student services is particularly apparent in those institutions with little or no previous history of providing distributed learning to students. While “designing responsive online learning environments” (Hicks, Reid, & George, 1999) is recog- nized by bodies that create guidelines for the provision of quality distributed educa- tion as essential (see Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education publications, 2002), as yet there are few examples of institutions doing this well. One very good example (Brigham, 2001) used a systematic approach that examined “extra-institu- tional societal factors acting on the institution from without and factors acting from within” to design a student learning environment that addresses each of the factors identified as “barriers to learning” (no residential campus infrastructure, no residen- tial faculty, and students who work and study at home in locations geographically dispersed across the country). The resulting integrated system includes electronic advising, electronic peer network, online databases, online bookstore, virtual library, and alumni services all available via the Internet. Quality Administrative Support The third issue is the quality of administrative support available to both teaching staff and distance students within an online classroom. The MOA course-sharing pilot evaluation revealed a critical weakness in how both partner institution’s admin- istrative systems were unable to “communicate efficiently and effectively” with each other at both the staff and program levels. The result was considerable wasted time 400 F. Wiesenberg and E. Stacey and effort for teaching and support staff, not to mention considerable frustration for both, as new procedures were created to address these problems. This happened because of the lack of institutional commitment in the form of staff resources dedi- cated to the pilot, resulting in the cancellation of a second course-sharing. Both coordinators decided that neither had the personal energy or resources to extend this project beyond its initial pilot. … the resource issue … [or] lack of time and … technical support that is an institutional barrier that really needs to be addressed and isn’t, as far as I can see, [addressed] very well in Canada. And once you take care of this, I think those two reasons probably cover most of the reluctance … then I think you will have more teachers deciding that yes, this is a really interesting and rewarding way to go. (Hutton et al, 2003) [An online course] easily takes me three times more [to teach] than a face to face. To do these kinds of additional social role tasks … We may need to look as redesigning our work loads. (Hutton et al., 2003) Since the pilot evaluation, Deakin University has mainstreamed the use of online learning throughout its courses, with policy support that defines ideal levels of online interaction and pedagogical support. Also, a code for good online practice has been developed. Deakin Studies Online includes a Learning Management System, and the university provides students and staff with the software and support material required for participation through the yearly updated Deakin Learning Toolkit, a CD-ROM distributed to all students in any location. Training for staff and students in pedagogical strategies as well as in technical skills is being provided in a variety of ways including workshops, online support, through print, and through fellowships that assist faculty staff to gain the necessary skills and mentor their colleagues. All support services are provided online from library borrowing to bookstore access, student administration, and communication. Since this pilot, the University of Calgary has developed new policies and proce- dures for distance program delivery, creating a teacher professional development centre to enhance program design and delivery skills, as well as adding distance student support in its library and registration functions. Interestingly, the MCE program has moved from a blended delivery to a fully online delivery format, and the gains in student accessibility and flexibility still need to be evaluated against the possible loss in community building that may have resulted. Overall, it was significant that this first course-sharing pilot evaluation was rated by all key stakeholders (i.e., students, teachers, program directors, and related institu- tional support staff) as highly successful/satisfying from a learning and teaching perspective, as well as personally and professionally worthwhile. While day-to-day administrative hassles for teachers (reporting of grades, provision of transcripts) detracted from the quality of the teaching/learning experience (Stacey & Wiesenberg, 2002), the results of this pilot exchange did contribute to Deakin University’s new policy of international exchange development and consideration of support issue solutions. At Deakin University, all students now study one subject in their program fully online so that they develop the online skills for international lifelong learning. Reflections on Teaching and Learning Online 401 The literature is clear that institutional commitment and ability to provide the necessary administrative resources to support online/distance programs is absolutely critical to the programs’ quality and subsequent success (Brown, 2002; Caffarella & Zinn, 1999; Carliner, 2002; Gallant, 2000; Pajo & Wallace, 2001; Stacey & Wiesenberg, 2002, 2004). While Caffarella and Zinn’s (1999) conceptual framework of barriers and support for professional development for faculty positions institutional commitment as key, Carliner (2002) identifies 13 administrative issues critical to offering distance courses with institutional partners, ranging from the need to identify the administrative model (remote, cross-enrollment, joint) to be followed, address differences in academic cultures, calendars, registration processes, library resources, and grading procedures at each institution, to making sure that textbooks and course materials arrive on time, and that relationships at all levels of the project are developed and nurtured. Conclusion Currently there exists a vigorous debate among faculty members and other stake- holders about the real motives behind moving program delivery online, with positions ranging from increasing the availability to high-quality education to increasing the profitability of the educational enterprise (Davies & Stacey, 2003; Feenberg, 1999; Zemsky & Massy, 2004). Those institutions recognized as “doing it right”, however, have clearly committed to the former, expending up to three times the resources on distributed courses compared with face-to-face courses (Harasim, 1999). The second key debate on this issue deals with the application of advanced communication technology to the delivery of education in the first place—does the technology or the educational goals come first? Clearly, how to deliver high-quality online learning is a “debate in process” as the major stakeholders negotiate their various, and sometimes conflicting, interests. The authors are both senior faculty members from two cross-global institu- tions of higher education who have strong commitments to increasing the avail- ability of high-quality education. They hope that this paper has illustrated how enhancing the quality of student learning at a distance is clearly a complex func- tion of many interrelated factors: program design; program delivery; teaching approach; and the quality of teacher, student, and administrative support provided by the institution. In order for institutions to ensure the quality of their distance students’ learning, they must commit to developing quality integrated institutional support systems for faculty members and students involved in their “distance classrooms”. Notes on Contributors Faye Wiesenberg is an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary. Her teaching and research interests include the teaching/learning process (both face-to-face and online). 402 F. Wiesenberg and E. 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work_3k3qyjhbmnekdg5gufvxdcyvw4	----	Microsoft Word - Dietze_JDET_ICWL.doc Supporting Interoperability and Context-Awareness in E-Learning through Situation-driven Learning Processes Stefan Dietze*, Alessio Gugliotta, John Domingue Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, MK7 6AA, Milton Keynes, UK {s.dietze, a.gugliotta, j.b.domingue}@open.ac.uk Abstract. Current E-Learning technologies primarily follow a data and metadata-centric paradigm by providing the learner with composite content containing the learning resources and the learning process description, usually based on specific metadata standards such as ADL SCORM or IMS Learning Design. Due to the design-time binding of learning resources, the actual learning context cannot be considered appropriately at runtime, what limits the reusability and interoperability of learning resources. This paper proposes Situation-driven Learning Processes (SDLP) which describe learning processes semantically from two perspectives: the user perspective considers a learning process as a course of learning goals which lead from an initial situation to a desired situation, whereas the system perspective utilizes Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology to semantically describe necessary resources for each learning goal within a specific learning situation. Consequently, a learning process is composed dynamically and accomplished in terms of SWS goal achievements by automatically allocating learning resources at runtime. Moreover, metadata standard-independent SDLP are mapped to established standards such as ADL SCORM and IMS LD. As a result, dynamic adaptation to specific learning contexts as well as interoperability across different metadata standards and application environments is achieved. To prove the feasibility, a prototypical application is described finally. Keywords: Semantic Web Services, E-Learning, Interoperability, Context- Awareness, WSMO. 1 Introduction The increasing availability of learning resources raises the need to discover and deliver the most appropriate learning resources to the learner to satisfy his/her learning needs within the actual learning situation. A learning situation constitutes the actual context which has to be addressed and is defined by e.g. the used technical environment or specific learner characteristics such as his/her native language. The current state of the art in E-Learning is mainly represented by approaches based on software systems, such as learning content management systems (LCMS) which provide a learner with composite learning contents – the so called learning objects (LO). Usually, a LO contains a description of a learning process - the learning path which has to be followed by the learner to fulfil his current learning objective – which is referred to a set of learning resources, whether these are data or services. Interoperability between LCMS is currently supported through metadata standards such as IEEE LOM (Duval, 2003), ADL SCORM (ADL SCORM, 2004) – based on IMS Simple Sequencing - or IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) (IMS Global, 2003) supporting the description of learning processes as well as learning objects. To satisfy a given learning need, a learning designer manually describes the learning process and allocates learning resources. Even though current E-Learning metadata standards try to address dynamic context-adaptability by introducing facilities such as the IMS LD Level B properties, their capabilities are limited and still rely on the manual pre- allocation of resources and a pre-defined selection strategy. Due to the design-time binding of learning process and learning resources, the actual runtime context of the learning process cannot be considered appropriately and therefore, a learning object cannot adapt dynamically to the specific context or learner needs. Consequently, reusability of a LO across distinct learning contexts or E-Learning applications is limited. The use of Web services instead of data addresses these issues partially. However, since Web services are deployed using purely syntactic technologies such as SOAP (W3C, 2003a), WSDL (W3C, 2001), and UDDI (W3C, 2003b), which do not provide information about the semantic meaning of the service functionalities, utilized data or usage constraints, services cannot be discovered, composed and invoked automatically. Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology (Fensel et al., 2006) aims at the automatic discovery of distributed Web services as well as underlying data on the basis of comprehensive semantic descriptions utilizing ontologies (Gruber, 1995) as formal specification of a service conceptualization. First results of SWS research are available, in terms of reference ontologies – e.g. OWL-S (Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee, 2004) and WSMO (WSMO Working Group, 2004) – as well as comprehensive frameworks - e.g. DIP project results (http://dip.semanticweb.org) - and applications. Whereas existing SWS frameworks enable the semantic description of Web services and data exposed by a Web service, they do not entirely encourage the representation of learning situations and processes, in which resources are used. In other words, SWS descriptions represent a process from a system perspective as an orchestration process which involves the invocation of services and the manipulation of data. In contrast, process metadata descriptions such as IMS LD or ADL SCORM provide non-semantic descriptions about a learning process from a user perspective. The approach described in this paper bridges the gap between learning situations and resources based on semantic Situation-driven Learning Processes (SDLP) that consider the user as well as the system perspective of a process. Learning processes are described as sequences of learning goals which lead from an initial to a final situation, where each goal is supported through dynamic SWS goal invocations. SDLP are composed dynamically and accomplished by automatically allocating learning resources (data, services) at runtime to adapt to different learning contexts. To achieve this vision, our approach is based on the following principles: abstraction from learning resources and semantic contextualization of learning process models. The abstraction from the actual resources – data as well as services – supports the semantic representation of the system-perspective of a process through established SWS technology and is aimed at the automatic discovery of resources which provide the required capabilities for a given context. Based on semantic descriptions of functional capabilities of available Web services, a SWS broker automatically selects and invokes Web services appropriate to achieve a given user goal. The contextualization of learning process models aims at the semantic representation of learning processes as sequences situation-specific learning goals to support the user- perspective of a process. It makes use of Semantic Web (SW) technology to provide the necessary contextualized descriptions and is mapped to different metadata standards to enable their interoperability. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The following Section 2 introduces our motivation which led to our vision of context-adaptive learning processes described in Section 3 together with our proposed approach. Section 4 then introduces the utilization of SWS to abstract from learning resources whereas Section 5 explains a metamodel for Situation-driven Processes (SDP). SDP are derived for the E- Learning domain in Section 6 and their deployment within a context-adaptive E- Learning application is described in Section 7. We compare our approach with the current state of the art in E-Learning in Section 8, and report some related work in Section 9. Our contributions are summarized and discussed in the last Section 10. 2 Motivation Current technologies aimed at supporting learning processes are mainly based on the following practices: • Widespread use of proprietary, non-semantic metadata standards, such as IMS LD and ADL SCORM, to describe a learning process. A process is described based on a common syntax – the metadata specification – but not enriched with descriptions of a semantic meaning in a machine-processable way. • Manual allocation of learning resources at design-time of a process. Data and services are manually associated with specific learning objectives based on the limited knowledge and subjective decisions of a specific individual. Since process descriptions rely on syntactic descriptions only, the allocation of appropriate resources requires the manual interpretation of the semantics of a process model. Moreover, the allocation of learning resources at design-time of a process - i.e. when the specific learning process metadata is described - contradicts the consideration of the actual learning context, what is possible at runtime only. • Workflow-centred notion of a learning process. Learning processes usually focus on the description of the learning workflow to be followed rather than on the learning context – e. g. the specific requirements of the addressed learning situation. For instance, to support a learner who intends to learn a particular language, e.g. French, usually a learning designer manually provides a learning object which contains the learning process based on a particular metadata standard and allocates learning assets to each of the learning activities. Imagine a learning process consisting of two learning activities, where the first introduces basic knowledge about the French language and the second one adds advanced vocabulary and grammar information. Each activity will be associated manually with a set of audio-visual learning assets or is referred at design-time to a Web service which retrieves appropriate learning resources. The composed LO is provided to the learner, for instance through open E- Learning platforms such as OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/), and finally presented within a metadata compliant runtime environment or LCMS. Due to these facts, the following limitations have been identified (Amorim et al., 2006)(Collis and Strijker, 2004)(Knight, Gasevic & Richards, 2006): L1. Limited reusability across different learning contexts and metadata standards. A learning process model – including references to associated resources - suiting the context and the preferences of a specific learner cannot be used across distinct learning contexts. Moreover, the conformance of a learning process model with a specific metadata standard ensures interoperability across systems following the same standard, but does contradict the usage of the same model in information systems adopting different standards. As a result, distinct learning process models have to be developed to meet multiple contexts and learner needs. L2. Limited appropriateness and dynamic adaptability to actual learning contexts. A learning object usually is composed of both, the workflow of learning activities and the set of required learning resources. Due to the designtime-binding of learning resources and learning process metadata, the actual learning context – known at runtime only – cannot be considered appropriately. Moreover, the use of data excludes the dynamic adaptability to a specific context a priori. The use of services instead of data addresses some of these issues but does not enable context-adaption based on the automatic allocation of services at runtime. L3. Limited use of distributed heterogeneous learning resources. Since learning resources usually are allocated manually at design-time, distributed heterogeneous data and services are neither widely reused nor integrated into learning application environments sufficiently. Nevertheless, standardized methodologies to solve heterogeneities between terminologies used by distinct data or service providers are not available. Therefore, interoperability and scalability of current E-Learning applications is limited. L4. High development costs. Due to L1, L2, and L3 distinct learning objects – including distinct learning process models and learning resources - have to be developed to support different learning contexts appropriately. Therefore, high development costs have to be taken into account to provide appropriate process support. 3 Context-Adaptive Learning Processes: Vision and Approach This section describes our vision and approach to context-adaptive learning process composition and accomplishment aimed at overcoming the limitations L1 – L4 described in Section 2. Vision: Situation-driven Learning Processes We consider the automatic, situation-aware allocation of resources at runtime of a learning process based on dynamic service invocations. Learning processes are described semantically as a composition of user goals within a specific learning situation, the actual context. Learning goals are achieved dynamically through automatic discovery of appropriate services for a given goal within a specific situation. Figure 1 depicts this vision of a situation-driven learning process. Fig. 1. Situation-driven learning processes. Semantic learning process models abstract from specific resources – whether data or services - and metadata standards. Given an initial situation and knowledge about the desired final situation, learning processes are composed dynamically and accomplished automatically. Based on semantic descriptions of available resources, the most appropriate resource is selected automatically to achieve a certain learning goal within the actual learning (runtime) context. This vision enables a highly dynamic adaptation to different learning contexts and learner needs. Moreover, using adequate mappings, standard-independent semantic learning process models can be transformed into existing (non-semantic) metadata standards in order to enable their reuse within existing standard-compliant runtime environments. By addressing limitations L1 – L3, the described vision consequently reduces the efforts of creating learning process models (L4): one unique learning process model can adapt dynamically to different process contexts and can be translated into different process metadata standards. Approach Our approach is fundamentally based on realizing the following principles: • Learning resource abstraction. S2 S1 G1 Ws1 Ws2 Ws3 S3 G2 Ws4 Ws5 Ws6 Learning Situations Learning Goals Web Services affords leads to affords leads to supports supports • Contextualization of learning processes. To support these principles, we introduce a layered approach to achieve a gradual abstraction and finally, a gradual mapping between resources – data and services – and process metadata (Figure 2): Fig. 2. Conceptual framework to gradually abstract from learning process resources and contextualize learning process models. P1. Learning Resource Abstraction. To integrate heterogeneous resources, we foresee the abstraction from existing learning data and content. A Web Service Layer is considered which exposes functionalities appropriate to fulfill specific learning objectives. These functionalities range from querying learning data repositories to filtering of data or the computation of competency gaps. This abstraction from learning process data enables a dynamic discovery of appropriate data to suit a specific context and objective. Services exposed at this layer may make use of semantic descriptions of available learning data to accomplish their functionalities. In order to abstract from these functionalities (Web services), we introduce an additional layer – the Semantic Web Service Layer. This layer enables the dynamic selection, composition and invocation of appropriate Web services for a specific learning objective within a particular learning context. This is achieved on the basis of formal semantic, declarative descriptions of the capabilities of available services to enable the dynamic matching of service capabilities to specific user goals. Due to the semantic abstraction from learning resources, additional distributed resources can be integrated into the application framework by simply adding semantic resource descriptions following a common SWS standard, such as WSMO (WSMO Working Group, 2004) or OWL-S (Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee, P1 - Resource Abstraction P2 - Contextualization Semantic Process Model Layer Semantic Learning Process Model Layer Learning Metadata Standard Layer mapping mapping Learner Learning Data Layer Semantic Web Service Layer uses mapping Learning Resource Provider Web Service Layer mapping 2004). Please note, that the aforementioned layers make use of established standard Web service and SWS technologies. P2. Contextualization of Learning Processes. Whereas the aforementioned layers utilize existing technologies, the contextualization of learning processes introduces two novel semantic layers. A first layer concerned with the semantic contextualization of current learning process metadata standards is the Semantic Learning Process Model Layer. It allows the comprehensive description of situation-driven processes within the domain of E- Learning as a composition of learning goals which occur in specific learning situations described by parameters such as the current learning environment or the actual user preferences. This layer is mapped to semantic representations of current learning metadata standards in order to enable the interoperability between different standards and furthermore, the automatic transformation between them. To achieve a further abstraction from domain-specific process models – whether it is e. g. a learning process, a business process or a communication process – we consider an upper level process model layer – Semantic Process Model Layer. This layer enables the description of contextualized domain-independent processes and introduces the high-level concepts – e. g. process goals, roles or process parameters – which are subject across different process domains. Thus, this layer enables a mapping between different domain-specific process model layers - for instance the mapping between learning objectives and business objectives. Based on semantic mappings, upper level layers can utilize information at lower level layers. It is important to note, that we explicitly consider mappings not only between multiple semantic layers but also within a specific semantic layer. For instance, within the Semantic Learning Process Model Layer different semantic conceptualizations could be utilized and aligned with each other in order to support reusability across different application scenarios each using a distinct terminology and conceptual E-Learning model. The following Table 1 provides an overview of our approach, mapping the lacks introduced in Section 2 with the elements of our approach that address them at different levels of abstraction: design principles, conceptual layers, implementation aspects. The implementation aspects (ontologies and supporting software) are elaborated further in the following sections. Table 1: Overview on approach followed to address L1-L4. Design princ iples: Conceptual layers: Web S ervice Layer Semanti Web Service Layer Semant ic Process Model Layer S emantic Learning P roc es s Model Layer O ntologies: Web Service Modelling Ont ology (WSMO ) Situation- Driven Process Ontology (S DP O) Learning P roc es s Modelling O ntology (LPMO ) S upportive s of tware: S upport ing Web services A dres sed lacks : L3 L1, L2 IR S-II I L4 P 1: Learning R es ource A bs traction P2: Learning P rocess Context ualization Design principle P1 addresses the identified lack L3 (Section 2), whereas P2 is aimed at overcoming L1 and L2. Both, P1 and P2 target L4 by aiming at a decrease of development efforts. To follow P1 the Web Service as well as the Semantic Web Service Layers have been introduced, whereas the Semantic Process Model Layer and the Semantic Learning Process Model Layer support the contextualization of learning processes (P2). To implement the Semantic Web Service Layer, established SWS technology has been utilized: the Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO) and the Semantic Execution Environment IRS-III (Cabral et al., 2006) (Section 4). The Situation-Driven Process Ontology (SDPO) populates the Semantic Process Model Layer (Section 5), while the Learning Process Modelling Ontology (LPMO) derives SDPO for E-Learning and facilitates the Semantic Learning Process Model Layer (Section 6). Nevertheless, several Web services - aimed at learning-related functionalities such as LO retrieval, competency gap calculation or learning process composition - have been implemented and incorporated as SWS into the SWS- oriented application framework (Section 7). 4 Abstracting From Learning Resources through Semantic Web Services (WSMO) and IRS-III In this Section we introduce the abstraction from learning process resources through a Web Service Layer and a Semantic Web Service Layer, which are based on established Web service and SWS technologies. The introduction of a Web Service Layer enables the integration of distributed heterogeneous learning data sources (Data Layer) into an open E-Learning application environment. Furthermore, services can provide any kind of learning-related functionality, such as data transformations or the computing of a competency gap between a desired learning objective and specific competencies of a learner. Whereas Web services technology facilitates the reuse of distributed software functionalities through the Web, it does not support the automatic integration and discovery of appropriate services and thus, always requires the manual allocation of appropriate Web services. By providing formal descriptions with well defined semantics, SWS technology facilitates the machine interpretation of Web service descriptions. Introducing the Semantic Web Service Layer enables the automatic discovery, orchestration and invocation of appropriate services based on comprehensive semantic formalizations of distributed services. SWS are based on a Semantic Web Service broker which hosts semantic descriptions of available services to enable the automatic discovery and composition of appropriate services. Since utilized data is a crucial important aspect of a Web service, semantic descriptions of data are an implicit part of a SWS description. Thus, the Semantic Web Service Layer enables abstraction not only from services but also from data, and consequently their integration based on formal semantics. We adopt the Web Service Modelling Ontology as reference ontology model for SWS descriptions. WSMO is a formal ontology for describing the various aspects of heterogeneous services. The conceptual model of WSMO defines four top level elements: • Ontologies provide the foundation for describing domains semantically. They are used by the three other WSMO elements. • Goals define the tasks that a service requester expects a Web service to fulfill. In this sense they express the requester’s intent. • Web service descriptions represent the functional behavior of an existing deployed Web service. The description also outlines how Web services communicate (choreography) and how they are composed (orchestration). • Mediators handle data and process interoperability issues that arise when handling heterogeneous systems. WSMO includes ontologies as one of its main entities; thus it is not limited to SWS descriptions exclusively. Therefore, all semantic layers – Semantic (Learning) Process Model Layer as well as Semantic Web Service Layer – can be supported by a unique Semantic Execution Environment based on WSMO. IRS-III (Cabral et al., 2006) the Internet Reasoning Service, is a Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) that also provides a development and broker environment for SWS based on WSMO. A client sends a request which captures a desired outcome or goal – specified as WSMO Goal - and, using the set of Semantic Web Service capability descriptions, IRS-III proceeds through the following steps: 1. Discover potentially relevant Web services. 2. Select set of Web services which best fit the incoming request. 3. Invoke the selected Web services whilst adhering to any data, control flow and Web service invocation constraints. 4. Mediate any mismatches at the data or process level. IRS-III adopts ontological descriptions to achieve the automatic discovery of appropriate services. In particular, IRS-III incorporates and extends WSMO as core epistemological framework of the IRS-III service ontology which provides semantic links between the knowledge level components describing the capabilities of a service and the restrictions applied to its use. 5 Situation-Driven Processes for Semantic Web Services To achieve the vision described in Section 3, the Semantic Process Model Layer aims at providing the semantic representation to incorporate SWS descriptions into reasonable process settings. Therefore the Semantic Process Model Layer introduces the domain-independent notion of semantic Situation-driven Processes (SDP) which describe two perspectives on a process: 1. The user perspective: describes the process as composition of user Goals 2. The system perspective: which describes the process in terms of services which support each user Goal. A semantic SDP Model consists of SDP Situations (S) and SDP Goals (G) as main entities. Utilizing the notion of concepts as described in (Gangemi, Mika, 2003), a situation is described by a set of concepts C. Consequently, an initial situation Si is defined by a set of x concepts: { } CccccSi ix ∈= ,,..,, 21 A desired final situation is defined by the union of Si and a set of y additional desired concepts cd. { } CcdcdcdcdSiSf iy ∈∪= ,,..,, 21 A SDP Goal represents a particular objective from a user perspective. Each Goal assumes a specific situation, described in its Goal assumption description Ga by a set of a concepts and describes the state after its invocation as its effect Ge by utilizing a set of e concepts: { }acccGa ,..,, 21= , { }ecccGe ,..,, 21= A Situation-driven Process SDP is a particular ordered set of n user Goals: { }nGGGSDP ,..,, 21= , where each goal G is described in terms of its assumption Ga and its effects Ge. The initial situation is a subset of the assumption of the first goal of SDP 1GaSi ⊆ , and the final situation Sf represents a subset of the union between Si and the set of all concepts which are described in the set of effects Ge of each of the n Goals of the SDP: nGeGeGeGaSf ∪∪∪∪⊆ ...211 Moreover, each particular Goal Gi is supported by a set of pi SDP Brokered Goals BG which are linked to SWS and describe the outcome of a Web service from the system perspective (Section 4). BG provide the union of all concepts described as the effects of Goal Gi: ipi BGeBGeBGeGe ∪∪∪⊆ ..21 For instance, to enable the accomplishment of a specific SDP Goal within a learning process, i.e. to acquire a specific competency, one BG could be aimed at providing required E-Learning assets out of specific databases whereas another aims at computing a specific calculation, such as the current competency gap of the learner. In this way, the achievement of Brokered Goals at runtime subsequently progresses the actual situation, for instance by adding additional resources, until a desired user situation is reached. For instance in Figure 4, BG1 and BG2 are achieved at runtime while gradually progressing situation S1 to S1.1 and S1.2. Finally, achievement of BG3 ensures that S2 is satisfied. Fig. 4. Utilizing SWS to support situation-driven process Goals. Brokered Goals are instantiated as domain-specific derivations of WSMO-based SWS Goals and thus, are mapped through Mediators (M) to SWS in order to enable the dynamic achievement at runtime through a SWS broker engine in terms of SWS service discovery, orchestration and invocation. Therefore, a SDP model extends the expressiveness of SWS facilities by enabling the incorporation of SWS Goals into meaningful process contexts. We would like to emphasize that process situations are highly dependent on the domain and nature of a process – for instance, whether it is a business or a learning process – since each domain emphasizes different situation parameters. For instance, a learning process situation is strongly dependent on parameters such as the competencies of the learner, whereas a business situation may focus on parameters such as the costs for a specific business task. Therefore, the SDP metamodel is not meant to be instantiated directly, but has to be derived in terms of domain-specific SDP models. Such conceptual models of domain contexts based on the SDP metamodel provide the facilities to represent existing process metadata schemas to enable the transformation of semantic SDP into non-semantic metadata standard manifestations. Our vision foresees a SDP lifecycle consisting of 3 stages which have to be supported by a SDP compliant application to suit a given user situation: i) Automatic composition of domain-specific SDP. ii) Transformation of SDP into metadata manifestation. iii) Accomplishment of SDP-based process in terms of BG achievements. S2 S1 G1 SWS1 affords leads to BG1 BG2 BG3 M1 M2 M3 S1.1 S1.2 G2 Semantic Situation-driven Processes Semantic Web Services SWS2 SWS3 SWS4 SWS5 SWS6 SWS7 SWS8 SWS9 affords leads to The abstract metamodel of SDP is defined in terms of a SDP Ontology (SDPO) expressed by using the OCML representation language (Motta, 1998). SDPO describes a metamodel of processes as composition of situations (contexts) and Goals independent from their specific domain setting. In order to enable a high level of interoperability of the SDPO, it is aligned to an established foundational ontology: the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) (Gangemi, Guarino, Masolo, Oltramari, Schneider, 2002) and, in particular, its module Descriptions and Situations (D&S) (Gangemi, Mika, 2003). Figure 5 depicts the central concepts and relations of SDPO. Fig. 5. Core concepts of the SDP Ontology (SDPO). 6 Situation-Driven Learning Processes The Semantic Learning Process Model Layer (Section 3) is supported through the Learning Process Modelling Ontology (LPMO) which supports the semantic description of learning processes and process contexts following the SDP metamodel (Section 5). Besides its alignment to SDPO, LPMO is aligned to E-Learning metadata standards to enable interoperability. Figure 6 depicts an overview of the major semantic representations which have been provided. sdp:Description sdp:Goal Description sdp:Brokered Goal sdp:Situation wsmo:Goal dns:Situation dns:Description satisfies 1..* sdp:Situation Description sdp:Goal defines supported-by 1..* assumes effects dns:Concept d-uses affords leads-to Fig. 6. Stack of ontologies to support Situation-driven Learning Processes. LPMO extends the SDPO by specifying (a) the concepts that can be used in domain- specific descriptions of E-Learning situation, (b) a set of Brokered Goals supporting learning Goals. Learning Process Modelling Ontology - LPMO Situation-driven Process Ontology - SDPO Web Service Modelling Ontology - WSMO Semantic Web Services Semantic Situation-driven Processes Domain-independent DOLCE Descriptions and Situations - DDnS IMS LD Ontology ADL SCORM Ontology Domain-specific IEEE LOM Ontology Figure 7 depicts the main elements used to define learning situation descriptions. Fig. 7. Learning Process Model Ontology as domain-specific SDP derivation. A situation description of the semantic SDP model is specialised into a E-Learning situation description (lpmo:Situation Description) in terms of specific functional roles and situation parameters (d-uses). Roles and parameters are inherited from the D&S ontology through the SDP Ontology. The former are the roles of actors and resources in learning situations. The latter are the characteristics that describe the learning situation. It is important to note that the LPMO allows the description of learning situations in domain-specific terms by using domain-specific parameters (lpmo:Parameter) such as competencies (lpmo:Competency). The situation description (lpmo:Situation Description) is of central character, since it describes the entire context of a specific learning situation, such as the learning domain (lpmo:Domain), the actual learner (lpmo:Actor) or his/her actual objective (lpmo:Objective). Specific parameters, for instance the learner (lpmo:Actor), are described by a dedicated description (e.g. lpmo:Actor Profile) using specific parameters (e.g. lpmo:Profile Parameters). Moreover, we would like to highlight that a specific domain – such as E-Learning - can be populated through the use of the LPMO, but also through several distinct ontologies which are aligned to the SDP metamodel. The alignment between different conceptual models of one specific domain can be achieved by concrete mappings as well as the use of mediation facilities as described in Section 4. Based on semantic representations of E-Learning-specific metadata standards – IMS LD and ADL SCORM - and the manual description of mappings to LPMO, standard compliancy with non-semantic metadata standards as well as interoperability between them is supported. Further elaboration of these mappings can be found in (Dietze et al., lpmo:Description lpmo:Parameterlpmo:Functional Role d-uses d-uses lpmo:Role Description d-uses : lpmo:Profile Parameter defined-by lpmo:Actor Role played-by : lpmo:Actor lpmo:Profile Parameter lpmo:Objective sdp:Functional Role played-by : dolce:Endurant sdp:Parameter valued-by : dolce:Region sdp:Concept lpmo:Situation Parameterlpmo:Resource Role played-by : lpmo:Resource lpmo:Situation Description d-uses : lpmo:Parameter d-uses : lpmo:Functional Role sdp:Situation Description lpmo:Domain lpmo:Location lpmo:Technical Environement lpmo:Language lpmo:Learner lpmo:Tutor lpmo:Object lpmo:Service lpmo:Competency lpmo:Learning Time lpmo:Learning Style lpmo:Parameter Description d-uses : lpmo:Profile Parameter defined-by d-uses sdp:Description 2007a). 7 Situation-Driven Composition and Accomplishment of Learning Processes This section explains the automatic composition and accomplishment of a learning process for a given learning situation using a SWS-based prototype application. Scenario To prove the feasibility of our approach, a proof-of-concept prototype was provided which utilizes the introduced framework to support a specific use case. The proposed application components and ontologies are used within the EU FP6 project LUISA (http://www.luisa-project.eu/www/). The prototype deploys the ontology framework introduced in the previous sections and supports the SDP lifecycle introduced in Section 5. Particularly, the lifecycle involves the automatic composition of SDP based on the LPMO, and the transformation into distinct process metadata manifestations for two standards, namely ADL SCORM and IMS LD, and the automatic process accomplishment, in terms of dynamic achievements of learning goals. To reach awareness about the current learning situation, the learner is authenticated to retrieve information about his/her actual preferences. Moreover, learners are enabled to define appropriate situation-specific parameters, such as his/her current learning aim, the available learning time or the preferred metadata runtime environment. The situation description is gradually refined throughout a specific session, for instance by adding the actual competency gap. The generation of an appropriate SDP for E-Learning, which targets the actual context is accomplished in two steps which are supported by distinct services: first an appropriate SDP is composed which targets the actual situation followed by the transformation of a metadata-independent SDP into the desired metadata standard. Figure 8 depicts the utilized architecture Fig. 8. Architecture to support runtime reasoning on SDLP and SWS. During runtime presentation of the process model within a dedicated runtime environment, each learning activity itself is accomplished by Brokered Goal achievement requests sent to the SEE, respectively IRS-III. Hence, at runtime, the SEE enables a further adaptation to the specific situation by automatically selecting the most appropriate resources for a given SDP Brokered Goal. IRS-III makes use of WSMO-based SWS descriptions, semantic LPMO models which are based on the SDP metamodel. Please note, that IRS-III therefore provides reasoning on all semantic layers described in Section 3. Multiple runtime environments interact with IRS-III to provide information about the current real-world situation on the one hand and present and accomplish LPMO-based processes on the other hand. Semantic process instances are presented within a dedicated web- based interface whereas standard-compliant runtime environments (IMS LD, ADL SCORM) are utilized to present non-semantic metadata representations of a learning process. Situation-driven Composition of Learning Goals Utilizing the gradual mapping between E-Learning-specific Brokered Goals and WSMO Goals, not only processes but also entire application scenarios are accomplished by automatically achieving Brokered Goals at runtime through the Semantic Execution Environment. Therefore, to follow our scenario, a sequence of high level Brokered Goals is achieved at runtime to support S1 – S3. Figure 9 depicts the utilized Goals: Web Service Layer Semantic Execution Environment IRS-III Web Service Repository Web Service Repository Web Service Repository Data Repository Data Repository Data Repository Data Layer Semantic Learning Process Model Layer Semantic Process Model Layer Semantic Web Service Layer Process Presentation Layer IMS LD Runtime Environment SCORM Runtime Environment Web Interface Situation-driven Processes Metamodel (SDPO) Semantic Web Services (WSMO) Learning Process Models (LPMO) Situation parameters Resources Fig. 9. Goal orchestration to create context-adaptive and metadata-compliant learning processes. After a gradual refinement of the available information about the actual situation context – learner authentication (BG.1), situation refinement (BG.2), computation of competency gap (BG.3.1) – a Goal is achieved to provide a learning process (BG.3.2). The learning process, respectively the SDP for E-Learning, has to suit the given situation and in particular the desired metadata standard. Hence, BG.3.2 is decomposed into two sub Goals which are aimed at composing a semantic context- aware learning process model (BG.3.2.1) based on the LPMO and transforming the process model into a metadata format appropriate for the given context (BG.3.2.2). The first one (BG.3.2.1) is accomplished by a Web service which takes into account specific situation parameters of Si, for instance the preferred educational method of the learner or his/her available learning time. In order to reason about the desired final situation Sf of the learner, a particular situation parameter is taken into account, the Aim of the learner. Each particular Aim, for instance “Learning French”, is linked to a set of desired competencies, for instance “French Language Advanced Level” and “French Language Expert Level”. Therefore, these competencies are part of the final situation Sf which is achieved by accomplishing the process. This fact is considered during the process composition by considering specific activities to gradually reach the desired final situation. The entire composition is performed by a Web service, which follows the formalization described in Section 5 to compose a LPMO-based process as a set of Goals and Brokered Goals to progress from the initial situation Si to the final situation Sf. Since Goal descriptions as well as Brokered Goal descriptions, particularly their assumptions and effects, are pre-described within the LPMO, Goals (Brokered Goals) are selected, composed and instantiated at runtime. Following this approach, given an initial situation Si and a final situation description Sf, a SDP (based on the LPMO) to progress from Si to Sf can automatically be composed of specific Goals, and consequently Brokered Goals, which show the appropriate assumptions and effects to provide all desired concepts which are subset of Sf but not Si. These are then instantiated given the particular input concepts which describe the current situation. Usually, composition functionalities will be provided by different services following lpmo:Goal BG.3.2 Get Learning Process lpmo:Goal BG.3.2.1 Compose Process lpmo:Goal BG.3.2.2 Create Standard Package lpmo:Goal BG.3 Achieve Learning Objective lpmo:Goal BG.3.1 Compute Competency Gap lpmo:Goal BG.3.2 Get Learning Process lpmo:Goal BG.1 Learner Authenticaion lpmo:Goal BG.2 Set Context distinct composition strategies. In this way, different stakeholders can implement their individual composition strategies, whereas the most appropriate for a given situation context is discovered and invoked at runtime by the Semantic Execution Environment. The outcome of BG.3.2.1 is a dynamically created learning process model which is described semantically by utilizing LPMO as domain-specific derivation of SDP and which is composed of learning Goals which each refer to a set of Brokered Goals. We would like to highlight, that each learning activity itself is described as a semantic learning Goal and is dependent on the actual situation. Hence, at runtime, the achievement of contextualized Brokered Goals considers the actual learning situation parameters and enables a more fine-grain adaptation to the actual learning context. Situation-driven Metadata Transformation based on Semantic Mappings Whereas the previous section was focused on the entire approach of composing SDP at runtime, this section explains the situation-driven transformation of a LPMO- based process into a non-semantic metadata standard based on mappings (Dietze et al., 2007a). To suit the actual situation – in particular the specifically used metadata runtime environment – the metadata-independent process provided by the achievement of BG.3.2.1 is transformed into the desired metadata standard. For instance, if the current situation description indicates that the actor utilizes an ADL SCORM compliant runtime environment, the standard independent LPMO-based process model is transformed into an ADL SCORM compliant metadata manifestation which represents the generated LPMO-based process and is contained in an IMS content package. The transformation into appropriate metadata standards is accomplished by SWS invocations, such as WS.3.2.2.1 and WS.3.2.2.2 as depicted in Figure 10. Fig. 10. Semantic Web Services to provide metadata standard compliant learning packages. As depicted above, these Web services are published as SWS and associated with Goal BG.3.2.2 via a dedicated Web Service-Goal-Mediator (WG-Mediator). The actual situation parameters are utilized by the Semantic Execution Environment to identify and invoke the most appropriate service – in this case whether WS.3.2.2.1 or WS.3.2.2.2 - for the given context on the basis of semantic capability descriptions. We would like to highlight, that for each metadata standard transformation, different Web services can be provided which each follow a distinct transformation strategy. This may be necessary, since the semantics of a metadata schema are usually lpmo:WG-Mediator M.3.2.2 Create Standard Package lpmo:Goal BG.3.2.2 Create Standard Package lpmo:Web Service WS.3.2.2.2 Create ADL SCORM Package lpmo:Web Service WS.3.2.2.1 Create IMS LD Package not completely unambiguous and thus, their interpretation and finally, their semantic alignment can vary and completeness may not be feasible. The following listing shows a portion of the OCML code of the SWS description of WS.3.2.2.1 aimed at providing an IMS LD compliant manifestation based on a given process. Listing 1. SWS capability description of WS.3.2.2.1. Please note, that the capability description indicates that the grounded Web service provides packages compliant with the metadata standard IMS LD and thus, this service is only invoked in case this metadata standard is desired. The authors would like to emphasize, that each transformed metadata manifestation still follows the SDP approach of describing user and system perspective on a process. This is achieved by referring user goals within a metadata manifest to SDP Brokered Goal achievements through HTTP references to a web applet which requests the achievement of a BG from a SEE. Particularly, the Web service reported here (WS.3.2.2.1.) not only dynamically generates the IMS LD content package but also a set of JavaScript files which are included into the package. These scripts – one for each Brokered Goal of the learning process – are capable of sending achievement requests for the respective BG to the Semantic Execution Environment IRS-III at runtime of the process - further details can be found in (Dietze et al., 2007b) - and hence, they implement our vision of SDP as described in Section 5. Runtime Accomplishment of SDP through dynamic Goal Achievements At runtime, a process is presented either in a metadata standard-specific runtime environment or a runtime environment dedicated to interpret semantic LPMO-based process models. As introduced in Section 5, each activity within a SDP-based process is described in terms of a situation-specific Goal from the user perspective and a set of Brokered Goals which define the Goal from the system perspective. This principle applies to dynamically created LPMO-based process models as they are domain- (DEF-CLASS CREATE-IMSLD-PACKAGE-WEB-SERVICE (LPMO-GOAL) ?GOAL ((HAS-INPUT-ROLE :VALUE HAS-PROCESS :VALUE HAS-CONTEXT) (HAS-INPUT-SOAP-BINDING :VALUE (HAS-PROCESS "string") :VALUE (HAS-METADATA-STANDARD "string")) (HAS-OUTPUT-ROLE :VALUE HAS-PACKAGE-URL) (HAS-OUTPUT-SOAP-BINDING :VALUE (HAS-PACKAGE-URL "string")) (HAS-PROCESS :TYPE LPMO-PROCESS) (HAS-METADATA-STANDARD :TYPE LPMO-METADATA-STANDARD) (HAS-URL :TYPE STRING))) (DEF-CLASS CREATE-IMSLD-WEB-SERVICE-CAPABILITY (CAPABILITY) ?CAPABILITY ((USED-MEDIATOR :VALUE GET-LEARNING-DATA-MED) (HAS-ASSUMPTION :VALUE (KAPPA (?WEB-SERVICE) (= (WSMO-ROLE-VALUE ?WEB-SERVICE 'HAS- CONTEXT)"IMS LD"))))) lpmo:WebService specific derivations of the SDP metamodel, and particularly to metadata standard- compliant manifestations of LPMO-based processes. Figure 11 depicts screenshots of three different process runtime environments, each presenting a distinct representation of a LPMO-based process. Whereas a specifically developed user interface is utilized to interpret and present semantic process instances of the LPMO, two player applications of the RELOAD-project (http://www.reload.ac.uk/) are utilized to present dynamically created XML-manifestations following the IMS LD and ADL SCORM standard. Fig. 11. Screenshots of distinct interfaces presenting LPMO-based processes. Each of the interfaces depicted above presents a representation of a dynamically composed process aimed at teaching the French language at different levels. In this individual learning situation, a specific situation description described by a learning aim to acquire French language skills for a specific learner competency profile and setting requirements led to the composition of a learning process which is described in terms of two distinct learning activities, respectively learning Goals G.5 (“Learn French Advanced Level”) and G.6 (“Learn French Expert Level”) which are depicted in Figure 12. Fig. 12. Learning Goals supported by a sequence of Brokered Goals. Each learning Goal – such as G.5 and G.6 – is supported through the runtime achievement of two Brokered Goals which enable to progress from the initial situation to the desired situation. In case of G.6, the initial situation is defined by the learner’s profile parameters, such as the native language or technical environment and in particular the learner’s competency profile parameters. The actual situation description includes in particular that the previous learning Goal G.5 is achieved and its prospective competency (“French Language, Advanced Level”) is achieved and is part of the current situation description. The two Brokered Goals BG.6.1 and BG.6.2 gradually modify the actual situation by adding specific parameters. BG.6.1 provides a list of matching learning resource repositories, whereas BG.6.2 provides a selection of learning resources which support the entire situation. In that way, the initial situation of G.6 is gradually modified by achieving Brokered Goals through SWS Goal achievements via a Semantic Execution Environment until the final situation of G.6, defined in the semantic effect description of G.6, is reached. Similar Goal achievements are orchestrated to achieve each activity of a specific process at runtime. We would like to highlight, that following the SDP approach enables not only the dynamic composition of a specific process for a specific situation but also the achievement of each activity at runtime, and consequently considers situation-specific parameters at runtime to enable selection of appropriate resources within a specific context setting. 8 Evaluation In this section, we introduce an evaluation model that provides an attempt to formalize and compare the efforts required to develop learning processes by following the common current practice in contrast to the approach proposed in this paper. Current State of the Art Let us consider a number of real world learning processes p, which have to be supported based on a number of process descriptions m. Each description has to be lpmo:Goal G.6 Get Learning Process lpmo:Goal BG.6.1 Identify Repositories for Situation lpmo:Goal BG.6.2 Retrieve Resources for Situation lpmo:Goal G.5 Learn French Advanced Level lpmo:Goal G.6 Learn French Expert Level developed by spending an effort me . The latter represents the amount of work to annotate a learning process by using one of the existing metadata specifications (e.g. IMS LD, SCORM), and it has been considered constant. In particular, we consider s different process metadata standards. The actual learning context for every process can be defined by n context parameters {c1..cn}, such as the technical platform or the native language of the learner. Each context parameter has got a number of possible parameter values: 1||)(},..{ 1 +=∈∀ iini ccvccc where || ic represents the number of all possible values of each parameter, and the unit defines the “no-specification” case. We assume that different process data is available to fit all different context parameter values and that process models for all different kind of process contexts have to be provided. According to the limitations introduced in Section 2, the necessary cumulative development effort ecum to support all learning processes, learning contexts and metadata specifications by following the traditional approach can be formalized as follows: ecum = f (m) = em * m i.e. creating all the necessary process descriptions m, where: scvppfm n i i *)1)((*)( 1 ∏ = −== . i.e. we have to create a different process description for each possible process, context and metadata specification. Therefore, the necessary effort can be summarized with: ecum = f ( p) = em * p * ( v(c i ) −1) i=1 n ∏ * s Based on this formula, we can expect an enormous linear increase in the development costs with an increase in the number of processes that have to be supported. Applying Learning SDP Let us refer to the formalization introduced in the previous subsection. According to our approach and differently to the current state of the art, the number of process models m necessary to support different processes p is equal to p: the same SDP description can be used within different contexts and automatically mapped into different metadata specifications. However, we have to consider a first effort einitial to fully provide the facilities to support our semantic framework; i.e. the semantic representations of the process contexts, the mappings to metadata standards, as well as the SWS descriptions. Thus, the cumulative effort in our approach can be summarized as follows: SDPinitialcum epepfe *)(' +== where SDPe is the effort to represent a process according to the semantic descriptions of our approach. Given our experience, we can assume that SDPm ee ≅ . Therefore: ecum' = einitial + p * em Figure 13 depicts a generic comparison of this effort with the efforts of traditional approaches. We foresee that the advantages of our vision can be observed with an increasing number of learning processes, since it benefits from lower process description development efforts, but requires an initial amount of work to provide necessary facilities. In the following subsection, we provide a concrete comparison, based on the scenario introduced in Section 7.1. Fig. 13. Comparison between SCP-based and current state of the art-based approaches, according to the proposed model. Validation based on Example Scenario To support the use case scenario which is currently being supported through our prototype application, we have to describe two different learning processes: “Modelling with Fourier Series” and “Speaking French Language”. Therefore, p=2. In addition, we have to support two learning context parameters c: the native language of the learner and the learning domain. The former can be valued by 5 different values v (English, German, French, Spanish and an unknown native language); the latter can be valued by 3 different values (Languages, Math and an unknown domain). Furthermore, two different metadata standards s have to be supported (IMS LD and ADL SCORM). Therefore, the cumulative effort to describe the necessary process descriptions can be expressed as follows: ecum = f ( p) = em * 2 * (5 * 3 −1) * 2 = em * 56 while the effort to develop the prototype application introduced in Sections 7 can be estimated as follows: m = f ( p) = p = 2 with ecum'= f ( p) = einitial + 2 * em einitial ecum’ ecum If we assume an effort em of 1 person-month (pm), as well as the availability of all facilities enabling our development approach – i.e. we do not have to consider the initial development effort einitial, we obtain the comparison in Figure 14. Fig. 14. Comparison of development efforts between SDP-based and traditional-based approaches in the introduced scenario. Figure 15 illustrates the point, that supporting the example scenario by following the traditional approach does require an amount of 56 pm. Every new learning process has to be taken into account with a necessary amount of 28 pm to satisfy just the simple requirements of the example use case. In contrast, by following our SCP-based approach, every new learning process can be supported with just 1 additional mm. We want to highlight that generalizing the effort of creating different learning process models is a simplistic approach. Therefore, it was just adopted to enable a quantification and comparison of expected efforts. Moreover, the choice of assuming the initial effort einitial null follows the idea of comparing the running framework (i.e. ready for use for learning designers) with the existing practices in E-Learning. In fact, the initial effort einitial could even be higher. For example, to implement the application described in Section 7.1, we spent 10 pm. However, considering 2 processes to represent, our approach already provides an advantage. 9 Related Work Given the framework and ontologies described above, L1-L4 (Section 2) are addressed by supporting the dynamic composition of context-adaptive learning processes, their transformation into distinct metadata standards and their automatic accomplishment in terms of SWS Goal achievements. Several other existing approaches follow the idea of using Semantic Web or Web service technologies to provide dynamic as well as personalized, and context-sensitive support for learning objectives, each addressing a subset of the mentioned lacks L1- L4 (Section 2). To quote a few examples, Knight et al. (2006) as well as Baldoni, Baroglio, Patto and Torasso (2002) are concerned with bridging learning contexts and resources by introducing semantic learning context descriptions. This allows the adaptation to different contexts based on reasoning over provided context ontologies, but does not provide solutions for building complex adaptive learning applications by reusing distributed learning functionalities. Moreover, Knight et al. (2006) base their 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 2 4 p e (pm) ecum ecum’ work entirely on IMS LD and thus, it does not envisage to bridge between different metadata standards. Baldoni, Baroglio, Brunkhorst, Henze, Marengo and Patti (2006) follow the idea of using a dedicated personalization Web service which makes use of semantic learning object descriptions to identify and provide appropriate learning content. Neither is the integration of several distributed learning services within the scope of this research, nor is the allocation of services at runtime. Further related research on a Personal Reader Framework (PRF) introduced in Henze (2006) and Henze, Dolog, Nejdl (2004) allows a mediation between different services based on a so-called ”connector service”. However, the composition of complex learning applications based on distributed services is not within the scope of the PRF. The work described in Schmidt and Winterhalter (2004) and Schmidt (2005) utilizes Semantic Web as well as Web service technologies to enable adaptation to different learning contexts by introducing a matching mechanism to map between a specific context and available learning data. However, neither it considers approaches for automatic service discovery nor it is based on common standards. Hence, the reuse and automatic allocation of a variety of services or the mediation between different metadata standards is not supported. These issues apply to the idea of ”Smart Spaces” for learning as well (Simon, Dolog, Miklos, Olmedilla, Sintek, 2004). Apart from these research efforts, even the specifications of existing E-Learning metadata standards such as IMS LD or ADL SCORM provide facilities for context- adaptive behavior. For instance, IMS LD Level B properties (IMS Global, 2003) and the sequencing elements of IMS Simple Sequencing, utilized by ADL SCORM enable the description of strategies for conditional selection of learning resources. However, since these facilities still rely on a manual pre-selection of learning resources at design-time, the issues described in Section 2 are not finally solved. Whereas the majority of the described approaches enables context-adaptation based on runtime allocation of learning data, none of them enables the automatic allocation of learning functionalities or the integration of new functionalities based on open standards. Nevertheless, all approaches do not envisage mappings between different learning metadata standards to enable interoperability not only between learning contexts but also across platforms and metadata standards. 10 Conclusions In this paper, we proposed an approach aimed at bridging the gap between learning contexts and learning resources based on Situation-driven Learning Processes (SDLP), which abstract from learning data and services – the actual resources - as well as learning process metadata. By introducing semantic descriptions of contextualized learning processes, which are aligned through SWS to learning resources on the one side and learning process metadata descriptions on the other side, our approach finally enables the context-aware composition of learning processes and their accomplishment by automatically allocating learning resources for a given learning need within a specific learning situation. To support this vision, we provided the semantic representations to support SDLP, respectively an ontology which represents the SDP metamodel (SDPO) and another which derives SDP for the E-Learning domain (LPMO). Given a specific learning situation, a semantic learning process based on LPMO is composed dynamically and is accomplished in terms of SWS Goal achievements, utilizing the gradual derivation of learning goals within a learning process from WSMO Goals. Furthermore, an implementation architecture to support reasoning on these semantic layers was introduced based on the Semantic Execution Environment IRS-III. IRS-III serves as central reasoning environment and SWS broker, hosting ontological descriptions of available learning resources as well as semantic conceptualizations of situation-driven learning processes. Thus, IRS-III is able to compose and deliver appropriate resources to satisfy a given learning objective within a specific learning situation. Consequently, by addressing L1-L4 described in Section 2, neither manual design and composition of learning processes nor manual allocation of resources is required in contrast to traditional E-Learning applications. Apart from that, the authors would like to highlight the openness of the described approach: additional resource providers can be integrated into the application framework by simply providing semantic descriptions of available resources and publishing these to the Semantic Execution Environment. By utilizing dedicated mediation facilities, heterogeneities related to data formats or terminologies used by distinct providers, can be solved to ensure the autonomy of all integrated resource providers. It is apparent that the approach described in this paper requires a preliminary effort, to provide the semantic facilities described in the previous sections as well as comprehensive semantic descriptions of learning resources and that their maintenance may be a challenging task. However, given these facilities - as exemplarily provided for the described prototype - our approach represents a generalisable framework which can be applied and reused across distinct E-Learning application scenarios to enable context-adaptive learning process composition and accomplishment. Moreover, the authors are aware, that the E-Learning community may be suspicious about trusting a reasoning engine based on semantic knowledge representations instead of manual process design and resource allocation. This is of particular concern as there may not be the one and only point of view on the semantics of a resource or a situation and distinct philosophies and perspectives are common on the question, which resource may be most appropriate for a given learning situation. To take this aspect into account, we particularly foresee the provision of distinct semantic descriptions of one learning entity, such as a learning resource, and of a variety of Web services which compose and transform learning processes. The most appropriate Web service is selected at runtime as this is a key feature of the Semantic Execution Environment IRS-III. To enable the high applicability of our approach, future work will consider the development of semantic mappings to a wider variety of metadata standards. Furthermore, it may be beneficial, to consider further SWS standards, such as OWL-S and their alignment to the SWS layer (Section 3). Nevertheless, as we attempt to provide a domain-independent metamodel for SDP, the consideration of further process domains is within the scope of our work, to enable a mapping of learning processes to additional process domains – for instance business processes – and their conjoint support through a unique SWS based application framework. 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Henze, N. (2006). Personalized E-Learning in the Semantic Web. Extended version of 4. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 1(1). Henze, N., Dolog, P., and Nejdl, W. (2004). Reasoning and Ontologies for Personalized E- Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 7(4). IMS Global (2003). IMS Learning Design Specification, from http://www.imsglobal.org Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee (2004), OWL-S 1.1 Release, from http://www.daml.org/services/owl-s/1.1/ Knight, C., Gašević, D., & Richards, G. (2006). An Ontology-Based Framework for Bridging Learning Design and Learning Content. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 9 (1), 23-37. Mika, P., Oberle, D., Gangemi, A., Sabou, M. (2004). Foundations for Service Ontologies: Aligning OWL-S to DOLCE, In proceedings of the 13th International Conference on World Wide Web. Motta, E. (1998). An Overview of the OCML Modelling Language, In proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Methods and Languages. OWL-S Coalition. (2004). OWL-S 1.1 release. from http://www.daml.org/services/owl-s/1.1/ Schmidt, A., Winterhalter, C. (2004). User Context Aware Delivery of E-Learning Material: Approach and Architecture, Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS). 10(1). Schmidt, A. (2005). Bridging the Gap Between E-Learning and Knowledge Management with Context-Aware Corporate Learning (Extended Version), In proceedings of Professional Knowledge Management (WM 2005), Springer. Simon, B., Dolog., P., Miklós, Z., Olmedilla, D. and Sintek, M. (2004). Conceptualising Smart Spaces for Learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. 2004(9), from http://www- jime.open.ac.uk/2004/9 World Wide Web Consortium, W3C (2003a). Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Version 1.2 Part 0: Primer, from http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part0/ World Wide Web Consortium, W3C (2003b). Universal Description, Discovery and Integration: UDDI Spec Technical Committee Specification v. 3.0, from http://uddi.org/pubs/uddi-v3.0.1-20031014.htm World Wide Web Consortium, W3C (2001). WSDL: Web services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1, from http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-wsdl-20010315 WSMO Working Group. (2004). D2v1.0: Web service Modeling Ontology (WSMO). WSMO Working Draft, from http://www.wsmo.org/2004/d2/v1.0/ 
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work_3m2o4qo4qrauvotfgtjxkixk2i	----	Distance education systems used in universities of Turkey and Northern Cyprus Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 31 (2012) 676 – 680 1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Hüseyin Uzunboylu. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.12.123 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia WCLTA 2011 Distance education systems used in universities of Turkey and Northern Cyprus Mümine Kayaa,* a University of Osmaniye Korkut Ata, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computer, Osmaniye, 80000, Turkey Abstract Distance Education is a method of education in which learners are physically separate from educators. The distance education systems are used in most universities in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. The most commonly used are Moodle and WebCT. Moodle is an open source learning management system that is the most widely used among Web-Based Distance Education Models. WebCT is an internet-based course management system that is accessed over the Internet. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance Education, Moodle, WebCT, Open Source Learning Management System; 1. Introduction In recent years higher education system have had to face an increasingly competitive environment and use of web-based learning in the last decade. The effect of using the Internet in education has gradually increased and new technologies have improved student’s learning. Distance learning has become an important part of the education. Distance education must involve two-way communication between educators and students occur non-contiguously [1]. With the development of technology in education has increased the need of distance education tools [2]. That’s why most universities begin to use the web-based distance education systems. While some distance education systems are open-sourced, the others are commercial. For the assessment of the most appropriate distance education systems, a detailed research is needed about the most used distance education systems in universities of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. In this study, the aim is to research and find the most appropriate distance education systems to use in universities of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Then these systems are compared with each other. 2. Material and Method In this study all universities in Turkey and Northern Cyprus are researched about distance education systems. Most universities now provide rich computer, network and multimedia capabilities for instruction. The benefits of these distance education systems include the means for creation of motivational environments for learning. Course management systems provide software for the management and delivery of course content and resources to students. These systems have become an essential component of computer-based instructional capability [3]. * Mümine KAYA. Tel.: +0-538-548-3500 E-mail address: muminekaya@osmaniye.edu.tr © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Hüseyin Uzunboylu. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 677Mümine Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 31 (2012) 676 – 680 Mümine KAYA / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 2 The increasing communications capability of computers is being used in universities. There are many computer based distance education systems such as ATutor [4], Moodle [5], WebCT (Blackboard) [6, 7], Claroline [8], Adobe Connect [9], Perculus [10], AkademikLMS [11], Angel [12], Sakai [13] and etc. Among the others, WebCT (Blackboard) and Moodle are the two well-known web-based learning management systems widely used in universities and higher education [14]. Adobe Connect is well-known web conferencing solution in universities recently. That’s why, in this section the well-known and widely used web-based distance education systems are explained and then the universities which use these systems are shown in a table. The Blackboard Learning System has emerged as the dominant course management system. It can be accessed from the internet at anytime and anywhere. Students can retrieve all of their course materials including assignments, lecture notes, and etc. They can submit their assignments as soon as they are complete. Despite its advantages, Blackboard has disadvantages, too. For instance, it is hard to learn. Blackboard options may be restricted to particular operating systems. It is not free software. It is likely that instruction will become less course-centric and more knowledge-centric [3]. WebCT is a Web-based distance education system with many teaching resources and with a simple user hierarchy. It is a course management system that allows instructors to post course information. The system administrator has only some basic and essential tasks like initial course and instructor registration [15]. Consequently, there is not excessive administrator dependence. Course management tasks, like registering students and course contents, checking test and statistics, are done by the instructor, called designer in WebCT. The system allows the instructors to change the page layouts, colors, font types, etc and they can choose texts or icon links. WebCT allows greater flexibility in designing course curriculum and study schedules, which is especially suitable for continuing education courses. With many communication and discussion features, WebCT facilitates active participation among instructors and students, and allows more varieties in designing learning materials and resources such as the use of multimedia. WebCT now owned by Blackboard since 2006. In early 2006, Blackboard and WebCT have merged their companies and the combined company is named Blackboard. It will continue to support Blackboard products and WebCT products. Moodle [5] is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Moodle is a course management system. It is a free and open source software package. It is designed to help educators to create effective online learning courses [16]. Moodle tools focus on content delivery for course information. It has a very large and active community of people who are using the system and developing new features and enhancements. It can compete with the big commercial systems in terms of feature sets and is easy to extend [17]. The advantages which are being open source, educational philosophy, and community make Moodle unique in the course management system space. Adobe Connect is an enterprise web conferencing solution for online learning and webinars. It is based on Adobe Flash technology, so lecturers can deliver rich interactions that students can join easily [9]. It provides users alike with the capability to easily create and deliver self-paced online courses, conduct highly interactive virtual classes, and efficiently manage training programs [18]. Adobe Connect enables users to create interactive tutorials with Adobe Presenter and Adobe Captivate, which automatically publish the courses using Adobe Flash Professional software. It enables to incorporate existing content from SCORM compliant learning management systems. It enables all learners to interact with content simultaneously [18]. Using distance education in universities has become widespread in Turkey and Northern Cyprus recently. Some universities use distance education system for their all departments and faculties, while the others use it for only one department or a few departments which are needed. The universities and their departments using distance education systems in Turkey and Northern Cyprus and their purposes of using distance education are given in Table 1. As shown in Table 1, the most widely used distance education systems are Moodle, WebCT (Blackboard) and Adobe Connect. 678 Mümine Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 31 (2012) 676 – 680 Mümine KAYA / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 3 Table 1. The Distance Education System in Universities UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT TOOL PURPOSE Anadolu University All Departments WebCT (Blackboard), Adobe Connect To Support Distance Education Atatürk University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Bahçeşehir University International Logistics Adobe Connect To Support Formal Education Başkent University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Beykent University 3 Departments Adobe Connect To Support Distance Education Bilkent University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Çankaya University 7 Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Çukurova University [20] 12 Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Dokuz Eylül University Computer Engineering Moodle To Support Formal Education Eastern Mediterranean University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Ege University Computer Engineering Moodle To Support Formal Education Eskişehir Osmangazi University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Fatih University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Girne American University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Hacettepe University All departments WebCT (Blackboard) To Support Formal Education Harran University 11 Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education International Cyprus University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education İstanbul University All Departments WebCT (Blackboard) To Support Formal Education İstanbul Arel University 2 Departments Perculus VCP To Support Distance Education İstanbul Aydın University 2 Departments Adobe Connect Pro Meeting To Support Distance Education İstanbul Bilgi University Computer Engineering Moodle To Support Formal Education Kadir Has University All Departments WebCT (Blackboard) To Support Distance Education Karabük University 9 Departments Moodle To Support Distance Education Kocaeli University 2 Departments Perculus VCP To Support Distance Education Mersin University 2 Departments Adobe Connect To Support Distance Education Metu Northern Cyprus Campus 3 Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Middle East Technical University All Departments Moodle To Support Formal Education Near East University Computer Engineering Moodle To Support Formal Education Pamukkale University 1 Department Moodle To Support Formal Education Sabancı University All Departments WebCT (Blackboard) To Support Distance Education Sakarya University All Departments AkademikLMS To Support Distance Education Süleyman Demirel University 4 Departments Adobe Connect To Support Distance Education According to Table 1, Moodle is most used web-based distance education system in Turkey. The reason can be that it is open-source web-based distance education system. WebCT and Adobe Connect are used mostly after Moodle, but WebCT is used in many departments more than Adobe Connect. The reason of using Moodle far from WebCT and Adobe Connect is that WebCT and Adobe Connect are commercial. The purpose of using Moodle in universities of Turkey is mostly to support formal education. It shows that open-source softwares for learning will become increasingly available. Only Karabük University uses Moodle to support distance education. The purpose of using WebCT in universities in Turkey is to support both formal and distance education. While Anadolu, Kadir Has and Sabancı Universities use WebCT to support distance education, Hacettepe and İstanbul Universities use WebCT to support formal education. The purpose of using Adobe Connect in universities of Turkey is mostly to support distance education. Only Bahçeşehir University uses Adobe Connect to support formal education. According to Table 1, Moodle is the only web-based distance education system is in universities of Northern Cyprus according to Table 1. The purpose of using Moodle is to support formal education in universities of Northern Cyprus. 3. Research and Discussion The universities which use web-based distance education systems are explained in previous section. According to this section, Moodle, WebCT and Adobe Connect are the three most widely used web-based distance education systems in universities in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. But Adobe Connect is used only a few departments of the 679Mümine Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 31 (2012) 676 – 680 Mümine KAYA / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 4 universities which are showed in Table 1. That’s why Moodle and WebCT web-based distance education systems are selected and compared as shown in Table 2 [11]. So the effectiveness of Moodle and WebCT distance education systems is evaluated. It is observed that, Moodle is selected for being open-source, while WebCT is selected for facilitating active participation among instructors and students. Table 2. Comparison of Moodle and WebCT (Blackboard) Features Moodle WebCT (Blackboard) Browser Support Any browser supporting HTML 3 Internet Explorer 5.1+, Netscape 6.2.1+, Safari 1.2+, and AOL 7.0. Operating Server Unix, Linux, Windows Linux, Solaris 8 and 9 File Uploading Single files, zip files, all web file types Single files, zip files, all web file types Usability User Friendly User Friendly Languages Each faculty can change the language of their own course--built-in Expensive language packs--not using Costs No license fee $34,000 license + $15,000 support Mail External Internal or external Announcement HTML blocks Text blocks Source Open Source Not Open Source Content Sharing File sharing, SCORM compliant imports, Meta-course allows course copy, tool by tool, imports quiz questions File sharing, IMS Import--has bugs, but works for content module and quizzes, imports quiz questions. Vista has Learning Object Manager Tools Blog, wiki, journal, glossary, workshop Whiteboard Scale You can create your own scale and use it in all graded activities No similar tool Assignments 3 types 1 type Wiki The Moodle Wiki module No similar tool Discussion Forum 3 types 1 type Whiteboard No Yes Student Reports Excellent OK Server Windows Server (IIS), Linux Linux, Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP3 Database MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle Oracle Requirements PHP 4.1.0 or later, Apache Perl 5.6.1, Apache According to Table 2, Moodle and WebCT have both similarities and differences. While in the terms of source, Moodle is open-source, WebCT (Blackboard) is not open-source. In the terms of costs, Moodle is superior to WebCT (Blackboard) because it is free, but the quality of services is not guaranteed because freeware systems have weaknesses in terms of technical support. That’s why WebCT (Blackboard) which is a commercial system is superior to Moodle in the terms of quality of services. Moodle has three types of assignment which are offline activity, online text, and upload a single file assignment. On the other hand, WebCT (Blackboard) has only one type of assignment. Moodle has a Wiki module which enables educators and students to work together on web pages to add and change the content, but WebCT (Blackboard) has no similar tool like Wiki module. WebCT (Blackboard) has a Whiteboard tool where students can share in real time drawings and images, but Moodle has no similar tool like Whiteboard. The mail module of WebCT (Blackboard) can be external or internal, but the mail module of Moodle is external, so users can send messages to offline students. Moodle has three types of discussion forum, but WebCT (Blackboard) has only one type of discussion forum. Moodle has a Scale tool which enables lecturers to create their own scale, but WebCT (Blackboard) has no similar tool like Scale tool. In terms of databases varieties, Moodle has a wide range of databases than WebCT (Blackboard) because Moodle supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle; on the other hand, WebCT (Blackboard) supports only Oracle database system. The announcements of Moodle are better than WebCT (Blackboard), because its blocks are html blocks, while the blocks of WebCT (Blackboard) are text blocks. Lastly, in terms of student reports, Moodle is more successful than WebCT (Blackboard). 680 Mümine Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 31 (2012) 676 – 680 Mümine KAYA / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 5 4. Conclusion There are several web-based distance education systems and each one is organized and works in a different way. However, the universities must consider its needs before choosing a distance education system. The distance education systems explained in this study are suitable for continuing education courses and make courses more effective for educators and students. Also these web-based distance education systems, Moodle, WebCT and Adobe Connect, reduce the time needed for submitting of the lecture notes. This study shows that the most well-known and widely used web-based distance education systems are Moodle and WebCT (Blackboard) despite Adobe Connect is a developing system nowadays. If educators want to use a guaranteed system for their courses in terms of services quality, they can use WebCT (Blackboard). But if educators want to use various modules in their courses and if they want a free web-based distance education system, then they can use Moodle. This study shows that the universities will use these systems more and increasingly because of the developing technology in education. References 1.Schlosser, C., A., Anderson, M., L., (1994). Distance Education: Review of the Literature, 8. 2. C. Ç. Aydın, S. Biroğul, 2008. E- Öğrenmede Açık Kaynak Kodlu Öğretim Yönetim Sistemleri ve Moodle, Bilişim Teknolojileri Dergisi, Cilt: 1, Sayı: 2 3. Bradford1, P., Porciello, M., Balkon, N., Backus, D., 2007. The Blackboard Learning System, The Journal of Educational Technology Systems 35:301-314. 4. ATutor, 2011. http://atutor.ca/ 5. Moodle, 2011. http://moodle.org/ 6. WebCT, 2011. http://www.webct.com/content 7. Blackboard, 2011. http://www.Blackboard.com/ 8. Claroline, 2011. http://www.claroline.net 9. Adobe Connect, 2011. http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html 10. Perculus, 2011. www.perculus.com 11. AkademikLMS, 2011. http://www.akademiklms.org/ 12. Angel, 2011. http://www.angellearning.com/products/lms/ 13. The rSmart Sakai CLE, 2011. http://www.sakaisandbox.com 14. Cheung, K. S., 2006. A Comparison Of WebCT, Blackboard And Moodle For The Teaching And Learning Of Continuing Education Courses, International Conference On ICT In Teaching And Learning, Enhancing Learning Through Technology, pp 219-228. 15. Zaina, L. A. M., Bressan, G., Silveira, R. M., Stiubiener, I., Ruggiero, W. V., 2001. Analysis and Comparison of Distance Education Environments, International Conference on Engineering Education, Session 7E8, Oslo, Norway. 16. Nozawa, K., 2011. To Moodle or Not To Moodle: Can It Be an Ideal e-Learning Environment?, Ritsumeikan University Journal of Policy Science, Bulletin of Universities and Institutes , 289-312. 17. Cole J. R. and Foster H., 2008. Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System, 2nd Edition, O'Reilly Community Press, p. ix.4. U. E. Eymen , 2007. 18. Adobe Connect for eLearning, 2011. http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect/elearning.html 19. Differences Between Moodle and Webct (Blackboard), 2011. http://skillspark.ca/info/MoodleandWebCTComparison.pdf. 20. Çukurova Üniversitesi Bilgisayar Mühendisliği Bölümü Uzaktan Eğitim Sitesi, 2011. http://mmf.cu.edu.tr/mkaya/moodle/course/view.php?id=51 
work_3qgfgadhuvamvpp2nfewnbd3f4	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_3omeu3svlrgyraxbvlfwyich6i	----	This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Lewis, Peter, Osborne, Yvonne, Gray, Genevieve, & Lacaze, Anne-Marie (2012) Design and delivery of a distance education programme: Educating Viet- namese nurse academics from Australia. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 47, pp. 1462-1468. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/57259/ c© Consult author(s) regarding copyright matters This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. 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If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.843 https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Lewis,_Peter.html https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Osborne,_Yvonne.html https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Gray,_Genevieve.html https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Lacaze,_Anne-Marie.html https://eprints.qut.edu.au/57259/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.843 Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1462 – 1468 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.843 CY-ICER 2012 Design and delivery of a distance education programme: educating Vietnamese Nurse Academics from Australia Peter A. Lewis a, Yvonne Osborne a, Genevieve Gray a, Anne-Marie Lacaze a a Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, 4059, Australia. Abstract In 2008 a move away from medical staff providing nursing education in Vietnam saw the employment of many new nurse academics. To assist in the instruction of these novice academics and provide them with sound teaching and learning practice as well as curriculum design and implementation skills, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) successfully tendered an international grant. One of QUT’s initiatives in educating the Vietnamese academics was a distance learning programme. Developed specifically for Vietnamese nurse academics, the programme was designed for Australian based delivery to academics in Vietnam. This paper will present an overview of why four separate modules were utilised for the delivery of content (modules were delivered at a rate of one per semester). It will address bilingual online discussion boards which were used in each of the modules and the process of moderating these given comments were posted in both Vietnamese and English. It will describe how content was scaffolded across four modules and how the modules themselves modelled new teaching delivery strategies. Lastly, it will discuss the considerations of programme delivery given the logistics of an Australian based delivery. Feedback from the Vietnamese nurse academics across their involvement in the programme (and at the conclusion of their fourth and final module) has been overwhelmingly positive. Feedback suggests the programme has altered teaching and assessment approaches used by some Vietnamese nurse academics. Additionally, Vietnamese nurse academics are reporting that they are engaging more with the application of their content indicating a cultural shift in the approach taken in Vietnamese nurse education. Keywords: online; distance; eLearning; education. 1. Introduction Increased accessibility and affordability of computers and internet access has seen eLearning used extensively by numerous educators in their teaching practice (Dorian & Wache, 2009; Ellaway & Masters, 2008A; 2008B; Heilessen & Josephsen, 2008; Kelly, Lyng, McGrath & Cannon, 2009; Muirhead, 2007; Pulman, Scammell & Martin, 2009). Accordingly, eLearning has become a growing and important component of many tertiary students’ learning experience (Ginns & Ellis, 2009; Ireland et.al. 2009; Orton-Johnson, 2009). Despite the extensive application of eLearning, however, its benefits and risks continue to be debated. While there are enthusiastic calls for the widespread adoption of the enabling role of technology in learning, there are also skeptical responses to its implementation (O’Toole & Absalom, 2003, p.179). Disadvantages identified for eLearning include: feeling intimidated, confused, or frustrated if the technological knowledge necessary to function in an e-learning environment is lacking; failure to keep pace with the learning schedule if the necessary responsibility, independence and self-discipline to do so is missing; and a loss of connection with others due to reduced opportunities for face-to face interaction and sharing of ideas (Cantoni et al,; Ellaway & Masters, 2008A & B; Haigh; Kelly, 2009; So & Brush, 2008; Yudko, Hirokawa, & Chi, 2008). Conversely, as with all teaching strategies, there is a balance and eLearning offers potential benefits as well. eLearning is: convenient (learners engage when, where, and at the speed they choose); consistent (all learners receive the same materials); fast (material previously learned can be skipped Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1463 Peter A. Lewis et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1462 – 1468 over). Additionally eLearning offers: enhanced retention and understanding (the message is reinforced by combining or varying the types of content audio, video, quizzes, etc); transmission of high quality, consistent content; support of life-long-learning, enhanced opportunities for communication, and opportunities to make mistakes without exposure (Cantoni et al, 2004; Ellaway & Masters, 2008A; Haigh, 2004; Yudko, Hirokawa, & Chi, 2008). eLearning has been used with success to assist in the education of nurse academics working in a developing country (Lewis, Mai & Gray, in press). The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the genesis of a distance education programme designed specifically for nurse academics in Vietnam. It will discuss why bilingual online discussion boards were used in each of its modules and the process of moderating the discussion boards given comments were posted in both Vietnamese and English. It will also describe how the modules themselves modelled new teaching delivery strategies. Lastly, it will discuss the considerations of programme delivery given the logistics of an Australian based delivery. 2. Background Traditionally, Vietnamese nursing education has been primarily delivered by medical staff with the involvement of very few nurses. Given this, many felt that if a reform of Vietnamese nursing education was to occur, nurses must start to take responsibility of their own education nurses must educate nurses in preference to medical staff strengthening nursing and midwifery services within Vietnam. The VNA influenced government bodies to consider a review of national nurse education. The VNA believed that through international assistance and collaborative partnership, they could strengthen nurse teaching and build capacity in nursing education across Vietnam. Consequently, 2007 saw a move away from medical staff providing nursing education in Vietnam and the employment of many new nurse academics. To assist in the instruction of these novice academics and provide them with sound teaching and learning practice as well as curriculum design and implementation skills, an Australian university The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) successfully tendered an international grant and Vietnamese academics was a distance education programme. Developed specifically for novice Vietnamese nurse academics, the programme was designed for an Australian based delivery to academics located in Vietnam. Six distance modules were developed and sequenced to scaffold the participants learning. 3. Genesis of the Distance Learning Programme 3.1. Module development With any course development there are many early questions and one of these will invariably relate to what content should be included within the course. In response to this question the course learning outcomes are automatically considered. However, expectations which will be placed on learners as well as the extent of student centred learning which is anticipated to occur should also be considered. Adult learners possess life experiences and most frequently an ability to discern, reflect and self motivate these are traits which should drive the scope of course content which will be presented. Given this, it was decided by QUT academics that six modules would be developed and offered as external, distance education. Each module incorporates core content, readings, reflections and learner guidance in the nature of online discussions and pre-recorded vodcasts (audio and image recordings) as well as a written assessment item. There is an expectation the learner takes responsibility for a large component of their individual learning the job of the academic coordinating the module is to direct the learning and ensure learning is scaffolded across the progression of modules. 1464 Peter A. Lewis et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1462 – 1468 To generate and deliver a bachelor of nursing course an academic requires specific pedagogical knowledge as well as teaching and learning development skills. The primary aim of the modularised programme is to up-skill nurse academics at a tertiary level (skills include information retrieval skills, critical thinking, justification of current practice and development of new practice). A secondary aim of the programme is to develop nurse academic networks across Vietnam (this was facilitated through moderated online discussion). The first two modules were designed as core modules and are mandatory for the Vietnamese nurse academics to complete. These modules address teaching and assessment. Following completion of the two core modules and depending upon the academics role, a choice of two elective streams is offered either a curriculum development stream (comprising a further two modules) or a clinical teaching stream (also comprising two modules). It was determined that four modules would assist the novice academic to not only attain required knowledge, but more importantly to embed life-long-learning skills. By studying progressively over a four semester period knowledge would be reinforced and skills built through frequent feedback academics should have the ability to problem solve individual issues and self appraise their performance. 3.2. Approaches to learning and teaching The programme modules were designed with a student centred approach. Course participants are provided with a module contained on a DVD. A 40 page document (approximate estimate across the six modules) outlines the module content, provides summaries of the content as well as links to web resources to support the content and provoke further thought and student engagement. To enhance this process vodcasts (short five minute videos of a QUT academic talking) are embedded within the module document. These vodcasts are presented numerous times throughout the module and both precede specific content sections and ante cede them. The precedent vodcasts pose questions and discuss some content to focus the participants learning when addressing the content. The antecedent vodcasts summarise key content and identify specific issues in an attempt to assist the participants to self r egulate whether or not they have engaged with the content adequately and if there is a need for them to revisit the materials (or extend their individual reading and learning in the content area). Reflective questions are also posed throughout the modules. The reflective questions are for the participants personal use only. They have been developed in an attempt to further engage the participants with the content. An example of a grouping of reflective questions taken from early in the Learning and Teaching 1 module (specific to teaching) is: What do you think teaching is and how would you describe your teaching? How do you think your students should be taught? What strategies do you use to teach your students? Do you think you should use other strategies as well? Why or why not? other strategies? Some reflective questions (such as these) are revisited again at the end of the module. The idea behind revisiting these questions is to assist the nurse academic to see if the module has altered their thinking. Following their engagement with the module materials have their thoughts about teaching changed? If so (and if not), why? The intention of this is again self moderation. For example, if there has been limited deviation in their thoughts are they operating at a higher level than they might have believed or have they failed to engage in the materials appropriately? Assessments should not just measure knowledge or understanding they should also teach. A good assessment will direct a learner as well measure their progress within a particular programme. The assessment items contained within the modules have been designed to ensure they teach as well as assess. As such, the module assessments also 1465 Peter A. Lewis et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1462 – 1468 constitute part of the approach taken to learning and teaching within this distance programme. The assessments will 3.3. Selected texts/ readings All readings specific to these modules can be found online. Many Vietnamese nurse academics do not have access to the financial assistance required to purchase academic texts. Vietnam is a developing country and faces economic difficulty. All resources for these modules are web sites of academic origin. These sites have been monitored and updated each semester. Additionally, given the module assessment expectations and the recent purchase of database access for many module participants (funded as part of the international grant), the use of relevant texts and journal articles is evident in participant discussions and assignments. 4. Assessment procedures All six modules utilise the same assessment strategy. Module assessment comprises the participants involvement in online discussion groups and forums where set questions are answered. In addition to this, a written assignment is also required. Like the online discussion, the written assignment requires critical reflection on past practices or specific scenarios. 4.1. Bilingual online discussion The online discussions run over a five week period and participants are required to engage in discussion (this contributes 30% of their module grade). Online discussion is focussed on engaging the participant with the module content and is conducted in both English and Vietnamese (the participants will post some comments in Vietnamese as this will allow them to fully elucidate their ideas and thoughts). The online discussions are moderated by a QUT lecturer with the use of a Vietnamese translator. The online discussions have set questions which the nurse academics are required to answer or comment on. For example, from Learning and Teaching 1: Why are there so many learning models? Do you think one single model could fit all learners? Why or why not? Questions are posed to facilitate discussion. In many instances the questions are discussed extensively, however, some occasions see discussion follow a different path specific to the participants interests and a rich dialogue tends to ensue. Flexibility and a non-judgemental attitude are key attributes of a good moderator and are the key to the success of these discussions. To further encourage online discussion and debate participants are not berated if they post a misguided statement all online dialogue has an underlying positive tone. Incorrect statements will be appropriately contextualised by the moderator and discussion will be redirected. As the online discussion is an open domain (for that participan the online postings serves to moderate the forum to a large extent. 4.2. Reflective written assessment item Depending upon the corresponding module, assignments require participants to observe and evaluate teaching sessions/assessment items/clinical performance/curriculum and unit development and implementation. Assignments are between 1,000-1,200 words and must be submitted in English. Assignment feedback is personalised and directed toward assisting the participant (after they have evaluated their practice) to determine the direction for future change. Feedback is also intended to reinforce the positive aspects of practice. The assignments engage the participants in either theoretical unit delivery (classroom observations) and development (unit delivery and review as well as curriculum development) or clinical practice and supervision. For 1466 Peter A. Lewis et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1462 – 1468 example, the Learning and Teaching 1 module requires an observation of a teaching session and reflection on what made the participant think the students were or were not engaged, what is was the academic did which made it easy for the students to learn, what it was that made it hard for the students to learn, and to consider how the session might be improved or redeveloped. Assignments require a high level of reflection and supporting literature. Owing to the feedback provided across the modules referencing expectations escalate as does the balance of discussion. 5. Course delivery Currently there are approximately 700 nurse academics working across Vietnam. Since commencing in semester 2, 2009, the distance education programme has seen the enrolment of 180 Vietnamese nurse academics (Table 1) across 19 institutions (nine universities; seven colleges; two 1,500 plus bed tertiary referral university affiliated hospitals; and one participant employed by the Vietnam Nursing Association). Thirty two of these academics have gone on to complete the programme; there are currently a further 103 nurse academics who have completed a minimum of one module and are currently active in the programme. Forty five (25%) Vietnamese nurse academics have commenced the programme and withdrawn (or been excluded due to non-participation on two occasions). Table 1. Distance Learning Programme results by module. MODULE Semester 2, 2009 Semester 1, 2010 Semester 2, 2010 Semester 1, 2011 Semester 2, 2011 TOTAL En NP Pass n(%) En NP Pass n(%) En NP Pass n(%) En NP Pass n(%) En NP Pass n(%) Passed n (mean %) Learning and Teaching 1 32 4 22 (79%) 51 15 27 (75%) 50 13 26 (70%) 39 1 32 (84%) 39 8 28 (90%) 135 (79%) Learning and Teaching 2 22 0 18 (82%) 33 6 20 (74%) 29 4 23 (92%) 35 1 30 (88%) 91 (84%) Clinical Teaching 1 10 0 10 (100%) 10 (100%) Clinical Teaching 2 10 2 8 (100%) 8 (100%) Curriculum 1 27 0 24 (89%) 24 (89%) Curriculum 2 24 0 24 (100%) 24 (100%) o En = number of Nurse Teachers who enrolled in the module. o NP = no participation (the Nurse Teacher did not attempt either module assessment item). o Pass rates calculated on students who participated in module only pass rates do not include Nurse Teachers who did not participate. Anecdotal feedback from the Vietnamese nurse academics across their involvement in the programme (and at the conclusion of their fourth and final module) has been overwhelmingly positive. Feedback suggests the programme has altered teaching and assessment approaches used by some Vietnamese nurse academics. Additionally, Vietnamese nurse academics are reporting that they are engaging more with the application of their content indicating a cultural shift in the approach taken in Vietnamese nurse education. Formal evaluation of the QUT/VNA grant from an external advisor who has met with all parties involved with the project (including project recipients) yielded the following advisor feedback: The DE [distance education programme] seems to have been a great success despite your challenges, all the feedback I've had has been very positive. 5.1. Considerations Delivery of a distance learning programme allows students to progress at their own individual pace. Use of multiple teaching and assessment strategies (online discussion, written assessments, module content including 1467 Peter A. Lewis et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1462 – 1468 multimedia and reflective exercises) spaced over a semester ensure the participants pace their progression. Additionally, a combination of four modules delivered over a two year period serves to reinforce content and build skills and abilities progressively. As this programme is delivered to participants based in Vietnam and classroom interaction is not possible between the module coordinator and participants Skype and email are utilised to facilitate contact. The frequency of these interactions is driven by participant needs. Importantly, the modules have been developed to incorporate numerous learning and teaching strategies to meet the learning needs of any many participants as possible it is recognised that all learners learn differently. The QUT distance education programme combines the generation of educational modules by a party culturally foreign to the programme recipients with an out of country delivery. While it might be assumed this would hinder the success of the programme, a positive outcome has been attained. The modules themselves have modelled new teaching delivery strategies for the Vietnamese nurse academics. The content contained within the modules has generated reflection and critical evaluation amongst participants. To assume the programme has been of benefit to all Vietnamese nurse academics would be misdirected given a withdrawal rate of 25%. Records indicate many withdrawals occurred as a result of issues external to programme dissatisfaction or lack of interest, despite this it remains likely some participants currently active in the programme are progressing as a consequence or employment pressures rather than genuine interest or desire. If a programme such as this which advocates such a large departure from current Vietnamese nursing teaching and assessment practices were to affect only 5% of its participants one might consider it a success and a small step along a path less tread. 6. Conclusion The paper has described the outcome of two disparate parties QUT and the VNA who combined to achieve a common outcome. An understanding of the constraints under which the intended programme participants function was essential for the successful design of this learning programme. A well structured and progressively scaffolded programme combining multiple learning and teaching strategies with assessments which taught not just assessed improved the likelihood of this programmes success. However, one also needs to consider not only the flexibility of those delivering the programme but also the application and commitment of the participants who undertook the programme. The magnitude of the cultural shift in altering Vietnamese teaching and learning practices must not be ignored. References Cantoni, V., Cellario, M., & Porta, M. (2004). Perspectives and challenges in e-learning: Towards natural interactive paradigms. Journal of Visual Language & Computing, 15: 333-345. Dorrian, J., & Wache, D. (2009). Introduction of an online approach to flexible learning for on -campus and distance education students: Lessons learned and ways forward. Nurse Education Today, 29(2), 157-167. Ellaway, R., & Masters, K. (2008A). AMEE Guide 32: E-learning in medical education. Part 1: Learning, teaching and assessment. Medical Teacher, 30, 455-473 Ellaway, R., & Masters, K. (2008B). E-learning in medical education Guide 32, Part 2: Technology, management and design. Medical Teacher, 30, 474-489. Ginns, P., & Ellis, R. (2009). 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Yudko, E., Hirokawa, R., & Chi, R. (2008). Attitudes, beliefs, and attendance in a hybrid course. Computers & Education, 50, 1217-1227. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.600 Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY ICER 2012) Dates 08 10 February, 2012 Organized By Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus Cyprus Educational Sciences Association Academic World Education and Research Center Venue Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus North Cyprus In Collaboration With Near East University Eastern Mediterranean University Atatürk Teacher training Academy International Cyprus University Girne American University Cyprus Educational Sciences Association www.cyicer.org Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Training Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 2 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.601 CY-ICER 2012 Message from the Guest Editors It is the great honor for me to edit this special issue of Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences Journal for the selected revised papers presented in The Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER 2012) held on February 08th – 11th 2012, at the Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus in North Cyprus. As the guest editor of this issue, we are glad to see variety of articles focusing on the curriculum and instruction, educational technology, educational administration, guidance and counselling, educational planning, measurement and evaluation, learning psychology, developmental psychology, instructional design, learning and teaching, special education, distance education, lifelong learning, mathematics education, social sciences teaching, science education, language learning and teaching, human resources in education, teacher training, pre-school education, primary school education, secondary school education, vocational education, college and higher education, learner needs in the 21st century, the role of education in globalization, human rights education, democracy education, innovation and change in education, new learning environments, environmental education, professional development, nursery education, health education, sport and physical education, multi-cultural education, mobile learning, technology-based learning, computer usage in education and etc. Furthermore, the journal is getting more international each year, which is an indicator that it is getting worldwide known and recognized. Scholars from all over the world contributed to this issue of the journal. Special thanks are to all the reviewers, the members of the international editorial board, the publisher, and those involved in technical processes. We would like to thank al who contributed to in every process to make this issue actualized. A total of 931 full papers or abstracts were submitted for this issue and each paper has been peer reviewed by the reviewers specialized in the related field. At the end of the review process, a total of 378 high quality research papers were selected and accepted for publication. I hope that you will enjoy reading the papers. Guest Editors Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu, Near East University, North Cyprus Assist. Prof. Dr. Çi dem Hursen, Near East University, North Cyprus Mukaddes Sakall , M.Sc, Near East University, North Cyprus Sezer Kanbul, M.Sc., Near East University, North Cyprus Editorial Assistants Aysegül Akçam Vasfi Tu un Erinç Eça Gül en Hüssein Ezgi Pelin Y ld z Tahir Tavukçu Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Tavukcu bozzetto Highlight Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 3 – 4 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.602 CY-ICER 2012 International Scientific Committee Prof. Dr. Ahmet Pehlivan – International Cyprus University (North Cyprus) Prof. Dr. Ali Amiri - University of Zanjan (Iran) Prof. Dr. Ay e Çak r lhan - Ankara University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Bekir Özer - Eastern Mediterranean University (North Cyprus) Prof. Dr. Cem Birol – Near East University (North Cyprus) Prof. Dr. Cevat Celep – Kocaeli University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Jung-Cheol Shini - Seoul National University (South Korea) Prof. Dr. Do an brahim – Near East University (UK) Prof. Dr. Nick Rusby, British Journal Of Educational Technology (UK) Prof. Dr. Hasan im ek – Bahcesehir University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Halil brahim Yal n – Gazi University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. H fz Dogan (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Ali Baykal – Bogazici University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Gönül Akçamete- Ankara University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Ulku Koymen – Lefke European University (North Cyprus) Prof. Dr. H. Ferhan Odaba i – Anadolu University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Maria Helena Esteves, University of Lisbon (Portugal) Prof. Dr. Marilyn Campbell - Queensland University Of Technology (Australia) Prof. Dr. Mustafa Murat nceo lu, Ege University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser – Ankara University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Jerry W. Willis – Louisiana State University (USA) Prof. Dr. George S. Mouzakitis – (Greece) Prof. Dr. Jacobus G. Maree - University Of Pretoria (South Africa) Prof. Dr. Jan Parker- Open University (UK) Prof. Dr. Jean Underwood - Nottingham Trent University (UK) Prof. Dr. Brent G. Wilson – Colorado at Denver University (USA) Prof. Dr. Colleen Sexton – Ohio University (USA) Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu – Near East University (North Cyprus) Prof. Dr. Mehmet Gürol – F rat University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Mehmet Kesim - Anadolu University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Nejdet Osam - Eastern Mediterranean University (North Cyprus) Prof. Dr. Özcan Demirel – Hacettepe University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Aytekin man – Sakarya University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Kinshuk – Athabasca University (Canada) Prof. Dr. Rauf Y ld z - Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Gülsün A. Baskan – Hacettepe University (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Servet Bayram Marmara University, (Turkey) Prof. Dr. Ulku Koymen – Girne American University (North Cyprus) Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 4 International Scientifi c Committee / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 3 – 4 Prof. Dr. Steven M. Rose – John Hopkins University (USA) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Demet Erol Öngen - Akdeniz University (Turkey) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hayat Boz - Ankara University (Turkey) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kamisah Osman - Universiti Kebangsaan (Malaysia) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ça lar – Near East University (North Cyprus) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fato Silman – Near East University (North Cyprus) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nergüz Bulut Serin, International Cyprus University, (North Cyprus) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Oguz Serin, International Cyprus University, (North Cyprus) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zehra Özçinar – Atatürk Teacher's Academy (North Cyprus) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hamit Caner – Eastern Mediterranean University (North Cyprus) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohammad Hossein Yarmohammadian, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Iran) Assist. Prof. Dr. A. Cendel Karaman, Middle East Technical University, (Turkey) Assist. Prof. Dr. Ali Rahimi - University of Kashan (Iran) Assist. Prof. Dr. Özge Hacifazlio lu –Bahcesehir University (Turkey) Assist. Prof. Dr. Havva Ba ak – Near East University (North Cyprus) Assist. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Yaratan – Eastern Mediterranean University (North Cyprus) Assist. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Erdem – University Of Nevada (USA) Assist. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ali Öztürk – Bahcesehir University (Turkey) Assist. Prof. Dr. Jaleh Hassaskhah, University of Guilan, (Iran) Assist. Prof. Dr. Murat Tezer - Near East University (North Cyprus) Assist. Prof. Dr. irin Karadeniz - Bahcesehir University (Turkey) Assist. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Güneyli – Near East University (North Cyprus) Assist. Prof. Dr. Tözün sa – Middlesex University (UK) Assist. Prof. Dr. Tuncay Ergene - Ya ar University (Turkey) Assist. Prof. Dr. Ülger Bulut Karaca, Arel University, (Turkey) Assist. Prof. Dr. Çi dem Hürsen -Near East University (North Cyprus) Assist. Prof. Dr. Fezile Özdaml – Near East University (North Cyprus) Dr. Ana Loureiro - Polytechnics Institute of Santarem (Portugal) Dr. Birikim Özgür – Near East University (North Cyprus) Dr. Melahat I nsu Halat - Ministry of Healthy (North Cyprus) Dr. Hasan Alicik - Near East University (North Cyprus) Dr. Ali Erden - Near East University (North Cyprus) Dr. Müge Taçman - Near East University (North Cyprus) Articles All fields Author Advanced search Images Journal/Book title --This Journal/Book-- Volume Issue Page Search Search tips Post your job on ElsevierJobs Precision targeted job recruitment Looking for World Class Researchers? Post your job on ScienceDirect Upload your CV/resume and get recruited Searching for jobs can be hard work, so why not let the jobs come to you? Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved About this Journal | Shortcut link to this Title < Previous vol/iss | Next vol/iss > Font Size: Add to my Quick Links Volume 47, Pages 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER-2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Edited by Hüseyin Uzunboylu New Article Feed Alert me about new articles Add to Favorites = Full-text available = Abstract only Volume 69 (2012) Volume 68 (2012) Volume 67 (2012) Volume 66 (2012) Volume 64 (2012) Volume 63 (2012) Volume 62 (2012) Volume 61 (2012) Volume 60 (2012) Volume 59 (2012) Volume 58 (2012) Volume 57 (2012) Volume 56 (2012) Volume 55 (2012) Volume 54 (2012) Volume 53 (2012) Volume 52 (2012) Volume 51 (2012) Volume 50 (2012) Volume 49 (2012) Volume 48 (2012) Volume 47 (2012) Volume 47 pp. 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER- 2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Volume 46 (2012) Volume 45 (2012) Volume 44 (2012) Volume 43 (2012) Volume 42 (2012) Volume 41 (2012) Volume 40 (2012) Volume 39 (2012) Volume 38 (2012) Volume 37 (2012) Volume 36 (2012) Volume 35 (2012) Volume 34 (2012) Volume 33 (2012) Volume 32 (2012) Volume 31 (2012) E-mail articles | Export citations | PDF downloader | Open all previews 1 Cyprus International Conference on Educational ResearchOriginal Research Article Page 1 Show preview | PDF (76 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 2 Message from the Guest Editors Page 2 Show preview | PDF (116 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 3 International Scientific CommitteeOriginal Research Article Pages 3-4 Show preview | PDF (130 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 4 A Survey on the Relation Between Social Support and Mental Health in Students Shahid Rajaee UniversityOriginal Research Article Pages 5-9 N. Tahmasbipour, A. Taheri Show preview | PDF (201 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 5 Mobile Education in ToolsOriginal Research Article Pages 10-13 Monika Simkova, Hana Tomaskova, Zuzana Nemcova Show preview | PDF (216 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 6 Affect of Watched Surroundings on Agent Decision Making on Stock MarketOriginal Research Article Pages 14-18 Jiří Štěpánek, Jiří Šťovíček, Richard Cimler, Monika Šimková Show preview | PDF (373 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 7 Examining the Effect of Information and Communication Technology on the Educational Justice from the Tehran's High School Teacher's Point of ViewOriginal Research Article Pages 19-23 Mostafa Ranai No prev art. 1 - 100 of 378 Next ► Home Publications Search My settings My alerts Help ScienceDirect Scopus Applications Register Go to SciVal SuiteLogin Page 1 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18770428/47/supp/C Volume 30 (2011) Volume 29 (2011) Volume 28 (2011) Volume 27 (2011) Volume 26 (2011) Volume 25 (2011) Volume 24 (2011) Volume 23 (2011) Volume 22 (2011) Volume 21 (2011) Volume 20 (2011) Volume 19 (2011) Volume 18 (2011) Volume 17 (2011) Volume 16 (2011) Volume 15 (2011) Volume 14 (2011) Volume 13 (2011) Volume 12 (2011) Volume 11 (2011) Volume 10 (2011) Volume 9 (2010) Volume 8 (2010) Volume 7 (2010) Volume 6 (2010) Volume 5 (2010) Volume 4 (2010) Volume 3 (2010) Volume 2 (2010) Volume 1 (2009) Show preview | PDF (420 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 8 To Analyze the Effective Factors of Using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Payam Noor UniversityOriginal Research Article Pages 24-28 Samire Mortazavi Kiasari, Teymor Ahmadigatab Show preview | PDF (534 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 9 An Urban Oriented and Multilayered Experience on Architectural Education in (The Global World)Original Research Article Pages 29-33 Kunter Manisa Show preview | PDF (505 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 10 How do you React to the Breakdown After it Happens? 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ScienceDirect® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. 98 CLIL and the Teaching of Foreign LanguagesOriginal Research Article Pages 572-576 Blanka Frydrychova Klimova Show preview | PDF (739 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 99 A Study on the Demographical Characteristics of Parents with Children Diagnosed with Autism, Problem they Face and their Knowledge on Alternative Treatment MethodsOriginal Research Article Pages 577-585 Hatice Bekir Simsek, Alper Yusuf Koroglu Show preview | PDF (1394 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 100 Views of Female Preschool Pre-service Teachers about Male Teaching ColleaguesOriginal Research Article Pages 586-593 Ramazan Sak, Ikbal Tuba Sahin, Betul Kubra Sahin Show preview | PDF (853 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles Page 10 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18770428/47/supp/C Articles All fields Author Advanced search Images Journal/Book title --This Journal/Book-- Volume Issue Page Search Search tips Sign up for our job alerts Latest jobs direct to your inbox Post your job on ElsevierJobs Precision targeted job recruitment Looking for World Class Researchers? 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All rights reserved About this Journal | Shortcut link to this Title < Previous vol/iss | Next vol/iss > Font Size: Add to my Quick Links Volume 47, Pages 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER-2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Edited by Hüseyin Uzunboylu New Article Feed Alert me about new articles Add to Favorites = Full-text available = Abstract only Volume 69 (2012) Volume 68 (2012) Volume 67 (2012) Volume 66 (2012) Volume 64 (2012) Volume 63 (2012) Volume 62 (2012) Volume 61 (2012) Volume 60 (2012) Volume 59 (2012) Volume 58 (2012) Volume 57 (2012) Volume 56 (2012) Volume 55 (2012) Volume 54 (2012) Volume 53 (2012) Volume 52 (2012) Volume 51 (2012) Volume 50 (2012) Volume 49 (2012) Volume 48 (2012) Volume 47 (2012) Volume 47 pp. 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER- 2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Volume 46 (2012) Volume 45 (2012) Volume 44 (2012) Volume 43 (2012) Volume 42 (2012) Volume 41 (2012) Volume 40 (2012) Volume 39 (2012) Volume 38 (2012) Volume 37 (2012) Volume 36 (2012) Volume 35 (2012) Volume 34 (2012) Volume 33 (2012) Volume 32 (2012) Volume 31 (2012) E-mail articles | Export citations | PDF downloader | Open all previews 101 An Examination of Turkish Preschool Curriculum's Effect on Children's Concept Acquisition Original Research Article Pages 594-599 Mehmet Toran, Z. Fulya Temel Show preview | PDF (986 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 102 The Views Concerning In-Service Teacher Education Courses in Science Teachers’ Professional Development Original Research Article Pages 600-604 Volkan Hasan Kaya, Yasemin Godek Altuk Show preview | PDF (991 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 103 The Roles of Teachers in Fostering Autonomous Learning at the University Level Original Research Article Pages 605-609 Cao Thanh Nguyen Show preview | PDF (685 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 104 The Effect of Synectics & Brainstorming on 3 rd Grade Students’development of Creative Thinking on Science Original Research Article Pages 610-613 Mandana Aiamy, Fariba Haghani Show preview | PDF (344 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 105 The Relationship Between Self-Regulation Approaches and Learning Approaches in English Writing Tasks on English Foreign Language Students Original Research Article Pages 614-618 Yaghoob Nami, Taraneh Enayati, Maral Ashouri Show preview | PDF (220 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 106 Education System in Knowledge Society and Model of Innovative Entrepreneur Original Research Article Pages 619-623 Ahmet Oguz, Uzeyir Aydin ◄ Prev art. 101 - 200 of 378 Next ► Home Publications Search My settings My alerts Help ScienceDirect Scopus Applications Register Go to SciVal SuiteLogin Page 1 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... Volume 30 (2011) Volume 29 (2011) Volume 28 (2011) Volume 27 (2011) Volume 26 (2011) Volume 25 (2011) Volume 24 (2011) Volume 23 (2011) Volume 22 (2011) Volume 21 (2011) Volume 20 (2011) Volume 19 (2011) Volume 18 (2011) Volume 17 (2011) Volume 16 (2011) Volume 15 (2011) Volume 14 (2011) Volume 13 (2011) Volume 12 (2011) Volume 11 (2011) Volume 10 (2011) Volume 9 (2010) Volume 8 (2010) Volume 7 (2010) Volume 6 (2010) Volume 5 (2010) Volume 4 (2010) Volume 3 (2010) Volume 2 (2010) Volume 1 (2009) Show preview | PDF (254 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 107 Teaching the Four Skills in Iranian Pre-University Schools Original Research Article Pages 624-628 Sara Sohrabi Show preview | PDF (240 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 108 Religious Foundation of Education Original Research Article Pages 629-633 Seyed Aliakbar Rabinataj, Ramezan Mahdavi Azadboni Show preview | PDF (307 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 109 The Effect of Activities Based on 5e Model on Grade 10 Students’ Understanding of the Gas Concept Original Research Article Pages 634-637 Mustafa Yadigaroglu, Gokhan Demircioglu Show preview | PDF (762 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 110 The Relationship Between Learning Styles and Achievement in Calculus Course for Engineering Students Original Research Article Pages 638-642 Nevin Orhun Show preview | PDF (577 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 111 The Explanation and Prediction of the Student's School Performance on the Basis of Explanation of Internal Motivational Factors with Structured Functional Model at Rural in Sanandaj City High Schools Original Research Article Pages 643-650 Yahya Yarahmadi Show preview | PDF (666 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 112 Comparison of the Education Inspection Systems in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Turkey and U.K. (England) Original Research Article Pages 651-655 Tanju Gurkan, Ayse Deveci Show preview | PDF (633 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 113 Mother Tongue Traces of Turkish University Students on Composition Papers Written in English Original Research Article Pages 656-664 Gencer Elkilic Show preview | PDF (1023 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 114 The Use of Woodcock-Johnson Tests for Identifying Students with Special Needs-a Comprehensive Literature Review Original Research Article Pages 665-673 Bashir Abu-Hamour, Hanan Al Hmouz, Jihan Mattar, Mohammad Muhaidat Show preview | PDF (519 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 115 Understanding Otherness Through Music Original Research Article Pages 674-678 Emanuele Ferrari Show preview | PDF (1012 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 116 Innovative and Organized Approaches for Foreign Language Teaching in Turkey Original Research Article Pages 679-683 Max Florian Hertsch, Altan Alperen Show preview | PDF (424 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 117 Education and Interculturality: Pupils of Maghrebi Origin in Spain Original Research Article Pages 684-688 Llorent Bedmar Vicente, Terrón Bellido, Ángela Mar’a Page 2 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... 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All rights reserved About this Journal | Shortcut link to this Title < Previous vol/iss | Next vol/iss > Font Size: Add to my Quick Links Volume 47, Pages 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER-2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Edited by Hüseyin Uzunboylu New Article Feed Alert me about new articles Add to Favorites = Full-text available = Abstract only Volume 69 (2012) Volume 68 (2012) Volume 67 (2012) Volume 66 (2012) Volume 64 (2012) Volume 63 (2012) Volume 62 (2012) Volume 61 (2012) Volume 60 (2012) Volume 59 (2012) Volume 58 (2012) Volume 57 (2012) Volume 56 (2012) Volume 55 (2012) Volume 54 (2012) Volume 53 (2012) Volume 52 (2012) Volume 51 (2012) Volume 50 (2012) Volume 49 (2012) Volume 48 (2012) Volume 47 (2012) Volume 47 pp. 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER- 2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Volume 46 (2012) Volume 45 (2012) Volume 44 (2012) Volume 43 (2012) Volume 42 (2012) Volume 41 (2012) Volume 40 (2012) Volume 39 (2012) Volume 38 (2012) Volume 37 (2012) Volume 36 (2012) Volume 35 (2012) Volume 34 (2012) Volume 33 (2012) Volume 32 (2012) Volume 31 (2012) E-mail articles | Export citations | PDF downloader | Open all previews 201 Interactive Multimedia Learning Object (IMLO) for Dyslexic Children Original Research Article Pages 1206-1210 Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi Show preview | PDF (346 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 202 Exploring Self-regulatory Strategies for Vocabulary Learning among Chinese EFL Learners Original Research Article Pages 1211-1215 Aminah Ma Ping, Saedah Siraj Show preview | PDF (594 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 203 Blended e-Learning: A New Approach to Environmental Education of Iran High Schools Original Research Article Pages 1216-1220 Saeed Mazloumiyan, Seyed Mohamad Shobeiri, Mehran Farajollahi, Mehdi Mohamadi Show preview | PDF (450 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 204 Effect of Perceived Procedural Justice on Faculty Members’ Silence: The Mediating Role of Trust in Supervisor Original Research Article Pages 1221-1231 Tijen Tulubas, Cevat Celep Show preview | PDF (1268 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 205 Nutrition Knowledge Levels of Police Officers (An Example Study) Original Research Article Pages 1232-1236 Fatma Celik Kayapinar, Behsat Savas Show preview | PDF (551 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 206 An Exploration of Discourse in an EFL Classroom: Teacher Talk Original Research Article Pages 1237-1241 Mehrdad Rezaee, Majid Farahian ◄ Prev art. 201 - 300 of 378 Next ► Home Publications Search My settings My alerts Help ScienceDirect Scopus Applications Register Go to SciVal SuiteLogin Page 1 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... 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S. Al Sulim Show preview | PDF (533 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 211 Curriculum Design, Development, Innovation and Change Original Research Article Pages 1276-1280 Vanithamani Saravanan Show preview | PDF (477 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 212 Passion for Teaching: A Qualitative Study Original Research Article Pages 1281-1285 Seake Harry Rampa Show preview | PDF (389 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 213 The Effects of Eight Weeks of sports Activities on Self-Sufficiency, Social Skills and Some Physical Fitness Parameters in Children 9-10 Years of Age Original Research Article Pages 1286-1291 R.Ferudun Dorak, Lale Yildiz, Civan Sortullu Show preview | PDF (648 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 214 The Model of Participating, Payable, Profitable, Prepotent, (4PES) Insured Education System (IESM) Original Research Article Pages 1292-1298 Seniha Celikhan Show preview | PDF (516 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 215 Parental Attitude Perception in Adolescents by Gender Original Research Article Pages 1299-1304 Guliz Kolburan, Itir Tari Comert, Meltem Narter, Hakan Isozen Show preview | PDF (1096 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 216 Evaluation of Child Abuse in Two Feature Films Original Research Article Pages 1305-1309 Meltem Narter, Guliz Kolburan, Itir Tari Comert, Hakan Isozen Show preview | PDF (1098 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 217 Assessment Effectiveness on the Job Training in Higher Education (Case Study: Takestan University) Original Research Article Pages 1310-1314 Ali Mollahoseini, Shahrooz Farjad Page 2 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... Show preview | PDF (307 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 218 The Effectiveness in Distance Education for Iranian Higher Education Original Research Article Pages 1315-1319 Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi Show preview | PDF (683 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 219 Teaching with Moodle in Higher Education Original Research Article Pages 1320-1324 Javad Mehrabi, Masoumeh sadat Abtahi Show preview | PDF (309 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 220 Teacher Further Education-Modern Phenomenon or Obligation? Original Research Article Pages 1325-1328 Petnuchova, Stefkova, Hornakova, Hrmo Show preview | PDF (317 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 221 The Importance of Development Student's Skills and Teacher's Competencies Original Research Article Pages 1329-1334 Erika Záhorcová, Martina Klierová, Martin Podařil, Roman Hrmo Show preview | PDF (551 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 222 Dissemination of Science Among Students by Remote Experimentation Original Research Article Pages 1335-1340 Lukáš Tkáč, František Schauer Show preview | PDF (736 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 223 The IEP: Are Malaysian Teachers Ready? Original Research Article Pages 1341-1347 Sitti Hasnah Bandu, Zalizan Mohd Jelas Show preview | PDF (493 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 224 Collaboration and Individual Education Practices Among Secondarys Schools with Special Education in Peninsular, Malaysia Original Research Article Pages 1348-1352 Gulson Begum Khalid, Mohd Hanafi Mohd Yasin, Noraini Said Show preview | PDF (331 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 225 Economics Education in Industrial Design Original Research Article Pages 1353-1357 Serkan Gunes Show preview | PDF (330 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 226 Application of Six-Sigma in Educational Quality Management Original Research Article Pages 1358-1362 Javad Mehrabi Show preview | PDF (448 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 227 The Evaluation of the Global Research on the Education: A Scientometric Approach Original Research Article Pages 1363-1367 Ozcan Konur Show preview | PDF (380 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 228 Perceptions of School Climate and Parental Behaviors Among Romanian Students From Migrant Families Original Research Article Pages 1368-1373 Nicoleta Laura Popa Show preview | PDF (634 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles Page 3 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... 229 Can First Year Student's Critical Thinking Skills Develop in a Space of Three Months? Original Research Article Pages 1374-1381 Thelma de Jager Show preview | PDF (803 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 230 The Role of Second-Language Learning in Diagnosing Primary Student's Gaps of Knowledge: Towards a Symptomatic Use of Interdisciplinarity Original Research Article Pages 1382-1391 Luis S. Villacañas de Castro Show preview | PDF (1697 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 231 Examining Job Satisfaction Burnout and Reality Shock Amongst Newly Graduated Nurses Original Research Article Pages 1392-1397 Ayse Caliskan, Yasemin Akbal Ergun Show preview | PDF (546 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 232 Identifying Constructivist Methodologies and Pedagogic Content Knowledge in the Teaching and Learning of Technology Original Research Article Pages 1398-1402 Moses Makgato Show preview | PDF (502 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 233 A Comparative Study of the Islamic Scholars’ Titles During the First Centuries of the Islamic Era and those of the Islamic Scholars at the Today's Universities Original Research Article Pages 1403-1407 Davood Yahyaei, Fakhteh Mahini Show preview | PDF (497 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 234 The School Role in Lively Education and Student's Mental Health Original Research Article Pages 1408-1412 Davood Yahyaei, Zahra Jabalameli Foroushani, Fakhteh Mahini Show preview | PDF (332 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 235 An On-Line Course in Critical Mental Health Promotion: Teaching and Learning at Multiple Spheres of Influence Original Research Article Pages 1413-1416 S.L. Jakubec, P. Mascaro, P. Nordstrom, L. Judd, B. Weimand Show preview | PDF (435 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 236 A Comparative Study of the Implementation of EMI in Europe, Asia and Africa Original Research Article Pages 1417-1425 A.G. Tamtam, F. Gallagher, A.G. Olabi, S. Naher Show preview | PDF (862 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 237 Working With Uniqueness: Optimizing Vocational Strengths for People With Tourette Syndrome and Co-Morbidities Original Research Article Pages 1426-1435 D. Averns, S.L. Jakubec, R. Thomas, A. Link Show preview | PDF (1311 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 238 Public Administration Education: The Case of Macedonian Universities Original Research Article Pages 1436-1441 Abdula Azizi Show preview | PDF (475 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 239 The Role Played by Literature in the Inter-Cultural Educational Process. Educational Extensions of the Contemporary Feminine Diaries Original Research Article Pages 1442-1447 Simona Antofi Page 4 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... Show preview | PDF (700 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 240 Reducing Cognitive Overload Among Students of Different Anxiety Levels Using Segmented Animation Original Research Article Pages 1448-1456 Soon Fook Fong, Lee Pei Lin Lily, Fei Ping Por Show preview | PDF (656 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 241 Examining of Teacher Candidate's Attitudes to Science Teaching and Self – Efficacy Related to Alternative Measurement Assessment Original Research Article Pages 1457-1461 Mustafa Ugras, Kemalettin Ay, Seda Altunbas, Erol Cil Show preview | PDF (472 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 242 Design and Delivery of a Distance Education Programme: Educating Vietnamese Nurse Academics from Australia Original Research Article Pages 1462-1468 Peter A. Lewis, Yvonne Osborne, Genevieve Gray, Anne-Marie Lacaze Show preview | PDF (355 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 243 New Educational Research Technologies in the Global World Original Research Article Pages 1469-1472 Shoaleh Bigdeli Show preview | PDF (236 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 244 The Bologna Process and Problems in Higher Education System of Kazakhstan Original Research Article Pages 1473-1478 Moldiyar Yergebekov, Zhanar Temirbekova Show preview | PDF (444 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 245 Examining Primary School Teacher's and Teacher Candidate's Sense of Efficacy Original Research Article Pages 1479-1484 Isil Tanriseven Show preview | PDF (757 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 246 The Pre-School Teacher Candidate's Metaphorical Thinking About the Concept of Music Learning Original Research Article Pages 1485-1489 Sehriban Koca Show preview | PDF (859 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 247 The Impact of Globalization on “Brain Drain” in Developing Countries Original Research Article Pages 1490-1494 A. Zhatkanbaeva, J. Zhatkanbaeva, E. Zhatkanbaev Show preview | PDF (373 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 248 Rethinking the Standardized Test: The Pursuit of Diversity and Standardization Original Research Article Pages 1495-1500 Yong-Lyun Kim, June Lee Show preview | PDF (344 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 249 The Partnership Between School and Family - Cooperation or Conflict? Original Research Article Pages 1501-1505 Valentin Cosmin Blândul Show preview | PDF (381 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 250 Effect of the Verbal Mnemonics on Students’ Achievements and their Attitudes Original Research Article Pages 1506-1510 Mustafa Aydin, Ali Murat Sunbul Page 5 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... Show preview | PDF (457 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 251 Multimedia Simulation Presentation in Empowering Students with Different Anxiety Levels in the Learning of Probability Original Research Article Pages 1511-1516 Soon Fook Fong, Fei Ping Por, Ai Ling Tang Show preview | PDF (724 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 252 Enhancing Low Ability Student's Performance Using Succinct Item Original Research Article Pages 1517-1522 Soon Fook Fong, Sii Ching Hii, Fei Ping Por, Mei Lean Teng Show preview | PDF (731 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 253 The Opinions of Preschool Teacher Candidates About Creative Thinking Original Research Article Pages 1523-1528 Emel Tok Show preview | PDF (500 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 254 Curricular Planning from a New Perspective: Diversity, Gender and Textbooks Original Research Article Pages 1529-1533 Vicente J. Llorent Show preview | PDF (672 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 255 The Emergent Effects of a Wired World to an Educational Paradigm Shift in Saudi Arabia: A Case Study Original Research Article Pages 1534-1538 Tariq Elyas, Omar Basalamah Show preview | PDF (646 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 256 Challenges for Lifelong Learning Original Research Article Pages 1539-1544 Marjan Laal, Ashkan Laal Show preview | PDF (316 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 257 Troubles Which Class Teachers in Primary Education Encounter in New Science and Technology Teaching Program Original Research Article Pages 1545-1548 Mustafa Ugras, Erol Cil Show preview | PDF (402 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 258 Determination of the Pre-Service Science and Classroom Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Science Teaching and Technology and Relationship Between These Attitudes Original Research Article Pages 1549-1553 Mustafa Ugras, Seda Altunbas, Kemalettin Ay, Erol Cil Show preview | PDF (486 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 259 The Way we Teach, the Way they Learn Original Research Article Pages 1554-1557 Pir Suhail Ahmed Show preview | PDF (349 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 260 Correlation Between Shyness and Self-esteem of Arts and Design Students Original Research Article Pages 1558-1561 Pelin Ozturk Gocmen Show preview | PDF (561 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 261 Lifelong Learning; Elements Original Research Article Pages 1562-1566 Marjan Laal, Ashkan Laal Show preview | PDF (242 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles Page 6 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... 262 Can Initial Pre-Service Teachers Incorporate Educational Technology? Original Research Article Pages 1567-1572 Ayfer Alper Show preview | PDF (583 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 263 Determining of College Students’ Trends about Tourism Sector: A Case Study at Akdeniz University Original Research Article Pages 1573-1577 Saliha Basak Erdinc Show preview | PDF (868 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 264 Online Etude Center Original Research Article Pages 1578-1582 Gizem Toroglu, Omer Harmansa, Birsen G. Ozdemir Show preview | PDF (648 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 265 Young People's Perception of the Evaluation of Parent Attitudes Original Research Article Pages 1583-1587 Celalettin Serinkan Show preview | PDF (266 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 266 The Role of Decoration Magazines in the Art Education Original Research Article Pages 1588-1591 Candan Ulku Show preview | PDF (359 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 267 Writing as Cultural Practice: Case Study of a Chinese Heritage School in Belgium Original Research Article Pages 1592-1596 Hsiu-Pei Hsu, Ching Lin Pang, Wim Haagdorens Show preview | PDF (499 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 268 Issues and Trends in Remedial Education: What Do the Teachers Say? Original Research Article Pages 1597-1604 Siti Barokah Kasran, Hasnah Toran, Anuar Md Amin Show preview | PDF (691 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 269 Methodological Issues in Accessing Children's Views: Using Interviews and Questionnaires Original Research Article Pages 1605-1609 Jan Georgeson Show preview | PDF (509 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 270 How Sport and Art could be Effective in the Fields of Social, Cognitive and Emotional Learning? Original Research Article Pages 1610-1615 Fatemeh Talebzadeh, Parivash Jafari Show preview | PDF (425 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 271 An Assessment of the Impact of Social Networks on Collaborative Learning at College Level Original Research Article Pages 1616-1621 Isabel Rodríguez-Tejedo, Sonia Lara, Marta Zárraga-Rodríguez, Victoria Rodríguez- Chacón Show preview | PDF (462 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 272 The Relationship Between Organizational Justice and Organizational Trust Original Research Article Pages 1622-1626 Shabnam Bidarian, Parivash Jafari Show preview | PDF (421 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 273 Methodological Issues in Collecting Children's View Part 2: Using Nominal Group Technique to Explore Children's Views of the Difficulties Encountered Page 7 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... in School Original Research Article Pages 1627-1631 Jill Porter Show preview | PDF (722 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 274 Independent-interdependent Self-construal's and Values’ Appreciation in Competitive and Cooperative Conditions Original Research Article Pages 1632-1637 Bentea Cristina-Corina Show preview | PDF (443 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 275 Some Determinative Factors for Teachers’ Job Motivation Original Research Article Pages 1638-1642 Bentea Cristina-Corina Show preview | PDF (958 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 276 The National Geography Curriculum for Basic Education in Portugal: Theory and Practices by Geography Teachers Original Research Article Pages 1643-1647 Felisbela Martins Show preview | PDF (560 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 277 The Impact of Teacher's Professional Development on the Results of Pupils at National Assessment of Knowledge Original Research Article Pages 1648-1654 Helena Mazi Golob Show preview | PDF (558 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 278 Learning from the Global Voices of Our Students Original Research Article Pages 1655-1661 Carlton Fitzgerald, Simona Laurian, William Preble Show preview | PDF (622 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 279 Change and Innovation in the Educational Policies and Strategies for Human Resources Development Original Research Article Pages 1662-1667 Simona Mioara Marin Show preview | PDF (516 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 280 Career Goals of a Private Hospital Nurses and Career Opportunities Offered to Them Original Research Article Pages 1668-1674 Selda Toygar, Yasemin Akbal Ergün Show preview | PDF (503 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 281 Turkish Vet System for Technical Staff in Architectural Conservation Original Research Article Pages 1675-1685 Nurdan Kuban Show preview | PDF (2040 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 282 A PBL Evaluation Toolkit: Building the Evidence-Base to Understand Effective Practices Original Research Article Pages 1686-1691 Carolyn Gibbon, Caroline Marcangelo Show preview | PDF (367 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 283 Geography Education in Portugal: Recent Trends in Research Original Research Article Pages 1692-1695 Maria Esteves Show preview | PDF (324 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 284 21st Century Learning; Learning in Collaboration Original Research Article Pages 1696-1701 Marjan Laal, Mozhgan Laal, Zhina Khattami Kermanshahi Page 8 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... Show preview | PDF (295 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 285 Globalization in Education in Russia Original Research Article Pages 1702-1706 Zhanna Mingaleva, Irina Mirskikh Show preview | PDF (328 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 286 Mobile Learning Adaption through a Device Based Reasoning Original Research Article Pages 1707-1712 Henda Ouertani Chorfi, Aise Zulal Sevkli, Fatiha Bousbahi Show preview | PDF (435 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 287 A Global Issue in Nursing Students’ Clinical Learning: The Theory–Practice Gap Original Research Article Pages 1713-1718 Ideh Dadgaran, Soroor Parvizy, Hamid Peyrovi Show preview | PDF (755 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 288 A Study on the Relationship of Thinking Styles of Students and Their Critical Thinking Skills Original Research Article Pages 1719-1723 Ali Abdi Show preview | PDF (362 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 289 Education, Excitement and Concern in the School of the “Global Village” Original Research Article Pages 1724-1729 Nicolae Ioana, Simona Mioara Marin Show preview | PDF (765 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 290 The Study on the Self-efficacy Perception of Foreign Languages High School Lecturers’ in Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University Original Research Article Pages 1730-1735 Kadir Yogurtcu Show preview | PDF (534 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 291 Orientations, Perspectives and Evolution of Education in the Knowledge Society” Original Research Article Pages 1736-1741 Simona Mioara Marin, Nicolae Ioana Show preview | PDF (383 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 292 Science and Technology Teachers’ Views about Considering Students’ Intelligence Types in Project and Performance Tasks Original Research Article Pages 1742-1746 Gokhan Kumlu, Gulfem Dilek Yurttas Show preview | PDF (692 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 293 Comparison of the Attitude of Bilingual (Kordi and Farsi) Boy and Girl Students in Islamic Azad University Islamabad Branch toward Farsi as Their Second Language and the Effect of the Place of Their Living(City or Village) on Their Attitude Original Research Article Pages 1747-1750 Akram Korani Show preview | PDF (356 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 294 Preservice Secondary Mathematics Teacher's Views about Using Multiple Representations in Mathematics Instruction Original Research Article Pages 1751-1756 Hilal Gulkilik, Ahmet Arikan Show preview | PDF (591 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 295 English as a Foreign Language Cul-De-Sac in Turkey Original Research Article Pages 1757-1761 Nuray Alagozlu Page 9 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect.c... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... About ScienceDirect About Elsevier Contact and support Information for advertisers Terms and conditions Privacy policy ◄ Prev art. 201 - 300 of 378 Next ► < Previous vol/iss | Next vol/iss > Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. SciVerse® is a registered trademark of Elsevier Properties S.A., used under license. ScienceDirect® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. Show preview | PDF (548 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 296 Education System in the Cloud to Improve Student Communication in the Institutes of: C-LearniXML++ Original Research Article Pages 1762-1769 Habib M. Fardoun, Sebastian Romero Lopez, Daniyal M. Alghazzawi, Jaime Ramirez Castillo Show preview | PDF (928 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 297 Linguistic Orientation and Methodological Perspectives in the Philosophy of the Contemporary Education Original Research Article Pages 1770-1774 Iuliana Barna, Mihai Androne, Corina Dobrotă Show preview | PDF (454 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 298 The Miracle of Communication as a Global Issue in Clinical Learning Motivation of Nursing Students Original Research Article Pages 1775-1779 Nasrin Hanifi, Soroor Parvizy, Soodabeh Joolaee Show preview | PDF (728 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 299 Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research the Effects of Computer Asssited Simulations of Physics Experiments on Learning Original Research Article Pages 1780-1786 Turhan Civelek, Erdem Ucar, Orhan Gokcol Show preview | PDF (848 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 300 The Role of Teaching Experience on Teachers’ Perceptions of Language Assessment Original Research Article Pages 1787-1792 Sehnaz Sahinkarakas Show preview | PDF (544 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles Page 10 of 10Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Vol 47, Pgs 1-2246, ,(2012) | ScienceDirect... 15/02/2013http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_method=list&_hubEid=1-... Articles All fields Author Advanced search Images Journal/Book title --This Journal/Book-- Volume Issue Page Search Search tips Sign up for our job alerts Latest jobs direct to your inbox Looking for a job? Connect with the most prestigious organizations Looking for World Class Researchers? Post your job on ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved About this Journal | Shortcut link to this Title < Previous vol/iss | Next vol/iss > Font Size: Add to my Quick Links Volume 47, Pages 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER-2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Edited by Hüseyin Uzunboylu New Article Feed Alert me about new articles Add to Favorites = Full-text available = Abstract only Volume 69 (2012) Volume 68 (2012) Volume 67 (2012) Volume 66 (2012) Volume 64 (2012) Volume 63 (2012) Volume 62 (2012) Volume 61 (2012) Volume 60 (2012) Volume 59 (2012) Volume 58 (2012) Volume 57 (2012) Volume 56 (2012) Volume 55 (2012) Volume 54 (2012) Volume 53 (2012) Volume 52 (2012) Volume 51 (2012) Volume 50 (2012) Volume 49 (2012) Volume 48 (2012) Volume 47 (2012) Volume 47 pp. 1-2246 (2012) Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research (CY-ICER- 2012) North Cyprus, US08-10 February, 2012 Volume 46 (2012) Volume 45 (2012) Volume 44 (2012) Volume 43 (2012) Volume 42 (2012) Volume 41 (2012) Volume 40 (2012) Volume 39 (2012) Volume 38 (2012) Volume 37 (2012) Volume 36 (2012) Volume 35 (2012) Volume 34 (2012) Volume 33 (2012) Volume 32 (2012) Volume 31 (2012) E-mail articles | Export citations | PDF downloader | Open all previews 301 Transition Programme and Barriers to Participating in the Employment Sector Among Hearing Impaired Students in Malaysia Original Research Article Pages 1793-1801 Madinah Mohd Yusof, Mohd Hanafi Mohd Yasin, Siti Hawa Hashim, Mahidin Awang Itam Show preview | PDF (432 K) | Related articles | Related reference work articles 302 E-Books as Textbooks in the Classroom Original Research Article Pages 1802-1809 Abd Mutalib Embong, Azelin M. 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work_3usfcgzurnakbakdslpsbzfs2m	----	Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 1 Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module AA van Rooyen Department of Financial Accounting University of South Africa Abstract The University of South Africa (Unisa), as a distance education institution, is continuously challenged to lessen the negative impact distance has on students’ learning. The effective use of technologies affords distance education institutions with valuable opportunities to enhance teaching and support students’ learning. Using online technologies in the context of a developing country like South Africa often remains unrealised because of the persistent impact of lack of access, bandwidth and cost to students. Most students, however, have mobile phones, thus creating an ideal opportunity for distance education institutions to increase the effectiveness of learning. This article investigated students’ responses to a pilot study aimed at integrating short message systems (SMSs) into the study experience of accounting students at Unisa. This research found that students overwhelmingly experienced this initiative not only as support but also more importantly as assistance to enable them to study more effectively. On the basis of the evidence provided, it is evident that using mobile technology can enhance the learning experience of accounting students and provide them with a more satisfying and successful experience. Key words Accounting; distance education; mobile learning; short message system (SMS); student support 1 Introduction Higher education in general and educators at distance learning institutions in particular are constantly challenged to increase the effectiveness of their teaching by improving student retention and throughput. One of the strategies available, especially for distance education institutions, is the effective integration of different technologies in their teaching. The success of students and the institution depends not only on the quality of the learning package, but also on the quality and scope of the support given to the student. Many students at distance education institutions, including Unisa, are often alienated and discouraged by negative (and unsuccessful) experiences in their engagement with distance Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module 2 Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 education. High-risk modules, such as those in accounting, demand special intervention for those students trapped in perpetual failure cycles. The better the support for students and the easier their access to it, the less likely they will be to consider dropping out. The main mode of teaching delivery at Unisa is printed study material, although the University has recently launched several initiatives to increase the effective use of technologies. With the increasing availability of mobile devices, there has been a shift in higher education from delivering information and study material in the print medium only towards the use of mobile devices. Higher education institutions use mobile devices to supply their students with information about timetable changes, assessment deadlines and other urgent administrative details (see Keegan 2005:67). In addition to administrative support, research by Barker, Krull and Mallinson (2005:17) confirms that wireless technologies in education have an impact on motivation, which results in benefits for students. In a technology-mediated study (Lillie 2008:267), positive feedback was received from auditing students on the use of technology tools. According to Zawacki-Richter, Brown and Delport (2007:20) innovative faculty teachers should consider adopting mobile learning because mobile technologies afford new opportunities for both teaching and learning. Mobile technologies provide an affordable and easily accessible technology that lecturers can use effectively to assist accounting students with their studies. The popularity of SMS (short message service) messaging among students provides opportunities to exploit the possibilities of using SMS for teaching and learning (Ng'ambi 2005:116). The University of Pretoria started using SMS for support in 2002 in three paper-based distance education programmes (Keegan 2005:68). A research project undertaken at the University of Cape Town has given some insight into the way mobile devices can be used effectively at a minimum cost to assist educators in student support (Ng'ambi 2005:119). Mobile support has the potential to improve students’ success rates and enhance the quality of the learning experience. This article reports on a pilot study undertaken at Unisa in 2006 and 2007 to determine how mobile phones could be used effectively to guide second-year Accounting (ACN202R) students through their studies, communicate with the students on a regular basis, motivate them and ensure that they received important information. The following hypothesis was tested in this research: Does receiving SMSs from the lecturer assist students with their learning? The data may assist in the planning of more effective learning interventions, which will have a positive impact on students’ retention rate. 2 Literature review Students’ departure from higher education institutions is not a new problem. Many retention efforts have failed because of an inability to understand exactly why students leave (Tinto 1998:167). Researchers agree that the causes of retention are complex, but the absence of sufficient contact with members of the institution is at the top of the list of factors that affect the retention rates of students (Astin 1997:40; Berger & Braxton 1998:116; Freeman, Hall & Bresciani 2007:768). Through the support of technologies, student success rates could be improved and the quality of the learning experience enhanced (Barker et al. 2005:22; Stone 2005:183; De Lange, Suwardy & Mavondo 2003:10). Most institutions concur that distance education students need better support to boost their confidence and enable them to work properly. Van Rooyen Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 3 The diverse group of distance education students in the South African context have one thing in common – a mobile phone (Louw 2005:104). The current advances in mobile technology could enable the formation of learning environments enriched by this technology – hence the need to reconceptualise learning for the mobile age. Mobile phone networks extend to rural areas (Sharples, Taylor & Vavoula 2005; Brown 2004; Barker et al. 2005:17) and allow people in rural communities not only to make phone calls but also to enjoy the benefits of mobile services such as text and multimedia messaging. Mobile technologies enable people to communicate regardless of their location. Mobile phones allow people to communicate by means of SMS, and communication is a vital element in distance education. Louw (2005:103) quotes Dhanarajan (1996) as follows: “A course is much more than a package of study materials … they (the students) must be supported in various ways. They may be distant from their teaching institution, but they must not be isolated.” Louw comments that one of the most effective means of support in the distance learning environment is to make contact with the student – anything that will bring the lecturer and the student closer together so that there can be a “meeting of minds” (Louw 2005:103). She is of the opinion that if a student receives an SMS from the university at which he or she is enrolled, he or she would probably feel excited about being part of this new adventure called learning. Louw (2005:104) goes on to say that a distance education institution should □ help its students by minimising the effects of isolation □ minimise the dropout rate □ improve the students’ learning experience Distance education, e-learning and mobile learning are all terms relating to modern education. They denote an integration of information technologies and communication tools to support educational professionals in remote teaching (Shih & Hung 2007:1; Traxler & Leach 2006:98-102). Technology changes what we do and what we can do. This is especially applicable to teachers and students. Over the past few years a trend has emerged in applying emerging technologies to support learning in ever more challenging situations (Mildrad, Spector & Davidsen 2003:13; De Lange et al. 2003:1). These technologies can reach students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to participate in education (Colley & Stead 2005:57; Stead 2005:153-156). The use of technologies is beginning to have a positive effect on teaching because it has an impact on student retention and achievement (Bates 2000:21; De Lange et al. 2003:1-14; Kukulska-Hulme & Pettit 2009:135-156; Joshi & Chugh 2009:1-10). Keegan (2005) defines mobile learning as the provision of education on mobile phones. Mobile learning happens across locations or takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies. The term “mobile learning” is increasingly being applied to the use of small, portable, handheld electronic devices used for educational activities (Traxler & Leach 2006:98; Stead 2005:153). Since e-learning is the macro concept that includes online and mobile learning environments, mobile learning can be viewed as a subset of e-learning (Zawacki-Richter et al. 2007:3). The world of education and training is divided into two halves known as conventional education and distance education. Conventional education is referred to as traditional or face-to-face education. Mobile learning is a subdivision of distance education and is a rich form of education and training provision on mobile phones (Keegan 2005:66; Zawacki-Richter et al. 2007:3). Mobile Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module 4 Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 technology affords users the opportunity to communicate among themselves and develop collaborative learning. There is little data on the use of mobile phones in accounting education. There are only a few systematic literature reviews and most of the studies are merely descriptive. Studies note problems with the technology, such as poor battery life or small screens, but students seem to enjoy using mobile phones (Sandars 2006:551). A study by Trifonova (2003) describes the use of mobile phone messages for matters such as lecture times or examination results. In a study conducted by Horstmanshof (2004), the two-way exchange of messages between tutors and students was noted as being effective. Feedback from students in mobile learning project trials has indicated that users enjoy the content and love the collaboration (Colley & Stead 2005:57). According to Sandars (2006), the high level of mobile phone use among undergraduate students suggests that they are unlikely to avoid the use of mobile phones. In an experiment on the use of SMS to support the learning of new English words, students expressed their satisfaction with and enjoyment of learning with the help of their mobile phones and SMSs (Cavus & Ibrahim 2009:88). 3 Background to the study It takes the average Unisa student nine years to complete a degree and only about 15% of students persevere to the end (Louw 2005:104). Students at Unisa must enrol for ACN202R as part of the prescribed curriculum for a Bachelor in Accounting Science (BCompt). Almost 50% of students registered for ACN202R have failed the module at least once. A study by Prinsloo and Van Rooyen (2007:57) in 2004 found that of the students registered for ACN202R, 61.37% had registered for ACN202R for the first time, while 58.91% had registered for the module more than once. Face-to-face interventions such as group discussions afford students the opportunity to attend sessions with the course lecturer. Group discussions were held in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town in 2004, but less than 22% of the respondents in the 2004 survey indicated that they had attended the group discussions (Prinsloo & Van Rooyen 2007:58). The reasons for nonattendance varied from logistical concerns to difficulty obtaining time off from employers. ACN202R is identified as a high-risk module. A module is considered to be high risk when it has a withdrawal rate of 30% or greater for several academic terms (Student Academic Resource Center 2009:1). Students generally have to pass these high-risk modules in order to pursue a particular major, as in the case of ACN202R. As part of a broader strategy, a project was launched to investigate students’ perceptions of the use of mobile technologies in supporting them in their studies. Using a mobile phone to enhance learning is practical at Unisa because almost all students have access to one. It is also relatively cheap - an SMS costs less than 20 cents to reach a student through the University’s Learning Management System. The fact that most students in ACN202R have a mobile phone creates a number of opportunities to enrich teaching and learning. Research has shown that almost 70% of students registered for the ACN202R module are between the ages of 20 and 30 (Prinsloo & Van Rooyen 2007:56). In 2009, the number increased to nearly 72%. According to Hollands (2006), sending text messages has become the “cool way to communicate” and the ubiquitous abbreviations and accompanying lack of punctuation now come automatically to many in the younger generation. The mobile phone interventions, which consisted of two distinct phases, started in 2006. The first phase entailed drawing up Van Rooyen Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 5 12 SMS messages that could be sent to students over a 14-week period. In 2006, the content of the ACN202R module consisted of four topics, namely group financial statements, financial analysis, time value of money and valuations. The difficulty levels of the topics, the number of pages per topic and the due dates for assignments were taken into consideration when the ACN202R lecturers compiled the 12 SMSs. An SMS was sent once a week, on Monday mornings, informing students which section of the study material needed to be covered during the following week. In some instances, two weeks were allocated for more difficult and complex sections of the syllabus. SMSs of 160 characters or fewer were sent to registered students’ cell phone numbers, which were available on their student accounts. The lecturers compiled these 12 SMSs in SMS language. ACN202R is a semester module. The first pilot project was completed during the five- month cycle from June to October 2006, with 2 197 students writing their examination on 16 October 2006. The second pilot period, in the same module, ran from January to May 2007, and the 2 669 students wrote their examination on 30 May 2007. The third pilot project ran from June to October 2007, and the 2 426 students wrote the examination on 15 October 2007. In all three semesters, the first SMS was sent a week after registration closed and the last SMS a few days before the examination. Students registered for the module received three types of SMS from their lecturers namely an informational, motivational or academic support SMS, as set out in table 1: Table 1: SMSs sent to ACN202R students SMS number Type of SMS Wording of SMS 1 Informational Welcome 2 ACN202! Lecturers will SMS u every week with workload for that week. U need 2 have text book and financial calculator. 2 Academic and informational ACN202. Let’s do pages 1-42 of guide this week. Do as many exercises as possible-do not just read thru text. Guide is available on myUnisa. 3 Academic and informational ACN202. Next 2 weeks work on pages 43-83 of guide. Plse submit 1st assignment be4 14/8. U can submit via myUnisa. 4 Academic and motivational ACN202.This week work thru pages 84-101. Hope u’re still on schedule. U’re not on your own-there are 2500 students doing this module with u. Ur family and friends r proud of u. 5 Academic and informational ACN202. This week we’re doing pages 102-142 and next week 143-172. Start questions 1 to 4 of assign 2. Practice makes perfect! 6 Academic ACN202. This week do pages 173-227 and Q5 from assign2. U can also do Q1 to Q6 in tut letter 101 page 53. 7 Academic ACN202. This week Topic B. Guide pages 228-249 and text book pages 1-84. Summarize formula on A4 paper and learn every day. 8 Academic and informational ACN202. This week Topic C. Guide pages 250-260 and text book 85-129. U must use either tables, formula or calculator in exam. 9 Academic ACN202 - last topic this week. Topic D. Guide pages 261-285 and text book 130-228. Do Q1 to Q5 from assign 3. 10 Academic ACN202. Start revision. Work thru Q1 to Q11 in tut letter 101 page 53. Do not look at answer b4 Q complete. Mark. Must complete within available time. 11 Academic Work thru as many ACN202 questions as possible these last 2 weeks. Everyday 1 question from each topic. Learn your formula. Practise, practise! 12 Motivational Good luck with ACN202 exam Monday. U’ve come a long way-u can do it!! Do all questions! Show all calculations. Rather write 2 much than 2 little. Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module 6 Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 4 Methodology The pilot study entailed compiling a questionnaire (appendix A) and sending it to students registered during the third pilot period. Ethical clearance and permission for this study were obtained from the head of department. A covering letter attached to the questionnaire stated the aim of the research for the students and guaranteed their anonymity. Since previous research findings indicated that not all ACN202R students have access to emails (Prinsloo & Van Rooyen 2007:68), it was decided to send the questionnaires by mail instead. The questionnaire was included in a tutorial letter sent to students at the end of the semester. The purpose of the questionnaire was to establish the answers to the following questions: □ Did students receive the SMSs? □ Why did students not receive the SMSs? □ Could students finish the workload given in every SMS in the particular week? □ Did the SMSs assist students with their studies? □ Would a reply SMS to lecturers be helpful? □ Did students have a problem with the SMS language used? □ Was the first SMS sent at a good time? The questionnaire was compiled and sent to all 2 963 students registered for the module ACN202R in the second semester of 2007. An extremely low percentage of questionnaires was returned - only 230(less than 8%). The results of this pilot study cannot therefore be used to make generalised assumptions about the whole study population. According to Benke and Street (1992:39), the results should therefore only be viewed as tentative because the response rate to the questionnaire was below 80%. However, the data gathered from the returned questionnaires do provide some insight about a small part of the whole study population. The returned questionnaires were analysed and students’ responses coded. An academic outside the Department of Financial Accounting verified the results. As an additional source of information, student emails and postings on the discussion forum were also analysed, coded and verified. 5 Analysis and discussion of the questionnaire results In this discussion, the sequence of the questions in the questionnaire is followed. A remarkable 95.15% of the students indicated that they did have a cell phone (Question 1) and 90% of them did receive the SMSs (Question 2). The reasons advanced for students not receiving the SMSs were that either their mobile phone number was not on the Unisa system or their mobile phone number had changed during the semester and they had not updated their personal information (Question 3). More than 60% of the respondents indicated that they could cope with the workload indicated per SMS, while 23.85% felt that there was too much work for the week (Question 4). Previous research had found that almost 35% of the study population of ACN202R was full-time students (Prinsloo & Van Rooyen 2007:56). Part-time students were more likely to feel a need for less work per week than their full-time counterparts. Just over 80% of the respondents indicated that they had benefited from the SMSs (Question 5), while 89.50% indicated that they would like to communicate with their lecturers by sending a reply message to them (Question 6). In 2007, the Unisa system could Van Rooyen Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 7 not accommodate reply SMSs of this kind. As a result of the findings of this research project, the Unisa system was updated and a trial run implemented for ACN202R students to send SMSs to the ACN202R lecturers during the first semester of 2009. Of the respondents, 88.18% indicated that they could understand the SMS messages (Question 7), while 18.72% indicated that lecturers should send the first SMS a week later, with 7.76% opting for the first SMS two weeks later (Question 8). Data gathered from emails sent to the lecturers confirmed the above data. Twelve emails were received in the period June 2007 to October 2007. None of the emails received by the lecturers with regard to the SMSs was negative. Extracts from the emails received from students are provided below. The extracts are direct quotes and the grammar and spelling errors have not been corrected. The quotes are anonymous: “Used the sms\s, found them very motivating_an excellent guide 4 keeping on track with my studies” “SMS ws gr8 help. It cut down planning time” “SMS kept me reminded of my schedule and it provided a standard to measure progress. Before the exam it was amusing” “Thank you for the weekly sms’s – they are a great help!” “Thank you for the sms send today. I feel motivated, and even looking forward to picking up my ACN202 books with all the support! It is nice to know the lecturers are behind us” Students also commented on the use of the SMSs on the ACN202R discussion forum on the myUnisa webpage during the period June 2007 to October 2007. An extract from the discussion forum is provided below. The extract includes direct quotes and grammar and spelling errors have not been corrected. The quotes are anonymous: Student A “Thank you for the ACN202 lecturer sms! I think it’s a wonderful idea and definitely think the other modules should consider doing this as well. I feel more connected and driven. It is very much appreciated, thank you!” Student B “Yha! Guys the lecturers sms’s are inspiring they really keep us strong even though im behind their schedule” Student A “I am a little behind schedule, but still going strong!” Student C “How many of you are still keeping up? just reply yes or no” Student D “The lecturer sms’s – wow, they fantastic! I feel quite motivated” Student E “I also like receiving the sms’s” Student F “I agree fully, this is the only course where I feel motivated to study, and I can feel the lecturer’ support” 6 Conclusion The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the way mobile phones could be used in an accounting module at Unisa to guide students through their studies and in so doing, provide a more satisfying experience. In the light of the number of variables outside of the control of students and the institution in a distance education setting (Prinsloo & Subotzky 2009), it was impossible to prove any direct relationship between this pilot project and student success. On the basis of the evidence provided, the use of mobile technology can enhance the learning experience of accounting students and provide them with guidance, motivation and the “personal touch”, so often missing in distance education. This study pointed to the possibility of reaching a greater percentage of students than through the traditional group discussions. Since the majority of students have a mobile phone, lecturers could focus on Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module 8 Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 the effective use of this technology. By supporting and guiding students with the use of mobile technologies, it may be possible to increase student success and retention. In this study, access to other technologies was not investigated, but the effective use of technologies could become an integral part of the future learning approach in accounting education at Unisa. Further research would be required to investigate the sustainability of SMSs in other accounting modules at Unisa and the scale to which these could be implemented. Bibliography Astin, A.W. 1997. How “good” is your institution's retention rat? Research in Higher Education, 38(6):647. Barker, A., Krull, G. & Mallinson, B. 2005. A proposed theoretical model for m-learning adoption in developing countries. Conference proceedings: Mobile technology: the future of learning in your hands, 4th World Conference on mLearning, October 25 to 28, Cape Town, South Africa. mLearn. Bates, A.W. 2000. Lessons in the application of educational technologies in South Africa. http://www.saide.org.za/Resources/registrationforms/Lessons%20in%20Application%2 0of%20Technologies.pdf. Accessed: 10 September 2009. Benke, R.L. & Street, D.L. 1992. Accounting education research methodology. Accounting Education, 1(1):33-45. Berger, J.B. & Braxton, J.M. 1998. Revising Tinto's interactionalist theory of student departure through theory elaboration: Examining the role of organizational attributes in the persistence process. Research in Higher Education, 39(2):103-119. Brown, T. 2004. Exploring future learning paradigms: Will m-learning survive. Conference proceedings: Conference keynote address: Mobile learning anytime everywhere, July 5 to 6, Rome, Italy. mLearn 2004. Cavus, N. & Ibrahim, D. 2009. m-Learning: An experiment in using SMS to support learning new English language words. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(1):78-91. Colley, J. & Stead, G. 2005. Mobile learning = collaboration. Conference proceedings: Mobile learning anytime everywhere, 2004 mLearn Conference, July 5 to 6, Bracciano, Rome. Learning and Skills Development Agency. De Lange, P., Suwardy, T. & Mavondo, F. 2003. Integrating a virtual learning environment into an introductory accounting course: Determinants of student motivation. Accounting Education, 12(1):1-14. Freeman, J.P., Hall, E.E. & Bresciani, M.J. 2007. What leads students to have thoughts, talk to someone about, and take steps to leave their institution? College Student Journal, 41(4):755-770. Hollands, B. 2006. Is dis da future of English? http://www.weekendpost.co.za/main/2006/04/22/news/nl103_22042006.htm. Accessed: 25 January 2008. Van Rooyen Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 9 Horstmanshof, L. 2004. Using SMS as a way of providing connection and community for first year students. Conference proceedings: 21st ASCILITE Conference, December 5 to 8, Perth, Australia. ASCILITE. Joshi, M. & Chugh, R. 2009. New paradigms in the teaching and learning of accounting: Use of educational blogs for reflective thinking. International Journal of education and development using ICT, 5(3):1-10. Keegan, D. 2005. The incorporation of mobile learning into mainstream education and training. Conference proceedings: Mobile technology: the future of learning in your hands, 4th World Conference on mLearning, October 25 to 28, Cape Town, South Africa. mLearn 2005. Kukulska-Hulme, A. & Pettit, J. 2009. Practitioners as innovators: Emergent practice in personal mobile teaching, learning, work and leisure. Edmonton: AU Press, Athabasca University. Lillie, R.E. 2008. Using a technology-mediated approach to create a practice-feedback- interaction process for use with accounting courses. Advances in Accounting Education, 9:267. Louw, W. 2005. Taking the distance out of distance education through the means of mLearning. Conference proceedings: Mobile technology: The future of learning in your hands, 4th World conference on mLearning, October 25 to 28, Cape Town, South Africa. mLearn 2005. Mildrad, M., Spector, M. & Davidsen, P. 2003. Model facilitated learning. London: Kogan Page. Mouly, G.J. 1978. Educational research: the art and science of investigation. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Ng'ambi, D. 2005. Mobile dynamic frequently asked questions (DFAQ) for student and learning support. Conference proceedings: Mobile technology: the future of learning in your hands, 4th World Conference on mLearning, October 25 to 28, Cape Town, South Africa. mLearn. Prinsloo P. & Subotzky G.I. 2009. Modeling throughput at Unisa: the key to the successful implementation of ODL. Discussion document. Pretoria, South Africa: Unisa. Prinsloo, P. & Van Rooyen, A.A. 2007. Exploring a blended learning approach to improving student success in the teaching of second year accounting. Meditari Accountancy Research, 15(1):51-69. Sandars, J. 2006. Mobile phones in undergraduate medical education: the tide is beginning to flow. Education for Primary Care, 17(6):549-556. Sharples, M., Taylor, J. & Vavoula, G. 2005. Towards a theory of mobile learning. http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Pu_9UCvlh60J:www.mlearn.org.za/CD/papers/Sha rpl. Accessed: 30 January 2008. Shih, T.K. & Hung, J.C. 2007. A survey of distance education challenges and technologies. London: Information Science Publishing. Stead, G. 2005. Moving mobile into the mainstream. Conference proceedings: Mobile technology: the future of learning in your hands, October 25 to 28, Cape Town. mLearn. Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module 10 Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 Stone, A. 2005. Blended learning, mobility and retention: supporting first-year university students with appropriate technology. Conference proceedings: Mobile learning anytime everywhere, 2004 mLearn Conference, July 5 to 6, Bracciano, Rome. Learning and Skills Development Agency. Student Academic Resource Center. 29 June 2009. Success starts at SARC. http://www.sarc.sdes.ucf.edu/sifaculty.php. Accessed: 11 September 2009. Tinto, V. 1998. Colleges as communities: taking research on student persistence seriously. The Review of Higher Education, 21(2):167-177. Traxler, J. & Leach, J. 2006. Innovative and sustainable mobile learning in Africa. Conference proceedings: International workshop on wireless, mobile and ubiquitous technology in education, November 16 to 17, Athens, Greece. IEEE. Trifonova, A. 2003. Report: Mobile learning - review of the literature. Report number: # DIT-03-009. Trento, Italy. Zawacki-Richter, O., Brown, T. & Delport, R. 2007. Mobile learning - a new paradigm shift in distance education? http://auspace.athabascau.ca:8080/dspace/bitstream/2149/1258/1/Zawacki- Richter_Brown_Delport%20mlearn06.pdf. Accessed: 7 September 2009. Van Rooyen Meditari Accountancy Research Vol. 18 No. 1 2010 : 1-11 11 Appendix A n = 230 Frequency missing Question 1 Do you own a cell/mobile phone? 3 • Yes 95.15% • No 4.85% Question 2 The ACN202R lecturers sent SMSs to students during the semester. Did you receive these SMSs? (Tick ONE only) 10 • Yes 90.00% • No 10.00% Question 3 Why do you think you did not receive the SMSs? (Tick ONE only) 22 • I did receive the SMSs 88.46% • My cellphone number is not on the Unisa system 4.81% • My cellphone number changed and I did not correct it on the Unisa system 1.92% • Other – please specify 4.81% Question 4 Each SMS indicated to you what work to study in a particular week. Which ONE of the following do you think best describes the workload per SMS? 12 • Too much work per SMS 23.85% • Too little work per SMS 1.38% • Can cover work within time allocated per SMS 64.68% • Did not receive the SMSs 10.09% Question 5 Are you of the opinion that the SMSs helped you with your studies? (Tick ONE only) 11 • Yes 80.37% • No 9.59% • Did not receive the SMSs 10.05% Question 6 Do you think it would be helpful if you could send a reply SMS to your lecturer with regard to study queries? (Tick ONE only) 11 • Yes 89.50% • No 10.50% Questions 7 Lecturers used “sms language” when sending the messages for example 4 u 2 learn. Did you understand all the messages? (Tick ONE only) 10 • I understood all the messages 88.18% • I had problems understanding some of the messages 2.27% • I could not understand the messages at all - • I did not receive the SMSs 9.55% Question 8 The first SMS was sent on 20 July 2007 (registrations closed on 17 July 2007). With which ONE of the following do you agree? 11 • I did not receive the SMSs 13.70% • The first SMS should be sent 1 week later 18.72% • The first SMS should be sent 2 weeks later 7.76% • The first SMS was sent at a good time 56.62% • Other – please specify 3.20% 
work_3wovkn4mqnbz7ed3uo4o5aklgy	----	Colouring the gaps in learning design: Aesthetics and the visual in learning Skip to main content Home Research Outputs People Faculties, Schools & Groups Research Areas Accountancy Africa Ageing Agricultural Management Agriculture Agriculture & Food Animal Care Any Arts Arts & Humanities Biomedical Sciences Biomedical/Medical Sciences/Health Biotechnology & Informatics Business Administration Cancer & Neurodegeneration Cell Signalling Chemical Engineering Chemistry Civil Law Computer Science Computing Social Sciences Criminal Law Education Energy Engineering Fisheries Food Food Analysis Food Management Fossil Fuels Gene Expression Health Higher Education Housing Humanities Infectious Diseases Journalism Education Land Management Law Management & Commerce Mathematics Mechanical Engineering Medical Science Other Miscellaneous Categories Peace Studies Physics Renewable Energy Sources Science & Technology Seafood Vegetables Research Centres/Groups Air Quality Management Resource Centre Applied Marketing Research Group Applied Statistics Group Bat Conservation Research Lab Big Data Enterprise and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Bristol Bio-Energy Centre Bristol Centre for Economics and Finance Bristol Centre for Linguistics Bristol Economic Analysis Bristol Group for Water Research Bristol Inter-disciplinary Group for Education Research Bristol Leadership and Change Centre Bristol Robotics Laboratory Centre for Appearance Research Centre for Applied Legal Research Centre for Architecture and Built Environment Research Centre for Fine Print Research Centre for Health and Clinical Research Centre for Machine Vision Centre for Moving Image Research Centre for Public Health and Wellbeing Centre for Research in Biosciences Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments Centre for Transport and Society Centre for Water, Communities and Resilience Collaborative Entrepreneurship Research Group Commercial Law Research Unit Computer Science Research Centre Creative Technologies Laboratory Data Research Access and Governance Network (DRAGoN) Digital Cultures Research Centre Document and Location Research Group Education Innovation Centre Engineering Modelling and Simulation Research Group Environmental Law and Sustainability Research Group Global Crime, Justice and Security Research Group Human Resources, Work and Employment Innovation, Operations Management and Supply Institute for Sustainability, Health and Environment Institute of Bio-Sensing Technology Mathematics and Statistics Research Group Moving Image Research Group Psychological Sciences Research Group Regional History Centre Research Group in Mathematics and its Applications Robotic Engineering and Computing for Healthcare - FET Science Communication Unit Social Justice Research Group Social Science Research Group Software Engineering Research Group Sustainable Economies Research Group (SERG) The WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environment Unconventional Computing Group Visual Culture Research Group Browse By Year By Author By Type About OAI Research Repository All Output Person Project Advanced Search Colouring the gaps in learning design: Aesthetics and the visual in learning Carroll, Fiona; Kop, Rita Home Outputs Authors Fiona Carroll Fiona.Carroll@uwe.ac.uk Occasional Associate Lecturer - FET CSCT Rita Kop Abstract © 2016, IGI Global. The visual is a dominant mode of information retrieval and understanding however, the focus on the visual dimension of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is still quite weak in relation to its predominant focus on usability. To accommodate the future needs of the visual learner, designers of e-learning environments should advance the current attention on usability and functionality to include aesthetics, the visual and the affective. The challenge lies in finding a way to fully address the needs of the visual learner. This paper explores the role of visual aesthetics in improving engagement in online learning. Citation Carroll, F., & Kop, R. (2016). Colouring the gaps in learning design: Aesthetics and the visual in learning. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 14(1), 92-103. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJDET.2016010106 Journal Article Type Article Acceptance Date Jan 1, 2016 Publication Date Jan 1, 2016 Journal International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Print ISSN 1539-3100 Electronic ISSN 1539-3119 Publisher IGI Global Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 92-103 DOI https://doi.org/10.4018/IJDET.2016010106 Keywords aesthetics, colour, engagement, technology enhanced learning, visual learning Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/915682 Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/IJDET.2016010106 Additional Information Additional Information : This paper appears in International Journal of Distance Education Technologies authored by Fiona Carroll and Rita Kop. Copyright 2008, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher. 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work_3zhn4zwgongkjcclpafznfkxoq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_3zv7xlambjagjpzcckzinlq5ni	----	Microsoft Word - Panda1BR.docx ISSN: 2311-1550 Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 379-381 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International License. BOOK REVIEW Promoting Use and Contribution of Open Educational Resources SANJAYA MISHRA New Delhi: CEMCA, ISBN: 978-81-88770-31-1, pp xii+148. (Available online at http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2659) The current movement toward Open Educational Resources (OER) has a long historical precedence in the open education movements including that of the provision of equality of educational opportunity, recognising, though, that two individuals, not even twins, learn the same way. This later became a more contentious issue for the designers of OER as well as the planners with regard to, respectively: how best to serve the individual learning styles of learners, and what could be the cost-efficiency of alternative learning resources, including OERs. The above unresolved issues notwithstanding, the promise of OER (and subsequently MOOCs as a part of OER and the OER movement), starting from UNESCO’s coinage of the term and MIT’s opening up of large numbers of courses for free, and subsequent initiatives by UKOU, IGNOU, COL, EdX, Corsera, Udacity, Khan Academy and many others, has generated considerable enthusiasm in policy makers as well as academic leaders and teachers. ‘Open sharing’ has been a foundational issue for large-scale use of OER; and it is as much personal as systemic. Therefore, it is imperative that these and a multitude of dimensions need to be rigorously examined through research for its effective / productive use of OER. The now-recognised debate on adoption and use of ICT through the “dominant diffusion model of the past, and the social shaping model of the recent times” may help us appreciate how best OER can be leveraged to derive the most utility. The end-user is the key to OER theory and practice. It is in this context that the current research undertaken by Dr Mishra could be located. Teachers, as practitioners, are a sceptical lot, who need to be convinced that something is worth doing; need to be facilitated in how best to do it; and, most importantly, need a ‘system’ within which such a seamless activity can be undertaken. These are critical issues which need to be addressed; and the current research assumes considerable significance inasmuch as it has tried to comprehensively examine the issue from a variety of dimensions. The research, as part of ROER4D network and funded by IDRC (Canada), is very timely, and addresses how best OERs can be used / reused more effectively by both contributors and non-users. The study was conducted on 148 Indian college and university teachers (finally, 117 questionnaires and interviews could be analysed), who attended four interactive workshops on OER by the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) in four regions of the country. The interactive sessions included: just-a-minute sessions, interactive quiz sessions, snowball sessions, and panel discussions. A structured Attitude Towards Open Educational Resources (ATOER) scale, 380 developed by Mishra et al (2016), was used in this study. The scale was further standardised through factor analysis, and 17 statements (13 on sharing, and 4 on adaptation) were finally used. The study focused on four variables: attitudes, motivations, barriers, and quality—within a well-structured research framework derived from the Activity Theory of Engestrom (1987) and the idea of mediating tool advocated by Vygotsky (1978). While fully establishing the reliability and validity of the research instruments, the researcher has also adopted appropriate statistical tools to analyse data—both quantitative and qualitative. The quadrant used for analysis included: contributor-noncontributor-user-nonuser. The findings suggest that: i) though teachers generally have a positive attitude toward OER and are happy to ‘share’, they are not as much willing to use OER of others; ii) the most important user-motivation was willingness to share, followed by learning opportunities, collaboration and professional image, though, ‘learning effectiveness of students’ could not be identified as a motivator; iii) for perception of quality of OER, authenticity was a major factor, followed by appropriateness to current teaching-learning and localisation of content; iv) the major barriers included lack of knowledge about licensing and copyright issues, current teaching workload, lack of technical support, and absence of OER policy; and v) the regression analysis results indicate that the displayed positive attitude was highly influenced by opportunities of partnership, learning and recognition opportunities, and the philosophy of reaching-the-unreached. This is a comprehensive and well-designed study, and was conducted within a well-articulated framework, useful for both policy analysis as well institutional and faculty adoption of OER. More research, though, is needed to further crystalise how best OER can address the twin pillars of higher education in India today—numbers on one hand, to increase GER; and quality on the other hand, to achieve employability and happy living. Some research outputs by the reviewer, in collaboration with colleagues from Asia (Chen & Panda, 2012; Santosh & Panda, 2016; Panda & Santosh, 2017), may be of use to interpret the findings of Dr Mishra in context. I shall also suggest relating this study to Dr Mishra’s recent well-articulated paper on OER (Mishra, 2017). We need to focus also on some very interesting findings vis-à-vis unanswered questions. Why does a positive attitude toward OER not lead to actual use of OER? Is professional ethics anything to do with use of OER? Why is it that the prime factor of student actual use and learning effectiveness is not a significant motivator? Could important motivation factors include: i) Factoring of OERs in the API and promotion? ii) Who shares the cost of developing OER? iii) When one’s own OER is sharable, why bring in the issue of authentication of OER developed by others? How could private and some profit- making institutions use OERs to their advantage, and why are public institutions lagging behind? The researcher’s quadrant of types of OER practitioners (Figure on p. 12) further suggests that it is important to study a very important part of the quadrant, i.e., Why does one think of contributing, but not using OER? This is very disturbing. Furthermore, the model for promoting OER in India (Figure on p. 119) is highly appreciated. Experience tells us that lack of a ‘system’ is the major constraint in so far as use of ICT, including MOOCs and OER, in India is concerned. The system and culture of seamless facilitation and blending of ICTs and OER in teaching-learning, professional development including performance appraisal, and institutional accreditation is lacking. This needs further articulation. 381 However, this reported research is a very significant contribution to OER literature. I must note, not only that this is a significant addition to OER research literature, but also that the well-articulated research framework adopted by the researcher is worth consideration for future OER studies. References Chen, Q. & Panda, S. (2012). Needs for and utilization of open educational resources in distance education: A Chinese survey. Educational Media International, 2, 1-16. Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki, Finland: Orienta-Konsultit. Mishra, S., Sharma, M., Sharma, R. C., Singh, A., & Thakur, A. (2016). Development of a scale to measure faculty attitude towards open educational resources. Open Praxis, 8(1), 5-69. Retrieved from https://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/236 Mishra, S. (2017). Open educational resources: removing barriers from within. Distance Education, 38(3), 369-380. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1369350 Panda, S., & Santosh, S. (2017). Faculty perception of openness and attitude towards open sharing at the India national open university. International Review of Research in Distance and Online Learning. (in press) Santosh, S., & Panda, S. (2016). Sharing of knowledge among faculty in a mega open university. Open Praxis, 8(3), 247-264. Retrieved from https://www.openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/317/221 Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reviewed by: Santosh Panda is a professor of distance education, Staff Training & Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). In the past, he has been: Director, STRIDE & Director, Inter-University Consortium, IGNOU; Director, Association of Indian Universities (AIU), New Delhi; Director of Flexible Learning Centre, The University of the South Pacific, Fiji; a senior Fulbright Scholar, University of New Mexico, USA; and Chairperson, National Council for Teacher Education, Government of India. Email: spanda.ignou@gmail.com). 
work_43huo4btn5d4hjvdd5xsqy5c6u	----	International Journal of Soft Computing and Engineering International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8 Issue-2, July 2019 1379 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: B2029078219/19©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2029.078219  Abstract: This article highlights the important issues of distance learning. A brief history of the development of distance learning and individual approaches to the applicability of this type of training in modern conditions are given. An individual approach to distance learning allows you to expand the scope of various educational distance learning courses by involving the creative forces and interests of each participant of a particular distance learning resource. Each student of a distance course can ask questions based on their own interests and previously acquired knowledge, which will significantly expand the discussion and therefore the coverage of one or another course being studied. Index Terms: distance learning, chat classes, chat school, chat room, web forum, web classes, teleconference, online seminar, business, management I. INTRODUCTION The relevance of this article lies in the fact that it reveals the main methods and techniques of individual distance learning. Currently, it is very important to support individual ways of formation and further socialization of the individual. A person in modern conditions of information abundance needs the constant help of experienced teachers and mentors. Changes in the requirements of the social and professional environment determine a permanent presence in the role of the student. However, each person in his own way represents his role in society and in professional activities. Having individual trajectories and creative features of thinking about their activities, people using electronic means, online courses, etc., selects precisely those classes and asks precisely those questions to the teacher who are most interested in him. Having understood these issues, it becomes easier for a person to adapt to a social and professional environment. The topic of distance learning has been widely reflected in scientific discussions, which has shown that the approaches to the consideration of this issue are not unambiguous. So, Blokhovtsova G.G., Malikova T.L., Simonenko A.A. consider the prospects for the development of distance learning in general and indicate that this technique has a very real potential in the transfer of knowledge. In addition, this method reduces the time to obtain new knowledge. Distance, in their opinion, contributes to greater mobility of students of certain distance courses, which ultimately allows them to acquire new knowledge without interrupting their core activities. Valyushina N.M., Danilchenko V.M., Devterova Z.R. consider the organization and management of distance Revised Manuscript Received on July 06, 2019. Sergey Kh. Peteraitis, Togliatti State University, Russia. Olga L. Shepelyuk, Tyumen Industrial University, Russia. Irina N. Fardeeva, Kazan Federal Univrsity, Russia. learning to improve the efficiency of educators. Distance learning allows you to expand the scope of many of the knowledge gained, by increasing freedoms and assumptions in professional activities. The employee is involved in a greater number of factors of professional activity, which allows him to feel confidence and self-importance in the labor process. Ibatova A.Z., Ilin A.G. consider distance learning as an opportunity to use mass open online courses. MOOK, in their opinion, allow to reach a wider audience of listeners. However, these authors do not consider distance learning from the standpoint of an individual approach. Match V.T., Svechnikov S.V. offer to use distance learning to test students' knowledge in the university. Methods of using a web-based testing system for conducting classes offered in their work allow us to quickly determine the students' individual level of preparedness. However, their work does not fully reflect the principles of distance learning. Pashkina A.G., Semenova I.N., Markelova E.S., Smirnova N.A. consider the possibilities of distance learning as a means of individual work of a teacher with a student, as well as the basis for modeling individual educational trajectories of students with disabilities in distance learning. What is an important theoretical and practical rationale for the use of these methods in teaching people with disabilities. However, in their works, the issues of training disabled people in their approach to normal healthy people and the corresponding socialization, and the possibility of being equal in certain areas of activity are not sufficiently consecrated. II. METHODOLOGY This article uses the methods of content analysis, allowing to study the relevant literature on this topic. The method of system-structural analysis of the main modern terms and concepts allows us to more accurately understand their applicability in the framework of the study. The method of systematization of the results allowed to summarize the results of the study and draw the appropriate conclusions. The synergistic approach in this study allowed us to consider the organization of individual learning through the prism of systematic and self-organizing activities of an individual in the framework of social and professional activities. III. RESULTS The results of the study suggest that it is necessary to introduce mechanisms for an individual approach in training in distance education courses. The article provides basic theoretical recommendations on the use in distance learning of techniques that allow the teacher to act on the individual consciousness of each student through technical capabilities and pedagogical skills. The practical applicability of this work lies in the fact that Learning Strategies in Distance Education Sergey Kh. Peteraitis, Olga L. Shepelyuk, Irina N. Fardeeva Learning Strategies in Distance Education 1380 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: B2029078219/19©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2029.078219 its results can be applied in the further development of this problem of individual learning, as well as in the practical use of basic recommendations in distance learning. Distance learning (DL) - a set of technologies that provide delivery to students of the bulk of the material being studied, interactive interaction between students and teachers in the learning process, providing students with the opportunity for independent work with the development of the material studied. Modern distance learning is based on the use of the following elements: - E-mail, television, radio, information and communication networks; - Various methods and means of exchanging the necessary, in the framework of the training course, information. Among the use of interactive interaction with students in the form of information communication networks, the Internet users environment is massively distinguished. At the beginning of the 2000s, the development of a standard for remote online learning began, which provides for the widespread use of Internet technologies. The introduction of standards contributes to both the deepening of requirements for the composition of distance learning and the requirements for software. There are software developments that are widely used both by domestic and foreign organizations that provide distance learning services [4]. Distance learning is offered along with full-time, part-time tuition and evening external studies. The use of distance learning technologies allows you to: · Reduce the cost of training (no need for rental of premises, travel, etc.); · Conduct training with a large number of students; · To improve the quality of education through the use of modern tools, bulk electronic libraries, and so on; · Create an educational environment. Distance learning is a modernized correspondence course, which includes communication with a teacher via the Internet. In the process of learning, a student has learning materials, tests and examinations are performed, which are sent to the teacher. The student knows his teacher and methodologist, can ask questions and get answers. Distance learning occupies an important place in the modernization of modern education [2]. In Europe, at the end of the 18th century, with the advent of regular postal communication, the so-called “correspondent education” arose. Students received educational materials by mail, corresponded with teachers and took exams. The beginning of the twentieth century is characterized by rapid technological growth, the presence of a telegraph and a telephone. But there are no reliable facts about their use in training. The era of “correspondent education” continues and many universities around the world have led and still conduct this education. The advent of radio and television has made changes to distance learning. It was a significant breakthrough, in which the classroom has grown hundreds of times. However, there was a drawback - the student was not able to get feedback from the teacher. In 1969, in the UK, the first university in the world of distance education was opened - the Open University of Great Britain. He demonstrated the accessibility of education with the help of low prices and the lack of the need to frequently attend classroom studies. There are other famous universities with the same distance learning programs: University of South Africa, 1946, FernUniversitt in Hagen (Germany, 1974), National Technological University (USA, 1984) (distance education programs in engineering specialties), Open University Hagen (Germany) , INTEC-College Cape Town (South Africa), Spanish National University of Distance Learning, Open Business School of the British Open University, Australian Territorial Information Network. In the late 1980s, personal computers made it possible to simplify training. Computer tutorials were in the form of various games. In 1988, the Soviet-American project School Email was implemented. The pioneers of satellite distance learning technologies in the 1990s were the International Association "Knowledge" and the Modern Academy of Humanities. In the 21st century, the availability of computers and the Internet makes distance learning easier and faster. The Internet has become a huge breakthrough, significantly more than radio and television. There are opportunities to communicate and receive feedback from any student, wherever he is. The spread of “fast Internet” allowed the use of “online” seminars and other types of distance learning, as well as the use of the MOOC [5]. Distance learning, carried out using computer telecommunications, has the following forms of employment: - Chat classes - training sessions carried out using chat technologies. Chat classes are held simultaneously, that is, participants have simultaneous access to the chat. In the framework of many distant educational institutions there is a chat school in which the activities of distance teachers and students are organized with the help of chat rooms; - Internet classes - distance learning, conferences, seminars, business games, laboratory work, workshops and other forms of classes that are held using telecommunications and other Internet capabilities. For web-based classes, specialized educational web forums are used - a form of user work on a specific topic or problem using posts on one of the sites with a corresponding program. Web technology can also be widely used to test students' knowledge through testing. “The web-based testing system has the ability to determine the order in which test tasks are performed both linearly and randomly; in our case, a variant of linear test execution was determined” [6]; - newsgroups are usually based on email distribution lists. For educational teleconferencing is characterized by the achievement of educational objectives. So, distance learning is a democratic, simple and free system of education, which is actively used in Europe for receiving additional education. The student constantly performs practical tasks, acquires steady automated skills. “Distance learning is a set of technologies that allow students to get the bulk of the information being studied, interactive communication between students and teachers during training, as well as allowing students to work independently not only to master the material studied after class, but also during the training itself” [ International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8 Issue-2, July 2019 1381 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: B2029078219/19©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2029.078219 one; C.90]. Theoretical knowledge is assimilated without additional efforts, organically intertwining with the training exercises. The formation of theoretical and practical skills occurs in the process of systematic study of the material, listening to the lecturer exercises on audio and video media. Usually, with distance learning, students do not need to be constantly in the classroom. In many educational institutions that implement distance learning, are full-time classes in the evening or on weekends. These classes are not required to attend, but they are extremely useful for developing students' practical skills. Also, in a number of educational institutions, short (one-two-day) off-site schools are used, allowing to gather students on weekends for group When training and socializing people with disabilities, it is widely necessary to apply individualized distance learning methods. “... One of the effective ways to implement individual educational trajectories of students with disabilities is the use of distance learning technologies. Their importance in the process of teaching the allocated contingent of students is also actualized because specialized educational institutions are not always located in every village, that is, not always such students have the opportunity to study at the place of residence ”[8]. People with disabilities can get an education and make important additions to the subjects being studied along with healthy people, and maybe make discoveries. For distance learning, you can use various methods of conveying educational information. “The traditional teacher-student hierarchy, where subject-object relationships take place, is restructured in the conditions of distance learning. The partnership of the teacher and the student assumes that the latter also becomes an active subject of the learning process. The role of the teacher changes qualitatively: from a knowledge translator, he becomes the organizer of a successful learning process and the creator of an effective learning environment ”[7]. Many large companies are creating structural distance learning centers to standardize, reduce the cost and improve the quality of training of their staff. Virtually no modern company can live independently. For example, Microsoft has created a large educational portal for training its employees, users or customers of its products, and software developers. One of the forms of distance learning are online simulators and game managers. These games, imitating the management processes of various industries, businesses, have basic management, basic management skills of both a small company and a transnational corporation [9,10]. The question arises: how does distance learning differ from traditional distance learning? Distance learning is mainly based on the independent work of the student. “The emphasis on independent types of activity is currently considered a priority, not only in remote and correspondence forms, but also in person (classroom, stationary)” [3]. Communication takes place between the student and the teacher most often in writing. Distance learning is primarily a method of collaborative learning in groups. Joint group workshops, discussions, dialogues provide support and understanding for each group member. Here isolation, which is characteristic of distance learning, completely disappears. The method of teaching in remote groups also contributes to the accumulation of knowledge, as students constantly exchange information and there are more opportunities to achieve truth in the educational process [11]. There are special forums, chat rooms, online conferences where you can consult or discuss with students. In the virtual group there are people who want to learn how to work, improve their professional level, get new qualifications, new skills that are necessary for further professional development. For all students, distance learning methods provide the same opportunity to actively participate in seminars. Discrimination based on race or gender completely disappears in an atmosphere of interactive communication. The undoubted advantage of distance learning is the possibility of regular consultations with the teacher online and the individual approach of the teacher to each student. IV. CONCLUSION Thus, the following advantages of distance education can be highlighted: - Distance education corresponds to the principle of humanism, which provides an opportunity to learn low-income, socially vulnerable, students; - Distance learning is available to all segments of the population without restrictions, including for health reasons; - Distance learning is cheaper than traditional; - Distance learning is effective - the student chooses the class schedule, the pace of learning; - Distance learning is available to students from anywhere in the world; all you have to do is to have a computer and access to the Internet; - Distance learning is promising, since distance learning technologies in education are constantly being improved; - Distance education makes it possible to simultaneously study and work, that is, to apply knowledge in practice; - In distance learning uses the latest materials. REFERENCES 1. Blokhovtsova G.G., Malikova T.L., Simonenko A.A. Prospects for the development of distance learning / / New Science: Strategies and vectors of development. 2016. № 118-3. Pp. 89-92. 2. Valyushina N.M. Organization and management of distance learning in the system of advanced training of educators // Actual issues of modern science. 2009. № 10. P. 41-52. 3. Danilchenko V.M. Distance learning as a means of developing an individual style of activity // Telecommunications and informatization of education. 2004. No. 1. P. 66-84 4. Devterova Z.R. Modern approaches to the organization and management of distance learning // Humanization of education. 2010. No. 1. P. 58-63. 5. Ibatova A.Z., Ilin A.G. Study of the effectiveness of mooc in the modern educational space // Azimuth of scientific research: pedagogy and psychology. 2019. Vol. 8. No. 1 (26). Pp. 126-127. 6. Match V.T., Svechnikov S.V. Using a web-based testing system when conducting classes in high school. Modern information technologies and IT education. 2012. No. 8. P. 340-345. 7. Pashkina A.G. Distance learning as a means of individual work of a teacher with a student // Pedagogical education in Altai. 2014. № 1. P. 201-203. 8. Semenova I.N., Markelova E.S. Fundamentals of modeling individual educational trajectories of students with disabilities in distance learning // Pedagogical education in Russia. 2016. No. 7. P. 77-81. 9. Smirnova N.A. Information and communication technologies and learning management systems in distance education // Actual problems of the humanities and natural sciences. 2015. № 4-2. Pp. 142-144. 10. Smirnova N.A. Learning management systems in distance education // Conference proceedings SIC Sociosphere. 2014. No. 25. P. 129-131. Learning Strategies in Distance Education 1382 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: B2029078219/19©BEIESP DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2029.078219 11. Ilyin Aleksandr, Ibatova Aygul, Orientation of the modern educational process on the concept of truth//National academy of managerial staff of culture and arts herald. - 2017. - Vol., Is.2. - P.184-187. 12. Keegan, D. (2003). Distance training: Taking stock at a time of change. Routledge. 13. Aygul Z. Ibatova – Iskandar G. Mukhametgaliyev. (2018). New ways of professional language thesaurus formation among students of engineering specialties. XLinguae, Volume 11, Issue 4, October 2018, ISSN 1337-8384, eISSN 2453-711X. DOI: 10.18355/XL.2018.11.04.03 14. Berge, Z. L., Muilenburg, L. Y., & Haneghan, J. V. (2002). Barriers to distance education and training: Survey results. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 3(4), 409-418. 15. Fricker, P. A., Pyne, D. B., Saunders, P. U., Cox, A. J., Gleeson, M., & Telford, R. D. (2005). Influence of training loads on patterns of illness in elite distance runners. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 15(4), 246-252. 16. Spiros, R. K. (2003). Individual differences in motivation during distance training: The influence of goal orientation and self-efficacy on learning outcomes (Doctoral dissertation, ProQuest Information & Learning). 17. Lindberg, J. O., & Olofsson, A. D. (2005). Training teachers through technology: A case study of a distance-based teacher training programme (Doctoral dissertation, Umeå universitet). 18. Tarr, M. (1998). Distance learning-bringing out the best in training. Industrial and Commercial Training, 30(3), 104-106. 19. Perraton, H., & Creed, C. (1999). Distance Education Practice: Training and Rewarding Authors. Education Research Paper. Department for International Development, 94 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JL, England. 
work_44chjhik3nfuvkq2onp3wvlldi	----	10.11648.j.edu.20160501.12 Education Journal 2016; 5(1): 7-11 Published online March 4, 2016 (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/edu) doi: 10.11648/j.edu.20160501.12 ISSN: 2327-2600 (Print); ISSN: 2327-2619 (Online) Associate Degree Students’ Attitudes Towards Distance Education at the Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University Kadim Ozturk Buca Education Faculty, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey Email address: drkadimozturk@gmail.com To cite this article: Kadim Ozturk. Associate Degree Students’ Attitudes Towards Distance Education at the Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University. Education Journal. Vol. 5, No. 1, 2016, pp. 7-11. doi: 10.11648/j.edu.20160501.12 Abstract: Distance education is a generic term which includes the range of teaching and learning strategies used by higher education institutions, open universities, distance departments of conventional colleges and distance training units of conventional colleges. As educators consider implementing their traditional courses into distance learning, they should pay attention to the learning styles of the learners as well as their attitudes. The purpose of this study is to reveal the relation between university preparatory students’ attitudes towards distance education at DEU and identify the factors which result in the differences in their attitudes in relation to their age, the schools they graduated from and their current level of education, which means if they take distance education classes or not. This is a descriptive study with a quantitative approach. The data were collected via the Attitudes Towards Distance Education Questionnaire from 128 students and analyzed with SPSS packet program. The results show that the students of the vocational schools tend to have rather negative attitudes towards distance education and they do not consider it as beneficial or efficient in terms of their instruction. Additionally, it has been found that their attitudes vary significantly in terms of their gender, distance education status and the type of high school they graduated from whereas there is no statistically difference in their attitudes in terms of their age. Keywords: Attitude, Distance Education, Vocational Education 1. Introduction It is true that contemporary educational processes are currently being updated. As Guri-Rosenblit (2005) points out higher education systems all over the world are constantly being challenged by the new information and communication technologies (ICT). [1] Distance education has had a remarkable effect between 1970 and 2000 and its role to complement the conventional provision is considered and studied by most governments. Johnson (2003) defines distance education as a process in which instructor and learner are separated from each other during the majority of instruction. [2] However, it differs from independent or self- directed study in that within the body of distance learning an institution which plans curriculum exists. Daniel (1997: 15) also gives a definition of distance learning as ‘the offering of educational [programs] designed to facilitate a learning strategy which does not depend on day-to-day contact teaching but makes best use of the potential of students to study on their own. [3] It provides interactive study material and decentralized learning facilities where students can seek academic and other forms of educational assistance when they need it’. Therefore, distance learning is based on the view that technology is exploited in the learning process in which learners do not have an instructor to teach them. Indeed, Moore and Kearsley (2010) suggest that distance education has attracted millions of potential distance learners in America and around the world although it has been marketed as “e-learning” or “online learning.” [4] According to Keegan (1996: 12) distance learning is based on the following premises: � Distance education is a coherent and distinct field of educational endeavor: it embraces programs at a distance at primary and secondary, technical and further, college and university levels in both public and private sectors. It has existed for over a hundred years and is to be found today in most countries. � Distance education is a system of education. It can provide a complete educational program for both 8 Kadim Ozturk: Associate Degree Students’ Attitudes Towards Distance Education at the Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University children and adults outside of, and distinct from, conventional, oral, group-based provision. It has its own laws of didactical structure and its own quasi-industrial administrative procedures. � Distance education is a form of education fraught with problems for administrators, teachers, and students. It is characterized by the fragility of the non-traditional in education. These difficulties concern the quality, quantity, and status of education at a distance. Good practice in distance education seeks to provide solutions for these inherent difficulties. � Distance education is a needed component of most national education systems. [5] Bates (2004: 4) suggests that distance education is one of the few areas into which technology has stepped and one of the most striking features of distance learning is that ‘they are deliberately designed and structured to exploit the cost and educational benefits of technology. [6] Distance learning has therefore provided a valuable test bed for understanding the potential and limitations of a wide range of technologies in education’. Coombs (1978) also maintains that many highly developed governments and developing governments are no longer putting the money into educational buildings due to their changing political and developmental priorities. [7] Distance education also holds a significant place in Turkey. It is not a new concept and some private educational institutions such as Limasollu Naci and FONO have started public programs for teaching English. Moreover, Ministry of National Education established the Center for Educative Films, which was later transformed into a center of production and communication which focused on radio and television programs to be used as educational aids. [8] Following these developments, the first correspondence course was commenced by the Institute of Banking and Commerce, in the year 1954, Law Faculty of Ankara University. [8] Finally, in 1982, the Ministry of National Education started the open distance education program at Anadolu University. Currently, distance education program is becoming popular since Turkish educational environment has made efforts to become more international since 1982. [9] However, as some countries establish this system without the necessary training, instructors and practitioners alike might have to face some problems. Therefore, some extra work might be crucial in terms of cultural sensitivity of the learners to involve them in distance education programming. Within the body of this study, a descriptive study was carried out in order to diagnose the current conditions in terms of distance education programming at Dokuz Eylul University. Research Questions 1. What are the attitudes of associate degree students’ towards distance education at Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University? 2. Do the students’ attitudes towards distance education vary significantly in terms of a. the type of high school they graduated from, b. their gender, c. their age, d. their distance education status? 2. Method This study aims to reveal the attitudes of associate degree students’ towards distance education at Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University and identify the factors which result in the differences in their attitudes. It can be considered as a descriptive study with a quantitative approach. Descriptive statistics tell what is there rather than trying to determine cause and effect. The purpose of a descriptive research is to describe, explain, and validate findings by describing naturally occurring phenomena without experimental manipulation which often leads a quantitative style. [10] Such type of research tends to construct statistical models and figures to explain what is observed and makes use of tools such as questionnaires, surveys, measurements and other equipment to collect numerical or measurable data. [11] 2.1. Data Collection Instrument In this study, the data have been collected via the Attitudes Towards Distance Education Questionnaire developed by Ağır, Gür and Okçu (2008). [12] The questionnaire is a 5- point Likert scale. There are 21 items in the attitude scale and 14 of these items are positive whereas the other 7 are negative. The participants were expected to decide to what extent they agreed with each item on a 5-point scale: (1) Strongly disagree, (2) Disagree, (3) Neither Agree Nor Disagree, (4) Agree, (5) Strongly agree. The Kaiser-Meyer- Olkin coefficient of the scale (KMO) is 0.814, its significance value for the Barlett Test is 0.000 and its Cronbach-alpha reliability coefficient is 0.835. 2.2. Participants There are 6 other vocational schools in the body of Dokuz Eylül University: Justice Vocational School, Bergama Vocational School, İzmir Vocational School, Health- Occupation Vocational School and Torbalı Vocational School. The study was carried out at Torbalı Vocational School since only this school has distance learning program for its students. Therefore, 128 students at the Torbalı Vocational School of Dokuz Eylul University participated in the study. Of the 128 participants, 52 females and 76 males did the questionnaires. They come from different types of high schools. 46 of them graduated from general high schools or general vocational and technical high schools whereas 79 of them graduated from a kind of Anatolian high school which provides students with intensive second language programs. 49 of the participant students were following a distance education program while the other 79 were having a face to face education in classrooms. Finally, 98 of the students were between 18 and 20 years old and the other 30 of them were above 21. All the background information concerning the participants is summarized in Table 1. Education Journal 2016; 5(1): 7-11 9 Table 1. Participants. Number Percentage (%) Gender Male 76 59.4 Female 52 40.6 Type of high school General High School 49 38.3 Anatolian High School 79 61.7 Age 18-20 98 76.6 21+ 30 23.4 Distance Education Status Yes 49 38.3 No 79 61.7 2.3. Data Analysis Techniques The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The statistical analysis with Means, Frequency, One Sample Kolmogorov Smirnov Test, One-way ANOVA, T-test and Mann Whitney-U test were carried out in order to find out the answers to the research questions. One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test was computed to test the variable is normally distributed. The results of the analysis are presented in Table 2. Table 2. One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test results for the attitudes towards distance education questionnaire. Attitudes Towards Distance Education Questionnaire N 128 Normal Parameters x 2.57 ss 0.73 Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z 0.63 p 0.81* *p<0,05 As can be seen in Table 2, the test result is not statistically significant at the p<0.05 significance level (p=0.81). This means that the data are normally distributed and parametric tests can be applied in the analysis of the data. The homogeneity of variances was tested using Levene's Test of Equality of Variances and it was found that the significance levels for “gender” (p=0.24) and “distance education status” (p=0.09) were greater than 0.05 and these two do not violate the assumption of homogeneity of variance. However, the significance levels for “age” (p=0.00) and “the type of high school” (p=0.00) were lower than 0.05 and these two violate the assumption of homogeneity of variance. Therefore, t-test, which is one of the parametric tests, was applied for “gender” and “distance education status” whereas Mann Whitney-U test, which is one of the non-parametric tests, was implemented for “age” and “type of high school” in order to analyze the data. 3. Results The findings of the study are presented in terms of the two research questions. 1. What are the attitudes of associate degree students’ towards distance education at Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University? The mean of the attitude scale is ( X ) 2.57 and the standard deviation is 0.73. This indicates that the participants mostly disagree with the items in the attitude scale. Therefore, it can be concluded that they tend to have rather negative attitudes towards distance education and they do not consider it as beneficial or efficient in terms of their education. 2. Do the students’ attitudes towards distance education vary significantly in terms of the type of high school they graduated from, their gender, their age and their distance education status? An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of their gender. The results of the analysis are given in Table 3. Table 3. Independent t-test results for the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of their gender. Gender N X SS Sd t p Female 52 2.41 .62 126 -2.15 .03* Male 76 2.69 .78 *p<0.05 As can be seen in Table 3, there is a significant difference in the scores for females (M=2.41, SD=.62) and males (M=2.69, SD=.78); t (126) = -2.15, p = 0.03. These results suggest that gender has a significant effect on the learners’ attitudes towards distance education and females have more negative attitudes towards distance education than males. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of their distance education status. The results of the analysis are given in Table 4. Table 4. Independent t-test results for the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of their distance education status. Distance Education Status N X SS Sd t p Yes 49 2.39 .91 126 -2.30 .02* No 79 2.69 .57 *p<0.05 As can be seen in Table 4, there is a significant difference in the scores for the participants having distance education (M=2.39, SD=.91) and the ones having face to face education (M=2.69, SD=.57); t (126)=-2.30, p = 0.02. These results suggest that the distance education status has a significant effect on the learners’ attitudes towards distance education and the participants receiving distance education have more negative attitudes than the ones having face to face education. A Mann-Whitney U test was conducted to compare the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of their age. The results of the analysis are presented in Table 5. Table 5. Mann-Whitney u test results for the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of their age. Groups N Mean Rank Sum of Ranks U p 18-20 98 64.95 6365.00 1.426 .80* 21+ 30 63.03 1891.00 Total 128 *p<0.05 10 Kadim Ozturk: Associate Degree Students’ Attitudes Towards Distance Education at the Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University From Table 5, it can be concluded that the attitudes of the participants aged between 18 and 20 and the ones aged 21 and above are not statistically significantly (U = 1.426, p =.80). That is, the attitudes of the students towards distance education do not significantly differ in terms of their age group. A Mann-Whitney U test was conducted to compare the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of the type of high school they graduated from. The results of the analysis are presented in Table 6. Table 6. Mann-Whitney u test results for the learners’ attitudes towards distance education in terms of the type of high school they graduated from. Groups N Mean Rank Sum of Ranks U P General high school 49 52.82 2429.50 1.348 .01* Anatolian high school 79 68.93 5445.50 Total 128 *p<0.05 From Table 6, it can be concluded that the attitudes of the participants who graduated from a general high school are statistically significantly more negative than the ones who graduated from an Anatolian high school U = 1.348, p =.01). That is, the students having attended academically better schools do not have as much negative attitudes as the group having attended schools with lower levels of academic achievement. 4. Discussion This study aims to reveal the attitudes of associate degree students’ towards distance education at the Vocational Schools of Dokuz Eylul University and identify the factors which result in the differences in their attitudes. The results show that the students of the vocational schools tend to have rather negative attitudes towards distance education and they do not consider it as beneficial or efficient in terms of their instruction. Additionally, it has been found that their attitudes vary significantly in terms of their gender, distance education status and the type of high school they graduated from whereas there is no statistically difference in their attitudes in terms of their age. First of all, the findings indicate that the students of the vocational schools tend to have rather negative attitudes towards distance education and they do not consider it as beneficial or efficient in terms of their instruction since they have mostly disagreed with the items in the questionnaire. Some of the participant students started having distance education within the last one year and the others had all their instruction face to face. Therefore, they might not have enough information or experience to consider all the advantages of distance education. Additionally, that they are more accustomed to face to face education might have contributed to such a hesitating and rather negative approach towards distance education. Likewise, in Birişçi’s (2013) study with college students at Artvin Çoruh University, it was found that the students were undecided about the advantages of distance education although they were aware of some benefits of such an instruction. [13] Furthermore, the findings have revealed that the learners’ attitudes towards distance education vary significantly in terms of their gender, distance education status and the type of high school they graduated from. Accordingly, the males have more positive attitudes towards distance education than the females. However, in the field there are different studies with various results concerning the gender. Ateş and Altun (2008) and Süer, et. al. (2005) did not find any significant difference in the attitudes of their participants towards distance education in terms of their gender. [14, 15] Nevertheless, Horzum, Albayrak and Ayvaz (2012) conducted a similar study with teachers and found that male teachers had more positive attitudes towards distance education than females which is consistent with the findings of this study. [16] Males’ general keenness on technology might have also contributed to their developing more positive attitudes towards such an instruction requiring technological literacy. Similarly, the learners who did not receive any distance education have more positive opinions about this type of instruction than the ones who had distance education courses. This might have resulted from the fact that it was a new practice for the school which started distance education system within the last one year. Therefore, the students had to face a new experience that they were not accustomed to and tackle with some problems concerning the novelty of the system. Being more aware of the drawbacks, they might have stated more negative attitudes than the students who never had such an instruction and never experienced those difficulties. However, it could be expected as in the findings of Ateş and Altun (2008) and Ağır, Gür and Okçu’s (2008) studies that the students who had familiarity with distance education or some background information concerning this type of instruction would develop more positive attitudes towards it. [14, 12] On the other hand, in Horzum, Albayrak and Ayvaz’s (2012) research, the distance education status did not result in any significant difference in the attitudes of the participants. [16] Another factor creating significant difference in the attitudes of the participants is the type of high school they graduated from. The students who attended an Anatolian high school had more positive attitudes towards distance education than the others. Because the students who were admitted to Anatolian high schools were required to have more academic success than the others, they could be more knowledgeable and conscious about the advantages of distance education which might have helped them to develop more positive views. Günter, Güneş and Ofluoğlu-Demir (2012) state that every member of the distance education system should receive training and gain awareness about its advantages and applications which will bear more positive opinions about it. [17] Finally, the findings show that age does not result in any significant difference in the attitudes of the students of the vocational schools which might be due to the fact that they Education Journal 2016; 5(1): 7-11 11 were from closer to each other in terms of their age range. Another study with pretty distinctive age groups may reveal some significant differences in the attitudes towards distance education. 5. Conclusion All in all, it is seen that the students of the vocational schools tend to have rather negative attitudes towards distance education and they do not consider it as beneficial or efficient in terms of their instruction and their attitudes vary significantly in terms of their gender, distance education status and the type of high school they graduated from whereas there is no statistically difference in their attitudes in terms of their age. As Ülker-Ayyıldız, Günlük and Erbey (2006) state, there is a need for more research on the distance education in Turkey and an efficient training program both for the providers and for the recipients of this type of instruction so that a particular quality can be achieved and more positives attitudes can be developed towards distance education systems. [18] References [1] Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2005). ‘Distance Education’ and ‘E- Leaarning’: Not the Same Thing. Higher Education. Toronto, Canada: TV Ontario. [2] Johnson, J. L. (2003). Distance Education: The Complete Guide to Design, Delivery, and Improvement. New York; London: Teachers College Press. [3] Daniel, J. S. (1997). Why Universities Need Technology Strategies. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 29(4), 10-17. [4] Moore, M. G., & Kearsley, G. (2011). Distance Education: A Systems View of Online Learning. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. [5] Keegan, D. (1996) Foundations of Distance Education (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. [6] Bates, A. T. (2004). Technology, E-Learning and Distance Education. London: Routledge. [7] Coombs, L. C. (1977). Preferences for Sex of Children among US Couples. Family Planning Perspectives, 9(6), 259-265. [8] Geray, C. (2007). Distance Education in Turkey. International Journal of Educational Policies, 1(1), 33-62. [9] Ruzgar, N. S. (2004). Distance Education in Turkey. Online Submission, 5, 1-11. [10] Seliger, H. W. & Shohamy, E. (1989). Second Language Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [11] Dörnyei, Z., & Taguchi, T. (2010). Questionnaires in Second Language Research: Construction, Administration, and Processing (2nd ed.). New York; London: Routledge. [12] Ağır, F., Gür, H., & Okçu, A. (2008). Uzaktan Eğitime Karşı Tutum Ölçeği Geliştirmesine Yönelik Geçerlik ve Güvenirlik Çalişmasi. E-Journal of New World Sciences Academy (NWSA), 3(2), 128-139. [13] Birişçi, S. (2013). Video Konferans Tabanlı Uzaktan Eğitime İlişkin Öğrenci Tutumları ve Görüşleri. Journal of Instructional Technologies &Teacher Education, 1(2), 24-40. [14] Ateş, A., & Altun, E. (2008). Bilgisayar Öğretmeni Adaylarının Uzaktan Eğitime Yönelik Tutumlarının Çeşitli Değişkenler Açısından İncelenmesi. Gazi University Journal of Gazi Educational Faculty (GUJGEF), 28(3). [15] Süer, T., Kaya, Z., Bülbul, H. T., Gör, Ö., Karaçanta Ög, H., Koç, G., & Gör, Ö. (2005). Gazi Üniversitesi'nin Uzaktan Eğitim Potansiyeli. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 4(1), 107-113. [16] Horzum, M. B., Albayrak, E., & Ayvaz, A. Sınıf Öğretmenlerinin Hizmet İçi Eğitimde Uzaktan Eğitime Yönelik İnançları. [17] Günter, T., Güneş, E. Ö., & DEMİR, E. O. (2012). Türkiye’deki Meslek Yüksekokullarında Uzaktan Eğitim. Journal of Higher Education & Science/Yüksekögretim ve Bilim Dergisi, 2(1), 54-62. [18] Ülker - Ayyıldız, S., Günlük, M. & Erbey, S. N. (2006). Muhasebe Öğretim Elemanlarının Uzaktan Eğitim ve Uzaktan Muhasebe Eğitimine Yönelik Tutumları Üzerine Bir Araştırma. Muhasebe ve Finansman Dergisi, 32. 
work_44orfrzqh5fezb2637wwchhyo4	----	Analysis of Teachers’Approaches to Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 388 – 392 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser Ankara University, Turkey doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.076 2nd World Conference on Educational Technology Researches – WCETR2012 Analysis of Teachers’Approaches to Distance Education Fatma Kübra Çelena, Aygül Çelikb* ,Süleyman Sadi Seferoğluc aHacettepe University, Faculty of Education, Dept. of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, 06800, Ankara-TURKEY Abstract Adapting teachers to evolving technology, and making them technology literate educators is a big challenge in today’s world. However, teachers’ attitudes towards new technologies are important in accepting changes in the responsibilities and roles. There are different reasons why teachers don’t enjoy professional activities offered for them. It can be said that, first of all, professional activities offered do not meet their needs. In addition, the professional activities teachers are expected to participate conflict with their school activities and with their family responsibilities. Distance education can eliminate a large part of those reasons. For effective implementation of distance education, however, primarily the determination of teachers' attitude towards this technology is required. This study aimed to determine teachers' approaches to distance education. According to the survey conducted, the majority of participants stated that they wanted to participate in distance learning activities. On the other hand, participants, based on their observation about the distance education implementations, reported that distance education systems are insufficient in terms of content, materials used, evaluation methods, validity of certificate which is taken at the end of distance education and employment of opportunities. In addition, while more than half of the participants think that Turkish Open University programs are not adequate; about half of the participants that they don’t trust distance education programs operated in Turkey. 1. Introduction In today’s world shaped by technology, educators and other education related people and institutions believe that teacher education needs to be given more importance (Balcı, 2002). However, in the training of teachers, a number of barriers and problems, such as the huge number of teachers working in the Ministry of National Education (MoNE), the difficulty of bringing teachers together for training, the lack of opportunities in attending formal education institutions, are observed. On the other hand, research conducted about teaching and teachers (Büyüköztürk, Akbaba-Altun & Yıldırım, 2010; Özer, 1990) indicated that the quality of teaching and teachers need to be improved. In recent years, undoubtedly one of the rapid advances in technology has been computers. Distance learning, with the use of computer technologies has come to the forefront in teacher education. National Ministry of Education has started to organize training in order to enhance the efficiency of operation staff including teachers and keep pace today's emerging technologies with computer and the internet (Çalımfidan, 2007). * Corresponding Author: Aygül ÇELİK . Tel.: +90-000-000-00-00 E-mail address: aygulcelik@hacettepe.edu.tr Keywords: Distance Education, teacher training, attitudes towards distance education; Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser Ankara University, Turkey http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 389 Fatma Kübra Ҫelen et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 388 – 392 1.1.1.1. Purpose of the study In this new era we live in rapid change and developments in science and technology are observed. Today, it could be claimed that educational institutions and teachers have an important role for communities to survive and adapting to these changes. In examining the reform efforts, one can see that developed countries in the world renewed their educational systems and started this process in the problems faced in teacher education. In parallel to social changes, traditional approaches are abandoned in the field of teacher training. In training of teachers in accordance with contemporary requirements, new applications are included within the framework of research and development activities (Aksarı, 1997). According to the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), there is a high need for qualified teachers in Turkey (Büyüköztürk, Akbaba-Altun ve Yıldırım, 2010). Ministry of National Education has been carrying out so many projects in supplying the needs of qualified teachers. In this context, especially sites which aim to develop skills about informatics and sites aim providing training on different topics workers may benefit were published and put into effect (MEB HIEDB, 2012; MEB, NDa; MEB, NDb). The basic purpose of these sites was providing in-service training to teachers by means of distance education. However, teachers’ opinions which would guide any kind of activities addressed to help teachers need to be taken into consideration in order for these types of services to be effective and useful. Since teachers’ views may lead the implementers to use different paths, it could be safe to say that taking teachers’ opinions are vital for professional development projects which prepared for teachers to develop themselves to be successful. In this regard, determination of teachers’ views about distance education is important in terms of measures to be taken when working on the projects for teachers’ professional development. Thus, this study aimed to determine the teachers' perspectives towards distance education. 2. Methodology This study is a descriptive study. The purpose of the study was to investigate teachers' opinions about distance education. The working group for the study was obtained by suitable selection of the sample in terms of accessibility. 2.1.1.1. Study Group The working group of the study consisted of 95 teachers who work in different cities of Turkey. In terms of gender, 63,15% of the participants were female and 36,85% of them were male. In terms of age distribution, 9% of the participants was 20-25 years old, 39% 26-30, 18% 31-35, 18% 36-40, 11% 41-45, 1% 51-55 and 3% was over 55 years old. Participating teachers had a wide range of teaching experience, such as 33% 1-5, 25% 6-10, 13% 11- 15, 22% 16-20, 4% 21-25, and 2% more than 26 years of teaching experiment. 27% of participating teachers have master’s degrees and 4% of participating teachers have PhDs. All of the participants have computers in their houses and 98% of those teachers have internet connection. In addition, participating teachers have been using computer for (44%) more than 10 years, (40%) 7-9 years, (15%) 4-6 years and (1%) 1-3 years. These users reported that they use computers at advanced, medium and beginning levels, 45% advanced level, 40% medium level and 15% at beginner level respectively. Finally, participants stated that 57% of them previously received distance education. 2.1.1.2. Data Collection Tool and Data Analysis In order to collect data to determine teachers’ views, two tools were used. The first tool was a survey questionnaire developed by researchers and the second tool was an attitude scale of distance education developed by Kışla (2005). The survey questionnaire consisted of two parts. Questions in the first part used to gather information about gender, age, professional seniority, educational status, type of school they work, computer and internet access and state of using the internet and computer. In the second part of the questionnaire, attitudes scale of distance education, there were 35 items aimed to get the opinions of teachers’ about distance education. The scale was organized as a 5-point Likert scale. In analyzing the data frequencies and percentages were reported. 390 Fatma Kübra Ҫelen et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 388 – 392 3. Findings and Discussion According to the distribution of teachers' opinions about distance education as displayed in Table 1, it is seen that the vast majority of teachers (73,6%) want to take distance education courses. Ağır, Gür and Okçu (2008) found that teachers’ attitudes towards distance education were positive in their study too. On the other hand, the rate of participants who thought distance education improved learning capacity is similar to the rate of those who thought many courses couldn’t be done with distance education (respectively %59 and %60). In Baran’s (2008) study, findings support the idea that distance education increases the quality of education. In this regard, Horzum (2003), who conducted a study about investigating faculty members’ opinions on the internet supported distance education, obtained similar findings, revealed that all types of courses can be offered through distance education except professional and practical courses. According to the findings of this study, 50.4% of the participants believe that distance education facilitates learning, 53.7% of people thought distance education makes people lazier and correspondingly 50.4% of them thought that distance education increases the quality of education. In Alakoç’s (2001) study in which faculty members’ views about distance education was examined, the majority of faculty members stated that distance education was effective. This finding is similar to the findings of this research. Table 1. The Distribution of Teachers’ Attitudes about Distance Education Items about Attitudes about Distance Education 1 2 3 4 5 Total 1. I want to take distance education courses. f 4 14 10 52 15 95 % 4,2 14,7 10,5 58,0 15,6 100 2. Distance education develops a person's learning capacity. f 4 19 16 45 11 95 % 4,2 20,0 16,8 47,4 11,6 100 3. Many lessons can’t be offered through distance education. f 2 17 19 44 13 95 % 2,1 17,9 20,0 46,3 13,7 100 4. Distance education facilitates learning. f 5 20 22 42 6 95 % 5,3 21,1 23,2 44,2 6,2 100 5. Distance education arouses interest. f 2 18 10 55 10 95 % 2,1 18,9 10,5 58,0 10,5 100 6. I don’t think I would have a good circle of friends if I take distance education. f 1 28 26 31 9 95 % 1,1 29,5 27,4 32,5 9,5 100 7. Distance education makes people lazier. f 6 24 14 43 8 95 % 6,3 25,3 14,7 45,3 8,4 100 8. I think distance education is luxury for our country. f 14 40 9 23 9 95 % 14,7 42,1 9,5 24,2 9,5 100 9. Distance education enhances the quality of education. f 7 20 20 41 7 95 % 7,4 21,1 21,1 43,2 7,2 100 10. I don’t think distance education is suitable for me. f 14 38 13 29 1 95 % 14,7 40,0 13,7 30,5 1,1 100 11. I think written materials which are used in distance education, are in good quality in terms of content. f 6 13 29 41 6 95 % 6,3 13,7 30,5 43,2 6,3 100 12. I don’t think the certificate which would be given at the end of the distance education isn’t valuable and valid. f 12 23 15 38 7 95 % 12,6 24,2 15,8 40,0 7,4 100 13. Distance education graduates are unlikely to find a job. f 5 14 15 52 9 95 % 5,3 14,7 15,8 54,7 9,5 100 14. Distance education is as respectable as classical education. f 9 44 14 19 9 95 % 9,5 46,3 14,7 20,0 9,5 100 15. I think that tools and equipment which are used in distance education are adequate. f 7 30 23 30 5 95 % 7,4 31,6 24,2 31,6 5,2 100 16. I am interested in distance education. f 2 15 12 57 9 95 % 2,1 15,8 12,6 60,0 9,5 100 17. Evaluation methods of distance education institutions are not suitable for this type of education. f 3 13 37 38 4 95 % 3,2 13,7 38,9 40,0 4,2 100 18. I think open university programs operated in Turkey are not adequate. f 16 47 19 12 1 95 391 Fatma Kübra Ҫelen et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 388 – 392 % 16,8 49,5 20,0 12,6 1,1 100 19. I think I would be more motivated in courses offered through distance education. f 4 31 29 27 4 95 % 4,2 32,6 30,6 28,4 4,2 100 20. I do not trust distance education programs in Turkey. f 3 22 19 43 8 95 % 3,2 23,1 20,0 45,3 8,4 100 21. I think instructors who have responsibilities in distance education are inadequate in terms of knowledge and skills. f 4 16 28 41 6 95 % 4,2 16,8 29,5 43,2 6,3 100 22. Distance education would positively affect my creativity. f 4 15 41 32 3 95 % 4,2 15,8 43,2 33,7 3,1 100 23. Structure of distance education increases efficiency. f 1 36 21 37 0 95 % 1,1 37,9 22,1 38,9 0 100 24. Having less face to face interaction in distance education bothers me. f 1 37 18 35 4 95 % 1,2 38,9 18,9 36,8 4,2 100 25. I think that distance education will be future educational model. f 1 33 20 40 1 95 % 1,1 34,6 21,1 42,0 1,2 100 26. The diversity of materials which is used in distance education draws my attention. f 1 38 20 34 2 95 % 1,1 40 21,1 35,7 2,1 100 27. The education which is given with distance education is not useful. f 5 36 19 31 4 95 % 5,3 37,9 20,0 32,6 4,2 100 28. I think some courses at universities could be offered through distance education. f 1 32 16 41 5 95 % 1,0 33,7 16,8 43,2 5,3 100 29. I learn better with distance education. f 2 36 25 32 0 95 % 2,1 37,9 26,3 33,7 0 100 30. Lecturers and students have lack of communication in distance education. f 0 37 19 38 1 95 % 0 38,9 20,0 40,0 1,1 100 31. Distance education reduces the students’ achievement. f 2 39 21 33 0 95 % 2,1 41,1 22,1 34,7 0 100 32. The certificates given upon the completion of distance education aren’t worth the tuition paid. f 2 34 25 32 2 95 % 2,1 35,8 26,3 33,7 2,1 100 33. The importance of distance education is increasing every day. f 1 30 19 41 4 95 % 1,1 31,6 20,0 43,2 4,1 100 34. Distance education draws my attention. f 1 32 17 42 3 95 % 1,1 33,6 17,9 44,2 3,2 100 35. I believe that distance education will restrict socialization. f 1 37 16 38 3 95 % 1,1 39,9 16,8 40,0 3,2 100 1- Strongly Disagree, 2- Disagree, 3- Undecided, 4- Agree, 5- Strongly Agree According the findings, 54.7% of participants thought that distance education would be eligible for them. In addition, participants who told "Distance education arouses my curiosity." was a majority with 68.5%. While percentage of participants who think that they would have a good circle of friend if being a part of distance education was 42%, percentage of participants who disagree with this subject was 30.4%. This finding was similar with findings of Turhan’s (2005) research which was about managerial processes school administrators need to develop and their views about distance learning technologies. Findings of this study revealed that person's sense of loneliness was increased with distance education. On the other hand, findings also showed that most of the participants (56.8%) believe that distance education is not a luxury for our country. Findings of this study also indicated that a majority of the participants (55.8%) believe that "distance education is not as respected as classical education". According to the findings, rate of participants who were agreeing with "the written materials that used in distance education are in good quality in terms of content" was 49.5%. However views about the validity of the certificate that will be given at the end of the distance education programs showed that a good number of participants (47.4%) do not believe in the validity of the certificate. In addition, the vast majority of participants (64.2%) believe that distance education graduates are unlikely to find a job. Kazu and Özdemir (2002), who conducted a study with pre-service teachers, reached a similar conclusion. While the rate of participants' view about “tools and equipment which are used in distance education are adequate” item was 36.8%, the rate of disagreeing participants was even higher with 39%. However, the vast 392 Fatma Kübra Ҫelen et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 388 – 392 majority of participants (69.5%) noted that they are interested in distance education. The percentage of participants who think "evaluation methods of distance education institutions are not suitable." was 44.2%, the percentage of participants who were "undecided" was more than other substances with 38.9. Finally, according to the findings of the study, the majority of respondents (66.3%) believe that Turkish Open University is not adequate. 4. The Results and Suggestions There are many factors affecting the success of distance education systems. These factors don’t include only the system characteristics and design, but also properties of people who join distance education. Distance education systems which are well designed to capture the success of a system can not be said to be sufficient alone. Other factors which aren’t caused by the system may also affect the process. For example, learner characteristics and the expectations about distance education can be decisive about the possible outcomes and the effectiveness of the system. Therefore, in order to ensure the professional development of teachers with distance education before designing distance education, determining of teachers' expectations and views are so important. In this study, based on feedback from teachers, the measures would also enhance the effectiveness of the system. In teacher education, distance education is the right choice, when target audience characteristics, expectations, and their views are taken into account. According to the survey results, teachers want to participate in distance learning activities. On the other hand, participants believe that distance education systems are inadequate in terms of content, materials used, evaluation methods, distance education and employment opportunities at the end of the validity of the certificate. Participants believe that Open University which is also carried out in our country is not adequate. At the same time, teachers don’t trust distance education programs operated in Turkey. In this study, according to the obtained results, distance learning courses can be said that it should be well planned for training to succeed. In addition, distance learning should be supported with face-to-face training in providing a more objective assessment. The majority of participant is interested in distance education. But they don’t think distance education is respected as a classical education. In order to change this negative outlook, using high quality education materials in distance education and an objective evaluation system should be provided. References Ağır, F., Gür, H. ve Okçu, A. (2008). Özel okullarda ve devlet okullarında çalışan ilköğretim öğretmenlerinin uzaktan eğitime karşı tutumlarını belirlenmesi. International Educational Technology Conference (IETC-2008). Anadolu University, Eskişehir. Aksarı, M. ( 1997). Yabancı ülkelerde öğretmen yetiştirme sistemi. Eğitim ve Yaşam Dergisi, Bahar97, 49-56. Alakoç, Z. (2001). Genel olarak uzaktan öğretim ve konuya öğretim üyelerinin bakış açıları. Sakarya Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 3, 403-413. Balcı, B. (2002).. Öğretmen yetiştirmede teknoloji kullanımı. V. Ulusal Fen Bilimleri ve Matematik Eğitimi Kongresi, Ankara. Baran, F. (2008). Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı’nın uzaktan hizmet içi yöntemiyle bilgisayar eğitimi uygulamasına ilişkin öğretmen görüş ve önerileri. Unpublished Master's Thesis. Yeditepe University, İstanbul. Büyüköztürk, Ş., Altun, Akbaba, S. ve Yıldırım, K. (2010). Uluslararası öğretme ve öğrenme araştırması Türkiye ulusal raporu [Teaching and Learning International Survey-TALIS]. Ankara: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, Dış İlişkiler Genel Müdürlüğü. Çalımfidan, M. (2007). İnternete dayalı uzaktan eğitim ve hizmet içi eğitim yöntemiyle bilgisayar eğitimi hakkında öğretmen görüşleri (Tuzla örneği). Unpublished Master's Thesis. Yeditepe Üniversity, İstanbul. Horzum, B. (2003). Öğretim elemanlarının internet destekli eğitime yönelik düşünceleri (Sakarya Üniversitesi örneği). Unpublished Master's Thesis. Sakarya University, Sakarya. Kazu, I. Y. Ve Özdemir, O. (2002). Teknik öğretmen adaylarının uzaktan eğitimle ilgili görüş ve beklentileri (Fırat Üniversitesi örneği). XI. Eğitim Bilimleri Kongresi, Yakın Doğu University, Lefkoşa, KKTC. Kışla, T. (2005). Üniversite öğrencilerinin uzaktan eğitime yönelik tutumları. Unpublished Master's Thesis.Ege University, İzmir. MEB (NDa). Uzaktan eğitim. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, Ankara. [Available online at: http://uzaktanegitim.meb.gov.tr/ ] retrieved on 10.05. 2012 MEB (NDb). Uzaktan eğitim platformu. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, Bilgi İşlem Grup Başkanlığı, Ankara. [Available online at: http://kursiyernet.meb.gov.tr] retrieved on 10.05.2012 MEB HIEDB (2012). Uzaktan eğitim projeleri. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, Hizmet içi Eğitim Dairesi Başkanlığı, Ankara. [Available online at: http://hedb.meb.gov.tr/net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=54:uzaktan-eitim&layout=blog&Itemid=87] retrieved on 10.05.2012. Özer, B. (1990). Öğretmenlerin Uzaktan eğitim yaklaşımıyla sürekli eğitimi. Eğitim ve Bilim, 76, 73-76. Turhan, E. (2005). Okul yöneticilerinin geliştirilmeye ihtiyaç duydukları yönetsel süreçlere ve uzaktan eğitim teknolojilerine ilişkin görüşleri. Eskişehir örneği. Unpublished PhD thesis. Anadolu University, Eskişehir. 
work_44tqnpprtvckbd3bhpzweq7caa	----	The Effects of Videoconferenced Distance-Learning Instruction in a Taiwanese Company | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2011040105 Corpus ID: 15602867The Effects of Videoconferenced Distance-Learning Instruction in a Taiwanese Company @article{Lin2011TheEO, title={The Effects of Videoconferenced Distance-Learning Instruction in a Taiwanese Company}, author={Chin-Hung Lin and S. Yang}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2011}, volume={9}, pages={52-64} } Chin-Hung Lin, S. Yang Published 2011 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Distance learning, where instruction is given to students despite wide separations of students and teachers, is increasingly popular. Videoconferencing, which is examined in this study, is a distance learning mode of featuring real-time interaction of students and teachers and provides sequence, real-time, vision, and actual interaction. This study focuses on learning achievement compared to that of face-to-face instruction at one fixed location. It investigates the interrelation of learning… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 1 Citations View All Topics from this paper Real-time transcription Statistical model One Citation Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Research and Conceptualization of Ontologies in Intelligent Learning Systems B. Deliyska, P. Manoilov Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2010 9 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 54 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Student perspectives on videoconferencing in teacher education at a distance D. Gillies Computer Science 2008 120 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed The Limits of Information: A Cautionary Tale about One Course Delivery Experience in the Distance Education Environment W. Salisbury, W. Pearson, W. D. Miller, William David Rodney Andrews David Wayne L. Kent Marett Psychology, Engineering 2002 24 Save Alert Research Feed Digital Game-Based Learning in high school Computer Science education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation Marina Papastergiou Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2009 1,238 Save Alert Research Feed Research and development of web-based virtual online classroom Zongkai Yang, Q. Liu Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2007 127 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS C. Pilcher, G. Miller Psychology 2000 28 Save Alert Research Feed The effectiveness of traditional vs. satellite delivery in three management of technology master's degree programs W. Souder Computer Science 1993 163 Save Alert Research Feed Gender and Learning Style Interactions in Students' Computer Attitudes P. Ames Psychology 2003 49 Save Alert Research Feed Encyclopedia of Distance Learning R. Knight, K. Whittington, W. Ford, J. Jenkins Computer Science 2005 283 Save Alert Research Feed Discussion-Based Online Teaching to Enhance Student Learning: Theory, Practice and Assessment T. Bender Computer Science 2003 223 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed The Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Globalized E-Learning A. Edmundson Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2005 38 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 1 Citations 54 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_46cz3ikyjngfzmyie32vyty4iq	----	Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(7): 1708-1717, 2016 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040724 Attitudes of Students Taking Distance Education in Theology Undergraduate Education Program towards E-learning Management System Murat Yalman*, Bülent Başaran, Selahattin Gönen Ziya Gokalp Education Facility, Dicle University, Turkey Copyright©2016 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract Education is one of the biggest problems experienced by developing societies. Education is has an important place in individuals’ lives since it allows them to prove themselves within their society and to maintain their future lives. Today, with the development of the Internet, education can be given via e-learning management systems designed on the web. E-learning is a type of education that can present information to its users via the Internet. In order to facilitate the use of e-learning systems and to make these systems more systematic, Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have appeared. LMSs are softwares that allow management of learning activities. During the application of e-learning management systems that can be designed in line with the desired curriculum, the feedback provided by students taking education via this platform play an important role in the success of the system. In this respect, the present study aimed at determining the attitudes of students attending Distance Education Theology Undergraduate Education Program at Dicle University towards e-learning. For this purpose, the five-point Likert-type scale of “Attitudes towards ICT skills and e-learning” developed by Haznedar [23] was applied to the students. The results of analysis of the data collected from the students participating in the study revealed no significant difference in relation to e-learning between the students’ gender, years of computer use, weekly Internet use time, their preferences of types of education, their foreign language, their foreign language proficiency levels, and their learning motivation preferences. In the study, a significant difference was found in relation to e-learning between the participants’ preferences of study methods. Keywords E-learning, Distance Education 1. Introduction Recent renovations in information technologies have led to great changes in the field of education. This situation has resulted in differences in definition, design and services of education (Ally, [1]). With the use and spread of the Internet and computer technologies in education, the concept of e-learning, which is totally different from face-to-face learning, has appeared. E-learning is a type of learning which uses such computer network technologies as Internet and Extranet to provide its users with the necessary information (Cheng, [12]; Engelbrecht, [17]). Lee et al. [35], similarly, define e-learning system as an integrated information system which includes a variety of instructional material; audios, videos, and texts; messages via e-mail; online chat sessions; online discussions; forums; exams; and assignments. Recent technological developments have led to the development of innovative methods in learning and teaching the tendencies towards flexible learning in education (Benković, Dobrota, [6]). In this respect, e-learning systems have become an important part of modern university curricula and played an important role in supporting university students in terms of the education given via the Internet (Paechter et al. [40]). Related studies demonstrate that integration of online components into traditional classes develop communication, increase access to resources via the Internet and maximize students’ satisfaction (Kaynama, Keesling, [29]). A number of factors in online environments have influence on students’ satisfaction. Bolliger and Martindale [8] point out that there are three important factors such as the trainer, technology and interaction to increase students’ satisfaction with e-learning. Drennan et al. [15] found that e-learning, a method of independent learning, could result in positive perceptions in student satisfaction. In addition, self-efficacy, social skills, the quality of the e-learning system, and multimedia-aided learning are among the most important structures for students’ perceptions (Liaw, [36]). This demonstrates that there is a close relationship between students’ satisfaction, successful teaching and quality of lessons (Peltier, Schibrowsky, Drago, [42]). Students’ feedbacks regarding their levels of satisfaction are important Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(7): 1708-1717, 2016 1709 to increase the overall quality of instructional activities, course contents and curricula (Bradford, Wyatt, [9]). An important point in designing a successful e-learning system is related to the support services for students. Student support is any kind of support that could help meet students’ needs before, during and after the education process (Thorpe, [54]). Student support services should be planned attentively to develop effective e-learning systems and designed in a way to cover all the academic, administrative, technical and social support needs of students. In order to establish successful academic environments for students taking e-learning education, various support services should be organized, and the necessary guidance should be provided to allow students make use of these services (Aoki, Pogroszewski, [4]). Activities designed for e-learning should be organized in line with the students’ views as well as with the information provided by the students. Limited interaction between the faculty member and students is reported to be the most probable drawbacks of e-learning systems (Kaba, Güneş, Altıntaş, [26]). Gibson et al. [18] found in their study that students have negative viewpoints due to limited interaction. In this respect, interaction is a really important issue in e-learning systems, and while developing e-learning systems, it is important to pay enough attention to the dimension of interaction with students. For a long time, the computer has been used as a tool to support education. With the spread of the Internet network technologies throughout the world, the Internet and computer are now increasingly used in education. Educational institutions using the Internet and computer initially as a support to face-to-face learning designed e-learning management systems and started to give education via these technologies. The advantages of e-learning, when compared to traditional learning, include removing the concepts of time and place from education, making students active and independent learners, and allowing cooperative learning (Yalman, Kutluca [57]). In determining the success of e-learning programs, student satisfaction is another important factor. Satisfaction with e-learning has a relationship with interaction, course organization, support services and communication methods (Roberts, Irani, Telg, Lundy, [45]). Learner satisfaction has a relationship with the user-friendliness and effectiveness of Learning Management Systems, with flexibility, with interaction levels of students, with the importance given by the faculty member to interaction and with website use (Arbaugh, [5]). In order to facilitate the use of e-learning systems and to make these systems more systematic, Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have appeared. LMSs are softwares that allow management of learning activities. LMSs are environments basically used to do such things as making e-learning courses public, registering students in LMS and allowing faculty members and administrators to follow students’ attendance in classes and their developmental processes (Cebeci, [10]; İnner, [24]). In this respect, LMSs include several software components which facilitate students’ access to contents and which allow managing, following, reporting and distributing the interactions between the faculty member and students. With the help of these components, LMSs include various functions such as doing registration procedures for students, storing related information, following students’ attendance in classes and their developments, conducting examinations, recording the results, and evaluating students’ performances. All LMSs are expected to include these functions. As the basic function of LMSs is the management of students and trainers, most LMSs do not have the capability of creating content. For this reason, LMS developers either provide content-development tools or cooperate with other content developers to put forward solutions as a whole. On the other hand, Learning Management Systems provide educational content depending on several factors such as individuals who will take the related education; their personalities; the learning activity; study environments; learning capacity; and the policy to provide content (Duran, Önal, Kurtuluş, [16]). This education program, which was designed to provide bachelor’s diploma for students who own an associate diploma via vocational education, started to become gradually widespread in turkey. The purpose of this curriculum is to help students not only develop their efficacies regarding religion and but also become well-trained individuals. In order to plan and give this education in a way to avoid increasing the workload of institutions that give face-to-face education, e-learning management systems are now used. This learning management system is favored since it allows providing more students with the same-quality education. Students can prepare for their exams by following the courses via this learning management system throughout the week without any time restriction. In addition, researchers examined the positive aspects of the system as well as the problems and difficulties experienced by faculty members giving lessons via e-learning management systems (Kaymakcan et.al., [27]; Otter et.al., [39]; Bilgiç, Doğan, [7]). These studies were conducted with faculty members using the e-learning management system, and they aimed at evaluating the approaches of trainers who knew and used the systems. In related literature, there is not much research carried out to investigate the use of e-learning management system - designed to give education in different areas – for the undergraduate education of Theology students. The present study is thought to be important since it is expected to act as a guide for other state universities giving undergraduate education in e-learning platforms in Turkey. Literature Review Studies conducted by Educational Statistics National Center demonstrate that there is an increasing demand for acceptance of e-learning and students generally have positive views about learning experiences (Tabs, Waits, Lewis, [51]). In order to establish communication (e-mail, msn and so on) or social networks (Facebook, blogging), students prevailingly use digital and web tools in their lives Keller et 1710 Attitudes of Students Taking Distance Education in Theology Undergraduate Education Program towards E-learning Management System al. [30], in their study, tried to predict the effects of such variables as age, gender, previous experiences regarding computer use and individual learning styles on students’ acceptance of technology. In other studies, conducted by Kennedy et al. [31] in Australia, by Kvavik, [34] in USA and by Green et al. [19] in England, it was found that most students use e-learning platforms via their personal computers and smart phones which have access to the web. Kranzow [33] mentions an important question for faculty members who teach via e-learning systems: “How should e-learning courses be designed in a way to maximize students’ motivation, performance and attendance as well as their levels of satisfaction?”. Kraznow [33] emphasizes the importance of developing the feeling of cooperation in e-learning environments. On the other hand, in order to increase students’ satisfaction, there is a need for better strategies to facilitate interaction with course contents besides establishing cooperative e-learning environments. Within such a cooperative community, there should be interaction between trainers and students as well as between students. Sher [48] points out that in e-learning systems, communication between trainers and students and between students is an important factor in students’ satisfaction and in their learning. Strachota [49] focused on the influence of student-student interaction, student-trainer interaction, students’ interaction with course contents and with technology on students’ satisfaction in e-learning systems. In the study, Strachota [49] found that student-content interaction ranked first in students’ satisfaction, which was followed by student-trainer interaction and student-technology interaction. Palmer et al. [41] reported that students’ ability to use technology easily plays an important role in satisfaction with e-learning. Another factor influential on students’ satisfaction with e-learning is the extent to which they feel good in e-learning environments. In addition, according to Drennan et al. [15], one of the two important factors regarding students’ satisfaction is related to their attitudes towards technology, and the second one is related to their independent and innovative learning styles. Hypothesis What are levels of mean scores of students attending Distance Education Theology Undergraduate Education Program regarding their attitudes towards e-learning? Do students’ attitude mean scores regarding e-learning management system differ depending on their gender, weekly Internet use time, years of computer use, their preferences of types of learning, their foreign languages, their foreign language proficiency levels, and their preferences of study and learning methods? Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the gains and experiences acquired by students via e-learning system. In line with this purpose, the study focused on determining students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system as well as on investigating whether their approaches to the system were significant with respect to certain variables. 2. Method In the study, the descriptive survey model was used to examine the e-learning levels of students with respect to certain variables. Descriptive research method defines the current and past states of a situation being examined and explains these states with graphs and with the data collected (Gürsakal, [22]). In the study, for the analysis of the research data, the individual and relational model, one of general survey models, was used. Data Collection Tools For the purpose of collecting the research data, the scale of “Attitudes towards ICT skills and e-learning” developed by Haznedar [23] was used. The first part of the questionnaire applied to collect the research data included 12 items regarding the demographic backgrounds of the participants, their academic achievements, foreign language proficiency levels, their computer and Internet use, and their levels of knowledge about computer use and 20 items regarding the participants’ attitudes towards e-learning. Sample In the study, the research sample was made up of 550 students attending the Distance Education Theology Undergraduate Education Program (DETUEP) at Dicle University in the academic year of 2013-2014. In the study, the participants were determined with the simple random sampling method, one of probability sampling methods. In this model, each member of the research group involved in the study has an equal chance of being selected. Students thought to be included in a study are selected from a list of students on random basis (Çepni, [13]: 46). In the study, for the research sample, the intention was to reach 70% of all the students. Table 1 demonstrates the results of the analysis of the survey data regarding the demographic backgrounds of the students participating in the study. Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(7): 1708-1717, 2016 1711 Table 1. Percentage and Frequency Distributions of the Participants with Respect to Their Demographic Backgrounds Variable Property f % Gender Female 152 39,90 Male 229 60,10 Weekly Internet Use time 0-7 hours 258 67,71 8-21 hours 88 23,10 22-35 hours 21 5,51 More than 36 hours 14 3,68 How many years do you use a computer? Less than a year 24 6,30 1-3 Years 98 25,72 4-5 Years 69 18,11 6-7 Years 60 15,75 More than 7 years. 130 34,12 Study Preference Individual 188 49,34 Group 193 50,66 Learning Method E-Learning 72 18,90 Face-to-face education and e-learning together 204 53,54 Face-to-face education 105 27,56 Mobil device selection Smart Cell Phone and Tablet PC or Notebook Computer 103 27,03 Tablet PC 98 25,72 Tablet and Notebook Computer 128 33,60 Notebook Computer 12 3,15 All 40 10,50 Foreign Language Level Poor 170 44,62 Middle 162 42,52 Good 46 12,07 Very Good 3 0,79 Language spoken Arabic 189 49,61 English 192 50,39 Motivation Type Extrinsic Motivation 131 34,38 Intrinsic Motivation 250 65,62 In what ways do you learn better? Visual 228 59,84 Aural 121 31,76 Tactual 32 8,40 What do you use information communication tools for? Course related research. 36 9,45 Course related research, commination, Homework, Online Banking, Social networking, radio, TV, Newspaper 79 20,73 Course related research, Shopping, commination and other 16 4,20 Course related research, Shopping, commination 39 10,24 Course related research, commination, Film and other 211 55,38 Total 381 100,0 Of all the students participating in the study, 39,90% of them were female, and 60,10% of them were male. In addition, 67,71% of them used the Internet for 0 to 7 hours; 23,10% of them for 8 to 21 hours; 5,51% of them for 22 to 35 hours; and 3,68% of them used the Internet for 36 hours or longer. Also, 6,30% of them used a computer for less than a year; 25,72% of them for 1 to 3 years; 18,11% of them for 4 to 5 years; 15,75% of them for 6 to 7 years; and 34,12% of them for more than 7 years. Moreover, 27,03% of them used a smart phone, a Tablet PC or a Notebook computer; 25,72% of them used a Tablet PC; 33,60% of them used a Tablet PC and a Notebook computer; 3,15% of them used only a 1712 Attitudes of Students Taking Distance Education in Theology Undergraduate Education Program towards E-learning Management System Notebook computer; and 10,5% of them used all the mobile devices. Of all the students participating in the study, 9,45% of them used information communication devices to do research related to the lessons; 20,73% of them to do research related to the lessons, to communicate with others, to do homework, to do online banking, to share something in social networks, to listen to the radio, to watch TV channels, and to read newspapers; 4,20% of them to do research related to the lessons, to do shopping, to communicate and for other purposes; 10,24% of them to do research related to the lessons, to do shopping and to communicate with others; and 55,38% of them to do research related to the lessons, to communicate, to watch movies and for other purposes. Among the participants, 49,61% of them spoke Arabic, and 50,39% of them spoke English. Of all the participants, 44,62% of them had a low level of proficiency in these languages; 42,52% of them had a moderate level of proficiency; 12,07% of them had a good level of proficiency; and 0,79% of them had a very good level of proficiency. In addition, 49,34% of the students favored individual work, while 50,66% of them preferred group work. Also, 18,90% of them wanted to use e-learning management system, 53,54% of them wanted to use face-to-face education and e-learning management system together; and 27,56% of them wanted to take courses on face-to-face basis. Of all the students, 34,38% of them had an extrinsic type of motivation (awards given out of class, and other similar methods), while 65,62% of them had an intrinsic type of motivation (I myself wonder, I have the desire to develop myself). In the study, 59,84% of the participants reported that they would learn better via visual elements; 31,76% of them via auditory elements; and 8,40% of them reported that they would learn better via tactile elements. Distance Education Theology Undergraduate Education Program (DETUEP) Distance Education Theology Undergraduate Education Program (DETUEP) allows undergraduate graduates to take their lisans education without ruining their socio-economic conditions. Thanks to this program, it is possible to reach more students via the e-learning management system with the help of the expert academic staff in theology faculties. In addition, this system makes education independent of time and place as well as makes it possible for individuals to continue their education and to maintain their vocational lives. 3. Findings This part presents the results of analyses regarding the participants’ responses to the questionnaire applied in relation to e-learning. It was found that the attitude mean scores of the students taking theology undergraduate education with e-learning management system was at the level of “I partly agree” ( = 2,87). In addition, t-test was conducted to reveal whether there was a significant difference between the attitude scores of the students regarding the e-learning management system with respect to their gender. Table 2. t-test results for the students’ attitude scores regarding e-learning management system with respect to their gender Gender n Ss Sd t p Female 152 2,84 0,57 379 ,936 ,35 Male 229 2,89 0,59 The mean score for the female students taking theology undergraduate education with the e-learning management system was MeanF=2,84 (Sd=0,57), and the mean score of the male students was MeanM=2,89 (Sd=0.59). As a result, no significant difference was found between the mean scores (t(379)= ,936; p>.05). In the study, for the purpose of determining whether there was a significant difference between the students’ attitudes towards e-learning with respect to their weekly Internet use time, Kruskal Wallis test was applied. Table 3. Kruskal Wallis test results regarding the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system with respect to their weekly Internet use time Weekly Internet Used time n Mean Rank df Chi-Square p 0-7 hours 258 188,58 3 2,301 ,512 8-21 hours 88 166,74 22-35 hours 21 211,36 More than 3 hours 14 200,65 The results revealed no significant difference between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding e-learning management system with respect to their weekly Internet use time (p>.05). In the study, in order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the students’ attitude mean scores in relation to their responses to the question of “How long have you been using a computer?”, ANOVA was conducted. Table 4. ANOVA results regarding the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system with respect to their years of computer use. KT df KO F P Between Groups ,532 4 ,133 ,384 ,820 Within Groups 130,370 376 ,347 Total 130,903 380 In the study, no statistically significant difference was found between the students’ levels of attitudes towards e-learning management system with respect to their years of computer use (F4-376=,133; p=,820). In addition, for the purpose of determining whether there was a significant difference between the attitude scores of the students regarding the e-learning management system with respect to their foreign languages, t-test was applied. X Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(7): 1708-1717, 2016 1713 Table 5. t-test results regarding the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system with respect to their foreign languages Foreign Language n Ss Sd t p Arabic 189 2,88 0,61 379 2,42 ,809 English 192 2,86 0,56 The mean score of the students regarding the e-learning management system who spoke Arabic as a foreign language was MeanA=2,88 (Sd=0,61) and that of the students who spoke English as a foreign language was MeanE=2,86 (Sd=0,56). The results of the statistical analysis did not reveal any significant difference (t(379)= 2,42; p>.05). In order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding the e-learning management system in terms of their levels of foreign language proficiency, ANOVA was conducted. The level of “Very good” was not included in the analysis due to the low number of the students in this group. Table 6. Results of ANOVA regarding the students’ attitudes towards the e-learning management system with respect to their levels of foreign language proficiency KT df KO F P Between Groups ,536 2 ,268 ,775 ,462 Within Groups 129,789 375 ,346 Total 130,325 377 In the study, no significant difference was found between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding the e-learning management system with respect to their levels of foreign language proficiency (F2-374=,268; p=,476). In order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding their responses to the question of “In what ways do you learn better?”, ANOVA was conducted. Table 7. Results of ANOVA regarding the students’ mean scores in relation to their attitudes towards e-learning management system in terms of their learning style preferences. KT df KO F P Between Groups 1,043 2 ,521 1,518 ,221 Within Groups 129,860 378 ,344 Total 130,903 380 In the study, no significant difference was found between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding their visual, auditory and tactile preferences in relation to the question of “In what ways do you learn better?” (F2-378=,521; p=,221). In order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the learning management preferences of the students, ANOVA was conducted. Table 8. Results of ANOVA regarding the students’ mean scores in relation to their attitudes towards e-learning management systems in terms of their learning preferences. KT df KO F P Between Groups ,104 2 ,052 ,151 ,860 Within Groups 130,798 378 ,346 Total 130,903 380 In the study, no significant difference was found between the students’ e-learning attitude mean scores in terms of face-to-face, e-learning and hybrid learning (face-to-face and e-learning combined) (F2-378=,151; p=,860). Table 9. t-test results regarding the students’ attitude mean scores in relation to e-learning management system in terms of their study preferences Method of Studying n Ss Sd t p Individual Work 188 2,80 0,61 379 -2,52 ,012 Group Work 193 2,95 0,55 In the study, the attitude mean score of the students regarding the e-learning management system in terms of their study method (individual work or group work) was found significant (t(379)= -2,52; p>.05). Accordingly, the attitude mean score of the students who preferred individual work was MeanIW=2,80 (Sd=0,61), while that of the students who preferred group work was MeanGW=2,95 (Sd=0.55). Depending on this result, it could be stated that the students who preferred individual work had better attitudes towards e-learning management system than those who preferred group work. Table 10. t-test results regarding the students’ attitude mean scores in relation to e-learning management system with respect to their learning motivations Motivation of Learning n Ss Sd t p External 131 2,91 0,67 379 ,844 ,399 Internal 250 2,85 0,53 In the study, there was no significant difference (t(379)= ,844, p>.05) between the learning motivations of the students (external motivation or internal motivation). The attitude mean score of the students who preferred external motivation was MeanE=2,91 (Ss =0,67), while that of the students who preferred internal motivation was MeanI=2,85 (Ss =0.53). X X X 1714 Attitudes of Students Taking Distance Education in Theology Undergraduate Education Program towards E-learning Management System Table 11. Kruskal Wallis test results regarding the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system in terms of their purposes of using information and communication technologies. Purpose of Using Information and Communication Technologies n Mean Rank df Chi-Square p Doing research in relation to lessons 36 177,36 3 4,862 ,302 Doing research in relation to lessons Communication, doing homework, online banking, sharing something in social networks, listening to radio, watching TV channels, reading newspapers 79 174,70 Doing research in relation to lessons, Shopping, communication and other 16 196,06 Doing research in relation to lessons Shopping, communication 39 218,22 Doing research in relation to lessons, Communication, watching movies and other 211 194,04 In the study, no significant difference was found between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding e-learning management system in terms of their purposes of using information and communication technologies (p>.05). In order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding their preferences of mobile devices, ANOVA was conducted. Table 12. t-test results regarding the students’ attitude mean scores in relation to e-learning management system with respect to their preferences of mobile devices KT df KO F P Between Groups ,979 4 ,245 ,709 ,586 Within Groups 129,923 376 ,346 Total 130,903 380 In the study, no significant difference was found between the students’ attitude mean scores regarding e-learning management system in terms of their preferences of mobile devices (p>.05). 4. Discussion and Conclusion This study was limited to 550 students attending Distance Education Theology Undergraduate Education Program at Dicle University in the academic year of 2013-2014. In the study, it was revealed that the theology undergraduate education students’ means score regarding e-learning management system was at the level of “I Partly Agree” ( = 2,87). The attitude mean score of the female students responding to the questionnaire was =2,84, while that of the male students was =2,89. The attitude mean scores of the two groups of students regarding e-learning management system were at the level of “I Partly Agree”. The results of the statistical analysis did not reveal any significant difference between the two groups in terms of their gender. In a number of studies investigating attitudes towards e-learning revealed a significant difference between the participants’ attitudes with respect to their gender in favor of the male participants (İşleyen et.al. [25]), yet recent research results have demonstrated that there is no significant difference between participants’ attitudes in terms of gender (Yalman, [56]). The reason for lack of such a difference in recent studies could be the fact that female students using information and communication technologies did not have much knowledge about or interest in these technologies in the past. One of the most important factors influential on attitudes towards e-learning management system is the level of knowledge about computer and Internet use. Studies conducted in the field demonstrated that students’ low level of knowledge about devices and tools regarding information technologies increase their level of related anxiety (Dinçer et al. [14]; Chan et al. [11]; Thatcher et al. [53]). In the present study, no significant difference was found between the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system with respect to their weekly Internet use. In addition, it was also seen that there was no significant difference between the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system in terms of their years of computer use. In the study, although the students participating in the study took courses via the e-learning management system, 53,54% of them preferred hybrid education, which combines both face-to-face learning and e-learning management system. In their study conducted on the productivity the theology undergraduate education program, Kaymakcan and colleagues [27] reported that not only the students taking education with the traditional method but also those attending the theology undergraduate education program preferred education given with the traditional method. In addition, statistical analysis of the participants’ responses revealed that there was no significant difference regarding their attitudes towards e-learning management system in terms of their preferences of face-to-face, e-learning or hybrid learning. The results of the statistical analysis regarding the participants’ responses to the questionnaire revealed that there was no significant difference between the students’ attitudes towards e-learning management system in terms of their preferences of face-to-face learning, e-learning or hybrid learning. The reason for this result could be the fact that the faculty members teaching courses at universities combine face-to-face learning method and e-learning platforms as a support to education (Akkuş, Keskin [2]; Orhan et al. [38]; Seng, Mohamad, [47]). In one study conducted by Ünsal [55] to examine the influence of hybrid learning on students’ achievement and motivation, no X X X Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(7): 1708-1717, 2016 1715 significant difference was found between the achievement scores of the students taking courses on face-to-face basis and those of the students taking education on the basis of hybrid learning. In addition, the present study did not reveal any statistically significant difference between the students’ motivation types (internal and external) they favored as a learning method. The mobile devices that students taking theology undergraduate education via e-learning management system prefer to log in or use the system could have influence on the usability of the system (Popovici, Mironov [43]). Liaw et al. [37] state that students’ approaches to e-learning environments are more important than the technology itself used for these environments. In this respect, the design and usability of e-learning environments are important. In one study examining what e-learning is and how and by whom it should be designed, Khan, Joshi [32] reported that it is necessary to analyze students who will take education via e-learning platforms before structuring such systems. In the present study, no statistically significant difference was found between the students’ preferences of technological devices they used for the e-learning management system. The students’ responses to the questionnaire revealed that they were able to use more than one mobile device together. Kaymakcan and colleagues [28], in their study conducted with students from six different universities giving theology undergraduate education in Turkey (Atatürk, Dokuz Eylül, Fırat, İnönü, İstanbul and Sakarya), found that the most productive learning environments were live lessons and e-books used as an educational material on the system. In addition, Internet platforms and PowerPoint presentations were not found productive as learning environments. The spread of the Internet has gradually increased the use of e-learning systems (Sun et al. [50]). Users prefer e-learning platforms because these platforms can now support several languages. For this reason, the language used in the design of e-learning systems is important. In the present study, no significant difference was found in relation to the students’ foreign languages (Arabic and English). This result could be explained by the fact that the system used in the study had an effective and functional design totally appropriate to the students’ profile (Zanjani et al. [58]; Rothwell, Kazanas, [46]; Rakap, [44]). In addition, the present study did not reveal any significant difference regarding the students’ levels of foreign language proficiency. In the study, no significant difference was found in relation to the students’ visual, auditory and tactile preferences of learning methods. The related results in the study revealed that there were no significant differences between the students in terms of such variables as gender, weekly Internet use, years of computer use, preference of learning method and preference of mobile devices. The students’ responses to the questionnaire revealed a significant difference only with respect to their study methods (individual work or group work). 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work_46xx2x463jhm5ju6jivrbvhsji	----	Microsoft Word - Watching MOOC Together _ Camera Ready.docx Watching MOOCs Together: Investigating Co-located MOOC Study Groups Nan Li, Himanshu Verma, Afroditi Skevi, Guillaume Zufferey, Jan Blom, Pierre Dillenbourg Computer-Human Interaction in Learning and Instruction Lab (CHILI), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland EPFL-CHILI, RLC D1 740 (Rolex Learning Center), Station 20, CH-1015 Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland nan.li@epfl.ch, himanshu.verma@epfl.ch, afroditi.skevi@epfl.ch, guillaume.zufferey@epfl.ch, jan.blom@google.com, pierre.dillenbourg@epfl.ch Watching MOOCs Together: Investigating Co-located MOOC Study Groups Current MOOCs emphasize offering individualistic learning experiences, and most MOOC research is centered on this context. Recent research also suggests that MOOC students may prefer to study in groups. Social facilitation within the study groups may render the learning of difficult concepts a pleasing experience. We report a longitudinal study that investigates how co-located study groups watch and study MOOC videos together. The study was conducted with on- campus flipped classroom students. Our subjects reported an overall high satisfaction with the study group style. The research reveals that students like to stay synchronized in the group while watching MOOC videos. However, they have to find a balance between synchronization, video interaction and the amount of conversation. Watching MOOCs on a shared display addresses the need of synchronicity, and the distribution of control can increase the video interactivities. Keywords: MOOC, collaborative video watching, study groups Introduction MOOCs’ large audience base is challenging the pedagogical practices. One prominent problem is the elimination of the traditional interaction between instructors and learners, so that learning feedback cannot be obtained directly from the instructors (Kop, Fournier & Mak, 2011). Therefore, learners often seek support from their peers. The benefits of such collaboration have been established by several learning theories, such as social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) and connectivism (Siemens, 2005). Through collaboration, the ideal outcome is to achieve a situation in which “the learner is the teacher is the learner” (Siemens, 2006). Most popular MOOC platforms provide online forums to foster collaboration among learners. With the forums, students create temporary social interactions that are asynchronous and voluntary - timely support is not guaranteed. Furthermore, learner diversity makes it harder to maintain the activeness and quality of the loose collaborations within a forum. Collaborative Learning in Study Groups Research has found that the more open an online course is, the more the learners seek to engage in groups, as opposed to an open network (Mackness, Mak & Williams, 2010). This suggests that MOOC learners may be inclined towards learning in groups. Apart from students’ subjective willingness, many researchers have identified (over decades) the benefits of such collaborations in terms of learning effectiveness. Johnson & Johnson (1989) found that learning is most effective when students work collaboratively, share and compare individual ideas and work on a common solution. Furthermore, students develop critical skills and construct common knowledge, when learning in groups (Brindley, Blaschke & Walti, 2009). While the power of group learning has been demonstrated, how can we realize it in the context of MOOCs? One intuitive solution is to bring group engagement online. Researchers have investigated online group learning for years. Learners reported to experience more frustrations in online groups than in the face-to-face counterpart (Smith et al., 2011), which may relate to the difference in study goals, imbalanced participation and the quality of individual contribution (Capdeferro & Romero, 2012). NovoED 1 (a MOOC initiative) created a social incentive system to tackle these challenges: Small group collaborations are enforced and implemented via Google Doc2 and Hangouts3. Individual performance in a group is peer-rated so as to encourage participation and contribution. NovoED currently focuses on entrepreneurship courses consisting of designated group projects. In comparison, courses in technology and mathematics do not always have suitable group tasks. As MOOC learning is often centred on lecture videos, a more general group-based learning pedagogical approach could leverage this activity. Collaborative Video Watching Over the last 40 years, extensive research has been conducted in the field of collaborative video watching. In the late 70s, Gibbons, Kincheloe & Down (1977) coined the term “Tutored Video Instruction (TVI)” to denote the scenario where remote students watch video lectures in small groups with a tutor. Both students and tutors were able to pause the video and initiate discussions when problems and questions arose. The result showed that in terms of average grade obtained by the students, TVI students outperformed students who watched live video lectures in the classroom and those who watched offline video lectures. More surprisingly, TVI students also outperformed campus students who attended the lecture in the classroom. While tutors were present in this research study, the scenario where group students watched lectures without a tutor was also reported as advantageous in another research study (Stone, 1990). Sun (Sipusic et al., 1999) and Microsoft researchers (Smith, Sipusic & Pannoni, 1999) also demonstrated the advantages of synchronous collaborative video-watching of lectures, by replicating TVI in remote settings (Distributed-TVI or DTVI). A subsequent research on DTVI without tutors again confirmed similar conclusions (Cadiz et al., 2000). A new term collaborative video viewing (CVV) was coined later to represent the scenario where TVI is conducted without tutors. Similar to DTVI as compared with TVI, Distributed-CVV (DCVV) is used in the distributed condition. In addition, Cadiz et al. (2000) compared CVV with DCVV on learning and interaction behavior. Their results exhibit that the collocated groups were significantly more comfortable with pausing videos and discussed for longer duration both in total and per pause, than the distributed groups. Furthermore, another follow-up research by Weisz et al. (2007) showed that discussing while video watching was perceived to be an engaging and enriching social experience by the participants and was not considered distracting. Early research on TVI required the presence of a tutor, which is not a realistic solution for MOOCs. DCVV can be potentially feasible, but current MOOCs do not technically offer synchronous online collaborative video watching experiences. In contrast, CVV can be achieved for students that are close to each other. As MOOCs have reached large scale of learners, geographical student clusters may emerge. This phenomenon is seen in MeetUp4, which is a communication hub for learners in the same location. We have observed that while local meetings are actually being organized spontaneously, they are mostly unstructured and casual. MeetUp in its current form does not provide suggestions on how to study together. 1 NovoED: https://novoed.com/ 2 Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/ 3 Google Hangouts: http://www.google.com/hangouts/ 4 MeetUp: http://www.meetup.com/ In addition to MeetUp, universities naturally gather learners. It is highly probable that a student is following the same MOOC course as other fellow students/friends. Furthermore, many universities are embedding MOOCs into their course schedule (Martin, 2012) with the flipped-classroom model (Tucker, 2012). This model offers more group learning opportunities for university students, who are used to spontaneously studying in groups. Such emergent study groups are also shown to be effective in achieving better outcomes than individual learners (Tang, 1993), in terms of grades. Given the possibility for students to study together in the context of MOOCs, we are motivated to replicate the CVV approach in MOOC learning. We conducted an experiment with spontaneously formed study groups of on-campus flipped-classroom students. In this article, we report our findings on how the students watched lecture videos and collaborated in groups over several weeks. On-campus students are representatives of collocated MOOC learners. We believe the investigation of this subpopulation of MOOC learners has pedagogical implications for flipped-classroom teaching, the organization of MeetUps as well as distance educational programs for developing countries where digital infrastructure is limited. It also has technological implications towards the design of video player features customized for watching MOOC lectures in a distributed group. Research Questions We designed a user study to investigate the potential of watching MOOC video lectures as well as solving quizzes collaboratively, within a collocated study-group setting. It is expected that study groups might adopt different styles of watching MOOC video lectures. For example, some groups might decide to watch video lectures independently followed by discussions after the end of each video. Other groups might prefer watching video lectures synchronously by projecting the video on a screen. Considering these varied video-watching styles, we defined different video-watching conditions in our study by manipulating across two dimensions: display (centralized or distributed) and video control (shared or distributed) as explained in the next sections. In order to investigate the underlying video-watching dynamics of the study groups, we aim to answer the following research questions, clustered into the three aspects of group work. The research questions were chosen to be thematically broad, as we intended to explore various factors involved in the study, and to get a more realistic picture of underlying study-group behaviour. a) Synchronicity: The varied video-watching styles adopted by the study groups reflect on the MOOC video watching preferences. One such preference worth investigating is the synchronous watching of video lectures. Do study groups tend to watch videos asynchronously (independent watching within the time frame when the students meet to study), or is synchronicity a desirable attribute of group video watching? b) Discussions and argumentations: In collocated study-group settings, discussions among the group members are expected, especially while watching the difficult parts of the video lectures. Concerning discussions, we aim to examine: When do the group members usually discuss? Are there discussions while watching a video, or after finishing a video lecture? Further, is there an influence of the video-watching configuration on the discussion patterns of the group members? c) Navigation patterns: Finally, we anticipate that some groups might interact more frequently with the video lectures by pausing and seeking, than others. One can think of several factors responsible for this behaviour, such as group composition or course difficulty. However, the influence of different video- watching conditions on the video interactions is more interesting to investigate, as this might provide some critical insights into the identification of an effective video watching condition. Thus, our question is: Do the different video-watching styles lead to difference in the amount of interactivity with the video lectures? Experimental Methodology We conducted an exploratory longitudinal study lasting for 5 weeks in the spring of 2013. During these 5 weeks the study groups were asked to watch video lectures collaboratively and solve quizzes, subjected to three video-watching conditions. Participants Fifty-Four (54) engineering students (11 females, 43 males) were recruited from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to participate in our study. Twelve (12) groups of 4-5 participants were spontaneously formed. These 12 groups attended the weekly lectures from one of two MOOCs, which were offered in a flipped classroom format; namely Numerical Analysis (NAS, in French) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP, in English). The participants were recruited from amongst the pool of students who had enrolled in these courses on campus, and were asked to form their own study- groups (except one group, which was formed by the experimenters). Both the courses were mathematical in nature, and the students could meet with the instructors weekly in a classroom. The students enrolled in the NAS course were first-year bachelor students, whereas the students enrolled in the DSP course consisted of first- and second-year master students. Also, the gender ratio of the participants in the study was unbalanced, which is a drawback of any authentic learning context. More details about group distribution are given in Table 1. Most of the students who participated in our study had no previous experience of learning with MOOCs. In addition, all except one student reported having participated in a study-group in the past. Further, all group members with an exception of one group from DSP course (which was formed by us), reported that they were well acquainted with their respective group members. Finally, each participant was rewarded with a compensation amount of 150 Swiss Francs and a printed textbook of the course, after the completion of the experiment. Table 1 Distribution of participants across the two courses. Course Total Groups Females Males NAS 9 11 29 DSP 3 0 14 Experimental Conditions We decided to have three experimental conditions, based on the groups’ varied video- watching styles. The choice of these three conditions was done based on manipulations across two dimensions: display and video controller as shown in Table 2. The display dimension refers to the screen over which the group members watch the video lectures. The video controller dimension refers to the controller that enables group members to interact with the video by pausing, seeking and browsing between videos. Both these dimensions can be either centralized or distributed. Table 2 The distribution of experimental conditions across the two dimensions. Display Video Controller Centralized Distributed Centralized CC - Distributed DD DC Varying across the aforementioned dimensions, we define three experimental conditions (see Figure 1) as follows: • Centralized video control and centralized display (CC): In this condition, group members sat around a table and watched video lectures on a single wall- mounted projected display, connected to a single tablet computer (multi-touch enabled). The group members could control the video by using the provided video-controller in the video player application. This condition is similar to the CVV condition from the user study of Cadiz et al. (2000). • Distributed video control and centralized display (DC): In this condition, group members sat around a table and watched videos on a single wall-mounted projected display, connected to a PC. In addition, each learner was equipped with a mouse of her own, which could be used to interact with the video player. This condition can be considered to be similar to a single television with multiple remote controllers, where each viewer gets her own remote control. • Distributed video control and distributed display (DD): In this condition, group members sat around the table and watched the video lectures on a separate tablet computer (multi-touch enabled) at their own pace. Each group member could only control her own video. Further, the participants in this condition used headphones while watching video lectures. (a) CC Condition: Group watch video on the centralized display with a single video control (b) DC Condition: Centralized display but each group member has their own video control (c) DD Condition: Every group member watches the video on a different tablet computer Figure 1. The three experimental conditions We envisioned that the DC condition would be an intermediate condition imposing synchronous video watching while encouraging group members to interact with the video by providing individual controls. This condition could be a good supplement to the study-group way of watching videos, as providing each group member with a video controller of their own might encourage them to pause and discuss frequently. We chose to omit the CD (centralized video control and distributed display) condition, as this condition does not correspond to a realistic study-group practice. Methodology The 12 groups were evenly distributed across the three conditions, such that each condition had 4 groups (3 groups of NAS, 1 group of DSP). The study lasted for a period of 5 weeks out of 7 for the two MOOC courses. Each study-group was asked to watch MOOC videos and solve quizzes collaboratively. The participants were instructed well in advance not to watch the MOOC videos before coming for the weekly experiment session. We used one-factor (video watching condition), between-group design for our study. Participants were allowed to discuss anytime while watching videos and were motivated to do so. The experiment sessions were not time-bound and participants were asked to watch videos at their own pace. However, an upper limit of 3 hours was set for a single experiment session. The video length of each week’s lectures was less than the time limit set for each session (see Table 3). After each session, participants completed a post-experiment questionnaire recording their perceptions of the session. We observed the study-groups in their natural behaviour and the participants were asked to choose their style freely. However, as our study was exploratory in nature and focused on the collaborative video watching, we decided not to measure any learning gain of the participants. Table 3 The total video length (in minutes) of each weekly session Course Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Mean (SD) NAS 39.36 56.90 59.26 48.28 59.46 52.65 (8.72) DSP 58.35 111.76 94.93 107.21 135.21 101.49 (28.19) Data Collected We recorded all the interactions of the participants with the video player (pauses, seek, etc.) in the system log files. In addition, as each participant had her own video controller (mouse) in DC condition, we also recorded individual actions in the log files. The participants completed a pre-experiment questionnaire, recording basic demographics and personality information (such as participant’s perception of herself about extroversion, self-discipline, etc.) as well as their previous experiences with MOOCs and study groups. The participants also filled in a post-experiment questionnaire after each weekly session, stating their perceptions about the video watching session, satisfaction and quality of their discussions. Finally, we video recorded all experimental sessions and also conducted semi-structured interviews with the participants at the end of the user study. Results and Analysis Participants’ Subjective Perceptions The experiment participants reported on a high level of satisfaction with the study- group way of learning with MOOCs, in the post-experiment questionnaires as well as in the semi-structured interviews. The discussions were perceived to be of higher quality and very beneficial on a 5-point Likert-scale (see Table 4), even in the DD condition where the group members were watching the videos independently. We observed that in the DD condition, study group members were waiting for others to finish their respective videos and discussions followed after each video. This shows that being in the study group influenced the individual video-watchers to synchronize their studying practice while giving a significant priority to the discussions after each video. Also, we did not find any significant statistical difference across the 3 conditions regarding the difference in perceived discussion quality. Table 4 The perceived quality of discussions during MOOC video watching. No significant difference was found in perceived quality across conditions. Perceived Quality of Discussions Mean (SD) All Participants 4.12 (0.81) CC Condition 4.17 (0.79) DC Condition 4.14 (0.87) DD Condition 4.03 (0.76) During the semi-structured interviews, participants reported that the power to pause the MOOC lecture in situations where a learner needs explanations about a specific concept, followed by discussions with peers was similar in experience to “…it’s like pausing a professor in the classroom.”. The participants also had positive opinions concerning their motivations for learning with MOOCs in a study group as they can validate their understanding of the topic with their friends instantly. This was reported by one of the participant as “If you are alone, maybe you doubt about your results and understanding and you validate the solutions to problems two or three times, to be sure. But here [within study group] you can compare with your friends. This is much better!”. Moreover, studying individually with MOOCs was perceived to be less effective and less motivating than learning within a study group. This was reported as: “The study group is much better than studying alone. More motivating … asking questions and getting answers, so that we are able to understand better. Alone, it would be more difficult and less interesting”. Study participants reported that as many courses are difficult and time-consuming, the study group renders their learning experience more pleasing. Finally, participants reported of increased activeness and attentiveness while watching video-lectures in a group as: “… during lectures [classroom] sometimes you kind of drift away, while here [study group] because of the interaction with the group, you are obliged to be more active”. Video Navigation Patterns In order to gain perceptual knowledge of how participants interacted with video- lectures, we visualize students’ navigation within videos with video navigation plots. Four sample plots, each illustrating the navigation patterns for a single group from different conditions, are shown in Figure 2. (a) CC sample in NAS (b) DD sample in NAS (c) DC sample in NAS (d) DD sample in DSP Figure 2. Sample video navigation patterns of the study groups for a weekly study session. The horizontal axis represents the session time (in seconds). The vertical axis corresponds to the video-time position of a student/group (in seconds). Each video is associated with a specific color. The horizontal axis of each plot represents the timeline of a study group session, and the vertical axis denotes the timeline of the videos. Both timelines are measured in seconds. Groups watched multiple videos each week, and each color in the plot represents a different video. Figure 2(b) and 2(d) are the examples of DD condition, where the patterns for multiple students are shown in parallel. A straight line-segment with a positive slope indicates that the corresponding video was played without any interruption; a horizontal line-segment is a sign of a pause; jitters depict fast forwards/backwards within the video and the gaps between two continuous series are the time periods when students were discussing about the problems or doing quizzes after finishing a video (no active video at that moment). Participants did not ask for breaks, so the plots represent a complete picture of the group activity during a session. Comparing the patterns in DD condition for the NAS course (Figure 2(b)) with the other two conditions for the same course (Figure 2(a) and 2(c)), we do not see striking differences. It is the DD group for the DSP course (Figure 2(d)) that stands out from the four samples. Students in this DSP group interacted with video-lectures a lot more, and were watching different video content at the same time, than those from the NAS course. Unlike NAS groups, other DSP groups exhibit differing patterns as well. Moreover, the instructors of the DSP course did not oblige campus students to solve MOOC quizzes, and the content of the course was more advanced than the introductory NAS course. These factors constitute a strong course-dependent effect that would break the homogeneity of the analysis. Considering that only 3 DSP groups were recruited, we have less statistical power to prove a finding. Therefore, the analyses in the next sections will be solely based on NAS groups. Video Interactivity Participants’ interaction with video-lectures is presented as video navigation plots in Figure 2. Video interactions consist of different kinds of actions (pause, seek-forward and seek-backward), each contributing to the total video-watching time. We define time-spent-on-video index (TSOVI) to gauge the level of interactivity. TSOVI refers to the ratio between the total time spent on watching videos in a week and the total length of video contents that are watched (not necessarily full videos). Possible values are theoretically any numbers that are above 1.0. Both pausing and rewinding videos increase the value: an index of 1.0 indicates that all the videos were played exactly once without being paused or re-watched, otherwise it exhibits that students had spent additional time on the videos. While computing the indices, all the videos for a week were taken into account as a whole, and non-watched video content was not considered. (a) Time-spent-on-video Index (TSOVI) (b) Pause frequency Figure 3. Bar plots with means and confidence intervals for time-spent-on-video index and pause frequency under different conditions Descriptive statistics about TSOVI and pause frequency across conditions are illustrated with the mean plot in Figure 3. The mean and confidence intervals are computed for the whole five-week period in the unit of group. In the DD condition, the indices are computed as the average values for all the participants in the group. Figure 3(a) shows that, on average the DC groups spent more time on videos, and no noticeable difference is seen for the other two conditions. This finding is confirmed statistically with a mixed-effect linear regression analysis. A pairwise comparison revealed that the groups spent significantly more time in the DC condition than both in CC (β=0.411, 95% CI = [0.143,0.679], R2=0.56, p<0.05) and DD (β=0.375,95% CI = [0.104,0.646], R2=0.56, p<0.05) conditions. No significant differences were found between CC and DD conditions. To complement the above finding, we compared the frequency of different types of video interactions (pauses and seeks). In terms of video seeks, the three conditions did not differ. However, the DC groups were found to pause significantly more often than in CC (β=0.227, 95% CI=[0.148,0.306], R2=0.49, p<0.005) and DD (β=0.214,95% CI= [0.133,0.295], R2=0.49, p<0.005) conditions (see Figure 3(b)). Social effects can offer an explanation for this finding. The fact that each student in the DC condition was equipped with a mouse is perhaps seen by the students as a signal to encourage pausing videos. In CC condition, the single video-control made students hesitant to pause due to social pressures, such as when and who should make the pause. On the contrary, students in the DD condition, perhaps pause generally less in order to stay synchronized with each other, as we will discuss in the next section. Synchronicity In the scope of the DD condition, we are interested in how far individual students in a group synchronously watched videos together, which we denote as synchronicity. The synchronicity between two students in a group is obtained by computing the ratio between the total synchronous time and the length of the study session. Synchronous time means that the two students are either simultaneously watching the same video content or not watching any videos (i.e. they might be discussing). A threshold value T (measured in seconds) was introduced to determine the synchronous status. For each second of a study-session we look T seconds ahead and behind to see if the two students were or would be watching the same video content within T. In other words, we check if one student catches up with the other in “T” seconds. If yes, then they are synchronized. We coined the term individual synchronicity index (ISI) to measure the average synchronicity between all pairs involving the same student. Each student in a group has a different individual synchronicity, which signifies how the student synchronized with other students in the same group. Another term group synchronicity index (GSI) is used to denote the average of all individual synchronicities within a group. An empirical value T = 50s was chosen to compute the previously defined synchronicity indices, because this threshold value maximizes the variance of resulting group synchronicity. The threshold also makes sense in real world: a teacher usually explains the same concept within this period, so it is reasonable to say that students are synchronized on the same ground. Synchronicity over Time The GSI over the five weeks for each DD groups (including the DSP group) are shown in Figure 4. The fifth week’s data for the NAS-1 group is missing due to a technical problem during the experiment. This figure shows that the synchronization in groups is stable over time. In addition, a clear gap among the synchronicity series is seen in the middle range of the vertical axis, which separates highly synchronized groups (NAS-1 and NAS-2 groups with GSI>0.65) from lowly synchronized ones (NAS-3 and DSP groups with GSI<0.6). Figure 4. Changes in group-synchronicity index over weeks. Variation in Synchronicity While group synchronicities tend to stabilize over weeks, they vary across different groups. With mixed linear regression analysis, we found that the TSOVI is shown to have negative correlational effect with the ISI (β=-0.19, 95% CI = [-0.301, -0.078], R2=0.90, p<0.005). This correlation indicates that more video-engagement time creates fewer opportunities for students in DD groups to keep synchronization. More time on videos suggests that many interactions (pausing and replaying) might have occurred, which apparently makes it difficult for students to stay synchronized. In the semi- structured interviews, highly synchronous groups reported that they usually noted down the problems while watching video-lectures, and discussed the problems right after everyone finished watching. The groups were self-regulated, and many students deliberately started and finished video watching more or less simultaneously. We also asked the participants to rate their perceived equality of contribution among group members and the quality of their discussions on a 5-point Likert scale. We observed that highly synchronous groups perceived a high quality of discussion (β=1.308, 95% CI = [0.263,2.546], R2=0.445, p<0.05), as well as equal contribution (β=1.438, 95% CI = [0.386,2.499], R2=0.35, p<0.05). This result exhibits that synchronization is a desired attribute of a study group. Amount of Speech In the previous section we identified study groups in the DD condition with diverse synchronicities. DD groups are separated into two categories according to their synchronicity. In this section we investigate the effect of synchronicity on the amount of speech in the DD condition, with CC condition as the baseline for comparisons. Speech Patterns We categorize the speech during a study session into 3 types, in-pause speech, in- watching speech, and off-video speech. The first type refers to the speech during the paused periods of time, the second concerns the speech while the videos are being played, and the last type represents the speech in the gap between watching two consecutive videos. The amount of each type of speech adds up to the total amount of speech in a study session. We measure the amount of speech at the group level, without differentiating whom it is from. The speech time is then divided by the total length of the corresponding session for normalization. The means of different types of normalized speech are plotted in Figure 5(a) with confidence intervals, and detailed patterns for each group over the five weeks are presented in Figure 5(b). These graphs plot the speech data from the NAS DD groups only. The separation between highly and lowly synchronized group is consistent to that described in the previous section (NAS-1 and NAS-2: DD-SYNC-HIGH, NAS-3: DD-SYNC-LOW). We first compare the common characteristics of different types of speech in Figure 5(a). The off-video speech contributed the largest to the total amount of speech. This type of speech happened after a video was finished, when students jointly solved quizzes and problems encountered in the video, both of which required group discussions. The fact that the amount of in-watching speech was always larger than in- pause speech is partly due to the overall higher length of video-play time compared to video-pause time. In addition, CC students could deliver spontaneous speech without pausing the video, and students were likely to discuss in subgroups, when some students were still playing videos. Both factors may also contribute to a higher amount of in- watching speech. (a) Amount of speech among different conditions (b) Amount of speech in each group over five weeks Figure 5. Amount of different type of speech in study groups Next we investigate the differences in speech across conditions (see Figure 5). The CC groups and highly synchronized DD groups resemble each other in large amount of total speech, whereas lowly synchronized DD groups overall talked noticeably less. It suggests that highly synchronized DD condition was almost like the CC condition in term of total speech, and the difference was that the CC groups talked more during video watching and less after the videos while the highly synchronized DD groups resulted oppositely. This observation can be explained by the group setup: The DD students were wearing headsets during video watching, so that they could not talk easily while watching videos. The loss of discussion during video watching was instead compensated after the videos. Note that even the speech patterns within the same group vary over five weeks (see Figure 5(b)). As for the comparison within DD condition, the interpretation of the bar charts for the lowly synchronized groups needs to be made with caution, since only one group is classified in their category. To get a better picture of the dynamics in the DD condition, we use statistical tools to quantify the patterns, which will come next. Effect of Synchronicity on Speech Figure 5(a) shows distinct patterns for lowly synchronized DD groups, which suggests a potentially systematic effect of synchronicities. With mixed linear regression analysis, we found that synchronicity (ISI) had a positive correlational effect on the amount of off-video speech (β=0.45, 95% CI = [0.319,0.621], R2=0.84, p<0.0005) and a negative effect on the amount of in-pause speech (β=-0.06, 95% CI = [-0.076, -0.011], R2=0.21, p<0.05). This result suggests that more synchronized groups spent less time in pauses within videos, but more time after watching the videos. To complement the result above by relating the speech to video interactivity, we found that video interactivity (TSOVI) positively affects in-pause speech (β=0.05, 95% CI = [0.026,0.074], R2=0.28, p<0.0005), and negatively affects off-video speech (β=-0.113, 95% CI = [-0.202, - 0.022], R2=0.82, p<0.05). This result is in line with the negative correlation between ISI and TSOVI. The interactions between these correlations are shown in Figure 6. Figure 6. Relationship between video interactivity, synchronicity and amount of speech Figure 6 suggests that the more students in the DD groups engaged in video watching, the less synchronized they were, which in turn increased the amount of off- video speech and decreased the in-pause speech. In other words, highly synchronized students sacrificed video engagement for gaining synchronicity, resulting in more discussions during off-video periods. The amount of off-video speech seems to be balanced with that of in-pause speech: one aspect wanes, the other waxes. This effect is confirmed with marginal significance (p=0.07). However, the link between them is missing, because the amount of off-video speech is affected by the time spent on quizzes as well. It is difficult to conclude there is a relation between these two types of speech Discussion Although previous MOOC research (Mackness, Mak & Williams, 2010) suggests that learners have tendency towards group learning, our study puts it into practice within a collocated setting. Our experiment participants are authentic MOOC students, the conditions are quasi-realistic and the study has the ingredients to bring the study-group way of learning with MOOCs in the mainstream. First and foremost, our observations show that the study-group way of watching MOOC videos was widely accepted and highly appreciated by the learners. The study participants reported on increased levels of attentiveness and engagement. In addition, learning within study-groups can render the learning experience with difficult courses a pleasing experience, and helps the group-members to validate each other’s understanding of the topic; resulting into a shared knowledge model. Furthermore, a high quality of discussions was also perceived by the participants regardless of the experimental condition, which conforms to the previous statement that being in a group is crucial towards learning with MOOCs. These observations indicate that our study can have implications towards flipped-courses within the universities as well as towards promoting learning with MOOCs in infrastructure-scarce developing countries. Next, we observed that watching videos synchronously (denoted by synchronicity) emerged as a crucial attribute of the study-groups. The two experimental conditions with the centralized display (CC and DC) were already synchronized as all the group members saw the same part of the video. However, we found interesting results in the DD condition where the group members watched the videos on their own. We observed a split in this condition, as some groups chose to stay highly synchronized by sacrificing the power of interactivity with the video. These highly synchronized groups discussed significantly more between videos as compared to the lowly synchronized groups, and were at par with one of the synchronized condition with centralized display. In addition, highly synchronized groups perceived discussions to be of better quality. These observations indicate that synchronicity while watching videos empowers learners with a sense of being in a team. On the contrary, interacting too much with the video promotes individualism, as the learners are only concerned with their own learning rather than sharing and validating their understanding with others; and this idea also goes against the theme of study-groups. Further, co-located video watching also empowers study-group members to discuss and validate each other’s understanding of the topic, whenever faced with confusion or a difficulty. This situation is analogous to asking questions to a teacher in the middle of a lecture, with the only difference that in a study-group one can ask questions to her peers. Therefore, presence of individual controls is advantageous as it promotes more discussions while watching videos. This is made evident as the groups in DC condition were observed to be more interactive (with the video) and spent more time on videos as compared to CC and DD conditions. One possible explanation for this difference could be that in CC condition the group members were hesitant to reach out and explicitly acquire the video control, and possibly only dominant members did so. On the other hand, the lack of awareness of what the others were watching in the highly synchronized DD groups led to less interactions with the videos. This observation is in line with the benefits of single display groupware in peer-tutoring and peer-learning as identified by Stewart et al. (1999). Single display groupware, such as the one used in DC condition, increase awareness of the learning activity and group members, promote balanced participation, and mitigate the chances where one group member takes explicit control of shared resources (video control). This leads us to the conclusion that DC condition is a good fit for situations where high interactivity with the video lectures is desired while keeping the synchronicity intact. In this study, as our focus was on understanding the group-study patterns that naturally emerge under different conditions, we did not measure the learning outcomes of the study-group participants. However, this could be an interesting research question for future work, as it will enable us to identify the optimal condition for learning with MOOCs in collocated settings. Moreover, the lack of comparison between group and individual video watching adds a limitation to our study, as we cannot conclude the relative value of group versus individual learning with MOOCs. Conclusion Co-located MOOC watching has the potential to become widespread at universities as well as geographically centered clusters, both due to the large learners base and the simplicity of technical solutions. A simple study group configuration requires no more than conventional computers, as demonstrated in this article. We have investigated how spontaneous MOOC study groups watch videos together under different configurations. Our results reveal that watching MOOCs in groups provides highly satisfying learning experience as learners feel connected and interactions among them are enabled. We identified that synchronicity while watching video lectures is a desirable attribute of collaborative video watching. However, when both video control and display were distributed, students tended to sacrifice in-video discussions and video interactions for staying synchronized. A video watching condition with shared display and distributed individual controls might enable study groups to find a fine balance between synchronicity, video interactivity and discussions. These results have implications for MOOC pedagogical designers towards the integration of collaborative learning practices in the existing MOOC platforms. References Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M., & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3). Cadiz, J. J., Balachandran, A., Sanocki, E., Gupta, A., Grudin, J., & Jancke, G. (2000, December). Distance learning through distributed collaborative video viewing. In CSCW’2000 (pp. 135-144). ACM. Capdeferro, N., & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?. The International review of research in open and distance learning, 13(2), 26-44. Gibbons, J. F., Kincheloe, W. R., and Down, K. S. (1977). Tutored videotape instruction: a new use of electronics media in education. Science. 195: 1139-1146. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Interaction Book Company. Kop, R., Fournier, H., & Mak, J. S. F. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on massive open online courses. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 74-93. Mackness, J., Mak, S., & Williams, R. (2010). The ideals and reality of participating in a MOOC. In Networked Learning Conference (pp. 266-275). University of Lancaster. Martin, F. G. (2012). Will massive open online courses change how we teach?. Communications of the ACM, 55(8), 26-28. Sipusic, M., Pannoni, R., Smith, R., Dutra, J., Gibbons., J., and Sutherland, W. (1999). Virtual Collaborative Learning: A Comparison between Face-to-Face Tutored Video Instruction and Distributed Tutored Video Instruction (DTVI). Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc. TR-99-72. Available at http://www.sun.com/research/techrep/1999/ abstract-72.html Smith, R. B., Sipusic, M. J., & Pannoni, R. L. (1999). Experiments comparing face-to- face with virtual collaborative learning. In CSCL’99 (p. 68). International Society of the Learning Sciences. Smith, G. G., Sorensen, C., Gump, A., Heindel, A. J., Caris, M., & Martinez, C. D. (2011). Overcoming student resistance to group work: Online versus face-to- face. The Internet and Higher Education, 14(2), 121-128. Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.International journal of instructional technology and distance learning, 2(1), 3-10. Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing knowledge. Lulu.com. Stewart, J., Bederson, B. B., & Druin, A. (1999). Single display groupware: a model for co-present collaboration. In CHI’99 (pp. 286-293). ACM. Stone, H. R. (1990). Economic development and technology transfer: Implications for video-based distance education. Contemporary issues in American distance education, 231-242. Tang, K. C. C. (1993). Spontaneous collaborative learning: A new dimension in student learning experience?. Higher Education Research and Development, 12(2), 115- 130. Tucker, B. (2012). The flipped classroom. Education Next, 12(1), 82-83. Vygotskiĭ, L. L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press. Weisz, J. D., Kiesler, S., Zhang, H., Ren, Y., Kraut, R. E., & Konstan, J. A. (2007). Watching together: integrating text chat with video. In CHI’2007 (pp. 877-886). ACM. 
work_4cdtyhsb2vbnbpsnxarfcyckna	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_4crdurn32jbbjhwiyeavq6p3by	----	The Modeling of Virtual Environment Distance Education Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346 1875-3892 © 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAPIE Organization Committee. doi:10.1016/j.phpro.2012.02.347 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com  Available online at www.sciencedirect.com    PhysicsProcedia00(2011)000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia   2012InternationalConferenceonAppliedPhysicsandIndustrialEngineering TheModelingofVirtualEnvironmentDistanceEducation ChangXueqin     This research presented a virtual environment that integrates in a virtual mockup services available in a university campusforstudentsandteacherscommunicationindifferentactuallocations.Advantagesofthissysteminclude:the remoteaccesstoavarietyofservicesandeducationaltools,therepresentationofrealstructuresandlandscapesinan interactive 3D model that favors localization of services and preserves the administrative organization of the university. For that, the system was implemented a control access for users and an interface to allow the use of previouseducationalequipmentsandresourcesnotdesignedfordistanceeducationmode.  ©2011PublishedbyElsevierLtd.Selectionand/orpeerreviewunderresponsibilityof[nameorganizer]  Keywords:virtualenvironment;distanceeducation;web  Virtual reality promised fully immersive environments accessed by specialized body and headset equipment.Easilyusablevirtualrealitiesofthisnaturehavelargelyfailedtoemerge.However,significant progress has been made in related areas and recent advances in multiuser, online games playing technologyhavefosteredtheemergenceofatypeofvirtualrealityintheformofgloballyaccessiblemulti uservirtualenvironments(MUVE)[1].Significantly,recentMUVEdevelopmentshavemovedawayfrom anygameplayingcontentandnowsimplyprovidea3Dplatformthatusersmaydevelopinany waythe choose.Thishasfosteredtheemergenceofa3Dinternetthatissomewhatsimilartotheworldwideweb, inthatusersdevelopsitesinprovidingrealistic,usable3Denvironmentsissuchthatthe3Dinternetisnow beinghailedasapotentialsuccessortotheworldwidewebforconductingonlineinteractions. Traditionally,studentsexpectflexibilityandmobilityoftheeducationenvironmentsandmoreintuitive interaction with the university campus, employees desire an easier access to administrative tools and the societydesiresbetterinformationregardingtheuniversitylocalities,itsactivitiesandservices.Traditional online delivery mechanisms struggle to achieve any sense of community or Ācohort cohesion” in participants even when using the latest Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, forums, etc. Here, students largely studyinisolationwithoutthenormalsocialinteractionthatissoimportanttoafullyroundededucational experience. © 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAPIE Organization Committee. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 2340 Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346       Realizethesenecessities,thispaperputforwardtoawebbasedmultiuservirtualcampus(WMUVC) for distance education, which isbased on MUVE to satisfy multiusers’ needs of which not only include students and teachers, but also managers and other employees who working for the campus. This paper presentstheapproachtobuildingasustainable,cohesiveeducationcommunity.   Perhaps oneof the most exciting developments inthecomputing arenaover the lastdecade hasbeen thealmoststealthyemergenceofdesktop,3Dvirtualrealities. Virtual Reality (VR), also known as virtual technology or artificial environment, a form of human computer interaction in which a real or imaginary environment is simulated and users interact with and manipulatethatworld.Userstravelwithinthesimulatedworldbymovingtowardwheretheywanttogo, and interact with things by grasping and manipulating simulated objects. In the most successful virtual environment, users feel that they are truly present in the simulated world and that theirexperience in the virtualworldmatcheswhattheywouldexperienceintheenvironmentbeingsimulated[2].Thissensation isreferredtoasengagement,immersion,orpresence,anditisthisqualitythatdistinguishesvirtualreality fromotherformsofhumancomputer”interaction.Virtualrealityisaproductwhichdevelopedtoacertain levelofcombiningcomputertechnologyandscienceofhumanunderstandingoftheworld.Itopenedupa new way for the visualization of special information. It has three characteristics Immersion, Interactivity andImagination.  Distanceeducationisafieldofeducationthatfocusesonthepedagogy,technology,andinstructional system designs that aim to deliver education to students who are not physically "on site" in a traditional classroomorcampus.Ithasbeendescribedas"aprocesstocreateandprovideaccesstolearningwhenthe sourceofinformationandthelearnersareseparatedbytimeanddistance,orboth." There are two distance education modes: synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous is a mode of onlinedeliverywhereallparticipantsare"present"atthesametimerequiringatimetabletobeorganized. Asynchronous is a mode of online delivery where participants access course materials on their own schedule. Students are not required to be together at the same time. Message board forums, email and recordedvideoareexamplesofasynchronoustechnology[3]. Neithersynchronousnorsynchronous,nowadays,canfulfillthenatureofinteractionbetweenstudents andteachers.Whattheyface,nevertheless,iscomputerscreenormonitor.So,theneedforchangingthis situationemergesrecentyears.  Virtualcampusistherepresentationofuniversitycampusintheformof3Dvirtualenvironment,which is usually based on a real campus features and landform, but not necessarily always so. It's a digitized virtualspaceofanexistingorimaginedcampus,andismainlyutilizedasameansofimageexhibitionor campusdesign.Manyuniversitieshavesetuptheirownvirtualuniversitiesandvirtualcampuses,Suchas BeijingUniversityofAeronauticsandAstronautics,ZhejiangUniversity,TianjinUniversityinChina[4]. However,thesevirtualcampusesjustarepropagandaforms,whiletheyhavenoanyothereffect. Inordertosatisfytherequirementsmentionedabove,thevirtualcampus,inthefuture,notonlyaimage of the university, but also the tool make students and teachers which are involved in distance education communication naturally andfreely.Only when all thesearedone it wouldbringaperfectexperienceto users. Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346 2341        People involved in distance education include students in various locations, teachers who are in different location from students, managers who in charge of the system and other employees. They are different group people regarding to the requirement to the system. This paper engaged in establishing a systemwhichwillmakedistanceeducationsustainable,cohesiveandconvenientforallusers.  To make the virtual campus more convenient and economical, this paper combines the three dimensional scenery supplied by virtual reality technology and the information dissemination mode of traditional website, such as email, VOIP, camera chat etc together to establish a networked multiusers virtual campus which can realize the combination and share of the teaching resources which can be browsed and This virtual system experiment used freely, and benefit to the users and managers of the distanceeducationsystem. TheWMUVCisenvironmentestablishedin3Dformwhichcanaffordavividimageoftheuniversity and is more flexible than 2D rendering form. During the process of course taking, one student can communicate and discuss with teacher and other students as in real classroom, even, refer to experiment courses, students can observe the details and steps of the experiment conduct by teacher. 3D rendering form excels 2D form change of vision either in course vitality or reality, and is much fit for guiding studentstostudy. The system is a simulation of real life in campus for students can take actives such as having class, takingexercisesandmakingfriends;aswellasintherealcampus,teachercanlecture,reviewworksfrom students,conductexaminations;managerscanmanagethedailyteachingactivesandstudents’affairs.  Astheusershavedifferentlevelofknowledgeaboutcomputerandinternet,theWMUVC’sstructure shouldbesimpleanditshouldofferintuitivenavigationwhichcouldmakeuserscommunicatenaturally. Thenavigationoccursthroughavirtualmockupthataffordsmobilityandaccesstotheservicesavailable. For remote access to the system and to its services, the interface of communication of the system uses a clientserver structure. This way, the user can access a homepage to connect him to an application that establishesaconnectionwiththeserverthroughinternet. MockupsinWMUVCaremodeledandorganizedaccordingtostructuralaspectsintherealworldand thisorganizationreflectstherelationshipbetweenmockups.Thestructuraldiagramofthesystemisshown asFig.1,inwhichvirtualclassroom,laboratoriesandlibraryareconnectedtoeachother.Userscanaccess everyvirtualentitythroughthenetworkafteridentityvalidation. 2342 Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346        Figure1. Thestructureofwebbasedmultiusersvirtualcampussystem The system is composed by: a virtual mockup situated in a Client subsystem; an interface of communication,responsible forthe access to the services;and a layerof applications available for users, situated in the Server subsystem. The Client subsystem is responsible for the management and sending requestsfortheServerthroughtheInternet.TheServersubsystemisresponsiblefortranslation,processing andreplyoftherequests. ThetheoreticalmodelofWMUVCisshowninFig.2,whichiscomprisedofthreemajorparts.Theleft partandrightpartisthemodelofstudentsubsystemandteachersubsystem,respectively,whichcomprise five layers,and the middle part istheOpen System Interconnection(OSI) model which comprises seven layers. The left part and right part communicate and exchange information through the middle part. The fivelayersofWMUVCinclude:  thislayersuppliestheuserwithavirtualcampus,andtheusercaninteractwith thevirtualcampus,teacher,andotherclassmatesfreelyandnaturally.    this layer consists of the basic functions of WMUVC, including design of the system, simulation to the physical world, transferring information and displaying images and other information,etc.     this layer integrates the algorithms necessary for the operation of WMUVC system,suchasplanningalgorithm,graphicrenderingalgorithmanddataprocessingalgorithm.  thislayer includestheinformationofcampus,courseandteacherdescription, demonstrationofsomeexperiments,displayingofthemockupsandotherthingsinWMUVC,etc.  thislayercomprisesthehardwareofthevirtualenvironmentsuchasclassrooms andotherbuildings,experimentalinstruments,tables,chairs,etc. Serversandequipments Webbasedmultiusersvirtualcampussystem library laboratorie s classroom s  Systeminterface students teachers managers other Dataserver Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346 2343        Figure2. ThetheoreticalmodelofWMUVC. While the seven layers of OSI model include application layer, presentation layer, session layer, transport layer, network layer, data link layer, and physical layer. The dashed block is the established WMUVC system. Students can enter any virtual classroom to having class; any laboratory to operate experiments; library to reading books, teachers can lecture in the virtual classroom or laboratory, and managers can overview the activities and process occurring in the system, as long as their identities is validated.  Consideringvarietyoftheusers,thecommunicateinterfaceofthesystemshouldbeflexible,available andeasytouse.AstheCSconstructionofthesystem,theinterfacecouldbuiltonthewebbrowsersuchas Microsoft Internet Explore, Firefox, Opera, Safari etc, then users can access the information and  take coursesanywhere,anytimeaslongastheyworkwithcomputerandinternet. Furthermore; the WIFI could be the solution to connect the users and system too, then, users can acquire the information and message with a smart phone, justly. This will make the system more convenient,andflexible.  Expressing the special information of the users and nonspatial data of the objective world such as buildings teaching equipments in the virtual environment is an important goal and difficult task in WMUVCsystem.Sincecomplexityanddiversityoftherealworld,variousdataisessentialandshouldbe integrated, and a complex data model is used to express the system's vector data, raster data, as well as CADdata.Forthesakeofmanagementandcollection,dataaredividedintospatialdataandmanagement dataasshowninTableI. TABLEI. ALISTOFDATATYPES WMUVC Student subsystem OSIbased subsystem Teacherand managersubsystem Perceptionlayer Functionlayer Algorithmlayer Information layer Physicallayer Applicationlayer Presentationlayer Sessionlayer Transportlayer Networklayer Datalinklayer physicallayer Perceptionlayer Functionlayer Algorithmlayer Information layer Physicallayer 2344 Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346       Dataname sources functions Topographic map Maps of the real world To provide information for simulationtotherealworld Buildings data Photogrammetric survey To provide referring informationformodeling Features data Questionnaire To provide relative user’ information CADdata Engineeringdesignprofiles To provide information for mockupsmodeling Texture images Picture from digitalcamera To provide a realistic imagesformockups Although one would expect relatively open access to a University campus, it would not be unreasonabletorestrictaccesstosomeareastoeitherstaffonlyorstudentsandstaffonly,toprevent,for example, casual visitors from disrupting a teaching session. Virtual worlds as with any other internet activity have their share of disruptive, destructive users, who seek to disrupt or deface sites in a similar fashiontowebsitedefacement.Accesscontrols,althoughnotinfallible,canbeimposedatvaryinglevelsof granularity,fromrestrictingaccesstothesitetoregistereduserstorestrictingaccesstoaparticularvenue toaclasslist.  TheWMUVCsystemisdevelopedwithSouthwestUniversityofScienceandTechnologyexemplified. Through the procedure, VRML and 3DSMAX is used for modeling the mockups, and virtual worlds. In generalway,thetoolsusedtodevelopvirtualcampuscanbedividedas: • Packagesfor3Ddrawing; • PackagesorlanguagesforVRmodeling; • Programminglanguagestoallowthedevelopmentofinteractionandaccesscontrol.    Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) is oneof themost populartools for establishing the3D environment. VRML introduces the interactive 3D rendering form into the World Wide Web, and it is a multiplatformusedmodelinglanguage.VRMLusesthenodeasthebasicunit,anddefinesthecommon descriptivelanguagesof3Dapplicationsystemsuchaslightsource;animation,changingoflevels,etc,and it have the function of simply description of the behavior characteristics. VRML has the advantages of expansible,multiplatform,interaction,etc[5].   VRML uses nodes to establish virtual scenes. However, using nodes to design models is not very convenient, and is difficult to design complicated models. However, the 3DSMAX can make up for the disadvantagesofVRML. 3DSMAX is mainly used in the fields of architecture design, product design and three dimensional animation design. The models designed by 3DSMAX have good feelings, and are easy controlled [6]. Whileinthevirtualcampuswhichmainlyfocusonthefeelingofinteractionandimmersion,thedetailis notaleadingfactor,so,thesimplyoperatedmodelingsoftware3DSMAXispopularinthedesigningof virtualcampus. Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346 2345        The models in WMUVC include: buildings such as classroom, library and laboratories, vegetal structuresliketrees,flowersandbushes,andavatarswhichisthepresentationofstudentsandteachersand otherpeoplewhoinvolvethissystem.Everymockupislinkedtodepartmenthomepages,laboratoriesand educationaltoolsincludingliterature,videosandlisteningmaterialsreferringtothecourses.Themodeling couldnotbeperformedfromCADmodelsduetheircomplexityandelevatednumberofpointstodescribe each structure. But the CAD models generated by 3DSMAX were used to identify proportions and localizationofthestructuresinthevirtualenvironment.ThemodelsshownFig.3isoneclassroomin the WMUVCsystem.  Figure3. OneclassroommodeloftheWMUVCsystem The system developed in this research is based on web include Internet and WiFi, so the communicationinterfaceisbuiltinbrowsersuchasInterneExplore.Justdoingthis,users can access the information and other education materials, and, furthermore, some words expressed materials,videosandlisteningmaterialscouldaccessedbyWiFithroughsmartphoneorotherdevices.Fig. 4istheinterfaceofthesystem,userscanloadonthesystemwiththeiridentitiesvalidationtogetstartthe courses.Forthenonmemberpeople,theycouldskipthecommoninformation.  Figure4. TheinterfaceofWMUVC  Theexperienceobtainedfromthissystemshouldbeusedasbasisforthecompleteimplementationof theVirtualCampus.Thepurposeofthisresearchistoprovideacompletemethodologyforthemodelingof virtualenvironmenttoexpanditsuseforotherapplications. 2346 Chang Xueqin / Physics Procedia 24 (2012) 2339 – 2346        [1] Maria Virvou,George Katsionis.On the usability and likeability of virtual reality games for education:The case of VR ENGAGE[J].Computers&Education.2008,(50):154178. [2] T.Drury,“GeneratingaThreeDimensionalCampusModel”.MITLaboratoryforComputerScience.AUPReport,2001. [3] BurdeaG,CoiffetP.VirtualRealityTechnology(2ndEdition)[M].WileyIEEEPress.June2003. [4] Mamtyla,K.:BlendingELearning:thePowerisintheMix.McGrawHill,NewYork(2001). [5] C.Wang,R.X.Gao.A virtual instrumentation system for integrated bearing conditon monitoring[J].IEEE TRANSACTIONSONINSTRUMENTATIONANDMEASUREMENT.2004,4(2):325332. [6] P Edirisingha,M Nie,M Pluciennik,and R Young,"Socialisation for Learning at a distance in a 3D multiuser virtual environment,"BritishJournalofEducationalTechnology,vol.40,no.3,pp.458479,200 
work_4cujqz4aivgidgezxrsxm5fq5a	----	An Adaptation of Circuit Analysis Course to Distance Education with Content Development Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.313 ScienceDirect 13th International Educational Technology Conference An Adaptation of Circuit Analysis Course to Distance Education With Content Development Fatih Çelika*, Abdullah Feriko lua, Ayhan Kiraza, Zafer Albayraka, Hüseyin Ekizb aSakarya University, Esentepe Kampüsü, Sakarya 54187, Turkey bSuleyman Sah University, Hayriye Dumankaya Kampüsü, stanbul 34865, Turkey Abstract In parallel with the recent developments, education has also begun to use internet media. Internet usage has enhanced the quality of the education. This teaching systems have widened up to primary education. In our country, works and applications in this area have also increased and universities have included distance education into their systems. In this study, the contents of the circuit analysis course were developed according to distance education. Multimedia Technologies were exploited heavily in this work. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya University, Turkey. Key Words: Circuit Analysis, Distance Education, Multimedia; 1. Introduction The use of internet technology has rapidly improved due to the use of computer increases. Internet is almost used in every field today. Internet technology is realized that it can use in training system at the present time and it largely understood to be the facilitator in training system. Outside students of the group being trained in internet-based education is observed to benefit. This also has flexibility in terms of course. Standardization efforts have started due to the spread of Internet-based teaching model in the whole world. As a result of these studies. For Learning Management Systems and all of components have been created standard. This studies are still continuing. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90-264-2957119 E-mail address: fatihc@sakarya.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 102 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 The aim of this study, after the technologies used for Internet-based training courses are to be prepared, examining the concepts and materials Electronics and Computer Education content development criteria, taking into account the contents of the distance education courses for Circuit Analysis. 2. Distance Education Distance Education is economic and interactive education form regardless of time and place using information technology. Depending on the situation, it is realized as synchronous (simultaneous) and asynchronous (time- independent / asynchronous) in two ways. In synchronous presentation, Users and servers are inside the application interactively through a live connection (Internet, satellite, etc.) in classroom environment simultaneously. Users can ask questions, discuss with each other or solve test. Asynchronous presentations are Web-based educations. The user may participate at any time at any place the courses on the web, take the test and participate in activities. Courses may be repeated as requested. (Isman, 2008). Some definitions related to distance education are as follows: Distance education program is the name given to the study performs stand-alone training courses to help you prepare in a certain order of educational institutions and students (Isman, 2008). Distance education provides access to education with satellite, video, audio, graphics, computer, multimedia technology with the help of electronic devices. USDLA, the teacher and the student are geographically remote from each other and said, this training program, the use of electronic means or written material and underline the need of the printed materials. Distance education consists of two main parts including teachers and students in the field of teaching education. It provides access to education to other persons. Distance education is to establish direct connection with the students. The distance learning program can be a method that replaces the forefront of the field of education, a program that can be interpreted as reinforcing the other methods (Isman, 2008). 2.1. Different time (asynchronous) teaching model Participants will receive courses from anywhere at any time. In this case, all the activities from sign- examination of the course participants, course content be processed by the participants, subject to final examinations in the notes to be stored or subject teacher can able to make assignments, forums, whiteboard, chat rooms, electronic mail, providing a platform for communication between the participants and the teachers allowing a management program is necessary. This management program is called Learning Management System (ÖYS) and ÖYS program is a must of distance learning. In this model, the publication of content delivery over the network forms other activities. Learning Management System (ÖYS) is a program that can be purchased in general as well as some institutions have developed their own applications. Today, largest shortcoming in this regard in Turkey and world is matching international standards in a wide range of different issues is the lack of quality content. Development of content fits these definitions are carried out by a team of crowded instructional designers, educators, writers, subject matter experts, audio, graphics, and computer experts. Quality and permanent education is interested with quality of developed content (Al & Orçun, 2004). 103 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 2.2. Simultaneous (synchronous) teaching model In this method, in consequence of a teacher's course participants to tell and different places for targeted monitoring and participation in the course, the teacher told the course pursued by the participants in the course, the necessary equipment should be installed. While a teacher expresses courses in a class or in a studio, videos that broadcast live are delivered over the Internet with the appropriate software and hardware to the participants. Similarly, participants that watch courses in places have sufficient software and hardware and they can ask questions to teacher and can take answers. As you can see, in this method software and hardware infrastructure in monitored environments and presented courses compose main element. Here, the most important factor affecting learning content is described by the teacher in the classroom may not show much change the content of face-to- face training. Of course, plenty visual material of content will be more permanent (Al & Orçun, 2004). 2.3. Blended teaching model In blending teaching, classroom education that will be used at a face-to-face education need to add with both methods above mentioned (Nicholson, 2002). Different time teaching model from these teaching models form the basis of the study that we have done. The aim of this study, as well as this teaching model, student performs the learning process using Internet technologies. 3. Content Development Used Technologies and Concepts Multimedia in the broadest sense, a computer-based application, the normal text, audio, images, graphics, animation, video, and supported the use of visual aids is the face of a user interface (Bourne, Harris, & Harris, 2005). Traditional education in recent years, overhead projector, video, and etc. tools were used. One of the most striking developments is WWW in information technology today; normal text, graphics, images and sound are transmitted over the Internet is a network of multi-media. Web is capable of integrating from the materials in different formats in variety of environments. t allows trainers to prepare an effective and efficient course (Bourne, Harris, & Harris, 2005). 3.1. Html Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents how to connect to each other and determines how settle the text and images in the document and determines how settle the text and images in the document ve a system consisting of pieces of code called tag. <BODY> .... </BODY> information between the post / commands (HTML code / source program) is created. <CENTER>, <FONT>, <B> Sample HTML tokens / commands. HTML code is of no significance in the gaps left. The main thing, the formatting of HTML markers and environments. 3.2. Php PHP is a scripting language and it is saved as PHP, PHP3 file extension after code is written in PHP editör. files written in PHP don't compile. A PHP interpreteris is only in Web Server to interpret scripts written in this language programs are available. This interpreter convert PHP scripts a format understood by the Web Server and sends. 104 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 1 <html> 2 <head> <title> This is my first Php Page </title></head> 3 <body> 4 <?php 5 echo ("Hi Evren"); 6 ?> 7 </body> 8 </html> Figure. 1. Php writing codes 3.3. Dreamweaver web design software For programming languages such as HTML, Visual (visual) programming using the property editor programs which have been developed and ready-made objects. These programs are further simplified by using the HTML language, ready-made objects instead of program code used as images. Dreamweaver is one of the best of these programs. This program is a large, complex and interactive web pages, can be prepared. Dreamweaver is a professional web design package that is designed for web designers. Figure. 2. Dreamweaver user interface 105 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 4. An Adaptation of Circuit Analysis Course to Distance Education Using the above-mentioned instruments, circuit analysis course notes that contain textual expressions is made more fun and intuitive for distance education students. Therefore animations are created and this animations will be able to watch again topics which do not understand gradually advanced. 4.1. Adapting sinusoidal function Figure. 3. Sinusoidal function graph The following definitions are made for the sinusoidal function: f(t)=f (t+nT), n is about to be a constant, so sinusoidal function is periodic. T sinusoidal function’s period, in contrast to the period is called the frequency. (A., Feriko lu, 2003). W is the angular frequency and the relation between with the frequency w=2 f. is called the phase angle of a sinusoidal function. A which is a constant shows the amplitude of the function. T’s unit is second (s), f’s unit is Hertz (Hz), w’s unit is radian/second (rad/s), ’s unit is radian(rad) (A., Feriko lu, 2003). The following periodic functions are also commonly used, as well as sinusoidal function (A., Feriko lu, 2003). Figure. 4. Square wave In study, distance education students select average and effective values. Sinusoidal and square waves is shown after textboxes are entered the required values. 106 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 Figure. 5. Square wave is plotted Figure. 6. The sinusoidal wave plotted after values have been entered Animation is used to observe sinusoidal steady-state analysis’s phase movement and angularly combined movement. 107 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 Figure. 7. Phase motion animation 4.2. Adapted to the application in the Internet environment Our lessons were prepared to publish on the Internet. The application is a web page and can be used. Figure. 8. Circuit Analysis course web page 108 Fatih Çelik et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 101 – 108 5. Conclusions and Recommendations In this study, A website that is easy usage, flexible and funny are designed to teach circuit analysis course over internet. this application also can be advanced by other methods. An example of this as ASP, PHP programs can be given. In the future, if ASP ,PHP etc. are used, it can be more interesting. Aim of this study is to enjoy students and teach as interactive. Frame was used so that the user easily to reach the information. The right side section opens when the user clicks on the button on the left side. In addition, Student can return to the homepage from everywhere wherefore each page have homepaga button. In this way, leaving the user to navigate the main topics on the page provided. design is given important in order to keep the user within the website. Forum is crated in order to discuss some of the issues among users. Subsequently users to be able to write their ideas on the web site put a guestbook. These are provided through the website to be more interesting. Consequently, Circuit Analysis course at the beginning of the computer easy to understand and enjoyable for anyone who wants to learn how to Circuit Analysis Dersi'nin presentation via the web application has reached the desired goals and the application is fully reached the stage of completion. The imagination of the person who designed the site using the Web site way he wants can make it more fun by adding visuals. This entirely depends on the horizon of the person who designed the site. References A., man, (2011). Uzaktan E itim (4. bask ). Ankara: Ö reti Yay nlar . U. Al,and M., Orçun, (2004). Web Tabanl Uzaktan E itim Sistemleri: Sahip Olmas Gereken Özellikler ve Standartlar. Bilgi Dünyas , vol. 5, n. 2, pp. 259-271. A., Feriko lu, (2003). Devre Analizi 1-2, De i im Yay nlar . S., Nicholson, (2002). Socialization in the “virtual hallway”: Instant messaging in the asynchronous Web-based distance education classroom, Volume 5, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 363–372. J., Bourne, D., Harris, D., Harris, (2005). Online Engineering Education: Learning Anywhere, Anytime, Volume 94, Issue 1, pages 131–146. 
work_4dexafticrbxfcqkmmizj4q7da	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_4kjhgbvfebh2tjxf73sw5ra4xy	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 360 476 CE 064 056 AUTHOR Jegede, Olugbemiro J.; Kirkwood, Jannette TITLE Students' Anxiety in Learning through Distance Education. PUB DATE 92 NOTE 16p. PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Adult Education; *Anxiety; *College Students; Demography; *Distance Education; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Pretests Posttests; *School Attitudes; School Surveys; *Student Attitudes; *Student School Relationship IDENTIFIERS University of Southern Queensland (Australia) ABSTRACT Student anxiety in learning through distance education was measured using a modified version of the Docking's Affect Adjective Checklist and a student opinionnaire on factors affecting distance learning. The instruments were completed by 222 University of Southern Queensland (Australia) students enrolled in distance education. The instruments were administered both before and after the semester. The responses were subjected to statistical analysis by the t-test and analysis of variance techniques. The students exhibited a high anxiety level (a sample mean of 19 out of a possible 23) and were generally more anxious about their studies after the semester than before it (a sample mean of 21 out of a possible 23). On the other hand, students' negative feelings toward the top three factors affecting distance learning (content of study materials, finance, and readiness) decreased significantly at the end of the semester. Gender, age, marital status, and course of study were not significantly related to students' anxiety about distance education. However, a significant increase was noticed for the factor of time between the students' pre-semester and post-semester opinions, while some increase was noted for the factors of employment, family support, and "other" (health-related). It may be that while the students found ways to cope with the factors associated with content, environment, and readiness, the factors of time, employment, and family support were likely associated with more problems than the students had expected. (Contains 16 references.) (MN) *********************************************************************** Reproductions tupplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** e Students' Anxiety in Learning Through Distance Education Olugbemiro J Jegede & Jannette Kirkwood Distance Education Centre University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, Qld 4350 Australia [This report is part of a larg project funded by a University of Southern Quensland Internal Reearch Grant, 1991-1992.1 U.S. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Obrce ot Eclutattormi Research and Imp.overnent EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) (freiTnts document has been reproduced as ecetned born the pe,sor, 0, oeganttatton nattnct .1 U Maar [banes bane been made to anprone rePrOductan (loam) Pchnts 01 view Ot ODa,ConS Stated fl INS dCCu ment do not necessaray represent otboa, OEM 005,1,0n 0, Sohry 'PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE ED ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC).- BEST COPY Abstract Learning within the distance education context may be a daunting prospect for many students for a number of reasons. One likely source of concern is the intervening variable of anxiety, which has been found to ha.,e a serious inhibitory effect in conventional classrooms. The literature is replete with results of studies in traditional classrooms, but a review of the literature on distance learning indicates a dearth of studies on anxiety effects. This study therefore attempted to find out if distance education learners experience this state of dread and foreboding and also their opinions about factors which affect their learning through the distance education mode. Using the Docking's Affect Adjective Checklist modified for use within a distance learning environment and, a Students' Opinionnaire on Factors Which Affect Learning at a Distance, a sample of 222 University of Southern Queensland students studying through the distance education mode were tested at the beginning and at the end of a semester. Using the statistics of t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), the results indicated that the students had a very high level of anxiety and were on the whole more anxious about their studies at the end of the semester than at the beginning. In addition, factors like content of the study materials, finance, time, readiness and employment, in the opinions of the students, significantly affected their studying at a distance. As we look with enthusiasm into the future of distance education worldwide, there is a need to consider the effects that debilitating variables such as anxiety could exert on students' learning. The paper discusses the implications of the results and suggests areas for further studies. 3 Introduction Learning within the distance education context may be a daunting prospect for many students. One likely source of concern is the intervening variable of anxiety, which has been found to have a serious inhibitory effect in conventional classrooms. There is evidence in the literature indicating that negative correlations exist between anxiety and students' achievement, as well as between anxiety and the realisation of important cognitive and affective outcomes within conventional face-to-face education (Spielberger, 1966; Tobias, 1979; Fraser, Nash & Fisher, 1983; Okebukola & Jegede, 1989; Jegede, Alaiyemola & Okebukola, 1990). The obvious differences between face-to-face and distance learning and the attendant environmental variables which exert effect on distance learners make it highly possible that the effect of anxiety on learning at a distance could be more pronounced. Anxiety, which is the 'experience of dread and foreboding based on some specific expectation of harm rather than an obvious external threat' (Sieber, O'Neil & Tobias, 1977) needs to be eliminated or at least reduced to the barest minimum within the distance learning mode if learning is to be meaningful. One logical way of doing this is to begin to investigate the presence and level of anxiety of distance learners towards their instructional materials, and the factors contributing to this anxiety. Although the literature, is replete with results of studies in anxiety in traditional classrooms (see Tobias, 1979; Fraser, Nash & Fisher, 1983; Spielberger, 1966), a review of the literature on distance learning indicates a dearth of studies on anxiety and its effect on learning at a distance. Studies remotely related to anxiety have been reported on stress (Kosbad, 1989) and adult study problems (Brookfield, 1979; Knigl,ts & McDonald, 1982). These studies and others on the same issues were carried out primarily on adult learners returning to formal higher education after a long period of time. Very few studies have been reported within distance learning environment. For example James (1982) using the University College London Study Difficulty Questionnaire (UCLSQ) compared the well-being of on-campus and distance students. The absence of reported studies in the crucial area of anxiety and distance learning calls for the need to begin to fill the vacuum, especially in areas of anxiety level and factors which distance education students perceive to affect their studying at a distance. Isolation of specific variables which might have significant relationships with distance learners' perception of factors that affect their anxiety also warrant research. The decision to study through the distance education mode is often a serious matter, especially if the student is a mature age working person with family and other commitments. Such a student would likely be faced with concerns which are biological, personal, emotional, and or environmental. 2 For mature age students the feeling of being at a disadvantage by virtue of their age, coupled with the long break from formal studies could be a source of stress. Feelings of whether they would cope with the demands of higher education, the effect of age on their study habits, memory, stamina and fatigue to mention but a few could be sources of anxiety. Another important source of anxiety for most mature students learning at a distance is the responsibilities of the commitment to a partner and the raising of a family. Coping with family demands, child care and other related issues exert pressure on the time available for studies which must often also be fitted around full-time employment. Unsuitability of the home environment for study and severe financial constraints may add to the students' level of anxiety. Sharing the limited time and finance at a student's disposal to meet family, employment and study commitments could potentially be very stressful. Apart from the problems a distance learner faces with finding time and space to work quietly, the distance from resource centres like libraries and study centres, the feeling of isolation, or the inability to attend residential school could pose serious disadvantages. All these together with other emotional problems faced by a distance learner are potential murces of anxiety which could persist throughout the study time. According to Fraser & Fisher (1982), previous research in anxiety in traditional classrooms has tended to concentrate almost exclusively on cognitive achievement criteria and has neglected equally important affective issues. For distance education, it does appear that affective issues dictate and sustain the need to study (Knights & McDonaid,.1982) and should therefore be a priority focus of investigation. In addition to investigating the affective issues, it is necessary to examine related issues of the sorts of moderator variab,as that affect anxiety and studying at a di ,nce. Knights & McDonald (1982) opined that because care of children is usually a responsibility assumed by the mother, in addition to other family and household duties, female students tend to have more problems with studies. Indeed, Jegede, Alaiyemola & Okebukola (1990) in their study of anxiety in conventional education mode have stressed the need to look more closely at what environmental and personal variables contribute to raising the levels of anxiety, particularly in females. While the study by Kosbad (1989) and Usera (1985) are inconclusive about the effect of the variable of age on mature students' studies, Simon & Thomas (1983) concluded from their studies that the course pursued is associated with anxiety level. It would therefore be illuminating to address the effect of moderator variables like age, gender, marital status, and course of study on learning through the distance education mode. The purpose of this study therefore was to investigate students' anxiety towards, and perception of factors engendering anxiety in learning through distance education. Specifically, the study sought answers to the following: To what extent, if any, do distance learners exhibit anxiety towards instructional materials? 3 What factors do distance learrwrs perceive as engendering anxiety towards instructional materials? Do moderator variables like gender, age, course of study, and marital status have any significant relationships with distance learners' perception of factors that affect their anxiety? Method Sample A total of 222 University of Soutl-.ent Queensland distance eaucation students formed the final sample of the study. The target population of the study consisted of all the distance education students enrolled with the University of Southern Queensland. Ten percent of the population were sampled using the systematic random sampling method. As a result, 730 students were served with the first administration of the instruments. The 370 who responded by sending completed instruments were then served with the second round of the administration of the instruments at the end of the semester. The aim was to obtain completed instruments from each student in the sample for both the first and second administrations. At the time of analysis 222 students completed both the pre-semester and post-semester administration of the instruments. Instrumentation Two instruments were developed and used to collect data for this study. They are the Affect Adjective Checklist on Distance Learning and the Student Opinionnaire on Factors which Affect Learning at a Distance. Anxiety was measured by the Affect Adjective Checklist on Distance Learning which was a modification of Docking's (1978) checklist. The University College London Study Difficulty Questionnaire (UCLSQ) situated primarily within the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy which James (1982) used was not suitable for this study because of two major reasons. First, it is based on the 'well-being theory' of Crown, Lucas & Supramanium (1973) and does not measure anxiety level, and second, it is an instrument in which only one of the eight subscales asked a few questions on anxiety. This necessitated our designing an instrument which could appropriately measure anxiety level within the distance learning environment. The instrument consisted of 23 key words embedded in a total of 66 adjectives which describe the feelings students might have towards distance education. Students were requested to underline as many or as few words which describe how they feel about learning at a distance. The 11 words designated (+) are scored 1 if they are underlined and 0 if they are not G 4 underlined. The 12 words designated are scored 0 if they are underlined and 1 if they are not underlined. The remaining 43 words are ignored in the scoring procedure. Each subject's total anxiety score is obtained by summing the scores for the key 23 words. The details of the instrument are contained in Fraser, Nash, and Fisher (1983). The instrument (see Appendix A) has been found to have a good concurrent validity (with correlations of 0.62 to 0.74 with other measures of anxiety). The K-R 20 reliability coefficient, and the test-retest reliability coefficient of the instrument were calculated to be 0.86 and 0.89 respectively for the sample used in this study. Students' perception of what affect their learning at a distance was determined by the Student Opinionnaire on Factors which Affect Learning at a Distance. The construction of the instrument followed a number of procedures. First, a discussion was held with five members of staff of the Distance Education Centre who are themselves studying by the distance mode to identify major areas which affect distance learning. This discussion resulted in the identification of 10 broad areas. Next, the investigators generated a number of items under each of the 10 areas and submitted then to a panel of judges to validate. The panel which consisted of experts in the different areas of distance education, communications, data analysis, and educational psychology was asked to check if: the whole instrument is appropriate in measuring, to some extent, the construct of anxiety; the items are relevant for the subscales and for the whole instrument; the opinionnaire is suitable for use within the distance learning situation; and if the language and expressions are appropriate and understandable. In checking the items the validators were also requested wish to: advise on items to be rejected, reconstructed or included in the opinionnaire without modification. Putting a mark and comment at the Lide of the affected items will do; provide alternative statements to any of the items you find improperly constructed; edit the language or the cOnstruction of any items you might judge inappropriate; suggest the rearrangement of any item within a subscale or a relocation to another subscale; and suggest the inclusion of new items or subscales. Based on the responses from the validators a total of 40 items were judged as acceptable foi inclusion in the final Opinionnaire. The final copy of the Opinionnaire was in two sections. Section A sought biographical information of the respondents, while Section B containing 40 items eliciting the opinion of 5 the students was designed on a six-point Likert scale of 'Strongly Agree"Agree', 'Neutral', 'Strongly Disagree', 'Disagree' and Not Applicable' (scored 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 respectively for positive items; reverse scoring for negative items). The respondents were requested to place a tick in a box which best represented their opinion on each of the items in the Opinionnaire. Factor analysis was carried out on the first response of the students to determine if the factors extracted reflected the ones identified in the discussion held with the staff during the initial period of constructing the instrument. The principal-axis factoring procedure with a varimax- rotated solution produced 8 factors with Eigenvalue greater than 1. The eight factors formed the subscales of Content, Environment, Finance, Readiness, Time, Employment, Family Support, and Others in the instrument. Examples of the subscales and items are as follows: Content The words in the study materials are easy to understand. My limited background in this subject area will affect my understanding of the content. Environmental I am often distracted by noise when I try to study. The lack of facilities, eg library, in my area will disadvantage me. Family Support My partner encouraged me to enrol in this course. It concerns me that my partner had to undertake a larger share of home and family duties. Other My health problems make it difficult to study. I have special needs which will influence my ability to successfully complete this course. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for the Student Opinionnaire on Factors which Affect Learning at a Distance was found to be 0.89 for the study sample. Procedure and Administration A pre-semester and post-semester instruments administration procedure was adopted in order to find out if the differences in the students' level of anxiety and opinions about factors which affect their studying at a distance were mainly due to the studies undertaken during the semester. Both instruments were administered by mail just before the beginning and at the end of Semester One of 1992. Each administration was accompanied by a letter introducing the study and soliciting their cooperation in completing the instruments enclosed. Only those students who returned completed instruments of the first administration were sent another set at the end of the semester. The receipt of the completed instruments administered during the second administration was closed six weeks after the end of the semester to enable preparation for data processing. 6 Data Analysis and Findings The data was analysed using the SPSS for Windows statistical software package. The means and standard deviations of the pre- and post-semester scores of the Affect Adjective Checklist on Anxiety and the Opinionnaire on Factors Which Affect Learning at a Distance are reported in Tables I and II. TABLE I & II ABOUT HERE T-tests carried out to compare the mean scores of the pre-semester and post-semester administrations of the two instruments attained sianificance for the anxiety checklist ([t (220) = -2.52, p < .051 and the Opinionnaire [t(189) = 2.19, p < .05]. The means and standard deviations for the pre- and post-semester responses to the Opinionnaire on factors affecting learning at a distance are as shown in Table III. A comparison of the means of the two administrations for each subscale using the T-test statistic is summarised in the same table. The data in Table III indicate that the differences in the pre- and post semester responses of the students for the factors of Content, Finance, Readiness, Time, and Employment attained significance (p <.01, p <.05). The data also reveal that except for the factors of Time and Employment, all the other factors which attained significance had an increase in mean scores at the post semester administration. TABLE III & IV ABOUT HERE Table IV contains the data on the ANOVA comparing the mean scores of student's post- semester responses to the Anxiety Checklist by the independent variables using the pre semester responses as covariates. Table V contains similar data for the Opinionnaire. It can be seen from Table IV that none of the variables indicated any significant relationship with anxiety. However, all the variables except gender indicated significant relationship with the responses on the Opinionnaire. Discussion of Results The study set out to investigate the extent, if any, to which distance learners exhibit anxiety towards instructional materials; what factors distance learners perceive as engendering anxiety towards instructional materials; and if moderator variables like gender, age, course of study, 9 7 and marital status have any significant relationships with distance learners perception of factors that affect their studying at a distance. The results obt ined showed that the students in this study have a high anxiety level and were generally more anxious about their studies at the end of the semester than at the beginning (Table I). Furthermore their opinions about factors which affect learning at a distance were less positive at the end of the semester than at the beginning also. The results obtained seem to suggest that the factors of Content of the study materials, Finance and Readiness were the three top factors which affected their learning at a distance. Students' opinions at the beginning and at the end of the semester about the effects of the factors of Content of the study materials, Finance, Readiness, Time, and Employment differed significantly (Table III). The variables of gender, age, marital status and course of study are not significantly related to students anxiety about studying at a distance (Table IV). But the variables of age, marital status and course are significantly related to students opinions about studying at a distance (Table V). Although we are mindful of the limitations associated with studies of this type, eg., being a one-sample design and the possibility of confounding variables affecting the external validity, the extensiveness of the results warrants their thorough examination. The results indicated that the students exhibited some level of anxiety. Indeed the data as reported in Table I showed that the anxiety level was quite high (a sample mean of 19 out of a possible 23) at the beginning of the semester and even higher (a sample mean of 21 out of a possible 23) at the end of the semester. This trend in results is in agreement with the views of Kosbad (1989) and the findings of Knights & McDonald (1989) with respect to adult learners in higher education. The results also confirm those of James (1982) where he noted that higher anxiety, work satisfaction, and syllabus-boundness discriminated the distance learners from the campus learners. An interesting development from this study is the fact that while anxiety increased at the end of the semester, the negative feelings associated with some factors which affected learning at a distance decreased significantly (p < .05) towards the end of the semester. It may well be that whereas the students had become accustomed to the effects of some of the factors affecting their studies other matters probably examinations heightened anxiety at the end of the semester. Further exploration of this trend of results should prove very informative. In the opinion of the students, the factors of Content of the study materials, Finance, Readiness to study, Time and Employment affect their learning at a distance. There were also significant differences in the views of the students before and after the semester. Although the students' negative feelings decreased significantly towards the end of the semester, in factors like Content of the study materials, Finance and Readiness, a significant increase was noticed for the factor of Time between the students pre-semester and post-semester opinions. An increase, although not significant (p >.05), was noticed for the factors of Employment, Famiiy Support, and Other (health related). A possible interpretation of this trend could be that while 0 the students found ways to cope with the factors associated with Content, Environment, Finance and-Readiness, the factors of Time, Employment, Family Support and others might have constituted more problems thazi they had thought Of expected. It does seem from the results of this study that theses factors are pervasive in distance learning mode as they have been found with adult learners in the conventional face-to-face mode in higher eciation (Knights & McDonald, 1989; Simon & Thomas, 1983; Kosbad, 1989). With regard to the moderator variables which relate to anxiety and opinions of students about learning through the distance mode, the results of this study, contrary to those of others (Simon & Thomas, 1983), indicated that gender, age, marital status and the course of study did not matter. The students were anxious irrespective cr in spite of these characteristics. The situation is slightly different with regard to their opinions concerning factors which affect their learning by the distance mode. The opinions of the students bore significant relationship with their age, marital status and course of study but not with their gender thereby confirming in part the findings of Simon & Thomas (1983) and the views expressed by Knights & McDonald (1989) as earlier discussed. Therefore, in addition to age which James (1984) found to be an important variable in studies of distance learning students, marital status and course of study are also important factors which, according to the opinions of the students, affect learning at a distance. Two significant points need to be mentioned at this juncture. First, if the results of this study are not merely artefacts of the design, the abundant presence of anxiety in, and negative opinions about factors affecting, studying at a distance by students is implicated. This study did not set out to examine cognitive outcomes and anxiety towards and opinion aboat learning at a distance for reasons already mentioned. However, the results of this study would seem to suggest the need to place this in a perspective for comprehensive interpretation even though in our experience distance education students are as successful as the conventional students in their academic pursuit. From our experience also, the attrition rate among distance students is by far higher than what occurs in on-campus studies. The effect of anxiety and factors which affect learning at a distance may well be playing more significant roles than are imagined. It would therefore be worthwhile to carry out more extensive study on the issue probably comparing on-campus with off-campus students with the introduction of other variables like achievement outcomes and a longer period of study eg. one full academic year rather than the one semester covered by this study. 9 References Brookfield, S. (1979). Adult study problems. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 3(1), 91-96. Crown, S., Lucas, C. J., & Supramanium, S. (1973). The delineation and measurement of study difficulty in university students. British Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 381-393. Docking, R. A. (1978). Araiety, achievement and cognitive incongruence. Unpublished manuscript, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia. Fraser, B. J. & Fisher, D. R. (1982). Effects of anxiety on science related attitudes. European Journal of Science Education, 4(4), 441-450. Fraser, B. J., Nash, R. & Fisher, D. R. (1983). Anxiety in science classrooms: its measurement and relationship to classroom environment. Research in Science and Technological Education, 1(2), 201-208. James, A. (1982). A multivariate comparative analysis of work-related symptoms of distance and campus students. Research in Higher Education, 16(4), 303-322. James, A. (1984). Age-group differences in the psychological well-being and academic attainment of distance learners. Distance Education, 5(4) 200-214. Jegede, 0. J., Alaiyemola, F. F. & Okebukola, P. A. 0. (1990). The effect of concept mapping on students' anxiety and achievement in biology. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27(10), 951-960. Kosbad, P. F. (1989). Stress and stress management in contemporary adult education: a commentary. Monograph. University of Oklahoma. Knights, S. & McDonald, R. (1982). Adult learners in higher education: some study problems and solutions from Australian experience. British Journal of Educational Technology, 3(13),227-246. Usera, J. J. (1985). Overcoming subject anxiety of adult learners. Perspectives in Adult Learning and development, 8, 25-32. Okebukola, P. A. 0. & Jegede, 0. J. (1989). Students' anxiety towards and perception of difficulty of some biological concepts under the concept mapping heuristic. Research in Science and Technological Education,7(1), 85-92. Simon, A. & Thomas, A. (1983). Test data for the State-trait Anxiety Inventory for British Further Education, Certificate of Education and B.Ed students. Personality and Individual Differences, 4(2), 190-200. Sieber, J. E., O'Neil, H. F. & Tobias, S. (1977). Anxiety, Learning and Instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Spielberger, C. D. (1966). The effects of anxiety on complex learning and academic achievement. In C. D Spielberger (Ed.). Anxiety and Behaviour. New York: Academic Press. Tobias, S. (1979). Anxiety research in educational psychology. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(5), 573-582. I 2 10 Table I: Descriptive data and t-test of scores in the pre-semester and post-semester administration of the Affect Adjective Checklist on Anxiety. Administration N Min Max Mean S.D t-Value Significance Score Score Pre-semester 220 5 19 11.98 2.34 -2.52 .01* Post-semester 220 2 21 12.41 2.60 * p< .01 Table II: Descriptive data and t-test of scores in the pre-semester and post-semester administration of the Opinionnaire on Factors which Affect Learning at a Distance. Administration N Min Max Mean S.D t-Value Significance Score Score Pre-semester Post-semester 189 106 192 151.67 15.12 189 113 187 149.76 14.54 2.19 .03* * p< .05 11 Table HI: Comparison of students pre and post semester responses to the Opinioimaire on factors affecting learning at a distance. Sub-scales Pre-Semester Post-Semester t-value Sig SD x SD Content 21.82 2.39 21.22 2.41 3.41 0.00** Environmental 22.39 3.25 22.25 3.22 0.73 0.46 Finance 17.83 3.91 15.81 3.95 6.32 0.00** Readiness 20.40 2.20 20.00 2.30 2.70 0.00** Time 17.44 2.97 17.74 3.13 -1.51 0.13* Employment 18.47 4.17 19.13 4.42 -2.62 0.00* Family Support 18.83 6.71 19.02 6.72 -0.66 0.50 Other 14.34 3.91 14.58 3.77 -0.90 0.36 * p<.05 ** p<.01 12 Table IV: ANOVA of students post semester scores in the Affect Adjective Checklist on Anxiety by the independent variables using the pre-semester scores as covar ates. Main Effect SS DF F Sig of F Gender: 9.61 1 1.83 0.17 Age: 47.68 4 2.27 0.06 Marital status: 6.27 2 0.59 0.55 Course: 20.32 6 0.64 0.69 *p< ,05 Table V: ANOVA of students' Post semester responses to the Opinionnaire by the independent variables using the Pre semester responses as covariates. Main Effect SS DF F Sig of F Gender: 0.88 1 0.01 0.92 Age: 1141.43 4 2.88 0.02** Marital status: 691.47 2 3.05 0.04* Course: 1854.96 6 3.12 0.00** * p< .05, ** p< .01 5 13 APPENDIX A Affect Adjective Checklist on Distance I earnina Instruction The words below could describe how you feel about learning at a distance. Read through the list of words and underline those which describe how you generally feel about learning at a distance. You may underline as many or as few as you wish. absorbed afraid (+) aimless ambitious annoyed threatened bored calm (-) careless cautious challenged cheerful (-) cheated comfortable confused contented (-) creative curious dedicated desperate (+) disappointed efficient entertained excited fearful (+) fortunate frightened (+) happy (-) hopeless impatient incapable inspired interested joyful (-) lazy committed (-) miserable misplaced nervous(+) organised overloaded (+) panicky (+) pleasant (-) pleased productive (-) pushed refreshed regretful rewarded satisfied secure (-) serious shaky (+) steady (-) tense (+) terrified (+) thoughtful (-) upset (+) weary worried (+) A word designated (+) is scored 1 if it is underlined and 0 if it is not underlined. A word designated (-) is scored 1 if it is not underlined and 0 if it is underlined. All other words are ignored in the scoring. 14 
work_4lnesy5zzrbvrltgqqgm4oizp4	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_4ncqibgu6bgwrdux5ej4acbhmq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_4nhxzpitabdu5brsldvsew4rry	----	Students’ Opinions on Artificial Intelligence based Distance Education System (Artimat) Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 549 – 553 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LINELT 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.374 ScienceDirect LINELT 2013 Students’ Opinions On Artificial Intelligence Based Distance Education System (Artimat) Hasan KARALa, Vasif NABİYEVa, Ali Kürşat ERÜMİTa*, Selahattin ARSLANa, Ayça ÇEBİa Abstract In literature review, it is stated that students face a number of difficulties while they learn the concepts and the relationships between them in mathematics education, and that they often have difficulty in mathematics education. Therefore, mathematics educators have a consensus on developing problem-solving skills of students and that it should be the primary objective of the education. For this reason, the aim of this study is to assess the artificial intelligence based distance education system called ARTIMAT, designed to develop mathematical problem solving skills, in terms of the conceptual competence, the ease of use and students’ contribution to the problem solving process. For this purpose, the application was tested with 59 students in 10th grade of an Anatolian High School in Trabzon. Firstly, every student was equipped to use the system individually and later, opinions of the students were taken through structured interviews. In the evaluation of the findings by the study, it was generally concluded that the system fulfilled the needs of the students and was successful. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LINELT 2013. Keywords: Expert System, Problem Solving, Motion Problems; 1. Introduction The main aim of mathematics education is to impart mathematical knowledge and skills that are required in daily life to the individual, to teach him problem solving and to bring him a way of thinking that handles matters using a * Corresponding author. Hasan KARAL Tel.: +90-532 501 92 50; fax: +90-462 871 74 24. E-mail address: kursaterumit@gmail.com © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LINELT 2013. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.374&domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.374&domain=pdf 550 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 549 – 553 problem solving approach. For this reason, problem solving skills take an important place among the mathematical skills (De Corte, 2004). Problem solving retains an important place in the overall objectives of mathematics courses; this issue is therefore at the centre of mathematics curricula at multiple levels from primary school. Indeed, NCTM standards indicate that problem solving skills are needed primarily in mathematics teaching (NCTM, 2000). In many studies within this framework, students are shown to encounter a number of difficulties in understanding the concepts that problems include and the relations between them while they are solving problems (Vicente, Orrantia & Verschaffel, 2007; Chiu and Klassen, 2008). For this reason, problem and the structure of problem solving, and increasing the success in problem solving is an issue studied by many educators and psychologists (Cai, 2003). In addition to many teaching methods, applications using computer technologies retain an important role in these studies. It is emphasized in the new mathematics curriculum that students can build up their mathematical knowledge in accordance with the nature of a constructivist approach, which is adopted by the program, using the software provided in an interactive way (Ministry of National Education, Committee Presidency of Teaching and Training, 2006). Of course, programmability and availability of the software are also associated with the chosen topic. As a computer does not have the human ability to think and make decisions, it is generally used for issues which are possible in terms of viability. Motion problems have an important place among the topics of mathematics curricula related to problem solving due to the fact that they contain questions of different types, the use of different solution methods and non-routine problems. Therefore, presentation of motion problems by an expert system in a way that provides students with live problem solving processes will be a useful example in the field. In the light of data provided, the purpose of this study is: the evaluation of the expert system called ARTIMAT, which was prepared to develop problem solving skills of students, in terms of conceptual proficiency and ease of use with students’ opinions. 2. Material and Method 2.1. Student module Student Module is the module in which the user can watch the lecture on the subject, can access the problem solving system or can have a test exam when he logs in. Firstly, the user logs in to the system via a Moodle interface. The user who logs in to the system via a Moodle interface calls up the lecture page, designed problem solving web page or test exam page. The data of the user who calls up the page is forwarded to the page that pops up by Moodle. The user can use the lecture page, or can enter the problem solving system, or can use the test exam independently of one another. If the user logs in to the Problem Solving System and starts to work initially with a moderate random question from the pool of questions that are grouped according to the level of difficulty, the system makes routings according to the level of the user. The system makes this routing by asking the user sub- problem questions for every step of the process and compares the answers of the user in each step with its own results. If the user gives a correct answer for a sub-problem, the system directs the user one at a time to the next step until finding the final result. If the answer is wrong, it wants the user to give a new answer, alerting with a message that is appropriate for his answer. If the user gives a wrong answer again, the system asks an easier question after ascertaining that the question is too hard for the level of the user. The difficulty level of the questions increases as long as the user correctly answers the questions and decreases if the user gives wrong answers to them. The user can leave the system at any stage. 2.2. Data collection tools The implementation, which was conducted in order to evaluate the system, was carried out with 59 students in 10th grade in an Anatolian High School in Trabzon. The system was implemented for two groups for three weeks for two hours in each week in a computer lab and in a way that each student used his/her computer alone and written interview forms were prepared in order to get opinions and thoughts of the students about the system. 551 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 549 – 553 3. Findings 3.1. Student Interviews Each student’s opinions and thoughts about the system, which they used for 6 hours in total, were compiled without discriminating grade and gender and results obtained from these were given on the basis of interview questions below. 1. Question: Which one of the features of the system did you like most/least? Features that were liked in students’ answers were determined as: • Providing individual learning • Being a more instructive system which is easier to remember • Providing the identification of the problem • Solving systematically the question step-by-step with different methods • Trying different solutions courtesy of the system • Being easy to use • Visual design • Feature that students can add photos by creating their own profiles • Students being able to communicate with each other via the system Features that were not liked in students’ answers were determined as: • Being unable to move directly to the result • The obligation to follow the steps • Losing time as there is a different solution 2. Question: Was the system helpful for your problem solving process? Can you explain? Students stated the positive sides of the system as follows: • It shows what should be done in the process of problem solving • It helps students think about the solution of the problem • It increases the knowledge about the solution of the problems • It strengthens the feature of judgment • It contributes to the understanding of the problem • It makes it easier to solve the problem when the user is familiar with using the system • It warns when the wrong solution is selected • It develops the habit of systematic problem solving 3. Question: Did you like the visual design of the system? What are your thoughts in terms of improvement? Students stated in the positive opinions that: • The system is useful, can be accessed quickly and conveniently and its design is simple at the same time • System deficiencies that students would wish to see improved • System should be made livelier with animations on the subject • Page colour should be changed • More colourful mathematical symbols should be used in the system • Warnings for students should be more obvious 4. Question: Did the system change your point of view on problem solving? (Positive/negative) Students stated in their answers that: • They can see at which point they have made errors as they have solved the problems step by step • It helps to understand the question better in a practical way, which they normally try to do mentally without writing the data, by writing in the system • Possibility of making a mistake decreases as they progress step by step to solve problems through the system • The system makes students to think over the problem instead of solving problems with formulas by heart • Solving problems step by step helps them to do operations more accurately 552 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 549 – 553 • Solving problems in the computer environment makes the problem solving process more enjoyable • Solving problems in the system provides better learning although it takes longer • The system is useful for the development of the human brain as it provides students with the chance to use different solution methods for students in problem solving and it can differentiate the monotonous types of question solving 5. Question: What features of the system are the easiest to use? Can you explain? The majority of the students reported that the system is easy to use in general. In addition, they gave the following answers: • Given and desired, which are the first phase of the solution of the problem, are written • It is easier to see in the table what the given and the desired are • Students can communicate with each other via the system • Problem solving steps can be selected 6. Question: Are there any sections that you had difficulty with when using the system? What are they? Can you explain? Responses from students focus on certain points. It is very important for students to use the system easily and efficiently. It is possible with the feedback to develop the system accurately and efficiently. Although it has been said that the system is generally easy to use according to the responses, the following difficulties have been indicated: • Doing operations step by step seems complicated • I find it hard to choose the solution method • I have difficulty in transferring the operations to the computer • I find it hard to place the data 7. Question: What are your opinions and suggestions about the system? General answers of the students are as follows; • The system is successful and interesting. It makes the solution more fun • The system has been designed well, and funny features relevant to mathematics such as games and jokes can be added • Intelligence and skill games and music can be added. It should be developed for other types of problems such as pool, percentages and so on • Actually, it is a nice system, but we attach importance to the result, not to the phase. It will be better if it is result-oriented • The system is nice, but phases should be facilitated • The main page of the system can be better • The system should include direct access to the solution 4. Conclusion In this study, the evaluation of the expert system called ARTIMAT, which was prepared to develop problem solving skills of students, in terms of conceptual proficiency and ease of use with students’ opinions has been done. With the help of the findings from student interviews, it has been concluded that students used all the features of the system and were satisfied with them, the system contributed to the problem solving process in various aspects and it developed students’ points of view for problem solving in a positive direction but they experienced time concerns due to their habit of going directly to the result as they were exam-oriented. The majority of the students indicated that the system was easy to use in general. It has been concluded from the findings obtained about the difficulties (which students encountered while using the system) that students were result-oriented and they found it hard to accept a different system as they solved test questions with paper and pencil for the examinations. With the help of responses given, it has been concluded that the system is successful in general but it can be made more useful by doing some revisions in terms of design. Acknowledgements 553 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 549 – 553 This research is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). References Cai, J. (2003). Singaporean students mathematical thinking in problem solving and problem posing: An exploratory study. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 34(5), 719-737. Chiu, M., Robert M. Klassen R. M. (2008). Relations of mathematics self-concept and its calibration with mathematics achievement: Cultural differences among fifteenyear- olds in 34 countries, Science Direct Learning and Instruction 20(1), 2-17. De Corte, E. (2004). Mainstreams and perspectives in research on learning (mathematics) from instruction, Applied Psychology, 2(53), 279-310. MEB, TTKB. (2006). Ortaöğretim matematik dersi öğretim programı ve kılavuzu. Ankara: MEB Basımevi. NCTM (2000). Principals and Standarts for School Mathematics. Reston, Va: National counsil of Teachers of Mathematics Pub. Vicente, S., Orrantia, J. & Verschaffel, L. (2007), Influence of situational and conceptual rewording on word problem solving. British Journal of Educational Psychology,77(4), 829-848. 
work_4pqm3cm6zneehf6tllstg3wole	----	Evaluating Resources for Scientific Modelling in a Distance Education Course Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Teknologi MARA. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.668 ScienceDirect IOSTE BORNEO 2014 Evaluating Resources for Scientific Modelling in a Distance Education Course Anne L. Scarinci* University of São Paulo, Rua do Matao, Tv.R, 197, Cidade Universitária – São Paulo – SP, 05508-090, Brazil Abstract This research evaluates the contribution of different strategies planned for a distance education course on astronomy, designed for teachers, especially during a topic where the goal was the dynamic model of the Earth’s orbit. Methodology was analysis of the written discourse of participants, collected from the virtual learning environment of the course. Using a socio-constructivist framework, we searched for elements of model usage in students’ accounts on the theme, and attempted to connect this process with the resources used. Findings compare accounts and learning results from different versions of the course, when new resources were gradually inserted. Conclusions are that varied course resources can be of benefit to the pedagogical communication, providing: more precise vocabulary; better understanding of the problem; a more concrete picture to relate with; construction of elements of the solution. However, consolidation of learning happens through students-tutor interaction and this activity could not be replaced, in the course analyzed, by as varied as the resources could be. As much as our desire to make the course as flexible as possible to provide opportunity for teachers throughout the country to enroll, our results indicate that pure online interactions appear to be insufficient to teach a scientific model, as best results were only obtained when a face-to-face encounter was added to the course plan. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Teknologi MARA. Keywords: distance education; pedagogical communication; teaching scientific models; Physics and astronomy education * Corresponding author. Tel.: +55-11-30917176. E-mail address: anne@if.usp.br © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Teknologi MARA. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.668&domain=pdf 239 Anne L. Scarinci / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 1. Introduction In distance education science courses, topics involving scientific modelling are the particularly challenging: explanations (through texts or video lectures) can be understood according to a model previously owned by the student, and this model (as theory predicts and data confirms) is frequently different from the scientific one. The solution preconized by socio-constructivist pedagogies is to foster interaction, so that models can be negotiated, departing from students’ ideas and being reconstructed along the teaching process. In distance education, the most common interaction-enabling activities are forum and chat. Both these activities were introduced in the distance course object of this research. Evaluation of the first offered class (Scarinci & Pacca, 2012) has taught us that – Forums can evaluate students’ initial knowledge (by the questions and utterances they pose) and provide accurate and profound explanations. Unfortunately, the explanations seldom get a feedback from the student, so the tutor rarely gets to know how those explanations were understood. This happens because the student reads the answers given by the tutor, but does not feel the need to reply to it. Furthermore, not every student accesses the system on a daily basis, so a longer conversation (and meaning negotiation) via forum is seldom possible. Chats were found to be complementary to forums. During the chat the educator is able to monitor students’ thinking point by point, as feedback is constant in synchronous interactions. On the other hand, chats tend to be more dynamic so that longer and deeper explanations are not very appropriate (also because a long explanation would place the educator in the centre of interaction, inhibiting participation of all the students). Moreover, the educator must be able (and quick) to interpret the difficulties beneath students’ utterances and provide meaningful follow-up. Authors of the course, acknowledging these characteristics, have provided course resources in order to enable and foster interactions that would construct the scientific model focused by the lessons. The immediate question that can be raised is – are these resources being effective? This research focused on part of this analysis, which is: i) how are interactions connected with the resources provided?; and ii) does learning occur? The overall purpose is to connect learning results with the resources provided. 2. Research problem and methodology The course was on astronomy and astrophysics. There were around 30 weekly lessons (this varied a bit along the four offerings, from 2011 to 2014). Each lesson had a set of resources (such as text, video, forum, chat, questionnaire, quiz, lesson account to be analyzed, computer simulation) (fig. 1) and a virtual book that worked as a guide to explicit the purposes of each resource and suggest an order for the activities that would provide better learning. There were 5 to 10 classes of around 20 participant students, plus their tutor, who was a post-graduation student at the university that offered the course. Investigation analyzed data from lesson 3, where the learning goal was the dynamic model of the Earth’s orbit and the referential to understand that we live on its surface. Along the four years the course has been offered, the author team included new resources, after a general evaluation, from both students and tutors, that the lesson was difficult and learning results should improve. Our initial intention was to measure learning results in different years, as to make a comparison of them as new resources were provided each year. However, group profile differed from one year to the next (first year had more geography teachers, second year had mainly primary and secondary teachers and third year had a higher number of physics teachers), and tutors also changed. Therefore, it was considered that a qualitative approach could provide more meaningful elements to our analysis. 240 Anne L. Scarinci / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 Fig. 1. Virtual learning environment showing lesson 3 and its resources, at year four. Methodology consisted of an analysis of the (written) discourse of participants. Using a socio-constructivist framework, we searched for elements in students’ accounts on the theme, in forum and chat activities and in the final answer to the lesson’s assessment questionnaire. We looked for instances where participants posed a question about the content, or utterances where a student explained what he had understood. We also considered the interaction generated, from this initial question or utterance, with other students and tutor. Then we attempted to connect this process with the available resources (by seeking clues of a resource usage in the account itself and by comparing frequent elements in the accounts through the four versions of the course). This should provide an evaluation of i) if the student referred to a resource implicitly or explicitly when trying to explain the concept; and ii) if the tutor used the resource as a tool for the response. Answers to the final questionnaire were also analysed for evaluation of learning. 3. Framework As mentioned above, we depart from the idea that learning of scientific contents is achieved by successive reconstructions of intuitive and spontaneous initial conceptions. As science is anti-intuitive (Bachelard, 1996), the initial conceptions are, by principle, different from the scientific ones. A psycho-analysis of these conceptions (and a proper treatment of errors) can, thus, be a stage of the learning process (Santos, 2005). 241 Anne L. Scarinci / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 Learning becomes possible through interaction. Although interaction with empirical phenomena (careful observation and analysis) is very useful, once science has an experimental basis, the school learner will not achieve a formalized and accurate level without interaction with peers and teacher (the more capable partners, in Vigotskyan theory; Vigotsky, 2003). Interaction between participants of a class (educator included) is, therefore, seen as an essential element of the learning process (Gil-Pérez & Carvalho 2006). Teaching is seen as producing a path that departs from the learner’s initial knowledge and arrives at the scientific knowledge (Freire, 1996). As learners may pass through various intermediate stages (successive reconstructions), the teaching-learning process is a dialogical process, where constant feedback provides to the teacher the clues about the next step to be taken. The effort of reconstruction, though, is the learner’s – this is why Vigotsky (2000) states that learning must depart from a conceptual problem (possessed by the learner), which requires a new concept to be solved. Dialogue is effective when the teacher has a very clear arriving point and has the competence of using the tools available (learning resources) to negotiate meanings and ensure that the dialogue is being based on mutual comprehension of the terms used (Scarinci & Pacca, 2013). In distance education, the educator who elaborates the learning resources and activities (the author) is frequently not the same person who will hold the didactic contract (the tutor) – this one responsible for the interactions. The author team must be able to communicate and effectively convince the tutors about the usefulness and effectiveness of the didactic material, as well as to share the planned sequence. 4. Findings The lesson was introduced by presenting to the students a problem – “Why doesn’t the Earth fall?” –, whose solution would require the understanding of the new model focused. A variation of this question should be answered in written form, by the end of a week-class. The sequence included: A reflection about living at the surface of a sphere, Understanding the gravitational force as a central force, Explaining the orbit of the Earth and the Moon as a result of a force and a tangent velocity, and Concluding that the Earth is falling (i.e. being constantly pulled towards the Sun), but is not falling on the Sun due to its tangent velocity, and the composition of velocity plus gravitational force produces the orbital path. The first resources to be included in the lesson were a virtual book (interactive, exploring the question and gradually building elements for the answer by providing access do different resources) and an analogy proposal, inserted in the text, which consisted of a Newton’s Cannon simulation (fig. 2a). This applet was introduced in the book with a suggestion of analysis regarding the movement of the ball (to the floor or around the Earth) depending on initial speed. Another resource included in the first version of the course was a “Lesson account” (fig. 2b), which was a transcription of an interaction of 6th grade students with their teacher on the theme. Some course participants related explicitly the text with the topic under study, as: “I also thought that we lived in a flat part inside the Earth. (…) I realized that those children in the lesson thought like I did.” The analogy also showed to be a powerful tool for the students: “Hi, guys, did I understand correctly? Can the Cannon simulation be used to explain anything that orbits something else?” (student – forum). However, tutors did not see this resource as a meaningful analogy, and in the forum/chat interactions, proposed new analogies: “Ok, for example, imagine a sheet being held open, horizontally, with a heavy ball in the middle…” (tutor – chat). For many students, those new analogies were inefficient and confusing. Evaluation of the first version of the course was that the Lesson account, as well as the virtual book and the cannon simulation, were able to establish a connection of the participants with the problem, but were not sufficient to reach its solution. So students would bring their ideas and inquiries to the forum and chat, and expect to find 242 Anne L. Scarinci / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 guidance there. On the other hand, tutors were having a hard time identifying students utterances with the origin of their difficulties. Final answers to the questionnaire showed maintenance of alternative models, as: Because the centrifugal force keeps it in equilibrium. Because it is in the orbit, the orbit keeps it in its place. Because it also has gravity... (b) (a) Fig. 2. (a) the applet “Newton’s Cannon, used in the course; (b) an extract of the lesson account, showing the evolution of 6th graders models of “where we live on the Earth” during a class discussion. The second version had this lesson worked in depth in tutor training. A video lecture was also included, explaining the most common conceptions on the topic and bringing a discussion about why they were wrong, highlighting the most important elements of the solution. Tutors and students profited from the video, and the training worked as to provide tutors with a better interpretation of students’ alternative models. Tutors were also able to use the Newton’s cannon as an analogy during the chat – although in the forum they still did not connect their explanations with the outcomes of the applet, and were not able provide meaningful feedback for students to improve their learning: Student - The gravitational force is perpendicular to the energy, this energy is what maintains it in orbit and it is constant; so we say it is in equilibrium. Tutor - Your text is still confusing you have to make it better. There is not equilibrium. Such feedback would not help the student see how he could “make it better”. To in the third version of the course, authors added a written tutors’ guide including comments on some students’ accounts considered typical (such as the underlying origin of the mistake, and possible teaching strategies on how to give feedback). Tutors became in fact more familiar with diagnosing students’ ideas and subjacent models. A quiz was also included, with multiple choice questions that the students would answer as many times as desired, receiving an immediate feedback with comments on why certain answer was correct or incorrect. The new resources of years 2 and 3 enhanced the usage of technical terms in the accounts (force, equilibrium, mutual attraction etc.). The students would also relate to the video pictures while trying to explain their thoughts, and use parts of the explanations of the quiz questions in the weekly assessment. Nevertheless, final answers were not 243 Anne L. Scarinci / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 completely correct and did not include all necessary elements of the model: “The moon doesn't fall because there is the gravitational force and there isn't any other force giving it energy like with the cannon ball.” Students (especially those who were not physics teachers) were using the technical terms, were trying to refer to a certain model, were relating to the analogy of the Newton’s Cannon, but still couldn’t express themselves in an accurate way. For example, they wouldn’t mention “equilibrium” anymore, but weren’t able to explain why there is not equilibrium to maintain the Earth in orbit. Or, as in the example above, they wouldn’t mention that “the moon has gravity”, but they do not show clearly the gravitational force as an interaction between bodies. The fourth version of the course brought a face-to-face encounter right after lesson 3, with a part of it dedicated to free conversation among class participants with their tutor about the subjacent model that lesson 3 focused. After this version most questionnaire answers finally improved in two ways: students were in fact considering both the inertia and the gravitational force in their explanations, and the answers were genuine, showing that the student was really reasoning with the model: It's like in every moment the moon is trying to escape, but the force is pulling it back to the trajectory. Where would it fall to? Depends. If there were no velocity, it would fall to the Earth. If there were no gravitational force, it would fall to space. 5. Conclusions Varied course resources can indeed be of benefit to pedagogical communication, and resources added to this course provided, to tutors, an understanding of the students’ alternative models, and some valuable teaching strategies to relate to them, as well as tools that could be used to facilitate explanations and interactions. To students, resources promoted: more precise vocabulary; better understanding of the problem; a more concrete picture to relate with; construction of elements of the solution. When the objective and meaning of the resources were adequately shared with the tutor, they achieved their maximum potential as teachers. Tutor guidelines and continued education are thus a necessary and most important element of the course. As predicted, consolidation of learning, in terms of being able to apply the model in interpreting phenomena, happens through students-tutor interaction and this activity could not be replaced, in the course analyzed, by as varied as the resources could be. Once tutors were not the ones who planned the course resources, the author team must make all efforts to bring the tutors to incorporate the resources chosen, and believe in them as valuable and effective for teaching. Therefore, including specific guidelines for tutors and enhancing tutor training added a considerable gain of quality to the course, visible by learning results. However, analysis also indicated that through online interaction only, even the most prepared tutors could not reach to all of their students. Results were considered satisfactory only when the face-to-face encounter was included. This is not the best scenario, since the purpose of a distance course is to be as flexible as possible and face- to-face encounters make it impossible for students from far away cities to participate (in Brazil, a student would have to travel as much as four thousand kilometers to attend encounters). Though our results indicate that online interactions appear to be insufficient to teach a scientific model in this course, other hypotheses can be traced, such as the more familiarity tutors (and students) have with face to face interactions in comparison to interactions through forums and chats. 244 Anne L. Scarinci / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 167 ( 2015 ) 238 – 244 Acknowledgements Financial support provided by FAPESP. References Bachelard, G. (1996) A formação do espírito científico: contribuição para uma psicanálise do conhecimento. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto. Freire, P. (2996) Pedagogia da autonomia – saberes necessários à prática educativa. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Gil-Pérez, D. e Carvalho, Anna M.P. (2006) Formação de Professores de Ciências – tendências e Inovações; São Paulo: Cortez. Santos, M-E. (2005). Que educação? Para que cidadania? Em que escola? (Tomo I –Que Educação?). Lisboa: Santos-Edu. Scarinci, Anne L. ; Pacca, J. L. A. (2012) Por que interações síncronas em um curso à distância?. In: XIV Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Ensino de Física (proceedings), Maresias. Scarinci, Anne L. ; Pacca, J. L. A. (2013) o truncamento da sequência pedagógica do professor de física. Investigações em Ensino de Ciências Rio Grande do Sul: UFRGS, 18, 681-696. Vigotsky, L. S. (2000) Pensamento e Linguagem. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. Vigotsky, L.S. (2003) A formação social da mente. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. 
work_4r35pejatvau3gwz7sdxnplrwu	----	JournalFall2006 263 Journal of Social Work Education, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Spring/Summer). Copyright © 2009, Council on Social Work Education, Inc. All rights reserved. DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK: CURRENT AND EMERGING TRENDS feW cAn deny the importance of distance- supported learning in higher education today. colleges and universities are commonly offering courses— and complete degrees— through media such as Web- based online courses, two- way television, and a host of ancillary technol - ogies. Institutional investments in course man - agement programs such as Blackboard/WebcT are extensive. As a result, the ability to support distance education programs has be come com- monplace within social work education. A decade ago, a seminal study by Siegel, Jennings, conklin, and napoletano flynn (1998) examined the status of distance learn- ing in social work and foreshadowed the emergence of distance education as a viable medium for delivering accredited education. Serious efforts to promote online degree pro- grams have evolved since that time (Abels, 2005; Beaulaurier, 2005; Mcfadden, Moore, Herie, & Schoech, 2005). Literature Review In terms of student learning and satisfaction, distance education courses have been found to be comparable to traditional classroom courses (Schoech & Helton, 2001). Rafferty and Waldman (2006) reiterated the need for social workers to stay abreast of communica- tion technologies that support virtual contact Robert Vernon Indiana University Halaevalu Vakalahi George Mason University Dean Pierce Council on Social Work Education Peggy Pittman- Munke Murray State University Lynn Frantz Adkins Bethany College This article reports on current and emerging trends in the use of distance edu- cation technologies in social work education. Areas studied include the extent of distance education programs, curricular areas covered, technologies used, pedagogical approaches, intentions for degree- program development, sources of pressure to adopt distance education technologies, and policy issues. Results are given for BSW and MSW programs. iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 263 264 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION and practice. distance education has become a critical method of delivering social work edu- cation because it has opened access to educa- tion for many people, including those in rural areas and in under- served communities, those who are far along in their careers, and those who are financially strained. Social work courses that incorporate current technologies can offer new possibilities for teaching and learning. Recent developments include degree programs that are accredited by the council on Social Work education (cSWe) being delivered entirely via distance education. for example, the University of north dakota and Texas State University–San Marcos offer a complete MSW degree program online. florida State University offers an advanced- standing MSW degree online. The Metropol - itan State college of denver offers an online BSW degree. In canada, the social work facul- ty of the University of calgary offers a one- year MSW degree online. In one study, “online student” outcomes were comparable to the outcomes for “face- to–face” students in terms of knowledge and skills gained in class (Wilke & Vinton, 2006). Similarly, Bellefeuille (2006) found that technology can enhance the learning process particularly in relation to decision making, reflection, and critical thinking; that technolo- gy is an effective medium that facilitates a learner’s taking charge of his or her learning; and that distance education takes advantage of human and technologically based learning interactions that expand beyond student and faculty interactions. Likewise, Shibusawa, Vanesselstyn, & Oppenheim (2006) found that computer- mediated technology effectively facilitates the teaching of advanced clinical skills in working with couples. Also, in a study by Barnett- Queen, Blair, and Merrick (2005), students indicated that online discus- sions enhanced learning and created a more interactive learning environment. Conceptual Framework The design of this study was based on both social work ideals and several relevant theo- ries. As reflected in the existing literature, making resources available and accessible to under served and remote communities, including the resource of education, is a social work ideal to which technology has con- tributed extensively. for decades, distance education has linked individuals to social work degree programs. In these times of social worker shortage and economic strain, the increased need for developing social workers with cultural- or community- specific expert- ise has increased. This study is part of a larger mission to evaluate the current status of dis- tance education as an option for accessing social work degree programs. Theories of adult learning are relevant to this study (Herie, 2005; Knowles, 1980). constructs of adult learning theory state that adults are autonomous, self directed, and adults are goal oriented; when adults enroll in a course, they usually know what goal they want to attain; and adults are generally moti- vated to learn because of internal or intrinsic factors, not external or extrinsic forces (Knowles, 1980). These constructs reflect the types of students who choose to take courses that utilize various forms of distance learning technology. Today, students in professional education are likely to be both goal oriented and self directed, and distance education, iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 264 265DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK especially Web- based education, suits the learning needs and temperaments of these students (Moore, 2005). Likewise, instructivist and constructivist theories are applicable to distance education. The instructivist perspective is useful in pre- senting Web- based on- demand didactic con- tent through lectures and Web sites, and test- ing through quizzes and exams. The construc- tivist perspective (which holds that all knowl- edge is a socially mediated process) finds suit- able the use of threaded discussion boards and chatrooms in distance learning. The methods of distance education provide a com- paratively safe venue for both learners and instructors to move beyond their usual meth- ods of learning and teaching. Students who do not normally contribute in traditional classrooms may find it safe to contribute to the class through electronic posting (Graham, 1997; Moore, 2005). Methodology Given the sustained investments made by social work programs in distance education technologies over the past decade, the commission on Accreditation (cOA) of the council on Social Work education (cSWe) concluded that a survey of current trends within social work education was in order. The commission wanted to better understand the current state of the art of distance learning efforts, including intentions to offer programs that would award BSW and MSW degrees. cOA is charged with the oversight and man- agement of social work accreditation in the United States, and it wished to examine poli- cy positions that might need to be revised before the next educational policy and accred- itation standards are issued. during the reex- amination of the current educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (ePAS) (cSWe, 2001), this question should be explored: What issues, exactly, ought the commission— and the social work profession— to consider as more and more programs embrace distance education as an integral and viable form of instruction? cOA defined distance education as any means of delivering part or all of a course or courses online or through the Web, or through television or other media where students nei- ther meet physically as in the traditional class- room setting, nor meet simultaneously via one of the aforementioned distance education media. (The term distributed education is also in use; our survey treated them as synonyms.) The Survey Instrument cOA’s committee on Research and Instructional Technology (cRIT) surveyed 501 social work programs about their distance education efforts. The survey was distributed to a single contact (the chief administrator) at each institution with an accredited social work program to avoid over- reporting. Because the cOA wanted a complete picture of the efforts currently taking place in social work education, the cRIT determined to take a full census of programs, using the cSWe database. As of the february 2006 cOA meet- ing, there were 326 baccalaureate programs, 48 master’s programs, and 127 institutions with both a baccalaureate and a master’s pro- gram that were listed as accredited in the cSWe database. Using a Web- based survey administration mode allowed the cOA to con- tact every institution at relatively low cost. iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 265 266 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION The survey instrument consisted of 18 ques- tions for baccalaureate and master’s programs and 23 questions for institutions with both pro- grams. The instrument included ques tions on the current use of distance education technology, intentions or plans to use such technology, and perception of the need for distance education. Those programs that reported “delivering,” “developing,” or “considering” distance educa- tion were asked to further specify the number of courses, course areas, format, and types of tech- nology being used or considered. Branching questions were used to guide programs to the appropriate questions. Two open- ended ques- tions were included for comments on experi- ences with distance education and issues the cOA should consider. Respon dents were also asked for demographic information. The survey was administered in May 2006 using Survey Monkey, an online survey administration platform. Participants were sent a survey invitation through a mass e- mail system (Mail Bomber) with a link to the Web survey included in the cover e- mail. Using the same system, an e- mail reminder was later sent to nonrespondents. Respondents’ Characteristics Of the 501 schools and programs that received the online survey, 137 (27%) responded. forty- three states and one territory were represent- ed. eighty- six responses (62%) were from BSW- only programs. Thirty- two (24%) were from institutions with both a BSW and a MSW program. nineteen (14%) were from institu- tions with MSW- only programs. This com- pared favorably with the characteristics of the industry as a whole: 65% of the 635 accredited programs at that time were BSW- only, 10% were MSW- only, and 25% were combined pro- grams (L. Weidekamp, personal communica- tion, March 11, 2005). The difference between the respondents and the actual distribution of accredited programs was not significant. (findings: degrees of freedom: 2; chi- square=1.85. for significance at the .05 level, chi- square should be greater than or equal to 5.99. The distribution is not significant; p is less than or equal to 1.) Of the 127 respondents who provided identifying information, 106 (83%) were deans and directors, 20 (16%) were faculty, and one (1%) was a staff member. Respondents were asked how long their programs had been engaged in distance education efforts; the mean was 3.7 years, with a range of 6 months to more than 10 years. Results Development Status: What Are Programs Doing? Respondents were asked about the current status of their distance education efforts. These were divided into four categories: pro- grams that were actively delivering devel- oped distance education courses, those that were developing them but not delivering any, those who were considering this but not active at the time, and programs who were not con- sidering distance education in any capacity. These data are summarized in Table 1. The number of programs that were actively engaged in distance education deliv- ery was surprising: 4 in 10 at the BSW level and half at the MSW level. These are well beyond the smaller numbers reported in the 1998 study, and attest to how common dis- iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 266 267DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK tance courses are becoming (Siegel et al., 1998). Presumably some of the schools and programs that were already delivering cours- es were also developing them as well, so the “developing courses” numbers are probably underreported. Of note, the MSW programs appear to be substantially more active in developing courses than the BSW programs. Of these, 2 of 10 MSW and BSW programs are considering distance education courses, sug- gesting that development and delivery should increase in the future. If one combines the numbers and percent- ages for those programs that are currently delivering, developing, or contemplating dis- tance education, 71 BSW programs (61%) and 43 MSW programs (83%) were “open” to using technology to provide courses for their students. This suggests that programs in the main are less resistant to providing courses online than one might suppose. certainly this is well beyond the more conservative findings from a decade ago. Curriculum Areas: What Are Programs Teaching? The council on Social Work education speci- fies eight distinct content areas for study for both the BSW degree and the MSW foundation (cSWe, 2001). Respondents reported teaching 220 distance courses at the BSW level and 133 at the MSW level. The substantial majority of these courses were elective in nature, 77 (35%) for BSW programs and 60 (39%) for MSW pro- grams. In rank order, practice courses were the most prevalent in core curriculum offerings for both MSW and BSW courses. These data are summarized in Table 2. The prevalence of electives is certainly understandable. electives offer safe environ- ments where faculty and schools may acquire skills and experience without jeopardizing the core curriculum. More interesting, however, is the presence of practice courses at the top of both the BSW and MSW lists as courses offered via distance education. This is sub- stantially different from the findings reported by Siegel et al. (1998), where only policy and research courses were commonly so offered. Rather than seeing policy and research as pri- mary, online practice courses have become preeminent for the core curriculum. The areas of social and economic justice and populations at risk, diversity, and values and ethics are much lower in both rankings. This is not surprising as these areas are com- monly infused into the curriculum by most programs and seldom offered as courses in their own right. The “field” dimension re mains interesting. Perhaps the higher incidence of TABLE 1. Development Status by Program Degree BSW MSW Action n % n % delivering courses 48 41 27 52 developing courses 2 2 6 12 considering courses 21 18 10 19 not considering 45 39 19 17 iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 267 268 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION online field courses and seminars for the MSW programs is an artifact of scale; MSW programs usually have more students than BSW programs and may find field liaison, supervision, and seminar duties more efficient when mediated online. This is a plausible explanation, but there remains need of further inquiry. These data strongly suggest that complete curricula for both degrees are currently avail- able online. A student could conceivably craft a complete course of study for either the BSW or the MSW degree from currently available offerings if there were greater agreement between institutions. We asked all of the respondents if they were considering cooper- ative degree programs with other universities and colleges. not one of the respondents reported that they were. At this time, online education may be viewed as a “place” or “site” by programs for their own students, and hence think of it as firmly located within the program or school. Thus, the industry is “siloed,” and collaboration between institu- tions is the exception rather than the rule. However, the potential certainly exists. What Technologies Are Being Used? distance education technologies have greatly expanded over the past decade. Schools and programs wishing to provide courses online have several choices. Some colleges and uni- versities have well- developed infrastructures that are television based. dedicated class- rooms with audiovisual capabilities between main and satellite locations are commonly used for “narrowcasting.” Internet- based pro- grams are also readily available. combina - TABLE 2. Courses Delivered via Distance Education BSW MSW Required Foundation Curriculum n % n % Practice 32 14.5 38 20.0 Policy and services 31 14.0 25 13.0 Human behavior and social environment 22 10.0 19 10.0 Research 15 7.0 22 11.0 diversity 14 6.0 6 3.0 Populations at risk/justice 10 4.5 5 2.5 field 10 4.5 17 9.0 Values and ethics 9 4.0 1 0.5 Subtotal, required courses 143 64.5 133 69.0 Elective Courses electives 77 35.0 60 31.0 Subtotal: elective courses 77 35.0 60 31.0 Total, all courses 220 99.5a 193 100 aPercentages do not add up to 100% because of rounding. iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 268 269DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK tions of these media choices are certainly pos- sible for many schools. We asked the respon- dents to identify the predominate technology in use in their programs, and 43 BSW and 25 MSW programs responded. These data are summarized in Table 3. The Internet is clearly the industry leader in distributed social work education. Given how inexpensive Web and e- mail technology is in comparison with building and maintain- ing television facilities, this choice comes as no surprise. The larger proportion of televi- sion use by MSW programs (32% for MSWs and only 9% by BSWs) may be a function of scale. MSW programs tend to be in larger uni- versity settings that may have more capital assets for televised delivery and, more likely, a longer history of investing in technology. Pas - sive, one- way televised programs are virtual- ly nonexistent as a technology choice. BSW programs are more inclined than MSW pro- grams to use combinations of technologies. Pedagogy: Online and Virtual or Face- to- Face? The older narrowcast television technologies run in “real time,” or what is commonly known as synchronous mode. This results in class- rooms that are separated by distance but other- wise traditional in nature. yet through e- mail and many of the Web- based course manage- ment platforms available today, students and professors need not meet, even virtually, at the same time. Time- delayed instruction, known as asynchronous mode, is entirely possible for many programs. In addition, asynchronous classes may meet face- to- face or through nar- rowcasting in what are often termed hybrid courses. We asked programs if they were using distance education without face- to- face contact or if a face- to- face component was present. These data are summarized in Table 4. Social work educators and practitioners often describe themselves as “people persons” who value human encounters. This is an understandable ethos given the nature of our profession. yet more than a third of the BSW programs and a quarter of the MSW programs did not require a face- to- face experience as an integral component of coursework. Instead, these programs offered courses that were entirely online, without direct human contact. Future Plans What plans do programs have for using dis- tance learning technologies? considering cur- rent trends, it is safe to assume that the number of schools and programs that provide distance TABLE 3. Types of Technology Used to Deliver Courses BSW MSW Technology n % n % Internet/Web 31 72 14 56 Passive (one-way) TV 1 2 1 4 Active (two-way) TV 3 7 7 28 combined media 8 19 3 12 Total, all technologies 43 100 25 100 iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 269 270 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION education courses will increase in the foresee- able future. yet to what extent? Programs may choose to offer only a smattering of elec- tives, for example, or move toward offering complete degree curricula. We asked our respondents about their future plans for dis- tance education. These data are summarized in Tables 5 and 6. The clear majority of social work pro- grams that responded in this study intend to offer at least part of the courses that are degree requirements through distance education. fifteen percent of the BSW programs and 21% of the MSW programs intend to offer com- plete degree programs. This is remarkable, given that only a decade ago programs were just beginning to explore the possibilities of distance education. Respondents were asked to identify the sources of pressure for adopting distance edu- cation. These are summarized in Table 7. Almost two thirds of the pressure to develop online courses comes from within institutions. This is understandable, given that many colleges and universities have made substantial investments in distance edu- cation infrastructure. Policy Issues Mindful that the cOA will have to evaluate distance education programs as they become available, we solicited qualitative responses concerning policy issues that should be con- sidered. Thirty- eight statements were ana- lyzed as event codes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003) with the object of isolating specific themes. TABLE 4. Types of Pedagogy BSW MSW Pedagogy n % n % face-to-face plus technology-delivered (hybrid) 27 63 19 76 no face-to-face; only technology-delivered 16 37 6 24 Total, both pedagogies 43 100 25 100 TABLE 5. Extent of Offering Courses via Distance Education: BSW Programs BSW Extent of Offerings n % Only electives 12 19 Part of degree 41 66 complete degree 9 15 Total 62 100 iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 270 271DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK each notation was reviewed and abstracted around its thematic contents. Three themes emerged from the data: (1) technological sup- port, (2) development time and resources, and (3) the teaching of practice courses online. Technological Support Seven respondents saw the need for techno- logical support as extremely important. One of the myths of distance education is that it is cheap and easy, but in reality the infrastruc- ture needed to provide and support courses “24-7-365” is rather daunting. following are typical statements reflecting this issue. • “The university’s technology needs upgrading! Based on evaluation of stu- dent outcomes, our distance education students do as well as their campus- based peers,” • “Technical problems with the TV system to multiple locations, and there is a need for supervision and monitoring of stu- dents and their behaviors in multiple locations.” Development Time and Resources Ten respondents emphasized the time needed for course development and the necessity of TABLE 6. Extent of Offering Courses via Distance Education: MSW Programs MSW Extent of Offerings n % Only electives 8 21 Part foundation year 11 29 complete foundation year 1 3 Part concentration year 9 23 complete concentration year 1 3 complete MSW degree 8 21 Total 38 100 TABLE 7. Sources of Pressure to Offer Distance Learning n % Internal, within the institution 37 33.0 Internal, within school or program 34 30.4 combination, multiple sources 24 21.4a Practice community 12 4.5a Total 112 100 aderived from “other” comments. iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 271 272 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION having non- social- work consultation expert- ise available. Their stories chronicled the real- ity that there is a serious learning curve for developing courses, and that proficiency in distance education requires new skills that are not always directly transferable from the tra- ditional setting. Typical remarks included the following. • “The primary limit at the moment seems to be the faculty’s inexperience with using the technology, and faculty’s incomplete understanding of the most effective pedagogy for delivery of the material and of the interaction of the stu- dents with the material.” • “We enjoy great support from our univer- sity’s IT department, which makes design and implementation doable. We are working on evaluation rubrics for online course delivery and student learning out- comes.” • “This has been a very effective medium for delivering some of our courses and has been very helpful in reducing com- muting time for students. It has allowed us to offer a course that meets the needs of several campuses. Our university does extensive training and offers excellent ongoing support. no one can teach one of these courses without such training. We have been consistently evaluating which courses to have online.” A subtheme within this group directly mentioned workload, compensation, and ownership as significant issues. Typical re - marks included the following. • “We need to look at faculty workload. This is not only a lot of new course devel- opment but also very intensive contact with students one- on- one that takes up a lot of time.” • “The use of Web courses has been very limited and while the experience was pos- itive for the students, the faculty find it work- intensive to develop such courses with little support from the institution.” • “At our institution, a major issue that the university is grappling with is how to compensate faculty equitably for online course development and delivery. Intel - lectual property ownership is among the issues.” In addition, these colleagues cautioned that fiscal, technical, and professional re - sources are also needed to provide a high- quality distance education experience. Teaching Practice Courses Online The most interesting theme revolved around the question of providing practice courses online. Practice courses were the courses most commonly offered online out of the required curriculum. yet twenty- one separate com- ments insisted that practice should not be taught online. Typical comments follow. • “distance learning works best with courses that are primarily didactic; does not work well with practice.” • “We recognize the pitfalls of offering ‘skills’ courses solely through use of tech- nology and we are very aware that this is something we will not be doing. Students iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 272 273DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK have expressed concerns about practice- oriented courses being offered only on - line and we have assured them that this will not happen.” • “This area needs to be studied and con- trolled. I do not believe that all courses should be online. I firmly believe practice courses should never be online.” • “Practice courses appear to present special considerations— how does the student demonstrate skills and attitudes on line?” One comment summarized this issue very directly. Social work as a profession utilizes and relies upon the use of self, self aware- ness, relationships, communication, and relationship building, to name a few. It is important that social workers develop and increase their skill levels in the aforementioned. Any method of instruction that may directly or indi- rectly compromise or eliminate the observation, supervision, and “human interaction” that I believe are critical for the development of social workers must be avoided in my opinion. The way in which students can relate to and work with others who may differ from themselves is an important part of social work education. Online instruction that does not include direct face- to- face interaction with others does not offer the level of preparation and “practice with individuals” that the profession requires for culturally competent practitioners. Thus, I think that there needs to be clear evidence that systematic observation of students is incorporated with the use of technol- ogy. In addition, I do not support online instruction for courses such as cultural competence, diversity, etc., or direct practice courses. The current ePAS specify recommended faculty–student ratios, the threshold number of faculty requisite for accreditation, and other resource issues. The characteristics and ade- quacy of personnel and infrastructure for sup- porting distance education may need to be added to the standards as significant accredi- tation dimensions. for example, MSW pro- grams must have a minimum of six full- time- equivalent (fTe) faculty. Just what constitutes a fTe faculty work load in the distance educa- tion environment? What if all six faculty members work from different states or coun- tries and never meet face to face? faculty competencies may also have to be examined. Workload, and its effect on faculty productiv- ity in other areas such as service and research, may need to be better understood in the next iteration of accreditation policy. How does one conduct a site visit when there is no site to visit? finally, a most important debate is emerg- ing: Should practice be taught in the distance education environment? This question reflects an undertone that is currently being informal- ly voiced in the profession on various elec- tronic mailing lists and at conferences. On the one hand, some factions insist that practice can only be effectively taught in the face- to- face environment, as this survey saw clearly iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 273 274 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION in some respondents’ remarks. Other research, however, suggests that practice courses and field practica can be effectively incorporated into distance education, possibly mediated by occasional face- to- face meetings. (Ouellette, Westhuis, Marshall & chang, 2006; Siebert, Siebert & Spaulding- Givens, 2006; Wilke & Vinton, 2006). Discussion Several limitations must be kept in mind con- cerning this study. first, only about one in four schools or programs (27%) surveyed responded, and there is no information con- cerning those who chose not to respond. It is possible that only stakeholders or those with an agenda chose to reply. We suspect that pro- grams that are either in favor of distance edu- cation or opposed to it may have been more likely to participate than those that have not had to adopt a distinct position on the ques- tion. next, as with most surveys, the limits of self- reporting are present; there is no way to confirm validity. finally, the database that was available for this survey was not comprehen- sive, although the lack of significance in the distributions of degree types mitigates this concern to an extent. With these limitations in mind, several salient issues deserve comment. first, it is readily apparent that distance education has expanded exponentially in only a decade. We may well see online programs, some fully independent from classroom contact and oth- ers in hybrid combinations, side by side with traditional degree programs in the near future. Universities and colleges are competi- tive and “siloed.” extramural collaboration is now rare in social work education.yet the abil- ity to cooperate to provide degree programs crafted from multiple sources cannot be over- looked as a possible future trend in social work education. Possible federal mandates on the transfer of credits between institutions could fundamentally alter this in the future (Pierce & Pittman- Munke, 2005). educational policies and standards for accreditation will have to address the fact that programs are producing degrees in whole as well as in part through distance education. Resource issues will certainly need considera- tion as a component of new ePAS policies and cOA evaluation procedures. There is a lack of consensus concerning the teaching of practice courses through distance education, especial- ly online. The most recent studies in this area reported that although differences between online students and traditional students may indeed be present, these may not be signifi- cant enough to warrant concern. neverthe - less, this will frame a most interesting debate and policy challenge in the foreseeable future. References Abels, P. (ed.) (2005). Distance education in social work: Planning, teaching and learning. new york: Springer. Barnett- Queen, T., Blair, R., & Merrick, M. (2005). Student perspectives of online dis- cussions: Strengths and weaknesses. Jour - nal of Technology in Human Services, 23(3–4), 229–244. Beaulaurier, R. (ed.). (2005). Technology in social work education and curriculum. Bing - hamton, ny: Haworth Press. Bellefeuille, G. L. (2006). Rethinking reflective practice education in social work educa- tion: A blended constructivist and objec- iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 274 275DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SOCIAL WORK tivist instructional design strategy for a Web- based child welfare practice course. Journal of Social Work Education, 42, 85–103. Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (2003). Research for education {4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. council on Social Work education. (2001). Educational policy and accreditation stan- dards. Alexandria, VA: Author. Graham, M. A. (1997). empowering social work faculty: Alternative paradigms for teaching and learning. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 15(1/2), 33–39. Herie, M. (2005). Theoretical perspectives in online pedagogy. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 23(1–2), 29–52. Knowles, M. S. (1980). The modern practice of adult education: From pedagogy to andra- gogy. cambridge, IL: follett. Mcfadden, R., Moore, B., Herie, M., & Schoech, d. (eds.). (2005). Web- based education in the human services: Models, methods, and best practices [Special issue]. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 23(1/2, 3/4). Moore, B. (2005). Key issues in Web- based education in the human services: A re - view of the literature. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 23(1–2), 11–28. Ouellette, P., Westhuis, d., Marshall, e., & chang, V. (2006). The acquisition of social work interviewing skills in a Web- based and classroom instructional environment: Results of a study. Journal of Technology and Human Services, 24(4), 53–76. Pierce, d., & Pittman- Munke, P. (2005). Com - mission on Accreditation study of future trends in higher education and accreditation. Unpublished manuscript. Raf fer ty, J., & Waldman, J. (2006). fit for virtu- al social work practice? Journal of Tech - nology in Human Services, 24(2–3), 1–22. Schoech, d., & Helton, d. (2001). Qualitative and quantitative analysis of a course taught via classroom and Internet chatroom. Qualita - tive Social Work, 1(1), 111–124. Shibusawa, T., Vanesselstyn, d., & Op pen - heim, S. (2006). Third space: A Web- based learning environment for teaching ad - vanced clinical practice skills. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 24(4), 21–33. Siebert, d., Siebert, c. & Spaulding- Givens, J. (2006). Teaching clinical social work skills primarily online. Journal of Social Work Education, 42, 325–336. Siegel, e., Jennings, J., conklin, J., & napol - etano flynn, S. (1998). distance learning in social work education: Results and implications of a national study. Journal of Social Work Education, 34, 71–80. Wilke, d., & Vinton, L. (2006). evaluation of the first Web- based advanced standing MSW program. Journal of Social Work Edu - cation, 42, 607–620. Accepted: 7/08 Robert Vernon is professor of social work at Indiana University on the Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. Halaevalu Vakalahi is associate professor and director of the MSW Program at George Mason University. Dean Pierce is director of the Office of Social Work Accreditation for the Council on Social iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 275 276 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION Work Education. Peggy Pittman- Munke is associate professor and director of Social Work at Murray State University. Lynn Frantz Adkins is professor emeritus at Bethany College. The authors acknowledge Jessica Holmes, research associate at the Council on Social Work Education, for her expert assistance and technical support in conducting the survey. Address correspondence to Bob Vernon, Indiana University School of Social Work, 902 West New York Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202; e- mail: rvernon@iupui.edu. iOc b iOcJS9SS-Vernon-3ff:JournalFall2006 Fri/October/2/2009 Fri/Oct/2/2009/ 10:46 AM Page 276 
work_4u5crcetuzbvbptycthten77fi	----	Distance Education for Health Professions’ Students Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.608 ScienceDirect INTE 2014 Distance education for health professions’ students Anna Siria*, Marina Ruib aUniversity of Genova, School of Medicine, Via L.B.Alberti 2, 16132 Genova, Italy bUniversity of Genova, DCCI, Via Dodecaneso 31, 16132 Genova, Italy Abstract This paper concerns the use of Moodle 2 as a suitable tool to improve the online learning project for the Health Profession courses offered by the University of Genoa. The student syllabus requires attendance to formal lectures and practical training sessions. Some of the Health Profession courses of our University (e.g., nursing, physiotherapy, and radiology technologist) are taught at different venues across the Liguria Region to facilitate students’ access to high education and enhance quality of life- long teaching programs at local health centers. Over the years, managing this complex teaching network has called for the development of new educational tools supported by AulaWeb, the Moodle environment of our University. At the beginning, teachers used AulaWeb merely for information storage. In this experimental project, we investigated how to make some courses more attractive by proposing them in a blended form. Eventually we managed to catch the students’ attention also for courses offered totally online. This approach meets two relevant requirements, (a) to ensure consistency, compliance, and quality of teaching at all local centers, (b) to reduce travel expenses for teachers lecturing at different venues. Thanks to the new features of Moodle 2, such as tools to monitor conditioned assets and track the activities performed and/or completed by students, we could arrange online courses that also ensure access of students to attentive and prompt tutorial mentoring. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. Keywords: E-learning; Higher education; Technology-enhanced learning * Corresponding author: Mobile.: +39 328 4233341 E-mail address: anna.siri@unige.it © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.608&domain=pdf 731 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 1. Introduction The world of the health care professions is complex, for it includes twenty-two non-medical qualifications, each requiring a specific three-year degree to provide adequate skills, in accordance with the guidelines of the National Health System of Italy. The university degrees enjoy the common feature of being directly qualifying for the profession. Since 2001, these degrees have been grouped into four distinct classes (Nursing and Midwives Health Professions, Health Professions of rehabilitation, Technical Health Professions, Health Professions for the prevention). The School of Medicine of the University of Genoa offers training programs in twenty health professions; some of the programs are available at different venues across the Liguria Region. This complex organization, which provides lecture hall education at eight training centers, has fostered the development of distance courses, thanks to the availability of AulaWeb, the Moodle-based platform of the University of Genoa. Our Faculty, which in the beginning was slow in taking advantage of AulaWeb, has progressed in recent years from using the platform as a mere repository of information, to the experimentation of blended courses, and finally to online learning. These developments has allowed combining the primary urge to ensure common, consistent programs at different premises with the need to control costs, which has been achieved by the reduction in teachers’ mobility to the peripheral venues to carry out in person the educational activities. On one hand, all the students of a given course receive the same educational lectures and teaching material for the course; on the other hand, the teachers can devote their time and care to the preparation of lectures and teaching material instead of traveling around the region. Local tutors offer support to students in order to pave the way for course attendance. There is recent evidence that distance learning can contribute to healthcare professionals’ base and practice knowledge (Glen, 2006; Moule et al., 2010).Distance learning can take a variety of forms including in nurse and allied health professional education: simulations of clinical scenarios (Tait et al., 2008); internet based discussion boards; and role play (Nelson & Blenkin, 2007). It can also overcome barriers to the learning such as distance or geographical location and provide online communities of practice in circumstances where different factors make it difficult. It can also offer students to communicate ideas and to learn in different ways and can help introverts to take part. Finally, the intrinsic properties to the technologies used in distance learning allow students to experiment with the identity of “professional nurse or technician” in a safe environment where they can make mistakes without damaging patients. In this context, a significant role was played by our ICT offerings. Online education tools have traditionally been organized and supported through learning management systems (LMSs) or content management systems (CMSs), such as mainly Blackboard and Moodle, because these systems offer opportunities for organization, efficiency, and security (DeSchryver et al., 2009; Lee & McLoughlin, 2010). We chose Moodle as educational portal of all the Schools of our University about ten years ago over several Learning Management System (LMS) with similar features. Since then, Moodle has been seen more as an interactive service than a research project. For this reason our staff focused on its improvements instead of keeping on comparing with other LMS. As a service to the entire campus, the stability is crucial, at least until it is well fitting the teaching requirements. Blackboard, Moodle, and more recently Sakai, are, among many others, LMS plenty of features allowing to achieve the same kind of goals. Years ago, when our staff has been charged to choose an LMS for the whole campus, Moodle has been chosen for two main reason: - avoiding a proprietary product that would bind our university to the editorial choices of the manufacturer, that does not happen inside the wide and open Moodle community; - having a good budget for training teachers in the use of it that was, and still is, a strength point of our staff. Moodle is free of license and the university has all the technical expertise to handle it, so the choice was made. We don’t agree with researchers that have argued that these platforms have generally been used as static repositories of content (Brady et al., 2010; Lee & McLoughlin, 2010; Schroeder et al., 2010; Whitworth & Benson, 2010). This was true at the beginning, but things are gradually changing also with the help of training for teachers themselves. At that time, Moodle (version 9.4) was far less advanced than it is now, but it was selected because of its large distribution, growing popularity in the academic world, and its easy availability as an open-source platform. We believed that these factors could ensure continuity to the project and provide an opportunity to achieve goals consistent with our educational requirements, which in fact occurred. Both quantitative and qualitative growth in the use of Moodle, especially in the medical field, has been slow but steady. The turning point from the previous ICT tools, which were merely of side support to classroom lectures, was the availability of the new features of Moodle 2, a breakthrough in distance education through its effective and timely mentoring functions. 2. Participative design as a planning strategy 732 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 2.1 The design As mentioned in the previous section, the need to implement online learning was determined by several considerations including the following: - the limited number of human resources in the scientific areas not covered by National Health Service personnel (such as basic science); - the request of some teachers to identify teaching modalities that could allow simultaneous coverage of several sites with a single lecture to constrain costs but to ensure the same quality of education as that delivered in the past; - the need to reduce educational costs, which largely depend on the number of peripheral venues for teaching activities. In accordance with the Faculty of each course and the individual teachers responsible for any given subject, the coordinating committee of the Health Professions first identified three courses to be delivered experimentally in online mode, two non-medical (Sociology and Anthropology) and one in the health science area (Epidemiology). An “ad hoc” working group made up of teachers in the field, technical experts in e-learning and in the health education design, was convened to realize the project. The project was implemented through the non-traditional strategy of participative design (Hagen et al., 2012; Nicholas, 2012; Hagen, 2010; Palloff & Pratt, 2007). It followed a constructivist approach whereby the product does not originate by the view that the expert has on how it should be; in contrast, knowledge is shared and the project is built through the interchange of all players. The end-user involvement in the design is therefore targeted to the following: - improve the design, and increase knowledge in the process of project analysis; - ensure realistic expectations of end users, thereby reducing resistance to change; - help to increase democracy in education, providing students the right to take part in decisions that have an impact on their learning. Experts in the subjects, employed locally by the public health scheme, were involved to define the scope of the training because of their long teaching experience and professional practice. Some students of advanced training courses (Master of Science in Health Professions) took part in the definition and implementation of the interactive procedures. Students enrolled in the courses were involved in the development of communication systems reputed more convenient for users themselves, in order to get more effectiveness and make users more aware of the interactive processes. A preliminary but complete development of the technological tools to use was needed to start the experimentation with a view to achieve a positive social environment (Schroeder et al., 2010). 2.2 Aim The present study is focused on gaining a better understanding of health professions students’ perception of the e- learning environment proposed by the School of Medicine. Based on the objectives outlined above, four questions were formulated. These were: 1) Are nursing and allied professions’ students able to apply the skills and knowledge from this program to their work setting? 2) Are the instructional design activities in the courses effective? 3) Are students satisfied with the online courses? 4) Are adequate the student’s support services provided? 3. The planning 3.1 The organization of content and the delivery modes Three on-line courses in the fields of Sociology (1 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System-ECTS points), Anthropology (1 ECTS points) and Epidemiology (ECTS points) scheduled for first-year students of Nursing enrolled in the academic year 2011-12 were offered in the second semester. The program of Sociology and Anthropology was developed in conjunction between the teachers so that the same issues of health interest could be treated consensually from the anthropological and sociological perspectives. The aim was to allow students to follow lectures in an integrated way. The course design for distance learning was supported by the AulaWeb portal, based on Moodle 2 platform. AulaWeb is easy to use, dynamic, flexible, modular and fully manageable also by the individual teacher. It is the official platform of the University of Genoa and so that it is technically supported by the university computer center staff, both in the construction of educational materials and in the management of virtual classrooms. Round-the-clock access to the course was available, a flexible feature that avoided excess mobility and allowed the students to choose their own timing of study to best suite their personal needs. Teaching was developed mainly on the network, but, in this first experiment, three meetings were also planned in person at each center. The first meeting concerned the online approach, 733 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 materials and course organization; the other two meeting concerned specific needs also in teaching methods. Particular attention was paid to course design and to the balance of hours of training between classroom and distance learning. Our aim was to enhance the scope of both educational approaches, the personal relation of the classroom and the flexibility of distance learning. The first meeting in the classroom was held to break the ice and to create some human interaction with a view to make the remote interaction more profitably. The classroom activities therefore were provided as a preparation for those online. Other in person meetings ensured quality control of online training activities, traced what had been done, and opened the way for reorganization or integration measures, if needed. The structure of distance learning consisted of modules composed of educational material (video lectures, slides, material details), of tutorials/self- assessment tests, and insights. In distance learning, it is crucial to subdivide the content in small conceptual units that are easily manageable by the learners. For this reason, the three courses were structured in lectures, scheduled for a given study timing. The time that the student required to complete his or her tasks and to study the individual educational materials was computed. Average time estimates are a weak variable. Some participants will spend less time than expected, for instance because they are already familiar with the topic or because they are particularly at ease with the content; on the contrary, other students will require extra time. In this experimental phase, no definite indication has been given of the average time needed for each module, but this feature will be implemented next year because we believe students should be enabled to better manage the time they spend to accomplish their tasks and to understand the level of details required in dealing with the materials. No specific time scale for the different modules was set, but a regular sequence of study was mandatory in order to proceed from one module to the following one. In traditional education, personal communication between teacher and student provides the opportunity to verify the level of learning of the contents. In distance-learning personal communication was replaced by meetings with tutors and by self-assessment tools useful to monitor the levels of achievement. Production of educational materials and online course design followed the principle of self-consistency (consistency, finiteness, clarity, comprehensiveness), which is particularly important for distance learning. In this context, learners have to rely mostly on their own; despite access to new tools of communication, such as email and forums, they enjoy fewer opportunities to get help from supporting figures (teachers, tutors, secretary office). A technical tutoring service has been activated in order to help students familiarize themselves with the tools of the platform hosting the courses. During course administration, as mentioned above, a first in person session was organized at the opening of the course, in order to provide the audience with a guide to the platform and its functions, and to simulate its key features to the participants. Some tools, provided by Moodle 2, allow tracking students’ performance ("catch the mood" function) at a distance. In this experimental phase, it was decided not to use them, leaving the task to report problems, and critical elements of dissatisfaction to the meetings in presence and the forum, enabled on each course. The online discussion forum, a powerful tool for communication and deepening of the content, was activated to foster collaborative learning methodology, based on the theory of learning as a social process. A tutor was identified for each distance course in order to monitor messages in the forums and provide timely answers, possibly after discussion with teachers. The learning objectives of these courses did not concern only transfer of content competencies, but also the ability to learn through group interaction and online education. As a result, careful monitoring of participation and interaction was put in place using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative analysis is a simple task for the AulaWeb portal, which automatically records the data related to access for all users and makes them available to the analysis of the evaluator. The main aspects under consideration being the following numbers of: accesses to the platform; accesses to each course; accesses to the discussion forum; postings in the discussion forum; contributions sent by e-mail. The qualitative analysis of participation, of each participant and of the whole group, was achieved through analysis of messaging in terms of interaction variables, such as nature of the communication flows (student/teacher, student/tutor, student/student); presence of statements concerning group cohesion; and links between messages. Analysis of interaction in the classroom in the three scheduled meetings was also taken into account. Activities were certified in an in-person meeting, as defined by the syllabus and by the academic regulations of the courses of the Health Professions. Any course examination requires separate exams covering each of the fields included in the integrated course, no matter if lectures were given in the traditional format or online. Therefore, no testing of online evaluation was carried out. 3.2 The new features in Moodle 2 Today, Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System widespread in educational field because it allows conducting fully online courses (with online dynamic web sites supporting teaching and communities of practice) as well as simply support to enhance face-to-face courses (blended learning). It is presently available in 70 languages and used by about 65 million registered users. Moodle was planned and developed on the basis of a philosophy that tries to combine up-to-date training methodologies with collaborative IT tools. The guiding philosophy of this environment is to support a true cognitive and collaborative link between bearer of different experiences and skills recreating for them a real "online 734 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 learning community". Presently it has come to version 2.5, but the courses we are discussing about have been created in the 2.1 and 2.2 releases. The early experiences of distance learning have been implemented on the version of Moodle 1.9 and have been preceded by an introductory course addressed to teachers of the courses of the Health Professions (Siri & Rui 2011). However the significant change took place in the Academic Year 2011/2012, in conjunction with the installation of two instances of Moodle 2.1 for institutional courses provided on online or blended training and life-long learning. Version-2 Moodle, based on a complete update of the core components, has provided teachers and students with new features that have ensured more flexibility, which is particularly useful in education and specifically in the field of the Health Professions. This has permitted the shift from the initial testing phase to the adoption of online lectures. The aspects of Moodle that had a major effect for the online teaching and learning for the Health Professions include the capabilities of monitoring and evaluation. Distance learning is part of an educational context essentially ruled by lectures of mandatory attendance carried out in the classroom. The main problem concerning the performance of online activities and their integration with other activities carried out in person is basically to determine the relevance of individual student performance. The Completion and Availability Conditioning function offered by Moodle 2 was instrumental for this purpose, which is crucial in the health procession courses. These features have enabled the creation of learning paths that can provide to each student resources and activities that follow his or her progress in the learning path. This has contributed substantially to the completion of our monitoring. The teacher defines the tasks that the student has to fulfil in order to proceed in the syllabus, and can evaluate advancement or identify inactive students. On the other hand, the student has the opportunity to check his educational path and to report intervening technical problems. Each activity has alternative completion criteria, which are activated when required, a feature that opens the way for diverging routes. In particular, in experimental settings, the teacher can define through self-evaluation tests, the qualitative and quantitative conditions that must be met to proceed in the educational program. These variables are set under the supervision of the teacher who has the opportunity to use the most appropriate criteria for the envisioned educational goal; in particular, the logging history that Moodle 2 provides, ensures close verification of each student’s advancement and the actual use of each module (resource or activity). In this context, the new report, which enabled teachers and participants to view the status of completion of the single activities and of the whole course, proved to be very useful. The information is displayed and downloaded for further processing in order to highlight the trend of the students participation, to identify critical issues and to monitor the appreciation and the effectiveness of the measures adopted. The criteria for completing the whole course were not activated because they require a mandatory final examination. The function, “Conditional availability and completion," was very effective. It was not restricted to allowing the next step only if the preceding step was shown, without detecting "how" the previous step was completed. In contrast, the possibility to include self-assessment test was used to identify how many attempts had been made to answer and what distractors (i.e. incorrect answers in multiple choice test) for each question were mostly selected. This approach was useful to understand the areas in which students were weaker. 4. Results and conclusions This recent online experience offered insights on the quality of the courses, on current features, and on possible improvements. In general, there was considerable satisfaction of the students who were interviewed, when they took the final exam. The students who, according to current regulations, are required to attend all the educational activities of their study program, especially those who are enrolled at peripheral venues, have appreciated the possibility to freely attend at least two courses from home or from the nearest venue. They identified in this innovative offer a more responsible way to learn, which is self-managed. Course attendance also allowed students to share and discuss the educational material together. The project has been well monitored and evaluated at all levels to increase and establish its credibility. The program dedicates one staff member to coordinate the evaluation procedures and to formulate additional evaluation methods to more completely focus all aspects of the online experience. On-going questionnaires were offered to monitor the progress of the course, in order to gain useful information to allow possible reshaping of some stages of learning. Tracing the paths carried out by the students and recording of on-line intercommunication completed the available data for monitoring the course. These data were useful to solve problems of access, communication and participation, with an eye at redesigning future versions of the project. The survey, regular staff meetings, observing course interactions, and examinations of the listserv by the staff, helped to evaluate the effectiveness of all components of the online program and also to address the four main evaluation questions of the program. Out of our 987 first-year health profession students, the 81% followed the distance learning courses offered on AulaWeb. The remaining 19% included students who received credit for previous studies and students who decided to take the course at a later time. 735 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 The exit survey is sent to all students attending the online courses in the academic year 2011-12 (response rate of 95%). The survey results proved a very high level of student satisfaction. One hundred percent of respondents reported that they - esteem the program very or somewhat worthwhile, that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the program. Moreover, 87% of replies agreed or strongly agreed that the online courses are relevant to the field of health professions. One hundred percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they learned skills that were useful to their future job. For the technology service and support component, students are asked to respond to some statements on a scale from 1-5, strongly agree to strongly disagree. The following statements are included in each course evaluation; “instructions to assist me in developing the required computer skills were sufficient”, “adequate technology support was available for this course,” and “in general, accessing the course website was easy.” Similarly, the curriculum component is evaluated through a combination of the surveys cited above and more informal monitoring by the staff. For each course, students are invited to list what teaching strategies they found useful in terms of increasing knowledge, instructional designers are requested to report new teaching strategies they worked on with faculty members and how successful they were, and faculty are asked what innovative strategies they used in their courses. Some of the techniques that were collected include: group projects to promote collaborative learning, postings on reflections of course content on discussion boards, case study based discussion boards, capstone evaluation assignments like projects or posters, and journaling. When asked about course strategies, 54.6% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that group activities contributed to learning of the course material. In addition, 67.9% of respondents reported that Discussion Boards were the most successful instructional activities over readings, group work and chat rooms. All of this feedback is used to inform the program about what pedagogical techniques have been successful. The Graphs 1, 2, and 3, for the three distance courses, summarize the data from the reports available on the platform. The number of the active students in the various stages of the course is shown together with the activities of each module. Some students complained of lack of high-speed network access for videos. MP3 files of the lectures were then downloaded and handed to the students. Figure 1 also indicates the trend of material accesses on the different modules and the on-going feedback; the modules that the students considered more difficult and were then the target of reshuffle in the following year. Students with technical difficulties for access preferred to join other students and to attend in groups with their teacher’s authorization of the teacher, even if self-assessment had to be done independently. Figure 2 shows the students' activities for the Anthropology course; its second module, in particular, has a smaller number of accesses to the video lectures. 736 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 Fig. 1. Activities carried out by students enrolled in "General Sociology" Fig. 2. Activities carried out by students enrolled in "Anthropology” 737 Anna Siri and Marina Rui / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 730 – 738 Same problems were identified for Epidemiology (Figure 3), a course that experienced a drop in video lecture accesses because of difficult in high-speed connections and postponement of the finale exam. Fig. 3. Activities carried out by students enrolled in the teaching of "Epidemiology”. Participation in self-assessment test has remained high, even in the final steps of the courses, when students were no longer required to access the following chapters, a sign that the tests were perceived by students as a valuable tool to verify their readiness to sit for the final exam. A feedback questionnaire of the courses has been proposed to interested students to complement the Moodle information. This experiment allowed collection of useful materials in order to make changes and additions to the content offered with the aim to overcome the operational and technical difficulties faced by students. In particular, for the next academic year, some video lectures will be proposed again in shorter format make access easier; additional details were added to some areas considered difficult by the students. The working group is envisioning, on the basis of reports received by tutors and students, upgrade to the FAQ format (with explanatory notes, bibliographical and site link suggestions of learning). Furthermore, we wish to strengthen the effectiveness and traceability of self-assessment tests by improving feedback provided to the students and the audit trail. The self-assessment tests provide a useful educational tool of self-learning and a valuable tool for an active tutoring, but to really exploit its potential it is necessary that teachers and tutors are properly informed about the features and the best practices for the used modules, in particular “quiz” and “lesson”, along with reports. For this purpose, the School of Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences is enhancing its duty for supporting the use of Moodle that will closely work with the staff of the university computer center. For next year it is expected to completely remote this experimentation with the only initial presentation of the course, without the assistance of tutors in presence in each educational pole. Off course, this will lead to a stronger online tutoring. Finally, the evaluation component itself is evaluated and the information collected is used to inform decisions about future evaluation activities. References Brady, K. P., Holcomb, L.B., & Smith, B.V., 2010. 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Participatory Design of evidence-based online youth mental health promotion, prevention, early intervention and treatment. Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre, Melbourne. Hagen, P. & Robertson, T., 2010. Social technologies: challenges and opportunities for participation. In Bødker, K. et al (Eds.). Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference (PDC '10) Sydney (pp. 31-40). New York: ACM Press. Lee, M.J.W., & McLoughlin, C., 2010. Beyond distance and time constraints: Applying social networking tools and Web 2.0 approaches to distance learning. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emerging technologies in distance education (pp. 61–87). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press. McKenzie, K., O’Shea, C., McLeod, H. & Begg, M., 2008. An evaluation of the effectiveness of online clinical ‘quandaries’ in promoting effective clinical decision making by trainee clinical psychologists. Journal of Practice Teaching in Social Work and Health; 8: 2, 7-24. Moule, P., Ward, R. & Lockyer, L., 2010. Nursing and healthcare students’ experiences and use of e-learning in higher education. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 66(12), 2785–2795. Nelson, D.L., Blenkin, C., 2007. The power of online role-play simulations: technology in nursing education. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship; 4: 1. Nicholas, M., Hagen, P., Rahilly K., & Swainston, N., 2012. Using participatory design methods to engage the uninterested, in: Halskov, K. et al (eds) PDC 2012 Embracing New Territories of Participation, Proceedings of the 12th Participatory Design Conference, August 12-16, 2012, Roskilde University, Denmark, New York: ACM Press. Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K., 2007. Building on line Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom. Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education. Schroeder, A., Minocha, S., & Schneider, C., 2010. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of using social software in higher and further education teaching and learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(3), 159–174. Siri, A.& Rui, M., 2011. Il progetto AulaWeb & Teaching Tools:un corso pilota per docenti delle Professioni sanitarie. VIII Congresso Nazionale della Società Italiana di e-Learning, Università di Modena e Reggio, Reggio Emilia, 14-16 settembre 2011, pp. 793-798, ISBN: 9788895994765. Sweeney, N.M., Saarmann, L., Flagg, J., Seidman, R., 2008. The keys to successful online continuing education programs for nurses. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing; 39: 1, 12-18. Tait, M., Tait, D., Thornton, F., Edwards, M., 2008. Development and evaluation of a critical care e-learning scenario. Nurse Education Today; 28: 8, 971-981. Whitworth, A., & Benson, A., 2010. Learning, design, and emergence: Two cases of Moodle in distance education. In G. 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work_4vlppz3tcjgsffqli66w22tlxm	----	PII: S0360-1315(01)00065-3 Integrating internet tools into traditional CS distance education: students’ attitudes Judith Gal-Ezer, David Lupo* Computer Science Department, The Open University of Israel, PO Box 39328, 16 Klausner Street, Ramat-Aviv, 61392, Tel-Aviv, Israel Received 17 June 2001; accepted 28 September 2001 Abstract This paper describes a study conducted on the attitudes of students towards the integration of the Web as a channel of communication and a study tool in traditional distance teaching of Computer Science (CS) at the Open University of Israel (OUI). We examined the incorporation of web communication into the traditional model with three different groups of undergraduate students—one of 700 students in our introductory course, another of 150 students in our advanced ‘‘Computer Networks’’ course, and the third including the remaining 3000 students in the CS department. Questionnaires were answered by a repre- sentative sample. The findings show that when the use of the Web is voluntary, students do not take full advantage of it, even those who are advanced in their studies and have rich experience in using computers and the Internet. The results, however, do show that the use of the Web increases as students advance in their studies, although even in this case the Web is not used as much as it could be, either as a commu- nication channel or as a study tool. Our findings support the following assumptions: The Web cannot substitute entirely for face-to-face learning, but it can serve as a reasonable alternative when the latter is unavailable. Using the Web to its full pedagogical potential requires a high level of self-study ability; the more distance-based the learning is, the more the Web is used and accepted by the students, and the more it serves them as a communication channel and as a study tool. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Media in education; Computer mediated communication; Distance learning 0360-1315/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0360-1315(01)00065-3 Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu * Corresponding author. Tel.: +972-3-6460738; fax: +972-3-6460744. E-mail address: davidlu@cs.openu.ac.il (D. Lupo). 1. Background The Open University of Israel (OUI) is a distance education institution designed to offer aca- demic studies to students throughout the country. Its study method allows its students to pursue higher education, whenever and wherever convenient, and without interfering with their other personal and vocational obligations. The OUI offers about 400 courses in Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science, Social Sciences, Management, Judaic Studies, Educa- tion, and Humanities, and serves more than 33,000 students. The OUI is a multi-campus university whose teaching method requires a complex logistic sys- tem which has evolved since the establishment of the university in 1976, based on the rationale of bringing the university to the student’s home. Written materials for each course (course books, assignments, syllabus and schedule, study instructions, and administrative procedures) are mailed to students before the beginning of the course. Tutorial sessions are held in regional study centers, ranging from weekly in the group-study format, to every three weeks in the standard distance format, and the students can choose the preferred format. About 30% of the students prefer the standard format, while 70% select the group-study format, which provides more support. Each course has a teaching staff that consists of an academic supervisor, a course coordinator and a number of tutors. The course coordinator is responsible for supervising the tutoring, writing assignments and examinations and preparing their answer keys. All students, regardless of study format, take the same final examination. Tutors receive a ready-made self-study course, and their job is to support the students throughout their studies and help them perform their tasks. 2. The computer-mediated-communication (CMC) model developed at the OUI OUI has developed a model of learning based on new technologies which combines and inte- grates on-line technologies with traditional distance education teaching aids. Every CMC course has its own Website that provides interactive learning materials through electronic asynchronous communication including discussion forums, e-mail, and materials that students can download (Aviv, 1999; Lupo & Erlich, 2001). Through research, development and integration of new teaching methods that take into account pedagogical, social and technological aspects, the OUI makes use of advanced information and communication technologies for the mutual benefit of students and teachers, as described by Beller (1996, 1997). 2.1. CMC in computer science (CS) courses To participate in a CMC course, students need to have basic knowledge of computer applica- tions, including the Internet. We assume that most CS students have these skills, at least after taking an introductory course. Students who lack these skills can register for a ‘‘Computer Applications’’ course that builds up the background needed but awards them no credit (Lupo & Erlich, 2001). Our experience shows that no CS students needed the course as all the students came with the appropriate background. The central guideline in introducing CMC into CS courses was to integrate the Web wherever it is beneficial and to avoid its integration in those cases when it becomes an impediment. For 320 J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 example, to avoid the disadvantages of screen-based reading, we decided not to place the written materials on our sites, but rather to continue to send printed textbooks and other material to our students. Our books are the basis of our study method, which has proved effective for years, and we felt there as no reason to replace a successful existing method with a new, less convenient one. Some CMC courses provide printed materials in .pdf files which students can download and print out at home. We prefer to continue to mail the written materials to our students since not all of them can afford to print out and organize the extensive self-study materials. In addition, since the Web aspect is a voluntary addition to the distance courses described here, and there was no way of knowing in advance which students would take advantage of the Web, all students received the printed materials by mail. The Internet is thus used mainly to improve communication between the teaching staff and the students, using methods that have been examined in various ways by a number of scholars (e.g. Beuschel, Bork, Hughes, Mcmahon, Serdiukov, & Stacey, 2000; Brooks, 1997; Mason & Kaye, 1989; Sandell, Stewart, & Stewart, 1997; Verdejo, Rodriguez-Artacho, Mayorga, & Calero, 2000). Our goal was to create a virtual campus in which students could get to know each other, form virtual study groups, and thus be compensated for the lack of an actual campus. However, we were unwilling at this stage to make the CMC obligatory in any way. The Web sites are designed to help the students, and we left the decision of whether or not to take advantage of the Web up to them. No additional credit was given for participation in the discussion forums, and we did not rely on the Internet as a formal channel of communication. All information continued to be sent to students by ‘‘snail mail’’ as had been the case before we introduced CMC into our courses. The CMC model has two different aspects: The Web as a channel of communication. Today ‘‘snail mail’’ serves as the official communica- tion channel between students and the university. All administrative announcements and clar- ifications regarding materials are sent by mail. At face-to-face meetings, a tutor provides additional explanations of the material and assignments, the examinations, etc. Because the tutorials are held throughout the country, the course coordinator can usually visit only one or two tutorial sessions for each group of students during a semester. Via the Internet, we attempted to augment communication between the students and the coordinator, making it more accessible, mutual and continuous throughout the semester. The Web as a study tool. Many studies have examined the effectiveness of the Web as a study tool in terms of the various options it offers: asynchronous discussion forums, synchronous dis- cussions (text, voice and/or video) and animated illustrations and multimedia applications in general (e.g. Beuschel et al., 2000; Moore, 1989; Sajaniemi & Kuittinen, 1999; Sandell et al., 1997) and in the special case of computer science education (e.g. Baker, Boilen, Goodrich, Tamassia, & Stibel, 1999; Boroni, Goosey, Grinder, Lambert, & Ross, 1999; Boroni, Goosey, Grinder, & Ross, 1998; Byrne, Catrambone, & Stasko, 1999; Cordova, 1999; Deaver & Resler, 1999; Mester & Krumm, 2000; Naps & Chan, 1999; Trondle, Mandl, Fischer, Koch, Schlichter, & Teege, 2000). We believe that one of the important tools for distance education at the OUI today is the asynchronous discussion forum. Synchronous activities take place at tutorial sessions and there is justification for complementing these with activities that are time- and place-independent. More- over, asynchronous discussions demand only minimal software and hardware, which is assumed to be available to all students. J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 321 As to the effectiveness of Web-based animated illustrations as a tool for improving learning, many studies have shown success in basic topics such as programming, data structures and algorithms (Baker et al., 1999; Boroni et al., 1999; Cordova, 1999), as well as advanced topics such as parallel algorithms (Naps & Chan, 1999), communication protocols and distributed algorithms (Mester & Krumm, 2000), and compilers (Deaver & Resler, 1999). Byrne et al. (1999) showed that animation for some known algorithms of varying difficulty do not differ much from detailed descriptions of snapshots of the algorithm steps. Such illustrations are not necessarily associated directly with the Web. Many illustrations may be constructed for viewing in a labora- tory (Mei-Chuen, Wu, & Liu, 1999) or on a home PC. In the OUI as well, in some courses, CDs are mailed to students together with the printed materials sent them at the beginning of the semester (Lupo & Erlich, 2001). 2.2. Description of the course sites All course sites are graphically similar, and linked to administrative information drawn directly from the OUI’s central database: the course schedule and description, the course tutors and the list of students. The academic aspect of the sites includes Hebrew-based applications that were specially developed to enable the course coordinator to easily and independently update the data, without the need for any knowledge of Web programming. There are a number of links at the top of each course home site: among these, links to discussion forums, relevant Web sites and file downloads: Discussion forums are opened by the course coordinator for each topic, depending on the structure of the course. Here all students registered in the course have read and write permis- sion. This is the main virtual meeting place for students in all study groups around the country. Links to other Web sites are sorted by subject, and contain useful links to other web sites, including links to similar courses in other universities around the world, and to Java-based visualizations of various topics covered in each course. A description of each link tells students how and when to incorporate the materials into their studies. File downloads contain downloadable files posted by the course coordinator and include exer- cises, solutions to exercises, sample tests, etc. A bulletin board is located on the course home page on which the coordinator posts brief important messages such as changes in meeting schedules, clarifications on deadlines for submit- ting assignments, etc. and can also be used to provide links on which students can click to reach more detailed information or feedback located elsewhere on the site. Fig. 1. shows a typical home page of a CS course. 3. The study After integrating CMC into our courses for 2 years, we saw that only a small percentage of the students were taking advantage of this mode of communication. Thus, we decided to conduct a study to determine the students’ attitudes towards the CMC model. All CS students were divided into three groups. One included 700 students in our introductory course, who are new and still unaccustomed to our teaching method (‘‘introductory’’ students). 322 J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 The second group included 150 students in an advanced elective, ‘‘Computer Networks’’, taken by students with rich experience in OUI courses (‘‘advanced’’ students). The third group included the rest of the 3000 students in the department (‘‘regular’’ students). Questionnaires were admi- nistered to all the students and a representative sample (20%) of the questionnaires for each group were examined (introductory group: n=132; regular group: n=618; advanced group: n=33). 3.1. Results 3.1.1. The Web as communication channel We can clearly see a rising trend in the utilization of the Internet as a channel of communica- tion as students advance in their studies. Introductory students tended to read the bulletin board less than regular or advanced students, as shown in Fig. 2. Among the regular students we found a significant correlation between use of the bulletin board and the tutoring format for which the students had registered (Chi-Square=15, P=0.020, d.f.=6). Students in the standard distance format, who have less contact with their peers and the tutor, tended to check the bulletin board more often than students in the group-study format. Though students are aware of the fact that important messages are sent to them by snail mail as well, Fig 2. indicates that many of the experienced students use the bulletin board as a convenient and reliable source of information. We also asked the students whether they preferred to use the Internet as an official channel of communication (completely replacing snail-mail messages), and here as well, we observed a slightly higher, though not significant, preference among the advanced students in comparison to others (Fig. 3). However, we cannot ignore the fact that one third of the students prefer not to use the Web as a channel of communication, even though over 90% of our students have access to Fig. 1. Web site of CMC course. J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 323 the Internet. This means that the choice of many of the students who prefer not to use the Web as an official channel of communication stems from reasons other than the availability of the Internet. As part of our attempt to develop a virtual campus through the CMC courses, on each course site we opened a discussion forum called ‘‘The Course Cafe’’. The ‘‘Cafe’’ was defined as a place where students could discuss any topic they wished, from culture to politics. It was intended to compensate for the lack of social life in a distance education institution. Participation in this discussion forum was minimal in all courses. Each site also included a list of students enrolled in the course which was intended to enable students to communicate among themselves by e-mail beyond the framework of the course itself. In order to appear on the list, students had to log-in to a specific page on the site, fill in their e- mail addresses, and give permission for their names to be posted. Here we also found differences in the numbers of students who posted their names in the site: 58% of the introductory students, 73% of the regular students and 82% of advanced students. However, less than 15% of the students made personal contact with other students, even though on the questionnaires many indicated that Fig. 3. Students’ responses to the question, ‘‘Would you prefer administrative communication through the Internet?’’. Fig. 2. Students’ use of the bulletin board. 324 J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 contact with other students was important to them. The CMC seems to have provided a frame- work for such contact to only very few of the students in all three groups. 3.1.2. The Web as a study tool The advanced group used the discussion forum more than the others, as shown in Fig. 4. It should be noted that from our previous experience we know that discussion forums in program- ming courses (such as the introductory course) are much more active than in theoretical courses, therefore, it turned out that introductory students actually used the discussion forum less than expected. We found a significant correlation (Chi-Square=10.23, P=0.006, d.f.=2) between the study format and the tendency to use the discussion forum—students in the standard distance format used the discussion forum to a greater extent. Among the regular students, we found another significant correlation between the way the students use the discussion forum and the study format (Chi-Square=13.17, P=0.01 d.f.=4). Students in the standard distance format tend to take an active part in the discussion forum more than students in group-study format who tend to be more passive (i.e. reading the messages without writing their own). We asked the students who had participated in the discussion forums whether this helped them in their studies, and the answers we received are shown in Fig. 5. Over half of the students in all three groups answered ‘‘to some extent’’, indicating that we need to improve the management of the discussion forums. However, it is clear that the students’ ability to benefit from the discussion forums is influenced by their maturity since the discussion forum serves as an aid to self-study— an ability that our students develop over time. 3.2. CMC study format In the semester during which we conducted our study, we offered the option for signing up for the advanced course, ‘‘Computer Networks’’, using the CMC format. Our intention was to open a study group which had no face-to-face tutorial sessions: all tutoring would be based on the Fig. 4. Students’ responses to the question, ‘‘Did you use the discussion forum?’’. J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 325 course site and specifically on the discussion forums. We knew from previous experience that about 60% of the students in the course choose the standard distance format, and that about half of these do not participate in any of the tutorial sessions. These students were the target popula- tion for the CMC tutoring group since they had nothing to lose by enrolling in it. Yet, only two of the 150 students registered for the course selected this option. To understand this phenom- enon, the questionnaire included several options, representing reasons for their choice. The stu- dents’ responses are summarized in Table 1. We asked the group of regular students whether in the future they would enroll in CMC study groups, were we to offer such groups. Surprisingly, about 2/3 of the students did not reject the idea. About 30% responded that they would consider the option, and others stated that they would consider it under certain conditions. Their responses are shown in Table 2. It should be noted that the question defined a CMC group as a group in which more advanced teaching tools—such as videoconferencing—would be incorporated. It is possible that students feel that CMC is still in its early stages, and expect it to develop further, and become more user-friendly Fig. 5. Students’ responses to the question, ‘‘Did the discussion forum help you in your studies?’’. Table 1 Responses of the advanced group to the question, ‘‘Why didn’t you enroll in the CMC group?’’a (n=33, in percentages) I study in the group-study format. 14.8 I study in the standard format, and intended to attend all sessions. 18.5 I saw no need for it. The course site in general and the study group in particular satisfied my study needs during the course. 22.2 I have no computer or regular access to the Internet. 11.1 I manage very well with the written study materials and the staff’s phone instruction hours. 11.1 I did not understand the nature of the CMC group. 7.4 Other 40.7 a The respondents could choose more than one response. 326 J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 and effective in the future. At present, the discussion forum interface poses problems in integrat- ing Hebrew and English and in writing mathematical formulas, and while attachments are pos- sible, these are time-consuming to open. This may be another factor that makes students wary of using the forums; however, students seem to be aware that this is merely a technical problem that will be resolved in the future. When this happens, it is likely that more students will opt for the CMC group. 4. Discussion and future research While students expressed an interest in using the CMC model in the future, at the moment, the feedback from this study indicates that students use this medium relatively little. Therefore, we view CMC only as a supplement to the existing system, and found that its potential has not yet been realized. As long as there is communication via snail mail and frequent face-to-face tutor- ials, there is less need for additional electronic communication. It seems that a mixed mode of CMC together with traditional distance learning would be preferable. The research systematically shows that, the more advanced the students are in their studies, the more they tend to use the Web in its various applications. It seems that students feel that the virtual learning environment cannot replace the live classroom, with its personal interaction between the students and the tutor and among the students themselves. The Web serves as an additional self-learning tool for the students when they sit alone at home and need to cope with the material from a distance, which requires a high level of self-learning ability on their part. Students who are used to the face-to-face study format from their previous experience, and especially the introductory students, find it difficult to use the Web as a study tool, just as they find it difficult to use other self-study aids used by the OUI, such as self-study texts, study guides and courseware. Tutoring meetings are designed, among others, to help them develop indepen- dent-study abilities that are essential for taking advantage of the OUI’s learning method. In contrast, advanced students, who have developed self-study skills, were able to use the Web more efficiently. Therefore, we will try to develop a new distance learning model to serve our advanced students, based on the appropriate balance between face-to-face interaction with experts in the field, and the need and demand for distance learning (most advanced students are part-time students with additional obligations including work and families). Where education is concerned, revolutions are unacceptable. Hence, the process of integrating technology into education must be evolutionary. Educators and policy-makers, separately and Table 2 Responses of regular group to the question, ‘‘Would you consider enrolling in the CMC study group format in the future?’’ (n=618, in percentages) No, I’d prefer one of the existing study formats. 35.9 Yes, I will consider it. 29.9 Perhaps, depending on the specific course and other factors. 15.6 Perhaps, if I have access to the Internet. 5.8 Perhaps, but only if I am not able to participate in the tutorial meetings. 12.8 J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 327 together, must carefully examine where the technology can help, and where it has little value. As a result, we decided to try a new model of CMC in the advanced ‘‘Computer Networks’’ elective in the semester following this study. Only after examining this new model carefully, will we extend it to other advanced courses, and only after proven success, to other courses (implementing any changes required to adjust the model to students who are not on an advanced level). The new CMC model will utilize the Internet to a greater extent in both the standard and the group-study formats by reducing the number of face-to-face tutorials, and defining the Internet as the sole channel of communication between the OUI, the teaching staff and the students. In the standard format, there will be only three 3-h face-to-face meetings (instead of seven meetings totaling 17.5 h), and the group-study format will have nine 3-h face-to-face meetings (instead of 15 meetings totaling 30 h), thereby making both formats more distance-based. The students will be told at the beginning of the course about this CMC model, and of their responsibility to keep themselves up-to-date through the course Web site. All information regarding course activities and procedures will be on the Web and no letters will be sent by snail mail during the semester. Students will be given the option to cancel their registration or to switch to another course if they find this mode of communication unsuitable for them, without having to give any explanation or to pay any fine (contrary to the usual procedures the OUI). The tutoring will be based on the course Web site, where all students from all tutorial groups will form one large virtual class tutored by the course coordinator through asynchronous com- munication. CMC tutoring will include posting guidelines for readings and additional questions, emphasizing certain teaching points and clarifying known problematic areas in the material, presenting visualizations and illustrations of specific topics, publishing video-based solutions for course assignments, etc. All on-line activity will be asynchronous, while the synchronous activities will take place in the tutorial sessions. The tutors will integrate the on-line activities into the meetings with the help of the course coordinator. We will conduct a comprehensive study to determine the effectiveness of this model and try to find out how the Web can better serve as an asynchronous study tool, and how it can be integrated in the existing learning method of the OUI. The full research will be presented in a future paper. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Yael Alberton of the Evaluation and Training department of the Open University for her help in writing the questionnaires and performing the statistical analysis. References Aviv, R. (1999). Educational performance of ALN via content analysis. Proceedings of the 1999 Sloan Summer Work- shop on Asynchronous Learning Network, 51–68. Baker, R. S., Boilen, M., Goodrich, M. T., Tamassia, R., & Stibel, B. A. (1999). Testers and visualizers for teaching data structures. Proceedings of the 30th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 261–265. Beller, M. (1996). Integrating new technologies in distance education: Pedagogical, social and technological aspects. In J. Katz, D. Millin, & B. Offir (Eds.), The impact of information technology: From practice to curriculum (pp. 69–76). London: Chapman & Hall. 328 J. Gal-Ezer, D. Lupo / Computers & Education 38 (2002) 319–329 Beller, M. (1997). 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work_4wj2q5w2vrej7h4gtgjjiazp2a	----	Introduction The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Methodology for Cost-Benefit Analysis of Web-Based Tele-Learning: Case Study of the Bell Online Institute Tammy Whalen and David Wright Abstract Educators, trainers, and business people need to be able to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of Web-based training in order to make informed decisions about the extent to which this new media should be used in their organizations. The present study hypothesizes that there are several key design elements that should be considered in costing Web- based training projects. The relative importance of these elements is examined using a case study approach. The methodology used in this case study can be employed in future cost benefit studies of Web-based training. This case study also provides a detailed cost-benefit analysis, including the breakeven number of students required to recover Web-based course development costs and the return on investment over a five-year period. Introduction Web-based training is receiving a great deal of interest in academia and private industry, and cost analysis has become increasingly important. Many universities such as the University of Phoenix, the University of Maryland, and Athabasca University, to name a few, have multimillion dollar budgets for Web-based teaching of part-time students. In private industry, Bell Canada is a good example of how companies are using Web-based learning for both in-house employee training and as a service product offered to customers who want to apply distance learning in their own organizations. In both cases, the cost benefit of Web-based training must be established. Internally, Bell Canada is interested in using Web-based training because it is a cost-effective and convenient alternative to classroom training. Since Web-based training is also a customer product, it is necessary to demonstrate its value in order to interest customers in using this type of training model. For these reasons Bell Canada undertook a pilot project to examine the cost-effectiveness of Web-based training. The literature in the area of cost-benefit analysis of Web-based distance learning is sparse, and the objective of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature. The costing methodology discussed in this paper was developed by the authors and tested in the Bell Canada case study. The results of the cost-benefit analysis provide further information about the economic benefits of Web-based training. Measurements of Financial Performance Although few cost-benefit analyses for Web-based training are available, standard measures of financial performance apply to this type of study. Two common measures are the breakeven point, the point at which costs are recovered, and return on investment, which illustrates the economic gain or loss from having undertaken a project. Breakeven Number of Students. To offset the high fixed costs of Web based courses, a certain number of students must be trained at a delivery cost per student of less than that of the delivery cost per student for classroom training. The number of students that offsets the fixed costs of Web-based training is the breakeven point. In Figure I the total fixed costs for classroom and Web-based courses are represented by the intercepts of the vertical axis. The cost of course delivery per student is represented by the slope of each line. Since Web-based courses cost more to develop, the line meets the vertical axis at a higher point than for classroom costs. However, since Web-based courses cost less to deliver per student, the slope of the line is more gradual. The point at which the lines cross is the breakeven number of students needed to recover the higher fixed costs of Web-based delivery. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Return on Investment. The return on investment (ROI) is the percentage that represents the net gain or loss of using Web-based training instead of classroom delivery. For example, an ROI of 300% means that $3 was saved in reduced delivery costs for every $1 spent on Web-based training. Cost Comparison: A Background In comparing Web-based distance education and classroom course delivery, there must be a clear basis for measuring output. It can be argued that the true measure of training output is the information and skills acquired by students. However, many studies in the literature report that there is no significant difference in the amount of learning that students acquire through classroom training and distance learning (Russell 1998). For the present costing analysis, the basis for comparison will be the costs of development and delivery of the courses themselves. In analyzing the costs of Web-based courses, the basis for comparison is the cost of delivering an equivalent course in the classroom. It was assumed that the learning outcomes for the Web-based courses in this study would have been the same if the courses had been delivered in a classroom. Costs are divided into fixed and variable costs in order to compare technology-enabled learning to traditional classroom delivery. Fixed costs are defined as costs that remain the same regardless of the output. Variable costs are those that vary directly with the amount of output. Thus, variable costs increase with the number of students, while fixed costs are incurred before a course is even offered. Clearly, costs that would be incurred even if a course were delivered in a classroom (i.e., sunk costs) should be ignored in costing Web-based training. For example, if a course were previously offered in the classroom, and no further research and development for course materials were needed, the cost of creating the intellectual property for the course would be a sunk cost. Likewise, the cost of feasibility studies should not be included as a costing element. In an analysis of distance education using video conferencing-based delivery at the University of Ottawa, Aub6, Chilibeck, and Wright (1996) established the fixed costs for videoconferencing as: videoconferencing equipment, technicians' salaries for running the equipment, installation costs, and fees for basic telephone lines. Variable costs for videoconferencing delivery of distance courses included fees for long distance network usage, shipping charges for supplementary print materials, honoraria for professors, and salaries paid for the preparation of course materials. The breakeven point, which was found to be twenty two courses with the videoconferencing configuration used at the University of Ottawa, is the financial measure used in the analysis. Trevor-Deutsch and Baker (1997) reported on the costing of a course with multimedia elements delivered via videoconferencing in an academic setting. They considered the following costs for traditional classroom delivery: the instructor's salary and benefits; the number of courses taught by the instructor; and the costs of course The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 development, course materials, administrative support, classroom overhead, and any additional time the instructor spent on the course for activities such as grading and meeting with students. Costs for the same course delivered at a distance included equipment costs and course development costs. The breakeven point was calculated at 331 students. Future courses using existing equipment and some of the development features of the pilot course were estimated to have a breakeven point of eighty-two students, a 75% reduction in the breakeven point of the pilot. Another study compared CD-ROM-based learning to classroom learning in a high-tech industry setting (Hall 1997). Costs for traditional classroom delivery included development time, classroom overhead costs, instructors costs, and travel costs for the participants. The CDROM training costs included equipment and course development time. Development time was high for the CD-ROM course, totaling $1,205,394 over three years. However, the classroom delivery costs were also high, primarily due to high travel costs for the students and the length of time spent away from the job. Costs over the three-year pilot period for the CD-ROM-based course were 47% less than those for the classroom-based course. The payback period was fifteen months, and the Internal Rate of Return-the discount rate that makes the Net Present Value of the investment equal to zero-was 61 %. The breakeven number of students needed to recover development costs was not calculated. The course material was compressed by 60%, from four days in the classroom to 11.2 hours for the CD-ROM version. The reduction in training time was attributed to improved instructional design, the ability of students to test their knowledge and then omit some sections of the course, and the variety of instructional models such as text and animation available to students, which contributed to more effective learning. Several other publications are relevant to the discussion of Web-based costing analysis. In a recent article, Hall (I 998) itemized the current contractor rates for the types of experts required for Web-based course production. Bates (I 995) also discusses the costing of distance education courses, although the Web is not included in his analysis. Several bibliographies on both return on investment and evaluation have been compiled by the American Society for Training and Development (I 998) and are available on their Web site at <http://www.astd.org>. Another report by the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (1994) primarily examines non-economic benefits of the use of information technology in an academic setting. While all of these studies are useful in providing a comparative look at methods of determining the costs and benefits of distance education, few reports deal specifically with the economic analysis of Web-based courses. This study takes a new approach in looking at cost-benefit analysis for the new delivery method of the Web. Costing Methodology Web-based training has become a widely explored topic in the education and training literature, but there are still few comprehensive, tested, costing methodologies available for use by educators, trainers, and business people who need to make decisions about the cost-effectiveness of Web-based training for their own organizations. This study hypothesizes that there are several key design elements that must be costed in a majority of Web-based training projects. These costs are divided into fixed capital costs and variable operating costs. Capital costs include the server platform shared by all courses mounted on that server as well as the cost of the content development shared by all students taking that course. Content development includes six items: 1) instructional and multimedia design; 2) the production of text, audio, video, graphics, and photographs; 3) the development of authoring and delivery software, or the cost of licensing commercial software;4) the integration, modification, and testing of course content; 5) student and instructor training; and 6) course testing. Operating costs represent the costs for the time students and instructors spend using the courses. These costs are analyzed to determine the costs per course, the costs per phase of development, the costs per student, and the costs per mode of delivery (i.e., synchronous or asynchronous). The Ratio Analysis section of this article provides an evaluation of the breakeven number of students required to recover course development costs and the return on investment over five years. The costs of producing future courses using the same instructional design or the same mode of delivery can be estimated from the results of this study. To verify the costing methodology, it is necessary to determine whether some of these costing elements are more important than others. In other words, do some elements dominate others, or are some elements insignificant? To test the hypothesis that all these elements are critical to costing analysis for Web-based course design and delivery, the costing methodology is applied to the following case study. Bell Online Institute Case Study The Bell Online Institute (BOLI) is the Bell Canada business unit that delivers Web-based training to Bell Canada employees. BOLI also functions as a testing ground for various Internet-based learning platforms used for delivery The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 of training at Bell Canada. A separate business unit, the Bell Institute for Professional Development (BIPD), provides traditional classroom course delivery and oversees all internal training. The Bell Online Institute case study was undertaken to measure the cost and evaluate the effectiveness of training delivered on four different Web-based learning platforms: • WebCT (http:Hwww.webct.com/) developed at the University of British Columbia for asynchronous training; • Mentys (http:Hwww.globalknowledge.com/) from Global Knowledge Network for asynchronous training; • Pebblesoft (http:Hwww.pebblesoft.coml) for asynchronous training; and • Centra Symposium (http://www.centra.com/) for synchronous training. Three courses designed for delivery on these learning platforms were produced by three independent vendors. All of the courses were on telecommunications topics: TCP/IP (using the WebCT and Mentys platforms), frame relay (using the Pebblesoft platform), and routing (using the Centra Symposium platform). The courses were estimated to be equivalent to two-day classroom courses. The pilot courses were delivered to engineers working in Bell Canada's Advanced Communication Systems group. Three of the learning platforms, WebCT, Mentys, and Pebblesoft, present course materials asynchronously. That is, course materials reside on a server on an on-going basis and may be accessed at the student's convenience. The frame relay course on the Pebblesoft learning platform was authored in French. The fourth platform, Symposium, is a synchronous learning platform using 28.8 Kbps delivery over the Internet or an intranet. The system supports text, graphics, and animation to present course materials. Shared features for system users of Symposium include audio communication among the course participants and the instructor, an electronic whiteboard, an Internet browser, and a live text chatroom. Cost Analysis: Fixed Costs This portion of the analysis helps determine whether the high fixed costs associated with providing learning in a technology-enabled format are justified in comparison to the costs of traditional classroom delivery already provided through BIPD. The actual billed rates reported by the vendors are used in the cost charts found throughout the paper. All costs are reported in Canadian dollars. Capital Costs. License Fees for Learning Platform Software. The price of a learning platform depends on the number of people who will be using the software and ranges widely from vendor to vendor. An upgrade cost of 10% per year is assumed. Using 10% of the costs as an annuity, the present value of the upgrades and the original purchase price are shown in column three of Table 1. The cost of the platform must be amortized over the total number of courses that will use the platform. BIPD presently has 150 independent study courses on CD-ROM or diskettes. It is assumed that all of these courses could potentially be taught using any of the asynchronous platforms. There are presently 700 classroom-based courses offered through BIPD. It is estimated that 10% of these could potentially be offered using the Centra Symposium synchronous platform. Table I summarizes the costs associated with learning platforms. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Hardware. In this study, it is assumed that a server must be purchased to offer the course, but that client computers are already available on the desktops of the employees participating in the course. The purchase price of the server was estimated at $15,000. The total number of courses, as established previously, is 220 (150 asynchronous + 70 synchronous). It is assumed that not all courses would need to run on the server at one time. By amortizing the cost of the, server over the number of courses, the cost of the server per course equals $68 ($15,000 / 220). On average, it is estimated that each asynchronous course requires 100 Megabytes of memory. A synchronous course would typically require less interactivity with the course material because of the presence of a live instructor. Therefore, the course would include less multimedia and require only twenty-five Megabytes of memory per course. During the pilot study, staff time was required to set up desktop machines-for example, the installation of browser plug-ins-to take advantage of the multimedia aspects of the courses. However, this cost was not included in the study since newer versions of the learning platforms will automatically install the software needed for the desktop computers. Total Capital Costs per Course. The capital cost per course is equal to a server cost of $68 ($15,000 / 220) plus the platform costs per course for each different platform: - Synchronous routing course: $752 ($68 + $684 for Symposium) - Asynchronous TCP/IP course using WebCT: $95 ($68 + $27) - Asynchronous TCP/IP course using Mentys: $1,436 ($68 + $1,368) - Asynchronous frame relay course using Pebblesoft: $1,664 ($68 + $1,596) Phase 1: Content Development. Content development variables include: instructional design; multimedia design; the production of text, audio, motion video, graphics, and photos in machine-readable format; course authoring; software development; integration of content and testing; modification/adjustment; training; and course testing. Only one of the courses, TCP/IP, included motion video elements. Developer Salaries. The billed hourly rates for the independent contractors were used in the analyses found throughout this paper. These are the rates that customers of these companies were willing to pay for Web-based course development. Differences in Synchronous and Asynchronous Course Development. Significant differences were found between the asynchronous courses and the synchronous course regarding course development costs. The asynchronous courses were similar in the types of tasks performed by developers and the total amount of time spent on course development. The synchronous course, however, required far less development time, primarily due to less use of multimedia. For example, the synchronous course contained no audio, video, or photographic elements and also had fewer graphics. An average of 1,321 development hours were spent on the asynchronous courses, while only 144 development hours (89% fewer) were required for the synchronous course. Since development costs depend on the number of hours required, the synchronous course cost much less to develop. Cost Analysis: Variable Costs Phase 2: Usability Testing. Phase 2 of the BOLI Pilot Project involved course testing in which Bell Canada employees participated in training using the Web-based courses. This represented the total variable costs for the project. Since Bell Canada must pay employees for the time they spend in training, student salary costs are a significant factor in this costing analysis. More time spent in course delivery translates into higher student salary costs and less cost savings. The salary costs of students and, for the synchronous course, of both students and the instructor, were analyzed to compare the delivery costs per student. Figure 2 gives an overview of the delivery costs for all courses. These costs are described in more detail in the following section. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Table 2 gives a summary of the fixed and variable costs, for each Webbased course in the study as well as the baseline classroom course costs. A detailed analysis discussing how these numbers were derived is found in the following section. Table 2. Fixed and Variable Costs for Web-Based Courses Course Total Fixed Costs Total Variable Costs Classroom $28,600 $1,284 ($600 + $614 + $70) Routing $24,332 ($23,580 + $752) $242($176 +$66) Frame Relay $88,364 ($86,700 + $1,664) $110 TCP/IP on WebCT $158,708 ($158,613 + $95) $110 TCP/IP on Mentys $160,049 ($158,613 + $1,436) $110 Cost Analysis of Courses Classroom Courses. Life-Span and Duration of Courses. The life-span of classroom courses is five years, meaning that no upgrade of course material is expected within a five-year period. The duration of classroom courses is fourteen hours. Although the actual time spent in the classroom is approximately twelve hours, the course participants are paid for two normal seven and a half hour work days. Costs of Classroom Training. Although none of the Web-based courses in this pilot project had been offered previously in the classroom, it was estimated that the courses were equivalent to two-day classroom courses. Therefore, the costs of delivering these courses in a classroom setting can be calculated by using the figures for delivering a typical two-day classroom course at the Bell Institute for Professional Development (BIPD). Course Development Costs. For each day of classroom training BIPD requires twenty days of development (20: 1). BIPD charges two different development rates depending on whether or not BIPD will deliver the courses and have the opportunity to recover some development costs from future delivery. If BIPD delivers the course, there is a charge of $715 per day for course development to the business unit requesting the course. If BIPD does not deliver the course, there is a charge of $995 per day for course development. Therefore, the development of a two-day classroom course similar to the ones in the pilot project would cost the customer a total of $28,600 ($715 * 40 days). Tuition Fees. In-house tuition fees are also charged to the participants' department to recover BIPD's normal operating costs. Classroom courses at BIPD have, on average, ten participants. Each participant is charged $250 for The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 tuition and another $50 per person to cover such costs as the instructor, course materials, and refreshments. This totals $300 per day for each participant. Therefore, for a two-day course similar to those in the pilot, a cost of $600 per participant would be charged by BIPD to the business unit in which the participant works. BOLI did not charge tuition to participants in the pilot. However, tuition charges for Web-based courses are anticipated with the full implementation of Web-based training to Bell employees. The costing information in this study will be taken into account to determine an appropriate price to charge business units in the company. Salary Costs for Course Participants. Twentv Bell Canada engineers were enrolled in the synchronous course, each earning an average annual salary of $57,700. The loaded annual salary including vacation, pensions and benefits, a portion of a supervisor's salary, office space, and office supplies and services is $85,500 per year, or $44 per hour. Each of the three pilot courses was equivalent to a two-day classroom course. Each participant was paid for fourteen hours of work for this period, at an average loaded hourly rate of $44. Therefore, the salary cost of offering classroom courses is $614 per participant. Travel Costs. Approximately 10% of employees taking courses at BIPD travel to a different city to take the course. At a typical travel cost of $350 per day, which includes airfare, one night in a hotel, and travel allowances, a two-day course costs Bell Canada $700 per student who travels. If 10% of the students travel, the travel cost per student is $70. Web-Based Courses. Life Span and Duration of Courses. The lifespan of Web-based courses is also five years. The duration of Web-based courses is two and a half hours for asynchronous courses and four hours for synchronous courses. Cou Corn ression. Compression ratios for Web-based courses are 79% for asynchronous courses and 67% for synchronous courses. Hall (1997) points out that there is strong evidence that CD-ROM-based multimedia training requires less time than classroom training. Reported course compression ratios range from 20-80%, with 40-60% being most common for CD-ROM training. In the Bell Online Institute Pilot, course compression ratios were at the high end of the reported ranges in the Hall study for both synchronous and asynchronous courses. The Web-based asynchronous courses lasted two and a half hours, while comparable classroom versions would have lasted twelve instruction hours. Course compression was, therefore, 79% for both asynchronous courses. The synchronous course lasted four hours, while a comparable course offered in a classroom would have lasted twelve instruction hours. This equaled a compression ratio of 67% for the synchronous course. Salarv Costs for Course Participants. Synchronous Course. For one engineer to complete the four-hour synchronous course, salary costs totaled $176 ($44 * 4). There was also an instructor present during the full four hours of the synchronous course. Theoretically, the Centra Symposium system can accommodate fifty participants at one time. However, this large number of concurrent participants would seriously limit the opportunities for interaction among the students and the instructor. For this study, it was assumed that the synchronous routing course would be taught in groups of ten. To calculate the cost of the instructor's salary per student, an hourly rate of $164 was used-the billed rate reported by the course vendor. This equaled a cost of $66 per student ($164 * 4 hours / 10 students). Asynchronous Courses. The asynchronous courses each had 29 participants who were also Bell Canada engineers. Based on the average loaded rate of pay, the salary cost for one engineer to complete a two and a half hour asynchronous course was $110 ($44 * 2.5). There are also opportunity costs involved in having employees spend time away from their work to take courses. For example, the completion of a project may be delayed due to time spent in training, and that delay may have unforeseen consequences for the organization's business. One advantage of asynchronous Web-based training as opposed to either synchronous or classroom training is that these problems are alleviated due to greater flexibility in scheduling students' time. However, although student salary costs are one measure of opportunity costs, total opportunity costs are almost impossible to determine and, therefore, have not been included here. Web-Based Course Development Costs Asynchronous Courses. Frame Relay Course. The frame relay course was one of two courses delivered on an asynchronous platform. The course vendor had difficulty using Pebblesoft because the initial software was delivered without French character support. This caused an estimated 24% increase in development time. If the project had been completed without the software problem, the time spent on course development would have equaled 932 hours, and development costs at $562.50 per day would have totaled $69,900. Table 3 gives the total cost of each developer task at the billed rates reported by the course vendors and also summarizes the number of hours spent on each task, including the percentage of the total that this represents. TCP/IP Course. Another vendor produced an asynchronous course on the topic of TCP/IP. Two different platforms were used to deliver the course: Global Knowledge Network's Mentys system and Web-CT, developed at the University of British Columbia. A staff member of BIPD also participated in course development by designing the The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 content architecture for the instructional design plan. The TCP/IP course included a five-minute video segment and was the only course that included video. Table 4 gives the total cost for each developer task as well as the number of hours spent on each task and the percentage of the total time spent. Table 3. Frame Relay Course (Asynchronous): Cost and Time per Developer Task Developer Task Cost Percentage of Time Training $1,200 1.4% (16 hrs.) Tests $9,975 11.5% (133 hrs.) Instructional Design $18,525 21.4% (247 hrs.) Multimedia Design $13,125 15.1% (175 hrs.) Text Production $6,225 11.5% (133 hrs.) Audio Production $1,875 2.2% (25 hrs.) Graphics Production $12,300 14.2% (164 hrs.) Photo P reduction $1,575 1.8% (21 hrs.) Authoring/Software Development $6,075 7% (81 hrs.) Content Integration $7,800 9% (104 hrs.) Testing Integration $2,550 2.9% (34 hrs.) Modification/Adjustment Integration $5,475 6.3% (73 hrs.) Total cost at $562.50 per day = $86,700. (All costs are reported in Canadian dollars.) Total of 1, 156 hours. Synchronous Course. Routin Course. The routing course was delivered on the Centra Symposium platform. The pilot course was delivered to twenty Bell Canada engineers from Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Hamilton. The course was offered in two parts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning session lasted two and a half hours and the afternoon session lasted one and a half hours, for a total of four hours. All of the engineers were present for the entire course. Table 4. TCP/IP Course (Asynchronous): Cost and Time per Developer Task Developer Task Cost Percentage of Time Training $7,893 5% (74 hrs.) Video Production $26,667 16.8% (250 hrs.) Instructional Design $36,800 23.2% (345 hrs.) Multimedia Design $9,173 5.8% (86 hrs.) Text Production $747 0. 1% (7 hrs.) Audio Production $4,053 2.6% (38 hrs.) Graphics Production $31,253 19.7% (293 hrs.) Authoring/Software Development $12,907 8.1% (121 hrs.) Content Integration $19,093 12% (179 hrs.) Testing Integration $3,733 2.4% (35 hrs.) Modification/Adjustment Integration $6,293 4% (59 hrs. Total cost at $800 per day = $158,612. (All costs are reported in Canadian dollars.) Total of 1,487 hours. Staff from the Bell Institute for Professional Development assisted the independent course vendor in developing the routing course and co-facilitated the pilot course delivery. Table 5 summarizes the cost, the number of hours, and the percentage of the total time for each developer task. Ratio Analysis Breakeven Number of Students. The breakeven number of students for each course is listed below. • Routing course: 4 students ($28,600 - 24,332) / ($1,284 - 242) The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 • Frame relay course: 51 students ($88,364 - 28,600) / ($1,284 - I 10) • TCP/IP course on WebCT: III students ($158,708 - 28,600) / ($1,284 - 110) • TCP/IP course on Mentys: 112 students ($160,049 - 28,600) / ($1,284 - 110) Table 5. Routing Course (Synchronous): Cost and Time per Developer Task Developer Task Cost Percentage of Time Training $2,620 1 1. 1% (I 6 hrs.) Tests $655 2.8% (4 hrs.) Instructional Design $17,849 75.7% (109 hrs.) Multimedia Production $491 2.1% (3 hrs.) Text Production $1,310 5.6% (8 hrs.) Graphics Production $655 2.8% (4 hrs.) Total cost at $1,228 per day $23,580. (All costs are reported in Canadian dollars.) Total of 144 hours. Return on Investment. Expected Number of Students per year. To calculate return on investment an assumption must be made concerning the number of students that will be trained per year with a course. The number of students trained per year is used to calcul ' ate the fixed costs per student so that these costs can be amortized over all students who will use the course. Otherwise, we would be trying to recover all fixed costs with the first student, which clearly cannot be done and which fails to take into consideration the reusability of both the course itself and the hardware and software used to deliver it. In the present study, it was expected that 30-40% of Bell Canada's 300 Wide Area Network (WAN) engineers would take this course, equaling 125 participants. Another seventy-five participants from other Bell Canada departments are also expected to take each of these courses. Thus, the expected number of students per year was 200 students per course. Platform Costs per Student. • WebCT: $0.14 per student ($27 / 200) • Mentys: $7 per student ($1,368 / 200) • Pebblesoft: $8 per student ($1,596 / 200) • Symposium: $3.50 per student ($684 / 200) Salary Costs per Student for Classroom Training. To calculate the return on investment it is necessary to know the savings per student for Web-based delivery over classroom delivery. Therefore, the delivery cost per student in a classroom must be determined. The cost of offering these three courses in a classroom to 200 participants per course annually would be $122,769 per course or $368,308 for all three courses. Assuming a classroom course would be offered to 200 students per year, the classroom course development costs per student would equal $143 ($28,600 / 200). Table 6 presents an analysis of the savings per student for each course. The return on investment (ROI) for each course in the expected case of 200 students trained per course per year is found in Table 7. Table 6. Savings per Student Classroom Course Costs Course Development $143 Tuition $600 Travel $70 Salary of Students $614 Total $1,427 The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Web-Based Course Costs Frame TCP/IP TCP/IP Relay Routing Course on Course on Course on Course on WebCT Mentys Pebblesoft Symposium Course Development $660 $660 $434 $53 Server ($15,000/3 courses/200) $25 $25 $25 $25 Learning Platform $0.14 $7 $8 $3.50 Salary of Students $110 $110 $110 $176 Salary of Instructor - - - $66 Total $795 $80 $577 $324 Savings per Student Over Classroom Delivery $632 $625 $850 $1,103 Table 7. Course ROls Course ROI Dollars Saved for Every $1 Spent Routing (synchronous) 3283% $33 Frame Relay (asynchronous) 697% $7 TCP/IP (asynchronous using WebCT) 228% $3 TCP/IP (asynchronous using Mentys) 283% $3 The present value Of the cost savings was estimated to be 3.621, an amount that takes into account the five-year life span of the courses and a discount rate that reflects a moderate investment risk. The ROI was positive in all cases, although the courses with the least amount of multimedia content-the synchronous routing course and the asynchronous frame relay course-had the best ROls. The TCP/IP courses had the highest percentage of multimedia content as well as the highest breakeven points. Table 8 summarizes the number of multimedia development hours per course, the corresponding breakeven number of 'students, and the ROI over five years. The results indicate that all courses will breakeven within the first year if 200 students per year take each course. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Table 8. Multimedia Development Hours, Breakeven Points, and Five-Year ROls of Courses Multimedia Breakeven Course Development Number of ROI Over 5 Hours Students Years Routing 144 hours 4 students 3283% Frame Relay 1,156 hours 51 students 697% TCP/IP on WebCT 1,487 hours 111 students 288% TCP/IP on Mentys 1,487 hours 112 students 283% Discussion Comparison of Multimedia Content per Course. There was a significant difference in the amount of multimedia content in the courses and, therefore, in the amount of time spent on multimedia development. The synchronous routing course contained only a few graphics, while the asynchronous courses contained a higher percentage of graphics as well as audio and photographs. The TCP/IP course had the largest percentage of multimedia because it included a five-minute video segment. The percentage of development time spent in multimedia production and design for each course is listed below. * Synchronous routing course: 5% * Asynchronous frame relay course: 33% * Asynchronous TCP/IP courses: 45 % Importance of Each Costing Element. While this is just one case study, there still appears to be evidence that the costing elements chosen for this study are all important. There was some variation in the use of any particular element among the courses, although the variations were small and some elements were consistently used more or less frequently for all of the courses. None of the costing elements could be discounted as unimportant, and none of the costing elements clearly dominated the others in importance. More research needs to be done in the area of costing analysis for Web-based course design and delivery, but practitioners working in the field may still find the conclusions of this study useful for their own cost-benefit projects. Conclusion Web-based training has higher fixed costs than classroom based training; however, these higher course development costs are offset by lower variable costs in course delivery. This is primarily due to the reduction in course delivery time (course compression) and the potential to deliver courses to a larger number of students than is possible in a traditional classroom without incurring significant incremental costs. Realizing savings for Web-based courses requires a sufficient number of students in order to recover course development costs. Since employees must be paid for time they spend taking a course, student salaries are an important consideration in this costing study. While all of the measures of financial performance indicated that there is a strong business case for Web-based training, financial indicators suggest that the amount of multimedia content in a course is the most significant factor in cost. The TCP/IP course, which had the least cost savings and a breakeven of 112 students, contained a five- minute video segment. As a result, the number of hours spent in multimedia production was far higher than for the other courses. The synchronous routing course, which was the most cost-effective course in the pilot, with a breakeven of four students, contained only a few graphics and live audio. The limited amount of multimedia content in the synchronous course offset the higher costs of course delivery resulting from the cost of having a live instructor present during delivery and the greater student salary costs due to the extra time required to deliver the course. In comparing the number of hours spent on multimedia development across all courses, the variations are relatively small. This indicates that all of the elements discussed previously are important to consider when costing Web-based course development. The methodology used in this case study can, therefore, be used in future cost-benefit studies of Web-based training. The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, 1999, pp. 25-43 Note The research for this paper was supported in part by Industry Canada's Network of Centres of Excellence in Telelearning. The authors wish to express their appreciation for the comments of the anonymous reviewers on the first draft of this paper. References American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). 1998. Bibliography: Evaluation. Alexandria, VA: ASTD. Available online at <http:Hwww.astd.org>. American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). 1998. Bibliography: Return-on-investment. Alexandria, VA: ASTD. Available online at <http://www.astd.org>. Aub6, S., M. Chilibeck, and D. Wright. 1996. Cost analysis of video conferencing for distance education at the University of Ottawa. Working Paper, 96-45. Ottawa, Canada: Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa. Bates, A. W. 1995. Technology, open leaming and distance education. London: Routledge. Hall, B. 1997. Web-based training: A cookbook. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Hall B. 1998. The Cost of Custom WBT. Inside Technology Training July-August, 46-47. Higher Education Information Resources Alliance. 1994. What presidents need to know about the payoff on the information technology investment. Background papers for HEIRAlliance, Executive Strategies Report #4. Boulder, CO: CAUSE. Russell, T. 1998. The "No Significant Difference" phenomenon as reported in 248 research reports, summaries, and papers, 4th ed. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University. Trevor-Deutsch, L., and W. Baker. 1997. Cost/benefit review of the interactive learning connection, University Space Network Pilot. Ottawa, Canada: Strathmere Associates International Ltd. Introduction Costing Methodology Table 4. TCP/IP Course (Asynchronous): Cost and Time per Developer Task Table 5. Routing Course (Synchronous): Cost and Time per Developer Task 
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As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_4zfweylwefgmxe5eg7vkzpa5oq	----	Journal of Digital Convergence 569 http://dx.doi.org/10.14400/JDC.2014.12.6.569 원격교원연수 질 제고를 위한 학습관리시스템 기능 분석 연구 김용 한국방송통신대학교 AnAnalysisofLMSFunctionsforImprovingtheQualityof DistanceEducationTraining YongKim Dept.ofe-Learning,GraduateSchool,KoreaNationalOpenUniv. 요 약 원격교육연수원은 2013년 12월 기준으로 63개 연수원이 민간,대학부설,국공립기관의 형태로 운영되고 있다.원격 교육연수원은 학습관리시스템을 통해 연수 관리를 하고 있기 때문에 학습관리시스템은 원격 연수의 질과 관계가 있다.본 논문은 원격연수의 질 제고를 위해 원격교육연수원의 학습관리시스템 기능을 분석하였다.분석 결과 전반적으로 연수자,관 리자,튜터에게 필요한 기능이 70.07%,72.09%,70.41%의 구현율을 보여주었다.연수자 기능에서는 연수지원,관리자 기능에 서는 통계관리,튜터 기능에서는 커뮤니케이션 기능이 가장 낮은 구현율을 보였다.본 논문의 결과를 통해 원격교육연수원 의 효율적인 연수 운영을 위한 학습관리시스템 개선에 도움이 될 것으로 사료된다. 주제어 : 이러닝,학습관리시스템,질관리,원격교육,원격연수 Abstract As of December 2013, 63 distance education training centers has been operating in the form of private, university affiliated and national/public centers. LMS is related to distance training quality as the system because distance education training centers are managing training by using LMS. In this paper, LMS functions of distance education training centers were analyzed to enhance the quality of distance training. In results of the analysis, it is showed 70.07%, 72.09% and 70.41% that implementation ratio of necessary LMS functions for trainee, manager and tutor. Functions of the lowest implementation ratio were “training support” of trainee mode, “statistics management” of manager mode and “communication” of tutor mode. The results of this paper will be helped to improve LMS for effective distance training of distance education training centers. Key Words : e-learning, LMS, quality assurance, distance education, distance training *본 논문은 2013년도 한국방송통신 학교 학술연구비 지원을 받아 작성된 것임 Received31March2014,Revised24April2014 Accepted20June2014 CorrespondingAuthor:YongKim(KNOU) Email:dragonknou@knou.ac.kr Ⓒ TheSocietyofDigitalPolicy& Management.Allrights reserved.Thisisanopen-accessarticledistributedunderthe termsoftheCreativeCommonsAttributionNon-Commercial License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0),which permits unrestricted non-commercialuse,distribution,and reproduction inany medium,providedtheoriginalworkis properlycited.ISSN:1738-1916 1. 서론 이러닝(e-learning)의확산은교원연수에서도 외는 아니어서 이러닝을 활용한 연수인 원격연수가 활용되고 있다.우리나라의원격연수는2000년최 원격교육연수 기 인가를 시작으로 2013년 기 으로 63개 연수원이 원격교원연수 질 제고를 위한 학습관리시스템 기능 분석 연구 570 Journal of Digital Convergence 2014 Jun; 12(6): 569-577 운 에 있으며 연수인원은 약 68만명으로 매년 증가 추세에있어원격교육연수가교원연수에 요한부분을 차지하고 있다[1]. 원격교육연수원은 체 연수과정을 이러닝으로 진행 하는 것을 원칙으로 하고 있으며 시·도교육청에서 운 하는기 외에민간기업, 학,공공기 등이교육부장 의인가를받아 국단 로교원연수를할수있는공 인원격교육연수원을 두고 있다[2]. 원격교육연수원 인가·운 을 해서는 정해진 설립 기 에 따라 운 기반을 구비해야하며 그 기반시설 로 학습 리시스템을 구축해야한다.학습 리시스템은 인터넷기반의학습에서학습자를 리하고콘텐츠를 달하는체제로학습자의역량을향상시키기 해학습의 반 인 활동을 리해주는 시스템이다[3].학습 리시 스템은 학습자에게 필요한 정보를 제공하고 학습과정과 결과에 한 정보를 제공하고 학습자가 원하는 내용의 수업등록과내용 속을편리하게하는역할을한다[4]. 따라서학습 리시스템을통해온라인에서학습이이루 어지기때문에학습효과를높이기 해서는학습 리시 스템의 지원이 충분히 이루어져야한다[5-8]. 원격교육연수원의인가 운 을 한학습 리시스 템기능은연수자, 리자,튜터로구분하여그기능을제 시하고있다[9].연수자의경우강의 련기능,성 조회 등학사 리,시험평가,커뮤니 이션기능등으로이루 져 있으며 리자의 경우 콘텐츠 리 기능,운 자 지원 기능,연수자 리기능등을포함하고있다.튜터의경우 는연수 리기능,평가기능,커뮤니 이션기능등으로 제시되어있다.이러한제시에도불구하고학습 리시스 템과 련된 원격연수원의 서비스 환경과 지원서비스는 연수자의 만족도와 요도 모두 낮게 인식되고 있고 반 인 개선을 제고해야 하는 항목으로 나타나고 있다 [10]. 따라서 원격교육연수원을 이용하는 사용자 상별로 세부 인기능에 한구 여부 활용여부에 한분 석이 필요하다. 한 원격교육연수원의 효율 인 연수 운 을 해서는 학습 리시스템의 세부 인 개선 을 악할 필요가 있다. 이를 해 본 연구에서는 원격교육연수원 운 을 해 구축되어야 할 학습 리시스템 기능을 연수자, 리 자,튜터의 이용 상자별로 분석하 고 원격교육연수원 유형별로도 분석하 다.본 연구에서 제시된 분석 결과 는원격교육운 의질 제고를 해필요한학습 리시 스템개선에가이드라인역할을할수있을것이라고사 료된다. 2. 관련 연구 원격교육에서교육의질 제고를 해학습 리시스 템에 한 연구는 지속 으로 이어지고 있다.학습 리 시스템은 학습자에게 학습 내용 등 필요한 정보를 제공 하고학습과정과결과에 한피드백을제공,데이터 리 등의 요한 역할을 하고 있다[4][11][12].따라서 원 격교육 학습 리시스템을 심으로 학습자에게 학습물 달과 학습자,교수자와의 정보 교류 그리고 학습 련 각종 데이터들이 기록되는 공간이라고 할 수 있다. 학습 리시스템 련연구들을살펴보면다음과같다. 첫째,학습 리시스템이원격교육에미치는 향에 한 연구이다.원격 학을 상으로 한 연구에서는 학습 리시스템의 메뉴들이 학습자의 학습 동기를 유발하는 특성을 갖는다는 요성을 제시하 다[13]. 한 이러닝 시스템 환경과 시스템 품질이 학습자 만족도에 향을 미친다는 연구도 제시되었다[14][15].학습 진에 한 등학교를 상으로 한 연구에서는 학습 리시스템 의상호작용지원이학습자의학습을 진한다고제시하 다[16].이의연구들을볼때학습 리시스템의품질과 상호작용지원등의기능들이원격교육의질 제고와 한 련이 있음을 알 수 있다. 둘째,학습 리시스템의 기능 개선에 한 연구이 다.학습 리시스템에필요한일반 인기능들은학습자 의 학습활동,교수자의 교수지원을 한 기능과 콘텐츠 제공, 리,이메일 등 의견교환 등을 제시하고 있다 [17-20]. 한,정부에서 리감독하고있는원격교육연 수원,사이버 학,학 인정원격평생교육시설등은원격 교육운 을 해필요한학습 리시스템기능을공시하 고 있다[2][21][22]. 이것은 원격교육을 한 효율 인 교수-학습 활동과 교수-학습지원그리고학습이해 계자(학습자,교수자, 리자등)등과의정보교환을 해필요한학습 리시 스템 구축에 한 가이드라인을 제공함으로써 원격교육 An Analysis of LMS Functions for Improving the Quality of Distance Education Training Journal of Digital Convergence 571 <TraineeFunctions> information management Login/out, ID/PW, register, information modification,memberleave,milage administrative support statement,receipt/certificateprint,testID, instructor/tutor introduction, training regulation,remotecontrolsystem,dataroom training functions courseregister,registrationprocesscourse, dropcourses,coursesintraining,completion courses,bookmark,open courses,interest courses,mytrainingroom,trainingnotice, resultinquiry,training data room,task registration & submission, assessment, forum,reflectionnotebook(memopadetc.), terminologydictionary communicati on message(e-mail,SMS,etc.),FAQ,counsel/ inquiry,trainingschedule,trainingepilogue, freeBBS,survey,traineemeeting,notice trainee support selftest,trainee training status,correct answerconfirmation,recommended books, personalscheduling,traininghelper,training tools <ManagerFunctions> member management registerapproval,thenumberof registered trainee,registeredtraineelist,manualcourse registerapproval,courseenrollmentlist Training Course management classmanagement,trainingstatus,courses process status, trainee encouragement, training data room, task management, counselor management,completed trainee management,coursesunit,traininggroup, training term,courses classification per traininggroup,courseregistermanagement, closecourses/ongoingcourses/pastcourses, managermanagement,tutormanagement, opencoursesmanagement,trainingschedule, certificate management,blended learning management,teachingmaterialsforwarding management,teachingmaterialssale statistics management counselstatistics,completionratio,training resultnotice,coursesaccessstatus,courses selectionstatus communicati on management notice, message(e-mail, SMS, etc.), counsel/inquiry,forum,FAQ questionnaire management,survey result, questionnaireitem,tutorcommunity assessment management onlinetest,questionbank,examinationpaper, assessmentmastermanagement, re-grading,taskassessmentresult contents& site management training contents management, training modulemanagement,codemanagement,web site management, homepage & server management,menumanagement <TutorFunctions> training status traineelist,trainingstatusassessmentresult, completedtraineelist,completionratio,open trainingcourselist training support task&testpresent,correction,trainingdata room,forum,coursesinchargelist,course notice,tutormanual,historymanagement communicati on message(e-mail, SMS, etc.) notice, counsel/inquiry,tutorcommunity,survay <Table 1> LMS Functions for Distance Training의 질 제고를 한 것으로 사료된다. 원격 학에서 학습 리시스템 기능에 한 요구 분 석연구에서는교수자들은학생들에게연락이가능한쪽 지 보내기,진도 리기능,토론방,과제 리 기능 등을 요구한 반면,학습자들은 교수자와의 상호작용을 한 커뮤니 이션기능,진도 리기능을요구하 다[23].이 연구에서는 교수자들은 과제 리를 학생들은 상호작용 을 더 강조한 것으로 보인다. 원격교육연수원을 상으로한연구에서는2007년교 원연수의품질제고를 해학습 리시스템 황을분석 하고이를기반으로연수자모드, 리자/운 자모드,튜 터 모드로 구분하여 학습 리시스템 기능을 제안하 다 [24]. 한,원격교육연수원을이용하는연수자에게필요 한 학습 리시스템 기능에 한 연구가 진행되었다[25]. 이상을토 로할때,효율 인원격교육을 해학습 리시스템의 요성과필요한기능에 한연구들은많 이이루어지고있음을알수있으나구체 으로이들기 능들이 구 이 되고 있는지에 한 것을 분석할 필요가 있을 것으로 사료된다.특히 원격교육연수원에 한 학 습 리시스템을연수자, 리자/운 자,튜터로구분하여 이미표 화를논의한바있으나약7년이지난지 원 격교육연수원이 실제로 학습 리시스템의 기능을 구 하고있는지에 한분석을통해연수의질 제고를 해필요한기능등에 한논의가필요한시 이라고하 겠다. 3. 연구 방법 및 절차 3.1 분석 도구 본논문에서는객 인분석을 해학습 리시스템 이용 상자에 따른 기능 명세표를 제시하 다.기능 명 세표는2007년에수행된원격교육연수원솔루션기능분 석연구를기반으로하 고약7여년간의원격교육연수 원운 환경등을감안하여 문가논의를통해연수자, 리자,튜터로구분하여<Table1>과같이학습 리시 스템에 필요한 기능을 제시하 다. 원격교원연수 질 제고를 위한 학습관리시스템 기능 분석 연구 572 Journal of Digital Convergence 2014 Jun; 12(6): 569-577 <Table1>에서제시된모든기능들에 해구 여부 를분석하 으며모든기 에서해당기능이구 되었을 때를 구 율 100%로 정하 다. 3.2 연구 절차 연구의 효율 이고 정확한 진행을 해 본 논문에서 는 다음과 같은 사항을 고려하여 연구를 진행하 다. 첫째,분석도구의객 성과타당성을 하여원격교육 연수원신규 는운 평가에참여한경력이있는 문 가 6인의 검토를 받아 분석도구를 제시하 다. 둘째,학습 리시스템 기능의 정확한 분석을 해 원 격연수운 평가에제출한운 평가보고서와원격교육연 수원사이트에 속하여기능의구 유무를 악하 다. 사이트 속은 원격연수 문가 6인이 연수자, 리자, 튜터 모드별로 각각 속하여 기능을 분석하 고 2회의 의 차를 거쳐 의견 조율이 이루어졌다.분석기간은 2013년 10월 28일부터 11월 15일까지 이루어졌다. 셋째,분석 상 기 은 운 평가보고서와 연수원 사 이트 속이모두가능한곳을선정하 으며총35개기 으로민간기 18곳, 학12곳,국공립기 5곳이었다. 국공립기 의 경우 사례수가 기는 하나 학습 리시스 템 리 방법,운 산 확보 등 세 유형의 원격교육연 수원의 운 형태가 다르다는 을 감안하여 세 유형을 각각 독립 으로 분석하 다. 4. 분석 결과 4.1 학습관리시스템 분석 세 유형의 원격교육연수원의 학습 리시스템을 분석 한결과민간원격교육연수원이74.18%로높은 구 율을 보 으며 학부설원격교육연수원(69.65%),국공립원격 교육연수원(68.74%)순이었다. 민간원격교육연수원의경우 리자기능(76.09%)이가 장 높은 구 율을 보 으며 연수자기능,튜터기능 순이 었다. 학부설원격교육연수원은 리자기능(71.69%), 튜터기능,연수자기능 순이었고 국공립원격교육연수원 은연수자기능(69.53%), 리자기능,튜터기능 순이었다. [Fig. 1] Implementation Ratio of LMS 세유형의원격교육연수원 상자별기능구 은 리 자기능(72.09%)이 가장 높은 구 율을 보 고 튜터기능 (70.41%),연수자기능(70.07%)이었다.분석 결과로 볼 때 연수활동을통해연수내용을습득해야하는연수자와이 를지원해야하는튜터의기능구 율이낮아연수의질 제고를 해서는이에 한개선이필요한것으로나타났 다. 상자별 세부 기능 분석 결과는 다음과 같다. 4.1 연수자 기능 분석 연수자 기능은 정보 리,행정지원,연수기능,커뮤니 이션,연수지원으로 구분하여 분석하 다.평균 기능 구 율은 정보 리는 82.56%,행정지원 70.55%,연수기 능 75.31%,커뮤니 이션 87.93%,연수자지원 45.53%로 분석되었다. 학부설원격교육연수원은 정보 리,행정 지원,연수기능,연수지원에서 평균이하의기능구 율 을 보 고 커뮤니 이션의 경우 민간원격교육연수원과 학부설원격교육연수원이 평균 이하의 구 율을 나타 내었다.특히 연수지원 역은 구 율이 가장 낮은 것으 로 나타났다. [Fig. 2] Implementation Ratio of Trainee Functions An Analysis of LMS Functions for Improving the Quality of Distance Education Training Journal of Digital Convergence 573 역별세부기능별로분석내용을살펴보면정보 리 에서는 민간원격교육연수원이85.19%로가장높은구 율을 나타내었으며,국공립원격교육연수원, 학부설원 격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 세 유형의 기 모두수강실 에따른포인트제도등의마일리지기 능이 체로구 율이낮아연수수강동기부여등을 한 기능이 보완되어야할 것으로 보인다. 행정지원에서는 국공립원격교육연수원이 77.14%로 가장 높은 구 율을 나타내었으며 민간원격교육연수원, 학부설원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민 간원격연수기 의 경우 수험표발 받기(55.56%),강사/ 튜터 정보(61.66%),일반자료실(61.66%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의 경우는 수험 표발 받기(25.00%),결제내역(50.55%),원격시스템지원 (58.33%),강사튜터정보(66.67%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다.국공립원격교육연수원의 경우 수험표발 받기 (20%)만 낮은 구 율을 보 다.수험표발 은 오 라인 평가가 이루어질 때 발생하는 것으로 60시간 이상의 원 격연수가이루어졌을때해당한다.따라서수험표발 받 기 기능이 구 되지 않은 연수원은 부분 60시간 이하 의원격연수가진행되기때문이라고 단되어진다. 학 부설원격교육연수원의 경우는 결제내역,원격시스템지 원구 율이낮아이에 한보완이필요한것으로나타 났다. 연수기능에서는 국공립원격교육연수원이 80.4%로 가 장높은구 율을나타내었으며민간원격교육연수원, 학부설원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민간 원격연수기 의 경우 나의 북마크(16.67%), 심강좌 (22.22%),수강취소(66.67%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의 경우 심강좌(16.67%), 용어 사 (25%), 성찰노트(33.33%), 나의 북마크 (33.33%),수강취소(33.33%)순이었다.국공립원격교육 연수원의 경우 나의 북마크(20.00%), 심강좌(20.00%), 성찰노트(40.00%),용어사 (40.00%)순이었다.세 유형 의 원격교육연수원 모두 성찰노트,나의 북마크, 심강 좌,용어사 와 같은 연수자 맞춤형 기능이 취약한 것으 로 나타나 이에 한 개선이 필요한 것으로 나타났다. 커뮤니 이션에서는국공립원격교육연수원이96%로 가장 높은 구 율을 나타내었으며 학부설원격교육연 수원,민간원격교육연수원순이었다.하 기능에서는민 간원격연수기 의 경우 연수모임(22.22%), 메시지 (55.56%)순으로낮은구 율을보 다. 학부설원격교 육연수원의 경우 연수모임(25.00%)이 낮은 구 율을 보 으며 국공립원격교육연수원의 경우는 모든 하 기능 의구 율이80%이상을나타내어양호한것으로분석되 었다.하 기능 연수자들끼리의 커뮤니 이션 기능 인 연수 모임이 세 유형의 원격교육연수원에서 가장 구 율이낮아정보교환이이루어질수있는충분한기능 개선이 필요한 것으로 나타났다. 연수지원에서는 민간원격교육연수원이 51.59%로 가 장높은구 율을나타내었으며민간원격교육연수원, 학부설원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민간 원격연수기 의경우자가진단평가(16.67%),개인일정 리(22.22%),추천도서(22.22%),수업교구(33.33%)순이었 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의경우수업교구(0%),자가 진단평가(8,33%),추천도서(25.00%),출석고사정답확인 (33.33%)순이었다.국공립원격교육연수원의 경우 수업 교구(0%),자가진단평가(20.00%),추천도서(20.00%),출 석고사정답확인(40.00%),개인일정 리(40.00%)순이었 다.세 유형의 원격교육연수원 모두 자가진단평가,수업 교구,추천도서,개인일정 리에서낮은구 율을나타내 었다.특히수업교구기능이낮은것은이러닝 심의연 수에서 별도의 교재 등을 활용하지 않고 콘텐츠로만 연 수가이루어지고있는것으로볼수있어다양한연수방 법에 한 논의가 필요해 보인다. 한 자기주도 학습 이가능하도록지원할수있는기능인자가진단평가,개 인일정 리 기능에 한 구 율이 낮은 것은 앞으로 개 선되어야할 사항으로 단된다. 4.2 관리자 기능 분석 리자 기능은 회원 리,연수과정 리,통계 리,커 뮤니 이션 리,평가 리,콘텐츠 사이트 리로 구분 하여분석하 다.평균기능구 율은회원 리84.67,연 수과정 리69.49%,통계 리51.52%,커뮤니 이션 리 73.83%,평가 리 73.67%,콘텐츠 사이트 리 64.47% 로분석되었다.민간원격교육연수원은모든 역에서평 균 이상의 구 율을 보 으나 학부설원격교육연수원 은평가 리,콘텐츠 사이트 리에서평균이하의기능 구 율을 보 고 국공립원격교육연수원의 경우 모든 역에서 평균보다 낮은 것으로 분석되어 리자 기능에 원격교원연수 질 제고를 위한 학습관리시스템 기능 분석 연구 574 Journal of Digital Convergence 2014 Jun; 12(6): 569-577 한 개선이 시 한 것으로 분석되었다. [Fig. 3] Implementation Ratio of Manager Functions 역별세부기능별로분석내용을살펴보면회원 리 리는 반 으로모두구 되었다고볼수있다.다만국 공립원격교육연수원인 경우 구 율이 낮아보이나 연수 자의 개인 신청보다는 시도교육청 의뢰에 따른 일 등 록이 많기 때문인 것으로 보인다. 연수과정 리에서는민간원격교육연수원이80.05%로 가장 높은 구 율을 나타내었으며 학부설원격교육연 수원,국공립원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민간원격연수기 의경우교육그룹과정분류(27.78%),클 래스 리(33.33%),상담자 리(44.44%)순으로낮은구 율을 보 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의 경우는 교육그 룹과정분류(8.33%), 교재 매(16.67%), 교육그룹 (33.33%),상담자 리(41.67%),혼합교육(B/L)기수 리 (41.67%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다.국공립원격교육 연수원의 경우 교재발송 리(0%),교재 매(20%),상담 자 리(40.00%),교육그룹과정분류(40.00%),연수일정 (40.00%)순이었다.세유형의연격연수원공통으로교육 그룹에 한기능이낮은것으로나타나교육그룹에 한세부 리가필요할것으로보이며연수교재보 과 련한 기능이 보완되어야할 것으로 단된다. 한 상 담자 리 기능을 활성화시켜 상담을 통한 효율 인 연 수가 이루어질 수 있도록 보완해야할 것으로 보인다. 통계 리에서는 세 유형의 연수원 모두 구 율이 낮 은것으로나타났다.하 기능에서는민간원격연수기 의 경우 상담통계(33.33%),교과목 속 황(50.00%),교 육과정선택 황(55.56%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 나타내었 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의 경우 상담통계(41.67%), 교육과정선택 황(41.67%),교과목 속 황(50.00%),수 료율(50.00%)순이었다.국공립원격교육연수원의 경우 교육과정선택 황(20.00%),수료율(40.00%),결과통보 (40.00%)순이었다. 학부설과국공립의경우연수수료 율과같은기본 인통계 리가되어있지않아이에 한 개선이 시 한 것으로 나타났다. 커뮤니 이션 리에서는 학부설원격교육연수원이 81.48%로가장높은구 율나타내었으며,민간원격교육 연수원,국공립원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서 는 민간원격연수기 의 경우 튜터커뮤니티(27.79%),토 론(55.56%)순으로낮은구 율을보 다. 학부설원격 교육연수원의 경우 튜터커뮤니티(16.67%),FAQ(66. 67%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 으며 국공립원격교육연 수원의경우는튜터커뮤니티,공지사항,상담/질문,FAQ 가 60%이하의 낮은 구 율을 보 다.세 유형의 원격교 육연수원모두튜터들의의견교환을 한기능이필요한 것으로 나타났으며 학 국공립원격교육연수원은 FAQ등을 보완해야할 것으로 분석되었다. 평가 리에서는 민간원격교육연수원이 79.63%로 가 장 높은 구 율을 나타내었으며,국공립원격교육연수원, 학부설원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민 간원격교육연수원의경우평가마스터 리와평가재채 이61.11%로낮은구 율을보 다. 학부설원격교육연 수원의 경우 평가재채 (33.33%), 평가마스터 리 (58.33%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 으며 국공립원격교 육연수원의 경우 평가재채 (40.00%)이 낮은 구 율을 보 다.평가 리기능의 경우 평가마스터 리,평가재채 기능에 한 보완이 필요한 것으로 나타났다. 콘텐츠 사이트 리에서는 민간원격교육연수원이 67.46%로가장높은구 율을나타내었으며 학부설원 격교육연수원,국공립원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기 능에서는 민간원격연수기 의 경우 연수모듈 리 (33.33%),서버 리(55.56%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의 경우 연수모듈 리 (50.00%),연수콘텐츠 리 서버 리(58.33)등메뉴 리 를 제외한 모든 기능에서 낮은 구 율을 보 으며 국공 립원격교육연수원의경우는서버 리(20.00%),연수모듈 An Analysis of LMS Functions for Improving the Quality of Distance Education Training Journal of Digital Convergence 575 리(40.00%),홈페이지 리(60.00%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다.세 유형의 원격교육연수원 모두 연수모듈 리,서버 리에서 낮은 구 을 보이고 있어 운 되고 있는 연수 과정에 한 체계 인 리가 필요한 것으로 나타났다.서버 리의경우는 부분IDC에 탁운 하 고있어낮게나타난것으로보이나 탁운 이라도연 수기 에서서버 리를할수있는기능은학습 리시스 템에 구 될 수 있도록 유도할 필요가 있다고 단된다. 4.3 튜터 기능 분석 튜터 기능은 연수 황,연수지원,커뮤니 이션으로 구분하여 분석하 다.평균 기능 구 율은 연수 황 75.28,연수지원 70.28%,커뮤니 이션 69.33%로 분석되 었다.민간원격교육연수원은 커뮤니 이션, 학부설원 격교육연수원은 연수 황,연수지원,국공립원격교육연 수원의 경우 연수지원,커뮤니 이션에서 평균 이하의 기능구 율을보여이에 한보완이필요한것으로나 타났다. [Fig. 4] Implementation Ratio of Tutor Functions 역별세부기능별로분석내용을살펴보면연수 황 에서는 국공립원격교육연수원이80.00%로가장높은 구 율을 나타내었으며 민간원격교육연수원, 학부설원 격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민간원격연수 기 의 경우 수료율(55.56%),수료자조회(66.67%)순으 로낮은구 율을보 다. 학부설원격교육연수원의경 우 수료율(8.33%),수료자조회(58.33%),개설내역조회 (66.67%)순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 으며 국공립원격교 육연수원의 경우 수료율 개설내역조회(40.00%)가 낮 은 구 율을 보 다.세 유형의 원격교육연수원 모두 튜 터가 연수 수료 황을 악하는데 필요한 기능 구 이 부족한 것으로 나타나 이에 한 개선이 필요한 것으로 보인다. 한 학,국공립원격교육연수원의경우튜터의 효율 인연수과정운 을 해개설된연수과정을조회 할 수 있는 기능이 개선되어야할 것으로 보인다. 연수지원에서는 민간원격교육연수원이 67.68%로 가 장 높은 구 율을 나타내었으며 국공립원격교육연수원, 학부설원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민 간원격교육연수원의 경우 튜터매뉴얼(25.00%),토론 (50.00%),이력 리(61.11%),나의담당과정과 학습안내 (66.67%)순으로낮은구 율을보 다. 학부설원격교 육연수원의 경우 튜터매뉴얼(25.00%),이력 리(58.33 %),연수안내와첨삭지도(66.67%)순으로낮은구 율을 보 으며 국공립원격교육연수원의 경우 연수안내(40.00 %),과제 평가출제,튜터매뉴얼,이력 리 모두 60.00 %순이었다.세유형원격교육연수원모두연수안내,튜 터 매뉴얼,이력 리 등 튜터의 연수지원 활동을 한 기능이 부족한 것으로 나타났다. 학부설원격교육연수 원의경우첨삭지도기능이구 이되지않아평가에 한 피드백 기능의 개선이 필요한 것으로 보이며 국공립 원격교육연수원의 경우 과제 평가 출제 기능이 다른 기능 비낮은구 율을보여개선이시 한것으로나 타났다. 커뮤니 이션에서는 학부설원격교육연수원이73.33 %로높은구 율을보 으며국공립원격교육연수원,민 간원격교육연수원 순이었다.하 기능에서는 민간원격 교육연수원의경우튜터커뮤니티(27.78%),설문(38.89%) 순으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다. 학부설원격교육연수원 의경우튜터커뮤니티(8.33%)만낮은구 율을보 으며 국공립원격교육연수원의경우튜터커뮤니티(20.00%),공 지사항(40.00%)으로 낮은 구 율을 보 다.커뮤니 이 션의 경우 세 유형 모두 리자 기능에서와 마찬가지로 튜터들간의정보교환을할수있는기능이부족한것으 로 나타나 이에 한 개선이 필요한 것으로 분석되었다. 5. 결론 및 제언 원격교육연수원은온라인을통한다양한연수내용제 공과연수자의편의성을제공한다는 에서장 을가지 원격교원연수 질 제고를 위한 학습관리시스템 기능 분석 연구 576 Journal of Digital Convergence 2014 Jun; 12(6): 569-577 고 있다고 단된다.연수의 질 제고를 해서는 연수 운 에기반이되는효율 인학습 리시스템구축이필 수 이라고 하겠다. 본 논문에서는 재 운 인 원격교육연수원을 상으로 민간원격교육연수원, 학부설원격교육연수원, 국공립원격교육연수원으로 구분하여 학습 리시스템을 분석하 다.분석결과 반 으로 연수자, 리자,튜터 기능은 70.07%,72.09%,70.41%의 구 율을 보여주었다. 세부기능별로살펴보면연수자기능에서는연수자의연 수 효율을 높이는데 필요한 연수지원이 가장 낮은 구 율을보이고있어이에 한개선이필요한것으로나타 났다. 리자기능에서는 리자에게 필요한 통계 리가 가장 낮은 구 율을 보 다.이에 한 개선을 해서는 원격연수에 련된통계 리에 한기본 인표 항목 을 정하고 리하도록 할 필요가 있다. 튜터기능에서는 튜터들 간의 정보공유 등을 한 커 뮤니 이션 기능들이 보강되어야할 것으로 분석되었다. 향후 원격교육연수원의 학습 리시스템 기능 강화를 해서는 다음과 같은 사항을 고려해야한다. 첫째,기능구 표 제시가필요하다. 재는원격교 육연수원에필요한 요기능에 한제시만있을뿐학 습 리시스템에 기능을 구 할 경우 어떻게 해야하는지 에 한 가이드라인이 없다.따라서 기능이 있다고 하더 라도 사용자에게 불편하게 구 이 되거나 제 기능을 하 지못하는경우가있으므로이에 한기능구 가이드 라인이 필요하다. 둘째,온라인 연수 활동 정보 교류를 한 다양한 상호작용 기능이 지속 으로 개선되어야한다.연수자와 튜터,연수자와 연수자 등 다양한 상호작용은 효율 인 원격교육 해 필요한 요소이다[26].그럼에도 불구하고 아직까지는 학습 리시스템에서 연수자 간,튜터 간 등 정보 공유를 한 기능이 부족한 것으로 나타났다.따라 서 이에 한 보완책 제시가 필요하다. 셋째,학습 리시스템에 한 지속 인 모니터링 컨설 이다.원격교육연수원은 최 인가 당시 필요한 학습 리시스템 기능을 갖추면 운 이 가능하다.이후 운 평가에서는 ‘합/보완/부 합’으로만 평가되기 때 문에 세부 기능에 한 평가가 어려운 실정이다.따라서 문 컨설턴트를 통해 학습 리시스템에서 필요한 기능 과 구 방법 등에 한 컨설 을 제공할 필요가 있다. 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[20]Tom,W.,“Usinglearningmanagementsystemsto teachpaperlesscourses:bestpracticesforcreating accreditationreview recordarchives”,J.Comput. SmallColl.20(1):pp.19-25,2004. [21] MEST, A guide of Cyber University Establishment,MinistryofEducationandScience Technology,2013. [22]MOE․NILE,2013TheEvaluationGuidefor Academic CreditBank System,PM 2013-20, NationalInstituteforLifelongEducation,2013. [23]KyungASon,YoungheeWoo,“thedevelopment strategyofLMStoimproveteachingandlearning activitiesinDistanceEducationofKorea”,Journal ofLifelongLearningSociety,Vol6,No2,pp.127-149, 2010. [24]YongKim etal.,AnanalysisofSolution(LMS) functionsinDistanceEducationTrainingInstitutes, RR 2007-3, Korea Education & Research InformationService,2007. [25]JaMeeKimetal.,“AStudyforImprovementof Learning Management System in Distance Education & Training Institutes”,Journalof academia-industrial technology, Vol.11 No4, pp.1411-1418,2010. [26]Moore,M.&Kearsley,G.,DistanceEducation:A systems view,CA:Wards worth Publishing Company,1996. 김 용(Kim, Yong) ․1995년 2월 :한국교원 학교 등 교육과(교육학사) ․1997년 2월 :한국교원 학교 컴퓨 터교육학과(교육학석사) ․2008년 8월 :고려 학교 컴퓨터교 육학과(이학박사) ․2010년9월～ 재:한국방송통신 학교 학원 이러닝학과 조교수 ․ 심분야 :이러닝,디지털 콘텐츠,컴퓨터교육 ․E-Mail:dragonknoue@knou.ac.kr 
work_4zuei3bzuvhwfmasyrflpbl5be	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_4zxxpw7l7fer5bb444cn4t2fnq	----	Former UW-Extension Skip to main content What is the UW System All In Wisconsin Campuses Offices Information for News Search Browse all sites Search for: Search Submit Cancel Search Former UW-Extension University of Wisconsin System Former UW-Extension Former UW-Extension UW-Extension has been restructured into UW-Madison and UW System Administration Divisions moved to UW-Madison Cooperative Extension is now known as UW-Madison Division of Extension. If you have questions related to agriculture, food preservation, gardening, 4H Youth Clubs and other topics, you can find that information on the Division of Extension website and at your local County Extension office.  If you need to reach the Dean’s office, call 608-263-5110. Broadcasting and Media Innovations is now in Division of Extension and Public Media. The Conference Centers are now managed by UW-Madison. You can reach the Pyle Center at (608) 262-1122 or contact the Lowell Center at (608) 256-2621. Divisions moved to UW System Administration Continuing Education, Outreach & E-Learning (CEOEL) is now known as UW Extended Campus. Find information for online courses and degrees, Independent Learning, and the UW Flex Option or call (877) 895-3276. If you are an Independent Learning student and in need of transcripts, find transcript information or call (877) 895-3276 and press 1. For all other inquiries for this unit, call (608) 262-1034. Business and Entrepreneurship including the Small Business Development Centers and the Food Finance Institute, are now known as the Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship. For more information UW Colleges and UW-Extension Restructuring Project University Of Wisconsin System What is the UW System All In Wisconsin Campuses Board of Regents Office of the President Offices News Contact the UW System © 2021 Board of Regents - University of Wisconsin System. All Rights Reserved All Sites | Accessibility Policy | Privacy Policy | Contact Webmaster 
work_523t7o6fdraptaw6doqnqrsljq	----	Experiences with a Synchronous Virtual Classroom in Distance Education Herman Koppelman Open University of the Netherlands PO Box 2960 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands +31534322894 University of Twente Enschede, The Netherlands H.Koppelman@utwente.nl Harald Vranken Open University of the Netherlands PO Box 2960 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands +31455762373 Harald.Vranken@ou.nl ABSTRACT Modern technology offers the tools for having synchronous virtual classes. This paper reports about experiences of such a class in the context of distance education. The paper focuses on the tool as well as on the pedagogy. It outlines the pedagogical approach of the virtual class, which is an adaptation of good practices of face-to-face classes. The results of an experiment are discussed. Strong and weak aspects of synchronous virtual classes are identified. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 [Computers in Education]: Computer and Information Science Education – computer science education, information systems education. K.3.1 [Computers in Education]: Computer Uses in Education – collaborative learning, distance learning. General Terms Design, Human Factors. Keywords Distance education, virtual classroom, pedagogy, educational technology, active learning. 1. INTRODUCTION The Open University of the Netherlands offers distance education. Although the courses are designed for self-study, many students need some support. Therefore, optional face-to-face classes are offered for several courses, in a small number of cities scattered over the country. For many years the number of students attending those classes has been small. On the one hand this low attendance number is a positive sign, since the course materials for self-study are rated highly by students and cause little need for students to participate in classes. On the other hand, some students do not attend due to restrictions on travel distance or time schedule. Also, we observe that students who attend the classes usually perform better. Although higher attendance numbers would improve the performance of students, the current low attendance numbers cause a strong urge to economize on those classes. We wonder whether virtual classes can solve these issues. For economic reasons, we may need to replace multiple small classes in different cities by a single virtual class. More students may be able to attend since there will be no need to travel. Furthermore, the virtual classes may be recorded and students – also those who did not attend the classes - may replay the recordings later. In this paper we report on our first experiences with a virtual class. Our main questions are: How should we organize the virtual classroom? Is there an adequate pedagogical approach? Which tool or which features of a tool should we use? Are virtual classes effective in student participation and achievement? It can be expected that at least for part of the students in the near future the choice will not be between virtual classes and face-to-face classes, but between virtual classes and no class at all. Therefore our main question is not whether virtual classes can be as effective as face-to-face classes. The main question is whether they can be effective at all. For the organization of the virtual classroom two things are essential: • to have a suitable pedagogical approach • to have a tool that supports that approach. Many authors stress the importance of the pedagogical approach in a virtual context. In an overview study [1] on the effectiveness of distance education it is concluded: “Characteristics of pedagogy tended to take precedence over media. Does this mean that media are not important? No, it cannot mean that, because media are a requirement for DE (distance education) to exist in the first place. It does mean, however, that instructional practices, independent of the medium, are critical to all forms of educational practice, including and perhaps especially DE. This seems almost too axiomatic to state, and yet in the DE literature there is an exaggerated emphasis on the medium du jour.”; and: “A medium should be selected in the service of instructional practice, not the other way around.” [1] Our paper presents a pilot study with a virtual class we conducted in the computer science department of our university. In the pilot we Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ITiCSE’08, June 30–July 2, 2008, Madrid, Spain. Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-115-6/08/06…$5.00. 194 focused on the tool as well as on the pedagogy. We based the pedagogical approach in the virtual classroom upon our experiences with face-to-face classes that we have been giving for many years. By and large the students and the instructors are positive about this pedagogical approach. Therefore we consider them as ‘good practices’. We transferred those good practices to the virtual classroom, taking care for the need of adjusted implementation. Communication in the virtual classroom can take place in two ways: synchronously and asynchronously. In this pilot we focus on synchronous communication. The main reason is that communication in a face-to-face class is mainly synchronously. Therefore it is comparatively easy to translate good practices to synchronous classes. In the next sections we will discuss the course, the pedagogical approach and references to prior work, the tool we used and our experiences. 2. THE COURSE The pilot with the virtual class was conducted in the course Introduction to Computer Science. This course is the first course of the bachelor curriculum in Computer Science and it gives a broad introduction to several subjects, as object-orientation, UML, Java- programming, relational databases, binary numbers, operating systems, computer networks, and so on. Many students enroll for this course to get acquainted with computer science and to explore whether to embark on a full curriculum in computer science or not. In fact, this is one of the main objectives of this course. For that reason, many students never participate in the examination. In our distance education university, students are free to study courses whenever they like, but we advice and promote the use of a schedule. This schedule resembles schedules in face-to-face education: a year has 4 blocks of 10 weeks and in every block a number of courses are ‘offered’. Most students study according to this given schedule. When Introduction to Computer Science is offered, enrolled students can join face-to-face classes in a number of places all over the country. Attending those classes is optional and students are not marked. In many cases the number of students joining these classes is below 10. 3. PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH We have been teaching face-to-face classes for the course Introduction to Computer Science for several years. At the heart of the pedagogical approach are activities performed by students. During the sessions students are not passively listening to lectures, but the instructors invite the students to get involved in activities. This approach is in agreement with the well known ideas of active learning. Silberman [8] characterizes active learning as follows: “To learn something well, it helps to hear it, see it, ask questions about it, and discuss it with others. Above all, students need to ‘do it’— figure things out by themselves, come up with examples, try out skills, and do assignments that depend on the knowledge they already have or must acquire.” Several reports have been published about the application of those ideas to computer science education. For example [3, 6, 7] discuss several possible activities in the CS classroom. In our face-to-face classes the activities of the students are focused upon solving problems. In every session we offer problems that are typical for the scheduled subjects. The students discuss these problems in interaction with each other and with the instructor. In the virtual classes we adopted the same approach. In every session some relevant problems are offered, related to the new topics. The problems are offered just in time, they are typical for the scheduled subjects and can be solved with the knowledge as offered in the course material. The problems are tuned to provoke discussion, e.g. problems are formulated such that they can be solved or interpreted in different ways. A key question is: how can we offer the students in the virtual class an environment that invites them and supports them to be active? An essential condition of this environment is that it should facilitate interaction. The importance of interaction for educational activities, especially in an online context, is stressed in [9]. During the sessions we strive for as much interaction as possible, interaction between the students and the instructor, but also interaction among the students themselves. In a face-to-face class interaction happens in several natural ways. In the virtual class this interaction has to be designed carefully. We used a number of features of the tool (to be discussed in more detail in the next section) to do so. First we used electronic hand raising. The functionality is the same as the physical hand raising. Students can raise hands individually and on their own initiative, indicating that they want to say or ask something. They can also raise hands in reaction to a question of the instructor, indicating that they want to give an answer. All participants can see on their screen which students raise hands electronically. We also used the feedback feature of the tool for eliciting interaction. The instructor can use this feature to get feedback from all members of the group at the same time. For example, the instructor can ask whether a statement about a topic is true, whether a given answer of one of the students is correct, and so on. All students can give feedback by polling yes or no. Everybody sees the distribution of the yes/no polls. After the poll the instructor can ask a student to give an explanation to his or her vote. In the same way a multiple choice question with 3 or 4 options can be posed and the answers can be discussed. The instructor can use feedback also to ask about the progress of the learning process, for example whether any questions are left with respect to a subject. During each session a number of topics are covered. The instructor gives a brief introduction on each topic by presenting some slides. Next a number of problems are discussed. This can be done in several ways, according to the type of problem. We give a typical example of how this happens. The instructor asks the students to raise their hands if they want to give a solution to a problem. He gives the turn to one of them. This student gives a solution, for example by typing and/or drawing it on the shared whiteboard. Then the instructor asks the students if they think the answer is correct by giving them the opportunity to poll right or wrong. Everybody can see the result of the polling. The instructor selects one of the students to explain why he/she thinks the answer is right or wrong. For example, if the original answer was wrong, the turn is given to somebody who thought so. Using the microphone, this student may state his of her motivation. Next other students can be asked to give their view. In this way several students can contribute to the discussion. Of course, on any time students can raise hands on their own initiative if they have a question or want to say something. We stimulate the students to be active prior to the class meeting, as well. Therefore we send the problems to them in advance, urging 195 the students to prepare themselves. The instructors expect the students at least to have read the problems prior to the class. In this way the students come to the class with some common experiences they can discuss. During the class no time is spent on reading and understanding the problems, therefore the available time can be used efficiently. A relevant issue is the frequency of the sessions. In the face-to-face classes we limit the frequency to one session in two weeks, because of the traveling effort of the students as well as the instructors. Therefore there are five sessions of about 2.5 hours. In virtual classes there is no need for this limitation. A class meeting is considered to be an incentive to prepare the topics. A higher frequency of meetings gives more structure to the students and will help them to study regularly. Therefore we offered weekly meetings of about 1.5 hours during 9 weeks. The first session is an introductory session. All participants introduce themselves and the instructor explains the way of working in the virtual classroom and the use of the tool, like how to electronically raise your hand and how to poll. The sessions are recorded and are available for the students after the sessions. The recordings and problems are stored and can be accessed and played back by all students who are registered for the course, including students who did not attend the class. 4. THE TOOL We needed a tool that could support our pedagogical approach. Therefore this tool should first of all: • stimulate students to participate actively and synchronically in the sessions • facilitate different kinds of synchronic interaction between the participants • be easy to use; technology should be no obstacle for participating in the virtual class. Based on a successful pilot in another department of our university we decided to use LearnLinc, a product of iLinc Inc [4]. LearnLinc offers a lot of functionality for synchronous virtual classes. We used only part of its features. Most important for our pilot were: • two-way audio conferencing, by way of Voice over IP (VoIP). In the LearnLinc classroom the instructor has control and can give one student access to audio conferencing. That student will then be heard by the class and a picture of that student is shown on the screen • shared whiteboard; the whiteboard is a shared workspace to which instructors and students can easily add content, like notes and simple graphics • feedback from students; instructors can poll students about any subject, and students can give feedback • electronic hand raising • delivery of presentations; LearnLinc has a viewer for PowerPoint slides • chat • record and playback; virtual classes can be recorded and replayed at a later date. We asked the students to use chat only for procedural and technical issues, for example to report issues as failing audio or not being able to view the PowerPoint slides. In section 3 we outlined how we used the other features within our pedagogical approach. Prior to the introductory session a short individual session with each student was held, allowing us to check whether the technology worked properly, especially the audio. LearnLinc offers video conferencing but we decided not to use it., because we expected technical problems. Students often participate from home and many of them lack a fast internet connection and/or a well equipped pc with a webcam. Instructors received a one day training with the tool. 5. EXPERIENCES 5.1 Student participation and interaction During the spring of 2007 we offered a block with virtual classes as well as face-to-face classes. We decided to limit the number of students of the virtual class to 15. We enrolled among the students that were registered for the course. Three students of the original 15 resigned during the course: two could not keep up with the pace and one gave up for medical reasons. During each session a few of the remaining students were absent for personal reasons. During the final session 10 students participated and two apologized for not being able to join. The students participated actively from the start. Usually they prepared the sessions reasonably well by working on the exercises. Of our initial group of 15 students starting in spring 2007, 9 passed and 1 failed the examination while the remaining 5 did not sit for an exam by the end of 2007. It follows that 67% of the students (10 out of 15) signed in for the examination and that 90% of the students (9 out of 10) that signed in for the examination, passed. 5.2 Student’s view We held two evaluations among the students, a formative evaluation about halfway through the course and a summative evaluation at the end. In general students are positive about the virtual classes. Most important findings are: • Main reasons to choose virtual classes (instead of face-to-face classes) are interest in the use of IT-tools (64%) and avoiding travel time (43%). • Students report better understanding of subject matter and providing structure to study regularly as the main benefits of attending virtual classes. This finding is in agreement with the findings of a similar pilot, as reported in [5]. • Students think it is important that exercises to be discussed in a class are sent to them in advance. They prepared those exercises reasonably well. At the end of the sessions a growing number of students had problems to keep up with the pace. • About half of the students replayed recorded sessions at a later date; many of them replayed several classes. • Also many students (260) who did not attend any of the classes, downloaded some of the recorded sessions or the accompanying exercises. • Students like short, frequent classes; they had no problems to maintain attention during the class. • Students had no problems worth mentioning using LearnLinc; LearnLinc is considered user friendly; including the log in procedure, participating in the sessions and replaying them. • The quality of the audio is evaluated as reasonably well, though some students don’t like the delay in the audio. 196 • The LearnLinc features that supported interaction (feedback with polling, hand raising and giving students a turn) are evaluated very well. • Many students said they missed video and proposed to use video in future classes. • Some students missed the opportunity for nonverbal communication and for social communication (jokes, getting to know each other better, expressing emotions). 5.3 Pedagogical approach and instructor’s views Students actively prepared the sessions by trying to solve the problems we sent them in advance. At the end of the cycle some students had problems to keep up with the pace and to prepare the sessions. During sessions all students participated in the discussions. The instructors continually tried to keep the students active, by asking questions that could be answered by electronic hand raising or by polling. When the instructor asked for ‘volunteers’ to answer a question, usually many hands were raised. Especially the feedback facility proved to be an effective and natural way to keep interaction going and to elicit a reaction from the group as well as to keep the students alert. When the instructor gave an opportunity for feedback, usually all or almost all of the students actually voted. The threshold to react by electronic voting seems to be lower than to react in a face-to-face class. In many cases the students had no problems using the whiteboard to give a solution, by entering a text or drawing a simple figure. Sometimes they preferred the instructor to type or draw their answers. The instructors had no problem handling a group of 10-15 students. It can be doubted whether the group can be much larger with the same pedagogical approach. Instructors have to divide their attention to several modes of communication at the same time. They have to concentrate on the content they are teaching, in the first place. At the same time they should notice if students raise hands. They have to operate the tool, using and controlling the facilities of hand raising, feedback, drawing figures and entering texts, and controlling which student is allowed to talk to all others. They also have to check the chat and sometimes have to act accordingly, for example to synchronize students who ‘got lost’ or had a technical failure. They should notice if a student comes late. If the number of students increases it becomes harder for the instructor to stay in command of the class. The instructor has to understand that it is important to constantly explain what is happening next, because physical cues available in the face-to-face environment are not available online. The tool should be no obstacle for the students to participate in the discussions. This means that the type of problems designed by the instructors need to match the feedback facilities of the tool. For example, the students can not be expected to draw complex diagrams or use mathematical notation. Therefore we had to rely on problems where the feedback consisted of audio, short written texts or simple figures. We had to adapt several problems to this requirement. We found out that the feedback feature of LearnLinc provides the possibility to diagnose the progress of the group as a whole. From the feedback to a multiple choice question, the instructor gets easily and quickly a survey of the level of understanding of a specific topic. 5.4 Technology A number of problems with technology arose. For example, some students sometimes could not log in, other students experienced problems with the audio. On the whole these problems had no heavy impact upon the course of the sessions and most of them could be solved easily. Two-way audio is an essential feature for virtual classes to succeed. The quality of the audio proved to be reasonably well. A drawback of the audio is the delay. This delay hampered to some extent spontaneous conversations and discussions. In the LearnLinc classroom the instructor has control and can give students access to audio conferencing, but only one at a time. This has the drawback that students can not discuss directly and spontaneously with each other. A student can only react to another student after having been giving explicitly access to the audio by the instructor. An advantage is that the instructor can easily control the quality of the audio. Students cannot speak together and disturbing background noises can be suppressed. Students had only minor problems with the access to LearnLinc and with the usability of the (in this pilot selected) features of LearnLinc. LearnLinc was by and large considered easy to use. 6. CONCLUSION We offered a virtual classroom with a pedagogical approach based upon active learning. The students participated actively from the beginning. They performed well: only 3 students (out of 15) resigned during the course, and 9 of the remaining 12 students passed the examination by the end of the year. The students also held positive opinions about the classes. The tool LearnLinc was felt to be intuitive both for the instructors and for the students. It cannot be denied that in our virtual class interaction is much poorer than in face-to-face classes. There is hardly any nonverbal communication and even the possibilities for verbal communication are limited. From that point of view a virtual class is a poor variant of a face-to-face class. On the other hand virtual classes provide opportunities that are hard to implement in a face-to-face context. • They offer flexibility in frequency and duration of the sessions. Especially in a distance education context this is a substantial benefit. In our case we offered a session every week, which cannot be achieved with face-to-face classes. More sessions provide more structure, which might support the students. • Sessions are recorded and can be replayed, also by students who could not join the class. This facility provides for a need of many students. • The features for hand raising and feedback (‘polling’) result in a lot of interaction and keep the students alert. These are natural and explicit features of the tool that invite students to communicate. We have the experience that the threshold for students to actually use these features is very low. • The feedback feature offers a nice possibility to diagnose if the group as a whole has problems with specific subjects. All of this could also be realized in face-to-face classes, but they are a standard feature of the used tool. LearnLinc provides affordances for these specific forms of communication [10]. The interaction during the pilot was limited. The students’ input was limited to audio, text, simple drawings and polling and there was hardly any nonverbal communication. In the future we would like to use features for drawing diagrams, for using more complex 197 notations and above all for using video, which is also a pressing wish of many students. Our pilot was limited to a group of 15 students, one course and one tool. The results are encouraging but we need more experiences with the same and different courses and other tools to assess the possibilities of virtual classes. Ultimately we would like to contribute to the development of a pedagogical approach for the virtual CS classroom, where for example also Bower ([2]) is aiming at. 7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Gerrit C. van der Veer for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. 8. REFERENCES [1] Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P.C., Lou, Y., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P.A., Fiset, M., and Huang, B. 2004. How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature. Review of Educational Research, 74, 3 (Fall 2004), 379-439. [2] Bower, M. 2006. Virtual Classroom Pedagogy. Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (Houston, Texas, USA, March 03 - 05, 2006), 148- 152. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1121341.1121390 [3] Briggs, T. 2005. Techniques for active learning in CS courses. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 21, 2 (December 2005), 156-165. [4] iLinc, http://www.ilinc.com/ [5] Mathews, C. 2005. Synchronous Distance Delivery of an Electrical and Computer Engineering Program. 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2005, Indianapolis. [6] McConnell, J. J. 1996. Active learning and its use in computer science. Proceedings of the 1st conference on Integrating technology into computer science education (Barcelona, Spain, June 02-06, 1996), 52-54. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/237466.237526 [7] McConnell, J. J. 2005. Active and cooperative learning: tips and tricks (part I). ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 37, 2 (June 2005). DOI = http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1083431.1083457 [8] Silberman, M. 1996. Active Learning 101: Strategies to Teach Any Subject. Allyn & Bacon. [9] Su, B., Bonk, C.J., Magjuka, R.J., Liu, X., and Lee, S. 2005. The Importance of Interaction in Web-Based Education: A Program-level Case Study of Online MBA Courses. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 4, 1 (Summer 2005). [10] Weller, M., Pegler, M., and Mason, R. 2005. Use of innovative technologies on an e-learning course. The Internet and Higher Education, 8, 1 (1st Quarter 2005), 61-71. 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work_52qruch7dvbqvmcfullfvutm7i	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_54p4pag4zvgjbggs4pbi44myn4	----	Differences between Visual Style and Verbal Style Learners in Learning English | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/ijdet.2014010106 Corpus ID: 37643210Differences between Visual Style and Verbal Style Learners in Learning English @article{Chen2014DifferencesBV, title={Differences between Visual Style and Verbal Style Learners in Learning English}, author={C. Chen}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2014}, volume={12}, pages={91-104} } C. Chen Published 2014 Computer Science, Psychology Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. English proverb is an interested part when learner applied it in real life situation. The participants of this study were chosen from a big university in the middle area of Taiwan. The researchers selected some learners from Department of Foreign Language (DFL) and Department of Non-Foreign Language (DNFL). 40 students were from DFL, and 40 students were from DNFL. According to learner’s short-term memory (STM) abilities, the researchers separated participants into four quadrants (Q1-Q4… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 6 Citations Results Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Long short-term memory Real life Image Software transactional memory 6 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency The Effect of Picture Media and Learning Style on Social Study Learning Outcomes Rini Purbayani, A. Marini, Fahrurrozi Psychology 2018 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites results Save Alert Research Feed Differences in High-School Student Learning by Instruction Type and MBTI Personality Type J. Ober Psychology 2018 Save Alert Research Feed The Mediating Role of Medical Students’ Attitudes towards Distance Education in the Relationship between E-Learning Styles and Academic Achievements Melih Dikmen Psychology 2020 Save Alert Research Feed Faculty development for medical teachers: An effective mechanism to foster professional Development M. Nor Psychology 2019 PDF Save Alert Research Feed E-öğrenme Ortamlarında Öğrenme Stilleri ve Akademik Başarı Arasındaki İlişkinin İncelenmesi Esin Ergün, Fatma Betül Kurnaz Psychology 2019 PDF View 2 excerpts Save Alert Research Feed A Comparative Study on Various Vocabulary Knowledge Scales for Predicting Vocabulary Pre-Knowledge D. Zou, Haoran Xie, Yanghui Rao, T. Wong, Fu Lee Wang, Q. Wu Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2017 8 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 29 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency SUPPORTING VISUAL AND VERBAL LEARNING PREFERENCES IN A SECOND LANGUAGE MULTIMEDIA LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Jan L. Plass, D. Chun, R. Mayer, D. Leutner Psychology 1998 361 Save Alert Research Feed EFFECTS OF SHORT-TERM MEMORY AND CONTENT REPRESENTATION TYPE ON MOBILE LANGUAGE LEARNING Nian-Shing Chen, Sheng-Wen Hsieh, Kinshuk Computer Science 2008 152 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Linguistic and Cognitive Correlates of Academic Skills in First and Second Languages E. Geva, E. Ryan Psychology 1993 160 Save Alert Research Feed TESTING L2 VOCABULARY RECOGNITION AND RECALL USING PICTORIAL AND WRITTEN TEST ITEMS L. Jones Computer Science 2004 127 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Influence of Working Memory on Reading and Creative Writing Processes in a Second Language Salim Abu-Rabia Psychology 2003 60 Save Alert Research Feed THE EFFECT OF MULTIMEDIA ANNOTATION MODES ON L2 VOCABULARY ACQUISITION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Khalid Al-Seghayer Computer Science 2001 460 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The intuitive style: Relationships with local/global and verbal/visual styles, gender, and superstitious reasoning E. Sadler-Smith Psychology 2011 48 Highly Influential View 3 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed The keyword method compared to alternative vocabulary-learning strategies. M. Pressley, J. Levin, G. Miller Psychology 1982 95 Save Alert Research Feed Language representation and working memory with bilinguals. A. Ardila Psychology, Medicine Journal of communication disorders 2003 112 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Development of an adaptive learning system with two sources of personalization information Judy C. R. Tseng, Hui-Chun Chu, G. Hwang, C. Tsai Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2008 260 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 6 Citations 29 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_56d7q6xehjcvtazs6onpwrv4wm	----	AJDE1901.vp Student Learning Style and Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Conferencing (CMC) Interaction Patrick J. Fahy Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University Mohamed Ally Centre for Computing and Information Systems Athabasca University This article describes a study of the relation between learning style, as measured by the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, and online communi- cation behavior, as measured by analysis of transcripts of computer-me- diated conferencing (CMC) interaction using a previously developed tool. Analysis of over fifty-nine hundred sentences, generated by forty graduate students in moderated online conferences from two different courses, showed that some theoretical predications of the Kolb learning style model were confirmed, especially for the dichotomous types Con- vergers and Divergers, and Assimilators and Accommodators. In this study, learning style denotes individual differences or preferences among learners, which impact learning. Learning style has been defined as the cognitive, affective, and psychological traits that serve as relatively sta- ble indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment (Keefe 1979). This definition recognizes learning style is individual, stable, and predictable (Rourke and Lysynchuk 2000), and thus of potential value to moderators of online interaction (Harasim and Calvert 2002; Stacey 1999). 5 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 19(1), 5–22 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Requests for reprints should be sent to Patrick J. Fahy, Athabasca University, Centre for Distance Education, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, AB, T9S 3A3, Canada. E-mail: patf@athabascau.ca In an early discussion of transactional distance, Moore (1991) observed a relation between learning style and perceived distance in any learning rela- tionship; specific learner characteristics, including learning style, influence the amount of dialogue and structure individually optimum for learning. He called for “time and effort … to be devoted to understanding the needs of in- dividual learner populations, and individual learners” (5). In a later work, Moore and Kearsley (1996) added that dialogue and structure might better be viewed as clusters of variables, requiring more examination. There is … need for much more research of an empirical nature to identify the many variables that lie within structure, dialog, and autonomy, and to explore them more thoroughly. It is essential that we empirically test specific variables that comprise these broad dimensions, and the relationships among them. (6) Since these injunctions appeared, researchers have explored the clusters of variables present within important distance education environments re- lated to dialogue, structure, autonomy, and interaction. These inquiries confirm the presence of individual learner differences and preferences af- fecting outcomes such as satisfaction, fulfillment of expectations, and en- gagement in the learning process (Atherton 2002; Liu and Ginther 1999; Ross 1998). Such research has proven useful to practitioners in raising awareness of the potential for mismatches between teaching strategies and learner preferences in relation to learner dependence–independence (Joughin 1992), and autonomy and self-direction (Grow 1991). Other research has identified important differences in communication preferences or styles arising from differences in gender (Fahy 2002a; Her- ring 1992; Rodino 1997), learning motives and intentions (Donath 1999), ex- perience with technology (Blocher 1997), “list effects” (the influence of the dominant participant group on the whole) (Herring 1996), moderator style (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001), the capabilities of the technologies themselves (Maier et al. 1996), and differences in media use (Mayer 2001). This study focused on communication behaviors in relation to learning styles and types. As online programs increasingly rely on computer-medi- ated conferencing (CMC) to provide dialogue and structure, through learner–tutor, learner–learner, and learner–content interaction (Gunawardena 1999; Moore 1989), knowledge of the individual uses of and responses to CMC-based interaction should be of practical use to on- line instructors and moderators, and to researchers examining phenomena such as CMC-based communities of inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, and Ar- cher 2001). 6 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION Background of the Study The Kolb Learning Style Inventory In this study, learning style was determined by the Kolb Learning Style Inventory (Kolb 1985). Kolb (1984, 1993) held that learning style is the characteristic way an individual learns from or deals with new ideas or situ- ations in daily life, “a … way of responding to and using stimuli in the con- text of learning” (Clark 2000, par. 1). These various learning styles or intelligences are points along a scale that help us to discover the different forms of mental representation; they are not good characterizations of what people are (or are not) like. … What these various instruments are doing is allocating the person along some point on a continuum (similar to measuring height or weight). In other words, do not pigeon-hole people, as we are all capable of learning under any style or intel- ligence no matter what our preference is. (Clark 2000, par. 4) Kolb data were studied here in relation to online interaction activities of two classes of graduate students, participating in CMC conferences as part of their coursework, and moderated by the authors. Communication behav- ior was described using a previously developed tool, the Transcript Analy- sis Tool (TAT) (Fahy 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001). The purposes of the study were first, to survey and describe the Kolb learn- ing styles in the two groups of participants, and then to relate the Kolb types to patterns of online communication behavior as described by the TAT. The differences observed in learning and communication styles were viewed as part of what Marton and Säljö (1997, 40) refer to as the “func- tional background of differences” in any learning situation that can lead to varying outcomes among individuals immersed in the same environment. Curiosity about why individuals respond and interact differently in the same online communities, and why they derive different outcomes from the same opportunities, including achievement of “community of inquiry” (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000), was a motivation of the study. Although there are many instruments for describing learning and cogni- tive style (O’Connor 2003; Rourke and Lysynchuk 2000), the Kolb Learning Style Inventory has some attractions. It is consistent with an andragogic teaching philosophy; in Atherton’s (2002, para. 1) words, the Kolb is “one of the most useful descriptive models of the adult learning process available.” As a measure of learning style, it has been widely used satisfactorily in a variety of research situations, including cross-cultural 7 FAHY AND ALLY contexts (Experiential Learning 2004). Reported interrater reliability for the instrument ranges from .71 to .86 (Veres, Sims, and Locklear 1991), and from .91 to .99 (Garland 2002). These facts, along with the instru- ment’s brevity and conciseness, suited it for this study. The Kolb represents learning and cognitive style in terms of Levin’s “cy- cle of adult learning” (Cartwright 1951; Kolb 1984) (see Figure 1). This model addresses learner processing and perception activities, as shown. The cycle analogy shows how common phases may occur or recur at differ- ent times and rates. In the model, perception ranges from concrete (sensing, feeling) to abstract (thinking, reasoning), and processing from active (test- ing, experiencing) to passive (watching, reflecting) (Atherton 2002; Gray and Palmer 2001; Kolb 1993; Marton and Säljö 1997). Kolb’s theory holds that individuals move through these stages as they learn: when perceiving some new phenomenon or fact, they are assimilative; when experimenting with new material, they are convergent; when considering the implications of new knowledge, or attempting to re- late to it in some way, they are divergent; and when integrating new infor- mation or experiences, they are accommodative. As noted, the order in which these stages are accomplished, and the ease with which they are completed, vary individually, reflecting individual differences such as 8 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION Figure 1. Kolb Categories and Associated Behaviors Adapted from David A. Kolb, Learning Style Inventory. Copyright © 1993. Re- printed by permission of the Hay Group. sources of energizing relationships (from groups for extraverts, or from solitary experiences for introverts), and the view taken of experience (atomistic for inductive thinkers, holistic for the more deductive). Teaching should “chase the learner around the cycle” (Atherton 2002). “Teaching around the cycle” (Felder 1996) involves various elements: ex- planations of the relevance of new learning (for those with concrete and re- flective styles); provision of basic information (for the abstract and reflec- tive); practice opportunities (for the abstract and active); and real-world applications of new knowledge (for the concrete and active). Learning style is not without its critics. Szabo (1998) noted conflicting results are common in learning style research, some studies showing better recall among students taught in their preferred modality, others showing no differences. In distance education there are particular diffi- culties. Gray and Palmer (2001) noted few theoretical frameworks for judging the impact of learning style in online learning exist. Loomis (2000) observed “little if any” learning style research has been done on asynchronous learning networks. Despite these limitations, there is con- tinuing, even increasing, interest by online practitioners and researchers in the topic (Policy Center 2003). The Study Participants Graduate students enrolled in one of two Athabasca University master’s level courses (one a required “core” course, the other an elective) volun- tarily completed the Kolb Learning Style Inventory. The inventory was dis- tributed and returned by mail or fax; one of the researchers scored and in- terpreted the submissions. Forty of fifty-two students (77%) participated. CMC use was similar in both courses: students were to post comments in response to questions posed by the instructor, or in reply to other students’ posts. Ten and fifteen marks, respectively, were awarded for CMC participation in the option and core course. The instructors moderated the conferences, to provide “in- structor presence” (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001). The Instrument The Kolb Learning Style Inventory used in this study is an ipsative (rather than a normative) measure of learning style (Baron 1996; Policy 9 FAHY AND ALLY Center 2003), producing a scale that describes the participants’ relative learning style. Participants rank each of twelve sentences, using the four phrases “most like you,” “second most like you,” “third most like you,” and “least like you” (Kolb 1985). Four points are allotted for each “most like” rating, three for each “second most,” and so on, totaling ten points per sen- tence. When the points (maximum total 120) are summed, a profile is ob- tained, ranking the participant’s preferences for “watching,” “thinking,” “doing,” and “feeling” (Figure 1). The Transcript Analysis Tool (TAT) Previous literature has reported analysis of transcripts of CMC interac- tion using the TAT, examining communication styles and networking pref- erences (Fahy 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001). The TAT focuses on eight sentence-level elements within the transcript (Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001): 1. Questioning (type 1A, vertical; type 1B, horizontal) 2. Statements (type 2A, nonreferential; type 2B, referential) 3. Reflections 4. Scaffolding–engaging 5. Quotations–citations (type 5A, quotations and paraphrases; type 5B, citations) In about 2% of the cases, more than one code is assigned to a sentence, in recognition of the fact that sentences may include more than one type of in- teraction, and that forcing such communications into a single category may damage the validity of the analysis (Fahy 2001; Rourke et al. 2001). ATLAS.ti was used for coding and analysis of transcripts; SPSS-PC was used for statistical routines. Three research questions were posed: 1. What pattern of learning styles was found in the two study groups using the Kolb Inventory? 2. What differences in communication style, as measured by the TAT, were found in relation to the learning styles observed? 3. What implications for online interaction and community building, if any, arise from the answers to these questions? 10 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION Results Learning Style Patterns The presence of the four Kolb learning styles was determined in relation to gender, and for the two courses used in the study (Table 1). Chen (1999) found, in a study of learning style in older adults, that the largest groups were Assimilators (42%) and Divergers (31%), with Convergers and Accommodators comprising the remaining 27%. Here also, Assimilators comprised the largest group (37%), but Convergers were second, at 33%. Not only did Accommodators and Divergers constitute less than one-third (29%) of the total, but those two groups included only three males (out of twelve persons of this type). The differences reported in Tables 1 and 2 were not statistically significant, perhaps due to the relatively homoge- neous backgrounds of these graduate students (other possible explanations are discussed later). Table 2 shows the occurrence of the four Kolb types in the two courses studied. Communication Patterns Shown by the TAT To address the second question, communications in the two groups were examined using the TAT to determine whether styles of interaction differed by gender, course (core, option), or Kolb type (Converger, Diverger, Assimilator, Accommodator). Table 3 shows gender distributions of TAT categories found in the transcripts of the two courses (none of the differ- ences are significant). Some previous studies (Fahy 2002b; Herring 1992, 1996) reported a re- lation between gender and online interaction patterns, but none was found 11 FAHY AND ALLY Table 1. Gender Distribution of Kolb Categories, Core and Option Courses Combined Female (n = 27) Male (n = 13) Total (n = 40) Kolb Category # % # % # % Divergers 3 11 2 15 5 12.5 Assimilators 11 41 4 30 15 37.5 Convergers 7 26 6 46 13 32.5 Accommodators 6 22 1 8 7 17.5 Total 27 100 13 99 40 100 Note: Because of rounding, the values of the percentages may not total 100%. here. Reasons may include the fact this conference was moderated (other studies used the transcripts from unmoderated listservs); small sample sizes (Fahy 2001; Lawlor 2004; Poscente 2003); and differences in the sub- ject matter, moderating styles, quality of feedback, and levels of the partici- pants’ prior experience with CMC (Maushak et al. 2000). Statistical differences emerged at the course level (Table 4): the option course students generated proportionately more expository statements (2A) and quotations and paraphrases (5A), while the core course generated more reflections (3). Although the core course instructor used somewhat 12 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION Table 2. Kolb Types by Course Core (n = 23) Option (n = 17) Total (n = 40) Kolb Category # % # % # % Divergers 4 17 1 6 5 12.5 Assimilators 7 30 8 47 15 37.5 Convergers 9 39 4 24 13 32.5 Accommodators 3 13 4 24 7 17.5 Total 23 99 17 101 40 100 Note: Because of rounding, the values of the percentages may not total 100%. Table 3. Gender and Transcript Analysis Tool (TAT) Frequencies Males (n = 13) Females (n = 27) Total (n = 40) TAT Types # % # % # % 1A: Vertical questions 26 1 38 1 64 1 1B: Horizontal questions 90 4 136 3 226 4 2A: Expository statements 1203 59 2444 63 3647 62 2B: Referential statements 119 6 263 7 382 6 3: Reflections 66 3 133 3 199 3 4: Scaffolding, engaging 366 18 554 14 920 16 5A: Quotations, paraphrases 84 4 175 4 259 4 5B: Citations 73 4 155 4 228 4 Total 2027 99 3898 99 5925 100 Note: Because of rounding, the values of the percentages may not total 100%. 13 Table 4. Course and Transcript Analysis Tool (TAT) Frequencies Students Instructors Core (n = 23) Option (n = 17) Total (n = 40) Core Option TAT Types # % # % # % Prob. (t) # % # % 1A: Vertical questions 33 1 31 1 64 1 .484 0 0 55 11 1B: Horizontal questions 146 5 80 3 226 4 .308 13 6 40 8 2A: Expository statements 1720 56 1927 68 3647 62 .042 106 51 209 41 2B: Referential statements 201 7 181 6 382 6 .388 17 8 80 16 3: Reflections 170 5 29 1 199 3 .000 3 1 3 1 4: Scaffolding, engaging 584 19 336 12 920 16 .320 56 27 68 13 5A: Quotations, paraphrases 87 3 172 6 259 4 .018 5 2 35 7 5B: Citations 151 5 77 3 228 4 .363 7 3 20 4 Total 3092 101 2833 100 5925 100 207 98 510 101 Note: Because of rounding, the values of the percentages may not total 100%. more expository statements (TAT type 2A), the core course students used this sentence type more often. Though the option instructor used referential statements (2B) twice as often as the core instructor, his students did not differ in their use of this sentence type from the core students. Poscente (2003) noted a tendency for students in CMC to imitate the style of the moderator. Here, the instructor asked direct questions and re- ferred to relevant student remarks, but the students more often responded with direct statements, answers, or elaborations; when the instructor pro- vided considerable scaffolding (approximately one-fourth of his posts), students used more reflections. In sum, imitation was not apparent, nor were “list effects” (Herring 1996), findings similar to Lawlor’s (2004). Differences in Kolb Results The Kolb model posits that learners differ in their preferences for the op- posing dimensions of action–reflection and concreteness–abstraction. Ac- cording to the theory, concrete–active Accommodators should differ most from abstract–reflective Assimilators, while concrete–reflective Divergers should differ most from abstract–active Convergers. Table 5 shows the comparison of Convergers with Divergers. Table 5 confirms that Convergers and Divergers communicated differ- ently, as predicted by Kolb theory: Convergers made significantly more postings and made longer postings (in numbers of words) than did Divergers. This greater verbosity was reflected in TAT results: Convergers 14 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION Table 5. Convergers Compared With Divergers Convergers (n = 13) Divergers (n = 5) TAT Type M SD M SD Prob. (t) Number of postings 19.46 8.09 8.80 5.26 .007 Number of words 3034 1567 1540 566 .009 1A: Vertical questions 1.92 1.66 1.00 1.23 .226 1B: Horizontal questions 8.31 6.01 3.60 3.29 .053 2A: Expository statements 125.85 68.83 47.00 24.65 .003 2B: Referential statements 10.38 7.37 4.20 4.03 .040 3: Reflections 6.38 5.85 3.20 3.49 .182 4: Scaffolding 30.62 22.13 12.80 9.63 .031 5A: Quotes, paraphrases 8.62 7.52 1.20 0.84 .004 5B: Citations 9.92 9.52 1.60 2.61 .011 Note: TAT = Transcript Analysis Tool. made significantly more use of all the TAT types of sentences, except verti- cal questions (1A) and reflections (3). In the Kolb model, Convergers are attracted to real problems, preferring practical applications to theorizing or reflection, are pragmatic and hands-on in problem solving, and are drawn to and benefit from opportuni- ties for guidance and feedback as they practice new skills or explore new knowledge (Chapman 2003; Felder 1996). Convergers use their intuition in problem solving, and they may appear less concerned about relationships when engaged in technical questions (Policy Center 2003). They prefer “public” interaction (Atherton 2002). In this study, the greater involvement of Convergers in a moderated, con- tent-focused discussion is consistent with these expectations, and with the actual online environment: two-thirds of the interaction here dealt with ex- pository or referential statements, while a further 8% dealt with citations, documentation, and references (5A and 5B). In total, over three-quarters of the interaction was, from the point of view of Convergers, “substan- tive”—directly related to the problem-discussion and resolving processes they would be theoretically expected to favor. At the same time, departures from the preferred Converger style were minimal: there was little reflection (type 3), and there were fewer network-maintenance-related activities such as scaffolding and engaging (type 4). Divergers, on the other hand, preferring observation (to discussion), pri- vacy, thought and reflection on new information, and use of the imagina- tion, would be expected, according to Kolb theory, to be less attracted to the factual, linear discussion of the kind found in the CMC conferences. Their lesser participation, as shown previously, confirms this response (Chapman 2003; Policy Center 2003). Table 6 shows how the second set of theoretically opposed pairs, Assimilators and Accommodators, compared. Here, the only difference noted was in relation to scaffolding and engag- ing: Accommodators generated more scaffolding and engaging (type 4) sentences than did Assimilators. In TAT terms, type 4 statements initiate or sustain dialogue, and include others by encouraging, reaching out, thank- ing, recognizing, and acknowledging others’ contributions. Type 4 includes all activities intended to initiate, sustain, and strengthen the social network. According to the Kolb model, Accommodators tend to rely on their feel- ings and prefer to be active and doing, while Assimilators prefer thinking and watching (Chapman 2003). Accommodators are also drawn to the pro- cess of discovery, and the application of new knowledge to real problems, while Assimilators are more theory-oriented, preferring observation and 15 FAHY AND ALLY reflection (Felder 1996; Policy Center 2003). In this respect, the greater at- tention of Accommodators to the health and maintenance of the social net- work, while the only difference observed between the two groups, is con- sistent with theoretical expectations. Implications for Interaction and Community Building In relation to this question, an intriguing finding was the greater involve- ment of the Convergers over the three other groups, and especially over their theoretical opposite type, the Divergers. The orientation of Convergers is to abstraction over concreteness, action over reflection. Though asynchronous CMC is celebrated for permitting time for reflection (French et al. 1999), Divergers did not respond in this study with more in- volvement, even with this expected advantage. An explanation may lie in the nature of the interaction, as shown by the TAT. Convergers did not appear to find the discussion’s factual nature (shown by the high proportion of type 2A statements) uncongenial to their preference for the abstract. The lack of immediacy or synchronicity in in- teraction may have enabled Convergers to process others’ comments into 16 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION Table 6. Assimilators Compared With Accommodators Assimilators (n = 15) Accommodators (n = 7) TAT Type M SD M SD Prob. (t) Number of postings 14.0 8.05 14.0 7.23 .999 Number of words 2343 1236 2338 1963 .994 1A: Vertical questions 1.27 1.49 2.14 2.48 .412 1B: Horizontal questions 4.93 4.27 3.71 3.82 .514 2A: Expository statements 83.60 48.96 74.57 54.74 .717 2B: Referential statements 9.93 5.30 11.00 9.38 .786 3: Reflections 5.07 4.62 3.43 2.44 .291 4: Scaffolding 24.33 15.09 13.29 9.20 .048 5A: Quotes, paraphrases 7.13 11.28 4.86 5.18 .524 5B: Citations 4.60 4.62 3.14 3.02 .392 Note: TAT = Transcript Analysis Tool. abstractions, permitting the application of intuition. Also, the predomi- nantly factual discussion may have appealed to the Convergers’ pragmatic orientation to real-world problems and experiences. The low level of “so- cializing” (TAT type 4 sentences) also would have suited this group. In all these respects, the opposite would have been true for Divergers. (These speculations obviously require further investigation.) Discussion and Conclusions This study examined differences in learning style in relation to observable features of online interaction found in transcripts. The intention was to assess learning style as a factor in the interaction of an online learning community, developed and sustained wholly by CMC. While the study was not primarily intended to confirm the construct of learning style per se (this basic assump- tion was made, for the study’s purposes), some of the findings were found to be theoretically consistent with predictions of the Kolb model. As noted, there is consensus that the whole “cycle of learning” (Felder 1996; Gray and Palmer 2001) should normally be completed by all learn- ers, as a part of a balanced instructional strategy, regardless of learning style or preference. Completing the whole cycle requires learners to be functional (if not comfortable) in all learning environments, engaging in activities requiring action–reflection and abstraction–concreteness. Regarding this view, the results warn that even in an environment in which the complete learning cycle might be intended, individual differ- ences in amounts and types of interaction may still be expected. Learning and communication styles may be seen as propensities, disposing certain behaviors but not rigidly dictating them. In practical terms, some learning styles (Convergers, in this study) may be disposed to greater participation, finding online interaction (and online communities) attractive, while other styles find the requirement to interact regularly less useful, even toilsome. How different learning and communication styles promote or inhibit learn- ing for various individual learning types remains unanswered. To summarize the answers to the study’s three questions: First, differ- ences in learning style were not found to be associated with gender, or with the two courses from which the participants came. This finding is at odds with some previous studies, where gender was found to be a factor in the context of task type and purpose of group communications (DeSanctis and Gallupe 1987; Fahy 2002b; Herring 1992, 1996). The finding that Convergers seemed most engaged with the online net- work was consistent with theoretical expectations: Convergers’ prefer- 17 FAHY AND ALLY ences are better met by a practical, moderated, content-oriented discussion, with relatively little socializing or other “distractions” (Walther 1996). Other researchers have speculated that hypermedia favor those able and willing to impose their own structure on new information (Rourke and Lysynchuk 2000), a good description of the behavior of Convergers here. Although the Accommodators appeared to be most comfortable in the online environment, they were not the majority among the participants, most of whom were Assimilators. Assimilators are oriented to reflection and abstraction (not surprising in a sample of graduate students). The issue for use of CMC with students of this orientation is that they may sometimes simply “lurk”—in fact, perhaps, reflecting on the discussion and their pos- sible contribution. The caution to moderators not to prematurely disparage such behavior should be clear. The findings of the TAT analysis showed among all groups expository statements (type 2A) were the dominant type of interaction, followed very distantly by scaffolding–engaging comments (type 4). The proportion of type 2A sentences (there were a total of 3,647 of these, 62% of all sentences) varied only 4% (from 64% for Accommodators to 59% for Assimilators); however, the range of type 4 sentences, with a much smaller total (920; 16% of all sentences), was 6% (from 17% for Divergers and Assimilators, to 11% for Accommodators). This suggests that differences in involvement with the online network (especially type 4 “engaging”) may distinguish groups more than their focus on the factual elements of the discussion (type 2A state- ments). In these groups, the best indicator of learning type was engagement in noncontent-related conference activity—attending to the social environ- ment with TAT type 4 comments—not content-related interaction (in which all Kolb types engaged regularly and nearly equally). There is potential value in the results of the study for instructors and mod- erators of courses using CMC. The active-abstract character of the Converger group differed most from its opposite (the Divergers), and was the learning style which was most involved in the online community (Convergers averaged considerably more words and posts). By their greater engagement, Convergers demonstrated their willingness to spend more time and energy on the network itself. The choice to spend time on online commu- nity health may be seen as governed by the principle that the value gained from such efforts must be equal to or greater than the costs. Convergers must find value in their extra efforts (the exact nature of the “payoffs” would be a fruitful topic of further study) (Ridley and Avery 1979). Finally, if it is true that preference for social interaction varies by learn- ing style, there are immediate implications for CMC and other social inter- 18 LEARNING STYLE AND CMC INTERACTION action strategies in teaching. Not only might some participants find online interaction unnecessary to learning, they may, in extreme cases, even find it inimical (DeSanctis and Gallupe 1987; Walther 1996). This individual dif- ference makes the good intentions of programmers quite irrelevant: if stu- dents are not permitted to participate in CMC as their individual styles and preferences dispose, the requirement for online interaction may ironically become a potential barrier to learning. References Atherton, J. S. 2002. Learning and teaching: Learning from experience. Available online at http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/ experien.htm Baron, H. 1996. Strengths and limitations of ipsative measurement. Jour- nal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 69:49–56. Blocher, M. 1997. Self-regulation of strategies and motivation to enhance interaction and social presence in computer-mediated communication. Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, Tempe. Cartwright, D. (ed.). 1951. 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work_57u2pwx35bgknn3w6akw6o7f3e	----	Development of an Instrument to Assess Student Opinions of the Quality of Distance Education Courses By: Beth Hensleigh Chaney, James M. Eddy, Steve M. Dorman, Linda Glessner, B. Lee Green, and Rafael Lara-Alecio Chaney, E.H., Eddy, J.M., et al, (2007). Development of an instrument to assess student opinions of the quality of distance education courses. Accepted for publication in American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21, No .3. (September 2007). Made available courtesy of Taylor and Francis: http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/ *** Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document Abstract: The purpose of this study was to develop a culturally sensitive instrument to assess the quality of distance education courses offered at a university in the southern United States through evaluation of student attitudes, opinions, and perceptions of distance education. Quality indicators, identified in a systematic literature review, coupled with an ecological framework served as the theoretical foundation for the instrument development process. The process of test development, outlined in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1999), was used and combined with Dillman’s (2000) four stages of pretesting to construct the instrument. Results indicated that the model constructed from the quality indicators and ecological framework provided valid and reliable measures of student attitudes, opinions, and perceptions of quality of the distance education courses. Article: The worldwide expansion of distance education courses begets the importance of quality assurance (Sherry 2003), emphasizing the need for rigorous evaluation of programs and courses. However, according to Stewart, Hong, and Strudler (2004), there is only a ―modest amount of research pertaining to evaluation‖ of distance education courseware, particularly Web-based courses (13 1). To evaluate student perspectives of the quality of distance education programs and courses, an instrument that produces valid and reliable measurements of student opinions is needed. To this end, the purpose of this study was to develop a culturally sensitive instrument to assess the quality of distance education programs and courses through evaluation of student attitudes, opinions, and perceptions of distance education. The instrument, called SASODE (Survey to Assess Student Opinions of Distance Education) was developed, pilot-tested, and used to evaluate the quality of health education courses offered via distance education at a major university in the southern United States. Foundation of Instrument Development The foundation of the instrument development process used was theory-driven and based on results of a systematic literature review of 160 articles and twelve books (Chaney 2006), which culminated the fourteen quality indicators listed in Table 1. Overall, these findings provided a basis for the quality indicators used to frame the development of SASODE. The opening sentence in the 2003 Handbook of Distance Education states, ―America’s approach to distance education has been pragmatic and a theoretical‖ (Saba 2003, 3). The application of theory surrounding research and practice of designing, implementing, and evaluating distance education programs and courses is important. Therefore, in addition to the quality indicators identified in the literature review, the SASODE construction process was based on systems theory and models that capture changes that often occur in distance education. For the development of the SASODE, Social Ecological Model (SEM) (McLeroy et al. 1988), a commonly used systems approach to health education, was used. SEM purports that student opinions are affected by the following multiple levels of influence: intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community, and public policy http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=3091 http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/ factors. In development of SASODE, the intrapersonal and institutional levels of SEM framework provided the theoretical under-pinnings. Intrapersonal level measurements included items to evaluate students’ knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs about each quality indicator. In addition, quality institutional level measurements examined any activity conducted by the university or designee of the university (i.e., faculty), such as university policies, technological support, student services, and faculty involvement. Table 1. Common Quality Indicators of Distance Education Identified in the Literature  Student–teacher interaction  Prompt feedback from instructor  Program evaluation and assessment  Clear analysis of audience  Documented technology plan to ensure quality  Institutional support and institutional resources  Course structure guidelines  Active learning techniques  Respect diverse ways of learning  Faculty support services  Strong rationale for distance education that correlates to the mission of the institution  Appropriate tools and media  Reliability of technology  Implementation of guidelines for course development and review of instructional materials Note: The quality indicators listed are results of a systematic literature review. Instrument Design Framework The process of test development, outlined in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1999), was used and combined with Dillman’s (2000) four stages of pretesting to construct the instrument. Figure 1 outlines the adapted framework used to develop and test the SASODE. Step 1—Purpose of Instrument The first step of instrument design, as identified by the Standards (1999), is to describe ―the extent of the domain, or the scope of the construct[s] to be measured‖ (37). For the SASODE, the quality indicators from intrapersonal and institutional levels of the SEM provided the scope of the constructs to be measured. Step 2—Test Specifications The second step is to design the instrument by identifying test specifications. According to the Standards (1999), ―the test specifications delineate the format of items, tasks, or questions; the response format or conditions for responding; and the type of scoring procedures‖(38). The SASODE included Likert scale questions, open-ended questions, and rank-order questions. Issues of fairness refer to the idea ―that examinees of equal standing with respect to the construct the test is intended to measure should on average earn the same test score, irrespective of group membership‖ (Standards 1999, 74). Therefore, the instrument was constructed to establish equality of measures and outcomes for respondents, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or any other characteristic (Standards 1999). Finally, issues of bias refer to ―construct-irrelevant components that result in systematically lower or higher scores for identifiable groups of examinees‖ (Standards 1999, 76). Content-related bias is a result of inappropriate test content; however, test developers can assemble a panel of diverse experts to review the instrument for content, language, and questions that might be offensive or disturbing to groups of test takers. A panel was assembled for this instrument development process and will be explained in the following steps of pretesting. Step 3—Development of a Pool of Items Using the identified quality indicators, items were developed or chosen based on two identified levels (intrapersonal and institutional) of the SEM (McLeroy et al. 1988). The quality indicators assessed using this model were student–teacher interaction, prompt feedback from instructor, student support/services, student- technical assistance/instruction, evaluation and assessment, and course structure benchmarks. An initial pool of items was drawn from three sources: (1) Scanlan’s (2003) instrument to assess quality of Internet-based distance learning, (2) student evaluation forms currently used at the southern university being evaluated, and (3) questions from the Distance Education Program in Health Studies: Student Satisfaction Survey, developed and pilot-tested at The University of Alabama. Dillman’s (2000) Tailored Design Method was used to construct additional questions for the current study. The initial pool consisted of seventy-five items. Step 4—Dillman’s Four Stages of Pretesting Following Institutional Review Board approval, the items were subjected to four stages of pretesting, identified by Dillman (2000), and assessed for culture sensitivity. Methods and results of this four-stage process are outlined as follows in sequential order. Stage 1: Review by Knowledgeable Colleagues Methods The initial pool of items was sent to a panel of experts for review. The panel consisted of nine professionals from across the country, whose expertise areas included distance education, survey development and research, and cultural sensitivity in research. The main goal was ―to finalize the substantive content of the questionnaire so the construction process can be undertaken‖ (Dillman 2000, 141). The panel was also responsible for evaluating evidence of content-related bias and cultural sensitivity issues in the instrument. Additionally, the panel was asked to review and rank each item on a scale from 1 to 4: 1 = not important to include in survey, 2 = somewhat important to include in survey, 3 =important to include in survey, and 4 =extremely important to include in survey. To minimize the number of similar items that measured the same quality indicator, panel members were asked to label items as either ―keep‖ or ―omit.‖ During Stage 1, panel members evaluated the instrument for face validity (i.e., the items appear to be relevant to the constructs being investigated) (Gomm, Needham, and Bullman 2000) and content validity, which is defined ―as the degree to which the scale properly [reflects] student-related dimensions of quality‖ in the distance education courses (Scanlan 2003, 4). Statistical Analysis and Results The results of the panel review for face validity and content validity revealed that twenty-three items were either redundant or did not adequately measure the intended quality indicator; therefore, the items were reduced from seventy-five to sixty. The criteria for deleting an item involved the rankings of panel members; if a majority (50% or above) indicated the item was either important or extremely important to include in the survey and suggested to keep the item, then it was included in the pilot study instrument. Additionally, modifications to eight questions (either with wording or separating one question into two questions) were made. Two demographic questions, regarding race and ethnicity, were added as a result of panel suggestions on cultural sensitivity of the instrument. Modifications recommended by the panel resulted in a sixty-two-item instrument, with five parts. Part I (four items) contained general distance education items to get a sense of students’ overall experience and perception of quality of distance education (Likert scale items ranging from 1= poor to 4 =excellent). Part II (thirty-seven items) consisted of quality indicator items, based on the identified quality indicators. The first nine items in Part II were Likert-type scale items ranging from 1 = very dissatisfied to 4 = very satisfied and 5 = not applicable. The last twenty-eight items were Likert-type scale items ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree and 5 = not applicable. Items in Part III (ten items) were background information questions, which included items such as what channels of communication students used to reach instructors and how many distance education courses students have taken. Part IV included four open-ended questions on the strengths and weaknesses of the course. Students were also given the opportunity to provide additional comments and/or recommendations to help improve quality of the course. Finally, items contained in Part V (seven items) were demographic questions. Stage 2: Interviews to Evaluate Cognitive and Motivational Qualities Methods In this stage, ten students who have either taken a distance education course in health education previously and/or are currently enrolled in one of the distance education courses were asked the sixty-two items, individually, by an interviewer. Respondents were asked to think out loud when answering questions. According to Dillman (2000), the interviewer ―probes the respondents in order to get an understanding of how each question is being interpreted and whether the intent of each question is being realized‖ (142). Cognitive interviewing, such as this, ―is designed to produce information when the respondent is confused or cannot answer a question‖ (Dillman 2000, 142). Results Cognitive interviews resulted in minor changes to the instrument. Wording on three items was modified to clarify the meaning of the question, and minor grammatical changes were made. No items were deleted during the cognitive interview process; therefore, the sixty-two-item SASODE was administered for the pilot study. Stage 3: A Pilot Test Methods According to Dillman (2000), the pilot study should emulate procedures to be used in follow-up studies. To this end, 601 students enrolled in at least one of four distance education courses offered at the participant university during the spring 2006 semester were asked to complete the pilot test. The asynchronous distance education courses selected consisted of two general health courses, Healthy Lifestyles and Women’s Health, and two content-specific health courses, Human Sexuality and Consumer Health. Students were sent the SASODE and informed consent via e-mail and asked to return the SASODE with their final examination. Several follow-up e- mails were sent to encourage student input. Responses were kept confidential, and students were asked not to give any identifiable information. Five hundred sixty-eight students completed the pilot test for a response rate of 94%. Statistical Analyses Construct validity is ―the results achieved from using the instrument predict those matters which the theory underlying the instrument’s design says they should predict‖ (Gomm, Needham, and Bullman 2000, 82). In this study, construct validity was evaluated within Stage 3 by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to identify factor scores of the items. Additionally, predictive validity or criterion-related validity was assessed. This type of validity applies ―when one wishes to infer from a test score an individual’s most probable standing on some other variable called a criterion‖ (Standards 1999, 179–180). According to Scanlan (2003), for an instrument assessing quality of distance education to have predictive validity, ―it should explain or predict students’ perceptions of the quality‖ of their experience in the distance course (6). A CFA was conducted to determine if the scale ―has meaningful component structure‖ (Scanlan 2003, 5) and to develop a measurement model of quality indicators. Then, a structural model was developed to test the relationship between the identified factors in the measurement model (based on the intrapersonal and institutional items) and the more global/institutional items (i.e., overall satisfaction with the distance education course) to assess convergent and predictive validity. Finally, Cronbach’s (1984) coefficient alpha (a) was used to determine internal consistency reliability. Results Sample Characteristics. Demographic analyses from the pilot study, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 14.0), indicated the majority of the sample was female (83.3%), white (86%), and classified as seniors (39.7%). The sample represented all nine colleges across the university, with a majority of participants in either Education and Human Development (n=191, 34.2%) or Liberal Arts (n=141, 25.2%). Refer to Table 2. Construct Validity Measures. CFA was used to summarize the relationship among ordinal items in the Likert- type scale of Part II of the survey in a smaller number of quality indicators that the items were chosen to measure. In this measurement model, polychoric correlations, which ―estimate the linear relationship between two unobserved continuous variables given only observed ordinal data,‖ are fit in the model with Robust Weighted Least Squares (WLS), which is a method for estimating model parameters using categorical or ordinal data (Flora and Curran 2004, 467). The measurement model was estimated using the software package Mplus (Muthén and Muthén 2002). Robust WLS requires that the distribution of ordinal data is not extremely skewed or leptokurtotic. Otherwise, the standard error of the parameter estimates will be underestimated, and the chi-square model fit test statistic will be inflated, resulting in overrejection of adequately fit models (Flora and Curran 2004). There were fifteen items excluded from the CFA analysis due to non-normality, because skewness and kurtosis were larger than 3.0. After these items were removed from the analysis, the quality indicator, prompt feedback from instructor, was measured only by one item in the model. A Pearson-product moment correlation indicated that prompt feedback from instructor was highly correlated with student–teacher interaction (Pearson’s r=0.852); therefore, these two indicators were collapsed into one factor for the measurement model tests. It is important to note that the non-normal items were not deleted from the final SASODE because their inclusion in the final instrument was based on face and content validity measures. An imputation method, EM algorithm, was utilized to input missing data values for items measuring the quality indicators. The statistical software NORM was used to handle missing data values (Schafer 1999). Additionally, the raw data were assessed for consistency of answers on positively worded questions and negatively worded questions. For example, one item states, ―The instructor provided prompt feedback to my questions,‖ and the answer choices range from 1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree. Another item in the same section states, ―The feedback to my questions was delayed,‖ with the same Likert-type scale answer choices. These negatively worded questions were included to make sure students were not simply marking the same answer all the way through the survey without reading the questions. Upon analysis of the raw data, 141 students (out of 568) indicated either they agree or strongly agree on both the positively worded and negatively worded questions that were assessing similar quality indicators or content, which created inconsistent answers. Therefore, these data were filtered and not used in the measurement model analyses. Model Specifications The hypothesized measurement model (Model 1), created based on the quality indicators identified in intrapersonal and institutional levels of SEM, contained five factors (latent variables representing the following quality indicators): Factor 1, student–teacher interaction (included prompt feedback from instructor because these two latent variables were collapsed); Factor 2, student support/services; Factor 3, student–technical assistance/instruction; Factor 4, evaluation and assessment; and Factor 5, course structure benchmarks. The Pearson’s product moment correlation between Factor 4 and Factor 5 was extremely high (r= 1.00); therefore, these factors were collapsed into one factor. The fit indexes of Model 1 indicated the model provided poor fit to the data. The chi-square goodness-of-fit index was statistically significant (X 2 = 529.5, d.f. = 65,p =.000), which reveals that Model 1 is not a preferred model. However, according to Thompson (2004), chi-square statistical significance test is ―not very useful in evaluating the fit of a single model‖ because chi-square values are dependent on sample size. Therefore, other fit indexes were evaluated to justify fit of the model. Bentler’s (1990) comparative fit index (CFI) and the Tucker and Lewis index (TLI) (Tucker and Lewis 1973) were 0.877 and 0.941, respectively. According to Heubeck and Neill (2000), many researchers accept CFI and TLI fit indexes greater than 0.90; therefore, the TLI index is acceptable. However, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA = 0. 113) is acceptable at 0.08 and lower, whereas Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR = 0.07 1) is acceptable at 0.05 or less (Heubeck and Neill 2000); both RMSEA and SRMR for Model 1 did not achieve acceptable values to ensure proper model fit. Finally, the Weighted Root Mean Square Residual (WRMR) was evaluated for acceptable rates of approximately 1.0; however, WRMR was 2.04, which indicated Model 1 does not fit the data appropriately, and therefore, modifications to the measurement model were required. Modification indexes revealed the model would be improved by deleting two items from the survey. These items had multiple R 2 values of 0. 150 and less; therefore, these did not explain much variance of the items, which means these items did not measure the quality indicators well. Additionally, modification indexes indicated that by adding an additional observed variable to Factor 2 and Factor 5, the model would better explain the data. Once the identified items were removed and additional observed variables were added to Factor 2 and Factor 5, this model (Model 2) was evaluated for model fit. Refer to Figure 2. Fit indexes for Model 2 indicated a better fit for the data than Model 1. The chi-square goodness-of-fit (X2 = 383.311, d.f. = 57,p =.000) was statistically significant; however, other fit indexes were analyzed for a better idea of model fit and appropriateness. CFI (0.952) and TLI (0.970) were acceptable and indicated appropriate model fit; however, RMSEA (0. 116), SRMR (0.065), and WRMR (1.811) did not necessarily meet cutoff points mentioned earlier. Considering the complexity of the model and the high sensitivity of RMSEA, SRMR, and WRMR to model complexity (Potthast 1993), values of the three fit indexes were close enough that Model 2 was not rejected as a good model for the data. Therefore, after two model tests, the fit indexes were approximately satisfactory. Table 3 provides parameter estimates and standard error for parameter estimates for Model 2. A parameter estimate to standard error ratio (Est./SE) greater than +1.96 or below –1.96 indicates factor loading is statistically significant. Two items (3j. and 3k.) did not have statistically significant factor loadings to their respective factors; however, the model became unstable and less appropriate for the data when these two items were deleted. Therefore, Model 2 remained unchanged. Figure 2a. Confirmatory Factor Analysis Model 2 for Factor 1 (Student– Teacher Interaction) and Factor 2 (Student Support Services). Figure 2b. Confirmatory Factor Analysis Model 2 for Factor 3 (Student–Technical Assistance/Instruction), and Factor 4 (Evaluation and Assessment/Course Structure Benchmarks) Finally, Table 4 lists multiple R-square output produced by the CFA analysis in Mplus. These values are calculated for continuous latent variables (underlying continuous variables that are not observed) rather than the observed categorical/ordinal variables. It is important to understand that multiple R-square values for ordinal or categorical outcome variables should not be interpreted as the proportion of explained variance; therefore, parameter estimates and standard errors shed more light on model fit and appropriateness than the multiple R- square values (University of Texas 2000). Predictive Validity Measures. A structural model was developed to test if the measurement model (Model 2) predicted students’ perception of overall quality of distance education and their overall learning experience in distance education courses. Overall quality of distance education was measured by one general item: ―I would rate the overall quality of the distance education course as ... 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = excellent.‖ The overall learning experience was measured by one general item: ―Considering all factors combined, I would rate my online learning experience at TAMU as ... 1=poor, 2=fair, 3=good, 4=excellent.‖ Furthermore, the structural model evaluated how the four factors in the measurement model were related to the following four general items of distance education: (1) ―I would rate the overall administrative process of getting started with this distance education course (registering, initial log-on, etc.) as ... 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, and 4 = excellent‖; (2) ―I would rate the overall ease of use of the delivery technology (online lectures and related support resources such as remote library access) as ... 1 =poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, and 4 = excellent‖; (3) Rate the ―Quality of instructional methods (online lectures, Web site, CDs, DVDs, etc.) as ... 1 =very dissatisfied, 2 = dissatisfied, 3 = satisfied, 4 = very satisfied, 5 = not applicable‖; and (4) Rate the ―Quality of the course materials as ... 1 =very dissatisfied, 2 = dissatisfied, 3 = satisfied, 4 = very satisfied, 5 = not applicable.‖ Fit indexes for the structural model indicate that the model provides a satisfactory fit for these data. The chi- square goodness-of-fit (X 2 = 473.405, d.f. = 8 1, p =.000) was statistically significant; however, other fit indexes were examined to further investigate model fit. CFI (0.936) and TLI (0.963) are acceptable and provide evidence of good model fit. Additionally, RMSEA (0.107), SRMR (0.072), and WRMR (1.668) were approximately satisfactory numbers (Figure 3). The parameter estimates and standard errors of the estimates are in Table 5. Parameter estimate to standard error ratios for the model reveal that Factor 1 (student–teacher interaction) and Factor 4 (evaluation and assessment) helps to explain quality of instructional methods. Factor 2 (student support/services) did not significantly explain any of the general distance education constructs, whereas Factor 3 (student–technical assistance/instruction) helped to explain the overall ease of use of distance education technology and the quality of the course materials. However, the relationship between the quality indicator involving student–technical assistance/instruction (Factor 3) was negatively correlated with overall ease of use of distance education technology. This negative relationship could be due to the fact that students who needed more technical assistance probably did not find the distance education technology easy to use. Factor 4 (evaluation and assessment/course objectives) helped explain all four of the general distance education constructs. Finally, the four general distance education items helped explain (and predict) overall quality of distance education and learning experience of students in distance education courses, with statistically significant parameter estimate to standard error ratios for each construct (Table 5). Figure 3. Final Structural Model. Reliability Measures. Cronbach’s (1984) alpha was assessed for the four quality indicator scales, and all reliability measures were above the acceptable 0.70 alpha coefficient (Gable and Wolf 1993) (Table 6). Cronbach’s alpha was also assessed for each scale by eliminating one item at a time to see if reliability improved by deleting items; however, no deletion improved the alpha coefficient significantly (improvement fell between 0.0012 and 0.0183). Therefore, no items were deleted from the reliability analysis. Stage 4: A Final Check. Did We Do Something Silly? Methods In this final step, test developers should ask a few people who have had no part in the development process to answer the questions and check for problems (Dillman 2000). In this study, three additional people were asked to review the survey for wording or content problems. Results Stage 4 did not result in additional changes or edits to the final version of SASODE. Final Form of Instrument The instrument design framework and results of the statistical analyses helped refine the instrument to sixty items. These items measure global or general distance education opinions, four quality indicators (factors 1–4), background information, and demographic information. The final form of SASODE is available, free of charge, for educational use at http://ohi.tamu.edu/survey.html Discussion and Conclusion Results of the study reveal that utilizing the instrument design framework, adapted from the Standards (1999) and Dillman’s (2000) four stages of pretesting, creates a culturally sensitive instrument, SASODE, that produces valid and reliable scores. SASODE can be used to assess student perceptions of quality of distance education courses and provides rich data for evaluation purposes. The final version consists of five parts. Part I includes four items measuring global or general distance education opinions. The second part consists of thirty- five items measuring identified quality indicators and three items measuring perceptions of overall quality. Part III consists of ten background information questions regarding distance education, and Part IV includes four open-ended questions on strengths/weaknesses of the course and recommendations for improvement in quality. Finally, Part V contains seven demographic questions. References Bentler, P. M. 1990. Comparative fit indices in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107: 238–246. Chaney, B. H. 2006. History, theory, and quality indicators of distance education: A literature review. Available online at http://ohi. tamu.edu/distanceed.pdf Cronbach, L. J. 1984. Essentials of psychological testing. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Dillman, D. A. 2000. Mail and Internet surveys: The tailored design method. New York: Wiley. Flora, D. B., and P. J. Curran. 2004. An empirical evaluation of alternative methods of estimation for confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data. Psychological Methods 9 (4): 466–491. Gable, R. K., and M. B. Wolf. 1993. Instrument development in the affective domain. Boston: Kluwer. Gomm, R., G. Needham, and A. Bullman, eds. 2000. Evaluating research in health and social care. London: Sage. Heubeck, B. G., and J. T. Neill. 2000. Internal validity and reliability of the 30 item Mental Health Inventory for Australian Adolescents. Psychological Reports 87: 431–440. McLeroy, K. R., D. Bibeau, A. Steckler, and K. Glanz. 1988. An ecological perspective on health promotion programs. Health Education Quarterly 15 (4): 351–377. Muthén, L. K., and B. O. Muthén. 2002. Mplus user’s guide. Available online at http://www.statmodel.com/download/usersguide/Mplus%20 Users%20Guide%20v41.pdf Potthast, M. J. 1993. Confirmatory factor analysis of ordered categorical variables with large models. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology 46: 273–286. Saba, F. 2003. Distance education theory, methodology, and epistemology: A pragmatic paradigm. In Handbook of distance education, ed. M. G. Moore and W. G. Anderson, 3–20. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Scanlan, C. L. 2003. Reliability and validity of a student scale for assessing the quality of Internet-based distance learning. Available online at http://www.westga.edu/˜distance/ojdla/fall63/scanlan63.htm Schafer, J. L. 1999. NORM: Multiple imputation of incomplete multivariate data under a normal model, Ver. 2.03, software for Windows 95/98/NT. Available online at http://www.stat.psu.edu/—jls/ misoftwa.html Sherry, A. C. 2003. Quality and its measurement in distance education. In Handbook of distance education, ed. M. G. Moore and W. G. Anderson, 435–459. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. 1999. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association, American Psycho-logical Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education. Stewart, I., E. Hong, and N. Strudler. 2004. Development and validation of an instrument for student evaluation of the quality of Web-based instruction. The American Journal of Distance Education 18 (3): 131–150. Thompson, B. 2004. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis: Understanding concepts and applications. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://ohi.tamu.edu/survey.html http://ohi.tamu.edu/distanceed.pdf http://www.statmodel.com/download/usersguide/Mplus%2520 Tucker, L. R., and C. Lewis. 1973. A reliability coefficient for maximum likelihood factor analysis. Psychometrika 38 (1): 1–10. University of Texas, Austin, Informational Technology Services. 2000. Mplus for Windows: An introduction. Available online at http://www.utexas.edu/its/rc/tutorials/stat/mplus/ http://www.utexas.edu/its/rc/tutorials/stat/mplus/ 
work_5ba6twxdb5ff5iuo4zluzbibi4	----	None 
work_5ei7rk2oenfvbjdwloxaxmh3ke	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_5exug6lmmbcj7kntqnbb4hihju	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_5fzgu5frl5ak7ne6qjzi6pa6lm	----	A STUDY ON CONTROL PROBLEMS IN ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION Elena Petrosyan1 and Vardan Mkrttchian2 1Yerevan State University, 1 A. Manoogian St, Yerevan 375049, Armenia 2All Armenian Internet University, 19a Korjun St, Yerevan 375009, Armenia Abstract: While the delivery of online instructional courses in higher education institutions is flourishing, students and educators in general recognize the advantages of the new technology. Problems and concerns about online education are touched in various articles and papers but limited researches were conducted to examine in depth the technical and social problems that accompany this new technology. This study examines these problems and concerns regarding online distance education. Hopefully, the information that is provided here will update decision-makers of the current needs and concerns of online students and instructors so that an effective distance-learning program can be fostered in an All Armenian Internet University. Copyright® 2005 IFAC Keywords: Distance Education, Online University, Web-based Instruction. 1. INTRODUCTION Because of the rapid development in recent years, the Internet and the World Wide Web is becoming a popular approach for information delivery. As an upcoming technology, it has the potential to strengthen and enhance learning and teaching in higher education (Kljajić, Mkrttchian and Škraba, 2004). Now many universities and colleges are placing an emphasis on web-based distance education to seek innovative ways to provide flexible course offerings through new media. In fact, the use of Internet to create online learning opportunities for students at a distance has become extremely popular in higher educational institutions. Gubernick and Ebeling (Ellis, 1999) documented this trend towards an expanded role for higher education: “…55% of the U.S.’ 2,215 four-year colleges and universities have courses available off-site. Over 1 million students are now plugged into the virtual college classroom, which compares with 13 million attending brick-and- mortar schools.” There are studies about the student and instructor incentives to go online. These studies reveal a commonality of advantages. The advantages cited most frequently in the literature include: convenience, flexibility increased interaction with instructor, less travel concerns, the ability to reach varied audiences, positive learning experience, single source for course and program materials and increased computer proficiency. The advantages and benefits of the use of this technology for distance education are obvious and multiple. There are many elaborate discussions in the literature. Hiltz (Hiltz, 1997) regarded online distance delivery not just as a “different” way of doing the same thing but a possible change in the nature and structure of higher education. If such change is about to take place, are there any problems? In fact application of Internet as an instruction media to reach the student at large is not an easy and simple task. There are concerns, barriers, and problems for both students and instructors. In order to fully tap the potential of this new technology, an exploration into these obstacles is of great practical importance. 2. THE CONTROL PROBLEMS IN ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION The ideal of online distance education involves building learning environments that immerse students in the same learning situation across several network locations. To recognize such conceptions, networks should be made transparent to the learning situation. Problems arise whenever technology is not transparent. 2.1 Digital Divide Although the price of computers and concerned peripherals dropped dramatically in the past several years and the use of information technology grew at an incredible rate, digital divide continues to be an issue. According to the report of U.S. Department of Commence, by the time of the survey in September 2001 only 56.5% of U.S. families have computers and 50.5 % of families have Internet connections. In another study, Valenta et al. (Valenta. Therriault, Dieter and Mrtek, 2001) indicated the cost of equipment, and online phone charges were a problem for some students. Some people simply cannot afford to use them (Mkrttchian and Kljajić, 2004). The finding was echoed in another study, in which Hiltz (Hiltz, 1997) reported 13% of the students had serious problems in access to a personal computer. In a somewhat more subtle sense, this digital divide also comes into play in web-based distance education. In addition to the need of computers and connectivity, the relevant differences in rates of connection, such as home dial-up, cable modem, digital subscriber line (DSL) service for students may constitute a problem as well. Therefore, accommodations for students with lesser technological resources should be devised (Mkrttchian and Kljajić, 2004). 2.1 Computer Literacy While millions of people are embracing these new technologies, many more do not understand them, and distrust them. Bolt and Crawford (Bolt and Crawford, 2000) documented that tens of millions of Americans are not at all conversant with digital tools, and tens of millions more have only a passing familiarity with the most basic of applications such as word processing and email. In addition to the fast development in computer industry, the sophistication and flexibility of software structures for supporting distance education vary extensively. A student in online distance education setting may come across different software applications, from posting materials on the Web or simple email systems to conferencing systems that have been specially enhanced to support classroom-like experiences, particularly group discussions and joint projects. It can be an overwhelming experience for an off-campus student when his subject area has nothing to do with computers. Although studies show that web-based instruction is helpful in improving students’ computer competence, the ultimate purpose of an online course is determined by its own subject area, not predetermined as computer competence (Mkrttchian and Petrosyan, 2004a). 2.2 More Startup Time For both students and faculty, more startup time devoted to solving the “logistics” of Internet delivery seems to be required at the beginning of courses. Yilmaz and Tuzun (Yilmaz and Tuzun, 2001) reported that students indicated that they had to learn new tools and skills such as application software, uploading files, and chat communication. The learning of a new way to communicate can create chaos and frustration at first. 2.3 Lack of Face-to-Face Contact In a web-based distance education environment where students rarely or never see their professors face to face, it is impossible to perceive the professors’ facial expression, or detect the voice inflections when a point is being emphasized. This lack of direct communication was addressed in a study conducted by Yilmaz and Tuzun (Yilmaz, and Tuzun, 2001). They reported that instructors engaged in distance education believed that they would be more helpful to their students if they had face-to-face contact with them. This finding was reflected in the study of McKenzie et al (McKenzie, Mims, Bennett, and Waugh, 2000); in which 96.7% of the faculty felt face-to-face communication would promote students learning. The fact that web-based distance education is short of face-to-face communication leads to some other issues of concern. In a study with matched subjects, Hiltz (Hiltz, 1997) compared the traditional learning environment with the virtual environment. He indicated that the majority of students meeting in traditional face-to- face courses develop new friendships in class whereas only a third of the online students reported doing so. Although written communication helps in building up friendship, it is obvious that close personal relationships are difficult. Lack of this direct contact can be a nightmare for some instructors and students. Hailey, Grant-Davie, and Hult (Hailey, Grant-Davie and Hult, 2001) reported a few messages from volatile students unpredictably exploded into flame wars. They believe that if there had been such face-to-face contact the problems could have been avoided. 2.4 Student Isolation Having students involved in class discussions is really important for an instructor to grasp an idea about student improvement, student learning, and student problems. But in the online environment, students prefer to study alone. It becomes difficult to get students involved in class discussions. Yilmaz and Tuzun (Yilmaz and Tuzun, 2001) reported that even when there was a mechanism for online students to have some discussions they did not respond to each other a lot. They put up their work on the web when required, but other than that they seldom made any comments about each other’s work. Students in this environment also felt it was difficult to get help when problems arose. 2.5 Communication There are different kinds of communication problems in an online environment. Both computer- supported collaborative leaning and distance learning encourage a view of technology in which the learning communication is computer-mediated. In this model of communication, technology broadly mediates discourse. Although it allows for some powerful and novel forms of communication, it also runs the risk of eliminating much of what makes informal classroom activity valuable. Leasure, Davis and Thievon (Leasure, Davis and Thievon, 2000) pointed out that asynchronous web-based communication was time consuming and frustrating. A student often starts with a question that is too general for the instructor to respond. Therefore guidelines on how to frame questions are included as part of the curriculum. Students were asked to refer to a page or objective. Besides, class discussion can be another problem in the online environment. Asynchronous discussions may end up with students uninterested in making comments on others’ ideas, while in synchronous setting, as in live chat, responding messages to a particular topic can be out of sequence and create chaos in the chat room. There are also problems in communication among students when it comes to group project (Mkrttchian and Petrosyan, 2004b). This communication problem between students and instructors could lead to some students forming inappropriate collaboration and taking improper measures against the instructor. Instead of working out their problems, complaints or frustrations with each other or with the instructor, students in such a situation may, in a few passionate minutes, send off copies of a complaint up and down the entire university hierarchy, emailing advisors, department chair, college deans, provosts and university president, local newspapers, and even state politicians. 2.6 High Dropout and Incomplete Outcomes Hiltz (Hiltz, 1997) conducted a research study based on the web-based online instruction at New Jersey Institute of Technology. NJIT had been delivering college courses using an asynchronous learning network system for a decade before this research. Two complete undergraduate degree programs were already in place through a mix of video plus Internet delivery: Virtual ClassroomTM . Virtual ClassroomTM is a computer conferencing system with some software structures to support collaborative learning, including structures to order the transcript of discussions, to enforce active participation, to allocate unique assignment topics, and an electronic grade book. Participation is asynchronous and available from any location through the Internet. This study indicates that dropout or incomplete outcomes are “somewhat more prevalent”, although grade distributions for those who complete tend to be similar to those for traditional courses. One needs to note that this study is particular, in that both traditional on campus students and offsite distance students participated in the same online conferences and activities, which in fact not only motivated the discussion, but also extended the influence of an instructor (Mkrttchian and Yelchyan, 2004a). 2.7 Lack of Technical Support System failures and computer glitches are legitimate concerns in an online environment. Lack of technical support is experienced both by instructors and students. For an instructor, the problem can arise from the use of software or a particular hardware. The sophistication and variation of multimedia and online delivery are such that it is unrealistic and unreasonable to require an instructor to be fully knowledgeable of the software chosen for the virtual environment. He is an expert in his subject area, not in the field of information and communication technologies (Mkrttchian and Yelchyan, 2004b). Under this circumstance, seeking technical support can be more time consuming than any other thing in preparation for a course. Students may experience a relatively focused need of such support, but it is by no means trivial for an off-campus student. One of the problems Hiltz (Hiltz, 1997) presented is network connection. He indicated that 40% to 50% of students at NJIT had access problems with busy signals when they tried to dial in. One solution offered was telling all students that they needed to learn how to direct dial and quickly upload and download materials; another solution given was to use ISP access. This results in either the addition of extra computer literacy workload or the increase of access cost to the learning environment. 2.8 Faculty Time Commitment Time commitment from faculty is necessarily increased in the development stage when the traditional course is transformed into an online course. Many people noticed the increase of workload at the development stage of a course preparation. McKenzie et al. (McKenzie, Mims, Bennett and Waugh, 2000) indicated 76% of online instructors felt they spent more time preparing and delivering WebCT courses compared to traditional face-to-face courses. Their study also showed the need of 4 to 6 hours for course preparation. When an online course is prepared, it needs to be reengineered after a little while. Time investment is again required for the maintenance and continual updating of an existing course. Besides, in a virtual classroom, there is additional administrative work involved in organizing a class for the instructor. One likely issue is homework assignment or projects can be submitted through email, regular mail or in person. The completed homework arrived at different times and days. An instructor must organize them before starting to grade. To provide feedback in an online environment is another area that needs a lot of time and effort. Since students ask their questions basically by sending emails, an instructor can receive a lot of emails related to students’ questions and problems. To help students, a prompt reply is expected from the instructor. Failure to do so may produce a negative effect on the side of the students or even to set back their study. McKenzie et al (McKenzie, Mims, Bennett and Waugh, 2000) revealed over half of the faculty spent 1 to 3 hours each week with students online in WebCT. 2.9 Pedagogical and Instructional Research Most of the online instructors come from the traditional face-to-face classroom environment without any additional pedagogical training. What is the difference between online mode and traditional mode? What is the most effective method for an instructor to deliver a class over the Internet? Questions of this nature should be explored before an instructor goes into a virtual classroom to teach. In some ways, the need for careful instructional design is greater in web-based courses. 2.10 Intellectual Property There are ongoing issues related to intellectual property: who owns the rights to the materials created for the online class by a professor? Intellectual ownership issues related to material ranging from journal articles to faculty member’s course notes created barricades for remote users wanting online digital access to information and educational resources. 2.11 Logistical Support There are concerns over logistical support to online distance education. Hiltz (Hiltz, 1997) reported in a study that 52% of virtual students felt that it was easier to fall behind in online classes due to the ease of postponing or procrastinating. Other issues of the same nature include whether and how faculty should be compensated for their work in preparing course materials for distance delivery, and how to provide adequate support to faculty to master the new skills and techniques they need to be effective in an online environment. Among the many suggestions gathered from the faculty are to give faculty release time to design and deliver online classes, to provide more incentives for online instructors, to limit the enrollments in online courses, and not to force faculty to teach online courses in they do not wish to do so. 2.12 Social Impact There are some other issues that are closely related to the nature of online distance education. These include what is the measurement of being successful in education. Humans are social beings. Social interaction is needed. 3. CONCLUSIONS - The unprecedented development of personal computers and Internet technology was lead to the growth of online distance education. Because of the unique features of web-based courses, it is becoming part of the education delivery method as a supplement for the traditional education mode. - The trend of putting courses online will continue to attract more institutions to join the effort of distance education. Nevertheless, concerns and problems, (some of which are becoming less prominent, as a result of technology advancement), need to be addressed so that it is utilized effectively for educational purposes. This includes a cooperative effort from all technical, administrative, and educational professionals. - Technical support is needed to guarantee the communication channel of instruction is effective. Administrative and logistical support is needed to provide incentive and regulatory measures. Instructional and pedagogical researches on the other hand are a constant process to find an appropriate, socially acceptable, and most effective pedagogy for the online distance education. REFERENCES Bolt, D, and R. Crawford, (2000). Digital Divide. New York, NY: TV Books. Ellis, T. J. (1999). Translating a college course for delivery over the World Wide Web. In: Journal of Instruction Delivery System, 13(3), 14-18. Hailey, D. E. Jr., K. Grant-Davie, and C. A. Hult, (2001). Online education horror stories worthy of Halloween: A short list of problems and solutions in online instruction. In: Computers and Composition, 18, 387-397. Hiltz, S. R. (1997). Impacts of college-level courses via asynchronous learning networks: some preliminary results. In: Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 1(2), 1-19. March 6, 2003 from http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v1n2/v1n2_ hilt.asp Kljajić, M., V. Mkrttchian and A. Škraba, (2004). Collaborative Learning and Organizational Concept in Virtual University Education, Proc. of the International Conference of Cognition and Exploratory Learning of Digital Age, 396 – 399. ISBN: 972-98947-7-9. Leasure, A. R., L. Davis, and S. L. Thievon, (2000). Comparison of student outcomes and preferences in a traditional vs. World Wide Web-based baccalaureate nursing research course. In: Journal of Nursing Education, 39(4), 149-54. McKenzie, B. K., N. Mims, E Bennett and M. Waugh, (2000). Needs, concerns and practices of online instructors. In: Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 3(3). March 12, 2002, from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall33/m ckenzie33.html Mkrttchian, V. and M. Kljajić (2004), Study Problems of E-Learning and Virtual Enterprises in Online University, Proc. of the 6th International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics. 49-53. ISBN: 1- 894613-62-7. Mkrttchian, V. and E. Petrosyan (2004a). Multiversion Web Servers of Cooperative Work in All Armenian University Network, Proc. of International Conference Advanced Information Technology in Education. 34-38. Mkrttchian, V. and E. Petrosyan (2004b), Creation of the Web Servers of Joint Work in All Armenian Internet University Network, Proc. of Internet Conference the Information Technology in Science and Education. 41-44. Mkrttchian, V. and R. Yelchyan (2004a). Using the Virtual Networking Teaching Laboratory in All Armenian Internet University, Proc. of International Conference Advanced Information Technology in Education. 56-60. Mkrttchian, V. and R. Yelchyan (2004b), Apply to Virtual Networking Teaching Laboratory in All Armenian Internet University, Proc. of the 4th International Scientific Conference on Internet in Education and Science. 80-83. Valenta, A., D. Therriault, M. Dieter, and R. Mrtek, (2001). Identifying student attitudes and learning styles in distance education. In: Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 111-113. Retrieved Feburary 27, 2003 from http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/v5n2_ valenta.asp Yilmaz, O., and H. Tuzun, (2001). Web-based instruction: Instructor and student problems. Paper presented at AECT International Conference, Atlanta, GA. 
work_5gc7uzdckrfjlbcrjqucoptroy	----	Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(11): 5498-5504, 2020 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.081153 Features of Distance Education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Problems and Prospects Kurok O1, Lucenko G1,*, Povstyn O2, Lutsenko O3 1Oleksandr Dovzhenko Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University, Ukraine 2Department of Law and Management in the Field of Civil Defense, Lviv State University of Life Safety, Ukraine 3Department Theory and Methodics of Teaching Natural Sciences, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University, Ukraine Received July 28, 2020; Revised September 1, 2020; Accepted September 29, 2020 Cite This Paper in the following Citation Styles (a): [1] Kurok O, Lucenko G, Povstyn O, Lutsenko O, "Features of Distance Education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Problems and Prospects," Universal Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 8, No. 11, pp. 5498 - 5504, 2020. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.081153. (b): Kurok O, Lucenko G, Povstyn O, Lutsenko O (2020). Features of Distance Education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Problems and Prospects. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(11), 5498 - 5504. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.081153. Copyright©2020 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract Our study reveals the peculiarities of the educational process in Ukraine after the introduction of distance learning related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The study was conducted based on two leading educational institutions in Ukraine. We have established that the introduction of distance education both in the world and in Ukraine has its pros and cons. In particular, it depends primarily on the initiative of the teacher to implement such technologies, as well as on the willingness of students to use them and the technical ability of both parties to use these technologies (because our country has faced the problem of Internet coverage). We found that in the era of information technology, the level of communication, both interpersonal and with students, has not changed among the respondents. It is established that almost all teachers who took the survey believe that distance education does not provide students with practical skills, competencies after graduation. Distance education from the point of view of management and administrative activity is more expedient, it gives educational institutions more decentralization and optimization in work. Keywords Covid-19, Education, Information Technologies, Knowledge, University, Distance Education 1. Introduction Today, the world's leading universities are thinking about the problem of transforming education after quarantine and how to return students to their campuses. Ukraine is no exception in this situation [2]. In the context of the global coronavirus pandemic 2019-nCoV and the spread of infection throughout Ukraine, it is extremely important to ensure a quality educational process [12]. Therefore, all educational institutions in Ukraine understand how important it is to minimize the spread of the new virus, which today is achieved primarily by limiting social contacts, reducing the time spent in crowded places, including public transport. To this end, universities are taking all the necessary measures. Students and all those who are not directly involved in performing the necessary production functions have completely stopped attending educational buildings. Employees of departments, chairs, deans' offices/directorates, other structural subdivisions, and services are transferred to the mode of remote work as much as possible. Teachers are recommended to perform all the necessary educational, scientific, methodological activities in terms of remote access. However, this does not mean that work at universities has stopped. On the contrary, right now, in the new difficult Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(11): 5498-5504, 2020 5499 conditions, it is especially important to maintain the full capacity of educational institutions, to ensure the implementation of all major tasks assigned to universities by society. We want to emphasize that all the main functions of universities are performed considering the peculiarities of the quarantine period. The administrative and economic part maintains in good condition the territory, educational buildings, and dormitories of universities. Accounting and planning and finance departments provide financial activities, timely accrual, and payment of salaries and scholarships. The human resources department performs all the necessary procedures related to the movement of personnel. The educational and methodical department coordinates the work on the organization of distance learning of students. The library continues to work for its users online. The dormitory department provides the mode of operation of the university dormitories with the necessary quarantine restrictions, as dormitories are inhabited by students who are unable to leave them (for example, foreign students or students deprived of parental care). All this is provided by a flexible mode of operation of structural units, in accordance with the current situation, which is changing very dynamically. And most importantly - the educational process in universities is not interrupted but continues in the form of distance learning. The coronavirus pandemic in Ukraine caused technical discomfort to most participants in the educational process. This has forced everyone to start using modern technologies of the educational process, whether they like it or not. And this direct practical experience allowed them to master these skills quite skillfully. In fact, technology has long been an integral part of our lives, so educators need to be able to use this handy tool, no matter what mode they are learning. Because now, distance learning is due to circumstances, although it increases the availability of education, and blended learning - a combination of distance and full-time forms - may well become our future. However, to do this, today we must actively work on the lessons learned and ensure the quality of such education. It is the above that prompted us to our study. Therefore, the aim was to investigate the peculiarities of the introduction of distance education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 pandemic, what problems and prospects it has. 2. Methods Our study covered two leading educational institutions in Ukraine, namely: Lviv State University of Life Safety (Lviv, Western Ukraine) and Oleksandr Dovzhenko Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University (Hlukhiv, Sumy Region, Northern Ukraine). Both educational institutions are geographically located on the map of Ukraine directly near the borders of other countries. Also, these educational institutions have different areas of student training, namely: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Glukhiv National Pedagogical University is a classic pedagogical university that trains educators of preschool educational institutions and teachers. Lviv State University of Life Safety has a non-pedagogical direction of training (civil defense, management, and administration, etc.). We developed a questionnaire for 14 questions, the main essence of which is the features of distance education in the educational institution, what technical means were used more by teachers, gender, etc. 1) Name of your educational institution 2) Your position  teacher  docent  professor  other 3) Age  20-30 years  31-40 years  41-50 years  51-60 years  61-70 years 4) Become  a woman  a man 5) How did the level of your communication with colleagues change during the COVID19 pandemic?  increased  remained at the previous level  decreased 6) How did the level of your communication with students change during the COVID19 pandemic?  increased  remained at the previous level  decreased 7) What changes took place in the management system of your school during the COVID19 pandemic?  became more centralized  optimization took place  decentralization took place 8) Assess the level of your psychological comfort when working in distance education?  comfortable  uncomfortable 9) Are you satisfied with the quality of Internet communication provided by your provider?  yes  No  partially  I use 3G / 4G 10) What communication tools and technologies do you use during the COVID19 pandemic?  ZOOM 5500 Features of Distance Education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Problems and Prospects  Google services  Email  Viber  Other 11) Assess the level of difficulty in mastering distance education technologies?  exceedingly difficult  not difficult  I have been using these technologies for a long time 12) Do you think that distance education is able to provide quality opportunities for practical skills and competencies?  yes  no  partially 13) Do you think that distance education platforms provide an opportunity to assess the real knowledge of students and ensure quality control of knowledge?  yes  no  other 14) What kind of activity is a priority during the COVID19 pandemic?  educational  scientific  methodical  educational The survey was conducted online using Google forms, which allowed to cover most of the respondents during the pandemic. The number of respondents who took part in the survey was a total of 173 teachers from two educational institutions. 103 of them are respondents from Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University named after Oleksandr Dovzhenko, which is 72% of the total number of university teachers. Accordingly, 70 respondents from Lviv State University of Life Safety, which is 18% of the total number of university teachers. This study was conducted exclusively among university teachers. Oleksandr Dovzhenko Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University Lviv State University of Life Safety Number of survey participants 103 respondents 70 respondents Gender men women men women 27 respondents 76 respondents 38 respondents 32 respondents Age of respondents 20-30 years - 24 31-40 years - 42 41-50 years - 24 51-60 years - 25 61-70 years - 58 20-30 years - 12 31-40 years - 18 41-50 years - 12 51-60 years - 22 61-70 years – 6 3. Results In connection with the introduction of quarantine on March 12, 2020, in connection with the pandemic, Ukrainian universities switched to distance learning. As is often the case, a new challenge has become an unbearable burden for some, and an opportunity for development for others. We will consider in our article whether Ukrainian educational institutions were ready to move from full-time/part-time to distance education today to tomorrow, and what problems arose. First, you need to establish distance learning - a form of education or the use of technology? [13]. When talking about distance learning, we need to distinguish between two similar terms: "distance form of education" and "use of distance technology" in different forms of education (full-time, part-time) [14]. Distance education is an opportunity to study and receive the necessary knowledge remotely from the school at any convenient time. Citizens who have secondary, vocational, higher education, as well as those who can remotely perform the necessary tasks with the help of educational technologies can study remotely in Ukraine. The learning process is based on the use of various means of communication. Upon completion of such training, students receive appropriate certificates and diplomas [16]. Distance education is very important for those who live in hard-to-reach settlements, people with disabilities, gifted children and boys and girls who are able to master the material on their own, for students who cannot attend classes due to family circumstances, and citizens of Ukraine. living abroad. In this form of education is an important element of self-discipline and self-organization of the student. When we talk about "distance technology in education" - we mean specific platforms and tools (eg, Moodle, Google Classroom, Zoom, Skype, Google Suite / Docs, etc.) that allow students and teachers to communicate, perform and test tasks, control attendance, organize semester control and certification, etc. Such technologies, depending on the country, university, and discipline being studied, can be integrated at any stage of the course. Here the teacher's initiative to implement such technologies, the readiness of students to use them, and the technical ability of both parties to apply these technologies are important. Prior to quarantine, only some Ukrainian universities could teach distance (as a form of education and/or they must have a special license), and in fact, all universities used distance learning to some extent. Rapid informatization and digitalization of society actualize the use of such technologies as video conferencing or learning management systems (Learning Management Systems - LMS), etc. Therefore, one of the questions in our questionnaire was: "What communication tools and technologies do you use during the COVID-19 pandemic in your educational Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(11): 5498-5504, 2020 5501 institution?". This question was answered by all respondents. It should be noted that the main information tool used by our respondents was ZOOM (100% of responses), followed by Google services (53%), followed by the use of E-mail (37%), Viber (8%), and another 2%. Of course, the only and global problem for Ukraine is a high-quality Internet connection (especially for villages and remote areas that do not have and/or have partial coverage). Universities faced this problem because most of the students were villagers, and during the quarantine, they left the campuses and moved to their homes. Language and live communication play a big role in our lives. We need constant communication with each other, with neighbors, family, etc. The pandemic has partially taken away this opportunity from us. After all, we were all forced to lock ourselves in our homes to reduce the risk of the disease spreading. How has this affected the teaching community? As can be seen from Figure 1, due to increased digitalization, most respondents said that their level of communication with colleagues (51.4%) and students (31.2%) did not change but remained at the previous level, increased in relation to students (47.3%) (sending assignments, checking them, lectures, defense of term papers, etc.), in relation to colleagues increased by 15.6%. Some respondents say that their level of communication with each other (32.5%) and in relation to students (21.3%) has decreased. The priority of higher education is to provide quality educational services. Education is the spiritual face of man, which is formed under the influence of moral and spiritual values, which is the property of its cultural circle, as well as the process of education, self-education, influence, polishing. The main thing is not the amount of knowledge, but its combination with personal qualities, the ability to independently dispose of it [7]. Figure 1. How did the level of your communication with colleagues/students change during the quarantine related to COVID-19? Figure 2. Do you think that distance education can provide practical skills and competencies and ensure quality control of knowledge? 5502 Features of Distance Education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Problems and Prospects In addition to basic knowledge, students need practical skills and personal qualities (competencies) that will help them compete successfully in modern society. The complex concept includes the acquisition of academic knowledge, effective socialization of students, emotional interaction with others, the development of skills of caring for others, solving complex problems, and much more. Researchers [5, 9, 14] named 16 most important skills for students’ XXI century, which is divided into three groups: fundamental knowledge (literacy), skills (skills), personal (personal) qualities. Whether these essential skills provide students with a complete distance education regime was one of the main questions of our study. The results are presented in Figure 2: 25 respondents answered that no (14.4%); 73 respondents answered "no" - 42.1%; 62 respondents answered "partially" - 35.8%; 13 respondents answered "other". As we can see, most teachers are inclined to think that the transition to full distance education makes it impossible to receive full feedback from their students, and it is impossible to trace how they apply their theoretical knowledge in practice. In our opinion, the combination of online & offline education (as a type of distance education) will provide an opportunity to develop practical skills and consolidate the acquired knowledge better than just using online education. This is especially true for specialties of a natural nature, as well as for future teachers. Since these specialties require the practical application of the acquired knowledge in laboratories, research institutions, etc. On April 27, 2020, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine sent a letter to all educational institutions "on certain issues of university activities during quarantine" (№ 1 / 9-224 of April 27, 2020) (kmu.gov.ua, 2020). According to this document, there have been partial changes, in/about:  class schedule for the quarantine period.  performing research and preparing publications.  professional development activities mastering distance learning technologies.  additional development of methodological support for disciplines for distance learning.  conducting individual consultations and additional control measures, etc. Based on this document, we asked our respondents questions about the management of the school during the quarantine (Fig. 3). Did they observe changes, in particular, 86 (49.7%) people answered that the educational, educational and scientific component of teachers' activities was optimized; 56 (32.3%) respondents said that there was a partial decentralization in the educational process; remained unchanged - this opinion of 28 people (16.1%); the rest - 3 respondents (1.7%). Figure 3. What changes have taken place in the management system of your school during the COVID-19 pandemic Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(11): 5498-5504, 2020 5503 4. Discussion Our study provides the first summary data on the educational process in Ukraine during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for urgent implementation of distance education in educational institutions. We analyzed in the legal framework of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, online discussion of the problems of distance education on a special portal mon.gov.ua/ua/osvita/visha-osvita/distancijna-osvita. Also, the only information we could analyze in addition to the main orders, the legal framework of this period from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, were reports of deputy ministers, leading experts of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, directors of regional education departments on distance education during the quarantine. They emphasized both the pros and cons. This contributed to the formation of the main questions for our questionnaire, regarding distance education during the quarantine. Our study was based on the results of UNESCO (UNESCO.org, 2020) and leading educational institutions in Europe and America [1, 3, 4, 6, 8]. In particular, we fully agree with Nasir Mustafa [10] that most educational institutions are the center of the city's economic development and that quarantine measures for a college or university have affected the city's status as a result of the pandemic [11, 15]. However, we want to emphasize that in Ukraine this is typical only for small towns (for example, one of the universities that took part in the study is Hlukhiv National University named after Oleksandr Dovzhenko). Because for a small town, the university/college, namely its students, are the main economic investors in infrastructure. For a large city, even in the absence of a small number of students, this will not be the case, as most of them are local. This is, for example, Lviv State University of Life Safety. The main problem faced by the education of Ukraine is, first, the aging of scientific staff (which, unfortunately, is exceedingly difficult to navigate with modern IT technologies and programs). Unfortunately, in our study, we covered only a few leading universities in Ukraine, but this is a very real problem for the whole state and universities. Therefore, despite the pandemic, and the quarantine restrictions of the Council of Young Scientists in Ukraine, both at the Ministry of Education and at each university as a whole unite efforts to promote science, research, research papers, grants, government procurement projects. After all, it is through joint efforts that the development of education and science in the state can be achieved. We also noted that the main staff in the educational and scientific environment are women, who mainly form the community of universities. Many scientific, pedagogical, and pedagogical employees of higher education institutions of Ukraine are women. And when the doors of schools and kindergartens were closed for quarantine, many teachers suffered the same fate as other Ukrainian women - working from home, raising children, and organizing home life. In Ukraine, most of this work continues to be performed mainly by women. Although over the past five years the number of those who believe that women should take care of the household and raise children has decreased, 83% of people still believe that the most important task of a woman is to take care of home and family, and a man - to earn money (75%). The issue of gender equality is still acute in our society, and universities are no exception. So, the coronavirus has really raised many important issues in higher education. But to turn problems into opportunities, universities as well as education departments need to understand how effective distance learning is implemented (including receiving quality feedback from both teachers and students). Because distance learning is now driven by circumstances, when in fact it increases the availability of education, blended learning, a combination of distance and face-to-face forms, may well be our future. However, to do this, today we must actively work on the lessons learned and ensure the quality of such education. 5. Соnclusions 1. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the worldview of society in all directions, both in the educational environment and social, economic, psychological, etc. 2. The introduction of distance education both in the world and in Ukraine has its pros and cons. In particular: the introduction of remote technologies depends primarily on the initiative of the teacher to implement such technologies, as well as on the willingness of students to use them and the technical ability of both parties to use these technologies (because our country has faced the problem of Internet coverage). 3. We found that in the era of information technology, the level of communication, both interpersonal and with students, has not changed among the respondents. 4. It is established that almost all teachers who took the survey believe that distance education does not provide students with practical skills, competencies after graduation. That is, the student who has received theoretical knowledge is not able to practically implement it. 5. Distance education from the point of view of management and administrative activity is more expedient, it gives educational institutions more opportunities for decentralization and optimization in work. 5504 Features of Distance Education in Ukraine during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Problems and Prospects REFERENCES [1] "10 March 2020 - Covid-19 Statement from the Department of Education and Skills - Department of Education and Skills". https://www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/Press-Releases/2 020-press-releases/covid-19-statement-10mar20.html. 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The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence. vol 395. рр. 912–20, 2020. doi:10.1016/SO140-6736(20)30460-8 (accessed March 20, 2020) [6] Giuffrida A., Tondo L., Beaumont P. "Italy orders closure of all schools and universities due to coronavirus". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2020/mar/04/italy-orders-closure-of-schools-and-uni versities-due-to-coronavirus (accessed March 06, 2020) [7] Goncharenko S. Ukrainian pedagogical dictionary. Kiev. "Lybid", 1997. 366 p. (in Ukraine) [8] Jamerson J., Mitchell J. "Student-Loan Debt Relief Offers Support to an Economy Battered by Coronavirus". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. https://www.wsj.com/artic les/student-loan-debt-relief-offers-support-to-an-economy-b attered-by-coronavirus-11584735842 (accessed March 23, 2020) [9] Libanova E., Tsymbal O., Yarosh O., Lisohor L. Transition to the youth labor market of Ukraine: results of the international study "School-to-worktransitionsurveys" in Ukraine in 2013 and 2015. - International Labor Office. Geneva: MOP, 2016. 112 p. (in Ukraine) [10] Nasir M. Impact of the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic on education https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340849956_Impa ct_of_the_2019-20_coronavirus_pandemic_on_education doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27946.98245 (accessed April 22, 2020) [11] OCDE. A helping hand: Education responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Retrieved the 24.03.2020 from https://oecdedutoday.com/education-responding-coronaviru s-pandemic/ [12] Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine "On prevention of the spread of coronavirus COVID-19 on the territory of Ukraine" № 211 (11.03.2020).https://www.kmu .gov.ua/npas/pro-zapobigannya-poshim110320rennyu-na-te ritoriyi-ukrayini-koronavirusu-covid-19 (accessed April 2, 2020) [13] Six problems of Ukrainian higher education identified by quarantine http://osvita.ua/vnz/74767/ (accessed May 22, 2020) [14] Tilikina N.V., Krymova M.O. Skills of the XXI century as a condition for young people to enter the labor market Investments: practice and experience № 5 - 6/2020 p. 21-28 doi: 10.32702/2306-6814.2020.5-6.21 (in Ukraine) [15] United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. COVID-19 educational disruption and response. https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-emergenc ies/coronavirus-schoolclosures (accessed May 19, 2020). [16] Youth of Ukraine - 2018: results of a representative sociological study / Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine. Ternopil: LLC "Terno-graf", 2018, 72 p. 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Introduction 2. Methods 3. Results 4. Discussion 5. Соnclusions REFERENCES 
work_5gdbu572nzhmxoykgwknph5fdi	----	<333720C0CCBFF8B1D42DBFF8B0DDB1B3C0B020C7D0BDC0B0FCB8AEBDC3BDBAC5DB20B0B3BCB1B9E6BEC8BFA120B0FCC7D120BFACB1B82E687770> 한국산학기술학회논문지 Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 1411-1418, 2010 1411 원격교육 학습관리시스템 개선방안에 관한 연구 김자미1, 김용2, 이원규3* 1고려대학교 컴퓨터교육학과, 2한국교육학술정보원, 3고려대학교 컴퓨터교육과 A Study for Improvement of Learning Management System in Distance Education & Training Institutes JaMee Kim1, Yong Kim2 and WonGyu Lee3* 1 Department of Computer Science Education, Korea University 2 Korea Education Research & Information Service 3 Department of Computer Education, Korea University 요 약 이러닝을 활용한 원격교육은 평생교육의 측면에서 교육의 내용과 방법에 대한 선택의 다양성을 제공하고 있다. 양질의 콘텐츠와 이를 운영하는 학습관리시스템의 효과적 운영은 원격교육의 효과성을 높이는 중요한 요인이 라 할 수 있다. 이에 본 연구는 원격교육의 질을 높이는 데 필요한 학습관리시스템의 현황을 분석하였다. 현황 분석 과 함께 원격교육의 학습관리시스템 기능에 대해 델파이를 통해 전문가의 의견을 수렴하였다. 전문가 의견 수렴을 토대로 본 연구는 원격교육의 효과성을 높일 수 있는 학습관리시스템에 필요한 기능을 제안하였다. Abstract Training for using e-learning has offered various options of contents and methods to learners. Both contents with high quality and the effective operation of LMS are very important to increase effectiveness. This paper analyzed the status of LMS which was necessary to improve quality of training for learners using e-learning. Based on analysis, it collected the opinions of experts by using delphi methods. Then, it suggested the improvement of the LMS and necessary functions of LMS in Distance Education & Training Institutes. Key Words : Distance Education, LMS, function *교신저자 : 이원규(lee@inc.korea.ac.kr) 접수일 10년 01월 07일 수정일 (1차 10년 02월 12일, 2차 10년 04월 08일) 게재확정일 10년 04월 09일 1. 서론 정보통신기술의 발달은 교육 분야에서 이러닝이 교수- 학습의 중요한 방법으로 자리 잡는데 기여하였다. 새로운 학습 환경 구성 매체로 선호되는 이러닝은 원격교육에서 필수적인 요소라 할 수 있다. 초기의 이러닝은 정보통신 의 발달에 집중하여 이러닝에 대한 교육적 효과와 영향 력을 기대하면서 교육의 수월성 측면보다는 평등에 더 많은 관심이 집중되었다[1]. 그러나 양적 팽창 뿐 아니라 질적 성장이 고려되면서, ISO (international standard organization)는 면대면 교육에서와 마찬가지로 이러닝이 효과를 거두기 위해서는 상호작용을 강화해야 하며, 학습 관리시스템에서 상호작용을 위한 기능이 충분히 구현되 어야 함을 강조하였다[22]. Becta(2007)는 정보통신 기술을 활용한 온라인 교육의 가치를 높이기 위해 보다 많은 상호작용의 방법들을 강 구해야 한다고 하였다. 즉, 이러닝은 학습관리시스템을 통해 온라인에서 학습이 이루어지는 것이기 때문에 이러 닝이 효과를 거두기 위해서는 학습관리시스템의 지원이 충분히 이루어져야 한다[10,11,23,24]. 원격교육으로 실시되는 이러닝은 실시간, 비실시간으 로 다른 학습자, 교수자 등과 상호작용하며, 학습자가 원 하는 지식의 양과 표현방식을 스스로 재구성할 수 있는 환경을 제공할 수 있다는 장점이 있다[2]. 그러나 앞에서 도 언급한 바와 같이 이러닝을 이용한 원격교육은 면대 면 학습과는 달리 학습 진행상황, 교수자와의 상호작용 등이 충분히 마련되지 않을 경우, 교육의 효과를 기대하 기 어려울 수 있다. 그러므로 학습 진행 상황이나 교육 한국산학기술학회논문지 제11권 제4호, 2010 1412 중의 상호작용 등에 대해 효과적으로 지원할 수 있는 지 원시스템의 구축은 이러닝 전반의 질을 향상시키는 데 주요 요인으로 작용하게 된다. 이러닝에서 학습관리시스템은 콘텐츠를 학습자에게 전달하고 관리하는 매개체 역할 뿐만 아니라 학습자, 교 수자, 학습내용 간의 상호작용을 지원하여 효과적인 학습 이 이루어질 수 있도록 하는 역할을 수행한다. 일반적으 로 이러닝에서 솔루션은 학습관리시스템을 포괄하고 있 다. 그러나 원격교육기관의 경우, 솔루션이라는 용어와 학습관리시스템이라는 용어를 혼용하여 사용하고 있기 때문에, 본 연구에서는 원격교육기관의 솔루션에 대해서 는 학습관리시스템으로 용어를 통일하여 사용하였다. 현 재 이러닝을 서비스하는 기관들의 학습관리시스템은 표 준화되어 있지 않으며, 학습관리시스템 구성에 대한 가이 드라인도 제시되고 있지 않기 때문에 각 기관별로 필요 에 따라 구축되어 활용되고 있다. 이에 본 연구는 원격교육기관들이 갖추어야 하는 학습 관리시스템의 기능 중 학습자모드를 분석하였다. 그리고 델파이를 통해 원격교육의 학습관리시스템 학습자모드에 서 갖추어야 할 기능을 파악하였다. 본 연구에서 제시하 는 학습관리시스템에 대한 기능은 현재 원격교육기관에 서 학습관리시스템 기능을 개선하고자 할 때, 혹은 새롭 게 개발하고자 할 때, 학습의 효과성을 높일 수 있는 학 습자모드의 중요한 기능들에 대한 가이드라인 역할을 할 수 있을 것이다. 2. 국내외 관련 연구 분석 컴퓨터 학문 분야에서 솔루션은 소프트웨어 패키지나 응용프로그램과 연계된 문제들을 처리해 주는 하드웨어 나 소프트웨어로 정의하고 있다[3]. 즉 컴퓨터 사용자가 하드웨어와 소프트웨어·서비스·응용프로그램·파일형식·회 사·상표명·운영체제 등에 대한 종합적인 개념이다. 이러닝 분야의 솔루션 역시 단순히 학습자의 학습 정 보를 관리하는 것이 아니라, 학습에 대한 계획, 설계, 운 영, 평가 등의 전 과정이 온라인으로 구현되기 때문에 최 근에는 이러닝 솔루션이라는 용어를 사용하고 있다. 김용 외(2006)는 ‘이러닝 솔루션은 이러닝의 전 과정에 대하여 관리에 필요한 물리적 컴퓨터 환경을 의미하며, 물리적 환경’이라고 정의하였다[4]. 즉, 콘텐츠 개발을 위한 저작 도구 뿐 아니라 이러닝 전반을 지원하는 학습관리시스템 (LMS)과 관련된 컴퓨터 소프트웨어까지 포함하는 광의 의 개념으로 이러닝 솔루션을 정의하고 있다. 그러므로 웹에서의 교수학습 과정을 도와주는 이러닝 솔루션은 단 순히 학습 내용(콘텐츠)을 전달하는 것에 그치지 않고, 콘텐츠 관리, 레포트 기능, 온라인 저작 기능, 평가 등이 포괄되어 서비스되고 있으며 필요에 따라 기능들이 가감 될 수 있을 것이다[5]. 원격교육을 위한 학습관리시스템에 관한 국내외 연구 들을 살펴보면 다음과 같다. 첫째, 효율적인 학습관리시스템에 대한 논의이다. Rosenberg(2000)는 원격교육 참여자들의 만족도와 가장 관련 있는 요인은 '운영의 적절성'이라고 하였다[11]. 즉, 원격교육에는 수강 신청 전에 학습에 대한 사전 안내(목 표 및 내용 제시, 선수지식 파악, 맛보기 강좌 등)가 반드 시 필요하고 학습자의 동기를 지속적으로 유지시키기 위 해 메일을 통한 개별 접촉, 학습자의 접속 상황 모니터링, 학습이 부진한 학습자의 관리 방안 등이 마련되어야 한 다고 하였다. 정영식(2006) 또한 원격교육에 대한 시스템 로그 분석 자료와 학업성취의 상관관계 분석을 통하여 시스템과의 상호작용이 높은 학습자의 성취가 높음을 보 고하였다[13]. 류근영(2005)는 원격교육 활성화를 위해서 학습관리 시스템에 학습자 측면의 편리성을 고려한 학습자 중심의 기능이 포함되어야 함을 강조하였다. 또한 학습자의 수준 차이를 고려하여 수준별 교육과정의 편성 및 운영과 상 호작용을 위한 다양한 도구 지원이 필요함을 언급하였다 [14]. 즉, 원격교육에서 학습의 효과를 높이기 위해서는 학습관리시스템에서 학습자들이 요구하는 수준의 관리와 자료의 제공 등이 우선되어야 할 것으로 보인다. 둘째, 효과적인 학습관리시스템이 되기 위한 학습자들 의 의사소통 활성화 지원방법에 대한 논의이다. 김선 (2000)은 원격교육이 올바른 방향으로 개선되기 위해서 보조 자료의 개발과 제공, 강사의 적극적인 학습자 관리, 학습자간 자유로운 의사소통 장 마련이 우선적으로 필요 하다고 보고하였다[6]. 윤길준(2003)은 학습관리시스템을 통해 웹 콘텐츠 이외에 보조 자료도 같이 제공되어야 학 습의 효과를 높일 수 있다고 하였고[7], 많은 연구에서 학 습자간의 자유로운 상호작용 뿐 아니라, 지도 강사와 학 습자간의 상호작용이 원격교육에서 중요한 성공 요인임 을 보고하고 있다[8-11]. 특히 황혜영(2004)은 상호작용 증진이 중요하기 때문에 다양한 방법을 적용하되, 시스템 을 통해 학습자의 수준을 고려한 단계적 접근 방법이 필 요하다고 하였다[12]. 즉, 학습자와 교수자의 상호작용은 원격교육을 보다 원활히 할 수 있도록 하는 필요 요건이 라 할 수 있으며, 상호작용 활성화에 기여할 수 있는 매 개체가 바로 학습관리시스템이라 할 것이다. 따라서 원격 교육에서 학습관리시스템은 원격교육을 진행하는 운영자 의 입장 뿐 아니라 학습자의 입장에서 충분히 논의될 때, 원격교육 학습관리시스템 개선방안에 관한 연구 1413 주 메 뉴 하부메뉴 기 능 보유기관 갯 수 비 율 개 인 정 보 관 리 기 능 나의정보 ◦회원가입 19 100 ◦회원정보 수정 - 개인 정보를 확인 하고 필요 시 정보 수정 19 100 ◦회원 탈퇴 - 학습 회원 탈퇴 신청 19 100 나의강의실 ◦수강중인 과정 - 현재 수강 중인 과정 목록 확인 및 과정 수강 링크 제공 16 84 ◦수강 신청 중인 과정 - 현재 수강 신청 후 학습 시작 대기 중인 과정 목록 제공 8 42 ◦수강신청연기/취소-수강 신청 또는 수강 중인 과정에 대한 신 청연기/취소 7 37 ◦수강 완료한 과정 - 수강 완 료 된 과정 목록 리스트 및 과 정 복습 링크 제공 14 74 ◦공개강좌 - 공개강좌리스트확 인기능 1 5 ◦메일확인 - 메일 발신 및 수 신확인 2 11 ◦나의 북마크 - 과정 수강 중 에 필요 한 부분을 북마크 하여 다시 볼 수 있도록 하는 북마크 제공 3 16 수강신청 ◦과정선정 19 100 일정관리 ◦학습자의 수강과목의 스케줄 링 점검-시험, 과제, 토론, 설문 수강자의 스케줄링 확인 6 32 도서구매내 역확인 ◦필요한 도서 구매에 대한 이 력 목록 확인 2 11 지 식 포 럼 신청현황 ◦사이트에서 제공 되는 여러 지식포럼에 대한 신청 현황 확 인 2 11 쪽지함 ◦쪽지보내기, 쪽지 확인, 보낸 쪽지함, 주소록 기능 제공 8 42 [표 1] 학습자 모드 기능 및 보유기관 그 효과를 높일 수 있을 것이다. 셋째, 원격교육에서 학습자들의 학습 효과를 구체화 할 수 있는 평가에 대한 논의도 이루어 졌다. 윤석철 (2003)은 종합 평가, 즉 온라인 평가, 온라인 지필, 출석 율, 출석 시험을 가장 이상적인 평가 형태라고 보고하였 다[8]. 장용구(2002) 또한 이러닝 솔루션을 통해 다양한 평가 방법이 제공되어져야 하고, 더불어 오프라인을 통한 출석 평가가 병행되어야 함을 강조하였다[9]. 넷째, 국외의 학습관리시스템(LMS; Learning Management System)에 대한 연구는 학습 관리에 한정하지 않고, 전체 적인 이러닝 솔루션 측면에서 논의하고 있다. Eevi(2005) 는 학습관리시스템을 단순히 교수자가 학습자에게 학습 콘텐츠를 제공하고 관리하는 측면으로 한정하지 않고 교 수와 학습의 다양한 과정을 관리해 주는 웹 기반의 플랫 폼으로 정의하고 있다[15]. Tom(2004)은 LMS의 기능으 로 학습 계획서 및 학습 계획, 과제, 강의 노트, 보조 교재 등의 탑재가 가능하며 설문, 퀴즈 등 다양한 형태의 평가 기능, 학습자들이 원격으로 과제를 제출하는 기능, 그리 고 과제 및 보고서에 대해 성적과 코멘트와 같은 피드백 이 즉각적으로 가능한 솔루션으로 정의하고 있다[16]. Ravi & Pamela (2004)는 학습관리시스템의 특징을 자 료 관리, 처리 관리, 개별화, 에이전트, 그리고 표준화로 서술하였다. 이들은 학습관리 시스템에 대한 자세한 기능 보다 일반적인 성향을 기술하였고[17], Charalambos (2004)는 실제로 학습이 실행되는 과정에서 꼭 필요한 전 략들을 포함해야 한다고 하였다[18]. 이상을 토대로 할 때, 원격교육 학습관리시스템의 표 준화를 통해, 원격교육기관들의 학습관리시스템을 품질 관리 할 필요가 있을 것으로 본다. 즉, 학습의 효과성 측 면에서 원격교육을 위한 학습관리시스템은 운영자나 튜 터의 입장보다는 학습자의 입장에서 학습을 지원하는 기 능이 무엇인지 살펴보고, 필요 기능들에 대한 표준화 방 안을 논의할 필요가 있다. 3. 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 현황 분석 본 연구에서는 국내 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 현황을 분석하기 위하여, 65개의 원격교육기관원을 대상 으로 LMS 기능 정의서를 요청하였다. 요청 결과, 65개의 기관 중 현재 운영 중인 25개의 기관에서 기능 정의서를 수합하였다. 그러나 이들 중 학습자 모드만을 따로 구성 하고 있는 19개 기관을 토대로 분석을 실시하였다. 분석 한 결과, 학습자 모드는 「개인 정보 관리 기능」,「교과 학습 기능」,「교사 휴게실」,「자료 나눔터」,「교육 쇼 핑몰」인 5개의 주 메뉴로 구분할 수 있었다. 원격교육기 관의 학습관리시스템이 보유한 학습자 모드 기능 분석 결과는 [표 1]과 같다. [표 1]에 나타난 주 메뉴는 현재 원격교육기관들이 보유하고 있는 학습관리시스템에 나타 난 주 메뉴를 의미한다. 본 연구는 메뉴에 대한 구조도 보다는 학습관리시스템이 갖추어야 하는 기능에 충실하 여 기능을 명기하고 기능 정의를 내리고 있다. 따라서 [표 1]의 주 메뉴는 메뉴의 구조를 의미하기 보다는 해당 기능에 대한 측면이 보다 중요하게 부각되었다. 한국산학기술학회논문지 제11권 제4호, 2010 1414 주 메 뉴 하부메뉴 기 능 보유기관 갯 수 비 율 역량진단 ◦학습자의 개인 역량을 진단하는 기능 제공 2 11 상담/질문내 역 ◦상담/질문을 신청 하고 신청 한 상담에 대한 답변 정보 기능 제공 6 32 학사( 학습) 일정 ◦학기 또는 학습등의 스케줄링 보기 5 26 학습안내 ◦학습안내, 수강방법, 평가방법, 문의방법 확인 8 42 마일리지조 회 ◦학습비 할인정책인 마일리지 포인트 2 11 학습후기 ◦학습후기작성 및 설문답변 11 58 공지사항 ◦학습자를 위한 전체 공지사항 제공 5 26 교 과 학 습 기 능 나의학습현 황 ◦과정에 대한 기본정보 제공 및 학습자의 진도율, 취득점수 등의 현황 파악 기능 제공 17 89 공지사항 ◦교과학습에 관한 운영자의 공지사항 게시 16 84 자유게시판 ◦과정내용과 관련한 문의 14 74 학습도우미 ◦과정개요, 과정구성, 학습준 비, 학습구조, 학습방법등에 대 한 상세내용을 제공 7 37 학습목차(강 의계획서) ◦학습목차와 개별 컨텐츠 접속 페이지 10 53 수험표발급 받기 ◦출석고사 수험표 확인 및 발급 2 11 출 석 고 사 정답확인 ◦출석고사 정답을 확인하는 시 스템(60시간) 1 5 성적조회 ◦진행중인 컨텐츠의 참여도, 온라인 시험, 온라인 과제 제출 여부확인 및 점수확인 14 74 학습자료실 ◦학습보조자료다운받기 14 74 사이버강의 실 ◦학습 콘텐츠에 접근하여 콘텐 츠 강의 수강 16 84 강사/튜터정 보 ◦과정을 담당하는 강사/튜터에 대한 정보를 제공 4 21 영수증/이수 증 출력 ◦과목수강료의 영수증/이수증 출력 7 37 평가 ◦과목일정에 맞추어 시험이 출제 8 42 성찰노트 ◦과정별로 학습자들에게 성찰노트를 제공 2 11 용어사전 ◦과정과 관계된 용어사전을 제공 2 11 과 제 등 록 및 제출 ◦과목 일정에 맞추어 과제가 출제 10 53 추천도서 ◦수강과목에 필요한 추천도서 목록 1 5 학습시간조 회 ◦선택과목에 대한 전체학습 및 lesson별 학습시간 조회 4 21 VOD 강의 문제 해결 ◦강의수강에 문제가 발생하였 을 때 사례별 해결방법이 제시 된 페이지로 이동 2 11 주 메 뉴 하부메뉴 기 능 보유기관 갯 수 비 율 게시물 정 보 ◦학습자의 강의실, 자료실, 글 등록에 대한 확인 2 11 메모장 ◦메모장리스트/등록/수정/내용보기 1 5 교 사 휴 게 실 학습경험나 누기 ◦수강생들간의 커뮤니티 제공 4 21 학습모임 ◦학급운영, 수업기법 1 5 자 료 나 눔 터 초등연구실 ◦초등학년별 학습자료공유 및 궁금사항 공유 1 5 중등연구실 ◦중등 과목별 궁금사항 및 자료공유 1 5 교육자료실 ◦교육에 필요한 자료 및 학습자료 공유 1 5 우 리 만 의 배움터 ◦다양한 수업자료 및 배움의 공간 1 5 교무실 ◦교직실무에 필요한 자료 및 담당자별 공유 자료 소개 1 5 수업지식검 색 ◦수업자료, 학급운영자료, 학습 자료검색 1 5 교 육 쇼 핑 몰 초등수업자 료 ◦초등 관련 학습자료 및 수업 도구 1 5 중등수업자 료 ◦중등 관련 학습자료 및 수업 도구 1 5 주제별수업 자료 ◦주제별 필요 수업자료 및 관 련도서 1 5 영상수업 ◦영상수업자료 목록 1 5 수업도구/교 구 ◦수업도구 및 교구에 대한 소 개 및 안내 1 5 이벤트/게시 판 ◦교육관련 이벤트 및 문의 게 시판 1 5 4. 전문가 델파이 조사 4.1 조사 방법 본 연구에서는 2단계 델파이 방법을 사용하여 명확한 기능 정의를 토대로 학습자의 관점에서 중요한 원격교육 기관의 학습관리시스템 기능을 제안하고자 하였다. 델파 이의 1단계에서는 개방형의 델파이를 사용하였다. 2단계 에서는 1단계에서 나타난 전문가들의 기능 정의를 토대 로 기능의 중요도를 5단계 Likert 척도의 델파이를 사용 하였다. 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 학습자모드 기능을 정의함에 있어 1, 2차에 따른 델파이 기법의 사용 이유는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 현재 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템은 각 교육 기관별로 개발하거나 타 기관에 의뢰하여 서버를 임대하 원격교육 학습관리시스템 개선방안에 관한 연구 1415 기능 기능 정의 인원 2차 M(SD) 나의 강의실 해당 과정의 강의 목록 제시 및 강의 수강 31 4.7 (.68) 성적조회 수강과목별 학습 성적 조회 및 확인 37 4.64 (.74) 나의 학습현 황 현재 수강하고 있는 과목별 진도 율과 수강일자 등의 정보 제공 35 4.58 (.79) 평가 과정에서 제시하는 각종 평가에 참여 34 4.52 (.97) 상담/질문 해당 과정에 대한 학습자 상담 내용 및 그에 대한 운영자 및 튜 터가 답변 제시 31 4.48 (.83) 학습안내 해당 과정의 강의 개요, 강의목표, 주차별 계획 등 제시 36 4.45 (.97) 과제등록 및 제출 과정에서 제시하는 과제 등록 및 제출(과제물 열람) 38 4.45 (.90) 수강 신청 현재 개설된 과정 중 학습자가 수강을 희망하여 과정을 신청한 정보 제공 37 4.41 (1.04) 학습 자료실 학습 과정과 관련된 학습자료 제시 37 4.36 (.93) 로그인/로그 아웃 학습자 인증을 위한 절차로 아이 디와 비밀번호를 입력함 37 4.33 (1.11) 학습안내 학습자가 신청한 학습에 대한 안 내 및 공지(학습 신청 및 학습방 법, 교재 및 수강료 공지 등) 34 4.33 (.92) 수강중인 과 정 학습자가 현재 수강중인 과정에 대한 정보 제공 및 해당 과정에 접속 36 4.31 (1.00) ID/비밀번호 찾기 학습자 본인 확인을 위한 절차로 힌트 또는 본인 개인신상정보를 확인하고 정보 제공 37 4.21 (.93) 공지사항 해당 과정 운영에 대한 안내 및 공지 26 4.21 (1.02) 회원가입 학습자 가입을 위한 절차로 필수 정보와 선택정보로 개인정보를 등록(학습을 위한 계정 부여) 36 4.18 (.95) FAQ 과정 운영과 관련되어 자주 발생 하는 질의응답 내용 제시 35 4.12 (.86) 학습도우미 온라인 학습을 위한 인터페이스 와 학습 절차, 학습지원 프로그 램 제시 21 4.09 (.95) 회 원 정 보 (확인)수정 가입된 학습자의 개인정보 확인 및 수정 절차로 변경사항을 수정 하고 저장 37 4.03 (1.13) 는 형태로 사용되고 있기 때문에 원격교육기관의 학습관 리시스템이 갖추어야 하는 기능들에 대한 합의가 이루어 지지 못한 상태이다. 따라서 델파이 방법의 경우, 응답이 다소 모호할 수 있고, 다양한 이해에 따라서 관련된 합의 를 쉽게 도출하기 어려울 때 권장되는 방법[19]이기 때문 에 본 연구의 목적에 부합하는 것으로 고려되었다. 둘째, 본 델파이의 진행에 앞서 기존의 원격교육기관 들을 대상으로 학습관리시스템의 학습자모드 기능을 분 석하고 이를 활용하고자 하였다. 셋째, 완전하고 엄밀한 이론적 체계를 갖추지 못한 분 야의 경우, 예측과정을 전문가의 판단에 의존하는 델파이 방법(이종성, 2001)으로 분석하여 보다 정확한 이론적 체 계를 갖추도록 하고 있다[20]. 이에 본 연구에서도 기존 의 기관들이 가지는 학습관리시스템의 특징을 분석하였 으나, 전문가들의 의견을 종합할 수 있는 델파이 방법을 통하여 분석된 정보의 양이나 판단의 신뢰성을 유지하고 자 하였다. 4.2 조사 절차 일반적으로 델파이는 전문가 패널들의 의견 수렴 절차 를 1회에서 많게는 5회에 걸쳐 반복하지만 3회 정도가 가장 적당한 진행으로 여겨지고 있다. 왜냐하면 의견 수 렴 절차의 반복이 지나치게 많을 경우, 오히려 결과를 그 르칠 수 있기 때문에 대부분의 연구들을 고려하여 3회 정 도가 가장 적절한 형태인 것으로 보고되고 있다 (Brockoff, 1975)[21]. 본 연구에서는 2단계 델파이만을 진행한 것은 델파이 전에 우리나라 원격교육기관들의 학 습관리시스템 기능을 모두 분석하였을 뿐 아니라 1단계 델파이 진행 이후, 5인의 전문가에 의해서 보다 면밀한 기능 정의에 대한 단계를 진행하였다. 즉, 예비 단계 뿐 아니라 1단계에서 2단계로 이어지는 중간 단계에서 전문 가 분석이 이루어졌기 때문에 2회만으로 의견 수렴이 가 능하였다. 1단계 델파이 설문에는 43명의 패널이 참여하였다. 그 러나 2단계 델파이에는 37명의 전문가 패널만이 참여하 여 1단계 회수율은 63.24%이며, 2단계 까지 최종 회수율 은 54.41%이다. 5. 분석 결과 본 연구에서 2단계 델파이를 진행한 결과, 원격교육기 관의 학습관리시스템의 학습자모드에 대한 전문가들의 의견은 [표 2]와 같다. [표 2]에 나타난 인원은 1차 델파 이에서 학습자 모드에서 필요한 기능을 선택하고 기능 정의를 내린 전문가의 수를 나타낸다. 그리고 2차의 평균 은 1차와 동일한 전문가들에게 해당 기능의 중요도를 5 점 만점으로 체크하도록 하였다. 따라서 5점에 가까울수 록 중요한 기능임을 의미한다. [표 2] 1, 2차 델파이 분석 결과 한국산학기술학회논문지 제11권 제4호, 2010 1416 기능 기능 정의 인원 2차 M(SD) 수강 신청 중인 과정 수강신청 중인 과정 목록과 과정 별 정보 열람 33 4.03 (1.10) 학사(학습)일 정 해당 학습원의 전체 과정운영에 대한 일정 공지 33 4.03 (.98) 수강 완료한 과정 학습자가 신청한 수강과목 중 현 재 수강이 완료된 과정에 대한 정보 제공(이전에 학습한 콘텐츠 열람) 35 4 (1.09) 공지사항 교육기관 전체 운영에 대한 안내 및 공지 37 4 (1.03) 영수증, 이수 증 사본출력 학습자가 수강한 과정에 대한 교 재, 수료 등과 관련된 각종 영수 증 발행 31 4 (1.17) 원 격 시 스 템 지원 VOD 강의문제 등 특정 실행에 서의 문제 해결 지원 22 4 (.90) 수강 취소 학습자가 수강을 희망했다가 사 정에 의해 수강을 취소한 사항에 대한 정보 제공 37 3.97 (1.10) 나의 북마크 학습 중 저장하고 싶은 부분을 선택하여 기록 및 언제든 해당 페이지로 이동 가능 15 3.97 (.92) 토론 특정 학습 주제에 맞추어 학습자가 게시할 수 있도록 개설 29 3.91 (1.06) 고사 정답확 인 출석 평가 문제 정답 확인 24 3.91 (1.01) 자유게시판 학습와 관련된 학습자들의 의견 게시 29 3.88 (1.02) 자가진단 평 가 해당 과정을 수강하기 전에 학습 자의 학습 내용에 대한 사전 지 식 내용 진단, 결과 제공 9 3.82 (1.10) 학습규정 학습 규정에 대한 안내 1 3.79 (.82) 공개 강좌 무료 콘텐츠 제공에 대한 안내 및 해당 과정 접속 30 3.75 (.92) 설문 과정에 대한 사전설문/강사평가/사후설문/종합설문 등 답변 33 3.7 (1.02) 수험표발급 출석 평가 시 수험표 발급 18 3.7 (.98) 메시지(쪽지, 메일 등) 학습과정 중 학습자가 다른 학습 자, 튜터, 운영자 등과 메시지를 발송, 저장, 관리(메일확인은 해 당교육기관에서 메일 계정을 따 로 마련하는 것을 의미하므로, 본 기능에는 해당사항 없음) 26 3.64 (1.14) 강사/튜터 정 보 과정별 강사 및 튜터에 대한 기 존정보(소속, 전공, 연락처 등) 30 3.64 (.93) 결제내역 유료 콘텐츠의 경우, 결제ㆍ환불ㆍ적립금 전환 등의 내용 표시 1 3.61 (1.20) 회원탈퇴 가입된 학습자의 탈퇴를 위한 절 차로 탈퇴사유 및 의견을 재확인 하고 개인정보를 관리 33 3.58 (1.23) 현재 원격교육기관에서 제공하는 학습관리시스템 기 능과 본 연구결과에서 나타난 학습자 모드에 대한 비교 분석 결과는 [표 3]과 같다. 비교 결과, 학습자의 측면에서 학습을 보다 효과적으 로 이끌어 가기 위해서는 현재 원격교육기관에서 제공하 는 기능들에 비하여 많은 기능들이 보완되어야 할 것으 로 보인다. 현재의 원격교육기관들은 학습자 모드에서 학 습자의 학습에 도움이 되는 기능들을 제공하기보다 학습을 위한 최소 한의 기능만을 제공하고 있는 것으로 보인다. 예컨대, 학 습의 효율성을 높이기 위해 필요한 기본적인 기능인 학 습도우미나 학습안내, 과제 평가에 대한 내용 등의 기능 들은 많은 원격교육기관들에서 제공하고 있지 않은 기능 들이기 때문이다. 현 원격교육기관의 학 습자 모드 학습관리시 스템 기능 본 연구에서 나타난 학습자모드 학 습관리시스템 기능 회원가입, 회원정보 수정, 회원탈퇴, 수강신청, 나의 학습현황, 나의 강의실, 공지사항(해당과정 관 련된 공지), 수강중인 과정, 수강 완료한 과정, 자유게시판, 학습 자료실, 성적조회, 학습후기, 학습목차, 과제등록 및 제출 나의 강의실, 성적조회, 나의 학습현황, 평가 상담/질문, 학습안내, 과제등록 및 제출, 수강신청, 학습 자료실, 로그인, 학습안내, 수강중인 과정, ID/ 비밀번호 찾기, 공지사항(해당과정과 관련된 공지) 회원가입, FAQ, 학습도우미 회원정보(확인)수정, 수강신청 중인 과정 학사(학습)일정, 수강 완료한 과정, 공지사항(해당 원격교육기관 전체 과정안내),영수증 및 이수증 사본 출력, 수강 취소, 나의 북마크, 토 론, 출석고사 정답 확인, 자유게시 판, 자가진단 평가, 결제 내역, 회 원탈퇴 [표 3] 학습관리시스템의 학습자 모드 기능 비교 본 연구 결과를 토대로 할 때, 전체 학사일정에 관한 내용이나, 학습에 대한 안내는 학습을 시작하기 전에 학 습자에게 학습 가이드를 제시할 수 있다는 점에서 매우 중요한 기능으로 구분될 수 있다. 또한 학습자의 '자가진 단 평가', '학습도우미' 등의 기능들은 학습자의 학습 상태 를 정확히 파악하고, 학습에 대한 앞으로의 방향성을 설 정해 줄 수 있다는 점에서 중요한 기능으로 고려할 필요 가 있을 것이다. 그러나 현재의 원격교육기관들에서는 이 상과 같은 기능들이 충분히 제공되지는 못하고 있음을 알 수 있다. 따라서 향후 학습자의 모드를 구성할 때에 학습의 중요성을 충분히 고려한 상태에서 본 연구에서 제시하고 있는 학습자 모드의 기능들을 보완할 필요가 있을 것이다. 원격교육 학습관리시스템 개선방안에 관한 연구 1417 6. 결론 및 제언 본 연구에서는 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템의 학 습자모드에 대한 기능 정의 및 기능 제안을 통하여 원격 교육의 품질을 높이는 데 기여하고자 하는 목적을 가지 고 시작되었다. 이상의 목적을 달성하기 위하여, 현행 민 간, 시ㆍ도 원격교육기관 관련 학습관리시스템 중 학습자 모드의 기능 및 기능 정의 내용을 분석하였다. 그리고 원 격교육기관 관련 전문가들을 대상으로 델파이를 통하여 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 학습자모드에서 갖추어 야 할 기능 및 기능 정의를 도출하였다. 1, 2차의 델파이 분석 결과, 전문가 패널들이 중요하다 고 고려한 학습관리시스템의 학습자모드 기능 31개를 제 안하였다. 본 연구에서 제안하는 학습관리시스템의 학습 자모드 기능들은 원격교육기관에서 기능 개선이나 신규 개발의 가이드라인이 될 수 있을 것이다. 이상과 같이 연구를 진행한 본 연구는 다음과 같이 제 언하고자 한다. 첫째, 본 연구에서는 학습자의 학습에 있어서 중요한 기능들을 위주로 분석하고, 현재의 원격교육기관 학습관 리시스템의 학습자모드 기능들과 비교하였다. 현재는 15 개 내외의 기능만을 가지고 있지만, 학습을 지원할 수 있 는 다양한 기능들을 보완할 필요가 있다. 특히 전체학사 일정이나 학습안내, 학습도우미 등은 학습에 꼭 필요한 안내임에도 불구하고 현재는 지원되지 않는 기능이다. 따 라서 원격교육기관들에서는 본 연구 결과를 토대로 학습 에 도움이 되는 기능들을 강화할 필요가 있다. 둘째, 본 연구에서는 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 의 학습자모드에서 갖추어야 하는 명확한 기능을 제시하 였다 향후에는 본 연구에서 제안한 기능들에 대한 표준 화가 이루어진다면, 원격교육을 받는 학습자들이 보다 편 리해 질 것으로 보인다. 또한 원격교육기관들이 지향해야 할 특성화의 측면에서 학습자를 고려한 학습관리시스템 의 기능은 학습 효과를 높이는 데 기여할 수 있을 것이다 셋째, 본 연구에서는 학습자모드만을 제안했지만, 관 리자 모드와 튜터 모드 등에 대한 연구를 통해 전체 원격 교육기관들의 학습관리시스템을 표준화할 수 있도록 하 는 방안 등이 제시될 필요가 있다. 이상과 같이 본 연구에서 제시한 학습관리시스템 학습 자모드 기능 정의는 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 기 능을 개선하거나 새롭게 개발하는 데 가이드라인으로 사 용될 수 있다. 또한 원격교육기관들에서 학습의 효율성을 높이기 위해서 학습자모드에서 어떤 기능들을 확보해야 하는지에 대한 안내 제공은 물론 향후 원격교육기관의 학습관리시스템 기능 평가를 위한 평가도구로도 활용될 수 있을 것이다. 참고문헌 [1] Romiszowski, A. 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[23] Becta, "Harnessing Technology Review 2007: Progress and impact of technology in education", Becta, 2007. [24] Khan, B. H. "Web-based instruction (WBI): What is it and why is it? In B. H. Khan (Ed.), Web-based instruction", Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology, pp. 5-18, 1997. 김 자 미(JaMee Kim) [정회원] • 1992년 8월 : 이화여자대학교 교 육학과 (교육학학사) • 1995년 2월 : 이화여자대학교 교 육학과 (문학석사) • 2009 3월 ~ 현재 : 고려대학교 대학원 컴퓨터교육학과 박사과 정 <관심분야> 컴퓨터교육, 교육정보화 평가, 이러닝 김 용(Yong Kim) [정회원] • 1995년 2월 : 한국교원대학교 초 등교육과 (교육학학사) • 1997년 2월 : 한국교원대학교 컴 퓨터교육과 (교육학석사) • 1997년 3월 ~ 1999년 : 멀티미 디어교육지원센터 연구원 • 2008년 8월 : 고려대학교 컴퓨터 교육학과 (이학박사) • 1999년 ~ 현재 : 한국교육학술정보원 책임연구원 <관심분야> 컴퓨터교육, 정보영재, 정보보호, EPL 이 원 규(WonGyu Lee) [종신회원] • 1985년 2월 : 고려대학교 문과대 학 영어영문학과 (문학사) • 1989년 2월 : 筑波大学 大学院 理工学研究科 (공학석사) • 1993년 2월 : 筑波大学 大学院 工学研究科 (공학박사) • 1993년 ~ 1995년 : 한국문화예 술진흥원 책임연구원 • 1996년 ~ 현재 : 고려대학교 사범대학 컴퓨터교육과 교수 <관심분야> 컴퓨터교육, 정보검색, 데이터베이스 << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.4 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJDFFile false /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /Unknown /Description << /FRA <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> /ENU (Use these settings to create PDF documents with higher image resolution for improved printing quality. 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work_5krugyycv5fybaqppe47pxfshm	----	133944 AsciiFlyer_finalPRINT FUTURE CHALLENGES | SUSTAINABLE FUTURES 25th - 28th November 2012 WELLINGTON ascilite Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand Wellington 25th - 28th November 2012 Hosted by: Education is facing a number of significant challenges. Recent waves of global uncertainty coupled with local crises and government reforms are reshaping the tertiary education landscape. Against the backdrop of these challenges digital technology is enabling new models of teaching and learning. Yet serious questions remain over the sustainability of these new models and the claims about the potential of new technology, especially in the face of new threats and wicked problems. The aim of the 2012 ascilite conference is to explore some of these challenges and to better understand the complexity of sustainability - in its widest sense. The basic premise is that what happened in the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future. There are three future-focused sub-themes: • Learning for the future • Teachers as future makers • Leading in a climate of change ascilite 2012 will be held on the Wellington water front at the iconic Te Papa Tongarewa – National Museum of New Zealand. Enjoy the spectacular views of Wellington Habour and take time to discover some of the rich history of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Wellington is an excellent conference venue with lots on offer including a lively nightlife and many tourist attractions within walking distance. For further information, visit: www.ascilite2012.org FUTURE CHALLENGES | SUSTAINABLE FUTURES ascilite2012 Conference Handbook WELCOME FROM ascilite 2012 CONVENOR Tēnā tātou katoa On behalf of the ascilite2012 Organising Committee, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to delegates to the ascilite International Conference. This is the 29th annual ascilite conference which is being hosted by Massey University at Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand on 25-28 November, 2012. The 2012 ascilite conference builds on a long tradition of ascilite providing an excellent forum for delegates from around the world to share and discuss their innovative ideas, latest research findings and practitioner experiences with like-minded people. Often referred to as the ‗friendly conference‘, this year‘s Committee has worked hard to ensure that this tradition lives throughout the conference programme. Importantly, the Committee has also strived to ensure the conference provides a valuable opportunity to debate and challenge different viewpoints. The conference theme of ‗Future Challenges | Sustainable Futures‘ is designed to explore some of the serious challenges facing tertiary education against the backdrop of global uncertainty, local government reforms and rapid technological change. With a strong focus on ‗sustainability‘ and the hype and the hope of ‗the future‘, the three conference sub-themes—learning for the future, teachers as future makers and leading in a climate of change—invite delegates to consider how new digital technologies and new models of tertiary education can help to address some of the big problems of our age. More specifically our conference theme provides the opportunity to debate the premise that much of what happened in the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future. To this end the 29th ascilite conference brings together a diverse range of keynotes, invited speakers, papers and workshops from some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field. We would like to thank all those who made submissions for conference presentation—be they full or concise papers, workshops, symposia or posters. Your commitment to sharing your expertise, knowledge and insights is invaluable and much appreciated. Delegates will find much to interest and stimulate them in the wide range of topics and quality presentations available over the conference. For the first time, we will be using a dedicated conference app to increase the degree of interaction and engagement between presenters and delegates. We hope it works well for you. We have a number of other innovations such as resident cartoonist, great debate and Pecha Kucha that we hope will ensure all delegates have an enjoyable and memorable conference experience. The Organising Committee would also like to acknowledge the generous support of our sponsors. Without their continuing support the conference would not be possible and we acknowledge all of them with grateful thanks. On a personal note, I would like to thank members of the Organising Committee, the Programme Committee, the Conference Secretariat and Conference Manager, individual paper reviewers and the ascilite Executive for their support and invaluable assistance into ensuring the success of the 2012 conference. A big thank you to everyone. Finally, the real success of the conference depends on the willingness of delegates to immerse themselves in the ascilite conference experience. Please welcome first-time delegates, introduce yourself to as many new people as possible and generally contribute to the conference vibe. We want to ensure that the middle of Middle Earth is as friendly and engaging as possible. He aha te mea nui? He tangata! He tangata! He tangata! Translation: What is the most important thing? It is people! It is people! It is people! Professor Mark Brown Conference Convenor http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/files/sound/tereo/tenatat.mp3 Page 2 WELCOME FROM ascilite PRESIDENT I would like to wish you all a very warm welcome to the ascilite2012 conference here in Wellington, New Zealand. For first-time delegates, those we haven‘t seen for a while, and those who are regular attendees, I hope that you locate strong opportunities for intellectual engagement and professional networking in what is shaping up to be a tremendous ascilite conference with lots of surprises in store for you all. A huge thank you to Massey University as Conference Hosts; our Conference Organising Committee; our fabulous Sponsors; our Programme Committee; Conference Secretariat and Manager. While our ascilite conference is certainly a feature event in our calendars, the ascilite Executive is working hard to create a range of engaging and professionally relevant opportunities for members that extend throughout the year. We take your feedback via our bi-annual survey seriously and use it to inform our future direction and planning. It is worth mentioning a few highlights from 2012 and looking forward: • In 2012, we ramped up our ‗ascilite live’ webinar program to include a research stream. These webinars aim to help build research capacity across our community by exposing members to different methodologies, approaches and some practical tips on conducting and writing up your research. We also offered our first webinar in collaboration with ACODE (Australasian Council of Distance and ELearning). • We expanded our Community Mentoring Program (CMP), particularly our Collaborative Community Mentoring Program (C²MP) that we trialled in 2011. CMP enables our members (in groups or pairs) to tap into or contribute expertise across our community in ways that are professionally and personally relevant. • We teamed up with the Association of Learning Technologies (ALT) in the UK to launch ‗CMALT Australasia‘. This portfolio-based professional accreditation scheme will be offered exclusively to ascilite members whose work involves learning technologies. It will enable members to have their experiences and capabilities certified by peers through an evidence- based approach. Prof John Slater of ALT, is attending this conference for the launch of the Australasia scheme. • With a view ensuring the sustainability and strong international reputation of the ascilite journal, we contracted Professor Paul Bacsich (UK) to conduct an external review and benchmarking of our open-access journal AJET in 2012. This review culminated in a set of excellent future-focused recommendations. We also have an exceptional new team of AJET Editors and Associate Editors. • And as we move forward into 2013 with the new ascilite Strategic Plan (2012-2015), the Executive will be focusing on more community building approaches, whereby we will encourage more member engagement, sharing and creating member opportunities to contribute toward the future of our community-based Society. We will be reviewing and improving our information architecture to enable that engagement. Speaking of engagement, our ascilite conference is a great place for stimulating, connecting and exchanging ideas, and for socializing and extending professional networks. Consequently, many people have reported finding their ‗professional families‘ or ‗tribes‘ in our ascilite community. We value our relationships and hope that you feel valued as our members. Please do find out a little more about ‗your‘ ascilite - how it can help you and how you can contribute. Enjoy our conference! Warm regards Dr Caroline Steel ascilite President Page 4 MEMBERS OF CONFERENCE COMMITTEES The following Massey University staff contributed to the 2012 ascilite Conference Programme Committee: Professor Mark Brown (Convenor) Dr Maggie Hartnett Dr Terry Stewart The following Massey University staff contributed to the wider 2012 ascilite Conference Organising Committee: Professor Mark Brown (Convenor) Dr Maggie Hartnett Jean Jacoby Andrew Jamieson Heather Lamond Duncan O‘Hara John Milne Sarah Siebert (Conference Manager) Dr Terry Stewart Scott Symonds Dr Jennifer Thompson Professional Conference Organisers / Conference Managers National Events, Conference & Sponsorship Team Massey University Private Bag 11222 Palmerston North 4442 NEW ZEALAND Ph: + 64 6 350 5117 Email: s.m.siebert@massey.ac.nz www.conferencesandevents.co.nz mailto:s.m.siebert@massey.ac.nz mailto:s.m.siebert@massey.ac.nz http://www.conferencesandevents.co.nz/ Page 6 2012 REVIEWERS The Organising Committee of ascilite 2012 would like to thank the following reviewers for their assistance. Name Institution Sandy Barker University of South Australia Stephanie Beames QUT Helen Farley University of Southern Queensland, Digital Futures Institute Iain Doherty University of Hong Kong, Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning Nicola Westberry Auckland University of Technology Ruth Billany Charles Darwin University, School of Health Mark McMahon Edith Cowan University Petrea Redmond University of Southern Queensland, Faculty of education Peter Albion University of Southern Queensland Angela Murphy University of Southern Queensland Linda Corrin University of Wollongong Jo-Anne Kelder University of Tasmania Mary Dracup Deakin University Rob Phillips Murdoch University Maggie Hartnett Massey University Robyn Philip QUT Leanne Cameron Australian Catholic University Sabrina Leone Università Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell‘Informazione John Clayton Waikato Institute of Technology Chris Campbell University of Queensland Oriel Kelly New Zealand Tertiary College Meg Colasante RMIT Terry Stewart Massey University Sue Gregory University of New England Hazel Jones Australian College of Applied Psychology Tania Broadley Curtin University Boris Handal The University of Notre Dame Australia Kuki Singh Curtin University Barney Dalgarno Charles Sturt University Thomas Cochrane Centre for Learning And Teaching, AUT University Trevor Billany Charles Darwin University Shaista Bibi University of Sydney Page 21 1130 - 1155 FULL PAPERS A theoretical lens to view blended learning sustainability Yvonne Wood Moodle and the Living Curriculum Tabitha Roder Nicoletta Rata- Skudder Conducting and Reporting on Educational Technology Research for Institutional Impact Harriet Ridolfo The importance of power dynamics in the development of asynchronous online learning communities Panos Vlachopoulos Faculty experiencing Sustainability of a Using technology first-line university designed to encourage self- implementation of and developed media directed learning: Technology Enhanced annotation tool to The Collaborative Learning prepare learners with Lecture Marichell van skills needed for Annotation Deventer future employment System (CLAS) PROGRAMME | MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012 *indicates finalists for the ascilite2012 paper awards 0800 - 0845 REGISTRATION & INFORMATION DESK OPENS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 0900 - 0910 MIHI WHAKATAU SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) 0910 – 0915 WELCOME FROM THE CONFERENCE CONVENOR SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) Professor Mark Brown (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 0915 – 0920 WELCOME FROM THE ASCILITE PRESIDENT SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) Dr Caroline Steel (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 0920 – 0930 WELCOME FROM WELLINGTON MAYOR SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) Hon. Celia Wade-Brown (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 0930 – 1025 KEYNOTE SPEAKER – The future is new? The future is now! SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) Professor Neil Selwyn (overflow will be streamed into ICON) Monash University, AUSTRALIA 1025– 1030 HOUSEKEEPING 1030 – 1055 MORNING REFRESHMENTS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 1100 – 1230 SESSION 1.1 SESSION 1.2 SESSION 1.3 SESSION 1.4 SESSION 1.5 SESSION 1.6 SESSION 1.7 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 1100 – 1125 Sustaining new LMS Encounters: Designing evaluation Teachers, and their Building teacher NPC: an online model The life and death FULL PAPERS approaches to Promises and and research into learning and teaching Realities – e-Learning educational opinions, matter: Analysing staff educator TPACK: Developing leaders as to improve of Webfuse: prescribing skills in principles for with technology – for Sustainable initiatives: the Global perceptions of the a catalyst for change health care learning and more than just a Futures? Perspectives effectiveness of in ICT Education professionals in leading into the Wicked Problem Reem Al-Mahmood Programme online discussion Helen Doyle Australia future Janet Buchan Jo-Anne Kelder forums Jorge Reyna David Jones Juliette Hazel Jones Santosh Khanal Sondermeyer Yeqin Zuo Rob Phillips Anne Rothwell Page 22 Susan Tull Lynette Nagel Michelle Ruyters, Meg Colasante, Shane Dawson Leah Macfadyen Janette Kruger Kathy Douglas, Evan F. Risko Sue Gregory Giovanni Mandarano Tom Foulsham Tim Klapdor Alan Kingstone Philip Uys 1200 – 1225 Do Open Educational A Pedagogical *Data mining Developing a Emerging strategies Online training: Promoting FULL PAPERS Resources represent Evaluation of Moodle interactions in a 3D moderation for a sustainable sustainability in the asynchronous additional challenges Extensions immersive community of approach to face of unskilled, interactivity of or advantages to the Margo McNeill environment for real- practice professional unsupervised, recorded lectures current climate of (Presented by time feedback during Brian Von Konsky development unmotivated “long in blended change in the Kathleen Curtis) simulated surgery Annette Watkins Kuki Singh tail” learning Australian higher Matt Bower Gregor Kennedy Tania Broadley Judy Schrape Lisa Wise environments education sector? John Hedberg Ioanna Ioannou Jacqui Kelly Jason Skues Bernadette Carina Bossu Yun Zhou Benedict Williams McCabe Mark Brown James Bailey Gregor McLean Carola Hobohm David Bull Stephen O’Leary 1230 –1325 LUNCH OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 1245 – 1325 ascilite AGM RANGIMARIE ROOM 1 (Level 3) 1330 – 1400 INVITED SPEAKER – Sustainability, Creativity, Innovation and Inclusion: Fostering New Approaches to Design Professor Gráinne Conole Leicester University, UNITED KINGDOM 1400 – 1405 HOUSEKEEPING SPONSOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Blackboard / Netspot SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1405 - 1410 PRESENTATION OF CERTIFICATES TO INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERS AND MENTEES SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) 1415 – 1515 SESSION 2.1 SESSION 2.2 SESSION 2.3 SESSION 2.4 SESSION 2.5 SESSION 2.6 SESSION 2.7 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 1415 – 1433 Towards a sustainable The road ahead: The 5 Cs of Literacy "It gave me a much Planning to teach Preliminary Beyond the CONCISE PAPERS support strategy for eBooks,eTextbooks and Literary Skills more personal with ICT: Some Investigation into Afterglow: online students and publishers’ Development: connection": Student- insights into Technology and Transfer of Elizabeth Smith electronic resources Conversations, generated podcasting university teachers’ Processes Facilitating Learning in an Anne Lonie Romana Martin Community, and assessment in knowledge the Assurance of Online Collaboration, teacher education Shaista Bibi Learning “Applications” Creativity, and Dianne Forbes Lina Markauskaite Brian von Konsky Course – Connection Elaine Khoo David Ashe Annette Watkins Preliminary Page 23 Wai-Leng Wong Michael Griffith Marcia Johnson Douglas Atkinson Tania Broadley Results of a Mixed Methods Diana Simmons Study Simon Smith John Egan 1435 – 1453 *Future-Thinking The challenge for (Trans) Formation Creativity in practice: Reflections on staff Moodle Workshop Over a decade of CONCISE PAPERS Flexible Learning static online Through Educational social media in higher development in activities support promising Development: A resources: The future Technologies education eLearning via a peer review in Year 1 pedagogical Design Approach for is dynamic Therese Keane Belinda Allen community of Science: Present and models and Sustainable Change Lynn Berry Aaron Blicbau Helen Caple practice model Future technology for Claire Macken Kate Coleman Tabitha Roder John Paul Posada music teaching: John Hannon Tam Nguyen Nicoletta Rata- Julian M Cox Can the past still Skudder reliably guide the future? Alan Anderson 1455 – 1515 *Naming and Google Analytics as a The digital tutor: Distance learners' use Relevant, current and Peer review of e Outside in: CONCISE PAPERS measuring the tool in the Accepting to lose of non-institutional sustainable digital learning Initiatives at Beyond blended elephants: development of e- control and make social media to strategies to prepare Charles Darwin learning sustainable change learning artefacts: A mistakes augment and future teachers to University: The DSA Trevor Billany for blended learning case study Rachel Panckhurst enhance their lead e-learning project Carol Russell Damon Ellis learning experience Julie Mackey Margaret Pack Trish Andrews Niki Davis (presented by Alison Belinda Tynan Nicki Dabner Reedy) Kendra Backstrom 1515 – 1540 AFTERNOON REFRESHMENTS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 1545 – 1645 SESSION 2.8 SESSION 2.9 SYMPOSIUM 1.1 SYMPOSIUM 1.2 SYMPOSIUM 1.3 SYMPOSIUM 1.4 SYMPOSIUM 1.5 Soundings Theatre Icon Ranigmarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 A framework for Promoting Post Web 2.0 Exploring the Growing, leading and Computer-mediated Digital evaluating blended engagement and Pedagogy: Mobile challenges of network measuring online collaborative learning communities - learning interaction through a Social Media leadership in Communities of in large first-year contexts for Michael Smythe technology supported Thomas Cochrane Australasian tertiary Practice STEM classes leading learning learning activity Helen Sissons associations Diana Ayling facilitating into the future? Student engagement Sue Whale Laurent Antonczak Mike Keppell Hazel Owen interdisciplinary Shirley Reushle in blended learning: A Josie Fisher Averill Gordon Gordon Suddaby scenario-inquiry tasks Jacquie toolkit for teachers Fredy-Roberto Andrew Withell Helen Carter Gwen Lawrie McDonald Lynn Jeffrey, John Valenzuela David Rhodes Gary Williams Kelly Matthews Milne & Andrew Daniel Wagner Denise Chalmers ascilite Page 24 Higgins Engaging higher education students Ilona Buchem Mar Camacho Trish Andrews Shelda Debowski Community Mentoring Official Launch of the via digital curation Helen Keegan Marguerite de Sousa Program: Sharing Toolkit funded by Ako Amy Antonio Solène Troussé and/or Lindy Baker successes and Aotearoa through that National Project Neil Martin Adrian Stagg learning for the future Fund (2009) Shirley Reushle Evolution of a Higher Ed Curriculum Based Ecosystem Chris Cheers 1645 - 1655 Short Break 1700 - 1715 GUEST SPEAKER - Hon Grant Robertson MP SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1715 - 1730 PECHA KUCHA POSTERS (5 x 2 minute Poster Presentations) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1730 – 1735 Launch of CMALT Australasia SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1735 – 1740 BOOK LAUNCH – Designing for Learning in an Open World SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1740 - 1743 SPONSOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Massey University 1745 – 1845 COCKTAIL RECEPTION POSTER VIEWING AND VOTING ascilite DINE AROUND NIGHT SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) OCEANIA ( Level 3) 1900 - Please make your own way to your selected restaurant by 1900 Page 25 PROGRAMME | TUESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2012 *indicates finalists for the ascilite2012 paper awards 0800 - 0845 REGISTRATION & INFORMATION DESK OPENS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 0845– 0900 WELCOME TO THE DAY AND HOUSEKEEPING Mark Brown ascilite 2012 Convenor 0900– 0955 KEYNOTE ADDRESS – The End of the University Dale Stephens Uncollege USA 1000 - 1030 THE GREAT DEBATE: That MOOCs are a real game changer which seriously challenge traditional models of Tertiary Education Bill Anderson, Maggie Hartnett,Mark Nichols | Gráinne Conole, Keith Smyth, Norm Vaughan SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) Live via Blackboard Collaborate 1030 – 1055 MORNING REFRESHMENTS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 1100 – 1220 SESSION 3.1 SESSION 3.2 SESSION 3.3 SESSION 3.4 SESSION 3.5 SESSION 3.6 SESSION 3.7 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 1100 – 1125 *Use of media-rich New approaches: Going mobile: Each Game-like digital Heutagogy and Sustainable learning Follow up panel FULL PAPERS real-time Embedding on-line small change training tools - do mobile social media: through formative discussion with collaboration tools interactive scenarios requires another information- post Web 2.0 online assessment: debate panel for learning and as core course Peter Albion integration skills pedagogy using quizzes to members about teaching in components for Romina Jamieson- transfer from static Thomas Cochrane maintain the future of Australian and New international Proctor to dynamic Laurent Antonczak engagement MOOCs: Live via Zealand universities biosecurity Petrea Redmond interfaces? Averill Gordon Lynette Nagel Blackboard Matt Bower practitioner training Kevin Larkin Lisa Wise Helen Sissons Lanise van Eck Collaborate Mark J.W. Lee Terry Stewart Andrew Maxwell Gregor McLean Andrew Withell Jacqueline Kenney Joanna S. McKenzie Benedict Williams Paula de Barba Willem D. Vink (presented by Gregor Kennedy & Barney Dalgarno, Mark Lee and Jacqueline Kenney) Page 25 1130 – 1155 FULL PAPERS Video-linked teaching: Designing Using Scenario Planning to Inform The peripatetic learner - the role of Multidiscipline role- play in a 3D virtual Augmenting the Design Thinking Unsupervised Online Constructed- An e-portfolio theoretical and evaluating Pedagogical Practice mobility in the learning Studio Response Tests: approach for technology-rich in Virtual Worlds in formation environment: Andrew Withell Maximising Student Provisionally classrooms for real- Schools: collaborative Experiences with a Thomas Cochrane Learning and Results Registered time collaboration Collaboration and learning spaces large cohort of Stephen Reay Integrity Teachers Scott Symonds Structure Judit Klein health care students Nick Charlton Genevieve Johnson Maryann Lee Maggie Hartnett Christopher Bonfield Marcus McDonald Idil Gaziulusoy Sharon Davies Lesley Pohio Philippa Butler Kevin Burden Tracii Ryan Shane Inder Mark Brown Katy Lumkin Jenny Sim Andrew Cram Jennifer James Philip Maude Sheila Scutter Denise Wood 1200 – 1220 Sustaining a Learning with Mobility makes us Sustaining the future ANU Campus Quest: Using reward Embedding e- CONCISE PAPERS problematic technology: Agile and Lean: A through virtual A Mobile App For contingencies in portfolios in innovation: A Theoretical New Paradigm for worlds Transition online activities to teacher ‘grounds eye’ view of foundations Institutional Projects Sue Gregory et. al Sage Leslie- facilitate education: video conferencing underpinning Tim Klapdor McCarthy engagement in a Lessons from a through teachers’ simulations in higher Jodi Tutty statistics class multi-year experiences education Xochitl de la Piedad implementation Nicola Westberry Judith Lyons Garcia Ben Cleland Sue McNaughton Christopher Helen Gaeta Allan Jennie Billot 1225 - 1315 LUNCH OCEANIA (Level 3) 1250 - 1315 CAMPUS REPRESENTATIVE MEETING – ‘ascilite champion’ ANGUS ROOMS 1 & 2 (Telstra Clear Centre, Level 3) 1320 - 1350 INVITED SPEAKER – To be or not to be? Student Engagement and Use of Digital Technologies in Blended Learning Environments Norm Vaughan Mount Royal University , Calgary, Alberta CANADA 1350 - 1355 HOUSEKEEPING SPONSORS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Echo 360 SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) Page 27 1400 - 1510 SESSION 4.1 SESSION 4.2 SESSION 4.3 SESSION 4.4 SESSION 4.5 SESSION 4.6 SESSION 4.7 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 1400 – 1425 *Analytics and *Exploring the Facilitating The changing role of Can Digital Natives The Go/No Go Humanizing e- FULL PAPERS Complexity: Learning relationship between motivation through learned bodies and Level-Up in a Association Task as a lecturers and and leading for the afforded learning support for personal membership Gamified New Technology for engaging online future tasks and learning agency – meeting organisations: some Curriculum? Teaching Anti- Writing students Colin Beer benefits in 3D virtual the future challenge UK experiences Penny de Byl Prejudice via dialogic David Jones learning Maggie Hartnett John Slater Leah Kaufmann video Damien Clark environments Maren Deepwell Martin Andrew Barney Dalgarno Mark J.W. Lee 1430 – 1447 *Pigeon pecks and Designing and Early identification of The Sloan Taming the Devil: A Leading by Example: Designing an CONCISE PAPERS mouse clicks: Putting recording machinima students at risk of Consortium: A Game-Based The start of a Online Activity the learning back to illustrate failing vibrant professional Approach to journey towards for Collaborative into learning professional practice John Milne community for Teaching transformation of Language analytics scenarios Lynn M Jeffrey digital educators Immunology teaching practice in Learning Jason Lodge Yvonne Masters Gordon Suddaby Bruce Chaloux Scott Nankervis the online space Mauricio Melinda Lewis (presented by Sue Andrew Higgins Grant Meredith Elaine Huber Marrone Gregory and Barney Peter Vamplew Nina Scarlet An Lilia Mantai Dargano) Fotinatos Marika Kalyuga 1450 – 1507 Twitter Learning The creation of a 3D Using Mobile Creating a Culture Impacts of Moving down An innovative CONCISE PAPERS Analytics in R immersive, Learning to Facilitate for Critical and Scheduling Stream: Using e- approach to Lyndon Walker interactive space for Early Engagement Situated Technology Algorithms on technology to facilitate critical experiential learning: Paul Goldacre Use Through Resource Availability enhance social work thinking and VirtualPREX Effective Learning David Lowe field education reflective Vicki Knox Design Kathryn Hay learning in (presented by Sue Anne Wheeler prescribing and Gregory) (Presented by Panos therapeutics e- Vachopoulos) learning Sandy Cope Santosh Khanal Yeqin Zuo 1510 - 1537 AFTERNOON REFRESHMENTS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 1540 – 1620 SESSION 5.1 SESSION 5.2 SESSION 5.3 SESSION 5.4 SESSION 5.5 SESSION 5.6 SESSION 5.7 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 1540 – 1605 Breaking the Rules: What's the risk of Addressing time Identifying key Thinking, Student views on MUVE-ing pre-service FULL PAPERS Supporting Learning disease? Software and curriculum actors for researching and how role-playing in teachers into the Page 28 and Teaching Technology tools to support learning concepts of constraints to encourage the use technology adoption in higher living in virtual professional a virtual hospital is distinctively future Frances Quinn Innovations risk perception and of ICT for teaching: education: A social development relevant to medical Helen Doyle Philip Uys assessment A comparative network approach community of education Terry Lyons Cathy Gunn Daan Vink, Naomi case study in Negin Mirriahi practice Swee-Kin Loke (Presented by Helen Cogger, Terry Singapore Shane Dawson Diana Ayling Phil Blyth Doyle) Walshe, Petra Wenli Chen, Debra Hoven Hazel Owen Judith Swan Muellner, Marta Cheryl Lee, Ashley Edward Flagg Martinez, Lesley Tan, Wenting Xie Stringer, Mark Burgman 1610 – 1627 Leading the Sustainable future for e-Learning An online The Design and Virtual Worlds: Not The affordances of web CONCISE PAPERS evaluation of learning in a climate Lecturer community Development of a the final frontier for conferences in online institutional online of change: Mobile Workload: working designed to suite of online games-based pre-service learning apps, social media, smarter or working support future professional nursing education mathematics environments for and crisis informatics harder? makers in development Kylie Turville education quality during emergencies Stephen Bright educational resources for Grant Meredith Brett Stephenson enhancement in and disasters reform academic staff: Dr Phil Smith Jillian Downing times of change Julie Willems Tania Broadley Framing the project Maree Gosper , I. (presented by Sue Dave Snell Solomonides, D. Ledger) Jane Terrell Holt, S Palmer, J Munro, M Sankey, M Hicks, G Allan, R. Hollenbeck 1630 – 1730 SYMPOSIUM 2.1 SYMPOSIUM 2.2 SYMPOSIUM 2.3 SYMPOSIUM 2.4 SYMPOSIUM 2.5 SYMPOSIUM 2.6 SYMPOSIUM 2.7 CONCISE / SYMPOSIUM Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 1630 - 1730 What’s the Big Idea Meeting the DeHub: Examples Remote Assisting Student Continuance theory Assessment, Physical 2012? The Flipped Challenges of of some Projects Laboratories: Learning Through and teacher Education and Mobile Lecture Sustainable Learning and Models for Sharing Resources Professional education Learning Elizabeth Greener Support Future and Sharing Development: The Noeline Wright Margot Bowes Roger Cook Wai-Leng Wong Collaboration Expertise Affect of Website Warren Patterson Christine Newman Michael Griffith Victor Minichiello David Lowe Materials and Real Implementation of Lawrence May Diana Simmons Rosalind James World Science on the eLearning Simon Smith Peter Albion Teacher Lifecycle Model to Paula Williams Mark Brown Development Develop Reflection Page 29 Bobby Harreveld Mike Keppell Lisa van Raalte (Presented by Chris Campbell) Rachel Boulay in Pre-Service Teachers Pauline Roberts Dorit Maor 1900 - LATE ascilite 2012 CONFERENCE DINNER Capital of Cool – Downtown in Wellywood ascilite AWARD PRESENTATIONS Sponsored by JPL Media Implementing a learner response system in one university Chris Campbell AMORA HOTEL 170 Wakefield Street, Wellington Page 30 PROGRAMME | WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2012 0830 - 0915 REGISTRATION & INFORMATION DESK OPENS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 0915 - 0930 WELCOME TO THE DAY AND HOUSEKEEPING Mark Brown ascilite 2012 Convenor 0930 – 1000 INVITED SPEAKERS - Decentralising Professional Development for Mobile Learning Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson The University of New South Wales AUSTRALIA 1000 - 1010 SPONSOR PRESENTATION PEARSON SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1015- 1045 SESSION 6.1 SESSION 6.2 SESSION 6.3 SESSION 6.4 SESSION 6.5 SESSION 6.6 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 1015 – 1042 Teaching Aboriginal A design-based Mobilising authentic "Wherever, whenever" Following the Sun: Learning for the Future: Online student FULL PAPERS Culture Online research approach learning: learning in Medicine: Sustainable conferencing evaluation of generic and context- Cat Kutay implementing a Understanding the Evaluation of an in a climate of change specific library skills tutorial Deidre Howard- palette of educational educational interactive mobile Angela Murphy Ruth Billany Wagner Janet Mooney technologies to foster 21 st century skills affordances of the iPad James Oldfield case-based project Marianna Koulias Shirley Reushle Bernadette Royal Isabelle Lys (presented by Lynette Janette Kruger Jan Herrington Riley) 1045 - 1112 MORNING REFRESHMENTS OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) 1115- 1245 SESSION 7.1 SESSION 7.2 SESSION 7.3 SESSION 7.4 SESSION 7.5 SESSION 7.6 WORKSHOP 1.1 Soundings Theatre Icon Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Angus 2 Rangimarie 1 1115– 1140 A 2010 Snapshot of A blended approach to Improving learners' Fitting learning into Authentic learning and Ready for m- apple workshop FULL PAPERS Educational Canadian First Nations self-efficacy in learner- life: Language Web 2.0 - Completing the learning? Access Technology use by CSU education: The controlled online students' perspectives equation to mobile devices It’s all about the students Sunchild e-learning learning environment: on benefits of using Vickel Narayan by tertiary content. Mobile Jacqueline Tinkler community a correlational study mobile apps Chris Lovegrove students studying Learning with Philip Uys Norman Vaughan Widchaporn Caroline Steel Japanese iPad Barney Dalgarno Taipjutorus Yasuhisa Stephen Lauren Carlson Sally Hansen Watanabe Atherton Andrea Crampton Mark Brown This session will 1145 -1202 Course Team Mobile learning, Responding to Finding a Voice: Treading carefully in the Using Online give you Page 31 CONCISE PAPERS 1205 - 1222 CONCISE PAPERS 1225 – 1242 CONCISE PAPERS Symposia: A useful launch pad for exploring course leadership? Carole Hunter (presented by Brad Edlington) *A Brave New World: introducing the planets online Natalie Spence Dean Groom Orsola DeMarco Online learning in ACS Education: Using online learning tools in professional education Asheley Jones Charlynn Miller exploring the possibilities for rangatahi Travis Timoko Bridging the digital divide: bringing e- literacy skills to incarcerated students Helen Farley Angela Murphy Tasman Bedford Designing to close the gap Alison Reedy diversification: Preparing naïve learners for university study using Time Budgets Diana Quinn Bruce Wedding Online learning preferences: revealing assumptions and working with difference Sue Tickner Tony Hunt *Living the new normal: Reflections on the experiences of first-time distance learners Mark Brown, Mike Keppell, Helen Hughes, Tash Hard, Sandi Shillington & Liz Smith Learning pronunciation in a second language using a dedicated speech technology Thomas Kerr Implications of the non-traditional student becoming the traditional Lorraine Fleckhammer Helene Richardson Applying a Reverse Induction Process for Improved Definition of Higher Education Technology-supported Research Projects Joanne Doyle Helen Farley Stalk Space: Social Media and Risk Carolyn Woodley Scott Beattie The Sapphire Vortex: Blending virtual world machinima with real world commentary for effective learning of criminal law Des Butler (presented by Anne Matthew) Understanding novice programmers: their perceptions and motivations Philip Smith, Kylie Turville, Grant Meredith, Kathleen Keogh Environments to Provoke Student Enquiry Fiona Nicolson Mitch Parsell How to get your work published in AJET: Meet the new editorial team AJET Editors background to trends in mobile learning. Attendees are encouraged to bring their mobile devices to participate in this workshop. 1245- 1325 L U N C H O C E A N I A ( L E V E L 3 ) 1330 - 1430 KEYNOTE SPEAKER – An Unexpected Journey: Changing hearts and minds in the Cloud Professor Beverley Oliver Deakin University AUSTRALIA SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1430 – 1440 PRESENTATION OF SPONSOR AWARDS SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1440 - 1445 CONFERENCE REFLECTIONS – Dr Peter Coolbear (Ako Aotearoa) SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) 1445 - 1500 GUEST SPEAKER - Shaping The Digital Future Hon Steve Maharey - Vice-Chancellor, Massey University, New Zealand SOUNDINGS THEATRE (Level 2) (overflow will be streamed into ICON) Page 48 ascilite2012 SPEAKER ABSTRACTS IN PROGRAMME ORDER SESSION 1 | 1100 – 11:25 MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 1.1 SESSION 1.2 Soundings Theatre Icon Sustaining new approaches to learning and teaching with technology – more than just a Wicked Problem Janet Buchan The basic premise of the 2012 Ascilite Conference theme is that; ‗what happened in the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future‘. However, if we do not learn from what happened in the past, it may well be a reliable guide to an unsustainable future. In the face of constant change, in order for higher education institutions to achieve the goal of creating sustainable approaches to new models and learning and teaching with technology a fundamental paradigm shift in management approaches is required. To address this, an interdisciplinary focus is introduced and two key concepts from environmental management: Wicked Problems and adaptive management are applied to the higher education environment. Using evidence- based practice these aspects have been researched in-depth in a large, mixed-mode university. Keywords: learning environment, educational management, change management, wicked problems, adaptive management, sustainability LMS Encounters: Promises and Realities – e-Learning for Sustainable Futures? Reem Al-Mahmood Although there are radical opportunities afforded by e-learning technologies (Hemmi, Bayne & Land, 2009), digital Learning Management Systems (LMSs) can be risky and ―disorienting spaces‖ for participants (Bayne & Ross, 2007) even though they often replicate traditional rituals and forms of university bricks and mortar teaching spaces. Whilst we need e-platform standards, we also need flexibility and diversity to avoid replicating sameness in LMS design and implementation. In any educational platform selection, there are always risks and uncertainties, but if we embrace informed, sustainable and ecological design, we can evolve beyond purely market-driven agendas towards pedagogical designs that have a ―learning-centric university mission‖ (Ellis & Goodyear, 2010, p. 153). This paper juxtaposes LMS discourses in theory with participant LMS experiences in practice. Emergent tensions of (hyper)textualising the university are discussed with/against neoliberal agendas of the (dis)embodied individual. At the forefront of our research agendas, we need to move beyond espoused e-learning technology promises to consider participant realities to inform (e)learning designs and choices, whilst experimenting with how to create sustainable learning/knowledge spaces for sustainable (e)learning futures. SESSION 1.3 SESSION 1.4 Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Designing evaluation and research into educational initiatives: the Global Perspectives Programme Jo-Anne Kelder, Juliette Sondermeyer , Rob Phillips & Anne Rothwell We describe the planning for evaluation research using a curriculum initiative project as a case study. The project was to design a generic Global Perspectives (GP) learning program to embed in first year units of study offered by the Faculty of Health Science. The pilot phase of the GP program delivery was used to explore and define an educational evaluation research (EER) plan that addresses, 1) the GP program design; 2) its implementation and ongoing refinement and, 3) the management of the project. The GP program Teachers, and their opinions, matter: Analysing staff perceptions of the effectiveness of online discussion forums Hazel Jones This paper analyses a recent survey on staff perceptions of the effectiveness of discussion forums in a small private institution. The responses will inform future opportunities and strategies for professional development and student support within the College; setting of expectations and benchmarks for staff and students and increasing awareness of these as well as curriculum and learning design. The overall aim of the research is implementing practices that will be sustainable and address current challenges within the College of improving student retention, engagement and Page 53 SESSION 1 | 1200 - 1225 MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 1.1 SESSION 1.2 Soundings Theatre Icon Do Open Educational Resources represent additional challenges or advantages to the current climate of change in the Australian higher education sector? Carina Boss, Mark Brown, David Bull This paper briefly reports on a number of Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in Australia, including some government programs and funding, then explores several of the challenges and advantages of adopting OER at institutional and individual (educators and learners) levels. This paper also discusses some of the preliminary findings of a centrally funded research project that investigates the state of play of OER in Australia. This project surveyed the higher education sector and interviewed key stakeholders. According to participants, the use of OER has the potential to lead to new pedagogical practices, can improve the quality of educational learning materials, and promote social inclusion across the Australian higher educational sector. However, there are still challenges to be overcome such as current academic culture, lack of awareness and issues related to finding quality materials. The above could represent additional challenges to the current climate of change faced by the higher educational sector in Australia. Keywords: open educational resources, advantages and challenges, OER in Australia. A Pedagogical Evaluation of Moodle Extensions Margo McNeill (Presented by Kathleen Curtis) Matt Bower, John Hedberg There has been a shift by the Australasian tertiary education sector towards open source Learning Management Systems (LMSs), in part due to the potential for extending and tailoring the systems using community sourced plugins. This paper reports on a comprehensive and systematic evaluation of Moodle extensions based on a six- month cross-faculty project conducted at Macquarie University. Findings included that despite over several hundred plugins and patches being uploaded to the Moodle Community website, the reference group only deemed nine of these as suitable for extending the functionality of the University LMS. The paper also describes the process and instruments that were utilised to evaluate the extensions themselves, which could be of interest to others making decisions about how best to balance the flexibility afforded by open source environment with extensibility within the constraints of complex and diverse institutional needs. Keywords: Evaluation, Moodle, Extensions, Plugins, Learning Management System SESSION 1.3 SESSION 1.4 Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie2 *Data mining interactions in a 3D immersive environment for real-time feedback during simulated surgery Gregor Kennedy, Ioanna Ioannou, Yun Zhou James Bailey, Stephen O’Leary The analysis and use of data generated by students‘ interactions with learning systems or programs – learning analytics – has recently gained widespread attention in the educational technology community. Part of the reason for this interest is based on the potential of learning analytic techniques such as data mining to find hidden patterns in students‘ online interactions that can be meaningfully interpreted and then fed back to students in a way that supports their learning. In this paper we present an investigation of how the digital data records of students‘ interactions within an immersive 3D environment can be mined, modeled and analysed in real-time, to provide formative feedback to students as they complete simulated Developing a moderation community of practice Brian Von Konsky, Annette Watkins, Tania Broadley This paper reports on a study to evaluate technology- based processes for assessment moderation. The aim was to evaluate standard features found in an institutional Learning Management System, and their compatibility with the values and practices of a large teaching team. The process used an online discussion board forum for tutors, the paring of more experienced tutors with those new to the process, and further meetings conducted in both face-to-face and web conferencing environments. Online rubrics were used for assessing student work and the provision of feedback. A focus group conducted after marking was concluded and the analysis of the discussion board forum demonstrated a strong community of practice with a shared understanding of assessment requirements. Keywords: discussion board, rubric, assessment, U1007825 Highlight Page 59 SESSION 2 | 1455 - 1515 MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 2.1 SESSION 2.2 Soundings Theatre Icon *Naming and measuring the elephants: sustainable change for blended learning Carol Russell Educational development work to replace traditional campus university teaching with more innovative blended learning activities usually involves articulating and questioning assumptions about disciplinary learning. But the assumptions built into the discipline and institutional organizational systems for managing study times and staff workload planning can block innovation. Several previous projects have established that intensive team workshops over 2-3 days, involving support staff working with academics to produce real outputs, can build sustainable capacity for curriculum innovation within academic units. This paper describes current work in one university that makes use of disciplinary curriculum mapping and explicit planning of academic and student workload in the educational design activity. Two pilots in different disciplines are being used to develop a model that can be applied and contextualized as part of a broader sustainable blended learning strategy. Keywords: blended learning; teaching workload; student workload. Google Analytics as a tool in the development of e-learning artefacts: A case study Damon Ellis The design, development, and evaluation of e- learning artefacts requires extensive and potentially time-consuming evidence collection in order to verify that the artefact is fulfilling its educational goals. There is a need for inexpensive tools that can facilitate the quantitative portion of this evidence base. This paper explores the use of Google Analytics in this capacity. The needs analysis, design, testing, embedding, and evaluation of APA Interactive – an e-learning artefact targeting students at Massey University – serves as a case study, demonstrating how analytics data can inform all stages in the creation of web-based educational resources. Keywords: online learning; evidence-based practice; e-learning artefacts SESSION 2.3 SESSION 2.4 Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie2 The digital tutor: Accepting to lose control and make mistakes Rachel Panckhurst Pilot studies using online social networks within a French University postgraduate course were conducted over a five-year period in order to explore and evaluate the relative advantages and challenges of such tools for tertiary education. Students were following a curriculum as part of a second-year predominantly off-campus Master‘s degree. In this paper, after having defined pedagogical eLearning exchange networks (eLENs), and how they can be implemented by using social learning objects, the latest case study analysis is focused on providing solutions for effective tutoring in the digital era. Keywords: educational paradigms, social networks, collaborative learning, mediated discourse. Distance learners' use of non-institutional social media to augment and enhance their learning experience Trish Andrews, Belinda Tynan, Kendra Backstrom This paper reports on initial data elicited from two related studies which draw on the learner voice in relation to experiences of distance learners in their use of social media in higher education contexts across four universities. Data from these studies suggest that the wide availability, accessibility and affordances of social media create alternative learning options for some distance learners. The studies reported here draw upon affordance theory and identify that some distant learners are actively and deliberately using popular, non-institutional social media tools to augment and extend their learning experiences. This brief paper discusses emerging findings and the possible implications of these findings for the sector. Keywords: Distance learners, social media, affordances, higher education U1007825 Highlight Page 61 SESSION 2 | 1545 - 1645 MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 2.8 SESSION 2.9 Soundings Theatre Icon A framework for evaluating blended learning Michael Smythe Blended learning for some is the future of education itself (Brown & Diaz, 2010). However blended learning lacks a coherent body of research that unequivocally demonstrates learning benefits over traditional modes of instruction. Yet there is a growing volume of evidence to support the view that blended learning can result in improvements in student learning outcomes and enhance student satisfaction (Dziuban, Hartman, Cavanagh & Moskal, 2011; Garrison & Vaughan, 2008; Graham, 2006; Sharpe, Benfield, Roberts & Francis, 2006; Vaughan, 2007). The means to evaluate its effectiveness is frequently lacking since there are a relatively limited range of tools and methods that support staff in designing blended learning curricula. This paper describes one component of a possible framework for evaluating blended learning – the use of a course design rubric. A new rubric is outlined that attempts to represent a range of good practice in blended learning design derived from the literature and evidence-based research. Keywords: blended learning, quality evaluation, rubric. Student engagement in blended learning: A toolkit for teachers Lynn Jeffrey, John Milne & Andrew Higgins Official Launch of the Toolkit funded by Ako Aotearoa through that National Project Fund (2009) Overall, the literature highlights considerable reluctance among academics to engage with online learning. In this study teachers reported that a lack of time for development and infrastructural support were significant inhibitors to developing suitable online experiences. The online toolkit presented includes, strategies, examples and tools that busy teachers can use to enhance their blended learning courses. It works as a wiki so that teachers can share their own ideas, suggestions and tools with other teachers. The toolkit is based on ten essential student engagement strategies, identified in the study, that have particular potency at critical stages of the semester. These are presented in a three- stage framework that includes: (i) capturing engagement, (ii) maintaining engagement, and (iii) re-engaging those who have either never engaged or become dis-engaged. Promoting engagement and interaction through a technology supported learning activity Sue Whale Josie Fisher Fredy-Roberto Valenzuela In this paper we describe a technology supported learning activity that was developed, implemented and evaluated in a postgraduate, online unit of study offered by the University of New England in 2011. A learner analysis and an analysis of the learning outcomes of the unit informed the development of this activity. The online activity was created within a Wiki and students completed it in the first few weeks of the teaching period. This design was intended to build social presence by encouraging ongoing interaction and engagement in the unit. A constructivist approach was utilised to facilitate this authentic activity in line with theories for learning futures. The activity provided scaffolding for subsequent assessment tasks in the unit. Students‘ outcomes and their feedback on the activity suggested it was successful in achieving the intended goals. Keywords: Engagement, interaction, learning futures, lifelong learning, online activity, social presence Engaging higher education students via digital curation Amy Antonio, Neil Martin, Adrian Stagg The emergence and adoption of freely available digital curation tools has shown a public desire to locate, evaluate and organise web content into manageable, shareable collections. These tools occupy a unique niche, often overlapping with other web tools. This necessitates a clear definition of tools laying claim to this space and suggestion and direction for the use of digital curation to build student engagement. A definition is suggested, as well as a discussion on the emotional design principles and how they build sustained engagement with users. Keywords: digital curation, digital literacy, information literacy, student engagement, higher education Evolution of a Higher Ed Curriculum Based Ecosystem Chris Cheers In a Higher Education context learning is an individual experience within a learning community. Such a community no longer needs to be bound by U1007825 Highlight Page 67 SESSION 3 | 11:00 - 11:25 TUESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 3.1 SESSION 3.2 Soundings Theatre Icon *Use of media-rich real-time collaboration tools for learning and teaching in Australian and New Zealand universities Matt Bower, Mark J.W. Lee, Jacqueline Kenney, Paula de Barba, (presented by Gregor Kennedy & Barney Dalgarno, Mark Lee and Jacqueline Kenney) This paper provides an overview of media-rich real-time collaboration tool use for learning and teaching in Australian and New Zealand universities. These tools, which include video conferencing tools, web conferencing tools and virtual worlds, afford students and teachers the ability to synchronously represent concepts, and enable them to interact with one another to negotiate meaning and develop a sense of connectedness. A survey of 750 higher educators revealed that while desktop video conferencing and web conferencing use display an upward trend, virtual worlds are being used by substantially fewer educators, and have recently begun to experience a decline in usage. There are four major web conferencing products being used, whereas desktop video conferencing and virtual worlds are each being dominated by a single product. The ‗best‘ uses of each technology as perceived by respondents with experience in a range of tools are examined, before the paper concludes with a discussion of implications for tertiary learning and teaching, along with an outline of the authors‘ future plans. Keywords: video conferencing, web conferencing, virtual worlds, rich media, synchronous New approaches: Embedding on-line interactive scenarios as core course components for international biosecurity practitioner training Terry Stewart, Joanna S. McKenzie, Willem D. Vink Interactive scenarios were used in an on-line international Masters degree programme for veterinary and public health professionals launched in 2010. For two courses in the programme, students were required to play the role of a senior advisor, analyzing data, determine the cause of an unfolding disease outbreak and critiquing recommendations. The scenario was presented in six episodes. Each episode was designed to be completed in one sitting and these also contained the history of previous episodes. On-line forums were used for group activities which included a vote on the diagnosis. Students were also required to give a critique of the diagnosis and solution proposed in the scenario. A student survey rated the use of the scenario-based approach highly with motivation and engagement being the most obvious benefits. This paper illustrates how an interactive scenario can deliver student outcomes when be embedded at the very core of a course. Keywords: interactive scenarios, case-based learning, scenario-based learning, course design, SBL interactive, biosecurity training, epidemics, health professional training, authentic learning SESSION 3.3 SESSION 3.4 Rangimarie 1 Rangimarie 2 Going mobile: Each small change requires another Peter Albion, Romina Jamieson-Proctor, Petrea Redmond, Kevin Larkin, Andrew Maxwell Students are seeking flexible study opportunities. Smartphones have potential to support learning at times and places chosen by learners but their introduction presents challenges in negotiating the changes in the behaviour of learners and in the materials and activities provided by university courses. This project, funded by DEHub in two Queensland universities, explored how students used mobile devices with many characteristics of smartphones. This paper reports on the first phase that investigated the changes required to facilitate access to course Game-like digital training tools - do information- integration skills transfer from static to dynamic interfaces? Lisa Wise, Gregor McLean, Benedict Williams This paper explores the principles of skill acquisition and training transfer within the context of game-like digital training tools, expanding on previous research using an instrument scanning task in novice versus experienced pilots. While previous work demonstrated a game-like training tool is capable of developing high levels of performance within the game environment, initial findings suggest the likelihood of practical transfer to a real world environment is strongly dependent on the nature of the cognitive and perceptual skills developed. This paper investigates whether instrument scanning skills developed within a static training task transfer U1007825 Highlight Page 68 materials and activities using the devices. Data have been viewed through the lens of activity theory. The results confirmed the need for developing skills and managing expectations of learners and academics and for adjustments to design of course materials and delivery systems to facilitate access. Keywords: mlearning, activity theory, teacher education, smartphone, iPod Touch, distance education, online education to a more dynamic video-based task. Despite strong performance within the static environment, preliminary data suggest a lesser degree of transfer when more dynamic perceptual skills are targeted. Findings are discussed broadly in terms of the principles of skill acquisition and training transfer, and how these principles may apply to game-like digital training tools. Keywords: Training Games, Training Transfer, Skilled Performance, Instrument Scanning. SESSION 3.5 SESSION 3.6 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Heutagogy and mobile social media: post Web 2.0 pedagogy Thomas Cochrane, Laurent Antonczak, Averill Gordon, Helen Sissons, Andrew Withell O‘Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 seven years ago (O'Reilly, 2005), yet in the past seven years we have seen limited evidence of wide-spread impact of Web 2.0 on traditional higher education pedagogy. Seven years on, the social media landscape has changed and today‘s school-leaving students are entering higher education within an increasingly post Web 2.0 society that is predominantly characterised by engagement with mobile social media. We argue that there is a need for higher education to engage with new pedagogies that are appropriate for an emerging post Web 2.0 society. We present a sustainable framework for preparing lecturers to engage with the challenge of post Web 2.0 pedagogies by experiencing the potential of mobile social media within authentic communities of practice. Keywords: heutagogy, mlearning, Web 2.0, communities of practice, professional development Sustainable learning through formative online assessment: using quizzes to maintain engagement Lynette Nagel, Lanise van Eck Due to pressure to deliver more Chartered Accountants, the pass-rate of first-year accounting students had to increase. Students who did not take accounting at school particularly needed extra tuition and support to reach the required standard. Poor success rates could be attributed to insufficient theoretical learning and poor time management characterized by cramming before tests. The intervention that aimed to redress those problems was weekly online quizzes that students could complete in their own time that contained feedback and easily understood explanations. In order to create and sustain an adequate database of suitable questions, the tutors who facilitated additional work sessions and understood the pitfalls in the theory, helped the lecturers to compile the questions and participated in quality control. Quizzes and feedback helped students to pace themselves, understand the terms and prepare for tests. The pass-rate increased from 57 to 75% Keywords: Financial Accounting, online quizzes, feedback, tutors SESSION 3.7 Angus 2 This session involves a brief panel discussion which follows up on ―The Great Debate‖ concerning the rapid growth of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education. Several panel members from the earlier debate in the main conference programme will elaborate on their views and discuss the impact the MOOC movement is likely to have on higher education—for better and worse. Attendance in person is by invitation only as the panel discussion primarily targets an online audience using Blackboard Collaborate. All ascilite conference delegates will be able to listen to and participate in the panel discussion through Collaborate. Page 90 set of mobile authentic learning principles. The study is informed by the theories of authentic learning, cognitive tools and mobile learning supported by the educational affordances of the iPad. Design-based research methodology will be employed to ensure the rigor of the study through two iterations of experimentation with a first year tertiary information systems for business course. Keywords: mobile learning, authentic learning, cognitive tools, iPads students and quantitative analysis of the data was performed. Results indicated that whilst students liked the mobile cases, they did not utilise them as mobile resources as anticipated. Some differences were also revealed between the digital immigrants‘ and digital natives‘ interactions with the case scenarios, as well as some variations between male and female students. Keywords: mobile learning, case-based elearning scenarios SESSION 6.5 SESSION 6.6 Rangimarie 3 Angus 1 Following the Sun: Sustainable conferencing in a climate of change Angela Murphy, Shirley Reushle This paper reports on a new initiative in online conferencing that has resulted from the collaboration between three tertiary institutions on three continents and across three time zones. The paper describes the role of the Follow the Sun Online Learning Festival in revitalising professional online learning and networking events in a similar manner to the way in which e-learning revitalised tertiary education. The paper also discusses the evaluation of online conferences and introduces the new learning methodology as an alternative method for evaluating online conferences. The methodology used to evaluate the Follow the Sun Learning Festival is discussed and some preliminary findings are shared. Initial results suggest that online learning events have the potential to engage and connect professional peers and facilitators across traditional geographical boundaries. The potential for the Follow the Sun conference to result in new learning is however still unresolved. Keywords: online conferencing, collaboration, evaluation, new learning Learning for the Future: Online student evaluation of generic and context-specific library skills tutorial Ruth Billany, Bernadette Royal, Isabelle Lys This paper reports on part of a larger project stimulated by two major challenges facing higher education in the twenty-first century; massification and the citizenisation of academies. This empirical study reports on the use of emergent technologies, in the acquisition of information, for two diverse cohort of students enrolled in two scientific subjects (n=48). A generic online library skills tutorial (LST) in one subject is compared to an embedded virtual, context- specific LST in another. Student attitudinal evaluation, both affective and cognitive, was measured by an 18-item online survey. Quantitative analysis reveals little difference between the groups except for individual items. However, the rich qualia show a ten-fold difference which adds to a body of knowledge. As consumers, the students have been valued and voiced their demands. Lecturers and librarians need to develop a creative and emergent, reciprocal non-linear mechanism to build on this trajectory and plan a future for learning. Keywords: acquisition of information, library skills tutorial, online student evaluation U1007825 Highlight Page 95 SESSION 7 | 1205 - 1225 WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 7.1 SESSION 7.2 Soundings Theatre Icon *A Brave New World: introducing the planets online Natalie Spence, Dean Groom, Orsola DeMarco There are numerous challenges facing a class at university: limited access to tutorial rooms, fewer tutors and low student attendance in traditional lectures. A further challenge in science is the need to facilitate the learning—and develop the science literacy—of non-science majors, who in the case of this paper elect to study astronomy as part of their academic program. On moving a class online, the challenge includes finding, and becoming confident in using, effective methods and tools. This paper traces a process of review and collaboration between an educational development team and faculty academics to reconfigure an introductory astronomy unit. Part of the approach is to engage students using concept mapping to underpin enquiry-driven pedagogy using the university‘s learning management system. Keywords: concept maps, peer instruction, educational design, astronomy, science education. Bridging the digital divide: bringing e-literacy skills to incarcerated students Helen Farley, Angela Murphy, Tasman Bedford Incarcerated students face a number of additional challenges to those faced by most other students studying at a distance. Lack of internet access is especially problematic for those studying in a sector that is increasingly characterised by online course offerings. This paper reports on a trial project that will attempt to address the digital challenges that hinder access to higher education by incarcerated students, and to provide them with inclusive learning experiences. The trial utilises Stand-Alone Moodle (SAM) and eBook readers with a small sample of incarcerated students participating in the Tertiary Preparation Program (TPP) at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). This project potentially addresses the digital divide experienced by incarcerated students as compared to the general student population. It is anticipated that students will participate in learning experiences more closely related to those experienced by students who study in online environments, that and they will acquire relevant e-literacy and e-research skills. Keywords: digital inclusion; distance learning; higher education; prisons; Moodle; eReaders SESSION 7.3 SESSION 7.4 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 Online learning preferences: revealing assumptions and working with difference Sue Tickner, Tony Hunt This paper describes a trial of an online survey that was intended to reveal the online learning preferences of students and staff at a Faculty of Education, and our conclusions to date about the usefulness of the tool and the results it revealed. As part of a wider work in progress, the trial arose from our desire to better understand the learning needs of students from diverse cultures and how best to support online and blended students and teachers in increasingly global communities of learning. Our conclusions to date do not enable us to validate the cultural dimensions of learning on which the survey was based, but they do lead us to believe there is value in using the instrument to reveal and explore difference in online learning preferences. Keywords: Online learning preferences; cultural dimensions Implications of the non-traditional student becoming the traditional Lorraine Fleckhammer, Helene Richardson The challenge that the new digital technologies brings to education today is in the shift to online education. Online education, as delivered through Open Universities Australia, is open access, and affords entry into Higher Education for many non- traditional students who are much more diverse in terms of academic skills than traditional-entry students. The aim of this study was to improve academic writing skills, specifically in the correct use of APA formatting for psychology research reports. A ‗low-stakes‘ assessment task worth 5% replaced optional referencing, formatting and report writing exercises. The results found no improvement in student reports (i.e., no increase in assignment grades) in the intervention year compared to three other years where the tasks were optional. Keywords: non-traditional student, online education, psychology, open-access U1007825 Highlight Page 97 SESSION 7 | 1225 - 1245 WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2012 SESSION 7.1 SESSION 7.2 Soundings Theatre Icon Online learning in ACS Education: Using online learning tools in professional education Asheley Jones, Charlynn Miller Following the theme of ―Learning for the Future‖, this paper investigates the use of a number of online tools that enhance learning within the Professional Year Program offered by ACSEducation. Supported by the literature on the use of these tools for learning and assessment, the use of online tools has provided engaging and relevant learning for students undertaking ACS programs. This paper explains the choice of tools and how they are applied to ensure the best outcome for the learners. Current research being undertaken to investigate the perceptions of students toward the use of these tools is discussed. Future research into the improvement in the use and efficacy of the tools into the future, and the methods planned for this research is also detailed along with relevant supporting literature. Keywords: ACS, Moodle, Mahara, e-Portfolio, online learning, online assessment, professional education. Designing to close the gap Alison Reedy This paper reports on the initial phase of the development of a large scale online design and implementation project, known as the ACIKE Online Unit Development Project, for the Australian Centre of Indigenous Knowledges and Education (ACIKE). The project is underpinned by a design-based research framework and encompasses the design, development and staged delivery of 81 units across seven higher education undergraduate and post- graduate courses. The rationale underpinning the project is to promote Indigenous learners‘ participation and success in higher education, with a particular focus on the online environment, whilst providing opportunities for all students to develop the skills and knowledge to work cross-culturally in a learning environment focused on building Indigenous cultural competence. Keywords: design-based research, educational design, Indigenous, higher education, templates. SESSION 7.3 SESSION 7.4 Rangimarie 2 Rangimarie 3 *Living the new normal: Reflections on the experiences of first-time distance learners Mark Brown, Mike Keppell, Helen Hughes, Tash Hard, Sandi Shillington & Liz Smith Significant challenges face traditional distance education. The conventional ‗pack and post‘ model of distance education is under serious threat along with the performance of distance education providers as governments and funding bodies increasingly scrutinize retention, progression and completion rates. The objective of the current study was to contribute to the enhancement of services and resources available for first-time distance learners in the future. The study was framed around Design-based Research involving a mixed method approach over three phases. The third phase was the major component of the study, which involved gathering the lived experiences of 20 first-time distance learners, in their own words, using weekly video diaries for data collection. The research proposed seven key takeaways, alongside seven guiding principles aimed at distance education providers wanting to enhance the success of distance learners in the future. Keywords: Distance learners, retention, student Applying a Reverse Induction Process for Improved Definition of Higher Education Technology-supported Research Projects Joanne Doyle, Helen Farley, Scoping out the detail of a Higher Education research project can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience. The excitement of a research project is frequently stifled by the tedious process of mapping out project activities, estimating required resources and developing project schedules. Reverse induction provides a fresh approach to defining technology-supported research projects. In much the same way as new product development must be guided by an understanding of customer needs, reverse induction focuses on research outcomes before formulating research aims. Using a systematic process of backward reasoning, researchers can define a project concept in a structured and efficient manner. There is significant potential for reverse induction to deliver time and cost savings in a complex and challenging Higher Education environment. Keywords: project management, technology, learning U1007825 Highlight U1007825 Highlight Page 99 ascilite2012 POSTER ABSTRACTS MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER | 1745 – 1845 | OCEANIA (LEVEL 3) POSTER 1 POSTER 2 POSTER 3 POSTER 4 Bridging Digital Divides in the Learning Process: Challenges of Integrating ICTs in Learning. Janak Adhikari and David Parsons Massey University This study is investigating the phenomenon of digital divides, in the context of integrating one-to- one ICTs into the learning process. For this purpose, we are studying a ‗bring your own device‘ (BYOD) initiative by a New Zealand School. This poster discusses the background and agenda of the study, as well as some of the initial findings from an analysis of the baseline data. Keywords: ICT integration, digital divide, learning outcomes Follow me! Increasing participation in online conferences Amy Antonio Australian Digital Futures Institute University of Southern Queensland There have been mixed reviews about the use of Twitter for increasing interaction during online conferences. Social media platforms such as Twitter have the potential to satisfy a perceived need for networking and communication opportunities that are commensurate with the face-to-face environment but generally lacking in the online world. However, a reluctance to adopt new and emerging technologies, or perhaps a lack of understanding about how to use Twitter for a more interactive conference experience, has inhibited its success. This paper reports on the use of Twitter in the Follow the Sun Online Learning Festival and provides an overview of the challenges involved in encouraging and sustaining participation in a virtual environment. Keywords: Twitter, social media, online conferencing Using a Learning Management System organisation as a resource site for blended learning Liz Askew Centre for Support and Advancement of Learning and Teaching (C-SALT) University of the Sunshine Coast The majority of universities in Australia provide learning and teaching resources to staff via their corporate website, or through their own intranet system. This is not possible at the University of the Sunshine Coast and so an alternative had to be provided. Rather than place many files in a central area, it was decided to utilise the organisation facility of the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS). This poster outlines the goals and processes of designing the site as well the future plans for its implementation. Keywords: Blended learning, learning management system, professional development ASk for student teachers: An online support site for ECE student teachers to develop their academic literacy Mark Bassett Academic Skills support team New Zealand Tertiary College ASk101 is an online academic literacy development site for early childhood teacher education students at New Zealand Tertiary College, a specialist early childhood teacher education provider. The site provides equitable access to information and support staff for all students, the vast majority of whom are online distance learners. The Poster demonstrates the personalised and interactive features of this site, which meets the challenge of sustainable online support for an ever increasingly diverse student population. Keywords: Academic Literacy. Early Childhood Teacher Education. Online Learning. Interactive. In-person Support. U1007825 Highlight Page 100 POSTER 5 POSTER 6 POSTER 7 POSTER 8 Eportfolios in the Sciences: The Role of Reflection as students build professional skills and career readiness Kathryn Coleman Deakin University Julian Cox Mita Das Adele Flood Patsie Polly Thuan Thai Jia Lin Yang University of New South Wales This poster presents a series of UNSW LTU seed funding grants that explored a program-wide approach to using ePortfolios as a reflective learning process together with the need for life-long and life-wide learning alongside career goal setting. ePortfolios were selected as the learning technology for these studies as they provide a cohesive and reflective space to enable a student to reflect upon and understand different ways of operating and possible new directions for their learning. In higher education more recently, there has been a growing imperative to have a portable record of work undertaken across a number of areas of endeavor in a student‘s academic life for assurance of learning. A Mahara ePortfolio serves several important functions with this in mind; it allows for integration of reflective elements, in the Journal, with career-oriented elements, including the articulation of academic and personal skills, plans and the Resume; it records past and current practice for If we build it, will they come? Developing an online assessment resource for educators at UNSW. Kathryn Coleman Adele Flood University of New South Wales Through the Assessment AS Learning Toolkit, on the new Teaching Gateway at University of New South Wales (UNSW) educators and academics have the opportunity to find ideas, guidelines, and practical strategies on the holistic processes of designing online assessment as learning. This toolkit has been devised to collect and share resources and includes practical strategies for selecting technologies that suit the learning objectives and outcomes of courses and programs to support more effective and efficient assessment. The premise throughout this Toolkit is that assessment should focus primarily on learning and the achievement of intended learning outcomes. This poster seeks to showcase the range of online assessment practices being used at UNSW to enhance student learning. Keywords: Technologies for assessment; professional development; blended learning; online assessment. Researching around the world: Developing an International Reference Group for ePortfolios in Higher Education Kathryn Coleman Deakin University Judy Williamson Batson Trent Batson AAEEBL Nan Travers State University of New York This poster presents the newly developed International Reference Group (IRG) for eportfolios in Higher Education as part of the work by The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) 2012 Research Committee. The purpose of the poster is to highlight this initiative, to share the AAEEBL mission, and to recruit interested individuals to join the IRG. AAEEBL is the international professional association for the eportfolio community with the mission to develop learners and to transform institutions with eportfolios. AAEEBL seeks to accomplish this by serving the global eportfolio community as a non-profit, service organization that offers membership benefits to institutional members and opportunities to corporates to share practices, research and industry developments supporting eportfolio implementation. Keywords: eportfolio; International Research Group; research; higher education; AAEEBL Rejuvenation Island: Enriching the Learning Journey through Immersion in Virtual Restorative Environments Helen Farley Janice K. Jones Angela Murphy University of Southern Queensland Immersive natural environments provide a means of restoration for adults and may present benefits for pre-service teachers who are unfamiliar with the natural world. The use of restorative virtual environments could be extended to schools in urban areas in particular, allowing pupils and their teachers to undertake field trips, and to relax in a calming and restorative context. This paper reports on a project that investigates the potential restorative benefits of immersion in simulated natural environments in virtual worlds. A cohort of pre-service teachers were taken into the simulated environment and reported that the island produced strong positive feelings in respondents, akin to being in a natural environment. However, it was also clear that a lack of familiarity with virtual environments diminishes the beneficial impacts of this immersion. Keywords: restorative environments, virtual worlds, teacher U1007825 Highlight Page 101 reflecting upon practice to effect change, and acts as a change agent by enabling long-term on-going evaluation of student performance and associated learning outcomes. Keywords: ePortfolios; Mahara; reflection; reflective practice; medical science; advanced science; higher education; careers. education, biophilia, effects of nature, restorative therapy, stress management, Second Life Page 102 POSTER 9 POSTER 10 POSTER 11 POSTER 12 An Informal Community of Practice: The Case of the DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group Helen Farley Lindy Orwin Janice K. Jones University of Southern Queensland Sue Gregory University of New England Scott Grant Monash University Des Butler Queensland University of Technology Lisa Jacka Southern Cross University The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group has an informal membership of nearly 200 members with an interest in education and virtual worlds within the Australian and New Zealand context. Members come from a variety of academic disciplines and may be teaching or research academics, Research Higher Degree candidates, project managers, virtual world builders and developers. The group acts as an informal Community of Practice, facilitating learning and the transfer of skills through social contact, opportunities to collaborate on projects and publications, and through the sharing of knowledge and experience. This poster provides a snapshot of the activity of this highly active group. Keywords: Using e-readers to increase access to course content for students without Internet access Angela Murphy Neil Martin Helen Farley University of Southern Queensland There have been mixed reviews about the potential of e-readers to enhance higher education. At first glance, e-readers appear to have significant potential to provide students with access to course content and learning materials. There are a number of considerations and obstacles to be addressed, however, before these devices are ready for widespread adoption. This paper reports on a pilot study using e- readers to provide students without internet access, with access to electronic course content. Course readings were converted into ePub format and were made available to a cohort of 16 incarcerated students via e-readers. This paper provides an overview of the steps undertaken as well the challenges and obstacles encountered in converting the readings to ePub format. Keywords: e-readers, diversity and inclusion, ePub, incarcerated students, digital divide Feeling the Feed: Migrating from Threaded Discussions to Social Media K. Martin ‘Marty’ Fletcher Michelle Barker Griffith University This poster describes the ongoing challenges of using now ‗traditional‘ threaded discussion boards, and details events leading to a simultaneous design experiment conducting an instructional activity in the traditional threaded discussion and a social media platform. It further describes a trial abandoning the legacy threaded discussion application completely in favor of the social media platform. Keywords: social media, social presence, threaded discussions, online learning & teaching Developing medical students’ information skills through online self- paced learning Sarah K.J. Gallagher University of Otago StudySmart is an online course designed for second year medical students at the University of Otago. This course was designed to replace a two hour library and information skills lab, and comprises a series of topics, tasks and quizzes. The course was built within the existing learning management system (LMS), Moodle. The content was made up of resources developed in-house as well as appropriate OERs from external sources. The online course was run as a pilot in 2012 and has involved three stages of evaluation: evaluative questions in the topic quizzes; post course reflective evaluation; and a focus group session. This poster presents the findings from the implementation and evaluation of this self- directed online course. The online course was designed to support the development of information skills in order to assist students with a significant summative assessment. The majority of students who completed the course reported a gain in knowledge and understanding about the topics covered, and reported that aspects of the course enhanced their ability U1007825 Highlight U1007825 Highlight Page 103 community of practice, social learning, informal learning to complete their assessment. Keywords: medical education, medical students, information literacy, online learning, e-learning, library skills, LMS, OER Page 104 POSTER 13 POSTER 14 POSTER 15 POSTER 16 Fostering teamwork for health care professionals in the online learning environment Joanne Joyce- McCoach University of Wollongong The inclusion of group assignments as part of teaching and learning in the education of health professionals is an expectation of registration bodies and health care stakeholders. Effective teamwork skills are seen as essential for productive working relationships in multidisciplinary teams and contributing to better health outcomes for staff and health care consumers. The translation of traditional approaches to teaching health care professionals to the online learning environment requires course coordinators to re-examine the relevance, design and assessment of group work. This presentation showcases the development of online group assessments that applies these education principles to the development of an assessment initiative in a multidiscipline health curriculum. It is anticipated that this translation of group work in higher education to the online learning experience will enhance the learning outcomes and experience for health care professionals and better meet the needs and expectations of students and key stakeholders. Evaluation of lecture captures in mathematics and statistics for internal, hybrid and distance modes. Dr Michael Kemp, Kerrie Cullis, Sharon Nielsen, Dr Robert Wood Charles Sturt University For several mathematics and statistics subjects we included a variety of video-based resources including lecture captures. We surveyed students and found they appreciated and felt they learnt from the videos. Additionally, we recorded usage data and found a positive relationship between number of lecture captures downloaded and exam performance. Keywords: lecture capture, mathematical education, video-based resources, usage data Patterns of Instruction: Using Screencasts in the Teaching of Textile Design Angela Fraser Peter Maclaren AUT University Rapid developments in technology over the last decade have enabled new processes for the printing of textiles. This has brought accompanying changes in textile design processes, and new challenges to the teaching of textile print design. Processes that traditionally involved hands-on physical interaction (e.g. screen- printing) have been transformed to become computer-mediated processes. Enabling students to acquire necessary software skills has proved a challenge in a time-constrained teaching environment. This poster illustrates the iterative development of screencasts that have allowed students to work independently on the acquisition of these software skills. Having students work at their own pace, with the ability to revisit material as required, has resulted in more advanced outputs than were obtained using a more traditional teacher-led approach. Keywords: textile design, screencasts, self- paced learning Benchmarking Open Educational Practices in Higher Education Angela Murphy University of Southern Queensland Open Educational Resources are widely discussed in higher education circles and open education practices are being upheld as the second generation of OERs that have the potential to make education freely available to all students. The OERu is a collaborative initiative between 12 institutions globally that is intending to offer courses free of charge to students using only OERs and open practices. This poster presents preliminary results from a research study conducted with 110 representatives of higher education institutions around the world, of which 12 were official; members of the OERu. The study was aimed at identifying the extent to which higher education institutions are currently implementing open policies and practices as well as explore the challenges faced by institutions when considering implementing open initiatives. Results from the study indicate that although higher education institutions are aware of and interested in open education resources and initiatives such as the OERu, there are a number of challenges U1007825 Highlight Page 105 Keywords: online learning, group assessment, multidisciplinary teams that need to be overcome before these initiatives are sustainable and more widely adopted. Keywords: Open Educational Resources, OERs, Open Educational Practices, Open Educational Resource University (Oeru) Page 106 POSTER 17 POSTER 18 POSTER 19 POSTER 20 Development of a framework for evaluating the impact and sustainability of mobile learning initiatives in higher education Angela Murphy Helen Farley University of Southern Queensland The field of mobile learning is becoming more capable of supporting high quality learning experiences and students are increasingly demanding greater mobility and flexibility. As a result, Higher Education Institutions are increasingly considering the implementation of institutional m-learning strategies. We present the aims and approach of a three year project to be conducted by the Australian Digital Futures Institute to develop an m-learning evaluation framework (MLEF) that will aid the selection and justification of m- learning initiatives. The framework will be encapsulated in an easy to use online evaluation toolkit which will consist of: a standardised evaluation framework, resources and guidelines; an m- learning maturity model; a database of m-learning exemplars; and an interactive mobile user model. The project is a collaborative initiative between USQ, ANU and UniSA and is supported through the Australian Government's Collaborative Research Networks (CRN) program. Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) methods will be used to From shed to head: A conceptual toolkit for social sciences Nigel Parsons Scott Symonds Massey University The conceptual toolkit is a heuristic device for teaching and learning key concepts and is grounded in Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). It focuses attention by stripping away extraneous material, encouraging a focus on the germane. This project brings the toolkit into virtual existence as a digitally animated interactive resource in the form of an extended metaphor. Key disciplinary concepts are represented as a ‗tools‘ that can gain traction on data like a spanner on a bolt. Tools are acquired by learners and organized in a ‗tool shed‘ ready for use. The tool shed allows students to organize concepts into memorable clusters; tools are organized on shelves akin to cognitive schemata in long-term memory. Subsequently learners may select tools appropriate to a specific ‗job‘ and, extending the metaphor, these are placed into a traditional steel cantilever toolbox ready for use. Exercises then scaffold application and analysis, facilitating higher level thinking; tools are ‗picked up‘ by working memory for application to tasks such as case study or comparison. Reflection on the suitability of tools selected allows for deeper synthesis and understanding. Keywords: Conceptual toolkit, Building an Institutional Reporting Framework for Consensus Moderation Practices Nicola D. Shapland Duncan D. Nulty Griffith University (Presented by Jason Lodge) This poster presents the initial findings from a two year Griffith University research project. The project entitled ―Developing consensus moderation practices to support comprehensive Quality Assurance of Assessment Standards” is funded through a strategic Griffith Grant for Learning and Teaching, with ethical approval granted under reference number GIH/08/11/HREC. The poster describes the development of, and reports on the initial results from, applying a five level model of consensus moderation to assessment. Each level in the model describes a key stage in the assessment process, and a range of consensus moderation practices that would support quality assurance of assessment at that level. The reporting framework is imbedded in the University‘s online Course Profile system and requires academics to report on their consensus moderation activities. Initial results confirmed this to be a meaningful reporting framework to gather and evaluate consensus moderation activities in use throughout the University. Keywords: consensus moderation, reporting 5 innovative ways to use virtual classrooms in Higher Education David Spann Curtin University With constant pressure for higher education institutions to increase (or at least retain) student enrolments across the sector, many institutions are opting to keep up with demand by offering alternate methods of education provision and facilitation. By providing tools and resources such as Blackboard Collaborate and Blackboard Mobile Learn, staff are able to engage and communicate with their students; anywhere and anytime. Encouraging staff to move away from the traditional lecture- theatre and tutorial based model and to instead embrace the opportunities provided by a virtual classroom is not always easy; however some staff have been re- invigorated by this teaching method and are trialing new and innovative ways to teach their students virtually U1007825 Highlight Page 107 develop outputs and deliverables. Keywords: Mobile learning, m-learning, mobile learning, evaluation frameworks, sustainability cognitive load, cognitive schemata, long- term memory, working memory framework, quality assurance of assessment 
work_5ks5cd2w35bl7efincrtwii7ym	----	La eficacia en la educación a distancia: ¿un problema resuelto? = The efficiency in distance education: a resolved problem? = L’efficacité dans l’éducation à distance: un problème résolu? LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? The efficiency in distance education. A resolved problem? L’efficacité dans l’éducation à distance. Un problème résolu? Lorenzo GARCÍA ARETIO y Marta RUIZ CORBELLA UNED. Facultad de Educación. Departamento de Teoría de la Educación y Pedagogía Social. Paseo Senda del Rey, 7. 28040 Madrid. Correo-e: lgaretio@edu. uned.es, mruiz@edu.uned.es Fecha de recepción: enero de 2010 Fecha de aceptación definitiva: abril de 2010 Biblid [(1130-3743) 22, 1-2010, 141-162] RESUMEN Gracias a la preocupación existente por la calidad de la educación a distancia, se ha reunido una amplia literatura científica que ha ayudado a detectar los puntos fuertes y débiles de esta metodología, lo que ha conducido a su permanente mejora. Una de sus líneas de investigación se dirige a comprobar si existen diferencias signi- ficativas entre la enseñanza presencial y la a distancia. A través de la metodología empírica de análisis de contenido, hemos acce- dido a investigaciones sobre el rendimiento de los estudiantes en ambos formatos, con el objetivo de detectar diferencias significativas entre éstos. Este metaanálisis evidencia que la eficacia en la educación no depende de los recursos tecnológi- cos, ni de los propios profesores, ni de los estudiantes, aunque todos ellos son decisivos, sino de la calidad de sus diseños pedagógicos. Con diseños rigurosos, © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 ISSN: 1130-3743 142 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 sea en formatos presenciales o en modalidad a distancia, los resultados no difieren significativamente. Palabras clave: educación a distancia, educación presencial, eficacia, rendi- miento, calidad de la educación, aislamiento. SUMMARY Thanks to the concern for the quality of distance education, a large amount of scientific literature had been produced to help detect the strong and weak points of this type of methodology and this has contributed to its constant improvement. One line of research focuses on whether significant differences exist between face to face and distance learning. Using an empirical methodology of content analysis, we have explored research on student performance in both formats in order to detect major differences between the two. This meta-analysis shows that the effectiveness of the education does not depend on the technological resources available or the teachers or the students, although they are all decisive, but rather on the quality of pedagogical design. With rigorous designs, whether they be used in face to face scenarios or in distance edu- cation, the results are not significantly different. Key words: distance education, face to face education, effectiveness, achieve- ment, quality of education, isolation. SOMMAIRE Grâce à l’inquiétude suscitée par l’éducation à distance, concernant sa qualité, a été réunie une ample littérature scientifique qui a aidé à détecter les points forts et faibles de cette méthodologie, ce qui a mené à sa constante amélioration. L’une des voies de recherche, a pour objectif de vérifier s’il existe des différences manifestes entre l’enseignement présentiel et l’enseignement à distance. À travers la méthodologie empirique de l’analyse de contenu, nous avons eu accès à des recherches sur le rendement des étudiants dans les deux types de formation, dans le but de détecter des différences significatives entre ces derniers. Cette métaanalyse met en évidence que l’efficacité dans l’enseignement ne dépend ni des ressources technologiques, ni des professeurs, ni des étudiants, quoique tous s’avèrent être décisifs, mais de la qualité de ses conceptions pédagogiques. Avec des conceptions rigoureuses, soit en format présentiel, soit dans la modalité à distance, les résultats ne diffèrent pas de façon significative. Mots clés: éducation à distance, éducation présentielle, efficacité, rendement, qualité de l’éducation, isolement. © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 143 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? 1. ¿SE SIGUE DUDANDO DE LA EFICACIA DE LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA? En 2009 acabamos de publicar un libro que muy conscientemente titulába- mos ¿Por qué va ganando la educación a distancia?1. Con ese título damos por supuesto que, en efecto, estamos convencidos de que, en cualquiera de sus formu- laciones, la modalidad, la metodología, las prácticas, las propuestas o proyectos de educación a distancia, han ido ganando terreno progresivamente y sin cesar, a lo que pudiéramos denominar como modalidad presencial o de docencia cara a cara sin mediación tecnológica. Están arrebatando espacio y tiempo a las formas más convencionales de en- señar y aprender, las metodologías a distancia que priman el trabajo autónomo de los estudiantes, así como las actividades cooperativas y colaborativas donde estos mismos participantes aprenden con otros, de otros y para otros a través de las redes sociales, a través de comunidades de aprendizaje ancladas en soportes digitales o, lo que es más habitual, a través de plataformas virtuales diseñadas con fines docentes. Así, quienes desde hace muchos años venimos abogando por el estudio, in- vestigación, análisis, contraste y divulgación científica de las bases, fundamentos, estructura, métodos, posibilidades, etc., de la educación a distancia en sus dife- rentes presentaciones, observamos con satisfacción que, ciertamente, ésta va con- quistando terreno. Cada vez hay un mayor número de instituciones, de programas, de docentes e investigadores comprometidos, de estudiantes que confían en esta modalidad y, lo que es más importante, los resultados sobre eficacia y eficiencia que se vienen mostrando aparecen al menos como de nivel similar a los de los procesos presenciales. No fueron fáciles los primeros años en los que se implementaron las iniciales experiencias de universidades a distancia. Quizás nadie analizó con criterio, o pocos se refirieron con rigor a varias décadas de crecimiento de una enseñanza por correspondencia que posibilitaba el acceso a diferentes ofertas de formación cultural, profesional, reciclaje, etc. Esa enseñanza por correspondencia supuso el soporte de las primeras universidades a distancia que realmente tuvieron su origen en los movimientos de extensión universitaria nacidos en Estados Unidos en la década de los años sesenta del siglo XIX, y que diez años después se trasladaban a Europa. Prueba de ello es el sistema adoptado por la Universidad de Londres en 1836 (Kaye, 1981). Pero, fundamentalmente, fue con el nacimiento de la Open University britá- nica, al ofertarse sus primeros títulos universitarios a distancia, cuando surgieron las mayores voces de alarma contra estas propuestas innovadoras. A partir de esa fecha la expansión de esta modalidad ha sido inusitada. Sólo un año después de que la Open University (OUUK) iniciase sus enseñanzas se creó la Universidad 1. GARCÍA ARETIO (2009). 144 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) de España. No tardarían en diferentes países en abrirse otras grandes universidades a distancia, que muy pronto supera- ron los 100.000 estudiantes. Muestra de estas megauniversidades, en término de Daniel (1996) son: University of South Africa (UNISA), Sudáfrica, creada en 1837. Centre National d’Enseignement à Distance (CENED), Francia, 1939. Korea Air and Correspondence University (KNOU), República de Corea, 1972. Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU), Thailandia, 1978. Anadolu University (AU), Turquía, 1982. Universitas Terbuka (UT), Indonesia, 1984. Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India, 1985. Payame Noor University (PNU), Irán, 1987. A pesar de esta expansión, muchos pusieron en entredicho la credibilidad de esta modalidad, de ahí que cada avance, cada propuesta debía justificarse siempre muy fundamentadamente. Así, constantemente, la educación a distancia tenía que someterse a la verificación de su calidad (Brown y Wack, 1999). Por ello, estas uni- versidades desde sus inicios han sabido desarrollar programas para la evaluación de la calidad, estudios dirigidos a la autoevaluación, que les permitiesen conocer para qué sirven, a quién sirven, cómo sirven, cuáles son los frutos de ese servicio en contraste con los objetivos de su creación, etc., convencidos de que es éste el único planteamiento serio que abrirá el camino de futuras mejoras y de una mayor eficacia. A la vez que interesaba mostrar a la sociedad qué tipo de Universidad son, qué aspectos eran similares e idénticos a los de otras universidades presenciales, cuáles eran sus claves diferenciadoras y, de forma especial, evidenciar la calidad de sus diseños formativos (García Aretio, 1997). Lógicamente, esta línea de investigación que ahora se aborda en todo centro educativo, para las instituciones universitarias a distancia, ha sido un tema perma- nente de estudio, lo que ha permitido contar con literatura científica suficiente y reconocida en torno a su calidad y resultados. Por eso, la aludida afirmación de «ganancia» no la sustentamos sólo en apreciaciones basadas en los años de expe- riencia en este campo, sino en la aproximación a numerosos trabajos que desde hace años confirman nuestro convencimiento. Somos conscientes de que nos movemos en un campo, el de la educación a distancia, que muestra un núcleo y unos perfiles más complicados que la educa- ción convencional plasmada en la relación física cara a cara. Sabemos de la dificul- tad de determinados análisis y prácticas incluso en entornos educativos presencia- les y reconocemos también la existencia de ofertas educativas a distancia con baja o nula calidad. Sin duda, es inviable trasladar el diseño de una acción formativa presencial tal cual a un entorno a distancia, como se ha llevado a cabo en muchas ocasiones. Esto sólo nos habla del desconocimiento de la educación a distancia © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 145 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? por parte de esos promotores y explica los fracasos producidos en muchas de estas propuestas. Igualmente, sabemos que planificar y desarrollar acciones educativas a distancia no resulta sencillo, y ello porque nos enfrentamos a un ámbito que podríamos definir como: a) Emergente (aunque cada vez menos), a la vez que consolidado, b) complementario a los esquemas presenciales, c) complejo por los numerosos agentes y componentes que han de interve- nir en su diseño y desarrollo, d) problemático al exigir equilibrar y armonizar las numerosas corrientes y todos y cada uno de los múltiples elementos intervinientes, e) heterogéneo en sus manifestaciones, por la diversidad de propuestas, formulaciones y tipos de educación a distancia que hoy aparecen como tales o con otros nombres que nosotros integramos en el genérico de educación a distancia, f) con bases múltiples por la cantidad de campos del saber que inciden en esta modalidad, tales como la pedagogía, la psicología, la tecnología, la informática, la sociología, la economía, la política, etc., y g) en permanente y rápida evolución que complica todo lo anterior al exi- gir constante adaptación a los nuevos avances, sobre todo tecnológicos, tanto desde la perspectiva institucional, como desde la organizativa y pedagógica de docentes y estudiantes. Tras esta contextualización, el objetivo de este trabajo es doble, quizás tri- ple. Por un lado, mostrar la eficacia de la educación a distancia. Y, por otro, aproximarnos a uno de los grandes obstáculos o desventajas que numerosas investigaciones han apreciado en esta modalidad, la de la separación profesor- estudiante/s que se traduce o se percibe en muchas ocasiones como el senti- miento de soledad ante el proceso de aprendizaje. Finalmente, como tercera intención, trataremos de acotar este rasgo negativo, en sus justos términos, para incluso neutralizarlo, sobre todo al amparo de las posibilidades de las más avan- zadas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación que culminan hoy con el software social de la Web 2.0. Aunque para la elaboración de este artículo las fuentes consultadas han sido abundantes, no nos ha resultado especialmente problemático localizar las que refuerzan los postulados que defendemos desde hace dos décadas y media. In- cluso hemos consultado más fuentes de las referenciadas en el trabajo, que han sido rechazadas por nuestra intención de seleccionar sólo algunas de las más relevantes. Como puede apreciarse, un alto porcentaje de las fuentes citadas fueron con- sultadas en texto completo a través de Internet. En muchos casos porque los documentos se ofrecen directamente online, pero otras muchas fuentes fueron igualmente localizadas en Internet, pero mediante los servicios de suscripción con 146 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 que cuenta la biblioteca de nuestra Universidad a través de EBSCO2. Téngase en cuenta que estos servicios disponen en abundancia, además de revistas científicas y electrónicas de suscripción, con trabajos inicialmente publicados en formato impreso, que hoy han sido digitalizados. Ha de destacarse también que la Univer- sidad a la que pertenecen los autores del trabajo cuenta con una buena biblioteca de libros y revistas relacionados con esta temática3. Acudimos, igualmente, a los servicios suscritos por nuestra Universidad, de préstamo interbibliotecario, en tres ocasiones. A todo ello debemos sumar la experiencia de uno de los autores de este artículo que viene trabajando sobre esta temática desde 1985. 2. ¿ESTÁ PROBADO QUE LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA ES EFICAZ? Hace pocas décadas eran escasas las experiencias de educación a distancia sistematizada, sometidas a contraste con las realizadas en ambientes presenciales, con siglos a sus espaldas. Eran escasos los estudios serios que comparasen unas y otras prácticas. Pero hoy día, muchas de las universidades del mundo cuentan con programas a distancia soportados en tecnologías más o menos sofisticadas. Ello ha propiciado la realización de trabajos de investigación dignos de ser considerados. Así en la actualidad, nos encontramos con numerosa literatura científica que se genera en torno a las innovaciones que apuestan por formas diferentes de enseñar y aprender realizadas en contextos que antes eran exclusivamente presenciales. A ello se suma el aumento considerable de instituciones unimodales4, que imparten su oferta educativa con la metodología a distancia de forma exclusiva, así como de las duales o mixtas que progresivamente van incorporando cada vez más progra- mas a distancia. Son de todos conocidos los campus virtuales existentes en tantas universidades presenciales, así como los consorcios de universidades que operan en este sentido. Para evitar equívocos señalaremos que bajo el concepto de educación a dis- tancia desde siempre venimos englobando a todas aquellas prácticas que hoy se vienen conociendo como enseñanza-aprendizaje abiertos, teleformación, enseñan- za-aprendizaje virtual, online, e-learning, etc. Y ello, porque consideramos que todas esas formulaciones responden a las definiciones que desde hace dos décadas manejamos (García Aretio, 1986, 2001). Para poder reconocer si realmente estamos ante una metodología a distancia, ésta debe basarse en un diálogo didáctico me- diado entre el profesor (institución) y el estudiante que, ubicado en espacio dife- rente al de aquél, aprende de forma independiente y/o cooperativa (García Aretio, 2. Se hace mención a esta circunstancia en las referencias bibliográficas. 3. Biblioteca del Instituto Universitario de Educación a Distancia (IUED) de la UNED. 4. Prueba de ello es que en España, a la UNED, www.uned.es y a la UOC, www.uoc.edu, se le han sumado recientemente, la UDIMA, www.udima.es, la UNIR, www.unir.net y la VIU, www.viu.es. © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 147 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? 2001). Así, todas esas formulaciones, denominaciones y modos de hacer, con todos los matices que se quiera, pueden considerarse como propuestas de educación a distancia, por hablar de un concepto superior al de mera enseñanza a distancia. En este trabajo no pretendemos demostrar que la educación a distancia sea mejor que la presencial. El enfoque nunca debería ir por ahí. Pretendemos respon- der al epígrafe de más arriba. Es decir, si diésemos por supuesto que la educación presencial es eficaz, querríamos mostrar que la educación a distancia también lo es. Y para ello nos vamos a apoyar básicamente en uno de los indicadores habi- tuales siempre que se abordan comparaciones de este tipo, el del rendimiento aca- démico de los alumnos que siguen estudios en formatos presenciales o a distancia, el de sus calificaciones o puntuaciones, fruto de exámenes o pruebas. Por eso, en respuesta al primer objetivo de este trabajo, queremos probar que determinados rendimientos académicos de estudiantes de una modalidad u otra no presentan diferencias significativas estadísticamente hablando (Clark, 1994). En realidad han sido múltiples los trabajos que concluyen que el rendimiento de los estudiantes depende más de los diseños pedagógicos de cada acción formativa que de los recursos seleccionados para el aprendizaje. Con diseños rigurosos, sea en formatos presenciales o en modalidad a distancia, los resultados no difieren significativamente. En definitiva, estamos con Clark, en que parece probado que el aprendizaje no es fruto de la tecnología, sino más bien del método pedagógico empleado. Aunque, la tecnología pueda abundar en la mejora de estos procesos, una vez que la integremos debidamente en el diseño pedagógico asumido. Con anterioridad al estudio citado de 1994 el mismo autor, Clark (1983), apun- taba que con la introducción de cualquier tecnología en determinado proceso de aprendizaje se suele captar la atención del estudiante por la novedad del artefacto y artilugio utilizados, pero progresivamente los estudiantes se van acostumbrando al medio y ya una vez perdidos los iniciales valores motivacionales vuelve a contar más el diseño, el sentido y los principios pedagógicos. Para confirmar nuestra postura, hemos consultado estudios, fundamentalmen- te revisiones y metaanálisis que han tratado de realizar algún tipo de contraste en- tre ambas modalidades. Quizás la mayor sistematización que se ha llevado a cabo respecto a estos estudios comparativos entre enseñanza a distancia y los métodos presenciales la desarrolló Russell, cuyo trabajo en su 5.ª edición fue publicado en 2001. En este libro se recogen 355 estudios, informes técnicos, resúmenes, tesis y documentos de investigación desde 1928 hasta 1998 que utilizan metodologías cuantitativas, pero también cualitativas, así como análisis reflexivos o teóricos. Russell concluye que los resultados obtenidos por los estudiantes a distancia no son ni peores ni mejores que los obtenidos por sus colegas que siguieron procesos ordinarios de enseñanza-aprendizaje. En consecuencia, parece ser que la modali- dad educativa no tiene efectos estadísticos significativos respecto a los resultados obtenidos por los estudiantes. 148 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 Como una pieza complementaria al citado libro de Russell se ofrece el si- tio Web No significant difference5. En esta Web, además de estudios e informes generados desde 1928, se facilita el acceso a los publicados o descubiertos en fecha posterior a la de la publicación del libro. En ese sentido, hemos revisado los estudios desde 1999 hasta los primeros meses de 2009 y los resultados son los siguientes: se recogen 68 estudios de los que 40 de ellos no muestran diferencias significativas, otros 24 dan resultados mejores para la enseñanza mediada por tec- nologías y sólo los 4 restantes producen resultados favorables a la educación en el aula. Russell afirma que no pudiéndose constatar diferencias significativas eviden- tes, sí que parece que la tendencia es favorable a los estudios no convencionales. Sin embargo, ha de reseñarse que también concluye que no hay nada inherente en la tecnología que produce mejoras en el aprendizaje. Es de destacar que el arco temporal de todas estas investigaciones ofrece una realidad permanente en el tiempo que, de forma invariable, manifiesta la similar eficacia de ambas modalidades, no dependiendo su eficiencia de recursos más o menos logrados, sino de su propio diseño pedagógico. Por otro lado, el número de investigaciones expone que los mejores resultados en una u otra modalidad dependen más de situaciones y experiencias concretas, en las que sobresale la novedad de una tecnología o la mejor adecuación a una materia concreta de una metodología específica, o la participación decisiva del profesorado, o… Pero estas situaciones excepcionales no avalan la preponderancia de uno u otro diseño. Sin embargo, en los trabajos en los que se constatan diferencias significativas eviden- tes, sí se da una tendencia favorable a los estudios basados en la incorporación de recursos tecnológicos en la enseñanza. En consecuencia, y como ya señalábamos más arriba, el mayor número de investigaciones proporcionadas por Russell evidencian que la eficacia en la educa- ción no depende de los recursos tecnológicos, ni de los propios profesores, ni de los estudiantes, aunque todos ellos son decisivos, sino de la calidad de sus diseños pedagógicos. De ahí que no exista una diferencia significativa entre ambas moda- lidades. Sin embargo, no nos damos por satisfechos con esta minuciosa revisión de Russell. Para ahondar en nuestro propósito, hemos manejado la herramienta suscrita por nuestra biblioteca EBSCO A to Z6. Como complemento ideal, hemos utilizado el potente sistema de referencias, EBSCO-Host7. Tras los años de trabajo en todo 5. La dirección de esta página es www.nosignificantdifference.org. 6. EBSCO A to Z permite la localización de una ingente cantidad de recursos electrónicos, in- cluidos publicaciones electrónicas, títulos en bases de datos de textos completos, paquetes editoriales y libros electrónicos. 7. EBSCO-Host consiste en un sistema de referencias bibliográficas a través de Internet, que ofre- ce una variedad de especialidades de bases de datos de texto completo y bases de datos populares de © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 149 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? lo relacionado con la educación a distancia, tenemos configurado My EBSCOhost8. Con motivo de este trabajo, hemos intensificado algunos perfiles de búsqueda. Las búsquedas las hemos centrado en ERIC (la fundamental) y también en MLA Inter- national Bibliography, PsycARTICLES, SocINDEX y E-Journals. Las posibilidades de búsqueda son inmensas. Además de las carpetas ya almacenadas desde hace tiem- po en My EBSCOhost, hemos insistido, siempre referido a la educación a distancia en sus diferentes formulaciones, en términos tales como meta-analysis, research, difference, significant, review y effectiveness. De los resúmenes de resultados que posteriormente referimos, algunos de ellos han sido recogidos también por Russell. De su libro citado hemos analizado unos pocos, los que entendimos como más relevantes para nuestro propósito, los que a lo largo de los años hemos valorado como más citados por otros autores que se acercan a esta temática y, además según nuestro entender, que quedaban avalados por una investigación rigurosa. Pero también en esos casos, siempre revi- samos fuentes primarias que no nos fue complicado conseguir como ya señalamos anteriormente. Una vez seleccionada la fuente y contrastada su fiabilidad y validez, nos hemos limitado a ofrecer un mínimo resumen de sus resultados. Dentro de los estudios presentados por Russell, se seleccionaron aquellos que, a su vez, eran revisiones de trabajos relacionados con el tema. Al margen de éstos, se seleccionaron otras nueve revisiones. En fin, entre todos esos trabajos relacionados con nuestro primer objetivo, hacemos mención sólo a estos pocos que nos parecen relevantes por las razones ya señaladas y suficientes para nuestro propósito en esta primera parte de este artículo. En 1962 Schramm, de la Universidad de Stanford, llevó a cabo una investiga- ción sobre la eficacia del aprendizaje a través de la televisión en la que revisó 393 trabajos. En este metaanálisis concluyó que en 255 de ellos no se evidenciaba una diferencia significativa entre la propuesta formativa a través de la televisión y la llevada a cabo de forma presencial. En 1990 Bajtelsmit aporta, a partir de la revisión de 5 estudios, que son com- parables, los resultados académicos logrados en ambos modelos de enseñanza, aunque si revisamos el criterio de coste y de economía de escala, sin duda, la educación a distancia sale beneficiada. Más tarde, en 1995, Barry y Runyan revisan las experiencias formativas llevadas a cabo en instituciones militares de Estados Unidos. En todas ellas no se ve una diferencia significativa entre los estudiantes a distancia y los que cursaron sus estudios de forma presencial. los principales proveedores de información. EBSCO-Host permite realizar búsquedas simultáneamente en diferentes bases de datos. 8. My EBSCO-Host es un servicio personalizado que permite guardar preferencias, organizar la búsqueda en carpetas, guardar y recuperar el historial de búsquedas y obtener acceso a investigaciones guardadas de forma remota. 150 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 Si nos fijamos en el trabajo de Moore y Thompson (1997), se llegó a la conclu- sión, después de la revisión de la literatura producida entre los años 1980 y 1990, de que la educación a distancia era eficaz cuando esta eficacia se medía por el ren- dimiento académico de los estudiantes, por las actitudes de éstos y sus profesores, y, de forma especial, por su economía de escala. En el 2000 Saba insiste en que desde la década de los 50 se están llevando a cabo estudios comparativos entre la enseñanza a distancia y la presencial, y la realidad, de forma tozuda, viene evidenciando la no diferencia significativa entre ambas formas de instrucción. Dos años más tarde, Hiltz, Zhang y Turoff (2002) examinaron diecinueve investigaciones que comparaban los estudios presenciales y los de educación a distancia, de carácter asíncrono y encontraron que cuando los resultados eran fruto de las consultas realizadas a los estudiantes, en general no se dedujeron diferencias significativas, sin embargo, cuando los resultados fueron fruto de sistemas de reco- pilación de datos objetivos, tales como exámenes, calificaciones, etc., encontraron mejores resultados en los estudiantes a distancia. Otro estudio que destacamos es el de Rivard (2002), que se basa en la comparación de los logros académicos de estudiantes presenciales y a distancia a lo largo de cuatro años. Los resultados fue- ron significativamente más altos para los que cursaron estudios a distancia. Otro estudio a destacar es el de Shachar y Neumann (2003), que realizaron un metaanálisis a partir de 86 estudios distribuidos entre 1990 y 2002. La conclusión que se extrae favorece la hipótesis de un rendimiento académico superior por par- te de los estudiantes que habían seguido cursos a distancia. También debemos destacar una revisión de estudios sobre esta temática en la que se abordaban cuestiones relacionadas además de con los logros académicos, con las actitudes y las tasas de retención. Se basó la revisión citada en 232 traba- jos empíricos referidos a diferentes niveles del sistema educativo y realizados en- tre 1985 y 2002 (Bernard y otros, 2004). Aquí se vuelve a reiterar la importancia de los diseños pedagógicos aplicados en los cursos, por encima de los recursos tecnológicos utilizados, y de si se enseña a distancia o cara a cara. Parece que en cuanto a los resultados las diferencias entre los procesos presenciales y a dis- tancia, cuando estos últimos son síncronos, favorecen levemente a los estudios presenciales tradicionales, sin embargo, esa leve diferencia significativa favorece a los estudios a distancia cuando éstos se realizan en formato asíncrono. Y de- bemos recordar que toda educación a distancia tiene su máximo componente en relaciones asíncronas. Finalmente, reseñamos una reciente publicación del Departamento de Educa- ción de Estados Unidos (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia y Jones, 2009), en la que se realiza una búsqueda sistemática de la literatura de investigación desde 1996 hasta julio de 2008. En esa búsqueda se identificaron más de un millar de estudios empíricos de aprendizaje en línea. La selección de estos estudios se basó en el con- traste con la enseñanza presencial, en la medida de los resultados de aprendizaje. De todos éstos se seleccionaron 51 estudios para ser objeto de un metaanálisis. © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 151 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? Éste arrojó el resultado de que, como promedio, los estudiantes en el apren- dizaje en línea mostraron mejores resultados que los que recibieron programas cara a cara. Por otra parte, fueron superiores a ambas prácticas, los resultados de aquellos estudiantes que siguieron la modalidad de blended-learning (aprendizaje mezclado, mixto, semipresencial o combinado de docencia en línea y presencial). Aunque el objeto de la investigación era sobre estudiantes de enseñanza secun- daria, la realidad fue que sobre este nivel existían pocos estudios y en los que se analizaron, los resultados no fueron tan favorables a estas nuevas modalidades. A partir de esta conclusión se infiere que la edad de los estudiantes es también una importante variable a considerar. No vamos a negar que existan, en efecto, estudios en sentido contrario, que pueden mostrar mejores resultados de los estudiantes que siguen propuestas de corte convencional. Sin embargo, es cierto que abundan más los resultados en los que no se detectan diferencias significativas, aunque, como hemos señalado, muy centrados en los resultados y las calificaciones de determinadas pruebas9. Todo esto nos lleva a afirmar que no debemos ser dogmáticos en la afirmación de que sólo pueden adquirirse aprendizajes de calidad mediante formatos tradicionales cara a cara, ni pasarnos al bando de los que piensan que actualmente todos los cursos sostenidos en sistemas digitales son claramente superiores con respecto a los resultados de aprendizajes valiosos por parte de los estudiantes. Ya de los primeros trabajos recogidos por Russell en su recopilación y revisión de referencia, y de otros posteriores, puede concluirse que la incorporación a la docencia de diferentes recursos tecnológicos (radio, televisión, audio, vídeo, etc.) no dañaba a los aprendizajes de los estudiantes, es decir, no se producían diferen- cias significativas entre unos y otros, generalmente ni en un sentido ni en el otro. Sin embargo, al igual que este autor, nos sentimos desilusionados al com- probar la creencia de una gran cantidad de docentes, directivos y técnicos que continúan pensando que la utilización de tecnologías para el aprendizaje es, por el uso en sí de esas tecnologías, causa directa de la calidad de estos aprendizajes. También existen quienes continúan afirmando lo contrario. Las creencias y las teorías implícitas siguen prevaleciendo, cuando las investigaciones nos muestran que no hay una modalidad de enseñanza superior a otra, al menos en los estudios superiores. Cuando lo que debemos tener en cuenta a la hora de escoger una u otra modalidad es definir claramente a quién va dirigida, qué objetivos se quieren lograr, con qué recursos se cuenta, etc. Por tanto, los rendimientos no dependen de la modalidad o de los recursos empleados en el desarrollo de una determinada acción formativa o curso. Es decir, los estudiantes a distancia no salen perjudica- dos en sus aprendizajes por seguir un curso en modalidad diferente a la conven- cional, que era en definitiva la crítica que se venía haciendo de la metodología a 9. Al menos, es lo que nosotros hemos localizado. Aunque sí hemos encontrado pocos, no co- nocemos estudios en una cantidad y calidad, similares, que muestren lo contrario. 152 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 distancia al tratarla como una enseñanza de segundo nivel, una opción de calidad claramente inferior. Así, está de más el preguntar si pueden o no los estudiantes adquirir a distancia aprendizajes de calidad. Entendemos que más beneficioso sería plantearse: los aprendizajes, etc. Bien es cierto que se han vertido críticas al conjunto de las investigaciones realizadas en este sentido, en unos casos por la debilidad de los propios diseños (Moore y Thompson, 1997) y en otros por la referencia al control de diferentes variables (Basu, 2005) que generalmente denominamos como «no intervinientes», pero que en realidad juegan un papel importante en cualquier investigación en el ámbito educativo, ¿cómo prescindir de las características del estudiante, de su en- torno, de los métodos, de los materiales, del propio profesor, de los compañeros, etc.? (Phipps y Merisotis, 1999). Pero eso sucede en toda investigación de corte educativo (Brown y Wack, 1999). Por otra parte, en algunas de éstas se echan de menos las bases teóricas de carácter educativo en que se basan (Lockee, Moore y Burton, 2001). Una afirmación, según nuestra opinión, muy genérica y poco mati- zada dado que en las diferentes revisiones se ha cuidado en seleccionar aquellos trabajos mejor fundamentados y más rigurosos. Y, al menos, en las traídas a cola- ción por nosotros, hemos extremado este cuidado. 3. ¿SOLEDAD O INTERACCIÓN SOCIAL? Por lo expuesto hasta ahora podríamos preguntarnos, ¿es que no existen in- convenientes en esta modalidad a distancia? En buena parte de los estudios que abordan esta problemática se infiere que las tasas de abandono, fracaso o deser- ción son más altas en los formatos a distancia. Ello ha venido considerándose sobre todo referido a una educación a distancia de corte más convencional. Sin duda, el sentimiento de soledad del estudiante es una realidad, especialmente al inicio del estudio con esta metodología. Se trata de un alumno que físicamente se encuentra solo ante unos materiales y unos recursos y en un entorno muchas veces poco favorecedor para el estudio. A la vez, no todos sabemos ser, sin más, estudiantes a distancia. Las estrategias necesarias para el estudio a distancia difieren de las presenciales, y el grado de autonomía del estudiante es sensi- blemente mayor desde el inicio de su proceso de aprendizaje, lo que conlleva unas destrezas específicas que deben adquirirse. Sin duda, la irrupción de las © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 153 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? tecnologías colaborativas parece que vienen frenando esta falla de los estudios a distancia. Además, es una realidad que la creación de comunidades virtuales entre los estudiantes disminuye el abandono de éstos, aumentando, en consecuencia, su grado de satisfacción (Davies y Quick, 2001). Así, abordando ya el segundo de los objetivos de este trabajo, señalaremos que numerosas investigaciones, la mayoría diríamos, de las que se han aproximado a averiguar las desventajas o problemas fundamentales de la educación a distan- cia, especialmente cuando se han realizado consultas a los estudiantes, destacan precisamente el sentimiento de soledad y de falta de comunicación a la hora de construir el conocimiento. Ello lo hemos podido constatar en investigaciones re- lacionadas con la UNED como después señalaremos (García Aretio, 1997). Este sentimiento de soledad, curiosamente, se deriva a partir de uno de los rasgos prin- cipales que definen a la educación a distancia: la separación física de profesores y estudiantes y de éstos entre sí. En realidad nos encontramos con un dilema de difícil solución. El concepto de separación física es recogido por buena parte de las definiciones de educación a distancia que reconocidos teóricos de la misma vinieron realizando a lo largo de las últimas décadas del siglo pasado10. Es decir, un elemento medular de lo que entendemos que es la educación a distancia, la más convencional y la más moder- na, es la consideración de que las conductas del docente y del estudiante, como tales, se desarrollan en espacios físicos diferentes o, si tuvieran lugar en el mismo escenario, de manera asíncrona. Así es que la paradoja surge cuando tantas inves- tigaciones insisten en que el problema fundamental de la educación a distancia es el de la separación del estudiante de aquello que se supone es el contexto físico propio de los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Esa separación no se vería como negativa si no fuese porque tras ella los es- tudiantes consultados la perciben con serios sentimientos de soledad. La mayoría de las investigaciones que se realizaron en la UNED durante sus primeros vein- ticinco años de existencia señalaban a esa «soledad» como una de las trabas más reiteradas por los estudiantes (García Aretio, 1997)11. Por otra parte esa separación, esa soledad, se traduce también en la base de otra de las características más des- tacadas de esta modalidad educativa, la independencia del estudiante y más que eso, su autonomía en el estudio. Quizás son dos rasgos que vienen forzados por la aludida separación pero que suponen principios educativos que bien maneja- dos y equilibrados con los de carácter más interactivo son referentes propios de 10. Véanse al efecto los propios estudios de recopilación que al respecto realizamos (GARCÍA ARETIO, 1986, 1994, 2001). 11. En este libro se recoge un resumen de cada una de las más destacadas investigaciones realizadas hasta 1996 sobre la UNED de España, muchas de ellas fueron producto de sendas tesis doctorales. 154 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 la educación de calidad dado que su puesta en práctica y producto final resultan altamente positivos. Parece que a través de las conclusiones de las investigaciones referidas a la efi- cacia de la educación a distancia se avalarían parte de nuestros presupuestos inicia- les, decimos «parte» porque al referirnos a la «ganancia» otra cuestión sería plantearse, además del rendimiento académico, la calidad de las interacciones humanas dentro de esta modalidad. Éste parece que puede ser el quid de la cuestión, el quid de la diferencia, ¿cómo lograr beneficios educativos relacionados con objetivos centrados en la formación social de los sujetos, similares a los que se obtienen en entornos cara a cara? En esto coincidimos con Tait (2000), en que las tecnologías colaborativas deben dar respuesta a esa cuestión. Es lógico que, al igual que otros muchos, este autor reconoce que la enseñanza en línea no puede suplir ese toque personal que supone la relación presencial entre profesor y estudiante, aunque sí que favorece la interacción, llegando en muchas ocasiones a situaciones de relación personal mucho más estrechas que las que suceden en formatos presenciales. Pero veamos y acerquémonos a las últimas décadas del siglo pasado. La rea- lidad de los estudiantes nuevos, los que accedían por primera vez a un sistema a distancia, sin experiencia anterior en este tipo de aprendizajes, es la de que arranca- ban sus estudios con la ausencia de los compañeros que habitualmente les habían acompañado en todas las anteriores andaduras educativas. Esa «soledad», más allá del perjuicio que pudiera suponer por la ausencia de debate, de ideas diferentes, de opiniones encontradas relativas a los temas de estudio y, sobre todo, de interac- ción con sus iguales, parece que suponía un hándicap especial que les «invitaba» a abandonar los estudios (Paul, 1990). Y ello, además, por la falta de referente ante determinadas dificultades que ofrecen los materiales de estudio en esta modalidad. En un aula convencional resulta fácil e inmediato para un estudiante que no haya entendido las explicaciones del profesor, el contrastar, por ejemplo, que los demás tampoco las entendieron. Eso relaja y hace entender que el fallo no es personal. Por el contrario, el alumno a distancia más convencional ante la dificultad podía concluir que no entiende porque no llega, porque le faltan conocimientos previos, porque sus capacidades intelectuales no están al nivel exigido por estos estudios y esta frustración puede impulsar al abandono (García Aretio, 1987). Existen alumnos que acceden a los estudios a distancia por el interés que tienen de aprovechar las ventajas de esta modalidad, la flexibilidad tempoespa- cial, la libertad para llevar el propio ritmo de aprendizaje, la autonomía e inde- pendencia que te brinda el acceso al conocimiento, etc. Sin embargo, hay otros que acceden a este tipo de formación porque no les queda más remedio, porque no existen otras vías, por dificultades económicas, familiares, de residencia, etc., para acceder a determinados estudios. En este último caso, se han encontrado estudiantes con mayores tendencias de desconcierto ante la falta de contacto y relación social con los compañeros (Krajnc, 1988). Por tanto, insistimos, entre las características o rasgos de la educación a distan- cia más reiterados a través de las diferentes definiciones seleccionadas, la separación © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 155 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? profesor-alumno es uno de los más destacados, junto con la ventaja de la posi- bilidad de favorecer el «estudio independiente». Pero este estudio independiente del alumno lo podemos considerar desde dos perspectivas, independencia como proceso o independencia como resultado. En el primer caso aludimos a lo que más podría criticarse y que podría entenderse como estudio «individual», aislado de los pares, lo que dificulta el logro de los objetivos relativos a la socialización. Ésta sería la parte negativa de este proceso. Ahora bien, esa «independencia» como «resultado» sería un objetivo de alto valor. Se trataría de lograr que el estudiante se preparase para ser independiente y autónomo, tanto en el aprender a aprender por sí mismo, como en la autonomía como persona que decide y es dueña de sí. Sin embargo, también debemos mencionar que esa soledad que se ha dado, y se sigue percibiendo, en los diseños de educación a distancia, está disminuyendo sensiblemente, como después veremos, gracias a la integración de las tecnolo- gías de la comunicación y la información en estos mismos diseños. Por tanto, a la hora de criticar o de argumentar en un sentido o en otro, deben considerarse todos estos extremos. En los sistemas a distancia de corte más convencional, digamos los ligados a la época de esplendor emergente de esta modalidad, décadas de los años 70 y 80 del pasado siglo, nunca se despreció el componente de interacción entre profesores y estudiantes y de éstos entre sí, ya fuese a través de los programados encuentros presenciales propios de estas universidades, como la Open University del Reino Unido o la UNED de España y que, por ejemplo, en el diseño de la Open University holandesa fueron una auténtica preocupación (Chang, 1983) con el fin de paliar esta limitación de la enseñanza a distancia; fuese a través de otros medios y siste- mas de comunicación propios de la época: correo postal y teléfono, fundamental- mente, y en menor medida, fax, audio y vídeo. A pesar de ello, en 1996, Keegan alertó de la dificultad para lograr el equilibrio entre la pregonada independencia del estudiante en la educación a distancia y la necesidad de una interacción con los otros estudiantes. Buena parte del éxito de esta modalidad estaría en adecuar convenientemente dicha armonía, punto que, poco a poco, se ha logrado y a unos niveles insospechados. Esta realidad se evidencia también a través del análisis de los recursos tecno- lógicos más utilizados en estas experiencias, que inicialmente fueron la televisión y el vídeo, y en menor medida, la radio. Ya a partir de los 90, las investigaciones dirigieron su mirada a los nuevos recursos que se incorporaron de forma masiva a la planificación de las acciones formativas a distancia. Estamos hablando ya del caso del correo electrónico primero y la Web después. Nadie pone en duda el enriquecimiento que desde esos momentos disfrutó la interrelación entre personas residentes en lugares distintos y distantes. Esas interacciones suponían en parte la superación de la soledad a que acabamos de hacer alusión. Los avances tecnoló- gicos cuando han ido integrándose en estos procesos, una vez logradas sus posi- bilidades de transmisión, han avanzado hacia las facilidades para la comunicación, interacción y, finalmente, colaboración. 156 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 Por otra parte, además de las ventajas que para algunos tiene un cierto ano- nimato a la hora de poderse expresar, otras investigaciones (Weiler, 1991) señalan que la distancia física proporciona, si se sabe utilizar adecuadamente, oportunida- des para la reflexión y el análisis crítico, sin la cercanía, coactiva a veces, de un profesor. La reflexión, la contemplación de las ideas ofrece más oportunidades para asentar los aprendizajes que el «aquí y ahora» del aula. Son éstas las ventajas de las interacciones asíncronas que más arriba destacábamos como muy positivas. Además, el anonimato de los alumnos, o al menos la no visión física de los mismos por parte de otros, en algunos procesos en línea hace que determinados estudiantes se sientan más cómodos, más libres, para poder expresar sus dudas, sus sentimientos, sus dificultades… También son muchos los estudiantes que ma- nifiestan una mayor capacidad para expresarse en grupos de debate soportados en sistemas digitales (Chester y Gwynne, 1998; Chambers, 2002). Otra crítica a la educación a distancia destaca que ésta no admite suficiente- mente la deliberación, el debate y contraste de pareceres entre profesores y estu- diantes y de éstos entre sí. Matthews (1999) piensa que el valor lo proporciona el estar físicamente en un campus universitario e interaccionar social e intelectual- mente con otros estudiantes y profesores. La ausencia de relación en el mismo es- pacio físico y de forma síncrona se ha observado por parte de los más críticos con preocupación y, en muchos casos, como motivo de alarma dado que se supone que esa falta de relación no prepara a los jóvenes para la participación ciudadana (Resnick, 2000). Pero este autor realiza estas críticas incluso para la denominada universidad virtual del siglo XXI que estaba llegando. 4. CON EL SOFTWARE SOCIAL, MÁS INTERACCIÓN En todo caso, algunos de los críticos de los sistemas a distancia que basan sus argumentos en esta falta de interacción humana se detienen muy poco en la interacción real que existe en muchos formatos presenciales, más allá de los mo- mentos informales de relación interpersonal entre estudiantes. De hecho resulta evidente que las posibilidades de interacción personal frecuente, uno a uno, entre profesor y estudiante se hace mucho más viable en sistemas en línea. Y afirmamos que también resulta así la relación entre todos los iguales, siempre que se disponga de herramientas de comunicación adecuadas. Son bastantes las propuestas de educación a distancia que mantienen la pre- ocupación de incorporar tecnologías con el fin de facilitar todas las posibilidades de interacción entre todos los actores y agentes de ese espacio formativo. De ahí que conforme han ido surgiendo tecnologías que han favorecido estas relaciones, la educación a distancia las haya ido incorporando. Y ésta es la dinámica que se está siguiendo en la actualidad con la Web 2.0. En lo que nos afecta a nuestro interés han sido vitales los años que llevamos recorridos de este siglo XXI en los que las herramientas tecnológicas se han ido © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 157 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? aproximando cada vez más a la facilitación de las relaciones sociales. El objetivo de este esfuerzo se ha centrado en lograr la interacción entre todas las personas, consiguiendo cada vez más y mejores niveles de comunicación, independiente- mente de los tiempos y espacios de cada uno (Levin, 2004). Si la educación a distancia ya se mostraba eficaz en las décadas finales del siglo pasado, a pesar del problema real de la escasez de interacción, qué podrá decirse en los años en que surge el software social, las redes sociales, la Web 2.0. Porque de lo que debería- mos hablar es de si puede o no existir en estos contextos la denominada presencia social, que entendemos como la capacidad de los alumnos a proyectarse social y afectivamente en una comunidad a través de las herramientas o software social (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison y Archer, 2001). Como parece deducirse fácilmente de su denominación, el software social agrupa todas aquellas herramientas de comunicación basadas en Internet que fa- cilitan la interacción entre personas y dan soporte a la configuración de redes sociales. Y en un contexto educacional, Anderson (2005) destaca que este software apoya a los estudiantes y los estimula a aprender juntos, manteniendo al mismo tiempo las características de independencia que posibilitan el control individual sobre su tiempo, espacio, presencia, actividad, identidad y grado de relación. El software es social porque además de facilitar la comunicación, a través del mismo, los usuarios pueden contribuir con sus contenidos por lo que entre todos van construyendo el conocimiento y enriqueciendo sus aportes (Styles, 2006). Los trabajos en grupo, las comunidades, las comunicaciones en todos los sentidos, también denominadas herramientas o tecnologías colaborativas, facilitan tareas ini- maginables en estos contextos educativos a distancia, gracias a las herramientas de mensajería de Internet, al chat, foros, blogs, e-portfolios, podcasting, wikis, redes sociales, peer-to-peer, etc. Son todas ellas componentes destacados de la Web 2.0 (Bragg, 2007). Recordemos que la Web 1.0, la de siempre, presenta un carácter más transmi- sivo, ya que los estudiantes acceden al contenido creado por otra persona, pero no interaccionan con él. Sin embargo, en la Web 2.0 los estudiantes pueden diseñar sus propios contenidos (Arsun y Kuru, 2006). Parece que lo que realmente se quie- re significar con esta Web no es otra cosa que la imparable evolución de Internet hacia cotas cada vez mayores de interacción y, sobre todo, de colaboración. Y además se incluye un cambio significativo en la interacción en esta Web, ya que hablamos de actitudes más que de herramientas o software (Davis, 2005), de he- cho, más que tecnologías se definen comportamientos, aunque bien es cierto que para activar ciertas actitudes deberemos facilitar los entornos donde éstas puedan expresarse. Pero éstos, apoyados en un determinado software, han de entenderse como servicio más que como un producto. Así, las contribuciones del usuario son las que en la Web 2.0 van construyendo la propia Web y, como consecuencia, el conocimiento. Desde nuestro punto de vista el ejemplo más paradigmático hoy es la Wikipedia de la que el propio creador del término Web 2.0, O’Really (2005), decía que era como una experiencia radical 158 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 de confianza donde el saber se construye libremente por parte de los propios usuarios transformándose cada uno de simple usuario, de consumidor, en code- sarrollador. ¿Cabe mayor democratización del conocimiento, no sólo en el acceso sino también en la creación? El contrapunto a esta experiencia de construcción colaborativa del conocimiento es la validez y fiabilidad del mismo. Es la inteligencia colectiva (Lévy, 2004) la que supone el gran beneficio de esta nueva ola digital. En definitiva, hacen falta aplicaciones Web, software social, que diseñan y articulan otros con el fin de que los usuarios se configuren como protagonistas de la producción, creación, gestión, actualización y organización de contenidos a través de la interacción y colaboración grupal. Ante esta realidad, los educadores nos encontramos con posibilidades realmente atractivas para facilitar a los estudiantes el logro de los objetivos de aprendizaje. Estas posibilidades per- miten una mayor independencia al estudiante, una mayor autonomía, pero a la vez mayores posibilidades de colaboración, de socialización, y de aumento de la eficiencia pedagógica (Franklin y Harmelen, 2007). También se define a la Web 2.0 como la Web de lectura y escritura (Richardson, 2006), y ello porque parece que va más allá de la prestación del servicio de lectura o mera visión y de descarga de contenidos, cuestiones propias de la Web 1.0. Ahora los lectores pueden también conformar y reescribir el contenido. En realidad existen muchos autores conven- cidos de que el fenómeno Web 2.0 es el aspecto de la sociabilidad que tiene el mayor potencial para mejorar la educación y, en concreto, una de las mayores posibilidades para la educación a distancia (Boyd, 2007). Y, sin duda, esta Web, al promover una mayor colaboración entre los estudiantes y entre profesores y estu- diantes, mejora los logros de aprendizaje, la socialización y, consecuentemente, el grado de satisfacción (Barkley Cross y Major, 2005). Sí es cierto que cuando surgieron teorías del aprendizaje como las conduc- tistas, cognitivistas y constructivistas, las tecnologías de la información y la comu- nicación no se habían desarrollado como para impactar esos postulados teóricos. Pero, respecto a la integración de las tecnologías, todas ellas están ahora superadas por la teoría conectivista (Siemens, 2004) como teoría del aprendizaje para nuestro tiempo que trata de proporcionar entendimiento de las habilidades y tareas nece- sarias para que los aprendices prosperen en una era digital basada en redes. Pero insistimos, tanto en un caso como en el otro, todas estas teorías pedagógicas de antes se mantienen, aunque evolucionan, y lo que hacen es tratar de aprovechar las facilitaciones que las tecnologías ofrecen para la aplicación de éstas y de los principios pedagógicos que postulan. 5. CONCLUSIÓN Sin duda, los estudiantes en estos momentos, en todo entorno educativo a dis- tancia, son realmente protagonistas de la propia construcción, gestión e, incluso, control de su saber y del acceso al mismo. Saber qué se necesita aprender en un momento determinado, dónde obtener los datos y la información precisa para ese © Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca Teor. educ. 22, 1-2010, pp. 141-162 LORENZO GARCÍA ARETIO Y MARTA RUIZ CORBELLA 159 LA EFICACIA EN LA EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA: ¿UN PROBLEMA RESUELTO? aprendizaje, cómo procesar esa información para transformarla en conocimiento, cómo relacionarla, refundirla, recrearla, gestionarla, mostrarla, etc., en interacción permanente con los otros. En esta línea diferentes investigaciones concluyen que estas tecnologías están facilitando un aprendizaje más eficaz con un potencial de apoyo al desarrollo de competencias antes reservadas a los formatos presenciales (Klamma y otros, 2007). De ahí que podamos concluir que esa «soledad» del estu- diante que hemos mencionado queda más que olvidada en los nuevos formatos digitales de enseñanza-aprendizaje. A esa conclusión final, que responde al tercero de los objetivos que nos marcamos al inicio de este trabajo, debemos agregar el logro de los otros dos objetivos, el hecho de que creemos probada la eficacia de la educación a dis- tancia, al menos a niveles similares a los de los formatos presenciales, así como que el inconveniente de la «soledad» del estudiante se ha ido viendo cada vez más reducido conforme las tecnologías han ido integrándose en estos procesos formativos. Decididamente, nos reiteramos en las consideraciones iniciales de este artícu- lo en el que partíamos del supuesto de que la educación a distancia «va ganando». Mientras estas formas diferentes e innovadoras de acometer estrategias para la do- cencia se sostengan en controles y garantías de calidad, soporten sus propuestas en diseños contrastados y partan de presupuestos teóricos y principios pedagógi- cos, no van a ser fácilmente frenadas por quienes aún en estos años dudan de la eficacia y eficiencia de esta modalidad o, más aún, reniegan de ella. Aunque bien es cierto que parece que hoy en día planteamientos serios son escasos en este último sentido, dado que parece probado que con diseños pedagógicos rigurosos los aprendizajes pueden ser igualmente de calidad, se produzcan éstos en formatos presenciales o a distancia. Entendemos, por ello, que a estas alturas está fuera de lugar debatir si se pueden o no lograr resultados académicos de calidad mediante la educación a distancia. 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Montgomery, AL, IDECC. SABA, F. (2000) Research in distance education: a status report. International Review of re- search in Open and Distance Learning, 1 (1), 2-9. Consultado el 27 de junio de 2009. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/4/24. SCHRAMM, W. (1962) What We Know About Learning from Instructional Television, en Edu- cational television: The next ten years. Stanford CA, The Institute for Communication Research, Stanford University. Consultado el 17 de mayo de 2009. http://www.questia. com/PM.qst?a=o&d=58715345. SHACHAR, M. y NEUMANN, Y. (2003) Differences between traditional and distance education academic performances: A meta-analytic approach. Consultado el 17 de junio de 2009. http://www.scribd.com/doc/3569335/Differences-Between-Traditional-and-Distance- Education-Academic-Performances. SIEMENS, G. (2004) Conectivismo: una teoría del aprendizaje para la era digital. Consultado el 27 de junio de 2009. http://www.diegoleal.org/docs/2007/Siemens(2004)-Conecti- vismo.doc. SIGALES, C. (2002) El potencial interactivo de los entornos virtuales de enseñanza y aprendi- zaje en la educación a distancia. Consultado el 18 de agosto de 2009. http://www.uoc. edu/web/esp/art/uoc/sigales0102/sigales0102.html. STYLES, C. (2006) How Web 2.0 will change history. Consultado el 17 de marzo de 2009. http://catherinestyles.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/web20history1.pdf. TAIT, A. (2000) Students and attachment: the nature of electronic relationships. Adult Lear- ning, 11 (10), 20-22. (Texto electrónico en Biblioteca UNED). WEILER, K. (1991) Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. Harvard Educational Review, 61 (4), 449-474. (Texto electrónico en Biblioteca UNED). 
work_5m4usadmrva6vh2msigmyhixqu	----	Changing the role of tutors in distance education with information and communication technologies Adrian Kirkwood, Ann Jones and Anne Jelfs Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University The Open University plans to make more extensive use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for distance teaching and learning and for administrative contacts between students, tutors and the University's headquarters. This paper reports on a survey of the Tuition and Counselling (TAC) staff, most of whom work only part-time for the OU. It established the extent to which TAC staff currently have access to and familiarity with ICTs and their perceived needs for training and other forms of support for its effective use. The paper discusses the possible impact on TAC staff of the greater use of new technologies in their OU work, and the organisational and pedagogic changes that may ensue. Introduction The Open University (OU) is a large, complex organization offering many types of course to a wide variety of adult learners. At the time of writing (1995), the university has over 200,000 distance learners, of whom more than 100,000 are taking undergraduate courses. The OU offers more than 140 undergraduate courses and many other courses in Health and Social Welfare, Management, Community Education, etc. There are about 7,700 Tuition and Counselling (TAC) staff throughout Europe. Individual members of the TAC staff provide student support as study counsellors and/or tutors for one or more of the OU's courses, and act as a student's local point of contact with the OU. They are usually contracted to work only part-time for the OU, and many are employed full- time or part-time at another university or educational institution. Within the OU system, there exist only limited opportunities for contact between students and their tutors. Infrequent tutorial sessions provide the main opportunities for face-to-face interaction between tutors and students, although the telephone enables the discussion of problems and queries. Communication by post forms a vital part of OU studies, with assignments being submitted by students for comment and grading by their tutors, who subsequently send back their responses to students. 35 Adrian Kirkwood et al Changing role of tutors in distance education with information and communication technologies Since 1988 a small number of courses have involved students and tutors in computer-mediated communication (CMC), and there have also been some small-scale experiments with CMC for students and tutors located in certain 'remote' areas (Mason, 1995a). However, from 1996 there are plans for more widespread access to CMC and other online facilities for those with a modem, etc., and very soon the OU will offer online facilities for administrative purposes. Access to information and communications technologies A survey of TAC staff was undertaken in March 1995. Questionnaires were sent to one-third of the TAC staff, with full-time OU staff being excluded from the sample. A total of 2,044 responses were received (78.5% of the sample). When the data were analysed, differences between groups (age, gender, type of course tutored, etc.) were examined (Kirkwood et al, 1995). The survey sought to determine: • the extent of access TAC staff have to information and communications technologies (ICTs); • the types of equipment available to them and the location; • their attitudes towards using a computer for their OU work; • in what ways (if any) they had used a computer for their OU work; • their perceived needs for support and training in the use of ICTs. The survey found that, overall, a very large proportion of the TAC staff has access to a computer, with only 12.3% having no access at all. If, however, we consider those who do not tutor courses that require students to use a computer, the proportion without access rises to 16.0%. The gender differences in both the quantity and quality of access that we have found with successive student surveys (Jones et al, 1992) is repeated in the data for TAC staff, i.e. men have better access than women. The type of computer most frequently used is a PC with Windows, although there are many using other systems, especially Apple Macintosh and Amstrad PCW machines as well as PCs without Windows. Less than 20% of those with a computer at home have a modem; about the same proportion have a CD-ROM drive. Very many tutors have already used a computer in connection with their OU work, even though only a small number of courses expect tutors to use one. Many of the survey respondents felt that the OU should provide support for their use of ICTs and not simply in terms of financial assistance to help cover the costs of acquiring hardware or peripherals (a modem, CD-ROM drive, etc.) or of online working. A large proportion felt that they should be trained in the use of software appropriate for their OU work. Issues for discussion We believe that the results of the survey raise three issues which are particularly important to the OU, but which also have a wider relevance. Expected computer literacy and competence The first of these issues is the level of computer literacy and competence that TAC staff will be 36 ALT-J Volume 4 Number I expected, in future, to have. Currently, TAC staff are selected on the basis of subject expertise (i.e. their knowledge and skills related to the subject of the course) and also on their relevant teaching expertise (i.e. their experience and skills of tutoring adult students both face-to-face and at a distance). Knowledge and skills about using computers are necessary only, and indeed relevant only, when tutors are being considered for courses where these form part of the content (e.g. computing or information technology). The issue, therefore, is what the effects will be on recruitment and retention Of TAC staff if wider use of computers for OU teaching and administration leads to an expectation of access to ICTs and skills in their use. This is of particular concern if the expectation is applied in respect of courses that do not require students to use computers as well as those that do. Might tutors without such skills find themselves disadvantaged even though they fulfil the criteria in terms of subject and teaching expertise? As has been discussed elsewhere (Kirkup and Jones, 1996), there is the real danger that while opening up new possibilities for some, increased use of ICTs closes down possibilities for others - and for TAC staff, as for students, those affected adversely are often groups who are already disadvantaged. Who gains most from wider use of ICTs by TAC staff? Does the Open University benefit from the computing knowledge and skills acquired by TAC staff at home or at their main workplace? Do the TAC staff seek to gain experience and skills in their use of ICTs for OU activities that can be transferred to their domestic or main work situation? Currently, the OU benefits from the general computing competence and skills possessed by TAC staff. However, very many of the tutors with access to a computer feel that they need training in the use of software and applications, ranging from about 20% wanting training for word processing, to more than 50% seeking guidance for email and computer conferencing. A survey was recently conducted of tutors for the new (1995) OU course Information Technology and Society (THD204), which requires students and tutors to use a computer for a number of applications, including CMC and accessing resources on a CD-ROM disc. It found that many hope to increase their IT skills in the process of tutoring the course: 'It appears that many tutors are getting their main training in the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for teaching through their OU work!' (Kirkup etal, 1995, p. 17). Within the wider context of UK higher education, the adoption and use of ICTs for teaching and learning may be less well developed than many enthusiasts expect. Research on the transformation of higher education in the UK and the role of ICTs (based upon interviews with staff and students in more than 30 universities and colleges) suggests that with the exception of word processing and email (both internally and inter-institutionally) much, if not most, of higher education remains untouched by ICTs (Albury, 1995). How will the tutor's role change with the increased use of ICTs for OU work? OU students' overall workload has tended to increase with the introduction of home-based computing as they learn to use the equipment as well as the subject being studied (Jones et al, 1992). It is highly likely that TAC staff will experience a similar increase in workload, at least initially. Currently, the workload for OU tutors tends to be intermittent, in that it is greater when assignments are due and at the time of group tutorials than at other times. If the use of CMC 37 Adrian Kiriwood et ol Changing role of tutors in distance education with information and communication technologies were introduced more widely, tutors would spend time throughout the year working online, and the workload would tend to be more continuous. The potential for online working and CMC might set up unrealistic student expectations about virtually unlimited levels of contact. As Mason (1995a) has pointed out, increased electronic communication can lead to a particular paradox: it offers the potential for providing more learners with up-to-date information (which could reduce teacher resources); however, it also sets up an expectation of fast personal interactive feedback (which requires more teaching resource). Although students currently have open telephone access to their tutors, social conventions have developed to regulate contact time, for example, no telephone conversations at 1.00 a.m. If tutors are to establish boundaries of the type that exist in telephone contact, and through that reduce their computer- conferencing overload, they need to announce to their students when they will be logging on (Mason, 1995b). Tutors might have to make additional purchases to achieve the required computer specification, and spend more on telephone costs; both of these will have an impact not only on the domestic budget, but also on the use of shared resources. Tutors are therefore likely to welcome methods of reducing the online costs, both in terms of finance and time. There are at least two changes to current practice that could achieve such a cost reduction. Firstly, conferencing could be used as a many-to-many delivery system in addition to the more frequently used one-to-many system. Secondly, students could be encouraged to take ownership of the conferencing. Both these changes, however, would require tutor training in conferencing, and would also assume a change in the nature of tutoring such that it would become a blend of course delivery and course support not previously undertaken by OU tutors. One approach, for example, may be for course teams to provide tutors with structured materials guiding tutor conferences which include questions to pose to students at intervals throughout the course. Such training would respond to tutors' expressed needs, and would go some way to solving the electronic communication paradox, and also ensuring that the opening up of possibilities for some is not done entirely at the risk of disadvantaging others. In conclusion As the OU moves towards greater use of information and communication technologies for teaching and student support, the role and the needs of the TAC staff (most of whom work only part-time for the OU) must be re-assessed. The issue is not simply one of ensuring that TAC staff have access to appropriate equipment without particular groups being disadvantaged or undue additional expense being incurred by all. The University must enable TAC staff to make effective use of technologies appropriate to their teaching and student support activities. In time, ICTs will not simply replace existing means of delivery and communication: they will make possible different forms of educational interaction. In the case of certain courses or programmes of study, this might involve the generation of new models of distance education, in which current distinctions between established patterns of course production, presentation and student support become untenable. References Albury, D. (1995), 'Transformation or expansion: ICTs and the future of higher education', 38 Aa-J Volume 4 Number I paper presented at the PICT International Conference on the Social and Economic Implications of Information and Communication Technologies, London, 10-12 May. Kirkup, G. and Jones, A. (1996) 'New technologies for open learning: the superhighway to the learning society' in Raggatt, P., Edwards, R., and Small, N. (eds), The Learning Society: Challenges and Trends, London, Routledge. Kirkup, G., Jelfs, A. and Heap, N. (1995), 'THD204 Information technology and society: first survey of tutors', Report no. 54, Programme on Learner Use of Media, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University. Kirkwood, A., Jelfs, A. and Jones, A. (1995), 'Teaching and counselling staff and computing: overall findings of 1995 survey', Report no. 64, Programme on Learner Use of Media, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University. Jones, A., Kirkup, G. and Kirkwood, A. (1992), Personal Computers for Distance Education, London, Paul Chapman. Mason, R. (1995a), 'The MINT Project in the context of future directions for computer conferencing in the Open University', Report no. 207, Centre for Information Technology in Education, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University. Mason, R. (1995b) 'Computer conferencing on A423: philosophical problems of equality', Report no. 210, Centre for Information Technology in Education, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University. 39 
work_5nohrgga2rhjldmpq3eob4pk24	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_5ugxohhzzbhateiwjapeoz4isa	----	AJDE1601.vp Use of Linguistic Qualifiers and Intensifiers in a Computer Conference Patrick J. Fahy Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University Previous research in text-based computer conferencing has reported that analysis of transcripts of online discussions can reveal how partic- ipants network socially, exchange information, and attempt to con- struct knowledge. Some have detected gender differences in online discussions, which may affect the interpersonal dynamics within the group. This study investigated a possible gender-related communica- tions difference (the use of linguistic qualifiers and intensifiers) in a computer conference transcript. The study differed from some previ- ous work in using the sentence as the unit of analysis and in employing a newly developed tool for coding, the Transcript Analysis Tool. Re- sults suggested a tendency for women to use more of the forms thought likely to sustain dialogue (qualifiers, conditional and paren- thetic statements, and personal pronouns), whereas men’s postings generally contained fewer qualifiers and more intensifiers. The differ- ences were seen as generally supporting previous findings and also as demonstrating that in a moderated conference the range of interactive behavior is less extreme than in “open” or unstructured environments. Online conferencing is increasingly central to much distance education and training. Tutors and students use conferences to create and sustain relation- ships online, and students interact with each other and with information in conferences. Research in this area is aided by the wealth of online data gen- erated (conference transcripts and log files detailing the interaction), which, with proper analysis, can aid in understanding the unique nature of computer-mediated communications (CMC; Collot and Belmore 1996; Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001). 5 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 16(1), 5–22 Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Requests for reprints should be sent to Patrick J. Fahy, Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada T9S 3A3. E-mail: patf@athabascau.ca I have critiqued some previous transcript analysis work for various methodological weaknesses (Fahy 2001a) and with colleagues have sug- gested an alternative methodology and instrument (the Transcript Analysis Tool, TAT) for exploring interaction and social network patterns (Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001). This study extends previous work, in accord with the view of the impact and efficacy of CMC as dependent both upon the content of the interaction and the quality of the interpersonal environ- ment in which it occurs (Collins and Berge 1996). The subject in this study was an analysis of the communications of men and women in an online computer conference moderated by the course instructor as part of a gradu- ate course in distance education. The particular focus was the students’ use of various linguistic forms thought to be gender related, which tend to ex- tend (epistolary forms) or limit (expository forms) ongoing interaction in an online conference. Theoretical Context Various ways in which men and women differ in their typical communi- cation styles have previously been described (Kirkup and von Prummer 1990; Herring 1996; Savicki, Lingenfelter, and Kelley 1996). In unmoderated, “open” online conferences and listservs, for example, men have been found to be more assertive, argumentative, and aggressive, whereas women were more “caring, sociable, and hence interactive” (Her- ring 1996; Yates 1996; Rodino 1997). Other observations, such as that men tend to be more engaged with online communication than women (Blocher 1997) or that women have fewer opportunities for online access (King 1998), have been less well supported or rejected in more recent studies (Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001). Online text-based communication has been recognized as an entity with unique characteristics—not merely a “pale shadow” of spoken language (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001) but a form of “talking in writing” that shares elements of both written and spoken communication (Collot and Bellmore 1996). Text-based CMC is a vehicle through which partici- pants are potentially able to create “social presence” (a projection of their personalities as well as their ideas) if given proper guidance and structure (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000). The growth in conferencing has encouraged transcript studies (Hillman 1999). As more work has been done in this area, methods have been refined and results have generally tended to be more illuminating of and applicable 6 LINGUISTIC QUALIFIERS AND INTENSIFIERS to the processes and the content of online interaction, though suggestions for improvements in methods and theory-building efforts have also been made (Saba 2000; Fahy 2001a). Among the earliest efforts at transcript analysis was Henri’s (1992), who viewed CMC as a “gold mine of information regarding the psychosocial dynamics at work among students” (118). Henri rightly saw that online communication was more than simply a means of conveying information; she demonstrated that the interactive process itself and the dynamics of group communication were seen by participants as central to their learning. Henri’s model of content analysis considered what she called the “social osmosis” in the group (120), including the circulation of ideas and the con- nections established among individuals. She recognized that “merely” so- cial factors such as the multiple views expressed in group exchanges, the reduction of social pressure resulting from conversational opportunities, and the feelings of belonging to the group resulting from successful collab- oration could together contribute significantly to the learning value of CMC (119). To address more of the social milieu in conferences, especially what she termed the metacognitive components of online content and pro- cesses leading to useful learning, Henri (1992) constructed a qualitative analytic tool that identified five dimensions of online interaction: participative, social, interactive, cognitive, and metacognitive (124). Henri divided (the unlovely current term is “unitized”) her transcript into meaning units rather than using a more structurally grounded unit of analysis such as the sentence or even the paragraph. Although others sub- sequently chose the sentence as a less subjective unit of analysis (Hill- man 1999; Fahy 2001a), some followed Henri’s lead in using nonsentence units: Gibson (1996) attempted to find “speech segments” in her corpus; Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997) adopted Henri’s “meaning units”; and Anderson et al. (2001) and Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) used “message units” (though they conceded that they would consider using “sub-message units” [i.e., sentences] in future work). Overall, although Henri’s (1992) approach left unanswered questions about the metacognitive aspects of online interaction, her perceptions about the place of interactivity in online communications were useful. For purposes of this study a key insight was the observation that consideration of interactive content plus other data was needed to create a clear under- standing of the collaborative processes at work in online learning situations (128). 7 FAHY Zhu’s (1996) interest in transcript analysis was in the processes of mean- ing negotiation and knowledge construction at a distance. She approached the task with the assumption that “electronic conferencing promotes stu- dent-centered learning” (822) and that it was important for students to en- gage in collaborative and self-regulated activities, including reflection, in the social context of the conference (823). Zhu (1996) studied the transcript of a graduate-level course. Her ana- lytic framework identified vertical and horizontal interactions (those that acknowledged a superior source of information or advice and those for which there was no authoritative source or correct answer, respectively). Her method involved counting occurrences of questioning, information ex- change, reflection, and knowledge construction. Zhu concluded that indi- viduals were motivated to construct knowledge by their interactions with others and that she was able to discern assimilation in the processing of in- formation by participants (840). Zhu’s (1996) work was significant in two ways. First, she simplified the process of analyzing the conference by limiting her instrument to five categories: questions, reflections, discussion, comments, and an- swers (824). Other analytic approaches had used up to twenty coding categories, and instruments with over a dozen categories were not un- common (Fahy 2001a). Second, Zhu recognized that participants’ rela- tionships to one another were mirrored in their interactions: the interac- tion reflected information about the social network and conveyed content about the topic under discussion. The act of asking a vertical question, for example, was both a request for information and an ac- knowledgment that the person approached was likely to possess the an- swer and thus to occupy the superior social status of a potential advisor or knowledge provider. Using Zhu’s typology to reveal the patterns of interaction in a conference could help describe the structure of the sup- porting social system and form an example of some of the “other data” Henri (1992) had mentioned as important to full understanding of the collaborative process. The processes by which knowledge might be constructed in a moderated online debate were explored by Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997). Following Henri’s advice, they attempted to identify “meaning units” within the interaction. The resulting analysis placed over 90% of the postings in a single category (“sharing, comparing information”), indicat- ing an apparent lack of discriminant capability in the instrument (Fahy 2001a). Methodological problems aside, Gunawardena, Lowe, and Ander- son’s work contained an important observation: 8 LINGUISTIC QUALIFIERS AND INTENSIFIERS Interaction should be viewed as the totality of interconnected and mutually responsive messages, which make up the conference, and perhaps more: in- teraction is the entire gestalt formed by the on-line communications among the participants. The participants are not speaking in the same virtual space by chance and regardless of each others’ presence; they are acting in relation to each other and in a manner which reflects each others’ presence and influ- ence. They are not merely acting, nor reacting, but interacting, even if the links among individual messages may not be readily apparent. (405) The concept of the gestalt of the communication and the importance of the “totality” of the content and the interaction are insightful. Like Henri’s (1992) “other data,” assessment in some systematic way of the totality of the conference could be seen as key to understanding its im- portance in the learning process. Seeing the totality of the interaction im- plies looking beyond single elements of conference content or interac- tion, viewing the interaction as at least partially a social network transaction and recognizing the resulting communication as a reflection of interpersonal as well as intellectual engagement (Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001). Garrison, Anderson, Rourke, and Archer in a series of important papers (Rourke et al. 1999, 2001; Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000, 2001; Rourke and Anderson 2000; Anderson et al. 2001) examined CMC as a re- cord of the striving of an online community to achieve higher-order learn- ing outcomes through the creation of cognitive, social, and teaching pres- ence. Their work has contributed to the context for transcript studies and has suggested a useful a framework for considering the observable ele- ments of online communication. Especially helpful for this study (dis- cussed further later) was their concept of social presence, the act of project- ing one’s personality onto the online community through textual and linguistic devices. Gender has emerged as an explanation of the types of linguistic forms and strategies participants choose in projecting social presence in online networks. Herring (1996) found in her studies of transcripts from listservs and other unmoderated forums that men were “more assertive and argu- mentative,” tending to challenge and criticize others, attracting attention to themselves, and engaging in “contests” intended to gain status in the online community (104). The male “expository” style also claimed to value infor- mation more highly, sometimes using accusations of “insufficient informativity” to terminate interaction with those with whom there was disagreement (105). 9 FAHY The female “epistolary” participation style, on the other hand, was found by Herring (1996) to include more efforts to continue dialogue and to avoid confrontation. Epistolary interactions emphasized commonalities between participants rather than differences and were more likely to view interlocutors as aligned than opposed. The epistolary style was seen as more referential of the other participants, attempting to weave consensus from the individual contributions of the group. Weaker links between gender and interactive styles than those found by Herring (1996) have been reported. In a study of a wide variety of unmoderated, “open” online discussion groups, Savicki, Lingenfelter, and Kelley (1996) found only limited gender associations. They did con- cede that women’s groups tended to contain more self-disclosure and more attempts at tension reduction, whereas men’s groups included more fact- and action-oriented statements, but their analysis failed to find more questions, opinions, apologies, or first-person pronouns in women’s groups or instances of rudeness or aggression in the contributions of men. Although they reported that men- or women-only (unisex) groups were more likely to feature extreme gender-associated behavior, Savicki, Lingenfelter, and Kelley concluded that the gender composition provided only modest explanatory power for any interaction differences observed in their groups. In our previous work (Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001), we found that some of Herring’s (1996) findings regarding gender preferences for epistolary and expository linguistic forms held, namely, that women asked and answered questions more often and that women were more in- terested in and involved with social network functions of the online com- munity, making more contacts within the network and responding more often to the overtures of others (their rates of ignoring others, or failing to include others among their personal contacts, were half those of men; Ridley and Avery 1979; Fahy 2001b). We also found that women more frequently employed characteristic epistolary conventions such as sign- ing their postings and retaining the message titles of others when re- sponding. Overall, these findings suggest some apparent gender differences in typical online communicative styles and strategies. The present study sought to determine whether gender differences in the use of language to qualify or intensify participants’ postings, frequently observed in open and unmoderated discussions, might be detected in the more structured environment of a course conference moderated closely by the instructor. 10 LINGUISTIC QUALIFIERS AND INTENSIFIERS Methodology The focus of the enquiry was on the participants’ uses of linguistic quali- fiers and intensifiers, as found in the transcript of a fifteen-week graduate course in distance education. Based on previous findings related to gender and language use in online communications discussed earlier, it was hy- pothesized that men’s and women’s preferred online interaction styles would differ in relation to use of qualifiers and intensifiers as follows: • The dominant female style would be more epistolary, using more hedges (“sort of,” “kind of,” “perhaps,” “it seems to me”) and qualifiers (“I think,” “perhaps”); more first- and second-person pronouns, to emphasize the interpersonal element of the online exchange (Yates 1996); and more conditional (if–then) and parenthetic expressions, as ways of reducing po- tential conflict, softening disagreement, expressing tentativeness, and sus- taining dialogue. • Consistent with lesser concern for continuing dialogue, the male ex- pository style would be expected to use fewer of the previously mentioned dialogue-sustaining forms and would be more emphatic and declamatory. In addition to using more intensifiers (“certainly,” “of course,” and “very”), men would be expected to be generally less civil and, in extreme cases, even to engage in flaming, coarse language and other forms of rudeness. A transcript consisting of 356 student postings (44,599 words in 2,558 sentences) was examined. (The instructor contributed an additional 9000 words in 102 postings; these were ignored in this analysis). ATLAS.ti (ver. 4.1), a computer-based qualitative research tool, and SPSS-PC were used to code and subsequently analyze the data. Coding was accomplished on a sentence-by-sentence basis by the author. It was not felt that reliability needed to be checked in this analysis as the linguistic items of interests were relatively unambiguous, and not, as is often the case in transcript re- search, subject to interpretation (Fahy 2001a). The student group was relatively small (13 students, 7 male, 6 female). The students were aware that their conference transcript would be the ob- ject of research, and participants had been guaranteed complete privacy in any reports. In consideration of any anxiety the participants might have re- garding the proposed research, students were offered the option of an alter- nate activity if they did not wish to participate, and until the end of the course they could withdraw or edit any posting they had made. No student 11 FAHY elected the alternate activity, and no one requested that a posting be with- drawn or edited. Findings Qualifiers and Intensifiers Table 1 shows differences in the use of the seven most commonly occur- ring qualifiers found in the transcript (those that occurred thirty or more times). Shown are the totals for men and women, the proportion of usage of each term by men and women, and, to permit comparisons, the occurrence of each term per 1000 words. (Men [n = 7] posted a total of 20,804 words, women [n = 6] 23,795. See Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001 for a full de- scription of the content of the transcript in relation to the TAT.) The results for qualifiers were mixed: women used 57% of the qualifiers overall, and their rate of usage (15 per 1000 words) was about 15% greater than the men’s (13 per 1000); however, men’s rates of usage slightly ex- ceeded the women’s on three of the seven most commonly occurring quali- fiers (“may/might,” “often,” and “probably”). The largest difference was for the qualifying phrase “I think,” 68% of the total uses of which were by women. Overall, intensifiers were less than half as common as qualifiers in the transcript (there were a total of 252 intensifiers, compared with 620 qualifi- ers). Table 2 shows the five most commonly occurring intensifiers found in the transcript. Although the results were again mixed, they were also suggestive of a pattern supporting the hypothesis of men’s greater use of intensifiers: • Men’s uses of intensifiers exceeded women’s on four of the five items listed. • Men produced 61% of all intensifiers. • Men’s sentences averaged more than 50% more intensifiers than women’s. (The ratio of qualifiers to intensifiers was 1.7:1 for men and 2.6:1 for women.) • The most commonly used intensifier, “very,” occurred almost twice as often in men’s posting as in women’s. 12 LINGUISTIC QUALIFIERS AND INTENSIFIERS 13 Table 1. Occurrence of Qualifiers Appearing 30 Times or More Men Women Total Qualifiers # % Occurrences per 1000 Words # % Occurrences per 1000 Words # % Occurrences per 1000 Words F Sig. But 95 46 4.4 112 54 4.5 207 28 4.4 0.02 .88 If 59 41 2.5 87 60 3.5 146 19 3.0 1.47 .25 May/might 40 53 2.0 36 47 1.5 76 10 1.8 1.02 .34 I think 24 32 1.0 52 68 2.3 76 10 1.6 6.32 .03 Often 25 50 1.3 25 50 1.1 50 7 1.2 0.25 .63 Probably 18 53 0.8 16 47 1.0 34 4 0.9 0.18 .68 Though 10 32 0.5 21 68 1.2 31 4 0.8 1.77 .21 Totals 271 43 13.0 349 57 15.0 620 14.1 Note: Sig. = statistical significance of the F value. 14 Table 2. Occurrence of the 5 Most Commonly Used Intensifiers Men Women Total Intensifiers # % Occurrences per 1000 Words # % Occurrences per 1000 Words # % Occurrences per 1000 Words F Sig. Very 59 63 2.9 35 37 1.6 94 24 2.3 2.37 .15 Only 40 62 1.8 25 38 1.0 65 17 1.4 2.60 .14 Every 25 46 1.2 30 54 1.5 55 14 1.3 0.50 .49 Never 16 80 0.7 4 20 0.3 20 5 0.5 1.09 .32 Always 14 78 0.6 4 22 0.3 18 5 0.4 2.00 .18 Totals 154 61 7.5 98 39 4.2 252 5.7 Note: Sig. = statistical significance of the F value. Parenthetics, Conditional Expressions, and Pronoun Usage Parenthetic and conditional expressions (chiefly if–then constructions, but also including comparatively rare subjunctive forms of the types should it be or if it were) were seen as another way of softening any potential oppo- sition to the message, parenthetics by adding “by the way” material (in the self-effacing manner of parenthetic expressions), and conditionals by sug- gesting assertions were somehow contingent. The pronouns I and you were seen as reflecting a preference for personal (epistolary) interaction. Table 3 shows the occurrence of parenthetic and conditional expressions and the use of pronouns by men and women. Again, findings were suggestive, if not emphatic. Women used 65% of the characteristically epistolary parenthetic expressions and 54% of the conditionals overall. Regarding the pronouns, women used I and you more than the men. Pronouns have been found to occur proportionally more of- ten in CMC than in writing or speech (Yates 1996). In some contexts (i.e., journalism), I is associated with personal speech and with “self-centered articles by people of note, … investigative reporting, and … eye-witness accounts” (Yates 1996, 40), whereas diminished use of the personal pro- noun reflects greater social impersonality. Low frequency of personal pro- nouns (more common here in the men’s postings) is associated with more informational prose (Collot and Belmore 1996). Discussion Savicki, Lingenfelter, and Kelley (1996) concluded from their data that gender was not a powerful predictor of participants’ online behavior. On the basis of only the statistical evidence, the same conclusion might appear to hold here, too. Also, some forms of extreme behavior observed in open conferences (rudeness, coarse language, dismissive, sexist, or suggestive comments) were not observed here. Nevertheless, the findings were sug- gestive and salient in relation to the question of gender styles in online communication. Specifically, trends in the data consistent with previously reported gen- der associations included the following: • Women used more qualifiers: women had higher totals and higher rates of usage of qualifiers than did men; although both men and women used more qualifiers than intensifiers, women’s preference for qualifiers 15 FAHY 16 Table 3. Parenthetics, Conditionals, and Pronoun Usage Men Women Totals Linguistic Elements # % Occurrences per 1000 Words # % Occurrences per 1000 Words # Occurrences per 1000 Words F Sig. Conditionals 36 46 1.6 43 54 1.9 79 1.7 0.28 .60 Parenthetics 81 35 3.6 151 65 5.7 232 4.6 2.56 .14 Pronouns I 424 41 18.8 606 59 25.7 1030 22.0 3.28 .10 We 149 48 6.6 159 52 7.2 308 6.9 0.66 .80 Us 27 54 1.2 23 46 1.1 50 1.2 0.03 .87 You 95 38 4.1 158 62 6.9 253 5.4 7.56 .02 Note: Sig. = statistical significance of the F value. was more than twice that of the men’s (women used qualifiers 3.6 times more often than intensifiers, whereas men used them 1.7 times more often); women used almost two-thirds of all parenthetic expressions. • Women preferred personal over collective language: women’s usage of the pronouns I and you exceeded men’s by 25% and 44%, respectively, whereas men’s uses of the collectives we and us were greater. • Men used more intensifiers: men used the most commonly occurring intensifiers 64% more than women despite writing 13% fewer words, and men used the two most common intensifiers (very and only) 61% more than women. Although the results obtained here form a pattern and seem to indicate a tendency for gender preferences in communication styles, the findings were less emphatic than had been reported by others. Examination of the circumstances under which this transcript was generated suggested possi- ble explanations for the discrepancies. First, this study used online interactions generated in a structured and moderated conference in which the instructor was highly involved (the in- structor contributed about 25% of the postings and 20% of the words in the transcript). Observers of online interaction (French et al. 1999) have at- tested to the impact of moderation on outcomes in online interaction. Al- though the association between instructor presence and specific outcomes is not yet well understood (Anderson et al. 2001), it is plausible that the in- structor’s presence was at least partially responsible for the consistently high levels of civility maintained. Second, and related to the previous explanation, there was a high level of instructor-imposed task in this conference (Savicki, Lingenfelter, and Kelley 1996). The group task (defined as work that requires collaboration and cooperation, such as solving a problem or discussing or generating ideas) consisted of topics provided by the instructor. To be successful, the group needed to work effectively together. In listservs and other open envi- ronments no such requirement for cooperation exists. In unmoderated situ- ations, the payoff for some participants appears to lie in deceiving, embar- rassing, or upstaging others. Studies of group decision making have demonstrated the importance of imposed goals, criteria, roles, and rules both for task completion and for group function (DeSanctis and Gallupe 1987). The performance difference observed in this group may reflect the known principle that increased structure obviates inappropriate behavior in task-oriented situations. 17 FAHY A third factor was the maturity of the group itself and the homogeneity of their interests. The average age in the program from which this group was formed was forty-two years, and all were graduate students in the same program. It is likely that maturity, experience with online communications, and a sense of common purpose predisposed the participants to greater co- operation, especially, as noted previously, as the task-orientation of the group was also very high. Finally, the participants who generated this transcript were not anony- mous when posting to the conference. All postings in the study transcript contained the identity of the contributor on a “From” line, and aliases or pseudonyms were not permitted. Asocial forms of interaction (Abrami and Bures 1996) and the “hi-jacking” of conferences by disaffected or malicious participants (Collison et al. 2000) are more likely in unmoderated or anonymous situations where repercussions for such be- havior may not exist. Conclusion Although the associations were not strong, indications of gender differ- ences in the use of qualifiers and intensifiers appeared in the interaction studied here. Perhaps because they were subtle, the findings reinforced the importance of attending to nuances in the social environment as a way of increasing understanding of the dynamics of online group learning. Partic- ularly in online group learning situations, social ambience is part of the learning gestalt. In this instance, different linguistic strategies seemed to characterize the behavior of men and women as they projected their social presence in the conference. The findings also suggest the need for further research on factors of known importance to network function (such as group size, group task, and interaction opportunities) in relation to participant behavior. For example, would interaction patterns change if the group were larger or if the propor- tion of men and women were unequal? What impact does the presence and nature of a predefined task have on interaction patterns? Would prospect of meeting face-to-face change interaction patterns? Continued study of online social and communicative behavior to answer these and other questions is important because online interaction is likely to remain central to the delivery of distance learning, and the tools for inter- acting online are becoming more powerful as bandwidth increases (Ball 2001; “Still time” 2001). Practitioners need to understand both the overt 18 LINGUISTIC QUALIFIERS AND INTENSIFIERS and the covert factors that affect learning in online situations. We may be alert to obvious violations of civility or fairness, but we are probably less aware of more subtle underlying influences in the environment, which may also impact the inclusiveness, appeal, and effectiveness of the online com- munity for different participants. Another reason for continued interest in the subtle linguistic patterns in conferences is to increase awareness and reduce instances of unfair treat- ment of nonexpository online participation. Participants of either gender who use the epistolary style may appear to some to be less task-oriented, especially compared to those interacting strictly in a narrow expository style. Use of epistolary strategies to focus on elements of group function, to maintain the social network, or to support the health of the online environ- ment may be criticized as failing to address the informational purposes of the conference and may be dismissed for lack of informativity. A counterposition might recognize that concern for the social and in- terpersonal in online communities is not “merely” social but supports the purpose of conferencing as an expression of cognitive engagement through social connections (Fulford and Zhang 1993; Anderson and Gar- rison 1995; Collins and Berge 1996; Gibson 1996; Zhu 1996; Kanuka and Anderson 1998; Rourke and Anderson 2000). Far from indicating weakness, the epistolary style, with its deliberate tentativeness and char- acteristic preference for qualification and personalization, is a strategy for reinforcing core purposes and values of conferencing: thoughtfulness, reflection, and continuing dialogue. Where the expository style may close off discussion prematurely (perhaps before shallow thinking is un- masked or misinformation corrected), epistolary strategies tend to en- courage continued, deeper, and wider ranging exchanges (Fahy, Crawford, and Ally 2001). Where a rigorously expository conference en- vironment may reward declamation (with minimal interaction), a more epistolary one is more likely to encourage the exchange of “intercon- nected and mutually responsive” messages (Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson 1997). Differential use of qualifiers and intensifiers is a device for participants to present themselves in a personal way in online conferences and thus to create social presence in a communication environment that has been called linguistically “lean” (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000) and an interpersonal “information desert” (Kilian 1997). The influence of these communicative forms may be subtle, but findings such as these suggest they are real and that they may constitute an important, if yet poorly under- stood, part of the gestalt of online distance learning. 19 FAHY References Abrami, P., and E. Bures. 1996. Computer-supported collaborative learn- ing and distance education. 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work_5uudls4l6bbjjoozq3atoevdhq	----	Microsoft Word - templatefinal31122014-2-  Abstract—Although it is not intended to identify distance education students as a homogeneous group, recent research has demonstrated that there are some demographic and personality common traits among most of them that provide the basis for the description of a typical distance learning student. The purpose of this paper is to describe these common traits and to facilitate their learning journey within a distance education program. The described research is an initiative of the Distance Education Unit at the European University Cyprus (Laureate International Universities) in the context of its action for the improvement of the students’ Keywords—Distance education students, successful student performance, European University Cyprus, common traits. I. INTRODUCTION HΕ world around academia has changed dramatically in the last years and classrooms are starting to change also. During the last two decades, more and more distance education programs are offered by Open Universities, while the majority of face-to-face universities have also enriched their offer with blended, hybrid of fully online programs [1] Apart from formal education programs (undergraduate and postgraduate), it is important to mention that Higher Education Institutions (Open and Conventional) also invest in lifelong learning programs by offering access to education and knowledge to a lot of people [2]. The European University Cyprus is one of the above-mentioned universities, which has prioritized distance education among its strategic objectives and has invested in offering distance learning programs through the Distance Education Unit (DEU), which is the responsible academic and administrative unit for the design, delivery and evaluation of these programs. Recent research has focused on how students and faculty members experience or perceive distance education environments as meeting their expectations [3]. This is very important, since successful students in conventional education may not have the same success in distance education context [4]. According to [5] the reasons for this difference in terms of students’ successful D. Vlachopoulos is with the European University Cyprus. He is now the Director of the Distance Education Unit. 6 Diogenes 1516 Cyprus (phone: 0035722559584; fax: 0035722713156; e-mail: d.vlachopoulos@ euc.ac.cy). G. Tsokkas is graduate student with the Department of Education Sciences, European University (e-mail: George.tsokkas@hotmail.com). performance have to do with the motivations of the students, self-discipline factors and other learning traits. In this context, the assessment and evaluation of the students’ differences and how these can influence their academic performance can help us understand how to achieve successful students’ results. The aim of this paper is to discover how the above- mentioned traits of the students are related with their successful performance in the context of distance education. II. LITERATURE REVIEW As mentioned before, as the demand for distance education grows, more and more courses are being delivered online. Distance Education courses are quite different –design and delivery wise- from face-to-face programs and often require that students possess certain skills and characteristics needed to achieve the necessary learning objectives/outcomes [6]. According to [7] determining the online learner’s characteristics can significantly help administrators, instructors, and instructional designers to understand who is likely to participate in distance learning, which factors contribute to a successful learning experience, and which potential barriers could deter some students from participating or successfully completing a distance education program. This study will identify student characteristics for distance education courses to use as a basis for the success of these programs. According to the literature, since the first important steps of distance education-two decades ago-, distance learning students chose to study online basically due to the possibility it offers to self-manage the place and the pace of the studies [8]. Almost all of them were adults who had already had a degree or didn’t have the opportunity to study when they were younger and they face distance education as a second chance to access knowledge and education [9]. In this context, self- regulated learning should be examined to better understand the traits of distance learning students. Self-efficacy theory refers to one’s convictions about her or his ability to perform a specific task at a designated level [10]. This theory has particular importance to distance education. For example, according to [11] the situational factors that might affect an online student’s decision to withdraw may not directly affect the outcome (withdrawal); rather, the student’s self-efficacy beliefs are impacted by the personal factors, and the resulting The Traits That Facilitate Successful Student Performance in Distance Education: The Case of the Distance Education Unit at European University Cyprus D. Vlachopoulos, G. Tsokkas T performance. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:9, No:1, 2015 264International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 9(1) 2015 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :9 , N o: 1, 2 01 5 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 00 40 0 http://waset.org/publication/The-Traits-That-Facilitate-Successful-Student-Performance-in-Distance-Education:-The-Case-of-the-Distance-Education-Unit-at-European-University-Cyprus/10000400 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 efficacy beliefs affect the decision to persist in the course. This is significant and promising for student success administrators. Although the personal factors may not be practicably variable, the efficacy beliefs may be. Whereas self-efficacy measures are task and domain specific, self- regulated learning refers to the motivational orientations and learning strategies that students employ to attain desired goals [12], [13]. According to [14], [15] self-regulated learning should include three traits of students’ behavior related with the cognitive strategies: Students should control actively their behavior, they should adapt the use of a cognitive strategy in order to achieve their goals and they should change their behavior as a reaction to their instructor action. In addition, [16] mentions that “the success of an online course or program is impacted by the readiness of the students to embrace this method of delivery”. This is easy to understand, since their participation and completion of course material is entirely up to them as dealing with any technical delays and difficulties that may occur. Experience in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is another important element for the successful performance of distance education students [17], [18]. In this context, it is easy to understand that the above-mentioned self-efficacy of the students in learning some concrete contents, as well as in using efficiently the ICT can influence their performance. In this context, distance education students should feel comfortable with the use of the technological tools and applications they will need during their studies to be able to finish their studies successfully. Moreover, the age of the students can be an important characteristic for their successful performance as well. Most distance education students are between 30-45 years old. It is easy to understand that the more they understand the philosophy of distance education, they easier it is to succeed in their studies. Of course, we should always have in mind that older people may face some usability problems with the use of ICT [19]. Furthermore, the gender issue has been examined widely in distance education and there is a lot of research that underlines how distance education has helped women (more than men) to access education and training and to combine personal and professional life with distance learning studies [20], [21]. Achieving gender equality in education implies equality of opportunities for males in relation to females, equality in the learning process, equality of outcomes as well as equality of external results after leaving education [22]. Another important factor for student successful performance in distance education programs is the educational background of the students [23]. As mentioned before, the majority of distance learning students has previous education experiences and has experienced academic successi. Moore and [24] moved this issue forward and found out that apart from the previous educational experiences (educational background) it is also important the time between the distance learning program and the previous educational experience, saying that more time there is since the last education experience less probable is for the students to finish successfully the distance education program. Also, a success factor for distance education studies is the learning styles of the students. Despite the fact that learning style is traditionally assumed to be a predictor of learning performance, yet few studies have identified the mediating and moderating effects between the two [25]. So we understand that a tool that can identify students’ learning styles can determine the combination between the learners and the teaching method, as well as measuring possible success of the students in the distance learning program [26], [27]. III. THE CASE STUDY: THE PROPOSAL FROM THE DISTANCE EDUCATION UNIT OF THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY CYPRUS The Distance Education Unit (DEU) of the European University Cyprus offers programs leading to Bachelor and Master Degrees and other specialization courses for the development of professional competences of its students. The main objective of the Unit is to offer access to education opportunities to a wide number of people who until now, due to geographical, professional, family or other constraints, were not allowed to attend a face-to-face program. In this way, the DEU responds to the current and growing needs of society for learning, through alternative education programs and it promotes equal opportunity in education. To assure the students’ successful performance the DEU studies in detail the personal and learning profile of its students in order to give response to their educational needs. More analytically, extending [28] all distance education students at the EUC are obliged to fill in a survey, where they have to give detailed information about their personal and academic background as well as to write a cover letter on the reasons they have chosen to study. The data received from this survey are collected by the officer responsible for the students’ admission and are analyzed in such way in order to create a clear image of the students’ background, previous learning experiences and preferences. In addition, this information is shared with the academic advisor of each student to better guide his/her academic path. The academic advisor is a person responsible to guide each student from day one if his/her enrollment until he/she graduates from the program. The academic advisor’s main duties are a) to facilitate the student choose the subjects to attend every semester, b) to help the student manage his/her study-time, c) to solve technical problems the students may face and d) to give advice on career opportunities and professional development of the students. In this context, it is obvious that the data collected from the survey are fundamental for the academic advisor’s tasks. In addition, it is important to mention that the overall results of the survey are shared with the academic staff (instructors) and the instructional designers, so they can take into consideration the students’ personal, social and education traits during the course design and the preparation of the learning materials for each subject. It is necessary to assure the active participation of all the people implicated in the teaching and learning process, academic and administrative staff, since each one of these people can contribute to the main objective of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:9, No:1, 2015 265International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 9(1) 2015 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :9 , N o: 1, 2 01 5 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 00 40 0 http://waset.org/publication/The-Traits-That-Facilitate-Successful-Student-Performance-in-Distance-Education:-The-Case-of-the-Distance-Education-Unit-at-European-University-Cyprus/10000400 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 Distance Education Unit, to facilitate the teaching and learning process and help the students develop the corresponding competences. The main axes of this survey can be found in the following table: TABLE I STUDENTS’ TRAITS FOR SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE Axes Examples Personal Information Age, gender, individual (special) needs, profession, foreign languages, personal status, education background, experience in distance education Motivation for studying online How is this program related with their personal goals? How is this program related with their professional goals? What kind of competences they believe they will develop? Which are the main opportunities and challenges for them? Is there a concrete reason for studying? What is their opinion about the program and its contents? Learning Profile & Previous experience Which are the main learning preferences? Which are the main strong and weak points? What kind of relation they have with the use of ICT? What are the expectations for learning according to their previous experience? Self- regulation/self- efficacy Are they considered disciplined enough to study on their own? Where/in what pace are they going to study? Which are the main challenges they feel they have to face? What kind of personal/professional factors may affect their leaning journey? How much time they have for studying? Do they have access to the necessary infrastructure? A detailed and concrete image of the students’ personal information (age, previous learning experiences, background and self-motivation) can give us the necessary indicators for identifying their learning needs and expectations for the online program they attend. IV. DISTANCE LEARNING DEMOGRAPHICS While different characteristics of the adult Distance Education learner are addressed in the educational literature, it is possible to identify commonalities. According to the corresponding literature [29], [30] there are some characteristics that seem to be common for the majority of Distance Education learners. In this context, the first common characteristic is maturity, since all Distance Education learners are adults by definition. In addition, they are all engaged in a continuing process of growth, since they give value to learning. Moreover, they all bring a package of experience and values (mainly from previous education and professional experiences). They are also self-motivated and bring mature expectations about education itself. At the same time they often have competing interests, since they combine employment, family and social life with their studies. Generally speaking [31]-[33] there is a belief that adult Distance Education learners are achievement oriented, highly motivated and relatively independent with special needs from flexible schedules and instruction appropriate for their developmental level. Of course, the demographics of distance learners may be changing over time. Data from different Open Universities demonstrate that distance education receives younger students, who prefer to study online due to the flexibility in managing the time, place and pace of their study. As far as barriers to participation in distance educational activities are concerned, the most frequently cited in the literature are the lack of time and cost [34]-[37] In addition, it demonstrates that Distance Education students often differ from traditional students in terms of demographic data, professional experience and self-motivation. To explore a potential “converging” effect [38]-[40] current profiles of Distance Education students that distinguish them from the on-campus students must be examined. V. CONCLUSIONS The above-mentioned information can be valuable for the “personalized” design and delivery of the distance learning courses and maximize the possibilities for students’ successful performance. If all universities from different countries collect such kind of data, then we could create the learning profile roadmap for distance education students and identify common and different traits that can be used to maximize their motivation and improve their performance and the development of their competences. Of course it is very difficult to apply a “one size fits all” approach taking into consideration their traits, but for sure it can help the university staff understand what their students need for having a successful performance. The identification of the students’ traits and needs can be more efficient when similar data from different Open Universities or conventional universities that offer distance learning course are collected and analyzed in order to create an “average profile” for the students who choose to study a distance learning program. In building a demographic, experiential, motivational and inhibitory profile of the Distance Education student, the findings of recent research continue to provide a rationale for the Distance Education format as well as a prognosis for the future of this format. In this context, this research opens a new window for international exchange and collaboration in order to find the ways to facilitate distance learning students’ learning journey. REFERENCES [1] Garrison, R. & Kanuka, H. (2004). Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 7(2), 95-105. [2] Lockwood, F. & Gooley, A. (2006). Innovation in Open and Distance Learning. London: Routledge. [3] Menchaca, M. & Bekele, T. (2008). Learner and Instructor identified success factors in distance education. Distance Education, 29(3), 231- 252. [4] Wood, C. (2005). Highscool.com. Edutopia Magazine, April/May, 32- 37. [5] Spanaka, A. & Theodosiou, A. (2013). Success elements of distance education students: a proposal for practical application at the Hellenic Open University (in Greek language). 7th International Conference in Open and Distance Learning. Athens. [6] Atwell, L.C. (2007). The Characteristics of the Successful Distance Education Student. Fairfax: George Mason University (PhD Dissertation). [7] Dabbagh, N. & Bannan-Ritland, B. (2005). Online learning: Concepts, strategies, and application. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. [8] Guri-Rosenblit, S. (1999). Distance and Campus Universities.Tensions and Interactions. Oxford: IAU Press. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:9, No:1, 2015 266International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 9(1) 2015 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :9 , N o: 1, 2 01 5 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 00 40 0 http://waset.org/publication/The-Traits-That-Facilitate-Successful-Student-Performance-in-Distance-Education:-The-Case-of-the-Distance-Education-Unit-at-European-University-Cyprus/10000400 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 [9] Vlachopoulos, D. (2013). E-learning models in Higher Education: The case of European Univerity Cyprus. African Educational Research Journal, 1(2), 134-142. [10] Bandura, A. 1997. Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman Press. [11] Puzziferro, M. (2008). Online Technologies Self-Efficacy and Self- Regulated Learning as Predicotrs of Final Grade and Satisfaction. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(2), 72-89. [12] Zimmerman, B. (1989). A social cognitive view of self-regulated academic learning. Journal of Educational Psycholog,y 81,329–339. [13] Zimmerman, B. (2002). Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: an overview. Theory intro Practice, 41(2), 64-70. [14] Pintrich, P. & Schunk, D. (1996). Motivation in Education: Theory, Research & Applications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. [15] Pintrich, P. R., Smith, D. A. F., Garcia, T., & McKeachie, W. J. (1991). A manual for the use of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (MSLQ). Ann Arbor: The Regents of the University of Michigan. [16] Bartokic-Zlomislic, S. (1999). Potential benefits and limitations of investing in teleleaning. 15th annual conference on distance teaching and learning. Madison. [17] Vlachopoulos, D. (2013). E-learning models in Higher Education: The case of European Univerity Cyprus. African Educational Research Journal, 1(2), 134-142. [18] Lynch, R. & Dembo, M. (2004). The relationship between self- regulation in online learning in a blenden learning context. The international review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(2). Retrieved on the 20th of November 2014 from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/189/271. [19] Vlachopoulos, D. (2013). Being a «Digital Native» is not enough: A case study of the students’ digital profile at the European University Cyprus. International Conference in Open and Distance Learning. Athens [20] Leach, F. (2003). Practising Gender Analysis in Education. Oxfam: London. [21] Leach, F. (1988). Gender on the aid agenda: men, women and educational opportunity. In P.Drake & Owen, P. (eds.) Gender and Management- Issues in Education. Staffordshire: Trentham. [22] UNESCO (2004). Gender and Education for All: The Leap to Equality. Paris: Unesco. [23] Nesler, M. (1999). Factors associated with retention in a distance-based liberal arts program. North East Association for Institutional Research Conference. Newport. [24] Moore, M.G. & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance Education. A systems view. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co. [25] Huang, E., Lin, S. & Huang, T. (2012). What type of learning style leads to online participation in the mixed-mode e-learning environment? A study of software usage instruction. Computers and Education, 58(1), 338-349. [26] Spanaka, A. & Theodosiou, A. (2013). Success elements of distance education students: a proposal for practical application at the Hellenic Open University (in Greek language). 7th International Conference in Open and Distance Learning. Athens. [27] Offir, B., Bezalel, R. & Barth, I. (2007). Introverts, extroverts and achievement in a distance learning environment. The American Journal of Distance Education, 21(1), 3-19. [28] Spanaka, A. & Theodosiou, A. (2013). Success elements of distance education students: a proposal for practical application at the Hellenic Open University (in Greek language). 7th International Conference in Open and Distance Learning. Athens. [29] Rogers, A. (1989). Teaching adults. Philadelphia: Open University Press. [30] Cranton, P. (1989). Planning instruction for adult learners. Toronto: Wall and Emerson Inc. [31] Qureshi, E. & Morton, L. (2002). An interesting profile-University student who take distance education courses show weaker motivation than on-campus students. Retrieved on the 20th of December 2014 from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter54/Quershi54.htm. [32] Benshoff, J. & Lewis, H. (1992). Nontraditional College Students. ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Personnel Services. Retrieved on the 15th of December 2014 from http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed347483.html. [33] Cross, K. (1980). Our changing students and their impact on colleges: Prospects for a tru learning society. Phi Delta Kappa, 61, 630-632. [34] Cárdenas, C. (2000). Motivations for and barriers against participation in adult education. Leonardo Project MOBA.VI Conference of Adult Education and the Labor Market. Seville. [35] Hyatt, S. (1992). Developing and managing a multi-modal distance learning program in the two-year college. International Conference of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development on Teaching Excellence and Conference of Administrators. Austin. [36] Wallace, L. (1996). Changes in the demographics and motivations of distance education students. Journal of Distance Education, 11(1), 1-31. [37] Willis, B. (2002). Distance Education at a glance. Retrieved on the 21st of December 2014 from http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/dist9.html. [38] ΜacBrayne, P. (1995). Rural adults in community college distance education: What motivates them to enroll? In New directions for community colleges. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers. [39] Cross, K. (1981). Adults as learners:Increasing participation and facilitating learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. [40] Garland, M. (1993). Student perceptions of the situational, institutional, dispositional and epistemological barriers to persistence. Distance Education, 14(2), 181-183. Dimitrios Vlachopoulos is Assistant Professor and Director of the Distance Education Unit at the European University Cyprus. His main research interests include Distance Education and Instructional Technology as well as emerging pedagogies in Higher Education. He has worked in various accredited universities in the UK, the USA, Spain and Cyprus. During the last 5 years he has more than 50 publications in books, research journals and international conferences. One of his most important recent publications is “Towards and inclusive definition of e-learning”, published by the Open University of Catalonia. George Tsokkas is graduate student in the distance learning master degree in Educational Leadership at the European University Cyprus. He has Bachelor Degree in Business administration, as well as an MBA by the University of Liverpool and the University of Greenwich (UK) specializing in Evaluation and Improvement in Higher Education. Since 2009 he is full-time permanent employee at the Ministry of Interior of Cyprus.   World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:9, No:1, 2015 267International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 9(1) 2015 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :9 , N o: 1, 2 01 5 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 00 40 0 http://waset.org/publication/The-Traits-That-Facilitate-Successful-Student-Performance-in-Distance-Education:-The-Case-of-the-Distance-Education-Unit-at-European-University-Cyprus/10000400 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10000400 
work_5x5vsegsp5abjeayedvibcw45i	----	Politics, practices, and possibilities of open educational resources This article was downloaded by: [University of Newcastle (Australia)] On: 24 July 2012, At: 16:52 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 Politics, practices, and possibilities of open educational resources Liam Phelan a a GradSchool, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia Version of record first published: 24 Jul 2012 To cite this article: Liam Phelan (2012): Politics, practices, and possibilities of open educational resources, Distance Education, 33:2, 279-282 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.692070 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.692070 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions REFLECTION Politics, practices, and possibilities of open educational resources Liam Phelan* GradSchool, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia (Received 1 November 2011; final version received 20 May 2012) In this article, I reflect on the politics, practices and possibilities of the open educa- tional resources (OER). OER raise important implications for current and potential students, for postsecondary education institutions, and for those currently teaching in higher education. The key questions raised by OER centre on the role of teach- ing in learning, the potential for a shift in societal conceptualizations of learners from didactic to autodidactic beings, and what roles teachers may play in a poten- tially radical broadening of access to postsecondary education. Keywords: open educational resources movement; OER; autodidacticism; certi- fication of learning; lifelong learning; postsecondary education From didacticism to autodidacticism? I wonder if, over the next few years, we will witness a change in societal under- standings of what it means to be a learner: from someone who (as a young adult) “goes to uni,” for example, and engages with what is offered there, to someone who is creative and driven in their approach to their learning, so much so, in fact, that they succeed in seeking out and pulling together a coherent learning program for themselves outside a tertiary institutional setting, which they then pursue through to a self-defined conclusion. And then, what if that achievement was vali- dated formally, so as to be recognized socially? The open educational resources (OER) movement may provide a pathway to that possible future. However, the prospects for such a shift also raise important questions about if and how that future might unfold. Could it happen? Will it hap- pen? Is it desirable? My reflections here focus on the politics, practices, and possibilities of OER. Part of the impetus for this focus is the International Council for Open and Distance Education’s (ICDE) 24th Biennial World Conference, held in early October 2011 in Bali, Indonesia (ICDE, 2011). This piece is informed in part by several presenta- tions at the conference. Politics The politics of open education deserve attention, and a key distinction between dis- tance and open education—perhaps a nuance that is easily overlooked—is worth *Email: liam.phelan@newcastle.edu.au Distance Education Vol. 33, No. 2, August 2012, 279–282 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online � 2012 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.692070 http://www.tandfonline.com D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of N ew ca st le ( A us tr al ia )] a t 16 :5 2 24 J ul y 20 12 making explicit. Open education historically and currently embodies a very clearly defined politics, centered strongly in a commitment to access and equity. In con- trast, distance education programs may or may not be grounded in a commitment to access and equity. The current proliferation of postgraduate coursework programs offered online by bricks-and-mortar universities for substantial fees exemplifies dis- tance education structured around a for-profit business model. The politics of access and equity is even starker with regard to OER. Making learning materials freely available to all with adequate Internet access at least sug- gests a potentially radical broadening of access to learning. However, as with dis- tance education, it may not necessarily be so. While neither the first nor the only university to do so, the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has famously sought to make all the materials it gives its students available online, accessible to anyone with Internet access (MIT, 2011). However, if learners want a qualification from MIT, they will need to enroll at MIT for the opportunity. More- over, without a scholarship, students will need to pay to do so. Perhaps the outcome in this instance is OER as marketing rather than OER as education revolution. However, there may be an important lesson worth noting here too. By making all the materials their students receive freely available, is MIT suggesting that quality learning processes and outcomes, that is, MIT degrees, require more than simply access to learning materials, even quality materials? Does learning require teaching? Alternatively, is teaching optional for learning? The implications for the effective use of OER are surely apparent. Practices In contrast to the MIT approach, the OER University project (Taylor & MacKin- tosh, 2011) is a partnership of five accredited tertiary institutions, which seeks to provide low-cost pathways for students to achieve recognized credentials. Students would learn using OER materials, and pay only for assessment of their assignments for academic credit. The potential for OER to contribute to massively reduced edu- cation costs and therefore much greater access to educational opportunities is com- monly cited as a rationale for OER (e.g., Daniel, 2011; Taylor, 2007). Moreover, the cost-saving rationale is a prominent driver for the OER University project. However, the OER University project also draws on the community service mission common to many tertiary institutions, and it calls for individual academic volunteers too, to provide some support and guidance to otherwise autodidactic students. The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya’s Campus for Peace and Solidarity offers a radical further alternative. This institution offers recognized degree programs as well as community development-style education materials by distance. One example is materials designed and shared to support safe birthing practices among expectant girls in remote communities in low-income countries of Latin America (Vinyamata, 2011). This program was initiated in response to high—and easily avoidable—rates of maternal mortality in childbirth in remote areas where state health services are non-existent and, for whatever reasons, traditional community practices such as older women supporting first-time expectant mothers are not available. Through this and other projects, the Campus for Peace and Solidarity is producing OER and delivering distance education in a manner that is vitally important, but far removed from the traditional university model. 280 L. Phelan D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of N ew ca st le ( A us tr al ia )] a t 16 :5 2 24 J ul y 20 12 Possibilities Coming back to traditional postsecondary learning, perhaps OER will in fact usher in radically new and broadly accessible learning opportunities. Certification of informal learning is an interesting challenge in this context. But why certify learning at all? The OER University project would certify learning because learners engaging in the OER University will have the option of using credentials awarded through the OER Univer- sity as credit toward formal qualifications offered by participating universities. Certification also allows informal learning to be recognized and valued socially. Recognition of learning is important in many contexts, for example, in seeking employment. Separate to the familiar, formal tertiary institution model, the Mozilla Foundation (creators of free software including the Firefox web browser) is experi- menting with digital Open Badges, as a way to provide certification—and social recognition—for informal learning completed using OER (Mozilla Foundation, 2011). This is how it would work. Students who have (1) learned using OER and (2) created a portfolio that dem- onstrates achievement in a particular area would submit their portfolio for assess- ment to a qualified assessor. For a minimal fee, the assessor would review the student portfolios. If the portfolios were judged to demonstrate accomplishment, the students would be awarded a digital badge certifying accomplishment in that area. However, the Mozilla experiment goes a step further: the students could then attach the digital badge to their CV. As well as trusting in the certification of learning rep- resented by the digital badge, potential employers reviewing the applicant’s CV could click on it to also see evidence of accomplishment directly, that is, review the applicant’s portfolio for themselves (Plotkin, 2011). The Mozilla Foundation certification process outside the tertiary education sector is still evolving, and it raises many questions. Nevertheless, the idea suggests many possibilities. Teaching autodidacticism Fundamentally, OER raise for me a question about common understandings of what it means to be a learner. This is the question that drives this reflection and it is related to, but distinct from, questions of access, equity, and the financial cost of education provision. For many in the academy, life experiences of formal education have been extremely privileged: a great deal of support through good preschool, primary, and secondary public schools, access to quality public tertiary education, and postgraduate education too. We are all well within the estimated 5% or less of the world’s population with access to postsecondary education (Pannekoek, 2011). If—or as—this radically different societal conceptualization of what it means to be a learner—using OER autodidactically—becomes normal, rather than excep- tional, we will truly be part of a revolution in education. I want people to have access to the education they need and want. I want them to have the chance to suc- ceed too. The OER movement may be creating a path to a possible and desirable, inspiring and even thrilling future that may allow for that. However, that future is not guaranteed. Moreover, it seems to me the prospect of such a future raises important questions about what it means to be a learner, and how we might support learners to engage in high-quality postsecondary education using OER. Let me leave you with just a few interesting (I think) questions that the prolifer- ation and promise of OER raise: Distance Education 281 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of N ew ca st le ( A us tr al ia )] a t 16 :5 2 24 J ul y 20 12 • Is teaching necessary for learning, or is it simply helpful? And if teaching expertise is necessary for learning, can it be wholly front-end loaded, that is, into the design of learning materials, which are then available for wholly autodidactic learners to use as they will? • Does the proliferation of OER materials online inspire or require (or both?, or neither?) a shift in societal conceptualizations of learners from didactic to autodidactic beings? • And if newly proliferating OER are related in some way to a change in societal understandings of what it means to be a learner, how might this shift connect to longer-evolving understandings of lifelong learning (e.g., Boud, 2000)? • If OER do offer a radical broadening of access to postsecondary education, what roles might we—those of us already in the academy and engaged in open and/or distance education—play in supporting that broadening of access? Do we see ourselves as materials producers? As voluntary academic tutors? As assessors and examiners of work produced by self-taught students? What role—if any—might we play in supporting informal students (citizens?) to become effective autodidacts? Notes on contributor Liam Phelan is a senior lecturer and the teaching and learning coordinator with GradSchool at the University of Newcastle. His research interests include online learning communities, assessment, complexity theory, political economy, climate change, and sustainability. References Boud, D. (2000). Sustainable assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society. Studies in Continuing Education, 22, 151–167. doi:10.1080/713695728 Daniel, J. (2011, September). Transforming Asia through open and distance learning. Key- note address presented at the Asian Association of Open Universities 25th Annual Con- ference, Penang. Retrieved from http://www.aaou.net/aaou2011/docs/25tth%20AAOU% 20Conference%20Keynote.pdf International Council for Open and Distance Education. (2011, October). 24th ICDE Bien- nial World Conference, Bali. Retrieved from http://www.ut.ac.id/icde2011/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). (2011). MIT OpenCourseWare. Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm Mozilla Foundation. (2011). Badges. Retrieved from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges Pannekoek, F. (2011, October). Welcome address. Remarks presented at the 24th ICDE Bien- nial World Conference on Open and Distance Learning, Bali. Plotkin, H. (2011, October). ODL and human capacity building. Keynote address presented at the 24th ICDE Biennial World Conference on Open and Distance Learning, Bali. Retrieved from http://itv.ut.ac.id/video/O2U28984WN1X/24th-ICDE-world-conference- on-open-and-distancce-learning Taylor, J. C. (2007). Open courseware futures: Creating a parallel universe. e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology, 10(1), 1–9. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org. au/ajet/e-jist/docs/vol10_no1/papers/full_papers/taylorj.htm Taylor, J. C., & MacKintosh, W. (2011). Creating an open educational resources university and the pedagogy of discovery. Open Praxis [Special edition: A tribute to Nyameko Bar- ney Pityana], 24–29. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/icde/docs/open_praxis_special_edi- tion_final_11105 Vinyamata, E. (2011, October). ODL and solidarity programs: The case of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya’s Campus for Peace and Solidarity. Paper presented at the 24th ICDE Biennial World Conference on Open and Distance Learning, Bali. Retrieved from http://www.vid4edu.info:82/paper/index.php/icde/2011/paper/view/300 282 L. Phelan D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of N ew ca st le ( A us tr al ia )] a t 16 :5 2 24 J ul y 20 12 http://www.aaou.net/aaou2011/docs/25tth%20AAOU%20Conference%20Keynote.pdf. http://www.aaou.net/aaou2011/docs/25tth%20AAOU%20Conference%20Keynote.pdf. http://www.ut.ac.id/icde2011/ http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges. http://itv.ut.ac.id/video/O2U28984WN1X/24th-ICDE-world-conference-on-open-and-distancce-learning. http://itv.ut.ac.id/video/O2U28984WN1X/24th-ICDE-world-conference-on-open-and-distancce-learning. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e-jist/docs/vol10_no1/papers/full_papers/taylorj.htm. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e-jist/docs/vol10_no1/papers/full_papers/taylorj.htm. http://issuu.com/icde/docs/open_praxis_special_edition_final_11105. http://issuu.com/icde/docs/open_praxis_special_edition_final_11105. http://www.vid4edu.info:82/paper/index.php/icde/2011/paper/view/300. 
work_5x62x5ffq5dixe7cyqgeyfurme	----	HAJD22(03).book(HAJD_A_322612.fm) The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education, 22: 159–176, 2008 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 0892-3647 print / 1538-9286 online DOI: 10.1080/08923640802224451 HAJD0892-36471538-9286The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education, Vol. 22, No. 3, June 2008: pp. 1–31The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education Improving the Motivation and Retention of Online Students Through the Use of ARCS-Based E-Mails IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTIONHUETT ET AL. Jason Bond Huett University of West Georgia Kevin E. Kalinowski University of North Texas Leslie Moller University School of Education Kimberly Cleaves Huett University of West Georgia Abstract: This study examined the use of ARCS-based, motivational mass e-mail messages designed to improve the motivation and retention of students enrolled in an online, entry-level, undergraduate computer applications course. Data from the Course Interest Survey, based on Keller’s ARCS model, were gathered and analyzed for two online groups (one treatment and one control) and compared with a face-to-face class for differences in attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction, and overall motivation. Based on the analysis, this article argues that simple, cost-effective, and easy-to-design mass e-mail messages show potential for addressing some of the motivational needs and retention concerns of online students. Numerous scholars highlight the general lack of research concerning the moti- vational needs of online learners (Astleitner and Keller 1995; Gabrielle 2003; Huett et al. 2007; Means, Jonassen, and Dwyer 1997; Shellnut, Knowlton, and Savage 1999; J. Visser and Keller 1990). According to Song and Keller (2001), instructional designers often ignore motivational design concerns in Web or site-based, computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and incorrectly assume that the novelty effect of the technology is enough to stimulate learner motivation. Correspondence should be sent to Jason Bond Huett, University of West Georgia, 1601 Maple Street, 152 Ed. Annex, MIT Department, Carrollton, GA 30118. E-mail: jhuett@gmail.com 160 HUETT ET AL. Distance education environments clearly allow for new and unique chal- lenges for instructors and designers who wish to motivate online students and, as L. Visser, et al. (2002) noted, there is a disturbing trend in the publication of specialized distance education handbooks to pay little, if any, attention to the motivational concerns of learners. They examined eight years of the pro- ceedings of the World Conferences of the International Council for Distance Education and found that only 6 of 801 studies addressed motivational con- cerns of online learners. However, one could argue that findings such as these are due to the inherent difficulty of conducting research on the diverse and constantly changing nature of learner motivation and not a lack of interest by the research community. Regardless, the literature establishes the need for studies, such as this one exploring Keller’s ARCS model, that specifically address how to motivate this rapidly growing population of online learners. To stimulate and manage student motivation to learn, Keller (1987a, 1987b, 1987c) created the ARCS model of motivation. ARCS is short for (A)ttention, (R)elevance, (C)onfidence, and (S)atisfaction and serves as the overall framework for the motivational mass e-mail messages used in this study. The ARCS model is an attempt to synthesize behavioral, cognitive, and affective learning theories and demonstrates that learner motivation can be influenced through external conditions. The purpose of the ARCS model is to employ strategies that are used to improve the motivational appeal of instruction. This, in turn, should translate into improvement in learner moti- vation. Given the relationship between motivation and persistence, it was hypothesized that using ARCS strategies to improve the motivational appeal of instruction would also lead to increased learner persistence or retention. There are significant challenges when it comes to the retention of online learners. Although students succeed or fail for a variety of reasons, anecdotal evidence supports the contention that distance education initia- tives often have higher noncompletion rates than face-to-face courses (Dupin-Bryant 2004). The main intent of the ARCS-based messages used in this study was to improve learner motivation. However, although it might be impossible to account for all variables related to retention of online learners, a review of the literature led the researchers to theorize that the messages might also have an effect on the completion rates of students in the treat- ment group. A need exists for simpler approaches to motivating and retaining online learners that are appropriate for the audience, the delivery system, and the course. Such methods should be cost-effective, fit within the time restraints of the class, and be easily integrated into the instruction. One such approach that shows promise is the creation of simple, systematically designed mass e-mail messages based on established ARCS model principles (Gabrielle 2003; Huett et al. 2008; Keller and Suzuki 2004; L. Visser et al. 2002; L. Visser, Plomp, and Kuiper 1999). IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTION 161 LITERATURE REVIEW The ARCS Model Building on the earlier work of Tolman’s (1932) and Lewin’s (1938) expect- ancy value theory, the ARCS model, with its four categories and twelve subcategories (see Table 1), attempts to synthesize behavioral, cognitive, and affective learning theories and demonstrate that learner motivation can be influenced through external conditions (Moller 1993). The attention, rele- vance, confidence, and satisfaction categories serve as a framework for devel- oping instructional strategies for capturing and maintaining learner attention, establishing relevance of the material being taught, improving and sustaining learner confidence, and providing a sense of learner satisfaction through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. According to Keller (1987a), each of the categories can be applied to a variety of instructional contexts, and “motivational interventions can be focused within a general category, or specific subcategory of the model” (6). However, there is some debate regarding claims that learner motivation can be isolated or compartmentalized into separate categories. Studies of ARCS- enhanced instructional materials have returned inconsistent results on the indi- vidual subsections as well as on the overall measure of learner motivation (Huett et al. 2008). Debates about the independent nature of the categories aside, among the limited research available, Keller’s ARCS model enjoys support in the litera- ture and researchers have applied its guidelines to different learning and design environments. For example, ARCS research can be found concerning the traditional classroom (Bickford 1989; Klein and Freitag 1992; Means, Jonassen, and Dwyer 1997; Moller 1993; Naime-Diefenbach 1991; Small and Gluck 1994; J. Visser and Keller 1990); computer-assisted instruction (Astleitner and Keller 1995; Bohlin and Milheim 1994; ChanLin 1994; Lee and Boling 1996; Shellnut, Knowlton, and Savage 1999; Song 1998; Song and Keller 1999; Suzuki and Keller 1996); blended learning environments (Gabrielle 2003); and online, distant, and Web-based classrooms (Chyung 2001; Huett 2006; Song 2000; L. Visser 1998). Table 1. Keller’s ARCS Model Summary (Keller 1987a, 1987b) Attention Relevance Confidence Satisfaction A1 Perceptual Arousal R1 Goal Orientation C1 Learning Requirements S1 Natural Consequences A2 Inquiry Arousal R2 Motive Matching C2 Success Opportunities S2 Positive Consequences A3 Variability R3 Familiarity C3 Personal Control S3 Equity 162 HUETT ET AL. Motivation in CAI and Distance Education Motivation has been defined on one extreme as the product of environmental conditioning—of deprivation and reinforcement schedules (Skinner 1953). On the other extreme, individuals like Carl Rogers (1951) and Abraham Maslow (1954) adopt a humanistic approach where motivation is almost entirely a byproduct of free will and an internal drive for self-actualization. Bandura’s (1969) social learning theory argued that learning and motiva- tion were a result not just of the environment or the individual’s free will but a combination of the two. Gagné (1985) advised that both internal and external conditions existed that influenced learning and motivation. Means, Jonassen, and Dwyer (1997) cite studies that show that motivation accounts for 16% to 38% of the variations in overall student achievement. Keller and Burkman (1993) acknowledge that motivation is often thought of as solely a product of learner personality and perceptions—much of which is assumed beyond the control of the instructional designer. However, they believe that providing for motivation is largely the responsibility of the designer. Additionally, they feel that motivation is a systematic process that must be considered during all stages of design. The concept of designing appealing instruction that allows for manipulations of learner motivation is at the heart of distance learning, and Keller and others have recently begun examining how the ARCS model can be applied to computer-based instruction and distance education (Keller 1999). Even today, many learners initially find Web-based environments like distance education and other CAI programs novel or fun. This often translates into a temporary increase in learner motivation. Unfortunately, if the CAI is poorly designed or lacks continuing motivational appeal beyond that of an ini- tial novelty level, learners will eventually lose interest, and motivation and confidence will wane (Keller and Suzuki 1988). It becomes the responsibility of the instructional designer to incorporate strategies that maintain this initial level of motivation through effectively designed distance courses. ARCS-Based Motivational Messages There is little research regarding the ARCS model and motivational messages in distance education as well as an absence of empirical research regarding motivation in technology-based learning environments generally (Gabrielle 2003; Huett 2006). Of the research available, J. Visser (1990) showed an increase in learner motivation through the use of motivational messages in a conventional classroom. In a study of adult students in Mozambique, J. Visser and Keller (1990) delivered ARCS-based motivational messages to students and showed improvement in motivation. They stressed the potential of motivational messages in distance education. IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTION 163 L. Visser, Plomp, and Kuiper (1999) and L. Visser et al. (2002) used the ARCS model as a guide for developing motivational communications with international distance education students. They found positive outcomes for learner motivation. They also found no statistically significant difference between the use of mass messages versus personalized messages and recom- mended using mass messages to increase “the chance of successful implemen- tation” (1999, 410). Additionally, L. Visser (1998) conducted a pilot study and a main study using the Motivational Messages Support System (MMSS), upon which the e-mails in this study were partly based. In both studies, she found that the messages increased the confidence levels of students. Also, she found no statistically significant difference in the use of mass messages versus personalized messages in terms of effectiveness. She recommends using mass messages to avoid problems such as the increased time associated with designing, developing, and preparing individualized messages. Gabrielle (2003) used Keller’s ARCS model and L. Visser’s MMSS as the basis for interventions and mass messages designed to improve learner motivation and performance in a study of undergraduate students in a public military school. She found statistically significant differences between the groups regarding motivation, academic performance, and self-directed learning and concluded that strategies based on Keller’s ARCS model were worthy instructional design considerations. ARCS and Retention There is no lack of research concerning student retention. In fact, it is arguably one of the most studied areas in education. Decades of research have tied fluc- tuations in face-to-face and online student retention to internal factors such as locus of control, motivation, confidence, and all manner of psychological traits. Other issues influencing student retention have been attributed to personal attributes like age and gender as well as other external and environ- mental concerns such as socioeconomic status, relationship with the educa- tional institution, educational background, familial commitments, grade point average, and any number of societal or cultural factors (Andreu 2002; Morris, Wu, and Finnegan 2005). Some researchers such as Spady (1970) and Tinto (1975) have developed conceptual or predictive models of retention in higher education with Tinto’s model being, by far, the most widely cited and studied (Dupin-Bryant 2004). Kember (1995) built on these earlier models to design the first retention model specifically targeted toward adults studying at a dis- tance. However, unlike the ARCS model, Kember’s model focuses less on psychological factors and more on certain personal aspects and social or demographic characteristics of students such as employment, family life, gender, and educational background (Woodley, de Lange, and Tanewski 2001; Yorke 2004). 164 HUETT ET AL. Building on the work of Rotter (locus of control), Bandura (self-efficacy), and others, Keller’s ARCS model more neatly parallels Bean and Eaton’s (2000) retention model, which emphasizes the key concepts of locus of con- trol, self-efficacy, and approach-avoidance theory as integral to the student’s commitment to persist. Additionally, established research into general reten- tion theory often makes a connection between learner persistence and core ARCS principles such as motivation, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (Andreu 2002; Dille and Mezack 1991; Tinto 1975, 1993, 2007). Although the ARCS model was not specifically designed to address retention, Song (2000) insists three types of motivational categories should be taken into consideration when designing ARCS-related distant or Web-based instruction: motivation to initiate, motivation to persist, and motivation to con- tinue. Each of Song’s three categories is related to the concept of engagement— a core principle in retention theory: “Throughout these changes [in student retention research, theory, and practice] and the putting forth of alternative models, one fact has remained clear. Involvement, or what is increasingly being referred to as engagement, matters . . .” (Tinto 2007, 4). It seems that motivational theory informs retention theory and vice versa, with both acknowledging that there is a connection between persistence, motivation, and learner engagement. Specifically, the ARCS model allows for external strate- gies that lead to a perceived increase in the motivational appeal of instruction. This, in turn, helps create conditions that support learner engagement and persistence. Although exploring the complexity of student retention is beyond the scope of this study, there is some limited research directly applicable to ARCS-based motivational messages. For instance, Keller and Suzuki (2004) cited a 1998 report by L. Visser outlining a 70–80% improvement in retention rates of distance learners when motivational messages based on the ARCS model were used. Additionally, with their ARCS-based motivational commu- nications, L. Visser, Plomp, and Kuiper (1999) and L. Visser et al. (2002) found that motivational messages “considerably increased the completion rates of students” (2002, 410). Given the available literature, it seemed feasi- ble that well-designed motivational mass e-mail messages could impact the retention rates of the treatment group. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The purpose of the current study was to determine what effect motivational e-mails had on student motivation and retention in distance education. To this end, two specific research questions were proposed: 1. Will the motivational mass e-mail messages used in this study produce statistically significant differences (a) between the control group and the IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTION 165 treatment group and (b) between the treatment group and a face-to-face classroom, both in terms of learner motivation as measured by the overall summative score of the Course Interest Survey (CIS)? 2. Will the motivational mass e-mail messages used in this study produce statistically significant differences between the control group and the treat- ment group in terms of learner retention based on completion rates of stu- dents for the course? METHOD Participants In order to answer the research questions, we examined 153 students in three sections of a required entry-level computer applications course at a Texas university rated Carnegie Doctoral/Research Universities—Extensive. An online section was used as a control, and another online section was treated with several simple, mass-mailed motivational e-mails throughout the semes- ter. For comparison purposes, a face-to-face classroom section of the same course was included in the study. See Table 2 for the composition of study participants. Of the 153 original participants, 124 students successfully com- pleted the course. Of these students, 119 (52 males and 67 females) completed the CIS (see Table 3). In addition to gender, other demographic information such as age, race, and enrollment status was consistent with university-reported demographics concerning the campus undergraduate population as a whole. Table 2. Composition of Study Participants Control Treatment Face-to-Face Total Passed course Completed CIS 37 54 28 119 Did not complete CIS 1 2 2 5 Failed course 11 4 2 17 Withdrew from course 9 3 0 12 Total 58 63 32 153 Table 3. Gender Composition of Participants Completing CIS Control Treatment Face-to-Face Total Male 16 25 11 52 Female 21 29 17 67 Total 37 54 28 119 166 HUETT ET AL. The students preferring to enroll in the online version of the course natu- rally formed two groups depending on the section in which they were enrolled. Students were automatically assigned to the online sections by the university registrar. Those students preferring the face-to-face version enrolled themselves in that section of the course. The face-to-face section covered the same material as the online sections except the face-to-face students completed the work in the campus lab at a specific time, whereas the online students completed the work on their own machines and according to their own schedules. Due dates for the completed work were the same regardless of the delivery format. There was no required contact between the online students during the semester, so for this study it will be presumed that participants were independent and randomly assigned between the two online groups. To minimize the possible impact of instructional differences, the same doctoral candidate taught all three sections involved in this study. Other than the motivational e-mails given to the treatment group, there were no other per- ceivable differences between the online groups. The only difference between the online section and the face-to-face section was direct face-to-face contact with the instructor. Procedures Keller (1999) noted that an excessive number of motivational tactics in computer-based instruction might prove distracting to already motivated stu- dents. Keller (1987c) also recommended that motivational strategies not be overly time-consuming, work within the delivery system, and be presented in an acceptable way to participants. With this in mind, the motivational mass e-mail messages in this study were delivered at roughly two-week intervals during the class to the students in the treatment group. The two-week interval was a discretionary decision based on Keller’s recommendations, past research, the structure of the class assignments, and the desire to show a con- cerned motivational presence—not an overpowering one. At the end of the semester, 119 students passing the course took the CIS through a Web-based survey tool to measure the four factors (attention, rele- vance, confidence, and satisfaction) of the ARCS model as well as an overall motivation score. The survey was voluntary and had no impact on course grades. Measures were taken to ensure only students enrolled in the three sec- tions took the survey, and no student took the survey more than once. Instruments For each student, the four latent factors of the ARCS model were computed from the thirty-four CIS questions as instructed by Keller and Subhiyah IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTION 167 (1993). This survey uses a Likert-type scale with five possible choices: (1) Not true, (2) Slightly true, (3) Moderately true, (4) Mostly true, and (5) Very true. Nine questions were reverse-worded by design and had to be recoded prior to the construction of the factors. The four factor scores were averaged to construct an overall motivation score. Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was computed for each of the four factors and the overall score. To answer the two parts of the first research question, two orthogonal contrasts were established a priori. Confidence intervals and effect sizes were computed to help assess the practical significance of the findings. For the second research question, failure and withdrawal rates were com- puted for the control and treatment online groups and compared with the face- to-face group. Because these measures had sample frequencies too small to test for statistical significance, they were combined under the broader classifi- cation of noncompleter and analyzed. Materials Design of the Messages for this Study. The messages were designed using the researchers’ interpretation of the literature surrounding the ARCS model (see Table 1). The mass e-mails used in this study were also based on the researchers’ understanding of what constituted motivational enhancements as well as adapta- tions of earlier works by Moller (1993), Moller and Russell (1994), L. Visser (1998), L. Visser et al. (2002), and Gabrielle (2003). Furthermore, it was the researchers’ desire to create cost-effective, simple, effectual e-mail communications that could be easily adapted to a variety of distance education settings or subjects. In general, the motivational messages were designed using the following template. It should be noted that this template is situational and can (and should) be adapted to fit the given learning environment. Expert consultation from a panel of three professors with extensive (minimum five years) online teaching experience was sought in the development of the template and motivational messages used the study. Suggestions were offered by the experts, and many of their ideas and proposals were incorporated into the final e-mail messages. Introduction. The beginning of the message contained a brief paragraph with an enthusiastic tone of introduction. For instance, “I hope you are doing great! I sent a letter out last week introducing myself and reminding you of what is expected in this class. If you are anything like me, you might have a tendency to procrastinate or have a tough time getting started. Don’t worry—there is still time.” The intent of the opening paragraph was to get the learners’ atten- tion and to convey assurances of personal interest in learner success. Goal Reminders. The intent of the next few paragraphs was to offer goal reminders for the class. For instance, “Ideally, by the end of these first few 168 HUETT ET AL. weeks, you will have completed at least three or four of the SAM Office 2003 assignments” and “Don’t forget the deadline for the Access pathways is April 3rd.” Again, this served to express a personal interest in learner success, offered reminders of personal control, and served to reinforce confidence and satisfaction by giving the students knowledge of what was expected of them. Words of Encouragement. The next paragraph was devoted to general words of encouragement. For instance, “As you complete the assignments this week, I would like to extend hearty congratulations to all of you for your hard work” and “You are almost done with this section of the class, so run for the finish. I have great faith in your continued success. You can do it!” Such sentiments were designed to decrease learner anxiety. Multiple Points of Contact. The final paragraph of the messages served to assure learners and offer multiple contact points for feedback opportunities. For instance, “I am very sure you will be successful. If you ever need my help or have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me via e-mail atjXXXXX@xyz.edu. If it is an emergency, I can be reached on my cell at 555–1234.” It was assumed that learner anxiety would decrease if the learners were reminded of the instructor’s approachability and desire to help. RESULTS After computing the four measures of motivation and the overall score for each student, we computed Cronbach’s (1951) coefficient alpha for each fac- tor as an estimate of reliability. The results, as well as a comparison to Keller and Subhiyah (1993) initial reliability results, are found in Table 4. Research Question One The online treatment group had motivational scores on par with the face-to-face classroom group, and both groups seem to show marked differences from the Table 4. Reliability Estimates for Motivational Scales Using Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha Current Study Keller and Subhiyah (1993) Attention (A) .753 .84 Relevance (R) .804 .84 Confidence (C) .758 .81 Satisfaction (S) .851 .88 Total scale (ARCS) .932 .95 IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTION 169 online control group not receiving the motivational e-mails. Per the research design, planned orthogonal contrasts were established to determine (a) if moti- vation, as measured by Keller’s ARCS model via the CIS, is statistically dif- ferent between students given motivational e-mails and those who did not and (b) if there is a statistically significant difference in motivation between the online treatment group and the face-to-face classroom. Prior to the analyses, descriptive statistics were run on the four subscales of CIS and the composite scale. Measures of skewness and kurtosis were within the range –1 to +1. Therefore, the assumption that the population from which the samples were selected is normally distributed was tenable (see Table 5). Furthermore, Levene’s Tests for Equality of Variances were computed for the factors with no statistically significant differences found. Therefore, homogeneity of variance was assumed. The results of the planned orthogonal contrasts are found in Table 6. Finally, two measures of practical significance were determined. First, 95% simultaneous confidence intervals for the two contrasts were calculated based on a formula provided by Maxwell and Delaney (2004). Then, effect size estimates for statistically significant results were computed using Cohen’s (1988) d index. The results are also found in Table 6. Research Question Two The control group had a 15.52% withdrawal rate and an 18.97% failure rate compared with a 4.76% withdrawal rate and a 6.35% failure rate for the treat- ment group. The traditional classroom had no withdrawals and a 6.25% failure rate, which was almost identical to that of the treatment. Failure was defined as a student who finished the course but did not earn the minimum number of points required for a passing grade. Specifics on when and why students with- drew from the course were unavailable. Alone, each of these measures had sample frequencies too small to test for statistical significance, so the numbers of withdrawals and failures were combined under the broader classification of noncompleter and analyzed. Results show that the control group had a statisti- cally significant noncompleter rate of 34.5% (9 + 11 / 58) compared with Table 5. Descriptive Statistics for the CIS Subscales and Composite Scale for All Three Groups n Minimum Maximum M SD Skewness Kurtosis A 119 1.25 4.75 3.15 0.72 −.266 −.267 R 119 2.50 5.00 4.37 0.55 −.909 .378 C 119 1.78 5.00 4.14 0.62 −.768 .747 S 119 1.11 5.00 3.82 0.78 −.711 .539 ARCS 119 1.75 4.88 3.87 0.59 −.623 .510 170 HUETT ET AL. 11.1% (3 + 4 / 63) for the treatment (χ2(1, N = 121) = 8.22, p = .004). There was no statistically significant difference between the treatment group and the traditional classroom group on this measure (χ2(1, N = 95) = 0.16, p = .689). DISCUSSION It is encouraging to find that our sample produced reliability measures on par with that of Keller and Subhiyah (1993). Although the subject-to-factor ratio was nearly 30:1, it is possible that low sample sizes (n = 119 as opposed to Keller’s n = 200) enhanced the effects of sampling error and produced esti- mates lower than previous studies. The results of the first planned contrast show that there is a statistically significant difference in means between students receiving the treatment and those who did not for attention (p < .001), confidence (p = .001), satisfaction (p < .001), and the overall measure of motivation (p < .001) but not in rele- vance (p = .122). Furthermore, estimates of effect size for attention (d = 0.94), satisfaction (d = 0.94), and the total ARCS scale (d = 0.85) are large, as suggested by Cohen (1988). Using the same criteria, the mean difference for Table 6. Summary of the Tests of Planned Contrasts Value SE t d.f. p 95% Simultaneous Intervals Cohen’s d Attention (A) Contrast Aa 0.645 0.143 4.504 116 < .001 0.32, 0.97 0.94 Contrast Bb 0.215 0.156 1.377 116 .171 −0.14, 0.57 Relevance (R) Contrast A 0.181 0.116 1.556 116 .122 −0.08, 0.44 Contrast B −0.104 0.127 −0.820 116 .414 −0.39, 0.18 Confidence (C) Contrast A 0.452 0.127 3.564 116 .001 0.16, 0.74 0.71 Contrast B 0.174 0.138 1.257 116 .211 −0.14, 0.49 Satisfaction (S) Contrast A 0.704 0.153 4.604 116 < .001 0.36, 1.05 0.94 Contrast B 0.053 0.167 0.320 116 .750 −0.33, 0.43 Total scale (ARCS) Contrast A 0.495 0.118 4.206 116 < .001 0.23, 0.76 0.85 Contrast B 0.085 0.129 0.658 116 .512 −0.21, 0.38 aContrast A: Is motivation statistically different between students given motivational e-mails (treatment) and those who did not (control)? bContrast B: Is there a statistically significant difference in motivation between the online treatment group and the face-to-face classroom? IMPROVING MOTIVATION AND RETENTION 171 confidence (d = 0.71) could be evaluated as medium-large. Therefore, all sta- tistically significant results showed nontrivial differences between the means of the treatment and control groups. There was a statistically significant difference in every measure of motivation except relevance. Given the nature of the treatment used in this study, this result appears to make sense. Relevance generally addresses the connection between the subject matter and the learner’s ability to find that material useful and personally meaningful. The e-mails were not designed to emphasize how the material learned in the course was readily applicable to the students’ personal or professional situations. Therefore, it is not unexpected that measures of relevance would be nonsignificant. Also, given that the course was required within the degree program and that the subject matter consisted of learning Microsoft Office (a highly relevant and ubiquitous office suite), the lack of variance in relevance between groups is not surprising. Finally, there was no difference detected between the online treatment group and the face-to-face classroom on any measure. Although it would be tempt- ing to try to draw other conclusions about why attention, for instance, had lower measured levels than the other factors (R, C, and S) in all three groups, the survey is designed to be a comparison across groups and not across scales. For this specific study, there was greater student retention as well as a lower student failure rate for the treatment group. Although it would be diffi- cult to claim that a simple e-mail treatment was the only possible cause of the difference in the retention rate between the treatment and control groups, one can speculate that the social aspect or sense of community (like that often present in a face-to-face classroom) created through motivational e-mail com- munications may be part of the necessary structure needed to support online learners’ engagement and persistence (Huett et al. 2007). Given these results, it seems reasonable to promote this treatment to all instructors teaching undergraduates enrolled in the online, entry-level com- puter application course at the university used in this study. With further stud- ies, it might be possible to generalize the findings to further populations. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH Perhaps the most notable limitation of the study for some would be that a series of e-mail messages presents a rudimentary form of motivational enhancement. The authors acknowledge the complexity of human motivation and do not contend that a single intervention (like motivational e-mails) can address the entire spectrum and inner complexity of motivation. Such was not the intended design of this study. However, one of the perceived benefits of the ARCS model is that it allows for a more prescriptive approach to motiva- tion. According to the model, simple, well-designed, targeted treatments may still return meaningful results when used properly with an appropriate 172 HUETT ET AL. audience. In addition, the content of the e-mail messages as well as the fre- quency of their delivery could leave room for different interpretations by varying researchers. However, given the practical concerns for online educa- tion such as cost, time, and ease of integration, the more narrow approach used in this study is not without merit. Regarding the design of the study, using a convenience sample might have led to contextual effects not detected in the analyses. If we had more course sections, we could have performed a multilevel analysis of the data to attempt to model these effects, but, given the very high effect sizes found in this study, it is doubtful the alternate analysis would have produced contra- dicting results. Perhaps a more precise fill-in-blank style motivational message template could be designed and tested to aid the simplification, standardized develop- ment, and research of the motivational e-mails. However, such a template might lend itself to criticism that one was only scratching the surface of moti- vational complexity or that one was ignoring important contextual and situa- tional factors. Also, when designing messages such as the ones used in this study, it seems reasonable to suggest that some messages could produce greater motivational returns than others and that some participants would respond to certain motivational e-mails that others would not. This makes templated design a difficult proposition. In retrospect, it would have also been potentially beneficial to use an instrument to get a baseline measure of learner motivation before applying the treatment. Getting a read on how motivated learners were before beginning instruction might have helped more clearly explain any changes in motivation. Such a measure is recommended for future studies. Though we were able to achieve significant motivation and retention results delivering the messages at roughly two-week intervals, it remains unclear at this point how frequently messages should be delivered to achieve desired results. It is feasible that fewer or greater numbers of messages could significantly impact results. Future researchers may wish to explore different intervals for message delivery. CONCLUSION It appears that simple, cost-effective, and easy-to-design mass e-mail messages show potential for addressing some of the motivational needs and retention concerns of online students. With their simplicity and ease of use, the motivational e-mails in this study represent another tool that distance educators can employ that complements other motivational efforts. Beyond the statistical findings, there are obvious practical (financial) implications for universities with online programs that wish to improve student motivation, retention, and passing rates with a relatively easy-to-implement strategy. 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work_5xpbkfubkzcptkx6c3rtubswrq	----	Going the distance: Delivery of high school drug prevention via distance education. By: David L. Wyrick, Melodie Fearnow-Kenney, Cheryl Haworth Wyrick, Muhsin Michael Orsini, Robert W. Strack & Jeffrey J. Milroy This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Wyrick, D. L., Fearnow-Kenney, M., Wyrick, C. H., Orsini, M. M., Strack, R., & Milroy, J. J. (2010). Going the distance: Delivery of high school drug prevention via distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 24(3), 151-162. [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/08923647.2010.500251. Abstract: The purpose of this project was to develop a technology that can be used in schools where there are insufficient resources to implement a quality drug prevention program. The specific technology—distance education via teleconferencing—allows a highly qualified teacher to deliver programs in such settings with increased quality. A promising high school drug prevention program, All Stars, Sr., was modified to be delivered using the latest technological advances in distance education. Student-level effects are reported across six mediating variables as well as past thirty-day and lifetime use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, ecstasy, and other illicit drugs. distance education | high school education | drug prevention | adolescents | drug Keywords: prevention programs Article: Although the use of some substances among young Americans is on the decline, drug use continues to be a major public health concern. The 2007 Monitoring the Future study revealed little change in eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade use of LSD, psilocybin (mushrooms), crack cocaine, powder cocaine, heroin, and crystal methamphetamine (Johnston et al. 2008). Most prevention programming that has been developed and tested in school settings has addressed prevention in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades (Tobler and Stratton 1997). The rationale has been that this is the single greatest period of risk for initial experimentation with drug use. This stands in contrast to the relative lack of attention given to primary prevention among high school students. Instead, most high school-based efforts to date have emphasized interventions primarily targeted at individuals who have demonstrated wide-ranging behavioral problems including problematic substance use (Tobler and Stratton 1997). Despite the success of some prevention programs, school-based prevention is not without its challenges. In fact, researchers have attempted to overcome barriers to successful school-based http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=1427 http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=1563 http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=1422 http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=3837 http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/08923647.2010.500251 prevention for quite some time (e.g., Keeve 1967). Much of this research has to do with the lack of training and qualifications of teachers who most often implement programs. The School Health Policies and Programs Study reported that over 90% of all schools sampled (607) included alcohol and other drug use prevention in their school health curricula (Collins et al. 1995). However, only 33.4% of the lead health education teachers and only 29.6% of the classroom health education teachers had received training on this topic anytime during the previous two years. Not only do health education teachers lack training in prevention but also most (94.6%) majored in subjects other than health education (Collins et al. 1995). The lack of training of health education teachers reduces program fidelity and presents serious barriers to the success of prevention efforts. This article describes a project that used the latest technology in telecommunications to provide schools with an additional method of overcoming barriers to school-based prevention. DISTANCE EDUCATION VIA TELECONFERENCING Technological advances within teleconferencing can be used to address the barriers to school- based drug prevention that were discussed earlier. This mode of technology has been used successfully to bring educational health programs to rural communities (Richardson-Nassif, Swartz, and Reardon 2002). Additionally, teleconferencing allows instructors to reach students in rural areas and provides students with qualified instructors (Ludlow 1994). Barriers to teacher training, program fidelity, time and resources, and teacher shortages can be reduced by training individuals in effective drug prevention and the use of teleconferencing technologies. Individuals such as district-level safe and drug-free school coordinators, school guidance counselors, school nurses, physical education teachers, and health teachers can fill the role of a drug prevention specialist. The critical element is that the individual receive specialized training in the underlying processes and technologies upon which the program is based. Once trained, the implementation of the program by a specialist can be broadcast to large numbers of students. Teleconferencing eliminates the need for drug prevention specialists to be present at each high school. Teacher time and money spent on training large numbers of teachers can be reduced. This same system of training and delivery also has the potential to increase the likelihood that the activities will be implemented as intended (i.e., with fidelity). Teleconferencing offers the possibility of receiving instruction from a highly skilled and knowledgeable individual. Given the deficits often seen among teachers in their understanding of the concepts that underlie prevention as well as methods that are effective, the ability to allow an expert into the classroom has considerable appeal. Teleconferencing has the potential to reduce the amount of money needed for program training and delivery. A three-year comparative study of distance education in Utah revealed that the cost of delivery per student was reduced over a three-year period and suggests that distance education can be more cost-effective than conventional instruction when given enough time (Rule, Dewulf, and Stowitschek 1988). As stated earlier, one specialist can broadcast the curriculum to several high schools. This approach can make a significant impact on the problem of teacher shortages in urban and rural areas. The use of teleconferencing makes programs and services available for educators, administrators, and students in urban and isolated rural school districts. It can help put these disadvantaged areas on the cutting edge of technology and prevention practice. METHODS To demonstrate the feasibility of using distance education as a mode for delivering drug prevention to high school students, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug (ATOD) unit of All Stars, Sr., was adapted for distance delivery via teleconferencing. All Stars, Sr., is a promising high school health supplement that targets eight research-based mediators: commitment, normative beliefs, lifestyle incongruence, resistance skills, beliefs about consequences, goal- setting skills, stress-management skills, and decision-making skills. The program includes small group activities, structured class discussions and debates, role plays, class surveys and feedback sessions, and other techniques that produce involvement and allow for the open expression of ideas and opinions. The full curriculum addresses the same major content areas that are included within a comprehensive school health education program and typically covered by the texts. Those content areas include mental health; family life; alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; personal health; environmental health; communicable and chronic diseases; consumer health; growth and development; nutrition; and injury prevention and safety. The distance version of All Stars, Sr. (ATOD unit), uses both technology (e.g., Internet, chromakey, graphics tablet, and flex cam) and interactive instructional methods (e.g., games, small group discussions) to deliver important information regarding substance use and target mediating variables (i.e., normative beliefs, resistance skills, decision-making skills, lifestyle incongruence, and beliefs about consequences). Table 1 summarizes the activities included in each session as well as the targeted mediators, instructional methods, and technologies used. Table 1 is omitted from this formatted document. Participants Students in four health classes participated in an evaluation of the distance version of All Stars, Sr. The treatment group consisted of 26 students. Students' ages ranged from 13 to 16 years. There were 17 males and 9 females. Ethnicity for the treatment group was roughly evenly split between White (15; 57.7%) and African American (10; 38.5%) students with one Hispanic student (3.8%). The comparison group consisted of 28 students. Students' ages ranged from 13 to 16 years. There were 4 males and 24 females. The ethnicity of the comparison group was represented by White students (11; 39.3%), African Americans (13; 46.4%), Asians (1; 3.6%), Hispanics (1; 3.6%), or others (2; 7.1%). Study Design A small pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility of offering effective drug prevention using distance education technologies. The goal was to determine if offering All Stars, Sr., activities via distance education is feasible and effective. Health classes in two high schools received the broadcast sessions. Within-school comparison groups were chosen; therefore, one health class was assigned as a treatment class and one was assigned as a comparison class within each school (both classes within a school had the same health teacher). Each teacher agreed to serve as the classroom facilitator during implementation of the distance program. Within-school designs have the inherent problem of contamination. However, we minimized this problem by limiting the instructor's access to program content and materials. Furthermore, the Web-based components were unavailable to comparison students. Assignment of classes was random, although it must be noted that with only two classes per condition, the benefits of random assignment in terms of achieving pretest equivalence cannot be fully realized. The treatment classes were taught eight modified All Stars, Sr., activities using distance technologies. Each participating school was paid a $500 stipend and each teacher was paid a $250 stipend to participate. A pre/posttest survey design was used to measure the impact of the intervention on student attitudes and behaviors. Participants in both groups completed surveys at the initiation of the study (prior to the first class session) and then again at the conclusion of the intervention (one week from the last classroom session). Program Training and Delivery Classroom facilitators were provided one day of training prior to program implementation. The content of the program and methods of implementation were discussed. Materials explaining the theory behind All Stars, Sr.; its goals and objectives; the definitions of the targeted mediating variables; and several sample activities were provided. However, the majority of the one-day training was spent clarifying the importance of classroom management and making sure that the facilitator was familiar with the distance technologies used in each lesson. Delivery of the six sessions was conducted by two experts trained in substance abuse prevention. The sessions were broadcast from a teleconferencing studio at one school to the two remote high schools. The remote high schools had classrooms equipped to support two-way broadcasting and Internet access. Broadcasts were sent to the high schools one at a time. Measures The effects of the program on student attitudes, intentions, and behaviors were evaluated using a twenty-three-item pre/posttest survey. In addition, teacher interviews, student focus groups, and videotaped sessions were used to provide further evaluative data concerning fidelity, level of classroom facilitator involvement, level of student engagement, level of studio manager involvement, overall satisfaction with the program as implemented, and suggestions for improvement. Students completed the survey prior to program implementation and again after the completion of the program. Surveys were coded with numeric identifiers, instead of names, to assure confidentiality. The survey assessed the following six mediators: (1) lifestyle incongruence, (2) normative beliefs, (3) commitment, (4) resistance skills, (5) beliefs about consequences, and (6) decision-making skills. In addition, items were included that assessed recent (past thirty days) and lifetime use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, ecstasy, and other illicit drugs. The survey also measured next-thirty-day and lifetime drug use intentions. Both classroom facilitators participated in interviews. A standard protocol was used and the interviewer took notes throughout the interview. A standard observation form was used for quantitative and qualitative assessment of program fidelity, level of involvement of the classroom facilitators and studio managers, and level of student engagement. Four student focus groups were completed. The focus group protocol consisted of eleven questions. Each focus group was audiotaped and the focus group facilitator took notes. Internal consistency of scales was assessed by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficients, summarized in Table 2. Table 2. Cronbach's Alpha Coefficients for Mediating Variable Scales Mediating variable # of items Pretest alpha Posttest alpha Impulsive decision making 9 .64 .82 Lifestyle incongruence 4 .66 .76 Normative beliefs 12 .68 .69 Commitment 4 .80 .72 Resistance skills 10 .82 .86 Beliefs about consequences 6 .68 .64 Overall, Cronbach's coefficients are in the acceptable range. Resistance skills had the highest average consistency (α = .84) and beliefs about consequences had the lowest (α = .66). Average overall internal consistency rose slightly between pretest (α = .71) and posttest (α = .75), suggesting a better understanding of items at posttest. Analyses are based on students present at both pretest and posttest surveys. The attrition rate for the treatment group from pretest to posttest was 7%. The attrition rate for the comparison group from pretest to posttest was 7%. Analysis The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of offering a modified version of the All Stars, Sr., program via distance education and its potential to impact mediating variables and behavioral outcomes. The design allowed for within-school comparison groups; however, the resources available for this pilot study restricted the overall sample size (N = 54). Hoyle (1999) recommends a strategy for evaluating small sample studies. He offers the following equation as an explanation: As the equation illustrates, the effect size of a study is not affected by the sample size. However, significance tests are affected by sample size. Hoyle suggests that an appropriate effect size indicator be used to assess group differences when sample sizes are small and power is low. A post hoc power analysis revealed that with N = 54 the power for this study was 0.183 to detect an effect size of .20, at p ≤ .05, thus severely limiting what can be concluded from the results of significance testing. Therefore, in addition to calculating and reporting p values we follow the recommendation of Hoyle and report group differences for this study in terms of effect sizes (Cohen's d). RESULTS Pretest to posttest change scores were created to examine program effects on each mediating variable. Independent samples t tests were performed on the change scores. Although not statistically significant, treatment group differences were observed for impulsive decision making (p = .250), beliefs about consequences (p = .429), and normative beliefs (p = .378); (see Figure 1). There were no program differences for lifestyle incongruence (p = .600) or resistance skills (p = .488). As can be seen in Figure 2, effect sizes for each of these mediators meet or exceed the program effects that Tobler and Stratton (1997) observed for Social Influence, Life Skills, and Other drug prevention programs included in their 1997 meta-analysis. Figure 1. Program effects on mediators. Figure 2. Effect sizes for mediating variables. Program effects were observed for intentions to use cigarettes (p = .233), marijuana (p = .142), and ecstasy (p = .106) in the next thirty days (see Figure 3). The average effect size for drug use intentions was .40. Figure 3. Program effects on drug use intentions. Figure 4 presents program effects for the past thirty-day use of wine (p = .190), smokeless tobacco (p = .155), and marijuana (p = .489). Group differences in pretest-to-posttest changes for other forms of alcohol (p > .470), as well as cigarettes (p = 1.00) and cocaine (p = .322), were not observed. The effect sizes observed exceed those reported by Tobler and Stratton (1997); (see Figure 5). Figure 4. Program effects on individual drugs. Figure 5. Effects sizes by substance. Student Focus Groups Student focus groups were completed at the conclusion of the four-week period to gather opinions on the distance delivery of All Stars, Sr. Each focus group consisted of eight to ten students and was led by trained facilitators. Two focus groups were conducted from each high school. Several themes emerged. First, students found the distance education class more interesting and fun than their traditional health class because (1) the distance instructor and distance delivery held their attention better than classroom delivery by their regular health teacher; (2) they were able to participate in online activities that they thought did an excellent job of facilitating learning; (3) the All Stars, Sr., activities encouraged them to get to know their classmates better; (4) they competed with the other distance class (high school) on a daily basis (activities designed to promote bonding among classmates); and (5) they felt less intimidated to be honest with an instructor who is separated by distance. Second, students reported high satisfaction with the distance technologies. The Web-based activities were especially appealing to students because feedback (i.e., individualized and classroom) was quickly received. The videoconferencing technologies enhanced the presentation of content. One student shared, “I liked it when she was standing up teaching from her PowerPoint. She looked like a meteorologist … she could walk in front of the screen (like a weather map).” Another student commented that getting to use the different pieces of technology (e.g., flex cam and computer) made learning more fun. Third, there were some challenges to the distance education approach. Students reported occasional delays in video and audio with teleconferencing. These delays made communication difficult at times. However, with advancements in teleconferencing technologies, these delays will be minimized. Students reported difficulty remembering usernames and passwords needed for computer access and Web site login procedures. Strategies for helping students maintain this information should be developed. Teacher Interviews Teachers reported being very pleased with all program materials. They enjoyed the role of facilitator and were intrigued with the technology used. Teachers thought that the technologies (e.g., PowerPoint and Internet site) improved instruction. They enjoyed seeing students respond positively to someone new, supporting the use of an outside specialist to deliver the prevention curriculum. Challenges faced by classroom facilitators include keeping students from “surfing” the Internet, assisting students with log-in procedures, scheduling computer lab time, and lack of assistance from distance classroom managers. These challenges will be taken into consideration when designing the facilitator guides and program training. Observations of Program Delivery Although program delivery by the distance instructors remained consistent across the two high schools, facilitator (regular health teacher) involvement varied greatly. One classroom facilitator was very involved in program implementation by participating in class discussion, asking questions, and challenging his students. He also maintained order in the classroom without stifling student participation. The other classroom facilitator was primarily an observer. This made implementation more difficult because classroom management became the responsibility of the distance instructors. In addition, hard-to-reach students were allowed to stay uninvolved in classroom activities. Involvement of the studio managers was also split. The involved studio manager controlled the classroom camera so that all students could be viewed. When a single student was speaking, the studio manager focused on that student allowing for more personable conversation. Finally, when appropriate, the studio manager would place the classroom microphones on mute so that students could discuss topics in private. The uninvolved studio manager left the classroom with the camera positioned on the center of the classroom and fully retracted. Clear expectations should be provided and the importance of this role stressed in future deliveries. DISCUSSION This research demonstrates the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of offering high school drug prevention via distance education technologies. Feasibility was demonstrated by the successful delivery of eight broadcast sessions to two remote high schools. Distance technologies such as the Internet, chromakey (technique for compositing two images together such as a weatherperson appearing to stand in front of a large map), PowerPoint, and flex cam were used to enhance the program and facilitate interaction between the instructors and the students. The program was well received by teachers, studio managers, and students. This preliminary study also suggests that the distance delivery of All Stars, Sr., did not result in diminished effects. Although the nonsignificant findings cannot eliminate the possibility that results were due to chance or sampling bias, program effects were observed for important prevention mediators such as normative beliefs, beliefs about consequences (expectancies), and decision making. These mediators have been instrumental in the success of All Stars, Sr., and other school-based drug prevention programs. The program's effects on these mediators meet or exceed the magnitude of effects observed by Tobler and Stratton (1997) in their meta-analysis of 120 drug prevention programs. Drug use intentions and the use of several specific drugs were also successfully reduced among students who received the program. Although caution should be used in interpreting nonsignificant findings, the results provide preliminary support for the use of distance education as an alternative mode of delivery for high school drug prevention. Improvements can be made in the training of classroom facilitators, technical support for students, and speed of transmission for audio and video broadcasts. These limitations notwithstanding, this research provides strong support for the use of distance technologies to overcome the challenges of high school drug prevention. This model can be applied to elementary and middle school drug prevention as well as violence prevention and other health education efforts. In essence, distance technology can place a research-based program and an expert teacher/facilitator into the classrooms of rural and urban schools that may not otherwise have access to these resources. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This project was funded by Grant 1R43DA015592-01 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. REFERENCES 1. Collins, J. L., Small, M. L., Kann, L., Pateman, B. C., Gold, R. S. and Kolbe, L. J. 1995. School health education. Journal of School Health, 65: 302–311. 2. Hoyle, R. H., ed. 1999. Statistical strategies for small sample research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 3. Johnston, L. D., O'Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G. and Schulenberg, J. E. 2008. Monitoring the future national results on adolescent drug use: Overview of key findings, 2007. NIH Publication No. 08-6418, Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse. 4. Keeve, J. P. 1967. Overcoming obstacles to a creative school health programme. International Journal of Health Education, : 26–32. 5. Ludlow, B. L. A comparison of traditional and distance education models. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Conference of the American Council on Rural Special Education. Austin, TX. ED 369 599 6. Richardson-Nassif, K., Swartz, R. and Reardon, M. 2002. Implementing a community education program on stroke for health care providers and consumers. Education for Health, 15(1): 59–64. 7. Rule, S., Dewulf, M. J. and Stowitschek, J. J. 1988. An economic analysis of inservice teacher training. The American Journal of Distance Education, 2(2): 12–22. 8. Tobler, N. S. and Stratton, H. H. 1997. Effectiveness of a school-based drug prevention programs: A meta-analysis of the research. Journal of Primary Prevention, 18(1): 71–128. 
work_622qov3gv5aylp5ierrdbkta5m	----	Distance Education, Vol. 27, No. 2, August 2006, pp. 217–232 ISSN 0158-7919 (print); 1475-0198 (online)/06/020217–16 © 2006 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI 10.1080/01587910600789613 New Model, New Strategies: Instructional design for building online wisdom communities Charlotte N. Gunawardena*, Ludmila Ortegano-Layne, Kayleigh Carabajal, Casey Frechette, Ken Lindemann and Barbara Jennings University of New Mexico, USA Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_178909.sgm10.1080/01587910600789613Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2006Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.272000000August 2006CharlotteGunawardenalani@unm.edu We discuss the development of an instructional design model, WisCom (Wisdom Communities), based on socio-constructivist and sociocultural learning philosophies and distance education prin- ciples for the development of online wisdom communities, and the application and evaluation of the model in an online graduate course in the USA. The WisCom model aims to facilitate transfor- mational learning by fostering the development of a wisdom community, knowledge innovation, and mentoring and learner support in an online learning environment, based on a “Cycle of Inquiry” module design, and a “Spiral of Inquiry” program design. Extending beyond current instructional design practice, WisCom provides both a new model for teaching that builds upon the inherent capacity of networked communication to support the growth and intellectual develop- ment of communities of practice, and a new model of learning where learners engage in the process of scholarly inquiry that supports individual and collective learning. Evaluation and research data support the WisCom model’s ability to design a learning community engaged in the collaborative construction of knowledge. Introduction Online education, a form of distance education based on Internet technologies, has emerged as a major global trend. The online environment’s ability to network minds, foster reflective thinking, and create the conditions for individuals and groups working at a distance to develop communities of practice is undoubtedly its unique strength. As Thorpe (2002) points out the “current emphasis is often on how * Corresponding author. Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology Program, College of Education, MSC05-3040, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Email: lani@unm.edu 218 C. N. Gunawardena et al. independent study may be used to support and sustain group interaction, where in 1979–1989 the roles were reversed; interaction was used to support and foster inde- pendence” (pp. 147–148). This has important implications for how instruction is designed. Designers must move beyond the strategies employed by “early adopters” and create educational contexts that support interaction and collaboration through networked communication. Interaction is essential for participation in communities that generate knowledge and is rapidly becoming a quotidian expectation for learn- ers in online learning communities. The challenge then is to develop new learning designs that sustain collaborative learning and help learners develop collaborative learning strategies applicable across evolving content domains and disciplines. This article discusses the development of a new instructional design model, WisCom, based on socio-constructivist and sociocultural learning approaches and distance education principles for the design of online wisdom communities, and the application and evaluation of the model in an online graduate course in a university in the USA. The WisCom model aims to facilitate transformational learning by fostering three dimensions: the development of a wisdom community, knowledge innovation, and mentoring and learner support in an online learning environment, based on a Cycle of Inquiry module design, and a Spiral of Inquiry program design. The strength of the WisCom model lies in the creation of a unique learning environ- ment that distributes expertise and knowledge construction across individuals and exteriorizes the process of scholarly inquiry resulting in new methods of learning for participants. The Conceptual Framework and Dimensions of the WisCom Design Model Drawing from socio-constructivist and sociocultural philosophies of learning (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991), the WisCom model is grounded on the theories of distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1991; Pea, 1993; Salomon, 1993), and social construction of knowledge through negotiation of meaning in communities of practice (Lave, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991), which focus on the social, situa- tional, cultural, and distributed nature of learning. Distributed cognition asserts that cognition, knowledge, and expertise are not merely a property of individual minds but are distributed across individuals, environments, external symbolic representations, tools, and artifacts (Pea, 1993). Salomon (1993) argues that “if cognitions are distributed, then by necessity they are also situated” (p. 114) as shown by Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989), whose work has emphasized the need to embed knowledge construction in authentic contexts and distribute the capability required to do an activity across groups of peers, or a learner–mentor system. Affiliated research on socially shared cognition has focused on socially scaffolded, tool-aided, and artifact-supported cognition (Resnick, Levine, & Teasley, 1991). Legitimate peripheral participation concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice, and the transformative possi- bilities of being and becoming cultural–historical participants in the world (Lave & Wenger, 1991). New Model, New Strategies 219 Anchored on this theoretical foundation, we developed WisCom, to design learn- ing environments for ill-structured knowledge domains (Jonassen, 1997), where there are no right or wrong answers, where domain knowledge is evolving and where multiple perspectives and contextual knowledge is critical to understanding a ques- tion or solving a problem. WisCom was designed after testing and evaluating the first iteration of this model, FOCAL (Final Outcome Centered Around the Learner) (Gunawardena et al., 2004). The WisCom model provides the design framework for developing a wisdom community supported by knowledge innovation, mentoring, and learner support that allows for perspective transformations (Mezirow, 1991) as the end goal, which occurs at both the individual and community levels. The next section discusses each dimension of WisCom. 1. Wisdom Community The WisCom model is community-centered. Community-centered learning envi- ronments offer a new perspective on the importance of creating a supportive context within which learners can navigate the process of learning, collaborate, and become collectively wise. Unlike early models of independent study that stressed individual learning, the goal of WisCom is to create a wise community that shares a common mission, engages in reflection and dialogue, believes in mutual trust, respect, and commitment, cares for the common good, and empowers its members. The commu- nity provides the opportunity for participants to interact, receive feedback, and learn and grow together. We adopted the metaphor of giftedness from Keresan Pueblo communities in New Mexico as a core value of our wisdom community, where giftedness (or the Western concept of intelligence) is defined as the individual’s ability to contribute or “give back” to the well being of the entire community (Romero, 1994). Like the Keresan Pueblo communities, we believe that talented people have special skills or abilities, while gifted people possess these same skills or abilities and are also able to teach or share these talents with others. The individual is seen in relationship to the community. Bleyl (2000), after an extensive review of literature from diverse cultural perspectives, concluded that wisdom appears to be an integration of cognition, affect, and reflectivity. Reflective learning is a significant aspect of perspective transformations, and the instructional goal of the WisCom model. As Wenger (1998) observed: “learning transforms who we are and what we can do” (p. 215). Given that Vygotsky (1978) was concerned with how mental functions can occur at the socially distributed and individual plane of functioning, we need to be concerned about how the entire flow and structure of communicative and collabora- tive processes, as well as individual mental processes, might undergo transformation within a computer-mediated learning environment that provides opportunities for reflective cognitive processing and extended dialogue not usually possible through face-to-face interaction (Wertsch, 2002). To develop an online wisdom community, learning activities must be designed to foster interactional competence, social negoti- ation of meaning, and construction of new knowledge. 220 C. N. Gunawardena et al. We believe that developing community requires time investment upfront so that the community can maintain and nurture itself. Additionally, if a sense of commu- nity is not conceptualized internally, it will have more difficulty in reaching deeper levels of understanding (Chapman, Ramondt, & Smiley, 2005). Therefore, WisCom puts a premium on interaction, both among learners and between learners and instructors (Moore, 1989), and collaboration which enables a community of practice to create, discover, and apply the wisdom and wisdom potential that exists within its membership. Social presence techniques are one way to ensure that online commu- nity members connect with each other and feel a level of comfort to share ideas (Gunawardena, 2004). Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2003) propose three over- lapping elements—social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence—as conditions for developing an online community of inquiry. Assessment and feedback play a crucial role in nurturing a community. In a wisdom community, assessment must reward collaboration and products developed within the community, rather than individual achievement. The WisCom model provides the designer with additional requirements to ensure community development by including mentoring and learner support as an impor- tant dimension of the model with implications for both the teacher and learners in this new educational context. 2. Mentoring and Learner Support The WisCom model utilizes mentoring as a mechanism for people supporting people as knowledge is created, and thereby contributing to building a community of wisdom. Mentoring aids in supporting new members and in the inclusion of diverse members into the community (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and diversity contributes new perspectives and wisdom to the community. The WisCom model calls for the recog- nition of the wise ones in the community who would serve as mentors. Matching a novice or inexperienced learner with a more experienced counterpart facilitates the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), which refers to achieving a learner’s optimal developmental potential, with assistance from an expert. Mentors support the development of a learner and guide the learner through legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) to become an effective member of a community of practice. Protégés need to be paired with mentors that share common interests and take the responsibility of mentoring seriously. Mentors will improve their learning in turn through the creation of these extended roles. Oftentimes, learning occurs through teaching or answering an unexpected question that a protégé might ask. Mentors can help their protégés with advice about balancing school and family responsibili- ties, difficult concepts in content areas, how to navigate the administrative functions of the institution, and difficulties that the protégés may have with the technical aspects of the course delivery systems. Mentoring can be designed as a distributed function among instructors, peers, teaching assistants, and other community members such as students who have taken the course in prior semesters. New Model, New Strategies 221 McLoughlin (2002) extends the role of mentoring to scaffolding to provide exam- ples of how learners can be supported in the process of constructivist inquiry in an online environment. She provides a framework for designing learner support for an online environment which includes task support, social support, and peer support, and maintains that “effective support would need to include the encouragement of reflective thinking, provision of social support for dialogue, interaction and extension of ideas with feedback from peers and mentors on emerging issues” (McLoughlin, 2002, p. 152). Other types of learner support address the needs of the learner in rela- tion to content, institutional context, and technology (Dillon & Blanchard, 1991) and support systems must relate to different cultures, learners, economic systems, and programs of study (Tait & Mills, 2003). The WisCom model calls for mentor training in learner support strategies that include these considerations to ensure effective learning guidance as the community engages in knowledge innovation. 3.Knowledge Innovation Efforts to enhance knowledge, or information paired with understanding (Applehans, Globe, & Laugero, 1999), are collectively termed knowledge innovation. In the WisCom model, knowledge innovation is the purposeful creation, sharing, and pres- ervation of meaningful, socially constructed ideas. Knowledge is the adhesive that holds a wisdom community together, and its management propels the community toward its goals. Knowledge is seen as both distributed among people and artifacts during the process of creation, and a commodity when it is preserved. The practical benefits of knowledge innovation include the ability to get the right information to the right people, ensure that knowledge is not lost (even when community membership changes), and enable communities to more readily build on past successes and learn from challenges. Knowledge innovation is cyclic, but unfolds in phases. The WisCom model stipu- lates four stages: create, record, access, and enable. Knowledge innovation begins with the creation of knowledge. Members of wisdom communities create knowledge through interaction; knowledge not only exists within the individual minds of a community’s members, but also in the communication that unfolds between community members. Once knowledge is created, its utility to a community is fleeting unless it is stored. Recording knowledge is the process by which community members’ ideas are perma- nently stored, such as by automatically archiving computer discussions, which can be organized, both manually and electronically. Knowledge access occurs when community members retrieve knowledge generated and subsequently recorded by their colleagues. The main task for the instructor in this phase is to improve the organization of recorded knowledge so that members can easily retrieve what they are researching. The interconnected, decentralized nature of the Internet is well suited for this function. In general, technical means of recording knowledge by coding and indexing will lead to technical means of access, and non-technical recording will lead to non-technical access. When accessing 222 C. N. Gunawardena et al. knowledge through communication with other group members, it is particularly important to know what questions to ask in order to invoke information. The final and most critical component of knowledge innovation is the enabling of knowledge. Enabling knowledge means ensuring that learners know how to use knowledge, that is, relate the knowledge they have retrieved to their individual learn- ing goals, as well as the larger goals of the community. One particularly powerful approach to enabling knowledge involves making connections between concepts evident. We have used concept mapping tools employing Inspiration and Cmap soft- ware as artifacts in a distributed learning system to enable community members to make connections between concepts, and store knowledge in an easily retrievable visual form. The role of concept maps in distributed cognition is twofold; it extends and supports intellectual capabilities while it is being used, and second, exposure to this artifact leaves a residue that can serve individuals well when they must perform tasks in the absence of the tool (Bell & Winn, 2000). Transformational Learning Wisdom is not a destination but a journey. One way to evaluate the process of becoming wise is to determine the level of transformational learning (Mezirow, 1991) that has taken place. The process of transformative learning is anchored in life experience and critical reflection; processes supported by the wisdom community. In this model transformational learning occurs through knowledge innovation, mentor- ing, support, dialogue, and reflection within the community. A definitional outcome of perspective transformation includes a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrative perspective; and finally, the ability to make choices or otherwise act on these new understandings (Mezirow, 1991). Simply stated, when learners are led to reflect on and question something previously taken for granted and thereby change their views or perspectives, transformative learning has taken place. This is the definition of transformational learning we have adopted for WisCom. In this context, learning is the process of making a new or revised interpretation, and engaging in reflective dialog. “The transformative practice of a learning community offers an ideal context for developing new understandings because the community sustains change as part of an identity of participation” (Wenger, 1998, p. 215). To evaluate transformational learning, we measure the trajectory or process, the difference between the starting point when the individual enters the community and the time when critical reflection emerges. Supportive learning conditions include self- assessment, responsibility for contributions, reflective dialogue and practice, and direct access to knowledge. Mentoring plays a critical role in facilitating transforma- tional learning. The responsibility for transformational learning rests with the learner. Application of the WisCom Model for Learning Design Figure 1 displays the conceptual relationship between the dimensions of the WisCom model and application to the design of a learning module. Taken together, this New Model, New Strategies 223 provides the designer a framework for creating a cycle of inquiry that will result in the creation, utilization, and preservation of meaningful, socially constructed knowledge. Figure 1. WisCom Cycle of Inquiry module design The three dimensions of the WisCom model are at the very core of the learning module design. The design for the process of learning consists of five steps: a learning challenge (i.e., a case, problem, or an issue), initial exploration, resources, reflection, and preservation. These steps reflect the process, or phases, of a collaborative learn- ing event, the intent of which is to solve a problem, discover something, or to work together to achieve a common learning goal. After viewing the case study, problem, or issue, the group navigates through a process whereby individual cognitions are shared (initial exploration), multiple perspectives are challenged, accommodated, and nego- tiated with peer learners and experts (resources, perspectives), and time is allotted for individual reflective restructuring in thinking (reflection, reorganization). This internal- ization occurs before the group works again in unison to produce shared artifacts to document the knowledge commodities that result from the collaborative learning experience (negotiation, preservation). For the instructor, purposive design for each of the steps along the learning process continuum includes the understanding that each of the three model dimensions exerts an impact on the collaborative process. However, as the diagram shows, each dimension impacts the steps in a slightly different proportion. To illustrate: all knowledge innovation phases occur in each cycle of the inquiry step; however, as a community moves through the cycle, the locus of knowledge innovation moves from heavy in creation to heavy in enabling. That is, moving through the cycle of inquiry pushes communities from emphases on creation (Steps 1 and 2) to periods focusing on recording and access (Steps 3 and 4), Figure 1. WisCom Cycle of Inquiry module design 224 C. N. Gunawardena et al. and finally to an emphasis on enabling (Step 5). Through this process the emphasis moves from knowledge as distributed cognition created through the interaction between people and artifacts to knowledge as a co-created commodity with a capac- ity for preservation and archiving. The following section explores the differential dimension implications as they relate to design tasks. Because the phases of knowl- edge innovation pervade all steps, this dimension underlies the entire figure. On the other hand, as the arrows indicate, building the wisdom community is especially critical in Steps 2 and 4, whereas mentoring and learner support are preeminent design considerations in Steps 3 and 5. Step 1. The cycle of inquiry, adapted from Bransford, Vye, Bateman, Brophy, and Roselli (2004) for our collaborative learning context, is generally organized around a learning challenge (i.e., a case study, problem, or issue). The challenge encompasses three important design tasks: (a) Devising an open-ended, authentic performance task (e.g., case-based or a problem-based scenario for short-term courses, or project-based challenge for longer duration learning events). Topics selected should genuinely allow learn- ers to profit by hearing each other’s opinions and experiences. Formats selected should promote discussion bringing in multiple perspectives. (b) Assuring the performance task is appropriate to the learners’ current capacity within the content domain and supports collaborative learning. This may include a pre-appraisal of participant skill level in content knowledge and collaborative learning expertise. (c) Designing a communication model that promotes creative, yet orderly, discus- sion and input; and supports social presence and ongoing formative assessment. The communication model is a deliberate and intentional strategy that provokes and sustains collaborative discourse as a key process in conceptual change (Hiltz & Goldman, 2005). Subscribing to this view presents a challenge to learners accustomed to communicating to the instructor in a more prescribed and independent fashion and requires a shift in thinking about the learner’s responsibility to a community of practice. Step 2. During initial exploration, participants exteriorize current meaning schemes and begin to generate initial ideas to address the challenge. The importance of this stage in creating a wisdom community culture cannot be overemphasized. The level of shared community identity and individuals’ perception of member empowerment created here impact the transformational learning process throughout the cycle of inquiry. Designers must foster: shared identity which can be developed by using social presence techniques (Gunawardena, 2004); shared goals and mission; oppor- tunities for critical reflection, dialogue, emergence, change, and transformation; a safe environment for exchange of diverse views and multiple perspectives; nurturing smaller subgroups; mutual trust, intimacy, respect, and commitment; spaces for social interaction; and care for the common good of the members. Moderators/learning facilitators (be they instructors or students) play a critical role in building a wisdom community by humanizing the online learning environ- New Model, New Strategies 225 ment, helping to achieve group goals, and promoting learning (Gunawardena, 1998). Much of the success of an online discussion depends on how the moderators play their roles in planning and conducting the dialog. In order to facilitate social construction of knowledge, moderators should encourage participants to generate ideas, link them, and summarize the discussion. Summaries can be either a summa- tive synthesis that lists and links ideas generated, or a query-posing synthesis that poses questions to help participants discover relationships between ideas. Design tasks in WisCom include: (a) Communicating clear “context expectations” that promote social equality and commitment to a common learning goal. Providing “ground rules,” response obligations (or recommendations), clear role expectations, and communication protocols that support a democratic and respectful social environment will aid the learner in formulating initial ideas and create confidence in subsequent attempts to communicate that idea to others. (b) Establishing a system for selecting “recorders” to organize initial participant input and an indexing system that will differentiate this input from later phases of the learning process. (c) Establishing a feedback cycle that includes frequent clarifications, encourages participation, “weaves” and summarizes thoughts and comments, expresses emerging consensus, and rewards collaboration. (d) Designing an evaluation method to assess “pre-knowledge” as baseline to gauge “value-added” learning gains over time. Step 3. Participants consult resources relevant to the challenge(s) including external research and the ability to learn from content experts and mentors. Meaning schemes expand as mentors introduce important points and perspectives that were not considered by the participants in their initial exploration. New ideas are tested against previously held assumptions and beliefs. A mentor does not need to know everything, but know how to access relevant and appropriate resources, and is will- ing to be a friend and an advisor. There are many ways in which mentoring relationships can be established. Mentors can be selected from within the community or invited from outside the community. Peer mentoring is effective if novice and expert learners can be matched carefully. In our application of the WisCom model, students who had taken the course previously served as volunteer mentors. Design tasks include: (a) selecting mentors with appropriate levels of content expertise; (b) training mentors in learner guidance strategies and encouraging mentors to initiate and maintain dialogue both publicly in discussion areas as well as privately via email; (c) assuring accessibility and timely availability of appropriate external resources including posting articles, links, and suggested Web resources; (d) monitoring implementation of the communication model and feedback cycle; and 226 C. N. Gunawardena et al. (e) providing a method to archive and record ideas, resources, and perspectives found to be most useful to the participants. Searchable, indexed databases are useful tools to manage this information and can be accessed in the future as the cycle of inquiry expands. Step 4. During reflection and reorganization, learners engage in a process of critical self-reflection and structural reorganization that internalizes the learning process. Individuals revise old or develop new assumptions. Following a self-assessment and revision—that may include a subset of peers—learners may publicly share new perspectives. However, willingness to share is proportionate to the individuals’ perceived level of member empowerment within the wisdom community that occurred earlier. In addition to the importance of community building, knowledge innovation recording and access take a preeminent place as design considerations. Learning facilitators’ reflective design tasks include: (a) devising a method (or virtual space) that supports students’ intentional and archived self-reflections such as private learning journals and self-reports; and (b) establishing a method for smaller groups to engage in reflective “pre-public” dialogue. Step 5. In negotiation and preservation, community members bring together the results of the performance task. Viable alternatives are considered, prioritized, and finalized in a series of negotiations among community members. Knowledge arti- facts are created and preserved that support connections across the learning domain. Once again, mentors serve a critical role in legitimizing the knowledge commodity created during the learning event. Here, the designer: (a) Designs a method to summarize knowledge creation. Concept mapping, matri- ces, and visual diagrams are useful preservation tools. Providing software appli- cations and training participants to employ them during this phase are critical in ensuring that enabled knowledge is recorded as a foundation for further access and retrieval. (b) Provides an organizational scheme to archive both technical and non-technical knowledge indexed in a way that supports easy retrieval and future searches. (c) Implements a post-experience instrument for comparison of knowledge (Step 5) to baseline exploration (Step 2). During the last two steps, changes in the learners’ cognitive processes, combined with the tools utilized to archive the knowledge commodity, provide perhaps the greatest contrast for WisCom as a new learning and teaching methodology. With the skilled design provided by the instructor, and as students advance through a Vygotskian zone of proximal development (Salomon, 1993), student performance is scaffolded and the community extends its understanding. The iterative, dynamic nature of the process of transformative learning within the wisdom community as it occurs in one learning event is illustrated in Figure 1. New Model, New Strategies 227 However, as learners gain the skills necessary to navigate within a wisdom community the cycle of knowledge creation, access, enabling, and preservation widens. The negotiated and preserved artifacts serve as a springboard for further cycles of inquiry. As the challenges increase so do the learners’ capacity to address greater levels of complexity. The result: an ever-widening spiral of inquiry throughout the educational program. Coincidental growth in capacity to successfully navigate within the content domain enables the community to address higher levels of challenge and achieve ever- increasing transformational learning gains. The iterative and expanding nature of the cycle of inquiry across an entire program is represented in Figure 2. Figure 2. WisCom Spiral of Inquiry program design Evaluation and Research Evaluation and research studies were conducted on the application of the WisCom model to the design of a graduate level online course on the subject of distance education, at a Southwestern university in the USA, in fall 2003. The course was designed using the WebCT™ course management system and put a premium on learning in an online community by assigning 30% of the grade to discussion and moderation activities, and 45% of the grade to small group collaborative learning activities which included a capstone case-based reasoning project. Participation in the community was assessed using a rubric developed by the instructors that addressed both positive and negative participation factors related to community and knowledge building. Fifteen students completed the course and participated in the online mid-term and final course evaluation surveys which were designed to deter- mine if the WisCom model was able to create a sense of community, and facilitate knowledge innovation and transformational learning. While recognizing that the sample size is small, we report results using percentages. Figure 2. WisCom Spiral of Inquiry program design 228 C. N. Gunawardena et al. Wisdom Community The semester long course generated 1,543 messages with an approximate average of 150 messages per 2-week course topic discussion moderated in some instances by an instructor and in others, by students. In the final evaluation, a majority of students (73%) felt the course had maintained a sense of community, the online community had engaged in reflective dialogue (86%), new knowledge was constructed through group interaction (73%), and the case-based reasoning group activity gave them the opportunity to apply what they had learned about distance education (74%). Mentoring functions were distributed among instructors, graduate assistants, peers, and former students who volunteered to serve as advisors to each group. Evaluation indicated that while some of the former students, who acted as mentors, spent a great deal of time helping their protégés, others did not. Students recommended that mentor roles be carefully defined at the beginning of the semester, so that expectations for roles are made clear. Such clarifications are important for learners previously accustomed to more individual-based learning environments. Concept Maps and Knowledge Innovation Concept mapping was used as an artifact to support knowledge innovation and the collaborative construction of knowledge. The Cmap Version 3 software developed by the University of West Florida was utilized. A research study (Ortegano-Layne, 2004) using qualitative and quantitative content analysis techniques determined how the concept maps generated by moderators to synthesize knowledge construc- tion were related to the actual knowledge construction that occurred. Results showed that concept maps are an excellent strategy for summarizing and synthesiz- ing knowledge construction, and an appropriate tool for knowledge preservation. When comparing the results of the content analysis of the discussion using Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson’s (1997) interaction analysis model, and the propositions and concepts stated in the concept maps, it was found that the major- ity of concepts and propositions socially constructed in the discussion were clearly represented and summarized in the concept maps, although variation was found in relationships between concepts and propositions in the maps. For instance, Groups 1 and 3 generated concept maps without showing very deep relationships among them, suggesting that they might need more practice in the use of links and link- words in order to generate propositions that show deeper relationships among concepts. Group 2, on the other hand, clearly represented all concepts and propo- sitions socially constructed in the discussion and even used the concept map to extend knowledge construction and create new meaning not evident in the discussion. This group showed how the use of concept maps changed the cognitive processes involved in knowledge construction and how the cognitive partnership between the tool and the moderators enabled the community to extend its under- standing. New Model, New Strategies 229 Students were asked to rate the value of concept maps, text-based moderator summaries, and moderator guidance in the process of knowledge construction. The highest value ratings were given to concept maps (50%), moderator guidance (43%), and moderator summaries (29%). The results indicate that concept maps as visual artifacts facilitated the process of knowledge construction as well as preservation. Transformational Learning In both the mid-term and final evaluation questionnaires, students were asked if they had changed their mind about an issue related to distance education as a result of online group discussions. At mid-term, students reported the following perspective transformations: “I now understand the need to account for cultural differences in DE.” I changed my mind about the discussions themselves! I am now fully aware of the time and effort involved in both participating in, and moderating, online group activities. Now I will be extraordinarily careful about designing courses with collaborative learning online as a component. Before the course, I would have thrown it in without a thought as to the impact it would make on the course participants and instructor. At the end of the course, a student observed: “It is true that knowledge can be constructed online.” Evaluation and research data support the WisCom model’s ability to design a learning community in which knowledge innovation supports the collaborative construction of knowledge. Conclusion This article contributes to many fields of practice by presenting a new instructional design model WisCom, developed to build online communities of wisdom. Supported by socio-constructivist learning theories, the model combines the cognitive, affective, and social dimensions of learning to create a learning environ- ment that fosters reflection, sharing, knowledge innovation, and transformational learning. Evaluation and research results based on one graduate level course support the ability of the design to facilitate social construction of knowledge and perspective transformation. More studies are needed to test the model in different online learning contexts with diverse learners. It is also important to examine if the model can be applied within other organizational contexts such as the CLIK (collaborative learning, information, and knowledge) application, where the WisCom model was used to design an online wisdom community for a group of high performance computer users at a national laboratory (Jennings, 2005). Learn- ing and instruction occur for the most part within a domain or discipline. Yet, the nature of knowledge within a content domain is complex, disciplinary fields are evolving, and domain knowledge is continually being constructed. In addition, the proliferation of online learning as a major global trend requires an instructional approach that can cross disciplines and respond to these challenges. Creating 230 C. N. Gunawardena et al. wisdom communities is such an approach. New strategies for teaching require and support new methods of learning. WisCom encourages learners to become reflec- tive thinkers engaged in the active construction of knowledge and to acquire collaborative thinking skills that transcend a disciplinary context. Exteriorizing the process of learning and facilitating scholarly inquiry is a powerful tool in the online instructional arsenal of the future. Notes on Contributors Charlotte Nirmalani (Lani) Gunawardena is Professor of Distance Education and Instructional Technology and Program Coordinator, Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology Program at the College of Education, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Ludmila Ortegano-Layne is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Technology and Educational programs at Simon Ropdriguez University, Caracas, Venezuela. Kayleigh Carabajal is Executive Director, Organizational Learning at Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Casey Frechette is an Interactive Learning Producer with News University at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St Petersburg, Florida, USA. Ken Lindemann is a doctoral candidate in the Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology Program, College of Education, University of New Mexico and a faculty member in the Business Information Technology Division at Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Barbara Jennings is a doctoral candidate in the Organizational Learning and Instruc- tional Technology Program, College of Education, University of New Mexico, and a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquer- que, New Mexico, USA. References Applehans, W., Globe, A., & Laugero, G. (1999). Managing knowledge: A practical Web-based approach. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Bell, P., & Winn, W. (2000). Distributed cognitions, by nature and by design. In D. H. Jonassen & S. M. Land (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments (pp. 123–144). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bleyl, M. (2000). The wise ones: A multi-cultural perspective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Bransford, J., Vye, N., Bateman, H., Brophy, S., & Roselli, B. (2004). Vanderbilt’s AMIGO Project: Knowledge of how people learn enters cyberspace. In T. M. Duffy & J. R. Kirkley (Eds.), Learner-centered theory and practice in distance education: Cases from higher education (pp. 209–234). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42. Chapman, C., Ramondt, L., & Smiley, G. (2005). Strong community, deep learning: Exploring the link. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 42(3), 217–230. New Model, New Strategies 231 Dillon, C., & Blanchard, D. (1991, May 22–24). Education for each: Learner driven distance educa- tion. Paper presented at the Second American Symposium on Research in Distance Educa- tion, The American Center for Study of Distance Education, Pennsylvania State University. Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2003). A theory of critical inquiry in online distance education. In M. G. Moore & W. G. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp. 113–127). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gunawardena, C. N. (1998). Designing collaborative learning environments mediated by computer conferencing: Issues and challenges in the Asian socio-cultural context. Indian Journal of Open Learning, 7(1), 105–124. Gunawardena, C. N. (2004). Designing the social environment for online learning: The role of social presence. In D. Murphy, R. Carr, J. Taylor, & T. Wong (Eds.), Distance education and technology: Issues and practice (pp. 255–270). Hong Kong: Open University of Hong Kong Press. Gunawardena, C. N., Jennings, B., Ortegano-Layne, L., Frechette, C., Carabajal, K., & Linde- mann, K. (2004). Building an online wisdom community: A transformational design model. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 15(2), 40–62. Gunawardena, C. N., Lowe, C. A., & Anderson, T. (1997). Analysis of a global online debate and the development of an interaction analysis model for examining social construction of knowl- edge in computer conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17(4), 395–429. Hiltz, S. R., & Goldman, R. (2005). Learning together online: Research on asynchronous learning networks. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hutchins, E. (1991). The social organization of distributed cognition. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 283–306). Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, American Psychological Associ- ation. Jennings, B. (2005). Support for high performance computing users: Developing an online knowledge community. In CUG 2005 Proceedings. Philomath, OR: Cray User Group. Jonassen, D. H. (1997). Instructional design models for well-structured and ill-structured problem-solving learning outcomes. Educational Technology Research and Development, 45(1), 65–94. Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 63–82). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (Eds.). (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McLoughlin, C. (2002). Learner support in distance and networked learning environments: Ten dimensions for successful design. Distance Education, 23(2), 149–162. Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Moore, M. G. (1989). Editorial: Three types of interaction. American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1–7. Ortegano-Layne, L. (2004). Using concept maps to represent complex systems, synthesize knowledge construction and enhance collaborative problem solving in online distance education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Pea, R. D. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligence and design for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognition: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 47–86). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Resnick, L. B., Levine, J. M., & Teasley, S. D. (1991). Perspectives on socially shared cognition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Romero, M. E. (1994). Identifying giftedness among Keresan Pueblo Indians: The Keres study. Journal of American Indian Education, 34(1), 35–58. Salomon, G. (1993). No distribution without individual’s cognition: A dynamic interactional view. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 111–138). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 232 C. N. Gunawardena et al. Tait, A., & Mills, R. (Eds.). (2003). Rethinking learner support in distance education: Change and continuity in an international context. New York: Routledge Falmer. Thorpe, M. (2002). From independent learning to collaborative learning: New communities of practice in open, distance and distributed learning. In M. R. Lea & K. Nicoll (Eds.), Distrib- uted learning: Social and cultural approaches to practice (pp. 131–151). London: Routledge Falmer. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). 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work_62ggeusf5nfh3no3oajeq2byx4	----	A Turkish Study of Nurses’ Attitudes Towards Graduate Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 3898 – 3901 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.862 ScienceDirect 5th World Conference on Educational Sciences - WCES 2013 A Turkish study of Nurses' Attitudes Towards Graduate Distance Education Memnun Seven a, F. İlknur Çınar a, Berna Eren Fidancı a , Aygül Akyüz a a Gülhane Military Medical Academy, School of Nursing, Ankara, 06010, Turkey Abstract The aim of the study to assess nurses’ attitudes towards graduate distance education in nursing. This descriptive study was conducted in a medical center in July- October 2012 in Turkey. The study sample included total 238 nurses. A questionnaire that was developed by authors was used to collect data. The mean of the participants’ age is 32.72+6.07 and the mean duration of working as a nurse was 11.59+6.64 years. Of them 37.4 % work in a internal medicine clinic, and 69.7 % of them work as a clinic nurse. 56.7 % of them stated that they follow developments related to distance education in nursing. More than fifty percent of participants think that distance education in nursing would be easier than current education and give an opportunity to take education independently, wherever they want. On the other hand, considerable amount of participant have some concerns about lack of a role model and feedback that may lead to poor and unqualified education. It is important that nursing differs from other disciplines in that it is practice-oriented; hence, distance education in nursing should be evaluated separately. Corresponding Author: Memnun Seven Tel: 0212 4589954 E-mail: memnunseven@gmail.com 1. Introduction Delivering nursing courses by distance education in which the instructor and the learners are geographically separated has been attracting global interest due to the potential benefits regarding the implementation, costs, and effectiveness (Knebel 2001; Atack & Rankin 2001). The concept of distance learning in the developed countries is currently increasing, however, there are currently few programs using distance learning in graduate nursing education in Turkey. The first online nursing program in Turkey was launched for Registered Nurses (RN) who have two-year college degrees and be working as nurses in professional settings in 2010 (Karaman 2011). While the program has been administered for the increased demand for graduate distance education in nursing, distance education to gain a master degree was started in 2012. However, nursing education necessitates changes in line with developments in science and technology, there are some barriers to administere qualified education. Knebel (2001) stated that there are some barriers specific to the developing country settings such as a lack of resources needed for meaningful development and sustenance of technology-based learning. When considered from this point of view, this distance education brought with some concerns about the quality of courses in Turkey. Therefore, the aim of the study to assess nurses’ attitudes towards graduate distance education in nursing. 1. Metod This descriptive study was conducted in a medical center in July- October 2012 in Turkey. The study was conducted following the approval of the institutional review board of the hospital. Requests for participation were solicited through visiting the nurses in the each department of the medical center. Nurses provided verbal consent after the aim and method of the study had been explained. Over a three month period, 238 convenient responses were accepted for inclusion in the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire with 18 questions, a researcher-designed, and self-administered. The questionnaire included questions regarding socio-demographic characteristics such as age, marital status, educational level and the length of working life, position, the clinics worked in. The questionnaire also covered nurses’ perceptions of graduate distance education in nursing. SPSS for Windows (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) software, version 15.00, was used for statistical analysis of the data. The distribution of the data is showed as .Keywords: nursing, distance education, graduate education Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 3899 Memnun Seven et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 3898 – 3901 countsand percentages, while the descriptive statistics are presented using the arithmetic means and standard deviations, minimums-maximums, frequencies and percentages. 2. Results In this study, the mean age of nurses was 32.72+6.07 years old and the lenght of working life was 11.59+6.63. Majority of them (62,2 %) have bachelor's degree in nursing, (37,4%) have been working in an internal medicine clinic and 69,7 % of nurses have been working as a clinic nurse. All of participants were also female nurses in the study. Table 1 shows characteristics of the nurses regarding wishing/pursuing status and its motivations for graduate education in nursing. The most common (47,9 %) motivation for wishing / pursuing graduate education in nursing was to be able to pursue new developments in health and nursing science. Also, 17,6 % of nurses do not wish graduate education by reason of not being able to have the required English proficiency test score. Table 1. Characteristics of nurses regarding wishing / pursuing status for graduate education in nursing and their motivations n % Wishing of nurses to pursue graduate education in nursing n=162 Wishing Not wishing 95 67 58.6 41.4 Wishing of nurses to pursue graduate distance education in nursing n=162 Yes No 119 43 73.5 26.5 The motivations for wishing / pursuing graduate education in nursing* n=171 To improve professional knowledge and skills To be able to follow new developments in health and nursing science. To be able to have higher status and possibility of promotion To be a lecturer / faculty 112 114 92 78 47.1 47.9 38.7 32.8 The motivations for not wishing graduate education in nursing* n=67 Thinking of having no additional contribution Having family responsibilities Having work responsibilities Not be able to have the required English proficiency 26 13 2 42 10.9 5.5 0.8 17.6 *Participants have marked more than one motivation. In this study, 56.7 % of nurses stated that they have enough knowledge about offered graduate distance education and 62.2 % of them think that graduate distance education for nurses should be administered in Turkey (Table 2). Table 2. The thoughts of nurses regarding distance graduate education in Turkey. n % Knowing status of nurses current developments regarding offered graduate distance education for nurses Have enough knowledge Have limited knowledge Do not know 135 76 27 56.7 31.9 11.3 Thoughts of nurses administiration of distance graduate education It should be It should not be 148 90 62.2 37.8 The thought of nurses regarding the percentage of being enough of graduate distance education for traditional education’s requirements, if it is administered in Turkey. 57.21 +26.70 Table 3 shows the opinions of nurses on the concequences of distance graduate education in nursing, if it is administered in Turkey. Table 3.The opinions of nurses on the concequences of distance graduate education in nursing, if it is administered in Turkey Disagree Neutral Agree Opinions of the nurses regarding graduate distance education in Turkey. n % n % n % 3900 Memnun Seven et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 3898 – 3901 It may cause incapacity in practical education 86 36.1 55 23.1 97 40.8 It may be easier than traditional education. 71 29.8 44 18.5 123 51.7 It may be an opportunity for those who can not pursue education due to different reasons. 61 25.6 27 11.3 150 63 It may be costlier than current education. 80 33.6 61 25.6 97 40.8 It may be more difficult for those with inability for using computer and intertent. 92 38.7 66 27.7 80 33.6 It may cause a decrease in faculty student communications. 70 29.4 76 31.9 92 38.7 Due to the lack of immediate performance feedback to students, it may cause some troubles. 73 30.7 70 30.7 92 38.7 It may increase malpractice. 81 34 80 33.6 77 32.4 Due to the lack of a faculty who could a role model, to learn and consolidate may be more difficult. 82 34.5 72 30.3 84 35.3 3. Discussion More than half of the nurses would like to pursue graduate education, especially through distance education. The nurses in the study have different motives for wishing/pursuing graduate education. Motives such as "to be able to follow the developments in health and nursing science and “to improve professional knowledge and skills”. To continue education following graduation is an inevitable necessity in the context of rapidly changing health care systems (Atack & Rankin 2002). Nursing graduate programs offer nurses to specialise and to increase their knowledge and skills in a specific area. However, it is found that a few studies focus on factors that effect nurses’ decisions to pursue graduate program. Natan & Becker (2009) have reported that interesting work, possibility of working in desired field, potential for promotion, travel opportunities are some reasons of choosing nursing career following graduation. In this study, a few percentage of nurses stated that they are not willing to pursue graduate education due to family and work responsibilities. Contrary to this, Cathro (2011) stated that time constraints and geographical barriers, financial costs, work responsibilities, and family responsibilities are important reasons for not pursuing education after graduatin. In this study, the most common reason for nurses who do not wish to have a graduate education is inability of having the required English proficiency to enroll a graduate program. In Turkey, there are few universities offering distance master's degree with or without thesis in a variety of nursing fields since 2012. Nurses do not have to provide language proficiency for admission, although some requirements should be provided by them (AÜ 2012). Therefore, it is thought that nurses are more motivated to pursue distance graduate education due to there is no need to know english language. In this study, nurses think that graduate distance education may be enough for 57.21 % of traditional education requirements in Turkey, even though most of nurses would like to enroll a graduate distance education. Majority of nurses think that graduate distance education may be easier than traditional education and be an opportunity for those who could not pursue education due to the different reasons. The most common concerns are to cause incapacity in practical education and be costlier than current nursing education in the study. Considerable amount of participant have also some concerns about lack of a role model and feedback that may lead to poor and unqualified education. Puterbaugh (2010) reported that both faculty and nurses have some concerns regarding online education in nursing such as the requirement of face to face connection as it focuses on psychomotor skills and practice. Kenny (2000) reported that it has been debated whether distance education is a cheaper option to on traditional education, due to the fact that the initial cost of the establishment of programs via distance education and the ongoing costs. Similarly, in the literature, advantages and disadvantages of distance education are often studied (Kenny 2000, Knebel 2001, Atack & Rankin 2002, Chaffin & Maddux 2004, Bigony 2010). Nursing schools should offer convenient educations to the increased demand for more graduates. However, distance education is a feasible alternative to meet this need, these concerns about the quality of education should take into consideration preparing and conducting this type of education in nursing. It is also important that nursing differs from other disciplines in respect to be practice-oriented; hence, it is important to evaluate distance education in nursing separately. 3901 Memnun Seven et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 3898 – 3901 References Knebel, E. (2001). The use and effect of distance education in healthcare: What do we know? Operations Research Issue Paper 2(2). Bethesda, MD: Published for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Quality Assurance Project. Atack, L., & Rankin, J. A. (2002). descriptive study of registered nurses’ experiences with web-based learning, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 40(4), 457–465. Karaman, S. (2011). Nurses’ perceptions of online continuing education, BMC Medical Education, 11(86). Natan, M. B., & Becker, F. (2009). Israelis’ perceived motivation for choosing a nursing career Nurse Education Today, 30(3), 308-13. Cathro, H. (2011). "Pursuing Graduate Studies in Nursing Education: Driving and Restraining Forces" The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 16(3). Atatürk Üniversitesi Lisansüstü Eğitim ve Öğretim Yönetmeliği (AÜ), Retrieved from; http://www.atauni.edu.tr/#sayfa=yonetmelik-yeni- 18092012- on November 2012. Puterbaugh, M. D., Shannon, M., & Gorton, H. (2010). A Survey of Nurses' Attitudes Toward Distance Education and the Educational Use of 3- D Virtual Environments. Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, 7(4), 292-307. Kenny, A. (2000). Untangling the Web… barriers and benefits for nurse education … an Australian perspective, Nurse Education Today, 20, 381–388. Chaffin, A. J. (2004). Maddux C D. Internet Teaching Methods for Use in Baccalaureate Nursing Education, Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 22(3), 132–142. Bigony, L. (2010). Can You Go the Distance? Attending the Virtual Classroom, Orthopaedic Nursing, 29(6), 390-392. 
work_62v4bh5cybbatjkf2yrmhx6b5a	----	Distance Education Students’ “Metaphors� Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 2883–2888 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com World Conference on Educational Sciences 2009 Distance Education Students’ “Metaphors” Nazime TUNCAY*a, Zehra ÖZÇINARb aNear East University, Nicosia, 98010, Nort Cyprus b Atatürk Teacher Academy, North Cyprus Received October 20, 2008; revised December 11, 2008; accepted January 02, 2009 Abstract Metaphors have an important place in education. In order to arrange curriculums more efficiently, one has to be aware of metaphors in those subjects. Students’ have several metaphors about distance education, where most of them have no relevance with the exact meaning of the distance education. In order to reveal the common misconceptions and in order to be aware of students’ metaphors; a research study with 12 distance education students was carried out. “Ocean” was the most common metaphor for distance education and blended distance education was taken as “an education for girls and boys”. This research study is the first steps of a more detailed future project of the authors.7 key questions are also presented, as recommendations for further researches. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Students; distance education; metaphors; interview; questionnaire. 1. Introduction Metaphors are words that show how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in one important way. Learners have different ways of learning and they issues such as instructional support, faculty motivation and enthusiasm, and technology problems have been raised as problems in developing online instruction in many institutions for a long time (Barr and Tag, 1995). There are lots of students who learn by metaphors. Metaphors are a way to describe something and are a way to learn something. There may be several issues effecting learners’ perceptions about online learning: Instructor, Website, Computer Skills, Pedagogical Issues and English Language. These differences in perceptions of students, result in their having different metaphors. If learners are not satisfied with the design of the course website, they may have negative perceptions of the effectiveness their online courses (Brush, 2001). Polloff and Pratt (2001) found that learners are most satisfied with courses in which the instructors facilitate frequent contact between themselves and learners, use active learning techniques, convey high expectations, emphasize of time spent on specific tasks, and provide prompt feedback. Findings from a mixed- methods analysis revealed that native language was a factor in distinguishing among the learning opportunities. Metaphors have proven to be a highly useful tool in the development of theories in the social sciences.(Hartzell, * Nazime Tuncay. Tel.:0392 7257327. E-mail address: nazime.tuncay@gmail.com 1877-0428 © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.513 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 2884 Nazime TUNCAY et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 2883–2888 2004; Kendall & Kendall, 1993; Levassuer, 2004; Wang, 2004). At a minimum,they provide a convenient means by which to create a taxonomy; the first step towards description,then prediction and finally to understanding (Kerssens-van-Drongelen, 2001; Lewis &Grimes, 1999; Lynham, 2000). At a practical level, metaphors become essential elements that comprise the everyday language among specialists (Cook-Sather, 2003). For example the statement, “The computer is down,” indicates the functional or operational status of a computer (including its programs or software) as opposed to a spatial relationship or orientation. Those familiar with the jargon share this common understanding (Gozzi, 2000). Working together with other learners increases involvement in learning and deepens understanding (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). According to Anderson and Joerg (1996), learners perceived online courses as a valuable delivery tool, and they reported that online courses changed the dynamics of access to class materials to any time from different locations. The online learning environment can help build a community of learners who cooperatively share ideas, knowledge, and opinions. Learning theory prominently recognizes the value of learning communities and the importance of cooperative learning for long-term relation of information (Dansereau, 1988; Phillips & Soltis, 2004). Researchers showed that a lack of belonging sense to learning communities keeps learners from developing shared feelings and emotional comfort in online environments (Oh & Lim, 2005, Rovai and Jordan, 2004). To address this in distance education environments, delivering vivid learning experiences, clear directions and enhancing social presence is crucial. Metaphors are like using a different language for communication purposes. This language helps us better understand the changes happening around us, by defining the less concrete by means of reference to a more concrete concept (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). For every metaphor highlights one aspect of the concept, just as it hides another; Lakoff and Johnson (1980) call this ‘‘metaphorical systematicity’’. In his analysis of McLuhan’s impact, Levinson (2001) regrets that McLuhan’s statements have fueled ‘‘the fire of worry that bad things are happening that we can’t know or understand’’. And while McLuhan proposed that the ‘‘medium has an impact above and beyond what we do with it’’ (Levinson 2001), there is no firm evidence as yet that the worriers are correct (Meyer 2002). Students methaphors play an important role in their learning. Teachers must be aware of their students metafors, in order to carry out their courses as student oriented. “Distance Education” is a much more different education than the traditional education, and students have much more different metaphors for this. Although there were research studies like common metaphors and their impact on distance education (Meyer, 2005), there were not any studies in the literature about distance educations metaphors. 1.1 Purpose The purpose of this study is to drive out the distance education students’ metaphors about distance education. 2.Method 2.1 Population The population of the survey is Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT) students in Near East University (NEU). The sample choosen consist of 12 students which are involved in various distance education courses. These students students in NEU were choosen randomly: 3 first form students, 3 second form students, 3 third form students and 3fourth form students . On the other hand, the students are assured that their responses would not affect their grades. 2.2 Instrument Nazime TUNCAY et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 2883–2888 2885 An 20 item questionnaire “ Distance Education Metaphor Analysis Survey” was designed by the authors (see Appendix A). Content validity is maintained by experts evaluation (n = 17) . Experts group from education technologist evaluated the data gathering scale both individually and collaboratively. Hence, the content validity was maintained by the help of the educational technologist experts. The survey was done with 12 “randomly chosen students” from CEIT department in NEU. The interviews with the students were done in one-to-one communication with the students by the authors. In the interviews as well as filling the questionnaires, the voice records are kept. Later all this information from the questionnaires and voice records are interpreted and used as data for this survey. 2.3. Data Analysis For data analysis SPSS 16 was used. Frequencies and perceptions of each data item are calculated. The answers of the questions (see Appendix A) with the frequencies above 6 are listed (see Table 1). 3. Results and Discussion According to the interviews with the students, results were driven. The metaphors of distance education students, which have frequency greater than 6, are listed in ascending order in Table1. According to these; Blended Distance Education is a distance education course, where some courses are asynchronous and some courses are synchronous. However, %100 of the students have answered that a “Blended Distance Education” was recalled them “Boy and Girl” and explained as it contained “Students from different sexes.” %91.7 of the students, said that when Traditional Education was mentioned, it recalled them “Class “. They explained it as “There is always a class in traditional education”. Here, it is seen that the other facilities and differences of the traditional education are omitted by the students. %83.3 of the students, have said that they think “Internet” when somebody says Online Education, since “It needs internet”. %83.3 of the students said that it is “Water” which comes first in their mind, when someone says “Technology” and their reason was that: “It’s in our life, everywhere” % 75 of the students said that it is “Freedom” which comes to their mind when “Asynchronous Education” is mentioned and their reasoning was: “You are free to study whenever you like”. This reasoning must be related to the students having part-time jobs, besides their school work. Thus, having freedom of study at the hours, when they are available to do. Similarly, %75 of the students has said it was “Internet” came to them when Videoconference is mentioned. Students’ metaphors are great clues about their way of life. Hence, %75 of the students said “E-mail” is “MSN”. % 75 of the students said that WWW is same as “Internet”. Only % 25 percent said that it is “World Wide Web”. It was interesting that the %66.7 of the students answered Mobil-Education as “rich students’ education” and the term recalled them the metaphor “richness”. Their reasoning was: “You need to be rich to have education via mobile phone”. On the other hand, %66.7 of the students answered that Virtual Class recalled them “Computer”. Their reason for this was: “In computers we see, virtual classes”. The students reasoning of their choosing “Ocean” metaphor (%50), for “Distance Education” was that, they felt a little afraid of the new education type and they taught they would sunk in. %66.7 of the students has answered “electricity” for E-education as expectedly. Another unexpected result was “Morning Classes” metaphor for Synchronous Education. “At the same time, people can meet only in the mornings” %50 of the students answered that Virtual Student’s are “Computer Hero’s”. Their reasoning was: “I have several virtual students in my computer game”. %58.33 of the students’ has said that Internet was their “Life” (see Table 1). 2886 Nazime TUNCAY et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 2883–2888 Table 1. Metaphors in Distance Education Keyword Metaphor Common Reason Frequency of Answer Percentage of the Answer Blended Distance Education “Boy and Girl” “Students from the different sexes” 12 %100 Traditional Education “Class” “There is always a class” 11 %91.7 Virtual Student “Computer Hero’s” “I have several virtual students in my computer game” 7 %58.33 Online Education “Internet” “It needs internet” 10 %83.3 Technology “Water “It’s in our life, everywhere…” 10 %83.3 Asynchronous Education “Freedom” “You are free to study whenever you like” 9 %75 Videoconference “Internet” “It’s in Internet” 9 %75 E-mail “MSN” “I use MSN” 9 %75 WWW “Internet” “Because its internet” 9 %75 Mobil-Education “Richness” “You need to be rich to have education via mobile phone” 8 %66.7 Virtual Class “Computer” “In computers we see, virtual classes” 8 %66.7 E-education “electricity” “Electronic Education” 8 %66.7 Distance Education “Ocean” “It’s so deep. You can even get drowned.” 6 %50 Synchronous Education “Morning Classes” “At the same time, people can meet only in the mornings” 6 %50 Internet “Life” “I do not think a life, without internet" 6 %50 Learners had various different answers but all too valuable for educators to shape-up their education. What’s more, the students’ answers also showed that they have chosen metaphors according to their way of life, their personal characteristics, their educational background and their feelings. Hence, the metaphors sometimes talk by themselves, what the students cannot talk about! 4. Conclusions and Recommendations This paper proposed that students have different metaphors for distance education keywords. Firstly, this has involve naturalistic processes that are embedded in the same milieu: Cyberspace, the digital world, and the human mind. Secondly, methaphors are expressions or manifestations of the same philosophical foundations: Constructivism and its underlying foundations as well as pragmatism and instrumentalism. This paper recommends that metaphors in distance education be more fully explored. That exploration should focus upon open source as a metaphor for instructional practices – design and delivery, instructional platforms - technologies, and instructional philosophy of distance education. The key questions that deserve attention in the area of instructional practices - design and delivery are: 1.Is distance education essentially a heuristic experience within the context of a shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artifacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over time? 2.What does this suggest as regards to the design of distance education? 3.What does this suggest as regards to the provision or the delivery of distance education? Nazime TUNCAY et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 2883–2888 2887 4. What if distance education essentially occurs in the human mind? And if so, is the delivery platform a private or public good? 5. To what extent should distance education involve automated processes that reduce access to, manipulation of, and capability to absorb knowledge/learning objects? 6. To what extent should distance education adopt automated processes that increase access to, manipulation of, and capability to absorb knowledge/learning objects? 7.In addition to the key questions posed for researchers, the metaphors for distance education assumes transparency of knowledge/learning objects, processes, technology and participants. Are those transparencies analogous? Should they be? Those are questions that require attention from a social, historical,educational and philosophical perspective. This paper has presented only a few of the potentially beneficial questions raised by distance education students metaphors. These distance education metaphors have great promise and in addition to the questions; there remains the work of constructing comprehensive or tentative working models including clearly defined and delineated components and synergies. References: Anderson, T., & Joerg, W. (1996). WWW to support classroom teaching. Canadian Journal of Education Communication, 25(1), 19-36. Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (1995, November/December). From teaching to learning-a new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change Magazine, 27 (6), 12-25. Brush, R. O. (2001). Effective web design and core communication issues: The mission components in Web-based distance education. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 10(4), 357-367. Chickering, A., & Ehrmann, S. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. Retrieved August 18, 2004 from http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html Cook-Sather, A. (2003). Movements of mind: the “Matrix,” metaphors and re-imagining education. Teachers College Record, 105 (6), 946-977. Dansereau, D. (1988). Cooperative Learning Strategies. In C. E. Weinstein, E. T. Goetz, & P. A. Alexander (Eds.), Learning and Study Strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction and evaluation (pp. 103-129). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Gozzi, J. (2000). Zombie computers. Etc., 57 (3), 349-352. Hartzell, G. (2004). The metaphor is the message. School Library Journal, 48 (6), 33. Kerssens-van-Drongelen, I. (2001). The iterative theory-building process: Rationale, principles and evaluation. Management Decision, 39 (7), 503-512. Kendall, J. & Kendall, K. (1993). Metaphors and methodologies: Living beyond the systems machine. MIS Quarterly, 17, (2), 149-171. Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levassuer, R. (2004). Open system theory and organizations. Futurics, 28 (3/4), 82-88. Levinson, Paul. 2001. Digital McLuhan. London: Routledge. Lewis, M. & Grimes, A. (1999). Metatriangulation: Building theory from multiple paradigms. The Academy of Management Review, 24 (4), 672-690. Lynham, S. (2000). Theory building in the human resource development profession. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 11 (2), 159-178. Meyer, K. A. (2002). Quality in distance education: Focus on on-line learning. ASHE-ERIC Meyer, K.A. (2005). Common Metaphors and Their Impact on Distance Education: What They Tell Us and What They Hide.Teachers College Record Volume 107, Number 8, August 2005, pp. 1601–1625 ISBN NO:0161-4681 Oh, E. (2007). Current Practices in Blended Instruction, Educational Technology International, 8(1), 101-126. Phillips, D. C., & Soltis, J. F. (2004). Perspectives on Learning (4th edition). New York: Teachers College Press. Polloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the cyberspace classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Rovai, A.P., Jordan ,H,M. 2004. Blended Learning And Sense Of Community: A Comparative Analysis With Traditional And Fully Online Graduate Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(2). ISSN: 1492-3831 Wang, T. (2004). From general system theory to total quality management. Journal of Academy of Business 4 (1/2), 394-400. 2888 Nazime TUNCAY et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 2883–2888 APPENDIX A. Questionarrie Items. 1. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Distance Education” ? Why you have chosen these? 2. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “E- Education” ? Why you have chosen these? 3. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Online Education” ? Why you have chosen these? 4. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Mobile Education” ? Why you have chosen these? 5. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “ Blended Distance Education”? Why you have chosen these? 6. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “ Asynchronous Distance Education” ? Why you have chosen these? 7. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Synchronous Distance Education” ? Why you have chosen these? 8. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Internet” ? Why you have chosen these? 9. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “WWW” ? Why you have chosen these? 10. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “E-mail” ? Why you have chosen these? 11. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Videoconferance” ? Why you have chosen these? 12. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Audiotext” ? Why you have chosen these? 13. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “ E-book” ? Why you have chosen these? 14. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Technology” ? Why you have chosen these? 15. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Virtual Library” ? Why you have chosen these? 16. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Search Engine” ? Why you have chosen these? 17. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Home Page ” ? Why you have chosen these? 18. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “URL” ? Why you have chosen these? 19. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Teleconferencing” ? Why you have chosen these? 20. What are the 3 words that comes first in your mind, when somebody mentions about “Computer” ? Why you have chosen these? 
work_63qyh6ipnbbvre2snoy3y57bmm	----	Kobe University Repository : Kernel タイトル Tit le Analyzing Learning Pat t erns Based on Log Dat a from Digit al Text books 著者 Aut hor(s) Mouri, Kousuke / Ren, Zhuo / Uosaki, Noriko / Yin, Chengjiu 掲載誌・巻号・ページ Cit at ion Int ernat ional Journal of Dist ance Educat ion Technologies (IJDET),17(1):1-14 刊行日 Issue dat e 2019-03 資源タイプ Resource Type Journal Art icle / 学術雑誌論文 版区分 Resource Version publisher 権利 Right s DOI 10.4018/IJDET.2019010101 JaLCDOI URL ht t p://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_kernel/90006335 PDF issue: 2021-04-06 DOI: 10.4018/IJDET.2019010101 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019  Copyright©2019,IGIGlobal.CopyingordistributinginprintorelectronicformswithoutwrittenpermissionofIGIGlobalisprohibited.  1 Analyzing Learning Patterns Based on Log Data from Digital Textbooks Kousuke Mouri, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Fuchu, Japan Zhuo Ren, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China Noriko Uosaki, Osaka University, Suita, Japan Chengjiu Yin, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan ABSTRACT Theanalysisoflearningbehaviorsfromthelogdataofdigitaltextbooksisbeneficialforimproving educationsystems.Thefocusofdiscussioninanyanalysisoflearningbehaviorsisoftenondiscovering therelationshipsbetweenlearningbehaviorandlearningperformance.However,littleattentionhas been paid to investigating and analyzing learning patterns or rules among learning style of index (LSI), cognitive style of index (CSI), and the logs of digital textbooks. In this study, the authors proposedamethodtoanalyzelearningpatternsorrulesofreadingdigitaltextbooks.Theanalysis methodusedassociationanalysiswiththeApriorialgorithm.Theanalysiswasconductedusinglogs ofdigitaltextbooksandquestionnairestoinvestigatestudents’learningandcognitivestyles.From thedetectedmeaningfulassociationrules,thisstudyfoundthreestudenttypes:poorlymotivated, efficient,anddiligent.Theauthorsbelievethatconsiderationofthesestudenttypescancontribute totheimprovementoflearningandteaching KEywoRDS Association Rule, Cognitive Style, Digital Textbooks Reading Log, Learning Analytics, Learning Style INTRoDUCTIoN Withthedevelopmentofe-publishingtechnologiesandstandards,itiseasytoobtaindigitalbooks, suchas“livingbooks,”“talkingbooks,”and“CD-ROMbooks,”fromtheInternet(Yinetal.,2015). Digitalbookshavebecomeapotentiallyeffectivepedagogictool(Hezroni,2004;Reinking,1997; Snyder,2002),indicatedbythefactthatdigitalbookreadinghasincreasedsignificantlyintheUnited States(Leeetal.,2012).Consequently,traditionaltextbooksarebeingincreasinglyreplacedbydigital textbooks(Ren,Uosaki,Kumamoto,Liu,&Yin,2017). Many researchers have been paying attention to the development of digital books to support teaching,learning,andscholarship.Byusingdigitalbooks,largebodiesoflogdatacanbeaccumulated, theanalysisofwhichcanbeusedtoperformlearninganalytics. Learninganalyticscanbeusedinmakingsuggestionstopolicymakers,instructors,andlearners (Baker&Inventado,2014;Hwang,Hsu,Lai,&Hsueh,2017).Therefore,learninganalyticshave becomeanimportantissueineducation(Hwang,Chu,&Yin,2017)thathaveentailedimportant changesineducationalresearch. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 2 The objective of learning analytics is to provide helpful information to optimize or improve learningdesigns,learningoutcomes,andlearningenvironmentsbasedontheanalysisresults(Greller &Drachsler,2012;Hwang,Chu,&Yin,2017). Intheanalysisoflearningbehaviorsinthisstudy,weusedadigitaltextbooksystemtocollect students’learninglogs.Learninglogisdefinedasadigitalrecordofwhatlearnershavelearnedina formalandaninformalsetting(Ogata,Hou,Uosaki,Mouri,&Liu.,2014;Mouri,Ogata,&Uosaki, 2015). The system was used in a commercial law course for undergraduate students, which was conductedinentiretyinEnglish:ThestudentswereassignedreadingsinEnglish,andtheteacherspoke inEnglish.Wealsousedquestionnairestocollectdataonstudents’learningstylesandcognitivestyles. Usingthesedata,weappliedtheassociationanalysismethodwiththeApriorialgorithmtoanalyze students’learningpatternsorrules.Oneoftheadvantagesofanalyzingthelearningpatternsorrules isthepreemptivepredictionofstudents’finalgradeandprogressesinthefuture.Asaresult,teachers canimprovetheirteachingstrategiesandsupportstudents’learningbehaviors.Fromtheanalysis,this studyfoundthreemeaningfulstudenttypesbyconsideringthedetectedassociationrules. LITERATURE REVIEw Previous Studies of Data Collection Datacollectionisthefirststepinlearninganalysis(Yin,Hirokawa,etal.,2013;Yin,Sung,etal., 2013). Yin et al. (2016) performed a review of previous research to survey the methods of data collection.Basedonthedatacollectionsource,previousstudiesofdatacollectioncanbeclassified intothreetypes:Questionnaire-BasedDataCollection(QDC),ManualDataCollection(MDC),and AutomaticDataCollection(ADC)(Yinetal.,2014;Yinetal.,2017). • QDC.Inthismethod,dataarecollectedbyusingapredesignedquestionnaire.Thequestionnaire isatooltoelicitspecificresponsesfromtheparticipantsofthesurvey,anditisadata-gathering methodusedtocollectandanalyzethefeedbackofagroupofpeoplefromatargetpopulation. • MDC.Inthismethod,amanualdatacollectionsystemisopentousersofthesystemtoconsciously providedataabouttheirlearningbehaviors.Usersmaysavedatathattheyconsiderusefulthrough thesystembythemselves.Forexample,ifastudentencountersinterestingimagesthatheorshe wantstosharewithhisorherfriends,thenheorshecancaptureimagesfromanauthenticand shareableenvironment. • ADC.Inthismethod,students’logdataforlearningbehaviorsareautomaticallyrecordedwhile reading e-documents. For example, Yin et al. (2015) analyzed learning behavior to identify students’learningstyleusingdatafromtheautomaticallyrecordedreadinglogsofthestudents’ digital textbooks. By using the same digital textbook log data, Shimada, Okubo, Yin, and Ogata(2017)summarizedlectureslidestoenhancepreviewefficiencyandimprovestudents’ understanding of the content, and Mouri and Yin (2017) found some patterns for improving learningmaterials. Inthepresentwork,weusedQDCandADCmethodstocollectdata.Threekindsofdatawere usedtoanalyzestudents’learningpatterns.Thefirstwaslogdatafromdigitaltextbooks(ADC).The secondwasstudents’learningstyledatacollectedthroughtheIndexofLearningStylesquestionnaire. FelderandSoloman(2001)developedthisquestionnairetoassesspreferencesonfourdimensions (active/reflective,sensing/intuitive,visual/verbal,andsequential/global)ofalearningstylemodel. Thethirdwasstudents’cognitivestyledata,collectedwiththeCognitiveStyleIndexquestionnaire. AllinsonandHayes(1996)developedthisquestionnaire,whichiswidelyusedtomeasurecognitive stylesinthefieldofeducation. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 3 Digital Textbooks Inthepastdecade,variousstudieshavebeenconductedtoinvestigatetheeffectivenessoflearning withdigitaltextbooks.Forexample,Shepperd,Grace,andKoch(2008)comparedtheefficacyof digitaltextbooksandtraditionaltextbooksandindicatedthatstudentsratedtheusabilityofdigital textbookspositively.Rockinson-Szapkiw,Courduff,Carter,andBennett(2013)comparedthelearning effectivenessofdigitaltextbooksandtraditionaltextbooksandfoundthatdigitaltextbooksareas effectiveforlearningastraditionaltextbooks. In contrast to traditional textbooks, digital textbooks can offer digital listening, reading, and vocabularypractice.Therefore,itisnecessarytoconsiderthedesignofdigitaltextbooksforoffering effectivelearning.Gu,Wu,andXu(2015)reportedtheimportanceregardingthedesignofdigital textbooksandsuggestedthatwell-designeddigitaltextbookspositivelyenhancelearning. Therefore,manyresearchersconcurthatdigitaltextbookshavebecomeapotentiallyeffective pedagogic tool to support teaching, learning, and scholarship (Hezroni, 2004; Reinking, 1997; Snyder,2002). Alargebodyoflogdatacanbeaccumulatedusingdigitaltextbooksystemsforthepurposeof monitoringstudents’activities.However,therearefewstudiesanalyzingtherelationshipsbetween learners’ learning style, cognitive style, and the log data from digital textbooks. We believe that analyzingsuchrelationshipscanhelpinprovidingdifferentformsofeffectivelearningsupportin accordancewiththeirlearningandcognitivestyles. Association Analysis ThisstudyemployedassociationanalysisusingtheApriorialgorithm.Thismethodisdesignedto extractassociationrulesfromadatabasecontainingtransactions,suchascollectionsofitemsbought bycustomersordetailsofwebsitefrequentation.Ineducationaltechnologyfields,researchersfocus onthismethodofanalysistomineregularitiesamongsomeparametersofeducationalbigdata. Forexample,Behrouz,Gerd,andWilliam(2004)foundassociationrulesbygroupingstudents whowereenrolledinanonlineeducationsystembasedonparameterssuchasGPA(GradePoint Average),age,andgender.Intheirstudy,iftherewerestudentswithGPAscoresbetween3.0and 3.5,thesystemcangivethemtheprobabilityofwhethertheycanpassacoursethattheywillattend basedonthedetectedassociationrules. Mouri and colleagues (Mouri, Ogata, & Uosaki, 2016; Mouri, Okubo, Shimada, & Ogata, 2016)usedassociationanalysistomineusefulrulesorpatternsfromlearninglogsaccumulatedin a ubiquitous learning system. By providing them advice based on the detected association rules, students’learningactivitiesininformalsettingscanbeimproved.However,littleattentionhasbeen paidtoanalyzingdatasuchasLearningStyleIndex(LSI)andCognitiveStyleIndex(CSI)tofind theassociationrulesbetweenlearningstylesanddigitaltextbooklogs.Byanalyzingtherelations betweenlearningstylesanddigitaltextbooklogs,thereisapossibilitythatwecanidentifyimportant associationrulestopredictfuturelearners’gradebasedontheirlearningstylesanddigitaltextbook logs. Therefore, this study focuses on analyzing logs collected in a digital textbook system in combinationwithresultsfromthelearning-styleorcognitive-stylequestionnaires. SySTEM The Architecture and Interface of the Digital Textbook System The server side runs on CentOS, and it is programmed using Java and Mysql. The client side is working on a web browser using HTML5 and javascript. The users can register and read digital textbooksanytimeandanywhere. A web-based digital textbook system using the e-pub format was developed for use in this research. This digital textbook system was developed to collect data from classes. The system is International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 4 namedDigitaltextbookforImprovingTeachingandLearning(DITeL).TheDITeLsystemcanbe usednotonlyonpersonalcomputers,butalsoonsmartphones.Specifically,thisdigitalsystemcan beusedanywhereandanytime.TeachersandstudentscanusetheDITeLsystemandreadadigital textbookonmobiledevicessuchasiPads,iPhones,andAndroid.Inaddition,theirlearninglogswere collectedtoanalyzetheirlearningbehaviorstoimprovetheDITeLsystem. Figure1andFigure2showtheinterfaceforstudentsandteachers,respectively.Byusingthis online digital textbook reading system, we can collect data like “turning to next/previous page,” “memo,”“zoomin/out,”and“addingmarker.”Alloftheseactionsarestoredtothedatabase.These datawereusedtoanalyzelearningbehaviors. Turningtonext/previouspage.Studentscanreadtheteachingcontentrepeatedly;theycango tothenextpagebyclickingthe“Next”button,andbacktracktothepreviouspagebyclickingthe “Prev”button. Memo.Whenauserwantstomakeamemoonthelearningcontent,heorsheclicksthe“Memo” button,whichshowsatextbox.Afterthememoiswritten,theactionnamewillbesavedas“Memo.” Zoomin/out.Thezoomin/outfunctioncanhelpstudentsreadthecontentsmoreclearly. Addingmarker.Whenauserwantstohighlightsometextinthelearningcontent,heorshewill clickthe“abchighlight”or“Underline”button,andtheactionnamewillbesavedas“Highlight” or“Underline.” Theteachercanregistereachstudent’snameandnumberintothesystem.Beforethestudents logintothesystem,thedigitaltextbookandotherrelevantmaterialsareuploadedtothesystemby Figure 1. Student interface of DITeL International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 5 theteacher.AsshowninFigure2,whentheteacherclicksthe“TextbookList”button,a“Textbook List”windowwillappear,andwhentheteacherclicksthe“Registration”button,a“TextbookUpd” windowwillappeartoteacher.Attheend,theteachercanselectanduploadtheteachingmaterials intothesystem. Eachstudentwillhaveanindividualaccounttoenterintothesystem,sothataseparaterecord iskeptforthelearningactivitiesinthiscourse. Log Data from the DITel System ThedatawerecollectedfromtheDITeLsystem.Table1showsasampleofreadingactionlogs.One datalogcontainsthedate,time,userID,learningcontentID,pagenumber,useraction,andotherdata. Participation TheDITeLsystemwasusedinacommerciallawcourseforundergraduatestudents.Thiscoursewas conductedwhollyinEnglish:ThestudentswereassignedEnglishreadings,andtheteacherspokein English.Atotalof50,000recordsweregatheredfromMarchtoJuly2017. Figure 2. Teacher interface of DITeL International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 6 A total of 41 undergraduate students participated in this study. The participants were asked toreadcertainlearningcontent(272pages)viathedigitaltextbooksystem.Themeanageofthe participantswas20years. Theconfidentialityoftheparticipantswasprotectedbyhidingtheirpersonalinformationduring theresearchprocess;moreover,theyknewthattheirparticipationwasvoluntaryandthattheycould withdrawfromthestudyatanytime. ANALySIS METHoD Theassociationanalysiswasconductedusingthe“arules”package(2017)oftheRlanguageand transaction data based on digital textbook logs, LSI, and CSI questionnaires. Table 2 shows the rankingthatwasestablishedfromtheindividualstudents’readingtimesbasedonthetotaltimeof thepageflippinglogs.Themeanandmedianwere5,407and5,402respectivelyfortherankAgroup, 3,553and3,586respectivelyfortherankBgroup,and1,849and1,808respectivelyfortherankC group.Thereadingtimewascategorizedintothreeranks:A(thetop33%),B(themiddle33%)and C(thebottom34%).Thestudentswereclassifiedintothesethreetypesaccordingly.Table3shows thepartsoftransactiondata.BasedonFelderandSoloman(2001),thefourdimensionsofLSIwere dividedintoLSI1(ActiveorReflective),LSI2(SensingorIntuitive),LSI3(VisualorVerbal),and LSI4(SequentialorGlobal).BasedonAllinsonetal.(1996),therangesofCSIscoreswereclassified intothreecognitivestyles,namelyAnalytic,Adaptive,andIntuitive((Table2). Theanalysisdetected5623associationrules(Figure3).Thehorizontalaxisrepresentsthesupport value,andtheverticalaxisrepresentstheconfidencevalue.Supportisanindicationofhowfrequently thedetectedrulesappearinthedatabase;thus,supportistherelativefrequencyoftransactionsthat containXandY(XandYareitemsets).Confidenceisanindicationofhowoftentherulehasbeen foundtobetrue.Thisstudydecidedthetworegions(1)and(2)throughexperthumanjudgmentwith thedetectedassociationrules. Region(1)includestheassociationruleswhosesupportislessthan0.1,anditsconfidenceisless than0.6.Theexpertswerenotabletofindimportantassociationrulessuchastherelationsamong learningstyles,digitaltextbooklogs,andlearningachievementsifthesupportvalueislessthan0.1and theconfidencevalueislessthan0.6.Therefore,wedonotconsidertheassociationrulesofregion(1). Table 1. Sample action log Userid Action Name Document ID Page Number Action Time Student1 Next 00000000NBU4 16 2014/10/228:40:55 Student1 Prev 00000000NBU4 15 2014/10/228:42:15 Student2 AddMarker 00000000NBU4 15 2014/10/228:42:16 Student3 AddMemo 00000000NBU4 15 2014/10/228:42:18 Table 2. The ranking of reading time Rank Criteria Sum of reading time (seconds) Mean (seconds) Median (seconds) A Top33% 91,919 5,407 5,042 B Middle33% 53,303 3,553 3,586 C Bottom34% 29,590 1,849 1,808 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 7 Region(2)includestheassociationruleswhosesupportisgreaterthan0.1,anditsconfidenceis greaterthan0.6.Thenumberofdetectedassociationrulesinthisregionwas712.Thisstudyanalyzed therelationshipsamongthetestscores,readingtimes,LSI,andCSIbasedontheassociationrules withdetectedhighsupportandconfidencevalues. RESULT First,todeterminetherelationshipsamongCSIandotherparameters,wedetectedassociationrules iftheRight-Hand-Side(RHS)representstheAnalytictypeofCSI.Table4showstheassociation rulescontainingoneortwofactorsintheLeft-Hand-Side(LHS)andRHSwiththeAnalytictypeof CSI.Thecolorofeachcellrepresentstheconfidencevalueifthesupportvalueisgreaterthan0.1. Forexample,(1)inTable4indicatesoneassociationruleifLHSis“LSI1=Reflective”and“LSI2 =Sensing”andRHSis“CSI=Analytic,”andtheconfidencevalueis0.626. Table 3. The parts of transaction data ID OP Pre-test Post-test Reading time LSI1 LSI2 LSI3 LSI4 CSI 1 NEXT 80 90 A Active Sensing Visual Sequential Analytic 2 NEXT 80 90 A Active Sensing Verbal Sequential Adaptive 3 PREV 70 80 B Reflective Intuitive Visual Global Intuitive 4 NEXT 80 90 A Reflective Intuitive Verbal Global Intuitive Figure 3. The distribution of the detected association rules International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 8 Whencomparingeachlearningstylethroughthepre-testandpost-testsores,associationrules werefoundwhenthestudentshadareflectivetypeofLSI,andthepre-testscorewas80,post-test score90,andpost-testscore100.Theseassociationruleshadsignificantrelationshipsbecausetheir confidencelevelsarehigherthanotherfactorssuchasthesensingorvisualsequentialtypeofLSI. Whencomparingeachlearningstylewiththereadingtime,associationruleswerefoundinthecases wherethestudentshavethereflectivetypeofLSIand“readingtime=A.”Thisfactindicatesthat studentsofthereflectivetypewith“readingtime=A”fitintotheanalytictypeofCSI. Followingtheaboveresults,thisstudyfurtherexploredthedatatofindassociationrulesincases wheretheRHSrepresentsthereflectiveoractivetypesofLSI.Table5showsthecross-tabulation ofLSIwiththereflectivetype.Theassociationrulesbetweeneachlearningstyle,suchassensing, visual sequential, and global, and other factors were found, but these association rules had lower confidencevalues. Significantassociationrulesamong“readingtime=A”andpre-testandpost-testscoreswere found.Fortheassociationrulebetweenpre-testscore80andpost-testscore90,theconfidencevalue was1.Thereweresevenstudentswhoincreasedtheirtestscoresby10pointsfrompre-test80to post-test90.TheyfitintothereflectivetypeofLSI.Table6showsthecross-tabulationoftheLSI withtheactivetype.Fortheassociationrulebetweenpre-test90andpost-test80,thereweresix studentswhodecreasedtheirtestscoresby10pointsfrompre-test90topost-test80.Theyfitinto theactivetypeofLSI.Amongtheassociationrulesofreadingtimewereassociationrulesindicating thatLHSis“readingtimeB”or“readingtimeC.” Table 4. Cross-tabulation of the CSI with analytics International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 9 Table7showsthecross-tabulationofLSIwiththevisualtype.Associationruleswerefound indicating that LHS was associated with reflective, sensing, global, and sequential types of LSI; however,theseassociationruleshadalowerconfidencevalue,thatis,lessthan0.8. AmongtheassociationrulesofCSI,itwasfoundthattheconfidencevalueoftheadaptivetype washigherthanthatoftheanalytictype,whileamongtheassociationrulesofreadingtime,there wereassociationruleswherebyLHSfellinto“readingtimeA,”“readingtimeB,”or“readingtime C.”Whencomparingeachreadingtimewithhighconfidencevalues,associationruleswerefound suchthatLHSfellunderthereflectivetypeofLSIwith“readingtimeA”andthatLHSfellunderthe sensingorglobaltypeofLSIwith“readingtimeC.”Thismeansthatamajorityofthestudentswith thereflectivetypeofLSIwith“readingtimeA”orsensingorglobaltypeofLSIwith“readingtime C”wereassociatedwiththevisualtypeofLSI.Amongtheassociationrulesconcerningthepre-test andpost-testscores,ameaningfulassociationrulewasfoundthatLHSfellunderpre-testscore90 withpost-testscore90.Thismeansthatstudentswhoreceivedapre-testscore90andapost-test scoreof90or100fitintothevisualtypeofLSI. Fromthesemeaningfulassociationrules,thisstudymainlycategorizedthreestudenttypes:Poorly Motivated,Efficient,andDiligent(Figure4).Thediligenttypemeetsfiveconditions:Pre-testscore 80,Post-testscore90,“LSI=Reflective,”“CSI=Analytic,”and“ReadingtimeA.”Theefficienttype fulfillsfiveconditions:Pretestscore90or100,Post-testscore90,“LSI=Visual,”“CSI=Adaptive,” and“Readingtime=A,B,orC.”Thepoorlymotivatedtypesatisfiesfourconditions:Pre-testscore 90,Post-testscore80,“readingtimeBorC,”and“LSI=Active.”Basedontheseconditionsaswell asthequestionnaireresultsforLSIandCSI,thethreestudenttypeswereidentified. Table 5. Cross-tabulation of the LSI with the reflective type International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 10 DISCUSSIoN From the results in Figure 4, this study identified three student types. Poorly motivated type is characterizedbyalowerreadingtimeofdigitaltextbooksthanothertypes.Weconsideredthatthe activestudentsdidnotpreferthinkingaboutandreflectingonthingsthroughreadingdigitaltextbooks. Previousstudieshavereportedthatactivelearnerslearnbydoingsomethingwiththeinformation obtained.Theyprefertoprocessinformationbytalkingaboutitandtryingitout.Therefore,when teachersidentifythestudenttypeinthequestionnairestage,itisnecessarytodesigninteractivedigital textbooksthatstudentscaninteractwithfunctionssuchasaudios,videos,andsoon. TheefficienttypeofstudentsincludestheadaptivetypeofCSIandthevisualtypeofLSI.The adaptivestyleimpliesabalancedblendofintuitionandanalyticalstyle.Inaddition,visuallearners prefer visual presentations of materials. They like pictures, diagrams, graphs, and charts. In the evaluationexperiments,studentswereabletoobtaingoodscoresinthepre-testandpost-testeven thoughwewerenotabletopreparerichdigitaltextbookswiththeidealnumberofpictures,diagrams, andgraphs.Thus,ournextanalysisshouldbemorecarefullyplanned(withwell-designeddigital textbooksornot). Ontheotherhand,adiligenttypehasahigherreadingtimeofdigitaltextbooksthanothertypes. Reflective learners learn by thinking about information. They prefer to think things through and understandthingsbeforeacting.Therefore,itisnecessarytodesigndigitaltextbooksthatpromote criticalthinking. CoNCLUSIoN This study analyzed the learning patterns or rules using digital textbook logs with LSI and CSI questionnaires.Tocollectstudents’digitaltextbooklogs,theDITelsystemwasdevelopedandused in a commercial law course for undergraduate students. The data collection period for the digital textbooklogswasfromMarchtoJuly2017.Atotalof41undergraduatestudentsparticipatedinthis study.TheywereaskedtoanswertheLSIandCSIquestionnairestoinvestigatetheirlearningand cognitivestyles. Table 6. Cross-tabulation of the LSI with the active type International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 11 Table 7. Cross-tabulation of the LSI with the visual type Figure 4. Three student types categorized based on the detected association rules International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 12 ThisstudyusedassociationanalysiswiththeApriorialgorithm.Usingtheanalysismethod,we found5,265associationrules.Furthermore,wecheckedtofindmeaningfulassociationrulesusing humanjudgmentinaccordancewiththeindicationsofsupportandconfidence. Based on the association rules, we found the following categories: The criteria of “CSI = Analytic”and“LSI=Reflective”onRHSandmeaningfulconditionsdetectedof“ReadingtimeA,” “Pre-testscore80,”and“Post-testscore90”categorizethediligenttype.“LSI=Visual”and“CSI =Adaptive”onRHSandmeaningfulconditionsdetectedof“ReadingtimeA,B,orC,”“Pre-test score90or100,”and“Post-testscore90”categorizetheefficienttype.Finally,“LSI=Active”on RHSandmeaningfulconditionsdetectedsuchas“ReadingtimeBorC,”“Pre-testscore90,”and “Post-testscore80”categorizethepoorlymotivatedtype. Insum,themaincontributionofthisstudyistofindlearningpatternsorrulesforenhancing education.Byconsideringthedetectedlearningpatterns,webelievethatteacherscanprovidesupport particularlytostudentsofthepoorlymotivatedtypeinadvance.Inthefuture,wewillconsidera dashboarddevelopment(Lkhagvasurenetal.,2016)topredictstudenttypesinaccordancewiththeir learninglogsandLSIandCSIquestionnaires. ACKNowLEDGMENT PartofthisresearchworkwasalsosupportedbytheGrant-in-AidforScientificResearchNo.16H03078 andNo.17K12947fromtheMinistryofEducation,Culture,Sports,ScienceandTechnology(MEXT) inJapan. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 13 REFERENCES Allinson,C.W.,&Hayes,J.(1996).Thecognitivestyleindex:Ameasureofintuition-analysisfororganizational research.Journal of Management Studies,33(1),119–136.doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.1996.tb00801.x Baker,R.S.,&Inventado,P.S.(2014).Educationaldataminingandlearninganalytics.InLearning analytics (pp.61–75).NewYork,NY:Springer. Behrouz,M.,Gerd,K.,&William,P.(2004).Associationanalysisforanonlineeducationsystem.InProceedings of the 2004 IEEE international conference on Information Reuse and Integration(pp.504-509).LasVegas,NV: InstituteofElectricalandElectronicsEngineers. 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Rockinson-Szapkiw,A.J.,Courduff,J.,Carter,K.,&Bennett,D.(2013).Electronicversustraditionalprint textbooks:Acomparisonstudyontheinfluenceofuniversitystudents’learning.Computers & Education,63, 259–266.doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2012.11.022 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1996.tb00801.x http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40692-014-0023-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2017.1287338 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.11.010 http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/IJDET.2016070101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2723576.2723598 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IIAI-AAI.2017.59 https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/arules/arules.pdf https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/arules/arules.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.11.022 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies Volume 17 • Issue 1 • January-March 2019 14 Kousuke Mouri is an assistant professor at the institute of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan. His research interests include computer supported ubiquitous and mobile learning, augmented reality, data mining and network analysis for authentic learning. He received the PhD degree at the Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University. He received best student paper award in the ICCE 2014 international conference. He is a member of SOLAR (Society of Learning Analytics and Research), and APSCE (Asian Pacific Society for Computer in Education). Zhuo Ren is a lecturer in international school of Ji Nan university, China. She received her LL.M. in 2005 from Law School of Sun Yat-Sen university, China. She is focused on the study of legal teaching and practising. She is also a practicing lawyer in China. Noriko Uosaki is currently an associated professor at the Center for International Education and Exchange, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. She received the Ph.D. degree in educational technology from Tokushima University in 2013. Her research interests include MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning), Seamless Learning, CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), Computer Supported Ubiquitous and Mobile Learning, CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning), and TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). She is a member of JSET, IEEE, and APSCE. Chengjiu Yin is an Associate Professor at the Information Science and Technology Center, Kobe University, Japan. He received his PhD degree from the Department of Information Science and Intelligent Systems, Tokushima University, Japan, in 2008. Currently he is committing himself in mobile learning, ubiquitous computing, language learning, and educational data mining. He is a member of JSET, JSiSE and APSCE. 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Yin,C.,Okubo,F.,Shimada,A.,Oi,M.,Hirokawa,S.,Yamada,M.,...Ogata,H.(2015).Analyzingthefeatures oflearningbehaviorsofstudentsusinge-books.InDoctoral Student Consortium (DSC) -Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computers in Education, ICCE 2015(pp.617-626).Hangzhou,China:Asia- PacificSocietyforComputersinEducation. Yin,C.J.,Hirokawa,S.,Yau,J.,Nakatoh,T.,Hashimoto,K.,&Tabata,Y.(2013).Analyzingresearchtrends withcrosstabulationsearchengine.International Journal of Distance Education Technologies,11(1),31–44. doi:10.4018/jdet.2013010103 Yin,C.J.,Sung,H.Y.,Hwang,G.J.,Hirokawa,S.,Chu,H.C.,Flanagan,B.,&Tabata,Y.(2013).Learningby searching:Alearningapproachthatprovidessearchingandanalysisfacilitiestosupportresearchtrendsurveys. Journal of Educational Technology & Society,16(3),286–300. Yin, C. J., Uosaki, N., Chu, H. C., Hwang, G. J., Hwang, J. J., Hatono, I., . . . Tabata, Y. (2017). Learning behavioralpatternanalysisbasedonstudents’logsinreadingdigitalbooks.InW.Chenetal.(Eds),Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Computers in Education(pp.549-557).Christchurch,NewZealand: Asia-PacificSocietyforComputersinEducation. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009862830803500102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2017.2682086 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2017.2682086 http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/jdet.2013010103 
work_64ezq4e5rvcipmikiojfydqrsi	----	untitled Informatics in Education, 2007, Vol. 6, No. 1, 179–188 179 © 2007 Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius What’s the Difference, Still? A Follow up Methodological Review of the Distance Education Research Justus J. RANDOLPH University of Joensuu, Department of Computer Science P.O. Box 111, FIN-80110, Joensuu, Finland e-mail: justus.randolph@cs.joensuu.fi Received: December 2005 Abstract. A high quality review of the distance learning literature from 1992–1999 concluded that most of the research on distance learning had serious methodological flaws. This paper presents the results of a small-scale replication of that review. A sample of 66 articles was drawn from three leading distance education journals. Those articles were categorized by study type, and the experimental or quasi-experimental articles were analyzed in terms of their research methodologies. The results indicated that the sample of post-1999 articles had the same methodological flaws as the sample of pre-1999 articles: most participants were not randomly selected, extraneous variables and reactive effects were not controlled for, and the validity and reliability of measures were not reported. Key words: distance education, methodological review, research methodology. 1. Introduction In April of 1999, The Institute for Higher Education Policy released an influential review of the distance learning literature entitled, What’s the Difference?: A Review of Contem- porary Research on the Effectiveness on Distance Learning in Higher Education [here- after – What’s the Difference] (Phipps and Merisotis). That review, which was based on a large sample of the distance learning literature, concluded that although a considerable amount of research on the effectiveness of distance learning has been conducted, “there is a relative paucity of true, original research dedicated to explaining or predicting phenom- ena related to distance learning” (p. 2). Although many of the studies included in What’s the Difference suggested that distance learning compares favorably with classroom-based instruction (Russell, 1999; see also Hammond, 1997; Martin and Rainey, 1993; Sounder, 1993), a closer investigation by the authors of What’s the Difference revealed that the quality of those studies was questionable and that the results of the body of the literature on distance learning were largely inconclusive. What’s the Difference reported four main shortcomings in the research on distance learning: 180 J.J. Randolph 1. Much of the research does not control for extraneous variables and, therefore, can- not show cause and effect. 2. Most of the studies do not use randomly selected subjects. 3. The validity and reliability of the instruments used to measure student outcomes and attitudes are questionable. 4. Many studies do not adequately control for the feelings and attitudes of the students and faculty – what the educational research refers to as “reactive effects” (pp. 3–4). Extraneous variables, poor validity or reliability of measures, and reactive effects, alone or in combination are enough to undermine the validity of a generalized causal inference. Since the authors of What’s the Difference found that the majority of research on distance learning contained these shortcomings, it follows that the majority of distance learning research was also inadequate to make sound causal conclusions about the effects that distance learning has on academic achievement and student satisfaction. Given the exponential growth of distance learning programs (see Conhaim, 2003; Imel, 2002; Salomon, 2004) and the potential consequences of imprudent policy deci- sions concerning distance education (see Kelly, 2002; “Pros and Cons of E-Learning,” 2002), it would be logical to presume that the distance learning research community would have taken heed of the suggestions for improving the methodology reported in What’s the Difference. That presumption is investigated here by reviewing a small sam- ple of the distance learning research where What’s the Difference left off. Specifically, the current review examines the distribution, by type of study, of English language articles that have been recently published in three leading distance education journals. Also, the research methodologies of the quantitative experimental or quasi-experimental articles in those journals are analyzed in detail. 2. Methods This section reports the method used to replicate What’s the Difference. In short, 66 re- cently published articles from a sample of journals used in What’s the Difference were categorized by study type, and the experimental or quasi-experimental articles were crit- ically analyzed in terms of the research methods used. 2.1. The Sample Of the five journals included in What’s the Difference, a purposive sample of three lead- ing distance education journals, The American Journal of Distance Education, Distance Education, and The Journal of Distance Education, was chosen for the current review. These journals were chosen because they were assumed to be representative of typical research in the field of distance education. All of the articles from these journals; besides book reviews, forewords, editorials, and articles not written in English; were included in the current review. See Table 1 for more information about the origins, number of articles, and time periods of the sample of articles used in the current review. None of the issues in this sample were special issues. A Follow up Methodological Review of the Distance Education Research 181 Table 1 Origin, time period, and quantity of articles included in the current review Journal title Volume/issue range Year(s) # of articles The American Journal of Distance Education V. 16.1 – 16.4 2002 12 Distance Education V. 23.1 – 23.2 2002 14 The Journal of Distance Education V. 15.1 – 18.1 2002–2003 40 2.2. Categorization of Articles The articles from the sample mentioned above were divided into six categories. The cate- gories were (1) qualitative articles (2) quantitative descriptive articles, (3) correlational articles, (4) quasi-experimental articles, (5) experimental articles, and (6) other types of articles. In the current review, qualitative articles reported on investigations that used qualita- tive approaches. Quantitative descriptive articles described the characteristics of a group of students on one or more variables. (One-group posttest-only designs were classified as descriptive studies.) Correlational articles examined the association between two con- tinuous variables. Experimental articles investigated the effects of distance learning on academic achievement or student satisfaction and used random assignment to control and treatment conditions. Quasi-experimental articles were defined the same way as exper- imental research articles except that participant assignment was not random. The other category of articles consisted of reviews of literature, meta-analyses, program descrip- tions, theoretical articles, project management guidelines, or fictional cases. The majority of categories in the current review corresponded with the categories in What’s the Difference. What were called qualitative articles, quantitative descriptive arti- cles, and correlational articles in the current review corresponded with what were called case studies, descriptive articles, and correlational articles, respectively, in What’s the Difference. There were two differences though between the categories in the current re- view and the categories in What’s the Difference. First, in the current review, a distinc- tion was made between quasi-experimental and experimental research. What were called quasi-experimental articles and experimental articles in the current review would have simply been called experimental articles in What’s the Difference. Second, in the current review, an other category was included to account for studies that did not fall into any of the categories above. 2.3. Critique of Articles The studies that used quantitative experimental or quasi-experimental research designs with a form of distance education as the independent variable and at least one measure of academic achievement or student satisfaction were analyzed in terms of the shortcomings found in What’s the Difference. The method for evaluating the scientific control of extra- neous variables was to identify the research design and then, by using Shadish, Cook, and 182 J.J. Randolph Campbell’s (2002) description of threats to internal validity, determine what extraneous variables need to be controlled for when a particular design is used. The text was scanned to determine if the relevant extraneous variables were controlled for. The text was also re- viewed to determine if participants were randomly selected and randomly assigned, if the author(s) reported evidence about the instrument’s reliability and validity, and if reactive effects, specifically novelty and the John Henry effect, were controlled for. 3. Results For the quantitative experimental and quasi-experimental studies, the research design, ex- perimental controls, selection, assignment, and reliability and validity of instruments are presented. The results also include the number of articles distributed into each category. 3.1. Distribution of Articles by Type From the 3 journals sampled, 66 articles were reviewed. Of these, 18 were categorized as qualitative, 12 as quantitative descriptive, 8 as correlational, 4 as quasi-experimental, 0 as experimental, and 24 were categorized as ‘other.’ See Table 2 for the distribution of articles by study type. In order to compare proportions of article types between the current review and the previous review (i.e., What’s the Difference), Table 3 shows the results of the current review when the other category is removed and when the quasi-experimental and experimental categories are collapsed into a single experimental category. 3.2. Results of the Article Critique Since only four studies were classified as quasi-experimental and none were categorized as experimental, the results of the article critique are reported here on a study-by-study Table 2 Distribution of types of articles included in the current review Type of article Number of articles Percent Qualitative 18 27.3 Quantitative descriptive 12 18.2 Correlational 8 12.1 Quasi-experimental 4 6.0 Experimental 0 0.0 Othera 24 36.4 Total 66 100.0 a The ‘other’ category includes reviews of literature, meta-analyses, program descriptions, theoretical articles, project management guide- lines, or fictional cases. A Follow up Methodological Review of the Distance Education Research 183 Table 3 Comparison of proportions of article types between the current review and the previous review Type of article Current review Previous review Qualitative 43% 15% Descriptive 29% 31% Correlational 19% 3% Experimental 9% 51% basis. These include a description of the methodology and the threats to validity in each study. 3.2.1. Bisciglia and Monk–Turner’s Study Bisciglia and Monk–Turner (2002) examined the effect of distance learning on reported attitudes toward distance learning. They used a posttest-only design with a nonequiva- lent control group. Participants in the treatment group were offsite; participants in the control group were onsite. The same instructor taught both groups at the same time, but the groups were at different locations. Intact groups were randomly selected from the population of local distance learning courses being conducted at the time; however, of the groups selected, only 38% of the teachers agreed to let their classes participate in the study. Students self-selected into either on-site or distant sites. The instruments were self-report surveys without reliability or validity information. Selection was the major threat to internal validity in the Bisciglia and Monk–Turner study. Although there was an attempt at randomly selecting classes, only a small per- centage of teachers who were selected volunteered to participate. Students self-selected not only into which class they would be in, they also self-selected into which experimen- tal condition they would participate in. Demographic variables were used as an attempt to measure the pre-intervention differences between treatment and control groups, yet this does not completely control for selection since there were other variables related to outcomes (i.e., prior knowledge of subject and motivation) not measured by the de- mographic variables. In fact, on several important variables, (e.g., prior experience with distance education, gender, hours at work, and marital status) the control and treatment groups differed markedly. In the Bisciglia and Monk–Turner study, the construct validity of the control con- dition was slightly questionable. Usually the comparison in distance education involves distance education programs versus traditional programs; however, in this study the com- parison involved onsite distance education versus offsite distance education. Onsite dis- tance education courses, although they are conducted face-to-face, are quite different than traditionally-administered courses and, therefore, do not represent the control condition of most interest (i.e., traditional classroom instruction.) Onsite students have to deal with many of the pedagogical disadvantages of distance learning, (e.g., waiting in an elec- tronic queue to interact verbally) and have more problems with instructor accessibility than offsite students (Phillips and Peters, 1999). However, onsite students do not receive 184 J.J. Randolph some of the same benefits as offsite students do (e.g., not having to relocate or commute to the physical site of instruction.) 3.2.2. Kennepohl’s Study Kennepohl (2001) examined the use of computer simulations on university-level stu- dents’ performance in a chemistry lab. The investigator used a posttest-only design with a nonequivalent control group. The control group did laboratory exercises for 32 hours. The treatment group did 4 to 8 hours of simulations before doing 24 hours of laboratory exercises. No information was given about selection or assignment; however, the text im- plies that the groups were intact and that the experimenter decided which intact group would be the treatment group and which would be the control group. The instruments used were teacher-made quizzes and tests. Major threats to validity in the Kennepohl (2001) study were selection and instrumen- tation. Selection was problematic because it was probable that groups were not equivalent before implementation of the treatment. For example, one group, to begin with, may sim- ply have had more high-achievers than the other group. This was especially problematic if the experimenter had assigned participants to conditions based on his or her prior knowl- edge of group performance. Instrumentation was a problem if the researcher’s scoring of quizzes and tests was influenced by knowing which group a student was in. The reliability and validity of measures were not reported. Other threats, such as attrition and reactive effects, may have been possible because little description of the participants, procedure, and setting was provided. 3.2.3. Litchfield, Oakland, and Anderson’s Study Litchfield, Oakland, and Anderson (2002) examined the effect of computer-mediated learning on computer attitudes. An untreated control group design with dependent pretest and posttest samples was used with adult dietetic students. Students were not reported to be randomly selected or assigned. The instrument was a self-report survey. No validity or reliability information was reported. This relatively strong design used in the Litchfield et al. study helped rule out most major threats; therefore, there were only minor plausible threats. Since pretest and demo- graphic data were used to compare the groups before treatment, this helped control the selection threat. While, the researchers reported the overall change between pretest and posttest for each group, they did not report initial pretest results for each group. Little in- formation was provided about the reliability or validity of measures or about procedures pertinent to reactive or other effects. 3.2.4. Neuhauser’s Study Neuhauser (2002) investigated the effect of computer-mediated learning, with learning style as a moderating variable, on the effectiveness of learning and student satisfaction with adults studying business management. The investigator used a posttest-only de- sign with a nonequivalent control group. Students in the experimental condition received computer-mediated instruction. Students in the control group received face-to-face in- struction. Students were not randomly selected or assigned; however, the demographic A Follow up Methodological Review of the Distance Education Research 185 characteristics of each group were reported. The measures, without reports of validity or reliability, were self-report surveys, teacher-made tests, and grades given by the teacher. The major validity threat in the Neuhauser study was selection. Selection was proba- ble because students self-selected into treatment conditions. Although, the demographic characteristics of each group were approximately equal, there may have been some fac- tors related to outcomes that were not measured through demographics alone (e.g., prior knowledge of course content). It is difficult to determine to what degree reactive threats affected the study outcomes because little information was given about settings and cir- cumstances. Attrition was addressed in the Neuhauser study by reporting the number and characteristics of students who quit attending the course in each group. 4. Discussion In this section, findings from the four quasi-experimental studies and the distribution of articles by study type are discussed in terms of the criticisms found in What’s the Difference. In short, the methodological flaws in distance learning research before the 1999 publication of What’s the Difference are still present in distance learning research after 1999. One surprising discrepancy, however, between the current review and What’s the Dif- ference is that the proportion of article types differed significantly. For example, in the current review 9% of the articles were experimental studies, but in What’s the Difference 51% of the articles were experimental studies; see Table 3. I hypothesize that this dis- crepancy might have happened (a) because of sampling error in the current review’s small sample, (b) because the current review’s sample was not representative of the population that What’s the Difference’s sample was representative of, or (c) because the proportion of articles types had actually changed since What’s the Difference was published. Sampling error is a possibility because so few articles were included; it is entirely possible that the sample of journal issues in the current review are representative of distance educa- tion research in general, but those particular issues had a higher proportion of qualitative articles, just by chance. A second possibility is that the sample chosen for the current review is representative of a different population than What’s the Difference sample is representative of. Although the majority of the journals that were included in What’s the Difference were also included in this review, What’s the Difference included other non- journal sources, which the authors of What’s the Difference broadly specified as “original research.” A third possibility is simply that the proportion of article types actually did change since What’s the Difference was published. Each of these hypotheses is plausible. Replication would be needed to determine which hypothesis, or combination of hypothe- ses, is correct. Although there was a discrepancy, many of the main findings in What’s the Difference were, nonetheless, supported by the results of the current review: there is still a paucity of original research, poor control of extraneous variables, a lack of randomized selection, questionable validity and reliability of instruments, and inadequate controls for reactive effects. 186 J.J. Randolph 4.1. A Paucity of Original Quality ‘Quantitative’ Research, Still In terms of quantitative designs, although descriptive and correlation research certainly is of significant value, only experimental and quasi-experimental research is appropriate for establishing causal links between treatments and outcomes (Shadish et al., 2002). Of the 66 articles included in the current review, only 4 used quasi-experimental designs and 0 used experimental designs. Therefore, it is still appropriate to conclude that there is a paucity of quality quantitative research that appropriately investigates the causal link between distance learning and academic achievement or student satisfaction. 4.2. Poor Control of Extraneous Variables, Still The posttest-only design with nonequivalent controls, which was used in 3 out of 4 studies reviewed here, leaves a host of extraneous variables uncontrolled for. This design is es- pecially open to selection and selection-interaction threats to internal validity. Although attempts were made to measure selection threats by comparing demographic data, this may be inadequate because demographic variables may not measure the factors that are most related to outcomes. Only one study (Litchfield et al., 2002) used a design strong enough to control for most extraneous variables. Poor description of procedures and set- tings in these research reports, overall, do not inspire confidence that other validity threats had been controlled for. 4.3. Lack of Randomized Selection, Still None of the studies reviewed here used random selection. This severely limits causal gen- eralization and violates the assumptions of many statistical procedures. More troubling, however, is that none of the studies used random assignment. Although random assign- ment of participants cannot ensure the elimination of threats, it increases the likelihood of making correct causal assumptions. When randomized assignment is not feasible, strong designs and thoughtful control of variables can allow a researcher to make cogent argu- ments about general causality between independent and dependent variables. 4.4. Questionable Validity and Reliability of Instruments, Still None of the studies analyzed here reported convincing information about the validity and reliability of instruments. Either the instruments were self-report Likert-type surveys, which are subject to strong reactive effects, or they were teacher-made tests or quizzes. Much work must be still done on creating, researching, and reporting the validity and reliability of instruments used in distance education research. 4.5. Inadequate Controls for Reactive Effects, Still None of the articles directly addressed how they controlled for reactive effects, such as novelty effects. Likewise, none of the articles gave enough information to determine to what degree the John Henry effect was present and how it was controlled. A Follow up Methodological Review of the Distance Education Research 187 5. Study Limitations There are several limitations of the current review that should be taken into account. First, the sample size was small. A small sample size increases the possibility that the sample selected is not representative of the population. One benefit of there having been only four experimental studies, however, is that they could be analyzed in detail as case studies, which would not have been possible had there been many experimental studies. Another limitation of the current review is that there are no interrater reliability estimates for the categorizations of articles, because only person was involved in this review. It is not known whether a second, independent reviewer would have categorized the articles in this sample in the same way as they were categorized in the current review. 6. Conclusion Based on the sample reviewed here, the same shortcomings in the distance learning liter- ature mentioned in What’s the Difference were still present in the recent distance learning literature. More research that uses strong designs which control for extraneous variables and reactive effects and that uses instruments which are proven to be valid and reliable is sorely needed in the research on distance learning. Until that point, we will just have to keep wondering, “What’s the difference?” References Bisciglia, M.G., and E. Monk–Turner (2002). Differences in attitudes between on-site and distance-site students in group teleconference courses. The American Journal of Distance Education, 16(1), 37–52. Conhaim, W.W. (2003). Education ain’t what it used to be. Information Today, 20, December, 37–38. Hammond, R.J. (1997). A comparison of the learning experience of telecourse students in community and day sections. Paper presented at the Meeting of the Distance Learning Symposium sponsored by Utah Valley State College, Orem, UT. Imel, S. (2002). E-Learning. Trends and Issues Alert (Report No-40). Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED469265) Kelly, M.F. (2002). The political implications of e-learning. Higher Education in Europe, 27(3), 211–216. Kennepohl, D. (2001). Using computer simulations to supplement teaching laboratories in chemistry for dis- tance delivery. The Journal of Distance Education, 16(2). Retrieved April 21, 1976, from http://cade.athabascau.ca/vol16.2/kennepohl.html Litchfield, R.E., M.J. Oakland and J.A. Anderson (2002). Relationship between intern characteristics, computer attitudes, and use of online instruction in a dietic training program. The American Journal of Distance Education, 16(1), 23–36. Martin, E.D., and L. Rainey (1993). Student achievement and attitude in a satellite-delivered high school science course. The American Journal of Distance Education, 7(1), 54–61. Neuhauser, C. (2002). Learning style and effectiveness of online and face-to-face instruction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 16(2), 99–113. Phillips, M.R., and M.J. Peters (1999). Targeting rural students with distance learning courses: A comparative study of determinant attributes and satisfaction levels. Journal of Education for Business, 74(6), 351–356. Phipps, R., and J. Merisotis (2004). What’s the Difference: A Review of the Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (1999, April). Retrieved April 21, 2004, from http://www.nea.org/he/abouthe/diseddif.pdf 188 J.J. Randolph The pros and cons of e-learning (2002). School Planning and Management, 41(12), 9. Russell, T.L. (1999). The no significant difference phenomenon. Office of Instructional Telecommunications, North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, NC. Salomon, K. (2004). Distance ed: The return of the DEPD. University Business, 7, February, 24–25. Shadish, W.R., T.D. Cook and D.T. Campbell (2002). Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Gen- eralized Causal Inference. Houghton Mifflin, New York. Sounder, W.E. (1993). The effectiveness of traditional versus satellite delivery in the three management of technology Master’s degree programs. The American Journal of Distance Education, 7(1), 37–53. J.J. Randolph is a planning officer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Joensuu, Finland. He is also a PhD candidate in Utah State University’s Education Research and Evaluation Program. His research interests include evaluation and program planning, research and evaluation methodology, and technology education. Ar padarėme išvadas? Nuotolinio mokymo tyrim ↪ u metodologinės apžvalgos t ↪ asa Justus J. RANDOLPH Nuotolinio mokymosi literatūros, išleistos 1992–1999 metais, išsami apžvalga atskleidė, jog daugelis nuotolinio mokymosi tyrim ↪ u turi nemenk ↪ u metodologini ↪ u sprag ↪ u. Straipsnyje supažindi- nama su rezultatais, gautais tam tikru mastu replikuojant minėt ↪ a apžvalg ↪ a. Iš trij ↪ u pagrindini ↪ u mok- slini ↪ u žurnal ↪ u, skirt ↪ u nuotolinio mokymosi klausimams, atrinkti bei, atsižvelgiant ↪ i j ↪ u tip ↪ a, suklasi- fikuoti 66 straipsniai, išanalizuotos eksperimentiniuose bei kvazieksperimentiniuose straipsniuose aprašomos tyrim ↪ u metodologijos. Gautieji rezultatai atskleidė, jog ir po 1999- ↪ uj ↪ u met ↪ u pasirod ↪ e straipsniai pasižymi tomis pačiomis metodologinėmis spragomis, kaip ir straipsniai, spausdinti iki 1999- ↪ uj ↪ u: dauguma aprašom ↪ u eksperiment ↪ u dalyvi ↪ u būdavo parenkami ne atsitiktiniu būdu, išoriniai kintamieji ir gr ↪ ižtamieji ryšiai tinkamai nekontroliuojami, taip pat nebūdavo aprašomas pasirinkt ↪ u matavimo vienet ↪ u pagr ↪ istumas bei patikimumas. 
work_64sqarsnrrejvkmlseqpnyrkvi	----	bjet_448.fm © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 36 No 2 2005 137 – 144 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UKBJETBritish Journal of Educational Technology0007-1013British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005January 2005362137144Articles A theoretical framework for distance educationBritish Journal of Educational Technology Dialogue: a theoretical framework for distance education instructional systems Paul Gorsky and Avner Caspi Drs Paul Gorsky and Avner Caspi are research associates at the Chais Research Center for Instructional Technologies at the Open University of Israel. Paul Gorsky’s interests include cognitive science and the role of dialogue in instructional systems. Avner Caspi’s expertise is cognitive psychology and his research efforts are directed towards studying the impact of educational technologies on cognition. Address for correspondence: Dr. Paul Gorsky, Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski St., P.O.B. 808, Ra’anana, Israel; Tel: ( + 972) 9-7781339; email: paulgo@openu.ac.il Abstract This paper presents a theoretical framework for viewing elements that comprise distance education instructional systems in terms of dialogue. It is assumed that learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue and facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. Every resource in a distance education instructional system (eg, instructor availability, asynchronous communication networks, self-instruction texts, etc) is analysed in terms of the dialogue mode it supports. The framework offers three advantages: (1) a unified, simple, and coherent description of the mechanisms at play in distance education systems, (2) clear- cut operational definitions, and (3) hypotheses that may be investigated empirically. Introduction The importance of theory to a discipline can hardly be overemphasised. Garrison (2000, p. 1) wrote: “Theoretical frameworks and models are essential to the long-term credi- bility and viability of a field of practice.” Perraton (2000, p. 10) wrote: “...unless research is grounded in theory, it cannot be much more than data gathering.” The existence of theory, or a theoretical framework, makes it possible to explain phenomena, to generate hypotheses, to frame questions, and to test them empirically. The goal of educational theory may be to increase understanding of human behaviour and/or to enhance practice. Regarding the latter goal, Lewin (1951, p. 169) pointed out: “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” This paper presents a theoretical framework for viewing elements of distance education instructional systems in terms of dialogue. Every element is viewed as a dialogue or as 138 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 36 No 2 2005 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. a resource that supports dialogue. The key element is learning —not teaching, not the learner, not the instructor, and not the physical or temporal distance separating them. Part I presents the theoretical framework—its underlying assumptions, a schematic overview, and definitions of basic constructs and the relations amongst them. Along with the desire to achieve rigour and parsimony, examples are included to enhance clarity. Part II is commentary. Here, three issues are discussed: (1) the centrality of dialogue in the teaching/learning process, (2) the perspective afforded by the frame- work, and (3) its usefulness, especially in terms of research agenda. Part I: the theoretical framework Assumptions Five basic assumptions underlie the framework: 1. Learning is an individual activity characterised by internal mental processes. 2. Learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue. 3. Learning is facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. 4. Dialogue is enabled by structural and human resources. 5. Dialogue and learning outcomes are correlated. Schematic overview Figure 1 presents the framework’s basic constructs and the relations amongst them. Figure 1: A theoretical framework of dialogue for distance education systems RESOURCES FOR DIALOGUE structural; human DIALOGUE intrapersonal; interpersonal— subject matter oriented and social LEARNING OUTCOMES achievement; satisfaction A theoretical framework for distance education 139 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. Basic constructs: definitions and relationships Dialogue The framework recognises two categories of dialogue: intrapersonal and interpersonal. In addition, two subcategories of interpersonal dialogue are defined: social and subject matter oriented. 1. Learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue; this dialogue type is an all-inclusive term for the mental processes engaged in by students as they purposefully try to learn. In other words, when students read self-instruction texts, listen to lectures or audio tapes, view educational films, solve problems, manipulate computer simula- tions, they are said to be engaged in intrapersonal dialogue. Furthermore, the physi- cal presence of instructional materials is not a prerequisite condition for such dialogue to occur; for example, a student walking alone or jogging and thinking about subject matter is engaged in intrapersonal dialogue. The mental processes of intrapersonal dialogue have been described in many ways. Some examples are: “assimilation” and “accommodation” (Piaget, 1970), “accretion,” “structuring,” and “tuning” (Rumelhart & Norman, 1978), “intra- psychological processes” (Vygotsky, 1978), or an “an internal didactic conversation” (Holmberg, 1989). Whatever the labels attached to these processes, they are rel- evant to the framework at hand only in so far as they contribute to the design of structural and human resources. The most significant element of intrapersonal dialogue is the individual learner, not the structural resources described below. Each learner, at any given time, is charac- terised by a constellation of variables that include, amongst others, his or her goals for the course, prior knowledge, motivation, intelligence, and anxiety. These vari- ables determine the extent of intrapersonal dialogue that occurs and, to a large degree, its quality and effectiveness. 2. Interpersonal dialogue, both social and subject matter oriented, facilitates learning (Bruner, 1966; Buber, 1965; Dewey, 1916; Freire, 1972; Rogers, 1969; Vygotsky, 1978). We begin with a structural definition of interpersonal dialogue: • Dialogue is a message loop; it may be instructor–student–instructor or student– instructor–student or student A–student B–student A. • Dialogue has two distinct classes of outputs: social and subject matter oriented. • Messages in a dialogue are mutually coherent. Dialogue may be face-to-face or mediated by communications media; if mediated by media, it may be synchronous or asynchronous. a. Interpersonal social dialogue is defined as a discursive relationship in which participants project themselves socially and emotionally. Every interaction that meets the structural criteria of dialogue cited above is, first and foremost, social dialogue. Garrison and Anderson (2003) have pointed out that social presence, created by social dialogue, is essential to a community of inquiry that, in turn, is central to a higher education learning experience. Social dialogue may be investigated through qualitative and quantitative research procedures. 140 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 36 No 2 2005 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. Interpersonal subject-matter oriented dialogue, discussed below, is a subset of inter- personal social dialogue. That is, all subject-matter oriented dialogue is social; how- ever, not all social dialogue is subject-matter oriented. b. Interpersonal subject-matter oriented dialogue is defined as a discursive relationship between two participants characterised by thought-provoking activities, such as hypothesising, questioning, interpreting, explaining, evaluating, and rethinking issues or problems at hand. Subject-matter oriented dialogue is said to have occurred if one or more of the activities listed above is manifested in an interaction. This is a judgment based on analysis of qualitative data from sources such as observations, interviews and questionnaires. Interpersonal subject-matter oriented dialogue is not a monolithic variable. Burbules (1993) cited four different kinds of dialogical engagement: inquiry, con- versation, instruction, and debate. These dialogue forms do not provide an exhaus- tive typology; other typologies may use different distinction criteria. One further point is very noteworthy: Dialogue may be directed intentionally towards achieving various instructional goals (eg, increasing learner understanding or sharpening learners’ analytical skills or for evaluation purposes), or dialogue may have no specific instructional intent; that is, although subject matter oriented, neither par- ticipant presumes to “instruct” the other. Whatever the form and intent of subject- matter oriented dialogue, its impact on learning outcomes may be investigated empirically by qualitative and quantitative research procedures. Resources for dialogue Two categories of resources—structural and human—support dialogue and make it possible. 1. Structural resources for intrapersonal dialogue include all instructional materials that students may learn from. Examples include self-instruction texts, television and radio programs, web-based instructional systems, lectures presented through audio and video cassettes, computer-based simulations, and tutorials. Three structural resources support interpersonal dialogue and have a significant effect upon it: instructional design (Anderson & Garrison, 1995; Clark, 1983; Draper et al , 1994), group size (Caspi, Gorsky & Chajut, 2003; Chen & Willits, 1998), and accessibility of students and instructors (Chen, 2001a,b; Gorsky, Caspi & Tuvi-Arad, 2004; Gorsky, Caspi & Trumper, 2004). The cumulative effect of these resources is to determine a potential, an upper limit of interpersonal dialogue that may occur in a distance education system. This cumulative effect is defined as the variable “ potential dialogue ”. At present, it may be estimated prior to the start of a programme or course; eventually, through empirical research, it may be quantified to higher degrees of precision. Other structural resources may influence potential dialogue; however, so far as known, their impact, if any, is minimal or yet to be studied. Two values of potential dialogue, one for each dialogue type (instructor–student, student–student), may be estimated or measured for any given instructional system. To illustrate the impact of these variables on potential dialogue, Table 1 presents some extreme examples. A theoretical framework for distance education 141 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. 2. Instructors and students are the human resources that initiate and sustain inter- personal dialogue. They act within constraints imposed by the structural resources. Instructors, characterised by personality traits and facilitation skills, play a critical role in creating and maintaining dialogue, both in traditional and in distance edu- cation programs (eg, Bruner, 1966; Moore, 1993; Rogers, 1969). The student, characterised primarily by the need to overcome some specific conceptual difficulty or to solve a specific problem or exercise (Gorsky, Caspi & Tuvi-Arad, 2004; Gorsky, Caspi & Trumper, 2004) and by “autonomy” (Moore, 1993) will participate in interpersonal dialogue to greater or lesser degrees. Learning outcomes Two learning outcomes—achievement and satisfaction—are included in the frame- work. It is hypothesised that dialogue correlates in a significant and meaningful way with these outcomes. Sometimes the use of dialogue increases student understanding and/or satisfaction, other times not. Burbules (1993) has shown that although some dialogues may serve educational purposes, others have deleterious and anti- educational effects. The relationship between “dialogue” and “learning outcomes” may be investigated empirically. Part II: commentary On dialogue Since Socrates, dialogue has generally been assigned a fundamental position in western views of education. It has been viewed from both philosophical and pedagogical approaches. Philosophical approaches to interpersonal instructional dialogue tend to emphasise either its epistemological advantages in the pursuit of knowledge and under- standing (Socrates and Plato), or its moral and political foundations based on egalitar- ianism and mutual respect (Bruner, 1966; Buber, 1965; Dewey, 1916; Freire, 1972; Table 1: Effect of structural resources on interpersonal potential dialogue Instructor–student potential dialogue Structural resource instructional design group size instructor accessibility Low potential recorded lecture 500 students/group 1 hour per month High potential “live” Q&A and discussion 5 students/group 24 hours/day; 7 days/week Student–student potential dialogue Structural resource instructional design group size student accessibility Low potential individual assignments 5 students/group students’ email addresses and phone numbers are not available; no web-based media of any kind High potential collaborative Problem Based Learning 500 students/group students’ email addresses and phone numbers are given, plus web-based synchronous and asynchronous forums 142 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 36 No 2 2005 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. Rogers, 1969). For example, regarding the moral aspects of educational dialogue, Martin Buber (1965) wrote: “...the basic movement of genuine dialogue, and thus of education itself, is a truly reciprocal conversation in which teacher and students are full partners” (p. 184). According to Buber, the relationship between teacher and students is based on honesty, equality, openness and mutual respect. Genuine dialogue is not located within any one of the participants, but rather is found in their “betweeness,” in what Buber calls the reality of the “interhuman” (p. 184). Jerome Bruner and Carl Rogers also emphasise the importance and necessity of dialogue between teacher and student. Bruner (1966) wrote that instructor and student should engage in an active dialogue (ie, Socratic learning). He contended that the task of the instructor is to trans- late information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner’s current state of understanding. Rogers (1969) discussed the centrality of the interpersonal relation- ship in the facilitation of learning alongside the need to provide freedom in educational environments. The problem with such philosophical approaches to dialogue, however, is that they are highly idealised and prescriptive. They tell us how people should relate to each other and what outcomes should result from dialogue. They tell us little about what real dialogues look like and how they work, or fail to work, in real situated learning environments. Such philosophical approaches are biased a priori towards an anti-empirical approach to the study of dialogue. On the other hand, pedagogical viewpoints of interpersonal dialogue, such as proposed in this theoretical framework, tend to emphasise actual discursive practices. That is, different kinds of dialogues are defined, each with its own educational objective grounded in theory. Some dialogues converge towards predetermined answers and conclusions (instructivism) whilst others are open and divergent (constructivism); some are friendly, some antagonistic. All, however, are dialogues and all are generally recognisable as such. They may be investigated empirically and correlated with learning outcomes. Using the framework to analyse distance education instructional systems As an analytical tool, elements of distance education systems may be viewed in terms of dialogues and supporting resources. Discursive activities amongst instructors and students are viewed as interpersonal dialogue (subject matter oriented or social) whilst individual study is intrapersonal dialogue. Resources may be viewed as supporting one or both dialogue modes. This compact frame of reference imposes an order on the wide variety of seemingly unrelated variables that comprise distance education systems. Illustrations follow: 1. A student reads a self-instruction text. The text is a structural resource that enables intrapersonal dialogue. 2. Student X seeks help in solving an assigned exercise by posting a message in an asynchronous discussion group. Student Y responds and helps. The discussion group is a structural resource that enables interpersonal dialogue, both subject A theoretical framework for distance education 143 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. matter oriented and social. A subject matter-oriented dialogue occurred between Students X and Y. 3. A student calls another student on the telephone. They discuss the weather and make plans to meet at a pub. Having telephone numbers of fellow students is a structural resource for interpersonal dialogue whilst the fellow student is, of course, a human resource. In this case, they engaged in social dialogue. 4. Assume a face-to-face tutorial session led by an instructor who encouraged discus- sion and question asking. The tutorial is a structural resource that enables both intrapersonal and interpersonal dialogue. • Student X attended and listened attentively, but did not actively participate. This student utilised the resource for intrapersonal dialogue only; he chose not to utilise the human resources, instructor and fellow students, for direct interpersonal dialogue. • Student Y attended the same tutorial and, in addition to listening attentively, also asked the instructor several questions which were answered to her satisfaction. This student utilised the resource for both intrapersonal and interpersonal dialogue. 5. An instructor lectures and there is no accompanying question and answer for discussion. The lecture is a structural resource that enables intrapersonal dialogue. The verbal presentation is equivalent to a video cassette or a written printout of the lecture. The next step is to seek advantages afforded by this analytical approach. This will be carried out by viewing research agendas and activities. Using the framework to define a research agenda Research endeavours in the field of distance education may be grounded in the proposed theoretical framework of dialogue. In other words, the framework enables much of the existing empirical research, as well as future research, to be placed in a unified, simpli- fied, and coherent frame of reference centred on learning , mediated and facilitated by dialogue which, in turn, is enabled by structural and human resources. Some typical research questions, framed in the framework’s terminology, follow: • How do different discursive practices, say inquiry, facilitate or retard students’ abilities to make conceptual changes? • When and for whom is a certain interpersonal dialogue type, say debate, effective? • What kinds of interpersonal dialogue best support instructivist pedagogy? • How does collaborative problem-based learning (interpersonal subject matter ori- ented and social dialogue) affect students’ perceived satisfaction with the course? • What kinds of dialogue (inquiry, conversation, instruction, and debate) best support constructivist pedagogy and under what circumstances? • How does a teacher’s background knowledge of content prepare him or her for facil- itating dialogue? • What happens to dialogue when no one apparently leads? • Assuming that “communities of inquiry” may be identified, what are the ratios between social and subject matter-oriented dialogues? 144 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 36 No 2 2005 © British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2005. The research questions are not new; what may be innovative, however, is the theoretical framework which establishes well-defined operational definitions for variables and clear-cut relations amongst them. One concluding comment It appears that the framework of dialogue, designed initially to describe distance edu- cation instructional systems, may also be useful for investigating traditional, campus- based instructional systems. References Anderson, T. & Garrison, D. (1995). Transactional issues in distance education: the impact of design in audioteleconferencing. The American Journal of Distance Education 9 , 27–45. Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buber, M. (1965). Between man and man . New York: Macmillan. Burbules, N. (1993). Dialogue in teaching: theory and practice . New York: Teachers College Press. Caspi, A., Gorsky, P. & Chajut, E. (2003). The influence of group size on non-mandatory asyn- chronous instructional discussion groups. The Internet and Higher Education 6 , 227–240. Chen, Y. (2001a). Transactional distance in world wide web learning environments. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 38 , 327–338. Chen, Y. (2001b). Dimensions of transactional distance in world wide web learning environment: a factor analysis. British Journal of Educational Technology 32 , 459–470. Chen, Y. & Willits, F. (1998). A path analysis of the concepts in Moore’s theory of transactional distance in a videoconferencing learning environment. The American Journal of Distance Educa- tion 13 , 51–65. Clark, R. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media. Review of Educational Research 53 , 445–460. Draper, S., Brown, M., Edgerton, E., Henderson, F., McAteer, E., Smith E., et al (1994). Observing and measuring the performance of educational technology . Glascow UK: University of Glascow. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education . Toronto: The Macmillan Co. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed . Harmondsworth: Penguin. Garrison, D. (2000). Theoretical challenges for distance education in the 21 st century: A shift from structural to transactional issues. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 1 , 1, 1–17. Garrison, D. & Anderson, T. (2003). E-Learning in the 21st century . London: Routledge. Gorsky, P., Caspi, A. & Tuvi-Arad, I. (2004). Use of instructional dialogue by university students in a distance education chemistry course. Journal of Distance Education 19 , 1, 1–19. Gorsky, P., Caspi, A. & Trumper, R. (2004). University students’ use of dialogue in a distance education physics course. Open Learning 19 , 3, 265–277. Holmberg, B. (1989). Theory and practice of distance education . London: Routledge. Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. Selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (Ed.). New York: Harper & Row. Moore, M. (1993). Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (Ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education (pp. 23–38).New York: Routledge. Perraton, H. (2000). Rethinking the research agenda. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 1 , 10–19. Piaget, J. (1970). The science of education and the psychology of the child . New York: Grossman. Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn . Columbus: Merrill Publishing Co. Rumelhart, D. & Norman, D. (1978). Accretion, tuning and restructuring: three modes of learn- ing. In J. Cotton & R. Klatzky (Eds), Semantic factors in cognition (pp. 27–53). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
work_65rqqsw5njdgnob6puu3lltp7u	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_67w3ayyp25aqngtnuxq44lqf7q	----	Rule-based System.doc A Rule-Based System for Test Quality Improvement Gennaro Costagliola, Vittorio Fuccella Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Fisciano (SA), Italy. ABSTRACT To correctly evaluate learners’ knowledge, it is important to administer tests composed of good quality question items. By the term “quality” we intend the potential of an item in effectively discriminating between skilled and untrained students and in obtaining tutor’s desired difficulty level. This paper presents a rule- based e-testing system which assists tutors in obtaining better question items through subsequent test sessions. After each test session, the system automatically detects items’ quality and provides the tutors with advice about what to do with each of them: good items can be re-used for future tests; among items with lower performances, instead, some should be discarded, while some can be modified and then re-used. The proposed system has been experimented in a course at the University of Salerno. Keywords: e-Testing, Computer Aided Assessment, CAA, item, item quality, questions, eWorkbook, Item Response Theory, IRT, Item Analysis, online testing, multiple choice test. 1. INTRODUCTION E-testing, also known as Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA), is a sector of e-learning aimed at assessing learner’s knowledge through computers. Through e-testing, tests composed of several question types can be presented to the students in order to assess their knowledge. Multiple choice question type is frequently employed, since, among other advantages, a large number of tests based on it can be easily corrected automatically. The experience gained by educators and the results obtained through several experiments (Woodford & Bancroft, 2005) provide some guidelines for writing good multiple choice questions (items, in the sequel), such as: “use the right language”, “avoid a big number of unlikely distractors for an item”, etc. It is also possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the items, through the use of several statistical models, such as Item Analysis (IA, 2008) and Item Response theory (IRT). Both of them are based on the interpretation of statistical indicators calculated on test outcomes. The most important indicators are the difficulty indicator, which measures the difficulty of an item, and the discrimination indicator, which represents the information of how effectively an item discriminates between skilled and untrained students. More statistical indicators are related to the distractors (wrong options) of an item. A good quality item has a high discrimination potential and a difficulty level close to tutor’s desired one. Despite the availability of guidelines for writing good items and statistical models to analyze their quality, only a few tutors are aware of the guidelines and even fewer are used with statistics. The result is that the quality of the tests used for exams or admissions is sometimes poor and in some cases could be improved. The most common Web-based e-learning platforms, such as Moodle (Moodle, 2008), Blackboard (Blackboard, 2008), and Questionmark (Questionmark, 2008) evaluate item quality by generating and showing item statistics. Nevertheless, their interpretation is left to the tutors: these systems do not advise or help the tutor in improving items. In this paper we propose an approach and a system for improving items: we provide tutors with feedback on their quality and suggest them the opportune action to undertake for improving it. To elaborate, the approach consists of administering tests to learners through a suitable rule-based system. The system obtains item quality improvement by analyzing the test outcomes. After the analysis, the system provides the tutor with one of the following suggestions: • “Keep on using the item” in future test sessions, for good items; • “Discard the item”, for poor items; • “Modify the item”, for poor items whose defect is originated by a well-known cause. In this case, the system also provides the tutor with suggestions on how to modify the item. Though item quality can be improved after the first test session in which it is used, the system can be used for subsequent test sessions, obtaining further improvements. Rule-based systems are generally composed of an inferential engine, a knowledge-base and a user interface. Our system follows this model. The inferential engine works by exploiting fuzzy classification: the items are classified on the basis of the values of some parameters calculated on test outcomes. Fuzzy classification has been successfully employed in technological applications in several sectors, from weather forecast (Bradley et al.; 1982) to medical diagnosis (Exarchos et al.; 2007). In our system, it has been preferred over other frequently used classification methods, such as decision trees and Bayesian classifier due to the following reasons: • Knowledge availability. Most of the knowledge is already available, as witnessed by the presence of numerous theories and manuals on psychometrics. • Lack of data. Other types of classification based on data would require the availability of large data sets. Once they have been gathered, in such a way to have statistically significant classes to perform data analysis, such methods might be exploited. The knowledge-base of the system has been inferred from IA and other statistical models for the evaluation of the items. The system has been given a Web-based interface. Rather than developing it from scratch, we have preferred to integrate the system in an existing Web-based e-testing platform: eWorkbook (Costagliola et al.; 2007), developed at University of Salerno. An experiment on system’s performances has been carried out in a course at the University of Salerno. As shown in the experiment, we can obtain items which better discriminate between skilled and untrained students and better match the difficulty estimated by the tutor. The paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents a brief survey on fuzzy classification; section 3 describes the statistical models for evaluating the effectiveness of the items; the approach for item quality improvement is presented in section 4. In section 5, we describe the system: its architecture and its instantiation in the existing e-testing platform; section 6 presents an experiment and a discussion on its results; section 7 contains a comparison with work related to ours; lastly, several final remarks and a discussion on future work conclude the paper. 2. FUZZY CLASSIFICATION The approach presented in this paper employs a fuzzy classification method. Classification is one of the most widespread Data Mining techniques (Roiger & Geatz; 2004). It lies in grouping n entities of a given knowledge domain into m knowledge containers, often called classes, sections, categories, etc. To perform a classification, several attributes of the entities must be analyzed. These are called input attributes. The class in which the entity will be inserted is an output attribute. A good classification consists of classes with high internal cohesion and external separation. Classification differs from clustering. The difference lies in the final classes, which are predefined only for the former problem. In clustering, instead, the classes (clusters) are discovered during the process. For this reason, we say that classification is a supervised process. Classification has been employed in several fields for solving real problems, such as: • In medicine, for medical diagnosis; • In pattern discovery, for fraud detection. E.g., the FALCON system (Brachman et al.; 1996), created by the HNC Inc. is used for detecting possible transaction with false credit cards; • In economy and financing, for risk management, for classifying the credit risk of a person who has requested funds. Several methods can be used for classification. Some of them, such as decision trees, use machine learning for extracting knowledge from data. The most frequently used machine learning approaches divide data in two sets: the training set and the test set. The former is used to produce the knowledge, the latter to test the effectiveness of the approach. The decision tree lends itself to be used in classification, but it gives just one output categorical attribute. Furthermore, the decision tree produces particularly easy to explain results and can be suitable in the case of unknown data distribution. Nevertheless, it can be advisable to employ other methods, such as the Bayesian classifier, when all or most of the input attributes are numerical: the tree could have too many conditional tests to satisfy to be informative. When data are missing, and the knowledge is already available, a rule-based system is a suitable solution for classification. A rule-based systems is a system whose knowledge-base is expressed under the form of production rules. Rule-based systems have been employed in many applications for decision making. Such systems can also be used for classification. The production rules can be inferred directly from the expertise or obtained through machine learning methods. In general, the rules are in the following form: IF <antecedent conditions> THEN <consequent conditions> The antecedent conditions define the values or the value intervals for one or more input attributes. The consequent conditions define the values or the value intervals for one or more output attributes. In the case of classification, the consequent conditions determine if a given entity belongs to a class. In rule-based systems, it is often necessary to deal with uncertainty. To this aim, fuzzy logic is often employed, e.g. it has been used for economic performance analysis (Zhou et al.; 2005). Fuzzy logic is derived from fuzzy sets theory. Fuzzy sets were first introduced by Zadeh (1997), and have been applied in various fields, such as decision making and control (Bardossy & Dukstein; 1995). Fuzzy set theory deals with reasoning that is approximate rather than precisely deduced from classical predicate logic. A fuzzy set is characterized by a membership function which maps a value that might be a member of the set to a number between zero and one indicating its actual degree of membership. The triangular membership function is the most frequently used function and the most practical, but other shapes, continuous or discrete, are also used. A variable used in a fuzzy production rule is also called a linguistic variable and is associated to a linguistic value (term). Each linguistic value is associated to a fuzzy set. A fuzzy system is a set of fuzzy rules connecting fuzzy input and fuzzy output in the form of IF- THEN sentences. Once we have the rules and the fuzzy sets for defining the values of the linguistic variables, the fuzzy inference can be applied. The most commonly applied method is the 4-phases procedure introduced by Mamdani & Assilian (1999). The four steps are the following: • Fuzzyfication: conversion of the input values in the corresponding membership levels in each fuzzy set; • Inference: the membership levels are combined in order to obtain a degree of fulfillment for each rule; • Combination: combination of all the values obtained for the rules to obtain a unique fuzzy set; • Defuzzyfication: conversion of the fuzzy set obtained at the previous phase into a value. A fuzzy classifier is a function that at each entity associates a set of Boolean functions defining the possibility (Degree of Fulfillment, DoF briefly) that an instance belongs to the output classes. The fuzzy classifier produces a categorical value as final output. Often, the classification is performed by selecting the class for which the DoF is the highest. This method corresponds to the case of maximum method for combination and maximum method for defuzzyfication. 3. ITEM QUALITY: ITEM AND DISTRACTOR ANALYSIS This section describes the main statistical models on which the knowledge-base of our system is based. In particular, it focuses on IA, whose statistical indicators are used in our system’s rules. The tests administered through our system make use of multiple choice items for the assessment of learners’ knowledge. Those items are composed of a stem and a list of options. The stem is the text that states the question. The only correct answer is called the key, whilst the incorrect answers are called distractors (Woodford & Bancroft, 2005). As mentioned in the introduction, two main statistical models are available for evaluating item quality: IA and IRT. Although today IRT is the pre-dominant measurement model, IA is still frequently employed by psychometricians, test developers, and tutors for a number of reasons. First, concepts of IA are simpler than those of their IRT counterpart: even the tutors without a strong statistical background could easily interpret the results without going through a steep learning curve. Second, IA could be computed by many popular statistical software programs, including SAS, while IRT necessitates use of specialized software packages such as Bilog, Winsteps, Multilog, RUMM (Yu and Wong, 2003; Yu, 2005). One great advantage of IRT is the invariance of ability and item parameters: it is the cornerstone of IRT and the major distinction between IRT and IA (Hambleton & Swaminathan, 1985). One drawback, however, of IRT is that a big sample size is necessary for the estimation of parameters. Nevertheless, empirical studies, examining and/or comparing the invariance characteristics of item statistics from the two measurement frameworks, have observed that it is difficult to find a great invariance or any other obvious advantage in the IRT based item indicators (Stage, 1999). For our study, IA has been preferred over IRT due to the following main reasons: it needs a smaller sample size for obtaining statistically significant indicators; it is easier to use IA indicators to compose rule conditions. The following statistical indicators are available from IA and other models, such as distractor analysis: • difficulty: a real number between 0 and 1 which expresses a measure of the difficulty of the item, intended as the proportion of learners who get the item correct. • discrimination: a real number between -1 and 1 which expresses a measure of how well the item discriminates between good and bad learners. Discrimination is calculated as the point biserial correlation coefficient between the score obtained on the item and the total score obtained on the test. The point biserial is a measure of association between a continuous variable (e.g. the score on the test) and a binary variable (e.g. the score on a multiple choice item). • frequency(i): a real number between 0 and 1 which expresses the frequency of the i-th option of the item. Its value is calculated as the percentage of learners who choose the i-th option. • discrimination(i): a real number between -1 and 1 which expresses the discrimination of the i-th option. Its value is calculated as the point biserial correlation coefficient between the result obtained by the learner on the whole test and a dichotomous variable that says whether the i-th option was chosen (yes=1, no=0) by the learner or not. • abstained_freq: a real number between 0 and 1 which expresses the frequency of the abstention (no answers given) on the item. Its value is calculated as the percentage of learners who did not give any answer to the item, where allowed. • abstained_discr: a real number between -1 and 1 which expresses the discrimination of the abstention on the item. Its value is calculated as the point biserial correlation coefficient between the result obtained by the learner on the whole test and a dichotomous variable that says whether the learner refrained or not (yes=1, no=0) on the item. Discrimination and difficulty are the most important indicators. They can be used for both determining item quality and choosing advice for tutors. As experts suggest (Massey, 2007), a good value for discrimination is about 0.5. A positive value lower than 0.2 indicates that the item does not discriminate well. This can be due to several reasons, including: the question does not assess learners on the desired knowledge; the stem or the options are badly/ambiguously expressed; etc. It is usually difficult to understand what is wrong with these items and more difficult to provide a suggestion to improve them, so, if the tutor cannot understand the problem her(him)self, the suggestion is to discard the item. A negative value for discrimination, especially if joined with a positive value for the discrimination of a distractor, is a sign of a possible mistake in choosing the key (a data entry error occurred). In this case it is easy to recover the item by changing the key. If difficulty is too high (>0.85) or too low (<0.15), there is the possibility that the item does not correctly evaluate the learners on the desired knowledge or subject. This is particularly true when such values for difficulty are sought together with medium-low values for discrimination. Furthermore, our system allows the tutor to define the foreseen difficulty for an item. In a test, in order to better assess a heterogeneous class with different levels of knowledge, it is important to balance the difficulty of the items: for example, in the preparation of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP, 2007), "easy" and "difficult" items are used in every form to balance the difficulty level of the items. Having a precise estimation of item’s difficulty allows the tutor to correctly assign it to a test section on the basis of its difficulty, when composing tests. Thus, the closer a tutor’s estimation of item difficulty is to the actual calculated difficulty for that item, the more reliable that item is considered to be. When difficulty is too high or underestimated, this can be due to the presence of a distractor (noticed for its high frequency) which is too plausible (it tends to mislead a lot of students, even skilled ones). Removing or substituting that distractor can help in obtaining a better item. Sometimes, the item has its intrinsic difficulty and it can be difficult to adjust it, so the suggestion can be to modify the tutor’s estimation. As for distractors, they can contribute to form a good item when they are selected by a significant number of students. When the frequency of the distractor is too high, there could be an ambiguity in the formulation of the stem or of the distractor. A good indicator of distractors’ quality is their discrimination, which should be negative, denoting that the distractor was selected by untrained students. In conclusion, a good distractor is the one which is selected by a small but significant number of untrained students. High abstention is always a symptom of high difficulty for the item. When it is accompanied by a high (not negative or next to 0) value for its discrimination and a low value for item discrimination, it can tell that the question has a bad quality and it is difficult to improve it. 4. THE APPROACH The approach consists of administering tests to the learners through a suitable e-testing system. On the basis of test outcomes, the system evaluates the items and suggests the tutor the most suitable action to undertake on each of them. This is possible after a test has been administered to a statistically significant number of learners. In general, the quality improvement is obtained in two ways: • through the increment of item discrimination. This objective is pursued by both eliminating and opportunely modifying items with low discrimination. • by having the tutor’s estimation of the difficulty closer to the calculated difficulty for the item. In the most desirable cases (when possible), the system suggests how to modify the item. Otherwise, the estimation must be modified. Though item quality can be improved after the first test session in which it is used, the items can be evaluated by the system through subsequent test sessions, following the lifecycle shown in Figure 1. The figure shows a UML activity diagram, in which the role of the tutor and the role of the system are specified in two different swimlines. Figure 1. Item Lifecycle The item starts its lifecycle when it is created by the tutor. Then, the tutor selects the item for a test session. The test is administered to the learners through the system in a test. At the end of the session, the system stores learners’ outcomes. Such outcomes are used to calculate statistical indicators, which are used in the production rules for item evaluation. The output of the evaluation is the state of the item, whose value is expressed through a traffic light. Later on, according to the system output, the tutor decides the destiny of the item as follows: • State = Green : the item has good performances and can be re-used for future test sessions. • State = Red: the item has bad performances and should be discarded. • State = Yellow: the item has bad performances, but its quality can be improved. The system suggests how. The item is modified by the tutor and can be re-used for future test sessions. It is worth noting that the system just suggests the tutor the most suitable action. Figure 1 shows the case in which the tutor follows the suggestion of the system. Nevertheless, the tutor can choose not to follow the system’s suggestion if s/he thinks it is opportune. 5. THE SYSTEM Typically, rule-based systems are composed of an inferential engine, a knowledge-base and a user interface (Momoh et al.; 2000). Our system follows this model. The knowledge-base has been mostly inferred by translating into rules the verbal knowledge presented in section 3. Since such knowledge does not completely cover all of the aspects considered in our system, it has been integrated with knowledge extracted from data. The inferential engine works by performing a classification of the items. Several classes of items have been identified, and each class is associated to a production rule. Fuzzy sets have been used in order to cope with linguistic uncertainty contained in the rules: sources of uncertainty in our system are associated to both the conditions in the antecedents of the rules and to the combination of the rules themselves. The DoF of a rule tells the membership of the item to the corresponding class. The classification is performed by selecting the class for which the DoF is the highest. This model fits well our question item classification problem, since, in most cases (except for Class 1, see Table 3), the belonging to a class indicates the presence of a defect affecting the item. By choosing to classify the item to the class to which the item belongs with the maximum degree, a decision is taken according to the heaviest problem affecting the item. The system has been equipped with a Web-based user interface. Rather than developing it from scratch, we have preferred to integrate the system in an existing Web-based e-testing platform. To elaborate, the system has been implemented as a Java Object Oriented framework, called Item Quality Framework, which can be instantiated in any Java-based e-testing platform. Our choice is fallen on eWorkbook, already in use at our faculty. The Knowledge-Base This section describes the process for obtaining the fuzzy production rules from the knowledge. As already pointed out, the rules have been mostly inferred from the verbal knowledge presented in section 3 and integrated with knowledge extracted from data. The integration has only been necessary for modeling a few membership functions. Variables and Fuzzyfication The set of variables used are reported, together with an explanation of their meaning and the set of possible values they can assume (terms), in Table 1. These variables are directly chosen from the statistical indicators presented in section 3 or derived from them. The discrimination and difficulty variables are the same indicators for item discrimination and difficulty defined in section 3. The same discourse is valid for the variables related to the abstention, abst_frequency and abst_discrimination. difficulty_gap is a variable representing the error in tutor’s estimation of item difficulty: through the system interface, the tutor can assign one out of three difficulty levels to an item (easy = 0.3; medium = 0.5; difficult = 0.7). difficulty_gap is calculated as the difference between the tutor estimation and the actual difficulty calculated by the system. Three variables representing the frequency of the distractors for an item have been considered: max_distr_freq, min_distr_freq, distr_freq. Their value is not an absolute frequency, but relative to the frequency of the other distractors: it is obtained by dividing the absolute frequency by the mean frequency of the distractors of the item. In the case of items with five options, as our system has been tested, their value is a real number varying from 0 to 4. Table 1. Variables and Terms Variable Explanation Terms discrimination Item’s discrimination (see sec. 3) Negative, low, high difficulty Item’s difficulty (see sec. 3) Very_low, medium, very_high difficulty_gap The difference between the tutor’s estimation of item’s difficulty and the difficulty calculated by the system Underestimated, correct, overestimated max_distr_discr The maximum discrimination for the distractors of an item Negative, positive max_distr_freq The maximum (relative) frequency for the distractors of an item. Low, high min_distr_freq The minimum (relative) frequency for the distractors of an item Low, high distr_freq The (relative) frequency of the distractor with maximum discrimination for an item Low, high abst_frequency The frequency of the abstentions for an item Low, high abst_discrimina tion The discrimination of the abstentions for an item Negative, positive Membership Functions As for the membership functions of fuzzy sets associated to each term, triangular and trapezoidal shapes have been used. Most of the values for the bases and the peaks have been established using the expertise. Only for some variables, the membership functions have been defined on an experimental basis. While we already had clear ideas on how to define most of them, we did not have enough information from the knowledge on how to model membership functions for the variables related to abstention (abst_frequency and abst_discrimination). A calibration phase was required in order to refine the values for the bases and peaks of their membership functions. As a calibration set, test results from the Science Faculty Admission Test of the 2006 year were used. The calibration set was composed of 64 items with 5 options each. For each item, about one thousand records (students answers) were available, even if only a smaller random sample was considered. Test items and their results were inspected by a human expert who identified items which should have been discarded due to low discrimination and anomalous values for the variables related to abstention. We have found 5 items satisfying the conditions above: the mean values for abst_discrimination and abst_frequency were, respectively, 0.12 and 0.39, as shown in Table 2. Due to the limited size of the calibration set, the simple method of choosing the peaks of the functions at the mean value, as shown in (Bardossy & Duckstein; 1995), has been used. When more data will be available, a more sophisticated method will be used for the definition of membership functions, such as the one proposed in (Civanlar & Trussel; 1986). Charts for the membership functions are shown in Figure 2. Table 2. Anomalous values forvariables related to abstention. Question Id abst_discrimination abst_frequency 23 0.03 0.26 29 0.10 0.53 33 0.14 0.42 34 0.18 0.32 61 0.17 0.42 Mean 0.12 0.39 Rules Figure 2. Membership Functions Table 3. Rules From the verbal description of the knowledge presented in section 3, the rules summarized in Table 3 have been inferred. The first three columns in the table contain, respectively, the class of the item, the rule used for classification and the item state. For items whose state is yellow, the fourth column contains the problem affecting the item and the suggestion to improve its quality. Conditions in the rules are connected using AND and OR logic operators. The commonly-used min-max inference method has been used to establish the degree of fulfillment of the rules. All the rules were given the default weight (1.0), except for the first one (0.9). By modifying the weight of the first rule, we can tune the sensitivity of the system: the lower this value, the higher the probability that anomalies will be detected in the items. Some suggestions in the last column advise to perform an operation on a distractor. The distractor to modify or eliminate (in case of rules 4, 7 and 10) or to select as correct answer (rule 9) is signaled by the system. An output variable x has been added to the system to keep the identifier of the distractor. It is worth noting that the most important IA statistical indicators have been employed more frequently than other indicators. For example, the discrimination, which is an good indicator for the overall quality of an item, is present in 8 rules out of 10, while a more specific indicator, such as distractor discrimination has only been employed in 2 rules. The Inferential Engine The inferential engine performs a process composed of the following steps: 1. Obtaining input data from the e-testing platform; 2. Construction of the item data matrix; 3. Item classification; 4. Giving output to the e-testing platform. Class Rule State Problem and Suggestion 1 discrimination IS high AND abst_discrimination IS negative WITH 0.9 Green / 2 discrimination IS low AND abst_frequency IS high AND abst_discrimination IS positive Red / 3 difficulty IS very_low AND discrimination IS low Red / 4 difficulty IS very_high AND discrimination IS low AND max_distr_freq IS high Yellow Item too difficult due to a too plausible distractor, delete or substitute distractor x. 5 difficulty_gap IS overestimated AND discrimination IS low Yellow Item difficulty overestimated, avoid too plausible distractors and too obvious answers. 6 difficulty_gap IS overestimated AND discrimination IS NOT low Yellow Item difficulty overestimated, modify the estimated difficulty. 7 difficulty_gap IS underestimated AND max_distr_freq IS high Yellow Item difficulty underestimated due to a too plausible distractor, delete or substitute distractor x. 8 difficulty_gap IS underestimated AND max_distr_freq IS NOT high Yellow Item difficulty underestimated, modify the estimated difficulty. 9 max_distr_discr IS positive AND discrimination IS negative Yellow Wrong key (data entry error), select option x as the correct answer. 10 discrimination IS high AND max_distr_discr IS positive AND distr_freq IS NOT low Yellow Too plausible distractor, delete or substitute distractor x. In step 1, data are obtained from the e-testing platform in which the Item Quality Framework is instantiated. This operation required the development of a wrapper to access the e-testing platform database. The input data obtained at the previous step, are used in step 2 for the construction of the item data matrix which reports, for each item, the value of the following attributes: • N: number of options; • key: the index of the right option; • discrimination: item discrimination; • difficulty: item difficulty; • tutor_difficulty: tutor’s estimation for item difficulty; • discrimination (1); … ; discrimination(N): N columns containing the discrimination of each option. • difficulty (1); … ; difficulty(N): N columns containing the difficulty of each option; • abstained_discr: discrimination of the abstention on the item; • abstained_freq: frequency of the abstention on the item. Item classification is performed, at step 3, by firing the rules. Before the rules can be fired, their variables must be assigned to values directly taken from the item data matrix (e.g. discrimination, difficulty, etc.) or derived from them (e.g. difficulty_gap, max_distr_freq, etc.). Then, the rules are fired and a new matrix containing the DoF for each item and for each class is obtained. As stated before, the item is classified in the class with the maximum DoF. Lastly, at step 4, the output with item state, problem and suggestion, is passed to the e-testing platform. System Implementation and Interface The system was implemented in two phases: 1. Development of the Item Quality Framework; 2. Its instantiation in an existing Web-based e-testing platform, called eWorkbook. The Item Quality Framework The system has been implemented as a Java Object Oriented framework. In this way, it would have been easily integrated in any e-testing java-based platform. The Item Quality Framework offers the following functionalities: • Implements the inferential engine; • Provides an Application Programming Interface (API) for both the construction of the item data matrix and the access to output data. For the development of the inferential engine, a free java library implementing a complete Fuzzy inference system, called jFuzzyLogic (jFuzzyLogic, 2008), has been used. The system variables, fuzzyfication, inference methods and the rules have been defined using Fuzzy Control Language (FCL, 1997) , supported by the jFuzzyLogic library. The advantage of this approach, compared to a hard-coded solution, is that membership functions and rules can be simply changed by editing a configuration file, thus avoiding to build the system again. Data can be imported from various sources and exported to several formats, such as spreadsheets or relational databases. The data matrix and the results can be saved in persistent tables, in order to avoid to perform calculations every time they must be visualized. The API is composed of two different Java classes, which allow to perform input and output to the Inferential Engine, respectively. The former contains methods for adding rows to the item data matrix. The latter contains methods for obtaining the state of an item (green, yellow, red) and, in case of yellow state, the suggestion for improving the item quality. It is worth noting that suggestions can be internationalized, that is, they can easily be translated into any language by editing a text file. Instantiation in eWorkbook Figure 3. eWorkbook Architecture (after the instantiation of the Item Quality Framework) eWorkbook is a Web-based e-testing platform that can be used for evaluating learner’s knowledge by creating (the tutor) and taking (the learner) on-line tests based on multiple choice question type. The questions are kept in a hierarchical repository. The tests are composed of one or more sections. There are two kinds of sections: static and dynamic. The difference between them is in the way they allow question selection: for a static section, the questions are chosen by the tutor. For a dynamic section, some selection parameters must be specified, such as the difficulty, leaving the platform to choose the questions randomly whenever a learner takes a test. In this way, it is possible with eWorkbook to make a test with banks of items of different difficulties, thus balancing test difficulty, in order to better assess a heterogeneous set of students. As shown in Figure 3, eWorkbook has a layered architecture. The Jakarta Struts framework (Struts, 2008) has been used to support the Model 2 design paradigm, a variation of the classic Model View Controller (MVC) approach. In our design choice, Struts works with JSP, for the View, while it interacts with Hibernate (Hibernate, 2008), a powerful framework for object/relational persistence and query service for Java, for the Model. The application is fully accessible with a Web browser. No browser plug-in installations are needed, since its pages are composed of standard HTML and ECMAScript (EcmaScript, 2008) code. The Web browser interacts with the Struts Servlet, at the Controller Layer, that processes the request and dispatches it to the Action Class, responsible for serving it, according to the predefined configuration. It is worth noting that the Struts Servlet uses the JSP pages to implement the user interfaces. The Action Classes interact with the modules of the Business Layer, responsible for the logic of the application. At this layer, the functionalities of the system are implemented in four main sub-systems: • User Management Subsystem (UMS), responsible for user management. In particular, it provides insert, update and delete facilities. • Question Management Subsystem (QMS), which manages eWorkbook’s question repository and controls access to it. • Test Management Subsystem (TMS), which manages eWorkbook’s test repository. • Course Management Subsystem (CMS), responsible for course management. In particular, it allows the insertion, update and deletion of a course. The Business Layer accesses to the Data Layer, implemented through a Relational Data Base Management System (RDBMS), to persist the data across the functionalities provided by Hibernate framework. The integration of the new functionalities in eWorkbook has required the development and integration in the platform of new modules at all the layers. In particular, a new sub-system, called Item Quality Sub- System (IQS), responsible for instantiating the framework and providing input, output and visualization functionalities, has been added at the Business Layer. Further minor modules have been added at the other layers: input of data is performed by a wrapper module that reads data from eWorkbook’s database and calls the API to fill the data matrix of the framework; the interface for browsing the item repository in eWorkbook has been modified in order to show item’s performances (difficulty and discrimination) and state (green, yellow or red). In this way, defective items are immediately visible to the tutor, who can undertake the opportune actions (delete or modify). A screenshot of the item report is shown in figure 4a. Furthermore, the platform has been given a versioning functionality: once an item is modified, a newer version of it is generated, keeping the old data in the question repository. Through this functionality, the tutor can analyze the entire lifecycle of an item, thus having a feedback on the trend of statistical indicators over time. In this way he/she can verify that the changes he/she made to the items positively affected their quality. Figure 4b shows the chart of an item improved across two sessions of tests. The improvement is visible both from the increase in the item discrimination (the green line), and in the convergence of the calculated difficulty with the tutor’s estimation of the difficulty (the continuous and dashed red lines, respectively). Figure 4. eWorkbook Interface 6. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS We experimented the system by using it across two test sessions in a university course, and measuring the overall improvement of the items in terms of discrimination capacity and matching to the tutor’s desired difficulty. A database of 50 items was arranged for the experiment. In the first session, an on-line test, containing a set of 25 randomly chosen items, was administered to 60 students. After, items were inspected through the system interface in order to check those to substitute or modify. Once the substitutions and modifications were performed, the modified test was administered to 60 other students. Figure 7a shows a table, exported in a spreadsheet, containing a report of the items presented in the first test session and their performances. The item to eliminate are highlighted in red, while those to modify are highlighted in yellow. According to the system analysis, 5 out of 25 items must be discarded, while 4 of them must be modified. Actually, among the items to modify, for two of them (those with id 1-F-4 and 1-E-1) the difficulty was underestimated due to a distractor that was too plausible (class 7), whose text was opportunely modified. In another case (1-B-16), the difficulty was different from that estimated by the tutor, due to the intrinsic difficulty of the item (class 8). The action undertaken was to adjust the tutor’s estimation of the difficulty. Lastly, the item with id 1-F-1, with a negative discrimination, presented a suspect error in the choice of the key (class 9). To give the reader a more precise idea, two modified items (opportunely translated from Italian) have been reported in Figure 5 and Figure 6. In item 1-F-4 (Figure 5a), a distractor (option D) was sought to be “too plausible”. Since the distractor was chosen by too many learners (26 out of 60 = 0.43%), the item was much more difficult (difficulty = 0.79) than expected (medium = 0.5). The tutor modified the distractor by changing the text from “Refreshes the content of the page http://www.expedia.it/info.htm in 20 seconds” to “Refreshes 20 times the content of the page http://www.expedia.it/info.htm” (Figure 5b). Such a modification significantly decreased the distractor plausibility, thus obtaining a difficulty level (0.43) for the item closer to the desired one, in the second session. Figure 5. The versions of item 1-F-4 used for the first (a) and the second (b) test session. By inspecting item 1-F-1 (Figure 6a), the tutor verified that the chosen key was not correct, even though the distractor labeled as correct by the system was not the right answer: simply, the item did not have any correct answer. The text of the key was modified to provide the right answer to the stem (Figure 6b). Figure 6. The versions of item 1-F-1 used for the first (a) and the second (b) test session. A new test was prepared, containing the same items, except for the 5 discarded ones, substituted by 5 unused items, and for the 4 modified ones, which were substituted by newer versions. A new set of sixty students participated in this test. In the analysis of test outcomes, our attention was more focused on the eventual improvement obtained than on the discovery of new defective items. Figure 7. Results after test sessions Figure 7b shows the report of the second test session. To measure the overall improvement of the new test, compared to the previous one, the following parameters were calculated for each of the two tests: • the average discrimination of the items; • the average of the differences |tutor_difficulty – difficulty| for the items of the tests; As for parameter 1, we have observed an improvement from a value of 0.375, obtained in the first session, to a value of 0.466, obtained in the second session. As for parameter 2, we had a decrement in the mean difference between the difficulty estimated by the tutor and the one calculated by the system, passing from a value of 0.19 to 0.157 across the two sessions. It is worth noting that, in our experiment, the tests have been administered to learners enrolled to the same university course, even if across different exam sessions. The results can be considered valid with respect to the above requirement. Due to the dependency of IA results on the learners’ ability, there is no warranty that the system behaves in the expected way when radically changing the context between different sessions. 7. RELATED WORK Several different applications supporting e-testing, such as the most common Web-based e-learning platforms, such as Moodle, Blackboard, and Questionmark, evaluate item quality by generating and showing item statistics. Nevertheless, in most cases, the interpretation of their results is left to the tutors: these systems do not advise or help the tutor in improving items. Several commercial stand-alone applications are available for improving test quality through IA (Integrity, 2008; Berk & Griesemer, 1976; Lertap, 2008) or IRT (RASCAL, 2008; Gierl & Ackerman, 1996). These can import test data from e-testing systems through a text file. Some of them are Web-based applications, such as Integrity. It can perform a detailed test analysis which also identifies problem areas and includes relevant recommendations for addressing them. Differently from our system, parameters are not combined in rules: a recommendation is given when for a given parameter an anomalous value is sought. Some other systems run under specific platforms (OS or spreadsheets). A program running under MS Windows is ITEMAN (Berk & Griesemer, 1976). ITEMAN analyzes data files (ASCII format) of test item responses produced by optical mark readers (scanners) or by manual data entry to compute conventional item analysis statistics. ITEMAN offers a multiple-keying option that allows items to have more than one correct answer (e.g., for a poorly-written item), and will flag those answers which appear to function better than the keyed answer. Our system does something similar by firing rule 9. An application running in a spreadsheet is Lertap, an Excel-based classical item and test analysis program. A nice feature of this program is the so called Visual Item Analysis, suggesting an ocular approach to item analysis, and exemplifying some of the graphics made by Lertap. A model for presenting test statistics, analysis, and to collect students’ learning behaviors for generating analysis result and feedback to tutors is described in (Hsieh et al., 2003). In other approaches, the qualitative characteristics of the items are considered for different aims: IRT has been applied in some systems (Ho & Yen, 2005) and experiments (Chen et al., 2004; Sun, 2000) to select the most appropriate items for examinees based on individual ability. In (Chen et al., 2004), the fuzzy sets theory is combined with the original IRT to model uncertainly learning response. The result of this combination is called Fuzzy Item Response Theory. Winters et al. (2005), mining the data of their educational institutions, found some scores that could be analyzed with the purpose of identifying those items that were particularly good or particularly bad, giving instructors feedback that will hopefully train them to ask better questions more consistently. A work closely related to ours is presented in (Hung et al., 2004). It proposes an e-testing system, where rules can detect defective items, which are signaled using traffic lights. It proposes an analysis model based on IA. Statistics are calculated by the system both on the items and on the whole test. Unfortunately, the four rules on which the system is based seem to be insufficient to cover all of the possible defects which can affect an item. Moreover, these rules are not inferred from consolidated statistical models and use crisp values (i.e., one of them, states that an option must be discarded if its frequency is 0, independently from the size of the sample). Furthermore, it does not contain any experiment which demonstrates the effectiveness of the system in improving assessment. Nevertheless, this work has given us many ideas, and our work can be considered a continuation of it. To elaborate, our system improves the above cited one in the following aspects: • it broadens and improves the rules used to check the items; • it gives advice to tutors to improve item quality; • it manages rules uncertainty (using fuzzy logic); • it has been evaluated in an experiment. Lastly, most of the scientific literature about e-testing and structured tests focuses on item generation with automatic (Mitkov & Ha, 2003; Brown et al., 2005) or semi-automatic (Wang et al., 2007; Hoshino & Nakagawa, 2007; Chen et al., 2006) processes based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, performed on instructional documents in an electronic format. The automatic systems generate the items, while the semi-automatic ones assist the user in their generation. In general, the human intervention is anyhow necessary for verifying the good sense of the items before using them in a test. Only in a few cases, the quality of the generated items is verified through statistical model such as IA or IRT. In most cases they are inspected and eventually modified by the tutor. The evaluation of the whole system is performed by checking the percentage of the reliable items out of the number of generated ones. In conclusion, we believe that tools that automatically generate items or assist the tutor in their creation, as those described before, can be very useful, since they permit to reduce the times of the onerous item construction phase. Nevertheless, they are still far from offering optimal performances and many of the analyzed systems are tailored for a specific educational subject, mostly foreign language teaching. Our approach is more general and can be applied to any subject. Furthermore, many tutors will keep on using their own items and our system is still applicable to generated items, for further improving their quality. Our system, compared to automatic or semi-automatic ones, requires a longer time for item construction, but allows us to obtain better quality items on the following aspects: • a better discrimination capacity; • evaluation of the learners on tutor’s desired knowledge; • a difficulty level closer to tutor’s desired one. 8. CONCLUSION In this paper we have presented a rule-based system, capable of improving item quality. Our system’s knowledge-base is mostly taken from several statistical models for item evaluation and partly extracted from data. The system detects anomalies on the items and gives tutors advise for their improvement. Obviously, the system can only detect defects which are visible by analyzing results of item and distractor analysis. The strength of our system is in the possibility for all the tutors, and not only experts of assessment or statistics, to improve test quality, by discarding or, when possible, by modifying defective items. An initial experiment carried out at the University of Salerno has produced encouraging results, showing that the system can effectively help the tutors to obtain items which better discriminate between skilled and untrained students and better match the difficulty estimated by the tutor. More accurate experiments, involving a larger set of items and students, are necessary to better measure the system capabilities. Our system performs a classification of items, carried out by evaluating fuzzy rules. At present, we are collecting data on test outcomes. 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work_6ae7sx5tuvcuzbdfo4qvghqn54	----	Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 33 Designing Ensemble Based Security Framework for Secure M-Learning System in Malaysian Higher Learning Institution Sheila Mahalingam Technical University of Malaysia, Melaka, MALAYSIA sheilamahalingam@yahoo.com Abstract Mobile Learning has a potential to improve efficiency in the education sector and expand educational opportunities to underserved communities in remote areas. However there are a multitude of challenges faced when introducing and implementing m-learning. It is possible that within 10 to 20 years there will be one global mobile campus. Very much unfocused issues are security management even though statistically proven that threats are increasing each day on mobile application and ensemble devices. This has been seriously discussed in many research that security need to bring in to the lime light of each complex and larger systems using variety of mobile devices that interconnected each other via internet or wireless environment. In order to provide a secure guideline for m-learning platform, an ensemble based security framework for mobile learning is designed and improved. One of the major benefits in the framework is it integrates the security with dependability to provide trustworthiness in learner and providers perspective. Besides that in also encompasses the suggested secure engineering model to be used in developing secure m-learning system which mapped with countermeasures and solutions to be used involving common threats and vulnerabilities in ensemble based m-learning. Mahalingam, S. (2012). Designing Ensemble Based Security Framework for Secure M-Learning System in Malaysian Higher Learning Institution. Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology, 12(3), pp. 33-41. Introduction At present , higher learning institution in global and Malaysia has well adopt the e-learning concept and now the new revolution in learning technologies has given a big bang towards rapid growth in mobile learning (m- learning) environment . In near future wireless and mobile application has become a very famous technology among the 21st century generation. M-learning capabilities will continue to expand with the introduction of smaller, more sophisticated and powerful gadgets capable of delivering data in a variety of format anywhere, at any time. As mentioned by (Schooler, Jelinek, & Dahle, 2010) developing countries continue to explore the mobile learning models there is need to explore the suitability of mobile technologies with a secure platform for the learner support in the mobile learning systems. In recent Asia Pacific Future Gov Online , Educational IT article by (Gou, 2011) stated University Sains Malaysia has created a mobile learning research team and as a future plan of the research team is to propose to the Ministry of Higher Education ; to extend the M-learning methodology to all universities as the cost is much less compared to the conventional methods. (“SEAMO RIHED ANNUAL REPORT,” 2007)Report of the 2nd Meeting of Director General/ Secretary General/ Commissioner of Higher Education in Southeast Asia hosted by Malaysia has put focus on several areas, which one of it is E-Learning and Mobile Education Programme. The meeting have notified that importance of lifelong learning programmes in the region especially open learning activities such as e-learning and m-learning. They have requested for a paper to be presented in collaborative efforts by Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia on M- Learning that address the possibility in developing general platform in delivering methods. Furthermore m-learning and security are among the expected services in ubiquitous computing. Global user expectation and initiative taken in wireless and mobile technologies is towards Ubiquitous computing. (Bhd, 2008)Presented one of Malaysian Government initiatives is The MyICMS886 strategy which has focused to three areas: First is the Services include high speed broadband, 3G & Beyond, Mobile TV, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting and etc. Second is Infrastructure contributes to Multiservice Convergence Networks, 3G Cellular Network, Information and Security Network and etc. Third is Growth which points out areas in ICT and Education Hub, Communication Devices, embedded component and device. Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 34 Another major issue in m-learning system is implementation of secure and trusted system. This is an essential requirement in m-learning applications and systems where sharing information is needed. The system should prevent data losses or corruption due to network disconnection and mobile failures. At present security tools are adequate for securing systems on small scale but most security breaches are caused by faulty and ad-hoc software. To rely on an m-learning system, learners need to know to what extent it can be trusted. Providers of M-learning need a guided platform to introduce and implement a secure mobile learning system in their organization. To overcome the drawbacks associated with m-learning system and ensemble computing, it is essential that m-learning system must have an integrated security framework, which offers different security techniques to provide an overall secure system. As a solution to be a successful provider and meet universities business management aim, m-learning should be highly secured and implemented in a trusted environment for the learners. In line with this issue there is an urgent need for framework that can be used to analyze and evaluate trustworthiness of m-learning system where both security and dependability can be measured. According to the project report by Steering Committee for European Security & Dependability Task Force under the Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006 in the Issue 1.0 (Technologies et al, 2010) mentioned that as size and complexity of this digital world grow, so too does our dependency on it for all aspects of personal and public, social and economic activity. There is a greater need to concentrate attention and effort on the security and dependability aspect as well as the design and implementation of components and system together with their interrelationships. Literature Review Since mobile learning is a new paradigm of a new networking structure with mobile and wireless technology,according to (Alaysia, 2010) the confusion that happened by using the unnecessary functions on the current e-learning system can be solve by implementing learning processes using mobile devices. Mobile applications and devices are likewise booming and becoming the fastest growing consumer technology. However mobile applications security is severely lacking and the security issues are present on all major platforms. There is a steady growth in the number of application infected with malware with the rise of 80 to 400 applications from January to June 2011 reported by (“Lookout Mobile Security,” 2011) and also has stated in the report that worldwide unit sales of mobile devices expected to increase from 300 million in 2010 to 650 million on 2012 . One of the top five threats grown substantially in year 2011 is mobile threat reported in (“Malware Report,” 2012) More than 50 third-party applications on Google’s Android Marketplace were infected with Trojan that was designed to gain administrative privileges over personal phone without user’s permission. Mobile threats are evolving quickly and more sophisticated and it’s important to change their existing security or software development models. The existing technical security measures such as firewalls, antivirus, and encryption are uncommon on latest mobile devices and mobile operating systems. Therefore an advance secure software engineering design is needed to develop secure mobile applications and to gain learners trust in using the mobile application in the m-learning platform. In this paper key security problems are identified along with the severity involved as barrier and possible solutions while implementing ensemble computing based m-learning technology are explained. M – learning method by ensemble computing helps to make m-learning solutions possible for mobile phones and other similar mobile devices to be integrated in a secured and reliable environment. Learners and m- learning provider are very conscious on the security features of the technology when it comes to ensemble. (Schooler et al, 2010) comprehensively discussed examples of ensemble found in health care information system. He stated an ensemble is based on body worn devices such as a watch or a cell phone, in combination with environmental monitors in the home, can provide care givers with data they need. As (Bill, 2004) aptly phased it, ”ensemble computing is dynamically coordinated collections of computers, which include both mobile and infrastructure components integrating the techniques for programming and orchestrating their applications.”Integration within the wired and wireless network also plays a main role in m-learning platform. There is a need to examine the challenges in mobile technologies and ensemble computing in areas such as manageability, usability, power constraint, accessibility, security standards and privacy issues, new programming models and ad hoc applications and wireless limitation. Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 35 To put in briefly, m-learning learning system face danger experience associates to cyber and physical damage that affect to vulnerable points in the learning platform. There are method in protecting this system by technological solution according to C.I.A triad; availability, confidentiality and integrity. Hence, the m-learning provider needs to think over in part of cost estimated for each asset involved and forecast for potential waste in each vulnerability point in order to increase the level of risk in each point to define a secure mobile learning environment. Related Work In order to design, prepare and implement a mobile learning system platform , elements and characteristics of mobile learning are organized in an appropriate framework in advance to get an efficient result in implementing m-learning successfully. Therefore a study towards the related work has been divided into two categories: environmental influences and secure system model integrated with security and dependability. Environmental Influences (Ozdamli & Cavus, 2011) stated basic elements of a complete mobile learning are learner, teachers, environment, content and assessment. The researcher has mentioned “environment must be design properly to obtain positive learning experiences.” The environment should be design by considering the available ensemble devices such as mobile phones, laptops and other handheld mobile tools. Researchers have argued about creating a group network for collaborative framework to improve learning in both awareness content and environment perspective(Chen et al, 2008). The research effort has indicated that handheld devices (ensemble devices) have a positive impact on learning because of it easy operating and use characteristic. However (Vassiljev, 2010) stated current security community with desired protective measures does not fit fell in the learning environment. (Jonssonet al, 2000) Classified environmental influence on intrusion detection which is divided into three areas (Threat Reduction, Boundary Protection and Recovery) Together he has proposed protection mechanism for these three areas (prevention protection-threat reduction, boundary protection, and internal protection-recovery). These findings effort comes from the hypothesis of the research, IT system that are complex must adopt the biological paradigm where continuous protection process is needed in every level and must be adaptive. Hence environmental influences need to be narrowed down to m-learning attack and threats taxonomy. (Wiesauer & Sametinger, 2007) has proposed taxonomy based on attack patterns. Researchers has discussed about planning a secure system, one need to identify which attack the system has to resist and which security requirement the system has to full fill. Furthermore as result from the previous research a taxonomy based on vulnerabilities and threats identified in m-learning , mobile technologies and ensemble devices , enables the secure model in m-learning to select the appropriate countermeasures and solution towards the threats and vulnerabilities identified. Security and Dependability There are a few recent research effort has been done to integrate dependability and security. Since that time, investigators from several studies have used and indentified the importance of this integration in several areas. (Hu et al, 2011) contributed their research in the area of service oriented architecture (SOA) functionality layer for the basic fault building blocks. They have used feedback control system which controls the behaviour and expended dependability and security tree, where faults classes has been categorized to several types of faults and mapped to three main attributes of security (availability, integrity and confidentiality) which are interrelated to dependability and non-repudiation as an independent attribute. (Meadows, 1995) Presented the same results, she identified different ways to handle faults which is the diversion from security paradigm to dependability paradigm by discussing the impacts of extending security paradigm which covers the full options of dependability. As a result she have developed and outlined of fault model for security by placing both fault tolerance and fault forecast in computer security. This model is defined as an approach to design dependable system. Continuous research has been done by (Meadows & McLean, 1999) after four years of her first paper was published; security has become more complex and need changes in the taxonomy. Significant gaps are found that dependability covers an Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 36 important aspect of security where it is true in the area of fault tolerance. Taxonomy of security needs to be extended to new ways in the case of fault prevention and removal. A summarization of few research paper in this area presented by (Pudar, 2006) on concepts and taxonomy of dependable & secure computing. Here researchers have identified malicious and non malicious faults incorporating with classification of service failures. Researchers have incorporated dependability and security specification to address the service failure and faults. There are interrelationship between fault, error and failure. Nicol et al (2004) developed a model based evaluation from dependability to security. There is important need to validate the efficiency of system security. Therefore security parameter, attacker behavior needs to be defined and characterized. Three type of models are reviewed which a combinatorial methods, model checking and state based stochastic methods. Finding shows that most of the dependability analysis could be transferred to security analysis and security needs to be qualified by modeling attacker behavior. Stochastic model are used as security evaluation for dependability model. Similarly (Sallhammar, 2007) has few contribution in integrating security and dependability. He has discussed about applying security related context in “fault-error-failure” demonstrating stochastic approach in computing expected time to failure in a system. Other than that expected system attacker behavior is computed and also risk in real time is been developed. Final contribution is combining these two features to new qualitative measures. Whereas (Spanoudakis, 2008) have proposed a framework that provides increased support for security and dependability attributes . They have presented this framework to monitor mobile P2P applications to detect on property violations. Conversely (Jonsson et al, 2000) has furthered his research in modelling metrics and evaluation techniques to archive the goal of what is security. The modelling technique presents dependability and security in a common concept. In his perception integrated system model are combining both security aspect vs. object system with dependability attributes vs. object system. As a result a fundamental system model for dependability and security is proposed. The proposed model has still future work to be done and is lack in common coordination between security and dependability that could not solve security problem properly. The integrated model suggested is only based in terms of correctness, protective and behavioural characteristics. Therefore a unified approach is still needed in terms of concepts, tools, and terms used. Basic Concepts According to (Sallhammar, 2007) to consider the trustworthy, m-learning system must be both dependable and secure which historically these two main features have been always identified separately. Security encompasses the basic concept of CIA which is confidentiality, integrity and availability. On the other hand dependability generic attributes overlap extensively on security concept explained by (Jonsson et al, 2000) as illustrated in Figure 1, which closely interrelated to one another to get maximum benefits of research results. Figure 1 Comprehensive Summary of Dependability Attributes Dependability Reliability Availability Safety Security Integrity Confidentiality Availability environment Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 37 Security attribute in dependability shows about the services that the system delivers to the environment, this is availability and system’s ability to resist external attacks which is integrity. The m-learning system needs the integration of security and dependability because the system is large and complex with rich human interaction which the specifications are likely to be incomplete, ambiguous or inconsistent. Therefore the basic concept of security does not address the problem of ensuring security satisfactory in m-learning system. Dependability attributes are not enough and often conflicting with each other (Nicol et al, 2004).Both dependability and security full fills the basic concept of a computer system which is correct service, service failure, service outage, fault, error and vulnerabilities (Pudar, 2006) and motivates researchers to bring together these two features. In this study the most appropriate integration of attributes are between security and dependability which are theoretically described that behavioural security is an integrated part of dependability and cannot readily be distinguished from it (Jonsson et al., 2000) . Nevertheless (Ramjan, 2005) has performed a harmonized comparison among eight countries connecting the m-learning problems with solutions by C.I.A and vulnerable points. Almost all the problem faced encounters to the dimension of C.I.A and technological solutions such as authentication, power failure, spyware, virus, malware and server network communication M-learning need standardization in term of interoperability, portability and reusability with ensemble based mobile devices. As discussed by (Bill, 2004) ensemble devices are getting great effect on individual work, where in ubiquitous computing “an expending array of intelligent handheld devices an increasingly mobile lifestyle are enabling new form of ensemble computing:” Many industries and researchers focus device interoperability in ensemble computing on four major layers in OSI layer (link layer , network layer, data layer and application layer). This standardization is needed for ensemble devices to be used at home, at work and on road. Moreover (Mikic & Anido, n.d.) Stated accessibility plays a key role in learning technology standardization. “Access able design grants a wider range of learners, more options, and greater flexibility in learning environment” Based on study conducted by (Mostakhdemin-hosseini, 2005) defined framework of mobile learning system is based on three domain: mobile usability, e-learning system and wireless technology. Furthermore a comprehensive research has been conducted on basic elements and characteristic of mobile learning. (Ozdamli & Cavus, 2011) claimed that the core characteristic of mobile learning are ubiquitous, portable, blended, private, interactive, collaborative and instant information Proposed Framework After analysing the overall research problem three sub problems has be derived in Table 1. Table 1 Summary of Sub Research Problem No Research problem RP1 Increase in security vulnerabilities in ensemble and mobile technologies RP2 In appropriate model for building secure mobile learning content and application RP3 Unsecured and inadequate dependability towards ensemble based m-learning environment addressing to security issues. Research Questions The research question that is addressed in this paper deals with how security framework can be constructed to resolve the mobile learning problem without introducing high cost or restraining the mobile technologies and ensemble computing mobility, performance and lightweight operation. Even though there are promising research result related to the first question, not much effort has been put in second till fourth question. The research will focus on these areas and hopefully provide and answer these questions. The questions have been put into a summary to relate the research question with research problem in Table 2. Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 38 Table 2 Summary of Relationship between Research Question and Research Problem (RP) (RQ) Research Question RP1 RQ1 What are the security issues in m-learning system and ensemble computing? RP2 RQ2 What are the secure software engineering approaches available for mobile learning systems? RP1 RP2 RP3 RQ3 Are there models that can be used to evaluate the m-learning system’s trustworthiness, in terms of security and dependability behaviour? RQ4 How to improve the success of m-learning addressing to security issues Methodology Table 3 Summary of Research Methodology Phase Task Description Outcome Literature Review To review , analyze and classify The vulnerabilities and threat in ensemble and mobile technologies The countermeasures and detection techniques The attributes of dependability interrelationship with vulnerabilities and countermeasures Classification of vulnerabilities /threats Classification of countermeasures /detection Improved taxonomy of vulnerabilities and countermeasures integrated with dependability attributes Analyse To identify the secure model integrated with security and dependability Identified improved secure engineering model mapped with taxonomy of vulnerabilities and countermeasures integrated with dependability for ensemble based m- learning system Design To built , implement and evaluate the improved framework A secure framework for ensemble based m-learning Implementation Test & Validate Features of Framework M-learning is a sophisticated learning system which is developed to provide services that place great trust to learners and providers. As suggested here, an integrated system model for dependability and security is highly needed to describe the system in terms of accessibility, behavioural and protective characteristic, in which this complete combination would produce a trusted system. Secure Ensemble Based Mobile Learning System Model (SEBAMOLS) is defined as a proposed secure model in this paper. SEBAMOLS can be defined as end product satisfaction and fitness for use that include availability, reliability and accessibility. SEBAMOLS will work closely in between the two main attributes; security and dependability in order to evaluate the trust of the learner. The behavioural attributes (availability and reliability) will be mapped with protective attributes (confidentiality, integrity) in the SEBAMOLS model. Taxonomy for threat /vulnerabilities in m-learning and ensemble based mobile devices will be integrated in the model. As Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 39 guidelines to the developer, learners and providers standards, policy and best practices will be introduced according to each attributes mapped and layer in the SEBAMOLS. Figure 2 Proposed SEBAMOLS model to be design for M-Learning Security Framework Figure 3 Illustration of Ensemble Based Security Framework for Secure M-Learning System SEBAMOLS Trust Dependability Security Integrity Accessibility Confidentiality Availability Reliability Learner/Academician Non-Learner/Non- Academician M-Learning System Environmental influence Reliability/Availability Confidentiality Delivery of service Denial of service Integrity System behaviour Standard/Policy & Best Practices Ensemble Device SEBAMOLS Access Control Integrity Ensemble Device Learner/Academician Non-Learner/Non- Academician Accessibility Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 40 Since mobile is referring to portability of learning devices, therefore the devices are seen as a transport vehicle of contents accessible at anywhere, anytime, without limitation or constraints. At this point SEBAMOLS works closely during the design phase to standardize the usability and compatibility elements in hardware and software of ensemble devices so that the interoperability of the hardware and software can be continuously work without interruptions. The SEBAMOLS model will be centred on data synchronization between ensemble devices for example Bluetooth synchronization between net book, I pad, iPod, hand phone, I phone and etc. SEBAMOLS manage the ensemble devices and network between the Local LAN which is the M-Learning Cloud and the personal LAN within a low power range of communication which encompasses on green saving, high bandwidth and continuous connectivity. Security comes in line in this cloud to manage and only allow the learners, academician and devices that are included in the m-learning system to interoperate and access the content. This will be measured on the access control attributes which authorized to the m-learning groups. The key objectives of the SEBAMOLS model here is the capabilities to built a communication among the ensemble devices to have automatic discovery when it is in the m-learning cloud which is announcement of presence in the “neighbourhood” features, ability to request for devices capabilities and easy of plug and play of new devices in the m- learning cloud with secure self organizing network group. Despite this, the application in M-learning will be organized such away to be used by whatever ensemble device in hand that are registered in the cloud , for example even though email programs viewed differently on each device but the basic functionality remains the same and comes from a single email server. Content of m-learning should be the same in all devices even though the display or interfaces are in different mode. Accessibility should be gain when one device fails to view the content and could be interconnected straight away with another device to able to retrieve the content Conclusion /Research Contribution In order to achieve trust and excellent performance from learners who are using m-learning system, the elements of m-learning should be integrated into a model of secure framework. Otherwise positive outcome will not be expected from m-learning applications. These reasons have motivated for a study on the security aspect of m-learning which brings in the trust towards the system in use. The major contribution of this chapter is to propose a secure framework on ensemble based m-learning where security threats and countermeasures are mapped with the dependability and security attributes in a unified model to generate trustworthiness in m-learning. Many important concepts have been illustrated in this framework in order to map the threats and countermeasures, classification of security countermeasures for mobile and ensemble computing are grouped with an improved taxonomy. References Alaysia, M. A. I. N. M. (2010). M-L EARNING : A NEW P ARADIGM OF L EARNING. International Journal, 2(4), pp. 76-86. Bhd, M. (2008). National Wireless Communications Technology Roadmap. Communications, 0-37. Bill, N. (2004). Device Ensembles. Computer. Chen, N.-shing, Wei, C.-wang & Yang, S. J. H. (2008). Designing a Self-contained Group Area Network for Ubiquitous Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 11, pp. 16-26. Gou, X. (2011). Malaysia uni to use sms for m-learning Articles FutureGov - Transforming Government Education Healthcare. Education IT, Asia Pacific Future Gov. Hu, J., Khalil, I., Han, S. & Mahmood, A. (2011). Journal of Network and Computer Applications Seamless integration of dependability and security concepts in SOA : A feedback control system based framework and taxonomy $. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 34, 1150-1159. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2010.11.013 Jonsson, E., Strömberg, L., & Lindskog, S. (2000). On the functional relation between security and dependability impairments. Proceedings of the 1999 workshop on New security paradigms NSPW 99, 104-111. ACM Press. doi:10.1145/335169.335204 Malware Report. (2012), (January). Meadows, C. (1995). Applying the Dependability Paradigm to Computer Security. Proceedings of 1995 New Security Paradigms Workshop (pp. 75-81). IEEE Computer Society Press. doi:10.1109/NSPW.1995.492346 Malaysian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 12, Number 3, September 2012 ISSN 1675 0292 41 Meadows, C. & McLean, J. (1999). Security and dependability: then and now. Proceedings Computer Security, Dependability, and Assurance: From Needs to Solutions (Cat. No.98EX358), 166-170. IEEE Comput. Soc. doi:10.1109/CSDA.1998.798363 Mikic, F., & Anido, L. (n.d.). Towards a Standard for Mobile E-Learning. International Conference on Networking, International Conference on Systems and International Conference on Mobile Communications and Learning Technologies (ICNICONSMCL’06), pp. 217-217. IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICNICONSMCL.2006.213 Mostakhdemin-hosseini, A. (2005). Mobile learning framework. Development, 3, 203-207. Nicol, D. M., Sanders, W. H. & Trivedi, K. S. (2004). Model-based evaluation: from dependability to security. Ieee Transactions On Dependable And Secure Computing (Vol. 1, pp. 48-65). IEEE Computer Society. doi:10.1109/TDSC.2004.11 Ozdamli, F. & Cavus, N. (2011). Social and. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.173 Pudar, S. (2006). Basic concepts and Taxonomy of Dependable and Secure Computing. Security. Ramjan, S. (2005). The conceptual framework of mLearning security for university in Thailand. International Journal. Sallhammar, K. (2007). Karin Sallhammar Stochastic Models for Combined Security and Dependability Evaluation. Science And Technology. Schooler, E., Jelinek, L. & Dahle, D. (2010). ENSEMBLE COMPUTING : OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES components , Device Ensembles Ensembles .”, 14(1), pp. 118-141. Spanoudakis, G. (2008). Monitoring Security and Dependability in Mobile P2P Systems. Architecture. Technologies, I. S., Dooly, Z., Clarke, J., Fitzgerald, W., Donnelly, W., Riguidel, M., Howker, K., et al (2010). D3 . 3 – ICT Security & Dependability Research beyond 2010 : Final strategy. Security, (004547). Vassiljev, A. (2010). MASTER ’S THESIS Enhancing the Hierarchical Framework Model of Mobile Security. Review Literature And Arts Of The Americas. Wiesauer, A. & Sametinger, J. (2007). A SECURITY DESIGN PATTERN TAXONOMY Findings of a Systematic Literature Review. 
work_6ceadrst7zhppe7nqxpkwnju6m	----	rumble00.PDF 1 Rumble, G. (2000). Student support in distance education in the 21st Century: Learning from service management. Distance Education, 21(2), 216-235. Student Support in Distance Education in the 21st. Century: Learning from service management Greville Rumble The popular conception of distance education is of a system in which students receive few of the consumptive service benefits of their colleagues in full-time education. In fact, distance educators have generally been better at articulating what they mean by student service than traditional educators. Nevertheless, the rationale developed by distance educators for providing such services is less well based, making the service-side of distance education vulnerable to pressures to reduce costs. With signs of a change in what traditional students, acting within a consumerist framework, want in the way of support services, and with distance education undergoing considerable changes in the wake of the development of e-business, there is a need to reconsider the rationale for and nature of student services, drawing on some of the thinking that has taken place in the service management sector. If there is a popular conception of the distance-educated, university student, then it is one of isolation from both teachers and peers who receives none of the consumptive benefits enjoyed by campus-based students (Carnoy and Levin, 1975: 396). This image is reinforced by the generally poor reputation that correspondence education, and now virtual education, has of failing to support students in the interests of maximising drop-out money (Noble, 2000). Even distance educators feel that we do not do as well as we should when it comes to student services. Chronic underfunding in some systems does not help, of course, but even in relatively well-funded systems there seem to be problems when we think about the level of services our students have. Tait (1995: 232) remarked that across distance education as a whole, „the rationale for student support in ODL [Open and Distance Learning] has been weakly conceived over the last twenty years, and, not surprisingly, in many ODL systems, weakly realised, and subject to wild fluctuations in terms of financial support“. In the UK, with the Oxbridge university model deeply entrenched in some kind of ancestral memory, and reinforced by images drawn from television series based on books such as Brideshead Revisited, we forget that most students in the system are not on full-time first degree courses (Watson, 2000: 76), and so perhaps we feel that there is much we could learn from the traditional universities. But is this so? In this paper I want to suggest three things. Firstly, that when it comes to articulating what we mean by student services, distance educators are way ahead of their colleagues in conventional universities. Secondly, that we cannot afford to be complacent. Our thinking is indeed weakly conceived, though there are signs that this is changing. Thirdly, that we could do worse than learn from service industry, and for this reason: students are increasingly acting as consumers in their relations with the universities, and it is in the service industries that most of the really good thinking about customer care has gone on. STUDENT SUPPORT IN HIGHER EDUCATION The American sociologist George Ritzer (1998) argues that the university is becoming a component in a consumer society, and that education is now seen as a product to be consumed. What students want, 2 Ritzer says, is for their universities to operate like banks and fast-food restaurants (Ritzer, 1998: 152). He cites a research study conducted by Arthur Levine (1993:4) that found that in the US higher education is not the centre of most university students’ lives. Levine’s report said that students „want education to be nearby and to operate during convenient hours – preferably round the clock. … They want … short lines, and polite and efficient personnel and services. They also want high high-quality products but are eager for low costs. They are willing to comparison shop – placing a premium on time and money. … they want a stripped-down version of college without student affairs, extracurricular activity, residence life, varsity sport, campus chaplains …. All they want of higher education is simple procedures, good service, quality courses, and low costs. They are bringing to higher education exactly the same consumer expectations that they have for every other commercial enterprise with which they deal“. Of course, universities cannot isolate themselves from the society within which they are based. A consumerist society breeds consumers, but Ritzer would, I think, argue that universities have colluded in this process by applying the rationalist and bureaucratic precepts of modern management – processes that are best exemplified in the practices of the McDonald’s fast food chain (Ritzer, 1993: 31-2) – to the campus. This has resulted, paradoxically, in a growth in irrationality within the university, with many staff and students put off by „the huge factory-like atmosphere of these universities“ where education can be „a de-humanising experience“ in which it is difficult for students to get to know other students and virtually impossible for them to know their professors (Ritzer, 1993: 141-2). Although some universities (Harvard, Oxford) will buck these trends, most will accommodate themselves because this is how they can enrol lots of students and save money. They will embrace technology because students are attracted to high-tech environments; because technology promises to lower the university’s costs even more (Ritzer, 1998: 154); and because technology promises to deliver programmes to satellite campuses near where students live, if not into their homes, for „like Domino’s [Pizzas], universities are increasingly in the business of home delivery“ (ibid: 11). Convenience education, like convenience foods, is with us. Thus officials at the University of Northern Arizona claim that their university is „designed around the concept of convenience for the student“ (Howard, 1996: 7). Integral to this is the delivery of distance learning and virtual education courses – the ultimate convenience in education, increasingly based around smart card technology for instant delivery to the home. I have started with the trends taking place in mass conventional higher education in the developed world partly because I find them intrinsically interesting, and partly because I think that distance educators have already had to think through some of the issues raised, and in many ways are ahead of the game. Our students have never seen their university as the centre of their lives: how can they, when so many of them have demanding jobs as well as family and other responsibilities? We have always had to think through our support services, trying to find the best delivery mechanism for students who will never come on-campus because the campus, in the traditional sense, does not exist. Perhaps this is why twenty years ago one commentator felt able to claim that the emphasis placed on student support systems by distance educators was unusual in academic organisations (Friedman, 1981: 123). When it comes to traditional higher education, not much seems to have changed. Look for example at Sir David Watson’s recent book, Managing Strategy in the ‘Managing Universities and Colleges: Guides to Good Practice’ series. If customer care were really important for universities, one would expect a book on the strategic management of the university to focus somewhere on client services and customer care. However, while Watson (2000: 76-7) has a brief section on student satisfaction and the need to seek student opinion, there is very little in the book that deals with student services. The concept of ‘student support’ is restricted to the question of how students pay for their studies and living expenses; other headings in the index deal with debt, discipline, employment, loans, overseas students, paid work and life-styles, and student unions. There is no reference to guidance, advisory, or counselling services in the index. Now, I am not making any comment about the quality of services 3 offered by the UK’s traditional universities, nor am I saying that they do not give any consideration to student support. Patently, they do: the University of Brighton’s Corporate Plan, which is included as an appendix to Watson’s book, gives among the priorities for 1999-2004, the development of „a quality strategy covering academic and support services“ (p. 137), though the details of what this means in practice are unclear from the information given. What I am saying that the distance education community seems to be more driven by concern for planning customer care and support than the traditional universities. There are reasons for this: • Firstly, our experience tells us that students need support if they are to succeed. Distance educators are generally conscious of their roots in correspondence education. In the 1960s correspondence education had a bad image, mainly because it did not help students learn successfully. The focus on student services in the 1970s – driven to a large extent by the adult educators who came to work at the British Open University – was motivated by the wish to avoid the catastrophic drop- out rates of correspondence education, and by the knowledge that evidence of high drop-out would kill the reputation of the university, and by a recognition that provision of a package of materials was not a sufficient support for students (Sewart, 1983). • Secondly, a systems approach to distance education is embedded in the literature. It is part of our culture, and it covers student support. We talk routinely about course development, materials production, materials distribution, materials reception, course delivery, student administrative and support services, logistical systems, decision-making systems. Somewhere under student administration and support we will focus on advisory and guidance services, counselling services, financial assistance, and support for the disabled, among other things. (Rumble 1986, 1992). It was because so much correspondence education was so poor that the Open University in the UK seemed to be so very different when it was founded in 1969. From the start, student support was central to the concerns of the University. The current Vice-Chancellor, Sir John Daniel, has argued that the 30 years of success of the Open University is based on three things: excellent teaching materials, high quality student support services, and efficient logistical systems. However, when the University was founded, the problem was to define what was meant by student support. The early history of the Open University shows that this was disputed territory. Many of the University’s early regional student services staff came out of adult education. Based on their experience, they believed that adults needed a great deal of supportive help in areas divorced from their academic studies. They therefore developed right at beginning a counselling service that was designed to provide each student with a named contact (their counsellor) who would remain with them for as long as they stayed in the university and within the region where they had first enrolled. The rationale for this role was that this person would provide the ‘continuity of concern’ that was felt to be so important to student success (see Sewart, 1983 for a discussion of the approach developed in the 1970s). However, many of the central academics responsible for creating the courses did not share this view: they thought that most of the advice that students would need would best come from their course tutor whose principle task was to correct the written assignments and deliver the occasional face-to-face classes built into the Open University’s instructional system (Perry, 1976: 113). This would have made student support a peripheral, not a core service. Recent changes in the Open University’s student support system have shown the deep divide between the remnants of the earlier generation of staff who continue to believe in approaches pioneered within adult education and the Open University, with their focus on the provision of continuity of concern through a counsellor (provided in actuality by a tutor-counsellor who was responsible for tutoring a first year entry course, and then providing continuity of concern to a larger group of students whom he or she had tutored in the first year and who had progressed onto higher level courses), and those who run the administration and who believe that a more professional, consistent and cheaper advisory service can be delivered by a centralised service using modern communications systems – that is, through a national Customer Call Centre featuring Help Desk facilities. It is the latter group that has won the argument. The role of tutor-counsellor has gone. Whatever continuity for concern that survives will be based not on the personal knowledge that counsellors had of their students – a 4 resource always likely to disappear with resignation, retirement, or death-in-service – but on what can be captured and held on the student’s computer record as projected onto the screen in front of a Call Centre operative. Perhaps the case for retaining the older, adult education derived system, would have been easier to make if we knew why it seemed to work, though I doubt it. Technology gave us the opportunity to remodel the service, cost-reduction the incentive, and the lack of consistency of service the excuse: and so the old system has gone. Still, resistance to these changes was not helped by the generally woeful lack of knowledge about the effectiveness of student support services. Let me summarise just some of the research findings while warning that the evidence is often confused and contradictory: • Advice given during recruitment and enrolment affects later success or failure. • Contact between students and the institution seems to be beneficial, and learners who make contact seem to value it. Support is most needed early in the first year of study. • Many factors affect student performance. Higher course completion rates seem to correlate with course pacing, continuous assessment, reminders from tutors to complete work, early submission of the first assignment, a short turn-round for the completed assignment, supplementary audio- tapes and telephone tuition, student access to favourable conditions in which to study. • Learners without support are likely to delay completion of a programme or drop-out altogether • There are many causes of drop out but personal circumstances and lack of time are the major causes. The cost to the student can be a major disincentive to rapid progress, and is a factor in keeping people out of the system. • There are wide variations in how institutions define student support and in how much resource is put into it, making comparative institutional studies very difficult. • It is as important to think about what is missing as what is there: for example, there is nothing supporting the value of the personal relationship built upon continuity of concern that might have saved the Open University’s old approach, had the case been proven (and even assuming, of course, that it could have been proven). PROVIDING STUDENT SUPPORT Distance education organisations are both ‘manufacturing’ organisations – producing a physical product (the materials), and service organisations – producing a student learning experience. There are some very considerable differences between manufacturing and service organisations (see Table 1). The very nature of the some of these differences – the fact that the course materials are physical, can be demonstrated, can be stored, and so on, seems to make the package dominant. This, coupled with the difficulty we have in demonstrating the service and showing its effect, makes the service side of the organisation vulnerable to cuts. However, we know that the package of materials on its own is not enough: some kind of learner support is necessary – but what are we doing to rectify the weak conceptualisation of student services that exists? TABLE 1 HERE Over the years a number of people have tried to articulate more clearly what we know about providing student support. I have sought to summarise some of the findings by addressing three questions: • Where should we start when considering student services? • What kind of services should be provided? • How are services to be delivered? Where should we start when considering student services? 5 We should begin with students’ needs. Identifying and understanding the implications of such needs requires prior knowledge about the characteristics of the student body as a whole. Distance educators stress the heterogeneity of their student body. This diversity is borne out by the extensive surveys that many institutions carry out on their students, in order to establish their distribution by age, gender, geographical location, social class, income, educational background, employment status, language abilities, home circumstances, access to communications and technology, physical disability, etc. Unfortunately, this kind of aggregated data reveals nothing about the individual students themselves. Most of the time individual student remain invisible (Evans, 1994: 16). Evans sought to enlarge distance educators’ understanding of their students’ contexts through the histories of individuals themselves, using as much as possible their own words to explore a range of issues that impact on or relate to student support. Evans’s work is important. What is actually provided ought to be driven by the students’ individual needs, and on the whole one only comes to an understanding of their needs by talking to them – lots of them. In the final analysis, each market is different. There is no substitute for carrying out one’s own market research. What kind of services should be provided? There are wide variations in how people define learner support and student services (see Table 2). The first two examples I give here, based on work by Reid (1995) and Tait (2000), are very much geared to the identification of the services students need as they progress through their studies, whereas Simpson’s typology (Simpson, 2000) is rather different, looking as it does far more at the kinds of activities student support professionals engage in in delivering a student support service. TABLE 2 HERE Reid (1995: 268) suggests that institutional perspectives of learner support will either view student support as „an essential integral component of the teaching/learning system“, and as a result build it in and make it complementary to the teaching system; or it will view student support as „compensatory, regarding students as having deficits in learning that need to be fixed“, and establish specialists „who will relieve tutors of their responsibility for meeting student needs“. Services that are built in tend to be more robust because it is the students that drive the extent to which the service is used. Compensatory services tend to be reactive, activated only when the institution feels they have to be. If you want to control the use made of a service, or run down it down, you will make it reactive. Comprehensive services, on the other hand, tend to be more expensive because services are available even for those who not want or need them. In the end, each institution’s service concept (that is, the package of benefits that it will offer its students) will be different. There is no substitute for thinking it through oneself. How are services to be delivered? Distance educators such as Bates (1995: 29-31) distinguish between media – that is, generic forms of communication (text, face-to-face, audio, video and, less clearly though arguably, computing) – and the various technologies that deliver them (see Table 3). These technologies, each with their own characteristics, enable communication to take place in various ways – one to one, one-to-a-group, one- to-many; synchronously (where reception occurs at the same time as delivery), or asynchronously; one-way (message out, nothing back), or two-way (allowing interactivity between the participants). 6 Although Bates is primarily concerned with the use of media and technology for teaching, rather than for student support, his ACTIONS model (pp. 1-2) governing media selection is as appropriate in the student services area as it is for course production and delivery. ACTIONS is an acronym standing for Access – Costs – Teaching/Learning [and Support] – Interactivity and user-friendliness – Organisational Issues – Novelty – and Speed. Table 4 takes this model, outlines some of the issues and questions that have to be confronted in assessing the utility of particular media and technology, and some of the requirements (in terms of understanding the environment and the technology) needed before a decision can be taken. Every service delivery system will be different. There is no substitute for doing one’s own thinking. TABLES 3 and 4 HERE LEARNING FROM SERVICE MANAGEMENT The current environment is being driven by three requirements: • Firstly, the transformation of education into a service industry. Students approach education as consumers. As consumers, they have more varied expectations of the kind of services that they want, and higher expectations that the services they believe they have paid for should meet their expectations. On the other hand, providers do not have to meet every expectation, however unreasonable – it would be unreasonable to expect a McDonald’s to serve a Chateau Lafitte. Management of expectations is a major issue for service providers – higher education included. • Secondly, increasing competition for students is putting pressures on providers both to be innovative when defining their service concept (that is, the benefits that they offer their clients), and to reduce their costs. Competition will also lead institutions to adopt strategies to become ‘sticky’, by providing learners with incentives to remain with them their whole lives (Oblinger, 2001). There is a continuing tension here, between cost reduction on the one hand, and on the other service provision to attain ‘stickiness’ and student success. • Thirdly, there are the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The flexibility and convenience of e-learning will make it increasingly popular. E-business and e-commerce applications will also reduce costs. Service industries are responding to these demands in a variety of ways, all of which involve innovation in the delivery of services. Application of new technology The application of new technology enables innovation to occur. The application of e-mail and computer conferencing to distance education, in conjunction with databases and electronic libraries, has enabled the emergence of a whole new kind of industry – e-distance education. ICTs are also enabling more established providers to rethink and re-engineer of the nature of their student services. The UK Open University is involved in just such a process as part of a strategy to position the University as a global player. Part of this re-engineering may involve disaggregation around ‘value nets’, rather than operating as end-to-end, vertically integrated firms (Oblinger, 2001). As a direct result, constructivist approaches to education have been applied within distance education (Ward and Davis, 1994; Jonassen, 1995; Collis, 1996: 135), and new roles – such as the e-moderator – have emerged (Salmon, 2000). Other key benefits derived from the latest generation of technology are the extent to which it has reduced location dependence, enabling businesses in some areas (and particularly those dealing with ephemeral goods such as knowledge), to source service providing agents anywhere in the world. It is no longer unusual to teach a course for a foreign university without leaving home. 7 Social innovation Providers are seeking to respond to the challenges facing them through social innovation. Such innovations create new roles, new social links, and new types of social behaviour. At one level this can involve greater client participation in the process of ‘production’ of the service. Self-help and self- service concepts have revolutionised banks, restaurants and petrol stations. Similarly, the provision of on-line services with access to information, advice and guidance, or to automatic enrolment and billing facilities, will enable students to do far more for themselves in the future. This hands them greater control of the relevant process by enabling the customer, and it also helps to reduce costs. It does however reduce the opportunities for proactive intervention in some of the processes – for example, opportunities to provide detailed advice on course choice at enrolment. Social innovation may also create new structures and roles. One of the problems with distance education is that it involves a division of labour, with the result that some of the jobs in the industry (for example, that of correspondence tutor) are heavily circumscribed. Critics of ‘Fordist’ distance education point to the resulting degradation of academic work, involving both deskilling and loss of power (Peters, 1983: 100-5, 108; Peters, 1989: 5; Campion and Renner, 1992: 10; Raggett, 1993: 25- 7). The Open University, having in its first teaching year experimented with the ultimate in division of labour, separate posts for the correspondence tutor, class tutor, and counsellor, rapidly re-organised its system twice in the early 1970s to provide the more satisfying roles of course tutor (combining correspondence and face-to-face tutoring) and tutor-counsellor (combining the course tutor role on entry courses with a counselling role for those of the tutor-counsellor’s students who had moved on to other courses). This role-based social innovation removed some of the soul-destroying aspects of the system introduced in 1971, and did much to provide attractive roles that exploited the utilisation of ‘unfocused human energy’ (Normann, 1991: 25) (that is, the ‘spare time’ of people who had jobs in other organisations, or were newly etired, and who wanted to work in an academic organisation). Another solution to the problem of academic alienation is to rethink the whole structure of the university. Service organisations have discovered that there is no reason why people have to belong to the organisation in order to participate in the production of the service. The National Technological University in the USA is an example of this principle in action. NTU brings together the leading engineering schools of the USA, the professors who teach classes at those schools, and firms who want their employees to update their knowledge. Working with a very small core staff, NTU puts the producers in contact with the customers, providing the facilities by which the company employees can be taught at a distance by academics based at the leading engineering schools in the USA. It has devised a payment system that benefits all those involved in the production of the service, and delivers an operating surplus. Elsewhere Rumble (1998) has outlined an innovative structure that draws upon approaches that date back to the twelfth century and the emergence of an urban intellectual class who sold their knowledge and instruction in the same way that artisans sold their goods (Le Goff, 1993), and upon contemporary ideas about the nature of post-bureaucratic organisations (Heckscher, 1994), to suggest how a service organisation might bring individuals academics together with students inside a post- bureaucratic structure (see Box 1). In Rumble’s scheme, many of the academics involved in the enterprise would have jobs in other sectors, and thus only teach part-time. This taps into another feature of innovative service organisations – their ability to discover and employ under-utilised and hitherto unfocused human energies (Normann, 1991: 24). Network effects A key advantage of NTU’s structure is that each university within a consortium, and each teacher within the university, acts as a node in a network that attracts and retains customers. This exploits another innovative service management approach – the network effect (Normann, 1991: 26). This is an effect utilised by franchises such as McDonalds – creating a chain in which customers can have 8 confidence that the service standards and processes are similar across the network. The UK Open University’s recent establishment of a legally independent sister institution in the United States, the United States Open University (www.open.edu) is a major step in the Open University’s development of a network effect. Maintaining a consistent quality Perhaps the key challenge in service organisations is to maintain quality. Normann (1991: 16) argues that „most services are the result of social acts which take place in direct contact between the customer and representatives of the service company“. What happens during this interaction determines how the customer’s perception of quality. This is what Normann refers to as ‘the moment of truth’ In large service providers there may well be tens of thousands such moments of truth each day, hence the challenge if quality is to be consistent. While service delivery may be capital as well as labour intensive, it is also personality intensive (p. 17) – that is, „the quality supplied to the customer is essentially a result of the way people perform in the specific situation“ that surrounds the moment of truth. Negative or positive performance by the service deliverer has an enormous impact on customer perceptions, and on the wider public’s perception of the provider. This puts a premium on the service design process, on the values and culture of the organisation, and on training. Well designed service systems must be reproducible. Reproducibility depends on identifying the absolutely essential elements of the service and designing effective ways of controlling and reproducing those elements. These elements cannot be over-complex or unclear. Indeed, successful service systems seem to be simple and uncomplicated (Normann, 1991: 40, 45). This has the added benefit that the service concept – basically, the package of physical, psychological and emotion benefits that accrue to customers – tends to be clear and unequivocal. In particular, it should be clear what the core service concept is, and what is peripheral (ibid: 46). The personality intensive nature of services places a premium on the organisation of the service delivery function. Moments of truth involve uncertainty; they are difficult to prepare for. Training of staff is therefore crucial. Normann (1991: 77) suggests that this needs to focus on providing the trainee with opportunities for personal growth and development; on modelling the desired behaviours and getting trainees to practice these; and on infusing the employee with the company’s values. Although there are other approaches, Normann seems to prefer strategies that increase the discretion of contact staff. Such approaches rely on training to deliver consistency. Neither of the alternative strategies of removing as much of the power from the moment of truth, and putting it in the back office, nor of reducing the discretion of the contact staff, thus standardising their situation and behaviour, finds favour (ibid: 72). Indeed, within an academic community, it is unlikely that these alternative approaches would work. The key must therefore be to define the core service in simple terms, while leaving staff considerable discretion as to how they deliver service within the values espoused by the institution. That way, one relies on their professionalism. Moreover, by acknowledging that professionalism, one enhances their self-esteem – which is yet another feature of the well-designed service system (ibid: 43). CONCLUSIONS It is surprising how little attention universities in general have paid at a theoretical level to the definition of the services they offer students. Distance education institutions tend to be the exception to this rule. Distance educators seem to have a clear understanding that student support services are integral to the overall working of their systems. However, there is surprisingly little hard knowledge about what works, and why. This, and the very intangibility of the services, makes the support services side of the business vulnerable, particularly where costs are being brought down. There are signs, however, of a renewed interest in student support. The impetus for this renewed interest is driven above all by concern with student dropout and, in an increasingly competitive world, student retention. Students’ conception of themselves as customers also plays a part here. Given that the package of 9 materials alone is not enough to ensure student success, this renewal of interest in student services is welcome. Recent work by various practitioners (Tait, 2000; Simpson, 2000) has sought to understand student needs, define the services that ought to be provided, and determine the means by which they should be delivered in given circumstances. Yet this effort could benefit some of the innovative thinking has taken place within the service sector. By raising these issues, this paper seeks to contribute to a crucial area of development in distance education. References Bates, A. W. 1995, Technology, open learning and distance education, Routledge, London. Campion, M. & Renner, W. 1992, ‘The supposed demise of Fordism: implications for distance education and higher education’, Distance Education, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 7-28. Carnoy, M. & Levin, H. M. 1975, ‘Evaluation of educational media: Some comcluding comments’, Instructional Science, vol. 4, pp. 385-40. Collis, B. 1996, Tele-learning in a digital age. The future of distance learning, International Thomson Computer Press, London. Evans, T. 1994, Understanding learners in open and distance education, Kogan Page, London. Friedman, Z. 1981, ‘Systems for student administration’, in Distance teaching for higher and adult education, eds. A. Kaye & G. Rumble, Croom Helm, London. Heckscher, C. 1994, ‘Defining the Post-Bureaucratic Type’, in The Post-Bureaucratic Organization: New Perspectives on Organizational Change, eds. C. Heckscher & A. Donnellon, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Howard, E. G. 1996, ‘Satellite Solution: Popping up like Dandelions, Satellite Campuses tighten Bond of Learning, Students’, Kansas City Business Journal, 14, sec. 1, p. 7. Jonassen, D. 1995, ‘Supporting communities of learners with technology: A vision for integrating technology with learning in schools’, Educational Technology, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 60-63. Keegan, D. 1986, 2nd. edn., Foundations of distance education, Routledge, London. Le Goff, J. 1993, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, Blackwell, Oxford. Levine, A. 1993, ‘Student expectations of college’, Change, September/October, p. 4. Noble, D. 2000, ‘Comeback of an education racket’, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2000, p. 15. Normann, R. 1991, 2nd. edn., Service management: Strategy and leadership in service business, John Wiley, Chichester. Oblinger, D. 2001, ‘Will e-business shape the future of open and distance learning?’, Open Learning vol. 16, no. 1, in press. Perry, W. 1976, Open University. A personal account by the first Vice-Chancellor, The Open University Press, Milton Keynes. 10 Peters, O. 1983 ‘Distance teaching and industrial production. A comparative interpretation’, in Distance education: international perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, & B. Holmberg, Croom Helm, London. Peters, O. 1989, ‘The iceberg has not melted: further reflections on the concept of industrialisation and distance teaching’, Open Learning, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 3-8. Raggatt, P. 1993, ‘Post-Fordism and distance education - a flexible strategy for change’, Open Learning, vol. 8, no. 1, pp.21-31. Reid, J. 1995, ‘Managing learner support’ in Open and distance learning today, ed. F. Lockwood, Routledge, London. Ritzer, G. 1993, The McDonaldization of society, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA. Ritzer, G. 1998, The McDonaldization thesis, Sage Publications, London. Rumble, G. 1986, The planning and management of distance education, Croom Helm, London. Rumble, G. 1992, The management of distance education, UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris. Rumble, G. 1998, ‘Academic work in the Information Age. A speculative essay’, Journal of Information Technology in Teacher Education, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 129-45. Salmon, G. 2000, E-moderating: The key to teaching and learning online, Kogan Page, London. Sewart, D. 1983, ‘Distance teaching: a contradiction in terms?’, in Distance education: International perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, & B. Holmberg, Croom Helm, London. Simpson, O. 2000, Supporting students in open and distance learning, Kogan Page, London. Tait, A. 1995, ‘Student support in open and distance learning’, in Open and distance learning today, ed. F. Lockwood, Routledge, London. Tait, A. 2000, ‘Planning student support for open and distance learning’, Open Learning, vol. 15 no. 3, pp. 287-99. Ward, P. & Davis, K. 1994, Empowering students in the information age. <http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Proceedings/Educ/WARD/Ward.htm> Watson, D. 2000, Managing strategy, The Open University Press, Buckingham, UK. Greville Rumble is Professor of Distance Education Management at the Open University, UK: Address: Student Services, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. g.rumble@open.ac.uk; <greville.rumble@talk21.com> 11 Table 1: Typical differences between manufacturing and service industries (from Richard Normann, Service management: Strategy and leadership in service business, Chichester, John Wiley, 2nd.edn., 1991, p. 15) Manufacturing Service The product is generally concrete The service is intangible Ownership is transferred when a purchase is made Ownership is not generally transferred The product can be resold The product cannot be resold The product can be demonstrated The product cannot usually be effectively demonstrated (it does not exist before purchase) The product can be stored by the sellers and buyers The product cannot be stored Consumption is preceded by production Production and consumption generally coincide Production, selling and consumption are locally differentiated Production, consumption and often even selling are spatially united The product can be transported The product cannot be transported (though ‘producers’ often can) The seller produces The buyer/client takes part directly in the production Indirect contact is possible between company and client In most cases direct contact is necessary Can be exported The service cannot normally be exported, but the service delivery system can 12 Table 2: Defining the scope of student support in open and distance learning Reid (1995) Tait (2000) Simpson (2000) • Career counselling • Academic guidance • Student advocacy • Learning support (including study and exam skills seminars, access to formal study groups and informal buddy networks, 1:1 assistance …. • Personal counselling • Support for special needs • Specific course and programme information • Financial advice • A library service • Specific one-to-one tutorial assistance • Enquiry, admission and pre-study advisory services • Tutoring • Guidance and counselling services • Assessment of prior learning and credit transfer • Study and examination centres • Residential schools • Library services • Individualised correspondence teaching, including in some cases continuous assessment • Record keeping, information management, and other administrative systems • Differentiated services for student with special needs of one sort or another, e.g. disability, geographical remoteness, prisoners • Materials which support the development of study skills, programme planning or career development • Academic support • Non-academic support - Advising in developmental areas (vocational guidance, course choice, learning skills, general motivational counselling) and in problem-solving areas (institution-related, study, time, and personal problems) - Assessment (giving feedback to the individual on non- academic aptitudes and skills) - Action (practical help to promote study) - Advocacy* (making a case out for funding, writing a reference, supporting a student’s complaint) - Agitation* (promoting changes within the institution to benefit students) - Administration* (organising student support) * These do not involve direct work with students 13 Table 3: Delivery mechanisms for student services Media Technology Characteristics Personal letters (postal service and hand delivered) One-to-one, interactive asynchronous Problem page (Agony Aunt) letters One-to-many but in answer to a particular problem, asynchronous, can be interactive Circular letters, leaflets, newsletters, booklets, books, etc. One-to-many, non-interactive, asynchronous, though may incorporate self-assessment questionnaires Correspondence tuition One-to-one, could be interactive asynchronously E-mail One-to-one, interactive, synchronous and asynchronous Computer conferencing Many-to-many, interactive, asynchronous and synchronous Text Video-text One-to-many, non-interactive Telephone (one-to-one) One-to-one, interactive, synchronous Telephone voice mail One-to-one, can be interactive, asynchronous Audio text services, voice mail notice boards One-to-many, asynchronous, non- interactive Chat lines Many-to-many, synchronous, interactive Audio-conferencing One-to-many, interactive, synchronous Audio-cassette One-to-one or one-to-many, could be slow interactive on a one-to-one basis, asynchronous Radio (broadcast) One-to-many, non-interactive, synchronous or, if recorded either end, asynchronous Audio Two way radio One-to-one or one-to-several, interactive Television broadcasts One-to-many, non-interactive, synchronous or, if recorded either end, asynchronous Video One-to-many, non-interactive, asynchronous Video Video-conferencing One-to-many or one-to-one, interactive, synchronous Lectures One-to-many, limited interaction, synchronous Seminars One-to-several in a group, interactive, synchronous Tutorials One-to-one or one-to-a-few, interactive, synchronous Face-to-face Personal coaching, mentoring, etc One-to-one, interactive, synchronous CAL, CAI, CBT One-to-many one-way Interactive databases One-to-many, two-way, asynchronous E-mail One-to-one, interactive, synchronous and asynchronous Computer Computer conferencing Many-to-many, interactive, asynchronous and synchronous 14 Table 4: Bates’s ACTIONS model applied to Student Services Bates model Issues to be confronted Requires A Access: How accessible is a particular technology for learners and for student support staff (e.g. tutors)? Is delivery to the home, or a local centre? Will students be able to access the technology in the home, or will there be other users wanting access for other purposes? How accessible is the local centre? How flexible is the technology for a particular target group? Will all students be able to use the service, or will some (the disabled, for example) be excluded? Understanding of student characteristics and geography: e.g. age, gender, employment status, educational background, technological knowledge, access to technology, special needs, etc.; impact of geography and the socio- political-economic conditions as these may affect access C Costs: What is the cost structure of each technology? What is the absolute capital cost? What are the running costs? What is the unit cost per learner of providing support through the technology? What is the total cost providing the service to all students? What will students be asked to pay? Will they b able to afford to pay for the service? Understanding of costs, relationship of technology and service costs to scale, and ability to pay T Teaching and Learning (and Support): What kinds of support are needed? What approaches best meet these needs? What are the technologies for supporting the service delivery? Will the media/technology support the desired presentational framework for the delivery of knowledge and information? Will it support the development of different types of skills? Understanding of programme and course demands (both cognitive and affective), student/learner needs, and technological capability I Interactivity and user-friendliness: What kind of interaction does this technology enable? Will it allow synchronous communication, or not? Does it support interactive, two-way communication? How many people can be accommodated at the same time without losing effectiveness? To what extent does the technology put the student in control of the situation? How easy is it to be used? Will students need to learn how to use the technology, and if so, how will training be provided? Understanding of programme and course demands (both cognitive and affective), student/learner needs, and technological capability O Organisational issues: What are the organisational requirements, and the barriers to be removed, before this technology can be used successfully? What changes in organisation need to be made? Understanding of technology and organisational capability N Novelty: How new is this technology? Will it attract external funding (it is often easier to find donor money for newer technology)? Can the technology be sustained once donor money dries up? Has the technology secured its position in the Understanding of the technology and its position within the marketplace 15 market place, or is it likely to be supplanted soon by a radically improved or entirely different technology? Is the supply over-dependent upon a single manufacturer or are their industry standards enabling a choice of suppliers? S Speed: How quickly can services be mounted and delivered using this technology? How quickly can service messages and characteristics be changed? Understanding of business needs (including customer needs) and technology Box 1: Towards a global interactive university Based on Greville Rumble (1998) ‘Academic work in the Information Age. A speculative essay’, Journal of Information Technology in Teacher Education, 7 (1), 129-45. In theory academics can now develop a curriculum and materials for an Internet based course and teach it from their own Web site. Their problem is to find customers who can be confident about the quality of the educational experience they are buying. This ‘problem’ resonates with the situation in Europe in the twelfth century. The period saw the development of an intellectual class whose profession it was „to think and share their thoughts“ (Le Goff, 1993: 1), and who worked in „workshops out of which ideas, like merchandise, were exported“ (ibid.: 62). The gathering together of masters and students in urban centres such as Paris, Chartres, and Orleans was the precursor of the European university. Some time in the twelfth century these intellectual artisans began to organise themselves within corporations or colleges of masters and students, out of which the universities developed. These universities secured the right to confer degrees. Masters were paid from two sources: salaries and stipends. Salaries, reflecting the master's position as a worker, were derived from either the master’s students or the civil authorities. Stipends or scholarships were gifts from private benefactors, public organisations and civil authorities. These different options had important consequences (Le Goff, 1993: 93): Masters who earned their money from fees paid by their students were merchants. Masters who were paid a salary by communal or princely powers were employees - functionaries. Masters who received stipends from a benefactor were domestic servants. Masters who lived off the money they were paid by their students had the advantage that they were free of temporal and ecclesiastical powers and private patrons: „This solution seemed natural to them for it conformed the most with the habits of the urban workplace of which they considered themselves to be members. Masters sold their knowledge and instruction the way artisans sold their wares“ (Le Goff, 1993: 94). The fact that the contemporary academic can put their own courses on the Internet means that, potentially, we have the modern day equivalent of the twelfth century knowledge artisan – a global artisan in the knowledge industry, able to attract web-based students wherever they live. What is needed is an organisational model to deliver this. Organisational analysts such as Heckscher (1994) believe that we are witnessing the emergence of the post-bureaucratic organisation. These differ from bureaucracies in that, whereas in a bureaucracy with its rational definition of office, „people are responsible only for their own jobs“ (Heckscher, 1994: 20), the key to post-bureaucratic organisations is „an organisation in which everyone takes responsibility for the success of the whole“ (ibid., p. 24). Heckscher's calls this new kind of organisation the interactive organisation (Heckscher, 1994: 24). One can envisage a community of academic partners within an interactive university, each of whom is licensed to practice (i.e. teach). They would have the flexibility to choose how many courses they teach and how many students they support. They would prepare the students for examinations, and they could be paid by their students for this. The university would act rather like a law firm. It would advertise its academic partners and their courses, and point would-be students towards academics having the 16 appropriate expertise to support them in their preparation for examinations. It too would charge for its services. The success of the enterprise as a whole would be everyone's responsibility. Accreditation of the student’s work would rest with the university as a body licensed to set examinations and grant degrees. The typical university would consist of a small central licensing, validating, examining, and accrediting body. To allow students to move between universities, carrying their accumulated credits with them, there might also be national, regional and global Credit Accumulation and Transfer (CAT) schemes. Universities would protect the integrity of their awards within CATs schemes by choosing their partner universities carefully. Whether an institution's credits are recognised or not by a particular validating body would, of course, become a significant factor in their success. The whole system would comprise a network of academics, institutions, and partnerships built around systems designed to ensure that all constituents gained financially from the structure. 
work_6e3lmcsoabbfxlbcvmdngwmwuy	----	CDIE770431 37..47 Getting real: the authenticity of remote labs and simulations for science learning Megan Sautera, David H. Uttalb, David N. Rappc, Michael Downinga and Kemi Jonad* aDepartment of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA; bDepartment of Psychology & Education, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA; cDepartment of Psychology & Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA; dDepartment of Learning Sciences & Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA (Received 12 November 2012; final version received 22 December 2012) Teachers use remote labs and simulations to augment or even replace hands-on science learning. We compared undergraduate students’ experiences with a remote lab and a simulation to investigate beliefs about and learning from the interactions. Although learning occurred in both groups, students were more deeply engaged while performing the remote lab. Remote lab users felt and behaved as though they completed a real scientific experiment. We also exam- ined whether realistic visualizations improved the psychological and learning experiences for each lab. Students who watched live video of the device collect- ing their data in the remote lab felt most engaged with the task, suggesting that it is the combination of the realistic lab and realistic video that was of the greatest benefit. Keywords: cognition; Web-based learning; remote lab; simulation; video; science learning Introduction Hands-on activities have long played a central role in science education (National Research Council, 2005; Stohr-Hunt, 1996). However, financial and practical constraints can limit access to these activities. Recent technological advances have led to increases in the use of tools that augment (or in some cases replace) hands-on science learning via interaction with a computer (Honey & Hilton, 2011; Scanlon, Colwee, Cooper, & DiPaolo, 2004). Nevertheless, the introduction of computer-based tools into the science laboratory repertoire has elicited signifi- cant debate (Ma & Nickerson, 2006). As a means of evaluating the utility of such tools, we focus on unpacking the psychological and learning implications of simulations and remote labs in support of science learning goals. Using psycho- logical presence as our guiding construct, we examine how these two technologies affect student experience with, and learning consequences from, computer-based laboratories. *Corresponding author. Email: kjona@northwestern.edu Distance Education, 2013 Vol. 34, No. 1, 37–47, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2013.770431 � 2013 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. sschmidt Typewritten Text https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260190903_Getting_real_the_authenticity_of_remote_labs_and_simulations_for_science_learning sschmidt Typewritten Text sschmidt Typewritten Text sschmidt Typewritten Text sschmidt Typewritten Text sschmidt Typewritten Text sschmidt Typewritten Text Remote labs Remote labs are computer-mediated laboratory experiences that allow students to access real experimental devices online (such as oscilloscopes, mass spectrometers, or Geiger counters). Remote labs provide access to scientific experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible, such as when schools lack specific facilities or equipment, with the goal of achieving similar experiences and learning outcomes (Lindsay & Good, 2005). In contrast, many science education programs rely on simulations, which differ in important ways from remote labs. Simulations do not provide access to real experimental devices but instead simulate data using compu- tational models. A critical issue is whether the use of actual equipment is important in students’ learning experiences, or whether simulations will suffice. Does the use of real equipment, as in remote labs, enable students to feel more like they are doing real science, despite accessing the equipment remotely? A meta-analysis of research studies comparing the efficacy of remote and hands- on labs shows little or no systematic differences in learning outcomes between the two types of experiences (Ma & Nickerson, 2006; Triona & Klahr, 2003). Students experience remote labs as being as effective as hands-on labs (Corter et al., 2004). However, students think that simulations are less effective than remote labs because simulations don’t feel as realistic (Scanlon, Colwee, Cooper, & DiPaolo, 2004). The realistic nature of remote labs affords students the opportunity to more directly apply theories learned in the classroom to real-world phenomena. In contrast, using simulations can lead students to overlook the link between theory and application (Lindsay & Good, 2005). However, other research shows that students don’t always think of remote labs as realistic experiences (Corter et al., 2007). The degree to which students derive realism from the experience might be a function of the user interfaces and visualiza- tions used in the lab experiences. For instance, Nedic, Machotka, and Nafalski (2003) noted that many remote labs resemble simulations without giving the user “a feeling of real presence in the laboratory” (p. 1). Using an interface that included controls that resembled actual equipment, as well as photographs and webcams, increased students’ preference for working in a remote environment (Nedic & Machotka, 2006). Presence We hypothesize that computer-based labs are more effective when their interfaces and visualizations lend a sense of presence to the experience. Presence is the “subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another” (Witmer & Singer, 1998, p. 225) such that the “the virtuality of experience is unnoticed” (Lee, 2004, p. 32). Factors that increase the sense of presence include design features, content, and user characteristics (Lom- bard & Ditton, 1997). We believe one cause of presence, realism, is particularly important for making computer-based labs seem more like authentic science labs. Realism may be especially important because beliefs about the validity and authen- ticity of the technology may play a bigger role in lab effectiveness than the technol- ogy itself (Lindsay & Good, 2005; Ma & Nickerson, 2006; Nedic et al., 2003). Across a range of applications, realism can be improved through design features such as photorealism (Daniel & Meitner, 2001), motion and sound (Heft & Nasar, 2000; Hetherington, Daniel, & Brown, 1993), and display size (Lombard, 1995). 38 M. Sauter et al. Specifically, in the present research we investigated two factors that may influ- ence students’ learning and their sense of presence: (1) the kind of lab that was pre- sented (remote lab or simulation) and (2) the inclusion of visualizations (photographs and videos). Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to com- plete a physics lesson that was presented either as a remote lab or as a simulation. Half of the students in each condition saw a video of a scientific device in action; the other half saw only a static photo of the device (see Table 1). We predicted that (1) remote lab users would rate their experiences as being more realistic than would simulation users and (2) seeing a video would better support presence and learning outcomes because it encodes the motion of the device. Our design also allowed us to test the interaction of two these factors. Method Participants in the experiment consisted of 123 undergraduate students at North- western University (United States). Most participants (N = 83) were first-year stu- dents, with the remainder including sophomores (N = 19), juniors (N = 10), and seniors (N = 11). On average participants had taken one physics class. Of the partic- ipants 13 had no previous physics experience, 56 had taken high school introduc- tory physics, 33 had taken advanced-placement physics in high school, and 21 had taken physics at the college level. Participants were tested individually at a desk in a quiet office at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, using the Firefox browser on an iMac. The Radioactivity iLab Our experiment utilized the Radioactivity iLab from http://www.iLabCentral.org, a website that provides access to remote online lab devices around the world (Jona & Vondracek, 2013). The Radioactivity iLab lesson includes a multistep, interactive online application that allows participants to perform an experiment pertaining to radioactivity. In the remote lab condition, participants remotely controlled a Geiger counter to measure radiation from a sample of radioactive strontium-90, with the actual equipment housed at the University of Queensland (Australia). In the simula- tion condition, participants used an identical Web interface but received simulated data based on computational models of radioactive decay of strontium 90. The sim- ulated data included randomized error to emulate the sampling error in real Geiger counter data. The learning goal of the lab was for students to observe and infer the inverse square law, which states that the intensity of the radiation from a point source decreases as a function of the square of the distance from that source. Visualizations Participants were assigned to see one of two different visualizations: half in each lab condition (remote lab or simulation) could access a photo, and half could access Table 1. Experimental conditions. Visualization condition Lab type Remote lab + photo Remote lab + live webcam Simulation + photo Simulation + prerecorded video Distance Education 39 http://www.iLabCentral.org a video. All participants saw the same small image of the Geiger counter on the left side of the screen as they worked through the lab (see Figure 1, upper); however, participants in the video condition could click on this image to see a video of the Geiger counter. Participants assigned to the video in the remote lab condition saw a live webcam feed of the Geiger counter performing their experiment, while partic- ipants in the simulation condition saw a recording of a webcam feed performing a similar experiment. Participants assigned to the photo in both lab conditions could click on the image to see a large photo, presented in the same frame size as the video. Figure 1. Accessing the visualizations in the Radioactivity iLab. When students clicked on the photo in the upper panel, they saw either the video or the photo (lower panel) in a new window. 40 M. Sauter et al. Procedure Participants progressed through a structured inquiry process using an online lab journal that contained instructions, readings, and metacognitive prompts (see Figure 1, upper right). The experimenter introduced each phase of the task to the participants but did not assist them further. The inquiry process included multiple phases that guided the participants through the scientific process of conducting an experiment. First, participants accessed short articles about radiation to research their topic. Next, participants wrote a research question to guide their investigation. Participants could design their experiment by choosing the distances at which radia- tion would last and the number of trials (or repetitions) the experiment would run at those settings. Finally, participants received their data and analyzed it using provided online graphing tools. Learning task and assessment Participants were informed they were testing educational software that was designed to promote physics learning. They completed four tasks: a pretest, the lab, a posttest, and the interview. The pretest, lab, and posttest were presented via computer, and the interview was conducted by the experimenter in the same location at Northwestern University. The pretest and posttest questions were designed to determine whether performing the labs improved content knowledge of radiation and the inverse square law. The interview was designed to probe participants’ thoughts about science labs and their specific experience with the online lab. Our assessments fell into the following three categories: the psychological pres- ence of the lab experience, thoughts about science labs, and learning outcomes. All assessments took place during the interview except the learning outcomes measures, which took place during the pretest and posttest. We created reliable coding schemes (Kappa > .70 using two coders) for each question to analyze the responses. Results Presence We examined whether lab type (i.e., remote or simulated data) and visual features (e.g., webcam or photo) influenced students’ perceptions of the realism of the lab. Presence was indicated by the participants’ feelings and attitudes toward the lab and whether they would apply actions normally taken in a hands-on experiment to a computer-based lab. For each of the assessment questions, we coded a “yes” response as 3 points, a “maybe/some doubt” response as 2 points, and a “no” response as 1 point. The remote lab group rated their experience as more like a real lab. On average, remote lab users (M = 2.54) more strongly believed that they had done a real experi- ment than simulation users did (M = 2.27), F(1, 117) = 5.14, p = <.05. There was also an interaction of lab type by visualization, F(1, 117) = 5.14, p = <.05. Simulation users who saw the video reported feeling more like they completed an experiment (M = 2.50) than did simulation users who just saw a photo (M = 2.03), F (1, 58) = 6.22, p = <.05, with no analogous difference for remote users (photo: M = 2.62, video: M = 2.50), F(1, 59) = .45, p = ns. We asked participants to discuss actions normally taken in a hands-on experi- ment to see if these actions were also applicable to computer-based labs. We asked Distance Education 41 participants to discuss the variability they observed (or failed to observe) in their data, and most participants noticed such variability (M = 2.78). Neither condition nor visualization type was significant, nor was the interaction, F(1, 117) 6 2.41, p = ns. However, remote lab users (M = 2.79) tended to expect variability in their data more often than simulation users did (M = 2.54), F(1, 116) = 4.09, p = .053. We asked participants whether they wanted to run the lab again: remote lab users (M = 1.90) responded more positively than simulation users (M = 1.56), F(1114) = 4.24, p = <.05. Although there was no main effect of visualization type [F(1, 115) = 2.49 p = .12], remote users who saw a video (M = 2.13) were more likely to want to rerun the lab as compared to users who saw a photo (M = 1.64), F (1, 57) = 5.23, p = <.05. Simulation users showed no such pattern, F(1, 57) = 0.04, p = ns. Participants’ reasons for wanting to rerun the lab included a desire to confirm or replicate their original data and to try different settings or methods. After completing the task, we told participants about the other lab type and asked them to compare the simulation and the remote lab. The majority of partici- pants overall preferred the remote lab over the simulation, particularly if they had completed the remote lab, χ2(1, N = 116) = 13.511, p = <.01. Few remote lab users preferred the simulation. This preference did not vary as a function of viewing a picture or video within either the remote lab (χ2 (1, N = 56) = .012, p = ns) or simu- lation (χ2 (1, N = 54) = .313, p = ns). This means that the lab type exerted a greater influence on participants’ lab preferences than the visual features did. Thoughts about science labs We asked participants to compare three lab types (hands-on lab, remote lab, and simulation) to probe their general thoughts and beliefs about science labs. A qualita- tive analysis of their responses revealed a core theme: participants often discussed the methodologies in terms of the quality of the data that each method produced. We coded their responses and performed Fisher’s exact tests to examine whether the frequency of their statements differed across lab and visualization type. One advantage of remote labs that arose from the data is the idea that computers can regulate the settings and measurements of the device, which may decrease human error compared to hands-on labs. Remote lab users who saw a video consid- ered how their methodology might decrease human error. More remote lab users who saw a video (N = 12) than a photo (N = 3) noted that hands-on data would be prone to human error (Fisher’s exact = .02, two-tailed). Remote lab users who viewed the video were also more likely to consider how the remote interface might decrease human error: 10 video viewers mentioned this in contrast to only two photo viewers (Fisher’s exact = .025, two-tailed). Some participants were wary of simulations, and simulation users who saw a video were especially likely to discuss problems with the methodology and the ben- efits of other methods. Of the participants 36% (N = 43) indicated that because sim- ulations did not use new data, they considered the method unscientific or unimportant. More simulation users who saw a video were wary of the simulation methodology (N = 14) than were users who saw a photo, (N = 5), Fisher’s exact = .025, two-tailed, with no similar effect emerging for remote lab users. Slightly more simulation users than remote lab users mentioned the importance of hands-on methodology in science labs, with 18 simulation users making this statement, compared to nine remote users (Fisher’s exact = .08, two-tailed). 42 M. Sauter et al. Learning outcomes We tested whether participants knew more content information after using the labs. Participants were asked specific test questions both before and after the lab activity. Each question was scored using a rubric checked by two coders (Kappa > .70). First, we examined test questions that could be answered using the readings, including (1) What is radiation? (2) What are some different types of radiation? Explain why these types of radiation differ. (3) What is radioactive decay, and how does it work? Participants gave more thorough answers to the question “What is radiation?” after than before the lab, F(1, 119) = 88.62, p = <.001. Participants were also better at naming different types of radiation and explaining how they differ after than before the lab, F(1, 112) = 76.43, p = <.001. Participants were also better at explaining radioactive decay after than before the lab, F(1, 112) = 61.21, p = <.001. However, simulation users performed better on this question than remote lab users, F(1, 111) = 4.70, p = <.05. Because participants in the simulation condition in our study felt less like they did an actual experiment, they may have concentrated more on theory than on application (Lindsay & Good, 2005). We also examined content questions that could be answered by doing the lab, including (1) How can you measure radioactivity? (2) Does the intensity of radia- tion change over time or distance? If so, explain the relationship(s). Participants were better at explaining how radioactivity was measured after than before the lab, F(1, 118) = 158.77, p = <.001. Participants were better at explaining the relation between distance and intensity of radiation after than before the lab, F(1, 118) = 105.06, p = <.001. There was a significant interaction between lab and visualiza- tion, F(1, 118) = 7.93, p = <.01. Within the remote group, participants who saw a video were better at explaining the relation between distance and intensity of radia- tion than those who only saw a photo, F(1, 58) = 8.38, p = <.01, with no compara- ble difference for simulation users, F(1, 58) = 2.29, p = ns. By viewing the video, participants saw the relation between distance and radiation in action: The particle counts decreased as the Geiger sensor moved away from the source. We also examined whether participants engaged with the lab differently depend- ing on lab or visualization type. Participants’ experimental designs did not differ according to condition. In the average experiment, participants chose about seven distances (M = 6.74) to measure at 4.98 s each, and they ran about five trials (M = 5.41). However, participants in the remote lab condition (especially those who saw a video) wrote better research questions to guide their experiment. We scored their questions on a scale of 0 to 3, with 3 being the most thorough response and 0 being a response unrelated to the experiment. Participants who used the remote lab wrote higher-quality questions (M = 2.53) than did participants who used the simula- tion (M = 2.05), F(1, 121) = 15.99, p = <.01. Additionally, remote lab users who saw a video (M = 2.75) wrote higher-quality questions than did users who saw a photo (M = 2.27), F(1, 60) = 12.04, p = <.01, but simulation users did not show this difference (M = 2.09 for photo versus M = 2.00 for video, F(1, 59) = .258, p = ns). Discussion Overall, remote labs and videos best re-created students’ experiences doing science labs: (1) Remote lab users were more likely to feel and behave as though they conducted a real experiment and (2) Remote users who watched the video felt most engaged with the task. These findings have important implications for science Distance Education 43 educators and learning technology developers, as well as researchers who can further expand our knowledge of realistic and engaging distance learning. Both remote lab and simulation modalities of the Radioactivity iLab were effec- tive at teaching the target science content; however, only the remote lab re-created students’ experiences of doing science labs. By grounding the experiment in the real world through the use of real devices, participants felt and behaved as though they conducted a scientific experiment. An important difference between the remote lab and simulation conditions involved beliefs about the data source; remote lab users were able to gather real data from a real device whereas simulation users were using computationally derived data, which did not feel as realistic or scientifically authentic. The authenticity of the data was important because it encouraged student engagement with the experimental task. Consider that remote lab users, as com- pared to simulation users, wrote higher-quality research questions and were more likely to want to run the lab again. By creating an authentic online experience grounded in reality, remote labs helped students to engage in scientific inquiry when the necessary empirical equipment was not locally available. The lab interface and visualizations were important in creating a more realistic experience. Some research has shown that students do not always believe remote labs are realistic (Corter et al., 2007), which may be due in part to the authenticity of the visual features of the labs. The Radioactivity iLab’s interface was intended to mimic a student’s actual research journal and workspace. Students were required to write a research question to drive their research, design their own experiment, and analyze their own results. These activities relied on the steps involved in a hands- on lab, with the connection to a real, albeit distal device fostering authenticity. Additionally, participants who watched live video of the device collecting data based on their own experimental design felt most engaged with the task, suggesting that it is the combination of the realistic lab and a realistic video that was of the greatest benefit. The remote lab and the video on the screen helped support the learning experi- ence. The remote lab created an authentic context and the visual features augmented the experience. The video allowed participants to actually see their experiment being run, which in turn enhanced student engagement with the activity. However, remote lab users and simulation users experienced this engagement differently. Remote lab users seemed more invested in the actual experiment—they crafted bet- ter research questions, considered how their experiment limited human error while also evaluating other possible sources of variability in their data, and wanted to run their experiment multiple times. Simulation users seemed invested in the idea of the experiment, but felt constrained by the methodology. The video helped them feel like they did an experiment, but the data from the simulation did not seem authentic enough. They considered ways that their experiment would be better if the method- ology was different, such as running a hands-on lab. Even though the remote lab and the simulation looked the same on the screen, the remote lab’s connection to a real device was integral to fostering an engaging and realistic lab experience. These findings are particularly important given current calls for a greater focus on teaching scientific practices (National Research Council, 2012), for more authen- tic lab experiences (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002; Singer, Hilton, & Schweingruber., 2005; Sunal, Wright, & Sundberg, 2008), and assessments of how those experiences can influence students’ academic trajectories. In a large-scale survey, Lopato (2007) found that undergraduate research experiences influenced student motivation in 44 M. Sauter et al. subsequent science courses. Participating in real research leads students to gain confidence and feel like a scientist (Hunter, Lausen, & Seymour, 2006). Because remote online labs feel authentic and are easy for students to access, their imple- mentation could have a positive effect on student experiences and outcomes for science learning. This is especially important for students in schools with limited resources, where a lack of equipment makes science learning less engaging for stu- dents and leads to poorer preparation for later science learning. It is also critical for the rapidly growing population of students who are taking science and engineering courses online where no physical access to laboratory equipment is possible. Remote labs are an important addition to simulations and computational models in the growing toolbox of learning technologies for science education. The results of this study point to important differences in the affordances of remote labs and simulations for science learning and critical elements of the user interface that enhance student engagement across both types of tools. Developers of science cur- ricula used in face-to-face, online, or blended delivery modalities should be attuned to the affordances of each type of learning technology and integrate hands-on work with simulations and remote labs in ways that optimize student learning. Learning technology developers should also adopt interface design principles and software tools that can further improve the realism of their user interfaces in order to benefit from the advantages pointed to by this study. Finally, the present research may shed light not only on whether various online education environments are effective, but also on how and why. This is particularly germane to science and engineering fields where learning about—and interacting with—scientific phenomena and the instruments used to study them are not only crucially important but also especially challenging to do at a distance from a physi- cal laboratory. In the future, we plan to continue the approach of linking research on presence with research on learning from remote labs and from simulations. One particularly interesting question is whether it is possible to design simulations that capture the benefits of remote labs in terms of creating a sense of presence. The critical question will not be which learning environment is better, but how to maximize the potential of each to create the most effective learning environments possible. This line of research will be essential in informing the design and devel- opment of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other new forms of online and blended learning. Acknowledgements This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grants OCI- 0753324 and DUE-0938075. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, and/or recommendations are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the University of Queensland, Australia for providing access to the remote radioactivity lab equipment. Notes on contributors Megan Sauter received her PhD in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 2011. She now works as a user experience researcher at AnswerLab in San Francisco, California. Megan is passionate about using psychological principles to improve people’s experiences with technology. David Uttal is professor of psychology of Education at Northwestern University. His research focuses on cognitive development, particularly the development of spatial and symbolic Distance Education 45 thinking. He is also active in efforts to enhance students’ participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) through improving their spatial thinking. David N. Rapp is associate professor at Northwestern University in the School of Education and Social Policy, and in the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on the cognitive mechanisms underlying successful and unsuccessful learning. He is associate editor at the Journal of Educational Psychology and Discourse Processes. Michael Downing is a research specialist in developmental neuroscience at the University of Chicago, Illinois. His current research examines the physiological components of early cortical development. Previously, he has conducted research at Northwestern University examining the psychology of virtual learning. Kemi Jona is research professor of learning sciences and computer science at Northwestern University where he leads R & D projects in cyberlearning tools for STEM education. He is also the Director of the Office of STEM Education Partnerships at Northwestern University. References Chinn, C. A., & Malhotra, B. A. (2002). Epistemologically authentic inquiry in schools: A theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks. Science Education, 86, 175–218. doi:10.1002/sce.10001 Corter, J. 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Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7, 225–240. doi:10.1162/105474698565686 Distance Education 47 http://fie-conference.org/fie2003/index.htm http://fie-conference.org/fie2003/index.htm http://www.wiete.com.au/journals/GJEE/Publish/index.html http://www.wiete.com.au/journals/GJEE/Publish/index.html Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. 
work_6hkcsyqcrbbx5ph4rhpn77b77i	----	The Model of Distance Education of the Designer in the Frames of Computer Project Graphics* Elena Zaeva-Burdonskaya and Daria Kardashenko Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Design and Applied Arts, Moscow, Russian Federation lenartt@gmail.com, dkardashenko@gmail.com Abstract. The article considers the potential of computer graphic modeling based on the experience of distance learning in design and art disciplines at the Department of Environmental design of the Stroganov Academy. An analysis of both practical and theoretical work of the Department during the semester made it possible to conclude that the model for the integration of full-time and dis- tance learning, the individual and interactive approaches to the student is opti- mal for schools of creative arts. The experiment revealed the greatest flexibility and adaptability to the online format of the methodological material of the dis- ciplines of graphic tools, its maximum openness to self-study, its role in innova- tive forms of design work, of the creative search for student’s own learning style. Keywords: Distance Learning, Computer Graphics, Design. 1 Introduction There is no single theory for learning in general; this is also true for online education. Today we have a number of theories of online education based on traditional teaching methods. The main purpose of this article is to analyse some ways to transform the model of visual and graphic content of traditional design education in a school of creative arts in terms of its compliance with the online educational environment. The theory of distance education has received sufficient justification abroad. in Various forms of distance learning existed since the 1840s starting from the primitive format of information transmission such as "pigeon mail" and up to theoretical expla- nations of distance education, undertaken by leading experts. "Traditionally, theories of distance education have been derived from classical European or American models based on correspondence study» [1]. Researchers, including B. Holmberg, C. A. Wedemeyer, D. Sewart, M. G. Moore etc. have formed the main theoretical postulates of distance education as a systematically organized form of self-learning - at a dis- tance, through the media, etc. Such postulates are relevant to this day. Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons Li- cense Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). * Publication is supported by RFBR grant № 19-01-00435 mailto:lenartt@gmail.com 2 E. Zaeva-Burdonskaya, D. Kardashenko Telecommunication systems have significantly changed the practice of distance learning (for example, the equivalence theory of M. Simonson [2]), focusing on two aspects of distance education: independent work and the use of media for educational communication. Some ways of work with CAD graphics in a new remote media format were pre- sented in the educational process of the Department of Environmental design of Mos- cow State Stroganov Academy of Design and Applied Arts. The uniqueness of the graphic pattern is formed by the multidisciplinary structure of the Department. Teach- ing, training of bachelors and masters is conducted according to the programs of En- vironmental Design and Multimedia Design. Despite the difference of the final project product (certificate of professional quali- fication of the student), the most important common basis for those two profiles is CAD technology. If computer graphics takes an important place in the full-time for- mat of training, then in the conditions of distance learning this tool becomes the only possible form of visualization, replacing modelling, manual drawing, sketching, etc. The existing graphic techniques are undergoing their maximum transformation in the technology of training and conducting of professional design and propaedeutic disciplines. In the new remote dialogue between teacher and student old methods of presentation are not effective. Normally, a person receives 80% of the information through vision. If the educa- tional information flow is restricted exclusively to visual images that are familiar and necessary in an art school, the requirements for this visual material are seriously increasing. It takes on new functions and is loaded with new qualities that previ- ously accompanied the teacher's face-to-face dialogue with the student. The historical- ly established tradition of transferring the experience of "art craft" from the master to the student in the oral form of consulting based on an aesthetic subjective assessment of the project material has been replaced by impersonal, but more universal criteria for evaluating virtual technologies. Stroganov school of design as a professional in- tegrity is focused basically on the reproduction of knowledge and the entire learning process, its processes are cyclical. In 2020 with its situation of forced self-isolation, the remote format with its virtual graphics platform assumed the role of a model of professional creative education. 1.1 Modern trends in distance education at the heart of new creative challenges Distance education is an international phenomenon that has radically changed the methods and approaches to the educational process. The basis of the positive vector is that “…modern telecommunications and electronic publications can overcome the shortcomings of traditional forms of education, while maintaining all their ad- vantages… Distance learning technology is …the process of independent, but con- trolled development of a certain volume of knowledge” [3] and as a result - unlimited potential for independent work; possibility of additional consultations (in any appro- priate time); high economic efficiency and low costs in comparison with full-time The Model of Distance Education of the Designer in the Frames of Computer Project… 3 forms; social accessibility; “openness, individual pace of classes, new opportunities for student’s creative self-expression” [4], etc. The main aim of the distance education is “to ensure that the entire educational system is ahead of the curve and is focused on the problems of the future post- industrial civilization... to increase creativity in education in order to be ready for activities in various social environments” [5]. According to D.Keegan it is “…this concept of industrial, open, non-traditional education that will change the practice of learning” [6]. Students should receive learning experiences tailored to the environ- ment and the situation in which they are located. Considering all the above prospective requirements “…it’s logical to turn to possi- ble options for organizing distance learning, their specifics, to determine for what purposes this or that option may be most acceptable and under what conditions; sec- ondly, what impact does it have on the organization of the educational process, the selection of content, methods, organizational forms and means of training” [7]. Those. the task is to create your own model of distance learning, acceptable in an school of creative arts with its priority of figurative visual thinking. 1.2 Factor of innovative technologies in distance education Electronic technologies of distance education, having introduced themselves into the system of higher art education, received an impetus for development and supplement- ed the methodology of the teacher with new technological and interactive potential. In distance learning of higher schools, a set of methodological materials, such as “…case technology and network technology –computer training programs and elec- tronic textbooks, ... and television-satellite technology can be considered as an inde- pendent form of education of the 21st century, as well as an innovative component of full-time and distance learning” [8]. This implies the use of special learning servers with a complex structure; cloud storages with large amounts of data that every student has access to; computer telecommunications: video lectures and video classes; e-mail and chat technologies (for asynchronous classes), webinars, etc. The digital format of distance learning programs for environmental and multimedia design realizes the advantages of visual and graphic tools with minimal involvement of a humanitarian intermediary. The expressive language of graphics that speaks without words became an only possible language of the new distance communication. 2 Method 2.1 Interactive approach to technology of distant education for the designer It’s very hard to write a good tutorial for designers. And by the way almost no one has written it yet. As a rule, the educational literature is limited either to the analysis of a narrow project topic, or to the general theory of plastic composition. Computer text- books from the collections of the “Hind” electronic library system provided assistance in preparing for independent classes, including training in graphic editors. Extremely useful material, among other things, was a textbook and a workshop for universities 4 E. Zaeva-Burdonskaya, D. Kardashenko "Digital technologies in design. History, theory, practice", published in the Stroganov Academy under the editorship of A.N.Lavrentyev. In the creative sphere, the methods of full-time training are not formatted in a set of strict rules and still keeps the memory of "workshop skills". The aura and charisma of teacher’s personality, clearly present in traditional full-time education, is compensated by the capabilities of IT technologies that use virtual instead of traditional means. The uniqueness of teacher’s individual methodology is partially preserved even in the situation of distant education. Among the various types of distance learning technologies that are used in Russia, “the most promising and widely used is Internet technology” [9]. These are: a case technology - the author’s “set of textual, audiovisual and multimedia teaching materi- als, ready for distribution for independent study by students during the organization of regular consultations with tutors” [10]; systematic consultations in the format of video classes (Skype); video lessons and reviews in the Discord service. The core of such technology is digital graphic material relating to various aspects of design. Actual working graphic or video materials and current graphic tasks have become available in the structured, according to the curriculum, Mega cloud storage service. The service has become an optimal tool for the exchange and control of visu- al graphic information. Remote work with the use of information technology has great flexibility and adap- tive capabilities, allows one to apply the school’s traditional individual approach to the personality of each student. The graphic visualization still remains the main way of implementing the author’s solution. The main used interactive format of Internet technologies in training are webinars. The online format of classes at the Department of Environmental Design arose long before today and began precisely with training programs for graphic editors: After effects, Premier Pro and Cinema 4D - all in the format of webinars. Initially, for that purpose the Youtube.com platform together with programs capturing the image on the monitor was used. Afterwards it was decided to abandon this method in favor of video conferences in the Zoom program. The author of the programs is a teacher of the De- partment – D. E. Kardashenko. The format of video conferences (consultations) made it possible to compensate for the "teacher's personality" factor significantly and gave an optimal quality to the video-graphic material presented by online comments. The fundamental principle of art education remains the priority of creative principles implemented in an individual (humanitarian) approach on the art and graphic material of the project. The distance between the teacher and the student enhances the interest in the dy- namic graphics format, which has a great potential for information. Video allows one to reflect the procedural nature of the design. The format for the presentation of edu- cational material by a teacher often becomes reoriented from a static PowerPoint presentation model to its dynamic model, which includes graphic video content. Dif- ferent video formats such as avi, Mpeg4, etc. become an opportunity to reveal the latent nature of creativity, and often the only possible way to explain to a student design tasks: the creation and functioning of mobile application interfaces; examples of the formation of design concepts from design to prototype, etc. Video recording of The Model of Distance Education of the Designer in the Frames of Computer Project… 5 the master classes allows you to introduce the student to the technique and tools of a particular study. Fig. 1. Page of the webinar program on the topic "Basics of Trapcode Particular" for 3rd year students of the Multimedia Design program. Fig. 2. Screen capture during a Zoom-conference on the topic “Creating holograms in After effects using the Trapcode Form plugin” 2.2 Specificity of the design and graphic studies for the designer in the situation of distance education The main difficulty of distance education in design lies in its creative artistic basis. Creativity, compensating for the humanitarian deficit, penetrates even into the tech- nical model of computer technology training. The technical methods of working in 6 E. Zaeva-Burdonskaya, D. Kardashenko Adobe After Effects are invested in the final task in a story video with a musical ba- sis. Fluency in graphic techniques and software capabilities liberates the student's crea- tive thinking process. The focus on an experiment and the discovery that follows, are the integral parts of the creative process and the creation of a new, previously non- existent, imaginative project concept that is present in every student project. How can one convey the creative intent of a project using conditional graphics? In that situation the combined representation of an idea or concept in static illustrative graphics, col- lage, animated format, video shooting, three-dimensional prototyping, etc. comes to the rescue. The distance format drew special attention to the research phase of the Master's degree and projects in the field of interactive design of the Multimedia profile. This required a change in the graphic composition of the project. A layer of digital info- graphic has appeared. Graphic visualization using software packages of 3d max, Cinema 4D; 2d orthogo- nal projections of environmental objects are supplemented by graphical analytical diagrams and graphs. Distance learning emphasizes the stage of pre-project research and increases the role of infographics in term and degree projects. The tasks of light- ing design in environmental content are starting with the introduction of the Dialux EVO version 9.0 and Adobe After Effects programs. Distance learning of manual project graphics is partially compensated by the possibilities of computer illustration – an integral part of multimedia and environmental projects. To make a sketch, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop programs are used. Illustrative rendered graphic images become the basis for subsequent character animation. 2.3 Methods of artistic design in the format of distance education “We consider distance education as an independent system, one of the forms of edu- cation. It is therefore logical to turn to the possible options for organizing distance learning, their specifics, in order to determine, first, for what purposes this or that option may be most acceptable and under what conditions, and secondly, what is the specificity of the components of each of the possible options, namely: what impact does this or that option have on the organization of the educational process, the selec- tion of content, methods, organizational forms and means of training” [6]. The im- plementation of the Internet-technical resources of education chosen by the Depart- ment can be illustrated by term projects created on the profiles of Multimedia Design and Environmental Design. The process of switching to distance learning in the Multimedia Design profile, where the experience of implementing information technologies in the educational process began long before the quarantine, was quite smooth. The proprietary free messenger Discord became a technological solution for conducting classes (consulta- tions of teachers Ivanova E. and Kuznetsova E.) with students in the discipline "De- sign". A whole group could simultaneously see each other's work and be able to comment on it. This brought classes as close as possible to offline consultations: stu- The Model of Distance Education of the Designer in the Frames of Computer Project… 7 dents showed their home work and received comments in the format of an audio con- versation with a demonstration of a personal computer screen. The virtual resource, however, allowed teachers to clearly follow the project man- agement methodology. On the first stage students showed presentations with research on the future topic of the project and after its "approval" conducted a step-by-step analysis of the social, ergonomic, geographical, economic, and other points of view. Sociological analysis of consumer model which is necessary for creating a website or mobile app project requires a serious pre-project research and visualization of its re- sults. Fig. 3. Pre-project analysis for the "Project of media reconstruction for the Museum of Cosmo- nautics named after Tsiolkovsky. T.Pashina Tutors: senior teacher E.A. Kuznetsova, E.V.Malkova. The research results became the basis for the project solution. Spatial visualization in 3d max / Cinema 4D programs was demonstrated in the render format. Fig. 4. Stillframe VR applications 8 E. Zaeva-Burdonskaya, D. Kardashenko Figma and/or Tilda software tools were used to design prototype interfaces. Stu- dents shared links to web pages with prototypes in a general chat. The final imple- mentation of the project included a study designed in a landing page, a graphic image (1500x1500 mm) and a video clip. Interactive prototypes on the project theme were used. Fig. 5. A frame from a video demonstrating the capabilities of the Journey tour app. P.Bakasov. Tutors: senior teacher E.A. Kuznetsova, E.V.Malkova. According to tutors E.Ivanova and E.Kuznetsova, one of the advantages of distance learning is the maximum use of modern technologies on the example of Zoom, Dis- cord, Mega, Figma, Tilda services, which are necessary for future specialists in the field of interactive design. The online format taught students to present their work clearly, concisely and more competently. Fig. 6. Demonstration of stillframes on the training server in the Discord program. The Model of Distance Education of the Designer in the Frames of Computer Project… 9 According to tutors E.Ivanova and E.Kuznetsova, one of the advantages of distance learning is the maximum use of modern technologies on the example of Zoom, Dis- cord, Mega, Figma, Tilda services, which are necessary for future specialists in the field of interactive design. The online format taught students to present their work clearly, concisely and more competently. The environmental approach has become the basis for the analysis and develop- ment of complex projects for interior and exterior environments. Due to the with- drawal of traditional sketches "by hand" and its replacement with computer graphic visualization, the program SketchUp, which has a great potential for graphic tools, attracted attention. It became a useful addition to 3d max / Cinema 4D programs in- volved in creating of 3D visualizations of environmental projects. The developed innovative solutions of imaginative project content are demonstrat- ed in integrated computer multimedia environments: PDF presentations, project presentations, readymag.com website that allows to create online presentations with any graphic content, etc. 3 Results In the current situation of forced distance learning format, it is advisable to talk about the formation of the Distinctive Distance Education Design, which defines the peda- gogical methods used in courses, synchronous and asynchronous communications, etc. [11]. For design and graphic training at the Department a comprehensive ap- proach was chosen that is optimal for the distance learning format. The Mega cloud platform, Discord voice, video, and text chat, Zoom video conferences, webinar pro- grams, and graphical software package became an information technology model that compensated for its forced limitations and shortcomings. The model took into account the obvious priority of independent work of the student and opened the way to the creative search for one’s own style of learning. With the repeating of the material and ability to return to the past, the remote format paved the way for a more advanced study of the capabilities and technologies of computer graphic modeling, which make up more than half of the project tasks. The format of distant learning required additional motivation for the student. “It is the motivation to get really solid knowledge that is the driving force for distance learning” [12]. In the current circumstances, maintaining interest in learning requires also additional and very serious efforts from the teacher. A new result of the remote format was socially oriented project work motivated by the forced coronovirus pan- demic. On the Multimedia profile projects include additional graphical development of virtual spaces designed for remote operation (sites of various companies, applica- tion-based services, scenarios for virtual Museum excursions, etc.). With a sharp change in project and educational tasks, as in the situation of restruc- turing the entire education system for the period of self-isolation in March 2020, the optimal solution is to get acquainted with as many techniques and methods of work of the teacher with the student as possible. The great potential of information and graph- ic tools allowed us to quickly reconstruct the creative process in a remote format 10 E. Zaeva-Burdonskaya, D. Kardashenko without loss of mutual understanding and violation of interpersonal relations, to speak the same "language". The disadvantages of distance work include a significant share of the responsibil- ity, self-discipline and initiative required from the student. Distance makes the organ- ization and management of learning imperfect, does not provide systematic feedback, reduces the indicator of sociability, personal contact of students with each other and with teachers is minimal or in the worst case there is no contact at all. For the full- weight work of the group as a whole the need for traditional contact classes in the Academy's classrooms is necessary. 4 Conclusion Distance education appeared at the stage of standardization of training programs, on the wave of globalization processes. Online training at an art school has become a forced exclusive measure, which is not typical for solving creative tasks. Moving away from the traditional model levels the aesthetic and emotional cross-section of the dialogue between "Teacher" and "Student", disrupts the delicate balance of the humanitarian artistic aspect and the innovative-technological origin. The trend of standardization is in direct conflict with creative tasks: to preserve the individuality and creative portrait of the student. Of all possible models the one created by H.Gardner (Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books. 1983) is the closest to desired: “…an integrated model that described the phenomenon of pedagogically driven online education. Key to this model is the assumption that online education has evolved as a subset of learning in general rather than a subset of distance learning. As blended learning, which combines face-to-face and online instruction, evolves into the dominant form of instruction throughout all levels of education, it serves as the basis for an integrated model” [13]. “The integration of full-time and distance learning” [6] is the most promising model based on higher education, which will allow obtaining advanced knowledge. “The integration of distance and full-time studies is very prom- ising in terms of ... training for individual programs” [6] that is increasingly present for various reasons in art schools. Computer graphic tools open the way to a possible online learning format as an unlimited opportunity to implement one’s creative ideas. Graphical modeling serves the main purpose of distance learning: “t0 provide students with elements of universal education that will enable them to adapt effectively to changing socio-economic conditions and successfully integrate into modern society” [14]. The universality of online teaching methods for interactive design is confirmed with the opinion of teachers of the Department of Environmental Design specializing on multimedia design. Evgeniya Ivanova: “The new format of the "Interface" discipline inspired me to optimize part of the work online and add new tools to the program. I consider the experiment on distance learning of the discipline "interface" to be successful and I am ready to use its individual aspects further on.” The Model of Distance Education of the Designer in the Frames of Computer Project… 11 Ekaterina Kuznetsova: “Working in an audience and in personal communication with students, computer disciplines, especially in the field of animation and three- dimensional modeling are learned better and faster due to the personal contact with the teacher. At the same time, a big advantage of distance learning is the simplifica- tion of knowledge control due to the " transparency” of the control system.” References 1. 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work_6l7vmaped5anva36fudft3iitu	----	Investigating teacher presence in courses using synchronous videoconferencing Investigating teacher presence in courses using synchronous videoconferencing Nicole Rehna, Dorit Maorb  and Andrew McConneyb aFaculty of arts and science, ambrose university college, calgary, canada; bschool of education, Murdoch university, Perth, australia ABSTRACT This research examines teacher presence in high school distance courses that are delivered by synchronous videoconference. In rural and remote areas, many school districts are using videoconferencing as way to reach dispersed students. This collective case study uses mixed methods to unpack the notion of presence from the perspective of teachers and their students. This study reports four key findings which have implications for building presence in a videoconference course: teachers’ confidence and experience aligned with higher presence; teaching videoconference and face-to-face classes simultaneously led to challenges with developing presence; immediacy behaviors correlated with higher presence; and, students’ learning preference related to perceived teacher presence. These findings confirm many of the issues raised in the literature about technology integration but also contribute new perspectives on teaching presence in a videoconference. Introduction Videoconferencing technology offers an enticing opportunity for distance education pro- viders to connect geographically distributed students and teachers through real-time, two- way video. As the cost of hardware decreases and high-speed Internet becomes more accessible, many schools and districts are choosing videoconferencing to meet the educa- tional needs of rural and remote students and those who cannot attend school for other reasons (Bower, Kenney, Dalgarno, Lee, & Kennedy, 2014; Greenberg, 2009). Although vid- eoconferencing is a cost-effective way to connect distance students with qualified teachers (Anderson, 2008; Lawson, Comber, Gage, & Cullum-Hanshaw, 2010; Twigg, 2001), there are very few resources to support teachers who find themselves teaching students across a screen (Bower et al., 2014). Teachers need concrete strategies and clear guidance on how to teach effectively and connect with their students in a course delivered synchronously by videoconference. Research into asynchronous, fully online modes of course delivery, particularly for the higher education sector, is growing (Maor, 2008). Few studies, however, look at the unique © 2016 open and Distance Learning association of australia, inc. KEYWORDS Distance education; presence; synchronous; technological pedagogical content knowledge (tPacK); videoconferencing ARTICLE HISTORY Received 11 June 2015 accepted 29 august 2016 CONTACT nicole Rehn nrehn@ambrose.edu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0743-4755 mailto:nrehn@ambrose.edu 2 N. ReHN eT AL. context of synchronous delivery of courses to non-adult learners by videoconferencing (Alberta education, 2006; Murphy, Rodríguez-Manzanares, & Barbour, 2011). When a course is delivered by videoconference, students see their teacher almost daily for a scheduled block of time, during which, the teacher uses direct instruction in a live format to explain content and tasks, and engage learners through interactive activities. As in online learning, there is a geographical distance between the teacher and student, which leads to both a real and a perceived barrier to communication and connection (Moore, 1993). The result of this barrier is a decreased sense of being there, which is otherwise known as presence (Anderson, 2008), a construct that has been investigated and conceptualized through the community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). Building relationships and rapport between the teacher and the students is critical to a positive learning environ- ment (Munroe, 1998), and the real and perceived distance in a videoconferencing classroom makes it more difficult to create this atmosphere. A unique set of skills and strategies are therefore required by the teacher to bridge this distance, connect with students, and develop presence (Barbour, 2013). The teacher has an important influence on the cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes of schooling for students (Hattie, 2003; Haughey, 1997; Kramas & Kopp, 2010; Rowe, 2003). Based on the assumption that the teacher is critical to student success, and the fact that videoconferencing exists in situations where students are physically separated from their teacher, the goal of this research has been to examine the notion of presence to determine how teachers can better develop it in this unique context. The research questions that drove this study are: (1) How do the teachers’ perception of their own technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and confidence as well as their experience impact presence? (2) What do high school students expect of their videoconference teachers in terms of presence? (3) What actions do videoconference teachers take to increase presence in their courses? (4) What is the impact on presence when videoconference teachers are required to teach remote and face-to-face students simultaneously? Presence Presence is generally considered to be a sense of awareness, receptivity, and connectedness to the mental, emotional, and physical workings of the individual and the group in the context of their learning environments (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006). Presence has also been defined as ‘the perceptual illusion of non-mediation’ (Lombard & Ditton, 1997, p. 16), which means that presence gives participants who are geographically dispersed the feeling of being there and being together. Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) refer to this as the degree to which a person on the other side of a screen (or computer) is perceived as being ‘real’ (p. 9). As a construct, presence is well documented in the literature, although mostly in studies of asynchronous, fully online adult education. Arising from their research into communities of inquiry in distributed learning contexts, Garrison et al. (2000) proposed a framework for understanding presence, which identifies three elements: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Cognitive presence refers to the construction of meaning or the acquisition of knowledge by participants; in other words, it is the primary goal of education. DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 3 It is based on Dewey’s (1933) notion of reflective thinking or meaning-making through discourse, and challenges the practice commonly seen in videoconferencing of content delivery through direct instruction. Garrison et al. argued that a strong social presence needs to exist for cognitive presence to flourish. This is because social presence, or the perception of feeling connected to others, leads to higher levels of comfort and satisfaction for teachers and students. Teaching presence is defined as ‘the design, facilitation and direction of cog- nitive and social processes for the purpose of realising personally meaningful and educa- tionally worthwhile learning outcomes’ (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001, p. 5). Therefore, teaching presence serves to initiate and maintain an environment where social presence, and therefore cognitive presence, can flourish. Teachers are responsible for creating the conditions in which students feel connected, supported, and safe to construct meaning, and this requires deliberate effort (Aragon, 2003). In the context of videoconferencing, teach- ers need to develop presence across a screen and across a distance. since students’ sense of distance can threaten their ability to learn (Moore, 1993), reducing this psychological distance is critical for teachers in a videoconference course. Previous studies in other distance education contexts can shed some light on the ways that teachers develop presence during videoconferencing. some scholars operationalize presence in terms of immediacy behaviors, defined as the degree of perceived physical and/ or psychological closeness between people (Mehrabian, 1981). Teacher immediacy includes both verbal behaviors (e.g., use of names, tone of voice, use of inclusive pronouns) and non-verbal behaviors (e.g., posture, facial and hand gestures, use of classroom space). originally used to understand communication in face-to-face relationships, immediacy behaviors have also been applied to distance education contexts. Immediacy has been linked to improved presence (Baker, 2010), and studies have shown how both constructs improve student satisfaction and perceived success (Hackman & Walker, 1990; Witt, Wheeless, & Allen, 2007). In a technology-mediated learning environment such as a videoconference, teachers need to have proficiency with technology, in addition to pedagogical skills and knowledge of curriculum. Koehler and Mishra (2009) argue, however, that technological knowledge on its own is not sufficient to ensure effective instruction. They proposed the TPACK framework that broadened shulman’s (1987) original pedagogy-content model to show how these three domains of knowledge need to come together for effective integration of technology. In other words, they believe that a teacher’s knowledge of subject matter and pedagogy does not assume the transfer of knowledge for incorporating appropriate technologies for teaching effectively. The TPACK model has received some criticism for its theoretical imma- turity (Graham, 2011) and its lack of clarity around the subcategories (Cox & Graham, 2009), and so we acknowledge, with Niess (2011), that TPACK is dynamic and gradually evolving. This has led to the development of a number of instruments for measuring TPACK, including self-report questionnaires and performance-based assessments (Jamieson-Proctor et al., 2013; Koehler, shin, & Mishra, 2012). The instrument chosen for this study was Archambault and Crippen’s (2009) survey due to its similarity of context and ease of administration. Videoconferencing technology was not originally designed for education purposes, rather as a business communication tool (Lawson et al., 2010), and for teachers to integrate this technology effectively in distance education courses, they need to merge their knowledge of the technological tools with their existing pedagogical beliefs (ermter, 2005), including those that lead to increased presence. 4 N. ReHN eT AL. For the purposes of this study, the researchers conceptualized presence as a construct that encapsulates the community of inquiry framework proposed by Garrison et al. (2000), feelings of ‘realness’ described by Gunawardena and Zittle (1997), and the perception of ‘closeness’ reported by Mehrabian (1981) and Moore (1993). In other words, when teachers design distance learning environments in which the students feel close to their teacher and peers as real people, then presence would be high. As indicated above, research shows that increased presence correlates positively with perceived student success and satisfaction. It is unclear, however, how teachers might develop it in a high school course delivered by videoconference. This research addresses that gap. Method Research design This study explored the experiences of teachers and students in secondary school courses that are delivered by videoconference, focusing on the construct of teaching presence. A constructivist epistemology, holistically and in-context, informed the research. The following collective case study approach used mixed methods to allow for an in-depth study of teacher presence from the teachers’ and students’ perspectives using multiple data sources (ques- tionnaires, interviews, and observations). The focus was on the interactions and transactions that took place within the videoconferencing class context and the perceptions and experi- ences of the teacher and student participants. Quantitative methods provided descriptive data to support the qualitative exploration of student and teacher perceptions and experi- ence. Morse and Niehaus (2009) describe this approach as simultaneous QuAL + quant, com- prising a qualitative core component and a supplementary quantitative component. Mixing methods in this way offered a stronger chance of answering the research questions than would a mono-method design (Johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003). During the study, teachers were surveyed about their confidence and experience with videoconferencing, and perceived skill level with technology. using observation and inter- views, rich detail about the context in which they teach was gathered. We also conducted questionnaires and interviews with students in the observed classes to understand teacher presence from their perspectives. We then used cross-case analysis to look for variations in pedagogy and perceived teacher presence from students’ perspectives. Data analysis was primarily inductive as themes and patterns developed across the cases. Participants The participants for this study were teachers and students from two rural school districts in Canada. In both districts, schools are geographically dispersed across vast distances with an administration operating out of a central office. Many of the schools in these districts have access to Polycom® videoconferencing technology with sMART™ interactive whiteboards and Bridgit™ software to deliver courses to one another. The students in this study were required to take a videoconference course because they were attending a remote, rural school that had limited face-to-face course offerings and human resources. With the support of the school district technology consultant and superintendent for each school district, we invited teachers using videoconferencing to the study, and five teachers agreed to participate (labelled teacher A–e). All five teachers had been teaching DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 5 for over 10 years but had varying degrees of experience with videoconferencing and were assigned labels accordingly: novice (fewer than two courses); moderate experience (between two and five courses); experienced (more than five courses). Three of the teachers taught a face-to-face class simultaneously with the videoconference course, whereas the other two teachers only had videoconference students. The students of these teachers were also invited to participate in the research. In total, all 40 students completed the teaching presence scale survey, and 26 students took part in focus group interviews. Instruments The Archambault and Crippen (2009) TPACK instrument was used to measure teachers’ per- ceptions of their TPACK to see if it impacted teacher presence. This was chosen because it had K–12 data that could be used comparatively. It includes 24 items, and responses are given in the form of a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = poor; 5 = excellent). Construct validity was estab- lished through expert consultation, item revision and two phases of a pilot study. Results from Achambault and Crippen’s study (n = 596) showed an average self-reported TPACK score of 3.75 among K-12 distance educators; this has been used as an average benchmark in this study for comparison against a larger sample. In addition to completing the TPACK question- naire, the teachers engaged with some additional questions to gather data on their experience with videoconference teaching. They also responded to a series of general questions (devel- oped by the researchers) to gauge their level of confidence with the videoconferencing con- text. The reason for this survey was to provide further data about each teacher to see if experience and confidence impacted the ability to develop presence. each teacher agreed to have at least one of their typical videoconference classes observed by the researcher. The focus of the observations was on teacher behaviors in regards to instruction and interaction with the students, with particular attention given to the indicators of teaching presence as outlined by Anderson et al. (2001). Teachers were informed of the purpose of the observations and were asked to teach over the videoconference and interact with students in a typical way. The teachers also participated in a 1-h interview with open- ended questions about their experience teaching by videoconference. The interview ques- tions focused on the development of presence—what strategies they used to maximize those feelings of connectedness, and how successful they felt they were at it. Participating students were invited to complete the teaching presence scale survey (shea, Pickett, & Pelz, 2003) to provide some descriptive data about each teacher’s presence from the perspective of their videoconferencing students and to compare these results with the teachers’ self-evaluation (via TPACK). The stance on teacher presence implicit in this scale follows the community of inquiry framework (Garrison et al., 2000). A 5-point Likert-type scale was used to measure each item on the scale with a score of five indicating high teaching presence and a score of one indicating low teaching presence. In addition to the electronic TPs questionnaire, some students participated in a focus group interview. The purpose of these focus groups was to have the students share their experience of videoconferencing, in their own words, and in a non-threatening way. The students were asked questions that focused on the expectations they had of their videoconference teacher and the indicators of presence that are reported in the literature. In total, there were seven focus groups, each with no more than five students. In one of the cases (teacher e), the students were too remote and dispersed to participate in a focus group but two of them responded to some open- ended questions by email. 6 N. ReHN eT AL. Analysis Miles and Huberman’s (1994) framework served as the guide for data analysis. The quanti- tative data obtained from the three surveys (TPACK, confidence, and TPs) provided rich, descriptive detail of the videoconferencing context. These data were used to give an objec- tive measure of the teachers’ perceived knowledge and skills with teaching by videoconfer- ence (TPACK) and their level of confidence and then to compare these to the students’ assessment of their teaching presence. To discover patterns in the qualitative data, the researchers employed inductive analysis. Interview transcripts and observation field notes were given initial codes, which were then sorted into themes. The themes were then matched with concepts and constructs reported in the literature to see what ideas about teacher presence, teaching skills, and communication across a distance were being confirmed in the context of high school videoconference and what original ideas were emerging. The final step in the data analysis process involved the researchers returning to the research questions and using the results of the quantitative and qualitative phases to draw tentative conclusions about presence in courses delivered by videoconference. Credibility was established through the triangulation of the quantitative data, the qualitative data and the literature. Findings and discussion Four major themes emerged from the analysis: • teachers’ levels of confidence and experience aligned with higher student-reported presence, more so than self-reported TPACK, • teaching by videoconference during a face-to-face class led to challenges with devel- oping presence, • teacher immediacy behaviors and feelings of interpersonal connectedness correlated with higher presence, and • students’ learning preference related to teacher presence. The following section unpacks and provides support for each of these findings. TPACK, confidence, experience, and presence The results from the quantitative phase of the study were used to determine if there was a connection between the teachers’ self-reported TPACK, their confidence, experience, and the students’ assessment of their presence. Figure 1 presents these quantitative results. Teachers A, B and C taught face-to-face and remote students simultaneously while teachers D and e taught only remote students. There are a few observations to be noted about these data. Firstly, the teachers with the most experience (teachers D and e) did not self-report correspondingly high TPACK scores compared with the less experienced teachers. We suggest that teachers with more video- conference experience likely have a more accurate idea of what they do not know and therefore rated themselves more conservatively on questions about their TPACK. Teachers A and B rated themselves comparatively high (4.5 and 4.6 out of 5, respectively) despite having little experience in this unique context. In the interviews that followed, it was deter- mined that these two teachers were quite tech-savvy and despite having less experience DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 7 with videoconference hardware and software specifically, they felt that they would learn quickly. secondly, based on what the research says about TPACK (Koehler & Mishra, 2009), we expected that the teachers who self-rated higher technological pedagogical knowledge would also be better at building presence in the technology-mediated context of a video- conference than those who reported lower knowledge, but the data did not reflect this. Although teachers A and B in our study produced the highest TPACK scores, this did not translate to the highest presence scores according to their students (3.5 and 3.5). In contrast, teachers D and e had the highest presence reported by their students (4.0 and 3.9, respec- tively) but their TPACK scores were lower than those of teachers A and B and much closer to the average score of 3.75 reported by Archambault and Crippen (2009). The only teacher with TPACK and presence scores that seemed to align was teacher C. This teacher had the lowest TPACK score (3.5), caused mostly by a very low technological knowledge sub-score of 2.0, and also the lowest presence score (3.3). It seems that the TPACK instrument failed to pick up something important here as the teachers’ sense of being tech- savvy or belief that they had the knowledge to teach with technology was not necessarily reflected in building presence across a screen, from the perspective of their videoconference students. Although a minimum level of comfort with technology is required, we suggest techno- logical proficiency is not enough to ensure effective instruction in a technology-mediated environment, such as a videoconference. Instead, the data show that higher levels of confi- dence and experience aligned more closely with higher levels of presence. In particular, teachers D and e had the most experience, the highest self-reported confidence, and the highest presence scores. This experience gave those teachers a better understanding of the context and the challenges, and how pedagogy needed to be adapted to ensure learning. They had spent more time testing out different strategies for connecting with their students, Figure 1.  teachers’ self-perception of overall tPacK and confidence scores compared with students’ perception of presence. 8 N. ReHN eT AL. building rapport, overcoming logistical tasks, and subsequently, building presence. Teachers D and e knew that they had more to learn, particularly in regards to the technology, but their experience afforded them the confidence to know what worked and to continue seek- ing new ways to improve. Teacher A, on the other hand, believed that he was tech-savvy and able to teach with technology, but he lacked experience with videoconferencing, spe- cifically. He had a very low confidence score, and received a modest presence score from his students suggesting that his expertise with technology did not immediately translate into the ability to build presence. The data show that experience and confidence appeared to improve the ability to build presence, but we also need to consider the impact of having to teach face-to-face and remote students simultaneously. We are mindful of the fact that the teachers with the highest pres- ence scores were also the ones who only taught remote students. Further research might reveal which variable has the strongest impact on the ability to develop teacher presence. While the quantitative data show that experience teaching with videoconferencing and a minimum level of technological proficiency appeared to align with teachers’ presence, the qualitative phase of this study was able to investigate presence-building practices, as described below. Teaching face-to-face and videoconference simultaneously Three of the teachers (A, B and C) delivered their course face-to-face while simultaneously delivering the same course to remote students through the videoconference suite. These teachers were required to communicate in two different ways at one time. The remote stu- dents of these teachers reported feeling like they were an audience to the regular face-to-face class, which was confirmed in one of the teacher interviews: ‘Because I have my classroom here, I really teach to them and the videoconference students just sort of visit’ (teacher B). This challenge was also evident when I observed teacher C. Both her face-to-face (near) and remote (far) students were presenting projects. When the near students were presenting, they distributed handouts to their near peers, but did not arrange to have them sent over to their far peers. This (lack of ) action seemed to exaggerate the distance between the two locations, causing further feelings of being an audience member rather than a classmate. Interestingly, the set-up of the classroom in the simultaneous cases impacted feelings of presence as well. Teacher C explained how she had moved the video camera from the back of the classroom to the front. This brought the images of the far students and the teacher closer together. We assumed that this would improve a sense of presence, but the opposite was true. When asked about the position of the camera in the room, the students unani- mously preferred to have it at the back of the classroom so they could see the heads of all their peers, with one of them commenting: even though we don’t interact with them, it makes me feel like I am part of a class because I can see them. When the camera and screen are at the front, I feel like we are always being watched. (student of teacher C) This situation was contrasted with that of teachers D and e, who only had remote students in their courses. They were not distracted by the immediate demands of students who were right in front of them and were able to singularly focus on the remote students. subsequently, I observed teachers D and e regularly engaging their students with questions, checks for understanding, and informal conversation. We suggest that this is another reason why they DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 9 received high presence scores from their students. Being able to give all their attention to the students on the other side of a screen helped bridge the psychological distance. The three teachers who were teaching remote students through the videoconference simultaneously with their regular face-to-face class had a harder time creating presence in comparison to the teachers who only had remote students in their classes. This suggests that videoconference teachers need to be creative and innovative to involve the students in the process of learning via videoconferencing. It requires teaching strategies that involve the face-to-face students interacting frequently with the far students to increase immediacy, or secured time for questions and answer, pal writing, and so on. There were too many immediate distractions in the face-to-face class, and subsequently, the remote students felt like audience members rather than equal classmates. This aligns with the findings reported by Knipe and Lee (2002) in their comparison of the experiences of local and remote students in a videoconference. Immediacy and interpersonal connectedness Mehrabian (1981) conceptualized immediacy as the degree of perceived physical and/or psychological closeness between people. He provides examples of immediacy behaviors: use of names, use of inclusive pronouns, posture, gestures, and use of classroom space. Through teacher interviews and observation, we identified a number of these teacher behav- iors (see Table 1). We then noted any correlation to what their students said about presence. Teachers D and e, who received the highest presence scores from their students, stood and spoke directly into the camera, used humour, and employed strategies for calling stu- dents by their individual names. For example, teacher e kept a list of names by her desk and checked them off as she called on each one so as to ensure each name was spoken at least once each class. some of these immediacy behaviors were confirmed during the student interviews such as, ‘I like how she jokes around with us and makes it so that everyone has a say.’ (student of teacher e); and ‘she uses our names to get our attention’ (student of teacher D). In contrast, teacher A, who received the lowest presence score, rarely used student names: ‘I think he knows our names but he doesn’t use them’ (student of teacher A). using individual Table 1. immediacy behaviors observed during videoconference. Teacher A Teacher B Teacher C Teacher D Teacher e Face-to-face and remote students Remote students only Gestures   Vocal variety   Looks at class   smiles   Relaxed body posture    Removes barriers between self and students   calls students by name   uses inclusive pronouns   informal talk   Gives feedback    self-disclosure  uses humour  10 N. ReHN eT AL. student names was a common theme in the data. Almost all the students desire and expect to be known and acknowledged by this simple gesture. While this is considered generally good practice in teaching, it is even more important in a videoconference. These findings support previous research (Baker, 2010; Bozkaya & erdem Aydin, 2007) that shows that imme- diacy behaviors such as these mentioned above improve perceptions of presence. Instructor self-disclosure is also listed as an immediacy behaviour (Mehrabian, 1981), and teacher C made a deliberate effort to do this. she purposefully shared personal stories with her students about her family and interests, and the students appreciated this, commenting: ‘We got to know her a lot better because she added a bit of a personal aspect to the classes and this made us feel connected’ (student of teacher C). While this action was noted by the students during the focus group interviews, it was not enough to translate into a high pres- ence score on the TPs questionnaire. other factors, such as her low technological proficiency and the simultaneous teaching format, overshadowed this simple immediacy behaviour when students assessed this teacher’s presence. social presence can be improved in online courses with an initial face-to-face meeting of the group (Garrison, 2011). We asked participants in this study about meeting face-to-face at some point during the semester, and they all spoke positively of the idea. Teachers D and e visited their remote sites at least once a semester so that their students could see a real person. In addition to this, teacher e kept track of when her students came into the city so she could go and meet them or watch them play sport. The students of teacher D said, ‘It was strange to have her teach us before we had ever met her’, and they agreed that following the school visit, they felt more comfortable. Teachers A, B and C all indicated that they would like to visit their students but time and logistics did not allow it. In previous years, teacher B went to the remote site and taught his far students face-to-face while giving his near students the experience of videoconference. He said that after that experience, he felt he was more connected to his students and knew their names better. Teacher B had not had the chance to meet his students this year but he employed an asynchronous tool to elevate connectedness and social presence in the classes. He used Google + Communities to dis- seminate information and connect students to one another. A survey of the activity log shows that students were posting photos and introducing themselves in the first few weeks of class. Teacher B did not think the students were making much use of this tool, but a few of the far students noted that the ‘get-to-know-you’ task made them feel more connected to their peers and teacher. one student stated that, ‘even though he doesn’t ask us anything personal, he knows about us because of what we wrote on Google + Community.’ Anderson (2008) found that blending synchronous and asynchronous technologies in this way improved presence. While the students of teacher B noted feeling more connected, it was not reflected by a high presence score. We suggest that the strategies of teacher B to connect with his students through asynchronous social media tools did not replace the positive benefits of meeting face-to-face. When asked to report on the barriers to presence, many participants referred to the public nature of the videoconference. The far students who were sharing the instruction with their face-to-face peers reported feeling intimidated: They were happy to watch, listen, and work independently, but asking questions and speaking aloud was difficult for them because their voices and images would be projected into the whole classroom. Many students com- mented on this effect, for example: I don’t know what my voice sounds like and I don’t want to sound stupid. (student of teacher A) DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 11 It feels kind of awkward to ask a question because it will be projected to the whole class. (student of teacher C) The teachers also felt frustrated by the lack of space for informal, personal connections with their students. They were aware that some subjects are more sensitive and not appropriate for the video screen. Teacher e explained, ‘I can watch for subtle body language and listen for negative voice tone to know if a student is frustrated or stressed, but it is difficult to then communicate privately with them to see if they are oK.’ When asked about building relation- ships and establishing presence, teacher D said it was hard, also citing the limitations of the public nature of the conference: You can’t whisper a private conversation with somebody. one of my students had an operation last week and I can’t ask them about it on the screen because it is not a public kind of thing. Lobel, Neubauer, and swedburg (2002) have proposed the concept of a privacy zone in learning as the subjective experience of personal safety, the extent and reliability of which will improve an individual learning experience. The data show that this privacy zone could apply to the videoconference context as well. Learning preference and interactivity Lecturing (or teacher-led instruction) was the most common teaching approach observed in this study. The teachers conceded that this was not the ideal approach but chose to instruct in this manner because it was the easiest. According to Murphy et al. (2011), synchronous teaching does lend itself to more teacher-centred than student-centred styles, which Lowenthal (2009) suggests is a barrier to presence. Interestingly, the students who took the majority of their other courses by traditional, correspondence modes and were used to learning independently said that they liked having a real teacher to explain the difficult concepts to them. While the literature shows that learning that is designed to be interactive leads to higher presence (Baker, 2010), these students liked the high proportion of lecturing. The students who took the majority of their other courses in a face-to-face classroom, how- ever, indicated that they were expecting more from their videoconference teacher in terms of interactivity: ‘I feel like if she was in the room then she wouldn’t talk as much and we would do more activities’ (student of teacher D). They blamed the videoconference format, not their teacher, for the large amounts of lecturing, a response that has been reported elsewhere (Doggett, 2008; Gillies, 2008). Attributing the lecturing format to the videoconference and not the teacher is likely why teacher D still received a high presence score. It appears that student preference for interactive or lecture-based instruction depended on the course format of their previous distance education experiences. Paired with other presence-building actions, some students found that the teacher-centred nature of the videoconference was effective compared to learning the material on their own. Questioning is a form of interaction that indicates social presence (Garrison, 2011). However, from the teachers’ perspectives, students rarely initiated questions. The students of teacher B said that they knew they could ask questions and they often observed the near students approaching their teacher’s desk to seek individual help, but they did not ask for help themselves because, ‘He is often busy talking to the students there and we don’t want to interrupt.’ one of the students proposed a solution: ‘Have a designated day or time for us to ask questions. Then we would know it was our time to get help’ (student of teacher B). This suggests, again, that they felt like intruders in the face-to-face class each time they 12 N. ReHN eT AL. spoke up on the videoconference. Teacher A mentioned a few tactics that he had tried to provide space for the far students to ask questions. For example, he initiated a live online chat during class, but reported that the students were not making use of it. After setting up the tool, he left the students to choose whether or not to engage with it rather than directly prompting them to ask questions on specific topics and at specific times. These same stu- dents of teacher A made clear a desire to break down the communication barrier and sug- gested that it was their teacher’s responsibility to do so by purposefully engaging them in opportunities to speak. In contrast, teacher e, who had a high presence score, persisted in engaging her students to seek help. she offered additional tutoring time outside of regular class and invited her students to contact her outside of school hours (by text or email) if they needed help. The students appreciated this approach. one of her students commented, ‘My teacher is amazing. she takes the time to go through stuff with us and if we need extra help then she is more than willing to stay and do that.’ students expected their teachers to check regularly for understanding and provide infor- mal feedback. In face-to-face classes or traditional correspondence courses they perceived avenues in place for them to keep updated on progress, but felt this was lacking in the videoconference course. When asked to comment about instructional strategies that would make them feel connected, a student of teacher B mentioned, ‘I’d like it if he came every morning and said, “Is there anything I can help you with? Did you understand the home- work?” Checking up to see if we understand would improve the situation.’ This regular feed- back would, in the students’ opinions, provide a level of interactivity that leads to higher ratings of teacher presence. Concluding remarks This study examined the experiences of teachers and students in distance education courses using videoconferencing in order to understand how presence is viewed in this unique context. The research questions focused on how teachers’ perceptions related to their TPACK impacted presence, what expectations students have of their videoconference teachers in terms of presence, what the videoconference teachers were doing to successfully increase presence in their courses, and the challenges associated with teaching face-to-face and remote students simultaneously. Presence in this study was based on the results of a teaching presence survey that the student participants completed, observations made in the classroom, and interviews with both teachers and students. The findings, as discussed above, confirm many of the issues raised in the literature about technological integration but also contribute new perspectives on TPACK, presence and distance education delivered by videoconference. Participating teachers’ self-perceptions of their TPACK did not necessarily result in higher presence in the videoconference setting. Instead, the findings show that experience and confidence better aligned with higher presence. While it was shown that a minimum technological proficiency is required to create pres- ence in a videoconference setting, this was not sufficient. Teachers need to learn how to adapt pedagogy to the technology, but without resources and training readily available it takes considerable time to trial and refine new strategies. This may have been the main reason why those teachers with more videoconference experience did better. However, even those teachers with comparably effective videoconference classes had room to improve DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 13 alongside their lesser effective colleagues. All the teachers in the study talked about the challenges of using their prevailing teaching methods with the new technology. We suggest that a complete paradigm shift is required whereby teachers think about the affordances of a videoconference and then design their courses to exploit these innovative aspects. While connecting distance education students to real teachers who can explain concepts through lecture is one of those affordances, the technology also lends itself to more interaction in the form of teacher feedback and peer collaboration. The technology itself will not make distance education courses good, nor close the psychological distance felt by participants; instead, we agree with Murphy and Coffin’s (2003) assertion that teachers have a responsi- bility to adapt their pedagogy to suit the technological context so that presence is developed to support far students’ learning. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Notes on contributors Nicole Rehn is an assistant professor of education at Ambrose university in Calgary, where she teaches in the fields of curriculum, educational technology and learning theory. Her research focuses on distance education and e-learning in rural and remote areas of Canada. Dorit Maor was a lecturer at Curtin university, prior to joining Murdoch university, where she com- pleted her PhD and Australian Research Council Post Doctoral Fellowship in science education and technology. Her research and teaching focus is on integrating technology and pedagogy to enhance learning in higher education or secondary school settings. Andrew McConney is an associate professor of education at Murdoch university. As an educational researcher and program evaluator, Andrew has directed numerous grants and contracts related to teacher education, teacher evaluation and teacher effectiveness, school system reform and improve- ment, and the evaluation of science and math programs in Australia and the us. ORCiD Dorit Maor   http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0743-4755 References Alberta education. (2006). Research community of practice research report. edmonton: Government of Alberta. Retrieved from https://education.alberta.ca/media/3115440/vccopreport.pdf Anderson, T. (2008). Is videoconferencing the killer app for K-12 distance education? Journal of Distance Education, 22, 109–124. Retrieved from http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/index Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 1–17. Retrieved from http:// onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/online-learning-journal/ Aragon, s. R. (2003). Creating social presence in online environments. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2003, 57–68. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/ (IssN)1536-0717 Archambault, L., & Crippen, K. (2009). examining TPACK among K-12 online distance educators in the united states. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9, 71–88. 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Patterns and principles for blended synchronous learning: engaging remote and face-to-face learners in rich-media real-time collaborative activities. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 30, 261–272. doi:10.14742/ajet.1697 Bozkaya, M., & erdem Aydin, I. (2007). The relationship between teacher immediacy behaviours and learners’ perception of social presence and satisfaction in open and distance education: The case of Anadolu university open education faculty. The Turkish Journal of Educational Technology, 6, 72–78. Retrieved from http://www.tojet.net/ Cox, s., & Graham, C. R. (2009). using an elaborated model of the TPACK framework to analyse and depict teacher knowledge. TechTrends, 53, 60–69. doi:10.1007/s11528-009-0327-1 Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. Boston, MA: D.C. Health. Doggett, A. M. (2008). The videoconferencing classroom: What do students think? Journal of Industrial Teacher Evaluation, 44, 29–41. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITe/ ermter, P. A. (2005). Teacher pedagogical beliefs: The final frontier in our quest for technology integration. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 53(4), 1–110. doi:10.1007/BF02504683 Garrison, D. R. (2011). E-learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 2, 87–105. doi:10.1016/s1096- 7516(00)00016-6 Gillies, D. (2008). student perspectives on videoconferencing in teacher education at a distance. Distance Education, 29, 107–118. doi:10.1080/01587910802004878 Graham, C. R. (2011). Theoretical considerations for understanding technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). Computers and Education, 57, 1953–1960. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.04.010 Greenberg, A. (2009). Mapping the latest research into video-based distance education [White paper]. Duxbury, MA: Wainhouse Research, LLC. Retrieved from http://docs.polycom.com/global/documents/ whitepapers/navigating_research_on_videoconferencing_based_distance_education.pdf Gunawardena, C. N., & Zittle, F. J. (1997). social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer-mediated conferencing environment. American Journal of Distance Education, 11, 8–26. doi:10.1080/08923649709526970 Hackman, M. Z., & Walker, K. B. (1990). Instructional communication in the televised classroom: The effects of system design and teacher immediacy on student learning and satisfaction. Communication Education, 39, 196–206. doi:10.1080/03634529009378802 Hattie, J. (2003). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Retrieved from https://www. det.nsw.edu.au/proflearn/docs/pdf/qt_hattie.pdf Haughey, M. (1997). successful secondary schools in Canada: A report of the exemplary schools project. Canadian Administrator, 36(5), 1–12. Retrieved from http://www2.education.ualberta.ca/ educ/journals/can_admin.html Jamieson-Proctor, R., Albion, P., Finger, G., Cavanagh, R., Fitzgerald, R., Bond, T., & Grimbeek, P. (2013). Development of the TTF TPACK survey instrument. Australian Educational Computing, 27, 26–35. doi:10.1007/s11251-008-9075-4 Johnson, R. B., & onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2004). Mixed methods research: A research paradigm whose time has come. Educational Researcher, 33, 14–26. doi:10.3102/0013189X033007014 Knipe, D., & Lee, M. (2002). The quality of teaching and learning via videoconferencing. British Journal of Educational Technology, 33, 301–311. doi:10.1111/1467-8535.00265 Koehler, M., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9, 60–70. Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/ Koehler, M., shin, T. s., & Mishra, P. (2012). How do we measure TPACK? Let me count the ways. In R. Ronau, C. Rakes, & M. Niess (eds.), Educational technology, teacher knowledge, and classroom impact: A research handbook on frameworks and approaches (pp. 16–31). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. http://www.thejeo.com/ http://www.thejeo.com/ http://dx.doi.org/10.14742/ajet.1697 http://www.tojet.net/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11528-009-0327-1 http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02504683 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587910802004878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.04.010 http://docs.polycom.com/global/documents/whitepapers/navigating_research_on_videoconferencing_based_distance_education.pdf http://docs.polycom.com/global/documents/whitepapers/navigating_research_on_videoconferencing_based_distance_education.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08923649709526970 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03634529009378802 https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/proflearn/docs/pdf/qt_hattie.pdf https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/proflearn/docs/pdf/qt_hattie.pdf http://www2.education.ualberta.ca/educ/journals/can_admin.html http://www2.education.ualberta.ca/educ/journals/can_admin.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11251-008-9075-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X033007014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8535.00265 http://www.citejournal.org/ DIsTANCe eDuCATIoN 15 Kramas, J., & Kopp, W. (2010). Teaching as leadership: The highly effective teacher’s guide to closing the achievement gap. san Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lawson, T., Comber, C., Gage, J., & Cullum-Hanshaw, A. (2010). Images of the future for education? Videoconferencing: A literature review. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 19, 295–314. doi:10.1 080/1475939X.2010.513761 Lobel, M., Neubauer, M., & swedburg, R. (2002). The eClassroom used as a teacher’s training laboratory to measure the impact of group facilitation on attending, participation, interaction, and involvement. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 3(2). Retrieved from http:// www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/ Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer- mediated Communication, 3(2), doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x Lowenthal, P. R. (2009). social presence. In P. Rogers, G. Berg, J. Boettcher, C. Howard, L. Justice, & K. schenk (eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 257–279). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Maor, D. (2008). Changing relationship: Who is the learner and who is the teacher in the online educational landscape? Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 24, 627–638. doi:10.14742/ ajet.1195 Mehrabian, A. (1981). Silent messages: Implicit communication or emotions and attitudes (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis (2nd ed.). Thousand oaks, CA: sage. Moore, M. (1993). Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education (pp. 22–38). London: Routledge. Morse, J. M., & Niehaus, L. (2009). Mixed methods designs: Principles and procedures. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Munroe, J. s. (1998). Presence at a distance: The educator-learner relationship in distance education (Research monographs, 16). university Park: Pennsylvania state university. Murphy, e., & Coffin, G. (2003). synchronous communication in a web-based senior high school course: Maximizing affordances and minimizing constraints of the tool. American Journal of Distance Education, 17, 235–246. doi:10.1207/s15389286ajde1704_4 Murphy, e., Rodríguez-Manzanares, M. A., & Barbour, M. (2011). Asynchronous and synchronous online teaching: Perspectives of Canadian high school distance education teachers. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42, 583–591. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01112.x Niess, M. (2011). Investigating TPACK: Knowledge growth in teaching with technology. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 44, 299–317. doi:10.2190/eC.44.3.c Rodgers, C. R., & Raider-Roth, M. B. (2006). Presence in teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 12, 265–287. doi:10.1080/13450600500467548 Rowe, K. (2003, october). The importance of teacher quality as a key determinant of students’ experiences and outcomes of schooling. Background paper to keynote address presented at ACeR Research Conference, Melbourne. Retrieved from http://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference_2003/3 shea, P., Pickett, A., & Pelz, W. (2003). A follow-up investigation of “teaching presence” in the suNY learning network. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Network, 7, 61–80. Retrieved from http:// onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/online-learning-journal shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1–23. doi:10.1177/002248719004100306 Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (2003). Handbook on mixed methods in the behavioral and social sciences. Thousand oaks, CA: sage. Twigg, C. A. (2001). Innovations in online learning: Moving beyond no significant difference. Troy, NY: Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Witt, P. L., Wheeless, L. R., & Allen, M. (2007). A meta-analytical review of the relationship between teacher immediacy and student learning. Communication Monographs, 71, 184–287. doi:10.1080/036452042000228054 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2010.513761 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2010.513761 http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/ http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x http://dx.doi.org/10.14742/ajet.1195 http://dx.doi.org/10.14742/ajet.1195 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15389286ajde1704_4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01112.x http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/EC.44.3.c http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13450600500467548 http://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference_2003/3 http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/online-learning-journal http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/online-learning-journal http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002248719004100306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/036452042000228054 Abstract Introduction Presence Method Research design Participants Instruments Analysis Findings and discussion TPACK, confidence, experience, and presence Teaching face-to-face and videoconference simultaneously Immediacy and interpersonal connectedness Learning preference and interactivity Concluding remarks Disclosure statement Notes on contributors References 
work_6ngziv2tnbhmnfbu742rn65d7a	----	Journal of Online Higher Education vol. 1, no. 4/2017 1 Peer-Reviewed Article The Genesis of Distance Education Alan D. Hansen, PhD, MBA, BA Independence University Abstract: Distance Education is not a new phenomenon. Current online methodologies to deliver education at a distance began to gain traction in the 1990s, but the premise of formal education at a distance, or from home, has been part of the educational infrastructure for nearly two hundred years. This paper examines the evolution of distance education and the impact, both pro and con, in its early stages. In turn, it presents insights into the institutional opposition that current online education development has, and still faces. Keywords: distance education, faculty The concept of higher education has been around for millennia, but the model that is often perceived as traditional higher education in the United States evolved from the European model. The European model of higher education itself made many shifts and turns in its development. But by the time the American colonies were established, European Higher education focused mainly on educating clergy, and the wealthy members of society (Lucas, 1994). In 1636 the general court of Massachusetts appropriated funds to establish what is now known as Harvard University. The proclaimed purpose of the institution was stated as, “Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life” (Lucas, p. 104). All eight of the pre-Revolution colleges focused on educating clergy and civic leaders. The early American Universities exclusive nature extended beyond the career functions of its graduates. A broad view that continued into the twentieth century was that education was not for the masses, but for a select few. A schism started to form at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1800, Dr. George Birkbeck, a faculty member from the Andersonian University of Glasgow began offering lectures to the working class in mechanical sciences. This soon spread to the French language, astronomy, electricity, and mathematics. This evolved into a confederation of non-traditional educational institutions organized as Mechanics Institutes (Knowles, 1994). The Mechanics Institutes mission was “to meet the need of artisans for technical education at low cost, in leisure hours, and with minimum preparation requirements” (Knowles, p.15). A version of the Mechanics Institute was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the Franklin Institute. In 1826, a Yale graduate, Josiah Holbrook founded the American Lyceum movement (Bode, 1965). The intent of the lyceum movement was to expand knowledge and education to the masses without massive cost (Woytanowitz, 1974). Between 1826 and 1832 professional Journal of Online Higher Education vol. 1, no. 4/2017 2 educators traveled to organized community education series in fifteen states (Watkins, 1991). By 1835 there were 3,000 town lyceums and over 100 county lyceum organizations (Knowles, 1994). The movement gradually disintegrated with the volatile political environment that led to the Civil War. New technology in the 1830s in Great Britain was the advent of the postage stamp and an organized postal system. A stable postal system created a technology innovation that allowed people to consistently communicate at a low cost through this postal system. In 1837 Issac Pitman, who developed phonograph (shorthand) created a course of study that could be administered through the mail; creating the first known correspondence course. This was repeated in the United States by Issac’s brother Ben Pitman in the United States (Public Broadcasting System, 2004). In 1873, Anna Ticknor initiated a program to educate women through correspondence (Nasseh, 2004). Ticknor became known broadly as the mother of American correspondence study (PBS, 2004), as curricula, guides, and supporting material were developed and shared with nearly 10,000 members over the course of twenty four years. In 1873, the best known of the traveling education systems in the United States was founded. The Chatauqua movement provided educational programs for the common people across the United States and Canada. According to Clay Schoenfield, “In effect Chautauqua became a folk university and college instructors were called shortly to give courses on college subjects” (1977, p.24). Dr. William Rainey Harper, who later founded the University of Chicago, was a popular instructor in the Chatauqua programs. He developed a model for correspondence learning in 1881 that became the standard for teaching through correspondence in higher education (Noffsinger, 1926). Distance education in the form of correspondence-based programs entered the United States Higher Education system in 1873 at Illinois Wesleyan College, when they introduced graduate degree studies through correspondence (Bittner & Mallory, 1933). Faculty opposition to teaching in abstentia was intense (Fallows, 1927). The program grew under the leadership of the presidency of Samuel Fallows but fell into disfavor after he left the institution. A pattern of correspondence programs being led by a strong leader, and opposed by faculty continued on through the nineteenth century. The most notable failure was at the University of Chicago, where Harper made it a central tenant of his plans for the university at its founding. Ultimately faculty opposition led to correspondence education being relegated to a minor role in the university (Storr, 1966). The one exception was the University of Wisconsin that built a strong distance education model under the advocacy of Frederick Jackson Turner (VanOverbeke, 2003). After Turner left the university the initiative seemed doomed to follow the path of other efforts in other universities, but in 1909 another strong leader, Charles R. Van Hise resurrected the idea, and rebuilt the extension system of distance education with the nomenclature, the “Wisconsin Idea” (Knowles, 1994). The model caught on, and the University of Wisconsin remains a leader in distance education to this day. Journal of Online Higher Education vol. 1, no. 4/2017 3 In the 1880s Thomas J. Foster developed a correspondence course about coal mining, surveying and machinery. In 1891 he had enrollments in excess of 1,000 students participating in his private venture correspondence programs. This led to the establishment of the International Correspondence Schools of Scranton (ICS). Over the next three decades his programs enrolled more than two million students, dwarfing enrollments at all U.S. colleges and universities combined at that time (PBS, 2004). Foster’s success led to numerous imitators, some scrupulous, others not. In the 1920s all that was required to operate a school was a business license, with no oversight from accrediting or regulatory agencies. The quality of course offerings ranged widely from quality training programs such as those delivered by ICS, to diploma mills that sold degrees at will (Bittner & Mallory, 1933). Summary The diploma mills amongst the legitimate privately owned correspondence schools gave traditional university faculty members the ammunition they needed. Extension and correspondence programs were relegated to a status of second class education for the next six decades. Faculty opposition to distance education, and the poor reputation that remained in place from the 1920s carried over into the late twentieth century when online education, which is a sub-set of distance education began its evolution. Lingering doubts about the integrity of education delivered at a distance were abundant as online education began to surface. Likewise, the even earlier opposition based on who a university should serve remained intact in the culture of many educations of higher education. Online education at the beginning of the twenty first century had many challenges to overcome beyond technology. Journal of Online Higher Education vol. 1, no. 4/2017 4 References Bittner, W.S., & Mallory, H.F. (1933). University teaching by mail: A survey of correspondence instruction conducted by American universities. New York: The Macmillan Company. Bode, C. (1968). The American lyceum. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Fallows, A. K. (1927). Everybody’s bishop: Being the life and times of the right Reverend Samuel Fallows, D.D. New York: J.H. Sears & Company. Knowles, M.S. (1994). A history of the adult education movement in the United States. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company. Lucas, C.L. (1994). American higher education: A History. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Nasseh, B. (1997). A brief history of distance education. Retrieved February 11, 2004, from http://www.seniornet. Org/edu/art/history.html. Norffsinger, J.S. (1926). Correspondence schools, lyceums, chautauquas. New York: The Macmillan Company. Public Broadcasting System. (2004). Distance learning an overview. Retrieved April 21, 2004, from http://www.pbs.org/als/dlweek/resources/index.html. Schoenfeld, C. (1977). The outreach university: A case history in the public relations of higher education, University of Wisconsin extension, 1885-1975. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Storr, R. J. (1966). Harper’s University: The beginnings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. VanOverbeke, M. (2003, 2003). Pushing the frontier of the University: Frederick Jackson Turner and Extension education at the University of Wisconsin in the 1890s. Retrieved April 17, 2004, from htt;://www.biotech.wisc.edu/Education/alliance/vanoverbeke.html. Watkins, B. L. (1991). A quite radical idea: The invention and elaboration of collegiate correspondence study. In B. L. Watkins & S. J. Wright (eds.). The foundations of American distance education: A century of collegiate correspondence study (pp. 1-35). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. Woytanowitz, G. M. (1974). University extension: The early years in the United States 1885 – 1915. Iowa City: National University Extension Association & The American College Testing Program. http://www.pbs.org/als/dlweek/resources/index.html 
work_6nnv7bj6nfgwxijq5p55i4dfmy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_6osyei4zyzamnc2zpwzp5ogrri	----	Web-Based Asynchronous Distance Education in New Product Development and Inventive Problem Solving for Industrial Companies Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-7058 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of TFC 2011, TFC 2012, TFC 2013 and TFC 2014 – GIC doi: 10.1016/j.proeng.2015.12.361 ScienceDirect World Conference: TRIZ FUTURE, TF 2011-2014 Web-Based Asynchronous Distance Education in New Product Development and Inventive Problem Solving for Industrial Companies Pavel Livotov Hochschule Offenburg - University of Applied Sciences, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Badstr. 24,77652 Offenburg, Germany Abstract Web-based learning is a rapidly growing area in education, which can offer a vibrant learning environment created using different teaching strategies, activities, and technologies. The paper addresses the needs of the industrial sector regarding the qualification of R&D specialists in using efficient techniques for successfully running an innovation process. It briefly describes the programme of a web-based course for asynchronous distance training in new product development and inventive problem solving with TRIZ methodology, which focuses on the main outcomes of learners - R&D leaders, engineers and product designers. The paper outlines a multi-source training approach and demonstrates different tools and educational methods, such as an interactive web-based learning platform, software tools for computer-aided innovation, and the design of instructions and manuals. Furthermore, it provides examples of training tasks and demonstrates the ideas proposed by the learners towards a solution. Finally, the paper presents a new approach for an innovation strategy formulation at the very early stages of new product development, which was also a part of the distance learning course. The research part of the article investigates the opportunities of asynchronous education, analyses the learning experience and underlines the main difficulties for engineers taking an asynchronous distance learning course. A special section describes a new method for the measurement of education efficiency. The presented results can help industrial companies to organize their internal education in innovation techniques or to improve its performance. The knowledge gained may also be interesting for trainers in systematic innovation and inventive problem solving. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of TFC 2011, TFC 2012, TFC 2013 and TFC 2014 – GIC. Keywords: new product development; inventive problem solving; TRIZ methodology; anticipatory failure identification; innovation strategy formulation; web-based distance education; measuring education efficiency © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of TFC 2011, TFC 2012, TFC 2013 and TFC 2014 – GIC http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.proeng.2015.12.361&domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.proeng.2015.12.361&domain=pdf 124 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 1. Introduction The on-going qualification of R&D specialists and managers in using efficient techniques for successfully running an innovation process becomes very important for the competitiveness of enterprises, which resides in the ability of companies to continuously and profitably produce new products that anticipate the true requirements of customers and that meet the needs of the market. In the last decade, industrial companies [1, 13, 26], as well as academia [3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 21, 22, 25, 29], have gathered considerable experience in traditional education approaches in new product development and inventive problem solving, such as face-to- face seminars, courses etc. The potential, as well as the limits of web- based learning and training as a rapidly growing area in education, still remain insufficiently explored. For industrial companies especially, the asynchronous distance education could help in saving valuable time for specialists, giving them an opportunity to participate in a course at the time of their availability and convenience [26]. The recently developed distance learning course, with a total duration of 10 months, was offered for German speaking companies in 2009-2011 with about 50 participants a year. It consists of 10 obligatory training units with an estimated workload of about 8 to 12 hours per month and a complementary opportunity for learners to resolve their actual innovation problems under trainer supervision. The numerous training tasks and examples of problems are focused on enhancing the following working skills by participants: contradiction-oriented way of thinking, optimal use of system resources, systematic and creative idea generation in cases of product development, process optimization and cost reduction, solving of bottle-neck problems, anticipatory failure identification, forecasting of possible future product features with evolution patterns, solving of non-technical business problems as well as formulation and implementation of customer-driven innovation strategy with an estimation of its market potential. Obtained learning experience does not only allow us to emphasize the likely value of web-based distance training, but also allows us to identify the essential difficulties faced by instructors in developing and teaching the course. It also provides us with the opportunity to better understand the problems reported by learners. For example, despite prior expectations, the spatiotemporal isolation was a minor problem factor for participants in an asynchronous distance course. Acceptance of a continuous learning process and the availability of time resources within almost a year are the key aspects to be taken into consideration by the participants before taking a distance course. On the other hand, the trainers are committed to adapting and modifying instructional strategies to match the needs of individual course participants. 2. Research and practical tasks of the project The preparation phase of the web-based training course for industrial learners (e.g. engineers, new product designers, innovation managers or researchers) was concentrated on following scientific and practical tasks: • Well-founded selection of the competencies and skills to be learned or improved upon in the course, • A range of examples and relevant problems for the broad circle of training participants who have different professional backgrounds, • Estimation of reasonable workload and course duration considering the personal goals of learners, • Development and adjustment of the web-based learning platform with integrated tools for product innovation and systematic problem solving. The undertaking of the training course and the analysis of the work of the participants and their feedback had to provide detailed answers to the following questions: • Is the asynchronous form of distance education suitable for training engineers in new product development and inventive problem solving? • Which innovation tools and techniques are appropriate for asynchronous education and for successful application in practice with minor trainer’s supervision? • How to measure the enhancement of personal innovation and inventive skills by course participants and how to objectively evaluate the outcomes of distance education? 125 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 3. Definition of educational program The selection of the competencies and skills to be learned during the course was undertaken using the results of the innovation study [20] carried out in more than 30 industrial companies. The following top 10 underserved needs of companies in new product development were gathered by conducting interviews with R&D leaders, innovation managers and engineers: 1. Fast idea generation and problem solving. 2. Solving of complicated “bottle-neck” technical problems. 3. Exact and well founded definition of innovation strategies and tasks for new product development. 4. Precise prediction of future technical product features. 5. Anticipatory detection of technical failures in new product concepts. 6. Cost reduction in all steps of the innovation process and new product development. 7. Minimization of organizational, personnel and financial risks in innovation projects. 8. Tracking of new technology trends and transferring technologies from other industries. 9. Fast and correct evaluation of ideas and innovation concepts. 10. Clearly arranged and readily available storage of all relevant data in an innovation process. In accordance with the quantitative evaluation of the study [20], these innovation skills are of high importance for companies but the satisfaction level with their performance is low. Aiming for a higher performance level for the innovation skills listed above (see pos. 1-6), the 10-month educational program was proposed and undertaken in the distance learning course. The curriculum contains 10 trainings units and is presented in Table 1. It was mostly based on the methods of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), which is regarded today as the most comprehensive and systematically organized invention knowledge and creative thinking methodology [2, 17, 30]. The TRIZ tools can significantly assist in enhancing the performance of the majority of innovation skills selected for the distance learning course. Regarding the underserved need for a well founded definition of market-driven strategies for new product development, a new systematic approach for innovation strategy formulation was created in the course. More than 30 problems and exercises in the course come from the industrial environment and were proposed predominantly by participants of earlier face-to-face educational seminars in systematic innovation. All training units provided learners a complementary opportunity to additionally resolve their actual problems with the gained skills while being under trainer supervision. The average workload between 8 to 12 hours per month was estimated with the help of an initial questionnaire filled in by all participants at the beginning of the course. The questionnaire also helped to identify the competence level of participants, their personal goals and their expected outcomes. The educational materials contained methodical instructions and worksheets for each training unit in PDF and MS Word formats, a handbook in systematic innovation and inventive problem solving with TRIZ methodology [17] and the software TriSolver Idea Generator & Manager for off-line work. The complete course was available online on the web-based learning platform on the Internet, making it possible to access learning materials via the Internet at any time, both for learners and instructors. 4. Web-based learning platform One of the goals of this project was to develop the educational web-based tools for asynchronous distance learning based on the available state-of-the-art internet technologies. This included the possibility to enable a personalized working space for course participants, therefore providing them with individual supervision by the trainer. The learning platform was built as a standard MS SQL database, combined with a web-based user interface with multi-user access. Fig. 1 provides a practical example that illustrates the structure and realization of a training unit in the learning platform. The navigator on the left hand side of the screenshot displays the structure of the training unit with the all tasks, recommended solution principles, ideas and questions from the learners and the corresponding comments and 126 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 answers from the trainer. All steps and results of the training process are continuously and fully documented and can be displayed as a table or exported into MS Excel or Word files. In each training unit the learner have to read methodical explanations of the project description in the platform and the provided training materials (handbook, power point presentations etc.). They then have to start to analyze and generate ideas task by task via the Internet. During this work, they can formulate a question to the instructor or vice versa, the supervisor can give some ongoing recommendations directly in the work space of the learning platform. The web-based training environment makes it possible to access learning materials at any time, both for learners and instructors. For systematic idea generation and inventive problem solving, the learning platform contains a package of innovation tools of TRIZ methodology, such as: functional and contradiction analysis, inventive algorithm, 40 inventive principles, separation principles, anticipatory failure identification and trends of technical evolution. An easy-to-use interface and an on-line guide, help to introduce inventive techniques in the learning process and for learners to utilize them. The training approach and applied innovation methods are briefly explained in the next section. Fig. 1. Realization example of the training unit 2 in the web-based learning platform. A typical feedback loop demonstrating the instructor-trainee's question-answer-relation is shown in Fig. 1 under the Task 2.1 “How to open a door intuitively in the right direction - pull or push?”. While generating ideas with the help of recommended TRIZ innovation principles, a learner fails to find an idea with the principle of prior action, asks the instructor a question on the learning platform, receives an explanation a day later and finally proposes an idea of a door, which opens itself a little after the door handle has been touched. This initial short door movement makes the right direction of opening obvious. Another example of instructor-trainee communication is presented in the appendix. 5. Training units As shown in Table 1, three levels of difficulty – low, medium and high - were anticipated by the trainer team for the 10 training units of the course. These levels correspond to the expected trainer support expenditures: level 1 – all tasks are almost self explanatory, level 2 – supervisor must support and give examples, usually at the very beginning of the training unit; level 3 – instructor has to guide learner in each step of the learning process. The course starts with a lower difficulty level and ends with higher level training units. The same “principle of rising difficulty level” was also implemented within each training unit: easy tasks in level 1 at the start were followed by more comprehensive problems in level 2 or 3. For the training tasks of level 3, the learning materials with detailed step-by-step explanations and case studies were available online and off-line. The last task of each training unit provides the learner an opportunity to apply gained knowledge for solving any real technical problem, preferably in the field of their own professional competence under supervision of the instructor. 127 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 Table 1. Training units of the asynchronous distance learning course. No. Title of training unit Number of tasks Difficulty level, Da* 1 Enhancement of personal creativity. Systematic contradiction-oriented way of thinking. 9 1 (low) 2 New product development and problem solving with help of contradiction analysis and TRIZ inventive principles. Part 1: Elimination of undesired properties and of harmful effects in new product development and product optimization. 4 2 (medium) 3 New product development and problem solving with help of technical contradiction analysis and TRIZ inventive principles. Part 2: Costs reduction and process optimization. 3 2 (medium) 4 Solving of difficult problems. Part 1: Short form of inventive algorithm ARIZ, identification of physical contradictions and their resolving with separation principles. 5 2 (medium) 5 Solving of difficult problems. Part 2: Comprehensive form of inventive algorithm ARIZ, including functional and resources analysis, identification and resolving of technical and physical contradictions. 2 3 (high) 6 Anticipatory failure identification: analysis of failures which happen for no apparent reason; prediction of potential failure scenarios for new products or processes. 5 2 (medium) 7 Prediction of future technical product features with evolution patterns of technical systems. 3 2 (medium) 8 Systematic search for solutions for non-technical tasks in business, management and service. 3 1 (low) 9 Formulation of customer- and market-driven innovation strategies with high success potential in the early stage of innovation process. 3 2 (medium) 10 Development of new product concepts with measurable innovation success. Systematic implementation of innovation strategies into solution concepts. 2 3 (high) *) difficulty levels anticipated by the trainers: 1 (low) – tasks are almost self explanatory, 2 (medium) – supervisor supports at the very beginning of the training unit, 3 (high) – instructor has to guide the learner in each step of the learning process. 5.1. Training unit 1 – Basic skills The first unit is dedicated to the enhancement of personal creativity and a development of a systematic contradiction-oriented way of thinking by the learners. The following techniques are to be applied and practiced within simple technical systems, such as portable umbrella, PC keyboard etc.: • Task 1.1. Creativity operator size-time-costs-X (any other system parameter can be varied for X). • Task 1.2. Formulation of technical contradictions and the corresponding ideal final results. • Task 1.3. Principle and directions for increasing ideality in technical systems. • Task 1.4. Principle of self-service and self-management. • Task 1.5. Identification and mobilization of resources. • Task 1.6. Principle of extraction and trimming of objects and functions. • Task 1.7. Principle of universality. • Task 1.8. Principle of converting harm into benefit. • Task 1.9. Application of the trained techniques in tasks 1.1 – 1.8 for a system proposed by a learner. 128 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 5.2. Training units 2 and 3 – Work with inventive principles The 40 inventive principles [2] are the most well-known and the most frequently applied TRIZ operators, which may be very successful in fast and systematic idea generation for solving simple to moderately difficult problems. In the course, the classical principles were extended with approx. 30 additional sub-principles [17], which were introduced as new positions in the numbered list, as the following example of the principle “Inversion” with additional sub-principle d) demonstrates: a) Instead of performing an action dictated by the specifications, carry out the reverse action. b) Make a moving part of the object or the outside environment fixed and the fixed part movable. c) Turn the object upside down. d) Perform the process or its phases in the reversed order. The training tasks focused on the following types of problem solving skills: • Guided brainstorming with innovation principles as a creativity workout. • Elimination of undesired properties and of harmful effects. • New product development and product optimization. • Solving of contradictions in design and construction work. • Process optimization. • Costs reduction. For each of the mentioned tasks, a specific group of 10 to 20 inventive principles was recommended for the learners. For example, a group of recommended principles for design problems includes principles of segmentation, extraction, local quality, asymmetry, combining, universality, integration, anti-weight, inversion, spheroidality, dynamism, shift to another dimension, mediator, flexible shells or thin films and composite materials. Such groups of task-oriented principles can be easily created in the database of the learning platform and remain at the disposal of the users. The learner began each problem solving exercise with the identification of technical contradiction, corresponding ideal final result and of the system resources, obeying the following three methodical rules: • Discipline: transform technical systems and generate ideas only in the directions proposed by the inventive principles. • Systemic approach: consider three system levels for system transformation: sub-systems – system – super- system. • Creativity: try to generate at least one idea with each recommended principle, even if the problem cannot be solved in one step. The evaluation of hundreds of ideas proposed by learners in this part of the distance learning course confirms that the best results can be achieved if these rules are followed exactly by the learners. The fulfillment of this requirement belongs to one of the main challenges for instructors. For example, for the educational problem 2.1 “How to open a door intuitively in the right direction – to pull or to push?” the principle “Copying” delivers a clear idea to put an optical copy (static or movable) of a half-opened door on a door leaf, which shows the right way to open it. Precisely this solution was proposed by the majority of course participants, who consequently applied the inventive principles correctly. In another task, learners can also judge the competitiveness of the contradiction matrix against the 10 statistically strongest inventive principles. With noticeable effort, they have to formulate several contradictions with the matrix for one problem situation, in order to form a set of recommended principles. The correct application of the matrix in this case provides a small number of principles, which were recommended 3 to 8 times (e.g. principle N.35 - 8 times; principle N.5 - 5 times, principle N.19 - 3 times etc.) and a longer list of principles which were recommended only once. Comparing this recommended set of principles with the list of 10 strongest principles, demonstrates that the matrix does not deliver any significant outcomes. 129 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 5.3. Training units 4 and 5 – Work with inventive algorithm The inventive algorithm ARIZ, as one of the comprehensive tools, was gradually introduced in the course during two training units, at first in a simplified short form and then in the complete form including detailed functional and contradiction analysis of technical systems [17]. The inventive algorithm in the short form was presented in the course in the following five steps with the help of several educational problems with a continuously increasing difficulty level: 1. Identification of the main conflicting pair in technical system. 2. Formulation and amplification of technical contradiction. 3. Definition of the corresponding ideal final result. 4. Identification and formulation of physical contradictions. 5. Resolving of physical contradictions with separation principles. This fast problem solving approach found a high acceptance rate among learners. The evaluation of the training experience outlines some desirable preconditions of its successful and correct application in the distance course: available catalogue of typical physical contradictions, clear definition of operative zone and operative time of contradiction, thorough application of separation principles with sub-principles, which help to look at a physical contradiction from different points of view and to subsequently generate ideas for a solution (examples for separation in space and in time are presented in the Table 2). Table 2. Separation principles for resolving physical contradictions [17]. No. Separation principle Sub-principles for separation of contradictory properties 1 Separation in space 1.1. Separation of contradictory properties into several levels, layers, tiers. 1.2. Separation in different directions, e.g. axial, radial, tangential, horizontal, vertical. 1.3. Separation through utilisation of two or three-dimensional structures. 1.4. Separation through utilisation or creation of voids in system or super-system. 1.5. Separation through utilisation of the external surface area of objects in the system. 1.6. Separation through utilisation of the reverse side or interior surfaces of objects. 1.7. Separation through integration of objects, e.g. vertically, horizontally or in a circle. 1.8. Dynamic spatial separation in motion, e.g. by applying centrifugal forces. 2 Separation in time 2.1. Separation in time of contradictory properties into two or more phases or time periods. 2.2. Periodic alteration of contradictory properties with synchronization of frequencies. 2.3. Utilising the time before the process, e.g. one property is carried out in advance. 2.4. Utilising or creating pauses, e.g. one property is carried out in the pause. 2.5. Utilising the time after the process, e.g. one property is attained after finished process. 2.6. Consider chronological or periodic changes of properties within the super-system. The tasks proposed for training of the short form of inventive algorithm were reduced to one conflicting pair, so the identification of the technical contradiction was quite obvious. Here are some examples of the educational problems: How to eliminate heating of PC-beamer? How to avoid sparking in a brushed DC-motor? How to reduce the water consumption of a washing machine? How to increase load capacity of roller bearing? 130 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 For the task “roller bearing”, some typical examples of resolving physical contradiction “cage between rollers separates them to reduce the friction - cage doesn’t separate rollers to increase load total capacity of bearing” are presented in Fig. 2. a b c Fig. 2. Examples of resolving physical contradiction in space: (a) utilization of voids between rollers and outer ring; (b) separation in axial and tangential directions of bearing; (c) utilisation of the external surface of rollers. Additional separation principles in the system’s structure, including separation by changing conditions and separation by phase transition (each with 4 sub-principles), were introduced in the training unit 5 in the complete form of inventive algorithm. The complete inventive algorithm was presented to the learners in two parts: 1. Problem analysis (10 steps) and 2. Search for solutions (16 steps). In spite of the availability of case studies and on-line instructions for training unit 5 the majority of learners had to be instructed by a supervisor in almost every step of the complete inventive algorithm. For example, the course participants were assisted in the correct definition of system components, their primary positive functions and negative properties, identification of a central technical contradiction in a system, abstract formulation of Ideal Final Result and physical contradictions. 5.4. Training unit 6 – Anticipatory failure identification New production methods and systems often achieve an acceptable standard of reliability only after a large number of breakdowns. Therefore, methods of anticipatory failure identification (AFI), also known as “subversive analysis” [12, 15, 28], are growing in importance. Different to the existing quality control methods such as FMEA, HAZOP and others they help to determine the risk of potential breakdowns even when the experience is lacking. In the distance learning course the application of the AFI-method for analysis of previous failures, which happened for no apparent reason, was proposed to the learners. Another typical AFI-application, such as the prediction of potential breakdown scenarios for new products was offered as a facultative task. Training unit 6 includes initially some introductory problems to be solved with the short form of AFI method, for example: explain the increased fuel consumption of an intact car after refuelling at a service station, explain seldom malfunction of the car rain sensor, explain the abrupt decrease in capacity of a notebook accumulator. The short form of the AFI-method and typical difficulties of learners in its application are explained in Table 3. The analysis of typical learner difficulties shows that for a successful AFI application in the industrial practice a detailed step-by-step approach is practically unavoidable. Therefore, in the last task of the training unit the course participants had the opportunity to apply the complete AFI-approach available in the web- based learning platform. The majority of learners had to be instructed by a supervisor in practically each step of the method. The structure of the complete AFI-method with more than 70 steps provided in the learning platform is presented in Fig. 3. 131 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 Table 3. Main steps of anticipatory failure identification (AFI) in the short form. No. Step of the AFI-method Typical difficulties in the application of AFI-method 1 Formulate the inverted task: “What actions will definitely cause a system to fail?” Unable to formulate the inverted task correctly, especially while analysing own practical problems. 2 Identify all resources of the system and the surrounding and use them for producing failures. Important failure resources are often overseen. 3 Creative and systematic idea generation to produce failures. Use inventive principles and checklists of typical faults to find new “subversive” ideas. Search for ideas is not systematic. Learners often forget the inverted task and tend to find ideas how to avoid failures. 4 Re-invert the problem formulation: failures, which possibly may occur at any time, have to be prevented. Learners often skip the elimination of failure causes and concentrate their activities on the failure itself and elimination of its consequences. 5.5. Training unit 7 – Prediction of technical evolution Training in the prediction of technical evolution was also separated into an introductory part and a comprehensive part. The introductory part was performed as a creative workout, enabling the generation of new possible product features with the recommended set of 12 augmented TRIZ inventive principles, which correspond to the main patterns of technical evolution: segmentation, combining, universality, dynamism, shift to another dimension, periodic action, feedback, self-service, replacement of mechanical system, pneumatic or hydraulic constructions, flexible shells or thin films, and porous materials. The learners, already experienced in the application of 40 inventive principles, succeeded in all proposed exercises. On the contrary, the systematic and well structured application of evolution trends and checklists [17, 23] often provided with difficulties. Learners who were less experienced in TRIZ explained their problems as the lack of available information about the state-of-the-art of technical systems, unexpected high time expenditures and sometimes with too high a level of abstraction of the evolution laws. Fig. 3. Realization of the complete anticipatory failure identification (AFI) method in the learning platform. 132 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 5.6. Training unit 8 – Solving non-technical problems The training in the solving of non-technical problems was focused on typical situations which can occur in R&D work, product management or marketing, such as: how to organize a meeting or conference without high time and personal expenditures, how to optimize an international joint-venture research and development project, how to improve acquisition activities for technical services. Table 4. Double principles for resolving of non-technical problems (full description in [16]). No. Name of principle No. Name of principle 1 2 3 4 5 6 Combining – Separating Symmetry - Asymmetry Homogeneity – Diversity Expansion – Reduction Mobility - Immovability Consumption – Regeneration 7 8 9 10 11 12 Standardisation – Specialisation Action - Reaction Continuous – Interrupted action Partial action – Excessive action Direct action – Indirect action Prior action – Prior counteraction. The 12 double principles for non-technical problems [16, 17] were recommended here as a tool for systematic idea generation and the resolving of organizational contradictions and conflicts (see Table 4). The principles also broaden the individual experiences and intuition of the managers and help them to quickly formulate several different solutions to difficult situations. Each principle represents two contradictory lines of action, which have to be taken into consideration when searching for solutions. There is no recommendation as to which action is the more suitable. The user is thus stimulated to think in a dialectic and creative way. The double principles can also be enhanced with the corresponding 40 inventive principles [16]. If physical contradictions were identified additionally during problem analysis, they could be resolved by separation in space or in time. 5.7. Training units 9 and 10 – Innovation strategy formulation and development of new product concepts An exact and well founded definition of an innovation strategy as one of the crucial tasks in the new product development was offered in training unit 9, followed by the implementation of innovation strategy in training unit 10. Although the step-by-step method was undertaken in the learning platform, including on-line help and accompanying materials with explanations and examples, less than 20% of learners successfully completed these training units. These were planned as the final piece of work for the distance learning course. The individual steps of the method and the corresponding level of supervisor assistance expenditures are presented in Table 5. The method for customer-driven innovation strategy formulation and planning of R&D activities, which was taught in the course via learning platform, is based on the thoughts and approaches published in [7, 8, 10, 18, 19, 24, 27]. It starts with description of all the essential components of a technical system on the market with its useful functions and all undesired or negative properties (see Table 5, step 1 and 2). Based on known market or customers needs and the detailed functional analysis, a complete list of all thinkable innovation tasks has to be formulated (step 3). These tasks are understood as customer benefits [10], which are independent from known technologies or solutions and correspond to further improvement of positive functions or to the elimination of negative properties. Especially in step 3, the majority of learners faced difficulties in the formulation of benefits. The proposed benefits were often closely associated with known technologies, for example “utilize flash drive in notebook” instead of “shorten laptop's boot time”. Sometimes the benefits were formulated too generally, for example “increase mechanical reliability of notebook” instead of “increase shock resistance in case of laptop falling”. 133 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 Table 5. Structure and estimated difficulty level of the training units 9 and 10. Step No. Training unit 9 – Innovation strategy formulation Difficulty level, d * Step No. Training unit 10 – Innovation concept development Difficulty level, d 1 2 3 4 5 Initial situation analysis on the market Functional analysis of the product Capturing desired customer benefits Evaluation market potential of benefits Formulation of the innovation strategy 1 3 3 3 2 6 7 8 9 10 Systematic idea generation with TRIZ Enhancement of ideas to solution ideas Evaluation of enhanced solution ideas Innovation concepts development Choice of the optimal innovation concept 2 3 3 3 2 *) estimated difficulty levels: 1 – tasks are self explanatory, 2 – supervisor must support at the very beginning of work on a training task, 3 – instructor has to guide the learner in each step of the learning process. After the capturing of customer benefits is completed, in step 4 the importance of each benefit and its current performance has to be evaluated from a customer’s point of view using a scale from 0% to 100% (100% - very high level of importance or performance, 80% - high, 60% -middle, 40% - low, 20% - very low importance or performance). In practice, market surveys and customer interviews can be used additionally for the final estimation of importance and performance values of benefits. Obtained importance and performance values allow one to calculate the market potential for each benefit pi (1), defined as its maximum contribution in the total growth of current product performance V (2). Identifying benefits with high market potential helps to formulate successful innovation strategies for new product development. A strategy with chances of high success in market should assure the anticipated growth of total product performance V of 15% or more. pi = (Xi + a Xi (Xi - Zi)) (1 - Zi) (1) (Xi + a Xi (Xi - Zi)) i=1,n V = i=1,n Zi (Xi + a Xi (Xi - Zi)) (2) (Xi + a Xi (Xi - Zi)) i=1,n pi - market potential of benefit, %; V - total product performance, %; Xi - importance of benefit, 0…100%; Zi - current performance of benefit, 0…100%; n - total number of benefits, n = 20…60; a - adjustment coefficient, a = 0,5…2,0. The recommended value of the adjustment coefficient a = 1, corresponds to the following conditions of the innovation opportunity metric f(Xi;Zi)=Xi +(Xi -Zi) as a function of any fixed importance Xi const and performance Zi, which may be considered as typical for the majority of practical cases [18, 27]: f [Xi const ; Zi=Xi const ] = 0,5 f [Xi const ; Zi=0] (3) Selected customer benefits with high market potential pi form the innovation strategy (step 5) and create a pool of innovation tasks for systematic idea generation with the help of inventive principles in step 6. After ideation process, proposed ideas have to be condensed to the stronger solutions (step 7). For each task, at least two solution ideas have to be generated in the distance learning course. 134 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 Customer benefits also provide objective basis for idea evaluation directly in relation to the added value each solution delivers to the customers (step 8). The value of an idea is 100% if a customer benefit is satisfied to 100%. Additional evaluation criteria such as implementation and development expenditures, costs of the future product, risk of possible failures or malfunctions can also be taken into consideration. To develop a new product concept, the most valuable idea must be selected for each customer benefit. The synthesis of a concept in step 9 is completed if suitable complementary solutions were chosen for each benefit. Several competitive concepts can be created and compared here with different objectives such as the maximum growth of total product performance, optimization of the costs, risks or R&D expenditures. The process ends with well founded selection and optimization of preferred innovation concept in step 10. 6. Measuring the efficiency of learner-centered education In their feedback, course participants reported on the considerable enhancement of personal innovation and inventive skills. Nevertheless, objective evaluation of distance education outcomes and efficiency remains a significant task for the systematic improvement of the learning process. Table 6. Measuring effectiveness of distance course by learners (evaluation example for one course participant) No. Innovation skills , to be trained in distance course (list can be extended by learner) Enhancement potential pi [%] Importance of skill Xi, [%] Initial skill performance ZIi, [%] Gain in skill performance Zi, [%] Final skill performance ZFi=ZIi+ Zi, [%] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Exact and well founded definition of tasks for new product development Solving of complicated “bottle-neck” technical problems Cost reduction in all steps of innovation process and new product development Anticipatory detection of technical failures in new product concepts Fast and correct evaluation of ideas and innovation concepts Enhancement of personal creativity in daily work Fast and systematic inventive problem solving Precise prediction of future technical product features Systematic analysis of initial problem situation Systematic solving of non-technical or organizational problems 8,2 5,2 5,2 5,2 4,7 4,7 4,7 4,7 1,9 1,6 80 60 60 60 80 80 80 80 80 40 40 40 40 40 60 60 60 60 80 60 20 20 10 30 10 30 30 10 20 10 60 60 50 70 70 90 90 70 100 70 Initial total skills performance VI = 54% Final total skills performance VF = 73% Growth of total skills performance V = VF - VI = 19% Calculated with (1), (2) for n=10 and a=1 Importance / Performance scale: 20% - very low; 40% - low; 60% -middle; 80% - high; 100% - very high. Added value scale for performance Z: 10% - minor, 20% - noticeable, 30% or more - disruptive improvement of a skill. Based on the numerical approach presented in chapter 5.7, a special questionnaire (see Table 6) was offered to the learners at the beginning and at the end of the course. This checklist includes 10 main innovation and 135 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 inventive skills to be taught during the course, and it can be also extended by the learners. At the beginning of the educational period, students have to evaluate their personal attitude about the importance Xi of innovation skills and their current satisfaction with their own skills (initial skill performance ZIi). Formula (1) allows one to calculate the improvement potential pi for each skill as a metric for the need of action in the learning process. The skills with higher pi values are presented in the top part of column 3 in Table 6. They reveal the motivation and main opportunities for enhancing the innovation expertise of learners. This information is very useful for instructors to recognize the true needs of individual course participants and for learner-centered education. With the help of equation (2), another important metric, the initial total skills performance VI at the beginning of the course, can be calculated. At the end of the educational period, learners are asked to evaluate the change in performance of each innovation skill and thus to estimate the final skill performance ZFi with the following procedure: add 10% to the initial performance Zi for minor improvement of a skill ( Zi =10%); add 20% in cases of noticeable improvement of a skill ( Zi =20%); add 30% or more in cases of disruptive improvement of a skill (see column 6 in Table 6). For estimation of final performance values ZFi following absolute scale from 0% to 100% can be applied: 20% - very low performance 40% - low 60% -middle 80% - high 100% - very high level of performance. If for example the initial skill performance ZIi was estimated with 80% (ZIi=80%) and the growth of performance as disruptive ( Zi =30%), the final skill performance ZFi cannot exceed 100%. Now the final total skills performance VF can be estimated with formula (2) and then compared with the initial total performance VI . The proposed approach reflects primarily the individual perception of students. The course can be considered as successfully accomplished if at least one of the two following conditions is fulfilled, as is illustrated for the reference group of 25 learners in Fig. 4: 1. V 15% - the growth of total skills performance V = VF - VI is higher than 15%. 2. VF 70% - final total skills performance VF is higher than 70%. Fig. 4. Final total skills performance VF and related growth of total skills performance V for reference group of 25 learners. 7. Discussion of results To evaluate which innovation tools and techniques are suitable for asynchronous education, the factual difficulty level of the training tasks can be compared with learner retention rate (see Fig. 5). The retention rate is an important gauge of any educational course success. It indicates the percentage of learners who remain at an educational course after they begin studying there. A high retention rate suggests a course is supportive and enjoyable and that the workload is manageable. 136 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 The average difficulty level D of the training course with number of training units n and number of tasks ki in a training unit can be interpreted as the supervisor’s assistance expenditures and calculated as follows: D = i=1,n Di = i=1,n dij j=1,ki (4) n n·ki D - difficulty level of the training course; Di - difficulty level of the training unit; n - number of training units; dij - average difficulty level of a task; ki - number of tasks or steps within a training unit. Estimation of factual difficulty levels Di of training units with proposed procedure (4) demonstrates the highest rates of course abandonment in training units with difficulty Di>2,5 (see Fig. 5). The factual difficulty level of the complete training course D=2,3 was calculated for the reference group of 25 learners, who successfully completed the course. It is higher than the earlier anticipated difficulty level Da=2,0 based on the involvement of the instructors, as shown in the Table 1. Therefore, the learner’s perception of the course difficulty deviates from the estimation of instructors. Many learners expected an “easy” online course, which they can add to an already full schedule, incorrectly assuming that the complexity of course is lower than face-to-face education. Together with the often reported lack of time resources of learners and lack of self-discipline for continuous learning within 10 months, the high difficulty of some tasks seems to be responsible for the low retention rates of the distance learning course. Also of importance is the fact that practically all students who successfully finished the course had prior practical experience in TRIZ methods, which were gained through conventional presence learning forms such as one-day seminars or introductory presence courses. Fig.5. Comparison of estimated difficulty level Di of training units and corresponding retention rate in the distance course. 137 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 The first three research questions that guided this project were: Is asynchronous distance education appropriate for training in new product development? What is the optimal workload and course duration? What innovation tools and techniques are suitable for asynchronous education? The experience in the realization of the training course and the analysis of participants work and feedback allows one to summarize the following conclusions and recommendations: 1. The asynchronous form of distance education is, in general, suitable for training in new product development and inventive problem solving within industrial companies. However, introductory one-day presence seminar for learners is recommended in order to reduce psychological barriers at the beginning of the distance learning course. 2. The integration of the asynchronous distance learning courses with conventional face-to-face teaching programs appears particularly promising, since it encourages and strengthens the ability for self-directed learning and the fast utilization of skills learned in practice. 3. The duration of the distance course for industrial learners with over-booked schedules should not exceed 5 to 6 months with a maximum workload of 2 hours a week. 4. The total number of tasks within a training unit should not exceed 4 to 5 tasks, in order keep a training unit clear and its workload manageable for learners and supervisors. 5. Instructors should motivate learners actively for a continuous learning process. If learners fall behind or abandon their work during the course, the trainer should help “to get them back on track”. In addition to the typical educational loop “learner asks trainer answers”, the course administration has to ensure that all trainers’ requirements and recommendations are completely fulfilled by the learners. 6. By the selection of innovation methods a practical rule “Train in an asynchronous distance learning course only such methods, which can be easily explained in face-to-face training” can be helpful. 7. Tasks or methods with a high difficulty level, which require continuous instructor’s assistance to the learner in each step of the learning process, lead to high retention rates and should be avoided in the asynchronous distance course. To such innovation methods belong invention algorithm in its complete form, prediction of technical evolution with evolution patterns and the innovation strategy formulation (see training units 5, 7, 9 and 10). Face-to-face seminars or workshops are more efficient here. 8. Training units 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 can be combined to the 6 months distance course with anticipated retention rate of about 70% to 80%, which is typical for e-learning or online education. Hence, such important innovation techniques and methods including inventive principles, separation principles and anticipatory failure identification can be successfully integrated into asynchronous distance education. 9. Spatiotemporal isolation is a minor problem factor for participants of asynchronous education if the trainer can comment on the results or answer questions on the web-platform within 1-3 days. On the other hand, the trainer is committed to adapting and modifying instructional strategies to match the needs and availability of time resources of individual course participants. For example, some essential aspects or questions can be also discussed by phone or, if possible, in short face-to-face sessions along the course. On the other hand, a manual with examples of solutions for typical training tasks reduces the time expenditure of instructors. Learners can compare their analytic or ideation work with solution samples and, if necessary, correct or complete their answers themselves. 10. A proposed approach to measure the enhancement of learner’s innovation skills and to evaluate the effectiveness of distance course enables systematic and accountable improvement of the learning process. Acknowledgements Many thanks to the TriS Europe GmbH, Germany for the technical support in the design of the web-based educational platform for the distance learning course. 138 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 Appendix A. An example of instructor-trainee asynchronous communication by means of web- based learning platform In addition to the typical educational loop “learner asks ""' trainer answers” mentioned in section 4, this example demonstrates another learner-trainer-relation in which the instructor has to check and comment on the trainee’s work in the learning platform on the one hand, and the learner is committed to react to all instructions on the other hand. It sometimes takes a lot of patience and effort, both for the instructor and the learner, in order to progress within a distance learning course. The example below relates to Task 4.3 of Training Unit 4 “Problem solving with the short form of inventive algorithm ARIZ” and illustrates characteristic difficulties for learners in the first step of ARIZ “1. Identification of main conflicting pair in technical system” (s. also section 5.3). Two interventions from the instructor were necessary before the methodically correct formulation of the conflicting pair was finally proposed by the learner in the 3rd variant of the answer. Task 4.3: How to reduce water and energy consumption of a conventional washing machine in cases of low filling level of the washing drum with laundry items, for example while washing only one small item? Variant of the answer Answer or formulation proposed by the learner Intervention of the trainer (instructions or recommendations) 1 Conflicting pair: water and energy consumption versus size of the washing drum. Consumption of water or drum size is not a component of a washing machine. Thus they cannot build a conflicting pair. Please look for a proper formulation. 2 Conflicting pair: low filling level of laundry items - washing drum. Please list all essential components of the technical system “washing machine” and analyse what two components are mainly responsible for the problem. 3 Components: housing, washing drum, drive, controller, heater, water pump, water, detergent, laundry item ... Conflicting pair: washing drum – laundry item. Question: Is this correct? Correct! In the next step please formulate and enhance the technical contradiction for this conflicting pair. References [1] Adunka R.: Lessons Learned in the Introduction of TRIZ at Siemens A&D, Proceedings of the 7th ETRIA World Conference 2007, Frankfurt, Germany, 6-8 Nov. 2007, Kassel University Press, ISBN 978-3-89958-340-3, p. 127-129. [2] Altshuller G.S.: Creativity as an exact science. The theory of the solution of inventive problems. Gordon & Breach Science Publishers, 1984, ISSN 0275-5807. [3] Belski I.: TRIZ Course Enhance Thinking and Problem Solving Skills of Engineering Students, Proceedings of the ETRIA World Conference 2007, Frankfurt, Germany, 6-8 Nov. 2007, Kassel University Press, ISBN 978-3-89958-340-3, p. 9-14. [4] Carignani G.: Missons Window: a short yet effective educational experience in creative technological thinking at technical high school Malignani, Proceedings of the 10th ETRIA World Conference, Bergamo, 3.-5. Nov. 2010, Bergamo University Press, 2010, 346 p., ISBN 978-88-96333-59-4. [5] Cascini G., Ragazzoni D., Rizzi C., Russo D.: …and suddenly students invent!, Proceedings of the 15th International CIRP Design Seminar , Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, May 22–25, 2005. [6] Cascini G., Regazzoni D., Rizzi C., Russo C.: Enhancing the innovation capabilities of engineering students, Proceedings of the TMCE (Tools and Methods of Competitive Engineering) 2008 Conference, April 21–25, 2008, Izmir, Turkey, Edited by I. Horváth and Z. Rusák, ISBN 978-90-5155-045-0, p. 733-742. [7] Cavallucci D., Rousselot F., Zanni C.: Assisting R&D activities definition through problem mapping, CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology (2009) Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Pages: 131-136, ISSN: 17555817. [8] Christensen C. M., Raynor M.E.: The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, 2003. 139 Pavel Livotov / Procedia Engineering 131 ( 2015 ) 123 – 139 [9] Domb E., Miller J., Czerepinski R.: Improve TRIZ Teaching and Learning by Getting Out of the Classroom, Proceedings of the 10th ETRIA World Conference, Bergamo, 3.-5. Nov. 2010, Bergamo University Press, 2010, 346 p., ISBN 978-88-96333-59-4. [10] Haley R. I.: Benefit Segmentation. A Decision-Oriented Research Tool. Journ. of Marketing, Vol. 32, p. 30-35, July 1968. [11] Jirman P., Busov B.: Solving cases studies in TRIZ education at Technical Universities in the Czech Republic, Proceedingsof the 10th ETRIA World Conference, Bergamo, 3.-5. Nov. 2010, Bergamo University Press, 2010, 346 p., ISBN 978-88-96333-59- 4, pp. 285-291. [12] Kaplan S., Visnepolschi S., Zlotin B., Zusman A.: New tools for failure and risk analysis. Anticipatory failure determination (AFDTM) and the theory of scenario structuring. Ideation Int. Inc. Southfield, USA,1999, 84 p., ISBN 1-928747-05-1. [13] Kim J.-H., Lee J.-Y., Kang S.-W.: The Acceleration of TRIZ Propagation in Samsung Electronics, Proceedings of the 5th ETRIA World Conference, Graz, Austria, 16.-18. Nov. 2005, p. 151-164, ISBN 3-7011-0057-8. [14] Lanzotti A, Patalano S., Trotta M.: Teaching product design through a participatory contest experience, Proceedings of the 10th ETRIA World Conference, Bergamo, 3.-5. Nov. 2010, Bergamo University Press, 2010, 346 p., ISBN 978-88-96333-59-4. [15] Livotov P., Weimar G.: Das Undenkbare denken. Vorausschauende Fehlererkennung zur Ermittlung möglicher Störungen an Maschinen und Anlagen. Qualität & Zuverlässigkeit QZ 03/2000, S. 308-312. [16] Livotov P., Ruchti B.: TRIZ-based Innovation Principles and a Process for Problem Solving in Business and Management. Proceedings of the ETRIA World Conference 2001, Bath, 7-9.11.2001, University of Bath, UK, p. 177-186, ISBN 90-77071-01-6. [17] Livotov P., Petrov V.: Innovation technology TRIZ: handbook for product development and problem solving. TriSolver, Hanover, Germany, 2002, 302 p., ISBN 3-935927-02-9. [18] Livotov P.: Differentiating the role of TRIZ in sustainable and disruptive innovation process. Proceedings of the ETRIA World Conference, Aachen, Germany, 12.-14.11.2003. [19] Livotov P.: Method for quantitative evaluation of innovation tasks for technical systems, products and processes. Proceedings of ETRIA World Conference 2008 “Synthesis in Innovation”, Enschede, 5-7 November 2008, published by University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, ISBN 978-90-365-2749-1, pp.197-199. 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work_6tdc2gp7yvgqfd2oi34ql5mmwe	----	A Case Study In Distance Education A Case Study In Distance Education The Information Resource Management Program: A Case Study In Distance Education By: Steven Cohen & William Eimicke, Columbia University Mark Kamlet & Robert Pearson, Carnegie Mellon University February, 1998 Introduction The speed and scope of change in information technology has created special challenges as well as new opportunities for us all. As a society, we must understand and come to terms with the social, political and economic effects of the information age. As managers and public policy practitioners, we must recognize the need for improving our skills and knowledge in this area. Fortunately, some of the same information technologies that pose these challenges are also improving the way in which educational programming can be delivered. In 1996, the H. John Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University joined forces to launch an innovative distance learning program in Information Resource Management (IRM). The program is innovative in two respects. First, it uses new and some not so new technology to meet the educational needs of those who cannot easily attend conventional degree programs. Second, the program is a collaboration between two graduate schools committed to exploring the new learning opportunities created by technology advancements. The IRM program provides a one-year, six-course curriculum designed to strengthen managerial and analytical skills and improve understanding of the role of information technology in work, the home and society at large. The initial class offerings include: Analysis and Design of Information Systems; Information Technology and Social Accountability; Database Management; Geographic Information Systems; Decision Support Systems; and Telecommunications Management. All courses begin and end with face-to-face instruction in New York, but the bulk of course work is conducted through the use of videotapes and the World Wide Web. As the program completes its second year, we thought it potentially useful to develop a case study documenting our experiences in creating and running this new program. The study seeks to answer the file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (1 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education following questions. What could the literature on distance learning tell us about the best way to structure the program? How did we begin? How does the program differ from traditional graduate courses? What have been the experiences and perspectives of those who set off on this journey into the relative unknown - the students, the faculty and our respective administrations? What challenges emerged and how did we try to overcome them? How much did the program cost to develop and to operate and what are the universities' return on these investments? And what does the future hold for our program and others like it? The Literature of Distance Learning Nearly all of the literature on distance education begins with a definition. While no two definitions are exactly alike, most define distance education as an approach to learning in which: ● teacher and learner are separated by space and/or time; · the interaction between teacher and learner takes place via a technology link; and · students are evaluated by an educational organization. From these three principal characteristics flow an incredible variety of distance education programs. They vary with respect to whether: the interaction between teacher and learner is conducted in real time or asynchronously; is principally one-way or two-way; relies on video, audio, and/ or text; or involves one instructor and many students or one or more instructors and few students. Distance education programs also differ in the ways they combine different delivery modes, including elements of conventional face-to-face instruction. Distance education programs target a variety of audiences including K-12, baccalaureate, and graduate levels. The curricular content also ranges widely. Graduate level programs are generally in business administration, information systems, and engineering. Overall objectives range from simply providing information to creating an environment for mastering complex skills. And the technical quality of interaction can differ greatly with respect to the speed and clarity of video or audio transmission. This variety makes it difficult to study and compare distance education programs. It is equally difficult to summarize the literature on the subject. Our own modest attempt at reviewing the literature suggests that: · the literature on distance education is vast and growing quickly, as is the development of distance education programs; · a large proportion of this literature is written from the vantage point of those who have a stake in its success (i.e., tends towards promotion); · few rigorous evaluations have been conducted (i.e., selection biases are not accounted for in comparing file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (2 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education the outcomes - often measures of student satisfaction - between conventional classroom instruction and distance education); · the literature has begun to move beyond such comparisons by asking under what conditions new instructional technologies contribute positively to learning; · cost effectiveness or cost savings- although often claimed - have not been systematically documented; · the results of empirical studies tend to show distance education outcomes as good as, if not better than, those achieved in conventional classrooms; · distance education programs are the only instructional alternative for substantial groups in the population or provide resources to instructors that they would not otherwise have; · while self-selection biases confound statistical estimates of the effects of distance education programs and may explain the positive results documented in many observational studies, this same condition means that some students (e.g., self-directed) do very well in this format and that recruitment into such programs should take these characteristics into account; and · communication technologies used in programs tend to minimize non-verbal social cues (e.g., gender, age) and thus promote greater, and more egalitarian, interaction among participants. It is also possible for the technology to generate too much interaction among students, which can result in attrition or disengagement. A number of case studies suggest that 25 students is optimal for classes that rely on computer-mediated communication. Case Study: The Information Resource Management Program The Information Resources Management Program (IRM) began as a concept paper developed by the Heinz School during the summer of 1995. The original idea was to offer in a distance learning (DL) format, using a combination of technologies, six graduate level courses in Information Policy and Management which were, and still are, being taught at the Heinz School to on-site students. The principles and objectives that guided our choice of technologies were to: · use robust, relatively inexpensive, and widespread technologies (e.g., videotapes, World Wide Web); · use technologies to promote thoughtful interaction and cooperative learning among students as much as between instructors and students; · plan for continuous development of course materials as instructional and telecommunication technologies evolve; file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (3 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education · use a combination of technologies in which face-to-face instruction still plays a role; and · create a learning experience that meets or exceeds the expectations that students bring to the program because of the reputations of our respective institutions and/or because of the level of tuition we charge. The two target markets initially identified were Washington, D.C. and New York City. Heinz's first choice for a New York City partner was the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. This preference became stronger when an initial inquiry to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. evidenced little faculty interest in the partnership and constraints in the use of already fully utilized facilities. Heinz chose SIPA because of the school's top quality public policy and management program which was comparable and complementary to Heinz's Master of Public Management degree. SIPA's New York City location was a major advantage as a large market, as was the school's association with the internationally recognized Columbia University. Finally, Heinz anticipated that the IRM courses might serve as an attractive concentration for the master's degrees at both schools. The joint program seemed to make sense to both schools because they believed there was a substantial market of working adults interested in master's level courses of this type who could not easily access traditional, full-time residential degree programs. Second, like many other public policy schools, SIPA saw the need and demand to provide cutting edge courses in information policy and management but lacked the in-house capacity and/or financial resources to offer these courses itself. SIPA had requests from its own students for such courses and also sensed a potential strong demand from mid-career students working in all three sectors throughout the New York Metropolitan region. The Heinz School had over a decade of experience in teaching information policy and management, has one of the strongest faculties in the world in this field and had the equipment and expertise readily available at Carnegie Mellon to transfer its traditional courses into a Distance Learning format. Heinz could access the University's state of the art television theater class rooms and a technical staff capable of producing commercial quality video tapes. Heinz's faculty were also already making highly innovative use of the computer and the World Wide Web as a teaching and communications tool. Heinz's IRM team did extensive research on distance learning experiments around the country and became convinced that the format would work well for these technology-based courses with mid-career students who were already working in the information resources area. New York City's history as place of innovation and change suggested to the Heinz team that the mid-career market there would respond well to this flexible and hands-on approach to graduate education. The Heinz project team included Robert W. Pearson, director of the School's executive master's degree program and Mark S. Kamlet, Dean of the School. The SIPA team consisted of William B. Eimicke, director of SIPA's Public Management Training Center, Steven Cohen, SIPA's Associate Dean and Director of the MPA program, and John Ruggie, SIPA's Dean. The direct involvement of Deans Kamlet and Ruggie in the early stages of program definition and in the various internal and external approval file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (4 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education processes proved to be an important ingredient of the program's ultimate success. The administrative and financial hurdles were many and the project could have been stopped numerous times along the development path were it not for the bureaucratic skill and "halo" effect of the two deans' direct participation in the planning stage. Cohen managed the administrative, financial and curriculum issues throughout the complex Columbia University approval processes. Pearson and Eimicke, who became the program coordinators, put together the budget, the marketing plan, kept the faculty and technical staff enthusiastic and on board, and managed the logistics of offering six courses from two schools 800 miles apart. The key administrative issues that arose early on included student status, administrative approvals, advising and the course schedule. 1. Whose Students, Which Transcript? Two different types of students were targeted initially: regular SIPA public administration degree students for whom the six course certificate would serve as their master's degree concentration; and working professionals seeking career enhancement skills who might later consider a master's degree at either Carnegie Mellon or Columbia University. For the second group, their student status and privileges during the certificate period required clarification. For matriculated SIPA students, their status was clear: they would be SIPA students and receive SIPA transcripts and credits for the IRM courses. The part-time students, it was agreed, would be Carnegie Mellon students and receive Carnegie Mellon transcripts and credits for the IRM courses. This approach was easiest and most logical, since the faculty and courses were already a regular component of the Heinz school curriculum. To help market the program, the schools agreed that all credits earned through the program would be applied toward a master's degree at either school and would fulfill the concentration requirements for that degree. Successful completion of the certificate qualified students for admission to the Heinz School's Master of Public Management Program. Admission to SIPA's master's degree required a separate application, but SIPA would indicate in writing that proven success in the IRM program represented extremely strong credentials for acceptance into the master's program. 2. Columbia University Approvals Required- There were minor administrative issues for Carnegie Mellon in offering existing courses with their own faculty but in a distance learning format. The administrative issues faced on the Columbia University side of the partnership were a bit more complicated. SIPA had to pre-qualify the Carnegie Mellon faculty and list them as Adjunct Professors at SIPA. It was agreed that they would be listed at the same level as their rank at Carnegie Mellon: assistant, associate or full professor. SIPA's Committee on Instruction also had to approve the IRM courses for them to be listed as credit-bearing SIPA courses. Cohen and Ruggie informed and managed this process so that no delays or controversies developed. 3. Student Advising and Accommodations- Bill Eimicke, already an advisor to SIPA's regular MPA students, agreed to assist and advise IRM students through SIPA's Public Management Training Center. Located in the same building as the class rooms and computer laboratory that the IRM students would use, Eimicke's office would be convenient for the mid-career students and his fifteen years as a public file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (5 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education sector manager made him a good choice to relate to these older, practitioner-oriented students. Eimicke would also rule on possible waivers of SIPA's internship and practicum requirements for IRM students continuing on for a master's degree in New York. IRM students would be given Columbia University identification cards offering full access to SIPA's computer labs, libraries throughout the university and other resources and amenities, such as the university athletic facilities, pools and tennis courts. SIPA class rooms used for the first and last in- person course sessions as well as other seminar rooms would be available to IRM students in the evenings and weekends for study sessions and group projects. Meeting space could also be arranged during the busy day periods by appointment through Eimicke's office. 4. Course Schedule- The initial plan of three courses for each of two consecutive semesters was modified to two courses a semester for three consecutive semesters: Fall, Spring and Summer. Informal surveys of current and prospective students indicated that completion of the certificate within twelve months was desirable but three courses at one time would be too heavy a burden for most older students working full-time, managing a home and family, and several or more years away from their last higher education course work. Finances were also a major area of concern from the beginning of the partnership. The schools ultimately agreed to charge $2,200 per course initially, or about the same amount that the Heinz School was currently charging for its mid-career, executive master's program course offerings. No financial assistance was available from the partners, although it was hoped that the majority of students would be eligible for at least partial reimbursement from their employers. Heinz agreed to help students apply for available government loan programs. Heinz invested substantial sums in the development of the IRM courses for the distance learning format, including production of the video-taped lectures, senior faculty release time and salaries, development of graphics and workbooks and the essential web sites, and course related software. To enable Heinz to amortize these costs over three years, the partners agreed to direct half of the tuition revenues to reimburse these expenses, and to share the remaining half of the revenues equally. Program operating costs such as marketing, staff and facilities would be shared equally and deducted from the second half of the tuition revenues. As an additional incentive for SIPA, the partners agreed that up to five SIPA students would be admitted on a competitive basis to all IRM courses. These students paid Columbia tuition and received Columbia credit for the IRM courses. The partners were primarily motivated by mission, not any expectation of any significant margin of revenues over direct expenditures, particularly during the term of the first three year agreement. Throughout the Fall of 1995 and the early Winter of 1996, the schools moved forward simultaneously on the required administrative and legal approvals and the program design and marketing plan. On February 16, 1996, Deans Kamlet and Ruggie signed a formal Letter of Agreement, and approved a Joint Marketing Program. The initial agreement was for three years, through the 1998-1999 academic year. The agreement formalized the administrative and financial points previously described and detailed the file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (6 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education division of responsibilities between the two schools. It capped each course at 25 students, including the five full-time SIPA students, based on the findings of the research referred to above on optimum class sizes for the distance learning format and a recognition that this was uncharted water for both schools. At the same time, approximately 20 tuition-paying students for all six courses would be sufficient for the schools to cover most of the costs of the experiment. While the primary responsibility for the academic aspects of the program logically fell to Carnegie Mellon, the physical location of the program and its market in New York City dictated that responsibility for marketing and recruitment be handled primarily by SIPA. As with every other aspect of the IRM program since its inception, the success of the marketing effort has been very much a result of shared responsibility and joint decision-making. Key components of the initial 1996-97 joint marketing program were: ● distribution of brochures, applications and information to a targeted mailing list of alumni of both schools, top companies and governments in the New York Metropolitan region and readers of technology journals and in response to requests via the telephone, mail, e-mail and in-person drop-ins; ● development and placement of advertisements in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as well as other low or no cost media venues; ● two evening open houses at SIPA, hosted by Eimicke and Pearson (with CMU faculty and program staff, as available) including a brief formal presentation, showing of the promotional video, a free-wheeling question and answer session, facility tours, refreshments, and informal, one-on-one conversations; ● a staffed telephone information line and a dedicated, 24 hour voice mail information/application request telephone line; and, ● individual facility tours and on-site interviews with SIPA coordinator Eimicke upon request. The information line was up and operating by mid-March 1996. An important ingredient in the program's initial success was the hiring of a talented MPA graduate student, Neil Amos, whose energy, dedication, and helpful nature set a customer-friendly tone that sustained the effort through the difficulties of launching the program. The marketing plan was implemented on schedule and about 70 prospective students attended the April 23rd and 24th, 1996 Open Houses. Amos, Eimicke and Pearson were available throughout the summer of 1996 to respond to mail, e-mail and telephone requests, follow-up with all open house attendees, contact major companies and governments throughout the region on a "cold call" basis, and call again anyone who called or contacted us more than once about the program. The program received a financial and psychological boost in the Spring of 1996 when former SIPA Dean Harvey Picker responded favorably to Dean Ruggie's suggestion that Picker make a gift to the school to cover some of the IRM program's start-up costs. The gift helped draw attention to the effort and relieved some of the pressure program staff were putting on themselves to get up to full enrollment file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (7 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education immediately. In marketing the program, it was immediately noticed (and subsequently borne out in discussions with students) that those interested in the IRM program differed in one major respect from the type of student that was typically attracted to SIPA's and the Heinz School's full-time programs. Students generally gave a much later expression of interest in and commitment to the program than is the case for most graduate programs. It was only during the summer of 1996 and 1997 that most students completed their applications and committed themselves to the program. This is because they were on average older, with more family and work commitments than most graduate students and were unable to commit to the program very far in advance. Also, the design of the program purposely sought to minimize work and family disruptions, and so students did not have to make extensive plans to move or leave employment. The first semester of the CMU/CU Joint Program in Information Resources Management was successfully launched on September 7, 1996, with 15 students present at the initial session in New York City. Only one SIPA student applied for the first two courses but she subsequently dropped them as too burdensome in light of her family responsibilities and part-time status. Several other students dropped out, some started late and others were forced to interrupt their studies over the course of the first three semesters for a variety of reasons, including company buy-outs, new jobs, moves, illness, death of a family member and financial problems. The first class had a good mix of young and not-so-young participants, technical and management types, from the city and its suburbs. They came from the financial sector, health care, education, the utilities industry and the computer business. Only a few students had problems with the course content and extra effort by the Heinz faculty and the program's administrative staff resulted in no drop-outs or drops for failure or inability to do the work. Eleven students completed the first two IRM courses, all of them new to the two schools and all of them part-time. Nine part-time students and five SIPA full-time students took the two Spring 1997 courses. Eight students took the two 1997 Summer courses and received their certificates at a festive graduation ceremony (including family members) held in a Columbia University neighborhood restaurant during August 1997. Several other students from the first class are expected to complete all six courses and receive their certificates in 1998. Recruitment for the 1997-98 program began in the Spring of 1997 and it followed the 1996 Marketing Plan for the most part, utilizing advertisements in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, two open houses at SIPA, targeted mailings to alumni, employers and all those requesting information in 1996 or 1997. A very successful 1997 innovation was an informational, large color postcard sent to the mailing list of Information Week, one of the field's most widely read magazines. Over 400 requests for information were received by mid-summer of 1997, about double the number of requests in 1996. We believe the increase was primarily due to the postcard mailing and word of mouth recommendations. The partners are cautiously optimistic that the availability and potential value of the IRM program is file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (8 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education becoming more widely known. Over the summer of 1997, we also called every person who had requested an application over the past two years for whom we could locate a telephone number, to encourage them to apply in 1997. A survey of this population revealed that the reasons for not applying were: tuition is too high (37%); background is not adequate to handle the work (self assessment, 22%); and desire for more professionally targeted courses (such as medical applications, 20%). So far, the net results are encouraging, as there were 21 students at the first session for the Fall 1997 IRM courses. Evaluations of the Program The IRM program is not unique. All of its strategies and tools have been used before and others have experimented with similar certificate initiatives. What may be notable about the IRM program is the combination of innovations. The IRM program is illustrative of the commitment of Columbia and Carnegie Mellon Universities to use information technologies to provide quality graduate education programs to working professionals who cannot easily attend conventional degree offerings. Among the more interesting, non-traditional aspects of the IRM program are: Flexibility of Learning- For the most part, IRM students can learn when and where it is most convenient for them. Each course begins and ends with face-to-face instruction at Columbia University but the sessions are scheduled on Saturday to avoid conflicts with the students' full-time jobs. More significant, the bulk of the instruction is conducted through the viewing of video-taped class lectures and completion of assignments/communication via the World Wide Web. Real World, State of the Art- The program seeks to teach the most up-to-date management and analytical aspects of the leading technologies being applied in the workplace, including PC Oracle, ArcView, System Architect, and Expert Choice. Professionally produced video-taped live class lectures, edited for quality, provide most of the visual instruction. Students may also meet in a class room at SIPA to work on projects and assignments but they can also access each other, faculty and program administrators on a 24 hour basis by e-mail, their own chatroom, video bulletin board, and dedicated voice mail telephone lines from anywhere in the world. Bridge To a Graduate Degree- The six course program is accepted for credit at both Carnegie Mellon and Columbia University. Offered over a calendar year, working professionals can complete their concentration requirements for either CMU's MPM or CU's MPA degree. While the degree candidate would subsequently need to be in residence for a year at either one of the two universities to complete the master's degree, they would be about halfway through upon completion of the IRM certificate. For many older students, two year, full-time master's programs are not feasible. The IRM program is making a master's degree more accessible to these students. A Full Partnership- The IRM program represents a true partnership between the Heinz School and SIPA, both ranked among the best of their field. The IRM courses are available to part-time and full- time students at both universities for credit at either university. Part-time students can use the courses as a springboard to a master's degree at either school as a fulfillment of their concentration requirement. file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (9 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education The face-to-face sessions at Columbia University are staffed and managed by faculty and administrators from both institutions. Students can use the computer lab at Columbia University to do their course work "at" Carnegie Mellon. Some IRM students based in New York City have even completed joint projects with full-time students at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Personal Contact- In addition to the flexibility and innovations available through the distance learning format, the two schools are doing everything possible to provide IRM students with maximum opportunities for personal contact and traditional course interactions. The Heinz school faculty and teaching assistants are readily accessible and have experimented with several different mechanisms, such as an organized conference call and regular "on call" times, to facilitate communication. SIPA's IRM coordinator and deputy coordinator are available to students on-site in New York City at least five and usually six days a week in person and 24 hours, year-round, by voice mail and e-mail for questions, trouble-shooting, problem-solving, and emergencies. Students are free to use all SIPA class rooms and facilities to review materials, consult with facilitators, work with fellow students and do course work. Fast-Track Admissions- The IRM's small size and specialized nature enabled the partners to offer a separate admissions process which is flexible, fast and user-friendly. Students can obtain information and applications from either school by e-mail, the World Wide Web, fax, regular mail or voice mail, 24 hours a day. Information is mailed within 72 hours of the initial request. The application itself is thorough but simple and concise. Students must submit their undergraduate transcript and three letters of recommendation. A personal interview with the SIPA coordinator is also required but can be done by telephone where distance is a significant obstacle. Applications are accepted throughout the year. Candidates are encouraged to submit their applications as early as possible. While prospective students may apply for less than all six courses and may therefore start with any of the three semesters, preference is given to certificate candidates and they are strongly encouraged to take the courses in order of their sequence, beginning with the Fall semester. To date, all admission decisions have been made in less than two weeks of receipt of the completed application package. One course of transfer credit is permitted. Experiences and Perspectives This section reflects on the different experiences and perspectives of the various groups of people involved in the first year of the program: the faculty, students and administrators. The Faculty The Heinz School faculty reacted with enthusiasm to the prospect of being involved in an innovative teaching experience, although this was often mixed with some trepidation about entering uncharted territory. The program calls for a very intensive front-loaded time commitment in preparing and recording classes and developing teaching materials. Gone are the days when an assignment can be pulled off the photocopier five minutes before class begins. While this has led to very well-produced file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (10 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education classes and materials, it has also resulted in some inflexibility and difficulties in adapting material to reflect students' interests. All the materials used for conventional classes have had to be substantially changed to make them suitable for the World Wide Web and to exploit the interactive environment that the Web offers. Instructors used more graphics and other visual exhibits during the video taping than they had in their prior conventional offerings of these courses. Assignments have had to become much more specific because of the limited opportunity distance learning offers to explain what is required. All the faculty consulted for this paper commented on how the IRM program has forced them to consider at every step how their teaching and their materials would be used outside of the classroom. For some, seeing their performance recorded for posterity on video led to changes in lecture style. Some faculty were concerned that teaching the IRM program would not be as positive an experience as conventional teaching because of the fewer opportunities it provided to be in contact with the students and get to know their interests and concerns. As it turned out, most faculty came to know their IRM students very well, as they were often called and e-mailed. Some commented that the distance learning format perhaps made students less inhibited about contacting faculty outside of the "classroom" and encouraged discussion. Many considered that they had more interaction on a daily basis with their distance than their on-campus students. However, it was certainly the case that the distance learning format required faculty to make a special effort to ensure that students were kept in the loop and up-to-date, often by creating an environment for communication between each other. Steps taken included distributing home phone numbers and being "on call" to answer questions and deal with any concerns. Most phone calls lasted only a few minutes, but sometimes faculty and students would make arrangements to call at a specific time when both were sitting in front of their computer and could work through a problem together. The Students The students evaluated every aspect of the classes and program at the end of each semester and commented in very positive terms on the professionalism of the materials, the program's content and the accessibility of the faculty and teaching assistants. In particular, they valued the flexibility provided by the program's structure. One student, a consultant, traveled frequently and used to take the videos on the road with her. She would wile away the evenings in hotels throughout the United States watching the classes and submitting her assignments from her laptop computer. Another student was called away on urgent business to Europe, but managed to continue the program while he was there. Most commented that they would have been unable to take the program if it had required attendance at traditional classes. To reap the benefits of distance learning, the students commented on the need to be highly self- motivated. The program demanded independent work with minimal supervision, and many said that they found it much easier to fall behind in the work than with conventional classes, despite regular deadlines for assignments. Those who were able to keep up usually did so by making their own schedule and file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (11 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education allocating specific times each week (usually at night, when other family members had gone to bed) to watch the videos and work on assignments. Some students were frustrated by technical problems that they encountered, particularly at the start of the program when they needed to load software and be hooked-up remotely with the Heinz School and SIPA's computer facilities. Usually, the students with the most problems were those with the least technical experience, but all students at one time or another experienced technical glitches, particularly in submitting assignments. SIPA students also completed evaluations of the classes that they took. Their comments are useful in that they provide some insight into how the program's classes compared with traditional classes. Most thought that the class matched the other classes that they were taking at SIPA in terms of content and work-demands. They liked the organization of the classes and the marketability of the skills and knowledge taught. Most said that they would definitely recommend the class to other students. At the same time, however, they recognized some of the challenges of distance learning. In particular, they felt that they were working in isolation and had to make more of an effort to benefit from discussing issues and problems with their peers. Nevertheless, they often commented on the accessibility of faculty and teaching assistants. The Administration The program's format and the partnership between the two schools presented new challenges for those responsible for administering the program. With staff in Pittsburgh and New York, phone calls and e- mails, rather than face-to-face meetings, were the primary means of communication. Because of this, administrative staff found a need for greater emphasis than usual on clarifying responsibilities and timelines for the production and delivery of materials. This did not prove to be easy, given the long lead- in times needed for production and the late receipt of applications. Key Challenges: Managing Communication and Achieving Returns A number of issues and challenges arose during the first year of the program which led us to make adjustments during the first and second years of the program. In many instances, the issues themselves arose as a consequence of the principles and objectives we sought to implement and the technologies we selected to deliver the program. This section covers in more detail the key issues of managing communication and interaction that arose during the first year of the program and achieving a return on our investment. Managing Communication We knew from studies of other distance education programs that preparation and structure were keys to the success of the program. We also knew that support services for the distance learner were important, and both institutions committed themselves to provide these. Despite this understanding, we stumbled at file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (12 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education the beginning in designing an orientation much as we might have for a conventional program. Administrators spoke as might lawyers at a the closing of a real estate transaction about the unique and exciting features of the house. Faculty described the architecture. We spent too little time with tradesmen, demonstrating to the students how to use the power tools the program would need to realize the lawyers' and architects' vision. We realized after the first semester began that we had wasted an opportunity in the program's initial face- to-face session to provide hands-on work concerning such mundane issues as how to submit assignments electronically or how to install the System Architect software that students would be using in the Analysis and Design course. We also quickly discovered that, although we had selected the World Wide Web as the principle vehicle for communication because of its support of alternative platforms-- Windows, Macintosh, and Unix-- we failed to appreciate the fact that supporting communication and application software varied according to students' operating systems. The fix to some of these problems is relatively straightforward: require students to use a standard operating system (Windows 95), and to change the Orientation sessions into a hands-on workshops in the computer lab. These changes were made for the second year of the program. However, issues concerning the communication technology extended beyond these teething problems. Although the program required experience in information systems and a familiarity with database structures, we underestimated two aspects of the learning environment which are available to conventional students but not the distance learner: (1) opportunities to learn "over one's shoulder"; and (2) an infrastructure of campus computer labs where applications software are readily available and maintained for students by offices of computer and information services. An interesting paradox arose during the first year of the program. On the one hand, students reported that they interacted far more with faculty and staff in this program than they had in any other prior undergraduate or graduate program. On the other hand, despite the ease with which the technology enabled interaction, they felt isolated. This isolation, both perceived and real, had an important consequence for the way in which students learned and the demands they placed on the program. Students frequently face irritating roadblocks in their mastery of information systems materials because of problems in software applications. Programs do not always behave as you would expect them to, and troubleshooting can be time consuming. In the conventional computer lab, students facing such a problem often turn to the student next to them or "over the shoulder" and ask if the neighbor has been experiencing similar problems. The neighbor looks at the distressed student's screen, pauses, and then says something like: "Oh, you forgot to hit the Enter key." The key is struck, and the student sails on, stress relieved. Distance education students do not have these opportunities for informal learning and quick and simple fixes to minor technical problems. They can e-mail or call a teaching assistant for help. Over the course of the first semester, we learned how important this service was for our students. But our teaching assistants are imperfect substitutes for the informal and incidental learning that takes place between file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (13 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education students in conventional classroom formats. A corollary of this observation is that our distance learning students began to expect very short response times. We heard from them when our staff did not respond within 24 hours. We also discovered that our distance learning students contacted faculty or teaching assistants instead of each other for help much more than we had expected. We also took for granted the value of having a computational infrastructure in place and on-site at our respective institutions. Full-time residential students walk into a computer lab, sit at a terminal, enter their user identification and password, point and click on a software application, begin their assignment. Our distance learners do not and cannot do so, unless they commute into the labs at Columbia University, thereby somewhat diminishing the value of the distance education format. Each distance learner in our program became his or her own Office of Computing Services. While there is some value in learning how to install and maintain software, that was not a learning objective of the program. Instead of mastering the course content, distance learners were spending time debugging installation problems. Achieving Returns on Investment There is very little information available in the literature and at conferences on distance education on the returns to investment in such programs. We will not rectify this situation in this paper. Our experience is too limited to provide any conclusive evidence. However, we can review the expenses and revenues associated with our program as background for those who are considering the development of distance education programs. The expenses associated with the program can be divided into two basic components: (1) development and (2) yearly operating costs. Revenues are derived at the moment only from tuition. The Heinz School provided resources for summer salary and videotaping support to a senior faculty member to develop and implement a pilot curriculum development project two summers prior to the targeted launch of the full program. We followed two principles here: (1) the program itself would require senior faculty leadership; and, (2) participating faculty members would learn how to develop these materials through a discovery-based process for which we provided resources. This pilot project cost approximately $20,000, all supported by funds provided by the Heinz School, as was the development cost of the entire program. The direct cost for developing the materials for the six courses were largely those associated with creating the videotaped lectures. The Heinz School used CMU's video recording studio at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for this purpose by recording conventional classes as they were being conducted. The facility includes a classroom that can seat from 20 to 50 students. It has four cameras and desk microphones that are remotely controlled by two operators. The facility itself cost approximately $1 million to build and equip more than five years ago. The use of this facility resulted in the production of professional quality, edited videotaped lectures that cost approximately $500 per file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (14 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education finished hour. We collected other estimates using different production facilities which we found charged from $1600 to $30,000 per finished hour of videotape. Overall, each course required approximately $25,000 to videotape, or $150,000 for the entire curriculum. The principle annual operating expenses associated with the program include: salaries-- $200,000; travel-- $30,000; reproduction of materials-- $30,000; and marketing--$50,000. The annual costs of operating the program total approximately $310,000. These annual operating expenses are offset if the program enrolls 22 students at the $2,400 per course tuition that is charged part-time students in one of the Heinz School's conventional degree programs. The initial development costs are recovered by enrolling another 14 students. The first year enrolled 10 full-time equivalent students and the second year an additional 14. We believe that all universities will eventually adopt some form of distance education program. Information technologies themselves will push institutions into such programs. The need for older learners to continue or renew their learning in settings which differ from conventional classrooms will pull them. The questions, if we are correct in this regard, are not whether, but when and how institutions will develop and administer distance education programs. Surely, the cost of developing today's distance education program will continue to fall, and the availability of electronic communication technology will continue to reach broader segments of the population, thus expanding the potential audience for these programs. The cutting edge will remain expensive. Implications for Extensions There are real possibilities for further collaboration in distance learning along the lines pursued in the collaboration described in this paper. Many programs are unable to deliver a given area of instruction due to resource constraints. In addition, as in this case, the area being considered may be important enough, and the need for instruction great enough, that an external mid-career market might be available to cross-subsidize the costs of a distance learning project. The opportunity comes because there is a mismatch between the geographic location of faculty and the market need for their expertise. While Columbia University has some faculty in information management, it does not come close to the depth of expertise in this field possessed by Carnegie Mellon. On the other hand, the mid-career market for this expertise is greater in New York City than in Pittsburgh. Columbia's need for faculty in this area and Carnegie-Mellon's desire to ease their access to a larger mid-career market created the conditions that led to this collaboration. One of the main contributions that Columbia made in the collaboration with Carnegie-Mellon is to provide local marketing and facilities. Even if the program was delivered without in-person instruction, use of a local host is probably desirable. The potential for similar collaborations between universities is quite real. While the start-up costs of the Carnegie-Mellon-Columbia collaboration were high, video taped lectures could be produced without broadcast quality production values, and costs could be lowered if necessary. Universities might develop file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (15 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] A Case Study In Distance Education two-way exchanges of faculty and virtual visiting professor programs that could increase learning opportunities for students at a fraction of the cost of hiring permanent in resident faculty. Another possibility is that organizations such as NASPAA or APPAM could earn income and provide a service by brokering distance learning course consortia. A school could offer a video-taped/Internet based course that could be offered by perhaps as many as five other schools simultaneously. Each university could "sell" the course to its own students or local mid-career market, and offer its own academic credits for the course. The number of students in the course would be capped at a set number, to give faculty and TAs sufficient time to grade work and interact with the class over the Internet. The institution providing the instruction would receive a fee or royalty for each student enrolled. Offering course credit for distant learning courses would require approval of the course and faculty from each university. That approval process was necessary in the Carnegie-Mellon-Columbia Information Resource Management Program in order for Columbia University students to apply the credit for the program's information management courses to their degree. For a multi-university consortium arrangement to be practical we would need to go beyond the mixed distance/local learning experiment we have conducted to a complete distance learning program. The Internet, FedEx, and credit cards make this technically feasible. While we believe the mixed system we have piloted in New York is quite successful educationally, the potential for additional collaboration might require a further leap to a pure distance learning experiment. A course offered without personal appearances by distant faculty could be team taught by local faculty, or could be a 2-to 4-week module imbedded within a longer course. For example, a course in public management might have a two week module in information management provided by Carnegie-Mellon. Another way to reduce travel costs might be to have the opening session of a distance learning class introduced by local faculty or administration who could distribute video tapes, assignments, or software. Costs could be further reduced by providing all of these materials through overnight package services and the Internet. Creative use of this technology could make it possible to open up learning experiences to students from faculty situated in any part of the globe. Courses in international issues might be taught by faculty from outside the U.S. or might be taught in other countries by faculty from U.S. universities. The potential for distance learning is only limited by our imagination. While the technology requires new teaching methods to insure quality, if care is taken, distance learning courses can provide unique, high quality educational experiences. Back to Personal Homepage SIPA Directory file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (16 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cohen.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa A Case Study In Distance Education Columbia University Home Page SIPA Web Manager file:///C|/Users/admin/Documents/websites/cohen/notused/cmrevisedjpae.html (17 of 17) [11/4/2008 6:54:24 PM] http://www.columbia.edu/ mailto:hm3@columbia.edu Local Disk A Case Study In Distance Education 
work_6txwrjdj35asroteeace5sr6eq	----	INVITED COMMENTARY 71NCMJ vol. 75, no. 1 ncmedicaljournal.com Sleep medicine is a quickly growing field of allied health and preventive medicine. The University of North Carolina has proven innovative and timely in offering a neurodiagnostics and sleep science bachelor’s degree program for the sleep medicine profession. The Department of Kinesiology in the College of Health and Human Services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte, in collaboration with the Departments of Allied Health Sciences and Neurology in the School of Medicine at UNC–Chapel Hill, has developed a postprofes- sional baccalaureate-degree program in neurodiagnostics and sleep science (NDSS). Offering a bachelor of science (BS) degree to sleep technologists and electroneurodiag- nostic technologists who are already registered and prac- ticing in their respective fields, this program can increase students’ professional knowledge and expand their oppor- tunities for career advancement. This program is the first of its type in the nation, and it is working to set the national standard for future BS degrees in NDSS. Since the program’s first class enrolled in the fall semester of 2011, students have been motivated and qualified practitioners who want to become institutional, educational, and health care lead- ers. To help students meet these goals, the NDSS program provides a broad foundation in sleep science and teaches critical thinking and problem solving skills. To assess the demand for a new baccalaureate-degree program in NDSS, a survey was conducted in 2008 of students enrolled in the 5 accredited community college programs in North Carolina that offer a concentration in polysomnography and/or electroneurodiagnostic technol- ogy; 82% of respondents indicated that they were inter- ested in pursuing a BS degree in NDSS. To further study the expressed interest in this type of program, a survey was conducted of the students at each of the 33 polysomnogra- phy and electroneurodiagnostic technology programs in the United States that have been accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs; 65% of these respondents said that they were interested in pur- suing a BS degree in NDSS. The NDSS program at UNC-Charlotte is offered via dis- tance-learning delivery methods. Due to the nature of their work, sleep technologists are inherently technologically savvy and adapt readily to the distance-learning format. This method also works well for sleep technologists because of their varied work schedules. Offering courses online allows all students to access the same information, regardless of their work and life schedules, which facilitates participation and engagement in the courses. Offering the courses via dis- tance learning also makes the program available to students regardless of their physical location. Thanks to the distance- learning delivery model, students are able to participate in all of the program’s educational experiences through vari- ous means of online collaboration. There are also intern- ship and capstone requirements that students must fulfill at various times throughout their program of study. Students can either develop relationships with professionals in their own geographic locale, or they can travel to Chapel Hill for a short period of time to complete these requirements. The need for technologists with higher levels of educa- tion has arisen as the roles and responsibilities of technolo- gists have expanded; sleep technologists are now dealing with different patient populations, and they are expected not only to be knowledgeable about technical subjects but also to be capable of managing resources and finances. In particular, health care reform and the increased emphasis on preventive health care have been major contributing fac- tors in emphasizing the importance of sleep medicine, as treatment of sleep disorders is a preventive cost-savings measure. Patients with undiagnosed sleep disorders have at least twice the utilization of care and double the health care costs of those whose sleep disorders have been treated [1-3], and at least one quarter of all Americans can benefit from evaluation of obstructive sleep apnea and other sleep disorders [4]. The constant development of new diagnostic and treat- ment technologies has also produced change in this field, and it will likely continue to do so. The role of nighttime tech- nologists is changing, as these technologists are expected to perform more specialized clinical testing—including seizure A Postprofessional Distance-Education Program in Neurodiagnostics and Sleep Science Auburne Overton Electronically published January 21, 2014. Address correspondence to Ms. Auburne Overton, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Belk Gym, #240-Q, Charlotte, NC 28223 (aoverto1@uncc.edu). N C Med J. 2014;75(1):71-72. ©2014 by the North Carolina Institute of Medicine and The Duke Endowment. All rights reserved. 0029-2559/2014/75123 NCMJ vol. 75, no. 1 ncmedicaljournal.com 72 monitoring, dental device titration, and servoventilation. Daytime technologists are also seeing their job descriptions change with the inclusion of additional duties, such as pro- viding more patient and community education, providing patient follow-up, monitoring patients for treatment compli- ance, teaching patients to use durable medical equipment (eg, continuous positive airway pressure [CPAP] machines), marketing, and other leadership and management duties. The rapid growth in home sleep testing is another poten- tial concern for sleep technologists. While home sleep testing is not necessarily less accurate than a full polysom- nogram, home sleep tests are not continuously monitored and examined by trained professionals and do not collect the same amount and types of physiological data. Thus many comorbidities and sleep-related complications may be omit- ted from a patient’s treatment plan if a lab-based, attended polysomnogram is not performed. In a survey by the journal Sleep Review, 50% of sleep labs reported that they currently offer home sleep testing to Medicare patients, and 64% reported that they offer it to patients with private insurance [5]. Many technologists fear that this trend will become a threat to their livelihood, as more patients seek to have home sleep testing rather than being tested and treated in traditional sleep labs. However, there are still patients with comorbidities and/or severe complications who need to undergo fully attended sleep studies. In fact, despite the availability of more cost-effec- tive home sleep testing, the vast majority of sleep studies performed over the past 4 years have been facility-based, attended sleep studies (Figure 1) [6]. This creates further need for technologists with the experience and education to treat these sicker patients. As the trend toward home sleep testing continues to evolve, many technologists may find that they are required to obtain higher educational degrees, such as the BS degree offered at UNC-Charlotte, in order to stay viable in the job market and to lead their profession during this time of change. A sleep medicine workforce with higher levels of education will better serve the needs of our patients through their knowledge and their experience in helping patients navigate complicated sleep disorders and associated comorbidities. These individuals are also poised to serve as leaders of their profession, to move sleep medicine forward as a new foundation in preventative medicine, and to provide innovative diagnosis and treatment for large sections of the population. Auburne Overton, RPSGT, MHA program coordinator and clinical assis- tant professor, Neurodiagnostics and Sleep Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina. Acknowledgments Potential conflicts of interest. A.O. is an employee of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and chair of the Committee on Accreditation of Polysomnographic Technology Education Programs. References 1. Ronald J, Delaive K, Roos L, Manfreda J, Bahammam A, Kryger MH. Health care utilization in the 10 years prior to diagnosis in obstruc- tive sleep apnea syndrome patients. Sleep. 1999;22(2):225-229. 2. Kapur V, Blough DK, Sandblom RE, et al. The medical cost of undiag- nosed sleep apnea. Sleep. 1999;22(6):749-755. 3. Albarrak M, Banno K, Sabbagh AA, et al. Utilization of healthcare resources in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome: a 5-year follow-up study in men using CPAP. Sleep. 2005;28(10):1306-1311. 4. Hiestand DM, Britz P, Goldman M, Phillips B. Prevalence of symp- toms and risk of sleep apnea in the US population: results from the national sleep foundation sleep in America 2005 poll. Chest. 2006;130(3):780-786. 5. Sleep Review’s 2013 Sleep Center Survey. Sleep Review magazine Web site. http://www.sleepreviewmag.com/all-news/18360-sleep -review-s-2013-sleep-center-survey. Published March 5, 2013. Ac- cessed December 2, 2013. 6. Medicare Part B National Summary Data Files for years 2000-2011. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Web site. http://www .cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Files-for-Order/ NonIdentifiableDataFiles/PartBNationalSummaryDataFile.html. Page last modified November 27, 2012. Accessed December 2, 2013. figure 1. Sleep Diagnostic Testing for Medicare Patients, 2009-2012: Home Sleep Testing (HST) Versus Attended Sleep Studies in a Laboratory Facility Source: Part B National Summary Data Files for years 2009–2012. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Web site. http://www .cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Files-for-Order/NonIdentifiableDataFiles/PartBNationalSummaryDataFile.html. Published November 27, 2012. Accessed December 2, 2013. 
work_6vufrvamdvexngc2hj6tq2v7ya	----	The VIP Approach - Applying a Virtual, Interdisciplinary Partnership to Support Innovation and Authentic Learning in Distance Education ORIGINAL PAPER The VIP Approach - Applying a Virtual, Interdisciplinary Partnership to Support Innovation and Authentic Learning in Distance Education Noelle Wall Sweany1 & Emily Finbow2 & Yun Li1 & Rebecca L. Burgner1 # Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2020 Abstract This paper offers lessons learned from a partnership between the Texas A&M School of Innovation (I-School) and the Texas A&M Educational Technology program. Taking on the I-School as a “client,” online graduate students in an Advanced Instructional Design course spent a semester designing the first of a set of online educational modules aimed to educate inventors, especially those emerging from research institutions, about the process of obtaining funding from outside sources for commer- cializing their technologies. Key elements of authentic learning experiences include a real-world relevant project, collaboration, meaningful reflection, and a polished product (Herrington et al. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 19(1), 57-71. 2003). The design of the asynchronous course is discussed in terms of how it reflects these elements of authentic learning experiences. In addition, the experience of participating in this client-based authentic learning experience within an asynchro- nous, online course is discussed from the instructor, student, and client perspectives. Keywords Authentic learning . Distance education . Innovation . Client project Texas A&M University recently launched the School of Innovation, a new unit focused on providing opportunities for student-led, project-based, multidisciplinary learning. Known colloquially as the “I-School,” the school aims to offer students, faculty, and staff the chance to explore opportunities and shared passions outside of the classroom–regardless of their major or degree level. Rather than creating new courses from scratch, the school seeks to coordinate existing universi- ty efforts to make it easier for members of the community to collaborate in research and education. In the educational spirit of capitalizing on the expertise located across our university system, the School of Innovation sought out ways to capture existing Texas A&M experiences related to innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, and leadership for future use and collaboration. One of the I- School’s initial projects was to provide a set of online educa- tional modules to teach new inventors the basics of how to pitch their idea to a potential investor. With the intent of these materials serving as a pilot for future educational projects, the I-School partnered with an Advanced Instructional Design course in the Educational Technology program housed within the Department of Educational Psychology to offer itself as a real-world client for the education students. The I-School wanted to ensure that this product was created by students for fellow learners, implementing best practices in developing learning objectives, instructional activities, assessment methods, and interface design. This article serves as a design case to outline the structure of the course and instructional strategies from the perspective of the instructor, graduate stu- dents, and client representative. Course Structure The Educational Technology master’s degree at Texas A&M is a fully online program. The students are located across the country and are typically working full-time, so the online classes are delivered asynchronously. To meet the I-School’s request of designing a set of online modules aimed at investor pitch coaching, the students were provided a variety of docu- ments and resources, including written and video guidance from the client, written materials on the commercialization * Noelle Wall Sweany nsweany@tamu.edu 1 Department of Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University, 4225 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4225, USA 2 School of Innovation, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00497-1 Published online: 7 May 2020 TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11528-020-00497-1&domain=pdf mailto:nsweany@tamu.edu process, and access to client representatives who could answer questions and serve as subject matter experts. The task was to produce the complete design documentation for the proposed modules, including learning objectives, practice activities, feedback, assessment methods, and module interface design. This documentation would then be passed on to a graduate student e-learning developer to create the set of online modules. While the Educational Technology faculty typically in- clude collaborative projects throughout the master’s program, this was the first time the faculty designed a course as a full- semester, fully online, client-based course. There were 13 stu- dents enrolled in the course, and they worked asynchronously in groups of varying sizes throughout the semester, depending on the task. In terms of the overall structure of the content, the instructor purposefully “front-loaded” new content related to advanced instructional design concepts during the first half of the semester, allowing students to focus on applying the con- tent to the design of the client project during the second half of the semester. Theoretical Perspective The overall structure of the advanced instructional design course was based on an “authentic” approach to learning. Authentic learning is rooted in situated cognition, which states that knowledge cannot be separated from the context in which it is learned (Brown et al. 1989). Proponents of situated cog- nition recommend approaches such as cognitive apprenticeships “that embed learning in activity and make deliberate use of the social and physical context” (Brown et al. 1989, p.32) and the development of authentic activities “where students become immersed in problem solving within realistic situations resembling the contexts where the knowl- edge they are learning can be realistically applied” (Herrington et al. 2003, pp. 59–60). Herrington and Herrington (2006) summarize nine characteristics of authentic learning: authentic context that reflects the way knowledge will be used in real life, authentic activities, access to expert performances and the modelling of processes, multiple roles and perspectives, collaborative construction of knowledge, reflection, articulation, coaching and scaffolding, authentic assessment (pp. 4–9). These characteristics serve as a practical framework to guide researchers and practitioners in the design of authentic learning environments (Herrington 2006; Herrington et al. 2003; Lombardi 2007; Reeves et al. 2002; Smith 1986; Woo et al. 2007). This paper will focus on four key elements of authentic learning: authentic context, collaborative knowledge con- struction, reflection, and authentic assessment (Brown et al. 1989; Herrington et al. 2003; Herrington 2006; Lombardi 2007; Woo et al. 2007). The authors of this paper–the course instructor, teaching assistant, graduate student, and client representative–will address each of these key elements from three perspectives: the instructor (and designer) of the gradu- ate course, the student perspective of those enrolled in the graduate course, and the client’s experience working with the graduate students. Authentic Context Researchers suggest that learning transfer can occur effective- ly when individuals acquire knowledge within a realistic con- text (Anderson, Anderson et al. 1996; Bennet et al. 2002; Grabinger 1996). Involving students in authentic learning ac- tivities often leads to more effective knowledge transfer and meaningful learning (Jonassen 1999). To create an authentic learning environment, the context should provide a “complex learning environment that can be explored at length” (Herrington and Herrington 2006, p. 4). Engaging with real- world practices, such as the roles and responsibilities of an instructional designer, provides the students an authentic learning experience that encourages them to reflect on the nature of the problem and build the connections between the- ory and practice (Squires 1999; Stein et al. 2004; Young 1993). Course Design Strategies The instructor identified the need for the advanced instructional design students to be able to apply their skills to an actual client project. The instructional goal was to provide an authentic learning environment for the stu- dents with real-world instructional design tasks and the chal- lenge of working with an actual client (Herrington et al. 2003; Herrington 2006; Reeves et al. 2002). The instructor designed a project-based course in which the students followed the typical process of instructional design projects. For example, these real-world tasks usually contain undefined and complex problems and require instructional designers to identify an effective solution to achieve the main learning goals (Herrington et al. 2003; Herrington 2006; Lombardi 2007). To help the students begin to define this problem space and break the complex problem down into manageable pieces, the instructor designed several brainstorming discussion sessions that required the students to collaborate with each other as well as the stakeholders, determine the most important content necessary for the learning solution, identify and organize the types of content involved, and consider possible instructional strategies appropriate for a mobile learning approach. To help focus the brainstorming sessions, the instructor began by pro- posing the following questions: & How do you make the tenets of entrepreneurship and in- novation understandable to a broader audience? & How do you do it when you are not in the same room with them? 647TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 Once the students had a general understanding of the broad instructional problem, the instructor then encouraged them to consider how they could structure the content in such a way that would help the users actually learn and understand the material. How could they go beyond information presentation and make the new information relevant and meaningful? In addition, the instructor asked the students to examine how to achieve these objectives within a mobile learning approach. Instead of a traditional e-learning course where the user might sit at a desk, complete the course in an hour or two, and take a traditional assessment, the client wanted the learners to be able to explore the information when they had quick bits of free time–in between meetings, on the bus to work, waiting to pick up their kids, etc. After participating in the group discussions and reviewing the large amount of documentation provided by the client, the students decided on a microlearning approach, which would be based on the design of micro modules that could stand on their own and be completed in three to five minutes each (Paul 2016). The instructor’s decision to have the students continually refine the project structure, from broad goals to a specific delivery method, based on an itera- tive process of reviewing the videos and documentation pro- vided by the client, highlighted the project’s “complex learn- ing environment that could be explored at length” (Herrington and Herrington 2006, p.4) – a key feature of authentic learning environments. Student Perspective The graduate students enrolled in the course noted that the use of a real-world client solidified the concepts taught in the class. Each concept played a part in the final project for the client, from understanding the learners and their motivation to designing strategies to promote critical thinking. Although most students in the course came from an education background and had taken other instructional design courses, the use of the real-world client stretched the students to begin thinking like a professional instructional designer. For some students, this stretch was challenging be- cause of their background in K-12, where they are used to being the content expert. During the last week of the course, the instructor asked the students to reflect on their learning experience and their key takeaway. One student commented: “I also realized with this course that I'm not a content expert, and at first, that was intimidating. However, as my team and I pushed through it,[and] did our own research, we learned how to take what we learned and modify it for our client's purposes.” (Student 1, Course Reflection) Additionally, the real client allowed students to see first-hand the nuances involved in navigating a client’s “wants” versus what is needed for the learning solution. However, this process also felt chaotic at times for the students. As in the real world, there were delays in receiving information from the client, resulting in a rearrangement of due dates/tasks with- in the semester. In a face-to-face class, these types of “on the fly” changes are easy to make; however, these changes are more difficult to implement in an asynchronous online course (Kebritchi et al. 2017). During times when students felt con- fused or lost throughout the design process, the instructor would communicate via video or virtual meetings. The video provided important verbal and nonverbal cues regarding where the class was during the process—cues that can nor- mally be lost when communicating via text (Crawley et al. 2009; Kebritchi et al. 2017; Romero-Hall and Vicentini, 2017). This authentic learning project gave students the valu- able experience of working with subject matter experts and a team of project stakeholders to solicit information and trans- late the content into a structured learning solution–a key skill of an effective instructional designer. Client Perspective This creative partnership between the in- structors, graduate students, and clients served as a pilot for both the types of materials the I-School could produce for its users and the types of collaboration which might be possible with current students. From an administrative side, working on a project with current students can be quite a different experience from working with other administrators or perma- nent collaborators. Students are typically only available for a semester, a relatively short period of time considering the amount of behind-the-scenes work that must be done to com- plete a project from start to finish. Working with one set of graduate students in one course on short micro modules kept the problem of “too many cooks” in the educational kitchen to a minimum. Throughout the project, the instructors served as a point of contact or overall project leader between the clients and the students. Future partnerships would ideally provide more opportunities for the students to ask clients questions face-to-face (or as “face to face” as can be in an asynchronous, online course). Collaborative Knowledge Construction Researchers in the field have noted that effective collab- oration goes beyond individuals working in groups. The output of this group collaboration should be something that each individual could not complete alone (Forman and Cazden 1985; Herrington and Herrington 2006). In the context of instructional design, the interaction and collaboration within the project stakeholders play a signif- icant role in developing effective projects. Collaborating with peers as well as the client provides students the op- portunity to problem-solve, critique ideas, and incorporate various perspectives in order to design the most effective and efficient learning solution. 648 TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 Course Design Strategies The course project was designed to begin at a broad, theoretical level and continually narrow in scope to specific tasks. In terms of collaborative activities, the instructor designed three levels of collaboration that were ad- justed weekly to maintain high quality, focused interactions between group participants and help the students understand typical interactions they might have with project stakeholders as an instructional designer. In the initial stage of the project, the instructor divided the students into three groups. The instructor assigned the first group to determine the main learning objectives and to iden- tify each content type as fact, concept, principle, procedure, problem-solving, or attitude (Foshay et al. 2003; Morrison et al. 2019). The instructor assigned the second group to re- search the possible development tools to recommend to the client based on the project needs and constraints. The instruc- tor assigned the third group to research educational trends that could have an impact on the design of the online modules (e.g., adult learning theory, microlearning, mobile learning). Students worked together to accomplish each of the assigned tasks within the group. Each of the tasks was broad enough that an individual student, particularly a novice instructional designer, could not successfully complete the task by his or herself. The multiple perspectives and peer assistance resulted in more thorough completion of each task. After completing the tasks, each group was required to post the results to the discussion board in the LMS for other groups to review and critique. Assigning each of the groups a separate task and using the results as the basis of a full-class discussion provided an efficient method for each student in the course to review the various types of information that must be considered at the beginning of an instructional design project without being overwhelmed by being responsible for all of the tasks. In the second stage of the project, the instructor divided the students into two groups and assigned them to one of two major content areas (“Creating an Effective Pitch Deck” or “Developing the Pitch”). The instructor asked each group to conduct a needs analysis and finalize the instructional objec- tives for their assigned content area. Similar to the first stage, each group shared the results in the discussion board and received feedback from the course instructor, teaching assis- tant, and their peers. The instructor specifically designed these rounds of groupwork and feedback to encourage collaborative knowledge construction. After the needs analysis, the instructor divided each group into two sub-groups of three to four students and assigned the students to design the instructional strategies for their content area. The instructor purposely decided to assign smaller group sizes to allow for easier brainstorm- ing sessions. Again, the results of the brainstorming ses- sions of possible instructional strategies were then pre- sented to the full group to decide on the final set of in- structional strategies. In the final stage of the project, the instructor redistributed the four small groups and assigned the students to two groups of six to seven students. The instructor assigned a specific role to each student. These roles supported the team’s collaborative effort and included the roles of project manager, visual design- er, instructional designer, and editor. Each of these roles aligns with the project roles in a real-world instructional design con- text. The use of virtual meeting and collaboration tools, such as Google Docs, Hangouts, Blackboard Collaborate, Skype, and text messaging were key to the success of this course in an online asynchronous format. This detailed level of collabora- tion allowed each student to experience the instructional de- sign process as well as the ability to work virtually with other teammates and stakeholders, a valuable skill that mirrors what is happening in terms of virtual, global collaboration in industry. Student Perspective The instructor was able to effectively transition the group exercises beginning with a broad view of the instructional design process at the start of the semester and narrowing the scope to focus on accomplishing specific tasks at the end of the semester. Using this approach allowed students from various backgrounds to work together toward a common goal and allowed the instructor to facilitate a class full of novice instructional designers to create one cohesive design document. The instructor’s approach in assigning pro- ject roles in the final group exercise proved useful in streamlining the process of completing the design documents. The project manager was responsible for outlining the tasks and ensuring the project kept moving forward. The instruc- tional designers fleshed out the instructional activities, the script, and the navigation for the storyboards. The visual de- signers designed the layout of the interface. The editor ensured that the documents were consistent and cohesive. Having the instructor assign roles at this stage of the course allowed the groups to work more efficiently. As with any group project, there can be difficulties in work- ing together. This can be magnified when students are at a distance and contributing asynchronously (Chang and Kang 2016). In instances where groups did not function well togeth- er, the instructor reassigned groups for the next exercise. Not only did this allow students to work with other students, but it also encouraged every student to provide input and be heard. In cases where redistributing the groups was not feasible, the instructor had more focused conversations with the groups to clarify project expectations and role requirements. Client Perspective The wide variety of student combinations working together throughout the semester seemed to prove a valuable course design strategy to ensure that students were able to interface with as many personality types or skill back- grounds as possible. This experience mirrors the frequent changes in project vision and team members that they will 649TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 encounter in future projects, post-graduation. Although reassigning groups when teams did not function well together might have been in the best interest of the students within the course, that is not always possible in real-world situations within the workplace. You sometimes must work with the team you are given, even when the team is not operating optimally. In these situations, a key skill to possess is the ability to determine and implement strategies that will help the team work more effectively together. Meaningful Reflection In authentic learning environments, instructors provide oppor- tunities for students to reflect on their learning process. Reflection enables learners to analyze their learning process and improve metacognitive skills through a “conscious explo- ration of one’s own experiences and thought process” (Silver 2013) in order to make improvements in the subsequent learn- ing and/or performance contexts (Boud et al. 1985; Herrington et al. 2014; Schön 1987). By reflecting on the process, learners can identify strategies for approaching simi- lar problems in the future or discover gaps in their learning that need to be addressed (Bolton 2010; Schön 1987). While reflection should be an ongoing process, it is important to design opportunities for structured reflection exercises within an authentic learning experience. Course Design Strategies The instructor designed a variety of tasks throughout the semester to encourage students to reflect on their learning process. The reflective tasks within this course included weekly discussion activities, which encour- aged students to apply theoretical concepts to their own pro- ject tasks, assess their own learning process, and compare their ideas and thought processes with other learners throughout different project design stages. In these discussion activities, students were asked to reflect on the readings, discussions, and the main project design, and to make connections between these activities. These tasks were designed to help develop the students’ metacognitive skills related to the instructional de- sign process. For example, students were placed in groups to recommend instructional strategies to address each of the in- structional objectives. To prepare students to accomplish this task on their own, during the prior week, the instructor guided students through determining a smaller set of instructional strategies by assigning a textbook activity and practice exer- cise. This exercise related to a content area that the students were more familiar with (e.g., history, technology, etc.). Structuring the activity in this way made the information a bit more relevant to the learners and built on their prior knowl- edge before asking them to apply this knowledge to the broader client project. In addition, synchronous online meet- ings with the course instructor and the teaching assistant en- couraged the students to discuss their instructional design decisions, confirm client expectations, and brainstorm solu- tions for various design challenges to bridge gaps in their learning (Bolton 2010; Schön 1987). For the final assignment in the course, the instructor de- signed one last reflection activity. The instructor outlined ev- erything that the students had accomplished over the semester, ranging from “applied a theoretical model to enhance motiva- tion in instruction’ to “developed a fully fleshed out visual storyboard suitable for including in a portfolio.” The instructor asked students to reflect on each of the outcomes and discuss what they learned from their experience. Students were to write a short essay detailing their key takeaways and what they might do differently on a future project. The students shared their reflective essays with their peers. Using this in- structional strategy allowed students to deepen their under- standing by making connections among the many learning experiences that occurred over the semester (Silver 2013). In addition, conducting this activity in the discussion forum allowed students to share their experiences with others. Not only were students able to “explore their own experiences” (Silver 2013), they were also able to learn from each other’s learning process, which should strengthen the student’s metacognitive ability. Student Perspective Throughout the course, the discussion activities provided opportunities to reflect on the week’s con- cepts. The instructor designed the discussion questions to in- tegrate the weekly content with the students’ prior knowledge and experiences, resulting in a deeper understanding of the material. During the final week of the course, the instructor asked students to take some time to reflect on the client pro- cess, the discussions, and the activities completed in class: What will be your key takeaway? What would you do differ- ently next time? Similar to a team debriefing at the conclusion of an instructional design project, having students complete the reflection as a discussion provided peer-to-peer interaction and assessment of the authentic learning experience and iden- tified strategies that could be applied to similar problems (Bolton 2010; Schön 1987), thus connecting theory to practice. In the final reflection activity, most students noted how each of the class activities coupled with the real-world client project brought a different perspective to instructional design than they had experienced before. The client project chal- lenged the students’ ability to understand the theoretical ap- proaches to learning as well as develop a practical knowledge of instructional design. One student referenced the popular education tenet commonly attributed to Confucian philoso- pher Xunzi: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand” to describe her experience of the class. This student, in particular, felt that activities completed in the class and the client-based project encouraged a deeper level of learning than other typical course projects. Furthermore, in 650 TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 completing the final reflection assignment, the student was able to articulate how her thought process and learning changed over the semester, a key metacognitive skill (Silver 2013). Client Feedback The students’ end-of-semester reflections were extremely valuable for the client in terms of short-term feedback and long-term planning for the future. Hearing from the students about their own experience helped the client un- derstand how the frequent changes in timeline affected the students’ experience. Future collaborations can take the week- ly assignments and individual steps into account, rather than simply focusing on the end product. Authentic Assessment In authentic learning environments, the assessment should be integrated within the activity itself (Herrington and Herrington 2006). For example, students may create a polished product as the ultimate outcome of an activity (Herrington et al. 2014). These products should be “valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else” (Herrington 2006, p.6). A polished product helps to promote the learners’ own- ership of their learning through exploring the project, collab- orating with project stakeholders, and reflecting on the learn- ing process (Nikitina 2011). Course Design Strategies In this client-based course, the final product was to create a fully fleshed-out design document for the mobile learning modules, including a high-fidelity story- board detailing all of the instructional activities. In addition to identifying appropriate strategies to deliver the instructional content, the students had to consider the design and usability aspects of the visual interface. To accomplish the final prod- uct, the instructor employed a scaffolding method in the course that gradually released responsibility from the instruc- tor to the students (Fisher and Frey 2013). This methodology gave the instructor the ability to move from the teacher-as- model approach to students taking ownership of their learning (Nikitina 2011). At the beginning of the semester, the instruc- tor intentionally placed students in groups and outlined spe- cific tasks that each group needed to accomplish. At the end of the semester, each group was responsible for outlining and meeting each of their milestones. For example, in the first two weeks, students were assigned to view the client videos and documentation and write specific learning objectives for the project. By the latter half of the semester, the student groups were responsible for brainstorming, selecting, and re- fining a variety of instructional strategies aligned with each of the objectives as well as designing the visual interface of the mobile app and outlining additional questions that needed to be answered by the client. Finally, at the end of the semester, the instructor assigned two students to serve as “document editors” and integrate all of the content drafted during the semester into one cohesive document for the client. These assignments shifted the ownership of learning from the in- structor to the students. Additionally, the instructor stressed the importance of the final product for the students’ personal portfolios, adding extra value and real-world relevance to the final product (Herrington 2006). In addition to the written documentation, a face-to-face client presentation of the final deliverable was scheduled. Unfortunately, due to extenuating circumstances and time conflicts, a virtual client presentation was not possible. Student Perspective The instructor assigned two students to serve as final editors of the design document. Since so many individuals worked on various pieces of the design document, the editors ensured that the final product was a “cohesive” document written in one voice. The editors also provided an overview of the structure of the design document and a ratio- nale for the design decisions to the client. The process of taking all of the information and creating the overview docu- ment challenged the two students to consider the overall scope of the project along with making specific recommendations for the actual development of the product. After completing the final design document, the entire class had the opportunity to provide feedback. This activity resulted in a detailed, pro- fessionally formatted document similar to what an instruction- al designer in the field would provide for a real-world client. For the final presentation of deliverables to the client, one local student was able to attend the client presentation and was able to add the student’s perspective. For this student, partic- ipation in the final presentation to the client was extremely valuable as it provided feedback on the work created through- out the semester from a different perspective other than in- structor and peers. The feedback was provided to the rest of the students in the course but for similar projects in the future, a virtual meeting that included more students would be highly recommended. Client Perspective The in-person meeting with the instructors and student at the end of the semester pulled back the curtain on the process of the students’ construction of the design plans. Although this experience offered the students a glimpse of how projects with future clients might play out in terms (and sometimes lack) of organization on the side of the client, it was determined that both groups would benefit from more frequent check-ins with each other, a clearer picture of desired outcomes, and most importantly, a better understanding of the audience of the eventual product. During the final phase of the project, the client reexamined their ideas of the user group for these types of micro modules. Would the modules serve as a guide for the general public on the essentials of a pitch? Should the modules be aimed at potential inventors working 651TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 on their own pitches? Or should the modules help prepare competitors for future pitch competitions? During the next phase of the project, the client will have more internal discus- sions to determine the level of audience which these modules might best serve and how we can clarify those ideas internally for future collaborations with students. Final Reflections on Overall Course Design The overall structure of this asynchronous online course aligns with the authentic learning design framework proposed by Herrington et al. (2010) with the overlapping elements of Tasks, Resources, and Supports. The learning task is central to the development of an authentic learning experience. Herrington et al. (2010) note that the “best forms of authentic learning tasks are those that are ill-defined, open-ended, quite complex, and which lead to a polished product” (2010, p.120). Working with the client to develop a complete design docu- ment which could then be handed over to a developer fits all of these criteria. The resources provided in an authentic learning experience should come from a variety of sources and “repre- sent the knowledge to be acquired” but the information pro- vided is usually more than is needed and it is up to the learner to decide how to engage with the resources (pp.123–124). In this case, the students had written documentation provided by the client outlining effective pitch strategies, slideshow pre- sentations detailing how to create a “pitch deck,” videos of actual participants in previous pitch competitions, as well as links to online resources for interface and e-learning design, storyboarding, design documentation, and general instruction- al design resources. The students had to sift through each of these resources and determine the most salient pieces of con- tent to include in the final product. In terms of supports, the instructor must scaffold the students by monitoring the pro- cess and providing additional help and feedback when needed. Since the students were novice instructional designers in this course, the instructor provided additional support to clarify client expectations, discuss potential design decisions, and help the students consider possible obstacles or challenges. In addition, the instructor provided encouragement when the students began to feel overwhelmed with the ill-defined problem. Instructor Perspective This was a very challenging course to take on purely online–from both the instructor and student perspectives. Typically, online instructors will have most of the weekly content laid out at the beginning of the semester so that they can devote the majority of their time to facilitating the activities each week. For this client-based project, the weekly content would change depending on what was re- ceived from the client each week. For example, the instructor might have scheduled a specific week for the students to review the client materials and develop the learning objec- tives, but the client needed additional time to gather and refine the specific documents for delivery. In this case, it was impor- tant to have back-up plans and to stress to the students from the beginning of the semester that they would have to be flexible in their weekly tasks and expectations. Of course, the last-minute receiving of information from the client is typical of the real-world experience, and this served as a “teachable moment” for the students as well. Student Perspective Several times throughout the semester, the instructor, concerned that students were feeling overwhelmed, would check in with the students to “take the temperature of the class,” but the feedback posted in the final reflection activity was very positive, with student comments noting how the project helped them connect theory to practice and mirrored the experience of working in industry: “My key takeaway is understanding how the process of instructional design works in a practical sense. I know we’ve had a lot of theory and practice, but having this experience of putting something together, from the ground up, for a real client put all the pieces together in a way that I don’t think a class project could have done.” (Student 2, Course Reflection) “The biggest takeaway for me was tailoring the instruc- tion towards a particular client and taking into consid- eration the learners they intended the instruction to be for, the message they hoped for us to convey, and the constraints of the project. Up to this point, I had de- signed instruction with my "ideal" setting in mind, but this course helped me to see what it would be like to work for a client, and them set the agenda.” (Student 3, Course Reflection) “This experience made me feel like I am working as an instructional designer for a project in a company. A lot of collaboration and creativity was involved.” (Student 4, Course Reflection) Client Perspective For this project, the members of the School of Innovation were in the same place as the graduate students: at square one, trying to tackle this new, unclear challenge. The opportunity to become someone’s “client” was finalized quite close to the first day of the semester. The course instructor and the students were incredibly patient through the growing pains of this new classroom endeavor. With each decision, the I- School needed to consider the experience of the designers (graduate students), the subjects of the online modules (previ- ous participants and judges), and the learners (users of the app). Throughout the semester, the I-School provided 652 TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 information to the class as it became available. The Dean of the School of Innovation recorded three videos as background material: I-School background and expectations of the project, a discussion of the stages of the commercialization process from idea to marketplace, and finally, a quick economics les- son. These videos served as an introduction to the students for the client, the project, and the context of the world of com- mercialization. Other items had to be gathered by the I-School throughout the semester, so the students received articles, competition information, and further product specs later than hoped. Although this gave students a very realistic example of working with a real-life client, who might change their mind or provide late information, it was most likely a stressful class- room experience. Lessons Learned The partnership between the School of Innovation and the Educational Technology program proved to be a valuable learning experience for both groups. Since this was the first time partnering on a project of this nature, the course instruc- tor, teaching assistant, and client representative identified sev- eral “lessons learned” that should be valuable for future col- laborations. From the instructor perspective, designing an on- line, asynchronous authentic learning experience required more time devoted to weekly preparation and facilitation than the typical online course; however, the ability to highlight the nuances of instructional design work and provide the student- client interactions resulted in a more meaningful learning ex- perience. This course served as an advanced graduate seminar that encouraged the students to connect the theory learned in previous courses to the practice and processes of true instruc- tional designers. It was apparent that highlighting the use of the final product as a sample for their portfolio was valuable to the students since they typically do not have the opportunity to work with an outside client. Using virtual communication and collaboration tools such as Skype and Google Docs reduced the “distance” among students and facilitated teamwork. Assigning project roles (e.g., project manager, instructional designer, visual designer, editor) streamlined the group pro- cess, and creating reflection opportunities within the LMS encouraged the students to link the day-to-day issues they were dealing with to the larger issues in the field (e.g., design- ing for different audiences, integrating adult learning princi- ples, making mobile learning recommendations). This experience served as somewhat of a “proof of con- cept” for the I-School. The project encouraged the client to clarify their goals and document their specific needs as well as consider the importance of structuring information for instruc- tional purposes. The I-School plans to develop a series of online modules using the same template developed by the graduate students and expects to partner with future instructional design courses. To enhance future iterations of this course, the authors recommend more frequent check-ins with the client to confirm scope of content, having students serve as primary client contacts, and scheduling time to “field test” the materials before submitting the final version to the client. These recommendations, coupled with the instructional strategies determined to be most effective during the first ver- sion of the course, should enhance the design of future courses and result in more meaningful learning experiences for both the students and the instructors. References Anderson, J. R, Reder, L. M. & Simon, H. A. (1996). 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In E- Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 3164-3173). Association for the Advancement of computing in education (AACE). Herrington, T., & Herrington, J. (2006). What is an authentic learning environment? In A. Herrington & J. Herrington (Eds.), Authentic learning environments in higher education. Internet Service Provider: Hershey. Herrington, J., Oliver, R., & Reeves, T. (2003). Patterns of engagement in authentic online learning environments. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 19(1), 57–71. Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C., & Oliver, R. (2010). A guide to authentic e- learning. New York: Routledge. 653TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 Herrington, J., Parker, J., & Boase-Jelinek, D. (2014). Connected authen- tic learning: reflection and intentional learning. Australian Journal of Education, 58(1), 23–35. Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional theories and models (2nd ed., pp. 215–239). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kebritchi, M., Lipschuetz, A., & Santiague, L. (2017). Issues and chal- lenges for teaching successful online courses in higher education: a literature review. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 46(1), 4–29. Lombardi, M. M. (2007). Authentic learning for the 21st century: an overview. Educause learning initiative, 1(2007), 1–12. Morrison, G., Ross, R., Morrison, J., & Kalman, H. (2019). Designing effective instruction (8th ed.). New York: Wiley. Nikitina, L. (2011). Creating an authentic learning environment in the foreign language classroom. International Journal of Instruction, 4(1), 33–46. Paul, A. M. (2016). Microlearning 101. HR Magazine, 61(4), 36–42. Reeves, T. C., Herrington, J., & Oliver, R. (2002). Authentic activities and online learning. Annual Conference Proceedings of Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. Perth, Australia. Romero-Hall, E., & Vicentini, C. (2017). Examining distance learners in hybrid synchronous instruction: Successes and challenges. Online Learning, 21(4), 141–157. Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Silver, N. (2013). Reflective pedagogies and the metacognitive turn in college teaching. In M. Kaplan, N. Silver, D. LaVaque-Manty, & D. Meizlish (Eds.), Using reflection and metacognition to improve stu- dent learning: Across the disciplines, across the academy, (pp. 1– 17). Stylus Publishing. Smith, P.E. (1986). Instructional simulation: Research, theory and a case study (ED No. 267 793). Squires, D. (1999). Educational software and learning: subversive use and volatile design. Educational Technology, 39(3), 48–54. Stein, S. J., Isaacs, G., & Andrews, T. (2004). Incorporating authentic learning experiences within a university course. Studies in Higher Education, 29(2), 239–258. Woo, Y., Herrington, J., Agostinho, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2007). Implementing authentic tasks in web-based learning environments. Educause Quarterly, 30(3), 36–43. Young, M. F. (1993). Instructional design for situated learning. Educational Technology Research and Development., 41(1), 43–58. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdic- tional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. 654 TechTrends (2020) 64:646–654 The... Abstract Course Structure Theoretical Perspective Authentic Context Collaborative Knowledge Construction Meaningful Reflection Authentic Assessment Final Reflections on Overall Course Design Lessons Learned References 
work_6xfhsahom5g5vgkfpefrx6pfgm	----	iCloud 
work_6yjimq6tqfedfp6hi6sjkxhyl4	----	‘Distance education’ and ‘e-learning’: Not the same thing SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT Department of Education and Psychology, The Open University of Israel, P.O. Box 39328, Ramat-Aviv, 61392, Israel Abstract. This article examines the distinct differences between ‘distance education’ and ‘e-learning’ in higher education settings. Since the emergence of the new information and communication technologies (ICT), many have related to them as the new generation of distance education, and some have referred to their implementation in academia as challenging the very existence of campus-based universities. Many policy makers, scholars and practitioners in higher education use these two terms interchangeably as synonyms. But the fact is that distance education in most higher education systems is not delivered through the new electronic media, and vice versa – e-learning in most univer- sities and colleges all over the world is not used for distance education purposes. ‘Dis- tance education’ and ‘e-learning’ do overlap in some cases, but are by no means identical. The lack of distinction between ‘e-learning’ and ‘distance education’ accounts for much of the misunderstanding of the ICT roles in higher education, and for the wide gap between the rhetoric in the literature describing the future sweeping effects of the ICT on educational environments and their actual implementation. The article examines the erroneous assumptions on which many exaggerated predictions as to the future impact of the ICT were based upon, and it concludes with highlighting the future trends of ‘dis- tance education’ and ‘e-learning’ in academia. Keywords: distance education, distance teaching universities, e-learning, higher educa- tion, information and communication technologies Introduction Higher education systems all over the world are challenged nowadays by the new information and communication technologies (ICT). These technologies have had a huge impact on the world economy, corporate management and globalization trends, and they bear a tremendous potential to reshape the nature of study environments everywhere, of both conventional and distance teaching institutions. Many have related to the ICT as the new generation of distance education (Bates 1999, 2001; Garrison 1993, 1999; Niper 1989; Peters 2001). Already in 1989 Soren Niper (1989) in his classic analysis identified three generations of distance education: the first was correspondence teaching; the second was multi-media teaching – integrating the use of print with broadcast Higher Education (2005) 49: 467–493 � Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10734-004-0040-0 media, cassettes and to some degree computers; and the third generation was identified with the new interactive communication technologies. Many policy makers, scholars and practitioners in higher education use the terms ‘distance education’ and ‘e-learning’ interchangeably as synonyms, emphasizing the continuous blurring of boundaries between conventional and distance education (AFT 2000, 2001; Arnold 1999; Evans and Nation 2000; Ryan 2002; Selinger and Pearson 1999; Twigg 2001). A comprehensive report issued by The Pew Learning and Tech- nology Program in the USA stated clearly that: ‘‘The terms ‘distance learning’, ‘distance education’, ‘distributed learning’ and ‘online learn- ing’ are used more or less interchangeably’’ (Twigg 2001, p. 4). It is important to mention that the various forms of learning through ICT are defined in the relevant literature by at least a dozen different terms, such as web-based learning, computer-mediated communication, tele- matics environments, e-learning, virtual classrooms, online instruction, I-Campus, electronic communication, cyberspace learning environ- ments, computer-driven interactive communication, distributed learn- ing, borderless education. In this article, all forms of learning/teaching through ICT are referred to as ‘e-learning’. Some scholars even go to extremes and claim that the new technologies challenge the very existence of campus-based universities. Arnold (1999), for instance, argued that the new information technologies create the appropriate scientific learning environments in the knowledge society, and given this ‘it is an extremely small step that distance studies will take the place of face-to-face studies in the future’ (ibid, p. 2). In the preface of the book Virtual University – Educational Environments of the Future, which provides an overview of the ICT implementation in European universities, Henk van de Molen stated that: ‘‘In the network society it is inescapable that the universities will have to deal with the information and communication technologies (ICT), not only for research but also for education. Some even think that universities as educational institutions will become totally virtual…’’ (van der Molen 2001, p. vii). However, distance education in most higher education systems is not delivered through the new electronic media, and vice versa: e-learning in most universities and colleges all over the world is not used for distance education purposes (Bates 2001; Collis and Moonen 2001; Guri- Rosenblit 2001a, b, 2002; Harley et al. 2002; Somekh and Davis 1997; van der Wende 2002). ‘Distance education’ and ‘e-learning’ do overlap in some cases, but are by no means identical. According to a recent survey in the USA, for example, more than 85% of the students in post secondary institutions use various forms of e-learning, but only 7.6% of SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT468 undergraduate students take some distance teaching courses, and only 2.2% of them study their whole degree program through distance edu- cation (U.S. Department of Education 2002). The lack of a distinction between ‘e-learning’ and ‘distance education’ accounts for much of the misunderstanding of the ICT roles in higher education, and for the wide gap between the rhetoric in the literature describing the sweeping future effects of the ICT on educational environments and their actual implementation. This article discusses the distinct differences between ‘distance edu- cation’ and ‘e-learning’ in higher education settings by comparing some of their major characteristics. It examines the reasons why most distance education on the university level all over the world is still provided through the more ‘traditional’ media of print and broadcasting, in spite of the many advantages e-learning provides for distance teaching pur- poses. The article analyzes the erroneous assumptions on which many exaggerated predictions as to the future impact of the ICT were based upon, and it concludes by highlighting future trends of ‘distance edu- cation’ and ‘e-learning’ in academia. Distance education and e-learning at university level –– three distinctive differences Distance education at university level has existed since the early half of the nineteenth century (Bell and Tight 1993). The idea of a distance teaching university adopts the opposite course of a campus-based uni- versity. Instead of assembling students from dispersed locations in one place, it reaches out to students wherever they live or wish to study (Guri-Rosenblit 1999). E-learning, on the other hand, is a relatively new phenomenon and relates to the use of electronic media for a variety of learning purposes that range from add-on functions in conventional classrooms to full substitution for the face-to-face meetings by online encounters. Below three distinctive differences between ‘distance edu- cation’ and ‘e-learning’ are examined in relation to: remoteness and proximity between the learner and teacher in the study process; relevant target populations; and cost considerations. On remoteness and proximity ‘Distance education’, by its very definition, denotes the physical sepa- ration of the learner from the instructor, at least at certain stages of the DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 469 learning process. This applies to distance education at all levels, from kindergarten to higher education. Holmberg, one of the leading researchers in the field of distance education, defined ‘distance educa- tion’ as characterized by non-contiguous communication, meaning that the learner and teacher are separated not only in space but also in time. According to Holmberg, the term ‘distance education’ covers ‘‘the various forms of study at all levels which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students at lecture rooms or on the same premises’’ (Holmberg 1989, p. 3). But contiguous education and pure distance education are extremes that rarely exist. Many distance education providers use face-to-face tutorials, summer schools and laboratory sessions, whereas many conventional universi- ties utilize independent study and guided learning by tutors and a variety of media. The advent of the new interactive communication technologies enables synchronous communication between students and teachers and in-between students from a distance. Daniel’s (1990) interpretation of the term ‘distance education’ embraces all forms of instruction in which classroom sessions are not the primary means of education. Distance education is mostly homework, with occasional work in class; whereas conventional edu- cation is mostly classwork with occasional work at home. In conven- tional education the teachers teach; in distance education the institution teaches. Keegan (1986) defined the quasi-permanent separation of the teacher and the learner throughout the length of the learning pro- cess, as well as the quasi-permanent absence of a learning group throughout the length of the learning process, as two of the major characteristics of distance education. In other words, in ‘distance education’ students are usually taught as individuals, not in groups, and are separated physically from both the teacher and other fellow stu- dents. In some cases, groups of students are taught by a distant teacher, mainly in the framework of teleconferencing and other broadcasting media. Although ICT facilitate the provision of distance education, and are also defined by many as ‘distance learning technologies’ (Arnold 1999; Garrison 1999; Garrison and Anderson 2000; Peters 2001), ‘distance’ is not a defining characteristic of e-learning. The applications of electronic media in distance teaching settings constitute only partial and limited functions, out of their overall capabilities. By their very nature, the new technologies are much more complex than the old distance teaching media, and they open up possibilities to design new study environments that were not feasible beforehand – for both on-campus and off-campus SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT470 students. The new ICT offer a rich plethora of uses in learning/teaching processes far beyond the ability to transfer content of textbooks and lectures to students at a distance. In fact, none of the ICT uses denotes the physical separation of the learner from the teacher at any stage of the study process. Many of the ICT qualities can be used most efficiently to enrich and support lectures, seminar meetings and face-to-face tutorials (Collis and Moonen 2001; Fetterman 1998; Guri-Rosenblit 2002; Harasim et al. 1995; Harley et al. 2002; Littleton and Light 1999; Robinson and Guernsey 1999; Scott et al. 2002; Somekh and Davis 1997; van der Wende 2002). The new technologies are applied in a variety of domains for infor- mation retrieval from periodicals, books, newspapers and other infor- mation resources; simulations and multi-media presentations; communication with instructors in- and after-classes; communication amongst students; drilling exercises and sample tests; reading notice boards; class administration, etc. Furthermore, ICT have a huge impact on other important areas of university activities, such as: library man- agement; registration and loan administration; enhancement of research communities; academic publishing; mobility and cooperation between institutions. The applications of the technologies in the above men- tioned areas have nothing in common with the traditional roles of distance education. In early 2000 the National Academies of the USA launched a study on the implications of the information technologies for the future of the nation’s research universities (National Research Council 2002). The panel was composed of leaders drawn from industry, higher education and foundations with expertise in the areas of information technologies, the research university, and public policy. The members of the panel purported to examine the implications of the new technologies on the activities of teaching, research, service and outreach of the research university, as well as on its organization, management, and impact on the broader higher education enterprise. They concluded that the impact of the information technologies on the research university will likely be profound, rapid and discontinuous. The new technologies will not only influence the intellectual activities of the university (learning, teaching and research) but also change how the university is organized, financed, and governed. Nevertheless, they emphasized that the campus, as a geographically concentrated community of scholars and a center of culture, will continue to play a central role. In other words, the impact of the new technologies on the universities’ operation and on the ways knowledge is generated and transformed will grow in the future, but DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 471 most of their applications will take place in the framework of campus- based universities and not in distance or virtual settings. Target clienteles A second distinctive characteristic of distance education is its attention to the needs of special clienteles that for a variety of reasons cannot attend a face-to-face gathering, a school or a conventional campus. Examples of intensive exchanges of letters for educational purposes have been known since ancient times. Such is the correspondence be- tween Plato and Cicero and their students, and the famous letters sent by Apostle Paul to the early Christian communities. Since the nine- teenth century correspondence institutions, extensions and distance teaching universities have opened the gates of academia to diverse cli- enteles for higher and continuing education. By doing so, the distance teaching institutions fulfilled an emancipatory ethos (Morrison 1992), a kind of barrier-removal mission. Time, space, prior level of education, social class, working and family obligations were defined as barriers to be overturned by special policies and mechanisms applied by distance education institutes. The target populations studying through distance education at post- secondary level were considered as distinct and special, usually older than the age cohorts at classical universities, and mostly ‘second chance’ students according to a variety of criteria. Such was the case of Prof. Knight of St. Andrews University, the oldest Scottish university, who decided that women were also entitled to higher education. He offered between 1877 and 1931 an external higher education degree in arts specifically designed for women scattered in over one hundred centers world-wide (Bell and Tight 1993). Traditionally, distance education at university level purported to overcome barriers and difficulties of stu- dents that were unable to attend a conventional campus. The obstacles which distance education has enabled to overcome include lack of formal entry qualifications; physical/health constraints; geographical barriers; working; family obligations; being held in closed institutions, such as prisons and hospitals, etc. Interestingly, even nowadays when millions of people use the Internet and exploit its distance learning capacities, the profile of the students studying all or most of their higher education programs through dis- tance education methods still resembles the profile of the traditional distance student. In a comprehensive survey published by the U.S. SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT472 Department of Education in November 2002 on A Profile of Partici- pation in Distance Education 1999–2000, it was clearly found that stu- dents who chose to take distance education programs were ‘‘those with family responsibilities and limited time. They were more likely to be enrolled in school part time and to be working full time while enrolled’’ (U.S. Department of Education 2002, pp. iii–iv). This survey was con- ducted on all undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in USA post-secondary institutions during the 1999/2000 academic year. Unlike distance education, e-learning is used by all types of students on all educational levels, from kindergarten to doctoral studies. E-learning offers attractive uses for learners of all ages and of various interests and needs. Younger pupils enjoy its multi-media games and fun activities in acquiring very basic literacy skills; older students use its endless information resources for preparing homework, assignments and examinations; and millions of people use e-mail, chat groups and other formats of telecommunication as learners, and in their social and working lives. E-learning is by no way exclusively meant for distance learners. As argued earlier, it is used extensively by on-campus students in the framework of their activities in classes, seminars, laboratories and other academic assignments and projects. Cost considerations A third major characteristic of distance education at university level in recent decades has been its ability to broaden access to higher education by providing economies of scale. This has particularly become true since the 1970s, when a new brand of large scale distance teaching universities was established. The mega distance teaching universities followed the model of the British Open University founded in 1969. There are about 30 such universities in various parts of the world. All of these large scale universities were a product of governmental planning set to fulfill na- tional missions, mainly – to absorb large numbers of students at a lower cost as compared to traditional campus universities (Daniel 1996). This goal has been achieved through an industrialist model of operation (Peters 1994, 2001). The division of the academic teaching responsibility into two sepa- rate phases constitutes the essence of the industrial model of distance education. The first phase is devoted to the development of high quality self study materials by teams of experts. The production of such courses is most expensive, since they are developed by a small number of DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 473 academics and other professionals and they undergo stringent quality control mechanisms. Most of the course developers do not participate in the second phase of the actual learning/teaching process. The underly- ing assumption of this phase is that large numbers of students can study the pre-developed materials through the didactic apparatus integrated into the self study materials, and the assistance of lower ranks of faculty (such as tutors and teaching assistants); and as the number of students increases, the cost per student decreases. This simple formula constitutes one of the main raisons d’être of the mega distance teaching universities (Bates 1999; Curran 2001; Daniel 1996; Guri-Rosenblit 1999). The fact is that the well-articulated study materials of the new brand distance teaching universities have replaced ordinary textbooks and the low-level correspondence courses, and are used extensively not only by students in the distance teaching universities, but also by many students at conventional universities in different national settings. Hence, many distance teaching universities have gained additional revenues from operating as highly respected academic publishing houses. It seems that the simple formula of the industrial model upon which the large scale distance teaching universities operate, accounts for part of the misconception as to the economies of scale that ICT were ex- pected to provide. The blurring of meanings between ‘distance educa- tion’ and ‘e-learning’ led to expectations and predictions that through the new interactive media dozens of thousands of students would be able to join higher and continuing education programs at lower costs as compared to classroom teaching in campus universities. But the underlying premises of e-learning differ meaningfully from the industrial model of distance education, as will be elaborated further on. Quite frequently, effective e-learning costs more, not less, than conventional face-to-face teaching (Bates 2001; Guri-Rosenblit 2001b; Matkin 2002; Ryan 2002). The distinct differences between the industrial model of distance education and e-learning explain why most of the large scale distance teaching universities have so far incorporated the new ICT to a very limited extent, in spite of their apparent suitability to distance teaching. Why is it difficult to implement e-learning in large distance teaching institutions? The new technologies are most attractive for distance teaching. They have the potential to overcome three major problems of ‘traditional’ SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT474 distance education: to rescue the isolated students from their loneliness by providing interaction with teachers, professors and tutors, as well as with other peer students throughout the study process; to provide easy access to libraries and other information resources, which was nearly impossible in the past; and to update the self study materials on an ongoing basis. But, as aforementioned, the very basic infrastructure of most large distance teaching universities hinders the wide scale imple- mentation of the ICT. ‘Distance education’ as provided by the large distance teaching universities and ‘e-learning’ are based on two different teaching/learning paradigms. While the industrial model of ‘distance education’ is based on teaching large numbers of students by a handful of professors, most of whom do not communicate with the students at all, efficient ‘e-learning’ encourages direct interaction between a small number of students and expert teacher/s. ‘Distance education’ is aimed at students who are located in dispersed places and are physically dis- tant from their teachers and the teaching institution, whereas ‘e-learn- ing’ can be easily utilized by both distant and on-campus students, and even more effectively by the latter. ‘Distance education’ at univer- sity level in the last thirty years has prided itself for providing economies of scale as compared to campus universities, while well designed ‘e-learning’ environments tend to cost even more than comparable face- to-face encounters. The advantages and problems which are associated with the ICT use for communication, information access and course update in the framework of distance teaching institutions are discussed below. Communication – merits and problems The lack of direct teacher–student and student–student communication has been the Achilles heel of distance education for centuries. The new interactive technologies enable universities to overcome this shortcom- ing. But intensive communication is, by its very nature, labor intensive. Phoenix University and the University of Maryland University College are two of the most successful USA universities that provide e-learning (Ryan 2002; Trow 1999; Twigg 2001). Their online classes are restricted from 8 to 15 students to guarantee high levels of interactivity. Phoenix University charges more for its online programs than for tutorials in study centers, since its operators found that the interactivity which students value is not scaleable at marginal costs. It turns out that DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 475 students who study online are willing to pay the additional costs for increased interactivity, but, to this date, the majority of Phoenix Uni- versity’s students prefer to meet in face-to-face tutorials. Thus, in theory, enhanced communication in distance education is enabled by the ICT, but its actualization is much more complicated to achieve. Small numbers of faculty are unable to communicate with thousands or even with hundreds of students. Moreover, direct inter- action between students and the faculty members who developed the self study courses necessitates the involvement of the latter in the actual learning/teaching process. In other words, it requires the abolishment of the very basic characteristic of the industrial model of distance educa- tion. Most, if not all, large distance teaching universities, cannot afford to hire many more academics in order to facilitate student–professor interaction in most of their large courses, often taken by thousands of students. Interaction among students and between students and tutors and lower ranks of academic staff has been enhanced in most distance teaching universities, but the synchronous communication between the senior faculty who are responsible for the overall structure and content of any self study course and the students is either extremely limited or non-existent. It is no surprise therefore that distance education in most higher education systems is still conducted through the ‘old’ technologies: mainly print, but also through radio, TV and satellite broadcasts. The USA is the exception – most of the distance education in the USA is delivered through e-learning (Bradburn 2002; Gladieux and Swail 1999; U.S.A. Department of Education 2002), but not vice versa. Most of e-learning in American higher education is not used for distance teaching purposes (Guri-Rosenblit 2001b; Harasim et al. 1995; van der Wende 2002). Developing countries, in particular, do not possess the appropriate resources and technology infrastructure to make e-learning available on a wide scale. Bates, who was asked by the International Institute for Educational Planning of UNESCO to recommend national strategies for implementing e-learning in post-secondary education in various parts of the world, concluded that: ‘‘Those countries that are not yet ready for the knowledge-based economy are probably not yet ready for e-learning’’ (Bates 2001, p. 111), and he suggested that those countries with large numbers of students unable to access the final years of secondary or higher education should adopt the industrial model of the distance teaching universities, that provides the best route for mass education, rather than design e-learning frame- works. SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT476 Information access – on equality and duplication Access to libraries and other information resources through the Internet has been used in the last decade at an accelerated pace by members of both distance and campus universities. More and more libraries are becoming digitalized and going online. But also in this domain of information access, the mega distance teaching universities encounter more difficulties as compared to campus universities. Many of their students, particularly in developing countries, do not have ready access to computers (Bates 2001; Guri-Rosenblit 2001b). The egalitarian phi- losophy of most distance teaching universities, that requires that they provide equality of opportunity to all of their students, also forces them to continue developing their printed self contained study packages that can be delivered to each student by mail. In other words, catering to large numbers of students, many of whom lack the ability or opportu- nity to reach Internet facilities and information resources, hinders the distance teaching universities from substituting some of their courses, or parts of any given course, with online materials, and with a built-in reference mechanism in the pre-prepared textbooks. This accounts for the duplication phenomenon. Many distance education institutes de- velop currently both printed and online versions of courses, and enable their students to choose their preferred mode of study. Such a policy adds on substantial additional costs to the already very expensive process of developing self study materials. Update of study materials – potential and difficulties One of the major problems associated with the development of expen- sive high quality materials for distance education is the difficulty in updating them. It is tremendously difficult to amend, change and revise materials produced over several years and used in a standardized manner over many years (Daniel 1996; Guri-Rosenblit 1999). Unques- tionably, the new technologies and the availability of desktop publish- ing provide a partial remedy by substantially reducing the time of course production and making the updating of materials less fraught. But in order to be able to update the materials on an ongoing basis, the course developers have to be part of the actual learning/teaching process. Here again the ICT challenge the organizational infrastructure of the distance teaching universities and demand a major overhaul of their whole operation (Bates 1999, 2001; Guri-Rosenblit 2001b; Peters 2001). DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 477 In campus universities the individual lecturer or tutor in any class- room may alter and redefine reading lists, and set assignments and study tasks in light of the teaching dynamic. However, teaching faculty at most distance teaching universities do not have any latitude whatsoever to make such alterations. The principles of sameness and uniformity apply to assignments and exams as they do to content. In order to employ flexible updating mechanisms, the distance teaching universities have to redefine and restructure their overall teaching mechanisms. The teaching responsibility in most distance teaching universities is distrib- uted among many actors, and exempts most of the senior academic faculty from involvement in the actual study phase. As difficult as the updating task seems to be, the distance teaching universities will have to undertake it, incurring also the additional associated costs of such a process. To sum up this section, it seems that in spite of the apparent advantages and merits of the new ICT for distance education, many of the distance teaching institutions lack the appropriate infrastructure and necessary conditions, as well as the human capital, to utilize the full potential of the ICT. To integrate the electronic media more fully and efficiently into their learning/teaching processes a whole restructuring of their operation is required, and such a process will take time and will necessitate totally new agreements between the large scale distance teaching universities and the national governments that sponsor them. Some erroneous assumptions as to e-learning applications A few years ago, many economic analysts, policy makers and practi- tioners projected that dramatic changes would take place in the aca- demic world and in professional training from the new technology push and the emergence of the new information economy. Several years on, the euphoria surrounding high technology industries and their sweeping effects on training markets and higher education has subsided. A large scale comparative study on the applications of ICT in 174 higher edu- cation institutions in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, the USA, Australia, Norway and Finland (Collis and van der Wende 2002) was presented in an international conference on ‘The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education’, that took place in Rotterdam in September 2002. The final conclusions of this study were: ‘‘Change in relation to the use of ICT has been gradual and unsystematic. Many experiments and pilot projects have been launched leading to interesting SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT478 innovations, which are, however, generally not well disseminated. ICT is used mainly to increase flexibility in on-campus delivery of education. Institutions turned out to be only moderately focused on new target groups, such as lifelong learners and international students. Competi- tion from foreign or corporate providers does not seem to be a major driving force for institutional ICT policy’’ (CHEPS 2002, p. 2). There are very good reasons for the piecemeal adaptation of the ICT in higher education settings. Most of the predictions as to the sweeping effects of the ICT on higher education have been based on several erroneous assumptions which are examined below. Space and time as barriers to overcome One of the erroneous assumptions as to the fast spread of e-learning was based on the notion that the need to attend a physical campus at given times is perceived as a barrier to overcome by most students. This perception is echoed in many publications. In a recent report issued by USA National Academies of Science, for example, it was stated that the new technologies ‘‘will erode, and in some cases obliterate, higher education’s usual constraints of space and time’’ (National Research Council 2002, p. 2). But the fact is that most students, and particularly those of traditional college age, enjoy attending the physical campus and meeting their peers in the framework of classrooms, lecture halls and seminar rooms for reasons that go far beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The need of humans to socialize is essential, not only in higher education. Alvin Toffler (1980) coined in his famous book on the Third Wave the term ‘‘electronic cottage’’. He predicted a return to the cottage industry on a new, higher, electronic basis, and a new emphasis on the home as the center of society. In reality his predictions have not materialized. Some business firms decentralized their work, and a handful of professionals like to work at home, but still most people prefer to work outside their homes, because of their immense need for social interaction. This social need applies to higher education settings as well. Many studies in the last decade show clearly that most students prefer to attend classes even when provided with the opportunity to get video-taped lectures, exercises and intimate tutoring through the elec- tronic media. For instance, a large scale study was conducted at UC Berkeley from September 2000 to June 2002 on the use of technology DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 479 enhancement in some large undergraduate courses in chemistry (Harley et al. 2002). This study found that only 16% of the students would be willing to watch lecture webcasts entirely online instead of going to the lecture hall. 84% of the students indicated that they prefer to attend face-to-face encounters, even though they could have studied all the materials, conducted all of the experiments and watched the video-taped lectures at home. A wide national project in Israel to enhance the use of the ICT in Israeli universities through special funding and incentives provided by the Israeli Council for Higher Education, was joined by many aca- demics. A study showed that at Tel-Aviv University more than 1000 faculty members have utilized various forms of e-learning in their classes in the last 3 years, but only 1% of them used electronic media to sub- stitute for class encounters (Guri-Rosenblit 2002). Many more studies substantiate this trend (CHEPS 2002; Collis and van der Wende 2002; Collis and Moonen 2001; Curran 2001; Fetterman 1998; Somekh and Davis 1997; van der Molen 2001; van der Wende 2002). Not only students in campus universities, but also students in dis- tance teaching institutions express a high demand for personal inter- action with academics and other students. One of the main lessons from the running of distance teaching universities underlines the importance of the social interaction. Contrary to some initial theories which as- sumed that adult students choosing to study via distance methods prefer to learn on their own and to interact only from time to time with academic staff, the experience of the large distance teaching universities shows that many prefer frequent contact, both with academic faculty and fellow students (Guri-Rosenblit 1999). In some places, where dis- tance does not present a real physical obstacle, like in Israel, more than 80% of the distant students urged the Israeli Open University to provide weekly meetings with their tutors in study centers. At the University of Phoenix, a subsidiary of the giant Apollo Group, the largest accredited private distance teaching university in the USA that has operated since 1976, only about 10% of its student population are registered for online programs (Ryan 2002). The Uni- versity of Phoenix appears to have no intention of downscaling its physical learning centers in favour of online provision. On the contrary, a ‘‘bricks and clicks’’ model, offering both an online and distributed face-to-face option is regarded as the best solution for the working adult market. Even in the business world, many prefer hybrid courses. There is apparent resistance by many students to the notion of exclusively online SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT480 education. One demographic group targeted by many universities is the busy professional, unwilling to commit to weekly classes and highly mobile in work patterns. Specifically for this group, a hybrid model has emerged, combining online communication/resources supporting intensive residential periods on campus to engender group cohesion and social learning. A recent European study found that only 15% of companies using e-learning preferred a stand-alone approach, with the majority opting for greater online interaction and use of e-learning to prepare for and reinforce face-to-face provision (Ryan 2002). In other words, space and time constitute barriers for those students that because a variety of constraints cannot attend a campus or a res- idential school at specific times. These are the students who have tra- ditionally been attracted to distance education, and their numbers will grow in the future, as will be discussed below. But space and time do not constitute a universal problem for most students, particularly for the traditional age cohorts that attend school and university. The urge of universities to extend their student population A second erroneous assumption regarding the impact of the new elec- tronic media on the academic world was based on the notion that most universities have an urge to expand their boundaries and to extend their student clienteles, if only possible. The fact is that most campus uni- versities have no good reason to increase their student body and to utilize distance teaching methods. The elite research universities, in particular, are, by their very nature, less interested in widening access to large numbers of students. They are inclined to remain selective for the few and well-to-do students. MIT is a leading institution in ICT applications. It currently runs nearly forty projects related to various uses of the new technologies (Olsen 2002). Nevertheless, its president, Charles Vest, stated firmly in his 2000/01 annual report that: ‘‘The residential university will remain an essential element of our society, providing the most intense, advanced, and effective education. Ma- chines cannot replace the magic that occurs when bright, creative young people live and learn together in the company of highly dedicated fac- ulty’’ (Vest 2001). MIT is currently developing its Open Courseware project for ‘academic philanthropy’ purposes, but not for its own stu- dents. The Open Courseware project will give interested students and faculty members all over the world a glimpse of the MIT curricula of about 2000 courses. But by no means does MIT intend to enroll large DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 481 numbers of students, or offer online courses from MIT professors for credit (Olsen 2002). In an international comparative study on the applications of ICT in 174 institutions in seven different countries, that was aforementioned, it was found that most universities do not reach out to new student cli- enteles either in their national settings or in the international domain (Collis and van der Wende 2002). Part of the reason is that it is a complicated and demanding task to design study programs for distant students by academics that have been accustomed to teach on-campus students. The teaching faculty are required to comprehend the unique qualities of various media for shaping new learning environments that are more learner-centered and enhance dialogue with students situated afar. For promoting such programs there is a need to develop a new infrastructure for course design and student support services. The full- fledged distance teaching universities have invested a huge amount of energy, money and human efforts for establishing special mechanisms suited for teaching at a distance. Most campus universities are relatively novices in the field of distance education, and are not appropriately equipped when confronted with distance learning concerns. In spite of the apparent difficulties to operate distance teaching by campus universities, a growing number of universities use the ICT to export a variety of programs as a commodity for profit. Many new consortia have been founded in the last decade, most noticeably by Australian, Canadian and British universities that export professional and academic programs for international students located mainly in third world countries. These consortia purport to generate more funds for the ongoing operation of the participating universities (Ryan 2002; van der Wende 2002). Most of the exported programs are aimed at graduate and postgraduate students, and have greatest success in pro- fessional training. But the majority of the new student populations are not considered an integral part of the main student body of these uni- versities. Harvard, Dartmouth, John Hopkins and Brown universities in the USA, have been investing in recent years in for-profit college companies (Blumenstyk 2003). The programs that the for-profit companies offer have nothing in common with the traditional core curricula of these elite research universities. Harvard University, for example, is the biggest institutional investor in a $590 million fund run by Boston’s Charles- bank Capital partners, which made its foray into the sector in April 2002 by investing in a school that trains automobile and motorcycle technicians (ibid) – not exactly typical Harvard students. In other SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT482 words, most of the well-based campus universities are in no rush to significantly expand their student body. Their reaching out to additional student clienteles is mainly conducted for profit, and mostly in profes- sional training areas. Lack of clear problems as a problem A third erroneous perception regarding the impact of the new technol- ogies on higher education was based on the hidden assumption that the advantages of the ICT are self evident, and there is no need to define them. In other words, the merits of the new technologies are so great, that they will be adopted easily and eagerly by policy makers and practitioners in the academic world without any need to define a clear vision of problems they might solve or what parameters in higher edu- cation they could improve. The new electronic media were introduced into the academic world like a sudden thunderstorm without taking the time to define what purposes and functions they could fulfill or substitute for. The lack of clear problems turned out to be an acute problem in the adaptation process of the new technologies in universities and colleges. The old and traditional distance education media were defined by very clear parameters. Their main goal was to deliver study content to students that, for a variety of reasons, were unable to attend a face-to- face classroom. Print, radio and television have clear-cut and trans- parent characteristics. It is totally clear what the self study materials and the communication channels stand for, and what kind of functions in the learning/teaching process they replace. This is not the case with the new technologies. Unlike the clear obstacles and barriers which traditional distance teaching technologies were designed to overcome, the new technologies offered multiple uses with no clear relation to any existent or future problem in the teaching/learning processes in campus universities. The reactions of many academics asked to incorporate the new technologies into their classrooms have been of the type: ‘‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’ or ‘‘Technology is the answer – but what are the questions?’’ (Guri- Rosenblit 2002). The UC Berkeley study, mentioned earlier, constitutes an interesting example of the impact of problem definition on institutional decision making (Harley et al. 2002). In the process of conducting the study, it was found that technology-enhanced classes in chemistry can save both faculty time and space. Instructors spent less time answering routine DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 483 questions because students were able to find some of the necessary information online. And it was found that laboratory sessions could hypothetically be reduced from four hours to three to better utilize lab space. Such a finding has been most interesting for the UC policy makers is face of Tidal Wave II, namely the fact that the University of California ten-campus system is facing an increased enrollment of about 63,000 full-time students, a 43% increase in the coming years. If through the use of technology it is possible to save from 10% to 20% of space and faculty time, technology becomes a strategic solution to absorb more students, although it does not save money (ibid). Many studies in the field of the ICT implementation claim that the time has come for both governments and institutions to become more focused and strategic in their policies regarding the use of the ICT (Bates 1999, 2001; CHEPS 2002; Collis and van der Wende 2002; Guri- Rosenblit 2001b, 2002; Harley et al. 2002; Laurillard 2001; Matkin 2002; National Research Council 2002; Trow 1999; van der Molen 2001; van der Wende 2002). A macro level organizational effort is needed to consolidate the multiple findings of the ICT uses into a coherent body of knowledge, available to decision makers in higher education settings. Laurillard (2001) in her widely acclaimed book on ‘Rethinking Uni- versity Teaching’ emphasizes the pressing need of higher education institutions, both campus-based and distance education providers, to meet the demands of the knowledge society by taking full advantage of the rich possibilities the new technologies present to move teaching and learning into a new era. For making the learning/teaching processes interactive, reflective, adaptive, and discursive, high rank policy makers play a crucial role as resource allocators and as system designers. E-learning as a profit making activity A fourth erroneous assumption regarding the ICT implementation in higher education was based on its fast profit making capabilities. A few years ago many analysts, such as Morgan Keegan (2000), projected billion dollar e-education and e-training markets globally. Virtual net- works of colleges and universities became a marker of a new economy. Several years later costly experience has caused many higher education institutions to question the increasing costs of their commitments to digitization and wired campus programs (Matkin 2002; Ryan 2002). It seems that three major reasons account for this misconception regarding the fast and easy profit from e-learning. First, as explained SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT484 earlier, the economies of scale provided by the large distance teaching universities, operating on the basis of the industrial model, led many to believe that any distance teaching technology is by its very nature cost effective. Second, substantial cuts in training costs that took place in the corporate world as a result of cutting out flights and hotel expenses on training caused many to assume that such money saving will also occur at universities employing e-learning. Obviously, it is more economical to bring training programs to the work place rather than sponsor the sending of workers for days to remote conference sites and training sessions. It is no wonder then that most of the profit-making claims came from the business and corporate world. But cuts in hotel and flight expenses have no relevance at all for students and faculty in the aca- demic world. Third, the high expenses of setting up an appropriate infrastructure for e-learning, its ongoing maintenance, and its wastage management, were heavily downscaled. Setting up an appropriate infrastructure for the effective utilization of the ICT in any university or college requires large investments. The computer hardware is still quite expensive, and its rapid change and the need for its frequent replacement increase the expense entailed. The initial costs of the basic infrastructure needed for operating e-learning is by no means a trivial issue. Bates stressed in his report on ‘National Strategies for E-learning in Post-secondary Education and Training’ that: ‘‘E-learning is heavily dependent on appropriate technological infrastructure already being in place for commerce or government reasons. Stable electricity and reliable and moderately priced Internet access is a necessary condition for e-learning’’ (Bates 2001, p.113). Until there is a basic and reliable infrastructure in place, e-learning is unlikely to be a realistic or practical choice for learners. Not only the infrastructure, but also the maintenance of e-learning is costly. It is of tremendous importance to establish support systems for both students and teachers who use the ICT. The induction of the teaching faculty into the new technologies necessitates ongoing profes- sional and technical support and the establishment of special centers for course development (Bates 1999, 2001). Ongoing support is also needed for students, particularly weak students (Collis and Moonen 2001; Guri- Rosenblit 1999; Littleton and Light 1999; Scott et al. 2002; Somekh and Davis 1997). Sir John Daniel who served until 2001 as the Vice-Chancellor of the UK Open University already stressed in 1996 that the potential success of the innovative electronic technologies depends to a great extent on the ability to provide individual learners with adequate backup DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 485 throughout their studies. Daniel asked: ‘‘Can we through electronic mail, computer conferencing and the World Wide Web, provide the level of individual student support that we think necessary? We are experimenting with that, but despite all the arm waving, I think the jury is still out. If the jury comes back and declares us guilty of being able to provide effective, personal, tutorial support to students on a large scale, then all sorts of things become possible’’ (Daniel 1996, p. 38). It seems that since Daniel phrased this question, the jury has brought in its verdict – such support is possible when teaching online very small numbers of students, and such a mode of teaching is extremely costly. In addition to the high expenses associated with setting up an appropriate infrastructure for e-learning and keeping up its mainte- nance, the wastage of the outdated hardware turns to be an unexpected additional cost. Getting rid of outdated computers poses financial, environmental and ethical challenges (Carlson 2003). Last year the University of Minnesota, for instance, spent more than $100,000 for the demanufacturing of old computers – to pull out valuable steel, alu- minium, copper and the chips that contain gold, and to get rid, in an appropriate way, of the many poisons it contains. During the boom of technology in education, colleges bought computers by the truckload. Now the institutions have to be careful when they throw those aging computers away. In some USA states, such as California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Virginia and South Carolina, legislators have proposed or passed laws that ban the disposal of electronic waste and outline how to treat large quantities of hazardous materials which in- clude computer monitors, televisions and other electronics. Electronic waste is now regarded as the next big environmental issue. Old com- puters compose 10% of the solid-waste stream in the USA, but com- puter related waste is growing as three times as fast as any other kind. The number of computers retired in 2002 was 40 million, and the number of obsolete computers is believed to be nearly 300 million in 2004 (ibid). Many universities and colleges have not yet decided how to deal with their electronic waste and how to sponsor this activity. In sum, it is definitely not easy to turn e-learning into a profit making activity. On the future of ‘distance education’ and ‘e-learning’ in higher education – concluding remarks This article examined the distinct differences between ‘distance educa- tion’ and ‘e-learning’ in higher education, and clarified the erroneous SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT486 assumptions on which many exaggerated predictions as to the sweeping effects of the new electronic media were based. Though it is likely that in the upcoming decade more and more providers of distance education will incorporate various forms of e-learning in their learning/teaching apparatus, still the differences between ‘distance education’ and ‘e-learning’ will remain noticeable. The boundaries between ‘distance education’ and ‘e-learning’ will blur in some areas, but they will never totally merge. Both phenomena will grow in the future, but mostly for different reasons and in different directions. How will distance education at university level evolve in the future? Distance education at university level will grow in the coming years and will attract new student clienteles. It will be provided more and more by mixed-mode institutions and consortia in addition to stand-alone dis- tance teaching institutions; and its mode of operation will depend greatly on the technological infrastructure of various national settings. Initially, most distance teaching institutions were mainly designed for older part-time students. Throughout the last two decades more diverse student clientless have joined distance study frameworks, and it is likely that the future student cohorts, both in distance and campus-based universities will be more heterogeneous. More younger students will join distance education. The desire of many high school students to gain academic credits concurrently with their high school studies, as well as their attraction to highly demanded fields of study, to which admission is difficult at a conventional university, haven drawn, and will continue to draw, young students to highly acclaimed and reputable distance education providers. In the future distance education is likely to attract several new adult student constituencies. Today, lifelong learning has become the leitmotif and dominant slogan of most higher education institutions worldwide. Grosso modo, lifelong learning is based on part-time education pro- ceeding throughout the whole life cycle. Part-time students are typically adults in full or partial employment and/or having family and social commitments. Among the older students at least three distinct groups can be identified: second-chance students; professional workers; and adults seeking to broaden their education in order to become better acquainted with new fields of knowledge. The proportion of students joining distance education for professional upgrade and for recreational purposes will grow immensely in the future. DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 487 A large proportion of students in any higher education institution, but particularly in distance teaching programs, will be studying towards various diplomas and continuing education courses, rather than to- wards full degree programs. International students, composed mainly of young professionals working in international corporations, will be a growing component in distance education institutions. Being highly mobile they will expect to continue studying as they move within or between different national jurisdictions. The status of the mega distance teaching universities will remain stable, and their main mandate will continue to be to widen access to higher education by reaching out to students who cannot attend or gain access to conventional universities. They will continue to operate on the industrial model paradigm which produces economies of scale and en- ables them to enroll large numbers of students at relatively low marginal costs well below those of campus universities or e-learning providers. Print and mass media will continue to serve as the main media in these large distance teaching institutions, though part of their courses will be enhanced by e-learning components. New leading models of distance education will be provided by mixed- mode institutions and consortia-type ventures. The mixed-mode enables students to study concurrently on-campus and through distance edu- cation. Consortia type ventures, in which a number of universities join forces, either within national higher education systems or as an inter- national enterprise, will offer a rich variety of distance teaching pro- grams. Some of the consortia have been created, and will continue to operate, as partnerships between universities and the corporate world. Many of the mixed-mode institutions and consortia offering distance teaching courses will utilize the communication capabilities of the new interactive media. The technological divide between developing and developed coun- tries will be clearly reflected in the mode of distance education delivery. Most developing countries do not possess the resources and skilled workforce necessary to make e-learning feasible and available on a wide scale. Bates (2001) claimed that only a handful of developing countries will be able to move partially into e-learning through a growing indig- enous high-tech sector, a rapidly developing middle class and export of academic programs from developing countries. However, in developed countries as well, the new electronic media applications will be used in the large distance teaching universities mainly as add-ons to the core curricula that will continue to be based, by and large, on printed self study materials and mass media. Nevertheless, the production of the self SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT488 study courses and their ongoing update will undergo drastic changes. Communication among students and between students and tutors in the study process will be greatly enhanced by the new electronic media. How will e-learning at university level evolve in the future? The impact of the new technologies on higher education environments will grow dramatically in the future, and will affect all domains of academic activity – research, teaching and learning, organization, fi- nance and government policy. Unquestionably, the new technologies have the potential to provide new exciting possibilities to improve the quality of the study process, and affect the generation and delivery of knowledge both in campus and distance teaching universities. However, the provision of distance education will constitute a partial function of e-learning applications, while the campus will remain a center of uni- versity culture, knowledge generation, and the locus of students–faculty interaction. The new technologies are not likely to endanger the exis- tence of the campus universities, but rather enrich, support and enhance many of their activities. E-learning will greatly contribute to growing flexibility in academic study patterns (Bates 2001; Collis and Moonen 2001; Collis and van der Wende 2002). Flexible learning offers students many opportunities to adjust their interests, needs and learning styles to a variety of learning settings and media combinations. Hybrid courses, combining various components of face-to-face encounters with online provision will emerge as a growing pattern in academic institutions. However, online teaching as a stand-alone pedagogy will be used to a very limited extent, and most e-learning will be employed for add-on functions in teaching/ learning processes. The majority of students attending campus univer- sities will prefer to attend classes, or will choose to distribute their college experience among residential campuses, commuter colleges and online courses. More graduate or postgraduate students will study on- line, whereas the majority of undergraduates will prefer the more con- ventional face-to-face encounters. E-learning will promote the growth of both academic trade and aca- demic philanthropy. More universities and new for-profit companies will export academic and professional programs as a commodity to a variety of student populations. There are already some noticeable differences among national policies in this domain. Australia, the UK and Canada are more oriented to the international market (Ryan 2001). Many of their DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 489 universities try to export their higher education as a commodity to third world countries. American universities are more directed inwards, gen- erally preferring campus-based integration of ICT, with a few examples of purchases and partnerships in physical campuses overseas. Concurrently with the growing use of e-learning for profit and commercial purposes, academic philanthropy through the utilization of the ICT capabilities will grow as well. The MIT’s Open Courseware project constitutes an excellent example in this domain. It demonstrates how a leading private university can practice intellectual philanthropy in the world of academic teaching. Higher education institutions all over the world will be able to adapt content and ideas from the MIT courses for their benefit. Also Carnegie Mellon and Princeton universities are currently involved in experiments to make course materials public on the Web (Olsen 2002). The Open Knowledge Initiative constitutes an additional example of academic generosity. This is a collaborative effort led by MIT, Stanford University with six other institutions of devel- oping free and open technical specifications of learning management systems and related infrastructures (ibid). E-learning will unquestionably enhance globalization trends. ‘Inter- nationalization’ and ‘globalization’ are new buzz words in higher edu- cation and practice. These two terms draw attention to the undeniable fact that boundaries of what were relatively closed national systems are increasingly being challenged by common international trends (Enders and Fulton 2002). Universities are at present engaged in becoming partners in inter-institutional schemes and pushing forward in the drive towards globalization. Students, academic staff and curricula are transferred and exchanged between institutions; accreditation agencies ensure promptness in accrediting previous experiential learning and previous academic studies; governments append their signatures to cooperative projects in higher education. Strengthening agreements between academic institutions within a particular country and across national borders will be central to the mobility of adult students. E-learning exerts global outreach. In an international market, stu- dents are able, and will be more so in the future, to approach any university where access policy encourages and extends to international students. This will be particularly true in professional training and postgraduate fields. The outreach of universities to international student clienteles on a global level could be activated at different levels, ranging from enrolling individual students from different countries, through collaborative ventures with other institutions (universities or business enterprises), to cooperative undertakings with governments, interna- SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT490 tional corporations and intergovernmental organizations. The involve- ment of such central bodies is essential for the systematic implementa- tion of the new technologies into higher education systems efficiently and on a large scale. References AFT (2000). Distance Education: Guidelines for Good Practice. 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Distance Education Instruction by Postsecondary Faculty and Staff at Degree-Granting Institutions. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Edu- cation, National Center for Education Statistics, NCES 2002-155. Carlson, S. (2003). ‘Old computers never die – they just cost colleges money in new ways’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 14. CHEPS (2002). ‘Successful conference on ICT in Rotterdam’, CHEPS Unplugged 2(3), 2. Collis, B. and Moonen, J. (2001). Flexible Learning in a Digital World: Experience and Expectations. London: Kogan Page. Collis, B. and van der Wende, M. (2002). Models of Technology and Change in Higher Education: An International Comparative Survey on the Current and Future Uses of ICT in Higher Education. University of Twente: CHEPS. Curran, C. (2001). ‘Universities and the Challenge of E-Learning: What Lessons from the European Universities?’ Presented at the University Teaching as E-Business, October 2001, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California at Berkeley. Daniel, J.S. (1990). ‘Distance education in developing countries’, in Croft, M., Mug- ridge, I., Daniel, J.S. and Hershfield A. (eds.), Distance Education: Development and Access, Caracas: ICDE Proceedings, pp. 101–110. Daniel, J.S. (1996). The Mega-Universities and the Knowledge Media. London: Kogan Page. Enders, J. and Fulton, O. (eds.) (2002). Higher Education in a Globalising World: International Trends and Mutual Observations. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub- lishers. DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 491 Evans, T. and Nation, D. (eds.) (2000). Changing University Teaching: Reflections on Creating Educational Technologies. London: Kogan Page. Fetterman, D.M. (1998). ‘Webs of meaning: Computer and Internet resources for educational research and instruction’, Educational Researcher 27(3), 22–31. Garrison, D.R. (1993). ‘Multifunction computer enhanced audio teleconferencing: Moving into the third generation of distance education’, in Harry, H., John, M. and Keegan, D. (eds.), Distance Education: New Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 200–208. Garrison, D.R. (1999). ‘Will distance education disappear in distance studies? A reac- tion’, Journal of Distance Education 14(2), 10–13. Garrison, D.R. and Anderson, T. (eds.) (2000). Changing University Teaching: Reflec- tions on Creating Educational Technologies. London: Kogan Page. Gladieux, L.E. and Swail, W.S. (1999). The Virtual University and Educational Oppor- tunity: Issues of Equity and Access for the Next Generation. Washington, D.C.: The College Board. Guri-Rosenblit, S. (1999). Distance and Campus Universities: Tensions and Interactions – A Comparative Study of Five Countries. Oxford: Pergamon Press & The Interna- tional Association of Universities. Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2001a). ‘The Tower of Babel syndrome in the discourse on infor- mation technologies in higher education’, Global E-Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Education 1(1), 28–38. Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2001b). ‘Virtual universities: Current models and future trends’, Higher Education in Europe XXVI(4), 487–499. Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2002). ‘A top down strategy to enhance information technologies into Israeli higher education’, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Education 2(2). Harasim, L., Hiltz, S.R., Teles, L. and Turrof, M. (1995). Learning Networks: A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harley, D., Henke, J., Lawrence, S., Maher, M., Gawlik, M. and Muller, P. (2002). An Analysis of Technology Enhancement in a Large Lecture Course at UC Berkeley: Costs, Cultures, and Complexity. A Final Report, UC Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education. Holmberg, B. (1989). Theory and Practice of Distance Education. London: Routledge. Keegan, D. (1986). The Foundations of Distance Education. Beckenham: Croom Helm. Keegan, M. (2000). E-Learning: The Engine of the Knowledge Economy. New York: Keegan. Laurillard, D. (2001). Rethinking University Teaching, 2nd edition. London: Routledge Falmer. Littleton, K. and Light, P. (eds.) (1999). Learning with Computers: Analysing Productive Interaction. London: Routledge. Matkin, G.W. (2002). The Whys and Hows of Online Education at UC: A Dean’s Pers- pective, UC TLtC News & Events. http://www.uctltc.org/news/2002/06/matkin.html. Morrison, T.R. (1992). ‘Learning, change and synergism: The potential of open uni- versities’, Presented at the Annual Asian Association of Universities, Seoul, Korea, Proceedings, pp. 19–54. National Research Council (2002). Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University. Washington, D.C.: The National Acad- emies Press. SARAH GURI-ROSENBLIT492 Niper, S. (1989). ‘Third generation distance learning and computer conferencing’, in Mason, R. and Kaye, A. (eds.), Mindweave: Communication, Computers and Dis- tance Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 63–73. Olsen, F. (2002). ‘MIT’s open window – putting course materials online, the university faces high expectations’, The Chronicle of Higher Education 6 December 2002. Peters, O. (1994). ‘Distance education and industrial production: A comparative interpretation in outline’, in Keegan, M. (ed.), Otto Peters on Distance Education. London: Routledge, pp. 107–127. Peters, O. (2001). Learning and Teaching in Distance Education: Analysis and Interpre- tations from an International Perspective. London: Kogan Page. Robinson, S. and Guernsey, L. (1999). ‘Microsoft and MIT to launch I-Campus’, International Harold Tribune 6 October 1999. Ryan, Y. (2002). Emerging Indicators of Success and Failure in Borderless Higher Edu- cation. London: The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. Scott, H., Chenette, J. and Swartz, J. (2002). ‘The integration of technology into learning and teaching in liberal arts’, Liberal Education (Spring) 2002, 30–35. Selinger, M. and Pearson, J. (eds.) (1999). Telematics in Education: Trends and Issues. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Somekh, B. and Davis, N. (eds.) (1997). Using Information Technology Effectively in Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge. Toffler, A. (1980). The Third Wave. New York: William Morrow. Trow, M. (1999). ‘Lifelong learning through the new information technologies’, Higher Education Policy 12(2), 201–217. Twigg, C. (2001). Innovations in Online Learning: Moving Beyond the no Significant Difference. Troy, N.Y.: The Pew Learning & Technology Program. U.S. Department of Education (2002). A Profile of Participation in Distance Education: 1999–2000. Washington D.C.: National Center for Educational Statistics, NCES 2003-154. van der Molen, H.J. (ed.) (2001). Virtual University? Educational Environments of the Future. London: Portland Press Ltd. van der Wende, M.C. (2002). The Role of US Higher Education in the Global E-Learning Market. Research and Occasional Paper Series: Center for Studies in Higher Edu- cation. 1.02, Higher Education in the Digital Age Project, University of California at Berkeley. Vest, C.M. (2001). Disturbing the Educational Universe: Universities in the Digital Age – Dinosaurs or Prometheans? Report of the President for the Academic Year 2000-1, MIT. Address for correspondence: Sarah Guri-Rosenblit, Department of Education and Psychology, The Open University of Israel, P.O. Box 39328, Ramat-Aviv 61392, Israel Phone: þ972-3-6460394; Fax: þ972-3-6465468; E-mail: saragu@openu.ac.il DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING 493 
work_6zscxuzejfh2zbzyvoyzm7yaja	----	DSpace DSpace niet meer beschikbaar Wegens de overgang naar het nieuwe onderzoeksinformatiesysteem PURE is DSpace niet meer beschikbaar. Er wordt op dit moment hard gewerkt aan het valideren van de onderzoeksoutput in PURE. Na validatie wordt de researchoutput getoond via https://research.ou.nl Let op, niet alle onderzoeksoutput zal worden getoond in PURE, dit is mede afhankelijk van het beleid binnen de verschillende faculteiten. Heeft u vragen, dan kunt u een e-mail sturen naar het PURE support team pure-support@ou.nl t.a.v. Katrine Bengtsson, Pure-co&oumlrdinator. 
work_6ztansau7jcxffnejoesxyfpta	----	The Quality Of Service Of The Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.441 ScienceDirect 13th International Educational Technology Conference The Quality Of Service Of The Distance Education Tolga DURSUNa*, Kader OSKAYBA a, Cansu GÖKMENa aMaltepe University, Faculty of Business Administiration 34857, “Istanbul”, Turkey Abstract The purpose of this paper is to measure the quality of service of the distance education that received from the educational institutions which are among the leading service enterprises, to find out students’ expectations, to what extend students expectations are met and whether or not the acquired findings vary by demographical information of the students. In this paper, the data obtained from the questionnaire with 463 students is evaluated. The examination of partial SERVQUAL scores indicate that expectations are not met for all five dimensions effecting service quality in the universities providing e-MBA education. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. Keywords: distance education, service quality, servqual; 1. Introduction Our century seems to be an age to witness a lot of political, social and technological changes. Similar changes has been also undergone by previous centuries. But globalization appears to push these changes to expand and continue with an increasing efficiency. These developments and changes have significant impacts on life's, demands and needs of people, while affecting styles and approach of meeting those needs. Therefore these changes in this century have required a new way of understanding in education service. Since, it intends to train those who are willing to join in professional life in the future, education service is one of the most critical service fields in the service sector. In this respect, increasing the quality of higher education in universities serves for the purpose of training people individually so that they provide society with maximum benefit in their own professional field. On the other hand, educational service quality is also a factor effecting * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90216-626-10-50/2421; fax: +90216-626-11-31. E-mail address: tolgadursun@maltepe.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1134 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 university preferences of the youth. It is seen that students, applying for university entrance exam, place the name of the universities known for their qualified educational services on the top of the lists on the preference forms. In the 21th century, it is obvious that all the societies has become in more need of education owing to an information explosion. In turn it has led to the development of new educational technologies and methods to have caused change in education by degree. Traditional educational institutions fall behind the increasing education demand. Resulting education deficit has been gradually growing day by day. This situation has urged people to search for alternative education to traditional one and the concept of “Distance Education” is an output of this search. The main driving force behind these developments is the effort of meeting educational demands of people as a result of rise in numbers of student, education demand of different student populations, former students, rise in jobs and working bringing with it a lifelong learning. Education is a concept on which much stress is placed in the world. It is clear that those societies with high level of education feature fast development course and have caught competitive advantage in various areas. This potential could not be achieved by a common educational system. Here the importance of educational quality reveals. Education leading to development means quality education. Quality is a relativistic concept which varies depending on personal needs. Also, goods quality and service quality are two separate concepts, because of their peculiar characteristics. Yet, it is possible to determine the expectations and perceptions of service receivers. Literature review shows that SERVQUAL is one of the common models for measuring service quality. This model is used to measure the service quality perceived based upon the gap between perceived and expected services. And in this study SERVQUAL model is used in order to measure quality of service of distance education. 1.1. Quality, Service and Service Quality Turkish Language Society (Türkçe Sözlük, 2005, p.896) defines the “Service” as standing someone in good stead or performing work good for somebody. According to Mucuk (2004, p.299) service is the benefit bought by consumers, which has nothing to do with ownership; Kotler (2003, p.444) says that "A service is any act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product". Today, we live in a service economy in which relationships are much more important than physical products. Howsoever high the share of technology in a service offered may be, main component is human being. Hence, service, provided either by machine or human, is a whole of intangible activities oriented to meet demands of people. As for service organizations, they lie across a broad spectrum ranging from education, health and communication to banking, insurance business and tourism. Concept of quality, according to Deming (1998, p.137), is “Judgement of consumer on product or service produced by a business firm” and is “Conformity degree of a product to requirements” for Crosby (1979), Turkish Standards Institute (TSE) defines quality as “Whole of the features of a product or a service, based on its capability to meet the given or possible needs”. According to American Society for Quality (ASQC) "Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs." Generally, all the quality definitions concern product quality, falling behind explaining service quality. Whereas the concept of service quality is defined by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1988 p.45 ) as the direction and degree of the gap between expectations and perceived performance based on comparison made by customers between their expectations before receiving service and their real service experience. 1135 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 In its broadest sense, service quality implies rendering great or perfect service to meet customers’ expectations. According to Odabas (2004, p.93) it is an ability of a business firm to meet or go beyond expectations of customers as is seen, both definitions attach more importance to customer expectation than other quality determinants. So, the quality here is the one which is perceived by customer. In terms of expectations and perceptions of customer, service quality can be defined by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985, p.42), as comparison between those expectations and perceptions. Perceiving many factors, customers interpret quality in his/her way and compare service rendered with service he/she perceived. What is important here is that customers should perceive high level of service. If a comparison gives a negative difference between expected and perceived qualities, it is obvious that customer interpreted negatively the service quality. If the result is a positive difference then it may be said that customer made a positive interpretation. Thus, service quality can be described by Sekerkaya (1997, p.14) as “A measure of realization level of service by customer’s expectations”. Howsoever difficult to define service quality, business managements should know these two things: At first, quality is defined by customer not by producer. Second, service quality which has failed to satisfy customers’ expectations is condemned not only to lose existing customers but also to fail to gain new customers in (Stanton, Etzel and Walker, 1997, p.524). Again the point is that quality determinant is the customer and so firms should give weight to demands of their customers. 2. Measuring Service Quality Although many methods and equipment have been developed for measuring service quality by this time, questionnaire survey method has been combined with SERVQUAL as an assessment method while conducting the research project designed for measuring service quality of education service rendered with e-MBA programs in distance education. 2.1. Conceptual Model of Service Quality-Gap Analysis This model developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985, pp. 48-49) prefer “Perceived service quality” instead of service quality. Perceived service is a result of comparison between customer’s expectations before receiving service (i.e. expected service) and actual service experience of that customer. Expectations include demands and desires of customers related to given service. Relationships between expected and perceived services as follows: If expected service is > perceived service, then perceived quality is far from satisfactory and implies an unacceptable quality level. If expected service is = perceived service, then perceived quality will be satisfactory. If expected service is < perceived service, then perceived quality will be quite over satisfactory level and reach the ideal quality level. This model includes approach and implementations of the service firms along with gaps between expected and perceived service and source of these gaps. In this context five types of gap is shown in figure 1 (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1994, p.4). 1136 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 Fig. 1. Conceptual Model of Service Quality Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman (1990) revealed that 10 criteria used by consumers in evaluating service quality. These (dimensions) are reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, empathy and tangibles. Having assessed surveys with factor analysis and reduced 10 dimensions determining service quality for 5 dimensions. Those five dimensions determining service quality as explained below: Tangibles: Physical facilities, equipment and appearance of personnel and communication instruments. Reliability: Performing the service based on principle of accuracy and honesty. In other words, organizations should fulfill their promise to customers. Responsiveness: Employees being ready and willing to perform service. Assurance (Contains competence, courtesy, credibility and security): Knowledge and kindness of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence. Empathy (Contains access, communication and understanding the customer): Making effort to know customer and learn his/her needs. Gap 1 Gap 5 Gap 4 Gap 2 Gap 3 Word Of Mouth Communications Personal Needs Past Experience Expected Service Perceived Service Service Delivery Service Quality Specifications Management Perceptions Of Consumer Expectations External Communications to Customers Consumer Provider 1137 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 3. An Application Of The Quality Of Service Of The Distance Education 3.1. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to measure the quality of service of distance education that received from the educational institutions which are among the leading service enterprises. It intends to evaluate what students expect from education service they receive, to what extend their expectations are met and whether or not the acquired findings vary by demographical information of students. Moreover, it is tried to determine whether or not there are any differences among similar higher education institutions implementing distant learning program in terms of their educational service quality. It is aimed at helping increase the quality of existing higher education services by evaluations based on the results of this comparative study. 3.2. Method The survey which was conducted in this study was composed of four pages plus a briefing note addressing respondents. First two pages of the form includes 22 likert type questions, while last two pages includes questions related to demographical variables. In the study it is to be determined at which level perceptions meet expectations by measuring expectations and perceptions of students as customers according to SERVQUAL methodology. SERVQUAL model suggests that perceived service quality is based on discrepancy/gap between customers’ expectations from a service and the performance of the service firm rendering that service. Therefore, Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry's (1996, p. 23) model is composed of two main parts: Expectations which include 22 variables representing five dimensions (Reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles), help understand customers' general expectations related to the service. These 22 variables were found out by investigating possible inherent features in a quality service in accordance with SERVQUAL criteria, i.e. the customer’s value judgement (Degermen, 2006, p. 38). Second part of the model, developed by Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman (1996, p.23), consists of perceptions. In this part all the 22 variables, which are to be used for measuring customers’ judgements about a service firm, are compared. As a result, if a received service meets or is over expectations, service will be decided as a quality one. But received service is less than expected, dissatisfaction will occur. Thus, SERVQUAL is also called as “Gap analysis”. First part aims at measuring the students’ expectations and the second part includes measurement of students’ perceptions. However, in this study the respondents were subjected to a 5-point likert type scale (1=Strongly disagree, 5=Strongly agree) which is converted from the original 7 point type. This conversion was because of common usage, relatively easy assessment and answering of the 5 point type. In Turkey, universities implement distance education including associate degree, undergraduate degree, degree completion, non-thesis master degree and master degree programs. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of students taking distance education. Since they have seen this potential, many universities started to give weight to establish distance education programs. Today, there are 156 universities (54 of them are foundation universities) in Turkey ( www.yok.gov.tr ). Among those implementing distance education programs there are 21 universities with e-MBA program, including newly opened ones with no student yet. These include; Anadolu University, Ankara University, Ataturk University, Bahcesehir University, Beykent University, Cukurova University, Ege University, Fatih University, Gazi University, Gaziantep University, Is k University, Istanbul Ayd n University, Istanbul Bilgi University, Karabuk University, Karadeniz Technical University, Maltepe University, Mersin University, Ondokuz Mayis University, Sakarya University, Suleyman Demirel University and Zirve University. Population is composed of students receiving education in the universities having e-MBA programs. Having identified those 21 universities with distant learning e-MBA programs in Turkey and considering difficulty of access to all and time limitation, the survey form prepared for this study was applied to only five universities 1138 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 selected by means of random sampling. Survey sample group is composed of all students of those five selected universities. Simple random sampling is a method by which samples from the population are chosen in such a way that every sample has an equal chance to be chosen. According to Gegez (2010, p.211); it is intended to make the units of the population equally likely to be selected. All the students taking distant learning e-MBA programs at those five selected universities are incorporated to the sampling. At the beginning students were informed about the study and asked to participate online. Each student with his/her assigned username and password was given right to participate online in the survey. In total, 463 students participated in the study. 3.3. Data Analysis and Methods Data obtained in this survey were computerized in Microsoft Excel and SPSS 18.0 programs. Specific calculations and statistical analysis used in SERVQUAL model were made by SPSS system. Generally, a survey is prepared having 22 questions related with five dimensions - reliability, responsiveness, credibility, empathy and tangibles- on SERVQUAL scale. According to the model, consumer have expectations about those five variables before receiving service and then compare these expectations with the service given. If service they receive meet their expectations it is concluded that the service is of quality. In other words, service quality is equals to discrepancy/gap between expected and perceived service. In this study, 22 statements were put into each survey form with a view to determine expectations and perceptions in accordance with five dimensions standard SERVQUAL scale developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry. Students were asked to state to what extent they agree with 22 statements at a scale of 1 to 5 at first for an ideal university having e-MBA program and next, their current universities. Agreement degrees were designed as 1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree. Next comes the scoring part for each dimension assessment on the scale of 100 to calculate importance weights of each quality dimension. The other part includes questions directed to obtain students’ demographic information, their satisfaction level with the e-MBA programs that they chosen, whether or not they faced with any problem during education and whether or not they find the solutions offered adequate, how they think about recommending the program they attended. 22 questions prepared for expectation and perception levels on the scale are distributed as follows and the statements composing dimensions are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Statements Composing Service Quality Dimensions Statement PHYSICAL/TANGIBLE FEATURE 1 Distance Education Portal should always be accessible/usable 2 Sufficient number of most recent sources (Book, Journal, Article, Electronic Databases, etc...) in library should be accessible 3 Web page should have striking, clear, understandable and good view. 4 Safe environment should be ensured in the Distance Education Portal. RELIABILITY 5 Courses, in large part, should be practice-oriented (e.g. case study) 6 Students should be prompted to group works in practice oriented parts of courses 7 Students should be allowed to contend for prize such as degree, incentive etc... 8 Students should be in interaction with faculty members and other students 9 Program should offer elective courses to meet personal needs for career 1139 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 INTEREST-RESPONSIVENESS OF FACULTY MEMBERS AND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF 10 Faculty members should help students in every matter for which they need counselling immediately. 11 Faculty members should be available at extracurricular times 12 Administrative staff should deal with each student one by one (registration procedures, course selection, etc...) 13 Library staff should meet demands and needs of students immediately CREDIBILITY 14 Lectures should be given by the faculty members who are expert in their fields 15 Course contents should be prepared in accordance with course schedule 16 Course content should be prepared conspicuously and given by faculty members 17 Faculty members should be fair in grading 18 Faculty members should be experienced 19 Coursed should be largely given by faculty members with Prof. title EMPATHY 20 Faculty members should help students and give advices on their career planning 21 Advisers should help students complete the program smoothly 22 Students should be provided with advisory service about employment opportunities offered by the diploma they are to get by this program Service quality determinant is the gap/discrepancy between performance of and expectations for a given service as to its receiver. For the analysis, gap score calculation is made by subtracting the expectation score from the perception score for each item that e-MBA students give. This operation is open to two types of SERVQUAL scoring: Unweighted SERVQUAL Score and the Weighted SERVQUAL Score. First step is calculated without taking into account the importance weight rated for each quality dimension by students while the later takes accounts of the importance weight given by students. Next step is the calculation of average SERVQUAL Score involving service quality dimensions. Two stages are followed for each dimension: Sum up the SERVQUAL scores for each of the statements (Perception-Expectation) and divide the sum by the number of the statements making up the dimension. Sum up the scores obtained per students in the first stage and divide the sum by the number of students. Resulting SERVQUAL Scores are averaged, that is, SERVQUAL score found out for each dimension are summed up and divided into five (number of dimensions) and so obtained value gives the Unweighted SERVQUAL Score. The Weighted SERVQUAL Score is calculates at four stages as follows: Average SERVQUAL Score is calculated for each student for each of five dimensions. Obtained score per each dimension for each student at the first stage is multiplied by the importance weight given to that dimension by each student. (Importance weight is obtained by dividing scores rated by customer to given dimension into 100) Resulting Weighted SERVQUAL Scores per student for five dimensions in the second stage are added up and thus a overall Weighted SERVQUAL Score is obtained. Calculated scores for overall customers of which number is represented by “N” at the third stage is summed up and divided into overall “N”. 1140 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 4. Research Findings and Comments SERVQUAL scale applied here was analysed in terms of its reliability and its alpha coefficients are established in a view to determining its internal coexistency. In these analyses, definitive statistics including frequency tables, crosstabulation tables and averages were used as well as t-test and anova in comparing service quality scores by participants’ demographic aspects and universities. Anova analyses conducted in comparing service quality levels by demographic features and universities are accompanied by Levene test for homogeneity between groups and Tukey post hoc test for determining between which groups discrepancies occur. But when Levene test results in inhomogeneity between groups Welch test is put into use not Anova. It is shown on statistic tables that which analysis was used. Survey findings were assessed by distinctive calculation method of SERVQUAL system and analysed by some statistical techniques. 4.1. Findings of Reliability Analysis Reliability is a concept related with research findings. Gegez (2010, p.184) explained that basically reliability indicates whether or not the same results would be obtained when a research is repeated and whether respondents would give same answers in case of no change of their state. For reliability analysis of research Cronbach’s alpha model was used. Cronbach’s alpha model is the one used for measuring internal consistency, in the words of George and Mallery (2001, p. 209), it is an indicator of to what extent all the items in a scale can successfully measure any dimension. Table 2. Reliability Coefficient Expectation Perception Cronbach Total scale 0,947 0,959 Tangibles 0,887 0,812 Reliability 0,791 0,873 Responsiveness 0,841 0,886 Credibility 0,857 0,873 Empathy 0,843 0,907 Reliability analysis comes to the front to gauge inter-closeness degree of questions when calculation is made by summating the values of answers to certain numbers of questions. This is also called as internal consistency. Most preferred method for reliability analysis is Cronbach Alpha model. This model calculates the coefficient alpha. Coefficient is obtained by comparing overall variations of question to general variation in a scale. Alpha is a standard change mean and varies between 0 and 1. In social researches, alpha value of 0,70 is accepted as adequate for reliability (Nakip,2006, p.146). For in this study reliability values of scales and sub-dimensions are at acceptable levels, t-tests, variation and SERVQUAL analyses were proceeded for testing research hypotheses. 1141 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 4.2. Demographic Features 34,1% of total participants was female and 65,9% were male, while 50,5% participants were married and 40,5% single. Initially students from age group between 21-30 with 60,7% and then age group between 31-40 with 33,7% were enlisted. These two age groups (between 21-40) make up 94,4% of whole participation. Table 3. Demographic Distribution Gender Distribution Age Distribution Number % Number % Female 158 34,1 Under 20 1 0,2 Male 305 65,9 21-30 281 60,7 Total 463 100,0 31-40 156 33,7 41-50 23 5,0 Distribution by Marital Status 51-60 1 0,2 Number % 61 and Over 1 0,2 Married 234 50,5 Total 463 100,0 Single 229 49,5 Total 463 100,0 Distribution of the professional sectors that e-MBA service quality measurement study participants work, is like this: 14,3% is in Banking , 8,4% in Health, 8% in Service, 7,3% in Informatics, 6,9% in Education, 5,6% in Construction while of them 27,6% serves as engineer, 16,4% as manager, 12,7% as banker, 6,3% as accountant. Table 4. Professional Experience Occupational Distribution Distribution by Professional Field Number % Number % Engineer 128 27,6 Other 169 36,5 Other 111 24,0 Banking 66 14,3 Manager 76 16,4 Health 39 8,4 Banker 59 12,7 Service 37 8,0 Accountant 29 6,3 Informatics 34 7,3 Teacher 20 4,3 Education 32 6,9 Self Employment 10 2,2 Construction 26 5,6 Economist 9 1,9 Food 18 3,9 Academician 7 1,5 Communication 18 3,9 Security officer 6 1,3 Logistics 11 2,4 Medical Doctor 5 1,1 Security 7 1,5 Architect 3 ,6 Economy 6 1,3 Total 463 100,0 Total 463 100,0 Almost all of the participatory e-MBA students (96,8%) resides in Turkey. In this distribution striking point is that participation from Afghanistan with 1,3% was the highest one among the participation ratios from abroad. When participation by city is examined, it is seen that the most participation was from Istanbul with 50,5%, and 1142 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 then comes Bursa with 7,3%, Ankara with 6,3%, Kocaeli with 5,2%, Izmir with 4,3%, Sakarya with 3,7% and Balikesir with 1,7%. Table 5. Distribution by Country of Residence NUMBER % AFGHANISTAN 6 1,3 GERMANY 3 ,6 IRAQ 1 ,2 SPAIN 1 ,2 UZBEKISTAN 1 ,2 RUSSIA 1 ,2 TURKEY 448 96,8 UKRAIN 2 ,4 TOTAL 463 100,0 SERVQUAL Scores Comparisons by Demographic Features In order to determine whether or not the expectations of e-MBA students were met in terms of their demographic features, t-tests were used for comparison by gender and marital status and variance analyses for comparison by age and income status. Table 6. Comparison Test for Service Quality Dimensions by Gender Gender N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean t p(sig.) Tangibles Female 158 -,172848 ,2554850 ,0203253 -2,298 ,022* Male 305 -,121369 ,1644927 ,0094188 Reliability Female 158 -,178658 ,2489990 ,0198093 -,378 ,706 Male 305 -,168774 ,2755989 ,0157807 Responsiveness Female 158 -,186092 ,2197352 ,0174812 -,611 ,542 Male 305 -,171451 ,2563722 ,0146798 Credibility Female 158 -,167954 ,2550665 ,0202920 -2,108 ,036 Male 305 -,119978 ,2193538 ,0125602 Empathy Female 158 -,174072 ,1881578 ,0149690 -1,654 ,099 Male 305 -,142295 ,1999835 ,0114510 SERVQUAL SCORE Female 158 -,175925 ,1658452 ,0131939 -1,928 ,055 Male 305 -,144773 ,1643642 ,0094115 Overall SERVQUAL scores do not differ by gender for e-MBA students. But, service quality score differs at sub-dimension of tangibles. Satisfaction level of female students from tangibles are less male students’. In other words, males are satisfied with their universities in terms of tangibles in comparison with females. 1143 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 Table 7. Comparison Test for Service Quality Dimensions by Marital Status Marital Status N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean t p(sig.) Tangibles Married 234 -,136325 ,1786907 ,0116814 ,282 0,778 Single 229 -,141605 ,2226850 ,0147154 Reliability Married 234 -,188333 ,2920399 ,0190912 -1,322 0,187 Single 229 -,155607 ,2372965 ,0156810 Responsiveness Married 234 -,164306 ,2262274 ,0147889 1,081 0,280 Single 229 -,188854 ,2614847 ,0172794 Credibility Married 234 -,136467 ,2345957 ,0153360 -,011 0,991 Single 229 -,136230 ,2318680 ,0153223 Empathy Married 234 -,142863 ,1892568 ,0123721 1,138 0,256 Single 229 -,163639 ,2033258 ,0134361 SERVQUAL SCORE Married 234 -,153659 ,1635900 ,0106942 ,229 0,819 Single 229 -,157187 ,1674767 ,0110672 Overall and sub-dimensional perceptions of service quality about universities having e-MBA programs differs by marital status of students. As for service quality scores comparison by age variance analyses were used. Table 8.Payoff Table of Homogeneity Tests for Age Groups Variations Levene Statistic df1 df2 Sig. Tangibles ,379 2 457 ,685 Reliability 1,072 2 457 ,343 Responsiveness ,126 2 457 ,882 Credibility 2,581 2 457 ,077 Empathy ,536 2 457 ,586 Servqual ,573 2 457 ,564 *Welch test is to be made **One-way-Anova is to be made According to the variance analysis hypotheses variances of groups to compare should be equal (Homogeneity). Homogeneity of age groups SERVQUAL scores variances were subjected to Levene tests. By means of one-way variance analysis it was found that total SERVQUAL scores and service quality score variances between age groups for each sub-dimension are homogeneous. 1144 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 Table 9. Comparison Tests for Service Quality Scores by Age Groups Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Tangibles Between Groups ,071 5 ,014 ,350 ,882 Within Groups 18,678 457 ,041 Total 18,749 462 Reliability Between Groups ,190 5 ,038 ,533 ,751 Within Groups 32,644 457 ,071 Total 32,834 462 Responsiveness Between Groups ,090 5 ,018 ,301 ,912 Within Groups 27,493 457 ,060 Total 27,584 462 Credibility Between Groups ,199 5 ,040 ,731 ,601 Within Groups 24,882 457 ,054 Total 25,081 462 Empathy Between Groups ,082 5 ,016 ,422 ,833 Within Groups 17,739 457 ,039 Total 17,821 462 Servqual Between Groups ,066 5 ,013 ,477 ,793 Within Groups 12,566 457 ,027 Total 12,632 462 *Significant at p=0,01 level As a result of variance analyses, service quality perception from universities with e-MBA learning programs differs by age groups of students attending those universities. Variance analyses were also used in comparing service quality scores by income groups. Table 10. Payoff Table of Homogeneity Tests for Income Groups Variations Levene Statistic df 1 df2 Sig. Tangibles 6,785 5 457 ,000* Reliability 1,305 5 457 ,261** Responsiveness 1,332 5 457 ,249** Credibility 1,079 5 457 ,371** Empathy 1,063 5 457 ,380** Servqual 1,307 5 457 ,260** *Welch test to be made **One-way-anova to be made According to the variance analysis hypotheses, group variances to compare should be equal to each other. Levene tests were conducted for testing homogeneity of SERVQUAL score variances by income groups. Having used one-way variance analyses, test results show that service quality score variances between age groups are homogeneous for sub-dimensions, except for total SERVQUAL scores and tangibles. Welch test was used in variance analysis for sub- dimension of tangibles because homogeneity hypothesis was not corresponded there. 1145 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 Table 11. Investigation of Service Quality Scores Between Income Groups by Welch Test Welch Test Statistica df1 df2 Sig. Tangibles 1,339 5 141,289 ,251 Table 12. Comparison Tests for Service Quality Scores by Income Groups (One-way Variance Analysis) Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Reliability Between Groups ,557 5 ,111 1,578 ,165 Within Groups 32,277 457 ,071 Total 32,834 462 Responsiveness Between Groups ,233 5 ,047 ,779 ,566 Within Groups 27,351 457 ,060 Total 27,584 462 Credibility Between Groups ,371 5 ,074 1,372 ,233 Within Groups 24,710 457 ,054 Total 25,081 462 Empathy Between Groups ,151 5 ,030 ,779 ,566 Within Groups 17,671 457 ,039 Total 17,821 462 Servqual Between Groups ,169 5 ,034 1,242 ,288 Within Groups 12,463 457 ,027 Total 12,632 462 *Significant at p=0,01 level As a result of variance analyses it was understood that service quality perception from the universities having e-MBA learning programs do not differ by income status of students. 4.3. General SERVQUAL Scores and Its Assessment Values which were obtained as a result of calculations made for realizing SERVQUAL analysis are shown in Table 13. Without taking into account colleges at which students have education, it is seen that service quality score (SERVQUAL score=0,80456) of institutions rendering e-MBA service is subtractive. 1146 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 Table 13. Expectation And Perception Averages Of All Participants And Expectation-Perception Gap Scores Perception Expectation Discrepancies of Averages Su m o f Fa ct or G ap Fa ct or G ap A ve ra ge s Dimension Statement Number Average Standard Deviation Average Standard Deviation Expectation- Perception Total Gap./k T an gi bl es 1 463 4,1512 1,0355 4,7603 ,7092 -,6091 -3,1037 -,7759 2 463 3,4233 1,1798 4,6091 ,8168 -1,1857 3 463 3,7775 1,0651 4,5680 ,7917 -,7905 4 463 4,0778 ,9178 4,5961 ,7722 -,5184 R el ia bi lit y 5 463 3,3499 1,1727 4,2527 ,9574 -,9028 -4,0043 -,8009 6 463 2,8877 1,2691 3,6307 1,1878 -,7430 7 463 2,8251 1,3050 3,5875 1,2381 -,7624 8 463 3,7797 1,0985 4,2981 ,9008 -,5184 9 463 3,4795 1,2445 4,5572 ,8247 -1,0778 R es po ns iv en es s 10 463 3,4946 1,1046 4,4039 ,8622 -,9093 -3,5594 -,8898 11 463 3,4428 1,1864 4,3197 ,8982 -,8769 12 463 3,4600 1,2388 4,3672 ,8992 -,9071 13 463 3,3585 1,0756 4,2246 ,9148 -,8661 C re di bi lit y 14 463 3,8186 ,9723 4,3758 ,8908 -,5572 -3,2246 -,5374 15 463 3,9503 ,9303 4,5443 ,7824 -,5940 16 463 3,7343 1,0489 4,5659 ,7613 -,8315 17 463 3,8596 1,0339 4,6328 ,7917 -,7732 18 463 4,0238 ,9078 4,4492 ,8611 -,4255 19 463 3,4255 1,1312 3,4687 1,1800 -,0432 E m pa th y 20 463 3,3737 1,1644 4,3434 ,8905 -,9698 -3,0562 -1,0187 21 463 3,6350 1,0904 4,5767 ,7401 -,9417 22 463 3,1814 1,2731 4,3261 ,9302 -1,1447 SUM -4,0228 SUM/5=SERVQUAL SCORE -0,80456 * k:Number of statements composing dimension This state indicates that students are not satisfied with service quality of colleges from which they receive e- MBA education. Moreover, it is an evidence that SERVQUAL scores estimated for service quality dimensions, - tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, credibility and empathy- are also subtractive and expectations for none of them were met. SERVQUAL scores calculated in the Table above are the values estimated without considering importance weight given by students to service quality dimensions. Service quality SERVQUAL score including importance weights given by students to dimensions is calculated as follows: SERVQUAL SCORE= (Reliability*importance of reliability + Empathy*importance of empathy +credibility*importance of credibility + tangibles*importance of tangibles + responsiveness*importance of responsiveness) / Number of dimension. 1147 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 In this calculation importance weight is expressed as percentage of importance that student give to a dimension. Table 14. Weighted SERVQUAL Scores Table N Weightless Average Gaps Weighted Average Gaps T p (Sig.) Tangibles 463 -,7759 -,138936 -14,840 ,000 Reliability 463 -,8009 -,172147 -13,895 ,000 Responsiveness 463 -,8898 -,176447 -15,538 ,000 Credibility 463 -,5374 -,136350 -12,592 ,000 Empathy 463 -1,0187 -,153139 -16,777 ,000 TOTAL GAPS -4,0228 -0,77702 SERVQUAL SCORE -0,80456 -0,1554 Before assessing dimension SERVQUAL scores it was examined that whether or not the discrepancy between perceived and desired service for each dimension is significant, that is, whether or not the discrepancies are statistically valid. For this examination hypothesis “H0: Gaps equal to "0” was tested throught the instrument of single sample t-test. As a result of t-tests it was found that gaps for all dimension were significant at level of p(sig.)= 0,000, that is discrepancies were non zero. It was found that service quality scores estimated without regarding importance weights are = -0,80456, while servqual scores including importance weights are = =-0,1554. Here the striking point is that results of both estimation are subtractive, meaning that expected service was not met. Next assessments were realized on the basis of weighted SERVQUAL scores. Absolute value of SERVQUAL score approximation to zero implies an increased service quality. When partial SERVQUAL scores are examined, although service expectations were not met for five dimensions effecting service quality in the universities rendering e-MBA education, most dissatisfied dimension was responsiveness, followed in order by reliability, empathy, tangibles and credibility. 5. Conclusion And Suggestions Today education system is faced with many problems, including falling behind developments and technology, lacking equipment, personnel and resource, scarcity of scientific researches, personnel having no skill and quality demanded by the system, education programs under efficiency standards. It is important to have educational organizations restructured and operated according to contemporary understanding of quality in order to find solutions to these problems and make education organizations efficient. Today, in a globalized world where competition has increased and quality has gained importance over other factors such as price for national development it is crucial to reorganize education system conforming the quality standards so as to train people in accordance with demands of competition environment. For ensuring development and advancement in a country education system should be carefully protected and improved by following the developing and changing conditions. Information technologies leading a reorganization of all institutional procedures have become one of the integral parts of education sector over time. Today computers and communication technologies are the factors which provide training education services unlike in 90’s when they were used as supportive devices in education service. One of these education services is an Internet based distant learning model. This model basically is applied for two goals: First, to provide support service for traditional education programs and secondly, servicing education 1148 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 programs over the web. In this framework Internet based distance education is considered among the most efficient and the best instruments to meet today’s educational needs. Distance education enables people to receive various certificates as well as associate, bachelor’s, postgraduate and doctoral diplomas from foreign universities whilst staying at their country. In service quality measurement literature it is the SERVQUAL method emerged as marketing research instrument that is the most common, most valid in its dimension structure and most reliable in terms of its internal consistence. Thanks to the SERVQUAL method it can be calculated to what extend each dimension and general service quality to have been affected by structural innovations and changes in services realized by enterprises rendering service. And in the light of this calculations it can be decided on vital and costly issues such as whether or not full-scale innovation or change is feasible. If results show a low grade in quality, it must be looked for which dimension is the crux of the problem and to what extent and then improvement should be initiated starting with statement of minimum quality level in that related dimension. To be able to make improvements based on that statement, a customer-oriented service approach should be adopted and the best effort should be made. So, rise in the perception statements scores would lead to a rise in perceived service quality. Service quality of distance education applications in education sector was examined including five quality determinants, tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, credibility and empathy. For five dimensions determining service quality and total service quality, discrepancies between expectation and perceptions of students were analysed regardless universities that render distance education. Discrepancies among scores that students rated for perceived and expected service for each were found statistically significant for each dimension. When partial SERVQUAL scores are examined, although service expectations were not met for every five dimension effecting service quality in the universities rendering e-MBA education, most dissatisfied dimension was responsiveness, followed in order by reliability, empathy, tangibles and credibility. It can be said that students’ perceptions of services are under their expectations. As survey results show, averages of overall expectations are higher than perceptions. It was found that expectations of survey participants were not met, leading to a dissatisfaction. And it is remarkable that dissatisfaction become more glaring especially as for the variables of responsiveness. Therefore, it is obvious that general perception is under general expectation, resulting in a dissatisfaction. When the customer oriented approach, which is important in terms of modern marketing, is adapted to education service marketing, focal point appears to be is educational expectations of students, parents and society. Education institutions marketing educational services should specify the marketing mix strategies. Service quality measurement is an opportunity for enterprises to accurately define their goals and correctly perceive needs of their customers accordingly to reshape their services. Moreover, measuring service quality allow for productive usage of operating assets. Enterprises operating in education sector should work on increasing service quality. Therefore, it is necessary to employ and to train quality faculty members as the backbone of education system. It is also significant to empathize with students in order to understand their educational problems and to ensure that courses made just in time in accordance with the curriculum by well-made organization. Besides, employees should have enough knowledge and experience to meet the expectations students. Universities, especially at the stage of planning and executing the services, should form administrative and academic cadres in pursuant of defined quality targets. As a result, these adjustments increase educational service quality and student satisfaction. In the light of these results, general perspective is under general expectation and there comes a dissatisfaction. In this case to enhance service quality and thus increase student satisfaction, it is obvious that sensitivity should be shown primarily to responsiveness. In this sense responsiveness is followed in order by reliability, empathy, tangibles and credibility. So students’ expectations can be met by making necessary regulations starting with statements under responsiveness dimension. Faculty members should be available for students and provide every kind of consultancy about university and education program. Administrative staff should deal with students one 1149 Tolga Dursun et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 1133 – 1151 by one. Library staff should have competence to address the needs and demands of students. And then comes statements of reliability dimension to be treated. Courses should be heavily practice-oriented. A competitive environment should be provided for students. Students could find an educational climate with interactive relationships among themselves and with faculty members as well. Furthermore, elective courses should be included in programs. In order of importance statements of third dimension, empathy, should be examined to be used in career orientation by faculty members. Advisers should help students pursue education programs smoothly and inform them about job opportunities that program diploma/certificate would create. Tangibles, as fourth dimension, are a point on the basis of which distance education portal can be designed. Accordingly, distance education web pages should be attention-grabbing, clear and understandable and kept updated. Also, universities are to be responsible for safety of that distance education portal. Last dimension in order of importance is credibility. Examining statements under credibility dimension, necessary regulation should be made to meet students’ expectations. Demands and needs of students have critical place in designing and improvement of education systems. It would be one of the most important factors which higher education institutions would pay attention to in developing quality management system to determine students’ expectations from higher education and measure the service quality by empathising with students. Related units of universities should examine thoroughly reasons and results of assessments made by students and accordingly produce solutions addressing negative assessments. 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(1988, Spring). SERVQUAL: Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1):12-40. Parasuraman, A. and Leonard L. Berry. (1991). Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, (The Free Pres).New York: Macmillan, Inc Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A. and Berry, L.L. (1994, January). Reassessment of Expectations as a Comparison Standard in Measuring Service Quality: Implications for Future Research. Journal of Marketing, 58:111-24. Roberts, P., Priest, H. (2007). Education: Improving Quality Through Service Enhancement. Art & Science Education, 21:42-46. Robledo, M.A. (2001). Measuring and Managing Service Quality: Integrating Customers Expactations. Managing Service Quality, 11(1): 22- 31. Seyran, C. (2004). Hizmet letmelerinde Yeni Bir Model Denemesi: Bütüncül Kalite Modeli. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Gazi Üniversitesi/Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Ankara. Seyran, D. (2004). Hizmet Kalitesi. 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Wilbur, H. R., Smith, B. & Associates, Inc., (2000). The Complete Guide to Nonprofit Management. Wiley Nonprofit Series, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York. Winer R.S. (2000). Marketing Management. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., Yalç nkaya, S. (2006). Web Tabanl Uzaktan E itim Sistemi ve Çukurova Üniversitesi Ö retim Elemanlar n n Yatk nl klar . Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Çukurova Üniversitesi/Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Adana. Yeniad, M. (2006). Uzaktan E itimde Kullan lmak Üzere Web Tabanl Bir Portal Yaz l m Geli tirme. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Çukurova Üniversitesi/Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Adana. Zeithaml, V. A., Berry L.L., and Parasuraman A. (1988). Communication and Control Processes In The Delivery Of Service Quality. Journal of Marketing, 52(2): 35. Zeithaml, V. A., Berry L.L., and Parasuraman A.(1996).The Behavioral Consequences of Service Quality. Journal of Marketing, 60(2):31-46 Zeithaml, V. A.and Bitner, M.J. (2003). Services Marketing (3rd edition). McGRAW-Hill. Zeithaml, V.A., Bitner, M.J. and Dwayne D. G. (2006). Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm (Fourth Edition). New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 
work_74czx5uubzfjjbngypsi6tnbry	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_75hzuw2nwvbbpoxrsl7vkladna	----	Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 85 1. INTRODUCTION In modern psychological and pedagogi- cal studies, the topic of informatization, high technologies, computers, Internet in the life of society is actively discussed. Various interac- tive resources, media, distance and mass on- line courses, which are used to organize the training, are widely distributed in the educa- tional system. Online resources are introduced into the traditional educational process as tools for organizing independent activities of students, filling the academic discipline with new and up-to-date information, implement- ing automated or centralized control. In other systems, distance education (DE) completely replaces the traditional one. ICDE studies show that the current trend is the expansion and deepening of the open and distance education quality throughout the world. Priority tasks are: • creation of favorable structures for open education (OE) at all levels; • stimulating the use of Open Educa- tional Resources (OER) - Open educational resources - publicly funded educational re- sources; • development of international struc- tures for the qualifications confirmation; • adoption of the quality standards, recommendations and assessments for open, online and distance learning, to improve the quality of distance education, and to devel- op innovative approaches to the learning out- comes evaluation (Ozhgibesova N. and Che- lyadinova O.,2014). Accordingly, the psychological and methodological foundations of interactive ACTIVE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES IN DISTANCE EDUCATION OF GIFTED STUDENTS Dr. Abakumova Irina, Corresponding Member of Russian academy of education, Don State Technical University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation E-mail: abakira@mail.ru Dr. Bakaeva Irina, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation E-mail: iabakaeva@sfedu.ru Dr. Grishina Anastasia, Don State Technical University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation. E-mail: avgrishina.sfedu@gmail.com Dr. Dyakova Elena, Rostov State Transport University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation E-mail: evdyakova.rgups@gmail.com Corresponding Author Dr. Grishina A., Don State Technical University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation. E-mail: avgrishina.sfedu@gmail.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- bution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs 4.0. The article is published with Open Access at www.ijcrsee.com A R T I C L E I N F O Original Research Received: February, 14.2019. Revised: March, 22.2019. Accepted: April, 06.2019. doi:10.5937/ijcrsee1901085A UDK 37.018.43 159.928-057.875 Keywords: distance education, sense formation, distance technologies, intellectually gifted, independent activity, developing potential. A B S T R A C T The article reveals the notion of distance education, meaning formation, meaningful technologies. The modern concept of psychological and peda- gogical support of talent is associated with the concept of the child’s abilities disclosure in education. Discussion about the developing potential of distance education, where, on the one hand, the student’s development potential is flattened, compressed and translated into “one-dimensional space” in the process of education; on the other hand, there is a whole range of opportuni- ties to initiate independent activity of students, to include mechanisms of cognitive and personal development of a modern student. The psychological bases of active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students are described. The author’s classification of interactive learning technologies using remote technologies is considered, where each technology finds several concrete embodiments. The results of an experimental study of gifted stu- dents’ independent activity initiation in distance education are presented. © 2019 IJCRSEE. All rights reserved. www.ijcrsee.com mailto:abakira%40mail.ru?subject= mailto:iabakaeva%40sfedu.ru?subject= mailto:avgrishina.sfedu%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:avgrishina.sfedu%40gmail.com?subject= https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://www.ijcrse.com https://doi.org/10.5937/ijcrsee1901085A Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 86 education with the use of technical means or by means of only electronic technologies are at the level of scientific discussion. They meet with heated discussion both in scientific cir- cles and in the practice of the teacher’s activ- ity. The methodology lags behind the imple- mentation practices. The analysis of Russian and foreign re- search allows us to identify the main problem points in the application of distance technolo- gies. In the works of A. A. Andreev and the Concept of the creation and development of distance education unified system in the Rus- sian Federation distance education is under- stood as “a set of educational services pro- vided to wide sections of the population in the country and abroad with the help of a spe- cialized information and educational environ- ment based on the means for the exchange of educational information at a distance (satellite television, radio, computer communications, etc.) “(Bakaeva I., 2016). Distance education involves interactive interaction between the learner and the cumulative subject(teachers plus other students) of the information envi- ronment, in which the environment becomes both an object of intellectual activity and its (the environment plus the learner) subject. Distance learning is understood as learning “provided by the use of educational technologies set, in which the purposeful in- direct or not completely mediated interaction between the learner and the teacher is carried out irrespective of their location and distribu- tion in time on the basis of pedagogically or- ganized information technologies, primarily with the use of telecommunications means” (Decree of the Russian Federation State Com- mittee of Higher Education, 1995). Russian researchers, L. Alkova, O. Ba- banskaya, I. L. Vasilyeva, M. B. Lebedeva is considering distance interactive learning tech- nologies as effective methods for developing students’ independent activities with the goal of forming various educational and profes- sional competences (Lebedeva M. B., 2010). At the same time V. V. Davydov, N. B. Ko- charyan differentiate the various problems and difficulties in introducing distance learn- ing into mass practice, which is associated with economic difficulties, the unavailability of teachers, low student motivation, and psy- chological factors, like the shortcomings in the development of modern students’ speech, “flattened” perception, and as a result narrow thinking, not generates broad alternatives, which contradicts the developmental nature of education. Some adherents of traditional learning in face-to-face discussions often ar- gue that distance education further exacer- bates the immersion of modern students in the virtual world, adversely affects their cognitive resources development, makes them “slaves” of technology. G. A. Reznik, Y. S. Ponomarenko, O. V. Lyshchik in their studies emphasize that the introduction of distance and mass electronic technologies in the Russian education is ham- pered by the inadequate elaboration of the sci- entific-methodological and normative bases of distance education in educational institutions, the lack of psychological and technological readiness of specialists, the development and implementation of these technologies, the in- sufficient technical equipment of the educa- tional process (Reznik G. A., Ponomarenko Yu. S. and Lyshchik O. V., 2016). T. V. Gromova, Y. V. Semochkina also highlight the importance of methodologi- cal and methodological study of on-line and distance education in modern systems. They study the features of active methods of train- ing in DE: case-method, brainstorming, busi- ness games (Gromova T. V. and Semochkina Yu. V., 2016). The possibilities and reserves of using massive open online courses as a new, even more recent model of distance education in the educational space of higher education are being studied in the works of E. A. Shuklina (Shuklina E. A., 2016). The author emphasiz- es the pent-up demand for young people on- line education. Author’s positions allow us to conclude that distance and other electronic technolo- gies are the vital result of the society infor- matization development. At the same time, e-learning opens up new horizons for peda- gogical practice, allows expanding the re- sources, technologies and methods of teach- ing. New technologies put education itself to a new level, providing continuous education throughout life, and educational organizations in the role of innovation centers. Distance technologies change both the philosophy and the methodology of education, when education acquires a nonlinear model, where the subject- subject relationship of the teacher and student comes to the fore in the process organization, and organizational structures become auxil- iary tools. The training process itself changes from strictly regulated to flexible, the speed of training depends only on its subjects. The pro- gram and content of training can be multiplied a hundred times in geometric progression by www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 87 attracting all the new resources and wiki tech- nologies in accordance with the student’s re- quests and opportunities. In the modern practice of identifying and developing children’s talent, the most im- portant question is the pedagogical and psy- chological support of the child’s development individual trajectory. It is not always possible to implement by means of education institu- tions or even the city. Often we can use the educational resources necessary for the pro- motion and development of the child from the Internet. Mass open online courses, online competitions, contests, online communities contribute to the development of various com- petencies and self-development of a gifted student. Euna Park, Hae-Deok Song, Ah Jeong Hong explore the impact of new trends in edu- cation and technology, in particular the use of social networks in the process of motivating students to learn (Park E., Song H. D., Hong A. J., 2018). The question of the distance technolo- gies developing potential, their application with the goal of transforming the student’s mental cognitive processes arises in psycho- logical science. Thus, the development of the psycho- logical foundations and methods of DE are reflected in modern studies. There is a search for effective technologies of implementing distance education for students and youth; de- velopment of self-educational competences of students; the use of information and com- munication technologies to implement vari- ous control options, such as the rating system, evaluation systems. Practitioners describe the use of various educational resources, such as a wiki portal, electronic simulators; issues of networking in the educational environment. Concerning distance education of schoolchil- dren, most of the works cover the distance ed- ucation of persons with disabilities, the disclo- sure of various electronic tools functionality. Pedagogical psychology is in difficulty with the task of developing the learning mo- tivation, developing skills and motivations for independent learning activities. Modern research, revealing the new didactic, psycho- logical and pedagogical foundations of mod- ern education, are reflected in the works of I. A. Abakumova, D. A. Leontiev, I. A. Ruda- kova, M.A. Friesen, who describe the techno- logical components of learning activity orga- nization in general and independent cognitive activity in particular through a deep psycho- logical analysis of the students meaning (Aba- kumova I. V. et al, 2014). In Russian psychol- ogy, the development of the meanings theory, which is currently studying the technology of students sense-formation processes initiation, triggering other mechanisms for motivating self-educational activity: the initiation of re- flexive abilities is described by E. V. Belova, studying the technology of directed meanings in learning, studies L. Ts. Kagermazova, the influence of students’ meanings is described by I. A. Nesterenko. Ideas of personalized, semantic learning are an important milestone of modern psy- chological and pedagogical thought. This ap- proach, built on the theory of meaning relative to learning activity, develops in the integrative model of sense formation in the educational process developed by I. V. Abakumova (Aba- kumova I. V. et al, 2014). In this theory, the prerequisites for the personal development of students, which create conditions for more complete self-regulation, are considered as fundamental. Namely, the personal component is indispensable in independent activity. Sense formation is understood by I. V. Abakumova as “the development of individual meanings of the participants in pedagogical interaction: their enrichment and their multidimensionali- ty acquisition through interaction with the per- sonal senses of other subjects of pedagogical interaction, with pedagogical meanings and culture texts” (Abakumova I. V. et al, 2014). In the concept of guided independent learning, which is based on the reorientation of the current learning process from an exten- sive to an intensive basis (I. V. Abakumova, V. T. Fomenko) (Abakumova I. V. et al, 2014, p. 37). Independent activity of students in it is an important psychological link of self- development, at each stage of which we ob- serve the formation of knowledge volume and skills for solving cognitive tasks and progress- ing through the levels of intellectual activity. Determining importance in the independent work effectiveness has a motivation - external, internal and procedural or educational (Aba- kumova I. V. et al, 2014, p.17). Accordingly, when organizing the independent activity of students, the main goal is personal develop- ment, self-realization, creative development, and the application of self-managed learning technologies contributes to this in full. The majority of foreign researchers of the beginning of the XXI century connect the problem of students’ independent activity with the technologies development . They are called in different ways: distance learning, e- learning, flexible training, etc. In the English www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 88 psychological and pedagogical literature, the questions of organizing independent activity are studied in Oxford, the founder of distance university education, where, as described by Ashwin P., Archer I. W, Beck R. J., indepen- dent work is built on the basis of methodologi- cal materials with the participation of tutors. The University’s Education Committee deter- mines the aim of the tutor to develop the in- dividual abilities of the student to master the depth of the subject area, and to work with growing confidence in their abilities. Distance learning is recognized as an evolving element of education throughout the world. M. A. Uddin in his works cites facts that only in the US 6.7 million students were trained online in 2011, which amounted to 32% of the total set in higher education (Ud- din M. A., 2013). The most discussed issue is selecting the content of independent learning. M. Ally em- phasizes the importance of using a multi-ap- proach in the design of distance learning ma- terials. He believes that it is necessary to use a combination of theories, thereby developing distance learning materials. In addition, the author points to the continuity of the science development, new materials of which must be used in the online materials development. In modern foreign studies, issues of the effectiveness of independent activity are being actively considered. J. L. Moore studies the student’s self-regulation characteristics from the social cognitive point of view. The author defines the student’s autonomy as the degree to which the student determines the goals, the learning process and evaluates the deci- sions. He believes that the greatest success in the distance learning courses will be the most self-organized and independent students. J. L. Howland, J. L. Moore note the importance of the issues of independent learning activi- ties research in the context of online learning; lead positive correlations of self-organization with positive academic results and the safety of the contingent of students, as well as their satisfaction with the program. Kelsey Hood Cattaneo points out that there are difficulties in identifying certain didactic categories of active learning pedagogy, which are based on insufficient knowledge of teaching methods (Hood Cattaneo, K., 2017). Y. Vovides, S. Sanchez-Alonso, V. Mi- tropoulou, G. Nickmans point to the active interaction between the teacher and pupils in distance education, which increases the emotional participation of pupils in learning and increases students’ self-motivation, self- regulation and self-management. The authors insist on creating an emotionally supportive learning environment that promotes cognitive development of students and develops critical thinking (Silchenko L. and Zubova T., 2017). J. Oomen-Early, L. Murphy consider that distance learning technology promotes self- actualization of both students and teachers, arguing that distance learning simultaneously facilitates student independence and control, while contributing to the satisfaction of adults self-actualization needs. Thus, the search for ways and methods of development and initiation of independent cognitive activity is key in the current educa- tional situation in the light of the federal state educational standards introduction and educa- tion modernization in Russia. In distance education as one of the tech- nologies for initiating independent activity, researchers find distinctive developmental markers, which are fixed in this form. Distance education assumes an interaction between the learner and the cumulative (teachers plus oth- er students) the subject of the information en- vironment, in which the environment becomes simultaneously the subject of intellectual ac- tivity and its (the environment plus the learn- er) subject. The psychological grounds for the development of independent students activity in the distance education system are revealed: first, in distance education, the environment acts as a means of expanding the conscious- ness and memory of a person and becomes a form of individual consciousness being and memory; secondly, the processes occurring within the learning system are represented in the outside and vice versa; thirdly, the very process of education is a model of intellectual activity in general, it can be easily seen that it is structured and allows you to isolate, objec- tify and study its various functions; fourth, the “impersonal” and “formalized” process of dis- tance learning, in deep structure carries the de- veloping potential of a very wide spectrum of action: the formation of productive, creative functions of thinking, the growth of intellec- tual abilities, the formation of the operation- al style of thinking, formed the motivational structure of the personality, the development of self-organization skills, personal develop- ment through the development of character; fifth, the competent use of all pedagogical in- fluence factors is a factor in the identification and intensification of the motivational mecha- nisms of the adolescent’s personality; sixthly, the use of specially developed technologies for the independent activity initiation will help www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 89 to increase the educational and cognitive mo- tivation through the initiation of various types of activity: involuntary, voluntary and post- operative, while the various personal spheres of the student develop. Our author’s approach consists in exam- ining the technologies of distance education in the context of their sense-building poten- tial (the theory of sense formation by I. V. Abakumova) (Abakumova I. V. et al, 2014); and also the description of the possibilities of using each technology type in the context of interactive education, taking into account its meaning-creating role (Bakaeva I., 2016). Under the technologies of initiating the independent activity of students, we mean the system of teachers and students activity in the educational process, built with the aim of developing students’ independent activity in accordance with the principles of the cog- nitive independence development and using a certain set of methods (in particular, distance education technology). The activity of the teacher in terms of developing specific technologies that cause the students’ educational and cognitive mo- tivation should be based on the system of ac- tivity, through the development of different activity types. We propose a scheme for initi- ating independent activity using various tech- nologies that initiate certain types of student’s cognitive activity. So the independent activity initiation through various technologies, for example, information transfer technologies or develop- ing technologies determine the impact on vari- ous information perception channels, which triggers the initiation of involuntary cogni- tive activity. Interactive technologies such as brainstorming, corporate interaction, game modeling, in addition to teaching and devel- oping effect, cause personal transformation, personal qualities development. The use of technologies for students’ sense formation, such as creative and seman- tic tasks, problem training, discussion meth- ods that focus on the value sphere, involves the initiation of higher motivation levels relat- ed to the personal students senses, and, there- fore, learning and knowledge are appropriated by the students as necessary for themselves, and there is activation of post-cognitive activ- ity. In distance education control plays an important role as an integral component of managed learning. Self-monitoring and self- evaluation of students develop through auto- mated regular monitoring, and, thus, volun- tary cognitive activity is activated. The use of information technology in distance education implements other psycho- logical mechanisms. Thus, an increase in the proportion of independent work and a decrease in the role of pedagogical influence makes it possible to make this impact more directional. The teacher in his communication with the students sets an indicative basis for the ac- tion, and then the student himself justifies the scheme of activity. The student increases the proportion of self-esteem when he becomes an active figure in his own educational process. Different level of students knowledge and skills at the entrance to the learning pro- cess does not interfere with the learning pro- cess, but contributes to a more individualized accompaniment by the teacher of the whole process, when each student crosses new mate- rial at his own pace and through his system of tasks. That is, each student takes possession of the material in different degrees and dif- ferent sides of knowledge, this increases the efficiency and objectivity of monitoring and evaluation. In distance learning, taking into account the model of translational learning and the use of all available telecommunication channels, the teacher-learner’s communication is more intimate, since it is more accessible in time and space, and secondly more individualized and personified. That also contributes to the initiation of cognitive activity of students. The development of students’ creative abilities, us- ing creative and semantic tasks is an important quality of distance education. We propose the author’s classification of technologies for initiation of independent activity in distance education. In accordance with the principle of independence and crea- tive thinking gradation; in the classification we can see the interconnectedness and unity of different types of tasks in the learning pro- cess, we highlight development technologies, interactive technologies, information transfer technologies, and the technologies for initiat- ing meaning formation. All these groups have within themselves a cluster of technologies that can be used with the help of distance edu- cation in various electronic shells (in particu- lar, in Moodle technology). These technologies use various psycho- logical mechanisms to attract cognitive inter- est of students, intensify cognitive processes, develop skills of students independent activ- ity, as a result, increase the motivation for independent activity and learning in general. Following I. V. Abakumova, P. N. Ermakov, www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 90 V. M. Antipova we classify technologies on various grounds: the degree of their develop- mental orientation, the degree of interactivity, the methods of information transfer and the meaning-creating potential (Abakumova I. V. et al, 2014). In our study we distinguish such tech- nologies as developing technologies, which include technologies for working with text, project technology, case studies. These tech- nologies help students learn the skills of self- extracting information, while actively using the cognitive structures of memory, thinking, imagination. These technologies are designed for the intensive development of the personal- ity in terms of the organization of the process in conjunction with other students and in inde- pendent activity. The next class of technologies are inter- active technologies as technologies that imply interaction, which are based on the principles of interaction, activity of trainees, reliance on group experience, mandatory feedback. In the context of distance learning, these tech- nologies involve the interaction not only of the teacher and student, but also of students among themselves, as well as of the learner with the teaching medium. These technologies include corporate interaction, brainstorming, decision tree as an interactive technology of collective-group interaction; game simulation and incident method as interactive situational modeling technologies; discussion as an inter- active technology for the development of dis- cussion issues. An important role in the initiation of the students self-educational activity is also in the properly selected and organized technologies of information transfer. In distance education the role of communication is very important. Since there is no moment of psychological contact between the teacher and the student, the structure of perception and understanding of the material changes, the means of percep- tion from the auditory ones change dramatical- ly - in the traditional education, the visual - in the distance learning. To use information more effectively and its role in learning, it is nec- essary to use various channels of information perception when teaching. In distance educa- tion, this is possible with the help of audio-vi- sual information technologies. Where com- puter technologies (interactive textbooks and lectures, audio and video materials, recordings of lectures and educational films, etc.) appear in all their diversity, but also the more tradi- tional technology of teaching through work with the curriculum also remains relevant and important in terms of developing self-educa- tional competence. As a separate group, we sing out the technologies of students’ sense formation ini- tiation as the main group of technologists that influence the deeper value-semantic structures of students and the development of their mo- tivation for independent cognitive activity. These are technologies that are oriented not at “the steady mastering of knowledge”, not on “active thinking”, or on “creative activity”, but directly on the sense-formation of stu- dents, accompanied by more or less expressed states of experience. With regard to distance learning, the most clearly represented from this class are technologies of creative and se- mantic tasks and problem training. Thus, the use of different groups of tech- nologies, oriented to different areas of men- tal development, which in fact are different in form and content, we use human development resources. Sense-forming potential of technol- ogies allows to deduce independent activity of pupils on a new level, generating new person- al senses in training, which lay the foundation for learning throughout life. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS We conducted and analyzed the study of students’ educational and cognitive moti- vation dynamics in the process of distance education. The sample consisted of 103 in- tellectually gifted distance-learning students and 54 full-time students of the Regional Or- ganizational and Methodological Center for Distance Education of Gifted Children, Ros- tov-on-Don, Russia. The age of participants is 13-18 years old, in school they are studying in grades 7-11. The average age is 15 years. In the center of gifted students distance education, students are selected among the prize-winners of competitions and contests, that is, the students respond to the idea of in- tellectually gifted children, as defined by D. B. Bogoyavlenskaya. The study was conducted in three stages: ascertaining (at the beginning of the academic year), forming (during the academic year) and control (at the end of the school year) experi- ment. At the stage of the formative experi- ment, adolescents were trained in supplemen- tary education programs for 7 months. In the content plan, the filling of distance learning programs for full-time associations coincides. The training was carried out by the same www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 91 teachers. The following methods were used in the study of adolescents: • “Diagnostics of the educational moti- vation orientation” (by T. D. Dubovitskaya); • “Focus on the acquisition of knowl- edge” (by E.P. Il’in, N.A. Kurdyukova); • “Diagnosis of the school motivation type in high school students” (by E. Lepesho- va); • Test-questionnaire measuring the achievement motivation (modification of the A. Mehrabian test questionnaire (adaptation of M.Sh. Magomed-Eminov)). A check of statistical significance was carried out using the Mann-Whitney U-crite- ria and the Pearson correlation analysis. Gifted students were divided into three categories: two experimental groups: the first experimental group — regularly and system- atically engaged with the use of active tech- nologies; the second group is not systemati- cally applying active technologies in distance education, the third group is the control one. 3. RESULTS The results of the ascertaining experi- ment have shown that intellectually gifted distance learning students have a higher lev- el of internal educational motivation, a high focus on acquiring knowledge. The study of the motivation for achieving in a sample as a whole shows the students’ inclination for both distance form and full-time form to strive to avoid failures. Students in full-time education tend to be more successful at the beginning of training. The motivation structure analysis at the stage of ascertaining experiment proves that all gifted students in the sample have the pre- dominant motive for realizing the social ne- cessity of education, while students of the dis- tance form have the motive for self-realization on second place, the full-time students have the motive for the studying prestige in the family. Cognitive interest is on third place in all groups. It is also interesting that the last place in the structure of motivation among all groups is occupied by “Extra-curricular school mo- tivation”, which characterizes intellectually gifted students as purposeful personalities, and the modern school as an institution of the education system, rather than entertainment or leisure. Also, the communication motive is fairly low, although it is higher in the group of full-time students than in the others. Comparison of the indicators of educa- tional and cognitive students motivation at the stage of ascertaining and control experiment allowed to see the dynamics in the motivation- al indicators of distance and full-time students (Table 1). Table 1. Comparison the results of ascertaining and control experiment in the distance and full-time intellectually gifted students groups The level of internal educational moti- vation development (according to the method- ology of T. D. Dubovitskaya) as a whole in students of distance education has decreased. The indicator of the level of internal teaching motivation development in full-time educa- tion students has grown. At the same time, the intensity of the motivation for the acquisition of knowledge (or cognitive motivation) as a whole has increased in distance learning stu- dents, and the number of students in full-time education has decreased. As a result of the correlation analysis, a direct high significant correlation was found www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 92 (r=0.45, with ρ≤0.01) between the parameters “level of development of internal educational motivation” (stage 2) and “the direction of motivation of achievement “in the sample of distance form students, as in full-time students group the correlation between these parame- ters is not observed (ρ does not reach the level of statistical significance). The results of the change in motivational structures in different teenagers groups study- ing in distance education regularly (group A) using different methods and dealing occasion- ally via e-mail and assignments (group B) (Ta- ble 2) show that the level of development of internal learning motivation increased in stu- dents group A, that is, those students who ac- tively mastered tasks that develop independent cognitive activity. In adolescents of group B, this indicator decreased. So the level of edu- cational motivation is also associated with the teaching technologies used, along with cogni- tive motivation. Table 2. Comparison the results of ascertaining and control experiment in the groups of distance and full-time intellectually gifted students The indicator of the motivation intensity for acquiring knowledge (cognitive motiva- tion) among students in the first group also increased and among the students of group B decreased. Accordingly, the non-systemat- ic initiation of independent activity and the transfer of excessive responsibility for tuition to students does not increase the educational and cognitive motivation. The achievement motivation in group A has grown in the direction of motivation to achieve success. In the second group, this in- dicator declined. These patterns can be linked to the real success of teenagers in group A in training activities, participation and vic- tories in olympiads and contests. As well as the growth of self-esteem of this category in connection with the development of skills and motivation for cognitive independence. 4. DISCUSSIONS Analysis of the students’ motivation structure in the process of the control experi- ment makes it possible to draw the following conclusions: the value of the indicator “Pres- tigiousness of studying in the family” in the distance education group has increased, this group also increased “Cognitive interest”, that is the desire to learn new things; but the role of “Communication motivation” among distance education students decreased, which suggests that initially not very sociable young people with the introduction of distance education are even more isolated and reject communication. The students of the additional education full-time form have increased the motivation to achieve. The results of the experiment show a sig- nificant impact on the students of the full-time studying form the prestige of studying in the family, social approval by the parents, that is, parents rather determine the choice of the edu- cation forms and priorities of the adolescent’s study, although the motive for comprehending social necessity, achievement and self-realiza- tion also occupies leading positions. That is, the students themselves are trying to realize themselves in teaching. Individual motives: social necessity, achievement and self-realization, cognitive in- terest, - are dominated among the teenagers of the distance education form and only after that we see the motives connected with the fam- ily and parents. That is, students of distance learning are more independent in their choice and self-development. So, with full-time education, the main emphasis is on the child development in the learning process, that is in the face-to-face meeting. In distance education the motivation development goes indirectly through the medi- ated interaction of the teacher and the student through the means of education, which means it goes through the subject of study, accord- ingly, the cognitive motivation develops. Thus the motivation is directed toward the subject. The achievement motivation of all stu- dents (both the experimental and control groups) is reduced in the direction of moti- vation to avoid failure. Thus, the competent and systematic ap- plication of technologies for the students in- www.ijcrsee.com Abakumova I., Bakaeva I., Grishina A., Dyakova E. (2019). Active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 7(1), 85-94 www.ijcrsee.com 93 dependent activity initiation in conditions of distance education has a positive effect on the educational, cognitive motivation and motiva- tion of students’ achievement, thereby devel- oping and initiating the development of cogni- tive independence. 5. CONCLUSIONS Theoretical analysis of the psychologi- cal foundations of the introduction of distance education systems, as well as practical con- clusions of DE application, lead to the fol- lowing generalizations: 1. Distance technologies - are a modern innovative tool for interactive education of students; implementing various models and means of education. The methodology of edu- cation with the use of distance technologies is changing, it becomes nonlinear. 2. The role of student development is important in the learning process. Initiation of independent activity as the training subject ac- tivity, which independently sets a goal, selects the methods of activity and independently compares the result and purpose of the activ- ity, with the help of the teacher. Distance edu- cation has a high development potential - it is the developing opportunities in which a child grows. It is the application of various forms and technologies, based on deep psychologi- cal analysis, that helps to build the educational process in the educational aspect. 3. Along with other technologies, we proposed to refer different forms of distance education to different sense formation tech- nologies and to realize them. Technologies of sense formation initiation can be presented in the form of developing technologies, interac- tive technologies, etc. Using different groups of technologies, oriented to different areas of mental development, different types of devel- opment, which are in essence different in form and content, we use human development re- sources in education. Sense-forming potential of technologies allows to deduce independent activity of pupils on a new level, generating new personal senses in training, which lay the foundation for learning throughout life. 4. An experimental study of the intro- duction of technologies for initiating indepen- dent activities in distance learning has shown that the internal educational motivation and other motivational students’ mechanisms de- pend on the regularity and intensity of the initiating independent activity technology ap- plication, in particular, influences the level of internal learning motivation and the intensity of the acquiring knowledge motivation, mo- tivation to achieve. Consequently, in the pro- cess of adolescents’ independent cognitive activity the inner essence of cognitive moti- vation changes, the personal meaning of the teaching changes, other personal meanings are generated, which in turn affects the increase of competence in the self-education field. 5. The systematic cognitive activity of students influences the structure of educa- tional motivation, so distance education stu- dents are dominated by individual motives of cognitive activity, so students of distance learning are more independent in their choice and direction of personality. 6. It is important to reduce the motiva- tion of communication among distance learn- ing students, both with the regular application of independent activity technologies and with the episodic. This trend is negative. That’s why when developing a distance learning course, it is necessary to use a variety of tech- nologies (interactive lectures, video materials, presentations, wiki-technologies, etc.), com- bining both independent activities and infor- mation and communication technologies (for example, videoconferences, chats and etc.), for the interaction of the teacher and student, and students among themselves. This trend as a basis for the success of distance education is noted by both competent teachers and suc- cessful students. Conflict of interests The authors declare no conflict of inter- est. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The article was supported by the Rus- sian Foundation for Basic Research RFBR (Project No. 18-29-22004 «Psychological and genetic studies of users’ behavior predictors that determine the perception of Internet con- tent of various informational orientation»). REFERENCES Abakumova I. V., Cuculyr A. M., Fomenko P. T. (2014). Sense didactics as a system embodi- ment of the General theory of meaning in the practice of the educational process. Российский психологический журнал, 11(3), 24-32. https:// doi.org/10.21702/rpj.2014.3.2 Bakaeva I. (2016). 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INTRODUCTION 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS 3. RESULTS 5. CONCLUSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS REFERENCES 
work_77odaek6d5hb3a7wldz5dmmtwe	----	AJDE1903.vp Facilitating Cognitive Presence in Online Learning: Interaction Is Not Enough D. Randy Garrison The Learning Commons The University of Calgary Martha Cleveland-Innes Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University This study assessed the depth of online learning, with a focus on the nature of online interaction in four distance education course designs. The Study Process Questionnaire was used to measure the shift in stu- dents’ approach to learning from the beginning to the end of the courses. Design had a significant impact on the nature of the interac- tion and whether students approached learning in a deep and meaning- ful manner. Structure and leadership were found to be crucial for on- line learners to take a deep and meaningful approach to learning. Interaction is seen as central to an educational experience and is a primary focus in the study of online learning. The focus on interaction in online learning emerges from the potential and properties of new technologies to support sustained educational communication. Communication and Internet technologies provide a high degree of communicative potential through asynchronous interaction design options (Garrison and Anderson 2003). From an access perspective, participants are able to maintain en- gagement in a community of learners when and where they choose. Notwithstanding the widely recognized potential of new and emerging communications technology to connect learners, until recently much of the research of collaborative online learning focused on egalitarian possibili- ties. Educators were quick to seize the possibility of a more democratic ap- 133 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 19(3), 133–148 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Correspondence should be sent to D. Randy Garrison, The Learning Commons, The University of Calgary, Biological Sciences Building, Room 530L, Calgary, AB, Can- ada T2N 1N4. E-mail: garrison@ucalgary.ca proach to education as a reaction to the traditional passive, controlling na- ture of much of higher education. However, concerns about the lack of physical presence focused early attention on understanding the social con- text or presence of online learning. Participation and belonging were to be valued first and foremost. In essence, online forums were chat rooms where participation was the primary goal. The purpose of an educational experience, whether it is online, face-to-face, or a blending of both, is to structure the educational experi- ence to achieve defined learning outcomes. In this context, interaction must be more structured and systematic. A qualitative dimension is introduced where interaction is seen as communication with the intent to influence thinking in a critical and reflective manner. Some have argued that in higher education, it is valuable and even necessary to create a community of inquiry where interaction and reflection are sustained; where ideas can be explored and critiqued; and where the process of critical inquiry can be scaffolded and modeled. Interaction in such an environment goes beyond social interaction and the simple exchange of information. A community of inquiry must include various combinations of interaction among content, teachers, and students (Anderson and Garrison 1997; Moore 1989). Interaction in Distance Education Moore (1989, 1990) was one of the first to focus on interaction issues in distance education. He identified transactional distance as consisting of di- alogue (i.e., interaction) and structure (i.e., design). Moore (1989) ex- panded on the dialogue variable and defined three core types of interaction: learner–teacher, learner–content, and learner–learner. Dialogue or interac- tion was recognized as a crucial variable in a distance education environ- ment, which was not necessarily the case with an industrial design ap- proach. Moore’s work precipitated growing interest in issues around interaction in a distance or online learning context. Others accounted for all possible combinations of interaction based on teacher, learner, and content variables (Anderson and Garrison 1997). To capitalize on the potential of online learning for educational purposes, a qualitative shift in the nature of the interaction must be considered. Garri- son, Anderson, and Archer (2000) provided a model of a community of in- quiry that maps and defines educational presence. A community of inquiry is more than a social community and more than the magnitude of interaction among participants. A community of inquiry is the integration of cognitive, social, and teaching presence. Considered together, the three presences ad- 134 FACILITATING COGNITIVE PRESENCE dress the qualitative nature of interactive inquiry consistent with the ideals of higher education. To appreciate interaction and the quality of learning out- comes, one must understand how cognitive, social, and teaching presence come together to create a purposeful community of inquiry. An interactive community of learners is generally considered the sine qua non of higher education. However, interaction is not a guarantee that students are cognitively engaged in an educationally meaningful manner. High levels of interaction may be reflective of group cohesion, but it does not directly create cognitive development or facilitate meaningful learning and understanding. Interaction directed to cognitive outcomes is character- ized more by the qualitative nature of the interaction and less by quantita- tive measures. There must be a qualitative dimension characterized by in- teraction that takes the form of purposeful and systematic discourse. Interaction and Presence Picciano (2002) made a distinction between interaction and presence. Interaction carries with it few conditions with regard to the nature of the communication and influence. Interaction by itself does not presume that one is engaged in a process of inquiry and cognitive presence exists. An ed- ucational experience sets a qualitative standard perhaps best reflected by the model of a community of inquiry. A community of inquiry integrates cognitive, social, and teaching elements that go beyond social exchanges and low-level cognitive interaction (Garrison and Anderson 2003). Rovai (2002) found a “positive significant relationship between a sense of com- munity and cognitive learning” (328). Although the natural and appropriate inclination is to first direct interac- tion efforts to establishing social presence and creating interrelationships, this is only a precondition for a purposeful and worthwhile learning experi- ence. Teaching presence is important for the creation and sustainability of a community of inquiry focused on the exploration, integration, and testing of concepts and solutions. This has been shown to be true in informal pro- fessional development forums, where there is considerable discussion but most of it is of a social nature with only a low level of cognitive exchange (Kanuka and Anderson 1998). This also holds true in more formal aca- demic settings where there is a growing body of research showing that the quantity of interaction does not reflect the quality of discourse (i.e., cogni- tive presence) as measured by the progression through the phases of the practical inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001; Meyer 2003; Pawan et al. 2003). 135 GARRISON AND CLEVELAND-INNES Understanding interaction for the purposes of inquiry is complex. More- over, students are not always prepared to engage in critical discourse, espe- cially if this is in an online learning environment (Angeli, Valanides, and Bonk 2003). This was congruent with the finding of Garrison and Cleve- land-Innes (2004) in that the greatest student adjustment to online learning was most directly associated with issues of interaction—both socially and cognitively. Interestingly, in this study, establishing social presence was more heavily shaped through peer interaction. With regard to successful higher-order learning, however, Garrison and Cleveland-Innes concluded that teaching presence in the form of facilitation is crucial in the success of online learning. There is considerable literature pointing to the relation between teaching presence and perceived learning (Jiang and Ting 2000; Pawan et al. 2003; Picciano 2002; Shea, Pickett, and Pelz 2004; Swan 2001). Swan (2001) concluded that “interaction with instructors seemed to have a much larger effect on satisfaction and perceived learning than interaction with peers” (322–323). More specifically, Angeli, Valanides, and Bonk (2003) studied the quality of online discourse and with low-level mentoring found that only “7% of the replies were justified opinions and claims” (37). Similarly, Wu and Hiltz (2004) reported that online discussions are related to per- ceived learning but varied according to instructional approach. They stated that the instructor’s role is crucial to effective online discussions and “more online guidance, more structured discussion topics and considerable time devotion are required for instructors” (149). Finally, Hay et al. (2004) found in a study comparing online and traditional courses that “instruc- tor-to-student interaction was the stronger of the two interaction measures [student–student the other] in terms of predicting effectiveness for both types of delivery” (200). The primary reason is that instructors are more concerned with fulfilling interaction needs. Interaction and Critical Discourse Accepting that interaction is not equivalent to critical discourse or suffi- cient for sustaining a community of inquiry, what then do we know about teaching and cognitive presence in terms of influencing quality learning outcomes? Synthesizing some of the literature, it would appear that critical discourse and teaching presence have some common features. The first is that if students are to reach a high level of critical thinking and knowledge construction, the interaction or discourse must be structured and cohesive (Aviv et al. 2003; Pawan et al. 2003; Thomas 2002; Wu and Hiltz 2004). 136 FACILITATING COGNITIVE PRESENCE The design feature of successful online courses demonstrates structured discourse that facilitate clear discussion threads, avoid disjointed mono- logues, and move the discussion through the phases of inquiry (levels of thinking). Another important feature found in the literature is clearly de- fined roles (Aviv et al. 2003; Garrison and Cleveland-Innes 2004; Hiltz and Turoff 1993; Meyer 2003; Tagg and Dickenson 1995). Here we find the leadership role of the instructor to be powerful in triggering discussion and facilitating high levels of thinking and knowledge construction. Deep and Surface Learning Levels of thinking and knowledge construction are learning process goals across delivery methods in education. Higher-order learning emerges in a community of inquiry. The concept of approaches to learning (com- monly referred to as deep and surface learning) and related models (Biggs 1990, 1998; Entwistle 1991, 1993) provide a framework for understanding the complex web of relations between learning context and learning pro- cesses that result in particular outcomes for individual students. The instru- mentation from this model was used to evaluate the conditions under which deep learning emerges in online education. Approaches to learning are both a process that carries a student through the learning environment and an outcome resulting from a student’s engagement with the learning envi- ronment. Social and academic interaction in learning environments, whether online or face-to-face, has a demonstrated impact on the approach to learning and outcomes (Cleveland-Innes and Emes 2005). “Approaches to learning” emerge from the combination of student moti- vation and strategies for learning. Students employ varying degrees of three different approaches to learning: deep, surface, and achievement ap- proaches. In a deep approach to learning, material is embraced and di- gested in the search for meaning. Surface learning employs the least amount of effort toward realizing the minimum required outcomes. Surface learners are motivated to complete the task rather than assimilate the learn- ing. Achievement approaches to learning are reflected by an orientation to the external reward for demonstrating learning. Strategies for the achieve- ment orientation focus on the activities that will result in the highest marks. All students are capable of employing any of the three approaches and do so as required by the learning environment; they choose strategies deemed to be most effective based on the requirements in the environment. Students can move from one approach to another and do so in response to the climate and requirements of the course. Without question, a deep ap- 137 GARRISON AND CLEVELAND-INNES proach to learning is the approach to foster in higher education. The mas- tering of material through detailed attention to the intricacies, substance, and limits of a subject area leads to improved academic performance (see, in particular, Svensson 1977). Much has been written about teaching practice leading to deep ap- proaches to learning in higher education (e.g., Ramsden 1992; Trigwell, Prosser, and Waterhouse 1999). Contextual factors such as workload and time constraints, type of learning evaluation, the opportunity for metacognition, the shift of learning management to the students them- selves, and instructor explanation, enthusiasm, and empathy have all been indicated in the development of deep learning. Method The study was conducted from January 2003 to April 2004. It adminis- tered the Study Process Questionnaire to the online course participants (seventy-five students participated) to measure changes in how graduate students choose to strategize their learning in a particular learning setting. These can be either deep, surface, or achievement approaches to learning. Students were asked to complete the questionnaire in reference to the course in which they were currently engaged. Scoring of the instrument in- tegrates motivation and activity relating to all three approaches (i.e., a score for the amount of each approach used by the student is documented at each test). The questionnaire was administered via e-mail and provided predata and postdata on student approaches to learning. Norms for this instrument reference undergraduate students only, so they were not used as a point of comparison for this study. This instrument demonstrates internal consis- tency and coefficients of alpha that ranged from .51 to .81 (Biggs 1987). Questionnaires were delivered electronically via e-mail and returned to re- search assistants the same way. Courses for this study were purposively chosen based on level of inter- action and variation in instructor presence. In addition, core courses nor- mally taken early in each of two programs were selected to include the greatest number of novice online learners and across programs to eliminate program bias. Four courses were chosen involving a total of seventy-five students. All courses were delivered using a combination of print and on- line conferencing. The online conferencing component provided the op- portunity for student–instructor engagement and group interaction. Re- quired conference participation was used for assessment in two courses, whereas it remained a voluntary activity in the others. 138 FACILITATING COGNITIVE PRESENCE The four treatment groups varied from each other in the following ways (see Table 1). In Course A, students critically analyzed readings in small groups with very little instructor involvement. Course B had students re- spond to text “lectures” individually but with little instructor involvement. However, both Courses A and B graded for participation and as a result there was quantitatively substantial online discussion. Course C had volun- tary participation with considerable instructor engagement and presence, but students moderated their own discussion in various forums. It should be noted this was a survey course of the history and foundations of distance education and, therefore, there was less need or opportunity for critique and debate. Course D was designed with deep approaches in mind. There was a high level of instructor engagement with the students in and out of the conferences. There were only four conferences and participation was not required. However, the instructor was heavily involved and questions were posed to generate ongoing and thoughtful responses. Also, the assignments required reflection and thought. There was a purposeful shift to the nature (critical reflection) of the interaction as compared to quantity of postings. Findings The course variable acts as a surrogate for type and level of interaction, and instructor involvement, in online conferences. Time refers to the differ- ence in approach to learning from the start of the course to the end of the course. Based on the theory of approach to learning, the context of the learning environment should influence the way students approach their learning. In an engaging, instructive, and influential learning environment, a change in approach to learning should occur. As this sample represents graduate level study, which normally involves higher-order learning, an in- crease in deep learning is the change most likely to occur. The instrument documents activity in all three approaches: deep, sur- face, and achieving. The possible score range is fourteen to seventy. In 139 GARRISON AND CLEVELAND-INNES Table 1. Instructional Differences Across Groups Course A N = 32 Course B N = 11 Course C N = 13 Course D N = 19 Instructor involvement Low Low Medium High Level of overall interaction High Medium High Low Reflective assignment requirements Medium Medium Low High these data, surface approach has an actual range of sixteen to fifty-six; deep approach actual range is forty to sixty-nine; achievement approach twenty-seven to sixty-one. It is expected that scores across all approaches will vary as students become familiar with the learning environment in which they are currently engaged. In higher education, a deep approach is the desired approach. Deep scores should be the highest and increase over the length of the education experience. A two-way repeated measures Analysis of Variance was used to deter- mine the interaction between time and course for this sample. The be- tween-subjects variable is course (Courses A, B, C, D). The within-sub- jects variable is time (Time 1 and Time 2). The results of the interaction between course and time, for each approach to learning, are presented in Table 2. The difference between approach to learning at Time 1 and Time 2 across courses is significant in one case, that of deep approach to learning (p = .05). Graphic depictions of change in approach to learning over the length of the semester provide patterns of difference across courses (see Figures 1–3). Discussion It is clear from these results that the shift in how students approached their study is strongly influenced by the design and teaching approach. It appears that teaching presence contributes to the adoption of a deep ap- proach to learning and that interaction by itself does not promote a deep ap- proach to learning. Courses A and B, which had little or no instructor in- volvement, showed either no shift or a drop in approaching learning in a deep and meaningful manner (see Figure 1). Deep approaches to learning for Course C (considerable interaction but no critical discourse) showed scores that were relatively low and remained that way throughout the courses. Interestingly, Course C had considerable instructor engagement but showed no shift to a deep approach. From an instructional design per- 140 FACILITATING COGNITIVE PRESENCE Table 2. Analysis of Variance Approach to Learning Source d.f. F Sig. Surface approach Time × course 3, 72 1.421 .244 Deep approach Time × course 3, 72 2.706 .050 Achievement approach Time × course 3, 72 1.291 .284 spective, the content and expectations (i.e., task demand) of the course sim- ply did not require a deep approach. However, Course D was specifically designed to encourage deep approaches to learning through focused criti- cal discourse and participants clearly showed a significant shift to a deep approach to learning. The surface approach graphs for all the courses did not show any signifi- cant shifts (see Figure 2). Although not significant, the findings show a shift to an achievement approach for Course C (see Figure 3). Keeping in mind that an achievement approach is one that reflects the management of activities to achieve the highest grade, this approach to learning would be consistent with Course C conditions. The findings are consistent with the literature discussed previously in that the nature of the interaction and teaching presence are crucial for deep approaches to learning. This suggests that the quality of interaction (i.e., critical discourse) must be a specific design goal and interaction facilitated and directed in a sustained manner if deep approaches to learning are to be achieved. To be clear, social interaction is necessary to establish relation- ships and to create a secure climate that will provide the foundation for a 141 GARRISON AND CLEVELAND-INNES Figure 1. Deep Approaches to Learning deep and meaningful educational experience. However, social presence ap- pears to be directly associated with the magnitude of interaction. There is evidence for this in Course D, a course in research methods, where partici- pants demonstrated a move toward a deep approach to learning. In Course D, interaction with social content was not encouraged beyond brief intro- ductions in the first conference. The first conference was a presentation by students of their experiences with the course topic, and the setting of objec- tives for content and skill mastery in the course. Further conferences were designed to have participants “act as if” they were in the role of researcher, and respond to issues and challenges of knowledge validation and creation from that perspective. Social identity as an individual student was bypassed as the students worked with the mate- rial from a different perspective. Dialogue focused entirely on the subject matter and student perspectives on use, misuse, and application of sub- ject-matter knowledge or expertise. What is critical to note here is that although education is certainly a so- cial phenomenon, there is a much larger purpose of acquiring and extend- ing societal knowledge. Social interaction and presence may create the 142 FACILITATING COGNITIVE PRESENCE Figure 2. Surface Approach to Learning condition for sharing and challenging ideas through critical discourse, but it does not directly create cognitive presence or facilitate a deep learning approach. High levels of learning are dependent less on the quantity of in- teraction than on the quality, or substance, of interaction. That is, social presence may be a necessary but insufficient precondition for creating a community of inquiry and encouraging deep approaches to learning. Teaching presence must be available, either from the facilitator or the other students, to transition from social to cognitive presence. Angeli, Valanides, and Bonk (2003) found that without adequate mentoring or fa- cilitation, interaction “was mostly an exchange of personal experiences and did not support well-supported reasoning” (31). Not surprisingly, in this situation the online conference failed to sustain interest and engagement. Pawan et al. (2003) stated emphatically that “without instructor’s explicit guidance and ‘teaching presence,’ students were found to engage primarily in ‘serial monologues’” (119). That is, participants share experiences or opinions without connecting to other contributions. Similarly, Wu and Hiltz (2004) found that the quality of online discussions could be improved with more structure and guidance. 143 GARRISON AND CLEVELAND-INNES Figure 3. Achievement Approach to Learning It appears that interaction does not necessarily translate into critical dis- course and the integration of ideas into meaningful constructs. This was ev- ident in Course C. Although social interaction (i.e., presence) may be a very helpful precondition, interaction for cognitive success (i.e., high lev- els of learning) depends on structure (i.e., design) and leadership (i.e., fa- cilitation and direction). However, success is not automatic—there is an adjustment period (Garrison and Cleveland-Innes 2004; Ruberg, Moore, and Taylor 1996). Students must be provided structure and leadership to become engaged and responsible for approaching learning in a deep man- ner. Although space does not permit exploration here, we have been dis- cussing issues of dialogue/interaction (including teacher–student) and structure that is not dissimilar to Moore (1989, 1990). Meaningful engagement does not simply correspond to sending lots of messages. It may mean that a student is engaged vicariously by following the discussion, reflecting on the discourse, and actively constructing mean- ing individually. Ideally, interaction would be required to confirm under- standing. However, students may be cognitively present while not interact- ing or engaged overtly. This reveals another challenge in understanding the qualitative nature of interaction in an online context. Understanding a complex concept such as interaction must be viewed from a comprehensive perspective. The community of inquiry framework defines the context that can support quality interaction and deep learning. A deep approach to learning must consider all three elements of the com- munity of inquiry: social, cognitive, and teaching presence. The findings here suggest that neither social presence alone nor the surface exchange of information can create the environment and climate for deep approaches to learning and meaningful educational exchanges. Quality interaction and discourse for deep and meaningful learning must consider the confluence of social, cognitive, and teaching presence—that is, interaction among ideas, students, and the teacher. Teaching presence provides the structure (design) and leadership (facilitation/direction) to establish social and cog- nitive presence (i.e., community of inquiry). The community of inquiry model has proven to be a useful framework to analyze and understand in- teraction in an online educational environment. Practical Implications From a practice perspective, we must go beyond social interaction and “serial monologues” if we are to understand the complexity of interaction consistent with deep and meaningful approaches to teaching and learning. 144 FACILITATING COGNITIVE PRESENCE The challenge we face is how we design and facilitate online learning expe- riences to create the cognitive presence consistent with deep meaning and understanding. We focus this brief exploration of teaching interventions on issues of structure (i.e., design) and leadership (i.e., facilitation and direc- tion). It is useful to note that design, facilitation, and direction are the three categories of teaching presence provided by Garrison and Anderson (2003). Together they provide valuable guidelines for creating and sustain- ing cognitive presence in an online educational environment. From a design and organizational perspective, our findings suggest de- fining clear expectations and selecting manageable content, structuring appropriate activities (collaborative and individual), and conducting as- sessment congruent with intended goals: the fostering of a deep approach to learning. In terms of facilitating discourse, it is important to first pro- vide clear participation requirements in terms of length, content expecta- tions, and timeliness (Pawan et al. 2003). Next, it is important to provide engaging questions, focus discussion, challenge and test ideas, model ap- propriate contributions, and ensure that the discourse is progressive. The central focus must be on students creating meaning and confirming un- derstanding. Sustained teaching presence that encourages participation, but is not teacher centered, is crucial. It is not educationally desirable or reasonable from a time-management perspective to have the teacher re- spond to each comment. But it is crucial that the teacher moderate and shape the direction of the discourse. Finally, in any educational context, one can expect instances in which di- rect instruction is required to achieve deep and meaningful learning. That is, there will be times when specific ideas need to be offered, a student needs help, and the discussion needs to be summarized. The goal in deep learning is to move discussion from exploration to integration and then to resolution (Garrison and Anderson 2003). Conclusion The findings here suggest that simple interaction, absent of structure and leadership, is not enough. We need to have a qualitatively richer view of in- teraction. There is a strong need to study the qualitative nature of online in- teraction in terms of teaching and learning approaches. The position here is that the reflective and collaborative properties of asynchronous, text-based online learning is well adapted to deep approaches to learning (i.e., cogni- tive presence). Further study is very much needed to understand the nature of online interaction that will support high levels of learning. 145 GARRISON AND CLEVELAND-INNES References Anderson, T. D., and D. R. Garrison. 1997. New roles for learners at a dis- tance. In Distance learners in higher education: Institutional responses for quality outcomes, ed. C. C. Gibson, 97–112. Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing. Angeli, C., N. Valanides, and C. Bonk. 2003. Communication in a Web-based conferencing system: The quality of computer-mediated in- teractions. British Journal of Educational Technology 34 (1): 31–43. Aviv, R., Z. Erlich, G. Ravid, and A. Geva. 2003. Network analysis of knowledge construction in asynchronous learning networks. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 7 (3): 1–20. Biggs, J. B. 1987. 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Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_7du4cg2zgzfdvgpo2ycfujwojy	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 285 559 IR 012 765 AUTHOR Saba, Farhad; Twitchell, David TITLE Research in Distance Education: A System Modeling Approach. PUB DATE Feb 87 NOTE 21p.; Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (Atlanta, GA, February 26-March 1, 1987). For the complete proceedings, see IR 012 723. PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) -- Reports - Research /Technical (143) -- Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Computer Simulation; *Distance Education; *Models; Programing Languages; *Research Methodology; *Systems Analysis IDENTIFIERS AECT Research and Theory Division Meeting; System Dynamics ABSTRACT This demonstration of the use of a computer simulation research method based on the System Dynamics modeling technique for studying distance education reviews research methods in distance education, including the broad categories of conceptual and case studies, and presents a rationale for the application of systems research in this area. The technique of model development using the System Dynamics approach and the DYNAMO simulation language is then described, and six steps for model development are outlined and applied to the development of a prototype model: (1) identifying a problem and conceptualizing a system model representing the problem; (2) developing a causal-loop diagram of system functions; ;3) developing a flow diagram based on the causal-loop diagram; (4) developing a set of DYNAMO equations representing the model; (5) running and testing the model; rnd (6) evaluating policy options in relation to the problem and in light of the results of the simulation. Discussions of the limitations of the simulation exercise and the development of a more complex and realistic model conclude the paper. Diagrams are included throughout, and a list of 17 references and a sample DYNAMO program are attached. (MES) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** RESEARCH IN DISTANCE EDUCATION; A SYSTEM MODELING APPROACH Farhad Saba, Ph. D. Associate Professor Drp---tment of Educational Technology San Diego State University David Twitchell Graduate Student Department of Educational Technology San Diego State University Association for Educational Communication and Technology Research and Theory Division Atlanta February-March 1987 BEST COPY AVAiLABLE 3 INTRODUCTION This presentation will demonstrate a computer simulation research method based on System Dynamics wodelig technique for studying distance education systems. The presentation will include: a brief review of research methods in distance education, rationale for systems research in distance education, technique of model development using System Dynamics approach and the DYNAMO simulation language. display of a computer simulation of a prototype model. audience participation in changing critical variables in the prototype model to observe related changes in the model's behavior. RESEARCH METHODS IN STUDYING DISTANCE EDUCATION SYSTEMS1 Published research in the field of distance education covers two broad categories of conceptual studies and case studies: Conceptual studies- Literature related to concepts of distance education have served at least three purposes. They have: offered definitions for the field, provided conceptual models for various systems and, presented current and future trends in the field. For example, Keegan (1980), analyzed several definitions of distance education suggested by experts in the field, and discussed their conceptual, organizational and social ramifications. Furthermore, Keegan (1980) and Holmberg (1981) have delineated the purpose of distance education as follows: to eliminate time and distance constraints in the delivery and utilization of educational services, to provide educational services to those unable to participate in conventional learning, and to provide continuing education to adults who wish to acquire new skills and knowledge. Pery (1977) provided a detailed account of the British Open University (BU). Besides its own merits Pery's work is significant in that BU has been emulated in several parts of the world as a viable model for developing new distance education organizations. Zigrell (1984) reviewed distance education systems in the United States and presented a 1 Distance education is a relatively new term for a field that has encompassed educational broadcasting, as well as non-electronic means of disseminating educatioual information. In this presentation, the term distance education includes electronic as well as non-electronic means of reaching learners in diverse geographic locations. 4 2 pragmatic approach to the field that is based on student needs, available delivery systems and economic realities. Castistudics- In studying distance education systems researchers have relied heavily on the case study method of inquiry. IL such studies either the entire structure of a distance education system has been analyzed, or a particular function is selected for analysis. In most case studies at least one or all of the following functions within a structure are analyzed: Social context and the governance of the system, Administration and organization, Modes of communication, Instructional (curriculum) development, Production, distribution and utilization, Attitudes towards the system and Learne:s and learning outcomes. For example, Mayo and Hornik (1976) provided a comprehensive study of the educational television system in El Salvador. Schramm, Nelson and Betham (1981) studied the educational television system in American Samoa. Concentrating on higher education's use of distance education, Harry and Rumble (1982) edited an anthology in which case studies on several countries were presented. These included the U.S.S.R., the United Kingdom, the United States, and the People's Republic of China. In case studies that are concerned with a distance education system in its entirety, as well as those studies that are only concerned with a specific function within a system, different methods of inquiry have been employed to learn about each function. For example: descriptive analysis is useu to show how distance education systems are organized and governed. cost-benefit analysis is used to study financing and budgedng of systems, course evaluation methods are used to .tidy curriculum effectiveness, survey methods are used to study utilization patterns and user attitudes towards the system, experimental research methods are used to study learners and to measure learning outcomes. RATIONALE FOR SYSTEM RESEARCH IN DISTANCE EDUCATION The research methods outlined above, while provide information about each functions of a distance education system, do not shed any light on the relationships among these functions. For example, descriptive studies show different organization structures and governance practices, and experimental studies show how well learners learn thro'igh distant means. But neither of these methods, nor other methods mentioned above provide any information about the relationship between how a system is organized and governed and how well learners learn. System research provides four critical types of information that may not be readily attainable through the use of other research methods. They are: how one part of the system affects the other parts and is affected by the other pans. 5 3 how each part as well as all parts, collectively, help or hinder the system to achieve its goals. how the system interacts with its social context (environment.) what alternative policies r the system toward its goals in the future. For example, systems research can produce information on how the governance and financing of a system may affect instructional development, production, dissemination and learning outcomes within a system. Or how increased or decreased learning outcomes may affect financial and political support for the system (through its governance function) that in turn affects all the other parts of the system. Furthermore, system research can provide information on how each system is affected by changes in its environment: How social change, political change or economic development as a whole may affe;.t the behavior and the life of a distance education system. Using system analysis one can delve into questions such as how distance education systems could be affected by: demographics of a society (aging of a population, change in ethnic composition of a society, etc.) and/or, political mood of a society (rise in conservatism, isolationist attitudes etc.) and/or, economic developments (increase in high-tech manufacturing, fluctuating cost of transportation , etc.) In addition, systems research and particularly System Dynamics assist evaluators, managers and personnel of an organization to: explicate their assumptions and perceptions about goals objectives, policies and.future plans articulate their assumptions, and perceptions in precise terms. share their assumptions, and perceptions with colleagues in public. modify their assumptions and perception to reach organizational goals more effectively, and efficiently. Distance education as a system- In recent years, social scientists have used the concept of general systems theory and related modeling methods for understanding complex social phenomena and for designing new organizations (Ackoff and Emery 1972, Forrester, 1972, Churchman 1979, Roberts, et. al., 1983, Wilson 1984). In the field of distance education systems research has been minimal. Saba and Root (1976) used System Dynamics methods to design and simulate a distance education system in the Middle East. Vazques-Abad and Mitchell (1983) used system modeling concepts to develop an economic evaluation model for distance education projects. Realizing the paucity of system research in educational technology in general Heinich (1984) called for an increased use of systems analysis techniques for learning about education and for designing new organizations for educational purposes. If applied to distance education, system analysis could assist educators to: understand the comprehensive structure of distance education; identify critical functions of distance education; predict and control the intertwined relationships among the functions of a distance education system; 6 4 determine the optimal performance of a distance education system for serving its clients (learners, parents, etc.); determine the impact of environmental changes on a distance education system and the impact of the system's performance on its environment. design more effective and efficient distance education systems. SYSTEM DYNAMICS Description and applications- System Dynamics is a technique for translating intuitive models into causal-loop diagrams in which the effect of one system function on other affected functions are clearly depicted through positive or negative feedback loops. Based on such feedback loops or causal-loops, flow diagrams are developed in which each system function is shown in terms of a level or a rate of performance. The technique provides for translating the flow diagram into a set of more formal mathematical equations in DYNAMO: a simulation language. System Dynamics allow objective observation of each system function in terms of its present level of performance and the rate in which this level is decreased or increased through time. DYNAMO is capable of plotting the performance of each system function and the performance of the system as a whole in specific time intervals in the future. Objective observation of system functions is not limited to collection of statistical data on rates or, levels of system variables. The strength of this technique is that it allows for inclusion of underlying assumptions about how system functions behave, or how they should behave. These assumptions that are made by the personnel in charge of system functions, are not overlooked, and are included as key elements in developing system diagrams and writing equations to represent these diagrams. This method has been used to study a variety of social phenomena, organizations and systems ra, sing from the future of the world (Forrester 196'.) to industrial relations, ecological systems and the growth and decay of cities. (Meadows & Robinson 1985.1 If applied to research in education, it is a versatile research method that can provide much needed information on how educational systems are affected by the nature of their own structure and organization as well as their contextual environments. Technique of model development- Roberts et al (1983) suggests six steps for mode! development using System Dynamics: 1- Identifying a problem and conceptualizing a systel.i model representing the problem. 2- Developing a casual-loop diagram of system functions. 3- Developing a flow diagram based on the casual-loop diagram. 4- Developing a set of DYNAMO equations representing the model. 5- Running and testing the model. 6- Evaluating policy options in relation to the problem and in light of the results of the simulation.(pp. 8) The same steps were followed in developing this simulation exercise. 1- The Problem Hawkridge and Robinson (1982) studied welve educational broadcasting systems in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and the United States and observed that distance education systems receive their funding from a variety of sources. They found that some systems are funded by federal, regional or local governments, while others receive their funds from student fees or private donations. All observations, however, showed that 5 financing of the system was a very influencial factor in how the system is managed. These observations led Hawkridge and Robinson to recommend that: a) Managers should carry out detailed analyses of sources of financing for educational broadcasting, to avoid neglecting potent. sources, and b) In the same way, they should carry out cost analyses based on functions (for example general administration, conception, production, distribution, utilization, evaluation) to enable them to determine the balance of resources allocated to each function and whether this is the correct balance. (pp. 149-150). These recommendations provided the framework for formulating two basic questions for the simulation exercise: a) Does the initial number of students enrolled in a distance education system affect the resources allocated to the system? b) How do resources available to the system affect the performance of each system function? 2- The Causal Loop Diagram. To answer these questions, by developing a casual-loop, we assumed a positive feedback loop between the number of students enrolled in a system and the amount of resources made available to the system; that is the more individual students pay to take telecourses, the more money available for that system. And the the more resources made available to the system, the greater the number of students that can be served by the system. This assumption defines the purpose of a distance education system: To use its resources to reach as many members of its intended audience as possible to enhance their learning. Diagram No. 1 demonstrates this basic relationship. Resources Available Number of Sutdents Enrolled Causal Loop Diagram No.1 8 6 The next step in further development of the causal loop diagram was to determine the basic functions of a distance education system, since our second question is how resources available to a system affect the performance of its different functions. The literature survey showed that while, the structure of educational broadcasting systems differ greatly, most systems possess the minimum functions required for fulfilling their purpose. Most organization charts depicted by Hawkridgc, and Robinson (1982) included the following essential functions: management and administration, instructional development, media production and dissemination of instructional information. The causal loop diagram, therefore, was augmented to show that resources available to a distance education system support its basic functions of organization development, instructional development and production. Instructional programs developed through these functions are made available to the learner by another function which is dissemination. An intuitive assumption was that programs disseminated affect the number of students enrolled, which in turn affect the level of resources available to the system. Dissemination Production Developnt Management Recources Available Causal Loop Diagram No. 2 Simplicity was a basic criteria in developing the system model at this stages therefore, several intervening functions were left out of the diagram. For example, resources mad;.: available to a system may be affected by other elements in addition to the number of students enrolled. The wish of a community to support a distance education system, regardless of the number of students enrolled, may be instrumental in increasing or 9 7 decreasing the rate of resour.cs allocated to a distance education system. It is also reasonable to assume that the number of students enrolled may be affected by instructional support services. That is, the more instructional support services offered to students, the higher the number of students who would be willing to receive educational services from a distance education system. These examples contain crucial environmental variables in distance education projects. These functions are extremely important and should be included in more complex models. 3- The Flow Diagram. A flow diagram was developed based on the causal-loop diagrams to further explicate and formalize the assumptions for model development. A prose description of the flow diagram follows: The level of available resources to a distance education system at the present time (RESAV .K) is assumed to be affected by a steady rare of monetary allocations (RESAL ) from funds that is dependent upon the number of students enrolled. The rate of expenditure (RESSPT) is increased or decreased by four functions or auxiliaries : organization development (ORGD), instructional development (DEV) and production (PROD). It is assumed that these auxiliaries control the rate of a fourth auxiliary which is dissemination (DISS). Dissemination in turn controls the rate of enrollments (ENROLL) and the rate of enrollments affect the level of student population at the present time (STPOP .K). In addition, this level is affected by another rate which reflect the students who graduate or drop out of the system. Student population at the present time influence an auxiliary or funds which in turn controls the rate of resources allocated to the system. 4- Equations for the Model. The following equations were developed to represent a mathematical formulation of the flow diagram: Insert the equations about here. The following is a prose description of the model to make the model assumptions more clear: Dynamo Distance Education Simulation Description of Terms RESAV RESAL RESSPT This represents the level of moncy available for use in meeting working expences. (Resources available) This represents the rate of funding to the whole distance education process. (Resources allocated) This is the rate of expenditures. (Resources spent) 10 8 T=48 Three years or 48 months is the La.: t.. allocated to the simulation. This is an arbitrary figure, yet a resonable time to determine whcather or not a projection is reflecting reality. PROD The production costs: printing, footage, talent and other working, production expences. PRODIN=0.1 This is the percentage of resources available used for production during each time frame (1 month). D EV The development costs: research and instructional development. DEVIN=0.OS This is the percentage of resources available used for development during each time frame (1 month). This represents the organizations management budget: salarys office expences. administration expences ect.. This is the percentage of resources available used for management and adrnuustrauon during each time frame (1 month). This is the total accumulated budgets: Production.Development and Organization Management. ORGD ORGDIN=0.05 A CBU Di DISS DISSIN=0.2 STUPOP ENROLL EN R OFR TENROL This is the cost of disseminating instruction: equipment, power, maintenance, etc.. (The total dissemination is dependent upon the accumulated budgets.) The percentage of resources available used for the dissemination of an instructional product. This represents the level of student population or the number of students currently receiving services (instruction) from the system. This is the rate of enrollment. The rate at which students begin to use instructional services. This is the enrollment fraction table showing theprojccted effect of enrollment Table figures arc based on estimated expenditures. This is the enrollment fraction based upon tabular data. FROTOP This represents the fraction of the total population that are students receiving instruction. TOTPOP= 500 A total population amount. G RDROP This is the rate at which students exit the student population and arc not receiving instruction. This is the inital number of students in the studentpopul.ition This is a seed number and will be manipulated by the calculations in the porgram. STUPOP=25.00 FUNDS DOLPER=10 The level of funds going into the resources available. Funding is dependent upon the student population. The cost of instruction per/student. (dollar/per/student) . 11 5- Running the Model. Several runs were made to test the equations and debug the formulas. Then the model was run under two different initial enrollment levels. The first run of the model represents a student population of 75 out of a total potential student population of 500 (or 15%). Under this condition in a 48 month period the following changes in the behavior of the model were observed: the level of resources available to the system declined and continued to decrease. while the level of student population increased moderately (slightly surpassing 100) and then started to level off. (See Plot No. 1.I.) there was a dramatic decline in the rate of enrollments in the first six months of the operation. The decline was not as dramatic after this period. but it did continue to do so. The rate of zraduation slowly increased in the first year and then it slowed down to approach ilie same va .e as the rate of enrollments. (See Pio: No. 1.2.) the functions also declined throughout the time of the simulation. The most dramatic was the rate of production which showed a steady decline throughout the 48 month . All other functions. instructional development. organization development and disserrunation also declined toward zero.(See Plot No. 1.4., 800 600 400 PLOT NO 1.1 STUPOP I 20 15 10 10 PLOT NO 1.2 PLOT NO 1.3 RESAL RESSPT ,,IIIII, TIME 11111,4 13 PLOT N01.4 200 IIIIIIIIII 150 100 50 11 ,.......... 0 TIME ili DEV Ow 48 For the second run of the model the initial student population was changed to 100 to represent 20% of the total population. Under this condition it was observed that: the level of available resources declined slightly in the first few months, but then it went back to its initial value and stayed there for the rest of the time. The level of student population, however, showed a dramatic :::;dease to almost include the total population near the 48th month. (See Plot No. 2.1.) the rate of enrollments showed a decline during the first two years of the operation, while the rate of graduation increased durir,_, this time. As it could be expected, both rates showed a tendency to approach the same value in the future. (See Plot No. 2.2.) the rate of resources allocated decreased slightly in the first half of the simulation, but then the rate went back to its initial value, and remained there. Whereas, the rate of expenditure showed a dramatic increase during the first 18 mouths, and although it began to slow down, it still remained at an impressive value. (See Plot So. 2.3.) the rate of functions experienced healthy values in this run. Production declined slightly during the first half of the simulation time, then it increased to regain its initial value. Instructional development, organizational development, and dissemination, however, kept the same rate of performance during the entire time. (See Plot No. 2.4.) 14 800 600 400 200 20 15 10 12 PLOT NO 2.1 STUPOP ..------- RESAV 0 411111 TIME 111110 48 PLOT NO 2.2 IENROLL I fl.------------1GRDROP I 411 TIME 15 1111,0 48 4 3 2 1 200 150 100 50 13 PLOT NO 2.3 RESAT. -41 IRESSPT I ..0111 TIME PLOT NO 2.4 11111).. PROD IDISS 0 .41111) TIME illt" 48 16 DEV 14 DISCUSSION The two initial values in student enrollment had different impacts on the resources made available to the system as well as on the behavior of its four functions. Starting with a student population of 75, or 15% of the total population and an initial available resource of $500 (where cost per student is $10), resources available to the system declined to almost $400 in 48 months. Whereas, with an initial student population of 100, resources available declined slightly to $475, but went back to its original value at the 48th month. In the first scenario all four functions declined during the 48 months. As the system grew older the rate of resources allocated to organization development, instructional development, production, and dissemination sloped downward. Student population increased during the first few months of the simulation but , did not go beyond 100 students or 20% of the total population. In contrast, with the initial student population of 100 all four functions showed a steady rate of performance. Their rate neither increased nor decreased, except for a slight decrease in production; only for it to regain its initial value later on. Enrollments, however, did increase to include 400 students or 80% of the total population. In this exercise, the second scenario showed a viable distance education system, which would be expected to function at least for four years, with healthy enrollment levels (80%) and rates of performance in its organization development, instructional development, production and dissemination functions. Whereas, the first scenario showed a system that would experience low levels of student enrollments (20%) and declining rates in all of its four functions. It is more likely for a system operating under the second scenario to grow and prosper, but less likely for a system to continue a healthy life under the assumptions of the first scenario. The behavior of the system under the first set of assumptions provide reasons for its managers to intervene and attempt to change one, or a few of the key factors to make it a more viable operation. The scenario under the second set of assumptions provide information about the kind and the degree of changes that would be necessary to make a system more viable. CONCLUSION The objective of this simulation exerck.: was limited to the demonstration of System Dynamics as a tool for research and organization development. It was specifically limited in scope in two respects:1) It did not represent a real referent in so far as its assumptions were not based on observation of an operating distance education system. 2) The model neither included the influence of environmental elements on the "internal" functions of the system, nor was it concerned with the impact of the system on its environment. Many elements such as the will of the community, the effects of a support sub-system on enrollments etc., were left (.,ut at this stage. To develop and simulate a more realistic model, assumptions reflected in the model should represent factual information from an operating distance education system. Such factual information should not be limited to statistics on expenditures, enrollments etc., but should reflect the assumptions of the key personnel in charge of functions, budgeting and planning. A main purpose for using System Dynamics is to make assumptions and perceptions of the people concerned about a system precise and public, so that they may be criticized and improved in the future. In addition, a more complex model should be developed to reflect environmental factors, such as public expenditure on education, community policies, needs of employers, geographical factors, etc. A more complex model will help to enhance our understanding of the role of distance education in its societal context. 15 System Dynamics Flow Diagram for Simulating a Distance Education System 18 16 REFERENCES Ackoff, R., & Emery, F. (1981). On Purposeful Systems. Chicago IL: Aldine, Atherton Churchman, C. W. (1968). Systems approach. New York, NY: Dell. Forrester, J. W. (1961). Industrial dynamics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harry, K., & Rumble, G. (1982). The_distance teaching university. New york, NY: St. Martin's Press. Hawkridge, D., & Robinson, J. (1982). Organizing educational broadcasting. London: Croom Helm. Heinich, R. (1984). The proper study of instructional technology. Educational Technoloav and Communication Journal, 32 67-87. Holmberg, B. (1981). Status & trends of distance education. London: Kogan Page Limited. Keegan, D. (March, 1980) On defining distance education. Distance Education, 1 (1), 13-36. Mayo, J. Hornik, & R. McAnany, E.. (1976). Educational reform with television: The El Salvador experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press Meadows, D. H., Robinson, J. M., (1985). The electronic oracle. Chichester, Great Britain. John Wiley & Sons. Peiy, W. (1977). The Open University. San Francisco, CA:, Jossey-Bass. Saba, F., & Root, G. (1976). Educational television: A new frontier. Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, IEEE. (pp. 111- 114). Washington, DC. Schramm, et. al. (1981). Bold experiment: The story of educational television in American Samoa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Roberts, N. et. al. (1983). Introduction to computer simulation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Wilson, B. (1984). Systems: Concepts. methodologies, and applications. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons. Vazquez-Abad, J. & Mitchell, P. L,. ,august, 1983). A systems approach to planning a tele-education system. Programmed Instruction & Educational Technology, 20, (3). - . Ziegrell, J. (1984). Distance education: An information age approach to adult education. Washington, DC: Inqructional Telecommunication Consortium. American Association of Continuing Education of Community and Junior Colleges. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 246 311) 17 DISTANCE -6)UCATION SYSTEM DEL NOTE REVISION 11/26/86 NOTE NOTE NOTE RESOURCE SECTOR NOTE L RESAV.K=RESAV.J+(DT)(RESAL.JK-RESSPT.JK) N RESAV=500.00 NOTE INITIAL RESOURCES NOTE R RESAL.KL=FUNDS.K/T NOTE ALLOCATIONS DEPEND UPON FUNDINGS NOTE WHICH DEPENDS UPON STUDENT POPULATION NOTE R REESPT.KL=(ACBUDJ.K+DISS.K)0.5/T NOTE E`e,PENDITURES DEPEND UPON ACCUMULATED BUDJETS NOTE NOTE NOTE REMEMBER T= TOTAL TIME OR 36 MONTHS C T=48 NOTE NOTE PRODUCTION BUDGET NOTE A PROD.K=RESAv.K*PRODIN C PRODIH=0.1 NOTE NOTE DEVELOPMENT BUDGET NOTE A DEV.K=RESAV.KXDE')IN DEVIN=0.05 NOTE NOTE ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT BUDGET NOTE ORGD.K=RESAV.XORGDIN C ORGDIN=0.05 NOTE NOTE NOTE TOTAL ACCUMULATED BUDJETS NOTE A ACEUDJ.K=PROD.K+DEV.K+ORGD.K NOTE NOTE NOTE INSTRUCTIONAL DEVELOPME1 SYSTEM MODEL NOTE NOTE DISSEMINATION SECTOR NOTE A DISS.K=ACBUDJ.K+RESAV.KnISSIP.4 C DISSIN=0.2 NOTE NOTE TOTAL DISSEMINATION DEPENDS UPON ACCUMULATED BUDJETS NOTE NOTE STUDENT POPULATION LEVEL NOTE L STUPOP.K=STUPOP.J+(DT)(ENROLL.JK-GRDROP.JK) NOTE R ENROLL.KL=DISS.KXENROFR.K 20 . NOTE RATE OF ENROLLMENT DEPENDS UPON 7:,-,'ED4:ITURES NOTE NOTE A ENROFR.K=TABLE(TENROL,FROTOP.K,0,1,0.1) NOTE NOTE EROLLMENT FRACTION BASED UPON TABULAR DATA NOTE T TENROL=0.18/8.18/0.09/0.09/0.08/0.07/0.05/0.05/0.04/0.03/0.02 NOTE NOTE ENROLLMENT TABLE NOTE A FROTOP.K=STUPOP.K/TOTPOP NOTE NOTE FRACTION OF TOTAL POPULATION WHO ARE STUDENTS NOTE C TOTPOP=500 NOTE TOTAL INITIAL POPULATION NOTE NOTE R GRDROP.KL=STUPOP.K/T NOTE RATE OF MATRICULATION NOTE N STUPOP=25.00 NOTE INITIAL STUDENT POPULATION NOTE FUNDING NOTE NOTE FUNDING IS Z,EPENDENT ON STUDENT POPULATION +STUPOP=+FUND A C NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE FUNDS.K=STUPOF.K*.05-(DOLPER DOLPER=10 DOLLARS PE? STUDENT FUNDS THEN FEED BACK INTO RESOUPCE ALLOCATION PATE PLOT RESAV=R,STUPOP=S SPEC DT=1/PLTPER=1/LENGTH=48 PLOT ENROLL =E , GRDROP =M PLOT RESAL=L,RESSPT=R PLOT PROD=X,DEV=D,ORGD=0,DIS5 =S RUN 
work_7fnwx2hggzbfzmf5qqszibgtay	----	Using algorithms for evaluation in web based distance education Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1777–1780 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.399 WCLTA 2010 Using algorithms for evaluation in web based distance education Tuncay Sevindik a *, Zafer Cömert b aAssist.Prof.Dr., Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Education, Department of Computer and Inst. Tech. Edu, Istanbul,34220, Turkey bRes. Assist., Bitlis Eren University, Faculty of Enginerinf, Department of Computer Engineering, Bitlis, 13000, Turkey Abstract Traditional assessment approaches are still being used in distance education environments. Positive changes have been experienced on dimensions of user, management and teacher in distance education systems at each passing day. In addition to these positive changes, new approaches to be used at the evaluation of distance education are emerging. Each of these approaches is an algorithm. In this study, the algorithms to be used at the evaluation of distance education platforms are analyzed and compared. Distance education algorithms as K-means, Apriori, C45, Support Vector Machines (SVM), KNN and Naive Bayes are created the universe and sample of this research. As a result, it is determined that which algorithms can be effective at analyzing of the student behavior, dimension of management and giving more impressive decision of the teachers. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Algorithm, Assessment, Distance Education, Evaluation; 1. Introduction Evaluation concept in education is described as the last step among the items of developing a programme. Evaluation item accepted as a feedback in deciding wheather a concept of education is effective or not, is the most important keystone in modern education system. Also it is an important step in traditional or internet based distance education system at the time of decision to reach the target. Evaluation concept is also divided in to two approaches as traditional evaluation and alternate evaluation. However both types of the evaluation are used in distance education in addition to traditional education. But in distance education environment generally traditional evaluation approach is used. Its most important reason is that data, web and text mining is not generally employed in evaluation perception in distance education environment. Firstly what is distance education? Distance education is a concept which helps teacher and student get together in dual interaction, different place and time or simultaneous different places via single or dual interaction and saves up time and place. One of the most important questions in modern education systems is there are not enough qualified teachers and the ones who exist just educate a very limited group. And the limited education environment is at schools in certain determined time and place. Distance education approaches eliminate these limits and enable qualified educators reach anywhere in the world. Even if distance education cannot be seen as a significant rival to face to face education, owing to limitations of face to face education, distance education is needed as an alternative way. At this point distant * Tuncay Sevindik. Tel.: +0-506-894-2277 E-mail address: tsevindik@gmail.com. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1778 Tuncay Sevindik and Zafer Cömert / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1777–1780 education will be the first option to be chosen because of its ability reaching larger groups and being used without limitation of time and place. The previous distance education systems were one way newspaper, radio, letter or television based ones. We are introduced to computer based distant education with the development of computers and in 1990’s with internets becoming widespread we are introduced to totally internet based education environments. Even if it is common idea that distance education concept appeals to students only, it is also for the usage of the adults and the people who have professions like providing in-service training. There are various distance education models used around the world and a lot of studies to improve these models. Since 1955 the options of distance education have increased with the development of radio and television. The emergence of satellite technology has enabled the distance education in different countries. As an example "Open University" in England founded in 1968 provides distance education in other countries. In 1980’s when the comptuter technology became cheaper, the usage of computers became widespread. With the inrease of opportunities provided by the internet, computer becomes very effective in distance education system (Da & Varol, 2001). "Distance education is a kind of revolutionary breakthrough and pioneer contemporary education model in education environment which has emerged during 1920’s technological developments." (Da & Varol, 2001). In distance education, content and education management systems are the second and the third part of developing a programme but there are still shortcomings in the evaluation size. In distance education, only multiple- choice, true-false or matching exams are applied but still it cannot be checked by written examination to check wheather the student is on the level of cognitive evaluation. More than sixty years after the introduction of the first computer system, Internet has become the standard platform for e-learning environments. E-learning, the contemporary version of distance education, is mainly web- based, conducted by means of Internet-connected computers running special programs (learning content management systems, LCMS), which bring learners, teachers, courses and collaborative technologies into contact (Yannis and Mavrommatis, 2009). It can be seen that programme elements are being used in distance education systems as well as in traditional education systems. When programme elements are examined, it is observed that it consists of target, content, educational status and evaluation stages. Then after the questions of target or why they do distance education are answered it comes to the stage of content and educational status in accordance to the programme elements. At this point according to content, education management systems step in content management systems and in developing or guiding content. We see a lot of content and education management systems has been developed in present conditions. But there is not a contemporary approach to complete these systems. During the evaluation stage to check whether the individual reaches the goal by written examinations in distance education systems. To be able to evaluate and conclude the individuals’ or students’ navigations during the distance education environments. To reshape the content by means of students’ purposely educational navigations between the units of content. The answer to all these applications emerges the considerations of evaluation of data mining which is taken as a base in internet based distance education approaches. When applications, data mining in internet based environments, are examined, we can see text mining as a core, web mining as middle layer , data mining as the last part of the applications. Of course for all these applications semantic web will be an important inference. Semantic web applications in parallel to development of mining applications will create the structure of semantic web in distance education platforms. 2. Evaluation in Distance Learning In any programme development system, evaluation is one of the most important fundamental parts. Because of the fact that the success of distance education depends on the general performance of the institution, evaluation step Tuncay Sevindik and Zafer Cömert / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1777–1780 1779 has to be planned carefully. As well as evaluation of students, evaluating the program is one of the matters that would influence the success of the institution. The desired goals that is to be reached in program evaluating should be determined well and lacks should be analysed objectively. The situation of reaching the goals, the contentment of students and the teachers should also be evaluated (Monolescu, Schifter, & Greenwood, 2004). Distance education is going towards a student-centred structure like in the other kinds of education. The role of the teachers is changing into a way that eases learning. And most institutions make changes that would control the students’ attendance and the work steps. Although technological means changed, the necessity of teachers have never changed, but the roles have changed. Teachers have become a means between students and information. And using technological means have become a must for teachers. (Beaudoin, 1990). In general, the success rate of distance education is measured with the success in control of the students. How successful students are in lessons, how well they understand the lessons, how much they developed , whether the content is enough or not can be measured by the means of control. Students should be controlled well and in which areas they have problems should be identified. These deficiencies should be worked on to resolve an new techniques should be developed. Methods used in distance education ranked as follows (Bayam & Urin, 2002): 1. Quizzes: After each topic, how well the students have learned the subjects is evaluated with quizzes. In this way, how much they understand the lesson can be seen. 2. Assignments: students should sometimes be given assignments and they should be encouraged to make research. 3. Online examinations: after a certain level of courses, with a general quiz, how well the students follow the courses, how much they understand and how well they learned can be measured. The most important point is how well they learned. 4. The control module of the platform of distance education: in this module, there should be reports that can control the students. Some of these reports should be reached by students for self-control. In this module, there should be the reports of attendance of the students, examination and homework grades, general situation in the class. Moreover, there should be form and chat part and students should be able to ask questions, get help about problematic topics and reach an area of discussion to develop themselves. In addition, new evaluation means are being developed appropriate for the new teaching models. In constructivist learning approach, the evaluation phase is not within the frame of the explanations about what information and learning is, but it is about the process of constructing the information not evaluating it. Constructivist education environment makes it necessary to develop assessment methods that require long-term review instead of evaluation at the final stage in traditional approach. Applying constructivist education and portfolio evaluation method to distance education are examples of this. 3. Algorithms Used in Evaluation C45: This data processing algorithm is used to provide machine learning to solve classification problems. By using a large set of information a decision tree is created under certain conditions and enables to have inferences accordingly. For example: If the weather is sunny and cloudless golf can be played, if it is cloudy and the temperature is low, golf cannot be played. K-Means: This algoritm is a classification system which has a wide usage area. It enables the classification of the given records according to needed qualifications so the same characteristics of goups is classified. Before staring to group, it needs to be inserted the same type of data. In addition, via k-means algoritm data can be divided into desired number of parts according to the smilar features. Because algortm is plain the results are fast and because it is one of the old algotms many suitable software can be found. SVM: Support vector machines is one the most effective way which is used in data mining. In the system it is counted with Support Vector Classifier (SVC) and Support Vector Regressor (SVR). These systems at the beginning of 1990's developed by Vapnik. With its need less samples is one of the reason which makes it prominent. 1780 Tuncay Sevindik and Zafer Cömert / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1777–1780 KNN: This algorithm classifies objects according to their smilarities for the nearest clasification (Pilavc lar, 2007). Naive Bayes: The information provided on the basis of a set of objects belonging to known groups of elements will be used to determine which group would take. Naive bayes is one the easiest and the most effective method, it can be adapted easily and fast to large-sized data. Because it is easy to understand, it is easy to apply and it is easy to learn who dont know much about the system. Apriori: In the systems of machine learing a lot of structures were developed to find a design and to classify. Among these the easy ones always are adapted easily and give effective results. Apriori is to methods to determine design. All these algorithms mentioned are also used easily in text mining at the same time. (Karabatak and Ince, 2010:Wu & Kumar, 2009) Text mining: Text mining mostly focuses on defining data and at the stage of inference. Preliminary stages of this instructed data , are composed of more regular documents into the required format of conversion, this kind of decomposition is not usually seen in data mining systems. Furthermore because they obtained information consist of the texts in natural language format, text mining focuses on natural language processing which is very different field according to computer sciences. Maybe the most striking points about text mining , information extraction, data collection and heap-based linguistic calculation process (Feldman & Sanger, 2007). 5. Conclusion According to the evaluation, evaluation seems to be the most important stage in distance education determining the effectiveness of all programme elements. At the stage of evaluation algorithm C45 is decided to be the effective one in classifying students’ characteristics and academic success. This algorithm is determined to be the effective to decide inferences and a decision tree. Another classifying algorithm K-means classifies students, behaviour and academic success features which are alike when compared to C45 algorithm. According to SVM algorithm it is the best method to evaluate when we lack the number of data. It is used when it is need to decide according to students’ different features and when the data is limited. KNN algorithm’s the most important feature is to match every single document. This situation helps to use the data effectively during evaluation stage. Naive Bayes algorithm is superior to other algorithms because it is known to begin with the data's which are given by the known resources and decide in which group new students should stay. Apriori algorithm with more than one substance decides the relationship between behaviour and data. Text mining is incorporation of all algorithms which have outstanding features to accommodate the art of installing meaning to the texts. Finally algorithms are effective to be used in text mining, have productive features to use in distance education to determine positive and negative features of distance learning. And it also helps to analysis student behaviour, academic success, content analysis at the base of evaluation. References Bayam, Y., & Urin, M. (2002). Uzaktan E itimde Ö renci Takibi ve De erlendirmesi. Aç k ve Uzaktan E itim Sempozyumu. Eski ehir: Anadolu Universitesi. Beaudoin, M. (1990). The Instructor’s Changing Role in Distance Education. The American Journal of Distance Education , 21-29. Da , R., & Varol, N. (2001). Günümüzde Uzaktan E itim Uygulamalar na Genel Bak . 1. Feldman, R., & Sanger, J. (2007). The Text Mining Handbook. New York: Cambridge University Press. Karabatak, M., Ince, M.C.. Apriori Algoritmas ile Ö renci Ba ar s Analizi. www.emo.org.tr Retrieved July 2010 Kayri, M. (2008). Elektronik Portfolyo De erlendirmeleri için Veri Madencili i Yakla m . Yüzüncü Y l Üniversitesi, E itim Fakültesi Dergisi , 100-101. Monolescu, D., Schifter, C., & Greenwood, L. (2004). The Distance Education Evolution:Issues and Case Studies. London: Idea Group Inc. Pilavc lar, .,F. (2007). Metin Madencili i le Metin S n fland rma. Fenbilimleri Enstitüsü, Y ld z Teknik Üniversitesi, Wu, X., & Kumar, V. (2009). The Top Ten Algorithms in Data Mining. New York: CRC press. 
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work_7mykt7xe6zesdgfc3pcybaefiq	----	Digital culture clash: “massive” education in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC Edinburgh Research Explorer Digital culture clash Citation for published version: Knox, J 2014, 'Digital culture clash: “massive” education in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC', Distance Education, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 164-177. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917704 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1080/01587919.2014.917704 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: Distance Education Publisher Rights Statement: © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Routledge This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 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D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 Digital culture clash: “massive” education in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC Jeremy Knox* Institute of Education, Community and Society, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK (Received 4 November 2013; final version received 12 April 2014) While education has been both open and online, the sizeable enrolment numbers associated with massive open online courses (MOOCs) are somewhat unprece- dented. In order to gauge the significance of education at scale, this article analy- ses specific examples of massive participation derived from E-learning and Digital Cultures, a MOOC from the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Coursera. Student-created content, user statistics, and survey data are illustrated to examine the experiences and repercussions of engaging with educational activity where participants number in the tens of thousands. This activity is shown to mirror established instructionist or constructivist approaches to peda- gogy. However, rather than working with “massiveness,” these positions are sug- gested to oppose large participant numbers. Concluding remarks propose an irreducible diversity of participation, rather than a generalised categorisation of “student,” and call for future considerations of the MOOC to move beyond indi- vidualism and self-interest. Keywords: MOOC; instructionism; constructivism; connectivism; individualism Introduction In response to the hyperbole about the institutional disruption and technical innova- tion imposed by massive open online courses (MOOCs) (see Adams, 2012; Lewin, 2012; Marginson, 2012; Pappano, 2012; Pérez-Peña, 2012), those working in open and online education have been keen to bring attention to the different histories and contexts in the field (e.g., Yuan & Powell, 2013). Weller (2013) described the promi- nence of MOOCs as merely the “visible aspect of a broader debate/battle/tension— which is around the role of openness in education” (p. 2), alluding to the considerable body of scholarly work in this area. Looking beyond the conventional claim that digi- tal technology has been the primary determinant of the open education movement (e.g., Brown & Adler, 2008), Peter and Deimann (2013) have made the case for a rich tradition of open educational practices spanning from the beginnings of monastic scholarship, through the coffee house culture of eighteenth-century Europe. Peters (2008) also provided a historical analysis of “openness” through a discussion of Open Educational Resources, a movement which has prompted considerable research on cultures of sharing and reuse of material (e.g., D’Antoni, 2008; Hilton III, Wiley, Stein, & Johnson, 2010; Okada, Mikroyannidis, Meister, & Little, 2012; Richter & *Email: j.k.knox@sms.ed.ac.uk © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Routledge. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecom mons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. Distance Education, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917704 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 mailto:j.k.knox@sms.ed.ac.uk http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/07/17/is-coursera-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-traditional-higher-education/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/07/17/is-coursera-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-traditional-higher-education/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917704 McPherson, 2012; Tosato & Bodi, 2011), or ways of bypassing institutional systems of accreditation (e.g., Macintosh, McGreal, & Taylor, 2011). Additionally, many have challenged the pedagogical rationales of the institution- ally affiliated MOOCs on the grounds that they do not offer anything disruptive to established educational practices (e.g., Bustillos, 2013). In questioning the value of the flipped classroom strategy endorsed by Coursera, Bogost (2013) declared, “The lecture is alive and well, it’s just been turned into a sitcom” (p. 11). Those critical of an impoverished pedagogical model often emphasise the origins of the acronym MOOC, coined in response to a much more radical and experimental course format (see Siemens & Downes, 2008) underpinned by the proposed learning theory of connectivism (Siemens, 2005). It is claimed that such histories and contexts have been largely overlooked, both by the promotion of Coursera, edX, and Udacity, as well as by those critical of the recent MOOC phenomenon (Stewart, 2012). Follow- ing from such concerns about whether the MOOC actually offers anything innova- tive or transformative, what follows is motivated by an interest in what might be genuinely new about this emerging educational format. This article suggests that “massiveness” constitutes not only something unprece- dented in education, but also something of significant value to continued work in an educational domain that is becoming increasingly global in its capacity and reach. In what follows, the case will be made that massiveness is more than simply large enrolment numbers. Such statistics are habitually emphasised in media coverage (Lewin, 2012; Marginson, 2012) and heavily publicised by MOOC organisations themselves, for example, Coursera’s dynamically updating figure for “Courserians,” at the time of writing over 6 million (Coursera, 2014). Huge enrolment numbers are also central to the promotional videos released by edX (2013), suggesting “imagine taking a class with a hundred thousand or more students.” Two further videos claim that edX’s ambition is to enrol a billion students from around the world (edX, 2012a, 2012b). However, this engagement with large numbers is largely based around the idea of education at scale (Stewart, 2013). In other words, it is the repli- cation of an identical educational experience that can be transmitted to large num- bers of students. The dominant considerations of massive participation have thus been concerned with productivity and “efficiency measures that hope to aggregate fewer higher-level (and higher-cost) educational encounters and standardize them for regularized future delivery” (Bogost, 2013, p. 13). Stewart (2013) provides an alternative vision, in which massiveness is consid- ered in terms of the opportunity to expose large numbers of students to digital liter- acy practices and networked environments. Here, the MOOC is judged to hold the potential to expose individuals to “open, decentred practices and distributed expertise” (p. 236). Thus, the massiveness of the MOOC has tended to be defined and understood in terms that reflect the xMOOC and cMOOC distinction (Siemens, 2012): either as the scaling of centralised and identical instruction to unprecedented numbers of students or the opportunity for self-directed learning, in which large par- ticipant numbers are understood as providing the means to construct knowledge independently of teachers and institutions (Rodriguez, 2012, 2013). As shall be dis- cussed, these instructionist and constructivist understandings of education manifest as the dominant approaches to MOOC pedagogy. However, beyond such expecta- tions, under-theorised in MOOC literature is the question of what happens when thousands of people come together and orient themselves around a specific arrange- ment of educational material. 2 J. Knox D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 E-learning and Digital Cultures E-learning and Digital Cultures (known as EDCMOOC) was a five-week MOOC first offered in January 2013 and co-taught by the author. It was developed around the theme of “the digital” across education and popular culture. The course was split into two blocks: utopian and dystopian themes, and notions of the human being in relation to technology. The EDCMOOC utilised a range of public domain short films and open access academic literature as the primary resources. These were curated and annotated by the course tutors as the grounding for student activity, which included discussing themes in the Coursera forum and in personal blogs or other forms of social media. Two live Google Hangouts took place, in which the tutors talked about the weekly themes and emerging topics from student discussion. An image competition was held in week 3, inviting students to represent a course theme visually. The final assignment required students to create a multimodal digital arte- fact—an image, video, or web resource—that represented or explored any of the themes encountered during the course. These artefacts were to be made visible online for subsequent peer assessment. Peak enrolment on the EDCMOOC was 42,844, of whom 21,862 participants were measured as being active within the Coursera pages of the course, constituting a conversion rate of 51% (MOOCs@Edinburgh Group, 2013). The enrolment number places the EDCMOOC close to the typical MOOC figure of 50,000 enrolees (Jordan, n.d.); however, the measurement of active participation is considered more significant for this article. Nevertheless, the importance of this number is questionable when the design of the EDCMOOC is taken into consideration, as discussed below. The EDCMOOC manifested a particular kind of massive participation: one that incorporated both the diversity and distribution of large participant numbers. This was the (not always intentional) result of three principal design decisions: the foreg- rounding of discussion and interaction as the main student activity, the inclusion of student-created work as course content, and the lack of formal group allocation. The course was designed with the intention of challenging what was perceived to be a prevailing tendency in Coursera MOOCs for transmissive pedagogy in the form of video lectures. The typical Coursera offering is behaviourist (Rodriguez, 2013), foregrounding pre-recorded video as the primary course content—the watching of which is predominantly a solo activity—frequently interspersed with multiple choice quizzes. In the EDCMOOC, public domain resources were curated and presented with the aim of encouraging students to explore, interpret, and discuss themes with some level of independence. The resources, in particular the short films and anima- tions, did not provide definitive explanations of the course themes, but rather were intended to serve as stimulus for open-ended discussion and debate. Furthermore, there were no pre-determined learning outcomes or formative quiz testing, features which are somewhat standard in many other Coursera offerings. Thus, what the teaching team considered valuable in the EDCMOOC was not explicitly or exclu- sively contained within the teacher-curated resources, as they might be within a video lecture, or specifiable as definitive or universal outcomes. Rather, the empha- sis was on responses to this material in the form of interactions and discussions, through which students might shape a particular understanding of the course themes. This orientation invited multiple interpretations and responses, which, due to the scale of participation, produced course themes that became diverse and multifaceted. This interpretation is not intended to negate the importance of the teacher-curated Distance Education 3 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 material, or the role of the teacher, but rather to acknowledge the intention that course themes were to be expanded and developed by students. As a result of such interpretations, forum activity, blog posts, and the use of social media quickly generated huge amounts of course content in addition to that placed on the Coursera platform by the teaching team. The forum within the Cour- sera platform acquired 1430 threads, containing 8718 posts and 5146 comments. Of the participants, 2615 posted in the Coursera forum and 1444 commented on exist- ing posts. Outside of the Coursera pages, a blog aggregator was developed to collect and combine posts from the personal blogs of participants, and this was considered as a central resource for EDCMOOC material. This aggregator generated 1340 posts from 300 of the 900 submitted RSS feeds (Scott, 2013). During the course, 4820 participants joined the student-created Facebook group, which became a lively space for conversation and the sharing of additional content. A similar Google + group attracted 1945 members. Twitter became a significant site of course activity in the form of communication and the sharing of blog posts and additional course-related material, utilising #EDCMOOC. In a period of build-up, duration and aftermath, from 7 November 2012 until 14 March 2013, a Twitter analysis reveals 18,745 unique tweets. The daily number of tweets peaked at 720 on 16 February. The con- siderable activity outside of the Coursera platform is indicative of the extent to which the EDCMOOC could be considered a distributed course space. It also may call into question the importance of the active participation figure derived exclu- sively from the Coursera platform. However, of primary importance to this discus- sion are the significant numbers of participants generating substantial amounts of course-related material. This created a compound effect, in which the more responses participants created, the more material was supplemented to the course content. This body of information rapidly became too immense for any single partic- ipant of the EDCMOOC to digest within the specified schedule and duration of the course. This was acknowledged by the teaching team in the course guidance, with students advised and encouraged to independently select content that was relevant or interesting to them. Although the intention was for participants to respond to each other’s work, no formal guidelines for the formation of groups were provided. As explored below, this proved to be a significant decision, primarily because it retained large numbers of participants in all aspects of the course activity and permitted all student-created material to be part of the main body of course content. These aspects of the EDCMOOC design invited a particular kind of massiveness; one that is atypical, but also provides a noteworthy case for considerations of what happens when education involves large student numbers. The next sections discuss ways in which the participants of the EDCMOOC, alongside engaging in the speci- fied activities of the course, began to respond to the experience of being involved in the course itself. Although often related to course themes, such responses surfaced as abstracted interpretations of the phenomena of MOOC participation. These meta- commentaries are discussed in two broad categories: reactions to the experience of large numbers and the offering of solutions to manage the massiveness of the MOOC. I suggest that these responses are of significant interest due to indications about the backgrounds and experience of EDCMOOC participants. In the pre-course sur- vey, 86% of respondents indicated that their highest level of completed academic study was at either undergraduate or postgraduate level, while 51% indicated that 4 J. Knox D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 they were employed in teaching and education. This suggests that a large proportion of the EDCMOOC participants may have had significant prior understanding and experience with the course topics and themes. It may also indicate ingrained expec- tations, or at least convictions, about how education should take place. Of the respondents in the pre-launch survey, 69.2% indicated that the EDCMOOC was the first MOOC that they had enrolled in; and 90% of evaluation survey respondents indicated engagement with the course in order to experience a MOOC. Combined with the indications of professional status, this could suggest that a significant pro- portion of EDCMOOC participants were active in order to form an understanding of MOOCs in general, rather than the specific course content. This also may explain the widespread meta-commentary on the experience of MOOC participation. In these ways, the following reactions and solutions to the massiveness of the EDCMOOC may serve as a useful insight into the range of understandings, perspectives, and approaches of established education professionals entering the emerging domain of the MOOC. Reactions to the massive The massiveness of the EDCMOOC was frequently perceived negatively. One of the most common reactions was the notion of being “overwhelmed.” The terms overwhelming or overwhelmed appeared 62 times in the Coursera discussion forum referring to participation in the EDCMOOC, and surfaced 52 times in the post- course evaluation survey in comments about the experience. The widespread use of this term is significant because it alludes to an anxiety about how the individual lear- ner is positioned in relation to an external and superior force; something too large to comprehend or control. In this sense, the massiveness of the EDCMOOC appeared to represent an external threat to both the individual and the expectation of organisa- tion and discipline in the educational setting. The Coursera forum and evaluation survey revealed a rich set of responses about the experience of participating in the EDCMOOC, which are categorised here into four broad and interrelated themes: metaphors of water, a sense of loss, overload, and noise. Metaphors involving large volumes of water were particularly prevalent in the discussion forum during the course, and present an intriguing vision of massiveness in spatial and material terms. One participant suggested that “the course feels like an ocean so I’m making myself post this comment as a way of dipping one toe into the water.” Another stated “this course was a waterfall, and I only felt a few drops,” expressing an additional sense of loss at being unable to interact with all the mate- rial. These metaphors express a profound anxiety about the large volume of activity and information in the EDCMOOC, yet they also reveal how this concern is related to individual orientation and presence with in the course. One poster suggested being “overwhelmed about how I find my niche and voice in this huge ocean of information.” The ocean serves to indicate both vastness and unfamiliarity here; an alien environment which the embodied individual is ill-equipped to navigate. Com- ments in the evaluation survey were similar, with one contributor claiming, “I felt my input would be lost in the sea of discussions.” Another participant expressed the ocean metaphor in more threatening terms with the suggestion that “the MOOC comes at you like a tsumani & simply swamps you.” This sense of loss in relation to the vast and distributed discussions of the EDCMOOC was palpable in many comments. One participant suggested, “there are Distance Education 5 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 just too many discussions happening, too many opportunities to miss key postings and threads. I felt I was always failing to keep up or get from the course what I wanted to.” Another added, “discussion and interaction was spread over too many systems/mechanisms, making it impossible to know what you might be missing.” This sense of failing to monitor or oversee all aspects of the course was often linked to the pace and weekly scheduling of topics, such as “once I slipped behind with the week’s material it was impossible to get back in line due to the volume of discus- sions.” Another participant claimed, “the discussion forums exploded on weeks 1 and 2 and as a result were virtually unusable if you were even a day ‘late to the party’ I felt.” These sentiments may be related to the status and work-related com- mitments of participants suggested previously. This idea of escaping content was articulated succinctly in a forum comment, describing participation as “the feeling of a runaway train.” Many of these comments also made notable references to issues of identity. One contributor summed up the experience with, “just felt big, lost, and just a number,” significantly linking the sense of loss with a disorientation and devaluing of the self. Therefore, the feeling of loss was not just expressed in relation to the idea of missing key course material, but also with regard to how participants perceived their own position and presence within the course. Notions of “overload” in the evaluation survey often referred to the distribution and magnitude of discussions and resources. One commenter suggested, “I found myself overwhelmed with the pace of the course and the amount of new information thrown out there about websites, resources, platforms. I just did not know which one to follow.” Another stated, “I also felt overwhelmed and confused about all the different ways I could engage and suffered techno-overload trying to look at and read all the different media streams and such.” These observations reveal a signifi- cant concern about the perceived importance of course content. This frustration was apparent in the comment “it was overwhelming, how many social sites were involved, it felt like there was no way to fully interact in the course.” Despite guid- ance to be selective and self-directing in engaging with course material, many stu- dents had clear expectations about the need to absorb and participate in all that was on offer. Student-created material was often considered excessive or superfluous. One commenter claimed, “it felt at times like the course was generating a lot of online pollution. At times the volume of online content created felt a lot like landfill.” The perceived worth of student contributions was frequently devalued in a similar way, attributed to a magnitude of activity often labelled as “noise.” One participant claimed, “the volume of comments and postings became noise and interfered with my learning,” while another suggested “the ‘noise’ from all the students who wanted to shout their opinion (sometimes without listening the previous comments) was unbearable.” This sense of fragmentation and lack of cooperation was described elsewhere in terms of violence: “This was not a commu- nity – more like a cluster bomb. Comments felt like missiles shot at random by the individual posters.” These themes indicate that many students come to such courses with expecta- tions about content and participation that are sometimes neglected in the literature and promotion of MOOCs (Ross, Sinclair, Knox, Bayne, & Macleod, 2014). Rather than automatically manifesting a “learner-centred” environment, MOOCs can pro- voke anxiety about presence and orientation in relation to large-scale activity (Kop, Fournier, & Mak, 2011) and a sense of losing identity and individuality. Many 6 J. Knox D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 students also maintain the expectation that all content needs to be accessed in order to authentically experience a MOOC course. It also seems apparent that a significant proportion of students value centralised, institutionally endorsed content and are not necessarily willing to value peer contributions. These somewhat contradictory outcomes seem to counter what can be perceived as a naturalising of the ability to self-direct, independently discern effective connections, and seek support and endorsement from peers rather than teachers, encountered in some of the connectiv- ist informed literature (Anderson & Dron, 2011; McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010). Visual work produced during the EDCMOOC image competition also expressed notable reactions to the experience of “massive education.” A particularly striking example was All Lines are Open by Mullu Lumbreras, which took the form of a remixed Tokyo underground map (see Lumbreras 2013). In this image stations are augmented with social media icons and further images from the competition, creat- ing a dense and hectic diagram of connections and potential journeys. Like the underground map it references, the EDCMOOC is envisioned as a site of complex mobility necessitated by the movements and activities of a concentrated population. Notable are the frequent ‘You are here’ signs, suggesting multiple and distributed positions of engagement and interaction, and perhaps a lack of bearings or direction. Significant to this discussion is a prominent stick figure in the bottom right of the image, which might be interpreted as adopting an exasperated posture and expres- sion. As in the metaphors of the ocean discussed previously, the sense of chaos and confusion brought about by the movements of the MOOC are positioned as an exter- nal non-human force, outside of the helpless and vulnerable learning subject. Anxiety about the orientation of the individual was also a key theme of Rabbit- hole by June.B (2013), which depicts a humanoid avatar appearing to float amongst a complex space of symbols and abstract forms. The figure of the human is central in this image, yet its balance and poise appear to be at stake within a fluid and shift- ing environment peppered with social media icons. The loss of control and direction is palpable in Rabbithole, and the stance of the avatar is mirrored by an image from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (2008), a tale of surreal adven- tures and confusing spaces. The image provides a useful way of considering how the MOOC environment can disorientate learners who may be expecting the orderly setting of the classroom or lecture hall. Both All Lines are Open and Rabbithole offer intriguing ways to con- ceptualise the MOOC experience: as the movement of people and the managing of crowds or as an immense, perplexing and unnavigable terrain. In these configura- tions, the position and status of the individual appears to be at risk. Nevertheless, Rabbithole offers an alternative reading of what happens when the perception of educational space is disrupted: the individual is conceived, not as the exacerbated onlooker, but as reconstituted within the digital; as part of the fluid and shifting spa- tial order. Solutions to the massive Proposed solutions to the massive of the EDCMOOC tended to reflect the tensions between instructionist and constructivist (or connectivist) pedagogy, and assump- tions about the xMOOC and cMOOC formats, respectively. As Stewart (2013) aptly pointed out, this dualistic tension is entangled with the dominant ways that Distance Education 7 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 technology is perceived in education: as a means to access information or afford communication. The former interprets the role of education technology as providing more accessible and egalitarian ways for students to come into contact with already existing knowledge, while the latter emphasises the means for interaction and the construction of knowledge through dialogue. Both these views perceive technology in instrumentalist terms, as the neutral and invisible means to achieving educational goals (Friesen & Hamilton, 2010). Furthermore, they directly influence the way that the massiveness of the MOOC is perceived: either as the scaled broadcast of an identical lecture to a large audience or as the potential for more communication and social interaction with a larger group of peers. In these ways, established ideas about pedagogy and technology are reinforcing a dualistic interpretation of MOOCs; as either the efficient transmission of authentic academic knowledge or the building of networked communities that challenge established institutional organisations. As suggested below, solutions to MOOC pedagogy informed by both positions tended to propose practices that actually reduced the massiveness of the EDCMOOC. Of those comments which appeared to be critical of distributed course space and massive participant activity, a significant proportion specified a solution that involved the reduction of students, the diminishing of content, and the re-assertion of teacher authority. A particularly salient contribution to the forums sums this up with, “I am searching for some simplicity. Week One: Topic One: One Video, One Reading, One quiz, One discussion thread on Week One Topics.” Here, the distrib- uted arrangements of the course are considered to create unnecessary complexity, and reveal the strong desire for a centralised, logical, and linear pathway through the course material. This suggestion exemplifies the call for a singular, and hence scal- able, educational experience. This call for simplicity is not just about individual preference; rather it is expressing the idea of education as a set of activities that can be replicated so that each student gains an identical experience. In this way, the move to reduce course content and activity can also be perceived as a move to stan- dardise and abstract learning outcomes. Rather than being the emergent product of specific, concrete, and temporal interaction with the course, learning outcomes and student experience become predefined, identical, and universal. General critiques of standardisation in education are often expressed in terms of resistance to nationally imposed measures; as standards which stifle individual teaching strengths (e.g., Giroux, 2010). Given the international scope of MOOCs, continued research may need to explore the extent to which massive enrolments might reduce the diversity of instruction in particular disciplines. Calls for direction and guidance were also frequent. The very first student- created forum thread was titled “Where are the professors?” in which the participant suggested: Somehow I feel like doing this all on my own without any assistance or guidance from professors and being really “in” the course … I think I could do this any time on my own, but where is the guideline, where is my teacher? Significantly, this student claimed to be capable of independent study, yet he/she still appeared to covet some level of support, lest his/her position within the course were placed in doubt. Teacher presence was further privileged in the comment, “I would really suggest this course should include some teaching next time. The only reason I came to this course … is because I was looking forward to learning from the great teachers at Edinburgh!” Another commenter re-asserted the authority of the MOOC 8 J. Knox D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 teacher suggesting, “I would far prefer to hear from you instructors who are in a much better position to expose me to current digital culture.” The desire for instruc- tion thus reflects the calls for simplicity and reduction, in which the singular pres- ence of the tutor replaces and conceals the cacophony of distributed peer interaction. The figure of the instructor or professor is thus often considered indispensable, call- ing into question MOOC designs that too quickly assume the teacher to be merely “a fellow node” in the network (Anderson & Dron, 2011, p. 90), or even a role that is increasingly obsolete (Kop & Hill, 2008). However, in contrast to such sentiments, many participants expressed a resis- tance to the authority of the teacher. Another commenter in this thread contended, “Who needs professors? The majority of the students in this course are capable enough to guide participants through the course. We call this social constructivism.” However, significantly, those endorsing this position often appeared to replace the need for a teacher with the necessity for community. This idea of community feed- back as a direct substitute for the instructor was expressed by one forum contributor as, “although a MOOC is massive if the people have an understanding that the cul- ture of community is important then you will not have the sense that people are waiting in the classroom with their hands up.” What is significant here is the impor- tance granted to the individual, as part of the ethos of community. The anxiety of the individual not being answered is perceived as the fundamental problem, for which the community provides the service of feedback. Further participants contrib- uted to the naturalisation of community as an essential requirement for learning, expressed by one participant as follows: People will connect to a community and learn but there has to be a community … you should strongly think of breaking MOOCs up into smaller learning communities where people can know each other … I think maybe 24 to 36 people in each “tribe” would be good. Another forum participant related this directly to educational theory, suggesting “the ‘massiveness’ is real obstacle to interaction and constructivism practices,” making a firm distinction between massive participation and the structured relationships of dialogue required for producing knowledge in the constructivist paradigm. One of the most prominent suggestions in the EDCMOOC was thus, perhaps unsurprisingly, for the grouping of students. In a thread entitled “Lost in forums” one participant asked, “Don’t we need to be marshalled into moderate size groups, otherwise the number of inputs is overwhelming?” Another commenter suggested, “I am really enjoying this course, but I think that it is important to acknowledge that it is better to have a reduced size classroom than a MASSIVE one.” Many partici- pants made use of the distributed social media spaces to draft guides and strategies for group formation, and these were particularly prevalent in the Facebook and Google + spaces. One such compendium suggested, “provide a place for cadres to form,” and “engage more tech savvy folks to lead cadres” (Anonymous, 2013). The tactical premise is striking here, with the activist language reflecting the self-organising premise of the connectivist MOOCs (McAuley et al., 2010). Of significance is the systematising of the community here, in which fringe participants are trained by more authoritative figures. This serves as a salient example of the different ways community participation can be interpreted; in this case, alluding to normalisation and hegemony (Ferreday & Hodgson, 2008; Gulati, 2008). Many students formed small groups, some adopting “quadblogging” activities in which Distance Education 9 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 posting and commenting duties were shared amongst four participants, while others contributed to the course alongside work colleagues (e.g., Dale, 2013; Young, 2013). Nationality and language provided strong motivators for creating sub-groups, with approximately 25 location-based groups identified from Coursera forum posts and Facebook activity. Such group formation was often accompanied with the justi- fication that community can only function with an optimal size. As one commenter put it, “drop the M and just call then RSOOCS (reasonably sized …).” Conclusions Reactions and solutions to the massive of the EDCMOOC revealed a profusion of suggestions, expectations, and convictions about MOOC education. The selective examples in this article expose only a fraction of the meta-commentary about this emerging educational format, an intensity of debate that is itself significant given the relatively early stages of the MOOC. Firstly, many students responded to massive participation in ways that can be interpreted as overload, anxiety, and a sense of loss. The massiveness of the MOOC appeared to be something alien to their expec- tations and understandings of educational activity and practice. Secondly, these responses habitually reinforced an emerging opposition in MOOCs: that between an instructionist form which privileges transmissive pedagogy and centralised, institu- tionally authenticated knowledge and a constructivist or connectivist form which emphasises the production of knowledge through community interaction or network formation. These oppositional strands are reinforced by the popular designations xMOOC and cMOOC and underpinned by instrumentalist views of technology either as enabling access to information or increasing opportunities for communica- tion. The significant number of professional educators participating in the EDCMOOC raises the question of whether such a bifurcation is a matter of student expectation or the influence of educational theory and teacher conviction. Neverthe- less, more work is needed within the open educational movement to consider how to work with a global audience that has significantly different experiences and beliefs about education; deep-seated expectations which are often brought to bear on ensuing MOOC activity (Ross et al., 2014). This article suggests that the instructionist, constructivist, and connectivist posi- tions tend to adopt practices which work to reduce or immunise what may be the one characteristic of the MOOC that is genuinely new to education: massive partici- pation. This conclusion is not to claim that the EDCMOOC design should serve as a model for subsequent MOOCs or to imply that the massiveness it generated is uni- versally and unquestionably of value to education, but merely to suggest that its novelty offers an alternative way to think about this emerging domain. Both the scaling of a singular educational experience to thousands of participants and the for- mation of community groups and personal learning networks are of pedagogical worth; yet, they share an interest in structuring and rationalising the diversities and inconsistencies of massive and globalised activity. The importance of this conclusion is that the very development or “maturing of the MOOC” (Haggard, 2013) may rush past this very moment in which something unprecedented and radical might be per- ceived. SPOCs, or small and private online courses, have been described as an “almost inevitable evolution” of the MOOC (Coughlan, 2013), while the COOC has been suggested to “replace the Massive with the Community” (Shukie, 2013). Obsessions with acronyms aside, these projects demonstrate immunisation at work. 10 J. Knox D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of E di nb ur gh ] at 0 5: 41 1 2 Ju ne 2 01 4 Both these proposals position the community as a way of isolating educational activ- ity from an external world imbued with threats and liabilities. It is an attempt to position education as a transcendent, sterilised activity disconnected from the con- taminations and disputes of the populace. In order to further explore the massive of the MOOC, educational theory might engage with work that considers the increasingly connected and globalised popula- tion. Hardt and Negri’s (2004) concept of the “multitude” provides a theory of a complex and irreducible population, which achieves commonality through difference rather than similarity. Where “the people” have been used to suggest a single iden- tity and “the masses” used to imply uniformity, Hardt and Negri proposed the “multitude” as way of theorising plurality: The multitude is composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or a single identity – different cultures, races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations; different forms of labor; different ways of living; different views of the world; and different desires. (p. xiv) This acknowledgement of irreducible difference may be valuable for educational projects that seek global participation and massive enrolment numbers. Considering “students” to be a stable and universal category with innate abilities and behaviours masks the variations, clashes, and conflicts that make MOOC populations rich, diverse, and intense. While emerging research is attempting to categorise student involvement (e.g., Ho et al., 2014; Milligan, Littlejohn, & Margaryan, 2013), this may serve to standardise participation rather than engage with the complexities of diverse and context-dependent course interactions. Whether in the form of the scaled, identical educational broadcast or the con- struction of an orderly, self-centred personal learning network, MOOCs are fre- quently designed to rationalise and regulate massive participation into the recognisable guise of the university lecture or the cohesive community. It is in this way that both xMOOC and cMOOC approaches maintain educational orthodoxies by preserving individualism, reason, and autonomy, and excising animality, irratio- nality, and the other (Lewis & Kahn, 2010). The massive of the EDCMOOC may have offered a glimpse of this excess; a radical outside to education beyond the rational common sense of individualism and self-interest. As education begins to sense global participation, what may be truly revolutionary and disruptive lies not in what the MOOC can do for the progress and betterment of the individual, but rather what the massive can do for education. As Lane and Kinser (2012) suggested, a “multinational university can’t simply be a broadcasting service to recipients in other countries; it must engage with and learn from other cultures.” One way to learn from the massiveness of the MOOC might be to conceive of education beyond the exclu- sive interest in individual attainment, and to work with the massive rather than against it. Acknowledgements This research was made possible by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom. 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work_7rudeku4e5esvkmfq43thsmkly	----	JSS-40-3-359-14-1552-Shava-G-N-Tx[7].pmd © Kamla-Raj 2014 J Soc Sci, 40(3): 359-372 (2014) Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Distance Education Management Positions: Experiences from the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) George N. Shava* and Clever Ndebele** *National University of Science and Technology, Department of Technical Teacher Education, P.O. Box AC. 939, Ascot, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe **University of Venda, Centre for Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Private Bag X5050, Thohoyandou, 0950 South Africa KEYWORDS Gender. Culture. Stereotype. Leadership. Discrimination. Masculinity ABSTRACT Concerns about women under-representation in positions of decision making, strategic planning, organizational development and their performance within distance education institutions has been the major focus of debates in higher education. The current study sought to investigate the challenges faced by women in distance education management positions, which were formerly dominated by males. The qualitative study examined and analysed the social, economic, traditional, political and religious factors influencing the degree of women advancement in Open Distance Learning (ODL) senior management positions. Data was collected through face to face interviews with one hundred and twenty staff members employed at the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) using the purposive sampling technique. The major finding from the study was that women in senior management positions were affected by their multiple responsibilities which include the gendered nature of society, family influences and culture. The study recommends the holding of open and honest discussion forums on gender and equal rights issues involving both men and women and the development of family friendly culture in universities. Address for Correspondence: Dr. G. N. Shava National University of Science and Technology Department of Technical Teacher Education P.O. Box AC.939. Ascot, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Telephone: +263-282842 Ext 2336 E-mail: gnshava@gmail.com INTRODUCTION The under-representation of women in se- nior management positions in higher institutions of learning and indeed other spheres is prob- lematic and has become a major issue of debate in higher education circles (See for example: Nan-Chi 2006; Kiamba 2008; Bilen-Green 2008; Nazemi et al 2012; Zinyemba 2013). The cited literature further indicates that ancient systems of management under which men were assigned a monopoly of access to higher managerial po- sitions of authority and power in organizations and the public sphere, with women restricted to the home, has come under attack in both devel- oped and most developing countries. While ef- forts seem to be in place to accelerate the ad- vancement of women, the number of women who achieve senior management positions is still dis- proportionate to the number of women employed in the universities. In the United States, in 2006, women accounted for twenty three percent of college and university presidents, which was up from five percent of presidents in 1975 (Mas- den 2012), a token improvement of only five per- cent in more than 30 years! A United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organisation (UNESCO) report cited in Ramsey (2000) found out that globally, women were grossly under- represented in higher education management with men outnumbering women at about five to one at middle management level and at about twenty to one at senior management level. Clos- er home in South Africa, survey data on South Africa, cited in Zinyemba (2013) showed that in 2003, the average number of women in senior management was approximately twenty four percent across seventeen institutions of higher learning and that at that point in time there were only three female Vice Chancellors, while eighty two percent of professors were male and only eighteen percent were female. Notwithstanding the above statistics, a ma- jority of talented and competent women in Zim- babwe and the world over have emerged from the home to occupy senior management posi- tions in educational management. The emer- gence of women in higher positions of authority or into larger roles in corporate governance in higher education and distance education in par- 360 GEORGE N. SHAVA AND CLEVER NDEBELE ticular has provoked several debates in as far as their potential and strength in these positions are concerned A study by Bower and Hums (2013) for example, found that some of the great- est challenges were that women were not re- spected, had continuous pressure to prove them- selves, and were not taken seriously. Challenges Facing Female Leadership Advancement in Higher Education While the international community is com- mitted to eliminating gender disparities in man- agement positions and equally achieving gen- der equality by 2015 (Longwe 2001), it is cur- rently noticed that women managing higher ed- ucation institutions face serious challenges in their day-to-day operations. Mama (2005) says that, “the inequalities in senior management positions are a major infringement of rights of women despite the challenges they face in these positions”. Chuma and Ncube (2010) use the concept of ‘glass ceiling’ to refer to the various barriers that prevent qualified women from ad- vancing upward into management positions in their organizations. In the same vein Katuna (2014) argues that often, women can advance only so far before they hit a glass ceiling that they cannot break due to either lack of mentor- ing or sexist perceptions about women’s ability to lead. Some of the major challenges and bar- riers discussed in this paper include the gen- dered nature of management practices, family and cultural factors and the women leadership styles. The Gendered Nature of Management Practices The gendered nature of management prac- tices has led to the situation where men are re- garded as more capable of dealing with certain tasks than women. Shakeshaft (1993) maintains that there is a mismatch of values and practices coupled with structural and societal barriers to women operating as managers. Meanwhile, Brock and Cammish (1997) note that there are several constraints experienced by women man- agers within the work situation. In most cases, there are constraints experienced through so- cially defined roles outside the work place, which tend to affect their operations at work. In the same vein, Bilen-Green (2008) argues that an underlying problem is that of the gendered or- ganization, whereby work policies, interperson- al networks and embedded attitudes have evolved from the life experience of the tradition- al male bread-winner, creating an unequal play- ing field favouring the advancement of men. This widespread operation of patriarchal sys- tems of social organizations of heavier domestic and subsistence duties of females and a gener- ally low regard for the value of women’s life, all combined, adversely affect the operations of woman managers. (Coleman 1996). Katuna (2014: 6) advises that, “By refraining from stereotypi- cally placing women and men into fixed, socially constructed categories through our speech, in- teractions, and expectations, we can move in the direction of a world that is not constrained by these harmful characterizations that repro- duce gender inequality.” It is also argued that women participation in positions of authority is seen to be difficult, usu- ally thwarted by men who discourage their par- ticipation in these positions and see their activ- ism as deviant. This ‘glass ceiling’ which is a metaphor for the invisible barrier that prevents women from advancing in their organizations to senior leadership positions is created by invisi- ble forces of culture, habit, and power that serve to keep women “in their place,” that is, subordi- nate to men (Dale 2007). Although such gender stereotypes exist however there are examples of women who have played key leadership roles in Africa and gained respect among males. In Zim- babwe, there were characters like Mbuya Ne- handa (Grandmother Nehanda) who was regard- ed as the spirit medium of the second Chimuren- ga war of liberation and was highly regarded as the quintessence of the first Chimurenga of 1896 against white settlers. Also Nongquaze, a fe- male Zulu chief, is recorded to have resisted the penetration into the Hinterland by the Boers. This does not lend credence to the argument that feminism is an alien concept that was im- ported into Africa and has led to an artificial dichotomy between female leaders and males veiled by ill-defined western values. On the con- trary, as has been evidenced, African women leaders had vital roles in the public and private sphere. The Effect of Culture on Women Leadership Advancement Kaufman (2003), notes that imbalances in leadership positions are perennial problems due WOMEN IN DISTANCE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT POSITIONS 361 to cultural values and this has been difficult to address. There is need in Zimbabwe and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region to confront stereotypical ideas, which provide fertile ground for disadvantag- ing women, and seek to address them with the aim of promoting the effective operations of women and men in management positions. Barg- man (2005) in her research established that a major deterrent factor to women operations in leadership positions even when these are made available is a mere universal fundamental cultur- al bias in favour of males. It may be indeed diffi- cult for a woman to relinquish power in the home as it is for men to assume responsibilities for domestic home activities. Ozgan (1993) observed that the main problems faced by women in man- agement positions include isolation and margin- alization. Comparing male and female support, Gourley (2013) states that men can usually rely on their wives to support them in finding the extra time entailed in holding down leadership positions while many women lack the support they need to climb the career ladder. Despite the development of bureaucratic forms of management and an associated model of masculinity defined in terms of rational, logi- cal and authoritative aspects of human behav- ior that has constructed management as a “mas- culinist enterprise” which makes it difficult for women to penetrate and effectively operate in these positions (Blackmore 1993), educational management is one area in which women have achieved a measure of status and authority in Zimbabwe. This has largely been through delib- erate government efforts at affirmative action in favour of women. One challenge of accelerating women advancement through affirmative action policies however is that they tend to be ridi- culed by their male counterparts for rising up the management ladder not because of expertise but rather because of gender. As Kiamba (2008) shows, in many institutions where women’s at- tainment of leadership positions has been facil- itated by the implementation of employment eq- uity policies and affirmative action there is the perception that one was ‘let in,’ and even the most capable women are viewed with suspicion. In the same vein, Bilen-Green (2008) notes that perceptions of tokenism (advancement based on social category rather than competence) di- minish women leaders respect and increase pres- sure for women in top management positions. Women’s historical negative evaluation from the management realm has also resulted in them developing a weak and different voice, and one which constitutes a submerged discourse. As Tsegay (2014) shows, women are typically judged to have less leadership abilities than men with similar characteristics and the same actions performed by men and women in leadership sit- uations are evaluated more negatively when women are the leaders. According to Chuma and Ncube (2010) premised on androcentricism, women’s domestic role is perceived as antithet- ical to public sphere activities informed by the process of socialization which in turn “elbowed” women out of the educational, political, and macro-economic spheres. Zinyemba (2013) fur- ther notes that women are seen as soft and weak and less committed to work than men and that they are left out of the “boys clubs”. In the face of these gender prejudices women find them- selves needing to worker harder than their male counterparts to prove their value in management. Family Support for Women in Leadership The impact of the family on advancement to leadership management is widely reported in the literature. (Bilen-Green 2008; Kiamba 2008; El- muti et al 2009; Chabaya et al. 2009; Murniati 2012; Nazemi et al. 2012; Morley 2013; Panigraphi 2013). Newman (1995) says women in manage- ment positions have problems of integrating home and work organizational lives and in match- ing the demands on their time. Because of fail- ing to integrate home and work lives, some wom- en have chosen not to marry to avoid difficul- ties of combining a demanding career with a fam- ily. Gauthier (2013) contends that with married life and the addition of children, women are tra- ditionally expected to take responsibility for most household tasks and, in particular, child care and that combining these responsibilities with fur- thering one’s education and entering into posi- tions of responsibility and leadership presents many demands and requires dedication. Kiamba (2008) further states that in the African context, the work and family dichotomy is filled with many contradictions for women that provoke stress while Morley (2013) notes that the moral imper- ative on women to care for children, the sick and elderly means that women have negative equity in the workplace. To further compound their pre- dicament; women leaders sometimes do not get 362 GEORGE N. SHAVA AND CLEVER NDEBELE the necessary support from their spouses. In a study by Zinyemba (2013) in Zimbabwe, the chal- lenges to do with gender role expectations in- cluded husbands feeling jealous and insecure with wives earning more than them and enjoy- ing company benefits such as company vehi- cles and entertainment allowances. Having a supportive husband as shown in a study by Murniati (2012) was vital to the career advance- ment of the women in that study as all the wom- en agreed that it was very important that they obtained their husbands’ approval before they accepted an administrative position. Women Managers’ Management Styles When it comes to supervision of subordi- nates, women managers operate with a face-to- face personnel management style. Goodman (1992) notes that women managers tend to pay special attention to elements such as honesty, sobriety, industry, quietness, gentleness, com- passion, cleanliness and neatness which are gendered and typically classified characteristics central to the smooth running of a well ordered home and also characteristics thought to be de- sirable for a mother. It is however noted that most women managers usually suffer a tempo- rary discouragement as they penetrate a world where the manager is presented as “he” and where elements of effective leadership are extracted ex- clusively from the traits of past or present male leaders. As Elmuti et al. (2009) so cogently put it, these past perceptions of leadership skills, com- petence, assertiveness, aggressiveness, and task-orientation may hinder the ability of women to succeed in management. Tsegay (2014) warns that, “Recognizing women’s styles of leadership represents an important approach to equity as long as they are not stereotyped as “the” ways women lead but as “other” ways of leading. The feminine leadership styles are not better or worse than the traditional male-oriented ones, they are just different.” This study on women in distance education management sought to establish the major chal- lenges faced by women who have emerged in Open Distance Learning (ODL) senior manage- ment positions providing for development in organizational management. Research studies have highlighted that feminism is a western ide- al that began as a movement for middle – class white women who felt that their role in the home was not adequate and they operated only in the private sphere and not in the public like their husbands. This feminism is seen as failing to articulate the issues African women have and argues for a separate positioning of such issues against the backdrop of the appropriate histori- cal context in which the traditional importance of the African women in the family and society is currently conceptualized. It is therefore against this background that the current study sought to establish the major challenges that are faced by women in management positions with spe- cific reference to the Zimbabwe Open Universi- ty, which is the sole provider of university dis- tance education in Zimbabwe. Objectives of the Study The current study sought to investigate the challenges faced by women in distance educa- tion management positions with specific refer- ence to the Zimbabwe Open University. Specif- ically, the study sought to answer the following questions; Why does the Zimbabwe Open University have fewer women in senior management positions than men? What are the factors/barriers and challenges affecting women advancement in leadership at the Zimbabwe Open University? What can be done to promote and support women to senior management positions in the Zimbabwe Open University? METHODOLOGY Using a case study approach, in the qualita- tive research paradigm (Yin 2003; Denzin and Lincoln 2005) the Zimbabwe Open University’s ten regional centres and the national centre were used as a sample for collecting qualitative data. A qualitative study is described by Hopeful (1997) as a study, which probes for deeper un- derstanding rather than examining surface fea- tures. Qualitative methodologies are powerful tools for enhancing our understanding of man- agement practices and they have gained increas- ing acceptance in recent years and unlike quan- titative researchers who seek casual determina- tion, prediction and generalization of findings, qualitative researchers seek instead illumination, understanding and extrapolation to similar situ- ations (Patton 2001). WOMEN IN DISTANCE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT POSITIONS 363 Sampling Techniques Purposeful sampling procedures were em- ployed to select the sample for the study. Patton (2001) notes that purposeful sampling is the most appropriate and dominant strategy in qualita- tive research: it seeks for information rich cas- es, which can be observed or studied in depth. In this study, women in management were seen as information rich as they were the ones likely to be experiencing challenges. Males were how- ever also selected to get an alternative view. As shown on Table 1, fourteen directors drawn from the ten regions and national centre were select- ed since they were linked to the day-to-day ac- tivities of ZOU. Regional administrators and faculty administrators were also interviewed. These were also linked to the major day-to-day administrative activities in the regions and at the national centre. Fifteen programme co-ordi- nators or leaders from Commerce and Law, twen- ty from Education and Arts, fourteen from Sci- ences and fourteen from Social Sciences were also interviewed. Student affairs administrators and records clerks all based at regional offices were interviewed since they were involved in the management of student affairs and records. Table 1 shows the sample for the study. Data Collection and Analysis Data was collected from one hundred and twenty respondents drawn from the ten region- al centres and the national centre, using face to face interviews with women and men occupying senior management positions in the Zimbabwe Open University. The analysis of data involved a special set of interpretive practices and narra- tive techniques. The analysis and presentation involved organizing the data and breaking it into manageable units searching for common patterns and themes. The analysis of data started with the identification of main themes emerging from the raw data and recording these. Participants’ quotes, which illustrate the themes being de- scribed, were recorded for presentation. Con- stant comparative analysis was used in the anal- ysis of data to establish emerging themes. Find- ings from the interviews were presented in ta- bles and narratives characterized by the use of quotations from respondents. RESULTS The Zimbabwe Open University has made notable efforts in addressing the problem of women under-representation in senior manage- ment position as shown by the number of wom- en appointed as deans, directors, administrators, programme co-ordinators, and managers. Table 2 shows the trends in women appointments to senior management positions since the estab- lishment of ZOU in 1994. It was also during the period from 2005 to 2009 when a woman was appointed to the most senior position of Vice Chancellor of the univer- sity. It emerged from the data that the number of women who occupy senior management posts in the university is increasing though still grossly under represented as shown on Table 2. The Human Resources Department revealed that out of the three hundred and fifty women employed by the university only about forty-four women occupied senior management positions. The Table 1: Distribution of the sample Region Direc- Adminis- Comm- Education Social Science Student Clerks Total tors tors erce and Arts sciences affairs Bulawayo 2 1 2 3 2 2 1 2 1 5 Mat South 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Mat North 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 9 Middlands 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 9 Masvingo 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 Manicaland 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 9 Mash West 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Mash Central 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Mash East 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Harare 3 1 2 3 2 2 1 2 1 6 National Center 4 4 2 2 2 2 0 4 2 0 To t a l 1 7 1 4 1 5 2 0 1 4 1 4 1 0 1 6 1 2 0 364 GEORGE N. SHAVA AND CLEVER NDEBELE university had a total staff complement of five hundred in its ten regions and the national cen- tre. A senior clerk in one of the regions remarked that at lower levels of the organization women officers tended to have fewer challenges unlike at higher levels like the position of Manager or Director. Senior Management Positions at ZOU The study established that while the highest position in the university was occupied by a lady, most of the senior management positions of di- rectors, managers and programme co-ordinators were occupied by men as shown on Table 3. From the illustrations on the table, eighty percent of the Regional Directors were male and only twenty percent were female. This is an indi- cation that men dominate the regional director- ate. From all the ten regional centers ninety per- cent of the Deputy Directors were male. Equally the same with the Regional Administrators, sev- enty percent of them were male with thirty per- cent females. The same trend is also evident with Regional Faculty Co-ordinators which were dominated by male lecturers. In the Faculty of Education and Arts seventy percent were male, with thirty percent female, the Faculty of Com- merce and Law had ninety percent male with ten percent females, the Faculty of Social Science had seventy percent male and twenty four per- cent females, the Faculty of Science had sixty six percent male and forty four percent females while the Student Affairs Department had sixty two percent males and thirty eight percent fe- males. The general trend shows that most of the senior management positions are held by men. A female Programme Co-coordinator from one of the regions indicated that she would rather take a lower position than to take the post of Regional Director that will require her to be ab- sent from her family on a regular basis on ZOU business. A positive trend is observed at the national centre where the Vice Chancellor and most of the national directorate are based. The analysis of data on Table 4 established that there was a marked increase in the number of women at the national centre where seventy five percent of the Deans were women. Senior management posts at the level of departmental directors were still dominated by men, that is sixty percent male and forty percent female directors. While sev- T ab le 2 : W om en a p p oi n tm en ts t o se n io r p os it io n s fr om 1 99 4- 20 08 R eg io na l di re ct or s D ea n A dm in is tr at or P ro gr am m es M an ag er N = 10 N = 4 C o- or di na to rs N = 80 N = 4 M F M F M F M F M F N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % N o. % 19 94 -1 99 7 9 9 0 1 1 0 3 7 5 1 2 5 9 9 0 1 1 0 7 0 8 8 1 0 1 2 3 7 5 1 2 5 19 98 -2 00 1 9 9 0 1 1 0 2 5 0 1 2 5 8 8 0 2 2 0 6 6 8 3 1 4 1 7 3 7 5 1 2 5 20 02 -2 00 5 8 8 0 2 2 0 2 5 0 2 5 0 8 8 0 2 2 0 6 2 7 7 1 8 2 3 2 5 0 2 5 0 20 06 -2 00 8 8 8 0 2 2 0 1 2 5 3 7 5 7 7 0 3 3 0 5 8 7 2 2 2 2 8 1 2 5 3 7 5 So ur ce : R es po nd en ts b io gr ap hi ca l da ta WOMEN IN DISTANCE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT POSITIONS 365 T ab le 3 . D is tr ib u ti on o f m an ag em en t p os ts a t Z O U b y ge n d er . R eg io n R eg io na l D ep ut y R eg io na l P ro gr am m e le ad er s / co -o rd in at or s E du ca tio n C om m er ce So ci al S ci en ce s St ud en t an d A rt s a nd l aw Sc ie nc es N = 24 a ffa ir s N = 27 N = 22 N = 26 N = 8 M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F B ul aw ay o 1 0 1 0 1 0 4 1 1 1 2 0 1 2 1 0 M at - S ou th 1 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 0 1 M at - N or th 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 2 2 0 2 0 2 1 0 0 M id la nd s 1 0 1 0 1 0 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 0 0 M as vi ng o 1 0 1 0 0 1 2 1 2 0 2 1 2 1 1 0 M an ic al an d 1 0 1 0 1 0 3 0 2 0 2 1 1 1 1 0 M as h W es t 1 0 1 0 0 1 2 0 2 0 2 1 2 0 1 0 M as h C en tr al 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 2 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 M as h E as t 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 2 0 2 1 2 0 0 1 H ar ar e 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 4 0 2 1 1 2 0 1 T ot al 8 2 1 0 0 7 3 1 9 8 2 0 2 2 0 6 1 6 8 5 3 T ab le 4 : D is tr ib u ti on o f m an ag em en t p os ts a t th e n at io n al c en te r b y ge n d er . M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 3 Director HRM Director IT Director MKT Director Finance Director fundraising Director Quality asurance Director in Provice’s office Director Research and Scholarship Director Academic Registry Registrar Pro-vice chancellor Vice Chancellor Deans di re ct or s r eg io na l a dm in is - n= 10 di re ct or s tr at er s 366 GEORGE N. SHAVA AND CLEVER NDEBELE enty five percent of women held higher posi- tions of dean of faculties, they claimed that they were finding their roles rather difficult, given the fact that their duties required them to work over- time. Working overtime also meant increasing their time away from their families, an issue that leads to stressful conditions. Family Factors Affecting Women in Senior Management Positions In all interviews carried out at the national centre, women Directors indicated that they had major problems in trying to accommodate and accomplish both home responsibilities and the requirements of the university job. One of the women Directors remarked that she would have chosen not to have a family because of the diffi- culties and challenges of combining a demand- ing university career with caring for her family. One female administrator remarked that, “I am rather haunted by leaving my young son to scream as I try to sound professional by leaving him with a maid.” Women Directors at the na- tional centre remarked that while there had been a great success and achievement in training and developing women in Zimbabwe, most of them had found it difficult to leave their homes in the morning to spend the whole day at work. One of the programme Co-ordinators noted that she was offered a job as a Deputy Dean by one of the Universities in South Africa but because of her family attachments she could not take up the job. The study established that sixty percent of the women respondents claimed that they suf- fered the consequences of working long and unsociable hours and the effects of this on fam- ily life was undesirable. A male Regional Administrator in one of the regions concurred that motherhood was one of the single determinants in the failure of women to achieve organizational goals. He noted that each time women were grouped together the central basis of their discussions was their fam- ilies, with very little else covered in as far as their work related issues were concerned. A wom- an programme co-coordinator also observed that, for most women in management positions the real tension between work and home began when their children started going to school. Six- ty percent of the women interviewed noted that they would have loved to have seen their chil- dren leaving for school having made all the nec- essary preparations for them and also welcom- ing them back from school. Cultural Factors Limiting Women’s Organisational Goal Achievement The findings revealed that in all the ten Zim- babwe Open University regions there was a fun- damental culture bias in favour of males. One of the female Regional Directors noted that on sev- eral occasions people had asked her if they could see the Regional Director when in fact she was the Regional Director! Also the study established that men had a negative attitude towards wom- en in senior management positions. Men natu- rally do not want to be led by women. To most men a woman cannot be the head of an organi- zation as much as she cannot be the head of a family unless in the absence of a man. One of the women directors noted that male managers regarded female managers as not managers in the executive sense of high power decision-mak- ing but rather as concerned with culturally pre- scribed activities relating to working at home, such as looking after buildings and people in the home. The same administrator noted that the moment a woman occupied a senior posi- tion, she encountered problems such as loneli- ness, isolation, lack of acceptance, particularly as a result of rejection by peers and subordi- nates of both genders. One of the woman direc- tors at the national centre noted that the first time a woman received criticism or the first time she failed, she would code it as a sign that she was inferior and that she should never have tried to become a manager in the first place. DISCUSSION Women Representation in Senior Management Positions at ZOU Despite the vigorous campaign and success achieved in the training and education of wom- en and the increased reservoir of highly and suitably qualified women in the Zimbabwe Open University, the study revealed that the number of women in senior management positions was lower than that of men. Probably the reason is that women in senior management positions are faced with several challenges which affect their day-to-day operations some which are discussed in this section. A notable major stride is the fact that the Vice Chancellor of the university is a woman. However, still the number of women in senior management is disproportionate to the WOMEN IN DISTANCE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT POSITIONS 367 number of women employed by the university. The Human Resources Department revealed that out of the three hundred and fifty women em- ployed by the university only about forty-four women occupied senior management positions. This is similar to the situation in Iran, where ac- cording to a study cited in Nazemi et al. (2012) although the percentage of women in the aca- demic profession at all levels has grown in Iran in the last 30 years, research still shows that only five percent of the managerial positions are held by women faculty members in top Ten Ira- nian Universities. Commenting on the United States of America, Mainah (2014) notes that there are only 494 female University Presidents out of the 2,148 institutions of higher education some of who are Presidents of ivy league colleg- es which does not amount to much given the over 50 years they have had to fight to get there. At the time of the study, the University had a total staff complement of approximately five hundred in its ten regions and the national cen- tre. It appears that while a large percentage of the lower level posts of responsibility are held by women, the percentage of the more senior posts held by women is disproportionately small. This seems to agree with Dale (2007)’s observa- tion that women’s marginalization is particularly poignant in higher education, a traditionally pa- triarchal environment that has provided limited access for women leaders and administrators. Advancement of women into senior management positions can thus be hampered by such issues as gender stereotyping, fear of not succeeding, family responsibilities and lack of time (Maseko and Proches, 2013; Panigrahi, 2013; Ekren 2014). From the analysis of data, it was established that only fifty-five women occupied senior man- agement positions while the remaining one hun- dred and seventy five occupied lower positions in the university. A senior clerk in one of the regions remarked that at lower levels of the or- ganization women officers tended to have fewer challenges unlike at higher levels like the posi- tion of Manager or Director. This scenario of under representation of women in senior man- agement positions at ZOU is in line with global trends. Kiamba (2008), citing Gumbi (2006) re- marks that literature on leadership in higher ed- ucation generally reveals that women are less likely than men to participate in upper levels of administration and that leadership in higher edu- cation is still a man’s world and universities are male dominated institutions The study also showed that women were disproportionately represented in the regional management structures. A woman Regional Di- rector indicated that most women were not will- ing to be associated with the challenges faced by Regional Directors in their day to day opera- tions. From all the ten regional centres ninety percent of the Deputy Directors were male. The general trend shows that most of the senior man- agement positions are held by men. This situa- tion seems to be similar to the situation in the United states where Nan-Chi (2006) indicates that women in leadership positions are not only in the minority but also are often viewed as “out- siders.” and is echoed by Bilen-Green et al (2008) who states that relatively few women advance to top academic leadership positions such as dean, provost, president or chancellor. Therefore, they are challenged with complex institutional barriers of great magnitude and profundity. While nationally with the ten ZOU regions put together women were underrepresented in management positions, the situation was differ- ent at the national centre where the university is administered from. At the national center where the Vice Chancellors and most of the national directorate are based, as shown in the results section forty percent of the directorate was oc- cupied by women departmental subunit Direc- tors with seventy five percent of the Deans of faculties as women. Such positive developments in gender equity in management are also found in Sweden, where according to Peterson (2014), Sweden has the highest percentage of female university Vice Chancellors in Europe. Peterson (2014) avers that this increase in the number of women in management positions in higher edu- cation might be interpreted as an example of how women were breaking the so called ‘glass ceil- ing’ in academia. While seventy five percent of women hold higher positions of dean of facul- ties, most of those that were interviewed claimed that they are finding their roles rather difficult, given the fact that their duties required them to work overtime. Working overtime also meant in- creasing their time away from their families, an issue that led to stressful conditions. Similarly, in response to questions about the challenges of being an academic administrator and a pro- fessor, Murniati (2012) reports that a shared complaint among the women was how the heavy workload of being both an administrator and a 368 GEORGE N. SHAVA AND CLEVER NDEBELE teacher discouraged them from pursuing higher academic positions such as deans, associate presidents, or presidents. The Effect of the Family on Advancement to Senior Management While it emerged from the analysis of data that some women claimed that they were com- fortable in their ability to overcome social, cul- tural and patriarchal obstacles and barriers that were placed on their way, most women inter- viewed indicated that they could not take the post of Regional Director considering the mo- bility involved in the post and the need to con- stantly travel long distances to the National Centre for strategic planning meetings. Region- al Directors regularly travel to the National Cen- tre and other regions for meetings and other re- lated issues. Because of this, women would rath- er take lower positions than to take the post of Regional Director that would require them to be absent from their families on a regular basis on ZOU business. With regards to the family com- mitments, Zinyemba (2013) reports that gender role expectations require women to take care of the home and family while the men spend most of the time away from home and as a result wom- en who have full time employment face challeng- es in the balancing work and life. In a similar vein, Panigraphi (2013) reporting on Ethiopia asserts that when females obtain or seek posi- tions as educational leaders, it is not easy to balance their work and family obligation and con- sequently women give priority to their family and might be less committed to jobs that require more time investments because of their com- bined work and family roles. In a study by Katu- na (2014) some of the women respondents spoke of the convenience of delaying leadership to a time when their children were grown up. In all interviews carried out at the national centre, women Directors indicated that they had major problems in trying to accommodate and accom- plish both home responsibilities and the require- ments of the university job. One of the women Directors remarked that she would have chosen not to have a family because of the difficulties and challenges of combining a demanding uni- versity career with caring for her family. The fam- ily barriers are so strong that they can prevent women from being effective and also from mov- ing up in their organizations. Writing about her leadership ascendance, Bradley (2013: 60) states, “As the mother of four sons, I found that the decisions I made about work and family, and how to enjoy both, were critical for me. As shown in the results section, the study established that sixty percent of the women re- spondents claimed that they suffered the con- sequences of working long and unsociable hours and the effects of this on family life was undesirable. In this regard, findings by Zinyem- ba (2013) on women in leadership positions in the hospitality and financial services industry in Zimbabwe show that the biggest challenge faced by women is that of work-life balance, emanating from pressure of time and the need to fulfil the multiple roles that a woman manager must fulfil as wife, mother and manager at work. Cultural Factors Limiting Women’s Leadership Advancement While women are increasingly moving into the labour market to occupy senior management positions, in all the ten Zimbabwe Open Univer- sity regions there was a fundamental culture bias in favour of males. Already shown in the results section, one of the female Regional Directors noted that on several occasions people had asked her if they could see the Regional Direc- tor when in fact she was the Regional Director! The general impression is that the position of Director should be held by a man. As Chuma and Ncube (2010) show, the persistent stereo- typing that associates management with male- ness contributes to the resistance of female lead- ership and discrimination. Bower and Hums (2013) are of the view that working hard and staying confident may help diminish the stereo- type that women do not have the necessary skills to work in leadership positions. The widespread operation of patriarchal sys- tems of social organizations and heavier domes- tic duties of women all combine to adversely affect the operation of women at their work place. The influence of cultural bias of patriarchal sys- tems can only be overcome by a profound change of attitude on the part of influential males who should consider women as potential assets for development and organizational goal achievement. Regrettably, even biological career breaks to allow for childbirth and initial care are detrimental to women’s career development in the university. One of the women directors not- WOMEN IN DISTANCE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT POSITIONS 369 ed that male managers regard female managers as not managers in the executive sense of high power decision-making but rather as concerned with culturally prescribed activities relating to working at home, such as looking after build- ings and people in the home. In this regard, Ka- tuna (2014) observes that the prevalence of tra- ditional gender roles that exist in the domestic sphere are thus sometimes observed in various contexts, even once a leader obtains a position of exceptional authority. Similarly Chuma and Ncube (2010) report that the patriarchal nature of the majority societies militates against wom- en to ascend organizational hierarchy as orga- nizations are systematically organized for male supremacy and are not gender neutral. They fur- ther add that women find themselves playing second fiddle to men because the core values of patriarchy are male domination and control of the perceived weak groups, which are women. This study also established that men had a negative attitude towards women in senior man- agement positions. Men naturally do not want to be led by women. To most men a woman can- not be the head of an organization as much as she cannot be the head of a family unless in the absence of a man. As Bissessar (2013) shows, the problem of women being forced to adhere to strict gender roles continues to be one of the major deterrents in women’s empowerment, self- esteem and feminist identity development. In this regard, in a study by Zinyemba (2013) some fe- male leaders also indicated that they faced chal- lenges in decision making especially in meet- ings when their opinions were taken in last with management team members showing preference for decisions coming from male colleagues. Find- ings by Makura (2009) in the primary schooling system also show that Zimbabwean male prima- ry school teachers displayed negative attitudes through non-cooperation with the female school heads in official activities and in some cases even verbally abused the female heads. Similar- ly, in higher education in Zimbabwe, Miranda (2008) reports that women leaders also experi- ence general insubordination, resentment, and hostility from their co-workers in the male-dom- inated workplaces in which they work. Bower and Hums (2013), after a study on women in leadership found that their feelings and thoughts revolved around the concept of this still being a man’s world and that for a woman to move into a leadership position, she would need to make personal sacrifices in relationship to her family and personal life. Because of these negative attitudes towards women in senior management positions, most women in these positions have been made to feel unaccepted, and their confidence in nearly everything they do has been lessened as a re- sult of the negative counter-productive attitudes of men. One of the woman directors at the na- tional centre noted that the first time a woman received criticism or the first time she failed, she would code it as a sign that she was inferior and that she should never have tried to become a manager in the first place. This is supported by Blackmore (1993) who says women in society are less valued than men. Blackmore (1993) fur- ther argues that women from birth onwards through school into adult life, receive subtle messages about their (dubious)worth in society and because of this they have been found to have poorer self image and lower self-esteem than men. Furthermore, Chabaya et al. (2009) re- port that in their study low-self esteem and lack of confidence were advanced as explanations for the under-representation of women in school headship positions. To try and compensate for the problem of cultural inferiority complex, some women man- agers may tend to be ‘iron ladies’ resorting to autocratic leadership styles, hence such women are noticed but feared more than valued in their organization, as was observed by one of the male regional administrators. Such strategies act to further isolate these women leaders. A male administrator interviewed in this study noted that the moment a woman occupies a senior po- sition, she encounters problems such as loneli- ness, isolation and she lacks acceptance, partic- ularly as a result of rejection by peers and sub- ordinates of both genders. As Morley (2013) observes, women who resort to these autocratic styles seem to be informed by the conventional view which is that the skills, competencies and dispositions deemed essential to leadership, in- clude assertiveness, autonomy and authority and these are embedded in socially constructed definitions of masculinity. All in all, major challenges and barriers to women in senior management positions at the Zimbabwe Open University are seen as emanat- ing from individual socialization, cultural bias- es, organizational constraints to women opera- tions, with even other constraints emanating 370 GEORGE N. SHAVA AND CLEVER NDEBELE from their dual responsibilities at work and at home. The problems surrounding gender ine- quality in senior management positions in the Zimbabwe Open University and other organiza- tions are thus multi-faceted, warranting a holis- tic approach based on complex and diverse vari- ables to get deeper in establishing the challeng- es women face in their management positions. While not denying the tensions and guilt asso- ciated with simultaneously managing a home and a paid job, this dual role for women has become a convenient peg for men on which to hang a range of explanations for under-achieving and ineffective organizational performance by wom- en in leadership. CONCLUSION In conclusion, it is evident that women in senior management positions at the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) are faced with multiple challenges emanating from their multiple roles in the home and at the work place. What is clear- ly evident from this study is that women have failed to claim a fair share in the distribution of senior management positions at ZOU. The study also managed to provide an awareness of how sex-role stereotyping and discrimination of wom- en can have a negative effect on career develop- ment and achievement at work. The study how- ever also concludes that notwithstanding the lower overall numbers of women in management positions compared to men, the Zimbabwe Open University has made notable efforts in address- ing the problem of women under-representation in senior management position as shown by the number of women appointed as deans, direc- tors, administrators, programme co-ordinators, and managers at the national centre. RECOMMENDATIONS In light of the findings from the study, it is recommended that consideration should be made of the importance of family friendly culture in universities to alleviate serious home/work chal- lenges for women who would consider the addi- tional responsibilities of management. The Zim- babwe Open University could for example es- tablish some work-place nurseries/pre-schools in its regions where women employees would directly benefit and be secure in the knowledge that their children are being properly looked af- ter near them. Efforts should be made to facilitate the re- duction of many barriers to women’s advance- ment and their day-to-day operations. The work environment for women should be made more conducive by introducing strategic plans and reward systems to promote the participation of women employees. Open discussions among both males and females on gender and stereo- typing should be held to conscientize the males on issues of human rights. Efforts should be made by responsible au- thorities to enforce legislation to reduce the prob- lem of unfair discrimination and negative atti- tudes against women in the workplace. There is need to enforce laws which seek to protect em- ployees against unnecessary discrimination on the grounds of sex, marital status, race, nation- ality or ethnic origin and disability. This should be part of an integrated and co-ordinated hu- man resources development strategy that in- cludes such other aspects as health and eco- nomic empowerment of women. Care should tak- en however to ensure that those women appoint- ed into senior positions meet the minimum re- quirements for them to gain the necessary re- spect from their male counter parts. Finally, it is recommended that universities at large should come out with educational pro- grammes that encourage women and girls to take up challenging courses of study, which in turn can assist by making them ready for challenging senior positions in different organizations. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH One area of further study could be a narra- tive of success stories of women in leadership who have been successful to see how they have managed to break the barriers. A document anal- ysis study on university appointment policies could also be undertaken to determine the ex- tent to which universities embrace equity in pro- motions criteria among males and females. As the study was conducted at a distance learning Open University, duplicate studies could be con- ducted at contact universities to compare the trends. A further study could be conducted on the impact of spousal support on female leader- ship success. WOMEN IN DISTANCE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT POSITIONS 371 LIMITATIONS OF STUDY As is true of any study, this study does have some limitations. Firstly the study sampled only one university and a bigger sample with more universities might have painted a different pic- ture. Secondly, the authors are men who might also be trapped in the traditional gendered na- ture of society in their beliefs and this might have affected the way the study was conduct- ed. This was however minimised through shar- ing the interview instruments with female re- searchers for input before the study was con- ducted. REFERENCES Bargman BR 2005. The Economics of Emergence of Women. London: Macmillan Publishers. Barret M Katuna 2014. Breaking the Glass Ceiling? Gender and Leadership in Higher Education. Ph.D. Thesis, Unpublished. Connecticut: University of Con- necticut Graduate School. Bilen-Green C, Froelich KA, Jacobson SW 2008. The Prevalence of Women in Academic Leadership Po- sitions and Potential Impact on Prevalence of Wom- en in the Professorial Ranks. Paper presented at the Women in Engineering Proactive Network Confer- ence, St. Louis, Missouri June 8 to 10 2008. Bissessar C 2013. 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Denzin NK, Lincoln YS 2005. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. 3rd Edition. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Gauthier C 2013. Through the looking glass: Women leaders in open schooling. In: A Kanwar, F Ferreira, C Latchem (Eds.). Women and Leadership in Open and Distance Learning and Development. Vancou- ver: Commonwealth of Learning, pp. 101-108. Gourley BA 2013. Helping other women to become leaders in open and distance higher education. In: A Kanwar, F Ferreira, C Latchem (Eds.): Women and Leadership in Open and Distance Learning and De- velopment. Vancouver: Commonwealth of Learn- ing, pp. 47-58. Kiamba JM 2008. Women and leadership positions: Social and cultural barriers to success. Wagadu: Wom- en’s Activism for Gender Equity in Africa, 6: 7-28. Longwe S 2001. Africa Feminism Today. From <http// www.longwe perspectives/sarah.htm.> (Retrieved on 15 December 2008). Madsen SR 2012. Women and leadership in higher ed- ucation: Current realities, challenges, and future directions. 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Athens Journal of Education, 1(1): 3 3 - 4 4 . Ramsay E 2000. Women and Leadership in Higher Education: Facing International Challenges and Max- imising Opportunities. Keynote address delivered at the international seminar on Asian Women Leaders in Higher Education II: Leadership Competencies to Face the Local-Global Challenges Of The 21st Century. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, October 30, 2000. Shakeshaft C 1993. Organizational Theory and Wom- en. Washington: Educational Research Association. Tiao Nan-Chi 2006. Senior Women Leaders in Higher Education Overcoming Barriers to Success. Ph.D. Thesis, Unpublished. Michigan: Eastern Michigan University. Tsegay TS 2013. Some Ethiopian women leaders’ per- ceptions about their leadership. Advancing Women in Leadership, 33: 75-86. Yin RK 2003. Case Study Research: Design and Meth- ods. London: Sage Publication. Zinyemba A 2013. 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work_7uoc2z6zofej5fli5sfq46bsoe	----	CDIE667957 5..30 Evaluating the quality of interaction in asynchronous discussion forums in fully online courses Dip Nandi*, Margaret Hamilton, and James Harland School of Computer Science and Information Technology, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia (Received 12 September 2011; final version received 14 December 2011) Fully online courses are becoming progressively more popular because of their “anytime anywhere” learning flexibility. One of the ways students interact with each other and with the instructors within fully online learning environments is via asynchronous discussion forums. However, student engagement in online discussion forums does not always take place automatically and there is a lack of clarity about the ideal role of the instructors in them. In this article, we report on our research on the quality of discussion in fully online courses through analysis of discussion forum activities. We have conducted our research on two large fully online subjects for computing students over two consecutive semes- ters and used a grounded theoretic approach for data analysis. Our results reveal what students and instructors consider as quality interaction in fully online courses. We also propose two frameworks based on our findings that can be used to ensure effective online interaction. Keywords: asynchronous discussion forums; fully online course; quality frame- work Introduction Encouraging interaction in online courses in tertiary education has long been an interesting research topic. The introduction of fully online tertiary courses, such as those offered by Open Universities Australia (http://www.open.edu.au) or the Open University (http://www.open.ac.uk), means that interaction between teachers and learners must be enabled purely via online environments. Online interactive activi- ties can assist learners to share and gain knowledge from each other. Although there is a great deal of focus on better uses of the technology to support online learning, the way online interaction and participation can be designed has yet to be ade- quately investigated (Nandi, Chang, & Balbo, 2009). A gap exists in the literature, where the dedication to analyze the content of forum participation has overshad- owed detail into how quality can be evaluated and how to increase productive stu- dent participation (Blignaut & Trollip, 2003). In particular, most of the research in this area has been conducted in blended learning environments, that is, those in which there is a mixture of traditional face-to-face classes and online activities. Our work deals with courses offered in a fully online environment, in which there are no face-to-face classes. *Corresponding author. Email: dip.nandi@rmit.edu.au Distance Education Vol. 33, No. 1, May 2012, 5–30 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online � 2012 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.667957 http://www.tandfonline.com http://www.open.edu.au http://www.open.ac.uk This article draws on literature concerned with online learning, interactivity, dis- cussion forum participation, and quality of participation for students and instructors. Our key research question is, “How can we evaluate quality online interaction in a fully online course?” To accomplish this research objective, qualitative analysis was performed on discussion forums in several fully online courses in a tertiary education context, using a grounded theoretic approach to capture the inner meaning of the data (Lechner, 2001; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Based on this analysis, specific guide- lines are proposed through which productive interaction in fully online courses can be ensured. Background Online learning and interactivity Online learning comprises digitally formatted content accessible via the World Wide Web and channels of communication for instructors and students to actively interact between and among themselves (Ng & Murphy, 2005). The importance of interactivity in online learning is highlighted by research on online learning systems (Maor & Volet, 2007; Persico, Pozzi, & Sarti, 2010). The quality of this interaction determines the success of learning and teaching online. To support ongoing online interaction, a range of asynchronous (e.g., newsgroups and wikis) and synchronous (e.g., Elluminate and Skype) technologies has been used (Bradshaw & Hinton, 2004; Sher, 2009). The way instructors intervene in online forums can help to set up the direction for discussion and define its boundaries. Such intervention includes the methods by which instructors teach, guide, assess, and support students’ learning and construct knowledge (Albion & Ertmer, 2004), and is one of the most critical factors in enhancing student satisfaction in an online course. Moore (1989) distinguished between three types of student interaction in online courses: (1) student–student interaction, (2) student–instructor interaction, and (3) student–content interaction. Hence, the learning process is no longer an individual endeavor; rather it can incorporate and leverage the many-to-many relations among learners and instructors (Piccoli, Ahmad, & Ives, 2001). Dennen and Wieland (2007) suggested that learners must interact with each other and the course material at deeper levels, which has the potential for negotiation and internalization of knowledge rather than just rote memorization of knowledge. Asynchronous discussion forums are widely used to facilitate this kind of inter- action. Discussion forums and participation Online asynchronous discussion forums are becoming a common feature in on- campus and online courses as they allow students and instructors to communicate with each other regardless of time and space. Broadly, there are three levels of participation in such discussion forums: (1) “Lurkers” (Salmon, 2003) who simply read the messages and do not partici- pate. They may learn by reading the posts and incorporating the ideas into their assignments (Guzdial & Carroll, 2002). 6 D. Nandi et al. (2) Students who treat the forum as a notice board, posting their own position and having limited interaction. (3) The participation is interactive and used to its full potential (Ho, 2002). Gerbic (2006) identified the main motivators for participation in online discus- sion forums as the need to exchange ideas and seek feedback from instructors, and the de-motivators for online participation as irrelevant discussion and arrogant con- tributors. Participation is not always welcome by students who fail to understand the benefits gained. Some demonstrate their uncertainty by not actively participating in the discussions because of the lack of standard guidelines (Armatas, Holt, & Rice, 2003; Dennen, Darabi, & Smith, 2007; Farmer, 2004; Ramsden, 2003). Design for quality student participation The quality of discussion in online forums has been investigated and measured by several researchers from different angles. These include tone (Grady, 2003), gram- mar (Edelstein & Edwards, 2002), number of words (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2003), rea- soning (Edelstein & Edwards, 2002), level of controversy (Burstall, 2000), and content (Edelstein & Edwards, 2002; Grady, 2003; Im & Lee, 2003). The results of these investigations suggest that posts are not always clearly understood by every- one (Love, 2002) and enhanced interaction often occurs when controversial issues are discussed, with participants constantly disagreeing and clarifying (Blignaut & Trollip, 2003; Burstall, 2000). A conceptual framework by Nandi et al. (2009) defined the main themes on which qualitative online interaction can be designed. This framework identified 12 criteria classified under the three main themes of content, interaction quality, and objective measures. Although the framework looks at the quality of interaction related to student participation in online discussion forums, it does not provide guidelines about how learner–instructor interaction should be designed to ensure enhanced student interac- tion. In addition, the criteria in the framework were derived through research into blended learning environments. Researchers suggest that Web-based learning presents a format in which instruc- tors must interact with each student (Wagner, 2001). Volery (2001) and Meyer (2002) also emphasized the critical role of the instructor in promoting a high-quality online learning experience, identifying the role of the instructor as that of a “learn- ing catalyst and knowledge navigator” (Volery, 2001, p. 77). A comprehensive framework with a set of criteria is essential for facilitating interactions in fully online courses to ensure effective and high-quality interaction. This would make explicit to students the expectations of their engagement in dis- cussions, and thereby shape that engagement (Jackson, 2010). For this to occur, we need to address how the issue of quality of interaction can be defined and what are the general criteria for quality online interaction for both students and instructors. Facilitation by instructors Facilitation by instructors refers to the methods by which they teach, guide, assess, and support students’ learning (Albion & Ertmer, 2004). Student–instructor interac- tion is one of the most critical factors in enhancing student satisfaction in an online Distance Education 7 course. Students and instructors must find ways to convey information, determine level of understanding, and create a workable feedback system (Sher, 2009). Thurmond and Wambach (2004) suggested that interactions between students and instructors help students clarify and obtain a correct understanding of the course content. Baran, Correia, and Thompson (2011) suggested that because online students are expected to take greater control of their learning process and be more active in stimulating their peers’ learning, facilitation of online learning plays an important role in guiding these student-centered approaches. Dennen (2005) suggested that all aspects of facilitation require different approaches in the context of asynchronous communication. The instructor’s role in asynchronous discussion forums can vary from being the “sage on the stage” to being the “guide on the side” or even “the ghost in the wings” (Mazzolini & Maddison, 2003). Discussion in the literature generally suggests that it is important that instruc- tors play an active, visible part in forum discussions (Salmon, 2000). Consequently, it is natural to ask what that ideal role should be for an instructor, and in particular, how can we define guidelines for participating in ongoing discus- sion in a fully online course? Davidson-Shivers (2009) conducted a study and reported what types of informa- tion are shared with students by the instructors in online courses. While this study provides some guidelines for the type of information the instructor needs to convey to the students, it does not provide any principles for instructor participation in an ongoing discussion forum about specific topics and how to inspire the students or extend such discussion toward quality interaction. Research conducted by Mazzolini and Maddison (2007) shows that, according to students, the role of an online instructor should incorporate: • asking follow-up questions while answering one; • Introducing new concepts or new ways of thinking about solutions; • answering questions as soon as possible; • providing feedback; • discussing the student solutions from different dimensions or angles. However, instructors classified most of their participation in: • answering students’ questions; • asking leading questions; • while responding to students’ questions, asking subsidiary ones in order to continue the discussion thread. One school of thought proposes that instructors are critical to the success of an online discussion (Blignaut & Trollip, 2003; Ferdig & Roehler, 2004; Greenlaw & DeLoach, 2003; Love, 2002; Roblyer & Wiencke, 2003). The instructor is there to raise the discussion to a higher level, and giving students the responsibility to deter- mine the direction of discussion is not a viable approach (Moller, 1998). The other school of thought claims that instructors should take a back seat and let students construct their own knowledge (Burstall, 2000; Li, 2003; Mazzolini & Maddison, 2003; Poole, 2000; Rourke & Anderson, 2002). It is reasonable to conclude then that how instructors should be facilitating a discussion forum that provides the backbone of a fully online course is neither fixed 8 D. Nandi et al. in a way, nor uniform. Blignaut and Trollip (2003) summarized this by saying that our understanding of how to design online discussion in an effective and meaningful way is still developing. Through this research, we intend to identify the ideal role of the instructor in facilitating discussion forums in fully online courses. Research questions The foregoing discussion suggests that there is a need to investigate the role of the students and instructors in online discussion forums. The two sub-questions that we set out to explore as part of this investigation are as follows: (1) How can we evaluate quality interaction between students in fully online courses? (2) How can we define the ideal role of the instructor while interacting with the students in fully online courses? Investigating the above sub-questions will enable us to answer our key research question: How can we evaluate quality online interaction in a fully online course? We investigated these research questions using a case study, which is described in the following sections. Methodology and data analysis According to Yin (1994), a case study should be employed to examine questions related to how and why, where the investigators have little or no possibility of con- trolling events and the study is on contemporary phenomena in a real-life context. The case study approach was used in the study in the analysis of discussion forum contents in two fully online introductory computing courses at a large metropolitan university in Australia. Using this method we sought to investigate “how” related questions where we had no possibility of controlling events; our context being the real-life online interaction among students and instructors. Introduction to Information Technology and Introduction to Programming are taught in almost all introductory computer science or information technology (IT) degrees and in some non-IT-related degrees. In such settings, all the interac- tions between students, instructor, and content take place online when the subject is conducted in a fully online mode. For this research, we investigated how these interactions are being conducted and identified if they can be better facili- tated. The courses The research reported in this article was carried out in two fully online courses offered by Open Universities Australia (OUA): Introduction to Programming and Introduction to Information Technology, both for first-year undergraduate and post- graduate students. The Introduction to IT course covers elementary IT concepts, for example, computer fundamentals, operating systems and applications, the Internet, and spreadsheets. This course had students from various degrees including Bachelor of Technology, Bachelor of Business IT, Bachelor of Indigenous Studies, and Bachelor of Accountancy. Distance Education 9 The Introduction to Programming course covers introductory concepts of programming through the use of two programming languages: Alice and Java. Students enrolled in this course were only from the Bachelor of Technology degree. Students enrolled in these courses were located in different parts of Australia and also different parts of the world, that is, New Zealand, Canada, China, and India. Throughout the two study periods, one (same) instructor happened to be in charge of the courses. Apart from the Programming course in the study period September–November 2009, the instructor was assisted by a number of tutors (see Table 1). Both courses were conducted in a fully online mode. Data were collected from the online discussion forums from these two courses. Table 1 presents a general overview of the courses, their duration, and participants. Both courses had online discussion forums where students are encouraged to participate and interact with each other through Blackboard, the learning management system. Several threads were created by the instructor to allow students to communicate via the online medium similar to those recommended by Davidson-Shivers (2009). The discussion threads were: (1) Welcome and Introduction: this was set up to allow students to introduce themselves, which would make them known to each other virtually and take a step toward forming a virtual community of learners. (2) General Discussion: this was set up to allow students to ask and respond to questions about the general management of the course. Discussion in this thread mainly consisted of which programming language they should use and any problems in installing it, issues regarding navigating though the online environment, issues regarding how assessment would be implemented in the courses. (3) Assignment and Exam Discussion: the courses had separate threads for sep- arate assignments. Students and the instructor used this thread to ask and respond to questions regarding general assignment issues, marking guide- lines, and clarification of questions. In the programming course, assignments 1 and 2 were based on Alice programming language whereas assignment 3 was based on Java. In the IT course, assignment 1 was based on using hypertext markup language (HTML) to develop a basic website, and assign- ment 2 was based on writing reports. Students submitted assignments via Blackboard and sat for a paper-based exam at the end of the course adminis- trated by OUA. (4) Feedback: this was set up to allow students to provide overall feedback about the management and content of the course. Table 1. Overview of the courses. Courses Study period Students enrolled Tutors (apart from the instructor) A Intro to IT September–November 2009 299 2 B Intro to IT March–May 2010 406 3 C Intro to Programming September–November 2009 346 0 D Intro to Programming March–May 2010 301 2 10 D. Nandi et al. (5) Group Discussion Forums: these forums were facilitated mainly by the tutors (except in the programming course in 2009) and students used them to discuss weekly study materials. Students were divided into groups equally and each group was assigned a separate tutor. Group discussion forums were divided into weeks according to study material so that discussions could take place in relevant weeks. Each week questions relating to the week’s study material were uploaded in the group discussion forums by the tutors. The students were advised to post the answers to those questions in the discussion board and discuss each other’s responses. Students were also encouraged to post their own questions online and respond to each other’s queries. The tutors also posted questions to encourage stu- dents to discuss course materials in the group discussion forums. All other threads were facilitated by the instructor. Apart from the asynchronous discussion each week, the instructor and the tutors conducted a synchronous chat session via Elluminate, which is a text-, audio-, and video-enabled interaction tool. Attendance in the chat sessions was very low primar- ily because of the location, time, and work constraints of the students and hence we did not consider the interaction via synchronous mode for analysis in this article. Participants Table 2 provides a general overview of the background of the students. It also shows the number of undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students in the courses along with the number of students who achieved a high distinction (HD) result of 80% or higher, those who failed the course, and those who did not sit for the course until the end and dropped out (DNS). Table 2 shows that most of the students were undergraduate students within the age range of 20–30 and using the fully online learning environment for the first time. There was no student younger than 20 or older than 40 years in these courses. The instructor for these four courses had a number of years’ experience in facilitating fully online courses. The tutors received training on facilitating group discussion. Data sources The content of the discussion forum in Blackboard for these two courses provided the data for this study. On average, there were 60–70 posts from students and 20–25 posts from the instructor and tutors in each week’s group discussion forums and in each of the assignment threads in the IT course. This number was around 30–40 for the students and 10–15 for the instructors in the programming course. Participation in the group discussion forum was assessed by the instructor based on his experience at Table 2. Overview of the students and final results. Course Results (%) Study level (%) Age level (%) First time online (%) HD DNS Fail UG PG 20–30 30–40 Yes No A 32.12 39.46 6.02 95 5 60 40 70 30 B 36.21 25.12 17.98 97 3 50 50 80 20 C 37.86 34.68 17.34 95 5 70 30 80 20 D 32.56 32.89 14.62 98 2 60 40 80 20 Distance Education 11 the end of the course. Students were not given any criteria for assessment beforehand, but it was mentioned that assessment would be based on the quality of posts and not quantity. This data was collected from two discussion forums from each of the courses over two study periods; one was an assignment discussion forum and the other was a general discussion forum on weekly topics from the course material. We decided to choose the “Assignment 1” and “Week 6” forums from the IT courses and “Assign- ment 1” and “Week 2” from the programming courses as these forums had a high participation rate. In the IT courses, “Week 6” discussion was about learning net- works and the Internet and learning the initial concepts of programming using Alice programming language in the programming courses. The topics for assignment 1 in both the courses are mentioned above under “Assignment and Exam Discussion.” Data analysis method We attempted to uncover all the themes by analyzing the discussion forum posts through qualitative data analysis. These themes provided a clear representation regarding what the participants regard as quality and productive discussion between students and the instructors and how they actually participated in the forums. Small-scale quantitative analysis was also performed to calculate the percentage of times each theme appeared in discussion. Qualitative data was processed using a grounded theoretic approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), that is, open, axial, and selective coding (Neuman, 2006) so that information relevant to the research could be extracted. All the data from the dis- cussion forums were loaded into NVivo 8 software for investigation through open, axial, and selective coding. A similar three-stage data analysis technique was used by Vlachopoulos and Cowan (2010) to explore the different styles and practice of e-moderation; they reported that this method is useful for gaining deep understand- ing of a phenomenon or theme from raw data. Our purpose in employing open coding was to identify the themes emerging from the discussion forums. After analysis of the data at the end of the open coding phase, we identified approximately 45–50 themes. Each separate concept in the data was labeled and similar ideas were grouped and labeled. Following open coding, the next step was axial coding, where the aim was to assemble coding categories into larger conceptual groupings (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The two major catego- ries that emerged were student participation and instructor contribution. Each cate- gory consisted of a number of themes and sub-themes. This process was repeated until no additional categories were identified and all the data had been analyzed. The third and final coding step was selective coding. Again, the data were re- examined and the prior coding and grouping were revisited and verified or changed as required. This set of themes is presented in the “Findings and Discussion” section. At the end of the data analysis, the “student participation” category had around 14 sub- categories and “instructor contribution” had around 12 subcategories. This categoriza- tion explains what types of posts are valued as quality participation by the students and instructors. An example of the coding procedure is provided in the Appendix. We used prolonged engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, and peer debriefing (Baran & Correia, 2009) to ensure the credibility of the findings. The instructor was not a part of the investigation team, which eliminated any chance of bias in this analysis. One researcher analyzed the data, categorized the themes, and presented the findings to co-researchers through peer debriefing. Inconsistencies and 12 D. Nandi et al. disagreement were discussed and managed through consensus reaching. A complete explanation of the courses and participants are presented in the above sections to ensure the transferability of the study. The data analysis enabled the extraction of key and relevant information to the research and, as a result, the research question was explored based on the results ascertained. Through this research, we intend to pro- pose design principles through which online participation of students and contribu- tion of instructors can be developed in fully online computer science or IT courses. Findings and discussion Student participation To carry out the analysis we chose one weekly discussion forum and one assign- ment discussion forum each from the two courses. We have combined the findings from the IT (A and B) and the programming courses (C and D) as the content was common in both study periods (the themes are presented in Table 3). On average 40–50 students were active in the selected discussion forums. Table 3 presents the themes that emerged from the analysis of the data of all of the courses put together. The percentages relate to the proportion of times the themes emerged during all the student interactions. The themes are discussed below along with the actual posts from the discussion forum. Table 3. Themes related to student participation appearing in the discussions. Criteria Intro to IT Intro to Programming Asking questions Administrative (+ for assignments) 1.15% 6.96% Leading questions 8.62% 0.87% Questions drawn from own experience and real-world situation 9.77% 0 Straight and in detail 10.34% 18.26% With lines of code 0 1.74% To instructors 1.72% 0 Answering questions Straight and in detail 14.37% 16.52% With tips 0 3.48% With real-world or own coding example 12.64% 3.48% Justification 5.75% 6.09% Acknowledgement for understanding 2.87% 0 Asking for feedback From students 1.72% 2.61% From instructors 1.15% 2.61% Clarification 9.20% 18.26% Critical discussion of contribution 1.72% 1.74% Ideas from interaction 1.72% 2.61% Opinions regarding the topic of discussion 6.90% 0 Providing feedback 0 1.74% Sharing own experience and knowledge 6.90% 6.96% Suggesting multiple solutions 0.57% 0.87% Distance Education 13 Asking questions Asking questions refers to queries regarding the course material or management of the subject. We found that the students were asking many questions in the discussion forums. This indicates they were active in their courses, trying to grasp the subject material, wanting to learn and hence asking questions. It also shows that students considered themselves within a virtual community of learners and felt free to submit their queries online. We classified the questions into the following categories. Administrative (+ for assignments). This type of question refers to queries where students were trying to understand the management of the course, that is, when tests were due, what software to use, and similar issues: Will you be placing an answers section to the tutorial questions, so we can mark our own progress? (Intro to IT_B) I was wondering if there was some way once the first assignment had been uploaded to “weblearn” whether it could be further modified or retrieved. (Intro to Prog_D) Relatively few such administrative questions were asked by the students. Leading questions. Leading questions refer to queries that came out of a post in the discussion board. It indicates that students have read the posts but do not fully understand the meaning prompting them to ask follow-up questions, such as the fol- lowing: So if there is, for all intents and purposes, only one backbone to/from Australia, what happens when/if there is a serious disruption or disabling to that line. (Intro to IT_A) Drawn from own experience and real-world situation. This type of question shows that students are trying to link the course material with real-world situations: When I access or send emails using a web-based account, such as yahoo or gmail, what protocols are at play? (Intro to IT_B) Understandably, a lot of such questions were asked during the discussion in the IT course, where most of the students are familiar with day-to-day use of IT. In comparison, very few such questions were asked in the programming course, which might be due to the different nature of the subject material of the courses. Straight and in detail. These are straightforward questions posted by the students regarding the topic of discussion. There were lots of such questions posted in the discussion board in both courses. With lines of code. This type of question was mainly observed in the introductory programming course. It actually serves two purposes. Firstly, it shows that the students have tried to solve the problem unsuccessfully and were confused; secondly, it makes it easier for others to answer the query by looking at the code: If (humvee distance to redbox+humvee distance to redbox)=redbox distance to bluebox) 14 D. Nandi et al. I’m having a major brain haemorrhage with this, I can only figure that it fails to be true because distance to is measured from the humvees edge rather than centre point. Any help appreciated much. Is there a better way that i am missing? (Intro to Prog_C) (Humvee, redbox and bluebox are objects from assignment 1 where students were required to compute the distances between each of these objects in the Alice pro- gramming environment, so the objects would not collide.) To instructors. These are straightforward questions directed toward instructors only, such as: Are you able to elaborate on Q1. part 2 below as I seem not understand the question clearly.1. Who (or what) is typically connected to each type of communication line? (Intro to IT_B) Sometimes during discussions, students appeared confused by the variety of information presented in the forum and asked direct questions to the instructors for clarification. Others asked to make sure they were on the right track before they went further along. Answering questions Answering questions refers to responding to the queries in the discussion forums. Our data analysis shows the students were freely answering questions in a variety of ways, which we have classified in the following categories. Straight and in detail. This refers to answering questions in a straightforward manner. These questions might be asked by the instructors or posted by other students in the forum. This practice assists in sharing and reinforcing knowledge. Students posted these types of answers to tutorial questions as well as questions from other students. With tips. Answers with tips do not directly provide a solution for the question or the problem, but provide some guidelines depending on which solutions can be worked through. These types of answers are especially important while discussing assignments where students and instructors are not supposed to give away the solution through their answers and instead provide clues: Look very carefully at all of the proximity functions and you’ll find one that is more suitable. (Intro to Prog_C) Understandably, these types of answers were seen in the introduction to the programming course as writing the code would give away the actual solution. With real-world or own coding example. Providing examples while answering questions allows students to link the theory with real-world practice. Many such answers were seen in the introductory IT course: Twitter has just removed XMPP for latency concerns. (Intro to IT_A) I have solved the problem with a few more IF statements. :) (Intro to Prog_D) Distance Education 15 These posts assisted students to apply theory to practice while answering ques- tions so other students could learn from them. Students also posted programming code. Justification. Justification refers to providing clear rationalization for the posts while participating in online forums. It acts as a source of validation for a specific comment. Students tried to justify their answers in different ways, for example (as mentioned above), by providing a link or the source for the information or by providing examples that show the application of the theory: This link explains it well and in detail of just what I said. http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/ WhatAreURIs/ (Intro to IT_B) This article outlines the terminology that I mentioned quite well—http://computerpro- gramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/procedure__subroutine_or_function_ (Intro to Prog_C) The above posts assisted others in the discussion board to verify the answer by visiting the links and acquire more knowledge. Students in both courses tried to provide a source or link while answering questions. Acknowledgement for understanding Acknowledging for understanding is an indication that the discussion is productive and may inspire other students to engage in effective discussion: After viewing some of the post’s i think I now know how this part of html code works :-) (Intro to IT_B) Asking for feedback Asking for feedback refers to posts where students comment or give solutions and ask other students or instructors for verification. From student: Am I on the right track here? (Intro to IT_A) From instructor: So. Mr. X, COULD YOU PLEASE SHED SOME LIGHT ON THIS (Intro to Prog_C) It shows that students were free to communicate and create a thoughtful interac- tion online. Students in both courses asked for feedback from other students and instructors. Clarification Clarification refers to explaining the posts clearly so the meaning can be easily understood. This is one of the most important criteria for participating in any dis- cussion forum. Technical courses have a lot of scope for misunderstanding and mis- interpretation: 16 D. Nandi et al. http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/WhatAreURIs/ http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/WhatAreURIs/ http://computerprogramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/procedure__subroutine_or_function http://computerprogramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/procedure__subroutine_or_function The relationship between International backbones are as follows: Shark eats Big fish which eats little fish which eats even littler fish :) i.e. Backbone > Regional Network > ISP’s > Me (Intro to IT_A) Objects in the Alice world will have both “properties” and “methods”—properties are like the attributes of an object for example its colour, the methods will be action the object is capable of performing—such as moving. (Intro to Prog_C) In all courses, students tried to clarify their posts in the above-mentioned ways to make logical sense to everyone in the discussion forum. Critical discussion of contribution Critical discussion of contribution covers agreement or disagreement with posts providing a logical explanation of the reasons. This assists students to learn the topic under discussion more clearly and to reflect on their own posts to consider different ways of answering an IT question or solving a programming problem: You say “the more expensive VoIP.” I don’t know what the costs are but isn’t the purpose of VoIP to supply cheap call rates using Internet technology. (Intro to IT_A) It appears your trying to overcomplicate something that is relatively simple … (Intro to Prog_D) Very few students critically discussed their peers’ posts, and this criterion should be encouraged by the instructors. Ideas from interaction Ideas from interaction refer to students learning a new concept from other students and using that knowledge to solve a problem or answer a question: I think there can be more than one backbone per area, because as Alison said, what if one gets disrupted, we would be completely cut-off. (Intro to IT_A) Thanks hips, i didn’t try “forward,” because worried that her upper torso would actually leaving her lower torso, I’ll try it now n c what happens. (Intro to Prog_D) This criterion shows that interaction was productive as students were learning from each other. Opinions regarding the topic of discussion Opinion-based posts may not be very helpful for other students. However, they can trigger discussion if other students reply and contribute new knowledge, creating an atmosphere for further more meaningful discussion: I would think instant messaging is not possible on a standard phone. (Intro to IT_B) Students posted their opinions about the course material in the IT course and interestingly, as noted previously, none in the programming course. Almost every time these types of opinions were posted, productive discussion was triggered. Distance Education 17 Providing feedback Providing feedback to each other is a criterion that shows students freely assist each other to develop knowledge: I completely agree with your statements. However I am sure that it is all workable with the left right things. (Intro to Prog_C) This criterion occurred only twice. Sharing own experience and knowledge This classification refers to students sharing their own experiences while interacting in the discussion forum. Sharing the experience of solving a problem can provide an assurance to others that certain IT or programming questions can be solved in that way: I’ve used Lotus Sametime at a company I worked for and it uses the same SIP as googletalk (Intro to IT_A) Here here!! I have found out by doing the prac that we were given, that the “objects” (skaters, cows, etc) move in relation to the way they are facing … (Intro to Prog_C) The above quotes indicate that students have tried or completed the task, and they are willing to share their experience and what they have learned from it. Suggesting multiple solutions Suggesting multiple solutions for a single problem shows that the student has done some research regarding that problem. Furthermore, it assists other students to con- sider different angles about certain problems or questions and in this way acquire more knowledge: The alternative would be to use the corresponding IP address which isn’t really the most user friendly approach (Intro to IT_B) These were the only two multiple solutions suggested in either discussion forum. Relevance and informal posts Relevance in participation refers to posts that are directly or indirectly related to the subject of discussion. Most of the posts in our data were relevant to the topic. A few informal posts were observed, however, and have been included here to show that they can assist in building a learning community. It is easier to post informal funny messages if the students feel they belong to the community: Sweet dreams and remember ice packs for the flying fingers. :-P (Intro to IT_B) The world is “large,” u didn’t get lost, just shift the world, u can find “yourself” again:-) (Intro to Prog_C) 18 D. Nandi et al. This type of informal posting made the discussion lighthearted and interesting. Instructor contribution Table 4 presents the themes that emerged from our data analysis. They provide an overview of how instructors (and tutors) facilitated the discussion forums. Table 4 also presents the number of times the themes appeared as a percentage of the total contributions in the forums. This highlights the different emphases of both courses. We discuss the themes further below and provide examples from the posts in the discussion forums. Administrative guidelines or technical assistance Administrative guidelines refer to the rules and regulations of the course and the strategies that should be followed by the students. The instructors and tutors pro- vided guidelines and technical assistance during the initial weeks of the course in the following ways: There are two group discussions boards, located away from the main Assignment discussion board. (Intro to IT_A) The a2w files must be opened from within alice, double clicking on them may open them in a zip program for extraction. (Intro to Prog_D) This guidance made it easier for online students to settle down and get into the subject materials. It also clarified which software to use or not to use and how to get the best out of a fully online course. As the students were fully online, this is essential, as it sets the tone for the study ahead. Clarification of questions Clarification refers to providing a clear explanation of the problem and surrounding issues. Examples of posts using this theme occurred only for the programming course, where instructors attempted to clarify the problem scenario in the assign- ment specification: Yes, you can use the existing Alice Functions and method parameters, but must NOT create new ones. (Intro to Prog_D) Table 4. Themes related to instructor participation as they appeared in the discussion. Criteria Intro to IT Intro to Programming Administrative guideline or technical assistance 2.65% 8.93% Clarification of questions 0 7.14% Declaration of expectation 15.93% 3.57% Periodic intervention to direct and extend discussion 17.70% 0 Promoting deep learning 4.24% 19.64% Providing direct answers 9.73% 50% Providing feedback with example 15.04% 0 Providing feedback 18.58% 10.71% Raising new questions 15.93% 0 Distance Education 19 Mostly evident in the assignment discussion, this theme allowed students to think in the appropriate way to solve a certain problem. Declaration of expectation It is important for the instructors to set expectations to assist students to understand what the instructor wants out of them and enable them to act accordingly. It specifies what the students should be doing to achieve the ultimate goal of learning in the course: Participate in tutorial discussion for one group for each week. (Intro to IT_A) It’s not something that would be examined; it’s a point of extension for those whom are curious. (Intro to IT_B) Particularly in a course like Introduction to Information Technology, which covers vast areas from the field of IT, it was important to clearly state expectations, in appropriate contexts like the above. Periodic intervention to direct and extend discussion This theme refers to continuing the discussion by broadening the focus while ensur- ing it does not halt after a certain point. Consistent intervention by the instructor keeps the discussion on track: For those who would like a little more to debate about, a valid point was raised between cable TV and cable Internet. (Intro to IT_A) Why do you think other countries would have Cable more popular? Do you think all cables are fibre optic? (Intro to IT_B) This intervention also assists in keeping the topic relevant, but was evident only in the IT course data. This verifies Nandi, Hamilton, Harland, and Warburton’s hypothesis that it might not be easy to extend a discussion in an introductory programming course (2011). The course content is narrow and often has only one solution to a problem. Providing feedback Periodic and summarized feedback is regarded as one of the major roles of instruc- tors (Mazzolini & Maddison, 2007). Feedback provides students with an overview regarding whether they are on the right track or not: X was on the right track and Y nailed it here. (Intro to IT_A) I am assuming you mean the distance between the cars, distance to is measured between the centre axis of the two objects, don’t worry too much about it looking right. (Intro to Prog_D) Periodic feedback from instructors and tutors was provided in both courses. Mostly evident in the IT course, this theme assisted students to clarify their way of thinking and determine a solution. 20 D. Nandi et al. Providing feedback with example Feedback with an example explains to the students in which way they should be con- centrating on solving the problems. This theme was evident only in the introductory IT course: Not really, since most of these are private commercial deals that us mere mortals are not allowed to know. (Intro to IT_B) Examples provided by the instructors, such as sample code for a problem or examples of how a network structure works, were probably considered as the most credible source of information by the students. Promoting deep learning Providing hints for discussion refers to not giving the answers directly but provok- ing the students’ thinking processes by providing certain helpful clues. It assisted the discussion to move ahead and helped students to find solutions: The simple idea of this question is to get you thinking about the differences between Cable and ADSL. (Intro to IT_A) You have just answered your own question; think about what you said in the question. (Intro to Prog_D) Providing hints for discussion to promote deep learning was a feature in both courses, especially in the programming course. Providing direct answers Providing direct answers assists students to learn what the solution to a problem is and verify their own research. Students should be provided enough time to engage with the problem before being given direct answers. There were a lot of direct answers provided by the instructors. Raising (new) questions Asking new questions provides the students with a chance to explore beyond the course material and learn more: Do you think the benefit would be great anyhow? (Intro to IT_B) Only evident in the IT course, this theme was used by the instructors lots of times during discussion. Lessons learned The key focus of this research was on the quality of interaction of the students and instructors in the discussion forum. By analyzing the discussion forum participation, we have uncovered several themes that can act as a base for designing online par- ticipation and several important features that affect the quality of participation. These are discussed in the following. Distance Education 21 Student participation On a general level, students are making the most of their online forum discussions to gain, share, deepen, and expand knowledge. A number of criteria in the area of cognitive skills, use of both formal and informal language (Gerbic, 2006), and frequency of participation were evident (Nandi et al., 2009). Themes such as justifi- cation of posts, clarification of ideas, critical discussion of contribution, and sugges- tions of multiple solutions were valued and exercised by the students regularly. Some of the criteria (Nandi et al., 2009) were not evident in the discussion, such as prioritization and interpretation; while some new and different themes emerged from data analysis, such as asking questions and providing feedback. The main tasks that students were performing in the discussion forum were ask- ing and answering questions. Research to date on analyzing themes for online par- ticipation (Nandi et al., 2009) largely focuses on how to answer questions and not on how the answers can be justified. Most of the themes provide guidelines on how quality responses should be posted in online forums. Our research verifies most of them as students used sources or links and examples while providing answers and wanted others to justify their responses. Different types of questions were being asked by the students in the two courses, which triggered discussions most of the times. We classified these ques- tions into six categories. They are administrative (+ for assignments), leading ques- tions, questions drawn from own experience and real-world situations, straight and in detail, with lines of code, and questions directed to instructors. Almost 50% of the posts in both courses were questions and answers from the students. The next highest number of posts were classified in the clarification category, which consisted of around 9% and 18% of the posts in the IT course and programming course, respectively. Researchers have argued that comments or answers posted online should be accurate and backed up by justification or clarification (Edelstein & Edwards, 2002). We have found that posting opinions can also be useful as it assists in trig- gering discussion. Blignaut and Trollip (2003) and Burstall (2000) suggested that controversial posts attract enhanced interaction. This theme was evident only in the introductory IT course, where students probably knew about the uses of IT in their day-to-day life and were trying to relate it with the topic of discussion. The content for the programming course is more prescriptive, algorithmic, and more narrowly focused; hence opportunities for direct discussion and asking ques- tions are limited. Often a single solution posted by a student in answer to a problem raised by another student or the instructor ended the discussion at that point. The same situation applied to assignments. Once the solution was obtained, there was little and no variety of solution provided. Conversely, the intro to IT course, which consists of basic topics from general IT covering a vast area from both hardware and software, often had a lot of discussions about these topics from different angles. During these, students pointed toward examples and real-world situations from past and current use of IT in their personal and work life, which broadened the discussion. This could explain why more questions (9.77%) and answers (12.64%) drawn from own experience or real-world situations were posted in the introductory IT course and very few in the programming course (3.48% only answers). On the con- trary, a lot more administrative questions were asked in the programming course 22 D. Nandi et al. (6.96%) than the IT course (1.15%), where students were trying to become acquainted with which software program to use and how to install it. It confirms Nandi et al.’s findings that the relative importance and the relevance of each theme depends very much on the instructors, the subject matter content, and the cohort and demography of the online students (2009). Based on the findings of our research reported in this article, we have modified the earlier framework (Nandi et al., 2009) and proposed this new framework in Table 5 for evaluating the quality of student interaction in fully online courses. This new framework consists of 11 criteria and assessment guidelines for each criterion. We did not include the criteria of “objective measures” (Nandi et al., 2009, p. 668) in this framework, and intend to investigate this further in the future. Instructor contribution Instructors played an active role in initiating and carrying the discussion forward. Data analysis indicates that periodic feedback from instructors is always valued highly by students and keeps the students on track, and hence this feedback is essential. Our results validate that handing students the responsibility to direct dis- cussion is not always the best option (Moller, 1998) and instructors should be in control of the discussion at all times through an active presence. There were many questions being asked by the students in both the courses that could explain why instructors had to provide so many direct answers. In the programming course, 50% of all posts by the instructors were direct answers to questions and none was related to extending or directing discussion. Conversely, only 9.73% of the posts in the IT course were direct answers and 17.70% were related to extending discussion, which highlights the impact of content on discussion. It falls to the instructor to draw a balance between these two criteria of answering direct questions and providing clues or hints while facilitating discussion. Investigation of the data reveals that it is important to provide administrative or technical guidance early in the course. Technical courses like IT and programming can sometimes be hard to study initially and the fully online environment of study adds to the problem. Students also need to know which software to install and guid- ance on how to install it. Around 7% of the posts by the students in the program- ming course were related to administrative issues and around 9% of the posts by the instructors were responses to those questions. Hence, clear and detailed guide- lines can assist the students to become accustomed to the fully online mode of learning early on. Instructors should declare early in the course their expectations of the students on how to participate and acquire the best out of the discussion forum. This decla- ration may consist of directions regarding how many and how often students should post in the discussion board, what should be the pattern of their contribution, how the students should approach the subject, and in general what is expected of them. The expectation might be different considering the difference in the content of the courses (Nandi, Hamilton, Harland, & Warburton, 2011). Hence, through specific subject-specific guidelines, students can follow the guidance and try to achieve the goal of learning accordingly. In both the courses, instructors set up threads named “Welcome and intro” reserved exclusively for students to introduce themselves. A lot of the posts in the first teaching weeks of the courses allowed students to introduce themselves and Distance Education 23 T ab le 5 . F ra m ew o rk fo r ev al u at in g in te ra ct io n q u al it y b et w ee n st u d en ts . C ri te ri a P o o r S at is fa ct o ry G o o d E x ce ll en t A sk in g q u es ti o n s A sk in g ir re le v an t q u es ti o n s Q u es ti o n s fr o m su b je ct m at te r o r to p ic o f d is cu ss io n Q u es ti o n s w it h cl ea r b ac k g ro u n d Q u es ti o n s in d ic at in g ab il it y an d ev id en ce to ca rr y o u t re se ar ch A n sw er in g q u es ti o n s P ro v in g w ro n g an sw er P o st in g co rr ec t an sw er s P ro v id in g d et ai le d an sw er s D et ai le d an sw er s w it h ex am p le s an d su g g es ti n g m u lt ip le so lu ti o n s if ap p li ca b le Ju st ifi ca ti o n N o ju st ifi ca ti o n o f p o in ts Ju st ifi ca ti o n b as ed o n p er so n al o p in io n Ju st ifi ca ti o n u si n g ex is ti n g ca se s, co n ce p ts , o r th eo ri es Ju st ifi ca ti o n u si n g ex is ti n g ca se s, co n ce p ts , o r th eo ri es an d p ro v id in g cl ea r d is cu ss io n o f im p li ca ti o n s C la ri fi ca ti o n R eg u rg it at io n o f in fo rm at io n A cl ea r ex p la n at io n o f av ai la b le in fo rm at io n E x p la in in g av ai la b le in fo rm at io n u si n g re le v an t ex am p le s A rt ic u la ti n g av ai la b le in fo rm at io n to ex p an d o n id ea s p re se n te d , in cl u d in g th e u se o f ex am p le s C ri ti ca l d is cu ss io n o f co n tr ib u ti o n s N o en g ag em en t w it h o th er le ar n er s’ co n tr ib u ti o n s S o m e b as ic d is cu ss io n ab o u t o th er le ar n er s’ co n tr ib u ti o n s C o n si st en t en g ag em en t w it h o th er le ar n er s’ co n tr ib u ti o n s an d ac k n o w le d g em en t o f o th er le ar n er s’ co m m en ts o n o w n co n tr ib u ti o n s C o n tr ib u ti n g to a co m m u n it y o f le ar n er s, w it h co n si st en t en g ag em en t an d ad v an ce m en t o f ea ch o th er ’s id ea s Id ea s (+ n ew ) fr o m in te ra ct io n s N o ev id en ce o f n ew id ea s an d th o u g h ts fr o m in te ra ct io n S o m e n ew id ea s d ev el o p ed as a re su lt o f in te ra ct io n S o m e so lu ti o n s an d n ew id ea s as a re su lt o f in te ra ct io n s C o ll ab o ra ti v e ap p ro ac h to so lu ti o n se ek in g an d n ew id ea s d ev el o p ed P o st in g o p in io n s O p in io n o n ir re le v an t to p ic O p in io n s o n re le v an t to p ic O p in io n s th at tr ig g er d is cu ss io n O p in io n s th at in d ic at e th e k n o w le d g e o f th e su b je ct m at te r an d p ro m p ts fe ed b ac k P ro v id in g fe ed b ac k W ro n g an d sh o rt fe ed b ac k A cc u ra te fe ed b ac k D et ai le d fe ed b ac k D et ai le d fe ed b ac k w it h ac k n o w le d g em en t fo r u n d er st an d in g if ap p li ca b le S h ar in g k n o w le d g e an d ex p er ie n ce N o sh ar in g o f o u ts id e k n o w le d g e S h ar in g g en er ic in fo rm at io n th at is ea si ly av ai la b le fr o m o u ts id e so u rc es S h ar in g re al -w o rl d ex am p le s th at m ay n o t b e im m ed ia te ly o b v io u s to o th er le ar n er s S h ar in g re al -l if e k n o w le d g e, p er so n al ex p er ie n ce , an d ex am p le s o f si m il ar p ro b le m s/ so lu ti o n s R el ev an ce (C o n ti n u ed ) 24 D. Nandi et al. N o ap p li ca ti o n o r d is cu ss io n o f re le v an ce to q u es ti o n s as k ed A p p li ca ti o n o f k n o w le d g e to q u es ti o n s as k ed A p p li ca ti o n o f k n o w le d g e in cl u d in g d is cu ss io n u si n g re le v an t ex am p le s K n o w le d g e is cr it ic al ly ap p li ed an d m ay in cl u d e d is cu ss io n o f li m it at io n s U si n g so ci al cu es to en g ag e o th er p ar ti ci p an ts N o en g ag em en t w it h o th er s in th e d is cu ss io n fo ru m A n sw er in g so m e b as ic q u es ti o n p o se d b y fa ci li ta to r o r o th er le ar n er s E n g ag in g w it h th e w o rk an d d is cu ss io n o f o th er le ar n er s E n g ag in g an d en co u ra g in g p ar ti ci p at io n w it h fe ll o w d is cu ss an ts in th e fo ru m Distance Education 25 meet each other virtually. On-campus students enjoy the benefits of easily establish- ing a group to study together. Therefore, a sense of virtual community is required so that students can feel free to interact with each other and share knowledge and ideas. Initiatives for building a virtual community need to be taken early in the course to allow students to communicate with each other to break the ice by introducing themselves. The above discussion clarifies that instructors and tutors fulfilled all the criteria mentioned by Mazzolini and Maddison (2007) as the ideal role of the online instructor. Baran et al. (2011) identified the ideal role of an online instructor. Our research has investigated how the instructor’s role might influence the quality of interaction in a fully online computing course. We decided to match our findings with the ideal role outlined by Baran et al. (2011). Based on our research presented in Table 4, we have identified the roles played by instructors in online discussion forums and matched these with the roles identified by Baran et al. (2011) for the ideal instruc- tor. We now propose a new framework to provide implementation guidelines for online instructors (see Table 6). This framework can provide guidelines for instructors on which roles to perform and how to execute them. It can also be beneficial for large classes where instruc- tors are assisted by tutors and individual roles can be clearly divided and defined. Conclusion and directions for further research We have investigated the quality of interaction with a view to evaluating quality in online discussions in fully online courses. Due to the exploratory nature of the research, the major focus has been to identify key themes that apply to online for- ums in fully online courses. We presented the key themes that emerged in Tables 3 and 4, identified from student and instructor contributions. A number of issues relat- ing to effective online participation and engagement were discovered through the analysis and discussed as lessons learned. Table 6. Ideal roles of an instructor and how to implement them. Ideal role of an instructor (from Baran et al., 2011) How to implement it (based on our research in Table 4) Managerial and instructional design • Providing administrative guideline • Declaring expectations Pedagogical • Clarifying questions and problems • Periodic intervention to direct and extend discussion • Promoting deep learning • Raising new questions Technical • Proving technical assistance Facilitator • Providing direct answers • Providing feedback (+ with examples) Social roles • Initiatives for community building 26 D. Nandi et al. In order to gain a better understanding of what it means by quality of participa- tion, the two major areas that were researched, analyzed, and extended were the type of participation by the students and the facilitation activities by the instructors. Our results and frameworks define a set of criteria for instructors to implement for quality participation for interactive learning. Results of the data analysis show that students were actively participating in the discussion, asking and answering questions. In response, instructors posted both direct answers and hints to promote deep learning of important course content. They also actively attempted to extend the discussion and raise new questions in the IT course and provided feedback with examples relevant to the course content. Our research shows that rather than designing a fully student-centered or instruc- tor-centered discussion, a combination of both approaches can be advantageous. This requires students and instructors to take responsibility to construct and share knowledge and ideas. Students can have guidance on what is expected of them through our framework in Table 5. Instructors can design their role and workload through the framework in Table 6. The themes and frameworks presented in this article provide clear guidelines that can be used as design principles for developing and supporting quality discussion forums in fully online courses. We plan to extend this research by applying the set of criteria and frameworks in online courses over multiple semesters to investigate patterns over time. Future research could extend our evaluation and include learner content interaction in the analysis. The implications of the frameworks can be tested in different higher edu- cation contexts with different online courses. This research can provide more insights into how students and instructors interact to learn and develop in online courses. The effects of the frameworks on design and structure of online activities and role distribution could benefit from future research. Notes on contributors Dip Nandi is a PhD candidate in the School of Computer Science and Information Technology at RMIT University. 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Example of the coding procedure Initial codes after open coding phase Administrative (+ for assignments) questions, Questions drawn from own experience and real-world situation, Straight and in detail questions, Administrative guidelines or technical assistance, Declaration of expectation, Periodic intervention to direct and extend discussion, Questions with lines of code, Clarification of questions, Declaration of expectation, Straight and in detail answers, Answers with real-world or own coding example, Justification. Grouped themes after the axial coding phase Student Participation → Straight and in detail answers, Answers with real-world or own coding example, Justification, Questions with lines of code, Administrative (+ for assign- ments) questions, Questions drawn from own experience and real-world situation, Straight and in detail questions. Instructor Contribution → Administrative guideline or technical assistance, Declaration of expectation, Periodic intervention to direct and extend discussion, Clarification of questions, Declaration of expectation. Grouped themes after the selective coding phase Student Participation → Asking Questions → Questions with lines of code, Administrative (+ for assignments) questions, Questions drawn from own experience and real-world situa- tion, Straight and in detail questions. Student Participation → Answering Questions → Straight and in detail answers, Answers with real-world or own coding example, Justification. Instructor Contribution → Administrative guideline or technical assistance, Declaration of expectation, Periodic intervention to direct and extend discussion, Clarification of questions, Declaration of expectation. 30 D. Nandi et al. http://jime.open.ac.uk/jime/index http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/ http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/ http://itdl.org/index.htm http://jrnledcompresearch.com/index.php/jecr/index http://jrnledcompresearch.com/index.php/jecr/index Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. 
work_7v5bjddmrbhqhlippvvevpksla	----	Distance Education Vol. 32, No. 1, May 2011, 5–28 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2011 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2011.565495 http://www.informaworld.com Role of social presence and cognitive absorption in online learning environments Peter Leong* Department of Educational Technology, University of Hawaii–Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA Taylor and FrancisCDIE_A_565495.sgm (Received 29 October 2010; final version received 9 February 2011) 10.1080/01587919.2011.565495Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Article2011Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.321000000May 2011PeterLeongpeter.leong@hawaii.edu This article investigates the relationships between social presence, cognitive absorption, interest, and student satisfaction in online learning. A hypothesized structural equation model was developed to study these critical variables that may influence interaction in online learning environments. Contrary to expectations, the study determined that social presence does not impact satisfaction directly. However, the study concludes that while social presence is related to student satisfaction, its impact is not direct but rather mediated by cognitive absorption. In addition, the study clarified the impact of students’ interest on social presence, cognitive absorption, and satisfaction. The results of this study indicate that interest affects social presence and satisfaction directly. Additionally, interest appears to influence satisfaction indirectly through social presence and cognitive absorption. Contrary to expectations, this study did not reveal any significant relationship between interest and cognitive absorption. Keywords: social presence; cognitive absorption; interest; online student satisfaction Introduction Distance education has grown substantially over the last several decades. Although distance education provides many positives for students, such as increasing access to educational opportunities, attrition in distance education courses can pose a significant problem. Dropout rates for online learning courses are believed to be 10–20% higher than for traditional courses (Carr, 2000; Frankola, 2001). To improve retention in online distance education courses, efforts must be made to understand and enhance student satisfaction with online learning environments. Unraveling all the elements that influence student satisfaction in online learning environments is a difficult task; however, researchers have studied many factors that have been shown to influence student satisfaction. In a study about factors contributing to student satisfaction in online learning envi- ronments, Bolliger and Martindale (2004) determined that instructor variables, such as communication, feedback, preparation, content knowledge, teaching methods, encouragement, accessibility, and professionalism; technical issues; and interactivity were the most important factors. They contended that being a good instructor and having reliable technology equipment are critical in online environments. Additionally, *Email: peter.leong@hawaii.edu 6 P. Leong it is crucial that students have ample opportunities to participate in discussions in order to be engaged in online courses. Similarly, Leong, Ho, and Saromines-Ganne (2002) identified five dimensions of online student satisfaction: interaction, instructor aspects, system-wide technology, workload/difficulty, and function-specific technology. Further, they found four of these five dimensions significantly influence overall student satisfaction with online courses: instructor aspects, system-wide technology, workload/difficulty, and interac- tion. Shea, Fredericksen, and Pickett (2000) also determined that the level of students’ interaction with the instructor and classmates was significantly correlated with the level of satisfaction and perceived learning in online learning courses. The implication of these studies is that instructors of online courses may be able to increase their online students’ satisfaction by addressing the appropriate factors underlying student satis- faction. Among the factors that influence student satisfaction, social presence has been found to be a strong predictor of satisfaction in online learning environments (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Hostetter & Busch, 2006; Richardson & Swan, 2003). Although social presence has a strong influ- ence on student satisfaction in online learning environments, the picture is more complex. An area that has been overlooked is the influence of cognitive absorption. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the role of social presence and cognitive absorption in online learning environments. Specifically, this study devel- oped a hypothesized structural equation model (SEM) to investigate the relationship between social presence and student satisfaction with online learning as mediated by cognitive absorption. In addition, the study clarified the impact of students’ interest on both cognitive absorption and satisfaction. The study investigated the following ques- tions: (1) What is the relationship between social presence and student course satisfaction? (2) What is the relationship between cognitive absorption and student satisfaction? (3) What is the relationship between social presence and cognitive absorption in online learning environments? (4) What is the relationship between students’ interest and cognitive absorption and satisfaction? Background Interaction is a ubiquitous term in technology-mediated distance education literature. It has been identified as one of the major constructs in distance education research (McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996; Moore, 1989; Saba, 2000; Wagner, 1994). The basic premise is that learners learn most effectively when they are actively engaged as opposed to passively reading or listening (Brooks, 1997). Researchers studying interaction in online learning environments have used social presence theory to analyze interaction, communication, and collaborative learning (Gunawardena, 1995; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Swan, 2002; Tu, 2000; Tu & McIsaac, 2002). Social presence is defined as ‘the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction’ (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976, p. 65). Most of these studies applied a semantic differential technique to measure the four dimensions of social presence proposed by Short et al.: personal–impersonal, sensitive–insensitive, warm–cold, and sociable–unsociable. Several shortcomings associated with the use of Distance Education 7 Short et al.’s social presence instrument have led to the development and validation of an instrument that more accurately measures social presence in online learning envi- ronments (Tu, 2002). In this study we used Tu’s validated survey to measure students’ perception of the level of social presence in online learning environments. Although social presence has been shown to influence student satisfaction, considering social presence in isolation may oversimplify a complex psychological process. A discussion of social presence and satisfaction in online learning environments should also consider cognitive absorption theory. Cognitive absorption is defined as ‘a state of deep involvement with software’ (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000, p. 673) and is derived from Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow (1990), which describes ‘the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter’ (p. 4). Agarwal and Karahanna created and validated an instrument to measure the five dimensions of the cognitive absorption construct: temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity. Cognitive absorption has been found to be a proximal antecedent of two important beliefs about adoption of new information technologies (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000; Agarwal, Sambamurthy, & Stair, 1997). A precursor concept to cognitive absorption, cognitive engagement, was determined to be a significant learning outcome in technology-mediated distance learning (Webster & Hackley, 1997). Hence, cognitive absorption may also be a significant learning outcome, as measured by student satisfaction, in online learning environments. Although this background section briefly highlights the factors of social presence and cognitive absorption, these constructs will be discussed in more depth in the following section along with the additional constructs of interest and student satisfac- tion. Too often these constructs have been examined in isolation of each other. Study- ing the interaction of these constructs and the influence of each on the other may lead to a richer understanding of how to enhance student satisfaction in online learning environments. Literature review Many factors influence an online learning environment. These interrelated factors, in turn, will impact course design and pedagogy. This section describes and examines the following three factors that literature suggests have an impact on student satisfaction in online learning environments: social presence, cognitive absorption, and interest. Social presence Researchers studying interactions in computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems have used social presence to study interaction, communication, and collabo- rative learning (Gunawardena, 1995; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Swan, 2002; Tu, 2000; Tu & McIsaac, 2002). According to Short et al. (1976), social presence is the degree to which a person is aware of another person in a technology-mediated communication setting. They believe social presence to be a feature or characteristic of the communication medium. They also contend that communication media differ in their degree of social presence and that these variations affect the nature of the inter- action. Furthermore, social presence of a medium is a ‘perceptual or attitudinal dimen- sion of the user, a “mental set” towards the medium’ (Short et al., 1976, p. 65). Therefore, although social presence is dependent on the objective qualities of a 8 P. Leong communication medium, it is a subjective quality of the medium as perceived by the user. Short et al. believe that it is imperative to know how users perceive the medium, what their feelings are, and what their ‘mental set’ is (1976, p. 65). Research suggests social presence is strongly related to online interaction, raising implications for online community building (Gunawardena, 1995; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Tu & McIsaac, 2002). Rafaeli (1988, 1990) further contends that social presence exists only when interactivity, which is the ‘actual quality of a communica- tion sequence or context’ (Gunawardena, 1995, p. 152), is realized and when users notice it. The most common way of measuring social presence is through the semantic differential technique (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957), which uses a series of bipolar scales to measure the four dimensions of social presence proposed by Short et al. (1976): personal–impersonal, sensitive–insensitive, warm–cold, and sociable– unsociable. Tu (2002) argued that current instruments used to measure social presence (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Short et al., 1976) fail to adequately capture percep- tions of social presence because they do not take into account various other important variables, such as privacy, recipients, tasks, and topics. These shortcomings have led to the development and validation of an instrument that more accurately measures social presence in an online learning environment. Tu (2002) determined that social presence is comprised of three dimensions: social context, online communication, and interactivity. The five variables that make up the social context dimension are CMC as a social form, as an informal and casual way to communicate, as a personal communication form, as a sensitive means for communi- cating with others, and as comfortable with familiar persons. The dimension of online communication includes five variables: CMC conveys feelings and emotion, and the language used in CMC is stimulating, expressive, meaningful, and easily understood. Interactivity comprises four variables: CMC as pleasant, immediate, responsive, and comfortable when dealing with familiar topics. Studies have demonstrated the positive relationship between students’ perception of social presence and their level of perceived satisfaction with online courses (Gunawardena et al., 1997; Hostetter & Busch, 2006; Richardson & Swan, 2003). Swan and Shih (2005), in particular, found positive associations between social presence and satisfaction within online discussions. In a study designed to examine the effectiveness of social presence as a predictor of overall student satisfaction in a text-based CMC environment, Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) determined that social presence explained about 60% of the variance in the overall learner satisfaction. Social presence theorists posit that there exists a relationship between social pres- ence and online interaction and that social presence strongly impacts the overall student satisfaction in CMC environments (Gunawardena, 1995; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Hostetter & Busch, 2006; Richardson & Swan, 2003; Tu & McIsaac, 2002). Consequently, the first hypothesis of this study is: Social presence will be positively related to student satisfaction with online courses. Although social presence is hypothesized to influence student satisfaction, a prom- ising line of research that has been overlooked in online learning environments is cognitive absorption. To understand the complexity of student satisfaction, it may be necessary to investigate the influence and interaction of different factors rather than exclusively relying on the previously demonstrated impact of social presence. Distance Education 9 Cognitive absorption Cognitive absorption, a state of deep involvement or a holistic experience that an individual has with information technology (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000), is rooted in psychology and derived from two closely interrelated concepts of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) and cognitive engagement (Webster & Hackley, 1997). Agarwal and Karahanna defined cognitive absorption as a convergence of flow (Trevino & Webster, 1992) and cognitive engagement (Webster & Hackley, 1997) with an additional dimension, temporal dissociation. Agarwal and Karahanna also identified and described the five dimensions of the cognitive absorption construct: temporal dissociation, or the inability to register the passage of time while engaged in interaction; focused immersion, or the experience of total engagement where other attentional demands are, in essence, ignored; heightened enjoyment, capturing the pleasurable aspects of the interaction; control, representing the user’s perception of being in charge of the interaction; and curiosity, tapping into the extent the experience arouses an individual’s sensory and cognitive curiosity (Malone, 1981, as cited in Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000). Although to date no work has directly examined the relationship between cogni- tive absorption and student satisfaction in online learning environments, cognitive engagement, a predecessor concept to cognitive absorption, has been found to be a significant learning outcome in technology-mediated distance learning (Webster & Hackley, 1997). This suggests that cognitive absorption may significantly influence student satisfaction in online learning environments and that it should be investigated further. Additionally, flow (from which cognitive absorption is derived) leads to increased learning, increased creativity, perceived behavioral control, exploratory mindset, and positive affect (Chen, 2000; Ghani, 1995; Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Hence, the second hypothesis of this study is: Cognitive absorption will be positively related to student satisfaction with online courses. To date, no work has examined the relationship between social presence and cognitive absorption. However, since both social presence and cognitive absorption are hypothesized to be positively related to and are antecedents to satisfaction, it stands to reason that one of the two constructs could be a mediator variable to the other. Pace (2004) suggested that there exists a relationship between flow (from which cognitive absorption is derived) and telepresence. One of the defining characteristics of flow is time distortion. When a person experiences flow, hours seem to transform into minutes while seconds may last for hours. Another concept that is closely related to the distortion in time perception is the distortion of the sense of space. Heeter (1992) described the sense of presence that a person experiences when he/she is physically removed from the scene (e.g., in an online discussion) as telepresence. Researchers studying the role of flow in online environments (e.g., Chen, 2000; Novak, Hoffman, & Yung, 2000; Skadberg & Kimmel, 2004) have identified telepresence as an ante- cedent to flow in their flow models. Furthermore, Heeter contended that telepresence is composed of three basic components: personal presence, social presence, and envi- ronmental presence. This suggests that social presence may be an antecedent to cogni- tive absorption and that cognitive absorption acts as a mediator variable between social presence and student satisfaction. Therefore, the third hypothesis of the study is: 10 P. Leong Social presence is an antecedent to cognitive absorption and will be positively related to cognitive absorption. Although social presence, cognitive absorption, and the combined influence may substantially explain student satisfaction, students’ interest must not be ignored. Interest The terms interest and intrinsic motivation have been used interchangeably and many researchers assume the effects of both interest and intrinsic motivation to be very similar (Naceur & Schiefele, 2005). Research studies (Naceur & Schiefele, 2005; Schiefele, 1991; Schiefele & Csikszentmihalyi, 1994, 1995) have found that interest may influence learning and, consequently, student satisfaction. Schiefele and Csikszentmihalyi (1994) determined that interest influences the quality of classroom experience. In 1995, Schiefele and Csikszentmihalyi also examined the relationship between interest and math achievement. Following Schiefele (1991), this study defined interest as a content-specific concept because it fits well with theories of knowledge acquisition and is probably readily amenable to instructional influence. A corollary to the investigation of the role of social presence and cognitive absorp- tion in learner satisfaction with online courses is the aspect of students’ interest in the topic covered in the online course. Many studies determined that interest may impact student satisfaction (Naceur & Schiefele, 2005; Schiefele, 1999; Schiefele & Csik- szentmihalyi, 1995). In addition, Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre (1989) contended that intrinsic motivation is positively related to the flow experience (from which cognitive absorption is derived). Hence, it stands to reason that interest should also have an impact on cognitive absorption. Consequently, the fourth and final hypothesis of this study is: Interest will be related to cognitive absorption and student satisfaction with online courses. The review of literature established the possible role of social presence, cognitive absorption, and interest in student satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a model to investigate the relationships between social presence, cognitive absorption, interest, and student satisfaction with online learning environ- ments. Hence, this research study proposed the model shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. The proposed theoretical model. Note: SC = Social Context; OC = Online Communication; INT = Interactivity; TD = Temporal Dissociation; FI = Focused Immersion; HE = Heighten Enjoyment; CO = Control; CU = Curiosity. Method Participants Since the main objective of this study was to investigate the role of social presence and cognitive absorption in online learning environments, we used an online survey to collect data. To maintain ecological validity and ensure that the sample repre- sented the online student population, the sampling frame was based on students who were taking a predominantly online course that could include some face-to-face sessions (online hybrid) but excluded traditional face-to-face courses supplemented by some online course components. The participants consisted of 294 students who were enrolled in 19 online or online hybrid courses of the University of Hawaii Distance Education 11 system and Hawaii Pacific University during the Spring 2005 and Fall 2005 semes- ters. The 19 courses spanned a wide range of content areas (numbers in parenthe- sis): Astronomy (1), Business Management (2), Computer (1), English (4), Educational Technology (2), History (1), Art (1), Mathematics (1), Nursing (1), and Education (5). Measure To test the hypotheses and the model proposed by the study, we developed an instru- ment based on validated survey instruments to measure social presence (Tu, 2002) and cognitive absorption (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000). The survey questionnaire consisted of 44 statements that determined students’ perception of social presence, cognitive absorption, interest, and satisfaction with online courses. Students’ interest in the subject matter covered in the online courses they were taking was measured using three statements developed based on general student course evaluations. Student satisfaction was measured based on students’ responses to five survey questions derived from Tallman’s student satisfaction questionnaire (1994). Table 1 summarizes all the variables measured for the study’s main constructs. For each statement, students were asked to evaluate the extent of their agreement with each statement. Throughout the survey instrument, a 7-point, Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree was used. Figure 1. The proposed theoretical model. Note: SC = Social Context; OC = Online Communication; INT = Interactivity; TD = Temporal Dissociation; FI = Focused Immersion; HE = Heighten Enjoyment; CO = Control; CU = Curiosity. 12 P. Leong Table 1. Original measured items of study’s main constructs. Construct (source) Dimension Measure item Item # in survey Social Presence, SP (Tu, 2002) Social Context (SC) Online learning environment (OLE) provides a social form of communication (SC1) 1 OLE provides an informal and casual way to communicate (SC2) 2 OLE is impersonal (SC3) 3 OLE provides a sensitive means of communicating (SC4) 4 OLE as being comfortable with familiar persons (SC5) 5 OLE as being uncomfortable with unfamiliar persons (SC6) 6 Online Communication (OC) OLE conveys feeling and emotion (OC7) 7 Language used in OLE is stimulating (OC8) 8 Difficulty in expressing oneself in OLE (OC9) 9 Language used in OLE is meaningful (OC10) 10 Language used in OLE is easily understood (OC11) 11 Interactivity (INT) Using OLE to communicate is pleasant (INT12) 12 Replies in OLE are immediate (INT13) 13 OLE users are normally responsive (INT14) 14 OLE as being comfortable with familiar topics (INT15) 15 OLE as being uncomfortable with unfamiliar topics (INT16) 16 Cognitive Absorption, CA (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000) Temporal Dissociation (TD) Time appears to go by quickly when in OLE (TD17) 17 Lose track of time when in OLE (TD18) 18 Time flies when in OLE (TD19) 19 End up spending more time than planned when in OLE (TD20) 20 Often spend more time in OLE (TD21) 21 Focused Immersion (FI) Able to block out most distractions while in OLE (FI22) 22 Absorbed in what one is doing while in OLE (FI23) 23 Distance Education 13 Data analysis Prior to any data analysis, we transformed negatively phrased items to ensure comparability of data. The primary data analysis methodology was two-step SEM: (1) Measurement model – confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to determine constructs. (2) Causal links – to verify the proposed model. Table 1. (Continued). Construct (source) Dimension Measure item Item # in survey Immersed in task being performed while in OLE (FI24) 24 Easily distracted by other attentions while in OLE (FI25) 25 Attention does not get diverted easily while in OLE (FI26) 26 Heightened Enjoyment (HE) Have fun interacting in OLE (HE27) 27 OLE provides a lot of enjoyment (HE28) 28 Enjoy using OLE (HE29) 29 OLE bores user (HE30) 30 Control (CO) Feel in control when using OLE (CO31) 31 Have no control over interaction in OLE (CO32) 32 OLE allows control over computer interaction (CO33) 33 Curiosity (CU) Using OLE excites curiosity (CU34) 34 Interacting with OLE makes one curious (CU35) 35 Using OLE arouses imagination (CU36) 36 Interest (ITR) Interested in the course subject matter (ITR37) 37 Read widely in subject covered prior to course (ITR38) 38 No interest in content covered in course (ITR39) 39 Student Satisfaction (Tallman, 1994) (SS) Beneficial learning experience (SS40) 40 Contribution to academic development (SS41) 41 Would take another online course (SS42) 42 Would recommend online courses to friends (SS43) 43 Personally rewarding educational experience (SS44) 44 14 P. Leong SEM is a way to test a model of relationship among theoretical constructs. We used a two-step approach to SEM (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). Firstly, we purified the measurement model by eliminating measured variables that did not fit well by CFA. Secondly, we fit a theoretically based model followed by a series of revisions. We used the SAS® PROC CALIS procedure to test the fitness of the proposed theoretical model and maximum likelihood estimation to fit the SEM model. Results Construct validity As the survey instrument was adapted from scales used in previous studies, issues of the validity of the instrument are discussed and verified in this section. We assessed construct validity of multidimensional constructs using CFA. Reliabilities of unidimensional constructs used in the study are reported. CFA of social presence The social presence instrument used for this study was based on the social presence and privacy questionnaire (SPPQ) developed by Tu (2002) to measure social presence and privacy in CMC. According to Tu (2000), social presence is comprised of three dimensions: social context, online communication, and interactivity. The SPPQ also measures two types of online privacy: system privacy and perception of privacy. Although Tu (2002) determined, using exploratory factor analysis, that the two privacy dimensions were distinct factors and that there was a significant but weak correlation between online privacy and social presence, he could not conclude that online privacy was a dimension of social presence. Hence, this study excluded the online privacy dimensions. Table 1 lists the variables measured for the study’s major constructs including the social presence construct. Six variables make up the social context dimension. The dimension of online communication included five variables, while the third dimension, interactivity, comprised five variables. To date, only exploratory factor analysis has been performed to identify the three dimensions of social presence: social context, online communication, and interactivity (Tu, 2000, 2002; Tu & McIsaac, 2002). Tu (2002) found significant inter-correlations among the three dimensions (ranging from .209 to .494). These correlations confirm that the three were adequately distinct from one another. However, Tu (2002) acknowl- edged that the Cronbach alpha coefficients obtained were in the medium–low value range (from .74 to .85) and suggested that further validation work should be done. We assessed convergent and discriminant validity of the social presence instrument for this study by CFA using the SAS® PROC CALIS procedure. We used maximum likelihood estimation to fit the CFA model using the sample of 294 respondents. Figure 2 presents the measurement model for the social presence construct for this study. The figure shows that the social context dimension (SC) is measured by manifest variables 1 through 6; the online communication dimension (OC) is measured by manifest variables 7 through 11; and the interactivity dimension (INT) is measured by variables 12 through 16. Figure 2. The measurement model for the social presence construct. n.s. = non-significant; * p < .001. Table 2 provides a summary of the goodness of fit indices for the social presence CFA model. The goodness of fit measures used were chi-square/degrees of freedom (χ2/df) ratio, Bentler’s comparative fit index (CFI) (1989), Bentler and Bonett’s Distance Education 15 normed fit index (NFI) (1980), Bentler and Bonett’s non-normed fit index (NNFI) (1980), goodness of fit index (GFI), and GFI adjusted for degrees of freedom (AGFI). The χ2/df ratio for this model was 4.53, much higher than the desired value of less than 2.0 (Hatcher, 1994). The CFI and the NNFI were 0.801 and 0.763, respectively. All indices were below the commonly accepted value of 0.9 required to be indicative of a good model fit. Overall, the CFA results for the social presence construct did not provide a good fit. Convergent validity seeks to confirm that the items are measuring more or less the same construct. Overall, the properties of the social presence measurement model shown in Table 3 provide evidence for convergent validity for the social presence construct. The composite reliabilities for the three dimensions of social presence ranged from .67 to .84, which were in the medium–low value range. However, closer examination of the obtained t-values indicated that the factor loadings for two of the manifest variables, SC6 (t = 1.80) and INT16 (t = 0.66) were not significant at p < .05. This led to the decision to remove these two variables from further consideration as they were not significantly associated with their respective latent factors. The purpose of discriminant validity is to verify that the items from different construct scales do not measure the same construct. To assess the discriminant validity of the dimensions of social context, online communication, and interactivity, we exam- ined the correlations among the dimensions. There were very high inter-correlations (see Figure 2) among the three dimensions (ranging from .81 to .86) making them Figure 2. The measurement model for the social presence construct. n.s. = non-significant; *p < .001. Table 2. Goodness of fit indices for the social presence CFA model. Fit measures CFA model Bentler’s comparative fit index (CFI) (1989) 0.801 Bentler and Bonett’s non-normed fit index (NNFI) (1980) 0.763 Bentler and Bonett’s normalized fit index (NFI) (1980) 0.760 Goodness of fit index (GFI) 0.829 GFI adjusted for degrees of freedom (AGFI) 0.770 Chi-square/degrees of freedom (χ2/df) 4.53 16 P. Leong practically indistinguishable. The results indicate a lack of discriminant validity, which may lead to the problem of high multicollinearity for subsequent SEM. CFA of cognitive absorption Agarwal and Karahanna (2000) identified and described the five dimensions of the cognitive absorption construct: temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity. Using a multistage iterative process, they developed scales to measure cognitive absorption, which consisted of five statements tapping into temporal dissociation, five items capturing focused immersion, four items measuring heightened enjoyment, three items capturing control, and three items measuring curi- osity. Using CFA, they established the psychometric validity of the scales and the multi- dimensionality of the cognitive absorption construct. All five dimensions demonstrated good internal consistency with their composite reliabilities: ranging from .83 for control to .88 for focused immersion and .93 for curiosity, heightened enjoyment, and temporal dissociation. Table 1 lists the variables measured for the study’s major constructs including the cognitive absorption construct. Similarly, we assessed convergent and discriminant validity of the cognitive absorption instrument for this study by CFA using the SAS® PROC CALIS proce- dure. We used maximum likelihood estimation to fit the CFA model using the sample of 294 respondents. Figure 3 presents the measurement model for the cognitive Table 3. Properties of the social presence measurement model. Construct and indicators Standardized loading t-valuea Reliability/r2 Social Context (SC) .667b SC1 .692 12.52 .479 SC2 .673 11.96 .453 SC3 .325 5.22 .106 SC4 .661 11.68 .437 SC5 .467 7.73 .218 SC6 .115 1.80 (n.s.) .013 Online Communication (OC) .843b OC7 .752 14.48 .566 OC8 .816 16.31 .666 OC9 .547 9.64 .299 OC10 .784 15.36 .615 OC11 .687 12.82 .472 Interactivity (INT) .671b INT12 .832 16.12 .692 INT13 .602 10.63 .362 INT14 .554 9.62 .307 INT15 .570 9.94 .325 INT16 .042 .66 (n.s.) .002 aAll t-values significant at p < .001 unless otherwise indicated. bCronbach’s alpha for composite reliability, proportion of variance accounted for (r2) for individual items. Distance Education 17 Figure 3. The measurement model for the cognitive absorption construct. *p < .001. 18 P. Leong absorption construct for this study. The figure shows that the temporal dissociation dimension (TD) is measured by manifest variables 17 through 21; the focused immer- sion dimension (FI) is measured by manifest variables 22 through 26; the heightened enjoyment dimension is measured by variables 27 through 30; the control (CO) Table 5. Properties of the cognitive absorption measurement model. Construct and indicators Standardized loading t-valuea Reliability/r2 Temporal Dissociation (TD) .827b TD17 .794 15.56 .630 TD18 .693 12.94 .480 TD19 .903 18.78 .816 TD20 .497 8.61 .247 TD21 .568 10.07 .322 Focused Immersion (FI) .872b FI22 .824 16.85 .678 FI23 .897 19.28 .804 FI24 .874 18.48 .764 FI25 .517 9.16 .267 FI26 .647 12.04 .419 Heightened Enjoyment (HE) .904b HE27 .893 19.38 .797 HE28 .929 20.73 .863 HE29 .879 18.89 .773 HE30 .627 11.70 .394 Control (CO) .725b CO31 .777 14.19 .604 CO32 .533 8.96 .284 CO33 .729 13.13 .532 Curiosity (CU) .940b CU34 .942 21.36 .888 CU35 .962 22.19 .926 CU36 .839 17.64 .704 aAll t-values significant at p < .001. bCronbach’s alpha for composite reliability, proportion of variance accounted for (r2) for individual items. Table 4. Goodness of fit indices for cognitive absorption CFA model. Fit measures CFA model Bentler’s comparative fit index (CFI) (1989) 0.889 Bentler and Bonett’s non-normed fit index (NNFI) (1980) 0.869 Bentler and Bonett’s normalized fit index (NFI) (1980) 0.858 Goodness of fit index (GFI) 0.815 GFI adjusted for degrees of freedom (AGFI) 0.757 Chi-square/degrees of freedom (χ2/df) 3.96 Distance Education 19 dimension is measured by variables 31 through 33; and the curiosity dimension (CU) is measured by variables 34 through 36. Figure 3. The measurement model for the cognitive absorption construct. * p < .001. The overall goodness of fit for the cognitive absorption CFA model was better compared to the social presence construct. Table 4 provides a summary of the good- ness of fit indices for the cognitive absorption CFA model. The χ2/df ratio of 3.96 for this model was also higher than the desired value of less than 2.0 (Hatcher, 1994). The CFI (0.889) and the NNFI (0.869) were slightly lower than the commonly accepted value of 0.9 required to be considered a good model fit. The CFA results for the cognitive absorption construct provided evidence for an acceptable fit to the data. Convergent validity seeks to confirm that the items from construct measurement scales are measuring the same construct. Overall, the properties of the cognitive absorption measurement model shown in Table 5 provide evidence for convergent validity for the cognitive absorption construct. The composite reliabilities for the five dimensions of cognitive absorption exhibited good internal consistency ranging from .73 to .94, which were comparable to Agarwal and Karahanna’s findings (2000). To assess the discriminant validity of the cognitive absorption dimensions, we examined the correlations among the dimensions. There were moderately high inter- correlations (see Figure 3) among the dimensions (ranging from .45 to .78). The results indicated an acceptable level of discriminant validity. Reliability analysis for the satisfaction and interest constructs We measured student satisfaction based on students’ responses to five survey ques- tions derived from Tallman’s student satisfaction questionnaire (1994): beneficial learning experience, contribution to academic development, would take another online course, would recommend online courses to friends, and personally rewarding educational experience. We measured students’ interest in the subject matter covered in the online courses they were taking using three statements based on general student course evaluations. Table 6 shows the Cronbach’s alpha results for the constructs of student satisfaction and interest. Cronbach’s alpha measures the internal consistency of the scales used to measure these constructs (Cronbach, 1951). The Cronbach’s alpha values for both constructs were judged to be acceptable, ranging from .64 to .90. These alpha values indicate good internal consistency among items within the satisfaction construct but only marginal internal consistency among items within the interest construct. The final revised model Figure 4 depicts the final revised model. The final model retained 28 of the original 44 variables (63.64% of the items kept). This smaller set of indicator variables is consistent with the recommendations of Hatcher (1994) and Bentler and Chou (1987) on the adequacy of indicator variables. Hatcher contended that a maximum of 20–30 indicator variables will be effectively considered when performing path analysis with manifest variables. Similarly, Bentler and Chou recommended against becoming too grandiose when developing structural models and that smaller data sets of 20 indicator variables or fewer are preferable. Figure 4. The final revised model. The final model consisted of four latent variables: social presence, cognitive absorption, interest, and satisfaction. Two of these, social presence and cognitive 20 P. Leong absorption, were multidimensional constructs. Each of the dimensions was measured by at least three manifest variables. Table 7 lists the indicator variables retained for the final revised model. With the exception of the paths from social presence to satisfaction and interest to cognitive absorption, the standardized path coefficients in Figure 4 were all significant at p < .05. All significant coefficients were in the predicted direction. Of particular interest is the emergence of the significant path from interest to social presence (ITR → SP), which was not part of the initial proposed model. This significant path has remained quite stable through the numerous model modifications. Goodness of fit statistics We used maximum likelihood estimation to fit the SEM model. The structured equa- tion results of the proposed theoretical model did not provide an acceptable fit to the data. To improve the fit of the model, we conducted a series of model revisions Table 6. Reliability analysis. Construct Item # in survey Cronbach’s α Interest 37–39 0.64 Student Satisfaction 40–44 0.90 Figure 4. The final revised model. Distance Education 21 Table 7. Measured items in the revised model. Construct Dimension Measure item Social Presence (SP) Social Context (SC) OLE provides a social form of communication (SC1) OLE provides an informal and casual way to communicate (SC2) OLE as being comfortable with familiar persons (SC5) Online Communication (OC) OLE conveys feeling and emotion (OC7) Difficulty in expressing oneself in OLE (OC9) Language used in OLE is meaningful (OC10) Interactivity (INT) Using OLE to communicate is pleasant (INT12) Replies in OLE are immediate (INT13) OLE users are normally responsive (INT14) Cognitive Absorption (CA) Temporal Dissociation (TD) Time appears to go by quickly when in OLE (TD17) Lose track of time when in OLE (TD18) Time flies when in OLE (TD19) Focused Immersion (FI) Able to block out most distractions while in OLE (FI22) Absorbed in what one is doing while in OLE (FI23) Immersed in task being performed while in OLE (FI24) Attention does not get diverted easily while in OLE (FI26) Heightened Enjoyment (HE) Have fun interacting in OLE (HE27) OLE provides a lot of enjoyment (HE28) Enjoy using OLE (HE29) Control (CO) Feel in control when using OLE (CO31) Have no control over interaction in OLE (CO32) OLE allows control over computer interaction (CO33) Interest (ITR) Interested in the course subject matter (ITR37) Read widely in subject covered prior to course (ITR38) No interest in content covered in course (ITR39) Student Satisfaction (SS) Beneficial learning experience (SS40) Contribution to academic development (SS41) Personally rewarding educational experience (SS44) 22 P. Leong following a set of specific guidelines. The goodness of fit indices are given in Table 8 for the initial as well as the final revised model. The goodness of fit indices for the final revised model, namely, the CFI (0.924) and the NNFI (0.914), were not only above .9 but were also higher than those displayed by the proposed theoretical model. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) is another statistic for measuring the fit of the model to the data. Browne and Cudeck (1993) suggested that a RMSEA of 0.05 or less indicates a close fit and that values up to 0.08 represent reasonable errors of approximation. For the final model, the RMSEA was 0.061 with a 95% confidence interval of (0.055, 0.067). Overall, the final revised model provides an acceptable model fit to the data. About 55.6% of the variance in student satisfaction can be accounted for by the final revised model, which is quite substantial. Discussion The literature on the impact of social presence on student learning and satisfaction in online learning environments suggests that social presence has a direct relationship or impact on student satisfaction (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997). Contrary to expecta- tions, the results of this study indicate that while social presence influences student satisfaction, its impact is not direct, but rather mediated by cognitive absorption. The magnitude of the indirect positive impact of social presence on satisfaction as medi- ated through cognitive absorption was 0.54, which is rather substantial. This is the most significant finding of this study. In the final revised model, social presence was found to have a non-significant effect on satisfaction. Instead, it appears that social presence strongly influences cognitive absorption, and cognitive absorption in turn influences satisfaction. Research studies have explored the relationship between social presence and student outcomes and between cognitive absorption and student outcomes separately. This study suggests that to better understand what constitutes an interactive, compelling online learning environment, these two constructs need to be taken into consideration simultaneously. Future research on online learning environments should study both social presence and cognitive absorption concurrently. It was hypothesized that students’ interest in the subject matter covered in the online courses would be related to learner satisfaction and cognitive absorption. Research studies (Naceur & Schiefele, 2005; Schiefele, 1999; Schiefele & Csikszentmihalyi, 1995) have found that interest may influence learning and, consequently, student satisfaction. As expected, this study has determined the direct impact of interest on student satisfaction. Table 8. Goodness of fit indices. Types of goodness of fit index Initial theoretic model Final model Bentler’s comparative fit index (CFI) (1989) 0.791 0.924 Bentler and Bonett’s non-normed fit index (NNFI) (1980) 0.777 0.914 Bentler and Bonett’s normalized fit index (NFI) (1980) 0.718 0.864 Goodness of fit index (GFI) 0.684 0.854 GFI adjusted for degrees of freedom (AGFI) 0.647 0.823 Chi-square/degrees of freedom (χ2/df) 3.01 2.09 Distance Education 23 Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre (1989) contended that intrinsic motivation is posi- tively related to the flow (from which cognitive absorption is derived) experience. Hence, it was hypothesized that interest should also have a positive impact on cognitive absorption. However, contrary to expectations, both the proposed theoretical model and the final revised model of this study did not reveal any significant relationship between interest and cognitive absorption. This could be due to the fact that the study defined interest more narrowly as a content-specific concept (Schiefele, 1991). In addition, it is possible that interest impacts some of the dimensions of cognitive absorption (e.g., temporal dissociation and focused immersion) but not necessarily the overall cognitive absorption construct. Interestingly, this study has found a significant relationship between interest and social presence. Although not part of the initial proposed model, the significant path from interest to social presence has remained quite stable through the numerous model modifications. This could be attributed to the fact that students who have a keen interest in the subject area covered in the online course would share more in common with each other thus leading to a higher level of social presence. In summary, the results from this study indicate that interest affects social presence and satisfaction directly. Additionally, interest also appears to positively impact satis- faction indirectly through social presence and cognitive absorption. The magnitude of this indirect impact was 0.18. The total effect of interest on satisfaction (both directly and indirectly through social presence and cognitive absorption) was 0.52, which is quite substantive. Limitations of the study Although the findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications, this study has a few limitations. One limitation is the threat to external validity. This study’s model was developed based on the assumption of the most prevalent form of online courses, that is, predominantly asynchronous text-based and facilitated through the use of a course management system, such as WebCT. It may not be generalizable to other online learning environments, especially those that use two-way synchronous interactive technologies, such as audio-video conferencing. In addition, this study was limited to a convenient sample of students enrolled in online and online hybrid courses in the University of Hawaii system and Hawaii Pacific University and may not be representative of the online student population. Students were encouraged by their instructors to participate in the online survey, but participation was entirely voluntary. Presumably, students who responded to the survey perceive online courses more positively. As such, the study may not have adequately captured the perceptions of students who were dissatisfied with their online course experience. Another limitation of the study is the use of only one data point in this study. Students’ perceptions were measured only once at the end of a semester of study. Pearce, Ainley, and Howard (2005) argue that overall-state measures of flow might reflect recency effects (last activities) as well as retrospective measures may be influenced by one particular activity, a ‘challenging event’ effect (p. 767). Unfortunately, this limitation is unavoidable because of the logistical difficulty of surveying a relatively large number of students repeatedly over the course of a semester. Nevertheless, the results of this study should contribute towards a more holistic approach to understanding online students’ internal experiences and the 24 P. Leong psychological processes that underlie their perceptions of interactivity in online learning environments. Conclusions and implications Contrary to expectations, this study has determined that social presence does not impact satisfaction directly. It concludes that while social presence influences student satisfaction, its impact is not direct but rather mediated by cognitive absorp- tion. In addition, the results of this study indicate that interest affects social presence and satisfaction directly. Additionally, interest appears to influence satisfaction indi- rectly through social presence and cognitive absorption. Contrary to expectations, this study did not reveal any significant relationship between interest and cognitive absorption. One of the major contributions of the study is the elucidation of the relationships among social presence, cognitive absorption, and student satisfaction with online learning environments. This study provided evidence that social presence is related to student satisfaction, and that its impact, contrary to contemporary research, is not direct but rather mediated by cognitive absorption. Research studies have explored the relationship between social presence and student outcomes and between cognitive absorption and student outcomes separately. This study suggests that these two constructs need to be taken into consideration simultaneously to better understand what contributes to an interactive, compelling online learning environment. Many research issues pertaining to interest were subsumed into theories of intrin- sic motivation (e.g., Berlyne, 1949, 1960). This research study integrated interest as an independent factor that could contribute to the creation of an interactive, compel- ling online learning environment. This study determined that interest affects social presence and satisfaction directly. Furthermore, interest appears to influence satis- faction indirectly through social presence and cognitive absorption. The present study suggests that increasing students’ interest in the subject matter may result in higher quality of online learning experience. Therefore, online instructors should perhaps focus more on facilitating interest by emphasizing the importance and rele- vance of the online course subject matter in students’ daily life and employing instructional activities that are more active and student-centered (Schiefele & Csikszentmihalyi, 1995). Another contribution of this study is the practical implications it offers for the design and development of interactive online learning environments. The conclusions of this study can help guide instructors in designing more effective online learning environments. If online instructors and instructional designers develop online learning environments that enhance opportunities for social presence and cognitive absorption, online students will have a more positive attitude towards their online learning. Several general but practical recommendations are provided for online course design- ers to facilitate the occurrence of social presence and cognitive absorption to increase student satisfaction with online learning environments. An online instructor can facilitate social presence by employing several strate- gies. It could be as simple as getting students to introduce themselves using discus- sion postings or more elaborate online ice-breaker activities at the beginning of an online course. This provides the opportunity for online students to get acquainted and promotes trust in relationships early in the course. According to Gunawardena (1995), students’ perception of social presence is influenced by the instructor’s skills Distance Education 25 in facilitating online conversations with introductions and salutations. Therefore, online instructors should develop facilitation skills that create a sense of social presence. Instructors may be able to increase their online students’ satisfaction by address- ing the most appropriate factors underlying social presence. For example, the dimension of interactivity is made up of these items: using online learning environ- ment to communicate is pleasant; replies in online learning environment are imme- diate; and online learning environment users are normally responsive. It may be possible for online instructors to influence student satisfaction by providing more timely feedback, and making themselves more accessible to their students. Tu (2000) found that when an immediate response is expected but is not received, the sense of social presence declines. Additionally, in their study on students’ frustra- tion with Web-based courses, Hara and Kling (1999) found a lack of immediate feedback from the instructor and ambiguous instructions to be main causes of students’ frustration. Chan (2000) contended that instructional design has been hampered by the lack of good theoretical framework, which has led designers to ‘often assume that good qual- ity instruction is itself motivating’ (p. 54). This view is shared by Spitzer (1996), who maintained that ‘many (if not most) education and training failures occur because of the lack of concern for the “motivational side” of learning’ (p. 45). Furthermore, Chan (2000) proposed that the structural variables of flow theory could be manipulated by a designer to enhance the likelihood that a learner will be motivated intrinsically. By the same token, we argue that the dimensions of cogni- tive absorption can be manipulated to increase the level of student satisfaction in online learning environments. Two dimensions of cognitive absorption may be predisposed to being manipulated to enhance student satisfaction: heightened enjoy- ment, which deals with how users perceive using the online learning environment as being enjoyable; and control, which captures users’ perception of being in charge of the interaction. In addition, as social presence is an antecedent to cognitive absorption, it behooves online instructors to provide opportunities that create a sense of social presence early in the course before attending to the cognitive absorption factors to enhance student satisfaction in online learning environments. Ideally, both social presence and cogni- tive absorption should be planned for in totality and with rigor in the instructional design process. To improve retention in online distance education courses, efforts must be made to enhance student satisfaction with online learning environments. The results of this study suggest that we may do so by attending to three factors: social presence, cogni- tive absorption, and interest. By drawing on these factors to design and develop online learning environments that are capable of sustaining a sense of community and keep- ing learners engaged or absorbed, perhaps online instructors may be able to increase student satisfaction and retention in e-learning programs. Notes on contributor Peter Leong is an assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Hawaii– Manoa. His research interests include student satisfaction with online learning, faculty support for technology integration, technologies for distance education, and video games and virtual worlds for teaching and learning. 26 P. Leong References Agarwal, R., & Karahanna, E. (2000). Time flies when you’re having fun: Cognitive absorp- tion and beliefs about information technology usage. MIS Quarterly, 24(4), 665–694. 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work_7ydv2klsurcgjifl5humd2q2me	----	Journal as a Tool for Distance Education EDITORIAL Journal as a Tool for Distance Education Surajit Bhattacharya1 # Association of Surgeons of India 2020 Not since the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg has there been such a revolution in the methods of dissemination of knowledge as is now being seen in the electronic media. The time-honored printed journal is becoming obsolete, and open-access electronic journals and other technological innovations are rapidly reshaping the field of scientific publication. Today we should be taking the next logical step, making our journals interactive. What Are the Shortcomings of a Printed or E-Journal? 1. They are usually one-way communication. Your interac- tions with the authors or editors are severely restrained, perhaps by a Letter to the Editor. 2. They come out at intervals and periodically saturate you with a lot of information, most of which you might not be interested in. That is the reason why journals are not read from cover to cover, but we pick and choose topics. 3. A printed matter, once read, has to be remembered, and to some extent imagined, to understand. This needs serious attention, but in the day and age of attention deficit, where people have an attention span less than that of a bee, we are asking a lot. Then again different people imagine dif- ferently and can carry home a message never intended by the author. 4. While students remain loyal to the journals, the practicing surgeons are very conscious about their time, and we have to give them the value for their time. If the journal does not give them inputs that they can directly take to their practice to improve patient care, they are usually not interested. 5. The original contribution to journals depends on their im- pact factor, and the best authors only remain loyal to the top-line journals. Journals still trying to reach the top struggle to attract them. A journal today desperately needs a new lease of life, and they will get one only if they remain useful to all and not the pride badge of the elite few. They have to be an extended arm of our practice, something which will improve our skills and prepare us for newer challenges. That is exactly what an in- teractive journal will do. It will be a blend of video and audio inputs inform you, teach you, help you to sharpen your skills, pick up tips and tricks, and allow you to interact with the authors and quench your thirst for knowledge to your heart’s desire. What Is an Interactive Journal? An interactive journal will not be a bimonthly, quarterly, or six-month affairs but a constant interaction between the edito- rial board and the readership. I propose we have 16 sections each with their Sectional Editorial team, and they can upload their contents at periodic intervals on the journal site. The journal will have a video evening every week for 90 min for this purpose. These sections are: 1. Video section: Any interesting video from any source, which is of use to surgical training, will be presented in this section. The sectional editor will decide the length of the videos and the format and the day and time it will be premiered in a webinar. We should try to upload at least 2 videos every 2 months or one video every month. After the video presentation, there will be a session of ques- tions and answers. 2. Ideas and innovations: Once in 2 months, 4 or 5 inno- vations will be chosen for presentation. A 5-min * Surajit Bhattacharya plasticsurgeonindia@gmail.com 1 Sr. Consultant, Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, Sahara Hospital, Lucknow, UP, India https://doi.org/10.1007/s12262-020-02609-w Indian Journal of Surgery (October 2020) 82(5):759–761 Accepted: 26 September 2020 /Published online: 2 October 2020 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s12262-020-02609-w&domain=pdf mailto:plasticsurgeonindia@gmail.com presentation in the form of a voice-over slide show or a video is required. The page will have 5 buttons with the image of the innovator and as you press it, his/her inno- vation starts. The innovations too can be premiered one evening, and the audience can interact with the innova- tors. Again second feedback to these innovations can be in the form of videos or comments to the sectional editor who will then upload them. 3. C.M.E article section: This team will invite a PPT pre- sentation or a video on the CME topic every 2 months. This presentation will be followed by a CME test of 15 questions, and the viewers can be marked by Google instantly. The test closes in 10 min and results are an- nounced. CME points can be aggregated, and the highest point achiever annually can be given an award. Google can also identify the fastest finger first every time. How MCI can recognize these CME points the organizers will have to look into. 4. Journal initiated journal club: A journal club article will be announced once in 2 months and fix a date of presentation and critical appraisal in a Webinar. Four junior colleagues and 2 seniors will be chosen to critical- ly evaluate the article. 5. Sharing knowledge section: Once in 2 months, this team will invite a specialist from a non surgical specialty like a diabetologist, an immunologist, a geneticist, a performance-enhancing specialist, an alternative medi- cine specialist, and a software expert in a webinar to share their knowledge for our benefit. They can invite any per- son from anywhere in the world including motivational and psychosocial subject speakers like Deepak Chopra and Robin Cook or speakers from industry, management gurus, and spiritual preachers. The presentation can be followed by Q and A. 6. Sunday reading section: Every Sunday in the morning, this team will post a small 1 or 2 paragraph write up about an interesting article published in an open-access journal and post the pdf of the article or a hyperlink to it. This interesting article should reach the e-mail box of every member first thing on Sunday morning as a small knowl- edge capsule. 7. How I do it: We choose a difficult problem like a crook- ed nose and ask an expert to present his technique of septorhinoplasty. One problem case once in 2 months and an expert showing us how he managed it. We invite the expert to a Webinar, and after the presentation, our members ask him questions to clear their doubts. 8. Meet the expert: We contact an expert once in 2 months and invite him/her to a Webinar where he/she shows his pre-recorder videos, and we follow this up with Q and A. Thus a liver transplant surgeon can be invited to a Webinar where he/she can tell us everything from patient selection to donor surgery, recipient surgery, post- operative care, follow up, immunology, and prospects, and this can be followed up by a Q and A session. 9. The technology of tomorrow: Once in 2 months you will have to upload a voice over ppt or a video in this section from anywhere in the world. You may invite a person to a Webinar instead and make it an interesting Q and A session of the newer technology or on the new research. This can be their published/patented work. Bionic eye, myoelectric prosthesis, the culture of the pancreatic cell line, nothing is out of bounds. The scien- tist has already published and patented the work and will be more than happy to share it with us. Robotics and AI will be used in a very big way in the future. AI will soon become a planning tool for choosing breast implants. We need to discuss all this with the pioneers and then convey it to our viewers. 10. Basic research and regenerative sciences: We will contact any researcher anywhere in the world and either invite him to a webinar where he/she presents his/her research and then there is Q and A. Alternatively he/she can pass on a pre-recorded video/voice over PPT and be available for Q & A on our journal site through our sectional editor. 11. Town hall panel discussion: Once in 3 months, you can choose 4 speakers who will speak on different as- pects of the same topic for 15 min. Problems like dia- betic foot, venous ulcers, and vascular malformations will be excellent for town hall Meetings. After the 4 speakers have spoken for 15 min, each Webinar will end with a Q and A. 12. Practice perspective: Any part of the practice of sur- gery that may be of interest to the members may be discussed with an expert from anywhere in the world. It can also be a town hall Webinar from 3 or 4 places each giving their perspective. It can be once in 2 months. The topics can be like a. Patient expectation b. Patient selection c. OPD consultation d. Pre-surgical planning e. Planning and conducting non-surgical procedures f. Follow-up schedules g. Managing unfavorable results h. Advertisements and promotion of practice i. Solitary practice vs. corporate hospital j. A disgruntled patient management k. Privacy concerns in practice l. Tax issues m. Consumer protection issues and other medico-legal issues. 13. Volunteer engagement platform: A write up or a vid- eo of volunteering by our members anywhere in the world. It can be in the National Burns Centre in Indian J Surg (October 2020) 82(5):759–761760 Mumbai or Sub Saharan Africa. This adds to the moral value of the journal, and every association seeking tax exemption from the government must show some volunteering. ASI is extensively involved in volunteering; let us document it for posterity. 14. Grand round case discussion: Where 3 cases will be presented by someone to a team of experts and discussed in a webinar about their management. This can be done once in 2 months. Exam-going residents will be greatly benefitted from this section. 15. Nuggets from history: This is a search of some inter- esting facts from history like the publication about nose reconstruction in the Gentleman’s Magazine or some- thing from Sushruta Samhita or from an old German or Persian book about how the surgery was performed then. 16. The Sunday Quiz: Every Sunday a set of 10 quiz ques- tions will reach the mailbox of the members. They have to answer within 24 h for CME points, and on the next Sunday, they will get the answers of the previous quiz and a new set of 10 quiz questions. The Sectional Editors will be the Quiz Masters and they will create the quiz. Advantages of an Interactive Journal While the traditional print/e-journal continues to exist, the interactive wing of the journal will have many benefits: 1. It will be continuous communication between the reader- ship and the journal editorial board and not a periodic and staccato one. While the Sunday Reading and Sunday Quiz will be a weekly affair on the journal evening every week, there will be a journal activity in the form of a Webinar. 2. To make the journal most useful to the end-user, every section will have to be in the form of an edited video or a live Webinar which we will be organizing at regular in- tervals. Thus “How I do it,” “Meet the Expert,” “Technology of Tomorrow,” “Basic Research and Regenerative Sciences,” “Town Hall Discussion,” and “Grand Round case presentation” will all be live and in- teractive, and our members can freely discuss and clear their doubts. 3. For a very long time, the surgery residents have been complaining that their training is not uniform across the country and residents in certain institutions are better trained than others. Thus after getting their degree, all of them do not consider themselves to be “Market Ready.” This interactive journal hopes to address this void in train- ing substantially. We hope to bring the best in the world into their laptops and smartphones. A plethora of online teaching sessions, explicitly designed for postgraduates, in particular, will herald a new era of distance education. It could be a watershed moment, infusing new thinking and establishing virtual geographical neutrality in surgical training. 4. There are many advantages of distance learning—it cuts cost, more experts on the topic can be involved, bureau- cratic and logistical practices (visas time, etc) can be bypassed, and long-distance travel can be avoided. 5. The best authors in the field who stick to the best journals for publication can continue to do so and still be available for our interactive section to benefit our members by interacting with them. 6. Another advantage that cannot be ignored is we can build leadership skills in our Sectional Editors, so that they can be the leaders who will carry our journal to the exciting future. In due course of time, a more interactive platform in the form of an app can be developed. An app allows 24 × 7 live interaction on smart phones and can be an excellent educa- tional tool for the electronics-savvy readers, but this interac- tion too has to be monitored through the sectional editors lest it becomes chaotic. It is always a great pleasure to be the change instead of watching the change happen from the sidelines. Scientific documentation is in the process of a massive change and those who will anticipate the change today and follow their instincts will be called the pioneers of this change. I am introducing the blueprint of the interactive wing of the Indian Journal of Surgery to you all. I invite you to be a part of this change. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to juris- dictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Indian J Surg (October 2020) 82(5):759–761 761 Journal as a Tool for Distance Education What Are the Shortcomings of a Printed or E-Journal? What Is an Interactive Journal? Advantages of an Interactive Journal 
work_a2jjuguccjezvokniuvs77ctbm	----	Higher Education 29: 183-199, 1995. O 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Critical thinking in distance education: Developing critical communities in an audio teleconference context TERRY D.ANDERSON* & D.R. GARRISON** *Extension Department, University of Alberta, Canada. **Faculry of Continuing Education, UniversiQ of Calgary, Canada. Abstract Distance education has long been associated with independent study and delivery of pre- packaged learning materials. These characteristics effectively deny distance education students the opportunity to participate in communities of inquiry and, perhaps, opportunities to develop their critical thinking slulls. This paper reviews the theoretical impact of socially situated learning, critical thinking and their implications for distance education. It then presents the results from a study of learners' perceptions while enrolled in two different models of audio teleconferenced delivered, university courses. The study reports quantitative results from a mail survey of these students and the qualitative results from interviews and classroom observations. The impact of the insrmctional design used by the delivering institution resulted in two distinct models of audio teleconference delivery with significant qualitative and quantitative differences in student perception. The paper concludes that learning communities, which support the development of critical thinlang skills, can be created at a distance and that they provide a mechanism for improving the quality of higher level distance education. Introduction This paper reports the results of an investigation of students' perceptions of learning in distance education courses delivered via audio teleconference (Anderson, 1994). The pervasive influence of instructional design on learning outcomes of mediated forms of educational delivery has been documented by many researchers (Clark, 1983). The traditional and dominant paradigm of instructional design in distance education has been prescribed course packages that ensure maximum independence. In recent years, however, low cost and accessible two- way communications technologies, such as audio teleconferencing, have given rise to important questions regarding the influence of instructional design on learning outcomes and perceptions. As a result the focus of t h ~ sstudy was to explore the experience of learners exposed to the sustained, interactive learning environment created via audio teleconferencing in a credited university course. Review of the Literature The study has been framed by research related to critical Guking and situated cognition. Distance education remains largely a private form of leaning and little, if any, discussion in the distance education literature has focused on critical thinking or learning processes which are dependent upon social interactions. Thus, the following review focuses on critical thinking and situated cognition in education generally. Recent developments in learning theory have been aimed at integrating the cognitive and social environments in which learning takes place. Early researchers in cognitive development, such as Piaget (cited in DiPardo and Freedman, 1988), acknowledged that the social environment provides stimulus - through exposure to contradictory viewpoints or arguments - but still focused on individual cognitive growth and development. Though not denying individual cognitive development, Vygotsky (1978) argued that it is from within the social environment that the individual derives and develops individual cognitive processes. Learning takes place as individuals make sense of their experience within the social context. More recently, researchers interested in socially shared cognition (Resnick, Levine and Tesley, 1991; Rogoff, 1990), have argued that knowledge is created within, and is determined by, the social environment in which it is experienced. Notwithstanding the need for reflection, effects and implications of the social component of learning would appear to be important in many learning contexts, including those created at a distance. This is particularly true when studying ill-defined subject matter, common in the social sciences and humanities. A number of social cognition theorists have investigated the importance of shared context in the learning process. Newman, Griffin and Cole (1989) looked beyond the individual as the basic unit of analysis when investigating cognitive development. Newman et al. (1989) noted that cognitive "construction work occurs as much in the interaction between the adult and the child as in the child's internal processes". They argued that learners appropriate new knowledge from other members of the group using the cultural aids of language and other forms of communicative interaction. The members of such groups do not need to have identical cognitive constructs or even shared understanding of the topics under discussion to create knowledge. Newman et al. (1989) postulated that "when people with different goals, roles and resources interact, the differences in interpretation provide occasions for the construction of new knowledge". This research, which emphasizes the social context of learning, provides support for educational systems that use the power and resources of the social group to expand and enhance learning. Conversely, (Newman et al., 1989) downgraded the effectiveness of individualistic learning by claiming that "cognitive change does not happen in a closed determined system". Earlier generations of distance education (Nipper, 1989) have been of this "closed, determined" type and thus have not supported the development of social cognition. The challenge to distance educators seems clear. In order to avail themselves of the learning opportunities presented by the social construction of knowledge, an opportunity for sustained interaction between and amongst learners and teacher is logically necessary. Community of inquiry There are a variety of indicators in the literature that support the notion that opportunity for sustained interaction between (amongst) student(s) and teacher is a significant precursor to the development of meaningful learning. Entwistle and Entwistle (1991) reported on study activities of undergraduates and concluded that "the negotiation of a shared meaning came out as one of the main strategies used to ensure that understanding was thorough". Deep or meaningful approaches to learning have been associated with affective involvement and satisfaction of intrinsic interest. Biggs (1990) wrote that "if the student's interest can be aroused then deep learning is likely to result". He provided examples of learning activities such as teacher's think-aloud modelling, peer-teaching, selfquestioning and group projects as activities that require students to be self-insightful and, thus, affectively involved in the activities. The social nature of each of these suggested activities implies the necessity for sustained interaction between and amongst teachers and learners for the development of meaningful learning. Schell and Branch (1993) argued that conversation, within the instructional process, is a necessary condition that ensures that participants share a common "understanding of each others knowledge and the specific context in which they find themselves". They contend that sharing unique cultural and cognitive perspectives, through conversation, enhances the potential for learner achievement. Therefore, the opportunity to engage with others (both peers and teachers) in a community of inquiry would appear to be an important component of deep or meaningful learning (Ramsden, 1988). Critical discourse leads to deeper meaning and development of higher order cognitive skills in all subject areas. That is not to say, however, that the balance between reflection and critical discourse does not vary depending upon the object of study and the cognitive level of the participants. At the same time, we agree with Resnick (1991) who writes that "much of human cognition is so varied and so sensitive to cultural context that we must also seek mechanisms by which people actively shape each other's knowledge and reasoning processes". Recent research in cognitive learning (Resnick et al., 1991) has illustrated that the social context or community which is created during the learning process has a large effect upon the nature of learning activities engaged in, the selection of content for study, and the learning outcomes. Similarly, Lipman, (1991) noted the crucial importance of community in formal education and in individual intellectual development. Lipman described the following characteristic behaviors of the community of inquiry: - members question one another - members request, of each other, reasons for belief - members build upon one another's ideas - members deliberate amongst themselves - members point out possible counter examples to the hypotheses of others - members utilize specific criteria when making judgement - members cooperate in the development of rational problem-solving techniques He viewed these characteristics as fundamental requisites for the development of higher level thinking. Lipman (1991) suggested that while the objective of critical reflection is intellectual autonomy, in reality, critical reflection is "thoroughly social and communal". This apparent paradox is explained by the fact that thinking is an attempt to understand or explain our experiences. Dewey (1959) rejected the separation of the psychological and social in the educational process. He believed that individual development is dependent upon community life. Reflective thought could not be separated from action. When action is separated from thought, teaching becomes a transmission of information without meaning. Critical reflection is an attempt to detach from the external world to construct meaning but the validity of that meaning is always grounded in experience. Discourse and reflection are essential aspects of the critical thinking process. Exposure of students to these communities of inquiry is a crucial component of the educational experience. Lipman (1991) argued that cognitive acts and processes begin as adaptations to group behaviors and that thinking is "individual emulation of social norms and social conduct". There is, thus, a strong basis in recent cognitive learning theory for the inclusion of social interaction in the learning process, particularly in the creation of a critical community of learners. This community of inquiry is also considered to be essential in facilitating the development of critical thinking abilities. Critical thinking The opportunity to engage in and develop critical thinking has been considered a defining feature of higher education and of fully developed adult living (Brookfield, 1989). Entwistle and Entwistle (1991) found that "academic staff in higher education expect students to develop a conceptual understanding of their discipline, and to apply critical analysis to the information and ideas they encounter". McPeck (1981) suggested that education cannot be accomplished without critical thinking. Furthermore, Brookfield (1989) argued that critical thinking is essential outside of the adult classroom as well, and is characteristic of a "developed person". He noted that "the ability to think critically is crucial to under- standing our personal relationships, envisioning alternative and more productive ways of organizing the workplace and becoming politically literate" (p. 14). Arriving at a precise definition or even a simple conceptualization of critical thinking has proven to be a difficult task for a number of reasons. First, thinking itself is an internal process that currently defies all but indirect examination and observation. Second, the terms "thinking" and "critical" are each defined by popular connotations which generate considerable confusion. McPeck (1981) noted that "confusion stems from approaching the concept as though it were a self- evident slogan whose precise ingredients were considered to be clear and self- justifying" (p.3). A number of educational philosophers have attempted to provide a more precise definition and practical understanding of this important component of the education process. The adjective critical, when applied to thinking, should be considered as implying the need to lay clear the underlying premises upon which statements of facts, deductions, opinions or hypothesis are grounded. For Dewey (1933) the term "thinking" referred to a detachment from the external world in whch contemplation and connections between ideas and facts can take place. Educational philosophers have described a variety of attributes which further define the concept. Dewey (1933) argued for including attitudes such as desire, will, passion and responsibility as components of critical thinking. Brookfield (1989) noted that critical thinking also includes commitment as well as "reflective scepticism". Thayer-Bacon (1993) added the quality of caring to the characteristics of the critical thinker. She believed that caring is as essential as reasoning and is the basis for developing trust and collaborative thinking. Thayer-Bacon also noted that her "rational model of [critical] thinking emphasizes people working together, each contributing his or her own perspective, and attempting to understand one another, to solve problems together" @. 338). These social shared learning activities arc necessary to "cross the barrier between self and other, bridging private and shared experience" (Thayer-Bacon, 1993). Critical thinking can be considered to be a process comprised of both individual internal activities and social or external activities. A number of authors (Brookfield, 1989; Dewey, 1933; Garrison, 1991) have found it useful to describe critical thinking as consisting of a process made up of phases. Each of these authors have suggested that critical rlunking phases are iterative and that the process often progresses in circular or spiral fashion with many iterations through the various phases or occasional jumps across phases. Dewey's (1933) model of critical thinking, which he referred to as "reflective thought", is a generalized notion of the scientific method. He wrote that the five phases of reflective thought are: 1) suggestions, 2) problem definition, 3) hypothesis generation, 4) reasoning and 5) testing of the hypothesis. Broolcfield (1989) added an important component to his description of the critical thinking cycle which consists of an integration phase in which newly developed notions are integrated into the existing fabric of our lives. However, Brookfield's model seems to have lost the evaluative or hypothesis testing component of the scientific method apparent in Dewey's model. Garrison's (1991) model takes the evaluative components of Dewey's model and includes Brookfield's integrative phase to develop a more comprehensive model of the critical thinking process. Most importantly for this study, Garrison also distinguishes between the reflective (private) and the collaborative (shared) activities which make up the process of critical thinking. Garrison (1991) considered critical thinking to encompass problem solving and creative thinking and, thus, is fundamental to the development and application of education to practical life experiences of adult learners. Garrison's model of the critical thinkingAeaming cycle is composed of five phases - problem identification, problem definition, exploration, applicability and integration. This model was used as the basis for the development of the critical thinking items in the questionnaire component of this investigation. The first phase of Garrison's model defmes a state of curiosity or dissonance that serves as a triggering event that precipitates critical thinking.Once the problem has been identified the next step is to precisely defme the problem. This may require assistance to critically examine our assumptions which may constrain thinking. The exploration phase is the search for possible explanations. Here one might be less critical and more open minded. The individual enters the reflective phase when ideas and concepts are assessed for their applicability. Finally, the result of the reflective process is tested through action and subsequent integration into the learner's thought processes and lifestyle. Through this process personal meaning is transformed into public knowledge. Invariably, the critical thinking process raises more questions that need to be explored through further interactions of reflection and action. As noted previously, little attention has been given to the issues related to the support of critical communities of inquiry in distance education. Much of distance education has relied on independent study course materials, which provide little opportunity for critical discourse. There is, however, a fundamental shift in the perception and practice of distance education as having the potential to establish and facilitate critical communities of learners at a distance (Gamson, 1993). With the use of two-way communication technologies that do more than merely convey information, communities of learners can be created in which students consider alternatives, construct meaning, discuss discrepancies and develop consensual knowledge. How distance educators view learning and particularly the role of social interaction in learning, will be implicit in the design and delivery of the teaching-learning transaction at a distance. This review underlines the importance of the learning community to the facilitation of critical thinking. Social interaction within supportive learning communities can be seen as essential in the development of communities of inquiry and critical thinking. Can this type of learning community be created at a distance using audio teleconferencing with its inherent lack of visual connection? The answer to this question, as perceived by student participants, was the focus of this investigation and the results are described in the following section. Method During the first phase of the investigation, an author-developed survey was mailed to 272 students, chosen at random from students enrolled in 23 distance education courses delivered by two Canadian universities. The courses were delivered from a number of faculties but the majority of courses were from the Social Science or Humanity disciplines. Audio teleconferencing was used in these courses to link students from 3-10 learning centres located in rural areas, with each other and with the instructor who was located at an urban university campus. The survey was completed and returned by 59% or 160 students. The survey questions were developed from Lipman's description of a "community of inqujr" (Lipman, 1991) and Garrison's discussion of the phases of the critical thinking cycle (Garrison, 1991). The second phase of the investigation included 18 semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in teleconference supported courses. The students were chosen at random from those who attended the teleconferences. The one hour interviews were tape recorded and the transcripts analyzed with the aid of the Atlas/ti (Muhr, 1991) qualitative analysis tool. The interview schedule was developed after initial analysis of the survey data, thus providing an opporkmity for the investigators to probe more deeply the indvidual perceptions of learning revealed collectively in the survey. To further triangulate data, the investigators observed 12 teleconference classes under field conditions. These observations coincided with the interviews and provided opportunity for the investigator to explore, in more depth, incidents and activities which were observed during the teleconference sessions. Finally, the authors mailed a summary sheet of the results of the investigation to all interview participants and conducted a focus group and seven individual telephone interviews which were used to c o n f m conclusions with the participants. Results The major discovery from the observations and interviews and confirmed by post hoc analysis of the survey data, was that the audio teleconference sessions were being used in two distinctive manners, each following a different instructional design model. These instructional design models permeated choice of learning activities, role of participants and the goals of the learning process. The choice of instructional design was also correlated with siflcant differences in the capacity of the medium to support a community of inquiry and the development of critical thinking. The two emergent design models are referred to as the "Community of Learners" (COL) and "Independent Learner Support" (ILS). Under a COL model, the teleconference technology was used (on a weekly basis) to support discussion, lecture, direct instruction, group activities and project presentations - much as an educational seminar is conducted with conventional face-to-face student-teacher interaction on campus. The COL model, through its capacity to allow student initiated discussion and content selection, encouraged creation of new knowledge which was integrated within the workplace context of teacher and learners. The following quotations illustrate the perception of learning experienced by COL students enrolled in courses that adhere to rhls model. . . . and what we want to do when we're doing our section is, in fact, take advantage of all the people that have the information and get them to bring their experiences out and not be just reading off all the information that they could read themselves in the book. So the idea is to by to put some of ourselves into it as well, but the real resource that the people don't have access to, happens to be the opinions and thoughts of other people, so we have to incorporate that into it. I think that's essential for us. - (COL student) I have been learning to become more reflective and discerning of subject matter, and of my own opinions and have been learning to accept the positions of others, because teleconference has explored their understanding and consequently encouraged me to change or reconsider my own. - (COL student) Teleconference classes, developed under an ILS model, take place only once every two to four weeks and serve as an optional student support mechanism providing a pacing function and limited social learning support. The ILS model provides an opportunity for clarification and discussion of materials that have been presented in individual learning packages. The ILS model tends to support a surface approach to learning. Much of the discussion focused on satisfying institutional demands for passing the course. The learning activities using the ILS model, consisted in large part of teacher review of chapters from the text or study guide, discussion of assignments and tests, and answers to specific student questions. There was little use of discussion, debate, student presentation, guest speakers or other enrichment activities. This format, with its emphasis on didactic teaching and instrumental learning, seemed to meet the learning needs of many students as illustrated below: For the most part, what I find helpful at those, is discussion of papers that are coming up, answering questions about content of them and exams. - (ILS student) The odd time we're asked to do something extra to help you leam a little more or to help it stick a little more. I really hate doing them. Like I really only want to do the textbook, the notes, whatever. - Qs student) There was also a group of ILS students who reported a strong sense of dissatisfaction with this model of instructional design. For these students, recapping of material that has already been read, without opportunity for application or further development, represented a waste of their learning time. This view is illustrated in the following quotations: So, because the stuff is already in the textbook anyways . . . and on the tapes. I just find them [the teleconferences] redundant. -(ILS student) Well, it's mostly answering questions from different students. I think I would enjoy it more if it was discussions. Like I would like to get into a discussion with people from other communities and see what they think about certain . . . and make it pertinent to what's going on in our times right now. -(ILS student) The following sections detail the quantitative differences in perception of learning by students studying using the identical technology, but very different instructional design models. Community of inquiry Characteristics of a community of i n q u j l were used to develop eight survey items (Lipman, 1991). Analysis of results showed significant differences between the two groups (COL and ILS)of audio teleconference learners using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). That is, the two groups were compared and found to be significantly different on multiple quantitive measures. Data (Table 1) illustrates the mean scores on each of the eight items. The COL students perceived the audio teleconferences as supporting the development of a community of inquiry to a greater degree than the ILS students on all eight items. On the three items most associated with social interaction (opportunity for in depth - - - - -- Table I. Means on community of inquiry variables - Where 5 indicates strongly agree, 1 strongly Characteristics of Lipman's (1991) COLMean SD ILS Mean SD F community of inquiry ( n 3 7 ) (n=97) (1,146) Provided input into what material is covered during the course Provided feedback related to my learning Provided opportunity for in depth discussion Clarified my ideas by sharing them Clarified my ideas by hearing other students comments Made me feel included in the class Provided feedback related to what others think about my comments Provided an opportunity to develop cooperative problem solving discussion; cooperative problem solving and feeling of inclusion in the class) the COL students perceived significantly greater opportunities to share in a community of inquiry. It is only on the items related to reception of feedback, comments of other students and opportunity for input into course materials that the differences between the two samples were not significant. In summary, the survey data reveals that the COL students feel the audio teleconference technology supports the development of a community of inquiry. This community functions without the benefit of nonverbal communication channels used in face-to-face interacrion, but the community of inquiry does operate - even when filtered through the teleconferencing medium. The significantly lower perception of a similar community of inquiry by ILS students illustrates that merely using the technology does not guarantee that a community of inquiry will be created. We see in these results the pervasive effect of different instructional designs on the perception of a community of inquiry. The design seems to ovemde and dictate the approach of the teacher and the climate or culture of the learning community. To further explore the effect of design on the quality of learning we assessed the perception of opportunity to engage in critical thinking within the two instructional design models. Critical thinking Subjects were asked to rate their perception of opportunity to engage in 20 activities which are derived from the phases of Gamson's model of critical thinking (Garrison, 1991).This data was subjected to both descriptive and exploratory factor Table 2. Eigenvalues for critical thinkingvariables -community of learners sample Factor Eigenvalue % of Variance Cumulative % of variance analysis. The factor analysis of this data provided a conceptual mapping of the underlying dimensions of the critical thinking cycle perceived by the students and is used in comparison to the original conceptual model. The data from both samples was analyzed by principal component factor analysis using SPSS programs. The data from the ILS suffered from a very low cases/item ratio and thus is not presented in this article. Principal component analysis with varirnax (orthogonal) rotation of the COL data was first examined; however, the resulting solutions had some cross loadings on a number of variables and lacked a "simple structure." The correlation matrix for these variables was then rotated obliquely (Gorsuch, 1988),producing a solution that was simpler with only a single cross-loading of variables. The eigenvalues for the factors are presented in Table 2. A four factor solution was chosen for its interpretability, despite the fact that the fourth factor had an eigenvalue less than 1.0. The three factor solution failed to clearly isolate the factor relating to applications of knowledge outside the formal class session. The COL solution had a small (.4000) cross loading on one item and one item which did not have a salient loading on any of the four factors. Table 3 illustrates the factor solution chosen for interpretation with the salient factor loadings for each variable. Table 4 provides the factor correlations for the obliquely rotated factors. The first factor, accounting for a high proportion (44.8%)of the variance, has high loadings on those items associated with the applicability and exploration phases of the theoretical model. This factor is labelled the "exploration and critical evaluation" factor. The second factor (8.9%variance) loads on items related to the first phase of the critical thinking cycle, namely the identification of problems and stimulation of interest. This factor loads on all four items derived from the problem identification phase of the theoretical model and, thus, is labelled the "problem identification" factor. The third factor (6.1% variance) loads on items related to defining learning outcomes, course objectives, and clarifying relevant personal problems. These items are all derived from the problem clarification phase of the theoretical model and, thus, the factor is labelled "clarification of course Table 3. Factor loadings of critical thinking variables - Oblimin rotation for COL sample Critical thinking item Critical Problem Clarification of Jntegration and evaluation and identification course application to exploration requirements everyday living Disentangle ambiguities from text ,6841 Test out ideas and solutions ,6593 Develop new solutions .5826 -.4000 Explore new ideas and content ,5768 Discuss concerns related to assignments ,5572 Critically evaluate the assumptions ,5388 and ideas of others Encouraged critical assessment of ,4991 course content Relate c o m e content to previous ,4756 knowledge Judge possible solutions to problems [.3571]' andexperience Arouse interest in the course content Trigger a desire to understand more Understand issues thoroughly -,7051 Made me aware of important -.6777 issues/problems I d e n m interesting problems -.6680 Defme expected learning outcomes Clarify course objectives Clarify relevant personal problems related to the course Apply course content to examples from everyday living Assess the practical utility of new ideas Clarify problems at work .&MI6 'Highest loading for item although not salient. Only loadings < = .40 shown. requirements" factor. The fourth factor (4.8% variance), loads on items related to application of knowledge from the course to the student's everyday life. This factor is labelled "integration and application to everyday life". The factor analysis of the critical thinking variables, provided a solution that was to a large degree, isomorphic with Ganison's model. The confirmations and differences between the model and the factor analysis provide interesting insights into the perceptions of learning held by audio teleconference students and to the perception of critical thinking in this mediated educational environment. Of initial Table 4. Factor comlations for rotated factors - COL sample Critical thinku~g item Exploration Problem Clarif~cation of Integration and and critical identification course application to evaluation requirements everyday life Exploration and critical evaluation 1.000 Problem identification .2975 1.000 Clarification of course requirements .3033 -.I918 1.000 Application to everyday life .3781 -.3808 ,2695 1.000 interest is the finding that the factors are not orthogonally related. Garrison (1991) noted in the discussion of the critical thinking model that there may be considerable overlap and iteration between the phases of the critical thinking cycle. Thus, the findings from this study, that the factors are more simply interpreted after oblique rotation, is not unexpected. The major difference between the factor solutions and the model is the condensation of the exploration and applicability phases, proposed in the model, into a common factor that emerged in the analysis. Forcing of a five factor solution upon the data was investigated but did not produce clean separation of this factor as proposed by the model. Iteration between the exploration and applicability1 evaluation phases may occur frequently within the critical thinking process, as the participants discard exploratory solutions which fail tests of applicability and return to the exploration phase for a better solution. Garrison (1991) noted in his discussion of the applicability phase that "the individual may well return repeatedly to the exploration phase to generate a more satisfactory explanation, or as a check before proceeding to c o n f i i and integrate the idea" @. 194). This variance between the model and the factor analysis solutions does not, therefore, refute the model, but it does illustrate the iterative nature of critical thinking. The disparity between the five phases of the model and the four factors produced by the factor analysis may relate to the difficulty of applying this analytic tool, with its inherent search for distinct factors, upon a process described by most authors (Brookfield, 1989; Garrison, 1991; Thayer-Bacon, 1993) as being integrated and iterative. The critical thinking model described the perception of critical thinking experienced in this environment, with increased attention to formal academic requirements. A factor called "clarification of course requirements" emerged in the analysis. This factor is related to the clarification stage proposed by the theoretical model, but is focused on clarifying course requirements, as opposed to more general subject related problems. This supports Ramsden's argument that assessment procedures have a profound influence on approaches to learning (Ramsden, 1992). He stated that "whatever we may say about our ambitions to develop understanding and critical thinking in our disciplines, it is our assessment practices and the amount of content we cover that demonstrate to undergraduate [and graduate] students what competence in a subject really means" (p. 72). External criteria (assignments, examinations etc.) are determining components of all activity in formal study (Entwistle and Entwistle, 1991). The emergence of this factor underlies the dynamic nature of critical thinking and the need to adjust any model of critical thinking to account for its differential development in various contexts. The formal academic environment has a built-in evaluation and assessment component that affects thinking at all stages and especially in the clarification stage. It is important to recognize that it is not evaluation as such that influences and potentially distorts development of critical thinking skills. Our concern is the surnmative nature of the evaluation and the lack of opportunity for analysis and explanation of the results. While it is important that assessment goes beyond information recall and reflects a judgement of the depth of understanding, there should also be a process where teacher and students can re-construct concepts judged lacking in coherence or understanding. Using variables from the critical thinking questionnaire a descriptive analysis was conducted. The two samples revealed interesting results as reported in Table 5. Most importantly, for this study, the results illustrate that most of the students, in both samples, do perceive the audio teleconference as providing an opportunity for the exercise of critical thinking slulls. MANOVA tests of difference between the two sample groups were significant (Wilks' criteria F(5,133) = 4.87 p < .001) and subsequent ANOVA tests showed significant differences @ < .01) between mean scores on each the 5 phases. In every case the mean score of the COL sample was higher then the ILS sample, indicating greater perception of the opportunity to engage in the development of critical thinking skills. These results provide strong support for the notion that the development of critical thinking skills is perceived as possible, and is experienced by students enrolled in both models of audio teleconference supported distance education courses. However, those studying with a COL instructional design model had higher perceptions of opportunity to develop their critical thinking skills. Discussion Results from this investigation c o n f i that instructional designs which support sustained interaction between (amongst) student(s) and teacher enhance the Table 5. Means for scores on the four items from each phase of the critical thinkingcycle Phase of the critical thinking cycle COL Sample ILS Sample F (1,137) Problem identification 16.27 14.39 17.77"' Problem d e f ~ t i o n and clarification 14.16 13.11 5.28' Problem exploration 15.22 13.52 11.8W Problem evaluation / applicability 14.51 13.16 8.52" Knowledge integration 15.58 13.58 19.63'" ' p < .05 "p < .01 " ' p < .001 development of a community of inquiry and critical thinking. Data from thxs study confirms the increase in learner satisfaction and perceived meaningfulness of the learning experience through critical discourse. Both the COL and ILS models of teleconferencing can serve useful pedagogical functions. The COL model was found to be more consistent with a model of education that stresses deep or meaningful learning which is consistent with critical thinking (Kember, 1991). The ILS model was not totally devoid of opportunity for critical thinking process, however, there were significantly less opportunities and encouragement for students to critically analyze the course content or their understanding or application of this content. Most of the interaction observed during the observations related to clarifying expectations and instructor rephrasing of materials previously presented in the course materials. In a discussion of ways to improve teaching, Ramsden (1988) argued that teachers need to help students change their previous conceptions of knowledge. Merely telling students the "conect" conception usually does not lead to deep or meaningful learning because "change involves an active working upon and interaction between the old way of thinking and the new" (Ramsden, 1988, p.13). Independent study course materials, which are central to a generalized ILS model of teaching, imply that students' educational needs are for information acquisition. Therefore, it follows that information should be transmitted in a clear, logical and ordered fashion. There is little necessity for teachers to grapple with or necessarily be aware of students' pre-existing conceptions. It is assumed that new information, presented in the learning package, is correct and sufficient to meet learner needs. The students' task is to assimilate this information. Thus, the instructional design, which is embedded within the prescribed course content and delivery strategy, effects students' approaches to learning. The participation and contributions of other students can lead to the development of a collaborative and critical approach to learning. The work and "real life" examples shared during the teleconferences were often mentioned by COL students, in the interviews, as major benefits of attendance at the teleconferences. Critical thinking is associated with integration of new concepts and ideas with previous knowledge and experience. This integration is facilitated by peer examples and illustrations of new knowledge application. Peer sharing during ILS model teleconferences generally focused on interpretations and questions relating to assignments, assessment activities, and clarification of subject matter introduced in the text or learning package. Although such exchange is valuable from an instrumental point of view (it enhances a student's potential to pass the course) it does little to develop critical thinking. It is essential that teachers model and students be given the opportunity to experience a critical community of inquiry. There is an educational tradition stretching from Dewey (1933) to works by Brookfield (1989), Lipman (1991), Ramsden (1992) and others which are consistent with the COL model. This tradition has a well defined rationale for inclusion of interactive learning opportunities and the facilitation of critical discourse. The relevance of, and support for, interaction in the ILS instructional design model is less apparent. The interviews revealed that ILS students and teachers seemed unsure of the function of the discussion during the audio teleconferences and often fell back into activities that are defined exclusively by their relevance to the course package and evaluation criteria. This is not consistent with the often-articulated goal of higher education to develop critical thinking abilities (Ramsden, 1992). In order for the audio teleconference to assist learners in developing critical approaches to learning, instructional designers must build the teleconference into the distance learning system and not let it exist as an ill-defined, optional add-on. The students who experienced the COL design model clearly identified and valued the critical thinking process and the opportunities for critical discourse. It is the critical community of learners that can encourage questioning and scepticism. To take the risk to challenge ideas and explore new conceptions and perspectives requires encouragement and support. For most students, development of critical thinking abilities is not facilitated very well or efficiently during independent study. As noted previously, critical thinking is the integration of thought and action. In an educational context, action is most often realized through critical discourse. Although perceptions and practices with the distance education community are changing, this study raises questions regarding the traditional orthodoxy of distance education which is to provide as much freedom for students to study when and where they wish. Unfortunately, such independence provided by a variety of self- instructional media provide little freedom regarding what and how to study. That is, much of the content is prescribed with little opportunity or encouragement to critically analyze, question or develop new ideas. The goal of such independent packaged learning is inevitably to assimilate the information as efficiently as possible in order to pass the exam. The evidence presented here indicates that distance education can do more than transmit information. Critical discourse recognizes "that knowledge is not static and it cannot be transmitted in whole from the teacher to the student" (Garrison, 1993). Furthermore, a critical community of inquiry and learning can be created at a distance using audio teleconferencing - if the instructional design goal is to do that. Conclusion The results of this investigation show that supportive learning communities can be created, at a distance, through the use of relatively low level technology - audio teleconferences. The opportunity for sustained communications between and among teacher and learners is crucial to the development of critical communities of inquiry. Distance education models which are based upon one-way media such as educational television, computer managed instruction, or text books, cannot be expected to facilitate a community of inquiry and, thus, will be less likely to provide opportunities to think critically. While some introductory and well defined courses will emphasize the presentation of basic information, it is argued here that some opportunity should be provided to support critical discourse and the development of a community of inquiry. Interactive audio teleconferencing sessions, developed under a community of learning model, can support university students in the development of meaningful approaches to learning and critical thinking. Merely using this technology does not, however, guarantee that such learning communities will be created. Instructors and instructional designers must actively build in opportunity and reasons for sustained interaction amongst participants in order to support development of higher level thinking skills. Sustained interaction must be seen and experienced as an essential process, not as an adjunct, for a critical learning community to be developed at a distance. The purpose of this research and the discussion is not to polarize distance education practice. In fact, the intent is to do the opposite. Critical thinking and discourse does not occur in a vacuum. Meaningful learning, based upon critical thinking and discourse, recognizes that information acquisition is important but insufficient. The Community of Learners design model should be seen as integrating information acquisition, critical reflection and critical discourse for the purpose of facilitating the construction of meaningful knowledge. 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'Shared cognition: Thinking as social practice', in Resnick, L.B., Levine, J.M.. and Teasley, S.D.,(ed.), (1991). Perspectives on Socially S h r e d Cogninon. Washington: American Psychological Association. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenriceship in Thinking: Cognitive D e v e l o p m e ~ s in Social C o n f e z . New York: Oxford University Press. ScheU, N. and Branch, R. (1993). 'The role of conversation and culture in the systematic design of insmaion', Educational Technology 23 (8), 7-18. Thayer-Bacon, B J. (1993). 'Caring and its relationship to critical thinking', Educational Theory 43, 323-340. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Sociery, The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. You have printed the following article: Critical Thinking in Distance Education: Developing Critical Communities in an Audio Teleconference Context Terry D. Anderson; D. R. Garrison Higher Education, Vol. 29, No. 2. (Mar., 1995), pp. 183-199. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-1560%28199503%2929%3A2%3C183%3ACTIDED%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR. References Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media Richard E. Clark Review of Educational Research, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Winter, 1983), pp. 445-459. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6543%28198324%2953%3A4%3C445%3ARROLFM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 Contrasting Forms of Understanding for Degree Examinations: The Student Experience and Its Implications N. J. Entwistle; Abigail Entwistle Higher Education, Vol. 22, No. 3, Approaches to Learning and Perceptions of the Learning Environment. (Oct., 1991), pp. 205-227. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-1560%28199110%2922%3A3%3C205%3ACFOUFD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R http://www.jstor.org LINKED CITATIONS - Page 1 of 1 - http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-1560%28199503%2929%3A2%3C183%3ACTIDED%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X&origin=JSTOR-pdf http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6543%28198324%2953%3A4%3C445%3ARROLFM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5&origin=JSTOR-pdf http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-1560%28199110%2922%3A3%3C205%3ACFOUFD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R&origin=JSTOR-pdf 
work_a42z3wwh65a3rnzmkedljsyhd4	----	Pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjem20 Learning, Media and Technology ISSN: 1743-9884 (Print) 1743-9892 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjem20 Pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency Ben Williamson, Rebecca Eynon & John Potter To cite this article: Ben Williamson, Rebecca Eynon & John Potter (2020) Pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency, Learning, Media and Technology, 45:2, 107-114, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 Published online: 21 May 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 25426 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 9 View citing articles https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjem20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjem20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cjem20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cjem20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-05-21 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-05-21 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641#tabModule https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641#tabModule EDITORIAL Pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency The first special issue of Learning, Media and Technology of 2020, entitled ‘Education and technology into the 2020s: speculative futures’, presented a series of papers looking to the future of critical research on educational technologies. As we write, just a few months later, with the coronavirus pan- demic sweeping around the world, the future appears more uncertain than ever. Global infection and illness, population lockdowns, and mass closures of educational institutions have engulfed countries across the planet in the short time between issues of this journal. The global pandemic is of course not only a serious public health emergency, but a political, econ- omic and social emergency too. Scholarship across myriad disciplines in years to come will examine the medical, political, economic and social factors defining our present moment. Many of these issues will be of interest to readers of Learning, Media and Technology. They include political man- oeuvring in relation to the pandemic, from misinformation and economic measures to policies of social distancing, quarantining and isolation; the use and misuse of large-scale data, statistics and visualizations; new forms of digitally mediated work, culture and personal life; surveillance systems for ‘contact tracing’; the use of predictive epidemiological modelling; the development of techniques for better public understanding of science; and the political use of behavioural economics as a public pedagogy of population management. Future papers in this journal will be written in the context of changes currently being experienced at planetary scale, and potentially dramatic shifts in the relationships between science, technology and society. In one key area we feel Learning, Media and Technology can and should make a more direct con- tribution to knowledge and practice during the COVID-19 pandemic: the switch to online and digi- tal education formats and the rise of ‘remote’ forms of teaching and learning as a consequence of mass closures of schools, colleges and universities. In this moment of pandemic politics, where con- tests are being fought at multiple scales and levels over the ways to handle and resolve the crisis, dis- tance education has become a widespread matter of concern for political authorities, education businesses, charities, teachers, parents and students alike. Education has become an emergency mat- ter, and along with it, educational technologies have been positioned as a frontline emergency ser- vice. In recent years Learning, Media and Technology has become a key publication for critical studies of education and technology. Other outlets have responded to the rapid switch to online edu- cation with useful guidance, advice, and references to extant research from promising studies that might support educators to make the best of this new educational emergency. But the need remains for critical reflection on the planetary pivot to digitally mediated remote and distance education. We have no wish to denigrate or criticize online distance education, but rather, the aim of this brief editorial is twofold. First, we want to raise a series of critical cautions, based on previous papers and special issues published in the journal, against simplistic and opportunistic claims that edu- cational technologies are a ready-made remedy for the current crisis. Second, we want to issue a call for future research to examine, in up-close detail, the effects and consequences of the expansion and embedding of digital technologies and media in education systems, institutions and practices across the world. We don’t necessarily see these issues as new or unique to the pandemic, but they are currently being experienced more acutely and affectively by educators, students and parents around the world, from the early years through to higher education. Within our own specialist area of research and practice, pandemic politics is now playing out through attempts to thoroughly © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 2020, VOL. 45, NO. 2, 107–114 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-05-13 http://www.tandfonline.com embed public education systems and practices, at international reach, in increasingly powerful tech- nological systems. We raise here four significant issues in education and technology for reinvigorated exploration. The political economy of pandemic pedagogy A distinctive approach to pedagogy has emerged as a global norm in the opening months of 2020. Distance education, remote teaching, and online instruction are not new approaches to pedagogy or curriculum design, but they have taken on renewed salience. Debates have already commenced on social media about whether to term current practices ‘emergency remote education’ in contextual recognition of the extraordinary circumstances in which they have been developed and deployed. These ‘pandemic pedagogies’ have also become the focus for the education technology industry. Since the effects of the coronavirus crisis on education systems first became apparent in south east Asia early in 2020, education companies and technology businesses have ramped up their marketing of products to support online learning considerably. Many companies, including videoconferencing and educational content providers, have offered up previously for-fee services for free for temporary periods, alongside celebrity figures posting livestreaming educational content from workouts and dance classes to guest lessons and online Q&A sessions. To a significant extent, these charitable offers have provided many tools and resources to enable educators to meet the high demands of switching to online teaching under extremely tense conditions and in tightly compressed timelines. Perhaps more importantly, they may help parents, now responsible for supporting their children’s remote education, to keep their children occupied, active, and mentally stimulated during periods of population lockdown, isolation and quarantine. Yet at the same time, it appears clear that certain actors in the edtech industry are treating the crisis as a business opportunity, with potentially long-term consequences for how public education is perceived and practised long after the coronavirus has been brought under control. The marketing of these products to teachers, by email and online on social media, has been intense, as the closure of schools and colleges has become an opportunity for the edtech industry to prove its benefits, to extend its reach, and to grow market share. Early in March 2020, the investment bank BMO Capital Markets predicted a spike in edtech stocks. ‘While we are uncomfortable citing “winners” in the cor- onavirus situation, some companies may be positioned better than others,’ it claimed. ‘Specifically, those that specialize in online education could see increased interest should the situation worsen’ (EdSurge 2020). Edu-businesses such as Pearson have made their online learning services available for free to new subscribing institutions, and launched packages of ‘homeschooling’ advice, resources and guidance. Many of the world’s largest and most successful technology businesses have also expanded their educational services rapidly, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Zoom. Mar- kets have long been a central concern of the global edtech industry, but the pandemic may have pre- sented it with remarkable business opportunities for profit-making, as well as enhanced influence over the practices of education. In a recent special issue of Learning, Media and Technology, Hillman, Bergviken Rensfeldt, and Ivarsson (2020) speculated that education systems may become increasingly platform-based, especially those systems that already exhibit a high degree of decentralization. The ‘platformisation of schooling’, in a context where ‘schooling as an institution has already been broken-up, decentra- lised and marketised’, they argued, is already leading to ‘a situation with little state governance where the dominant technical platforms are amongst few centralising powers uniting schools as a national school system’ and ‘global commercial platforms incorporated into public education risk challenging education as a public good’ (Hillman, Bergviken Rensfeldt, and Ivarsson 2020, 7–8). Their political economy analysis of educational platformization suggests the need for serious cau- tion regarding the expansion of edtech and other platform companies during the coronavirus pan- demic. At the present time, public education has been forcibly decentralized into students’ own homes, largely disaggregated from the institutions and practices of education and instead 108 EDITORIAL repositioned as a form of homeschooling mediated by technology tools, edu-businesses and other institutions. Many edtech businesses have in fact been seeking to finesse the model of ‘distance’ edu- cation for years. They have sought to make education available remotely from schools or campuses, while also inserting platforms as intermediaries between educational institutions and their students, acting at a distance to shape the possibilities of teaching and learning. The current state of ‘pandemic pedagogy’, in other words, may not be seen by some businesses as simply an emergency response to a public health and political crisis, but as a rapid prototype of education as a private service and an opportunity to recentralize decentralized systems through platforms. Beyond simple market-making strategies, a range of coalitions and networks has formed to pro- mote forms of online learning as both a short-term response to the pandemic and a long-term ambi- tion for whole education systems. The Global Education Coalition announced by UNESCO, for example, is an international partnership intended to help countries mobilize resources and implement ‘innovative and context-appropriate solutions to provide education remotely, leveraging hi-tech, low-tech and no-tech approaches’, both in order to ‘mitigate the immediate disruption caused by COVID-19 and establish approaches to develop more open and flexible education systems for the future’ (UNESCO 2020). Its partners include Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Zoom along- side influential international organizations the OECD and World Bank, all now aligned to the com- mon mission of extending online education globally. The World Bank has actively worked with government ministries around the world to enable online education, while the OECD has begun to talk of COVID-19 as a crisis of ‘human capital’ development, and of the pandemic as ‘an oppor- tunity for experimentation and for envisioning new models of education and new ways of using the face-to-face learning time’ (OECD 2020). These policy-influencing international organizations are now enabling private platforms providers to extend their reach into previously unattainable terri- tories and spaces. At the national level, coalitions are also promoting their own forms of remote education. In the UK, the Department for Education issued a £300,000 grant to Oak National Academy, a startup online school backed by Teach First (the private teacher education provider) and researchED (an influential network promoting research evidence of ‘what works’ in the field of education), at the same time as the public broadcaster the BBC revamped its online Bitesize catalogue and iPlayer con- tent for home learning. The US-based Wide Open Schools, similarly, was established by Common Sense Media and powered by Salesforce to provide ‘a free collection of the best online learning experiences for kids’, with partners including Khan Academy, Google, YouTube, Apple and Zoom. Dominant styles of education policy that have historically distributed power to multisector networks are now empowering private companies to become infrastructural substrates to public edu- cation, in ways that may solidify and consolidate in years to come. These snapshot examples indicate how the new pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices of online education, remote teaching and homeschooling have become embedded in political and econ- omic contests. There is also a geopolitical angle, reflecting how technology companies from the US and China have sought commercial advantage and expansion in education (Knox 2020). Global tech platforms are being empowered alongside national and international policy-influencing organiz- ations that seek ‘human capital’ as the key outcome of education. Emergency education models are being treated as prototypes for education systems to emulate far beyond the pandemic. Although, then, in many respects the switch to online education around the world has been haphazard and chaotic in practice, critical studies will need to locate these changes in the broader political economy of the COVID-19 pandemic, its antecedents and long-term consequences. Digital inequalities during the pandemic As articles in this journal have consistently shown (e.g., Beckman et al. 2018) not all young people are the well connected, digitally savvy, ‘digital natives’ that the rhetoric around young people and tech- nology would have us believe. Instead, there is significant variety in the ways that young people can LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 109 access, navigate and use the internet and other new technologies, with an important minority who are excluded entirely. As schools close due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and many teachers look to digital means to connect to their students, education policy makers are beginning to realize that the rhetoric around young people is incorrect, and now some young people are excluded from much of their education and their social networks. This has led to a well-meaning response – to try to get these young people connected as soon as is possible. But many of those arguing for a move in this direction have not worked in this domain before or are aware of the many past home access schemes to get all young people connected. All young people should have the ability to access and skills to use technology effectively and safely to achieve their own goals (educational and otherwise). Yet it is extremely hard to get such schemes right. Three common questions that such schemes have to address are: What is an adequate level of digital access? At first glance, this seems to be an obvious question – provide laptops and / or internet access to those who don’t have it. But access is not a dichotomous measure, it is multifaceted. It is about the quality of that access. For example, do all children need their own device? If not, how many young people could reasonably use the same device? What is the age group that such a scheme would impact the most? Is a mobile sufficient, or do young people need a laptop for learning and education? What are the minimum technical specifications a device should have? What kind of internet connection is sufficient? How can young people and their families be supported to technology in the home? Young people who do not have digital access at home are likely to have less digital skills than their peers, and it is likely that their parents and guardians also do not have strong sets of digital skills. Using the inter- net contains multiple opportunities but also risks. How young people are supported to develop those skills and help protect them from harm is central. Typically, strong filters are placed on devices that make them less usable and less like the digital experiences of their peers. Instead, expert support is required (from teachers or others) to help young people and their families navigate the internet in a safe and effective way; and also provide them with ways to get assistance if the device breaks or the internet fails. How can longevity of the scheme be assured? In the rush to connect young people, quick fixes are being sought, where devices are to be borrowed and internet connection provided free of charge for a short period of time. However, this uncertainty over ownership and responsibilities stymies use and often causes a great deal of stress as families feel under pressure to begin paying for the internet once the initial ‘free’ period is over. Ideally devices should be given to the young person and their families to ensure they have agency over what they use it for and why; and there needs to be clear guidelines about what happens when the internet gets stopped, with significant care not to push families in to continuing with a scheme that cannot afford. Beyond these three questions, there are also some fundamental issues that need to be agreed upon. A central focus needs to be defining what ‘success’ for a particular scheme would mean. In the past, outcome measures of such initiatives have often focused on whether access is provided – e.g., a laptop is delivered and an internet connection set up. This is reasonable, but then other assumptions, that are not based on any evidence, are made about the ‘inevitable’ positive benefits the scheme has brought to the young person and their family. However, we know that the benefits from using tech- nology vary widely, with those better off tending to benefit more educationally and socially. Digital connectivity is important, but it does not overcome all inequalities young people face - during COVID-19 or otherwise. It is crucial to consider how any access scheme connects with the broader plan for providing young people with a distance education of quality. Schools have many roles and purposes, and pro- viding distance education at this time for all young people is hugely challenging. Education is not one thing and is not experienced in the same way. The inequalities in our school system and wider society are only exacerbated by the current crisis. It is therefore really important that all schemes, digital or not, work together to support less well-off young people and schools. A holistic vision will work bet- ter than a piecemeal approach. 110 EDITORIAL As readers of this journal know, technology is not a neutral entity that simply does good when people have access to it – it is complex and social cultural artefact. By putting technology into homes that are already likely to be struggling financially, and suffering more since the COVID-19 outbreak, the internet will provide access to their teachers, information and social support, and all of these things are important. However, the internet also provides: payday loan companies and gam- bling companies with easier access to families who are already struggling financially, content and people that young people should not have access to, and data brokers with more information that may negatively impact the families’ future. This, taken together with the problems that we often see with ‘EdTech’ companies and the kinds of digital education on offer (Sancho-Gil, Rivera-Vargas, and Miño-Puigcercós 2020), means that we need to think about dealing with digital inequalities in a different way. The primary reason these families do not have digital access is because of a lack of material resources due to social inequality. These economic realities do not go away as a result of a laptop scheme. Indeed, as this pandemic continues, more and more young people and their families will be in financial hardship and inequal- ities in society are likely to widen. Technology cannot fix social inequality. Though access schemes will help (if done well) it is important to think more holistically and in the longer term. We should not simply think about the issues of digital inequalities in relation to questions of access, but instead to see this time as an important moment to support, regulate and design an inclusive digital future for us all, that is part of a society that is more socially just. Social, educational, health and digital inequalities have never been clearer. Perhaps now is a time to make a more decisive set of significant social and digital changes. Spaces and hierarchies in pandemic times: re-locating digital pedagogy Being in lockdown in pandemic times and working from home, for those of us fortunate enough to be on the right side of inequality and with the opportunity to do so, means further consideration of the ways in which spatial and temporal relations are changed in the (digital) work we do as educators and researchers. There is no simple mapping of offline onto online that can escape the essential dis- juncture between what is possible and what is impossible under these circumstances, no matter how many times parents and/or educators are told that it is easy and that the ‘digital’ makes it so. Articles in Learning Media and Technology in recent years, in pre-pandemic times, have explored what happens when technological devices are brought from home into school, critiquing the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, and exploring the ways in which they alter relations in class- room space-time (e.g., Alirezabeigi, Masschelein, and Decuypere 2020). The lockdown in many countries occasioned by the pandemic requires us to hold the mirror up to what happens when class- room space-time travels in the other direction, into the home environment, introducing the poly- synchronous world of learning in the digital age into the rhythms of family life. We might call this the Bring Your Own School Home (BYOSH) movement. In this environment, personal screen-time is taken over at the same time as the physical spaces of the home are colonized and co-opted. Those grappling with the delicate ecosystem of parenting in the digital age realize that this is anything but remote learning. It is up close and personal and with the customary territorial trade-offs of colonization. The promise of both the infotainment value (as in the recent BBC here in the UK providing celebrities as teachers) and the familiar hype of ‘anytime’, ‘anywhere’ learning are ever present except that this carries the potential promise, or threat, of ‘all the time’ and ‘every- where’. So, routines are disrupted, but not in the ways nor in the places imagined by ed-tech adver- tising; spaces are invaded by devices and screens which have now, like the eponymous character in Diana Wynne-Jones’s novel Archer’s Goon (2000), melted into the foreground and, finally, roles are renegotiated and re-imagined under terms and conditions no one thought would ever apply. Schools, colleges and universities are of course reacting in different ways in this BYOSH environ- ment. Expectations are calibrated differently in different contexts with, at local level in the UK, some LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 111 headteachers and university chancellors sensibly lowering expectations and pressure on all parties. Transitioning from offline to online teaching and learning has long been found by its earliest researchers and exponents to be complex, problematic and evolutionary, though it can be done by managing the unrealistic expectations that you will be doing substantially the same thing with time, space and material artefacts as you did in face-to-face teaching. As you know by now, if you are currently working at distance with students, you won’t be doing the same things. If you are also, perhaps, a parent or carer, simultaneously in receipt of ‘online learning’ to ‘deliver’, you will know the additional attention and cognitive overload only too well. In the recent ‘looking to the future editorial’ for Learning, Media and Technology (Selwyn et al. 2020), the authors speculated on ten areas towards which critical educational technology researchers should be directing their attention in the next ten years. It was written in pre-pandemic times but anticipates, in many relevant ways, how the locus of control of pedagogy needs to be questioned and even relocated, away from remote, unaccountable, unethical systems and into the hands of edu- cators and communities. The final idea in that piece opens up more exciting and ambitious possibi- lities than those routinely voiced as technology making things more ‘effective’, speaking instead to the everyday creativity of what they label ‘convivial technologies’. Here we could invoke the notion of practices which speak back to power, where the direction of flow is not about ‘content’ being deliv- ered downstream by algorithm but about more open, agentive and productive spaces for both lear- ners and educators. We might find these ‘third spaces’ in practices around digital media in an era when testing and performativity measures are relaxed through circumstances beyond the control of the neoliberal imaginary and where these difficult times produce surprising and hopeful outcomes. Certainly there is work to be done on each of the following: the due diligence associated with the educational technology industry in these times; addressing, not glossing over, the inequalities we see around us; and with paying attention to how we can better identify the practices which flatten hierarchies and generate a productive pedagogy for the times in which we live and work. Emergency edtech experimentation Our final reflection here is on the ways that emergency remote teaching has been positioned in ‘experimental’ terms. According to an article in Quartz magazine, coronavirus has catalysed the world’s biggest educational technology (edtech) experiment in history. With 1.5 billion students out of school and hundreds of millions attempting to learn solely online, the experiment will reshape schools, the idea of education, and what learning looks like in the 21st century. (Anderson 2020) This idea of experimentation makes remote learning students, teachers and parents into laboratory subjects whose contingent experiences and activities are being observed for insights about the future of edtech itself. The global edtech experiment is also an opportunity to produce very large quantities of student data, as students are forced online into data-intensive digital learning environments at unprece- dented scale. For researchers and organizations invested in data scientific forms of analysis in edu- cation, as Zimmerman (2020) put it in The Chronicle of Higher Education, coronavirus is an opportunity for a ‘great online learning experiment’: Coronavirus … has created a set of unprecedented natural experiments. For the first time, entire student bodies have been compelled to take all of their classes online. So we can examine how they perform in these courses compared to the face-to-face kind, without worrying about the bias of self-selection. It might be hard to get good data if the online instruction only lasts a few weeks. But at institutions that have moved to online-only for the rest of the semester, we should be able to measure how much students learn in that medium compared to the face-to-face instruction they received earlier. The argument exemplified by Zimmerman is that the coronavirus crisis is a natural experimental opportunity for education data scientists – both those in academic education research and analysts working in edtech companies and other edu-businesses – to demonstrate the effectiveness of online 112 EDITORIAL education over face-to-face teaching. Zimmerman even argued that it should be considered a kind of moral responsibility for universities to use the chance to figure out if online education outperforms in-person teaching, even though, he said, ‘if students showed more gains from online instruction, professors who teach face-to-face classes – like I do – might find their own jobs in peril’ (Zimmer- man 2020). The data scientific dream of measuring learning at scale in order to develop a precise understanding of the benefits of remote instruction is clearly animating part of the effort by edtech businesses and associated researchers to utilize the coronavirus emergency as a mass data-gathering and analysis opportunity. And this might ultimately, as Zimmerman suggested, lead to a consolida- tion of online instruction and, as a consequence, exacerbate worker precarity for educators. The possible contraction of higher education as an on-campus experience, and a shift to remote instruc- tion and learning, is already concerning many educators. The effort to position pandemic pedagogies as a natural experimental opportunity for education data science to ‘prove’ the benefits of digital teaching exemplifies the ways that ‘datafication’ has been presented as a transformative force in education in recent years. As Jarke and Breiter (2019) put it in their introduction to a special issue of Learning, Media and Technology on ‘The datafication of edu- cation’, ‘the education sector is one of the most noticeable domains affected by datafication, because it transforms not only the ways in which teaching and learning are organised’ and raises expectations about ‘increased transparency, accountability, service orientation and civic participation but also associated fears with respect to surveillance and control, privacy issues, power relations, and (new) inequalities’ (Jarke and Breiter 2019, 1). From this perspective, efforts to datafy the student experience of education during the pandemic need to be understood as an extreme manifestation of longer-term aspirations to render education legible as numbers through increasingly pervasive technologies and techniques of surveillance. The COVID-19 pandemic is being treated as a labora- tory experiment in mass-scale datafication of education in ways that might further empower and advance the interests of data-driven edtech companies, researchers and advocates. As millions of stu- dents sign up to new platforms in order to be able to access education during the pandemic, long- running concerns over data privacy and the use of data for student profiling and control need to be brought back into focus. Towards future research We raise the four discussions above as critical reflections on ongoing significant changes with poten- tially long-term consequences for education generally and for research and practice in digital media and learning specifically. Pandemic education may also illuminate something of longer-term changes in the relationship between technology and society, with digital services adopted unproblematically as solutions to any problem (also reflected in current tensions over surveillance and privacy impli- cations of ‘contact tracing’ apps). Yet these are not all necessarily new issues or problems. Contribu- tors to Learning, Media and Technology have for many years been confronting questions and challenges of the political economy of edtech, digital inequalities, spaces and futures of learning, and datafication of education. The coronavirus emergency has intensified and expanded these. Rather than calling for a specific research agenda related to coronavirus, our more modest hope is that the journal will continue to act as a key source of scholarly knowledge and critical analysis on issues around education, media and technology that have long, contested histories and uncertain futures. The pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices characteristic of education in 2020 call for a reinvigorated approach to research on educational technologies and media that is driven by critical and theoretically informed analysis. Learning, Media and Technology remains a key forum for orig- inal research in these areas. We welcome contributions that not only take the current pandemic as their focus or context of analysis, but continue to advance our understanding of historically and con- textually specific education and technology-related policies, practices, and problems that are now more urgent than ever. LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 113 References Alirezabeigi, S., J. Masschelein, and M. Decuypere. 2020. “Investigating Digital Doings Through Breakdowns: A Sociomaterial Ethnography of a Bring Your Own Device school.” Learning, Media and Technology, doi:10.1080/ 17439884.2020.1727501. Anderson, J. 2020. Quartz, 30 March. https://qz.com/1826369/how-coronavirus-is-changing-education/. Beckman, K., T. Apps, S. Bennett, and L. Lockyer. 2018. “Conceptualising Technology Practice in Education Using Bourdieu’s Sociology.” Learning, Media and Technology 43 (2): 197–210. EdSurge. 2020. “Analysts Watch for Coronavirus Impact on Edtech Stocks.” EdSurge, March 5. https://www.edsurge. com/news/2020-03-05-public-markets-watch-for-coronavirus-impact-on-edtech-stocks. Hillman, T., A. Bergviken Rensfeldt, and J. Ivarsson. 2020. “Brave new Platforms: A Possible Platform Future for Highly Decentralised Schooling.” Learning, Media and Technology 45 (1): 7–16. Jarke, J., and A. Breiter. 2019. “The Datafication of Education.” Learning, Media and Technology 44 (1): 1–6. Knox, J. 2020. “Artificial Intelligence and Education in China.” Learning, Media and Technology, doi:10.1080/ 17439884.2020.1754236. OECD. 2020. “Education Responses to Covid-19: Embracing Digital Learning and Online Collaboration.” OECD, March 23. https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=120_120544-8ksud7oaj2&Title=Education%20responses%20to %20covid-19:%20%20Embracing%20digital%20learning%20and%20online%20collaboration. Sancho-Gil, J. M., P. Rivera-Vargas, and R. Miño-Puigcercós. 2020. “Moving Beyond the Predictable Failure of Ed- Tech Initiatives.” Learning, Media and Technology 45 (1): 61–75. Selwyn, N., T. Hillman, R. Eynon, G. Ferreira, J. Knox, F. MacGilchrist, and J. M. Sancho-Gil. 2020. “What’s Next for Ed-Tech? Critical Hopes and Concerns for the 2020s.” Learning, Media and Technology 45 (1): 1–6. UNESCO. 2020. “Global Education Coalition.” UNESCO, March 26. https://en.unesco.org/covid19/ educationresponse/globalcoalition. Wynne Jones, D. 2000. Archer’s Goon. London: Collins. Zimmerman, J. 2020. “Coronavirus and the Great Online-Learning Experiment.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Coronavirusthe-Great/248216. Ben Williamson University of Edinburgh Rebecca Eynon University of Oxford John Potter Institute of Education, University College London 114 EDITORIAL https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1727501 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1727501 https://qz.com/1826369/how-coronavirus-is-changing-education/ https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-03-05-public-markets-watch-for-coronavirus-impact-on-edtech-stocks https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-03-05-public-markets-watch-for-coronavirus-impact-on-edtech-stocks https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1754236 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1754236 https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=120_120544-8ksud7oaj2%26Title=Education%20responses%20to%20covid-19:%20%20Embracing%20digital%20learning%20and%20online%20collaboration https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=120_120544-8ksud7oaj2%26Title=Education%20responses%20to%20covid-19:%20%20Embracing%20digital%20learning%20and%20online%20collaboration https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/globalcoalition https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/globalcoalition https://www.chronicle.com/article/Coronavirusthe-Great/248216 The political economy of pandemic pedagogy Digital inequalities during the pandemic Spaces and hierarchies in pandemic times: re-locating digital pedagogy Emergency edtech experimentation Towards future research References << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles false /AutoRotatePages /PageByPage /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile () /CalRGBProfile (Adobe RGB \0501998\051) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages false /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.1000 /ColorConversionStrategy /sRGB /DoThumbnails true /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 524288 /LockDistillerParams true /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments false /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo false /PreserveFlatness true /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings false /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Remove /UCRandBGInfo /Remove /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages true /ColorImageMinResolution 150 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages false /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.90 /HSamples [2 1 1 2] /VSamples [2 1 1 2] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.40 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages true /GrayImageMinResolution 150 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.90 /HSamples [2 1 1 2] /VSamples [2 1 1 2] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.40 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 15 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages true /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 300 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects true /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /Description << /ENU () >> >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [600 600] /PageSize [595.245 841.846] >> setpagedevice 
work_a4bhlgwkvnc57llzvhbtv6wypi	----	Effects of Implementing STEM-I Project-Based Learning Activities for Female High School Students | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/ijdet.2014010104 Corpus ID: 34667440Effects of Implementing STEM-I Project-Based Learning Activities for Female High School Students @article{Lou2014EffectsOI, title={Effects of Implementing STEM-I Project-Based Learning Activities for Female High School Students}, author={Shi-Jer Lou and Huei-Yin Tsai and K. Tseng and R. Shih}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2014}, volume={12}, pages={52-73} } Shi-Jer Lou, Huei-Yin Tsai, +1 author R. Shih Published 2014 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. This study aims to explore the application of STEM-I (STEM-Imagination) project-based learning activities and its effects on the effectiveness, processes, and characteristics of STEM integrative knowledge learning and imagination development for female high school students. A total of 72 female high school students were divided into 18 teams. Students were provided with a place to discuss, share, and integrate learning activities. A questionnaire and focus group interviews were conducted for… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 15 Citations View All Topics from this paper Knowledge integration Focus group Futures studies IDEAL 15 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Enhancing Students' Creativity through STEM Project-Based Learning. S. Hanif, Agus Fany Chandra Wijaya, N. Winarno Psychology 2019 6 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Construction and Development of iSTEM Learning Model Huei-Yin Tsai, Chih-Chao Chung, Shi-Jer Lou Psychology 2017 7 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Evidence of STEM enactment effectiveness in Asian student learning outcomes Bevo Wahono, Pei-Ling Lin, Chun-Yen Chang 2020 1 Save Alert Research Feed Impact of Implementing STEM PBL Approach on Elementary Students’ Science Academic Achievement in Sharjah H. Jarrar Psychology 2020 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Sustaining STEM: A Framework for Effective STEM Education Across the Learning Continuum S. Murphy, Amy Macdonald, L. Danaia Psychology 2020 1 Save Alert Research Feed M-learning in the middle east: The case of Bahrain Evangelia Marinakou, Charalampos Giousmpasoglou Engineering 2014 8 Save Alert Research Feed Enhancing Students' Learning Outcomes of a STEAM Permutations Course Through a Game Based Visual Programming Environment with Qualifying Rank Strategy Yu-Che Huang, Yueh-Ming Huang, A. I. Starcic Computer Science ICITL 2020 Save Alert Research Feed Rooted in Teaching: Does Environmental Socialization Impact Teachers' Interest in Science-Related Topics? L. A. Gross, J. J. James, Eric Frauman Psychology 2015 9 Save Alert Research Feed Blend the Lab Course, Flip the Responsibility Mark Gallo Engineering 2014 6 Save Alert Research Feed Impacts of the project based (PBL) science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education on academic achievement and career interests of vocational high school students M. Çevik Psychology 2018 12 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 32 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency The senior high school students’ learning behavioral model of STEM in PBL Shi-Jer Lou, Y. Liu, Ru Chu Shih, K. Tseng Psychology 2011 22 Save Alert Research Feed Attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a project-based learning (PjBL) environment K. Tseng, C. Chang, Shi-Jer Lou, W. Chen Engineering 2013 221 Save Alert Research Feed The Impact of Pre-Service Teachers' Reflection on Their Instructional Practices Y. K. Dollar, E. Mede Psychology 2016 5 Save Alert Research Feed Video Gaming for STEM Education Kim J. Hyatt, Jessica L. Barron, Michaela A. Noakes Computer Science 2013 9 Save Alert Research Feed Mobile Technology in Higher Education: Patterns of Replication and Transferability Meghan M. Deyoe, D. Newman, Jessica M. Lamendola Engineering 2015 6 Save Alert Research Feed The Role of the Professional Doctorate in Developing Professional Practice in STEM Subjects P. Smith, J. Fulton, A. Irons, G. Sanders Medicine 2015 11 Save Alert Research Feed Inspiring imagination – education and learning : the university experience in the regional development cocktail Robbie Collins, L. Stevenson Political Science 2004 9 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Massachusetts science and technology/engineering curriculum framework Secondary Education. Office for Career Engineering 2006 155 Save Alert Research Feed Mathematics Gaming in Early Childhood: Describing Teacher Moves for Effective and Appropriate Implementation Alejandra Salinas, Chu Ly Computer Science, Mathematics 2015 7 Save Alert Research Feed Women's Roles: Do They Exist in a Technological Workforce? H. Lawrence Sociology 2015 4 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 15 Citations 32 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_a5s4ynkcrfdctgshhfuqxqdgci	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_abpda6cbuvc5foo2af7jpe3cma	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_acxa3wdfdzcjfneh7eluqdemb4	----	Open Learning, Vol. 19, No. 3, November 2004 Dialogue in a distance education physics course Paul Gorskya*, Avner Caspia and Ricardo Trumperb aOpen University of Israel, Israel; bHaifa University, Israel This study investigated the kinds of dialogues utilized by Open University students while studying an intermediate level physics course. Research objectives were twofold: to document what dialogue types, mediated through which resources, were (1) generally utilized by students as they learned; and (2) were specifically utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulties. It was found that all students initially chose individual study characterized by intrapersonal dialogue. Only when individual study failed did students opt for interpersonal dialogue. This finding conflicts with the assumed importance often ascribed to interpersonal dialogue by some distance education theorists. Keywords: Distance education; Instructional dialogues; Instructional resources; Study strategies Introduction This article recounts a research study aimed at exploring individual accounts of the process of learning university physics by focusing on the instructional resources and dialogues utilized by students. The study, in part, is a response to observations that few research endeavors have attempted to explore adult learners own description of their processes of formal learning (Brookfield, 1994). Brockbank and McGill (1998) wrote that processes involved in teaching and learning remain a ‘black box’ which is still largely unexplored (p. 65). Haggis (2002) pointed out that there have been ‘few investigations into the relationship between theoretical ideas about ‘adult’ learning and the process of learning as described by adult learners themselves, particularly in the context of higher education’ (p. 208). This study explored the complexity of real, situated learning experiences and possibly created new ways of thinking about factors and influences, especially communication modes and technologies, which may be crucial in determining the success or failure of distance education courses. Modern distance education systems include a diverse array of resources for intrapersonal dialogue such as self-instruction texts, web-based instructional sys- tems, audio and video cassettes, television and radio programs, computer-based *Corresponding author. Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski Street, P.O. Box 808, Ra’anana 43107, Israel. Email: paulgo@openu.ac.il ISSN 0268-0513 (print)/ISSN 1469-9958 (online)/04/030265-13  2004 The Open University DOI: 10.1080/0268051042000280129 266 P. Gorsky et al. simulations and tutorials, etc. In addition, there are many and diverse resources for interpersonal dialogue such as web sites for synchronous and asynchronous interac- tion, video and audio-conferencing, telephone, email, face-to-face meetings with instructors and peers, etc. Given this diversity, we suggest that students’ study strategies and practices might be investigated usefully in terms of the kinds of dialogues engaged in and the resources which enabled these dialogues. To carry out such an analysis, however, a need exists for a broad conceptual framework of distance education systems which recognizes the centrality of instruc- tional dialogue and views the resources of an instructional system in terms of the kinds of dialogue each resource supports. Such a framework was proposed by Gorsky and Caspi (in press). A brief review follows. Dialogue: a theoretical framework for distance education instructional sys- tems The framework provides a theory of instruction centered on dialogue for describing learning activities in distance education systems. The key element of the framework is learning—not the learner, not the instructor and not the physical or temporal distance separating them. Gorsky and Caspi (in press) cite five basic assumptions which underlie the framework: 1. Learning is an individual activity characterized by internal mental processes. 2. Learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue. 3. Learning is facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. 4. Dialogue is enabled by structural and human resources. 5. Dialogue and learning outcomes are correlated. A schematic overview of the framework appears in Figure 1. Structural resources for intrapersonal dialogue include all materials of any kind that students may learn from. Structural resources for interpersonal dialogue include all available communications media and the availability of instructors and fellow students. Human resources for interpersonal dialogue are the instructors and stu- dents who may engage in instructional dialogue. Students may utilize resources as they see fit, in accord with their goals, abilities and needs. Given these assumptions, all study strategies and practices used by students in distance education courses may be viewed and analyzed in terms of the instructional dialogues they engage in and the instructional resources which make the dialogues possible. Two illustrations follow: 1. A student reads a self-instruction text. The text is a structural resource which enables intrapersonal dialogue. 2. A student posts a message in an asynchronous discussion group. The asynchro- nous discussion group is a structural resource which enables interpersonal dialogue. The student who responded is a human resource. Dialogue in a distance education physics course 267 Figure 1. The framework of instructional dialogues and resources The model of intrapersonal instructional dialogue The construct ‘intrapersonal instructional dialogue’ subsumes those internal mental processes engaged in by students as they are purposefully trying to learn. According to Gorsky and Caspi (in press): … when students read self-instruction texts, listen to lectures or audio tapes, view educational films, solve problems, manipulate computer simulations with the intent to learn, they are said to be engaged in intrapersonal instructional dialogue. Furthermore, dialogue may occur without the physical presence of instructional materials; for example, a student walking alone or jogging and thinking about subject matter is engaged in intrapersonal instructional dialogue. Mental processes may be described by psychologists as ‘assimilation’ or ‘accommo- dation’ (Piaget, 1970), ‘accretion’, ‘structuring’ and ‘tuning’ (Rumelhart & Nor- man, 1978), ‘intra-psychological processes’ (Vygotsky, 1978) or as ‘an internal didactic conversation’ (Holmberg, 1989). The actual internal processes are relevant in so far as they contribute to the design of instructional resources. Students utilize structural resources as they see fit. The quality and availability of the resources make a significant impact on learning outcomes. However, Gorsky and Caspi (in press) contend that the most significant resource in intrapersonal dialogue is the human being, the learner, not the structural resources: Each individual learner is characterized by a constellation of variables which include his or her goals for the course, prior knowledge, motivation, intelligence, and anxiety, among others. These variables differ for each learner and they determine the extent of intrapersonal dialogue that occurs and its quality. 268 P. Gorsky et al. The model of interpersonal instructional dialogue The underlying assumption is that interpersonal instructional dialogue is a discur- sive process through which learner understanding may be increased. Ultimately, all learning is perceived as occurring through intrapersonal processes, even learning facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. However, given the direct impact of interper- sonal learning on concept acquisition, two distinct dialogue types are distinguished. Dialogue. Interpersonal instructional dialogue is defined as a discursive relationship between two or more participants characterized by thought provoking activities such as questioning, hypothesizing, interpreting, explaining, evaluating, and rethinking issues or problems at hand. A dialogue is said to have occurred if one or more of the activities listed above is manifested in an interaction, either instructor–student or student–student. This is a judgment based on a qualitative analysis of data from sources such as observations, videos, transcripts, interviews and questionnaires. There are different kinds of dialogue with different specific aims which, in turn, derive from different philosophical stances. Dialogue may be used as a means to increase learner understanding or to sharpen learners’ analytic skills or as an evaluation tool. Burbules (1993) listed four types of dialogical engagement: inquiry, conversation, instruction and debate. Each may be either instructor–student or student–student. The instructor, characterized by personality traits and facilitation skills, plays a critical role in creating and maintaining dialogue, both in traditional and in distance education programs (see Dewey, 1916; Bruner, 1966; Rogers, 1969). The student, characterized by prior knowledge, motivation, anxiety, auton- omy and other traits, will participate in interpersonal dialogue to greater or lesser degrees. Learning outcomes. Two learning outcomes, achievement and learner satisfaction, are included in the framework. A direct, causal relationship between instructional dialogues and learning outcomes, which may be investigated empirically, is hypoth- esized. Summary This conceptual framework of distance education systems associates every resource in an instructional system with a specific dialogue type. In so doing, it provides a description of the mechanisms at play in distance education systems and proposes relationships between different constructs which may be tested by empirical re- search. It is the theoretical basis upon which this research is grounded. The study Background The Open University of Israel is a distance education university designed to offer academic studies to students throughout Israel. Established in 1974, the university Dialogue in a distance education physics course 269 Table 1. Human and structural resources available to the Open University students Human resources Structural resources • Self-instruction texts Intrapersonal dialogue Learner • Tutorial sessions • Website materials • Recommended texts Instructor; • Website discussion groups, synchronousInterpersonal dialogue and asynchronouslearner(s) • Telephone • E-mail • Personal face-to-face meetings • Tutorial sessions offers a home study system based on textbooks, tutors and study centers throughout the land. Enrolment for the academic year 2003–2004 was more than 38,000 students. Each university course offers ‘regular’ tutorials held every two or three weeks. Some courses offer ‘extended’ tutorials held weekly. The classic text–tutor system was enriched in 1999 with the introduction of a ‘web-based instructional environment’ (WBIE) wherein each course has its own web site. These sites are intended to enrich students’ learning opportunities and to increase interpersonal interaction, both instructor–student and student–student. Web site use is optional, non-mandatory, so that equality among students is preserved (at the time the study was conducted, only about 42% of the students had home access to Internet). The WBIE does not replace textbooks or face-to-face instructor-led tutorials that are the pedagogical foundations of the Open University. The WBIE enables asynchronous instructor–student and student–student interactions as well as a synchronous forum for chat between and among all logged-on participants, including the instructor. The physics course from which participants were surveyed is an intermediate level course required of all physics and chemistry majors. It accounts for six credits out of a total 108 needed for graduation. Table 1 lists the human and structural instructional resources for each of the dialogue types that were available to students. About six weeks prior to the start of the semester, students received the written course materials, mailed to their home addresses. Written materials included self-in- struction texts and a booklet of problems to be solved and submitted by certain deadlines. About two weeks after having received the materials, they were required to enroll in a tutorial group, either regular or extended. In addition, they received a password which granted access to the course’s web site. In this study, ‘instructor’ is the term used for the person who communicated with students in tutoring sessions, by email, by telephone or in person. Research objectives Research objectives were to document (1) what dialogue types, enabled through which structural resources, were generally utilized by students; and (2) what dia- 270 P. Gorsky et al. logue types, enabled through which communication resources, were specifically utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulties. Methodology The use of dialogue and resources was investigated through a qualitative, naturalistic approach which enabled the participants to be studied in a natural, open and non-threatening context. The method enabled participants to review their personal learning processes and to communicate their perceptions. Data were gathered from two sources: from semi-structured interviews with the students and from a conver- sation with the course coordinator. Participants. Eight students, out of 41 who had completed the course ‘Foundations of Physics II’ during the spring semester of 2003, participated in the study. The course coordinator, a senior member of the faculty of natural sciences, also partici- pated. The students, all of whom were studying part-time, were selected according to the following criteria: all expressed willingness to explore their own learning activities and all had completed successfully at least two science courses in a previous semester. The latter criterion ensures that students had amassed enough experience in distance learning so that dialogue preference and resource utilization would be the result of conscious decision-making and not the result of random trial and error. That is, they have acquired a sense of knowing how to learn based on direct personal experience. Data collection and analysis. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with the students and from an interview with the course instructor. Initial phases of data analysis involved classifying data in accordance with the research questions. Data generated by each student were analyzed in terms of the two research questions for purposes of pattern formation and pattern matching. Pattern matching involves looking for similarities in the reactions, thoughts, and actions of the participants (Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Hill & Hannafin, 1997). Patterns may lead to a model or to a set of related models which can explicate students’ use of dialogue and instructional resources in a specific distance education setting. In order to achieve this goal, a constant comparative method (Silverman, 2001) was used in which initial, provisional patterns (hypotheses) were proposed and then tested in sub- sequent interviews with different students. This process was carried out until no more new knowledge was gathered. Interviews with students. Each participant was interviewed once, at the end of the course, in a semi-structured interview which took about 40–60 minutes. The interviewer made brief notes during the session and extensive notes immediately upon completion of the interview. Participants were asked questions aimed to be as neutral and open-ended as possible while probing for particular, idiosyncratic aspects of experience. Some examples follow: Dialogue in a distance education physics course 271 • How did you learn? That is, what kinds of learning activities did you engage in? • What factors influenced your choice of learning activities? • Did you personally communicate with the instructor or with other students? • Did you post messages on the web site? • What did you do when you couldn’t solve a problem? Interview with the course coordinator. The interview took place after completion of the course, after students’ final grades had been recorded and after the interviews with students. The coordinator explained and discussed his perspectives about the course. He was asked to express perceptions of and opinions about the quality of the self-instruction materials, the relative difficulty of assignments and tests, the tutorial sessions and the quality and amount of interactions and dialogues that occurred with students. Findings Interview data from the course coordinator The senior academic faculty member responsible for the course participated in the interview. He felt that students could be classified into two groups: physics majors who were ‘actually interested’ in the subject matter and non-physics majors who were for the most part ‘just interested in achieving a passing grade’. He believed this to be true since the course is a requirement for all science majors and many of the participants were chemistry and biology students with little real interest in physics. The coordinator defined the course as ‘average to somewhat difficult’. Difficulty, he believed, emerged from the fact that the course included a large number of abstract basic concepts which were represented mathematically. The fact that the mathe- matic structures were algebraic reduced difficulty. From his past experience with the course, he felt that he knew where and when students experienced special difficulties. Tutorial sessions focused on the specific conceptual difficulties being experienced by the learners as well as on problem solving. He felt that students used the weekly telephone session to its fullest extent and that students also utilized the course web site as a means of communicating with him. Interview data from students pertinent to research objective 1: what dialogue types, enabled through which resources, were generally utilized by students as they learned? It was found, without exception, that all students reviewed the self-instruction materials after having received them in the mail. They did so, in part, because of the need to enroll in a particular tutorial session, either ‘regular’ (once every two or three weeks) or ‘extended’ (weekly). It was found that two factors influenced the choice of tutorial, desired grade and perceived difficulty of the course. Data are shown in Table 2. Perceived difficulty emerged from two sources, reviewing the texts and discussions 272 P. Gorsky et al. Table 2. Study strategies prior to start of course Perceived difficulty Planned toof impending Name courseMajor Desired grade Tutorial type attend tutorials extended yesTomer Life Sciences high difficult Avi yesPhysics extendedhigh intermediate Ovad extendedEngineering yeshigh intermediate Guy yesPhysics extendedhigh easy Alex extendedPhysics yeshigh easy Hod yesLife Sciences regularhigh easy Noam Physics high regulareasy yes Yossi Life Sciences passing regularintermediate yes with friends who had already taken the course. All the students, except for Yossi, expressed motivation to achieve the highest possible grades. Five were willing to invest the additional time, inconvenience and effort to achieve them by attending the extended tutorials which met weekly. Furthermore, two students, Guy and Alex, who perceived the upcoming course as ‘easy’ chose to attend the extended tutorials. This choice seemed to reinforce their sincerity about achieving the highest possible grade. Guy said: I’ll go to the tutorials even though the material doesn’t seem too difficult because it’ll give me an edge—the instructor emphasizes what’s important and I want a high grade. Alex tersely explained his decision to attend the extended tutorials despite his perception that the course is easy: ‘Just in case. For safety’s sake’. Two other students, Hod and Noam, who also perceived the course as easy, chose regular tutorials in the belief that they could successfully cope with the material. Noam said: ‘I go to extended tutorials when I want a high grade and things look difficult. This course is a piece of cake’. It appeared that students initial learning strategies vis-a-vis tutorial choice, derived from their aims and from their perceptions of course difficulty which were estab- lished from reviewing the self-instruction texts, the problems to be solved prior to the start of the course and from discussions with friends who had already taken the course. Students chose tutorial types in a manner which would achieve this aim. After the course began, students studied and learned from the self-instruction texts, by attending the tutorials and by downloading materials from the course web site which included sample problems and sample exams. These activities were performed alone, as individual study, intrapersonal dialogue. Interview data from students pertinent to research objective 2: what dialogue types, enabled through which resources, were specifically utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulties. It was found, however, that at some point, all participants confronted some concep- Dialogue in a distance education physics course 273 Table 3. Courses of action for overcoming conceptual difficulty and modes of communication Name Second course of actionFirst course of action Third course of action —Tomer —Peers (tel, f2f*) —Avi —— —Guy instructor/private (f2f*, tel)Peers (f2f*, tel, Web) Ovad Peers (tel)instructor/public (at instructor/private (tel, f2f*) tutorials) —Alex —instructor/private (f2f*) Hod instructor/public (at instructor/private (f2f*, tel)Peers (tel) tutorials) —Noam —instructor/public (at tutorials) Yossi —Peers (f2f*, tel) — * f2f � face to face. tual difficulty, either the inability to understand a concept or the inability to solve a problem with a high degree of certainty. For example, Tomer recalled trying to solve the first set of assigned problems: ‘Oops! This isn’t so easy’. Alex (who also thought the course would be easy), when he actually sat down to solve the first set of problems, said: Wow, this isn’t so easy. Then again, it’s not all that hard. Then again, I’m not absolutely sure I got the right answer. I have to know if I got the right answer!!! The different courses of action taken to overcome conceptual difficulty and the communication modes by which they were mediated are shown in Table 3. The modes of communication, which appear in parentheses, are listed in order of preferred use. Four specific behavior patterns emerge from the data. 1. Upon confronting conceptual difficulty, each student, except for Avi, responded by engaging in some form of interpersonal interaction, instructor–student and/or student–student. Avi was indeed the ultimate ‘autonomous learner’ who redou- bled efforts when confronted with difficulty. Students who had attended tutorials as passive listeners began to ask questions (Ovad, Hod and Noam). This form of interpersonal dialogue was cited as ‘instructor/public’ since the dialogue occurred within the group tutorial. Tomer, Guy and Yossi chose not to ask questions at the tutorials, but instead turned to peers for help in overcoming difficulty. Alex spoke with the instructor privately (instructor/private) both before and after the tutorials. 2. Five of the eight participants cited peer collaboration as the most important and effective means of overcoming conceptual difficulty. Both Tomer and Guy studied with a friend on a permanent basis. Ovad participated in a forum of three that communicated frequently by telephone. He described the forum as an ‘important and effective means of getting help to solve problems’. Noam reported that although he managed to solve problems alone, he had a ‘friend in waiting’ if he needed any help. 274 P. Gorsky et al. 3. Except for Alex, a personal instructor-student interaction (outside the realm of question asking at the group tutorials) was generally a last resort used only after other courses of action had been utilized, or not at all. Hod explained why he did not contact the instructor: ‘I don’t have anything against the instructor, I just prefer working things through alone or with my friends where I’m comfortable and can say dumb things’. Other students pointed out that the two hour per week availability of instructors was insufficient since the line was usually ‘busy’. 4. Asynchronous communication via the web site was not a popular mode of communication. The primary reason cited was a lack of immediacy. Noam’s comment, ‘When I’m stuck, I want an answer right away’, was echoed by most students. General patterns It was found that experienced distance education students utilized instructional dialogues and the instructional resources offered by the Open University of Israel (see Table 1) in similar ways. Four general patterns emerged from the findings. Patterns of intrapersonal dialogue.. Prior to the start of the course: (1) all students reviewed the self-instruction texts; (2) all defined goals, especially the desired grade; (3) all defined an initial study strategy based on participating in either regular or extended tutorials; and (4) all began the course in an individual study mode using the structural resources of intrapersonal dialogue (self-instruction texts, tutorials, web site materials) listed in Table 1. Only one student purchased the recommended text. This pattern of intrapersonal dialogue prevailed until some non-resolvable difficulty was experienced, usually the inability to solve a problem. Indeed, this mode of behavior is the paradigm of distance education at the Open University of Israel. Patterns of interpersonal dialogue. Interpersonal dialogue emerged when students were confronted with what appeared to be an unsolvable problem or an uncertainty regarding the correctness of an answer. As seen in Table 3, the choice between turning to peers or turning to the instructor is about evenly divided. What is clear, however, is that the preferred communication mode with the instructor is face-to- face at the tutorial sessions. A personal dialogue with the instructor, either face-to- face or by telephone, was generally a last resort. Patterns of media selection. Table 1 shows the different structural resources available for interpersonal dialogue. For the seven students who engaged in interpersonal dialogue to resolve some conceptual difficulty (see Table 3), the overwhelming preference was for the ‘old fashioned’ synchronous modes of communication: face-to-face encounters or telephone conversations. Computer mediated technolo- gies were utilized infrequently or not at all. The students participating in the study did not utilize the facilities for synchronous ‘chats’; they did not send emails and Dialogue in a distance education physics course 275 only one student (Guy) reported posting messages to the asynchronous discussion group. A general algorithm for viewing students’ utilization of dialogues and resources. All students participating in the study followed the same path. Differences among students expressed themselves on a time axis; that is, some experienced conceptual difficulty or the inability to solve a problem earlier in the course than did others. It appears that the utilization of interpersonal dialogue is motivated by the student’s immediate need to understand a specific concept or, especially, to solve a specific problem rather than by a learning preference or cognitive style or some inherent degree of learner autonomy. The simplicity of this general study strategy may be deceptive since, although several courses of action may have been pursued theoretically, in fact, the actual degrees of freedom available to students were limited. First, during the period prior to the start of the course, the only resources available to students were the self-instruction materials. Thus, individual study characterized by intrapersonal dialogue was the only realistic option available at the time. Second, after the course started, courses of action available to students who encountered conceptual difficulty (instructor–student or student–student dialogues) were not equivalent; that is, availability of peers was essentially unlimited while instructor availability was limited to either a once weekly two hour open telephone which was often busy or a hurried conversation before or after a tutorial session. Furthermore, at least in this particular physics course, students were generally interested in getting the correct answer to a problem that had to be solved while instructors were generally more prone to explain underlying concepts so that students could solve the problems on their own. It is not surprising, therefore, that many students preferred collaborating with peers rather than with the instructor. In any event, students preferred to learn by themselves. Only when confronted by some insurmountable difficulty did they turn to others for help. Discussion Two issues will be discussed: (1) the compatibility of these findings with theoretical premises regarding the place of interpersonal dialogue in distance education; and (2) the relation between research findings and the conceptual framework cited above. The place of interpersonal dialogue in distance education Findings indicate that for all students participating in the study, intrapersonal dialogue characterized by individual study, was the primary and preferred dialogue mode engaged in while learning an intermediate level physics course at the Open University of Israel. Student initiated interpersonal dialogue was engaged in gener- ally for the purpose of solving problems. This finding illustrates very clearly the tension between distance education theories on the one hand and practices engaged in by distance education students on the other. Students are often motivated by very 276 P. Gorsky et al. practical concerns such as passing courses with the highest possible grade (Eison et al., 1986). Distance education theories, such as Moore’s (1993) theory of transac- tional distance, often assign to interpersonal dialogue, especially between instructor and student, an importance that may not be realized in practice. These generaliza- tions must be limited, however, by a key constraint imposed by the particular study; that is, these conclusions are drawn from a very small sample of eight students. Although findings converged into what appear to be clear patterns, they are at best tentative. Further research on a much larger scale will help clarify these issues. The framework of instructional dialogue and resources The research questions of this study were formulated in terms of the elements of the framework of instructional dialogue and resources. It was possible to categorize all the components of the instructional system of the Open University in terms of the framework’s categories (see Table 1). In addition, all activities engaged in by students could be classified in terms of a dialogue type and the supporting resource or resources. The significance of the framework, however, is not to be found merely in these acts of categorization. A framework is judged in terms of how adequately it represents the functioning of a system, what correlations exist between the elements and, ultimately, its usefulness. The theoretical base of the framework, the centrality of instructional dialogue, points toward a research agenda which encompasses many points of view: pedagogical, psychological and economic. For example, some pedagogical studies may describe how different kinds of instructional dialogue influence learning outcomes. Psychological studies may ex- plore how certain resources can enhance learner motivation. Economic studies may analyze the impact of particular resources on instructional dialogue and subsequent learning outcomes in terms of cost/benefit. These questions, of course, are not new. The conceptual framework of instructional dialogue and resources, however, inte- grates all these variables into one coherent, unified system. References Brookfield, S. (1994) Tales from the dark side: a phenomenography of adult critical reflection, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 13, 203–216. Brockbank, A. & McGill, I. (1998) Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education (Bucking- ham, Open University Press). Bruner, J. (1966) Toward a theory of instruction (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Burbules, N. (1993) Dialogue in teaching: theory and practice (New York, Teachers College Press). Eison, J., Pollio, H. & Milton, O. (1986) Educational and personal characteristics of four different types of learning- and grade-oriented students, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 11, 545–567. Ericsson, K. & Simon, H. (1984) Protocol analysis: verbal reports as data (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press). Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and education (Toronto, Macmillan). Gorsky, P. & Caspi, A. (in press) Dialogue: a theoretical framework for distance education instructional systems, British Journal of Educational Technology. Dialogue in a distance education physics course 277 Haggis, T. (2002) Exploring the ‘black box’ of process: a comparison of theoretical notions of the ‘adult learner’ with accounts of postgraduate learning experience, Studies in Higher Edu- cation, 27, 207–220. Hill, J., & Hannafin, M. (1997) Cognitive strategies and learning from the World Wide Web. Educational Technology Research and Development, 45(4), 37–64. Holmberg, B. (1989) Theory and practice of distance education (London, Routledge). Moore, M. (1993) Theory of transactional distance, in: D. Keegan (Ed.) Theoretical principles of distance education (New York, Routledge). Piaget, J. (1970) The science of education and the psychology of the child (New York, Grossman). Rogers, C. (1969) Freedom to learn (Columbus, Merrill). Rumelhart, D. & Norman, D. (1978) Accretion, tuning and restructuring: three modes of learning, in: J. Cotton & R. Klatzky (Eds) Semantic factors in cognition (Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum). Silverman, D. (2001) Interpreting qualitative data: method for analysing talk, text, and interaction (London, Sage). Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in society (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). 
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work_aegt4um2yrdkdlv2iqqedf4veq	----	The relationship between tutoring mode and learners’ use of help tools in distance education BRUNO DE LIÈVRE1, CHRISTIAN DEPOVER1 & PIERRE DILLENBOURG2,* 1Educational Technology Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences University of Mons-Hainaut, Place du Parc, 18-B-7000, Mons, Belgium; 2Craft – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland (*Author for correspondance, e-mail: pierre.dillenbourg@epfl.ch) Received: 28 January 2005; in final form: 1 April 2005; accepted: 21 December 2005 Abstract. This article presents an experimental study demonstrating how 120 learners use help tools in a virtual learning set-up. More specifically, several types of tutoring are investigated to find out the extent of the use of help tools in each. The e!ects of two independent variables which may have an impact on the behaviour of learners are studied: (1) whether or not they have access to a human tutor (HT) and (2) the tutor’s means of intervention (reactive or proactive). One of the goals of the study is to determine whether these modes of tutoring can influence positively or negatively dis- tance learners’ use of lexical, conceptual, metacognitive and navigational help tools. The results of analysis of variance show that it is useless to prompt (e!ect of proactivity) learners to use the help that is available to them but that prompting is sometimes more subtle than initially foreseen. It appears that the presence of an HT pushes learners to use help tools, but this e!ect (of the presence of the HT) is still relatively weak and therefore may not justify the cost of employing a human tutor. It is also important to show the necessary intrinsic quality of the tools made available in order for a given mode of tutoring to have an e!ect on their use. Keywords: experimental study, distance learning, virtual learning, tutoring, help tools, human tutor, computerised tutor, proactive tutor, reactive tutor Introduction In this article, we deal with tutoring in the distance learning situation. More specifically, we consider di!erent modes of tutoring with the aim of determining their e!ects on learners. In the context of distance learning, the tutor is considered to be one of the key players in the e"cacy of the process. Providing tutorial help to distance students encourages them to be more active during their training, which, in turn, can be expected to reduce the dropout rate. Behind the word ‘tutoring’ there are a variety of meanings, di!erent practices and Instructional Science (2006) 34: 97–129 ! Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s11251-005-6076-4 various modes of intervention in the learning process. What is meant by ‘tutoring’ is not understood by everyone in the same manner. The modes of intervention by the tutor are not always clearly defined, making it di"cult to compare tutoring e"ciency in di!erent distance learning situations. Here we study two modes of tutorial intervention. In the first, called reactive tutoring, tutors react to spontaneous requests for help from learners. In the second, called pro-active tutoring, the tutors intervene in the learners’ learning process on their own initiative. These di!erent modes have an impact on the cost of tutoring. For example, should one recommend to designers of distance learning environments the strategy of human tutorial support by telephone, when this must involve frequent, rapid, timely replies – often to ques- tions of the same type? We think that the integration of ‘help tools’ in training courses can be an appropriate means of providing part of the support the learner needs. However, help tools are not always used by learners in the best possible way. It is therefore worth considering the way in which the mode of tutorial intervention may influence, posi- tively or negatively, the use of help tools integrated in the learning process. The question being asked here concerns the complementarity between the help provided by tools integrated in the learning process and the help provided by a human tutor. Tutoring, its e!ects and its modalities Tutoring Legendre (1993) defines tutoring as ‘a form of support covering the en- tire scholastic activity of the student. (...) The tutor is a guide, an instructor who teaches one person or a small group of pupils at one time’ (p. 1379). Tutors may conduct classes in which they are co-present with the students, or their classes may be conducted at a distance. Annoot (2001) says that co-present tutoring allows the stu- dent to ‘graft himself on to a pre-existing system without questioning it’. (p. 384) – with the explicit aim of reducing the number of failures. This is also one of the aims pursued by the designers of distance learn- ing environments in which tutoring is an integral part. Deschênes & Lebel (1994) describe the distance tutor as one who is ‘the intermedi- ary found in classes where there is no teacher in direct contact with the students’ (p. 24). The distance tutor must take on a large part of the responsibilities normally assumed by the classroom teacher: 98 • Cognitive support: the tutor must possess disciplinary and meth- odological skills (Burge et al., 1991; Laurent et al., 1992; Henri & Kaye, 1985; Denis, 2003). • Socio-a!ective and relational support: the tutor must encourage and support the learner (Henri & Kaye, 1985; Burge et al., 1991; Pettigrew 2001; Glikman, 1999; Gagné et al., 2001). • Motivational support: the tutor must stimulate and maintain at a high level the motivation of the student (Lebel, 1995; Carrier & Schofield, 1991). • Metacognitive support: tutors must help learners develop their abilities so that they realise the need to plan their learning, orga- nise their work, etc (Henri & Kaye, 1985). • Administrative and technical support: tutors must help learners through the di"culties they may meet in contact with their learn- ing institution, e.g. at the administrative level and in the use of the communication tools placed at their disposal (Lebel, 1995; Denis, 2003). According to Paquette (2001), the tutor does not always know which role or responsibilities to priorities. The tutors’ own priorities may di!er from those of other tutors, from those that the teaching institu- tion ascribes and from those expected by students. Training may be needed to help the tutors carry out their assigned responsibilities. We see then that the tutorial function needs to be specified before one can determine the e!ects it may have. In describing the experi- mental design, below, we shall therefore define, as precisely as possi- ble, the modes of intervention of the tutors and the functions they fulfil. The e!ects of tutoring The reason most often given to justify employing tutors is that they may help to reduce the high rate of dropout (between 25 and 44%) associated with the feeling of isolation frequently encountered in the distance learning context (Tinto, 1987; Lebel & Michaud, 1989; Bertrand et al., 1994; Person et al., 1994; Portway & Lane, 1997; Depover et al., 1998; Desmarais, 2000; Gagné et al., 2001; Bourdages & Delmotte, 2001). The causes of learner dropout are di"cult to determine. The analysis of Bertrand et al. (1994) reveals the multiplicity of variables involved (individual, institutional and organisational). As to the means of remedying the problem, many authors point out that tutoring is a 99 solution, but when it comes to testing this hypothesis, the results are usually disappointing. Bourdages & Delmotte (2001) claim that the initiatives to develop tutoring described by Kelly (1993), Blay (1994) and Belawati (1998) did not produce significant results in favour of new tutoring modes. When research results appear in favour of tutor- ing modes developed to increase the persistence of students in courses, they are often subsidiary results complementary to the principal sub- ject of the research. For example, Towles et al. (1993), who set-up a welcoming structure for learners at the beginning of their training, did not observe any significant di!erence in persistence between the experi- mental group (initial welcome by telephone) and the control group (no initial welcome). However, amongst the students in the control group, fewer of those who had previously taken part in another distance learning course withdrew than did those embarking on their first expe- rience of distance learning. These authors (somewhat riskily) deduce from this that tutoring has a positive e!ect on persistence due to the initial contact the learners had with the tutors on the first distance course they undertook. Bertrand et al. (1994) created an early inter- vention programme, which they applied to 245 students divided into two groups. The di!erences observed were contrary to the positive ef- fect expected, which the authors ascribe to reasons of methodology. Though the e!ect of the treatment on persistence is not shown, on the basis of the comments written by the students involved, the authors infer that the programme nevertheless has an e!ect on the learner’s integration within the educational institution, which is another factor linked to persistence. The works of Wozniak & Silviera (2004) point in the same direc- tion when they show that learners need to be guided in using means of communication mediated by computer. Giving them explicit instructions on how to communicate virtually as well as on how to integrate these moments of communication into pertinent tasks which demand production on their part enables learners to attain a level of interactivity that is significantly superior to that of learners who are not fortunate enough to work in the same conditions. Although there is no confirmation by research results concerning persistence, an early intervention seems to have an e!ect on other variables capable of influencing persistence (Tinto, 1987). In their research with 928 learners, Gagné et al. (2001) have shown, by means of answers to a questionnaire, that a start-up contact at the beginning of training has a positive influence on the satisfaction of the learner, the number of contacts between the learner and the tutor later on, 100 and the quality of the feedback from which the learner benefits. In the results of this research, certain qualities that the learners think the tutor should possess have been put forward: being able to provide high-quality, rapid feedback, being willing to take enough time to understand students’ problems and to provide encouragement and emotional support (Sherry, 2000; Pettigrew, 2001). In addition to these, other tutorial qualities are mentioned by the learners: the fact that the tutors favour exchanges, that they bring their own contribu- tion to the work of the learners (by providing resources, for example), that they make sure the learners and what corresponds best to their expectations in the course and that they are reassuring (Burge et al., 1991; Stevenson et al., 1996; Mason & Weller, 2000). The attitude of the tutor towards the learner may have an influ- ence on the quality of the relationship established between them. Indeed, in a study involving 101 learners, Schweizer et al. (2001) show that the length of the periods of communication and the involvement of the learners are significantly greater when tutors show empathy than when they remain socially distant. The relationship between a tutor and a learner is one of trust which is built up steadily. Along these lines, Desmarais (2000) notes that when there was a change of tutor during training, the quality of the learners’ work was not as satisfactory as when there was no change of tutor during training. Desmarais sees in these results the sign of a specific relationship between tutors and learners which encourages the latter to hand in work to someone they trust, someone who cares about the work they are going to receive and whose comments are personalised. If tutoring produces these e!ects, it seems essential to us to be able to show them objectively. Tutoring represents an investment that must be justified by research proving that it is e!ective. Our research contributes to this goal. Modes of tutoring In distance education literature, there are few studies of the role of tutors and of the relationship between the tutor and the learner (Burge, 1994; Deschênes & Lebel, 1994; Weedon, 1997). Amongst the tutor’s roles, some may be distinguished according to the pedagogical model set-up in distance learning by Power et al. (1994). In most distance learning models, the tutor is limited to playing the role of a corrector or to providing feedback on request, in which case the learners will construct their knowledge in relative solitude (Deschênes 101 & Lebel, 1994; Bernatchez, 1998). In this model, tutors play only a sec- ondary role, which, according to us, does not correspond to the reality of the influence they may have. According to Deschênes & Lebel (1994), two tutoring models exist in distance learning: on the one hand, the academic model in which the tutor is in control and, on the other hand, the autonomous model in which all the learning dimensions (cognitive, metacognitive and emotional) are taken into consideration and in which the learner interacts with the subject matter in a flexible way. This latter model, developed from constructivist theories, is better adapted to the way we have envisaged the modes of tutoring in the learning environment described in the framework of our research. The role the tutor plays in the autonomous model seems to us to be close to Weedon’s description (1997). Referring to the theories of Vygotsky (1981), Weedon shows that the tutor’s function is that of a facilitator allowing the learner to progress towards mastering a higher level of knowledge. The interaction between the tutor and the learner is no longer limited to the monitoring of one by the other but is in fact a task involving them both. Tutors are more than just people who mark the learners’ work: they play an active role in the learning process, accompanying learners on the path towards knowledge. This is what Goodyear et al. (2001) specify when they indicate that the interventions of the tutor can be defined as those of process- facilitator, advisor-counsellor, assessor, content-facilitator, technolo- gist, designer or even manager-administrator. In another analysis related to on-line tutoring, Goodyear (2002) further identifies di!erent elements taken into account by HT tutors. Among these elements, for instance, is the understanding they have of a learner’s personality. This insight enables HT tutors to adjust the number of their reactions to the number of requests made by the learner in order to maintain a high quality of interaction between them. If the active role of tutors is recognised as being a variable that may influence learners’ persistence, it then becomes important to consider the way in which tutors fulfil their role (Salmon, 2000). It appears from research that the tutor fulfils di!erent functions, that is to say the functions of cognitive, socio-a!ective and relational, metacognitive, motivational as well as administrative and technical support. Many authors emphasise the conditions in which tutors must fulfil their tasks in order to be e!ective. One of these conditions relates to the timing of the contacts between the tutors and the learners. It seems that the beginning of the learning period is a crucial time to encourage learners’ persistence. Bajtelsmit (1988), Towles et al. (1993), 102 Gagné et al. (2001) insist on the fact that it is important for the insti- tution to organise and initiate this first contact with the tutor for it to be e!ective. Burge et al. (1991) justify the institution taking the initia- tive in contact since, in their study involving 84 tutors and 447 stu- dents, they note that learners rarely initiated dialogue with tutors on their own. However we may hope, like Bernatchez (1998), that with the help of contemporary methods of communication, learners may take the initiative in dialogue with the tutor. We agree with Mason (1990) that the mere presence of technology facilitating communica- tion is not enough to make learners suddenly become interactive. It is also necessary to integrate these tools in activities that require the learner to take the initiative in contacting the tutor. Indeed, if the ini- tial contact carries so much importance and if the leaner does not often take the initiative, it seems essential to us for the institution to initiate contact and to adopt a pro-active attitude towards the learner. Glikman (1999) puts forward several reasons for the fact that learners do not take the initiative in asking for help from tutors: – some learners get together in order to find the information they need in other resources at their disposal; – other learners do not dare to ask the tutors for help for fear of hav- ing to reveal their lack of understanding; – a few no longer ask the tutors for help because their first contact with them was unsatisfactory. We also think, like Posner et al. (1992) and Dijkstra et al. (1999), that another reason for the low number of requests for help may be a lack of awareness on the part of the learners that they need any help. Gilkman (1999) also insists on the fact that, even though they do not often seek the help of the tutors, the majority of learners recognise the positive contribution of these tutors. The fact that tutors are available seems, in the eyes of the learners, to be more important than calling on them regularly. This attitude of learners is also fea- tured in the Taplin et al. (2001) study involving 712 students. Fur- thermore, these authors note that the learners’ requests for help are not related to their level of achievement. The learners explain that they first try to solve a problem on their own. Karabenick & Knapp (1991), in their analyses of 612, 541 and 386 subjects, show that the most active learners and the most anxious to finish their work are those who ask for the most help. These di!erent research results confirm the need to study the way in which tutors intervene in a distance learning context: should they 103 let the learner ask for help (reactive attitude) or should they intervene in the learner’s work (pro-active attitude)? Are help tools going to be used more, or less, intensively in these di!erent modes of tutorial intervention? Are they going to be used more, or less, appropriately? These are the questions to which our research is going to try to provide some answers. Hypotheses Origin of the hypotheses Our hypotheses are based on evidence from the research of Burge et al. (1991), Crook (1994), Collis & Pals (1998), Bernatchez (1998), Glikman (1999) and Pettigrew (2001) whose conclusions seem to indi- cate that help tools, placed at the disposal of learners, are underused in a learning context. Crook’s analysis (1994), carried out on six groups of students enrolled in a course, reveals only minimal use of electronic mail as a work-tool. Its use is often limited to a request for help addressed to another learner or to the teacher, without any real dialogue taking place. Collis & Pals (1998) and Burge et al. (1991) re- fer to results which point in the same direction. Pettigrew (2001) shows that out of 48 students involved in a distance course, only 10 called on help provided outside compulsory contacts. Of these 10 stu- dents, two may be considered as having used help with a view to solv- ing learning problems: that is, they asked for help in connexion with the content and the work method. The other eight students who availed themselves of help tools kept to brief, technical communica- tions. Glikman (1999) shows similar results. That is, the majority of learners do not often use the help available, even though they con- sider that formulating a request for help is a good means of learning, chiefly because the request is preceded by recognising the di"culty encountered (Taplin et al., 2001). Experiments connected with the use of help tools in computerised learning environments have revealed a similar tendency, which is that they are rarely used. In previous studies (Deschryver et al., 1994), we have been able to observe that learners who are not very familiar with the content use the resources placed at their disposal very di!erently than anticipated. These new learners make only minimal use of all the resources at their disposal. Several explanations are put forward by Glikman (1999): either the learners believe they can find the informa- tion they need on their own or they are afraid of showing they need 104 help because of shyness or a fear that a lack of knowledge will be revealed. Authors like Karabenick & Knapp (1991) and Pettigrew (2001) are in favour of this second explanatory hypothesis. Like Posner et al. (1992) and Dijkstra et al. (1999), we think that one explanation may be that the learners do not know what sort of help these tools can o!er, but that it is also possible that they do not use the help tools because the learning situation does not insist on their use. In fact, learners use help tools when they realise their advantages. But they only discover these advantages when they are obliged to use them in order to continue their learning or if the system makes them discover them. Concerning the stimulation of learners to use help tools, we can refer to the concept of ‘sca!olding’ defined by Wood et al. (1976) as the control of ‘aspects of the task which are initially beyond the student’s capabilities in order to allow him to concentrate on those which are not beyond his capabilities’ (p. 9). In order to encourage access to a higher level of knowledge, Young (1993) and Choi & Hannafin (1995) have reflected on the type of tutorial intervention, which may be adapted to the needs of the learner and lead them progressively to an independent use of resources at their disposal. Collins (1996) suggests that the sca!olding must consist of well-timed interventions: tutors must intervene at precise moments. Precisely when they must intervene still needs to be defined. To be more specific concerning these interventions, we may refer to the research of Hardy (1992) on telematic tutoring which shows that a Socratic dialogue consisting of asking for the learner’s opinion, being thus pro-active, facilitates learning. Tutorial interventions representing sca!olding are considered necessary by Mason (1990), who believes that learners are not suddenly going to become active once help is available. Like Power et al. (1994), we believe that the pro-active approach implies that learning is a part of a socialisation process during which requests for help need to be foreseen. As to the presence or absence of a human tutor, Salomon et al. (1989) consider that the support provided by a human expert allows learners to reach a level of knowledge that they would not be able to attain as easily on their own. When resources are not used in the best possible way, a well-adapted intervention by a human tutor, repre- senting sca!olding, may remedy this state of a!airs. It seems to us that another justification for the contribution of a human tutor may be inferred from research by Bajtelsmit (1988), Burge et al. (1991), Towles et al. (1993), and Gagné et al. (2001) who show that an initial 105 contact between the human tutor and the learner is essential in order to promote motivation and the quality of future communications. If this initial contact is very important, it is because it allows ‘both part- ners in the framework to decide on future modes of communication, to clarify their roles, to say what their expectations are and to create an emotional climate which favours continuing communication’ (Gagné et al., 2001, p. 80.). This initial contact is more easily estab- lished in the framework of a dialogue maintained by the learner with a human tutor than when this contact takes place between a learner and a computerised system, however sophisticated it might be. Our aim is to verify the impact of this pro-active behaviour and the impact of intervention by a human tutor on the use of help tools in the context of distance learning. Hypotheses Our hypotheses take into consideration two principal e!ects: the type of tutoring (pro-active or reactive) and access to human tutoring (HT) or to computer-generated tutoring (CT), and an interactions e!ect between these two variables. • Hypothesis 1 (relates to the e!ect of pro-active tutoring on the use of help tools): Pro-active tutoring leads to a greater use of help tools than reactive tutoring. • Hypothesis 2 (relates to the e!ect of access to an HT or to a CT on the use of help tools): Access to an HT leads to a greater use of help tools than does access to a CT. • Hypothesis 3 (relates to the e!ect of interaction between pro- active tutoring and access to an HT): Pro-active tutoring has a greater e!ect on the use of help tools when the learners have access to an HT. These di!erent hypotheses will be tested for the di!erent types of help being considered (metacognitive help, lexical help, conceptual help and navigational help). For our purposes, ‘‘tutoring’’ refers to both HT and CT unless otherwise specified. The experimental design In presenting the experimental design used to test these hypotheses, we shall specify the characteristics of our sample and the context in 106 which we operated. We shall then describe the environment in which the learning took place and lastly we shall enumerate the independent variables integrated in the experimental design. Sampling process The context was that of a university training course during which the students had to participate in practical course-work relating to teach- ing and learning models. The practical work was given to the students in the form of distance learning, including software (developed with the Authorware authoring system) and a synchronous communication tool (based on Intel’s Proshare software). The approach we chose was quantitative (an experimental appara- tus was set-up). It was also ecologically valid in the sense that the training in which the learning environment was placed figured in the programme of studies of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of Mons-Hainaut University with students in a real learning situation. Another characteristic of our research was the fact that it ran over a relatively long period of time compared to most other studies of this kind. The average time spent per student was almost 5 h. The sample was made up of 120 students taking part in a course on the models and processes of learning. Each of the learners dealt with seven cases describing the situation of a pupil in di"culty. Each of these seven situations was presented in an identical order for all the learners. Each learner participating in the course was asked to follow three or four one-and-a-half hour sessions spread over three or four consecutive weeks. These students had no experience of distance learning. The learning environment The learning environment (Figure 1) presented seven cases. For each case, the learner’s task was structured in three phases. During the sit- uation analysis phase, the learners were acquainted with learning di"- culties that were described to them. They were asked to investigate how these di"culties show up in everyday life by consulting lists of e!ects or symptoms which shed light on the nature of the di"culty. The identification phase required the learners to identify with pre- cision the learning di"culties pupils encountered during the preceding phase by associating them with one or several theoretical principles capable of explaining their origin. In order to carry out this task, the 107 learners selected principles (motivation in school, knowledge, strate- gies, etc.) that seemed to correspond to the pupils’ di"culties. The third phase was to propose a solution for solving the learning di"cul- ties they had identified, illustrating them using the problem described and linking them to the theoretical bases. Di!erent help tools were constantly available (represented by the buttons in the zone on the right side of Figure 1). These tools were divided into four categories: lexical help, conceptual help, naviga- tional help and metacognitive help. • The lexical help provided the learners with succinct definitions of concepts used in the software. • The conceptual help presented more detailed information than that given in the lexical help. It o!ered conceptual interactive cards showing relationships between concepts; it gave access to numerous examples illustrating the concepts and allowed the learners to verify their understanding of the concepts through self-correcting exercises. • The metacognitive help allowed learners to obtain information relating to their steps toward learning, in order to analyse their La motivation scolaire La conception des buts de l'école La conception de l'intelligence La perception de la valeur de la tâche La perception des exigences de la tâche La perception du contrôle de la tâche Tu vois ci-dessus un ensemble de principes regroupés sur une fiche. Pour passer à une autre fiche (connaissance,..) tu dois cliquer sur le mot en rouge. Pour sélectionner le ou les principes qui représentent une explication au problème de Tom, tu dois cliquer sur ceux-ci avec la souris. Figure 1. The learning environment used by the learner. 108 progress. One tool was a control panel which displayed what they had already done and what they still had left to do. Another tool traced the actions they had already carried out. Learners could also have access to the questions which they had been asked and to the answers they had given, as well as to comments and advice from which they could benefit. This could possibly help them to deal with a new situation on the basis of their previous learning activities. • The navigational help gave learners the possibility to obtain information relating to the way in which they should manipulate the software (access a phase, answer questions, quit, ask for help, use a communication tool, etc.) and also information relating to procedures they had to accomplish (the di!erent work phases and their objectives, the criteria which determined access to the questions or to a later work phase, etc). The independent variables The experimental groups are described (Table 1) by the crossing of the two independent variables: access to HT or to CT and reactive or pro-active tutoring. Access to an HT means the learner could chat with that HT tutor through a semistructured dialogue interface (Figure 2). Once the tutor’s help was requested, a dialogue space opened up allowing the students and the tutor to engage in dialogue. When there was no HT tutor, the learners received CT tutoring. In that case, the communication with the HT function was deactivated. The pro-active mode of intervention consisted of proposing ways of proceeding to the learner, administering advice, asking questions, etc., Table 1. Independent variables and composition of experimental groups Reactive tutoring Pro-active tutoring Access to a CT tutor Twenty-nine subjects have access to help tools do not have access to a human tutor do not have access to pro-active messages Thirty subjects have access to help tools do not have access to a human tutor have to pro- active messages Access to an HT tutor Thirty-one subjects have access to help tools have access to a human tutor have access to pro-active message Thirty subjects have access to help tools have access to a human tutor have access to pro-active messages 109 without waiting to be called upon by the learner. The actions taking place in the pro-active mode were initiated on the basis of well-de- fined criteria, which we shall describe in detail shortly. The mode of intervention described as reactive consisted of waiting for a request from the learner. Among the messages sent by the tutor to the learner, some may be described as automatic and others as personalised. The automatic mes- sages were delivered by the computer system and appeared in a win- dow superimposed over the learner’s work zone. The automatic messages appeared each time a criterion of activation was satisfied. They could thus be sent to the learner either systematically by the CT or by the HT (who activated a function via the keyboard making the message appear in the communication interface). The personalised text-format messages were composed by the human tutor using a keyboard. Below, we describe the modes according to which each group benefited from automatic messages or personalised messages (Table 2). In Table 3, we present some examples of automatic messages and their criterion of activation. These messages were compiled from a list used during a previous experiment on a prototype version. Peux-tu m'indiquer comment... je dois faire pour passer à la phase suivante ? Je voudrais te donner mon avis ... tu dois controler ou tu en es à 1' aide 1' option historique. A TOI ! Si tu veux m'envoyer un message, tu dois sélectionner un des boutons de droite puis ecrire ton texte au clavier. Presse ENTER quand tu as fini pour envoyer ton message. Figure 2. A semi-structure communication interface. 110 Table 2. Description of the methods according to which each group receives auto- mated or personalised messages Reactive tutoring Pro-active tutoring Access to a CT tutor The learners could use only the help tools installed on the computer The automatic messages were sent by the CT according to certain criteria: the learners’ progress, the quality of their responses, the length of a period of inactivity Access to an HT tutor Some automatic messages were supplied to reply to questions asked by the learners but the HT wrote most of the messages The HT applied the same criteria as the CT to send ‘automatic messages’. In addition, the per- sonalised messages were created by the HT either to answer the learner or when there was no rel- evant pre-recorded message Table 3. Examples of automatic messages and of their criterion of activation Message Criterion of activation I’d like you to know that this phase is not accessible for you in the present state of your work. You should check your progress with the record-sheet in the history option and see whether you have all the information and whether you have answered all the questions... Moves to a new phase when the preceding phase has not been completed You have made a lot of mistakes in answering the questions; you should go over the theory related to these questions again Score of less than 60% for answers to questions I’d like you to know that I think you have all the information necessary to answer the ques- tions. You should check your progress with the record-sheet in the history option and see whether the question button has not been activated... Does not answer the questions even though in possession of the necessary information You use inadequate strategies; you should check in the history option what you have already accomplished, which may help you understand why you went wrong Selects a criterion when already told following an earlier choice that this criterion could not be appropriate 111 Analysis and discussion of the results When analysing the results, we shall consider each of the kinds of help in turn and analyse the influence of (a) the mode of intervention (pro-active or reactive) and (b) access to an HT or to a CT. The metacognitive help In Table 4 below, we find the number of times that the learner used help (activations by the learner of the metacognitive help), the num- ber of times the tutor (whether HT or CT) prompted the learner to use the metacognitive help and the number of items of metacognitive information the tutor sent the learner through the communication interface. Tutoring in the pro-active mode increases the number of activations by the learner of metacognitve help The average number of activations of the metacognitive help (Table 4) was higher when the tutoring mode was pro-active (3.05 for the pro-active mode with access to the CT and 3.42 for the pro-active mode with access to the HT) than when it was reactive. The analysis of the variance (Table 5) shows a significant VVS e!ect at 0.000 in favour of the pro-active mode. Only the first hypothesis, which postulates that the pro-active mode of intervention results in an increase Table 3. Continued Message Criterion of activation You choose many inadequate criteria! Perhaps you should go back and re-read the description of the problem? If the terms are di"cult, use the glossary or the conceptual help Many wrong choices (£5) I’d like you to know that I think you have answered the questions in this phase. You should check where you are with the record- sheet in the history option and see which phase you can go on to... Does not move on to the next phase even though the informa- tion has been used and the ques- tions answered You have not done anything for a long time After x seconds of inactivity Can you explain to me why you have gone back to a previous phase and what you thought you might gain from so doing? Returns to a previous phase al- though capable of working in the present one 112 in the number of uses of help on the part of the learner, is validated. The other two hypotheses are invalidated. To explain these results, we shall consider two possible explana- tions: the influence of the promptings of the tutor (that is the fact that the tutor indicates for the learner to use the metacognitive help) and the influence of items of metacognitive information which the tutor gives the learner when they are engaged in dialogue (for exam- ple when tutors ask learners to be attentive to the feedback they have received to help them understand their mistakes). First explanation: the learner takes into account the promptings of the tutor to use the metacognitive help In this respect, we may say that: • Pro-active tutoring prompts the learner to use the metacognitive help equally with or without the availability of an HT tutor. In Table 4. Average number of items of metacognitive help Reactive access to the CT tutor Pro-active access to the CT tutor Reactive access to the Ht tutor Pro-active access to the HT tutor Activations by the learner of the metacognitive help 1.55 3.05 1.71 3.42 Promptings by the tutor to use the metacognitive help – 0.29 0.13 0.17 Items of metacognitive information transmitted by the tutor – – 0.19 0.71 Table 5. Results of the analysis of variance relating to the activations by the learner of the metacognitive help Hypothesis 1: Pro-active>reactive Hypothesis 2: Access >no access to the human tutor Hypothesis 3: Interaction e!ect (HT) (CT) F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance 92.33 VVS 0.000 2.54 NS 0.111 0.38 NS 0.534 113 Table 4, we notice that the number of promptings was greater with pro-active CT tutoring (0.29) than with pro-active HT tutor- ing (0.17). However, from a statistical point of view, we must consider that there is no significant di!erence in terms of the number of promptings (NS at 0.27 on the t test between the aver- ages). • At the individual level, the learner takes more systematic notice of pro-active promptings when HT tutors are accessible than when they are not. Table 6 shows Bravais Pearson’s correlation coe"- cient between the number of promptings and the number of acti- vations of the metacognitive help. This coe"cient was significant (r=0.187 VVS at 0.007) with pro-active HT tutoring but not with pro-active CT tutoring. When the tutoring mode is pro-active, we thus observe no di!erence (NS at 0.27 on the t test between the averages) in terms of the number of promptings, whether dealing with the HT tutor or the CT tutor, whereas we observe the presence of a significant correlation (r=0.18 7 VVS at 0.007) between the number of promptings and the number of uses of the metacognitive help when the HT is accessible. Second explanation: the learner who receives metacognitive information is stimulated to use the metacognitive help more intensively Concerning this explanation, we may say that: • Learners do indeed call on metacognitive help more often when they receive metacognitive information. The correlation coe"cient (r=0.183) in Table 6 shows that a significant relationship exists (VVS at 0.008) between the number of items of information administered by the pro-active HT and the number of requests for metacognitive help. • Nevertheless the number of items of information and promptings has a limited influence on the use of the metacognitive help. We Table 6. Bravais Pearson correlation coe"cients between the number of information requests and the number of activations of the metacognitive help (first line) and between the number of occurences of metacognitive information transmitted by the tutor and the number of activations of the metacognitive help (second line) Pro-active CT tutor Pro-active HT tutor Promptings r=0.131 NS at 0.058 r=0.187 VVS 0.007 Items of information – – – r=0.183 VVS 0.008 114 must analyse the influence of the promptings and the items of information with caution. Indeed, if they are significant, the cor- relation coe"cients (Table 6) related to the items of information and to the promptings are not very high (r=0.183 and r=0.187 respectively). The regression analysis (Table 7) reinforces our cau- tion as to the interpretation of these results: in fact, it reveals that the combination of these two variables accounts for only 5% of the global explanation (R2 of 0.053) of the use of the metacogni- tive help. If we try to give a meaning to the Beta values (Beta=0.139 for the promptings and Beta=0.145 for the items of information), which represent the intensity of the explanation of these variables in the global variance, we can say that these values are • positive (the greater the number of promptings and items of information, the more the learner uses the metacognitive help), • significant (the items of information and the promptings system- atically influence the use of the metacognitive help), • low (the items of information and the promptings play only a limited part in explaining the use of the metacognitive help), and • equivalent (the promptings do not have a greater explanatory va- lue than the items of information). Third explanation: pro-active tutoring has an e!ect on the use of the metacognitive help which may be explained by the ‘social presence’ of the HT tutor The attentive presence of the HT tutor, shown by pro-active interven- tions in the work of the learner, might stimulate spontaneous use of the metacognitive help. It may be that this is a general characteristic of pro-activity linked to HT tutoring. More than the content of the interventions, it is the mode of intervention of the HT tutors which, because it gives the learners the impression that someone is taking an interest in them, may captivate their attention. This is what some call Table 7. Results of the regression analysis for the pro-active tutoring mode carried out by an HT tutor, concerning the metacognitive help Pro-active access to the HT tutor Beta value t t sign. R 0.229 F 5.754 Promptings 0.139 1.968 0.050 S R2 0.053 F sign. 0.004 VVS Items of information 0.145 2.049 0.042 S 115 ‘social presence’ (Bernard & Naidu, 1990; Gregor & Cuskelly, 1994). It is thought to stimulate learners to stay in a state of cognitive awareness and to use the forms of help placed at their disposal. The greater use of the metacognitive help on the part of the learners who benefited from the pro-active tutoring can be explained by the fact that the tutor intervenes more frequently on the learner’s behalf. The tutors make their presence felt more intensively and the learners, sens- ing this, spontaneously use the help tools. The less frequent use of the metacognitive help by the learner who benefited from reactive HT tutoring confirms the e!ect of this ‘social presence’. Pro-active tutors would appear then, by their presence, to be su"cient to stimulate learners to use the metacognitive help; the opposite e!ect is observed when this presence is felt less. The lexical help Pro-active tutoring increases the use of the lexical help As with the metacognitive help, we see that pro-active tutoring has an e!ect since the learners used the lexical help significantly more often in the pro-active mode (1.35 and 1.09, Table 8) than in the reactive tutoring mode (0.70 and 0.85, Table 8). The analysis of variance (Table 9) confirms that there is a signifi- cant e!ect due to the pro-active attitude of the tutor but no e!ect due to the presence of a human tutor or to interaction. Only the first hypothesis, which postulates that the mode of intervention of the tutor increases the use of the lexical help, is thus confirmed. The other two hypotheses are invalidated. Table 8. Average number of items of lexical help Reactive access to the CT tutor Pro-active access to the CT tutor Reactive access to the HT tutor Pro-active access to the HT tutor Activation by the learner of the lexical help 0.70 1.35 0.85 1.09 Promtings by the tutor to use the lexical help – 0.32 0.09 0.40 Items of lexical information transmitted by the tutor – – 0.25 1.37 116 Explanations: the learner takes more notice of the promptings of the pro-active tutor to use the lexical help than to the items of lexical infor- mation received from the tutor First, we may say that pro-active tutoring prompts the learner to use the lexical help equally with access to the HT tutor or with access to the CT tutor. Indeed, we observe that the di!erence between the num- ber of promptings (see Table 8) when the pro-active mode of inter- vention is assured by the HT tutor (0.40) and when it is assured by the CT tutor (0.32) is not significant (NS at 0.53 on the t test). Secondly, there is a di!erence in terms of e!ect of the promptings given by the pro-active HT tutor when compared with those given by the pro-active CT tutor. Learners take notice of the pro-active promptings more systematically when HT tutors are accessible (r=0.489 VVS at 0.001) than when they are not (r=0.012 NS at 0.860). Lastly, if we consider the lexical information that, pro-active HT tutors provide, we observe that their promptings seem to have more influence than the information they may transmit. Indeed, if a system- atic relation (VVS at 0.009) between the number of information items administered by the proactive HT tutor and the number of requests for lexical help is significant, the correlation coe"cient is low (r=0.164). The learner who receives lexical information thus has a tendency to use this help but it is the promptings of the tutor that seem to most stimulate the learner to use it. This is confirmed by the regression analysis (Table 10) where the weight associated with the number of promptings is greater (Beta=0.413) than that associated with the number of items of information (Beta=0.164) in order to explain the number of activations of the lexical tool. It is important to make clear that the two variables integrated in the regression model (promptings and items of information) alone Table 9. Results of the analysis of variance relating to activation by the learner of the lexical help Hypothesis 1: Pro-active>reactive Hypothesis 2: Access>no access to the human tutor Hypothesis 3: Interaction e!ect (HT) (CT) F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance 11.043 VVS 0.001 0.200 NS 0.655 2.447 NS 0.118 117 provide a degree of explanation for the use of the lexical help which attains 21% (R2=0.219) and which may be considered high. The ‘so- cial presence’ seems, in the case of the lexical help, to be less impor- tant than in the case of the metacognitive help, for which the degree of explanation provided by the variables (promptings and items of information) was much lower (5%, see Table 7). This leads us to be- lieve that the use of the metacognitive help could be explained by the social presence of the HT tutor, lacking other tangible elements. The conceptual help None of the variables under consideration has an e!ect on the use of the conceptual tool as confirmed by the analysis of variance (Table 12). In Table 11, we can observe that the average numbers of activations of the conceptual tool are very close whatever the mode of tutoring employed (between 0.50 and 0.56). Concerning the promptings (Table 11), they are as frequent when the HT tutor is present (0.32) as when the learner is faced with the Table 10. Results of the regression analysis for pro-active tutoring by an HT tutor with respect to the lexical help Pro-active access to the HT tutor Beta value t t sign. R 0.468 F 29.011 Promptings 0.413 6.630 0.000 VVS R2 0.219 F sign. 0.000 VVS Items of information 0.164 2.627 0.009 VVS Table 11. Average number of items of conceptual help Reactive access to the CT tutor Pro-active access to the CT tutor Reactive access to the HT tutor Pro-active access to the HT tutor Activation of the conceptual help by learner 0.56 0.50 0.51 0.55 Promptings by the tutor to use the conceptual help – 0.32 0.07 0.29 Items of conceptual informa- tion transmitted by the tutor – – 0.20 1.28 118 CT tutor (0.29). Here, it seems that pro-active tutoring stimulates the learner to use the conceptual help equally, whether the HT tutor is present or not. If we look at the number of items of information provided when the HT tutor is pro-active, the application of the regression analysis (Table 13) shows that, of the two explanatory variables, promptings and received information, only the variable promptings is significant (VVS at 0.000) in the explanation of requests for conceptual help. It seems then that the promptings to use the conceptual help are more systematically heeded when HT tutors are present than when they are absent, even though these promptings have little e!ect since the, use of the conceptual help does not vary considerably. The hypothesis of the ‘social presence’ does not hold here since pro-active HT tutoring does not favour a greater use of the conceptual help. Another explanation of the absence of e!ect of the conceptual help could be an inhibiting aspect of the conceptual help itself: because it is too complex, it becomes inaccessible to the learner. Indeed, its aim is to allow the learner to better understand the concepts contained in the software by giving access to, examples, detailed definitions, Table 12. Results of the analysis of variance relating to the activations by the learner of the navigational help Hypothesis 1: Pro-active>reactive Hypothesis 2: Access>no access to the human tutor Hypothesis 3: Interaction e!ect (HT) (CT) F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance 0.014 NS 0.905 0.000 NS 0.988 0.347 NS 0.556 Table 13. Results of the regression analysis for pro-active tutoring by an HT tutor, as regards the conceptual help Pro-active access to the HT tutor Beta value t t sign. R 0.290 F 9.469 Promptings 0.259 3.891 0.000 VVS R2 0.084 F sign. 0.000 VVS Items of information 0.115 1.727 0.086 NS 119 questions, etc. In order to use them optimally, it is essential that the learner realise the need for them, is motivated to use them and has the means to obtain the information. Concentrating on the main task, the problem which they are occupied at solving, the learners prefer to use the information they can obtain readily rather than ‘wasting time’ looking for the more complex items of information provided by the conceptual help. The cognitive overload that this investment would impose undoubtedly dissuades the learner. It may also be because items of information are easily available, their formulation succinct and immediately usable that the lexical and metacognitive forms of help are used more readily. The navigational help In Table 14, the average number of activations of the navigational help by the learner was greater when the CT tutor was available (0.44 and 0.49). The analysis of variance (Table 15) confirms that the values are significantly lower where there is an HT tutor. This contradicts our original hypothesis. The other two hypotheses are invalidated. There- fore there is no e!ect due to pro-activity and no e!ect due to interac- tion. Nevertheless some characteristics of pro-activity are similar to those of the other help tools considered earlier: pro-active tutoring stimulates the learner to use the navigational help equally (di!erence NS at 0.12 on the t test between the averages) when the HT tutor is accessible (0.18) and when the HT tutor is not (0.35). Table 14. Average number of occurrences of navigational help Reactive access to the CT tutor Pro-active access to the CT tutor Reactive access to the HT tutor Pro-active access to the HT tutor Activation of the navigational help by the learner 0.44 0.49 0.35 0.21 Promptings by the tutor to use the conceptual help – 0.35 0.13 0.18 Items of navigational informa- tion transmitted by the tutor – 1.37 0.48 1.48 120 Moreover, the pro-active tutor, HT or CT, provides the learners with about the same number of information items (1.48 and 1.37, Table 14). However the respective e!ects of the items of information administered are di!erent. Indeed, the analyses of regression (Tables 16 and 17) clearly show that the variable ‘Promptings’ is never significant (NS at 0.556 and NS at 0.055) whereas the number of items of information intervenes in explaining the number of activa- tions of the navigational help (Beta=0.396 VVS at 0.000). The num- ber of item of information given by the pro-active CT tutor does not figure in the explanation of the number of activations of the naviga- tional help (Beta=0.034 NS at 0.883). The amount of information transmitted by the tutor has an influence on the number of uses of the navigational help only when the pro-active HT tutor is accessible. In this case, the more items of navigational information the tutor gives, the more the learner calls on the navigational help. It would seem that, when compared with dialogue with an HT tutor, the navigational help is perhaps not the most appropriate chan- nel of information for informing the learner about how to move around in the system. Indeed, the number of uses of the navigational help was the lowest of all the help tools (0.21, see Table 14). Our Table 16. Results of the regression analysis concerning navigational help for the pro- active tutoring mode assured by a CT tutor Pro-active access to the CT tutor Beta value t t sign. R 0.167 F 2.976 Promptings 0.135 0.590 0.556 NS R2 0.028 F sign. 0.053 NS Items of information 0.034 0.147 0.883 NS Table 15. Results of the analysis of variance relating to the activations by the learner of the navigational help Hypothesis 1: Pro-active>reactive Hypothesis 2: Access> no access to the human tutor Hypothesis 3: Interaction e!ect (HT) (CT) F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance F ratio Levels of significance 0.517 NS 0.472 6.490 VS 0.011 1.719 NS 0.190 121 explanatory hypothesis is that the items of information transmitted by the proactive HT tutor, if they stimulate the learner to use the naviga- tional help more often, sometimes carry items of information so appropriate that the learner no longer sees the necessity of calling on the navigational help. In the case of the navigational help, when the learners are encour- aged to use it more intensively, many do not. Taking this fact into consideration, the tutors progressively give the learners the items of information they clearly need. The tutors may not confine themselves to the role of being counsellor at a specific time; they must also give clear information, If we try to explain the reasons why the HT tutor was called upon in preference to a computerised help tool for all nav- igational matters, we may think that if learners have problems in manipulating the system, they are not going to use the system’s resources and therefore are not going to use the navigational help. Instead the learner seeks a more familiar channel, such as calling upon an HT tutor. This is the founding principle of helpdesks. This explanation, if it proves to be appropriate, raises questions as to the necessity and value of installing navigational help tools. Which modes of tutoring encourage learners to use computerised help? Encouraging the learner to use a help tool increases its use It is essential to distinguish between the di!erent types of help accord- ing to their role. Indeed, our results are not consistent for the di!er- ent help tools. Help should therefore not be considered as a single concept having a single e!ect, but rather as a set of distinct functions. The first, and the most natural, hypothesis is that a learner will use a tool more if they receive prompting from the tutor to do so. Our analysis shows a pro-active e!ect, which consequently gives rise to an Table 17. Results of the regression analysis concerning navigational help for the pro- active tutoring mode assured by an HT tutor Pro-active access to the HT tutor Beta value t t sign. R 0.476 F 30.290 Promptings 0.134 1.926 0.555 NS R2 0.226 F sign. 0.000 VVS Items of information 0.396 5.679 0.000 VVS 122 increase in the overall use that the learner makes of the help tools. This hypothesis is statistically verified for the metacognitive help and the lexical help, but not for either the conceptual help or the navigational help. According to the mode employed, the intervention of the tutors either stimulates or does not stimulate the learners to make greater use of the help tools placed at their disposal. This seems to us to be in agreement with the observations of Mason (1992) who concludes that the way in which tutors intervene has more impact than the number of times they intervene. Pro-activity has an intensifying e!ect on the intrinsic qualifies of a help tool One of the e!ects of pro-activity is to stimulate the learners to use the help tools: but are learners always compliant? From a general point of view, our reply is that they are not. Indeed, while they followed the tutor’s promptings for the lexical help and to a lesser degree for the metacognitive help, they adopted the opposite behaviour for the navi- gational help. The learners apparently adopted a spontaneous use of the help tools which went beyond the promptings of the tutor. This seems to be linked to two characteristics of the tool: the contextuali- sation of help and its ease of use. Contextualisation of the information provided is related to its rele- vance to the problem the learner is trying to solve. For example, when learners activated the metacognitive help, the help delivered an item of information updated in relation to the evolution of the learn- ers in their learning process by showing them the answers they had gi- ven since the beginning of their session. Metacognitive help was much more contextualised than the other help tools. For the latter, learners had to select the relevant information from an index (for the glossary) or headings (for the conceptual help and the navigational help). They had to identify them on their own initiative without automatically obtaining the help that was going to be the most appropriate to their di"culty. The criterion of contextualisation was thus satisfied for the metacognitive help but not for the others. Knowing that not all learn- ers have the same capacity to identify gaps in their knowledge or di"- culties in terms of their level of cognitive (Person et al., 1994) and metacognitive abilities, it is not surprising that these help tools were scarcely used without promptings to do so. If the glossary was nevertheless used more than the conceptual and navigational help, it is because it was easier to find information therein. 123 Ease of access depends on the means of reaching the information and on the form in which the information is presented. Access that requires a series of manipulations or a long search for information does not encourage the use of this help, whereas a presentation of key words giving immediate access to a relevant item of information does encourage its use. We argue that learners chose the type of help according to the quality of the information and the rapidity with which it is provided. If the cognitive and manipulatory accessibility of the glossary com- pensated for its lack of contextualisation, this was not the case for the navigational help and the conceptual help, which were not used often. Conclusions relating to the navigational help proposed in this text may be even better understood when the dialogues between the tutor and the learner are analysed (Delrane, in preparation). Indeed, dia- logues are often used to help the learner navigate. The elements we have just put forward lead us to make the obser- vation that pro-activity has the e!ect of enhancing the intrinsic qualities of the help tool. It is important to benefit from help that is appropri- ate, accessible and contextualised. When these qualities are combined, pro-activity leads to a greater use of the help tool. On the other hand, if some of these qualities are lacking, pro-activity loses much of its e"cacy. Even when these qualities exist, they are not always su"cient to persuade learners to use the help tools. One explanation of the minimal use that is made of them is very often linked to the fact that their content is not well known to the learners (Posner et al., 1992; Deschryver et al., 1994; Dijkstra et al., 1999). Pro-active behaviour by the tutor may stimulate the learners to discover the content of these help tools in their context as well as how to access the information they convey. Does the presence of an HT tutor influence the use of help tools? The hypothesis that the learners use help more if they have been prompted by an HT tutor is not supported for any of the four help tools under consideration. The only observed e!ect of the HT tutor is an inhibiting e!ect on the use of the navigational help. However, comparison of the averages of each group masks di!erences between individuals: some students use some types of help more than others. And, when the HT tutor prompts the learner, the correlation coe"- cients (Table 18) between the number of promptings and the number of activations are significant, whereas they are not when the learner 124 receives promptings from a CT tutor. This observation is verified for the metacognitive, lexical and conceptual helps. The learners would seem to be more sensitive to the injunctions of an HT tutor than to those coming from a CT tutor. We must employ the conditional here since, on the one hand, the correlation coe"- cients are low and, on the other hand, comparison between the corre- lation coe"cients cannot be substituted for the absence of e!ect observed in the analysis of variance concerning the e!ect of the acces- sibility/non-accessibility of the human tutor variable. Interpretation of these results remains complex, however, because another process interferes with the one which has just been described: not only may the tutors encourage the learner to ask for a specific type of help, but they may also supply information of the same type as that given by a specific form of help. Is this information going to inhibit use of the help tools? (One does not need to seek the items of information which one has just been given.) Or, on the contrary, is it going to stimulate their use? (One perceives the usefulness of the information which one is able to find in a particular help tool.) The second explanation seems more appropriate for the metacognitive, lexical and navigational help: the more items of information the students receive, the more they seek. Let us note that, for the navigational help, the correlations are higher than for the other help tools. This observation, coupled with the inhibiting e!ect observed in the analysis of variance, seems to us to confirm that navigational help may not be transmitted easily in a learning set-up by a tool which itself calls on the navigational abilities required by the set-up. This observation also seems to us to confirm that it is necessary, consequently, to use a more natural information channel, such as discussion with an HT tutor available at a distance. Table 18. Bravais Pearson, correlation coe"cients between the number of promptings and activations of help Pro-active access to the CT tutor Pro-active access to the HT tutor Metacognitive help r=0.131 0.058 NS r=0.187 0.007 VVS Lexical help r=0.012 0.860 NS r=0.489 0.001 VVS Conceptual help r=0.125 0.070 NS r=0.266 0.00 VVS Navigational help r=0.127 0.015 NS r=0.315 0.000 VVS 125 Conclusions About pro-activity, our conclusion is that the best way to bring learn- ers to use a tool is not only to tell them to do so but also to provide them with information that invites them to activate the tool. Tutoring is a subtle process. The second conclusion is that this study did not reveal an e!ect of HT tutoring that would be significant enough to justify its cost. The picture that comes out of the study is that the tutor and the help tools form a complex and dynamic system. It is complex because the relationship between the help provided by the tutor and the help provided by the tools varies from one tool type to another (lexical, navigational, conceptual, metacognitive). It is dynamic because this relationship evolves with time, the original configuration of tools may be rapidly modified through interactions. Moreover, it is personal. One of the implications of this research relates to the way in which the needs of learners are taken into account. Like Karabenick & Knapp (1991), we think that it is necessary to inform learners of the conditions in which the use of help tools is appropriate to helping them succeed. In order to do this, we join Deschênes & Lebel (1994) in proposing that the tutor should decide on the mode of intervention to be used for a given learner. This choice of the type of intervention must be taken together with the learner (Bernatchez, 1998; Gagné et al., 2001) in order for it to be as appropriate as possible. 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work_ahyleqfxcrdw7l3eqsu2z5rf7q	----	doi:10.1016/j.laa.2003.08.021 Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 www.elsevier.com/locate/laa Student discussions on a Linear Algebra problem in a distance-education course Asuman Oktaç Departamento de Matemática Educativa, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav) del IPN, Av. IPN 2508, Col. San Pedro Zacatenco, México DF 07360, Mexico Received 12 December 2002; accepted 26 August 2003 Submitted by F. Uhlig Abstract An introductory course on Linear Algebra was given at a distance, employing group work. We present one of the on-line discussions about a problem that involved eigenvalues and eigenvectors, commenting on the conceptual and logical difficulties of students, as well as the characteristics of the distance environment as far as they influence student interactions. We emphasize that our success in using new communicational technologies for instructional purposes will depend on our understanding of these new environments and this in turn will require change in points of view in interpreting teaching and learning phenomena. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Distance education; Eigenvalues and eigenvectors; Chain of reasoning; E-mail discussion; Group discussion; Logical errors 1. Distance education “Can we teach mathematics at a distance?” is a question that has generated a lot of discussion. With the developments in technology new ways of presenting and studying mathematics have been introduced. In some of these approaches technol- ogy is used as a communication tool whereas in others it serves the purpose of a pedagogical tool to enhance student understanding. There is a considerable amount of general literature regarding the use of learn- ing networks in education. Some of these studies refer to the principles of design- ing instruction and courseware for distance courses, while others compare on-line E-mail address: oktac@mail.cinvestav.mx (A. Oktaç). 0024-3795/$ - see front matter � 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.laa.2003.08.021 440 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 and traditional approaches. There are also those that discuss the characteristics of on-line collaborative work and student attitudes towards this medium. Yet others choose possible influences of distance environments on the formation of learning and professional communities as their focus. One study worth mentioning is the article by Blanton et al. [3] in which the authors review, using the perspective of social constructivism, several hundreds of articles regarding the application of computer-based telecommunications to teacher prepa- ration. Their conclusion is that research in this area in general lacks theoretical and methodological rigor. They mention that many authors simply fit e-mail messages into categories and they present this as the result of their research, even though these categorizations seldom reflect a theoretical perspective. The authors also affirm that many studies make unsupported claims as to the participants’ engagement in critical reflection, the democratization of relationships and environments, and the sharpen- ing of analytic and verbal skills through writing as a result of telecommunications. The authors do, however, report that this technology seems to increase and improve communication among users. Since in this article we will be analyzing an e-mail discussion, we think it is important to mention some of the general research results that involve asynchronous learning environments. Schahczenski [13] reports on an experiment in which stu- dents participated in on-line discussions about computer ethics. She concludes that since the students have time to reflect on what they write and structure it before sending their messages, the discussions in this environment become more like “the presentation of mini-essays”. Furthermore, she contrasts the pace of the two discus- sion formats and states that on-line discussions develop at a slower pace whereas in-class discussions are short-lived, adding that student motivation is a key factor for on-line discussions to work. Wang and Bonk [16] report that in a strategy that consists in “scaffolding” (Collins et al. [5] referred to in [16]) the teacher provides temporary support with difficult tasks, gradually fading this help until the students start working on their own. This study and several others acknowledge that e-mail and other computer conferencing tools have the power to do away with time and space constraints of traditional learning environments, offering an “anywhere, anytime” learning environment model. Of course this comment has to be evaluated taking into account issues of access and equity. Anderson et al. [1] define “teaching presence” as having three categories–– design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction. Their com- ments indicate how complex the teacher’s already difficult role can become in a distance environment: Fulfilling the complex responsibilities of a teacher necessitates sustained and authentic communication between and among teachers and students. While control must be shared and choices provided, the discourse must also be guided toward higher levels of learning through reflective participation as well as by challenging assumptions and diagnosing misconceptions. A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 441 This collaborative construction of knowledge is a challenge that all educators face. However, it is made extraordinarily difficult when it is the educator’s responsibility to design, facilitate, and direct learning online. [. . . ] Part of the challenge [. . . ] is to develop compensatory behaviors for the relative lack of non-verbal and paralinguistic communication in a text-based medium such as computer conferencing. Another part of the challenge is to overcome the difficulty of conceiving the role of the teacher in online courses within the long established conceptual framework that we have built in the context of conventional, face-to-face teaching. [. . . ] Especially in these “pio- neering days” of online learning the thoughtful design of learning activities is critical to the attainment of educational outcomes. In the process of designing and using these tools, teachers are forced to be learners themselves and like all who experience learning, the learners themselves are changed [1]. With the idea that the instructor, taking the role of discussion leader, can im- pose an authoritarian presence, and that the students may become passive followers, Rourke and Anderson [12] report on the use peer teams where students took up the role of a facilitator in a graduate-level communications networks course. Their results indicate that the peer teams fulfilled each of the roles of the teacher presence mentioned above, and that the students preferred the peer teams to the instructor as discussion leaders. The authors state that although this method was “helpful in achieving higher order learning objectives”, the discussions “could have been more challenging and critical” [12]. In the case of mathematics, there has not been much discussion concerning on-line collaborative work and interaction, or the kinds of tools that a distance-education en- vironment can offer for studying students’ conceptions, difficulties and mathematical reasoning. Among the few research studies that our search identified in this domain, Crowe and Zand [6] report on the results of a case study with distance students of mathematics, where the learning environment was improved through the use of electronic communication and enhanced by specialized software. The material that they used for their course contained diverse mathematical topics that involved ge- ometry, functions, differentiation, recurrence relations and sequences. Students were encouraged to seek help electronically from their tutors when needed, and they were required to submit on-line assignments. One of the research questions that the au- thors posed is whether the students can work collaboratively on mathematics using electronic communication. In one phase of the study students were divided into small groups and were asked to work on an open-ended modelling project. Based on the results of this experiment, the authors conclude that electronic collaboration at a distance is possible. Another paper in this category [9] mentions that their main objective was the exploration of the communication process that took place between a student studying systems of linear equations and his tutor. The student was an athlete who was not able to attend his regular classes and therefore was assigned a tutor with whom 442 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 he could work at a distance. The author gives examples of the exchanges that oc- curred between the student and the tutor, without offering a detailed analysis. Due to the complexities of the communication, she calls for the formulation of new methodologies that take into account the written character of the interactions and their widely varying linguistic aspects, which would allow a more complete analysis. In our previous work [10,11] we presented detailed information about a Linear Algebra course that was offered at a distance. This information included matters concerning instructional design, the team work that went into the preparation of the course, the didactical strategies employed and examples of on-line exchanges, as well as a discussion about the difficulties involved and the nature of the communi- cation process. In [10], we report that on-line interactions, being asynchronous and writing-based, can help overcome conceptual difficulties in Linear Algebra experi- enced by the participants, resulting in correct solutions that have the consensus of all the group members. 2. This study In this paper we will report on a particular on-line discussion that took place among a group of students that were trying to solve a problem involving eigen- values and eigenvectors. That students face difficulties when learning Linear Algebra concepts can no longer be doubted. Several researchers have demonstrated that the abstract notions of Linear Algebra such as vector spaces and linear transforma- tions cause considerable difficulties for novice students. The book on the teach- ing of Linear Algebra edited by Dorier [7] shows that these problems are general and not specific to one country or culture. Various studies have identified different causes for these problems and some have suggested ways to help students over- come them [8,15]. It is worth mentioning that except for the articles mentioned in the previous section, we found no study that specifically addresses the char- acteristics of distance teaching and learning, or that takes a critical look into the use of collaborative learning and on-line discussions in the case of Linear Algebra. In the present study, the students who formed the discussion group were teach- ers at the “preparatory” level on different campuses of the Instituto Tecnológico y Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico and were enrolled in an introductory Linear Algebra course as part of a Master’s in Education program. (Af- ter secondary school, at the preparatory level students are prepared to go on to the university.) In this section we describe the course and then we give a mathematical and conceptual analysis of the problem on which the students were working. In the next section we present the group discussion together with our interpretation of the interactions that took place, commenting on the effects of this virtual environment on the characteristics of the interaction. A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 443 2.1. The course The instructor of the course was also the author of this paper. One of our didactical objectives in planning this course was to hand in the responsibility to the teachers who were taking it, in every single component of the course. The purpose of this was to give them the opportunity to progress towards becoming independent learners, to defend their points of view and to learn to collaborate with their colleagues using electronic means of communication. In this course the students had to read a lot of material on their own, try to make sense of the concepts involved, and share their ideas with the instructor as well as with their group members and the whole class. Most of the students who were enrolled in this course did not have any previous ex- perience with the abstract concepts of Linear Algebra, although they were somewhat comfortable with solving systems of linear equations and performing matrix opera- tions. Their contact with Linear Algebra had been mostly at an algorithmic level. During satellite classes that were broadcast for 1.5 hours every two weeks, stu- dents saw the instructor on a television screen and were able to communicate with her by sending electronic messages that appeared on her computer screen, after first being filtered by the course assistant. The preparation of homework relied heavily on e-mail discussions. It is important to note that there was no lecturing by the instruc- tor. During the satellite sessions selected homework questions were discussed, but only after they had been “handed-in”. These sessions also served to clarify students’ doubts and to emphasize important concepts and relationships between different con- cepts. To do the homework students relied on their textbook [2] and “virtual” group discussions. This book was chosen due to the restriction that the textbook had to be in Spanish, and some others that we had considered for use were either out of print or were not available. We are using the word “virtual” in the sense here that in each group there were at most two people from the same campus, hence the stu- dents had to interact via e-mail or the internet with the others in their group. The discussion stage lasted less than two weeks from the time one satellite class ended up to about two days before the next one was held, so that there would be enough time to review the answers for the next session. It was one of the didactical contracts of this course that the initiative rested with the students. If there was enough effort to solve a particular problem, the instructor would help by asking further questions and giving hints, while trying to keep this to a minimum so that the students would rely on themselves for the solutions. The degree of this effort was not quantified, but it meant participating actively and on time in the group discussions towards the resolution of the homework problems. 2.2. The problem Students were given the following chain of reasoning and were asked to find the flaw in it. 444 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 • “Let A and B be two n × n matrices, A with an eigenvalue λ and B with an eigenvalue µ. • This implies that Ax = λx and Bx = µx for some eigenvector x. • We have ABx = A(µx) = µ(Ax) = µ(λx) and BAx = B(λx) = λ(Bx) = λ(µx) • Since µ(λx) = λ(µx), AB and BA have the same eigenvalues.” A second part asked whether the two matrix products AB and BA do in fact always have the same eigenvalues. This is not a traditional problem in the sense that it does not ask the students to prove a mathematical statement. Rather, it demands that the students try to follow the presented chain of reasoning and find where it fails. Complicating the situation further is the fact that under the given condition that A and B are square matrices, the two products AB and BA do indeed have the same eigenvalues. One might expect that a student who has difficulties with logical and mathematical reasoning might group the given “proof”, its steps and its result together, concluding that since the re- sult is true, there is nothing wrong with its “proof”. Others might pay more attention to the reasoning and discover that something is wrong with it and then answer–– erroneously––the second part of the question in the negative, by simply thinking that “if there is a mistake in one line of the given proof, this makes the result wrong, too”. On the other hand, a student who is at ease with mathematical theory and logic would conclude that the second part might be true or false independently of the chain of reasoning presented above. The reason we chose to present on-line student exchanges on this specific problem is its explicit logical aspect and the fact that it caused difficulties for many students. One of the issues that has been identified as problematic in introductory courses is student difficulties with logic, but as we shall see, the nature of these difficulties could be quite different from what we as the instructors assume. We would like to note that by our presentation of a step-by-step reasoning and by asking where the mistake lies, instead of presenting a statement and its “proof” separately, we have placed an emphasis on following the logic of an argument and on deciding on its coherence. As we point out when we discuss the students’ contri- butions, some confusion might have resulted from this. However we preferred this version as it relates more closely to the kind of thinking that we wanted to develop in the students, in line with the objectives of the course. 2.3. Purpose of this study Let us suppose that one group of students turn in the following argument as their final answer to this homework problem. A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 445 Group answer That the eigenvector x is considered from the beginning as if it were the same in: Ax = λx and Bx = µx. In any case what the above outline [referring to the chain of reasoning] shows is that AB and BA for the same eigenvector have the same eigenvalues. That is, the mistake is in the way that the information is presented. Do AB and BA have the same eigenvalues? If A and B are similar, then they have the same eigenvalues. If A and B are similar their multiplication will also be similar, therefore AB and BA will have the same eigenvalues. What sense can we make of this answer as an instructor? Can we pinpoint the conceptual difficulties of students, concerning the notions of eigenvalues and eigen- vectors? Can we guess where their logical errors lie? In what follows, by presenting the solution process of the group who came up with this answer, we hope to show that the analysis of students’ registered on-line discus- sions will on the one hand provide possible answers to these questions, and on the other hand they will guide us into directions for choosing further didactical strategies in dealing with student difficulties. Our comments will include observations about the students’ conceptual difficulties with the linear algebra concepts, the problems with their logical reasoning, as well as the nature of the interactions that took place, as we believe that the cognitive and the interactional (social) aspects together provide us with clues as to how knowledge is constructed and the difficulties that arise. We also hope to shed some light into some of the new teaching/learning phenomena oc- curring as a result of new technological environments and warn against not noticing or misinterpreting them. 3. Group discussion The group whose interactions we reproduce below is composed of four students, whose names have been changed to protect their identity. After every message that was posted by a student to his/her group we insert comments regarding his/her con- tribution to the solution. Our comments should be taken as possible interpretations of the situations, and not as claims to truth, as we are aware that other interpreta- tions might be possible. As Sfard [14] points out, “the only viable possibility for the researcher is to provide a convincing interpretation of the observed phenomena, as opposed to their definitive explanation. The interpretation should try to be as com- pelling, cogent, and trustworthy as possible, but it will nevertheless always remain subject to questioning and modifications”. In fact, the registered transcripts make it possible to share these episodes with other teachers and researchers with the purpose of entering into a dialogue about the nature of the teaching–learning process and in order to obtain insights into the observed phenomena. In what follows we extract only those parts of messages that correspond to the par- ticular problem presented above, although the group was discussing several 446 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 homework questions at the same time. For each message we indicate the day and time when it was posted, counting as Day 1 the day after the previous satellite class was held. The transcripts are translated from Spanish. (Day 3, 11:21) María: Here I don’t see the trick that they are doing. What I know, is that they assume that ABx and BAx are scalar multiples of x, which is false. . . Well, I will keep thinking about it. Comments: One possibility for what is bothering María is the existence of two lines in the chain of reasoning affirming that ABx = µ(λx) and BAx = λ(µx). She might be seeing the right hand sides of these equations as a scalar multiple of a vector resulting in a vector, whereas the left hand side gives her the impression of an expression resulting in a matrix, therefore ignoring that the resulting matrix in both sides would have dimensions n × 1. In this case what attracts her attention would be the “scalar” part, pointing out to the impossibility of multiplying x by a scalar and obtaining the left hand side. This might have to do with the visual effect of the expressions ABx and BAx being different from the visual effect that a scalar multiple of x produces, leading to the conclusion that they cannot be the same size. The other possibility could be that she sees BAx and ABx as vectors, but not as multiples of x. These two possibilities would imply difficulties with the structure and size of products involving matrices and vectors. Yet another interpretation is that she is concerned that the same x appears everywhere, although she does not say anything specific to that effect. María points out to something which she says that she knows is false, however her answer indicates that she does not offer this as the solution to the problem. In other words she does not consider this as the failing piece in the argument. Furthermore she uses the term “assume” incorrectly, since in the argument this result follows from a previous error, and it is not one of the starting assumptions. María was the one who opened the solution process to this problem on Day 3. Although the group members had exchanged opinions about the other homework questions during the first two days, no one had commented about this problem, which might be an indication that they were all having difficulty with it. (Day 5, 21:19) John: I am sending my ideas about the problem. (a) Here, they assume that AB = BA which is false and you can show it for almost any n × n matrix. The idea that they have is that if AB = BA then ABx = BAx and then, A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 447 A(µx) = B(λx) µ(Ax) = λ(Bx) µ(λx) = λ(µx) which is what is false because we cannot start with AB = BA (multiplication of matrices is not commutative). (b) Here I have tried some instances where I found the eigenvalues for AB and BA and they come out with the same eigenvalues. Until now nothing occurs to me as to why. I am going home. Comments: John’s message shows his confusion mainly of a logical nature, that is with the assumptions that are being made. Although nowhere in the chain of reason- ing is the equality of AB and BA mentioned or used, John has the impression that it is being assumed. Our interpretation is that he starts with the conclusion obtained somewhere from the given argument that ABx = BAx, and thinks that one way to obtain this is by assuming that AB = BA. He does not think of the possibility that other assumptions might lead to this result, neither does he concentrate on what is being claimed erroneously in the chain of reasoning. This might point out to his confusion between equivalence and implication. We can compare his behavior to the attitude of a student who thinks that if we have a homogeneous system of linear equa- tions, the solution set contains only the zero vector. However we note a difference in these two cases: in the case of the solution to a system of equations the student is choosing the trivial solution and ignoring the possibility of having other solutions. In the case of our problem, the student is imposing an assumption based on a result that is obtained. In a way, for him, this result itself is imposing the condition, as according to him the result cannot have been obtained in any other way. We also note that John changes the quantifier in the equation ABx = BAx from a “there exists” to a “for all”, consequence of assuming AB = BA. This might imply a difficulty with quantifiers on his part. In the second part of his answer, he seems surprised by the observed equality of the eigenvalues of AB and BA. He tries to make sense of it, but cannot. Note that John repeats the error in the given chain by making Bx = µx and Ax = λx at the end of his argument. From an interactional point of view, John presents his individual progress so far. He does not pay attention to the idea that María had suggested and does not comment anything about it. (Day 6, 21:21) Javier: I have been studying the problem and I haven’t found anything wrong. I developed a general equation to calculate eigenvalues of 2 × 2 matrices one for AB and another for BA, and they come out to be identical. Tomorrow I will send more details. (Day 7, 13:10) Javier: With respect to what I wrote to you about this problem, here are the details. 448 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 I have analyzed the argument, I couldn’t find the mistake. I don’t see that they are assuming that AB = BA either, because they are handling the equation ABx separate and independent from BAx. Out of curiosity I developed a general equation for the calculation of the char- acteristic polynomial of AB and another for BA for 2 × 2 matrices, and I arrived at the same equation. I did it in the following manner [he writes his calculations of AB and BA in terms of their entries, which we do not repeat here]. Here we can see that AB is not equal to BA. Applying the steps for the cal- culation of characteristic polynomials in both cases I arrived at the following general equation [he gives the equation of the characteristic polynomial in terms of the entries of the matrices A and B]. I tried this equation with some examples and yes they came out to be equal doing it directly and with this formula. Of course this doesn’t mean that the same thing happens for any n × n matrix. I did this only to see what the result was with 2 × 2 matrices. I wanted to do it with 3 × 3 matrices, but I didn’t have time any more, and anyway this doesn’t show the argument in this problem is correct or false. As I said before, I couldn’t find anything wrong. And you? We also have to think about the possibility that there is nothing wrong with the proof. . . until the opposite is shown. I will be waiting for your comments. Comments: Although Javier could not find what is wrong with the given chain of reasoning, he makes some important contributions to the solution process. He refutes John’s claim that AB and BA are assumed equal and he gives a reason for it: that the equations involving ABx and BAx are handled independently, and therefore there was no relation established between them beforehand. This explanation also assumes that somehow the relationship between ABx and BAx might imply an assumption about a relationship between AB and BA. After showing algebraically the equality of the eigenvalues of AB and BA for the 2 × 2 case, he correctly argues that no matter what the result would be for the 3 × 3 case, this would have no implication on the correctness or falseness of the proof. He suggests that there may be nothing wrong with it. His behavior in this part of the solution displays his readiness to accept different possibilities until something is proven beyond doubt. In his first message, Javier also follows the pattern by presenting what he had done so far individually. However he lets his group know that more is coming. With his second message, he starts interacting more directly with the others in the group. He does not simply reject John’s argument, but he explains to the others in detail by a logical argument why John’s solution was not correct . We can claim that the fact that the student contributions are written and not oral, facilitates the task of examining them and commenting about them later. Then, when Javier starts showing his calcu- lations involving the characteristic polynomials and mentions the inequality of AB A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 449 and BA, he seems to be following on John’s claim that “AB and BA are not equal and you can show it for any n × n matrix”. His explanations contain mathematical elements as well as what he thinks about what constitutes justification of an argument and the nature of mathematical proof, and it seems that he is willing to communicate with the members of his group about his ideas. He asks them directly if they could find anything yet and he ends his message by asking for feedback and more com- ments from his group members. His messages show that he is not simply presenting individual progress, but that he takes the communication process seriously. (Day 8, 19:57) Instructor: I am sending you my comments about your so- lutions. María observes that in the argument it is assumed that ABx and BAx are scalar multiples of x and that is false. Good observation but actually they don’t assume it. This follows from other assumptions that they make. Javier answers to John that they never assume the equality AB = BA. What is wrong then? Comments: I as the instructor intervened in order to motivate more discussion by specifying what I could agree with so far. My answer reflects that María’s message appears to take the problem to be that these two expressions are multiples of the same vector x. However as pointed out above, María might have been bothered by something else. I acknowledge all the contributions made so far summarizing the main points, mentioning María’s message alongside others, as it had not received an answer from the group. I repeat the question, calling for more reflection. (Day 10, 15:07) Raúl: In this problem the mistake that I observe in the argu- ment is that it is only valid for the same eigenvector x, or could it be that it shows that AB and BA have the same eigenvalue when they have the same eigenvector????, anyway I agree with Javier that for 2 × 2 matrices AB and BA have the same eigenvalues, I would extend this to 3 × 3 matrices (I ver- ified it with various examples) and they also have the same eigenvalues, the proof is algebraically tedious but relatively simple, I think that this extends to all matrices A and B but until now I haven’t been able to carry out a general proof. (Day 10, 21:27) Raúl: I am sending you what I have so far of the homework. We have not reached an agreement on this problem, the comments that María and Javier sent seem to be refuted by the instructor. In summary we have to go over this problem. In a draft that contains all the solutions to the homework, he suggests the follow- ing answer for this problem: 450 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 That the eigenvector x is considered from the beginning as if it were the same in: Ax = λx and Bx = µx. In any case what the above outline [referring to the chain of reasoning] shows is that AB and BA for the same eigenvector have the same eigenvalue. Comments: Raúl realizes that the same vector x is used, although he has difficulty expressing exactly how, and what the implications of this are. He seems to be both- ered by the fact that the same x that appears in Ax = λx and Bx = µx also appears in the expressions involving AB and BA. He then interprets this as if in the chain of reasoning the mistake lied in assuming that instead of A and B, it is AB and BA that have the same eigenvector x. He reinterprets the statement and the proof in the lines of “if AB and BA have the same eigenvector, then they have the same eigenvalue”. The rest of Raúl’s arguments are concerned with establishing that AB and BA have the same eigenvalues, apparently continuing along the lines of Javier’s thinking. He looks for a general proof but faced with the lack of it (as he could not produce one), he refers to his conviction based on various examples and local arithmetic proofs in special cases. Raúl enters late into the discussion and following the example of the others’ in the group, first he presents his individual solution to the problem. Since the group members were taking turns for sending the results and this homework was his respon- sibility, he sends a draft calling attention to this problem, as they had not reached a solution yet. He reminds the fact that María’s and Javier’s arguments were refuted by the instructor, so he offers his solution as a possibility. He calls for more discussion, as there was no consensus yet. (Day 10, 22:27) Javier: I want to make some comments about the problems of the homework that we haven’t been able to conclude yet. It looks like the proof works at least with 2 × 2 and 3 × 3 matrices. I personally still don’t see the mistake. With respect to Raúl’s comment, where the mistake is that the argument works only for the same eigenvector x, I don’t see it as a mistake, because if one eigenvector for A is used and another different one for B, we wouldn’t have a point of comparison for the proof. Comments: Javier interprets what Raúl says in terms of the choice of the same x for A and B. It is as if Javier is suggesting that in order to be able to say anything, it is obvious that we have to work with the same vector x. Otherwise, we would not be able to write the rest of this proof. Therefore his reasoning takes the body of the proof as a starting point and justifies the rest in terms of it. His message is illustrative of his conception of what constitutes a chain of reasoning. In this message he lets us have a glimpse into the implicit assumptions that he is making about the nature of the problem. Javier accepts Raúl’s statement that the result holds with 3 × 3 matrices as well. He takes into account Raúl’s suggestion for a possible flaw in the argument, he seems to understand what this suggestion means and presents his reasons for not A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 451 agreeing with it. At this point the conflict seems to be based on the differences of interpretation as to what a chain of reasoning consists of, and what the problem is asking. (Day 11, 9:38) Instructor: Raúl has the correct idea. The mistake is in assum- ing that A and B have the same eigenvectors. Now, it is true that AB and BA have the same eigenvalues for square matrices. For the general proof, I suggest that you see the next exercise in the manual. Comments: The next exercise of the manual asked the student to read the arti- cle “Gems of Exposition in Elementary Linear Algebra” [4] that suggests a general proof. With this message the instructor re-words what in her opinion Raúl had sug- gested and gives them a hint as to how to write up their solution. However her inter- pretation of Raúl’s solution may not have been correct (see the comments above on Raúl’s contribution). This interpretation might have been influenced by what Javier took Raúl as saying. The instructor’s intervention at this time was due to the fact that the homework was due the next day, and the thought that after concentrating enough on this par- ticular problem, the students were ready to read an outline of the proof and have a discussion about it. (Day 11, 9:55) María: It occurs to me to show that if A and B are similar, then they have the same eigenvalues. If A and B are similar their multiplication also will be similar. I don’t think that there is a mistake in the argument, only that we need to add that they are both similar. María suggests fixing the problem by adding a condition. She might be saying that similarity of the matrices A and B would guarantee them to have the same eigenvalues, hence in her reasoning (although she does not mention this explicitly) to have the same eigenvectors. Therefore according to her, the rest of the argument would remain correct. On the other hand she also seems to be implying that the sim- ilarity of A and B would guarantee the similarity of AB and BA, and consequently they would have the same eigenvalues. In her second message, María continues her own efforts in solving the problem, without mentioning anything about the previous suggestions of the group members. She does not seem to take into account the instructor’s message, either. (Day 11, 18:50) John: So we can conclude that in this problem the mistake is not in the argument itself but in the manner they present the information to be proved? Because if the mistake is that it cannot be assumed that x is the same eigenvector for both matrices, we have an error in giving the information to prove and not necessarily in the proof itself. Right? 452 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 Comments: John’s reflection comes as a response to the instructor’s intervention and reveals that he was considering the part that said “This implies that Ax = λx and Bx = µx for some eigenvector x” as something that the problem asks to be proven. This might be due to the form that we are used to seeing in mathematical propositions and statements to be proved. However, if he were taking this sentence as the result to be proven, then he was not paying attention that actually the next step was using this assumption and at the end of the proof another result was being reached. (Turned in on Day 12, as it was due) Group answer: Final version of the homework: That the eigenvector x is considered from the beginning as if it were the same in: Ax = λx and Bx = µx. In any case what the above outline [referring to the chain of reasoning] shows is that AB and BA for the same eigenvec- tor have the same eigenvalues. That is, the mistake is in the way that the information is presented. Do AB and BA have the same eigenvalues? If A and B are similar, then they have the same eigenvalues. If A and B are similar their multiplication will also be similar, therefore AB and BA will have the same eigenvalues. Comments: This answer shows that the group could not put together enough in- formation to present an answer that solves the problem. Neither did they check up on claims such as María’s that if A and B are similar, so are AB and BA. Rather, they chose to mix the different opinions that had not been refuted so far, albeit not in a coherent way, as the time for turning in the homework had come. Apparently they did not read the suggested article. (John later mentioned in a message that he had never received this article in his course package.) In the following satellite class this problem was commented in detail, underlining the difficulties that the groups displayed in their solution processes. Each group also received corrections to their homework. We believe that after spending so much time on this specific problem and displaying reasonable effort to solve it, students were motivated to find out the answers and understand the solution. In the next section we explain why we think this group of students could not reach a solution and had they had more time and proper guidance, this might have been possible. 4. Conclusions One interesting thing in all the discussion that took place (as opposed to a tra- ditional interaction between the students and the teacher) is that we have access to what the students say or think, and that is why it is so impressive to follow their “conversations”. In this course students were encouraged to express freely what they thought and this contributed to their willingness to share their incomplete attempts to solve the problems. We can see the kind and level of mathematical reasoning that A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 453 they can employ, where they fail, and how they try to convince each other. These records make it possible for the instructor to consult them whenever necessary for the purpose of identifying those aspects of their understanding that need attention. On the other hand, as is the case with face-to-face discussions, there may be student contributions that are not clear. One pedagogical suggestion that we may offer is to send a follow-up message asking for a clarification. This might motivate more reflection on the part of the student and give us more insight into his/her reasoning. As a first impression one might think that the reason this group could not reach a solution is because they do not have the conceptual maturity to deal with the given problem and that they are lost. However, the fact that throughout the course this group was quite successful in reaching a consensus about their solutions and that these solutions were generally mathematically correct, leads us into considering other possibilities. A careful reading of the students’ contributions and the local analyses of these discussions offered above suggest that the conception that the students had of what constituted a chain of reasoning differed from what the instructor assumed it to be in giving them this problem. We think that the students saw this argument as having two parts: one part corresponding to the assumptions of a theorem and the result to be proved (that is the statement of the theorem), and another part that consisted in the proof itself. The wording that is used in the argument probably has contributed in interpreting it this way: the use of the expressions “Let––This implies that” pattern correspond to the statement, and the “We have-since” part forms the proof and leads to the conclusion. This assumption was incompatible with what the in- structor thought everybody took as shared. María’s use of the word “assume” in her first message, John’s surprise shown in his last message (“So we can conclude that [. . . ] the mistake is not in the argument itself but in the manner they present the information to be proved? [. . . ] we have an error in giving the information to prove and not necessarily in the proof itself.”), Javier’s last statement (“I don’t see it as a mistake, because if one eigenvector for A is used and another different one for B, we wouldn’t have a point of comparison for the proof”), and Raúl’s choice of the words in presenting the solution (“That the eigenvector x is considered from the beginning as if it were the same in: Ax = λx and Bx = µx”) all point out to this implicit division of the argument into two parts. It is very possible that it was the first time that these students were dealing with a question of this type. If the only proofs they had seen involving Linear Algebra concepts were presented in their “proper” format, the identification of this argument as something that they were used to dealing with is understandable. As a result of this, the students may not even have questioned whether the statements Ax = λx and Bx = µx follow from the previous assumption and might have simply taken it as something to be proved, concentrating on the rest of the argument. Because of this incompatibility in interpretations, the solution process was not very productive. This phenomenon offers an explanation as to why the group may not have been able to reach a solution. The restrictions of trying to keep up with 454 A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 several group discussions at the same time unfortunately did not allow the instructor to realize the real nature of the difficulty on time to be able to intervene by having a discussion about the students’ implicit assumptions and the characteristics of the homework problem. In a way, not knowing the kind of logical and mathematical reasoning that the students go through when solving problems prevents us as mathematics instructors from discovering that in certain cases the students’ reasoning might not coincide with our reasoning at all. We might not realize that the concepts that we teach might take a different form when the students are in the process of constructing them. On the other hand, looking only at the end product, i.e., the answer, might lead us to ignore the richness of their thinking and how much they might have progressed during the process of producing that answer. In summary, we learn a lot from the students’ comments as to what ideas can be emphasized so that they can reach a deep understanding of the concepts involved. This can give us opportunities to tap into their understanding of mathematical conventions and help them reorganize their knowledge. However we need experience to get used to the opportunities offered by this medium and new points of reference in order to interpret the situations that we observe. One aspect of the communication that takes place in this environment is its writ- ten and paused nature. This forces the students to elaborate more on their answers which in turn gives rise to interesting discussions. The fact that they have time to read and re-read messages before answering and can do the same with their own messages before posting them might force them to engage in more systemic and analytic thinking, compared to a spontaneous class discussion in which they would communicate verbally. However, we think that there might also be adverse effects of this kind of communication. Let us recall that in our example the instructor in her second message took Raúl’s message to be related to the choice of the same x for both A and B. This was probably due to the fact that she had read Raúl’s message followed by Javier’s interpretation of it, instead of first forming an opinion herself about what Raúl meant to say. The asynchronous nature of the discussions modify the meaning of order and time as we are used to in our regular classes. As a result, we can say that the on-line media offer possibilities for a real in- teraction to take place between the students themselves and the instructor if used intelligently. They might provide information which normally would not be available and that can be used to help students develop their mathematical understanding. However we need to be careful in adapting ourselves to this new medium as many of the didactical strategies and interpretations of phenomena that we are used to may change forms in this environment. For this reason it is important to share our experiences openly, discussing the benefits and the limitations of this environment. However we need to be careful in not interpreting the novelty that this medium brings as limitations as a result of our limited experience with it. We need to look into pro- ductive and non-productive episodes, teacher decisions, student interactions and their results, our immediate and long-term reactions and interpretations, etc., to be able to A. Oktaç / Linear Algebra and its Applications 379 (2004) 439–455 455 understand this new medium in its own terms. This will no doubt help us in using the communication technologies that are available to us for instructional purposes in a more informed manner. More research is needed with respect to this environment’s role in the construction of mathematical concepts. We hope that our analysis will contribute to our understanding of the characteristics of this medium and its impli- cations for mathematics education, and of its feasibility as an instructional medium for mathematics. References [1] T. Anderson, L. Rourke, D.R. Garrison, W. Archer, Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context, J. Asynchronous Learn. Netw. 5 (2) (2001) 1–17 http://www.aln.org/publi- cations/jaln/v5n2/v5n2_anderson.asp. [2] H. Anton, Introducción al Álgebra Lineal, Limusa, México, 1997. [3] W.E. Blanton, G. Moorman, W. Trathen, Telecommunications and teacher education: a social con- structivist review, in: P.D. Pearson, A. Iran-Nejad (Eds.), Review of Research in Education, AERA, Washington, DC, 1998, pp. 235–275. [4] D. Carlson, C.R. Johnson, D. Lay, A.D. Porter, Gems of exposition in elementary linear algebra, College Math. J. 23 (4) (1992) 299–303. [5] A. Collins, J.S. Brown, S. Newman, Cognitive apprenticeship: teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics, in: L.B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing Learning and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, 1989, pp. 453–494. [6] D. Crowe, H. Zand, Novices entering mathematics––I. The impact of new technology, Computers Educ. 28 (1) (1997) 43–54. [7] J.-L. Dorier (Ed.), On the Teaching of Linear Algebra, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000. [8] J.-L. Dorier, Meta level in the teaching of unifying and generalizing concepts in mathematics, Educ. Stud. Math. 29 (2) (1995) 175–197. [9] L. Figueiras O., Teaching mathematics via internet: written interactions between tutor and student, in: Proceedings of the 24th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, vol. 4, 2000, pp. 57–64. [10] A. Oktaç, The teaching and learning of linear algebra: is it the same at a distance? in: Proceedings of the ICMI Study Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Algebra, vol. 2, 2001, pp. 501–506. [11] A. Oktaç, H. Stein, Linear algebra at a virtual university, in: Proceedings of the International Con- ference on the Teaching of Mathematics, Samos, Greece, 1998, pp. 233–235. [12] L. Rourke, T. Anderson, Using peer teams to lead online discussions, J. Interactive Media Educ. 1 (2002) 1–21 http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2002/1. [13] C. Schahczenski, Experiment substituting in-class discussions with email discussions, in: Elec- tronic Proceedings for Frontiers in Education Conference, 1998. Available from <http://fie. engrng.pitt.edu/fie98/papers/1249.pdf>. [14] A. Sfard, There is more to discourse than meets the ears: looking at thinking as communicating to learn more about mathematical learning, Educ. Stud. Math. 46 (1–3) (2001) 13–57. [15] A. Sierpinska, T. Dreyfus, J. Hillel, Evaluation of a teaching design in linear algebra: the case of linear transformations, Rech. Didactique Math. 19 (1) (1999) 7–40. [16] F.-K. Wang, C.J. Bonk, A design framework for electronic cognitive apprenticeship, J. Asynchronous Learn. Netw. 5 (2) (2001) 131–151 http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/v5n2_wang.asp. 
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work_aoafz7qkpjbj3p6ggnzsf763aq	----	Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning Vol. 19, No. 1, February 2011, 5–24 ISSN 1361-1267 print/ISSN 1469-9745 online © 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13611267.2011.543567 http://www.informaworld.com Assessment of a University-Based Distance Education Mentoring Program from a Quality Management Perspective Casimir Barczyk, Janet Buckenmeyer, Lori Feldman, and Emily Hixon Purdue University Calumet Taylor and FrancisCMET_A_543567.sgm10.1080/13611267.2011.543567Mentoring & Tutoring1361-1267 (print)/1469-9745 (online)Research Article2011Taylor & Francis191000000February 2011Professor CasimirBarczykbarczyk@calumet.purdue.edu This study describes assessment results from the Distance Education Mentoring Program (DEMP) at Purdue University Calumet, Indiana, USA. The program, sponsored by the university’s Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, was made available to all teaching faculty who wished to become protégés and develop their skills at teaching online courses. The DEMP is a university initiative designed to enhance the development of high-quality online courses by mentoring faculty in instructional design principles. Faculty member protégés who completed the mentoring program were surveyed using an anonymous questionnaire. Data were obtained from 34 faculty respondents who completed the program during the last three years. Using regression analysis, we found that the Pyramid Model explained 83% of the variance in perceptions of teaching improvement attributable to the DEMP. The program’s process orientation, continuous improvement approach, and focus on customer satisfaction explained protégés’ perceived improvement in teaching. In addition, protégés believed their peer faculty mentors provided more psychosocial support than career development. Implications for implementation of a mentoring program in a university setting are discussed. Keywords: career development, faculty development, mentoring, online learning, psychosocial, quality management Importance of Quality in Online Education In this article we describe and evaluate the efficacy of a unique program designed to mentor university faculty in online instruction. The program is both innovative and necessary because teaching online can be a challenge for university faculty (Gomes = Mullen, 2005). Poor online teaching, or online teaching which is conducted no differently from what occurs in a classroom setting, can jeopardize student satisfaction, instructional effectiveness, and perceptions of the university. Student satisfaction is an important issue, largely Casimir Barczyk, School of Management, Purdue University Calumet; Janet Buckenmeyer, School of Education, Purdue University Calumet; Lori Feldman, School of Management, Purdue University Calumet; Emily Hixon, School of Education, Purdue University Calumet. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Casimir Barczyk, School of Management, Purdue University Calumet, 2200 169th Street, Hammond, IN 46323-2094, USA. Email: barczyk@calumet.purdue.edu 6 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON because the number of students learning online has been increasing dramati- cally (Allen & Seaman, 2007). Further, with the now routine practice of assess- ing learning outcomes, the need for high-quality delivery of online courses is becoming critical. It is generally accepted that teaching online is different from teaching face-to-face; it requires new skills and techniques. Faculty members may struggle with learning the necessary technological skills, adapting their pedagogic strategies for the online environment, adjusting to the more learner- centered focus inherent in online courses, conceptualizing their courses differ- ently to fit the new environment, and finding the time necessary for developing an online course. To address the distinctive challenges related to teaching online, Purdue University Calumet developed the Distance Education Mentor- ing Program (DEMP) (Barczyk, Buckenmeyer, & Feldman, 2010). The program is built on a foundation of quality principles that focus on customer satisfaction and continuous process improvement. From a business standpoint, it makes strategic sense for universities to invest resources in the certification of professors who teach online courses. The DEMP provides certification in online instruction, which is a valuable form of faculty development. This investment in the quality of faculty and the online courses they deliver has the potential to reap substantial dividends. The Sloan Consortium reports that online learning represents a large market segment (Allen & Seaman, 2007), that continues to grow. In their most recent annual survey of chief administrative officers at 2590 colleges and universi- ties, Allen and Seaman (2010) found that “over 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term [representing] a 17 percent increase over the number reported the previous year” (p. 1). They also found that “the 17 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population” (p. 1). This means that more than one in four higher education students now take at least one course online. Program Design The architecture of the DEMP is andragogical in nature (Holmes & Abington- Cooper, 2002), a manner of learning appropriate for adults. Hu, Thomas, and Lance (2008), citing the classic work of Kram (1988), defined mentoring as “an interpersonal exchange between an experienced senior colleague (mentor) and a less experienced junior colleague (protégé) in which the mentor provides the protégé with career functions related to career advancement and psychoso- cial functions related to personal development” (p. 727). From the protégé standpoint, mentoring is a way to attain higher professional and personal rewards, including compensation, personal learning, and commitment. In the DEMP, learning about teaching online takes place when faculty members who possess superior knowledge of instructional design (mentors) engage with professors who are newer or less experienced in online education (protégés). A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 7 For the most part, professors at a university are quite independent, highly educated in their disciplines, and entrepreneurial in their work. The culture of higher education and the preparation of its faculty tend to favor research produc- tivity over development of pedagogical and instructional design skills. It is the latter skills, however, that are critically important to the development of instruc- tionally sound online courses (Caplan, 2004). The DEMP recognized this limi- tation in professors’ training and provided a quality-focused mechanism to facilitate faculty development and assist faculty members obtain the critical expertise necessary to develop and deliver high-quality online instruction. The DEMP uses a rubric contained in Quality Matters, a faculty centered, peer-review process designed to certify the quality of online courses and their components (Maryland Online, 2006). Faculty members who have completed the Quality Matters certification process and have online teaching experience serve as mentors. Each faculty member protégé is paired with a mentor from outside his or her discipline to ensure a focus on instructional design rather than course content. In sum, the DEMP represents an attempt to ensure the academic quality of distance education by aligning the conditions for optimal learning with the best technology available for online delivery. This unique program facilitates the development of faculty and quality online courses by mentoring professors in the principles of instructional design. In this discussion, we describe the structure and implementation of the DEMP and present findings associated with a quality-focused survey of faculty member protégés who completed the program at Purdue University Calumet (PUC) between 2006 and 2009. The survey assesses perceptions of DEMP protégés on 10 of the 18 components associated with the Pyramid Model of Quality Management (Barczyk, 1999) and perceptions of career development and psychosocial benefits they received from this mentoring. A key element of quality management is an organization’s commitment to customer satisfaction—in this case, the protégés’ satisfaction with what they learned in the DEMP. Therefore, the survey focuses on protégés because they are the internal customers of the mentoring program. The Pyramid Model Quality Management (QM) is a philosophy of managing that involves: (a) continuously improving products as well as services, and (b) responding to customer needs and expectations (Robbins & Coulter, 2007). This philosophy was inspired by quality experts, the most notable being W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran. QM is a departure from earlier management theories that held that lowering costs was the only way to achieve productivity. Instead, QM posits that a high-quality orientation to process and production that 8 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON reduces errors and defects, which minimizes costs, leading ultimately to increased productivity and competitive advantage (Deming, 1986). The Pyramid Model of QM (Barczyk, 1999) expands this philosophical notion of managing into 18 elements conceptually organized into three levels as shown in Figure 1. It views QM as a pyramid structure that has an apex, middle blocks, and a base. The apex in the Pyramid Model of quality manage- ment is made up of three fundamental elements: top management commitment to quality, commitment to customer satisfaction, and organizational culture of participation and empowerment. The second level of a pyramid is made up of blocks that give it structure and height. These blocks make up the principles of QM. At the second level of the Pyramid Model are five elements: teamwork, total system integration, quality standards, quality measurement, and continuous quality improvement. The base of a pyramid provides the structure with a foundation for stability. The base of the Pyramid Model consists of QM tools and techniques, the 10 elements of which are benchmarking, training, process orientation, problem identification, problem solving, employee quality assurance, proactive management, supplier quality assurance, communication, and incentives and recognition. Figure 1. Pyramid Model of quality management showing the three conceptual levels and 18 elements. It is appropriate to view the DEMP through the lens of quality manage- ment. In making the case for improved quality, Offstein, Morwick, and Shah (2006) argue that quality programs influence a firm’s overall competitiveness. Figure 1. Pyramid Model of quality management showing the three conceptual lev- els and 18 elements. A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 9 They believe that profit is strongly related to quality and as such “changes in relative quality have a far more potent effect on market share than do changes in prices” (p. 34). An emphasis on quality has implications for universities interested in being successful in today’s competitive market, while facilitating faculty development. Universities can enhance the quality of their online courses by certifying their faculties in online education, thus enabling them to capitalize on the growing market of students interested in taking university courses in an online format. Since faculty completing the DEMP receive certi- fication to teach online, it is prudent to examine the elements of this program from a QM perspective. High-quality mentoring programs facilitate training outcomes, enhance skill development, and contribute to significant returns on investment (Gardiner, Tiggermann, Kearns, & Kelly, 2007; Noe, 1988). In a study of South African managers, Meyer and Mabaso (2001) found that mentoring may be particularly useful to develop equity and managerial skills and describe barriers that inhibit the success of mentoring initiatives. The barriers to mentoring success include not having senior management commitment, participative management and empowerment, training, open communication, a process orientation, and a mechanism for evaluation based on continuous quality improvement—elements found in the Pyramid Model of QM. Organizationally this paper is divided into five sections. The first provides an overview of mentoring and reviews a portion of the relevant literature. The second describes the DEMP and poses two research hypothe- ses related to the perceptions of protégés in the mentoring program. The third outlines the research method. The fourth section summarizes the results of the study, which includes a description of the survey respondents, statisti- cal findings related to the hypothesis tests, and descriptive statistics of the protégés’ perception of the DEMP on variables associated with the Pyramid Model of QM. The final section discusses the survey results and presents some limitations of the study. Mentoring: A Brief Overview What is Mentoring? While definitions vary, the one we use herein is derived from Murray and Owen (1991) who view mentoring as “a deliberate pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a lesser skilled or experienced one, with the agreed- upon goal of having the lesser skilled person grow and develop specific competencies” (p. xiv). A mentor interacts in ways that bring about learning, skill development, and growth of the protégé. The concept of mentoring reflects a basic principle of survival: that humans learn skills, values, and culture directly from other humans whom they respect and admire. People tend to emulate or model the behavior they see in others, 10 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON especially if that behavior is rewarded (Bandura, 1986). Mentoring also reflects basic concepts of motivation: that humans need relationships and engage in competence-seeking behavior. Individuals seek relationships because of their inherent need for belongingness. They also desire competence in their life’s work (Maslow, 1970). Mentoring relationships can help people achieve those needs for connectedness and career achievement. Mentoring and Faculty Development Mentoring is often used by universities to develop new faculty members into active and productive members of the academy. Valeau and Boggs (2004) asserted that in the last 30 years, education literature acknowledges the extraordinary positive effect of mentoring on faculty competence in both teaching and publishing. Mentoring programs increase the potential for academic success, improve new faculty decision making, and ultimately increase retention (Bowers & Eberhart, 2001). Describing a mentoring approach developed at a private religious-based university, Nastanski and Simmons (2007) cited protégés in their institution’s program who expressed that their mentor not only saved them time and frus- tration but functioned as a friend when “a sounding board” was needed (p. 10). Mentors served both career development and psychosocial functions, providing protégés with specific direction and, later on, support for difficult professional decisions. In addition to developing faculty members into scholars and master teach- ers, mentoring can be useful in assisting faculty members with the transition to more technology-based teaching. Gomes and Mullen (2005) suggested that faculty development offices should identify and instruct faculty in using tech- nology in their teaching. These faculty members would in turn “impart the same information to other[s]…in their departments, thereby serving as peer mentors” (p. 139). This idea builds on Bates’ (2000) notion of mentoring wherein he states that “faculty members learn best from their peers through show-and-tell demonstrations by faculty ‘stars’ who have developed good examples of technology-based teaching” (p. 102). Luna and Cullen (1995) argued that universities waste talent when faculty members are not mentored. Mentoring serves to support faculty renewal and professional growth, which in turn empowers faculty members. Consequently, teaching and research improves, along with job satisfaction and organizational socialization. Both mentor and protégé experience these positive outcomes. A Distance Education Mentoring Program Background and Description The DEMP began as a result of: A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 11 (a) an identified gap between faculty instructional needs and technology services on campus and (b) an awareness of the enrollment growth in online education. In 2004, the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at PUC appointed a multidisciplinary task force comprised of faculty members and administrators representative of the academic community. The task force studied the quality and scope of distance education offerings at the university and recommended plans for a mentoring program to assist faculty in the instructional design and delivery of high-quality distance learning courses. The Vice Chancellor mandated that all faculty members who wished to teach online would have to be certified online instructors. The DEMP was one method by which faculty could become certified. A total of 17 mentors and 69 protégés participated in the first three years of this ongoing program. The DEMP was coordinated by the Office of Instructional Technology under the auspices of the Vice Chancellor. A graphic showing the four stages of the DEMP model is captured in Figure 2. Figure 2. Timeline illustrating the four stages in the model of the Distance Education Mentoring Program. The learning stage. Having mentors who had successfully developed and taught online courses was critical to implementing the DEMP. Faculty mentors were chosen from various academic disciplines on campus. They were expected to participate in the Quality Matters training program (Maryland Online, 2006) to become certified for peer mentoring and quality online course development. Six mentors were identified who agreed to pilot the initial mentorship program. Figure 2. Timeline illustrating the four stages in the model of the Distance Education Mentoring Program. 12 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON The learning stage took place during the fall semester of each year. The mentors were assigned protégés outside their areas of expertise. They met with their protégés during a two-day knowledge exchange session, which empha- sized the Quality Matters criteria for successful online course development. During this session, mentor-protégé rapport was established and expectations were clarified. Four lunches held once a month followed the knowledge exchange. The lunches served as workshops in which various applications were demonstrated and their effective uses were modeled. The workshops were supplemented with an online course, the Distance Learning Institute, which was created in the university’s course management system. Learning materials and additional resources were uploaded to the course’s website. This online course was designed by the faculty mentors to model best practices of online instructional design. The teaching stage. During the semester break following the learning stage, protégés self-assessed their courses against the Quality Matters standards provided to them. A team of mentors then evaluated each protégé’s online course according to the Quality Matters’ Rubric™. Protégés received feed- back about whether their course reasonably complied with the standards of the rubric. Mentors also provided protégés with advice to strengthen the quality of their online courses. Once approved, the protégés delivered the courses they had developed. The evaluation stage. Following the teaching stage, the mentors, organized into two teams of three, evaluated all courses that the protégés delivered online. In order to ensure objectivity, mentors did not review their protégés’ courses. To successfully complete the program and receive certification to teach online, courses were evaluated using the Quality Matters Rubric™. Protégés’ courses were scored as either “pass”, “conditional pass”, or “fail”. In order to pass, courses had to satisfy all of the rubric standards considered essential and a majority of those standards considered “very important” and “important”. To receive a conditional pass, courses had to satisfy the essential standards. However, few of the other standards had to be satisfied. The acknowledgement stage. In the final stage of the program, both the mentors and the protégés were formally recognized at a luncheon and each received a certificate of recognition. For the protégé, this ritual was a symbol of having moved from being a faculty member unfamiliar with teaching in an online environment to being a certified professional in distance education. For mentors, this type of symbolic public recognition of competence and leadership A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 13 was an effective reward for the contributions each made to the growth and development of their protégés (Murray & Owen, 1991). In addition to the symbolic rewards, all protégés and mentors received substantive compensation from the university in the form of a quarter-time release from teaching. If a mentor could not act on the release, s/he was provided with a monetary payment. The payment was equal to an adjunct instructor’s stipend for teaching the course from which the mentor could not be released. Payments ranged from $2500 to $4000. In addition, upon success- ful completion of the program, protégés were rewarded with $500 as recogni- tion of their dedication to teaching and professional development. The second iteration of the program began when six of the protégés agreed to serve as mentors for the next group of faculty applicants. Specification of Hypotheses We believe that a program built on the tenets of QM, as contrasted with one developed without quality considerations, will have greater effective- ness; that is, perceived improvement in teaching. In this context, the extent to which a faculty member perceives his or her teaching has improved is an appropriate dependent variable to measure the effectiveness of the DEMP. A statistical framework using the elements of the Pyramid Model may explain the factors that contribute to perceptions of teaching improvement. Those elements would serve as the independent variables to explain the work- ings of the DEMP. A study of Israeli business organizations by Galin and Falk (2008) provides the basis for this approach. They used the Pyramid Model to explain quality outcomes and found that employee encouragement practices (such as process orientation, recognition, and empowerment) impacted orga- nizational quality practices (such as customer satisfaction, training, and qual- ity measurement). These researchers also found that quality practices directly impacted quality outcomes. Implicit in the definition of “quality” is the notion of continuous improve- ment—a second level element in the Pyramid Model. Summers (2009) defined continuous improvement as the ongoing enhancement of products, services, or processes through incremental or breakthrough efforts. According to Rodrigues (2007), quality management means having a long-term, ongoing commitment to improvement, with all employees actively participating at all levels. Quality also means that organizations produce goods or deliver services that meet or exceed customers’ expectations at the lowest possible cost (Deming, 1986; Juran, 1964). Quality-oriented organizations are highly responsive to customer needs and satisfaction. This is an apex level element in the Pyramid Model. Based on these studies, we hypothesize that: 14 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON H-1: Protégés’ perceptions of teaching improvement will be positively affected by the tools (level 3), principles (level 2), and fundamental elements (level 1) of the Pyramid Model that are incorporated into the DEMP. Mentoring can be viewed from multiple perspectives. According to Merriam (1983), “mentoring appears to mean one thing to developmental psychologists, another thing to business people, and a third thing to those in academic settings” (p. 169). Through content analysis of detailed interviews, Kram (1988) found that mentors provided career and psychosocial support to their protégés. Career support refers to the fact that mentors coach, protect, and provide organizational visibility for their protégés. Psychosocial support refers to the modeling and counseling behavior that mentors frequently provide. It also refers to the positive acceptance and recognition that mentors provide their protégés. In their study of career support, Dreher and Ash (1990) found that individuals involved in extensive mentoring relationships had higher incomes, received more promotions, and experienced greater pay and higher satisfaction. University faculty members have not typically been trained in the tech- niques or methods of distance education. The distance learning courses they create often mirror what they do in their on-campus courses. Making a trans- formation from learner to teacher is usually not overly cumbersome where the environment remains relatively the same. With distance education, however, the environment is very different and many faculty members need expert assistance. This situation is analogous to faculty who graduate from research institutions and then take positions at teaching institutions or community colleges. LeCroy and McClenny (1992) recommended faculty-to-faculty mentoring to facilitate this transition and to create connectedness. When faculty feel connected to others, they view their work as “more positive than if they feel estranged and unsupported” (LeCroy & McClenny, 1992, p. 41). How faculty view their work affects whether it is done excellently, which in turn affects the success (Seidman, 1985), identity (St. Clair, 1994), and perhaps the competitive advantage of the university. In terms of psychosocial support, Penner (2001) indicated that mentoring provides protégés with friendship, which in the long run may be a productive and enjoyable outcome. Other examples include providing protégés with a role model, encouragement, and counseling (Leon, 1993; Taylor, 1997). Smith, Howard, and Harrington (2005) identified two new behaviors associated with psychosocial support: fostering teamwork (a level 2 element in the Pyramid Model) and developing cooperation with protégés. These researchers also found that psychosocial behaviors were significantly more important to mentors than career development behaviors. They reasoned that perhaps mentors lacked psychosocial support as protégés, and as such, valued it more as a way of correcting past wrongs. It is an empirical question as to whether protégés view psychosocial support as more important than career develop- ment support. A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 15 On the basis of the theory and research cited above, we propose the following hypothesis related to the DEMP: H-2: Protégés will rate the psychosocial contributions of the DEMP higher than the career support contributions of the program. Method Survey Instrument Three authors of this article used their insights as mentors and a protégé involved in the first iteration of the DEMP (as summarized in Barczyk, Buck- enmeyer, & Feldman, 2010) to develop the survey questionnaire. Research suggests that skilled faculty members and structured faculty development programs are key ingredients of quality distance courses (North Central Asso- ciation of Colleges and Schools, Higher Learning Commission, 2007). Faculty who teach online must be provided with both training and continuous support (Willis, 1994). The survey questions created reflect these criteria. Specifically, the questionnaire asked about the development of skills to teach online, the focus on instructional design for online instruction, qualities of the mentoring relationship, working as a team, and general beliefs about online instruction. The questionnaire contained 72 closed-ended items, 58 of which related to the characteristics and outcomes of mentoring as well as to the quality manage- ment aspects of the DEMP. Several items related to the psychosocial and career development functions of mentoring. Fourteen items related to 10 elements in the Pyramid Model of QM. The protégés completed the questionnaire electron- ically, which was accessible as an assessment in the university’s course manage- ment system. Most of the items required the protégés to rate their perceptions using a four-point Likert scale where 1 corresponded to a rating of strongly agree and 4 corresponded to a rating of strongly disagree. The questionnaire also contained 14 items that related to demographic and background issues. Respondents In this study, we focused on the protégés of the DEMP, all of whom are on the instructional staff at Purdue University Calumet holding academic ranks from instructor to full professor. Sixty-nine protégés were invited to participate in the electronic survey. Thirty-four individuals (49.3%) completed the anony- mous questionnaire. Results Demographics Of the protégés reporting gender, 17 (50%) were females and 13 (38.2%) were males (four [11.8%] did not report gender). The race/ethnicity breakdown was 16 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON as follows: 22 (64.7%) Caucasians, 5 (14.7%) Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 1 (2.9%) African American (six [17.6%] did not report race/ethnicity). The tenure status of protégés at the time they started the program was as follows: 17 (50%) tenured, 7 (20.6%) non-tenured but in the tenure track, and 6 (17.6%) non-tenured and not in the tenure track (four [11.8%] did not report tenure status). Tenure and other employment characteristics of the protégés are shown in Table 1. Hypothesis Tests and Perceptions of the DEMP Hypothesis 1 was tested using stepwise regression analysis. The hypothesis stated that protégés’ perceptions of teaching improvement would be positively affected by the tools, principles, and fundamental elements of the Pyramid Model that are designed into the structure of the DEMP. Perceptions of teach- ing improvement served as the dependent variable and elements of the three levels of the Pyramid Model served as the independent variables. The hypoth- esis was supported. The results of the regression, summarized in Table 2, indicated that the three elements associated with three levels of the Pyramid Model explain 83% of the variance in the protégés’ perceptions of teaching improvement. Accord- ing to the regression model, protégés perceived improvements in their teach- ing because of the DEMP’s focus on customers (protégés), continuous improvement approach, and process-like orientation. Table 3 shows the protégés’ perceptions of the DEMP in terms of the 10 selected elements of the Pyramid Model of QM. Fourteen items are reported Table 1 University Employment Characteristics of Protégés Measure M N SD Courses taught online prior to program 1.94 24 2.03 Years since receiving terminal degree 16.96 28 10.36 Years of university teaching experience 19.07 29 9.26 Years employed at this university 14.47 29 8.84 Table 2 Stepwise Regression Model of the Effect of Quality Factors on the Perception of Teaching Improvement Predictor Variable B t p Process orientation (Tool—level 3) .436 3.85 .001 Continuous quality improvement (Principle—level 2) .324 2.49 .021 Customer satisfaction (Fundamental—level 1) .329 2.33 .030 Notes. R2= .83 for overall model; F= 34.27 at p <.001. A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 17 because some of the 10 elements included multiple questionnaire items. The table is organized in ascending order of mean value, where a lower value relates to a higher level of agreement for the given question. All of the means shown in Table 3 are below the scale midpoint (2.5), indicating that protégés perceived elements of quality in the design of the DEMP. Hypothesis 2 was tested using a t-test. Results indicated that protégés rated psychosocial contributions of the DEMP (M=2.52, SD= .98) higher than career support contributions (M=3.00, SD= .88), t(26)=2.68, p< .01. Five questionnaire items semantically related to the psychosocial construct were tested for reliability. They are listed in Table 4. Cronbach’s alpha was highly significant (α= .94, N=5) for items associated with establishing rapport, devoting time, sharing information openly, exhibiting strong interper- sonal skills, and engendering trust. Inter-item correlations ranged between 0.67 and 0.92. Five other questionnaire items semantically related to the career develop- ment construct were tested for reliability. They are listed in Table 4. Cronbach’s alpha was also significant (α= .80, N=5) for items associated with providing access to information, providing knowledge and skills, providing new infor- mation, providing course feedback, and facilitating application of instructional design principles. Inter-item correlations ranged between 0.29 and 0.71. A t-test between the means of the semantically constructed psychosocial (PS) and career development (CD) variables was statistically significant, t(31)=3.42, p< .01. The effect is similar to that found for the original variables Table 3 Protégés’ TQM Perceptions of the Distance Education Mentoring Program Pyramid Model Element M N SD Continuous quality improvement 1.71 32 0.85 Communication with protégés—open door policy 1.73 30 0.79 Customer satisfaction with DEMP—meeting students’ needs 1.74 31 0.63 Customer satisfaction with DEMP—overall 1.84 31 0.74 Empowerment of protégés—opinions welcomed 1.87 31 0.89 Empowerment of protégés—opinions considered 1.87 31 0.81 Measurement of quality against established goals or standards 1.87 30 0.82 Top management commitment to the DEMP 2.00 31 0.97 Protégé training 2.07 30 0.74 Process orientation in dealing with problems 2.07 29 0.75 Encouragement of teamwork 2.10 31 0.79 Protégé recognition 2.13 30 0.82 Communication with protégés—feedback 2.19 27 0.74 Protégé incentives for good performance 2.31 29 0.85 Note. Means are based on a Likert scale where 1=strongly agree and 4=strongly disagree. 18 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON where protégés experienced more psychosocial support from the DEMP (M=1.78, SD= .74) than career development support (M=2.03, SD= .70). Discussion The results associated with hypothesis 1 indicate that elements from all three levels of the Pyramid Model explain the perception of teaching improvement experienced by protégés in the DEMP. The data summarized in Table 2 show that the use of a process orientation in the program (a tool from level 3) to foster quality improvement (a principle from level 2) in an effort to achieve customer satisfaction (a fundamental from level 1) results in protégés’ believ- ing that their teaching improved. These findings support hypothesis 1, which states that protégés’ perceptions of teaching improvement are affected by the quality elements incorporated into the design of the DEMP, and are in partial accord with the results of Galin and Falk (2008). They provide evidence for a direct link between the three elements of the Pyramid Model (one from each level) and the dependent variable. The regression model, based on elements of QM, explains 83% of the variance in protégés’ perceptions of teaching improvement resulting from the DEMP. It confirms that elements at each level of the pyramid are interrelated and integrated to produce quality outcomes. The data summarized in Table 3 convey how protégés perceived the DEMP in terms of QM. None of the fourteen survey questions that correspond with the 10 elements in the Pyramid Model of QM (Barczyk, 1999) had a mean Table 4 Protégés’ Perceptions of Career Development and Psychosocial Support Functions of the Distance Education Mentoring Program Career Development and Psychosocial Support Related Items M N SD Career Development (CD) Support Functions Provided course feedback 1.97 31 1.05 Provided postings in DL Institute 2.00 32 0.80 Facilitated application of instructional design principles 1.87 30 0.90 Provided access to new information 2.07 30 0.79 Provided relevant knowledge and skills 2.17 30 0.91 Cronbach’s α= .80 Psychosocial (PS) Support Functions Shared information openly 1.74 31 0.68 Established good rapport 1.78 32 0.83 Exhibited strong professional interpersonal skills 1.77 31 0.88 Engendered trust 1.83 30 0.87 Devoted time to clarifying expectations 1.84 32 0.85 Cronbach’s α= .94 A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 19 score exceeding the scale midpoint (2.5). It is significant that seven items had mean scores lower than 2.0, indicating that protégés agreed or strongly agreed that the DEMP was designed with a strong quality focus. In protégés’ view, the program had excellent mechanisms for communication and focused on continuous improvement. It also satisfied the quality needs of students, empowered participants, provided overall satisfaction to protégés, and measured the quality of work outcomes against objective standards. The protégés’ high ratings on important elements of quality provide an objective assessment of how faculty-customers perceive the experience. While senior management at Purdue University Calumet and the program designers may extol the virtues of the DEMP, the critical perceptions come from the true internal customers of the program—the faculty members who participated as protégés. By insuring that programs such as the DEMP are perceived posi- tively in terms of quality, the university enhances its identity (St. Clair, 1994) and perhaps its competitive advantage. Deming (1986) has long held that the role of senior management in organizations is to focus on quality to achieve the benefits of the quality chain reaction. For a university, that reaction would be as follows: (1) to focus on teaching excellence through a highly developed faculty, (2) to satisfy their customers, both students and faculty, (3) capture market share in terms of enrollments and credit hours, (4) stay in business, and (5) provide jobs for both faculty and staff. The results associated with hypothesis 2 indicate that mentors in the DEMP provided protégés with more psychosocial support than career development support. This finding extends the conclusions of Smith, Howard, and Harrington (2005), whose work showed that mentors ranked psychosocial functions as more essential than career functions. In this study protégés reported that their mentors engendered trust, had strong professional interpersonal skills, and established good rapport, which in some cases facilitated the formation of friendships. Perhaps seasoned profes- sors, who in this study had an average of 19.1 years of teaching experience, need psychosocial support or reassurance to deal with the anxieties associated with the use of new technologies. Our assertion appears to be corroborated by the mean score in Table 3 for communication (1.73), which is necessary for good interpersonal relationships. This score indicates that protégés strongly agreed that their mentors in the DEMP had open door policies that encouraged discussion and the sharing of information. The data summarized in Table 4 reveal how protégés in the DEMP perceived mentors in terms of career development and psychosocial support. The ratings suggest that protégés received more psychosocial than career development support from their mentors. Protégés reported that mentors 20 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON established good rapport, engendered trust, shared information openly, devoted time to clarifying expectations, and exhibited strong interpersonal skills. In terms of career development, protégés reported that mentors helped them access new information, increase their relevant skills, and apply newly learned instructional design principles. Our data suggest that university faculty members need mentors who have the soft skills associated with psychosocial support more than technical expertise. Conceivably, seasoned faculty members who have already taught a number of online courses (M=1.94 courses) and who received their terminal degrees some time ago (M=16.96 years) simply need a trusting, sharing, interpersonally adept mentor to assist them through the process of learning new technologies and a new instructional mode. Implications for Professional Practice Investing in and continuing a program should not to be done on the sole belief that it will be successful. Programs need to be assessed or studied (Deming, 1986). In that way, managers, decision makers, and participants can see whether their investments of time and resources are worthwhile and should be continued and improved, or eliminated. The results of this study indicate that the DEMP is effective. This has implications for those involved in university- level programs designed to assist professors in the development of high-qual- ity distance education courses. In tight economic and recessionary times when budgets for training and faculty development are often reduced, this evidence is especially critical. Knowing that a program such as the DEMP has bottom- line benefits provides university decision makers with the information neces- sary to continue funding, and in the process, build quality faculty and online courses. Such benefits give an institution a distinct competitive advantage. A second implication of this study relates to the quality factors deemed most important to performance—in the present case—the perceptions of teaching improvement. The regression analysis showed that three elements of the Pyramid Model of QM were critical to explaining faculty perceptions of performance improvement. The fact that customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, and process orientation were the elements found to be signifi- cant in explaining teaching improvement suggests that the DEMP and similar faculty development programs should continue to emphasize those elements of quality, but not necessarily at the expense of other elements. A third implication of this study relates to the importance of focusing on the process of mentoring, which consists of both psychosocial and career development functions. When designing mentoring programs for professors and knowledge-based professionals, administrators should emphasize the psychosocial over the career development functions. Those programs should focus on specific behaviors such as the open sharing of information, establish- ment of good rapport, development of trust, use of effective interpersonal A UNIVERSITY-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION MENTORING PROGRAM 21 skills, and clarification of expectations. A process-oriented view of mentoring is consistent with the tenets of QM. Limitations This study has two potential limitations. The first relates to the fact that the survey relies on self-report measures. Even though the protégés completed their questionnaires anonymously, self-report has the potential of creating a social-desirability bias wherein participants want to respond in a way that makes them look as good as possible. Respondents may attempt to answer in a socially desirable way and occasionally under-report behaviors deemed inappropriate by researchers and over-report behaviors viewed as appropriate. The nature of the survey and its electronic administration likely prevented participants in the current study from knowing the research hypotheses or desired responses. While the possibility for this effect exists, the probability that it would impact the study’s findings is relatively low. The second limitation relates to the use of a single survey instrument, which creates the potential for common method bias. For this study, a survey was the only feasible means of efficiently collecting data from the protégés. Future research should investigate the use of other data collection methods that may include interviewing a sample of the protégé pool. This mixed method approach would help strengthen the findings and partially rule out the validity threats of mono-method bias observed in organizational behavior research (Donaldson & Grant-Vallone, 2002). Author Note The authors are indebted to Saul Lerner and Suzanne Degges-White for their thought- ful contributions to this article. Notes on Contributors Dr Casimir Barczyk is a Professor of Management in the School of Management at Purdue University Calumet. His research interests include distance education, quality management, human resources, academic integrity, and organizational symbolism. He publishes in management, education, and case-writing journals. He presents papers at national and international conferences and served numerous terms as President of the Mountain Plains Management Association. Dr Janet Buckenmeyer is an Associate Professor and Chair of Instructional Technology graduate program in the School of Education at Purdue University Calumet. Her research interests include distance education and the changes faculty members make in order to teach online successfully. She publishes and presents nationally and inter- nationally about various topics, with a primary focus on instructional technology and design. 22 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON Dr Lori Feldman is Professor of Marketing and Department Head for Marketing, Human Resources and Management in the School of Management at Purdue University Calumet. Her research interests include service quality issues in academic settings particularly in online teaching environments. 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Seidman, E. (1985). In the words of faculty: Perspectives on improving teaching and educational quality in community colleges. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Smith, W.J., Howard, J.T., & Harrington, K.V. (2005). Essential formal mentor char- acteristics and functions in governmental and non-governmental organizations from the program administrator’s and the mentor’s perspective. Public Personnel Management, 34(1), 31–58. 24 BARCZYK, BUCKENMEYER, FELDMAN, AND HIXON St. Clair, I.L. (1994). Faculty-to-faculty mentoring in the community college: An instructional component of faculty development. Community College Review, 22(3), 23–35. Summers, D.C.S. (2009). Quality management: Creating and sustaining organiza- tional effectiveness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Taylor, L. (1997). Mentoring: A strategy for success. Wright State University Center for Teaching and Learning, 5(5), 1–3. Valeau, E.J., & Boggs, G.R. (2004). 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work_appkfrmbfnc67k46kyp74gqk2y	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 443 382 IR 020 083 AUTHOR Kennedy, Cathleen TITLE Implications for New Pedagogy in Higher Education: Can Online Technology Enhance Student Engagement & Learning? PUB DATE 2000-00-00 NOTE 7p. PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Distance Education; Educational Practices; *Educational Technology; Higher Education; Instructional Effectiveness; *Instructional Improvement; *Learning; *Online Systems; Teaching Methods IDENTIFIERS *Student Engagement ABSTRACT This paper describes the author's research on online higher education. Engagement, online technology, and learning are introduced as three components of online education. The following two research questions are presented: To what extent can we discover factors or dimensions of learning predictive of success in online courses? and To what extent can student achievement in online courses be improved through specific pedagogies used in online courses? Studies, articles, white papers, and miscellany are listed. Contains 17 references. (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Can Online Technology Enhance Student Engagement & Learning? Implications for New Pedagogy in Higher Education PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY C_Kennedy TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 00 O O N O (24 Research by Cathleen Kennedy, Ph.D. Student in Policy, Organization, Measurement & Evaluation (POME) Graduate School of Education, University of California at Berkeley Intro Theory Questions Studies Papers Bibliography Introduction In talking to colleagues about their experience teaching online courses. some interesting themes run through the conversations. First, many find that online students perform better than students taking the same course in a traditional on-campus mode from the same instructor. The second common experience is that faculty seem surprised at how well they get to know their online students. In fact, many find that they communicate directly with a higher percentage of their online students than with their on campus students. The third theme is that faculty discover their experience preparing and teaching online courses also improves what they do in the classroom; that the process of constructing an online course stimulates re-thinking of objectives and methods for the course as a whole. And, perhaps the most surprising experience online teachers share is that students who complete their courses consistently report that they would have preferred to have more face-to-face meetings with the instructor. This implies two things: Most students take online courses because their schedule forces them to, and students who stay in online courses have become engaged in the course. My research explores the "why" of these experiences, and in the process develops empirical evidence to support these anecdotal outcomes of online education. Several explanations for why online students perform better have been posed: "Online courses are easier." 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) el This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this docu- ment do not necessarily represent official NIE position or policy. "Students are graded differently in online courses." "Only mature, highly motivated students enroll in online courses." "Only teachers who like technology teach online courses. Their own bias favors students who also like to use technology." Is any of this true? Does it matter? What can be learned by studying current practices in online education and their impact on student learning? Emergence of a Theory I believe there are three pieces to this puzzle: engagement, online technology, and learning. Engagement. Given two students with similar academic profiles and interest in the subject matter, the student who becomes more engaged in a course will learn more. Online technology. Students who know how to use online tools can easily follow-up on their interest and become more deeply immersed in the subject matter, and they have more opportunities to initiate communiation with their instructors. Learning. Thus, online technology, by virtue of capitalizing on and enhancing student engagement, can improve learning. Online technologies facilitate student exploration of a subject and facilitate communication with teachers and with other students. This allows students to direct and manage their own study of a subject beyond the boundaries of the classroom, and stimulates engagement by turning interest into action. Of course, motivated students could always do more, even before online technologies became available. And, students can still go to the library, meet with one another in study groups, and meet with their teachers during office hours. But online technologies can make this easier by allowing asynchronous and place-independent communication. Longitudinal studies of postsecondary students suggest that a key factor in student engagement is communication with teachers outside of the classroom (Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991). With online technology, students and teachers can either meet at the same time, from different places, or they can exchange information and ideas in a common area, but participate at different times. The first technique makes use of online "chat" capabilites, while the latter uses online "conferences" or "forums." Even making use of a simpler technology, email, means that students and teachers can send and receive messages at all hours of the day and night without worrying about waking someone up or wondering if the answering machine recorded their message. Research further suggests that certain classroom practices, combined with teacher-availability, encourage student-teacher communication (Wilson and Gaff, 1975). Inviting students to help make class plans or policy , providing opportunities for student 3 evaluation of the course, and encouraging student discussion send a clear message to students that their opinions matter. Discussing points of view other than yours, relating coursework to other disciplines, and discussing current events that relate to the subject give additional clues that you are interested in perspectives other than your own. And, giving essay exams and term papers instead of objective exams, and grading objectively without a curve provide further evidence to students that they are perceived as individuals and not interchangeable "student-units." This provides an important clue to why online education can be successful for students. The very nature of individual emails and requiring extensive student participation in an online course reinforces the message that the individual student is important to the instructor. This factor may have critical significance to student engagement and success in a course. We are compelled to ask whether these kinds of communication are the same as face-to-face interactions. Obviously, they are not. But are they worse, or even harmful? This is an involved question, but a general response is that they are probably not harmful when used in addition to in-person communication. Some studies have shown, however, that relying on "faceless" communication over an extended period of time exacerbates problems among individuals who live in relative isolation. We conjecture, then, that it's safe to use online communication extensively if an individual leads a lifestyle with regular personal interactions at work or within the community. Research Questions 1. To what extent can we discover factors or dimensions of learning predictive of success in online courses? 2. To what extent can student achievement in online courses be improved through specific pedagogies used in online courses? Currently, my research is focusing on the multidimensional nature of student learning; the interactions between ability, motivation, personality, and learning style, and their impact on learning. Collectively, I refer to these as factors or dimensions of Cognitive Engagement. I am exploring the differences between on-campus and online student profiles and predictors for success. The most important expected outcome of this research is discovery of an approach to advising students of effective online learning strategies based on their specific needs as defined by these factors in the context of a specific discipline. At the moment, this research is cross-sectional. I'm looking at today's online students, who I expect to find differ from today's on-campus students in several areas. This concept is consistent with several studies of the differences between distance and traditional students (Biner, 1995; Cheng, 1995; Fjortoft, 1996). Currently, many speculate that online students are highly motivated 4 BEST COPY AVAILABLE and capable learners, and attribute their success in online courses to these personal qualities rather than excellent online course design. I believe, however, that over time online student characteristics will converge with on-campus students as online technologies become ubiquitous and todays K-12 students, who are introduced to online technologies as early as the primary grades, enter higher education. When that happens, we may not find the special motivational and personality traits in online students sprruing them to success. We will need to rely more on sound pedagogy in the design and delivery of online courses and helping students select learning strategies most appropriate to their individual circumstances. Studies Measuring Information Literacy: The "Tool Literacy" Variable (1998) Evaluation of Online Curriculum at College of San Mateo (1998) Study of Student Engagement and Learning (in progress) Measuring Student Engagement: Validation Challenges Part 1(1999) Articles, White Papers, Miscellany "Why I Teach" Personal Statement for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "1998 - 99 Outstanding U.S. Community College Professor of the Year" Award, May 1998. Online Education: Finding Common Ground, October 1998. Conflicting Purposes of Education: Will Improving Access to Higher Education Undermine Quality?, October 1998. Online Education: Looking at the Dangers, November 1998 Turning the Tables: Engaging Teachers in the Learning Process, November 1998 Online Education: How Does It Benefit Students? , December 1998 Online Education: Pathway or Barrier to Academic Equity?, December 1998 Community College Teaching: Divining the Future from the Past Talk given to the Plenary Session of the Academic Senate of the California Community Colleges, April 1999 Finding Your Path -- Commencement Address to the Graduating BEST COPY AVAILABLE 5 Class of College of San Mateo, June 2, 1999 My Top 10 Surprises About Teaching SMCCCD Opening Day Keynote Address, August 17, 1999. Reinventing Online Education From A Social Context Talk delivered at the "Online Education in California Community Colleges: Faculty Perspectives" Conference at College of San Mateo, October 9, 1999. Bibliography Andre, R. & Frost, P. J. editors (1997)Researchers Hooked on Teaching: Noted Scholars Discuss the Synergies of Teaching and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Biner, P., Bink, M., Huffman, M., Dean, R. (1995) "Personality Characteristics Differentiating and Predicting the Achievement of Televised-Course Students and Traditional-Course Students", The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 9 No. 2, 46-60. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1952), Committees of Educational Inquiry Inaugural Address, Address at First Conference in Skytop, Pennsylvania. Cheng, H., Lehman, J., Armstrong, P. (1995) "Comparison of Performance and Attitude in Traditional and Computer Conferencing Classes", The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 10 No. 5, 51-64. Cross, K. P. & Steadman, M. H. (1996) Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Flagg, B. N. (1.990) Formative Evaluation for Educational Technologies, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. Fjortoft, N. (1996) "Persistence in a Distance Learning Program: A Case in Pharmaceutical Education",The American Journal of Distance Education; Vol. 10 No. 3, 49-59. Hildebrand, M., Wilson, R. C., Dienst, E. R. (1971) Evaluating University Teaching Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, Berkeley, CA. 6 Kells, H. R. & Van Vught, F. A. editors (1988) Self-regulation, Self study and Prograin. Review in Higher Education, papers presented at the Ninth European Forum on the Association for Institution Research (AIR), August, 1987 at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. McClelland, D. C. & Steele, R. S. editors (1973)Human Motivation: A Book of Readings General Learning Press, Morristown, NJ. Pace, C. R. (1979) Measuring Outcomes of College, Jossey -Bass, San Francisco, CA. Pascarella, E. T., Terenzini, P. T., (1991)F/ow College Affects Student, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Peters, R. S. (1981) Essays on Educators, George Allen & Unwin, Boston, MA. Sacks, P. (1996) Generation X Goes to College, Open Court, Chicago, IL. U.S. DOE (1995) Realizing the Potential: Improving Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessmen4 National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, Washington, DC. Wilson, Gaff, J. G., Dienst, E. R., Wood, L., Bavry, J. L. (1975) College Professors and Their Impact on Students John Wiley & Sons, NY, NY. Zwerling, L. S. (1976), Second Best, McGraw-Hill, San Francisco, CA. Each Study and Paper also includes a bibliography 7 Jun-29-00 10:48A ThIJ L-tb AR r14.;: V.J. isrgrat IffICI le V/ 1LUILII#C14111Mre Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) National Library of Education (NLE) bdUcational Resources Information Center (LRIc;) tA '41On'tt- *;kV ..; 00" REPRODUCTION RELEASE I. DOCUr- WI* IDENTIFICATION: (Specific Document) RIC 1 Title: Iv pit& ez-k Deis f- A te4) Pe cht lAjAer- AUthOr(S): ea4-Alten A. kennedi Corporate free: Publication Date: II. REPF DUCTION RELEASE: In order ;ssemlnate es widely as possible timely and significant materials of interest to the educational community, documents announced in the monthly abs t Journal of the ERIC system, Resources In Education (RIE), ere usually made available to users in microfiche, reproduced paper copy. and electron Ttedla, and sold through Me ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). Credit is given to the source of each document, and, if iapDavc.f;:w :ego to giar;te4, tria; ric.ticea i5 axed iG file down-vent. If permit is granted to reproduce end disseminate the identified document, please CHECK ONE of the following three options and sign et the bottom of the page. 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work_anmlx5a3dvbkhn6hlomwpkakua	----	http://rer.aera.net Review of Educational Research DOI: 10.3102/00346543074003379 2004; 74; 379 REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Lori Wozney, Peter Andrew Wallet, Manon Fiset and Binru Huang Robert M. Bernard, Philip C. Abrami, Yiping Lou, Evgueni Borokhovski, Anne Wade, Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? A http://rer.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/74/3/379 The online version of this article can be found at: Published on behalf of http://www.aera.net By http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at:Review of Educational Research Additional services and information for http://rer.aera.net/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://rer.aera.net/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.aera.net/reprintsReprints: http://www.aera.net/permissionsPermissions: September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://www.aera.net http://rer.aera.net/cgi/alerts http://rer.aera.net/subscriptions http://www.aera.net/reprints http://www.aera.net/permissions http://rer.sagepub.com 379 Review of Educational Research Fall 2004, Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 379–439 How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature Robert M. Bernard and Philip C. Abrami Concordia University Yiping Lou Louisiana State University Evgueni Borokhovski, Anne Wade, Lori Wozney, Peter Andrew Wallet, and Manon Fiset Concordia University Binru Huang Louisiana State University A meta-analysis of the comparative distance education (DE) literature between 1985 and 2002 was conducted. In total, 232 studies containing 688 indepen- dent achievement, attitude, and retention outcomes were analyzed. Overall results indicated effect sizes of essentially zero on all three measures and wide variability. This suggests that many applications of DE outperform their class- room counterparts and that many perform more poorly. Dividing achievement outcomes into synchronous and asynchronous forms of DE produced a some- what different impression. In general, mean achievement effect sizes for syn- chronous applications favored classroom instruction, while effect sizes for asynchronous applications favored DE. However, significant heterogeneity remained in each subset. KEYWORDS: classroom instruction, comparative studies, distance education, meta- analysis, research methodology. In the same way that transitions between technological epochs often breed tran- sitional names that are shed as the new technology becomes established (e.g., the automobile was called the “horseless carriage” and the railroad train was called an “iron horse”), research in new applications of technology in education has initially focused on comparisons with more established instructional applications, such as classroom instruction. In the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of television as a new medium of instruction initiated a flurry of research that compared it with “traditional” classroom instruction. Similarly, various forms of computer-based instruction (1970s and 1980s), multimedia (1980s and 1990s), teleconferencing (1990s), and distance education (DE) (spanning all of these decades) have been investigated from a comparative perspective in an attempt to judge their relative effectiveness. It is arguably the case that these comparisons are necessary for policymakers, designers, researchers, and adopters to be certain of the relative September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 380 value of innovation. Questions about relative effectiveness are important, both in the early stages of development and as a field matures, to summarize the nature and extent of the impact on important outcomes, giving credibility to change and help- ing to focus it. The present study dealt specifically with comparative studies of DE. Keegan’s (1996) definition of DE is perhaps the most commonly cited in the literature and involves five qualities that distinguish it from other forms of instruction: (a) the quasi- permanent separation of teacher and learner, (b) the influence of an educational orga- nization in planning, preparation, and provision of student support, (c) the use of technical media, (d) the provision of two-way communication, and (e) the quasi- permanent absence of learning groups. This latter element has been debated in the literature (Garrison & Shale, 1987; Verduin & Clark, 1991) because it seemingly excludes many applications of DE based on teleconferencing technologies that are group based. Some argue that when DE simply re-creates the conditions of a tradi- tional classroom, it misses the point because DE of this type does not support the “anytime, anyplace” objective of access to education for students who cannot be in a particular place at a particular time. However, synchronous DE does fall within the purview of current practices and therefore qualifies for consideration. To Keegan’s definition, Rekkedal and Qvist-Eriksen (2003, p. 1) add the following adjustments to accommodate “e-learning”: • the use of computers and computer networks to unite teacher and learners and carry the content of the course • the provision of two-way communication via computer networks so that the student may benefit from or even initiate dialogue (this distinguishes it from other uses of technology in education) In characterizing DE, Keegan also distinguishes between “distance teaching” and “distance learning.” It is a fair distinction that applies to all organized educational events. Since learning does not always follow from teaching, it is also a useful way of discussing the elements—teaching and learning—that constitute a total educa- tional setting. While Keegan does not go on to explain, specifically, how these dif- fer in practice, it can be assumed that teaching designates activities in which teachers engage (e.g., lecturing, questioning, providing feedback), while learning designates activities in which students engage (e.g., taking notes, studying, reviewing, revising). The media used in DE have undergone remarkable changes over the years. Tay- lor (2001) characterizes five generations of DE, largely defined with regard to the media and thereby the range of instructional options available at the time of their prevalence. The progression that Taylor describes moves along a rough continuum of increased flexibility, interactivity, delivery of materials, and access beginning in the early years of DE, when it was called correspondence education (i.e., the media were print and the post office), through broadcast radio and television and on to cur- rent manifestations of interactive multimedia, the Internet, access to Web-based resources, computer-mediated communication (CMC), and, most recently, campus portals providing access to the complete range of university services and facilities at a distance. Across the history of DE research, most of these media have been implicated in DE studies in which comparisons have been made to what is often referred to as “traditional classroom-based instruction” or “face-to-face” instruc- tion. This literature was the focus of the present meta-analysis. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 381 Instruction, Media, and DE Comparison Studies Clark (1983, 1994) rightly criticized early media comparison studies on a vari- ety of grounds, the most important of which is that the medium under investiga- tion, the instructional method that is inextricably tied to it, and the content of instruction together form a confound that renders their relative contributions to achieving instructional goals impossible to untangle. Clark goes on to argue that the instructional method is the “active ingredient,” not the medium—the medium is simply a neutral carrier of content and of method. In essence, he argues that any medium, appropriately applied, can fulfill the conditions for quality instruction, and so cost and access should form the decision criteria for media selection. Effec- tively, these arguments suggest that media serve a transparent purpose in DE. Several notable rebuttals of Clark’s position have followed (Kozma, 1994; Morrison, 1994; Tennyson, 1994; Ullmer, 1994). Kozma argued that Clark’s orig- inal assessment was based on “old non-interactive technologies” that simply car- ried method and content, wherein a distinction between these elements could be clearly drawn. More recent media uses, he added, involve highly interactive sets of events that occur between learners and teachers, among learners (e.g., collab- orative learning), often within a constructivist framework, and even between learners and nonhuman agents or tools, so a consideration of discrete variables no longer makes sense. The distinction here seems to be “media to support teaching” and “media to support learning,” which is completely in line with Keegan’s ref- erence to distance teaching and distance learning. Cobb (1997) added an interesting wrinkle to the debate. He argued that under cer- tain circumstances, the efficiency of a medium or symbol system can be judged by how much of the learner’s cognitive work it performs. By this logic, some media, then, have advantages over other media, since it is “easier” to learn some things with certain media than with others. The way to advance media design, according to Cobb, “is to model learner and medium as distributed information systems, with principled, empirically determined distributions of information storage and processing over the course of learning” (p. 33). According to this argument, the medium becomes the tool of the learner’s cognitive engagement and not simply an independent and neu- tral means for delivering content. It is what the learner does with a medium that counts, not so much what the teacher does. These arguments suggest that media are more than just transparent, they are also transformative. Why Do Comparative DE Studies? One of the differences between DE and media comparison studies is that DE is not a medium of instruction; rather, it depends entirely on the availability of media for delivery and communication (Keegan, 1996). DE can be noninteractive or highly interactive and may, in fact, encompass one or many media types (e.g., print, video, computer-based simulations, and computer conferencing) in the service of a wide range of instructional objectives. In the same way, classroom instruction may include a wide mix of media forms. So, in a well-conceived and executed comparative study in which all of these aspects are present in both conditions, differences may relate more to the proximity of learner and teacher, one of Keegan’s defining characteris- tics of DE, and differential means through which interaction and learner engagement can occur. Synchronicity and asynchronicity, as well as the attendant issues of September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 382 instructional design, student motivation, feedback and encouragement, direct and timely communication, and perceptions of isolation, might then form the major dis- tinguishing features of DE and classroom instruction. Shale (1990) comments: In sum, DE ought to be regarded as education at a distance. All of what constitutes the process of education when teacher and student are able to meet face-to-face also constitutes the process of education when teacher and student are physically separated. (p. 334) This, in turn, suggests that “good” DE applications and “good” classroom instruc- tion should be, in principle, relatively equal to one another, regardless of the media used, especially if a medium is used simply for the delivery of content. However, when the medium is placed in the hands of learners to make learning more con- structive or more efficient, as suggested by Kozma and Cobb, the balance of effect may shift. In fact, in DE, media may transform the learning experience in ways that are unanticipated and not regularly available in face-to-face instructional sit- uations. For example, the use of computer-mediated communication means that students must use written forms of expression to interact with one another in artic- ulating and developing ideas, arguing contrasting viewpoints, refining opinions, settling disputes, and so on (Abrami & Bures, 1996). This use of written language and peer interaction may result in increased reflection (Hawkes, 2001) and the development of better writing skills (Winkelmann, 1995). Higher quality perfor- mance in terms of solving complex problems may develop through peer modeling and mentoring (Lou, 2004; Lou, Dedic, & Rosenfield, 2003; Lou & MacGregor, 2002). The critical thinking literature goes so far as to suggest that activity of this sort can promote the development of critical thinking skills (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001; McKnight, 2001). Is it necessary or even desirable, then, to continue to conduct studies that directly compare DE with classroom teaching? Clark (2000), by exclusion, claims that it is not: “All evaluations should explicitly investigate the relative benefits of two different but compatible types of DE technologies found in every DE pro- gram” (p. 4). By contrast, Smith and Dillon (1999) argue that comparative studies are still useful, but only when they are done in light of a full analysis of media attributes and their hypothesized effects on learning, and when these same attri- butes are present and clearly articulated in the comparison conditions. In the eyes of Smith and Dillon, it is only under these circumstances that comparative studies can push forward our understanding of the features of DE and classroom instruc- tion that make them similar or different. Unfortunately, as Smith and Dillon point out, this level of analysis and clear accounting of the similarities and differences between treatment and control is not often reported in the literature, and so it is difficult to determine the existence of confounds across treatments that would ren- der such studies uninterpretable. There may be a more practical reason for assessing the effectiveness of DE in comparison with its classroom alternatives. There was a time when DE was regarded simply as a reasonable alternative to campus-based education, primarily for students who had restricted access to campuses because of geography, time constraints, dis- abilities, or other circumstances. And by virtue of the limitations of the communica- tion facilities that existed at that time (e.g., mail, telephone, television coverage), DE itself tended to be restricted by geographical boundaries (e.g., for many years the September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 383 United Kingdom Open University was available only to students in Britain). How- ever, the reality of “learn anywhere, anytime,” promulgated largely by the commu- nication and technological resources offered by the Internet and broadband Internet service providers, has set traditional educational institutions into intense competition for the worldwide market of “online learners.” So it is arguable that finding answers to the question that has guided much of the comparative research on DE in the past— Is distance learning as effective as classroom learning?—has become even more pressing. Should educational institutions continue to develop and market Internet learning opportunities without knowing whether they will be as effective as their classroom-based equivalents or, in the worse case, whether they will be effective at all? According to long-standing instructional design thinking, it is not enough to develop a technology-based course simply because the technology of delivery exists, and yet the reverse of this very thinking seems to prevail in the rush to get courses and even whole degree programs online. Beyond simply representing “proof of wor- thiness,” well-designed studies can suggest to administrators and policymakers not only whether DE is a worthwhile alternative but also in which content domains, with which learners, under what pedagogical circumstances, and with which mix of media the transformation of courses and programs to DE is justified. In fact, it is not unrea- sonable to suggest that such studies might be conducted under “local circumstances” for the primary purpose of making decisions that affect institutional growth on a particular campus. Evidence of Effectiveness The answer to the DE effectiveness question, or any research question for that matter, cannot be found in a single study. It is only through careful reviews of the general state of affairs in a research literature that large questions can be addressed and the quality of the research itself and the veracity of its findings can be assessed. There have been many attempts to summarize the comparative DE research lit- erature. The most comprehensive, but least assiduous, is Russell’s (1999) collec- tion of 355 “no significant difference” studies. On the basis of compiling evidence in the form of fragmented annotations (e.g., “. . . no significant difference was found . . .”) of all of the studies that could be located and contrasting this evidence with the much smaller number of “significant difference studies” (which could be either positive or negative), Russell declared that there is no compelling evidence to refute Clark’s original 1983 claim that a delivery medium contributes little if anything to the outcomes of planned instruction and that, by extension, there is no advantage in favor of technology-delivered DE. But there are several problems with Russell’s approach. First, not all studies are of equal quality and rigor, and to include them all, without qualification or description, renders conclusions and generalizations suspicious at best. Second, an accepted null hypothesis does not deny the possibility that unsampled differences exist in the population; it means only that they do not exist in the sample being studied. This is particularly true in small-sample studies wherein the power to reject the null hypothesis (and thus the risk of making Type II errors) is high. Third, the different sample sizes of indi- vidual studies make it impossible to aggregate the results of different studies solely on the basis of their test statistics. Thus, Russell’s work represents neither a sufficient overall test of the hypothesis of no difference nor an estimate of the magnitude of effects attributable to DE. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 384 Another widely cited report (Phipps & Merisotis, 1999), prepared for the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association and titled What’s the Difference? A Review of Contemporary Research on the Effec- tiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education, may contain a level of bias similar to that in Russell’s work, but for a different reason. In the words of the authors, “While this review of original research does not encompass every study published since 1990, it does capture the most important and salient of these works” (p. 154). In fact, just over 40 empirical investigations are cited to illus- trate specific points made by the authors. The problem is, how can we judge importance or salience without carefully crafted inclusion and exclusion crite- ria? The bias that is risked, then, is one of selecting research, even unconsciously, to make a point rather than accurately characterizing the state of the research lit- erature around a given question. While one of the findings of the report may gen- erally be true—that the literature lacks rigor of methodology and reporting—the finding of the “questionable effectiveness of DE” based on a select number of studies is no more credible than Russell’s claim of nonsignificance based on everything that has ever been published. Somewhere between these extremes resides evidence that can be taken as more representative of the true state of affairs in the population. In addition to these reports, there have been a number of more or less exten- sive narrative reviews of research (e.g., Berge & Mrozowski, 2001; Jung & Rha, 2000; Moore & Thompson, 1990; Saba, 2000; Schlosser & Anderson, 1994). This type of research has long been known for its subjectivity, potential bias, and inability to answer questions about magnitudes of effects. Meta-analysis or quantitative synthesis, developed by Gene Glass and his asso- ciates (Glass, McGaw, & Smith, 1981), represents an alternative to the selectivity of narrative reviews and the problem of conclusions based on test statistics from studies with different sample sizes. Meta-analysis makes it possible to combine studies with different sample sizes by extracting an effect size from all studies. Cohen’s d is a sample-size-based index of standardized differences between a treatment and control group that can be averaged in a way that test statistics can- not. Refinements made by Hedges and Olkins (1985) further reduced the bias resulting from differential sample sizes among studies. Thus, a meta-analysis is an approach to estimating how much one treatment differs from another, over a large set of similar studies, along with the associated variability. An additional advan- tage of meta-analysis is that moderator variables can be investigated to explore more detailed relationships that may exist in the data. A careful analysis of the accumulated evidence on DE studies can allow us to estimate the mean effect size and variability in the population and to explore what might be responsible for variability in findings across media, instructional design, course features, students, settings, and so forth. Research methodology can also be investigated, thereby shedding light on some of the issues of media, method, and experimental confounds pointed out by Clark and others. At the same time, failure to reach closure on these issues exposes the limitations in the existing research base in terms of both quantity and quality, indicating directions for further inquiry. In summary, meta-analysis has the following advantages: (a) It answers ques- tions about sizes of effects; (b) it allows systematic exploration of sources of vari- ability in effect sizes; (c) it allows for control over internal validity by focusing on September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 385 comparison studies versus one-shot case studies; (d) it maximizes external valid- ity or generalizability by addressing a large collection of studies; (e) it improves statistical power when a large number of studies are analyzed; (f) it uses the stu- dent as the unit of analysis, not the study (large sample studies have higher weights); (g) it allows new studies to be added as they become available or studies to be deleted as they are judged to be anomalous; (h) it allows new study features and outcomes to be added to future analyses as new directions in primary research emerge; (i) it allows analysis and reanalysis of parts of the data set for special pur- poses (e.g., military studies, synchronous versus asynchronous instruction, Web- based instruction); and (j) it allows comment on what we know and what we need to know (Abrami, Cohen, & d’Apollonia, 1988; Bernard & Naidu, 1990). Five quantitative syntheses specifically related to DE and its correlates have been published (Allen, Bourhis, Burrell, & Mabry, 2002; Cavanaugh, 2001; Machtmes & Asher, 2000; Shachar & Neumann, 2003; Ungerleider & Burns, 2003). In the most recent meta-analysis, Shachar and Neumann reviewed 86 studies, dated between 1990 and 2002, and found an effect size for student achievement of 0.37, which, if it holds up, belies the general impression offered by other studies that DE and classroom instruction are relatively equal. In another recent study, Ungerleider and Burns conducted a systematic review for the Council of Minis- ters of Education of Canada including a quantitative meta-analysis of the litera- ture on networked and online learning (i.e., not specifically DE). They found poor methodological quality, to the extent that only 12 achievement and 4 satisfaction outcomes were analyzed. They also found an overall effect size of zero for achievement and an effect size of −0.509 for satisfaction. Both findings were sig- nificantly heterogeneous. This provides an example of two credible works offer- ing conflicting evidence as to the state of comparative studies. Allen et al. (2002) summarized 25 empirical studies in which DE and class- room conditions were compared on the basis of measures of student satisfaction. Studies were excluded from consideration if they did not contain a comparison group and did not report sufficient statistical information from which effect sizes could be calculated. The results revealed a slight correlation (r = .031, k = 25, N = 4,702; significantly heterogeneous sample) favoring classroom instruction. When three outliers were removed from the analysis, the correlation coefficient increased to .090, and the homogeneity assumption was satisfied. Virtually no effects were found for “channel of communication” (video, audio, or written) or its interaction with “availability of interaction.” This meta-analysis was limited in that it investigated only one outcome measure, student satisfaction, arguably one of the least important indicators of effectiveness, and its sample size and range of coded moderator variables yielded little more than basic information related to the question of DE effectiveness. The Cavanaugh (2001) meta-analysis examined interactive (i.e., videoconferenc- ing and telecommunications) DE technologies in K–12 learning in 19 experimental and quasi-experimental studies on the basis of student achievement. Studies were selected on the following bases: (a) They included a focus on interactive DE tech- nology; (b) they were published between 1980 and 1998; (c) they included quanti- tative outcomes from which effect sizes could be extracted; and (d) they were free from obvious methodological flaws. In 19 studies (N = 929) that met these criteria, results indicated an overall effect size (i.e., weighted mean difference) of 0.015 in September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 386 favor of DE conditions for a significantly heterogeneous sample. This effect size was considered to be not significant. Subsequent investigation of moderator vari- ables revealed no additional findings of consequence. This study was limited in its purview to K–12 courses, generalizing to what is perhaps the least developed “mar- ket” for DE. The fourth meta-analysis, performed by Machtmes and Asher (2000), com- pared live or preproduced adult telecourses with their classroom equivalents on measures of classroom achievement in either experimental or quasi-experimental designs. Of 30 studies identified, 19 dated between 1943 and 1997 were coded for effect sizes and study features. The overall weighted effect size for these com- parisons was −0.0093 (not significant; range: −0.005 to 1.50). The assumption of homogeneity of effect size was violated, and this was attributed to differences in learners’ levels of education and differences in technology over the period of time under consideration. Three study features were found to affect student achieve- ment: type of interaction available, type of course, and type of remote site. In the literature of DE comparison reviews, we find only fragmented and par- tial attempts to address the myriad of questions that might be answerable from the primary literature; we also find great variability among the findings but general agreement concerning the poor quality of the literature. In this era of proliferation of various technology-mediated forms of DE, it is time for a comprehensive review of the empirical literature to assess the quality of the DE research literature sys- tematically, to attempt to answer questions relating to the effectiveness of DE, and to suggest directions for future practice and research. Synchronous and Asynchronous DE In the age of the Internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC), there is a tendency to think of DE in terms of “anywhere, anytime education.” DE of this type truly fits two of Keegan’s (1996) definitional criteria, “the quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learner” and “the quasi-permanent absence of learning groups.” However, much of what is called DE does not fit either of these two cri- teria, rendering it DE that is group based and time and place dependent. This form of DE, which we will call synchronous DE, is not so very different from early applications of distributed education via closed-circuit television on university campuses (e.g., Pennsylvania State University) that began in the late 1940s. The primary purpose of this movement in the United States was to economize on teach- ing resources and subject matter expertise by distributing live lectures and, later, mediated questioning and discussion, to many “television classrooms” or remote sites across a university campus or other satellite locales. Many studies of this form of instruction produced “no significant difference” between the live classroom and the remote site (e.g., Carpenter & Greenhill, 1955, 1958). The term distance education became attached to this form of instruction as the availability and reliability of videoconferencing and interactive television began to emerge in the mid-1980s. The premise, however, remains the same: two or more classes in different locations connected via some form of telecommunication tech- nology and directed by one or more teachers. According to Mottet (1998) and Ostendorf (1997), this form of “emulated traditional classroom instruction” is the fastest growing form of DE in U.S. universities, and so it is important for us to know how it affects learners who are involved in it. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 387 Contrasted with this “group-based” form of instruction is “individually based” DE, in which students in remote locations work independently or in asynchronous groups, usually with the support of an instructor or tutor. We call this asynchronous because DE students are not synchronized with classroom students and because communication is largely asynchronous, by e-mail or through CMC software. Chat rooms and the like offer an element of synchronicity, of course, but this is usually an optional feature of the instructional setting. Asynchronous DE has its roots in correspondence education, wherein learners were truly independent, connected to an instructor or tutor by the postal system; communication was truly asynchronous because of postal delays. Because of the differences in synchronous and asyn- chronous DE just noted, we decided to examine these two patterns undivided as well as divided. In fact, this distinction formed a natural division around which the majority of the analyses revolved. For some, the key definitional feature of DE is the physical separation of learn- ers in space and time. For others, the physical separation in space is only a suffi- cient condition for DE. In the former definition, asynchronous communication is the norm. In the latter definition, synchronous communication is the norm. We take no position on which of these definitions is correct, but note that there are numerous instances in the literature in which both synchronous and asyn- chronous forms of communication are available to the learner. We have included both types in our review to examine how synchronicity and asynchronicity affect learning. When a choice in instructional design exists, knowing the influence of these patterns may guide the design. When there is no choice in design and stu- dents must learn asynchronously, separated in both space and time, it may be nec- essary to develop new instructional resources as alternative supports for student learning needs. There are, of course, hybrids of these two, referred to by some as “distributed education” (e.g., Dede, 1996). We did not attempt to separate these mixed pat- terns from those in which students truly worked independently from one another or in synchronous groups. Thus, within asynchronous studies there is an element of within-group synchronicity (i.e., DE students communicating, synchronously, among themselves), just as there is a certain degree of asynchronicity within syn- chronous studies. However, this does not affect the defining characteristics of synchronicity and asynchronicity as they are described here. Statement of the Problem The overall intention of this meta-analysis was to provide an exhaustive quan- titative synthesis of the comparative research literature on DE, from 1985 to the end of 2002, across all age groups, media types, instructional methods, and out- come measures. From this literature, we sought to answer the following questions: 1. Overall, is interactive DE as effective, in terms of student achievement, attitudes, and retention, as its classroom-based counterparts? 2. What is the nature and extent of the variability of the findings? 3. How do conditions of synchronicity and asynchronicity moderate the over- all results? 4. What conditions contribute to more effective DE as compared with class- room instruction? September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 388 5. To what extent do media features and pedagogical features moderate the influences of DE on student learning? 6. What is the methodological state of the literature? 7. What are important implications for practice and future directions for research? Method This meta-analysis was a quantitative synthesis of empirical studies conducted since 1985 that compared the effects of DE and traditional classroom-based instruc- tion on student achievement, attitude, and retention (i.e., opposite of dropout). The year 1985 was chosen as a cutoff date because electronically mediated, interactive DE became widely available around that time. The procedures employed in con- ducting this quantitative synthesis are described subsequently under the following subheadings: working definition of DE, inclusion/exclusion criteria, data sources and search strategies, outcomes of the searches, outcome measures and effect size extraction, study feature coding, and data analysis. (See Appendix A for a descrip- tion of the variables and study features used in the final coding.) Working Definition of DE Our working definition of DE builds on Nipper’s (1989) model of “third- generation distance learning,” as well as Keegan’s (1996) synthesis of recent def- initions. Linked historically to developments in technology, first-generation DE refers to the early days of print-based correspondence study. Characterized by the establishment of the Open University in 1969, second-generation DE refers to the period when print materials were integrated with broadcast TV and radio, audio- and videocassettes, and increased student support. Third-generation DE was her- alded by the invention of Hypertext and the rise in the use of teleconferencing (i.e., audio and video). To this, Taylor (2001) adds the “fourth generation,” char- acterized by flexible learning (e.g., CMC, Internet-accessible courses), and the “fifth generation” (e.g., online interactive multimedia, Internet-based access to Web resources). Generations 3, 4, and 5 represent moves away from directed and noninteractive courses to those characterized by a high degree of learner control and two-way communication, as well as group-oriented processes and greater flexibility in learning. With new communication technologies in hand and renewed interest in the convergence of DE and traditional education, this is an appropriate time to review the research on third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation DE. Our defi- nition of DE for the inclusion of studies is thus as follows: • Semipermanent separation (place and/or time) of learner and instructor during planned learning events. • Presence of planning and preparation of learning materials, student sup- port services, and final recognition of course completion by an educational organization. • Provision of two-way media to facilitate dialogue and interaction between students and the instructor and among students. Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria To be included in this meta-analysis, each study had to meet the following criteria: September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 389 1. It had to involve an empirical comparison of DE, as defined in this meta- analysis (including satellite/TV/radio broadcast + telephone/e-mail, e-mail- based correspondence, text-based correspondence + telephone, web/audio/ video-based two-way telecommunication), with face-to-face classroom instruction (including lectures, seminars, tutorials, and laboratory ses- sions). Studies comparing DE with national standards or norms, rather than a control condition, were excluded. 2. It had to involve “distance from instructor” as a primary condition of the DE condition. DE with some face-to-face meetings (less than 50%) was included. However, studies in which electronic media were used to supplement regu- lar face-to-face classes with the teacher physically present were excluded. 3. It had to report measured outcomes for both experimental and control groups. Studies with insufficient data for effect size calculations (e.g., with means but no standard deviations, inferential statistics, or sample size) were excluded. 4. It had to be publicly available or archived. 5. It had to include at least one achievement, attitude, or retention outcome measure. 6. It had to include an identifiable level of learner. All levels of learners from kindergarteners to adults, whether involved in informal schooling or pro- fessional training, were admissible. 7. It had to be published or presented no earlier than 1985 and no later than December of 2002. 8. It had to include outcome measures that were the same or comparable. If the study explicitly indicated that different exams were used for the experimental and control groups, the study was excluded. 9. It had to include outcome measures that reflected individual courses rather than entire programs. Thus, programs composed of many different courses, in which no opportunity existed to analyze conditions and corresponding outcomes for individual treatments, were excluded. 10. It had to include only the published source when data about a particular study were available from different sources (e.g., journal article and dis- sertation). Additional data from the other source were used only to make coding study features more detailed and accurate. Data Sources and Search Strategies The studies used in this meta-analysis were located through a comprehensive search of publicly available literature from 1985 through December 2002. Electronic searches were performed via the following databases: ABI/Inform, Compendex, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Canadian Research Index, Communication Abstracts, Digital Dissertations on ProQuest, Dissertation Abstracts, Education Abstracts, ERIC, PsycINFO, and Social SciSearch. Web searches were per- formed with the Google, AlltheWeb, and Teoma search engines. Manual searches were performed in ComAbstracts, Educational Technology Abstracts; in several distance learning journals, including the American Journal of Distance Education, Distance Education, the Journal of Distance Education, Open Learn- ing, and the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare; and in several conference proceedings, including the Association for the Advancement of Computing in September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 390 Education, the American Educational Research Association, the Canadian Associ- ation for Distance Education, EdMedia, E-Learn, SITE, and WebNet. In addition, the reference lists of several earlier reviews, including those of Moore and Thomp- son (1990), Russell (1999), Machtmes and Asher (2000), Cavanaugh (2001), Allen et al. (2002), and Shachar (2002), were searched for possible inclusions. Although search strategies varied depending on the tool used, generally search terms included “distance education,” “distance learning,” “open learning” or “virtual university,” and “traditional,” “lecture,” “face-to-face,” or “comparison.” Outcomes of the Searches In total, 2,262 research abstracts concerning DE and traditional classroom- based instruction were examined and 862 full-text potential items retrieved. Each of the studies retrieved was read by two researchers for possible inclusion accord- ing to the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The initial interrater agreement as to inclu- sion was 89%. Any study that was considered for exclusion by one researcher was cross-checked by another researcher. Two hundred thirty-two studies met all inclusion criteria and were included in this meta-analysis; 630 were excluded. The categories of reasons for exclusion and the numbers and percentages of excluded studies are shown in Appendix B. Outcome Measures and Effect Size Extraction Outcome measures. We chose not to develop rigid operational definitions of the outcome measures, but instead used general descriptions. Achievement outcomes were objective measures—standardized tests, researcher-made or teacher-made tests, or a combination of these—that assessed the extent to which students had achieved the instructional (i.e., learning) objectives of a course. While most mea- sured the acquisition of content knowledge, tests of comprehension and applica- tion of knowledge were also included. Attitude measures and inventories were more subjective reactions, opinions, or expressions of satisfaction or evaluations of the course as a whole, the instruc- tor, the course content, or the technology used. Some attitude measures could not be classified in these terms and were labeled “other attitudes.” Retention outcomes were measures of the number or percentage of students who remained in a course out of the total who had enrolled. When these numbers or percentages were expressed in terms of dropout, they were converted to reflect retention. Effect size extraction. Effect sizes were extracted from numerical or statistical data contained in the study. The basic index for the effect size calculation (d ) was the mean of the experimental group (DE) minus the mean of the classroom group divided by the pooled standard deviation: (1) Cohen’s d values were converted to Hedges’s g values (i.e., unbiased estimates) via Equation 2 (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 81): d Y Y s E C Pooled = − . September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 391 (2) Effect sizes from data in forms such as t tests, F tests, p levels, and frequen- cies were computed via conversion formulas provided by Glass et al. (1981) and Hedges, Shymansky, and Woodworth (1989). These effect sizes were referred to in coding as “estimated effect sizes.” The following rules governed calculation of effect sizes: • When multiple achievement data were reported (e.g., assignments, midterm and final exams, grade point averages, grade distributions), final exam scores were used in calculating effect sizes. • When there was more than one control group and groups did not differ con- siderably, the weighted average of the two conditions was used. • If only one of the control groups could be considered “purely” control (i.e., classical face-to-face instructional mode), while others involved elements of DE treatment (e.g., originating studio site), the former was used as the control group. • In studies in which there were two DE conditions and one control condition, the weighted average of the two DE conditions was used. • In studies in which instruction was simultaneously delivered to an originat- ing site and remote sites (e.g., two-way videoconferencing), the originating site was considered to be the control condition and the remote site(s) the DE condition. • For attitude inventories, we used the average of all items falling under one type of outcome (e.g., attitude toward subject matter) so that only one effect size was generated from each study for each outcome. • In the case of studies reporting only a significance level, effect sizes were estimated (e.g., t = 1.96 for α = .05). • When the direction of the effect was not available, we used an estimated effect size of zero. • When the direction was reported, a “midpoint” approach was taken to esti- mate a representative t value (i.e., midpoint between zero and the critical t value for the sample size to be significant; Sedlmeier & Gigerenzer, 1989). The unit of analysis was the independent study finding; multiple outcomes were sometimes extracted from the same study. For within-outcome types (e.g., achievement), multiple outcomes were extracted for different courses; when there were several measures for the same course, the more stable out- come (e.g., posttest instead of quizzes) was extracted. Outcomes and effect sizes from each study were extracted by two researchers, working independently, and then compared for reliability. Intercoder agreement rates were 91% for number of effect sizes extracted within studies and 96% for effect size calculations. In total, 688 independent effect sizes (i.e., 321 achieve- ment outcomes, 262 attitude outcomes, and 105 retention outcomes) were extracted. g N d≅ − −    1 3 4 9 . September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 392 Study Feature Coding Initial coding. A comprehensive codebook was initially developed on the basis of several earlier narrative reviews (e.g., Phipps & Merisotis, 1999), meta-analyses (e.g., Cavanaugh, 2001), conceptual reports (e.g., Smith & Dillon, 1999), critiques (e.g., Saba, 2000), and a review of 10 sample studies. The codebook was revised as a result of sample coding and a better understanding of the literature and the issues drawn from it. The final codebook included the following categories of study features: outcome features (e.g., outcome measure source), methodology features (e.g., instructor equivalence), course design (e.g., systematic instructional design procedures used), media and delivery (e.g., use of two-way videoconferencing), demographics (e.g., subject matter), and pedagogy (e.g., problem-based learning). Of particular interest in the analysis were the outcomes related to methodology, pedagogy, and media characteristics. Some study features were modified and others dropped (e.g., type of student learning) if there were insufficient data in the primary literature for inclusion in the meta-analysis. As mentioned earlier, the vari- ables and study features used in the final coding are described in Appendix A. In addition to these codes, elaborate operational descriptions were developed for each item and used to guide coders. Operational definitions of coding options. To operationalize the coding scheme and to make coding more concrete, we developed definitions of “more than,” “equal to,” and “less than.” “More than” was defined as 66% or more, “equal to” as 34% to 65%, and “less than” as 33% or less. This approach to coding sets up a comparison between a DE outcome and a control outcome within each coded item, allowing us to quantify certain aspects of study features (i.e., methodology, pedagogy, and media) that have heretofore been ignored or dealt with qualita- tively. Thus, we hoped that the meta-analysis would allow us to address the long- standing controversy regarding the effects of media and pedagogy. As well, this form of coding enabled us to estimate, empirically, the state of the DE research literature from a quality perspective. Each study was coded by two coders inde- pendently and compared. Their initial coding agreement was 90%. Disagreements between coders were resolved through discussion and further review of the dis- puted studies. The entire research team adjudicated some difficult cases. Synchronous and asynchronous DE. Outcomes were split, for the purposes of analysis, into synchronous and asynchronous DE on the basis of the study feature “SIMUL.” This study feature described whether the classroom and DE conditions met simultaneously with each other, linked by some form of telecommunication technology such as videoconferencing, or were separate and therefore not directly linked in any way. The term asynchronous, therefore, does not refer as much to “asynchronous communication” among instructors and/or students as it does to the fact that there was no synchronization with a classroom. As a result of this def- inition, some DE students did communicate synchronously with instructors or other students, but this was not typically the case. We did not separate conditions in which inter-DE synchronous communication occurred from those in which it did not. Outcomes for which “SIMUL” was missing were considered “unclassi- fied” and not subjected to thorough analysis (i.e., only their average effect size was calculated). September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 393 Recoding methodological study features. Thirteen coded study features relating to the methodological quality of the outcomes were recoded according to the scheme shown in Table 1. Equality between treatment and control was given a weighting of 2, and inequality was recoded as −2 to reflect this extreme discrep- ancy. The two indeterminate conditions (i.e., one group known and the other not known) were recoded to zero. We had three choices for dealing with the sub- stantial amount of missing information recorded on the coding sheets: (a) Use only available information and treat missing data as missing (this would have precluded multiple regression modeling of study features, since each case had at least one study feature missing); (b) recode missing data using a mean substitu- tion procedure under the assumption that missing data were “typical” of the aver- age for each study feature; or (c) code missing data as zero under the assumption that these data also represented indetermination. We chose the last of these three options. The coded study features were (a) type of publication, (b) type of mea- sure, (c) effect size (i.e., calculated or estimated), (d) treatment duration, (e) treat- ment time proximity, (f) instructor equivalence, (g) selection bias, (h) time-on-task equivalence, (i) material equivalence, (j) learner ability equivalence, (k) mortality, (l) class size equivalence, and (m) gender equivalence. Recoding pedagogical and media study features. To allow us to explore the vari- ability among DE outcomes using multiple regression, we recoded the pedagog- ical and media-related study features. Using a procedure similar to that used to produce the methodological study features, we recoded pedagogical and media- related study features to reflect a contrast between features favoring DE condi- tions and features favoring classroom conditions. We faced the same problem of missing data with pedagogical and media study features as we did with method- ological features. Again, we chose to code missing values to zero. Our view was that this was the most conservative approach, since it gave missing values equal weight across all of the study features (i.e., mean substitution would have given unequal weight). An additional reason for favoring this approach was that the bulk of the missing data resided on the classroom side of the scale. This is because, in general, DE conditions were described far more completely than their classroom counterparts. This was especially true for media study features, because media represent a definitional criterion of DE, whereas they are not always present in classrooms. So, in effect, many of the relationships expressed in the multiple regression analyses described subsequently were based on com- parisons between a positive value (i.e., either 1 or 2) and 0. Thus, the pedagogi- cal and media study features were recoded through the use of the weighting system, also shown in Table 1. The nine pedagogical coded study features were as follows: (a) systematic instructional design procedures used, (b) advance course information given to stu- dents, (c) opportunity for face-to-face (F2F) contact with the teacher, (d) oppor- tunity for F2F contact among student peers, (e) opportunity for mediated communication (e.g., e-mail, CMC) with the teacher, (f) opportunity for mediated communication among students, (g) student/teacher contact encouraged through activities or course design, (h) student/student contact encouraged through activi- ties or course design, and (i) use of problem-based learning. The media-related items were as follows: (a) use of two-way audio conferencing, (b) use of two-way video- September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 394 conferencing, (c) use of CMC, (d) use of e-mail, (e) use of one-way TV or video- or audiotape, (f) use of the Web, (g) use of a telephone, and (h) use of computer- based instruction. Data Analysis Aggregating effect sizes. The weighted effect sizes were aggregated to form an overall weighted mean estimate of the treatment effect (i.e., g+). Thus, more weight was given to findings that were based on larger sample sizes. The sig- nificance of the mean effect size was judged by its 95% confidence interval and a z test. A significantly positive (+) mean effect size indicates that the results favor DE conditions; a significantly negative (−) mean effect size indicates that the results favor traditional classroom-based instruction. In the case of one study with retention outcomes (Hittelman, 2001) that had extremely large sample sizes (e.g., 1,000,000+), the control sample sizes were reduced to 3,000, with the experimental group’s sample size reduced propor- tionally. The treatment k was then proportionally weighted. This procedure was used to avoid overweighting by one study. Outlier analyses were performed with the homogeneity statistic reduction method of Hedges and Olkin (1985). Testing the homogeneity assumption. In addition, Hedges and Olkin’s (1985) homogeneity procedures were employed in analyzing the effect sizes for each out- come. The statistic used, QW, represents an extremely sensitive test of the homo- geneity assumption and is evaluated via the chi-square sampling distribution. To determine whether the findings for each mean outcome shared a common effect size, we tested the set of effect sizes for homogeneity with the homogene- ity statistic QT. When all findings share the same population effect size, QT has an approximate chi-square distribution with k − 1 degrees of freedom, where k is the number of effect sizes. If the obtained QT value is larger than the critical value, the findings are determined to be significantly heterogeneous, meaning that there is more variability in the effect sizes than chance fluctuation would allow. Study feature analyses were then performed to identify potential moder- ating factors. TABLE 1 Methodological, pedagogical, and media study feature codes and the recodes assigned to them Pedagogy/ Study feature code Methodology recode media recode 1. DE more than control group −2 +2 2. DE reported/control group not reported 0 +1 3. DE equal to control group +2 0 4. Control reported/DE not reported 0 −1 5. DE less than control group −2 −2 999. Missing (no information or DE control 0 0 reported) September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 395 In the study feature analyses, each coded study feature with sufficient variabil- ity was tested through two homogeneity statistics: between-class homogeneity (QB) and within-class homogeneity (QW). QB tests for homogeneity of effect sizes across classes. It has an approximate chi-square distribution with p − 1 degrees of freedom, where p is the number of classes. If QB is greater than the critical value, this indicates a significant difference among the classes of effect sizes. QW indi- cates whether the effect sizes within each class are homogeneous. It has an approx- imate chi-square distribution with m − 1 degrees of freedom, where m is the number of effect sizes in each class. If QW is greater than the critical value, this indicates that the effect sizes within the class are heterogeneous. We conducted data analyses using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (Biostat) and SPSS (Version 11 for the Macintosh OS X). Multiple regression modeling of study features. Weighted multiple regression in SPSS was used to explore variability in effect sizes and to model the relation- ships that existed among methodology, pedagogy, and media study features. Each effect size was weighted by the inverse of its sampling variance. Equation 3 was used in calculating variance, and Equation 4 was used in calculating the weighting factor (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 174). (3) and (4) Each set of study features, methodological, pedagogical, and media, was entered into weighted multiple regression analyses separately in blocks with g as the dependent variable and Wi as the weight. Methodology, pedagogy, and media were entered in different orders to assess the relative contribution (R2 change) of each. Individual methodological, pedagogical, and media study features were then assessed to determine their individual contributions to overall variability. The individual beta value for each predictor was used in testing the significance of individual study features, and standard errors were corrected according to Equation 5 (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 174). (5) Ninety-five percent confidence intervals (CIs) were corrected according to Equation 6 (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 171). (6)CI whereAdjusted AdjustedSE= ± = ( )β σ σβ β1 96 2 . , . SE SE MS adjusted E = . Wi d = 1 2σ . σd E C E C E C n n n n d n n 2 2 2 = + + +( ) September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 396 We created the test statistic z to test the null hypothesis that β = 0 (via Equa- tion 7), and we evaluated α using t = 1.96 (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 172). (7) Results In total, 232 studies yielding 688 independent effect sizes (i.e., outcomes) were analyzed. These values were based on totals of 57,019 students (k = 321) with achievement outcomes, 35,365 students (k = 262) with attitude outcomes, and 57,916,029 students (k = 105) with retention outcomes. The sample size reported here for retention was reduced to 3,744,869 to avoid overestimation based on a California study of retention over a number of years. The procedure used in reducing these numbers is described in the section on retention outcomes. Missing Information One of the most difficult problems we encountered in this analysis was the amount of missing information in the research literature. This, of course, was not a problem in calculating effect sizes, because the availability of appropriate statistical information was a condition of inclusion. However, it was particularly acute in the coding of study features. Table 2 shows a breakdown of missing study feature data over the three outcome measures: achievement, retention, and attitude. Overall, nearly 60% of the potentially codable study features were found to be missing. It is because of this difficulty that we recommend caution in interpreting the results based on study features, including methodological quality. Had the research reports been more complete, we would have been able to offer substantially better quality advice as to what works and what does not work in DE. Achievement Outcomes Total achievement outcomes. The total number of achievement outcomes was reduced by three outliers, two that exceeded ±3.0 standard deviations from the mean weighted effect size and one whose QW value was extreme (i.e., above 500). This left 318 achievement outcomes (N = 54,775) to be analyzed. The tables in Appendix C show frequencies and percentages of achievement outcomes according to date of publication and source of publication. Two things zβ β β σ = . TABLE 2 Numbers and percentages of missing values for the three measures Measure Total cells No. missing % missing Achievement 13,650 7,726 56.61 Retention 4,410 2,664 60.41 Attitude 11,088 5,855 52.80 Total 29,148 16,246 55.74 September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 397 are evident in these tables. First, the impetus to conduct comparative research is not diminishing with time, in spite of calls from prominent voices in the field (e.g., Clark, 1983, 1994) that it should. The Pearson product–moment correlation between year of publication and g was −.035 (df = 316, p < .05), indicating that there was no systematic relationship between these two variables. Second, there is modest bias over the three classes of publication sources upon which these data were based. The g+ value for technical reports, while not substantially greater than that for dissertations, was significant. Table 3 shows the weighted mean effect size for 318 outcomes. It is essen- tially zero, but the test of homogeneity indicates that wide variability surrounds it. This means that the actual average effect size in the population could range substantially on either side of this value. The overall distribution of 318 achievement outcomes is shown in Figure 1. It is a symmetrical distribution with a near zero mean (as indicated), a standard deviation of ±0.439, a skewness value of 0.203, and a kurtosis value of 0.752; the distribution is nearly normal. It is clear from the range of effect sizes (−1.31 to +1.41) that some applications of DE are far better than classroom instruction and that some are far worse. Synchronous and asynchronous DE. The split between synchronous and asyn- chronous DE resulted in 92 synchronous outcomes (N = 8,677), 174 asynchro- nous outcomes (N = 36,531), and 52 unclassified outcomes (N = 9,567). The mean effect sizes (g+ values), standard errors, confidence intervals, and homogeneity statistics for these three categories are shown in Table 3. The difference in g+ resulting from this split, with synchronous DE significantly negative and asyn- chronous DE significantly positive, is dramatic, but both groups remained het- erogeneous. Further exploration of variability in g is required. Weighted multiple regression. In beginning to explore the variability in g, we con- ducted weighted multiple regression (WMR) analyses with the three blocks of pre- dictors. We were particularly interested in the variance accounted for by each of TABLE 3 Weighted mean effect sizes for combined achievement outcomes 95% confidence Homogeneity Effect size interval of effect size g+ SE Lower Upper Q value df Combined outcomes 0.0128 0.0100 −0.0068 0.0325 1,191.32* 317 (k = 318, N = 54,775) Synchronous −0.1022* 0.0236 −0.1485 −0.0559 182.11* 91 (k = 92, N = 8,677) Asynchronous 0.0527* 0.0121 0.0289 0.0764 779.38* 173 (k = 174, N = 36,531) Unclassified −0.0359 0.0273 −0.0895 0.0177 191.93* 51 (k = 52, N = 9,567) *p < .05. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 398 the blocks—methodology, pedagogy, and media—entered in different orders to determine their relative contribution to achievement. Clark and others have argued that poor methodological quality tends to confound effects attributable to features of pedagogy and media and that pedagogy and media themselves are confounded in studies of this type. In this analysis, we attempted to untangle these confounds and to suggest where future researchers and designers of DE applications should expend their energy. WMR was used to assess the relative contributions of these three blocks of predictors. The weighting factor, as described in the Method sec- tion, was the inverse of the variance, and the dependent variable in all cases was g (Hedges & Olkin, 1985). We begin with an overall analysis followed by a more detailed, albeit more speculative, description of the particular study features that accounted for the more general findings. We entered the three blocks of predictors1 (e.g., 13 method- ological study features) into the WMR in different orders: (a) methodology followed by pedagogy and media, (b) methodology followed by media and pedagogy, (c) ped- agogy followed by media and methodology, and (d) media followed by pedagogy and methodology. We did not enter methodology in the second step because this combination seemed to explain little of interest. The partitioning of between- group (QB) and within-group (QW) variance in the third step of the regression for both synchronous and asynchronous DE outcomes yielded the following results: QB was significant for both DE patterns, and synchronous DE outcomes were homogeneous (i.e., QW was not significant) while asynchronous DE outcomes were not (i.e., QW was significant). 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 F re q u e n cy Magnitude of Effect Size –1.25 –1.00 –.75 –.50 –.25 0.00 .25 .50 .75 1.00 1.25 FIGURE 1. Distribution of 318 achievement effect sizes September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 399 Table 4 provides a comparison of R2 changes for each of the blocks of predic- tors. This table reveals some interesting insights into the nature of these predictors relative to one another. First, with one exception each (i.e., the third step in both cases), methodology and pedagogy were always significant, no matter which posi- tion they were in or whether outcomes were associated with synchronous or asyn- chronous DE. Second, media was significant only when it was entered in the first step. Overall, this indicates that methodology and pedagogy are more important than media in predicting achievement. Third, in line with much of the commentary on the research literature of DE and other media comparison literatures, research methodology accounted for a substantial proportion of variation in effect size, more for synchronous than for asynchronous DE. One of the difficulties with pre- vious meta-analyses of these literatures is that, at best, methodologically unsound studies were removed a priori, often according to fuzzy criteria such as “more than one methodological flaw.” By including studies ranging in methodological qual- ity and coding for such differences, we overcame this difficulty to an extent. Study feature analysis. We examined individual study features for pedagogy and media after variation for methodology had been accounted for, in order to deter- mine which features had the greatest effect on achievement outcomes. The results of this analysis (i.e., the significant study features resulting from the WMR) are summarized in Table 5. Demographic study features. We also coded a set of study features relating to demographics of students, instructors, subject matter, and reasons for offering DE. Appendix D contains the three study features that yielded enough outcomes to warrant analysis. DE achievement effects were large (a) when efficient deliv- ery or cost was a reason for offering DE courses (g+ = 0.1639), (b) for students in Grades K–12 (g+ = 0.2016), and (c) for military and business subject matters (g+ = 0.1777). Interestingly, there was no difference between undergraduate postsecondary education applications of DE and classroom instruction. Gradu- ate school applications yielded modest but significant results in favor of DE TABLE 4 Comparison of R2 changes for blocks of study features: Achievement outcomes 2nd step 2nd step after Predictor 1st step after methodology pedagogy or media 3rd step Synchronous DE Methodology .490* .250* Pedagogy .360* .101* .130* .077 Media .245* .058 .015 .048 Asynchronous DE Methodology .117* .054 Pedagogy .156* .107* .124* .120* Media .111* .051 .078 .065 Note. Not all significance tests were based on the same degrees of freedom. *p < .05. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 400 (g+ = 0.0809). As well, the academic subject areas of math, science, and engi- neering appeared to be best suited to the classroom (g+ = −0.1026), while subjects related to computing and military/business (g+ > 0.17) seemed to work well in distance education settings. Attitude Outcomes Synchronous and asynchronous outcomes. We found various forms of attitude mea- sures in the literature that could be classified into four categories: attitude toward technology, attitude toward subject matter, attitude toward instructor, and attitude toward course. We also had a fairly large set of measures (k = 90) that could not be classified into a single set, and we therefore labeled them as “other attitude mea- sures.” We chose not to include “other attitudes” in analyses in which type of mea- sure was known. Therefore, the total number of attitude outcomes was reduced from 262 to 172. This number was further reduced when missing data prevented us from categorizing outcomes as either synchronous or asynchronous. Before the analysis, one extremely high outlier was removed. This left 154 outcomes to be analyzed. TABLE 5 Summary of study features significantly predicting achievement, attitude, and retention outcomes Favor classroom instruction (−) Favor DE (+) Synchronous DE Achievement • Face-to-face meetings with instructor • Use of telephone to contact instructor Attitudes • Opportunity for face-to-face contact with other students • Use of one-way TV-video Retention • No significant predictors Asynchronous DE Achievement • No significant predictors Attitudes • Use of the Web Retention • No significant predictors Achievement • Face-to-face contact with other students • Use of one-way TV-video Attitudes • Use of systematic instructional design • Opportunity for mediated communication with instructor • Instructor/student contact encouraged • Use of telephone to contact instructor Retention • No significant predictors Achievement • Use of problem-based learning strategies • Opportunity for mediated communication with the instructor • Advance information given to students • Use of one-way TV-video Attitudes • Use of problem-based learning strategies • Use of computer-mediated communication • Use of computer-based instruction Retention • No significant predictors September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 401 We split the sample into synchronous and asynchronous DE, in the same manner as for achievement, and found essentially the same overall dichotomy. Table 6 shows these results, along with the results of 154 combined attitudes (i.e., before classifi- cation into synchronous and asynchronous). While all of the weighted mean effect sizes were negative, note the contrast between synchronous and asynchronous out- comes. The average effect size for synchronous outcomes was significant, while the average effect size for asynchronous outcomes was not. Furthermore, there was a high level of variability among effect sizes, even after the split. Figure 2 provides a graphic depiction of overall variabilities in attitude outcomes for 154 outcomes, and it can be seen that they ranged from −1.51 to +1.63. There were circumstances in which DE students’ reactions were extremely positive, and others in which their reac- tions were quite negative, relative to classroom instruction. Weighted multiple regression. Given the wide variability in attitude outcomes, a WMR analysis was conducted in a manner similar to the one done with the achieve- ment data. The within-group and between-groups tests of significance indicated heterogeneity for these groups. We examined R2 changes for attitudes in regard to three blocks of predictors, methodology, pedagogy, and media, in different orders, in the same way we did for achievement outcomes. Table 7 presents a comparison of R2 changes for blocks of study features entered in different orders in the WMR. The results do not as clearly favor methodology, pedagogy, and the diminished role of media as they did for achievement. In fact, these results indicate a more complex relationship among the three blocks of predictors. For one thing, there were more differences here between synchronous and asynchronous DE in the three blocks of predictors. As with achievement, methodology still accounted for more variation in synchronous DE than in asynchronous DE. While pedagogy was somewhat suppressed in the case of synchronous DE, it emerged as important in the case of asynchronous DE. On the other hand, media appeared to be more important in synchronous DE than in asynchronous DE. TABLE 6 Weighted mean effect sizes for combined, synchronous, and asynchronous attitude outcomes 95% confidence Homogeneity Effect size interval of effect size DE category g+ SE Lower Upper Q value df Combined (not including −0.0812* 0.0146 −0.1098 −0.0526 793.65* 153 “other attitudes”; k = 154, N = 21,047) Synchronous −0.1846* 0.0222 −0.2282 −0.1410 410.02* 82 (k = 83, N = 9,483) Asynchronous −0.0034 0.0193 −0.0412 0.0344 345.64* 70 (k = 71, N = 11,624) *p < .001. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 402 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 F re q u e n cy Magnitude of Effect Size -1.38 -1.13 -.88 -.63 -.38 -.13 .13 .38 .63 .88 1.13 1.38 FIGURE 2. Distribution of 154 attitude effect sizes TABLE 7 Comparison of R2 changes for blocks of study features: Attitude outcomes 2nd step after 2nd step after Predictor 1st step methodology pedagogy or media 3rd step Synchronous DE Methodology .471** .421** Pedagogy .128 .138** .101 .120** Media .136** .067* .109** .049 Asynchronous DE Methodology .218** .157 Pedagogy .253** .215** .133 .076 Media .241** .236** .121 .097 Note. Not all significance tests were based on the same degrees of freedom. *p = .057; **p < .05. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 403 Study feature analysis. Individual study features were assessed after the WMR in a manner similar to that for achievement outcomes; significant synchronous and asynchronous results are summarized in Table 5. Retention Outcomes Retention is defined here as the opposite of dropout or attrition. We found sev- eral statewide studies (e.g., California) comparing DE and classroom conditions in which the sample size was in the millions. To correct for the extreme effects of these huge (N = 57,916,029) but anomalous studies, we truncated the sample sizes of the classroom condition to 3,000 and proportionately reduced the DE condi- tion to create a better balance with other studies (N = 3,735,050). Otherwise, these effect sizes would have dominated the average effect, unduly skewing it in favor of the large samples. Figure 3 shows the distribution of effect sizes for the reten- tion measure. The distribution is clearly bimodal, with the primary mode at zero. Again, there was wide variability. Table 8 shows the results of this analysis and the results of the split between syn- chronous and asynchronous DE conditions. None of the large-sample studies had been coded as either synchronous or asynchronous, and thus, while the number of effects is fairly representative of the total, the number of students is not. In spite of this, the results of the synchronous/asynchronous split seemed to reflect the aver- age for all studies. Caution should be exercised in interpreting the mean effect size for synchronous DE because of the low number of outcomes associated with it. .63 .50 .38 .25 .13 0.00 -.13 -.25 -.38 -.50 -.63 -.75 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 F re q u e n cy Magnitude of Effect Size FIGURE 3. Distribution of 70 retention effect sizes September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 404 Since the traditionally high dropout rate in DE has been attributed to factors such as isolation and poor student-teacher communication, we wondered whether this situation had changed over the years examined here as a result of the increas- ing availability of newer forms of electronic communication. To explore this issue, we calculated the Pearson product-moment correlation between dropout (i.e., g) and “year of publication” over the 17 years of the study. This correlation was .015 (df = 68, p > .05), suggesting that there was no systematic increase or decrease in differential retention rates over time. This situation was somewhat dif- ferent for synchronous (r = −.27, df = 14, p > .05) and asynchronous (r = .011, df = 51, p > .05) retention outcomes calculated separately, although neither reached significance. Had the synchronous correlation been significant, this would have indicated a decreasing differential (i.e., the two conditions becoming more simi- lar) over time between classroom and DE applications in terms of retention. When a WMR analysis was performed on synchronous and asynchronous retention outcomes, the results for methodology, pedagogy, and media were all nonsignificant. Therefore, no regression outcomes are presented. Summary of Results: Achievement 1. There was a very small and significant effect favoring DE conditions (g+ = 0.0128) in terms of overall achievement outcomes (k = 318). However, the variability surrounding this mean was wide and significant. 2. When outcomes were split between synchronous and asynchronous DE achievement outcomes, a small, significant negative effect (g+ = −0.1022) was found for synchronous DE, and a significantly positive effect was found for asynchronous DE (g+ = 0.0527). Variability remained wide and significantly heterogeneous for each group. 3. WMR revealed that together, methodology, pedagogy, and media accounted for 62.4% of variation in synchronous DE achievement outcomes and 28.8% of variability in asynchronous DE outcomes. 4. When R2 changes were examined for blocks of predictors entered in dif- ferent orders, methodology and pedagogy were almost always found to be significant, whereas media was significant only when it was entered in the TABLE 8 Mean effect sizes for synchronous and asynchronous retention outcomes 95% confidence Homogeneity Effect size interval of effect size Outcome type g+ SE Lower Upper Q value df Overall retention −0.0573* 0.0065 −0.0700 −0.0445 3150.96* 102 (k = 103, N = 3,735,050) Synchronous DE 0.0051 0.0341 −0.0617 0.0718 17.17 16 (k = 17, N = 3,604) Asynchronous DE −0.0933* 0.0211 −0.1347 −0.0519 70.52* 52 (k = 53, N = 10,435) *p < .05. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 405 first step. This was true for both synchronous DE outcomes and asynchro- nous DE outcomes. Individual significant study feature outcomes are sum- marized in Table 5. Summary of Results: Attitude 1. There was a small negative but significant effect on overall attitude outcomes in favor of classroom instruction (g+ = −0.0812). Again, the variability around this mean was significantly heterogeneous. 2. There were differences in the effect sizes for synchronous DE (g+ = −0.1846) and asynchronous DE (g+ = −0.0034). Both favored classroom instruction, but the average effect size was significant for synchronous DE, and it was not for asynchronous DE. Individual significant study feature outcomes are summarized in Table 5. 3. R2 change analyses of the type described earlier revealed that methodology, pedagogy, and media accounted for varying patterns of variance in terms of attitudes. It appears that these three sets of variables are related in a more complex way than they are for achievement outcomes. Summary of Results: Retention 1. There was a very small but significant effect in favor of classroom instruc- tion (g+ = −0.0573) on retention outcomes. 2. There was a very small but positive effect for synchronous DE, which was not significant (g+ = 0.0051), and a larger negative effect (g+ = −0.0933) for asynchronous DE. Summary of Results: Overall 1. There was extremely wide variability in effect size on all measures, and we were unable to find study features that formed homogeneous subsets, includ- ing the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous DE (with the one exception of synchronous DE in the case of achievement). This suggests that DE works extremely well sometimes and extremely poorly other times, even when all coded study features are taken into account. 2. Since the variation in effect size accounted for by methodology was fairly substantial (generally speaking, more substantial for synchronous than asyn- chronous DE), and often more so than for pedagogy and media combined, methodological weakness was considered an important deterrent to offering clear recommendations to practitioners and policymakers. 3. Another measure of the quality of the literature, amount of data available, suggested that the literature was very weak in terms of design features that would improve the interpretability of the results. More than half (55.73%) of the codable study features (including methodological features) were missing. 4. Even though the literature is large, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions as to what works and does not work in regard to DE, except to say that the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous forms of DE does moder- ate effect sizes in terms of both achievement and attitudes. Concise statements of outcomes based on study feature analysis (Table 5) must be made with cau- tion and must remain speculative because of the relatively large amount of missing data relating to these outcomes. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 406 Discussion Overall Findings The most important outcome of the overall effect size analysis relates to the wide variability in outcomes for all three primary measures. While the average effect of DE was near zero, there was a tremendous range of effect sizes (g) in achievement outcomes, from −1.31 to +1.41. There were instances in which the DE group outperformed the traditional instruction group by more than 50%, and there were instances in which the opposite occurred, for example, the traditional instructional group outperforming the DE group by 48% or more. Similar results were found for overall attitude and retention outcomes. None of the measures were homogeneous, so interpreting means as if they are true representations of population values is risky (Hedges & Olkin, 1985). It is simply incorrect to state that DE is better than, worse than, or even equal to classroom instruction on the basis of mean effect sizes and heterogeneity. This wide variability means that a substantial number of DE applications provide bet- ter achievement results, are viewed more positively, and have higher retention rates than their classroom counterparts. On the other hand, a substantial number of DE applications are far worse than classroom instruction in regard to all three measures. The mistake that a number of previous reviewers have made, from early narra- tive reviews (e.g., Moore & Thompson, 1990) to more recent reviews (e.g., Rus- sell, 1999), is to declare that DE and classroom instruction are equal without examining the variability surrounding their difference. Wide and unexplained vari- ability precludes any such simplistic conclusion. An assessment of the literature of this sort can be made only through a meta-analysis that provides a comprehensive representation of the literature, the application of rigorously applied inclusion/ exclusion criteria, and an analysis of variability around mean effect sizes. On a fur- ther note, the overall retention outcomes appear to indicate that the substantial degree of retention differential between classroom and DE conditions noted in many studies of student persistence is still present in these studies. Quality of the DE Literature In the past few years, a number of commentators (Anglin & Morrison, 2000; Diaz, 2000; Perraton, 2000; Phipps & Merisotis, 1999; Saba, 2000) have decried the quality of the DE research literature. One of the main purposes of this meta- analysis was to estimate the extent of these claims and to examine the research lit- erature in terms of its completeness. This discussion begins with that assessment, because both quality of studies and depth of reporting impinge upon all other aspects of the analysis. One entire section of the codebook (13 items) deals with methodological aspects of the studies that were reviewed. Our intent was not to exclude studies that had methodological weaknesses, such as lack of random assignment or nonequiv- alent materials, but to code these features and examine how they affect the con- clusions that can be drawn from the studies. However, the quality and quantity of reporting in the literature that we examined affected the accuracy of the method- ological assessment, since missing aspects of design, control, measurement, equiv- alence of conditions, and so forth influence the quality of the assessment. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 407 Information available in the literature. Overall, we found the literature severely wanting in terms of depth of reporting. Nearly 60% of codable study features, including methodological features, were coded as missing. This means that for out- comes that met our inclusion criteria and for which we could calculate an effect size, we were able to derive only a 40% estimate of the effects of the study features on the effect sizes. The most persistent problem was the reporting of characteristics of the comparison condition (i.e., classroom instruction). Often, authors went to extraordinary lengths to describe the DE condition, only to say that it was being compared with a “classroom condition.” If we cannot discern what a DE condition is being compared with, it is very difficult to come to any conclusion as to what is meant by an effect size characterizing differences. This was not just a problem in reports and conference papers, which are often not reviewed or reviewed only at a cursory level; it was true of journal articles and dissertations as well, which are pre- sumably reviewed by panels of peers or committees of academics. This speaks not only to the quality of the peer review process of journals but to the quality and rigor of training that future researchers in our field are receiving. However, an analysis of publication sources revealed only a small bias in mean effect size among the types of literature represented in these data (i.e., achievement data only). There are some interesting statistics associated with year of publication that bear noting. In spite of calls from the field to end the form of classroom compara- tive studies investigated here (e.g., Clark, 1983, 1994), their frequency actually appears to have been increasing since 1985. As indicated in the Results section, there appears to be no systematic relationship between “year of publication” and effect size. Methodological quality of the literature. Field experiments investigating educa- tional practices are characteristically weak because they are so often conducted in circumstances in which opportunities to control for rival explanations of research hypotheses are minimal. Therefore, they are typically higher in external validity than in internal validity. Cook and Campbell (1979) argued that this trade-off between internal and external validity is justified under certain circumstances. The What Works Clearinghouse (Valentine & Cooper, 2003) uses a four-axis model of research methodology, based on the guidelines of Shadish, Cook, and Campbell (2002), to judge the quality of a research study: internal validity, external validity, measure- ment validity, and statistical validity. Our 13 coded study features relating to method- ology focused more on internal validity than on the other three types of validity. Ten items rated aspects of internal validity in terms of the equality or inequality of comparison groups; no direct assessment of external validity was made, one feature assessed the quality of the outcome measure used, another assessed the quality of the publication source, and another rated the quality of the statistical information used in calculating effect sizes (i.e., calculated or estimated). Since, as mentioned, many codable aspects of methodological quality were unavailable owing to missing information, we attempted to characterize the qual- ity of studies in terms of research design and degree of control for confounding. We chose to enter the 13 methodological study features into a WMR as a way of (a) assessing methodology independently and in relation to other blocks of study features and (b) assessing other study features after variation due to methodology had been removed. We found that methodology accounted for a substantial pro- September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 408 portion of the overall variation in effect sizes for achievement and attitude mea- sures. This was moderated somewhat when outcomes were split between syn- chronous and asynchronous DE patterns. Typically, more methodological variation was accounted for in synchronous DE than in asynchronous DE. Our recoding scheme emphasized the difference between methodological strengths and methodological weaknesses, with missing data considered neutral. In a strong experimental literature with few missing data, strong measures, and ade- quate control over confounding, the variance accounted for by methodology would have been minimal. In the most extreme situation, zero variability would be attrib- utable to methodology. As previously indicated, this was not the case, suggesting that the dual contributing factors of experimental and methodological inadequa- cies and missing information weaken the DE research literature. However, this fact does not mitigate entirely against exploring these data in an effort to learn more about the characteristics of DE and the relative contributions of various factors to its success or failure relative to classroom instruction. Synchronous and Asynchronous DE After assessing overall outcomes for the three measures, we split the samples into the two different forms of DE noted in the literature, synchronous DE and asyn- chronous DE. Synchronous DE is defined as the time- and place-dependent nature of classroom instruction proceeding in synchronization with a DE classroom located in a remote location and connected by videoconferencing, audio-conferencing media, or both. Asynchronous DE conditions were run independently of their classroom comparison conditions. While a few asynchronous applications actually used synchronous media among themselves, they were not bound by time and place to the classroom comparison condition. Current use of the term asynchronous often refers to the lag time in communication that distinguishes, for instance, e-mail from a “chat room”; our definition does not disqualify some synchronous communica- tion between students and instructors and between students and other students. The results of this split yielded substantially different outcomes for the two forms of DE on all three measures. In the case of achievement, synchronous out- comes favored the classroom condition, ranging from −1.14 to +0.97 (this was the only homogeneous subset), while asynchronous outcomes favored the DE condi- tion, ranging from −1.31 to +1.41. While both mean effect sizes for attitudes were negative, the differences were dramatic for synchronous and asynchronous DE, favoring classroom instruction by nearly 0.20 standard deviations. The split for retention outcomes yielded the opposite outcome. Dropout was substantially higher in asynchronous DE than in synchronous DE. It is possible that these three results can be explained in the same terms by exam- ining the conditions under which students learn and develop attitudes in these two patterns as well as make decisions to persist or drop out. Looked at in one way, synchronous DE is a poorer quality replication of classroom instruction; there is neither the flexibility of scheduling and place of learning nor the individual atten- tion that exists in many applications of asynchronous DE, and there is the question of the effectiveness of “face-to-face” instruction conducted through a teleconfer- encing medium. Although we were unable to ascertain much about teaching style from the literature, there may be a tendency for synchronous DE instructors to engage in lecture-based, instructor-oriented strategies that may not translate well to medi- September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 409 ated classrooms at a distance (Verduin & Clark, 1991). Even employing effective questioning strategies may be problematic under these circumstances. In fact, there have been calls in the synchronous DE literature for instructors to adopt more con- structivist teaching practices (Beaudoin, 1990; Dillon & Walsh, 1992; Gehlauf, Shatz, & Frye, 1991). According to Bates (1997), asynchronous DE, by contrast, can more effectively provide interpersonal interaction and support two-way com- munication between instructors and students and among students, thereby produc- ing a better approximation of a learner-centered environment. These two sides of the DE coin may help explain the differential achievement and attitude results. Work carried out by Chickering and Gamson (1987) offers an interesting frame- work to address the question of teaching in DE environments. On the basis of 50 years of higher education research, they produced a list of seven basic principles of good teaching practices in face-to-face courses. Graham, Cagiltay, Craner, Lim, and Duff (2000) used these same seven principles to assess whether these skills trans- fer to online teaching environments. Their general findings, echoed by the work of Schoenfeld-Tacher and Persichitte (2000) and Spector (2001), indicate that DE teach- ers typically require different sets of technical and pedagogical competencies to engage in superior teaching practices, although Kanuka, Collett, and Caswell (2003) claim that this transition can be made fairly easily by experienced instructors. Pre- sumably, this applies to both synchronous and asynchronous DE; however, because synchronous DE is more like classroom instruction and takes place in view of a live classroom as well as a mediated one, it is possible that adopting new and more appro- priate teaching methods is not as critical and pressing as it is in asynchronous DE. If achievement is better and attitudes are more positive in asynchronous DE than in synchronous DE, why is its retention rate lower? First of all, on the basis of the lit- erature, it is not surprising that there is greater dropout in DE courses than in tradi- tional classroom-based courses (Kember, 1996). The literature has reported this for years. However, this does not fully answer the question about synchronous and asyn- chronous DE. Part of the answer is that achievement and attitude measurement are independent of retention, since they do not include data from students who dropped out before the course ended. A second part of the answer may reside, again, in dif- ferences in the conditions that exist in synchronous and asynchronous DE. As previ- ously noted, synchronous DE is more like classroom instruction than is asynchronous DE. Students meet together in a particular place, at a particular time. They are a group, just like classroom students. The difference is that they are remote from the instructor. Students working in asynchronous DE conditions do not typically meet in groups, although they may have face-to-face and/or synchronous mediated contact with the instructor and other students. Group affiliation and social pressure, then, may partially explain this effect. Other explanations may derive from models of persistence—for example, that of Kember (1996)—that stress factors such as entry characteristics, social integration, external attribution, and academic integration. Only a small percentage of the findings for synchronous DE were based on K–12 learners. We speculate that, for younger learners, the structure of synchronous DE may be better suited to their academic schedules and their need for spontaneous guidance and feedback. Furthermore, we have concerns about the nature of appro- priate comparisons. For example, how does asynchronous DE compare with home schooling or the provision of specialized content by a nonexpert (e.g., in rural and remote communities)? September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 410 This question is an even more general concern that goes beyond synchronicity or asynchronicity of DE delivery and addresses the question of access to education and the appropriate nature of the comparison condition. When is it appropriate for DE to be compared with traditional instruction, other alternative delivery methods, or a no-instruction control group? In the latter case, this may be the choice with which a substantial number of learners are faced and which represents one purpose of DE: to provide learning opportunities when no others exist. In such circum- stances, issues of instructional quality, attitudes, and retention may be secondary to issues of whether assessment and outcome standards—ensuring rigorous learn- ing objectives—are maintained. Media Versus Pedagogy: Resolving the Debate? Is technology transparent, or is it transformative? Do the most effective forms of DE take unique advantage of communication and multimedia technologies in ways absent from “traditional” classroom instruction? If so, why are these absent from classroom instruction? For example, how much does the DE context provide the requisite incentive for learners to use the technological features apparent in some media-rich DE applications? Alternatively, can effective pedagogy exist independently of the advantages and restrictions of DE? Can, for example, clarity, expressiveness, and instructional feedback be provided regardless of their medium of delivery and independently of the separation of space and time? Finally, how can we begin to explore these issues independently of concerns about method- ological quality and completeness? The nature of the DE research literature, in which research methodology, ped- agogy, and media are all present and intertwined, gave us an opportunity to exam- ine their relative contributions to achievement, attitude, and retention outcomes and to further explore the wide variability that still existed after studies had been split into synchronous and asynchronous DE. We settled on an approach to WMR in which blocks of these recoded study features were entered in different orders and assessed the R2 changes that resulted from their various positions in the regression models. With the exception of retention, which did not achieve statis- tical significance for either type of DE, the overall percentage of variance accounted for by these blocks ranged from 29% to 66% for achievement and atti- tude. However, only one homogeneous set was found: achievement outcomes for synchronous DE. Methodology. In the design of original experimental research, the more the extra- neous differences between treatment and control can be minimized, the stronger the causal assertion. However, in a meta-analysis, actual control cannot be applied to the studies under scrutiny, so the best that can be done is to estimate the method- ological strength or weakness of the research literature. The first thing we found is that methodology is a good predictor of achievement and attitude effect sizes, but a better predictor in synchronous DE studies (49% and 47%, respectively) than in asynchronous DE studies (12% and 22%). Second, we found that methodology is a strong predictor of achievement and attitude effect sizes, whether entered in the first or the third step of the WMR, for synchronous DE but not for asynchronous DE. Because of the way methodology was recoded, this means that studies of asyn- chronous DE are of higher quality than studies of synchronous DE. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 411 Pedagogy and media. Clark (1983, 1994) has argued vociferously that media and technology, used in educational practice, have no effect on learning. Instead, it is the characteristics of instructional design, such as the instructional strategies used, the feedback provided, and the degree of learner engagement, that create the con- ditions within which purposive learning will occur. In general, we found this to be the case. Characteristics of pedagogy tended to take precedence over media, no matter in which step in the WMR they were entered. This is especially true for achievement outcomes; the relationship for attitudes is a little more complex. Does this mean that media are not important? No, it cannot mean that, because media are a requirement for DE to exist in the first place. It does mean, however, that instructional practices, independent of the medium, are critical to all forms of educational practice, including and perhaps especially DE. This seems almost too axiomatic to state, and yet in the DE literature there is an exaggerated empha- sis on the medium du jour. As Richard Clark recently explained (personal com- munication, April and October 2003), it was the tendency of educational technologists to become enamored with “the toys of technology” that led to his original thesis and his continued insistence that media are of little concern in com- parison with the myriad elements of sound instructional practice. There is a now old instructional design adage that goes something like this: “A medium should be selected in the service of instructional practices, not the other way around.” We would encourage all practitioners and policymakers bent on developing and deliv- ering quality DE, whether on the Internet or through synchronous teleconferenc- ing, to heed this advice. Considerations for Practice Before moving on to a discussion of individual study features, there are two issues that need reiteration. First, interpretation of individual predictors in WMR, when overall results are heterogeneous, must proceed with caution (Hedges & Olkin, 1985). Second, some of the individual study feature results were based on a fairly small number of actual outcomes and therefore must be taken as speculative. Specific considerations. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer any recipes for the design and development of quality DE. Missing information in the research liter- ature, we suspect, is largely responsible for this. However, we are able to speak in broad terms about some of the things that matter in synchronous and asynchronous DE applications: • Attention to quality course design should take precedence over attention to the characteristics of media. This presumably includes what the instructor does as well as what the student does, although we see only limited direct evi- dence of either. However, the appearance of “use of systematic instructional design” as a predictor of attitude outcomes implicates instructors and design- ers of asynchronous DE conditions. • Active learning (e.g., problem-based learning [PBL]) that includes (or induces) some degree of collaboration among students appears to foster better achieve- ment and attitude outcomes in asynchronous DE. • Opportunities for communication, both face to face and through mediation, appear to benefit students in synchronous and asynchronous DE. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 412 • “Supplementary one-way video materials” and “use of computer-based instruc- tion” were also found to help promote better achievement and attitude out- comes in synchronous and asynchronous DE. • In asynchronous DE, media that support interactivity (i.e., CMC and tele- phone) appear to facilitate better attitudes, and “providing advance course information” benefits achievement outcomes. The results for achievement and attitude across synchronous and asynchronous DE are both strikingly similar and strikingly different. For instance, for asynchro- nous DE, PBL appears as a strong predictor in favor of the DE condition. Although this was one of the study features with relatively few instances, we speculate that it is the collaborative, learner-oriented aspect of this instructional strategy that accounts for better achievement and more positive attitudes. Judging from reviews in the medical education literature (e.g., Albanese & Mitchell, 1993; Colliver, 1999), in which 30 years of studies have been performed with PBL, this instruc- tional strategy represents a useful mechanism for engaging students, teaching prob- lem solving, and developing collaborative working skills. Bernard, Rojo de Rubalcava, and St. Pierre (2000) describe ways that PBL might be linked to col- laborative learning in online learning environments. Among the other pedagogical study features is a group of features that relate to both face-to-face and mediated contact with the instructor in a course and among student peers. We also found that “encouragement of contact (either face to face or mediated)” predicted outcomes for both synchronous and asynchronous DE when achievement and attitudes were examined jointly. This suggests that DE should not be a solitary experience, as it often was in the era of correspondence education. Instructionally relevant contact with instructors and peers is not only desirable, it is probably necessary for creating learning environments that lead to desirable achievement gains and general satisfaction with DE. This is not a particular reve- lation, but it is an important aspect of quality course design that should not be neglected or compromised. One of the surprising aspects of this analysis is that the mechanisms of medi- ated communication (e.g., e-mail) did not figure more prominently as predictors of learning or attitude outcomes. CMC did arise as a significant predictor of attitude outcomes, but a rather traditional medium, the telephone, also contributed to the media equation. In addition, non-interactive one-way TV/video rose to the top as a significant predictor. However, the results for achievement and attitude were exactly the reverse of each other in this regard. In the case of achievement, TV/video improved DE conditions for both synchronous and asynchronous DE, while use of the telephone favored classroom conditions in synchronous DE. For attitudes, TV/video favored the classroom and use of the telephone favored DE, both in synchronous and asynchronous DE settings. Generally speaking, these results appear to further implicate communication and the use of supplementary visual materials. If one overarching generalization is applicable here, it is that sufficient oppor- tunities for both student/instructor and student/student communication are impor- tant, possibly in the service of collaborative learning experiences such as PBL. We encourage practitioners to build more of these two elements into DE courses and into classroom experiences as well. We also favor an interpretation of media fea- September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 413 tures as aids to these seemingly important instructional/pedagogical aspects of course design and delivery. For DE, in particular, where media are the only means of providing collaborative and communicative experiences for students, we see pedagogy and the media that support it working in tandem and not as competing entities in the course developer’s or instructor’s set of tools. Thus, while we have attempted to separate pedagogy from media to assess their relative importance, it is the total package in DE that must ultimately come together to foster student learning and satisfaction. General considerations. Researchers, educators, and members of the business community have all commented recently on the future of education and the goals of schooling. These comments focus on the importance of encouraging learners to have a lifelong commitment to learning, to be responsible for their own learning, to have effective interpersonal and communication skills, to be aware of technol- ogy as a tool for learning, and to be effective problem solvers with skills transfer- able to varied contexts. These comments also recognize that learners who have genuine learning goals are likely to remain personally committed to their achieve- ment goals, use complex cognitive skills, and draw upon the active support of the learning community to enhance their personal skills. These concerns apply with equal if not greater force to learning at a distance, where the challenges of isola- tion may exacerbate them. The results of this meta-analysis provide general support for the claim that effective DE depends on the provision of pedagogical excellence. How is this achieved in a DE environment? Particular predictors of pedagogical importance included PBL and interactivity, either face to face or through mediation, with instructors and other students. Can we make a more general case? We speculate that the keys to pedagogical effectiveness in DE center on the appropriate and strategic use of interactivity among learners, with the material leading to learner engagement, deep processing, and understanding. By what means might interac- tivity occur? First, interactivity among learners occurs when technology is used as a com- munication device and learners are provided with appropriate collaborative activities and strategies for learning together. Here we distinguish between “sur- face” interaction among learners, wherein superficial learning is promoted through efficient communication (e.g., seeking only the correct answer), and “deep” interaction among learners, wherein complex learning is promoted through effective communication (e.g., seeking an explanation). The teacher plays roles here by participating in establishing, maintaining, and guiding inter- active communication. Second, the design of interactivity around learning materials might focus on notions derived from cognitive psychology, including sociocognitive and construc- tivist principles of learning such as those summarized by the American Psycho- logical Association (1997). In addition, learning materials and tasks must engage the learner in ways that promote meaningfulness, understanding, and transfer. Clar- ity, expressiveness, and feedback may help to ensure learner engagement and inter- activity; multimedia learning materials may do likewise when they are linked to authentic learning activities. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 414 Considerations for Policymakers One possible implication is that DE needs to exploit media in ways that take advantage of its power; DE should not simply be an electronic copy of paper-based material. This may explain why the effect sizes were so small in the current meta- analysis. That is, there is a widespread weakness in the tools of DE. Where are the cognitive tools that encourage deeper, active learning—the ones that Kozma and Cobb predicted would transform learning experiences? These tools need further development and more appropriate deployment. A contrasting view, supported by the size of effects found in this quantitative review, is that DE effectiveness is most directly affected by pedagogical excellence rather than media sophistication or flexibility. The first alternative is a long-standing speculation that might not be verified until the next generation of DE is widely available and appropriately used. The sec- ond alternative requires that policymakers devote energy to ensuring that excel- lence and effectiveness take precedence over cost efficiency. Considerations for Future DE Research What does this analysis suggest about future DE research directions? The answer to this question depends, to some extent, on whether we accept the premise of Clark and others that media comparison studies (and DE comparison studies, by extension) answer few useful questions or the premise of Smith and Dillon (1999) that there is still a place for comparative studies performed under certain conditions. It is probably true that, once DE is established as a “legiti- mate alternative to classroom instruction,” the need for comparative DE studies will diminish. After all, even in the world of folklore, the comparison between a steam-driven device and the brawn of John Henry was performed only once, to the demise of John. But it is also true that before we forge ahead into an inde- terminate future, possibly embracing untested fads and following false leads while at the same time dismantling the infrastructure of the past, we should reflect upon why we are going there and what we risk if we are wrong. And if there is a practical way of translating what we know about “best practices in the classroom” to “best practices in cyberspace,” then a case for continued research in both venues, simultaneously, might be made. So what can we learn from classroom instruction that can be translated into effective DE practices? One of the few significant findings that emerged from the TV studies of the 1950s and 1960s was that planning and design pay off—it was not the medium that mattered so much as what came before the TV cameras were turned on. Similarly, in this millennium, we might ask whether there are aspects of design, relating to either medium or method, that are optimal in either or both instructional contexts. In collecting these studies we found few factorial designs, suggesting that the bulk of the studies asked questions in the form of “Is it this or that?” Such comparisons are the stock-in-trade of meta-analysis, but once the basic question is answered, more or less, we should begin to move toward answering more subtle and sophisticated questions. More complex designs might enable us to address questions such as “What does it depend on or what moderates between this and that?” Simply knowing that something works or does not work without knowing why strands us in a quagmire of uncertainty, allowing the “gimmick of September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 415 the week” to become king. It is the examination of the details of research studies that can tell us the “why.” Thus, if comparison studies do continue—and we suspect that they will—can we envisage an optimal comparative study? In the best of all of Campbell and Stanley (1963) worlds, an experiment that intends to establish cause eliminates all rival hypotheses and varies only one aspect of the design: the treatment. Here this means eliminating all potential confounds—selection, history, materials, and so forth—except distance, the one feature that distinguishes distance edu- cation from face-to-face instruction. The problem is that even if exactly the same media are used in both DE and classroom conditions, they are used for funda- mentally different purposes, in DE to bridge the distance gap (e.g., online col- laborative learning instead of face-to-face collaboration) and in the classroom as a supplement to face-to-face instruction. So, without even examining the problem of media/method confounds and other sources of inequality between treatments, we have already identified a fundamental stumbling block to deriv- ing any more useful information from comparative studies. This does not mean, of course, that imperfectly designed but perfectly described studies (i.e., descrip- tions of the details of treatments and methodology) are not useful in the hands of a meta-analyst, but will we learn anymore than we already know by continu- ing to pursue comparative research? We suspect not, unless such studies are designed to assess the “active ingredients” in each application, as suggested by Smith and Dillon. So, what is the alternative? In the realm of synchronous DE, a productive set of studies might involve two classroom/DE dyads, run simultaneously, with one of a host of instructional features being varied across the treatments. In a study of this sort, media are used for the same purpose in both conditions, and so dis- tance is not the variable under study. In asynchronous DE, we envisage similar direct comparisons between equivalent DE treatments. Bernard and Naidu (1992) performed a study of this sort comparing different conditions of concept mapping and questioning among roughly equivalent DE groups. Studies such as this could even examine different types of media or media used for different pur- poses without succumbing to the fatal flaw inherent in DE/classroom-comparative research. The following are some other directions for future research: • Developing a theoretical framework for the design and analysis of DE. Adapt- ing the learner-centered principles of the American Psychological Associa- tion (1997; see also Lambert & McCombs, 1998) may be a starting point for exploring the cognitive and motivational processes involved in learning at a distance. • Exploring more fully student motivational dispositions in DE, including task choice, persistence, mental effort, efficacy, and perceived task value. Interest/ satisfaction may not indicate success but the opposite, since students may expend less effort learning, especially when they choose between DE and regular courses for convenience purposes (i.e., they are happy to have choice and are satisfied, but because they may wish to make less of an effort to learn, they are merely conveniencing themselves). September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 416 • Examining new aspects of pedagogical effectiveness and efficiency, includ- ing faculty development and teaching time, student access and learning time, and cost effectiveness (e.g., cost per student). Establishing desirable skill sets for instructors in synchronous and asynchronous DE settings might be a place to start. Examining different methods for developing these skill sets might extend from this assessment. • Studying levels of learning (e.g., simple knowledge or comprehension vs. higher order thinking). Examining various instructional strategies for achieving these outcomes, such as PBL and collaborative online learning, could repre- sent a very productive line of inquiry. • Examining inclusivity and accessibility for home learners, rural and remote learners, and learners with various disabilities. Here in particular the appro- priate comparison may be with “no instruction” rather than “traditional” classroom instruction. • Using more rigorous and complete research methodologies, including more detailed descriptions of control conditions in terms of both pedagogical fea- tures and media characteristics. There is one thing that is certain. The demand for research will always lag behind the supply of research, and for this very reason it is important to apportion our collective research resources judiciously. It may just be that at this point in our evolution, and with so many pressing issues to examine as Internet applications of DE proliferate, continuing to compare DE with the classroom without attempting to answer the attendant concerns of “why” and “under what conditions” represents wasted time and effort. Conclusion This meta-analysis represents a rigorously applied examination of the com- parative literature of DE with regard to the variety of conditions of study fea- tures and outcomes that are publicly available. We found evidence, in an overall sense, that classroom instruction and DE are comparable, as have some others. However, the wide variability present in all measures precludes any firm decla- rations of this sort. We confirm the prevailing view that, in general, DE research is of low quality, particularly in terms of internal validity (i.e., control for con- founds and inequalities). We found a dearth of information in the literature; a more replete literature could have led to stronger conclusions and recommen- dations for practice and policy-making. Beyond that, we have also contributed the following: (a) a view of the differences that exist in all measures between synchronous and asynchronous DE; (b) a view of the relationship between ped- agogy and media, which appears to be a focus for debate whenever a new learn- ing orientation (e.g., constructivism) or medium of instruction (e.g., CMC) appears on the educational horizon; (c) an assessment of the relative strength and effect of methodological quality on assessments of other contributing fac- tors; (d) a glimpse at the relatively few individual study features that predict learning and attitude outcomes; and (e) a view of the heterogeneity in findings that hampered our attempts to form homogeneous subsets of study features that could have helped to establish what makes DE better or worse than classroom instruction. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 417 Notes This study was supported by grants from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la Société et la culture and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and funding from the Louisiana State University Council on Research Awards and Department. We express appreciation to Janette M. Barrington, Anna Pereti- atkovicz, Mike Surkes, Lucie A. Ranger, Claire Feng, Vanikumari Pulendra, Keisha Smith, Alvin Gautreaux, and Venkatraman Kandaswamy for their assistance and con- tributions. Also, we thank Richard E. Clark, Gary Morrison, and Tom Cobb for their comments on this research and their contributions to the development of ideas for analysis and discussion. 1We explored another method of entering the three sets of study features in blocks. First, we ran each block separately and saved the unstandardized predicted values. This provided three new composite variables, which were then entered into the WMR in dif- ferent orders, as indicated earlier. The results were very similar to the ones reported, with the exception that a clearer distinction emerged between pedagogy and media (i.e., ped- agogy was always significant and media was never significant). However, we chose to report the results in the manner described earlier because it allows a detailed analysis of the contribution of individual study features, whereas the method just described does not. Also, neither synchronous nor asynchronous DE formed a homogeneous set. References References marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis. Abrami, P. C., & Bures, E. M. (1996). Computer-supported collaborative learning and distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 10(2), 37–42. Abrami, P. C., Cohen, P., & d’Apollonia, S. (1988). Implementation problems in meta- analysis. 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S. (1998). Changes in students’ attitude toward graduate business instruction via interactive television. American Journal of Distance Education, 11(1), 55–69. *Whetzel, D. L., Felker, D. B., & Williams, K. M. (1996). A real world comparison of the effectiveness of satellite training and classroom training. Educational Technol- ogy Research and Development, 44(3), 5–18. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? 433 *Whitten, P., Ford, D. J., Davis, N., Speicher, R., & Collins, B. (1998). Comparison of face-to-face versus interactive video continuing medical education delivery modal- ities. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 18(2), 93–99. *Wick, W. R. (1997). An analysis of the effectiveness of distance learning at remote sites versus on-site locations in high school foreign language programs. Unpublished doc- toral dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. *Wideman, H. H., & Owston, R. D. (1999). Internet based courses at Atkinson Col- lege: An initial assessment. Retrieved May 13, 2003, from http://www.yorku.ca/irlt/ reports/techreport99-1.htm Winkelmann, C. L. (1995). Electronic literacy, critical pedagogy, and collaboration: A case for cyborg writing. Computers and the Humanities, 29, 431–448. *Winn, F. J., Fletcher, D., Smith, J., Williams, R., & Louis, T. (1999). Internet teaching of PA practitioners in rural areas: Can complex material with high definition graphics be taught using PC? In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 43rd Annual Meeting (pp. 1161–1165). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. *Wisher, R. A., & Priest, A. N. (1998). Cost-effectiveness of audio teletraining for the U.S. Army National Guard. American Journal of Distance Education, 12(1), 38–51. *Wishner, R. A., Curnow, C. K., & Seidel, R. J. (2001). Knowledge retention as a latent outcome measure in distance learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(3), 20–23. Authors ROBERT M. BERNARD is Professor of Education at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB-545-5, Department of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail bernard@education.concordia.ca. He specializes in instructional technology, distance education, online teaching and learn- ing, research design and statistics, and research synthesis (meta-analysis). PHILIP C. ABRAMI is Professor of Education at Concordia University and Director of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB-545-5, Department of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail abrami@education.concordia.ca. His areas of expertise include instructional technology, social psychology of education, postsecondary instruction, and research syn- thesis (meta-analysis). YIPING LOU is Assistant Professor of Educational Technology in the Department of Educational Leadership, Research, and Counseling, Louisiana State University, 111 Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803; e-mail ylou@lsu.edu. She specializes in technology-mediated instruction, collaborative learning, and meta-analysis. EVGUENI BOROKHOVSKI is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology, Concordia University, and a research assistant at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB-545-5, Department of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail eborokhovski@ education.concordia.ca. He specializes in systematic reviews in the area of cognitive psy- chology and learning (e.g., early reading acquisition, second-language learning). ANNE WADE is Manager and Information Specialist at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB-545-5, Department of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail wada@ education.concordia.ca. Her expertise is in information storage and retrieval and research strategies. LORI WOZNEY is a doctoral candidate in Concordia University’s Educational Technology program and is a member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB- 545-5, Department of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com Bernard et al. 434 Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail wozney@education.concordia.ca. Her work focuses on the integration of instructional technology, self-regulated learning, and orga- nizational analysis. PETER ANDREW WALLET is an MA student in educational technology and a research assistant at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB-545-5, Depart- ment of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Mon- treal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail wallet@education.concordia.ca. Teacher training using distance education is a prime interest in his research. MANON FISET is an MA student in educational technology and a research assistant at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, LB-545-5, Department of Education, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8; e-mail fiset@education.concordia.ca. She has worked in the field of distance educa- tion for several years at the Institute of Canadian Bankers and the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance. BINRU HUANG is a research assistant in the Department of Educational Leadership, Research, and Counseling, Louisiana State University, 111 Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803; e-mail binruhuang@hotmail.com. Her research interests include statistical analysis methods and use of technology in distance learning. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 435 (continued) APPENDIX A Coded variables and study features: DE meta-analysis codebook Section A: Identification of Studies 1. Study number (Name: “Study”) 2. Finding number (Name: “Finding”) 3. Author name (Name: “Author”) 4. Year of publication (Name: “Yr”) Section B: Outcome Features 1. Outcome type (Name: “Outcome”) 1. Achievement 2. Retention 3. Attitude toward course 4. Attitude toward the technology 5. Attitude toward the subject matter 6. Attitude toward the instructor 7. Other attitudes 2. Whose outcome (Name: “Whose”) 1. Group 2. Individual 3. Teacher 3. Number of control conditions (Name: “Ctrol”) 1. One control, one DE 2. One control, more than one DE 3. One DE, more than one control 4. More than one DE and more than one control Section C: Methodological Features 1. Type of publication (Name: “Typpub”) 1. Journal article 2. Book chapter 3. Report 4. Dissertation 2. Outcome measure (Name: “Measure”) 1. Standardized test 2. Researcher-made test 3. Teacher-made test 4. Teacher/researcher-made test 3. Effect size (Name: “Esest”) 1. Calculated 2. Estimated from probability levels 4. Treatment duration (Name: “Durat”) 1. Less than one semester 2. One semester 3. More than one semester 5. Treatment proximity (Name: “Prox”) 1. Same time period 2. Different time period 6. Instructor equivalence (Name: “Inseq”) 1. Same instructor 2. Different instructor September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 436 APPENDIX A (Continued) 7. Student equivalence (Name: “Stueq”) 1. Random assignment 2. Statistical control 8. Equivalent time on task (Name: “Timeeq”)* 9. Material equivalence (Name: “Mateq”) 1. Same curriculum materials 2. Different curriculum materials 10. Learner ability (Name: “Abilit”)* 11. Attrition rates (Name: “Attr”)* 12. Average class size (Name: “Size”) 1. DE larger than control 2. DE equal to control 3. DE smaller than control 13. Gender (Name: “Gender”)* Section D: Course Design and Pedagogical Features 1. Simultaneous delivery (Name: “Simul”) 1. Simultaneous delivery 2. Not simultaneous 2. Systematic “instructional design” (Name: “Id”)* 3. DE condition: Advance information (Name: “Advinf”) 1. Information received before commencement of course 2. Information received at first course 3. No information received 4. Opportunity for face-to-face contact with instructor (Name: “f2ft”) 1. Opportunity to meet instructor during instruction 2. No opportunity to meet instructor 3. Opportunity to meet instructor prior to, or at commencement of, instruction only (e.g., orientation session) 5. Opportunity for face-to-face contact with peers (Name: “f2fp”) 1. Opportunity to meet peers during instruction 2. No opportunity to meet peers 3. Opportunity to meet peers at or prior to commencement of instruction 6. Provision for synchronous technically mediated communication with teacher (Name: “Syncte”) 1. Opportunity for synchronous communication 2. No opportunity for synchronous communication 7. Provision for synchronous technically mediated communication with students (Name: “Synper”) 1. Opportunity for synchronous communication 2. No opportunity for synchronous communication 8. Teacher/student contact encouraged (Name: “Tstd”)* 9. Student/student contact encouraged (Name: “Ss”)* 10. Problem-based learning (Name: “Pbl”)* Section E: Institutional Features 1. Institutional support for instructor (Name: “Insupp”)* 2. Technical support for students (Name: “Tcsupp”)* September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 437 APPENDIX A (Continued) Section F: Media Features 1. Use of two-way audio conferencing (Name: “Ac”)* 2. Use of two-way video conferencing (Name: “Vc”)* 3. Use of CMC or interactive computer classroom (Name: “Cmc”)* 4. Use of e-mail (Name: “E-mail”)* 5. Use of one-way broadcast TV or videotape or audiotape (Name: “Tvvid”)* 6. Use of Web-based course materials (Name: “Web”)* 7. Use of telephone (Name: “Tele”)* 8. Use of computer-based tutorials/simulations (Name: “Cbi”)* Section G: Demographics 1. Cost of course delivery (Name: “Cost”)* 2. Purpose of offering DE (Name: “Purpos”) 1. Flexibility of schedule or travel 2. Preferred media approach 3. Access to expertise (teacher/program) 4. Special needs students 5. Efficient delivery or cost savings 6. Multiple reasons 3. Instructor experience with DE (Name: “Inde”) 1. Yes 2. No 4. Instructor experience with technologies used (Name: “Intech”) 1. Yes 2. No 5. Student experience with DE (Name: “Stude”) 1. Yes 2. No 6. Student experience with technologies used (Name: “Stutech”) 1. Yes 2. No 7. Types of control learners (Name: “Lrtypc”) 1. K–12 2. Undergraduate 3. Graduate 4. Military 5. Industry/business 6. Professionals (e.g., doctors) 8. Types of DE learners (Name: “Lrtypd”) 1. K–12 2. Undergraduate 3. Graduate 4. Military 5. Industry/business 6. Professionals (e.g., doctors) 9. Setting (Name: “Settng”) 1. DE urban and control rural 2. DE urban and control urban 3. DE reported/control not reported (continued) September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 438 APPENDIX A (Continued) 4. DE rural and control urban 5. DE rural and control rural 6. Control reported/DE not reported 10. Subject matter (Name: “Subjec”) 1. Math (including statistics and algebra) 2. Languages (includes language arts and second languages) 3. Science (including biology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy) 4. History 5. Geography 6. Computer science (information technology) 7. Computer applications 8. Education 9. Medicine or nursing (histology) 10. Military training 11. Business 12. Engineering 13. Other 11. Average age (Name: “Age”) 1. Real difference in age means with corresponding sign Note. Items followed by asterisks were coded according to the following scheme: 1. DE more than control group 2. DE reported/control group not reported 3. DE equal to control group 4. Control reported/DE not reported 5. DE less than control group 999. Missing (no information on DE or control reported) APPENDIX B Categories, numbers, and percentages of excluded studies Excluded studies Category No. % Review and conceptual articles 52 8.25 Case studies, survey results, and qualitative studies 55 8.73 Studies with violations of either DE or face-to-face definitions 295 46.83 Collapsed data, mixed conditions, or program-based findings 43 6.83 Insufficient statistical data 97 15.40 Nonretrievable studies 10 1.58 “Out-of-date” studies 21 3.33 Duplicates 11 1.75 Multiple reasons 46 7.30 Total 630 100 September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 439 APPENDIX D Effect sizes for demographic study features (k ≥ 10) Study feature g+ t Reasons for offering DE courses Access to expertise (k = 48) −0.0821 −2.93** Efficient delivery or cost (k = 22) 0.1639 3.55** Multiple purposes (k = 22) 0.1557 2.84** Types of students K–12 (k = 24) 0.2016 4.26** Undergraduate (k = 219) −0.0048 −0.38 Graduate (k = 36) 0.0809 2.18* Military (k = 11) 0.4452 6.80** Subject matter Math, science, and engineering (k = 67) −0.1026 −3.94** Computer science/computer applications (k = 13) 0.1706 3.01** Military/business (k = 50) 0.1777 5.72** *p ≤ .05; **p < .01. APPENDIX C Dates and categories of publication for achievement outcomes Publication date category Frequency % 1985–1989 27 8.49 1990–1994 91 28.61 1995–1999 108 33.96 2000–2002 92 28.93 Publication category Frequency Relative % g+ Journal articles 135 42.45 −0.009 Dissertations 64 20.13 0.022 Technical reports 119 37.42 0.036* *p < .05. September 7, 2009 at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB onhttp://rer.aera.netDownloaded from http://rer.sagepub.com 
work_aqxbafrnmvbandb6ilx6e3duau	----	JVME-35.3.-019 449..455 Research and Education Reports Learning Characteristics of Veterinary Technology Students in a Distance-Education and an On-Campus Program Connie K. Varnhagen g David L. Wright ABSTRACT Distance-education programs have the potential to greatly increase the number of veterinary technicians. The demographic characteristics, readiness for independent and online learning, learning styles, and academic locus of control of a group of distance-education and on-campus veterinary technology students were examined. Distance-education students preferred independent learning and were more internally motivated to learn. Distance-education students with greater degrees of independence and internal motivation participated more fully, were more satisfied with their learning, and achieved higher grades. Students who preferred problem solving and active experimentation were particularly successful in distance education. These findings could have important implications for advising students interested in distance-education programs. Key words: distance education, e-learning, student characteristics INTRODUCTION Accredited distance-education degree programs in veter- inary technology were developed in the late 1990s to address the unmet need for veterinary technicians in North America.1–5 Distance-education programs offer economies of scale, providing access to large numbers of students living and working outside the range of traditional on-campus programs.4 Generally, distance-education stu- dents complete the academic portion of their program through independent reading and Web-based or video lectures and demonstrations and the practical components through preceptor-supervised work experience. Because distance-education programs do not deliver on-campus practical and clinical experiences, class size is not subject to the same limits as traditional on-campus programs. Distance education differs from on-campus education with respect to the degree of student independence and control in the learning environment.6, 7 Distance-education students are more often female, older, married, and employed full- time, and are more likely to be enrolled in distance education for personally defined reasons.3, 4, 8–10 Distance-education and traditional programs provide similar academic content and are designed to prepare students for a standardized national examination. Both programs require general education courses; on-campus students generally complete their courses in biology, mathematics, composition, and communication prior to enrollment, while distance-education students complete their courses concurrently with veterinary technician courses. Most students in distance-education programs take courses on a part-time basis, and many take five years or more to graduate. In contrast, the on-campus program is designed to be completed on a full-time basis in two years, provided that the general education courses are completed prior to admission to the program. Students in the distance-education program complete didactic material independently online and learn practical skills through work experience, with practicing veterinarians and/or credentialed veterinary technicians serving as preceptors. Students in the on-campus program receive didactic material in classroom lectures and learn practical skills in laboratory and clinical courses. Attrition rates are higher in distance-education programs than in on-campus programs: approximately 50% of students continue beyond the first course.10–14 Factors associated with the higher drop-out rate include older age, being married, and having family commitments.10 Other factors include technological barriers, learning styles, motivation to learn independently, and institutional and circumstantial factors, such as distance from an accredited educational program.10, 15, 16 It is essential to understand the characteristics of successful distance-education learners in order to appropriately counsel students considering enrol- ling in distance-education programs and to build program supports to ensure success. The number of distance-education veterinary technology programs is increasing, but there is little information available comparing learner characteristics of students in distance-education and on-campus programs. The ability to use a computer should be a key to success in distance education, but most on-campus college courses require some ability to use computers for accessing course and library-based information. In one study, veterinary technol- ogy students taking a distance-education veterinary phy- siology course as part of their program rated themselves ‘‘pretty good’’ to ‘‘extremely good’’ at using computers.18 It was anticipated that both groups would be able to use computers but that distance-education students might have a greater preference for independent learning and for receiving information in an online format. Known indices of readiness for online learning include the avail- ability of computers and level of computer skill, the degree JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC 449 of independent learning aptitude, and time-management ability.7, 15, 16, 18 Research on learning styles has shown that students approach and respond to learning experiences in many ways.7, 19, 20 Although learning-style inventories are some- what controversial, educators use them to match students with appropriate instructional materials and counseling regarding distance education.20–23 Students’ response to the learning environment is an important predictor of retention in distance education programs; thus, we predicted that students with different learning styles would have varying levels of academic success and satisfaction with the two different components of the programs (didactic information and clinical preceptorship).24 Student control of learning is a critical component of distance education.7 Students with an internal locus of control take greater control over their own learning and attribute their learning and performance to internal factors, such as effort. Students with an external locus of control attribute learning and performance to factors outside of their control, such as the instructor ’s teaching or luck.25 Successful distance education students should exhibit a more internal locus of control, particularly given the amount of indepen- dent, student-centered learning required. The goals of this study were to compare learner character- istics of distance-education and on-campus students enrolled in veterinary technology programs and to investi- gate characteristics of successful distance-education veter- inary technology students. METHODS A total of 614 distance-education students and 53 on- campus students enrolled in a veterinary technology program leading to an associate’s degree in applied sciences were sent an e-mail requesting their participation in an online survey during the second-to-last week of the term. A reminder was sent 10 days later. The solicitation e-mail introduced the study and provided a link to the appropriate survey. Participants indicated their willingness to partici- pate by completing the survey. The survey included demographic and program-related questions and three personality scales. Human subjects approval was obtained from the university’s institutional review board, as well as the permission of the president of the college, prior to the study. The survey contained demographic questions, program- related questions, an index of readiness for online learn- ing,17 a learning styles index,23 and a locus of control index.26 Basic demographic questions addressed age, gender, racial identity, and previous education, as well as gathering data on general computer skill and access, self- reported grade-point average, and satisfaction with learn- ing. The wording of several of the demographic questions differed between the two groups to account for the flexibility of the distance-education program. Readiness for online learning was assessed using the Readiness Index for Online Learning,17 a 20-item ques- tionnaire that considers student independence and self- directedness. Examples of questions are the following: ‘‘The type of learning environment I learn best in is . . .’’; ‘‘When confronted with technology that is new to me, I . . .’’ Each item had three potential responses: one consistent with a preference for or suitability for on campus classes; one consistent with a preference for or suitability for online classes; and one between the two extremes. A score of 1 was assigned for responses indicating a preference for an on- campus course, a 3 for responses indicating a preference for an online course, and a 2 for in-between responses. The score for this measure was created by totaling the scores for the different items. The potential range of scores for this measure was 20–60; higher scores reflect a preference or suitability for an online program. Learning styles were assessed using the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory.23 Various measures are constructed from students’ responses to 12 statements (e.g., ‘‘I learn by . . .’’), each with four response options reflecting a learning preference for experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and doing. The options were rank-ordered in terms of personal preference, with 4 indicating a statement ‘‘most like’’ the respondent and 1 indicating a statement ‘‘least like’’ the respondent. Ranks were summed for different options to create scores on subscales of Concrete Experience (CE, experiencing), Reflective Observation (RO, reflecting), Abstract Conceptualization (AC, thinking), and Active Experimentation (AE, doing). Two additional scores were created by subtracting the CE score from the AC score to create a measure of preference for abstractness as opposed to concreteness (AC-CE) and by subtracting the RO score from the AE score to create a measure of preference for action over reflection (AE-RO). Values on the AC-CE and AE-RO were used to determine preferred learning style, based on norming studies23. The relationship between the subscales on the Learning Style Inventory and the resulting learning styles is shown in Figure 1. A value less than or equal to 7 on the AC-CE and less than or equal to 6 on the AE-RO defines a Diverging learning style, indicating a preference for experiencing and reflecting; this is shown in the upper right quadrant of the figure. A value greater than Active Experimentation (doing) Reflective Observation (reflecting) Abstract Conceptualization (thinking) Concrete Experience (experiencing) Accommodating learning style Assimilating learning style Diverging learning style Converging learning style Figure 1: Diagram of Kolb Learning Styles derived from the subscales of the Learning Style Inventory (adapted from Kolb and Kolb 23 ) 450 JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC or equal to 8 on the AC-CE and greater than or equal to 7 on the AE-RO defines a Converging learning style, indicating preferences for thinking and doing; this is shown in the lower left quadrant of Figure 1, diagonal to the Diverging learning style. A value less than or equal to 7 on the AC-CE and greater than or equal to 7 on the AE-RO defines an Accommodating learning style, indicating preferences for experiencing and doing (upper left quadrant). A value greater than or equal to 8 on the AC-CE and less than or equal to 6 on the AE-RO defines an Assimilating learning style, indicating a preference for thinking and reflecting (diagonal to the Accommodating learning style). Students’ perceptions of control over their academic performance and outcomes were assessed using the Trice Academic Locus of Control.26 This measure consists of student true/false responses to 28 statements such as ‘‘College grades most often reflect the effort you put into classes.’’ Higher scores on the scale represent a relatively greater external locus of control, with scores of 0–13 representing an internal locus of control and scores above 13 representing an external locus of control. Cronbach’s alpha was used to evaluate reliability of the various measures. Chi-square likelihood ratios were used to investigate differences based on the demographic vari- ables. Welsh t-tests were used to compare scores on the learning characteristics between on campus and online students because of the large difference in sample sizes. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for repeated measures was used to analyze differences between the two groups of students in terms of learning style and the learning scores from the learning style inventory, with type of program (distance education versus on-campus) and learning style (Diverging, Converging, Accommodating, Assimilating) as between-subjects variables and the four learning scores (Abstract Conceptualization, Concrete Experience, Active Experimentation, Reflective Observation) as repeated mea- sures. The effect of learning style on readiness for online learning was assessed using a one-way ANOVA. Tukey post-hoc analyses were used to identify differences. Spear- man rank-order correlations were used to examine relation- ships between the outcome measures of learning and program satisfaction with background variables, program participation, and other satisfaction variables. Finally, stepwise regression was used to predict program satisfac- tion. All analyses were evaluated at the 0.05 probability level. RESULTS The response rates for distance-education students and on- campus students were 39.9% (245/614) and 35.8% (19/55), respectively. Less than 1% of e-mails were returned due to incorrect addresses. Reliability scores for the responses ranged from moderate to very high. Reliability for online readiness was very high (�¼0.94); the learning style subscales were of moderate to high reliability (�¼0.72– 0.84).23 Reliability for locus of control was very high (�¼0.96). Demographic information for the respondents is shown in Table 1. Respondents were representative of the population in each program in terms of gender, age, and the number enrolled in each level or year. The distance-education program is divided into four levels, with most students enrolled in introductory courses. The distribution of respondents closely reflected the enrollment distribution in the distance-education program, with 57.6%, 27.8%, 9.4%, and 5.3% of the respondents in levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The majority of respondents from the on- campus program were in their first year (68.4%), reflecting the smaller number of students in the second year of the on- campus program because of attrition and advancement rates. Most distance-education students (90%) lived in another state; 4% lived in-state, 3% lived within driving distance of the college, and 3% lived outside the United States. The rest of the results are divided into two sections: comparisons between distance-education and on-campus students, and an examination of learning characteristics of distance-education students as they relate to students’ perceptions of satisfaction and learning. COMPARISONS BETWEEN DISTANCE-EDUCATION AND ON-CAMPUS STUDENTS Table 1 shows the demographic statistics for both distance- education and on-campus students. Significantly more (p < 0.001) distance-education students than on-campus students had previous veterinary experience, and signifi- cantly more (p < 0.001) distance-education students were employed full-time. As shown in Table 1, there were no significant differences in age between the on-campus Table 1: Demographic information for distance- education and on-campus students Type of Program Demographic Variable Distance Education (N^245) On Campus (N^19) Age (mean years) 32.4 31.0 Female (%) 94.3 94.7 Is married or living common-law (%) 53.5 68.4 Has children (%) 27.3 26.3 Identifies as Caucasian (%) 91.4 89.5 Speaks English as a first language (%) 98.4 100.0 Has more than high school education (%) 85.3 89.5 Has previous veterinary experience (%) 95.5 63.2* Is employed full-time (%) 88.6 26.3* Self-rates computer skill as ‘‘good’’ to ‘‘excellent’’ (%) 88.6 94.8 Self-rates Internet skill as ‘‘good’’ to ‘‘excellent’’ (%) 91.4 89.5 Has previous experience with online instruction (%) 21.6 31.6 *p < 0.01 JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC 451 and distance-education students, consistent with general demographic information on students from the two programs. Scores for online readiness, learning style inventory, and locus of control are reported in Table 2. Online readiness scores were significantly higher (p < 0.005) for distance- education students than for on-campus students, but responses indicated that on-campus students also demon- strated readiness. Responses relating to independence revealed the largest differences. For example, for the item ‘‘Face-to-face interaction with the instructor is . . .’’ the most common response for distance-education students was ‘‘Not necessary for my success,’’ whereas the most common response for on-campus students was ‘‘An impor- tant part of the learning process for me.’’ Similarly, in response to the statement, ‘‘The type of learning environ- ment I learn best in is . . .’’ distance-education students most frequently chose ‘‘A student-centered environment: I’m on my own, but I have help as needed,’’ while on-campus students most commonly chose ‘‘A teacher-directed envir- onment with all material explained in detail.’’ Both groups responded similarly to statements such as ‘‘I consider my reading skills to be . . .’’ and ‘‘My access to an Internet-ready computer is . . .’’ No differences in learning styles were detected between groups on the four subscales and combined subscales; the patterns of means most closely resembled those of undergraduate students in the arts.23 No strong differ- ences between the two sets of subscales—Abstract Conceptualization versus Concrete Experience and Active Experimentation versus Reflective Observation—were found, indicating no preferences for one type of learning environment over another. A more meaningful interpreta- tion of the learning style inventory came from categorizing students into the four learning styles: Diverging, Converging, Accommodating, and Assimilating. Table 3 shows the percentage of each type of learning style for distance-education and on-campus students. The distribu- tion of the two groups was not different. We found a significant (p < 0.001) main effect of learning score. Consistent with the norming groups, we obtained highest learning scores for Active Experimentation, fol- lowed by Abstract Conceptualization, Reflective Observa- tion, and, finally, Concrete Experience. There were also statistically significant interactions (p < 0.001) between learning style and learning score, an artifact of the scoring system used to determine learning styles from learning scores. We found no main effects or interactions related to type of program, consistent with the separate analyses of the subscales and combined subscales. Distance-education students scored significantly lower (p < 0.005) on the locus of control scale. Scores between 0 and 13 represent an internal locus of control; means for both groups were below 13, with 78.8% of distance-education students and 47.4% of on-campus students scoring in this range. A significantly higher percentage (p < 0.01) of distance-education students were classified as having an internal locus of control. LEARNING STYLE CHARACTERISTICS OF DISTANCE- EDUCATION STUDENTS RELATED TO LEARNING AND SATISFACTION The means and standard deviations for online readiness and locus of control are presented in Table 4 as a function of students’ preferred learning style. Learning style affected online readiness: students displaying a Converging learning style were more likely to be more independent, as assessed by the online readiness index than those with a Diverging learning style. In addition, there were significant differences between Converging learning style and Diverging and Assimilating learning styles, with an Accommodating learning style falling between them on the locus of control measure. Although all means fell within the internal locus of control region, students with a preference for a Converging learning style had a relatively more internal locus of control. Proportions of distance-education students by self-reported grades, learning, and satisfaction as a function of learning style are reported in Table 5. Self-reported grade-point averages differed by learning style (p < 0.05): more students demonstrating the Converging learning style reported an A Table 2: Means and standard deviations for the readiness index for online learning, learning style inventory, and academic locus of control scales Type of Program Scale Distance Education Mean (SD) On Campus Mean (SD) Readiness Index for Online Learning 50.1 (4.6) 45.3 (4.0)* Learning Styles Inventory Concrete Experience (CE) 27.9 (7.5) 30.0 (8.0) Reflective Observation (RO) 31.0 (6.8) 31.1 (7.5) Abstract Conceptualization (AC) 29.7 (7.3) 26.2 (7.8) Active Experimentation (AE) 35.9 (6.6) 35.8 (5.1) AC - CE 1.9 (9.7) �3.8 (13.0) AE - RO 4.9 (9.0) 4.8 (8.0) Academic Locus of Control 9.7 (3.8) 12.4 (3.4)* *p < 0.01 Table 3: Proportions of students in the two programs falling into the four different learning style categories Type of Program Learning Style Distance Education % On Campus % Diverging 44 44 Converging 13 6 Accommodating 29 33 Assimilating 14 17 452 JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC average than students with the other learning styles. Similarly, more Converging respondents (66.7%) reported being ‘‘very satisfied’’ with their learning compared with approximately 40%, 49%, and 41% of students with Diverging, Accommodating, and Assimilating learning styles, respectively. Similar trends were found for overall satisfaction, but in this case the differences were not statistically significant as a function of learning style. Correlations between the outcome measures of learning and program satisfaction and background variables, program participation, and other satisfaction variables are presented in Table 6. (Negative values are related to reverse scoring of one of the variables.) The first column of Table 6 shows the correlations with grade-point average (GPA). These correla- tions are smaller than those shown in the second column for program satisfaction, likely because of a restricted range in GPA (75% of respondents reported an A average). Students who reported better Internet skill, a more positive impres- sion of the usefulness of the Internet for learning, greater readiness for online learning, a more internal locus of control, and greater satisfaction with their learning reported higher grades. Students who reported more frequent use of the Internet, a markedly positive impression of and preference for using the Internet for learning, greater readiness for online learning, a more internal locus of control, greater participation in all online components, and greater satisfaction with all aspects of the program also reported higher overall satisfaction with the program. Removing the Converging students who were more ready for online learning, had a more internal locus of control, and reported greater satisfaction and learning than students classified into the other three types of learning styles did not change the correlations. Predictors of program satisfaction were determined. Four background variables (perceived helpfulness of the Internet for learning, preference for Internet-based instruction, online learning readiness, and locus of control) and one program-related variable (access to the Internet for the learning materials) predicted program satisfaction (p < 0.001). Learning style did not significantly predict program satisfaction; students who held a more positive impression of and preference for the Internet for learning, were more ready for online learning, displayed a more internal locus of control, and made greater use of online course materials expressed a greater satisfaction with their distance-education program. DISCUSSION The goals of this study were to compare learning character- istics of distance-education and on-campus students enrolled in veterinary technology programs and to explore relationships among learning characteristics of the distance- education students. Distance-education and on-campus students were similar in terms of age, gender, prior educational experience, and patterns of learning styles, but distance education students were more ready for indepen- dent online learning and demonstrated a more internal locus of control. These findings are consistent with the literature on college-level distance-education programs, indicating that results from other programs may be applicable to more specialized veterinary technician students.6–10, 14, 24, 25 All students who responded to the survey were successful in terms of grades and learning, but students who displayed a preference for a Converging learning style were more Table 4: Means and standard deviations for distance-education students’ scores on the readiness index for online learning and academic locus of control scale as a function of learning style Learning Style Measure Diverging Mean (SD) (N^102) Converging Mean (SD) (N^30) Accommodating Mean (SD) (N^69) Assimilating Mean (SD) (N^32) Readiness Index for Online Learning 49.2 (4.6)a 52.4 (4.7)b 50.5 (4.0) 50.2 (4.5) Academic Locus of Control 10.2 (3.5)b 8.0 (2.8)a 9.6 (4.0) 10.4 (4.5)b a, b Means in the same row that do not share subscripts are statistically significantly different. Table 5: Distance-education students’ responses to the performance, learning, and satisfaction survey items Learning Style Item Diverging % (N^102) Converging % (N^30) Accommodating % (N^69) Assimilating % (N^32) Grade-point average of A 70.6b 93.3a 72.5b 78.1b ‘‘Very satisfied’’ with learning 39.8b 66.7a 49.3b 40.6b ‘‘Very satisfied’’ with program 44.7 63.3 55.1 43.8 a, b Means in the same row that do not share subscripts are statistically significantly different. JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC 453 ready for online learning, were more internally motivated to succeed, reported higher grade-point averages, and tended to be more satisfied with their own learning. Students who were better prepared for online learning, were more internally motivated, participated more in the online components, and reported greater satisfaction with their learning had higher grades and expressed greater satisfac- tion with the program. Several investigators have found that distance-education students are more likely than on-campus students to be older, to be more mature, and to have family and work commitments.4, 8, 10, 14 We found no differences in terms of age, marital status, or children between the two groups, but distance-education students were more likely to be employed full-time, often in the field of veterinary medi- cine. Distance-education students indicated a greater pre- ference for independent learning than on-campus students. Given this finding and responses indicating a strong internal locus of control, this study suggests that successful distance-education students take control of their own learning more than on-campus students do.7, 24, 2 Age is reported to be an important variable in both the general college distance-education literature and a report on an overview of a veterinary technician distance-education program.4, 6–10 However, other characteristics of the learner, such as learning style and locus of control, seem to be more important to consider in relation to distance-education programs for veterinary technology, both for program development and for student recruitment and retention. Implications for Program Development A popular model for designing distance-education oppor- tunities, based on an understanding of the learning styles of students, is the Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing (R2D2) model.23, 24 This model proposes that students with learning styles that include thinking and doing (e.g., Converging) might be best served by access to quality information (e.g., readings, asynchronous lectures) and discussion as well as to interactive activities. The two major components of successful distance-education veter- inary technology programs are didactic learning, both online and through textbook assignments, and active learning through hands-on experience under the guidance of a veterinary professional.4 A didactic-plus-practical distance-learning program in veterinary technology is appropriately aligned with the learning characteristics we found for successful distance-education veterinary technol- ogy students based on the R2D2 model.24 This finding has important implications both for the development of dis- tance-education veterinary technology programs and for recruiting students who will succeed in these programs. Implications for Recruitment Successful distance-education veterinary technology stu- dents have varied learning characteristics. This study suggests that the most successful students have a Converging learning style, indicating a preference for thinking about readings and other informational materials that make up the didactic online component of many distance-education veterinary technology programs as well as a preference for active experimentation (e.g., working in the field). Successful students also have an internal locus of control, indicating that they take personal responsibility for their learning and performance, and have strong computer skills and a preference for independent, online learning. Recruitment and selection procedures that identify such students may improve retention and success in distance- education veterinary technology programs. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Heather Cuthbertson, Sarah Snider, and Karyna Soco, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, who assisted with the development of the survey. We thank the students in the Distance Education Veterinary Technology Program and the on-campus Veterinary Technology Program at Cedar Valley College in the Dallas County Community College District. REFERENCES 1 Bassert JM. An introduction to the profession of veterinary technology. In McCurnin DM, Bassert JM, eds. Clinical Textbook for Veterinary Technicians, 6th ed. St Louis, MO: Elsevier Saunders, 2006:1–26. Table 6: Spearman rank-order correlations between outcome measures (grade-point average, program satisfaction) with background variables, program-related behavior, and satisfaction Outcome Measure Measures Average Program Satisfaction Background Variables Internet skill �0.13* – Frequency of Internet use – 0.13* Helpfulness of Internet for learning 0.14* 0.43** Preference for online instruction – 0.44** Readiness Index for Online Learning �0.25** �0.38** Locus of control 0.17* 0.27** Program-Related Behaviours Course access 0.14* 0.35** Participation in graded discussion – 0.14* Participation in student discussion – 0.16* Satisfaction With instructors – 0.62** With preceptors – 0.38** With learning 0.17* 0.65** – not significant *p < 0.05 **p < 0.001 454 JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC 2 Leff GR. Veterinary technicians: how would you characterize the shortage of veterinary technicians and the underlying causes? J Am Vet Med Assoc 228:1313–1331, 2006. 3 Jones PA. The Effect of Instructor Interaction on Students’ Self-Efficacy and Satisfaction with Distance Learning. Master’s thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 2005. 4 Bill RL. Purdue University’s Veterinary Technology Distance Learning Program. J Vet Med Educ 34:311–315, 2007. 5 Ertmer PA, Nour AYM. Teaching basic medical sciences at a distance: strategies for effective teaching and learning in Internet-based courses. J Vet Med Educ 34:316–332, 2007. 6 Bates T. Technology, E-Learning and Distance Education. London: Routledge, 2005. 7 Hiltz SR, Shea P. The student in the online classroom. In Hiltz SR, Starr R, Goldman R, eds. Learning Together Online: Research on Asynchronous Learning Networks. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005:145–168. 8 Halsne A, Gatta L. Online versus traditionally- delivered instruction: a descriptive study of learner characteristics in a community college setting <http://www. westga.edu/�distance/ojdla/spring51/halsne51.html>. Accessed 7/5/07. Online J Distance Learn Admin 5(1), 2002. 9 Hannay M, Newvine T. Perceptions of distance learn- ing: a comparison of traditional and online learning <jolt.merlot.org/documents/MSO5011.pdf>. Accessed 7/5/07. J Online Learn Teach 2(1): 1–11, 2006. 10 Kember D. A longitudinal-process model of drop-out from distance education. J Higher Educ 60:278–301, 1989. 11 Berge Z, Huang Y. A model for sustainable student retention: a holistic perspective on the student dropout problem with special attention to e-learning <http:// www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/deos/deosnews/deos- news13_5.pdf>. Accessed 7/5/07. DEOSNEWS 1(5), 2004. 12 Carr S. As distance education comes of age, the challenge is keeping the students <http://chronicle.com/ prm/weekly/v46/i23/23a00101.htm>. Accessed 7/5/07. Chronicle of Higher Education February 11:A39–A49, 2000.URL: 13 Frankola K. Why online learners drop out. Workforce 80(10):53–59, 2001. 14 Kember D. Open Learning Courses for Adults: A Model for Student Progress. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1995. 15 Bernard RM, Brauer A, Abrami PC, Surkes M. The development of a questionnaire for predicting online learning achievement. Distance Educ 25:31–47, 2003. 16 Tyler-Smith K. Early attrition among first time elear- ners: a review of factors that contribute to drop-out, withdrawal and non-completion rates of adult learners undertaking elearning programmes <jolt.merlot.org/ documents/Vol2_No2_TylerSmith.pdf>. Accessed 7/5/07. J Online Learn Teach 2(2):73–85, 2006. 17 Novosel S. The Readiness Index for Online Learning <http://www.nursing.iupui.edu/About/default.asp?/ About/CTLL/Online/rilo.htm>. Accessed 07/05/07. Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis, 2000. 18 Diwakar V, Ertmer PA, Nour AY. Developing inter- active course Web sites for distance education and char- acteristics of students enrolled in distance learning courses. J Vet Med Educ 30:351–357, 2003. 19 Cassidy S. Learning styles: an overview of theories, models and measures. Educ Psychol 24:419–444, 2004. 20 Coffield F, Moseley D, Hall E, Ecclestone K. Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning: A Systematic and Critical Review. London: Learning and Skills Research Centre, 2004. 21 Chyung SY. Conducting learner analysis to adjust online instruction for your faceless learners. Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. Madison: University of Wisconsin System, 2001:85–89. 22 duVivier RL. Your Online Learning Success Plan. Florence, KY: Thomson Delmar, 2008. 23 Kolb AY, Kolb DA. The Kolb Learning Style Inventory, version 3.1. Boston: Hay Group, Hay Resources Direct, 2005. 24 Bonk CJ, Zhang K. Introducing the R2D2 Model: online learning for the diverse learners of this world. Dist Educ 27:249–264, 2006. 25 Gifford DD, Briceno-Perriott J, Mianzo F. Locus of control: academic achievement and retention in a sample of university first-year students. J College Admission 191:18–25, 2006. 26 Trice AD. An academic locus of control scale for college students. Percept Mot Skills 61:1043–1046, 1985. AUTHOR INFORMATION Connie K. Varnhagen, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Alberta. Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 0C1 Canada. E-mail: varn@ualberta .ca. Her research interest is in instructional technology. David L. Wright, DVM, is Director of the Veterinary Technology Distance Learning Program at San Juan College, New Mexico. Veterinary Technology Distance Learning Program, San Jan College, 4601 College Boulevard, Farmington, NM 87402 USA. His research interests are in the development and evaluation of instructional technology for veterinary technology. JVME 35(3) � 2008 AAVMC 455 http://www http:// http://chronicle.com/ http://www.nursing.iupui.edu/About/default.asp?/ 
work_auc6cf5owjfbtpxznq5eu7um44	----	http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html WP 00-01-B1 Students’ Distress with a Web-based Distance Education Course: An Ethnographic Study of Participants' Experiences Spring, 2000 Center for Social Informatics SLIS Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 Note: This article has been accepted for publication in Information, Communication & Society 3(4): 557 -579. There may be some minor revisions. Please check this site for the latest version. Abstract Noriko Hara SILS Manning Hall University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599 haran@ils.unc.edu Rob Kling The Center for Social Informatics SLIS Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 kling@indiana.edu (812) 855-9763 1/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html Many advocates of computer-mediated distance education emphasize its positive aspects and understate the kinds of communicative and technical capabilities and work required by students and faculty. There are few systematic analytical studies of students who have experienced new technologies in higher education. This article presents a qualitative case study of a web- based distance education course at a major U.S. university. The case data reveal a topic that is glossed over in much of the distance education literature written for administrators, instructors and prospective students: students' periodic distressing experiences (such as frustration, anxiety and confusion) in a small graduate -level course due to communication breakdowns and technical difficulties. Our intent is that this study will enhance understanding of the instructional design issues, instructor and student preparation, and communication practices that are needed to improve web-based distance education courses. Keywords: distance education, WWW, asynchronous communication, students’ experiences Introduction Cutting-edge technology (e.g., digital communications and learning technologies) enables universities to implement distance education to reach more diverse populations and to provide more available learning environments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are substantial discussions about distance education in higher education, and the number of asynchronous distance education courses that rely on Internet applications is growing rapidly . There are at least five major kinds of literatures about asynchronous distance education courses that rely upon the Internet as a core communication medium: (a) a specialized research literature, which includes journals such as the Journal of Asynchronous Learning and the American Journal of Distance Education, research monographs, and specialized conferences; (b) a practitioner literature whose audience is administrators and faculty who may be involved in such courses (e.g., the Chronicle of Higher Education, written advice for instructors); (c) instructional materials for students taking specific courses (e.g., 2/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html syllabi, orientation documents, tip sheets); (d) popular accounts of such courses written for the public (i.e., the mainstream press); and (e) marketing descriptions of courses and degree programs provided by educational institutions to their prospective students and their parents, employers and others. Most of these diverse literatures, including the specialty research literature, emphasize the likely value of Internet-enabled distance education to institutions (for reaching new students and generating new revenues) and to students (for convenience, and possibly enriched educational experiences), although there is some debate about the actual costs (and thus profits) of these new distance education courses (Green, 1997). Amongst academic practitioners, there has also been considerable concern about whether universities or their faculty own the instructional materials that they develop for these courses (Noble, 1998). Some of the specialty research studies have examined the difficulties faced by instructors in developing and teaching these courses (Besser and Donahue, 1996; Rahm & Reed, 1998) or that students report in taking them (Wegerif, 1998; Rossman, 1999). Overall, though, the vast majority of the practitioner and popular articles about Internet-enabled distance education tends to emphasize the virtues of Internet-enabled distance education and to minimize the difficulties of routinely providing high quality courses or of students learning from them. This promotional bias has been characteristic of other practitioner and popular literatures about computerization (Kling, 1994). Further, many characterizations of Internet-enabled distance education deftly intertwine themes of (needed) educational reforms to improve accessability and a larger cultural narrative about "the death of distance" (Iacono and Kling, in press). Our intent in this study was to increase understanding of the process and students’ actual experiences in an Internet-enabled course. However, as we will explore below, our study does focus on students’ distresses in a particular distance education class. In this article, we use "distresses" as a general term to describe students’ difficulties during the course, such as frustration, a feeling of isolation, anxiety, confusion, and panic. This focus has led to considerable interest in early versions of this article, as well as to some controversy. 3/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html Overview of Article’s History and the Literatures of Distance Education The article began as an ethnographic case study in 1997 of students’ experiences in a specific course, with interviews and observations conducted and course-specific documentary data collected by the first author. One major aim of the study was to understand the experience of taking an asynchronous text-based, Internet-enabled course from the point of view of its student participants. It is difficult to find other such research studies. While students’ perspectives are sometimes represented in the research literature, it is generally through course evaluation forms (Rossman, 1999) and concise characterizations of some students’ comments or experiences. The course that we studied was chosen specifically because the instructor permitted observation of the on- line class and interviews with her and her students, thus allowing for the collection of more observational and ethnography data than has been previously reported. We had approached other faculty members to request permission to study their on -line courses in this way, but were denied. Availability of the in -depth data that we wanted was the only criteria for selection of the course used in this study. It was not chosen because we expected it to be either a particularly superb or troublesome course. Some prior studies have cited the importance of students’ isolation in distance education courses (Abrahamson, 1998; Besser and Donahue, 1996;Brown, 1996; Rahm and Reed, 1998; Twigg, 1997). The original research question for this study was: How and how well do the students in this course manage their feelings of isolation in a virtual classroom in order to create the sense of a community of learning? However, during the observations and interviews we learned that students’ isolation was not a major problem, while students’ recurrent experiences of other types of distress such as frustration, anxiety and confusion seemed to be pervasive. Possibly because of the small class size, the students supported each other and developed a sufficient sense of community. Rather than speaking about feelings of isolation, during the first several interviews students frequently reported distress from various aspects of taking their course. We immediately 4/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html investigated the research literature about on -line courses. A few studies mentioned students being frustrated with technical problems or anxious about communication norms (Dede, 1996; Feenberg, 1987), but their authors emphasized the value of the students’ learning. Also, these previous studies did not provide detailed descriptions of on-line classrooms, nor did they indicate how these problems develop and are handled in specific teaching situations. We felt that the substantial distresses reported by our informants were not incidental and could actually impede their learning. Consequently we shifted our focus to examine the conditions that led these students to be distressed and some consequences of their distresses. In a subsequent section, we will illustrate these experiences, which are a byproduct of technical difficulties and communication breakdowns, as reported by our informants. In the course of analyzing the field data in late 1998 and early 1999, we reviewed the literatures of Internet-enabled distance education more carefully to see whether and how others reported these phenomena. We found few explicit research reports, except for Wegerif ’s (1998) study which focused on the importance of developing a learning community. We also searched the practitioner literature for articles and tip sheets that would help prospective instructors of Internet-enabled courses to avoid the kinds of difficulties that we observed in this one course. There is a reasonable literature written for instructors of face-to-face lecture classes and seminars. For example, McKeachie’s (1999) well known Teaching Tips is now in its 10 th Edition. In addition, we found some materials about the structuring and teaching of video-courses. We could not readily find similar quality materials for web-based courses. We were able to locate articles with general teaching tips (such as "emphasize interactivity," "provide prompt feedback"). But the handbooks to enhance face-to-face teaching often anchor their tips in specific research and flesh them out with a number of contextualized examples. In contrast, the articles with tips to improve on-line teaching are rarely explicit about the basis for the advice and rarely provide a variety of contextualized examples of ways that students and instructors can concretize the advice. There is a huge discrepancy in the quality, quantity and accessibility of 5/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html the materials that can help teachers improve face-to-face courses versus that which is available for teachers of on-line courses. This discrepancy leads us to suspect that the difficulties experienced by the instructor and students in this course might also be experienced by students in other web-based courses. A report of our study was initially posted on-line as both a working paper and an extended abstract on a discussion list. We received mixed feedback from the on-line readers. Some of the e- mail messages were positive and indicated confirmation of our findings. Others, however, were more critical of the methodology employed. One suggested that the course was poorly designed and the instructor ill-prepared, and noted how "hard it is to be a good teacher." Another critic speculated that we might be trying to sabotage web -based distance education efforts, with the view that criticisms of Internet-enabled distance education were simply thin covers for faculty job-protection. We were quite surprised by the way in which our working paper had become so rapidly politicized within some of the debates about Internet-enabled distance education. Publication of a story about our study in the New York Times On- line edition brought the study a new level of visibility. A one- paragraph summary circulated on several LISTSERVs and pointers to the story and our study seemed to be widely reposted. Our study attracted substantial attention, which brought us a hailstorm of new e-mail from researchers and educators, as well as from students who had taken distance education courses. In general, the researchers and practitioners in the field were sympathetic to the study’s findings and indicated that they had had parallel experiences in their research observations or teaching. The students experiences varied -- some reported having difficulties similar to the experiences reported by the students in our study, while others reported having satisfying experiences with their on-line courses. We were intrigued by the extent to which some people simply wanted to tell us about good examples of on-line courses without helping us to better understand the processes, pedagogies, and backstage resources (broadly conceived) that influenced students’ experiences in their on-line courses. 6/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html A few Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals claimed that the course, described below, was "designed to fail" from the start because of alleged limitations in the instructional design, student selection, or the instructor’s preparation. For example, the instructor was a Ph.D. student. While she had taught before, this was her first on-line course. Implicit in some of these criticisms was the view that first- time instructors could be expected to have severe problems in teaching on-line. Even in 1999, we have been unable to locate readily available and widely appreciated guidelines that support this judgement. In 1997, when the course was taught, it is even less likely that such guidelines were available. We know that issues of these kinds can weaken the performance of instructors in face-to-face courses. Yet, it is commonplace in North American universities for doctoral students or new regular faculty to teach their first course with "live students" and without much special orientation to teaching. Rather than making our study somehow marginal, these features stimulate broader questions about the kinds of people who are teaching the thousands of on-line courses that are taught each year in North America, their preparation and mentoring, and so on. In short, this small-scale case study helps to raise interesting and important national-scale issues that merit serious engagement. The key issue is understanding how people work with their innovations in practice, without censoring that which is problematic. During the discussions and debates highlighted here, we expanded our focus from the course as a bounded set of interactions between an instructor and her students to also include the kinds of guidelines that would help the participants in working together efficiently. This article may help stimulate a better understanding of the kinds of instructional design issues, instructor preparation, student selection practices, and communicative practices that should be widely encouraged. Research Methods Study Site B3002 was a graduate course at a major university. It was an 7/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html educational technology course in which students learn how to use information technologies in their areas of expertise. It was taught through a web site developed by graduate students who had worked with close faculty supervision during the previous summer. This site contained reading materials, activities, discussion questions, and additional readings organized along eight themes, such as authentic task, control, and "time and feedback." The course syllabus and assignment instructions were available on the web site. After students entered their usernames and passwords, they would see the menu screen. This page used the metaphor of a traditional classroom, so that the student could be situated in their familiar environments. The Students and Instructor In 1997, B3002 enrolled eight master’s students; six of them completed the course. Four students had only minimal experience with computers, but one of them was quite enthusiastic about technology and spent thirty to forty hours a week for this course at the beginning of the semester. One student was very familiar with computers; she was also familiar with the course's content through friends who had taken B3002 during the prior summer. The sixth student trained teachers in integrating computers into a curriculum. She was living far from the university, and thus did not have direct access to university facilities. She was the only student who had taken a distance education course prior to B3002. The instructor was a Ph.D. candidate. She was an experienced school teacher, but this was her first experience teaching in higher education and by distance education. She was selected, in part, because she was viewed as competent and sufficiently experienced by her department chair. She had taken B3002 in the summer of 1996, audited B3002 again over the previous summer, and participated in the design team for the B3002 web site. B3002 was designed by a faculty member in her program. The faculty member had provided content for most of the web site, such as course activities and reading assignments. The web site was used in a traditional class version of B3002 during the previous summer. However, the web site was not substantially altered for the online version of B3002. Instead, the instructor informed the students about the differences of some activities between these 8/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html two version of courses by sending weekly e-mail messages. Informed consent was obtained before each of our observations and interviews. Pseudonyms are used in order to protect informants’ identities. We do not cite quotes from e-mail messages with their pseudonyms, as that could potentially reveal the students' identities to the instructor, who knew which student had said what in e-mail messages. Data Collection We used a case study methodology because we found it necessary to develop a "thick description" (Geertz, 1973) of a virtual classroom. The inquiry was an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) based on a need for a general understanding of students’ experiences in distance education. The department where this study was conducted offered several courses on-line. B3002 was chosen because the instructor permitted observation of the on-line class and interviews of her and her students. She was also interested in learning from this study. Six students, five at the university campus and one from out of state, were enrolled, and all agreed to participate in this study. The empirical case study used three different methodologies: observation, interview, and document review. First, on-line classroom discussion was observed to examine the nature of students’ discussion, the instructor’s pedagogy (such as on-line discussion facilitation), the instructor’s comments to students, and task assignments. Various other kinds of observations were also conducted. One of the observations was a special event during the semester that provided opportunities for students to interact synchronously. They had a field trip to SchMOOze University—a virtual university campus accessed by telnet from all over the world. SchMOOze University is a MOO specifically designed for an English as a Second Language learner. (MOO is an acronym for "MUD Object Oriented" referring to "a multi-user, text-based virtual reality." . A MOO is programmed to provide an electronic space where people can meet on-line, have synchronous chat and discussion, and play games.) The rest of the observations were conducted in university computer labs. However, because we 9/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center fo... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html observed human-computer interaction, informants were asked to "think aloud" while they used a computer. Second, we observed students’ interaction with the course web site and conducted interviews immediately after the students had finished their tasks. Four of the six students in the course were observed for one to two hours. The interview following the observation lasted about an hour for each student. One student did not allow observation of his interaction with a computer because he anticipated discomfort with being observed during his coursework. Another student was living too far from the university location. However, these two students and the instructor agreed to be interviewed for about an hour (see Appendix for interview protocols). Moreover, data were collected from informal conversations with two students as well as the instructor. Third, we examined various types of documents related to B3002, including the course syllabus, reading assignments, and the catalog's course description. The syllabus explained the materials that students would use, the purpose, format and philosophy of the course, the class schedule, and the requirements and evaluation methods, including readings and responses, electronic discussion forum participation, Internet address book, portfolios, and final project. In addition, with her permission, the instructor ’s personal reflection notes were reviewed. Data Analysis Observation, interview, and documentary data were analyzed simultaneously while data were being collected. This comparison of the information collected from various sources helped to verify the data, both within individuals (i.e., different data collected from a given informant supported each other) and between individuals (i.e., different informants tended to report similar issues) . Furthermore, each interview transcript and interpretation was validated by the informants. We also found some discrepancies among different kinds of data sources. In e-mail messages, some students expressed frustrations. However, they tend to balance their messages with positive comments. On the other hand, in interviews, some students balance their comments as in e-mail, but some students reported their extensive frustrations more than 10/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html in their e-mail messages. In addition, observing the students while they were frustrated has strong effects on the observer. Therefore, we indicated a data source for each excerpt. This article is organized as follows: the section "Students' Experiences in Distance Education" describes situations that students in B3002 encountered. The description includes minimal interpretation in order to provide a "vicarious experience" for readers, so that they can relate it to their existing knowledge and participate in a rich experience from this case. The next section, "Understanding Students' Perspectives," offers vignettes and interviews followed by a section of commentary. The "Discussion" section presents our conclusions from this study. Finally, the "Conclusion" section summarizes the study and raises cautions for the study of distance education. (Note that as the article's first author conducted the fieldwork for this study, in the text to follow "I" or "me" refers to the first author, whereas "we" refers to both authors.) Students’ Distresses in an On -line Course In this section we describe some of the situations that the students in B3002 found to be particularly troublesome. The students did not report that all of their course activities were distressing. However, the following examples illustrate the kinds of distressing events that stood out for the students. A Virtual Field Trip The students took a field trip to SchMOOze University to experience virtual space. When people join SchMOOze University electronically they see text-based screens, although this virtual university uses metaphors of location. People can explore different virtual buildings (e.g., library, Mall, and meeting rooms) to meet people from all over the world by using simple commands, such as "go to east." The following observation was a special event in the middle of the semester that provided an opportunity for the students to have synchronous interaction. The class meeting time was set at 8:30 pm. All students and the instructor were supposed to meet at a virtual meeting room, so that the instructor could see who was on-line. I was observing one of 11/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html the students, Kathy, for this field trip. Kathy immediately started the field trip to SchMOOze University when I arrived at her home by typing: @knock MMM (instructor’s name) but the computer replied: >I don’t know Kathy said, "It doesn’t understand. How stupid it is. Let’s try with a different name." Then she typed: @knock mmm two or three more times, but continued to receive the same response. She murmured, "I don’t know what I am supposed to do. Maybe I am already in." At this point, several messages appeared on her computer screen. Conversation on the screen proceeded very quickly, making it very difficult to follow. A student complained. >Sheryl: Please slow down. However, the conversation never slowed. When Kathy saw the following message: >MMM: everybody seems familiar with commands. Kathy typed: I practiced this afternoon. When she typed, Kathy seemed very careful about spelling and capitalization. >Sheryl: I like the action of calling rows. Kathy remarked, "I think what she means is ‘calling role.’ Sometimes it’s confusing, the half of the students are non -native speakers." Kathy then saw the message: >Julie: Julie is here and tried to respond to it. While she was typing, she commented "By the time I type in my response, the conversation is gone." She typed: Welcome, intending this comment for Julie, but at this time several people who were not in the class joined the discussion. The first 30 minutes went by very quickly while Kathy tried to identify who was there and what to do. Kathy explained to me, "This is the first time we talked together." and complained, "What 12/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html are we supposed to do?" and glanced at her watch. It was almost 9 p.m. and according to the instructor ’s guideline, students were supposed to leave the original meeting room, go to different buildings at SchMOOze University, and look for possible student activities. Therefore, Kathy typed: Are we supposed to move around now? >MMM: chose building When she saw the instructor’s message, she murmured "I’m going to be out, go to lobby, and go to Mall." However, she couldn’t find anybody to talk to at the Virtual Mall, so she maneuvered back to the original meeting room. She saw on the screen that there were still students from the B3002 class continuing discussions. She said, "Now, I’m back to the discussion." and typed: Guess I need to stay put. >MMM: go to the building Kathy said, " I feel like nobody is answering my question," and complained "I’ve already been around the campus and..." While she was deciding what to do next, the on-line discussion at the meeting room was continuing. When she saw a message referring to Ann, she typed: Who’s Ann? The situation was chaotic in the room because different simultaneous conversations were overlapping (Herring, 1999). Before identifying Ann, Kathy said, "Maybe I’ll explore the campus now." She suggested going to a virtual bar to her classmates by typing: How about the bar?, and saw everyone’s agreement with her suggestion. When Kathy saw a message saying >Knock, knock she suspected that somebody had knocked at her door. She responded by typing: Enter, but received no answer. Kathy muttered, "What am I supposed to do? I’m confused," and looked at the instructor ’s guide. Prior to this event, the instructor had sent out the instruction for the SchMOOze University field trip and a map of the SchMOOze University through e-mail. Kathy assumed Julie was sending a message that knocks at her door because she saw Julie’s message asking her a question, and thus she tried to 13/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html find where Julie was. Kathy then moved to where Julie was and Julie sent a message to her. >Julie: I don’t want to leave you at the bar alone. Kathy laughed when she read the message. Julie tried to instruct her how to respond to a knock in this text -based environment, but Kathy was still struggling. Kathy looked at her watch and said, "This is exactly an hour." She told me, "If I have one complaint about this class, it is that time goes so quickly. I can be hooked up with a computer for a whole day and then realize that I haven’t had a dinner or I haven’t prepared my lesson plans." Although Kathy had tried to be well prepared for this special event, the virtual field trip, she had nevertheless experienced many difficulties during it. She had tried going to the SchMooze site earlier in the day to become familiar with it, but at that time no one had responded to her attempts at conversation. Thus, the class field trip was the first time that she had experienced the fast pace of this kind of communication, and she had found it overwhelming. She had also been frustrated at the field trip because she could not figure out what to do when she could not operate her intended commands, e.g., simply responding to a knock. There was no one to ask for help, so she had to attempt to resolve the difficulties by herself. Amy commented about this virtual field trip at a computer lab a few days after this event: At SchMOOze University, [when I planned to meet with the classmates,] I got lost. Before this event, I had to set up software, some special software for MOO the instructor said, on a computer. So, I downloaded it and set it up. I checked if I could go to the meeting room before the class activity time, then I went there successfully and thought everything was fine. But, when I went there to see classmates at the meeting time, I got lost. I could see their on - line conversation, but they couldn’t see my messages. So, I called Sheryl and she taught me how to use commands and so on. I just forgot to 14/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html put parentheses when I typed. That ’s why the classmates could not see my messages. I talked to other people from different places at SchMOOze University, but not my classmates. I was so frustrated because everyone else could do it, but why not me? Not only for the SchMOOze University activity, but I put in lots of time for this course overall, but I couldn’t see the results. Like I paid a hundred dollars, but I only got ten dollars back. I probably spend a hundred minutes, but I can get ten dollars worth (personal communication, November 11). Like Kathy, Amy was frustrated because of the problem that she had with operational commands at SchMOOze University. She expressed her frustration and even anger at herself. She felt as if she had been left out of the class because she could not use the commands properly. Julie also had had a distressing experience with this virtual trip. Because of the slow connection from her computer, her responses were significantly delayed. When I observed Kathy trying to talk to Julie on-line, Kathy had no response from Julie for more than 2 minutes. Finally, Kathy discontinued her conversation with Julie. Another student also reflected on the trip in a personal e-mail to the instructor the next day after the field trip to SchMOOze University: I thought your [the instructor’s] preparation for our visit to SchMOOze U was excellent. ... I did not enjoy our class excursion there however because the technology did not live up to expectations. I also felt more encumbered by knowing people there. I was more cognizant of hurt feelings and other people’s frustration, it narrowed my exploration (personal communication, October, 23). There were, however, some positive comments about the virtual field trip. John seemed to be excited about the new technology he was experiencing, and was generally enthusiastic about the 15/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html SchMOOze University activity, despite encountering some negative aspects. I’d loved the MOO session. I felt like doing that, we’re really sort of like a community. I was totally laughing, at my computer, laughing. It’s so weird to laugh at the computer. But I was laughing because I really felt somebody’s there talking. And I met a person that was kind of cold to me and asked me weird questions, and they never really answered my questions. That hurt, you know? So it’s real feelings that were involved. It’s kind of interesting (personal communication, October, 30). Working Alone at Night It is common for students in many on-line courses to work alone, often at home in the evenings or weekends. However, it is hard for students who work under these conditions to resolve some of the kinds of potentially frustrating problems that can typically be discussed and resolved more readily in a face-to-face class meeting. The dynamics of this issue are illustrated by the experiences of one student, John, whom I met unexpectedly when he was working alone after midnight in a campus computer lab. The week’s topic was "feedback and time." John was working on an assignment which required him to evaluate a set of lesson plans that used information technologies in education. These lesson plans were developed by instructors elsewhere. The web design team of B3002 had located a number of lesson plans available on the Internet and linked to them. John started talking: J: I am frustrated because I am here too long (laugh). I: How long have you been here? J: Ohhhhh, I...probably nine o’clock, I guess. I: Four hours? 16/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html J: Yeah. So, my eyes are tired. Of course, a part of the problem is not totally the class’s fault. Part of the problem is finding things really interesting. They don’t completely relate to the class. I mean, we are looking for things, lesson plans that we have to evaluate, right? And there are all kinds of great lesson plans. I am looking for ideas for my classes and I just get stuck. Then by the time I’m at the place where I really need to be doing my work, I’m totally frustrated because I really want to go home. I don’t want to be here anymore … I: Too much information? J: Perhaps. I mean these links on the B3002 web site have all the lesson plans that we can give to a class. I think this one [pointing to a link], just tons and tons of activities, but most of the stuff on these, I don’t like. John went on to explain that he was frustrated with the poor quality of many of the lesson plans that he had found for his assignment. J: It could be better if I could make my own lesson plan or something and then, talk about how I would use assessment in it. So, anyway, I’ve got a couple of things I want to use for the B3002 class assignment, but I feel like it ’s sub- standard. Or not exactly how I would want to define it if I would be looking for something to fulfill the requirement (personal communication, November 11). John reported significant distress during this interview. He still had not received specifications for the assignments from the instructor and was confused about her expectations. When I left the computer lab, John returned to work on his assignment and declared, "I will finish this work anyway. It’ll probably take an hour and it may not be a good work. ... But just 17/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html do it." It was almost 1:20 am. He said in a tired voice, "You have a good night, and I’ll have a good night." Interactive Communication Tool: E-mail The students and instructor relied upon e-mail as a primary means of communication. In fact, the instructor required that students post e-mail to the class discussion forum "at least 5 times during the course." Her syllabus also noted: "Participants are expected to check the list daily." The students and the instructor in B3002 generated quite intensive on-line discussions through e -mail, and all of the students posted far more than 5 one-to-two page-long messages. During the week of October 19th they posted 35 messages; this volume was common throughout the semester. On the surface, this volume of discussion indicates a lively class. However, we found that there were some underlying problems with the reliance on e-mail. First some students did not read other people’s postings before writing their own e-mail messages. One student reported this practice in an interview. Second, some students were unable to make time to read and post e-mail during short intensive discussion periods. For example, one student did not post any comments when the other students intensively discussed a particular topic for two days in the middle of the semester. After another student summarized the overall discussion in his e-mail, she sent an e-mail that had a subject line saying, "Ah ... I cannot catch up with all of you : (." She was one of the students who posted the fewest number of e-mail messages to the on-line class discussion. Some other students also reported that they were overwhelmed by the volume of e-mail, and that they fell behind in reading and responding on-line. Some of the students’ difficulties were a byproduct of using e-mail differently than the more conventional way. In the "standard view," students will read their e-mail on-line and reply immediately from their computers. My observations of Amy, who did not have a computer printer at home, revealed a more complex way of working with e-mail. Amy logged into a computer system in a campus lab and copied all of her e-mail messages into a word-processing file. She reported that she didn’t want to waste paper, and that although it 18/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html took time to copy the messages, if she printed messages directly from the e-mail system it would look like a lot more to read. "After that, I delete the messages because it’s too much e-mail." She reported that her routine for B3002 was to print out all the e- mail messages for B3002 in a word-processing document, print out all the readings for this course and then read the e-mail and reading assignments at home. She would reply to messages on another day when she returned to the campus computer lab. Another student, Eric, also commented about the overwhelming e- mail messages: I don’t like, I have to say, I don’t really like turning on the computer and finding that I have eleven messages on my e-mail. It’s a pain. I mean to answer that many things, just talking in conversation would be so much easier, rather than replying and doing all the stuff you have to do. So, that is just time-consuming, but it is a part of at a distance. I think if you are doing that, you have to be aware that you’re gonna be spending more time with computer problems, not getting on -line, software freaking out, crashing, whatever it’s gonna happen, it gonna take you a lot longer, waiting in a line at a lab. There are so many things that make it kind of difficult to do (personal communication, November 13). It appeared that students in B3002 were competing with each other, or felt obligated to produce a notable number of thoughtful and detailed e-mail messages. The category "e-mail messages" consolidates diverse communications: short conversational notes and more elaborate multi -screen memos. These were mixed into the students’ other more general e-mail flow, such as messages from co-workers, others students, friends, and administrative announcements. The research literature indicates this complication of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). Wegerif (1998) also reports a student's comment of a "daunting prospect" of being behind reading messages. While the advantage 19/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html of CMC is that it reduces the constraints of time and location (Ahern and Repman 1994; Burge, 1994; Harasim, 1990; McIsaac and Gunawardena 1996), it is also very demanding for students and instructors to read all their messages (Hara, Bonk and Angeli, 2000; Hiltz 1998; Kang 1988; Wiesenberg and Hutton 1995). The instructor also commented that at the beginning of the semester she was spending all day doing nothing but reading and responding to e-mail messages. Later in the semester, she was able to reduce her workload, but still spent a large amount of time on this course. Understanding Students’ Perspectives Complexities of Working Alone Much of the distance education literature emphasizes the convenience of this educational medium. In practice, this convenience translates to students working at different times and in different locations. While often valued, this also leads to certain stresses. For example, in a web-based distance education course, students do not see each other or their instructors unless they use a video-link (Besser, 1996). B3002 had no video support and the absence of physical cues led to some confusion and anxiety for the students. John was working on one of the B3002 activities in a computer lab and reading e-mail messages. He pointed out an e- mail message from the instructor and said: I agree with her, but I am not sure if I should send a message saying, "I agree." That’s the problem with this e-mail. If this is the classroom, you can just nod your head to show your agreement. I am not always sure that if I am contributing enough or not. Other people, like Julie and Kathy, are really active. I feel a sense of competitiveness. So, my survival skill is not to respond. In fact, I haven ’t gotten any feedback about my contribution. I cannot tell from the e-mail. You can tell from the classroom what the professor thinks about you from the body language and the way they talk. So, I am not feeling that I’m getting enough assessment. I haven’t gotten any grade for this 20/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html class, but most of the grade is from the portfolio, so it’s OK, I guess (personal communication, October 30). Eric also indicated his frustration with not getting enough feedback: One of the problems is that I’d like to have feedback. A kind of constant feedback. With the class, you don’t really,...especially this distance ed., I guess you don’t get that kind of feedback (personal communication, November 13). Sheryl expressed her frustration with the lack of immediate assistance from the instructor as well as the difficulty of finding information on the Internet. While working on an assignment for the B3002 course, Sheryl had gone to the Yahoo Education site, and typed as a keyword instructions for evaluating electronic learning. The computer responded: >There is no web site to match your inquiry. She looked unhappy. (It is likely that she had used too specific a phrase rather than a careful selection of keywords. It would have been helpful if one of the class sessions taught tips and techniques for searching the web.) Sheryl next went to the AltaVista search engine web site, where she could also search for web sites by entering keywords. She explained, "One of my friends told me that Alta Vista is much better." Alta Vista helped her to locate one web site, but that page didn ’t help her. She did another search with the keywords educational assessment. This produced too many matching pages, so she tried to narrow down her inquiry, by adding "assessments" and "education." This seemed to produce a more reasonable list of the sites for her topic, and Sheryl printed out two pages for her assignment. While she was assessing the web sites, she also read the e-mail instruction from the teacher again to make sure she was on the right track; she carried a 3 - inch-thick folder that contained all the e-mail messages for this course. Sheryl next went to the web site that was referred to in the e-mail instruction, but she did not find relevant readings on this site. 21/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html She clicked the Net Search button on the Netscape menu and went to yet another search engine, InfoSeek. She explained, "I am not satisfied with these articles that I found so far, so I’m doing more research." She typed educational instruction and assessment. The list of web sites did not satisfy her. Next, she typed classroom instruction. She glanced over the list, but it did not match her requirements. Then, she tried instruction for on-line language learning, which brought up a new list. At this point it seemed that she had found a reference that was quite promising, as its title was the same as that of the class. However, when she tried the links on that page, none of them were working. She could not reach any web sites and was not able to find the sites she was looking for. She felt that "this part is most frustrating -- finding the information from the web." She compared her experiences to what she had heard about the other B3002 class that had been taught over the summer, saying, "they had more resources. They saw a teacher in person, so they might have had the same problem, but not as much frustration as this." Commentary In contrast to his positive comments on the virtual fieldtrip, John seemed to be unsure about the communication conventions appropriate for participating in the on-line class. It appears that some of his anxiety was caused by a lack of feedback from the instructor. Not being able to see his instructor physically and determine the instructor ’s expectations was likely increasing his anxiety level. Eric had indicated the same problem. These anxieties and communicative confusions that are a byproduct of limited social cues such as gestures and facial expressions have been identified in the research literature (Kuehn , Harasim , and McIsaac and Gunawardena ). Feenberg (1987) refers to these experiences as "communication anxiety." Sheryl expressed frustration that came from a poor understanding of effective web searching and a lack of immediate help. One gap in the 1997 version of B3002 may be the (tacit) assumption that graduate students in this program all had good on-line search skills. (The face-to-face version of B3002 included interns who could consult with students at their PC’s when they had technical problems.) The lack of prompt feedback from the instructor was certainly a 22/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html major source of anxiety and frustration for students because they were concerned about their performance. , "the concept of interaction [including feedback] is fundamental to the effectiveness of distance education programs as well as traditional ones" (p. 407). Bonk and Cummings also suggest the significance of feedback in web courses. In B3002, the instructor did realize later in the semester that she needed to give more feedback to her students. In her weekly announcement on November 10, 1997, she apologized for not providing "enough and prompt feedback." Technological Problems During the interviews, some students reported frustration with technological problems and the absence of personnel to provide technical support. Unlike the other students, the following informant was taking the course from a distant site. She indicated three areas of frustration, the biggest of which were with the technology and the inflexibility of the course schedule. First of all, inappropriate prerequisite statement. For example, there is nothing to say that you should know HTML, but our first assignment was creating a web site. Fortunately, I knew it. I’d explored learning how to do HTML by myself. If I didn't know, I just cannot imagine how to get through. Secondly, this course is very time specific. The course I took before, I could go in anytime and finish anytime. However, this course is very specific in terms of time. For example, I got into the class a week late and the instructor sent me e-mail saying that they had already started. As an old learner, I felt so intimidated. I felt pressure to catch up. Third, accessibility to technology. This is related to the prerequisite. There is nothing that says we should have access to a web server. However, when we developed the web site as an assignment, we had to have the server access. Since I work for a school, one of the technical people helped me to connect to the web server. 23/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html If I didn’t have these resources here, I would have dropped this course. I don't have any access to the wonderful computer labs in the university. I don't have a [electronic] student locker and software that are available on campus (personal communication, October, 31). In addition to observations and interviews, students’ on-line discussions via e-mail gave us insights into what was happening during the class. Reading students’ e-mail served as another substitute for physical classroom observation. Some students expressed their anxieties and frustrations with the course in their messages. For example, on a Friday evening a student wrote the following message to the instructor regarding a technical problem: I have spent one hour trying to follow your directions. I am getting an error message. The first time I tried to download it as a zip file, the error says, cannot access this file. I am getting extremely frustrated : ( On Saturday afternoon she wrote another e-mail message regarding the same issue: This computer is very frustrating. I would imagine it is like sitting in a class and only understanding some of what was said, then asked to answer a question. I have felt it... panic... isolation... frustration... anger. This has been a very good lesson. I will keep trying. About 30 minutes after this message, the student sent an e-mail message saying that she had solved the problem. The instructor’s personal reflection notes offered a different perspective, and helped us better understand the class dynamics. The instructor expressed her problems and frustrations with not being able to solve students’ technical problems. For example, in one of her personal reflection notes, she wrote: 24/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html I may need to understand more about how network and ISPs [Internet Service Providers] work. This to me is a hardware issue that I really did not want to touch and that I don’t know how much help I could give to people. But, Julie and the previous two real distance students (who dropped out after several frustrated experiences) keep pushing me to this knowledge domain (personal communication, October 18). Because of their e-mail interactions, the instructor knew that students had difficulty dealing with technological problems and felt frustrated. During the interview, she commented: I think computer skill -wise, they [the students in B3002] are not able to handle some of the assignments and exercises. And ordering, like we started from building web pages with very minimum help, even though we provided them with very good, we thought, very good job-aids, but still they had difficulties. Help themselves learn. They are not in that kind of mode yet. They still need help. I guess both them and us, we are not used to this kind of environment at all. If you are in a classroom, a teacher can lead them during the process, so whenever they have problems, we can just fix it, right on a spot. However, if you give them the job -aids, if there is anything wrong there, there is no way we know. There is no way we can fix it right away and make it smooth for them. So that’s frustrating for them and also frustrating to me because sometimes you feel that you’ve done everything you could, but just it doesn’t work out that way (personal communication, November 18). Commentary The student without direct access to technological hardware and support had to resolve technological problems that the other 25/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html students did not experience. She was the only student who did not live near the university, and her technical environment was different from that of the other students. She was as concerned about the technology as she was about the course content because her technical support was inadequate. However, some of the other students also reported difficulties with technology during observations and interviews. Several research studies (e.g. Burge, 1994; Gregor and Cuskelly 1994; Kang, 1988; Wiesenberg and Hutton 1995, November; Yakimovicz and Murphy 1995) report students’ frustration with technology during the evaluation of their distance education courses, but they do not thoroughly investigate it. However, the importance of computing support for professional work and even the public’s use of the Internet has been well reported in other research studies (see Kling and Jewett 1991; Kling 1999). Pedagogical Issue—Ambiguous Instructions Much of human communication is inherently ambiguous. But people can often adequately resolve key ambiguities when they are face to face. When the primary communication medium is written text, resolving ambiguities may be more difficult for many people, as is indicated in the following interview excerpt: Though I understand each sentence and word in the e-mail that the instructor sent us, I don’t know how to use the instructions to compose the programming. Because in her instruction, sometimes I can follow steps 1 and 2, and then I can’t follow from steps 2 to 3. So I go back to the beginning and start over. The instruction is all in text, no graphics because she sends it to us through e-mail. ... So, when I submit my assignment, I always put a note to her, "please let me know if I need to do more or if I need to delete something" to make sure if I do the things that I am supposed to do. Because I don’t know exactly what the instructor wants. (Amy, personal communication, November 11). 26/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html In this interview, Amy identified two recurrent sources of communicative ambiguity. She had trouble adequately interpreting both the instructor’s weekly e-mailed instructions as well as the instructions on the B3002 web site. In our documentary analysis, we concurred that many of these instructions were under-specified and ambiguous. For instance, one of the activity instructions on the web site was: l Review the sample testware package that you have. What does it test? How do you think it facilitates learning? OR Visit one of these sites: [List of URLs] l Look at at least two electronic portfolios (student works) in Student Project page [URL]. How would you give feedback to the student? OR l To create a quiz on the Web, here are some tools you can use: [List of URLs] The instructor’s intent was to give the students flexibility. However, some students did not consider this flexibility to be an advantage, and they wanted more structure and clearer direction. Sheryl, for example, did not think that she was getting effective instruction because of the ambiguous instructions on the web site and in e-mail messages from the instructor. I: What’s the biggest problem in this course? S: I think the biggest problem is the instruction of our assignments. I usually don’t understand what she wants, either e-mail or from the web site. Actually I shared the print-outs with my friend. He is a doctoral student, and he looked at the instructions. He thought that our instructor was not a very good presenter because he also agreed that those instructions were so ambiguous that it’s very confusing. There were no points at all. Sometimes, she takes all kinds of responses and she would say, "it’s good you are creative," but sometimes I got her response that this is not what I want. So I felt very frustrated because we were supposed to be creative and that’s what I came up with, 27/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html but she said that’s not what she wanted. That’s the biggest problem (personal communication, November 5). Sheryl went on to relate her dissatisfaction with the amount of content provided by the course, particularly that of theoretical orientation to the material. Unlike the other students in the class, Sheryl had no prior background in the subject area. Given the class’ lack of clear instructions, background information, or even explicit definitions of terms, she found herself having to attempt to glean this information from the general class discussions, and felt that she had only gained a general sense of the material. Like Amy, Sheryl also gave up trying to clarify the instructor’s expectations after asking her a few questions. When I asked her what was the most frustrating thing, Sheryl answered: lack of teacher’s support and teacher’s clarification of her instruction. Usually I e-mail her if I have any questions and her answer is very ambiguous, too. So, I won’t ask the second time (personal communication, November 5). Kathy’s frustration was that she was uncertain what the instructor expected for this course because she could not see the instructor physically. She also gave an example of how she misinterpreted the instructor’s message in an e-mail message. The instructor has been good about responding immediately when you ask something. However, I have been in school in my life and I didn’t realize how much I relied on my knowledge of what teachers are looking for, sort of, you know. You sit in a classroom with somebody and you analyze who they are and what they like and you cannot analyze because you’ve never seen them. So, you are only guessing at what teacher really wants. You don ’t know how to interpret what they say because you don’t know the personality. Like one time, the teacher was joking and I took her 28/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html seriously and it really hurt. She was saying that, I can’t remember what it was now, but something about that nobody is working ... since none of you are working at this, maybe we should do such and such and I wrote her back, "what do you mean we are not working. I am spending 6 hours a day" and she wrote back that said, "it was only a joke." So, things like that, but I think if you are, like, very careful in what you write and communicate often with people, you can put them easily to get to know you (personal communication, October 22). Both the students and the instructor reported periodic distress with this course. Even so, during interviews, the students complimented the instructor’s overall performance. They appreciated her support and some students even sympathized with her because she also had to resolve many technological problems. The distance education format amplified the difficulty of interpreting the students’ messages. The instructor reported that she received periodic e-mail about ambiguous expectations in this course. "Sometimes they do give me some of this [complaints of ambiguous instructions], right, but you know sometimes you don’t really know whether it is just an excuse or it is real. You don’t know." Commentary Reading the assignment instructions for B3002 on the web site provided opportunities to verify informants’ concerns. First, the students often wanted less ambiguous instructions than were provided on the web site. In face-to-face courses, the students could ask converse with the instructor and each other to reduce major ambiguities during the class meetings. In contrast, the asynchronous "anywhere-anytime" format of B3002 often lead to significant delays between the times that students raised questions and the times that the instructor could reasonably answer them. Second, this web site was developed for the same course offered in summer, and the summer course was offered in a traditional classroom, rather than the web-based 29/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html distance education form. Some of the instructions taken from the summer course did not fit the distance version of B3002. For example, one of the activities instructed students to form teams. However, in the web-based distance education course, students had to work individually, so the instructions confused them. Third, this web site had been developed before the course had started, and some links to other web sites were no longer accessible. The students reported confusion in effectively understanding the instructor ’s expectations. The instructor knew that the instructions on the web were too ambiguous, and she attempted to clarify them. For the final project, she sent out an e-mail message: "I think we need a set of very clear criteria so that you and I know exactly what you are expected to do and how your project will be ‘judged’." (personal communication, November 10). However, this attempt did not succeed. A few students posted questions about her "clear criteria." Overall, not all the students in B3002 were familiar with the technology used in the course and some were feeling rather overwhelmed. Therefore, the unclear instructions and expectations for B3002 likely amplified their anxiety. Dealing With Distresses Amy dealt with her distresses with B3002 by talking with a classmate of similar ethnicity in her own native language. Amy stopped communicating with the instructor about her difficulties after one unsatisfying interchange with the instructor. Thereafter, Amy complained only to her friend. A: I am calling a friend every week, just to complain. She is a good listener, whenever I complained, she just listened and I felt better. I: Did you complain to your instructor? A: Once. 30/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html I: Why just once? A: I complained once about the difficulty of searching on the web, and she gave me the tips for searching as I told you before. After that, I didn’t complain because I felt stupid. I should have spent more time on this, but I couldn ’t because I’m too busy. If I hadn ’t taken this many courses and also work, I could ... if you want to take this course, you have to spend time. I want to complain, but it’s not the instructor’s problem, or the class’s fault. It’s my problem. There is nothing she can do about it (personal communication, November 11). Despite his periodic frustrations, John expressed a different view in an informal conversation. He believed that his frustrations were a good learning experience because now he understood what his students might experience when he teaches similar courses in the future. B3002’s instructor did try to help her students resolve their difficulties. Later in the semester, she started to ask students for their suggestions to improve tutorials and teaching materials. She believed that at this point the students felt less frustrated. In one of her messages to the students she wrote: I’m more comfortable to let you face flaws now than before, because I feel that: (1) You have experience solving this level of computer problems. (2) You know that learning can come from failure and frustrations. (3) The communication channel that we happen to so luckily have helped too (personal communication, November, 1). Also, she stated the same issue in her personal reflection notes: It was from the MOO week that I started asking them for improvement ideas, and it seems to me that this opened a new door for communication. ... All of a sudden they agreed 31/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html that it is all right to be frustrated when following instructions that are with flaws, because flaws give opportunities to think and to gain real control (personal communication, November 1). Commentary If students could deal effectively with their frustrations, B3002 might not be a negative experience. In fact, the students supported each other by sharing their frustrations with their friends or with their classmates. We also suspect that without this mutual support, none of the students would have completed this course. Some students felt a community of learning with their classmates. The instructor also helped create a sense of community among the students. Bates (1994) claims that one of the major contribution of two-way technologies is allowing interactions among students as well as between students and instructors, and there was some active interaction among students in this course. Many researchers note the importance of virtual community to support students (e.g., Burge 1994; Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell and Haag 1995; McIsaac and Gunawardena 1996; Savard, Mitchell, Abrami and Corso 1995). In this case study, however, it seemed that students’ distresses -- confusion, anxiety and frustration -- recurred throughout the term. Conclusions Instructors’ Misperceptions of Students ’ Distress From the interviews and observations we found two foci of students’ distress in this course. The first focus was technological problems, and students without access to technical support were especially frustrated. The second focus involved the course content and the instructor's practices in managing her communications with her students. Students reported confusion, anxiety and frustration when they wanted prompt feedback from the instructor and when they found ambiguous instructions on the web and in e-mail messages. The instructor did not appreciate the duration of the students’ distress. She believed that she had effectively eliminated their anxieties and frustrations during the term and noted during an 32/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html interview: They [the students] thought that the problems they had were basically their own; other people did not have the same problem until we opened up the conversation and they realized that, oh, yeah, we were all in the same boat. Now, they have this peer support coming in. That [problem], I think, we took care of pretty well (personal communication, November 18). However, her students still expressed their frustrations and anxieties during observations and interviews late in the semester. Part of the reason for the instructor’s misperception resulted from the students reluctance to express all of their anxieties, frustrations and confusions to the instructor. Because of the frequent power differential between students and instructors in university courses, it is likely that these students did not feel free to express the full extent of their dissatisfactions, or the extent to which their expectations were not met. We suspect that these difficulties were exacerbated by the weaker social cues of asynchronous text-based communication. After all, small elective graduate courses are often highly rated, in part because instructors can better appreciate their students experiences and preferences than in larger courses; and because they have greater latitude in flexible adaptation during the term. The Pains of Innovation We caution against emphasizing only the virtues of computer- mediated distance education. Most of the articles about distance education that are written for practitioners (i.e., administrators and teachers), and lay people (e.g., potential students) emphasize the positive opportunities presented in distance education (e.g., Barnard 1997; Harasim 1993; Yakimovicz and Murphy 1995). In some of these upbeat studies, students may not have had opportunities to express their confusions and anxieties with web - based distance education. At the end of the semester, students might make positive comments about the courses because of a relief of finishing a course and concern about hurting instructors' feelings. For example, one B3002 student posted a "thank you" 33/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html note during the final week saying how much she had learned, and how much she appreciated these learning opportunities: I do believe you all are the best classmates and instructor I have ever met. I can see your hard work, your enthusiasm, and your patience learning along. I’d like to say that the most successful condition I’ve learned from this class is: warm and supportive class atmosphere (personal communication, December 1). If students give public evaluations like this in courses like B3002, the positive results of many studies, including such findings as students enjoying their experiences despite communication breakdowns and technical problems, can be artifacts of the research methods (Gregor and Cuskelly 1994; Yakimovicz and Murphy 1995). Unfortunately, only a few scholars (e.g., Bromley and Apple 1998; Feenberg, 1999; Jaffee, 1998; Wegerif, 1998) examine important limitations and pervasive problems, and their studies are found in the specialty research literature rather than integrated into the practitioners’ literatures. As noted earlier, we found some discrepancies among the different data sources: observations, interviews, and e-mail messages. Triangulating various kinds of data sources enabled us to see distance education course from a different perspective. We recommend that future researchers use this kind of multi-source methodology to study distance education courses. Understanding Instructional Work and Communication in Practice It is time to seriously examine the actual experiences for students in distance education courses and to critically discuss the wide array of practices and experiences that undergird distance education. It is easy to place the burden of students' frustrations wholly upon the instructor's limitations. One might argue that this course was a unique case of an insufficiently experienced instructor poorly teaching an on -line course, and that this "oddball case" tells us nothing about on -line courses in general. We disagree with this interpretation. 34/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html Everyone who teaches an on-line course has to start with their first on-line course. We have not found any widely publicized articles that encourage faculty who are starting to teach an on-line course to prepare in special ways. In this era when the number of on-line course offerings is growing rapidly, it is likely that a notable fraction of these offerings are taught by "first-time instructors." The students’ concerns about receiving "prompt unambiguous feedback" continued throughout the term. We believe that "prompt unambiguous feedback" is much more difficult in text- based asynchronous courses than in face-to-face conditions. In passing, we noted that many of the students worked on the course during the late evenings and weekends. "Instant feedback" would require the instructor to be available at these hours, thus turning an "anytime convenience" into an "all the time" workload! This issue could be even more significant in larger classes. What is needed is for the students and instructors to learn how to manage their expectations about when they should be able to have reliable, fast communicative responses. We have also commented upon the communicative complexity of constructing adequately unambiguous conversations via text - based media. Part of the complexity comes from trying to anticipate the level of detail and phrasing that will be sufficiently helpful to others. But, as our informants also noted, they were also unsure what meta-communicative conventions would be appropriate in their on-line conversations. E-mail that represents the nodded heads of a face-to-face group could be valued by an instructor to confirm others’ understanding, or it could result in yet more e-mail glut. These kinds of practices need to be negotiated within each group. In B3002 and doubtless in many other courses, both face to face as well as on-line, participants don’t explicitly question and negotiate meta-communicative conventions, even when they are confused and frustrated. These discussions and negotiations require a higher level of social skills on the part of all participants. And their enactment – such as creating strong social presence in a written medium – also requires time and expressive capabilities which are not well explained in the literatures of on-line instruction. Clearly, we need more student -centered studies of distance education that are designed to teach us how the appropriate use of technology and pedagogy 35/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html could make distance education more beneficial for more students. In addition, we need ways to translate the best of such research into the practitioner literature. There is, of course, broad public appeal for the hope of inexpensive and convenient education, especially for people who are working or who have extensive family commitments. Unfortunately, little of the practitioner literature and even less of the popular literature about distance education (in any of its modes) effectively identifies the complexities of working and communicating with "new media." It is not impossible to locate such accounts, but they are published in specialty journals such as Instructional Science (Feenberg, 1987) and Semiotica (Feenberg, 1989) which remove them from ready availability to the diverse faculty and administrators who are involved with teaching on-line courses. It appears that few academic administrators, especially those at one or more levels away from the front-lines of teaching, understand these complexities very well. Rather, administrators who want to encourage their faculties to teach on-line courses coax instructors into viewing on-line courses as easy to take on rather than as a complex instructional engagement that can require new materials and new behaviors. High quality education, both on-line and face-to-face, is neither cheap nor easy. We have not heard of administrators in traditional universities who encourage regular faculty to teach on-line courses also insisting that these instructors immerse themselves in the most sophisticated literatures about distance education and computer-mediated communication before they are allowed to teach on-line. We understand that there are many high quality on -line courses taught today. However, a careful reading of the literatures suggests that they are usually taught by highly dedicated and very experienced instructors. They are said to be much more labor- intensive for their instructors than are comparable face-to-face courses. Some analysts argue that some of these courses can be much better learning experiences than their in-place equivalents. But given these requirements of unusual instructional skill, experience, and dedication, we would be surprised if these constitute a majority of today’s on-line courses. 36/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html Even so, we see some signs that the "floor of professional practice" is improving at a few universities that offer numerous distance education courses. There are some new internal consulting groups and workshops for prospective instructors. In some cases these are mandatory; however, they are more commonly discretionary. At least one major university has required that students who take distance education courses take an "on-line orientation course" as of 1999. We have not examined the ways that these support resources work in practice. But, if they help participants to understand the communicational complexities of asynchronous text -based communication, they may help to raise the level of instructional and student competencies for effectively teaching and learning with new media. This article reports one case study in considerable detail, and explicitly theorizing the conditions under which such courses are organized and taught is well beyond our scope. But it is an important next step. Part of the theoretical analysis would have to examine the socio-technical complexity of the communication and computational support for the courses, and faculty and students’ abilities to work with and through them (Star and Ruhleder, 1996; Kling, 1999). Another critical part would include the political economies of the participating universities – for example, the ways that academic administrators are being encouraged to embrace Internet-enabled distance education as new a source of revenue (Carnevale, 1999). Other elements would include an understanding of the conditions under which potential students take such courses, and the conditions under which faculty teach them. Most seriously, the necessary theorizing would involve the conjunction of these conditions, social processes and practices: the various ecologies of games (Dutton and Guthrie, 1991; Dutton, 1995) in which administrators, students, and instructors come together in making Internet-enabled distance education programs happen. We have informally analyzed some aspects of B3002 in these terms. The particular mixture of administrative encouragement, students’ eagerness and instructor’s willingness led to the course being taught. However, the instructor’s newness to online education taken together with limited instructional and technological supports led to many students being distressed 37/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html during the term. We suspect that the course’s reliance on asynchronous communication further exacerbated the level of student distress over what would likely have been seen in a face- to-face class. Other game ecologies have sometimes produced more satisfying instructional and personal experiences in distance education courses. We have much to learn about the conditions that create the good, the bad, and the ugly in Internet-enabled, text-based distance education. Acknowledgements This study was made possible with the help of the instructor and students of B3002. 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What are the biggest problems so far to take this course? What is frustrating most as a part of taking this class? 46/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html 8. How do you understand other students without seeing them face-to-face? 9. How do you feel the sense of a community of learning in this course? 10. Is there anything else you want to tell me about this course? 11. Is there anything else I should know? Interview Protocols for the instructor in B3002 1. What do you want your students to gain from the course? 2. How much do you spend preparing and teaching this course?? 3. What are the enjoyable parts in teaching this course? 4. What are the difficulties to teach this course? 5. When you have a problem whom you can ask for help? 6. What instructional technique do you apply to this course? 7. What are the issues that you particularly concern when you teach this course in this way? 8. What is your impression about the students in the course? 9. Is there anything else you want to tell me about this course? 10. Is there anything else I should know? Endnotes 47/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html [1] In this article, the terms Internet-enabled, web -based, computer-mediated and online courses are used interchangeably with asynchronous distance education. In practice, these courses can utilize such a number of different communication supports (either asynchronous or synchronous), such as text, voice, video, discussion forums and even face-to-face meetings in addition to the electronic communication that any two courses may be extremely different in their communicative structurings. The major focus of this paper is on Internet-enabled courses that rely primarily on asynchronous, text-based communication media. [2] This generalization is based on our reading of dozens of practitioner and popular articles about Internet- enabled distanced education that we have reviewed informally during the course of this research. A systematic review of these vast practitioner and popular literatures is well beyond the scope of this article. [3] For a review of the literature about the ways that frustration can impede learning, see Hara and Kling (1999b). [4] One colleague commented: "through large samples of students and quantitative methods I have found data that supports your findings on instructor feedback. In particular, we see that the timeliness and quality of instructor feedback are related to student outcomes measures, as well as student discretionary behaviors (e.g., intent to take another class on-line, intent to communicate positively about on-line education to other students) (Hoffman, 1999). [5] B3002 is a pseudonym used in this study. [6] Two students who were taking B3002 far from the university dropped the course after experiencing technological problems. [7] Since the class size was so small, if we described students' profiles in this article, the instructor could 48/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html identify individual students. Therefore, in order to protect the informants, we decided not to include individual students’ profiles, though they would have helped readers understand this case more deeply. [8] MUD is an acronym for "Multi-User Dungeon" developed for multi-players play of the Dungeons and Dragons game in 1979 . [9] Although this methodology has a disadvantage in that researchers cannot take account of every comment from informants during think aloud sessions, the methodology is widely used for usability tests. Dillon claims that the use of verbal protocols produced during the tasks allows for more accurate information than that obtained during retrospective verbal reporting. [10] More complete interview data are reported in Hara and Kling, 1999b. 49/49 ページStudents' Distress with Distance Education - Noriko Hara and Rob Kling (Center... 2002/02/16http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html 
work_auxow32p7fgenlwhyp4f3d4vy4	----	Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hajd20 American Journal of Distance Education ISSN: 0892-3647 (Print) 1538-9286 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hajd20 sMOOC, Un Nuevo Modelo De Formación En El Aprendizaje Del Segundo Idioma. Estudio De Caso Sara Osuna-Acedo & Javier Gil-Quintana To cite this article: Sara Osuna-Acedo & Javier Gil-Quintana (2020): sMOOC, Un Nuevo Modelo De Formación En El Aprendizaje Del Segundo Idioma. Estudio De Caso, American Journal of Distance Education, DOI: 10.1080/08923647.2019.1705085 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2019.1705085 Published online: 03 Jan 2020. 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Estudio De Caso Sara Osuna-Acedo and Javier Gil-Quintana National Distance Education University (UNED), Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia RESUMEN Este artículo presenta un trabajo de investigación desarrollado en el Proyecto Europeo ECO (Elearning, Communication, Open-data). El estu- dio despliega un análisis de enfoque cuantitativo del sMOOC (socialMOOC) llamado “How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam“, curso destinado a ayudar a los estudiantes a prepararse para cualquier examen de inglés, de nivel B1. El objetivo de la investigación es el análisis de las experiencias comunicativas y pedagógicas percibidas en este contexto específico, aplicadas al aprendizaje de lenguas extra- njeras, en general, y al inglés como lengua extranjera, en particular. Esta línea educativa y comunicativa ha sentado las bases para el Proyecto ECO que, más allá de la formación de docentes, apuesta decididamente por una educación abierta para toda la vida. Este estudio ha sido concebido con el propósito de descubrir la valoración de los estudiantes que aprenden a través de este modelo formativo e innovador, que promueve un nuevo esquema horizontal y bidireccional de comunicación. Para reconocer esta realidad, se han analizado los datos compilados a través de la herramienta de cuestio- narios incluida en el curso. Se ha llevado a cabo una investigación para la acción, ampliando el rango de innovación con nuevas prácticas pedagógicas y comunicativas en las redes sociales, consiguiendo acti- var una participación comprometida de los individuos como agentes culturales activos en la creación de la cibercultura del siglo XXI. PALABRAS CLAVE Cursos Abiertos Masivos y en Línea (MOOC); recursos educativos abiertos; análisis de contenidos; aprendizaje virtual; innovación educativa Introducción La web 2.0 ha posibilitado la creación de un gran potencial formativo a través de cursos online, proyectado desde el e-learning tradicional, por medio de plataformas digitales como Moodle o Blackboard, hacia plataformas MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). Con estas últimas, se presenta una respuesta más clara al cambio metodológico, a la educación abierta y, sobre todo, al acceso a la formación continua para toda la ciudadanía. Todos estos rasgos se encuentran claramente vinculados con el modelo comunicativo que se está potenciando en los últimos años, sobre todo en el ámbito del aprendizaje de una segunda lengua, a través de una formación de calidad, motivadora y accesible para cualquier persona, independientemente de su país de procedencia, cultura y lengua (YeonJoo, YouJin, & Hikyoung, 2017). Como consecuencia, se ha enriquecido el ámbito de la enseñanza de las lenguas, basando su acción en un aprendizaje por competencias y por tareas, en un trabajo colaborativo a través de las TIC (Trujillo, 2007), como nuevo CONTACT Sara Osuna-Acedo sosuna@edu.uned.es National Distance Education University (UNED), Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Calle/ Juan del Rosal nº 14. 2ª planta. Despacho 236, Madrid 28040, Spain AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2019.1705085 © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5454-6215 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-2535 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/08923647.2019.1705085&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-01-03 espacio de aprendizaje (Vizoso, 2013), y convirtiendo al equipo docente en parte de un andamiaje, que posibilite «las competencias generales y comunicativas del lenguaje de los individuos y el desarrollo de competencias multilingües y multiculturales» (Barbero de Andrés, Maestro-Güemes, Pitcairn-Álvarez, & Saiz-Cuesta, 2008, p. 7). En este orden de ideas podemos preguntarnos ¿qué ofrece el modelo sMOOC (socialMOOC) al aprendizaje de idiomas?, ¿se puede convertir en una respuesta a la formación ciudadana para su comunicación en otras lenguas? El perfil colaborativo que se pretende potenciar en estos espacios digitales fomenta la participación del alumnado que se involucra en el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua. La adquisición de esta competencia lingüística la consiguen por sí mismos (Bakar, Latif, & Ya’acob, 2010) e interactuando con los demás participantes que constituyen la comunidad virtual. Desde este factor relacional e intermetodológico (Marta-Lazo & Gabelas-Barroso, 2016; Marta-Lazo, Hergueta- Covacho, & Gabelas-Barroso, 2016) se posibilita el acceso a diferentes producciones audio- visuales, al ser estos recursos el producto estrella de los sMOOC. La sociedad actual exige un nuevo modelo comunicativo y pedagógico (Barak, Watted, & Haick, 2016; García-Lastra, 2013), objetivos reales en el ámbito educativo que buscan alfabetizar de forma globalizada a la ciudadanía, capaz de autodesarrollarse, participar en las redes sociales en cualquier idioma y fomentar una cultura crítica, creativa y constructiva. El modelo comunicativo que presentan los sMOOC, permite romper con la unidireccionalidad que se había asociado a este término en algunos de sus tipos (xMOOC) y da un paso más allá en la interacción social (cMOOC), y en producir una bidireccionalidad fomentada en la multitud de conexiones entre distintos nodos que se crean y desarrollan en todo momento. Se puede priorizar, por tanto, la intercreatividad (Osuna-Acedo & Camarero-Cano, 2016), donde el conocimiento fluya entre todas las personas que comparten y construyen el proceso de aprendizaje. “El intercambio de roles entre personas que son a la vez emisores y receptores (EMEREC)” (Cloutier, 1973) produce los verdaderos procesos de aprendizaje, respondiendo a un equilibrio ideal donde comunicación y educación se funden, criterio básico por el que ha apostado la propuesta sMOOC en Europa desde el Proyecto europeo ECO (Elearning, Comunication, Open-data), enmarcado dentro del Programa Marco de Competitividad e Innovación (CIP-ICT-PSP.2013) financiado por la Comisión Europea. ECO ha contribuido en el posicionamiento de los países integrantes del proyecto (España, Francia, Reino Unido, Holanda, Alemania, Portugal e Italia) como los primeros países que, a nivel mundial, han desarrollado activamente este modelo de formación. El objetivo es dar una oportunidad a personas afectadas por la exclusión educativa en épocas anteriores, integrándolas, no por sus características distintivas, sino por formar parte de la ciudadanía global que debe atender a unas necesidades educativas específicas a lo largo de su vida. Llevar a cabo estos procesos de inclusión educativa (Monteiro, Leite, & Barros, 2018) conlleva fuertes esfuerzos para hacer accesibles los escenarios digitales formativos, contenidos multimedia, actividades interactivas, herramientas de comunicación horizon- tales, etc., proyectados en seis idiomas, consolidando la proyección internacional de ECO (Marta-Lazo, Osuna-Acedo, & Gil-Quintana, 2019). La finalidad clave de este proyecto se enmarca en crear un marco de diseño e implementación de sMOOC; pilotar, junto con los diez centros involucrados, la formación de 50.000 estudiantes; y, finalmente, convertir a 4.000 docentes en e-teachers con la oportunidad de crear su propio sMOOC en ECO (Osuna-Acedo, Marta-Lazo, & 2 S. OSUNA-ACEDO AND J. GIL-QUINTANA Frau-Meigs, 2018). Asimismo, se fomenta una labor innovadora a nivel internacional que puede facilitar la expansión futura de estos modelos formativos abiertos y marcar una referencia en el panorama educativo y social. El conocimiento basado en la interacción, el aprendizaje colaborativo y la cultura de la participación implica la posibilidad de compartir, desarrollar diferentes tareas, dar solución a problemáticas, construir colectivamente el conocimiento y desarrollar espacios de comunicación dinámicos. Esta nueva cultura potencia en la actualidad diversas posibilidades a través de los sMOOC, que desarrollarán de forma progresiva el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía como usuaria digital a través de experiencias como el sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam», objeto de nuestro estudio, cuya finalidad es ayudar a los estudiantes a prepararse para cualquier examen de Inglés de Nivel B1. El curso está estructurado en seis módulos, cada uno de ellos presenta distintos materiales como videoconferencias y documentos escritos que ayudan a comprender las características principales del nivel B1: – Introduction – Reading comprehension. How to prepare for it efficiently – Writing. How to prepare for it efficiently – Listening. How to prepare for it efficiently – Speaking. How to prepare for it efficiently – Final reflections La duración del curso ha sido de seis semanas, una por módulo, pero todo el curso está abierto para que cada participante pueda trabajar tan rápido o tan lento como lo desee. Existen diferentes tipos de actividades: pruebas y cuestionarios con corrección automática, participación en foros moderados por algunos de los docentes, y actividades entre pares, evaluadas por sus compañeros de curso siguiendo los criterios proporcionados. Una vez superado el curso el alumnado recibe su certificado. El sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» abarca las habilidades lingüísticas de escuchar, leer, hablar y escribir, cumpliendo con los requisitos marcados por el Marco Común Europeo para las Lenguas (2002). En este curso se ha potenciado el modelo comunicativo bidireccional y horizontal dentro de la comunidad de aprendizaje, siendo valorado por el alumnado como un espacio caracterizado por la interactividad, la participación y la construcción colectiva del conocimiento. Metodología Esta investigación versa sobre el análisis cuantitativo del estudio de caso único y analítico con hipótesis (Coller, 2005) del sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam», siguiendo una estructura de investigación lógica y sistemática para verificar los resultados según los objetivos y las hipótesis. La muestra intencional de nuestro estudio se compone de 401 estudiantes que han superado el curso, correspondiente al 36,6% de un total de 1.093 estudiantes inscritos. Se han recogido los datos de la investigación a través de un cuestionario, de carácter anónimo y voluntario, con preguntas basadas en una escala Likert y desarrollado con el software Lime Survey. Este instrumento posibilita la clasificación de AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 3 las diferentes respuestas y la asociación de ciertas variables según los rasgos de la muestra. Las correlaciones entre las variables fueron analizadas con el software SPSS. La finalidad de nuestro estudio se ha concretado en los siguientes objetivos: – Analizar el perfil académico y profesional del alumnado del sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam». – Descubrir las posibilidades de interacción y participación del alumnado que ofrecen los sMOOC en el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua. – Valorar la importancia de la labor docente en el desarrollo de una mayor implicación del alumnado en el aprendizaje. – Evaluar el grado de satisfacción de los estudiantes respecto a la capacitación recibida en los entornos sMOOC, la formación y la aplicabilidad a la vida profesional. El siguiente paso para el encauzamiento del proceso ha sido la formulación de las hipótesis que han proporcionado la explicación del fenómeno a estudiar y se han establecido en: – El perfil del alumnado del sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» es mayoritariamente de edad adulta y se encuentra en el mercado laboral. – La práctica pedagógica del aprendizaje de idiomas que se desarrolla en el sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» está basada en la interacción y la participación e implicación del alumnado como elemento motivador. – El apoyo del equipo docente en el sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» ha obtenido valoración positiva por parte de su alumnado. – EL sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» fomenta altos niveles de satisfacción respecto a la percepción de los estudiantes sobre el aprendizaje alcanzado y la transferencia a su vida profesional. Resultados En primer lugar, analizamos el entorno académico, al ser este dato imprescindible para poder valorar posteriormente el rigor científico de los planteamientos cuantitativos. Esto nos permite obtener información relevante sobre el propio contexto, facilitando la comprobación de la validez científica en cuanto a distintos aspectos que engloban la realidad sMOOC, como la interacción, participación y construcción del conocimiento de forma colectiva. El análisis de estos datos comprende métodos utilizados por la comunidad científica para establecer la relación entre las variables como los coeficientes de correlación de Spearman y Kendall, ya que se han correlacionado variables ordinales para medir la intensidad de una relación lineal entre las mismas, aunque no tengan una relación causal. Perfil El perfil del alumnado corresponde a personas entre los treinta y los cuarenta años de edad (37,6 años de media), principalmente, mujeres (60,5%), corroborando que se consolidan de nuevo las premisas defendidas por diferentes estudios realizados (Oliver, Hernández-Leo, Daza, Martín, & Albó, 2014). Este análisis refleja la falta de alumnado joven de edades entre los 4 S. OSUNA-ACEDO AND J. GIL-QUINTANA veinte y los treinta años, poniendo de manifiesto la falta de interés por esta temática, que ellos mismos pueden estar cursando dentro de una actividad profesional, en sus carreras universi- tarias, formación profesional u otros programas educativos o bien, que el nivel de competencia lingüística que se ofrece no responde a su interés. Hemos observado que los sMOOC aún tienen el reto de conseguir ser una respuesta a la demanda de formación de la joven ciudadanía que se encuentra dentro o fuera de las instituciones universitarias y que ha podido sufrir la exclusión digital debido a su falta de información, motivación por el aprendizaje o por una reducida y parcelada alfabetización. Concretando más el perfil de la muestra observamos que el ámbito estudiantil no es una referencia clave en este sentido, sino que el aprendizaje de idiomas es más valorado en la formación sMOOC para quienes se encuentran fuera del sistema educativo formal. Como consecuencia, encontramos que el alumnado de este curso es trabajador en activo a tiempo completo (43,5%) o se encuentra en busca de un puesto de trabajo (31%) y sólo una pequeña parte de la muestra (13%) está trabajando a tiempo parcial. Nuestros resultados indican que, para la mayoría de los participantes, esta era la primera vez que hicieron un sMOOC (55%). Resulta interesante destacar, además, otro tipo de datos que nos pueden servir de cara a perfilar el ámbito de la sociedad que responde de forma efectiva a este tipo de formación. El conocimiento de la existencia de este sMOOC, según consta en la Figura 1, ha surgido a través de una página web universitaria (34,2%), un boletín de noticias o correo electrónico (23,4%), de amigos o de las redes sociales (18,4%) o directamente desde la plataforma de ECO (17,4%). Resulta interesante que el alumnado con un nivel académico universitario tenga más opción a recibir información de este modelo formativo, al ser la misma institución universitaria quien potencia su publicidad, aunque en nuestro estudio no se corresponda con el perfil de los participantes. Esto nos lleva a la reflexión de que, a pesar de que los sMOOC son propuestas que pretenden abrir las puertas de la universidad a toda la ciudadanía y que, en este caso, pueden favorecer el aprendizaje de idiomas por sectores de la sociedad ajenos al entorno universitario, la información sobre los mismos sigue circunscribiéndose al espacio reglado superior. 17.40% 3.90% 18.40% 23.40% 34.20% 0.20% 1.40% 1.10% ECO-Learning.eu Buscadores web Amigos/Redes Sociales Newsletter y email Sitio web Universidad Noticias en artículos / Prensa Figura 1. Medios por los que ha recibido información sobre el sMOOC. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 5 Método de enseñanza sMOOC La valoración realizada por el alumnado sobre los contenidos y los métodos de aprendizaje es muy positiva. Para los participantes, los contenidos cubren el tema del curso «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» por completo (30,5%) o en gran medida (52,5%); son interesantes de forma íntegra (34,1%) o en gran medida (47,7%); y, finalmente, son valorados como precisos de forma completa (27,3%) o en gran medida (51%). Un aspecto de vital importancia, la actualización de los conteni- dos, es valorado muy positivamente por la muestra (89,1%), disfrutando el alumnado de una gran variedad de materiales donde se presentan estos contenidos. Los estu- diantes aprenden intercambiando «un importante flujo de significados producidos por la lectura de los contenidos, y mediante anotaciones con diferentes códigos: anota- ciones de vídeo, texto, imagen y sonido, hipervínculos y e-rúbricas» (Monedero, Cebrian, & Desenne, 2015, p. 53). El sMOOC «How to succeed in the English B1 Level Exam» logra sus objetivos formativos en gran medida, además de favorecer el desarrollo de estrategias de aprendizaje que estimulan la discusión y la reflexión (67,3%) en la comunidad de aprendizaje, como se presenta en la Tabla 1. Éste es un aspecto que debemos señalar como importante, porque habitualmente la masividad se encuentra relacionada con el descenso de la participación y las tasas de abandono, según consta en diferentes estudios (Daradoumis, Bassi, Xhafa, & Caballe, 2013; Jordan, 2013; Sánchez, León, & Davis, 2015; UTHS, 2013; Yang, Shina, Adamson, & Rosa, 2013). Por este motivo, el equipo docente ha conseguido la atención del alumnado a través de un modelo de enseñanza que ha respondido, según lo valorado por los propios estudiantes, a su necesidad de implicación. El profesorado ha optado por empoderar al alumnado (Osuna-Acedo & Gil-Quintana, 2017), invirtiendo de esta forma el embudo de la participación (Clow, 2013) en favor de los aprendices. Valoramos esta opción en el diseño del sMOOC que pretende conseguir que los participantes se sientan motivados a interactuar en la comunidad. El alumnado aprende a comunicar, comunicando y participando en la construcción de la inteligencia colectiva (Lévy, 2004). En la medida en que la formación se acerque a la manera de vida habitual del alumnado conseguiremos nuestros objetivos formativos. En este sMOOC no existe un itinerario establecido de contenidos, materias, tiempo, etc. La evaluación por pares, característica clave de este modelo, parece estar ganando apoyo entre los estu- diantes; que el alumnado sea evaluador conlleva beneficios como el hecho que evaluar a sus semejantes se convierte en una experiencia relevante de aprendizaje. Sin embargo, aún debemos dar un paso más y proponer esta actividad desde el diseño de la rúbrica por la propia comunidad, haciendo partícipe al alumnado en su elaboración para que tenga un sentido mayor su empoderamiento (Osuna-Acedo & Gil-Quintana, 2017). Tabla 1. Valoración del alumnado sobre el grado de incentivación a la discusión y reflexión personal generada en el sMOOC (X2). Frecuencia Porcentaje Porcentaje acumulado Válido Completamente 89 22,2 22,2 En gran medida 181 45,1 67,3 Hasta cierto punto 119 29,7 97,0 Inadecuadamente 12 3,0 100,0 Total 401 100,0 6 S. OSUNA-ACEDO AND J. GIL-QUINTANA La tarea de la escucha y enriquecimiento no es sólo para el alumnado sino también para el equipo docente, quien recibe la influencia de sus estudiantes para crecer como sujetos activos con el fin de motivar y alentar a construir el deseo de aprender. Teniendo presente el elevado número de estudiantes, como señalamos anteriormente, el equipo docente ha respondido desde su labor como guía y facilitador, consiguiendo que pueda ser un ejemplo de formación donde se puede verdaderamente aprender. Esta realidad se ha hecho patente en el curso analizado, observando que el alumnado identifica la satisfacción por el apoyo recibido por el equipo docente, como buena o muy buena (63,8%), según consta en la Tabla 2. La valoración positiva de la labor pedagógica realizada por parte del equipo docente es vital en nuestro estudio. El reto de este modelo comunicativo sigue siendo una puerta abierta al conocimiento, el cual, ha dejado de ser eterno, cerrado e inamovible y ha pasado a ser caduco, abierto y cambiante. Método de aprendizaje sMOOC El alumnado tiene libertad a la hora de trazar su propio recorrido de aprendizaje priorizando lo que le resulte más motivador y enriquecedor, sin ningún tipo de imposición por parte del equipo docente o de facilitadores. Una vez realizado este itinerario, el alumnado comparte libremente sus resultados proyectándolos tanto en el sMOOC como en las redes sociales, transmitiendo y amplificando las ideas. Se fomenta así un aprendizaje colaborativo a través de propuestas interactivas (Frau-Meigs & Bossu, 2017), que se impulsan hacia el compromiso en la capa social (Jung & Lee, 2018). La interacción se ha presentado también como característica clave valorada por el alumnado (67,8%) permitiendo combatir las altas tasas de abandono que tienen estos cursos (Fidalgo, Sein-Echaluce, & García-Peñalvo, 2013; Gómez-Hernández, García-Barrera, & Monge-López, 2016) con el interés, la participación y la motivación. La interacción social, los mensajes escritos por los estudiantes, el trabajo compartido por sus semejantes y los comentarios recibidos, como se presenta en la Tabla 3, promueven la interacción y participación como elementos clave para una óptima motivación en el método de aprendizaje (Watted & Barak, 2018). Tabla 2. Valoración del alumnado sobre la satisfacción con el apoyo del equipo docente del sMOOC (X1). Frecuencia Porcentaje Porcentaje acumulado Válido Muy buena 83 20,7 20,7 Buena 173 43,1 63,8 Justa 123 30,7 94,5 Pobre 14 3,5 98,0 Muy pobre 8 2,0 100,0 Total 401 100,0 Tabla 3. Valoración del alumnado sobre la promoción de la interacción y la participación con otros estudiantes del sMOOC (X4). Frecuencia Porcentaje Porcentaje acumulado Válido Completamente 108 26,9 26,9 En gran medida 164 40,9 67,8 Hasta cierto punto 108 26,9 94,8 Inadecuadamente 21 5,2 100,0 Total 401 100,0 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 7 Los participantes valoran su propia iniciativa para aprender cosas nuevas, desta- cando un aspecto motivador del método de aprendizaje que favorece la disponibilidad para adquirir competencias y, no tanto, la obtención de un certificado. El carácter innovador de este tipo de cursos y el gran impacto publicitario que están teniendo en el software social, anima al alumnado a participar, simplemente por probar algo nuevo y llevar a cabo la esencia de la formación con MOOC. En cambio, los resultados del aprendizaje y la implicación serán diferentes para cada persona (Siemens, Downes, & Cormier, 2012). Este interés ha dejado patente la valoración que ha realizado el alumnado del modelo sMOOC al encontrarse satisfecho con su implicación, califi- cando su experiencia global como satisfactoria completamente o en gran medida (74,8%), como consta en la Tabla 4. En general, el alumnado del sMOOC estima que el apoyo del equipo docente ha sido bueno. También manifiestan que, en gran medida, el curso ha alentado la discusión y reflexión personal, la implicación del alumnado y, por último, la interacción y la participación con los demás estudiantes (Figura 2). Los resultados de los coeficientes de Kendall y Spearman entre las cuatro variables contempladas son muy claros, según refleja la Tabla 5, observándose una correlación muy positiva. El apoyo del equipo docente (X1), la promoción de la discusión y la reflexión personal (X2), la implicación de los estudiantes (X3) y la promoción de la interacción con otros estudiantes (X4), tienen gran influencia entre sí. Esto quiere decir que, a mayor uso de las cuatro variables, mayor satisfacción de los estudiantes. Con el fin de analizar la fiabilidad de los ítems medidos en la Tabla 5, hemos aplicado el coeficiente Alpha de Cronbach, presentado en la Tabla 6, utilizando el Tabla 4. Valoración del alumnado sobre la promoción de la implicación de los estudiantes en el sMOOC (X3). Frecuencia Porcentaje Porcentaje acumulado Válido Completamente 125 31,2 31,2 En gran medida 175 43,6 74,8 Hasta cierto punto 91 22,7 97,5 Inadecuadamente 10 2,5 100,0 Total 401 100,0 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 X1 X2 X3 X4 Figura 2. Medias y Desviaciones Típicas (barras de error) de las puntuaciones obtenidas de las respuestas de la muestra para cada variable (X1, X2, X3 y X4). 8 S. OSUNA-ACEDO AND J. GIL-QUINTANA software SPSS. A partir de este análisis, hemos obtenido como resultado un 0,812, superior al mínimo aceptable de 0,7, lo que nos indica una adecuada fiabilidad (Cronbach & Shavelson, 2004). Este valor revela la consistencia interna y muestra una fuerte correlación entre los cuatro ítems analizados. Aprendizaje, formación y transferencia profesional Para finalizar el análisis, además del grado de satisfacción de los estudiantes en el sMOOC, se considera necesario estudiar el grado real de aprendizaje alcanzado y su transferencia a la actividad profesional. Este propósito implicaba el estudio de las variables X5 (Nivel de aprendizaje percibido por los estudiantes) y X6 (Aplicación del aprendizaje en la vida profesional). En base a la información presentada en la Tabla 7 comprobamos que el 73,7% de los estudiantes que participaron en el sMOOC afirman estar muy de acuerdo o bastante de acuerdo en que el aprendizaje es adecuado para su formación. Los datos ponen de manifiesto que la formación es valorada positivamente por su transferencia profesional. Estos datos se ven reforzados con los resultados de la Tabla 8 al confirmar un 59,9% que este aprendizaje es aplicable a su vida profesional diaria. Tabla 5. Correlaciones de Kendall y Spearman para medir el grado de satisfacción de los estudiantes para las distintas variables del estudio. X1 X2 X3 X4 Tau_b de Kendall X1 Coeficiente de correlación 1,000 ,353** ,384** ,391** Sig. (bilateral) . ,000 ,000 ,000 N 401 401 401 401 X2 Coeficiente de correlación ,353** 1,000 ,604** ,551** Sig. (bilateral) ,000 . ,000 ,000 N 401 401 401 401 X3 Coeficiente de correlación ,384** ,604** 1,000 ,599** Sig. (bilateral) ,000 ,000 . ,000 N 401 401 401 401 X4 Coeficiente de correlación ,391** ,551** ,599** 1,000 Sig. (bilateral) ,000 ,000 ,000 . N 401 401 401 401 Rho de Spearman X1 Coeficiente de correlación 1,000 ,396** ,431** ,437** Sig. (bilateral) . ,000 ,000 ,000 N 401 401 401 401 X2 Coeficiente de correlación ,396** 1,000 ,643** ,595** Sig. (bilateral) ,000 . ,000 ,000 N 401 401 401 401 X3 Coeficiente de correlación ,431** ,643** 1,000 ,647** Sig. (bilateral) ,000 ,000 . ,000 N 401 401 401 401 X4 Coeficiente de correlación ,437** ,595** ,647** 1,000 Sig. (bilateral) ,000 ,000 ,000 . N 401 401 401 401 **. La correlación es significativa en el nivel 0,01 (bilateral). Tabla 6. Alpha de Cronbach para las variables seleccionadas en el estudio. Estadísticas de fiablidad Alpha de Conbach Núm. de ítems ,812 4 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 9 Discusión El modelo formativo innovador desarrollado desde los escenarios sMOOC se ha conver- tido en una puerta abierta para la formación docente, la especialización del profesorado de lenguas extranjeras y una respuesta a la demanda de alfabetización ciudadana en una segunda lengua (Heinsch & Rodríguez-Pérez, 2015; Perifanou, 2015), teniendo como base las competencias lingüísticas más demandadas en el mundo laboral y, cada vez más, imprescindibles para la participación en la sociedad intercultural. Este modelo formativo innovador ha encontrado respuesta en personas cuyas edades se sitúan entre los treinta y los cuarenta años, siendo el género femenino el más presente. Nuestro estudio revela que, partiendo del elevado número de estudiantes que tiene esta propuesta formativa, los sMOOC pueden ser una respuesta concreta que fomente la compe- tencia lingüística de cara a la transferencia profesional y al futuro desempeño de cualquier puesto laboral. Es un modelo formativo muy valioso para poder desarrollar en la ciudadanía las destrezas que les permita comunicarse en idiomas diversos, enriqueciendo de esta forma la participación en los nuevos medios que tienen hacia un escenario mundial cada vez más globalizado, inclusivo y accesible (Rodríguez-Ascaso & González Boticario, 2015). La propuesta formativa que surgió con la intencionalidad de hacer que la universidad «salga a la calle», sigue restringiendo el acceso a estos escenarios digitales de formación, reduciéndose al ámbito del alumnado con estudios superiores. No se da respuesta a las necesidades sociales de repercutir en los campos de práctica (Barab & Duffy, 2012) que inciden directamente en la mejora de la sociedad. Entre el alumnado del sMOOC, la mayoría de ellos son personas que se encuentran trabajando como empleados a tiempo completo o a tiempo parcial, aunque también debemos tener presente que esta formación es cursada por quienes se encuentran en situación de desempleo. Es necesario dar un paso más allá para informar a otros sectores sociales, convirtiéndose este propósito en un aspecto a mejorar dentro del modelo sMOOC que se proyecta a través del software social (Fidalgo et al., 2013; Osuna-Acedo & Gil-Quintana, 2017). Tabla 7. Distribución de la frecuencia en el nivel de aprendizaje percibido por los estudiantes (X5). Frecuencia Porcentaje Porcentaje válido Porcentaje acumulado Mucho 45 15.4 15.4 15.4 En gran medida 130 44.5 44.5 59.9 Hasta cierto punto 69 23.6 23.6 83.6 Un poco 35 12.0 12.0 95.5 Poco 5 1.7 1.7 97.3 No lo sé 8 2.7 2.7 100.0 Total 292 100.0 100.0 Tabla 8. Distribución de la frecuencia en la aplicación del aprendizaje en la vida profesional (X6). Frecuencia Porcentaje Porcentaje válido Porcentaje acumulado Mucho 65 22.3 22.3 22.3 En gran medida 150 51.4 51.4 73.7 Hasta cierto punto 56 19.2 19.2 92.8 Un poco 15 5.1 5.1 97.9 Nada 2 .7 .7 98.6 No lo sé 4 1.4 1.4 100.0 Total 292 100.0 100.0 10 S. OSUNA-ACEDO AND J. GIL-QUINTANA Resultaría interesante que este tipo de cursos tuvieran un mejor calado entre los diferentes sectores sociales, especialmente, los más excluidos. No es por la mera necesidad de ofertar propuestas formativas en relación con el aprendizaje de idiomas, sino porque este tipo de formación ofrece un modelo que hace uso de una tecnología de vanguardia (Llorent-Vaquero, 2016), convirtiendo la plataforma digital en un espacio donde se fomenta la comunicación en diversos idiomas, de forma similar a como lo hacen los medios sociales. El aprendizaje de idiomas ha encontrado en los sMOOC una realidad innovadora que fomenta la discusión, la reflexión personal, la interactividad, implicación y participación del alumnado, cuyo fin último es la construcción colectiva del conocimiento, haciendo más lúdica y motivadora la experiencia de aprendizaje (Bates, 2014). Los estudiantes implicados en el modelo de aprendizaje del sMOOC se encuentran satisfechos con el método de aprendizaje y la formación recibida. Además, al disponer de materiales audiovisuales, hipervínculos, e-rúbricas, etc., fomentan una mayor motivación y un proceso educativo más atractivo, teniendo como consecuencia directa la interacción con los contenidos y con la comunidad virtual de aprendizaje a través de las redes sociales. Asimismo, es necesario resaltar el desempeño de un papel importante en el proceso de calificación dentro del planteamiento de evaluación por pares valorado de forma positiva (Baldomero, Salmerón, & López, 2015; Luo & Robinson, 2014). Estos condicionantes se presentan como requisito para poder crear un sMOOC que busque la formación en el desempeño de las destrezas comunicativas en un idioma extranjero e impida el abandono de este proceso formativo por parte del alumnado. En este sentido, el método de enseñanza sMOOC impulsado por el equipo docente tiene una función fundamental a la hora de estimular, apoyar y guiar al alumnado en el desarrollo exitoso de los sMOOC siendo su facilitador y orientador en el aprendizaje, desde la taxonomía de las 10’T (Osuna-Acedo et al., 2018). No podemos olvidar que, desde las propuestas de formación en línea que promue- ven los sMOOC, todo el alumnado tiene un protagonismo vital. Ellos eligen el itinerario, trazando su propio recorrido con sus semejantes, prestando atención a lo que le pueda resultar más interesante, motivador o ajustado a sus intereses personales y no a una estructura lineal, que pretende que el alumnado siga un camino hacia la evaluación final. El destino último no es tanto la finalidad de conseguir una credencial que posibilite el desempeño de un determinado puesto donde sea imprescindible acreditar una formación a nivel de lenguas extranjeras (aunque también es posible), sino el tener derecho a una formación para toda la vida, sin necesitar ningún tipo de requisito académico u ocupacional para poder acceder a la misma, repercutiendo en su transferencia profesional. Conclusión Esta oferta formativa en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua contribuye a mejorar la formación sMOOC a nivel internacional en relación con el aprendizaje de idiomas, implementándose con éxito en el ámbito social, con la finalidad de fomentar el descubrimiento de un modelo formativo innovador que apuesta por métodos de enseñanza y aprendizaje interactivos que mejora la calidad educativa. El éxito de los sMOOC y su promoción vienen determinados por la experiencia, la conformidad, los contenidos y por el grado de satisfacción del alumnado participante; AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 11 también esta complacencia de los estudiantes viene determinada por la labor docente y la implicación, participación e interacción vivida en la comunidad virtual de aprendizaje, que resulta imprescindible continuar investigando, sobre todo en el ámbito de la transferencia del conocimiento que proyecta en modelo tMOOC o transferMOOC. Los sMOOC del Proyecto ECO se presentan como modelo de formación en lenguas extranjeras ofertado como inclusivo y accesible a la ciudadanía, que permite no sólo el diseño universal y diversidad funcional sino también la apertura y la participación en nuevos procesos formativos para la mejora de la sociedad global, posibilitando el encuen- tro y la participación de personas de diversas culturas y nacionalidades. El hecho de que la mayoría de los estudiantes nunca hubieran participado en un sMOOC ha supuesto una limitación para el estudio, pero, al mismo tiempo, este hecho, junto al nivel de satisfacción alcanzado en el curso, nos ha dado la oportunidad de que los estudiantes abrieran sus mentes, desde la reflexión y la discusión, a otras formas de aprender con métodos de enseñanza y aprendizaje más interactivos y participativos. Las futuras líneas de investigación deben enfocarse en la transformación y la transfer- encia del conocimiento a la sociedad con este tipo de formación de la ciudadanía a lo largo de su vida. Tal enfoque implica más compromiso de los estudiantes con su propio desarrollo personal continuo y con el aprendizaje de por vida consecuente, así como la obligatoriedad de transferir a la sociedad lo aprendido. Se sugiere seguir profundizando en los aspectos conceptuales y prácticos del modelo que se proyecta en la actualidad como son los tMOOC, basados en el talento intercreativo y el empoderamiento de los estu- diantes, apostando por la taxonomía de las 10’T. Agradecimientos Este artículo ha sido realizado en la investigación llevada a cabo desde el Proyecto ECO, parcial- mente financiado por el Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP-ICT-PSP. 2013 Theme 2: Digital content, open data and creativity, Obj 2.3.a: Piloting and showcasing excellence in ICT for learning for all). Los autores forman parte del Grupo de Investigación consolidado en “Social Media y Educación Mediática Inclusiva y Ubicua” (SMEMIU), CG: 484 de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). ORCID Sara Osuna-Acedo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5454-6215 Javier Gil-Quintana http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-2535 References Bakar, N. A., Latif, H., & Ya’acob, A. (2010). 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(2015). Personalized MOOCs for language learning: A challenging proposal. eLearning Papers, 45, 1–13. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/xGBVhQ Rodríguez-Ascaso, A., & González Boticario, J. (2015). Accesibilidad y MOOC: Hacia una perspec- tiva integral. Revista Iberoamericana De Educación a Distancia, 18(2), 61–85. doi:10.5944/ ried.18.2 Sánchez, M. M., León, M., & Davis, H. (2015). Desafíos en la creación, desarrollo e implementación de los MOOC: El curso de web science en la Universidad de Southampton. Comunicar, 44, 37–44. doi:10.3916/C44-2015-04 Siemens, G., Downes, S., & Cormier, D. (2012). How this course works. Learning Analytics and Knowledge: LAK12. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/Ee5ali. Trujillo, F. (2007). Enseñar nuevas lenguas en la escuela. Revista De Educación, 343, 71–91. Gobierno de España. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/jrdem3 UTHS (2013). What is a MOOC. UTHS Educational Technology. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/ djRNty. Vizoso, C. M. (2013). Los MOOC un estilo de educación 3.0, en SCOPEO: MOOC: Estado de la situación actual, posibilidades, retos y futuro, 2, 239-261. Salamanca, ES: Universidad de Salamanca-Centro Internacional de Tecnologías Avanzadas. Watted, A., & Barak, M. (2018). Motivating factors of MOOC completers: Comparing between university-affiliated students and general participants. The Internet and Higher Education, 37, 11–20. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2017.12.001 Yang, D., Shina, T., Adamson, D., & Rosa, C. P. (2013). Turn on, tune in, drop out: Anticipating students dropouts in massive open online courses. Proceedings of the 2013 NIPS Data-Driven Education Workshop. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/t2qtIm. YeonJoo, J., YouJin, K., & Hikyoung, L. (2017). Learner perception of multimodal synchronous computer-mediated communication in foreign language classrooms. Language Teching Research. doi:10.1177/1362168817731910 14 S. OSUNA-ACEDO AND J. GIL-QUINTANA https://doi.org/10.3916/C44-2015-06 https://doi.org/10.1590/ES0101-7330216156650 http://goo.gl/02f9kM https://doi.org/10.3916/C55-2018-10 https://doi.org/10.3916/C55-2018-10 http://goo.gl/xGBVhQ https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.18.2 https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.18.2 https://doi.org/10.3916/C44-2015-04 http://goo.gl/Ee5ali http://goo.gl/jrdem3 http://goo.gl/djRNty http://goo.gl/djRNty https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2017.12.001 http://goo.gl/t2qtIm https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817731910 Abstract Introducción Metodología Resultados Perfil Método de enseñanza sMOOC Método de aprendizaje sMOOC Aprendizaje, formación ytransferencia profesional Discusión Conclusión Agradecimientos References 
work_b3feuq4bk5a3pkoayl5zhucv54	----	Avoiding the Industrialization of Research Universities: Big and Little Distance Education Abstract access and cost has led to the development of an industrialized model of higher education. The industrialized model is best represented by the emergence of the mega, open universities of the last twenty-five years (Daniel 1997). Major research-intensive universities must seriously question whether this is the model they should be emulating. The goal of research universi- ties, in addition to their research function, is to enhance the quality of and access to education through communications and learning technologies. The challenge is to achieve this goal in a productive or cost-effective manner. Models for achieving this goal must include affordable and highly interactive technologies. These technologies are not those of the industrialized model. Evans and Nation (1989) have criticized the dominant open university approach to technology as "instructional industrialism." They suggest that distance education systems evolved from behaviorist models of learning in which course writers have a powerful influence over content and teaching strategies and students are passive receivers of information, "structurally confined to dominated and alienated positions within the distance teaching and learning relationship" (p. 246). Most importantly, discourse is limited and highly regulated in such a way that students are expected to conform and are not allowed to shape their learning experi- ence or challenge the content. This trend toward the industrialization of higher education and the adoption of mass communication technologies raises serious questions with regard to the purpose and goals of the traditional research-intensive university. Research-intensive universities should begin by clarifying and defending their goals and purposes. This is particularly important with the increased opportunities made possible by developments in information and communications technology and the pressure to adopt distance education approaches in higher education. D. Randy Garrison and Terry D. Anderson The pressure to increase access to higher education while reducing costs raises serious questions with regard to the purpose and goals of the traditional research-intensive university. Moreover, there is considerable rhetoric about reinventing universities based on adop- tion of communications and learning technologies without clearly defining or articulating educational goals. In contrast to the big industrial model of distance education, an approach to distance edu- cation is described that is consistent with the traditional goals and values of creating knowledge through a critical community of learn- ers. This approach, or model, is labeled "little distance education," and its characteristics are defined. Meeting the needs of a new mar- ket for continuing professional education available at a distance is also discussed. Some time ago, Wilbur Schramm (1977) described the technologies for instruction as big media and little media. Generally, the intent was to dis- tinguish high-cost, large-audience media from low-cost, small-audience media. Schramm claimed that small or simple media can often provide the necessary conditions needed for a learning task at less cost than large or expensive media. These ideas remain relevant, and it may be useful to revisit them in the context of the challenges that research-intensive uni- versities are facing in the perceived worldwide crisis of access and cost in higher education (Daniel 1997; Dolence and Norris 1995). A significant change has taken place in higher education during the second half of this century, marked by the collapse of elitism and the opening of universities to large numbers of students. More recently, there has been heightened pressure to increase access to higher education while reducing costs. Many educators, economists, and business leaders have argued that higher education institutions must transform themselves in order to be accessible and cost-efficient. The proposed solution to this "crisis" invariably is the adoption of learning technologies and the sub- stitution of capital for labor (Massy and Zemsky 1996). This focus on The Goals of a University On the surface, it is ironic that universities, whose raison d'etre is the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, have changed so little in the face of the "knowledge age," an age fueled by enhanced communica- tions capacity. Moreover, communication lies at the heart of higher education. Communication, whether between research collaborators, among and between students and teachers, or between the university and the workplace, is central to both knowledge production and dissemination. 48 49 Brown and Duguid (1996, 13) argue that "the core competency of univer- sities is not transferring knowledge but developing it, and that's done within intricate and robust networks and communities." It i.s particularly striking to see the contrast between the widespread adoptIOn of powerful communications technology within the business ~ommunity and general population and the tentative and limited adop- tIon an~ ~se of th.e powers of such technologies for teaching and learning by tradItIOnal umversities. While there are many reasons for this trend legitimate and otherwise, it has created tensions within mainstream high~ er education (Anderson, Varnhagen, and Campbell 1998). There is consi~erable rhetoric about adopting communications and learning tech- nologIes, but few concrete action plans that reflect the values and goals of research-intensive universities. Therefore, these plans have little chanc~ of. b~ing implemented and actively supported by faculty. "Y~Ile It IS hyperbole to suggest that higher education is experiencing a cnSIS, transformation is inevitable (Dolence and Norris 1995). Precipi- t~ted by the ~mergence of powerful new communications technology, hIgher edu~atIOn must address the issues of accessibility, cost, and quali- ty of learmng concurrent with the adoption of these technologies. In recent history, technology and cost factors have been allowed to drive this transformation without a clear understanding of desired outcomes. ~he issue is o?e of productivity (quality, access, and cost), as opposed to sImply reducIng costs through mass production and delivery. For a research-intensive university, productivity gains must be made first in the area of enhanced quality. If this can be done by increasing access at reduced cost, so much the better. Major research universities will never be able to compete with the mega, open universities solely on the basis of cost and accessibility-nor should they. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand "what a uni- :versity ~s and S,?ould be before getti.ng too excited about technological InnOV.atIOn . .. .(Paul 1997, 3). ThIS may then lead to the justifiable adoptIon of certaIn forms of communications technology and improved approaches to learning. Effective adoption of innovation only occurs in response to real needs, as defined by the appropriate stake-holders (Rogers 1995). . Paul (1997) states that the goals of a relevant and effective university Include such traditional elements as the search for truth, the creation of knowledge, the preservation of tradition and culture, and the mainte- nance of a critical perspective. This is certainly true for the research-intensive university. The core competency of the research university is the development of knowledge. Congruent with this idea, teaching and learning should be conceived as an active process of col1ab- oratively constructing knowledge. The essential means of achieving the traditional goals of the major research university, regardless of the technology, is the provision of sus- tained reciprocal communication for the purpose of facilitating critical reflection and discourse. It is this process that has been proven effective in facilitating the construction of personal meaning and the continued development of worthwhile knowledge in higher education. All ideas must be open to debate. Educational outcomes should be less about what to think and more about how to think. The search for truth and the creation of knowledge necessitate the existence of a critical community of learners. It is this collaborative com- munity of learners (scholars and students) that encourages the participants to question existing knowledge and search for new under- standings. Critical discourse, supported and enhanced by the advances and opportunities of communications technology, will reveal new approaches to the teaching-learning transaction that can enhance the quality of learning outcomes in higher education by increasing access to critical communities of learners, not simply access to information. Brown and Duguid (1996) argue strongly that communities of learn- ers are at the core of universities. Learning communities provide a context for active engagement in learning wherein understanding is not achieved by reproducing explicit information without a deeper under- standing of the structure of the subject and the important questions for the discipline. According to Brown and Duguid, the real challenge for research-intensive universities is the quality of access provided to its academic communities. Two Models Traditional universities have remained largely unaffected by recent technological developments because they have failed to construct a model of distance education and distributed learning that is consistent with the mandate, culture, and practice of major research universities. The confusion and resistance has come from comparing these research universities to the "mega-universities" (Daniel 1997), which have been driven by technologies consistent with a model that maximizes access and minimizes cost through mass-produced, prescriptive, and largely self- instructional materials. The model that drives the mega-universities is 50 51 made possible through mass communications technology and remains the dominant model in distance education (Garrison 1997). The mega-universities emerged as an effective model with which to address the issues of access, cost, and flexibility (Daniel 1997). The result was an industrialized model of teaching and learning. The driving force of the mega-university is the substitution of capital (technology of curriculum production) for labor (the classroom teacher). The ideal is to provide flexibility and control for the learners so they can study when and where they wish. That is, the ideal is to make the learner as indepen- dent as possible. This convenience, however, comes at the cost of severely reducing interaction and increasing learner isolation. The emphasis on cost-efficiency for purposes of increased access creates a very different educational experience from that provided by traditional research universities. Along with significant shifts in how we conceive of a quality educational transaction and the emergence of new communica- tions technology, an alternative worldview of distance education is emerging that is more consistent with the culture and practice of research universities (Garrison 1997). The major research university, with its core mission of creating knowledge, will not be well-served by a mass production and delivery approach to knowledge dissemination. The challenge for research uni- versities is to rethink the nature of the teaching-learning transaction in a distributed environment. We cannot simply weld new communications technologies onto less-than-adequate traditional approaches to teaching and learning. There is, for instance, a tendency to "construe teaching almost entirely in terms of lecturing" (Oblinger and Maruyama 1996). Unfortunately, the lecture has serious limitations with regard to interac- tivity and establishing a critical community of learners. Therefore, it would not be advisable to build a distributed approach to learning on such a foundation. On the other hand, there is also serious concern with delegating the responsibility for teaching to a Web site constructed with a rigid template that devolves most of the responsibility for learning to the students. What clearly distinguishes the research university from the mega, open university is its recognition of the centrality of knowledge creation in its teaching and research functions. This is not to protect the status quo, but rather to recognize the core process of the research university with regard to knowledge creation. From the learners' perspective, this knowledge must be acquired in a manner that facilitates deep and mean- ingful (i.e., quality) learning outcomes. The mass production model of distance education fails to address this core competency of the research university. To address this concern, we propose an alternative model, which we have labeled "little distance education." Characteristics of Little Distance Education Little distance education (LDE) is an emerging model that shares characteristics of both face-to-face instruction and traditional distance education but is built upon the extensive and pervasive networked learn- ing environment. It has many similarities to distributed learning (Oblinger and Maruyama 1996) and is defined by the following charac- teristics. LDE Maximizes Interaction. Little distance education systems acknowledge two-way communications as essential to learning. Peer groups are encouraged and collaborative activities are the norm. This usually entails paced systems in which cohort groups proceed through learning sequences. These cohorts allow learning communities to be cre- ated and to flourish, thus allowing high levels of interaction without prohibitively high levels of instructional time. The combined use of asynchronous and synchronous communication tools allows a variety of both reflective and spontaneous communications between and among learners and teachers. These tools have the capability of supporting qual- ity interaction potentially superior to both the inhibited discourse found in the face-to-face classroom lecture mode and one-way didactic dia- logues common in "big distance education" systems. LDE Focuses on Meaningful Learning Outcomes. Little distance edu- cation focuses on the quality of learning outcomes. The function of materials, teacher guidance, and peer support of the course design serve to motivate, pace, inform, and challenge the student to dig deeply into the subject content and explore the implications of this knowledge with regard to personal and societal constructs. It challenges traditional knowledge as well as personal perspectives and meaning. Since meaning is defined in large part by individuals, the course content and assign- ments in LDE are sufficiently open-ended to allow for extensive individual exploration, topic selection, and negotiation of course objec- tives. LDE Maximizes Active Learning. Little distance education makes extensive use of active learning activities, including simulations, explo- rations, and explanatory assessment. The costs of creating and distributing these resources are spread among many institutions and 52 53 learners through the use of a network. For example, banks of interactive simulations, learning modules, quizzes, and computer-assisted learning drills are being created and distributed across networks (see, for exam- ple, Apple's Education Object Economy at: <http://www.eoe.org>). These educational resources are commonly written in JavaTM so as to be compatible and distributable across a variety of operating systems. Unlike earlier large-scale computer-assisted learning programs, such as the PLATO experiments, LDE does not focus on the creation of prepack- aged, independent study materials so standardized as to become immutable and, therefore, "teacher proof' in the sense that they are not diminished by bad teaching. Rather, LDE uses computer tutorials and simulations that are combined with teacher notes and interactive activi- ties to create complete courses and programs. LDE Is Flexible in Design. Little distance education courses are revised by every teacher and in every section in which they are taught. Course development consists of defining broad learning goals and out- comes and a set of learning activities that can be modified and supplemented in response to learner or instructor needs and a similar set of evaluation guidelines. LDE can be printed or converted from bytes to matter (in many formats) based on the needs of students or teachers. Storage for LDE does not consist of a warehouse of products, nor does it exist only in the mind or notebooks of the instructor. Rather, course materials are created in hyper-linked and hypermedia format and stored such that they can easily be modified, augmented, annotated, or printed by both instructor and learners as needed. The modular nature of LDE programming creates the opportunity for customization by both teacher and learners to accommodate different learning styles and contexts and the creation and application of new knowledge. LDE Supports a Systems View. While not dictated by the large-scale efficiencies of big distance education systems, LDE acknowledges the systems within which formal education is developed and delivered. Effective LDE systems provide for learner support services, registration flexibility, credit transfer, accreditation, provision of learning and research resources through electronic delivery and virtual libraries. These courses are embedded within transparent systems so that neither individual faculty members nor individual learners are forced to create ad hoc adaptations of higher education systems. LDE Is Distributed. The course design of LDE allows the materials and learning activities to be effectively used both at a distance and on campus. Mediated communications supported by a variety of telecom- munications technologies are easily exchanged for face-to-face interaction when such interaction is possible and affordable. Similarly, the collaboration, problem solving, and project work of learners can take place within a classroom or be spread across the globe. LDE Is Compatible with Research Practice. Little distance education shares the tradition and tools associated with the creation of knowledge. Increasingly, networks with collaborative tool-sets are essential to teams of widely distributed researchers. Communications technologies allow for global collaboration and distributed use of scarce source materials and expensive tools. Similarly, these networks are employed in LDE sys- tems in which the focus moves from research to teaching and learning. LDE creates learning environments focused on problem solving, collab- orative projects, and exploration of complex environments. Thus, the skills and attitudes acquired through LDE experiences are directly trans- ferable and congruent with the actual work of researchers and other knowledge workers. LDE Is Cost-Effective. Cost-efficiency cannot be reduced to a simple computation of costs divided by student numbers. McClure (1997) argues that academic productivity is a function of access and learning quality divided by the costs. LDE substantially increases access as cours- es become available at any time of the day or night and anywhere that dial-up or LAN-based network connectivity is available. Increased accessibility is critical to the survival of publicly funded education. Sys- tems that allow only exclusive and restricted access to their programming will not only fail to meet needs of lifelong learners, but will also find it increasingly difficult to argue for government support when more flexible and accessible private and public sector alternatives are available. The use of active learning techniques, access to networked resources, customization of content, and support for collaboration all enhance learning above that normally provided in either face-to-face or big dis- tance education settings. Costs are roughly equivalent to face-to-face learning, with capital costs of campus buildings substituted for commu- nications and information technologies. Through increased accessibility and learning effectiveness and constraining costs, productivity in LDE is enhanced without replacing critical labor (knowledge-producing profes- soriate) with capital. 54 55 The Technologies of Education video and audio teleconferencing was the first medium to be used exten- sively in LDE systems. However, increasingly LDE systems are making use of the asynchronous capabilities of the Internet-especially the dis- play, hyper-linking, and hypermedia capacity of the World Wide Web (WWW). The early support and development of the Internet by research- intensive universities and the opportunities provided to them through recently announced high-speed research initiatives such as Internet2 and CaNet3 present ideal conditions under which to quickly expand their LDE opportunities. The selection and development of learning materials that use appropriate technologies wi1l insure higher levels of compatibili- ty with the core values and culture of the research-intensive university. A significant subset of WWW technology is computer conferencing, which has the potential to be, and is rapidly evolving into, the most widely used medium in LDE systems (Harasim et al. 1995). Its populari- ty is due to the compatibility, power, and access provisions of this mostly text-based medium. Asynchronous computer conferencing supports high levels of interactivity, "anytime, anywhere," while allowing and support- ing the type of reflective and substantiated discourse that is highly valued in the research-intensive university. Recorded and broadcast audio is also a technology with potential for application within LDE sys- tems. Audio recording offers very low cost of production, relatively low cost of distribution (especially over the Internet), compatibility with the lecture-based tradition of the research university, and relative ease and inexpensive recording and editing. The Technology of Big Distance Education. The cluster of technolo- gies most appropriate for big distance education systems include the broadcast technology of television, the large-scale production of corre- spondence materials in print format, and the development of computer-assisted instructional and multimedia courses such as those developed by PLATO, Academic Systems, and others. The high produc- tion costs, coupled with the lack of interactivity inherent in broadcast television, have precluded its adoption by all but the largest of distance education systems, such as the British Open University and the China Television University. Attempts by single universities or consortia to cre- ate telecourses have had limited success at the college level, but have been markedly less successful within the research university. The cost of production of quality materials that use any of the media in this grouping is very high and generally requires the industrialized production ski1ls of designers, technicians, and producers, in addition to subject matter The major research universities are not exempt from issues of accessi- bility. Even those who argue most emphatically for excellence in research universities recognize the importance of accessibility for quali- fied students. In reference to the Canadian context, Bercuson, Bothwell, and Granatstein (1997) state that, "major research universities must rec- ognize that their mandate now includes distance education. . ." (p. 89). They continue by saying that the primary mission of the major research universities is to teach people how to think, and the challenge is to use the new technologies to enhance this primary mission. Accomplishing this in a distance or distributed learning environment necessitates an understanding of the capabilities of communications technologies that can facilitate educational activities leading to quality learning outcomes. All forms of distance education are mediated by technology. The tech- nology characteristics of LDE systems are congruent with the needs of the modern research university-namely, a high degree of interactivity, rapid development and deployment of learning products (courses and other learning sequences), and compatible access to the wider research community. Moreover, LDE systems add value to the research university by extending its reach and mandate over temporal and geographical dis- tance. The categorization of a technology as supporting either big or little distance education is rather arbitrary and open to further discussion and change induced by the fluid economics and costs of technology. Nonetheless, we believe that various media lend themselves differential- ly to application in the face-to-face classroom as well as in little and big distance education systems. The Technology of Face-to-Face Classrooms. Often the technologies of the face-to-face classroom do not extend beyond blackboards and overhead projectors. The presentation and feedback technologies now appearing in "smart classrooms" enhance the presentation and interac- tion capacity of the classroom. In addition, they increase the speed and ease with which classroom content can be developed and shared among teachers. Materials developed for presentation in the face-to-face class- room (e.g., PowerPoint slides, streaming video presentations of lectures, etc.) often can be easily adapted for delivery using interactive forms of LDE, thus increasing cost-effectiveness of media applications. The Technology of Little Distance Education. There are a variety of synchronous and asynchronous communication and presentation tools available today. Synchronous distribution of classroom learning through 56 57 experts or teachers. These costs can only be recovered through massifi- cation and large student numbers that, in turn, must be supported by large and complex administration and support infrastructures. The big media described previously can be used as a supplementary resource for LDE systems. In such applications, the cost of production and distribution is normally left to publishers and mass media distribu- tors. For example, LDE systems may purchase textbooks, videotapes, or computer-assisted learning sequences, but they will rarely, if ever, enter into the business of producing, publishing, and marketing products for the mass market. of new communications technology lies in its ability to enhance the qual- ity of the educational transaction consistent with the legitimate needs and ethos of research-intensive universities while improving access. For the working professional, the combination of a quality learning experi- ence accessible both synchronously and asynchronously is a necessity. This will require new approaches to facilitating the teaching-learning transaction. These new approaches will recognize and support critical reflection and discourse within a community of learners, whether it be face-to-face or virtual. New Markets A Learning Community The essence of the research university is reflected in the ideal of a critical community of learners. We argue that a crucial component to acquiring meaningful and worthwhile knowledge is a critical community of scholars and learners. It is interesting to note that the more we use the powerful asynchronous technologies such as computer conferencing, the more students feel a need for synchronous communication (Harasim et al. 1995; Fabro 1996). Asynchronous written communication has very different qualities and characteristics from synchronous verbal commu- nication (Kaye 1987; Garrison 1997). It is becoming clear in distance education that we do not have to aban- don the social context as we adopt mediated forms of communication for educational purposes. While there will always be a place for intensive residential experiences, it is possible to create a community of learners in a technologically distributed format. The key element in designing these technologically mediated learning experiences are the educational ideals we are striving to achieve. Within practical limits, educational ide- als and learning outcomes must determine the appropriate communications technology. The ideals of the traditional research uni- versity should not be abandoned to the driving force of technology. Instead, these ideals should shape the adoption of communications tech- nology and be reflected in the approach to distance education. Didactic, one-way delivery models of education, whether face-to-face or virtual, are becoming unacceptable to the growing percentage of mature part-time learners enrolled in universities. Add-on approaches such as television broadcast and linking of lecture rooms via video con- ferencing will inevitably be short-lived and not address the challenges of access concurrent with a quality learning experience. The lasting effect Remaining true to the traditional goals of the research university does not mean ignoring the changing client needs and demographics of higher education. It would be detrimental to the research university to ignore the growing market for post-degree continuing professional education. Particular attention should be given to approaches that meet the needs of the continuing part-time learner. The research university must adopt technologies that will serve full and part-time traditional learners as well as the mature post-degree continuing learner. Cost-recovery models need to be introduced. Major research-intensive universities must become multifaceted if they are to remain relevant in this postmodern age. Meeting the needs of the nontraditional learner does not mean aban- doning the quality standards of the research university. It does mean, however, that new approaches must be adopted that recognize different outcome standards. For the professional with considerable working knowledge, it is no longer acceptable to focus exclusively on abstract theory. The challenge of post-degree professional programs is to trans- late theory into practice in a multidisciplinary context. The teaching-learning transaction must facilitate the understanding of rele- vant theoretical knowledge from personal and contextual perspectives. Moreover, knowledge is not the exclusive domain of the university. Experienced professionals possess enormously powerful working knowl- edge that should be shared with fellow learners. Finally, a quality learning experience for the post-degree professional must be timely. That is, it must have meaning, practical importance, and relevance to the cur- rent needs of the learner. For the continuing professional learner, this will reflect a shift in what is currently considered a quality educational expenence. 58 59 Recognizing that a quality educational experience must meet the needs of the "client" is a particular challenge within the major research university. Traditional academicians are hard-pressed to understand the challenges of translating theory to practice and to recognize the practical knowledge of working professionals. This means that innovative and accessible professional part-time graduate programs will likely experi- ence considerable resistance during the approval process. This is made worse by the need to mount these programs in a timely manner. To respond to emerging market opportunities, programs must be designed and approved in short periods of time. New standards and approval pro- cedures will likely have to be implemented, or at least attitudes will have to change in order to expedite the realization of market-driven profes- sional programs. Another key characteristic of a continuing professional education pro- gram is accessibility to information and human knowledge sources. It is not sufficient to simply provide access to information. A quality learning experience demands that students have opportunities to interact with the professor and fellow learners in a sustained manner. These programs rep- resent an opportunity to understand and utilize the full capabilities of communications technology. The challenge is to make it central to the educational transaction and not simply an extension of what is already done or an enhancement of less-than-adequate conventional processes. In addition, it is not acceptable to rely on one technology. Research uni- versities have much to learn with regard to making quality learning experiences accessible off-campus or in a virtual environment. At a mini- mum, a combination of face-to-face and mediated, as well as synchronous and asynchronous communication options must be employed to provide a full quality learning experience. Quality learning experiences in higher education require a flexible mix of collaborative synchronous communication and reflective asyn- chronous formats. Students must be assured a quality learning experience defined in terms of relevant content combined with sustained opportunities for critical reflection and discourse. The challenge of a quality program is to create a design that addresses relevant content and its practical application, is accessible to working professionals, and can be completed in a reasonable period of time (two to three years). One powerful strategy is to adopt a cohort-based approach to learning. Furthermore, establishing a climate for critical discourse is facilitated considerably by bringing the cohort together for a three-week face-to- face institute at the start of each academic year. Initially, this would allow time for students to get to know each other as well as be introduced to the technical intricacies of the communications technology. Subsequently, course content best suited for a face-to-face context could be addressed during such an institute. Without question, research universities must recognize the growing market and influence of the post-degree continuous learner. Addressing the needs of this market will also have secondary beneficial influences in changing for the better traditional on-campus approaches to teaching and learning. For its own viability, the research-intensive university must continue to serve its students as well as its corporate and nonprofit clients and benefactors. The best way to do this in a quality and person- alized manner is through the adoption of little distance education communications technology. Conclusion Strategies to incorporate communications technology must not com- promise the ideals and standards of excellence traditionally found in the major research-intensive universities. While accessibility and cost are challenges research universities must face, they are not defining charac- teristics as they are with the mega, open universities. The industrialization (massification) of the research university should be resisted. Research universities must find a balance between the tradition- al low-access elitism of the research-intensive universities and the "massification" of the mega, open universities. Almost by definition the major research universities are elitist in the sense that they attempt to attract the best and brightest students and faculty. Elitism, however, must not be maintained on grounds other than those of competence and ability. It is not in the best interest of the research university to compete with the mega universities in being open to the mass market. This would be a serious threat to the quality of the research and teaching of traditional universities. It would also diminish the prestige of a degree from a major research university. It is without apology that we say that, in the general trend toward the massification of higher education, the major research universities must distinguish themselves by basing access on intellectual merit. T~e research university cannot succumb to the politically correct democratIc ideal of equal access regardless of talent. The colleges and mega, open universities should address these legitimate concerns with regard to access and the demand for mass higher education. Not all students want 60 61 or will benefit from an education that integrates teaching and research. Industrialization and massification run counter to critical exploration and creation of new knowledge. For research-intensive universities, the adop- tion of distance education communication technologies should enhance the quality of the learning experience while increasing the convenience of access. In this way, productivity gains can be made. Despite the rhetoric surrounding developments in technologies for distance education and the imperative to adopt these learning technolo- gies, most traditional research universities remain largely unaffected by such developments. Elite research universities have failed to define and adopt a model of distance education that is consistent with their man- date, culture, and practice. Moreover, the real threat is not the mega-universities or the "for-profit" institutions, such as the University of Phoenix, but accessible and relevant programs from other renowned research universities. While the focus of this paper has been on research-intensive universi- ties, other institutions could also benefit from "little distance education." Certainly teaching universities and colleges could enhance learning through the application of LDE technologies. However, all institutions of higher education that have the teaching-learning transaction as a defining characteristic can benefit from LDE educational technologies with the capability to bring together a critical community of learners and the flex- ibility to meet emerging learning needs with the express purpose of enhancing the quality of learning outcomes. We believe that there is a model of distance education that can pre- serve and enhance the quality of the teaching-learning transaction while increasing access to education. At the core of this model is the mainte- nance of quality of content, delivery, and students. The model advocated here is the creative adoption of systems based on "little distance educa- tion" technologies that are not only affordable over time but, most importantly, support sustained two-way critical discourse and the realiza- tion of a virtual community of learners. In this way, the quality standards of the research-intensive university can be maintained while increasing access to all qualified learners. Bercuson, D., R. Bothwell, and J. L. Granatstein. 1997. Petrified cam- pus: The crisis in Canada's universities. Toronto: Random House of Canada. Brown, J., and P. Duguid. 1996. Universities in the digital age. Change 28 (4): 10-19. Daniel, J. S. 1997. Why universities need technology strategies. Change 29 (4): 11-17. Dolence, M., and D. Norris. 1995. Transforming higher education: A vision for learning in the 21st century. Ann Arbor, MI: Society for College and University Planning. Evans, T., and D. Nation. 1989. Critical reflections on distance educa- tion. London: Falmer Press. Fabro, K. 1996. Computer conferencing in higher education: An explo- ration of communication and cognitive development issues. Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Canada. Garrison, D. R. 1997. Computer conferencing: The post-industrial age of distance education. Open Learning 12 (2): 3-11. Harasim, L., S. R. Hiltz, L. Telus, and M. Turoff. 1995. Learning net- works: A field guide to teaching and learning online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kaye, T. 1987. Introducing computer mediated communication into a distance education system. Canadian Journal of Educational Commu- nication 16:153-166. Massy, W., and R. Zemsky. 1996. Information technology and academic productivity. Educom Review 31 (I): 12-15. McClure, P. 1997. Technology in university teaching and learning: Bene- fits and barriers from a technology viewpoint. Online Computer Library Centre. Available online at: <http://www.oclc.org/oclc/ man/1 0045rld/mcclure.htm>. Oblinger, D., and M. Maruyama. 1996. Distributed learning. CAUSE Professional Paper Series, no. 14. Boulder, CO: CAUSE. Paul, R. 1997. The university of the future: Learning from 15 years of distance education. Paper presented at 18th ICDE World Conference, 2-6 June, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Rogers, E. 1995. Diffusion of innovations. 4th ed. New York: Simon & Shuster. Schramm, W. 1977. Big media, little media: Tools and technologies for instruction. London: Sage. References Anderson, T., S. Varnhagen, and K. Campbell. 1998. Faculty adoption of teaching and learning technologies: Contrasting earlier adopters and mainstream faculty. Canadian Journal of Higher Education 28 (2-3): 71-98. 62 63 page 1 Titles Abstract D. Randy Garrison and Terry D. Anderson The Goals of a University 48 49 page 2 Titles Two Models 50 51 page 3 Titles Characteristics of Little Distance Education LDE Maximizes Active Learning. Little distance education makes 52 53 page 4 Titles 54 55 page 5 Titles The Technologies of Education 56 57 page 6 Titles New Markets A Learning Community 58 59 page 7 Titles Conclusion 60 61 page 8 Titles Kaye, T. 1987. Introducing computer mediated communication into a References 62 63 
work_b3looqew5ja27osuwsashgnwge	----	01-1-Foxx ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   1   ANALYSING THE ROLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS OF LEARNING TECHNOLOGISTS: A CASE STUDY FROM CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON Olivia Fox and Neal Sumner City University London United Kingdom Abstract This paper reports on a case study carried out at City University London into the role of Learning Technologists. This paper examines how the role developed, by providing points of comparison to a report on the career development of learning technology staff in UK universities in 2001. This case study identified that Learning Technologists undertook diverse roles and acquired the skills to work in different communities (professional, academic and research). It also found that while the core role and activities of Learning Technologists were similar to findings in 2001, the changing context in which they operated added complexity to the role and impacted on the skills and experience required.   Introduction It is widely recognised that Higher Education (HE) is undergoing a profound transformation due in part to the impact of technology (Barber, Donnelly, & Rizvi, 2013). As Christensen (in interview with Myers, 2011) argued, technology has a disruptive impact on the provision of Higher Education and threatens the existing models on which it is based. Although claims that these changes are revolutionary may be exaggerated, there can be no doubt that educational technologies and the staff that support them are increasingly important in the design and delivery of Higher Education (HE) both nationally and globally. However, have the roles, career structure and influence of Learning Technologists developed to recognise the centrality of technology in the provision of Higher Education? What follows is a case study exploring the activities and skills of Learning Technologists at City University London (City) to ascertain if the roles, activities and skills of Learning Technologists at City had changed since Beetham, Jones, and Gornall’s 2001 national survey identified the roles and functions of "new specialists" (p.4) employed in UK Higher Education (HE). Beetham et al.'s study investigated the role and functions of staff involved in supporting learning and teaching through the use of Information and Communication Technology and identified 11 roles in this area. These roles were divided into three categories. The category of "new specialists" was used as a benchmark for this study as Beetham et al. (2001, p.4) found that these staff had "[…] learning technology work at the core of their professional identify." Six roles were identified in the "new specialist" category: • Educational developer • Educational researcher ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   2   • Technical researcher/developer • Materials developer • Manager (a. Projects, b. Team) • Learning technologist Beetham et al. (2001) noted that these were not distinct roles and that staff was likely to carry out composite roles. Rationale Browne and Beetham's (2010, p.23) "open review"1 on the role of Learning Technologists in enhancing the student learning experience recommended repeating the Beetham et al. (2001) study to examine what activities Learning Technologists were undertaking and with whom they worked. It was an appropriate time to carry out this research at City as the number of staff engaged in learning technology support increased substantially with the launch of the Strategic Learning Environment (SLE) project in 2008. This project supported the student experience through a range of online and classroom learning technologies (Quinsee & Bullimore, 2011). It funded six School-based Project Resource Officers in 2009 with a role in "[…] managing change and engaging staff in the use of new technologies to support the educational mission of the University" (Learning Development Centre, 2009, p.3). In addition, there were School-based Learning Technologists with strategic responsibility for implementing learning technology (Quinsee, 2010). Seven staff based centrally at the Learning Development Centre (LDC) also supported learning technology development (Learning Development Centre, n.d.). Literature Review The findings of a literature review highlighted that Learning Technologists worked in a hybrid role between the academic and professional fields. They occupied a role that was contradictory (Oliver, 2002). Learning Technologists had a central role in supporting change in HE, but their role was often marginalised and sometimes precarious. This was initially through short-term contracts (Beetham et al, 2001; Gornall, 1999) and then through feelings of insecurity due to a lack of career structure (Shurville, Browne, & Whitaker, 2009) or concern over possible redundancy (Browne & Beetham, 2010). The role undertaken by Learning Technologists transformed from one of a change agent at individual or project level (Beetham et al., 2001) to that of a change manager with responsibility for strategic level initiatives (Browne & Beetham, 2010). It is unclear, however, if all Learning Technologists undertook a change manager role; Armitage et al. (2004) indicated that only some Learning Technologists undertook this organisational-level role. The activities undertaken by Learning Technologists aimed at engaging academic staff in relation to using technology effectively to support their teaching remained core activities. Some literature pointed to a fragmentation of the role of the Learning Technologist (Conole, 2004; Hudson, 2009). On the issue of specialisation in the role, there was some evidence of this (Cope, 2011, 2012), but also evidence that the role was expanding to ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   3   encompass new activities, including support for researchers (Peacock, Robertson, Williams, & Giatsi Clausen, 2009). In line with its organic development, the role has remained varied and somewhat ill defined with no consistency in job titles (Hudson, 2009; Oliver, 2004). Interpersonal skills were required to engage with academic staff (Beetham et al., 2001; Browne & Beetham, 2010; Ooms, Burke, Linsey, & Heaton-Shrestha, 2008; Oliver, 2002; O'Neill, 2010). Technical knowledge was also important with the development of enterprise-level systems and the expansion of technologies that were used to support the delivery of teaching and learning. Pedagogical skills were required to engage with the academic community and Learning Technologists viewed these skills as longer lasting than technical skills that needed constant updating (Browne & Beetham, 2010). To engage with the research community and to ensure that new technical developments were evidence-based, research skills became increasingly important (Armitage et al. 2004). For those Learning Technologists occupying a more organisational- level role, leadership skills were also required to support organisational planning and implementation (Kowch, 2005; Marshall, 2010; and Shurville et al., 2009). Methodology The study used mixed methods to research a comprehensive account (Bryman, 2010) of the role and activities of Learning Technologists. A questionnaire was used to get an understanding of the breadth of roles and contexts of Learning Technologists at City. The online questionnaire was followed with semi-structured interviews as a qualitative tool to elaborate on the questionnaire responses (Green et al., 1989 cited in Bryman, 2006). Questionnaire   Data from Beetham et al.'s (2001) initial role analysis was used in the questionnaire to provide points of comparison for this new study. The questionnaire included questions around the following areas:   • Role and responsibilities   • Activities and skills required   • Professional development and career progression   •   Of the 22-strong research population, 77% responded to the questionnaire. The quantitative data from the questionnaire was analysed using the reporting features within the survey tool – Bristol Online Surveys – that produces descriptive statistics. Open-ended responses were included in the qualitative analysis. Interviews Fourteen respondents indicated that they would like to participate in a follow- up interview. A stratified sample was used to select participants to ensure a representative sample from across the University. Seven Learning Technologists were interviewed and, to get a longitudinal and expert perspective on the development of the role of the Learning Technologist at ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   4   City, a long-standing member of staff was interviewed. The interviews were conducted in April and May 2012. Interviews lasted between 30 minutes to 90 minutes and each participant was asked at least 13 questions. The qualitative data was analysed following Bryman's four-stage model of qualitative analysis (Bryman, 2008, cited in Gibbs, 2010). Interviewees are represented in this study with a code (P for participant followed by a number selected at random and not in the order in which they were interviewed; the expert interviewee is represented as EI). Findings and Discussion   This section presents and explores the integrated results of the questionnaire and semi-structured interviews on the role, activities and skills of Learning Technologists at City. Role of Learning Technologist Questionnaire respondents were asked to describe their role using Beetham et al.'s (2001) "new specialist2" roles. Like the "new specialists," Learning Technologists at City did not undertake one role in isolation, but engaged in a variety of roles as they were involved in the "holistic" approach to learning technology from implementation to support and use (Beetham et al., 2001, p.31) as depicted in Figure 1.       Figure 1: How would you describe your current role? (Multi-option answer).   Participants discussed undertaking a range of different responsibilities during the interviews. While describing a typical working day some core tasks were identified – these fell into three categories:   • Learning technology support   • Project work   • Research and evaluation   Development of the Role Responsibilities of Learning Technologists differed depending on length of time in the profession (Figure 1) and, while there was no set career path, there ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   5   appeared to be progression to the role of Team Manager and/or Project Manager. Respondents who worked in the learning technology field for at least eight years (n= 7) were more likely to have the role of Team Manager (n=6), with responsibility for leading teams and implementing local strategy (Figure 1). Browne and Beetham (2010) underlined how supporting and managing change had transformed from supporting individuals with change (Beetham et al., 2001) to supporting organisational change, while Armitage et al. (2004) stated that this role was only undertaken by some Learning Technologists. Hudson (2009) found that, while newcomers to a learning technology/educational development role did not have the same level of responsibility as more experienced colleagues, they still discussed their role as strategic, and Learning Technologists without a Team Manager role spoke about their role in supporting the implementation of a VLE, not just for individual members of staff, but implementing a system across a School. Said one: It was more of a change management role, so moving from one system to another with staff training [...] producing training materials, doing support on the new system and managing that transition. (P5) The level of organisational change undertaken by staff who were not Team Managers could be due in part to the devolved decision-making structure with the introduction of the SLE where "[…] ownership of the pace of change [was given] to the schools" (Quinsee & Bullimore, 2011, p.284). It is worth noting that the role in supporting change was included in the job description for staff employed to implement the SLE (Learning Development Centre, 2009). This represented a change from advertised job roles analysed by Oliver (2004) and Wright and Miller (2000) where change management was not included. Activities The stem and options for the question on activities undertaken by Learning Technologists were based on results from Beetham et al.'s (2001) original findings. Beetham et al. (2001) published the top ten activities that were rated as crucial or significant by over 50% of their sample. These activities were scored as crucial or significant by over 50% of the questionnaire respondents at City. During the interviews, participants discussed how relationship- building with different groups of staff underpinned their activities and the enabling activity of facilitating access to learning technology expertise and services was rated as most important to this community of Learning Technologists. Multi-competence Required The hybrid nature of the role meant that Learning Technologists needed to develop the skills to be effective in each of the communities in which they operated (Armitage et al., 2004). Interpersonal skills were highlighted as crucial or significant to 100% of the questionnaire respondents and were a theme in the interviews. Technical skills ranked lower than interpersonal or ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   6   pedagogical skills in Beetham et al.'s (2001) study, while in this study, pedagogical and technical skills were rated equally (88.2%) by respondents. The increase in the number of learning technologies supported could explain the increased rating for technical skills. EI said that Learning Technologists needed practical experience of a range of learning technologies in comparison to the technical skills required in early 2000 when Learning Technologists could have "[…] a vague interest in IT." There was some contextualisation around the technical skills required during the interviews. P7 thought that it was the ability to signpost staff to someone with the relevant technical skills rather than developing the technical skills yourself that was important. P2 said that, while Learning Technologists did not need to be "super IT expert[s],” they needed to have a conceptual understanding of learning technologies to understand what they could and could not achieve. The amount of learning technologies supported and the practical experience of learning technology required led to discussions around the tension between innovating and supporting institutional systems. This tension was discussed by four of the Learning Technologists at City, and a keen desire to innovate was discussed by three of the interviewees (P3, P4 and P5). Beetham et al. (2001, p.29) discussed the importance of pedagogical skills, but also stated that technical skills were important "to professional credibility," and Hudson (2009, p.199) agreed that technical skills were part of Learning Technologists' "cultural capital." Drawing on the work of Becher (1989), Hudson said that keeping up with developments in the field was an important part of developing and maintaining a reputation in the field. This was illustrated by P6 who discussed the skills of another Learning Technologist in using social media effectively, "I'm learning from him, it's given me more of an emphasis to do a lot more immediate feedback, because I know he is really good at doing Twitter." Research skills. Research and evaluation skills were noted as skills for the future in Beetham et al.'s (2001) report. Ten of the questionnaire respondents in this study indicated that they had a role in research (either as a Technical Researcher (n=4), an Educational Researcher (n=2) or both (n=4)), while research skills were noted as relevant to all respondents. During the interviews, all participants highlighted the importance of promoting their research into the impact of learning technology both in terms of raising the profile of learning technology at City and to develop City's reputation with an external community. For a number of participants, however, research was a secondary role or had to be done in their own time due to the more pressing demands of the role. Development of leadership skills.   Stiles and Yorke (2006) highlighted that the process of learning technology development became more complex with enterprise-level solutions. Kowch (2005) said that leadership was required to enact strategic planning as opposed to operational planning and that this was beyond the current practice of Learning Technologists who had more experience of project planning. Project ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   7   management skills were the second most highly rated of the skills of Learning Technologists in my questionnaire. Leadership skills were not included in the questionnaire, as this area had not been highlighted as a skill in the Beetham et al. (2001) study. However, the institutional implementation of learning technologies has seen a demand for something more than project management skills. Eight of the questionnaire respondents were participating in a Collaborative Leadership Programme. EI explained that the aim of this programme was to help staff manage and lead projects when they were in positions of responsibility, but did not have organisational power. Five of the interviewees discussed their development as part of this course. They highlighted the positives as learning about how to work as part of a team and understanding their own strengths, developing an understanding of why people work differently and how to work with them effectively.     Conclusion This research study has identified some changes to the general context in which Learning Technologists operate. "First generation" (Conole, 2004) Learning Technologists needed to have a "vague interest" (EI) in learning technology. As Learning technologies became mission critical to institutions and the processes around their implementation and use more complex (Stiles & Yorke, 2006), this has impacted on the role of Learning Technologists, which has, in turn, become more complex to support a large variety of institutional and social media. The skill-set and experience required has expanded, so, like Beetham et al.'s (2001) "new specialists," interpersonal skills and pedagogical skills were important, but practical technical experience is now required across a range of learning technologies (EI). At City, it was identified that, in some cases, leadership skills were required to communicate and engage with a variety of staff to implement organisational change. All of the participants described their role as playing a part in school-level change; this could have been distinct to City due to its decision to devolve the rate of change of the SLE project to Learning Technologists in Schools. Interviewees reported a tension between supporting institutional technologies and innovation, particularly the recent impact of social media in Higher Education.   In other ways, the role has remained similar to that described by Beetham et al.'s (2001) "new specialists." The role at City was described as a hybrid role - Learning Technologists acted as brokers (Armitage et al., 2004; Beetham et al., 2001) between professional and academic communities and developed the skills to gain legitimacy within these communities. As Learning Technologists tried to develop and maintain a reputation within these communities, opportunities to develop both technical and pedagogic skills were important. The ability to engage different groups of staff was key, which was why interpersonal skills rated so highly among participants in the study. In City, at least, there has been no fragmentation of the role (Conole, 2004; Hudson, 2009) between researchers and practitioners, and Learning Technologists have recognised the importance of research into the impact of learning technology. However, this activity often has a lower priority than activities around learning technology support and project management or co-ordination. While there was no clear career path, there was some career progression for Learning ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   8   Technologists to the role of Team Manager, but there were concerns about what progression was available beyond that. Given the profound, technologically driven changes that are sweeping through the Higher Education sector, how will the career paths, skills and opportunities for learning Technologists change in response to the challenges ahead?     Notes 1. Literature review sourced by and shared with the learning technology community for discussion on the themes. 2. Combinations of roles presented by Beetham et al. (2001) were separated in the question options to avoid confusion. References Armitage, S., Bryson, M., Creanor, L., Higgison, C., Jenkins, M., Ringan, N., Newland, B., Prescott D., & Yip, H. (2004, April). Supporting learning technology: Relationships with research and theory. Proceedings Networked Learning Conference 2004. Lancaster University UK. Retrieved from http://www.networkedlearningconference. org.uk/past/ nlc2004/proceedings/symposia/symposium1/armitage_et_al.htm Barber, M., Donnelly, K., & Rizvi, S. (2013). An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead. London: Institute for Public Policy Research. Beetham, H., Jones, S., & Gornall, L. (2001). Career development of learning technology staff: Scoping study. Final Report for the JISC JCALT. Bristol: University of Plymouth. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2001/cdssfinalreport.aspx Browne, T., & Beetham, H. (2010). The positioning of educational technologists in enhancing the student experience. Report funded by The Higher Education Academy under their Call4: Enhancing Learning and Teaching through the use of Technology. Retrieved from http://repos itory.alt.ac.uk/831/1/Tom_Browne_Helen_Beetham_HEA_finalweb.pdf Bryman, A. (2006). Integrating quantitative and qualitative research: How is it done? Qualitative Research, 6(1), pp.97–113. Retrieved from www.so csci.uci.edu/ssarc/sshonors/webdocs/Integratingqualandquant.pdf Bryman, A. (2010). Conducting mixed methods research Pt.1, 2, &3 w/ Alan Bryman. [YouTube videos] Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lZ3w8pKyJI Conole, G. (2004, April). The role of learning technology practitioners and researchers. Proceedings Networked Learning Conference 2004. Lancaster University UK. Retrieved from http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2004/proceeding s/symposia/symposium1/conole.htm Cope, J. (2011, 15 December). The Research Technologist Part 1: Proactivity and innovation. eRambler, [web log comment]. Retrieved from http://erambler.co.uk/blog/the-research-technologist-proactivity- innovation/ ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   9   Cope, J. (2012, 10 January). The Research Technologist Part 2: Research focus. eRambler, [web log comment]. Retrieved from http://erambler.co.uk/blog/the-research-technologist-research-focus/ Gibbs, G. (2010). Part 1: Bryman's 4 stages. Online QDA Website. Available from http://onlineqda.hud.ac.uk/movies/Coding/index.php Gornall, L. (1999). ''New professionals”: Change and occupational roles in Higher Education. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 3(2), 44-49. Hudson, A. (2009). New professional and new technologies in new higher education? Conceptualising struggles in the field. Umeå: Umeå University. Retrieved from https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/handle/10588/5144 Kowch, E. G. (2005). Do we plan the journey or read the compass? An argument for preparing educational technologists to lead organisational change. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(6), 1067-1070. Learning Development Centre. (n.d.). Our Staff. Website page. Retrieved from http://www.city.ac.uk/about/education/ldc/about-us/our-staff Learning Development Centre. (2009). Educational technology project resource officer. (City University London job description - hard copy available on request) London: City University London. Marshall, S. (2010). Change, technology and Higher Education: Are universities capable of organisational change? ALT-J Research in Learning Technology, 18(3), 179-192. Retrieved from http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/1 0762 Myers, C.B. (2011,13 November). Clayton Christensen, Why online education is ready for disruption now. TheNextWeb [web log comment]. Retrieved from http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/13/clayton-christensen-why- online-education-is-ready-for-disruption-now/ Oliver, M. (2002). What do Learning Technologists do? Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 39(4), 245-252. Oliver, M., Farmer, R., Duggleby, J., Jennings, D., Kay, D., & Hughes, G. (2004). Consultation with learning technologists, employers and sector representatives on the development of an accreditation scheme. Association  of  Learning  Technology  (ALT)  Accreditation  project   report  no.  3 Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/2005   0211125346/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/calt/alt-­‐accreditation/ O'Neill, G. (2010). Initiating curriculum revision: Exploring the practices of educational developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 15(1), 61-71. Ooms, A., Burke, L., Linsey, T., & Heaton-Shrestha, C. (2008). Introducing e- developers to support a university's blended learning developments. ALT- J Research in Learning Technology, 16(2), 111-122. Retrieved from http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/1 0890 Peacock, S., Robertson, A., Williams, S., & Giatsi Clausen, M. (2009). The role of Learning Technologists in supporting e-research. ALT-J Research in Learning Technology, 17(2), 115-129. Retrieved from http:// www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/10869   ICICTE 2013 Proceedings   10   Quinsee, S. (2010). Moodle@City. Retrieved from http://prezi.com/uk0l- ok3f5ht/moodle-city/ Quinsee, S., & Bullimore, A. (2011). Creating the strategic learning environment at City University London. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 28(4), 275–288. Retrieved from City Research Online http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/575/1/Quinsee-Bullimore-Bolton- FinalRevised.pdf Shurville, S., Browne, T., & Whitaker, M. (2009). Accommodating the newfound strategic importance of educational technologists within higher education: A critical literature review. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 26(3), 201-231. Stiles, M., & Yorke, J. (2006). Technology supported learning – Tensions between innovation, and control and organisational and professional cultures. Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change, 3(3), 251-267. Wright, A. and Miller, J.E. (2000). The educational developer's portfolio. International Journal for Academic Development, 5(1), 20-29. Author Details Olivia Fox Olivia.fox.1@city.ac.uk Neal Sumner n.sumner@city.ac.uk 
work_b47h7q4oafgctds24m4qf4da2a	----	Impacts of Distance Education on Agricultural Performance and Household Income: Micro-Evidence from Peri-Urban Districts in Beijing sustainability Article Impacts of Distance Education on Agricultural Performance and Household Income: Micro-Evidence from Peri-Urban Districts in Beijing Jianxin Guo 1,*, Songqing Jin 2,3,*, Lei Chen 1 and Jichun Zhao 1 1 Institute of Agricultural Information and Economics, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China; chenl@agri.ac.cn (L.C.); zhaojc@agri.ac.cn (J.Z.) 2 China Academy for Rural Development, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China 3 Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA * Correspondence: guojx@agri.ac.cn (J.G.); jins@msu.edu (S.J.); Tel.: +86-10-51503298 (J.G.); +1-517-353-4522 (S.J.) Received: 22 September 2018; Accepted: 26 October 2018; Published: 30 October 2018 ���������� ������� Abstract: Information communication technology (ICT) has changed the traditional agricultural extension service mode worldwide. This paper examines the effects of the Rural Distance Education Project (RDEP) on the household income, agricultural productivity, and off-farm employment of farmers in peri-urban areas in Beijing. Using the survey data of 783 randomly selected farm households from 54 villages in three Beijing peri-urban districts in 2014, and the propensity score matching method (PSM), we find that the RDEP has a significant and positive effect on agricultural productivity and input use. Meanwhile, the program’s effects are heterogeneous across districts and households. For example, the RDEP has significant impacts on several outcome indicators, such as agricultural labor productivity (at a 5% level of significance), agricultural land productivity (at a 10% level), and input use intensity (at a 1% level) in Tongzhou (an agriculturally more important district, with a more intensive RDEP usage), but none of these effects is significant in Pinggu district. Furthermore, the RDEP is found to have bigger, and statistically more significant effects, for households with junior high school education than for those with either lower or higher than junior high school education. Furthermore, the RDEP is more effective for households with more assets than those with fewer assets. These results point toward the importance of using a rural distance education program as an effective extension service, and the need to take community and individual characteristics into account in the implementation and design of future programs. Keywords: impact evaluation; distance education program; propensity score matching; agricultural productivity 1. Introduction Information communication technology (ICT) has changed the mode of production and dissemination of information, and has the potential to overcome the traditional obstacles of economic differences, geographical distance barriers and the unequal distribution of knowledge [1]. Recognizing that the ICT-based extension service has a greater potential than the traditional extension system, many governments in the developing world have made huge efforts to establish comprehensive ICT-based agriculture extension systems. The Chinese government has already invested massively in information infrastructure and ICT-based education programs to assist farmers in obtaining knowledge, information, and skills to enhance the level of their livelihood [2]. However, despite decades of investment in ICT-related infrastructure and education programs, evidence of the impact of such Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945; doi:10.3390/su10113945 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/3945?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su10113945 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 2 of 19 investment on farm households’ welfare is still mixed, and sparse from China, which is possibly due to the variety of ICT technologies, different types of information provided, and data availability [3]. There are two active strands of literature regarding the evaluation of impacts of the ICT-based programs affecting rural farmers. The first strand of literature evaluates the impact of ICTs on access to market and price information. The second strand evaluates the effects of ICTs as a means of enhancing farmers’ knowledge about improved agricultural practices and technologies. The results are mixed in each of the two strands of research. Related to the first strand of research, considerable attention has been focused on the effects of accessing mobile phone services on market efficiency and agricultural prices with mixed findings. On the one hand, several studies found that mobile phone services significantly improved market efficiency and reduced information asymmetry. For example, an influential study by Jensen found that the introduction of mobile phone coverage improved market efficiency and significantly reduced the local sardine market price dispersion [4]. Megumi Muto et al. found that an expansion of mobile phone coverage significantly increased banana sales but not maize sales in remote rural communities in Uganda [5]. On the other hand, evidence from other African countries has demonstrated that accessing mobile phones did not significantly improve farmers’ market participation and spatial arbitrage, suggesting that the lack of relevant information or the existence of other market failures needs to be addressed [6,7]. Shimamoto et al. argued that it is not the mobile phone but rather the market information via a mobile phone that increases farmers’ market arbitrary power [8]. Outside developing countries, evidence from Ireland indicates that the digital divide is not a problem of access but rather a problem of engagement, and farm business characteristics determine whether farmers use computers for their agriculture business [9]. The second strand of literature focuses on the effects of ICT-based extension services on farmers’ knowledge about new agricultural practices and technologies and the ensuing effects on adoption behaviors, productivity, and welfare. It is perceived by many that ICT-based extension services are more cost-effective and efficient in disseminating new knowledge and technologies than the “outdated” traditional extension system. The empirical findings on the impacts of ICT-based agricultural extension services are also mixed. For instance, two recent studies about impacts of mobile phone-based information services (MIS) using data from two African countries demonstrate that MIS have positive and significant impacts on farmers’ practices in Kenya [10] and on pesticide use and food security in Ghana [11]. In contrast, a recent study by Cole and Fernando [12] showed that a mobile phone-based agricultural consulting service had no significant effect on the agricultural knowledge of Indian cotton farmers. There are two main reasons why the empirical evidence on the impacts of the ICT-based extension services has been inconclusive. First, ICT technologies and the information delivered by the ICT technologies are heterogeneous and complex. Among the ICT-based extension programs, the service information is not the same as MIS. Compared to MIS, other extension services, such as digital video instruction or online consultation, are much more complicated and difficult to be transmitted to and shared with other farmers independent of equipment or networks. Second, there are well-known empirical challenges associated with the evaluation of extension programs that are not based on experimental data [13,14]. Despite the relatively active micro-level studies on the impacts of rural ICT-based programs in developing countries with focus in Africa or Asia, there is a paucity of research on the impacts of ICT applications by farmers in rural China, despite being a country with more than one-fifth of the world’s farmers and a rapid expansion of ICT infrastructure, networks and telecommunication services in recent years (To our knowledge, there is only one earlier micro-level empirical study [15] related to the impact evaluation of ICT-based service on Chinese farmers. That paper explores the impact on farmers’ participation in market and sales prices. No one has studied the effect of ICT-based service on Chinese farmer’s agricultural production efficiency and household income). Therefore, we are among Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 3 of 19 the first few examining the impacts of ICT programs in the context of rural China where most people have access to mobile phone service and the internet [15]. The impacts of the Rural Distance Education Project (RDEP) on farm households were assessed using survey data of 783 randomly selected farm households from both the RDEP and the non-RDEP villages in peri-urban areas of Beijing in 2014. Propensity score matching methods (PSM) were adopted to deal with the program placement/selection biases. For two of the outcome variables for which panel data are available, the combination of a PSM and difference-in-difference (DID) was adopted to further control for potential biases due to unobserved heterogeneity. We found that RDEP increases farm households’ agricultural productivity significantly, although effects on their gross income is not confirmed. There exist obvious heterogeneous impacts across districts and household characteristics. While the RDEP is found to significantly enhance agricultural land productivity, labor productivity, and input use intensity in Tongzhou district, this was not the case in Pinggu district. Moreover, while the productivity effects are positive and statistically significant for households with junior high school education, the effects are insignificant for those with either primary school or senior high school education. Furthermore, the productivity effects are more effective for households with more assets than for those with fewer assets. 2. RDEP Background There were 3950 administrative villages in suburb Beijing, which is the home of 1.16 million farm households and 2.68 million farmers, according to the rural Hukou registration data. An average farm household owns 0.19 hectares of arable land. There is a large income gap between urban and rural residents. In 2010, the per capita income of an average farmer in Beijing area was 13,262 yuan (about $1959, based on the 2010 average exchange rate), which was 45.62% of that of an urban resident. The income disparity among farmers was also large in suburban Beijing. The level of average income for the bottom 20% farmers was 7251 yuan (about $1071) per capita, which was only 23.81% of that of the top 20% of farmers. The gap between urban and rural public service is an important potential cause for the considerable urban–rural income gap. To help solve this problem, the Beijing municipal government initiated the RDEP to improve the scientific and technology support for rural area through information. The RDEP was put into operation in 2010, and about 2000 distance stations were constructed in 10 suburban districts. The RDEP in Beijing consists of a municipal platform (to develop and distribute training courseware and information) and distance education stations located in villages to educate and train the grass roots villagers. The distance education stations were established by district governments and situated in village public places (meeting rooms, classrooms, offices, etc.). These RDEP stations are administrated by local College Graduate Village Officials or the village committee members. The station administrators help villagers learn agriculture technologies via courseware, or search for information through the RDEP website. Furthermore, at least two of the collective training events are arranged to train farmers. Training details such as the training time and learning content are recorded by the platform information system. Details on trainees’ participation and learning intensification are also recorded by the administrators of the local distance stations. The RDEP provides more than 10,000 coursework and consultant services, including innovative farming technology, vocational skills, small business operations, daily wholesale and retail market prices, and health education courses. Farmers participate in the public training classes organized in the village station or search for needed courses and information through the station terminal, and consult experts regarding farming problems through an online system on demand in the station, in order to gain the information and knowledge needed to improve their product efficiency. The survey was approved by the Academic and Ethics Committee of the Institute of Agricultural Information and Economics, Beijing Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences. All of the data were processed in an anonymized manner. A detailed explanation of the respondent’s rights and authorization of the survey was provided during the interview. All of the participants gave consent to participate in the survey prior to each interview. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 4 of 19 It is also important to note that the impact of the ICTs measured in this paper is a combination of the impacts of accessing ICT services (computer/mobile/internet) and the impacts of the delivered information through ICT, which was not made clear in the literature. Unfortunately, our data do not allow the disentanglement of the two separate effects. 3. Sample and Data 3.1. Sample and Data Collection A total of 783 households were drawn from three peri-urban districts based on a three-stage stratified random sampling technique. In the first stage, three districts in 10 rural districts were selected as showing in Figure 1, based on criteria regarding the functional zone planning, economic conditions, and program intensity (learning time) of an average station. Tongzhou, Pinggu, and Huairou belong to a plain, a semi-mountainous area, and a mountains area, respectively. In the Beijing municipal development planning, Tongzhou district belongs to the development zone, while Pinggu and Huairou belong to the ecological conservation zone. The learning intensity of stations in Tongzhou was 100.41 h per year, and those in Pinggu and Huairou were 34.88 h and 67.37 h, respectively. In the second stage, nine program (treatment) villages in each district were randomly sampled, and nine villages that had similar agro-ecological and socio-economic characteristics but had no distance education station at the time of the survey were selected as control villages. In order to increase the probability of having households in the control group to match the households in the treatment group, more control households than treatment households were selected. As a result, 324 participating households (12 households per treatment village) and 459 non-participating households (17 households per control village) were randomly sampled. To minimize the possible spillover or confounding effects from other ICT projects, two strategies were adopted. First, we purposively kept the treatment and control villages within the same district, with certain distance. Second, villages implemented with other ICT-based service projects were removed before sampling. The geographical distribution of the three peri-urban districts in Beijing is displayed in Figure 1. Purposive questionnaires were designed and used to collect data at both the village and the household level. Interviews were conducted by experienced enumerators in the months of August, September, and October in 2014. At the village level, information on village basic demographic characteristics, economic conditions, land assets, and non-land assets was collected from village officials. For the treatment villages, information on the RDEP implementation was also collected. At the household level, data were collected on household demographic characteristics, land endowment, non-land asset holdings, agriculture production, off-farm employment, business income, and non-labor income. Each completed questionnaire was rechecked and validated for accuracy by a fieldwork supervisor, and then again by a data administrator before data entry. The survey’s response rate was 100%. An unfortunate mistake that occurred at the beginning of the survey was that no data on household fixed assets was collected for nine villages in Pinggu. For this very reason, the value of fixed assets for the Pinggu district is missing in Table 1. Also, the fixed asset variable was excluded from the logit model regression that was used to estimate the propensity scores for the Pinggu subsample. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 5 of 19 Sustainability 2018, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW 5 of 20 Figure 1. Sample districts in Beijing municipal city. The three districts with shading marks are Huairou, Pinggu, and Tongzhou, respectively, from top to bottom. Purposive questionnaires were designed and used to collect data at both the village and the household level. Interviews were conducted by experienced enumerators in the months of August, September, and October in 2014. At the village level, information on village basic demographic characteristics, economic conditions, land assets, and non-land assets was collected from village officials. For the treatment villages, information on the RDEP implementation was also collected. At the household level, data were collected on household demographic characteristics, land endowment, non-land asset holdings, agriculture production, off-farm employment, business income, and non-labor income. Each completed questionnaire was rechecked and validated for accuracy by a fieldwork supervisor, and then again by a data administrator before data entry. The survey’s response rate was 100%. An unfortunate mistake that occurred at the beginning of the survey was that no data on household fixed assets was collected for nine villages in Pinggu. For this very reason, the value of fixed assets for the Pinggu district is missing in Table 1. Also, the fixed asset variable was excluded from the logit model regression that was used to estimate the propensity scores for the Pinggu subsample. Table 1. Household (HH) and village characteristics. Variable Total (n = 783) Tongzhou (n = 261) Pinggu (n = 261) Huairou (n = 261) Treatment (n = 324) Control (n = 459) Treatment (n = 108) Control (n = 153) Treatment (n = 108) Control (n = 153) Treatment (n = 108) Control (n = 153) Demographic Characteristics HH size in 2010 (#) 3.40 *** (1.35) 3.04 (1.18) 2.70 (0.92) 2.75 (1.07) 4.38 *** (1.39) 3.4 (1.44) 3.11 (1.08) 2.92 (0.86) Figure 1. Sample districts in Beijing municipal city. The three districts with shading marks are Huairou, Pinggu, and Tongzhou, respectively, from top to bottom. Since the information services of the RDEP are multifaceted, and farmers may benefit from the program in a variety of different ways in terms of economic opportunities, resource allocation efficiencies, production, income, and welfare, the impacts of the RDEP program are measured by the following performance or impact indicators: (1) household (HH) gross income, which was calculated as the sum of agricultural income, off-farm employment income, business operation, and transferred income (including rent, dividends, and subsidies); (2) HH gross agricultural income, which was calculated as the value of crop and livestock production (including non-marketed produce valued at market prices) minus variable production costs (including purchased inputs, hired labor, land rent, etc.); (3) agricultural labor productivity (agricultural income per agricultural worker per month), which was calculated as the annual agricultural income divided by the total labor months working on the farm; (4) agricultural land productivity (crop income per mu), which was calculated as the annual crop income divided by land area (mu), where annual crop income is calculated as the value of crop and production (including non-marketed produce valued at market prices) minus variable production costs (including purchased inputs, hired labor, land rent, etc.); (5) agricultural input use intensity (fertilizer, pesticide, seed use per unit of land); (6) HH labor months working on farm; (7) off-farm labor productivity (off-farm income per worker per month); and (8) HH off-farm employment (person months on off-farm). The first indicator measures the overall income effect; indicators (2)–(6) measure the agriculture productivity and intensification effects; indicators (7)–(8) measure the off-farm labor productivity effects, and indicators (6) and (8) also capture HH labor allocation effects. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 6 of 19 Table 1. Household (HH) and village characteristics. Variable Total (n = 783) Tongzhou (n = 261) Pinggu (n = 261) Huairou (n = 261) Treatment (n = 324) Control (n = 459) Treatment (n = 108) Control (n = 153) Treatment (n = 108) Control (n = 153) Treatment (n = 108) Control (n = 153) Demographic Characteristics HH size in 2010 (#) 3.40 *** (1.35) 3.04 (1.18) 2.70 (0.92) 2.75 (1.07) 4.38 *** (1.39) 3.4 (1.44) 3.11 (1.08) 2.92 (0.86) Distance from RDEP station in village (m) 415.03 (481.43) 453.01 (554.30) 349.54 (208.21) 332.19 (307.91) 578.89 (720.91) 483.86 (788.08) 316.68 *** (308.85) 542.99 (577.68) HH head age (year) 54.18 ** (10.91) 55.86 (10.77) 55.69 (10.34) 56.58 (10.27) 56.23 ** (12.31) 59.07 (10.60) 50.63 (9.02) 51.93 (10.28) Gender of HH head (Male = 1, Female = 0) 0.86 (0.35) 0.88 (0.33) 0.89 (0.32) 0.92 (0.28) 0.81 (0.40) 0.85 (0.36) 0.88 (0.33) 0.88 (0.33) Marriage status of HH head 0.96 (0.19) 0.94 (0.24) 0.98 ** (0.14) 0.90 (0.30) 0.95 (0.21) 0.96 (0.19) 0.95 (0.21) 0.95 (0.21) Education level of HH head (year) 10.12 *** (2.87) 9.52 (3.13) 9.87 ** (2.55) 9.04 (2.86) 10.13 (3.01) 9.48 (3.05) 10.36 (3.02) 10.04 (3.41) 1 Education level of head’s father 0.23 (0.42) 0.19 (0.39) 0.25 *** (0.44) 0.12 (0.32) _ _ 0.44 (0.50) 0.44 (0.50) Maximum education of HH members (year) 12.81 ** (3.12) 12.30 (3.45) 11.51 (3.26) 11.45 (3.27) 13.96 *** (2.59) 12.37 (3.59) 12.95 (2.99) 13.07 (3.31) Share of HH members (<14 or >60) in 2010 0.21 ** (0.28) 0.25 (0.36) 0.26 (0.36) 0.25 (0.38) 0.22 *** (0.23) 0.35 (0.40) 0.14 (0.22) 0.16 (0.27) Party membership of HH head 0.58 *** (0.49) 0.57 (0.50) 0.50 (0.50) 0.41 (0.49) 0.81 ** (0.39) 0.91 (0.29) 0.42 (0.50) 0.41 (0.49) Village committee cadre membership of HH head 0.19 (0.40) 0.15 (0.36) 0.13 (0.34) 0.08 (0.28) 0.25 (0.44) 0.26 (0.44) 0.18 (0.38) 0.12 (0.33) Household Assets Land owned in 2010 (Mu) 4.45 (9.22) 5.06 (10.89) 3.80 (3.56) 4.85 (7.13) 2.93 (7.24) 2.63 (4.98) 6.64 (13.56) 7.69 (16.40) Proportion of cultivated land (%) 32.75 (50.60) 26.47 (79.63) 25.35 (49.94) 20.59 (59.95) 38.84 (53.76) 32.42 (45.42) 34.07 (47.42) 26.42 (46.07) 1 Gross value of assets in 2010 (log) 7.76 (5.85) 7.71 (5.74) 11.70 ** (2.25) 11.08 (2.44) _ _ 11.57 * (2.65) 12.04 (1.76) 1 HH income per capita in 2010 6.22 (4.46) 6.14 (4.47) 9.08 (0.85) 8.96 (1.49) _ _ 9.57 (0.62) 9.46 (1.01) Village Characteristics Collective assets (10,000 yuan) 712.64 (753.30) 638.99 (669.74) 768.92 (643.38) 778.14 (939.81) 995.92 (976.23) 774.41 (558.83) 373.08 (381.39) 394.40 (255.17) Collective assets in 2010 (10,000 yuan) 538.54 (632.01) 541.43 (676.56) 529.60 (440.73) 615.89 (822.30) 1038.37 ** (1122.52) 646.38 (549.12) 361.16 (441.76) 431.99 (524.75) Gross collective income in 2010 (10,000 yuan) 410.18 *** (1370.02) 140.22 (174.53) 819.51 *** (1969.37) 223.39 (228.30) 92.33 (99.18) 104.33 (111.17) 68.88 (60.07) 69.02 (51.58) Collective dividend per capita in 2010 (yuan) 355.09 *** (761.59) 628.57 (1512.13) 111.11 *** (315.73) 766.67 (1660.06) 276.67 *** (396.82) 0.00 (0.00) 625.20 (1036.16) 700.00 (1562.89) Distance from county center (km) 16.83 ** (13.99) 19.65 (19.15) 22.72 *** (6.09) 30.22 (19.30) 9.11 (4.47) 10.00 (4.89) 18.67 (20.87) 18.72 (22.39) Distance from Beijing Center (km) 60.79 (22.98) 60.06 (25.84) 48.14 (13.52) 48.89 (30.08) 67.56 (65.28) 68.89 (6.23) 66.67 (32.03) 62.39 (29.32) Notes: Mean values are shown, standard deviations are shown in parentheses. T-test results for mean difference between treatment and control groups: *, **and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significance level; 1 Data are missing in Pinggu. Source: Authors’ own calculation based on data from own survey conducted in 2014. 3.2. Descriptive Analysis Table 1 reports descriptive statistics for the participating and non-participating households. The descriptive analysis suggests the presence of noticeable differences between the RDEP participants and non-participants in their observed characteristics. There is a total of nine variables that are significantly different between households in the treatment and control villages. Of the nine variables, Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 7 of 19 three are village-level variables, and six are household-level variables. Compared to a typical household in the control villages, a typical household in a typical treatment village appeared to be bigger in household size (3.40 versus 3.04), was headed by a younger and more educated member, and possessed more assets. According to our data, the village collective dividend per capita in 2010 of an average control village was much larger than that of an average treatment village. However, the differences in these characteristics between treatment villages and control villages vary considerably across districts. Table 1 shows obvious differences in demographic and socio-economic conditions across the three districts. For example, an average household in Pinggu had almost one member (or one and half members) more than those in Huairou (or Tongzhou). The landholding of an average household in Huairou was 1.5 times (or two times) bigger than that of an average household in Tongzhou (or Pinggu). Additionally, while an average treatment household had a higher value of total assets than an average control household in Tongzhou, the opposite was true in the case of Huairou. As for geographical location, Tongzhou is closer to Beijing, and achieved a much higher gross collective income than the other two districts. These considerable differences across districts collectively remind us to conduct additional analysis to assess the effects of the project separately for each district as well. 4. Methods In this paper, the impacts of the RDEP on crop productivity, input use intensity, labor allocation between on-farm and off-farm employments, and household income were evaluated using the PSM method in each of the three districts. The PSM, which was pioneered by Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983), was mainly developed as a way to match participants to non-participants according to the relevant pretreatment characteristics (X). The problem is that matching participants to non-participants is unmanageable when the number of relevant covariates is large, which is known as the “curse of dimensionality” problem. Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983) proved that if outcomes Y1 (Y0) (Y1 standing for potential outcomes under treatment and Y0 standing for potential outcomes under control) are independent of treatment status conditional on X, then they are also independent of treatment status conditional on P(X), where P(X) is the propensity score of being treated given X. Thus, a multi-dimensional matching exercise is then reduced to a single dimensional matching problem: matching each participant to one or more non-participants according to their estimated propensity scores. A standard logit or probit model can be used to estimate the propensity scores. Under PSM, the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) is equal to the expected difference in the observed outcomes between participants and matched non-participants, appropriately weighted by the propensity score distribution of participants [16]: ATTPSM = EP(X)|D=1{E[Y1|D = 1, P(X)]− E[Y0|D = 0, P(X)]} (1) where D is a dummy variable indicating treatment status (= 1 if treated, 0 otherwise). The underlying identifying assumption behind the PSM approach is the conditional independence assumption (CIA), which means that after conditioning on observables (X), participants would have the same potential outcome Y0 as non-participants in the absence of the treatment, or more formally: E(Y0|X, D = 1) = E(Y0|X, D = 0) (2) To meet CIA, the researcher should observe all of the variables simultaneously influencing the participation decision and outcome variables. Besides the CIA condition, another important assumption to ensure that the PSM works in practice is the common support or overlap condition. It ensures that farmers with the same X values have a positive probability of being both participants and non-participants. The PSM estimation of program effects involves a number of standard steps [16–18]. The first step is to calculate the sample farmers’ propensity scores based on the estimated coefficients of a logit or probit regression. The next step is to match each household in the treatment group to one or more Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 8 of 19 households in the control group according to their estimated propensity scores. The third step is to calculate the program effects (ATTPSM) based on Equation (1). There are several matching techniques (e.g., nearest neighbors K (NNK, k = 1 or other positive integer), radius caliper matching, kernel matching, local linear regression matching, and spline matching), with each having its own pros and cons. It is generally recommended to try a few different matching methods. If different matching methods give similar results, then the results are robust. The quality of matching needs to be checked by a balance test, the purpose of which is to determine whether the PSM procedure has served the purpose of making participants and non-participant groups sufficiently similar in terms of observed characteristics. The standard balance test is to test the degree to which the standardized bias or normalized differences in means are reduced via PSM matching. In the present study, Imben’s rule of thumb is also applied, which suggests that the balance is achieved if the percentage of bias is reduced to below 25% [19,20]. Another method to obtain covariate balance that was proposed by Hirano et al. [21] is to weight the observations with their respective estimated propensity scores in a weighted sample. Morgan and Todd [22] also showed that the average treatment effect of the treated (ATT) can be efficiently estimated by inverse probability weighted least square regression, as in Equation (3): Y = α̂ + δ̂OLS D + Xβ̂ + ε (3) where we assign weight ω(t, x) = P(X)× ( t P(X) + 1−t 1−P(X) ) to each observation, t is an indicator for treatment status (=1 if treated, 0 otherwise), and P(X) is the propensity score of being treated. A key assumption for the validity of the PSM method is that selection to participate in the RDEP is conditional on a set of observed characteristics (known as “selection on observables”). If this assumption is invalid, then other methods must be used to determine the project’s effects. For example, to take advantage of the panel information for two key outcome variables (income per capita and total asset), the combination of PSM and the difference-in-difference method (PSM-DID) can be used to evaluate the effects of RDEP on these two variables. Alternatively, a PS-weighted DID regression method proposed by Hirano and Imbens [19], as well as Morgan and Todd [22], can also be employed. Based on an assumption that any selection bias due to unobserved factors is time-invariant, the time-invariant selection biases can be differenced out in both the PSM-DID non-parametric approach and the PS-weighted DID regression method. Accordingly, the PSM-DID estimated ATT is given by: (∑i∈T(Yi1 − Yi0)− ∑j∈C Wij ( Yj1 − Yj0 ) )/NT , where T denotes the set of treated households, C is the set of control households, NT is the number of treated households, and Wij is the associated weight given to the jth non-treated household in comparison with the ith treated household. Similarly, the PS-weighted DID estimator of ATT is given by regressing the change in outcome on the treatment indicator: ∆Yit = α + βDi + ξit, with weights similar to those in Equation (3). 5. Results 5.1. Quality of Different Matching Methods Numerous factors have been documented to influence farmers’ training participation and technology adoption decisions [23–26]. In this paper, the choice of covariates is guided by previous studies in the literature and the data availability. Four sets of characteristics are used as covariates in the logit models: household demographic characteristics, asset ownership, village characteristics, and access to market. Table 2 reports the balance test results for five matching methods with the propensity scores estimated from a logit model. The Hotelling’s T2 indicate that the covariance matrices are the same in the treated and the control groups after matching for all five methods, suggesting that the quality of matching is high for all of the methods. The balance test results in Table 2 further encourage us to choose the kernel matching, radius caliper matching (caliper = 0.25σ’), and NN matching (k = 5) Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 9 of 19 as the three final matching methods used to estimate the impacts of RDEP (according to the results in Table 2, the Rubin bias is less than 25%, and the covariate biases are reduced to less than 10% for all three methods). To check the overlap region of the matching results, the probability density distributions of propensity scores for the RDEP participants and non-participants is illustrated in Figure 2. The graphic evidence shows that the probability density of the estimated propensity scores between the participants and non-participants change from “very different” before matching to “very similar” after matching for all the three chosen matching methods. Sustainability 2018, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW 12 of 20 Figure 2. Estimated propensity scores before and after matching by different matching methods: (a) before matching; (b) kernel matching; (c) radius caliper matching; and (d) NN matching. 5.2. Overall Impacts of the RDEP Table 3 reports the estimated impacts of the RDEP on the eight outcome variables based on the three selected matching methods (columns 4–6) and the PS-weighted least square regression (column 3). For comparison purpose, the simple mean differences for all of the outcome variables between the treatment and control groups are also reported (column 2). While the results are generally robust across different matching methods, as well as between the matching methods and the PS-weighted regression approach, they are very different from those based on a simple mean comparison between participants and non-participants. Specifically, the simple mean comparison tends to overestimate the impact on total income, but underestimate the effects on agriculture productivity, including both the labor productivity and the land productivity. Table 3. Estimated effects of the Rural Distance Education Project (RDEP) (all samples). PS: propensity score. Outcome TTEST PS-Weighted Regression (LSR) Radius Caliper (0.25sd) (T = 321, C = 459) NN (k = 5) (T = 321, C = 459) Kernel (BW = 0.04) (T = 321, C = 459) HH gross income in 2013 (yuan) 19,471.02 ** 15,902.88 13,898.58 14,502.61 14,126.17 (9191.86) (11,176.77) (10,530.58) (10,898.43) (10,512.76) HH gross agricultural income (yuan) 14,513.38 ** 14,484.43 14,909.96 16,942.68 * 14,754.48 (8677.44) (10,675.45) (10,445.71) (10,207.95) (10,442.46) Agricultural labor productivity (yuan/person*month) 785.24 ** 767.49 840.05 * 1084.13 ** 823.68 * (393.64) (528.81) (448.61) (469.41) (447.74) Agricultural land productivity (yuan/mu) 302.97 ** 289.49 * 377.67 ** 404.10 ** 383.79 ** (170.13) (160.92) (188.28) (200.24) (189.10) Agricultural input intensity (yuan/mu) 187.55 ** 157.79 ** 188.49 ** 199.38 ** 185.36 ** (83.03) (76.33) (78.49) (92.87) (78.19) Off-farm labor productivity (yuan/person*month) 103.09 23.76 −3.23 −41.25 11.59 (178.49) (155.29) (148.54) (182.60) (148.59) Figure 2. Estimated propensity scores before and after matching by different matching methods: (a) before matching; (b) kernel matching; (c) radius caliper matching; and (d) NN matching. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 10 of 19 Table 2. Estimated coefficient and balance test for matching. NN: nearest neighbor. Variable Before Matching After Matching Logit Coefficient Mean NN(1) with Replacement NN(5) with Replacement Radius Cali (0.25sd) (T = 321, C = 459) Radius Cali (0.005) (T = 310, C = 459) Kernel (BW = 0.04) (T = 321, C = 459) Treated Control %bias %bias %bias %bias %bias %bias HH size in 2010 (#) 3.40 3.04 28.3 14.0 −3.7 −2.9 −3.7 −3.7 0.35 *** (0.07) Distance from distance education station in village (m) 415.08 453.01 −7.3 10.8 6.7 4.1 5.1 4.4 −0.00009 (0.0002) Gender of HH head 0.86 0.88 −6.7 −2.8 −4.1 −3.8 −3.0 −4.2 −0.23 (0.23) Age of HH head (log) 3.97 4.00 −15.4 −13.3 −4.5 −3.7 −1.0 −4.2 −0.60 (0.48) Education level of HH head (1 if > nine years, 0 otherwise) 0.44 0.32 25.2 7.1 3 2.2 −0.9 2.6 0.56 *** (0.19) Marriage status of HH head (1 if married, 0 otherwise) 0.96 0.94 11.0 1.4 −1.7 −0.3 −1.9 −0.2 0.31 (0.38) Share of HH members younger than 15 or older than 59 0.21 0.26 −15 −6.0 −2.4 −0.2 −2.4 −0.5 −0.16 (0.28) Education level of head’s father (1 if > nine years, 0 otherwise) 0.23 0.18 10.8 5.4 2.9 3.8 4.7 3.7 0.35 (0.23) Maximum education level of HH members (1 if > nine years, 0 otherwise) 0.41 0.39 4.7 −0.6 6.4 2.4 4.0 2.8 −0.28 (0.18) Party membership of HH head 0.58 0.57 1.2 −4.4 7.2 4.2 3.7 5.0 −0.06 (0.19) Village committee cadre membership (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.19 0.16 8.3 0.8 0.5 −1.3 −3.4 −0.3 0.01 (0.23) Land owned in 2010 (mu) 4.44 5.06 −6.1 2.1 5.6 3.1 6.5 3.8 0.01 (0.02) Square of land owned in 2010 104.60 143.95 −5.3 −0.8 3.5 1.7 4.8 1.9 −0.0002 (0.0003) Proportion of cultivated land (%) 32.85 26.47 9.6 −1.3 5 −0.6 11.5 −0.2 0.002 (0.001) Gross value of assets in 2010 (log) 7.75 7.71 0.7 −2.1 −1.4 −2.5 −1.9 −1.8 −0.26 * (0.14) Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 11 of 19 Table 2. Cont. Variable Before Matching After Matching Logit Coefficient Mean NN(1) with Replacement NN(5) with Replacement Radius Cali (0.25sd) (T = 321, C = 459) Radius Cali (0.005) (T = 310, C = 459) Kernel (BW = 0.04) (T = 321, C = 459) Treated Control %bias %bias %bias %bias %bias %bias Square of gross value of assets in 2010 94.12 92.22 2.6 −3.3 −1.8 −2.7 −2.3 −2.1 0.02 ** (0.01) HH income per capita in 2010 (log) 6.21 6.14 1.7 0.0 −0.5 −1.3 0.2 −0.7 0.54 *** (0.21) Square of HH income per capita in 2010 58.36 57.61 1.7 0.2 0 −0.7 0.2 0.1 −0.04 ** (0.02) Resident population of village in 2010 (log) 6.57 6.68 −12.4 −2.4 −3.9 −5.8 −3.8 −6.0 −0.39 *** (0.12) Collective assets of village in 2010 (log) 4.28 4.32 −1.7 6.6 3.2 0.6 3.1 1.2 −0.05 (0.06) Collective revenue of village in 2010 (log) 3.09 3.156 −2.7 5.5 4.1 −0.2 2.0 0.7 −0.04 (0.07) Collective dividend per capita in 2010 (log) 1.51 1.36 5.2 −1.4 −0.4 0.3 0.8 0.8 0.10 *** (0.04) Distance from district center (km) 16.79 19.65 −17 −2.2 0.6 −0.6 −0.6 0.5 −0.045 *** (0.009) Distance from Beijing Center (km) 60.85 60.06 3.3 3.9 3.9 2.0 −0.8 2.1 0.028 *** (0.01) Overall balance Hotelling’s T2 92.660 *** 11.350 7.663 5.238 12.114 5.035 Ps R2 0.084 0.016 0.008 0.005 0.012 0.006 LR chi2 89.03 14.42 6.84 4.42 10.07 4.95 P > chi2 0.000 0.954 1.000 1.000 0.996 1.000 Mean Bias 8.2 4 3.2 2.1 3 2.2 Med bias 6.1 2.4 3.2 2.2 2.4 1.9 Rubin B 70.3 * 29.9 * 20.7 16.6 25.6 * 17.6 Rubin R 0.82 1.34 1.22 1.74 1.4 1.63 Var 50 33 33 22 22 22 Notes: 1. Kernel matching by Gaussian kernel; 2. *, ** and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significant levels, respectively in column of logit coefficient, and standard deviations in parentheses; 3. In overall balance, the row of Rubin B, * denotes bias is significant above 25%; 4. Authors’ own calculation based on data from own survey conducted in 2014 and results from Stata commands (psmatch2 and ptest). Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 12 of 19 5.2. Overall Impacts of the RDEP Table 3 reports the estimated impacts of the RDEP on the eight outcome variables based on the three selected matching methods (columns 4–6) and the PS-weighted least square regression (column 3). For comparison purpose, the simple mean differences for all of the outcome variables between the treatment and control groups are also reported (column 2). While the results are generally robust across different matching methods, as well as between the matching methods and the PS-weighted regression approach, they are very different from those based on a simple mean comparison between participants and non-participants. Specifically, the simple mean comparison tends to overestimate the impact on total income, but underestimate the effects on agriculture productivity, including both the labor productivity and the land productivity. Table 3. Estimated effects of the Rural Distance Education Project (RDEP) (all samples). PS: propensity score. Outcome TTEST PS-Weighted Regression (LSR) Radius Caliper (0.25sd) (T = 321, C = 459) NN (k = 5) (T = 321, C = 459) Kernel (BW = 0.04) (T = 321, C = 459) HH gross income in 2013 (yuan) 19,471.02 ** 15,902.88 13,898.58 14,502.61 14,126.17 (9191.86) (11,176.77) (10,530.58) (10,898.43) (10,512.76) HH gross agricultural income (yuan) 14,513.38 ** 14,484.43 14,909.96 16,942.68 * 14,754.48 (8677.44) (10,675.45) (10,445.71) (10,207.95) (10,442.46) Agricultural labor productivity (yuan/person*month) 785.24 ** 767.49 840.05 * 1084.13 ** 823.68 * (393.64) (528.81) (448.61) (469.41) (447.74) Agricultural land productivity (yuan/mu) 302.97 ** 289.49 * 377.67 ** 404.10 ** 383.79 ** (170.13) (160.92) (188.28) (200.24) (189.10) Agricultural input intensity (yuan/mu) 187.55 ** 157.79 ** 188.49 ** 199.38 ** 185.36 ** (83.03) (76.33) (78.49) (92.87) (78.19) Off-farm labor productivity (yuan/person*month) 103.09 23.76 −3.23 −41.25 11.59 (178.49) (155.29) (148.54) (182.60) (148.59) HH labor months working on farm (person*month) 1.07 −0.52 −0.075 0.17 −0.35 (0.71) (1.09) (1.10) (1.05) (1.15) HH off-farm employment (person*month) 4.72 *** 2.71 *** 2.00 * 1.86 2.15 * (0.98) (1.00) (1.09) (1.19) (1.11) Notes: 1. Kernel matching with Gaussian kernel; 2. Matching variables include HH size in 2010, district dummy, distance from the distance education station in the village, gender of HH head, age of HH head, education level of HH head, HH head’s marriage status, education level of head’s father, maximum education level of HH members, party membership, village committee cadre membership, share of members younger than 15 and older than 59 in 2010, land owned in 2010, square of land owned in 2010, proportion of cultivated land in 2010, gross assets in 2010 (log), square of gross asset in 2010, HH income per capita in 2010, resident population of village in 2010, collective assets of village in 2010 (log), collective revenue of village in 2010 (log), collective dividend per capita in 2010 (log), distance from district center, distance from Beijing center; 3. *, ** and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significant levels, respectively, and bootstrap standard errors with 500 repetitions in parentheses; 4. Source: calculation based on authors’ own survey data collected in 2014, and results from psmatch2. Results from all of the matching methods and PS-weighted regression indicate positive and significant impacts of RDEP on agricultural labor productivity, agricultural land productivity, and agricultural input use intensity. Participation in the RDEP increased agricultural labor productivity by 824–1084 yuan per month (equivalent to $133–$175 per month), agricultural land productivity by 289–404 yuan per mu ($701–$979 per ha., 1 hectare = 15 mu) and inputs of seeds, fertilizer, and pesticide by 158–199 yuan per mu ($382.03–$482.90 per ha.). The gains in land and labor productivity are also consistent with the household agricultural income being higher for the participating households than for the non-participating households (although significant only in one of the three matching methods, and at 10%). The total household income is also higher for participating households than non-participating households, although none is statistically significant at 10%. With regard to the effects of RDEP on labor allocation between farm and non-farm activities, while participating in the RDEP significantly increased household’s off-farm labor time by about two ‘person months’ (which is also statistically significant except for the case of NN matching), the RDEP had no significant effect on the time spent on farming activities. The RDEP also had no Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 13 of 19 significant effect on off-farm labor productivity (i.e., earnings from off-farm employment per person month). These combined results tend to suggest that farmers might have benefited from the off-farm employment information rather than from the training of off-farm job skills of the RDEP. Meanwhile, the increase in off-farm employment time alone is not large enough to be translated into a significant increase in household income. For farmers in the peri-urban areas in Beijing, wage income and transfer income (collective dividends, agricultural subsidies, and property income, etc.) account for a major proportion of the gross household income. Assisting households in accessing off-farm employment information and improving household members’ job skills are equally important. 5.3. Heterogeneous Effects of RDEP across Crops To explore whether the impacts of RDEP on crop productivity vary by crops, we obtained PSM estimates of the RDEP’s impacts on crop productivity for two types of crops separately: grain crops and fruit trees, with the former including wheat, corn, soybean, potato, and other grains, and the latter including apple, pear, grape, peach, Chinese chestnut, cherry, and other fruit trees. Vegetables and the specialty crops are not included in the analysis, because they are insignificant in terms of crop areas, and because it is impossible to collect production data for them. The results based on kernel matching are reported in Table 4. The results show that the impacts of the RDEP on land productivity and input use intensity are consistent across the two types of crops and in line with the overall results in Table 3 in the sense that the RDEP significantly increased both outcomes. While the impacts of RDEP on crop income are different between the two types of crops, it is not significant for either type of crop, which is again consistent with the results in Table 3. Therefore, there is no strong evidence to support the heterogeneous effects across crop types, at least based on our data. Table 4. Estimated effects of the RDEP across different crops. Outcome Grain Crops (T = 89, C = 88) Fruit Trees (T = 49, C = 85) Net income from crop production (yuan) 1382.17 (1151.43) −2505.56 (2460.71) Crop land productivity (yuan/mu) 747.42 *** (276.80) 789.03 ** (385.29) Input use intensity (yuan/mu) 345.29 *** (100.99) 461.07 (580.78) Notes: 1. Kernel matching with Gaussian kernel; 2. Matching variables include HH size in 2010, district dummy, distance from the distance education station in the village, gender of HH head, age of HH head, education level of HH head, HH head’s marriage status, education level of head’s father, maximum education level of HH members, party membership, village committee cadre membership, share of members younger than 15 and older than 59 in 2010, land owned in 2010, square of land owned in 2010, proportion of cultivated land in 2010, gross asset in 2010 (log), square of gross asset in 2010, HH income per capita in 2010, resident population of village in 2010, collective assets of village in 2010 (log), collective revenue of village in 2010 (log), collective dividend per capita in 2010 (log), distance from district center, distance from Beijing center; 3. *, ** and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significant levels, respectively, and bootstrap standard errors with 500 repetitions in parentheses; 4. Source: calculation based on authors’ own survey data collected in 2014, and results from psmatch2. 5.4. Heterogeneous Effects of RDEP across Districts The descriptive evidence that the three districts differ distinctly in agro-ecological and socio-economic characteristics and in the level of RDEP involvement suggest the importance of evaluating the effects of the RDEP separately for each district. The results based on the kernel matching method from the individual districts are reported in Table 5. It shows that the effects of the RDEP vary considerably across districts. For example, the effects of the RDEP on agriculture land productivity and agricultural inputs intensity are positive and significant in both Tongzhou and Huairou, but neither is significant in Pinggu. Meanwhile, the RDEP significantly increased agricultural labor productivity in Tongzhou, but not in Huairou. In Pinggu district, the only outcome indicator that is Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 14 of 19 significantly impacted by the RDEP is the person months spent on off-farm employment, and the effect is substantial, as the time spent on off-farm employment by an average participating household is four person months more than that of an average non-participating household. In Tongzhou, the RDEP significantly increased labor productivity by 632 yuan per person month (or $102 per person month), land productivity by 932 yuan per mu (or $2257 per hectare), and input intensity 248 yuan per mu ($599.74 per hectare). Table 5. Estimated effects of the RDEP across different districts. Outcome Tongzhou Pinggu Huairou (T = 84, C = 153) (T = 100, C = 153) (T = 97, C = 153) HH gross income in 2013 (yuan) 6911.19 (8733.02) 39701.78 (33,585.41) −4567.51 (3894.07) HH gross agricultural income (yuan) 6854.45 (5037.54) 35044.53 (33,535.26) 947.73 (1003.00) Agricultural labor productivity (yuan/person*month) 632.07 * (357.82) 887.35 (1115.65) 171.93 (388.53) Agricultural land productivity (yuan/mu) 931.78 ** (412.08) 61.83 (403.43) 380.49 ** (163.91) Agricultural input intensity (yuan/mu) 247.62 *** (87.61) 362.84 (243.16) 76.65 * (41.98) Off-farm labor productivity (yuan/person*month) 374.58 (398.86) −483.52 (389.44) −548.55 (364.49) HH labor months working on farm (person*month) −1.06 (1.93) 1.09 (1.96) 1.13 (1.14) HH off-farm employment (person*month) 2.75 (2.53) 4.31 ** (1.19) 0.21 (1.24) Notes: 1. Kernel matching with Gaussian kernel; 2. Matching variables include HH size in 2010, district dummy, distance from the distance education station in the village, gender of HH head, age of HH head, education level of HH head, HH head’s marriage status, education level of head’s father, maximum education level of HH members, party membership, village committee cadre membership, share of members younger than 15 and older than 59 in 2010, land owned in 2010, square of land owned in 2010, proportion of cultivated land in 2010, gross asset in 2010 (log), square of gross asset in 2010, HH income per capita in 2010, resident population of village in 2010, collective assets of village in 2010 (log), collective revenue of village in 2010 (log), collective dividend per capita in 2010 (log), distance from district center, distance from Beijing center; 3. *, ** and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significant levels, respectively, and bootstrap standard errors with 500 repetitions in parentheses; 4. Source: calculation based on authors’ own survey data collected in 2014, and results from psmatch2. 5.5. Heterogeneous Effects across Household Characteristics Finally, to explore the potential heterogeneous effects of the RDEP across household characteristics, all of the households were divided by the head’s level of education (primary, junior, or high school level), as well as by the level of household’s total asset value (above or below the median level of assets). The results for the different levels of education and assets are reported in Table 6. Table 6 suggests the existence of a considerable heterogeneity of the effects of the RDEP across the level of education and the value of assets. In terms of the heterogeneous effects across the level of education, our results show that the RDEP benefits households with a junior high school level of education to a more extensive and significant effect. While the RDEP significantly increased agricultural labor productivity, agricultural input intensity, and farm and off-farm employment, none is significant in the subgroups of primary and high school education levels. One possible explanation for the significant effects of the RDEP on a number of variables for junior high but not for the senior high school level education is that those with higher than a junior high school level education are likely to have more alternative sources to learn about technologies and information, and therefore, the marginal benefit from the RDEP is minimal. That the RDEP is also not effective for those with only primary school education or lower suggests that there exists an education threshold in order for a household to benefit from the RDEP program. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 15 of 19 As for the differing effects across assets, the results indicate that the RDEP mainly benefits households with higher levels of assets. Participating in the RDEP significantly increased agricultural labor productivity by 751 yuan per month (or USD $121.18 per month), agricultural land productivity by 933 yuan per mu (USD $2258.02 per hectare) and input use intensity by 250 per mu (USD $603.57 per hectare) for the households with higher levels of assets. The RDEP also significantly increased the gross agricultural income by 7027 yuan per year (USD $1134.58 per year) for the households with higher levels of assets. Although the effects on these outcomes are also positive for the households with lower levels of assets, they are largely insignificant. Table 6. Estimated effects of RDEP across household characteristics. Outcome HH Head’s Education Level HH Assets Level Primary Junior High School High School and Above Low High T = 40, C = 84 T = 133, C = 229 T = 146, C = 125 T = 108, C = 147 T = 100, C = 153 HH gross income in 2013 (¥ yuan) 774.631 (8590.091) 28,216.85 (21261.2) 5347.196 (14,426.45) −5769.666 (5650.171) 3781.995 (5648.524) HH gross agriculture income (¥ yuan) −2358.306 (5282.46) 24,395.41 (22,020.17) 10,855.85 (14,318.97) 2441.011 (3089.184) 7026.655 ** (3572.667) Agricultural labor productivity (yuan/person*month) −1210.353 (1449.343) 811.709 * (472.317) 1145.64 (1007.168) 666.430 (883.412) 750.508 ** (291.508) Agricultural land productivity (yuan/mu) 699.001 (571.745) 237.022 (237.140) 274.947 (319.822) 64.387 (206.987) 932.292 *** (304.855) Agricultural input intensity (yuan/mu) −81.662 (363.014) 290.495 ** (114.390) 171.252 (141.923) 75.606 (46.708) 249.199 *** (58.052) Off-farm labor productivity (yuan/person*month) −204.667 (392.527) 82.910 (219.999) −115.138 (257.239) −143.378 (190.762) −303.586 (457.129) HH labor months working on farm (person*month) −1.549 (5.116) 1.964 * (1.118) −1.166 (1.188) −0.461 (1.024) 1.216 (1.127) HH off-farm employment (person*month) 5.469 (3.589) 3.210 ** (1.264) 0.205 (1.254) 1.540 (1.425) 0.504 (1.322) Notes: 1. Estimated by Kernel matching Gaussian kernel, BW = 0.06. Matching variables for different education levels include: HH size in 2010, HH head age, party membership, village committee cadre membership, land owned in 2010, square of land owned 2010, proportion of cultivated land, HH income per capita 2010, square of HH income per capita 2010, collective dividend per capita in 2010, distance from district center, distance from Beijing center. Matching variables for different asset levels include: HH size in 2010, HH head age, HH head education level, HH head marriage status, HH head’s father education level, HH member maximum education level, ratio of child and ages in 2010, land owned in 2010, square of land owned in 2010, proportion of cultivated land, HH income per capita in 2010, collective dividend per capita in 2010, distance from district center; 2. *, ** and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significant levels, respectively, and bootstrap standard errors with 500 repetitions in parentheses; 3. Author’s calculation based on survey 2014 by psmatch2. 5.6. Impact of the RDEP on Income Per Capita and Assets Using the DID-PSM Approach, 2010–2013 During the field interview, recalled data were also collected for income per capita and the total value of fixed assets in 2010, which are the two most important outcome variables of the study. This additional valuable information allows us to use a combination of the PSM and difference-in-difference (DID) approaches (in short, DID-PSM) to assess the impacts of the RDEP on these two key outcome indicators. As discussed in the method section, PS-weighted DID was also used to estimate the impact. The results based on the DID-PSM (kernel regression-based PSM) and PS-weighted DID regression are reported in Table 7. At the 10% level of significance, the RDEP significantly increased the income per capita by approximately 10% when the data from Tongzhou and Huairou are pooled together. However, the effects, vary across districts. While the RDEP increased income per capita by 13.6–16.8% in Tongzhou and the impact is significant at 5% and 11% based on DID-PSM and PS-weighted DID regressions, respectively, it had no significant effect on income in Huairou. The effects estimated by PS-weighted DID on the total asset value of the pooled sample and Tongzhou sample were both significant and positive. However, for the Huairou sample, it was insignificant no matter whether the evaluation was based on DID-PSM or PS-weighted DID regressions. The results further support the earlier findings that the impact of the RDEP was bigger and more Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 16 of 19 statistically significant in Tongzhou than in the other two districts. Had we had access to more panel data, we would have evaluated the RDEP impacts more comprehensively and accurately. Table 7. Effects of the RDEP on income per capita and HH assets 2010–2013 (difference-in-difference (DID) estimation). Outcome Pooled sample Tongzhou Huairou (T = 216, C = 296) (T = 84, C = 153) (T = 97, C = 153) PS Kernel Matched PS-Weighted PS Kernel Matched PS-Weighted PS Kernel Matched PS-Weighted Household income per capita (log) 0.11 * 0.11 * 0.17 ** 0.14 0.04 0.09 (0.05) (0.06) (0.08) (0.08) (0.09) (0.09) Household assets (log) 0.17 0.21 * 0.16 * 0.19 * 0.19 0.28 (0.11) (0.13) (0.09) (0.10) (0.21) (0.23) Note: 1. Data on HH income and HH asset were not collected in Pinggu, so the pooled regression (column 1) includes data from Tongzhou and Huairou only; 2. Matching methods and parameters are based on Table 6; 3. *, ** and *** denote 10%, 5% and 1% significant levels, respectively, and robust standard errors in parentheses; 4. Source: calculation based on authors’ own survey data collected in 2014. 6. Discussion Since the beginning, the rapid expansion of ICT-based agricultural extension services in developing countries has been accompanied by a wide skepticism regarding its uncertain impact, sustainability, and scale [13]. This paper provides encouraging evidence to support the ICT-based extension service, which indicates that RDEP increases farm households’ agricultural productivity. Notable heterogeneity exists across different characteristics at the village and household levels, which raises questions regarding the mechanism of how ICT improves agriculture extension efficiency and famers’ welfare. Unlike the early phase of mobile phone expansion in developing countries, which has shown to have significantly reduced the costs of obtaining information on market and new technology [4,7,13], the RDEP was implemented in peri-urban areas with large-scale coverage of mobile phones and internet services, where the ICT access effect began to fade away. What has been estimated in this paper is the impact of an alternative information channel and its transmitting content, but not the ICT access effect per se. While the identified overall positive effects of the RDEP on agricultural productivity and input use intensity are encouraging, the estimated heterogeneous effects across different groups are more telling and important for future policy design. In this regard, two points deserve our attention. The first one is the possible role of “digital engagement”. It has been shown earlier that the RDEP stations in Tongzhou were more intensively utilized (100 h per year) than those in Pinggu and Huairou (35 h and 67 h, respectively), and the effects of the RDEP on agriculture outcomes in Tongzhou were also the highest among all three districts. Previous studies have shown that the digital engagement divide is becoming more prominent with the narrowing of the digital access divide [27]. Digital applications themselves can become a habit or adoption decision, and if they are not sufficiently inclusive or inconvenient for the vulnerable group, they may become a new medium of inequality. Thus, it is important to implement inclusive public ICT-based services in rural areas. Relatedly, the finding that the productivity effects of the RDEP are positive and statistically significant for households with junior high school education, but not for those with a higher level of education or lower level of education, implies that targeting those with a medium level of education but more limited alternatives to acquire information is likely to be more effective. Second, it should also be kept in mind that ICT is not a ready-made panacea. An ICT-based extension service could potentially exacerbate income inequality in rural areas because of the different capacities of utilizing the new information channel between farmers with more assets and those with fewer assets. Practically, farmers’ awareness of improved technologies and techniques may increase through ICT-based extension projects; however, such increased awareness does not automatically translate into behavioral changes such as an increased adoption of improved practices or modern input. Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 17 of 19 ICT-based extension projects can only solve some of the barriers faced by farmers; others depend on complement factors, such as farmers’ endowment conditions, market participation threshold, infrastructures, and institutional or cultural context [28–30]. If the aim of the project is to narrow the gap in agriculture productivity between poor and wealthy farmers, technology extension services packaged with skill training, input support, and other assistance could be a consideration in the future. 7. Conclusions and Policy Implications ICT-based extension services have been widely viewed as the future mode of extension. There have been active studies of the effectiveness and impacts of access to ICT-based technologies with a focus on mobile phones in Asia and Africa [26]. Nevertheless, the results of the impacts are mixed. While the literature on the impact of ICT-based technology and extension/education programs in developing countries is emerging rapidly, the rigorous empirical evidence on China is disproportionately scarce, despite China’s importance in the global economy and its vast stock of ICT-based infrastructure and internet. This study aims to complement the emerging literature by evaluating the impacts of a rural distance education program through using data from peri-urban areas of Beijing. Specifically, this study utilizes survey data from treatment and control villages, and the propensity score matching method to evaluate the short-term impacts of the RDEP on farmers’ agricultural productivity, input use, labor allocation, and overall welfare. This study is among the first few rigorous evaluations of the RDEP on agricultural performance, household income, and off-farm employment, and therefore provides important policy implications on the design and implementation of effective rural distance education programs. First, the findings that the RDEP had a positive and significant effect on agricultural productivity and input use reassures that a rural distance education program can be an effective method to train farmers to acquire information and new agricultural technologies. Second, the existence of a considerable variation in RDEP effects across districts and household characteristics implies that an effective RDEP should take the local community conditions and households’ characteristics into consideration in formulating, implementing, and scaling up the RDEP programs. It is important to note that it is the households with junior high education that benefit the most from the RDEP program, so they should be the prioritized targeting groups for receiving the RDEP projects. Our results also imply that it is important to identify the factors that prevent those with lower than a junior high education and those of lower assets from benefiting from the RDEP projects. There are also a few caveats to our study. We focus on relatively short-term effects, yet the adoption of new technologies or services is likely to take time to be effective. On the other hand, there are also studies showing that the effects of a training program may decay over time. We would like to explore the long-term versus short-term effects in our future research. Also, while the PSM is a popular method to evaluate training and extension programs, the PSM’s inability to control for selection on unobservable variables is always a concern. We would like to use alternative evaluation methods that better account for selection on unobservable variables in the future research. Finally, in the future, we would also like to pursue the evaluation of similar programs regarding outcomes that are related to food safety and the environment. As of today, the safety of agriculture products contributed from the overuse of agro-chemicals is among the top public concerns in China, and it is considered one of the most effective ways to spread environment-friendly agricultural technology to farmers through ICT-based services. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, J.G. and S.J.; Methodology, S.J.; Investigation, L.C. and J.Z.; Formal analysis, J.G. and S.J.; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, J.G.; Writing—Review & Editing, J.G. and S.J. Funding: This research was funded by Beijing Natural Science Foundation, 9172009 and Beijing Social Science Foundation, 17SRB008, and National Natural Science foundation of China (71673244 and 71773110). Acknowledgments: Guo specially thanks the financial support from the China Scholarship Council for staying at the Michigan State University to undertake the data analysis and draft paper writing. Jin gratefully acknowledges Sustainability 2018, 10, 3945 18 of 19 support from Michigan State University’s AgBioResearch. Comments by anonymous reviewers on this paper were also very helpful. All remaining errors are our own. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1. Grimes, S. Rural areas in the information society: Diminishing distance or increasing learning capacity? J. Rural Stud. 2000, 16, 13–21. [CrossRef] 2. Sun, C.; Yang, H. Empirical research on rural information service for farmers’ income—Based on the analysis of panel data in Harbin. J. 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Introduction RDEP Background Sample and Data Sample and Data Collection Descriptive Analysis Methods Results Quality of Different Matching Methods Overall Impacts of the RDEP Heterogeneous Effects of RDEP across Crops Heterogeneous Effects of RDEP across Districts Heterogeneous Effects across Household Characteristics Impact of the RDEP on Income Per Capita and Assets Using the DID-PSM Approach, 2010–2013 Discussion Conclusions and Policy Implications References 
work_b5mnlfp7g5cerdgkowkssp6lba	----	ajpe90 1..6 INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND ASSESSMENT Using Performance-based Assessments to Evaluate Parity Between a Campus and Distance Education Pathway Thomas L. Lenz, PharmD, MA, Michael S. Monaghan, PharmD, Amy F. Wilson, PharmD, Jennifer A. Tilleman, PharmD, Rhonda M. Jones, PharmD, and Mary M. Hayes Creighton University Medical Center Submitted September 8, 2005; accepted January 12, 2006; published August 15, 2006. Objectives. To compare the performance of campus-based students with that of distance students during the first 2 years of a doctor of pharmacy program to evaluate parity between the pathways. Methods. Twelve cases were created for each year of the program along with performance criteria. The cases were converted into computer-based simulations for programmatic assessment at the end of the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years. All first-professional year (P1) and second-professional year (P2) students participated in the assessments. Overall class means were calculated and used to compare student performances between campus and distance education pathways. Results. Overall scores for the 2003 P1 class were 56.4% for the campus-based students and 62.4% for the distance students, (p 5 0.002); overall scores for the 2003 P2 class were 48.8% and 55.5%, re- spectively (p , 0.0001). The 2004 overall scores for P1 campus and distance students were 59.0% and 65.7%, respectively, (p 5 0.001); and for 2004 P2 scores the results were51.8% and 56.5%, respec- tively (p 5 0.049). Conclusions. Students receiving their pharmacy education via a distance pathway scored higher on performance-based assessments compared with students receiving their pharmacy education via the traditional campus-based pathway. This indicates that distance students are receiving at least an equivalent curricular experience in the P1 and P2 years compared to that received by campus-based students. Keywords: performance-based assessment, distance education, abilities-based curriculum INTRODUCTION The aging population and corresponding increase in prescriptions has created a current and future demand for pharmacists.1 This workforce demand has in turn produced an unprecedented period of growth in phar- macy education. Universities are opening new schools of pharmacy, while existing schools and colleges are de- veloping innovative ways to increase their class sizes. They are graduating more practitioners by developing satellite campuses, and employing distance education technology. 2 Our school addressed this shortage of pharmacists through the development of a distance-based doctor of pharmacy degree pathway in which all didactic courses, with the exception of 2 laboratory-based courses and the clinical rotations, are delivered via the Internet. A more complete description of this pathway and its development is available in a previous publication. 3 This increase in enrollment was not without chal- lenges such as ensuring that we effectively increase class size without sacrificing quality. The courses are identical in content to the campus-based pathway, and when pos- sible, are delivered at the same time via distance technol- ogy. But not all courses are taught simultaneously or by the same instructors. Some of the distance courses are taught out of sequence and by different instructors. Also, differences in examination administration exist with the differences in pathways. For example, the distance-based pathway may use QuestionMark to administer examina- tions electronically, while in the campus-based course, a paper-based format is used. Therefore, we required a controlled testing condition to account for potential course-to-course variations in examinations. The purpose of this project was to provide a standardized testing environment to compare the performance of campus- based students to that of distance-based students for the Corresponding Author: Tom Lenz, PharmD. Address: Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice, School of Pharmacy and Health Professions, Creighton University Medical Center, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE 68178. Tel: 402-280-3144. Fax: 402-280-3320. Email: tlenz@creighton.edu. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (4) Article 90. 1 first 2 years of the program to evaluate parity between the pathways. METHODS The development of test methods for this project has been described in detail in a previous publication.4 Our program adopted an abilities-based curriculum and estab- lished 12 terminal educational ability-based outcomes. These ability-based outcomes became the basis for com- paring the 2 curricular pathways. The first step was case development based on these ability-based outcomes. Twelve faculty teams were formed: 1 team per ability- based outcome. When developing the faculty teams, care was taken to select faculty memberswho taughtcourses in which the outcomes were listed in the course syllabus as a primary focus. Faculty teams took the terminal educa- tional ability-based outcomes and defined expected out- comes for student performance by each year in the curriculum. In other words, the terminal ability-based outcome (Appendix 1) was defined by producing student performance expectations or tasks for each year in the curriculum. Twenty-four different cases (12 for P1 and 12 for P2) were authored for the computer-based clinical simulations; each computer-based clinical simulation as- sessment that students completed consisted of 12 case stations. Each station was composed of a case, directions to the student, case performance criteria, and any refer- ences deemed necessary to complete the problem or clin- ical task(s) required in the case. The faculty members were instructed to use their pro- fessional/clinical experience to describe a problem that focused on the ability-based outcome level in question. This real-life problem then constituted the case scenario. For each case brief descriptions of the context of the prob- lem were provided to ensure congruence between stu- dents’ perception and actual case construct. These directions allowed the students to quickly identify the tasks required to complete the case. An example of stu- dent directions for a P1-level case is provided in Appen- dix 2. Case writers defined the case scenario, directions to the student, performance criteria used for evaluating stu- dent performance, and identified any references neces- sary for solving the case. The performance criteria were in the form of rating scales or checklists, which are proven means of evaluating clinical skills in health professional education. 5,6 These checklists consisted of performance indicators (ie, items) or observable behaviors that could be scored by a faculty grading panel. Validations of case content and checklists were based on a previously described method.7 Briefly, the case con- tent,ratingscale,anddirectionswerereviewedbyafaculty validation panel. The panel was composed of 5 pharmacy faculty members from different pharmacy schools: 2 rep- resentatives from the East Coast (Pittsburgh, Shenan- doah), 1 from the Midwest (Drake), 1 from the West Coast (UCSF), and 1 from the South (Houston). Two of the faculty members were employed in private pharmacy schools (Shenandoah and Drake) while the remainder came from state schools. The purpose of the validation was twofold. First, to ensure that each case appropriately tested the specific outcome in question (ie, construct) and that the case was true to the context in which it was set (ie, problem or clinical condition). Second, the panel addressed the generalizability of the cases to their institu- tion and region of the country. Comments from the panel were used to produce the final cases. The cases were then developed into online computer simulations and pilot tested at the pharmacy school by P4 clerkship students. Twenty minutes were allotted for each case. Case refer- ences and props (eg, prescription bottles) were case- dependent and could not be moved; thus, students physi- cally rotated from one computer to another until all cases were completed. The students provided feedback and the assessment procedures were amended based on their com- ments. The revised assessments were then administered to both campus and distance students. Wired classrooms were utilized for access to computers at each case. All student responses were scored by a 2-member faculty grading panel according to the performance crite- ria indicated in the checklists. Each item on a rating scale was scored dichotomously (ie, ‘‘yes, the student com- pleted/preformed the item successfully’’ or ‘‘no, the stu- dent did not’’). The number of items varied by case, and each case was treated as an independent unit (question) of the entire performance-based assessment since each case assessed a different outcome. The 2 scores generated by the grading panel were averaged and this mean repre- sented the students’ score. Overall class means were calculated and used to com- pare student performances for both campus and distance pathways using a Mann-Whitney U test. This project was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board for Research and deemed to be exempt. RESULTS All P1 and P2 students in the program completed the assessments. Data were similar with no statistical differ- ence found between the groups in entering grade point averages (Table 1). Overall scores for the 2003 academic year are listed in Table 2. The mean score for P1 campus students’ was 56.4% and for P1 distance students, 62.4%, (p 5 0.002). The mean score for P2 campus students was 48.8% and for P2 distance students, 55.5% (p , 0.0001). Table 3 lists the overall scores for the 2003-2004 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (4) Article 90. 2 academic year. Scores for P1 campus students compared to those of distance students were 59.0% vs. 65.7%, re- spectively (p 5 0.001). Scores for P2 campus students compared to those of distance students were 51.8% vs. 56.5%, respectively (p 5 .049). Course-grade compari- sons between the 2 pathways for P1 and P2 are provided in Tables 4 and 5, respectively. DISCUSSION Studentsreceivingtheirpharmacyeducationviaadis- tance-based pathway scored higher on performance- based assessments compared with students receiving their pharmacy education via the traditional campus-based pathway. This indicates that distance students are receiv- ing at least an equivalent curricular experience in the P1 and P2 years compared to that received by campus-based students. Severalreasonsexistthatjustifytheneedforthisstudy. An examination of the course grade comparisons between the 2 pathways is provided in Tables 4 and 5 and is difficult to interpret. Knowing that there is some variation in course sequence, course instructor, and minor differences in test- ing conditions, some controlled means of assessing parity between the pathways is necessary. Also, since our pro- gram has an abilities based curriculum, and not all tests utilized are performance-based, it is programmatically es- sential to identify how well students are achieving or per- forming the program’s ability-based outcomes. The use of performance assessments to compare stu- dent outcomes between the 2 pathways was important. The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) encourage the adoption of an abilities-based curriculum. 8,9 Our school has adopted an abilities-based curriculum, and therefore when evaluating such a program it would be appropriate to use perfor- mance assessments as they require students to demon- strate or produce evidence of learning.4 Our data indicate that learning occurred; that students were able to demonstrate competencyof theabilities. This is unique in that one may assume student experiences were different based on the pathway. That is, learning was clearly documented even though the learning expe- riences may have differed based on the pathway. Even though the distance students scored signifi- cantly higher than the campus students in our study, nei- ther of the groups performed well on the assessments. One possible explanation for the low scores may be that our students arenotprimarilyassessedviaperformance-based methods during the first 2 years of the program. This may account for the discrepancy between expectations (ability-basedoutcomesareperformance-based)andscores. The data from this analysis only included students who were in the first- and second-professional years of the program. To get a clearer and more overall picture of students’ abilities, we must also look at the assessment data from the third- and fourth-professional years. The P3 and P4 assessments were conducted using standardized participants that included the Objective Structured Clin- ical Examination (OSCE) approach. 4 These data are cur- rently being analyzed. In addition, looking at individual course scores, overall GPA, and NAPLEX results may give additional information to assess parity between the 2 pathways. These analyses are underway. Once all of our performance assessment data are an- alyzed, it will be used in aggregate to determine the ef- fectiveness of the curriculum’s content in terms of preparing students to meet the program’s educational ability-based outcomes. 4 The combination of student per- formance data regarding specific programmatic outcomes may be used to monitor overall effectiveness, demon- strate improvement, and provide accountability of student achievement to all constituents.4,10 The data can then be related back to the instructional methods and used for Table 1. Demographics of Pharmacy Students Enrolled in Distance and Campus Pathways Variable P1 P2 Distance Campus Distance Campus Enrolled, No. 60 111 54 102 Mean GPA 3.31 3.36 3.18 3.21 Sex Male 19 (32%) 36 (32%) 22 (41%) 39 (38%) Female 41 (68%) 75 (68%) 32 (59%) 63 (62%) Previous degree 31 (52%) 36 (32%) 34 (63%) 40 (39%) Mean age, y 31 25 34 26 P1 5 first-year students; P2 5 second-year students; GPA 5 grade point average Table 2. Comparison Results for of 2002-2003 P1 and P2 Campus and Distance Students Campus P1 Distance P1 Campus P2 Distance P2 Number of students 96 52 96 45 Maximum number of points possible 54 54 57 57 Mean score (SD) 30.4 (7.3) 33.68 (5.7) 27.8 (6.3) 31.61 (3.85) Mean score as a percent 56.4 62.4 48.8 55.5 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (4) Article 90. 3 program planning, such as the incorporation of increased active-learning strategies in the classroom.4 Further, the information in this study may be useful to other schools of pharmacy in making decisions regarding adopting a dis- tance-based pharmacy pathway or to model the perfor- mance-based assessment approach we have taken with their own abilities-based curriculum. Limitations Because the distance students take their didactic courses online, the distance students may be more adept at online assessments than the campus students. This may confound our results. Also, because different instructors were used in a few of the courses, our results may reflect differences in pedagogical effectiveness versus absolute student learning. Finally, because this is the first large performance-based assessment of hundreds of students, no previous data exist with which to compare. Therefore, it is difficult to interpret the low scores. To determine whether other students would perform similarly or better, more research is needed. CONCLUSIONS The performance-based assessment data indicate that our distance pathway provides a similar learning experi- ence in the P1 and P2 years to that provided by the campus pathway based on student performance. This study pro- vides data to help support the evaluation of parity between the 2 pathways to date based on student performance. Table 3. Comparison of Results for 2003-2004 P1 and P2 Campus and Distance Students Campus P1 Distance P1 Campus P2 Distance P2 Number of students 99 38 87 52 Maximum number of points possible 54 54 57 57 Mean score (SD) 31.97 (4.94) 35.48 (5.24) 29.56 (6.98) 32.23 (5.13) Mean score as a percent 59.0 65.7 51.8 56.5 Table 4. Comparison of Grades Between P1 Students Enrolled in Campus and Distance Pathways Class Campus Mean (n)* Distance Mean (n)* P Anatomy 3.81 (94) 3.83 (52) 0.259 Biochemistry 3.02 (106) 2.78 (55) 0.216 Pharmacy Calculations 3.58 (111) 3.46 (61) 0.236 Physical Pharmacy 3.79 (110) 3.73 (59) 0.899 Health Care Systems 3.80 (112) 3.76 (64) 0.691 Communication Skills 3.37 (110) 3.79 (55) 0.000y Introduction to Drug Information & Pharmaceutical Care 3.73 (110) 3.50 (60) 0.000y Physiology 2.97 (84) 2.91 (55) 0.914 Introduction to Disease 3.86 (109) 3.74 (59) 0.055y Dosage Forms and Drug Delivery Systems 3.42 (109) 3.42 (61) 0.553 Biostatistics & Research Design 3.30 (99) 3.24 (48) 0.980 Pharmacy Practice Management 3.80 (109) 3.82 (61) 0.470 Early Pharmaceutical Care Experience I 3.95 (109) 4.00 (55) 0.056 *Mean based on the following scale A 5 4.0, B1 5 3.5, B 5 3.0, C1 5 2.5, C 5 2.0, D 5 1, F 5 0 yp , .05; significance determined using a Mann-Whitney U analysis Table 5. P2 Student Grade Comparison Between the Campus and Distance Pathways Class Campus Mean (n)* Distance Mean (n)* P Microbiology 3.37 (111) 3.11(62) 0.021y Pharmacology I 3.01 (110) 3.05 (58) 0.980 Parenteral Drug Products 2.99 (107) 3.27 (55) 0.038y Chemical Basis of Drug Action I 2.56 (113) 1.73 (59) 0.000y Pharmacology II 2.93 (105) 2.71 (58) 0.039y Basic Pharmacokinetics 3.99 (105) 3.99 (55) 0.660 Chemical Basis of Drug Action II 3.00 (107) 2.77 (57) 0.095 Nonprescription Therapeutics 3.80 (106) 3.64 (59) 0.003y Patient Assessment 3.38 (109) 3.76 (55) 0.000y Early Pharmaceutical Care Experience II 3.98 (105) 3.98 (58) 0.561 *Mean based on the following scale A 5 4.0, B1 5 3.5, B 5 3.0, C1 5 2.5, C 5 2.0, D 5 1, F 5 0 yp , .05; significance determined using a Mann-Whitney U analysis American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (4) Article 90. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENT This project is sponsored in part by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), US Department of Education and by the Creighton University 2004 Summer Assessment Grant, Office for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, Creighton Univer- sity, Omaha, Nebraska. REFERENCES 1. Pedersen CA, Doucette WR, Gaither CA, Mott DA, Schommer JC. Final Report of the National Pharmacist Workforce Survey: 2000. Available at: http://www.aacp.org/site/ page.asp?TRACKID5&VID51&CID5360&DID53490. Accessed September 7, 2005. 2. Davison M, Medina MS. Addressing industry needs through innovative technologies. Am J Pharm Educ. 2003;67(3): Article 100:3-4. 3. Malone PM, Glynn GE, Stohs SJ. The development and structure of a web-based entry-level Doctor of Pharmacy pathway at Creighton University medical center. Am J Pharm Educ. 2004;68:Article 46. 4. Monaghan MS, Jones RM. Faculty Case Writing Teams. Designing an assessment for an abilities-based curriculum. Am J Pharm Educ. 2005;69: Article 19:118-25. 5. Stillman PL, Gillers MA. Clinical performance evaluation in medicine and law. In: Berk RA, ed. Performance Assessment: Methods and Applications. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; 393-445. 6. Andrew BJ. The use of behavioral checklists to assess physical examination skills. J Med Educ. 1977;52:589-91. 7. Monaghan MS, Vanderbush RE, Gardner SF, Schneider EF, Grady AR, McKay AB. Standardized patients: an ability-based outcomes assessment for the evaluation of clinical skills in traditional and nontraditional education. Am J Pharm Educ. 1997;61:337-44. 8. American Council on Pharmaceutical Education. Accreditation Standards on Guidelines for Professional Program in Pharmacy Leading to the Doctor of Pharmacy Degree Adopted June 14, 1997. Available at: www.acpe-accredit.org/frameset_Pubs.htm. Accessed August 19, 2005. 9. Center for the Advancement of Pharmaceutical Education Advisory Panel on Educational Outcomes. Alexandria, Va: American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy; 1998. 10. Arrasmith DG, Kushman JW, Olson N. Using performance information for improvement. In: Blum RE, Arter JA, eds. A Handbook for Student Performance Assessment in an Era of Restructuring. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; 1996:VII-1. Appendix 1. Ability-based educational outcomes for graduates. Pharmaceutical Care Abilities 1. Patient Assessment - The student shall contribute to the database of information about the patient by: a) performing a medication history, review of systems, and physical assessment; b) recommending and interpreting laboratory tests; c) assessing medical, psychosocial, behavioral, and economic status; and d) identifying potential drug-related problems. 2. Pharmaceutical Care Plan Development - The student shall develop pharmaceutical care plansa that maximize the patients’ response to drug therapy and prevent or resolve a drug-related problem(s) in order to ensure positive out- come(s). The student shall appropriately document the implementation of and outcomes related to the care plan. The pharmaceutical care plan shall include medical devices, as needed, and educational information (e.g., nutrition, lifestyle, etc.) intended to promote general health and prevent or minimize disease progression. 3. Drug Therapy Evaluation - The student shall assess and monitor the patient’s drug therapy, including a consideration of the chemical, pharmaceutical, pharmacokinetic, and pharmacological characteristics of the administered medications. 4. Pharmacotherapy Decision-Making - The student shall make pharmacotherapy decisions and support those decisions based on knowledge of biomedical, pharmaceutical, administrative, and clinical sciences.b The student shall recommend patient use of prescription and nonprescription medications, as well as nondrug therapy. 5. Medication Preparation, Distribution, and Administration –The student shall compound and/or dispense drug products consistent with patient needs and in harmony with the law. The student shall demonstrate the ability to accurately interpret the prescription, select the appropriate dosage form, route and method of administration, and appropriately package and label the product. The student shall demonstrate the ability to administer medications, when appropriate. 6. Systems Management - The student shall use and evaluate acquisition, inventory control and distribution systems, while documenting and maintaining quality. The student shall plan, organize, direct and control pharmaceutical care systems and human, material, and financial resources, utilizing management theories and information technology. General Education Abilities 7. Communication Skills - The student shall read, write, speak, listen and use multimedia to communicate effectively. The student shall counsel and educate patients, as well as communicate with other healthcare professionals. 8. Critical Thinking - The student shall acquire, comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information. The student shall integrate these abilities to identify, resolve, and prevent problems and make appropriate decisions. The student shall understand the research process. 9. Professional Ethics and Responsibility - The student shall represent the profession in an ethical manner. The student shall identify, analyze, and resolve ethical problems. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (4) Article 90. 5 10. Social Interaction, Citizenship, Leadership, Professionalism - The student shall demonstrate appropriate interpersonal behaviors. The student shall provide service to the profession, as well as the community. The student shall be proactive in collaborating with other health care professionals. 11. Life-long Learning - The student shall continuously strive to expand his or her knowledge to maintain professional competence. 12. Information Management – The student shall apply technology to pharmacy practice and science. The student shall demonstrate the ability to interpret and evaluate data for the purpose of assessing the suitability, accuracy, and reliability of information from reference sources. aThe pharmaceutical care plan shall include subjective and objective patient information, an assessment of that information, and a plan to resolve and monitor any drug-related problems that were identified. bPharmacotherapy decisions determine what, why, when, where, and how drug therapy is provided. The making of pharmacotherapy decisions is the foremost expressions of the professional knowledge, responsibility and authority of pharmacists. Appendix 2. Directions to the Student Directions You are a pharmacist in the clinic pharmacy serving a medical building containing physicians from many different practices. Dr. Baker just prescribed Avandamet for a 34-Year-old woman just diagnosed with type 2 diabetes today. Please review the prescription and clarify any problems using the resources available. If you find any problems, please document them on the form provided. The following is a list of tertiary sources; please check which would be pertinent to determine if problems exist in this case (Check all that apply) s Briggs Drugs and Pregnancy s Facts and Comparisons s Micromedex s Pharmacotherapy (old edition) s American Hospital Formulary Service Drug Information Using only Micromedex determine if problems exist with the following prescription. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (4) Article 90. 6 
work_b74qwmz64bh4piraelbatycqu4	----	Distance Education in Nursing in Turkey Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 639 – 643 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.271 ScienceDirect 5th World Conference on Educational Sciences - WCES 2013 Distance Education in Nursing in Turkey Filiz Kanteka * aAssistant Professor, Akdeniz University Antalya School of Health, Antalya, 07058, Turkey Abstract Distance education is an important means for nursing knowledge to become widespread. Although distance learning is seen as a strategy for providing solutions for educational problems such as insufficiency of lecturers, an oncoming deficit for nurses, and the unavailability of continuing education of nurses; the applications concerning nurses are limited. This article presents a general overview of the distance education application in Turkey and aims at reviewing the current status concerning distance education in nursing especially, by emphasizing the significance of distance education, and to provide perspective for administrators, Corresponding Author: Filiz Kantek, Tel: +23 412747839 Email: Filiz Kantek@gmail.com Introduction Distance education is a strategy to increase access to nursing education, train nurses for practice, and prepare future nurse educators (Mancuso, 2009). Distance education is defined as the process of extending learning, or delivering instructional resource-sharing opportunities, to locations away from the classroom, building or site by using video, audio, computers, multimedia communications, or some combination of these with other traditional delivery methods (O’Neil, Fisher, & Newbold, 2009). Educators use distance education for delivering entire courses and/or educational programs worldwide, or for providing specific learning experiences for academic courses, staff development, or continuing education (Billings, 2007; Hyde & Murray, 2005). The most widely used presentation systems in distance learning are the printed materials; television broadcasting that can be received by satellite; broadcasting via microwave, or optical fibers; and other electronic methods including computer conferencing, audioconferencing and videoconferencing (Billings & Halstead, 1998; Keating, 2006). Distance education can be totally online or partially online (blended learning). In addition to this, the interaction can be synchronous (real time) or asynchronous (delayed) (O’Neil, Fisher, & Newbold, 2009; Mancuso, 2009; Kaya, 2007). Enabling individuals to access an education program, such as a university program which is distant, by overcoming the obstacles such as time and geography, to easily fulfill the vocational and individual roles in a Keywords: Distance education, nurse education, nursing, Turkey; Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 640 Filiz Kantek / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 639 – 643 flexible environment renders distant education appealing in countries where a deficit of nurses and nurse academicians is experienced (Geray, 2007; Kaya & Akçin, 2005; Talbert, 2009; Sit et al., 2005). Today, distance education is being applied successfully in nursing in graduate and postgraduate programs, and certificate programs in many countries (Billings, 2007). A 1998 survey of 365 American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) member nursing institutions revealed that 187 (51%) offered distance education courses, with a total of 1682 separate course offerings from undergraduate to Ph.D. education (Potempa et al., 2001). A 2002 survey to determine the annual enrollments of 162 accredited nursing distance education programs revealed the heaviest enrollment was in bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) completion programs (90.73%) which can be registered online, followed by Master’s degrees (3.65%), associate degrees (2.29%), basic baccalaureate degrees (2.14%), continuing education courses (0.78%), licensed practical nurse transition programs (0.36%), and Ph.D. degrees (0.06%) (Hodson-Carlton et al., 2003). There are several reasons and possibilities to promote and continue to effectively utilize distance education methods and techniques in nursing education in Turkey. These are: the differences between nursing schools in terms of facilities and education opportunities, an insufficient number of lecturers, an oncoming deficit of nurses, disenabling of the continuing development of nurses by the current system, limited career opportunities for nurses (Kocaman, Sevig & Kubilay, 2008; Kocaman, 2005), and the failure in meeting the demand for higher education systems due to growth in young population (Kaya, 2007; Geray, 2007). Distance education applications in our country, especially in nursing, have a short history and limited experience. Therefore, this study aims at reviewing the current status concerning distance education in nursing especially, by emphasizing the significance of distance education, and to provide perspective for administrators, educators and researchers who would conduct studies in this topic. First, information is given on distance education applications in Turkey; later distance education applications in nursing are surveyed and suggestions are made. Distance education applications in Turkey Although the concept of distance education in Turkey was brought into agenda in a meeting in which the problems of education had been discussed in 1927, the first application of distance education was performed by private educational institutions (namely FONO and Limasollu Naci for teaching English) in the early 1950s (Kaya, 2007; Geray, 2007). The first correspondence course was started within higher education by the Institute of Banking and Commerce, in the year 1954, Law Faculty of Ankara University. Ministry of Education developed the mail education in 1961 at first, and then started primary and secondary school, and high school distance learning programs over radio, television and internet (Kaya, 2007; Geray, 2007; Çakır & Oguz, 2010). In higher education though, the Higher Education Board assigned the mission of distance education to Anadolu University grounding on the Higher Education Fundamental Law in 1981. Anadolu University Open Education Faculty began with two programs; one in Economics and one in Business Administration, which was supported by Radio and Television Institution of Turkey made its channels eligible to use. In due course, the Open Education Faculty developed associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees and vocational programs in Education Sciences, Health Sciences, Continuing Education and Informatics in order to meet the needs of the growing and developing Turkish society (Kaya, 2007; Anadolu Üniversitesi, 2011). After the Internet was formed in 1993 in Turkey, a new dimension has been brought to distance education. While distance education is done with both printed materials and via broadcasting, education programs that can be given through internet as synchronic and asynchronous have been included to them (Geray, 2007; Çakır & Oguz, 2010). Most of the universities in Turkey started and still continue associate, bachelor’s, master’s degrees and Ph.D. programs based on the internet, via either synchronous or a synchronous communication systems with distance learning centers within an institute or a vocational school of higher education (Kaya, 2007; Anadolu Üniversitesi, 2011). These programs generally include the social and education sciences areas such as Computer Education and Technology Instruction, Pre-School Teaching, Philosophy, Sociology, Human Resources Management, Marketing, Finance, Business, and Econometrics (Geray, 2007; Senyuva, 2007). 641 Filiz Kantek / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 639 – 643 Although the distance learning applications in Turkey exhibit a rapid increase, it is difficult to say that this increase is at the desired level (Kaya, 2007). Particularly, the applications for applied programs in engineering, medicine, and nursing need to be improved. Distance Education Applications in Nursing The first distance education program in nursing in Turkey, the Nursing Associate Degree Program, started in the 1991-1992 academic year with the cooperation of Ministry of Health, Istanbul University Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Anadolu University Faculty of Open Education. The main purpose of these programs was to reduce the constraints on higher education and to provide the working with an opening to level up their education. Only the applicants who had high-school nursing education were admitted to the program. This program was very similar to the nursing associate programs started in 1985. The education period of this program comprised of four academic semesters and the total period was two years. The education was conducted via printed material and television programs. 47.442 nurses, as of 1997-1998 academic year, registered in these programs and 32.626 of them graduated the programs (Kaya & Akçin, 2005; Senyuva, 2007). Nursing Associate Degree Programs stopped admitting students in 1996, with the decision of carrying nursing education to bachelor’s degree. After this period, Turkish Nurses Association was faced with the demands of the nurses with associate degree for topping up their education via open nursing bachelor’s degree completion. Thereupon, Turkish Nurses Association, in order to meet this demand, initiated the studies for a completion program, in cooperation with Anadolu University, conferring on the opinions of the nursing schools. As the association was about to complete its studies, Ministry of Health made a protocol on nursing bachelor’s degree completion program with Atatürk University in 2009. According to the protocol, Atatürk University distance education center would perform the completion training of the graduates of Nursing and Health Officer associate departments/programs working in public or private institutions for a two-year period starting from 2009-2010 academic year (atauzem.atauni.edu.tr/UserFiles/file/ sss_080210.pdf.; Sağlık Bakanlığı 2009). The program started accepting students in September 2009. The lectures in the program are done over the internet; the following of the lessons is not dependent on any time limitation, and any printed material is not given to the students. The visa examinations are performed online over the internet, but the final and repeat examinations are done in person (atauzem.atauni.edu.tr/UserFiles/file/sss_080210.pdf). 13.000 medical staff registered in this bachelor’s degree completion program in 2009 (http://www.memurlar.net/haber/174093). This completion program caused reactions and raised an issue among nurse academicians, bachelor’s degree graduate nurses, graduate program students and especially Turkish Nurses Association. The first one of their concerns was that this completion program, prepared by a university without adequate experience in distance education and without any preparation process, would weaken nursing education. The main reason for this concern was the Ministry providing a quick and easy way for obtaining a nurse diploma, without considering any agreement with the nursing professionals. This would both reduce the quality of the nurses and reduce the motivation of the students in the traditional education system (http://www.saglikmemurlari.com). In the meantime, other concerns included academic dishonesty, the lack of face-to-face interaction, and the time and effort involved in distance education. Despite all criticism, concerns and issues, it is a fact that the distance education programs draw intense interest among nurses working in public and private institutions, and make a positive contribution to the nurses and nursing profession. This program has enabled the rapid rise in the of education level of nurses by offering them the opportunity of having associate and bachelor’s degree diplomas (Kaya & Akçin, 2005; Senyuva, 2007; Dal & Kitis, 2008). Further to this, due to the determination of the education levels of nurses as “bachelor’s degree” in the Nursing Law amended in 2007, and the requirement of having at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing for the Nurse Administration positions (http://www.mevzuat.adalet.gov.tr/html/976.html; http://www.mevzuatlar.com/sy/resmiGazete/rga/10/03/080310001.htm.), the program enabled nurses who completed this program to improve their status. Nurses, working in the public institutions have got the chance of 642 Filiz Kantek / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 639 – 643 advancements in grades and of earning a retirement pension of a better level, and they earned an increase in their supplementary payments such as floating capital. In addition, internet acquaintance of the nurses has increased. This program gave the nurses a chance to learn again, whose education lives had ended years ago. Lessons Learned It can be said that the limited number of applications in nursing caused negative thoughts to arise about distance education among a large number of nurses (especially the bachelor’s degree graduate nurses) and nurse academicians. Probably, the biggest mistake made in distance education in nursing is starting with programs that provide advantage to some certain group. If distance education in nursing was to be applied in courses/certificate programs or traditional education lectures, a negative opinion of this kind would not have occurred. Because, when the arguments of the nurse academicians in Turkey were examined in detail, it can be said that they are of one mind, as are their colleagues in other countries (Mancuso, 2009; Cheryl, Fisher, & Newbold, 2009), on distance education having certain advantageous aspects such as the opportunity to reach remote students, the intellectual challenge and the opportunity to develop new ideas, the opportunity to work with more motivated students, release time, financial reward, opportunities for research, motivation to use technology, the opportunity for recognition, the opportunity to utilize support services, reduced travel, an increased course quality, and increased flexibility. While the experiences are of great importance for the future success of distance learning in nursing in Turkey, the scarcity of distance learning programs and their being uncommon are the problems to be solved. In overcoming these problems, reinforcement of lecturers in distance learning can be an important strategy. Within the scope of these, the strategy applications below can be proposed: 1- Organizing courses/certificate programs on subjects such as planning, organizing and evaluating courses in distance learning, providing feedback, and using technology may provide a preparation to distance education for lecturers. 2- Organizing seminars, workshops, conferences and symposiums about distance education may increase lecturers’ knowledge and willingness. 3- Lecturers who are willing and volunteering distance education may form a network and thus speed up their own learning and may decrease their concerns. 4- Selecting distance education as a thesis topic in graduate programs may increase the awareness of the future lecturers about distance education. 5- Providing funds and support by their institutions may increase the motivation of the lecturers who are conducting or willing to conduct studies on distance education. 6- Cooperation of schools/lecturers who are interested in distance learning with the schools/lecturers who are experienced in this subject may be facilitative in increasing their success. Conclusion Distance education as a means of disseminating nursing knowledge should be strengthened in nursing education in Turkey. The distance learning applications intended at fulfilling the needs of nurses should be continued, avoiding the previous mistakes. Monitoring the recent rapid developments in distance learning applications in Turkey will make a significant contribution to distance education in nursing. In addition, conducting studies on nurses’ knowledge about distance learning, the readiness levels of academician nurses, and on determining the obstacles before the distance education may provide an important data source for monitoring the success and quality of distance learning in nursing in Turkey. References Adalet Bakanlığı. (February 2, 2011). Hemşirelik Kanunu (Nursing Law). Retrieved from http://www.mevzuat.adalet.gov.tr/html/976.html. Accessed February 2, 2011. 643 Filiz Kantek / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 639 – 643 Anadolu Üniversitesi. 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(2007). Hemşirelik Eğitiminde WEB Tabanlı Uzaktan Eğitim Uygulaması: Hasta Eğitimi Ders Örneği (Implementation of Web- Based Distance Education in Nursing Education: A Sample Lesson in Patient Education). Istanbul Üniversitesi Sağlık Bilimleri Enstitüsü Doktora Tezi (PhD Thesis), Istanbul. Sit, J.W.H., Chung J. W.Y., Chow M.C.M., & Wong, T.K.S. (2005). Experiences of Online Learning: Students’ Perspective. Nurse Education Today, 25, 140–147. Talbert, J.J. (2009). Distance Education: One Solution to the Nursing Shortage?. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 13 (3), 269-270. THD Başkanının Lisans Tamamlama Hakkındaki Görüşleri (THD Chairman's Views on The Degree Completion). Available at http://www.saglikmemurlari.com. Accessed January 25, 2011. 
work_bczlrmpt6beezlkfsa3t6xqftu	----	International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 13 Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ABSTRACT Three dimensional Collaborative Virtual Environments are a powerful form of collaborative telecommunica- tion applications, enabling the users to share a common three-dimensional space and interact with each other as well as with the environment surrounding them, in order to collaboratively solve problems or aid learning processes. Such an environment is “EVE Training Area tool” which is supported by “EVE platform”. This tool is a three-dimensional space where participants, represented by three-dimensional humanoid avatars, can use a variety of e-collaboration tools. This paper presents advanced functionality that has been integrated on “EVE Training Area tool” in order to support: (a) multiple collaborative learning techniques (b) Spatial audio conferencing, which is targeted to support principle 3 (augmenting user’s representation and aware- ness). Furthermore the paper presents technological and implementation issues concerning the evolution of “EVE platform” in order to support this functionality. Implementing Advanced Characteristics of X3D Collaborative Virtual Environments for Supporting e-Learning: The Case of EVE Platform Christos Bouras, Research Academic Computer Technology Institute, Patras, Greece & Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Patras, Greece Vasileios Triglianos, Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Patras, Greece Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos, Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece Keywords: Collaborative Spatial Design, Collaborative Virtual Environments, Extensible 3D (X3D), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Spatial Audio Conferencing DOI: 10.4018/ijdet.2014010102 Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 14 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 INTRODUCTION The maturation of the Internet and the need for electronic communication formed the basis for the research and development of collaborative applications. Collaborative Virtual Environ- ments (CVE) is a promising form of this type of applications. CVEs might vary in their repre- sentational richness from three dimensional 3D graphical spaces, 2.5D and 2D environments to text-based environments (Snowdon et al., 2001). CVEs can enable the users to share a common 3D space and interact with each other as well as with the environment surrounding them, in order to collaboratively solve problems or aid learning processes. Collaborative Virtual Environments are technologically based on Networked Virtual Environment (NVE) platforms. NVEs allow the communication and interaction of geo- graphically separated users, inside 3D virtual worlds. This paper presents advanced NVE’s functionality that has been integrated on EVE platform (Bouras et al., 2001; Bouras & Tsiat- sos, 2004; Bouras et al., 2005; Bouras et al., 2006) in order to support. More specifically, the main goal of this paper is to present the evolution of EVE platform in order to support e-learning and e-collaboration scenarios in a more effective manner. Since the early uses of collaborative virtual environments in learning, researchers have tried to establish a schema that incorporates some well known aspects, issues, elements and principles which should be taken into account during the design process of educational virtual worlds. The rationale behind the designers’ decisions can have a significant effect on the appropriate- ness of the platform for education. Regarding the design adequacy of EVE for online learning purposes, we validated (as presented in the next section) the platform’s features, philosophy and policies against the design principles presented in Bouras et al. (2008). These principles are the following: Principle 1: Design to support multiple col- laborative learning scenarios: A useful tool for collaboration would support the execution of many e-learning scenarios. E- learning scenarios can combine one or more instructional methods like role-playing, case studies, team projects, brainstorm- ing, jigsaw and many more, as long as the environment supports their functional requirements; Principle 2: Design to maximize the flexibility within a virtual space: Space parameters like size, architecture, facilities and the physical environment affect the way learn- ers socialize (Koubek & Müller, 2002). In order foster educational value, virtual environments must fulfil the teacher’s expectations for spatial and temporal flexibility. Therefore, due to the need for multiple functions within a collaborative online synchronous session, it should be possible to quickly reorganize the virtual place for a particular activity or scenario; Principle 3: Augmenting user’s representa- tion and awareness: Combining gestures, mimics, user representation, voice and text chat communication, users can share their views and show others what they are talking about; Principle 4: Design to reduce the amount of extraneous load of the users: The main objective of an e-learning environment is to support the learning process. Therefore, the users should be able to understand the operation of the learning environment and easily participate in the learning process; Principle 5: Design a media-learning centric virtual space: The virtual space should be enhanced by multiple communication and media layers. Each media type (e.g. text, graphics, sound etc.) has its advantages. The virtual space should integrate many communication channels (e.g. gestures, voice and text chat etc.) in order to enhance awareness and communication among the users; Principle 6: Ergonomic design of a virtual place accessible by a large audience: The designers of a virtual place should take into account that a virtual place for e-learning Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 15 could be used by various individuals with different backgrounds and level of exper- tise in information and communication technologies; Principle 7: Design an inclusive, open and user-centred virtual place: SL membership is free, anyone above 18 years old can join (there is also a separate world for teenag- ers) and the virtual content of the world is created by its users; Principle 8: Design a place for many people with different roles: An e-learning system should support a variety of roles each with different access rights. For example, in a collaborative learning scenario the participants could be moderators, tutors, or learners. The virtual space should be designed ac- cordingly in order to differentiate these roles. The previous versions of EVE platform could support the majority of the above princi- ples through the EVE Training Area tool (Bouras & Tsiatsos, 2002; Bouras et al., 2005). This tool is a three-dimensional space where participants, represented by 3D humanoid avatars, can use a variety of e-collaboration tools. However, the previous versions of EVE should be improved in order to support the following functionality: • Multiple collaborative learning (CL) techniques (i.e. to support principle 1) and flexibility within a virtual space (i.e. to support principle 2); • Spatial audio conferencing, which is tar- geted to support principle 3 (augmenting user’s representation and awareness). The improvements that were made and the new functionality that were added to the previ- ous version of EVE platform are focused on the satisfaction of the above mentioned principles as well as on the enhancement of the EVE platform in terms of performance, compatibility and stability. The advancements presented in this paper concern: (a) full compatibility with the current version of Extensible 3D (X3D) standard (Web3D, 2009) and extension in order to offer X3D event sharing, even for dynamic created shared objects; (b) support for spatial audio conferencing; and (c) integration of a generic non-X3D events management. This paper is structured as follows. In the next section EVE training area tool is presented and the way that every principle is met in this environment is described. In addition this section introduces the necessary functional as well as technological improvements in EVE platform which are needed for the support of the new functionality. The third section presents the related work done on X3D enabled NVE platforms; protocols for supporting 3D event sharing in NVEs; spatial audio conferencing; and collaborative design applications. The fourth section presents the integration of X3D event sharing mechanism in EVE platform. Afterwards, in fifth section, we present in de- tail the design of a spatial audio conferencing server and its integration in EVE platform. In the section that follows we describe a server dedicated to handle non-X3D events sharing. Finally, we present some concluding remarks and our vision for future work. SUPPORTING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING WITH EVE PLATFORM: AFFORDANCES, LIMITATIONS, FUNCTIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL EXTENSIONS In the following paragraphs, EVE training area is presented and the way that every principle is met in this environment is described. Furthermore, we are discussing the limita- tions of this tool concerning the support of: • Multiple collaborative learning techniques and flexibility within the virtual educa- tional space; • Spatial audio conferencing. Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 16 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 In addition, we are introducing the neces- sary functional as well as technological im- provements in EVE platform which are needed for the support of the new functionality. EVE Training Area EVE Training Area is designed and imple- mented for hosting synchronous e-learning and e-collaboration sessions. As described in Bouras and Tsiatsos (2006), after the user-evaluation, the usability of this tool has been rated positive. It combines 2D and 3D features for providing the users with the necessary communication and collaboration capabilities. The main feature of EVE training area is the 3D representation of a multi-user virtual classroom. The user interface of the training area is depicted in Figure 1. The participants in the virtual classroom can have two different roles: tutor (only one participant) and students. In that way EVE training area meets principle 8. The users that participate in the virtual classroom are represented by humanoid articu- lated avatars, which can support animations (such as walking and sitting down) and gestures for non-verbal interaction among the users. EVE’s avatars support functions not only for representing a user but also for visualizing his/ her actions to other participants in the virtual space, which also satisfies principle 3. Available functions in EVE Training area are: Perception (the ability of a participant to see if anyone is around); Localization (the ability of a participant to see where the other person is located); Gestures (representation and visualiza- tion of others’ actions and feelings. Examples are: “Hi”, “Bye”, “Agree”, “Disagree”, and “Applause”); Bubble chat (when a user sends a text message, a bubble containing the message appears over his/her avatar). The virtual classroom is supported by vari- ous communication channels (principle 5) such Figure 1. User interface of the training area Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 17 as (a) audio chat, which is the main interaction channel, (b) 3D text/bubble chat, (c) non verbal communication using avatar gestures in order to provide a more realistic interaction among users, expressing, when needed, the emotion of each one to the others (Capin et al., 1999). Furthermore, EVE Training Area supports manipulation of users and shared objects by integrating two specific tools: (a) expel learner/ participant and (b) lock / unlock objects. EVE Training Area integrates a “presentation table”, which is the central point in the virtual space, in order to provide specific collaboration tools. Using the functionality of this table the users can present their slides and ideas, can comment on slides, upload and view learning material as well as view streaming video. The avatars of all participants in the virtual space can have a sit next to this table, viewing not only what is presented on the table but also the other par- ticipants. Furthermore, the user can change his/ her viewpoint in order to zoom in and out on the presented material. The presentation table has the following functionality: • 3D Whiteboard: The 3D whiteboard supports slide projection, line, circle and ellipsis drawing in a wide range of colors and text input in many sizes and colors. It also offers “undo last action” capability as well the cancellation of all previous actions on the whiteboard; • Brainstorming Board: The brainstorming board can be used in a range of collaborative learning techniques for learners to present their ideas in a structured way. The users can create cards in three shapes (rectangle, circle and hexagon) and five colors attach- ing text on them. It should be mentioned that the shape and color of the cards is attached to a defined argument. They can also move and delete a card; • Video presenter: Video presenter is used in order for the user to attend streaming video presentation/movies inside the 3D environment. The users have the capabil- ity to start and stop the movie. Supported formats are rm, mpeg, and avi; • Library with drag and drop support: The users have the capability to drag and drop learning material on the table. This material is represented as a small icon on the backside of the table. When the user clicks on the icon the corresponding file is opened either on the whiteboard (if the corresponding file is picture or VRML object), on the video presenter (if the corresponding file is of rm, mpeg or avi type) or on a new pop-up window (if the corresponding file is not supported by the VRML format). In order to augment the user’s representa- tion and awareness (and to satisfy principle 3), the usage of avatars along with gestures and additional icons attached to the avatar could be very helpful (Bouras & Tsiatsos, 2006). Examples of this functionality are the following: • Bubble chat over the avatars head, which can be used in order to inform the par- ticipants of a session about the text chat input of this user. Figure 2a depicts the implementation of a bubble chat; • User representation and avatar gestures for expressing actions and feelings. In Figure 2b, we can see an avatar of a user to visualize a “Hi” action by a gesture in the EVE training area (Figure 2b). Concerning awareness of objects and the action on them, there are many solutions. An example is depicted in Figure 7, where users can share and see the cards attached in the brainstorming board by their participants. According to principle 4, the basic func- tionality of the interface should be accessible in a graphical user interface fashion in the context of a collaborative virtual environments. Furthermore, in order to reduce the amount of extraneous load of the users, EVE training area adopts the following approach: • It integrates avatars with gestures. In such way the user can see at once who is partici- Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 18 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 pating and who is making what contribu- tion. An example is depicted in Figure 3a; • It separates the shared and not shared areas in order to avoid user’s misconception as depicted in Figure 3b. A different design that could maximize the amount of extrane- ous load of the users is depicted in Figure 3c. In that case there are many areas that contain information fully, partly or not shared. Thus, the user could be overloaded in order to discover what the rest of partici- pants are doing, who is participating, etc. As previously described e-learning systems, supported by collaborative virtual environments, should be based on three main categories: Content, Learning Context and Communication Media (principle 5). The ap- proach adopted in EVE training area with the concepts of (a) presentation table for sharing information; (b) avatars, audio conferencing and text chat for supporting communication; (c) 3D classroom design along with shared library for integrating learning content has been rated very positively as described in Bouras and Tsiatsos Figure 2. Examples of augmenting user’s representation and awareness Figure 3. Design examples to reduce the extraneous load of the users Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 19 (2006). Thus such a design approach is proposed for supporting principle 5. Limitations EVE Training Area supports almost all the previous defined design principles. Thus, even if the use of virtual reality technology is not a required feature a priori, it seems that the use of collaborative 3D virtual environments and humanoid avatars along with supportive com- munication channels fit well as a solution for virtual collaboration spaces. Humanoid avatars are a unique solution that 3D-centered tools offer to group communication and learning. It is a fact that persons participating in the virtual learning experience with human like full-body avatars feel more comfortable than in chat or audio-communication (Bouras & Tsiatsos, 2006). The main benefit of the avatars is the psychological feeling of a sense of ‘presence’. The sense of ‘presence’ results in a suspension of disbelief and an increase in motivation and productivity (Bouras & Tsiatsos, 2006). There are a number of important attributes to this experience. The ability to make basic gestures along with a voice or text message strengthens the understanding of the communication context (Redfern & Galway, 2002). Therefore, due to the fact that the user’s awareness of the spatial proximity and orientation of others has a strong impact on the dynamics of group communica- tion (Redfern & Galway, 2002), we could say that 3D multi-user virtual spaces have a good potential for supporting learning communities and e-collaboration. In such an environment users feel as though they are working together as a group and tend to forget they are working independently. However, the previous versions of EVE should be improved in order to support the following functionality: • Multiple collaborative learning tech- niques (i.e. principle 1) and flexibility within a virtual space (i.e. principle 2): Even though, in the previous versions of EVE, it is feasible to implement and inte- grate various educational spaces in order to support different collaborative learning techniques, it is not possible to change on the fly the settings of the educational space. A comprehensive and thorough list of collaborative learning techniques is presented in Barkley et al. (2004). Ex- amples are “fishbowl” (where the students form concentric circles with the smaller, inside group of students discussing and the larger, outside group listening and observing), “role play” (where, students assume a different identity and act out a scenario) and “jigsaw” (where, students develop knowledge about a given topic and then teach it to others). Depending on the set objective, the collaborative learning techniques can be used independently of, or in combination with each other. How- ever, the spatial organization of the virtual environment could be very different for each technique. For example the jigsaw CL technique needs various rooms (which are furnished by chairs and a collabora- tion table) for supporting the discussion and collaboration among the members of jigsaw groups (Figure 4a). On the contrary, fishbowl CL technique could be supported by a hall (Figure 4b), which is furnished by chairs in two concentric cycles and a presentation board. Furthermore, in the previous versions of EVE platform is possible for the user (teacher) to use and choose various services/virtual tools for supporting the educational process. However, the tutor cannot reorganise the EVE training area in order to support better the learning needs as well as to avoid misunderstandings in the usage by the students. Due to the need for multiple functions within a collaborative online synchronous session, it should be pos- sible to quickly reorganize the virtual place for a particular activity or scenario: Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 20 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 • Spatial audio conferencing, which is tar- geted to support principle 3 (augmenting user’s representation and awareness): The spatial audio conferencing support is an important feature of a networked virtual environment that aims to support either distance learning scenarios or e- collaboration (Begault, 1994). According to Barfield et al. (1997) the three primary benefits of auditory spatial information displays are identified as: (a) relieving processing demands on the visual modal- ity; (b) enhancing spatial awareness; and (c) directing attention to important spatial events. Yamazaki and Herder (2000) refer that, by exploiting spatial audio conferenc- ing, our eyes track a moving avatar on the screen and at the same time a spatialized sound source gives other information with- out disturbing the visual task. Furthermore, they claim that spatial audio conferencing can enhance the spatial awareness, because the spatial locations of all sound sources let us determine not only the location of other sound sources, but also our own location in space. They also claim that an acoustical event spatialized using a sound source can direct our attention. We tend to agree with the above claims and findings. Spatial audio is of equal importance with visual modality in order for an interactive 3D environment to be realistic. Plain audio conferencing support is an important feature. However, the best results are achieved by integrating spatial audio conferencing. Figure 4. Examples of virtual learning spaces for supporting collaborative learning techniques Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 21 Functional Extensions In the following paragraphs, we are presenting the necessary functional improvements in EVE platform for the support of: • Multiple collaborative learning techniques, spatial collaboration on the implementation of CL techniques and flexibility within the virtual educational space; • Spatial audio conferencing. Multiple Collaborative Learning Techniques and Design to Maximize the Flexibility within a Virtual Space EVE platform has been improved and offers a new module, giving the teacher the ability to design the EVE training area as s/he wants (Bouras et al., 2007). From the users’ side this module is a plug-in which is extended by a 2D tool (Figure 5) called “Collaborative Spatial Design Tool”. This tool contains a number of panels to provide different functions. Besides the already existing panels from the previous versions of EVE platform (i.e. gesture, chat and lock panels), two new panels is introduced: • The “2D Top View Panel” (Figure 5: 2D Top View Panel): This panel was embedded in the user interface as a tool for re-arranging worlds in collaborative spatial designs. It illustrates the floor plan of the world area and its objects. A user can move an object inside the limits of the world thus the limits of the panel and then s/he can watch the corresponding X3D object moving in the virtual X3D world. The intro- duction of this panel is of great importance. Not only it gives a better inspection of the object arrangement in the world, making it easier for the user to choose the modifica- tions to be applied, but it also functions as lightweight object transporter. The events Figure 5. User interface of EVE client extended with collaborative spatial design tool Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 22 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 occurring on that panel are shared with the rest of the online users; • The “Options Panel” (Figure 5: Options Panel): When dealing with collaborative spatial design options (such as object lists and classroom information) are a necessity. For that reason the option panel features options depending on the application. For example, this panel features options such as an object list for choosing virtual objects, a classroom object list, and number of copies of certain objects to be inserted, etc. Using the Collaborative Spatial Design Tool, depicted in Figure 5, the teacher can design the EVE training area as s/he wants by: • Using predefined classroom models and having the ability to reorganize the classroom; • Creating and setting up of a virtual class- room using object library; • Using spatial collaboration on the imple- mentation of CL techniques. These usage scenarios are described in the following paragraphs. Usage of predefined classroom models with classroom reorganization ability: This functionality offers quick classroom setup and the ability to move existing objects or to add new. The procedure that a teacher has to follow is to choose one of the predefined classrooms according to his/her criteria. Once the teacher selects a predefined classroom in which specific objects are placed has two options. The first one is to select new objects, which s/he wants to add, from an object list (Figure 5: Options Panel). The second one is to rearrange already added components. When a teacher loads a classroom a top view is created in a 2D panel next to the 3D world (Figure 5: 2D Top View Panel). Each 3D object has a 2D representa- tion. The teacher can move an object in the 2D view. Accordingly the corresponding X3D object will be re-located in the virtual world. This scenario is preferred when the features and the customization needed for a classroom have to do mainly with objects’ location and re-orientation. In that case the avoidance of having to select an empty classroom and fill it with object saves much time. Creation and set up of a virtual classroom using object library: This functionality supports the teacher to implement multiple learning sce- narios. More specifically s/he can change the organization of the virtual classroom and can use different shared objects that can facilitate each learning scenario. For example, s/he may want to select the size or shape of the virtual classroom, add specific objects etc. If that is the case EVE offers the ability to select from a variety of objects stored in a database library (Figure 5: Options Panel). Extended customiza- tion is offered by this model enhancing more precise customization. The teacher chooses an empty virtual classroom from a list of virtual classrooms, according to his/her needs. Then s/he adds the kind and number of objects s/he likes. Moving the 3D objects is supported as well, as described in the previous paragraph. This functionality is giving the teachers the ability to select among a number of empty or already customized classrooms. A list of available objects can be added in the virtual classrooms by the teachers. Moreover, a teacher can move objects in the 2D floor plan. This plan contains a 2D representation of all the objects in the classroom. Dragging an object in the 2D view moves the corresponding object in the 3D world accordingly. For example, in order to apply the brainstorming/roundtable scenario the tutor can re-organise the classroom area by creating a table with a brainstorming board and seats for the learners around the table, as depicted in Figure 6. EVE Training Area has been designed in such a way to maximise the flexibility within a virtual space (in order to satisfy principle 2). The tutor can reorganise the EVE training area in order to better support the learning needs as well as to avoid misunderstandings in the usage by the students. In that way, the tutor can either create or re-use virtual rooms for formal classes, Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 23 Figure 6. Organizing the EVE training area for brainstorming Figure 7. Brainstorming session Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 24 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 group work, etc. For example in the organisation depicted in Figure 6 the only action for the user, in order to participate in the brainstorming ses- sion, is to move his/her mouse over a chair and to click on it (Figure 7a). By following these actions the viewpoint of the user is changed and s/he can see the presentation table and the other participants (Figure 7b and Figure 7c). After that the user can cooperate with the rest of participants in the brainstorming session by zooming in the brainstorming table (Figure 7d). Spatial collaboration on the implementa- tion of CL techniques: During these scenarios an inexperienced teacher in the application of CL techniques could collaborate with an expert in order to rearrange the classroom. This col- laboration can be supported by chat commu- nication and 3D objects sharing. Furthermore, the expert can take the control to organize the classrooms adding and rearranging 3D objects. Alternatively, two or more teachers can collabo- rate concerning the creation and organization of a virtual classroom. Spatial Audio Conferencing The integration of spatial audio conferencing in CVE platforms could facilitate the users’ communication in terms of immediateness, while at the same time the voice contributes to a more realistic communication and inter- action among the users. Spatial audio confer- encing contributes to a best perception of the environmental entities, especially when the user has no eye contact with them. The user, by hearing spatial audio, obtains information about the 3D location, and the direction of the entity which emits the sound moves. Moreover, depending on the intensity and the tone of the sound, a user can be aware, to some extent, of the intensions of the entity towards the user as well as the psychological situation of the entity. These psychological effects that arise from the 3D spatial sound along with the perception of space, lead to a very realistic interaction in two fashions: among the users, and between the user and the virtual space. Technological and Implementation Issues The advancements presented in this paper were implemented in EVE Networked Virtual Environments platform. Thus, it is essential to present the main characteristics of this platform. EVE is based on open technologies (i.e. Java and X3D). It features a client-(multi) server architecture (Figure 8) with a modular structure Figure 8. EVE architecture Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 25 that allows new functionalities to be added with minimal effort. The previous version of EVE platform provided a full set of functionalities for e-learning procedures, such as avatar rep- resentation, avatar gestures, content sharing, brainstorming, chatting etc. However, the above described functionality for maximizing the flexibility within a virtual space, implies the implementation and integra- tion of a collaborative spatial design application in EVE platform. Such an application requires: • A flexible way for dynamic 3D world manipulation such as the ability to dy- namically load virtual environments and shared objects; • A generic event’s management mechanism for effective non-X3D event handling. From the technical point of view X3D (Web3D, 2009) is the current open standard for lightweight 3D content description and repre- sentation, to build virtual environments. It can be used from desktop to web applications and is the ideal solution for open platforms. How- ever, X3D standard does not support 3D event sharing, which is necessary for the multi-user nature of Collaborative Virtual Environments. The previous version of EVE integrated an X3D event-handling mechanism responsible for serving events related to the virtual world. However, a more robust and complete solution has been implemented in the extended version of EVE platform in order to accomplish the demand for dynamic X3D node loading. Concerning the integration of the Col- laborative Spatial Design Tool, there is a need to handle non-X3D events in order to support: • The retrieval of new 3D objects or whole virtual worlds from a database, (such as database queries to retrieve objects and 3D environments from a database); • The manipulation of 3D objects from an external and intuitive 2D interface, which implies the support of java swing events. These events are called “2D applications events”. An additional server called “2D ap- plication server” has been developed and integrated in EVE platform for servicing “2D applications events”. Concerning the integration of spatial audio conferencing, EVE platform featured H.323 audio conferencing since it was introduced. However in order to support the spatial au- dio conferencing a new Audio Conferencing Server is needed. This server features a new algorithmic approach and utilizes the latest session protocols and codec technologies.The main issues concerning the integration of spatial audio conferencing are the following: • The selection of a networked audio protocol along with algorithms and codecs that will be used to establish sessions and reproduce sound among users; • The algorithms that will create the illusion of 3D spatial sound. After the integration of the new features, the client-side of EVE platform is a Java applet that incorporates an X3D browser (based on Xj3D API), and audio and a chat client. The server-side architecture of the EVE platform consists of five servers as shown in Figure 8. The “Connection Server” coordinates the operation of the other three. The “VRML- X3D Server” is responsible for sending the 3D content to the clients as well as for managing the virtual worlds and the events that occur in them. The “Chat Server” supports the text chat communication among the participants of the virtual environments. The “SIP Spatial Audio Conferencing Server” is used to manage audio streams from the clients and to support spatial audio conferencing. Finally the “2D Application Server” handles the generic (i.e. non-X3D) events. Both “SIP Spatial Audio Conferencing Server” and “2D Application Server” are the new servers that integrated in EVE platform. More details about this server and the related Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 26 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 implementation issues will be described in detail later in this paper. The rest of the paper is focused on pre- senting the related work and the work done concerning the technological advancements of EVE platform. RELATED WORK ON TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES This section presents the related work in point of the advancements of EVE platform. Therefore, it is organized in the following parts describing work done on: (a) X3D enabled NVE platforms; (b) protocols for supporting 3D event sharing in NVEs; (c) spatial audio conferencing; and (d) collaborative design applications. X3D Enabled NVE Platforms This paragraph presents an overview of the state of the art on X3D enabled networked virtual environment platforms. Generally speaking, there are many networked virtual environ- ment platforms either commercial products or research platforms. The most significant commercial networked virtual environment platforms are the following: blaxxun platform (http://www.blaxxun.com), Bitmanagement’s BS Collaborate (BS Collaborate, 2007), Ac- tive Worlds (http://www.activeworlds.com), Octaga (http://www.octaga.com), Parallel- Graphics (http://www.parallelgraphics.com), Croquet (http://www.croquetconsortium.org), I-maginer, (http://www.i-maginer.fr/), Second Life (http://secondlife.com) and Workspace 3D (http://www.tixeo.com). The most significant research platforms are the following: DIVE: Distributed Interactive Virtual Environments (Carlsson & Hagsand, 1993; http://www. sics.se/dive), SPLINE: Scalable Platform for Large Interactive Environments (http://www. merl.com/projects/spline), VLNET: Virtual Life Network (Pandzic et al., 1996; Pandzic et al., 1998), SmallTool (Broll, 1998) and EVE (Bouras et al., 2005; Bouras et al., 2006; http:// ouranos.ceid.upatras.gr/vr). However, some of the above platforms are not supporting X3D standard at all and some of them are supporting X3D standard partially (Bouras et al., 2005). The most promising X3D enabled CVE platforms today are Bitmanage- ment, Octaga and EVE solutions. Almost all these platforms partially support X3D stan- dard, and offer good rendering functionality. However, the first two (i.e. Bitmanagement, and Octaga) solutions are commercial and any extension and or programming, that requires additional technical implementation, cost additionally due to the additional cost of the respective SDKs. Furthermore, a commercial solution may have the risk of a closed solution due to each company’s extensions to the stan- dards. Therefore, it is obvious that in order to support X3D collaborative virtual environments the most mature solutions are the commercial platforms. However, the cost in this case is high. Thus, a promising technical solution could be EVE platform. For that reason we have decided to work on the extension of EVE platform in order to accomplish the demand for dynamic X3D node loading. Protocols for Supporting 3D Event Sharing in NVEs This paragraph is presenting briefly the main protocols for handling 3D event sharing in NVEs, in order to adopt similar mechanisms (if any) for dynamic X3D node loading. These protocols are VRTP (Virtual Reality Transfer Protocol) (Brutzman et al., 1997), DIS (Distrib- uted Interactive Simulation) protocol (Canter- bury, 1995) and SWAMP (Simple Wide Area Multi-user Protocol) (Weber & Parisi, 2007). VRTP is an application level protocol for Internet based NVE’s in a standardized way. It offers four basic functionalities for NVEs communication capabilities: (a) entity state processing, (b) heavyweight objects, (c) net- work pointers and (d) real-time streams. VRTP framework consists of a protocol collection and an application level protocol that provides the necessary connectivity between the client and http://www.blaxxun.com http://www.activeworlds.com http://www.octaga.com http://www.parallelgraphics.com http://www.croquetconsortium.org http://www.i-maginer.fr/ http://secondlife.com http://www.tixeo.com http://www.sics.se/dive http://www.sics.se/dive http://www.merl.com/projects/spline http://www.merl.com/projects/spline http://ouranos.ceid.upatras.gr/vr http://ouranos.ceid.upatras.gr/vr Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 27 the virtual environment. The main problem of VRTP is that its design is focused on the support of the communication needs of VRML-based NVEs; It wasn’t designed in order to meet specific networking demands. The DIS protocol has been designed to support large scale Virtual Environments and is based on the SIMNET standard (Miller & Thorpe, 1995). It consists of a set of protocols. More specifically DIS defines a set of Protocol Data Units (PDUs), which are transmitted to all the participants of the NVE in order to update the current state of each object. DIS is very efficient in supporting many concurrent users. However, it is difficult to be integrated in EVE platform because of its limited scalability and the rigidity caused by embedding its application in its architecture (Wray & Hawkes, 1998). Finally, SWAMP is a new multi-user protocol which was designed in order to sup- port X3D client-server communication. The philosophy behind its design is the ability to be used in wide area, thus heterogeneous, networks. A great amount of concern has been given to the message exchange speed and safety. SWAMP uses an entity model that is based on the X3D rationale (i.e. nodes and fields). Abstractions of an entity or a total of entities are also supported. The approach of SWAMP for the client-server communication, regards the use of TCP/IP for the establishment of the initial connection as well as for the exchange of low frequency messages and utilizes UDP for exchanging continuous, highly frequent messages. UDP usage involves the use of packages with small overhead, which results in faster transportation. SWAMP integration in the X3D scene graph involves the usage of the X3D Network Component. This features a node named EventStreamSensor that establishes network connections. However, SWAMP is still under development and thus it is not ready for public use. Our work differs from SWAMP in the type of the events that are sent to the server. Instead of using the EventStreamSensor node to transmit events, each event that occurs in the virtual world is captured by a custom event sharing mecha- nism and is transmitted to a dedicated server for processing. The mechanism of our solution is more generic, since it allows the sharing of events that occur outside the 3D scene as well. By that way our mechanism can support the dispatch of an event of an external application to the 3D scene. In addition our mechanism is mature and fully functional, offering a variety of events that is a superset of the X3D standard set of events. Spatial Audio Conferencing A fair amount of work has been done on spatial 3D sound. The majority of today’s 3D games, single or multi-user, features spatial 3D sound. However the sound that is used in this type of applications is pre-recorded. When it comes to CVE’s where live streaming sound needs to be converted to spatial 3D sound, little work has been done. Good examples have been pre- sented by Liesenborgs (2000) and Macedonia et al. (1995). The work done by Macedonia et al. (1995) is based on multicast networks. It features a networked virtual environment that offers low cost 3D sound. We want to avoid this solution due to the fact that multicasting is not available in every network. Liesenborgs (2000) describes a Voice over IP framework for networked virtual environ- ments. The capture and reconstruction of voice is accomplished by the clients’ operating system. The session initiation and the transmission of the voice are carried out by Real-time Transmission Protocol (RTP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) (RFC3261, 2002) libraries written in C++. The spatialization of the audio is performed by an algorithm that mimics the way human ear perceives sound, that is using the Interaural Time Difference (ITD) and the Interaural Intensity Difference (IID) effects. Our work differs from the work done by Liesenborgs (2000) in terms of portability, since our solution is Java based thus platform independent. The second and major difference is that our solution relies on an X3D standard node to perform the audio spatialization in X3D based virtual environments. Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 28 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 Spatial Collaboration Applications There is some research work done on spatial col- laboration using CVE. This work, as described in the following paragraphs, is focused on: (a) the usefulness of multiple representations and the need for additional features to support collaboration across representations; (b) the viewpoints handling; (c) findings concerning intuitiveness and real-time interaction issues in virtual environments for supporting spatial collaboration. The main example is the work done by Schafer and Bowman (2005), which investigates how to support distributed spatial collaboration activities and presents a novel prototype that integrates both two-dimensional and three- dimensional representations. Our work differs from this project in terms of technological solu- tion as well as from the communication channels included. Our scope is to rely on the use of the combined representations and the findings of Schafer and Bowman (2005), which highlight the usefulness of multiple representations and the need for additional features to support col- laboration across representations. Another example is CALVIN prototype (Leigh & Johnson, 1996; Leigh et al., 1996). This system explores the usage of different virtual reality hardware configurations, such as CAVE and Immersadesk technology, for collaboration. Although our scope is to design and develop a system for desktop CVEs, using only keyboard and mouse as input devices, the findings of this work are useful concerning the viewpoints handling. Another interesting work concerns VSculpt (Li & Lau, 2003), which is a collaborative virtual sculpting system that enables geographically separated designers to participate in the design process of engineering tools and sculptures. Although this work aims at supporting collab- orative virtual sculpting, its findings concerning intuitiveness and real-time interaction are very useful for the extension of our platform. Furthermore, Li et al (2006) implemented a 3D collaborative system for double-suction centrifugal pump, based on X3D and Java Applet technology. The system allows the assembly of a centrigugal pump by one or more collaborators via a web interface that is embedded in an X3D browser. Our work is different in the way that the 3D objects are externally modified, and that user can move objects inside the 3D scene. Our work is based on the use of a two dimensional ground plan of the scene that displays labels of all the available 3D objects. These labels can be dragged within the 2D ground plan resulting in the movement of the corresponding 3D objects in the 3D scene. X3D SUPPORT AND EVENT SHARING This section presents two important features of the EVE platform: • The support of X3D standard, which is the current standard in the area web based virtual reality applications; • The extension of X3D by a custom event sharing mechanism, which manages and shares events over the network. Generic X3D Features Originally, VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) was used in EVE for 3D content creation and visualization. VRML evolved to, the ISO certified, X3D open standard. X3D supports XML encoding as well as the syntax of the VRML language. Many advantages derive from the use of XML, such as interoper- ability with other networking applications and familiar syntax to web applications developers. Considering that EVE is a web based platform, the use of an XML based open standard is very important. Moreover, X3D allows lightweight core 3D runtime delivery engine. This is crucial since EVE’s client runs within a browser where minimum consumption of resources is required. Furthermore, there is no tradeoff between light- ness and quality since X3D graphics are of high quality, while performing in real-time. Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 29 In order to dynamically modify 3D content, which is a key feature for the interactive virtual environments, the Scene Authoring Interface (SAI) was created. SAI is the appropriate API (Application Programming Interface) for user- 3D scene interaction. Using SAI programmers can add, remove and modify nodes and their fields from both inside and outside the 3D scene. Although X3D offers many advantages for visualizing and interacting with web based virtual environments, there is no mature or cost-effective solution for multi-user event sharing over the network, as presented in a previous section. Therefore, the only solution for supporting multi-user virtual environments is the extension of X3D by implementing an event sharing mechanism. This mechanism is described in the next paragraph. X3D Event Sharing Mechanism An NVE is based on a mechanism for sharing events that occur in the virtual scenes. This is important in order to maintain 3D content consistency and to allow interaction among users. As said before, X3D currently does not provide a mechanism and/or protocol to share 3D scene events. The event sharing mechanism of the previous version of EVE platform is now improved. In order to accomplish the demand for event sharing support of dynamic created 3D objects (i.e. dynamic X3D node sharing and loading). The previous version of EVE integrated an X3D event-handling mechanism responsible for serving events related to the vir- tual world. The previous mechanism overrides SAI and EAI (External Authoring Interface) in a way that events are sent to all users connected to the platform. In order to dynamically create nodes a specific event is sent to the VRML-X3D server, containing the node to be added and the parent (default is “root node”) to make this node its child. This event is then broadcasted to online users and is added to an X3D representation of the world it belongs. This representation is kept in the server and it is broadcasted to new users that entered later in the virtual world. It should be pointed out that already online and connected users to the platform receive only the newly added nodes. By that way, network- ing load is significantly reduced. Once online clients receive a shared node they locally add it to their VRML-X3D Scene. In general, the design of event sharing mechanism is trying to fulfill the following three requirements: • Event sharing support of many data types and events; • Easy transformation of a non multi-user X3D virtual world to a multi-user one, based on little code changes to the initial X3D file; • Selection of efficient and suitable network protocols for good network bandwidth management. In order to satisfy the above requirements, the event sharing mechanism features an internal Java representation of X3D nodes and fields. Events that are needed to be shared are marked with a “shared” tag, in the corresponding field routes. This method causes a minimum change to the initial X3D file. When a new shared event occurs in a client’s virtual world the following steps are followed: • The event is being transmitted to the VRML-X3D server without affecting the local copy of the virtual world in the client; • The event is converted to an instance of class responsible for describing event, with all the necessary parameters stored as well; • The event is processed by the server and is sent back to the clients that the event concerns; • The event is received by the client, it is transformed via SAI to reflect the change inside the virtual scene. The network protocol used for the event transmission is, generally, TCP in order to en- sure reliability. However, the events occurring from avatars’ position or orientation changes are transmitted via UDP. This ensures low Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 30 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 network load, while at the same time it does not have impacts on the quality of the user’s experience, since packages of such events are very frequently transmitted. Implementation Issues The implementation of the above described mechanism involves both 3D content handling and parsing. As EVE is mainly implemented in Java, the Xj3D toolkit is used for the X3D and SAI implementation. We have extended Xj3D’s Java library by creating a custom library (called “vrmlx”) in order to provide support for shared events. This library contains packages that de- scribe the fields and nodes of the X3D standard (Web 3d, 2007). Every vrmlx node extends a basic node named BaseNode. Similarly, each field extends a basic field named “Field”. Each time occuring an event in the virtual world, the event’s attributes related to X3D (such as a node or a field) are transformed to a vrmlx library representation. Afterwards, the clients receive the event, convert its vrmlx representation to an Xj3D representation and the event is applied to the 3D scene. In order to support X3D virtual world load- ing and dynamic X3D objects’ events sharing an X3D parser has been implemented. This parser parses the x3d files and loads the 3D content. The parser has been integrated in EVE platform as a package (called “vrmlx.parser”) in the vrmlx library. EVE’S SIP SPATIAL AUDIO CONFERENCING SERVER The previous versions of EVE platform featured H.323-based audio conferencing. In order to increase performance and stability as well as to emphasize the distributed nature of the platform a new Audio Conferencing Server was introduced. This server features a new algorithmic approach and utilizes the latest session protocols and codec technologies.The main issues concerning the integration of spatial audio conferencing are the following: • The selection of a networked audio protocol along with algorithms and codecs that will be used to establish sessions and reproduce sound among users; • Design and implementation of the algo- rithms that will create the illusion of 3D spatial sound. These issues are described in the following paragraphs. EVE Audio Spatialization Process and Conferencing Architecture The steps of the audio spatialization process adopted in EVE platform are the following: • The establishment of the client-server connection; • The capture of the audio stream by the client; • The transmission of the audio stream to the server; • The spatialization process of the audio stream in the virtual world; • The reception of the audio stream by the rest of clients. The technologies used in order to support the above process are the following: • Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for the session establishment. This lightweight, transport independent protocol has proven to be very reliable and robust thus mak- ing it the most popular session protocol nowadays; • Real Time Protocol (RTP) for audio data transmission (RFC3550, 2003); • The Java Media Framework API, which provides convenient classes and methods for media manipulation, is used for sup- porting the audio capture. Concerning the process for audio spatial- ization the proposed and implemented solution takes into account issues such as bandwidth Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 31 consumption, processing costs, complexity, as well as design and implementation issues related to EVE platform. Audio spatialization is performed by an X3D Sound node (Figure 9). Firstly, the client’s side architecture is examined. The establishment of the client-server connection is accomplished via the SIP protocol. The client’s applet makes a call to the SIP Spatial Audio Conferencing Server and a server port is reserved for the connection with the client. After the session initiation, an RTP stream, using the JMF API, is established with the server, in order to transmit the audio data stream. At the same time the client’s capture device captures audio data, utilizing JMF API’s classes, and transmits them through the RTP stream. The X3D browser of the applet receives the audio data encapsulated, by the SIP Spatial Audio Conferencing Server, in X3D AudioClip nodes. The playback of the audio is performed by X3D Sound nodes that use the AudioClip nodes as their sources. The X3D Sound node features built-in spatialization and attenuation audio algorithms. Regarding the server side, the following proce- dure takes place: The server is waiting for new SIP calls on a dedicated port. After an incom- ing call from a client is accepted, a new port is assigned for the communication between a server thread, dedicated in servicing the specific client, and the server. This thread establishes an RTP stream with the client for receiving audio data. Concurrently, the SIP Spatial Audio Conferencing Server acquires information of the user’s avatar location and orientation in the virtual world through the VRML-X3D Server. This information will be used to reproduce the sound like it is being emitted from the avatar’s mouth. For each user an X3D AudioClip node along with an X3D Sound node are instantiated via the Xj3D API and they are added in the graph scene of the virtual world. A file is cre- ated to which the audio data are continuously appended to. The AudioClip node’s URL field is given that file as a value, while the Sound node’s fields direction, location and source fields are given the values of the avatar’s mouth direction, avatar’s mouth location and the AudioClip, respectively. The key point in this solution is that the audio spatialization is based on the X3D Sound node. This node can produce spatialized audio by setting appropriate values to the specialized fields. When the two new X3D nodes are added to the scene, the VRML-X3D server sends them to the client and the client’s X3D browser starts immediate playback of the Sound node. Figure 9. Audio conferencing architecture Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 32 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 Implementation Issues In this section the implementation issues (SIP integration, audio streaming, capture and spa- tialization) are discussed along with the main technologies in which the SIP Spatial Audio Conferencing Server is based on: • SIP integration: A java implementation of the protocol was adopted due to the fact that the EVE platform is Java – Xj3D based. More specifically, JAIN – SIP (JAIN – SIP, 2007) was chosen as an API. This solution helps us to maintain EVE’s openness and cross platform characteristics; • RTP streaming and audio capture: The RTP streaming and the audio captured man- agement tasks, is performed by custom code that utilizes the Java Media Framework API – JMF. The capture format that is used in this implementation is in linear encoding, has 8000 Hz sample rate, 8 bits of sample size and is monophonic. The streaming format was of the same characteristics. We used these relatively low quality settings in order to save bandwidth; • Audio spatialization: The spatialization of audio is performed by the X3D Sound Node. The Sound node specifies fields that affect the spatialization of the sound. The sound is located at a point in the local coordinate system and it is emitted in an elliptical pattern. The location is specified by the location field, while the direction vector of the ellipsoids is specified by the direction field. There are fields that specify the maximum and minimum values to where the sound is audible, that is the maximum and minimum lengths of the two ellipsoids along the direction vector. A very crucial field is the spatialize field. If set to TRUE the sound is perceived as being directionally located relative to the listener. If the listener is located between the transformed inner and outer ellipsoids, the listener’s direction and the relative location of the Sound node is taken into account during playback. In our implementation this field is set to TRUE, resulting in a very realistic spatialized audio playback. The sound source specified by the field source is an AudioClip node. The Audio- Clip node specifies an URL field (that in our implementation is the URL file of the buffer), which is used as source. In order to change between the two sets of nodes, we used an ECMA script which sets the startime field of one AudioClip that waits to start, equal to the stoptime field of the currently playing AudioClip. GENERIC EVENT’S MANAGEMENT: EVE’S 2D APPLICATION SERVER As described before, there is a need to handle non-X3D events in order to support: • The retrieval of new 3D objects or whole virtual worlds from a database, (such as database queries to retrieve objects and 3D environments from a database); • The manipulation of 3D objects from an external and intuitive 2D interface, which implies the support of java swing events. These events are called “2D applications events”. Five types of “2D application events” are currently supported: • SQL Database query (which is a string representing an SQL query); • JDBC ResultSet (a JDBC ResultSet class); • Java Swing Component (such as labels, shapes, etc.); • Java Swing Events (such as altering the location of a Swing Component); • Ping: Used to verify the connection be- tween the server and the clients. Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 33 EVE, as already mentioned, consists of several servers. However, none of them is able to manage 2D events. For that reason an ad- ditional server called “2D application server” has been integrated in EVE platform. The client-server communication operation is described as shown in Figure 10: Firstly a client establishes a connection to the server. This class deals with connection related issues such as sockets server ports etc. Once a con- nection has been established, two threads (one responsible for sending and one for receiving “2D application event” instances) are created for each client. On the client side, a thread respon- sible for “2D application event” handling and server communication is created. The receiving thread examines if the event is to be executed in the server (e.g. Database query). In that case, it executes the event and, if necessary, it creates another event (e.g. ResultSet). Otherwise, it enqueues the event in the ClientConnection FIFO queue. After that the sending thread takes the first pending event and sends it to all clients. FUTURE WORK Among our next steps, it is to extensive test the newly added features among a various us- age scenarios by large groups of users. Also, several technical aspects of the features need to be thoroughly examined, such as scalability, packet jitter and server load. In addition, we plan to extend EVE platform in order to support mixed reality applications. Mixed reality applications usually involve the usage of specialized and expensive equipment in order to mix real world with virtual world (i.e. computer generated data). This can be done by utilizing the generic event’s manage- ment mechanism to handle non-3D data such as video projections. Concerning spatial collaboration appli- cations, our next step has mainly to do with extended world setup abilities. Particularly, a user will have the abilities to add his/her custom X3D objects, change a classroom’s dimensions, and visualize possible collisions. Collisions may Figure 10. 2D events architecture Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 34 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 occur due to the following reasons: (a) specific spatial setup models; (b) accessibility to emer- gency exits in case of an emergency situation; (c) routes a teacher follows during class time; and (d) students co-existence problems. Also, we intend to provide full H-Anim (http://www.h-anim.org/) support in EVE ava- tars. The H-Anim protocol is a standard way of modeling and animating humanoids, designed to facilitate the sharing of animations between different humanoid models. This will allow the creation of portable avatars that can be trans- ferred from one NVE platform to another. By supporting H-anim standard we will facilitate the users to upload and use their custom H-Anim compliant avatar. Finally, we plan to evaluate this platform exploiting the framework suggested by Tsiatsos, Konstantinidis and Pomportsis (2010). This framework consists of two consecutive cycles. Each cycle is made up of individual phases consisting of three steps: main phase step, data acquisition step and data analysis step. There are three types of phases: pre-analysis, usability and learning. This evaluation will include the Jigsaw CL technique, the Fishbowl CL technique and the participation of postgraduate students. CONCLUSION This paper presented advanced functionality that has been integrated on “EVE Training Area tool” in order to support: (a) multiple collaborative learning techniques (b) Spatial audio conferencing, which is targeted to sup- port principle 3. Furthermore, the paper presented techno- logical and implementation issues concerning the evolution of “EVE platform” in order to support this functionality. EVE platform is based on open technolo- gies (i.e. Java and X3D). It features a client – multi-server architecture with a modular structure that allows new functionalities to be added with minimal effort. The previous version of EVE platform provided a full set of functionalities for e-learning procedures, such as avatar representation, avatar gestures, content sharing, brainstorming, chatting etc. However, the above described functionality for maximizing the flexibility within a virtual space, implied the implementation and integration of a collaborative spatial design application in EVE platform. Such an application required: (a) a flexible way for dynamic 3D world manipula- tion such as the ability to dynamically load virtual environments and shared objects; and (b) a generic event’s management mechanism for effective non-X3D event handling. For that reason the X3D standard has been extended by a custom event sharing mechanism over the network, which manages and shares events that occur in the virtual worlds. This mechanism has been integrated in EVE platform. Another important extension of EVE platform is the design and implementation of a spatial audio conferencing server to support spatial audio conferencing functionality. By that feature EVE can support the three primary benefits of auditory spatial information displays that are identified as: (a) relieving processing demands on the visual modality, (b) enhancing spatial awareness, and (c) directing attention to important spatial events. Concerning the integration of spatial audio conferencing we have faced the following issues: (a) the selec- tion of a networked audio protocol along with algorithms and codecs that will be used to establish sessions and reproduce sound among users; and (b) the design and implementation of the algorithms that will create the illusion of 3D spatial sound. As far as the protocol is concerned, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) was used. The transmission of the audio data utilizes the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). The last technological improvement in EVE platform was the integration of a module for handling non-X3D events in order to support (a) the retrieval of new 3D objects or whole virtual worlds from a database, (such as database queries to retrieve objects and 3D environments from a database); and (b) the manipulation of http://www.h-anim.org/ Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 35 3D objects from an external and intuitive 2D interface, which implies the support of java swing events. An additional server called “2D application server” has been developed and integrated in EVE platform for servicing this type of events. To conclude with, the new version of EVE platform, by integrating the above features can support in a more effective way the EVE training area by offering to its users new tools and flexibility concerning the application of collaborative learning techniques. Now the teacher can design the EVE training area as s/he wants by (a) using predefined classroom models and having the ability to reorganize the classroom; (b) creating and setting up a virtual classroom using object library; and (c) using spatial collaboration on the implementation of CL techniques. REFERENCES Barfield, W., Cohen, M., & Rosenberg, C. (1997). Visual, auditory, and combined visual-auditory displays for enhanced situational awareness. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 7(2), 123–138. doi:10.1207/s15327108ijap0702_2 Barkley, E., Cross, P., & Major, C. (2004). Collab- orative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. Jossey-Bass. Begault, D. R. 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Educational virtual environments: Design rationale and architecture. [Kluwer Academic Publishers.]. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 29(2), 153–173. doi:10.1007/ s11042-006-0005-7 Broll, W. (1998). SmallTool - a toolkit for realizing shared virtual environments on the Internet. Distrib- uted Systems Engineering Journal, Special Issue on Distributed Virtual Environments (Vol. 5). The Brit- ish Computer Society, The Institution of Electrical Engineers and IOP Publishing Ltd. Brutzman, D., Zyda, M., Watsen, K., & Macedonia, M. (1997). Virtual reality transfer protocol design rationale. In Proceedings of the IEEE Sixth Inter- national Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WET- ICE’97), Distributed System Aspects of Sharing a Virtual Reality workshop (pp. 179-186). 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(2003). RTP: A transport protocol for real-time applications. Retrieved September 10, 2009, from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3550.txt Schafer, W., & Bowman, D. (2005). Integrating 2D and 3D views for spatial collaboration. In Proceed- ings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (pp. 41–50). Snowdon, D., Churchill, E., & Munro, A. (2001). Collaborative virtual environments: Digital spaces and places for CSCW: An introduction. In D. Snow- don, E. Churchill, & A. Munro (Eds.), Collaborative virtual environments: Digital places and spaces for interaction. Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1- 4471-0685-2_1 Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(29), 257–285. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4 Tsiatsos, T., Konstantinidis, A., & Pomportsis, A. (2010). Evaluation framework for collaborative edu- cational virtual environments. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 13(2), 65–77. http://www.bitmanagement.com/download/BS_Collaborate/BS_Collaborate_documentation.pdf http://www.bitmanagement.com/download/BS_Collaborate/BS_Collaborate_documentation.pdf http://www.bitmanagement.com/download/BS_Collaborate/BS_Collaborate_documentation.pdf https://jain-sip.dev.java.net https://jain-sip.dev.java.net http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/38.511853 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMM.2003.814795 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMM.2003.814795 http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~jori/page/index.php?n=CS.Thesis http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~jori/page/index.php?n=CS.Thesis http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/5.400452 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3550.txt http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0685-2_1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0685-2_1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4 Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 12(1), 13-37, January-March 2014 37 Christos J. Bouras, Professor, obtained his Diploma and PhD from the Computer Science and Engineering Department of Patras University (Greece). He is currently a Professor in the above department. Also he is a scientific advisor of Research Unit 6 in Computer Technology Institute & Press “Diophantus”, Patras, Greece. His research interests include Analysis of Performance of Networking and Computer Systems, Computer Networks and Protocols, Telematics and New Services, QoS and Pricing for Networks and Services, e – learning, Networked Virtual Environ- ments and WWW Issues. He has extended professional experience in Design and Analysis of Networks, Protocols, Telematics and New Services. He has published more than 400 papers in various well-known refereed books, conferences and journals. He is a co-author of 8 books in Greek. He has been a PC member and referee in various international journals and conferences. He has participated in various R&D projects. Also he is member of experts in the Greek Re- search and Technology Network (GRNET), member of Scientific Committee of GRNET, member of Strategic Committee of Digital Greece 2020, IEEE - CS Technical Committee on Learning Technologies, IEEE ComSoc Radio Communications Committee, IASTED Technical Commit- tee on Education W 6.4 Internet Applications Engineering of IFIP, and Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE). Also he is member of BoD of GFOSS, member of Central Committee of TEE and BoD of e – TEE (Vice President). Vasileios Triglianos obtained his Diploma from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University. He is currently postgraduate student in the Department. His interests include Virtual Reality applications, Distributed Virtual Environments, Computer Net- works, System Architectures, and Web based Applications. Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics of Ar- istotle University of Thessaloniki. He obtained his Diploma, his Master’s Degree and his PhD from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University (Greece). His research interests include Networked Virtual Learning Environments, Computer Uses in Educa- tion, Evaluation methods of Internet Learning Environments and Open and Distance Education using Multimedia and Internet Technologies. He has published more than 90 papers in Journals and in well-known refereed conferences and he is co-author in 3 books. He has been a PC mem- ber and referee in various international journals and conferences. He has participated in R&D projects such as OSYDD, RTS-GUNET, ODL-UP, VES, ODL-OTE, INVITE, EdComNet, VirRAD, SAPSAT, E-internationalization for Collaborative Learning (EICL) and Education of Foreign and Repatriated Students (NSRF – National Strategic Reference Framework, 2007–2013). Also he is member Technical Chamber of Greece. Web3D. (2009). X3D and Related Specifications. Web3D Consortium. Retrieved September 10, 2009, from http://www.web3d.org/x3d/specifications/ Weber, J., & Parisi, T. (2007). An open protocol for wide-area multi-user X3D. In Proceedings of the Web3D 2007 Symposium, University of Perugia, Umbria, Italy. Wray, M., & Hawkes, R. (1998). Distributed virtual environments and VRML: an event-based architec- ture. Comput. Netw. ISDN Syst. 30(1-7), 43-51. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00022-1 Yamazaki, Y., & Herder, J. (2000). Exploring spatial audio conferencing functionality in multiuser virtual environments (poster session). In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Collaborative Virtual Environments, San Francisco, CA. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/351006.351051. http://www.web3d.org/x3d/specifications/ http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/351006.351051 Reference r1 Reference r2 Reference r3 Reference r4 Reference r5 Reference r6 Reference r7 Reference r8 Reference r9 Reference r10 Reference r11 Reference r12 Reference r13 Reference r14 Reference r15 Reference r16 Reference r17 Reference r18 Reference r19 Reference r20 Reference r21 Reference r22 Reference r23 Reference r24 Reference r25 Reference r26 Reference r27 Reference r28 Reference r29 Reference r30 Reference r31 Reference r32 Reference r33 Reference r34 Reference r35 Reference r36 Reference r37 Reference r38 Reference r39 Figure f01 Figure f02 Figure f07 Figure f03 Figure f04 Figure f05 Figure f06 Figure f08 Figure f09 Figure f10 
work_bd3day3zz5euddeyzrqnv4o7wq	----	The Usage of Distance Education Practice of the World Leading Universities in Russian Multiethnic Region Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 2622 – 2625 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.392 ScienceDirect WCES 2014 The Usage of Distance Education Practice of The World Leading Universities in Russian Multiethnic Region Irina Malganova a*, Adelina Rahkimova a aKazan (Volga region) federal university, K.Marks,43, Kazan 420111, Russia Abstract A large number of functions and features within the system have made it popular Moodle virtual learning space used in major universities such as Stanford, Princeton, Oxford , London School of Economics and other courses on a variety of subjects are available on the university servers, including on economic disciplines. The aim of this work was to analyze the principles and to use e-learning practices in 70 of the best universities in the world in development of copyright-based distance learning courses in Moodle of Kazan University (Russia). Wherein, we used the methods of grouping and regional analysis and the method of survey. The author and his colleagues developed a series of e-learning resources in disciplines of "Economic geography", "Regional Economics and Management", etc. The analysis of using the system of Moodle in above universities for teaching economic subjects revealed a number of features: a) the simplicity and popularity of the LMS «Moodle» resonates with students from many universities., and b) nowadays plug language packs allow you to achieve full localization in 43 languages Moodle. The plan of the KFU science group is using the system in Tatar language, c) courses allow students to study in convenient (it is important for students with disabilities), but with limited time. In addition, students have the opportunity to co-create educational audio / video resources in several languages (Russian, Tatar, English). And this means creative and researching development of the students in a multinational region. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014. Keywords: distance learning course; Moodle; multiethnic region; regional economics 1. Introduction Education in the 21st century requires the use of creativity and innovation in teaching technology. Audio /video facilities, TV, computers, Internet, new technologies of recording and storing information in database allowed to enrich very monotonous palette of teaching tools. These new stuffs of pedagogical communication used in the U.S., * Irina Malganova. Tel.: +7-843-292-2920 E-mail address: IGMalganova@kpfu.ru © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.392&domain=pdf 2623 Irina Malganova and Adelina Rahkimova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 2622 – 2625 Japan, Western Europe, Russia not just for university students. If teacher wants to stay at the high level of professionalism, he has to learn constantly. Besides, the labor market competition, the economic crisis and forced migrations necessitate acquiring additional qualification of lecturers. In the world’s leading universities, including the top 100 QS World University Rankings, the tendency is observed of increasing the development work of students and the decreasing of classroom lessons. Therefore, Learning Management Systems (LMS), which form the basis of effective provision of distance education, are quickly developing. For LMS information we can refer to: open source software: Moodle (www.moodle.org), Sakai (www.sakaiproject.org), ATutor (www.atutor.ca), Whiteboard (www.whiteboard. Sourceforge.net); Commercial: WebCT / Black board (www.blackboard.com), Gradepoint (www.gradepoint.net), Desire2Learn (www.desire2learn.com), Learn.com (www.learn.com). The vast amount of functions and possibilities within the system of education management have made Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) a vital virtual learning space used in major universities such as Massachusetts, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, London School of Economics, etc. Courses on a variety of subjects, including economic disciplines, are available on the universities' servers. 2. Methodology In the presented work a review was carried out of the top 70 universities in the world (TOP-100) on the application of the open LMS Moodle for teaching economic subjects. The review was done in order to analyze the principles and practices of the use of e-learning by the investigated world Universities in the development of copyrighted distance learning courses on the basis of Moodle in the Institute of Management and Territorial Development of Kazan Federal University (Russia, Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan). The review includes a system of economic disciplines, which are publicly available and are free. This invaluable humanitarian venture in universities enabled the use of the foreign practice of e-learning in Kazan Federal University for teaching students of the specialty of "Regional Economics and Management" and "World Economics". Since 2008, the "Modular Object- Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment" has been used in Kazan Federal University in three main areas: "Zilant", "Bars" and "Tulpar." The names of the areas are from Tatar legends and fairy tales. Zilant - a mythological creature that has the appearance of a dragon or snake. In 1781, by imperial decree,Zilant was placed on the coat of arms of the Kazan province. Since then Zilant has been the symbol of the city of Kazan. "Zilant" - "historically" the first platform in Kazan Federal University, which was established in 2008 on the basis of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (currently a member of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Information Technology). ZILANT uses MOODLE version 1.9.x (http://zilant.kpfu.ru/). "Bars" - the central image of the coat of arms of the Republic of Tatarstan. In ancient times, the Volga Bulgars’ deity of fertility and patron of children. On the coat of arms of the Republic of Tatarstan "Bars" is the patron of the citizens of the Republic and its people. The platform "Bars" was established in the Tatar State Humanitarian and Pedagogical University (TSHPU), which became part of Kazan Federal University in 2009 (http://bars.kpfu.ru/). "Tulpar" - a winged horse in Tatar and Bashkir mythologies, which corresponds to Pegasus in Greek mythology. This platform has been in use since 2012, and it is equipped with MOODLE 2.x. (http://tulpar.kpfu.ru/). The author in collaboration with colleagues developed a number of electronic educational resources on “Regional Economics and Management”, “Economic Geography”, etc. The presented electronic educational resources were compiled on the basis of the E-learning practice using Moodle of leading universities. 3. Conclusions The analysis of Moodle usage for teaching economic disciplines in the above mentioned universities revealed a number of peculiarities: A. The simplicity, popularity and interactivity of LMS «Moodle» find a response among students from many universities and different nationalities. For example, the London School of Economics and Political Science of the University of London originally also used a commercial product (WebCT), however at the moment the transition to the Moodle system is practically completed, acting on a nonprofit basis. Of interest is the online marketplace MITOPENCOURSEWARE of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which once again confirms the 1st place of the university in the Top-100 ranking. On the web-site 62 opened courses on Economics are available (among them 35 2624 Irina Malganova and Adelina Rahkimova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 2622 – 2625 Bachelor courses, 27 – Masters). In general, at universities the number of open courses for undergraduate studies ranges from 15 to 55, for masters from 10 to 46 , although the concern is not the quantity but the quality of available resources. In virtually all 70 universities such classic economics courses as «Macroeconomics», «Microeconomics», «Econometrics», «Statistical Methods in Economics», etc. are presented. Of the 70 universities (from Massachusetts to the London School of Economics), 68% of educational establishments offer open courses of economics at the global level: «The World Economy», «International Economics», «International Trade», «International Finance», «International Political Economics». All these disciplines are used by students of KFU specializing in "World Economy" as an additional resource when preparing for a seminar on "Regional Economics and Management." However, for the course on Regional Economics only one open access source was found, «Urban and Regional Economics» of the University of Toronto (Canada). From our point of view the reason is that the notion “region” in terms of globalization becomes a multi-scale concept. In Russia all 83 members of the Russian Federationare considered as regions, which are highly contrasted in terms of territory, administrative arrangement, population and economic potential (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, the Sverdlovsk region, the Chechen Republic, Perm Territory, the Republic of Tatarstan, Chukot Autonomous Area, etc.). On the other hand, there are cross-border regions («Benelux», «Neisse», «SaarLorLux»), as well as world regions that have supranational institutions. In general, the principles used in the LMS Moodle by foreign universities are transmitted to the experience of electronic educational sources introduction in regions of Russia and allow the provision of: multiple information representation; the interactivity of the education; multiple repetition of the studied material; the creation of an always-on reference system; effective control of studies; privacy of education; conformity to the principles of effective studying. B. Pluggable language packs allow the achievement of complete localization; nowadays 43 languages are used in Moodle. The scientific group of KFU plans to develop an electronic educational source in the Tatar language. 36% of all Tatars that live in Russia are residents of the Tatarstan Republic, the rest are scattered in 30 regions of Russia. The total amount of Tatars is about 8 million people. In general, Tatarstan is a multinational region, where live Russian and Tatars and also there are many people with other nationalities like: Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mordovians, Mari, Ukrainians, Bashkirs, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Armenians, Tajiks, Belarusians, Jews, Germans, etc. This involves the development of multiethnic region of distance learning courses in the relevant languages. C. Within the electronic educational resource “Economic Geography” students attending this course also have an opportunity to use geo-information systems (MapInfoProf.7.5) for developing thematic base maps. The usage of geoinformation systems is caused by the interdisciplinarity of the “Economic geography” course. Map development and geographical analysis are not of a recent origin. However hybrid technology provides a modern, more effective, graphic and fast approach to the analysis and solution of problems facing humanity as a whole and economic organizations or groups of economists in particular. It automates the procedure of the analysis and prognosis. Due to the use of hybrid technology in electronic educational resources, students can: have an idea of hybrid technology, the process of their development and work with electronic maps; create economic data bases for any region and work with them; know the main aims of hybrid technology and the possible use of them in different economic spheres; learn to work with hybrid technology software. D. In the work general opportunities were outlined, available for the professors compiling courses in Moodle of the universities under study, as well as of the Kazan Federal University: the possibility of having online study materials; the usage of the sources both in full-time and part-time attendance; the opportunity to create bridging programs, in which the syllabus is defined by the end of the academic activity; the capacity of monitoring the process of education and work individually with each student; the possibility of exchanging study courses with other professors working in Moodle. E. Social aspects. The authorial courses presented in the work allow students to study at convenient but limited times (this is very important for disabled-students and those who missed classes through illness, etc.). Moreover, students have an opportunity to create educational audio/video resources in several languages (Russian, Tatar, and English) in coordination. This leads to the development of creative and research activities of students in a multicultural region. The experience of leading universities in the usage of the given LMS lets us take into account both its social and technical aspects: in Moodle it is possible to develop, edit and review teaching material in combination between a professor and a student. Joint creativity provides scientific progress. 2625 Irina Malganova and Adelina Rahkimova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 2622 – 2625 4. Discussion A survey conducted among first-year students of the Institute of Management and Territorial Development studying “Economics” (groups 14-345, 14-346, 14-347; 93 students) showed that despite not using electronic educational services in the schools of 90% of responders, students have a positive attitude towards the usage of the LMS Moodle in their studies (95% were “for”, 5% - had no information). 79% of those questioned would be happy to use open access courses of the world’sleading universities while preparing for their practical classes and independent works (15% have a language barrier).The groups of students, which were interviewed, have 13 different nationalities. Thеsе students are ready to take courses in three languages: Russian, Tatar and English. Among the undoubted advantages of distance learning , most students reported easy access to vast amounts of information, especially which is valuable for users of remoting research centers, and thus creates equal conditions in the distribution of information between regions within the same country, providing access to valuable scientific and educational information for students from other countries. The flexibility, interactivity, educational cooperation and social importance of the electronic educational resources should be supported by the openness of professors that introduce their courses to Moodle, and the motivation of students to advance their educational level by all accessible, effective and modern means. References Andreev A.V., S. Andreeva, Dotsenko I.B. (2008). The practice of using e-learning Moodle (pp. 124-134).Taganrog: Publish. house. TTISFU. Baran, E, Correia, A.-P., Thompson, A. (2011). Transforming online teaching practice: Critical analysis of the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers. Distance Education. Vol. 32, pp. 421-439. Hockridge D. (2013). Challenges for educators using distance and online education to prepare students for relational professions. Distance Education. Vol. 34, pp. 142-160. Konstantinidis, A., Papadopoulos, P.M., Tsiatsos, T., Demetriadis, S. (2011) Selecting and evaluating a learning management system: A moodle evaluation based on instructors and students. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies. Vol. 9, pp. 13-30. Phelan. L. (2012) Politics, practices, and possibilities of open educational resources. Distance Education. Vol. 33, pp. 279-282. Ustyugova V.N. (2010). Practicum of learning opportunities for working in the Moodle distance teaching system. (pp.34-44 ). Kazan The tutorial. TGGPU. Xu.D., Jaggars, S.S. (2013) The impact of online learning on students' course outcomes: Evidence from a large community and technical college system. Economics of Education Review, Vol. 37, pp. 46-57. 
work_7tysfdi7hveg7lgwbqeglcvd7q	----	Федеральное государственное бюджетное учреждение науки Геофизический центр Российской академии наук О Т Ч Е Т О ВЫПОЛНЕНИИ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОГО ЗАДАНИЯ на 2014 год Москва 2015 GEOPHYSICAL CENTER RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES R E P O R T O F G E O P H Y S I C A L C E N T E R O F R A S F O R 2 0 1 4 Results of the State Task Moscow 2015 The present edition contains information about the work of the Geophysical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (GC RAS) in 2014. The most important results of research carried out in the directions of the Program of fundamental scientific research of the state academies of sciences for 2013–2020, in the framework of the state task, programs of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences and departments of RAS and grants of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Research activities carried out at the expense of income-generating activities are listed. The full list of GC RAS employees’ publications in 2014 is also included. The edition is intended for specialists in the field of geophysics and related geosciences. Editors in chief: A. A. Soloviev, Dr., Deputy Director of Research T. A. Tatarinova, Scientific Secretary of GC RAS Editorial board: A. D. Gvishiani, Academician RAS E. O. Kedrov, Cand. Sci. (physics and mathematics) O. V. Alexanova Approved for publishing on 29.04.2015 Layout Production: O. V. Alexanova, E. O. Kedrov Report of Geophysical Center of RAS for 2014. M.: GC RAS, 2015, 149 pp., 92 Figs. DOI: 10.2205/2015BS017 URL: http://ebooks.wdcb.ru/2015/2015BS017/2015BS017.pdf ISSN: 2308-5983 © 2015 Geophysical Center of RAS В настоящем издании содержатся сведения о работе Федерального государственного бюджетного учреждения науки Геофизический центр Российской академии наук (ГЦ РАН) в 2014 году. Освещены наиболее важные результаты исследований, проводимых по направлениям Программы фундаментальных научных исследований государственных академий наук на 2013–2020 гг., в рамках государственного задания, программ Президиума и отделений РАН, а также грантов РФФИ. Перечислены научные исследования, проводимые за счет средств от приносящей доход деятельности. Приведен полный список публикаций сотрудников ГЦ РАН за 2014 год. Издание рассчитано на специалистов в области геофизики и смежных наук о Земле. Ответственные редакторы: А. А. Соловьев, д.ф.-м.н., заместитель директора по науке ГЦ РАН Т. А. Татаринова, ученый секретарь ГЦ РАН Редколлегия: А. Д. Гвишиани, академик РАН Э. О. Кедров, к.ф.-м.н. О. В. Алексанова Утверждено к печати 29.04.2015 г. Компьютерная подготовка оригинал-макета: О. В. Алексанова, Э. О. Кедров Отчет о выполнении государственного задания на 2014 год М.: ГЦ РАН, 2015, 149с., 92 ил. DOI: 10.2205/2015BS017 URL: http://ebooks.wdcb.ru/2015/2015BS017/2015BS017.pdf ISSN: 2308-5983 © ГЦ РАН, 2015 СОДЕРЖАНИЕ 1. О государственном задании ГЦ РАН на 2014 год ................................................................................ 6 2. Разработка информационных технологий организации доступа к ресурсам и совершенствование управления данными Мировых центров данных по физике твердой Земли и солнечно-земной физике ............................................................................................................... 12 3. Исследование и прогнозирование нелинейных геодинамических процессов в гетерогенной блочной среде при подземной изоляции радиоактивных отходов ........................... 24 4. Развитие и сопровождение интерактивного ресурса данных по солнечно-земной физике SPIDR .................................................................................................................................................. 35 5. Разработка и внедрение методов дискретного математического анализа для изучения состояния геомагнитной активности и контроля качества магнитных данных ........................... 40 6. Разработка алгоритмов сглаживания динамических геофизических данных на базе дискретного математического анализа .................................................................................................... 53 7. Интеллектуальная медицинская геоинформационная система для территории России в условиях изменяющегося климата ......................................................................................................... 60 8. Аналитическая геоинформационная система для комплексной оценки ресурсов стратегического минерального сырья (ГИС «Ресурсы») ..................................................................... 68 9. Расширение базы геоданных ГИС за счет включения новых данных по ГНСС, ДЗЗ и наблюдательным геофизическим сетям, данных о сплоченности морского льда и движениях земной поверхности в пунктах ГНСС; разработка архитектуры ГИС- приложения и интеграция алгоритмов пространственного анализа данных о геофизических полях в среду ГИС ............................................................................................................. 76 10. Разработка метода спектрально-временного анализа (СВАН) для распознавания магнитных бурь в наблюдениях магнитного поля Земли; разработка метода СВАН для оценивания параметров пульсаций магнитного поля Земли с использованием полигармонических моделей и параллельных вычислений ............................................................... 81 11. Развитие новых методов распознавания аномальных событий на временных рядах обсерваторских наблюдений магнитного поля Земли и расширение сети геомагнитных наблюдений в РФ ........................................................................................................................................... 92 12. Исследование геомагнитного поля и разработка методов фильтрации его естественных вариаций в целях повышения точности наклонного бурения скважин в Арктическом регионе .................................................................................................................................. 103 13. Создание семейства численных физико-математических моделей для изучения и прогнозирования электродинамики верхней атмосферы Земли с использованием данных геомагнитного спутника SWARM и высокопроизводительных компьютерных систем ........... 110 14. Распознавание предвестников геомагнитных бурь на основе спектрально-временного анализа наблюдений магнитных обсерваторий с использованием полигармонических моделей и вычислительных систем сверхвысокой производительности ...................................... 117 15. Оценка геомагнитной активности в режиме реального времени методами дискретного математического анализа .................................................................................................. 128 16. Усовершенствование моделей вариаций геомагнитного поля с использованием новых данных обсерваторий российско-украинского сегмента сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ ............ 131 17. Построение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф ....................................................................................................................................................... 134 СПИСОК ПУБЛИКАЦИЙ СОТРУДНИКОВ ГЦ РАН за 2014 год ................................................. 137 6 1. О государственном задании ГЦ РАН на 2014 год Государственное задание Федерального государственного бюджетного учреждения науки Геофизический центр Российской академии наук (ГЦ РАН) на 2014 год включало в себя 17 научно-исследовательских работ по следующим приоритетным направлениям развития науки, технологий и техники в РФ: • Информационно-телекоммуникационные системы; • Науки о жизни; • Рациональное природопользование; • Энергоэффективность, энергосбережение, ядерная энергетика; разделам перечня критических технологий РФ: • Технологии мониторинга и прогнозирования состояния окружающей среды, предот- вращения и ликвидации ее загрязнения; • Технологии предупреждения и ликвидации чрезвычайных ситуаций природного и техногенного характера; направлениям Программы фундаментальных научных исследований государственных академий наук на 2013–2020 гг.: • 70. Физические поля, внутреннее строение Земли и глубинные геодинамические про- цессы; • 74. Комплексное освоение и сохранение недр Земли, инновационные процессы разработки месторождений полезных ископаемых и глубокой переработки мине- рального сырья; • 78. Катастрофические эндогенные и экзогенные процессы, включая экстремальные изменения космической погоды: проблемы прогноза и снижения уровня негативных последствий; • 79. Эволюция окружающей среды и климата под воздействием природных и антропогенных факторов, научные основы рационального природопользования и устойчивого развития; территориальная организация хозяйства и общества; • 80. Научные основы разработки методов, технологий и средств исследования поверхности и недр Земли, атмосферы, включая ионосферу и магнитосферу Земли, гидросферы и криосферы; численное моделирование и геоинформатика (инфра- структура пространственных данных и ГИС-технологии). В рамках фундаментальных исследований по данным направлениям выполнялись: 1. Проекты в рамках тем НИР (базовое финансирование) – 5 2. Проекты фундаментальных программ Президиума РАН и ОНЗ РАН – 8 7 В рамках научных исследований за счет средств от приносящей доход деятельности: 1. Проекты РФФИ – 3 2. Государственные контракты – 1 3. Контракты с российскими заказчиками – 6 Согласно государственному заданию в рамках фундаментальных исследований ла- боратории ГЦ РАН выполняли научные исследования по следующим темам: 1. Тема № 01201456271 «Разработка информационных технологий организации досту- па к ресурсам и совершенствование управления данными Мировых центров данных по физике твердой Земли и солнечно-земной физике». Руководители – гл.н.с., к.ф.- м.н. Н. А. Сергеева; гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. И. Кафтан; зав. лаб., к.ф.-м.н. Э. О. Кедров; зав. сектором А. И. Рыбкина (тема продолжается); 2. Тема № 01201456270 «Исследование и прогнозирование нелинейных геодинами- ческих процессов в гетерогенной блочной среде при подземной изоляции радиоак- тивных отходов». Руководители – гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. Н. Морозов; зав. лаб., д.т.н. В. Н. Татаринов (тема продолжается); 3. Тема № 01201252859 «Развитие и сопровождение интерактивного ресурса данных по солнечно-земной физике SPIDR». Руководитель – в.н.с., к.ф.-м.н. М. Н. Жижин (тема завершена); 4. Тема № 01201252857 «Разработка и внедрение методов дискретного математиче- ского анализа для изучения состояния геомагнитной активности и контроля качества магнитных данных». Руководитель – зам. директора по науке, зав. лаб., д.ф.-м.н. А. А. Соловьев (тема завершена); 5. Тема № 01201252858 «Разработка алгоритмов сглаживания динамических геофизических данных на базе дискретного математического анализа». Руководи- тель – гл.н.с., д.ф.-м.н. С. М. Агаян (тема завершена). В 2014 г. ГЦ РАН принимал участие в выполнении следующих научных программ Президиума РАН и ОНЗ РАН согласно государственному заданию: 1. Программа Президиума РАН 5П «Фундаментальные науки – медицине». • Проект «Интеллектуальная медицинская геоинформационная система для территории России в условиях изменяющегося климата». 2. Программа Президиума РАН 27П «Фундаментальный базис инновационных технологий прогноза оценки, добычи и глубокой комплексной переработки страте- гического минерального сырья, необходимого для модернизации экономики России». • Проект «Аналитическая геоинформационная система для комплексной оценки ресурсов стратегического минерального сырья (ГИС «Ресурсы»)». 8 3. Программа Президиума РАН 44П «Поисковые фундаментальные научные исследования в интересах развития Арктической зоны Российской Федерации». • Проект «Исследование геомагнитного поля и разработка методов фильтрации его естественных вариаций в целях повышения точности наклонного бурения скважин в Арктическом регионе». 4. Программа Президиума РАН 43П «Фундаментальные проблемы математического моделирования». • Проект «Распознавание предвестников геомагнитных бурь на основе спек- трально-временного анализа наблюдений магнитных обсерваторий с использо- ванием полигармонических моделей и вычислительных систем сверхвысокой производительности»; • Проект «Создание семейства численных физико-математических моделей для изучения и прогнозирования электродинамики верхней атмосферы Земли с ис- пользованием данных геомагнитного спутника SWARM и высокопроизводи- тельных компьютерных систем». 5. Программа Отделения наук о Земле РАН № 7 «Геофизические данные: анализ и интерпретация». • Проект «Расширение базы геоданных ГИС за счет включения новых данных по ГНСС, ДЗЗ и наблюдательным геофизическим сетям, данных о сплоченности морского льда и движениях земной поверхности в пунктах ГНСС; разработка архитектуры ГИС-приложения и интеграция алгоритмов пространственного анализа данных о геофизических полях в среду ГИС»; • Проект «Разработка метода спектрально-временного анализа (СВАН) для распознавания магнитных бурь в наблюдениях магнитного поля Земли; Разра- ботка метода СВАН для оценивания параметров пульсаций магнитного поля Земли с использованием полигармонических моделей и параллельных вычис- лений»; • Проект «Развитие новых методов распознавания аномальных событий на временных рядах обсерваторских наблюдений магнитного поля Земли и рас- ширение сети геомагнитных наблюдений в РФ». Перечень научных исследований за счет средств от приносящей доход деятельности в 2014 году включает в себя: 1. Соглашение № 14.607.21.0058 о предоставлении субсидии. Выполнение прикладных научных исследований по лоту шифр 2014-14-579-0057 по теме «Разработка иннова- ционной технологии и создание экспериментального образца аппаратно-программ- ного комплекса для мониторинга экстремальных геомагнитных явлений с использо- ванием наземных и спутниковых данных» (шифр заявки «2014-14-579-0057-013») в рамках реализации федеральной целевой программы «Исследования и разработки по 9 приоритетным направлениям развития научно-технологического комплекса России на 2014–2020 годы». Заказчик: Министерство образования и науки Российской Фе- дерации. Руководитель: директор ГЦ РАН, академик А. Д. Гвишиани (продолжа- ется); 2. Грант РФФИ № 12-05-00583 «Оценка геомагнитной активности в режиме реального времени методами дискретного математического анализа». Руководитель: директор ГЦ РАН, академик А. Д. Гвишиани (завершен); 3. Грант РФФИ № 12-05-00029 «Построение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф». Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.г.-м.н. А. Г. Родников (завершен); 4. Грант РФФИ № 14-05-90419 «Усовершенствование моделей вариаций геомагнит- ного поля с использованием новых данных обсерваторий российско-украинского сегмента сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ». Руководитель: директор ГЦ РАН, академик А. Д. Гвишиани (продолжается); 5. Договор № 1-ГД «Проведение цикла GPS-наблюдений за современными движени- ями земной коры». Заказчик: ОАО «Красноярская горно-геологическая компания» (ОАО «Красноярскгеология»). Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. Н. Морозов (договор завершен); 6. Договор №1/14 «Услуга по предоставлению цифрового демонстрационного ком- плекса со сферическим экраном для использования на VII-м Международном салоне «Комплексная безопасность 2014». Заказчик: ФГБУ «НПО «Тайфун». Руководитель: зав. сектором А. И. Рыбкина (договор завершен); 7. Лицензионный договор № 1 о предоставлении неисключительного права использования Атласа магнитного поля Земли. Заказчик: Комиссия по геологиче- ской карте мира (КГКМ). Руководитель: зав. сектором А. И. Рыбкина (договор за- вершен); 8. Договор б/н «Разработка сервиса геоинформационной системы (ГИС) по новообразованиям». Заказчик: Благотворительный фонд Марка Кауфмана. Руково- дитель: зав. сектором А. И. Рыбкина (договор завершен); 9. Договор № 12196 «Выполнение магниторазведочных работ на местности для выявления возможных мест строительства павильонов геофизической обсервато- рии». Заказчик: компания «Шлюмберже Лоджелко, Инк.». Руководитель: зав. лаб., д.ф.-м.н. А. А. Соловьев (договор завершен); 10. Договор № 355.433/2014 «Геодезические изыскания на полигоне ОАО «Вологод- ского оптико-механического завода». Заказчик: ОАО «Вологодский оптико-механи- ческий завод». Руководитель: зав. лаб., д.ф.-м.н. А. А. Соловьев (договор завершен). В 2013 году ГЦ РАН присоединился к Технологической платформе (ТП) «Техноло- гии экологического развития» (Протокол № 7 от 6 марта 2013 года заседания Правления ТП). Организация-координатор – Русское географическое общество. В соответствии с 10 решением Правительственной комиссии по высоким технологиям и инновациям под председательством В. В. Путина ТП «Технологии экологического развития» в 2011 г. была внесена в утвержденный правительственной комиссией перечень технологических платформ. В результате выполнения государственного задания в 2014 году сотрудниками ГЦ РАН получено 8 авторских свидетельств. Среди важнейших результатов научных исследований 2014 года следует выделить следующие: Результат № 1. В 2014 г. введен в строй Российско-украинский центр геомагнитных данных, являющийся ядром российско-украинского сегмента международной сети гео- магнитных наблюдений высшего стандарта качества ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ (http://geomag.gcras.ru/). Отличительной особенностью Центра является созданная впервые автоматизированная система распознавания техногенных возмущений на магнитограммах по мере их поступления. Данная система контроля качества облегчает экспертам подготовку окончательных магнитограмм из предварительных записей. В 2014 г. была значительно расширена сеть геомагнитных обсерваторий международного стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ на территории РФ. Введены в строй геомагнитные обсерватории «Климовская» (Архангельская область) и «Бор» (Красноярский край) (Соловьев А. А., Лукьянова Р. Ю., Красноперов Р. И., Сидоров Р. В., Добровольский М. Н., Груднев А. А.). Рисунок 1.1 – Сайт Российско-украинского центра геомагнитных данных и образец данных, поступающих в Центр Результат № 2. Впервые построены геодинамические модели глубинного строения литосферы регионов Охотского, Японского, Филиппинского и Южно-Китайского морей, характеризующихся повышенной сейсмичностью, извержениями вулканов и другими природными катастрофами. Модели основаны на комплексной интерпретации всех доступных геолого-геофизических данных. Установлено аномальное строение недр Земли под регионами природных катастроф, выделены древние и зарождающиеся субдукцион- ные зоны, обусловливающие сейсмические и вулканические явления, оконтурены астено- сферные диапиры, определяющие строение земной коры (Родников А. Г., Забарин- ская Л. П., Рашидов В. А., Сергеева Н. А.). http://geomag.gcras.ru/ 11 Рисунок 1.2 – Монография «Геодинамические модели глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф активных континентальных окраин» Результат № 3. В зоне сочленения Сибирской платформы и Западно-Сибирской плиты создан геодинамический полигон для наблюдений за современными смещениями блоков земной коры на основе глобальных навигационных спутниковых систем GPS/ГЛОНАСС. В 2014 г. была зарегистрирована геодинамическая активизация Муратов- ского разлома. Образование зон растягивающих напряжений в восточной части и сжима- ющих в западной части района, как следствия вертикальных положительных движений глыбы Сибирской платформы, принципиально важны для прогноза сохранности изоляци- онных свойств пород при проектировании первого в России пункта глубинного захороне- ния высокоактивных радиоактивных отходов (Морозов В. Н., Татаринов В. Н., Каф- тан В. И., Колесников И. Ю., Каган А. И.). Рисунок 1.3 – Изменения длин базисных линий за 2013–2014 гг. Черный цвет – длина линий не изменилась или увеличилась (растяжение), красный цвет – длина линий уменьшилась (сжатие) 12 2. Разработка информационных технологий организации доступа к ресурсам и совершенствование управления данными Мировых центров данных по физике твердой Земли и солнечно-земной физике Номер гос. регистрации № 01201456271 (0145-2014-0001) Руководители – гл.н.с., к.ф.-м.н. Н. А. Сергеева; гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. И. Кафтан; зав. лаб., к.ф.-м.н. Э. О. Кедров; зав. сектором А. И. Рыбкина Данная научно-исследовательская работа направлена на разработку новых информа- ционных технологий, обеспечивающих свободный и удобный доступ к ресурсам Мировых центров данных (МЦД) по физике твердой Земли (ФТЗ) и солнечно-земной физике (СЗФ) и базам электронных публикаций Геофизического центра РАН, а также на совершенство- вание системы управления данными МЦД для интеграции информационных ресурсов Центров в Мировую систему данных (МСД) Международного совета по науке (МСН), регулярными членами которой они являются с 2012 г. 2.1. Разработка новых информационных технологий доступа к данным МЦД, развитие пользовательского интерфейса, расширение информационных ресурсов в свободном доступе на сайтах Центров. Совершенствование управления данными в МЦД по СЗФ и ФТЗ В 2014 г. основным объектом исследования, обработки и реорганизации были все виды данных по разделу «Геомагнитные вариации» МЦД по СЗФ. В этом разделе пред- ставлены результаты наблюдений, полученные мировой сетью геомагнитных обсервато- рий и станций за период с 1957 г. по настоящее время: индексы геомагнитной активности, магнитограммы, минутные, среднечасовые и среднегодовые значения элементов магнит- ного поля Земли, данные о магнитных бурях, внезапных началах бурь и геомагнитных пульсациях. Проведена инвентаризация данных, проверены и дополнены записи о наличии дан- ных в регистрационной системе МЦД. Реорганизованы веб-страницы доступа к данным, размещенным на сайте МЦД. Обращение к каждому виду данных организовано по пря- мым ссылкам, для каждого вида данных создана отдельная интернет-страница, с которой можно перейти к подробному описанию данных, описанию формата представления данных и к самим данным (рис. 2.1). Подготовлены и размещены на сайте новые описания данных и описания форматов. Для данных, представляющих собой временные ряды за длительный промежуток времени и полученных на геомагнитных станциях России и стран СНГ, разработана структура реляционной базы данных под СУБД MySQL для организации доступа к дан- ным через форму запроса, позволяющую формулировать выбор данных из БД по различ- ным параметрам. База данных представляет собой структурированную совокупность данных, представленных изначально в текстовом (ASCII) формате. Это таблицы средне- 13 годовых, среднечасовых и минутных значений, элементов геомагнитного поля и уникаль- ный массив значений К-индекса, зарегистрированных на 33 станциях России и стран СНГ с 1957 г. по настоящее время. Создан макет формы запроса для выборки из БД необходи- мых данных по условиям, примененным к ряду параметров. Написан гипертекстовый код, формирующий интернет-страницу с формой запроса, разработана блок-схема выполнения запроса. Рисунок 2.1 – Пример интернет-страницы для доступа к различным индексам геомагнитной активности, с которой можно перейти к описанию данных, описанию формата представления данных и к самим данным Все новые информационные ресурсы в электронной форме, поступившие в Мировые центры данных в 2014 г., размещены на сайте в открытом доступе. В МЦД по СЗФ из геофизической обсерватории «Паратунка» ИКИР ДВО РАН был передан на хранение большой массив цифровых изображений магнитограмм за 40 лет (более 50 000 файлов). Поступившие данные были проверены и размещены на сайте вместе с сопроводитель- ными документами. Одновременно по-новому, более удобно для пользователей, был организован доступ ко всем данным из раздела «Магнитограммы» через сводную таблицу, в которой дана информация о станциях и периодах времени, для которых есть данные (рис. 2.2). Созданы программные модули для анализа, проверки качества и записи данных в стандартных форматах для индексов геомагнитной активности аm, an, as и аа. Осуществлен перевод 5 каталогов данных о солнечных протонных событиях за пе- риод 1970‒1996 гг. из отдельных постраничных изображений формата TIFF (более 900 страниц) в единые файлы формата PDF. Каталоги в новом формате размещены на сайте. С целью увеличения существующих электронных информационных ресурсов по геофизике, а также предотвращения утраты ценнейших старых данных, продолжалась начатая в 2013 г. работа по переводу исторических данных с бумажного носителя в элек- тронную форму (формат PDF) поточным сканированием. 14 Рисунок 2.2 – Интернет-страница доступа к цифровым изображениям магнитограмм Завершен перевод в электронную форму таблиц (36 000 бумажных документов) с определениями К и С индексов и данными о магнитных бурях на обсерваториях России и стран СНГ (1957‒2005 гг.) (таблица 2.1). Таблица 2.1 – Геомагнитные данные, переведенные в электронную форму Код станции K-индекс Бури Внезапные начала Код станции K-индекс Бури Внезапные начала AAA 1964‒1990 1989, 1990 MOL 1975‒1979 ARS 1976‒2005 2000‒2005 MOS 1957‒1990 2000‒2005 1957‒1978 ASH 1958‒1990 1958‒1970 NVS 1971‒2005 2000‒2005 CCS 1957‒1990 1989 ODE 1957‒1990 1989 1957‒1977 CWE 1957‒1990 1989, 1990 PET 1973‒2003 1989‒2003 1989‒1991 DIK 1957‒1990 POD 1974‒2005 1990‒2005 HIS 1959‒1990 1989, 1990 SRE 1957‒1966 1957‒1965 IRT 1957‒1990 1982‒1990 1957‒1988 SVD 1957‒1975 KNG 2001‒2005 2001‒2005 TFS 1957‒1990 1989‒2003 1957‒1983 KGD 1973‒1979 TIK 1957‒1990 1989 KIV 1958‒1990 1959‒1981 TKT 1957‒1990 1989 1957‒1979 KZN 1957‒1990 2000‒2005 1957‒1983 TMK 1958‒1970 LNN 1957‒1990 2000‒2005 UBA 1973‒1979 1988, 1989 1966‒1989 LVV 1957‒1990 1989 VLA 1957‒1990 2000‒2005 MGD 1965‒1994 2000‒2005 VOS 1958‒1979 MIR 1957‒1979 YAK 1957‒1990 2000‒2005 MMK 1957‒1990 1989 YSS 1957‒1979 2000‒2005 MNK 1962‒1990 2000‒2005 15 Все электронные документы прошли процедуры проверки и редактирования с ис- пользованием ПО ScanSoft PaperPort. Составлен каталог электронных документов. База данных сформирована и размещена на сайте в свободном доступе. О результатах этой работы был представлен доклад на конференцию CODATA 2014 г. [1]. Начат перевод в электронную форму таблиц среднечасовых значений элементов геомагнитного поля станций России и стран СНГ. Объем этой части данных около 350 тысяч документов. В 2014 г. переведено в электронную форму более 25 тысяч документов. В процессе работы были найдены таблицы за некоторые годы, отсутствовавшие в виде электронных число- вых массивов. Такие данные переведены в цифровую форму с использованием ПО ABBYY FineReader 9.0 для трансформации изображений в текстовый формат и с после- дующей проверкой при помощи ПО Microsoft Exсel 2007, используя вычисления средних значений строк и столбцов. Подготовлены метаданные для ряда данных из раздела «Геомагнитные вариации» на языке XML стандарта ISO (DIF-формат) и размещены в репозитории метаданных, из которого по протоколу OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) включены в базу метаданных Портала Мировой системы данных. В соответствии с решением Научного комитета МСД были подготовлены стендовые доклады [2, 3] в качестве отчетов о деятельности МЦД по СЗФ и МЦД по ФТЗ за два года для представления на Форуме членов МСД, проходившем 2 ноября 2014 г. в Нью Дели, Индия. Одновременно с описанными работами проведены научные исследования, основан- ные на использовании и анализе больших объемов данных, собранных в МЦД. 2.2. Построение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения пассивных континентальных окраин России вдоль Северного Ледовитого океана с целью возможного прогнозирования перспективных районов распространения залежей полезных ископаемых Одним из таких исследований является изучение глубинного строения пассивных континентальных окраин России вдоль Северного Ледовитого океана. В 2014 г. были собраны геолого-геофизические данные для региона Карского моря из фондов МЦД, многочисленных публикаций и интернет-источников. Рассмотрена геодинамика развития литосферных плит Северного Ледовитого океана, определяющая строение и эволюцию пассивных континентальных окраин. Построена структурная схема литосферных плит с указанием направления и скорости их перемещения по данным GPS. По данным много- численных сейсмических исследований построен глубинный разрез земной коры и верх- ней мантии Южно-Карской впадины [4‒6] (рис. 2.3). Юго-западная часть разреза распо- ложена в пределах Западно-Сибирской плиты, а северо-восточная открывается в океан. Кора впадины имеет двухслойное строение. Глубина Мохо увеличивается до 43 км. Максимальная мощность осадочного слоя составляет 12 км, слой характеризуется повы- шенным градиентом и скоростями от 3 до 6,2 км/с. Верхняя часть коры со скоростью от 16 6,4 до 6,8 км/с и мощностью около 12 км образует прогиб до глубины 25 км. Отмечаются пониженные сейсмические скорости в основании коры вдоль поверхности Мохо, свиде- тельствующие об активности глубинных процессов в верхней мантии. В основании впадины, вероятно, прослеживаются рифтовые системы, протянувшиеся со стороны Западно-Сибирской низменности. Рисунок 2.3 – Сейсмический разрез земной коры Южно-Карской впадины: 1 − главные разделы в земной коре; 2 − граница Мохо; 3 − изолинии сейсмических скоростей, км/с Установлено, что развитие Южно-Карской впадины связано с эволюцией Западно- Сибирской плиты и образованием Северного Ледовитого океана. До позднего мела Южно-Карская впадина была северной окраиной Западно-Сибирской плиты, образование которой связано с пермско-триасовыми процессами рифтогенеза, сопровождаемого излияниями траппов. В мезозое в связи с раскрытием Северного Ледовитого океана Южно-Карская впадина стала частью пассивной континентальной окраины с накоплением мощных толщ морских песчано-глинистых пород. В 2014 г. была подготовлена и опубликована монография «Геодинамические модели глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф активных континентальных окраин» [7], являющаяся итогом многолетней работы по изучению глубинного строения переход- ной зоны от Евразийского континента к Тихому океану. Впервые построены геодинами- ческие модели глубинного строения литосферы регионов Охотского, Японского, Филип- пинского и Южно-Китайского морей, характеризующихся повышенной сейсмичностью, извержениями вулканов и другими природными катастрофами. Модели основаны на комплексной интерпретации всех доступных геолого-геофизических данных. Установлено аномальное строение недр Земли под регионами природных катастроф, выделены древние и зарождающиеся субдукционные зоны, обусловливающие сейсмические и вулканические явления, оконтурены астеносферные диапиры, определяющие строение земной коры. 2.3. Изучение влияния физических полей различной природы на геодинамические процессы с целью создания нового подхода к прогнозированию природных катастроф Вторым направлением научных исследований является изучение связи сейсмично- сти и вулканизма Земли с солнечной активностью и процесса генерации нейтронов в связи с эндогенной активностью Земли. 17 Для исследования связи сейсмичности и вулканизма Земли с солнечной активностью использовался метод анализа, основанный на вейвлет-разложении сигналов в неортого- нальных базисах [8]. Результатом является вывод о существовании общего векового цикла в системе Солнце–Земля, имеющего свои особенности как на Солнце, так и на Земле. На Солнце в начале цикла активность незначительная, затем она постепенно увеличивается. На Земле, наоборот, в начале цикла сейсмичность максимальна, затем она постепенно уменьшается. Это свидетельствует об отрицательной корреляции сейсмичности Земли с солнечной активностью. Ранее было показано, что землетрясения и вулканические извержения являются ис- точником нейтронов. В экспериментах, проводимых в 2009‒2012 гг. одновременно в ИЗМИРАН и на пункте комплексных наблюдений Камчатского филиала Геофизической службы РАН вблизи г. Петропавловск-Камчатский, были зарегистрированы потоки частиц, связанные с сильными землетрясениями и вулканическим извержением в Ислан- дии. На этом приборном комплексе регистрируются тепловые нейтроны и быстрые нейтроны с энергией больше 2 МэВ. В 2013–2014 гг. наблюдались всплески потоков нейтронов не только на этом приборном комплексе, но и на нейтронных мониторах (НМ), пороговая энергия которых равна 20–30 МэВ (НМ Баксан, Эльбрус; НМ JUNG1, Швейца- рия). На этих НМ на фоне непрерывного нарастания величины потоков нейтронов наблю- дались всплески с интенсивностью потоков частиц, достигавшей около 10 000% и 1000% соответственно. Наблюдались они на протяжении нескольких часов. Эти исследования имеют важное научное и прикладное значение [9]. На их основании можно сделать вывод о том, что в ближайшее время могут произойти сильные землетрясения и вулканические извержения в различных районах мира, но определить их точное место и время невоз- можно из-за ограниченного количества данных. 2.4. Развитие геоинформационных технологий с целью повышения эффективности анализа пространственно-временного распределения геофизических полей. Расширение базы геопространственных данных ГИС по геологии, геофизике и дистанционному зондированию Осуществлен сбор данных по геологии, геофизике и дистанционному зондированию и предварительный анализ собранных данных. Проведена подготовка и оформление цифровых тематических карт в среде ГИС, подготовлены метаданные. Подготовленные с помощью серверного ПО тематические слои данных опубликованы в виде единого карто- графического веб-сервиса, обеспечивающего оперативный доступ к геопространственным данным. В базу геопространственных данных включена цифровая карта средних значений мощности осадочного чехла, подготовленная на основе имеющихся геологических карт разного масштаба, оцифрованных в ИФЗ РАН, GFZ Potsdam, NOAA [10‒15]. Включенные в базу данные были обработаны, оформлены и опубликованы в формате картографи- ческих веб-сервисов. К ним открыт свободный доступ посредством геопортала ГЦ РАН (рис. 2.4). 18 Рисунок 2.4 – Средние значения мощности осадочного чехла − глубины от поверхности твердой Земли до поверхности кристаллического фундамента 2.5. Организация удаленного доступа к картографическим веб- сервисам с помощью специализированного геопортала ГЦ РАН В 2014 г. представлена новая версия геопортала ГЦ РАН (http://gis.gcras.ru/), став- шего единой точкой интерактивного доступа к публикуемым картографическим веб- сервисам. Выбранная технология геопортала обладает большой гибкостью и имеет серь- езный потенциал для расширения своих функциональных возможностей. В интерфейсе геопортала предоставлены возможности использования различных вариантов представле- ния цифровых геопространственных данных. Функциональные возможности геопортала позволяют эффективно и быстро организовать многоуровневый авторизованный доступ к тем или иным картографическим сервисам. На главной странице геопортала представлено общее описание проекта, изложено основное назначение и цели проекта, кратко описано общее представление и архитектура всей системы. В разделе «Данные» представлено общее описание базы геоданных, пере- числены основные тематические категории геоданных, даны примеры оформления неко- торых тематических слоев. Отдельно дано описание структуры метаданных. Для органи- зации интерактивного доступа к базе метаданных через Интернет были использованы технологии JavaServer Pages (JSP) и JavaScript. В разделе «Сервисы» предоставлены возможности использования различных вариантов представления цифровых геопростран- ственных данных с использованием современных онлайн сервисов, таких как ArcGIS.com Map и Google Earth, в виде файлов для настольных приложений ArcMap или ArcGIS Explorer или в виде интерфейса программирования приложений ArcGIS JavaScript API (рис. 2.5). 19 Рисунок 2.5 – Раздел «Сервисы». Имеется выбор вариантов представления данных В разделе «Просмотр» также имеется доступ ко всем опубликованным картографи- ческим сервисам. В разделе «Поиск» реализована возможность интерактивного поиска по всем сервисам геопортала. В разделе «Публикации» перечислены основные опубликован- ные работы, подготовленные в ходе работы над системой. В разделе «Карта» можно вызывать из базы данных и просматривать цифровые слои геолого-геофизической инфор- мации, просматривать метаданные, создавать свои собственные цифровые слои путем использования ресурсов геопортала, сохранять и выводить их на печать, измерять пло- щадь и длину объектов, получать их координаты, делать собственные комментарии в виде закладок и др. 2.6. Выполнение функций Национального геофизического комитета РАН (НГК РАН). Общие итоги деятельности НГК РАН В 2014 г. были проведены заседания всех секций НГК РАН, на которых рассмотрены основные научные результаты, проекты и международные мероприятия International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), а также подведены итоги работы в 2014 г. Основное внимание было уделено началу подготовки к 26-й Генеральной ассамблее Международ- ного геодезического и геофизического союза. Важным вопросом является начало подго- товки четырехлетних национальных отчетов о деятельности научных секций Комитета. 2.7. Развитие технологий электронных публикаций как составной части интеграции данных и информации по наукам о Земле Развитие технологий электронных публикаций направлено на дальнейшее развитие разработанных ранее современных методов и инструментов отображения и публикации динамического и интерактивного научного контента. 20 Разработан пакет PROGCRAS для трансляции материалов электронной книжной се- рии «Труды по геоинформатике», издаваемой ГЦ РАН, обеспечивающий генерацию PDF- версий публикуемых материалов с одновременной генерацией XML-метафайлов для регистрации в системе CrossRef. Разработан новый LaTeX-класс ELXPAPER, обеспечивающий трансляцию статей для журналов ГЦ РАН и максимально адаптированный к конверсии статей в формат электронных книг EPUB3. Пакет также обеспечивает автоматическую генерацию XML- метаописаний для включения в фонды Национальной научной электронной библиотеки eLIBRARY.RU. Выполнен не запланированный ранее большой объем работ по подготовке метаопи- саний всех статей, ранее опубликованных в «Российском журнале наук о Земле» с начала его издания (1998 г.) и загрузке его в eLIBRARY.RU. По материалам разработки опубли- кована статья [16]. Подготовлена и направлена заявка в Роспатент на регистрацию объекта интеллектуальной собственности. Разработана новая версия программного комплекса конверсии исходных текстов в LaTeX2e к формату электронных книг EPUB3, что делает доступными публикации статей не только на десктопах, но и на портативных устройствах, таких как iPad, iPhone, смарт- фонах на базе Android и эмуляторах типа AZARDI и др. Подготовлен проект технического задания на создание в ГЦ РАН на базе Мирового центра данных по солнечно-земной физике современной системы регистрации, публика- ции и цитирования геофизических данных с присвоением цифрового идентификатора объекта DOI (Digital Object Identifier). В качестве регистрационного агентства будет использоваться система CrossRef. Данный проект базируется на рекомендациях, разраба- тываемых Группой публикации данных Мировой системы данных Международного совета по науке (ICSU-WDS Working Group on Data Publication) и рядом других групп, в которых формулируется и развивается современный подход к документированию науч- ного контента. Получение новых данных не может более рассматриваться как некая вспомогательная деятельность, а становится важнейшей задачей геоинформатики. Данные следует считать полноценными результатами исследований, которые, будучи использо- ваны при создании научного продукта, подлежат цитированию так же, как и другие научно-исследовательские источники информации, такие как журналы, статьи, книги и т.п. [17]. Ведется разработка пользовательских интерфейсов. Будет сформирована база метаданных, включающая подробное описание самих данных, информацию о производи- теле данных и публикаторе данных. 2.8. Развитие технологий сферической визуализации в области геопространственных данных по наукам о Земле Разработаны информационные технологии интерактивной визуализации информа- ции из базы данных МЦД на многофункциональном программно-аппаратном демонстра- ционном комплексе со сферическим экраном (ПО «ORBUS», написанное на языке C++), включая возможность подготовки данных к визуализации. В качестве объектов, выводи- 21 мых на сферический экран, могут выступать текстовые надписи, векторные объекты, изображения, видео, бегущая строка и пр., что позволяет создавать презентации любого уровня сложности. Программное средство также позволяет демонстрировать различные анимации, представляющие либо изменение покрытия, либо изменение объектов на глобусе, что важно для создания полноценных видеопрезентаций. Создание анимаций позволяет визуализировать процессы, происходящие на Земле. В этом случае в качестве объектов могут выступать как данные полученные с космоснимков о передвижении воздушных масс, данные мониторинга цунами, информация о выбросах в атмосферу, так и модельные данные о строении литосферных плит, локализации месторождений полез- ных ископаемых и многое другое. Таким образом, можно наблюдать за формированием ураганов, локацией землетрясений и др., в том числе в режиме реального времени, в случае подключения демонстрационного комплекса к сети Интернет. Разработаны 3D-технологии в области сферических визуализаций. Изображение вы- водится сразу на 2 экрана (рис. 2.6). Рисунок 2.6 – Схема вывода изображений на 2 экрана Изображения на обоих экранах синхронизируются между собой так, чтобы изобра- жение на передней части сферического экрана выглядело идентично изображению гло- буса в перспективной проекции. Разработана база данных изображений для сферической визуализации, адаптирован- ная под ПО «ORBUS». Проведена каталогизация имеющихся изображений, создан от- дельный каталог сферических презентаций, включающий в себя тематически подобран- ные изображения, наборы изображений и видео. Проведена интеграция каталогизирован- ных изображений в многоуровневую структуру базы данных для корректного их отобра- жения на сферическом экране с помощью ПО «ORBUS». 22 Список публикаций по результатам проекта1 Статьи в журналах Савиных В. П., Быков В. Г., Карпик А. П., Молдобеков Б., Побединский Г. Г., Демьянов Г. В., Кафтан В. И., Малкин З. М., Стеблов Г. М. Организация международной комиссии по региональной земной геодезической основе Северо-восточной Евразии // Международный научно-технический и производственный электронный журнал «Науки о Земле». 2014. № 1/2. С. 16–25. Импакт-фактор РИНЦ 0,869. Родников А. Г., Забаринская Л. П., Сергеева Н. А. Глубинное строение сейсмоопасных регионов Земли (о. Сахалин) // Вестник ОНЗ РАН. 2014. Т. 6. NZ1001. 8 C. doi:10.2205/2014NZ000121. Сергеева Н. 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The Alpine- Mediterranean fold belt and adjacent structures of the southern former USSR // Russian Journal of Earth sciences. 2002. V. 4. No. 1. P. 19–33. 14. Stolk W., Kaban M., Beekman F., Tesauro M., Mooney W. D., Cloetingh, S. A. P. L. High resolution regional crustal models from irregularly distributed data: Application to Asia and adjacent areas. // Tectonophysics. 2013. V. 602. P. 55-68. DOI: 10.1016/j.tecto.2013.01.022 15. Tesauro M., Kaban M., Cloetingh S. EuCRUST-07: A new reference model for the European crust. // Geoph. Res. Let. 2008. V. 35. doi:10.1029/2007GL032244 16. Нечитайленко В. А. Технологии документирования научного контента. I. Онлайновый журнал // Исследования по геоинформатике. Труды Геофизического центра РАН. 2014. Т. 2. Вып. BS2003. С. 1–8. doi:10.2205/2014BS015 17. Лукьянова Р. Ю. Включение обсерваторских данных в систему цитирования DOI // Вестник ОНЗ РАН. 2013. Т. 5. 6 С. NZ9001. doi:10.2205/2013NZ000120 24 3. Исследование и прогнозирование нелинейных геодинамических процессов в гетерогенной блочной среде при подземной изоляции радиоактивных отходов Номер гос. регистрации № 01201456270 (0145-2014-0002) Руководители: гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. Н. Морозов; зав. лаб., д.т.н. В. Н. Татаринов В рамках данной темы НИР в 2014 году были решены следующие три научные за- дачи. 3.1. Разработка алгоритма и программы расчета напряженно- деформированного состояния пластинчатых структурных блоков геологической среды, обусловленных вертикальными перемещениями Для прогнозирования нелинейных геодинамических процессов при строительстве пунктов подземной изоляции РАО (ПГЗРО) особенно ценными являются данные инстру- ментальных наблюдений. В этой связи возникает задача использования данных высоко- точного геодезического нивелирования для прогнозирования напряженного состояния верхнего слоя земной коры, в котором собственно и будут находиться подземные выра- ботки ПГЗРО. Цель работ состояла в разработке алгоритма и программного модуля для расчета напряженно-деформированного состояния верхней части земной коры, идеализи- рованной в виде пластины, на основе использования вертикальных смещений по границам участка, которые могут быть получены на основе высокоточных геодезических наблюде- ний. Исследования велись в тесном контакте с учеными Горного института НИТУ «МИСиС» в рамках НОЦ «Геодинамика и геоэкология недр: моделирование, прогноз и мониторинг». Идея проиллюстрирована на рис. 3.1, где показана схема, поясняющая принципы геодинамического районирования территории по трем категориям в зависимо- сти от напряжений. Как видно, задачей моделирования становится выявление опасных зон в массиве горных пород, в которых возникает концентрация напряжений, обусловленная характером изменения граничных прогибов. Моделирование осуществлялось с помощью разработанного проблемно-ориентированного вычислительного комплекса, написанного на языке Фортран. Для проверки разработанного алгоритма была выполнена верификация с помощью программы расчета значений прогиба и изгибающих моментов в 121 точке квадратной пластины. В качестве теста был выбран участок Нижнеканского массива, на границе которого задавались характерные прогибы, моделируемые посредством синусоидального закона. 25 Рисунок 3.1 – Использование расчетов НДС в пластинчатых блоках при заданных вертикальных смещениях Тестовые расчеты производились со следующими целями: 1) проверить правильность полученного решения; 2) исследовать сходимость решения при увеличении числа точек; 3) исследовать влияние учета угловых точек. На рис. 3.2 приведены модели, для которых выполнялись тестовые расчеты. Резуль- таты практически совпадают (незначительное различие обусловлено ошибками округле- ния при суммировании конечных сумм решения). Сравнение результатов свидетельствует о том, что неучет угловых точек дает неправильные результаты, что связано с расходимо- стью соответствующих спектральных разложений, которые имеют сильную особенность в угловых точках. В случае учета угловых точек явление Гиббса для граничной функции практически устраняется, а производные не имеют сильных особенностей, что приводит к хорошим результатам, соответствующим физическим представлениям. На рис. 3.3‒3.6 показаны объемные модели точного решения для первой модели. На рис. 3.3 приведены смещения, рис. 3.4 ‒ изгибающий момент МХ, рис. 3.5 ‒ изгибающий момент МY. На рис. 3.6 приведена объемная диаграмма распределения величины MX для граничной функции прогибов. Для остальных вариантов объемные модели очень похожи ввиду незначительного расхождения в несколько процентов, поэтому не приводятся. 26 (а) (б) Рисунок 3.2 – Модель 1 тестового расчета: точное решение (а), приближенное решение (б) Рисунок 3.3 – Смещения для точного решения Рисунок 3.4 – Изгибающий момент МХ (сигма X) для точного решения 27 Рисунок 3.5 – Изгибающий момент МY (сигма Y) для точного решения Рисунок 3.6 – Объемная диаграмма распределения величины MX для граничной функции прогибов В итоге в явном аналитическом виде было получено приближенное решение задачи изгиба тонкой прямоугольной пластины Кирхгофа от действия заданных прогибов точек контура в граничных узлах. Число граничных узлов вдоль каждой стороны пластины выбирается в зависимости от гладкости граничной функции прогибов: там, где эта функ- ция изменяется наиболее быстро (например, в случае возможных осцилляций, которые проявляются при воздействии внезапных скачкообразных внешних воздействий, напри- мер, сейсмических) это число может быть достаточно большим, в отличие от ситуации плавного изменения граничных прогибов, когда достаточно ограничиться малым числом узлов вдоль соответствующей стороны пластины. -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 28 3.2. Выполнение третьего цикла GPS-наблюдений за современными движениями земной коры на геодинамическом полигоне ФГУП «ГХК» Наблюдения за современными движениями земной коры (СДЗК) в районе были начаты в 2010 г. В июне 2014 г. был выполнен очередной цикл наблюдений. По результа- там 4-х эпох наблюдений было выполнено уравнивание сети и проведена кинематическая обработка данных. В результате уравнивания наблюдений с использованием программного пакета MAGNET Office Tools были получены уравненные компоненты векторов базовых линий и оценки их точности ‒ средние квадратические ошибки (СКО). При уравнивании не ис- пользовались опорные значения координат. Такая сеть в геодезической литературе имену- ется нуль-свободной. При этом на поправки в неизвестные координаты накладывается условие минимума суммы их квадратов [δX2] = min. В результате получены уравненные компоненты векторов базовых линий и СКО. Результаты приведены на рис. 3.7. Распределение средних квадратических ошибок положения пунктов в плане Распределение средних квадратических ошибок положения пунктов по высоте 2012 год 2013 год 2014 год Рисунок 3.7 ‒ Результаты уравнивания геодинамической сети и оценки СКО 29 Визуальный анализ гистограммы распределения разностей длин базовых линий (рис. 3.7) показывает преобладание отрицательных разностей над положительными. Медиана гистограммы смещена в область отрицательных значений. Средняя разность составляет – 1,3 мм. Средняя квадратическая погрешность полученной средней разности равна 0,5 мм, нормированное значение средней разности t = -2,6. Пользуясь таблицей квантилей распределения Стьюдента, получим для выборки 100 и более значений (в нашем случае k = 103) критическое значение 2,6259 при доверительной вероятности Р = 0,99. Так как полученная оценка t практически достигает критического значения, можно отклонить гипотезу об отсутствии значимых деформаций с доверительной вероятностью 0,99. Полученную обобщенную оценку -2,6 можно отождествить с общей тенденцией деформации сжатия территории во временном интервале с 2012 по 2013 гг. В 2010, 2012, 2013 гг. максимальные изменения длин базисов не превышали 10– 11 мм, а в период 2013–2014 г. резко возросло количество базисов, для которых изменения длин лежат в интервале от 10 до 20 мм. Оценка СКО положения пунктов в плане для эпохи 2014 г. показала, что основная масса группируется в области 3 мм. Средние значения СКО в плане и по высоте составили 3,7 и 6,3 мм, соответственно. Результаты аналогичного уравнивания для эпохи 2013 г. показали, что средние значения СКО в плане и по высоте составляли приблизительно такие же величины ‒ 3,9 и 6,6 мм, соответственно. В 2012 г. ‒ 3,0 и 6,0 соответственно. Таким образом, очевиден вывод, что относительно высокие изменения длин базисов, полученные в 2014 г., вызваны природными причинами, а не помехами или возможными техническими ошибками в выполнении наблюдений или расчетов. На всей правобережной части района длины базовых линий за период с 2010 по 2013 год уменьшались, т.е. имелась тенденция к сжатию верхней части геологической среды, а в левобережной части, наоборот, почти все линии увеличили свою длину, т.е. среда испытывала растяжение. Через год (рис. 3.8) картина полностью сменилась на противопо- ложную. На правом берегу зарегистрированы растяжения почти для всех линий, а на левом – сжатие среды. В качестве объяснения этого факта можно предположить, что это следствие цикли- ческого развития природных процессов в регионе, и оно является ярким подтверждением фундаментальных закономерностей геодинамических процессов, неоднократно установ- ленных в различных (активных и платформенных) регионах земного шара. Именно в период 2013–2014 гг. произошел очередной цикл активизации тектонического режима территории. Этот вывод согласуется с хорошо известными геоморфологическими особенностями региона. Енисейский кряж четко делит территорию на две провинции – спокойную лево- бережную и воздымающуюся правобережную. В этом случае становится особенно важ- ным и необходимым анализ данных повторного нивелирования по профильным линиям, ориентированным с запада на восток, которые по идее должны подтвердить факт смены знаков движений в районе, прилегающем к р. Енисей. 30 Рисунок 3.8 ‒ Изменения длин базисных линий за 2013–2014 гг. Черный цвет – длина линий не изменилась или увеличилась (растяжение), красный цвет – длина линий уменьшилась (сжатие) На рис. 3.9 показан поперечный разрез с востока на запад, на котором показано раз- витие геодинамической обстановки в районе Енисейского кряжа, объясняющий данные наблюдений за СДЗК. Независимо от причин, которые можно обсуждать, совершенно очевидна современная тектоническая активность Муратовского (и, возможно, Правобе- режного) разлома, так как именно по его границам происходит смена направленности изменения длин базисов двух тектонических районов. Необходимо дальнейшее накопление информации. Более обоснованные выводы о возможности подземной изоляции РАО в этом регионе будут возможны при зарегистри- рованных скоростях СДЗК, как минимум превышающих паспортную точность метода. Необходим также комплексный анализ данных о горизонтальных движениях, полученных на основе применения GPS/ГЛОНАСС-систем, с результатами повторного нивелирования и других геолого-геофизических методов исследования. 31 Рисунок 3.9 ‒ Геодинамическая обстановка в районе Енисейского кряжа на основе наблюдений за СДЗК в 2010–2014 гг. (вертикальный масштаб сильно увеличен по отношению к горизонтальному). Коричневая линия ‒ рельеф, красная – активные разломы, голубой пунктир – позднеплиоценовая поверхность выравнивания. Красная пунктирная линия ‒ граница двух тектонических районов: Западно-Сибирской плиты и Сибирской платформы 3.3. Разработка инновационной методологии выделения перспективных площадей при поисково-разведочных работах на нефть и газ В настоящее время имеются веские основания считать, что локализация углеводоро- дов (УВ) в осадочном чехле ряда нефтяных провинций связана с абиогенным происхож- дением нефти и газа, поступающим из глубин кристаллического фундамента. Примером локализации углеводородов в кристаллическом фундаменте является месторождение нефти во Вьетнаме, Мексиканском заливе, Бразилии и др. Поиск промышленных залежей углеводородов связан с использованием широкого комплекса геолого-геофизических методов исследований, завершающихся бурением скважин, достигающих глубин 6–7 км. Бурению предшествуют площадные геофизические исследования, равномерно покрыва- ющие предполагаемую перспективную территорию (на региональном уровне более 104– 105 км2), с последующим выделением зон (на локальном уровне 102–103 км2) и поиском «ловушек», перспективных на локализацию промышленных скоплений углеводородов. 32 Исходя из геологических предпосылок, можно считать общепринятой концепцию промышленной локализации углеводородов, связанную с зонами разгрузки (тектониче- ской деструкции), как в породах фундамента, так и осадочного чехла. При этом предполагается, что разломная тектоника определяет региональную систе- му каналов вертикальной и горизонтальной фильтрации углеводородных флюидов в земной коре, формирующих промышленные запасы нефти и газа. В этой связи была разработана новая методология выделения перспективных участков на нефть и газ, по результатам моделирования напряженно-деформированного состояния геологической среды и процесса фильтрации газовожидких флюидов в блочных гетерогенных структу- рах, нарушенных системой тектонических разломов (шовных зон и др.), открывающая новые перспективы в выявлении потенциально возможной локализации углеводородов в поле современных тектонических напряжений. Подробно принципы работы методологии представлены в наших статьях. Эффективность методологии апробирована на ряде при- меров ретроспективного поиска промышленных месторождений нефти и газа, в том числе на нефтяных месторождениях Канадской провинции Британская Колумбия. На рис. 3.10 представлена тектоническая карта северо-восточной части провинции Британская Колумбия, построенная по данным 3D сейсморазведки и аэромагнитной съемки высокого разрешения. Рисунок 3.10 ‒ Тектоническая схема северо-востока Британской Колумбии, Канада 33 Доминирующим направлением тектонических сил является ось сжатия СВ–ЮЗ направления, что следует из анализа механизма очагов землетрясений. В модели напря- женно-деформированного состояния этого района Канады эти предпосылки использованы в качестве базовых, с последующим расчетом возможных векторов фильтрации УВ в верхней части кристаллического фундамента под действием градиентных полей тектони- ческих напряжений. Карта интенсивности тектонических напряжений и векторов скоростей фильтрации представлена на рис. 3.11. Красными квадратами на карте обозначены основные нефтяные поля региона. Из карты видно, что они в основном попадают в зоны низких значений тектонических напряжений, что соответствует геологической концепции о локализации углеводородов в зонах разгрузки тектонических напряжений. Применение новой методо- логии позволяет существенно сократить затраты на геофизические исследования и повы- сить эффективность дорогостоящих буровых работ. Рисунок 3.11 ‒ Карта интенсивности напряжений северо-востока Британской Колумбии 34 Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Морозов В. Н., Каган А. И. К прогнозу локализации залежей углеводородов в центральных и шельфовых районах Камчатки // Недропользование XXI век. 2014. № 5. С. 48–54. Журнал из списка ВАК. Татаринов В. Н., Морозов В. Н., Каган А. И. Моделирование напряжений и направлений фильтраций подземных вод при выборе участков для подземной изоляции радиоактивных отходов // ГИАБ. 2014. № 6. С. 243–249. Импакт-фактор РИНЦ 0,053. Татаринов В. Н., Морозов В. Н., Кафтан В. И., Каган А. И. Геодинамический мониторинг как основа сохранения биосферы при захоронении радиоактивных отходов // Международный научно-технический и производственный электронный журнал «Науки о Земле». 2014. № 3. С. 47–60. Импакт-фактор РИНЦ 0,869. Татаринов В. Н., Морозов В. Н., Колесников И. Ю., Каган А. И. Кинематический метод геодинамического районирования при проектировании отработки месторождений подземным способом // Безопасность жизнедеятельности. 2014. № 7. С. 8–11. Импакт-фактор РИНЦ 0,138. Татаринов В. Н., Морозов В. В., Колесников И. Ю., Каган А. И., Татаринова Т. А. Устойчивость геологической среды как основа безопасной подземной изоляции радиоактивных отходов и отработавшего ядерного топлива // Надежность и безопасность энергетики. 2014. № 1(24). С. 25–29. Импакт-фактор РИНЦ 0,085. Свидетельства о государственной регистрации • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации базы данных №2014621300 «База данных по напряженно-деформированному состоянию района подземной изоляции радиоактивных отходов в пределах Нижнеканского массива (Красноярский край). «DATABASE STRESS AND DISPLACEMENTS NKM». Авторы: Татаринов В. Н., Морозов В. Н., Каган А. И. Заявка № 2014620837 от 24.06.2014 г. Дата гос. Регистрации в Реестре баз данных 15 сентября 2014 г. • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации базы данных №2014621299 «База данных по геологической среде Нижнеканского массива (Красноярский край) «Database on geological environment NKM». Авторы: Татаринов В. Н., Морозов В. Н., Колесников И. Ю., Каган А. И. Заявка № 2014620836 от 24.06.2014 г. Дата гос. Регистрации в Реестре баз данных 15 сентября 2014 г. 35 4. Развитие и сопровождение интерактивного ресурса данных по солнечно-земной физике SPIDR Номер гос. регистрации № 01201252859 (0145-2014-0003) Руководитель: в.н.с., к.ф.-м.н. М. Н. Жижин Основной задачей данной темы НИР является разработка современных методов, обеспечивающих непрерывное устойчивое функционирование сети взаимодействующих баз данных, а также приложений, реализующих, в частности, вычислительные модели околоземной среды и космической погоды. В качестве приложения использовалась со- зданная ранее сеть синхронных баз данных космической погоды SPIDR, позволяющая выбирать и визуализировать исторические научные данные в сети Интернет. В настоящее время узлы SPIDR уже установлены в России, США, Японии, Китае, и на Украине. Про- граммное обеспечение и базы данных системы разрабатываются совместно Националь- ным центром геофизических данных Национальной администрации по океанам и атмо- сфере (NOAA) США и Геофизическим центром РАН. Исходные коды программ и данные системы обмена данными открыты и свободно распространяются в сети Интернет через Мировые центры данных. Узел системы реализуется на компьютерном кластере и обеспечивает параллельный поиск, обработку и визуализацию больших объемов данных с применением методов искусственного интеллекта и нечеткой логики. Каждый сервер приложений имеет интер- фейс управления кластером баз данных, который позволяет выполнять модификацию данных удаленным пользователям с правами администратора по сети Интернет. Узлы системы автоматически обмениваются обновлениями баз данных и программного обеспе- чения. Существенное увеличение отказоустойчивости, масштабируемости и гибкости каж- дого узла в отдельности и системы в целом может быть достигнуто при использовании современных компьютерных технологий облачных вычислений. 4.1. Аппаратное обеспечение Аппаратной основой работ по теме стало создание комплекса распределенных вы- числений, объединяющего географически распределенные и, вообще говоря, разнородные вычислительные ресурсы. Для проведения исследований был использован управляющий сервер, расположенный в ГЦ РАН, и вычислительный кластер в Институте физики Земли (ИФЗ) РАН. Назначение управляющего сервера состоит в организации доступа к данным узла SPIDR, распределении заданий между узлами распределенной вычислительной системы и сборе результатов обработки данных из системы. В общем случае, такого рода управление ресурсами не требует существенных вычислительных мощностей и объемов памяти, что и обусловило использование единичного сервера для администрирования системы. 36 Рисунок 4.1 ‒ Корзина с серверами (вверху) и система хранения (внизу) В то же время выполнение запросов и проведение расчетов, наоборот, требует при- влечения значительных вычислительных мощностей. Для обеспечения функционирования системы был использован современный вычислительный кластер, состоящий из шести блейд-серверов и системы хранения данных (рис. 4.1), размещенный в Институте физики Земли РАН. 4.2. Виртуализация Для обеспечения максимальной гибкости системы мы использовали технологию виртуализации, являющуюся одной из компонент облачных технологий. Использование виртуальных машин позволяет более гибко распределять ресурсы между пользователями, сервисами, приложениями. Применительно к научным исследованиям, в которых, как правило, отсутствуют непрерывно функционирующие сервисы, и требуется запуск раз- личных задач, виртуализация существенно упрощает обслуживание и настройку системы. Для каждой задачи достаточно настроить свою виртуальную машину, с последующим клонированием необходимого количества экземпляров. На серверах установлена свободно распространяемая операционная система Linux, дистрибутив CentOS 6 от компании RedHat. Каждый из серверов является платформой (или «хост-машиной») для виртуальных серверов, эмулирующих поведение реальных машин с использованием части ресурсов платформы (рис. 4.2). Мы использовали мене- джер виртуальных машин KVM (или Kernel-based Virtual Machine), работающий под управлением ibvirt – свободной кросс-платформенной библиотеки управления виртуали- зацией. Рисунок 4.2 ‒ Иллюстрация технологии виртуализации 37 Технология виртуализации, используемая в данной работе, практически не снижает производительность процессора. Это достигается за счет использования аппаратного ускорения виртуализации, в частности технологий VT-x и Extended Page Tables (EPT), которые позволяют работать виртуальной машине практически без потерь в производи- тельности. 4.3. Промежуточное программное обеспечение Одной из целей проводимых исследований является адаптация расчетов, необходи- мых для решения геофизических задач, для слабо связанных вычислительных систем (ССВС). В отличие от локальных вычислений на суперкомпьютере, ССВС подразумевают значительную неоднородность вычислительных модулей и относительно большое время обмена между ними. Для управления распределенными системами создано и развивается специализированное, так называемое, промежуточное программное обеспечение (ППО). Название связано с тем, что оно является, по сути, надстройкой над операционной систе- мой, позволяющей автоматизировать параллельные вычисления. Наиболее простой в плане инфраструктуры ССВС является вычислительный кластер – группа компьютеров, объединенных высокоскоростным каналом связи. Дальнейшее объединение ресурсов приводит к необходимости использования глобальной сети Интернет для организации совместных вычислений. Это, с одной стороны, существенно снижает скорость обмена между узлами, а, значит, сужает круг решаемых задач. С другой стороны, использование соответствующего ППО позволяет объединить существенно неоднородные вычислитель- ные ресурсы. Такого рода ССВС получили название грид, от английского «grid» – ре- шетка. 4.4. Грид-инфраструктура Средства грид-инфраструктуры для поддержки вычислительных веб-сервисов вклю- чают в себя: удостоверяющий центр, хранилище реквизитов, файловое хранилище, мета- планировщик, веб-интерфейс, а также службу запуска и контроля задач, локального менеджера вычислительных ресурсов, а также локального планировщика задач (послед- ние три – на каждый вычислительный кластер). Ниже перечислены основные решения, принятые при реализации проекта. Удостоверяющий центр представляет собой набор инструментов для поддержки инфраструктуры открытых ключей (Public key infrastructure, PKI) для обеспечения аутен- тификации и авторизации пользователей и сервисов в грид. В настоящей реализации используется набор инструментов от проекта OpenSSL (The OpenSSL Project). Хранилище реквизитов. В грид на основе инструментария Globus Toolkit для про- цессов аутентификации и авторизации пользователей и сервисов используются не пользо- вательские сертификаты, а так называемые прокси-сертификаты. Создание прокси-серти- фиката инициируется пользователем или сервисом грид. При этом происходит генерация 38 новой пары ключей, после чего создается соответствующий сертификат, подписанный ключом пользователя. Прокси-сертификат имеет ограниченный срок действия и может использоваться командами и сервисами грид для выполнения действий от имени пользо- вателя без ввода пароля. Для доступа к сертификатам пользователей для последующей генерации прокси-сертификатов используется сервис MyProxy. Для его использования Globus Toolkit содержит специальный набор команд. Файловое хранилище. Для размещения данных и доступа к ним применяется про- токол GridFTP. GridFTP – это расширение протокола передачи данных FTP, с перерабо- танной системой контроля доступа и рядом других значительных улучшений. Безопас- ность GridFTP основана на средствах Globus Security Interface, которые, в свою очередь, опираются на прокси и X.509-сертификаты. Сервер GridFTP расположен на сервере ГЦ. Метапланировщик. Метапланировщик осуществляет распределение вычислитель- ных заданий между ресурсными центрами грид в целях балансировки нагрузки и оптими- зации времени вычислений. Метапланировщик позволяет также оценивать время выпол- нения задач на вычислительных узлах на основе информации о динамике выполнения и классе задачи. Служба запуска и контроля задач. Каждый вычислительный кластер является обособленным комплексом и может иметь инфраструктуру, как программную, так и аппаратную, отличную от других кластеров в грид. Для унификации процедур запуска и контроля выполнения в кластере настраивается программное обеспечение-посредник – грид-шлюз. Его задача – прозрачно оттранслировать контрольные и информационные сигналы между Globus Toolkit и локальными средствами контроля и запуска, а также передача необходимых для выполнения задания файлов. Локальный менеджер вычислительных ресурсов. Задачи в вычислительном кла- стере выполняются и останавливаются по сигналам от локального менеджера вычисли- тельных ресурсов. Это ПО работает только в пределах определенного кластера и обеспе- чивает непосредственный запуск и отслеживание вычислительных программных процес- сов. Система управления ресурсами управляет вычислительной нагрузкой путем предот- вращения возникновения «гонки» за ограниченные вычислительные ресурсы. Обычно система управления ресурсами состоит из собственно менеджера ресурсов, а также пла- нировщика задач. В качестве кластерного ППО нами был использован сервер TORQUE/PBS (Portable Batch System, переносимая система очередей). При выборе мы исходили из простоты установки и эксплуатации. Torque собирается на головных маши- нах каждого кластера с явным указанием сервера по умолчанию, генерируются пакеты для вычислительных узлов, которые затем распространяются и устанавливаются. В параметрах серверной части Torque задается как минимум одна очередь и указы- ваются все вычислительные узлы, в свою очередь на вычислительных узлах в конфигура- ционные файлы вносятся директивы для совместимости с общей файловой системой. Проведенные работы создали аппаратную и программную основу для перехода на поддержку узла SPIDR с помощью распределенной вычислительной системы. Созданная система облачных вычислений может быть, с одной стороны, легко клонирована для 39 установки в других узлах сети. С другой стороны, созданная система допускает при необходимости существенное наращивание мощности. Наконец, разработанное решение также пригодно для совместного использования с несколькими узлами сети. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Жижин М. Н., Крис Э., Пойда А. А., Годунов А. И., Велихов В. Е., Ерохин Г. Н., Алсынбаев К. С., Брыксин В. М. Использование данных ДЗЗ для мониторинга добычи углеводородов // Информационные технологии и вычислительные системы. 2014. № 3. С. 97–111. Импакт- фактор РИНЦ 0,46. Отчет по результатам проекта По результатам выполнения НИР в 2012–2014 г. подготовлен, сдан и размещен на сайте ФГАНУ ЦИТиС отчет. Регистрационный номер ИКРБС № 215020970016. 40 5. Разработка и внедрение методов дискретного математического анализа для изучения состояния геомагнитной активности и контроля качества магнитных данных Номер гос. регистрации № 01201252857 (0145-2014-0004) Руководитель: зам. директора по науке, зав. лаб., д.ф.-м.н. А. А. Соловьев В ходе выполнения НИР в 2014 году были получены следующие результаты: 1. Осуществлена программно-алгоритмическая реализация методов дискретного математического анализа для автоматизированного, формализованного и единооб- разного распознавания аномальных событий техногенной природы (скачков и дрейфа базового уровня) на минутных, секундных и полусекундных магнитограм- мах, зарегистрированных наземными обсерваториями и искусственными спутниками Земли. Разработаны методы оценки эффективности распознавания техногенных аномалий на множестве магнитограмм; 2. Разработаны и внедрены методы визуализации результатов геомагнитного монито- ринга для Российского центра геомагнитных данных; 3. Проведен обзор методов фильтрации наблюдений геомагнитного поля. Сформулиро- ваны задачи фильтрации наблюдений главного магнитного поля Земли; 4. Проведены магнитометрические полевые исследования на двух участках северной части острова Сахалин. 5.1. Разработка методов и алгоритмов распознавания скачков на магнитограммах 5.1.1. Описание алгоритма JM (JUMP) Неформальная логика Неформальная логика, лежащая в основе поиска скачков на записи, может быть опи- сана следующим образом: «Скачок – аномалия на записи, приводящая к смещению ее уровня». По аналогии с целью исследования будем называть соответствующий алгоритм JM, сокращенно от JUMP – скачок (англ.). В основе алгоритма JM лежит нечеткая мера скачкообразности (рис. 5.1), представ- ляющая собой функционал исходной записи с областью значений от 0 до 1. Большие значения этого функционала соответствуют резкому изменению уровня исследуемой записи, а их выбор происходит с использованием нечетких сравнений. 41 Рисунок 5.1 – На верхнем графике приведен фрагмент исследуемой записи компоненты Bz, на нижнем – соответствующий график меры скачкообразности Для построения меры скачкообразности нами было введено понятие нечетких гра- ней. На рис. 5.2, 5.3 показаны нечеткие грани первых пяти и трех порядков. Рисунок 5.2 – Пример вычисления нечетких верхней и нижней граней при k = 0, …, 5. При k = 0 нечеткая верхняя и нижняя грань показана фиолетовым цветом, в остальных случаях верхняя – красным, нижняя – зеленым Рисунок 5.3 – Нечеткие грани первых трех порядков. При k = 0 нечеткая верхняя и нижняя грань показана зеленым цветом, в остальных случаях верхняя – красным, нижняя – синим 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 -10 -5 0 42 Нечеткие грани с разной степенью жесткости позволяют определять наиболее харак- терный разброс значений числового множества A . Разницу ( ) ( ) ( )k k kW A S A S A + −= − естественно назвать стохастической шириной A k-го порядка. Ширина ( )kW A гибко отображает обычное статистическое отклонение ( ) ( )A d Aσ = . Конкретная реализация алгоритма JM определяется выбором следующих свободных параметров: h +∆∈R – параметр локального обзора алгоритма FCARS, h +Λ∈R – параметр глобального обзора, [0.9,1]α ∈ – уровень сильной вертикальной аномальности в алгоритме FCARS, [0.5,1]β ∈ – уровень скачкообразности аномалии. Два примера работы алгоритма JM на магнитных записях ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ приве- дены на рис. 5.4. (а) (б) Рисунок 5.4 – Пример выделения скачков (черный цвет) на предварительных записях ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ (внизу) и сравнение результатов с записями, прошедшими ручной контроль качества экспертами (вверху): фрагмент записи компоненты Y на обсерватории BOU (а), фрагмент записи компоненты Z на обсерватории BOU (б) 5.1.2. Распознавание скачков базовой линии на спутниковых магнитограммах Геостационарные спутники наблюдения окружающей среды (GOES) вращаются во- круг Земли по геосинхронной орбите со скоростью, соответствующей скорости вращения Земли. Это позволяет им непрерывно наблюдать за одной и той же позицией на поверхно- сти Земли. Получаемые с помощью GOES данные, которые являются очень точными и используются для краткосрочного прогнозирования, распространяются Национальной информационной службой спутниковых данных об окружающей среде (NESDIS) по целому ряду действующих научно-исследовательских центров. Сегодня эти данные используются очень большим числом пользователей: Национальной метеорологической службой США, коммерческими центрами погоды, университетами и мировым научно- 43 исследовательским обществом. На спутнике GOES помимо метеорологических измерений осуществляется регистрация магнитных данных. Они представляют собой вариации трех компонент магнитного поля, зарегистрированных двумя векторными магнитометрами с частотой 2 Гц. Эти данные характеризуются большим количеством скачков базовой линии. В большинстве случаев причиной скачков являются автоматические включения и отключения нагревательных систем, сопровождающих каждый магнитометр. Таким образом, задача фильтрации спутниковых данных во многом связана с устранением скачков базовой линии. Ситуация осложняется тем, что в большинстве случаев скачки настолько малы, что их весьма трудно распознать визуально. Для этой цели был разрабо- тан алгоритм JM (от JUMP), позволяющий в автоматизированном режиме единообразно распознавать скачки на магнитограммах со спутника GOES. Апробация алгоритма осуществлялась на суточных магнитограммах трех компонент магнитного поля (BX, BY, BZ), полученных спутником GOES-15 3 апреля 2010 г. Магнито- граммы также сопровождались двумя записями о статусе {0, 1, 2, 3} нагревателей с частотой 1 значение в 5 мин (S1 и S2). Статус 0 соответствует выключенному состоянию обоих нагревателей, статус 1 – включенному состоянию первого нагревателя, 2 – вклю- ченному состоянию второго нагревателя, 3 – включенному состоянию обоих нагревателей (рис. 5.5). (а) (б) Рисунок 5.5 – Фрагмент магнитограмм и записей статуса нагревателей на спутнике: в масштабе часов (а), в масштабе минут (б) В результате применения алгоритма JM к данным за 3 апреля 2010 г. были распо- знаны практически все скачки. Стоит отметить, что в большинстве случаев скачки на глаз не различимы, что видно из рис. 5.6 и 5.7. На рис. 5.6 показан часовой фрагмент исходной записи, рассчитанная мера скачкообразности и график состояния нагревателей. 44 Рисунок 5.6 – Иллюстрация фрагмента исходной записи (сверху), рассчитанной для него меры скачкообразности (посередине) и состояния нагревателей (снизу) Примеры работы алгоритма приведены на рис. 5.7. Рисунок 5.7 – Примеры работы алгоритма JM. Распознанные скачки выделены красным цветом 45 5.2. Разработка алгоритма распознавания дрейфа базового уровня в магнитограммах В момент времени t на записи ( )|T ty , ( ) { : }T t t T t t= ∈ ≤ алгоритм FCARS обнару- жил аномалию [ ( ), ( )]|t c t d tA y= , ( )d t t≤ . Если аномалия tA достаточно «свежая»: ( )t d t− < Λ , то ждем момента ( )d t + Λ для решения вопроса о существовании в t A скачка ( ) [ ( ), ( )]tJ A a t b t= . Допустим, что он существует. Но скачок – результат смещения (дрейфа) записи. Возникает вопрос о начале (зарождении) такого смещения. Ищем его циклом по t влево от начала скачка ( )c t . Итак, в качестве уже начала сме- щения, завершившегося скачком [ ( ), ( )]| a t b ty , предлагается ( )t c t< . Далее с помощью алго- ритма FCARS изучается стыковка фрагмента [ , ]| t ty −Λ с фрагментом ( ( ), ( ) ]|t d t d tA y +∆= . Стыковка имеет место (точка t «хорошая»), если выпрямление ( | ) y F t ∆  объединения [ , ] ( ( ), ( ) ]| t t d t d ty y −∆ ∪ +∆= в месте стыка [ , ( ) ]t d t h+ будет вертикально фоновым: ( | )y sF t α∆ < , где s α – сильный уровень вертикальной аномальности в алгоритме FCARS. Началом смещения считается точка *t h+ , где *t ближайшая к ( )c t хорошая точка. Таким образом, само смещение представляет собой фрагмент записи *[ , ( ))| t h a ty + . На рис. 5.8 представлен пример выделения дрейфа на магнитограмме. Рисунок 5.8 – Пример выделения дрейфа 5.3. Разработка метода оценки эффективности распознавания техногенных аномалий на множестве магнитограмм В качестве примера приведем описание метода оценки эффективности распознава- ния выбросов (спайков) алгоритмом SP. Для проведения процедуры обучения алгоритма SP введем следующие обозначения: { }kS s= , 1, 2k =  – множество обсерваторий ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ; { }iD d= , 1, , 4i =  , { , , , }id X Y Z F∈ – множество компонент магнитного поля, измеряемых на обсерваториях ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ; 152 153 154 155 156 157 -200 -150 -100 -50 46 ,s dy – компонента типа d , зарегистрированная обсерваторией s ; ,( )s dyψ – произвольный фрагмент временного ряда ,s dy , , ,( ) { ( )}s d s dy yψΨ = – множество всех таких фрагментов на записи ,s dy . Обучающая выборка Ω определяется подмножествами S S⊂ и D D⊂ и представ- ляет собой совокупность всех фрагментов всех записей ,s dy с s S∈ и d D∈ : ,( , ) { ( ) : , }s dS D y s S d DΩ = Ω = Ψ ∈ ∈ . Элементы Ω будем обозначать через ,( )s dyω ψ= , где s S∈ , d D∈ . Определим показатель качества работы алгоритма ( )SP π , ( , , , )π α β= ∆ Λ , на фраг- менте ω . Пусть ( )A ω – множество выбросов, найденных на фрагменте ω экспертом (эталонный результат распознавания), а ( )( )SP π ω – множество выбросов, найденных на фрагменте ω алгоритмом ( )SP π . Обозначим через 1 ( ( )( ))K SP π ω вероятность ошибки первого рода (пропуск цели), т.е. того, что найденные на фрагменте ω экспертом выбросы пропущены алгоритмом ( )SP π : 1 | ( ) ( )( ) |( ( )( )) 1 | ( ) | A SP K SP A ω π ω π ω ω ∩ = − . Обозначим через 2 ( ( )( ))K SP π ω вероятность ошибки второго рода (ложная тревога), т.е. того, что найденные на фрагменте ω алгоритмом ( )SP π выбросы не распознаны экспертом: 2 | ( ) ( )( ) |( ( )( )) 1 | ( )( ) | A SP K SP SP ω π ω π ω π ω ∩ = − . Общий критерий качества работы ( ( )( )) ( ( )( ))K SP K SPλπ ω π ω= алгоритма ( )SP π на фрагменте ω представляет собой их λ -линейную комбинацию: если 0 1λ≤ ≤ , то 1 2( ( )( )) ( ( )( )) (1 ) ( ( )( ))K SP K SP K SPλ π ω λ π ω λ π ω= + − . Теперь можно определить критерий качества ( ( )( ))K SP π Ω распознавания алгоритма ( )SP π на обучающей выборке Ω , как интегральный показатель Θ совокупности ( ( )( ))K SP π ω по всем ω ∈Ω : ( ( )( )) { ( ( )( )), }K SP K SPπ π ω ωΩ = Θ ∈Ω . Вариантами соединения Θ могут быть: Нечеткая дизъюнкция: 47 ( ( )( )) max{ ( ( )( )), }K SP K SPπ π ω ωΩ = ∈Ω Среднее по Колмогорову r∑ : 1 ( ( )( )) ( ( )( )) { ( ( )( )), } | | r r r K SP K SP K SP ω π ω π π ω ω ∈Ω  ∑ Ω = ∑ ∈Ω =  Ω  , 0r > . Нечеткое среднее ∑ : [0,1) | : ( ( )( )) | ( ( )( )) { ( ( )( )), } sup min , | | K SP K SP K SP γ ω π ω γ π π ω ω γ ∈   ∈Ω ≥ Ω = ∑ ∈Ω =   Ω   . Обучение алгоритма SP может происходить на выборках самой разной конфигура- ции, но самыми естественными представляются следующие уровни обучения: , (Глобальный уровень) , ( ровень компоненты) , ( ровень станции) , ( ровень фрагмента) S D S D У s D У Уω Ω = ×  Ω = ×  Ω = × Ω = Критерий ( ( )( ))K SP π Ω при фиксированном множестве Ω является функцией от свободных параметров алгоритма SP ( , , , )π α β= ∆ Λ и λ . Процесс обучения состоит в минимизации этой функции на некотором множестве параметров алгоритма, т.е. в полу- чении наборов оптимальных свободных параметров алгоритма *( )SP π на Ω , min( ( ( , , , ), ))Arg K SPπ α β∗ ∈ ∆ Λ Ω . Имея эталонный результат распознавания экспертом, существует возможность оценивать эффективность алгоритмического распознавания путем вычисления критерия 0 1Kλ≤ ≤ : чем меньше Kλ , тем эффективнее распознавание. Изменяя значение параметра λ , можно варьировать степень важности мнения эксперта (критерия 1K ) по отношению к алгоритму SP (критерий 2K ). 5.4. Разработка методов визуализации результатов геомагнитного мониторинга для российского центра геомагнитных данных 5.4.1. Веб-портал Центра геомагнитных данных На базе созданных веб-сервисов для интерактивной работы с данными был опубли- кован онлайн веб-портал Российско-украинского центра геомагнитных данных. Он доступен по адресу http://geomag.gcras.ru. Веб-портал содержит всю необходимую информацию о функционировании Центра геомагнитных данных. Для пользователей веб- портал предоставляет полный доступ к геомагнитным данным, поступающим и храня- щимся в Центре, благодаря разработанным веб-сервисам, интегрированным в работу веб- портала. Среди разделов веб-портала стоит отметить следующие: 48 1. «Data Products» – раздел интерактивного доступа к данным в графическом (рис. 5.9) и цифровом виде; в корне раздела содержится графическое представление магнито- грамм за последние сутки, полученные из всех станций и обсерваторий; 2. «Observatories» – раздел с описанием всех станций и обсерваторий, обслуживаемых Центром; в корне раздела приведена интерактивная карта мира с возможностью вы- бора интересующей станции или обсерватории, а также справочная информация по всем станциям и обсерваториям с указанием временных интервалов доступных дан- ных; 3. «Data Services» – раздел со службами по работе с данными, включая удаленную обработку пользовательских данных автоматизированной системой распознавания техногенных аномалий (спайков), подраздел для ввода результатов абсолютных из- мерений и подраздел доступа к абсолютным значениям компонент поля и значениям базовых линий в графическом и цифровом видах. Рисунок 5.9 – Подраздел «Plot» веб-портала для доступа к геомагнитным данным. Для выбора интересующей обсерватории на странице имеется интерактивная карта мира. Результаты запроса к данным доступны как в цифровом, так и графическом видах и содержат информацию о распознанных техногенных аномалиях (справа выделены серым) 5.4.2. Видео-стенд для отображения геомагнитных данных На видео-стенде, установленном в ГЦ РАН (рис. 5.10), отображаются геомагнитные данные по мере их поступления в Центр. Источником информации служат исходные файлы данных, присылаемые из обсерваторий и станций. Таким образом, видео-стенд функционирует независимо от работы базы данных и, тем самым, служит дополнитель- ным индикатором работы всей системы в целом. 49 Рисунок 5.10 – Видео-стенд центра геомагнитных данных, установленный в ГЦ РАН 5.5. Обзор методов цифровой фильтрации наблюдений геомагнитного поля Проведен обзор и анализ методов фильтрации наблюдений геомагнитного поля (ГМП), применяемых для существующей научно-технической практики. Кратко описаны особенности применения традиционных цифровых фильтров для наблюдений ГМП. Рассмотрены методы фильтрации наблюдений ГМП, основанные на регрессионном анализе; отдельно проанализированы нелинейные и линейные регрессионные модели. Существенное место в обзоре занимают методы фильтрации, использующие вейвлет- функции. Произведен обзор публикаций реализованных задач фильтрации наблюдений ГМП по отечественным и зарубежным литературным источникам, благодаря чему предложено рассмотрение современных задач фильтрации наблюдений ГМП, которые на сегодня требуют решения. 5.6. Формирование общей постановки задачи аппроксимационной фильтрации наблюдений ГМП Произведено формирование общей постановки задач аппроксимационной фильтра- ции наблюдений ГМП. Реализована постановка задачи аппроксимационной фильтрации на последователь- ности локальных интервалов с использованием локальных аппроксимационных моделей. Предложены задачи фильтрации и на их основе задачи оценивания параметрических функций. Предложена математическая технология скользящей аппроксимационной фильтра- ции и оценивания параметров наблюдений ГМП. Разработаны методы аппроксимацион- ной сплайновой фильтрации, реализованные на полиномах общего вида и ортогональных полиномах. Реализована фильтрация на основе сплайнов с разрывами первых производ- 50 ных, использованная для аппроксимационного сглаживания наблюдений ГМП с джер- ками. Рассмотрена постановка задачи аппроксимационной фильтрации наблюдений ГМП на основе совместной обработки наблюдений векторного и скалярного магнитометра, которая позволяет снизить погрешности оценок наблюдений ГМП. 5.7. Геомагнитные исследования на о. Сахалин Состоялась экспедиция на о. Сахалин, в ходе которой были выполнены магнитораз- ведочные исследования территории, планируемой под установку совместно с компанией Schlumberger геомагнитной обсерватории стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ. Целью экспедиции было определение участков, пригодных для строительства обсерваторского павильона. В результате экспедиции была проведена площадная магнитоградиентометрическая съемка в нескольких масштабах для многоуровневого исследования характера распределения аномалий магнитного поля на участках «Москальво» и «Пионер» (рис. 5.11). На каждом из участков была выбрана наиболее оптимальная площадь для строительства обсервато- рии и определены ее координаты. Рисунок 5.11 – Карта магнитных аномалий масштаба 10×10 м на участке «Пионер» (слева сверху), комбинированная карта результатов съемки аномальной составляющей и вертикального градиента поля масштаба 3×3 м на участке «Пионер» (посередине сверху), карта вертикального градиента масштаба ~6×6 м на участке «Москальво» (слева снизу), комбинированная карта результатов масштаба 4×4 м на участке «Москальво» (посередине снизу), расположение исследуемых участков на о. Сахалин (справа) 51 5.8. Выводы Осуществлена программно-алгоритмическая реализация метода дискретного мате- матического анализа (ДМА) для автоматизированного, формализованного и единообраз- ного распознавания таких аномальных событий техногенной природы на наземных и спутниковых магнитограммах, как скачок и дрейф базового уровня. Разработанные алго- ритмы обладают существенной адаптивностью и универсальностью в силу наличия свободных параметров. Разработанные алгоритмы связаны общей математической осно- вой с использованием нечеткой логики и базируются на единой математической теории – ДМА. Это делает соответствующую алгоритмическую систему эффективным и универ- сальным инструментарием, позволяющим решать широкий круг геофизических задач, связанных с анализом временных рядов и распознаванием отраженных на них аномаль- ных событий. Оптимизирована система обучения алгоритмов и создан формализованный метод оценки эффективности работы алгоритмов при их применении к множеству магни- тограмм. Разработаны методы визуализации результатов геомагнитного мониторинга и внед- рены в работу Российского центра сбора и анализа геомагнитных данных. Проведен обзор методов фильтрации наблюдений геомагнитного поля. В обзор во- шли методы, основанные на традиционных цифровых фильтрах, регрессионном анализе, wavelet-функциях, а также специальные методы фильтрации геомагнитных наблюдений. Сформулированы задачи цифровой фильтрации наблюдений магнитного поля Земли. Сформирована общая постановка задачи аппроксимационной фильтрации геомаг- нитных наблюдений. В частности, рассмотрены фильтрация с использованием локальных аппроксимационных моделей, скользящих локальных аппроксимационных моделей, аппроксимационная сплайновая фильтрация, наблюдения с джерками, а также аппрокси- мационная фильтрация на основе совместной обработки наблюдений векторного и ска- лярного магнитометров. Проведена полевая магнитоградиентометрическая съемка двух участков на севере о. Сахалин. В результате выбраны оптимальные площадки для строительства павильонов будущей магнитной обсерватории. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Хохлов A. В. Вековые геомагнитные вариации. методы статистики палеомагнитных направлений в осадочных породах // Физика Земли. 2014. № 4. С. 106–111. Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,503; WoS 0,494; Scopus 0,376. Gvishiani A., Lukianova R., Soloviev A., Khokhlov A. Survey of Geomagnetic Observations Made in the Northern Sector of Russia and New Methods for Analysing Them // Surveys in Geophysics. 2014. Vol. 35. № 5. P. 1123–1154. doi: 10.1007/s10712-014-9297-8. Импакт-факторы: WoS 5,112; Scopus 3,657. 52 Kozlovsky А., Shalimov S., Lukianova R., Lester M. Ionospheric effects of the missile destruction on December 9, 2009 // Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics). 2014. Vol. 119. № 5. P. 3873– 3882. doi:10.1002/2013JA019531. Импакт-факторы: WoS 3,440; Scopus 2,376. Zelinskiy N. R., Kleimenova N. G., Kozyreva O. V., Agayan S. M., Bogoutdinov Sh. R., Soloviev A. A. Algorithm for recognizing Pc3 geomagnetic pulsations in 1-s data from INTERMAGNET equatorial observatories // Izvestia-Physics of the Solid Earth. 2014. Vol. 50. № 2. P. 240–248. Импакт- факторы: РИНЦ 0,503; WoS 0,494; Scopus 0,376. Свидетельства о государственной регистрации • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации базы данных №2014620725 «База данных Российско-украинского центра геомагнитных данных». Авторы: Медведев Д. П., Добровольский М. Н., Соловьев А. А. Заявка № 2014620130 от 13.02.2014 г. Дата гос. регистрации в Реестре баз данных 21 мая 2014 г. • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации программы для ЭВМ №2014613741 «Программа загрузки данных наблюдений компонент магнитного поля Земли в базу данных Российско- украинского центра геомагнитных данных». Авторы: Медведев Д. П., Добровольский М. Н., Соловьев А. А. Заявка № 2014611076 от 13.02.2014 г. Дата гос. регистрации в Реестре программ для ЭВМ 04 апреля 2014 г. • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации программы для ЭВМ №2014613651 «Программа доступа и визуализации данных наблюдений компонент магнитного поля Земли, хранящихся в базе данных Российско-украинского центра геомагнитных данных». Авторы: Медведев Д. П., Добровольский М. Н., Соловьев А. А. Заявка № 2014611025 от 13.02.2014 г. Дата гос. регистрации в Реестре программ для ЭВМ 02 апреля 2014 г. Отчет по результатам проекта По результатам выполнения НИР в 2012–2014 г. подготовлен, сдан и размещен на сайте ФГАНУ ЦИТиС отчет. Регистрационный номер ИКРБС № 215020970014. 53 6. Разработка алгоритмов сглаживания динамических геофизических данных на базе дискретного математического анализа Номер гос. регистрации № 01201252858 (0145-2014-0005) Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.ф.-м.н. С. М. Агаян В течение отчетного года на основе гравитационного сглаживания был разработан новый алгоритм выделения аномалий на магнитограммах, который, как представляется, удачно дополняет алгоритмы SP и SPs. 6.1. Сбои на записях сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ Глобальная сеть геомагнитных наблюдений ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ на сегодняшний день насчитывает 144 обсерватории и 5 региональных центров обработки и распространения данных GIN (Geomagnetic Information Node), расположенных по всему миру (рис. 6.1). Ежегодно эксперты обсерваторий и центров осуществляют вручную обработку и филь- трацию накопленных сырых (предварительных ‒ preliminary) данных, делая обработанные (окончательные ‒ definitive) данные доступными мировому научному сообществу. Не- смотря на тесное сотрудничество между обсерваториями, подходы к обработке данных могут отличаться и нести в себе субъективность оценки того или иного эксперта. Кроме того, даже у одного эксперта процесс обработки данных может меняться со временем, к примеру, с учетом усталости. В связи с этим математическая формализация распознавания временных возмущений могла бы способствовать существенному повышению качества окончательных данных ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ [1]. В свою очередь, повышение качества наблюденных магнитных данных внесет существенный вклад в наши знания о магнитном поле Земли. Рисунок 6.1 – 144 обсерватории и 5 GIN (2014) 54 Наблюдение за главным магнитным полем Земли и его изучение является одной из важнейших задач геофизики. Система ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ служит основой мониторинга состояния магнитного поля Земли, поэтому требования к достоверности предоставляемой ею информации очень высоки. Несмотря на жесткий высокий стандарт качества регистри- рующих приборов, они подвержены внешним воздействиям, которые отражаются на качестве записей. Поэтому важной задачей является объективное, формализованное распознавание, а затем и устранение возникающих аномалий (сбоев) на записи. На рис. 6.2 приведены примеры характерных временных аномалий, которые требуется устранить для дальнейшего использования полученных наблюдений в целях мониторинга магнитного поля Земли и других фундаментальных исследований. Подобные аномалии (сбои), как правило, вызваны следующими причинами: • природные явления; • техногенные явления, включая перемещения больших объемов металла; • калибровка измерительного прибора; • искажение данных при их передаче из обсерваторий в информационные узлы посредством сети Интернет. Рисунок 6.2 – Примеры аппаратных сбоев магнитометра, отраженных на записях К природным явлениям, прежде всего, относятся грозы, которые индуцируют элек- трические токи внутри Земли и вызывают кратковременные изменения естественного хода ее магнитного поля. Полярное сияние при максимальной амплитуде магнитной бури может также оказывать кратковременное воздействие на обсерватории, расположенные в полярных областях, за счет возникновения токов в атмосфере. Примером подобных природных явлений являются и пульсации магнитного поля, вызванные солнечной актив- ностью. К техногенным явлениям можно отнести близость городов, аэродромов, железных дорог, линий электропередачи. Это также приводит к индуцированию токов внутри Земли 55 и созданию помех в работе магнитного оборудования. При регулярной калибровке при- бора искусственно создаются помехи для проверки его работоспособности, что также сказывается на регистрируемых записях. При передаче данных через Интернет нестабильный канал связи (например, спутни- ковый) может быть причиной появления сбоев на записях. Такие сбои обнаруживаются экспертом при сравнении интернет-данных с данными за тот же период регистрации, хранимыми независимо в локальных архивах. В то же время на выделенных каналах подобные сбои не наблюдаются. Важный шаг в направлении такой математической формализации распознавания аномалий был предпринят в [2], где приведен созданный алгоритм SP(Δ, λ, α, β). Он был применен к распознаванию временных возмущений на магнитограммах, записанных на приборах с минутной регистрацией. При этом были обработаны записи, которые были получены семью обсерваториями ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ, расположенными в разных частях земного шара. Сейчас большинство обсерваторий функционирует в режиме минутной регистрации. Одной из важнейших задач ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ является переход всех обсерваторий сети на режим секундной регистрации геомагнитных данных. Такой переход даст возможность изучения магнитных пульсаций типа Pc2, Pc3 и Pc4 [3], в частности и с помощью описан- ного алгоритма. Необходимо отметить, что в случае секундных магнитограмм формализация распо- знавания временных возмущений становится еще более актуальной задачей. Действи- тельно, на таких высокочастотных записях малые возмущения, как правило, визуально неотличимы. Наряду с повседневной деятельностью, работа с такими данными требует от экспертов повышенного внимания при более детальном изучении предварительных записей. В то же время, при переходе от минутной регистрации к секундной, количество возмущений на магнитограммах становится несравнимо больше. В огромной мере возрас- тает вероятность ошибок и субъективного подхода экспертов. Эти обстоятельства делают преобразование предварительных данных в окончательные крайне затруднительным, а иногда и невозможным. Последнее является ярким подтверждением необходимости разработки и использования оригинальных формализованных алгоритмов распознавания возмущений на магнитных временных рядах. В работе описан алгоритм Sps (µ, ρ1, ρ2), решающий задачу выделения спайков на секундных записях. Несмотря на то, что алгоритмы SP и SPs решают подобные задачи, они сильно отли- чаются друг от друга. Другим существенным недостатком этих алгоритмов является множество параметров, не всегда понятных с физической точки зрения. 56 6.2. Секундные данные Чтобы показать работу нового алгоритма выделения аномалий, были использованы секундные данные сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ (рис. 6.3, 6.4). Рисунок 6.3 – Исходная магнитограмма Рисунок 6.4 – Фрагмент магнитограммы Далее для двух существенно различных λ были построены гравитационные сглажи- вания. Сглаживание при большем λ = 0,9999 будет аналогом некоторого идеального течения процесса, отображенного на магнитограмме (рис. 6.5). Сглаживание при меньшем λ = 0,4 лучше сканирует исходную запись, игнорируя маленькие, несущественные колеба- ния, и сохраняя большие, существенные всплески (рис. 6.6). Рисунок 6.5 – Сглаживание магнитограммы с λ=0,9999 5 10 15 20 -1.9636 -1.9634 -1.9632 -1.963 -1.9628 -1.9626 -1.9624 -1.9622 -1.962 x 10 4 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time nT 15.5 15.55 15.6 15.65 15.7 15.75 15.8 15.85 15.9 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 x 10 4 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time nT 15.5 15.55 15.6 15.65 15.7 15.75 15.8 15.85 15.9 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 x 10 4 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time nT 57 Рисунок 6.6 – Сглаживание магнитограммы с λ=0,4 Модуль разности этих двух сглаживаний будет аналогом выпрямления в алгоритме FCARS [4, 5]. Далее, используя нечеткие сравнения алгоритма FCARS, строится уровень максимальности, обозначенный на рис. 6.7 и 6.8 зеленой линией. Рисунок 6.7 – Выпрямление c рассчитанным уровнем максимальности Рисунок 6.8 – Фрагмент выпрямления Все точки выпрямления, выходящие за пределы, считаются аномальными. Последу- ющий анализ этих точек на разнице сглаживаний и их объединение с соседними близкими точками позволяет выделить аномалию целиком (рис. 6.9). 15.5 15.55 15.6 15.65 15.7 15.75 15.8 15.85 15.9 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 x 10 4 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time nT 5 10 15 20 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time ab s( S m 0. 99 99 - S m 0. 4 ) 15.5 15.55 15.6 15.65 15.7 15.75 15.8 15.85 15.9 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time ab s( S m 0. 99 99 - S m 0. 4 ) 58 Рисунок 6.9 – Объединение аномальных точек Результаты работы алгоритма показаны на рис. 6.10 и 6.11. Рисунок 6.10 – Исходная магнитограмма с выделенными аномальными фрагментами Рисунок 6.11 – Исходная магнитограмма с выделенными аномальными фрагментами 15.5 15.55 15.6 15.65 15.7 15.75 15.8 15.85 15.9 -0.2 -0.15 -0.1 -0.05 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time S m 0. 99 99 - S m 0. 4 15.5 15.55 15.6 15.65 15.7 15.75 15.8 15.85 15.9 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 -1.9632 x 10 4 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time nT 5 10 15 20 -1.9636 -1.9634 -1.9632 -1.963 -1.9628 -1.9626 -1.9624 -1.9622 -1.962 x 10 4 IPM, Component Z, (02-07-2009) Time nT 59 Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Добровольский М. Н. Дискретные совершенные множества и их применение в кластерном анализе // Кибернетика и системный анализ. 2014. № 2. С. 17–32. Импакт-фактор: Scopus 0,235. Соловьев А. А., Гвишиани А. Д., Горшков А. И., Добровольский М. Н., Новикова О. В. Распознавание мест возможного возникновения землетрясений: методология и пути развития // Физика Земли. 2014. № 2. С. 3–20. Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,326; WoS 0,494; Scopus 0,376. Agayan S. M., Bogoutdinov Sh. R., Dobrovolsky M. N., Kagan A. I. Weighted gravitational time series smoothing // Russ. J. Earth Sci. 2014. Vol. 14, ES3002. doi:10.2205/2014ES000543. Импакт- фактор: РИНЦ 0,696. Отчет по результатам проекта По результатам выполнения НИР в 2012-2014 г. подготовлен, сдан и размещен на сайте ФГАНУ ЦИТиС отчет. Регистрационный номер ИКРБС № 215020970017. Список использованных источников 1. Соловьев А. А. и др. Распознавание возмущений с заданной морфологией на временных рядах. II. Выбросы на секундных магнитограммах. Физика Земли. 2012. № 5. С. 37–52. 2. Богоутдинов Ш. Р. и др. Распознавание возмущений с заданной морфологией на временных рядах. I. Выбросы на магнитограммах всемирной сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ. Физика Земли. 2010. 2011. С. 99–112. 3. Клейменова Н. Г. и др. Геомагнитные пульсации Модели космоса. М.:МГУ. 2007. ред. Панасюк М. И. Т. 1. С. 511–627. 4. Гвишиани А. Д. и др. Определение аномалий на временных рядах методами нечеткого распознавания. Доклады Академии наук. 2008, Т. 421, 1, С. 101–105. 5. Гвишиани А. Д. и др. Математические методы геоинформатики. III. Нечеткие сравнения и распознавание аномалий на временных рядах. Кибернетика и системный анализ. 2008, Т. 44, 3, С. 3–18. 60 7. Интеллектуальная медицинская геоинформационная система для территории России в условиях изменяющегося климата Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0006 Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани Соруководитель: в.н.с., к.ф.-м.н. Ю. С. Любовцева В результате выполнения госзадания по данному проекту в 2014 году впервые для всей территории России создана современная интеллектуальная многодисциплинарная геоинформационная система (ИМГИС), объединяющая данные по демографии, здоровью населения, экологии и климату. На основе инновационных методов, использующих демографические эволюционные модели, проведен анализ и оценка влияния окружающей среды и климата на здоровье населения регионов РФ. Программа фундаментальных исследований Президиума РАН «Фундаментальные науки – медицине» предусматривает создание систем количественных критериев, которые одновременно отражали бы климатические изменения, изменения показателей природных факторов и показателей уровня жизни и здоровья населения. Использование географических информационных систем (ГИС) является самым со- временным методом сбора, хранения, обработки и визуализации пространственных данных, а также получения на их основе новой информации и знаний о пространственно- координированных связях в сложных многодисциплинарных системах. Технология ГИС объединяет традиционные операции работы с базами данных с преимуществами полно- ценного визуального представления и пространственного анализа. В настоящее время существуют примеры успешного построения МГИС отдельных регионов. Между тем, практически не предпринимались попытки построения МГИС для всей территории России, включающей в себя одновременно климатические, экологиче- ские, природные и медико-географические данные. Поэтому целью проекта явилось создание современной аналитической многодисциплинарной интеллектуальной МГИС России, охватывающей всю территорию страны в условиях изменяющегося климата и экологии, а также получение на этой основе информации об их связи и корреляции. Система ИМГИС составлена на основе накопленной информации институтами РАН, РАМН, Росгидромета, Минздравсоцразвития, Федеральной службы государственной статистики о динамике изменений климата, изменений состояния экосистем в простран- стве и во времени, рисков заболеваемости и смертности населения. Впервые использованы инновационные методы, основанные на демографических эволюционных моделях для анализа геомедицинских данных и прогноза рисков наруше- ния здоровья населения всех регионов РФ. Создана современная аналитическая интеллектуальная многодисциплинарная ГИС для анализа влияния окружающей среды на здоровье населения России. 61 Разработана методика, на основе которой построены карты и проведено районирова- ние территории РФ по состоянию здоровья и по медико-экологическим показателям для всех регионов России. Принципиальной особенностью созданной ИМГИС является наличие в ее составе приложения для взаимодействия удаленных пользователей с унифицированными цифро- выми слоями. Все слои сопровождаются подробным описанием в соответствующих файлах метаданных. Доступ к описанию ИМГИС, метаданным, а также опубликованным веб-серверам осуществляется посредством единого веб-ресурса www.gis.gcras.ru. Система ИМГИС позволяет выявлять тенденции изменения состояния здоровья населения в различных регионах России, связанные с климатическими изменениями, и получать полную информацию о географическом распределении медико-демографиче- ских индикаторов на текущий момент. Инновационные методы районирования территории России по уровню здоровья и прогнозирование медико-экологической обстановки на различных территориальных уровнях позволяет обосновывать и разрабатывать меры по адаптации населения к меняю- щимся климатоэкологическим условиям. Созданная ИМГИС приспособлена для контроля результатов деятельности региональных организаций при планировании ими санитарно- профилактических мероприятий по социально-экологической защите населения. Впервые создана современная интеллектуальная многодисциплинарная геоинфор- мационная система – ИМГИС, объединяющая данные по демографии, здоровью населе- ния, экологии и климату на территории России. Актуальность проблемы обусловлена растущей смертностью населения России, связанной со старением населения и низкой скоростью его воспроизводства. Основные результаты, полученные в ходе работ над проектом: 1. Проанализированы медико-экологическая и медико-демографическая ситуации в целом по стране и по отдельным ее регионам и выделены основные факторы, веду- щие к депопуляции и сокращению продолжительности жизни населения. 2. Проведено медико-экологическое районирование территории России, позволяющее оценить риски заболеваемости и смертности, связанные с загрязнениями атмосферы, воды и почвы. 3. Продемонстрировано влияние климатических изменений на здоровье и смертность населения на территории РФ. 4. Осуществлена визуализация пространственных данных о здоровье, демографии, заболеваемости и изменении климата в виде цифровых карт по территории РФ. 5. Исследовано влияние климатических факторов на смертность населения в различ- ных возрастных группах. Показано, что даже короткопериодные температурные из- менения (волны жары) ведут к существенному увеличению смертности в старшей возрастной группе (старше трудоспособного возраста). 62 6. Показано, что в старшей возрастной группе основной причиной смертности явля- ются сердечно-сосудистые и онкологические заболевания. В других возрастных группах основные риски связаны с внешними причинами. 7. Сформулирована новая трехкомпонентная математическая модель развития эпидемических заболеваний. 8. Представлены прогнозы численности населения и общей картины заболеваемости социально значимыми болезнями до 2040 года для регионов РФ. 9. Конечный результат моделирования представлен в виде компьютеризированного набора карт, позволяющих оценивать текущее состояние здоровья населения на фе- деральном и региональном уровнях, предсказывать тренды возможных изменений состояния здоровья населения и устанавливать связи фактора здоровья с экологи- ческими и климатическими характеристиками, а также социально-экономическим состоянием всех территориальных единиц РФ. На рисунках представлены результаты анализа смертности населения в 2009 и 2010 году в трех возрастных группах (рис. 7.1–7.3) и результаты заболеваемости в 2011 г. (рис. 7.4) и прогноза заболеваемости болезнями системы кровообращения в 2040 г. (рис. 7.5). На рис. 7.6 показано районирование территории России по уровню здоровья населе- ния в 2011 году. Здесь: 1 означает высокий уровень здоровья населения, 9 – крайне низкий уровень здоровья населения. На рис. 7.7 представлена карта медико-экологического районирования территории России, построенная с учетом загрязнения воды и почвы различных регионов. Выделены территории повышенного риска (кластеры 7‒9). Проведен анализ медико-демографического состояния территориальных единиц РФ. Продемонстрирована существенная неравномерность уровня заболеваемости различными группами болезней и смертности взрослого и детского населения по территории РФ, и, как следствие, различной демографической нагрузки. Представлено медико-экологи- ческое районирование регионов РФ и выделены зоны максимальных рисков для здоровья населения. Рисунок 7.1 – Смертность населения в возрасте 0-17 лет от всех причин смерти на 100 000 человек соответствующего возраста 63 Рисунок 7.2 – Смертность населения трудоспособного возраста от всех причин смерти на 100 000 человек соответствующего возраста Рисунок 7.3 – Смертность населения старше трудоспособного возраста от всех причин смерти на 100 000 человек соответствующего возраста Рисунок 7.4 – Болезни системы кровообращения взрослого населения на 100 000 человек, 2011 г. 64 Рисунок 7.5 – Прогноз заболеваемости болезнями системы кровообращения взрослого населения на 100 000 человек, 2040 г. Рисунок 7.6 – Районирование территории России по уровню здоровью населения, 2011 г. 65 Рисунок 7.7 – Районирование территории России по медико-экологическому состоянию, 2011 г. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Голубков Г. В., Манжелий М. И., Лушников А. А. Радиохимическая физика верхней атмосферы земли // Химическая физика. 2014. Т. 33. № 7. С. 101–108. (Lushnikov A. A., Golubkov G. V., Manzhelii M. I. Radiochemical physics of the upper Earth’s atmosphere // Russian Journal of Physical Chemistry B. 2014. Vol. 8, Issue 4. P. 604–611. doi:10.1134/S1990793114040034). Импакт- факторы: РИНЦ 0,430; WoS 0,336; Scopus 0,283. Лушников А. А., Загайнов В. А., Любовцева Ю. С., Гвишиани А. Д. Образование наноаэрозолей в тропосфере под действием космического излучения. // Известия РАН. Физика атмосферы и океана. 2014. Т. 50. № 2. С. 175–184. (Lushnikov A. A., Zagaynov V. A., Lyubovtseva Yu. S., Gvishiani A. D. Nanoaerosol Formation in the Troposphere under Action of Cosmic Radiation // Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics. 2014. Vol. 50. No. 2. P. 152–159.). Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,589; WoS 0,597; Scopus 0,580. Любовцева Ю. С., Каган А. И., Пятыгина О. О., Воронова Е. В. Медико-экологическое районирование территории России // Геофизические процессы и биосфера. 2014. Т. 13. № 4. С. 41–59. Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,614; WoS 0,597; Scopus 0,580. Lushnikov A. A. Composition distributions of particles in a gelling mixture // Physical Review E 89, 032121. 2014. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.89.032121. Импакт-факторы: WoS 2,326; Scopus 0,970. Lushnikov A. A., Kagan A. I., Lyubovtseva Yu. S., Gvishiani A. D. Modeling the Evolutionary Demographic Processes for Geomedicine // Izvestia, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics. 2014. Vol. 50, Issue 7. P. 661–668. doi: 10.1134/S0001433814040021. Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,517; WoS 0,597; Scopus 0,580. 66 Статьи в монографии Лушников А. А., Каган А. И. Математическое моделирование геомедицинских процессов // Здоровье населения России: влияние окружающей среды в условиях изменяющегося климата / Под общ. ред. академика А. И. Григорьева; Российская академия наук. М.: Наука, 2014. 428 с. С. 194–217. Любовцева Ю. С., Гвишиани А. Д., Макоско А. А., Пятыгина О. О., Воронова Е. В. Интеллектуальная медицинская геоинформационная система России в условиях изменяющегося климата // Здоровье населения России: влияние окружающей среды в условиях изменяющегося климата / Под общ. ред. академика А. И. Григорьева; Российская академия наук. М.: Наука, 2014. 428 с. С. 325–343. Любовцева Ю. С., Каган А. И., Пятыгина О. О., Воронова Е. В. Оценка медико- демографической и медико-экологической ситуации на территории России // Здоровье населения России: влияние окружающей среды в условиях изменяющегося климата / Под общ. ред. академика А. И. Григорьева; Российская академия наук. М.: Наука, 2014. 428 с. С. 168–193. Отчет по результатам проекта Материалы исследований размещены в итоговом отчете по программе Президиума РАН 5П «Фундаментальные науки – медицине». Книга 2, раздел III «Окружающая среда и здоровье населения в условиях изменяющегося климата», подраздел 3.3 «Научные основы мониторинга и создания технологий снижения негативного влияния факторов окружающей среды на здоровье человека», проект 132 «Интеллектуальная аналитическая многодисциплинарная медицинская геоинформационная система для территории России», стр. 521‒528. А также в монографии Президиума РАН по Программе № 5 «Здоровье населения России: Влияние окружающей среды в условиях изменяющегося климата». Список использованных источников 1. Бокерия Л. А. (ред.) Здоровье России. Атлас, М. НССХ им. А. Н. Бакулева РАМН. 2011, 374 с. 2. Бокерия Л. А. (ред.) Здоровье России. Атлас, М. НССХ им. А. Н. Бакулева РАМН. 2010, 266 с. 3. Демографический ежегодник России, 2010, сс. 295–300. 4. Гофман В. В. //. ГИС в здравоохранении и медицине в РФ, ARCREVIEW 2012, 1, [60] сс. 1–3. 5. Заболеваемость населения. Здравоохранение в Российской Федерации. Статистический сборник, Госкомстат России, М. 1996 6. Коэффициенты смертности по основным классам причин смерти по субъектам Российской Федерации (2010) // Демографический ежегодник России 2010, сс. 295–300. 252–253. 7. Любовцева Ю. С., Красноперов Р. И., Гвишиани А. Д., Макоско А. А., Воронова Е. В., Лушников А. А. // Информационное наполнение медицинской геоинформационной системы России, Тезисы доклада на международной конференции «Влияние космической погоды на человека в космосе и на Земле», 2012. (ИКИ РАН, Москва, Россия 2–8 июня 2012 года) 8. Население России за 100 лет (1897–1997) // Статистический сборник. М. Госкомстат России. 1998. 222 с. 67 9. Последствия изменения климата. // Оценочный доклад об изменениях климата и их последствиях на территории Российской Федерации. Т. 2 Федеральная служба по гидрометеорологии и мониторингу окружающей среды (РОСГИДРОМЕТ) М. 2008, 287 с. 10. Обзор загрязнений природной среды за 2005 год. // Федеральная служба по гидрометеорологии и мониторингу окружающей среды Росгидромета М. 2006. 11. Об особенностях изменения климата на территории РФ в 2009 году // доклад Федеральной службы по гидрометеорологии и мониторингу окружающей среды Росгидромета М. 2009. 12. Об особенностях климата на территории РФ за 2011 год // доклад Федеральной службы по гидрометеорологии и мониторингу окружающей среды Росгидромета М. 2012. 13. О состоянии и об охране окружающей среды Российской Федерации в 2010 году // Государственный доклад Федеральной службы по гидрометеорологии и мониторингу окружающей среды Росгидромета М. 2011. 14. Ревич Б. А. // Экологические приоритеты и здоровье: социально-уязвимые территории и группы населения. Экология человека. 2010 № 7. 15. Российский статистический ежегодник 2011, сс. 99–105. 16. Стандартизованные коэффициенты смертности по основным классам причин смерти // Демографический ежегодник России, Статистический сборник, М. 1997. 17. Струков Д. П. // ГИС здравоохранения Санкт-Петербурга: задачи, геопорталы, опыт. ARCREVIEW 2012 1 [60] c. 7–10. 18. Численность населения Российской Федерации по полу и возрасту на 1 января 2009 года// Статистический Бюллетень, М. Росстат, 2009. cc. 26–29. 19. Численность и миграция населения Российской Федерации в 2008 г.: Статистический бюллетень. М. Росстат. 2009. С. 29. 68 8. Аналитическая геоинформационная система для комплексной оценки ресурсов стратегического минерального сырья (ГИС «Ресурсы») Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0008 Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани Соруководитель: c.н.с., к.ф.-м.н. Р. И. Красноперов 8.1. Цели и задачи исследования Направление 1.1 «Геологическая и минералого-технологическая оценка ресурсов стратегического минерального сырья» программы фундаментальных исследований Пре- зидиума РАН № 27 (ППРАН № 27) является важнейшим элементом государственной стратегии геологического изучения недр и воспроизводства минерально-сырьевой базы. Научно-аналитическое и информационное обеспечение мероприятий программы является одним из необходимых ее элементов, направленным на разработку аналитической геоин- формационной системы (ГИС), предназначенной для сбора, хранения, анализа и предо- ставления данных, собранных в ходе реализации программы. В 2014 г. в рамках проекта в ГЦ РАН продолжалась разработка инструмента, позво- ляющего собирать, анализировать и редактировать цифровую геопространственную информацию о минерально-сырьевых ресурсах, а также использовать генетически связан- ную информацию о геолого-геофизических полях с целью получения новых фундамен- тальных научных обобщений, оценки масштабов распределения и прогнозирования минерально-сырьевых запасов. Основной целью проекта являлась разработка современной аналитической ГИС, предназначенной для интеграции, визуализации и передачи пользователям информации, позволяющей выполнять сравнительный анализ характеристик сырьевых геолого-минера- логических ресурсов и осуществлять оценку тенденций распространения рудных узлов и месторождений. Решение подобных задач требует наличия специалиста-эксперта, способ- ного анализировать массивы пространственных данных различной тематики. В связи с этим возникает задача создания современных информационных систем, обеспечивающих эксперту удобный и оперативный доступ к данным различной тематики и позволяющих оперировать массивами пространственных данных, и выполнять сложный многоуровне- вый интеллектуальный анализ. При этом повышение автоматизации процедур анализа данных позволяет эксперту сосредоточиться на принятии конкретных управленческих решений. Основу исследований и разработок представляют цифровые геопространствен- ные данные о сырьевых геолого-минералогических ресурсах РФ, о геологическом строе- нии и геофизических полях Земли. В 2014 г. исследовательские работы в рамках проекта велись по следующим основ- ным направлениям: • Расширение базы геопространственных данных и метаданных за счет включения новых тематических данных по геологии и геофизике. 69 • Совершенствование и расширение инструментария и функциональных возможно- стей веб-интерфейса для взаимодействия с картографическими веб-сервисами, опуб- ликованными в рамках проекта. • Разработка и оптимизация алгоритмов кластерного анализа и их адаптация для ра- боты с геопространственными данными. 8.2. Расширение базы геопространственных данных проекта В результате исследований по проекту в 2014 г. были обработаны и помещены в ГИС новые слои геолого-геофизической информации. Первичная обработка включала в себя конвертацию данных в формат, совместимый с используемым программным обеспе- чением (ПО) ESRI ArcGIS, оформление соответствующих цифровых карт, подготовку метаданных, отражающих основные характеристики включаемого тематического слоя данных. Подготовленные с помощью серверного ПО тематические слои данных были опубликованы в виде единого картографического веб-сервиса, обеспечивающего опера- тивный доступ к геопространственным данным [1–5]. Также было выполнено обновление тематических слоев данных, включенных в ГИС на этапе 2012–2013 гг. Основное направ- ление обновления уже имеющихся в базе слоев заключалось в составлении более совер- шенной легенды. В качестве основы картографического сервиса в базе геоданных ГИС присутствуют собранные ранее в рамках выполнения проекта цифровые слои данных, обновленные в 2014 г.: • Геологическая карта России масштаба 1:2 500 000 [6]; • Прогнозно-минерагеническая карта на твердые полезные ископаемые территории России, увязанная с материалами по странам СНГ масштаба 1:2 500 000 [7]; • Минерагеническая карта Российской Федерации и сопредельных государств (в пределах бывшего СССР) масштаба 1:2 500 000 [8]. В 2014 г. в картографический веб-сервис проекта включены тематические слои дан- ных, построенные на основе опубликованных ранее результатов геофизических исследо- ваний. Включены тематические слои, построенные на основе модели гравитационного поля EIGEN-6c2. Модель получена путем совместной обработки данных наземных наблюдений и спутниковых данных, включая данные спутников LAGEOS, GRACE и GOCE со времени их запуска по 2012 г. Максимальное разрешение 1949 гармоник для модели EIGEN-6c2 [9]. На основе модели EIGEN-6c2 были рассчитаны аномалии геоида для всего земного шара. Эти данные были включены в веб-сервис в виде отдельного тематического слоя. Данные по аномальному гравитационному полю, создаваемому осадочным чехлом, также включены в базу данных ГИС. 8.3. Интерактивный доступ к результатам проекта В 2014 г. значительно усовершенствован инструментарий для предоставления до- ступа к данным, собранным в рамках проекта. Основной компонент интерактивного 70 получения и анализа геопространственных данных о ресурсах стратегического материаль- ного сырья России представлен одним из сервисов единого геопортала ГИС «Данные наук о Земле по территории России» (http://gis.gcras.ru). Обновленный интерфейс геопортала позволяет вызывать из базы данных и просмат- ривать цифровые слои геолого-геофизической информации, просматривать метаданные, а также выполнять простейшие операции (рис. 8.1). Рисунок 8.1 – Интерфейс для просмотра и редактирования картографической информации в режиме онлайн Интерфейс обеспечивает сравнительный пространственный анализ разных темати- ческих слоев с целью обеспечения новой информацией исследователей в области про- странственного распределения минерально-сырьевых ресурсов, выявления простран- ственных закономерностей и взаимосвязей с различными геолого-геофизическими по- лями. Эти возможности делают данный веб-сервис эффективным аналитическим инстру- ментом в области освоения, оценки перспектив и прогнозирования запасов минерально- сырьевых ресурсов России. 8.4. Разработка и оптимизация алгоритмов кластерного анализа и их адаптация для работы с геопространственными данными Аналитическая компонента геопортала предусматривает использование современ- ных алгоритмов искусственного интеллекта (в области распознавания образов). В настоя- щее время проводится опробование уже созданных и разработка новых алгоритмов с целью их применения в предлагаемом геологическому научному сообществу интерактив- ном геоинформационном средстве. В Геофизическом центре РАН разработан и реализован алгоритм Discrete Perfect Sets (DPS), который при соответствующем выборе параметров выделяет области повышенной 71 плотности в многомерном массиве на основе формальной конструкции плотности [10–13]. Построены новые модификации алгоритма, позволяющие выделять аномалии на времен- ных рядах и двумерных рельефах. Позднее алгоритм DPS был усовершенствован за счет использования его в совокуп- ности с разработанным алгоритмом плоского расширения кластеров E2XT [14]. Эффек- тивность нового подхода была продемонстрирована в процессе анализа данных сейсмиче- ской активности двух регионов мира. Наиболее показательным является результат анализа сейсмичности Кавказа. Результаты распознавания зон возможного возникновения эпицен- тров землетрясений с М≥5,0 представлены на рис. 8.2. Рисунок 8.2 – Зоны возможного возникновения землетрясений с М ≥ 5,0 на Кавказе и эпицентры землетрясений с М ≥ 5,0. Из 105 рассматриваемых сильных землетрясений эпицентры только восьми земле- трясений не попали в распознанные зоны, что свидетельствует о высокой эффективности метода. Алгоритм DPS включен в банк данных алгоритмов ГИС и проводится работа по его внедрению в веб-портал для использования с различными слоями геолого-геофизиче- ской информации. В рамках взаимодействия институтов-участников программы алгоритмы дискрет- ного математического анализа применены для оценки перспектив нефтегазоносности невскрытой части разреза фундамента в центральной части Западной Сибири на границе осадочные породы/фундамент. Получены оценки значимости и иерархии важнейших критериев оценки перспективности глубоких месторождений [15]. 72 8.5. Участие в научных мероприятиях В 2014 г. участниками Программы была организована Международная конференция «Современные информационные технологии для фундаментальных научных исследова- ний в области наук о Земле» (Modern Information Technologies in Earth Sciences – ITES- 2014), прошедшая в Петропавловске-Камчатском 8–13 сентября (http://kamchatka2014.fegi.ru). Организаторами конференции являлись: Отделение наук о Земле РАН, Дальневосточное отделение РАН, Дальневосточный геологический институт ДВО РАН, Институт вулканологии и сейсмологии ДВО РАН, Северо-Восточный ком- плексный научно-исследовательский институт ДВО РАН им. Н. А. Шило и Геофизиче- ский центр РАН. Конференция объединила ведущих российских и зарубежных специалистов в обла- сти информационных и телекоммуникационных технологий, прикладной математики и математического моделирования, системного анализа, геоинформатики, геофизики, дистанционного зондирования, баз данных и других смежных дисциплин. Конференция явилась важным событием в ходе работ по Программе. Участники Программы в своих устных и стендовых докладах представили ключевые результаты работы по своим проек- там, а также подвели предварительные итоги работы. Некоторые доклады были включены в пленарную сессию конференции. Представители организаций-участников Программы выступили в качестве модераторов тематических сессий. В ходе заседаний обсуждался широкий круг вопросов: • Геоинформационное обеспечение фундаментальных исследований в области наук о Земле. Инфраструктура пространственных данных. Проблемы интеграции простран- ственных данных, сервисов и приложений. Интеллектуальные ГИС. • Дистанционное зондирование. Спутниковый мониторинг окружающей среды. Ме- тоды анализа спутниковых данных. Сервисы оперативного доступа к спутниковым данным и системам их обработки. • Организация сетей сбора информации. Разработка систем удаленного мониторинга природных объектов. • Унифицированные коммуникации. Облачные технологии. Корпоративные порталы. Опыт построения и проблемы. • Математическое моделирование природных процессов. Математические методы анализа информации. • Открытый доступ как современная практика научной коммуникации. Электронные библиотеки и коллекции. Интеграция территориально распределенных разнородных научных данных в области наук о Земле. • Виртуальные научные среды и лаборатории. В докладах, представленных участниками Программы, обсуждались современные проблемы и перспективы математической геологии и геофизики. Затрагивалась проблема управления данными (data management) и извлечения знаний и интеллектуального анализа данных (data mining). Эта проблема в настоящее время стоит наиболее остро, поскольку 73 имеет место быстрый постоянный рост объемов геолого-геофизических данных. Кроме того, ведутся непрерывные работы по переводу накопленных архивов геофизических данных из аналогового формата в цифровой. Это приводит к необходимости создания научно-обоснованного эффективного управления базами данных геофизических наблюде- ний во всей их совокупности. В связи с этим возникает проблема организации эффектив- ного доступа к имеющимся базам геопространственных данных по геологии и геофизике. На конференции подробно обсуждалась актуальная проблема развития инфраструктуры пространственных данных (ИПД) в области данных наук о Земле. В ходе выступлений отмечалось, что проблема ИПД сохраняется также на терминологическом и понятийном уровнях [16]. Было отдельно подчеркнуто, что на сегодняшний день при создании элемен- тов ИПД наиболее прогрессивным является использование стандартов, разработанных Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Ряд докладов был посвящен онлайн-сервисам, предоставляющим доступ к базам геоданных по наукам о Земле. Среди прочих были отмечены сервис OneGeology, геопор- тал ВСЕГЕИ, геопортал «Техногенные минеральные образования России» ГГМ им. В. И. Вернадского РАН, геопортал ИВиС ДВО РАН и другие известные онлайн-сервисы. В отдельном докладе были представлены результаты работы, полученные в рамках настоя- щего проекта программы [5]. Отдельная сессия конференции была посвящена математическим методам анализа данных и моделированию природных процессов. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Kaban M. K., Tesauro M., Mooney W. D., Cloetingh S. A. P. L. Density, temperature, and composition of the North American lithosphere – New insights from a joint analysis of seismic, gravity, and mineral physics data: 1. Density structure of the crust and upper mantle // Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst. 2014. Vol. 15. doi:10.1002/2014GC005483. Kaban M. K., Yuanda T. R. Density Structure, Isostatic Balance and Tectonic Models of the Central Tien Shan. // Surveys in Geophysics. 2014. Vol. 35, No. 6. pp. 1375–1391. doi: 10.1007/s10712-014- 9298-7 Tesauro M., Kaban M. K., Mooney W. D., Cloetingh S. A. P. L. NACr14: A 3D model for the crustal structure of the North American Continent // Tectonophysics. 2014. Vol. 631, pp. 65–86. doi: 10.1016/j.tecto.2014.04.016 Импакт-факторы: WoS 2, 866; Scopus 1,817. Tesauro M., Kaban M. K., Mooney W. D., Cloetingh S. A. P. L. Density, temperature, and composition of the North American lithosphere–New insights from a joint analysis of seismic, gravity, and mineral physics data: 2. Thermal and compositional model of the upper mantle // Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst. 2014. Vol. 15. doi: 10.1002/2014GC005484 74 Материалы конференций Soloviev A. A., Gvishiani A. D., Pyatygina O. O., Rybkina A. I., Nikiforov O. V. Web mapping services for providing geological, geophysical and medical geography geodata // In «Modern information technologies in Earth sciences»: Proceedings of the International Conference, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, September 8–13, 2014. Vladivostok: Dalnauka. 2014. P. 90. Список использованных источников 1. Березко А. Е., Соловьев А. А., Гвишиани А. Д., Жалковский Е. А., Красноперов Р. И., Смагин С. А., Болотский Э. С. Интеллектуальная географическая информационная система «Данные наук о Земле по территории России» // Инженерная экология. 2008. № 5. С. 32–40. 2. Beriozko A., Lebedev A., Soloviev A., Krasnoperov R., Rybkina A. Geoinformation system with algorithmic shell as a new tool for Earth sciences // Russian Journal of Earth Sciences. 2011. Vol. 12. No. 1. ES1001. doi: 10.2205/2011ES000501 3. Красноперов Р. И., Лебедев А. Ю., Пятыгина О. О., Рыбкина А. И., Шибаева А. А. Многодисциплинарная аналитическая ГИС для обработки и представления данных дистанционного зондирования // Современные проблемы дистанционного зондирования Земли из космоса. 2012. Т. 9. № 3. С. 50–54. 4. Rybkina A., Krasnoperov R., Pyatygina O., Shibaeva A. Geoinformation system with algorithmic shell as a new tool for Earth sciences / In Proceedings of 1st Czech-Russian Forum of Young Scientists (19–22 April 2012, Pilsen, Czech Republic). Pilsen: University of West Bohemia. 2012. P. 17–18. 5. Soloviev A. A., Gvishiani A. D., Pyatygina O. O., Rybkina A. I., Nikiforov O. V. Web mapping services for providing geological, geophysical and medical geography geodata // In «Modern information technologies in Earth sciences»: Proceedings of the International Conference, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, September 8–13, 2014. Vladivostok: Dalnauka. 2014. P. 90. 6. Андрианова О. Н., Гурьева И. Г., Кузнецова Г. Н., Липатов А. В., Сирота Ю. Н., Чистякова Т. Н. Государственная геологическая карта масштаба 1:2 500 000. СПб.: ФГУП «ВСЕГЕИ». 2011. 7. Петров О. В. (гл. ред.), Феоктистов В. П. (ред.) и др. Прогнозно-минерагеническая карта на твердые полезные ископаемые территории России, увязанная с материалами по странам СНГ масштаба 1:2 500 000. СПб.: ФГУП «ВСЕГЕИ». 2008. 8. Роднов Ю. Н., Белкина И. Л. (ред.) и др. Минерагеническая карта Российской Федерации и сопредельных государств (в пределах бывшего СССР) масштаба 1:2 500 000. М.: ФГУНПП «Аэрогеология». 2009. 9. Förste C., Bruinsma S. L., Shako R., et al. A new release of EIGEN-6: The latest combined global gravity field model including LAGEOS, GRACE and GOCE data from the collaboration of GFZ Potsdam and GRGS Toulouse // Geophysical Research Abstracts. 2012. Vol. 14. Abstract No. EGU2012-2821. 10. Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Добровольский М. Н. Об одном алгоритме поиска плотных областей и его геофизических приложениях / В сб. «Математические методы распознавания образов: 15-я Всероссийская конференция» (г. Петрозаводск, 11–17 сентября 2011). М.: 2012. C. 543–546. 75 11. Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Добровольский М. Н. Дискретные совершенные множества и их применение в кластерном анализе // Кибернетика и системный анализ. 2014. № 2. С. 17–32. 12. Добровольский М. Н., Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Лебедев С. А. Алгоритмы дискретного математического анализа (ДМА) для обработки геофизических данных и возможность их применения к обработке данных дистанционного зондирования / В сб. «Спутниковые методы и системы исследования Земли» (Материалы Третьей международной Школы-семинара, Таруса, 28 февраля – 5 марта 2012). М.: ИКИ. 2012. 13. Agayan S. M., Bogoutdinov Sh. R., Dobrovolsky M. N. Discrete Perfect Sets and their application in cluster analysis // Cybernetics and Systems Analysis. 2014. Vol. 50. No. 2. P. 176-190. doi: 10.1007/s10559-014-9605-9 14. Гвишиани А. Д., Агаян С. М., Добровольский М. Н., Дзебоев Б. А. Объективная классификация эпицентров и распознавание мест возможного возникновения сильных землетрясений в Калифорнии // Геоинформатика. 2013. № 2. С. 44–57. 15. Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Шустер В. Л., Агаян С. М., Цаган-Манджиев Т. Н., Кафтан В. И. Оценка перспектив нефтегазоносности фундамента в центральной части Западной Сибири с применением алгоритмов нечеткой логики и системного анализа // Науки о Земле. 2015. № 2. 16. Кафтан В. И., Цветков В. Я. О форме и содержании понятия «инфраструктура пространственных данных» // Геодезия и картография. 2013. № 6. С. 46–50. 76 9. Расширение базы геоданных ГИС за счет включения новых данных по ГНСС, ДЗЗ и наблюдательным геофизическим сетям, данных о сплоченности морского льда и движениях земной поверхности в пунктах ГНСС; разработка архитектуры ГИС-приложения и интеграция алгоритмов пространственного анализа данных о геофизических полях в среду ГИС Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0007 Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. И. Кафтан Соруководитель: с.н.с., к.ф.-м.н. Р. И. Красноперов 9.1. Цели и задачи проекта Основной целью проекта являлась разработка современной аналитической ГИС, предназначенной для хранения, интеграции, визуализации и предоставления пользовате- лям пространственных геофизических данных для их дальнейшего анализа и интерпрета- ции. Основными задачами в разработке ГИС являются интеграция в единой геоинформа- ционной среде баз данных по наукам о Земле и реализация системы представления про- странственных данных, которая обеспечивает взаимодействие между ГИС и пользовате- лями посредством тонкого клиента [1–3]. Ранее создаваемые пользовательские ГИС, предназначенные для анализа различных геолого-геофизических данных, обладали рядом существенных недостатков, в том числе: • необходимость установки на рабочие места пользователей дорогостоящего программного обеспечения; • высокие требования к квалификации пользователей ГИС; • отсутствие возможности работы с ГИС в режиме удаленного доступа; • невозможность многопользовательского режима; • узкая тематическая направленность. ГИС, разработанная в ГЦ РАН в рамках настоящего проекта, предназначена для комплексного анализа геолого-геофизических данных и данных ДЗЗ и свободна от выше- перечисленных недостатков: • Специализированное программно-аппаратное обеспечение необходимо лишь разработчику системы. Пользователю предлагаемой ГИС требуется только про- граммное обеспечение, находящееся в свободном доступе, для просмотра веб-стра- ниц. 77 • Предлагаемая реализация интеллектуальной ГИС в виде приложения на основе картографического веб-сервиса обладает ясным и простым в обращении интерфей- сом и не требует специальной подготовки и квалификации пользователя. • Система функционирует в режиме удаленного доступа и требует только наличия сетевого соединения. В 2014 гг. исследовательские работы в рамках проекта велись по следующим основ- ным направлениям: • Расширение базы геопространственных данных и метаданных за счет включения новых тематических данных по ГНСС, ДЗЗ и наблюдательным геофизическим се- тям, данных о сплоченности морского льда и движениях земной поверхности в пунктах ГНСС. • Совершенствование и расширение инструментария и функциональных возможно- стей веб-интерфейса для взаимодействия с картографическими веб-сервисами, опуб- ликованными в рамках проекта. 9.2. Цифровые пространственные данные по геофизике Основу исследований и разработок, проводимых в рамках проекта, представляют цифровые геопространственные данные о физических полях Земли. В результате исследо- ваний по проекту были обработаны и помещены в ГИС новые цифровые тематические слои по наукам о Земле. Были добавлены данные по тепловой модели верхней мантии, характеризующие распределение температуры на глубинах 50–300 км [4]. Температура верхней мантии рассчитана по данным о распределении сейсмических скоростей с использованием урав- нений физики минералов (рис. 9.1). Рисунок 9.1 – Значения температуры верхней мантии на глубине 100 км 78 Среди прочего, была добавлена томографическая модель внутренней структуры верхней мантии [5] (рис. 9.2). Рисунок 9.2 – Значения вариаций скорости поперечных волн в процентах от заданного стандартного значения для слоя на глубине 150 км В рамках работ по проекту был также обновлен созданный ранее тематический слой по ГНСС. Слой содержит информацию о постоянно действующих пунктах, оборудован- ных приемной аппаратурой ГЛОНАСС/GPS. Было добавлено описание пунктов наблюде- ний, расположенных на территории России и сопредельных государств. Для исследования сплоченности морского льда использовались данные ДЗЗ между- народного проекта GHRSST (GODAE High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature) экспери- мента по усвоению океанографических параметров GODAE (Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment). Они представляют собой среднесуточные поля температуры поверхности океана (ТПО), представленные на регулярной сетке с шагом 0,25° по широте и долготе и обработанные методом оптимальной интерполяции, начиная с сентября 1981 г. по настоящее время. Данные получены с помощью радиометров AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer), установленных на спутниках NOAA. 9.3. Развитие геопортала ГЦ РАН В 2014 г. была введена в строй обновленная версия инструмента интерактивного до- ступа к данным проекта. Основной компонент интерактивного получения и анализа геопространственных данных по геофизике представлен картографическими веб-серви- сами единого геопортала ГИС «Данные наук о Земле по территории России» (http://gis.gcras.ru). В качестве основы при реализации геопортала выбрано свободно распространяемое ПО ESRI Geoportal Server. Данный программный продукт предназначен для организации интерактивного доступа к публикуемым картографическим веб-сервисам с использованием стандартных протоколов обмена картографической информацией. В интерфейсе геопортала предоставлены возможности использования различных ва- риантов представления цифровых геопространственных данных с использованием совре- 79 менных сетевых сервисов, таких как ArcGIS.com Map и Google Earth, в виде файлов для настольных приложений ESRI ArcMap или ESRI ArcGIS Explorer или в виде модулей для интерфейса программирования приложений ArcGIS JavaScript API (рис. 9.3). Рисунок 9.3 – Интерфейс для предварительного просмотра метаданных картографического веб-сервиса. Имеется выбор вариантов представления данных Веб-интерфейс был модифицирован с целью получения возможности обращаться непосредственно к определенному цифровому слою с его главной страницы, где имеется доступ не только к геолого-геофизическим данным, но также и к политико-экономиче- ским, экологическим, демографическим, медицинским и другим цифровым слоям ГИС [6]. Интерфейс геопортала позволяет вызывать из базы данных и просматривать цифро- вые слои геолого-геофизической информации, просматривать метаданные, создавать свои собственные цифровые слои путем использования ресурсов геопортала, сохранять и выводить их на печать, измерять площадь и длину объектов, получать их координаты, делать собственные комментарии в виде закладок и др. (рис. 9.4). Рисунок 9.4 – Интерфейс для просмотра и редактирования картографической информации в режиме онлайн 80 Функциональные возможности геопортала позволяют эффективно и быстро органи- зовать многоуровневый авторизованный доступ к тем или иным картографическим серви- сам. Для реализации этой функции имеется возможность регистрации пользователей с последующим присвоением определенных прав. Интерфейс обеспечивает сравнительный пространственный анализ разных темати- ческих слоев с целью обеспечения новой информацией исследователей в области наук о Земле. Эти возможности делают данный веб-сервис эффективным аналитическим инстру- ментом при анализе и интерпретации геофизических данных. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Tesauro M., Kaban M. K., Mooney W. D., Cloetingh S. A. P. L. NACr14: A 3D model for the crustal structure of the North American Continent // Tectonophysics. 2014. Vol. 631, pp. 65–86. doi: 10.1016/j.tecto.2014.04.016 Импакт-факторы: WoS 2, 866; Scopus 1,817. Список использованных источников 1. Березко А. Е., Гвишиани А. Д., Соловьев А. А., Красноперов Р. И., Рыбкина А. И., Лебедев А. Ю. Интеллектуальная ГИС «Данные наук о Земле по территории России» / В кн. Проблемы защиты населения и территорий от чрезвычайных ситуаций. – М.: ФГУ ВНИИ ГОЧС (ФЦ). 2010. c. 210–218. 2. Березко А. Е., Гвишиани А. Д., Соловьев А. А., Красноперов Р. И., Рыбкина А. И., Лебедев А. Ю. Многодисциплинарная ГИС для наук о Земле // Прикладные аспекты геологии, геофизики и геоэкологии с использованием современных информационных технологий: Материалы Международной научно-практической конференции. 16–20 мая 2011 г., г. Майкоп (Россия) – Майкоп: Изд-во. «Магарин О.Г.», 2011. с. 37–43. 3. Красноперов Р. И., Лебедев А. Ю., Пятыгина О. О., Рыбкина А. И., Шибаева А. А. Многодисциплинарная аналитическая ГИС для обработки и представления данных дистанционного зондирования // Современные проблемы дистанционного зондирования Земли из космоса. 2012. Т. 9. № 3. С. 50–54. 4. Tesauro M., Audet P., Kaban M. K., Bürgmann R. Cloetingh S. The effective elastic thickness of the continental lithosphere: Comparison between rheological and inverse approaches // Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. 2012. Vol. 13. No. 9. Q09001. doi: 10.1029/2012GC004162 5. Schaeffer A. J., Lebedev S. Global shear-speed structure of the upper mantle and transition zone // Geophysical Journal International. 2013. Vol. 194. No. 1. P. 417–449. 6. Любовцева Ю. С., Макоско А. А., Воронова Е. В., Пятыгина О. О., Шибаева А. А., Красноперов Р. И. Медицинская геоинформационная система России в условиях изменяющегося климата / В сб. «Влияние космической погоды на человека в космосе и на земле» (ИКИ РАН, Москва 4–8 июня 2012 г.). М.: ИКИ РАН. 2013. С. 435–449. 81 10. Разработка метода спектрально-временного анализа (СВАН) для распознавания магнитных бурь в наблюдениях магнитного поля Земли; разработка метода СВАН для оценивания параметров пульсаций магнитного поля Земли с использованием полигармонических моделей и параллельных вычислений Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0012 Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. Г. Гетманов Данный проект выполнялся в рамках Программы ОНЗ РАН № 7 «Геофизические данные: анализ и интерпретация». В 2014 году рассматривался метод спектрально-вре- менного анализа (СВАН) наблюдений сигналов геомагнитного поля (ГМП) для распозна- вания магнитных бурь. Использовался математический аппарат функций частотно-вре- менных распределений (ЧВР), базирующийся на вычислении скользящих дискретных преобразований Фурье и локальных функций ЧВР. Снижение погрешностей СВАН было реализовано на основе методов простого и взвешенного усреднения локальных функций ЧВР. Для оценивания погрешностей СВАН произведено статистическое моделирование. Осуществлено тестирование предложенного СВАН на наблюдениях сигналов ГМП с магнитными бурями для системы магнитных обсерваторий. Предложенный метод СВАН может быть эффективно использован в задаче распо- знавания магнитных бурь в наблюдениях ГМП, применен для вычисления индексов геомагнитной активности на основе спектрально-временных представлений и может дополнить существующие технологии распознавания магнитных бурь, основанные на вычислении индексов геомагнитной активности во временной области. Здесь метод СВАН базируется на введении функции частотно-временного распреде- ления (ЧВР) ( , )P tω , определяющей величину, пропорциональную энергии сигнала, приходящуюся на интервалы , dω ω ω+ , ,t t dt+ . Запишем дифференциальное равенство и интеграл полной энергии: ( , )dE P t d dtω ω= , ( , )E d P t dtω ω ∞ ∞ −∞ −∞ = ∫ ∫ . (10.1) Представим функцию ЧВР на прямоугольной сетке значений частот и моментов времени 10 1 2 ..., Nω ω ω ω< < < < , 20 1 2 ..., Nt t t t< < < < ; положим, что вне данной сетки эта функция ЧВР равна нулю. В точках kω и it , 1k k kω ω ω +≤ < , 1i i it t t +≤ < определим значение функции ЧВР ( , )k iP tω . Вполне можно считать, что ( , ) ( , )k iP t P tω ω= для 1k kω ω ω +≤ < , 1i it t t +≤ < , 10,1,..., 1k N= − , 20,1,..., 1i N= − . В частном случае положим, что k kω ω= , ,i it t= тогда ( , ) ( , )k iP t P tω ω= . Примем 1k k kdω ω ω+= − , 10,1,..., 1k N= − , 1i i idt t t+= − , 20,1,..., 1i N= − , просуммируем, также как и в (10.1): 82 , ( , )k i k i k idE P t d dtω ω= , 1 21 1 0 0 ( , ) N N k i k i k i E P t d dtω ω − − = = = ∑ ∑ . (10.2) Произведем построение функции ЧВР на основе дискретного преобразования Фурье (ДПФ). Зададим дискретизованный сигнал ( )y Ti в точках 0,1,..., 1i N= − . Сформируем дискретные значения частот и моментов времени: 2 k k kNT π ω ω= = ∆ , 2 NT π ω∆ = , 0,1,..., 1k N= − , it Ti= , 0,1,..., 1i N= − . С помощью ДПФ определим полигармоническую модель для рассматриваемого сиг- нала с амплитудами гармоник ( )C k и частотами k kω ω= ∆ : 21 0 1 ( ) ( ) kiN N i C k y Ti e N π− − = = ∑ , 0,1,..., 1k N= − , 21 0 ( ) ( ) kiN N k y Ti C k e π− = = ∑ , 0,1,..., 1i N= − . С использованием величины 2 *( ) ( ) ( )С k C k C k= определим энергию сигнала, прихо- дящуюся на интервал времени длительностью TN и гармонику с частотой kω∆ : 1 1 22 0 0 ( ) ( ) N N i k E y Ti N C k − − = = = =∑ ∑ . Примем допущение, что энергия гармоники с частотой kω∆ равномерно распределяется по дискретным моментам времени Ti , 0,1,..., 1i N= − . Запишем сумму: 21 1 0 0 ( )N N k i С k E N N − − = = = ∑∑ . Получим выражение для функции ЧВР ( , )P k Tiω∆ на основе ДПФ, аналогично (10.2): 21 1 0 0 ( )N N k i С k E T T ω ω − − = = = ⋅∆ ⋅ ∆ ∑∑ , 1 1 0 0 ( , ) N N k i E P k Ti Tω ω − − = = = ∆ ⋅∆ ⋅∑∑ , 2 ( ) ( , ) , 0,1,..., 1, 0,1,..., 1 C k P k Ti k N i N T ω ω ∆ = = − = − ∆ . (10.3) Введем 1 2,j jN N ‒ граничные точки для скользящих локальных интервалов размером N точек с единичным шагом скольжения 1 1jN j= − , 2 1 1j jN N N= + − , 1,...,j m= , 83 1fm N N= − + ‒ число скользящих локальных интервалов, j ‒ номер локального интер- вала, fN mN= . Вычислим скользящие ДПФ для скользящих локальных интервалов: 12 1 2 ( ) 1 ( ) ( ) jj j k i NN N j i N C k y Ti e N π − − = = ∑ , 1,...,j m= , 0,1,..., 1k N= − . На основе указанных ДПФ определим скользящие локальные модельные функции ЧВР ( , )jP k Tiω∆ для последовательности локальных интервалов с номерами 1,...,j m= : 21 ( , ) ( ) 2j j P k Ti C kω π ∆ = , 1 2j jN i N≤ ≤ , 0,1,..., 1k N= − , ( , ) 0jP k Tiω∆ = , 10 ji N≤ < , 2 1j fN i N< ≤ − , 0,1,..., 1k N= − . Для частоты kω∆ и момента времени Ti величины ( , )jP k Tiω∆ могут служить в качестве локальных оценок значений исходной функции ЧВР. Оценка функции ЧВР ( , )P k Tiω∆ для частоты kω∆ и момента времени Ti может быть представлена в виде взвешенной суммы локальных оценок: 1 ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) m j j P k Ti Q i j P k Tiω ω = ∆ = ∆∑ , 0,..., 1fi N= − , 1fm N N= − + , (10.4) где ( , )Q i j ‒ двумерная функция взвешенного усреднения. Нетрудно убедиться в том, что индекс j в общем случае для (10.4) должен удовлетворять неравенствам 1 21 i iJ j J m≤ ≤ ≤ ≤ , где предельные верхние и нижние граничные точки 1 2,i iJ J для суммирования находятся следующим образом: 1 1iJ = , 0,..., 1i N= − , 1 1iJ i N= + − , ,..., 1fi N N= − , 2 1iJ i= + , 0,..., 1i m= − , 2iJ m= , ,..., 1fi m N= − . На практике, суммирование по индексу j осуществляется в окне суммирования с нижними и верхними граничными точками 1 2,i iJ J , которые удовлетворяют неравенствам 1 1 2 2i i i iJ J j J J≤ ≤ ≤ ≤ . Эти точки могут быть определены следующими формулами: 0 02 01(( ) / 2)i i iJ ent J J= − , 1 0i i mJ J J= − , 2 0i i mJ J J= + , ,...,m f mi J N J= − , 84 где 2 1 01 2 1i i mJ J J J− + = + = ‒ ширина окна суммирования. Простое усреднение в окне суммирования применяется, когда величины погрешно- стей оценок локальных ЧВР в точке Ti для частоты kω∆ при введенной ширине окна являются одинаковыми. В этом случае значения локальных функций ЧВР ( , )jP k Tiω∆ , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ могут быть представлены следующей моделью: 0 ,( , ) ( , )j i jP k Ti P k Ti wω ω∆ = ∆ + ∆ , (10.5) где 0 ( , )P k Tiω∆ ‒ значение локальной функции ЧВР для kω∆ и Ti , погрешности ,i jw∆ ‒ случайные некоррелированные числа с нулевым математическим ожиданием и дисперси- ями 2,i jσ , для которых выполняются равенства 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 , , 1 ,...i i ii J i J i J iσ σ σ σ+= = = ; предполагается, что для (10.5) отсутствуют систематические погрешности, что возможно допустить при условии малых 0J . Для такой модели общеизвестно, что оптимальная оценка локальной функции ЧВР для kω∆ и Ti производится на основе простого усреднения: 0 ( , )P k Tiω∆ =  2 10 1 ( , ) i i J j j J P k Ti J ω = ∆∑ . Очевидно, что в этом случае двумерная функция простого усреднения ( , )EQ i j для точек 0 0,..., fi J N J= − и 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ будет иметь вид 0( , ) 1 /EQ i j J= . Для точек 00,..., 1i J= − и 1 01i iJ J= , 2 02i iJ J= , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ будет иметь место равенство ( , ) 1 / ( 1)EQ i j i= + ; для точек 0 1,.., 1f fi N J N= − + − и 1 01i iJ J= , 2 02i iJ J= , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ будет справедливо равенство ( , ) 1 / ( )E fQ i j N i= − . Для остальных точек ,i j в прямоуголь- нике 0,..., 1fi N= − , 1,...,j m= функция простого усреднения будет равна нулю ( , ) 0EQ i j = . Результат простого усреднения локальных ЧВР-функций представляется в виде формулы, позволяющей вычислить оценку функции ЧВР ( , )ЕP k Tiω∆  : 2 1 ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) i i J Е E j j J P k Ti Q i j P k Tiω ω = ∆ = ∆∑ , 0,..., 1fi N= − , 0,1,..., 1k N= − . (10.6) Взвешенное усреднение в окне суммирования применяется, когда величины по- грешностей оценок локальных ЧВР в точке Ti для частоты kω∆ для введенного окна не являются одинаковыми. В этом случае значения локальных функций ЧВР ( , )jP k Tiω∆ , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ могут быть представлены моделью, совпадающей по форме с (10.5); отличие состоит в том, что дисперсии 2,i jσ , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ погрешностей для окна суммирования не являются одинаковыми для заданных Ti и kω∆ . Для такой модели оптимальная оценка локальной функции ЧВР для kω∆ и Ti производится на основе следующей формулы: 85 2 1 ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) i i J G G j j J P k Ti Q i j P k Tiω ω = ∆ = ∆∑ , 0,..., 1fi N= − , 0,1,..., 1k N= − , (10.7) где функция весового усреднения ( , )GQ i j , учитывающая неодинаковые дисперсии имеет вид: 2 1 2 2 , , 1 1 ( , ) / i i J G k Ji j i k Q i j σ σ=     =          ∑ , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ . Дисперсии 2,i jσ , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ , как правило, не бывают точно известными. Воспользу- емся возможной моделью дисперсий 2 ,Mi jσ . Как правило, погрешности больше на концах весового окна, чем в его центре. В качестве оценки сверху для неизвестных величин дисперсий примем кусочно-линейную модельную функцию: , 0 1 0 2 1( )Mi j M M ij Jσ σ σ= + − + , 1 1,...,i i mj J J J= + , , 0 1 0 2 ( ( 1))Mi j M M mj Jσ σ σ= + − + , 22,...,m ij J J= + . Параметры 0 1 0 2,M Mσ σ выберем таким образом, чтобы выполнялись неравенства , ,i j Mi jσ σ< , 1 2i iJ j J≤ ≤ . Тогда, будем иметь: 2 1 2 2 , , 1 1 ( , ) / i i J MG k JMi j Mi k Q i j σ σ=     =          ∑ . Был сформирован модельный сигнал ( )My Ti , приближенно имитировавший спокой- ные и возмущенные магнитной бурей наблюдения ГМП: 1 2( ) ( ) ( )My Ti y Ti y Ti= + , 0,1,..., 1fi N= − , где 1 ( )y Ti ‒ составляющая, соответствующая спокойному состоянию ГМП, 2 ( )y Ti ‒ возмущенному магнитной бурей состоянию ГМП, 60 сT = ‒ шаг дискретизации, 1440 30 43200fN = ⋅ = ‒ число наблюдений за месяц. Составляющая 1 ( )y Ti приближенно имитировала суточные низкочастотные колебания ГМП 1 10 1 1 01 1( ) (2 ) ( )y Ti Е Е сos f Ti w Tiπ φ= − + + , где 1 11 / 2f T= , 1 1440 60T = ⋅ ‒ суточный период, 01φ ‒ начальная фаза, 10E ‒ постоянная составляющая ГМП, 1E ‒ средняя амплитуда суточных колебаний ГМП, 1 ( )w Ti ‒ шум с 0σ . Вторая составляющая 2 ( )y Ti представлена формулой ( )2 2 2 2( ) ( ) cos ( ) ( )y Ti E Ti Ti w Tiϕ= + , где 2 ( )E Ti ‒ переменная амплитуда второй составляющей, которая была сформирована на основе модулирующей функции 0 ( )G Ti типа гауссовой 86 2 0 0 1 0 ( ) i I G Ti ехр I α   −  = −      , 00,1,..., 1i I= − , 2 0 0 2 0 ( ) i I G Ti ехр I α   −  = −      , 0 ,..., 1fi I N= − , 2 20 0( ) ( )E Ti E G Ti= , 20E ‒ средняя амплитуда, 0I определяет положение во времени магнитной бури, 1 2,α α ‒ регулируют крутизну для модулирующей функции, которая имитирует внезапное начало, нарастание и спад модельной магнитной бури. Фазовая функция 2 2 02( ) 2Ti f Tiϕ π ϕ= + , где 2 02,f ϕ ‒ некоторая заданная частота и начальная фаза колебаний магнитной бури. Дисперсия шума 2 ( )w Ti зависит от времени 0 0 0( ) ( )Ti G Tiσ σ α= , 0,1,..., 1fi N= − . Для моделирования были приняты следующие значения параметров: 0 43700E = , 10 50E = , 6 1 5, 71 10 Гцf −= ⋅ , 01 0, 2ϕ = , 0 1, 0σ = , 20 200E = , 1 315α = , 2 35α = , 0 13650I = , 5 2 1, 62 10 Гцf −= ⋅ , 02 0ϕ = , 0 10, 0α = . На рис. 10.1 изображена реализация ( )y Ti . Рисунок 10.1 – Реализация ( )My Ti модельного сигнала ГМП с магнитной бурей На рис. 10.2 помещена СВАН-диаграмма 1/ 2( , ) ( ( , ))E k i P Fk Ti= ∆ , / 2F ω π∆ = ∆ для сигнала рис. 10.1. Интервал, на котором анализировался сигнал, ограничивался точками 01 5000N = , 02 25000N = , параметр ДПФ ‒ 4096N = , СВАН-диаграмма была сформиро- вана для точек 01 02N i N≤ ≤ , 01 01 / 2 7048N N N= + = , 02 02 / 2 22952N N N= − = . Число дискретных частот в ДПФ-спектре бралось равным 10pK = , частотный диапазон состав- лял 5(0 ( 1) / ( )) (0 3, 66 10 ) ГцpK NT −÷ − = ÷ ⋅ . Применялось простое усреднение с ( , )ЕQ i j по (10.6, 10.7) с 3mJ = . 87 Рисунок 10.2 – Амплитудная СВАН-диаграмма модельного сигнала ГМП с магнитной бурей На предложенном модельном сигнале было произведено оценивание погрешностей СВАН. В качестве референтной была взята функция 0 ( , )P k Tiω∆ без шумов ‒ 0 0σ = и без усреднения ( 0mJ = ). Вычислялись СВАН-диаграммы простого и взвешенного усреднения для различных величин mJ при фиксированном значении 0σ . Формировались последова- тельности реализаций наблюдений ( )sy Ti , СВАН-диаграммы 0 ( , )P k Tiω∆ , ( , , )Еs mP k Ti Jω∆ , ( , , )Gs mP k Ti Jω∆ , где 1,...,s M= , s ‒ номер реализации, M ‒ число реализаций. Вычисля- лись погрешности ( )Е mdS J и ( )G mdS J : 0( , , ) ( , ) ( , , )Еs m Еs mdP k Ti J P k Ti P k Ti Jω ω ω∆ = ∆ − ∆ , 02 01 1 2 1 002 01 1 1 ( ) ( , , ) ( 1) pK NM Е m Es m s k i Np dS J dP k Ti J M K N N ω − = = = = ∆ − + ∑ ∑ ∑ , 0( , , ) ( , ) ( , , )Gs m Gs mdP k Ti J P k Ti P k Ti Jω ω ω∆ = ∆ − ∆ , 02 01 1 2 1 002 01 1 1 ( ) ( , , ) ( 1) pK NM G m Gs m s k i Np dS J dP k Ti J M K N N ω − = = = = ∆ − + ∑ ∑ ∑ . На рис. 10.3 помещены результаты статистического моделирования – относительные погрешности ( ) ( ) ( )/ 0E m Е m EJ dS J dSδ = , ( ) ( ) ( )/ 0G m G m GJ dS J dSδ = . Параметры прини- мали значения: 4096N = , 0 2, 0σ = , 0 1 2Mσ = , 0 2 0,1Mσ = . Рисунок 10.3 – Относительные погрешности с простым и взвешенным усреднением 88 На рис. 10.3 помещены графики относительных погрешностей с простым (индекс 1) и взвешенным усреднением (индекс 2). Простое усреднение снижает погрешность СВАН- диаграммы на ≈15‒20%, взвешивание снижает на ≈ 2‒4%. Возрастание кривых ( )E mJδ , ( )G mJδ связано с систематическими погрешностями при увеличении окна суммирования. Для тестирования алгоритма СВАН были использованы магнитограммы обсервато- рии ABG. На рис. 10.4 изображена магнитограмма ( )xH Ti с минутной дискретизацией, произведенная в течение месяца, начиная с 01.10.2004, 0 ч. 00 м. В интервале времени начиная с 06.10.2004 по 12.10.2004 (9000‒18000 мин.) имела место магнитная буря. СВАН-диаграмма на рис. 10.5 соответствует временному интервалу с точками 01 1,N = 02 25000N = , реализовывались скользящие ДПФ с 4096N = , 20pK = , 5(0 ( 1) / ( )) (0 7, 73 10 ) ГцpK NT −÷ − = ÷ ⋅ . Полученные здесь СВАН-диаграммы реализованы с повышенной точностью по сравнению со СВАН-диаграммами отчета 2013 года. Рисунок 10.4 – Обсерватория ABG. Магнитограмма xH Рисунок 10.5 – Обсерватория ABG. СВАН-диаграмма xH Участки СВАН-диаграмм, соответствующие спокойным состояниям ГМП, сосредо- точены в полосе со средней частотой, соответствующей суточной частоте; возникновение магнитной бури приводит к расширению частотной полосы и повышению амплитуд. Рассмотрим задачу аппроксимации наблюденного сигнала ( )z t конечным набором тригонометрических функций: { }cos , sin , 1, ,l l l la t b t l Lω ω = … , где L – число используемых гармоник. Будем считать, что все частоты / 2l lf ω π= упорядочены по величине и лежат в заданном интервале 1 2[ , ]f f . При заданном числе гармоник задача сводится к поиску частот и амплитуд, минимизирующих функционал ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2 10 1 , , cos sin L l l l l i F a b z t a t b t W t dt τ ω ω ω τ =   = − +    ∑∫   . 89 Здесь стрелка над символом означает, что соответствующая величина является мер- ным вектором, τ – временной интервал, для которого выполняется аппроксимация, ( )W t – весовая функция. Если набор частот задан, то определение оптимальных значений амплитуд a  и b  сводится к решению линейной системы, составленной из условий мини- мума функционала F . Выполнив дифференцирование, получим: ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 1 1 , L L a b ml l ml l m lm l ml l m l l A a C b Z C a B b Z = = + = + =∑ ∑ . Здесь введены обозначения: ( ) ( ) 0 0 1 1 cos cos , sin sin ml m l lm ml m l lmA t t W t dt A B t t W t dt B τ τ ω ω ω ω τ τ = = = =∫ ∫ , ( ) ( ) ( ) 0 0 cos 1 1 cos sin , . sin a kb ml m l m l t C t t W t dt Z z t W t dt t τ τ ω ω ω ωτ τ         = =     ∫ ∫ Из приведенных формул видно, что матрица коэффициентов системы уравнений близка к диагональный. То есть, по крайней мере в этом случае вычисление «спектраль- ных компонент» может быть осуществлено весьма эффективно. Для формального пере- хода от непрерывного сигнала к дискретному следует выбрать весовую функцию в виде «гребенки Дирака». В этом случае интегрирование по времени следует заменить на сум- мирование. Получим: ( )1 0 1 1 1 cos sin cos cosec Φ , 2 2 2 2 2 n k n nx x kx x n x n n= +      = ≡            ∑ , ( )2 1 1 1 1 sin sin sin cosec Φ , 2 2 2 2 2 n k nx n x kx x n x n n= +      = ≡            ∑ . Элементы матриц A , B , C можно представить в виде: ( ) ( )1 1Φ , Ω Φ , Ωml ml mlA N N− += + , ( ) ( )1 1Φ , Ω Φ , Ωml ml mlB N N− += − , ( ) ( )2 2Φ , Ω Φ , Ωml ml mlC N N− += + , ( )Ω Δml m l tω ω± = ± . Видно, что и для дискретных сигналов при выполнении условий матрица коэффици- ентов в исходных уравнениях близка к диагональной. Наличие независящих от числа отсчетов N экстремумов означает, что все коэффициенты становятся одного порядка. В 90 этом случае предложенные оценки перестают быть справедливыми, а условие разрешимо- сти системы приводит к ограничению разрешающей способности по частоте, что означает возможность двух-трехкратного увеличения частотного разрешения по сравнению с методом дискретного преобразования Фурье. Вернемся теперь к определению значений частот. Зависимость функционала от этих параметров является нелинейной. Более того, в общем случае функционал, помимо гло- бального минимума, имеет несколько локальных, что существенно усложняет поиск. Ограничимся вариантом решения методом нулевого порядка: разобьем исходный интер- вал частот на K равных промежутков. Поиск оптимальных значений будем осуществлять перебором всех возможных комбинаций частот. Число перебираемых комбинаций частот при больших L по-прежнему экспоненциально возрастает с увеличением сложности модели, так что в отсутствии значительных вычислительных ресурсов мы вынуждены ограничиться тремя-пятью гармониками. Тем не менее, из приведенного ниже примера видно, что и в этом случае использование полигармонической модели вполне оправдано. Приведем пример построения спектрально-временных диаграмм для пульсаций гео- магнитного поля. В верхней части рис. 10.6 изображена компонента ГМП, зафиксирован- ная на станции AAE, Аддис-Абеба. Запись была отфильтрована в диапазоне частот 8‒20 мГц. Ниже, сверху вниз, приведены спектрально-временные диаграммы, построен- ные с использованием полигармонических моделей с двумя, тремя и шестью частотами, соответственно. Рисунок 10.6 – Спектрально-временные диаграммы пульсаций ГМП 91 Предложенный метод СВАН на основе скользящих ДПФ и взвешенного усреднения локальных функций ЧВР адекватен рассматриваемой проблеме анализа сигналов ГМП магнитных бурь и позволяет получить дополнительную информацию относительно спектральных характеристик протекающих во времени физических процессов в магнито- сфере. Интерпретация результатов СВАН наблюдений сигналов ГМП с магнитными бурями от системы обсерваторий позволяет сделать вывод, что предложенная электроме- ханическая модель магнитной бури является вполне реалистичной. Простое усреднение локальных функций ЧВР, как показало статистическое моделирование, позволяет снизить погрешности вычисления СВАН-диаграмм, в среднем, на ≈15‒20%, введение взвешенного усреднения обеспечивает дополнительное снижение погрешностей на ≈2‒4%. Полигармо- ническая модель, даже в случае небольшого числа используемых гармоник, может быть использована в качестве простого и эффективного инструмента анализа геомагнитных возмущений. При необходимости применения в полигармонической модели большего числа параметров можно воспользоваться ресурсами ГРИД. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Гетманов В. Г., Сидоров Р. В. Фильтрация 1-секундных наблюдений от векторного и скалярного магнитометров на основе аппроксимационных кусочно-линейных моделей // Геомагнетизм и аэрономия. 2014. Т. 54. № 5. С. 670‒677. Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,429; WoS 0,510; Scopus 0,339. Отчет по результатам проекта Материалы исследований размещены в отчете «Физические поля Земли: анализ и интерпретация» по Программе ОНЗ РАН № 7 за 2014 год, часть 1, глава 1, параграф 1.4, стр. 46‒55 и стр. 66‒82. 92 11. Развитие новых методов распознавания аномальных событий на временных рядах обсерваторских наблюдений магнитного поля Земли и расширение сети геомагнитных наблюдений в РФ Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0013 Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани Целью работы является развитие математических методов автоматизированной об- работки данных и их применение к анализу дискретных временных рядов геомагнитных наблюдений. В рамках данной работы анализ временных рядов направлен на распознава- ние всплесков векового ускорения главного магнитного поля Земли (ГМПЗ) как индика- торов геомагнитных джерков. Вариации ГМПЗ, регистрируемые на поверхности Земли и в космосе, меняются на временных масштабах от 1 года до десятков миллионов лет. Эти вариации содержат в себе различные проявления геомагнитного векового хода (ВХ), такие как западный дрейф, медленное ослабление геомагнитного диполя, расширение зоны аномально низкого поля в Южной Атлантике и дрейф Северного магнитного полюса. Причиной ВХ служат потоки во внешнем ядре Земли, либо конвективные, либо связанные с магнитогидродинамическими волнами, а также диффузионные процессы (напр., [1]). На временных интервалах до десятка лет менее явные вариации в ВХ обнаруживаются путем расчета второй временной производной поля, иными словами, векового ускорения (ВУ). При анализе обсерваторских данных можно наблюдать нерегулярные внезапные измене- ния полярности ВУ, происходящие менее чем за год. Эти события, именуемые геомагнит- ными джерками, имеют место на стыке двух временных интервалов, в течение которых ВХ меняется практически линейно. Несмотря на широкое изучение геомагнитных джер- ков на протяжении последних 30 лет, вопрос об их происхождении по-прежнему остается открытым. Они бывают как региональные, так и глобальные в своей пространственной протяженности с максимальным сдвигом по времени в 2‒3 года между проявлениями на разных обсерваториях. После 1999 г. геомагнитные джерки были зафиксированы в 2003 [2] и 2007 гг. [3]. В работе также решаются задачи разработки методов распознавания аномалий на двумерных рядах геофизических данных. В настоящее время в задачах анализа геомаг- нитных измерений такие методы особо актуальны, поскольку с 2013 г. научное сообще- ство располагает спутниковыми данными высокой точности, представляющими собой двумерное распределение характеристик магнитного поля по поверхности Земли. Третье направление исследований было связано непосредственно с непрерывной ре- гистрацией и накоплением геомагнитных данных. Работы по вводу в эксплуатацию обсерватории «Климовская» в 2014 г. в основном касались установки визирной цели, требуемой для проведения измерений абсолютных значений (склонения, наклонения и полной напряженности) магнитного поля, и определения ее азимута с помощью высоко- точных геодезических измерений. 93 11.1. Применение метода гравитационного сглаживания для изучения всплесков векового ускорения ГМПЗ С недавних пор, с появлением спутниковых наблюдений магнитного поля Земли беспрецедентной точности, появилась возможность более глубокого исследования проис- хождения джерков. Благодаря этим данным, имеющим, в отличие от обсерваторских, глобальное покрытие земного шара, были построены весьма точные модели ГМПЗ за последнее десятилетие. Эти модели разложения ГМПЗ по сферическим гармоникам позволяют строить карты ВУ не только на поверхности Земли, но и на границе ядра и мантии. Последние исследования показывают, что, по крайней мере, некоторые геомагнит- ные джерки, наблюдаемые на поверхности Земли, являются результатом начальной или конечной фаз всплесков ВУ на границе ядра и мантии. В частности, в работе [3] было показано, что полная энергия ВУ на границе ядра и мантии согласно модели CHAOS-2 [4] достигла максимума между 2005 и 2006 гг. и регионально была сосредоточена преимуще- ственно в центральной части Атлантики (рис. 11.1а). Было показано, что фаза возрастания этого всплеска ВУ являлась причиной геомагнитного джерка, наблюдаемого на поверхно- сти ядра около 2003 г., а фаза убывания всплеска привела к джерку 2007 г. Последний выявленный всплеск ВУ относится к 2009 г. (рис. 11.1б), а последний джерк – к 2011 г. [5]. (а) (б) Рисунок 11.1 – Карты ВУ (радиальная компонента, нТл/год2) на границе ядра и мантии за 2006 (а) и 2009 (б) гг. согласно модели разложения по сферическим гармоникам до степени 10 серии CHAOS, построенной по спутниковым данным [5] За 2009 г. три участка ВУ чередующейся полярности, расположенные в атлантиче- ском секторе, схожи по форме с участками ВУ в том же регионе за 2006 г., но имеют обратную полярность. ВУ в центральной части Атлантики в 2009 г. достигает 600 нТл/год2, что по модулю немного больше, чем в 2006 г., когда ВУ составило около -400 нТл/год2 на том же участке. Менее очевидна взаимосвязь между другими участками аномального ВУ за 2006 и 2009 гг. В особенности это касается крупных и интенсивных участков в районе Индийского океана [5]. 94 Итак, современные модели на базе спутниковых данных позволяют выделять всплески ВУ с большой точностью. В основном это связано с тем, что спутниковые данные по сравнению, например, с наземными наблюдениями, наиболее гладкие, не зашумленные и однородные с точки зрения географического покрытия. Однако это обсто- ятельство делает затруднительным изучение всплесков до 2000 г., когда спутниковые измерения магнитного поля Земли не проводились. Таким образом, возникла задача разработки нового подхода к распознаванию всплесков ВУ ГМПЗ исключительно по обсерваторским данным. В 2014 г. задача состо- яла в апробации подхода на примере всплесков ВУ, имеющих место после 2000 г., и сравнении полученных результатов с результатами моделирования на базе спутниковых данных. В основе предлагаемого подхода использовался метод гравитационного сглаживания [6, 7], разработанный на предыдущих этапах проекта. Метод положительно себя зареко- мендовал в моделировании ВХ, что было подтверждено результатами сравнения с моде- лированием ВХ на базе спутниковых данных. Технологии отбора исходных геомагнитных данных и расчета первой и второй производных подробно описаны в отчете за 2013 г. Отобранные записи представляют собой регулярные временные ряды с шагом 1 месяц. В данном исследовании проверка метода осуществлялась на примере последних двух всплесков ВУ, которые имели место в 2006 и 2009 гг. в атлантическом и южно- азиатском регионах по причине их изученности в уже опубликованных работах ([5]). В качестве исходных данных рассматривались записи восточной (Y) и вертикальной (Z) компонент вектора магнитного поля, полученные на нескольких обсерваториях в двух рассматриваемых регионах, за период с 1997 по 2011 гг. В атлантическом регионе рас- сматривались 9 обсерваторий, в южно-азиатском – 6. Отбор обсерваторий проводился по двум критериям: расположение в интересующих регионах и наличие непрерывных рядов наблюдений за период 1997‒2011 гг. Карты с указанием мест расположения выбранных обсерваторий приведены на рис. 11.2. (а) (б) Рисунок 11.2 – Карты расположения обсерваторий в атлантическом (а) и южно-азиатском (б) регионах, отобранных для исследования 95 ВУ рассчитывалось для каждой обсерватории согласно методу, описанному в отчете за 2013 г. Пример расчета ВУ для компоненты Y проиллюстрирован на рис. 11.3. Рисунок 11.3 – Пример расчета ВУ компоненты Y для двух обсерваторий. Стрелками отмечены смены знака ВУ Для выделения значительных всплесков ВУ рассматривались несколько пороговых значений A (горизонтальная пунктирная линия на рис. 11.3): 2, 3, 4 и 5 нТл/год2. Для каждого порогового значения A были обработаны данные всего множества обсерваторий и выделены фрагменты ВУ, превышающие по модулю установленные пороговые значе- ния. Для возможности комплексной оценки полученных результатов рассчитывалась характеристическая функция отдельно для каждого региона, для каждой компоненты Y и Z и для каждого порогового значения A. Каждая характеристическая функция отражает количество обсерваторий в заданном регионе, для которых ВУ по заданной компоненте превышает заданное пороговое значение A за каждый месяц из рассматриваемого времен- ного интервала. Таким образом, в итоге было построено 16 графиков (2 региона, 2 компо- ненты, 4 пороговых значения A). На рис. 11.4 представлены графики характеристической функции, рассчитанной для компоненты Z по атлантическому региону (рис. 11.4а) и для компоненты Y по южно-азиатскому региону (рис. 11.4б) с учетом всех пороговых значе- ний A. Как видно из рис. 11.4а, в атлантическом регионе при всех пороговых значениях A наблюдаются ярко выраженные возвышенности характеристической функции обеих полярностей в окрестностях 2006 и 2009 гг. При этом, с увеличением A возвышенности становятся более локализованными. Это легко объяснимо тем обстоятельством, что, согласно «спутниковым» моделям, в атлантическом регионе ВУ за указанные периоды проявляется наиболее интенсивно (см. рис. 11.1). Для южно-азиатского региона ситуация менее очевидна, что также вполне есте- ственно – интенсивность ВУ на границе ядра и мантии существенно ниже, чем в атланти- ческом регионе (см. рис. 11.1). Однако чем больше A, тем более отчетливо прослежива- ются локальные максимумы характеристической функции обеих полярностей в окрестно- стях 2006 и 2009 гг. При этом, при наивысшем значении A максимум в окрестности 2009 г. является абсолютным. 96 (а) (б) Рисунок 11.4 – Графики характеристической функции, рассчитанной по данным обсерваторий из атлантического (а) и южно-азиатского (б) регионов. Для Атлантики рассматривалась компонента Z, для Южной Азии – компонента Y. Использовались следующие пороговые значения A: 2 (верхние графики), 3, 4 и 5 (нижние графики) нТл/год2. На графиках синим цветом обозначено количество обсерваторий за каждый месяц, для которых d2Y/dt2<-A (d2Z/dt2<-A), красным – для которых d2Y/dt2>A (d2Z/dt2>A) Итак, полученные результаты демонстрируют эффективность и перспективность предлагаемого метода для распознавания всплесков ВУ исключительно по обсерватор- ским данным. Данное обстоятельство дает серьезные основания для использования метода в задаче распознавания и анализа всплесков ВУ до 2000 г., когда спутниковые измерения магнитного поля Земли не проводились. Всплески ВУ, наблюдаемые в регистрируемых 97 геомагнитных данных, являются прямым проявлением динамических процессов в жидком ядре. Подобный подход к анализу динамики векового хода ГМПЗ используется впервые. 11.2. Разработка метода распознавания аномалий на двумерных рядах геофизических данных В ГЦ РАН разработан и реализован алгоритм Discrete Perfect Sets (DPS) [8, 9], кото- рый при соответствующем выборе параметров выделяет области повышенной плотности в многомерном массиве на основе формальной конструкции плотности. Построены новые модификации алгоритма, позволяющие выделять аномалии на двумерных временных рядах и рельефах (рис. 11.5). Рисунок 11.5 – Исходный рельеф, синтетические данные 11.2.1. Построение 2D-выпрямлений Обозначим через 1 2 =h h h + + +×R R R декартово произведение дискретных полуосей 1h +R и 2h +R : 1 1 1 11 2 2 2 22 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 = { , > 0, = 1, 2, } = { , > 0, = 1, 2, } = { = ( , ); = ( , ), = ( , )} h h h k h h k k h h k kh k h k h h h h k k k + + +   R R R Двумерный ряд 1 1 2 2= { = ( ) = ( , )}ky y y kh y k h k h предполагается заданным на подмножестве hY +∈ R . Введем на h +R параметр локального обзора 1 2= ( , )∆ ∆ ∆ кратный h, h +∆∈ R . Фрагментом локального обзора назовем следующий участок временного ряда y с центром в 1 1 2 2= ( , )kh k h k h : 2 21 21 2 1 1 = , ,k k k h h hh y y y ∆ ∆ ∆ − + ∆  + +      ∆ ∈     R . 98 Определение 1: Выпрямлением ( ) = ( )ky k yΦ Φ ∆ двумерного ряда y назовем неотрицательное отображение, определенное на множестве фрагментов { }k y∆ . Пример: 1. Длина фрагмента обзора 1 2 ( ) = ( ) ( )k k j k h h y y L y j j k k∆ ∆ − ≤ < + ∂ ∂ ∆ + ∂ ∂ ∑ . 2. Энергия фрагмента обзора 2 = ( ) = k h k j k j k h E y y y ∆ + ∆ − ∆ −∑ , где = 1 2 1 2 = 2 2 1 1 k h j j k h k y y h h ∆ + ∆ −   ∆ ∆ + +      ∑ . 3. Осцилляция фрагмента обзора == ( ) = max min k k h hk j j j kj k hh O y y y ∆ ∆ + + ∆∆ −− ∆ − . 11.2.2. Применение DPS для распознавания аномалий на 2D-выпрямлениях По выпрямлению yΦ на множестве Y строится плотность P . Это неотрицательная функция множества и точки: : 2YP Y +× → R . Если A Y⊂ , k Y∈ , то ( ) = ( ), ,A yP k k k A k kh h ∆ ∆  Φ ∈ ∩ − +   ∑ . В результате применения алгоритма DPS( , )Y P к множеству Y с плотностью P получается подмножество yAnom YΦ ∈ всех аномальных для ряда y точек на основе выпрямления Φ (рис. 11.6). 99 Рисунок 11.6 – yAnom YΦ ∈ Заключительный этап – разбиение множества аномальных точек yAnomΦ на компоненты дискретной связности (рис. 11.7): 1= ( ) ( )sy y yAnom Anom AnomΦ Φ ∨ ∨ Φ . Рисунок 11.7 – ( ) , = 1, ,iyAnom i sΦ  Подмножества ( )iyAnomΦ , = 1, ,i s являются аномалиями двумерного ряда y на основе выпрямления Φ . 11.3. Ввод в эксплуатацию геомагнитной обсерватории стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ «Климовская» (Архангельская обл.) С 25 по 29 августа 2014 г. состоялась экспедиция сотрудников ГЦ на магнитную об- серваторию «Климовская», функционирующую на базе геобиостационара «Ротковец» (деревня Поповка, Климовское сельское поселение, Коношский район Архангельской обл.) Института физиологии природных адаптаций Уральского отделения Российской 100 академии наук (ИФПА УрО РАН). Основной целью поездки являлась установка визирной цели для абсолютных наблюдений и определение ее азимута с помощью геодезических измерений. Визирная цель является неотъемлемым элементом геомагнитной обсервато- рии. Значение ее азимута используется для привязки горизонтальных отсчетов на декли- нометре к абсолютным значениям и последующего определения склонения вектора магнитного поля. На южной оконечности мыса, вдающегося в оз. Святое, была установлена визирная цель для измерений абсолютного магнитного склонения и наклонения. Визирная цель представляет собой геодезическую марку, закрепленную на стальном винте на торце 8- метровой стальной трубы, установленной вертикально. Труба была вкопана в землю приблизительно на 2 м в специально сделанную ручным шнековым буром скважину и забетонирована. Расположение визирной цели отмечено на плане обсерватории (рис. 11.8а). Расстояние между точкой расположения деклинометра (феррозондового теодолита) в абсолютном павильоне и визирной целью (рис. 11.8б) составляет 177 м. Цель хорошо просматривается из окна абсолютного павильона через зрительную трубу теодо- лита. (а) (б) Рисунок 11.8 – (а) – Схема расположения зданий и сооружений магнитной обсерватории «Климовское»; (б) – установленная мира С помощью ГНСС-приемников и электронного тахеометра (рис. 11.9) были опреде- лены координаты визирной цели и постамента в абсолютном павильоне, на котором располагается деклинометр. Был рассчитан геодезический азимут визирной цели. Предва- рительное значение азимута составляет 174° 57′ 10ʺ. Точность определения азимута составляет ~8ʺ и удовлетворяет обсерваторским стандартам. При последующей дополни- тельной обработке ГНСС-измерений будут уточнены координаты визирной цели и поста- мента, а также будет заново рассчитано значение азимута. Для этого необходимо исполь- 101 зовать точные эфемериды навигационных спутников GPS, которые были изданы в течение 14 дней после момента измерений. Кроме того, следует учитывать, что в процессе усадки визирная цель может поменять свое положение. Таким образом, в любом случае будут проведены повторные геодезические измерения через 1 год после закладки визирной цели. Рисунок 11.9 – Работы по определению азимута миры 11.4. Объемы данных, полученных и обработанных за отчетный период Объем исходных обсерваторских данных ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ, которые использовались в задаче распознавания всплесков ВУ, составил ~120 Мб. За отчетный период в Российско-украинский центр геомагнитных данных, функцио- нирующий на базе ГЦ РАН, из геомагнитных обсерваторий и станций поступили опера- тивные данные объемом ~960 Мб. Их объем при хранении в геомагнитной БД составил ~116 Мб. Кроме того, за отчетный период в центр поступили магнитограммы в отсканирован- ном виде в объеме ~304 Гб. Итого, общий объем геомагнитных данных, полученных и обработанных за отчет- ный период, составил ~305,2 Гб. 102 Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Зелинский Н. Р., Клейменова Н. Г., Козырева О. В., Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Соловьев А. А. Алгоритм распознавания геомагнитных пульсаций Pc3 на секундных данных экваториальных обсерваторий сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ // Физика Земли. 2014. № 2. С. 91‒99. Импакт-факторы: РИНЦ 0,326; WoS 0,494; Scopus 0,376. Материалы конференций Soloviev A. A., Bogoutdinov Sh. R., Agayan S. M. New Fuzzy Logic Technique for Modelling Geomagnetic Secular Variation Using Onground Observations // Proc. Int. Conf. «Modern Inform. Technologies in Earth Sciences», Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka, Sept. 8‒13, 2014. p. 113‒114. Soloviev A., Agayan S., Bogoutdinov S., Dzeboev B. New methods of geoinformatics for analysing nonregular geophysical data // International Conference on Data Sharing and Integration for Global Sustainability (SciDataCon), 2‒5 November 2014, New Delhi (India). Отчет по результатам проекта Материалы исследований размещены в отчете «Физические поля Земли: анализ и интерпре- тация» по Программе ОНЗ РАН № 7 за 2014 год, часть 1, глава 1, параграф 1.4., стр. 46‒55. Список использованных источников 1. Finlay C. C., Dumberry M., Chulliat A., Pais M. A. Short timescale core dynamics: Theory and observations, Space Sci. Rev. 2010. Vol. 155, P. 177–218. 2. Olsen N., Mandea M. Investigation of a secular variation impulse using satellite data: The 2003 geomagnetic jerk. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 2007. Vol. 255, P. 94–105. 3. Chulliat A., Thébault E., Hulot G. Core field acceleration pulse as a common cause of the 2003 and 2007 geomagnetic jerks, Geophys. Res. Lett. 2010. Vol. 37, L07301, doi: 10.1029/2009GL042019 4. Olsen N., Mandea M., Sabaka T. J., Tøffner-Clausen L. CHAOS-2—A geomagnetic field model derived from one decade of continuous satellite data, Geophys. J. Int. 2009. Vol. 179, P. 1477–1487. 5. Chulliat A., Maus S. Geomagnetic secular acceleration, jerks, and a localized standing wave at the core surface from 2000 to 2010. JGR Solid Earth. 2014. Vol. 119 , doi: 10.1002/2013JB010604 6. Агаян С. М., Гвишиани А. Д., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Каган А. И. Сглаживание временных рядов методами дискретного математического анализа // Российский журнал наук о Земле. 2010. Т. 11. RE40001 (doi: 10.2205/2009ES000436) 7. Гвишиани А. Д., Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Каган А. И. Гравитационное сглаживание временных рядов // Тр. ИММ УрО РАН. 2011.Т. 17. № 2. С. 62–70. 8. Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Добровольский М. Н. Об одном алгоритме поиска плотных областей и его геофизических приложениях // Доклады 15-й Всероссийской конференции «Математические методы распознавания образов. ММРО-15». 2011. С. 543‒546. 9. Агаян С. М., Богоутдинов Ш. Р., Добровольский М. Н. Дискретные совершенные множества и их применение в кластерном анализе // Кибернетика и системный анализ. 2014. № 2. С. 17‒32. 103 12. Исследование геомагнитного поля и разработка методов фильтрации его естественных вариаций в целях повышения точности наклонного бурения скважин в Арктическом регионе Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0009 Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани Соруководитель: гл.н.с., д.ф.-м.н. Р. Ю. Лукьянова 12.1. Методы определения траектории бурения и коррекции с учетом главного, литосферного и внешнего геомагнитного поля Технология горизонтального бурения скважин требует непрерывного контроля ори- ентации буровой колонны под землей. Строгое следование заданному направлению необходимо для достижения нефтеносного слоя, а при проводке скважин кустами ‒ для соблюдения условий непересечения стволов скважин. Для измерения зенитного угла и географического азимута применяются скважинные измерительные системы с использо- ванием гироинклинометров или приборов, измеряющих магнитное поле Земли. Несмотря на все измерительные достоинства гироинклинометров, они имеют относительно низкую вибро- и ударопрочность, вследствие чего их затруднительно использовать в буровом забойном оборудовании. Магнитометрическая технология является значительно более экономичной, так как магнитные инклинометры более стабильны и могут использоваться в качестве забойных навигационных систем. Однако при геомагнитном сопровождении бурения в Арктическом регионе возникают проблемы, которых нет в более низких гео- графических широтах. Эти проблемы связаны со строением магнитного поля Земли и мощными спорадическими возмущениями геомагнитного поля во время магнитных бурь. В 2014 г. проводились работы по разработке научных основ и созданию технологического задела в области геомагнитного сопровождения наклонно-направленного бурения сква- жин в арктической зоне РФ, исследования спорадических геомагнитных вариаций и эволюции внутреннего магнитного поля Земли. Полный спектр работ включал в себя теоретические (изучение локальных аномалий и вариаций геомагнитного поля в арктиче- ском регионе) и прикладные (методические и технологические работы по развертыванию обсерваторий) задачи. В случае наклонно-направленного или горизонтального бурения забойные двигатели ориентируют в скважине по определенному азимуту, и бурение идет в строго заданном направлении. Постепенно набирается зенитный угол вплоть до 90°, и ствол скважины становится горизонтальным. В скважине измерения производятся компонентным сква- жинным магнитометром, расположенным в немагнитной капсуле на конце буровой колонны (рис. 12.1). По известным значениям магнитного склонения D и наклонения I можно однозначно определить направление на истинный северный полюс (географиче- ский азимут) и величину отклонения от вертикали. Скважинный магнитометр входит в систему телеметрического контроля, которая носит название «Measurements While Drilling» (MWD, «Измерения в процессе бурения»), и широко используется при проведе- нии буровых работ и строительстве скважин во всех географических зонах. Методика определения координат с учетом главного магнитного поля Земли, литосферных магнит- 104 ных аномалий и вариаций внешнего геомагнитного поля известна как «Interpolation In- Field Referencing» (IIFR «Интерполяционная привязка к месту»). Для коррекции телемет- рических магнитных данных применяется параллельный мониторинг геомагнитного поля на поверхности Земли с помощью магнитных обсерваторий, развернутых в районе прове- дения работ, но магнитометрическая аппаратура должна находиться вне техногенных помех. Как правило, обсерватории располагаются на некотором удалении, и для коррек- ции показаний системы MWD решается задача математической интерполяции данных ближайших обсерваторий. Рисунок 12.1 – Ствол наклонно-направленной скважины, буровой инструмент и измерительные приборы для контроля заданного направления по магнитному склонению и азимуту Принятые в нефтегазовой промышленности стандарты точности определения пара- метров геомагнитного поля составляют 0,1° для D, 0,05° для I и 50 нТл для модуля пол- ного вектора геомагнитного поля F. В Арктике величина I превышает 80°, т.е. силовые линии магнитного поля Земли направлены почти вертикально, а горизонтальная состав- ляющая невелика. Поэтому естественные и техногенные аномалии магнитного поля вносят дополнительную, часто значительно превышающую допустимые значения, по- грешность в показания телесистемы MWD. Основной причиной возникновения помех в высоких широтах являются геомагнитные бури, связанные с солнечной активностью. Во время бурь средней интенсивности амплитуда горизонтальных наземных магнитных вариаций от авроральных ионосферных электрических токов достигает 1000 нТл. При экстремальных бурях могут наблюдаться отклонения азимутальной компоненты вектора геомагнитного поля в 4000 и более нТл. В магнитовозмущенные периоды в авроральной зоне амплитуда спорадических вариаций горизонтальной компоненты внешнего геомаг- нитного поля может быть сравнима по величине с главным геомагнитным полем, по которому осуществляется навигация подземного скважинного рабочего инструмента. 105 12.2. Геомагнитное поле в Арктическом регионе На карте, представленной на рис. 12.2, показаны действующие в арктическом реги- оне магнитные обсерватории, которые входят в мировую сеть обсерваторий реального времени ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ и удовлетворяют высшему стандарту качества геомагнитных измерений полного цикла для индустриальных потребителей. Рисунок 12.2 – Магнитные обсерватории, действующие в Арктическом регионе севернее 60°N. На территории РФ обозначены действующие обсерватории (синие контурные звездочки), в том числе входящие в ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ (синие звездочки), обсерватории, готовящиеся к вводу в эксплуатацию (синие точки) и магнитовариационные станции (треугольники) 106 В целях расширения российского сегмента ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ в Арктике разработана методическая база и проведены работы по установке аппаратного магнитометрического комплекса стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ на геофизической обсерватории «Мыс Шмидта» ИКИР ДВО РАН. Вариации магнитного поля регистрируются с помощью: (1) феррозондового компонентного вариометра MAGDAS COLD; магнитометр (оверхау- зеровский датчик GSM-19), расположенный в системе двойных колец, регистрирует вариации dH, dD, dZ с частотой 1 Гц, синхронизация к точному времени с помощью встроенного GPS-приемника; и (2) dIdD-магнитометра GSM-19FD GEM Systems, Канада, периодичность измерений 2,5 с. Регистрируются вариации dD, dI и модуль F. Были уста- новлены магнитометры для абсолютных измерений: I-магнитометр (DIflux, DIF) Mag-01H (Bartington Instr., UK) на базе немагнитного теодолита Wild-T1 (Швейцария) для опреде- ления магнитного склонения D и наклонения I с погрешностью 0,1' и протонный магни- тометр ММП-203-М2 для абсолютных измерений модуля вектора магнитной индукции F, точность 0,1 нТл, оверхаузеровский магнитометр POS-1 для измерений F, чувствитель- ность 0,01 нТл, точность 0,5 нТл, измерения с периодичностью до 1 с. Основу для мето- дического обеспечения магнитных измерений составляют требования ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ. Были разработаны алгоритмы и программы для обработки измерений в виде набора скриптов для математического пакета MATLAB, которые обеспечивают: чтение исходных файлов с результатами измерений dIdD GSM-19FD и MAGDAS; визуализацию исходных данных, контроль сбоев таймера; выделение и отбраковку помех в исходных данных; вывод исходных данных в формате MATLAB и текстовом; вычисление среднеминутных значений dF, dD, dI, dZ, вывод в суточные файлы в стандартах IMFv1.23 и IAGA2002; вывод графических файлов и расчет K-индексов геомагнитной активности; сравнение данных dI, dD и MAGDAS. Минутные данные в формате IMF по электронной почте раз в сутки передаются в ГЦ РАН для пополнения базы данных (БД) и представления на сайте центра геомагнитных данных (http://geomag.gcras.ru). Организован интерактивный доступ к данным через набор веб-сервисов и визуализация на видео-стенде. Автоматическое обновление БД происходит по мере поступления новых данных. Тестовые непрерывные измерения проводились в течение нескольких месяцев. Следующая часть работ связана с определением характеристик главного поля. Мо- дели главного поля из-за недоучета вековой вариации могут содержать значительные погрешности. Для построения скорректированных локальных магнитных карт в первую очередь необходимо иметь оценки отклонений реально наблюдаемой вековой вариации от статистической модели и изменение этих отклонений во времени. Для ряда высокоширот- ных станций проанализирован вековой ход F по модели IGRF и по данным периодических наблюдений абсолютных величин. На рис. 12.3 показан вековой ход на станции Диксон (DIK, 71,1°N, 129°E) и мыс Челюскин (CCS, 77,72°N, 104,28°E) за период с 1940 по 2006 г. Наблюдаемое поле на несколько десятых процента слабее, чем модельное. Разность между ними постепенно увеличивалась и в современную эпоху достигает 300 нТл. За полвека интенсивность поля увеличилась, в среднем, на 2%. Межгодовая изменчивость F по данным измерений и сглаженная кривая имеют медленно меняющуюся гармонику с периодом 50‒60 лет, а разность между модельной и измеренной межгодовой изменчиво- стью ‒ линейный тренд: отрицательный для DIK и положительный для CCS. 107 Рисунок 12.3 – Левая колонка: вековая вариация F для станций Диксон (а) и мыс Челюскин (b), рассчитанная по модели IGRF (черные точки), и по данным измерений (красные точки). Средняя колонка: межгодовая изменчивость F по данным измерений и сглаженная по 5 точкам кривая (синяя линия). Правая колонка: разность между модельной и измеренной межгодовой изменчивостью и линейный тренд Разработаны и протестированы алгоритмы для оценки локальной возмущенности внешнего геомагнитного поля, основанные на методах дискретного математического анализа, описывающих меру вертикальной аномальности на магнитограммах геомагнит- ных вариаций. Для высокоширотных станций проведено сопоставление мер аномальности с традиционными 3-часовыми традиционными геомагнитными индексами К, которые рассчитываются ретроспективно. Получен коэффициент корреляции >0,9, что позволяет перейти к расчету нового индекса активности, основанному на мере аномальности гео- магнитного поля – меры аномальности с высоким (вплоть до минутного) временным разрешением и режиме квазиреального времени. Следующая часть работ связана с определением характеристик внешнего геомагнит- ного поля для оценки частоты возникновения условий, когда величина геомагнитных возмущений превышает допустимую погрешность точности измерений магнитометров MWD по среднесуточным значениям горизонтальных магнитных элементов I, D и модуля полного вектора поля F на арктических станциях. На рис. 12.4 для обс. Соданкюля (SOD, 67,3°N, 26,6°E) за два солнечных цикла с 1993 по 2013 гг. показаны гистограммы числа дней в году, когда возмущения внешнего магнитного поля, величины I, D и F, превышали заданные пороговые значения 1° (0,5°), 1,5° (0,75°) и 500 нТл (200 нТл), соответственно. Показано, что на широтах 60‒70°N дни значительных возмущений могут занимать более трети года, особенно в период солнечного максимума. 108 Рисунок 12.4 – Гистограммы, показывающие число дней в году, когда амплитуда среднесуточных отклонений магнитных элементов D, I и интенсивности F от спокойного уровня превышала заданные пороговые значения (обс. SOD, 1993‒2013 гг.) В ходе выполнения работ по проекту получены результаты как прикладного, так и теоретического характера, а именно: • Для развития российского сегмента геомагнитных обсерваторий и его расширения в арктическую зону разработана методическая база и проведены работы по установке аппаратного магнитометрического комплекса стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ на наибо- лее высокоширотной на сегодняшний день магнитной обсерватории «Мыс Шмидта» (69°с.ш., 179,5°в.д.). Проведены тестовые непрерывные (в течение нескольких меся- цев) измерения полного вектора и вариаций геомагнитного поля с организацией ка- нала связи и передачи данных из обсерватории с дискретностью раз в сутки в центр сбора, расположенный в ГЦ РАН, для пополнения базы данных и представления на сайте. • Вековой ход модуля полного вектора геомагнитного поля F для трех российских высокоширотных станций, полученный по модели главного поля IGRF и по данным наблюдений, имеет различия, достигающие 300 нТл, скорость изменения F имеет период около 50 лет и амплитуду до 100 нТл, разность между модельным и измерен- ным вековым ускорением знакопеременна и зависит от географического положения. Результат показывает необходимость обсерваторского мониторинга абсолютных значений геомагнитного поля в возможно большем числе точек и локальной коррек- ции IGRF. • Аналог локального индекса геомагнитной активности К, рассчитанный как дискрет- ная мера вертикальной аномальности на магнитограммах, имеет коэффициент кор- реляции с традиционным 3-часовым К-индексом, превышающий 0,9 для всех меся- цев года, что позволяет перейти к расчету индекса с высоким (до 1-мин) временным разрешением. • Оценки частоты возмущений внешнего магнитного поля, при которых величины геомагнитных элементов превышали заданные пороговые значения, показывают, что дни значительных возмущений могут занимать более трети года в период солнеч- ного максимума и на спаде цикла. 109 Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Гвишиани А. Д., Лукьянова Р. Ю. Геоинформатика и наблюдения магнитного поля Земли: российский сегмент // Физика Земли. 2015. С. 3–20. Гвишиани А. Д., Лукьянова Р. Ю. Наклонно-направленное бурение скважин в Арктике: найти полюс и не потерять его // Арктические Ведомости / Arctic Herald. № 4, 2014. Отчет по результатам проекта Материалы о проведенных исследованиях размещены в итоговом отчете по Программе Пре- зидиума РАН 44П «Поисковые фундаментальные научные исследования в интересах развития Арктической зоны Российской Федерации» за 2014 год: Книга 3, Раздел II «Нефтегазовые и минеральные ресурсы Арктики и их глубокая переработка», параграф 2.1. «Разработка новых геолого-геофизических и геодинамических моделей строения и эволюция литосферы Арктики и прогноз месторождений полезных ископаемых», подраздел 2.2. «Разработка научных основ новых технологий поиска, разведки и эксплуатации месторождений полезных ископаемых», стр. 123. 110 13. Создание семейства численных физико-математических моделей для изучения и прогнозирования электродинамики верхней атмосферы Земли с использованием данных геомагнитного спутника SWARM и высокопроизводительных компьютерных систем Номер гос. регистрации № 114101670061 (0145-2014-0010) Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани Соруководитель: гл.н.с., д.ф.-м.н. Р. Ю. Лукьянова 13.1. Концепция Эмпирические модели конвекции основаны на сопоставлении значений ионосфер- ного электрического потенциала с соответствующими значениями солнечного ветра (СВ), межпланетного магнитного поля (ММП) и другими внешними управляющими парамет- рами. При этом получается, что характеристики продольных токов (ПТ), которые связы- вают магнитосферу и ионосферу, непосредственно контролируются параметрами СВ и ММП и являются драйверами ионосферных электрических полей, учитываются лишь косвенно. В отличие от предыдущих подходов, в предложенной модели в качестве вход- ных данных и источника потенциала естественным образом используется именно распре- деление ПТ, причем индивидуальное для каждого полушария. В окончательном виде, после обработки всех данных космической миссии Swarm, статистическая модель ПТ должна быть детально параметризована. В совокупности с соответствующим распределе- нием ионосферной проводимости это дает глобальную картину крупномасштабных электродинамических характеристик ионосферы. Математическое моделирование во многих случаях является более эффективным способом количественного описания элек- тродинамических процессов в ионосфере и прогнозирования развития экстремальных ситуаций. Численные модели прогностического типа предполагают не только адекватное описание физических процессов, но и использование различных способов ассимиляции данных наблюдений. В целом, задача разработки семейства моделей ионосферной элек- тродинамики состоит из двух компонентов: (1) создание статистической модели ПТ по измерениям магнитных вариаций над высокоширотной ионосферой спутниками Swarm, параметризованной по межпланетному магнитному полю, уровню солнечной и геомаг- нитной активности, величине солнечного зенитного угла, полушарию и (2) создание численной модели глобального распределения ионосферного электрического потенциала (модели конвекции ионосферной плазмы) с учетом электродинамической связи ионосфер противоположных полушарий, где источником возбуждения конвекции является ПТ магнитосферного происхождения из модели (1), а проводимость ионосферы рассчитыва- ется по модели, основанной на измерениях авроральных частиц спутниками DMSP и TIMED. В дальнейшем, семейство моделей может быть расширено за счет создания численной модели расчета 3-мерного распределения электронной концентрации в поляр- ной ионосфере, где конвекция плазмы играет определяющую роль. Для определения эволюции траекторий плазменных трубок в этом случае может использоваться модель (2). 111 13.2. Магнитное поле, создаваемое продольными токами над ионосферой Разработана методика численного расчета распределения магнитного поля над ионо- сферой, которое создается произвольно заданным распределением ПТ. Модель базируется на решении уравнения: В = rot A при дополнительном условии divA = 0, (13.1) где А – векторный магнитный потенциал. Уравнение (13.1) записывается в сферических координатах θ, φ, r, где θ – геомагнит- ная коширота, φ ‒ долгота, r – радиус Земли + 120 км и дискретизируется на сетке (θ,φ) с шагом ∆θ, ∆φ. Электрический ток (в нашем случае ПТ) плотностью j, создающий магнит- ное поле, направлен нормально к внешней поверхности тонкой ионосферной оболочки. Тогда из В = rotA (θ,φ)er зональная и меридиональная компоненты магнитного поля определяются как (13.2) и для узла сетки (i,j) (13.3) Для единичного контура периметром L: (13.4) Итерационное уравнение для А: (13.5) где f – левая часть (13.4), w – параметр релаксации, n – номер итерации. 112 Для решения задачи был разработан алгоритм, реализованный в программном мо- дуле на языке Fortran. Плотность ПТ задавалась в каждом узле сетки согласно статистиче- ским картам, полученным ранее по данным измерений предыдущих космических аппара- тов Triad, Magsat, Oersted. На рис. 13.1 представлено распределение плотности ПТ над ионосферой (рис. 13.1а), магнитного потенциала, который создается этим ПТ (рис. 13.1б), зональная Bφ (рис. 13.1в) и меридиональная Вθ (рис. 13.1г) компоненты магнитного поля. Для избранных случаев было проведено сравнение рассчитанного распределения магнит- ного поля с современными измерениями новых спутников Swarm. На рис. 13.2 показано модельное распределение Вφ вдоль траектории пролета спутника. Рисунок 13.1 – Распределение плотности ПТ над ионосферой (а), магнитного потенциала, который создается этим ПТ (б), зональная Bφ (в) и меридиональная Вθ (г) компоненты магнитного поля для равноденствия, ММП Bz = -5 нТл, By = -5 нТл. Карты построены в геомагнитных координатах, северное полушарие. Внешняя граница находится на 50° MLat (геомагнитная широта). Красным и синим цветом на диаграмме (а) обозначен ПТ, соответственно втекающий в ионосферу и вытекающий из нее. Красный и синий цвет на диаграммах (б, в, г) соответствуют положительным и отрицательным значениям параметров 12 12 06 0618 18 0000 0000 а) б) в) г) 113 Рисунок 13.2 – Модельное и измеренное распределение Вφ вдоль траектории пролета спутника 13.3. База данных по магнитным вариациям, измеряемым группировкой Swarm над ионосферой Было начато создание базы данных по магнитным вариациям, измеряемым группи- ровкой Swarm в высоких широтах северного и южного полушарий. Разработана структура СУБД и алгоритмы, автоматизирующие привязку данных по магнитному полю к данным по географическим координатам, процесс выделения из спутниковых данных сигнала внутреннего магнитного поля Земли с использованием модели главного поля. Имеющийся в настоящее время объем магнитных данных приведен в табл. 13.1. Таблица 13.1 Код Спутник Количество файлов Начало периода Последние данные Объем (Мб) MAGx_CA SAT_A 339 26.11.2013 18.11.2014 2694 MAGx_CA SAT_B 337 28.11.2013 18.11.2014 2678 MAGx_CA SAT_C 319 04.12.2013 05.11.2014 2535 MAGx_HR SAT_A 341 26.11.2013 18.11.2014 111631 MAGx_HR SAT_B 337 28.11.2013 18.11.2014 110321 MAGx_HR SAT_C 319 04.12.2013 05.11.2014 104429 MAGx_LR SAT_A 539 26.11.2013 18.11.2014 5501 MAGx_LR SAT_B 536 28.11.2013 18.11.2014 5470 MAGx_LR SAT_C 511 04.12.2013 05.11.2014 5215 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 90 MLat (Pole)50 MLat B , n T 50 MLat 114 13.4. Модуль расчета двумерного распределения интегральной ионосферной проводимости Разработаны алгоритмы и программный модуль для расчета двумерного распределе- ния интегральной ионосферной проводимости в зависимости от следующих входных параметров: день года, универсальное время, уровень солнечной и геомагнитной активно- сти. Учитывался вклад солнечного ультрафиолетового излучения и ионизация энергич- ными авроральными частицами магнитосферного происхождения согласно опубликован- ным данным наблюдений высыпаний энергичных частиц в ионосфере c помощью спутни- ков DMSP и TIMED и приведенным там параметризациям. Расширение аврорального овала с ростом геомагнитной активности параметризовано согласно cтатистической модели. Проведен подбор параметров сплайн-интерполяции для сглаживания градиентов проводимости на границах высыпаний частиц и на терминаторе. 13.5. Реализация численного решения краевой задачи для уравнения непрерывности токов, обеспечивающих магнитосферно-ионосферное взаимодействие Программные модули реализуют задачу непрерывности токов, обеспечивающих ионосферно-магнитосферное взаимодействие (13.6) где J – интегральные ионосферные токи, j – плотность ПТ, χ – магнитное наклонение. Проводящая ионосферная оболочка разделена на три области: северная и южная по- лярные шапки и остальная часть сферы. Двумерное уравнение непрерывности интеграль- ного ионосферного тока в сферических геомагнитных координатах (θ ‒ коширота, φ – долгота) решается для северной, южной и среднеширотной областей отдельно, а соответ- ствующие граничные условия связывают эти три области в единую систему. Внутри северной и южной полярных шапок процесс описывается своим уравнением непрерывно- сти, с присущим данной шапке распределением проводимости и плотности ПТ. Гранич- ные условия отражают неразрывность общей токовой цепи и выравнивание потенциала на границах шапок. Краевая задача для трех областей ионосферной оболочки (α=1 и 2 – северная и юж- ная полярные шапки, α=3 – среднеширотная область): (13.7) 115 где Uα, Jα, jα – электрический потенциал, интегральный ионосферный ток и ПТ, текущий нормально к внешней границе ионосферной оболочки в соответствующих областях α=1, 2, 3. θ1 (θ2) ‒ экваториальная граница северной (южной) полярной шапки, θ1 и θ3 – границы среднеширотной области. В ионосфере закон Ома с учетом тензора проводимости записывается: (13.8) Уравнения (13.8) для каждой из трех областей дискретизируются на сетке, и задача решается итерационным методом с введением новой переменной Z (τ – параметр релакса- ции): (13.9) Примеры распределения ионосферного электрического потенциала для различных значений ММП и моментов времени приведены на рис. 13.3. Рисунок 13.3 – Изолинии электрического потенциала (траектории конвекции ионосферной плазмы) для различных значений ММП и моментов времени 116 13.6. Заключение Разработана методика и алгоритмы численного расчета распределения магнитного поля над ионосферой, которое создается произвольно заданным распределением электри- ческих токов магнитосферного происхождения, текущих вдоль высокопроводящих сило- вых линий геомагнитного поля между пограничными слоями магнитосферы и ионосферой (продольных токов ‒ ПТ). Разработана структура базы данных для вариаций магнитного поля, связанных с ПТ по измерениям группировки спутников последнего поколения Swarm и проводится ее наполнение данными по мере их поступления. Разработаны про- граммные модули расчета распределения ионосферной проводимости. Разработаны алгоритмы и программные модули для реализации физико-математической модели рас- пределения электрического потенциала в ионосфере в глобальной постановке, т.е. при учете электродинамической связи между ионосферными оболочками северного и южного полушарий. Модель основана на численном решении краевой задачи для уравнения непрерывности электрических токов, обеспечивающих ионосферно-магнитосферное взаимодействие (интегральные горизонтальные ионосферные токи и ПТ). Постановка граничных условий, отражающих неразрывность общей токовой цепи и выравнивание потенциала на границах шапок, приводит к взаимозависимости распределения электриче- ских полей внутри полярных шапок и влияние обеих шапок на распределение потенциала в среднеширотной области. В качестве источника потенциала задается распределение ПТ на внешней границе ионосферы. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Уваров В. М., Лукьянова Р. Ю. Моделирование высокоширотной ионосферы с учетом влияния параметров межпланетной среды // Гелиогеофизические исследования (Научный электронный журнал) № 7, 2014. URL: http://vestnik.geospace.ru/index.php?id=245 Свидетельства о государственной регистрации • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации программы для ЭВМ №2014660976 «sigma_PH». Автор: Лукьянова Р. Ю. Заявка № 2014618636 от 28.08.2014 г. Дата госрегистрации в Реестре программ для ЭВМ 21 октября 2014 г. • Свидетельство о государственной регистрации программы для ЭВМ №2014661138 «DIFFUR_3REG». Автор: Лукьянова Р. Ю. Заявка № 2014618901 от 02.09.2014 г. Дата госрегистрации в Реестре программ для ЭВМ 23 октября 2014 г. Отчет по результатам проекта Материалы исследований размещены в итоговом отчете по Программе 43П Президиума РАН «Фундаментальные проблемы математического моделирования», тема 24, стр. 144‒150. По результатам выполнения проекта в 2014 г. подготовлен, сдан и размещен на сайте ФГАНУ ЦИТиС отчет. Регистрационный номер ИКРБС № 215020970015. 117 14. Распознавание предвестников геомагнитных бурь на основе спектрально-временного анализа наблюдений магнитных обсерваторий с использованием полигармонических моделей и вычислительных систем сверхвысокой производительности Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2014-0011 Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.т.н. В. Г. Гетманов События-предвестники магнитных бурь ‒ Sudden commencement (SС) и магнитные бури (МБ) фиксируются на магнитограммах наблюдений геомагнитного поля (ГМП) и являются процессами, возможно, близкими по своей физической природе. МБ представляют собой существенно нестационарные колебания ГМП со средней длительностью ≈ 1‒2 суток, с амплитудами до ≈ сотен нТл. Сигналы SC появляются в сигналах ГМП за ≈ 5‒10 часов до возникновения МБ в виде коротких импульсов (неск. минут) с малыми амплитудами (десятки нТл). Характерная особенность импульсов SC ‒ наличие крутых передних и задних фронтов-больших значений первых производных. Согласно используемой здесь феноменологической модели, очевидно, что при от- сутствии МБ, сигналы ГМП должны быть низкочастотными, иметь малые амплитуды и быть сосредоточенными в некоторой частотной полосе. Появление SC и последующее возникновение МБ связывается с расширением указанной частотной полосы сигналов ГМП за счет подключения новых мод и возрастанием амплитуд. Рассмотрим магнитограммы сигналов SC и МБ от обсерватории ААЕ. На рис. 14.1 представлена магнитограмма события SC для координаты ГМП ( )zH Ti , время наблюде- ния в течение суток 12.11.2011, 1 сT = , 18000 с 26000 сТi≤ ≤ . Для времен 21500 с 22000 сТi≤ ≤ имеют место два импульса SC с амплитудами ≈ 2 нТл ; длитель- ность переднего фронта составляет примерно 100 с. Таким образом, первая производная для сигнала SC ГМП составляет величину ≈ 0, 020 нТл c . Рисунок 14.1 – Обсерватория ААЕ. Магнитограмма с SC 118 На рис. 14.2 представлено событие МБ для координаты ГМП ( )xH Ti , время наблюдения – в течение месяца, начиная с 01.10.2004, 60 сT = , 0 43199 60 сТi≤ ≤ ⋅ , начало МБ ‒ ≈ 06.10.2004, конец МБ ‒ ≈ 12.10.2004. Рисунок 14.2 – Обсерватория ААЕ. Магнитограмма с МБ Видно, что в данном случае, МБ начинается со скачка вниз, начиная с 4 1 60 0, 8 10 сTi ≈ ⋅ ⋅ до момента с 4 2 60 1,1 10 сTi ≈ ⋅ ⋅ . Длительность скачка составляет 460 0, 3 10 с≈ ⋅ ⋅ . Величина скачка равна (36240 35670) нТл≈ − . Следовательно, максимальное значение первой производной для сигнала МБ ГМП в данном случае принимает значение ≈ 0, 003 нТл/c , что значительно меньше, чем в случае с SC. На рис. 14.3, 14.4 помещены результаты спектрально-временного анализа (СВАН) указанных сигналов SC и МБ с использованием скользящих ДПФ. Приведенные СВАН-диаграммы в виде зависимостей амплитуд ( , )E k i от Fk∆ и Ti ( 1 /F NT∆ = ‒ разрешающая способ- ность ДПФ, N ‒ размерность ДПФ, для SC ‒ 64N = , для МБ ‒ 4096N = ) позволяют составить первоначальное представление о поведении SC и МБ в частотно-временной области. Рисунок 14.3 – Обсерватория ААЕ. СВАН-диаграмма SC 119 Рисунок 14.4 – Обсерватория ААЕ. СВАН-диаграмма МБ Видно, что СВАН-диаграммы подтверждают, в общих чертах, правильность пред- ложенной модели. Общая постановка задачи SC-распознавания базируется на вычислении текущих СВАН-диаграмм сигналов ГМП и реализации их сравнений с заданными референтными СВАН-диаграммами. Недостатки СВАН на основе скользящих ДПФ ‒ малые разрешаю- щие способности по времени и частоте. Полигармонические модели (ПГМ), применяемые для СВАН, позволяют улучшить разрешение по времени и частоте за счет реализации возможно меньших локальных временных интервалов и оптимизации расположения частот для ПГМ. Алгоритм построения локальных ПГМ базируется на стандартных составляющих: определении модели, наблюдений, функционала и формулировки задачи аппроксимации. ПГМ в дальнейшем будут использоваться для реализации СВАН. Будем полагать, что ПГМ, предназначенная для аппроксимации наблюдений координат вектора напряженно- сти ГМП на локальном интервале, представляется в следующем виде: 1 ( , , , ) ( cos sin ), 0,1,..., 1 L M l l l l l y a b Ti a Ti b Ti i Nω ω ω = = + = −∑ , где ,a b ‒ векторы линейных параметров, 1( ,..., ) T Lω ω ω= ‒ вектор частотных параметров размерности ( ,1)L , 0 Lω ∈Ω , 0 LΩ ‒ допустимое множество частотных векторов. Пусть вектор наблюдений имеет вид ( ( 0), ( 1),..., ( ( 1))TY y T y T y T N= ⋅ ⋅ − ; формируется функцио- нал: 1 2 0 ( , , , ) ( ( ) ( , , , )) N M i W a b Y y Ti y a b Tiω ω − = = −∑ . На первом этапе аппроксимации для ( , , , )W a b Yω фиксируются нелинейные частот- ные параметры constω = и находятся частично оптимальные линейные параметры: 120 ( ) { }, , const( , ), ( , ) arg min ( , , , )a ba Y b Y W a b Yωω ω ω==  . На основе ( , )a Yω , ( , )b Yω формируется функционал частичной остаточной суммы, зависящий от ω : 0 ( , ) ( ( ), ( ), , )W Y W a b Yω ω ω ω=   . На втором этапе для 0 ( , )W Yω осуществляется оптимизация по 0 Lω ∈Ω . Оцениваются частоты ω и, с использованием , ω , вычисляются оценки амплитудных параметров a , b : ( ) { } 0 0arg min ( , )LY W Yω ω ω ω ∈Ω = =  , ( , )a a Yω=   , ( , )b b Yω=   . Ввиду того, что функционал 0 ( , )W Yω зависит от многих переменных и является многоэкстремальным, его минимизацию целесообразно производить на основе поисковой процедуры нулевого порядка. Для указанной минимизации и получения оценок ампли- тудных параметров β  реализуется процедура перечисления векторов поисковых частот. Пусть значения координат векторов поисковых частот выбираются на сетке дискретных значений kω в диапазоне min max( , )ω ω : max min( ) / ( 1)fkω ω ω∆ = − − , min ( 1)k kω ω ω= + ∆ − , 1,..., fk k= , где fk ‒ число дискретных частот на сетке, ω∆ ‒ шаг дискретности. Частоты 1 2 , ,..., Lk k k ω ω ω назначаются из заданного набора дискретных значений kω , 1,..., fk k= . Очевидно, индексы 1 2, ,..., Lk k k для этих частот с учетом неравенств должны удовлетво- рять системе из L неравенств: 11 1fk k L≤ ≤ − + , 1 21 2fk k k L+ ≤ ≤ − + ,…, 2 11 1L L fk k k− −+ ≤ ≤ − , 1 1L L fk k k− + ≤ ≤ . Для 2, 3, 4L = системы неравенств для индексов представятся следующим образом: 2L = 11 1fk k≤ ≤ − , 1 21 fk k k+ ≤ ≤ ; 3L = 11 2fk k≤ ≤ − , 1 21 1fk k k+ ≤ ≤ − , 2 31 fk k k+ ≤ ≤ ; 4L = 11 3fk k≤ ≤ − , 1 21 2fk k k+ ≤ ≤ − , 2 31 1fk k k+ ≤ ≤ − , 3 41 fk k k+ ≤ ≤ . Введенные индексы удобно объединить в векторы: 1 2( , ,..., ) Т Lk k k k= . Известно, что в общем случае задача перечисления векторов индексов решается на основе известных комбинаторных алгоритмов. Для случая малых значений ,fk L последовательности векторов индексов 1 2( , ,..., ) Ts s s s Lk k k k= , 1,..., fs s= достаточно просто могут быть сформированы и пронумерованы на основе вложенных циклов. 121 При организации поиска по частоте каждому номеру 1,..., fs s= ставится в соответ- ствие вектор индексов sk и вектор поисковых частот sω . Координаты 1 2 , ,..., L s s s k k kω ω ω для этого вектора вычисляются по формулам: ( ) 1 2 , ,..., L s s s s k k kω ω ω ω= , min ( 1)l s s k lkω ω ω= + ∆ − , 1, 2,...,l L= , 1,..., fs s= . Отыскание оптимальных частотных и амплитудных параметров ПГМ на локальном интервале с наблюдениями Y сводится к последовательным вычислениям для 1,..., fs s= векторов sω и функционалов 0 ( , ) sW Yω и организации перебора: { }01,...,arg min ( , )f ss ss W Yω== , sω ω=  , ( )sβ β ω=   . Построение ПГМ на локальном интервале сводится к решению задачи локальной аппроксимации и вычислению оценок оптимальных частот и амплитуд: ( )1 2 1 2, ,..., , , ,...,L Lf f f A A A      , / 2l lf ω π=  , 2 2 1/ 2( )l l lA a b= +    , 1, 2,...,l L= . Сформированной сетке частот kω , 1,..., fk k= могут быть поставлены в соответствие амплитуды kА , 1,..., fk k= , где 2 2 1/ 2( ) l l k k k А a b= +   , 1, 2,...,l L= и lk k=  ‒ координаты опти- мального вектора индексов, для остальных индексов lk k≠  будем иметь 0kА = . Результа- том спектрального анализа на локальном интервале оказывается введенный одномерный массив амплитуд kА , 1,..., fk k= , где индекс k определяет частоту. Для большого временного исходного интервала с точками 0,1,..., 1fi N= − , строится последовательность скользящих локальных интервалов по N точек, расположенных внутри исходного интервала, 2 jN , 1 jN ‒ граничные точки локальных интервалов, j ‒ номер локального интервала, 1,...,j m= . Например, 1 ( 1)jN dN j= − , 2 1 1j jN N N= + − , 1,...,j m= , dN ‒ шаг скольжения. Решаются задачи локальной аппроксимации – нахожде- ния ПГМ для последовательности скользящих локальных интервалов. На их основе вычисляются двумерные массивы оптимальных частотных и соответствующих им ампли- тудных параметров: ( )1 2 1 2, ,..., , , ,...,j j Lj j j Ljf f f A A A      , / 2lj ljf ω π=  , 2 2 1/ 2( )lj lj jlA a b= +    , 1, 2,...,l L= , 1,...,j m= . Результатом СВАН на исходном временном интервале будет двумерный массив ам- плитуд ,k jА , 1,..., fk k= , 1,...,j m= , где индекс k определяет частотный параметр. Повышение точности СВАН может быть реализовано на основе взвешенного суммирова- ния. 122 На основе полученного двумерного массива амплитуд вычисляются локальные функции частотно-временных распределений (ЧВР) 2,( , )j k k jP Ti Аω = , 1 fk k≤ ≤ , 1 2j jN i N≤ ≤ , 1,...,j m= , ( , ) 0j kP Tiω = , 10 ji N≤ < , 2 1j fN i N< ≤ − для частотно-времен- ного прямоугольника, которые имеют вполне отчетливый физический смысл. С использо- ванием феноменологической модели задаются референтные ЧВР-функции для спокойных состояний ГМП 0 ( , )j kP Tiω . Принятие решений о распознавании SC осуществляется на основе сравнений референтной и локальных ЧВР-функций. В случае выполнения неравенства 0 ( , ) ( , )j k j kP Ti P Tiω ω< принимается решение за- дачи распознавании SC на прямоугольнике 1 fk k≤ ≤ , 1 2j jN i N≤ ≤ . При невыполнении неравенства принимается противоположное решение. Процедура сравнения реализуется на последовательности локальных интервалов 1,...,j m= . Окончательное решение о SC- распознавании должно производиться на основе обработки результатов процедур приня- тия решений на последовательности локальных интервалов. Эффективность алгоритма построения ПГМ зависит от процедур поиска по частотам в допустимых множествах 0 LΩ и 0 LΩ , не учитывающих или учитывающих упорядочен- ность частотных векторов. Очевидно, эффективность алгоритма поиска определяется размером допустимых множеств. Были вычислены размеры для множеств 0 LΩ и 0 LΩ в виде интегралов 0( ) LV Ω , 0( ) LV Ω и коэффициент относительного уменьшения размеров ( )Lε : 0 0 1( ) ... L L LV d d ω ω ω ∈Ω Ω = ∫ , 0 0 1( ) ... L L LV d d ω ω ω ∈Ω Ω = ∫ , ( ) 0 0( ) / ( )L LL V Vε = Ω Ω . Данный коэффициент для 1, 2, 3, 4L = принимал значения: (1) 1ε = , (2) 0, 5ε = , (3) 0,166ε = , (4) 0, 002ε = , которые свидетельствовали о соответствующем повышении эффективности поиска по векторам частот вследствие учета упорядоченности. Эффективность алгоритма СВАН определяется количеством вычислений fs основ- ного функционала, которое зависит от параметров fk и L и может быть вычислено как число сочетаний из fk элементов по L : ! !( )! f f f k s L k L = − . Примем время вычисления функционала, определяемое вектором sω , за условную временную единицу (базовую операцию). Тогда, временная сложность исходного после- довательного алгоритма с перебором может быть принята равной величине 1 ( , ) !/ ( !( )!)f f fT k L k L k L= − . Переходя к асимптотическим оценкам, после очевидных упрощений для fk L>> получим асимптотическую оценку временной сложности в виде функции 2 ( , ) ( / ) L f fT k L О k L= . Алгоритм, на котором основывается предлагаемый СВАН, 123 имеет экспоненциальную временную сложность. На рис. 14.5 представлены графики зависимостей числа векторов поисковых частот ( , )f fs C k L= в логарифмическом мас- штабе для параметров 21 40fk = − ; параметр L принимал значения: индекс 1 ‒ 3L = , 2 ‒ 5L = , 3 ‒ 7L = , 4 ‒ 9L = . Рисунок 14.5 – Графики зависимостей числа частотных векторов 10log ( , )f fs k L Графики на рис. 14.5 подтверждают результаты анализа: последовательный алго- ритм, на котором основывается предлагаемый СВАН, имеет экспоненциальную времен- ную сложность. Рассмотрение оценивания погрешностей вычисления параметров ПГМ производится на основе задания вида наблюдений для многочастотного сигнала: 0 0 0 0 1 ( ) ( cos sin ) ( ) L l l l l l y Ti a Ti b Ti w Tiω ω = = + +∑ , 0,1,..., 1i N= − с известными параметрами 0 0 0, ,l l la b ω , 1,...,l L= и дисперсией шума 2σ . В качестве ПГМ, естественно, берется функция 1 ( , , , ) ( cos sin ) L М l l l l l y a b Ti a Ti b Tiω ω ω = = +∑ . Погрешности оценивания могут быть определены вполне очевидным образом: 0l l la a aδ = −   , 0l l lb b bδ = −   , 0l l lδω ω ω= −   , 1,...,l L= . Очевидна их зависимость от параметров исходных наблюдений 2, ,N T σ и шага по- иска по частоте. Поскольку ПГМ – это нелинейная функция параметров, и функционал частичной остаточной суммы является многоэкстремальным, то рассматриваемые по- грешности ведут себя весьма необычным образом. Так, к примеру, при значительном увеличении 2σ имеет место скачкообразное нарушение непрерывности функции погрешности частоты из-за перемены местами локальных и глобальных экстремумов. 124 Для выяснения характера погрешностей целесообразно рассмотреть одночастотный случай c 1L = для малых 2σ , чтобы иметь корректную возможность линеаризации. Приведем формулы для оценок статистических характеристик погрешностей частоты и амплитуд. На основе произведенных достаточно громоздких расчетов были получены формулы для оценки математического ожидания погрешности определения частоты, которая оказалась равной нулю (оценивание без смещений) и оценки дисперсии, величина которой убывает при увеличении N : [ ] 0M δω = , 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 1 3(4 10 100 99) [ ] ( ) ( 12 1) N N N M T a b N N N δ ω σ + − + = + − −  . Рассмотрение амплитудных погрешностей, произведенное на основе линеаризации позволило получить формулы для математических ожиданий и дисперсий. Запишем: [ ] 0M aδ = , [ ] 0M bδ = , 2 2 3 2 2 2 0 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 36( 1) (4 10 100 99) [ ] ( 12 1) b N N N N M a a b N N N δ σ − + − + = + + −  , 2 2 3 2 2 2 0 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 36( 1) (4 10 100 99) [ ] ( 12 1) a N N N N M b a b N N N δ σ − + − + = + + −  . Анализ формул для 2[ ]M aδ  , 2[ ]M bδ  позволяет сделать вывод, что дисперсии по- грешностей оценивания амплитудных параметров уменьшаются с ростом N . Формулы для 1L > могут быть получены обобщением предложенного подхода. Для уменьшения временной сложности последовательного алгоритма СВАН форми- руется алгоритм параллельных вычислений. Его структура реализуется с использованием ГРИД-системы и предполагает наличие главного процесса, связанного посредством интернет-каналов с компьютерными кластерами, расположенными в различных географи- ческих точках. В компьютерном кластере реализуется функционирование набора процес- сов-исполнителей. Главный процессор обеспечивает управление работой параллельного алгоритма. В нем формируются задания для процессоров-исполнителей в виде файлов с исполнительными модулями и входными данными. В свою очередь, процессоры-исполни- тели передают результаты своей работы в виде файлов на главный процессор. Будем полагать, что: 1) суммарное число процессоров-исполнителей составляет величину fn ; 2) процессоры-исполнители имеют одинаковые производительности и объемы оператив- ной памяти. Число процессоров-исполнителей fn зависит от объема памяти fV , требуемого для размещения fs векторов поисковых частот с размерностями ( ,1)L в оперативной памяти для главного процесса и 0fV -объема оперативной памяти для процессора-исполнителя. Очевидна формула для 64 ( , ) / 10f fV L s k L= ⋅ ⋅ (Мб). Используя fV , 0fV (Мб), можно 125 сделать приближенную оценку fn для системы параллельных вычислений в зависимости от параметров 0, ,f fk L V 6 0 0 4 ( , ) / 10f f f f f V L s k L n V V ⋅ ⋅ = = . Параллельный алгоритм для СВАН базируется на разбиении последовательности номеров векторов поисковых частот 1,..., fs s= на fn равных по длине участков. Вводятся параметр 0 ( / )f fds ent s n= и граничные точки 1 2,n ns s для последовательности индексов 1,..., fs s= , которые могут быть вычислены на основе следующих рекуррентных формул: 11 1s = , 2 1 0 1n ns s ds= + − , 1, 1 2 1n ns s+ = + , 1,..., 1fn n= − , 2, fn fs s= . Введенное разбиение последовательности номеров векторов индексов на равные участки корректно, поскольку: - не увеличивает количество вычислений и объем памяти, которые требуются для реализации алгоритма СВАН; - обеспечивает равномерную загрузку вычислительных узлов за счет разбиения по- следовательности индексов с номерами 1,..., fs s= на равные участки индексов; - обеспечивает масштабируемость при увеличении числа вычислительных узлов пу- тем уменьшения длин участков индексов. Алгоритм параллельных вычислений для СВАН основывается на двухшаговых вы- числительных процедурах, в которых: 1. Осуществляются прямые переборы для функционала 0 ( , ) sW Yω по векторам поисковых частот, которые могут быть сведены к переборам по целым индексам 1 2n ns s s≤ ≤ . В вычислительных узлах решаются задачи оптимизации функционалов и находятся последовательности значений оценок векторов параметров и функционалов nω  , nβ  , 0nW , 1,..., fn n= : { } 1 2 0arg min ( , ) n n s n s s s s W Yω ≤ ≤ = , nsnω ω=   , ( )nsnβ β ω=    , 0 0 ( , )n s nW W Yω=  , 1,..., fn n= . 2. Осуществляются пересылки последовательностей значений оценок nω  , nβ  , 0nW , 1,..., fn n= на главный вычислитель, в котором находятся оптимальные оценки векторов частотных и амплитудных параметров для ПГМ: { }01arg minf nn nn W≤ ≤= , nω ω=   , nβ β=   . 126 Вполне очевидно, что предложенный алгоритм параллельных вычислений позволяет снизить временную сложность алгоритма СВАН. Для исследования алгоритма СВАН был сформирован модельный сигнал ( )Y Ti : 1 2( ) ( ) cos( ( ) ( )) ( )Y Ti E Ti Ti Ti w Tiφ φ= + + , 0,1,..., 1fi N= − . Амплитудные и фазовые модуляционные функции представлялись следующим об- разом: 1 0 0( ) 2Ti f Tiφ π φ= + , 2 2 ( ) ( ) / 2Ti Tiφ β= , 2 0 0( ) exp( ( ) )E Ti E Ti N Tα= − − . Случайные нормально-распределенные числа ( )w Ti с нулевым математическим ожиданием и дисперсией 2σ имитировали действие шумов в наблюдениях. Параметры модели принимали значения ‒ 60 сT = , 0 1, 0E = , 3 0 0, 2 10 Гцf −= ⋅ ( 30 01 / 5 10 cT f= = ⋅ ), 0 0, 2ϕ = , 80, 75 10 Гц/сβ −= ⋅ , 8 -21 10 сα −= ⋅ , 0 350N = . Частота сигнала изменялась по линейному, амплитуда ‒ по гауссовскому закону. Данный сигнал предназначался для имитации сигналов CS и МБ и проверки предложенного алгоритма СВАН в рамках вычислительного эксперимента и тестирования работы СВАН-алгоритма в ГРИД-системе при реализации параллельных вычислений. Локальный интервал принимался состоящим из 128N = точек; в среднем, на локальных интервалах умещалось ≈ 1,5 периода исход- ного сигнала. Параметр скольжения выбирался равным / 4 32dN N= = , при этом число локальных интервалов оказывалось равным 21fm = . Задавались следующие параметры для формирования векторов поисковых частот ‒ 21fk = , 21fk = , число векторов соста- вило величину 165fs = . Назначались границы поискового диапазона по частоте ‒ 3 min 0,1 10 Гцf −= ⋅ , 3max 0, 6 10 Гцf −= ⋅ , шаг дискретности по частоте принимал значение 40, 25 10 Гцf −∆ = ⋅ . Для вычислительного эксперимента принималось 5fn = . На рис. 14.6 представлена СВАН-диаграмма распределений амплитуд ( , )A f t . Рисунок 14.6 – СВАН-диаграмма модельного сигнала с амплитудной и частотной модуляцией 127 На СВАН-диаграмме видно, что при данных параметрах сигнала и алгоритма осу- ществляется эффективная работа алгоритма СВАН: оценки частоты реализуются в виде линейной функции времени, оценки амплитуды ‒ в виде гауссовой кривой. Для реализации параллельных вычислений и сверхвысокой вычислительной произ- водительности была сформирована ГРИД-система. На рис. 14.7 представлена двумерная СВАН-диаграмма для рассмотренного сигнала вычисленная на основе ГРИД-системы. Рисунок 14.7 – СВАН-диаграмма модельного сигнала с амплитудной и частотной модуляцией Видно, что на основе СВАН-алгоритма, реализованного в данной ГРИД-системе, можно сделать оценки частотной и амплитудной модуляции в модельном сигнале. Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Алешин И. М., Холодков К. И. Применение распределенных вычислительных систем к расчету апостериорных распределений // Геофизические исследования. 2014. Т.15 № 4. С. 73‒80. Импакт-фактор РИНЦ 0,179. Отчет по результатам проекта Результаты работы над проектом размещены в полном отчете по Программе Президиума РАН 43П за 2014 г. «Фундаментальные проблемы математического моделирования». Координатор программы академик В. Б. Бетелин, ученый секретарь проф. Н. Н. Смирнов. Тема 25 «Распознава- ние предвестников геомагнитных бурь на основе спектрально-временного анализа наблюдений магнитных обсерваторий с использованием полигармонических моделей, специальных технологий цифровой обработки одномерных и двумерных рядов данных и вычислительных систем сверхвы- сокой производительности», стр. 150‒154. 128 15. Оценка геомагнитной активности в режиме реального времени методами дискретного математического анализа Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2015-0001 Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани 15.1. Распознавание всплесков геомагнитных пульсаций и глобальная оценка их динамики в режиме реального времени Самым распространенным видом магнитных колебаний, регистрируемых на земной поверхности, являются дневные геомагнитные пульсации типа Рс3 в полосе частот 20‒50 мГц с амплитудой в средних широтах порядка нескольких нТл. Как правило, пуль- сации Рс3 являются результатом резонансных колебаний силовых линий геомагнитного поля в магнитосфере Земли. С переходом большинства наземных геомагнитных обсерваторий на цифровую ми- нутную регистрацию данных исследование пульсаций Рс3 (f = 20–50 мГц) по данным этих обсерваторий стало невозможным, поскольку их периоды в среднем составляют порядка 30 с. В ходе модернизации регистрации данных на некоторых магнитных обсерваториях глобальной сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ (http://www.intermagnet.org) в 2010 году была введена регистрация с частотой дискретизации 1 Гц. Это позволило использовать данные таких наблюдений для изучения пульсаций Рс3. Однако при этом возникла трудность выделения этих колебаний, поскольку их амплитуда значительно меньше более длиннопериодных колебаний, и на исходных данных колебания Рс3 не видны. Целью исследования является разработка алгоритма автоматического выделения дневных геомагнитных пульсаций Pc3 по данным наземных цифровых наблюдений с частотой дискретизации 1 Гц. Разработан подход на основе использования методов нечет- кой логики. 15.2. Входные данные В работе использовались трехкомпонентные геомагнитные данные ( ) ( ( ), ( ), ( ))i i i iM t Mx t My t Mz t= , где it менялось от местного магнитного полудня (MLD) до магнитной местной полуночи (MLM) с шагом 1| | 1 .i ih t t с−= − = В этом временном окне могут наблюдаться пульсации Pc3. Предлагаемый подход был опробован на геомагнитных данных за 5 апреля 2010 года, полученных на десяти обсерваториях французской сети BCMT (Bureau Central de Magnétisme Terrestre, http://www.bcmt.fr): AAE, CLF, DMC, DRV, IPM, LZH, MBO, PAF, PHU, PPT (см. рис. 15.1). Указанные обсерватории также входят и в сеть ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ. 129 Рисунок 15.1 – Пространственное распределение использовавшихся геомагнитных обсерваторий на карте мира, даны названия обсерваторий. В работе использовались данные за 5 апреля 2010 года. Жирной черной линией показан магнитный экватор 15.3. Использование алгоритма при решении реальной задачи Алгоритм использовался при анализе 1 с геомагнитных наблюдений на сети разне- сенных по долготе приэкваториальных и низкоширотных обсерваторий ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ в начальную фазу умеренной магнитной бури (5–7 апреля 2010 г.) нового цикла солнеч- ной активности. Для анализа было выбрано два интервала: внезапное начало бури SC (удар по дневной магнитосфере) и начало большой глобальной суббури, наблюдающейся через полчаса после SC («удар» с ночной стороны магнитосферы). Были исследованы спектральные характеристики геомагнитных пульсаций диапазона Рс3 (f = 20–50 мГц) как на средних, так и на приэкваториальных широтах. Таких исследований в глобальном по долготе масштабе ранее не проводилось. Роль приведенного алгоритма в этих исследова- ниях – одновременное автоматическое выделение пульсаций Pc3 на нескольких станциях, что позволяет сопоставить пульсации сразу на нескольких станциях (рис. 15.2, 15.3). 130 Рисунок 15.2 – Пример выделения единичных пульсаций. Вверху – пульсации на фильтрованной записи Bx, красным цветом отмечены пульсации Pc3. Внизу – пульсации на соответствующей исходной записи Mx, красным цветом отмечены пульсации Pc3 Рисунок 15.3 – Пример результата работы алгоритма (станция CLF 1 с, данные 5 апреля 2010 года). Выделенные продолжительные пульсации Pс3 показаны красным на фильтрованной записи Bx (вверху) и соответствующей исходной магнитограмме Mx (внизу). Светлым кружком показано положение местного магнитного полдня, а черным – положение местной магнитной полуночи 131 16. Усовершенствование моделей вариаций геомагнитного поля с использованием новых данных обсерваторий российско-украинского сегмента сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2015-0002 Руководитель: директор ГЦ, академик А. Д. Гвишиани Из наиболее важных задач, направленных на развитие российско-украинского сег- мента мировой сети магнитных обсерваторий ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ в 2014 году, важно отме- тить в первую очередь задачи развертывания новых обсерваторий и обновления и обу- стройства существующих магнитных обсерваторий на территории России. Во время отчетного периода на обсерватории «Климовская» доустановлен полный комплект оборудования стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ, включающий в себя: феррозондовый магнитометр на немагнитном теодолите, протонный оверхаузеровский скалярный магни- тометр, трехкомпонентный феррозондовый векторный магнитометр (вариометр) и си- стему сбора и передачи магнитных данных. В вариометрическом павильоне обсерватории была смонтирована автоматизированная система отопления. На территории обсерватории установлена визирная цель для абсолютных наблюдений магнитного склонения и накло- нения. Были проведены работы по доразвертыванию магнитной обсерватории «Бор». В частности, в октябре 2014 г. были проведены геодезические измерения по определению координат имеющейся на обсерватории визирной цели. Также настроена передача данных с обсерватории в ГЦ РАН через сервер Среднесибирского УГМС. В 2014 г. произведена отладка оборудования на магнитной обсерватории «Санкт-Пе- тербург», где регулярно выполняются абсолютные наблюдения. Была произведена точная настройка векторного магнитометра, а также отладка системы отопления павильонов. В настоящее время обсерватория «Санкт-Петербург», как и «Климовская», передает данные в Российско-украинский центр геомагнитных данных во времени, близком к реальному – раз в 10 минут, что представляет существенное значение для мониторинга геомагнитной активности. В рамках развития российско-украинского сегмента мировой сети магнитных наблюдений ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ начата передача данных из обсерватории «Хабаровск» (IAGA-код KHB, Хабаровский край) и из украинской обсерватории «Академик Вернад- ский» (IAGA-код AIA) в Антарктиде. На веб-сайте Центра запущена интерактивная служба для расчета и отображения абсолютных данных и базовых значений в реальном времени. В рамках дискретного математического анализа (ДМА), созданного в ГЦ РАН но- вого подхода к анализу и обработке геофизических данных, построены так называемые регрессионные производные дискретных функций, определенных на произвольных, в общем случае нерегулярных, конечных сетках в многомерных евклидовых пространствах. Как показали исследования, кроме удачной основы для сглаживания нерегулярных вре- менных рядов (рис. 16.1), регрессионные производные дискретных функций обладают 132 свойствами, аналогичными свойствам обычных производных для гладких функций, в частности, тесно связаны с трендами и экстремумами (рис. 16.2). Рисунок 16.1 – Нерегулярное гравитационное сглаживание функции sin 15% noisexe x + sin sin 2 sin 3 sin 4 20% noisex x x x+ + + + DMA derivation Рисунок 16.2 – Красный цвет – область возрастания функции (производная больше нуля), зеленый цвет – область убывания функции (производная меньше нуля) Соединение регрессионных производных с регулярным ДМА-сглаживанием позво- лило распространить ДМА-сглаживания на нерегулярные временные ряды. Разработано программное обеспечение по приведению данных с геомагнитных об- серваторий российско-украинского сегмента сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ и других обсерваторий мира в формат, который будет использоваться для анализа и проведения научных иссле- дований. Проведены исследования долговременных изменений геомагнитной активности с использованием новых данных расширенной сети магнитных обсерваторий России и Украины, которые входят в российско-украинский сегмент ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ. Показано, -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 133 что геомагнитная активность достигла максимума в конце пятидесятых годов двадцатого века, в девятнадцатом цикле солнечной активности, и в дальнейшем наблюдается ее постепенное уменьшение. Наименьшая активность наблюдается на фазе развития 24-го цикла. Сравнение геомагнитной активности с солнечной показало, что резкое уменьшение геомагнитной активности связано с уменьшением величины крупномасштабного магнит- ного поля Солнца и приближения минимума ~ 200-летнего цикла солнечной активности. Уменьшение солнечной и геомагнитной активности приведет к изменениям метеорологи- ческих процессов в земной атмосфере. Исследована динамика пространственных и временных изменений возрастных ва- риаций геомагнитного поля в высоких широтах Земли. В высоких широтах возрастные вариации отражаются в вертикальной компоненте поля. Показано, что возрастная вариа- ция в высоких широтах имеет две компоненты: одна связана с внутренним, вторая ‒ с внешним источниками. Компонента, которая связана с внешними источниками хорошо коррелирует с геомагнитной активностью. Уменьшение солнечной и геомагнитной актив- ности привели к уменьшению абсолютных величин вековых вариаций геомагнитного поля. Проведено исследование вклада индукционных токов в возрастную вариацию гео- магнитного поля по данным украинских геомагнитных обсерваторий. Показано, что величина вклада индукционных токов в возрастную вариацию зависит от геомагнитной активности. В бурные дни амплитуда изменений возрастных вариаций возрастает в 1,5‒2 раза. Проведен расчет силовых и угловых компонент магнитного поля Земли на районы со сложным характером геомагнитного поля путем разработки трехмерных моделей земной коры и вычисления от них вектора аномального магнитного поля. 134 17. Построение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф Номер гос. регистрации № 0145-2015-0003 Руководитель: гл.н.с., д.г.-м.н. А. Г. Родников 17.1. О проекте Проект был направлен на решение фундаментальной проблемы изучения глубин- ного строения регионов природных катастроф Земли. Работа проводилась в рамках меж- дународных программ «InterMargins» и «GeoPRISMS». Район исследования – переходная зона от Евразийского континента к Тихому океану. В 2014 г. выполнен третий этап про- екта – завершено построение геодинамических моделей регионов с различными тектони- ческими режимами Охотского, Японского, Филиппинского и Южно-Китайского морей, характеризующихся активной сейсмичностью, извержениями вулканов и другими при- родными катаклизмами (рис. 17.1). Рисунок 17.1 – Геодинамические модели глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф переходной зоны от Евразии к Тихому океану Изучено глубинное строение недр Земли под сейсмоопасными и вулканическими зо- нами, установлена роль глубинных процессов, протекающих в мантии, в формировании структур земной коры. Под сейсмоопасными зонами установлено аномальное глубинное строение земной коры и верхней мантии, выделены астеносферные диапиры, древние 135 субдукционные зоны, отмечены зоны повышенного сейсмического риска. Отличительной особенностью глубинного строения переходной зоны от Евразийского континента к Тихому океану является распространение в верхней мантии астеносферного слоя, от которого отходят диапиры аномальной мантии, процессы в которых обусловливают формирование структур земной коры. На поверхности поднятиям астеносферы соответ- ствуют рифтовые образования и излияния, в основном, толеитовых магм. 17.2. Результаты исследований Для региона Охотского моря впервые построена геодинамическая модель глубин- ного строения региона Нефтегорского землетрясения, происшедшего на Северном Саха- лине в 1995 г. Подтверждено расположение древней субдукционной зоны под Сахалином, действующей в позднемеловое–палеогеновое время. Вероятно, что очаг Нефтегорского землетрясения непосредственно образовался в связи с активизацией этой древней субдук- ционной зоны. Для региона Японского моря установлено, что Японская островная дуга заключена с запада и востока между субдукционными зонами. На востоке под Японскую дугу погру- жается Тихоокеанская плита, ответственная за землетрясение Тохоку 11 марта 2011 г., с юго-восточной – субдуцирует плита Филиппинского моря, с которой связано землетрясе- ние Канто 1923 г. С запада под Японские острова 2 млн лет назад начала субдуцировать плита Японского моря, с которой связана серия землетрясений вдоль западного побережья о. Хонсю. Формирование структур региона Филиппинского моря также связано с субдукцион- ными процессами и действиями астеносферных диапиров. Коллизия Тихоокеанской и Филиппинской плит в палеогеновую эпоху привела к формированию Марианской остров- ной дуги и образованию астеносферного слоя под глубоководными котловинами Филип- пинского моря и Северо-Китайской плитой. Марианский трог представляет собой между- говой бассейн, образованный 6 млн лет назад в результате спрединговых процессов. С рифтовыми структурами связаны излияния толеитовых базальтов и интенсивная гидро- термальная деятельность. Регион Южно-Китайского моря расположен между двумя континентами − Евразий- ским и Австралийским, и двумя океанскими плитами − Тихоокеанской и Индийской. Формирование структур связывают с коллизией Индии и Азии и возникновением мощной Индонезийской субдукционной зоны. Затем очередная структурная перестройка произо- шла в связи с субдукцией океанской плиты Филиппинского моря под структуры Филип- пин. Возникла система островных дуг и задуговых бассейнов, где субдукционные про- цессы привели к активному вулканизму, сопровождавшемуся излияниями преимуще- ственно щелочных базальтов, и интенсивной сейсмичности в восточной части региона исследования. Создана междисциплинарная информационная база геолого-геофизических данных по регионам Охотского, Японского, Филиппинского и Южно-Китайского морей. Постро- ение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф 136 является значительным вкладом в общую программу изучения глубинного строения и геодинамической обстановки районов исследований, необходимую для дальнейшей оценки рисков в той или иной зоне и подготовки действий населения на случай природной катастрофы. Результаты работ обсуждены на Генеральной ассамблее Европейского союза наук о Земле (Вена, 2013 и 2014 гг.); на XX Международной научной конференции по морской геологии (Москва, 2013 г.); Всероссийской конференции «Геологические процессы в обстановках субдукции, коллизии и скольжения литосферных плит» (Владивосток, 2014). Список публикаций по результатам проекта Монография Родников А. Г., Забаринская Л. П., Рашидов В. А. Сергеева Н. А. Геодинамические модели глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф активных континентальных окраин. М.: Научный мир, 2014. 172 с. Статьи в журналах Родников А. Г., Забаринская Л. П., Сергеева Н. А., Нисилевич М. 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Activization of ancient subduction zone and crust destruction on Sakhalin Island // Abstracts of EGU General Assembly, Vienna, 2014. V. 16. EGU2014-13. ДИССЕРТАЦИИ Дзебоев Б. А. Кластеризация в распознавании мест возможного возникновения сильных землетрясений в Калифорнии и на Кавказе // диссертация на соискание ученой степени кандидата физико-математических наук: 25.00.10 / Институт физики Земли им. О. Ю. Шмидта РАН. Москва, 2014. 132 с. Лебедев С. А. Спутниковая альтиметрия Каспийского моря // диссертация на соискание ученой степени доктора физико-математических наук: 28.00.29 / Институт физики атмосферы им. А. М. Обухова РАН. Москва, 2014. 350 с. Соловьев А. А. Методы распознавания аномальных событий на временных рядах в анализе геофизических наблюдений: диссертация на соискание ученой степени доктора физико- математических наук: 25.00.10 / Институт физики Земли им. О.Ю. Шмидта РАН. Москва, 2014. 310 с. О Т Ч Е Т О ВЫПОЛНЕНИИ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОГО ЗАДАНИЯ на 2014 год Москва 2015 / 1. О государственном задании ГЦ РАН на 2014 год 2. Разработка информационных технологий организации доступа к ресурсам и совершенствование управления данными Мировых центров данных по физике твердой Земли и солнечно-земной физике 2.1. Разработка новых информационных технологий доступа к данным МЦД, развитие пользовательского интерфейса, расширение информационных ресурсов в свободном доступе на сайтах Центров. Совершенствование управления данными в МЦД по СЗФ и ФТЗ 2.2. Построение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения пассивных континентальных окраин России вдоль Северного Ледовитого океана с целью возможного прогнозирования перспективных районов распространения залежей полезных ископаемых 2.3. Изучение влияния физических полей различной природы на геодинамические процессы с целью создания нового подхода к прогнозированию природных катастроф 2.4. Развитие геоинформационных технологий с целью повышения эффективности анализа пространственно-временного распределения геофизических полей. Расширение базы геопространственных данных ГИС по геологии, геофизике и дистанционному зондированию 2.5. Организация удаленного доступа к картографическим веб-сервисам с помощью специализированного геопортала ГЦ РАН 2.6. Выполнение функций Национального геофизического комитета РАН (НГК РАН). Общие итоги деятельности НГК РАН 2.7. Развитие технологий электронных публикаций как составной части интеграции данных и информации по наукам о Земле 2.8. Развитие технологий сферической визуализации в области геопространственных данных по наукам о Земле Список публикаций по результатам проекта0F Статьи в журналах Свидетельства о государственной регистрации Список использованных источников 3. Исследование и прогнозирование нелинейных геодинамических процессов в гетерогенной блочной среде при подземной изоляции радиоактивных отходов 3.1. Разработка алгоритма и программы расчета напряженно-деформированного состояния пластинчатых структурных блоков геологической среды, обусловленных вертикальными перемещениями 3.2. Выполнение третьего цикла GPS-наблюдений за современными движениями земной коры на геодинамическом полигоне ФГУП «ГХК» 3.3. Разработка инновационной методологии выделения перспективных площадей при поисково-разведочных работах на нефть и газ Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Свидетельства о государственной регистрации 4. Развитие и сопровождение интерактивного ресурса данных по солнечно-земной физике SPIDR 4.1. Аппаратное обеспечение 4.2. Виртуализация 4.3. Промежуточное программное обеспечение 4.4. Грид-инфраструктура Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Отчет по результатам проекта 5. Разработка и внедрение методов дискретного математического анализа для изучения состояния геомагнитной активности и контроля качества магнитных данных 5.1. Разработка методов и алгоритмов распознавания скачков на магнитограммах 5.1.1. Описание алгоритма JM (JUMP) Неформальная логика 5.1.2. Распознавание скачков базовой линии на спутниковых магнитограммах 5.2. Разработка алгоритма распознавания дрейфа базового уровня в магнитограммах 5.3. Разработка метода оценки эффективности распознавания техногенных аномалий на множестве магнитограмм 5.4. Разработка методов визуализации результатов геомагнитного мониторинга для российского центра геомагнитных данных 5.4.1. Веб-портал Центра геомагнитных данных 5.4.2. Видео-стенд для отображения геомагнитных данных 5.5. Обзор методов цифровой фильтрации наблюдений геомагнитного поля 5.6. Формирование общей постановки задачи аппроксимационной фильтрации наблюдений ГМП 5.7. Геомагнитные исследования на о. Сахалин 5.8. Выводы Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Свидетельства о государственной регистрации Отчет по результатам проекта 6. Разработка алгоритмов сглаживания динамических геофизических данных на базе дискретного математического анализа 6.1. Сбои на записях сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ 6.2. Секундные данные Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Отчет по результатам проекта Список использованных источников 7. Интеллектуальная медицинская геоинформационная система для территории России в условиях изменяющегося климата Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Статьи в монографии Отчет по результатам проекта Список использованных источников 8. Аналитическая геоинформационная система для комплексной оценки ресурсов стратегического минерального сырья (ГИС «Ресурсы») 8.1. Цели и задачи исследования 8.2. Расширение базы геопространственных данных проекта 8.3. Интерактивный доступ к результатам проекта 8.4. Разработка и оптимизация алгоритмов кластерного анализа и их адаптация для работы с геопространственными данными 8.5. Участие в научных мероприятиях Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Материалы конференций Список использованных источников 9. Расширение базы геоданных ГИС за счет включения новых данных по ГНСС, ДЗЗ и наблюдательным геофизическим сетям, данных о сплоченности морского льда и движениях земной поверхности в пунктах ГНСС; разработка архитектуры ГИС-приложения и интеграция ал... 9.1. Цели и задачи проекта 9.2. Цифровые пространственные данные по геофизике 9.3. Развитие геопортала ГЦ РАН Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Список использованных источников 10. Разработка метода спектрально-временного анализа (СВАН) для распознавания магнитных бурь в наблюдениях магнитного поля Земли; разработка метода СВАН для оценивания параметров пульсаций магнитного поля Земли с использованием полигармонических модел... Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Отчет по результатам проекта 11. Развитие новых методов распознавания аномальных событий на временных рядах обсерваторских наблюдений магнитного поля Земли и расширение сети геомагнитных наблюдений в РФ 11.1. Применение метода гравитационного сглаживания для изучения всплесков векового ускорения ГМПЗ 11.2. Разработка метода распознавания аномалий на двумерных рядах геофизических данных 11.2.1. Построение 2D-выпрямлений 11.2.2. Применение DPS для распознавания аномалий на 2D-выпрямлениях 11.3. Ввод в эксплуатацию геомагнитной обсерватории стандарта ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ «Климовская» (Архангельская обл.) 11.4. Объемы данных, полученных и обработанных за отчетный период Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Материалы конференций Отчет по результатам проекта Список использованных источников 12. Исследование геомагнитного поля и разработка методов фильтрации его естественных вариаций в целях повышения точности наклонного бурения скважин в Арктическом регионе 12.1. Методы определения траектории бурения и коррекции с учетом главного, литосферного и внешнего геомагнитного поля 12.2. Геомагнитное поле в Арктическом регионе Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Отчет по результатам проекта 13. Создание семейства численных физико-математических моделей для изучения и прогнозирования электродинамики верхней атмосферы Земли с использованием данных геомагнитного спутника SWARM и высокопроизводительных компьютерных систем 13.1. Концепция 13.2. Магнитное поле, создаваемое продольными токами над ионосферой 13.3. База данных по магнитным вариациям, измеряемым группировкой Swarm над ионосферой 13.4. Модуль расчета двумерного распределения интегральной ионосферной проводимости 13.5. Реализация численного решения краевой задачи для уравнения непрерывности токов, обеспечивающих магнитосферно-ионосферное взаимодействие 13.6. Заключение Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Свидетельства о государственной регистрации Отчет по результатам проекта 14. Распознавание предвестников геомагнитных бурь на основе спектрально-временного анализа наблюдений магнитных обсерваторий с использованием полигармонических моделей и вычислительных систем сверхвысокой производительности Список публикаций по результатам проекта Статьи в журналах Отчет по результатам проекта 15. Оценка геомагнитной активности в режиме реального времени методами дискретного математического анализа 15.1. Распознавание всплесков геомагнитных пульсаций и глобальная оценка их динамики в режиме реального времени 15.2. Входные данные 15.3. Использование алгоритма при решении реальной задачи 16. Усовершенствование моделей вариаций геомагнитного поля с использованием новых данных обсерваторий российско-украинского сегмента сети ИНТЕРМАГНЕТ 17. Построение геодинамических моделей глубинного строения регионов природных катастроф 17.1. О проекте 17.2. Результаты исследований Список публикаций по результатам проекта Монография Статьи в журналах СПИСОК ПУБЛИКАЦИЙ СОТРУДНИКОВ ГЦ РАН за 2014 год 
work_bdaeyh3fcvg5zad34hq6ic3hxm	----	Effect of Semantic Web technologies on Distance Education Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 4295 – 4299 1877-7058 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2011.08.806 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 Procedia Engineering www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia Advanced in Control Engineeringand Information Science Effect of Semantic Web technologies on Distance Education Yaqing Shi , Meijuan Wang , Zhenghong Qiao,Lei Mao * Institute of Science, PLA Univ. of Sci. & Tech., 211101 Nanjing Jiangsu,China Abstract We analyze the characteristics of the semantic web and the potential effect on the model of distance education starting with the key technologies of the Semantic Web. The conclusion shows that the development of Semantic Web will leverage the ability of the resources fusion, knowledge discovery and the knowledge retrieval, and finally, the Semantic Web will transform the study mode of the learners, from pulling knowledge from the web to pushing knowledge out of the web. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [CEIS 2011] Key words:distance education; semantic web; ontology; 1. Introduction Distance Education, also known as distance learning, is the teaching model of using media such as television and the Internet and so on. Adopting advanced forms of information dissemination and information technology solutions has been the main driving force of vigorous development of distance education. Nowadays, the popularization and application of Internet provides a broad implementation * Yaqing Shi. Tel.: 18951839396 E-mail address: qingyashi_blue@sina.com Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 4296 Yaqing Shi et al. / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 4295 – 42992 Yaqing Shi et al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 space to distance education. From the point of view of development process of information technology, each step of Internet will bring new impact and positive effect to distance education model. Semantic Web [1] is an extension of the existing World Wide Web, to more effectively express the semantics of information and resources, thus contributing to the synergy work between people and computers. Linked Data, Social Semantic Web, Semantic Web Search and Smart Data Integration of Semantic Web will play a huge role in promoting many of the current Internet-based Infrastructure solutions, and distance education is no exception. Based on this, the paper analyzes the semantic Web technology and its characteristics. And for the implementation solution and process of distance education, the paper puts forward the impact on distance education that Semantic Web is bringing or will bring. And it provides a useful exploration to the development of distance education based on Semantic Web technology. 2. Main Semantic Web technology The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing. Here we summarized as follows: 2.1 Ontology and Knowledge Representation Ontology plays the key role in the semantic web. In theory, ontology is a "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization". Ontology provides a shared vocabulary, which can be used to model a domain — that is, the type of objects and/or concepts that exist, and their properties and relations. Ontology are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, systems engineering, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontology is also fundamental to the definition and use of an enterprise architecture framework. 2.2 The semantic annotation of resources Ontology makes a precise description to objective things and their relationship in the abstract conceptual level. In the specific Web application layer, you will need precise, formal semantics binding of the resources on the Internet. And this process is known as semantic annotation. Thus, semantic annotation of Web resources is to use some shared ontology to describe web resources, independent concept and relationship between the concepts. Documents and knowledge annotated with ontology form a huge network of knowledge. It is conducive to the network resource identification, extraction, restructuring and share [2]. 2.3 Knowledge Reasoning 4297Yaqing Shi et al. / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 4295 – 4299 Yaqing Shi et al / Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 3 Logical reasoning in the knowledge base is embodied intelligent Semantic Web. However, different from intelligent reasoning in the "artificial intelligence" field, Semantic Web reasoning is based on Description Logic (Description Logics, DL), and is a machine reasoning. That is, the description logic reasoning main includes two forms: (1) Inclusion reasoning. It is mainly used for the classification of the concept, which is to determine whether a concept is a subset of another concept. (2) Coincident reasoning. It is mainly used for consistency check of concept set to determine whether a concept is compatible with existing concepts, that is whether the knowledge base is in conflict or inconsistent. Knowledge base is invalid and inconsistent with conflict. Description Logic-based knowledge representation and knowledge reasoning system is shown in Figure 1. Fig.1 Description Logic-based knowledge representation System 2.4 Services Compared with traditional Web services, Semantic Web Services has better interpretation of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) architecture. The widely used Web service requires too much involvement of people. For example, requiring the user to browse information related to resources and fill out the form. As for the semantic Web services, it focuses on realizing Web service discovery, invocation, composition and automation of monitoring by providing machine-interpretable. Machine understandable and automation of implementation of Semantic Web Services mechanisms rely on semantic annotation of objects in services and knowledge reasoning. Ontology of Web services is the basis of the whole service mechanism. Currently, the main ontology describing Web services is W3C recommended ontology OWL- S [3]. As the view of OWL-S, there are three basic types of knowledge associated with the service: service profile, service model and service grounding. Among them, the service profile is the description of functions and requirements of the services; service model describes how the service is carried out; and services grounding determine details of the agency how to access the service. The relationship between them is shown in Figure 2. Fig.2 Relationship between OWL-S ontology 4298 Yaqing Shi et al. / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 4295 – 42994 Yaqing Shi et al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 3. Semantic Web Technology Applications in Distance Education As the author of Semantic Web Tim Berners-Lee stated: " The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”[1] Distance education is different from traditional classroom teaching. Distance education emphasizes learners’ active learning. From the perspective of the learner (knowledge requester) point of view, distance education process includes knowledge discovery, knowledge integration, knowledge acquisition, learning program design and so on. As the largest distributed knowledge database, web has a mass of learning resources and teaching resources. As a provider of knowledge resources, Web (knowledge resources providers) should try its best to provide learners accurate and adequate learning services. Based on this perspective, problems to be resolved is the integration of learning resources (integration), the discovery of learning resources, response of learning resources and the automatic generation of referenced learning programs. Semantic Web technology helps change traditional learners pulling out of resources from the Web into Web automatic / semi- automatically pushing out of learning resources based on the learning characteristics of learners. It has greatly improved the learning efficiency of distance education. In this section, some views will be shown on these themes. 3.1 Integration of teaching resources based on semantics Information integration aims to resolve interoperability of heterogeneous data sources. Teaching institutions and knowledge fields which are Independent of each other may have a lot of heterogeneous data sources which contact between each other but not compatible with. Heterogeneous data mainly include structure heterogeneity, syntax heterogeneity and semantic heterogeneity. The structure and syntax heterogeneity has been well resolved with traditional information integration. But the traditional information integration technology cannot solve semantic heterogeneity. This is because the semantic heterogeneity mainly from the data sources of different systems using different concept describe the same thing or using the same concept describe the different things. The former is called synonym and the latter is called homonym. The ontology helps solve the problem. Ontology in information integration provides a unified standard to teaching resources. It has three common approaches: (1) Annotating data sources needing to integrate with the same ontology. This approach is ideal for practice, but in practice is impossible, because they cannot demand all the relevant Web data sources using a recognized body to markup. (2) The data source using their own local ontology to annotate, and then do the mapping between local ontology. This is problem for ontology mapping to study. (3) The data source using their own local ontology to annotate, and mapping these local ontologies to a recognized common vocabulary. The premise of this approach is a widely recognized vocabulary as a reference, such as WorldNet. 3.2 DBpedia and link data Wikipedia is a permissive, free, open-content encyclopedia collaborative program. Participants come around the world, which means that anyone can edit any Wikipedia article and entries. Thus, Wikipedia is also becoming the center of the human knowledge source. However, in the traditional Wiki, the term exists in the document, and there are not directly semantic relations between the terms. Simply relying on keywords to link apparently looses the semantic links between all knowledge points. To May 2009, DBpedia knowledge base has described more than 26 million objects, which consists of 274 million RDF triples. The emergence of DBpedia represents two meanings: First, it describes the existing largest free shared knowledge base into RDF triples, and that is the milestone of representation of human knowledge; 4299Yaqing Shi et al. / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 4295 – 4299 Yaqing Shi et al / Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 5 another, DBpedia is one of the mainly knowledge Source on the semantic Web. Because it defines the URI of Linked Data of millions of concepts, and other data providers link their data sets to DBpedia, which makes DBpedia become one of the emerging center interconnection Hubs. Therefore, as distance education institutions, when publishing their own learning resources, firstly they should use related terms of DBpedia to annotate the appropriate resources. Linked data is an essential part of the semantic Web. In the W3C's Linking Open Data (LOD) community, more and more system developers post and link the corresponding data which includes geographic information, people, Companies, online communities, movies, music, books and scientific publications on the Web in accordance with principles of Linked Data. The organization form of information will not only help learners to quickly and accurately find the desired learning resources but also help resource providers to quickly promote their possessed resource information to the world and also make for the integration of relevant information with other agencies. 3.3 Organization and management of semantic information In the Semantic Web environment, there are two ways of information organization and management: (1) the whole new approach. The so-called whole new approach is converting all the information into RDF. This form of information management is more feature-rich, and directly support reasoning and semantic query. However, the cost of information storage and synchronized is high. The fully suitable way of store and the storage platform for large scale RDF tuples is not yet found. (2) The traditional way. The so-called traditional way is to map all of the things to ontology, but the original resources are still stored in traditional databases. Although it does not need to abandon the existing infrastructure of original system, but for response of semantic reasoning and semantic query request, complex query rewrite technology is needed which reduces the expected effect of semantic Web. Currently most of the application systems support the second scenario, and the common conversion platform is D2RQ, Virtuoso and other systems. 4. Conclusions Semantic Web is an extension of the existing network platform. Its essence is to change the traditional document-based network into the web data with semantics. The core of semantic web is of ontology technology; Semantic annotation technology is its implementation; Semantic search and semantic Web services is their application. Aiming at the increasing development of Semantic Web applications, distance education closely relying on network infrastructure must in the new environment explore the model fully using new technologies and meet the new requirements of users. Through the above analysis, it is easy to find that semantic Web technology has a great in terms of theoretical significance and practical value for distance education, especially has a strong vitality in the establishment and management of resources, discovery and integration of learning resources, intelligent generation of restructuring and learning plan. It can be said, Semantic Web technology builds an efficient people- oriented channel between learning resources and learning providers. It will have a profound impact to the future development of distance education. References [1] T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler and O. Lassila[J]. Scientific American 2001, 29~37 [2] RDFa Primer [EB/OL]. http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/ [3] OWL-S: Semantic Markup for Web Services [EB/OL].http://www.w3.org/Submission/OWL-S/ 
work_bdrf4rns6zc25gb77uag3bndge	----	Evaluation of distance education programs based on the NADE-TDEC 2009-2010 Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 117 – 119 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.024 WCETR 2011 Evaluation of distance education programs based on the NADE-TDEC 2009-2010 Mohammad Hossein Yarmohammadian a*, Ahmad Ahmadib, Mehdi Sadrianc, Maryam Fooladvandd a*, Associate Professor & Head, Department of Education, Khorasgan(Isfahan)Branch,Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran. email: mhyarm@gmail.com b Associate Professor, Isfahan University ,Isfahan, Iran c&dM.Sc.,Educational Planning, Khorasgan(Isfahan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran. Abstract Distance Education is an approach in which student and teacher are far from each other. Information and communication technology (ICT) can help schools to solve this problem. So there is a competition between countries to use this technology as much as possible to reach the aim of education, teaching and learning better. For the time this technology was used in some countries such as U.S.A and Canada and some European countries thus we can use their experiences and the way that have used successfully. One way to qualify something is to standardize and evaluate the results. One of these standards is that has been established by USA Office of distance education. The aim of this research is evaluate the program of Isfahan high school distance education centers according to students’ opinion based on NADE-TDEC pattern 2009-10. There are 17 centers in Isfahan, Iran that 179 students of these centers were selected randomly and questionnaires were distributed among them. The results of this research showed that the quality of course development is upper than medium, quality of technology is lower than medium, quality of instruction is upper than medium and quality of institutional support is upper than medium. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keyword: Distance education, Evaluation, Virtual education, Quality of Education. 1. Introduction Distance education is a method in which the learner is not physically present in educational environments and classrooms. The major feature differentiating distance education from other methods of education is the physical distance among learners, teachers and the educational institute (Abraham, 1997). Distance education is carried out through media. Educational media and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) play pivotal roles in this method of education. ICT has resolved the “distance” difficulties in communication to a great extent and consequently many countries have initiated in their globalization programs the competition in distance education at international levels (Khaleghi, 2006). In 1836, University of Hawaii was established as one of the first academies developing correspondence education. In the United States of America, first steps were taken in 1870s. In 1873, Ticknor founded the Ticknor Society in Britain as a correspondence education system for women. In 1874 Illinois State University offered a course in correspondence education. In order to offer correspondence courses to immigrant students, The National Centre for Distance Education(Centre National d'Enseignement Distance, CNED) was established in France in 1939. This center is now the largest institute of distance education in Europe. The University ofSouth Africa (UNISA) has become an institute of distance education since 1946. The establishment of Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 118 Mohammad Hossein Yarmohammadian et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 117 – 119 United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) in 1969 led to establishment of universities of distance education in several European and Asian countries.These universities included Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Spain (1972), AllamaIqbal Open University (AIOU) in Pakistan (1974), Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) in Thailand (1978), Korea National Open University (KNOU) in Korea (1982), Universitas Terbuka (UT) in Indonesia (1984), and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in India (1985). In Iran, the University of Abu Reyhan Biruni carried out distance education for the first time in the form of correspondence education in 1971. It offered associate degree in the eight fields of chemistry, physics, mathematics, Persian language and literature, elementary education, rural economy and cooperation, banking services and technical services. In 1973, Iran Open University was established. Its major goal was to increase the admission capacity of Iran's higher education system for training specialists. In 1994, the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council (SCRC) obliged the Ministry of Education to establish an institute in order to offer attendance and non-attendance training courses and its statute was approved by SCRC. In 2003, the institute of distance education was established according to the statute of SCRC. It was the first official policy making and administrative organization of Ministry of Education in 2004-5 academic year and began the admission of qualified students. To achieve its goal, the institute began establishing centers for distance education in all parts of the country. In the beginning of 2004-5, 15 provinces were participating in the program which included all provinces by 2005-6 academic year. In that year 400 centers were established in all parts of the country especially in deprived regions to offer academic services in those areas. Distance education in these centers is carried out through correspondence education, troubleshooting courses and educational guidance. Etezadi (2009), through carrying out a research, “study of distance education difficulties from Isfahan secondary students and teachers’ points of view in 2008-2009”, and reviewing other studies like Boyd- Barret (2000), Ellsworth (2000), Pina (2008), Hasanzade (2001), and Pakide and Rostaminejhad (2007), claims that this method suffers some limitations regarding the access to Information Technologies (IT), shortage of orientation courses, and that there is a need for more information and culture building programs. Zamani and Madani (2005) also analyze “distance education, strategies for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of educators” and suggest that the main challenge facing the authorities of distance education is to provide students with powerful learning environments. The aim of powerful learning environments is development of complex and high level skills, deep understanding of concepts, and cognitive skills such as self-monitoring learning ability. 2. Research method The aim of this research is the evaluation of distance education programs in Isfahan’s secondary schools, Iran from the learners’ viewpoints based on NADE-TDECpattern in the 2009-10 academic year. This study employed a descriptive-survey method and tried to give a description of opinions of students studying at distance education centers of Isfahan’s secondary schools about educational programs. The statistical society included students of 17 distance education centers of Isfahan’s secondary schools in the 2009-10academic year. The sample included 179 students, selected through stratified randomization which was proportional to the size of statistical society. Required data was collected and analyzed through a researcher-made questionnaire based on NADE-TDECpattern. Appropriate statistical tests at descriptive and inferential levels were used to analyze the data. 3. Conclusion Based on standards derived from NADE-TDECpattern, the researcher tried to evaluate distance education programs in Isfahan’s secondary schools. By introducing four questions, the researcher tried to assess curriculum design, new educational technologies, and educational and administrative matters of these centers. According to previous studies and the researchers own studies, this research identified the quality of distance education programs in Isfahan’s secondary schools from the viewpoint of students in 2009-10based on NADE-TDEC pattern and the data collected from the researcher-made questionnaire. After the thorough analysis of the results of research questions, following suggestions are made in 4 components respectively: 1- The quality of curriculum design 2- The quality of new used educational technologies 3- The quality of matters related to education 119Mohammad Hossein Yarmohammadian et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 117 – 119 4- The quality of administrative matters (such as the time of classes, costs, rules related to education) The results are shown in following table: Table 5-1 weighted average of research questions The measure Weighted average Components Above average 3.20 1- quality of curriculum design Weak average 2.53 2- quality of new used educational technologies Above average 3.07 3- quality of matters related to education Above average 3.36 4- quality of administrative matters (such as the time of classes, costs, rules related to education) Acknowledgment Authors would like to express their appreciations to all of students and staff of Isfahan distance education centers who participated in this survey. They are thankful for support and assistance of responsible director of distance education in Isfahan Education Department and also Dr Payam Najafi, vice chancellor for research, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan( Isfahan) Branch. References Abraham, A. (1997). Libraries and distance education. Translated by: Kiani Khouzestani. Quarterly of Book. Spring and summer. pp. 125-133. Alharthi, M. (2003). A High Quality Portal Frame Work for Asynchronous Learning Networks: Intellectual Capital Aggregation and Organization, doctorate thesis, Vanderbilt University. Armstrong, A. J. (2002). An Investigation of Personal – Social Contextual Factors of the Online Adult Learner: Perceived Ability to Complete and Succeed in a Program of Study. Doctorate Thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University. Bayless, L. (2000). What are the non-Academic Needs of Distance Learners PhD thesis. Regional Polytechnic Institutional State University. Ellsworth, J.B. (2000). Surviving Change: A Survey of Educational Change Models . Syracuse , NY : Eric Clearing House on Information and Technology. Hasanzadeh, M. (2002). A feasibility study of distance education via internet based library and information education in Iran. Unpublished Master Thesis. Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Tarbiat Modares. Hoseini, A. (2005). Effectiveness of distance education centers. Proceedings of distance education. Tehran: Distance Education publication. 210 p. Esfijani, A. (2002). Study of effects of education by information networks on 2nd grade female students’ educational motivation at 14th districts of Tehran Education. Unpublished Master Thesis. Tarbiat Moallem University. Etezadi, M. (2009). Study of distance education difficulties from Isfahan secondary students and teachers’ points of view in 2008-2009. Unpublished Master Thesis. Islamic Azad University of Khorasgan, Isfahan, Iran. Khaleghi, N. (2006). The role of libraries and librarian in servicing to learners. Electronic journal of Iranian research institute for scientific information and documentation. Vol 6. No. 1. Pakide, F. A., RostamiNejad, M. A. (2007). Study of learners’ views about distance education. Quarterly of Reform and Education. No. 43. Tehran. Pina, A. (2008). Factors Influencing the Institutionalization of Distance Education in Higher Education, The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, Information Age Publishing Inc. Talebzadeh, M. Hoseini, S. A. (2005). Distance education: a new approach in Iran Education. Quarterly of Educational Innovations. Vol 6. No. 19. spring of 2007. Yarmohammadian, M. H. (2010) Principles of Curriculum Planning, Tehran, Yadvareh Ketab Co. Yarmohammadian, M. H., Bahrami, S. & Foroughi Abari, A. A. (2009) Educational Management and Planning, Isfahan, HMERC, IUMS Publishing. Zamani, B.& Madani, S. A. (2005). Distance education, strategies for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of educators. Journal of Computer Report.No. 171. 
work_bhd2cpldhbg4vlkpsfooopl3tq	----	Interaction in distance education and online learning: using evidence and theory to improve practice Philip C. Abrami • Robert M. Bernard • Eva M. Bures • Eugene Borokhovski • Rana M. Tamim Published online: 2 March 2011 � Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract In a recent meta-analysis of distance and online learning, Bernard et al. (2009) quantitatively verified the importance of three types of interaction: among students, between the instructor and students, and between students and course content. In this paper we explore these findings further, discuss methodological issues in research and suggest how these results may foster instructional improve- ment. We highlight several evidence-based approaches that may be useful in the next generation of distance and online learning. These include principles and applications stemming from the theories of self-regulation and multimedia learning, research-based motivational principles and collaborative learning principles. We also discuss the pedagogical challenges inherent in distance and online learning that need to be considered in instructional design and software development. Keywords Distance education � Online learning � Self-regulation � Multimedia learning � Motivation � Collaboration � Instructional design � Cooperative learning � Metacognition The preparation of this article was facilitated by grants to Abrami and Bernard from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada and the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture, Province of Québéc. An earlier version of this paper was presented at ‘‘The Evolution from Distance Education to Distributed Learning’’ 2010 AECT Research Sympoium, Bloomington, Indiana, July, 2010. P. C. Abrami (&) � R. M. Bernard � E. Borokhovski Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, QC H3G 1M8, Canada e-mail: abrami@education.concordia.ca URL: http://doe.concordia.ca/cslp/ E. M. Bures Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, QC, Canada R. M. Tamim Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University, Dubai, UAE 123 J Comput High Educ (2011) 23:82–103 DOI 10.1007/s12528-011-9043-x Introduction This paper provides us with an opportunity to look backward as a way of looking forward. As reviewers of evidence, we constantly use the past record of evidence to summarize what is known, to offer new insights about the existing evidence and then to suggest what may lie ahead in theorizing, researching and applying new knowledge. Distance and online learning provide exciting opportunities for not only increasing the reach of education and reducing its cost, but, most important to us, for increasing the quality of teaching and learning. In looking forward, we combine the results of our latest distance education review with summaries of evidence from other areas to suggest directions for the future. Thus, this paper has two intertwined foci. One is at the level of research, where we will argue that distance education (DE) and online learning (OL) has evolved beyond simple comparisons with classroom instruction. The other is at the level of design, where we will suggest how theory and new forms of evidence may improve instructional practice. The research paradigm of the past An examination of the quantitative/experimental research literature of DE and OL reveals an inordinately large proportion of comparisons with classroom instruction (CI). Bernard et al. (2004a) found that 232 such studies were conducted between 1985 and 2003. Many others have been done since 2003. Why is this form of primary study so popular? The most cynical answer to this question is that they are easy to conduct, given that many universities and colleges have routinely run parallel forms of courses, one as a conventional classroom-based section and the other as a DE section. From a less cynical perspective, they are sometimes used to justify the viability of DE as an alternative to classroom instruction to adminis- trators and policymakers. If asked a second question, whether researchers interested in improving classroom instruction would make similar comparisons with DE and OL, the resounding answer would be ‘‘no.’’ Since 2000, there have been more that 15 meta-analyses of this literature. Some have focused on particular populations, such as K-12 students (e.g., Cavanaugh et al. 2004), postsecondary students (e.g., Jahng et al. 2007) and health care professionals (e.g., Cook et al. 2008). Some have addressed particular forms of DE (telecourses, Machtmes and Asher 2000; online learning, U.S. DOE, 2009; and Web-based instruction, Sitzmann et al. 2006) and some have looked at specific outcome measures besides achievement (satisfaction, Allen et al. 2002). The meta- analysis by Bernard et al. (2004a, b) looked at all of these population features and also examined studies reporting dropout statistics. What has been the overall outcome of all of this primary research and meta-analytic activity based upon it? 1. There is general consensus of the effectiveness of all forms of DE (including online learning and Web-based instruction) compared with classroom instruction. Interaction in distance education and online learning 83 123 2. There is wide variability among studies, from those strongly favoring DE to those favoring CI, thereby bringing into question the unqualified interpretation of point 1. 3. There is a tendency for researchers to describe the DE/OL condition in great detail while characterizing the CI condition as ‘‘traditional classroom instruc- tion,’’ thereby diminishing the opportunity to describe and compare salient study features. 4. Comparative primary research is plagued with a variety of methodological problems and confounds that make them very hard to interpret (Bernard et al. 2004b). 5. There is little else to learn about the nature of DE or CI from comparative studies. The next generation of research More recent advances in technology have increased the power, flexibility, ubiquity and ease of learning online and at a distance. As one consequence, there is literature in DE and OL, albeit small by comparison to the DE vs. CI literature, that compares DE treatments ‘‘head-to-head.’’ Bernard et al. (2009) examined this literature from the perspective of interaction treatments (i.e., conditions of media and/or instructional design that are intended to enable and/or increase student–student, student-instructor and student-content interaction). According to Cook (2009), it is studies such as these that will help us understand ‘‘… when to use e-learning (studies exploring strengths and weaknesses) and how to use it effectively (head- to-head comparisons of e-learning interventions)’’ (p. 158). Similarly, Bernard et al. (2009) argue that it is through direct studies of DE and OL that ‘‘… progress to advance theory and practice will be made as researchers begin to examine how instructional and technological treatments differ between DE conditions, not between DE and CI’’ (p. 1262). As early as 2000, Clark (2000) was arguing the same point, ‘‘All evaluations [of DE] should explicitly investigate the relative benefits of two different but compatible types of DE technologies found in every DE program’’ (p. 4). Prior to Bernard et al. (2009), other reviews, and the studies on which they were based, explored only indirect comparisons of pedagogical features across studies by contrasting DE with CI. However, differentiating among critical DE features is never certain in such contrasts and may be explained by a host of alternative factors. In contrast, more recent DE vs. DE studies allow for the direct comparison of pedagogical features, such that differentiating among critical features is more certain and may be explained by fewer alternative factors. Furthermore, as Bernard et al. (2009) demonstrated, it is not always necessary for primary studies of DE and OL to directly address instructional variables such as interaction, flexibility, technology affordance, etc. in order for a systematic review to be conducted. It is necessary, however, that a conceptual structure be devised into which primary studies can be reasonably integrated. That is, one or more underlying 84 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 constructs must be identified allowing for different study-by-study operationaliza- tions to be classed together by the reviewer. But these studies, especially high quality studies, still represent the minority. A fundamental shift in the culture of research practices and the quality of reporting needs to occur to enable systematic reviewers and meta-analysts to come to broader and more comprehensive generalizations about the processes and conditions under which learning is best supported in DE and OL course designs. These include: • more research that compares at least one DE/OL treatment to another DE/OL treatment with an emphasis on learning and motivational processes; • better research designs (if not RCTs, designs that at least control for selection bias); • more studies across the grade levels (k-12) and in higher education settings of all types; • better-quality descriptions of all treatment levels and how well they were implemented; • better-quality measures, particularly measures of student learning, higher order thinking and engagement; and • better-quality reporting, preferably the inclusion of full descriptive statistics. This is a hope, perhaps more like a plea, for the future. But there is much to be learned already from studies that do compare DE/OL conditions directly. In order to do so, Bernard et al. (2009) used Moore’s (1989) tripartite conception of interaction in DE and Anderson’s (2003) more recent expansion on the conditions that encourage student–student, student-instructor, and student-content interaction to examine both the magnitude and the strength of interaction treatments. Interaction in DE and OL The DE/OL literature is largely univocal about the importance of interaction (Lou et al. 2006; Anderson 2003; Sutton 2001; Muirhead 2001a, b; Sims 1999; Wagner 1994; Fulford and Zhang 1993; Jaspers 1991; Bates 1990; Juler 1990; Moore 1989; Daniel and Marquis 1979, 1988; Laurillard 1997). This is because of the integral role that interaction between students, teachers and content is presumed to play in all of formal education (e.g., Garrison and Shale 1990; Chickering and Gamson 1987) and because interaction was largely absent during so much of the early history of DE (Nipper 1989). But is there empirical evidence that interaction is important and what forms of interaction are best? Bernard et al. (2009) were able to synthesize the evidence in support of this belief in a meta-analysis that summarized findings from 74 empirical studies comparing different modes of DE to one another. They found the overall positive weighted average effect size of 0.38 for achievement outcomes favoring more interactive treatments over less interactive ones. The results supported the importance of three types of interaction: among students, between the instructor and students and between students and course content. Interaction in distance education and online learning 85 123 Types of interaction An interaction is commonly understood as actions among individuals, but this meaning is extended here to include individual interactions with curricular content. Moore (1989) distinguished among three forms of interaction in DE: (1) student– student interaction, (2) student-instructor interaction; and (3) student-content interaction. Student–student interaction refers to interaction among individual students or among students working in small groups (Moore 1989). In correspondence courses, this interaction is often absent; in fact, correspondence students may not even be aware that other students are taking the same course. In later generations of DE, including two-way video- and audio-conferencing and Web-based courses, student– student interaction could be synchronous, as in videoconferencing and chatting, or asynchronous, as in discussion boards or e-mail messaging. Student-instructor interaction focuses on dialogue between students and the instructor. According to Moore (1989), during student-instructor interaction, the instructor seeks ‘‘to stimulate or at least maintain the student’s interest in what is to be taught, to motivate the student to learn, to enhance and maintain the learner’s interest, including self-direction and self-motivation’’ (p. 2). In DE environments, student-instructor interaction may be synchronous such as through the telephone, videoconferencing and chats, or asynchronous such as through correspondence, e-mail and discussion boards. Student-content interaction refers to students interacting with the subject matter under study to construct meaning, relate it to personal knowledge, and apply it to problem solving. Moore (1989) described student-content interaction as ‘‘… the process of intellectually interacting with the content that results in changes in the learner’s understanding, the learner’s perspective, or the cognitive structures of the learner’s mind’’ (p. 2). Student-content interaction may include reading informational texts for meaning, using study guides, watching instructional videos, interacting with multimedia, participating in simulations, or using cognitive support software (e.g., statistical software), as well as searching for information, completing assignments and working on projects. The positive impacts of interaction The results of Bernard et al. (2009) confirmed the importance of each type of interaction on student learning. See Table 1 for a summary of the results. Each type of interaction had a significantly positive average effect size ranging from ?0.32 for student-instructor interaction to ?0.49 for student–student interaction. Both student– student and student-content interaction was significantly higher than student- instructor interaction. Not surprisingly, the major conclusion from Bernard et al. (2009) was that designing interaction treatments into DE courses, whether to increase interaction with the material to be learned, with the course instructor, or with peers impacts positively on student learning. But are even larger and more consistently positive 86 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 effects possible? It may be that the presence of the interaction conditions in the reviewed studies functioned in exactly the way they were intended, so that the estimates of the effects were fairly accurate. But just because opportunities for interaction were offered to students does not mean that students availed themselves of them, or if they did interact, that they did so effectively. The latter case is the more likely event, so the achievement effects resulting from well-implemented interaction conditions may be underestimated in our review. Therefore, we believe that what we identified in Bernard et al. (2009) is the impact of the first generation of interactive distance education (IDE1), where online learning instructional design and technology treatments allowed or enabled some degree of interaction to occur. In other words, in IDE1 learners were able to interact but may not have done so optimally given the quality and quantity of interactions that occurred. These interactions may have been limited by how the courses used in the research were designed and delivered and limited by how technology mediated learning and instruction. Consequently, the next generation of interactive distance education (IDE2), or purposeful, interactive distance education, should be better designed to facilitate interactions that are more targeted, intentional and engaging. Not only will we need knowledge tools and instructional designs that do this effectively, but we will also need research that validates both the underlying processes (e.g., using implemen- tation checks and measures of treatment integrity) as well as the outcomes of IDE2 (e.g., especially measures of student learning). The next generation of interactive distance education (IDE2) One way to advance this new, more interactive DE, largely possible because of Web 2.0 features, is via the development of specialized knowledge tools or customized instructional designs that take advantage of these new features. A knowledge tool is educational software that scaffolds and supports student learning. Instructional design is the practice of maximizing the effectiveness, efficiency and appeal of instruction and other learning experiences. Effective knowledge tools for IDE2 should be based on sound instructional design or allow instructional design templates to be added to them. Beldarrain (2006) notes that although emerging technologies offer a vast range of opportunities for promoting collaboration in learning environments, distance Table 1 Weighted average achievement effect sizes for categories of interaction Interaction categories k g ? (adj.) SE Student–student (SS) 10 0.49 0.08 Student-instructor (SI) 44 0.32 0.04 Student-content (SC) 20 0.46 0.05 Total 74 0.38 0.03 (Q) Between-class 7.05* Interaction in distance education and online learning 87 123 education programs around the globe face challenges that may limit or deter implementation of these technologies. Beldarrain (2008), like Moore (1989), believes that instructional design models must be adapted to integrate various types of interactions, each with a specific purpose and intended outcome. It is also necessary to choose the appropriate technology tools that foster collaboration, communication and cognition. Furthermore, instructional design models must anchor student interaction in the instructional objectives and strategies that create, support and enhance learning environments. Beldarrain (2008) explores five instructional design frameworks and assesses their effectiveness in integrating interaction as part of the design and development phase of DE. She also provides literature-based suggestions for enhancing the ability of these design frameworks to foster student interaction. Guided, focused and purposeful interaction goes beyond whether opportunities for interaction exist to consider especially why and how interaction occurs. When students consider why they engage in learning activities they are reflecting on their motivation (from the Latin word ‘‘movere’’ meaning to move) for learning including the energy of activity and the direction of that energy towards a goal. When students consider how they engage in learning they are addressing the strategies and techniques for knowledge acquisition. Evidence-based approaches to IDE2 We highlight below several evidence-based approaches useful in the next generation of IDE2. These include application of: (1) theories of self-regulation, (2) multimedia learning principles, (3) motivational design principles and (4) collaborative and cooperative learning principles. We also discuss challenges in integrating these principles in IDE2 and the instructional designs and learning tools best suited for its success. Self-regulation principles One important interpretation of purposeful interaction in IDE2 means learners will be self-regulated; they will set clear goals and develop strategies for achieving those goals, monitor their activity and reflect on their accomplishments using both self and peer or teacher feedback (Zimmerman 2000). Self-regulated learners are individuals who are metacognitively, motivationally and behaviorally active participants in their own learning and consequently are learners whose academic performance is higher than others (Zimmerman 2000). A main feature of self- regulated learning is metacognition, which refers to the awareness, knowledge and control of cognition. The three processes that make up metacognitive self-regulation are planning, monitoring and regulating. Proponents of socio-cognitive models emphasize that to develop effective self-regulated learning strategies, ‘‘students need to be involved in complex meaningful tasks, choosing the products and processes that will be evaluated, modifying tasks and assessment criteria to attain an 88 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 optimal challenge, obtaining support from peers and evaluating their own work’’ (Perry 1998, p. 716). The three cyclical phases of self-regulation include both metacognitive and motivational components, providing the foundation for better sustainability of learning and skill development. The forethought phase includes task analysis (goal setting and strategic planning) and consideration of self-motivation beliefs (self- efficacy, outcome expectations, intrinsic interest/value and goal orientation). Learners need to set goals and make plans to engage successfully in the task as well as take stock of their own motivation toward the task. The next phase, the performance phase, includes self-control (self-instruction, imagery, attention focusing and task strategies) and self-observation (self-recording and self-experi- mentation). Learners need to engage in the activity, controlling their processes and observe their own performance. Finally, the self-reflection phase includes self- judgment (self-evaluation and casual attribution) and self-reaction (self-satisfaction/ affect and adaptive-defensive responses) (Zimmerman 2000). Here learners examine themselves and develop motivational ‘responses’ or reactions (See Fig. 1). Zimmerman (2008) emphasizes the importance of directing further research at the motivational aspects of self-regulation and Zimmerman and Tsikalas (2005) discuss how student motivational beliefs need to be an integral part of the design of educational software. Though the terms are different, distance education has emphasized the need for students to be self-directed and to learn how to learn; historically this emphasis comes from the adult learning literature as early models of distance education largely catered to older learners. There is an emphasis on adults directing their own Fig. 1 Zimmerman’s (2000) cyclical model of self-regulation Interaction in distance education and online learning 89 123 learning in a myriad of ways from monitoring their progress to setting their own learning goals. Knowles (1980) outlined six key principles of his adult learning theory, two of which address adult learners’ self-regulation: learners need to be aware of the learning process to be undertaken, where that process leads (the learning which will be achieved) and why the learning is important; they also need to be self-directed in their learning, taking ownership over the methods and goals of learning. Similarly, Brookfield (1995) discusses adult learners’ needs to be self- directed, as illustrated by setting up goals, finding relevant resources and evaluating their own progress and the importance of supporting adults in learning how to learn. Such approaches have been criticized for placing too much emphasis on the individual, as has the concept of self-regulation. Hickey and McCaslin (2001) suggest that reconciliation with more of a socio-constructivist perspective would not necessarily prohibit the concept of self-regulation, but it would be framed within the context of learners increasing their engagement in communities of practice. It is possible to create instructional designs with many of the features of self- regulation and to embed these designs as templates into existing tools for distance and online learning, especially those that are intended to support computer conferencing (e.g., FirstClass). But knowledge tools are emerging, designed specifically to promote student self-regulation in blended, online and distance learning contexts. ePEARL, an electronic portfolio software that serves to support learning processes and encourage self-regulated learning, is one such tool (Abrami et al. 2008; Meyer et al. 2010). Multimedia learning principles Research on learning from multimedia has lead to the development of instructional design principles by Mayer (2001, 2008) that have applications to IDE2. In a classic experiment, Paivio (1969) found that subjects who were shown a rapid sequence of pictures as well as a rapid sequence of words and later asked to recall the words and pictures, either in order of appearance or in any order they wanted, were better at recalling images when allowed to do so in any order. Participants, however, more readily recalled the sequential order of the words, rather than the sequence of pictures. These results supported Paivio’s hypothesis that verbal information is processed differently than visual information. Paivio’s dual coding theory of information processing (1971, 1986) gives weight to both verbal and non-verbal processing. The theory posits that there are two cognitive subsystems, one specialized for the representation and processing of nonverbal objects/events (i.e., imagery) and the other specialized for dealing with language. Following from this pioneering work, Mayer (2001, 2008) describes a cognitive theory of multimedia learning organized around three core principles: (a) dual channels—the idea that humans possess separate channels for processing visual and verbal material; (b) limited capacity—the idea that each channel can process only a limited amount of material at any one time; and (c) active processing—the idea that deep learning depends on the learner’s cognitive processing during learning (e.g., selecting, organizing and integrating). 90 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 According to Mayer (2001, 2008), the central challenge of instructional design for multimedia learning is to encourage learners to engage in appropriate cognitive processing during learning while not overloading the processing capacity of the verbal or visual channel. Accordingly, Mayer (2001, 2008) summarizes a series of evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia learning tools that are relevant to IDE2. There are five principles for reducing extraneous processing and the waste of cognitive capacity, three principles for managing essential processing and reducing complexity and two principles for fostering generative processing and encouraging the use of cognitive capacity. These evidence-based principles are listed in Table 2. For example, the five principles for reducing extraneous processing include coherence, signaling, redundancy, spatial contiguity and temporal contiguity. All of these principles are intended to focus the learner’s attention and processing of information and avoid distractions or spurious mental activity leading to cognitive overload. By using the evidence-based principles of multimedia learning, interaction between students and the course content, in particular, will be enhanced by going beyond the mere inclusion of interactive multimedia in DE and OL courses. These evidence-based principles help insure that learning from multimedia will be meaningful, maximizing the storage or construction of knowledge and its retrieval. Motivational design principles Beyond self-regulation, motivational principles in general are also important in IDE2 to insure the active and directed engagement of learners. In an enlightening article, Fishman et al. (2004) acknowledged that far too few cognitively-based or constructively-oriented knowledge tools are in wide use in school systems. The primary uses of educational technology remain drill and practice, word processing Table 2 Mayer’s (2001, 2008) multimedia learning design principles Principle Definition Five evidence-based and theoretically grounded principles for reducing extraneous processing Coherence Reduce extraneous material Signaling Highlight essential material Redundancy Do not add on-screen text to narrated animation Spatial contiguity Place printed words next to corresponding graphics Temporal contiguity Present corresponding narration and animation at the same time. Three evidence-based and theoretically grounded principles for managing essential processing Segmenting Present animation in learner-paced segments Pre-training Provide pre-training in the name, location and characteristics of key components Modality Present words as spoken text rather than printed text Two evidence-based and theoretically grounded principles for fostering generative processing Multimedia Present words and pictures rather than words alone Personalization Present words in conversational style rather than formal style Interaction in distance education and online learning 91 123 and web surfing (Burns and Ungerleider 2003), whereas the most helpful for learning appear to be technologies that offer students various forms of cognitive support (e.g., Schmid et al. 2009). Fishman et al. (2004) claim that we need to understand ways to encourage instructor and student ‘‘buy in’’ or accept the value and purpose of the innovation. For example, Wozney et al. (2006) used expectancy theory to explain teacher integration of technology. Expectations of success, the perceived value of outcomes, versus the costs of adoption were key factors in explaining teacher adoption and persistence. Finally, Moos and Azevedo (2009) summarized evidence on the positive association between students’ computer self- efficacy beliefs and learning with educational software. These perspectives and findings about student and educator motivation and the use of educational software overlap with motivational principles for instructional design in general. Pintrich (2003) provided five motivational generalizations and 14 instructional design principles that are evidence-based. The motivational general- izations are: (1) adaptive self-efficacy and competence beliefs motivate students, (2) adaptive attributions and control beliefs motivate students, (3) higher levels of interest and intrinsic motivation motivate students, (4) higher levels of value motivate students and (5) goals motivate and direct students (see Table 3). For example, to encourage self-efficacy and student competency beliefs means distance and online courses need to be structured to: (a) provide clear and accurate feedback regarding competence and self-efficacy, focusing on the development of competence, expertise and skill; and (b) offer opportunities to be successful but also challenge students. To maximize students’ values for learning course content requires: (a) tasks, material and activities that are relevant and useful to students, allowing for some personal identification with school and the content to be learned; and (b) discourse that focuses on the importance and utility of content and activities. An important reason to use a knowledge tool occurs when learners are undertaking large, novel or difficult tasks rather than trivial or routine ones. Knowledge tools may be best suited to situations when learners have to be conscientiously engaged in learning, when the outcome is important and/or when the process is being judged or evaluated. Knowledge tools are also suited to situations when the outcome is uncertain and especially when student effort matters and/or when failure has occurred previously. One ideal situation is where a knowledge tool is integrated into instruction, where the task is complex and novel, where the learner wants to do well and doing well is important and when the student is not certain how well s/he will do but believes that personal efforts to learn will lead to success. Collaborative and cooperative learning principles When student-to-student interaction becomes truly collaborative and learners work together to help each other learn, the benefits of interactivity may be largest. Lou et al. (2001) examined the effects of learning in small groups with technology and reached similar conclusions. Lou et al.’s (2001) study quantitatively synthesized the empirical research on the effects of social context (i.e., small group versus individual learning) when students 92 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 learn using computer technology. In total, 486 independent findings were extracted from 122 studies involving 11,317 learners. The results indicated that, on average, small group learning had significantly more positive effects than individual learning on student individual achievement (average ES = ?0.15), group task performance (average ES = ?0.31) and several process and affective outcomes. The effects of small group learning were significantly enhanced when: (a) students had group work experience or instruction; (b) specific cooperative learning strategies were employed; (c) group size was small; (d) using tutorials or practice software or programming languages; (e) learning computer skills, social sciences and other subjects such as management and social studies; and (f) students were either relatively low in ability or relatively high in ability. Table 3 Motivational generalizations and design principles (Pintrich 2003) Motivational generalization Design principle Adaptive self-efficacy and competence beliefs motivate students Provide clear and accurate feedback regarding competence and self-efficacy, focusing on the development of competence, expertise and skill Design tasks that offer opportunities to be successful but also challenge students Adaptive attributions and control beliefs motivate students Provide feedback that stresses process nature of learning, including importance of effort, strategies and potential self- control of learning Provide opportunities to exercise some choice and control Build supportive and caring personal relationships in the community of learners in the classroom Higher levels of interest and intrinsic motivation motivate students Provide stimulating and interesting tasks, activities and materials, including some novelty and variety in tasks and activities Provide content material and tasks that are personally meaningful and interesting to students Display and model interest and involvement in the content and activities. Higher levels of value motivate students Provide tasks, material and activities that are relevant and useful to students, allowing for some personal identification with school Classroom discourse should focus on importance and utility of content and activities Goals motivate and direct students Use organizational and management structures that encourage personal and social responsibility and provide a safe, comfortable and predictable environment Use cooperative and collaborative groups to allow for opportunities to attain both social and academic goals Classroom discourse should focus on mastery, learning and understanding course and lesson content Use task, reward and evaluation structures that promote mastery, learning, effort, progress and self-improvement standards and less reliance on social comparison or norm- referenced standards Interaction in distance education and online learning 93 123 Lou et al. (2001) suggested that prior group learning experience and the teacher’s use of cooperative learning strategies are important pedagogical factors that may influence how much students learn when working in small groups using technology. Explanations of group dynamics suggest that not all groups function well; for example, groups often do not function well when some members exert only minimal effort. Students need practice working together on group activities and training in how to work collaboratively. In IDE2, this training can be done in numerous ways including via the incorporation of multimedia vignettes. Experience in IDE2 group work may also enable members to use acquired strategies for effective group work more effectively. Specific instruction for cooperative learning in IDE2 ensures that students learning in small groups will have positive interdependence as well as individual accountability (Abrami et al. 1995). Positive interdependence among outcomes, means, or interpersonal factors exists when one student’s success positively influences the chances of other students’ successes. According to Abrami et al. (1995) positive interdependence develops along a continuum from teacher- structured interdependence, followed by student perceptions of interdependence, leading to student interdependence behaviors and culminating in student interde- pendence values. Individual accountability among outcomes, means and interpersonal factors involves two components: (1) each student is responsible for his or her own learning and (2) each student is responsible for helping the other group members learn. Like positive interdependence, individual accountability develops along a continuum from teacher-imposed structure to accountability as a student value. Recently, Johnson and Johnson (2009) updated their review of the evidence on cooperative learning noting that the research in the area has been voluminous numbering in excess of 1,200 studies. They elaborated on the importance of positive interdependence and individual accountability but also promotive interactions. Promotive interactions occur as individuals encourage and facilitate each other’s efforts to accomplish the group’s goals. Promotive interaction is characterized by individuals: (1) acting in trusting and trustworthy ways; (2) exchanging needed resources, such as information and materials and processing information more efficiently and effectively; (3) providing efficient and effective help and assistance to group mates; (4) being motivated to strive for mutual benefit; (5) advocating exerting effort to achieve mutual goals; (6) having a moderate level of arousal, characterized by low anxiety and stress; (7) influencing each other’s efforts to achieve the group’s goals; (8) providing group mates with feedback in order to improve their subsequent performance of assigned tasks and responsibilities; (9) challenging each other’s reasoning and conclusions in order to promote higher quality decision making and greater creativity; and (10) taking the perspectives of others more accurately and thus being better able to explore different points of view. Noreen Webb (Webb 1989, 2008; Webb and Mastergeorge 2006; Webb and Palincsar 1996) has examined extensively what constitutes effective collaboration in terms of how meaningful learning is exchanged. Ineffective collaboration includes providing correct answers without explanation. Effective collaboration includes 94 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 giving and receiving elaborated explanations with a focus on encouraging understanding in others. When designing online and distance learning, instructional designers should consider these four principles—(1) positive interdependence, (2) individual accountability, (3) promotive interactions, and (4) elaborated explanations. There are knowledge tools that can be designed to better scaffold and support aspects of collaborative and cooperative learning or more generally, student-to-student interaction. And they may also be used to support student-to-content interaction and student-to-teacher interaction as well. Challenges to IDE2 Abrami (2010) considered several reasons why learners do not better utilize some knowledge tools. The first is based on the principle of least effort. Even the best strategic learners need to balance efficiency concerns with effectiveness concerns, as well as balance proximal goals with distal ones. Strategic learners need to find the middle ground between how much they can learn and how well they can learn, or between the quantity of learning and the quality of learning. Second, strategic learners often have to find the balance between intrinsic interests and extrinsic requirements. Frankly, the postsecondary learning system imposes its own restrictions on students (e.g., course requirements) that may not make effortful strategies uniformly appropriate. Third, decades ago, McClelland et al. (1953) illustrated the impact not only of individual differences in achievement strivings but the importance of perceived outcome to learners’ task choices and persistence. Years later, Weiner (1980) showed how causal attributions for task outcomes varied among learners, that these attributions affected thinking, behavior and feelings and that attributions varied depending on subjective estimates of the likelihood of future success and later, perceived outcome. When we ask students to take personal responsibility for their own learning, we may create an internal conflict for students. First, does a student believe s/he can succeed at this learning task? Second, does a student believe that this tool will help him/her succeed? Third, does a student want to take responsibility for his/her own learning? While McClelland and Atkinson (e.g., McClelland et al. 1953) showed that high need achievers are drawn to moderately challenging tasks, we know that high need achievers tend to avoid tasks which are low in the probability of success. Weiner and others (e.g., Weiner 1980) showed that there are marked differences in causal attributions when learners perceive they have succeeded versus failed. Attributional bias means learners attribute success to internal causes and failure to external ones. Defensive attributions for failure (e.g., I failed because the exam was too hard or my teacher did not help) help protect a learner’s sense of self-efficacy (i.e., keep a learner from concluding s/he failed because of lack of ability). Therefore, there may be situations where increased personal responsibility for learning is not always beneficial to a learner’s achievement strivings, causal attributions and self-efficacy. These situations have mostly to do with the learner’s Interaction in distance education and online learning 95 123 perception of the likelihood of future success and/or perceived outcome. For example, in novel or very demanding situations, especially ones that are high in importance, learners may want to avoid taking responsibility for their learning (and the learning of others) until such time as they are confident of a positive outcome. In other words, it is likely that some learners will return the responsibility for learning to the instructor or, more generally, the instructional delivery system, as accept it themselves. Fourth, related to the above is the importance of effort-outcome covariation. Productive learners come to believe that their efforts at learning lead to successful learning outcomes. These learners come to believe that ‘‘the harder and more that I try, the more likely I am to achieve a positive learning outcome.’’ The opposite belief is when a learner believes that their efforts bear little, if any, relationship to learning outcomes. In behavioral terms, this is learning that outcomes are non- contingent on actions, called learned helplessness by Seligman (1975). Seligman demonstrated that after experiencing these non-contingencies learners made almost no effort to act even when the contingencies were changed. This passivity, even in the face of aversive stimuli, is difficult to reverse. Fifth, in order to encourage active collaboration among learners, it is often necessary at the outset to impose external structures including individual accountability and positive interdependence. These structures insure that each learner knows that s/he is responsible for his/her own learning within a group and that s/he is also responsible for the learning of others, respectively. Eventually, the meaning and value of these structures become internalized and are no longer necessary to impose (Abrami et al. 1995). However, not all tasks lend themselves equally well to collaboration or require team activity in the same fashion. Steiner’s typology of tasks (1972) presents four major task types—additive, compensatory, disjunctive and conjunctive. For example, Steiner claims that certain types of disjunctive tasks (e.g., questions involving yes/no or either/or answers) provide group performances that are only equal to or are less than the performance of the most capable group member. In contrast, additive tasks, where individual inputs are combined, provide group performances that are always better than the most capable group member. Cohen (1994) noted that true group tasks require resources that no single individual possesses so that no one is likely to solve the problem without input from others. In the absence of true group tasks and when individual accountability and positive interdependence are ill-structured, learning in groups may see a reduction in individual effort, not an increase, colorfully referred to as ‘‘social loafing’’ (Latane et al. 1979). Indeed, Abrami et al. (1995) summarized ten factors that research showed are related to social loafing: size, equality of efforts, identifiability, responsibility, redundancy, involvement, cohesiveness, goals, heterogeneity and time. Creating activities that accounts for the influence of these factors on group productivity and individual learning is a tall order. And it may be more difficult in an electronic learning environment where, for example, there is less identifiability (i.e., individual contributions that are clearly identified) and tasks where there is more redundancy (i.e., individuals who believe their contributions are not unique). 96 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 To summarize, the following factors may be at work in preventing more pervasive and persistent use of knowledge tools by students: • learners do not value the outcome(s) of learning sufficiently to increase their efforts to learn—it is not so important to do well; • learners believe that gains in learning from increased effort are inefficient—it takes too much effort to do a little bit better; • learners do not want to become more responsible for their own learning—it is too risky unless the perceived chances of a positive outcome are increased; and • learners believe that novel approaches to learning (use of unfamiliar knowledge tools) increase the likelihood of poor outcomes, not increase them—it is not of interest or too risky because they do not believe the tool will help them learn. There are ways to overcome these challenges. Several suggestions for future research and development follow. First, knowledge tools must be structured so they increase the efficiency of learning as well as the effectiveness of learning. As such, instructional designers should pay more attention to ease of use as an overall design objective, where learners need even more guidance as to which features to use, how and when. Time is one critical factor and it may be dealt with in numerous ways including structuring how tool activities are carried out (e.g., weekly) or making them part of the evaluation scheme. Simplicity of use may be important; avoiding the addition of time to learn how to use technology at the expense of time needed to learn the content. It would be interesting to know not only whether use of each tool resulted in increased achievement but also whether the quality and quantity of use related to learning gains—a form of cost/benefit ratio. Second, students need more guidance about when to use the tool and not only whether to use it. That is, the tool should be used when a learning task is both difficult and important. Advice and feedback from instructors may help, as well as queries and suggestions embedded in the tool. Not every learning task requires the use of a knowledge tool and its use probably varies according to the skills and interests of each learner. Furthermore, even when a task warrants the use of a tool, not all features of the tool may need to be used. Some explanation, embedded within the tool, regarding when to use which feature would also be useful. As such, additional features should be designed to be used flexibly when appropriate to the learning task. Third, like any tool, physical or cognitive, users need practice to use the tool well and wisely. You don’t license a driver after 1 day’s practice or ask a carpenter apprentice to build a cabinet after a single time using a band saw. Asking students to use a tool voluntarily where performance and grades matter is stacking the deck against enthusiastic use. Requiring use may ameliorate the problem because it is fair to everyone. Nevertheless, learners may now face the dual challenge of not only learning complex and challenging material but doing so in a novel and effortful way. Use of the tool should be ‘‘well-learned’’ and second nature before it becomes a required part of a course or program of study. And learners must be convinced that the tool helps them learn. In the latter regard, careful attention should be paid to Interaction in distance education and online learning 97 123 feedback from students and instructors on success and failure stories, including the former as testimonials embedded in the tool. Fourth, cognitive tools and learning strategies may work best when they are an integral feature of a course or program of study and not an add-on. This is the true meaning of technology integration or when the use of technology is not separate from the content to be learned but embedded in it. This integration may require the same degree of forethought, planning and goal setting on the part of instructors to insure effective and efficient student use. And instructors need training and experience with the use of tools to encourage scalability and sustainability. Summary In this paper, we argued for changes to primary quantitative/experimental research designs in DE/OL to examine alternative instructional treatments ‘‘head-to-head.’’ We can see limited future improvements to DE/OL if comparisons to CI continue to prevail. How far would our understanding of automotive technology have progressed, for instance, if cars (i.e., ‘‘horseless carriages’’) were still designed as alternatives to horses? Secondly, we believe that DE/OL research and development is still in its infancy with regards to our ability to engineer successful interaction among students, between teachers and students and between students and content. The results of Bernard et al. (2009) confirmed the importance of student–student, student-content and student-instructor interaction for student learning. The next generation of interactive distance education (IDE2) should be better designed to facilitate more purposeful interaction. Guided, focused and purposeful interaction goes beyond whether opportunities for interaction exist to consider especially why and how interaction occurs. When students consider how they engage in learning they consider, or are provided with, the strategies and techniques for knowledge acquisition. We highlighted several evidence-based approaches useful in the next generation IDE2. These include principles and applications from the theories of self-regulation and multimedia learning, research-based motivational principles and collaborative learning principles. Self-regulated learning principles: 1. Include a forethought phase that involves task analysis (goal setting and strategic planning) and self-motivation beliefs (self-efficacy, outcome expec- tations, intrinsic interest/value and goal orientation). 2. Provide a performance phase that includes self-control (self-instruction, imagery, attention focusing and task strategies) and self-observation (self- recording and self-experimentation). 3. Integrate a self-reflection phase that includes self-judgment (self-evaluation and casual attribution) and self-reaction (self-satisfaction/affect and adaptive- defensive responses). Multimedia Learning Principles: 1. Reduce extraneous processing and the waste of cognitive capacity. 2. Manage essential processing and reducing complexity. 98 P. C. Abrami et al. 123 3. Foster generative processing and encourage the use of cognitive capacity. Motivational design principles: 1. Encourage adaptive self-efficacy and competence beliefs. 2. Promote adaptive attributions and control beliefs. 3. Stimulate higher levels of interest and intrinsic motivation. 4. Insure higher levels of task value. 5. Encourage the identification of goals that motivate and direct students. 6. Participate in a context where knowledge is valued and used motivates students. Collaborative and cooperative learning principles: 1. Structure positive interdependence such that one student’s success positively influences the chances of other students’ successes. 2. Highlight individual accountability in ways that each student is responsible for: (a) his or her own learning; and (b) helping the other group members learn. 3. Insure promotive interactions occur allowing individuals to encourage and facilitate each other’s efforts to accomplish the group’s goals. 4. Maximize the likelihood that students give and receive elaborated explanations with a focus on encouraging understanding in others. Overcoming Challenges to IDE2 1. Instructional designers should pay more attention to ease of use as an overall design objective. 2. Students need more guidance about when, under what circumstances and for what purposes, to use the tool. 3. Users need practice to use the tool well and wisely. 4. Cognitive tools and learning strategies may work best when they are an integral feature of a course. Finally, in this paper we addressed several theoretical and empirical perspectives that should be explored more fully, but we have not specified in complete detail how instructional design and technology applications should converge to achieve a more interactive environment for teaching and learning at a distance. Achieving that goal is left to the creative and collaborative efforts of future researchers, designers, software engineers and teachers. 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His current work focuses on research integrations and primary investigations in support of applications of educational technology in distance and higher education, in early literacy, and in the development of higher order thinking skills. Robert M. Bernard is Professor of Education (Educational Technology) at Concordia University and Systematic Review Theme Leader for the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance. His research interests include distance and online learning and instructional technology. His methodological expertise is in the areas of research design, statistics and meta-analysis. Eva M. Bures is an Associate Professor in Education at Bishop’s University and is a member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance. A graduate of Reed College and Concordia University, her work focuses on knowledge tools that scaffold learners’ development of higher-order thinking skills through computer-supported learning and assessment, both in distance and face-to-face contexts. Eugene Borokhovski is an Assistant Research Professor with the Department of Psychology and Systematic Reviews Project Manager at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia 102 P. C. 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Tamim is Director of Graduate Programs, Associate Professor in the School of e-Education Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University in Dubai, UAE, and a collaborator with the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Montreal, Canada. Her research expertise includes quantitative and qualitative skills in addition to systematic review and meta-analytic expertise. Her research interests include the impact and role of computer technologies in facilitating learning. Interaction in distance education and online learning 103 123 Interaction in distance education and online learning: using evidence and theory to improve practice Abstract Introduction The research paradigm of the past The next generation of research Interaction in DE and OL Types of interaction The positive impacts of interaction The next generation of interactive distance education (IDE2) Evidence-based approaches to IDE2 Self-regulation principles Multimedia learning principles Motivational design principles Collaborative and cooperative learning principles Challenges to IDE2 Summary References << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Gray Gamma 2.2) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (ISO Coated v2 300% \050ECI\051) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true 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work_bi6igbmk5vfkrgbkfpczui5aji	----	Distance Education Vol. 29, No. 3, November 2008, 231–252 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2008 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587910802395771 http://www.informaworld.com Learner and instructor identified success factors in distance education Michael P. Menchacaa* and Teklu Abate Bekeleb aDepartment of Educational Technology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA; bInstitute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Taylor and FrancisCDIE_A_339744.sgm10.1080/01587910802395771 (Received 23 May 2008; final version received 6 August 2008) Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Research Article2008Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.293000000November 2008MichaelMenchacamikepm@hawaii.edu To better understand their perceptions of optimal tools and strategies for success, this research analyzed the experiences of learners and instructors in an online distance education environment. A qualitative constant comparative analysis methodology supported by an appropriate conceptual framework guided the study. Data were collected over multiple years and from multiple stakeholders. The study identified the following significant conclusions: the availability of multiple tools added flexibility to the learning environment; technology tools should appeal to multiple learning styles; collaboration, reflection, and building a learning community were important strategies supported by multiple tools; and participant satisfaction, appropriate prerequisite skills, and faculty and administrative involvement ensured programmatic success. According to this study, optimal distance education environments should address factors identified in the conceptual framework. Keywords: distance education; online learning environments; qualitative analysis Introduction Traditionally, distance education utilized one or more tools to service learning and teaching across long distances (Groff, 1996). Some of these tools included written materials sent via post, cable television, satellite, phone conferencing, or perhaps two-way video conferenc- ing. Early research tended to focus on student outcomes, student attitudes, and overall student satisfaction (Phipps, Wellman, & Merisotis, 1998). To address the need for expanded research, early researchers argued distance education was being transformed to include the utilization of interactive, communications-based technologies (Dede, 1996, 1998; Van Dusen, 1997; Watson, 1997). Some researchers noted institutions were increas- ingly relying on new technologies to deliver not only courses but also entire programs (Blumenstyk, 1999; Dede, 1998; Drucker, 1992), whereas others posited that institutions incorporating modern technologies for delivery would continue to grow (Dede, 1998; Drucker, 1992; Dyson, 1997; Peters, 1997). Indeed, online courses and programs, many relying on interactive tools, have proliferated (Allen & Seaman, 2004, 2005; Dede, 2004; Dede, Whitehouse, & Brown-L’Bahy, 2002; Fletcher, 2004). In 2004, Fletcher noted, ‘distance learning programs are offered by two-thirds of colleges and universities, and the percentage of institutions offering accredited degrees through distance learning has increased to about 55%’ (p. 2). Distance education and related research has continued to proliferate. Research has focused on how students and faculty members experience or perceive distance education environments as meeting their expectations (Bekele & Menchaca, in press). Although some *Corresponding author. Email: mikepm@hawaii.edu 232 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele research has examined the prerequisites and conditions required for optimal use in distance learning, most has focused on the effect of such learning environments on student achieve- ment (Bekele & Menchaca, in press). Studies have considered prior computer literacy (Erlich, Erlich-Philip, & Gal-Ezer, 2005); prior experience with technologies (Shih, Muñoz, & Sanchez, 2006; Yan, 2006); and perceived prerequisites for optimal use (Ostlund, 2008). These studies have typically utilized Likert scales, rankings, and multiple-choice questions for quantitative data collection and analysis. In addition, most have focused on measuring student achievement in some quantitative format, such as grades, test scores, and other outcome measures. Less frequent has been the inclusion of open-ended questions, inter- views, or focus group research. Thus, how learners perceive e-learning environments and how such perceptions affect learning is less clear (Chen & Macredie, 2002; Gilbert, Morton, & Rowley, 2007; Imel, 2002; Moore & Aspden, 2004). In this regard, ‘more in-depth qualitative interviews and case studies could provide richer insights into student e-learning behaviour, and answers to “why” and “how” questions’ (Gilbert et al., 2007, p. 561). This study was conducted to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by qualitatively analyzing student and faculty member experiences in an online Master in Educational Technology program. Purpose and questions To better inform instructional design, practice, and further research, this study explored factors needed for success in an online learning environment (OLE) as viewed by students, faculty, and administrators. It also examined the specific form of technologies optimally used for teaching and learning. The study identified instructional and learning approaches preferred in the learning environment. Overall, it examined the experience and perception of individuals participating in an OLE where only 25% of instructional time was devoted to face-to-face (f2f) meetings, by addressing the following questions: (1) What prerequisite knowledge, skills, or combination of both were required of participants for success? (2) Which technology or form of technology was optimally used for instruction and learning? (3) What learning, instructional, or combination of approaches were required or preferred for success? Literature review Relevant literature was reviewed to (a) identify success factors in OLEs, (b) identify major methodological and theoretical issues embedded in previous research, and (c) better inform the study. Table 1 presents a summary of the literature. The review indicated several limitations in previous research on success factors in OLEs. First, overall knowledge of success factors was fragmented and inconclusive partly because research on the area was relatively recent with few longitudinal analyses (Bekele, 2008; Bekele & Menchaca, in press). Particularly, how learners perceive OLEs and how these environments affect learning were inconclusive (Chen & Macredie, 2002; Gilbert et al., 2007; Imel, 2002; Moore & Aspden, 2004; Romero, du Boulay, Cox, Lutz, & Bryant, 2007). The dynamic and complex nature of OLEs seemed to explain part of this phenomenon. Second, most studies were quantitatively driven, possibly limiting depth and breadth as far as learner experiences and perceptions were concerned (Bekele, 2008; Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Gilbert et al., 2007). Distance Education 233 Table 1. Summary of success factors in online learning. Study Success factors Abel (2005) Motivation, measurements and expectations, student and faculty support, and delivery format Baker and Schihl (2005) Instructional support for staff (training on technology) and administrative support Bekele (2008) Human, technology, pedagogic, course, and leadership factors Bekele and Menchaca (in press) Factors related to technology, media, content, method of learning, and support services Carr-Chellman and Duchastel (2000) Study guides, projects/assignments, examples online, course communications through asynchronous and synchronous tools, and interactive skill building Erlich et al. (2005) Prior computer literacy and applications courses Gilbert et al. (2007) Theory–practice matches, several subject themes, social interactions, and support services Howell and Wilcken (2005) Student support (instructor and administrative based) Kung-Ming and Khoon-Seng (2005) Synchronous and asynchronous interaction Lammintakanen and Rissanen (2005) Student motivation; asynchronous and synchronous tools; experience; students’ time; support from peers and instructors; teachers’ motivation, attitude to technology, and ICT skill; and student need assessment Martz and Reddy (2005) Technology use, fairness, classroom interaction, and course content Naidu (2005) Pedagogy and the design and development process in general Novitzki (2005) Course quality, course pedagogy, various online interaction methods, and high level of interaction Ostlund (2008) Structure, autonomy, dialogue, and social presence Pituch and Lee (2006) System characteristics such as functionality, interactivity, response, self-efficacy, and Internet experience Romero et al. (2007) Learner confidence, prior operational and conceptual knowledge, teacher presence and involvement, communication between teachers and learners, and the cultural issues relating to managing change, motivation and technology platform Salter (2005) Perception of staff about technology, experience with technology, workload, and institutional factors (value of f2f, limited or no reward for online learning, logistics) Shih et al. (2006) Prior Internet-related experience Soong et al. (2001) Human factors (instructor’s time and motivation), technical competency (of instructor and students), mindset about learning (students and instructor), high collaboration, IT infrastructure and technical support Weaver (2008) Relevant learning resources, timely feedback, and interaction with teachers, administrative support, experience in WebCT Yan (2006) Earlier experience of using computer network systems 234 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele Third, many studies primarily examined student experiences with OLEs. These studies included faculty experiences and roles only from the student point of view. However, the experience of instructors and administrators is equally important. Inclusion of their perceptions of and experiences with OLEs should improve our understanding of critical success factors. Fourth, individual studies considered limited and varied success measures. Some studies measured satisfaction (Martz & Reddy, 2005); high student retention and course completion (Howell & Wilcken, 2005); high usage, enjoyment, perceived helpfulness, and higher learning (Soong, Chan, Chua, & Loh, 2001); student outcomes, student satisfaction, enrolment growth, faculty satisfaction, return on investment, and number of courses or sections (Abel, 2005); and achievement, student and faculty satisfaction, interaction, participation, and motivation (Bekele & Menchaca, in press). Overall, most of these indicators were related to benefits students and institutions were getting from the OLEs. However, each study examined only limited outcomes. Last and most important, our holistic understanding of successful OLEs is incomplete partly because each study considered only a limited number of success factors. A host of factors at technology, content, method, and support levels are involved in and impact OLEs (see Table 1). A more comprehensive approach would better inform instructional design, practice, and further research. Success factors from the literature could roughly be grouped into five interdependent categories: technology-related, user characteristics, course-related, learning approach, and support services. There was an evolving and often reciprocal influence between and among these categories. These categories helped inform how success factors were related to the human and non-human resources available to the OLEs. Overlooking one or more of the categories could unfavorably affect other categories and thus overall success measures. Technology-related factors These factors were linked to the capability or quality of hardware and software available to OLEs. Some studies (Romero et al., 2007; Soong et al., 2001) indicated general technologic infrastructure and platform were crucial for success. These researchers concluded careful consideration was required when designing, implementing, and updating technologies. In short, infrastructure was significant. Other researchers (Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Carr- Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Martz & Reddy, 2005; Novitzki, 2005; Pituch & Lee, 2006; Soong et al., 2001) indicated the use of multiple technologies in different contexts was crucial for success. These researchers concluded participants should have access to many different types of technologic tools: synchronous, asynchronous, and multimedia based. In short, tools were significant. Taken together, that both infrastructure and tools were crucial for success reflected a highly contextual nature for OLEs. Generally, the technology-related category of success factors emphasized how technologies influenced online learning. This category reflected a narrow yet public view of the role of educational technology in learning. User characteristics Student and instructor roles, perceptions, and competencies in the OLEs also impacted learning. Some studies (Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Pituch & Lee, 2006; Salter, 2005; Shih et al., 2006; Weaver, 2008; Yan, 2006) indicated experience in using technology was crucial for success. The more experienced the students and instructors were, the better Distance Education 235 their success. The implication here was that novices would unlikely succeed before they acquired some level of experience with the OLEs. Other studies (Romero et al., 2007; Erlich et al., 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Soong et al., 2001) indicated the importance of skill with technologies. Some studies (Abel, 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Romero et al., 2007; Soong et al., 2001) linked levels of student motivation to success. Additional success factors included learner confidence (Romero et al., 2007), attitude to technologies (Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005), and learning view (Soong et al., 2001). These human factors would impact the level of learner interaction with technology and instructional content. Course-related factors These factors generally referred to quality issues in designing and offering online courses. Clear expectations (Abel, 2005) and structure (Ostlund, 2008), for instance, were among the factors that impacted success. Other studies (Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Gilbert et al., 2007; Martz & Reddy, 2005; Novitzki, 2005; Weaver, 2008) have identified the importance of quality online courses that adopted appropriate learning views. Learning approach The learning approach adopted in the OLEs also impacted success. Such factors included general design process and pedagogy (Naidu, 2005) as well as online collaboration and inter- action (Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Kung-Ming & Khoon-Seng, 2005; Martz & Reddy, 2005; Novitzki, 2005; Ostlund, 2008; Soong et al., 2001; Weaver, 2008). According to this category of studies, process-oriented and social learning (Benigno & Trentin, 2000; Harasim, 1996; Thornburg, 2000) was crucial for success. Support services The level of administrative support available to students and instructors was also crucial. Administrative, technical support, and logistics (Gilbert et al., 2007; Salter, 2005; Soong et al., 2001; Weaver, 2008) was reported. Student and faculty support services also impacted success (Abel, 2005; Baker & Schihl, 2005; Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Howell & Wilcken, 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005). The specific factors included helpdesks, support teaching staff, technical training, faculty professional development opportunities, and update of the technologic pool. In sum, the five categories of success factors were not reported in any single study. Rather, each study focused on a limited number of factors. Thus, each category should not be considered as an alternative explanation for success. Some individual studies also reported factors that belonged to different categories. Although all categories taken together might holistically explain success, current literature could address only limited success factors. Generally, success factors were linked to the systematic use of human and non- human resources available to learning. The latest definition of educational technology seemed congruent with this logic (AECT, 2008). Bekele (2008) also categorized success factors into human, technology, course, pedagogy, and leadership, which are described in the conceptual framework section below. Generally, our limited knowledge of success factors could be improved by conducting more in-depth qualitative interviews and case studies (Bekele, 2008; Bekele & Menchaca, 236 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele in press; Gilbert et al., 2007). Thus, this empirical study was aimed at contributing to the existing body of knowledge by (a) using a qualitative methodology, (b) including both student and faculty perceptions and experiences, (c) examining multiple factors at various levels, (d) considering several success measures, and (e) using a comprehensive conceptual framework. Conceptual framework Two possible reasons for challenges in research could be the absence of theoretic frameworks or the reliance on frameworks that do not consider multiple determinants (Chen, Gillenson, & Sherrell, 2002). The literature reviewed indicated that several factors impacted OLEs although each independent study considered only a limited number of factors at limited levels. Bekele (2008) has developed a more comprehensive model based on a review of 82 studies published in major educational technology journals between 1995 and 2006. The studies generally investigated impacts of modern learning technologies on student motivation, satisfaction, achievement, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The model was further supported by the findings of two empirical studies conducted in an unstudied setting, Ethiopia. Although recent and not yet validated or falsified across various learning contexts, the model conceptually supported the current study because (a) it considered multiple factors at various levels, (b) it was developed based on the findings of over 80 contemporary studies on OLEs, and (c) it explicitly and simultaneously stated both success measures and success factors (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Model of success and success factors in Internet-supported learning environments (Bekele, 2008, p. 57). ���������� ���� � ������������ ���������� ��� ������ �������� ���������� ����� �� ���� ��� ���� ������ ������� ��������� ���� � ��������� ��� �� ���� ��� �������� ����� �� ������������� ������� ����� �� ����������� ��� ������������� ! ��� ��" ����� ���� ���� � #�������"� ��������� � �� ���� ������" � ���� �������� ���� $��� ����� ��# ������ ����� ����� ������" � � % ��� ��"�� ��� ����� ���� � ��# ����� ���� �� ��� ��� � � ��� &��������� �������" ���' (��'���"� ���' #�������"� ���' )��' � �������"� ���� �� �������" ������� ����� �� * �������" �� ����� * ���� �� �� �� ��� * $�"��� �������" * ����� � �� �� �� ��� * �� �������� � * �������� � * +� � � �� ��� ��� �� ���� � ��� ������"���,� ��� -���� � ��� �� �� ��� �������.�� � +�������� ����� "���� ����� ����� � ���� �� ��� ��" �������"��" �������� Figure 1. Model of success and success factors in Internet-supported learning environments (Bekele, 2008, p. 57). Distance Education 237 According to Bekele’s model (2008), success in the OLEs was a function of a compli- cated interplay of human, technologic, course, pedagogic, and leadership factors, abbrevi- ated as HF, TF, CF, PF, and LF, respectively. Thus, overlooking one or more of these factors would unfavorably affect success measures such as learning outcomes, higher order learning (e.g., critical thinking, problem solving, and metacognition), student and faculty satisfaction, sustainability and scalability of online learning projects, and rate of return from investment on such projects. The HF, TF, CF, and PF would impact success directly, whereas LP would affect it only indirectly by substantially impacting HF, TF, CF, and PF. Factors are described below. HF referred to student and instructor understandings and perceptions as well as their competencies related to the OLEs. It was surmised that higher levels of motivation, infor- mation and communications technology (ICT) competency, attitude, and experience in the OLEs would result in higher success. Student and instructor views of technology and tech- nology’s role in knowledge and learning would also impact success. For example, if partic- ipants viewed knowledge as something to be acquired and defended, they would not be as actively involved in learning. Similarly, if the role of technology in learning were limited merely to carrying information, students would be unlikely to exploit the potential of tech- nology optimally. TF were linked to the attributes of educational technology. If users had dependable access to an ample variety of technologies in different contexts, then that should have a positive impact in the how, when, where, and even what of learning. Moreover, online collaboration, interaction, and communication and other pedagogic elements were possible only when one had multiple tools at hand. PF primarily referred to the how of learning and instruction in OLEs. Theoretically, success should be measured higher if learning were student focused, collaborative, problem based, and process oriented. Flexibility in approach was at least as important as course content. CF were linked to the critical elements needed in instructional design. Examples included course organization, relevance to student need, clear goals and expectations, flexibility, and other quality elements. Bekele’s model (2008) proposed that CF were among the crucial factors impacting success measures in the OLEs given appropriate technologic leadership. LF denoted the role played by the administration related to technology leadership. It was proposed that LF substantially impacted all the other four factors directly and success measures only indirectly. Technology leadership provided all the logistics required in the successful implementation of online learning. Within this framework, there existed a complex relationship among HF, TF, CF, and PF, including symbiotic relationships between HF and PF, HF and CF, HF and TF, CF and PF, and CF and TF. However, the focus of this study was limited to investigating only factors impacting optimal OLEs. Thus, the relation of the success factors to success measures was the interest. It was proposed that HF, TF, CF, PF, and LF would reflect the success factors in the California State University (CSU) system’s OLE, which was examined using a qual- itative research methodology. Research methodology Because one of the faculty members was also a participant in the program studied, the study employed participatory action research (PAR) as a method for implementation, data collection, and analysis. The PAR model requires a systematic method for observing and 238 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele then critically evaluating the implementation of some action within a participatory commu- nity in order to improve some aspect, problem, or challenge within that community (Stringer, 2007). The community in this study included faculty and students participating in a hybrid master’s program in educational technology. The challenge was to design an optimal delivery methodology for the program. Results would then be used to improve the learning experience within the community in an iterative design process requiring regular re-analysis. The PAR methodology utilized an empowerment evaluation (Fetterman, Kaftarian, & Wandersman, 1996) design for data collection and analysis. The design required triangula- tion of data from multiple stakeholders. The methodology was open-ended and easily customizable for the program studied. In addition, the methodology addressed areas of concern identified in the review of relevant literature. Some researchers have debated the validity of empowerment evaluation methodology. Fetterman and Wandersman (2007) have responded to such critics by enhancing clarity and specificity of the design. As part of the design, an outside author was added to ensure reliability and limit bias. The study was conducted at CSU, Sacramento, one of the 23 campuses that comprise the CSU system. The mission of all campuses within the CSU system is to serve the state of California by producing a conscientious, democratic society and workforce. The population studied included faculty, students, and administrators participating in the first five cohorts of an online master’s program in educational technology, one of the first online master’s programs at any campus in the CSU system. The student population consisted of K-12 master teachers, corporate trainers, school administrators, independent consultants, and technology support personnel and managers. Regarding the seven faculty member participants, four had experience with online teaching, having taught two years or more; two were novice online teachers, having taught no more than one year; and one was just joining the online instruction team. Thus, about half the faculty members were experienced with online learning and half were novices. No data were collected for this study from the faculty member who was also the researcher for this study. Overall, there were 72 students and six teaching faculty from whom data were collected. Two administrators were also consulted for the study but, because of limited participation, those data were not included in the results. Participants were asked to voluntarily participate in a survey and some were then randomly selected for follow-up focus group meetings regarding their experience in the program. Data were collected from five multiple cohorts as well as program instructors over three years. Participants had a range of skills in online learning from none to significant with the average having been exposed to one or two courses. Based on the framework provided by Bekele (2008), a series of qualitative prompts were created for an initial survey. The authors collaborated with experts in the field to design, test, and implement appropriate prompts. Noticeably absent from the prompts were any references to the framework’s factors and measures. Collaborators indicated prompts, while clear, should be as general as possible to minimize influence on participant responses. The following categories were considered clear yet broad enough to elicit diverse responses in a qualitative venue: (a) technologies, (b) optimal learning environments, (c) components for success, (d) strategies, (e) prerequisite knowledge, and (f) learning or teaching experiences. The final questions were: (1) Which technology would have been most difficult to do without? Why? (2) Describe the optimal online learning environment. (3) What components are critical to the success of online learning? Distance Education 239 (4) What strategies help ensure student success in online learning? (5) What prerequisite knowledge should students possess before they begin learning online? (6) Please describe your own experience learning (or teaching) online. What were your successes and failures? A preliminary analysis of survey responses indicated that the data lacked sufficient depth. Two focus groups were then added. The same questions were asked in the focus groups. Although focus group sessions did not create any new coded categories, responses added depth and richness to the study. One focus group consisted of eight participants (two participants randomly selected from each cohort except for the first). The second group consisted of five of the participating faculty (the newest member of the team declined to participate stating: ‘I don’t understand enough about the issues yet’). According to Stewart, Shamdasani, and Rook (2006), for focus groups, ‘the ideal range seems to be 8 to 12 people’ (p. 82). Discussion from smaller groups could be ‘narrow and biased’ (p. 82). Thus, sufficient group size was met for this study for the students but not for the faculty. Analysis methodology Coding of the data was conducted by hand using the constant comparative method (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). The study employed a CSU statistics support consultant to assist in the coding process and data analysis and to ensure inter-rater reliability, or ‘agreement among raters’ (Vogt, 1993, p. 114). According to the procedure outlined by Maykut and Morehouse, the constant comparative coding proceeded in the fashion described below for both the open-ended and focus group analysis. First, focus group and survey responses were combined and transcribed or copied from other documents and consolidated by question into a spreadsheet in column format. Next, multiple researchers independently read all transcripts and organized the data according to phrase segments or chunks into single cells in the spreadsheet (a phrase segment or chunk of information was determined to be a part of a sentence, a complete sentence, or several contiguous sentences expressing one idea). Next, researchers compared the revised transcripts and resolved any discrepancies between the two transcripts to create a single transcript that could then be coded. The researchers collaboratively coded the transcripts using inductive category coding and simultaneous comparing of units of meaning across categories in which each phrase segment was given a code to indicate its appropriate theme. Each emergent theme was then compared to previous ones to determine whether it would receive a previous code or be assigned a new, unique coded theme (Menchaca & Hoffman, 2007). Once all segments were coded, patterns, themes, and relationships were identified and refined. Then, data were integrated and counted, patterns analyzed, categories created, and representative quotations from salient responses were extracted from transcripts to be included in the manuscript. When preliminary analysis of the data was performed for each question, significant overlap between not only questions targeted toward technology tools but also between all questions was noted. For example, responding to the question about how the program might have differed without access to tools, one student stated: ‘by communicating electronically, the individuals that did not participate verbally when we were face-to-face do so on line. This enabled me to understand those individuals more so than when we were in face [sic].’ Although responding to a tools question, the student in reality related 240 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele how important it was to integrate tools that appealed to multiple learning styles. That is, the interaction of tool and strategy was significant. Lincoln and Guba (1985) noted that such overlap of data was common in qualitative analysis. Talley (1998) proposed a solu- tion when faced with overlapping data: ‘all of the questions were analyzed together for their common elements rather than being analyzed individually’ (p. 110). Since analysis was augmented by such a strategy, all questions were coded and analyzed holistically (Talley, 1998). Coding of data Table 2 presents a synopsis of qualitative data. Coded responses were separated into three areas: technology tools, pedagogic strategies, and programmatic issues. These areas were subdivided into categories thematically. With regard to technology tools, the following categories were coded: multiple tools, technical proficiency, asynchronous tools, and synchronous tools. Technical proficiency was further subdivided into none, basic, moderate, and advanced levels. With regard to pedagogic strategies, the following were coded: situated learning, face-to-face, change, and faculty import. For programmatic issues, the following were coded: overall experience, enrolment, and program difficulty. For illustrative purposes, Table 2 indicates the percentage a certain category was coded in comparison to all other categories both for students and faculty. However, no inference about the relative significance of these themes should be drawn from these percentage rankings. According to Stewart et al. (2006), it is not typical to relate coded responses to individual respondents in focus groups. Respondents often speak simultaneously and it would be difficult to attribute responses to unique individuals even though such responses might be clear. Also, the number of respondents in focus groups is large compared to Table 2. Qualitatively coded categories as a percent of overall coded responses. Theme Student % Faculty % Technology tools 49.6 56.5 Multiple tools 37.0 32.6 Technical proficiency 10.6 13.0 • Basic 47.3 66.7 • Moderate 34.5 0.0 • None 14.5 33.3 • Advanced 3.6 0.0 Asynchronous tools 1.2 0.0 Synchronous tools 0.8 10.9 Pedagogic strategies 33.8 36.9 Situated learning 13.2 15.2 Face-to-face 9.8 8.7 Change 7.3 4.3 Faculty import 3.5 8.7 Programmatic issues 16.7 6.5 Overall experience 8.6 4.3 Enrolment 6.9 n/a Program difficulty 1.2 2.2 Note: Some totals slightly more or slightly less than 100% due to rounding errors. Distance Education 241 interviews. Thus, it was not possible to count the number of times a particular individual mentioned a particular theme although it was possible to count the number of times that theme was mentioned compared to all other themes. For that reason, while illustrative, that a particular category was mentioned more compared to others did not necessarily indicate greater significance. Findings During data collection, there were five cohorts of students in the program. Since the program had been in existence for over three years, concern regarding a novelty effect (Phipps, 1999), where students were motivated and satisfied with online delivery only because the methods were new, was addressed. When coded, 11 major categories divided into three areas were identified (Table 3). Technology tools When coded, responses regarding tools appeared nearly half the time for students (49.6%) and over half the time for faculty (56.5%). Multiple tools By far, the largest coded category for both student and faculty data was multiple tools. Included in this category were responses indicating multiple interactive tools were crucial in creating successful OLEs. References to multiple tools were coded 37% among student and 32.6% among faculty member responses. Data revealed technology tools assisted students in commenting on each other’s work. Student comments included ‘[tools provided] the opportunity for critical feedback from peers’ and ‘we posted much of our work for others to look at and for us to reflect upon and give feedback.’ Table 3. Coded categories defined. Technology tools Multiple tools Respondents indicated multiple tools were important for success Technical proficiency Respondents indicated whether students should possess some prerequisite technology skills before starting the program Asynchronous tools Respondents indicated asynchronous tools were most important Synchronous tools Respondents indicated synchronous tools were most important Pedagogic strategies Situated learning Cooperative learning in a social context was a key success factor Face-to-face Face-to-face was needed for the success of the program Change Students must be willing to embrace change Faculty import Faculty were important to the program’s success Programmatic issues Overall experience Overall experience in the program was positive Enrolment Students enroll in the program only because it is available online Program difficulty Students and faculty experienced difficulty in the program 242 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele Similar to commenting, data also revealed technology tools assisted students in discuss- ing concepts and ideas taught in the program. Two student comments were ‘[technology tools have] allowed us to hold relevant and meaningful course discussions without having to be in the same room to do it’ and ‘the discussions of the materials were invaluable. I was able to “digest” the thoughts of others at my own pace and as a result I saw a wider set of interpretations.’ Data also indicated technology tools allowed students to actively participate in the program. Student comments included ‘by communicating electronically, the individuals that did not participate verbally when we were face-to-face do so on line’ and ‘[without tools] it would be less interesting, less applicable to my real world situation, and much less actively engaging.’ Similar to allowing students to actively participate, data indicated technology tools decreased student isolation. Student comments indicated that without electronic communication ‘I would still feel isolated from others who enjoy integrating technology’ and ‘I would feel isolated and unable to contribute to the course discussion.’ The data also indicated technologies helped students access, process, and understand the content required for the program. Student comments included ‘WWW [World Wide Web] information was the most important information … without the knowledge for internet publication, navigation, and how to digest the massive amounts of information … this class could not survive’ and the ‘syllabus online with questions and reading in advance and then online discussions “forced” me to prepare at a higher level that I have done for classes in the past.’ One faculty member stated: ‘I think the web-based agendas are particularly helpful. Everyone knows ahead of time what to expect, what to prepare, and what resources to use.’ Finally, students and faculty consistently indicated that the interaction of many tech- nology tools was the key to a successful OLE. In short, one tool was not more important than another. Student comments describing their view of an optimal OLE included: ● ‘Mixture of real time communications (chat) and reflective communications (bulletin board or forum). Reading assigned in advance. Clear agendas and instructions posted well in advance.’ ● ‘Multiple means of communication (email, web, listserv, forum, chat, f2f).’ ● ‘Optimal OLE is a combination of real time chat, forum posting with time for reflection, and some f2f interaction.’ ● ‘Combination of f2f, chat and forum postings.’ ● ‘The OLE must be supported by group interaction and some f2f meetings to make connections with other students. It relies heavily on interactive chat, delayed posting assignments, the use of electronic mail.’ Faculty member comments included: ● ‘Multiple tools interacting in many ways, appealing to the different style of learning of different students.’ ● ‘Democratic access to interaction, i.e., being able to have a voice, to engage in activ- ities, to reflect, and to give, receive, and integrate feedback. These elements critical to online success are no different from quality learning elements f2f. Therefore, tools must be chosen to enable same such democratic access.’ ● ‘Online learning must have a combination of f2f (25–40%) with synchronous and asynchronous environments. Web-based agendas with plenty of scaffolding for Distance Education 243 short-term and long-term assignments. Students in OLE need to access a location where they can meet in real time without the instructor.’ Overall, there was little indication any particular tool was considered unimportant for online learning. Moreover, many tools were considered very important or ranked nearly equally in comparison to other tools. This was especially true for synchronous and asynchronous communication, which were similarly rated by students and nearly equally rated by faculty. Students and faculty consistently described the importance of multiple tools to support the OLE even when asked to describe a specific technology they could least do without. Technical proficiency Responses regarding the level of technical proficiency a student should possess before entering the program were coded 10.6% for students and 13% for faculty. Technical profi- ciency was further subdivided by skill level. For students, requiring no technical skill at all was coded 14.5%, basic skills 47.3%, moderate skills 34.5%, and advanced skills 3.6%. By far, students indicated either basic or moderate skills as needed for success in the program. Typical comments given by students regarding proficiency included ‘basic typing skills,’ ‘basic Internet familiarity,’ and ‘moderate familiarity with computer.’ Two students indicated more advanced level of proficiency including ‘HTML, use of Internet Explorer … familiarity with computer internal and external devices, a good knowledge of MS word and it’s [sic] parts, XL [sic] and access [sic].’ For faculty, requiring no technical skills was coded 33.3% and basic skills 66.7%. Inter- estingly, faculty did not deem it necessary for students to possess more than a rudimentary or basic understanding of the computer. One faculty member indicated ‘teaching experiences are more important.’ Overall, data indicated student proficiency before entering the program should be at or below basic skills with 61.8% for students and 100% for faculty members. Asynchronous tools Responses indicating asynchronous communication in the form of discussion groups as the single most important tool were coded 1.2% among students. While the percentage was small, it was compared to all concepts coded, including those not related to tool usage. In addition, none of the qualitative questions specifically mentioned asynchronous discussions. In short, several students related without prompting that discussion group software was the most important tool available. Typical comments indicated the importance of ‘delayed communication media’ and ‘reflective communications (bulletin board or forum).’ Synchronous tools Responses indicating synchronous communication as the single most important tool were coded 0.8% among students and 10.9% among faculty. Once again, without prompting, students and faculty members mentioned synchronous discussion as most critical for a successful learning environment. A typical comment from a student was ‘TI [TappedIn] was key.’ A comment from one faculty member was ‘small group discussions in synchronous environments have been successful.’ In general, faculty mentioned the value of synchronous chat more than students. Faculty seemed to be more comfortable in a synchronous environment which required students to 244 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele be present at specified times. Student coding of asynchronous and synchronous concepts differed only by 0.4%. Pedagogic strategies Pedagogic strategies were divided into the following categories: situated learning, face-to- face, change, and faculty import. When coded, concepts regarding strategies appeared in the responses one-third of the time for students (33.8%) and just over one-third of the time for faculty (36.9%). Situated learning Responses indicating the importance of community-based learning were coded 13.2% among students and 15.2% among faculty members. Both students and faculty indicated a strong belief in the value of group work and collaboration for the success of the OLE. Their typical words or phrases included ‘collaboration,’ ‘teamwork,’ ‘group work,’ ‘small groups,’ and ‘cooperative.’ Student responses included ‘the cooperative groups online ensured success and involvement,’ ‘the ability to communicate and collaborate within this course drives the curriculum and the experience,’ ‘group activities to foster interaction with students,’ and ‘I was able to “digest” the thoughts of others at my own pace and as a result I saw a wider set of interpretations.’ Faculty member responses included ‘group facilitates inter student dialogue’ and ‘the most successful experiences have been in small group discussions.’ In addition, faculty and student responses supported the idea that a strong sense of community was important to success. Typical phrases included ‘community,’ ‘community- building,’ ‘team-building,’ ‘community of learners,’ ‘interaction,’ ‘social learning,’ ‘multiple expertise,’ and ‘social interaction.’ One student, when asked to identify critical success factors for online learning stated: ‘community, community, community.’ Other student responses included ‘the environment should foster a feeling of community and cama- raderie,’ ‘the cohesiveness of the group is extremely important to the entire learning envi- ronment,’ ‘a community of learners is essential to success,’ ‘the knowledge that learning is a social process and that technology is a tool to allow that social connection,’ ‘an optimal environment would include a community of people sharing similar interests,’ and ‘the opti- mal online learning environment would be one that is accepting of all learners regardless of expertise.’ One faculty member stated: ‘the basis for collegiality, the environment necessary for constructivism (which is deeply grounded in trust), and the protocols for collaboration would not have been established to transform them online without community.’ Face-to-face (f2f) A significant number of responses indicated the importance of f2f interaction for success in online learning. Moreover, respondents were not prompted to rate the importance of f2f meetings. They were asked only general questions such as ‘Describe the optimal learning environment’ or ‘What components are critical to the success of online learning?’ One student responded: I think the initial bootcamp [orientation] was something that helped build an understanding and appreciation for the work ahead. The f2f was more crucial than I originally thought due to the need to connect and get greater clarity. It also helped build ties that I know helped later. Distance Education 245 Overall, responses indicating f2f as important occurred in about one out of every 10 unique codings for students (9.8%) and nearly as often for faculty (8.7%). Faculty responses included ‘developing community of learners through initial f2f sessions,’ ‘community building technology that was established f2f,’ ‘opportunities for f2f,’ and ‘community needs to be established early in the program.’ Change Responses indicating that students should be motivated and not resistant to change were coded 7.3% among students and 4.3% among faculty. Student comments included ‘must tolerate AC [ambiguous clarity],’ ‘open-communication, flexibility, and a commitment to achieve and excel,’ ‘team work and cooperation by all members as well as participation by all members at all meetings,’ ‘you have helped me to become a change agent,’ and ‘try new things, communicate with classmates, be extremely self-motivated.’ Two faculty members stated students must possess ‘a tolerance for ambiguity.’ Data indicated change was significant. Faculty import Student responses underscored the importance faculty played in the OLE. The influence of faculty members was coded 3.5% among students and 8.7% among faculty. Most commen- tary was focused on the importance of faculty providing prompt and reflective feedback. Other comments indicated the role faculty members played in supporting students as well as their ability to create a viable learning community. Student comments included ‘immediate feedback is crucial,’ ‘having immediate feed- back has been very helpful when working on subject matter that is difficult to comprehend,’ ‘good, prompt feedback from the instructor,’ ‘support from instructors,’ ‘professors … are able to create the intimacy of an online community,’ and ‘by far the most critical is the competence level of the instructors … the instructor needs to know how the tools function in a learning environment before bringing students to use them.’ Instructor comments included ‘I felt that the students needed the comfort of having access to the instructor, even if it is limited by the online environment,’ ‘tools were constantly used for asking clarification from instructor,’ and ‘students need access to instructor.’ Additionally, one faculty member indicated: ‘an ideal online learning environ- ment requires more than one instructor, each with areas of expertise to share.’ Programmatic issues Programmatic issues were divided into three categories: overall experience, enrolment, and program difficulty. Overall experience Responses were coded 8.6% for students and 4.3% for faculty. Typical student words included ‘satisfied,’ ‘enjoyed,’ ‘valuable,’ ‘learned a lot,’ ‘wonderful,’ ‘best experience,’ ‘exhilarating,’ ‘loved it,’ ‘meaningful,’ ‘fulfilling,’ ‘positive,’ ‘motivating,’ and ‘effective.’ Statements included ‘I have truly enjoyed the total experience,’ ‘this is my first time using on-line learning, and its great!,’ ‘this is the best learning experience I have ever had and I have 2 masters degrees, a Ph.D. and I teach a class online,’ ‘powerful, effective, flexible, 246 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele and a big gas savings,’ and ‘my own experience as co-developer of the iMET [the acronym for the online program] format was the most self-motivating and rewarding learning experiences I have had in my post-secondary educational experience – absolute.’ Faculty keywords included ‘satisfied,’ ‘wonderful,’ and ‘successful.’ Comments included ‘iMET has been a wonderful experience, both from a teaching and a learning perspective’ and ‘I really think that all aspects were successful.’ Enrolment Student responses, coded at 6.9%, indicated that if the program was not available online, they would not have enrolled. Responses included ‘I would not have enrolled in a Master of Educational Technology course if technology was not going to be used,’ ‘I would not have enrolled in the program,’ and ‘without access to the electronic communication, the course would not have been a possibility for me.’ From a programmatic standpoint, this data indicated the program was appealing to a student population that would not otherwise enroll in a traditional format, due to location, convenience, professional obligations, or some other reason. Program difficulty Responses indicating some level of difficulty with the program were coded at 1.2% for students and 2.2% for faculty. Difficulties included problems accessing the synchronous environment, lack of adequate feedback, and difficulty working in groups. With regards to the synchronous environment, one student stated: ‘I didn’t like TappedIn most of the time. It was difficult to keep people on task. What could be done in 10 minutes f2f could take 30 minutes or more in TappedIn.’ Two other students stated respectively: ‘tapped-in [sic] was challenging at times’ and ‘My biggest stress with TappedIn was the ever-present possibility of losing my connection.’ With regards to feedback, one student stated: ‘Quicker and more in depth feedback would have been appreciated.’ Another student said: ‘I needed more feedback.’ Finally, one student mentioned difficulty working in groups. I found at times that I became very frustrated with some of the group assignments because some of the participants were not doing their part. Another problem was the distance between the members made it difficult to put together assignment to the quality [sic]. Among faculty, one respondent stated: ‘Not successful was any activity without making explicit specific goals and criteria for achieving goals; inadequate tools; lack of protocol for interaction.’ This faculty member noted that there were difficulties when students did not have a clear understanding of assignments, when they did not have adequate resources, and when it was not clear how they should collaborate online. Discussion This study examined the experience and perception of students and faculty in the OLE in the CSU system exploring factors needed for success. Participants were asked about optimal technologies used, preferred learning approaches, and prerequisite knowledge or skill needed for online learning. Data were collected using surveys and focus group interviews. A constant comparative methodology was employed for data coding and analysis. The major findings are discussed below. Distance Education 247 Through qualitative analysis, the study identified multiple categories divided into technologic, pedagogic, and programmatic areas. With regard to technologic tools, faculty and students alike identified the importance of using multiple tools appealing to diverse learning styles. The use of multiple tools coded at the highest percentage. The availability of technology-based tools, such as online collaboration, electronic communication, and web publishing, provided students the strongest opportunity to participate and collaborate with each other. Student and faculty data indicated students would more actively participate in discussions and meetings than if these tools were unavailable. Flexibility in the learning environment was also provided by the availability of multiple tools. Most respondents viewed the usage of synchronous and asynchronous tools as equally important, each appeal- ing to a particular learning style, such as real-time discussion, collaboration, and reflection. This finding corroborated other research. Several studies (Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Kung-Ming & Khoon-Seng, 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Soong et al., 2001) indicated the importance of using multiple technologies for success in OLE. Some studies (Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Kung-Ming & Khoon-Seng, 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Novitzki, 2005) specifically recognized the enormous potential of asynchronous tools in supporting learning and related communication. Additionally, some studies indicated synchronous tools were considered vital for success in learning (Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Kung-Ming & Khoon-Seng, 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Soong et al., 2001). The conceptual framework of the study also noted the importance of appropriate technologies for specific contexts. Asynchronous and synchronous technologies were two of the technology factors mentioned in the conceptual framework. Generally, no technology was perceived as more important than another in all contexts; technology use was context dependent. The study also revealed that some level of ICT competency was required for successful OLE. Students and faculty needed to acquire basic computer and Internet skills. Some level of experience with OLE was also perceived as important. This finding corroborated previous studies indicating some level of ICT proficiency, experience, or both was required for online learning success (Erlich et al., 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Pituch & Lee, 2006; Salter, 2005; Shih et al., 2006; Soong et al., 2001; Weaver, 2008; Yan, 2006). In addition, skill and experience were among the human factor category of the conceptual framework underpinning this study. The implication was that novices would require more time and experience before becoming satisfied with OLE. However, pedagogic factors were also important. The pedagogic area received the second highest number of responses after the techno- logic area. A significant pedagogic category was the situated nature of learning. Learning was considered a social, problem-based and collaborative phenomenon. Faculty and students repeatedly mentioned the importance of collaborative discussion and reflection supported by multiple tools. Through collaborative tools, students were more likely to comment on each other’s work, providing critical feedback and suggestions for modifica- tion. Literature also indicated that cooperative learning in a social environment was crucial to success in online learning (Benigno & Trentin, 2000; Blumenstyk, 1999; Dede, 2004; Harasim, 1996; Thornburg, 2000). The conceptual framework maintained that collaborative and process-oriented learning was required for success. This is in line with the latest view of learning and educational technology (AECT, 2008). Additionally, the inclusion of some f2f interaction, especially for the purpose of building community, was also found significant. Students and faculty strongly endorsed the inclusion of f2f time in the online environment, especially at the onset of the program. The f2f retreat 248 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele and renewal meetings created a sustainable community where students did not feel isolated. This was due in large part to the active community-building students repeatedly stated sustained their ability to interact and collaborate with peers during long periods of working online. Research indicated many institutions used f2f meetings to supplement online delivery (Abel, 2005; Bekele & Menchaca, in press). Additionally, the conceptual frame- work considered f2f interaction as one of the pedagogic factors required for success. Since most research has focused on other factors, the role or advantage of f2f in online learning is generally unknown. This study recognizes the importance of f2f, at least during the start and completion of a course or program. Attitudinal change in participants was an additional pedagogic category. Participants needed to embrace change and develop favorable attitudes toward technology. This corrob- orated previous research (Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005) as well as the conceptual framework, which included a positive attitude toward technology and OLE as one of the human factors. The role of faculty was a final pedagogic-related category required for successful online learning. Participants indicated that faculty did play a major role in organizing learning, providing feedback, and in monitoring the online process. This role of faculty was found in several studies (Abel, 2005; Baker & Schihl, 2005; Bekele & Menchaca, in press; Gilbert et al., 2007; Howell & Wilcken, 2005; Lammintakanen & Rissanen, 2005; Naidu, 2005; Salter, 2005; Soong et al., 2001; Weaver, 2008). The role of faculty was also reflected in the human, course, pedagogic, and technologic factors of the conceptual framework. The framework indicated the importance of faculty for (a) supporting student motivation; (b) optimally utilizing appropriate technologies; (c) choosing relevant learning approaches; and (d) designing, offering, and monitoring online courses. With regard to the programmatic area, one finding was that students would not have enrolled in the program had it been offered in a traditional format. Thus, the CSU system was able to attract students who would not otherwise have matriculated. In this way, OLE reached the otherwise unreachable audience by expanding educational access. This was a major motive behind the launch of distance education globally. The online program was convenient for participants as most were non-traditional students. Regard- less of space and time constraints, students could attend online courses while being at work or with family. Still, students did face challenges and difficulties in the OLE. These challenges were related to clarity of course materials, course organization, group dynamics, limited level of feedback, and technical difficulties. Such challenges might be addressed by increasing faculty and administrative involvement, as indicated under course and leadership factors of the framework. Programmatically, students and faculty were satisfied overall with their online experi- ence. This is important as research indicated satisfaction was directly related to achieve- ment and negatively related to dropout rates (British Columbia College and Institute, 2003), a significant problem in the OLE. Thus, successful OLEs were likely to support better student performance, if not also learning, while improving student satisfaction. For this study, satisfaction positively influenced the sustainability and scalability of the online program. Since students were satisfied with the learning environment, they were more likely to enroll in additional online courses. In addition, anecdotal evidence indicated new students were attracted via word of mouth. Student demand definitely influenced CSU’s decision to sustain and scale up existing OLEs. Current research and the conceptual framework corroborated these findings. A recent review of educational technology research analyzing studies published between 1995 and 2007 indicated OLE influenced student Distance Education 249 motivation and satisfaction in various contexts (Bekele, 2008). In short, student satisfaction was one of the major success measures in the CSU system and was supported by literature and the conceptual framework of this study. In summary, the success factors found in the CSU online program corresponded to factors stipulated in the conceptual framework. All five categories of factors were evident although with only a limited number of factors within each category. For instance, technol- ogy skills, attitude, experience, and instructor roles reflected human factors. The use of multiple tools, asynchronous and synchronous, for different contexts as well as access and dependability reflected technologic factors. Pedagogic factors included the collaborative, situated nature of learning and f2f interaction. Clarity of goals, course organization, and quality of projects/assignments were the major course factors identified. Leadership factors included the importance of training, support, technical provision, and technology logistics. Generally, participants perceived technologic, pedagogic, human, course, and leadership factors were required for successful online learning. None of these factors was considered more important than others; rather, each factor impacted success depending on context. A complex interplay among these factors was required for successful OLEs. Implications for practice This study was an important step to better understand the experience of learners and instructors in OLE. Although data were collected from multiple cohorts and faculty, the study was limited to a single program at the graduate level. However, initial results were promising. Optimal distance delivery should address the factors identified in the study and those defined by the conceptual framework. The factors should be considered holistically when implementing quality distance delivery. That participants responded qualitatively without prompting indicated substantial importance for all factors. Specifically, successful OLEs should: ● integrate multiple tools for different contexts; ● promote a positive attitude toward technology and OLE; ● incorporate a social and situated learning environment; ● include some level of f2f interaction; ● involve and rely on faculty at many levels; ● help participants develop appropriate skills, experience, and training; and ● provide sustained administrative support. Implications for research Although the study revealed interesting findings about student and faculty experiences, a better and more definitive understanding of specific tools and factors, perhaps identifying the best of the best that exist for certain contexts, is still needed. According to the study, factors at human, pedagogic, technologic, course, and leadership levels all impact online learning experiences. Consequently, both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal studies employing comprehensive conceptual frameworks are required to better understand how these factors operate in complex OLE. The quality and nature of online collaboration and interaction as well as group dynamics should be examined further. Contemporary society requires higher order skills such as critical reflection, metacognition, and problem solving from graduates. Thus, how and to what extent such skills are supported through distance education should also be examined further. 250 M.P. Menchaca and T.A. Bekele Notes on contributors Michael Menchaca is an assistant professor in the University of Hawaii’s Department of Educational Technology. He directs the online Master in Educational Technology program. He conducts research on online learning, social justice with technology, and integrating technology into teaching and learning. Teklu Abate Bekele is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Educational Research, the University of Oslo, Norway. He conducts research on the impacts of Internet-supported learning environments on student motivation, satisfaction, achievement, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills in higher education. References Abel, R. (2005). Achieving success in Internet-supported learning in higher education: Case studies illuminate success factors, challenges, and future directions. Lake Mary, FL: Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness. Retrieved April 10, 2006, from http://www.a-hec.org/ research/study%5Freports/IsL0205/TOC.html AECT. (2008). 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work_bj44wqwbi5d2jndtcztwzv4zxy	----	Student opinions about the period of measurement and evaluation in distance education: the difficulties Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.371 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1597–1601 WCLTA 2010 Student opinions about the period of measurement and evaluation in distance education: the difficulties Hasan Karala, Ayça Çebib*, Memnüne Pek enc a,c Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon 61040, Turkey bDistance Education Center, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon 61040, Turkey Abstract The purpose of this study is to identify the views of the students' who have been trained by the distance education about the measurement-evaluation period. 91 students who are from different cities and registered in the distance education program of the graduate degree without thesis in Karadeniz Technique University, Social Sciences Institute, Education Management, Inspection, Planning and Economy have constituted the sample of this study. The data in the study have been gathered through the interview form in which the open-ended questions take part. Students experience anxiety and concern due to the probable system problems and the outage of electricity and internet which may occur in the period. Also it has been expressed that some students can't motivate enough for the online exams because of the atmosphere differences. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance education, Measurement and evaluation, Students' opinions; 1. Introduction Compared to traditional teaching methods, distance education, with the developments in information and communication technologies, has enabled the realization of different distance education applications. The assessment and evaluation caused by developments in distance education on the current trends in education take place between these applications. Assessment process is important for students and distance education as well as all the institutions to determine how much students have learned as a result of their education. This process provides important feedback for both sides (Altan & Sefero lu, 2009; Kara, 2009). From this point of view, it is expressed by researchers that students’ opinions about the process of assessment and evaluation have a great importance (Altan & Sefero lu, 2009). To increase the effectiveness of distance education assessment activities, alternative to the traditional measurement tools, different vehicles can be used (Dali, 2008). For this purpose, using new assessment methods such as constructive learning, performance assessment and evaluation of real-life; according to this approach, assessment is one of the basic elements of the learning process and regardless of being in contrast with the process, evaluation begins with the process (Simonson et al., 2003; Semerci & Bekta , 2005). The flexibility in distance education provided by developments in Internet technology has made the assessment and evaluation flexible also; online applications have begun to carry out. There are some benefits and limitations about online measurement used in assessment activities Providing students with flexibility in terms of time, the collection of data more quickly, * Hasan Karal. Tel.: +90 462 377 71 25; fax: +90 462 248 73 44 E-mail address: aycacebi@ktu.edu.tr Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1598 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1597–1601 evaluation of the results more quickly and reducing costs are among these benefits (Dommeyer et al., 2004; Anderson et al., 2005). Limitations encountered are examined, it requires examination of computer and internet access, lack of security caused by examination itself, the probability of the students’ cheating or controlling whether the student enter into the exam his own or not, student isolation, evaluation, deficiency of instructor control over the evaluation conditions, lack of communication, and lack of skill and information about online education are stated as the issues in such environments (Kerka & Wonacot, 2000; Graham et al., 2000; Shuey, 2002; Benson, 2003; Tany ld z & Semerci, 2005, McCombs, & Vakil, 2005). 2. Aim As with all systems, in distance education evaluation must be considered to determine effectiveness of teaching- learning process. Jung (2005) stated that measurement and evaluation are seen as the last step distance education institutions and generally hasn’t been given the necessary importance. Yet, determining students’ positive and negative opinions about the evaluation process helps reviewing assessment methods in distance education and students’ contribution to the creation of more comfortable environments (Altan & Sefero lu, 2009) is stated by the researcher. In this framework, a deep qualitative study was needed about how the students who are registered in distance education perceive analyzing and evaluation process. The purpose of this study is to determine the opinions of the students of distance education concerning assessment and evaluation process. 3. Method In this study case study, a qualitative research pattern, were used. Case study searches for factors related to a situation with a holistic approach and focuses on how they affect the status (Y ld r m & im ek, 2006). In other words, case studies are the works in that life experiences are reflected. 91 students who are from different cities and registered in the distance education program of the graduate degree without thesis in Karadeniz Technique University, Social Sciences Institute, Education Management, Inspection, Planning and Economy have constituted the sample of this study. As the participants are experts from different levels of The Turkish Ministry of National Education, this study enabled them to consider assessment and evaluation process not only through the eyes of a student but also through the eyes of a teacher. The study data were collected through open-ended interview form including questions. In the preparation of the interview form, the theoretical information obtained from the literature searching, data collection tools used in researches on this subject and expert opinions are based on. The data gathered from the interview were assessed using content analysis method. In order to increase the reliability and validity of the research findings the views of participants were frequently quoted. In addition, the data obtained from subject matter were discussed with experts in the field of education at every stage and these people’s comments related to the results were taken. 4. Finding In this section, the students’ demographic characteristics and experiences they has lived in the process of assessment and evaluation in distance education will be given. Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of students participating in the study. Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Participants FEATURES N % Gender Male 84 92.3 Female 7 7.7 Ministry of Education service class Inspector 19 20.9 Branch Manager 12 13.2 Principal 22 24.2 School Assistant 29 31.8 Teacher 9 9.9 Computer Literacy Level Basic level (On-off the computer, browsing etc..) 7 7.7 Middle-level (basic skills programs, as well as office use) 64 70.3 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1597–1601 1599 Advanced level (use of all kinds of program in addition to middle level) 20 22.0 Online Exam Experience Yes, I have online exam experience before. 19 20.9 No, I haven’t got online exam experience before. 72 79.1 If data in Table 1 is analyzed, it is seen that 84 students participated in the study (92.3%) are male, 7 (7.7%) are the female. Sample group is designated from inspectors (20.9%), the branch managers (13.2%), the school principals (24.2%), deputy director of the school (31.8%) and teachers (9.9%) who are served at least 5 years in Ministry of Education. When the participants assessed according to their computer literacy, it is seen that 7.7% of the basic level, 70.3% moderate reputation, while 22% of advanced. When the students’ online exam experiences in distance education are examined, it is stated that 79.1% of the students hasn’t lived online exam experience, besides, 20.9% have lived such an experience before. When the students' opinions about the process of assessment and evaluation in distance education are examined, it is found that students have experienced some difficulties in this process. Table 2 summarizes the difficulties that students have experienced the process. Table 2. Students’ views on difficulties experienced in the process of assessment and evaluation in distance education Problems f % Student (Individual) based problems Lack of interest and motivation 16 17.6 Lack of computer literacy 12 13.2 Online test anxiety 8 8.8 Technology based problems Internet problems 22 24.2 Technical (computer) problems 15 16.5 Power cut 9 9.9 Teacher based problems Lack of measuring instruments diversity 5 5.5 Alternative assessment means are not preferred 2 2.2 Distance (Media) based problems Lack of feedback 28 30.7 Communication Problems 18 19.8 Teachers and students are not know each other enough 13 14.3 The interaction problems in courses 7 7.7 The absence of guidance in the exams 5 5.5 The process cannot be evaluated 4 4.4 Validity problems Lack of coherence between the topics and questions in the tests 7 7.7 The degree of difficulty of the questions 2 2.2 Cheating on online exams 15 16.5 Reliability Problems Online exam time is short 15 16.5 Exam questions are not clear 3 3.3 The question is not sufficient in number 2 2.2 Table 2, when the data in table 2 is analyzed, it is seen that students have a number of difficulties in the process of assessment and evaluation. At the end of the analysis, it has stated that there are some problems based on students (individuals), teacher, technology and distance, and as a result it has concluded that there are validity and reliability problems. As a result of the investigations it has stated that students related problems are lack of interest and motivation, computer literacy and online test anxiety. Students views on this subject has stated as follows: “Environments in tests applied in distance education can affect concentration.” “Due to the domestic environment I cannot concentrate on courses and online tests so it causes tests anxiety on me.” “Distance education applications require efficiency in information technologies. Comparing an inadequate student with others may cause some disruptions. Students reached a particular qualification in a given program in distance education must be sufficient in the fields of information technology, also. Otherwise, the measurement and evaluation is not healthy. A person who cannot use keyboard and communication skills efficiently wastes his time. This will adversely affect academic performance, also.” 1600 Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1597–1601 In distance education applications, internet problems such as disconnection from the Internet (24.2%), lack of computer hardware or software problems (16.5%), and power cuts (% 9.9) are the technology based problems. The process of assessment and evaluation in distance education technology issues that negatively affect the resources are defined as follows: technological problems affect the evaluation process in distance education and it is expressed below: “Disconnection from internet and power cuts in my current location affects me negatively so I cannot listen to courses and participate in tests effectively.” “I think that technical problems in the time of tests affect the assessment and evaluation process negatively.” “A sudden technologic problem may affect the participant’s success.” As students and teachers are away from each other, students and teachers cannot recognize each other enough (%14.3). In addition, it causes communication problems (%19.8), lack of interaction (%7.7) and deficiency in feedback (%30) which is one of the most important elements of evaluation process. It is stated that lack of guidance also affect students’ success (%5.5). In addition, it is reported that in distance education, evaluation process is carried out rather than product evaluation and it is hard to carry out process evaluation activities (4.4%). Students' opinions about the subject are as follows: “As it is distant, personal qualities cannot perceived as it is desired so evaluation process affected negatively.” “There is no face-to-face interaction so there is no interaction with teachers. We cannot talk or share lessons with other colleagues. As the lessons are in virtual environment it is difficult to understand or integrate issues. In addition, in a virtual environment, an adequate motivation cannot be provided in the exam.” “Differences in Teachers' expectations and students’ expectations affects academic success in negative.” “It is a disadvantage that there is no one to ask for help in the online exams. So it affects evaluation.” “There is no enough feedback in distance education. Because there are a large group of students. We ask questions, but teachers may pass without seeing some of these questions. Following the evaluation of test results or details about our faults, we cannot take feedbacks about our errors. We can only see the errors and the correct answer but we cannot talk about our errors.” Distance education teaching staffs do not prefer alternative evaluation techniques (%2.2) and reliability and validity of the expression was also experiencing some problems. Cheating on online exams (16.5%), described the issues are not consistent with the exam questions (7.7%), and questions the degree of difficulty (2.2%) is a good problem to set the terms of the validity of such examinations, plus online exams not given enough time (16.5%), exam questions is not clear (3.3%) and lack of a sufficient number of exam questions (2.2%) also affects the reliability. Some students' opinions about this situation are as follows: “Exams are generally in the form of test. Sometimes classic. But other question techniques should be given addition to these.” “Assessment techniques used by teachers are the same. Yet, we talk about the model of constructivist learning and alternative assessment and evaluation tools, but we do not apply them. In fact, if portfolios in which homework, projects or studies are carried out in electronic environment, it may be more useful for the evaluation process.” “Think that people that attend the same program answer the questions together. What can we say about the validity and reliability of this exam?” “As I cannot use communication skills and keyboard efficiently, I spent some extra time to write the answers. So, especially in classical exams, I cannot finish my exam in time.” 5. Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendations Based on the findings gained from the experts, students' interests and motivations, their computer literacy levels and technological infrastructures (Internet, computer hardware) have an important role in distant education. In distant education, teachers and learners do not know each other. So their expectations are different, also. Baturay and Bay (2009)’ result supports this situation. It is clear from the students’ opinions that evaluation of the process according to tests or written exams cannot be carried out in a healthy way. Altan and Sefero lu (2009) emphasize that feedback is important for students for an effective distant education. In the study, it is emphasize that feedback is important but because of the distance there is less and inadequate Hasan Karal et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1597–1601 1601 feedback. This situation affects students’ success negatively. In distance learning, while evaluation process, student may cheat. King and his friends (2009) findings show that students cheat more easily in online education. When the questions are not clear, students cannot find one to ask for help. This is another deficiency of the system. In online exams compared to classical exam patterns, there are some factors that affect success. These are students’ computer literacy, as a result of this having time problem, each person has been exposed to different environment and different stimuli (lack of unity in environment) as a result of lack of motivation in exam. Xuet (2007) has emphasized in his study that online exams are not affected by computer knowledge and attitude but these exams should be prepared in a simple way that those who don’t know much about computer can overcome. Students have exam anxiety even if their computer literacy level middle or higher. Because they haven’t experienced an online exam before. Students preferred online exams because they had online exam experience (Donovan et al., 2007). According to the students’ opinions; there isn’t variety in evaluation and assessment tools in distant education, there is no coherence between the questions in exams and the topics and the questions are not clear. To evaluate process through distance education forum, online chats and etc.. should be included to the process and should be active during the process. Questions should not only measure students’ level of knowledge but also they should be simple and understandable to prevent inappropriate behaviors. Exam environments should be prepared according to online exam. In distance education, selecting the most appropriate methods of assessment and evaluation, the process can be made more efficient. References Altan, T., & Sefero lu, S. S. (2009). Uzaktan e itimde de erlendirme süreci: Ö renci görü lerinin sistemin geli imine katk lar . 3.International Computer & Instructional Technologies Symposium (ICITS 2009). 7-9 October 2009, Karadeniz Technical University Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon. Anderson, H. M., Cain , J., & Bird, E. (2005). Online Student Course Evaluations: Review of Literature and a Pilot Study. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2005, 69(1), 34-43. Baturay, M., & Bay, Ö.F. (2009). Uzaktan ö retimi tercih eden ö rencilerin demografik özellikleri (Demographic Characteristics of the Students That Chose Distance Education). Journal of Ziya Gokalp Faculty of Education, 7(13), 17-26. Benson, A. (2003). Assessing participant learning in online environments. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 100, 69-78. Dali, H. (2008). Desing and implement of e-learning performance evaluation system. International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering. DOI 10.1109/CSSE.2008.157 Dommeyer, C.J., Baum, P., Hanna, R. W., & Chapman, K. S. (2004). Gathering faculty teaching evaluations by inclass and online surveys. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(4), 611-623. Donovan, J., Mader, C., & Shinsky, J. (2007). Traditional Course Evaluation Formats: Student Perceptions. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 6(3), 158-180. Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Craner, J., Lim, B., & Duffy, T. M. (2000). Teaching in Web Based Distance Learning Environment: an Evaluation Summary Based on Four Courses. Center for Research on Learning and Technology Technical Report No.13. Indiana University, Bloomington. Jung, I. (2005). Innovation and good practices of open and distance learning in Asia and the Pasific. Apeid, Unesco Bangkok Occasional Paper Series. Paper no: 3. Kara, E. (2009). Uzaktan yüksek ö retimde ölçme de erlendirme ve Anadolu Üniversitesi aç kö retim sistemi uygulamas (Measurement and evaluation in distance higher education and an application in Anadolu University open education system). Social Sciences Institute of Anadolu University, Eski ehir. Kerka, S., & Wonacot, M. (2000). Practitioner file: Assessing learners online. Columbus, OH: Clearinghouse for Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. Accessed May 16, 2009 from:http://ericacve.org/fulltext.asp King, C., Guyette, R., & Piotrowski, C. (2009). Online exams and cheating: An empirical analysis of business students’ views. The Journal of Educators Online, 6(1), 1-11. McCombs, B., & Vakili, D. (2005). A learner-centered framework for e-learning. Teachers College Record. 107(8), 1582-1600. Semerci, Ç., & Bekta , C. (2005). nternet Temelli Ölçmelerin Geçerli ini Sa lamada Yeni Yakla mlar (The New Approaches for Prov d ng Val d ty In Internet-Based Measurements), The Turkish Online Journal Of Educational Technology, 4(1), 130-134. Shuey, S. (2002). Assessing Online Learning in Higher Education. Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, 16(2),13-18. Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2003). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Tany ld z , M., & Semerci, Ç. (2005). Çevrim çi E itim Uygulamalar na li kin Ö retim Eleman ve Ö renci Görü lerinin Belirlenmesi (The opinions of students and teaching staff about online education implementations). Accessed May 22, 2009 from: http://www.tebd.gazi.edu.tr/arsiv/2005_cilt3/sayi_2/197-216.pdf Xu, Y., Iran-Nejad , A., & Thoma, S. J. ( 2007). Administering Defining Issues Test Online: Do Response Modes Matter?. 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work_bkemmxra7jfrtg45ykhrgijr3a	----	Attitudes of University Applicant's toward Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 1926 – 1929 1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 2nd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.374 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia WCPCG-2011 Attitudes of University Applicant’s toward Distance Education Adel Zahed-Babelan a * , Esmaeil Ghaderi b, Mahdi Moenikia c a University of mohaghegh Ardabili, zahed@uma.ac.ir Ardabil, Iran b Payame Noor University, Ardabil, Iran c Payame Noor University, Ardabil, Iran Abstract This paper reports on a research done to study the attitudes of university applicants in Iran-Ardabil toward distance education. The sample of study consisted of university applicants for the 2009-2010 academic year. Using cluster sampling, 408 students (152 male and 256 female students) were selected based on Krejcie- Morgan table and taken into account the adequacy of the sample. The method of study was a survey study. The attitude questionnaire made up of 36 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale was used to collect data. The questionnaire included emotional, cognitive, and tendency to act subdivisions. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated using internal consistency. The reliability of the questionnaire was α= .86. Findings (t (407) = -21.14, p < .01) showed that the total mean of attitudes of students (97.3) is significantly lower than the conceptual mean (108). Keywords: attitude, distance education, Payame Noor University 1. Introduction Today, a great number of applicants seeking for higher education in Iran and the inability of traditional education to fulfill this demand have developed distance education in Iran -especially Payame Noor University, the major distance education university in this country. Knowledgeable and interested students with high academic aptitude is of great importance in this system of education because the students are exposed to a variety of information and advertisements forming their attitudes and experts believe that human beings' attitudes influence their behavior. This concept in distance education is of great importance because there is not face to face interaction and teaching in the classroom like traditional education in this system. An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event—this is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question. The ABC model of attitude contain: affect, behavior, and cognition (Eagly, & Chaiken, 1995). The affective response is an emotional response that expresses an individual's degree of preference for a person, place, thing, or event. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual toward a person, place, thing, or event. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an individual's beliefs about a person, place, thing, or event. Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1927Adel Zahed-Babelan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 1926 – 1929 Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 Allport (1935) believes that attitude is mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experiences, exerting a direct or dynamic influence upon the individual's response to all objects and situations with which it is related. Research data on students' attitude toward distance education can be grouped into these categories: attitude toward technology, teaching method, student-teacher interaction, student-student interaction, attendance or non- attendance at the university. Studies show that the academic achievement of students and their success in university are influenced by the interaction between situational variables such as schedule, teaching methods, affective and physical conditions of the educational environment and also individual variables of learners such as their attitude toward educational issues and field of study (Brunstein & Maier, 2005).Bassey (2002) found that attitude had an important role in the prediction of students' academic achievement. Findings of Smith and Mcnelis (1993) showed that the students with negative attitude toward distance education had lower academic achievement in comparison with other students. Most of studies emphasize that distance education is appropriate for adult students and those who cannot attend in traditional university due to various reasons and these students have positive attitude toward distance education (O' Lawrence, 2006; Soreensen, 1995). In the study done by Cragg, et al. (2003), nurses reported positive attitude toward distance education. Carswell, et al. (2000), Su, et al. (2005), and Tekinarslan (2008) found that male students had more positive attitude toward distance education than female ones. Moreover, in Tekinarslan's study (2008) the married students in comparison with single ones, employed students in comparison with unemployed ones, married students with a child or children in comparison with married ones without a child , and finally adult students(37-41 years old) in comparison with younger ones had more positive attitude toward distance education. In addition to the aforementioned issues, the main problem of distance education system is some applicants who are not allowed to enter the traditional system of higher education because they have not obtained the academic requirement necessary to enter this system or cultural and social limitations prevented them. This paper is going to answer these questions:  How is the attitude of students seeking for higher education toward distance education?  Is there any difference between male and female students in their attitude toward distance education? 2. Method 2.1. Participants The statistical population of this research consisted of the students in the last year of high school and university applicants who participated in the reinforcement classes and in the preparation for University Entrance Examination institutes in the city of Ardebil in the 2009-2010 academic years. Using random cluster sampling, 408 students (152 male and 256 female students) were selected based on Krejcie-Morgan table and taken into the estimated standard error 0.05. 2.2. Materials The attitude questionnaire made up of 36 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale was used to collect data. The questionnaire was designed on the theoretical basis of attitude toward distance education and included cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Each component had twelve favorable and unfavorable items about distance education. The reliability of the questionnaire in the pilot study was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha. The overall reliability of the questionnaire was .86. The reliability of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components was .82, .75, and .78 respectively. They were appropriate values taken into account the number of questions. 2.3. Procedure Research method was a survey study in which a sample with at least 100 subjects was adequate. Data were collected through field study in the preparation for University Entrance Examination centers and institutes. They were analyzed using independent one-sample t-test and independent two-sample t-test. 1928 Adel Zahed-Babelan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 1926 – 1929 Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 3. Results Attitudes of the subjects in the sample and the components of attitude are compared with the possible median. Each item was designed in 5-point Likert scale and each component included 12 items. Therefore, the conceptual mean for the components of attitude was considered (12×3=36) and for the overall attitude was considered (36×3=108). Figure 1. Mean score of males and females students' attitude toward distance education Table 1. One-Sample statistics and t test for students' attitude Components of attitude gender Mean (Std.deviation) test value* t df. Sig. Effect size Affective component 408 29.96 (7.2) 36 -17.02 407 .000 2.36 Cognition component 408 30.39 (8.9) 36 3.08 407 .000 0.35 Behavior component 408 36.94 (6.2) 36 -12.81 407 .000 2.07 Total (attitude) 408 97.3 (16.4) 108 -13.23 407 .000 0.81 As shown in table 1, t (407) = -13.23, P <0.01 indicated that attitude of students toward distance education (97.3+ 16.4) was significantly lower than the conceptual mean (108). Moreover, the values of t (407) = -17.02 and t (407) = - 2.81 showed that the mean score of the affective component (29.96+ 7.2) and the behavioral component (30.39+ 8.9) were significantly lower than the conceptual mean (36). However, t (407) =3.08 showed that the mean of the cognitive component (36.94+ 6.2) was significantly higher than the conceptual mean (36). Table 1. compare of male and female students' attitude Components of attitude gender Mean (Std.deviation) t df. Sig. Effect size Affective component Female male 3068 (7.3) 28.74 (6.8) 2.66 407 .000 0.19 Cognition component Female male 36.52 (5.7) 37.62 (6.7) -1.75 407 .000 0.14 Behavior component Female male 28.91 (7.80) 32.87 (9.93) -4.47 407 .000 0.25 Total (attitude) Female male 95.58 (15.02) 100.12 (18.13) -2.74 407 .000 0.08 According to table2, t (406) = 2.74 , P< 0.01 showed that the mean of the male students' attitude (100.12+ 18.13) was significantly higher than the female students' attitude (95.58+ 15.02) toward distance education. However, t (406) = 2.66 , P< 0.01 showed that the mean of the affective component of the female students' attitude 25 30 35 40 affective cognition behavior Male Female Conceptual 1929Adel Zahed-Babelan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 1926 – 1929 Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 (30.68+ 7.3 ) was significantly higher than the mean of the affective component of the male students' attitude (28.74+ 6.81). On the other hand, t (406) = -4.47 , P < 0.01 showed that the mean score of the behavioral component of the male students' attitude (32.87+ 9.93 ) was significantly higher than the mean score of the behavioral component of the female students' attitude(28.91+ 7.80). There was no significant difference between the cognitive components of two groups. 4. Conclusion Findings of present study showed that attitude of university applicants toward distance education are negative. This result is in compliance with the findings of O' Lawrence (2006), Soreensen (1995), and Tekinarslan (2008). So in these researchers indicated that attitude of young people toward distance education is lower than old people. According to Motamedi (2009) more than 90% of the P.N.U. students in B.C. are those who graduated from the high school in the past year (or maximum in two or three recent years). Therefore the majority of the P.N.U. students are young and they are not working anywhere. The needs of these groups of students are different from older students who both study and work. Although the P.N.U. curriculum is different from the traditional university, the majority of the student expects to receive some educational services as like utilizing the library, laboratory, using the network information, on-line learning and interaction with the teachers, etc. Considering that most customers of Payam Noor University are young people who couldn't find traditional university entrance, this finding seems reasonable. Moreover, the findings showed that the mean score of the affective component and the behavioral component were significantly lower than the conceptual mean. However the mean score of the cognitive component was significantly higher than the conceptual mean. Finally this research indicated that mean score of the male students' attitude was significantly higher than the female students' attitude toward distance education. This result was confirmed in some researches (Carswell, et al. 2000; Su, et al. 2005; & Tekinarslan, 2008). The findings of Omidian and Omidian (2009) showed that the best subset of predictors that can be used in modeling student’s attitude to adapt e-learning includes: availability of resources, perceived of Usefulness, perceived ease of use, Pressure to use and the intention towards e-learning. Hence, Program managers can focus on these factors that are expected to affect student’s attitude to adapt e- learning. So field of study Brunstein and Maier (2005), Bassey (2002), Smith and Mcnelis (1993) found that attitude had an important role in the prediction of students' academic achievement. References Brunstein, J. C., & Maier, G. W. (2005). Implicit and self-attributed motives to achieve: Two separate but interacting needs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89,, 205-222. Carswell, L., Thomas, P., Petre, M., Price, B., & Richards, M. (2000). Distance education via the Internet: the student experience. British Journal of Educational Technology, 3 1(1), 29-47. Cragg, C. E., Edwards, N., Yue, Z., Xın, S. L. & Huı, Z. D. (2003). Integrating Web-based Technology into Distance Education for Nurses in China: Computer and Internet Access and Attitudes. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 21 (5), 265-275. Eagly, A., & Chaiken, S. (1995). Attitude strength, attitude structure and resistance to change. In R. Petty and J. Kosnik (Eds.), Attitude Strength. (pp. 413–432). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Motamedi, A. (2009). Educational conditions of Payame Noor University (P.N.U.) in Iran and its developmental strategies. The 23rd Annual Conference of Asian Association of Open Universities, 3-5 Nov. 2009, Payame Noor University, Tehran-Iran. O’Lawrence, H. (2006). The influences of distance learning on adult learners. Techniques: Connecting Education & Careers, 81 (5), 47-49. Omidian , F.; Omidian, A. (2009). Examining students' attitudes to adopt E-learning in Iran. The 23rd Annual Conference of Asian Association of Open Universities, 3-5 Nov. 2009, Payame Noor University, Tehran-Iran. Smith, D.L. & McNelis, M. J. (1993). Distance Education: Graduate Student Attitudes and Academic Performance. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No: ED 360 948. Sorensen, C. K. (1995). Evaluation of interactive television instruction: assessing attitudes of community college students. DEOSNEWS, 5(9). [Online] Retrieved December 20, 2006 from http://www.ed.psu.edu/ACSDE/deos/deosnews/deosnews5_9.asp Su, B., Bonk, C. J., Magjuka, R. J., Liu, X., & Lee, S. (2005). The Importance of Interaction in Web-Based Education: A Program-level Case Study of Online MBA Courses. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 4(1). [Online] Retrieved 24 December, 2006, from http://www.ncolr.net/jiol/issues/PDF/4.1.1.pdf Tekinarsalan, E. (2008). Attitudes of Turkish distance learners toward internet- based learning: An investigation depending on demographical characteristics. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. 9(1), 39-47. ISSN 1302-6488. 
work_bkl4fwu7ovgn5obyzw2v2yps4q	----	Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(12): 6659-6666, 2020 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.081230 Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education Iryna S. Mintii1, Svitlana V. Shokaliuk1, Tetiana A. Vakaliuk2,*, Olexandr V. Merzlykin3, Mykhailo M. Mintii1 1Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University, Ukraine 2Department of Software Engineering, Faculty of Information and Computer Technologies, Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University, Ukraine 3Kryvyi Rih Educational Complex No 129 "Gymnasium-Lyceum of Academic Approach", Ukraine Received July 15, 2020; Revised August 13, 2020; Accepted November 19, 2020 Cite This Paper in the following Citation Styles (a): [1] Iryna S. Mintii, Svitlana V. Shokaliuk, Tetiana A. Vakaliuk, Olexandr V. Merzlykin, Mykhailo M. Mintii , "Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education," Universal Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 8, No. 12, pp. 6659-6666, 2020. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.081230. (b): Iryna S. Mintii, Svitlana V. Shokaliuk, Tetiana A. Vakaliuk, Olexandr V. Merzlykin, Mykhailo M. Mintii (2020). Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(12), 6659-6666. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2020.081230. Copyright©2020 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract To minimize the time required for designing a Moodle course and to reduce the required level of ICT competence for learning content management system (LCMS) Moodle, we designed standard Moodle course university and created video tutorials about how to design a new Moodle course based on it. The purpose of this paper is to consider the structural and content features of the standard Moodle course university and to review the methodical instructions for designing a new Moodle course based on it. The reasonableness of the creation of a new Moodle course from a backup copy of the standard course university is substantiated in the work. This approach to new courses designing eliminates two main factors that impede using of Moodle in the educational process. When a teacher has electronic training and methodological complex, this approach helps to minimize the time for course designing. Using of such elements as "URL", "Assignment" and "Quiz" reduces the minimal level of teachers' information and communication technologies competence for work in Moodle. The basic principle of building a standard course is the designing course as the online portal. When course is built in this way, it helps not to overload the Moodle server. Placing of electronic learning and methodological complex components on Google Drive creates the first backup of the course. The following methods were used in the research: analysis of Internet resources (finding out which Ukrainian pedagogical universities use LCMS Moodle), analysis of а pedagogical experience of using LCMS Moodle, modeling (developing a model of standard Moodle course and its use in the educational process), questionnaires (finding out whether the model meets the requirements of the educational process and the direction of further research). Keywords Learning Content Management System Moodle, Standard Course, Backup of the Course, Distance Education 1. Introduction Today it is very important to train teachers for using of distance technologies in the educational process. Today there are such Ukrainian-language online educational platforms: "Action. Digital education" [11] – educational series "Digital skills for teachers" and "Quarantine: online services for teachers"; "For The Lesson" [12] – courses "Teaching informatics through distance learning", "Class Dojo and other feed-back tools", "Using Zoom service for distance lessons", etc. Also there are courses at higher education institutions sites: National Technical University 6660 Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute" [10] – courses "Technology of Distance Course Design 2020" and "Basics of Distance Learning 2020"; Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University [23] – Course "Cloud Technologies in Distance Learning During Quarantine" and others. However, analysis of the such scientists as Yu.V. Tryus[21; 20], V.M. Kukharenko [7], S.O. Semerikov[14; 15; 19], Ye.M. Smyrnova-Trybulska[16], etc. makes us to conclude that for higher education blended learning is more appropriate than distance learning: "blended learning is one of the most promising innovation trends in higher education" [21, p. 299]. In 2016, Gartner analysts determined that blended learning reached the plateau of productivity, and therefore matured, and its' benefits are undoubted [1] (Fig. 1). A.M. Striuk defines blended learning as "the way of realizing the content of learning that integrates classroom and online learning activities with pedagogically balanced combination of traditional, electronic, distance and mobile learning technologies with the aim to achieve learning goals most efficiently" [18, p. 19]. Depending on the technical capabilities of Universities and the level of its' teaching staff, it is possible to combine the following types of student learning activities under the guidance of the teacher in blended learning [21, p. 304]:  traditional workshops or seminars with video conferences and webinars;  traditional lessons with their discussion at forums, chats or using e-mail;  group work on individual tasks with their discussion at the class;  Internet lectures with workshops and labs at the class;  lectures at the class and teachers' Internet consulting;  individual tasks with sending results to the teacher via Internet services;  implementation of role-playing games and research projects in the virtual environment at home or at class;  other combinations of using the distance, electronic, mobile learning and traditional learning forms, methods and tools. Figure 1. 2016 eLearning Predictions Hype Curve Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(12): 6659-6666, 2020 6661 2. Materials and Methods According to the European University Association report, 91% of universities use blended learning, 82% of universities offer online courses, over 80% of universities have repositories for storing e-courses and digital content, and various systems for creating and managing educational resources for students [3]. Because of its' wide range of capabilities and simple interface, LCMS Moodle is one of the most popular platforms for blended learning. The LCMS Moodle module structure makes it easy to modify the design. Another Moodle advantage is the availability of more than 40 language packages. As a result of the analysis of Internet resources, it is determined that the vast majority (86%) of Ukrainian Universities, which provide training in pedagogical specialties, use LCMS Moodle. Among them are Berdyansk State Pedagogical University [24], Bogdan Khmelnytsky Cherkasy National University [25], Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University [26], Donbass State Pedagogical University [27], H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University [28], Ivan Franko Lviv National University [29], Kamianets-Podіlskyi National Ivan Ohiienko University [30], Khmelnytskyi National University [31], Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University [32], Kherson State University [33], Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University [34], Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University [35], Makarenko Sumy State Pedagogical University [36], Mykolaiv V. O. Sukhomlynskyi National University [37], National Pedagogical Dragomanov University [38], Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University [39], Rivne State University of Humanities [40], Taras Shevchenko National University "Chernihiv College" [41], Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University [42], Uzhhorod National University [43], Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University [44], Volodymyr Vynnychenko Central Ukrainian State Pedagogical University [45], Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University [46], Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University [47]. Teaching staff training to design Moodle courses in Universities is carried out according to their own educational trajectories: self-education using instructions in different formats (text, video) [4; 5; 8; 13; 20; 22], intensive trainings [40; 42], long-term courses on enhancing their ICT competence [9] and others. We designed survey "Using LCMS Moodle in the University Educational Process" and did this research in 2019-2020. Its' results are:  factors that hinder the use of LCMS Moodle in the educational process are the lack of time (48% of surveyed teachers) and low level of IT competence (29% of surveyed teachers);  ways to increase the IT competence by using LCMS Moodle are self-education, communication with colleagues, IT courses, webinars, workshops, seminars. The distribution of the respondents is shown at the Fig. 2;  ways to increase the use of LCMS Moodle in the educational process are periodic seminars, consultations on basic LCMS Moodle capabilities (as an option, group or personal electronic appointment with a qualified specialist); site stability; blended ICT courses; development of methodological guidelines of using some elements in the educational process; creation of transparent, predictable and attractive for authors license and course sample. Figure 2. Ways to improve Moodle competencies 6662 Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education To minimize the time required for designing a Moodle course and to reduce the required level of ICT competence for LCMS Moodle, we designed standard Moodle course university and created video tutorials about how to design a new Moodle course based on it [6]. The principle of course design will improve the site stability. The purpose of this paper is to consider the structural and content features of the standard Moodle course university and to review the methodical instructions for designing a new Moodle course based on it. The following methods were used in the research: analysis of Internet resources (finding out which Ukrainian pedagogical universities use LCMS Moodle), analysis of а pedagogical experience of using LCMS Moodle, modeling (developing a model of standard Moodle course and its use in the educational process), questionnaires (finding out whether the model meets the requirements of the educational process and the direction of further research). 3. Results 3.1. The Basic Principle of Designing The basic principle of designing the course is to consider course as an information portal. It means that this course contains educational materials from different sources. Electronic learning management complex (ELMC) components placed in remote repositories. The main remote repository is personal or departmental corporate (and therefore unlimited) Google Drive [6]. Placing basic information material outside the course site and using web 2.0 services for online meetings and discussions are principles of designing massive open online courses. 3.2. Structure of the ELMC Placing on Google Drive Figure 3. Structure of the ELMC on Google Drive The structure of ELMC on Google Drive is determined by the need of saving the documentation and materials for all kinds of activities, which are envisaged in the curriculum of the discipline (lectures, laboratory, individual works, workshops) (Fig. 3). We recommended placing tasks for every laboratory work or workshop in a separate folder – in this case, it is possible to supplement, modify and delete resources with constant URL to the tasks in the Moodle course. 3.3. Overview of the Structure of the Standard Moodle Course University The General section contains:  teacher information (surname, first name and contact information);  links to the curriculum or syllabus;  links to excerpts from curriculum (syllabus) – tables with lectures' topics, laboratory and/or practical classes;  links to the theoretical content folder (lecture materials, etc.);  links to the electronic journal of the academic group (Moodle journal backup). Three thematic sections were added to the course, which in this case contain only assignments. Students respond to the assignments by sharing links to the folder with the results of their work placed in the students' educational environments (student's Google Drive). Also there are additional sections – giving extra points and final control (for example, the lecturer gives extra points if the student was present and showed activity; teacher gives the grade which the student received while answering the exam questions). Standard Moodle course can be described by these criteria:  structured teaching materials: availability of general and thematic sections, sections for additional and final assessment with clearly defined mandatory elements in them;  the logic of the training course studying (the materials related to the course as a whole are placed at the beginning, after them – materials according to the curriculum and at the end – courses for the final assessment);  a clear timetable for the completion of the curriculum (every assignment closes after deadline);  the system of interactive interaction between the teacher and the students during in the course studying (there are a forum in the General section and communication facilities for consultations);  quality of education materials (all course materials are published in ELMC on Google Drive);  system of evaluation and control for all types of students' learning activities (all types of tasks are automatically displayed in the gradebook; every student has an opportunity to see only his own grades, Universal Journal of Educational Research 8(12): 6659-6666, 2020 6663 the system records the date of the task submission and its' grade). 4. Discussion 4.1. Restoring into an Existing Course. Editing the Structure and Content of Standard Moodle Course for the Requirements of the Teacher/Discipline Restore Course from a Backup To develop a new Moodle course, it is enough to restore it from a backup of the standard Moodle course [6]. There are such ways of restoring course from a backup: restore as a new course (this option is available only for course managers), restore into this course or restore into an existing course. In our case, it is necessary to restore into this course, with the option "delete the content of this course and then restore". Editing Course Structure and Content We have to consider these questions of editing the structure and content:  section editing (for example, the General section): fast (changes only the title) using the tool "Edit title"; summary, etc. – on the section editing page;  editing links to files (curriculum or syllabus; tables with lectures topics, laboratory works and/or workshops; electronic gradebook, etc.) [6]. It is also worth to mention here that you can share the ELMC files hosted on Google Drive. If you work with the standard Moodle course university, we recommend sharing links to the ELMC folder and then copying the links to items;  adding sections (for example, thematic or additional) and their moving;  editing elements (for example, lab assignments – title, links to the task folder, gradebook, deadlines, etc.): fast – change only headings – tool "Edit title"; links to task folders, gradebook, etc. – on the page of editing the parameters of the task [6];  adding new elements by duplicating existing ones (for example, assignments to sections or tests) and their moving;  work with a questions bank (adding categories, import questions from file, and preparation of questions in different formats);  editing tests: settings (quiz opening and closing time, time limit, allowed attempts, grading method, questions shuffle, adaptive or interactive mode, immediate or deferred feedback, etc.) and quiz (grades, shuffle, adding questions (a new question, from question bank, a random question) [8]. Course Settings By default, the course page contains the Actions menu and the course content. You can add other blocks to make course navigation easier. For example:  Activities (in a standard course they are forum, assignments and tests);  Calendar with the specified events and deadlines. By default, all the added blocks are located to the left under the Actions menu. We recommend placing the Calendar block to the right for better course navigation. Participants At this point, it is advisable to give students access to the course. It can be done in such ways: guest access (with or without password), self-registration (with or without password), manual enrollment (enrollment of students one at a time) and group synchronization. For group courses, it is advisable to use group synchronizing. Gradebook Setup After adding all the activities, you should review the Gradebook and make sure that the course total is 100 points. If several groups are learning on the same course, the gradebook provides an over-view of the separate group, user or activity. Evaluation of Works To evaluate the assignment, you have to visit its' page where, by default, all students data is shown. At this stage, you can sort the data by one of such parameters: first/last name, e-mail, status (submitted for evaluation/not submitted; rated/not rated; submitted on time/delayed), rate, date of submission/last changes/rate change. We recommend hiding some fields (such as e-mail, etc.). On this page in the Options section you can filter the data: without submissions, submitted, evaluation required. Thus, at the first evaluation, it is enough to set the filter to display the submitted works, at every next evaluation – only "evaluation required", after the deadline – "without submissions". Course Backup Teachers should also pay attention to backing up their courses [6]. In this process such questions have to be considered:  selection of course elements to back up;  uploading the backup to the user's local disk. 6664 Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education Figure 4. Scheme for designing a new course based on the standard Moodle course university 5. Conclusions The Moodle course designing based on the standard Moodle course university does not overload the server. All ELMC components are placed on the corporate Google Drive. The course author has the first backup of his course, since the original training content has been hosted on the local teacher's media. Designing your course basing on the standard Moodle course university takes less of time and reduces the minimal level of teachers' information and communication technologies competencies. 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Teoriia i praktyka orhanizatsii samostiinoi roboty studentiv vyshchykh navchalnykh zakladiv (Theory and practice of organization of independent work of students of higher educational institutions), 135–163. Knyzhkovevydavnytstv oKyrieievskoho, KryvyiRih (2012) [16] Smyrnova-Trybulska, Ye.M.: Teoretyko-metodychni osnovy formuvannia informatychnykh kompetentnostei vchyteliv pryrodnychykh dystsyplin u haluzi dystantsiinoho navchannia : dysertatsiia na zdobuttia naukovoho stupenia doktora pedahohichnykh nauk (Theoretical and methodological bases of formation of informative competences of teachers of natural disciplines in the field of distance learning : the dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences). NPU im. M.P. Drahomanova, Kyiv (2008) [17] Spirin, O.M., Vakaliuk, T.A.: Formation of information and communication competence of bachelors of informatics on the use of cloud-oriented learning environment. In-formation Technologies and Learning Tools. 4 (72), 226– 245 (2019). doi: https://doi.org/10.33407/itlt.v72i4.3262 [18] Striuk, A.M.: Teoretyko-metodychni zasady kombinovanoho navchannia systemnoho prohramuvannia maibutnikh fakhivtsiv z prohramnoi inzhenerii (Theoretical and methodological foundations of blended learning of system programming of future specialists in software engineering). Kryvyi Rih National University, Kryvyi Rih (2015). [19] Teplytskyi, I.O., Semerikov, S.O., Polishchuk, O.P.: Model mobilnoho navchannia v serednii ta vyshchii shkoli (The model of mobile learning in middle and high school). In: Proceedings of the 3rd Ukrainian scientific and methodical workshop on Computer Simulation in Education, Kryvyi Rih, 24 Apr 2008, 45–46. KDPU, Kryvyi Rih (2008) [20] Tryus, Yu.V., Herasymenko, I.V., Franchuk, V.M.: Systema elektronnoho navchannia VNZ na bazi MOODLE: metodychnyi posibnyk (MOODLE-based e-learning system : a toolkit). / In: Tryus, Yu.V. (ed.). Moodle.org, Cherkasy (2012) [21] Tryus, Yu.V., Herasymenko, I.V.: The combined study as innovative educational technology in higher education. Theory and methods of e-learning 3, 299–308 (2012). Mode of access:https://ccjournals.eu/ojs/index.php/e-learn/article/ view/353 [22] Ustinova, V.O., Shokaliuk, S.V., Mintii, I.S., Pikilnyak, A.V.: Modern techniques of organizing computer support for future teachers' independent work in German language. In: Kiv, A.E., Soloviev, V.N. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Cloud Technologies in Education (CTE 2018), KryvyiRih, Ukraine, December 21, 2018. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 2433, 308–321. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2433/p aper20.pdf (2019). Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [23] Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University. http://ztu.edu.ua. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [24] Berdyansk State Pedagogical University. http://elearn.bdpu.org/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [25] Bogdan Khmelnytsky Cherkasy National University. https://dl.cdu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [26] Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University. http://e-learning.kubg.e du.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [27] Donbass State Pedagogical University. http://ddpu.edu.ua:9 090/moodle/login/index.php. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [28] H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. http://lms.hnpu.edu.ua/moodle/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [29] Ivan FrankoLviv National University. http://e-learning.lnu.e du.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [30] Kamianets-Podіlskyi National Ivan Ohiienko University. https://itcentre.kpnu.edu.ua/moodle/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [31] Khmelnytskyi National University. https://msn.khnu.km.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [32] KryvyiRih State Pedagogical University. https://moodle.kd pu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [33] KSU Online Kherson State University. http://ksuonline.ksp u.edu/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [34] LesyaUkrainka Eastern European National University. http://cit.eenu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [35] LuhanskTaras Shevchenko National University. http://do.lu guniv.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [36] Makarenko Sumy State Pedagogical University. https://dl.sspu.edu.ua/ . Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [37] Mykolaiv V.O. Sukhomlynskyi National University. http://moodle.mdu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [38] National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. https://moodle.npu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [39] Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University. https://moodle.dls.udpu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [40] Rivne State University of Humanities.http://do.iktmvi.rv.ua 6666 Development of a Standard Moodle Course to Optimize the Teacher's Work in Distance Education /. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [41] Taras Shevchenko National University "Chernihiv College". https://moodle.chnpu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [42] Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University. http://elr.tnpu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [43] Uzhhorod National University. https://e-learn.uzhnu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [44] Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University. http://distance.vspu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [45] Volodymyr Vynnychenko Central Ukrainian State Pedagogical University. http://moodle.kspu.kr.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [46] Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University. https://moodle.chnu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 [47] Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University. http://moodle.zu.edu.ua/. Accessed 15 Apr 2020 1. Introduction 2. Materials and Methods 3. Results 4. Discussion 5. Conclusions REFERENCES 
work_bko6twzoy5er7etxq4pjahzflq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_borbtdpvlrddfns5lnm23xkcaq	----	Microsoft Word - A. Statkus.docx Abstract—This study describes the relationship between motivation factors and academic performance among distance education students enrolled in a postgraduate nursing course. Students (n=96) participated in a survey that assesses student's motivational orientations from a cognitive perspective using a self- administered questionnaire based on Pintrich’s Motivation Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MLSQ). Results showed students’ motivational factors are highest on task value (6.44, 0.71); followed by intrinsic goal orientation (6.20, 0.76), control beliefs (6.02, 0.89); extrinsic goal orientation (5.85, 1.13); self-efficacy for learning and performance (5.62, 0.84), and finally, test anxiety (4.21, 1.37). Weak positive correlations were found between academic performance and intrinsic goal orientation (r=0.13), extrinsic goal orientation (r=0.04), task value (r=0.09), control beliefs (r=0.02), and self-efficacy (r=0.05), while there was weak negative correlation with test anxiety (r=-0.04). Conclusions from the study indicate the need to focus on improving tasks and targeting intrinsic goal orientations of students to courses since these were positively correlated with academic performance and downplay the use of tests since these were negatively correlated with academic performance. Keywords—Motivation factors, academic performance, distance education I. INTRODUCTION OTIVATION in learning is especially important among distance education students since they are usually studying in isolation – physically far from their teacher and classmates. This study aims to determine the motivation factors of distance education students based on the motivation variables identified by Pintrich from a cognitive perspective [1]. The study also aims to find if relationships exist between these motivation factors and students’ academic performance. Possible roles of students’ age, sex and location as confounders were also explored. Pintrich and De Groot [2] studied motivational components relationship to self-regulated learning and academic performance in the classroom. They named three motivational components, namely: (a) an expectancy component, which refers to students’ beliefs about their expected success in performing a task, (b) a value component, which concerns students’ appreciation of and beliefs about the importance of the task for them and (c) an affective component, comprised of students’ emotional reactions to the task. They found that motivational components to be significantly linked to students’ cognitive engagement and academic performance in the classroom. The three main motivation components identified in [2] can be expanded into six motivation variables, namely: intrinsic S. R. Bonito is with the Faculty of Management and Development Studies, University of the Philippines Open University, Manila, Philippines (phone: 632-523-1633; fax: 632-528-4014; e-mail: sheila.bonito@upou.edu.ph). goal orientation, extrinsic goal orientation, task value, control beliefs, self-efficacy and test anxiety [1]. Goal orientation refers to the student's perception of the reasons why she is engaging in a learning task. It may be intrinsic, wherein student perceives self to be participating in a task for reasons such as challenge, curiosity, and mastery; or extrinsic where student perceives self to be participating in a task for reasons such as grades, rewards, performance, evaluation by others and competition. Goal orientations lead students to engage with learning activities in various ways [3]. Task value differs from goal orientation by not focusing on the why but on student's evaluation of how interesting, how important, and how useful the task is. Task value refers to the student's perceptions of the course material in terms of interest, importance and utility [1]. Control of learning refers to student's beliefs that their efforts to learn will result in positive outcomes. It concerns the belief that outcomes are contingent on one's own effort, in contrast to external factors such as the teacher. If students believe that their efforts to study make a difference in their learning, they should be more likely to study more strategically and effectively [1]. Self-efficacy is a self-appraisal of one's ability to master a task. Self-efficacy includes judgments about one's ability and confidence to accomplish a task. Self-efficacy belief is key to students' level of engagement with tasks and their achievement [4]. Schunk and Zimmerman [5] reported a positive relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement. Students who are trained to have higher self-efficacy beliefs have better academic performance. Test anxiety is thought to have two components: a worry or cognitive component, and an emotionality component. The worry component refers to student's negative thoughts that disrupt performance, while the emotionality component refers to affective and physiological arousal aspects of anxiety. II. MATERIALS AND METHODS A. Research and Sampling Design The research study utilizes a descriptive correlational research design. Students enrolled in a specific postgraduate nursing course delivered via distance education were asked to answer a self-administered survey questionnaire to determine their motivation factors and academic performance. Out of 141 enrolled students, 68% participated in the study voluntarily. B. Data Collection Instrument The survey instrument for motivation factors was based on Pintrich’s Motivation Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MLSQ) [1]. The MLSQ is a self-report instrument originally designed to assess college student's motivational orientations Motivation Factors in Distance Education Sheila R. Bonito M World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:7, No:2, 2013 458International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 7(2) 2013 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11386 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :7 , N o: 2, 2 01 3 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 13 86 http://waset.org/publication/Motivation-Factors-in-Distance-Education/11386 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11386 and their use of different learning strategies. Its use among postgraduate distance education students is a new look into the motivation factors of adult learners based on a cognitive perspective. The questionnaire measures six variables, namely: (a) intrinsic goal orientation, (b) extrinsic goal orientation, (c) task value, (d) control beliefs, (e) self-efficacy for learning and performance, and (f) test anxiety. The survey was distributed using SurveyMonkey – an online survey website. C. Statistical Treatment The students’ final grades in the course were recorded and correlated with the six motivation variables. Demographic profiles of students such as age, gender, and residence location were also determined as possible confounders of the correlation between motivation factors and academic performance. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A. Demographic Profile The students who participated in the study are first time postgraduate students in distance education program in nursing. The mean age of the student participants is 30 years old (±7.34). There is nearly 1:3 ratio of male to female. Twenty-six percent of them are based abroad. Almost all (92%) are employed full-time. The course is delivered fully online using a learning management system based on Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (MOODLE). TABLE I SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS Socio-demographic profile Frequency Percentage Age 21 – 30 31 – 40 41 and above 62 25 9 65% 26% 9% Sex Male Female 25 71 26% 64% Residence Local Abroad 71 25 64% 26% Employment Full time Part time 88 8 92% 8% B. Motivational Factors Results on the motivation factors showed that students in postgraduate distance education institution have “high” task value (6.44, ±0.71), intrinsic goal orientation (6.20, ±0.76) and control beliefs (6.02, ±0.89); “moderate” extrinsic goal orientation (5.85, ±1.13) and self-efficacy (5.62, ±0.84); and “low” test anxiety (4.21, ±1.37). The mean and standard deviation of student scores in the six motivation variables are shown in Table II. TABLE II MOTIVATION FACTORS OF STUDENTS IN DISTANCE EDUCATION Motivation Factors Mean Standard Deviation Intrinsic goal orientation 6.20 0.76 Extrinsic goal orientation 5.85 1.13 Task value 6.44 0.71 Control beliefs 6.02 0.89 Self-efficacy for learning and performance 5.62 0.84 Test anxiety 4.21 1.37 Postgraduate distance education students were motivated more by the tasks rather than the goal. The students’ participation in the task is an end all to itself rather than participation being a means to an end. Students in distance education put more value in tasks or their perceptions of the course material in terms of interest, importance and utility. This underscores the need for course materials to be more interesting, important and useful to students to contribute to motivating them to learn more. Intrinsic goal orientation was also found important in motivating postgraduate distance education students; that is, how they perceive self to be participating in a task for reasons such as challenge, curiosity, and mastery. This was deemed more important compared to extrinsic goal, which is more about the end-goal such as grades, rewards, and performance evaluation. Control of learning belief was also considered an important motivation factor. Postgraduate distance education students considered outcomes as more dependent on one's effort rather than external factors. This means that they think more that motivation for learning is up to them and not due to anybody else. Self-efficacy was rated moderately important meaning that postgraduate distance education students have moderate expectancy for success as it relates to performance expectations and mastery of a task. This has some implications to the types of learning activities given to them. These learning activities should foster student’s self-efficacy to motivate them in their studies. Test anxiety was rated as the least factor contributing to motivation to learning. Adult learners are usually not comfortable with the idea of being “tested” or being given an examination to prove what they have learned in a course. Pintrich [6] showed that motivational elements may or may not be relevant and play different roles throughout the learning process. Intrinsic task value is particularly important to predict the learner's initial engagement. At the beginning of a task, students adopt a particular goal orientation that is adjusted or modified in the course of learning. Self-efficacy beliefs have significant role in later steps of task performance. Significant interaction among motivational elements during World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:7, No:2, 2013 459International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 7(2) 2013 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11386 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :7 , N o: 2, 2 01 3 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 13 86 http://waset.org/publication/Motivation-Factors-in-Distance-Education/11386 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11386 the learning process exists and this interaction may be different at different steps of task performance. C. Motivational Factors and Academic Performance Motivation factors were correlated with academic performance measured as their final grade in the course. Weak positive correlations were found between academic performance and intrinsic goal orientation (r=0.13), extrinsic goal orientation (r=0.04), task value (r=0.09), control beliefs (r=0.02), and self-efficacy (r=0.05); whereas there was weak negative correlation with test anxiety (r=-0.04). These weak correlations were found not significant. There was no significant effect of students’ age, sex or location to the relationship between academic performance and motivation factors. In this study, only motivational factors were measured and were shown as not significantly correlated to students’ academic performance. Pintrich [6] identified motivational beliefs and cognitive strategies as important elements in the learning process. Motivational beliefs mediate between the classroom context and the students' academic behavior; that is, motivated students will choose to work on course material instead of leisure activity, put forth a great deal of effort, and persist until assignments are completed [7]. Pintrich and De Groot [2] found a positive correlation between motivational beliefs and self-regulated learning and furthermore, all affective components were related to academic performance. Self-regulation has also been found positively correlated to achievement, with highly self- regulated students being more motivated to use planning, organizational, and self-monitoring strategies than low self regulated students. It is therefore important to look into both motivation and cognitive strategies to see if they have meaningful relationship with academic achievement. IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS This study highlights the different motivations of postgraduate students in distance education. This underscores the need for course materials to be more interesting, important and useful to students to contribute to motivating them to learn more. There is also more value on how they perceive self to be participating in a task for reasons such as challenge, curiosity, and mastery. This is deemed more important compared to grades, rewards, and performance evaluation. Postgraduate distance education students consider outcomes as more dependent on one's effort rather than external factors. Learning activities should foster students' self-efficacy and emphasize practical application of tasks. Additional activities in the use of effective learning strategies and test-taking skills should help reduce the degree of anxiety. Conclusions from the study indicate the need to focus on improving student interest and expectancy for success as motivation strategies for learning in distance education especially since these are positively related to student performance. On the other hand test anxiety is not a strong motivation orientation for students and also negatively correlated to academic performance. REFERENCES [1] P. R. Pintrich, D. A. Smith, T. Garcia, and W. J. McKeachie, "A manual for the use of motivated strategies for learning questionnaire." Ann Arbor, Michigan: National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, 1991. [2] P. R. Pintrich and E. De Groot, "Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance," Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 82, no. 1 pp. 33-50, 1990. [3] P. R. Pintrich and A. Zusho, "Goal orientation and self-regulated learning in the college classroom: A cross-cultural comparison," In Student Motivation: The Culture and Context of Learning, F Salili & C Chiu, Eds. Dorrdrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. [4] E. A. Linnenbrink and P. R. Pintrich, "The role of self-efficacy beliefs in student engagement and learning in the classroom," Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 119-37, 2003. [5] D. H. Schunk, and B. J. Zimmerman, Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance: Issues and Educational Applications. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994. [6] P. R. Pintrich, "The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning," In Handbook of Self-Regulation, P.R. Pintrich, M. Zeidner, and M. Boekaerts (Eds). San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2000. [7] P. R. Pintrich, "Student motivation in the college classroom," In Handbook of College Teaching: Theory and Applications, K.W. Prichard and R.M. Sawyer (Eds). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:7, No:2, 2013 460International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 7(2) 2013 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11386 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :7 , N o: 2, 2 01 3 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 13 86 http://waset.org/publication/Motivation-Factors-in-Distance-Education/11386 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11386 
work_bumu6m36efebtdcgdj6h7m3ilq	----	OPEN DISTANCE EDUCATION: A TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACH WITHIN SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE Vardan Mkrttchian1 and Dietrich Brandt2 1All Armenian Internet University P.O.Box 965, Lane Cove, NSW, 2066, Australia 2Centre for Learning & Knowledge Management, University of Technology, Dennewartsrasse 27, Aachen, D-52068, Germany Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide an argument material in order to open up a discussion concerning educational and political strategies within the field of distance education using a work experience of All Armenian Internet University (AAIU). In the field of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) the best deifications are where the exploration of the new possibilities is represented by the emerging technologies. In this paper, there is a desire to build learning environments to support a range of distributed cognitive work, i.e., communities of learners, conceptual learning conversations, and knowledge building communities. Instructional designers are in the initial stages of exploring the commonalities and discontinuities between the varieties of CSCL activities in AAIU. Copyright© 2005 IFAC Keywords: Social Impact, Technology, Distance Education. 1. INTRODUCTION Teaching is a process of conveying ideas to students. Good teaching means, mostly, more effective communication between learners. The prerequisite has been due to the fact that because teachers “maybe” have studied ideas longer, they understand them better and are therefore better able to communicate them. Other requirements, which are important to control, are that the strategies and methods we use are empirically based and validated. Whatever, the level of distance education or teaching organization, many factors make teaching a distance education course different from teaching in a traditional classroom. When using the technology tools the material should be developed from a good point of learning theories (Mkrttchian and Kljajić, 2004). Сultural and ethical aspects, between different countries, can also be taken into consideration in this paradigm discourse. For example, in Armenia or in Germany some aspects of open ended strategies are being used within the higher educational system. Furthermore, if we wish to develop open global learning environments, we should also take these approaches (the cultural- and the ethical aspects) in to consideration. Designing a learning environment begins by trying identifying to what is to be learned and reciprocal the real world situations in which the activity occurs. When designing a course we need to consider several related aspects. For example, first we need to be clear in specifying our objectives. Secondly, we need to structure the modules of presentation with attractive design. The language should be appropriate and clearly defined and there must be an option for variety of questions and feedback. These aspects are crucial, since they are involved in assessing student's participation in these courses. However, we need to be conscious about which aspects are suitable tools for these assessments (Mkrttchian and Brandt, 2002). Information- and communications technology (ICT) provides us with a better prerequisite for open distance learning. Maybe a better word is flexible learning. In this constructivist approach the education would be considered as communication between people in terms of problem solving issues. In this context, in the future, the educational approach would be more learning- than teaching based. The new generations ICT-tools have been developing by considering new prerequisite for the new type of learning environment. For example, we can use the ICT-tools in a traditional educational situation, in campus environments, as well as in distance education. Furthermore, we probably are going to use an automatic e-learning system, the fifth generation of distance education1, a form of intelligent tutoring system (ITS). In this context, the role of the instructor would be reduced. I would like to say concerning this form of tutoring systems that we can compare IT’S with a very sophisticated form of computer assisted instruction (CAI). If this paradigm can get our acknowledgment is another issue. Sometimes we referred to as intelligent computer assisted instruction when we argue for intelligent tutoring systems. Intelligent tutoring systems is not new phenomena it has the origin from the 80th and where developed throughout by artificial intelligence (AI). By introducing the fifth generation of an intelligent flexible learning model into a meaningful conceptual learning framework, it might be worthwhile to review briefly certain features of the previous generation of distance education. One issue that might be of interest to discuss is whether a student should be given an answer directly through the computer instead of through an instructor. I am however not convinced (with Dr. Brandt) that this would be the right way to develop the distance education and the scope of this paper is beyond this issue. Further, we must be carefully when we implement the above mentioned psychological approaches in a design phase concerning distance education. Although the behaviorists maintain that knowledge may be derived. Distance educational operations have evolved through the following four generations: first, the Correspondence Model based on print technology; second, the Multi-media Model, based on print, audio and video technologies; third, the Tele learning Model based on applications of telecommunications technologies to provide opportunities for synchronous communication; and fourth, the Flexible Learning Model based on on-line delivery via Internet and through the conditioned process for Skinner's learning machine or Bandura's social learning processing, within the process of learning environments have we feel dubious about the conversation. CAI represents learning from computers where the computer is programmed to teach the student directly. Furthermore, this instruction technique was concentrated towards mathematical problems. Drills were based on behaviorist beliefs about the reinforcement of the stimulus-response activity. A question I would like to discuss is (with Dr. Brandt): are we going to a more behaviorist approach in this form of learning environments there computers been using as artifacts? A possible answer could be that the sophisticated system we wish to develop is very expensive and therefore not so easy to do the way we desire. A largely university has other possibilities of having a system there a high level to distribute all kinds of learning material is possibly, i.e., streaming video, interactive web based material and high collaboration between the students. If you do not have an economically framework to develop or bye large distance education system, you must be pleased over systems as not are so collaboratively. The constructors or team of learning systems have a large challenge to develop good systems to reasonable costs. We can still see several Web-platforms using behaviorist ideas about knowledge construction. Naturally, we have more sophisticated ideas about behaviorist learning methods within our era. The controls of learning processes are still within the teacher's area. If we wish to change this context the designers must think in other ways and open up for more “non traditional environments” (for example, open learning communities, computer supported collaborative learning environments and computer supported cooperative works environments) (Mkrttchian and Petrosyan, 2004a). 2. CONSTRUCTIVISTIC APPROACH The constructivism has its roots in the Italian philosopher Gimbattista Vico (17th century) e.g., and, of course, Immanuel Kant's synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, e.g., where it is noted that the subject has no direct access to external reality, and can only develop knowledge by using fundamental in-built cognitive principles (categories) to organize experience. One of the first psychologists to develop constructivism was Jean Piaget, who developed a theory (genetic epistemology) of the different cognitive stages through which a child passes while building up a model of the world, e.g. Student- and learner centered environments provide interactive, complementary activities that enable individuals to address unique learning interests, and needs, to study multiple levels of complexity and to deepen under- standing, e.g., in case-, project-, and PBL methodology. Fundamental issues have arisen related to the kinds of learning such environmental support, how to design them and whether or not designs can be generalized across varied domains in contexts. A constructivist model concerning a distance educational system requires, not always but mostly, collaboration between students. For example, open discussions are voluntarily among the participants and we must try to open up for these discussions. Furthermore the students' mentalities are crucial for a good learning environment. (Kljajić, Mkrttchian and Škraba, 2004). We should also create structures so that the groups open up for cooperation. Constructivist epistemology assumes that learners construct their own knowledge on the basis of interaction with their environment. Four epistemological assumptions are essential for what we refer to as "constructivist learning". Epistemological assumptions: - Knowledge is physically constructed by learners who are involved in active learning. - Knowledge is symbolically constructed by learners who are making their own representations of action. - Knowledge is socially constructed by learners who convey their experience making to others. - Knowledge is theoretically constructed by learners who try to explain things they don't completely understand. Providing a new situation in an educational system require more flexibility. This suggests that they (i.e., the Universities, Universities Colleges, and other educational establishments) should be able to create a more flexible atmosphere. Thus they need to attract the students and newly emerged groups; those who were earlier lacking the possibilities of education, particularly within the university environment. The management of distance education institutions and the administration of programs is a complex issue. At institutional and governmental levels there is need for new policies to support the development of distance educational programs, units, institutions, and other consortia, and there is also need for procedures to make such policies. The constructivist view can be helpful in creating a meaningful learning environment and is necessarily in order to engage oneself in a different kind of thinking. From this follows that, we must consider the ways that we teach and the ways that educators could use the technology to engage students, in order to achieve the objectives, especially within the distance educational system. Furthermore, the student should have the possibility of studying independent of time and space. Another important aspect of this viewpoint is that students should be able to control their process of learning. The student, from her/his own experience will be able to construct her/his own knowledge. Thus, a student should be able to teach himself, what he or she would wish to learn (the content) and the way in which this should be accomplished (the method). We have now noticed an overwhelming interest among the researchers concerning pragmatic approach of a constructivist viewpoint, particularly in the area of flexible learning. This means that flexibility should also be taken into consideration concerning the aspects of instructional design technique when the courses or materials are being developed. Furthermore, we need to find models for how the techniques (ICT) could be implicated when the courses and the materials are distributed on-line (Mkrttchian and Petrosyan, 2004b). In this discourse, the constructivist view, I am mainly focusing on my (All Armenian Internet University) research. Mkrttchian explicatively discussed the relevance of constructivist approach in learning. For example, the structure of a learning process is explicitly connected to theoretical foundations of learning environments. According to Jonassen, the process is as follows: when learners articulate what they have learned and reflect on the processes and decisions that were entailed by the process, they understand more and better, and are able to use their constructed knowledge in new situations. Mkrttchian's model explains the requirements for the interactions within the field of meaningful learning. It is evident that learning is a complicated process, which contains many interacting ingredients. Within this process we focus on five characteristic attributes in terms of meaningful learning, see also. The notion of an active learner originates from the work of Dietrich Brandt who advocated for learning by doing. Learning is a natural, adaptive human process. Real learning requires active learners, people engaged by a meaningful task in which they manipulate objects and the environment in which they are working. Dietrich Brandt (University of Technology) advocates following. The first key strategy is to identify the innovators in the organization, the small number of people who exist at every level who are interested in change. These people, if we can find them, should be helped with money, time, and external assistance to organize themselves, to develop a consensus of ideas and strategies for developing education in the organization. Even if I like the statement, I don't agree (with Dr. Brandt) (Mkrttchian and Yeolchian, 2004a) A good idea is to try to find “these” people in the “open” market. We need to find people from, e.g., architectures of information systems, systems programming educational environments, and bring them in to the pedagogical education's area. Clearly, I mean why we should identify people who are interested when we can find instructional designers in the area, mentioned above. According to Dewey, the key to meaningful learning is ownership of soluble the problem or a learning goal. It is important to present learners with interesting, relevant and engaging problems to be able to solve and these problems should be ill- structured. Sometimes, the students know that ordinary textbook problems or on-line material are prescriptive and well-structured and therefore have little reason or desire to solve them. Then we have ill-structured problems meaning that some aspects of it are obvious. Activity is a necessary component but not sufficient for constructive meaningful learning. Learners must reflect on their activity and observations to learn the lesson that their activity is supposed to teach. For example, new experiences often provide a discrepancy between what learners observe and what they understand. This means, which I mentioned above (with Dr. Brandt), that the student from his/her own experience is able to construct the knowledge. Thus, a student should be able to teach him, what he or she would wish to learn and the way in which this should be accomplished (Mkrttchian and Yeolchian, 2004b). All animals, including human beings, interact with their environment and learn about their world through those interactions in order to fulfill a goal. The activity theory focuses on the purposeful actions that are realized through conscious intentions and before intentions are manifest in action in the real world, they are planned. For example, technology based learning systems might require learners to articulate what they are doing, the decisions they make, the strategies they use, and the answers that they found (Kljajić and Mkrttchian 2004). A great deal of recent research has shown that learning tasks that are situated in an authentic meaningful real-world task or simulated in case-, project-, and [or] PBL environments are not only better understood, but are also more consistently transferred to new situations. Collaboration mostly requires conversation among participants. Learners should be accountable for their own knowledge, so even if you agree with the collaborative learning principles, the hardest part of applying for your beliefs will be assessing learners. I discussed above the creation of structures where the groups open up for collaboration. In this respect, we are to consider the assignments created together within the group. I am convinced that the collaboration in groups should be a way to have better control over the dropouts in the system. Furthermore, as we could establish before, the interaction and collaboration are explicitly focused in Mkrttchian’s model. In this context, where the knowledge of the context is transferred to the student, we need to be aware of the following: Using a constructivist model in the distance educational system, we require cooperation among participants. Furthermore, we need to be more aware of how and in what way these structures or modules are created. It is however important to remember that we must be aware of prerequisites of an environment where the cognitive structures of the process of learning are growing. Thus, the constructivist perspective needs these characteristic aspects in order to generate the knowledge within the learning activities. Together with these perspectives we need to crystallize a better technology and a greater cost-effectiveness as well. For example, the fixed costs of a distance educational system tend to be higher than those of the conventional university, while the variable or direct cost per student usually is lower. And of course, in distance education, the more students take the course, the lower the average cost of the course. For more discussion around costs and economical frameworks; see. I am (with Dr. Brandt) convinced that this economical point will play a major role in our academic renewal at the beginning of the 21st century. 3. CONCLUSIONS - To conclude the social constructivist theory provides a different view of analyzing learning processes and outcomes for the purpose of designing instructions. Rather than focusing on knowledge content, it focuses on the activities in which people are engaged, i.e., the social and contextual relationship among the collaborators in those activities, the goals and intentions and the objects or outcomes of those activities; e.g. - A meaningful learning might be created when technologies engage learners in these structures. Furthermore, with the ICT-tools, we could create good opportunities to transmit these structures within the distance educational system. On the other hand, good teaching cannot be reduced to technique and technological innovations. - The professional skill comes from the identity, integrity, and good knowledge of the teacher or the instructor. - When the ICT is to be used in a more extended approach within distance learning environments, we should also take into consideration the above mentioned viewpoint. REFERENCES Kljajić, M., V. Mkrttchian and A. Škraba, (2004). Collaborative Learning and Organizational Concept in Virtual University Education, Proc. of the International Conference of Cognition and Exploratory Learning of Digital Age, 396 – 399. ISBN: 972-98947-7-9. Mkrttchian, V. and D. Brandt (2002). Framework for the Effective Implementation of Advanced Technology in Armenia. Proc. of 15th IFAC World Congress. Mkrttchian, V. and M. Kljajić (2004), Study Problems of E-Learning and Virtual Enterprises in Online University, Proc. of the 6th International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics. 49-53. ISBN: 1- 894613-62-7. Mkrttchian, V. and E. Petrosyan (2004a). Multiversion Web Servers of Cooperative Work in All Armenian University Network, Proc. of International Conference Advanced Information Technology in Education. 34-38. Mkrttchian, V. and E. Petrosyan (2004b), Creation of the Web Servers of Joint Work in All Armenian Internet University Network, Proc. of Internet Conference the Information Technology in Science and Education. 41-44. Mkrttchian, V. and R. Yelchyan (2004a). Using the Virtual Networking Teaching Laboratory in All Armenian Internet University, Proc. of International Conference Advanced Information Technology in Education. 56-60. Mkrttchian, V. and R. Yelchyan (2004b), Apply to Virtual Networking Teaching Laboratory in All Armenian Internet University, Proc. of the 4th International Scientific Conference on Internet in Education and Science. 80-83. 
work_bx2xwrktgbda7gzs2mf7py5beu	----	The Diffusion of Internet-based Distance Education Technology among U.S. Associate Colleges Qiangbing Chen ∗ Department of Economics, Finance, Geography and Urban Studies East Tennessee State University P.O. Box 70686 Johnson City, Tennessee 37614 chenq@etsu.edu Zafer D. Ozdemir Farmer School of Business Miami University Oxford, OH 45056 ozdemir@muohio.edu Yali liu Department of Mathematics East Tennessee State University Johnson City, Tennessee 37614 liuy01@etsu.edu Abstract This paper analyzes the diffusion of internet-based distance education technology (NETDE) among the U.S. associate colleges. The study finds that an institution with experience in using an earlier generation distance education technology is more likely to adopt NETDE than an institution without such an experience. The finding supports the view of Cohen and Levinthal (1990) that an organization’s “absorptive Capability” plays a significant role in its innovative activities. Institution size also facilitates the adoption of NETDE. We relate this size effect to market power because the size effect is partly caused by customer switching costs present in the NETDE market. Finally, we find that, among public institutions, the presence of close competitors motivates an institution to adopt NETDE earlier. Keywords: Innovation Adoption, Internet-based Distance Education, Distance Learning, Or- ganizational Knowledge, Switching Cost. JEL Classification: O31 ∗Correspondence author. 1 1 INTRODUCTION Since Griliches (1957), the diffusion of technological innovation has been recognized as an important topic in the study of technological change. Many empirical studies have examined the roles of many firm-level and industry-level factors, especially firm size, plant size, market concentration and rival precedence, in technology adoption (Davies, 1979; Oster, 1982; Karshenas and Stoneman, 1993; Gourlay and Pentecost, 2002). In addition to these factors, the role of knowledge in innovation has received considerable attention. For example, some recent studies (Colombo and Mosconi, 1995; Gourlay and Pentecost, 2002) find that a firm’s knowledge base has significant effect on its innovation adoption decisions. The idea of knowledge base is close to Cohen and Levinthal (1989, 1990)’s concept of ”absorptive capability.” They write: Thus, prior related knowledge confers an ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends. These abilities collectively constitute what we call a firm’s “absorptive capacity.” (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) To adopt an innovation, a firm needs to acquire new knowledge that it did not previously possess. If the new knowledge is similar to the knowledge base a firm already has, then it is easier for the firm to assess and acquire the new knowledge which is necessary for the adoption of the innovation, increasing the probability of adoption. In contrast, if a firm has a small knowledge base, one would expect a lower probability of adoption. One of the objectives of this paper is to provide further evidence on the role of “absorptive capability” in technology adoption. We analyzed the adoption of internet-based distance education technology (hereafter NETDE) by American associate colleges. Associate colleges in the U.S. typically offer two-year courses covering general education or specific occupational education and award associate degrees and certificates, although they may also award baccalaureate degrees in rare cases. NETDE is a distance education technology that delivers instructions to off-campus students through the internet. Colleges differ in terms of their experiences with earlier generations of distance education technology, which in- 2 clude one-way audio, two-way audio, one-way video, two way-interactive video, etc. We use such experiences to measure a college’s “absorptive capability” in its adoption of NETDE because these experiences enhance an institution’s knowledge base for NETDE adoption. The paper also studies the roles that a number of additional factors play in technology diffusion. First, we analyze the roles of organization size and market power in technology adoption. With only a few exceptions, most empirical studies find a positive and significant effect of size on technology adoption (Hannan and McDowell, 1987; Colombo and Mosconi, 1995; Gourlay and Pentecost, 2002). In contrast, the effect of market power is far from conclusive (Hanna and McDowell, 1984a, 1984b, 1987; Levin, Levin, and Meisel, 1987; Romeo, 1975; Karshenas and Stoneman, 1993). In this study, we provide new empirical results. Furthermore, we suggest that there exists an implicit linkage between the size effect and the market power effect. In particular, if it is costly for buyers to switch to new producers, then a large producer in the old product market obtains more market power in a related new product market in the sense that more buyers are “stuck with” its products (Klemperer, 1987). With more “secured” customers, a large producer tends to adopt an innovation earlier. Based on this reasoning, we argue that the positive effect of firm size on innovation adoption provides an indirect supportive evidence to Schumpeter’s conjecture that market power facilitates innovation (Schumpeter, 1942).1 Second, we investigate the role of market demand on technology diffusion. Schmookler (1966) and Mansfield (1968) both suggest that large market demand motivates innovative activities. This study attempts to provide more empirical evidence on this issue (Levin, Levin and Meisel 1985, 1987; Oster, 1982). Third, we use a variety of measures to test the effect of market competition on the diffusion of NETDE. Finally, our study contributes to the literature of innovation diffusion among higher education institutions (Link and Scott, 2003) and contributes to this literature by incorporating education quality into our analysis. 1However, in his earlier work (Schumpeter, 1934), Schumpeter suggests that competition promotes innovation. In the current study, when we discuss Schumpeter’s hypothesis, we refer to the view expressed in his later work. 3 The paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2, we briefly introduce the history of Internet-based distance education. In Section 3, we develop a theoretical model to study the optimal timing of NETDE adoption and develop hypotheses based on this model. In Section 4, Cox and Weibull survival models are specified to test the hypotheses. Section 5 reports estimation results and and discussions, and Section 6 concludes the paper. 2 THE NETDE TECHNOLOGY The technology that uses networks to connect computers and to permit communication among them first emerged in 1969 in the United States. The earliest network was called ARPAnet. Over time, the size of the networks expanded and the network communication technology experienced gradual, and sometimes significant, improvements. In 1983, TCP (Transfer Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol) were adopted by international network standard organizations to replace the early version of Network Control Protocol (NCP). The new protocols were faster, easier to use, and less expensive to implement than NCP. From then on, all networks that use TCP/IP have collectively become known as the Internet. The standardization of TCP/IP boosted the number of internet sites and users exponentially. In 1991, the World Wide Web (WWW) technology was introduced. WWW is a system of internet servers that supports specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a markup language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graph, audio, and video files. This makes it possible to jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hyperlinks and facilitates communication through the Internet. The instructional technologies used by the U.S. associate colleges include traditional classroom teaching and a variety of distance education technologies. The latter include traditional technologies such as one-way audio, two-way audio, one-way video, two-way interactive video, and others. The Internet-based distance education technology emerged in the early 1980s. The earliest application of the Internet in distance education in our sample occurred in 1983. Coincidentally, 1983 is the 4 year TCP/IP was officially adopted and the Internet received its official name. For colleges and universities, a primary benefit of NETDE is to expand their accessibility to potential learners. NETDE provides great flexibility in the time and location of learning. Many potential students who would otherwise be unable to receive higher education are able to do so with NETDE. The adoption of NETDE might also enable colleges and universities to expand their instructional capacity without much investment in new buildings. For students, the benefits of NETDE primarily include time flexibility and reductions in travel cost (Ozdemir and Abrevaya, 2007; Ozdemir et al., 2007). Time flexibility is especially valuable for many working students because NETDE allows them to avoid some opportunity costs of on-campus learning, primarily the salaries earned from current jobs. Past research that investigates the cost implications of NETDE instruction provides inconclusive results. A study conducted at the University of Illinois finds that unit costs dropped on all nine courses when NETDE delivery substituted for classroom instruction. However, Arizona Learning System, a state-wide distance education consortium, finds that the cost per course enrollment of NETDE is higher than that of traditional classroom instruction (Rumble, 2001, p. 84). Bates (2000) argues that the unit cost of NETDE relative to classroom instruction varies by class size and the amount of special purpose materials used in NETDE. Due to some measurement problems present in these studies, we are not sure to what degree these costs represent the economic cost. For example, are the buildings on campus considered to be sunk or not? If they are sunk, then the economic cost of using them is zero. In the two calculations cited by Rumble (2001), buildings are treated as non- sunk. One conclusion we might draw is that from the institutions’ perspective, education delivered through NETDE does not seem to have a substantial cost advantage over traditional classroom instruction. Compared to other distance education technologies, NETDE may even be significantly more costly (Rumble, 2001, p. 85). Regarding the quality of NETDE instruction, some studies show that there is no significant difference in learning outcomes between traditional classroom learning and NETDE learning (Phelps, 5 Wells, Ashworth and Hahn, 1991; Finkelstein, 2000, p. 21; Allen and Seaman, 2004). In our estimation, we examine the effect of education quality on the adoption of NETDE. 3 THE THEORY AND HYPOTHESES Institutions are of three types: public not-for-profit, private not-for-profit, and private for-profit. Each of these institutions provides differentiated NETDE products. The market demand that an institution faces is p = a − bq, (1) where p is market price per unit of NETDE enrollment, q represents the quantity of NETDE enroll- ment, a and b are coefficients. To adopt NETDE, each institution must spend amount F (t) on capital equipment, where F (t) is decreasing (due to technological progress in capital goods production) and concave (due to the limited potential of improvements in technology) over time. Further, the investment is assumed to be sunk. The variable costs in offering NETDE primarily are made up of the cost of instruction. For simplicity, we assume the marginal cost of NETDE is constant and denote it by c. In Figure 1, line 1 (L1) represents market demand, line 2 (L2) represents marginal cost, and line 3 (L3) represents marginal revenue. Not-for-profit institutions (public or private) aim to maximize social welfare. Thus, these institutions set their output q at the level where marginal cost c equals the market price. Hence, we have c = a − bq. (2) Through (2), the optimal output q∗s is given by (3) q∗s = (a − c)/b. (3) 6 Figure 1: Optimal Output: For-profit and Not-for-profit Institutions Social welfare at time t is represented by triangle ABC whose area is given by (a − c)2/2b. The total social welfare of NETDE adoption is w = ∫ ∞ t (a − c)2 2b dτ − F (t). (4) To simplify the analysis, the discount factor is assumed to be 0. The institution’s objective is to choose time t to maximize (4). The first order condition is G = ∂w ∂t∗ = − (a − c)2 2b − F ′(t∗) = 0. (5) According to (5), we obtain ∂G ∂t∗ = −F ′′(t∗) ≤ 0. (6) ∂G ∂a = −(a − c)/b ≤ 0. (7) 7 ∂G ∂b = (a − c)2/2b2 ≥ 0. (8) ∂G ∂c = (a − c)/b ≥ 0. (9) According to the total derivative theorem, we further have ∂t∗ ∂a = − ∂G/∂a ∂G/∂t∗ ≤ 0 (10) ∂t∗ ∂b = − ∂G/∂b ∂G/∂t∗ ≥ 0 (11) ∂t∗ ∂c = − ∂G/∂c ∂G/∂t∗ ≥ 0 (12) Instead of social welfare, for-profit institutions aim to maximize profit (represented by the area BDEF in Figure 1). For a monopoly institution facing a linear demand, the optimal output and current profit at time t are given by (13) and (14) below, respectively. q∗p = (a − c)/2b. (13) π(t) = (a − c)2/4b. (14) Following a similar procedure outlined for not-for-profit institutions above, the first order condi- tion for a for-profit institution is G = (a − c)2/4b − F ′(t∗) = 0. (15) Comparing the two first order conditions (5) and (15), the optimal adoption date of the for-profit institutions should be later than that of not-for-profit institutions because (a − c)2/4b is less than (a − c)2/2b and F (t∗) is concave in t∗. Hence, we have our first hypothesis. 8 Hypothesis 1. For-profit institutions should adopt NETDE later than not-for-profit institu- tions, other things equal. The directions of the impacts of coefficients a, b, and c on t∗ are the same for both a for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, as given by (10), (11), and (12). Using the results above, we next examine the effects of different factors on the adoption time of NETDE. 3.1 The effect of absorptive capability Despite its different technology, NETDE is similar to earlier distance education technologies in its ability to deliver instruction to off-campus students. Because of this similarity, the knowledge accumulated by a college in its experience with earlier generations of distance education technology contributes to its “absorptive capability” in the adoption of NETDE. Thus, we expect an institution with such an experience to have a lower marginal cost in delivering instruction online than an institution without such an experience. By (12), lower marginal cost implies earlier adoption time. Hence we have the following hypothesis. Hypothesis 2. Institutions with experience in using earlier generations of distance education technology should adopt NETDE earlier than institutions without such an experience. As discussed in Section 5, we asked associate colleges if they delivered distance education in the past using one-way audio, two-way audio, one-way video, or other technologies. If the answer is “yes,” the variable Ade is set to 1; Ade equals 0 otherwise.2 3.2 The effect of institutional size Economists’ interest in the relation between firm size and innovativeness started as early as Schum- peter who expressed different views on the issue at different stages of his research (Schumpeter, 2Theoretically, the intensity of the utilization of alternative distance education technologies before the adoption of NETDE could be a better measure of “absorptive capability.” Unfortunately, historical data on the enrollment in these courses are unavailable. Some surveyed institutions reported their enrollments in alternative distance education courses in academic year 2004-2005. However, this enrollment figure is endogenous because the adoption of NETDE can impact the enrollments in alternative distance education courses. As a result, the intensity of utilization of alternative distance education technology is not incorporated into the statistical model discussed in section 4. Distance education office is another good measure of “absorptive capability.” However, most institutions established distance education office after NETDE was adopted. To keep more observations in the estimation, we choose to exclude distance education office from the model. 9 1934; 1942). Though most studies find a positive effect of firm size on innovative activities, Oster (1982) finds a negative correlation between firm size and the likelihood of technology adoption. In the adoption of NETDE, large institutions have some advantages. First, an institution with a large enrollment in traditional classroom instruction is more likely to face larger market demand for NETDE education. For associate colleges, classroom instruction primarily attracts students from local community, and hence traditionally an institution’s size is largely determined by the population in the area it serves. If potential NETDE students face considerable cost in collecting and assessing information of NETDE courses on the market, and an institution has some advantage in spreading its course information to local residents (due to, for example, more local social networking and a larger local alumni body), then a large institution is likely to face large market demand for its NETDE education. In turn, this large demand tends to promote the adoption of NETDE. Similarly, if there is a minimum efficient scale in the utilization of NETDE, a large institution is more likely to quickly adopt NETDE and reach this scale. Using a as a proxy for the size of the market, (10) suggests that the size of an institution positively affects NETDE adoption. On the other hand, size has its drawbacks as well. The emergence of an innovation may destroy the rent of existing assets, and thus a big producer is likely to lose more than a small producer due to its larger stock of current capital goods. This is one of the reasons why monopoly power tends to retard innovation (Reinganum, 1989, p. 868). However, this factor seems unlikely to have a substantial effect in the diffusion of NETDE. Since many resources used in classroom instruction may also be used in NETDE instruction, the rent of existing assets does not change much. For example, an experienced classroom instructor can learn to deliver instruction through NETDE after proper training. Christensen (1997) discusses the concept of “innovator’s dilemma,” where leading firms with an earlier generation of technology may very likely miss the opportunity to exploit a disruptive inno- vation. Two factors make an innovation disruptive. First, the innovation is potentially dominant in the future market but is only marginal in the current market. Second, the strategic management 10 techniques of current leading firms blind them from recognizing the importance of adopting the in- novation. In our context, NETDE is an important innovation, but it need not marginalize classroom education. Also, the management techniques of classroom education seem unlikely to prevent the administration of a college from recognizing the advantages of NETDE. We therefore maintain that NETDE is not a disruptive innovation in the sense of Christensen (1997). In summary, we expect that size-related advantages of NETDE adoption outweigh its size-related inertia, and hence size has a positive effect on the adoption of NETDE. Hypothesis 3. The size of an institution should have a positive effect on NETDE adoption. 3.3 The effect of market size The larger the size of the market, the larger the demand for the product of a producer, and thus the easier it is to recoup the investment in technology that improves that product. In higher education, especially within the context of associate colleges, states and local communities represent the markets for students. Thus, the size of a state market is closely related to the population of that state.3 We therefore use the state population between ages 18 and 65 as a measure of demand for NETDE, and expect a large state population to facilitate adoption. Hypothesis 4a. State population has a positive effect on the probability of NETDE adoption, other things equal. The benefits of NETDE may also be related to state population density. Lower population density implies a longer travel time, on average, to access classroom instruction (Ozdemir et al. 2007). Since NETDE stands to reduce travel costs, the demand for NETDE should be larger in states with lower population densities.4 For reasons similar to those discussed for Hypothesis 4a, we state the following hypothesis. 3Note that state population may not be a good proxy for market demand for a small number of institutions that primarily compete in a local market rather than the whole state. To mitigate this weakness, we also use population density to proxy market demand in hypothesis 4b below. 4The geographic distribution of residents can be highly uneven. In extreme cases, a state may have a significant proportion of its residents located in one or two big cities (such as Nevada and Arizona). However, since even in such states a substantial proportion of residents are dispersed in rural areas, state population density can serve as a proper measure of mean travel costs. 11 Hypothesis 4b. State population density has a negative effect on the probability of NETDE adoption, other things equal. The hypotheses presented here are to some extent related to a stream of literature that examines the effect of location on the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) (Forman and Goldfarb, 2005). One school of thought in this stream argues that the gross benefits of ICT adoption will decrease with the size of an adopter’s location, other things equal (Cairncross, 1997; Forman et al., 2005), whereas another school of thought maintains that the benefits will increase with the size of location (Gaspar and Glaeser, 1998). The underlying rationale for these arguments deals with the relative cost and availability of data communication technologies as well as complementary products and services (such as a skilled labor market) in rural and urban areas. Past empirical research provide evidence supporting both views. In our context, the main benefit of NETDE is eliminating the need to travel for education. We therefore side with the former school of thought discussed above and expect a higher level of NETDE adoption in states with lower population densities, all else equal. 3.4 The effect of market competition We test the Schumpeter hypothesis that monopoly power promotes innovativeness (Schumpeter, 1942). In our setting, taking a as given, intensified competition implies a larger b. That is, given price p, the quantity demanded decreases when competition intensifies. We know from (11) that b has a negative effect on the propensity to adopt NETDE. A variety of approaches are used to measure the degree of market competition. If a U.S. state is a proper education market for in-state public institutions (Appendix 1 discusses the boundaries of markets), we use the number of public institutions and Herfindahl index of a state market to measure the degree of market competition. If institutions primarily compete in local markets, we use the distance between an institution and its nearest competitor and the number of institutions within 50 miles of its location to measure the degree of market competition that the institution faces. The next hypothesis states the expected 12 relationship between market competition and NETDE adoption. Hypothesis 5. The larger the number of public institutions in a state, the lower the propensity to adopt NETDE. The larger the Herfindahl index in a state, the higher the propensity to adopt NETDE. The larger the number of institutions within 50 miles of an institution’s location, the lower the propensity to adopt NETDE. The longer the distance from the nearest competitor, the higher the propensity to adopt. 3.5 Controlling for education quality Besides the factors discussed above, we also examine the effect of education quality on the adoption of NETDE. We use an institution’s graduation rate in 1993 as a measure of its education quality and treat it as an institutional characteristic. Since NETDE had had little impact on college teaching by 1993, our selection of graduation rate in year 1993 avoids simultaneity concerns. 4 THE STATISTICAL MODEL A hazard model is employed to test the hypotheses discussed above. Time is divided into M + 1 intervals, [0, a1), [a1, a2), · · · , [aM−1, aM ) , [aM , ∞), where am is a known constant for every m, and each interval is equal to one year. Let T denote the length of time between the time when NETDE first emerges and the time when an institution adopts NETDE. Let F (t) = P (T ≤ t), t ≥ 0 denote the cumulative distribution function of T . For a positive value h, let P (t ≤ T ≤ t + h|T ≥ t) denote the probability of adopting NETDE in the interval [t, t + h), under the condition that the institution has not adopted NETDE by time t. A hazard function for t is defined as λ(t) = lim h→0 P (t ≤ T ≤ t + h|T ≥ t) h , (16) where λ(t) is the instantaneous rate of adoption per unit of time, conditional on the institution having not adopted NETDE by time t. Observations concluding their spells in the last interval [aM , ∞) are censored at time aM . Define 13 x1, x2, · · · , xM as the covariates of an observation in each of the intervals, respectively. The covariates are time-varying (but constant within each interval). Before estimation, we need to specify the hazard function. Here we use the piecewise-constant proportional hazard function because of its flexibility. For observation i, in each interval m = 1, 2, · · · , M , the hazard function is λ(s; xi,m, θ) = exp(xi,mβ)λm. (17) We first use the Cox method to estimate the model primarily because of its merit of flexibility (with no restriction on the shape of the baseline hazard). The number of total observations in the sample is denoted by n. Define the cumulative number of adopters before the mth interval as nm−1. The conditional probability that observation i adopts NETDE in interval [am−1, am), given that any of the n − nm−1 observations could have adopted NETDE in the interval, is given by exp(xi,mβ)λm n∑ j=n−nm−1+1 exp (xj,mβ) λm = exp (xi,mβ) n∑ j=n−nm−1+1 exp (xj,mβ) . (18) The likelihood is obtained by summing up the partial likelihood of all observations. Hence the log-likelihood function is L(β) = n∑ i  xi,mβ − ln   n∑ j=n−nm−1+1 exp (xj,mβ)     . (19) We also estimate a Weibull model 5 to investigate the issue of time dependence in diffusion. The hazard function is specified as λ(s; xi,m, θ) = exp(xi,mβ)αγ t α. (20) 5The estimation of Weibull model is technically complicated when covariates are time dependent. To make the estimation procedure simple, we replace time-varying Ade and Size by time invariant variables Adelength and Sizeave. The definitions of Adelength and Sizeave are provided in Table 1. 14 5 DATA AND ESTIMATION 5.1 Data description The data used in the estimation are obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) maintained by the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Census Bureau 6 and a survey conducted by the authors. The survey was conducted in May, June and July of 2005. In the survey, we asked institutions about the year of adoption of NETDE, the year of adoption of an earlier generation of distance education technology,7 the enrollment of NETDE students and the number of NETDE courses offered. 1,361 surveys were sent out through emails to the persons in charge of academic affairs, or distance education, or instructional technology in each of the associate colleges. 353 responses were received, resulting in a response rate close to 26%. Figure 2 is plotted using the adoption dates provided by 309 of the responding institutions. Similar to several other previous empirical studies, the diffusion curve here is S-shaped. NETDE diffused at a relatively slow pace between 1983 and 1996 and at a high rate between 1997 and 2001. The diffusion process slowed down after 2001. Eighty-two percent of the institutions in our sample had adopted the innovation by the end of 2004-2005 academic year. We also check whether the diffusion of NETDE exhibited a geographical pattern. For example, we want to know whether colleges near an IT hub such as Silicon Valley tended to adopt the innovation early, or whether the diffusion process started from one area and then spreaded out to the surrounding regions. After examining the adoption dates and home states of the adopters, we do not find an obvious geographical pattern in the diffusion process. The adoptions occurred largely at an even rate across geographical regions. After removing some observations due to missing data, the sample size reduced to 285. The sample includes 246 public institutions, 20 private for-profit institutions and 19 private not-for-profit institutions. The 285 institutions in the sample are from 46 states. The academic year 1982-1983 is 6See http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html for details. 7These technologies include one-way audio, two-way audio, one-way video, two-way video, and some others. 15 Figure 2: The Diffusion Path of NETDE Technology chosen as the baseline year to measure the duration of an event because the earliest adoption in our sample occurred in 1983-1984 academic year. The latest adoption occurred in academic year 2004- 2005. The censoring date is the end of summer semester in 2005 when the survey was conducted. As a result, 46 observations in the sample are right censored. Table 1 shows the definition of variables and their descriptive statistics. 5.2 Estimation and discussion We use software package SAS to estimate the Cox model (19) and Weibull model (20). The results are presented in Table 2, and in Table 3 which presents the results for public institutions only. We first discuss Cox estimations. The coefficient of Nonprofit is significant in the Cox estimation in Table 2. The hazard ratio indicates that a not-for-profit institution is 180% more likely to adopt NETDE than a for-profit-institution, a result consistent with Hypothesis 1.8 8A caution is that variable Nonprofit may capture some effect of government subsidy(Most public institutions receive subsidies for distance education from government.) Subsidy results in lower marginal (private instead of social) cost of instruction for an institution, hence promotes NETDE adoption. However, as supervisor and fund provider, government should have the authority to approve or stop an education program in a public institution, and we assume government’s decision to be based on social cost concerns. As a result, the effect of lower private marginal cost due to subsidy on NETDE adoption may not be large. Based on the discussions, we interpret the statistical evidence as supportive to Hypothesis 1. 16 Table 1: Descriptive Statistics Variable Definition Mean SD Max Min Ade Time-varying covariate na na na na 1, if an institution provided alternative distance education before or in the period; 0, otherwise. Adelength The length of Ade experience 10.11 10.6 49 0 between the adoption year and 2004 Coll The number of public associate 50 37.2 138 2 institutions in a state. Density The population density 220.8 221.0 1134.4 5.1 (residents per square mile) of the home state of an institution. Dn (in 10 miles)Distance to the nearest 2.94 3.24 15.06 0 institution. Grate The ratio of associate degree 0.22 0.15 0.93 0.001 awarded to 12 month unduplicated headcount Herf Herfindahl Index for the public 890.7 1040.9 10000 124.7 institutions in a state market. Nonprofit The legal status of an 0.93 0.26 1 0 institution; 1 for not-for-profit institutions; 0, otherwise. Num50 The number of institutions within 6.7 8.3 35 0 50 miles of the institution. Pop The population (with age greater 7.21 6.25 22.0 0.3 than 18 and less than 65) of a state in 2000 (in millions). Size (in thousands)Time-varying covariate; na na na na The size of an institution in each year before it adopts NETDE or is cencored. Sizeave (in thousands)The average size of 4.87 5.24 34.95 0.10 an institution in the period between 1983 and 2005. Year The year when an institution 1998.44 2.92 2004 1983 adopted NETDE. 17 Table 2: The Determinants of The Adoption of NETDE: All Schools Variable Cox Hazard Weibull Hazard Estimation Ratio Estimation Ratio Ade 1.07(0.15) **** 2.93 Adelenghth 0.038(0.006) **** 1.04 Density -3.99E-4(3.42E-4) 1.00 - 0.0004(0.0003) 0.99 Dn -2.78E-3(2.32-3) 0.99 -0.0027(0.0023) 0.99 Grate -0.92(0.65) 0.40 -1.65(0.63 )*** 0.19 Nonprofit 1.03(0.49) ** 2.80 1.36(0.48)*** 3.89 Num50 0.006(0.01) 0.99 -0.019(0.01)* 0.98 Pop -0.004(0.011) 0.99 -0.0035( 0.011) 0.99 Sizeave 0.048(0.016)*** 1.05 Size 0.046(0.015) *** 1.05 α 6.44(0.34)** Log likelihood -1218.09 11.16 N 285 285 Notes: * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01, **** p < 0.001 Table 3: The Determinants of The Adoption of NETDE: Public Schools Variable Cox Hazard Weibull Hazard Estimation Ratio Estimation Ratio Ade 0.90(0.15) **** 2.45 Adelenghth 0.033(0.0063)**** 1.03 Coll -0.0057(0.0073) 0.99 -0.0046(0.0075) 0.99 Density -4.7E-4(3.59E-4) 1.00 -0.00057 (0.00036) 0.99 Dn -0.045(0.024)* 0.96 -0.005(0.0023)** 0.99 Grate -0.28(0.79) 0.76 -0.43 (0.79 ) 0.65 Herf 2.79E-5(8.67E-5) 1.00 1.25E-5(8.87E-5) 1.00 Num50 -0.0034(0.01) 0.99 0.016( 0.011) 0.98 Pop 0.03(0.043) 1.03 0.027(0.045) 1.03 Size 0.03(0.017)** 1.034 Sizeav 0.034( 0.017)** 1.03 α 6.64(0.35 )** Log likelihood - 1110.4 39.61 N 246 246 Notes: * p < 0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01, **** p < 0.001 18 The Cox estimation in Table 2 shows that the coefficient of the variable Ade (in the second column) is significant. The likelihood ratio 9 is 2.93 which indicates that within an interval an institution having experiences with earlier generations of technology has about 193% more proba- bility to adopt NETDE than an institution not having the experience. We obtain similar results for variable Ade when including only public institutions in the analysis (See Table 3, column 2). These results are consistent with our theoretical prediction in Hypothesis 2 that an institution’s “ab- sorptive capability” (measured by its experiences with prior technologies) facilitates its adoption of NETDE. This result also supports the existence of rank effect in innovation diffusion (Karshenas and Stoneman,1993). Some empirical studies find a significant effect of technology complementarities on technology adoption (see, for example, Hwang and Weil, 1997, p. 30). The idea is that if technology A and B are complementary in production, then a firm using technology A has a greater incentive to adopt B than a firm without technology A. However, if the two technologies require similar or- ganizational knowledge in their application, then the correlation between the use of technology A and B can not be solely attributed to the effect of technology complementarities, because it could also be the case that the use of technology A accumulates certain organizational capabilities which facilitate the adoption of technology B. In this situation, the control for the effect of organizational capability may be necessary to detect the effects of technological complementarities. The Cox estimation in Table 2 suggests a positive and highly significant coefficient for Size, which is consistent with Hypothesis 3. This result is also in line with the results of many other studies. A common explanation for this finding is that large institutions usually have more internal resources ( e.g., capital funds) under control. In the case of NETDE, internal resources may not be the primary reason for a size advantage because the required amount of capital investment is not large (Rumble, 2001). Instead, we suggest that friction in buyer searching activities may be important in explaining the size effect. Because NETDE courses offered by different institutions are differentiated, it can be quite costly for students to search for and assess information on NETDE 9The hazard ratio is the ratio between the hazard rate after a one unit increase in the covariate and the hazard rate before the change. 19 courses. Consequently, students may be inclined to take NETDE course from the most familiar institution or which they trust most. This suggests that large institutions are more likely to face large demand for NETDE education than smaller institutions because they are more broadly known ( e.g., due to their larger alumni body), supporting an earlier adoption by these institutions. The hazard ratio for Size indicates that an increase of 1,000 in size is associated with an increase in the probability of adoption in an interval by about 5%. The mean of Size is around 5,000. Thus, on average, a 20% increase in size results in a 5% increase in the probability of adoption in an interval. Comparing to the percentage change in the size of an institution, the change in the probability of adoption does not seem to be large. Since the diffusion process took about two decades, the effect of size on the cumulative hazard rate is more significant. Cox estimation provides similar results when including only public institutions in the analysis. This effect of institution size is to some degree related to the Schumpeter’s discussion of monopoly power and innovation. Schumpeter (1942, p. 87-90) suggests that monopolistic power helps firms secure strategic resources and attract prospective customers which are vital to justify the investment in innovation. Without the two conditions, it is difficult for a firm to make commitment to the highly risky investments in new products, new production method and new markets. In the case of NETDE, large institutions are able to get more customers than small ones due to market friction. In other words, the market imperfection gives large institutions more monopolistic power than small institutions in the sense that the former can attract more customers. In turn, this larger body of secured customers reduces the firm’s investment risk and tends to make larger institutions adopt NETDE earlier. Another possible factor causing size advantage is that the efficient adoption of NETDE very likely requires a minimum scale. For example, an institution would not have much incentive to adopt NETDE to serve an expected enrollment of 10 students. Since large institutions face large demand as discussed above, they are more likely to reach the minimum efficient scale. This explanation of size effect based on market imperfection and minimum efficient scale in adop- 20 tion may help explain some contradictory findings in the literature. For example, Oster (1982) finds a negative effect of firm size on the adoption of Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) by U.S. steel firms. Her explanation of the finding is based on the idea of Adams and Dirlam (1966) that “structural and behavioral characteristics of oligopolized industries prevent the dominant (firm) from pioneer- ing.” Based on the argument above, another possible explanation is that steel products are highly standard, and buyers’ search costs are relatively low. Consequently, large firms cannot secure more customers for its new capacity (due to the adoption of BOF) than their smaller rivals, and hence large firms do not have more incentive to adopt the innovation. Further, capital investments in steel industry are highly sunk. For the reasons discussed in section 3.2, to protect the rent of previous capital stock, large steel firms tend to delay the adoption of BOF. In both Cox estimations, variables Pop and Density are both insignificant, not supporting Hy- potheses 4a and 4b. Like Levin, Levin and Meisel (1985), our results suggest that market size has no significant effect on technology adoption. If institutions primarily compete in local markets as discussed before, then state population is not a good proxy for the market demand an institution faces, and this may explain why state population is insignificant. The insignificance of Density may be due to the distinct advantages of adoption realized separately by urban and rural establishments as discussed in the ICT literature (Forman and Goldfarb, 2005; 2006). Using only public institutions, variables Coll and Herf are both insignificant. Variable Num50 is insignificant in both Cox estimations. When using all institutions, Dn is also insignificant. However, when using only public institutions, Dn is significant. The likelihood ratio suggests that a 10 mile decrease in distance to closest competitor would increase the probability of adoption by 4%. This result is contradictory to Hypothesis 5 which suggests that Dn should have a positive sign. A possible explanation is that when the distance to the nearest competitor is large, an institution may have more organizational inertia to change due to less competitive pressure. Combining the discussion of institution size and distance, it seems that market power obtained from different sources may have different effects on innovative activities. 21 In both Cox estimations, variable Grate is insignificant. That is, education quality has no significant impact on NETDE adoption. The result is somewhat counter-intuitive because, compared to low-quality institutions, high-quality institutions may fear NETDE to negatively affect their quality reputation and hence be more reluctant to adopt NETDE. A possible explanation is that an institution with high quality in classroom instruction may also be able to offer high quality NETDE courses. Thus, while high-quality institutions may be concerned with the low teaching quality of NETDE, low-quality institutions may also be concerned that NETDE may lower their quality even further. It may also be that NETDE is as effective as in-class learning as the technology-mediated learning literature suggests (Fjermestad et al., 2004). The results we obtain in Weibull estimations are similar to those of Cox estimations with two exceptions.10 The two exceptions are that, in Table 2, Weibull estimation gives the results that variables Grate and Num50 are both significant. However, these results are not robust across different specifications because in the other three estimations we cannot find similar results. Further more, since Cox model is less restrictive in model specification than Weibull model, we suggest that the results in Cox models are more reliable. In both Weibull estimations, α is significantly greater than 1, the magnitude is also large (greater than 6).These results suggest that institutions are more likely to adopt NETDE as time elapses, supporting the existence of strong epidemic effects in technology diffusion as some models suggest (Forman and Goldfarb, 2006). 6 FURTHER DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study investigates the adoption of NETDE technology by U.S. associate educational institu- tions. Three findings are of primary interest. First, we find that an institution with experience in using earlier generations of distance education technology tends to adopt NETDE significantly earlier than institutions without such experience. This result is consistent to the argument of Co- 10We note that the assumption of a Weibull model in the diffusion process is appropriate. Please see Appendix 2 for details. We thank the referees for the suggestion to investigate the issue of time dependence in diffusion. 22 hen and Levinthal (1990) that an organization’s absorptive capability is important in its innovative activities. Second, we suggest a linkage between significant size effect and Schumpeter’s hypothesis. A large associate college’s internal resources may not be the main reason for the size effect in the diffusion of NETDE. Instead, we believe that an important source of the size effect may be monopolistic power caused by market friction (Klemperer, 1987). As discussed before, an originally large organization is more likely to get more customers in a related new market. This ability to have a larger secured customer base might be interpreted as a kind of monopolistic power over customers because cus- tomers are “stuck” to the institution not because of better service or lower price, but because of costliness in accessing alternative (unfamiliar) choices. In this situation, we believe size results in monopolistic power, and the significance of variable size is evidence supporting the hypothesis that monopolistic power facilitates innovation. Third, we find that, when using only public institutions in the estimation, the distance to the nearest institution has a negative effect on the probability of adoption. To link the monopolistic power explanation to the size effect above, it seems different kinds of monopolistic power have different effects on innovative activities. Monopolistic power caused by market friction tends to keep more customers for a large associate college, and facilitate its NETDE adoption. In contrast, monopolistic power due to fewer competitors results in organizational inertia and retards NETDE adoption. We also find that NETDE markets are still very local. When information costs are minimal, potential NETDE students are less likely to prefer local institutions to distant institutions. However, our estimation shows that this is not the case, supporting our conjecture that there is considerable friction in the NETDE market and that institutions attract students primarily from their local communities. The popular prediction that NETDE technology will remove traditional geographical boundaries separating regional markets does not seem to be fully realized yet. Researchers usually use Herfindahl index and the total number of firms in a market as a proxy for the degree of market 23 competition. These measures are primarily based on Cournot competition model which requires firms to compete in one market. If firms primarily compete in distinct regional markets, as is the case for NETDE, then Herfindahl index and the total number of firms may be inaccurate measures for the degree of competition in the greater, combined market. We suggest that this may be one of the factors that lead to inconclusive results about market competition in the literature. 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The Theory of Industrial Organization, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 30 Taymaz, Erol (1990). “Flexible Automation in the U.S. Engineering Industries,” International Journal of Industry Organization, Vol. 9, pp. 557-572. APPENDIX 1 Evidence from many sources indicates that in-state students account for most of the student body in public institutions. For example, Illinois Virtual Campus, a state wide distance education consor- tium, reports that Illinois public associate institutions have only 3% of the total NETDE students from outside Illinois in the Spring/Winter term 2005. At the same time, 97% percent of the associate college students study in public institutions. NETDE students rarely cross state borders primarily because public associate institutions charge different tuition for in-state students (low) and out-state students (high), due to the strong support from state governments (on average, state funds account for 44% percent of the total revenue of public associate colleges. 11 The difference between the two tuition levels is considerable, compared to the income level of the students and the value of the education. Consequently very few students attend an associate college located out of his or her residential state. Another reason may be that the recognition and reputation of an associate college are largely confined to the local community and its home state. Traditional ties between in-state employers and colleges could be important to a student’s chance on a local job market. A student earning an NETDE degree or certificate from an out-state associate college is likely disadvantaged in the local job market because employers in the local community may have little experience to judge the quality of the education provided by an unfamiliar institution. Further, the mission of a public associate college is to serve home state and local communities. This limits the allocation of resources and attention (for example, the marketing of the NETDE courses) to explore out-state market opportunities. The last reason lies in information spreading channels for NETDE courses. In a survey conducted 11Data source: http://www.aacc.nche.edu. 31 by the California Chancellor’s office of Distance Education in 2003, the most important channels through which a student obtains NETDE course information are catalogs, teacher recommendations, and recommendations of friends. Only 0.5% of the NETDE students in California became aware of the distance education courses they took through advertisements. Less than 8% of the NETDE students in California became aware of the distance courses they took through website visits. In this situation, students in an area are more likely to take NETDE courses offered by local and in-state institutions than courses offered by unfamiliar out-state institutions. Though the evidence above tends to support the view that the boundaries of a NETDE market do not exceed a state, it may be the case that a state contains several distinct regional markets. For example, Ivy Tech in Lafayette City of Indiana state may have very few or almost no NETDE students from Evansville or South Bend of Indiana. In this case, a proper market should be a county or city, and subsequently the counting of institutions in a state loses its meaning to measure market concentration. To deal with this problem, we also use the distance between an institution and its nearest institution, the number of institutions within 50 miles of an institutions geographical location to measure the degree of market competition. Compared to public associate institutions, private institutions are likely to enroll a higher per- centage of out-state students primarily because of their flat tuition rate. For this reason, we exclude observations of private institutions from the sample in the analysis of the market competition effect. When we count the number of competitors in a state market, we also exclude private institutions for the similar reasons. This treatment should have little effect on the measurement of market com- petition because private institutions account for only around 3% of the total associate education market. Our survey data show private institutions remain a similar marginal status in the segment of NETDE market. 32 APPENDIX 2 For both Weibull estimations, we use Cox-Snell residuals to assess the fit of the models. If a model fits the data, then the plot of Cox-Snell residuals versus the Nelson-Aalen estimator of the cumulative hazard should be a straight line with slope 1 (Klein and Moeschberger, 2003, pp. 414-419). By the principle, figure 3 and 4 suggest that Weibull specification is proper for out data. Figure 3: Weibull Assumption Check All Institutions 33 Figure 4: Weibull Assumption Check Public Institutions 34 
work_c6kapqyi6ventcewulrlyq6ilq	----	Microsoft Word - sumitra_14us090502_la_final_modify  Abstract—The research focus on study, analyze and d esign the model of the infrastructure and computer networks for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blen ded learning. The collected information from study and analyze process that information was evaluated by the index of item objective congruence (IOC) by 9 specialists to design model. The results of evaluate the model with th e mean and stand ard deviation by the sample of 9 speci alists value is 3.85. The re sults showed that the infrastructure and computer networks are designed to be appropriate to a great extent appropriate to a great extent. Keywords—Blended Learning, New M edia, Infrastructure and Computer Network, Tele-Education, Online Learning. I. INTRODUCTION HAILAND and the world are changing rapidly due to the changing social environment. There are many changes such as the economy or knowledge economy, politics, society and technology, and espe cially in the field of digital communication and co mputer technology to make the world smaller. Local communities become the world community and shortens the time to communicate to the system as we call real time and online. If there are an y actions that occur from one hemisphere will affect all around the world. For exa mple, the economic crisis in Europe and the United States will affect the economy to the world immediately, through communication systems and i nformation technology such as the internet, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Impact of change in information communication and technology (ICT) and new media [7], [9], the model of management education and learning changed enormously in the last decade, the classroom and laboratory to de velop into the virtual classroom, simulations and virtual experiments in teac hing distance learning and online systems or the b lended learning with no limit as to time and pl ace. It makes teaching the class was to learn online such as e-learning, and 100% online learning system in university of developed countries with more than 30% of all courses. There a re also many organizations that have developed a sys tem of distance education and o nline, including Khanaccademy.org. The development of learning through new media and the Internet, the world pop ulation has an education from elementary school to university. Courses are more than 1,000 stories and p rovide content knowledge Sumitra Nuanmeesri is with the f aculty of science and technol ogy, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, Dusit, Bangkok, 10300 Thailand (phone: 662- 160-1145; fax: 662-160-1145; e-mail: sumitra.nu@ssru.ac.th). database courseware materials and resources for learning. The system provides the r egistration system, exercises, quizzes, and assessment of learning for people around the world without time limit on q ualifications and seniority. Users or students can self-learning and does not cost a fee. Nowadays, the distance education, online learning, and e- learning system were used instead of learnin g in a traditional school classroom would be even more. These are m ore affected by computer technology, communications and n ew media are developed a fast, easy, convenient to use, save time and money, flexible, virtualized and current. So, the students can study, an d learn endle ssly and forever by access to information and kn owledge base from system provided [5], [8], [11]. Thus, the sy stem of education and learn ing management systems of non-formal and formal, there are vital to keep pace with the development of such a change. And it requires developing and designing for distance education, online learning via new media, and e-learning. Otherwise, the education system learning and quality education of Thailand, it will no t grow up when compared to other countries in the world. In Thailand, the output quality of education, there are several problems and was retained for the result to be pushed a law occurred, there are the National Education Act B.E.2542 (1999) and amendments (second National Education Act .B.E. 2545 (2002) are affect the study to adjust the educational system, including the organization since its management education with the focus on quality is clearly the grade level indicators and adopted the metric level (office of the national education commission, 1999), the process of education is set to hold the education and skills such as curr iculum development, the proportion of the cu rriculum content and local material clearly [2]–[4]. The process of learning that focuses on the research as part of the process and participation of local knowledge in t he curriculum. The evalu ation process is based on authentic instruments indicate the efficacy of the curriculum each year. (The law article no . 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30) [6]. II. METHODOLOGY A. The Study and Analysis So explore the technology of computer systems and network infrastructure to support teaching and learning in the classroom, outside the c lassroom and distance education, will help to make the investment worth o f hardware and software Sumitra Nuanmeesri A Design of the Infrastructure and Computer Network for Distance Education, Online Learning via New Media, E-Learning and Blended Learning T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Vol:8, No:9, 2014 1657International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 8(9) 2014 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , I nd us tr ia l an d M an uf ac tu ri ng E ng in ee ri ng V ol :8 , N o: 9, 2 01 4 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /9 99 97 60 http://waset.org/publication/A-Design-of-the-Infrastructure-and-Computer-Network-for-Distance-Education,-Online-Learning-via-New-Media,-E-Learning-and-Blended-Learning/9999760 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 and teaching effectiveness. At t his process, we will get the data that it use to e valuation with I CO by the sample group consisted of 9 members who are ex perts to sum up the index of item objective congruence for the study and analysis of the infrastructure and computer networks. The index value is greater than 0.5, only to be used in the design of the system. B. Design Model Design model can be applied by using information from the study and analysis process. This process is generating a model of the infrastructure and computer networks should be as in Fig. 1. Fig. 1 The model of the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning C. Verify Model To verify the model of the infrastructure and computer network is designed by using a group of sampling with 9 specialists to evaluate this system with questionnaire of satisfaction survey. The mean value and st andard derivation value were used to verify and encourage the system design [1], [10]. In the interpretation of the mean scores according to the following criteria:  4.51 – 5.00 is the equivalent of Excellent  3.51 – 4.50 is the equivalent of Very good  2.51 – 3.50 is the equivalent of Good  1.51 – 2.50 is the equivalent of Fair  1.00 – 1.50 is the equivalent of Poor If the form of m odel of the infrastructure and computer networks for learning in distance, Online learning system, new media learning and blended learning are the average scores in the medium. It has i mproved the accuracy of the system and computer network infrastructure for infrastructure and computer networks for learning in distance, Online learning system, new media learning and blended learning again. III. RESULT The results of evaluation the model by 9 experts who have knowledge and expertise that related to the learning of computer networking and new media, educational Innovation and technology design, networking, a computer-based learning on learning through distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and the design and development of blended learning in higher education, the findings are as follows: 1. Based on studies and analysis of model of infrastructure and computer network can conclude from the analysis as below.  Communication components for the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning include the following: 1) Information in this means the data suc h as the tex t, images, audio, video, interactive multimedia, data sent is encrypted. Then send the data to the destination. 2) Transmission unit (innovative learning) is a set of device used for sending signal to classroom such as speak ers, microphones, video cameras, computer screens, broadcast studio devices. 3) Receiver unit (learning center) is a d evice used for receiving signals from the data. For the receiver, such as speakers, microphones, video cameras, monitoring screens get a signal. 4) Transmission medium (Internet Service Provider), data transmission requires an intermediate virtual road transport data, vo ice, video, and slide from the source to the destination. For example, the internet service provider networking from source to destination signal. 5) Application (Web base) as a medium to connect between innovative learning and learning center can display source and destination image, audio, video, slide was the same either way.  System components of the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learnin g via new media, e-learning and blended learning include the following: 1) Studios and classrooms, making room at university for the live transmission from the innovative learning to the class destination or learning center, it consists of slides, photos, audio and video content. 2) Class destination is a signal transmitted from the source contains audio slideshows and video. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Vol:8, No:9, 2014 1658International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 8(9) 2014 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , I nd us tr ia l an d M an uf ac tu ri ng E ng in ee ri ng V ol :8 , N o: 9, 2 01 4 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /9 99 97 60 http://waset.org/publication/A-Design-of-the-Infrastructure-and-Computer-Network-for-Distance-Education,-Online-Learning-via-New-Media,-E-Learning-and-Blended-Learning/9999760 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 3) Classroom at home or at wor k, class for reviewing lesson content that has been recorded and student can review anywhere and anytime. 4) Classroom for teachers is a set of broadcast center that can be mobility and broadcast a signal at any time with an Internet connection. 5) Courseware online, lessons are recorded and stored in files in the library offers lessons catering for both offline and online media for different rooms. Everyone who uses the system can be exchange information.  Administration and education system is installed on the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning include the following: 1) Course Management consists of a g roup of users is divided into three levels: students, teachers, an d administrators. User can log in from anywhere at any time via the Internet. The system can support a number of users or students and teachers are not l imited by dependent on hardware, software, and the system can accommodate the full range in Thailand. 2) Content Management includes tools to help create content. The system can be used both with lessons in the text-based and streaming media. 3) Test and evaluation system are consisting of a random test exam from data warehouse. Stud ents must complete the test within the prescribed period and the exam results can be seen immediately whereas the instructor can check the test results of s tudents such as statistics report score and the frequency of the use of students. 4) Course tools contain various tools used for communication between learners and teachers or l earners and learners, for example web board and chat rooms can keep track of this information. 5) Delegation and tracking system (assignment) is a system that students can be upload files such a s homework or assignment to the instructor and the in structor can track tasks assigned to students. 6) Course Management System (CMS) is a s ystem that manages the courses offered. 7) Tele-Education System is a system of education that students and teachers are far apart. It can cause learning via the medium of instruction in the blended learning. By using various media, including video files, such as textbooks, charts or using electronic devices to help in the spread of education to thos e who wish t o learn broadl y around everywhere. Then the researchers used data from the study and analysis for model of the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning. The contents are prepared and conducted by the i ndex of ite m objective congruence (IOC) evaluation. The 9 e xperts will evaluate a s ystem design. The IOC values were defined as follows: -1 means disagree, if the experts do not agree that model of the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning should look like this would gi ve a value of - 1. 0 means deemed reasonable experts that a model of the infrastructure and computer network for dis tance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning should look like this to the value 0. 1 means that if experts agree that a model of the infrastructure and computer network for dis tance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning should look like this to the value 1. The evaluation of the IOC from the experts, consistent with values from 0.50 up t o a s ummary of the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning as follows: TABLE I THE EVALUATION RESULTS OF MODEL OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND COMPUTER NETWORK FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION, ONLINE LEARNING VIA NEW MEDIA, E-LEARNING AND BLENDED LEARNING Evaluation topics Mean Standard deviation 1) Terms of use 1.1 Formed infrastructure and computer networking. Are appropriate to the application sufficiently and thoroughly blended. 3.89 0.33 1.2 Formed infrastructure and computer networking. To respond in an integrated instructional services. 3.89 0.33 1 3. Formed infrastructure and computer networking. The quality and potential of blended learning. Competitive universities in the country and abroad 3.78 0.44 Total 3.89 0.36 2) Innovation and learning 2.1 Formed infrastructure and computer networking. Contribute to the learning and development of teachers and learners. 4.11 0.33 2.2 Formed infrastructure and computer networking. Help to improve and develop teaching and learning to keep pace with new technologies. 4.11 0.33 Total 4.11 0.33 3) Its value for the investment. 3.1 Formed infrastructure and computer networking. Are worth the investment. The installation and expand its use to promote the teaching blended. 3.56 0.53 3.2 Formed infrastructure and computer networking. I should be a model for the investment to develop and improve continuously. 3.56 0.53 3.3 You were satisfied with the infrastructure and network is designed. 3.89 0.33 Total 3.67 0.48 Grand total 3.85 0.43 1) Computer server 2) Clients computer/Mobile device 3) Operating system software for computer servers 4) Operating system software for client 5) Live control system for audio and video streaming 6) Camera Video Recorder/Camcorder 7) Monitor (big screen) World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Vol:8, No:9, 2014 1659International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 8(9) 2014 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , I nd us tr ia l an d M an uf ac tu ri ng E ng in ee ri ng V ol :8 , N o: 9, 2 01 4 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /9 99 97 60 http://waset.org/publication/A-Design-of-the-Infrastructure-and-Computer-Network-for-Distance-Education,-Online-Learning-via-New-Media,-E-Learning-and-Blended-Learning/9999760 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 8) Microphone 9) Speaker 10) Network and structured cabling network 11) Place a studio and classroom of origin 12) Classroom or learning center 13) Computer serverroom 14) Broadcast networking devices 15) Network devices connected to the internet 16) Internet access 2. The results of the analysis data with evaluation of the IOC from the 9 experts were used to design a model and system requirements. Then a system design was evaluated for satisfaction survey by 9 experts or specialists, the values of evaluation were defined in level of rating scale as follows: 5 is the equivalent of Excellent 4 is the equivalent of Very good 3 is the equivalent of Good 2 is the equivalent ofFair 1 is the equivalent of Poor The results of an evaluation to determine the effectiveness of the system in terms of use, innovation and learning, and its value for the investment were used to calculate by statistical software to analyze the mean value and standard deviation [1] is presented in Table I. Table I shows the results of the evaluation for the model of infrastructure and computer network by 9 experts, it can say the following. Evaluation of terms of use, the mean value was 3.85 and standard deviation was 0.36. The model has been designed with the appropriate level is good. Evaluation of innovation and learning, the mean value was 4.11 and standard deviation was 0.32. T he model has been designed with the appropriate level is good. Evaluation of the value for the investment, the mean value was 3.67 and standard deviation was 0.48. The model has been designed with the appropriate level is good. Evaluation of the overall, the mean was 3.85 and a standard deviation was 0.43. The model has been design ed with the appropriate level is good. It is concluded that model of the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning is designed to be appropriate level is good. IV. CONCLUSION The researchers conducted a stu dy and analysis of information about the infrastructure and computer network for distance education, online learning via new media, e-learning and blended learning. At this stage, that information will be evaluated to deter mine the IOC value of the sy stem model by using the sample is 9 specialists. The IOC value must be greater than 0.5 in order to desig n of model of the infrastructure and computer network. The model was designed has to e valuate the satisfaction survey in terms of use, innovation and learning, and the value of the investment. The summary of evaluation from 9 specialists, the mean value was 3.85 and a sta ndard deviation was 0.43. So, the model has been designed with the appropriate level is good. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Thank the faculty and staff at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University to provide information to support the research. And thank the research and development institutes at Su an Sunandha Rajabhat University to funding of this research. REFERENCES [1] K. Vanichbuncha, Statistics for Research, Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 2005. [2] C. Khonsue, “Development pattern of the blended learning activities in the course of analysis and design”, Rajamangala University of Technology Isan Sakonnakhon Campus, Master of Philosophy Computer Education Graduate University, 2010. [3] S. Sopeerak, “The difference in academic achievement of students and Master of technology and technical education courses and training process blended learning and learning in regular classes”, Bangkok: Kasetsart University, 2007. [4] S. Jinjo, “Development of Blended Learning Model for Computer Programming Language 1 in Business Computer Study”, Computer Education, King M ongkutos University of Technology North Bangkok, 2007. [5] S. Luangrattanawimon, “A Comparison of Acchievements and Attitudes towards Mathematics Learning Entited Triangles for Prathomsuksa 6 between the Integrated Teaching Approach and the Following- Teacher’s-Handbook Teaching Approach”, M.Ed. Major Curriculum and Instruction, Mahasarakham University, 2003. [6] Office of the Education Council, Education Act of 2542.Bangkok, 2542. [7] K. Johnson, Mchugo and H all, “Analysing the Efficacy of Blended Learning Using Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and m-Learning Deliver Technologies”, The University of Sydney, 2006. [8] G. Kearsley, Online Education : learning and teaching in cyberspace, Nelson Thomson Learning, Canada. 2000. [9] W. Kent, and F. Iran, DigiMarketing : The Essential Guide to New Media & Digital Marketing, 2008. [10] S. Nuanmeesri, “Research Administration and Information System Management via Internet”, Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep Research Journal, vol.2, 2007. [11] P. Kadmateekarun, “The impact on the em ployment situation and Segmentation attitudes in the profession of education”, The 2rd Conference Phuket Rajabhat University, 2010. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Vol:8, No:9, 2014 1660International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 8(9) 2014 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , I nd us tr ia l an d M an uf ac tu ri ng E ng in ee ri ng V ol :8 , N o: 9, 2 01 4 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /9 99 97 60 http://waset.org/publication/A-Design-of-the-Infrastructure-and-Computer-Network-for-Distance-Education,-Online-Learning-via-New-Media,-E-Learning-and-Blended-Learning/9999760 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/9999760 
work_c7rjrjve25fbjogadaolgeui7a	----	Distance education and mobile learning: Catching up, taking stock This article was downloaded by: [University of Ballarat] On: 04 September 2012, At: 20:00 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 Distance education and mobile learning: Catching up, taking stock John Traxler a a University of Wolverhampton Version of record first published: 30 Jul 2010 To cite this article: John Traxler (2010): Distance education and mobile learning: Catching up, taking stock, Distance Education, 31:2, 129-138 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2010.503362 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2010.503362 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Distance Education Vol. 31, No. 2, August 2010, 129–138 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2010 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2010.503362 http://www.informaworld.com EDITORIAL Distance education and mobile learning: Catching up, taking stock Taylor and FrancisCDIE_A_503362.sgm10.1080/01587919.2010.503362Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Editorial2010Taylor & Francis3120000002010SomNaidu The background This special edition of Distance Education is dedicated to mobile learning. As such it seeks to connect two rather different communities and specifically to introduce and explain the work of the small but growing mobile learning research community to the more established and mature distance education community. In introducing this edition it is perhaps necessary to provide some context and orientation for readers, all the more so since the mobile learning community is only some ten years old and is unevenly spread around the globe. In exploring the literature of mobile learning, it is easier to get a sense of the breadth of mobile learning than it is to get a stable definition. Early approaches to definition focused on technology, for example, saying it was “any educational provision where the sole or dominant technologies are handheld or palmtop devices” (Traxler, 2005), or on the mobility of the technology, describing mobile learning as “e-learning through mobile computational devices: Palms, Windows CE machines, even your digital cell phone” (Quinn, 2000). Another view of mobile learning says it involves: “Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, prede- termined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of learn- ing opportunities offered by mobile technologies” (O’Malley et al., 2003, p. 6), while Keegan took a similar position in 2005, saying I feel that in the definition of mobile learning the focus should be on mobility. Mobile learning should be restricted to learning on devices which a lady can carry in her hand- bag or a gentleman can carry in his pocket. I therefore define mobile learning as ‘the provision of education and training on PDAs/palmtops/handhelds, smartphones and mobile phones.’ One of the characteristics of mobile learning is that it uses devices: ● which citizens are used to carrying everywhere with them, ● which they regard as friendly and personal devices, ● which are cheap and easy to use, ● which they use constantly in all walks of life and in a variety of different settings, except education (p. 33). The MoLeNET (2007) initiative in the United Kingdom, referred to later, still takes this approach, defining mobile learning as “exploitation of ubiquitous handheld hardware, wireless networking and mobile telephony to enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning” (p. 1). These earlier definitions were soon seen as too techno-centric and imprecise. Furthermore, owing to the transience and diversity of the devices, systems and platforms, they were seen as too unstable. They also merely put mobile learning somewhere on e-learning’s spectrum of portability – an interpretation that could easily connect to the distance learning community without any intervening critique D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 130 J. Traxler from the mobile learning community. Furthermore, while these definitions used specific technical attributes to consolidate a definition of mobile learning in order to help us reason about it, other technical attributes, notably connectivity, usability and latency, had the very opposite effect and disrupted the notion that there was even such a thing as mobile learning defined in terms of mobile technologies. The uncer- tainty about whether laptops and tablets deliver mobile learning (because of the lack of ‘ownership’, individuality and personalisation, the lack of unthinking spontaneity in carrying them around and the latency in starting them up) illustrated the difficulty with this kind of definition; the subsequent availability of netbooks and now the iPad continue to problematise the boundary between the mobile learning and the portable and the merely ‘luggable’ aspects of e-learning. These issues do all, however, hint at the underlying challenge, that of conceptualising mobile learning in a way that recognises its origins and practices in specific technological systems whilst being sufficiently abstract to be durable and sufficiently abstract to act as a stable platform for theorising about education and about learning. Outside the (self- referential) mobile learning community it may be less exclusive and more transpar- ent to revert to an understanding of mobile learning as ‘learning with mobile devices’. At this point, having retreated from an authoritative definition of mobile learning, it may still make sense to look at definitions of distance education, thereby creating the twin poles for this special edition. According to one influential definition, the defining characteristics of distance education are: • the separation of teacher and learner which distinguishes it from face-to-face lecturing • the influence of an educational organisation which distinguishes it from private study • the use of technical media, usually print, to unite teacher and learner and carry the educational content • the provision of two-way communication so that the student may benefit from or even initiate dialogue • the possibility of occasional meetings for both didactic and socialisation purposes • the participation in an industrialised form of education which, if accepted, contains the genus of radical separation of distance education from other forms. (Keegan, 1980, p. 33). The exercise of defining distance education addressed “the questions of terminology, definition and identification in an effort to contribute to the theory of distance educa- tion. The method used is an analysis of generally accepted definitions in an attempt to highlight what can be regarded as essential elements of any definition” (Keegan, 1980, p. 14). The method used exposed just how nationally and culturally determined such definitions could be, and how they could contribute to the development of theory. A more detailed exploration of the literature of mobile learning would reveal equally problematic relationships between theory building, cultural underpinnings and evidence from practice. A subsequent paraphrase of the defining characteristics (of Keegan 1996, cited by Benson & Samarawickrema, 2009, p. 6) gives them as the quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learner; the influence of an educational organisation in planning and preparing learning materials and providing student support; the use of technical media; the provision of two-way communication; the quasi-permanent absence of the D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 Distance Education 131 learning group so that students are usually taught as individuals rather than in groups; it points out that the last of these characteristics have been progressively diluted by the availability of various network technologies, many shared and deployed by mobile learning practitioners. Taking the definitions at face value we can see considerable overlap between mobile learning and distance education. Mobile learning is in some respects broader; it encompasses learners within the boundaries of educational institutions and it encompasses individual unstructured learning driven by curiosity or necessity. Distance education, however, encompasses a more explicit and diverse blend of tech- nologies to deliver learning and support learners, often as simple as print and post. Looking at mobile learning in practice, other differences and other similarities emerge. In earlier articles (Traxler, 2007, and others) we have, perhaps uncritically, summarised the early achievements of the mobile learning community during its first decade. This community has demonstrated that it can take learning to individuals, communities and countries that were previously too remote for other educational initi- atives. It has also shown that it can enhance and enrich the concept and activity of learning, beyond earlier conceptions, with learning experiences that are more person- alised, authentic, situated and context-aware than ever before. It has shown that it can challenge and extend existing theories of learning. Finally the claim is often made that mobile learning increases motivation, especially amongst learners who would normally be considered distant, disengaged or disenfranchised, and hence improves retention and progression, the two most problematic challenges to successful distance education. Elsewhere (Traxler, 2010a), we have laid out these achievements in more detail, saying that the mobile learning community has demonstrated, though not proved in any sense, across a wide variety of contexts, that it can: ● Enhance, extend and enrich the concept and activity of learning itself, beyond earlier conceptions of learning. This includes: ● contingent learning, where learners can react and respond to their environ- ment and their changing experiences, for example data collection in real-time on geography field trips ● situated learning, where learning takes place in surroundings that make learn- ing meaningful, for example learning about religions whilst visiting temples, mosques, churches and synagogues ● authentic learning, where meaningful learning tasks are related to immediate learning goals, for example basic literacy or numeracy in work-based learn- ing on the job ● context aware learning, where learning is informed by the history, surround- ings and environment of the learner, for example learning in museums, game parks or heritage sights ● augmented reality mobile learning, where learning builds on local context supplemented by an audio or video overlay ● personalised learning, where learning is customised for the preferences, history and abilities of individual learners or groups of learners ● Take learning to individuals, communities and countries that were previously too remote or distant, for example culturally, economically, socially or geographically, for other educational interventions to reach. This category has included addressing: D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 132 J. Traxler ● geographical or spatial distance, for example reaching into deeply rural areas ● sparsity, connecting thinly spread and perhaps nomadic learners to create viable communities of learners, or exploiting learning niches and perhaps the ‘long tail’ ● infrastructural or technical barriers, for example, areas in sub Saharan Africa, supporting those communities lacking mains electricity, secure clean build- ings or land-line connectivity ● social exclusion, for example reaching students unfamiliar with and lacking confidence in formal learning and its institutions, for example the homeless, gypsies, marginal groups, those ‘not-in-education, employment-or-training’ (NEETs) ● physiological or cognitive different, and distant, for example supporting learning opportunities for the hearing impaired or people with dyslexia ● privacy and connection, for example helping secluded women and girls in some cultures to access informal and social learning. The first category is essentially tightly coupled, intensive and focused in on innovative pedagogy, the second loosely coupled, extensive and addresses deficits and disadvan- tages, and would certainly resonate with the distance education community. There are, however, still many obvious challenges. Some of them will also reso- nate with the distance education community. They include understanding how to sustain and to scale up projects; understanding how and what to abstract and to gener- alise from pilots; maintaining or perhaps increasing equitable and inclusive access and provision, and generating and disseminating credible, rigorous and appropriate evidence (Taylor 2006; Traxler & Kukulska-Hulme, 2005). Where the two communi- ties often differ, and where they might learn from each other, is in their institutional relationships. To date mobile learning has usually been supported and resourced on a project basis whereas distance education seems to have a more secure foundation as ongoing provision. This edition is timely in that mobile learning now needs to move onto more secure foundations. These remarks should make it possible to explore the relationships with distance education and also to locate the contributions to this special edition. For those open and distance learning institutions with a large, well-resourced and sophisticated infrastructure, staff and student populations, it is possible to adapt and adopt any of these achievements. Indeed, the Open University in the United Kingdom, the Athabasca University in Canada, University of South Africa (UNISA), the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), and other distance learning departments of universities in the ‘developed’ parts of the world have themselves initiated many of the developments in mobile learning. For open and distance learning institutions with- out the necessary capacity and resources and perhaps with more pressing objectives, progress has been much slower. This special edition is an attempt to indicate to all of these institutions what might become possible, especially as we see dramatically increasing coverage by networks; increasing, almost universal, ownership of handsets by learners; increased capacity and functionality of devices and steadily falling real costs for both handsets and connectivity. Mobile learning in the ‘developed’ regions of the world has matured and consoli- dated. It now has a peer-reviewed academic journal, the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning and a professional research body, the International Association for Mobile Learning (http://mlearning.noe-kaleidoscope.org/). It has a large and vibrant D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 Distance Education 133 online community using the Handheld Learning forum, and several prestigious inter- national conferences such as mLearn (Ally 2006; Traxler, Riordan, & Dennett, 2008). There are some key emerging working texts (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler, 2005; Metcalf, 2006; Joint Information Services Committee [JISC], 2005; Kukulska-Hulme et al 2005) and emerging guidelines for practitioners (see for example, O’Malley, et al., 2004). Mobile learning has gained clarity about the significant issues (see, for example, Sharples, 2006, defining the ‘big issues’) and a more defined research agenda (see, for example, Arnedillo-Sánchez, et al., 2007) and an awareness of the need for ethical guidelines and frameworks. Within the United Kingdom specifically, there has been considerable public sector investment: £4m to £5m per annum for three years to date in the vocational sector in the MoLeNET programme (2007) for example, and large- scale projects in the primary schools of Bristol and Wolverhampton (Wolverhampton City Council, n.d.). The ACL (Adult Continuing Learning) community have been industrious and ingenious on a negligible resource base (Dawson, 2007). It is likely that much practitioner activity now takes place undocumented and only informally or locally evaluated. Much of this work and many of the issues addressed are likely to be recognisable in a distance education context. The current contributions would as easily fit into the mobile learning publications and projects. There is also, however, a growing lack of communication and connection between the practitioner community, the policy and technology vendor communities on the one hand, and the research community on the other; developments in practice are increasingly driven by public understanding and policy-maker understanding of the affordances of the technologies (as perhaps portrayed by the press and the tech- nology vendors) rather than the considered evidence of educational researcher community. This state of affairs may make it difficult for other educational commu- nities, such as that of open and distance learning, to see beyond mobile learning as under-theorised practices and projects addressing the immediate problems of distance and delivery. The papers Having provided an introductory framework for this special edition, we are now better prepared to turn to the individual papers. As is often the case, several of the papers in this edition report on specific projects but the first, “Literature on the safe and disrup- tive learning potential of mobile technologies” by Tiffany Koszalka and G.S. Ntloedibe-Kuswani, reviews the mobile learning literature in order to explore and unpack the topic of ‘disruption’ and shows its relevance to distance education. They describe disruption in terms of a shift in the balance of control and move the debate on by looking at a dichotomy between ‘safe learning’, characterised as open access to resources, and ‘disruptive’ learning, characterised as collaborative and immersive. They start, however, by defining and describing mobile learning, using evocative phrases, “the learners do not stay in a fixed location learning alone or together nor do they use specific resources presented to them at one point in time. The learners scatter to explore. They review, choose, and access informational or human resources they need immediately when they have questions or ideas, regardless of where they are located.” Throughout the evolution of mobile learning their central theme, the theme of disruption, has surfaced, sometimes in the sense of ‘nuisance’, though in practice this aspect is not something to trouble the distance education community, sometimes as something more unsettling, profound and threatening. Mobile devices, in enabling D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 134 J. Traxler learners to generate, transmit, store and consume images, ideas and information and to create virtual communities and spaces of shared interests, thereby create parallel, local, decentralised and potentially subversive alternatives to the relatively static and unchanging institutions of mainstream education (see Sharples, 2002, and Traxler, 2010c, for earlier discussions). These developments can be read as challenging the hegemony of the institutions of formal education but their departments of open and distance learning, with more permeable boundaries and greater links into the wider world and across to outside communities, may not find these various connotations of ‘disruption’ quite so disconcerting. Finally the authors reiterate some of the challenges identified earlier, being partic- ularly critical of methodology, research design and evaluation of mobile learning. They add an extra challenge, that of “disconnects between conceptual frameworks of well-designed technology integrated instruction and the field work examples”. They flag up the need for larger studies but nevertheless they suggest we “just do it”. The other four papers contribute to the literature of such studies. Elizabeth Beckman’s paper, “Learners on the move: Mobile modalities in devel- opment studies”, deals with the educational needs of development workers in settings as diverse as outback Australia, East Timor, Egypt and Afghanistan. Echoing our earlier points about authentic and situated learning, she comments that, “mobile tech- nologies offer opportunities for ongoing access to distance education that can be pursued off-campus and transnationally with the same peer-centred approaches avail- able on-campus, enhancing authenticity of both content and context.” Three key issues are explored in the paper, namely the implications of variable Internet access and quality; how students use their mobile devices; and how mobile learning allows consistent engagement with other professionals, despite geographical, cultural or socio-political isolation. The paper draws on much of the mainstream literature of mobile learning and of ‘development’ studies and shows how mobile technologies underpin successful attempts to address this isolation, one of the main and defining problems of distance education, and furthermore deliver authentic and situated learning in diverse and challenging environments. Beckman argues forcefully that mobile learning brings substantial qualitative improvements to distance education, mentioning motivation as a bonus. Jill Taylor and colleagues, in “Developing a mobile learning solution for health and social care practice”, report on the ALPS project based in the north-east of England. The Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL) worked towards a framework of inter- professional assessment of common competences in the health and social care professions. It was large-scale collaborative programme involving five UK Univer- sities, 16 professional groups and over 1000 users, using mobile devices to deliver learning resources and assessments to enrich, enhance and extend practice learning. The authors’ focus is the mobile assessment processes that were developed by ALPS and the shared services platform that enabled it to be delivered on a mobile device. They discuss the potential transferability of this mobile model to distance education. For both distance education and mobile learning communities this is an important paper in that it addresses the vexed question of assessment. This is often an overlooked or unduly conservative aspect of teaching and learning, holding back the more imaginative achievements mentioned earlier. The paper is clearly at the intersection of mobile learning and distance education and is an exemplar for work of its kind. The authors conclude that the approach and processes adopted by ALPS D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 Distance Education 135 have the potential to be used more widely across the university sector to bridge the divide between campus and distant work-based learning. K. Balasubramanian and his colleagues have contributed a paper “Using mobile phones to promote lifelong learning and empowerment among rural women in South- ern India”, describing a large-scale and substantial Commonwealth of Learning project that used simple mobile phones. This is significant for the mobile learning community in addressing scale and size and shows mobile learning can be a vital means to overcome gender inequity and Internet access problems in education and training. The authors bring Silverstone’s (1992) domestication of technology frame- work to bear as the way of understanding the technology-gender relationship. This gives a systematic approach to analysing the social shaping of technology and shows the place of education and educational technologies in the wider discourses of society and technology, and in this case shows their role in ‘development’ issues. A group of academics from the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, and Tufts University in the United States contribute a paper entitled “Clinical training at remote sites using mobile technology: An India-USA partnership”. This too addresses issues of scale (and of embedding and institutionalisation) and shows a successful process of iterative research, design, development and testing that give a model of learning based on student-articulated needs. The paper describes the adap- tation of a powerful in-house open source knowledge management system to a mobile mode. The authors address a common dilemma, namely how to develop appropriate thoughtful mobile learning from existing desktop versions. The system facilitated the creation, capture, sharing and leveraging of information to support health sciences education and training, specifically supporting active and distance learning with tools for case-based learning, self-assessment, quizzes, problem-based learning, and competency-based learning and assessment. This paper is much nearer to the literature of mobile learning in describing the development, deployment and integration of a novel mobile technology to support learning but again in a ‘develop- ment’ context. Clearly the discourses of mobile learning are not the only ones represented in distance and open learning. Several of the papers in this special edition draw theory less from the mobile learning discourses but from the discourses of ‘development’ or from the broader debates of technology and society. This is valuable and suggests caution when developing overly prescriptive or exclusive definitions of our various disciplines, especially as they demonstrably overlap in so many respects. These papers, or rather the last four, reporting on projects, necessarily have an over-riding practical dimension, a need to deliver and support, a need to exploit mobile technologies, even where they explicitly buy into the rhetoric, the ideology or community of mobile learning; they are mobile learning enacted even if not mobile learning espoused. The bigger picture If we step back and look at the bigger picture and the wider environment, it begins to look as though the relationship between mobile technologies and distance learning is not simply the one that is mediated by mobile learning. There is an emergent ‘mobilities’ or ‘sociology of mobility’ research topic (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007); this has significant long-term implications for learning and for education (Traxler, 2010b). D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 136 J. Traxler We have already alluded to the changing nature and significance of knowledge as people are able to generate and produce ideas, images and information that are specific, personal and local and then store, transmit and discuss them within virtual, transient and possibly hermetic communities, away from centralised production and control, and on technologies that they – not the institutions – choose, own, value, understand and control (Traxler, in press). Although this could be perceived as a threatening development for the already declining hegemony of conventional universities, schools and colleges and their curricula, it is perhaps less threatening for open and distance learning with an inherently more flexible attitude to the authority of learning. It does nevertheless create more communities and spaces that potentially challenge monolithic views of learning, education and knowledge. The notions of time, space and place, and implicitly of distance and presence, are also changing as mobile and connected communities and people find their online worlds no longer separate and parallel to their real worlds. Again, this may be discon- certing for formal institutions like colleges, universities and schools, governed and defined by buildings, schedules, timetables and calendars but perhaps much less so for distance education, that is loosely-coupled, dispersed, asynchronous and remote. Although e-learning technologies may already have reconfigured the notion of distance in distance education, they have only done so in ways constrained by infra- structure, buildings and hardware. The mobility and connectedness afforded by near universal mobile phones are a significant step beyond the erosion of distance and reconfiguration of space afforded by desktop technologies. In a recent reflection, Spector (2009) talks of three themes, “(a) the multiple dimensions of distance involved in modern distance learning, (b) the expansion of technology in distance learning and (c) the gradual erosion of distinct boundaries in between distance and other forms of education” (p. 157). This adds language and culture into the current dimensions of distance, perhaps echoing our earlier account of mobile learning as reaching across not only spatial and geographical distance but social, economic and culture distance. It also recognises the existence of virtual spaces afforded by desktop technologies but while these technologies do indeed create virtual spaces separate, substantial and distinct from real spaces, mobile technologies multiply and weave these spaces, the real and the virtual, seamlessly together. This special edition captures the growing potential synergy between mobile learn- ing and distance education and it does so at a time when mobility and connectedness are starting to transform many aspects of most societies around the world. References Ally, M. (2006). ‘Developing materials for mobile learning’. Paper presented at mLearn 2006 Conference, Mobile technology: The future of learning in your hands. Retrieved from http://www.mlearn.org.za/CD/BOA_p.07.pdf Arnedillo-Sánchez, I., Sharples, M., & Vavoula, G. (Eds,). (2007). Beyond Mobile Learning Workshop. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin Press. Benson, R., & Samarawickrema, G. (2009). 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(2006). ‘Evaluating mobile learning: What are appropriate methods for evaluating learning in mobile environments?’ In M. Sharples (Ed.), Big issues in mobile learning (Report of a workshop by the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence Mobile Learning Initiative, University of Nottingham (pp. 24–26). Nottingham: Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence, Mobile Learning Initiative. Traxler, J. (2005). Mobile learning – it’s here but what is it? Interactions, 9(1). Retrieved from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/ldc/resource/interactions/archive/issue25/traxler Traxler, J. (2007). Defining, discussing and evaluating mobile education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(2). Retrieved from http://www. irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl Traxler, J. (2010a). Mobile people, mobile societies, mobile cultures not just mobile learning. In A.I. Chib (Ed.), Proceedings of the ICA Mobiles Preconference, Nanyang Technical University, Singapore. Traxler, J. (2010b). Sustaining mobile learning and its institutions. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 2(4), 129–138. Retrieved from http://www.igi-global.com/ Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=1115&DetailsType=Description Traxler, J. (2010c). Will student devices deliver innovation, inclusion & transformation?, Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 6(1), 3–15. Retrieved from http://www.rcetj.org/index.php/rcetj Traxler, J. (in press). Students and mobile devices. ALT-J, Association for Learning Technology Research Journal, 18(3). Traxler, J., & Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2005). ‘Evaluating mobile learning: Reflections on current practice’. In Proceedings of mLearn2005: 4th World Conference on mLearning, Cape Town, South Africa. Retrieved from http://www.mlearn.org.za/CD/BOA_p.65.pdf D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 138 J. Traxler Traxler, J., Riordan, B., & Dennett, C. (2008). Proceedings of the mLearn2008 Conference: The bridge from text to context. Wolverhampton: University of Wolverhampton. Retrieved from http://www.mlearn2008.wlv.ac.uk/ Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity. Wolverhampton City Council. (n.d.). Learning2Go. Retrieved from http://www.learning 2go.org/ John Traxler Guest Editor University of Wolverhampton D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B al la ra t] a t 20 :0 0 04 S ep te m be r 20 12 
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Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_cble76c4ojbatbuxvcihrr7lte	----	doi:10.3402/rlt.v20i0/14430 Cross-discipline investigation of the relationship between academic performance and online resource access by distance education students Andrea Crampton a, *, Angela T. Ragusa b and Heather Cavanagh a a Faculty of Science, Charles Sturt University, Wagga, Wagga, Australia; b School of Humanities and Social Science, Charles Sturt University, Wagga, Wagga, Australia (Received 14 March 2011; final version received 30 June 2011) Educational technology implementation often owes more to the technical proficiency of the teaching staff and/or the capacity of the institution than to a student outcome-centred design process. Creation of online resources takes considerable time and involves significant cost to both the institution, for devices and platforms, and to students for devices and Internet connectivity charges. Here, we present a cross-discipline investigation of student engagement with a range of simple resources. Our aim was to determining if the provision of such resources had an impact on student academic performance regardless of the students’ level of academic proficiency. This research focused on students studying first-year introductory subjects at a distance (off campus) from two different faculties, Arts and Science. Analysis of the web access data from the learning management system (Sakai) demonstrated that students who accessed the most resources in terms of diversity and percentage of available resources achieved higher grades. We postulate that the resources prompted students to spend more ‘‘time-on-task’’ and facilitate more active styles of learning. We suggest, however, that students need to be made aware of the value of the resources and how they are best used to enhance academic performance. Keywords: distance education; online resources; academic performance; virtual learning environments; e-learning Introduction The shift from an industrial to an information-driven society (Castells 2000) has substantially changed education delivery, often facilitated by the use of internet- driven communications that are a recent, yet foundational, component of many educational systems (Schifter 2004). The globalisation of world economies and internationalisation of curricula (Barjis 2003) fostered an environment, whereby universities increasingly are internet dependent. As e-learning supplements, and even supplants, traditional classroom learning environments (Ragusa 2009), universities compete to lead in flexible delivery, to achieve market dominance and to meet government policy objectives (Ragusa 2007). In response, higher education educators are encouraged to augment online delivery resources and align their teaching practice with the needs and expectations of twenty-first century learners and markets. (page number not for citation purpose) *Corresponding author. Email: acrampton@csu.edu.au Research in Learning Technology Vol. 20, 2012 RLT 2012. # 2012 A. Crampton et al. Research in Learning Technology is the journal of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), a UK-based professional and scholarly society and membership organisation. ALT is registered charity number 1063519. http://www.alt.ac.uk/. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)" license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) permitting use, reuse, distribution and transmission, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1 Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 Technology-infused distance education is the fastest growing sector in education (Tennant, McMullen, and Kaczynski 2009). A range of socio-economic factors is responsible for this growth. Distance education requires less physical infrastructure and resources and can offer students access to higher education for a reduced living cost (Betts, Hartman, and Oxholm 2009). Distance education enables institutions to access a global student market (Tennant, McMullen, and Kaczynski 2009) that extends to non-traditional populations, particularly those with family and/or work obligations that prevent attendance at university campuses (Betts et al. 2009). Furthermore, distance education is material to the heightened global interest in higher education and the growth in international students (Ragusa and Steinke 2011). These economic realities, coupled with the growth in size and acceptance of online education, and the introduction of widely available, public access, education- associated social media (e.g. iTunesU 1 ) clearly signal that technology-dependent learning is as much a part of twenty-first century education as the chalk board was in classrooms of yesteryear. The changes fuelled by these economic realities, however, are underscored by a deeper socio-historical shift. In contrast with past societies’ reliance on face-to-face communication, rapid changes in how we interact today, ‘‘for the first time in human history’’ (Giddens 1984, 185), made possible by technology led us to shift from a local to inherently global social organisation. Giddens’ later works (1991, 1994, 2002) helped us to theoretically frame how education pedagogies, informed by commu- nicative technologies, exist in a social order characterised by different traditions, identities, expertise and global relations. Epistemic and technical shifts in how individuals relate to one another have, however, raised some concerns in the higher education sector, including how the mechanism for social interaction and communication affects learning outcomes. Questions regarding the effects such changes have on the educational experience of students are but one example of issues facing contemporary consumers of knowledge in societies, where specialised expert knowledge replaces traditions to grant or deny power and authority (Giddens 1991). Alongside, macro level social changes are relentless micro level, everyday shifts that determine our technical proficiency. In the case of education, the focus on technical solutions can translate into poorly designed or executed resources that waste both educators’ and students’ time, the latter of which might have been better spent on traditional learning tasks, such as textbook reading. Conversely, educators who are less enthusiastic about educational technol- ogies may feel that their expertise and authority are threatened by a lack of technical command in an increasingly technical environment. Given the ever-evolving plethora of educational technology platforms, tools and resources (‘‘bells and whistles’’) presented to the academic community, it is easy to lose sight of core educational goals. A specific educational goal that we investigate in this article is the enhancement of learning environments to facilitate students’ acquisition of substantive and tacit knowledge. A growing body of educational technology research, however, is beginning to question whether the twenty-first century bells and whistles enabled by educational technologies drown, or at least distract from, sound pedagogy. According to McFarlin (2008), for educational technology to be effective, student learning and outcomes must be the focus of its implementation and use. Pedagogies with technologies driven by learning outcomes are increasingly noted in the literature (see Tennant, McMullen, and Kaczynski 2009) with Larson and Chung-Hsien (2009) A. Crampton et al. 2 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 concluding that the delivery mode is irrelevant so long as the instructor applies ‘‘best practices’’. The present study seeks to fill knowledge gaps in the research literature by examining how and if the use of pedagogically driven technologies enhances or detracts from higher education delivery in two large and diverse introductory subjects at an Australian University. By providing an evaluation of online communication and resources used by distance students in a range of natural and social science courses, as well as the humanities, our research sample includes students with widely varying pre-tertiary performance abilities that we term ‘perceived academic capacity’. Background The resources and communication tools used to teach in two subjects, introductory microbiology (MIC) and introductory sociology (SOC), provided students with dynamic learning environments not traditionally available to geographically dis- persed distance students. The design and application of learning resources mimicking those of traditional face-to-face classrooms, we argue, represents real progress, not the step sideways that those critiquing blended learning approaches claim (Morrison 2003; Tremblay 2006). Traditionally, students studying by distance education (the ‘‘DE cohort’’ of each course) receive a paper-based subject outline containing details of assessment procedures, a recommended study pattern and a study guide with key explanations from the textbook and some additional figures and explanations written by the teaching staff. Here, we examine the effectiveness of the use of virtual lectures, access to lecture handouts and student use of asynchronous forums on the education outcomes of students as measured by their final grade and analysed by measuring activity logs from the learning platform for the entire teaching session. Due to large enrolment numbers (SOC N �145 and MIC N �221), the online space mirrored a more traditional didactic classroom, where students passively received information, albeit via virtual lectures (narrated slides) or electronic handouts, rather than live lectures or tutorials. This structure is commensurable with other initial forays into online education (Tennant, McMullen, and Kaczynski 2009) that rely on familiar, normative pedagogies (i.e. we start with what we know) and are based on materials developed for face-to-face environments (Salter, Pang, and Shrama 2009). Both subjects used an electronic forum structured similarly to the ‘‘question and answer’’ sessions that often accompany face-to-face lectures and/or tutorials. Unlike many other studies of online or blended learning, we examine subjects previously taught only by correspondence (see Schifter 2004), where students had no opportunity to attend lectures, with the exception of a compulsory 4-day residential school on campus for the microbiology students to learn practical laboratory skills. While the provision of online resources replicating traditional classrooms may not initially seem conducive to increasing student engagement, the platform context (i.e. resource hosting plus synchronous and asynchronous communication tools) enhances opportunities for student interaction with the content and with each other beyond those possible in conventional classrooms. The online platform also allows distance education students to interact with on-campus students. Therefore, provision of online resources, with their capacity to facilitate interactions, can be viewed as an intermediate step between lecture-based delivery and the proposed ideal, student-centred teaching model designed around active or problem-based Research in Learning Technology Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 3 (page number not for citation purpose) http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 learning (Exeter et al. 2010). This transitional step is, perhaps, a suitable option to engage first-year students, most of whom enter university environments from the more traditionally didactic background of secondary schooling, although this is likely to change in the future as online learning becomes more prominent in the high school system (Drabinski, Clark, and Roberts 2011). With universities’ increased reliance on self-directed learning, this transitional step may assume even greater importance, particularly for students studying by distance. Clearly structured higher education learning environments, with resources such as audio lectures or lecture notes, can provide students clear signposts likely to further facilitate transition towards self-directed learning. This transition step will no doubt evolve as pedagogic practices of secondary schools and other educational institutes that increasingly adopt the use of blended learning. Movement from an online environment replicating traditional classrooms towards an effective blended environment with active learning and engagement requires professional development for teaching staff and training for students (Salter, Pang, and Sharma 2009). Thus, the re-socialisation of staff and students is a necessity and likely to be affected by familiarity and use of blended learning in prior organisational settings. The learning environments examined were not open learning environments as defined by Clarebout and Elen (2008); students were neither able to manipulate their learning environment nor presented with meaningful problems to solve. As distance students, a high degree of self-regulation was assumed and considered necessary for academic success (Barnard-Brak, Lan, and Paton 2010). The degree of self- directedness, or self-regulation, required from distance learners is a major risk factor for attrition (Rovai and Downey 2010). While direct measures of self- regulation have been applied in educational settings (Biesinger and Crippen 2010), sociological studies focused on how interventions, such as the structure and design of learning environments, affect learning outcomes, are required to complement studies of psychological characteristics such as those noted above. Robinson’s (2007) sociological study, for example, noted how Giddens’ structuration theory can inform e-learning design and the value of providing multiple communication tools to students as a way of enhancing students’ agency in affecting their academic goals. Most modern learning management systems (LMS) provide at least one simple measure of student access to, and use of, learning resources. Use of learning resources offers an indicator of students’ capacity for self-regulation accessible by an audit file, most commonly in the form of a log tool. Web logs, as indicators of students’ study practices, have been used in a variety of ways. Our research builds on prior research, such as Judd and Kennedy’s (2010), 5 year analysis of web use at dedicated computers, which found that students predominantly accessed the university’s core systems and learning resources posted through the internal system rather than external sites and tools. This behaviour, however, was exhibited only by advanced students because most courses utilised the university’s LMS (Judd and Kennedy 2010). Log files were also used to investigate the pace of 6112 students’ learning in a fully online environment to examine resource type and use in relation to time of day and duration of access (Hershkovitz and Nachmias 2009) as well as to map embedded versus non-embedded support tool use and student self-regulation (Clarebout, et al. 2010). Generally, the use of log files allows researchers to examine ‘‘real world’’ practices (Schrader and Lawless 2007), instead of conducting lab-based scenarios and other A. Crampton et al. 4 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 more intrusive instruments such as surveys. Hence, this technique is ideal for exploratory analyses of students’ LMS use, permitting creation of appropriate interventions or variations in design that can improve learning resource effectiveness. Log files matched with assessment of learning outcomes, such as grades, are useful for examining students’ initial resource use to see how and if this affects academic performance as well to explore the impact of intervention strategies applied during the teaching session. Moreover, the collection of log data is suitable to large classes for which surveys, focus groups and other more intrusive or intensive methodologies are less feasible. Methods The primary research aim was to examine the effect of providing online learning resources on students’ academic performance. To minimise the impact of subject type and student cohort, we chose subjects from two different faculties containing students with varied levels of pre-tertiary academic performance and preparation for university study. Secondary data, available from university subject site logs, student grades and learning forum logs, were compiled to reflect student utilisation of online learning resources and quantitatively analysed. Sample and design The research sample consisted of two large, first-year introductory subjects taught between August and December 2009. The subjects spanned two divergent faculties, Science and Arts. The first subject, SOC, was taught by distance only, contained 145 students and was primarily taught by a teaching assistant under the management of a senior academic who designed and produced the subject content and learning resources. The second subject, MIC, was taught both internally (on campus) at two different locations (400 km apart) and simultaneously by distance education, containing a total of 593 students. MIC was taught by a single academic at one campus, and by nine academics at the other. All cohorts were supported by a single online platform managed by the academic staff. The 221 students studying MIC by distance travelled to one campus for a 4-day residential school to complete the laboratory component of the subject, whilst the SOC students were not required to attend any on-campus sessions. The assessment requirements varied with each subject. SOC students were required to complete three assessment items: an online mid-semester multiple choice exam, a 1000 word essay and an invigilated paper-based exam at the end of the semester. MIC students were assessed by weekly quizzes on laboratory topics, a mid- semester and an end-of-semester exam, both of which contained multiple choice and short answer questions. This investigation examines the distance students enrolled in both of these subjects. Online platform and learning resources Both MIC and SOC used a customised version of the Sakai platform, termed ‘Interact’, plus an additional forum tool for asynchronous communication. In both subjects, the forums were divided into a ‘‘general’’ forum and ‘‘sub-forums’’ that related to each topic taught (9 for MIC and 11 for SOC). Administrative tasks, such Research in Learning Technology Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 5 (page number not for citation purpose) http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 as the organisation of residential schools (MIC) and general queries (SOC), were managed utilising the general subject forum. Students in SOC were provided with PowerPoint slides summarising the chapters of the textbook and providing additional sociological information. These slides were linked to separate virtual lectures produced using Adobe Captivate # (v3). The virtual lectures were provided in both shockwave and.exe formats and contained the lecturer’s narration of key introductory concepts. MIC students were also provided PowerPoint slides. Their slides, however, were the same as those presented to the subject’s internal students during campus lectures and textbook-based tutorial exercises. Both subjects also provided the students with a printed subject outline and study guides (Figure 1). Analysis of resource use The Sakai platform included a log tool (SiteStats) used to generate data about which resources were accessed by each student. It is important to note that SiteStats only records access to the resources and not use of the resource. Hence, some resources may have been accessed but not viewed. Actual reported use of the resources was not assessed by a student survey because of the typically low student survey response rates at the university being sampled. Use of secondary data permitted reliable analysis of the entire sample’s performance and each student’s resource access, rather than perceived use from social surveys. Students’ forum participation was analysed by counting the number of messages each student posted on each forum. Furthermore, overall forum use was calculated using an inbuilt statistics tool for forum evaluation. Analysis of individual student use of forums and resources was conducted after final grades were announced; a procedure approved by the School of Biomedical Science’s Human Ethics Commit- tee, approval 406/2009/12. Student resource use and grades were entered into cohort-specific SPSS data files and analysed separately by subject to produce descriptive statistics and correlations. T-tests were conducted with significantly correlated (p �B0.05) variables using the independent sample t-test with Levene’s test for equality of variances, where equal variances were assumed. Resource Type MIC SOC Virtual Lectures (voice over PowerPoint slides created by lecturer) X PDF of Lecture Slides X X PDF or Word files with tutorial activities (i.e. quizzes, games, key questions) X General Discussion Forum X X Content-Specific Forums X (nine) X (eleven) Figure 1. Types of resources provided to each cohort of students. A. Crampton et al. 6 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 Results One hundred and nine SOC students and 181 MIC distance students completed all the requisite tasks to receive a final grade. Descriptive statistics revealed that 51% of MIC and 46% of SOC students posted messages on the general forums. Only 8% of the SOC students and 20% of the MIC students posted messages on topically related sub-forums. At least one virtual lecture was downloaded by 71% of the SOC students and 12% downloaded all virtual lectures. The PowerPoint slide files were accessed by 81% of the SOC students, with 9% downloading all of them. Five students (5%) accessed at least one slide file but none of the virtual lectures. Conversely, 14 students (13%) accessed at least one virtual lecture but none of the slide files. Lecture slides were downloaded by 88% of the MIC students, with most of those (84%) also accessing at least one tutorial resource. Sixteen percent of the MIC students accessed all available tutorial resources. In MIC, weak yet significant positive correlations (i.e. the higher a student’s grade, the more resources he or she accessed) were found between a student’s final grade and his or her downloading lecture slides (r �0.28; p �0.00) or accessing tutorial resources (r �0.31; p �0.00) and/or posting to the content forums (r �0.34; p �0.05). In SOC, a moderately strong and significant correlation existed between students accessing the virtual lectures and their final grade (r �0.40; p �0.00). In other words, those students in both subjects who downloaded electronic learning resources were more likely to receive higher grades. No significant correlations were observed between students’ contribution to subject forums and final grades in SOC, indicating that lecture slides may be of greater utility to learning that subject’s content than forum communication. It is important, however, to note that correlations do not determine causality. Therefore, to test if the correlation between learning material usage and final grades is statistically meaningful, parametric tests of significance were conducted. After tests for normality confirmed that the samples were normally distributed, two-tailed independent groups t-tests were conducted to test the means between the two subjects related to resource use and final grades. Findings revealed a significant difference in the final grades between SOC students who received at least a pass (M � 9.40, SD �4.59) and those who failed (M �5.24, SD �4.72) related to the access of virtual lectures t(133) �5.22, p �0.00. In other words, the more virtual lectures accessed, the higher SOC students’ final grades. These significant relationships are evident in Figures 2, 3 and 5. Similar analyses of resource use by the MIC students revealed four significant relationships, the strongest related to students’ access of tutorial resources and general forum usage, the latter in contrast to the SOC students. Students who failed in the subject accessed fewer lecture slides (M �8.75, SD �3.83), t(156) �2.020, p � 0.05, than students who received at least a passing final grade(M �10.45, SD �4.09). Students with at least a passing final grade (M �9.98, SD �12.98) posted more messages on the general forum, t(89) �1.95, p �0.00, than students who failed (M � 3.14, SD �3.23). Students who failed in the subject also accessed (M �1.00, SD � 0.67) the subject content forums less frequently, t(40) �2.05, p �0.05, than students with a passing grade or better (M �2.34, SD �2.03). Finally, students with at least a passing final grade accessed more of the tutorial resources (M �12.95, SD �6.77), t(150) �2829, p �0.01, than students who failed (M �8.75, SD �3.83). Research in Learning Technology Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 7 (page number not for citation purpose) http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 Discussion Our research reveals that the provision of online resources to distance education students supports learning outcomes and improves academic performance. The finding that the majority of students accessed lecture slides was anticipated Figure 3. Percentage of students who posted a message on either the general or content- specific forums, relevant to their final grade. FL, fail; PS, pass; CR, credit; DI, distinction; HD, high distinction. Figure 2. Average percentage of an available resource type accessed by students relative to their final grade. FL, fail; PS, pass; CR, credit; DI, distinction; HD, high distinction. A. Crampton et al. 8 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 because such activity replicates face-to-face classroom practices, such as note taking. Figure 4, however, presents an unanticipated finding: SOC students eventually stopped downloading lecture slides but continued to access the virtual lectures that represent a much larger commitment in terms of time and download time/cost. Students’ preference to use virtual lectures alone, particularly as audio files in a MP3 format, rather than PowerPoint slides coupled with audio, reveals a shift in learning preference made possible by recent advances in communication technology. Student comments from subject evaluations revealed that MP3 files were preferred because of their transportability and use in multi-tasking scenarios such as while driving, commuting, doing household tasks, etc. Given the poverty of time experienced by many distance education students, it is possible that those who accessed the MP3 files were more likely to use them, than those who only accessed the PowerPoint slides. Accessing virtual lectures fostered better comprehension of subject content and concepts as evidenced by higher academic achievement (see Figures 2 and 5) than accessing PowerPoint slides alone. The virtual lectures ensured students who are audio learners, or potentially just busy, could engage with the content in a manner that fitted their learning style and/or lifestyle; a delivery mode unavailable to distance students because institutions stopped posting correspondence courses on tape. The degree to which students access online learning opportunities is a potential indicator of how prepared they are for self-regulated education fostered by online platforms. For some students, however, the transition from seeking knowledge out of casual interest to taking a disciplined approach towards reaching a concrete learning goal, such as a final grade, may be less readily adopted during their first year of university study if left entirely up to their independent pursuit. Help-seeking behaviour is regarded as a significant component of effective self-regulated learning. Figure 4. Download patterns for virtual lectures and slides by 101 SOC students during the 12 weeks of the semester. Research in Learning Technology Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 9 (page number not for citation purpose) http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 Students who choose to study via distance education are expected to have a high degree of self-efficiency (Barnard-Brak, Lan, and Paton 2010) and be able to regulate their learning environment around other life issues. Indeed, Barnard-Brak, Lan and Paton (2010) noted even competent self-regulators who ‘‘do what it takes . . ..to achieve well in their learning but they don’t do much more’’ (Barnard-Brak, Lan, and Paton 2010, 72) are able to achieve academic success. Our results indicate students who actively sought help and/or clarification for issues, by way of forum postings, achieved higher levels of academic success (Figure 3). That is not to say students who read forums without posting contributions, otherwise known as ‘‘lurkers’’ (Bax and Pegrum 2010), are less effective at self-regulated learning; ‘‘lurking’’, as prior socio- cultural research found, may simply reveal that help-seeking needs can be met by passive engagement. Our focus on first-year subjects demonstrates that students may be affected by their level of academic socialisation. This supports prior research findings that first-year students may not understand the value of support mechan- isms provided or have the capacity to use them adequately (Azevedo, Cromley, and Seilbert 2004). Identification of key attributes used by skilled self-regulators is one way universities can develop better support and training systems, particularly for non- self-regulators. Enhanced support and training may lead to better outcomes such as academic performance and completion rates. Many current learning environments that give students control over access to support devices require them to be good self- regulators and aware of the full potential of the provided resources, before they can adequately access or identify any support they may need (see Clarebout et al. 2010). Enhancing the support provided to help students become better self-regulated learners from the time they enter university is crucial to address the long-term nature of goal orientation and self-regulation, which requires more than one teaching session to affect (Biesinger and Crippen 2010). The role of the educator is changing Figure 5. Percentage of students who accessed at least one of the available resources relevant to their final grade. FL, fail; PS, pass; CR, credit; DI, distinction; HD, high distinction. A. Crampton et al. 10 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 from one who simply possesses and imparts knowledge to one who facilitates the development of learning skills that show students how to obtain and interpret knowledge (i.e. the shift from didactic styles of early e-learning to c-learning 2 ) (Ledzinska and Postek 2010; Tan, Wang, and Xiao 2010). We need to consider the implications of changing roles when examining the development and use of non- traditional learning tools. The overestimation of students’ capacity to use the technology provided appropriately (Kvavik 2005; Nasah et al. 2010) is an area of particular concern and a possible confounding factor in how the resources in our study were applied. Furthermore, lack of appropriate technical support for distance students studying online is a major contributor to attrition (Rovai and Downey 2010) and a common criticism noted by distance students at our institution. Accessing tutorial resources (MIC) or virtual lectures (SOC) was positively correlated with improved academic performance as illustrated in Figure 2. Both of these resource types simulate the same key practice, namely time on task (i.e. the amount of time a student spends engaged with a resource or activity). Grimstad and Grabe (2004) noted that students who accessed online tutorial exercises (in their case quizzes) performed better academically than those who did not. They concluded that although quizzes gave students experience with the types of questions in the examination, it was the time spent on the quizzes that possibly explained their correlation with academic success (Grimstad and Grabe 2004). Similarly, Kuh (2004) noted, in relation to student development, that the amount of time devoted to ‘‘educationally purposeful activities’’ was the best predictor of students’ learning outcomes. In regards to microbiology, Johnson (2008) found a significant correlation between academic performance and use of online resources (again quizzes), attributing that time-on-task may be a key component of the association. Furthermore, a meta-analysis of online learning studies conducted by the US Department of Education concluded that time-on-task was the only statistically significant aspect of online learning affecting student performance, noting that online students who spent more time-on-task fared better than their counterparts studying in the traditional face-to-face mode (US Department of Education 2009). Our research adds further support that purposive online learning activities positively affect student performance. The online tutorials and virtual lectures provided students in our study a vehicle to interact with each subject’s content in more than one way, encouraging active learning via completing tutorial exercises and discussion questions. Use of these resources required students either to work through problems or to answer questions that involved connecting content and concepts in a manner not presented in the core materials provided. Active learning promotes better engagement with subject matter (Windham 2005), an important factor in student success and retention (Sheard, Carbone, and Hurst 2010). Nevertheless, the value of active learning, and its effect on student outcomes, remains a contentious, unresolved issue with the perceived benefits potentially attributable to a time-on-task effect as previously noted (US Department of Education 2009). Conclusion Our research evidenced that the provision of low-cost and easy-to-create online resources quantitatively enhanced students’ academic performance: students who accessed the online resources achieved greater academic success. This is notable given Research in Learning Technology Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 11 (page number not for citation purpose) http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 that the institutional cost of providing the supplemental electronic resources was limited to the purchase price of the software (Adobe Captivate # v.3) and a limited time investment for staff training with minimal impact on staff time. For example, apart from up-skilling in software use, MIC staff required no additional preparation time, as they simply uploaded online versions of resources already created for the face-to-face class. Conversely, SOC staff spent an additional hour per week to create the lecture slides, record them and upload them; however, these resources could then be reused for multiple sessions. The relationship between resource access and academic success was related to both the diversity of available resources and the proportion of each type accessed by the student. Such findings may be informed by the sociological theory of Giddens, specifically his work on culture and structuration theory that, as contextualised by Robinson (2007), suggests that the provision of a range of resources enhances an educator’s capacity to provide a diverse range of learners with adequate agency to devise their most effective learning environments. To make the most use of such agency, however, the users must first be able to adequately engage with the resource/ technology and be aware of its potential value. Therefore, we suggest that course developers would be well advised to ensure that first-year students are adequately trained, and directed towards the use of key learning resources as well as informed of the relationship between resource use and grades. Furthermore, as resource utilisation may be linked to students’ proficiency to self-regulate their learning, as suggested by prior research (Azevedo, Cromley, and Seilbert 2004; Barnard-Brak, Lan, and Paton 2010;). Therefore, mechanisms for assisting students with their development of self-directed study skills should be included in learning environment design. Future studies would do well to look at students’ demographic attributes, such as age, gender, cultural background and socio-economic status, as well as their time constraints (i.e. combining study with employment or caring responsibilities). Additionally, student and educators’ familiarity with, and preference for engaging with, online resources should be identified. Such knowledge would further enhance educators’ capacity to develop, implement and promote the most suitable resources that are both relevant and cost- and time-effective. Adequate awareness of the digital literacy levels of academic staff would also help institutions develop professional development programmes that address all levels of staff capacity while maximising the effective use of virtual learning environments. The ‘‘bells and whistles’’ provided music to some SOC students’ ears and visual guidance to many MIC students’ eyes, yet regardless of the tool implemented, it was utilisation of resources, rather than technology type that positively affected many students’ academic aspirations and fostered engagement in the learning process. Notes 1. A subsection of iTunes with free recorded lectures from many prestigious universities. 2. ‘‘C-learning is most often defined as a learning process happening in virtual surrounding, in which the teacher assumes the role of not a source of knowledge, but rather a source of metaskills needed to operate on that knowledge’’ (Ledzinska and Postek 2010, 2). A. Crampton et al. 12 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012; 20: 14430 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14430 http://researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/14430 References Azevedo, R., Cromley, J. G. & Seibert, D. (2004) ‘Does adaptive scaffolding facilitate students’ ability to regulate their learning with hypermedia?’, Contemporary Educational Psychology, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 344�370. Barjis, J. (2003) ‘An overview of virtual university studies’, in Virtual Education, ed F. Albalooshi. IRM, Hershey, PA, pp. 1�15. Barnard-Brak, L., Lan, W. Y. & Paton, V. O. 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(2010) ‘A five-year study of on-campus internet use by undergraduate biomedical students’, Computers and Education, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 1564�1571. Kuh, G. D. (2004) ‘The national survey of student engagement: conceptual framework and overview of psychometric properties (National Survey of Student Engagement)’, Available at: http://nsse.iub.edu/2004_annual_report/pdf/2004_conceptual_framwork.pdf Kvavik, R. (2005). Convenience, communications and control: how students use technology, in Educating the Net Generation, eds D. G. Oblinger & J. L. Oblinger, EDUCAUSE. Larson, D. K. & Chung.-Hsien, S. (2009) ‘Comparing student performance: online versus blended versus face-to-face’, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 31�42. 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(2009) ‘Learning in the digital age’, in Teaching, learning and research in higher education, Routledge, Hoboken. Tremblay, R. (2006) ‘‘‘Best practices’’ and collaborative software in online teaching’, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, vol. 7, no. 1. Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/309/486 U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. (2009) Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: a meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. US Department of Education, Washington, DC. Available at: http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf Windham, C. (2005) ‘The students’ perspective’, in Educating the Net Generation, eds D. Oblinger & J. Oblinger, e-Educause, Washington, DC, pp. 5.1�5.16. A. 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work_ck4el64q6neqbpodk2322cidhi	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_cnqcydrworgkpihwtqo4wea4nm	----	169 THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN ASTRONOMY Barrie W. Jones Physics Department, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK E-mail: b.w.jones@open.ac.uk In distance education the student is remote from the university or college. Education is through a mixture of media; the specially prepared printed text is usually the main medium, with audiovisual media also prominent. There are usually no lectures, though there will normally be some tutor contact, and perhaps a short residential school. Student assignments throughout the year plus an end-of-course examination are the norm. Distance education is NOT unguided self study. It is essential that considerable effort goes into preparing the course materials, and in providing support and guidance that works at-a-distance at reasonable cost. There are now about thirty universities around the world devoted entirely to distance education, and many of these are national institutions. In addition a larger number of conventional institutions have some distance teaching activity. The UK Open University was the first major distance teaching university; it was established in 1969. In 1994 it introduced an introductory astronomy course that constitutes 8% of an honours science degree, that can alternatively be taken as a stand-alone certified course. [For further details about the UK Open University astronomy course, contact the author. One component of the course, all of the colour images (about 200), is separately available: Images of the cosmos, B.W. Jones et al., OU/Hodder and Stoughton 1994, ISBN 0 340 60065 9.]. Nearly 2000 students applied to take the course in 1994, and a similar number have applied for 1995. We can"only" admit 1150 students, but this is more than the total of all the other students in the UK taking astronomy at science degree level! Why is distance education important in astronomy? The importance of distance education is that • it reaches people who are unable to attend courses that require frequent attendance at a university or college: people can work at home, and they need not study full-time • a course can reach a very large number of students (witness our experience, outlined above) and so a small number of astronomers in a country, or region, is no bar to mass education in astronomy, at school, college, or degree level • the costs per student can be low. It is important to remember that, though students at-a-distance have some support, the extent of this is not nearly as great as at conventional institutions. Therefore, particularly at first and second year levels, normal text books, even with a study guide, will rarely be suitable. Texts have to be specially prepared in order to cater for the needs of students who have little support by way of tutor/lecturer/peer contact. In particular use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1539299600010832 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:46, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of mailto:b.w.jones@open.ac.uk https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S1539299600010832 https://www.cambridge.org/core 170 • the texts have to include detailed instructions about how to engage with the various course components, including the texts themselves • the texts have to provide pacing • the sequence of topics has to be prepared with great care, and it is essential to specify clearly and completely the knowledge and skills that students are expected to bring to the course • the texts have to be "student-active", for example by providing in-text questions that enable the students to check their understanding - full answers plus advice must be given for these questions. Distance education is already playing a role in astronomy, not only through the UK Open University, but also in France and elsewhere. However, the full potential of distance education in bringing astronomy, at all levels, to large numbers of people, has barely begun to be exploited. There is a golden opportunity here. TEXTBOOKS AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA Jay M. Pasachoff Williams College-Hopkins Observatory, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA E-mail: jay.m.pasachoff@williams.edu 1. Textbooks. Over the last few years, U.S. textbooks for the survey course have become increasingly sophisticated in the use of color diagrams and photographs and in the availability of supplemental material. This type of course is by far the largest exposure of astronomy to American students, with enrollments of over 200,000 per year. The increasing cost of preparing the books and auxiliary packages has led to many authors and publishing nouses bringing out both higher and lower level books, with different lengths and different levels of mathematics. Some 15 authors (or sets of co-authors) have brought out two dozen different textbooks with current copyrights (1993,1994, or 1995), including (with publishers in parentheses): Thomas T. Amy (Mosby), Eric Chaisson and Steve McMillan (Prentice-Hall), Sune Engelbrekston (Brown), William K. Hartmann (Wadsworth), William H. Jefferys and Robert R. Robbins (Wiley), James B. Kaler (HarperCollins), William J. Kaufmann HI (Freeman), Karl F. Kuhn (West), Dinah L. Moche (Wiley), David Morrison and Sidney Wolff (Saunders; one book includes the late George Abell), Jay M. Pasachoff (Saunders), Michael A. Seeds (Wadsworth), Theodore P. Snow (West), and Michael Zeilik (Wiley). A table with lists and addresses is available on request. Free supplements given to adopters of class-sized numbers of copies include special magazine or newspaper supplements, overhead transparencies of artwork and photographs, slide sets of artwork and photographs, videotapes, videodiscs, and use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1539299600010832 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:46, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of mailto:jay.m.pasachoff@williams.edu https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S1539299600010832 https://www.cambridge.org/core 
work_cqbkv6kvf5bwlhunesqjcjnr6y	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_csphsx5yxnfsjmtlmphyrkxvxy	----	High School Students’ Attitudes towards Distance Education: Comparative Study Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 197 ( 2015 ) 292 – 297 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.139 ScienceDirect 7th World Conference on Educational Sciences, (WCES-2015), 05-07 February 2015, Novotel Athens Convention Center, Athens, Greece High School Students' Attitudes towards Distance Education: Comparative Study Birol Celika *, Huseyin Uzunboylua aDepartment of Educational Curriculum and Instruction, Near East University, Nicosia, Cyprus Abstract By the rapidly evolving technologies, alternative training methods used on training needs of individuals instead of classical training methods. With the growing popularity of distance education opportunities, students' attitudes towards distance education is rapidly changing. The purpose of this study was determine to changes of attitudes of high school students in 2010 and 2014 towards distance education. To achieve this study "Distance Learning Attitude Scale" (DLAS) and "Personal Information Form" (PIF) developed by Celik (2011) utilized. Mentioned measuring tools applied to 92 in 2010 and 99 in 2014 high school students. DLAS has two sub-dimensions on distance education which are positive and negative attitudes. The reliability of these subscales were examined by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. Positive sub-dimension attitude toward distance learning Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient calculated as α=0.91 for 2010 and α=0.92 for 2014 and negative sub-dimension attitude toward distance learning Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient calculated as α=0.75 for 2010 and α=0.79 for 2014. Participant student’s gender, socio-economic levels and internet usage time determined by PIF. İnternet usage time of students grouped by less than 1 hour, 1-3 hours and more than 3 hours. ANOVA used on SPSS 20 software to analyze if student’s gender, socio-economic level and internet usage time have significant impact on positive and negative attitudes. Homogeneity of variances analyzed by Levene F test. Each test examined separately for the 2010 and 2014 data. As a result of the analysis, no significant difference (p<0.05) of student’s gender on distance education attitudes detected. The time spent on the Internet in 2010 has a significant difference (p=0.04) on positive attitude but no significant difference on negative attitude. No significant difference for the time spent on Internet for both attitude scales. Socio-economic status of students has a significant difference (p=0.02) on positive attitude for the year 2010 but no significant difference for the year 2014. Additionally no change detected on distance learning attitudes of students in comparison between the year 2010 and 2014. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. Keywords: distance learning, internet, computer, high school students * Birol Celik Tel.: +90 532 405 67 75; fax: +90-212-222-6548 E-mail address: celik.birol@gmail.com © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.139&domain=pdf 293 Birol Celik and Huseyin Uzunboylu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 197 ( 2015 ) 292 – 297 1. Introduction The field on which the countries focuses upon and allocate more and more resources for in the science age is education. In parallel with the developments in science and technology; different education and training methods have been started to be tried in order to increase the quality in education and to get people gain the information, skills and behaviors required by employment potential and industrial society. Distance learning was developed in order to meet the needs of persons who cannot participate in face-to-face classes (Beldarrain, 2006). Distance learning was firstly described by Keegan (1996) as the continuation of the learning processes among the trainer and students who are located in different places with various means. According to Eisinger (2000), distance learning is a planned learning experience which was formed for certifying the learning and which encourages the student communication; and which may access the student all around the world by addressing the students in distant places. When the history of distance learning in Turkey is investigated it is seen that distance learning was firstly performed via letter and “open university” has been developed. Together with the rapid developments and changes in technology, Distance learning has become different and e-learning and distance learning programs based upon internet have become widespread. One of the most important reasons of using computer and internet on education is increasing demand of education every passing day (Ozdamli ve Uzunboylu, 2008). Computer- computerized systems (laptop, tablets, smart phones, etc.) enable the formation of programs from which the individuals can get education in the time they want and on the place they are by benefitting from the internet. While the first generation web tools have been e-mail, chat rooms; the web blocks, wiki, podcast has followed these (Beldarrain, 2006). When the educationalists became aware of the power of these tools, the applications of these tools aiming at education have been developed (Beldarrain, 2006). Thus, lots of distance learning tools have been developed. Since income is a significant factor in the formation of life styles of the people from every segment of society, it is thought that the perception of today’s high school students who have grown in technology era will be related to the socio- economical level of their families (Saybasili, 1992). Adequate socio-economic opportunities are required for keeping up with the contemporary technology. Celik (2011) researched upon high school students in Turkey in determined that approaches towards distance learning show social-economical differences. Moreover “Net Generation” has an easier access to technology and they spend more time with technology (Newland & Bylest, 2014). It is thought that the fact Turkey is among the developing countries will affect the attitude of high school students in Turkey towards distance learning. In this context investigation of the changes towards the distance learning in relation to rapidly changing technology due to the gender, socio-economic levels and access to technology of the high school students has been aimed. 2. Method 2.1. Participants This research includes two study groups. First study group includes 92 students (72 men, 20 women) who were studied in high school in Istanbul in the year 2010. The second study group includes 99 students (75 men, 24 women) who study in high school in the year 2014. All of the participants were volunteers. 2.2. Instruments 2.2.1. Personal Information Form (PIF) Personal Information Form (PIF) was used for obtaining the demographical information of the students. While issuing this PIF, Socio-Economical Level Scale (SELS) which was developed by (Bacanli, 1992) was benefitted. PIF aims to determine the gender, internet access tools, income levels of the families and the time spend on internet of the students who have participated in the research. 2.2.2. Distance Learning Attitude Scale (DLAS) 294 Birol Celik and Huseyin Uzunboylu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 197 ( 2015 ) 292 – 297 In order to determine the perception of the students upon distance learning, Distance Learning Attitude Scale (DLAS) which was developed by Celik (2011) was used. The scale includes 23 items. DLAS has got two sub-scales as positive and negative attitude towards distance learning. Scale is graded as five point likert type (1= Strongly Disagree, 5= Strongly Agree). Reliability of DLAS’s sub-scales has been investigated with Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of positive attitude sub-scale towards distance learning was found as α = 0.91 for the year 2010 and α = 0.92 for the year 2014. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of negative attitude sub-scale towards distance learning was found as α = 0.75 for the year 2010 and α = 0.79 for the year 2014. 2.3. Analytic Procedure ANOVA used on SPSS 20 software to analyze if student’s gender, socio-economic and internet usage time have significant impact on positive and negative attitudes. Homogeneity of variances analyzed by Levene F test. Each test examined separately for the 2010 and 2014 data. Tukey test was conducted in order to determine the differences among the groups. 3. Results The findings of the research are as the following. Gender distribution of the students participating in the research is provided in Table 1. When table 1 is investigated, it is seen that the gender distribution of the students participating in the research in the years 2010 and 2014 is similar. Table 1: Gender distribution of the participants Years 2010 2014 Women 21,98% 23,59% Men 78,02% 76,41% Monthly average income of the families of students participating in the research is provided in Table 2. According to Table, the monthly average income of the families of participants in the years 2010 and 2014 are similar. It is thought that the changes in percentiles are due to the wage increases depending on the inflation. Inflation changes according to the years are provided in Figure 1 (TUIK, 2014). Table 2: Monthly average income levels of the families of participants Years 2010 2014 Less than 1000 TL 26,40% 8,08% 1000 TL - 2500 TL 41,70% 60,61% 2500 TL - 5000 TL 22,00% 27,27% 5000 TL - 10000 TL 5,50% 2,02% More than 10000 TL 4,40% 2,02% 295 Birol Celik and Huseyin Uzunboylu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 197 ( 2015 ) 292 – 297 Figure 1: Inflation rate distribution by years The time in which the participants daily internet usage duration is given in Table 3. When Table 3 is investigated it is seen that the time in which the participants spend in internet has significantly increased. Table 3: Internet usage duration Years 2010 2014 Less than 1 hour 26,09% 15,15% 1 - 3 Hours 35,87% 31,31% More than 3 Hours 38,04% 53,54% ANOVA test was conducted in order to determine whether the gender, internet usage duration and monthly average income which are independent variables of the research form a significant difference on the positive and negative attitude towards distance learning. ANOVA test was conducted separately for the data obtained in the year 2010 and 2014. The results of the year 2010 ANOVA are provided in Table 4. When Table 4 is investigated, gend er does not form a significant difference in positive and negative attitude towards distance learning. It was found out that positive attitude in 2010 has shown a significant difference according to the time spend in internet [F (2, 89) = 0.019, p < 0.05]. According to this positive attitude scores of the students who spend their time in internet more than 3 hours higher than the positive attitude scores of the students who spend their time in internet for 1-3 hours. It was found out that negative attitude in 2010 has shown a significant difference according to the time spend in internet [F (2, 89) = 0.036, p< 0.05]. According to this negative attitude scores of the students who spend their time in internet less than 1 hour higher than the negative attitude scores of the students who spend their time in internet more than 3 hours. When Table 4 is investigated, it is determined that positive attitude shows a significant difference according to the monthly average income [F (4, 87) = 0.030, p < 0.05]. According to this, it was found out that positive attitude scores of the students whose families’ monthly average income is 5000-10000 TL are higher than the positive attitude scores of the students 296 Birol Celik and Huseyin Uzunboylu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 197 ( 2015 ) 292 – 297 whose families’ monthly average income is between 1000-2500 TL. Monthly average income of the families does not form any significant difference on the negative attitude of the students towards distance learning. Table 4: ANOVA results of year 2010 Dependent variable Sd df F p Effect Size Gender Positive attitude 360,626 1 2,964 0,089 0,032 Negative attitude 63,832 1 2,282 0,134 0,025 Time spend in internet Positive attitude 963,912 2 4,146 0,019 0,085 Negative attitude 186,305 2 3,461 0,036 0,072 Monthly average income Positive attitude 1293,484 4 2,808 0,030 0,114 Negative attitude 228,784 4 2,115 0,086 0,089 ANOVA results of year 2014 are provided in Table 5. According to the results of ANOVA 2014; gender, time spend in internet and monthly average income which are independent variables of the research do not form a significant difference in positive and negative attitude towards distance learning. Table 5: ANOVA results of year 2014 Dependent variable Sd df F p Effect Size Gender Positive attitude 2,185 1 0,013 0,909 0,000 Negative attitude 0,170 1 0,004 0,947 0,000 Time spend in internet Positive attitude 200,752 2 0,607 0,547 0,012 Negative attitude 50,268 2 0,667 0,516 0,014 Monthly average income Positive attitude 82,781 4 0,164 0,092 0,005 Negative attitude 102,72 4 0.913 0,438 0,028 4. Discussion & Conclusion In this research the attitudes of the high school students towards distance learning in the years 2010 and 2014 were investigated according to gender of the students, the time they spend in internet and their families’ average income. Two different study groups resembling each other were included in the research in the years 2010 and 2014. The findings of the research show that the time in which high school students spend in the internet has increased. As a result of the research, in the year 2010 the time spent in internet and students’ families’ monthly average income formed a significant difference on the attitude towards distance learning. However, in the year 2014 gender, the time spent in internet and students’ families’ monthly average income did not form a significant difference on the attitude towards distance learning As the findings of this research indicated that the time in which digital era high school students spend in the internet increases day by day. Net generation who was born in 1980 and after 1980 uses computer in their classes (Newland & Byles, 2014). Children who were born in 1992/1993 grow as the computer is a part of their life (Newland & Byles, 2014). All of these show that number of children in the world growing with technology increases day by day. Hence, in Turkey where the young population is much, the age group in which computer and internet usage rate is the highest is 16-24 (TUIK, 2014). In this research it was determined that internet usage increasing in the year 2014 form neither positive nor negative attitude towards distance learning when compared to year 2010. The reason of this may the rapid change in the usage aims of the internet. Such that although the students spend more time in the internet, they do not spend their time not for education, but for activities such as social 297 Birol Celik and Huseyin Uzunboylu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 197 ( 2015 ) 292 – 297 networking sites, reading online news or magazines, seeking information upon goods and services, downloading or playing games, music, films, views, sending and receiving e-mails (TUIK, 2014). On the other hand, Yang & Tung (2007) conducted a research determining that long term internet usage indicates problematic internet usage. Thus, it may be said that attitudes of digital era children growing with technology towards distance learning do not have any positive or negative aspect. Similarly, in Turkey men spend more time in the internet but attitudes towards distance learning among men and women does not change. Again the reason of this may be the perception of distance learning is directed to online learning. More researches are need for having an opinion upon the attitude of the emerging youth towards distance learning and we need to explain the meaning of distance learning to the young persons. Also, training materials based on internet may be diversified and they may become more interesting in order to direct the rapidly increasing internet use to the education. Another finding of this research is that positive directional relation between social-economical level and wide band internet access has disappeared. Decrease in the prices of technological tools which are the necessities of technology age and in the prices of internet makes the internet a tool which can be reached by every segment of society. When positive effect of distance learning upon equality of opportunity in education is taken into consideration (Li, Zhou, & Fan, 2013) it must be considered that computer and internet services have to be more easily accessible for every person in order to provide complete equality of opportunity in education. Countries such as America allocate more money to distance learning day by day (Holzweiss, Joyner, Fuller, & Henderson, 2014). Hence, in America online learning has started to become an important part of higher education. Researches show that online learning develops “critical thinking” and “problem solving” skills of the students (Holzweiss et al., 2014). In Turkey updating distance learning and making it online is needed. Also, explaining the students the exact meaning of distance learning is needed. References Bacanli, H. (1992). Sosyo-ekonomik duzeyin belirlenmesi. In VII. Ulusal Psikoloji Kongresi. Ankara. Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2), 139–153. doi:10.1080/01587910600789498 Celik, B. (2011). Socio-economic family structure of students reflections on e-learning. Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey. Eisinger, J. (2000). Education Evolution. Journal of Association Management, 52(13), 52–59. Holzweiss, P. C., Joyner, S. A., Fuller, M. B., & Henderson, S. (2014). Online graduate students ’ perceptions of best learning experiences, 35(3), 311–323. doi:10.1080/01587919.2015.955262 Online Keegan, D. (1996). Foundations of distance education (3nd ed.). London: Routledge. Li, F., Zhou, M., & Fan, B. (2013). Can distance education increase educational equality? Evidence from the expansion of Chinese higher education. Studies in Higher Education, (January 2015), 1–12. doi:10.1080/03075079.2013.806462 Newland, B., & Byles, L. (2014). Changing academic teaching with Web 2 . 0 technologies. Innovations in Educations and Teaching International, 51(3), 315–325. doi:10.1080/14703297.2013.796727 Ozdamli, F. ve Uzunboylu, H. (2008). Ogretmen Adaylarinin Teknoloji Destekli İsbirlikli Ogrenme OrtaminaYonelı̇k Tutumlari. CYPRIOT Journal Of Educational Sciences, 3(1), 28–36. Saybasili, K. (1992). İktisat, siyaset, devlet ve Turkiye (p. 224). Baglam Yayincilik. TUIK. (2014). Hanehalki Bilisim Teknolojileri Kullanim Arastirmasi , 2014. Yang, S. C., & Tung, C.-J. (2007). Comparison of Internet addicts and non-addicts in Taiwanese high school. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(1), 79–96. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2004.03.037 
work_ct7dkb2wcfeqnk6nlbrr6vpbrm	----	SEWART93.PDF 1 Sewart, D. (1993). Student support systems in distance education. Open Learning, 8(3), 3- 12. Student support systems in distance education David Sewart David Sewart, Director of Regional Academic Services at the Open University UK, gave this keynote address as outgoing President of the International Council for Distance Education, to the 16th ICDE World Conference in Bangkok, November 1992. In the paper he identifies within a historical context the principles of student support in university education. Dr. Sewart demonstrates that student support services comprise the elements in distance education which relate most closely to teaching in conventional education He uses management theory especially that relating to service industry, to comment on strategic planning and management of student services in open and distance learning. When I was invited to offer a presentation on student support services at this ICDE World Conference, the first thing I did was to look back to the major presentations made at previous ICDE Conferences to see what had been said on this topic, so that I could refer to these and develop some of the thinkingg that had taken place. I managed to locate all the Conference Books and papers back to the Conference in New Delhi in 1978 but I could not find within them any comprehensive analysis of student support services although there were papers on drop out, study centres and other individual elements. It is probably not too difficult to understand why this is the case. If we were to examine the elements of course production we would see that they varied somewhat, with audio and video elements being added to the basic printed materials in some systems. But such variation is relatively minor. A discussion of course production can normally assume a generic similarity across the whole range of distance education. When we turn to student support services, the same cannot be said as these may or may not embrace: · class teaching at study centres; · individual tutorials at study centres or other locations; · annual residential schools (compulsory or optional); · study or self-help groups; · social events; · counselling sessions at study centres; · correspondence with tutor and counsellor; · telephone contact with tutor and counsellor; · group telephone tutorials; · radio tutorials; · audio cassette 'correspondence'; · computer mediated communication; · student newspapers. 2 This list is by no means exhaustive. But it does serve to illustrate that there is an almost infinite variation in student support systems in distance education. Each student support system represented in any distance teaching system is unique. In this paper I am not even attempting to cover such variation. What I will be attempting to do is to cover a number of principles in the area of student support. I will also be attempting to demonstrate that what is offered in student support depends on: · the market aimed at; · the package which is employed; · the delivery system; · the image of the organisation; · the culture in which it operates. Distance education Distance education is seen by some theorists as an entirely separate form of education, by others merely as taking a place on a continuum of types of education which has at one end the totally supportive one to one face to face situation and at the other end a process of learning from materials which is devoid of human interaction. I tend to favour this latter view, although I accept that there is a wide variation on the continuum of education. My own involvement in the oversight of a large distance education student support system (the UK Open University) leads me to believe that I am not doing anything generically different than my counterparts in traditional education systems. What do I mean by this? Let me look back briefly at the origins of distance education. Most people see the origins in this century. It is widely viewed as an industrialised form of teaching and learning which is reliant on good and swift communications over distance, in particular the rail and postal services which were developed in the nineteenth century, and it draws upon the processes of industry to break down complex operations into constituent parts and to carry these out with considerable savings in efficiency without any loss of effectiveness. The description of distance education as an industrialised form of teaching and learning was first made by Otto Peters' in his seminal work. The importance of his definition is now widely accepted and he highlighted the relevant characteristics of distance education as follows: · the division of labour in the teaching process itself which allows a rationalisation of the elements of the teaching process; · the use of technical equipment to ensure a product of constant quality in theoretically unlimited volumes; · the application of organisational principles to cut down unnecessary effort on the part of those teaching and those learning; · the use of technical media such as television and radio to replace teachers and cater for volume; · the testing of the product, the teaching package, to eliminate mistakes and guarantee a standard; · the monitoring of the teaching system by scientific methods to maintain quality and standards. 3 In general I agree with this definition; indeed it would be hard to disagree. Traditional education Now let me turn to traditional Higher Education. Here I am looking at the UK, but most of what I am saying is applicable throughout the world but not necessarily in the same time frame. The principles underlying higher education before the turn of this century were, for the most part, those of personal treatment tailored to the individual requirements of the students. This is epitomised nowhere more clearly than in the Oxford tutorial tradition in the United Kingdom but is no less apparent in the United States of America as well as other developed countries. Within this system the role of the tutors was to examine the needs of individual students who might be assigned to them, suggest the pattern of learning which each of these students should undertake, and advise on reading lists and the whole pattern of study. Such relationships usually became personal individual relationships between tutors and students and could take on an advisory capacity well beyond the strictly academic development of the student. In general it is clear that the early principles of higher education were student centred and individualised. They belong to the simple 'cottage industry' approach which has its origins in the Socratic philosophy and practices of teaching. The tutor was wholly responsible for all aspects of the learning process. But the moves towards the education of greater numbers of students from a much wider diversity of backgrounds required a move away from the idiosyncrasies and costs of the personal tutor system. The 'increasing flow of students into higher education was met by a change in the relationship between tutor and student and the processes of industry became apparent in mass higher education. There was a need to bring some of the principles of industry and management into this higher volume activity. No longer was the tutor responsible for providing the student with an individual, coherent and integrated pattern for learning. The emphasis moved from the learning experience of individual students and passed to a teaching process which was divided up between a range of teachers, all responsible for individual specialism, who taught large groups of students in a lecture theatre. The individual learning process lingered in a few institutions but the new institutions of higher education adopted the industrialised mode and the individualised mode of learning was relegated to post-graduate studies. The move from the artisan or cottage industry system of education became immediately clear in the UK in the creation of the new universities at the end of the last century and the expansion of these institutions for the first 60 years of this century to meet the expansion of the student base. The varied syllabus in which a tutor encouraged a student to explore widely within unrestricted areas of knowledge was replaced by the syllabus which defined what had to be learned and the length of time to be expended on this syllabus. The syllabus itself demanded sub-divisions of knowledge and led to the identification of disciplines such as history, philosophy, literature, chemistry, biology etc. In traditional mass higher education today students follow a series of predetermined courses which have been assessed as leading to a particular award. Each of these courses is taught by a separate expert and so the educational process is not related to one teacher but a range of individual experts. The whole system is 'managed' so as to achieve the best output from the costly academic staff while maintaining a breadth of provision which allows the institution to be accepted as a provider of education. 4 Change in the learning process Perhaps it would be useful to look at the changes that have appeared in the learning process which had originally stemmed from the one to one tutor student relationship. Most obvious is the depersonalisation of the process. Students no longer have a relationship with an individual tutor and hence with the institution. They see themselves, and are seen, as similar if not identical parts on a production line. The educational process is reduced from dialogue to monologue. In mass higher education the professor gives a lecture to a large audience. The professor is active, the audience wholly passive. The delivery is generalised. Its aim is to appeal to the Whole audience or, in the unlikely event of this being possible, at least to the largest possible part of the audience. There can be no attempt to individualise the process for each member of the audience. Mass higher education has recognised, to some extent, the differences between the lecture and the one to one teaching and learning process. It has recognised that the depersonalised system creates considerable gaps and, in compliance with the principles of mechanisation, has attempted to reassemble the previous structure by an assembly line method in which all the parts are fitted to the whole by a series of specialists. To comprehend the studentship of the individual in its entirety, the new mass higher education instituted ´personal tutors' or 'supervisors'. These personal tutors were members of the academic staff of the institution who specialised in particular discipline areas but, as a part of their work, had a responsibility for a group of students across the whole range of their academic pursuits. Such personal tutors or supervisors monitored the progress of individual students towards the ultimate goal - a degree. They gave advice on ´options' or choice of course where these existed and maintained that role throughout the students' careers, from entry into the University up to graduation. Most institutions of higher education have adopted a role of this sort but here again volume becomes an important factor. A supervisor might reasonably be expected to keep up to date with and monitor effectively the work and progress of a small number of students. Increased student/tutor ratios have led to attempts to mechanise this system by setting up posts such as sub-Dean, responsible for large numbers of students and specialising in this activity of student progress. Further sub-divisions of the original all embracing role of personal tutor can also be seen. Many universities have instituted a Careers Advisory Service. A further specialist development has occurred in the setting up of Student Health Services. Returning to my earlier thesis, we can see, in mass higher education, the bureaucratisation and mechanisation of education, an assembly line approach in which the product, representing studentship, is assembled by a number of specialists, many in narrow academic disciplines but some also in 'support areas' which are at least as critical to the attainment of the final objective of successful completion of undergraduate studies. Mass higher education has acquired the characteristics and management approaches of large scale industry. In that it is an industrialised form of teaching and learning, we must expect its management to reflect the methods and practices which are witnessed in industry. Management The principles of classical management theory were based upon the notions of organisations as machines which could be divided on the basis of functional specialisations: 5 · each functional department would have its own hierarchical mode of organisation with a clear line of authority from supervisor to subordinate which ran from top to bottom of the organisation; · reporting lines would be simple with no areas of divided responsibility; · individuals would carry out specialised tasks within a limited area of responsibility; · within that hierarchical model the responsibility of one individual would be limited to a number of people who might reasonably be coordinated and controlled; · authority and responsibility for activities would be properly defined; · authority would be centralised; · the interest of the individuals would be subordinate to the interests of the organisation. The classical management theorists approached the design and management of an organisation in much the same way as an engineer approaches the design of a machine in which each of the parts is designed to have a particular role and to work together to a strict pattern and as part of the whole. This was the basis of management theory early in the first half of this century. It is not surprising therefore that we find it in the move to mass higher education which also began at this time. The strengths of this form of management are apparent in organisations which can operate in an environment similar to that of a machine. The operation intended must be straightforward and inputs and outputs must be constant. organisations structured in this way are not designed for innovation and have difficulty adapting themselves to changing circumstances. Anyone witnessing the difficulties faced by higher education in the United Kingdom and Australia in their attempts to come to terms with directions of government in relation to students numbers, courses and structures will see the difficulties inherent in the adoption of many of these principles of classical management and scientific management theory in our present institutions of higher education. If management theory in the first part of this century looked to the analogy of the machine, in the last half of this century it has looked to the analogy of the organism or the brain. This is the systems approach to organisation and management. This approach defines the organisation as interrelated subsystems: · these subsystems are cells or organs of the body and might be quite complex in themselves; · where the classical and scientific management theory defines closed systems which exist in themselves as part of the perfect design, these new theories define open systems in which there is a continuous exchange with the environment in terms of input, output and feedback; · the regulatory systems must be diverse enough to deal with the environment in which the organisation exists; · there is not one correct way of achieving an outcome but rather several, or indeed an infinite number since the outcome required is infinitely changing; · the system is able to evolve to deal with new challenges and opportunities and thus will not run down or decay if the environment becomes hostile or even marginally less favourable. 6 Learner support Where is this thesis leading? The purpose is to highlight, through the progress from individual to mass higher education in the traditional form over a century, the dangers inherent in an industrialised approach to higher education if this process is not thought out and planned as a whole and if the architects of the mode lose sight, even for a moment, of the goal which is the education of the individual and the support which allows individuals from a variety of diverse backgrounds to mould the knowledge which they obtain from higher education to the richness of their pre-existing framework of experience. Higher education must be ever alert to the threat that teaching can so easily become instruction and even indoctrination rather than education. Distance education has merely taken the industrialisation of mass higher education a few steps further down the road. In distance education it is easier to see the divisions of the traditional teaching function and this method of education uses existing industrialised systems such as large volume printing and publication. post, telecommunications etc. In distance education, however, the independence of time and space leads more readily to a division into discrete elements. The overall design of the distance education system is, therefore, of paramount importance. If the discrete elements of the process do not fit together as a coherent whole from the standpoint of the student, the objective cannot be achieved. The specialists who are involved in these discrete elements of distance education rarely comprehend the interstices of any of the other elements or their interrelationship. There is a need, therefore, for a master plan and close control over the elements. There is a beguiling temptation to assume in distance education that the problems of teaching - and therefore of students learning can be resolved by the construction of perfect discrete elements which can be tested and refined almost in laboratory conditions until they are precisely what is required. The most obvious example of this is the excessive concentration on the hypothetically perfect package of instructional materials (course units, set books, radio and television programmes etc.), This approach tacitly assumes the subordination of the needs of the individual as a learner to the teaching package. The teaching package takes the place of the lecture and student lecture notes in traditional mass higher education. The emphasis on instruction can be, and often is, so much greater in distance education where the students are normally studying alone and at a distance For them there is no peer group against which to judge themselves and their own personal reaction to the package of materials. The possibilities for instruction to the point , of indoctrination rather than education are so much greater. Mass higher education has, as we have seen, begun to recognise the needs of the individual student learning in an industrialised process where teaching is the dominant characteristic. Distance education, in many of its manifestations, still lags somewhat behind. There have been a number of much vaunted experiments in distance education which have been seen as successes, not least the United Kingdom Open University which has recognised the need for general support services and concentrated resources on this function. However, the success of the United Kingdom Open University rests upon a number of cohorts of highly motivated, often academically well prepared students, For those who are less well prepared, less well motivated or more socially disadvantaged the success rate has been nowhere near as satisfactory. The United Kingdom Open University has recently determined that it will concentrate on 'Access' in an attempt to broaden its student base. The new cohorts of students whom it hopes to attract will need more individual support to help them relate to 7 the body of knowledge which higher education is there to provide. It, is a challenge which faces traditional and non-traditional higher education and in the 1990s it will bring to the forefront the need for further analysis of the Process of teaching and learning in higher education. Service industry I want tentatively to attempt such an analysis. The student support element of distance education is a service industry which meets most of the general criteria for service industries: · a service industry is an activity; · a service industry is intangible and relates to a method of transmitting a product rather than to the product itself - it cannot be transported or stored; · a service industry relates a product to its customers such that the production and consumption are connected - the services are produced at the point of consumption or are produced and consumed almost simultaneously; · customers take part in the process of a service industry. Earlier I noted that management theory had moved in the second half of this century away from the analogy of the machine and towards that of the organism or brain. This metaphor is particularly appropriate to service industries which are seen as a continuous interchange and interaction between: · the market segment aimed at; · the service package which is employed, · the delivery system; · the image of the organisation; · the culture in which it operates. The traditional stress on intangibility, in relation to a service, as opposed to tangibility, in relation to goods is probably not satisfactory. We might like to see service as something which is both produced and consumed simultaneously. The client is always at the centre of the service and relates to the physical system and procedures which are used, the overall strategy of the organisation and the people in the organisation who are providing the service. When the client comes into contact with the organisation, there is a 'moment of truth' at which the client receives a good, bad or indifferent impression of the service. In a service industry there are a number of moments of truth' and the cumulative effects of these determines whether the client is dissatisfied (drops out) or satisfied (completes the course). The essence of managing a service industry is creating a positive experience for the client in relation to each of these 'moments of truth'. The success or failure of student support will be judged on a number of performance indicators. The most simple and obvious of these is probably the rate of success of the students. Drop out, wastage or attrition are and have been major guides to the success of distance education systems. But drop out has to be judged in economic as well as educational terms. We might posit a system of education which admitted 100,000 students per year and offered them no further support of any sort until the examination at the end of 8 the year. Such a system would have most of its expenditure in direct student costs centred on the sets of course materials provided for the vast student intake. The cost of its student support services would be zero. Students would receive no support from the institution and would merely be required to study on their own and submit for an examination rarely complete the course. London University External Degrees were possibly the best known example of such a system, but there is a documented history of such systems and it was on the basis of this known wastage rate in correspondence education that 'The Times' on the 7 June 1968 attacked the concept of the UK Open University by quoting the example of the Chicago experiment where some 53,000 out of a total population of 8 million participated in credit courses but of these only 0.2 per cent gained a degree and 2 per cent gained some form of credit. The system such as I have posited might achieve at best a success rate of 5,000 students and possibly a good deal less. We might contrast this with a system which admits only 10,000 students per year but provides them with a comprehensive support system of regular contacts and advice. The initial direct costs of such a system in terms of the costs of the materials are only one tenth of our first system but the costs of the student support services may be such as to consume the other nine tenths of the initial costs of our first system. For the sake of this example I am assuming that the success rate of the second system is also 5,000 students but this time it is 50 per cent of the intake rather than 5 per cent of the intake. In this theoretical example - but one which can be roughly paralleled by analysis of historical distance education systems - the per capita costs of the system are identical when measured in successful students and, assuming for the sake of the example that the fixed costs are equal, there is no difference between the systems in simple economic terms. The two examples epitomise, perhaps, different approaches, that of a manufacturing indust, approach and that of a service indust approach and they add point to a basic question for distance education. The student support system in distance education cannot be seen out of context of the philosophy of education which exists in the pa of the world in which it is operating. The tradition of individual support for students higher education is very high in Australia, the United States and British traditional system. The practices of industrialisation have been applied to mass higher education, as we have seen, but attempts have been made to build in these systems the view of a student as a learner in a system rather than as a product of the teaching system. This philosophy of individual support does not exist - or certainly does r. exist to the same extent - in several other areas of the world. Thus we have in traditional high-, education two contrasting philosophies - ' perhaps it would be better to say two wide separated points on the continuum - the one which students are expected to fend for themselves and where success against the system is in itself seen as a valuable part of the educational process and the other in which students are expected to succeed and where failure is not regarded as a failure by the students but as a failure by the institution. The contrast between the philosophies of education epitomised in the now quite popular anecdote in distance education of the professor of mathematics in a distance education system who stated that his mathematics courses were the best mathematics courses in any institution in his country because the drop out rate for students on his courses was higher than for any other course. The story is often told in the UK a apocryphal; it is in fact perfectly true. A major question which has to be asked with regard to student support services is - what is the educational philosophy in which we are operating and where does it exist on the continuum to which I have just referred? Is it the institution based teaching approach, the 9 manufacturing industry, or the student based approach, the service industry? Nor is this quite such a simple question of alternative choice The objectives of a student based system cannot be defined simply as a requirement to guarantee success for all students. Cost per student success is a performance indicator used both in traditional and distance education systems. The greater the input to the provision of student support services, the greater the success rate. But this is not a straight line equation. As the level of support gets beyond a certain point, the curve of student success seems to flatten out. For those responsible for creating student support systems there is an overall decision to be made concerning an `acceptable` rate of dropout and this will be arrived at in terms of the overall philosophy of education but also through an analysis of the overall costs of the institution and the relative value for money between production and presentation activities. There is nowhere a widely accepted standard against which this decision can be taken but it is one which, once taken on behalf of the institution, must be taken again and again in terms of the analysis of the student body' What are the relative costs of providing similar support to distance education students in an urban area as opposed to a scattered rural area? What are the pressures to provide a good service in rural areas both from within the institution itself and from the local community, public funding bodies etc? What are the relative costs of supporting minority groups such as the disabled or ethnic minorities? What is the policy of the institution to such groups? Distance education is an industrialised form of teaching and learning but, given the increased emphasis on the clients in various parts of the world, it is to service industry that we must look for models of student support rather than manufacturing industry. The systems approach to organisation, with particular reference to the needs of the customer and the human relations approach, is more meaningful than the classical or scientific approach. Course production subsystem Defined in the narrowest of contexts and in isolation from the other elements, the course materials subsystem in distance education might be seen to operate most closely to the principles of manufacturing industry. The product of the course materials subsystem is narrowly circumscribed as a series of course materials, prepared initially by academic authors, supported by educational technologists, graphic designers, editors and sometimes sound and vision producers and technicians and finally appearing as texts and programmes. The financial structure of all distance education institutions is such that the production of materials is the largest, normally by far the largest, cost centre. This cost is justified through student volume factors and the amortisation of the initial cost over several large student cohorts. This provides for large scale distance education systems a recognised cost advantage over traditional systems. However, no subsystem can be seen in isolation and the course materials subsystem must be integrated, to a greater or lesser extent, with the student support subsystem. The continuing problem in distance education overall is the need to manage an organisati6n in which the major cost centre runs on the principles of manufacturing industry and the product of this, course materials, is mediated to the clients through a student support subsystem which must run on the principles of a service industry. Moreover, the dominant ethos of the distance education organisation as a whole must be that of a service industry. It will have to exist in the general competitive environment of education. If distance 10 education cannot provide an individualised service, it will not be able to compete against traditional education or will be left only that niche of the market which traditional education cannot serve or does not wish to serve. The tension between course production and student support subsystems is not simply one of esoteric management theory. It exists as a major element in the financial and strategic planning of the institution. In an ideal world and in a steady state, an organisation might devote a fixed percentage of its total resources to course production and maintenance and a fixed proportion to student services. The theoretical steady state does not exist in reality. A wish to increase the range of courses or to remake or update sooner than initially planned creates demands for additional funding which has to come from student support services and/or, where this is applicable, from student fees. Since the reputation of the institution is normally seen to rest on the quality of its materials in the first instance, pressures to alter the balance of funding between course production and presentation can be considerable. A classic failure of management in distance education is to develop a structure in which the remake of a course vies directly for a limited pot of money with the hire of a new study centre, the relining of the boiler or the upgrading of desk top publishing equipment. In dual mode systems the options can be even more difficult to disentangle. There is a beguiling view of management that to analyse decision malting in terms of options of this sort offers clarity for management decision by reducing complex problems to apparently simple options. Unfortunately the opposite is true. Management at the strategic level in distance education must recognise certain general financial principles in relation to the total budget of the institution. While a transfer of resource between course production and presentation might exist from year to year, it must operate only within specific parameters and recognise these limits if it is not to have an adverse effect on the student and potential student population. The relationship of student support to the institution as a whole is of prime importance. There must be a recognition of the tension between subsystems which quite properly are set up on manufacturing industry lines and those which have to function as a service industry. The impact of the course materials subsystem should not be underestimated. It is easy to see the course materials as the major product of distance education. After all, they stand as the most obvious difference between a distance education system and a traditional system. They are tangible and might be perceived as the end result of an industrial process. In addition they have a relationship with the students which can be measured quite easily, whereas the utilisation of services is far less easy to define and will vary from one student to another. But the product of all education, including distance education is, in fact, the students. The organisation, as a service industry, is relating the tangible product (course materials) to its customers. The objective of the institution is not the production of highly acclaimed course materials, it is the production of successful students. Those involved in the student support services must recognise the tension between the materials, where the principles of manufacturing industry play no small part, and service industry, But this must exist as constructive tension rather than destructive tension. Perhaps the most important means of accomplishing this is to establish and build in from the earliest possible stage the interrelationship between the materials and the services. 11 Resource allocation This leads me immediately to the question of resource allocation in the institution as a whole. The dominant philosophy of education in any country will dictate an 'acceptable' rate of attrition. To put it another way, there are different parameters for the range of successful as opposed to unsuccessful clients. Any organisation will have to operate somewhere within this range and, if it is hoping to prosper and exists in a tradition of learner centred education, it will have to aim to be in the top quartile of success as measured by this parameter. Students will not easily achieve success if course materials are of poor quality. Nor will they usually achieve success if they are not dealt with individually through the student support subsystem. As we have seen, the course materials production is a high initial cost and low volume cost operation. Student support is the opposite. There is, therefore, a complex interrelationship between student volumes, course production costs and student support costs. This is a strategic question for those who manage resource allocation in the institution as a whole. Since student support is almost wholly volume related, an increase in the unit cost may not be significant in a small population system. In a large population system the impact can be dramatic and critical. Perhaps the significance of this can be best appreciated from an example. The student support system of the UK Open University provides for a payment to the staff engaged in tuition and counselling in relation to the number of students allocated to them, the number of 'contact' hours worked and the number of assignments marked. If a small distance education system increased by one the number of assignments marked for each of its courses, the impact on the total finances might not be too significant. Such a move in the UK Open University would, however, lead to an increase of over El million, almost one per cent of the institution's total budget and also approximately equal to the cost of producing a whole course. Moreover such an increase is a recurrent cost, whereas course production is mostly 'one off with a small recurrent and volume related cost. So the relationship of student support to other elements becomes more critical the greater the size of the institution. Decision-making processes I wish finally to examine decision-making processes. Management in relation to the decision-making structure in an institution must involve policy formulation and the traditional management of universities is inappropriate for distance education. As an industrialised form of teaching and learning it is to industry that it must look for its decision-making structure. This flies in the face of the educational ethos of many countries but its importance cannot be stressed too highly. However, management in relation to decision-making within the student support area is no less vital. In a small scale organisation there can be a personal relationship between the individual client and the organisation. In a complex Organisation this personal relationship, of necessity, disappears, There is a gulf between the system, in our case the distance education Organisation, and the individuals, in our case the students. Within this gulf there has grown up a number of intermediaries who seek to adapt the system to the individual 12 needs of the clients. In education these people are tutors, counsellors, advisors etc. The primary concern of these intermediaries is not for the system itself but for the students and they seek to represent individual needs to such an extent that they force the system to take cognisance of these needs. This is a strength and a weakness for the student support area. It is a strength because it leads to a better deal for the students through the intermediaries. It is a weakness because the intermediaries, in acting for the student, can also be seen as acting against the institution as a whole. The management of student support needs to take account of the needs of the students as expressed by themselves or by the intermediaries in a structure which manages the intermediaries within the resource, policy and planning definition of the subsystem. Traditional teachers are no less intermediaries but pose much more simple local management problems. For traditional teachers the requirement to serve the students in a particular way is generic to all of them within a particular institution. They will be, or will see themselves to be, employed and directed by an authority beyond the local Head Master or Vice-Chancellor, whom they will consider as benign management, constrained by distant and uncontrollable features such as government policy and funding. In large scale student support services the same is not true (as I know to my cost). Failure to provide more for students is seen as failure of the management of the student support area in relation to the management of other areas, focusing attention on the importance of management and leadership within the student support area itself. Conclusion Student support services make up the element of distance education most nearly akin to traditional education: it is the interface between the institution and its students. The problem of management relates, therefore, to a subsystem which is apparently carrying out a traditional role and consequently might appear to observe the traditional management practices of education. The reality is far from this. Student support services have to take cognisance of the course materials, which form the major part of the traditional role, as well as of other subsystems. One approach to this problem, currently taken by many of the large scale distance teaching institutions, is to draw up role definitions of those engaged in the interface with the students, relating these to one another, to the students and to the subsystem as well as to the institution as a whole. This is a useful way of highlighting the role of the intermediaries in distance education and can avoid confusion with the traditional roles. But here again, care must be taken on the interrelationship of these roles. What is being designed is not a machine in which every part performs a separate function operating in a strict sequence but rather an organism in which the cells are constantly relating to one another in patterns which are duplicated throughout the organism. The loss of a cell does not mean the failure of the system, and cells can be added without putting a stop to the overall objective of the organism but rather changing its direction marginally, without the need for the design of a completely new machine. It is possible to transfer between countries the elements which make up course production. The same cannot be said for student support services. These: · must be constructed in the context of the almost infinite needs of the clients; · are dependent on the educational ethos of the region and the institution; 13 · are dependent on the dispersal of the student body, elements of resource and the curriculum or product of the course production subsystem; · are dependent on the generic differences in the student body which it has been set up to serve. No detailed prescription of student support services in general can be made. Each system must be derived rather from a number of principles. A visitor to the UKOU examining its course production system would find that it could be transported virtually intact and would work in any country throughout the world. If, on the other hand, the same were to take place with the UKOU's student support system, it would not work at all or, at best, only in a very limited capacity. What would be needed would be the principles behind that system, which could be translated in the context of the other country. Only by this means would success be achieved. References Peters, 0. (1973) Die didaktische Struktur des Fernunterrichts, Untersuchungen zu einer industrialierten Form des Lehrens und Lernens. 
work_ctr2kqs2afahpnm6r5dnp3ddva	----	Students’ perceptions on distance education: A multinational study RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Students’ perceptions on distance education: A multinational study Patricia Fidalgo1*, Joan Thormann2, Oleksandr Kulyk3 and José Alberto Lencastre4 * Correspondence: pfidalgo@ecae. ac.ae 1Curriculum and Instruction Division, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Abstract Many universities offer Distance Education (DE) courses and programs to address the diverse educational needs of students and to stay current with advancing technology. Some Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) that do not offer DE find it difficult to navigate through the steps that are needed to provide such courses and programs. Investigating learners’ perceptions, attitudes and willingness to try DE can provide guidance and recommendations for IHEs that are considering expanding use of DE formats. A survey was distributed to undergraduate students in Portugal, UAE and Ukraine. The results of this pilot study showed that in all three countries, students’ major concerns about such programs were time management, motivation, and English language skills. Although students were somewhat apprehensive many indicated they were interested in taking DE courses. Six recommendations informed by interpretation of students’ responses and the literature, are offered to assist institutions who want to offer DE as part of their educational strategy. Keywords: Distance education, Multinational study, Perceptions of distance education, Undergraduate students Introduction The World Wide Web has made information access and distribution of educational content available to a large fraction of the world’s population and helped to move Dis- tance Education (DE) to the digital era. DE has become increasingly common in many universities worldwide (Allen & Seaman, 2017). Nonetheless, there are still many uni- versities that do not provide this opportunity because it is not part of their institutional culture. As DE becomes more prevalent, countries and Institutions of Higher Educa- tion (IHE) that do not provide DE courses will need to look at this option to retain and expand their student population. (Keegan, 1994; Nakamura, 2017). In order to develop such programs, it is useful to determine if students are receptive to taking such online courses and are prepared to do so. This study addresses students’ perceptions and their interest in DE. In addition, it provides a comparative analysis across three countries whose IHEs do not have extensive offerings in DE. The results of this research provide some strategies to encourage and support students to take DE courses. © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-00194-2 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1186/s41239-020-00194-2&domain=pdf mailto:pfidalgo@ecae.ac.ae mailto:pfidalgo@ecae.ac.ae http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Literature review A seminal article by Keegan (1980) presents key aspects of DE. Some of the elements are: physical separation of teacher and learner, learning occurs in the context of an educational institution, technical media are used, teacher and learner communicate, face to face meetings are possible, and an industrial model of providing education is used. More recently varying definitions of DE seem to be based on the perspective of various educators and to reflect the educational culture of each country and IHE. How- ever, some common descriptors seem to be accepted by most stakeholders in the field. Distance education is an educational experience where instructors and learners are separated in time and space (Keegan, 2002) which means it can happen away from an academic institution and can lead to a degree or credential (Gunawardena, McIsaac, & Jonassen, 2008). Although there are different types of DE, this research focuses on online learning. The following types of online learning will be investigated: synchronous, asynchronous, blended, massive online open courses (MOOC), and open schedule online courses. In synchronous instruction, teachers and learners meet (usually online) for a session at a predetermined time. According to Watts (2016) live streaming video and/or audio are used for synchronous interaction. Although videoconferencing allows participants to see each other this is not considered a face-to-face interaction because of the physical separation (Keegan, 1980). Asynchronous instruction means that teachers and learners do not have synchronous sessions and that students have access to course content through the Internet at any time they want or need. Communication among the participants occurs mainly through email and online forums and is typically moderated by the instructor (Watts, 2016). According to Garrison (2000) “Asynchronous collaborative learning may well be the defining technology of the postindustrial era of distance education.” (p.12) Yet another type of DE is blended learning (BL). Garrison and Kanuka (2004) define BL as combin- ing face-to-face classroom time with online learning experiences. Although it is not clear as to how much time is allocated to online in the blended model “the real test of blended learning is the effective integration of the two main components (face-to-face and Internet technology) such that we are not just adding on to the existing dominant approach or method.” (p.97) In the BL format different teaching strategies and instruc- tional technology can be used to help individuals who have different learning styles, needs and interests (Tseng & Walsh Jr., 2016). Another type of DE is MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses). This format was first introduced in 2006 and offers distributed open online courses that are available without cost to a very large number of participants (Cormier, McAuley, Siemens, & Stewart, 2010). MOOCs origins can be traced to the Open Access Initiative in 2002 which advo- cates sharing knowledge freely through the Internet. By providing educational oppor- tunities MOOCs can address the increasing demand for training and education (Zawacki-Richter & Naidu, 2016). Finally, in open schedule online courses students work asynchronously with all the materials being provided digitally. Although there are deadlines for submitting assignments, students working at their own pace have some independence as to when they do their coursework (Campus Explorer, 2019). There are advantages and disadvantages in taking DE courses. Some of the advan- tages are self-paced study, time and space flexibility, time saving (no commute between Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 2 of 18 home and school) and the fact that a distance learning course often costs less. Disad- vantages include a sense of isolation, the struggle with staying motivated, lack of face- to-face interaction, difficulty in getting immediate feedback, the need for constant and reliable access to technology, and occasionally some difficulty with accreditation (De Paepe, Zhu, & Depryck, 2018; Lei & Gupta, 2010; Venter, 2003; Zuhairi, Wahyono, & Suratinah, 2006). Most of the literature concerning student perception of DE courses, both blended and entirely online, involves students who have enrolled in online courses. Some arti- cles address comparisons of perceptions between face-to-face and online students regarding DE (Daniels & Feather, 2002; Dobbs, del Carmen, & Waid-Lindberg, 2017; Hannay & Newvine, 2006; Lanier, 2006). Additional studies address adult and under- graduate students and cover many aspects of the online experience (Dobbs et al., 2017; Horspool & Lange, 2012; Seok, DaCosta, Kinsell, & Tung, 2010b, a). However, little, if any research has been conducted that only addresses perceptions of students who live in countries in which few IHEs offer online courses. In a study comparing online and face-to-face learning, Horspool and Lange (2012) found that students chose to take online courses to avoid travel time to class and scheduling problems. A majority of both face-to-face and online students did not experience technological issues. Both groups also found that communication with the instructor was adequate. Online students indicated that instructor response time to questions was prompt. By contrast online students perceived peer communication as occurring much less often. Course satisfaction was comparable for both formats (Horspool & Lange, 2012). Responses to another survey concerning online and trad- itional course formats found that students’ reasons for taking online courses included flexibility to accommodate work and family schedules, the ability to avoid commuting to the university and more online courses being available to them (Dobbs et al., 2017). Both online and traditional students agreed that traditional courses were easier, and they learned more in that format. They also concurred that online courses required more effort. Experienced online students indicated that the quality of their courses was good while traditional students who had never taken an online course felt that the qual- ity of online courses was lower. There is additional research that focuses on students including those enrolled in community colleges, MOOCs, blended learning as well as adult learners. Community college students’ and instructors’ perceptions of effectiveness of online courses were compared by Seok et al. (2010b, a). The researchers focused on pedagogical characteris- tics (management, Universal Design for Learning, interaction, teaching design and con- tent) and technical features (interface, navigation and support). In addition, responses were examined based on various aspects of the subjects’ demographics. Two surveys with 99 items were distributed electronically. One survey was for instructors and the other for students. In general, instructors and students indicated that teaching and learning online was effective. Female students responded more positively to most ques- tions concerning effectiveness, and instructors also found it more positive (Seok et al., 2010b, a). Students who enrolled in a MOOC were motivated to take other courses in this for- mat based on their perception that it was useful for achieving their goals. In addition, their motivation was high if the course was posted on a platform that was easy to use Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 3 of 18 (Aharony & Bar-Ilan, 2016). This study also found that as students proceeded through the course, they gained confidence. Blended learning was examined by Kurt and Yildirim (2018) to determine student satisfaction and what they considered to be important features of the blended format. The results indicated that the Turkish students who participated, almost unanimously felt that BL was beneficial and that their own role and the instructors’ role was central to their satisfaction. The authors stated, “the prominent components in the process have been identified as face-to-face lessons, the features of online course materials, LMS used, design-specific activities, process-based measurement and evaluation, student-student interaction and out-of-class sharing respectively.” (p. 439) DE has a growth potential and offers the opportunity to reach many people (Fidalgo, 2012), hence it can be used as a technique for mass education (Perraton, 2008). According to Perraton (2008) DE can be adapted to the needs of current and previous generations who did not complete their education. DE can also reach individuals who live in remote locations and do not have the means to attend school. Methodology Study goals The goal of this pilot study is to examine what undergraduate students’ perceptions are concerning DE and their willingness to enroll in this type of course. This study focuses on three countries that do not offer extensive DE accredited programs. By comparing three countries with similar DE profiles, commonalties and differences that are relevant and useful can be found. When the IHEs from these countries decide or have the conditions to move towards DE, the results of this study may help them adapt this format to their particular context and students’ needs. Results may also help IHEs plan their strategy for offering online courses to current and future students and attract prospective students who otherwise would not be able to enroll in the face-to-face courses that are available. Research questions 1. Have undergraduate students taken an online course previously? 2. What are undergraduate students’ perceptions of distance education? 3. What are the reasons for undergraduate students to enroll/not enroll is distance education courses? 4. What preparation do undergraduate students feel they need to have before taking distance education courses? 5. What is the undergraduate students’ receptivity towards enrolling in distance education courses? 6. What types of distance education would undergraduate students be interested in taking? Setting This research was conducted at IHEs in three countries (Portugal, Ukraine and UAE). A description of each country’s sociodemographic and technological use provides a context for this study. Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 4 of 18 Portugal, a country located at the western end of the European continent, has a resi- dent population of just over 10 million people (Instituto Nacional de Estatistica, 2019). Data collected by Instituto Nacional de Estatistica in 2019 indicated that almost 81% of households in Portugal had Internet access at home. According to the Portuguese National Statistical Institute (2019), the rate of Internet use by the adult population is about 76%. Among this population, people who attend or have completed secondary and higher education have a higher percentage of Internet use (98%) (Instituto Nacional de Estatistica, 2019). The most used devices to access the Internet are smartphones and laptops. Regarding computer tasks, the most frequent ones are copying and moving files and folders and transferring files from the computer to other devices (PORDATA - Base de Dados Portugal Contemporâneo, 2017). Among Internet users, 80% use social networks, which is a higher percentage than the European Union (EU) average. Mobile Internet access (outside the home and work- place and on portable devices) is 84% and maintains a strong growth trend (Instituto Nacional de Estatistica, 2019). Ukraine is one of the post-soviet countries located in Eastern Europe and it strives to be integrated in economic and political structures of the EU. The current population of the country is 42 million. Despite the low incomes of many Ukrainians, modern technological devices are widespread among the population. The State Statistics Service of Ukraine (2019) reported that there were 26 million Internet subscribers in the country in the beginning of 2019. However, Ukrainians do not have a high level of digital literacy yet. According to the Digital Transformation Ministry of Ukraine (Communications Department of the Secretariat of the CMU, 2019), almost 38% of Ukrainian people aged from 18 to 70 have poor skills in computer literacy and 15.1% of the citizens have no com- puter skills. According to the survey conducted by the Digital Transformation Ministry of Ukraine (The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, 2019) 27.5% Ukrainian families have a tablet, and 30.6% have one smart phone, 26.4% have two smart phones, 16.5% have three smart phones and 10.8% have four and more smart phones. As for laptops, 42.7% Ukrainian families have a laptop and 45.6% have a desktop computer (The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, 2019). The data from the ministry did not indicate if families have multiple devices, however the data shows that technological devices are widespread. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a country located in the Persian Gulf that bor- ders with Oman and Saudi Arabia. The UAE has a population of 9.77 million and is one of the richest countries in the world based on gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The resident population consists of 11,5% Emiratis and the remaining residents are expats from countries such as India, Pakistan, Philippines, Egypt and others (Global Media Insight, 2020). Regarding technology use, 91% of the residents use mobile Internetand over 98% of the households have Internet access (Knoema, 2018). Mobile devices such as smart- phones are used to access the Internet mainly at home or at work (Federal Competi- tiveness and Statistics Authority, 2017). In 2017 the most frequent Internet activities were: sending/receiving emails (61%), posting information or instant messaging (55%), getting information about goods or services (45%), reading or downloading online newspapers, magazines or electronic Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 5 of 18 books (41%) and telephoning over the Internet/VOIP (33%). Downloading movies, im- ages, music, watching TV or video, or listening to radio or music is also a frequent ac- tivity performed by 27% of the Internet users followed by Internet banking (25%) and purchasing or ordering good and services (22%) (Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority, 2017). While these three countries were selected due to the location of the researchers and thus provided convenience samples, the three countries have a similar lack of DE offer- ings. Online surveys were emailed to students enrolled in a variety of undergraduate face-to-face courses during the fall semester of 2018. The students in Portugal and the UAE were enrolled in a teacher education program and the survey was emailed to two course sections in Portugal (73 students) and four course sections in the UAE (108 stu- dents). At the IHE in Ukraine, students were majoring in applied mathematics, phil- ology, diagnostics, social work and philosophy, and surveys were emailed to 102 students who were enrolled in five course sections. In Portugal and Ukraine, the URL for the online survey was emailed by the instructor of all the course sections. In the UAE the instructor who emailed the URL for the survey taught two of the course sec- tions. The students in the other two sections knew this instructor from taking courses with her previously. The students participating in this study were a convenience sample based on the disciplines taught by the researchers. Data collection An online survey with 10 closed questions about undergraduate students’ perception and receptivity towards enrolling in DE courses was developed by the researchers. Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen, and Walker (2010) compared traditional methods (i.e. face-to-face, paper and pencil) with web-based surveys and found the latter to be are more effective for gathering data from many participants. The questions designed by the researchers were informed by their experience/practice as well as in-depth literature review. The survey was created to respond to the research questions that guided this study. Response choices to the multiple- choice questions were based on issues and concerns related to DE. Students’ responses were collected towards the end of the first semester of the 2018/19 academic year. The survey was developed to address research questions that assess undergraduate stu- dents’ perceptions of DE and students’ receptivity towards enrolling in DE courses (c.f. Appendix). The use of surveys allows researchers to “obtain information about thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values, perceptions, personality and behavioral intentions of research participants.” (Johnson & Christensen, 2014, p. 192) The survey questions included multiple response formats: Likert scale, select more than one response and mul- tiple choice. Surveys for Portugal were presented in Portuguese. In Ukraine the surveys were translated into Ukrainian. Since English is the language of instruction at the UAE institution, their survey was in English. The URL for the survey was emailed to students by their instructors and was available in an online Google Form. The survey took approxi- mately 10 min to complete. The study consisted of a “self-selected” convenience sample. Data analysis Survey results were recorded in Google Forms and an Excel spreadsheet was used to collect students’ responses. Descriptive statistics of the responses to the survey are Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 6 of 18 presented in graphs and tables with percentages of responses displayed. The descriptive statistics provide summaries about the sample’s answers to each of the questions as well as measures of variability (or spread) and central tendency. Research approval and data management The research proposal was submitted to the Research and Grants Committee and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the college in the UAE. No personal in- formation (name, College ID number or any other type of information that allows the identification of students) was asked from the students in the surveys. The surveys were anonymous. Only the Principal Investigator (PI) had access to all the data collected. The data will be stored in the PI’s password protected computer for 5 years. Results Fifty five of the 73 Portuguese students who received the survey responded and 98 of the 108 UAE students responded. In the Ukraine 102 students were sent surveys and 70 responded. Below are participants’ responses to questions concerning age, gender, as well as level of confidence using the computer and the Internet. Students’ age range was from 17 to 50 years old. Most students’ age ranges were be- tween 17 and 29 years. Survey responses indicated that 7% of the students in the UAE were male and 93% female, in the Ukraine 43% were male and 57% female and in Portugal 9% male, and 91% female. Participants were asked about their level of confidence using a computer and the Internet. Results are presented in Table 1. The use of participants from three countries allows the study of trends and to deter- mine differences and/or similarities of perceptions about DE. Although the students were enrolled in courses in diverse content areas, they were all undergraduates, almost all under 30 years old, and most were confident using the computer and Internet. These demographic similarities provided a relatively cohesive group for this study while allow- ing a comparison across countries. A range of questions were asked about students’ attitudes towards and experience with DE. To determine the participants’ experience with DE two questions were asked. The data indicates that out of 223 students who responded to the survey, a total of 63 students have taken DE courses. Half of the Ukraine students, about one quarter of the UAE students and only 5% of students in the group from Portugal had taken DE courses (Fig. 1). As shown in Fig. 2, of the students who have had previous experience in DE, most Ukraine students have taken one or two online courses, most UAE stu- dents have taken one course and a few Portuguese students have taken one course. Table 1 Student confidence level using a computer and the Internet Country Not at all confident Somewhat confident Neutral/ Cannot judge Confident Extremely confident Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 0.00 7.27 20.00 54.55 18.18 Ukraine 0.00 2.86 5.71 32.86 58.57 UAE 3.16 7.37 26.32 25.26 37.89 Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 7 of 18 More than half of Portuguese students, about two thirds of the Ukraine students and a little over one third of UAE students had a Very favorable or Favorable attitude towards DE. Approximately one third of Portuguese and Ukraine students were Neutral/Unable to judge their attitude. A little less than half of UAE students also indicated this. A small per- centage of Portuguese, and one fifth of UAE students indicated their attitude was Very unfavorable or Unfavorable and no Ukraine students reported this (Table 2). More than one third of Portuguese students shared that managing class and study time, saving time by choosing study location and working at their own pace were rea- sons to enroll in DE. About two thirds of the students from Ukraine reported that working at their own pace and managing their study time were reasons to enroll. A lit- tle more than half of these students reported that reasons for enrolling in DE included managing class time, saving time by selecting study location and not having to travel to school as well as having more options for courses or colleges to attend. Almost half of the UAE students had similar reasons for enrolling in a DE courses including managing class and study time, saving time by choosing study location and working at their own Fig. 1 Students that have taken distance education courses Fig. 2 Number of distance education courses taken Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 8 of 18 pace. In addition, a little more than half of the UAE students also shared that having more options for courses or colleges to attend were reasons to enroll. The reasons that were selected the least by all three groups were that courses were less expensive and enrolling in a preferred program (Tables 3 and 4). Students were given eleven options as to why they would not enroll in DE courses, which are displayed in Tables 5 and 6. Two reasons that were chosen most often were difficulty staying motivated and preferring face-to-face classes. A small number of Ukraine students reported this as a reason to not enroll in DE courses. Difficulty get- ting immediate feedback was also a concern for UAE students. Close to one third in the three groups indicated that difficulty contacting the instructor and interacting with peers as well as missing campus life are reasons for not enrolling. About one tenth of Portuguese, one fifth of Ukraine and one fifth of the UAE students reported difficulty getting accreditation as a reason for not enrolling. Not knowing enough about DE was indicated by one tenth of Portuguese, one fifth of Ukraine and one fifth of the UAE students. Only a small number of all the students indicated three categories that are frequently cited in the literature as preventing students from enrolling, these include access to technology, feeling of isolation and too great an expense. Tables 7 and 8 show student responses to a question regarding the preparation they think they would need before enrolling in a DE course. A little over one tenth of the Portuguese students indicated that they needed better computer equipment, writing skills and a dedicated study space. About one quarter of these students reported they need better skills in the following areas: time management, computer and English lan- guage skills, as well as needing to have learning goals and objectives. Having a better Internet connection and the need to develop a study plan was shared by approximately one third of these students. Finally, the highest rated prerequisite for these Portuguese students was to be more motivated. Few of the Ukraine students felt that they needed better computer equipment or skills, a dedicated study space or a better Internet connection at home. Their concerns focused on their behaviors as students since half or a little more than half felt they needed to be more motivated, have learning objectives and goals, a study plan and Table 2 Attitudes toward distance education Country Very unfavorable Unfavorable Neutral/ Unable to judge Favorable Very favorable Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 0.00 7.27 34.55 52.73 5.45 Ukraine 0.00 0.00 31.43 42.86 25.71 UAE 8.42 12.63 42.11 21.05 15.79 Table 3 Reasons to enroll in distance education courses (More than one could be chosen) Country Other It is less expensive I can enroll in the programs that I really want I have more options when selecting courses and/or a college I don’t have to travel to school Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 1.82 5.45 9.09 12.73 20.00 Ukraine 0.00 20.00 32.86 51.43 51.43 UAE 2.11 21.05 27.37 29.47 45.26 Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 9 of 18 better management skills. About one third of these students also reported that they needed better English language skills. The UAE students were less confident than the Ukraine students about computer skills and needing better equipment and a better Internet connection at home. Almost half of these UAE students reported their need for a study plan and motivation as their most pressing needs. Better management and English language skills were recorded by about one third of the students. One quarter of the UAE students felt they needed bet- ter writing skills and a dedicated study space. Table 9 shows students’ interest in enrolling in DE courses. Almost one quarter of the Ukraine students are Extremely interested in taking DE courses and almost half are Somewhat interested. This contrasts with the students from Portugal who indicated that only 5% are Extremely interested and almost a quarter Somewhat interested. The UAE students’ interest in enrolling fell in between the students from the two other countries. One fifth to almost one third of all three groups were Neutral/Unable to judge. About one tenth of students from Ukraine reported Not being very interested or Not at all interested which contrasts with the Portuguese and UAE students whose numbers were about one half and one quarter respectively. Tables 10 and 11 show the types of DE that the students were interested in trying. Portuguese students favored Open schedule courses, followed by Blended learning and Synchronous. Few of these students were interested in MOOCs and Asynchronous. More than half of the students from Ukraine were interested in MOOCs and Blended learning followed by Open schedule. About one third of these students were interested in Synchronous and Asynchronous. UAE students most popular formats were Open schedule and Blended learning followed by Synchronous and Asynchronous. There was little interest in MOOCs by the UAE students. Few Portuguese and Ukraine students indicated that they would not take a DE course, however, almost a quarter of the UAE students indicated this. Table 4 Reasons to enroll in distance education courses (More than one could be chosen) Country I can work at my own pace I can manage my own study time I can save time by studying from a location I choose I can manage my own class time Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 36.36 38.18 40.00 45.45 Ukraine 67.14 64.29 54.29 55.71 UAE 47.37 48.42 48.42 54.74 Table 5 Reasons to not enroll in distance education courses (More than one could be chosen) Country It is too expensive I do not have constant, reliable access to technology I would feel very isolated I would have difficulty getting accreditation for the course I do not know enough about distance education courses I would miss campus life Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 1.82 7.27 10.91 10.91 12.73 25.45 Ukraine 0.00 2.86 8.57 27.14 21.43 28.57 UAE 1.05 15.79 17.89 21.05 28.42 31.58 Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 10 of 18 Discussion Data indicates close to a 100% of the UAE residents use the Internet at home or on their mobile devices (Knoema, 2018). By contrast a smaller percentage of individuals use the Internet in Portugal and the Ukraine (Infographics, 2019). Internet use in each country does not seem to greatly impact UAE students’ opinions regarding DE. Students’ perceptions of DE vary across the participants from the three countries. Portuguese and Ukrainian students rated DE more favorably than UAE students. Half of the Ukrainian students have experience with DE which might account for their favorable attitude. In contrast, in Portugal only a very small percentage of the students had experience. However, this does not seem to have negatively influenced their atti- tude towards DE. The interest level and engagement with new technologies by Portu- guese students may help explain the favorable perception the participants had toward DE. A study by Costa, Faria, and Neto (2018) found that 90% of Portuguese students use new technologies and 69% of them use new technologies more than an hour and a half a day. Based on three European studies, Diário de Noticias (2011) stated that Portuguese students “appear at the forefront of those who best master information and communication technologies (ICT).” (para.1) Another factor influencing respondents might be that currently, and for the first time, the Portuguese government has passed a law that will regulate DE in the country. This new law will open the possibility for other IHEs to provide DE courses that lead to a degree. Ukrainian students reported a high level of confidence in operating technological de- vices. The reason for this may be, in part, because of state educational requirements. Since the end of the 1990s, all Ukrainian students in secondary schools have at least one computer course as a mandatory element of their curriculum. This course covers a wide range of issues, which vary from information society theory to applied aspects of computer usage. Among the seven learning goals of this course three address digital Table 6 Reasons to not enroll in distance education courses (More than one could be chosen) Country I would have difficulty contacting the instructors I would have difficulty interacting with peers It would be difficult for me to stay motivated I would have difficulty getting immediate feedback I prefer face to face to face classes Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 27.27 30.91 30.91 32.73 52.73 Ukraine 28.57 21.43 65.71 24.29 14.29 UAE 32.63 36.84 41.05 47.37 55.79 Table 7 Preparation students feel they need before enrolling in distance education courses (More than one could be chosen) Country I would need better computer equipment I would need better writing skills I would need a dedicated study space I would need to have learning objectives and goals I would need better time management skills Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 12.73 14.55 14.55 25.45 25.45 Ukraine 5.71 7.14 12.86 57.14 50.00 UAE 16.84 25.26 25.26 27.37 32.63 Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 11 of 18 literacy (Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, 2017). Ukrainian students who responded to the survey have taken computer courses for at least 5 years. In the UAE, most DE courses and programs are not accredited by the Ministry of Education (United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education, 2016), which may account for UAE students lack of experience and their inability to judge this type of instruction. It is worth analyzing the reasons why students enrolled or would enroll in DE courses. The reasons for taking DE courses, such as time management issues, are sup- ported by studies concerning self-regulation and higher retention rates (Bradley, Browne, & Kelley, 2017; Peck, Stefaniak, & Shah, 2018). Students’ interest in having more control of their study time is also mentioned as one of the primary benefits of DE (Alahmari, 2017; Lei & Gupta, 2010). Regarding the reasons for not enrolling in DE courses, participants from the three countries mentioned difficulty contacting instruc- tors and peers. Also, more than half of the students in Portugal and the UAE indicated they preferred face-to-face classes. Most students have spent their entire academic lives in traditional classes where interaction and immediate feedback from instructors and peers are more common. These concerns may be why students perceive they would lose a familiar type of interaction and have to engage with classroom participants in a new and different way (Carver & Kosloski Jr., 2015; Morris & Clark, 2018; Robinson & Hullinger, 2008; Summers, Waigandt, & Whittaker, 2005). It should be noted that the Portuguese and UAE students were enrolled in teacher education programs and are training to be face-to-face teachers. They may not understand the potential of DE for- mat and are not preparing or expecting to use DE in their professional careers. Difficulty being motivated was another reason chosen by the participants of the three countries to not enroll in DE courses. The lack of experience in this type of educational format may help explain student lack of confidence with their ability to study and stay on task. This response contrasts with the reasons reported for enrolling in DE courses such as controlling their study time. On one hand, participants like the prospect of hav- ing the ability to manage their own time. On the other hand, they are concerned they may lack the discipline they need to be successful. Table 8 Preparation students feel they need before enrolling in distance education courses (More than one could be chosen) Country I would need better computer skills I would need better language skills (mainly English) I would need a better Internet connection at home I would need to develop a study plan I would need to be more motivated Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 27.27 27.27 30.91 34.55 38.18 Ukraine 5.71 35.71 8.57 50.00 58.57 UAE 35.79 36.84 38.95 44.21 45.26 Table 9 Interest in enrolling in a distance education course Country Not at all interested Not very interested Neutral/ Unable to judge Somewhat interested Extremely interested Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Portugal 18.18 29.09 25.45 21.82 5.45 Ukraine 4.29 7.14 21.43 44.29 22.86 UAE 14.74 10.53 31.58 25.26 17.89 Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 12 of 18 Although the literature indicates that access to technology, isolation and expense are reasons frequently cited as preventing students from enrolling in DE courses (Lei & Gupta, 2010; Venter, 2003; Zuhairi et al., 2006), these reasons were selected by a very small percentage of the participants of this study. Access and affordability of technology has rapidly increased over the last decade which may help explain this inconsistency. Students may understand that DE courses are now less expensive than traditional uni- versity courses (Piletic, 2018) and they do not cite this as a reason for not enrolling. Relatively few students indicated they would feel isolated. Since this generation is in constant communication using technology (Diário de Notícias, 2011) they may not as- sociate DE learning with isolation. However, it is interesting to note that there was a greater concern for interacting with instructors and peers than isolation. The Ukrainian students are the most receptive to enrolling in DE courses. This is consistent with their positive perception of this type of learning. In addition, the previ- ous experience of half of the participants may influence their interest as well as encour- age their peers’ receptivity. UAE students do not have much experience and fewer than half are open to enrolling in DE courses. This may be due to their lack of experience and other concerns previously mentioned. Only one third of the Portuguese partici- pants indicated their interest in enrolling in DE courses. This is in contrast with almost two thirds saying they had a favorable or very favorable attitude. The reasons for this inconsistency are not evident. In terms of preparation needed to take DE courses, technical concerns were less of an issue for the participants of all three countries than skills and behaviors. Most par- ticipants’ answers focused on student skills including computer, English language and time management. Behaviors such as developing a study plan, having learning goals and objectives and being more motivated were also mentioned. The perceived need for better English language skills was expressed by about one third of the participants, none of whom have English as their native language. English speaking countries have been dominant in DE making English the most commonly used language in online Table 10 Types of distance education interested in trying (More than one could be chosen) Country MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses – a free course available on the Internet to a very large number of people) I would not take a distance course Asynchronous (Students and instructor do not meet at the same time online. All course work is done online.) Percent Percent Percent Portugal 90.9 10.91 12.73 Ukraine 54.29 1.43 30.00 UAE 8.42 22.11 24.21 Table 11 Types of distance education interested in trying (More than one could be chosen) Country Synchronous (Students and instructor meet at the same time online) Blended learning (Some classes are taken online others face to face on campus) Open schedule (Students study on their own time schedule) Percent Percent Percent Portugal 25.45% 29.09% 61.82% Ukraine 30.00% 52.86% 45.71% UAE 31.58% 42.11% 42.11% Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 13 of 18 learning (Sadykova & Dautermann, 2009). Regarding time management, half of the Ukrainian students expressed their need for improvement in contrast to approxi- mately one third of the participants from the other countries. The difference among responses may be because the Ukrainian students are more self-reflective, or the others are more disciplined. Although both DE and face-to-face courses have dead- lines for tasks and assessments, in the face-to-face courses, students meet in person with their instructors who may support and press them to do their work. Lack of in person contact may account for the participants feeling they need to improve these skills when taking DE courses (De Paepe et al., 2018). Students expressed concerns about lacking certain skills and having certain behaviors that would lead them to be reluctant to enroll in DE courses. The need for help and preparation are some of the concerns that participants reported. Perceived needs may account for the students’ apprehensions regarding taking DE courses. To promote this type of instruction, IHEs could address students’ concerns (Mahlangu, 2018). Open schedule and blended learning courses were the two preferred formats stated by the participants. The reason that Open schedule is the most popular may be that it provides more freedom than other types of courses. Blended learning offers the familiar face-to-face instruction and some of the conveniences of DE which may be why partici- pants are interested in this model. Studies regarding the use of MOOCs in all three countries have been conducted indi- cating that researchers in these locations are aware that this course format is of poten- tial interest to local students (Eppard & Reddy, 2017; Gallacher, 2014; Gonçalves, Chumbo, Torres, & Gonçalves, 2016; Sharov, Liapunova, & Sharova, 2019; Strutynska & Umryk, 2016). Ukrainian students selected MOOCs much more than students in the other countries. The reason for this may be that these students are more knowledgeable about MOOCs, because this type of course is usually at no cost and/or offered by pres- tigious IHEs (Cormier et al., 2010). However, this study did not ask why students were interested in MOOCs or other types of DE courses. Limitations and future research While this study offers useful information regarding undergraduate students’ percep- tion and receptivity in taking DE courses, it has limited generalizability because of the size of the sample and the type of statistical analysis performed. Participants from two of the countries were enrolled in teacher education programs and were primarily female, thus future studies would benefit from including more students in diverse pro- grams and a more equitable gender distribution. Since many IHEs also offer programs for graduate students it would be useful to survey these students about their opinion and availability to enroll in DE courses. This would provide additional information for IHEs that are interested in developing DE programs. There were some inconsistencies in the students’ responses such as Portuguese stu- dents’ interest in enrolling in DE courses not matching their favorable/ very favorable attitude towards DE. It would be helpful to conduct future research regarding this and other inconsistencies. A study is currently being planned to collect data that will provide a larger and more diverse sample and include additional IHEs. This future research will potentially in- crease the available knowledge on how to provide DE for a greater number of students. Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 14 of 18 Conclusion and recommendations Further development of DE courses and programs at IHEs in countries such as Portugal, UAE and Ukraine have good prospects. The students’ primary concerns regarding taking DE courses were similar among the three countries. These concerns included time management, motivation, and English language skills. However, this did not totally diminish participants interest in taking online courses especially for the Ukrainian students. Based on this research, there are some obstacles that can be addressed to support the expansion of DE in the three countries that were studied and in other countries. The following recommendations may assist IHEs in promoting DE. Recommendations for preparation within IHEs IHEs can take proactive steps to prepare DE offerings, however, a one-size fit all model may not be appropriate for all countries and IHEs. Each institution needs to develop their own plan that meets the needs of their students and faculty. Data from this pilot study and the literature (Elbaum, McIntyre, & Smith, 2002; Hashim & Tasir, 2014; Hux et al., 2018) suggest that following steps might be taken: � Assess readiness to take DE courses through a survey and have students speak with counselors. � Provide pre-DE courses to build skills and behaviors based on students’ concerns. � Train instructors to develop and deliver DE courses that help to overcome obstacles such as motivation and time management. � Offer courses in a blended learning format to familiarize students with online learning which may provide a transitional model. Recommendations for IHE outreach This study shows that there is some student interest in enrolling in online courses. It is not sufficient for IHEs to make changes internally within their own institution. IHEs need to develop external strategies and actions that help advance the devel- opment of DE: � Promote DE in social media to target potential students and encourage them to take courses. � Urge government agencies to accredit DE courses and programs. This pilot study provides some background information that may help IHEs to offer DE courses. Additional research about students’ preferences and needs regarding DE should be conducted. The sample size, IHEs included and participating countries could be expanded in order to gain a greater understanding. Different cultural characteristics need to be taken into account in the development of online courses and programs. DE is being increasingly included by IHEs all around the world. To stay current, universities will need to find ways to offer DE to their current and prospective students. Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 15 of 18 Appendix Online Survey Questions 1. If the students have taken any distance education courses previously and if yes, how many; 2. What are the students’ perceptions of distance education; 3. What are the reasons students would enroll in distance education courses; 4. What are the reasons students would not enroll in a distance education course; 5. What preparation do students feel they need before taking distance education courses; 6. What is the level of students’ interest towards enrolling in distance education courses; 7. What types of distance education would students be interested in trying; 8. What is the students’ age; 9. What is the students’ gender; 10. How confident do students feel using a computer and the Internet. Acknowledgements Not applicable. Authors’ contributions Patricia Fidalgo: design of the work, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, and draft of the work. Joan Thormann: design of the work, analysis, interpretation of data, and draft of the work. Oleksandr Kulyk: data collection, interpretation of data, and draft of the work. José Alberto Lencastre: data collection. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript. Funding This research was not funded. Availability of data and materials The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due privacy reasons but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Author details 1Curriculum and Instruction Division, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 2Educational Technology Division, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, USA. 3Philosophy Department, Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, Dnipropetrovs’ka oblast, Ukraine. 4Department of Curricular Studies and Educational Technology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. Received: 11 December 2019 Accepted: 18 March 2020 References Aharony, N., & Bar-Ilan, J. 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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Fidalgo et al. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2020) 17:18 Page 18 of 18 https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-227597132/college-distance-education-courses-evaluating-benefits https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-227597132/college-distance-education-courses-evaluating-benefits https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75702 https://mon.gov.ua/storage/app/media/zagalna%20serednya/programy-5-9-klas/onovlennya-12-2017/programa-informatika-5-9-traven-2015.pdf https://mon.gov.ua/storage/app/media/zagalna%20serednya/programy-5-9-klas/onovlennya-12-2017/programa-informatika-5-9-traven-2015.pdf https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P4-2166326369/using-nsse-data-to-analyze-levels-of-engagement-of https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P4-2166326369/using-nsse-data-to-analyze-levels-of-engagement-of https://elearningindustry.com/students-prefer-online-education-lower-costs-making https://www.pordata.pt/DB/Portugal/Ambiente+de+Consulta/Tabela https://www.pordata.pt/DB/Portugal/Ambiente+de+Consulta/Tabela https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/JOEB.84.2.101-109 https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v13i2.1670 http://online.nuc.edu/ctl_en/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Online-education-effectiviness.pdf http://online.nuc.edu/ctl_en/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Online-education-effectiviness.pdf https://doi.org/10.18421/TEM84-52 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-005-1938-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-005-1938-x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ghLyjzqLM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ghLyjzqLM&feature=youtu.be http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2019/zv/az/az_e/az0119_e.htm https://www.moe.gov.ae/En/MediaCenter/archive/mohesr/news/Pages/Higher-Education-emphasizes-the-need-to-check-accredited-e-learning-universities-list.aspx https://www.moe.gov.ae/En/MediaCenter/archive/mohesr/news/Pages/Higher-Education-emphasizes-the-need-to-check-accredited-e-learning-universities-list.aspx https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0268051032000131035 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2016.1185079 https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1040201321/the-historical-context-current-development-and-future https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1040201321/the-historical-context-current-development-and-future Abstract Introduction Literature review Methodology Study goals Research questions Setting Data collection Data analysis Research approval and data management Results Discussion Limitations and future research Conclusion and recommendations Recommendations for preparation within IHEs Recommendations for IHE outreach Appendix Acknowledgements Authors’ contributions Funding Availability of data and materials Competing interests Author details References Publisher’s Note 
work_cvvrfzyvnbfnzhb42gjp24pbyi	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. 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Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_cyhqz4sfavaxpbs22vgeu3cnjm	----	9.xps Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research 13(Approaches of Halal and Thoyyib for Society, Wellness and Health): 49-53, 2013 ISSN 1990-9233 © IDOSI Publications, 2013 DOI: 10.5829/idosi.mejsr.2013.16.s.10029 Corresponding author: N.A. Khairun Nain, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), Tingkat 13, Menara B, Persiaran MPAJ, Jalan Pandan Utama, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Tel: +60342892400. 49 Towards a Halal Certification Module and Training Programme Development for the Pharmaceutical Industry N.A. Khairun Nain, A.H. Nazefah, C.I. Che Ilina, M.R. Mohd Dzulkhairi,1 1 1 1 R. Nur Syahrina, Z. Noor Fadzilah, Z. Norlelawati, A.A. Asral Wirda,1 1 1 1 A.M. Normaliza, M. Ahmad Wifaq, A.H. Mustafa ‘Afifi,2 3 4 A.R. Alina, A.A. Siti Hanizah, A.K. Imtinan and M.S. Norhaizam5 5 5 6 Faculty of Medicine and Health, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Tingkat 13,1 Menara B, Persiaran MPAJ, Jalan Pandan Utama, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Tingkat 15, Menara B,2 Persiaran MPAJ, Jalan Pandan Utama, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia The World Fatwa Management & Research Institute (INFAD),3 Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), 71800 Bandar Baru Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia Faculty of Syariah and Law, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM),4 71800 Bandar Baru Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia Institute of Halal Research and Management (IHRAM),5 Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), 71800 Bandar Baru Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia Halal Industry Development Corporation (HDC), 5.02, Level 5, KPMG Tower,6 First Avenue, Persiaran Bandar Utama, 47800 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia Abstract: The Halal pharmaceutical industry is relatively new and offers untapped opportunities to be further developed. The objective of this study is to develop Halal certification modules and training programmes to cater to the differing groups of auditors, industry, health professionals and consumers. In January 2012, Standards Malaysia announced the debut of the new Malaysian Standard for Halal pharmaceuticals, MS 2424:2012, a great leap forward in allowing pharmaceutical manufacturers to obtain Halal compliance certification for their products. With the advent of this Halal standard, there is now a growing demand from the pharmaceutical industry for training programmes in order to apply and achieve Halal certification for their products. The MS 2424:2012 standard is studied in depth and organizations involved in the development are consulted to develop appropriate training modules. Experts from various fields including medicine, dentistry, shariah, science and others are recruited and trained to become module instructors. The graduate interns involved in the project undergo attachments and extensive training in view of upscaling into halal pharmaceutical executives. The launch of the modules and training programme is expected to contribute significantly to greater ability of the pharmaceutical industry to cater to Halal requirements and thus satisfy public demand, while at the same time promising higher sales and export potential. There is a growing awareness and thus corresponding demand for medicines that comply with shariah requirement from the Muslim ummah or public. Thus, the research perspective of halal pharmaceutical industry in Malaysia becomes wider. The development of the training module is an effort to facilitate the pharmaceutical industry to comply with the shariah requirements. Key words: Pharmaceuticals Halal Training Module MS2424:2012 Certification Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 16(Approaches of Halal and Thoyyib for Society, Wellness and Health): 49-53, 2013 50 INTRODUCTION In 2012, Standards Malaysia unveiled the new Malaysian As narrated by Abu Darda, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad (saw), “The Prophet (saw) said Allah has sent down both the disease and the cure and He has appointed a cure for every disease, so treat yourself medically, but use nothing unlawful.” [1]. Thus the obligation and requirement for Halal pharmaceuticals holds true for each and every Muslim. However up to the present, there has been little effort to ensure that medicines taken by the more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide are certified as Halal and comply with shariah requirements [2]. As such, there are numerous examples of pharmaceuticals such as vaccines, injectable suspensions, tablets, pills and capsules that contain ingredients from animals not slaughtered according to the shariah methods and even porcine origin considered as unacceptable mughallazah najs or filth, as well as mixtures that contain high percentages of alcohol [3]. Therefore, the Islamic obligation for Halal pharmaceuticals is undoubtable and has yet to be fulfilled. This is a vast untapped area with huge economic potential; the global pharmaceuticals market is estimated to be worth some US$800 billion annually. The Muslim market share is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions, considering Muslims constitute around 2 billion of the world’s total population. Recent days has seen very promising developments. The Chemical Company of Malaysia (CCM) has become the first pharmaceutical manufacturer to obtain Halal certification for its products [4]. In January 2012, Standards Malaysia announced the debut of the new Malaysian Standard for Halal pharmaceuticals, MS 2424:2012, a great leap forward in allowing pharmaceutical manufacturers to obtain Halal compliance certification for their products. Therefore the objective of this study is to develop Halal certification modules and training programmes targeted (but not limited) to pharmaceutical manufacturers to assist with compliance with the MS2424:2012 thus enabling the production of pharmaceuticals that are certified to be halal. Halal Pharmaceutical Industry: In contrast to the Halal food industry, the Halal pharmaceutical industry is relatively untapped. However there is growing recognition of the vast prospects of Halal pharmaceuticals considering the global pharmaceutical market is worth some US$800 billion annually, together with the fact that Muslim compromise some 2 billion people and rising. standard for Halal pharmaceuticals, MS 2424:2012: Halal Pharmaceuticals: General Guidelines [5]. Nevertheless, there is a current vacuum of Halal pharmaceutical training or certification programmes despite rising industry demands. In addition, the launch of the new version of the Malaysian Halal Certification Manual Procedure 2011 (Second Revision) by the Islamic Development Department of Malaysia (JAKIM) marked the opening of its pharmaceutical certification scheme starting by February 2012 [6]. Therefore, this is a novel effort to develop a module for training and certification of the industry and to engage other stakeholders involved in Halal pharmaceuticals. This project is in collaboration with Halal Industry Development Corporation (HDC), an organization with extensive Malaysian and global experience and expertise in conducting Halal certification training programmes, for example in Halal logistics and in the Halal food industry. The challenges faced by the Malaysian halal pharmaceutical industry lie in the approach towards process and system management to achieve seamless integration throughout the raw material supply chain and manufacturing process. The goal is to fulfill the Shariah and monitoring agencies legislative requirements [7]. There is a prominent lack of databases for Halal, Haram and Syubhah ingredients and additives in pharmaceuticals. There is an urgent need for a Halal pharmacopoeia [8]. Further development of novel Halal pharmaceutical alternatives and technological innovation are also much needed. Scholars need to research and analyse potentially conflicting legal-ethical issues of shariah compliance of medicines and the shariah concept of dharurah in facing life and death. Another area needing attention is consumer rights towards informed choice [9]. This is just the tip of the iceberg of undeveloped Halal frontiers for pharmaceuticals in the effort to fulfill the needs of the Muslim nation. Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)’s IHRAM Halal pharmaceutical training modules, targeting the industry, monitoring agencies, health care providers and consumers offer promising solutions towards this important goal of providing vast access to halal medicines for the Muslim ummah. Development of a Halal Certification Module and Training Programme: According to the Malaysian Standard MS 2424:2012 Halal Pharmaceuticals – General Guidelines, subtopic 4.7 (Training), clause 4.7.1 states that, “The organisation shall provide training for all Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 16(Approaches of Halal and Thoyyib for Society, Wellness and Health): 49-53, 2013 51 Fig. 1: Summary of the Module enhance the general consumers’ (ummah) confidence in personnel on the Halal principles and its application”. current dependency on pharmaceutical products that do Therefore, comprehensive training is a requirement of the not comply with shariah requirements. pharmaceutical industry especially for the management This initiative will create greater recognition for the and members of the Halal committee to ensure the Halal USIM academia and catalyze further improvement of the requirements are fully understood and implemented. on-going modules contained within the Halal Executive Apart from that, this training module will facilitate Programme conducted by IHRAM and HDC. In addition, manufacturers, suppliers, health professionals and this innovation is expected to generate greater revenue for consumers to integrate knowledge, understanding and HDC as well as to bridge the existing gap between the awareness accordingly by its target, programmes and needs of the Muslim ummah and the pharmaceutical topics that had been proposed as shown in Figure 1 industry. above. In addition, this training and certification module This module was developed by synchronizing the programme is an organized and structured body of available expertise and knowledge at USIM which information that integrate; shariah and technical aspects includes current team members as well as a small number of Halal certification with experts from the medical, dental, of subject matter experts mostly from other Malaysian shariah, science and various other fields. This module will public universities, as well as other organizations help the pharmaceutical industry to understand the including from industry. Once the expertise and principles of shariah in manufacturing and in producing knowledge to be transferred had been clearly identified, Halal pharmaceutical products, as outlined by the Halal the next stage was to develop multi-organizational Pharmaceutical standards of MS 2424: 2012. It will allow networks and relationships in particular with HDC, HDC to conduct relevant and highly marketable training Malaysian Standards, Ministry of Health, National or certification programmes on Halal pharmaceuticals both Pharmaceutical Control Bureau (NPCB), JAKIM, CCM and locally and internationally. others to allow the efficient and comprehensive transfer of such knowledge to HDC in the form of a module or training programme. A pool of expert trainers and module instructors has been developed mainly amongst USIM lecturers. They consist of medical, dental, Islamic studies, shariah, law, science and technology and other experts. They have all undergone Halal training of trainer programmes and have been certified as Halal trainers by HDC. Furthermore, the graduate interns involved with this project have undergone various attachments, seminars and meetings with the aim of upscaling to become highly competent halal executives. The Significance of Training Module to the Pharmaceutical Industry: The development of the training module that enables compliance with the MS 2424:2012 standard and JAKIM’s manual of procedures or protocols requirements, can contribute significantly to the overall growth of the Halal pharmaceutical industry not only in Malaysia but also at the international level. This innovation ultimately fulfills our responsibility as Muslims, raises public awareness and achieves public acceptance as well as public satisfaction on Halal pharmaceuticals. It will fulfill the consumers’ (ummah) needs by having a pharmaceutical product that delivers the concept of “halalan thoyyiban” meaning not only Halal, but good and safe to be consumed. Hence, it will using the Halal pharmaceutical products and reduce the Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 16(Approaches of Halal and Thoyyib for Society, Wellness and Health): 49-53, 2013 52 Research Perspective of Halal Pharmaceutical Industry building greater public satisfaction and confidence in in Malaysia: The global pharmaceutical industry has grown rapidly, reaching an estimated value of US$800 billion per annum and pharmaceutical manufacturers are among the largest corporations in existence. The industry is dominated by massive pharmaceutical manufacturers based in industrialized countries specifically Western Europe, North America and Japan. Despite little shareholdings or ownership by the Islamic populace, the companies are also becoming increasingly aware of the requirements of Muslims considering the huge segment that Muslim consumers constitute. In Malaysia, the pharmaceutical industry has shown progressive growth over the years, particularly over the last one decade. The industry has invested substantially to upgrade itself in the last few years to meet the latest Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) requirements, in accordance with the domestic as well as international Guidance [10]. In view of nascent halal pharmaceutical issues and with Malaysia taking the leadership position to address them, the pharmaceutical industry is entrusted to be one of the halal compliant industries, as a strategic economic segment for Malaysia whether in domestic usage or export agenda [11]. Thus, the MS2424:2012 standard plays a crucial role as a guideline to ensure the pharmaceutical industry complies with shariah requirements. Currently the industry has the capacity to produce medicines in all dosage forms such as tablets (coated & non-coated), capsules (hard and soft gelatine), liquids, creams, ointments, sterile eye drops, small volume injectable (ampoules and vials), large volume infusions, dry powders for reconstitution and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Pharmaceutical manufacturing is already highly regulated for example by GMP and Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-Operation Scheme (PICS) [12-15]. For halal pharmaceuticals, the paradigm is that halal should be inbuilt throughout the manufacturing process. Therefore, this comprehensive training module would assist halal compliance for each and every stage of production, as overseen by the internal halal committee of the pharmaceutical manufacturer themselves. CONCLUSION This halal certification module and training programme contributes significantly to the ultimate aim of ensuring that pharmaceuticals used by the ummah are Halal. While fulfilling Islamic obligation or “fardu kifayah”, the module will also help provide a clearer understanding of halal pharmaceuticals by the ummah, pharmaceutical products. The module is not only limited to local applications, but appropriate to be applied on an international basis for example to the main pharmaceuticals giants, considering the increasing awareness and economic strength of the Muslim ummah worldwide. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special acknowledgement to Minister of High Education (MoHE) and Economic Planning Unit (EPU) for the financial assistance under the grant USIM/KTP-FPSK (IHRAM)-51-50211. Special thanks to all lecturers and staff of IHRAM for their cooperation and support in preparing this module. REFERENCES 1. Ibnu Qayyim Al-Jauziah translation by Z. Mohd Rifqi, 2011. Terjemahan At-Tibb An-Nabawiy. Berubat Mengikut Nabi SAW. Jasmin Enterprise (In Malay). 2. Abd Rahman, B., 2010. Ubat Daripada Sumber Babi Dan Pilihan Alternatif. H Science Solution (In Malay). 3. Abd Rahman, B., 2012. Halalkah Ubat Anda. Crescent News: Kuala Lumpur (In Malay). 4. CCM, 2008. CCM - Forefront of Halal Pharmaceutical Industry. 13 May 2008. Chemical Company ofth Malaysia Berhad. 5. Department of Standards Malaysia, 2012. MS 2424: 2012 Malaysian Standard: Halal Pharmaceuticals – General Guidelines. Department of Standards Malaysia. 6. Hub Halal, JAKIM, 2011. Manual Procedure of Malaysian Halal Certification 2011 (Second Revision). JAKIM. 7. Laws of Malaysia, 2011. Federal Government Gazette Act 730 Trade Descriptions (Certification and Marking of Halal) Order 2011. 8. Zhari, I. and I. Abdul Halim, 2013. Adakah Ubat-ubatan Anda Halal?. Halim Ihsan Publication (In Malay). 9. Juanda, B., 2012. Penggunaan Ubat-Ubat Daripada Perspektif Islam. Wacana Ubat-ubatan 2012. Jabatan Farmasi PPUM (In Malay). 10. Industry in Malaysia. Accessed Online on 28th August 2013 at http:// www.mida.gov.my/ env3/ index.php?page=pharmaceuticals. Middle-East J. Sci. Res., 16(Approaches of Halal and Thoyyib for Society, Wellness and Health): 49-53, 2013 53 11. Noriah, R., S. Faqihah and N.A. Saiful Muhammad, 14. International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) of 2012. Halal Pharmaceuticals: A Review On Malaysian Technical Requirements for Registration of Standard, MS 2424:2012 (P). Journal of Arts and Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. (2013). Guide To Humanities, 1(1): 137-142. Good Manufacturing Practice. 12. International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) of 15. For Medicinal Products - Part II. Pharmaceutical Technical Requirements for Registration of Inspection Co-Operation Scheme. Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. (2013). Guide To 16. International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) of Good Manufacturing Practice For Medicinal Technical Requirements for Registration of Products- Introduction. Pharmaceutical Inspection Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. (2013). Guide To Co-Operation Scheme. Good Manufacturing Practice For Medicinal 13. International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) of Products - Annexes. Pharmaceutical Inspection Technical Requirements for Registration of Co-Operation Scheme. Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. (2013). Guide To Good Manufacturing Practice For Medicinal Products - Part I. Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-Operation Scheme. 
work_d2ruh6x7angchhvpz6lqg7swii	----	A phenomenology of learning large: the tutorial sphere of xMOOC video lectures This article was downloaded by: [University of Alberta] On: 27 May 2014, At: 09:19 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 A phenomenology of learning large: the tutorial sphere of xMOOC video lectures Catherine Adamsa, Yin Yina, Luis Francisco Vargas Madrizb & C. Scott Mullena a Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada b Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Published online: 27 May 2014. To cite this article: Catherine Adams, Yin Yin, Luis Francisco Vargas Madriz & C. Scott Mullen (2014): A phenomenology of learning large: the tutorial sphere of xMOOC video lectures, Distance Education, DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2014.917701 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917701 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/01587919.2014.917701 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917701 Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions A phenomenology of learning large: the tutorial sphere of xMOOC video lectures Catherine Adamsa*, Yin Yina, Luis Francisco Vargas Madrizb, and C. Scott Mullena aDepartment of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; bDepartment of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (Received 14 November 2013; final version received 12 April 2014) The current discourse surrounding Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is powerful. Despite their rapid and widespread deployment, research has yet to confirm or refute some of the bold claims rationalizing the popularity and effi- cacy of these large-scale virtual learning environments. Also, MOOCs’ reputed disruptive, game-changing potential for education remains unsubstantiated. A sober counterbalance is needed, in particular, via attending to students’ everyday accounts of the complex realities of learning in these massive online courses. This article reports on an exploratory, phenomenological study of the xMOOC learning experience. Our interest was not the xMOOC experience of students in general, but in its singular, lived particularities. What we discovered was a unique and intimate tutorial sphere that seemed to develop for some xMOOC students in the context of the video lectures, an experience sometimes marked by a sense of fandom surround. Keywords: eventedness; MOOCs; phenomenology; student–teacher relation; tutorial sphere; video lectures Introduction Most of us have grown up with faces on television that look back at us, talk to us, even when we ignore them. They smile at us, and seem to address us person- ally. But they cannot see or hear us, and we may or may not know who they are. Increasingly, in societies where screens are prevalent (e.g., TV, cinema, com- puters), our encounters with fellow human beings are mediated in ways such as this. Has the ubiquitous intervention of screens in our lives thus made it harder to understand and communicate directly with one another? Or, have screens extended our capacity to empathise and “socialise”, bringing us face-to-face with people and points of view that we otherwise would never have encountered? (Gerbaz, 2008, p. 17) Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of Udacity, declared bluntly that: Education is broken. Face it … It is so broken at so many ends, it requires a little bit of Silicon Valley magic … If you look at Stanford, they are wonderful but they are small, by choice … What is missing is scale. (Wolfson, 2013) *Corresponding author. Email: caadams@ualberta.ca © 2014 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. Distance Education, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917701 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 mailto:caadams@ualberta.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.917701 By scale, Thrun means massive, as in massive open online courses (MOOCs). Video game theorist and MOOC critic Ian Bogost (2013) countered that “Both MOOCs and flipped classrooms still rely on the lecture as their principal building block … The lecture is alive and well, it’s just been turned into a sitcom.” Bogost’s tongue-in-cheek humor aside, the claim that the MOOC learning experience is essentially the traditional lecture reformatted for popular screen begs verification in the field: Is learning in a MOOC like sitting in a lecture hall, except online? Or watching a sitcom? Or is it, as Thrun (cited in Wolfson, 2013) suggested, more like a massively scaled up version of the Stanford experience? Thus, we may rightly inquire, what is it really like for students to learn in a MOOC? This article reports on preliminary findings of a phenomenological study examining students’ accounts of their everyday experiences of learning in MOOCs.1 In particular, the study gathered and analyzed experiential “MOOC moments” recol- lected by xMOOC completers, that is, “learners who completed the majority of the assessments offered in the class” (Kizilcec, Piech, & Schneider, 2013, p. 3). Through phenomenological analysis of these completing students’ lived experience descriptions (LEDs), we show how the virtual learning landscapes afforded by these large-scale online environments may create unique conditions, situations, and relations of pedagogical effect and influence. MOOC research: an overview To date, much of the critical scholarly discussion regarding MOOCs has been unfolding in editorial pieces, op-eds, online professional magazines, the popular press, the blogosphere, and even open letters. Meanwhile, scholarly journal articles, academic reports, and conference proceedings are beginning to appear with acceler- ating frequency, reporting primarily on single case studies, student survey data, and analyses based on a wealth of student log data. Attempts to frame the MOOC phenomenon theoretically have focused primarily on connectivism (Bell, 2010; Kop, 2011), complexity theory (deWaard et al., 2011), and other socio-constructivist vari- ations (Clarà & Barberà, 2013; Wegerif, 2013), which have also served to strongly differentiate dialogical, connectivist cMOOCs from more monological, instructivist xMOOCs. There is already a well-established body of scholarship on e-learning in higher education, open learning, as well as informal learning experiences in a wide range of virtual spaces, including online communities, social media, and Wikipedia. Yet, for the most part, extant MOOC discourse has noticeably disregarded this pre- MOOC e-learning literature (Daniel, 2012; McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010; Siemens & Downes, 2011). Nonetheless, MOOCs—with their large-scale, open-access global enrollment—may also turn out to be “a different animal” (Breslow et al., 2013, p. 24) requiring new study. As happens with the arrival of any new educational technology, critical discussion is often hampered early on by a lack of evidence-based research in the midst of polarized rhetorical claims and commit- ments: MOOCs are “a tonic for an ailing education system say some, a poison for Universities say others” (Haggard, 2013, p. 12). Too, pedagogies evolve as teachers and students explore the unique affordances of the new learning environment, while the supporting educational technology architectures also undergo rapid development, articulation, and expansion. 2 C. Adams et al. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 Student experiences in MOOCs Empirical studies of students’ MOOC learning experiences are so far limited. A variety of quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to gather student learning data, including surveys, self-report instruments, semi-structured interviews, as well as big data—learner-generated numerical data-sets—that are tracked at the MOOC site. The latter allow researchers to perform large-scale educational data mining and learning analytics. Classification of MOOC students by engagement and intention Littlejohn (2013) conducted a mixed-methods study (n = 29) of learners’ patterns of engagement in Siemens and Downes’ (2011) Connectivism and Connective Knowl- edge CCK2011 cMOOC. The study identified three levels of engagement: lurkers, passive participants, and active participants. Hill (2013) suggested adding a fourth category or “archetype” (¶ 9) of MOOC engagement: “drop-ins” (¶ 13). He defined drop-ins as students who are active participants but only for a selected topic or dis- cussion thread in the course. Using a self-regulated learning self-report instrument combined with semi-structured interviews, Milligan, Littlejohn, and Margaryan (2013) further reported that students’ patterns of engagement in the CCK2011 cMOOC were affected by multiple factors including student confidence with the technology, prior experience with a cMOOC, and motivation. Using learning analytics findings across three xMOOCs, Kizilcec et al. (2013) also distinguished four types of student engagement categories: completers, auditors, disengaged learners, and samplers. Koller, Ng, Do, and Chen (2013) argued the importance of separating out MOOC “browsers” from “committed learners,” whom they defined as students “who tend to stay engaged throughout most or all of a class” (¶ 7). They proposed a further sub-grouping of committed learners: passive participants, active participants, and community contributors. Passive participants engage through watching videos, attempt few assignments, and have limited forum participation; active participants engage in all course content aspects of the MOOC and include the subset “course completers”; community contributors are also a sub- set of the active participants, but they additionally generate new content such as through discussion forums. Such attempts to construct a taxonomy of MOOC stu- dent engagement patterns, motivation, and intent are helpful. However, as with all such classification systems, they shed limited light on the experiential lifeworld dimensions of learning in a MOOC. MOOC retention rates MOOC completion rates average under 10% (Jordan, 2013), with Coursera courses reporting closer to 5% (Koller et al., 2013). Expressing concern regarding low com- pletion rates, two xMOOC data mining studies of “first MOOCs” (edX’s Circuits and Electronics and Duke University’s Bioelectricity) proposed that “persistence” is a key variable determining student success (Belanger & Thornton, 2013, p. 8; Breslow et al., 2013, p. 14). In examining the issue of low retention rates in MOOCs, Koller et al. (2013) suggested that comparisons with traditional, univer- sity-based courses may be inappropriate since, unlike a paying college student, a significant portion of the non-completing MOOC population may have had limited Distance Education 3 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 commitment and no need to complete the course. They concluded that MOOC stu- dent retention must be weighed in terms of student intention and commitment, not sign-up vs. completion rates. Other MOOC student survey studies and big data learner analyses have and will continue to be published at a breathtaking rate for at least the next couple of years. Learner analytics are giving new, objective glimpses of student behavior and are revealing previously untracked learning activity patterns online. Student survey data and semi-structured interviews generate primarily subjective opinions and general impressions of learning in a MOOC. However, none of these studies are positioned to address the unique, pre-objective, pre-subjective, everyday “realities of learners’ actual” experiences (Selwyn, 2009, p. 74; italics in original) in MOOCs. Without a methodical gathering and analysis of students’ pre-reflective experiences in these large-scale learning environments, only minimal light will be shed on the “in the wild” lifeworld of MOOCs. Simply: we are missing a phenomenology of the MOOC learning experience. MOOC experiences reported by students in the field A number of MOOC participants have blogged or otherwise recorded their experiences online. For the most part, these journals have consisted of general observations and opinions about MOOCs—as one would expect to generate via sur- vey or semi-structured interview—rather than detailed, lived-through descriptions of learning. Nonetheless, some experiential material is discoverable amid this wealth of online records. For example, TIME’s MOOC Brigade (2012) series provides some excellent examples of experientially rich recollections. Below are two excerpts from this series: one from technology writer Harry McCracken, who completed Courser- a’s six-week Gamification MOOC by Kevin Werbach, and another from personal finance writer Brad Tuttle, who undertook Coursera’s Introduction to Mathematical Thinking by Keith Devlin. Tuttle (2012) wrote: By the time the seventh e-mail about coursework and assignments arrives in my in- box, the guilt is too much to take. The online class I signed up for started on Sept. 17, and as the unopened emails pile up from Coursera, I haven’t watched a single lecture or done any work. But hey, having the flexibility to take in lectures at whatever pace you please is one of the attractions of such courses. The fact they’re free is another. In any event, it’s time to buckle down. Anyone who has registered for a MOOC with Coursera will immediately recog- nize Tuttle’s guilt-ridden twinge as he encounters yet another reminder e-mail in his e-mail inbox. Once students have signed up, Coursera regularly pings stu- dents, issuing weekly updates and notices about important deadlines. To the delin- quent student, such e-mail notifications may strike as an unhappy reminder of another unfulfilled commitment in an already overburdened schedule. Of course, as Tuttle (2012) pointed out, MOOCs’ flexibility and zero cost have also allowed him to put off his participation almost indefinitely. Three weeks into the 10-week course and provoked by the e-mail, he at last decides to take the plunge. With Coursera attrition rates hovering close to 95% (Koller et al., 2013), 400+ courses on offer, and boasting more than 4 million students since its April 2012 launch, this ordinary LED also gestures to the potentially hundreds of thousands of other non-completers across the globe who have been and will continue to be plagued 4 C. Adams et al. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 by such guilt-inducing MOOC e-mail moments on a weekly basis. For a small percentage, the reminder may press the student to at last commit. McCracken (2012), who finished Werbach’s Gamification with a respectable 83% and thus earned a certificate, recorded the following post-completion MOOC moment: As I rummaged through my records [in the MOOC], I learned that I was penalized for completing the third homework quiz a day late. That surprised me, because my memory was that I squeaked it in right before the deadline of 9 pm on Sept. 18. Wrong! It was due at 8:59:00 pm, one minute before 9 pm. I apparently pressed the submit button at 8:59:32. On Coursera, being 32 s late counts as blowing the deadline by an entire day, which seems mean. And hey—I completed the final exam four days ahead of schedule, without receiving any bonus points for doing so. Upon learning about this infraction, I seethed briefly and considered complaining about the unfairness of it all in the forums. If I’d done so, I wouldn’t have looked like the lone churl: the message boards are rife with students squawking about course policies, second-guessing the questions in the quizzes and begging that the rules be bent for one reason or another. I found most of their gripes to be preposterous and decided not to join their number. McCracken confronted helplessly, but not without angry indignation, an unforgiv- ing deadline that was incorrectly enforced 60 s prior to the advertised quiz com- pletion cut-off. Of course, assignment and examination deadlines have long provided necessary course structure for teachers, as well as (artificial) motivation for students to progress their learning. But teachers and students also recognize that such deadlines are often arbitrary and may not always be defensible pedagogically speaking. In the case of the Coursera quiz (and other online learn- ing management systems with similarly precise but incorrectly calibrated timing algorithms for flagging late assignments), the arbitrariness of, but also the con- tractual aspect of, such deadlines is momentarily foregrounded for McCracken. His reduced grade is unfair and maddening. Perhaps the moment now lives silently for McCracken as a lingering distrust that Coursera will not always give credit where credit is due. Indeed, the notion of assigning and being given credit underpins much of what transpires not only in a MOOC, but also the educational system more generally. Credit is currency, a lucrative market logic much on the minds of both universities and venture capitalists. Evident too is the student’s perception of the great-unwashed masses of others also inhabiting the MOOC. McCracken (2012) was aware that some contingent of his fellow MOOCers were busy on message boards, “squawking about course policies, second-guessing the questions in the quizzes and begging that the rules be bent for one reason or another” (¶ 5), a conversation he chose not to join at that moment. Echoing Tuttle’s (2012) vivid description of his moment of resolve in the wake of a battery of reminder e-mails, McCracken’s quiz deadline anec- dote provides a compelling example of the nuanced singularity but also the rec- ognizability of the xMOOC learning experience. Such anecdotal evidence gives us front row seat access to the differences of meaning significance a MOOC may make in the larger educational sphere and in the lives of students more generally. As McCracken (2012) added, “the fact that I was even temporarily ticked off about my grade is probably a good sign that the class was meaningful; if it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have cared” (¶ 6). Distance Education 5 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 Methodology Our research asked: What are completers’ experiences of learning in an xMOOC? The study is situated within a qualitative research methodology, “phenomenology of practice” (Van Manen, 2014). This methodology was developed specifically for studying educational environments in situ (Van Manen, 1990) and is adept at uncov- ering and fostering practical insights, communicative thoughtfulness, and ethical sensitivities in professional teaching practice. As such, phenomenology of practice is ideally suited for revealing the rich, complex realities of everyday student learning experiences in xMOOCs and subsequently building pedagogically responsive insight for educators, instructional media experts, and software architects who design, build, and work in these environments. With origins in continental philosophy, phenome- nology is directed toward exploring the everyday structures of pre-reflective human involvements, that is, how human beings experience their everyday lives rather than how they may conceptualize, theorize, or even rationalize it afterwards. The aim is to “lay bare and exhibit” the ground of a given human experience—the phenome- non—and attempt to preserve it in its lived entirety (Heidegger, 1962, p. 23). Data sources For this research, we generated data via two human science methods: written self- protocols (daily journals maintained by four adults engaged in a self-chosen MOOC) as well as in-depth phenomenological interviews with six xMOOC completers (Kizilcec et al., 2013) recruited via snowball sampling. Raw journal and transcript data were examined for LEDs. LEDs are moments recollected by the study partici- pants while learning in an xMOOC, and specifically exclude their personal opinions or generalizations about the experience. The term lived experience has special meth- odological significance for phenomenology and refers to “our immediate, pre-reflec- tive consciousness of life” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 35). Phenomenological inquiry depends on a collected base of such remembered, pre-reflective or lived-through moments. This body of evidentiary material serves to orient all subsequent phenom- enological analysis and reflection on the phenomenon, here, on the student experi- ence of learning in an xMOOC. Data analysis Once raw data were generated, the interview transcripts and journals were culled for LEDs. These pre-reflective descriptions were then subjected to phenomenological analysis via the application of multiple heuristics including thematic, existential, and eidetic reflection (Van Manen, 2014). Existential reflection examines experiential data across five existential dimensions: lived time, lived (and extended) body, lived space, lived things, and lived relation. Lived time, for example, is distinguished from objec- tive clock time: when one is engaged in a conversation with a good friend, time may seem to fly by or even disappear; whereas when one is sitting in a dull lecture, time slows to a crawl; all the while, the clock ticks away without variation. Eidetic analy- sis employs techniques such as comparing the lived dimensions of MOOCs to other online learning environments or face-to-face lectures, as well as those of completers to samplers, for example (several of our completers were also auditors, disengaged learners, and “sampling learners” in other MOOCs), as per the learner categories described by Kizilcec et al. (2013, p. 175). Thematic analysis is used to explore the 6 C. Adams et al. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 underlying meaning structures of the human experience. Phenomenological themes are not intended as generalized outcomes of the research—as is proffered in some forms of qualitative inquiry—but as heuristics to help lift up and uncover possible meanings inhering in a particular MOOC moment. Although our analyses uncovered multiple themes, in this article, we focus on only two aspects of the student’s relational experience of learning in an xMOOC. We examine (1) the relationship a student develops (or not) with the instructor in the context of prerecorded teaching videos and (2) the relationship students perceive with other xMOOC students en masse (as opposed to with individual peers). A preliminary phenomenological analysis of the lived pedagogical relationality of xMOOCs xMOOC videos may open an unexpectedly intimate tutorial sphere with the instructor Reflecting back on a recent xMOOC experience, a software engineer is surprised by: What ended up being a high degree of intimacy, or rather my sense of intimacy between me and the instructor. Surprising, because initially I think 150,000 people signed up for the course and it seemed like it should have been impersonal. It was about three weeks in when I began to have this sense—while watching the videos— like the instructor was speaking directly to me, almost as if he were just sitting across that table from me.2 (xMOOC participant) Over the course of a few weeks, the student experienced a dawning sense that his MOOC instructor was addressing him personally in the teaching videos. Despite knowing that the instructor could not possibly be “speaking directly” to him (xMOOC participant), this unique sense of pedagogical intimacy and tutorial-like presence of the teacher persisted and deepened for the student over the balance of the course. On the one hand, the student was aware he was participating in a class with tens of thousands of others; on the other hand, in his day-to-day learning through the MOOC videos and weekly assignments, the student came to perceive the instructor as engaging him personally in a private, tutorial way. In such moments, the thought of the thousands of other xMOOCers disappeared, and he found himself being personally tutored by the instructor. The lived immediacy of the MOOC instructor for the student is characterized by a punctive, omnivoyant address: the student hears the instructor as speaking to him or her personally, though he or she may be distantly aware that the instructor is also speaking to thousands of others in exactly the same way. To address means to guide or to direct to the attention of someone, to communicate or dedicate to a particular person or location. For example, we address a letter or e-mail to someone; we also address or call someone by name. But to be addressed means that we have been called, and our attention is prepared and newly devoted to the one who addresses us. To be addressed is to be the intended recipient, the one who is being called to turn, orient, and be confronted by and face the one making the address. This one-to-one, “speaking directly to me” (xMOOC participant) pedagogical relationship is reminiscent of the private educational sphere of the tutorial. The term tutor comes from the Latin tutus, which means to “watch over,” and thus the Old French tutour for “guardian, private teacher” (Online Etymology Dictionary, Distance Education 7 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 2001–2014). The MOOC instructor is clearly not in a position to watch over and attend individually to each of the thousands of students in this originary pedagogical sense. Nonetheless, an xMOOC student may have a very real and palpable sense of being watched over through the perception of being addressed in just such a per- sonal, tutorial manner. The full reciprocity of a one-to-one, teacher–student tutorial relationship may not be possible in an xMOOC, but the addressive or “speaking directly to me” (xMOOC participant) dimension of a teaching tutorial may have found new pedagogical footing in this massive online learning world. The prerecorded interjection may be felt as a special, private address in the immediacy of the now Another MOOC participant describes watching Massachusetts Institute of Technol- ogy (MIT) professor emeritus Walter Lewin deliver quirky, compelling in-class lec- tures and Physics demonstrations. Lewin’s lectures had been recorded a decade earlier (in 2002) and were now integrated into an MITx MOOC, Electricity and Magnetism.3 Then, unexpectedly, during one of the video lectures, the frame freezes, and Dr Lewin interjects that he had made a mistake there—it was an audio adden- dum directed to the current MOOC goers. The student smiles, recalling the moment: “He was talking to all of us, of course, the ones taking the MOOC. But he was also talking to me. That’s how it felt.” Here, the professor’s interruption of his recorded lecture stream foregrounds the immediacy with which the student perceived Lewin’s voice, a moment encountered as a direct, personal address occurring in the now. Watching the recorded lectures, the student found himself sitting attentively in Lewin’s class—a unique experiential con- fluence of viewing the 2002 lecture and belonging to the MOOC course more than a decade later. Lewin’s voiceover, directed to all the current MOOC students, was in this online learning world apprehended by the student both as one of the many MOO- Cers, but also in a remarkably intimate way: “He was talking to all of us, … [b]ut he was also talking to me.” Of course, the possibility of perceiving such a personal, ped- agogical address had already taken root in the many MOOC video lectures given by Lewin that proceeded this moment. Is this then Bogost’s (2013) traditional lecture but reformatted for the small screen? Or is it more akin to Thrun’s Stanford experience (cited in Wolfson, 2013) but scaled up? Or perhaps it is something else? One might imagine a university student, sitting among his peers in a chalkboard- lined MIT lecture hall watching the wacky pedagogical performance art of Walter Lewin. Suddenly, the legendary professor turns to the sea of avid students and con- fesses that he has made a mistake and must begin again. For the MOOC student, this aside was heard as directed not only to the whole class, but also to himself in particular. To gain a better sense of the latter experience in a face-to-face lecture sit- uation, imagine now that Dr Lewin turns directly to this one student, perhaps addressing him by name or by way of a wink, and shares the same communiqué. Everyone in the class hears the aside, but the statement is clearly intended for this one student in particular. In such a moment, the student is called—perhaps even finds himself thrown—into a one-to-one student–teacher relational sphere in the midst of the larger class. Depending on how the student felt about being singled out in this way, the many eyes of the class may seem to suddenly bear down upon him, or alternatively, fade dramatically into the background. In an xMOOC, however, the online student lives with little fear (though perhaps a little desire) that the instructor 8 C. Adams et al. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 might unexpectedly single him or her out in front of the entire class: the MOOC is open and accessible to thousands, and yet the student nonetheless experiences the professor via the video in a remarkably face-to-face manner. The sphere of pedagog- ical relation that seems to manifest in the context of the xMOOC videos is intimate and personal; and while the experience of this unique tutorial sphere may be shared by many across the globe, it is assuredly felt as special and private. Addressing students as a class in an xMOOC video may engage a sense of belonging and commitment: “Hello, 8-O-2-xers! How’s it going? Don’t give up, I know its hard, but don’t give up!” The forums were useful for feedback some of the time, but the best thing was the short little video segments the instructor posted saying, “Hello, 8-O-2-xers! How’s it going? Don’t give up, I know its hard, but don’t give up!” It made the difference between me quitting at the end of the 2nd week. (xMOOC participant) It is difficult to estimate the difference a teacher’s tactful and carefully timed words of encouragement can make to a struggling student. Indeed, is it really possible to ascertain what exactly in these words delivered via a brief video segment meant for this xMOOC student? Here, the instructor clearly knows that such support may be needed by his students, the 8-O-2-xers, at just this juncture, as well as at other key moments during the course. The student hears the instructor’s words as, “I know you’re going right into the deep end, don’t quit! Stay on a couple more weeks, I promise you it will be worth it.” She feels acknowledged in her struggle so far, and that the instructor understands but is also anticipating the difficulties that may lie ahead: nonetheless, he is cheering her on. Too, her status as his student is under- lined: she is greeted as one of the 8-O-2-xers. She belongs to MITx 8.02x– Electric- ity and Magnetism, and her professor cares that she continues. As every seasoned teacher knows, there is no magic formula for offering words of encouragement. The meaningfulness of a teacher’s words inheres in the context of the class; the particularities of the subject matter; the prior background, the apti- tude and interest, the unique personal situation and motivations of the student. Yet, it is also clear that the teacher’s ability to surgically declare where the shoals of des- pair may lie along the academic journey and offer a reassuring pedagogical hand on one’s shoulder may imbue the struggling student with the courage to proceed despite uncertain odds. Such sensitive understanding of the patterns of learning that may inhere in a particular course of study may also engender trust in the struggling stu- dent, and give her or him the courage to stay committed, to persevere despite current and anticipated future difficulties. The instructor may be perceived as being “always there” for the student via the xMOOC videos Another student describes a comparable moment after being away from the MOOC for more than a week: I log into the MOOC, realizing that I have so much to catch up with. My sense of panic at being behind starts to fade when I open the video to see the instructor, Steve, is talking to me as usual. It seems that he is always living there waiting for me! (xMOOC participant) Distance Education 9 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 In the video, Steve, the instructor, appears for the student in the immediacy of her lived now. Despite the student’s almost two-week absence from the course, it seems the conversation rapidly picks up from where the student had left off—not only does the student feel enabled to reacquaint herself with the course content, but she quickly falls back into the instructor’s familiar way of talking and the welcoming atmosphere of the lecture. Such a felt, lively presence of the other in asynchronous, online pedagogical spaces has been noted elsewhere (Adams, in press; Friesen, 2011a). Too, the notion of teaching presence in online learning environments has generated significant scholarly attention over the last decade (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001; Baker, 2010; Shea, Li, & Pickett, 2006). Especially remarkable here is that in this massive enrollment context, the teacher’s presence is apparently not only felt by the student, but also is perceived as being “always … there … for me!” Moreover, this sense of being there is apparently realized in the context of the now much maligned pedagogical form: the lecture (Friesen, 2011b). Nonetheless, it seems that at least in the xMOOC context, the lecture as a peda- gogical form—whether as footage of an actual lecture (e.g., Walter Lewin’s 2002 chalkboard and demonstration Physics lectures (Lewin, 2012) or Harvard University’s Sandel’s (2005) interactive justice lectures) or made-for-MOOC, speak- ing-to-the-camera video clip lectures as described in the anecdote above—has found new and meaningful pedagogical life. As Friesen (2011b) has pointed out, the con- structivist stereotype of the lecture as a “simple transmission of knowledge” (p. 95) is clearly mistaken. Rather, the lecture is more a kind of “hermeneutic speech act” (p. 100) that nowadays is augmented with a range of computing technology enhancements but also continues to rely on traditional rhetorical “dramaturgical” effects and tricks (p. 101). Such authorial lecture performances seem to have the capacity to speak to a student in a manner akin to the way the good author can engage his or her reader. Yet, unlike a novelist, the talented xMOOC lecturer- instructor appears immanently present to the student, or perhaps more accurately, in the midst of the xMOOC video, the instructor’s authorial performance is made immediately manifest for the student. But just as the words and letters on the page disappear for the absorbed reader, when learning from the xMOOC video lecture, students leave behind the digital world of the xMOOC and instead find themselves captured by the unique tutorial sphere occasioned by the instructor. The mood of the MOOC may involve an atmosphere or ambient sense of “eventedness” An IT professional who has taken multiple xMOOCs describes his experience in edX’s first MOOC, Circuits & Electronics: MITx 6.002x: In a weird kind of way, I was getting a personal lecture from Agarwal, and felt that intimacy. At the same time, I had the sense of being one of tens of thousands who all were having the same experience. I didn’t feel that my experience was degraded because it was spread out over all these people, but I was fortunate enough to be a part of this community that is having this same really cool experience. Of course, Agarwal didn’t know who the hell I was, and he probably never will … It may sound a ridicu- lous comparison, but the MOOC had some of the same energy as a rock concert. I go see U2 and I am so far away, but I can still see Bono on this massive screen, by the time the sound gets to me, the people are already dancing or waving and cheering out of sync, and his lips are moving up on the screen. So I am feeling this thing and I am 10 C. Adams et al. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 experiencing this thing with people and it is great, but he doesn’t know who I am, even though I kind of feel like he is singing to me. (xMOOC participant) This xMOOC student describes developing a close pedagogical relation with his instructor while simultaneously distantly perceiving his participation in a special event—reminiscent of a rock concert—that had gathered fans from across the world. Here, another experiential theme—“eventedness”—proposed by Cormier (2009), suggests itself. Cormier conjectured that eventedness, a sense of shared specialness characteristic of large-scale, fan-based public events (e.g., a rock concert or major sporting event), may uniquely distinguish MOOCs from other everyday online learn- ing experiences. Not all our study participants described such an ambiance of eventedness in their xMOOCs. However, one participant, who had taken an xMOOC that had not attracted many participants, keenly felt its unexpected absence: I login on Canvas and look for the information for the first week. I complete the video tutorial, and start going through the other links. There is little guidance, I don’t know if I have correctly understood the required activities. I feel a little overwhelmed. I am supposed to choose some readings among the reference list, but which ones are the more relevant to the topic of this week? Which ones does the teacher recommend? I notice that there’s no interaction yet: no messages, no announcements, and no signs of the others. I am sure this will be some interactions when I reach to the co-op tasks, but where are the people now? I start to feel a bit lonely. (xMOOC participant) Later in the course, the student reported having several opportunities to interact directly (online) with the MOOC instructor, and very much appreciated the one-to- one correspondences with her. Yet, he also expressed disappointment that he had not experienced a “true MOOC” (xMOOC participant), that is, an online course that attracted thousands of students from across the globe. Throughout, he found himself occasionally looking for all the others, but only ever encountered a few. Limitations This research did not set out to represent all completer experiences of xMOOC videos. Rather, the purpose was to provide examples of meaningful xMOOC stu- dent experiences in an effort to uncover new and possibly fruitful avenues of research in this nascent educational field. Several of our study participants reported participating in MOOCs that they did not persist with. LEDs from these not-completed MOOC experiences were not included here. Nor were some of the other larger phenomenological themes we uncovered, for example, the temporal rhythms of the xMOOCs and the quality of relationality with individual others (peers). Instructive, too, were some of the frustrations and setbacks that these stu- dents described encountering. However, such difficulties and disappointments are reserved for future phenomenological analysis. Finally, we recognize the landscape of MOOCs is changing swiftly; thus, our study may be of transient historical sig- nificance. Nonetheless, we suggest that revealing the everyday experiences of xMOOC students today may provide critical glimpses for instructors and MOOC design teams members for future efforts. Distance Education 11 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 Discussion and conclusion Long before MOOCs arrived on the scene, the field of distance education had developed a significant history experimenting with video telecommunications (e.g., telelectures, telecourses, video-assisted independent study—VAIS), which included one-way pre-recorded/broadcast as well as two-way interactive video and television courses. Beare (1989), for example, compared the effectiveness of classroom lec- tures being delivered in-person, via telelecture, or by VAIS, and concluded there was no significant difference in student grades or course satisfaction. Interestingly, the lack of student–teacher interaction in the VAIS case did not appear to have a negative impact. In a review of 40 research studies involving the use of video- and computer-mediated learning, Merisotis and Phipps (1999) reached a similar conclu- sion: the academic performance of distance education students was on par with their campus-based peers, and student attitudes toward the use of video was generally positive. More recent research comparing on campus lectures with online streaming videos has also concluded that “the extent to which students attended lectures or watched them online was not related to examination performance” (Bassili, 2008, p. 129). Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, the lecture as a pedagogical form has been the subject of increasingly hostile commentary (Friesen, 2011b). This antagonism is pop- ularly expressed in the constructivist adage that the teacher should no longer be a “sage on the stage” (representing the “traditional” teacher-centric, transmission model of education) but a “guide on the side” (King, 1993, as cited in Friesen, 2011b, p. 95) (representing the newer, student-centric, socio-constructivist stance). A similar theo- retic bifurcation has occurred in the cleaving of MOOCs into instructivist (i.e., direct instruction) xMOOCs and constructivist (or connectivist) cMOOCs. Ironically, even before MOOCs, there existed little evidence in the research literature to suggest that one approach is necessarily better than the other for all purposes. Moreover, with the multimodal, interactive possibilities that MOOCs of all shades afford—from discus- sion forums to informal Facebook collectives to local gatherings—it seems hard to abide a radical anti-lecture position. In this regard, our study reveals several surprising results for constructivists and connectivists. Our xMOOC completers consistently described a unique and powerful sphere of intimacy that developed for them with their xMOOC instructor, most espe- cially in the context of the pre-recorded instructional videos. Developing a sense of tutorial relationship with a top teacher and expert in the field is undoubtedly a dimension of the MOOC experience that warrants further investigation. Too, as Friesen (2011b) suggested, the lecture is a transmedial pedagogical form that is proving to be highly adaptive in our new media educational world, and should not be dismissed as an inappropriate pedagogical form for the future of education. As well, our findings seem to confirm Cormier’s (2009) conjecture that eventedness— the sense of specialness characteristic of other massive-scale, shared events (e.g., a rock concert or major sporting event)—may uniquely distinguish MOOCs from other online learning experiences. More recently, Sebastian Thrun is more circumspect about his claims regarding the potential of MOOCs to remake the academy. Despite employing a range of engagement and motivation strategies to boost student participation and learning, including gamification, progress meters, and badges, Udacity’s completion rate remains stubbornly low at 7% (Chafkin, 2013). Nonetheless, our exploratory study 12 C. Adams et al. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 of xMOOC completers suggests that these large-scale learning events may indeed represent a unique, new phenomenon that may be significantly different than previ- ous online offerings. While an intimate tutorial sphere was not occasioned for all the 10 participants in our study nor across all of their xMOOC experiences, the possibil- ity of experiencing such a one-to-one relation with an instructor of tens of thousands has rightly captured the public imagination, the fiscal attention of post-secondary institutions, and the keen interest of venture capitalists. But what to do about the other 93%? Acknowledgments This research was supported by the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education Support for the Advancement of Scholarship (SAS) Fund and a Roger S. Smith Undergraduate Student Researcher Award. Notes 1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 Networked Learning Confer- ence, Edinburgh. 2. Quotes represent material collected during interviews with MOOC completers and/or via solicited written experiential descriptions as part of a [university]-funded research pro- ject. Interviews were conducted either in person or via Skype. All names are pseud- onyms. All data collection adhered to the guidelines set by the “Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans.” 3. Because of the open and public nature of MOOCs, we credit the instructor and the name of the MOOC where applicable. Otherwise, pseudonyms have been employed as noted immediately above. Notes on contributors Catherine Adams is an associate professor in the Department of Secondary Education and coordinator of the MEd Technology in Education program, University of Alberta. Drawing on links between phenomenology, philosophy of technology, pedagogy, and media scholar- ship, her research investigates digital media technology integration across K–12 and post- secondary educational settings. Yin Yin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta. Her research interests include phenomenological pedagogy, curriculum studies, and comparative education. Her doctoral study examines the lived experience of teacher–student eye contact and the experiential ontological shift of pedagogical relation in the twenty-first- century educational context. L. Francisco Vargas Madriz is a master’s student in the Technology in Education program, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta. His research interests include online learning, twenty-first-century skills, and assistive technology. His master’s study exam- ines students’ lived experience of closeness in online learning environments. Scott Mullen is a recent graduate from the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Alberta and is currently teaching. He is interested in seeing how advances in technology will afford new opportunities for student learning as well as shape the future of education. Distance Education 13 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 References Adams, C. (2014). What’s in a name? 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Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-18/ venture-capital-needed-for-broken-u-dot-s-dot-education-thrun-says Distance Education 15 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of A lb er ta ] at 0 9: 19 2 7 M ay 2 01 4 http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2460296.2460330 http://www.educause.edu/ero/ http://www.educause.edu/ero/ http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/index http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/index http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002 http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002 http://cemca.org.in/ckfinder/userfiles/files/EdTech%20Notes%202_Littlejohn_final_1June2013.pdf http://cemca.org.in/ckfinder/userfiles/files/EdTech%20Notes%202_Littlejohn_final_1June2013.pdf http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf http://nation.time.com/2012/10/22/mooc-brigade-what-i-learned-from-learning-online/ http://nation.time.com/2012/10/22/mooc-brigade-what-i-learned-from-learning-online/ http://www.ihep.org/%5Cassets%5Cfiles%5C/publications/S-Z/WhatDifference.pdf http://www.ihep.org/%5Cassets%5Cfiles%5C/publications/S-Z/WhatDifference.pdf http://jolt.merlot.org http://www.etymonline.com/ http://www.etymonline.com/ http://www.justiceharvard.org/ http://www.idunn.no/ts/dk http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2006.06.005 http://cck11.mooc.ca http://nation.time.com/2012/10/02/mooc-brigade-with-free-online-classes-guilt-is-part-of-the-bargain/ http://nation.time.com/2012/10/02/mooc-brigade-with-free-online-classes-guilt-is-part-of-the-bargain/ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-18/venture-capital-needed-for-broken-u-dot-s-dot-education-thrun-says http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-18/venture-capital-needed-for-broken-u-dot-s-dot-education-thrun-says Abstract Introduction MOOC research: an overview Student experiences in MOOCs Classification of MOOC students by engagement and intention MOOC retention rates MOOC experiences reported by students in the field Methodology Data sources Data analysis A preliminary phenomenological analysis of the lived pedagogical relationality of xMOOCs xMOOC videos may open an unexpectedly intimate tutorial sphere with the instructor The prerecorded interjection may be felt as a special, private address in the immediacy of the now Addressing students as a class in an xMOOC video may engage a sense of belonging and commitment: ``Hello, 8-O-2-xers! How`s it going? Don`t give up, I know its hard, but don`t give up!'' The instructor may be perceived as being ``always there'' for the student via the xMOOC videos The mood of the MOOC may involve an atmosphere or ambient sense of ``eventedness'' Limitations Discussion and conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Notes on contributors References 
work_d3libocc2vduljcpieengraaqa	----	Authentic tasks online: A synergy among learner, task and technology MURDOCH RESEARCH REPOSITORY http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au This is the author's final version of the work, as accepted for publication following peer review but without the publisher's layout or pagination. Herrington, J. , Reeves, T.C. and Oliver, R. (2006) Authentic Tasks Online: A synergy among learner, task, and technology. Distance Education, 27 (2). pp. 233-247. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/5246 Copyright © 2006 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc It is posted here for your personal use. No further distribution is permitted. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/ http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/5246 Authentic Tasks Online 1 Authentic Tasks Online: A Synergy among Learner, Task and Technology Submitted to a special issue of Distance Education Edited by Rod Sims Herrington, J., Oliver, R. & Reeves, T.C. (2006). Authentic tasks online: A synergy among learner, task and technology. Distance Education, 27(2), 233-248 Abstract Fostering the synergy among learner, task and technology to create innovative and immersive distance learning environments runs counter to the widespread practice of incorporating traditional classroom pedagogical strategies into web-based delivery of courses. The most widely accepted model of online higher education appears to be one of reductionism, whereby learning management systems facilitate the design of easily digested packets of information, usually assessed by discrete stand-alone tests and academic assignments. This paper describes a model of authentic tasks that can assist in designing environments of increased rather than reduced complexity. It provides a robust framework for the design of online courses, based on the work of theorists and researchers in situated learning and authentic learning. It describes the characteristics of a task’s design that facilitates the requirements of an entire course of study being readily satisfied by its completion, where the students make the important decisions about why, how, and in what order they investigate a problem. The paper describes several learning environments that were investigated in depth in the study and explores the synergies that exist between the learners, tasks and technology engaged in authentic learning settings. The paper leads readers to a conceptual understanding of the role of authentic tasks in supporting knowledge construction and meaningful learning, and illustrates the principles of authentic task design for online learning environments. Authentic Tasks Online 2 A synergistic view of teaching and learning synergy: the working together of two or more things, people, or organizations, especially when the result is greater than the sum of their individual effects or capabilities. F. Buckminster Fuller, an early advocate of a systems view of the earth and designer of geodesic domes, defined synergy as the behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately (Buckminster Fuller Institute, nd.). Educational researchers and practitioners in distance education have long lacked a sufficiently synergistic view of teaching and learning. This paucity of holistic perspectives in the distance education literature and practice is derived partially from impoverished theoretical foundations (Gibson, 2003; Saba, 2003). The lack of seeing the forest for the trees, if you will, also stems from an enduring legacy of poor research in distance education. For many years, the distance education literature was dominated by predictive research studies that employed quasi-experimental methods in repetitive attempts to tease out the effects of individual variables (e.g., feedback, delivery mode, media, etc.) on outcome measures of dubious reliability and validity (Bernard, Abrami, Lou, & Borokhovski, 2004; Reeves, 2005). More recently, distance education research has been enriched by numerous interpretivist studies involving qualitative designs, but for the most part these studies have focused on a single tree, and the forest remains unexplored. In this paper, we propose that synergistic perspectives on distance education could be advanced by adoption of a model that can be used to guide the design of online learning environments focused on authentic tasks. This model is described below in terms of ten integrated design elements. In addition to presenting the authentic tasks model and its theoretical foundations, we also present examples of Web-based courses that exemplify our model. Characteristics of authentic activities Research in distance education has for many years, and continues today, to investigate the use of online technologies to enhance and support learner activity and engagement (e.g., Spector, 2005). One key to success appears to lie in the design of learning environments that make effective use of the communications capabilities of technologies that can connect learners in meaningful ways (e.g., Goodyear, 2005; Laurillard, 2002). There are a number of models of learning that have been proposed as providing ways to attract and engage learners. In particular, the preferred approaches are seen to be those that encourage and support deep rather than surface approaches to learning (Ramsden, 1992). The majority of these approaches are based on learning strategies that promote knowledge construction and include such forms as problem-based learning, computer-supported collaboration and student-centred learning. The precise instructional forms used to deliver learning programs that employ such student-centred approaches to learning are usually easy to describe in terms of learner actions and activities, but more difficult to prescribe in terms of teacher actions and activities. In recent years there have been a number of attempts to formalise particular Authentic Tasks Online 3 designs for learning, learning designs that can guide and inform teachers as they seek to create effective learning environments for their students. In particular there have been concerted and well-coordinated attempts to identify and describe learning designs for technology-based learning settings and those that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to deliver education at a distance (e.g., Agostinho, Oliver, Harper, Hedberg & Wills, 2002; Oliver, Harper, Hedberg, Wills & Agostinho, 2002). A second key to successful distance education stems from the design of learning environments that encourage learning activities that are relevant and/or authentic to the participants. Authentic learning as a learning design takes many forms and has been shown to have many benefits for learners, especially for those students in online units and courses (Lebow & Wager, 1994). In authentic learning settings, real-life authentic tasks are used to create the core of the learning environment, and the completion of the tasks effectively occupies the entire student commitment for the course. Many courses have been based on complex and sustained scenarios and cases, where students become immersed in problem solving within realistic situations resembling the contexts where the knowledge they are learning will eventually be applied. The authentic task project The research project described in this paper has engaged us for over a decade in exploring the use of authentic tasks. The timeline of our collaborative research coincides with a period of rapid growth of online learning courses in higher education. However, during this period, under the pressure of reduced funding to the university sector, larger classes and higher workloads (e,g,, Sharda, 2005), it has become apparent that authentic and complex tasks have largely been sacrificed to more manageable and expedient activities that can readily be incorporated into the weekly schedules of a course. Assessment requirements and administrative constraints also tend to militate against the use of sustained tasks that might take a whole semester, or a large part of it, to complete. In spite of the massive swing among educational theorists and those who prepare teachers towards a more constructivist philosophy of learning that has occurred over the past 2-3 decades, ‘instructivist’ models of online teaching abound on the Web as they do in most classrooms. Our research was designed to investigate this phenomenon by examining in depth successful cases of online authentic tasks that were complex and sustained, and facilitated learning of both content and processes through their completion. As this type of complex task is uncommon, we were interested to find working examples of the approach, and to explore those factors that led to successful experiences for both students and teachers. The stated aims of the research were: 1. To investigate the effectiveness of authentic activity as an alternative model for online delivery of university courses. 2. To investigate and determine the characteristics of authentic activity that facilitate a whole course unit of study being encapsulated within a single complex task. Authentic Tasks Online 4 3. To determine the factors which contribute to the successful adoption and implementation of activity-based online courses and units. In choosing the cases for in-depth investigation, we drew upon the findings of an extensive literature search and our own earlier work. In particular, theoretical and applied work done in the USA informed our thinking. For example, Jonassen (1991) defined authentic activities as tasks: that have real-world relevance and utility, that integrate those tasks across the curriculum, that provide appropriate levels of complexity and that allow students to select appropriate levels of difficulty or involvement. Similarly, Bransford, Vye, Kinzer and Risko (1990), Young (1993), Lebow and Wager (1994) and Savery and Duffy (1996) among others have nominated criteria of authentic activities. Our own previous research has also focused on aspects of authentic and situated learning (e.g., Herrington & Oliver, 2000; Oliver & Herrington, 2000; Oliver & Herrington, 2001), authentic activity (Herrington & Knibb, 1999; Herrington, Sparrow & Herrington, 2000), problem-based learning (Oliver & Omari, 1999; Reeves & Laffey, 1999) and authentic assessment (Reeves & Okey, 1996; Herrington & Herrington, 1998). For this study, we focussed more precisely on the design of tasks themselves, rather than more general designs of authentic learning environments. From the findings of this research, and an in-depth literature review, characteristic elements of authentic activities or tasks were defined for selection of cases (reported in more depth in Herrington, Reeves, Oliver & Woo, 2004). According to our own experiences in teaching in authentic learning environments and the aforementioned review of the literature, the following characteristics define authentic activities or tasks: 1. Authentic tasks have real-world relevance: Activities match as nearly as possible the real-world tasks of professionals in practice rather than decontextualized or classroom-based tasks (e.g., Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990a; Jonassen, 1991; Lebow & Wager, 1994; Oliver & Omari, 1999; Resnick, 1987; Winn, 1993). 2. Authentic tasks are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub- tasks needed to complete the activity: Problems inherent in the activities are ill- defined and open to multiple interpretations rather than easily solved by the application of existing algorithms. Learners must identify their own unique tasks and sub-tasks in order to complete the major task (e.g., Bransford, Vye et al., 1990; Brown et al., 1989; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990a; Lebow & Wager, 1994). 3. Authentic tasks comprise complex activities to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time: Tasks are completed in days, weeks and months rather than minutes or hours, requiring significant investment of time and intellectual resources (e.g., Bransford, Vye et al., 1990; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990b; Jonassen, 1991; Lebow & Wager, 1994). 4. Authentic tasks provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources: The task affords learners the opportunity to examine the problem from a variety of theoretical and Authentic Tasks Online 5 practical perspectives, rather than a single perspective that learners must imitate to be successful. The use of a variety of resources rather than a limited number of preselected references requires students to detect relevant from irrelevant information (e.g., Bransford, Vye et al., 1990; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990b). 5. Authentic tasks provide the opportunity to collaborate: Collaboration is integral to the task, both within the course and the real world, rather than achievable by an individual learner (e.g., Gordon, 1998; Lebow & Wager, 1994; Young, 1993). 6. Authentic tasks provide the opportunity to reflect: Activities need to enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning both individually and socially (e.g., Gordon, 1998; Myers, 1993; Young, 1993). 7. Authentic tasks can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes: Activities encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and enable diverse roles and expertise rather than a single well- defined field or domain (e.g., Bransford, Sherwood et al., 1990; Bransford, Vye et al., 1990b; Jonassen, 1991). 8. Authentic tasks are seamlessly integrated with assessment: Assessment of tasks is seamlessly integrated with the major task in a manner that reflects real world assessment, rather than separate artificial assessment removed from the nature of the task (e.g., Herrington & Herrington, 1998; Reeves & Okey, 1996; Young, 1995). 9. Authentic tasks create polished products valuable in their own right: Tasks culminate in the creation of a whole product rather than an exercise or sub-step in preparation for something else (e.g., Barab, Squire & Dueber, 2000; Duchastel, 1997; Gordon, 1998). 10. Authentic tasks allow competing solutions and diversity of outcome: Tasks allow a range and diversity of outcomes open to multiple solutions of an original nature, rather than a single correct response obtained by the application of rules and procedures (e.g., Bottge & Hasselbring, 1993; Bransford, Sherwoord et al., 1990; Bransford, Vye et al., 1990; Duchastel, 1997). These characteristics were used to define suitable cases for investigation, that is, to identify and locate courses that met the following conditions: • Authentic complex activities form the core of the entire course (i.e., a semester unit or subject) • The tasks meet at least six of the authentic task criteria listed above, • The course must be a higher education course (not K-12 schooling or training), • The course must be totally online and delivered at a distance (not a web-based supplement to an on-campus unit), and • The course must have run successfully for at least two semesters. A search for suitable courses was conducted, firstly, through examination of published refereed literature. It was thought that if a paper had been published describing a course, it would be more likely to be innovative and well established, rather than an unrealised idea or plan. Journals such as the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Distance Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, Journal of Interactive Learning Research, and Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, and refereed proceedings for conferences such as Ed- Authentic Tasks Online 6 Media, Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE), E-Learn and others were searched for potential cases. An extensive web search was also conducted, and email messages were sent to many established leaders in the field of educational technology throughout the world to ask their assistance in locating eligible cases. After locating only a few excellent cases using this method, we realised the difficulty stemmed from our requirement that a whole semester course be devoted to a single complex task, and so reduced this requirement to a major task comprising more than a third of a course. We also allowed courses that had an on- campus component into our analysis, but only if that component was incidental, rather than critical to the completion of the task. In all cases, the courses selected used tasks that could have been completed completely at a distance (i.e., the on-campus element was not critical for completion or assessment of the task, but in most cases simply reflected the nature of the course cohort). With these changes in selection criteria, many more potentially eligible examples of authentic tasks in higher education contexts were found. When a case was selected for investigation, a contact teacher or designer was located and permission was sought to conduct interviews and examine the course website. Interviews were generally conducted with at least two teachers, instructional designers or staff development personnel associated with a course. A range of exciting and innovative courses were investigated, revealing talented and imaginative teachers and designers who clearly looked beyond the delivery of information to explore the synergies among task, learner and technology. Cases were represented across disciplines at both under-graduate and post-graduate levels. Some of the cases had been developed with external funding, and used extensive graphics, audio, and interactive web features to enhance the presentation of the authentic context. Others were accessible to students through course management systems (such as Blackboard or WebCT, or some university departments’ own systems), and some were very low cost, simple representations that relied more on a very good idea and well described task than on sophisticated technology per se. Three sample cases Three case descriptions are given below to give a snapshot of the types of courses that were researched, including a short description of the task, the learner, and the technology used within each learning environment. None of the course instances at the time of the research were large undergraduate classes; all were comparatively small specialised cohorts with 1-3 teachers involved in their delivery. All three examples came from universities in Australia: Research Preparation: Research Methods Research Preparation: Research methods is an introductory research methodology course studied within a Master of Education degree (see Angus & Grey, 2002, for more detail on the course). Task: In order to learn about appropriate use of qualitative and quantitative research methods, students are given the task of investigating the closure of a fictitious rural Australian school. They use data collected by two fictitious graduate students, Peggy and Brian, including Authentic Tasks Online 7 interviews with parents and teachers, researcher notes, school records, surveys and demographic data. They also have access to newspapers and other types of information from the town. Their task is to prepare an analysis and report (using qualitative and quantitative methods) on the likely impact the closure of the school will have on the rural community. The task is comprised of a number of large assessable sub- tasks which contribute to the development of one report which is the focus of the entire semester course. Learner: The learners taking the course are usually in the first year of a Master of Education degree. Some are returning to study after a substantial gap, and many require a great deal of support in the first few weeks of the course in particular before they feel confident in the approach. In completing the task, they work vicariously using the data that has already been collected, and in small collaborative groups with other students. However, their final report is an individual one. Technology: Students access the task, resources and supports available to them through the course website. A graduate research centre is presented as a metaphor (Figure 1), and a range of resources become available by clicking on the different items in the interface. For example, the two filing cabinet drawers reveal qualitative data in the form of interview transcripts, researcher notes, and documents, and quantitative data in the form of survey data, and other statistical records. Video interviews are accessible under the television, and town demographics and newspaper reports are available on the coffee table. A range of other resources on research methods are available through the Help Desk (door). Students are able to freely navigate the space to access data and resources as needed. Figure 1: The graduate research center North American Fiction and Film North American Fiction and Film is an advanced undergraduate course in North American Literature in a Bachelor of Arts degree. The design framework of the course is described in Fitzsimmons (2001), and further discussion on the theoretical foundation of the approach can be found in Fitzsimmons (2006). Task: In a semester course on North American Fiction and Film (Figure 2), students studying novels written by North American writers such as Melville, Hemingway, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Atwood, and Esquival, are given the role of Editorial Board Members of an online scholarly journal. They are invited to submit book reviews and articles based on Authentic Tasks Online 8 their study of the literature, and as editors, they collaboratively design a guide for novice reviewers on how to write a book review. The teacher of the course is the journal editor, and an edition of the journal is published online at the end of each semester featuring the best articles chosen by the board. Learner: The learners are in their second or third year of a Bachelor of Arts degree, or they are pre-service education teachers (English teachers) from the Faculty of Education. They complete the task by acting as members of the editorial board for the journal, and preparing papers on their chosen works. At the end of the course, and a one day mini- conference is held where students can present their papers. Technology: The course task and resources are fully available on the website. The major task is presented to students in the form of a memo welcoming them to their new position on the editorial board of the NAFF (North American Fiction and Film) journal. A range of literary papers, articles and reviews and other support services and resources are also accessible from the site. Figure 2: North American Fiction and Film Writing in organizations Writing in organizations is part of the third-year curriculum for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies) where students learn business communication skills by accepting temporary employment in a virtual recording company (described in detail in Pennell, Durham, Orzog & Spark, 1997). Task: Learners accept a temporary position at a recording company (Figure 3), and are given the task of preparing a report on whether the company would benefit from the introduction of an internal newsletter to improve communication between employees and management. In order to complete this activity, student make appointments, keep a diary, ‘interview’ the director and other employees, and write letters, and memos as required. Learner: The students are third year on-campus undergraduates studying an elective in the communication degree. By the time they take this course, they would have already undertaken one or two courses in the professional writing strand. Students complete the task by attending work ‘virtually’ each day for two weeks. During this time, they keep a Authentic Tasks Online 9 real physical diary for their appointments, as a further authentic element to the learning environment. Technology: The learning environment is presented entirely online even though it is part of an on-campus course. The task is extremely well resourced with audio-interviews (including full text on screen) with a number of employees, cartoon-style graphics, and a range of resources on business writing and communication. Characters have been extremely well conceptualised to present alternative and competing perspectives, and students have a rich source of ideas on the interaction between employers and employees and how they communicate in organizations. Figure 3: Writing in organizations: Virtual Records Exploring synergies in authentic learning settings A large part of the learning advantage that can be derived from the use of authentic learning settings appears to draw from the synergies that result from the interactions of these three elements, learner, task and technology. Our research has revealed the need for more authentic tasks as described above. Likewise, the use of technology in authentic distance learning environments draws on particular attributes of technology- use that relate to the real-life nature of the activity, and the seamless and integrated applications for communication and knowledge construction that the technology must provide. And finally, learners in authentic settings are typically freed from the constraints of weekly lectures, readings and other linear constraints usually associated with courses presented in course management programs. They are able to pursue more self-paced independent learning using technology, and associated interactions with peers and other supports. Table 1 summarises and distinguishes between the attributes of the elements that form the basis of authentic distance learning settings. Authentic Tasks Online 10 Table 1: Attributes of authentic learning elements Element Attributes Tasks • Complex activities • Ill-structured • Based on real-life scenarios and instances • Resulting in a polished product Learners • ICT literate • Problem-solvers • Reflective learners • Collaborative learners • Self-sufficient learners Technologies • Providing access to rich media • Providing learner and resource connectivity (ideally 24/7) • Providing access to rich resource collections • Supporting extensive functionality (including cognitive tools for construction of knowledge representations that can be shared, critiqued, and refined over time) • Ubiquitous access and availability It is apparent from our analysis of the three case studies described above and other examples that the use of authentic tasks provides important synergies between the three elements: learner, task and technology. The tasks were seen to be positive supports for the learner, in the form of meaningful contexts, motivations and skills development. In a similar fashion, the learners who were familiar and comfortable in authentic learning settings were able to extend the ways in which various technologies were used. Often the students produced products others could use, and in all cases, their learning activities produced the product that subsequently formed the basis of their assessment. This complementarity was seen frequently to provide synergies which could expand how tasks could be structured as a consequence of students’ capabilities and technology use (Figure 4). How the task helps and supports the learner • Produces reusable resources for other learners • Enables collaboration • Refines the task • Develops the product that provides the basis for assessment • Provides meaningful contexts • Enhances motivation • Fosters ownership of learning • Supports learner’s metacognitive development • Promotes transferability of learning • Provides feedback and support How the learner helps and supports the task Figure 4: Synergies between task and learner in authentic learning settings In a similar fashion, the forms of tasks that were selected influenced in many ways the technology that was planned as an element in the solution process. Figure 5 indicates some of the ways in which the task can be seen to support the use of the technology by providing meaningful contexts for inquiry and collaboration, and a seamless and natural place for technology use. When the teachers formulated their tasks, the fact that technology was to be a tool for the students provided many opportunities for the design and specification of the task in terms of resource access, enriched communications concerning research and inquiry, and cognitive tools for building the solution products. Authentic Tasks Online 11 How the task helps and supports the technology use • Provides access to rich, real world resources • Enables communications regarding for research and inquiry • provides tools to build the products that represent solutions to tasks • Provides meaningful purpose for technology use • Encourages use of collaborative tools • Encourages seamless and natural ICT integration How the technology use helps and supports the task Figure 5: Synergies between task and technology use in authentic learning settings Finally, there were synergies identified that occurred as a consequence of the role of the learners and the way in which they used the technology in the learning process (Figure 6). The fact that the learners across all cases were able to use the technology in a self-sufficient way to solve problems, stemmed from the design of a learning environment that relies heavily on technology for support. And what the technology appeared to offer this kind of learner, tended to be far more than what a student in a conventional environment might expect or need to use. The communication capabilities, the cognitive tools for knowledge construction, the resource opportunities and the support facilities all served to assist the learner in ways that more typical uses of technology might not normally have achieved. How the learner helps and supports the technology use • Connects learners with other learners • Connects learners with tutors and teachers • Provides access to resources • Provides organising means for learning and support materials • Able to use a range of ICT development tools • Self-sufficient technology user for exploration and inquiry • Appropriate use for distance learning How the technology use helps and supports the learner Figure 6: Synergies between technology and learner in authentic learning settings The synergies illustrated in Figures 4-6 are useful in illuminating the complementarities that exist among learner, task, and technology. Together with the examples of actual courses grounded in authentic tasks described above and in more detail in other reports of our research (Reeves, Herrington & Oliver, 2002; Herrington 2002; Herrington, Oliver & Reeves, 2003a, 2003b; Herrington, Reeves, Oliver & Woo, 2004), these synergies will hopefully encourage course designers and instructors to design, implement, and evaluate authentic task-based courses. Summary and Conclusions Authentic tasks describe a learning design that appears to hold considerable promise for the delivery of units and courses through distance education modes. In this paper, we have discussed and described a framework for designing authentic learning based on the prescription of an authentic task that is holistic and complex. The framework for the design of online courses based around complex tasks, draws from the work of Authentic Tasks Online 12 theorists and researchers in situated learning and authentic learning and seeks to formalise a number of the design and implementation elements. The paper has identified and described three cases of actual learning settings based on the use of such forms of authentic task. In each of the cases, the respective roles of learner, task and technology have been identified and synergies between these elements have been explored. The inquiry has demonstrated that synergy among the various roles and elements is a strong contributor to the success of such learning settings. Each element was seen to provide affordances and supports for the other elements and at the same time to draw on the relative contributions of each to strengthen its own capability to support the learning setting. 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Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp. 3-20). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Savery, J.R., & Duffy, T.M. (1996). Problem based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework. In B.G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist learning environments: Case studies in instructional design (pp. 135-148). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Sharda, H. (2005). Cost cutting at what cost? Australian university scenario. Paper presented at the Australasian Association for Institutional Research Forum, 2005. Retrieved 30 January, 2006 from http://www.aair.org.au/Forum2005/Others/Sharda.pdf Spector, M. (2005). Time demands in online instruction. Distance Education, 26(1), 5-27. Venezky, R. L. (2001). Procedures for evaluating the impact of complex educational interventions. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 10(1), 17-30. Winn, W. (1993). Instructional design and situated learning: Paradox or partnership. Educational Technology, 33(3), 16-21. Young, M.F. (1993). Instructional design for situated learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(1), 43-58. Authentic Tasks Online 15 Acknowledgements This research was supported in part by grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC-Discovery) and the Australian-American Fulbright Commission as well as by the authors’ universities. More information about the authentic tasks model used in our research can be found at: http://www.authentictasks.uow.edu.au/. Notes on Contributors Jan Herrington is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and a member of the Research Centre for Interactive Learning Environments group. Thomas C. Reeves is a Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology in the College of Education at The University of Georgia in the USA. Ron Oliver is a Professor of Interactive Multimedia and an Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Edith Cowan University in Australia. Publication Details University of Wollongong Research Online 2006 Authentic tasks online: A synergy among learner, task and technology J. Herrington R. Oliver T. C. Reeves 
work_dcfaevcy2ng23apunm33cpxe7m	----	Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 60 Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment at the College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast Moses Segbenya1, Ebenezer Aggrey2 & Fred Peniana3 1Department of Business Studies, College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast 2School of Economics, University of Cape Coast 3School of Physical Sciences, University of Cape Coast Email: msebenya@ucc.edu.gh1 Abstract The study examined human resource factors and organisational commitment at the College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. The research approach was quantitative, specifically using a descriptive study design. Out of 242 staff of the College, a sample of 148 respondents (comprising 18 senior members, 80 senior staff and 50 junior staff) were drawn across the three spectrums of staff using Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sample determination formula. The main instrument for data collection was a self- administered questionnaire. Data of the study was analysed with means, standard deviations, independent t- test, two-way analysis of variance and Spearman rank order correlations matrix. The study found that commitment level among staff at the college (CoDE) was high and affective commitment was perceived higher than normative and continuance dimensions of organisational commitment. Work relations were perceived as higher than extrinsic rewards and training and development. It was also found that training and orientation significantly relate to organisational commitment. Sex and age of respondents did not affect organisational commitment and other variables of the study. It was recommended that management of the college should continue to pay more attention to work relations at the college by engaging staff of the Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 61 college in inter-unit or inter- departmental assignments to enable staff to build more work relations and used both on-the-job and off-the-job training techniques to maintain or increase commitment level among staff of the college. Keywords: Extrinsic rewards, work relations, training and orientation, commitment Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 62 Introduction The goals of higher education are to provide in-depth knowledge, seek academic development, educate students, and to coordinate developmental demands (Betz, 2005). In the attempt to expand the educational frontiers and extend these educational goals to cover a broad spectrum of qualified applicants, some tertiary educational institutions have introduced distance education in addition to the regular mainstream academic programmes (Moore & Kearsely, 2005). However, the attainment of distance educational goals largely depends on the availability of committed and competent employees. This suggests that the human resources of every distance educational institution remain the most important resource for the survival and growth of that institution. Without it, all other resources would lie idle and unproductive (Jackson & Mathis, 2010). Thus, the survival of a distance education institution depends on employees’ commitment. Employees’ commitment is underpinned by Becker’s (1960) side-bet theory of commitment. Becker’s side-bet theory postulates that “contract” of economic exchange defines the kind of relationship between employee’s commitment towards an organisation (Irefin & Ali 2014). Thus, an employee could hardly claim the investments of “side-bet” if he/she decides to quit the organization. Becker (1960) therefore argued that since over a period certain costs accrue; it makes it more difficult for an employee to disengage from maintaining membership in the organization. Employee social and economic investment over time in an organisation come in the form of income, status, seniority, friendship and institutional memory or technical knowledge, cannot easily be recouped or claimed if one loses membership (Kessler, 2013). Kessler described this kind of commitment in the 1960s as the calculative approach to defining and measuring commitment. Another approach to measuring and describing employees’ commitment emerged from the 1970s to mid-1980s called organisational behaviour or psychology approach of commitment by Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974). Unlike, Becker’s (1960) side-step theory of commitment which argued from the perspective of economic and social accumulation over time, the second Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 63 approach (the attitudinal approach) described commitment as affective or attitudinal. Thus, Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974) were of the view that employees get committed to their organisation because they identify with the organisational values and goals. The emphasis during the attitudinal approach was based on the desire to maintain membership in the organization, belief in and acceptance of the values and goals of the organisation and lastly willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organization. Meyer and Allen (1984) introduced the multidimensional approach to describe and measure employees’ commitment in 1984. The multidimensional approach was initially based on two main pillars such as affective commitment (like the Becker’s side-bet theory) and continuance commitment. Continuance commitment was explained as the degree to which employees feels committed to their organisation by the virtue of their perception of the cost associated with leaving. Meyer and Allen (1984) however, later added a third dimension to the multidimensional approach, which was normative commitment. Normative commitment describes an employee’s feeling of obligation to remain with the organization. Even though the debate on how to describe and measure employees’ commitment has not ceased, it is now generally accepted to describe and measure employees’ commitment from the three perspectives such as affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment. Details of these dimensions are provided under theoretical perspective under a literature review of this study. The University of Cape Coast established the College of Distance Education (CoDE) (Hitherto Centre for Continuing Education) in 1997 with the vision of becoming the leading provider of quality distance and continuing education in Ghana and beyond. The College’s mission is to remain as the excellent institution for planning and delivery of innovative, demand- driven, customer-oriented and cost- effective continuing and distance education programmes, aimed at assisting individuals in overcoming geographical, economic, social and cultural barriers to learning, and for national development. In order to achieve its mission, the college has Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 64 divided its activities into two main categories. The first component of the college’s activities focuses on activities performed during weekdays usually from Mondays to Thursdays. This category of activities serves as the preparatory period of the college’s activities, which are largely administrative in nature. It also includes resolving students’ challenges, printing of questions, getting study materials ready for students as well as synchronizing information (announcement) to be sent to students. The second category of activities of the college is basically teaching and monitoring of academic activities in over 83 study centres of the college across the length and breadth of Ghana during weekends. Invigilation of continuous assessment and end of semester examination as well as receiving students’ complaints from study centre coordinators are also part of the weekend’s activities. The college is headed by a provost and administrative staff (college registrar and college finance officer), aided by heads of departments, unit coordinators and regional coordinators. Most of the staff at the College were transferred from the mainstream of the University and others were brought in as part of the Colleges’ effort of capacity building. The staff of the College comprised senior members, senior staff and junior staff. In terms of reward system, staff are paid salary for their weekdays' activities and allowances for their weekends' activities. The nature of activities at the college (on weekdays and weekends) requires that staff of the college are committed. This is because committed employees are easy to be retained even though they may not necessarily be satisfied employees as argued from the perspective of normative and affective approaches of commitment theory (Kessler, 2013). Employees of the college also need to be committed to enable the college to deliver on its mandates since organisational performance largely depends on committed staff (Coetzee, Schreuder & Tladinyane, 2014). Thus, the college’s ability to achieve its aim of becoming a leading provider of quality distance education in Ghana and Africa hinges on committed staff. The competition faced by the college from other providers of distance education in Ghana (from Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 65 universities and colleges of education) could be largely dealt with when committed staff are on board to deliver on the College’s mandate. Meanwhile, employees’ performance is not just an antecedent of organisational commitment but also depends on other human resource functions or practices. Key among these human resource practices are training and orientation that staff joining the college receives to enhance their skills and competencies for performance. The staff of the college work in relation with other staff members in their departments and units. Thus, individual performance could also be highly influenced by the kind of human relationships that exists among staff at the college. From the calculative approach of the theory of commitment, reward as an economic benefit and a human resource function could also be a determinant of employees’ commitment. However, earlier studies on the college by Segbenya, Peniana and Aggrey (2018) looked at other human resource practices such as work-life balance and employee job satisfaction among others. This study thus focused on other understudied variables such as work relations, rewards system and training and orientation, and how these variables relate to employee commitment. Thus, the need to determine whether staff of the college are committed due to positive feelings of attachment to the college (from the perspective of affective commitment), cost associated with leaving (from the continuance commitment perspective) or feeling of obligation to stay in the organisation (from normative commitment dimension) has become very relevant and urgent. The increasing demand and reliance on the activities of CoDE make it imperative to undertake this study. Thus, this study sought to fill this research gap. The purpose of the study was to examine predetermined factors that influence employee commitment at CoDE. The specific research questions and associated hypotheses of the study were: 1. What is the level of employee commitment among a staff of CoDE, UCC? 2. How do employees perceive work relations, training and orientation and extrinsic reward at CoDE, UCC? Hypothesis One Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 66 H0: There is a statistically positive significant relationship between organisational commitment and variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, and extrinsic rewards. Hypothesis Two H0: There is a statistically significant difference between the sex of respondents and the variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, extrinsic reward and organisational commitment. Hypothesis Three H0: There is a statistically positive and significant difference between the type of employment and variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, extrinsic reward and organisational commitment. Hypothesis Four H0: There is a statistically significant difference between the types of organisational commitment and tenure. Literature Review The first part of this section of the paper focuses on the theoretical perspective of organisational commitment theory. The three historical angles of organisational commitment theory such as calculative, attitudinal and multidimensional approaches have already been catered for in the background. Thus, the discussion under this section focuses on the three major perspectives on organisational commitment theory such as affective, continuance and normative commitment (Irefin & Ali, 2014). Affective dimension of the commitment theory describes employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organisation. A strong effective commitment to an organisation is characterized by employees’ decision to maintain their continuous membership or employment with the organisation (Meyer & Allen, 1987). Four antecedents of affective commitment include personal characteristics, structural/organisational characteristics, job-related characteristics, and lastly, demographic characteristics such as Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 67 work experiences, age, tenure, gender and education and job status. The second dimension of commitment theory which is continuance commitment relates awareness of the costs associated with leaving an organisation. The potential costs of leaving an organisation include giving up seniority-based privileges, losing attractive benefits, the threat of wasting the time and effort spent acquiring nontransferable skills or having to ‘uproot’ family and disrupt personal relationships. Additionally, continuance commitment also develops as a function of a lack of alternative employment opportunities. Thus, workers whose primary link to the organisation is based on continuance commitment remain because they need to. The feeling of obligation to continue employment also constitute a normative commitment. Employees with a high level of normative commitment are characterized by the feeling of ‘I ought to remain with this organisation’. Normative commitment is influenced by an organisation’s provision of “rewards in advance” to a work like the payment of school fees or incurring significant costs in providing employment in the form of head- hunting fees or the costs associated with a job. Other factors associated with normative commitment include cultural orientation (prior to entry into the organization), and organisational orientation (following entry). Recognition of these investments causes employees to feel an obligation to reciprocate by committing themselves to the organisation until the debt has been repaid. The second section of the literature review of this paper focuses on conceptual discussions on HRM factors of the study and employee commitment. The HRM factors of this study are work relations, training and orientations, and reward systems. Other HRM factors such as job satisfaction, work and life balance among others are not the focus of this study because they have been studied by Segbenya, Aggrey and Peniana (2018) on the same study institution. Also, other HRM practices or factors such as recruitment and selection, performance appraisal and promotions were also excluded from this study because the college has little or no influence over these factors at the college level. Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 68 Work Relations and Commitment Generally, work relations in the workplace is a type of interpersonal relationship based on two concepts-the leader-member relationship and coworkers' interactions (Paşaoğlu & Becker 2015). This description did not consider the quality dimension of work relation. For this reason, Jørgensen, and Becker (2015) added that work relations can be described as the quality of the interpersonal relationship that exists between employees and co-workers (the horizontal pair) and their supervisors (the vertical pair). A more specific and elaborated description indicating the antecedents of work relation was however given by Sawithri, Nishanthi and Amarasinghe (2017) that workplace employee collaboration encompasses office politicking, level of an interpersonal relationship among workers, backstabbing, empire building, rumour mongering, alienation, trust or mistrust and sabotage. Work relation is relevant for achieving social reciprocity of resources, support and participation in decision- making, trust and respect, quality of teamwork and ultimately, organisational commitment (Funminiyi, 2018). Training and Orientation, and Commitment Training is a planned process to modify attitudes, knowledge or skill behaviour through learning experience to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities (Wan, 2007). This means that training basically leads to sharpening the skills and the competencies of employees either “on or of” the job for better performance in their present or future job roles. Orientation, on the other hand, is a form of training given to new employees to familiarize themselves with the new workplace and the necessary facilities, activities of the organisation, work colleagues among others (Jafari, Afshin, Jafari, & Barzegar, 2015). Thus, organisations that are committed to employee training benefit from the rewards of increased skill sets, motivation, higher productivity and knowledge transfer of their employee. Training enhances employees’ skills, reduces role conflict and prepares them for future advancements, reduces employee Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 69 turnover, hence increases their level of commitment (Funminiyi, 2018). Extrinsic Rewards and Commitment Extrinsic rewards are usually financial and tangible rewards given to employees by managers, such as pay raises, bonuses, and direct financial benefits in return for services rendered (Armstrong, 2007). Extrinsic reward continues to play a dominant role in the lives of workers because it is a key determinant for workers’ decision to accept and stay on a job (Shaw, 2015). Extrinsic rewards remain one of the most significant motivational strategies for workers (Armstrong & Murlis, 2007). Comparing the effect of pay growth effects on turnover intentions among staff categories, Sthapit (2014) argues that pay growth or extrinsic reward greatly influenced talented employees than other categories of staff. The overall benefit of extrinsic reward was also highlighted by Mahesar (2015) that organizations that provide its workers with a good extrinsic reward or compensation get in return committed employees who are willing to keep their employment arrangement with their employer for a long term. Arguing from the institutional image perspective, Paşaoğlu (2015) concluded that extrinsic reward is not only necessary for employees but also raises the goodwill of employers in the job market, as a fair and rational organization. The last section of the literature review of this study looks at the empirical studies on the variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, and extrinsic rewards. Coffie, Agyenim -Boateng and Coffie, (2018) found that the quality of information shared among co- workers and supervisors positively correlate with the three dimensions of commitment such as continuance, affective and normative commitment. Funminiyi (2018) rather found that trust in supervisor and co-workers were significantly related to the two dimensions of commitment such as affective commitment in supervisor and explained significant variance in affective commitment in supervisor. Brunetto, Xerri, Shriberg, Rod, Newman, Dienger (2013) found a very significant relationship between workplace relations and organisational commitment among nurses in the US and Australia. Telman and Unsal (2004) also Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 70 concluded that relationship with supervisors and colleagues at the workplace was an external factor that affects employee commitment. Thus, work relations affect employees’ commitment, however, at the CoDE, UCC, it is not clear how this factor affects the commitment level of staff. A study carried out by Coffie, Agyenim -Boateng and Coffie, (2018) found that training only relates to two dimensions of commitment such as affective and normative commitment. Peretomode and Bello (2018) also found that training affected teachers’ commitment along the three dimensions of commitment. It can, therefore, be concluded that training and orientation affect employees’ commitment, however, it is not clear how training and orientation affect the dimensions of commitment at CoDE/UCC. Gellatly, Hunter, Currie and Irving (2009) found a significant relationship between firms’ compensation packages and employees affective and continuance commitment towards their organization. Shaw and Gupta cited in Mahesar (2015) investigated the relationships between pay dispersal and the quits patterns of good, average and poor performers among 226 US truck drivers. The study found that under high pay practices, pay dispersal was negatively associated with good employees’ quit rates when performance-based pay increases were underlined and positively associated when they were not. Also, under high pay practices, pay dispersal was negatively connected to average performer quits when seniority-based pay increases were underlined, but this relationship was diminished when they were not. However, pay dispersal was not constantly related to quilt patterns, when pay was small. Methodology This study adopted the quantitative research approach, specifically a descriptive study design. The reason that necessitated the use of this design was that the study sought to describe (Amedahe & Gyimah, 2016) how human resource factors relateto employee commitment at CoDE. The Total population of the study was 242 employees of CoDE comprising 30 senior members, 130 senior staff, and 82 junior staff. Samples of 148 respondents were drawn across the three spectra of staff. Krejcie & Mor- gan (1970) sample determination formula was used to sample 148 Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 71 respondents out of the 242 population of the study. The formula used is as follow: S=X2 NP(1-P) / d2 (N-1) + X2 P(1-P) Where s = required sample size; X2 = the table value of chi-square for 1 degree of freedom at the desired confidence level (3.841); N = the population size, P = the population proportion (assumed to be .50 since this would provide the maximum sample size) and d = the degree of accuracy expressed as a proportion (.05). Thus S=3.841*242*0.50(1- 0.50)/.052 (242-1) +3.841*0.50(1- 0.50) =148 sample for the study. Firstly, a list of staff was obtained, and each member of the population was assigned a unique number. In the next step, these numbers were written on separate cards which were physically similar in shape, size, color etc. Then they were placed in a box and thoroughly mixed and the slips were taken out randomly without looking at them until number/sample required was attained. Thus, the lottery method of the simple random was used for the study. The 148 sample was further proportionately distributed across the three staff categories and specific sample for each category can be seen from Table 1. Table 1: Distribution of Sample Across Spectrum of Staff of the College Category Population % Proportionate Sample Drawn Senior members 30 12 18 Senior Staff 130 54 80 Junior Staff 82 34 50 Total 242 100 148 Source: CoDE, 2016 Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 72 Data collection instrument was self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire captured both opened and close-ended items. The opened ended items were coded and assigned values due to the quantitative approach or design adopted. Training and orientation as a variable in this study was measured by four items adapted from Delery and Doty’s (1996) study and four other items personally developed. Furthermore, four items about extrinsic reward/pay was adapted from the scale developed by Price and Mueller (1986) with two items personally developed. OC was measured with Porter et al.’s (1974) fifteen-item scale (which was modified into nine items) which considered all dimensions of the commitment- affective, continuance and normative commitment. The last variable of the study which was work relation was assessed with the six-item scale developed by Mahesa (2015). The questionnaire was divided into five sections with section one focused on demographic characteristics of respondents and the remaining four sections dealing with the four variables of the study such organisational commitment, intrinsic reward, work relations and training and orientation. The Cronbach’s alpha for the variables of the study can be seen from Table 2. The data collection instrument (questionnaire) had items that were measured on a scale of 1 to 4 with 1 representing strongly disagreement while 4 represented strong agreement. In all 115 completed questionnaires was received representing a response rate of 78 percent. Table 2: Cronbach’s Alpha for Variables of the Study Dependent variable Cronbach’s alpha Number of items Organisational Commitment .648 9 Independent variables Intrinsic Rewards/allowance .823 6 Work relations .856 6 Training and orientation .718 8 Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 73 All variables .828 29 Source: Field survey (2017) Data gathered through open- ended items were coded and analysed quantitatively with data gathered through close-ended items. Specifically, descriptive and inferential statistical tools were employed for the data analysis. Means and standard deviations were used to analysed objectives one and two. Independent t-test was used to test hypotheses two and three and spearman rank order nonparametric correlation matrix was used to test for hypothesis one. Lastly, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was also used to analysed hypothesis four. Results and Discussion Presentation in this section is based on the research questions that the study sought to answer. The first research question concerned the level of employee commitment among staff of CoDE. In order to answer this question, means and standard deviations were calculated and the results can be seen from Table 3. The scale of the items on the questionnaire were rated from one to four. Thus, adding 1+2+3+4=10/4=2.5. This means that all means values from the threshold of 2.5 and above is regarded as high and vice versa. It is evident from Table 3 that only three items were rated high since their means values were above the 2.5 threshold. These items bordered on intention to continue work with the college if possible (M=2.8696; SD= .80005); willingness to recommend the college as a good working place to colleagues (M=2.7478; SD= .81481) and the influence of work relations on respondents’ decisions to stay with the college (M=2.6174; SD=.8227). The results suggest that commitment level among CoDE staff was found to be high. The assertion of high commitment among staff is further corroborated by the low rating of all the remaining items forming the commitment variable of the study. This is because these low items suggest that workers’ were not prepared to quit the college to other institutions for a better conditions of service (M=1.9217; SD=.78526), if offered more salary and allowances by other employers (M=2.1739; SD=.91057) and do not feel like Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 74 quitting the college at times (M=2.2522; SD=.98090). This finding agrees with that of Brunetto, Xerri, Shriberg, Rod, Newman, Dienger (2013) that committed employees are always prepared to recommend their organisation to their colleagues. Table 3: Commitment Level Among CODE Staff Commitment Variables N M i n M a x Mean Std. Dev. I intend and wish to work with CoDE for as long as possible 115 1.00 4.00 2.8696 .80046 I will recommend CoDE to my friends 115 1.00 4.00 2.7478 .81481 I will not feel guilty if I leave CoDE now 115 1.00 4.00 2.4348 .84946 I am with CCE because there are good work relationships 115 1.00 4.00 2.6174 .82273 Staying with CoDE, right now, is a matter of necessity 115 1.00 4.00 2.4174 .86838 I intend retiring in my present job 115 1.00 4.00 2.3478 .98269 I sometimes feel like leaving CoDE 115 1.00 4.00 2.2522 .98090 I will quit CoDE if offered more salary and allowance by any employer 115 1.00 4.00 2.1739 .91057 If the conditions of service improved, I will still quit CoDE 115 1.00 4.00 1.9217 .78526 Source: Field survey, 2017 Scale: 1.9-2.4= Low and 2.5 and above= High In terms of how commitment level among staff of the college differ according to staff categorisation, the results can be seen from Table 4. Results in Table show the three categorisations of staff of Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 75 the college against the three dimensions of commitment. The results indicate that affective commitment (M= 2.6087; SD=.06107) was perceived higher than normative (M= 2.4348, SD=.84946) and continuance (M=2.4174; SD=.86838) dimensions of organisational commitment. Specifically, senior members of the college perceived affective commitment higher (M=3.05; SD=.350) followed by junior staff (M=2.85, SD=.642) and senior staff (M=2.45; SD=.643). This kind of commitment at the college was influenced by workers’ emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the activities of the college. The finding is in tandem with Irefin and Ali (2014) that strong affective commitment to an organisation is characterized with employees’ decision to maintain their continuous membership or employment with the organization. Table 4: Commitment Level According to the Three Categorisation of Staff N Mean Std. Dev. Std. Error Affective Commitment Senior Member 11 3.05 .350 .10563 Senior Staff 75 2.45 .643 .07424 Junior Staff 29 2.85 .642 .11927 Total 115 2.61 .655 .06107 Continuance Commitment Senior Member 11 2.18 1.17 .35209 Senior Staff 75 2.37 .835 .09637 Junior Staff 29 2.62 .820 .15227 Total 115 2.41 .868 .08098 Normative Commitment Senior Member 11 2.46 1.13 .34015 Senior Staff 75 2.51 .795 .09178 Junior Staff 29 2.24 .872 .16200 Total 115 2.44 .849 .07921 Source: Field survey (2017) Scale: 2.0-2.4= Low; 2.5 and above= High Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 76 Table 4 equally shows that continuance commitment among staff of the college was perceived to be high by only the junior staff (M=2.6207; SD=.82001) of the college. The commitment of junior staff of the college was due to the cost of leaving the college which could be either losing attractive benefits (allowances), the threat of wasting the time and effort spent acquiring nontransferable skills or having to disrupt work relationship as found by Jorgensen and Becker (2-15). With regards to normative commitment, only senior staff of the college (M=2.5067, SD=.79480) followed by senior members (M=2.4545, SD=1.12815) perceived it to be high. The high level of normative commitment among the two categories of staff means these workers had a feeling of obligation (ought) to continue employment with the college. This could be possible due to support received by some members of staff who were sponsored or supported by the college to do their masters and PhD studies as part of the college’s capacity building efforts. Recognition of these investments could have causes senior staff and senior members to have felt an obligation to reciprocate by committing themselves to the college and its activities. This finding agrees with that of Coffie, Agyenim -Boateng and Coffie (2018) that organisation’s provision of “rewards in advance” to a worker, like the payment of school fees, could cause normative commitment where workers feel like I ought to stay with the organization). How Employees Perceive Work Relations, Training and Orientation and Extrinsic Reward at CoDE It has been established that some key antecedents of organisational commitment theory are work relations, extrinsic reward and training and orientation (Mahesar, 2015). It is for this reason that the study went further to examine how respondents perceived these antecedents of organisational commitment at CoDE. Results for respondents’ perception on how these factors influenced commitment among the categorization of staff can be seen from Table 5. Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 77 Table 5: Respondents’ Perception of Factors Influencing Commitment N Mean Std. Dev Std. Error Work Relations Senior Member 11 2.1818 .75076 .22636 Senior Staff 75 2.5733 .82484 .09524 Junior Staff 29 2.8966 .77205 .14337 Total 115 2.6174 .82273 .07672 Reward System Senior Member 11 2.3333 .69522 .20962 Senior Staff 75 2.0422 .59091 .06823 Junior Staff 29 2.0920 .59024 .10961 Total 115 2.0826 .60148 .05609 Training & Orientation Senior Member 11 2.4205 .46190 .13927 Senior Staff 75 2.3733 .44574 .05147 Junior Staff 29 2.8405 .53022 .09846 Total 115 2.4957 .50733 .04731 Source: Field survey (2017) Scale: 2.0-2.4= Low and 2.5 and above= High Among the three factors examined (Work Relations, Training and Orientation and extrinsic reward) only work relations (M=2.6174; SD=.82273) was perceived to be very high among staff of the college. Training and orientation (M=2.4957; SD=.50733) and extrinsic reward (M=2.0826; SD=.60148) were however, perceived to be low. Junior staff of the college perceived work relations (M=2.8966; SD=.77205) and training and orientation (M= 2.8405; SD=.53022) higher than the other two categories of staff. Though extrinsic reward was generally perceived low across the three spectrums of staff, senior members however, rated it higher than junior and senior staff of the College. The findings for work relations as the only factor rated high corroborate that the findings of Funminiyi (2018) that work relation ultimately leads to high commitment among workers. Meanwhile, the Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 78 findings of this study about the low rating for extrinsic reward disagrees with that of Shaw et al. (2009) that extrinsic reward continues to play a dominant role in the lives of workers because it is a key Testing of Hypotheses of the Study Hypothesis One H0: There is statistically positive significant relationship between organisational commitment and variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, and extrinsic rewards. Hypothesis of the study was tested with Spearman rank order nonparametric correlation matrix to establish relationship between the dependent and independent variables and the result can be seen from Table 6. The correlation matrix (Table 6) indicates that there was weak, positive and insignificant relationship between organisational commitment and work relation (rho=.116; Sig=.474; p ≥0.005); and organisational commitment and extrinsic reward (rho=.067; Sig=.217; p ≥0.005). It is clear from Table 6 that there was a positive and significant but weak correlation between training and orientation and organisational commitment (r = .372**, Sig=.000; **p<0.05). This means that a percentage increase in training and orientation would result in a percentage increase in organisational commitment at the college. The results corroborate the findings of Peretomode and Bello (2018) that training affected teachers’ commitment. Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 79 Table 6: Spearman's rho Nonparametric Correlation Matrix Extrinsic Reward Training & orientatio n Work Relations Organisation al Commitment Extrinsic Reward Correlation Coefficient 1.000 .317** .086 .116 Sig. (2- Tailed) . .001 .363 .217 N 115 115 115 115 Training and orientation Correlation Coefficient .317** 1.000 .169 .372** Sig. (2- Tailed) .001 . .071 .000 N 115 115 115 115 Work Relations Correlation Coefficient .086 .169 1.000 .067 Sig. (2- Tailed) .363 .071 . .474 N 115 115 115 115 Organisatio nal Commitme nt Correlation Coefficient .116 .372** .067 1.000 Sig. (2- Tailed) .217 .000 .474 . N 115 115 115 115 **. Correlation Is Significant at the 0.01 Level (2-Tailed). Source: Field survey (2017) Scale: 2.0-2.4= Low and 2.5 and above= High Since only training and orientation was found to have had a significant relationship with organisational commitment, the study therefore rejected the alternative hypothesis which states that there is statistically positive significant relationship between organisational commitment and variables of the study such as work Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 80 relations, training and orientation, and extrinsic rewards. Irefin and Ali’s (2014) found that antecedents such as personal characteristics, structural/organisational characteristics, job-related characteristics, and demographic characteristics such as work experiences, age, tenure, gender and education and job status influence organisational commitment. It is for this purpose that this section test hypotheses that relate to demographic characteristics and variables of the study. Demographic characteristics considered in this section were sex, tenure and employment type. Educational level was not considered because it was already used to categorized staff of the college into junior staff, senior staff and senior members. Hypothesis Two H0: There is a statistically significance difference between sex of respondents and the variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, extrinsic reward and organisational commitment. The second hypothesis was tested with independent t-test and the results can be seen from Table 7. All t- values reported for the variables were in line with the equal variance assumed because all the Sig. values obtained under the Levene's test for equality of variances were above .05 threshold. This means that none of the assumptions for using t-test was breached. The results as indicated by the Sig (2 tailed) under t-test for equality of means in Table 7 means that there were no statistically significance differences in scores respectively for male and female perception of organisational commitment [(M=2.64, SD=.698); (M=2.56, SD=.586); t (115)= .488)]; work relations [M=2.59, SD=.807); (M=2.67, SD=.853); t (115)= .609]; training and orientation [(M= 2.54, SD= .543) (M= 2.43, SD=.444); t(115)= .252] and extrinsic reward [ (M=2.13, SD= .594); (M= 2.00 SD=.612) t=(115)= .261)]. Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 81 Table 7: Differences in Perception of the Factors of the Study Based on Sex Variables Sex N Mean . Std. De v Std. Error Levene's Test for Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means F Sig T Sig (2- tailed Organisationa l Commitment Male 70 2.64 .69 8 .083 2.416 .123 .696 .488 Femal e 45 2.56 .58 6 .087 Work Relations Male 70 2.59 .80 7 .097 .097 .757 .513 .609 Femal e 45 2.67 .85 3 .127 Training & orientation Male 70 2.54 .54 3 .065 3.257 .074 1.15 2 .252 Femal e 45 2.43 .44 4 .066 Extrinsic Reward Male 70 2.13 .59 4 .071 .027 .869 1.12 9 .261 Femal e 45 2.00 .61 2 .091 Source: Field survey (2017) Scale: 2.0-2.4= Low and 2.5 and above= High Meanwhile, (except for work relations) male staff perceived commitment, training and orientation, and extrinsic reward more positively as compared to their female counterparts. The findings of this study of non-significance of the varables of the study thus disagree with that of Irefin and Ali’s (2014) that organisational characteristics and job-related characteristics influence organisational commitment. Based on the result of non-significance of the factors of study, the eta square showing the size of the effect was not calculated. The alternative hypothesis which indicates that there is a statistically significance difference in how male and female staff perceived work Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 82 relations, training and orientation, extrinsic reward and organisational commitment was therefore rejected. Hypothesis Three H0: There is a statistically positive and significance difference between type of employment and variables of the study such as work relations, training and orientation, extrinsic reward and organisational commitment. The third hypothesis of the study also examined whether there were statistical significance differences in terms of how the factors of the study were perceived by teaching staff as compared to non- teaching staff of the college (herein referred to as type of employment). The results can be found in Table 8. Table 8: Differences in Perception of the Factors of the Study Based on Type of Employment Variables Type of employme nt N Mea n . Std. Dev Std. Error Levene's Test for Equality of Variances t -test for Equality of Means F Sig t Sig (2- tailed) E t a 2 Organisational Commitment Teaching 17 2.74 .615 .149 .089 .766 .862 .390 0 . 0 1 Non - teaching 98 2.59 .662 .067 Work Relations Teaching 17 2.06 .746 .181 .676 .413 3.149 .002 0 . 0 8 Non - teaching 98 2.71 .799 .081 Teaching 17 2.28 .439 .106 Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 83 Training and orientation Non - teaching 98 2.53 .511 .052 2.28 .134 1.926 .057 0 . 0 3 Extrinsic reward Teaching 17 2.02 .623 .151 .135 .714 .466 .642 0 . 0 1 Non - teaching 98 2.09 .600 .061 Source: Field survey (2017) Scale: 2.0-2.4= Low and 2.5 and above= High From Table 8, it is obvious that apart from organisational commitment, non-teaching staff of the College perceived work relations, training and orientation, and extrinsic reward more positively than the teaching staff. The results as indicated by the Sig (2 tailed) under t-test for equality of means in Table 8 means that there were no statistical significance differences in scores respectively for teaching and non-teaching staff of the college with regards extrinsic reward [(M=2.0196, SD=..62328); (M=2.0935, SD=.60024); t (115)= .488)]; and organisational commitment [M=2.7353, SD=.61537); (M=2.5867, SD=.66202); t (115)= .390]. Meanwhile there was a statistically significant difference in terms of how teaching and non- teaching staff respectively perceived training and orientation [(M= 2.2794, SD= .43868) (M= 2.5332, SD=.51101); t(115)= .057] and work relations [M=2.0588, SD= .74755); (M= 2.7143 SD=.79948) t=(115)= .002)]. The magnitude of the differences in the means was small for training and orientation (eta squared=0.03) and great for work relations (0.08). The alternative hypothesis that there is a statistically positive and significance difference between type of employment and variables of the study was therefore rejected. Hypothesis Four H0: There is a statistically significance difference between types of organisational commitment and tenure. Hypothesis four was tested with the use of analysis of variance Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 84 (ANOVA). A two-way between group analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of working experience herein termed as tenure on the various types of commitment and the three independent variables of the study, as measured by the life orientation test (LOT). Subjects were divided into three main groups according to their number of years of working in the college (Group 1: 1-5 years; Group 2: 6- 9 years; Group 3: 10 years and above) and the results can be found in Table 9. From the table, staff with six to nine (6-9) years working experience perceived affective commitment (M=2.96, SD=.594) and normative commitment (M=2.69, SD=.855); extrinsic reward (M= 2.15, SD=.551) and work relations (M=3.00, SD=.817) higher than all other age categories of staff. Staff with 10 years and above working experience also perceived continuance commitment (M= 3.00, SD=1.00) and training and orientation (M=2.700, SD=.168) higher that the other two age categories. Meanwhile, there was no statistically significance differences between age and affective commitment [F (2.536) =.084)], continuance commitment [F (1.181) = .311)], normative commitment [F (= 0.670) =.514)], extrinsic rewards [ F (1.119) =. 330)], work relations [ F (1.606) =.205)] and training and orientation [F (1.054) = .352)]. Irefin and Ali’s (2014) findings that demographic characteristics like age influences commitment was therefore not corroborated by this study. Based on the non-significance of commitment and all the other variables of the study, the alternative hypothesis which states that there is a statistically significance difference between types of organisational commitment and tenure was therefore rejected. Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 85 Table 9: Differences in Organisational Commitment Based on Age of Respondents Variables Age N Mean Std. Dev. Std. Error F Sig. affective commitment 1-5 years 97 2.55 .663 .067 2.536 .084 6-9 13 2.96 .594 .165 10 years & above 5 2.80 .274 .123 Total 115 2.61 .655 .061 Continuance Commitment 1-5 years 97 2.39 .873 .089 1.181 .311 6-9 13 2.39 .768 .213 10 years & above 5 3.00 1.00 .447 Total 115 2.42 .868 .082 Normative Commitment 1-5 years 97 2.40 .862 .088 .670 .514 6-9 13 2.69 .855 .237 10 years & above 5 2.40 .548 .245 Total 115 2.44 .849 .079 Extrinsic Reward 1-5 years 97 2.09 .608 .062 1.119 .330 6-9 13 2.15 .551 .153 10 & above 5 1.70 .570 .255 Total 115 2.08 .602 .056 work relations 1-5 years 97 2.57 .828 .084 1.606 .205 6-9 years 13 3.00 .817 .227 10 years & above 5 2.60 .548 .245 Total 115 2.62 .823 .078 Training & Orientation 1-5 years 97 2.47 .516 .052 1.054 .352 6-9 13 2.63 .509 .141 Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 86 Source: Field survey (2017) Scale: 2.0-2.4= Low and 2.5 and above= High Conclusion The purpose of the study was to examine human resource factors and organisational commitment at College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. The human resource factors examined were extrinsic rewards, training and orientation, and work relations. The study found that commitment level among staff at the college (CoDE) was found to be high. Affective commitment was perceived higher than normative and continuance dimensions of organisational commitment. Senior members of the college perceived affective commitment higher whiles junior staff perceived continuance commitment higher. Work relations were perceived to be higher compared to training and orientation and extrinsic reward. The study also found that only training and orientation had a statistically significant relationship with organisational commitment. There was no statistically significance effect of age and sex of respondents on organisational commitment, extrinsic rewards, training and orientation, and work relations. Apart from work relations, all other factors of the study were perceived higher by non-teaching staff as compared to the teaching staff of the college. Type of employment (teaching and non- teaching) was found to have had a statistically significance effect on work relations at the College of Distance Education. The above findings indicate a need for certain action to take place by management (advisory committee). It is, therefore, recommended that the management of CoDE should: 1. Pay more attention to work relations at the college by engaging staff of the college in inter-unit or inter- departmental assignments to enable staff to build more work relations. 2. Organize college level socialization activities like sporting activities, health walk among others on 10 years & above 5 2.70 .168 .075 Total 115 2.49 .507 .047 Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 87 public holidays for the staff of the college to fraternize in order to enhance work relations. 3. Continue with training and orientation for staff of the college by introducing both on- the- job and off- the- job methods in order to maintain or enhance the commitment level of staff of the college. Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 88 References Amedahe, F. K., & Gyimah, E. A. (2015). Introduction to education research. Cape Coast: College of Distance Education. Cape Coast, Ghana: University of Cape Coast Press Armstrong, M. & Murlis, H. (2007). Reward management: A handbook of remuneration strategy and practice (5th ed.). London: Kogan Page Ltd. Becker, H. S. (1960). Notes on the concepts of commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66, 32 - 40. Brunetto, Y., Xerri,M, Shriberg, A., Rod, F., Newman, K., & Dienger, S. (2013). The impact of workplace relationships on engagement, well-being, commitment and turnover for nurses in Australia and the USA. Queensland, Australia: University of Griffith Press. Betz, M.K. (2005). Distance Education: A Systems View. Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education, 1(4), 70-82. Coetzee, M., Schreuder, D., & Tladinyane, R. (2014). Employees’ work engagement and job commitment: The moderating role of career anchors. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(1) 1-12. Coffie1, B. R., Boateng, K. A. & Coffie, F. (2018). Achieving organisational commitment through HRM practices: The Ghanaian banking sector experience. International Journal of Business and Management; 13, (5); 171- 184. Delery, J. E. and Doty, D. H. (1996). Modes of theorizing in strategic human resource management: Tests of universalistic, contingency and configurational performance predictions. Academy of Management Journal, 39 (4), 802–835 Funminiyi, K.A. (2018). Impact of workplace environmental factors on employee commitment: Evidence from North East Nigeria. International Journal of Scientific Research and Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 89 Management, 06 (07), 575- 585. Gellatly, I. R., Hunter, K. H., Currie, L. G., & Irving, G. (2009). HRM practices and organisational commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20 (4), 869- 884. Irefin, P. & Ali, M.M. (2014). Effect of employee commitment on organisational performance in Coca Cola Nigeria Limited Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 19 (3), 33-42. Jackson, J. H., & Mathis, R. L. (2006). Human resource management. (11th ed.). New York: West Publishing Co. Jafari, S., Afshin, T., Jafari, K., & Barzegar, M. (2015). Evaluation of organisational commitment among nurses in Intensive Care Units. Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Sciences, 2 (3), 38-43. Jørgensen, F. & Becker, K. (2015), Balancing organisational and professional commitments in professional service firms: The HR practices that matter. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26 (1); 23-41. Kessler, E.H. (2013). Encyclopedia of management theory. Los Angeles, Sage publication. Krejcie & Mor-gan (1970). Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and Psychological Measurement; 30 (2), 607- 610. Mahesar, H. A. (2015). The impact of HRM bundles and organisational commitment on managers turnover intentions. London, UK: University of Bedfordshire Press. Meyer, J. P. & Allen, N. J. (1984). Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Moore, M. G. &Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view (2nded.). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rijh20/current Moses Segbenya: Human Resource Factors and Organisational Commitment... 90 Paşaoğlu, D. (2015). Analysis of the relationship between human resources management practices and organisational commitment from a strategic perspective: Findings from the banking industry. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 207 (22), 315-324. Porter, L. W, Steers, R., Mowday, R. T. & Boulian,V. P. (1974). Organisational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59 (5), 603-623. Price, J. L. & Mueller, C. W. (1986). Handbook of organisational measurement. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Sawithri, L.D., Nishanthi, H. M. & Amarasinghe, K. G. (2017). The impact of employer- employee relations on employee commitment: A case from Sri Lanka. Kelaniya Journal of Human Resource Management, 12 (2), 174-192. Segbenya, Peniana & Aggrey (2018). Effect of work conflict on employees’ job satisfaction: The case of College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast. European Scientific Journal, 14 (7), 313-323 Shaw, J. D. (2014). Pay levels and pay changes. Strategic Management Journal, 22 (2); 379-386. Sthapit, A. (2014). What drives employees to switch organisations? A study of factors affecting inter-bank HR-turnover. Journal of Business Studies, 13 (1), 73- 88. Wan, H. L. (2007). Human capital development policies: Enhancing employees’ satisfaction. Journal of European Industrial Training, 31(4), 297-319. 
work_dcx77mqm6zc7vdj3qzidj67aiq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_df65qtc4h5bf5aluhil6dgna2i	----	c402.dvi Journal of Computing and Information Technology - CIT 11, 2003, 1, 67–76 67 Real Laboratories for Distance Education Stuart McCracken, Zeljko Zilic and Hoi Yun Henry Chan McGill University, Montréal, Canada Providing distance laboratory-based courses is becom- ing critical for distance technical education. In this work, we describe remote laboratories in digital system courses. While the hardware is based on widely used programmable logic, the Internet interfaces include those for remote development, testing and debugging as well as the cooperative work environment. Special attention has been paid to the objectivity of evaluating the remote cooperative work. The web tools for project progress evaluation, self-and group-assessment and the automated hardware support are being developed. Previous work consisted mainly of providing simulated environments or prefabricated circuits. The productivity and accessibility of these tools was greatly enhanced by using off-the-shelf hardware, software and networking elements. Keywords: distance education, remote laboratories, field-programmable gate arrays, peer evaluation, user interface, video collaboration, videoconference. 1. Introduction Distance education has experienced great im- provements with the advents of Internet. Much of the “low-hanging fruits” have been consumed by now: distributing and managing lectures, ex- aminations and grades has become transparent and equivalent to that of on-campus education. The areas that still need improvement include those with a substantial technical content that can only be provided with running comprehen- sive laboratories. Incidentally, the greatest in- crease in educational needs have been in the engineering areas that address large collabora- tive system developments �12�. Our goal is to investigate the practicality of hav- ing remote laboratories for digital design engi- neering courses. These remote laboratories al- low any user in a remote location to program or test a system under development. Furthermore, with software intervention, multiple users could be using, viewing and discussing the same pro- gram and a digital circuit under development. The actual outputs of the electronic circuit could be made visible to all the developers, as well as to a teacher. As teleconferencing tools have be- come readily accessible, we provide means to use commercial off-the-shelf �COTS� compo- nents �14��15��16�. From a hardware point of view, Field Pro- grammable Gate-Arrays �FPGAs� �10��13� can be effectively deployed in hardware design dis- tance laboratories. This technology allows rapid development of digital circuits, by download- ing a digital circuit onto a device. In a learn- ing environment, the value of FPGAs has been shown to be indispensable. They can quickly be debugged, adapted and reprogrammed with- out physically manipulating the FPGA. Thus, FPGAs are very appropriate when considering remote laboratories in cooperative network en- vironments. They further remove much over- head in running laboratories as one piece of equipment can serve in many experiments and projects. FPGA development systems can be in- stalled in laboratory only once, while students and laboratory technicians can access them re- motely at all times. The FPGA use and their remote development system are considered here in the context of distance education for digital system design courses, including those with a large project component. Several approaches to establishing the needed infrastructure are evaluated with re- spect to their practicality, followed by descrip- tion of our low cost remote laboratory that is easily accessible by any remote student with a 68 Real Laboratories for Distance Education personal computer. Since much of the underly- ing teleconferencing technologies are still being under development, we chose to rely on widely available de-facto standards that allow the use of low bandwidth channels. 2. Background A. Related Work Recently, several attempts have been made to establish University laboratories for use in dis- tance education. Systems such as the AIM-Lab project �1�, and the RemLab �2� have made head- way in the measurement field. Equally fruit- ful advances have been made in the areas of robotics and control with such accomplishments as the visualization, simulation and control of a robotic system �3�. Furthermore, remote control laboratory experiments have also been devel- oped in an Internet–based setting �4�. This pa- per attempts to accomplish similar results in the courses that teach design and implementation of digital systems, with emphasis on complet- ing large-scale laboratory projects. This imple- mentation will require the use of COTS software components integrated into one remote labora- tory with multipoint access. B. Groupware and Performance Feedback Historically, the interaction between users and remote systems falls into a category of ’group- ware’ research. The goal of this research, which dates back to the late 1980’s, is to understand human communications in order to facilitate the collaboration and interaction of all users �5�. The study in this field is done on both a computer science and human perception level in order to understand how we, as a population, interact with each other and with computers. The system considered here has many attributes of the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work �CSCW�. CSCW strives to understand how tech- nology can improve group work, whether it is in the same room, or halfway around the world �5�. In recent years, globalization trends forced many enterprises to engage in some form of CSCW. We are seeing increasing needs for new graduates that can work in teams spread in sev- eral locations. This fact alone justifies investi- gation of CSCW applications in building large systems. Nonetheless, computer-supported col- laboration still has much room to grow �6�. Among the impediments to wider CSCW ac- ceptance, we notice practical interoperability and lack of integrative frameworks �18�. The research on groupware provides one com- ponent of this work; our other focus is on the genuine education needs in using distance laboratories. In our scenario, while coopera- tive development is necessary, much emphasis is placed on improving and evaluating student learning by means of increased feedback gath- ering. C. Overview of the Multi-User Distance Laboratory The Multi-User Distance Laboratory �MUDL� was developed and implemented using COTS components. We developed, in short time and with minimal cost, a concrete and feasible sys- tem for distance education using a digital system laboratory. MUDL could allow students to take a digital hardware class, in which they would design, discuss, implement and debug their de- signs on remotely placed hardware. The key ingredients in this laboratory are programmable logic devices, such as FPGAs. The devised system involves one station where the hardware is placed, and multiple user lo- cations from where students access the system. Figure 1 contains a high-level overview of the system, where one station is serviced by X user locations. As shown, multiple users access one remote FPGA site and collaborate by working on the same FPGA attached to the terminal. Thus, to supply resources for several groups us- ing a number of FPGAs, identical systems can be used for prolonged periods of time. Such flexibility in use is also valuable for manag- ing and maintaining the laboratory equipment, especially since lab technicians can remotely monitor and diagnose all laboratory equipment. 3. Software Components A. Multiple-User Collaborative Environments In the design of our system, the main chal- lenge involves the implementation of an useful multi-user development environment composed of standard and widely available components. Currently, software such as MS NetMeetingTM Real Laboratories for Distance Education 69 �8� allows mult iple users to exchange live video in a conference format. All users can view video streams from all other participants. Provided that they have video cameras, their faces and gestures can be used to enrich other means of communication. This software allows various other means of multi-used interaction, from a simple chat to more structured collaboration. Features of NetMeeting are typical for most ex- isting teleconferencing systems. Fig. 1. Multi-User Distance Laboratory. Equally applicable, AT&T research laboratory in Cambridge developed Virtual Network Com- puting �VNC� �9� software that allows remote users to view, access and work on a remote computer using standard protocols based on TCP�IP. Also, Microsoft developed their own software allowing for remote system use, called Remote Desktop Connection �17�. For the pur- poses of this system, only VNC’s integration is considered. VNC’s major benefit lies in its cross-platform nature. It is possible to view and execute all the commands of, for example, a Sun Workstation on an NT computer and vice- versa. This software displays the exact desktop of the accessed computer allowing for direct access to the remote computer. There are some current limitations to this software that shall be discussed later. Nonetheless, VNC provides a viable and impressive alternative to video. One concern in the design of the MUDL is the principle of shared file access. For instance, two users cannot be working on the same file at the same time unless measures such as owner- ship and revision control can be incorporated. Nonetheless, supporting software can handle much of this burden. As much has been done on the subject, one of the pre-existing systems will suffice for the needs of this system. File sharing issues will be addressed in Section 6. B. FPGAs and FPGA Software Most of the available FPGAs and relevant FPGA software are applicable to this system as they are based on the same principle. They require a software component for editing, compilation, simulation, and programming of the FPGA, and a hardware component that connects the termi- nal to the FPGA. Furthermore, the FPGA is mounted on a board that allows a simple off- the-shelf serial or parallel connection between terminal and FPGA. For the uses of this design, the Altera Univer- sity board �UP1� is used. This board contains two FPGAs both of which are programmable via the Altera Software Package �10� that we found robust and easy to use. C. Interfacing between the Internet and the Altera FPGA Software A major missing link comes by way of the in- terfacing between the FPGA software and the CSCW software. The problem arises from the fact that the FPGA software, for the most part, was not designed with networking in mind. A software layer is used to fill the divide between the two. Furthermore, more functionality is al- located to software that will be referred to as “Interface Software”. The interface software will also incorporate the display of Virtual LEDs and the use of Virtual DIP switches, which are common inputs and outputs on FPGA develop- ment boards such as the UP1, mentioned in the previous section. Microsoft has made readily available a devel- oper studio package for creating the interfaces between newly created software and the MS NetMeeting software. In order to accomplish such an interfacing, the newly created software 70 Real Laboratories for Distance Education must have pointers that link to NetMeeting ob- jects allowing access to the data channels be- tween users that NetMeeting creates. This sim- plifies much of the network programming con- siderations. Equally plausible as a solution is the use of a re- mote launching of software. If user A launches the FPGA software and works ‘virtually’ on the remote computer wired to the FPGA, the functioning of the Interface Software would be shifted from sending FPGA programming in- formation to launching and controlling remote software. Furthermore, a combination of the two is also applicable. VNC, on the other hand, does not require any such FPGA Software-to-Conferencing Software Interfacing Software as the FPGA software can be run directly from the remote computer. If working on a remote system is slower than working on a local version of the software, it is more effective for the user to work on the software locally, and send the compiled files to be downloaded. Once the files are at the FPGA site, they are used to configure the FPGA and the circuit outputs are tested. This ensures that the resources are used more efficiently. D. Interfacing between Collaboration Tools and the FPGA Software Components As none of the mentioned collaboration soft- ware interfaces directly with the FPGA or the FPGA software, it is critical that such a link be made. We provide such interfacing software �IS�. Equally, communication between the col- laboration software and the FPGA is also done using IS. Functionality of IS necessarily relies on the solution to the previous problem, Sec. 3.C. If the remote computer receives program- ming information, IS needs to receive the data and pass it on to the right programming device �COM port, serial port or other�. If, on the other hand, the remote computer receives com- mands to launch programs, it must be set up to launch programs and be able to use incoming information to properly run programs and use its resources. Within NetMeeting, program sharing is possi- ble which allows software to be used by larger student groups �4 students, as required by the course� including the remote computer. This, however, is not as practical as VNC, which al- lows a user to view and work directly on the desktop of the remote computer. E. FPGA Input and Output Pin Control and Probing Once an FPGA is programmed, testing the out- puts and simulating inputs is done with Inter- facing Software. Without this functionality this entire FPGA remote system is not fully func- tional. Hence, it is critical that this portion be effective and takes into consideration as much of the FPGA’s uses as possible in order to satisfy all users. Again, the solution to this problem lies in the two previous implementations. Ulti- mately, the interface must contain all standard FPGA development board functionality such as DIP switches, LEDs and pushbuttons. Equally important is the display of certain programming signals such as the ’Done’ signal, which indi- cates when the file has been completely down- loaded onto the FPGA. Many solutions are pos- sible for the selection or display of the signals. Certain options will be discussed in the imple- mentation section. 4. Software Assessment We evaluated NetMeetingt and VNC and dis- cussed possible scenarios of their use. Their usability and system relevancy in terms of their benefits and drawbacks are given next. A. NetMeeting 1) Benefits NetMeeting’s major benefit is its ability to al- low multiple user video conferencing. With this functionality, multiple users can view a remote FPGA system with a camera. All these users can also view each other in a conference for- mat. Furthermore, NetMeeting is flexible as it allows for third party use of its data channels, which can improve functionality and applicabil- ity. Furthermore, NetMeeting has incorporated ftp and chat functionality. Thus, its main ad- vantage is its ability to provide quality real-time video, and an all-encompassing environment for discussion and file sharing. Real Laboratories for Distance Education 71 2) Drawbacks The major drawback of NetMeeting is the in- creased level of complexity inherent to the in- troduction of third party software. Although this added complexity could be beneficial, other systems accomplish similar ends with alterna- tive means. B. Virtual Network Computing (VNC) 1) Benefits VNC works as a cross platform remote viewer. It allows for a Unix workstation to be viewed by an NT desktop and vice versa. Equally im- portant is the ability with which one can control the remote computer’s resources as the user is working directly on the remote desktop. The main concept behind this software is that a user can fully control the remote environment, which inherently allows for the use of all the remote hardware that is connected to this remote ter- minal. Essentially, the desktop can be accessed with the VNC Viewer, or with any web browser. This allows VNC to fit well within the COTS component criterion stated previously. 2) Drawbacks VNC has no provisions for videoconferencing. If a camera display of the FPGA is shown on the desktop, it is relayed to all VNC viewers. All the viewers, however, are not able to conference with each other with VNC alone. Furthermore, as VNC is a cross platform system, ‘drag and drop’ file transfers are not possible due to oper- ating system’s differing file naming format and file structures. Finally, as Windows is not a multi-user system only one user can view the desktop through VNC. C. Summary As both NetMeeting and VNC have benefits and disadvantages, an approach using a combination of the two programs allows for the best results concerning multi-user remote FPGA program- ming. VNC’s ability to easily work on a remote desktop provides a powerful alternative to the complex programming required with NetMeet- ing. NetMeeting does, however, incorporate live video very effectively, which also proves vital to the conference nature of this system. 5. Implementation In this section, three possibilities as to the use of the NetMeeting and VNC are investigated. The first option relies on VNC alone, the second, on NetMeeting alone, and the third option com- bines the benefits of both software packages. A. Option 1 Option 1 consists of simply using VNC as the means to achieving the goal. Using VNC and a camera on a Unix machine allows for all users to see the procedures taking place on the re- mote computer. Furthermore, the camera al- lows for the FPGA board to be seen by all users. There is, however, no conferencing with the other participants. One alternative is to sup- ply a notepad on the remote computer so that any user can jot down their thoughts. This is, nonetheless, very rudimentary and is preferably avoided. Equally, additional software is placed on the remote desktop that allows interfacing with the FPGA via DIP switches and LEDs. The layout on the user’s desktop looks like that seen in Figure 2a. B. Option 2 The second option consists of using NetMeeting only. With this option, sophisticated user end and remote end interface software are required to perform the task effectively. This option, however, is an improvement over option 1 as video conferencing is now possible. All other users can chat and see each other with NetMeet- ing. Also, software at the remote end does not need to be launched as it can all be launched from the user’s computer with NetMeeting. If only video cameras are available, a chat window will supply a means for communication between all the users. If, on the other hand, the camera �and microphone� handles audio and video, the chat window is not needed. The layout for such a set-up can be seen in Figure 2b. C. Option 3 Option 3 relies on a combination of both VNC and NetMeeting. VNC handles the FPGA inter- facing and NetMeeting handles the conferenc- ing aspects of the system. Ultimately, the layout for this option is shown in Figure 2c. A more in–depth description of this system follows in the next section. 72 Real Laboratories for Distance Education Fig. 2. Screen Shots and Descriptions of the 3 Optional User Environments; a� VNC Only; b� NetMeeting Only; c� NetMeeting and VNC. 6. Implementation of the Multi-User Distance Laboratory Using VNC and NetMeeting The most effective system will be the one that combines both VNC and NetMeeting as seen in Figure 2c �Option 3�. The addition of a third party interfacing software makes for a fully comprehensive system allowing for testing and implementing designs on the FPGA board. This is the system that was implemented and proved useful. A. Relevant NetMeeting Features for Our Implementation NetMeeting’s main use lies in its ability to con- ference live video. Furthermore, the chat and file transfer functions are also useful, as this is required of the FPGA software system. They are very straightforward to use as they work like standard WindowsTM programs. Once the pro- gram is opened, a connection can be made to the remote computer. As the setting on the remote computer is to accept any incoming calls, the connection would be made automatically. This setting is simply set in the Options � Gene- ral window. Once the connection is made, the video channel must be opened. This is done in order to send to and receive from the other par- ticipants and the FPGA camera the live video. Furthermore, the chat window can be opened straight from the pull-down menus �or cntrl-T�. Real Laboratories for Distance Education 73 Equally straightforward is the file transfer func- tion. The sender would access the file transfer function via the pull-down menus �or cntrl-S� and select the file to be sent. The remote FPGA computer receives the file where it is saved in a specified directory. The user can then access, use and move the file with VNC. If the user wants to retrieve a file, this can equally be done with VNC by ‘ftp’ing the file back to his com- puter. VNC does not directly have an ftp func- tion, but as the entire desktop and hard drives are available to the user, an ftp program can be invoked and used. Equally possible is to write a program that, using NetMeeting’s data chan- nels, allows for direct drag-and-drop access to the remote hard-disk and other file storage util- ities. B. Relevant VNC Features for our Implementation VNC is useful when it comes to the direct im- plementation with the FPGA. The remote com- puter requires the installation of the VNC pro- gram and each user-end computer requires the installation of the VNC viewer. The program is simple to use. When starting the program, the computer address to be connected to must be entered along with the password. The remote desktop is then loaded and used as if the user were there. Within the confines of the VNC window, Altera software, the FPGA video and a third party soft- ware have been added. Altera software is used as if the user were working on his own desk- top. This requires that the FPGA be always connected to the computer. To program the FPGA, the regular download program is used. The FPGA video also needs to be on at all times so that the user can view it. Finally, the third party software allows for using and testing of the circuit that was downloaded onto the FPGA. C. Interface Software In order to interface between the computer and the FPGA, a program was devised. This pro- gram allows for much of the functionality avail- able on the UP1 Altera board. Different solutions allowing for the passing of data between the FPGA’s pins and the computer terminal are possible. One example is to have a select number of pins that are probed constantly for their output. Some others are dedicated in- put pins. These are accessed by means of serial and parallel ports. This, however, only allows for a certain number of pins to be probed and used at once. If this is sufficient, this is the ideal alternative. If, on the other hand, many input and�or output pins are required, some ad- ditional circuitry is added to the FPGA in order to shift in the data to the pins. If the downloaded circuit does not take up all of the FPGA’s logic cells, this extra circuitry could be added to the design. For instance, each input is sent to the FPGA with one extra code for its pin number, one extra code for whether it is an input or out- put value, and the last code could dictate the actual value assigned. For instance: 11001001 � �z � Code � 110010 � �z � Pin# 0 ��z� I�O 1 ��z� Value A sample of the output of this circuit can be seen in Figure 3. The circuit shifts in the inputs, decodes the values, and assigns the correct in- put value to the correct pin. During this time the disable signal goes high, which disables the circuit being tested as these transitions could give erroneous results. This does, however, re- quire design changes for a remote version as compared to the hands-on version. The remote version requires an external disable pin. This Fig. 3. Waveform of the Serial Input Shift–In. 74 Real Laboratories for Distance Education is remedied by simply grounding out the dis- able pin in the hands-on version rendering both designs identical. In order to completely avoid reducing resources, another FPGA is used to generate all the pin val- ues. All the I�O pins from this FPGA connect to the FPGA that is to be programmed with the user’s file. The I�O FPGA is programmed with EEPROMs. This entails that the FPGA to be programmed by the user has none of its resources taken up by the i�o system. Another alternative is to slow the system clock down to a frequency where all inputs can be inputted per cycle. This requires that the input codes be shifted in at a much higher frequency than the system clock. This system was not developed, but provides an alternative solution. Equally, the interface is connected to other im- portant pins such as ‘Done’ allowing the user to view when programming is complete. Fig. 4. Interface Software for Controlling the Inputs to, and for Detecting the Outputs from the FPGA. The designed interface is shown in Figure 4. In the prototype interface software, 18 input pins and 16 output pins are used. There is also the ’Done’ green light that indicates when the FPGA has been programmed. More function- ality can be ascribed to this interface software as is needed. D. Limitations One important problem that befalls all of this system is the lack of ability to check voltages at other points than the actual probed pins through- out the FPGA. For instance, users cannot deter- mine whether the power supply is faulty and does not supply enough voltage to the FPGA. Therefore, no oscilloscope readings are avail- able. Thus, the user is not entirely able to detect whether it is his circuit that is not working, or the FPGA board. Furthermore, there is the issue of the parallel�serial port interface between the FPGA and the computer that are application– specific. Thus, a more sophisticated set-up would be required to allow for all applications. As both VNC and NetMeeting are real-time pro- grams, they both consume bandwidth. As band- width is costly, concessions would need to be made to allow for different restrictions, such as connection speeds, bandwidth allocations, and so on. One important consideration in the use of COTS is that the hardware and software is ever improving. As such, the bandwidth de- mands will eventually be met, and the system will be practical in this sense as developments are made. 7. Support for Grading Parallel to the multi-user distance laboratory �MUDL� software, we use a Web-based eva- luation tool. The goal of the tool is to col- lect useful data so that each student’s over- all teamwork performance can be better ad- dressed. Apart from evaluating students’ in- dividual proficiency on the subject, attention will also be placed on students’ participation in working in a team. Currently, a web-based query-form to collect peer evaluations and com- ments from students is fully developed. The Fig. 5. Hierarchy of Grading Support System. Real Laboratories for Distance Education 75 prospective tool will later extend to incorporate the web-based evaluation form for data acquisi- tion, which is built alongside a data-harvesting program to organize collected data, and a grad- ing program for data processing. The tool struc- ture is outlined in Figure 5. The modular grad- ing program component can be customized for a specific course. A. Peer Evaluation Besides individual performance, interpersonal relationships are an important ingredient for effective teamwork. Participation of all team members in a project collaboration is paramount, as it builds trust among team members. Equally, through interaction, potential problems such as poorly defined expectations among team mem- bers can be eliminated. Thus, interpersonal re- lationship should also be accounted for during the evaluation process of team projects. How- ever, it is traditionally difficult for instructors to understand and assess the intra-team dynamics �11�. The most effective way to evaluate interpersonal relationships is through peer evaluation, where students have the opportunity to criticize each other’s performance. Students are better mo- tivated when peer evaluation is announced be- forehand. It will promote the importance of an individual’s performance as well as integrity in completing their assigned tasks among other team members. We found that the tool exis- tence alone reduced the conflicting situations in teams to well under half the cases per semester. B. The Evaluation Tool The evaluation forms shown in Figure 6 gather peer evaluations, course work, and auxiliary in- formation submitted by students throughout the course. After proper organization, the instruc- tor can easily monitor progress, review sub- missions, place comments and assign grades. The results will be re-distributed to the stu- dents appropriately. When the tool is fully com- pleted, data organizations, re-distributions and the repetitive task of recording scores can also be automated. Currently, the evaluation tool is used in a course Web page at www�ece�mcgill� ca��ee���. C. Evaluation Tool At Work In grading group projects, the evaluation tool first requests each team member to state his�her assumed tasks, as well as those expected from Fig. 6. Screen Shot of Peer Evaluation Forms. other teammates, at an early stage of the project. Extra comments will continuously be accepted as the project develops. Finally, the completed project is submitted to the tool. The submit- ted data will be arranged and compared, ei- ther manually or aided by the grading program. Graded are student’s individual performance and his�her ability to work with other members of the team. With this information available, the instructor can make a conclusion as to the student’s overall performance. 8. Conclusions and Future Work In this paper, we presented the system for a Multi-User Distance Laboratory, that we de- veloped and implemented using COTS compo- nents. Furthermore, relevant administrative is- sues concerning distance education were shown to benefit from our system. In order to achieve optimal results, both VNC and NetMeeting are used in MUDL. VNC is used for ease of FPGA-to-remote user interfac- ing, whereas NetMeeting is used for its high quality video-conferencing abilities, along with FTP and chat. A simple interface software was designed for circuits requiring less than 18 in- puts and 16 outputs, such as supplied on the Altera UP1 board. Another, more advanced 76 Real Laboratories for Distance Education system was devised to allow for devices with greater I�O requirements, but was not employed with the current hardware. This system provides an adequate backdrop for the development and set-up of a remote multi- user FPGA environment. Finally, Web-based tools are incorporated to the system, including those for effective peer evaluation. In the future, this prototype system could be used to develop other courseware, whereby work in laboratory-based courses can be remotely performed maintaining the educational relevance of the course and exposing students to current technologies. References �1� S. HONG, ET AL., Conducting Laboratory Exper- iments over the Internet, IEEE Transactions on Education, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 180–185, Aug. 1999. �2� P. ARPAIA ET AL., “A Measurement Laboratory on Geographic Network for Remote Test Exper- iments“, Proceedings of IEEE International Con- ference on Instrumentation and Measurement Tech- nology, IMTC/98, IEEE Vol. 1, pp. 206–209, 1998. �3� D.W. CALKIN ET AL., Visualization, Simulation, and Control of a Robotic System using Internet Tech- nology, Advanced Motion Control, pp. 399–404, 1998. �4� J.W. OVERSTREET AND A. TZES, Internet–Based Client�Server Virtual Instrument Designs for Real- Time Remote-Access Control Engineering Labora- tory, Proc. Of American Control Conference, pp. 1472–1476, 1999. �5� C.A. ELLIS, S.J. GIBBS, AND G.L. REIN, Group- ware: Some Issues and Experiences, Comm. ACM, pp. 38–58, Jan. 1991. �6� K.L. MILLS, Introduction to the Electronic Sympo- sium on Computer–Supported Cooperative Work, ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 1999. �7� J. GRUDIN, Why CSCW Applications Fail: Prob- lems in the Design and Evaluation of Organizational Interfaces, Proc. CSCW, pp. 85–93, Sept. 1988. �8� MICROSOFT CORPORATION, http���msdn� microsoft�com�developer�sdk�netmeeting� default�htm. �9� AT&T LABORATORIES, Cambridge, VNC Home Page, http���www�uk�researc�h�att�com� vnc�, UK, 1999. �10� ALTERA CORPORATION, http���www�altera� com. �11� J.W. LOCKWOOD, Automated Team Project Man- agement and Evaluation Through Interactive Web Modules, Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Microelectonic Systems Education, MSE 99, pp. 45–49, July 1999. �12� S. MCCRACKEN, Z. ZILIC AND H. CHAN, “Real Lab- oratories in Distance Education“, Proc. Int. Conf. Adv. Infrastructure for Business, Science and Ed- ucation on Internet, SSGRR2000, L’Aquilla, Italy, Aug. 2000. �13� XILINX, INC., The Programmable Logic Data Book 2000. �14� E. DEMKO, Commercial–Off–The–Shelf �COTS� – A challenge to military equipment reliability, In Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, Las Vegas, NV, pp. 7–12, Jan 1996. �15� D. BOLAND, ET AL., Calibration of a COTS Inte- gration Cost Model Using Local Project Data, In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Software Engineer- ing Workshop, pp. 81–98, Dec 1997. �16� JEFFREY VOAS, COTS Software: The Economical Choice, IEEE Software, 15�2�:16–19, Mar. 1998. �17� MICROSOFT CORPORATION, http���www� microsoft�com�windowsxp�pro�using� howto�gomobile�remotedesktop�default� asp �18� R. IQBAL, A. JAMES AND R. GATWARD, “A Frame- work for Integration of CSCW“, Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, pp. 43–48, 2002. Received: August, 2002 Revised: March, 2003 Accepted: March, 2003 Contact address: Stuart McCracken Zeljko Zilic Hoi Yun Henry Chan McGill University Montréal, Canada e-mail: fsmc�cra�zeljko�henryg�macs�ece�mcgill�ca STUART MCCRACKEN received his M.Eng. and B.Eng. degrees from McGill University in 2002 and 2000, respectively. He is currently working for Analog Devices in Boston. His interests are in FPGA testing and applications. ZELJKO ZILIC is Assistant Professor at McGill University, currently holding Chercheur Strategique research chair. He received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Toronto and Dipl.Ing. degree from the University of Zagreb. His interests are in the design, test and verification of systems on a chip. HOI YUN HENRY CHAN is a Ph.D. student at McGill University, from which he received his M.Eng. and B.Eng. degrees. He and his super- visor Z. Zilic received Myril B. Reed Best Paper Award from IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems in 2001 for their work on substrate noise modeling, which is the topic of Henry’s Ph.D. thesis in progress. His other interests include photography and music playing. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJDFFile false /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false 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work_dkrlnwhaxneglccqbohon6xtbm	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_dllksaivizftjhcvca7djpwmda	----	IRMJ01mcmanus Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 1 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT With the increasing popularity of the Internet, there is a growing demand for web-based educa- tion, which allows students to study and learn at their own pace over the Internet. However in order to improve the teaching quality, such systems should be able to adapt the teaching in accordance with individual students’ ability and progress. Focusing on this objective, this paper proposes a new method to construct group-wised courseware by mining both context and structure of the courseware to build personalized Web tutor trees. To this end, the concept of Web tutor units and the notion of similarity are presented. Five algoriths, including the Naive Algorithm for tutor concept tree and the Level-generate Algorithm to generate Web tutor units of K+1 levels, are proposed. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method. Keywords: distance learning, student profiling, web tutor unit, group-wised tutor tree. Automatic Re-Organization of Group-Wised Web Courseware Changjie Tang, Sichuan University, China Rynson W. H. Lau, City University of Hong Kong, China Qing Li, City University of Hong Kong, China Tianqing Zhang, Sichuan University, China Danny Kilis, Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW), Hong Kong INTRODUCTION With the rapid advancement in multi- media technologies and the availability of Web infrastructure, distance learning is now widely adopted in the higher education in China. The e-Teacher system, an experi- mental software for distance learning, has been jointly developed by the City Univer- sity of Hong Kong and Sichuan University. It runs on the software platform with Win- dows NT plus IIS (Internet Information Server) and ASP (Active Server Page). The main idea of the e-Teacher is its capa- bility in adapting the teaching in accordance with the progress of individual students. Its key mechanisms are as follows: 1) Clustering students into different groups according to their abilities. For example, group11 = (Theory, Excellent), 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITJ2438 IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING 2 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. group12 = (Theory, Medium), group13 = (Theory, Not good), group21 = (Prac- tice, Excellent), group22 = (Practice, Medium), group23 = (Practice, Not good), etc. Thus, the teaching style is called “group-wised teaching.” In the ex- treme situation when each group has only one student, it becomes a “person- alized teaching.” In the e-Teacher sys- tem, this function is implemented in a data warehouse called ETDW. 2) Constructing a group-wised course- ware that can be accessed through common web browsers, such as Microsoft IE and Netscape Naviga- tor. It is implemented based on our ex- perience in the course “Reading Selected Articles on Web” (RSAW). RSAW is one of the core courses of the distant learning M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree pro- grams. One of the authors is currently teaching this course to students across several provinces in China. To organize the course RSAW in group-wised style, the distance-teacher needs to have the following: • A set of profiles: To store the profile information of each student, such as name, age, class, interests, background, academic records, etc. • A tutor tree: This is a learning schema designed for each cluster of students in accordance with their abilities. Each tree node is a 2-tuple <WTUnit, Weight>, where WTUnit is a Web tutor unit (an article or a sub tutor tree) organized in a multi-resolution form, and Weight is an array of integers (containing the cluster number, course importance, teaching hours). • A set of evaluation and upgrading facilities: To automatically evaluate the answer sheets and exercise forms for each student, dynamically upgrade the student profiles (as a feedback of evalu- ation), and reorganize student grouping based on the evaluation results. In this paper we focus on the design of a good tutor tree. A group-wised tutor tree allows students to find the articles sat- isfying personal demands in a short time. The basic idea and main steps to construct the tutor tree are as follows: 1) Use an existing (usually naive) URL tree as the initial tutor tree. 2) Configure the model to calculate the similarity by adjusting the weights of the Web tutor units, and to evaluate the simi- larity of Web tutor units. 3) Reorganize the tutor tree by similarity and group-wised keywords. 4) Establish the new tutor tree. In current practice, distance-teach- ers use an existing collection of URLs in a way that the collection may be considered as a naive form of the tutor tree. As shown in Table 1, it works in an “eagerly collect- ing style” by collecting everything available with low efficiency. Our interest in this study is on how to build efficient and group-wised tutor trees for effective distance learning. Topic of selected articles The root of tutor tree Knowledge Discovery http://www.kdnuggets.com/ Machine Learning Database Repositories http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mlrepository.html Table 1: Sample of naive tutor tree of RSAW Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 3 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Related Work There have been some research ef- forts conducted that are related to our work. Jiang et al. (1999) attempted to dis- cover structures from documents. They ex- pounded the concept of Structural Docu- ment and developed a formula to calculate the similarity of two structural documents. The authors made a similarity matrix that can be updated by different clustering al- gorithms. Mannila and Toivonen (1999) pro- posed a method to discover generalized episodes using minimal occurrence. Agrawal et al. (1995) proposed a fast simi- larity search in the presence of noise in a time-series database. Tang et al. (1999, 2000) investigated methods to extract knowledge from semi-structural Web data and to discover the quasi-periodicity from Web data. Spertus (1997) considered in- formation clustering (grouping Web docu- ments) according to some predefined pro- files. Song et al. (2000) proposed a model to analyze the semantic similarity between Web documents, and their system supports manipulation of Web documents such as exchange, search and evolution. Unfortu- nately, most of these existing systems are developed for specific purposes, and there is no satisfactory way for constructing ef- ficient group-wised (or personalized) tutor trees for distance learning. Paper Organization The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section introduces the concepts of group-wised tutor tree and Web tutor unit. Then we present five algorithms for constructing the group-wised tutor tree and show some experimental results of the new method. Finally the last section draws a brief conclusion of the paper. WEB-BASED TUTORING FACILITIES Figure 1 gives a sample courseware of course RSAW for the distance-learning students. There are eight articles, some of these appeared in the Proceedings of the 16th National Database Conference in China. It includes URLs, names of the pro- ceedings, pages, titles, keywords, author names, first authors’ sexes, names of su- pervisors (for student authors), fields, and special topics. Group-Wised Tutor Tree Two group-wised tutor trees for the course, organized in different ways, are shown in Figures 2(a) and 2(b), where sym- bol ‘^’ indicates “unknown.” However, there may be professors and students who may prefer to access the Web tutor tree in a way similar to the one shown in Figure 2(c), which organizes selected articles ac- cording to the subject. The objective of group-wised courseware is to meet such individual needs. As mentioned before, we cluster students into different groups ac- cording to their ability. When there is only one member in each group, “group-wised” becomes “personalized.” In this paper, “per- sonalized” will be considered as a special case of “group-wised” without further ex- planations. Basic Concepts and Definitions In general, the selected articles for distance leaning students include HTML files, bookmarks, personal home pages, images, and voice files. To formalize the observations, we now define Web Tutor Unit. 4 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Definition 1 (Web Tutor Unit). 1. A Web Tutor Unit (abbreviated as WTUnit) is a recursive structure: struct WTUnit { CString ObjTitle; // title of web page or bookmark SetOfCString Keywords; // std keywords given by author Cstring URL_Dir; // such as www.scu. edu.cn\CS\DB\ WTUnit *pChildrenUnit[]; // array of children unit } 2. Let N k \N k-1 \...\N 2 \N 1 \ be the URL_Dir of the Web tutor unit w. The ordered set {N 1 , N 2 , ..., N k }, arranged from the last to the first, is called an Ordered Ances- tor Set of a Web tutor unit, and is ab- breviated as Ancestor Set. • It is clear that there is a 1-1 corre- Figure 1: RSAW courseware for distance learning. 1.www.pru.edu.cn, 16DB, P1, “Implementation of Storage of Large Object Data”, {large object, spatial multi-pointer, bitmap page}, Zhang Xiao, Male, Prof. Wang, DB, Database theory. 2.www.fudan.edu.cn, 16DB, P6, “The Query Language and Data Model of Constraint Based Spatial- Temporal Data in Digital Library”, {constraint database, query language, data model}, Wang Wei, Male, Prof. Shi, DB, Database theory. 3.www.fudan.edu.cn, 16DB, P77, “Non-Monotonic Inheritance of Objects”, {Deductive OO database, non- monotonic, inheritance canonical model, the inheritance diagram}, Liu Hong Liang, Male, Prof. Shi, DB, Advanced Database. 4.www.nju.edu.cn, 16DB, P93, “The Implementation of EXPRESS Object-Oriented Data Model with Relational Database Systems”, {OO data model, relational data model, EXPRESS modeling language, RDBS}, Yu Yong Hong, Male, Prof. Xu, DB, Advanced Database. 5.www.scu.edu.cn, 16DB, P215, “Aggregation on Data Cube”, {KDD, cube OLAP, B-Tree, dependency tree}, Liu Xin, Male, Prof. Tang, DB, Data Warehouse. 6.www.pku.edu.cn, 16DB, P308, “A Client Analysis System Prototype Based on Spatial Data Mining”, {attribute-oriented induction, spatial data mining, spatial attribute-oriented induction}, Xu Qi Chang, Male, Prof. Yang, DB, Data mining. 7.www.fudan.edu.cn, 16DB, P319, “Scaling DBSCAN Algorithm to Large-scale Database by Data Sampling”, {spatial database, data clustering, sampling, DBSCAN}, Fan Ye, Male, Prof. Zhou, DB, Data mining. 8.www.scu.edu.cn, 16DB, P250, “Mining Associations of Objects with Relaxed Periodicity and its Applications in Seismic Research”, {KDD, relaxed periodicity, Seism}, Yang Lu, Female, Prof. Tang, DB, Data mining. (b) By “Director→Topic→PaperID” (c) By “Field→University→PaperID” Renmin Universitymaledatabase theory1 female⊥ Fudan Universitymaledatabase theory2  special database3  data mining7 female⊥ Nanjing Universitymalespecial database4 female⊥ Peking Universitymaledata mining6 female⊥ Sichuan Universitymaledata warehouse5 femaledata mining8 Prof. Wangdatabase theory1 Prof. Shidatabase theory2 special database3 Prof. Zhoudata mining7 Prof. XuSpecial database4 Prof. Tangdata warehouse5 data mining8 Prof. Yangdata mining6 (a) By “University→Sex-Topic→PaperID” database theoryRenmin University1 Fudan University2 Special databaseFudan University3 Nanjing University4 data warehouseSichuan University5 data miningSichuan University8 Peking University6 Fudan University7 Figure 2. Different organizations of web tutor tree. (a,b, and c) Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 5 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. spondence between a Web tutor unit and its URL. Thus, we can refer to a Web tu- tor unit by its URL when needed. Example 1. Let w be the web tutor unit with URL = www.scu.edu.cn\CS\DB\ KDD.html#papers99. ObjTitle is bookmarked as “papers99” in file “KDD.html”. The string “papers99” is shown as the title of the current page. URL_Dir is www.scu.edu.cn\CS\DB\. Assuming that there are three hyperlinks named as “Relations,” “Time Series,” and “Classify” in w, pChildrenUnit is then the set of hyperlinks. The author of the article gives the set of keywords. Finally {“CS”, “DB”} is the ordered ancestor set. • We make the following observations: 1. Let w and w’ be two web tutor units. If the first two parameters (i.e., ObjTitle and Keywords) are similar, then from the student’s point of view, w and w’ are similar in contents. 2. Let URL_Dir of w be N m\Nm- 1\...Nk...\N2\N1\, URL_Dir of w’ be N’m\N’m-1\...N’k...\N’2\N’1\, and Ni = N’i, where 1 £ i £ k. This indicates that the positions of w and w’ in the Web organization are similar, and the larger the k is, the more similar they are. Let b(Ni) be the degree of contribution of Ni to this similarity. Obviously, β(Nk) ≤ ... ≤ β(N2) ≤ β(N1). Example 2. Suppose that w and w’ correspond to URLs “www.scu.edu.cn \CS\KDD\A.html” and “www.pku.edu.cn \Math\KDD\B.html”, respectively. From observation (2), we have N1=N’1=KDD, N2 = CS (Department of Computer Sci- ence), N’2 = Math (Department. of Math- ematics), N3 is Sichuan University, and N’3 is Peking University. Files A.html and B.html are in different pages of different departments in different universities, but are similar in terms of having the same imme- diate ancestor (i.e., ‘KDD’). • Definition 2. Let UnitSet be a set of Web unit, the function Same is defined as: Same: UnitSet × UnitSet →{1, 0} The value of Same(UnitSet 1, UnitSet2) is 1 if UnitSet1 UnitSet2, or 0 oth- erwise. • Definition 3 (Similarity of Web tutor units). Let w1 and w2 be two Web tutor units. 1 The set of personalized keywords, PersKeySet = {K1, K2,…, Kn}, is se- lected from domain standard keywords by users according to the personalized guideline. 2 Let K_SET i = w i.Keywords ∩ PersKeySet, where i = 1 or 2. K(w1,w2) = |K_SET1 ∩ K_SET2| / |PersKeySet| is called the personalized keyword similarity of w1 and w2. 3 Let wi have ni child web units, and the children units are C i = {wi.pChildrenUnit[k] | 0 ≤ k ≤ ni} for i = 1 to 2. Then, C(w1,w2)= | C1 ∩ C2 | / | C1 ∪ C2 | is called the children similar- ity of w1 and w2. 4 Let ancestor sets of w1 and w2 be {N11, N12, ..., N1p} and {N21, N22, ..., N2q}, respectively. If there exists a number k, 0 ≤ k ≤ min (p, q) such that N1i = N2i for 0 ≤ i ≤ k, and N1(k+1) ¹ N2(k+1), then r = 1/ 2 + 1/4 + ... + 1/2k is called the inherit- ance similarity of w1 and w2, denoted as A(w1, w2). 5 Let k be the number described above and a, c, be non-negative numbers, and k+c+a=1. Then Group_Similarity (w1,w2) = k xK(w1,w2) + c x C(w1,w2) + a x (w1,w2) is called the group-wised (or personalized when the group size is one) similarity of w1 and w2. Note that: 1) Inheritance similarity is a binary num- 6 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ber 0.11...1=2-1+2-2+2-3+…+2 -k. Its length of fractional part is k. Contribu- tions of ancestors to similarity are de- creasing as series of 2-n. 2) Inheritance similarity and children unit similarity reflect the resemblance of units in a web organization. The personalized keyword similarity describes resem- blance of units under users’ guideline. 3) Parameters a, c and k are given by the distance-teacher. (The default values used in our experiment are a=0.2, c=0.1, and k=0.7.) ALGORITHMS FOR GROUP- WISED TUTOR TREE We now proceed to describe how to construct the group-wised tutor tree. We do this by introducing five algorithms that we have developed for this purpose. A Naive Way to Construct Web Tutor Tree Parameters In the Naive Algorithm for group- wised tutor tree, the parameters are set as follows: a=c=0 and k=1 (see Definition 3). That is, the role of the old organization of web courseware is ignored; only the key- words of the Web tutor unit are used as clustering criteria. Thus, the personalized similarity of w1 and w2 is: P(w1, w2) = K(w1, w2) = |K_SET1 ∩ K_SET2| / |PersKeySet|. Training Set and Personalized Order of Keywords The primary training set, denoted as PrimaryTutorSet, is selected by the dis- tance-teacher from the Web courseware under the following criteria: The size of PrimaryTutorSet is big enough, say more than 100 pages. The PrimaryTutorSet must be typical enough. It involves typical tutor contents, with typical keywords, ancestors and children units. Let PrimaryTutorSet = {w 1, w 2, ...,wn} and the personalized keyword set PersKeySet={K1, K2, ..., Km}. We con- struct the Tutor Unit-Key Matrix as shown in Table 2. If there exists a keyword ki con- tained in wj, then aij = 1, otherwise, aij = 0. The number si = ai1 + ai2 +...+ ain is the total number of wj containing ki, called key activity of ki. The number tj= a1j + a2j +...+ anj indicates the number of keywords con- tained in wj. Formally, we have: Definition 4. Let the context be as that of Table 2. 1) The set of personalized keywords with the descending order of si is called Descending Key set. tj in Table 2 is called group-wised intensity of Web tutor unit wj . 2) The function to arrange the web tutor unit set WTUnitSet with descend- ing order of group-wised in- tensity is denoted as O r d e r e d _ W T U n i t S e t =PD_Sort (WTUnitSet). Table 2: Tutor Unit-Key Matrix Unit-Key w 1, w2, ..., wj, .., wm Sum k1 ... k i ... k n . ... ... ... ... aij .. . . . .. si Total keys tj Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 7 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 3) Let Delta be the threshold of group- wised intensity. The set TrainWTUnitSet = GD_Sort({wi | ti(wi) > Delta }) is called personalized training set with re- spect to Delta. • It is straightforward to build the Tu- tor Unit-Key Matrix, to sort keywords, and to generate personalized training set. We thus assume that these processes are done in a preprocessing phase. Candidate Tutor Concept Set During the procedure to reorganize web tutor tree, a set of similar web tutor units can be viewed as a (new) tutor con- cept. To prepare and simplify the concept- generating procedure, we define the fol- lowing: Definition 5. Let TrainWTUnitSet = {w1, w2, ..., wm} and ancestor set of wi be Ai={Si1, Si2, ..., Sik[i]}. Then the Candidate Concept Set is defined as: CandidateConceptSet=A1∪A2∪…∪Am- • Note that, Sik is a candidate concept if and only if Sik is an ancestor of some Wi. By “candidate” we mean that it can be selected as the basic material to compose a new concept. It is illustrated by the fol- lowing example. Example 3. (1) Consider Figure 2(a). CandidateConceptSet = {Renmin Univer- sity, Fudan University, Nanjing University, Peking University, Sichuan University, male, female, Database theory, Special database, Data mining, Data warehouse}. (2) Con- sider Figure 2(b). CandidateConceptSet = {Prof. Wang, Prof. Shi, Prof. Xu, Prof. Tang, Prof. Yang, Prof. Zhou, database theory, special database, data mining, data warehouse}.• Definition 6. Let S1, S2, and S3 be three strings of characters, S3 be the longest common sub-string of S1 and S2. If |S3| ≥ 0, then S1 and S2 are said to be partially similar with similarity Sim(S1, S2) = |S3| / max(|S1|, |S2| ) . • Based on a set of similar Web tutor units, new tutor concepts (or topics) can be generalized. The function GenerateConcept_Similarity(S 1, S2, NewConcept, Sim) is defined as follows and explained in Example 4. Function GenerateConcept _ Similarity Input: Web tutor concept name (or string) S1, S2. Output: NewConcept and Similarity Sim of S1 and S2 as return value. Steps: 1. L = 0; // Initialization of the com- mon feature 2. for (i = 1; i ≤ |S1|; i++) 3. for (j = 1; j ≤ |S1|-i+1; j++) { 4. Extract sub-string S3 with length of j and start from S1[i]; 5. if (S2 including S3 and j >L) then L = j; 6. } 7. Sim = L / max(|S1|, |S2|); 8. NewConcept = S3 +”_Set”; 9. Output NewConcept and Sim; �• Example 4. Based on Example 3(1) and function GenerateConcept_Similarity, we can generate a new concept from simi- lar concepts with similarity Sim ≥ 0.4, as shown below: 1)University_Set = {Renmin University, Fudan University, Nanjing University, Peking University, Sichuan University}, Sim = 0.5. 2)database_Set = {database theory, spe- cial database}, Sim = 0.5. 3)data_Set = {database theory, special database, data mining, data warehouse}, Sim = 0.5. The Meta Concept Base Some concept names are derived 8 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. from their elements semantically but not lexically, such as “Sex” ={“male,” “fe- male”}. To generate such tutor concepts (or topic) automatically, we need a Meta concept base as shown in Table 3. Algorithm 1 (Generate new concept) Input: CandidateConceptSet, Meta concept base, threshold of similarity δ>0. Output: The set of new web tutor concepts NewConcepts within which Simi- larity ≥ δ, and all the elements are sorted by descending group-wised intensity. Steps: 1. NewConcept=NULL; // initiate it as NULL 2. for each C i and C j (i<j) in CandidateConceptSet { 3. GenerateConcept_Similarity(Ci, Cj, NewConceptij, Simij); // pair-wised check similarity 4. if (Simij ≥ δ ) then 5.NewConcept=NewConcept∪NewConceptij; // NewConcept increases by threshold 6. } 7. Sort NewConcepts by name; 8. Merging courseware in NewConcepts with same name; 9. Output NewConcepts in the format of “NewConceptName_SET = {a, b, c, d, ...}”; In the above algorithm, the main com- putation cost is in the for-loop. Clearly the complexity is O(n2), where n is the size of CandidateConceptSet. In Example 4, the Web tutor Concept database Set = {“database theory,” “spe- cial database”}. Suppose that “database theory” and “special database” consist of papers {p1, p2, ..., pn} and {q1, q2, ..., qn}, respectively. To evaluate the group-wised intensity of database_Set, we sum all in- tensity of all pi’s and qj’s. Formally, we have: Definition 7. Let the context be the same as in Algorithm 1 and the NewConcept be C0 = {t1, t2, ..., tn}, where ti is a concept or a title of a Web tutor unit. The group-wised intensity function, denoted as GI, is recursively defined as follows: 1 If ti is the title of a Web tutor unit ui, GI(ti) is the group-wised intensity as defined in Definition 4(2), i.e., the num- ber of keywords contained in Ci. 2 GI (C0) = ΣGI(ti). 3 SortedNewTopicSet is the set of NewConcept generated by Algorithm 1 and sorted according to the descending order of group-wised intensity. • Intuitively, GI(NewConcept) is the total number of personalized keys appear- ing in the Web tutor tree with NewConcept as the root of tutor tree. To prepare Algo- rithm 3 (Naive Algorithm), we need an- other observation. Let w be the Web tutor unit with URL Renmin_University \ CS \ database \ Prof.Wang \ database theory \ male \ 1.htm.” Its concept hierarchy model is “University→Deparment→ Prof→ Complex Tutor Concept Name Contents of Concept InsideSimilarity Sex Male, Female 0.8 PaperID 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... 1 Fruit Apple, Banana, Pear, Grape, Orange 0.8 Table 3: A part of meta topic base Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 9 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Field→Sex→PaperID.” Then, “\ database_ theory \ Renmin_University \ 1.htm” is a valid URL to locate 1.htm. Hence it is a valid reorganization under the concept hi- erarchy model “Field→University→ PaperID.” Thus we have: Algorithm 2 (Insert training units) Input: 1) Concept hierarchy model C1→ C2→ ... →Cm, (such as “Field →University→ PaperID”). 2) A Web tutor unit w with URL “N1\ N2\ ...\ Np\ leaf_file” in TrainWTUnitSet. Output: Insert w into Web tutor tree under given concept hierarchy model, return true if successful or false otherwise. Steps: 1. if not (each Ci is in {N1, N2, ..., Np}) then return false; // Ci is invalid 2. if not exist group-wised tutor unit then GroupWisedTutorUnit = new WTUnit; 3. w0 = GroupWisedTutorUnit; 4. w0.ObjTitle = “Personalized web tutor page”; // default title 5. for (i = 1; i < p; i ++) 6. if not exist wi { 7. wi = new WTUnit; 8. wi.ObjTitle = Name of the Ci; 9. w i - 1 . p C h i l d r e n U n i t = w i - 1.pChildrenUnit∪{&wi}; // Add address of wi as a new hyperlink 10. } 11. Insert leaf_file as the last child unit of w p• In Algorithm 2, the complexity of step 1 is m ´ p and the complexity of step 2 is O(p), where m ≤ p. Thus, the total com- plexity is O(p2), where p is the number of ancestors of w. The Naive Algorithm This algorithm is to first construct a Web tutor concept hierarchy model and concept tree based on TrainWTUnitSet, and then insert the remainder w i of WTUnitSet to the concept tree (i.e., the Web tutor tree). Algorithm 3 (Naive Algorithm) Input: WTUnitSet, TrainWTU intSet, threshold δ >0, Max_L (the maxi- mum level of Web tutor tree), PersKeySet ordered by key activity Output: Concept hierarchy model (such as “Topic→University →PaperID” and Tutor tree (such as Figure 2(c)). Procedure: 1. Build CandidateConceptSet from TrainWTUintSet; // See Example 3 2. Invoke Algorithm 1, sort its result, and generate SortedNewConceptSet with similarity ≥ δ; 3. Assume SortedNewConceptSet = {C1, C2, ..., Cn}, and m = Min(n, Max_L). The concept hierarchy model is then C1→C2→ ... →Cm. 4. For each Web tutor unit w in TrainWTUintSet, invoke Algorithm 2 and insert tutor unit according to the concept hierarchy model C1 → C2→ ... → Cm. Denote the resulting tree as ConceptTree. 5. // Insert all remaining Web tutor units of WTUnitSet into ConceptTree TempUnit=NULL; TempSim=0; for (each wi ∈ WTUnitSet - TrainWTUintSet and each Unit wj in ConceptTree) {Simij = Group_ Similarity(wi, wj); // personalized similarity, see Definition 3 (5) if (Simij>δ and Simij>TempSim) { TempUnit=wj; TempSim= Simij; // Now TempUnit is the web tutor Unit with // Maxmum similarity to wi. } } 6. Output ConceptTree as tutor tree. • 10 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Proposition 1. Let n be the number of Web tutor units. Assume t is the max number of ancestors of tutor unit, r is the max length of keywords and concept names, and m is the levels of concept tree. Then the complexity of the Naive Algorithm is O (p4+n×2m), where p = max (n, r, t). Proof. The complexity of step (1) is n × t. Consider step (2) of the Naive Algorithm. The size of CandidateConceptSet is not greater than n × t. As the complexity of function GenerateConcept_Similarity is O(r2), the complexity of Step (2) is O(r2×(n×t)2). In Step (3), the concept tree has m levels, thus, the complexity of Step (4) and that of Step (5) are both O(n×2m). Let p = max (n, r, t) in the worst case. The complexity of the Naive Algorithm is then O(p4+n×2m) . • In practice, usually t ≤ 10, r ≤ 10, l ≤ 4, and m < n. The complexity can be sim- ply evaluated as O(n4+ n×2 m) for the worst case. Example 5. Consider the Web tutor units (i.e., the selected articles) in Figure 1. The WTUnitSet = {w1, w2, w3, w4, w5, w6, w7, w8}, where w1= Renmin University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Wang \ database theory \ male \ 1.htm, w2= Fudan university \ CS \ database \ Prof. Shi \ database theory \ male \ 2.htm, w3= Fudan University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Shi \ special database \ male \ 3.htm, w4= Nanjing University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Xu \ special database \ male \ 4.htm, w5= Sichuan University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Tang \ data warehouse \ male \ 5.htm, w 6 = Peking University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Yang \ data mining \ male \ 6.htm, w 7 = Fudan University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Zhou \ data mining \ male \ 7.htm, w 8 = Sichuan University \ CS \ database \ Prof. Tang \ data mining \ female \ 8.htm. The inputs of Algorithm 3 are given below: • WTUnitSet={w1, w2, w3, w4, w5, w6, w7, w 8 }. • TrainWTUintSet={w1, w2, w4, w5, w6, w 8 }, selected by the teacher on the de- mands of the students and the personal- ized rules. • PersKeySet={data mining, database theory, special database, data ware- house, Sichuan University, 4}. The stepwise outputs of Algorithm 3 are as follows: 1. TrainWTUintSet = {w 1 , w 2 , w 4 , w 5 , w 6 , w 8 }. 2. CandidateConceptSet = {Renmin Uni- versity, Fudan University, Nanjing Uni- versity, Peking University, Sichuan Uni- versity, CS, database, database theory, special database, data mining, data warehouse, male, female, Prof. Wang, Prof. Shi, Prof. Xu, Prof. Tang, Prof. Yang}. 3. Similar concept sets are: • University_Set = {Renmin Univer- sity, Fudan University, Nanjing Uni versity, Peking University, Sichuan University}. • database_Set = {database theory, special database}. • data_Set = {database theory, spe- cial database, data mining, data warehouse}. • Prof._Set = {Prof. Wang, Prof. Shi, Prof. Xu, Prof. Tang, Prof. Yang}. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 11 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. • Sex_Set = {male, female}. 4. Insert w3 and w7 after obtaining the con- cept tree. The final concept tree is as shown in Figure 2(c).• Group-Wised Algorithm Level Generating Algorithm The Naive Algorithm (Algorithm 3) is simple and with acceptable speed, but the concept hierarchy cannot be modified once it is constructed. In particular, step (5) of the Naive Algorithm only inserts Web tutor units according to similarity; thus it cannot change the concept hierarchy. To develop a more flexible algorithm, we de- fine the following: Definition 8 (multi-level tutor units). 1. The tutor unit at 0-th level, v0, is a usual Web tutor unit v, and v0. Keywords = v.Keywords. 2. Let v1, v2, ..., vn be the tutor unit at k-th level. Then (k+1)-th level tutor unit v(k+1) composed from v1, v2, ..., vn is a Web unit satisfying following conditions: a. v(k+1) has exactly n children units v1, v2, ..., vn , i.e., *pChildrenUnit[k]=vk, for k=1,2,…n. b. v(k+1).Keywords =)”vi.Keywords, ( )” for all i, 0<i<n+1) Keywordsvi n i .1=∩ . c. v(k+1).ObjTitle is the concept with maximum frequency in NewConcepts, where NewConcepts is the set of con- cepts generated by applying GenerateConcept_Similarity on each pair in set {vi.ObjTitle| 0<i<n+1}. • Algorithm 4 generates (k+1)-th level Web tutor unit from k-th level of web tu- tor units. The idea is: (1) to evaluate the similarity of any two tutor units of k-th level in CurrWTUnitSet; (2) if similarity is higher than the threshold, then combine them as a (k+1)-th level, denoted as vi (k+1); (3) prune the combined units from CurrWTUnitSet. The initial CurrWTUnitSet is the set of k- th level Web tutor units ordered by the de- scending personalized intensity. In the al- gorithm, the brackets “{“ and “}” in italic font indicate that the contents inside them form a set. Algorithm 4 (Level_Generate Algorithm for Web tutor unit of (k+1)-th Level) Input: Web tutor units at k-th level: v1 k, v2 k, ..., vn k, Similarity threshold δ > 0, and the personalized keyword set PersKeySet. Output: Tutor unit at (k+1)-th level: v1 (k+1), v2 (k+1), ..., vn (k+1) , such that the simi- larity within each vi (k+1) is not less than δ. Procedure: Level_Generate(k+1) 1. CurrWTUnitSet = GD_Sort ({v1 k, v2 k, ..., vn k}, ti); // ti and GD_Sort same as in Definition 4 // Initialize CurrWTUnitSet as the input and ordered by descending personalized intensity 2. OutputWTUnitSet = NULL; 3. for (each vi k in CurrWTUnitSet ) { 4. CurrWTUnitSet = CurrWTUnitSet – {vi k}; // to avoid dead loop 5. v = new WTUnit; // generate a new Web tutor unit v as buffer 6. v.Keywords= PersKeySet∩vi. Key- words; // Initialize the keywords of new WTUnit. 7. v.pChildrenUnit = {vi k}; // insert vi k as the first Child-tutor unit of v. 8. v.ObjTitle = “Title_I”; // set default title; it is modifiable 9. for (each vj k in CurrWTUnitSet) 12 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 10. if (GroupSimilarity (vi k, vj k) > δ) { / personalized similarity, see Def. 3 (5) 11. CurrWTUnitSet = CurrWTUnitSet – {vj k}; 12. v.pChildrenUnit = v.pChildrenUnit ∪ {vj k}; // insert vj k as the child tutor Unit of v. 13. v.Keywords=v.Keywords Çvj k.Keywords; 14. } // end of if 15. } // end of for 16. For each pair (vj p ,vj q ) in the set { vj k<n+1} { 17. GenerateConcept_Similarity (vj p.ObjTitle, vj q.ObjTitle, TempNewTitlepq, TempSimilaritypq); 18. Find the concept in { TempNewTitlepq } with maximum frequency and denote it as NewTitle; 19. v.ObjTitle = NewTitle; // it is similar to most of { vj k | 0<j<n+1} 20. if (2 > the number of Children Units in v) then v = v ∪ {ε}; // ε is a zero unit 21. v(k+1) = v; // it is web tutor unit of level (k+1) 22. OutputWTUnitSet = OutputWTUnitSet ∪{v(k+1)}; 23. } 24. Output OutputWTUnitSet; • Proposition 2. Let n be the number of the k-th level Web units inputted to Algorithm 4. The complexity of Algorithm 4 is O(n2). Proof. In Algorithm 4, the complexity of line 1 is O(n×log(n)). The complexity of lines 3 to 15 is O(n). Line 17 (function GenerateConcept_ Similarity) will be called for at most n(n-1)/2 times and its cost is O(n2). The cost comparisons in line 18 are no greater than O(n2). Thus the total complexity can be evaluated as O(n2). • In order to simplify the algorithm, a zero tutor unit e is introduced here, which can be viewed as a bookmark pointing to an empty URL. ε is inserted to OutputWTUnitSet if it has only one child unit. In the following, Algorithm 5 will call the procedure Level_Generate (k+1) from k = 0 until its output set equals the input set. To simplify Algorithm 5, we need the concept of embedded level tree. Suppose that there are three sets: A = {1, 2, 3, 4}, B = {{1, 2}, {3, 4}}, and C = {1, {2, {3, 4}}}. The results of expanding them are shown in Figures 3(a), 3(b), and 3(c), which are called embedded level tree. The procedure to expand embedded level tree is denoted as Tree_Expand, the details of which are omitted due to its simplicity. Algorithm 5 (Group-wis3ed Algo- rithm for generating multi-level Web tutor tree) Input: 0-level Web tutor unit set {v1 0, v2 0, ..., vn 0}, threshold of similarity δ > 0, and personalized keyword set PersKeySet. Output: Web tutor tree with multi- level and its root node. Procedure: 1. InputWTUnitSet = {v1 0, v2 0, ..., vn 0}; 2. OutputWTUnitSet = NULL; 3. Root = NULL; / 1 {1, 2}1 1 2 2 {2, {3, 4}} 2 3 {3, 4}3 {3, 4}3 4 4 4 (a) A (b) B (c) C Figure 3: Embedded Level Tree Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 13 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. / Init multi-level Web tutor unit 4. k = 0; 5. while (k ≥ 0) { 6. CurrWTUnitSet = InputWTUnitSet; // Initialize it 7. Level_Generate(k+1); // Algorithm 4, generate Web tutor unit of (k+1)-th level 8. if (OutputWTUnitSet = = InputWTUnitSet) { 9. Insert each element of OutputWTUnit- Set to Root; 10. Exit; 11.}else InputWTUnitSet = OutputWTUnit- Set; 12.} // end of while 13. Tree_Expand(Root); //Use Level_Expand to expand Root to a tree; see Figure 3 14. Delete all zero units e in root and out put it; • Proposition 3. Let n be the number of Web tutor units considered. The com- plexity of Algorithm 5 is O(n3). Proof. In Algorithm 5, the complexity of lines 1-4 and lines 13-14 are O(n). In the “while” loop, line 7 incurs the maxi- mum complexity. The complexity of other lines are O(n). In the worst case, n Web tutor units can be embedded in n levels. Thus the while statement will loop at most n times. By Proposition 2, for each call of line 7, the complexity is O(n2). Thus the total complexity can be evalu- ated as O(n3) . • Comparison of Algorithms 3 and 5 Tables 4-7 list the comparison of Al- gorithm 3 (the Naive Algorithm) and Algo- rithm 5 (the Group-Wised Algorithm). There is an interesting observation that Algorithm 5 looks simpler than Algorithm 3, but with higher efficiency. The reason is that Algorithm 4 (which generates the (k+1)-th level WTUnit) has already ab- sorbed the difficulties. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSES We have done an initial experimental study based on an implementation of Algo- rithm 5. To avoid the side effect of net- work bottleneck, we first downloaded the selected Web tutor units from the Web. The format is as illustrated in Figure 1. During the testing, all the inputs are available from a local computer. The experimental result of algorithm 5 is shown in Figure 4. The descriptions of the experiment are given in Figure 4. Input: 0-level web tutor units Algorithm 3 Algorithm 5 WTUnitSet, TrainWTUintSet, threshold of similarity δ >0, PersKeySet WTUnitSet, as 0-level web tutor unit set (no need for TrainWTUintSet), threshold of similarity δ > 0, PersKeySet. Table 4: The Input of Algorithms 3 and 5 {u8, u6, u7} u8 u6 u7 u4 u5 Figure 4. Calculated Result 14 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. WTUnitSet = {u4, u5, u6, u7, u8}; k = 0.7, c = 0.1, a = 0.2, δ = 0.3; PersKeySet = {Data Mining, Association Rule}. The item “key- words” and “field (of research)” and ab- stracts of all articles in Figure 1 are taken as the Keywords of the tutor units. Output: Shown in Figure 4. Stepwise Analysis: Because there is no child tutor unit in those WTUnits, the children similarity of all WTUnits C = 0. The program based on the algorithm can be traced in a stepwise manner, which al- lows us to view the intermediate results as follows: 1. k = 0, call Level_Generate (1): After GD_Sort(WTUnitSet, t i), CurrWTUnitSet = {u8, u6, u7, u4, u5}. Using the functions K(x,y),C(x,y) and A(x,y) defined in the Definition 3, we have: K(u8, u6) = 2/2, A(u8, u6) = 0, we get Group_Similarity (u8, u6) = 0.7´2/2+0.2´0 = 0.7, Group_Similarity (u8, u7) = 0.7´1/ 2 = 0.35 and Group_Similarity (u8, u4) = 0. Since K(u8, u5) = 0 and A(u8, u5)=1/2+1/ 4+1/8+1/16=15/16, we get Group_Similarity(u8, u5)=0.7´0+0.2´15/ 16=0.19. Since Group_Similarity (u8, u6) = 0.7>δ and Group_Similarity (u8, u7) = 0.35>δ, v1 1={u8, u6, u7} and v1 1.Keywords = {Data Mining}, where CurrWTUnitSet = {u4, u5}. The same as above, we have v2 1={u4, ε}, v21.Keywords = ∅, v3 1={u5, ε}, and v31.Keywords = ∅. So OutputWT UnitSet = {{u8, u6, u7}, {u4, ε}, {u5, ε}}. Since OutputWTUnitSet and InputWT UnitSet are of different values, we have the further step below: 2. k = 1, InputWTUnitSet = Output WTUnitSet, call Level_Generate (2). After calling Level_Generate (2), the set OutputWTUnitSet is equal to the set InputWTUnitSet. Hence, Root = OutputWTUnitSet = {{u8, u6, u7}, {u4, ε}, {u5, ε}}. 3. Deleting all zero Web tutor units, we have Root = {{u8, u6, u7}, {u4}, {u5}}. Algorithm 3 Algorithm 5 Topic hierarchy model, such as field University PaperID, Web Tutor tree (cf. Figure 1 (c)) Web tutor tree Algorithm 3 Algorithm 5 Calls procedure Group_Similarity (...), and meta concept base. It works in the style of supervised classification. Calls Algorithm 4 to generate tutor unit of (k+1)-th level from units of k-th level. It works in the style of unsupervised classification. Algorithm 3 Algorithm 5 Primary training set Candidate concept Set tutor concept hierarchy model by Alg 1 tutor concept Tree by Alg 2. 0-th Level obj 1 Level obj ,... K Level obj by Alg 4. Table 5: The output of Algorithms 3 and 5 Table 6: The calling features of Algorithms 3 and 5 Table 7. The Data-flow features of Algorithms 3 and 5 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 15 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Then, call Tree_Expand (Root), and the final result is as shown in Figure 4. CONCLUSION In this paper, we have presented con- cepts for web-based group-wised distance learning, such as Web Tutor Unit with multi-levels, its Similarity, and Personal- ized Intensity. We presented five algo- rithms, including the Naive Algorithm for simple Web tutor tree, Level-Generate Al- gorithm to generate Web tutor concept of k+1 level, and Group-wised Algorithm for personalized Web tutor tree. Experimental results are provided to illustrate our ap- proach. We are currently studying several further research issues such as perfor- mance improvement, and the design and incorporation of the weighting concept into the personalized Web tutor tree. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project is in part supported by a CERG grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (RGC Reference Number: CPHK 77/95E) and the National Science Foundation of China grant #60073046. REFERENCES Agrawal, A., & Mannila, H. (1996). Fast Discovery of Association Rules. Ad- vances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, AAAI Press and The MIT Press. Agrawal, A., Ling, K., Harpreet, S., & Shim, S. (1995). Fast Similarity Search in the Presence of Noise, Scaling, and Translation in Time-Series Databases. Proc. of VLDB. Chim, J., Lau, R.W.H., Si, A., Leong, H.V., Green, M., & Lam, M. (1998).Multi- Resolution Model Transmission in Distrib- uted Virtual Environments. Proceedings of ACM VRST’99, 25-34. Fayyad, U. & Piatetsky-Shapiro, G. (1996). Advances in Knowledge Discover and Data Mining (Eds), AAAI Press and The MIT Press, 1-5. Guo, Y., Zhang, T., Yin, H., & Tang, C. (2000). The Implementation of Data Warehouse ETDW in Distance Education System E-Teacher. Proc. of National Database Conference of China (NDBC’00), B-Series, 249-252. Jiang, M., Tseng, S., & Tsai, C. (1999). Discovering Structure from Document Databases. Proc. of PAKDD’99, 169-173. Mannila, H. & Toivonen, H. (1999). Discovering Generalized Episodes Using Minimal Occurrence. Proc. of Int’ Conf. on Knowledge Discovery and Data Min- ing. Song, W., Cheung, D., & Tan, C. (2000). A Semantic Similarity Approach to Electronic Document Modeling and Inte- gration. Proceedings of International Conference on Web Information System Engineering (WISE’00), 108-116. Spertus, E. (1997). Parasite: Mining Structural Information on the Web. Proc.of International World Wide Web Confer- ence. Tang, C., Yu, Z., You, Z., Zhang, T., & Lu, Y. (2000). Mine the Quasi-Periodic- ity From Web Data. Journal of Computer, 23(1), 52-59. Tang, C., Lau, R.W.H., Yin, H., Li, Q., Lu, Y., Yu, Z., Xiang, L., & Zhang, T. (1999). Discovering Tendency Association Between Objects with Relaxed Periodic- ity and its Application in Seismology. Proc. of ICSC’99, LNCS 1749, 51-62. 16 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(2), 1-16, Apr-June 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Changjie Tang received his MSc. from the Department of Mathematics, Sichuan University in 1981. He is a Professor and the Head of Computer Science Department of Sichuan University. His current interests are in Web data mining. He has published eight books and more than 100 research papers in journals and international conferences, such as FODO, IFIP, SIGMOD, DASFAA, ICSC, TCS (Theoretical Computer Science), LNCS, JOS, JCST, SC (Science of China). Prof. Tang has served as a PC member of VLDV’97, DASFAA’99, ICSC’99, Pakdd2001, DASFAA2001, WAIM2000, WAIM02 and WAIM03. He is also a vice director of the Database Society of Chinese Computer Federation.(Email: chjtang2002@sohu.com or chjtang@scu.edu.cn) Qing Li received his BEng. degree from Hunan University (Changsha, China), MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Souther California (Los Angeles, USA), all in computer science. He is currently an Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, as well as an adjunct Professor of the Hunan University. His research interests include database modeling, multimedia retrieval and management, and e-learning systems. Dr Li has published over 100 papers in technical journals and international conferences in these areas, and is actively involved in the research community by serving as a journal reviewer, programme committee chair/co-chair, and as an organizer/co-organizer of several international conferences. Currently he serves as a councillor of the Database Society of Chinese Computer Federation, and as a Steering Committee member of the international WISE Society.(Email: itqli@cityu.edu.hk) Rynson W.H. Lau received a (top) first class honors degree in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Graphics from the University of Cambridge, England. He is currently an Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include computer graphics, virtual reality and multimedia systems.(Email: rynson@cs.cityu.edu.hk) Tianqing Zhang received the B.E. and M.E degree in computer science from Sichuan University, China, in 1993 and 1996 respectively. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Computer Science Department, Sichuan University. His main research interests are database systems. (Email: zhangtianqing@cs.scu.edu.cn) Danny Kilis received advanced academic training in both Computer Science as well as Electrical Engineering fields from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He has over 17 years of experience in leading and managing eCommerce and Information Technology projects. His work experience spans across a wide spectrum of functional areas, including eCommerce (B2B and B2C) product development, pre- and post-sales consulting, product marketing and academic research. He is currently the Senior Vice President for the eProduct Development and Services teams in Hong Kong and Shenzhen (China) for PCCW. His teams focus in developing the company’s strategic eCommerce software products. He has pioneered the product strategy on the company’s ConXerto Product Suite (http://conxerto.pccw.com,) which is a set of software products targeted for the collaborative commerce area. In addition to his product role, Dr. Kilis advocates the group’s object-oriented and component development strategies and processes. He is well experienced in such technologies as Internet/extranet architecture, object-orientation, component software engineering, software reuse, and artificial intelligence. Prior to joining PCCW, he also co-founded an offshore eCommerce Solutions Development Center in Manila for GE Information Services, which, in turn, developed the company’s global eCommerce software products. He also single-authored some U.S. patents on software technology for IBM. 
work_dlpsi3djmrcfxgmpphxtescdre	----	Sustainable Distance Education: Comparison of Digital Pedagogical Models sustainability Article Sustainable Distance Education: Comparison of Digital Pedagogical Models Sonia Santoveña-Casal * and Mª Dolores Fernández Pérez Department of Education, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 28040 Madrid, Spain; mdfernandez@edu.uned.es * Correspondence: ssantovena@edu.uned.es Received: 17 October 2020; Accepted: 29 October 2020; Published: 31 October 2020 ���������� ������� Abstract: The literature shows strong evidence of how different learning models influence learning. The kind of model used is a basic variable that can either help or hinder sustainable education. The objective of this research is to analyse how digital pedagogical models of three kinds (collaborative, social, and independent) influence the learning experience. The study is based on a design that combines triangulation, a theoretical model, quantitative methods (descriptive analysis and contrast of means), and qualitative methods (discourse analysis, following the principles of grounded theory). The importance of social and collaborative models in sustainable education is proved; both types of models promote a positive learning experience. They strengthen inter-student relationships, a feeling of belonging to a community with shared interests, and feelings of membership and cohesion. An independent model may hamper students’ perception of current knowledge and development of collaborative competences, in contrast to the more-interactive model. These results can be assessed in greater depth through future research exploring independent models’ possible potential for analysing environmental problems and their tie-in to personal decisions. Keywords: collaborative learning; digital pedagogy; social learning; independent or autonomous learning 1. Introduction Education for sustainable development challenges reigning educational ideas, organisations, and even content, and at the same time, it deals with issues like cooperative skills and creative, reflexive, and critical thought [1]. It can thus improve education and teach students how to make sound decisions. Sustainable digital education seeks to educate people about commitment and social transformation to facilitate the construction of a society that is increasingly responsible vis-à-vis future generations. As the United Nations [2] stated in 1987, this aspect is the key that defines the concept of sustainability. Sustainable ethical behaviour can never develop unless there is social commitment within the educational community and in the school itself. UNESCO tells us that when we place our focus on personalised learning processes, we make it harder to tackle social topics and topics related to sustainable development. UNESCO [1,3] stresses the importance of social learning, and collaborative learning within a digital pedagogical model is the basic strategy that can help us attain sustainable education [4]. Let us begin by defining collaborative learning as learning that takes place in an organised group working cooperatively toward a specific shared objective [2] and interacting to reach academic objectives [5], where what the group can achieve depends on how all the group’s members behave [6]. Collaborative learning seeks to transform how we learn and so facilitate the development of autonomy; improve information analysis, synthesis, and expression capabilities; and thus reach the group’s shared goal [7–9]. This transformation requires a particular methodology implemented through certain Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067; doi:10.3390/su12219067 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-6148 http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9067?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su12219067 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 2 of 14 specific teaching activities; otherwise, we miss the entire point of collaborative work [10], and what is supposed to be collaborative may veer dangerously close to cooperative work, which obeys a different methodology [11]. Digital collaborative learning favours effective learning processes [12,13]. It is regarded as one of the most complete, effective learning models for digital and university contexts because it involves active [14], interactive [8,14–16], constructivist learning based on the processes of communication and interaction [17]. This research begins by framing the concept of social learning as a process of active participation in the practices of social communities that in turn influence the construction of one’s own identity [18]. In a social learning model based on discussion and interaction on social networks, networks are regarded as environments that facilitate horizontal, non-hierarchical communication, knowledge acquisition, information and opinion sharing [19], and feelings of membership and cohesion [20]. They are spaces of social influence in the sense of “the effect whereby an individual’s thoughts, feelings or actions are affected by other individuals” [21] (p. 274), and therefore participation in networks fulfils important social learning functions [22]. In addition, studies indicate that when students engage in discussion and reflection, their perception of the learning experience is improved [23]. Twitter has been defined as a conversation centre [24] and a space that strengthens the communication process and citizen influence [25]. The digital education proposals of the last few years have focused more on interaction- and communication-based models than on independent (or autonomous) learning models [26]. These collaborative and social learning proposals are not free of difficulties that may prevent smooth learning, such as the consideration that forcing students to take part in interactive processes compromises students’ autonomy [27], lack of commitment among group members [28], students’ observed resistance against interacting publicly and/or on social networks [29], supervening limitations due to learning style [28], or students’ preference for autonomous solo work under their own, unshared responsibility [30]. In fact, the importance of individual tasks as opposed to online activities and discussions has been defended [31]. The basis is the definition of the independent learning model as the model that offers students various degrees of freedom and takes place through sundry means of communication, but forces students to assume responsibility autonomously for their own learning process both instrumentally (beginning the activity and performing it without seeking help) and emotionally (not seeking regard or approval for the work they are doing) [32]. The present study adds evidence to the literature on how learning model type influences different variables of the teaching and learning process in sustainable higher education. The objective is to analyse the influence of the digital pedagogical model (either collaborative [C], social [S], or independent [I]) on the learning experience, examined in terms of four concepts: general assessment of the pedagogical proposal, knowledge acquisition (social, active, current, theoretical, and practical knowledge), learning processes (constructivist, connectivist, social, active, critical, and reflexive learning), and lastly the development of feelings of group membership and cohesion. The research question is this: How does the digital pedagogical model influence the learning experience? To operationalise the general objective, the following Hypothesis 1–4 were proposed (Figure 1): Hypothesis (H1). The general assessment of the learning experience is differentially influenced by the learning model used. Hypothesis (H2). The learning model used exerts a differential influence on the knowledge acquisition experience: The social learning model facilitates the perception of the acquisition of current, active knowledge, in contrast to the collaborative learning model, which favours the perception of the acquisition of collaborative work competences, and the independent model, which lends itself more to technical and practical knowledge. Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 3 of 14 Hypothesis (H3). The constructivist, connectivist, active, social, participatory learning experience is favoured by the social model and the collaborative model, in contrast to critical, more-reflexive learning, which is facilitated by the independent model. Hypothesis (H4). Feelings of membership and cohesion are favoured by the collaborative and social learning models, but not by the independent model. Sustainability 2020, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 14 Hypothesis (H4). Feelings of membership and cohesion are favoured by the collaborative and social learning models, but not by the independent model. Figure 1. Proposed model. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Context of the Study Spain’s National Distance Education University (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia or UNED), the context in which the research reported in this article took place, is based on an increasingly digital educational system that seeks to facilitate equal access to quality university education, in line with sustainable development goal 4 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and more specifically targeting goal 4.3., “Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including university,” and goal 4.4., “Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.” This study was conducted among students enrolled in four subjects from the undergraduate and master’s degree curricula in the 2019–2020 academic year. As part of the Methodologies Based on Connected, Active Collaborative Learning Project, these classes employed various learning models to train future education professionals. The three digital pedagogical models evaluated in this study are the collaborative learning model, the social model, and the independent (or autonomous) learning model. These models share the objective of developing attitudes, values, and competences that enable students to respond to future social and educational challenges in the framework of sustainable education. 2.1.1. Collaborative Learning Model (C) The collaborative pedagogical design adhered to the parameters indicated by Mora, Merodio, and Martínez [33]. The learning model and the objectives were defined; pre-recorded video classes guiding students through the activity and the subject requirements, the course syllabus, and the schedule of activities and interactions were presented; the best tools for the learning process were Figure 1. Proposed model. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Context of the Study Spain’s National Distance Education University (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia or UNED), the context in which the research reported in this article took place, is based on an increasingly digital educational system that seeks to facilitate equal access to quality university education, in line with sustainable development goal 4 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and more specifically targeting goal 4.3., “Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including university,” and goal 4.4., “Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.” This study was conducted among students enrolled in four subjects from the undergraduate and master’s degree curricula in the 2019–2020 academic year. As part of the Methodologies Based on Connected, Active Collaborative Learning Project, these classes employed various learning models to train future education professionals. The three digital pedagogical models evaluated in this study are the collaborative learning model, the social model, and the independent (or autonomous) learning model. These models share the objective of developing attitudes, values, and competences that enable students to respond to future social and educational challenges in the framework of sustainable education. Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 4 of 14 2.1.1. Collaborative Learning Model (C) The collaborative pedagogical design adhered to the parameters indicated by Mora, Merodio, and Martínez [33]. The learning model and the objectives were defined; pre-recorded video classes guiding students through the activity and the subject requirements, the course syllabus, and the schedule of activities and interactions were presented; the best tools for the learning process were established [34,35]; and lastly the instructors’ involvement was ensured, as Pérez Torres [36] suggests, to motivate students more strongly. The proposed activities called for students to detect and analyse a social problem that had developed on a social network. Each student had to select a single case study (a social network problem related to a group of students from a school and/or social centre) and complete the process of detecting, analysing, and proposing possible solutions to the problem. Two variants of the collaborative model were analysed: 1. Collaboration as a class group (CG): The task had to be done in cooperation with the entire group/class. The group/class was not divided into subgroups. The group was expected to work together on each of the activities proposed by the group members. The model was applied to a subject in the undergraduate curriculum for one semester. Twitter and the class discussion forums were used as communication tools. Using these tools, each student selected a social problem in progress on a social network (e.g., harassment, insults, gender discrimination) and presented it to the entire group/class, which discussed whether the problem would be a good case study and what solutions might be applied to it. 2. Collaboration in small groups (CP): The teaching team created working subgroups of six to eight students (randomly assigned to the subgroups). Private work areas for each subgroup were created within the virtual course. The model was applied to a subject in the postgraduate curriculum for half a semester (three months). Twitter and the class discussion forums were used as communication tools. To complete the activity, each student selected one case study (a social network problem having to do with the group of students at a school and/or social centre) and performed a process whereby they detected the problem, analysed it, and proposed a possible solution. The students used the selected social network and the virtual course’s forums as their means of communication. Both models were thus designed on the basis of the same kind of task, but they differed in how the work was to be done and how the task was to be accomplished. 2.1.2. Social Model Based on Academic Discussion on Social Networks (Twitter) (S) “Social network” is now used practically as a synonym for the concept of the digital social network. From this perspective, social networks are not merely key spaces; because social networks are made up of people and their relationships with each other, we define them also as a set of relationships that can influence people’s lives by creating a specific social environment [37]. As Christakis and Fowler [38] assert, to comprehend how society works, it is vital to understand how interpersonal connections give rise to new experiences beyond the individual realm. Although social networks have been studied from different perspectives, an integrating focus means adopting a social perspective. At the core of the social model lay immersion in the Twitter social network, not only from a practical/technological standpoint, but also, and much more importantly, as a space for creating a community of shared interests that students can go to even after the course is over. From this perspective, two variants were designed: 1. Short-term discussion (SC): Two discussions to be held in two weeks. One discussion per week. During the first week, students had to discuss, interact, and exchange opinions and resources about the purpose social networks serve, how that purpose becomes twisted, abuse, opinion control/manipulation, and privacy. During the second week, students discussed education, Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 5 of 14 digital culture, and collaboration; how these fields are connected; what networks contribute; and what the negative aspects and positive aspects are. The model was applied to a subject in the postgraduate curriculum for half a semester (three months). Twitter and the class discussion forums were used as communication tools. 2. Medium-term discussion (SM): A discussion to be held over 20 days. Students had to discuss and interact over the question of how they would evaluate competences in secondary education and then make proposals related to the topic. The model was applied to a subject in the postgraduate curriculum for two months. Twitter and the class discussion forums were used as communication tools. The discussion topic was directly related to the course’s subject matter, so the aim was for students not only to acquire certain theoretical knowledge, but also to experience and address the difficulties entailed in participating in an open-network educational community and to learn first-hand the possibilities and difficulties of using specific social networks in education within a reflective, critical context. Both models used Twitter for academic discussion, although they differed in the number of discussions held and the time allowed for discussion. In the SC model, two discussions took place in the short term, which means the process was more intense. In the SM model, there was only one discussion in a 20-day period. 2.1.3. Independent (or Autonomous) Learning Model (I) This model’s design was based on the work phases noted by Pintrich [39] and Zimmerman [40]. Each student set her or his own learning objectives with the support of a process for self-regulating one’s thoughts, emotions, conduct, and motivation [39]. This took place in three phases: planning and preparation, execution, and evaluation [40]. This model featured two variants: 1. Theoretical work (IT): Students had to perform a set of theory-related/hands-on activities whose objective was to facilitate learning the subject and to help acquire the target competences as established in the learning results. Students selected six activities from a range of choices, including “create a dossier of definitions,” “prepare a personal outline, summary, and analysis,” “prepare a unit of study,” “prepare a comparative grid,” “make a mind map of the contents of a study unit of your choice,” “prepare a document with all the information you can get from the media (press, radio, TV, internet, etc.) about a course topic you are interested in,” and “propose an open activity by your own initiative related to practical cases in school organisation and management.” The model was applied to a subject in the undergraduate curriculum for a semester. Discussion forums and web conferencing were used as communication tools. 2. Technical and practical work (IP): Using a specific programming language, students had to programme an interactive story, game, and/or animation using a particular kind of software. The objective was to find a simple, innovative way to develop basic skills in programming for children. The model was applied to a subject in the undergraduate curriculum for a semester. Students used free programming software. They submitted any questions to the discussion forums. Students received support via web conference at the start of the semester; this was the designated means of communication for the activity. 2.2. Population and Sample The study sample was 176 future education professionals (social educators, specialists in education theory, secondary school teachers) enrolled in classes on four subjects (two undergraduate subjects and two postgraduate subjects) in which various digital pedagogical models (collaborative, social/participatory, and independent/autonomous) were used (Table 1). Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 6 of 14 Table 1. Sample. Subject Model Total Social Collaborative Independent SM 1 SP 2 CP 3 CG 4 IP 5 IT 6 Postgraduate 43 36 18 0 0 0 97 Undergraduate 0 0 20 17 42 79 Subtype total 79 38 59 176 1 Short-term discussion (SC); 2 Medium-term discussion (SM); 3 Collaboration in small groups (CP); 4 Collaboration as a class group (CG); 5 Technical and practical work (IP); 6 Theoretical work (IT). 2.3. Design and Data Collection Instruments The study was based on a design that combined triangulation, a theoretical model, quantitative methods (descriptive analysis and contrast of means), and qualitative methods (discourse analysis, following the principles of grounded theory) [41]. The study employed the SPSS ver. 24 package (statistical analysis) and Atlas Ti HM software (content analysis). The quantitative study was conducted on the basis of a descriptive analysis and contrast of means (factorial ANOVA, multivariate linear model) to ascertain how the learning model used (collaborative, social, or independent) influenced the learning experience as measured via these dependent variables: general assessment of the proposal, knowledge acquisition, learning processes, and development of feelings of group membership and cohesion. The distribution of the variables was not normal; for this reason, and to confirm the ANOVA data, the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis H test was used. After the difference between means was found, the Bonferroni post-hoc test was applied to locate the pairs in which the differences lay. In addition, the tests’ effect size was found (eta squared). Data were collected using an ad-hoc Likert survey (https://cutt.ly/kyMxOCy) with six open and 20 closed questions concerning the following variables: general matters of quality, subject usefulness, analysis of the learning process and knowledge acquisition, collaborative work, and membership and cohesion. The survey was organised in six dimensions: general evaluation of the subject (four items on quality, usefulness and satisfaction), analysis of the communication and interaction process (seven items), learning and knowledge acquisition process (seven items), collaborative work (four items), pedagogical innovation (three items), and membership and cohesion (four items). The information required for the research objective was selected from the variables stated above. The initial version of the survey was modified in response to contributions from three faculty experts in the knowledge area. As a check of reliability, Cronbach’s alpha was found to be 0.964, which is much higher than the recommended 0.70. Content validity was based on the literature, in the variables considered fundamental by authors such as Kurucay and Inan [42] (demographic data, satisfaction, interaction, perception of collaboration, perception of learning) and Luo et al. [43] (student–student interaction, student–instructor interaction, interaction with content, membership and influence). The factors and their values are presented in Table 2. The qualitative study [44,45] was based on discourse analysis [45,46] of the answers to the survey’s open questions about the value of the communication and interaction process and the development of a feeling of membership and cohesion. These questions sought to expand on the information from the quantitative data. They were analysed as indicated by García-Llamas et al. [45]: 1) definition of the content universe and sample selection; 2) choice of the unit of analysis; and 3) establishment of categories. The open questions focused on exploring aspects related to interaction, membership, and cohesion. Some questions asked students about their interest in interacting with classmates (interaction). Other questions inquired whether students felt like a member of the classmate group, whether they saw https://cutt.ly/kyMxOCy Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 7 of 14 themselves as part of the group/class, whether or not they had bonded with classmates, and whether they felt they shared similar needs and objectives with other students (membership). Lastly, the survey examined students’ intention to keep participating in the virtual course and/or social network and the underlying reasons, students’ interest in accessing the virtual course and/or social network frequently in future, and lastly whether students felt that losing access to the course/social network might be a disadvantage and how serious that disadvantage would be. Table 2. Factors and values. Factors (Models) Values (Model Subtypes) Collaborative learning model (C) Class group collaboration (CG) Collaboration in small groups (CP) Social model based on academic discussion on social networks (Twitter) (S) Short-term discussion (SC) Medium-term discussion (SM) Independent (or autonomous) learning model (I) Theoretical work (IT) Technical and practical work (IP) Models and subtypes of models. 3. Results The research results show the influence each digital model has on the learning experience, knowledge acquisition, and the creation of feelings of membership and cohesion. 3.1. H1. The General Assessment of the Learning Experience Is Differentially Influenced by the Learning Model Used Over 50% of the students ranked the general learning experience highly or very highly in all dimensions (general assessment, usefulness, and satisfaction). No significant differences were observed between learning models (Table 3). Table 3. Kruskal–Wallis H test for general assessment of the learning experience. Test Statistic General Assessment Usefulness Satisfaction Kruskal–Wallis H 15.016 5.968 9.067 dof (Degrees of freedom) 5 5 5 Asymptotic sig. 0.010 0.309 0.106 Variable: General assessment of the learning experience. 3.2. H2. The Learning Model Used Exerts a Differential Influence on the Knowledge Acquisition Experience: The Social Learning Model Facilitates the Perception of Acquisition of Current, Active Knowledge, in Contrast to the Collaborative Learning Model, which Favours the Perception of Acquisition of Collaborative Work Competences, and the Independent Model, which Lends Itself more to Technical and Practical Knowledge A total of 67% of the students felt they had acquired knowledge at a high or very high level. When asked about the type of knowledge they had acquired, more than 52% reported that they had acquired, at a high or very high level, all types of knowledge (knowledge of the subject, technical knowledge, current knowledge, theoretical knowledge, and collaborative competences) (Figure 2). Significant differences in knowledge acquisition are observed concerning knowledge of the subject (F(2.93), sig. (bilateral) = 0.014), current knowledge (F(4.77), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000), theoretical knowledge (F(4.77), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000), and collaborative working competences (F(5.32), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000). The Kruskal–Wallis U test confirms the differences (asymptotic sig. 0.001, 0.023, and 0.001, respectively). For all variables, the effect size is small (R2 between 0.014 and 0.110). Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 8 of 14 Sustainability 2020, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 14 Figure 2. Perception of acquired knowledge (percentages). Significant differences in knowledge acquisition are observed concerning knowledge of the subject (F(2.93), sig. (bilateral) = 0.014), current knowledge (F(4.77), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000), theoretical knowledge (F(4.77), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000), and collaborative working competences (F(5.32), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000). The Kruskal–Wallis U test confirms the differences (asymptotic sig. 0.001, 0.023, and 0.001, respectively). For all variables, the effect size is small (R2 between 0.014 and 0.110). The students who participated in the independent theoretical model reported a lower acquisition of current knowledge (news, projects, events, etc.) than did those who formed part of the medium-term discussion social model (sig. = 0.003), the class group collaboration model (sig. = 0.002), or the small group collaboration model (sig. = 0.015). In addition, the students in the independent theoretical model had a lower mean perception of having developed collaborative competences than did the students in the two collaborative models (sig. = 0.003 and sig. = 0.004). The students in the class group collaborative model reported the best perception of acquired knowledge (mean of 4) of all three types (subject, theoretical, current), maintaining significant differences (Bonferroni, sig. = 0.014) with the medium-term discussion social model in subject knowledge acquisition and theoretical knowledge acquisition. 3.3. H3. The Constructivist, Connected, Active, Social, Participatory Learning Experience Is Favoured by the Social Model and the Collaborative Model, in Contrast to Critical, more-Reflexive Learning, which Is Facilitated by the Independent Model More than 63% of the students reported having developed the different types of learning (critical and reflexive, constructivist, connectivist, social, and active), except in independent learning (39.2%). Significant differences were observed in social learning (F (7.88), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000) and independent learning (F (5.83), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000). The Kruskal–Wallis U test confirmed the differences (asymptotic sig. 0.000). For all the variables, the effect size was medium (R2 between 0.164 and 0.121). The students in the independent theoretical model had less perception of having acquired social learning than did the students who participated in the social models (Bonferroni = 0.003 in SM model and 0.000 in SC) and collaborative models (Bonferroni = 0.0032 in CP model and 0.049 in CG). Figure 2. Perception of acquired knowledge (percentages). The students who participated in the independent theoretical model reported a lower acquisition of current knowledge (news, projects, events, etc.) than did those who formed part of the medium-term discussion social model (sig. = 0.003), the class group collaboration model (sig. = 0.002), or the small group collaboration model (sig. = 0.015). In addition, the students in the independent theoretical model had a lower mean perception of having developed collaborative competences than did the students in the two collaborative models (sig. = 0.003 and sig. = 0.004). The students in the class group collaborative model reported the best perception of acquired knowledge (mean of 4) of all three types (subject, theoretical, current), maintaining significant differences (Bonferroni, sig. = 0.014) with the medium-term discussion social model in subject knowledge acquisition and theoretical knowledge acquisition. 3.3. H3. The Constructivist, Connected, Active, Social, Participatory Learning Experience Is Favoured by the Social Model and the Collaborative Model, in Contrast to Critical, more-Reflexive Learning, which Is Facilitated by the Independent Model More than 63% of the students reported having developed the different types of learning (critical and reflexive, constructivist, connectivist, social, and active), except in independent learning (39.2%). Significant differences were observed in social learning (F (7.88), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000) and independent learning (F (5.83), sig. (bilateral) = 0.000). The Kruskal–Wallis U test confirmed the differences (asymptotic sig. 0.000). For all the variables, the effect size was medium (R2 between 0.164 and 0.121). The students in the independent theoretical model had less perception of having acquired social learning than did the students who participated in the social models (Bonferroni = 0.003 in SM model and 0.000 in SC) and collaborative models (Bonferroni = 0.0032 in CP model and 0.049 in CG). Furthermore, students in the independent model had a greater perception of having engaged in independent learning than did students in the medium-term discussion social model (Bonferroni, sig. = 0.000), the short-term social model (sig. = 0.020), or the small group collaborative model (sig. = 0.022). Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 9 of 14 3.4. H4. Feelings of Membership and Cohesion Are Favoured by the Collaborative and Social Learning Models, but not by the Independent Model Most of the students developed a feeling of membership at a high or very high level in all the learning groups: 60% reported feeling like part of the group/class, 45.5% reported having developed ties to classmates, and 46% said they felt that they and their classmates shared similar needs and objectives. To examine the feeling of cohesion, it was found that at a high or very high level, 45.5% reported that they intended to prolong their participation in the virtual course and/or social network, 47.2% reported that they would like to have access to the virtual course and/or social network frequently in future, and 42% said that they would consider it a loss if they could no longer use the virtual course and/or social network in future. Significant differences were found in all aspects (membership and cohesion) except for the cohesion variable in the feeling of loss at not having access to the virtual course and/or social network in future. The data were confirmed with the Kruskal–Wallis test (Table 4). Table 4. Kruskal-Wallis test for “feelings of membership and cohesion”. Test Statistic Membership Cohesion Group/Class Tie Shared Interests Continue Course Access Regret Kruskal–Wallis H 35.290 35.769 25.548 23.986 22.300 12.878 dof 5 5 5 5 5 5 Asymptotic sig. 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.025 “Feelings of membership and cohesion” variable. Students working in the independent theoretical model displayed significantly lower means in membership feeling in all three values analysed (feeling like part of the group/class, feeling of creating ties to other students, feeling that they and classmates shared similar needs and objectives), in contrast to the social models (SM and SC) and the small group collaborative model (Table 5). In addition, the students in the independent practical model expressed a lesser feeling of having created ties to classmates than did the students in the small group collaborative model (Bonferroni, sig. 0.023). Table 5. Bonferroni post-hoc test for “membership feeling”. Model Membership Feeling Feeling Like Part of the Group/Class Feeling that Ties Are Created Feeling that Needs and Objectives Are Shared IT SM 0.000 0.000 0.006 SC 0.000 0.000 0.002 CP 0.000 0.000 0.005 “Membership feeling” variable. As a measure of the feeling of cohesion, the intention of prolonging participation in the virtual course and/or the social network among students in the small group collaborative model was observed to have a significantly higher mean than among students in the medium-term discussion social model or the independent theoretical model. Furthermore, analysis of the sentimental value of loss if students could not access the virtual course and/or social network in future revealed a lower mean in the independent theoretical model than in the short-term discussion social model (0.025) or the small group collaborative model (0.003). Qualitative analysis confirmed that the students who participated in the independent model made it clear that they had learned without the need to interact with others and without relying on others’ help (“Interaction was not necessary, which is sad, and was not encouraged outside the forum” (S167)). These students had difficulty developing a feeling of membership and cohesion, in contrast to Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 10 of 14 the students in the social and collaborative models (“I worked and studied alone” (S173); “I do not have any relationships” (S130)). In contrast, qualitative analysis also showed that the students who participated in the social and collaborative models valued the fact that they and their classmates had shared objectives: “Because we’ve gotten along, and we have the same concerns and problems having to do with the degree” (S116); “Everybody in our group is pursuing the same objectives, and the best thing about attending UNED is the way students work together” (S152); “Because relations in the group are quite satisfactory. We share some interests and objectives. Everybody’s taken into consideration and account, with respect and in a spirit of building together” (S137). These students stressed the importance of mutual support: “It’s comforting to see that, if you ever feel lost, there’s always somebody else who feels the same, so you’re not alone” (S90); “I’ve found a great group of classmates, and we help each other all the time” (S36). They identify with the group: “We’re all in the same boat. Being in a distance education programme is lonely, but when you have classmates’ support, in Facebook groups, in forums, you identify with them” (S62). Lastly, the students perceived working as a group as providing added value: “The class/group work is very balanced, I feel, and group members are showing a lot of interest in what we’re doing” (S76). 4. Discussion and Conclusions The first conclusion is that the general learning experience (general assessment, usefulness, and satisfaction) was valued positively by the students in all models, without significant differences between models. Hypothesis 1 is not confirmed. The model type does not significantly influence the general assessment of the learning experience. Although the models that reinforce social and cooperative skills were expected to result in higher satisfaction and a higher score, it was observed to be otherwise. No significant differences were found in these variables. Interestingly, 60% of the students felt that they had acquired knowledge (subject knowledge, technical knowledge, current knowledge, theoretical knowledge, and collaborative competences) and developed their learning capacity (for critical and reflexive learning, constructivist learning, connectivist learning, social learning, and active learning) at a high or very high level. The learning model’s influence on students’ perception of knowledge acquisition was small. Therefore, hypothesis 2 is confirmed only on some points. The independent model was not observed to lend itself more to the acquisition of technical and theoretical knowledge; in fact, acquisition of theoretical knowledge was facilitated within the medium-term discussion social model and the class group collaborative model. An independent model may hamper students’ perception of current knowledge and development of collaborative competences, in contrast to the more-interactive collaborative and social models. Using social models and small group collaboration models makes it easier for students to share information and knowledge than using models based on theoretical or practical activities performed independently. No significant differences were observed between the two types of independent models; therefore, it is concluded that the most influential characteristic is the independent nature of the learning process, instead of the type of activity (i.e., theoretical or practical) that the student performs. Also, it was found that students tend to ask for information when working collaboratively in small groups, as opposed to when using independent models. Hypothesis 3 is partially confirmed. On the one hand, the social and collaborative models favour social learning; on the other hand, all the models have the same weight in the constructivist, connectivist, active, critical, and reflexive learning experience. The perception of social learning (learning in society thanks to contributions from other participants such as students and instructors participating, sharing, and engaging with each other) reinforced by the independent theoretical model is significantly worse than the perception of social learning reinforced by the social and collaborative models. The independent model strengthens the perception of independent learning, learning alone thanks to independent effort, where students autonomously bear responsibility for their own learning Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 11 of 14 process [32]. Students express this clearly when they say they are learning alone and do not look for help or deal with others, thus confirming both types of independence (instrumental and emotional) reported by Moore [33]. The last conclusion is that all these results show that collaborative learning is a very complete model for use in digital and university contexts; it is active [14] and interactive [7,8,15,16], and it relies especially on processes of communication and interaction [17]. The collaborative model shares these characteristics with the social model, which is based on discussion on social networks. As we have seen, the type of activity proposed in the independent model did not generally influence students. These data are striking, because the technological activity based on programming an interactive story, game, and/or animation was expected not only to engender reports of greater satisfaction and usefulness, but also to make significant differences in students’ perception of knowledge acquisition and practical learning. The qualitative and quantitative data reveal the value students place on interacting, sharing resources, and learning with classmates. This aspect is common to the social model and the collaborative model. Both models are potentially valuable for learning about interaction and membership, creating social communities based on a more-informal communication process of sharing ideas [19]. The data confirm the results, indicating that these interactions boost a feeling of group belonging [26,30,31], membership, and cohesion [26]. In short, hypothesis 4 is confirmed: Feelings of membership and cohesion are favoured by the collaborative and social learning models, but not by the independent model. This study demonstrates the importance of social and collaborative models in the framework of sustainable education. Both promote a positive learning experience and reinforce feelings of membership and cohesion. All these aspects are essential if the educational community is to reach its goal of getting students to engage socially, as the UN [2] report states. Students in the independent model displayed individualistic feelings far removed from a sustainable focus; they did not generate feelings of being connected with others, they did not feel like part of the group/class or feel that they shared needs and objectives, nor did they display any intention of prolonging their participation in the virtual course and/or social network or accessing the virtual course and/or social network in future. The independent model, by definition, involved an autonomous learning process, which proved itself generally effective. Even so, to enhance students’ perception of being part of a group and part of society, the course could include specific units related to sustainability. It is confirmed that an individualised learning process could make it difficult for academic institutions to deal with social issues and issues in sustainable development [1,3], in contrast to models that favour interpersonal relationships, be it through intense academic discussions on Twitter and/or by working in collaboration. In social and collaborative models, students especially value teamwork, mutual support, and the fact that they share objectives with their classmates. Students stress the importance of mutual classmate support in distance education, where it is often hard to really see other people, to feel that there actually is another person out there with whom one can work, who can provide support and also needs support. The qualitative analysis confirms that the students who participated in the independent model had difficulties simply realising that other people existed. These results can be assessed in greater depth through future research by exploring independent models’ possible potential for analysing environmental problems and their tie-in to personal decisions. Research could look into how the independent model influences topics where individual responsibility, decision making, and our short-, medium-, and long-term contribution to society as a whole and our planet’s sustainability play a leading role. It would be interesting to put to the test an independent learning model that seeks to understand how our life depends on others and in turn others depend on our decisions. This idea could seed future research into independent learning models. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, S.S.-C. and M.D.F.P.; methodology, S.S.-C. and M.D.F.P.; formal analysis, S.S.-C.; investigation, S.S.-C. and M.D.F.P.; draft preparation, S.S.-C. and M.D.F.P.; writing, S.S.-C.; review: S.S.-C. and M.D.F.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 12 of 14 Funding: This publication was written as part of the Methodologies Based on Connected, Active Collaborative Learning (Metodologías basadas en el aprendizaje conectado, activo y colaborativo) Project by the Innovation Group on Communication, Social Networks, and New Narratives (Comunicación, Redes Sociales y nuevas narrativas) (GID2017-4). The project was funded by UNED’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Digitalisation and Innovation (Vicerrectorado de Digitalización e Innovación), with the support of the University Distance Education Institute (Instituto Universitario de Educación a Distancia), under the Plan to Support Teaching Innovation at UNED (Plan de apoyo a la innovación docente en la UNED), grant number 500. It began in October 2019 and ended in September 2020. Acknowledgments: The authors express their sincere appreciation to UNED’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Digitalisation and Innovation and the University Distance Education Institute. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1. Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura. Educación para los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible; UNESCO: Paris, France, 2017; Available online: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/ 0024/002474/247444e.pdf (accessed on 6 October 2020). 2. 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Redes educativas 2.1. Medios sociales, entornos colaborativos y procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje. RUSC 2011, 8, 7–24. 20. Santoveña-Casl, S. Effects of Continuous Assessment on the Academic Performance of Future Teacher. Croat. J. Educ. 2019, 21, 777–822. [CrossRef] 21. Canals, A. ARS, información y conocimiento. In Conectados por Redes Sociales. Introducción al Análisis de Redes Sociales y Casos Prácticos; Del Fresno, M., Marqués, P., Paunero, D.S., Eds.; Editorial UOC: Barcelona, Spain, 2014; pp. 247–276. 22. Greenhow, C.; Robelia, B. Old communication, new literacies: Social network sites as social learning resources. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 2009, 4, 1130–1161. [CrossRef] 23. Lee, J.; Bonk, C.J. Social network analysis of peer relationships and online interactions in a blended class using blogs. Internet High. Educ. 2016, 28, 35–44. [CrossRef] 24. Veltri, G.A. Microblogging and nanotweets: Nanotechnology on Twitter. Public Underst. Sci. 2012, 22, 832–849. [CrossRef] 25. 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In El Desarrollo de Teoría Desde la Generación Conceptual; Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS): Madrid, Spain, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.15516/cje.v21i3.3013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01484.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.09.001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963662512463510 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2011.597250 http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v14i3.1462 http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v8i3.372 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.08.012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00347.x http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/dixon.pdf http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/dixon.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v9i3.586 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1980599 Sustainability 2020, 12, 9067 14 of 14 42. Kurucay, M.; Inan, A. Examining the effects of learner-learner interactions on satisfaction and learning in an online undergraduate course. Comput. Educ. 2017, 115, 20–37. [CrossRef] 43. Luo, N.; Zhang, M.; Qi, D. Effects of different interactions on students’ sense of community in e-learning environment. Comput. Educ. 2017, 115, 153–160. [CrossRef] 44. Gibbs, G. El Análisis de Datos Cualitativos en Investigación Cualitativa; Morata: Madrid, Spain, 2012. 45. Flick, U. El Diseño de Investigación Cualitativa; Morata: Madrid, Spain, 2015. 46. García-Llamas, J.L.; González, M.A.; Ballesteros, B. Introducción a la Investigación en Educación II; UNED: Madrid, Spain, 2001. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.06.010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.08.006 http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Introduction Materials and Methods Context of the Study Collaborative Learning Model (C) Social Model Based on Academic Discussion on Social Networks (Twitter) (S) Independent (or Autonomous) Learning Model (I) Population and Sample Design and Data Collection Instruments Results H1. The General Assessment of the Learning Experience Is Differentially Influenced by the Learning Model Used H2. The Learning Model Used Exerts a Differential Influence on the Knowledge Acquisition Experience: The Social Learning Model Facilitates the Perception of Acquisition of Current, Active Knowledge, in Contrast to the Collaborative Learning Model, which Favours the Perception of Acquisition of Collaborative Work Competences, and the Independent Model, which Lends Itself more to Technical and Practical Knowledge H3. The Constructivist, Connected, Active, Social, Participatory Learning Experience Is Favoured by the Social Model and the Collaborative Model, in Contrast to Critical, more-Reflexive Learning, which Is Facilitated by the Independent Model H4. Feelings of Membership and Cohesion Are Favoured by the Collaborative and Social Learning Models, but not by the Independent Model Discussion and Conclusions References 
work_dmm3duzpivhmngajouiug2d6we	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_ducw3u76bvftxicejaldrx6uj4	----	OER-Proceedings th st Disclaimer: The content of this proceedings is based on camera-ready papers received by 11th September 2012. The accuracy of the content and language used in the full papers published in this proceedings is the onus of the author/co-authors. Except where otherwise noted, the content of this proceedings is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The last three decades have seen a phenomenal increase in the provision of higher education in almost all parts of greater Asia. Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges and Training Institutes in a variety of forms, structures, academic programmes and funding provisions have been on an almost linear upward progression. Participating and financially supporting this growth, besides governments, has been private–for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, public–private partnerships, international and intergovernmental agencies. In addition many individuals, with the arrival of and access to the Internet, World Wide Web and whole range of fast and intelligent ICTs., were prepared to share their life experiences and knowledge, with others, through YouTube, Flickr, Wiki educator and other similar tools. Consumers of education have themselves become producers of education. The three day symposium will consider the organics of the relationship between the use of OERs and the ambitions of nation states to enhance access and improve equity for All especially in higher levels of learning. The symposium will consider and focus on issues in relation to Access, Equity and the use of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education. Key presentations will be made by leading educators of the region along with others of international repute. Presentations will also be solicited by policy makers, institutional administrators, scholars, international advocates and practitioners. The Aim of the Symposium To understand and at the same time share knowledge of the role played by these technologies in the context of increasing access, enhancing equity and promoting lifelong learning in higher education. Speakers (Abstracts) Opening Session: Dr. GWANG-JO KIM, Director UNESCO Bangkok REGIONAL TRENDS, ACHIEVEMENTS, ISSUES ON ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE AND CONTENTS : Asia Pacific Perspectives on OER Session one: Prof. David Wiley, Bingham Young University, USA The OER COUP: A research framework for Open Educational Resources http://www.oerasia.org/keynote-abstracts Session Two: Prof. Asha Kanwar, President, Commonwealth of Learning, Canada TEN YEARS OF OER: enlarging the circle? Session Three: Prof. Mangala Sunder Krishnan, Indian Institute of Technology, India Technology-Enabled and Technology-Enhanced Open Educational Resources Session Four: Prof. Som Naidu, Charles Sturt University, Australia Engines for Education: Integrating Open Educational Resources in Learning and Teaching Session Five: Prof. Wayne Mackintosh, CEO, OER Foundation and The OER University, New Zealand The OER university: A sustainable model for more affordable education futures Closing Session: Dr. Grace J. Alfonso, Chancellor, University of the Philippines Open University Open Educational Resources (OER) in Asia in a Digitized World Proceedings Cover Content Full papers.pdf Session 1: Policy ID1 - Carina Bossu, David Bull & Mark Brown Introduction OER Movement in Australia The Research Project Some Preliminary Findings Conclusion Acknowledgements References ID10 - Meena Hwang 1 Overview of Platforms 1.1 Factors to be considered 2. Further Considerations 3 References ID15 - Kerry de Hart & Truida Oosthuizen ID5 - Anne Fitzgerald & Haswira Nor Mohd Hashim Session 2: Technology ID17 - Shinde Jayashree, Kesarkar Madhura & Ghosh Swagata Aune, S. (2008). 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials, Mashabale Inc. Retrieved in August, 2012 from http://mashable.com/2008/02/21/screencasting-video-tutorials/ ID12 - Chung Sheng Hung & Khor Ean Teng ID8 - Ishan Abeywardena & Gajaraj Dhanarajan ID9 - Paul Kawachi & Shuangxu Yin Session 3: Practice ID29 - Tsuneo Yamada ID2 - Lim Kin Chew ID14 - Janaka Liyanagama & Upali Vidanapathirana ID30 - Mohan Menon & Kamsiah Mohd Ali Session 4: Quality ID16 - K C Li & K S Yuen ID11 - Pradeep Kumar Misra ID18 - D. Enkhbat & D. Potter ID22 - Kesarkar Madhura, Shinde Jayashree & Deshmukh Sarika EVALUATION OF LEARNING OBJECTS Deshmukh Sarika, deshmukh.sarika4@gmail.com Abstract Learning Objects: Definitions of learning object: Key characteristic of learning object: Learning object repository: Previous approaches to evaluating learning objects: Evaluation Rubric: Educational Significance of the Study: Sample of the study: Tool for data collection: Preparation of the tool: Learning objectives: Content quality: Language: Graphics: Interactivity: Navigation: Questions: Feedback: Animation: Sound: Validation of tools: Table 1 Score for Each Learning Object References: Wiley II, D.(n.d.) Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy, Retrieved July 28, 2011 from reusability.org/read/chapters/wiley.doc Annexure A Session 5: Sustainability ID21 - Yoon Sook Jhee Rajendran Nagappan, Rosma bt Osman & Seva Bala Sundaram ID18 - Sitansu S. Jena ID23 - K S Yuen & K C Li ID28 - Marie-Sol P. Hidalgo 
work_duduxu262vblroeyrrdforg7di	----	ED 188 561 yITHOP TITLE INSTITUTfON 'PUB DATE NOTE EDPS PRICE DEKFTPTOPS IDENTIFIrDS DOCOMPIT RiSTIE 11\.0.12 922 ' Brown, (54.ep);en: Nathenson, Michael. u Designing'Instructional Mmterlals: Guesswork or. *Facts?' Open Univ., Waltbt-, Blrchley, Bucks (En4landl:.Irst. of Educational TechnOl^ay. Nov '78* '381). , 1'MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. *Academic Ability: *Basle-Ski/11.s: *Externalregree Programs: Foreian.Countri_es: tigher"Educatior: *Instructional Ma*.erialsi Instructional"Sytems: Introductory .C"urses: Language Skills: Mathematics Anxiety: *Science Programs:-*Social Sciences: Techni.9. Education *Open UniversityjGreat Prit in) ABSTPACT A systematic study is reported,of the. matheuatica l . skills and learning abilities of new students imdediately prier to eptry int^ the Open University's (Ftl.glmrd), foundation courses in t.echnology and social sciences. q'te intent was to provide predicve informatiu about potential student' entry skfl.ls fo the team preparing a newtechnology' foundation course. Basi langpage and ematical skills were assessed by a guePtionna rt-test given to" le of applicants for the courses. was foI# that ftathemAtical skills were an area needing speciattention, ar chances ir course materials mnd ..schedules*are propoSe It;:. assist südents in developing Ole skills In the coutse. 1110.5 concluded that suph- systemaUc evaluations cf critical rearner skills are needed as a preregbisite to the desi6n of instructional material for ether courses, both at the Open Univeraity and in other institutions. IMSE) e 1 4 ************ Peprcductions supplsi*.ed by EDP! are.the best that cah be mad? * irt9p the orIgInal document. * . . , - 0 If co' a 1. ASSTRACT a. <, S. This is a reportoof a systematic study of the mathematical skills and learning capabilities of new Students immediately prior to entry into.T100 and D101. the Open University, Foundation.Courseft in 6 Technology and Social Sciences respectively. The aim of the Study waskto pravide predictive information about potential student.entry skills for . the Course Team jareparing T101; 'the new Technology Foundation Course. The report describes the mettiod used in the study and expliiins how it forma part of-an overalloptrategy 4 for: ensuring that the design of the instructiona). l material to be used in T101 is based onothe known. t * legirilin-g capabilities and requirements og its likely . students.. ---T-iifindings of the -Study..are reportedk t 1 . briefly and the prOblims ana advantages of usisg-thi's- . 0 . is kind of approach to cuVriculum divelopment are discussed. I. pa 1 3 %nil 1 5 1980, * a 4 Desionind Instructional Materials: . Guesswork.or Facts? 0 ..1 Stephen Brown. and MiChael rathenion The Open University No4'ember 1978* ; Oa 4 4 q. 04 BACKGROUND TO THE nippy 4, I/ 2Undergraduates of the Open.University are normally required to take two foundation courses towards their .deree. Each (#. foundation course is considered to be the equivalent ofrsix months full-time study or one year part-time. There are five foundation courses, one for each of the following faculties: . Ar sl.Social Sciences, Science, Mathematics, Technology. .14 /, . A major task for foundatfon courses'is to bridge the gap between school.and aniversity 14e1 study in terms of studentA4 study, communication and dialectical The Open University 0 was created to provide educational opportunities for people who have missed out for some reason on the ediscatibn 'facilities avaitlable to /them in earlier life. Consequently, Open.University ig . students come from a wide range of backgrounds, employment and ONim 6 educ!ation, and they can differ widely on entry in terms of ages e 0 k . , skills and know/edge. A distinctive feature Of foundation courses ,I 0 therefore must be their breadth Of appeal Snd their'ability to 4.S meet the educationaLreAtirements of an extremely diverse student : population. T101 is the code nuMber of the new Open University Technology p. Folindation Course entitled "Living with.Technology". It is plandbd . to replace the'existing course (T.106: The Man-Made.World) in 1986. 0 TIO1 is a course about technology rather than in technolOgy in the sense that it is concerned with the ways in which technology influences both our present way of life and.our future. The team 4 A 1..f c .. r / 4 . i 77 . 'reapabible for producipg the course, the Course TeaM, believes . . t . % . . that,Living with Ttchnolow will be of vital interest and releva-nce " 4 * O . to-a broad spectrum of students, not just those with an interest in the engineering aspects of.tethnology. Consequently, the Course d 0 Team wants to piement the coursliin a way which will make it accessible to studints, yhatever their previous background or skills. A basic and, on the face of it self-evident, tenet of goodo teaching is that the teaching 'material should be matched:toethe 4? akills and learning abilities of the students at whom it is directed. That is to say, the teaching material should begin at a 5. level which corresponds to the skills of the students immediately prior to taking the-course and it should-proceed at pade consonant willh thefr abilities to assimilate the new*. material. Despite the obvious common sense of this approach it is not always carried out in practive.fOr a very good reason. Nkt-the time the-teaching material is i,eing prepared neither the entry.*- skills nor the4earm1ng cabililities of the future students * known. a In the case of T1 the.tar get student population for the new Technology FoundStion, Øourse is broader than that currently registered for T100. JTAble 1 shows that only 11% of the application' from ew stUdents.for fouriaation courses'are for-2100. ir rf the Course Team is successfUl a much larger proportion of N 4 0 r . students who currently apply for other foundation courhea in the: . , University (i.e., in the Social Science, Sciere, Arts and 44 Mathematics Faculiies) will also apply foripOl. 4? I. P Table 1: Applications from nev7 students Pow Foundation Courses 1 averaged over197741979. (Note the pereentagefigures f`eitt? quoted are approximate only o.the nearest ini;eger.) -.xi. . ...,. . . , a -Foundation Course Applications , Arts . . 34 , Social SCience 1 26 . Science -.4 , le, , , Maths ; ( V. 14 . .. Technologi It 0 a S. 0 4. - S. a. * I. V. 'Detailed inforrtion on studpni abilities prior to course commencement is not availSble. The only available'institutional ,research data.list student characteristics.such a a'ge, occupation, sex,Ireviktus Oalifications, eter or describe student.performance . on a partidular coursele.g., number of assignments passed, number . . , oi.students talking the' exam, average exam scores, etc. What these t -4 kinds of data do not tell the course 1esigner4is. what skills tbe 4 students are likely to possess at tfie loeginning pi- the course, or how theyrwillfespond to diffiiirent teaching strategies. In other . . . ,. words, the existing survey data.are not sufficiently R5edictive. 4 To overcome these difficulties the Course Team has dedided to adopt a three-livilet_strategy aimed at ensuring.that the course material is tailored as closely as possible to'the learning requirements of its studer4. Pt. . I . The first part of the strategy is a skills survey aimed at A providing quantitativeoinformation about the likely entry skills and learning abilit f ;rtol students: The intended function of this 'information is to provide mime guidelines for setting *stahdards in'an areS fraught with-dincertainty, conflictin0 opinions and myths. , Thd'second part is ascheme for developmentally taistirig the . teachinsvmaterial for the first six stlidy week's of the course in draft form. The first six study weeks are curcual to successful .1 A study' of the entire.cOurse since they will lay the foundations of'the basic numeracy aild literacy skills in addition to intr;ducing students to some iMportant technological activity* areas. The results obtained from the developmental testing will he used to ratfify or revise as necessary the findings from the , skills survey. 4 The third part of th6 st?htexy is 4 programme.with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the. Ito f , teachtng fn the coursP.and rotrosppctively idehtifying learning ong-term course evaluation J difficulties' encountered by the students. It is recognised that the previous two approaches (a pre-course skills sUrverand, f dovekrpmemtal testing 'of parts of the course) although'useful for " eatablisbing reference points,,are unliRely in themselves'to . enable the Course Team to produde'the best posflible cours.p on a 4 4 first attelipt.i/.It will bewnec essary to assess,the effectiveness . .1 ofidge course as. a whole in its 'final po lished form-amd to\make s mpdifications0o-1. For this reason a Course EvalUation Team has been establis4111 with the responsibiUty for collecting feedback *- from students on all arpects of the coursb during its firs year presentation, .(4980) . for modifying the co The vesulting feedback data,will be.the basis urse as necessary during the second yoar (1981), amd for re-presenting a revised course irk the. third-year (1982). It is hoped that fhe revised course will be mAched sufficiently clqsdly to studentoe learning requirements for it to be able to run substantially unchanged fol. six years.. In due course reports will hd.produced discupsin e.results of the second and third parts of the Course Team strategy. This I. or' V A 2 paw. is concernbd with the f4rE4 part: the kills Survey. st, 0, THE SURVEY 'METHOD The aim of the survey r The two skills'of literacy and numeracy referred to. above were identified as being of,importance to the study of technology. Of these, n*meracy was felt to be a particularly important topic for investiga0.; because the ability to solve problems numerically is . . considered to be one of the most important skills of technologists; it is also a skill which has Caused difficu/ties for studentsAon ihe Curr:ent Technology Foundation Course. Moreover, within the Open Univasity as a whole, mathematics seem to be a stumbling 'hock for students in as much as courses with substantial mathematics ), / e . have hidher withdrawal rates than courses with little or none. More , . fundamental even than basic numeracy are the algorithmic skills ,,z.,.equird to .carry out the computations involved once the problems have been appropriately xpressed. The aim of the survey was to provide the Course.Team with detailed useful information about students' entry level algorithmic Skillh and learning capabilities. - in areas relevant tosthe subject matter_proposed for the beginning of the course: 41. (1) Basic Arithmetic, including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, negative nuMbeirs, precedence' of operators and brackets. (2) Fractions and Ratios, including addition; subtraction4 0- multiplication.and division of.fractiipns and.the cpnversion of.fractionsto ratios and vice-versa. f (3) 'Percentages, including Calculating percentages, converiing percentages to fractions and vice-versa and percentages to decimals and vice-versa. (4) Decimals, including converting fractions to decimals and vice-versa, multiplication and division of decimals , and rounding, truncating and,signIficant figures: 4 (5) Areas ang Volumes, including calculating the areas of rectangles, parallelograms, ttiangles and circles, the Surface areas of simple solids,and the,volumes of simple sonde. (6) Graphs, including plotting and reading coordinates and lirplotting graphs. 4 8 Withi n1,1111,s # of these six areas the Course Team wanted answers , to four ques :- . ' e (1) 'What Proportion of the sample targi population are able to carry out simple calculations without any help from T101? .-(2) What Torlioportion of the sample are able to perform the calculations with oar a 'brief reminder'? (3) What proportion of the samille required detailed teaching in order to learn (or releaim) the algorithmic skills required to perform the calculations? (4)' How Much time Le spent studying the detailed teachinle / - Design of the Veationnaire, 4 I 1 A separate questionnaire was prepared for each of the six areas and was divided into a number of blocks of calculations. Each block covered three or more subskilis of the.general skill being 'assessed. For example, in the Baste Arithmetic questionnaire, the first ! block assessed simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; the second aAsessed the use of 'negative nuMbers1;. the .third /precedence of operatorie; and the fourth blodk assessed the ft use of brackets. Students were asked to tackle all the bloas of calculations at the beginning of a questionnaire, then.to mark theit answers to the first block.' If they got them all right they proceeded to mark their answerr to the iecond block. If they- got any wrong. or were - uriable to do any of the calculations in the first block they were directed to a brief reminder of how to do thosekinds of calculations, then to another similar set of calculaiions to tadkle. If they got all the talculations right &Ater the brief reminder they were asked to proceed with marking their answers to the second block. Otherwise they were asked to study some detailed teaahing and to attempt a further,set ofcalculations. The detailed teaching.material used was partly culled from a variety of existing OU and other sourees and partly prepared espectally for the survey where none.of the existing material seemed suitable. :After marking Ifieir answers to the *third set of calculations ihey were asked to proceed with marking their answers to the next block. This procedve, which was reimated for eadh block in turn, is summarised in Figure 1. # 1.4 f . Tackle all Blticks ve 04:; 0a - - 10 - or all -righI Read -detailed teaching F. z Tackle Mark more answer.s probldms° , Mark answers to Block 2 1111111/111M yes Fig- 1. Procedure for completing a' questioimaire 9 a 4 0 a g Students weile also asked to record the amount of time they spent studying the detailed teaching and answering the problems which-follow,de it. ik SelectioWof the sampleepopuAtion . t There was, at the tide of carrying out the survey, mo poo1 of . A . applicants for the course which could be sampled fort their pre-cburse ( . 2 skills Or learnihg capabilities. Such a pool will not be available until lat, 1979, i.e., when the course will almost readi for V presentatidn. Instead a sample poiulation had to be defined which would be is representative as possible of the kindsi"of student T101 110. is intended to attract. The target student pOpulation was identified as the present range of students who apply for T100 plus a larger proportion than'at present of studedts who are attracted .to the Social Science Foundation Coursey D101. This is not to say that the Course Team hopePtce lure students away from the Social Sciences but rather it is hoped that more students *ill take both a Social Scieece and a Technology Foundation Course. It was decided therefOre to look at students who had been offered a plaoe on either T100 Or D101 and who were waiting for their course to begin. Only new students (i.e., those commencing their first year of studY as Open University undergraduates) were regarded as relevant subjects for the study. This was-because T101 will be oriented primarily.towards the requiremeqts of students with no previous experience of university Tabl.e.2. Percentage 31. 12. 77 Withdrawal of New Students froM T100 at by Educational Qualifications. Educational Qualifications. 0 '. Percentage of students in this category who , .. have withdrawn from the course No formitl - 45 I CSE/RSA 1 et. 50 101 level 1-4 . . , 30 em level 5+ 28 .. 1A1 level 1 22 22 , ONC irr OND ..1.. 24 HNC or HND 16 Teachers Cert. 13 Univ. Diploma 6 15 A Univ. Degree . 4 No data , 11 1 6 a - 13 - 44 ldvel study. Consequently, it is necessary to pase the design of 1 the teaching imaterials on the skills and capabilities of liew students rather than those already in the Open UniVersity kearning system a a It w40 decided not to survey the whole body of new students . . . 1 registered for both expected to possess T100 and D101,sinc,d many of thohe can be a quite gophisticated,numeracy skills. The aim of the study.lias to identiYy-the lowest likely levels of entry t skills and learning capabilities w of potential T101 students in order a to determine the starting leveland learAing gradient for such skills inithe course. Applicalits for Open University courses are asked to indicate Which of a number of educational qualiilcation categorieip they fit into on entry. Table 2 lists these educational categories ih the left-hand column. :* v . The Table-shows the4pfiriportion ot new students who hadstrithdrawn . from T100 in 1977 by the'end of the course-expressed as'a percentage. of the total number of new students who had paid their course fees. From this Tabld it can be seen that there is a tendency for students with few educ,tional qualifications to withdraw.from T100 in greater- proportions ihan those'with rather more qualifications. a It woaldecided to include students in the lowest three 'categories , % r , only in thelvamPle. The sample populaiion therefore was all 2279 iof the new tudents who had registered for either T100 o'i- D101 .in 1978 7 V 4 \I and who fell into one of the followinft.three educational categories: 10 (1) Students with no formal educational qualifications. (2) Students having a CSE, RSA or school leaving certificgtte in one or more subjects. (1) Students with GCE 20, level, CSE 202 grade, school certificate or equivalent in 1-4 subjects. 4 Table I shows the proportions of students in each of these categories as a percentage of the total intake of.newly registered students to'both T100 and D101 in 1977. It is apparent from the %Table that thp proportions were approximately the samefor both cases. Taile 3. Proportions of Newly Rpgistered Student Intake 1977 4.. in Different Educational-Categories. Educational COURSES Qualifications . T100 D101 No formal 11% I0/4 . . csA/4A 2 4% ii% , -4 1-4 201 levels ,. ty% . to% Total , 28% 24% 8 0 Administration of the survey It was decided that it would be impracticabl.e to ask any student to attempt more than one questionnaire because of the amount of time 1' requird to inswer each one. Pilot tests indicated that, for those students who had to work through all. the deiaiked teaching and the accompanying problems, each questionnaire required approximately' 2i hours study time to complete.. Accordinglyithe sample population was split into six equally siied groups, each group receiving a different quesiionnaire. Within each group tha three educational categories sampled were represented in the same proportions as in, the sample popula;tion as &whole. Each qmpstionnaire was accompanied by a covering letter which explained the aims of the survey. It also invited the recepient to return the questionnaire blank if ,they were unable to complete it for sow, reasonl-but to specify what those reasons were. No inducement.tarespond was offered other than . an appeal to their- altruihni. 1.1 t The first Iwo, questionnaires were mailed jto students in NoIrember t # 1977 and the remainder were sent as soAres they were ready. The last one was despatched at the beginning of rebruary 1978. . THE SURVEYRESULTS Responee rate. At' The response mite for Completed returned.questionnaires declined gradually.from 66%,to 57%; with a mean response rate.of approximately 62%. This decline can probably be explAinedly the fact that .foundation courses kegin in early February and in addition to the actual course texts, stuaents receive a large volUme of material , from their regional office and other OU sources. consluentay, the 4 later queStionnaires would have been in increaciing compdtition with other moeci pressing material for the htudents' Ittention. Of the je% who did not return a completed ques:tionnaire, sows responded to our invitation to return it blank with an explanation. \ These responses were bllster.ed bycdditional coMillents volunteered by .students who had returned completed questionnaires. The inter- pretation and classification of such open-ended\reedback was to a large extent arbitrary. Many respon*es contained' multiple reasons for non-return. However the following four categories Amerged as the major relevant ones:- (1) Thoseo4ho regarded the.exercises as too daunting to attempt *A- . and those who attempted them anyway and wrote to us telling us how difficult they were (28'responses). (2) Those wtko for perSonal reasons such,as illness, changing job, %moving home, etc. were unable to:find the time'to coM7iete, the questiarnaire (21 responses). (3) Those who did not understand what they had been asked-to 0 dol9 response). (4) Those who regarditd the exercises.Set as too triyial to be worthy of an attempt and those who attempted ihem anyway I. 0 . but *rote to us telling us how eapy they were (7 reaponses). . The misunderstanding* referred to in category 3 'above were aimosi entirely due to the fact'that the D104students who received a questionnaire assumed that we had sent it to them by mistake. Many of these respondents told us th'at their difficulties with mathematics had,contributed.to their decision never t6 take a technojogy coUrse. This is interesting because such studnts are precisely the kind we are tring to encourage to study T101. 20 * % of students getitng all the Prokess right Fig. 2. Pei-formance bifferences Associated with Course Preference performance differences associated with course preference r 4 ' Differences between the T100 and D101 itudents are sDOwn in Figure 2. It can be seen fromithe figure that on Average about 15% more T106 students than 1)104 students got all therdblems right on ' their first try. In most cases this diffirence was reduc'ed to about 9% by the reminder and further reduced to about 6% by the detailed .' feaching. The two exceptions to this trend'were ihe Fractions and Ratios questionnaire and the Percentages questionnaire. On the . Fractions and Ratios ques ionnaire, the iniV.ai difference between T100 and D101 students wad-Tairly small (9%) and itliholied little change after either the iteminder or the detailed iteaching. On the Percentagits questionnaire, a larger initial differerice-Of 1%; was eeduced to 16% by the reminder:and to 11% by the detailed teAching. Performance differences associated with educational qualifications if IV . . Performance ifferences associated with differences in educational . . , # -qualifications are shown in Figure 3. On four of the sfx-questionnaires, A larger proportion of respondents in the 14 101 level category got all the answers right on'thetr-first tey than did eespondents in' either.of the other two categoriesf on'the Graphk questioniiaire, .th9 - difference betwefin the 1-4 001 lievlitlo and the "no qualifications" _ category was only 1%. On the two questionnaires where the peeformance , . . is - , of the 1-4 00' levels group was not the best, Decimali and Areas lux! . - A - Volumes, thedifferences_between all three categories were less than . . . e . _ 396. guriiisingly,sponClents ufith no formal qualifications.did slightlybe'fter than students in the; CSE/RSA category 9n the./first' Ary in five of the six questionnaires. There.was some tendency for'performance differences between ir 22 Nallb r . I 1 - . % of students geiting all the problems right 4 30 26 4. TRY 1' 2 No formal 6 e . .1 2 3 1 2 ,3 TRX AE/RSA 1-4 20/ levels 'BASIC ARITHMETIC s'- 11 4. $. - 4. a A moilt Fig. 3: Performance Differences Associated with Educational Qualificationi. 23 Joe. 4111r of studisnts getting all the problems Aght TRY . 1 - 2 3 No formal I ,2 3 1 2 3 TRY CSE/RSA 1-4 '0' levels FRAdTIONS AND RATIOS 'Fig. 3 ,(Cont.) ar - cfa of students ng oil the probleasgetti /- Mo formai Fig. 1. (Cont.) 1. 12 3 CSSALSA VOINTAGES 1.-.6 *CIO levels "' 25 gt 44 1 . % of stbdents gettihg all the'problens right 4 S. qa sr WV 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2, 1 Tur. No form:al, esgittsAt 1-4 90, levels Fig. 3. (Coot.) DEC 26 a. A 41.4 Mirs 4 % of students getting all the problems right 100-, 90- 0 80- , 4d-A 30-; 20-1 10-k. Q- . TRY 2 1 1. 2 ,47 , 1 . No 'formal -csAft.tsA .tot levels ' 4 2 3 TRY. 4 S ARRAS AND VOLUMES'. filb: 3. (Cont.) -r'"" . ." % of students getting all the problems right 100- 70- 6o. 50- *30- 20- 10-, AV re A Tiff 1' 2 3 -1 2 3 1 2 4 3 TRY ' csg/OsA 1-4 100 levelsNo. formal GRAPHS Fig...". (Cont.), . _dr 0 categories to be reduced on successive tries, modt notably in'the Basic Arithmetic questionnaire. It is important to note, however, that in the Percentages questionnaire, the initial. 10% lead established by the 1.14 109 levels yroup was barely diminished despite the fact that the'other two groups converged. Similarly in the Graphs questionnaire, the 1-4 ,levels and the no qualifications groups began witgan approximately 6% lead over the CSE/RSA group; a lead which they retained throughout successive tries. Overall performance results e, Figure 4 summarises the overall For eadh questiolmaire, it shows the got all ofthe problems right on the and following the detailed teaching. performance results of the Study. proportion of respondents who first try, after the reminder, ' It can be seen from Figure 4 that the reminders' were in all cases effective, producing on average, a 20% increase in the proportion of mispondents able to get all the problems right on their seopnd try. The effects of the detailed teaching were less clear. Although moderately effective on the Basic Arithmetic and Decimals questionnaires, the overall increase in the proportion of students able to get all the problems right after the detailedlteaching, was on average,:less than 5%. This left. some 10% of the respondents still unable to answer the problems correctly, even after being exposed to the detailed vteaching. Overall approximately 35% of the respondents did not get all the e %.of student6 getting all the rob1¼ns right 100- 90- 1 80- 60-( 30- 20- 1CM 11111M% 1 1 1. 1 T R Y 1 2 3 i 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 . 3 . 1 2 3 1 2 3 TRY o miA ,gI; 1 4 d m V 1o o ci 2 r4 44 r4 I P.1 14 1 1 E VA 1,4 0-A g Wm Fig. 4. Performance on Bath Questionnaire on Successive Tries, 30 problems right on their first try. Assuming the.respondents to be a representative of the sample population, this suggests that 35% of all new T100 categories sampl (4From Table 3 itvcan be seen that students in the educational V D101 students in the three educational need some help with the kinds of problems set. categoriewsampled constitute 26% of the combined inUke of new studitnts to T1.00 an4VE1101. Thus the proportion of new students entering these courses who need help,with basic mathematical skills ig! 35% of 26% Or just over 9% of the total intake of new students into T100 and 1)104. vascussIom OF THE RESULTS In general the results of the study indicate that the algorithmic skiils present difficulties for a significant proportion of students in the categories sampled, particul.arly for those with few or no academic qualifications and those Who have indicated a preference for social science rather than techhology courses. The fact that some (38%) of the students selected for the survey sample did not yespoild obviously has iMplications for the representatiVeness of the results obtained and for the validity of any conclusions drawn froth those results. Although meagret, the open-ended feedback suggests that a majir reason for non-response to the survey was a desire by individuals not to reveal their ladk of numeracy skills. The feedbadk 'also suggests that students with numeracy problems deliberately avoid the present Technology Foundati4n Coui.se precisely * because of this weakness. In other words., the perfotmance of those students Who responded-is probably better on average thah the actual mean performance capability of the Whole sample. In addition, it ' 11/ 31 b. seems 'reasonable to suppose that numeracy problems are not confined to students'in the categories sampledrand that the problem is eyen greater thim indicated by the survey results. For example, students with-only one.otAt level or evdn a degree in an area not requiring numeracy may have problems with mathematics. Similarly, students who currentlg register for the Arts Fouridation Course may do so.partly because they are reassured by its essentially non- mathematical Syllabus. The ineffectiveness of the detailed teaching used inillfte survey is of particular concern to currivlum designers. As stated in the introduction, the matbrial was drawn partly from a range /of Open University sources and partly generated especially for the survey. 'One ()pious problem with the detailed teaching was the absence of practise exercises. Several respondents remarked that they believed they could have done better given more time to practice-the skills beim; taught. Others actually told us that they had borrowed "Teach Yourself Mathematics" types of books and set themselves practise exercises, Applying a 90% criterion-level to the results it has been'possible to make firm recommendations to the Course Team abOut the level of teaching which should be provided in T101 for each of the skills. surveyed. These recommendations correspond to the three levels of teaching provided in the questionnaires: none; a briei reminder; detailed teaching. Thus if 90% or more of the respondents got all_ of the problems in a particular bloc& right on the first try then the:recommendation for Rroviding no teaching was made. If less than 90% got all the problems in a block right on. the first try then the 32 # reconsnendatid'in was for the provision of a brief reminder. Similarly if less than 90% of thearespondents who tried the problems after the reminder got them,all right then a recommendation was made to the e Course Team for detailed teaching of the skill covered in that block. In the light of the survey finding that on average 10% of the respondents were still unible'to get all the problemexight after the detailed teaching, four further iecommendations have been made:- (1) Numeracy teething should be integrated into the. course material in a meaningful way. Because the course is designed to be issue and problem oriented, the need for calculations will arise naturally from topics 1iecussed, cOncepts taught, and evidence evalUated. It is anticipated that this integrtttion will be more motivating, than for example, the kind of preparatory mathematics booklets used on other Foundation Courses. 4 (2) Mathematical topics should be taught via the use of a calculator. This will allow students to tackle problems Using realistic data right from the start without having to go through the tedious process of long computations. It is self-evident that students will have to be taught how to .use the calculator in a sensible manner. (3) The first six weeks worth of.course work Which ceintains the bulk of the basic numeracy teadhing should be mailed to students early, so that instead of Six weeks new students will have the option of spending two to three months practising and.consolidating their basic numeracy skills. (4) Optional practise exercises shonld be provided for the minority of studenti who still have difficulty after the detailed teaching but it should be stressed thatIthese are additional to the course workload. That is to say, the Course Team shoul not take the learning requirements of these students as its baseline for developing numeracy skills but it should provide extra optional helpjor the few who need it. A number of important assumptions underlie the war in which the Numeracy Study has been carried out. These concern the representativeness - of the sample selected, the'extent to which the "material used in the ; questionnaires is likely to correspond to the teaching material used in the course, the validity of the comparisons drawn between different groups within age sample and the reliability of the data obtained. It has been assumed that the selected Sample is representative ok the future student intaim into the new course. There is of course an unavoidable conflict built into this approach. On the One hand, it was our intention to establish what the skills and learning capabilities of future T101 sttidents`will be immediatel7 rior to thefr 4 entry into the course. On the other hand, we wanted the information sufficiently far in advance of the commencement of the course for it to be useful in the preparation of the instructional material to be . used in the course. In practice this meant that the attidy had to be darried out two years before the course is due to be presented to the first students. Any attempt to base the design of new instructional material on the known skills and abilities of-future students seems likel to-encounter this problem unless the'candidates are carefully selected for theif suitability to undertake the course. This latter, approach is quite common, but it is arguable that students are then being matdhed to the teadhing material - an approadh which is quite 34 antithetical to the spirit and aims pf the Open University. The problems posed and the teaching material provided in the questionnaires were each presented in a pure, abstract form divorced from any practical application. But technolwists use mathematiCs as a toot for tackling real problems. Consequently, ih T101 mathematics-wil be introduced and taught in the context of practical applioationq. On the one hand it may make it easier for students to learn theJbasic numeracy skills if they can see their relevance and usefulness and apply them to concrete examples. Alternatively, students may encounter-additionarNifficulties as a result of having to learn how to interpret and remodel problems so that they can be handled mathematically. ConseqUently, thefindings of the Numeracy Study can,only be taken as a very rough'guide to the likely performance capabilitiei ..d.hd learning difficulties of students actually studying the course. It has been assumed that the student gloups tackling the various questionnaires were evenly matched in terms of their skills and fi learning abilities and that comparisons between groups are thua valid. It is impossible to be certain that the groups.are matched unless individuals are assigned to them on the basis of their known skills / and abilities. Sinc 1 these are what vie wish to measure and to do so we havesto divide the students into groups first there is clearly a .t. conflict here. The best we can do is assume that within each of the three educational categories identified, stpdents have approximately eqUal capabilities and skills. They can then be assigned randomly to groups in such a way as to ensure-that the relative proporitons of students from each catedory are the same in all groups. -Finalli, it has been assumed that the responses obtained are A . honest and accurate. It. is bonceivable that some students may have cheated by looking up the answers and filling these in instead of working thrliugh the problems set themselves. Some may ibelieve that, despite our`assurance te the contrary, h high score would favourably influence their future assessment record in the University. Each of these four assumptions can be regarded as a weakness of the_method used in the study in that they cast doubt on the reliability of the data obtained and the validity of the conclusions drawn there from. However, before passing judgement, the method has to be reviewed in the context in which it was devised. The aim of the study was to obtain only a first approximation of the likely skins and learning capabilities of potential Tiol students. The findings are intended to supplement the Course Team's teaching experiences in an area beset by anecdote, hearsarand prejddice. As iexplained in the Introduction, he Numeracy Study is one part of a three part strategy for ensuring the coordination of students' needs with course production. "he other two parts, developmental testing and complete course evaluation, will provide the necessary checks on the findings of.the Numeracy Study. The strength of the Numeracy Study is that it is predictive. It provides information About students' likely learning needs sufficiently far in advance'.to be useful in the preparation of the course. The other two methods are necessarily poet hoc4in their orientation. They can only provide information about the suitability of material Which hes already been epared. In conclusion, we-believe that the findings of the Numeracy'StUdy , demonstrate the importance of carrying out e systematic evaluation of Critical learner skills ad a pre-requisite to the design of 41, instructional material. Without the knowledge generated by the study, the T101 Course Team would have been in great danger of- , selecting an initial skill level and subsequent learning gradient whith wouid be too geeat for at least 9% of the new students for whom the course is being prepared. It is hoped that other course designers at the Open University and elsehohere will be encouraged to undertake simi].,fr types of investigations.' 11.0 ks1/ L 3 7 t, N 41. COURSE DEVELOPME7.GROUP PAPERS, CB1 NOTES ON THE EARLY. STAGES OF-COURSE PLANNING by Phillipe Duchastels-Roger Harrison, Euan Henderson, Barbara Hodgsont Adrian Kirkwood, Robert Zimmer. CD2 HOW TO USE CONSULTANTS SUCCESSFULLY by Judith Riley CDI DISCUSSING AND EVALUATING DRAFTS' by Judith Riley V CD4 ASSESSMENT by Judith Riley CD5 INTRODUCING NEW FACULTY MEMBERS TO COURSE PRODUCTION by Phillipe Duchastel and Roger Harrison CB() BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN TFACHING AND LEARNING AT A DISTANCE by Michael Nathenson C.1,7 CADI14gx1t4CT Ft-Ebehte,4 sway/ 6 °AMIE: tape* rh Pt* 4,3 Via, 664.44toci s - P 38 11# -/ 
work_dvvif5bcvbhtfe2wbgwagqn37q	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_dwxpqkspnzg2rnud5qad5xbali	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_e3yf2e4unjedhftb53b3g6cldm	----	Distance Education, Vol. 27, No. 2, August 2006, pp. 249–264 ISSN 0158-7919 (print); 1475-0198 (online)/06/020249–16 © 2006 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI 10.1080/01587910600789670 Introducing the R2D2 Model: Online learning for the diverse learners of this world Curtis J. Bonka* and Ke Zhangb aIndiana University, USA; bWayne State University, USA Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_178915.sgm10.1080/01587910600789670Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2006Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.272000000August 2006CurtisBonkcjbonk@indiana.edu The R2D2 method—read, reflect, display, and do—is a new model for designing and delivering distance education, and in particular, online learning. Such a model is especially important to address the diverse preferences of online learners of varied generations and varied Internet familiarity. Four quadrants can be utilized separately or as part of a problem-solving process: the first component primarily relates to methods to help learners acquire knowledge through online readings, virtual explorations, and listening to online lectures and podcasts. As such, it addresses verbal and auditory learners. The second component of the model focuses on reflective activities such as online blogs, reflective writing tasks, self-check examinations, and electronic portfolios. In the third quadrant, visual representations of the content are highlighted with techniques such as virtual tours, timelines, animations, and concept maps. Fourth, the model emphasizes what learn- ers can do with the content in hands-on activities including simulations, scenarios, and real-time cases. In effect, the R2D2 model is one means to organize and make sense of the diverse array of instructional possibilities currently available in distance education. It provides new ways of learning for diverse online students, and demonstrates easy-to-apply learning activities for instruc- tors to integrate various technologies in online learning. When thoughtfully designed, content delivered from this perspective should be more enriching for learners. The R2D2 model provides a framework for more engaging, dynamic, and responsive teaching and learning in online environ- ments. Introducing the R2D2 Model Online Learning for the Diverse Learners of this World Online learning has been increasingly popular in training and education. In 2004, about 2.7 million students in the USA took at least one course online, and 91% of * Corresponding author. School of Education, Room 2220, Instructional Systems Technology Department, Indiana University, 201 North Rose Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405-1006, USA. Email: cjbonk@indiana.edu 250 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang the public learning institutions in the USA had online class offerings (Allen & Seaman, 2004). However, with a high drop out rate (Carr, 2000; Diaz, 2002; Frankola, 2001), instructors face serious challenges to attract and retain diverse learners in online courses. Learners in online environments, especially those born after the mid-1970s, want learning that is responsive to their preferred styles of learning. Thus, it is important to recognize the rich body of literature on learning styles within face-to-face instruction (e.g., Felder & Brent, 2005; Kolb, 1984; Lawrence, 1993), and to provide an extended theoretical framework as well as practical guidance to enable online teaching to address varied learning styles, cultural backgrounds, generational differences, and preferences. This article proposes an easy-to-apply, practical model—the R2D2 model—that is designed to help online instructors integrate various learning activities with appropriate technol- ogies for effective online learning. In this way, R2D2 provides a framework for the changes required in learning and teaching that will arise as online distance education becomes more and more widespread. Learning Styles According to Kolb (1984), effective learning involves four phases: (a) getting involved in concrete experiences; (b) reflective listening and observations; (c) creating an idea with an abstract conceptualization; and (d) making decisions through active experi- mentations. Extending Kolb’s experiential learning approach, Bernice McCarthy (1987) developed the 4MAT system, identifying four types of learners: innovative, analytic, common sense, and dynamic. According to McCarthy, innovate learners are primarily interested in personal meanings, whereas analytic learners are focused on acquiring facts to understand concepts and processes. In contrast, common-sense learners want to know how things work, while the fourth type of learner in her model—dynamic learners—are primarily interested in self-directed discovery. Similarly, Fleming and Mills (1992a, 1992b) identified four types of learners and learning styles: (a) visual; (b) auditory; (c) reading/writing; and (d) kinesthetic, tactile, or exploratory, known as the VARK learning styles. According to the Fleming and Mills model, visual learners prefer diagrams, flowcharts, and graphics, yet educational technologies such as videos, films, Webcasts, or PowerPoint presen- tations are noticeably absent from their descriptions. In addition, auditory learners prefer hearing directions, lectures, or verbal information. Learners who prefer reading and writing learn best from text passages, words, and written explanations. Finally, tactile or kinesthetic learners learn best by connecting to reality through hands-on examples, role plays, debates, practice exercises, and simulations. All types of learning situations and events have their benefits and opportunities. The options available in online environments can make the learning formats more explicit. At the same time, the wealth of options might overwhelm online instructors and course designers. To provide an organizing aid for the various options, we designed a model for addressing online learning styles and an associated mnemonic to enhance the memorability and use of it. Introducing the R2D2 Model 251 Recent research by Bonk, Kim, and Zeng (2006) indicates that there is a shift looming on the horizon to more active learning, problem-solving, authentic learning, and virtual teaming or collaboration online. Bonk et al.’s research within both higher education and corporate training environments indicates that online courses will move away from being text-centered and lecture-based while increasingly incorpo- rating hands-on activities (Kim, Bonk, & Zeng, 2005). While hands-on learning was deemed the least addressed area today, it was predicted to be the most salient aspect of e-learning courses in the next couple of years (Bonk et al., 2006). Of course, more complex and realistic simulations, scenarios, and interactive news stories are already signaling part of this trend. This shift may reflect not only technological advances, but also may mesh with the learning styles of younger generations that are surfacing in college classrooms and corporate training settings (Oblinger, 2003). With young, tech-savvy learners entering college classrooms, there is increasing attention on generational lifestyles; some of it focusing on how different generations of students learn, or not learn, with various emerging as well as more common technologies (Dede, 2005). With increas- ing numbers of Generations X and Y as well as younger learners in online courses, educators must consider how to design their courses for greater interactivity, visualization, collaboration, captivation, and technology sophistication to motivate learners and promote effective learning. R2D2 Model As a further extension of the above theoretical framework, we propose the R2D2 model for online learning. It is distinct from instructional design models with the same name (e.g., Jost, Mumma, & Willis, 1999) or similar names such as R2D5 (i.e., Dream, Define, Design, Develop, Deliver, Review, and Revise—Pederson, 2005). Our model does not specifically address the instructional design and develop- ment process; instead, it fosters reflection on the type of tasks, resources, and activi- ties that one may want to embed in an online course or module so as to address different human learning strengths and preferences or skill target areas. Like 4MAT and VARK, the R2D2 model proposes an integration of four types of learning activ- ities: (a) Reading/Listening; (b) Reflecting/Writing; (c) Displaying; and (d) Doing. While highly similar to the VARK method, the R2D2 method places more emphasis on reflective activities, while auditory activities are generally grouped with the read- ing and writing quadrant. As noted in Table 1, the R2D2 model suggests a variety of learning activities for active and effective online learning with various e-learning technologies for each type of learner. Applications of the R2D2 Model As indicated, there are four components to the R2D2 model—Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing. Below we detail each of these components as well as instruc- tional activities that link to each area and type of learner. However, almost every 252 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang Table 1. Learning activities and technology applications for online course using the R2D2 model R2D2 Learning activities Technology/resource/example Reading, listening, and knowledge acquisition Reading materials (online or offline) and finding information (online or offline) Announcements, Q&A, FAQs For auditory and verbal, who prefer words, spoken or written explanations Synchronous online presentation Elluminate™, Live!™: http:// www.elluminate.com/ Breeze™: http:// www.macromedia.com/software/ breeze/ Online discussions, group discussions, and presentations Chat, Instant Messenger, bulletin boards/forums, Yahoo groups, listservs Guest expert chats with text, audio, whiteboard, application share, video, etc. Chat, Instant Messenger, bulletin boards, Yahoo groups, listservs Online tutorials Webinars pubMed tutorial: http:// www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/ pubmed_tutorial/m1001.html Webinar: http://www.nten.org/ webinars Listen to and/or watch lectures posted on the Web Audio, streamed video, podcasts Podcast directory: http:// www.podcast.net/ NPR podcast directory (Beta): http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/ podcast_directory.php Webcasts: United Nations Webcasts: http:// www.un.org/webcast/index.asp UC Berkeley Webcasts: http:// webcast.berkeley.edu/ Listen to and/or watch expert explanations Audio, streamed video, podcasts Online meetings in chat rooms or forums Online brainstorming or discussion with peers Chat, Instant Messenger, bulletin board, Yahoo groups, listserv Online testing Hot potato: http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/ halfbaked/ Captivate: http:// www.macromedia.com/software/ robodemo/ Webquest Online scavenger hunt Webquest portal: http:// webquest.org/ Online scavenger hunt: http:// www.spa3.k12.sc.us/ Scavenger.html Introducing the R2D2 Model 253 Table 1. (Continued) R2D2 Learning activities Technology/resource/example Reflection Posted interviews about occupations, internships, and field placement observations Blogs, bulletin board, streamed video For reflective and observational learners, who prefer to reflect, observe, view, and watch learning; they make careful judgments and view things from different perspectives Online role play Threaded discussion forums, interactive video conferencing via Elluminate™, Breeze™, or the like Online debates, pros and cons, mock trials Bulletin board, threaded discussion forums, online chats, video conferencing Collaborative group paper writing Sharepoint, Groove, Word, etc. Annotate electronic texts Blogs, Word documents with footnotes, comments, annotations Read, react to, and reflect upon documents in another language Blogs, online newsletters Write reflection papers: team reflection papers, trends in field, chat with expert reflections, group or class blogging, summary papers, etc. Online discussion forums, blogs, bulletin boards Provide feedback on papers MS Word “track changes” and “comment” Conferences with live video feeds Internet Time Group: http:// www.internettime.com/visual/ gallery6.htm Watch or observe expert performances online (music, Cyber fashion show, etc.) Streamed video, video conferencing Online modeling with archived exemplary performance data Streamed video Learning management systems (e.g., Moodle, WebCT, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, ANGEL, etc.) Electronic portfolios with reflections E-portfolios, blogs, personal homepage or Web site, CD, DVD Displaying Search video library of concepts, cases, or experts Video files, CD, DVD 254 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang Table 1. (Continued) R2D2 Learning activities Technology/resource/example For visual learners, who prefer diagrams, flowcharts, timelines, pictures, films, and demonstrations Learners generating graphic representation of knowledge structure Concept mapping (e.g., Inspiration, Kidspiration) and other visualization software Visual Understanding Environment (VUE): http:// vue.tccs.tufts.edu/ IHMC concept mapping tool: http://cmap.ihmc.us/ Learners create task timelines Timeline tool: http:// www.readwritethink.org/materials/ timeline/ http:// www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/ timeline.htm http://www.teach-nology.com/ web_tools/materials/timelines/ Interactive visual with online chat http://www.learningbydoing.net/ Peer evaluation and critics on learner-generated graphic representations Bulletin board, blogs Use draw tools in asynchronous chats Instant Messenger with whiteboard Flash visuals and animations Statistics, cash flow, visualization software to track weather patterns, etc. Taking virtual tours, and post team project in a gallery or virtual tour Virtual tours http:// astro.uchicago.edu/cara/vtour/ http://www.michielb.nl/sun/ http://www.md.huji.ac.il/vjt/ Adventure blogging ExplorersWeb: http:// www.explorersweb.com/ The Poles: http:// www.thepoles.com/ Online demonstrations Video-streamed lectures Doing For tactile/kinesthetic learners, who prefer learning by active doing, experiencing, hands-on, and often also group work Interactive, project-based learning with dynamic online databases Case simulations and manipulations The Global Grocery Project: http:// www.landmark-project.com/ggl/ The Globe Program: http:// www.globe.gov/globe_flash.html Business, special education, medical science, chemistry, etc. Introducing the R2D2 Model 255 activity discussed below will address more than one component. Our classifications are meant to indicate which aspect is primarily being addressed. If instructional designers involved in distance learning initiatives as well as online instructors take these four types of learning and learning activities into account when designing and delivering online and other forms of distance learning courses, they should experience higher success rates with diverse students. Reading, Listening, and Knowledge Acquisition for Verbal or Auditory Learners Reading, exploring resources, and listening to online lectures is the first part of the R2D2 model. Given that one must typically acquire knowledge prior to knowledge use, this first quadrant of the model essentially focuses on knowledge acquisition. In distance learning, there are various ways that knowledge can be acquired— through video-streamed lectures and podcasts, synchronous presentations, online discussions, guest expert chats, and online and paper-based readings and explora- tions. Learners in this quadrant might also prefer online tutorials, audiotapes or audio files, group discussions, speaking or presenting, and generally talking things through and negotiating meaning. With synchronous presentations and video- streamed presentations from the instructor or guest expert, the learner has multiple ways to internalize the information including both visual and verbal representations. Table 1. (Continued) R2D2 Learning activities Technology/resource/example Case-based learning MedCases CME Portal: http:// www.medcases.com/Physician/ cme_portal.asp SimTeacher: http:// www.simteacher.com/ Online simulations and lab resources Simulated businesses, hospitals, schools, farms, planets, etc. Posting oral histories Blogs, bulletin boards PBL Final products in online gallery or Web site Online survey research http://www.surveyshare.com and http://info.zoomerang.com Use iPod to create radio station iPod, podcast Digital movie-making based on reflective writings Digital video-recording hardware and software Create an online gallery to demonstrate current, past, and future students’ learning outcomes and achievements http://www.indiana.edu/∼tickit/ projectgallery/gallery.htm Online personal performances Theater, music, and surgery Webcasts, podcasts, etc. 256 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang Podcasting, which typically involves only an audio-channel, is rapidly growing in use in both higher education and corporate training. Online knowledge acquisition may also happen in virtual classrooms or Web conferences, with application sharing, Web touring, surveys and polls, online presentations, and chats. As the formats of online presentation tools proliferate, it is vital to conduct research in this area. Podcasting, for instance, has many open research questions related to learner satisfaction, use, access, and overall learning. In terms of reading, an online scavenger hunt and Webquest are common types of such activities. A learner might be assigned online reading materials or required to find articles that relate to the activities for a particular week. Content explorations might be guided where students read from a selection of articles prescreened by the instructor. Such guided discovery activities also might be more open-ended, where students select articles based on their interests related to the course. The latter approach is perhaps more suited to self-directed or self-motivated learners and online learning veterans; often these are older and more mature adults. In contrast, pre-assigned readings might be employed when students need more guidance or who are new to e-learning. Verbal learners will also appreciate frequently asked questions (FAQs), course announcements, and the archiving or posting of email internally within the system. Such learners may also prefer online chats, especially with voice channels open. Chat tools can also be used for online quizzing of select students to test their under- standing of course content, using dynamic assessment that changes with their answers. Finally, foreign language courses might have students read online newslet- ters, newspapers, magazines, and other foreign correspondence and then test them or have them use it in a particular way. There are a variety of ways to help online learners read, listen, explore, and other- wise acquire knowledge. Instructor guidelines on how to use these tools and where to focus one’s efforts are central to the smooth running of the course and student retention within it. In effect, the first quadrant of the R2D2 model lays out a range of learning activities to help with active knowledge acquisition and collaborative knowledge construction with widely available learning technologies. Opportunities for Reflective or Observational Learners The second part of the R2D2 model has students reflect on what they have learned; essentially, it addresses reflective or observational learners who prefer observing, viewing, watching, and reflecting upon learning situations and activities. Such a learning style relates to those who listen to others and learn from models or exam- ples of what is expected. Naturally, as a key part of this reflection, this quadrant also emphasizes writing tasks and activities. Distance learning may offer these types of learners engaging opportunities not available in face-to-face classes. With asynchronous discussion forums, for instance, they can think carefully and thoughtfully before responding to others or posting a new message. Such delayed response opportunities are especially important for Introducing the R2D2 Model 257 in-depth discussions and to critically synthesize thoughts across topics. Instructors may also ask students to create online resource libraries (ORLs) of additional articles that they have read. While reading electronic articles and exploring associated resources is vital to learning, collaborative and reflective writing online has become an increasing part of the curriculum. For instance, in addition to everyday email responding, bulletin board commentaries on current news and posted articles, threaded online discussions in college courses, and engaging in multiple online chats with colleagues and friends around the world, millions of learners are now reflecting on their learning in their personal or course-related blogs. There are many instructional uses of blogs, such as individual blogs for reflections, team blogs for joint assignments, instructor blogs for a class, and class blogs for cross-cultural exchanges (Martindale & Wiley, 2005). In our own classes, we typically assign students a “critical friend” in the class who gives them weekly feedback and hopefully some encouragement on their blog-related postings. Also, at the end of the semester, we require a reflection paper on their overall blogging experiences and associated learning. In addition, students might engage in mock trials, pro-and-con debates, and role plays within online discussion forums or conferences.1 These controversies will foster critical reflections as well as collaborative knowledge sharing and construction. And, of course, reflection papers, summary writing, and collaborative group papers are also ideal for reflective learners. Once completed, learners will further benefit from written comments and annotations from peers, team-mates, and experts. As we have found, the “track changes” and “insert comment” features in Microsoft Word™ are handy. There are a variety of other highly reflective activities which can be fostered on the Internet. For instance, in an internship or field placement in professional schools, such as accounting, law, education, or nursing, students may interview practitioners about their jobs so that they can reflect on the demands of a particular occupation. They may also reflect on how certain concepts, principles, or ideas from their book(s) or online lectures are referred to, encountered, or handled in the real world (Bonk, Hara, Dennen, Malikowski, & Supplee, 2000). During such live placements, reflective learners might notice particular nuances related to how a concept is imple- mented as well as alternatives and competing ideas to that which they have learned in class. As a result, they might discern where book knowledge is not directly applied in the real world as well as how their knowledge must continually be modified and updated to fit the actual circumstance or situation. If an internship is not possible, online instructors might embed videos of real-world situations and scenarios for learners to reflect on. Of course, while such a technique is useful for visual learners, it also has extensive applications for reflective learners depending on the task selected and overall pedagogical use. Another way of placing reflective learners into professional situations, again with links to visual learning as well, is to have them attend video-streamed conferences, seminars, or live performances, such as online music recitals, theater performances, heart surgeries, and fashion shows (e.g., Carlson, 2004; Olsen, 2003; Young, 2003). 258 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang As Albert Bandura’s (1986, 1997) social cognitive model of learning highlights, obser- vation and reflection are highly powerful components of human learning. Fortunately, with the emergence of personal learning tools such as blogs, personal homepages, student profiles, and electronic portfolios, opportunities for students’ reflections on their performances continue to mount. Using such tools as e-portfolios, learner reflec- tions can be accumulated and shared (Young, 2002). Of course, when online learners transition from observational learning to conducting their own online performances, they tend to operate in the fourth quadrant of the R2D2 model, as described below. Similarly, online learners might reflect on a podcast or Webinar offered via a virtual classroom using tools like Breeze™, WebEx™, Placeware™, or Elluminate™ (Erlanger, 2005). Instructors might, for instance, conduct a demonstration of a physics or chemistry experiment online that can be reused and synchronized with student notes. These activities apprentice students into their chosen profession by allowing them to lurk on the outside or periphery of a discipline, in effect, as legitimate peripheral participants (Lave & Wenger, 1991). If current trends continue, such synchronous e-learning tools and applications will offer increasingly interactive activities for apprenticing online learners and fostering learner engage- ment (Bonk et al., 2006; Shi & Morrow, 2006). With trends toward more active and self-directed learning, there has been a parallel emphasis on student reflection so that they internalize and expand upon their learn- ing pursuits. For instance, online instructors might utilize self-tests, self-reflections, “Did you know?” prompts, and other self-assessment activities to get learners to pause and reflect on the content that they are learning. Such tasks are especially common in courses with extensive learner–content interactions or minimal feedback from instructors, peers, and outside experts. Along these same lines, sample answers or archived student work examples give reflective learners something to observe as a standard or model of exemplary performance. Online modeling might be especially useful in physical education and outdoor recreation courses as well as in counseling, teacher training, and any form of emergency preparedness training. As e-learning tools are designed for self-testing, reviewing one’s performance, and observing the performance of others, there are increasing opportunities for those who prefer activities in the second quadrant of the R2D2 model. As clearly indicated by the R2D2 model, emerging and existing technologies provide new opportunities to address the varied learning styles and preferences in online courses, and, at the same time, these differences require more responsive online pedagogies. What seems needed now is research in this area to explore the impacts of reflection on student learning and course satisfaction. Displaying Learning for Visual Learners The third part of the R2D2 model forces students to represent what they have learned or are in the process of learning through visual representations, depictions, or overviews. Learning in this quadrant of distance education focuses on providing pictures, diagrams, charts, graphs, videos, animations, and written overviews or Introducing the R2D2 Model 259 summaries, and, therefore, relates most closely with visual learners. It can also involve the manipulation of mathematical and scientific symbols as in algebra, chemistry, and physics. There is notable overlap here with the reflection category, since activities in both quadrants can entail showing learners a macro representation of a concept, principle, or idea and then having them reflect on its use. Once again, there are myriad strategies that can be called upon in distance learning environments to address visual learners or others who have moved to this stage of the R2D2 learning process. For instance, an online instructor might use an interactive whiteboard in synchronous communications with students using arrows and different colors, notations, and highlights. The instructor might also have students explore or search through an online library of video clips which display concepts, procedures, and skills as in the real world. In particular, video cases are often used in professional schools such as business, medicine, law, and education to display key concepts in action. Another way to address this form of learning is through a series of visuals for exploration or navigation. For instance, the Internet is becoming increasingly used for virtual tours. An archeology professor might take students on a virtual tour of a Mayan ruin, an economics professor might design a virtual tour of oil wells and the underlying supply potential around the world, and a tourism instructor might show students how to highlight different points of interest in a country, community, or geographic region. Such virtual tours might provide quick overviews that anchor students’ learning in a visual that can be discussed or replayed later to pull out key concepts (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990). There are still more techniques to enhance student visual learning, such as adven- ture blogs and animations. Adventure blogs may provide current and interactive news stories, blogs of explorers in their travels, and videos of explorer treks or scientific experiments. Such tools take students directly to the content instead of reading about it in books or online articles. In effect, students can see it in action. While less current, online animations are also increasingly used to bring learners more directly into a discipline. An animation can be played to illustrate a concept more clearly, paused to give the learner time to reflect on it, and replayed when the learner has specific questions. As with the use of video cases and virtual tours, both adventure blogs and animations situate student learning in a real context (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Collins, 1990; Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1990) and engage such students in authentic learning environments (Herrington & Oliver, 1997; Herrington, Oliver, & Reeves, 2003; Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2002). The visual displays that are now available online can draw students into the learning environment and help them connect concepts that they have read about (Quadrant 1 of R2D2) and reflected upon (Quadrant 2 of R2D2), and begin to internalize them through visual conceptualizations. Even more important is having students form their own visual depictions and representations of the content, since students are more likely to remember information when they actively construct their own knowledge (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1991). For instance, students might create a concept map summarizing key points of a paper, 260 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang chapter, module, or lesson. Students might also represent their learning in a comparison and contrast matrix, Venn diagram, flowchart, or virtual tour. There are also a number of timeline tools available to help students represent their learning. With all these visual formats, one of the key goals is to foster student critical thinking and evaluation of their learning. The Internet is a highly visual tool which provides learners and instructors with access to current events in ways that previously were not possible. While there are many such visualization technologies available and new ones are constantly emerg- ing, additional tools and toolkits for visual representation are needed to guide learn- ers to become more self-directed in their online learning pursuits. At the same time, more empirical research is needed to investigate emerging pedagogies in online learning using visualization technologies, as the R2D2 model suggests. Hands-on Learning for Kinesthetic Learners The fourth quadrant of the R2D2 model involves having learners applying what they have learned, reflected on, and visualized in practice exercises or in the real world. Such learning links well with kinesthetic learners, who need to try out, experience, imitate, and practice concepts and ideas in order to learn them more deeply. Fortu- nately, the Internet is increasingly offering hands-on experiences or activities for online learners, especially in the science areas. One obvious way to apply learning is through the use of cases, scenarios, and simulations. These learning methods situate learners in rich contexts or authentic problems where they can test their knowledge or solutions against that of their instructor, their peers, or an expert. Cases now exist on the Web in almost any field of study from anthropology to zoology. In the medical field, for example, cases allow one to obtain case information, order lab tests, make diagnoses, and compare one’s solution to an expert’s (see http://www.medcases.com/Physician/cme_portal.asp). Similarly, in teacher education, pre-service teachers might interview for jobs in a simulated school, talk to school counselors, teachers, librarians, and principals about particular students or situations, and make decisions about problem cases (see http://www.simteacher.com/). In these online experiences, the goal is to engage learners in the content by allowing them to physically manipulate contents or vari- ables and observe the results of those manipulations. There are varying degrees of authenticity in online cases. For instance, in the real- time case approach (Theroux, Carpenter, & Kilbane, 2004), a full-time case writer is located in an existing company thereby enabling students to experience and discuss real events as they unfold. Online learners might not simply manipulate existing data, they might also collect and analyze it. Students and instructors may use any available technology including online chats, teleconferencing, threaded discussion forums, and video conferencing. Another idea for placing students in the real world is to have them conduct market research and interesting educational research using online polls and surveys. Real- world research enables learners to not only explore concepts in real-world settings, but Introducing the R2D2 Model 261 also potentially discover and share new knowledge. Authentic activities in fully online and blended environments also offer opportunities for sustained inquiry, the exami- nation of a task from multiple perspectives, interdisciplinary learning, and the creation of more polished and meaningful final products (Oliver, Herrington, & Reeves, 2006). Of course, there are many other ways for learners to collect real-world information with educational technologies. For example, students might interview famous people or those who lived through different historical events (e.g., World War II, the Vietnam War, etc.) and post those oral histories in an online podcast or digital movie. In expanding on the idea of oral histories, tools such as the VideoPaper Builder™ (see http://vpb.concord.org/?version=print) enable students to juxtapose a digital movie against a paper they have written. Using such a tool, a student might back up key points in a paper with video snippets of key events. Or, in teacher training, pre-service teachers might reflect on how their performances (as seen in Webcasts and other video tools) compare to state or national standards. Another interesting tool to enable students to take charge of their own learning is the use of an iPod for podcasting their own radio stations and shows. And with the emergence of video-capable iPods, there are numerous other applications where students become designers of knowledge. At the end of an online course, students might also produce final class products which are made available for an audience beyond the instructor. For example, student final projects might be posted to the Web in an online gallery for expert, teacher, or peer evaluation and feedback (Oliver & McLoughlin, 1999; Oliver, Omari, & Herrington, 1998). The first author of this article used this method in training rural teachers how to integrate technology into their curriculum (see http:// www.indiana.edu/∼tickit/projectgallery/gallery.htm). In effect, the fourth quadrant of the model expects students to apply their new knowledge and further extend learning by doing something such as making case decisions, conducting scientific experiments, and collecting and analyzing real-world data. For example, Ou and Zhang (in press) introduced various ways of integrating databases in teaching, including using live, dynamic, real-world databases from the Internet for students to experience firsthand scientific discoveries in different subject areas, or through interdisciplinary inquiries. Similar learning activities can be conducted in online environments as well. In courses where instructors might give up more control over the curriculum, learners might also take ideas from a course or module and create unique products or ideas. In either case—using existing resources or creating new ones—the learner is trying out ideas and concepts, instead of simply listening about them, reflecting on them, or seeing visual depictions of them as in the first three quadrants of the R2D2 model. Discussion Tools, resources, and activities for distance education are proliferating at a time of increasing demand for online education (Bonk, 2004). There are extensive opportunities to address learners with different styles of learning or learning prefer- ences, including those who prefer words or text, reflective activities, visual 262 C. J. Bonk and K. Zhang representations, or hands-on activities. The R2D2 model enables instructors to consider learners and learning activities in each quadrant, potentially providing a more engaging and enriching environment for online learning. In addition, this model offers a learning and problem-solving process that moves from the acquisi- tion of content to the reflection and visualization of it, and finally, to its actual use. As an instructional design model, it provides both a macro lens on processes that an instructor or instructional designer should consider in designing an online class, as well as a window into specific ideas that might work in successfully delivering it. In effect, it is an organizing aid for the distance educator. And, perhaps more importantly, the Read, Reflect, Display, and Do (i.e., R2D2) model is easy to remember and versatile to apply! With the increasing availability of learning technologies and virtually limitless pedagogical potential of such technologies, the R2D2 model lays out exciting opportunities to better address the needs for more versatile teaching and learning in online environments. Naturally, there are many open issues and questions that still need to be sorted out with this model as well as various limitations. Among the most pressing issues and ques- tions is whether self-reported assessments of learning styles at the start of a class will help instructors better deliver their online courses. In addition, are there more extensive learning gains and greater knowledge transfer in courses that use the R2D2 method over those that do not? In terms of limitations, it is obvious that many ideas cut across multiple quadrants of the model. At the same time, that also adds to the power of this model since some learning activities address more than one type of learner; and the model offers a means to make sense of the complexities and opportunities within online teaching and learning. The applications of the R2D2 model in designing and delivering online courses may take technology integration to a new level in distance education, and, more importantly, they may lead to positive changes in online pedagogical prac- tices, learner experiences and overall sense of satisfaction, and course and program success ratios. May the force be with all of those who attempt to take the R2D2 model on such research and development journeys in the coming years as well as those who embed this model in their own online teaching and learning practices! Note 1. We realize that these activities could easily be positioned in the fourth quadrant of the R2D2 model but place them here since they involve writing while most of the other tasks in the fourth quadrant do not. Notes on Contributors Curt Bonk is a Professor of Instructional Systems Technology and adjunct in the School of Informatics at Indiana University, USA. 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work_e5uqw4m3snggzinagnib4d3jni	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_ecv3cbjfcfb7jdd5mtxyaedwku	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_ekdhl3bhxjbuzi2ebcjyrrpaim	----	Book of Abstracts Sponsored by Volume edited by Gabriella Casalino and Riccardo Pecori Book of Abstracts HELMeTO 2020 Second International Workshop on Higher Education Learning Methodologies and Technologies Online September 17-18, 2020, Virtual Workshop Sponsored by Edited in September 2020 HELMeTO 2020 Message of the General Chairs of HELMeTO 2020 Message of the General Chairs of HELMeTO 2020 Dear friends, the 2019 edition of HELMeTO confirmed a growing interest on the online higher education topics, as well as the relevance of the interdisciplinary approach that characterize our annual event. The presentations and the talks triggered an intense discussion about the complex rela- tionship between technologies and pedagogical approaches. These reflections highlighted some topics of particular interest such as the potential role of learning analytics, the relevance of the learning design, and the key role of tutorship in online learning. While the HELMeTO steer- ing committee was working on the 2020 edition, to be held in Bari, the Covid-19 emergency erupted and, in few weeks, online learning topics escalated in the agendas of all the education institutions around the world: schools, universities, education ministries and policy makers. On one side the emergency led us to reconsider the organization of the conference, bringing the entire organization online, on the other side it appeared to us that the unprecedented situation needed a dedicated special session within HELMeTO 2020, a session dedicated to the impact of Covid-19 emergency on online learning. The emergency has forced universities to adopt solu- tions for distance learning very quickly, often without being able to provide adequate planning or build up the specific technical and didactic skills to develop e-learning courses. Even the del- icate aspect of the assessment, necessarily translated online too, was addressed with emergency solutions that each university has implemented on the basis of the technological resources and skills available as well as the specific nature of the degree courses. This extraordinary situation is well represented by most of the accepted contributions explicitly dedicated to the reaction of academic institution to the Covid-19 impact on their courses. Alongside these contributions there are those less linked to contingency, which address the key themes of online learning: learning analytics, online assessment, innovative teaching methodologies, roles and practices of online tutoring. We are aware of the fact that 2020 is not going to be a year as usual and all of us had to face something unexpected and unprecedented, facing the first global pandemic of the digital era, but, in the end, we decided to maintain the HELMeTO 2020 edition as a virtual workshop and place of discussion, with a special focus on the unexpected diffusion of online learning far beyond its usual reference domain. We received 59 extended abstract submissions from more than 170 authors and 13 countries (Spain, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, Norway, Canada, United Kingdom, Hungary, Yemen, Netherlands, Greece, Oman, Italy), after the peer review 40 contributions were accepted to the workshop. September 17, 2020 Bari The General Chairs: Loredana Perla Paolo Raviolo Daniel Burgos Pierpaolo Limone HELMeTO 2020 Program Committee Program/Scientific Committee Chairs: Laura Sara Agrati ’Giustino Fortunato’ University, Italy Pietro Picerno eCampus University, Italy Christian M. Stracke European Institute for Learning, Innovation and Cooperation, Germany Members: Pasquale Ardimento University of Bari, Italy Michele Baldassarre University of Bari, Italy Mario Luca Bernardi University of Sannio, Italy Gabriella Casalino University of Bari, Italy Marta Cimitile UniTelma Sapienza University, Italy Anna Dipace University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy Xu Du Central China Normal University, China Pietro Ducange University of Pisa, Italy Stefano Faralli Unitelma Sapienza University, Italy Alberto Fornasari University of Bari, Italy Muriel Frisch Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France Rosa Gallelli University of Bari, Italy Enzo Iuliano eCampus University, Italy Riccardo Mancini eCampus University, Italy Tawfik Masrour Ensam Meknes My Ismail University, Morocco Stefania Massaro University of Bari, Italy J. J. Mena Marcos Universidad de Salamanca, Spain Riccardo Pecori University of Sannio, Italy Marco Piccinno University of Salento, Italy Giuseppe Pirlo University of Bari, Italy Päivi Rasi University of Lapland, Finland Luigi Sarti Institute for Educational Technologies, Italy Gaetano Tieri Unitelma Sapienza University, Italy Chih-Hsiung Tu Northern Arizona University, USA Gennaro Vessio University of Bari, Italy Sharma Rajesh Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India Simona Ferrari ‘Sacro Cuore’ Catholic University, Italy Stefano Di Tore University of Salerno, Italy Viviana Vinci University of Reggio Calabria, Italy HELMeTO 2020 Table of Contents Table of Contents Bridges and Mediation in Higher Distance Education. HELMeTO 2020 Editorial: Introduction to the Scientific Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Laura Sara Agrati, Daniel Burgos, Pietro Ducange, Pierpaolo Limone, Loredana Perla, Pietro Picerno, Paolo Raviolo and Christian M. Stracke Session 1 - The challenge of implementing emerging technology solution for online Session chair - Pietro Ducange, University of Pisa The Importance of the Temporal Factor in Educational Data Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Gabriella Casalino, Giovanna Castellano and Gennaro Vessio Cognitive Emotions Recognition in Distance Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Berardina Nadja De Carolis, Francesca D’Errico, Nicola Macchiarulo, Marinella Paciello and Giuseppe Palestra Perceiving Educational Value of Videos Based on Semi-automated Student Feedback and Theory-driven Video-analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Maka Eradze, Anna Dipace, Bojan Fazlagic and Anastasia Di Pietro Learning-state-estimation Method using Browsing History and Electroencephalogram in E-learning of Programming Language and Its Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Katsuyuki Umezawa, Tomohiko Saito, Takashi Ishida, Makoto Nakazawa and Shigeichi Hirasawa Using Virtual Reality for Artificial Intelligence Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Sølve Robert Bø Hunvik and Frank Lindseth Session 2 - Online learning pedagogical frameworks: models, perspec- tives and application Session chair - Paolo Raviolo, eCampus University Collective intelligence, hybrid device, conceptualization, professional evolutions . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Muriel Frisch, Simon Ndi-Mena, Jean-Marc Paragot and Victoria Pfeffer-Meyer Student Teachers’ Readiness to Develop Primary School Children’s Visual Memory Using Online Simulators: Possibilities of Distance Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Roza Valeeva and Elvira Sabirova Blended and online instructional strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Chiara Panciroli, Laura Corazza, Anita Macauda and Simona Nicolini Smart teaching: from the model of the use and acceptance of technology to the contemporary need for exclusive use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Giusi Antonia Toto and Pierpaolo Limone Learning between real and virtual. Frames, narrative thinking and paradigmatic thinking 48 Marco Piccinno HELMeTO 2020 Table of Contents Creation, implementation and evaluation of an e-learning course to prepare the Final Degree Project in Teaching Studies in Spain: an exploratory analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Alejandro Quintas-Hijós and Lorena Latre-Navarro Cynicism toward university: a measure to predict academic dropout? Validation of the Italian version of the Cynical Attitudes Toward College Scale and perspectives for online learning environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Maria Elisa Maiolo, Tiziana Ramaci, Giuseppe Santisi and Massimiliano Barattucci Session 3 - Facing COVID19 Emergency in Higher Education Teaching and Learning: tools and practices Session chair - Pietro Picerno, eCampus University Moving from classroom to online within a month: keys to a successful transition . . . . . . . . . . 62 John Daniel, Neil Mort The educational relationship between teachers and young tennis players continued during the Covid-19 emergency: is the online distance didactics a new start? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Valerio Bonavolontà, Stefania Cataldi and Francesco Fischetti Digital competences and online social presence survey among university students during COVID19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Edit Kővári and Gerda Bak Does Test Anxiety increase in times of uncertainty? The School-Leaving Exam of Italian Students during the Covid19 Pandemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Stefania Stimilli, Roberto Pierdicca, Marina Paolanti, Emanuele Frontoni and Giuseppe Lavenia Satisfaction level and effectiveness of interactive online workshops during COVID-19 lockdown for students of a sport and exercise master’s degree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Enzo Iuliano, Massimiliano Mazzilli, Filippo Macaluso, Stefano Zambelli, Paolo Raviolo and Pietro Picerno. Facing the COVID-19 Pandemic with Moodle, Collaborate, Smowl, Meet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Marco Bernardo and Edoardo Bontà From the in-presence training model to the online one: the Laboratory of didactic technologies at the time of Covid19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Luca Luciani Mediatization of experience. Virtual internship and educator’s professional training . . . . . . . 89 Laura Sara Agrati and Viviana Vinci Outcome of a Pilot Course in Science Communication Highlights the Relevance of Student Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Maurizio Dabbicco, Sandra Lucente and Franco Liuzzi Session 4 - Facing COVID19 Emergency in Higher Education Teaching and Learning: frameworks and overviews Session chair - Alberto Fornasari, University of Bari HELMeTO 2020 Table of Contents From the COVID-19 emergency to the flexible learning. Survey on students’ representations in University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Viviana Vinci and Rosa Sgambelluri Open Online Courses and online teaching in Higher Education: the framework of Start@unito and the support during Covid -19 pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Barbara Bruschi, Marina Marchisio and Matteo Sacchet Resilience and landscape of the post COVID-19 strategic plan on Distance learning at Cadi Ayyad University. Catch the opportunity, being toward the total digital transformation of the university after the crisis time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Hana Ait Si Ahmad, Khadija El Kharki and Khalid Berrada Remote teaching in Italian schools: A pilot study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Stefano Di Tore Blended learning and transformative processes to face new and uncertain destinies . . . . . . . 114 Loretta Fabbri, Mario Giampaolo and Martina Capacci Metamorphosis of space into digital scholarship. A research on hybrid mediation in a university context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Loredana Perla, Alessia Scarinci and Ilenia Amati More than technology: How pedagogy underpins online education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Annette Lane and Kristin Petrovic Session 5 - Online learning technologies in practice Session chair - Christian M. Stracke, European Institute for Learning, Innovation and Cooperation, Germany Flipped Learning in a University Course on Object-Oriented Programming Paradigm . . . . . 126 Pasquale Ardimento and Michele Scalera A Problem-Based Approach in a Soft-Blended Environment for Teaching NoSQL Paradigms and Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Pietro Ducange and Paolo Raviolo A Cloud-Based Approach for Teaching Cloud Computing and Distributed Databases. Experiences at the University of Pisa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Antonio Cisternino, Pietro Ducange, Nicola Tonellotto and Carlo Vallati Presente Digitale: an Online Learning Platform for Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Michela Fazzolari, Stefania Fabbri, Ilaria Matteucci, Marinella Petrocchi and Anna Vaccarelli Hacking the Higher Education: Experiences from EduHack Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Fabrizio Barpi, Davide Dalmazzo, Antonella De Blasio and Fiorella Vinci Session 6 - Online learning strategies and resources: e-tutoring, com- munities, webinar and tools Session chair - Laura Sara Agrati, ‘Giustino Fortunato’ University HELMeTO 2020 Table of Contents The role of etutoring in eCampus University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Paolo Raviolo, Salvatore Messina, Irene Mauro and Marco Rondonotti Bridging Online Community: the strategic role of the E-tutor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Simona Ferrari and Serena Triacca Webinars in distance learning – the key to student progression? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Georgina Stebbings, Chris Mackintosh, Adrian Burden and Dave Sims Impacts of Distance Education on Learning Outcomes of Under-graduate Degree Students of Science Education in an Introductory Basic Biology Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Ibe Ebere, Joseph Aneke and Abamuche Joy Social annotation: innovating the teaching-learning process at university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Graziano Cecchinato A systematic literature review of italian studies related to learning assessment in higher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Pio Alfredo Di Tore, Giovanni Arduini, Diletta Chiusaroli, Maria Annarumma and Felice Corona Flipped Inclusion: a systemic-inclusive model of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Tonia De Giuseppe, Annalisa Ianniello and Felice Corona Bridges and Mediation in Higher Distance Education. HELMeTO 2020 Editorial: Introduction to the Scientific Contributions Laura Sara Agrati1,[0000−0003−0108−5176], Daniel Burgos2,[0000−0003−0498−1101], Pietro Ducange3,[0000−0003−4510−1350], Pierpaolo Limone4,[0000−0003−3852−4005], Loredana Perla5,[0000−0003−1520−0884], Pietro Picerno6,[0000−0003−3478−7692], Paolo Raviolo6,[0000−0002−2876−514X], and Christian M. Stracke7,[0000−0001−9656−8298] Contact: {loredana.perla@uniba.it, pietro.ducange@unipi.it} 1Giustino Fortunato University, Benevento, Italy 2Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, La Rioja, Spain 3University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy 4University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy 5University of Bari, Bari, Italy 6eCampus University, Novedrate CO, Italy 7Open Universiteit of the Netherlands, Herleen, Netherlands Keywords: Distance Learning, Higher Education, Technology-Enhanced Learn- ing, Digital Learning, Online Education, eLearning, Covid-19 C ovid-19 shook and is still shaking the whole world in a short period like globalization and the establishment of the worldwide Internet did over decades impacting all sectors, branches and levels of the society including for- mal school and higher education and leading to our digital age [1–4]. This impact is unique in the formal education during the last decades and led to many ad-hoc decisions and changes. Most educators and learning providers were not prepared and forced to move to distance education. Schools and universities had to be closed so that there was no alternative than establishing new forms of education. Technology-enhanced learning, now called e-Learning again as in its beginning in the 1990s, was considered as a potential solution but all parties (learners, educators, learning providers, educational systems and ministries) were lacking expertise, infrastructure and equipment. The situation was similar to the 1990s when e-text, e-learning, e-commerce, and e-governance were introduced. That is why these years can also be labeled as the electronic decade [5], while the following decade saw the rise and collapse of the e-Learning hype. Therefore, the 2000s are called the ’open’ decade [6] as they introduced open source, open systems, open standards, open archives, and open everything supported by the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware by UNESCO in 2002 [7]. Online col- laboration, communities and courses were enabled thanks to Web 2.0 and social media, including the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2008 [8, 9]. In the 2010s, e-Learning became mature, in particular in enterprises and their vo- 1 cational training. However, the focus was often on the technology and on simple transfer of face-to-face learning and paper-based materials in digital environ- ments. Thus, innovative methodologies and specific pedagogical approaches in online learning were demanded under the umbrella term Open Education that was influencing policies, methodologies and practices [6, 9]. First milestones were the Paris OER Declaration by UNESCO (2012) [10] and the Opening up Educa- tion initiative by the European Commission (2013) [11]. As a consequence, open learning approaches was entering official curricula in school and higher education [6]. Combined with innovative learning design and strategy, e-Learning has got the potential to achieve broad and long-term impact, to improve the educational quality and to support United Nations’ sustainable development goals for our better future and society [12]. The outbreak of Covid-19 has demonstrated the still existing challenges for implementing e-Learning at large scale, also in Higher Education. HELMeTO 2020 is facing similar challenges as it has to be converted into a complete online event. Thus, the international workshop is reflecting it in its title ”Bridges and Mediation in Higher Distance Education” as well as in its program: a special call for Covid-19-related papers led to a record of submissions dealing with the specific demands, current and potential solutions in (higher) education through e-Learning. In the following, we briefly summarize the contributions accepted for the oral presentation in HELMeTO 2020. In the first section, we summarize the contributions in the field of methodologies for e-Learning. Then, in the second section, we focus on the works dealing with technologies for eLearning. Finally, in the last section, we briefly discuss the papers collected and accepted for the special track on Facing Covid-19 Emergency in Higher Education Teaching and Learning. Each contribution is cited specifying the surname of the first author. In the following chapters of this volume, each contribution is presented in the order in which it appears in this brief editorial. Methodologies for eLearning Online higher education offers several topics for further study, both theoretical and empirical, in the specific context of the methodologies, assumed as the ’back- bone’ of any educational intervention activity. In this workshop, we accepted 14 contributions under the umbrella of methodologies for e-Learning. We divided them into two main sessions, namely ”Online learning pedagogical frameworks: models, perspectives and application” and ”Online learning strategies and re- sources: e-tutoring, communities, webinar and tools”. Online Learning Pedagogical Frameworks: Models, Perspectives and Application The work of Frisch et al., within the IDEKI network, proposes the construct of a ’collective intelligence’ to reflect on hybrid modes of online professional 2 development. Valeeva and Sabinova’s proposal illustrates how a simulator was used as a part of an e-learning course to train future teachers to develop children’s visual memory at the Federal University of Kazan. The study conducted with the multiple-case approach, described by Panciroli et al, analyzes the blended model created at a university course and two undergraduate’s laboratories at the University of Bologna. Toto and Limone investigate through the UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) questionnaire the degree and forms of acceptance of technologies by teachers involved in online courses. The work of Piccino investigates the forms of reasoning that can be developed in students in an online environment, real and virtual, through narrative and paradigmatic thinking. Quintas-Hijós and Latre-Navarro describe an exploratory analysis of an e-learning course to support future primary school teachers for the drafting of the Final Degree Project at the University of Zaragoza. Maiolo et al. present the validation of the Italian version of the CATCS as a predictor of academic dropout. Online Learning Strategies and Resources: E-tutoring, Communities, Webinar and Tools Raviolo et al. provide a map of the specific activities of e-tutoring in eCampus Telematic University, focusing on online tutors (TOLs) and disciplinary tutors (TDs). The work of Ferrari and Triacca describes the strategic role of the e-tutor in building the online community investigated through qualitative and quanti- tative methods on 9 degree courses at the ’Sacred Heart’ University of Milan. Stebbings et al. investigate the function of webinars in the progression of stu- dent learning as regards a distance learning course at Manchester Metropolitan University. The work of Ebere et al. analyzes statistically the impact of the dis- tance learning modality of the under-graduated introductory course in Biology on student learning. Cecchinato reflects on the effects that the Perusall, a tool of ’social annotation’ developed by the Harvard University, has on the learning pro- cesses of university students. The proposal of Di Tore et al. presents a systematic review of Italian studies, based on the PRISMA paradigm, regarding learning assessment in higher education. The work of De Giuseppe et al. presents an in- clusive training model in blended mode for the development of active citizenship skills, called Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Information Technology for eLearning IT technologies play an important role for supporting different aspects and di- mensions of distance learning in higher education. In this workshop, we accepted 11 contributions under the umbrella of learning technologies. We divided them into two main sessions, namely ”The challenge of implementing emerging tech- nology solution for online learning” and ”Online learning technologies in prac- tice”. 3 The Challenge of Implementing Emerging Technology Solution for Online Learning As regards the paper of the first session, Casalino et al. discuss the importance of taking into consideration, when building education data mining models, the streaming aspects related with digital footprints, which each student continu- ously generates while interacting with virtual learning environments. De Carolis et al. present the preliminary results achieved by a computer vision module that recognizes facial expressions associated with emotions, which typically arise dur- ing a distance learning process. Eradze et al. carry out a statistical analysis for assessing the educational values of videos. The analysis is performed consider- ing feedback provided by the students after each video class. Umezawa et al. proposes a method to assess the attention degree of students considering the time spent on a browser and the analysis of their electroencephalogram. The authors carried out an experiment to test the proposed method, which included two groups of students who learn the C and Scratch languages, respectively. The work of Robert et al. introduces a Virtual Reality application for learning in Artificial Intelligence education. The application has been experimented in a real context for introducing pupils to neural networks and the gradient descent algorithm. Online Learning Technologies in Practice Regarding the second session, Ardimento and Scalera discuss the results of com- paring flipped Learning and traditional learning in a Object-oriented Program- ming course at the University of Bari. They actually divided their classroom into two groups that experimented the two different learning approaches. Ducange and Raviolo argue on the experience, at the University of Pisa, of teaching Emerging Paradigms and Technologies. Specifically, authors discuss the adopted Problem-Based Approach, in a Soft-Blended Environment, for teaching a course entitled Large Scale and Multi-Structured Databases. Further, Cisternino et al., discuss another teaching experience at the University of Pisa. Specifically, au- thors exploited a Cloud-based virtual lab for allowing students to carry out prac- tical activities in the framework of Cloud Computing and Distributed Databases courses. Fazzolari et al. describe a nation-wide initiative for the implementation of online teacher training courses and materials on Digital Culture. The main aim of the initiative is to enhance and to make more accessible distance learning at every level of education. Finally, Barpi et al. share their experience in partic- ipating in the EduHackathon, a collaborative part of a course called EduHack. The course was organized by the Politecnico di Torino, as part of an Erasums+ project. The aim of the course was to stimulate teachers to improve their skills for the creation of e-learning course and digital resources. 4 Facing COVID19 Emergency in Higher Education Teaching and Learning The Covid-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the world of higher education. If online universities were somehow prepared for this unfortunate situation, tradi- tional universities paid the highest price in seeing themselves basically converging towards distance learning in no time. On the other hand, the pandemic emer- gency has clearly boosted theories and practices of distance learning in higher education. HELMeTO 2020 launched a call for papers reserved for a Covid- 19 special track, and the impressive amount of papers received for this special track proves both the successful effort made by traditional courses in turning on- line and the response of the higher educational research community in defining frameworks and models for distance learning during the pandemic. The Covid-19 special track relies on 16 accepted extended abstracts that turned into 2 parallel sessions for podium presentation. A first session pooled contributions focused on tools and practices for facing Covid-19 emergency in higher education, while a second session gathered studies aimed at providing frameworks and overviews. Facing Covid-19 Emergency: Tools and Practices As regards the first session, Bonavolontà et al. investigate the continuity of the educational relationship between teachers and young tennis players during lock- down as well as the levels of physical activity, enjoyment and motivation in the emergency context. On the basis of the encouraging results, they reflect on how the emergency may represent a fresh start for distance learning in sport activ- ities. The work of Kővári and Bak aims at assessing digital competences and online social presence among university students of the University of Pannonia during Covid-19 lock-down. By means of a survey, authors have found a con- nection between Internet skills and online social presence, a positive correlation between age and the Internet skill, and a similar online social presence between men and women. Stimilli et al. assess the anxiety levels of students at the 5th year of an Italian high schools who faced the preparation of their graduation exam during the pandemic. Iuliano et al. assess student’s satisfaction in attend- ing an online workshop specifically created to ensure didactic continuity to a Sport and Exercise Sciences university program, at eCampus University, during the lock-down, and they compare its effectiveness with respect to the tradi- tional practice-oriented classes. Bernardo and Bontá report on the experience of the University of Urbino in facing the Covid-19 outbreak via massive distance learning and on-line exams. They also discuss the combined use of a number of software tools (Moodle, Collaborate, Smowl, Meet) to provide support for on- line lectures and oral and written exams. The same challenge is faced by Luciani in turning the Laboratory of Didactic Technologies of the University of L’Aquila into a fully online delivery mode. Students project works have been uploaded on a blog, and students’ satisfaction and adherence to the program results to be on the same level than pre-emergency. The work of Agrati and Vinci presents the 5 model and the didactic-organizational solutions that have been adopted for vir- tual internship of the Educational Sciences university program at the ’Giustino Fortunato’ University during Covid-19 lockdown. Their results suggest that we- binars providing targeted e-tivities can be successfully used to simulate problem scenarios and develop process intervention skills. Similarly, moodles have been found useful in representing activities in a virtual form. Finally, students satisfac- tion of a Science Technology Engineering and Medicine course of the University of Bari, that unexpectedly turned online during the Covid-19 lock-down, is also the focus of the work of Dabbicco et al. Facing Covid-19 Emergency: Frameworks and Overviews Concerning the second Covid-19 related session, Viviana Vinci and Rosa Sgam- belluri present the outcomes of an exploratory research on the effectiveness per- ceived by students about distance learning in University of Reggio Calabria during Covid-19 crisis, highlighting the potential of enhancing flexible learning, autonomy and the negotiating construction of knowledge. Bruschi et al. dis- cuss the early results of a research on the advantages experienced by university teachers already involved in a specific training program on Online Open Course model at the University of Torino facing the Covid-19 emergency. Hana Ait Si Ahmad et al. present a research on the implementation of the online teaching at Cadi Ayyad University, Morocco, as a starting point for a strategic plan for the digital transformation of the University after Covid-19 emergency, highlighting six pillars that seem to be the most relevant to build the university of tomor- row. Di Tore presents an exploratory study on the remote teaching technologies used in twenty lower secondary schools in Campania (Italy) to face Covid-19 emergency. He found that opportunities include a growing interest about digital learning among students and the need for digital skills training among teachers, along with the risks of failure in adopting common technical standards and the critical adoption of models and methodologies chosen in an emergency situation without a real rethinking of the teaching approach. Fabbri et al. describe the implementation of a blended learning model in the Department of Education, humanities and intercultural communication at University of Siena (Italy). The crisis is seen as a “critical organizational incident” which triggered a process of building a new community, more reflective and able to evaluate and rethink the degree of effectiveness of its pedagogical practices. Loredana Perla et al. present an investigation aimed at identifying the main constituents of the imposed digi- tal “metamorphosis” and the forms and formats of the hybridization introduced in educational mediation during Covid-19 crisis. They identify some indications of a profound rethinking of university didactic mediation in a hybrid digital di- rection that seem to be here to stay even after the returning to the normality of face-to-face teaching. Lane et al. highlights in their study the importance of a sound pedagogical approach in teaching online, discussing the emergency imple- mentation of online learning in clinical courses in nursing and applied psychology at the Faculty of Health Disciplines, Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada. 6 They discuss both the underlying pedagogy of online learning and show how technology can support effectively this pedagogy. References 1. Bonk, C., Lee, M., Reeves, T.: MOOCs and Open Education Around the World. Routledge (2015) 2. Stracke, C.M.: The need to change education towards open learning. In Stracke, C.M., Shamarina-Heidenreich, T., eds.: The Need for Change in Education: Open- ness as Default? Proceedings of 4th International Conference Learning Innovations and Learning Quality (LINQ). (2015) 11–23 3. Stracke, C.M.: Open education and learning quality: The need for changing strate- gies and learning experiences. In: 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Con- ference (EDUCON). (April 2017) 1049–1053 4. Gaskell, Anne: Online distance education: towards a research agenda. Taylor & Francis (2016) 5. Materu, P.N.: Open Source Courseware: A Baseline Study. Technical report, Washington, DC: The World Bank (2004) 6. Stracke, C.M.: Quality Frameworks and Learning Design for Open Education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 20(2) (Apr. 2019) 7. Burgos, D., Cimitile, M., Ducange, P., Pecori, R., Picerno, P., Raviolo, P., Stracke, C.M.: Learning methodologies and technologies online. helmeto 2019 editorial: Introduction to the scientific contributions. In: Proceedings of HELMeTO 2019, Cham, Springer International Publishing (2019) 1–6 8. Gaskell, A., Mills, R.: The quality and reputation of open, distance and e-learning: what are the challenges? Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning 29(3) (2014) 190–205 9. Stracke, C.M., Downes, S., Conole, G., Burgos, D., Nascimbeni, F., et al.: Are moocs open educational resources?: A literature review on history, definitions and typologies of oer and moocs. Open Praxis 11(4) (2019) 331 10. UNESCO: Paris OER Declaration. Technical report, UNESCO (2012) 11. European Commission: Opening up Education: Innovative teaching and learning for all through new Technologies and Open Educational Resources. Technical report, European Union (2013) 12. United Nations General Assembly: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Technical report, ONU (2015) 7 
work_ell4ddtgjrh2vdgnirsf7s4gqy	----	Ethics Principles in Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 890 – 894 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.218 WCES 2012 Ethics principles in distance education Mohsen Farmahini Farahani * Assistant Professor ,Shahed university ,Tehran,Iran Abstract The field of open and distance education has witnessed much transformation since simple print based communication till the WEB era. With the increasing use of new communication technologies, discussion of the ethical issues becomes more important. Ethics in education in general and distance education in specific has its manifestations in various forms. This paper identifies ethical issues that is concerned with distance education The article puts emphasis on Principles and codes of Ethics in various aspects in the realm of distance education such as those pertaining to student-teacher relationship, research ethics, subject matter experts, instructional designers, faculty, teaching assistants, but major emphasis is on ethical principles in four areas: Commitment to the Student ,Commitment to the distance education System , Commitment to the Profession and Ethical Commitment of instructional designers in distance education system . Codes of ethics apply to all members of the distance education, including the regents, faculty and other academic personnel, staff, students, volunteers, contractors, agents and others associated with the distance education institution. Keywords: Ethics, distance education ,codes of ethics , student, teacher; Introduction Success without ethics can be a serious criticism. UNESCO has advocated ethics in its educational programs, and has initiated deep instilling the ethical values in the cultural, legal, philosophical and religious heritage of the various human communities. The need to review ethical issues is necessary in the light of recent developments namely the increasing use of e-learning for formulation of models to judge ethical issues in distance and open learning. Desmond Keegan (1986) identified six key elements of distance education: Separation of teacher and learner- Influence of an educational organization- Use of media to link teacher and learner- Two-way exchange of communication- Learners as individuals rather than group- Education as an industrialized form. Moore has divided distance education into different types: High dialog and Low dialog. Although at first glance, it seems that high dialogue should observe more ethical issues, but this does not lessen the importance of the observing the more ethical issues about low dialog. the behaviours of a group. Campbell (2001, 2008) support the ethical elements of a code while Chapman (2002) and Raiborn and Payne (1990) -Macrow, 2007) accept facets of both styles. The code sets out principles of action and standards of behaviour, how the members of the group will operate or work. Raiborn and Payne (1990) note that for a code to be usable and viable, the qualitative Tel.: + 989123721060 E-mail address: Farmahinifar@yahoo.com Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 891 Mohsen Farmahini Farahani / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 890 – 894 right choices in the moral sense, ethical code must guide and inspire individuals to act in an ethical manner. Campbell, 2001: 402). The Code of Ethics stresses the public duties and moral commitment of teachers as public employees entrusted by society. There is a natural assumption that a code of conduct has a positive impact on the behaviour of the fected by the culture in which one works (Raiborn and Payne, 1990. Frankel (1989) proposes initiatives to ensure that a code of ethics becomes more useful to practitioners or others, thus having a greater impact. Literature review Dozens of articles and chapters have been written during the past 20 years on the ethics of practice in adult education, including debates about the desirability and feasibility of developing codes of ethics. Among those who have argued for the development of codes of ethics are Boulmetis and Russo (1991), Griffith (1991), Connelly and Light (1991), Siegel (2000). Arguments supporting the development of ethics codes have focused on the need to protect the public from harm inflicted on them by unscrupulous or incompetent practitioners, and the commitment to ethically responsible practice that adopting a code represents. The debates on codes of ethics have largely been between academics. Most of the literature that explicitly addresses the ethics of practice was published in the past 20 years. A good portion of this literature has focused on ethical issues that are likely to be encountered in specific areas of practice, such as program planning (Cervero & Wilson, 1994), teaching(Pratt, 1998), administration (Price,1997), Counselling and advising (Day, 1988),and evaluation (Brookfield, 1988). Review of research literature shows that little research about ethical issues in distance education has been done. Research in distance education was primarily around the following axes. In realm of distance education, ethical issues, has been paid less attention. Berge and Mrozowski review (2001) identifies that researches focuses mostly on the impact of individual technologies rather than on the interaction of multiple technologies in e-learning. observes that in a review of literature conducted before launching of the International Research Foundation for Open Learning. They found that most research fell under five headings: (1) description, (2) audience studies, (3) cost- effectiveness studies, 4) methodology (methodologies used to teach and support distance students), and (5) social context. He analyzes many of these studies for their lack of a theoretical base and for their lack of understanding about the distance education context. Sharma (2004) have encircled various aspects in the realm of distance education.. The authors have identified eight spheres of concern for ethics in distance education namely Student Support Services (Administration, Admission Eligibility Criteria/Calibre, Academic counselling, Medium of Instruction); Collaboration (Learner Support Centre, How and why they are selected); Credibility (Employability versus Continuing Education); Duplication of Efforts (Material Production, Launch of Programmes, Course Writing); Provision of intersystem transfer (Lack for interface to aim transfer); Expertise (Academic activity, Administrative activity, Resources, Research, Who does, How it is done). Why ethical standards are important for distance learning? -In recent years, the ethics of practice and ethical standards have been a popular discussion topic in many professional fields, including distance education. -Ethical standards are designed to articulate attitude and behaviours to distance education personnel. -The ethical standards are expressed as expectations of conduct in distance education. -The ethical standards focused on the responsibilities of distance education personnel. -It provides a common understanding among those involved in distance learning. -It provides the basis of professional growth among those involved. -It represents the aspirations and expectations of e-learning. -It enables distance education authorities to be accountable to self, religious, and community. 892 Mohsen Farmahini Farahani / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 890 – 894 -In order for individuals to make the right choice in the moral sense ,the ethical standard or code must guide and inspire individuals to act in an ethical manner(Campbell,2001:402). Goals of the ethical codes which all members of the profession would adhere. -disciplinary guidelines for members of the profession by formulating norms of professional conduct. of the profession towards the community. (Council for Professional Conduct in Education, 1995: 2) -awaken the sense of self-esteem, dignity, honour, selfless service and moral rectitude in the teacher. global community. restige of the teaching profession. 5) In general, a code affects the university community students, parents, colleagues both teaching and non-teaching, and most importantly, the teacher. The intent of the code is to guide teacher behaviour reflecting the responsibilities of teachers to the stakeholders. Universal moral principles: Ethical principles should guide the behaviours of professionals in everyday practice. Principles are assumed to be constant and, therefore, provide consistent guidelines for decision-making. These universal moral principles include: Respect, Non-malevolence, Benevolence, Integrity, Justice, and Utility , Responsibility and caring, Wisdom and peace In distance education, in addition, following principal should also be considered. Principle 1: Commitment to the Student. - Respecting for the autonomy of student. - Maintaining a safe and healthy environment, free from harassment (including sexual harassment), intimidation, abuse and violence, and discrimination - Maintaining an appropriate relationship with distance education students in all settings; not encouraging, soliciting, or engaging in a sexual or romantic relationship with students, nor touching a student in an inappropriate way for personal gratification, with intent to harm, or out of anger. - Evaluating students and assigning . Disciplines students justly and fairly and does not deliberately embarrass or humiliate them. - Holding in confidence information learned in professional practice except for professional reasons or in compliance with pertinent regulations or statutes. - Refusing to accept significant gifts, favors, or additional compensation that might influence or appear to influence professional decisions or actions. -The educator shall work to stimulate the spirit of inquiry, the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and the thoughtful formulation of worthy goals. - The educator shall conduct professional educational activities in accordance with sound educational practices that are in the best interest of the student. - The educator shall keep in confidence personally identifiable information that has been obtained in the course of professional service, unless disclosure serves professional purposes, or is required by law. 893 Mohsen Farmahini Farahani / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 890 – 894 Principle 2: Commitment to the distance education System - Utilizing available resources (Email- teleconference-mobile-web) to promote learning to the maximum possible extent. - Acknowledging the diverse views of students, parents and legal guardians, and colleagues as they work collaboratively to shape educational goals, policies, and decisions; not proselytizing for personal viewpoints that are outside the scope of professional practice. - Signs a contract in good faith and not abandon contracted professional duties without a substantive reason. - Participating actively in professional decision-making processes and supporting the expression of professional opinions and judgments by colleagues in decision-making processes or due process proceedings. - When acting in an administrative capacity. Act fairly, consistently, and prudently in the exercise of authority with colleagues, subordinates, students, and parents and legal guardians. Evaluates the work of other educators using appropriate procedures and established statutes and regulations. Protects the rights of others in the educational setting, and not retaliate, coerce, or intentionally intimidate others in the exercise of rights protected by law. Recommend persons for employment, promotion, or transfer according to their professional qualifications, the needs and policies of the LEA, and according to the law. Principle 3: Commitment to the Profession and Commitment as a Professional Educator In the belief that the quality of the services to the education profession directly influences the nation and its citizens, the educator shall exert every effort to raise professional standards, to improve service, to promote a climate in which the exercise of professional judgment is encouraged t he educator shall believe that sound professional relationships with colleagues are built upon personal integrity, dignity, and mutual respect .In fulfilment of the obligation to the profession: -The educator shall practice the profession only with proper certification, and shall actively oppose the practice of the profession by persons known to be unqualified. - She/he should pursue growth and development in the practice of the profession and uses that knowledge in improving the educational opportunities, experiences, and performance of students and colleagues. - The educator shall not interfere with the exercise of political and citizenship rights and responsibilities of students, colleagues, parents. - The educator shall not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, creed, sex, marital status, age, national origin, ethnic background, or handicapping condition - The educator Shall not use coercive means, or promise or provide special treatment to students, colleagues, , or distance educational board members in order to influence professional decisions. - The educator shall not exploit professional relationships with students, colleagues, parents, university patrons, or university board members for personal gain or private advantage - She/he shall not sexually harass students, parents or university patrons, employees, or board members. - The educator shall not use institutional privileges for private gain or to promote political candidates, political issues, or partisan political activities Principle 4: Ethical Commitment Of Instructional Designers in Distance Education system -Provide efficient, effective, workable, and cost-effective solutions to client Problems. - Systematically improve human performance to accomplish valid and appropriate individual and organizational goals. -Facilitate individual accomplishment. -Help clients make informed decisions. -Inform others of potential ethical violations and conflicts of interest. -Educate clients in matters of instructional design and performance improvement. - Support humane, socially responsible goals and activities for individuals and organizations. - Make professional decisions based upon moral and ethical positions regarding societal issues. 894 Mohsen Farmahini Farahani / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 890 – 894 - Consider the impact of planned interventions upon students, distance education organizations. Conclusion The ethical or moral values must be inculcated since infancy so that it becomes a part of the behaviour of an individual and when re- introduced at the higher education (Waston,2006 ,p.2)and distance education system. Ethics deserves to be made a component of each and every activity of every individual in dealing with others or dealing with oneself .After the four decades of experimentation and utilization of the distance education system in the world, ethical principles are more highlighted in globalization. A code of conduct exists to support teachers in their activities in classes working with learner and supports learner as they work with their teachers. A code affects on students, parents, colleagues both teaching and non-teaching, and most importantly, the teacher. For a code to be considered effective, it must be framed for the distance education users to influence positive behaviours. If the code is understandable, detailed, and executable, it can be applied in a more straightforward manner. For developing a moral atmosphere and filling the gap in distance education, creating an ethical relationship between the learner ,instructor, and institution in distance learning is necessary. References Berge, Z. L., & Mrozowski, S. (2001). Review of research in distance education: 1990 to 1999. American Journal of Distance Education .15(3), 5 19 Boulmetis, J.,&Russo, F. X. (1991).A question of ethics. Community Education Journal, 18(2), 15-18. Brookfield, S. (1988). Ethical dilemmas in evaluating adult education programs. In R. G. Brockett (Ed.), Ethical issues in adult education (pp. 88-102). New York: Teachers College Press. Journal of Education Policy 16(5), 395-411 Cervero, R. M., &Wilson, A. L. (1994). Planning responsibly for adult education: A guide to negotiating power and interests. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chapter III: Ethics in Interactions in Distance Education Paul Kawachi, Shin-Ai Women's College, Japan Connelly, R. J., & Light, K. M. (1991). An interdisciplinary code of ethics for adult education. Adult Education Quarterly, 41, 233-240 Council on Professional Conduct in Education. (1995). Code for the education of the profession of Hong Kong. Retrieved 15 September 2008, from .Council on Professional Conduct in Education: http://cpc.edb.org.hk/english/code.htm Day, M. J. (1988). Educational advising and brokering: The ethics of choice. In R. G. Brockett (Ed.), Ethical issues in adult education (pp. 118- 132). New York: Teachers College Press. Journal of Business Ethics 65, 391-404 Dorothy J. S; Ugur Demiray, Anadolu: Ethics in the Ambit of Distance Education University Chapter IV, Turkey ed.). London: Routledge Gordon ,Wanda and . Sork, Thomas. (2001)_ Ethical Issues and Codes of Ethics: Views of Adult Education Practitioners in Canada and the United States ,Adult Education Quarterly 2001; 51; 202 Griffith, W. S. (1991). Do adult educators need a code of ethics? Adult Learning, 2(8), l, 4. Keegan, D. (1986). The foundations of distance education (second Moore, M. G. (1973). Towards a theory of independent learning and teaching. Journal of Higher Education, (44), 661-679. Available online at http://www.ajde.com/Documents/theory.pdf Ontario College of Teachers.( 2006). Ethical and practice standards. Retrieved 22 September 2008, from Ontario College of Teachers: www.oct.ca/standards/?lang=en-CA Perraton (2000). Rethinking the research agenda. In International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, vol1(1)http://www.irrodl.org/content/v1.1/hilary.pdf, Pratt, D. D. (1998). Ethical reasoning in teaching adults. In M.W. Galbraith (Ed.), Adult learning methods: A guide for effective instruction (2nd ed., pp. 113-125). Malabar, FL: Krieger. Price, D. W. (1997). Ethical dilemmas in administrative practice. Adult Learning, 9(1), 15-17. Journal of Business Ethics 9(11), 879- 889 Sharma, R. C. (2004). Learning at a Distance in India: A History. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 2 (2) Siegel, I. H. (2000). Toward developing a universal code of ethics for adult educators. PAACE Journal of Lifelong Learning, 9, 39-64. Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria.( 2005). Teachers code of conduct. Retrieved 8 October 2008, from Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria: www.trcn.gov.ng/index.php Watson,D.(2006)The university and civic engagement.Ad.Lib:Journal for Continuing Liberal Adult Education,31,2 -6. University of Cambridge institute of Continuing Education. Cambridge 
work_ep3zdzup7rf7xbasn7vplkkcxe	----	Use of Global Distance Education Program in Educational Goals of Airline Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 ( 2015 ) 372 – 378 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of GLOBE-EDU 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.365 ScienceDirect Global Conference on Contemporary Issues in Education, GLOBE-EDU 2014, 12-14 July 2014, Las Vegas, USA Use of Global Distance Education Program in Educational Goals of Airline Asst. Prof. Dr. Perihan Paksoya* aBeykent University, İstanbul, Turkey Abstract Recently there has been an explosive growth in online distance learning which is rapidly transforming traditional learning habits with the more recent ones that uses the latest technology. As establishments nowadays are conscious of the necessity for being more integrative and innovative compared to the past, they question about the need to change management mentality in order to survive in a competitive market. Perceiving human as a value and an important valuable asset, directors of organizations look for the ways of changing of qualifications in workforce. To be able to accomplish this change, they need to alter the organization’s training applications to ensure their own survival. Today, organizations tend to improve and gain from the managers out of their own resources by different approaches. As time and financial resources are restricted the newest technologies help them in succeeding this aim. Global distance education is one of the easiest supporters in this regard. In this study the historical developments of Turkish airlines (THY) are succinctly reviewed. Followed by the current position of global distance education in THY is to be highlighted. In this context, Turkish Airlines (THY) and Management Trainee Program of THY are taken as sample. “Harvard ManageMentor” (HMM) is being used for training purposes in Turkish Airlines and the researcher has aimed to explain how this program is being implemented in Turkish Airlines in detail and how the Harvard ManageMentor program corresponds to the needs of THY educational goals. It was concluded that HarvardManage Mentor supported the educational priorities of THY and e-learning programs by time saving and efficiency. Additionally THY educational goals were found to be in harmony with HMM. For further research, the staff of THY whom has been trained under HarvardManage Mentor, could be polled by online surveys. Based on surveys filled out, the results can be used for further discussions and probings. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of GLOBE-EDU 2014. Keywords: Airline; distance learning; education of tourism executives * Asst. Prof. Dr. Perihan Paksoy. Tel.:+3-432-234-333. E-mail address: perihanpaksoy@beykent.edu.tr © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of GLOBE-EDU 2014. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.365&domain=pdf 373 Perihan Paksoy / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 ( 2015 ) 372 – 378 1. Introduction Online education exploits the Internet intended for course supply for the student and educator customarily in different locations. Learners interconnect electronically with the educator and other learners (Sims, Dobb & Hand, 2002). Assignments and assessments are deferred to electronically. Educators, instructional designers, and course developers use technology to present course content. Course content can be presented through recorded lectures, slide presentations, text-based documents, interactive online activities of various forms, audio files, video files, pod casts, wikis, live chat sessions, online discussions, live online presentations, video conferencing, and other methods (Lisa, 2013: 2). Still some other people are observing a “systemic lack of awareness” in appropriate uses of technology in the field of education (Desai, Hart & Richards, 2009: 329). Nevertheless, the general use of online education brings ease and time effectiveness especially for the working people who have limited time. This issue of time becomes more crucial especially in the tourism industry where the employees of the industry have to deal with people and establish service 24 hours a day and all year the round. Therefore the necessity of online education has to be underlined within the tourism industry. Many corporations have executed online learning to meet training and professional development needs. In a research by Trierweiler and Rivera (2005), participants expected future growth of online learning within their respective businesses. Professionals are utilizing online education to meet continuing education needs. Personal interest classes are also available online which provide opportunities to participate in online courses for almost any topic (Lisa, 2013: 2). Turkish Airlines (THY) THY has on going education programs for the flight cabin and airport personnel and Managerial School-Leaders of Tomorrow. Especially for the staff with managerial position they preferred to use online education of Harvard Manage Mentor. Professional cultures are usually regarded in educational research as a typical context for acquiring and applying knowledge and skills (Nistor, et al, 2013: 737). Srite et al. (2008) suggested that cultural values influence technology acceptance and use; in particular, individualism/collectivisma directly influences the use of computer- based learning systems.b Collectivist societies show eagerness to classroom tutoring whereas individualist societies would find online teaching more efficient. Downey, Wentling, Wentling, and Wadsworth (2005) evaluated the relationship between national culture and the usability of an online learning system and reported that individuals from cultures with low power distance indicators found the system more beneficial as compared to individuals from high power distancec cultures (quoted from Lee, 2010: 279). Nistor et al. (2013: 736) focused the fact that distance education is a geographical necessity for Turkey and even Downey et al (2005) believes that low power distance individuals prefer online education, or Strite et al. (2008) comments about collectivit cultures about technology and online education (and Turkey with score of 66 seems to be in high power distance group and Turkey, with a score of a Turkey, with a score of 37 is a collectivistic society. This means that the “We” is important, people belong to in-groups (families, clans or organisations) who look after each other in exchange for loyalty. Communication is indirect and the harmony of the group has to be maintained, open conflicts are avoided. The relationship has a moral base and this always has priority over task fulfillment. Time must be invested initially to establish a relationship of trust. (Hofstede Centre, http://geert-hofstede.com/turkey.html) b Hofstede describes culture using five dimensions that were initially identified in a worldwide study among IBM staff (Hofstede 2001): Power distance index (PDI) represents the extent to which the less powerful members of a culture accept the unequal distribution of power within the same culture. Uncertainty avoidance (UAI) deals with the intolerance for unstructured, i.e. novel, unknown, surprising or unusual situation s that the members of a society show. Individualism (IDV) (vs. collectivism) refers to the quality of ties between individuals, and to the degree of integration into cohesive groups within society. Masculinity (MAS) (vs. femininity) is a preference for assertiveness, achievement and material success; contrasted with femininity, which emphasizes relationships, modesty and caring. Long-term orientation (LTO) (vs. short-term orientation) comprises values such as thrift and perseverance, as opposed to respect for tradition, the fulfillment of social obligations and face-saving, which are representative of short-term orientation. c Turkey scores high on this dimension (score of 66) which means that the following characterises the Turkish style: Dependent, hierarchical, superiors often inaccessible and the ideal boss is a father figure. Power is centralized and managers rely on their bosses and on rules. Employees expect to be told what to do. Control is expected and attitude towards managers is formal. Communication is indirect and the information flow is selective. The same structure can be observed in the family unit, where the father is a kind of patriarch to whom others submit. (Hofstede Centre, http://geert-hofstede.com/turkey.html) 374 Perihan Paksoy / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 ( 2015 ) 372 – 378 37 is a collectivistic society), Turkish airlines have been attending online education programs especially for the managerial positions as well. Hence in this study HarvardManageMentor (HMM) programme was discussed whether it demonstrated harmony with THY Manager Trainee Program MTP that has used HMM in online education. Regardless of the cultural attributes, it has been observed that the programme has been implemented successfully. It should also be noted that the attributes that Hofstede had categorized, could undergo change and cause differences through years as well. 2. Outlook of Turkish Airlines THY Turkish Airlines, Inc. is the national airline of Turkey, headquartered in Istanbul. It operates scheduled services to 11 international and 37 domestic cities (38 domestic airports), serving a total of 158 airports, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Americas (Zaim et al, 2013, p. 545). The Turkish Airline industry has hitherto become one of the fastest growing industries in Turkish economy, after liberalization allowed airline companies to compete on scheduled flights. By becoming the first national airline company of Turkey, the Turkish Airlines has successfully created a different image on passengers for years. Therefore, the customers became loyal to the company. The other reasons for customers being loyal to the Turkish Airlines can be classified in terms of accuracy in schedules, quality of service, frequency of flights, behaviors of the staff, and safety and security provided (Aslan, 2007). Within time, the Turkish Airlines has strengthened its position with its strategic plans that are prepared by its skillful and experienced staff during the reconfiguration process after the privatization. The Turkish Airlines appears to be far better in terms of management competence and experienced dexterous staff with respect to other firms (Torlak et al, 2011, p. 3404). The Turkish Airlines for the twenty-first century was the following: regional leadership on long haul flights, opening up new international flight destinations, making İstanbul Atatürk Airport a hub, providing technical, educational and technological service to the airlines in the region and boosting its image abroad and joining an alliance system (Türk Hava Yolları, 2009, p.220). The Turkish Airlines has also taken up a decision to cooperate with airline alliances in order to respond their customers’ increasing demands as a result of proliferating number of passengers. Meanwhile the Turkish Airlines attended to ‘‘Star Alliance” groups in which Lufthansa took the lead in 2006. The business expects benefits from this cooperation such as flight facility to more destinations worldwide, income increment, cost decrement, information, technology and experience sharing, common brand utilization, opportunity to win mile points and spend it in other airlines that are the members of the alliance, connecting flights by ticket from only one airline, and transfer of the luggage to the destination point. All these benefits have strengthened the trust of customers who travels in domestic flights through the Turkish Airlines brand. Furthermore it can be stated that Turkish Airlines has not only increased the number of international transit passengers, but also contributed to İstanbul’s tourism potential. As Singapore and Dubai have developed into tourist destinations with the help of being aviation hubs, İstanbul may utilize from its tourism potential with the help of Turkish Airlines and Atatürk Airport (Lohmann et al, 2009). Along with all the above, THY has been an official sponsor of Barcelona, Manchester United and Euro league Final 2010. In addition to the sponsorship deals, the involvement of Turkish Airlines contributes to Turkey’s trade and tourism potential that influences mutual understanding between societies, hence improving economic and political relations. THY aims at to become the leading European air carrier with a global network of coverage with its strict compliance with flight safety, reliability, product line, service quality and competitiveness (Zaim et al, 2013, p. 545). At the same time, the success of Turkish Airlines also contributes invisibly positively to the global image of Turkey. 2. Importance of Training in THY With its growing market a loyal customer profile customer-oriented business has been one of the company policies of THY for a long period of time. Customer–oriented business policy, service friendliness feature, comfort 375 Perihan Paksoy / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 ( 2015 ) 372 – 378 and reliability features have an important role on customers’ choice and THY with its educational team tries to provide better and sound service with higher quality focusing on customer with well-trained staff and managers. THY has ongoing education programs for the flight cabin and airport personnel. In addition to flight training in 2012 THY started its Managerial School-Leaders of Tomorrow. The education of managers is as important as the education of the flight cabin. With training programs the managers will have the initiative and working skills which would improve the flight cabin’s training skills as well. According to Karasar and Öztürk (2014), the Managerial School intends to provide high or medium level managers and potential managerial candidates with equipment and qualifications that the Turkish Airlines might need as a company. For this purpose, twelve in class sessions and ten in conferences are given to the leadership program students. The major target of a manager is to use company resources efficiently. And a successful manager directs resources in order to achieve best record in organizational goals (Karagülle, 2012, p. 93). One of these resources is the employees and one of these goals is to improve the skills of the employees that the manager works with. Table 1 Management Trainee Program (MTP) of THY Personality Traits Personal Skills Strategic View Operational Skills Human Resource Management Humanism Educational background Seeing the big picture Take action Management of diversities Strong moral values Work experience Analysis and synthesis Fast decision making Understanding of people’s skills and potentials Taking initiatives Competence in information technologies Visionary Being innovative/Adoption to changes Being a good listener Self-assessment (Self-criticism) Being a good rhetorician Prioritizing Being goal oriented Setting as an example/ Being inspirational Dedication Fast learning-Speed reading Cause- effect relationship Effective time management Being persuasive/motivator Sense of justice Being able to establish organizational & communicational networks Planning Division of authority and responsibility Being open and honest in relationships Note. From “İşletmelerde Yönetici Adayı Havuzu Yöntemiyle, Yönetici Adaylarının Belirlenmesi (THY Uygulaması)”, by THY, 2013, Electronic Journal of Vocational Colleges, 43. 3. Online Education of THY Owing to the immense amount of knowledge culminated in the first decade of 21st century and the increasing demand for education in society, traditional educational institutions have become incapable of meeting this demand. Due to this educational cleavage, the notion of “distance learning” has occurred as a substitute to traditional education (Erginöz, 2013, p. 18). Digital technologies entering the economic field in recent decades have accelerated the process of economic globalization and the relaxation of laws relating to terms of employment in such a way that companies have found themselves compelled to transform their productive and organizational processes (Busquets and Argüelles, 2014, p. 68). According to Cannings & Talley (2002), the Internet and multimedia, including the non-linear integration of video, audio, text, and graphics can provide a rich environment for case studies which promote the mental 376 Perihan Paksoy / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 ( 2015 ) 372 – 378 construction of knowledge about integrating technology into the curriculum. Consequently, e-learning also brings a substantial reduction in training costs, makes knowledge easier and integrates workers into the company (Clarke, Lewis, Cole, & Ringrose, 2005). For the purpose of e-learning the Turkish Airlines purchased the usage rights of Harvard ManageMentor (HMM). HMM is a web-based distant education program, for almost a thousand managerial candidates, in cooperation with Harvard University. ManageMentor, which was initiated by Harvard University, is one of the most famous and successful programs through which the managerial candidates receive web-based distant education. Harvard ManageMentor online offerings are made available to all leaders. Leaders are encouraged to use tools and exercises from the system for in-service and staff training sessions. All leader tools and resources are made available online for enhanced usability and easy access (Bradley et al, 2008: p. 28). This program, which is supposed to be used by more than five million people since the day it has been launched, consists of 44 modules. Harvard ManageMentor is competent enough to provide a secure background for the future managers with its interface that enables sharing seminars of the world leaders, visual presentations, comments of the users. (Karasar & Öztürk, 2014, p. 115) IATA has incorporated Harvard ManageMentor’s 44 e-learning modules into its training curriculum as well. (Harvard Business, 2013) These module groups are Managing Yourself, Managing Others and Managing the Business. Harvard ManageMentor anticipates improving the skills of the trainee managers and other users in six phases. In the first phase, key points of the subject and auxiliary materials are presented. Then, the learning capacity is determined by using taught concepts that would present real scenarios and tests applicable to the taught concepts. The tips on how the taught concepts should be applied to the work environment are shared with the user. The users can share information on their experiences or acquire knowledge with the Harvard ManageMentor community (Karasar & Öztürk, 2014, p. 116). Table 2. Harvard ManageMentor Program Managing Yourself Managing Others Managing the Business Career Management Change Management Budgeting Delegating Coaching Business Case Development Goal Setting Developing Employees Business Plan Development Managing Upward Difficult Interactions Crisis Management Meeting Management Dismissing an Employee Customer Focus New Manager Transitions Feedback Essentials Decision Making Presentation Skills Global Collaboration Diversity Stress Management Hiring Ethics at Work Time Management Laying off Employees Finance Essentials Writing Skills Leading & Motivating Innovation & Creativity Performance Appraisals Innovation Implementation Persuading Others Marketing Essentials Retaining Employees Negotiating Team Leadership Performance Measurement Virtual Teams Process Improvement Project Management Strategic Thinking Strategy Execution Note. From Harvard ManageMentor, http://www.proactivknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/Harvard-ManageMentor.pdf & From “İşletmelerde Yönetici Adayı Havuzu Yöntemiyle, Yönetici Adaylarının Belirlenmesi (THY Uygulaması)”, by THY, 2013, Electronic Journal of Vocational Colleges, 43 4. Evaluation of HMM & Concluding Remarks Managing yourself attributes of HMM seem to be in harmony with THY Manager Trainee Program MTP with especially personal skills and personality traits. Especially presentation skills module help the trainees to improve their communication skills. 377 Perihan Paksoy / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 ( 2015 ) 372 – 378 The issues that are included in the “Managing Others Section” match with the Human Resources target of MTP. Managing the business section is composed of challenging topics like diversity which can be interpreted under Human resources of MTP. The educational goals of MTP are supported by HMM and it provides a complete manager-training program for the company. The Turkish Airlines gives the lead to all other airlines in Turkey by setting an instructive example not only for the aviation sector but also for other, sectors as well through its usage of Harvard ManageMentor. Analysis and synthesis, prioritizing, visionary topics could be considered in the Managing the Business Group Module whereas Modules of Strategic Thinking and Strategy Execution can directly be grouped under Strategic View of MTP. In the Table 3 all the target modules have been grouped according to the HMM’s three main groups. Table 3 Matching attributes of MTP with HMM Managing Yourself Managing Others Managing the Business Humanism Management of Diversities Seeing the big picture Strong moral values Understanding of people’s skills and Analysis and Synthesis Taking initiatives potentials Visionary Self-assessment (Self-criticism) Being a good listener Prioritizing Dedication Setting as an example/ Being inspirational Cause- effect relationship Sense of justice Being persuasive/motivator Planning Educational background Being open and honest in relationships Take action Work Experience Fast decision making Competence in information technologies Being innovative/Adoption to changes Being a good rhetorician Being goal oriented Fast learning-Speed reading Effective time management Being able to establish organizational & Division of authority and responsibility Communicational networks Note. From Harvard ManageMentor, http://www.proactivknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/Harvard-ManageMentor.pdf As regards to the content analysis, it can be commented that HarvardManage Mentor supports the educational priorities of THY and e-learning programs causes time saving and efficiency. THY educational goals are in harmony with HMM. As the e-learning program has also provided time saving and efficiency for the staff who has time restrictions, Turkish Airlines initially sets a noteworthy example for the other airlines and may lead its competitors in use of educational programs, e-learning programs like HarvardManage Mentor. For the improvement of this study, for the next research, the staff of THY, whom has been trained under HarvardManage Mentor, could be polled by online surveys. Based on surveys filled out, the results can be highlighted and used for further discussion and probings. 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work_epawowrbs5chdlpp2ltbg7edhy	----	Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, 2019 909 Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, pp 909-913, 2019 Copyright © 2019 Trakia University Available online at: http://www.uni-sz.bg ISSN 1313-7069 (print) ISSN 1313-3551 (online) doi:10.15547/tjs.2019.s.01.150 MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES – A MODERN FORM OF DISTANCE EDUCATION G. Kiryakova* Faculty of Economics, Trakia University, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria ABSTRACT Distance education has proven its advantages over time as a form of learning that overcomes geographical and time barriers. Massive Open Online Courses are a modern form of distance education that creates prerequisites for life-long learning. The purpose of the current work is to investigate the nature, distinctive features and models of Massive Open Online Courses. The main elements of the courses, which are provided to learners through learning platforms, are systematized. Key words: Massive Open Online Courses, distance education, learning platforms INTRODUCTION Distance education has emerged as a solution to the existing need for more opportunities for people to learn and overcoming the constraints of traditional forms of training. In distance education there is a physical separation of learners, who study at their own pace and at a convenient time. To ensure interaction and communication between the main participants in the learning process, a variety of technologies are used. The first stages of distance education are distinguished by the provision of learning materials from teachers to learners with minimal communication between them. The idea of modern distance education is to exploit the potential of information and communication technologies and provide opportunities for learning to all people who have the need and desire to acquire knowledge and skills throughout their lives. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the modern forms of distance education. They provide conditions for comprehensive life-long learning, allow members of the society to gain knowledge, competencies and skills when they have an internally recognized necessity or are in need of additional professional qualification. ________________________________ *Correspondence to: Gabriela Kiryakova, Faculty of Economics, Trakia University – Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, gabriela@uni-sz.bg There is a controversy over whether Massive Open Online Courses are a form of distance education. Some authors believe that such courses are a kind of self-learning. The refutation of these claims is the fact that many of the massive online courses are offered by well-established educational institutions, and certificates are issued upon successful completion. The purpose of the current work is to reveal the essence, distinctive features and models of Massive Open Online Courses, which are one of the most popular forms of distance education. The main components of the open courses are systematized. NATURE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES Massive Open Online Courses are online courses that are conducted and accessible through the Web [1]. They are with open access and an unlimited number of users can subscribe and attend (Figure 1). Dave Cormier used the term MOOC in 2008 to outline the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course, created by Canadian professors George Siemens and Stephen Downes. The course was offered for both a small number of students for a fee and over 2000 users online for free [2]. http://www.uni-sz.bg/ mailto:gabriela@uni-sz.bg KIRYAKOVA G. 910 Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, 2019 Figure 1. Massive Open Online Courses (adapted from Wikimedia Commons). MOOCs are based on the concept of free accessible, global, video-based courses that are realized through online platforms. They are used by a large number of learners to gain additional knowledge, skills and competencies. The main distinctive features of MOOCs are openness, structuredness, massiveness, presence of interaction and communication between participants, and underlying on the Connectivism paradigm [3, 4].  Open. Characteristic Open contains various interpretations. On the one side, the courses and educational resources are provided through systems that can be used by everyone – the registration and participation of users is free. On the other side, the access to the educational resources is free – activities and course content are shared and publicly available. Those massive courses that offer a certificate require the payment of a fee, so open can not be identified with free.  Massiveness. The courses and the supporting platforms allow access and participation of a large number of users, which significantly exceeds the groups in the traditional training. This is one of the characteristics that distinguishes MOOCs from all other forms of online training and courses.  Structuredness. Massive courses are restricted in time and have a particular structure. Each course has pre-defined learning objectives to be met by the participants. Users achieve goals by working with learning content and performing certain learning activities. Different forms and tools for evaluating the knowledge acquired by the participants are available.  Connectivism. MOOCs are based on the Connectivism paradigm. The basic idea of this pedagogical approach is that knowledge is spread across a network of participants. Most of the course activities take place in a shared learning environment where learners work and study together.  Interaction and communication. To realize the idea of connectivity, it is necessary to have the means by which the learners can interact and communicate with teachers and each other. Among the most popular forms of communication are discussions and forums where users can talk about topics and issues of the curriculum. These features of massive courses as well as the provision of high-quality content developed by experts from some of the most prestigious universities, explain their widespread distribution and the large number of participants. Learners receive flexible access to training without the need to invest significant financial resources and time, which is very important in contemporary society. They have the opportunity to choose courses among a wide variety of thematic areas, lecturers, experts and educational organizations. The MOOCs also have some negative aspects, including the lack of direct contact and real- time interaction between participants, which is inherent in distance education. Social KIRYAKOVA G. Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, 2019 911 exclusion can be a cause for a poor performance, lack of motivation, and low efficiency of learning. Several observations and studies of MOOCs [5] mark a large percentage of users who register in courses but do not take part in them and a very small percentage of participants that receive a certificate as a document proving completion of the course. To change these negative trends, different techniques should be applied to provoke learners to be active, motivated, committed and responsible for their own learning. МООCs MODELS Two MOOCs models can be distinguished – cMOOCs and xMOOCs. cMOOCs (connectivist MOOCs) are considered as the first phase in the development of MOOCs and are often called the original MOOCs. They are structured as open online communities of learners. cMOOCs are based on the educational principles and the philosophy of Connectivism, emphasizing on the power of the social interaction in generating knowledge [6]. The training and learning are implemented in a network of connected tools – different digital collaborative platforms such as blogs, wiki systems, social networks. This is a new type of learning environment where participants are the main drivers of learning, who interact with each other, share knowledge, experience and ideas, and solve problems. Each participant contributes and enriches with his knowledge to the knowledge of others. The standard forms for evaluating learners’ knowledge, such as tests and assignments are not available. The teachers’ of experts’ feedback to course participants can be seen as an informal form of assessment. The links between participants are many to many with multiple conversations in both groups and individuals [7]. xMOOCs (eXtented MOOCs) are the second phase of MOOCs development. Gradually MOOCs are being created and offered by large universities and delivered through their e- learning and distance learning platforms or through specially developed systems. xMOOCs are based on the philosophy of cognitivism and behaviorism. They rely on the traditional concept of transferring knowledge from teachers to learners. In the center of the learning process is the teacher [8]. xMOOCs implementation is in the form of traditional online courses with a clearly defined curriculum and a fixed structure. A distinguished feature of xMOOCs is the high-quality learning content created by experts. It is provided to learners in the form of short video lectures. In addition to the main content, learners can also use other materials - audio files, presentations, links to Web resources that enable them to expand their knowledge of a particular topic. The courses provide tools, such as online quizzes and assignments for assessing learners' knowledge and skills. The quizzes are automatically evaluated with immediate feedback. The assignments are assessed by the teacher or by other learners to ensure their active participation in training. Forums and discussions are tools for communication between users. In discussions, learners have the opportunity to share their experience, which can enrich and support the other participants. They can receive guidance, help, clarification, mainly by teachers, but also by the other learners. Both models (cMOOCs and xMOOCs) have a common goal – to provide opportunities for open training for everyone. The differences lie in the learning environment that is being created. According to [9] cMOOCs focus on creating and generating knowledge, while xMOOCs provide duplication of knowledge. The main criticism of xMOOCs is the lack of strong interaction among learners. However, xMOOCs are more widespread model being provided at this moment. PLATFORMS FOR PROVIDING MOOCs MOOCs are implemented and delivered through learning management platforms. They allow the registration of a large number of participants, the storage of a significant amount of learning materials, and tools for automatic evaluation of quizzes or assignments [7]. Platforms also have tools to track users’ progress and analyze data about their performance in order to help teachers in course improvement. Popular platforms for MOOCs are Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, EdX, FutureLearn, Saylor Academy, OpenLearning, FUN-MOOC, Open2Study, OpenUpEd, Janux, Stanford Online, EMMA, Canvas Network and others. The massive online courses have several common components, regardless of the platforms used for their creation [10, 11]:  Standardized format. Courses are organized on a weekly or thematic basis. The structure and organization depend on the KIRYAKOVA G. 912 Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, 2019 purpose of the course - whether users will work at their own pace or there is a planned development.  Video lectures. The learning content is presented in the form of short video lectures, recorded by lecturers, lasting up to 10 minutes. Another common option is the integration of other media such as YouTube. Video subtitles are available in English and, in some cases, in other languages. Video lectures and subtitles can be downloaded for free by participants.  Reading materials. Each course offers a text alternative of video lectures and additional materials for reading.  Integrated activities. In addition to the learning content, courses also include learning activities – questions and quizzes. Usually, each module or week ends with a quiz, assignment or project that should be performed by the participants to determine the extent to which they have mastered the content. The questions are embedded in video lectures or organized into quizes as separate items in each module. Immediate feedback is available since questions are automatically evaluated. In many courses, the projects and assignments are subject to mutual evaluation, which ensures the active participation of learners.  Discussion forums. An unchanging part of each course is the ability for every learner to communicate with others. Communication is possible in discussion forums where the participants comment and discuss issues related to course topics, solve problems or share opinions.  Final Exam/Project. In order to determine whether the learning objectives are achieved or in other words, whether the learners have acquired the required knowledge, skills and competences, it is necessary to conduct a final exam. The final step is usually in the form of a quiz or an assignment (project). Some courses provide opportunities for multiple attempts until positive results are achieved. After the successful completion of some courses, the participants can receive certificates, but they have to pay a fee, even if the course is free of charge. The partnership between MOOCs platforms and different universities allows learners, after positive results in certain courses, to obtain credits that are recognized by the educational institutions. Even is possible to acquire a master's or a bachelor's degree by enrolling in programs offered by universities and delivered through MOOCs platforms. Alongside with MOOCs, other platforms that provide free remote access to educational resources are developing – Khan Academy, ALISON, Peer-to-Peer-University and others. They are not considered as MOOCs and distinguish from them in two main characteristics – they are not maintained and offered by educational institutions and emphasize on self-learning. CONCLUSION Information and communication technologies are part of everyday life. Our society is transformed into a digital society and its members are constantly in need of new skills, knowledge and competences in different fields. Massive Open Online Courses are a tool for additional and life-long learning. They are based on the concept of open, online, global courses accessible through platforms that are used by a large number of learners. Through them, learners have flexible access to training without the need for significant financial investments. They use high-quality learning content developed by experts from prestigious universities and have the opportunity to collaborate with people all over the world. Massive courses even can complement and enrich the traditional model of formal education. They are one of the most popular form of contemporary distance education. REFERENCES 1. Wikipedia, https://www.wikipedia.org/ (last access 08.07.2019). 2. Maxwell, K., Macmillan Dictionary, https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buz zword/entries/mooc.html (last access 08.07.2019). 3. McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., & Cormier, D., The MOOC model for digital practice, 2010. 4. Baturay, M. H. An overview of the world of MOOCs. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 427-433, 2015. 5. Bates, T., The strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs: Part I, https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/19/the- strengths-and-weaknesses-of-moocs-part-i/ (last access 08.07.2019). 6. Ospina-Delgado, J., Zorio-Grima, A., & García-Benau, M. Massive open online courses in higher education: A data analysis of the MOOC supply. Intangible Capital, 12(5), 1401-1450, 2016. 7. Bates B., Comparing xMOOCs and cMOOCs: philosophy and practice, https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/13/com https://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.macmillanenglish.com/authors/kerry-maxwell https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/mooc.html https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/mooc.html https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/19/the-strengths-and-weaknesses-of-moocs-part-i/ https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/19/the-strengths-and-weaknesses-of-moocs-part-i/ https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/13/comparing-xmoocs-and-cmoocs-philosophy-and-practice/ KIRYAKOVA G. Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, 2019 913 paring-xmoocs-and-cmoocs-philosophy- and-practice/ (last access 08.07.2019). 8. Rodriguez, O.: The concept of openness behind c and x-moocs (massive open online courses). Open Praxis 5 (1), 2013 9. What is the Difference Between xMOOCs and cMOOCs?, Online Education Blog of TouroCollege,http://blogs.onlineeducation. touro.edu/distinguishing-between-cmoocs- and-xmoocs/ (last access 08.07.2019) 10. Grainger, B. Massive open online course (MOOC) report 2013. 11. The Best MOOC Platforms, Reviews.com, https://www.reviews.com/mooc- platforms/, (last access 08.07.2019) https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/13/comparing-xmoocs-and-cmoocs-philosophy-and-practice/ https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/13/comparing-xmoocs-and-cmoocs-philosophy-and-practice/ http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/ http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/ http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/distinguishing-between-cmoocs-and-xmoocs/ http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/distinguishing-between-cmoocs-and-xmoocs/ http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/distinguishing-between-cmoocs-and-xmoocs/ https://www.reviews.com/mooc-platforms/ https://www.reviews.com/mooc-platforms/ 
work_esw7vp64trczvbz6lppicyhbfq	----	Adapting a biochemistry course to distance education Articles Adapting a Biochemistry Course to Distance Education Received for publication, June 3, 2003, and in revised form, November 11, 2003 Daniela K. Yokaichiya‡§, Eduardo Galembeck‡, and Bayardo B. Torres¶ From the Biochemical Education Research Group, ‡Departamento de Bioquı́mica, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas SP 13083970, Brazil, and ¶Departamento de Bioquı́mica, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo SP 05508900, Brazil Internet-based distance education seems to be an attractive alternative to offer courses dealing with specific topics that are not conveniently explored in undergraduate courses. This is a good way to provide access to the recent and updated discoveries in this research area and to reach people who could not take the classes in the traditional mode. Using the communication advantages available via the Internet, we adapted the course “Biochemistry of Nutrition,” first offered as a summer course to be entirely carried out at distance. The adaptation explored the use of online tools such as E-mail communication among students and teachers, computer conferencing in small groups to discuss specific subjects, and texts and software downloads to be used as main references. Graduate students had their first real experience as teachers, which proved to be very productive for both the development of the Internet version of the course and their integration with undergraduate students. Keywords: Nutritional biochemistry, Internet, distance education, collaborative learning. The Functional and Molecular Biology graduate program at State University of Campinas and the Biochemistry graduate program at University of São Paulo have offered to their graduate students the opportunity to develop and teach summer courses to undergraduate students as a part of their pedagogical training [1]. The pedagogical training is divided into two parts: 1) planning phase, where graduate students select the subject, plan the curriculum, and design the classes and pedagogical strategies; and 2) teaching phase, where graduate students deliver the courses to an undergraduate audience. The courses have some peculiar characteristics: high diversity of pedagogical strategies; 1-wk course with 30 h classroom instruction; great demand by undergraduate students; multi-disciplinary; and contents not taught in the regular face-to-face courses. Nutritional biochemistry was the subject of the 1998 summer course. The large number of registered students to the “Biochemistry of Nutrition” course and its excellent student evaluation of the course were the reasons for creating a distance education course. The course objectives, content, and evaluation tools were completely restructured to fit the Internet-based resources and to allow more students to enroll. The Internet version of this course was structured as a regular 15-wk course and offered in the Fall of 2000 and Spring of 2001 and 2003. The online tools used were E-mail communication among students and teachers; computer conferencing in small groups through discussion of specific topic; and texts and software downloads used as instructional aids. The participation of graduate students as teachers was a feature of the Internet-based course, because the inte- gration between graduate and undergraduate students has been shown to be very productive for both parts. The intention of giving close and prompt support to the stu- dents enrolled in the course made it also necessary to have a reasonable number of tutors available. ACTIVITIES AND CHANGES IN THE DISTANCE EDUCATION FORMAT There are many reports about using Internet resources to complement traditional biochemistry classes [2–5]. Ac- tually, the Internet is such an endless information source, and the topics chosen for this course, such as weight-loss diets, free radicals, caloric intake calculations, specially prescribed regimen, malnutrition, and obesity, can be eas- ily found on the Web. The course was essentially structured as a Web page where the students and the teachers could access texts, exercises, educational software [6], and communication tools such as discussion lists and chat rooms. One topic per week was available for download, and each one was carried out by different activities: problems and exercises, chats, and computer-assisted conferences or discussion lists. Table I presents the themes taught in the original course and the activities developed to adapt the course for distance education. In the original course, all activities were supported by questions to guide students and by 10 graduate students circulating in the classroom to answer the undergraduate students’ questions. At the end of each day, teachers asked a question about the content studied during that day § To whom correspondence should be addressed: Departa- mento de Bioquı́mica, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas SP 13083970, Brazil. E-mail: dycy@unicamp.br. © 2004 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION Printed in U.S.A. Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 27–29, 2004 This paper is available on line at http://www.bambed.org 27 TABLE I The “Biochemistry of Nutrition” syllabus for the original course (1998) and the distance education course (2000 –2001) Topic Activity in the original course Activity in the distance education course Nutrition through the years Lecture to introduce the course and to show the importance of research about nutritional biochemistry. Text download and study guide about the first discoveries about vitamins. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Macro nutrients metabolism review Study guide-based discussion in small groups, with teacher facilitation. Text download and study guide about the metabolism. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Determinations of differences in glucose, urea, cholesterol, and triglycerides blood levels in different diets Discussion about differences in glucose, cholesterol, urea, and triglycerides blood levels taken from volunteer students before and after a day diet. The volunteers gave priority to carbohydrate, lipid, or protein in their diets of one day. Text download and a study guide about clinical correlations of alterations in glucose, urea, cholesterol, and triglycerides blood levels. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Calculation of the caloric intake Study in small groups to calculate the caloric intake produced by different kinds of meals. Text download and a study guide about caloric intake calculation. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Calculation of individual nutrition parameters Determination of individual nutrition parameters using the formula of body mass index (BMI) and basal metabolic tax (BMT), and results comparison to the individual caloric intake. Plan a day diet to a course colleague, based on the BMI, BMT, and caloric intake calculated data. Post the proposed diet to the discussion list. Free radicals and orthomolecular medicine Study of an educational software [6] to introduce the topic free radicals. Seminar “The Orthomolecular Medicine” presented by an invited speaker. Download of the free radical software and the study guide. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Food preparation and bioavailability Lecture about competition of different components in the organism to the same receptor, as well as the loss of some minerals according to the management of the food. Download of a text and a study guide about the bioavailability and the consequences of different ways to prepare the food. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Sugar levels in different kinds of drink Laboratory experiments to quantify the sugar levels in different kinds of drinks. Differentiation between light and diet drinks in details. Download of a text and a study guide about the differences in diet and light foods and about phenylketonuria. Doubts and questions were posted to the discussion list. Post-harvest physiology Laboratory class and discussion about post- harvest manipulation of fruits and vegetables. Home-made experiments about post-harvest manipulation of fruits and vegetables followed by online discussion in chat rooms. Malnutrition Metabolic and social aspects of Kwashiorkor and marasmus diseases. All students discussed the topic in class, giving answers and opinions to questions and to additional information proposed by the teachers. Discussion (assisted and non-assisted) in chat rooms about the metabolic implications in people with Kwashiorkor and marasmus diseases. Obesity Study in small groups about the different mechanisms proposed to explain obesity: insulin resistance, leptin, low levels of lipid oxidation, and thermogenesis disturbances. One teacher accompanied each group. New groups were formed with one member from each previous group that explained to the others the mechanism studied. First activitya: four simultaneous discussions in chat rooms dealing with four different theories proposed to explain obesity. Second activityb: discussions in chat rooms about the four mechanisms studied before. The discussion group was formed with one component of each previous discussion group. Weight loss regimens Presentation and discussion in groups about weight loss programs. New groups were formed with one member from each group discussing a specific regimen program. First activitya: simultaneous discussions in chat rooms each one about one of four specific weight-loss diet. Second activityb: discussions in chat rooms about the four weight-loss diets with components from each previous discussion groups. Specially prescribed regimens Discussion in small groups about special diets in a disease situation. Presentation of the metabolic disturbances promoted by a specific disease and general discussion about the specially prescribed regimens for each situation. First activitya: simultaneous discussions about specific diet for a disease in chat rooms. Second activityb: discussions in chat rooms about all diets with one member from each previous discussion group. a Not required activity. b Activity used for learning assessment. 28 BAMBED, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 27–29, 2004 as part of an evaluation process. Students discussed the question in groups and provided one answer per group. In the distance education course, students were encour- aged to reply to other student’s questions using the online discussion forum. Teachers helped students by sending references, giving tips, and stimulating them to discuss the topics through the online discussion forum. All activities done during the course (exercises, chats, and the final test) were part of the assessment tools for the course. COURSE EVALUATION BY STUDENTS AND TEACHERS Results from the evaluations conducted during and at the end of the course indicated that the use of the Internet resources was exciting for students and teachers. The pos- itive aspects of this experience and the interest by people from different Brazilian states [7] showed that courses taught at a distance have great potential. Comments from students, before and after the course, and from the instructors about the teaching experience are presented below: Typical Students’ Comments Before Taking the Course “My expectations are very good. The topic is very inter- esting and I think that the use of Internet is exciting.” “I hope this distance course will increase my knowledge both in Nutritional Biochemistry and computing, which could not be achieved in traditional courses.” Typical Students’ Comments After the Course “The course surpassed my expectations. At the begin- ning I thought it would be very easy! Then I realized that we (the students) had many tasks to complete . . . it was even more difficult compared with a traditional course.” “My questions about the topics appear only when I study at home. In a distance course we can just ask questions via E-mail to the teacher and always get an answer.” “I would like to express my satisfaction for have being part of this course. The content was interesting and the strategies very efficient, besides being very exciting ( . . . ) The flexibility and the tools of the Internet course made it possible to conciliate my professional and personal life with course schedule.” “I really appreciated the course. It was my first experi- ence in distance course and I am now encouraged to look for other Internet-based courses.” Typical Teachers (Graduate Students) Comment “In a traditional course the students don’t have much room to discuss their misconceptions with the teachers. In a distance education course, students feel more comfort- able to send their questions via E-mail, and the interaction among teachers and students is improved. It also encour- ages us to update our knowledge to better assist students and answer their questions.” DISCUSSION The Internet is certainly an excellent media to offer courses to improve and update biochemistry knowledge because it is a great source of information, and presents different and efficient communication tools. The possibility to use E-mail discussion lists and chat rooms for discus- sions to increase the interaction among the participants was one of the main reasons for the good acceptance of the course. The structure of the course, based on interaction among students through the Internet communication tools, is ap- propriate for the student-centered learning model, in which the teacher does not simply give the answers to the stu- dents’ questions, but must also stimulate discussion and critical thinking. In the “Biochemistry of Nutrition” course, students at various performance levels work together in small groups toward a common goal. The peer teaching process with the students being responsible for the col- leagues’ learning is called “collaborative learning,” and the achievement of one student helps other students to succeed [8]. We believe that collaborative learning is only possible through the establishment of a learning community. Simply providing a physical or electronic connection between peo- ple or delivering the contents of the course in the Internet do not guarantee that any collaborative learning will take place. It is also important to consider that this model of instruction depends on a lot of students’ commitment to the learning, their engagement in the cooperative pursuit of knowledge, and the transition of the instructor’s role from authority source of information to facilitator and resource guide. CONCLUSIONS The experience of designing and delivering the distance education course “Biochemistry of Nutrition” showed that it is possible to develop a distance education course with the purpose of enhancing and updating biochemistry knowledge. The adequate use of the Internet communica- tion tools in this course was efficient enough to meet the teaching-learning process requirements of students and teachers involved in this work. Acknowledgments—We thank the teachers and graduated stu- dents that helped to develop and deliver this course: Dr. Carmen V. Ferreira, Dr. Eneida de Paula, Dr. Denise V. de Macedo, Agnes M. Molnar, Alexandre D. M. Cavagis, Armindo A. Alves, Bayki H. Kassab, Daniela D. Carvalho, Daniela Z. Covizi, Daniele R. de Araujo, Gláucia C. Melo, Joaquim M. F. A. Neto, José A. da Silva, Leonardo F. Fraceto, Luzia A. Pando, Márcio A. Miranda, Maria E. F. da Silva, Maria I. Gallão, Paulo S. C. Pretè, Silvana C. Pando, Simone A. Teixeira, and Sônia V. P. Malheiros. We thank Simone Conceição for critical review of the manuscript. We are especially grateful to the students. REFERENCES [1] D. V. Macedo, E. de Paula, B. B. Torres (1999) Training graduate students to be teachers, Braz. J. Med. Bio. Res. 32, 1457–1465. [2] T. S. Ingebritsen, J. Cheaney (1998) Teaching biotechnology via the World Wide Web, FASEB J. 12, 153 Suppl. S APR 24. [3] G. R. Parslow, E. J. Wood, B. Livett (1998) Miscellaneous Bytes, Biochem. Educ. 26, 44 – 49. [4] T. Hamamoto, Y. Kagawa (1998) Internet assisted learning of biochem- istry in Japan. Biochem. Educ. 26, 7–29. [5] J. P. Whitehead, H. E. Pence (2002) Using computer to teach biochem- istry, Biochem. Mol. Biol. Educ. 30, 206 –207. [6] D. K. Yokaichiya, E. Galembeck, B. B. Torres (2000) Radicais Livres de Oxigênio—Um Software Introdutório, Quı́m. Nova. 23, 267–269. [7] D. K. Yokaichiya, E. Galembeck, B. B. Torres (2001) Expectations and interest in distance education in biochemistry classes, Revista Brasil- eira de Ensino de Bioquı́mica e Biologia Molecular, www.sbbq. org.br/revista/. [8] A. A. Gokhale (1995) Collaborative learning enhances critical thinking, J. Tech. Educ. 7, 22–30. 29 
work_ezxnh3flyja3dcq6def2c6r3u4	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_f3cbedamonaplpbgnrgdr4rij4	----	TOCSJ-Yue Li (20151638) Send Orders for Reprints to reprints@benthamscience.ae The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, 9, 1769-1775 1769 1874-110X/15 2015 Bentham Open Open Access Application of Data Mining in Personalized Remote Distance Education Web System Yue Li*, Jian Sun and Wei Qiang North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan, China Abstract: This paper used web log mining technology for different users to take a different service policy and provide different and individualized services . Also the paper used basic theory of application of web data mining for remote edu- cation process in the distance education. After analysing systematic framework of distance education, the paper proposed web data mining application model in remote education and described all module function. The model used log infor- mation and user information to get interesting mode, and applied this mode to remote education system in order to im- prove personalized service and can be more conducive to learners. It is beneficial to help improve the content and the site topology update which reflects more dynamic and personalized than common distance learning. Keywords: Data mining, distance education, personalized, web system. 1. INTRODUCTION With the advent of the information age, modern distance education has better developed as the main way of e-learning and become an important foundation for building a learning society. Also it plays an important role in the implementation process of higher education popularization in China. Re- sources in e-learning environment which are widely shared and provide effective support for collaborative learning gave rise to a gradual change in the learning mode that is the cen- tre changed from "teacher" to "learners" and emphasized personalization and adaptation of the learning environment [1]. The World Wide Web has been widely accepted by peo- ple due to its rich hypertext information (graphics, sound, animation and video), unified platform (the browser) as well as the easy usage. Computer-aided teaching system experi- enced the same change as a complement to a new school of education. Distance teaching system based on World Wide Web has been developed [2, 3]. This teaching mode has changed the traditional teaching in spatial and temporal boundaries, by letting people experience to free access of knowledge of fun, has achieved teaching process of interac- tive sex, fast update of teaching content , and teaching media using various valuable lesson plans. The teaching service is available for more users and students have opportunities to select the best school learning program, and select the best teacher and like most courses, various excellent of teaching resources and teaching courseware can be shared [4]. Distance education involves computer technology and application of network technology. It is based on a teaching model of modern information technology platform, being a complement to traditional education. Distance education *Address correspondence to this author at the North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan, China; Tel: 13832969848; E-mail: 769683614@qq.com as a learning tool is used in higher education, vocational ed- ucation and adult education. Iit is a good means to provide lifelong education. There is a great deal of difference, main- ly reflected by different individual learning goals, learning abilities, and different cognitive styles. This necessarily de- termines that the distance education must be a kind of indi- vidualized education and distance learning must also be an adaptation of the individual learning and needs individual teaching [5, 6]. In distance teaching system based on WEB, the course providers to design good software are stored on the server and wait for the user to access. The user can access at any time, using any browser on a computer with access Inter- net/intranet servers according to their own interest to enrol themselves as students in a study course. However, the tra- ditional system of remote education made the system as the centre and did not fully take into account the student's needs and habits and required the user to adapt to the system in- stead of the system adapt to the users’ needs; it was not fully in accordance with the law of education, generally lack user guide which is basically the electronic copy of a book. Moreover, creating interactive teaching was not obvious, and involved many other issues. Distance education system has low human rigidity mainly due to lack of user behav- iour analysis, as it ignores the particularities of different user behaviour, and does not give user feedback,thus reducing the interest of users [7, 8]. In recent years, data mining has made it possible to deal with large database found. With the development in Inter- net and Web technologies, application of data mining based on Web knowledge permeated many aspects of social life at an alarming rate. Combining Web and data mining technolo- gy, the application of data mining in the Web has introduced another field of data mining which is knowledge discovery through Web data mining [9, 10]. 1770 The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, Volume 9 Li et al. Web mining is the www-related resource and extracts in- teresting, useful patterns and hidden information. It is the function of data mining technologies to utilize Web docu- ments and Web services to automatically find and extract interesting information [11]. Application of web mining in distance education site, mine useful information and model for the analysis of students of distance education, their learn- ing behaviour and learning, to improve the design of dis- tance education sites and provide a personalized learning environment for distance education students, which is very meaningful. Next, the data and methodology used in the study are described in more detail. 2. DATA MINING Data mining from large-scale data has potential rules and requires skills for extracting useful knowledge. Because the database deals with knowledge, it is also known as know- ledge discovery in databases (KDD). Data mining not only extracts knowledge, but is able to identify what is un- known, given that the knowledge is "explicit", and due to easy usage and application and being comprehensive, it has gained widespread attention. Knowledge discovery is a process which requires use of integrated systems, and data mining is just one link. Data mining is just one step in the whole knowledge discovery system, but it is one of the most important and most critical steps. We can say that data mining is the core technology of knowledge discovery, data mining algorithms directly affects the quality of knowledge discovery. Good data mining algo- rithms can perform quick and efficient data mining because internal rules enable the whole system to extract more useful knowledge, however, the speed of data mining or knowledge discovery was observed to be inadequate for effective knowledge discovery. Knowledge discovery in databases was identified from the database effectively by using novel and potentially useful and understandable model based on advanced process. Web data mining generally can be defined as a www- related resource which extracts interesting, useful patterns and hidden information. In general, web data mining can be divided into three categories: web content mining and web usage mining, and web structure mining. 2.1. Web Content Mining Web content mining is the mining of web page content. It includes: (1) intelligently extracting information from the www search tools. (2) The database methods: reconstruction of semi-structured web to make it more structured, therefore standard database query mechanism can be used for the analysis and data mining methods. (3) Mining the content of HTML pages, the text in the page through text mining, mul- timedia information mining of multimedia information on the page including the content of the page classification, clustering and association rules. 2.2. Web Structure Mining Web structure mining uses the link of the web document which reveals useful structural pattern contained in these documents. It is considered a web of processed data. Hyper- links in the documents reflect a link between documents, such as its content, subordination, references, etc. More rep- resentative of these tools is the page rank. I Information in the links of the documents is used to find relevant web pag- es. 2.3. Web Usage Mining Web usage mining is left to the user when accessing the web server access logs for mining, namely access to the us- er’s access to the web site for mining. Mining object is in- cluded in the server, such as server log data log. Mining methods include the following: (1) path analysis; (2) dis- covery of association rules and sequence patterns; (3) cluster and classification. Web usage mining can automatically dis- cover users’ access to web pages from the web server mode that a group of users or an individual user finds interest in and accesses . Data mining based on web generally includes the follow- ing processes: data acquisition, pre-processing, patterns, pat- tern analysis and the application. Web mining process consistent with the preceding data mining process can be divided into following steps; data mining of business objects, data preparation, data mining and analysis and validation of results in several stages as shown in Fig. (1). (1) Business objects: data mining is carried out in initially before exploring issues of evaluation, prediction, goals and basic structure of data mining. (2) Data preparat- Web data mining data acquisition pre-processing patterns pattern analysis and the application Fig. (1). Web data mining process. Application of Data Mining in Personalized Remote Distance Education The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, Volume 9 1771 ion: this involves web data mining of user’s background information and Web page which consists of two parts; User’s background information and u information regarding user’s registration. This records user’s private information, social background, information regarding profession, inte- rests, and hobbies. As these informations are personal , many users do not register themselves on website Shang registration real content, this on to zhihou of data mining caused has obstacles;. Another section involves information about user’s browsing log. This information reflects user’s preferences, and can also give information about user’s social background,. Web page file is a key component of the site, users through their acquisition of knowledge. Data pre- paration requires background information about the user and Web page files to extract information to have access to the data. (3) Data mining involves selecting and designing appropriate data mining algorithms, for data analysis and processing of data in the preparation phase to , find the ex- pected pattern. (4) Analysis of authentication phase verifies the accuracy of the data mining phase results. In case of errors, the preceding steps are rolled back and are amended and if the results are correct, further analysis, interpretation, guide site design and renovation are followed. Based on remote education platform combined with web data mining technology, understand and master students le- arning of interest, and browse mode, and learning status, and need of navigation help, get conducive to remote education of fresh mode and rules, guide teaching material of arrange- ments and courseware of design and improved, improve re- mote education of quality, building a perfect of online virtual teaching system, makes students of remote education le- arning mode more intelligent of, and personalized. With the application of web mining in distance educat- ion technology, we can take full advantage of the informat- ion site , for constructing effective education system. Based on web data mining of remote education model shown in Fig. (2), model in traditional of based on web of remote education mode increased web mining technology through on website log and background database of integrated analy- sis, found user of learning law and learning preference, will these information feedback to line teachers and courses de- sign personnel and website management personnel, these people will can proposed website of improved programme both frame site (Fig. 2). So we can set up a personalized in- telligent education platform. In general, the application of data mining technology in the education system has made the decision makers use data mining techniques to detect shortcomings of education, to predict the future trend for educational development, and to improve the quality of education . 3. APPLICATION REAEARCH 3.1. Bayesian Classification Bayesian classification is a very important application in personalized learning system. Classification in data mining is a very important task. The purpose of classification is to build a classification model, and this model can be mapped to data items in the database in one category . Classification is a common problem. There are many different applications for classification. For example, a classification model can be created, security classification or risk on bank lending based on e-mail headers and content check out spam; In the MRI results, to distinguish between tumours as being malignant or benign, the results are categorized based on the shape of galaxy Bayesian classification method was proposed for the classification of learner's learning style, to establish a per- sonalized learning system to provide information for deci- sion-making. Briefly, classification involves learning function f, and x maps each property set to a previously defined class label y. Data classification is divided into two steps: (1) building a model, and providing description of the scheduled data col- lection or set of concepts. The description involves the ana- lytical description of the attribute database tuples to con- struct the model. Tuples are also known as sampling, in- stances, or objects. Tuple form of data analysis is used for model training dataset. Each sample also has a specific cor- responding label, as the provision of training samples for each class label, which is also known as supervised learning. Web browser Web server Web mining Database interface Network teaching resources Web log Datebase Internet Fig. (2). Distance education model based on web mining. 1772 The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, Volume 9 Li et al. (2) The classification using the model, evaluates the predic- tive accuracy of the model followed by a, a simple method that uses class label sample test sets. These samples are ran- domly selected, and are independent of the training samples. The model calculates the percentage of test samples which are accurate and classifies them. For each test sample, sam- ples of known class label and the comparison of model pre- diction. Bayesian network is based on dependencies between var- iables, using graph theory to represent the joint probability distribution of the variables collection of graphical models. Bell leaves republican network is based on a no to no ring showing conditions of probability of distribution, allowing the variable of subset to define class conditions independ- ence in which, each knot point is described as a random variable, and between the two knot points, there is an article arc. This two knot points phase corresponds to the random variable dependent on probability, instead of the description the two random variable is conditions independent of In the network, a node x has a corresponding conditional probabil- ity table to represent node x in its parent node each having a possible value of the conditional probability. Bayesian net- work has two main components: (1) directed acyclic graph showing dependency between vectors; each node represents a random variable, and each ARC represents a probability dependent. (2) Probability table with a parent node and its associates. Bayesian network modelling consists of two steps: (1) creation of a grid structure. (2) Estimation of the probability of each node in the table of probabilities. Net- work topology can be obtained through the expert knowledge in the field of subjective coding. Bayesian classification is a combination of statistics and Bayesian network classification method. It is based on the following assumptions: the probability distribution of the studied variables is based on the probabilistic reasoning and observed data in order to make the best decision and the probability for a given sample belongs to a particular class. Bayesian classification method has the following main fea- tures: (1) it makes full use of knowledge in the field and oth- er information can be explicitly calculated if probability re- sult is the combination of domain knowledge and infor- mation data. (2) It uses digraph representations, and arc demonstrates the dependency between variables, represented by probability distributions dependent on the strength of the relationship. Representation is conducive to the understand- ing of the knowledge in the field. (3) Under normal circum- stances, all steps are involved in the classification of the property, and potentially play a role in the process of classi- fication. (4) It can be incremental learning.. The data can be incremented or decremented to estimated the probability of a hypothesis, and can easily deal with incomplete data. (5) Bayesian classification process is a discrete object. Suppose that the sample space of experiment is S. A, and B represent the event. The probability of event A is P(A), , the probability of event B is P(B) . The probability of event A and B is P(A!B) . Therefore, the following formulas are obtained: ( ) ( / ) ( ) P A B P B A P A ! = (1) The multiplication theorem calculates conditional proba- bility : ( ) ( / ) ( ) ( / ) ( )P A B P B A P A P A B P B! = = (2) The total probability formula is as follows: 1 ( ) (A/B )P(B ) n i i i P A P = = ! (3) Fig. (3). Learning satisfaction based on data mining in personalized distance education. The study used naive Bayesian classification method to cat- egorize learning styles, and personalized learning content for personalized learning system organizations which provided information for decision-making as shown in Fig. (3). (1) Identification of learners. In learning who login to the learning system first with a user name reveals learning style database in the weather has the learning who of learning style type records, if has, system is through the learning who of learning style rendering for its learning style of learning content, if the learning style is not determined, Shi system will access the information related to learning behaviour (user name, the time of enrolment in the learning module and the time of completion, test results, selection of learning content and Learning styles, etc.) stored in repository. (2) Pre-processing of data. Quality of data is an important factor for successful data mining through data processing. On one hand, it guarantees that the modelling data is correct and effective, while on the other hand, by regulating the format and content of the data, it makes the model more accurate and effective. Through on source data analysis and pro- cessing, classification model of learning styles is obtained which includes training sample set of the property, that vid- eo learning times (v), and FLASH learning times (f), and text learning times (t), and video learning average results (VS), and FLASH learning average results (FS), and text learning average results (TS), and learning style type (s). 3.2. Association Rules Associated rules mining in data mining is the most active research method , initially introduced for shopping basket analysis. Its purpose was to find trading database of the different commodities in Zhejiang o, with development in Application of Data Mining in Personalized Remote Distance Education The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, Volume 9 1773 the theory of associated rules mining , Associated rules are widely used in other fields like medical, and commercial, industry, and in personalized learning systems to keep large amount of data based on learning records. This data contain personal information about learners and learning behaviour, however, its potential value has never been fully used. The association rules mining method can be applied for the anal- ysis of learner's record, to find out learners ' preferences according to the Act of law to guide personalized learning system about personalized service, and problems that are worth studying. This study described the basic concepts and methods of association rules and made use of association rules mining to learn about courses and explore the relation- ship between the test scores, learning styles and learning methods of association rules method for the development of personalized learning system. Data Association is an important aspect in the database of knowledge. Between two or more variable values there is a regularity, which is called an association. Associations can be divided into simple association associated, timing, and the causal associations. Correlational analysis of hidden Associ- ation network aims to identify the database. Sometimes, the functions associated with data in the database are not known. Despite of this uncertainty, analysis rules bring credibility through associations. . Interesting associations or related links were found between sets of items in large volumes of data through the application of mining association rules. {d D } (x) x d Support D ! " = (4) The strength of association rules can be measured in terms of its support and confidence. Support is determined by how often certain rules can be used for given data set and confidence is determined by analysing the frequency of the occurrence of y in the x. Measurement of both supports (s) and confidence (c) is defined as follows: ( ) ( ) X Y s X Y N ! " # = (5) ( ) ( ) ( ) X Y c X Y X ! ! " # = (6) The basic task of association rule mining involves the specification of first user-specified minimum support and minimum confidence for the mining of association rules in the database. Association rule mining process consists of two stages: at the first stage, all frequent item sets in data collec- tion are found, while the second phase is based on mining association rules of those frequent item sets the user is inter- ested in. (1) Through the given user minimal support to find all frequent item sets meets not less than support a subset of all the items is created. In fact, the frequent item sets may contain. In General, we are concerned only with those who did not were other frequent item set contains a collection called maximum frequent item sets . All previously ob- served frequent item sets form the basis of association rules. Discovering frequent item sets in the original method determines the structure of each set of options that provide support after calculation in order to complete this task. Each candidate’s item sets must be compared with each transac- tion. If the candidate’s set is included in the service, support for the candidate set a count value, in order to reduce the computational complexity of frequent item sets by using the following two methods. (2) From high frequency associated with projects, group’s rules are created. Therefore, high fre- quency of k-groups of projects from the previous step is used to generate rules, having minimal reliability, under the threshold. If the rules of the trust meet minimum reliability, association rules are set . For example, with high-frequency, k-projects are generated by the set {a, b}with rule AB, whose reliability can be obtained by the formula. If the reli- ability is greater than or equal to the minimum reliability, AB is set for association rules. At present , association rules mining technology has been widely used in the financial industry in the West, it can suc- cessfully forecast the bank’s customer needs. The system uses data mining techniques by utilizing basic information regarding learning activities for analysis, sorting and mining to construct learning features. The fact that one section con- tains a description about the learner, while another section contains the rules for describing learner, the method of asso- ciation rules is used to derive data by using the learning rules, assisted by experts in education. Moreover established operand is used to distinguish between good and bad rules to reconstruct the learners ' characteristics. In order to find the description of individual learners’ behaviour rules, a variety of data mining algorithms can be used [12, 13]. For generating association rules, the process involves four steps: data processing, transaction of database, generat- ing frequent item sets and association rules. They of function respectively for: on learning who learning behaviour data for cleaning finishing formed learning results database; from learning results database in the extraction data mining object, on data mining object for coding and will relationship table conversion for Affairs database; according to given of mini- mum support degrees in Affairs database of based Shang generated frequently items set; according to given of mini- mum confidence degrees by frequently items set generated associated rules. Fig. (4). Education resource usage based on data mining in person- alized distance education. 1774 The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, Volume 9 Li et al. CONCLUSION The web data mining technology and distance learning are fully combined, using existing data sources and data min- ing algorithms to find courses, network design and other links between them. Studying favourable rules, and applying these tothe existing distance education platforms, proved best for the distance education mode , and has enabled stu- dents to change from being passive to Active students. Dis- tance education is more personal, comprehensive and has greater advantage. Fig. (5). Learning outcomes based on data mining in personalized distance education. In this paper, the mining application was used in dis- tance education. With the development in web and internet, human society has entered into the information age. Due to the arrival of this era, education also faces new opportunities and challenges. Therefore, the subject has a strong theoreti- cal and practical application. Modern distance education has undergone three changes; it has become more dependent on the network, but many distance education websites are not dynamic and personal- ized. However, the existing distance education system has accumulated a great deal of useful information on the Web, the w g b mining technology can be used from a broad array of existing aggregate data found in useful information. Moreover, the use of mining application in distance educa- tion was also studied. This log processes pre-treatment data in five stages; purification, identification of the data, session identification, path complements and recognition, introduc- tion of filter lists, and heuristic rules, on the basis of maxi- mum forward path, which are described one by one. In the end, basic theory and application of mining in remote edu- cation process and application of Web mining in remote education along with its all modules of function have been described. This model proved to be advantageous as it is useful for mining of object, and not only for log infor- mation. It also analysed learner’s personal information, the results, content, and will mining get of results application to personalized recommended system in the, can more condu- cive to learning who of learning, while, also conducive to improve the structure of website topology and content of update reflects more personalized than the ordinary distance education (Fig. 4). This system was used to personalize learning theory for based, will education theory, and data mining technology and network technology and component technology, applica- tion to learning system in the, the system full grasp educa- tion teaching law, can according to each students of basic situation, and learning style, and learning preference, and learning requirements, itself features, to learning who pro- vides different of learning information and the learning page, reflected has education thought and theory of guide role, also reflected has education theory and modern science and tech- nology of mutual fusion . The main features of this system are as follows: (1) suit- able for multidisciplinary studies, and used as a common platform for individualized learning; (2) it expands the knowledge ; (3) it classifies learners ' learning styles accord- ing to the learners ' records, automatically; (4) According to the learner's basic situation, information regarding learning styles is provided to determine learners’ characteristics in learning, for personalized functions; (5) It applies data min- ing algorithm to fully extract potential information, and provide a guarantee for personalized learning content to the learning organization. In personalized distance education system, in addition to mining log files, users can also interact with the site database tree and get access to courseware, site, files, such as mining, students ' assignments and examination process along with the analysis and results, as well as can ask questions and receive answers , thus, carrying out a full range of personal- ized services. Despite initiation of developments in personal- ized remote education website, development also just start- ed, It has many technological problems which need inquiry, but it is worth the people’s efforts, because remote educa- tion in today’s world provides lifelong education. Howev- er, this field requires in-depth research to establish perfect personalized remote education platform (Fig. 5). We know of no previous register-based study that has il- lustrated the relevance of these two crucial issues in an equally detailed manner as we have done here. CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors confirm that this article content has no con- flict of interest. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the Key Project of Guangxi Social Sciences, China (No. gxsk201424), the Education Science fund of the Education Department of Guangxi, Chi- na (No. 2014JGA268), and Guangxi Office for Education Sciences Planning, China (No. 2013C108). REFERENCES [1] C. Romero, S. Ventura, and E. García, "Data mining in course management systems: Moodle case study and tutorial," Computers and Education, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 368-384, 2008. [2] F. Castro, A. Vellido, À. Nebot, and F. Mugica, "Applying data mining techniques to e-learning problems," Evolution of teaching and learning paradigms in intelligent environment, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, vol. 62, pp. 183-221, 2007. [3] S. H. Ha, M. B. Sung, and C. P. Sang, "Web mining for distance education, “Management of Innovation and Technology,” In: Pro- Application of Data Mining in Personalized Remote Distance Education The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal, 2015, Volume 9 1775 ceedings of the IEEE International Conference on, vol. 2, pp. 715- 719, 2000. [4] O. R. Zaïane, and J. Luo, "Web usage mining for a better web- based learning environment," In: Proceedings of conference on ad- vanced technology for education, 2001. [5] C. Romero, "Personalized links recommendation based on data mining in adaptive educational hypermedia systems," Creating New Learning Experiences on a Global Scale, Springer Berlin Hei- delberg, pp. 292-306, 2007. [6] W. Hämäläinen, "Data mining in personalizing distance education courses," In: World conference on open learning and distance edu- cation, 2004. [7] M. Penelope, "Using semantic web mining technologies for per- sonalized e-learning experiences," In:Proceedings of the web-based education, pp. 461-826, 2005. [8] C. F. Lin, "Data mining for providing a personalized learning path in creativity: An application of decision trees," Computers and Ed- ucation, vol. 68, pp. 199-210, 2013. [9] E. Yukselturk, O. Serhat, and Y. K. Türel, "Predicting dropout student: An application of data mining methods in an online educa- tion program," European Journal of Open, Distance and e- Learning, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 118-133, 2014. [10] M. Abdous, H. Wu, and C.J. Yen, "Using data mining for predict- ing relationships between online question theme and final grade," Educational Technology & Society, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 77-88, 2012. [11] A. Fernández, "E-learning and educational data mining in cloud computing: an overview," International Journal of Learning Tech- nology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 25-52, 2014. [12] J. A. Lara, "A system for knowledge discovery in e-learning envi- ronments within the European Higher Education Area–Application to student data from Open University of Madrid, UDIMA," Com- puters & Education, vol. 72, pp. 23-36, 2014. [13] M. Munk, and D. Martin, "Impact of Different pre-processing tasks on effective identification of users’ behavioral patterns in web- based educational system," Procedia Computer Science, vol. 4, pp. 1640-1649, 2011. Received: June 10, 2015 Revised: July 29, 2015 Accepted: August 15, 2015 © Li et al.; Licensee Bentham Open. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non- commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. 
work_f3noukb6djcwdfi2jjqnll2ej4	----	Applying Augmented Reality to a Mobile-Assisted Learning System for Martial Arts using Kinect Motion Capture | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2016070106 Corpus ID: 13709938Applying Augmented Reality to a Mobile-Assisted Learning System for Martial Arts using Kinect Motion Capture @article{Hsu2016ApplyingAR, title={Applying Augmented Reality to a Mobile-Assisted Learning System for Martial Arts using Kinect Motion Capture}, author={Wen-Chun Hsu and J. Shih}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2016}, volume={14}, pages={91-106} } Wen-Chun Hsu, J. Shih Published 2016 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. In this study, to learn the routine of Tantui, a branch of martial arts was taken as an object of research. Fitts' stages of motor learning and augmented reality AR were applied to a 3D mobile-assisted learning system for martial arts, which was characterized by free viewing angles. With the new system, learners could rotate the viewing angle of an image freely in a three-dimensional space, zoom in or zoom out the image, and adjust its playback speed. The experimental participants were divided… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 1 Citations View All Topics from this paper Augmented reality Kinect Motion capture Experiment Viewing angle Mobile device One-way function One Citation Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency E-Learning Supported Martial-Arts-Training Armin Vahidi, Nicholas H. Müller Computer Science HCI 2017 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 25 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Affordances of Augmented Reality in Science Learning: Suggestions for Future Research Kun-Hung Cheng, C. Tsai Psychology 2013 368 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed “Making it real”: exploring the potential of augmented reality for teaching primary school science Lucinda Kerawalla, R. Luckin, S. Seljeflot, A. Woolard Computer Science Virtual Reality 2006 381 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Impact of an augmented reality system on students' motivation for a visual art course Angela Di Serio, María-Blanca Ibáñez-Espiga, C. D. Kloos Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2013 547 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Affordances and Limitations of Immersive Participatory Augmented Reality Simulations for Teaching and Learning M. Dunleavy, C. Dede, R. Mitchell Computer Science 2009 765 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Augmented Reality in Education: Current Technologies and the Potential for Education M. Kesim, Yasin Ozarslan Engineering 2012 213 Save Alert Research Feed Martial arts in artificial reality P. Hämäläinen, T. Ilmonen, Johanna Höysniemi, Mikko Lindholm, Ari Nykänen Computer Science CHI 2005 129 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Evaluation of learners' attitude toward learning in ARIES augmented reality environments R. Wojciechowski, W. Cellary Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2013 271 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Environmental Detectives—the development of an augmented reality platform for environmental simulations E. Klopfer, Kurt Squire Computer Science 2008 643 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed A Survey of Augmented Reality R. Azuma Computer Science Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 1997 6,544 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Immersive Interfaces for Engagement and Learning C. Dede Computer Science, Medicine Science 2009 938 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 1 Citations 25 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_f6yholdtqvajzbfkctdkmbckie	----	Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(12): 2857-2862, 2016 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.041220 Quality Content in Distance Education Ezgi Pelin Yildiz*, Aytekin İşman Institute of Educational Sciences, Sakarya University, Sakarya, Turkey Copyright©2016 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract In parallel with technological advances in today's world of education activities can be conducted without the constraints of time and space. One of the most important of these activities is distance education. The success of the distance education is possible with content quality. The proliferation of e-learning environment has brought a need for content production. In educational process one of the most important subjects is learning contest. Learning contest represents an entire course, subject materials, content modules, learning objects about courses, information resources and periodicals. Quality of the content in distance education systems come before the factors that determine the quality of education. Keywords Distance Education, E-learning, Quality, Content 1. Introduction Many new concepts have emerged within education using information and communication technology. One of these is the concept of distance education. Distant education is an institutive education activity which brings; teaching materials with communication tecnologies, teachers and students in different places together. Distance learning is one of the rapidly developing fields of education (Boas et al. [1]). In other words distance education expresses the model of an education system that the student and teachers in different places make the learning-teaching activities with communication technologies and mail services real (İşman, [2]). Distance learning is an important tool that meets the learning needs of young people and adults. Distance learning has a great potential at various levels. The development of modern information technology has encouraged the advance of distance higher education (Zhao & Li, [3]). Quality assurance systems that improve the quality of distance higher education haves been established. In this context, distance education and the accreditation of quality assurance systems are created. Accreditation in education is a way of verification of a definite institution’s education quality which has been approved by academic quality approval and presented to a person, group or people who needs education. Accreditation is a concept developed in education to agree on certain standards. One of the most important institutions providing the accreditation of distance education institutions is the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). According to the organization's 1998 data the average age of Internet-based distance education students participating in the programme was 31 and the most important problem in the frequently asked questions section is the validity level of the diplomas or certificates in the other countries that they take this education in another institutions. While the studies of accreditation are still going on these kinds of questions subsist in the part of problems at education institutions. Accredited institutions have provided standardised, Internet-based distance education programmes that are implemented by educational institutions which haves provided a way to solve these problems (Gürol & Sevindik, [4]). It has been observed that there has been an increase in the number of universities across the world implementing distance education through innovative forms of education. Information on distance learning is transferred to the students by communication Technology and in this point the quality control system of distance education is featuring. (Batura et al. [5]). A quality control system is expected to be fulfilled in a repeated 4-step cycle; planning, monitoring, organizing and setting up set up all elements of the system. Active, social-oriented, creative and self-sufficient educational qualifications are the main criteria in the quality of distance education. The supportive factors could be organized as motivation in education, self-organization information and communication technologies with practical experience availability, distance education’s psychological and technological adaptation. Quality in distance education can be characterized by three elements: staffing, training and methodological materials, material and technical infrastructure (Batura et al. [5]). Also distance learning is evaluated through quality control conditions, process quality and quality of results. Quality conditions include the training and supply system, the material and technical infrastructure and personnel, process quality includes; education, science and research and management, the quality of the results; two dimensions are discussed: the quality of the students, and an 2858 Quality Content in Distance Education external evaluation of graduates is examined by; the employment rate and, unemployment rate. The quality of the students; knowledge, skills and experience are examined. The graduate of external evaluation; the employment rate, unemployment rate and problems are examined. The University of Texas Pan American quality in distance education is discussed from three angles; quality of content, presentation quality and the quality of student services (Davies et al. [6]). The quality of distance education could be evaluated by approaching the learning experiences’ results on these identified factors. Especially for the quality content, content experts, instructional designers, media experts, graphic designers and there is a need to be synchronised and work as a team in one or more subject technology officer. For effective learning in distance education components such as interaction via, text, sound, simple graphical presentations, video presentations, animations, simulations, test systems, should be supported by feedback. The proliferation of e-learning environments has brought the need for the content to be produced together and is one of the most important points to be considered in the educational process of learning content. The quality of content is one of the factors that determine the quality of education in distance learning. Numerous content development tools for distance learning are available. The use of these tools are practical quick to prepare and can bring about very different content. The most important objective in the design of educational content; is that it is easy for users to understand, easy to learn and is an interactive structure. Related features that affect the quality of content include: it should; be interactive with, audio, images, animation, multimedia support, simulation and animation of courses and learning activities to give the work contains questions and tests. The other issue in content quality is to provide the content standards (Balaban, [7]). Therefore it is important to investigate the selection of the Learning Management System (LMS) and Content Management Systems (CMS) soft wares’ whether they use the standards or not. Learning Management System software enables the monitoring of user information. It allows the selection and registration of students in distance or blended learning courses the presentation of content, and its assessment and evaluation. Learning Management Systems "LMS" (Learning Management System, LMS) is software that allows the management of learning activities. It allows students and teachers to keep system records and retention reports. It provides learning materials and the ability to share learning materials and discussions, manage course catalogues, receive assignments, enter exams, undertake assignments and provide feedback on the exam (Özaslan, [8]). An instructional management system must have certain characteristics in order to provide full service to its users. The main features it should have are interoperability, primarily with other systems, compliance archiving and file management capabilities, reusability, regulation consistent with learning objectives and supporting other tools used to create quick accessibility of content Word, PowerPoint, Flash, PDF etc. (Altıparmak et al. [9]). The content management systems are the systems that the web site owner and the other authorised users’ private account information (user name, password, ...) with the reached Web site Management panel by using the content that can be changed and add the new ones on the website (text, pictures, music, files, etc.). Web-based programs which means the programs that works on the internet can be run easily to use without the need to install to the private computer and it can be reached from any computer anywhere in the world. The software's that featured in content production are: Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, Adobe Flash Adobe X pro Raptivity, Camtasia, Articulate, Articulate Engage, Articulate Presenter, Authoware, Lectora, Elicitus, Rapid Intake, Toolbook, Keynote, Webex presentation studio, Articulate studio. Apart from the need for any software installation without providing rapid content development services that can be used if necessary to give a few examples of websites:  E-Learning Brothers: It is possible to get the SWF with a flash output by changing the desired content on ready-made templates (www.elearningbrothers.com).  Panopto: Fast offline content that can be prepared and published (www.panopta.com).  Presentations 2Go: The program can translate a described course as an accessible content which can be accessed from web save it with the person’s shared information of the presentation and image in a conference. (http://www.presentations2go.eu). Open sources and coded softwares show themselves at development of the contents of distance learning. Open source code is an application development method that presents an easy access to the product's source. It provides a significant advantage in terms of cost open source content and development tools allow people with no professional skills to easily create interactive course content. Almost all software development tools have a graphical user interface. Most of this software also has Turkish language support. All these features provide to prepare a content in a fast and easy way to the content development teams who give a distance education in institutions, instructors and the other people who are responsible for the content development. Open source tools that can be used for content development in distance education are an alternative to commercial software. Today, there are many different functions that offer open source content development In our era there isn’t a solution that is "capable of responding to all needs" with the open source code learning management system which is pretty much in number. The learning management systems that will be selected for suiting the aim should to be investigated, compared with each other and should be in a position that answers the institution’s needs in the best way by its general outlines. Prominent and general characteristic: 2. Moodle In the world of e-learning platforms Moodle is the most Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(12): 2857-2862, 2016 2859 widely used open source learning management system software. Each month, the average number of new registrations is 2000, and it is available to users in 219 countries. Moodle software has spread in Turkey and provides support for the use of the Turkish language. Particularly Moodle as the opening of the Learning management system is a low cost solution to start in the web based online graduate level courses (LMS). Although it is free, open source software will entail costs associated the university and software support. Compared with the cost of commercial software it is preferable due to its lower cost. Moodle is an open source and open to development learning management system designed to help educators create online courses. The software works under the MySQL and PostgreSQL database systems and in any environment that supports PHP (Linux, Windows, etc.). The model can perform many of the activities that may be required in distance education sites. The most important feature is that teachers and students can use it easily (Altıparmak et al. [9]). 2.1. Blackboard In 1997 Blackboard, an E-learning software of the leading position at areas of its applications and services globally was founded with the aim to increase the innovations in the field of education to reach everywhere and also to spread the productivity with the dissemination. Blackboard’s worldwide users portfolio formed of, primary and secondary schools, higher education institutions, public and commercial institutions. Blackboard and it’s users seen as the world pioneers in the field of e-learning and Blackboard's online learning application draws the attention as the most commonly used in United States and the most successfully adapted system. Blackboard aims to promote educational innovations everywhere by combining technology with humans; it has accepted this as its mission. Blackboard software has been introduced in two packages: 'Academic Suite' (academic pack) and 'Commerce Suite' (commercial package). The commonly used 'Blackboard Academic Suite' consists of three separate modules: 1. Blackboard Learning System This provides content preparation and management training. 2. Blackboard Community System This allows the setting up of vibrant online communities, educational institutions and improves the flow of data. 3. Blackboard Content System This is used to store, share and organize the digital content. An electronic portfolio can be prepared to assess student progress. Sakai "Sakai Foundation" is a collaborative and a learning environment (CLE) that reformed under the organisational structure academic, commercial and individual participation which was created under the leadership of Sakai Indiana University, Stanford University, University of Michigan and the University of Valencia Polytechnic. Web-based platform is an independent application that appeals free for over 160 educational institutions’ that a lot of users use with the features that support education and open source code. The application of Sakai course management systems besides the many common features they have, including information/document distribution, transferring assignment, online assessment and evaluation, notepad and also live chat modules. Sakai that presents collaborative work environment tools is also suitable for the use of researchers and project groups. Developing the applications under the Sakai Foundation’s structure is made by educational institutions and universities individual, based on membership without any profit motive. This community is also working on the identification on open standards for the education and research communities, software solutions and about its integration. When Moodle and Sakai is compared, it is seen that although Moodle is used more widely in our Country and globally, future aimed investments and supports to Sakai show it will get more shares in the market. Mellon's investment of 2.2 million USD and Hewlett’s investment partners’ 4.6 million USD fund supports demonstrates Sakai’s future brighter. Atutor Atutor is an open source web-based learning content management system (LCMS). A Tutor a software that contains the desired features for the disabled people which determined by The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). Platform works independently on the server environments which is Microsoft, Linux, UNIX, or Mac. University of Toronto is conducting studies about the creation of standards and continues to develop many projects in this area with Atutor in the first place. Atutor is used by many universities, institutions, research centers and educational institutions. Dokeos Dokeos is a learning management system that based on the open source business model which reformed besides many international institution and organisations with the universities first. It is used in e-learning and blended learning programs by many companies except for academic purposes. Based on the MySQL database and a web-based application is written in PHP. Dokeos is a tool based on web-based e-learning, course management and a collaboration system. Dokeos can perform course management which is about distribution issues, scheduling, progress tracking, text / voice and video with chat, test management and record in. At this moment Dokeos which includes 31 languages is using by many organisations. The main advantage of Dokeos its ease of use and it is a flexible system. With a simple operation it aims to become the main tool for good teaching. In this way users will be presented with the opportunity to devote more in learning by making less effort with Dokeos. 2860 Quality Content in Distance Education Efront EFront is a content and learning management system for e-learning and human resources management with its easy usage, visual characteristics and SCORM compliance, which include suitable systems to be used for open source coded companies and education institutions. Platform works on MySQL as a database, software architecture as PHP. Besides Efront’s enriched version about human resources management, different language supports, LDAP’s authentication option and pedagogical content presentations with open source code of educational package is also located. Apart from this, Dimdim’s open source code applications have the possibility to form an online certificate for virtual classroom and courses which will be presented a virtual meeting and synchronous education. Docebo Docebo is a content and learning management system which is similar to Efront that keeps open source code companies with the systems which is proper to the use of educational institutions for SCORM compatibility with e-learning and human resources’ management and development. Docebo is working as PHP and database on MySQL. In Docebo there is a possibility as e-bulletin for collective informing as well as video conferencing, virtual conversation and meeting. Estudy Estudy, is an open source learning management system that gives special support, especially in computer Science, in addition to the simulation of an ordinary university course management system. Claroline Claroline has been developed on the basis of pedagogical principles. Classroom’s traditional structure has been started to move to the collaborative web applications based on the foundation of education. Drupal Open source code content management system of Drupal is a flexible platform that developed by the aim to form many wide features and services with socially interactive learning environments besides the customizable, authorizable content and user management and search capabilities. Web-based platform could be configured on MySQL or PostgreSQL database, in PHP language. Many educational institutions and universities choose Drupal as a content management system. DotLRN Dotlrn is an open source code learning management system that keeps the office supplies that students used about assignments and projects within itself. Dotlrn consists of course management, learning management, content management, and online community management structure. Dotlrn works supportive on the Unix / Linux based servers with AOLServer web application server. The database is PostgreSQL and is compatible with Oracle. Olat Olat, which is used in Switzerland and the University of Zurich, was developed as an open source learning management system. The java based application requires a java-enabled server. MySQL, Postgres and HSQL have been tested and can be used by anyone. The course system’s installation and structure is easy. It provides file sharing, chat, discussion forums and support groups. There is strong membership as an intra-Group membership status is available. Olat contains course system scoring mechanism inside itself. It supports online testing and scoring while the user page carries a portal feature. There are survey-based reporting and query features. Distance Education Uses Areas Distance learning is used in almost every area. The method is particularly indispensable especially for school age and background who want to develop themselves or people working in education. In Turkey undergraduate, graduate, including almost all universities in postgraduate education has been implemented. Advantages and Disadvantages of Distance Learning Like any kind of educational program, distance learning comes with a host of pros and cons. Before you enroll in any kind of distance learning program, make sure to carefully consider these in order to be sure you’ll be getting an education that meets your personal needs, strengths and career goals. Distance Learning Advantages  Lots of flexibility. With distance learning courses, students can complete their course work from just about anywhere, provided there’s a computer and internet connection. This allows students to work when and where it is more convenient for them without having to squeeze in scheduled classes to an already busy life.  No commuting. Taking a course online can be one way to cut down on costly gas or public transportation. Since students can often work from home to complete their class assignments, both time and money are saved in cutting out the trips to and from class.  Numerous choices for schools. Even if you live in a community with few or no colleges distance learning allows you to choose from a wide variety of schools to complete your education. You may find online schools that specialize in your particular field or one that can provide a great general education. Either way, your options for education will be greatly expanded.  Lowered costs. Prices for online courses are generally cheaper than their on-campus counterparts and you won’t have to worry about commuting, moving or getting meal plans on campus, some additional benefits to learning from home. Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(12): 2857-2862, 2016 2861  Learn while working. As distance learning can usually be completed on your own schedule, it is much easier to complete distance learning courses while working than more traditional educational programs. Keeping your job gives you more income, experience and stability while completing your degree giving you less to worry about and more time to focus on your studies. Distance Learning Disadvantages  Lack of social interaction. If the classroom environment is what you love most about learning you may want to take a step back and reconsider distance learning. You’ll likely get some interaction on chat rooms, discussion boards and through email, but the experience will be quite different than traditional courses.  Format isn’t ideal for all learners. Not everyone is an ideal candidate for online learning. If you know you have problems with motivation, procrastination and needs lots of individual attention from an instructor you may want to think long and hard before enrolling in an online learning program.  Some employers don’t accept online degrees. While a majority of employers will, there are some who still see a stigma attached to distance learning. Realize that your online degree may not be the ideal tool for some job fields or for future learning.  Requires adaptability to new technologies. If you’ve never been one to love working with technology you will probably get a lot less out of an online course than your more tech-savvy counterparts. Make sure you feel comfortable working with computers and with online programs before you sign up for a class.  Not all courses required to complete the degree may be offered online. It makes sense that more practical majors like nursing aren’t offered entirely online, after all, part of the degree is learning to work directly with patients. Find out all the requirements of your degree to see what may need to be completed offline. Effectiveness of Distance Education among Different Learning Models  Universities servicing multiple sites can seek to utilise online education as a cost efficient means to develop skills and education training to numerous sites at once and so reduce time and drive down fixed costs (Childs et al., 2005; Scarafiotti, 2004).  As the up-scaling of learner groups takes place, then online education can deliver content to numbers beyond the limitations of the bricks and mortar classroom environment. Again, clear efficiencies can be theoretically achieved (Childs et al., 2005; Scarafiotti, 2004; Lee, Yoon, & Lee, 2009) as excess or overflow demand is catered for which might previously have gone elsewhere.  From the learner point of view, online education is about convenience and the flexibility of study. Translated into the commercial sector, this allows the delivery of ‘just-in-time’ training as and when necessary, and in the education sector it can mean wider access for non-traditional students (i.e. adult returners) (Childs et al., 2005; Winterbottom, 2007; Meyer, 2003; Wang & Woo, 2007).  Online education systems have the capacity to track user progress and also to assess their competencies through interactive content and related quizzes and assessments in a much more instantaneous manner than the large lecture hall environment. (Childs et al., 2005).  There are clear cost savings to student commuters being able to work from home and progress their studies; likewise in the commercial sector where online education can save many thousands of pounds annually on reduced transport costs for classroom-based training events (Childs et al., 2005). 3. Result The concept of distance education is of great importance in developing information and communication technologies. Today, in primary schools to universities the concept of distance education is used in many areas, sometimes as an alternative to, and sometimes independently from, formal education. Within the concept of distance education content development is of great importance. The prepared content is one of the main components that determine the quality of education. The most important objectives in the design of educational content is that it is; easy for users to understand, easy to learn, and has an interactive structure. Related features that affect the quality of content are; it should be interactive with audio, images, animation and so on. In addition, it should have multimedia support, simulation and the animation of courses and learning activities, to include the work that contains questions and tests. Another issue with content standards is to ensure the quality of the content. Therefore, it is important to research at this point whether the chosen Learning Management System (LMS) and Content Management System (CMS) softwares' use the standards or not. According to the purpose of the chosen learning management system and content management systems’ should answer with their best for the needs of the organisation which will use the application and be examined with their general characteristics, be compared with each other. REFERENCES [1] Boas, A., Andrade, G., Hamtini, T. & Sousa, S. [2011]. Tutors and University Teachers' Perception about Quality Assurance in Distance Education. IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON). 2862 Quality Content in Distance Education [2] Isman, A. [2011]. Distance Education. Chapter [1]. Pegem Academy Publishing. [1]. [3] Zhao, J. & Li, X. [2009]. Inspiration from an Analysis of the British and American Quality Assurance System of Distance Higher Education. 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[2008].Distance Education Practice for Open Source Code Learning Management Systems. inet-tr’08 - XIII. Internet Conferance Notifications in Turkey 22-23 December 2008. Orta Doğu Teknik University, Ankara. [10] Lee, B., Yoon, J.,& Lee, I. (2009). Learners’ acceptance of e-learning in South Korea: Theories and results. Computers & Education, 53(4), 1320–1329. [11] Altıparmak, M., Kurt, I. & Kapıder, M. [2011]. E-Learning and Open Source Learning Management Systems in Distance Education. Academic Information'11 - XIII. Academic Computing Conference Proceedings, Inonu University, Malatya. [12] Scarafiotti, C. (2004). Five important lessons about the cost of e-learning. New directions for community colleges, (128), 39–46. [13] Winterbottom, S. (2007). Virtual lecturing: Delivering lectures using screencasting and podcasting technology. Planet, 18, 6–8. [14] Meyer, K. A. (2003). Face-to-face versus threaded discussions: The role of time and higher-order thinking. 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[17] For more information about Open Source Code Learning Management Systems; [18] ATutor: http://www.atutor.ca/ [19] Sakai: http://www.sakaiproject.org/ [20] Dokeos: http://www.dokeos.com/ [21] Drupal: http://drupal.org/ [22] eFront: https://www.efrontlearning.com/ [23] Blackboard: http://blackboard.org/ [24] DotLRN: http://www.dotlrn.org/ [25] Docebo: http://www.docebo.org/ [26] Moodle: http://moodle.org/ [27] OLAT: http://www.olat.org/ [28] Estudy: http://estudy.sourceforge.net/ [29] Claroline: http://www.claroline.net/ [30] E-Learning Brothers: www.elearningbrothers.com [31] Presentations 2Go: http://www.presentations2go.eu [32] Panopto: www.panopta.com4 
work_fb4yvs2horaixo3cn5qpyd52f4	----	An Implementation of Distance Education Program for Teaching Common Necessary Courses in Formal Education: Karabuk University Sample Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.493 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW HORIZONS IN EDUCATION INTE2012 An implementation of distance education program for teaching common necessary courses in formal education: karabuk university sample Gözde Çakıra, Bengi Yurtseverb* aKarabuk University, Safranbolu Fethi Toker Fine Arts and Design Faculty, Department of Industrial Design, Karabuk 78600, Turkey bKarabuk University, Safranbolu Fethi Toker Fine Arts and Design Faculty, Department of Architecture, Karabuk 78600, Turkey Abstract Increase of student numbers by higher education institution in post-secondary educational institutions causes various problems in the sense of teacher and learner. It is known that the quality of education given in crowded classes by single instructor decreases. It is thought that improving this situation with developing technology and common internet usage is possible. From this point, distance learning program has been applied in the education of compulsory common courses determined by Higher Education Institution throughout Karabük University since fall semester of 2011-2012 academic year. In the process of application it is aimed to discuss experiences of students and instructors, the sufficiency of technological infrastructure of program, advantages and disadvantages of the program with end of term assessment reports for Safranbolu Fethi Toker, Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, Department of Architecture. Keywords: Distance Education, Undergraduate Education, Technology, Rapid Life, Using Technology in Education 1. Introduction There have been many changes in Turkish education system recently. The main reason of these changes is thought to be the rate of literacy which is expected to increase and the rate of unemployment which is not expected to increase due to increasing population of the country. With the changes of education and exam in elementary schools and high-schools; similar changes are done in universities as well, this change is rather thought to have the aim of increasing the number of students. While all these changes were done, a system in which the quality is not given much importance but things were determined through quantity has begun to take place in education. It is possible to assert these both for undergraduate and for associate and postgraduate education. The thought of enabling occupation for * Bengi Yurtsever. Tel.: +0-370-712-8707 E-mail address: bengiyurtsever@karabuk.edu.tr © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 188 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 everyone is naturally favorable. However taking such step without any infrastructure causes insubstantial growth and expansion. In fact it is more important to be an individual who can improve himself in every way and completely comprehended critical thinking and inquisition for this aim. All these actions are regarded important for self-discovery. Providing these to students must be one of the primary aims of education. Within the scope of this subject it is aimed to determine whether these attainments – critical thinking, inquisition, designing – can be achieved within the frame of distance learning which is a relatively new education system for Turkey and to analyze the issue through the instance of Karabuk University. Evaluation of reciprocal views of students and instructors after one year process has importance at this point. As it is briefly mentioned above, the number of students accepted in universities has been increasing day by day. Measures taken for this problem and the infrastructure of schools are most of time insufficient. This insufficiency in the infrastructure can be due to specific technological deficiencies, being primarily instructors. The importance of technology cannot be denied in present period. In recent months when fast developing technology gathers societies together and intercommunal interaction becomes indispensable, reconstruction of education system in harmony with changes experienced have been discussed nearly by all the nations. The approach of unconditioned truths leaves its palace to more sensible and intuitive approaches; having belief in the necessity of nature integrity, people began to adopt a life style which compatible with all the living species and nature (Yaşar, 2001, 1). In this frame it is important for the students to participate “actively” in the education and produce technology as well as to have the skill of using technology. The way of using technology should be discussed and it must be provided to students sufficiently within the process of education. This usage can be during courses and it is possible to support with various education strategies. It is thought that participation of such a process, in other words usage of newly developed technologies is quite important for education. However when there is no infrastructure, there would be specific problems soon and then these problems would get bigger. In this sense innovations should be included in the system after inquisition and discussed within the scope of a specific strategy. Cases which are thought to have solved the problem for short term may rather make the situation worse and this in turn may result in unsolvable problems in the future. In the education system which is called distance learning, students can participate in the education from their houses or from the places where they want or where they are at that moment. Electronic learning (E-learning) or distance learning can be defined as web-based education system which is provided through internet/intranet or a platform on a computer network. Although the greatest difference of e-learning from traditional education seems to be the technology it included, in fact it predicts a radical change. This approach is a student-centered model which motivates students in attaining knowledge and gives them priority. In e-learning, education is conducted with training activities where the student and instructor do not have to be in the same place simultaneously. E-learning occurs in two ways: a. Individual’s receiving education on their own from computer. b. a group of students and course instructor synchronously meeting in a class in a live computer environment. In fact this system is regarded positive for making use of technological opportunities of today, and making use of educational opportunities rapidly within the conditions of daily life. However, it must be questioned whether providing education only as knowledge would be sufficient for an undergraduate student. What kind of an educational environment is expected for an undergraduate student? These are the questions which forms the complications within the system and which are ignored. Through which approach the distance learning can be more efficient? Output of the process in the case of Karabük University can be evaluated in negative and positive terms. It can be regarded as positive side that such a recent university has been able to adopt such a 189 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 system and has taken a distinctive place in recent years. Students can program their time thanks to distance learning; create himself a studying environment at home. Moreover it prevents the loss of time in transportation from campus to residential area, students feel free about time. The negative side is the matter of infrastructure/strategy which is generally discussed in this study. Although it is regarded positive for the universities to be open to new ideas, there are many problems when adapting this to education strategy. The process brings along many problems such the problem of instructor, environment, computer etc. Since the system is not comprehensible in the computer environment and students are not interested in computer adequately causes the system to be an environment in which only the instructor talks to himself rather making the process of distance learning a mutual, active one. However as it is mentioned, it is important and is getting important everyday for students to participate in the education process actively and make a process in which students and instructors mutually share and acquire information. This mentioned process is valid not only for distance learning but also for formal education. In parallel to all these thoughts, students were interviewed in order to mutually evaluate positive/negative sides of distance learning carried out within a year. 2. Distance Learning Application of distance learning in education started towards the end of 18th century. In the definition made by California Distance Learning Project (CDLP, 2006) it is stated that distance learning is a kind of education system which is carried out through connection with student and educational tools, and it is underlined that the fact that distance learning programs provide education opportunity even for those who are not registered to any educational institution is a case which increase education opportunities provided for students in recent years. Another side of distance learning is that it has to follow developing technology closely by making use of current resources adequately (CDLP, 2006). According to United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA, 2005) distance learning means providing education to students with the help of tools such as satellite, video, audio, graphic, computer, multimedia technology. USDLA states that student and instructor is geographically far from each other and electronic devices or written or printed materials should be used in this education program. Distance learning is composed of two basic parts, teaching which includes teachers and learning which includes students (USDLA, 2005). Opportunities provided through developing technology and increase of computer literacy made it possible for web-based distance learning applications to increase. Distance learning which is a kind of student-centered education is an education model which is prepared considering student’s inclination towards technology, functional literacy, visual literacy and learning styles. 2.1. Distance Education Application in Turkey Since there was no widespread usage of internet until the beginning of 1990’s in turkey, Open Education University, Open high school and open elementary school used to provide distance education through TRT 4 and books prepared for this aim served as resources for students. As internet usage became widespread, IDEA (Web-Based Asynchronous Education, http://idea.metu.edu.tr) sustained E-learning studies which are completely carried out on internet environment and asynchronously. Today, E-MBA program organized many intercampus courses, education of foreign language and certificate programs. (E-MBA: an online post-graduate program in which course will totally be given web-based) (Çallı, Bayram, Karaağaç, 2002). For the course of Informatics which is taken commonly by 1800 students in ITU, students arrive at computer laboratories in the campus and have their exam in virtual exam environment with the questions chosen randomly from question bank which includes 10.000 questions (Çallı, Bayram, Karaağaç, 2002). 190 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 Istanbul Bilgi University initiated the first electronic management program which is named Bilgi E- MBA and approved by YÖK. This interactive program provides accomplishments about marketing, entrepreneurship, finance, human resources etc. MBA diploma will be given as a result of the program which can be followed through internet all around the world (www.bilgiemba.net). 2.2. Karabuk University Distance Education Applicaitons With the developing technology it has become a necessity to remove time and place restriction of higher-education and make the information produced in higher education independent from time and place. In the process of transition towards information society, scientific and technological studies should be done and recommended in order to make quality education which assists improvement and development of Turkey widespread through e-learning. In parallel to these necessities, Distance Learning Application and Research Center was founded in Karabuk University in order to conduct plan, program, coordination and applications within the scope of undergraduate, associate and postgraduate distance education program and activities which are carried out in the basis of information and technology technologies of the university. Karabuk University which aims to increase its success in education with opportunities of interactive media and multimedia presented by the university provides distance education in 5 associate programs, 9 undergraduate and 2 postgraduate programs. 2.3. Application of Distance Education Program for Common Compulsory Courses within Formal Education Increase of student numbers by higher education institution in post-secondary educational institutions causes various problems in the sense of teacher and learner. It is known that the quality of education given in crowded classes by single instructor decreases. It is thought that improving this situation with developing technology and common internet usage is possible. Considering the age, computer literacy, technology inclination, functional literacy, interests and learning motivations of individuals, distance education program has been applied in the education of common compulsory courses determined by Higher Education Institution throughout Karabük University since fall semester of 2011-2012 academic year. 2.4. Introduction to Distance Education Program Login of students who completed preparatory education and are to start 1st grade education was defined before the fall semester begins. The student can log in with students number and the password he created. The home page that occurs when system is logged in is shown in Figure 1. There are videos with lecturing and lecture notes for every course in the system. Students can access these information whenever they want. In addition to these, days and hours were determined in course programs for common compulsory courses of each department. Students who log in at these determined days and hours can access the coordinator of this course on-line, watch the lecture live and ask question to the coordinator (Figure 2). With LMS (Learning Management System) software coordinator can apply quiz, exam or survey to the students and can make assessment. Log in and log out of students are recorded by the software and their attendance can be monitored in this way. When the student logs in, he can create his own calendar from his personal page and access forum of the courses he receives, introductory video of the courses and course resources (Figure 3, 4). 191 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 Figure 1. View of distance education home page Figure 2. Video page including lecture There are two forums for each course in the system. One of them can be defined as the area in which coordinator of the course makes announcements about the course (Figure 5). Students cannot intervene in this area. The second one is the course forum. Coordinator shares his opinions when he expects feedback from students. Students can share their opinions and questions with the coordinator. The interaction between coordinator and students is visible for every student. Students who are active in the system can see other active students and share information (Figure 6). 192 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 Figure 3. Calendar page of student Figure 4. Calendar personalization page of student 193 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 Figure 5. Coordinator forum page Figure 6. Active student page 2.5. Evaluation of Distance Education Application in Karabuk University, Safranbolu Fethi Toker, Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, Department of Architecture Architecture is an occupation which is dynamic, open to innovation and constantly modifies. The greatest change is thought to happen in current time. In our day where modernism and latter movements are discussed and technology lives its golden age, it must be questioned that whether current architectural education programs can keep up with the times or not (Lökçe, 2002). With the development of construction technologies, due to improvement of various representation tools, many choices which can be the interface of architecture are provided every passing day simultaneously. Due to the change of way 194 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 of seeing and thinking; perspective towards art and philosophy, perspective towards life, architecture can fulfill the entire demand of people and society in this plentifulness. This situation makes it possible to carry out every kind of architectural study in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary basis. Architecture education must be kept up-to-date in line with daily life and conditions of the day in order to create up-to- date environment of architecture education; interrogator, critical student-instructor environment. It is observed that architecture students at first grade gain familiarity with the usage of computer and technology through distance education program applied within the scope of university. Since common compulsory courses are provide through distance education system, students who have intensive design study in the courses of architectural project and construction can both prevent the loss of time during going to school and back and also continue their project studies after on-line course without changing environment. 3. Conclusion Within the scope of distance education application, an architecture student at first grade was interviewed, and it was concluded that thanks to the application of distance education program in teaching common compulsory courses students can easily follow the courses since they can access the coordinator of the course face to face; they access the information whenever they want thanks to lecture notes and videos with lecturing; they can determine their learning deficiencies through exams whenever they want. It was determined that problems about the system are rather related with technical/infrastructure basis. Since the system has not been seated very well in the first semester, there have been problems for about one month at the beginning of the term. Acquisition in the sense of time is especially important for architecture students. In this sense, students who learn to schedule themselves had rather comfortable term in the sense of course intensity. Since the courses provided with distance education program are not department courses but those with which students are familiar from high-school, there has not been any problem in the sense of conveying information – efficiency. Technological opportunities of the present day should be certainly evaluated. In this sense distance education is a system which relieves the burden of education system. Yet, it must be discussed whether a proper education environment could be enabled or not. References Alkan, C. (1987): Açıköğretim. Ankara: Ankara üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Fakültesi Yay. No:157. Alkan, C. Ve diğerleri (1995): Eğitim Teknolojisine Giriş. Ankara: Önder Matbaacılık Ltd.Şti. Atıcı, B., Gürol, M., (2001): Nesnelci Öğretim Yaklaşımlarından Oluşturmacı Öğrenme Yaklaşımlarına Doğru İnternet Tabanlı Uzaktan Eğitime Yönelik Gelişimsel Bir Model önerisi, Bilişim Teknolojileri Işığında Eğitim. Bildiriler Kitabı. Ankara, 177-183. CDLP, T. C. (2006). Adult learning activities: What is distance learning? 02 10, 2006 tarihinde The California Distance Learning Project (CDLP), url: http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=whatis Çallı, İ., Bayam, Y., Karacadağ, M.C., (2002): Türkiye’de uzaktan eğitimin geleceği ve e-üniversite, Anadolu Üniversitesi Açık ve Uzaktan Eğitim Sempozyumu, Eskişehir. Gagné, R. (1985): The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction. New York: Holt, Rinchart & Winston. Şenel, A., Gençoğlu, S., (2003): Küreselleşen Dünyada Teknoloji Eğitimi,Gazi Üniversitesi Endüstriyel Sanatlar Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi Y.11,No.12,S.45-65 195 Gözde Çakır and Bengi Yurtsever / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 187 – 195 Karabük Üniversitesi Uzaktan Eğitim Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi Url: http://karabuk.edu.tr. Lökçe, S. (2002): Mimarlık Eğitim Programları: Mimari Tasarım ve Teknoloji ile Bütünleşme, Gazi Üni. Müh. Mim. Fak. Dergisi, Cilt: 17, No: 3, 1-16, Ankara. Passerini K., Granger, M. (2000): A Developmental Model for Distance Learning Using the Internet, Computers & Education, 34, 1-15. USDLA, U. S. (2005): url: http://www.usdla.org/html/resources/dictionary.htm#d Url: www.bilgiemba.net Yaşar, D. (2001): “Yeni Binyılda Eğitim ve Öğretim”, Türkiye Bilim ve Aklın Aydınlığında Eğitim Dergisi-MEB Yayınları, Sayı 21, http://www.meb.gov.tr/ 
work_fbjexfufrrfclget72fcmg57zu	----	SHORT REPORT Open Access An exploratory study of co-location as a factor in synchronous, collaborative medical informatics distance education Craig Locatis1*, Eta S Berner2, Glenn Hammack2, Steve Smith3, Richard Maisiak4, Michael Ackerman1 Abstract Background: This study determined differences in learning, judgments of teaching and technology, and interaction when videoconferencing was used to deliver instruction on telemedicine to medical students in conditions where they were co-located and dispersed. A lecture on telemedicine was given by videoconference to medical students at a distant site. After a question and answer period, students were then given search problems on the topic and encouraged to collaborate. Half the students were randomly assigned to a co-located condition where they received the presentation and collaborated in a computer lab, and half were assigned to a dispersed condition where they were located in different rooms to receive the presentation and collaborate online using the videoconferencing technology. Students were observed in both conditions and they individually completed a test on presentation content and a rating scale about the quality of the teaching and the technology. Findings: There were no differences between the two groups in the learning outcomes or judgments about the teaching and technology, with the exception that more students in the dispersed condition felt more interaction was fostered. The level and patterns of interaction were very different in the two conditions and higher for dispersed students. Conclusions: Synchronous communication at a distance via videoconference may give sufficient sense of presence that the learning experience may be similar to that in actual classrooms, even when students are far apart. The technology may channel interaction in desirable ways. Background Voice over IP and instant messaging companies, such as Skype and WebEx, are now offering two-way and multi- point videoconferencing services as more people have begun to get broadband access to their homes and workplace from fiber, cable, DSL, and other types of providers. The research undertaken here was done in anticipation that videoconferencing over IP will become more ubiquitous, increasingly practical, and more cap- able of facilitating much of the real time interaction pos- sible with groups in classrooms. Indeed, most research on teaching with two way interactive video has been with groups, usually with a group at the teacher’s class- room and a group at a remote site [1,2]. As the technol- ogy becomes more pervasive, it will be increasingly feasible for students to participate individually and be part of a virtual classroom. An important issue is how well such virtual classrooms can accommodate learning, especially if it involves collaboration. Consequently, this study examined learning outcomes, attitudes toward instruction and technology, and interaction when stu- dents participated in a collaborative distance learning experience by videoconference in contexts where they were co-located and where they were dispersed. Distance learning programs can use asynchronous (email, web) and synchronous (videoconferencing) tech- nologies [3] and may include “blended learning” approaches combining distance education with face-to- face instruction [4]. Three meta-analyses of distance education research are especially relevant to this study. One showed no significant differences between those taught at a distance and those taught in class, but sub- analyses of asynchronous distance learning and * Correspondence: locatis@nlm.nih.gov 1Office of High Performance Computing & Communications, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA Locatis et al. BMC Research Notes 2010, 3:30 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/30 © 2010 Locatis et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. mailto:locatis@nlm.nih.gov http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 synchronous distance learning (defined as having stu- dents in class and others simultaneously participating remotely by video or audio conference) indicated small achievement advantages for asynchronous distance edu- cation and for classroom education when distance edu- cation was synchronous [1]. The authors were cautious about the finding, however, given the substantial hetero- geneity and variability of the data. Another meta-analy- sis focusing only on video found students receiving distance instruction by television perform about the same as those in classrooms, but students in televised courses having two-way audio and video do better than those where communication is only one-way [2]. Finally, a meta-analysis of online learning studies found that achievement was higher when face-to-face instruction was blended with online learning [5]. The ability of students and teachers to see and hear each other in real time may increase sense of social pre- sence and reduce transactional distance in communica- tion, factors that are known to affect student satisfaction with distance learning [6-13]. Students at sites where conferences originate tend interact more and instructors concentrate more on students who are physically pre- sent [14]. Consequently, on site students tend to out perform distance ones and have better attitudes [1]. Videoconferencing technology can constrain dialog [9,14] and students at distant sites often feel more dis- connected than those on site [12,15]. Detachment can be mitigated when students are not physically present at the origination site [16] and the overall level of interac- tion may influence student attitudes more than personal participation [17]. Students may appreciate hearing answers to questions others ask even though they do not ask questions themselves. The closer media properties approximate in person conversation, the closer conversation style approximates face-to-face interaction. Consequently, factors such as high video quality, full duplex audio, and low latency can make videoconferencing conversations more person- able [18,19]. The communication does not equate to face-to-face because of camera restrictions on the field of view, the need to use microphones, and other factors [12,19-21]. Methods Forty two medical student paid volunteers at the Uni- versity of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine were randomly assigned to a learning activity involving the use of two-way interactive videoconferencing in a co-located condition and a dispersed one. In the co- located condition, students were physically together in a computer lab where they could interact with each other in person and with the remote instructor by videocon- ference. In the dispersed condition, students were physi- cally separated in different rooms at the university and used desktop videoconferencing technology to interact both with the instructor and each other. Since the num- ber of video sources that could be transmitted was _____________________________________________________________________________ According to the glossary for health care professionals on the Telemedicine Information Exchange website, which word is defined as the following? “The use of audio, video, and other telecommunications and electronic information processing technologies for the transmission of information and data relevant to the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions, or to provide health services or aid health care personnel at distant sites.” A. Telematics B. Telepresence C. Telemedicine D. Teleconferencing One of the earliest telemedicine sites was: A. LAX to UCLA Hospital B. Logan airport to Mass General Hospital C. USS Holland to Camp Pendleton Military Hospital D. Carnival Cruise Ship to UTMB Hospital ______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 1 Sample Test Questions. Locatis et al. BMC Research Notes 2010, 3:30 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/30 Page 2 of 6 limited, students in both conditions were exposed to the learning experience in small groups and the experience was repeated three times in each condition (groups of seven each in the dispersed condition and groups of ten, six, and five in the co-located condition). In both conditions, students were given a forty minute lecture on telemedicine by videoconference that was fol- lowed by a five minute question period and ten minute exercise searching a telemedicine web site. Students were told they could use any strategy to complete the exercise, but that they should try to work collabora- tively. They took a short seventeen item multiple choice test on the lecture and search tasks and completed a scale with two sub-parts, one rating the instruction and one rating communicating with the technology. The instruction scale used modified items from a larger one developed at Stanford University that also included rat- ings of advising, mentoring and other aspects of Evaluation of the Technology Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree 1. I felt I could easily communicate with other students in this session. -2 -1 0 1 2 2. I liked using the Internet to communicate with other students during the videoconference (leave blank if you did not use the Internet for communication). -2 -1 0 1 2 3. I prefer meeting with other students even if the instructor is not physically present. -2 -1 0 1 2 4. I prefer communicating virtually by video conference to using email or other forms of written communication. -2 -1 0 1 2 Evaluation of the Presentation During this presentation the presenter generally…. Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree 1. explained the purpose of the presentation clearly and concisely. -2 -1 0 1 2 2. explained how content applied to participants. -2 -1 0 1 2 3. presented well organized material. -2 -1 0 1 2 2 1 0 1- 2- .tcejbus no deyats .4 5. used appropriate visual aids (i.e. slides, web browser). -2 -1 0 1 2 6. expressed respect for participants. -2 -1 0 1 2 7. encouraged participation and interaction. -2 -1 0 1 2 2 1 0 1- 2- .gninrael rehtruf degaruocne .8 9. motivated participants to follow up on their own. -2 -1 0 1 2 2 1 0 1- 2- .llarevo evitceffe saw .01 Figure 2 Technology and Instruction Rating Forms. Table 1 Ratings of Instruction for Co-located and Dispersed Students Item Co-located Mean SD Dispersed Mean SD 1. Purpose 1.20 .95 1.38 .59 2. Application 1.20 .77 1.10 .89 3. Organization 1.50 .61 1.52 .60 4. Stayed on Subject 1.50 .61 1.67 .48 5. Visual Aids 1.50 .61 1.38 .97 6. Respect 1.30 .80 1.57 .60 7. Interaction .40 1.05 1.19 .87 8. Further Learning .60 .99 .43 1.08 9. Motivation .30 1.17 -.10 1.14 10. Overall 1.25 .79 1.24 .70 Locatis et al. BMC Research Notes 2010, 3:30 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/30 Page 3 of 6 teaching not relevant to this research [22]. One of the communication/technology questions about student communication via videoconferencing was only com- pleted by dispersed students, since co-located students did not use the technology to communicate among themselves. Sample questions from the test appear in Figure 1. The instructional and communications tech- nology rating scale appears in Figure 2. In addition, stu- dents were observed by two researchers; one physically present and one remotely in the co-located condition and two remotely in the dispersed condition. Remote observer video was blanked in both conditions. Results Independent t-tests were performed to test for signifi- cant differences between conditions and among groups using SPSS. Item reliability analyses were also per- formed to determine internal consistency of the test and scales. Student ratings of instruction, responses to questions about communication and technology, and test scores were compared. The sub-scale for rating instruction was highly reliable (Cronbach’s alpha = .88), while sub-scale rating communicating with the technol- ogy and the multiple choice test were moderately reli- able (Cronbach’s alpha = .50 and .42 respectively). The average ratings of instruction and communicating with the technology were generally high (Tables 1 &2) as were the multiple choice test scores (Table 3). Unpaired t-tests were performed on the test results, the commu- nication technology ratings, and the ratings of instruc- tion for both groups. There were no significant differences in the content learned as measured by the test (Table 3) or significant differences in the communi- cation and technology ratings (Table 4). Only one of the ratings of instruction was significantly different (Table 5). Dispersed students felt the lecturer encour- aged more interaction. The number of questions asked the lecturer ranged from two in one co-located session to six in one dis- persed session with four questions asked in other ses- sions. Since interactions initiated by individual students in the collaborative exercise were not recorded, they could not be compared statistically. There were fourteen interactions in co-located sessions and thirty nine inter- actions in the dispersed. Co-located interactions may have been undercounted somewhat due to the difficulty of monitoring students spread throughout the computer lab, but there was still more interaction in the dispersed condition. The kind of interaction varied. In one co- located session, students agreed to divide the search questions, work independently, and share results. Inter- actions in the co-located condition were limited to those in close physical proximity, usually students sitting besides each other. In contrast, videoconferencing in the dispersed condition included everyone in the conversa- tion, even if they did not say anything. Discussion The absence of students at the instructor’s site elimi- nated the instructor focusing attention on those physi- cally present. The fact that there were no performance differences and only one significantly different rating between the co-located and dispersed students indicates that the real time virtual interaction that videoconferen- cing affords had no detrimental impact on performance or students ratings and may have positively affected par- ticipation and interaction. The students in the dispersed condition rated the lec- turer’s encouraging interaction significantly higher than those who were co-located and they interacted more because the technology extended access to conversation to all participants, not just some one physically nearby. It is likely that these higher levels of interaction made the dispersed students more inclined to give the lecturer Table 2 Ratings of Communication/Technology for Co-located and Dispersed Students Item Co-located Mean SD Dispersed Mean SD 1. Communicate with other students .95 .71 .90 1.22 2. Using Internet to communicate * * .95 .89 3. Prefer meeting with students .79 1.18 .90 1.04 4. Prefer video to written communication .58 1.02 .33 1.06 * Not rated by co-located students. Table 3 Test Scores and T-Test Results of Co-located and Dispersed Students Mean SD Percent Dispersed Multiple Choice Test 13.75 2.10 80% Co-located Multiple Choice Test 14.10 1.34 82% t df Significance (2-tailed) Standard Error Difference Co-located - Dispersed -.63 39.00 .53 .55 (Maximum score = 17). Locatis et al. BMC Research Notes 2010, 3:30 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/30 Page 4 of 6 higher marks for encouraging interactivity since ratings of instruction were not done until the very end of the session, after students collaborated and took the test. Consequently, it can be viewed more as an assessment of the entire learning experience, not just the lecture. It is uncertain whether the interactivity effects observed in this study would carry over for larger groups of students, especially if dispersed. There are videoconferencing technologies that can connect more end points and those conducting videoconferences rou- tinely generally acknowledge more end points become harder to manage. On the other hand, interaction also is harder to manage when larger classes meet in person. It is possible to control for group size to some extent in videoconferencing by having dispersed students access different, smaller videoconference sessions, rather than one large one, the virtual equivalent to breaking a large class into small groups. It is also uncertain if the interactivity effects observed would occur if students had to perform their collabora- tive tasks differently. In the study, students worked col- laboratively from print outs independently using software on their own machines. If dispersed students had to take turns using an application on a single desk- top and pass control to each other, which also can be done with some online collaboration tools, the mechanics of working together may have been more cumbersome. But it is not always necessary or desirable that students share the same application while they work together, whether they are co-located or not. It became apparent in the course of the study that there were certain transactional and distance factors affecting interaction even when students were co- located. Consider a group of people standing or sitting together at a reception or party. They will hear their own conversation and perhaps parts of others nearby, but will unlikely hear conversations across the room. To include others in their conversation they might have to raise their voices, make attention getting noises, or relo- cate. There are, of course, social, cultural, and language differences that inject “distance” into any communica- tion. Distance factors affect communication even when people occupy the same physical space. With the excep- tion of the session where a student approached others and suggested they divide the assignment, no effort was made to move or reconfigure seating in the co-located sessions to better accommodate collaboration. Students partnered with the person next to them. Conclusion Synchronous communication at a distance via videocon- ference may give sufficient sense of presence that the learning experience may be similar to that in actual classrooms, even when students are far apart and have to work collaboratively. In asynchronous online learning students are separated by time and place while in syn- chronous online learning they are only separated by location. Students are still physically separate from each other, more or less, by location, even when they occupy the same classroom, and this separation can impact communication as much as if they were separated at a greater distance. This experiment suggests that videoconferencing can mimic many conditions in normal classrooms when stu- dents are individually apart and might potentially pro- vide a more inclusive and accessible communication environment. It may be a useful method to bring stu- dents together during preceptorships and other phases of education where they learn remotely and as a method to provide real time continuing education experiences to practitioners not wanting to travel. Bringing individual students from diverse locations virtually by videoconfer- ence may be as interactive or more interactive than Table 4 Communication/Technology Ratings T-Test Results for Co-located and Dispersed Students Item t df Significance (2-tailed) Standard Error Difference 1. Communicate with other students .13 38.00 .89 .32 2. Using Internet to communicate * * * * 3. Prefer meeting with students -.33 38.00 .75 .35 4. Prefer video to written communication 74 38.00 .46 .33 * Not rated by co-located students and not analyzed. Table 5 Instruction Ratings T-Test Results for Co-located and Dispersed Students Item t df Significance (2-tailed) Standard Error Difference 1. Purpose -.74 39.00 .47 .25 2. Application .40 39.00 .69 .26 3. Organization -.13 39.00 .90 .19 4. Stayed on Subject -.98 39.00 .34 .17 5. Visual Aids .47 39.00 .34 .17 6. Respect -1.23 39.00 .22 .22 7. Interaction -2.63 39.00 .01* .30 8. Further Learning .53 39.00 .60 .32 9. Motivation 1.10 39.00 .28 .36 10. Overall .05 39.00 .96 .23 Locatis et al. BMC Research Notes 2010, 3:30 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/30 Page 5 of 6 bringing them physically together in classrooms. One area for future research is whether bringing students together virtually by videoconference can be combined with asynchronous distance education as a way to implement a new form of blended learning. Permissions This research was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the National Institutes of Health. Author details 1Office of High Performance Computing & Communications, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. 2Department of Health Services Administration, School of Health Related Professions, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1675 University Blvd. Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA. 3Department of Medical Student Services, School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1530 3rd Ave. Birmingham, AL, USA. 4Maisiak Associates, 5444 Grovers Ave. Scottsdale, Arizona 85254, USA. Authors’ contributions CL Conceived the general research plan, worked on developing the measuring instruments, assisted in implementing the technology and wrote the original manuscript. EB Developed the detailed research plan, worked on developing the measuring instruments, was lead in implementing the technology and collaboration tasks, assisted with data collection and writing the manuscript. GH Provided the lesson content and was the distance education instructor. SS Recruited subjects and assisted in collecting data and writing the manuscript. RM Provided statistical consultation and performed the statistical analysis. MA Assisted in the development of the general research plan, the writing of the original manuscript, and editing and revising later versions. All authors have read and approve the final manuscript. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Received: 7 October 2009 Accepted: 2 February 2010 Published: 2 February 2010 References 1. Bernard R, Abrami PC, Lou Y, Borokhovski E, Wade A, Wozney L, Wallet PA, Fiset M, Huang B: How does distance education compare with classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Rev of Ed Res 2004, 74(3):379-439. 2. Machtimes K, Asher W: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of telecourses in distance education. Am J of Dist Ed 2000, 14(1):27-45. 3. Hanson D, Maushak N, Schlosser C, Andersen M, Simonson M: Distance education: A review of the literature. Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 2 1997. 4. Ruiz J, Mintzer M, Leipzig R: The impact of e-learning in medical education. Acad Med 2006, 81:207-12. 5. Means B, Toyama Y, Murphy R, Bakia M, Jones K: Evaluation of evidence- based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education. 6. Cheng H, Lehman J, Armstrong P: Comparison of performance and attitude in traditional and computer conferencing classes. Am J of Dist Ed 1991, 5(3):51-64. 7. Moore M: What does research say about the learners using computer- mediated communication in distance learning?. Am J of Dist Ed 2002, 16(2):61-64. 8. Gunawardena C, Zittle F: Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer-mediated conferencing environment. Am J of Dist Ed 1997, 11(3):8-26. 9. Tu C, McIsaac M: The relationship between social presence and interaction in online classes. Am J of Dist Ed 2002, 16(3):131-150. 10. Moore M: Towards a theory of independent learning and teaching. J of High Ed 1973, 44:661-679. 11. Moore M, Kearsley G: Distance education: A systems view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 1996. 12. Rovai A, Lucking R: Sense of community in a higher-education television- based distance education program. Ed Tech Res & Dev 2003, 51(2):5-16. 13. Chen Y, Willets F: Dimensions of educational transactions in a videoconferencing learning environment. Am J of Dist Ed 1999, 13(1):45-59. 14. Kelsey K: Participant interaction in a course delivered by interactive compressed video technology. Am J of Dist Ed 2000, 14(1):63-73. 15. Bisciglia M, Monk-Turner E: Differences in attitudes between on-site and distance-site students in group teleconference courses. Am J of Dist Ed 2002, 16(1):37-52. 16. Locatis C, Gaines C, Liu W, Gill M, Carney J, Foster J, McCall V, Woods M: A blended training approach using videoconferencing for distance education. J of Med Lib Assoc 2006, 94(4):464-468. 17. Fulford C, Zhang S: Perceptions of interaction: the critical predictor in distance education. Am J of Dist Ed 2002, 7(3):9-21. 18. Comeaux P: The impact of an interactive distance learning network on classroom communication. Com Ed 1995, 44:352-361. 19. O’Conaill B, Whittaker S, Wilbur S: Conversations over videoconferences: An evaluation of the spoken aspects of video-mediated communication. Hum Comp Inter 1993, 8:389-428. 20. Snellen A: Remote conversations: The effects of mediating talk with technology. Hum Comp Inter 1995, 10:401-444. 21. Mills O, Bates J, Pendleton V, Lese K, Tatarko M: Distance education by interactive videoconference in a family practice residency center. Distance education in the health sciences University Park: Pennsylvania State UniversityMoore M, Savrock J 2001, 7-15. 22. Litzelman D, Stratos G, Marriott D, Skeff K: Factorial validation of a widely disseminated educational framework for evaluating clinical teachers. Acad Med 1998, 73(6):688-95. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-3-30 Cite this article as: Locatis et al.: An exploratory study of co-location as a factor in synchronous, collaborative medical informatics distance education. BMC Research Notes 2010 3:30. Submit your next manuscript to BioMed Central and take full advantage of: • Convenient online submission • Thorough peer review • No space constraints or color figure charges • Immediate publication on acceptance • Inclusion in PubMed, CAS, Scopus and Google Scholar • Research which is freely available for redistribution Submit your manuscript at www.biomedcentral.com/submit Locatis et al. BMC Research Notes 2010, 3:30 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/30 Page 6 of 6 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16501260?dopt=Abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16501260?dopt=Abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9653408?dopt=Abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9653408?dopt=Abstract Abstract Background Findings Conclusions Background Methods Results Discussion Conclusion Permissions Author details Authors' contributions Competing interests References 
work_fboruprnxfhrdo6exm2csjk24i	----	Attitudes of distance education students towards web based learning – a case study 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.343 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 2393–2396 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com WCES-2010 Attitudes of distance education students towards web based learning – a case study Serdar Çiftcia, Erhan Güne a *, Mutlu Tahsin Üstünda a aFaculty of Education, Gazi University, Ankara, 06500, Turkey Received October 20, 2009; revised December 29, 2009; accepted January 11, 2010 Abstract The aim of this study is to assess the resistance level, which is taken as a dimension of attitude, of distance education students towards web based learning and to present the relationship of resistance level with age, gender, program and grade level. In the study, the sample includes 432 students from Gazi University Distance Education Vocational School. T-test results for resistance level according to the independent variables; age, gender, program and grade have been presented. Subsequently, implications based on related literature and the results of analysis have been listed. Finally, suggestions for future research have been discussed. Keywords: Distance education; web based learning; attitude; learner attributes. 1. Introduction According to Keegan (2002), definition of distance education can be summarized as “teaching and learning in which learning normally occurs in a different place from teaching”. He further states that in distance education, materials and support structures are planned and prepared by an educational organization which uses technical media to unite teacher, learner, and content. Keegan’s description of the distance education environment highlights various interacting components of distance education such as instructor, students, and content. Information and communication technology (ICT) makes interaction in this environment possible where every component plays a significant role in producing the desired outcome. Web-based learning has been becoming more widespread in parallel with maturation of ICT. However, it is a challenge to develop Web-based learning that is suitable for the varied needs of different students. Previous research has shown that student learning is influenced by numerous factors, such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status. Also, learner attributes such as interest, attitude, or motivation are some key concepts which are and most probably will be studied by researches in the field of distance education. Instruction is not merely displaying information; rather it requires an integrated fit that considers the content, individual differences of learners and the delivery method to achieve success (Alexander, 1995; Martindale and * Erhan Güne . Tel.: +905057798278 E-mail address: guneserhan@gmail.com © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 2394 Serdar Çiftci et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 2393–2396 Ahern, 2001). In web based education, when it is considered that students predominantly study alone, individual differences come into prominence. Current internet technologies make it possible to produce different designs, which take into account individual differences. Individual differences should be taken into account; otherwise students’ achievement would be low mainly because the organization of the learning environment would not fit the organization of real life in their minds (K l ç E., Karadeniz ., 2004). One of the individual differences of distance students is “attitude”. In Turkey, there is a growing demand for distance education programs within universities. Distance education has become a viable alternative for those who are unable or unwilling to travel to campus yet still possess the desire to learn in a formal environment. Gazi University Distance Education Vocational School (GUDEVS) can be given as an example. This institution was founded in 2006 and there were 1924 registered students by the 2008-2009 fall semester. Table 1. Student numbers on the basis of programs in GUDEVS Program Number of Students Knowledge Management 192 Computer Programming 702 Business Administration 638 Accounting 190 Web Technologies-Programming 202 Total 1924 The aim of this study is to assess the resistance level, which is taken as a dimension of attitude, of distance education students towards web based learning and to present the relationship of resistance level with age, gender, program and grade level. Specifically, the study addressed the following questions: 1. Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to gender? 2. Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to age? 3. Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to grade level? 4. Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to the program they attend? 2. Method The study utilized descriptive methodology through the application of a case study of sample of distance education students from 5 different programs in GUDEVS. Descriptive methodology is a kind of research method which is used to describe a current or a past situation (Karasar, 1999). A survey was used to assess the resistance level, which is taken as a dimension of attitude, of distance education students towards web based learning. The survey was developed by Erdo an, Bayram and Deniz (2007). Data were collected from totally 432 distance education students of GUDEVS. %45.8 of the participants is composed of males and the rest (%54.2) females. In addition, %83.5 of the participants is under the age of 26. Participant distribution according to programs and grade levels is given in Table 2. These data were analyzed using T-test. Table 2. Participant distribution according to programs and grade levels Program Number of Students Grade Level Knowledge Management 61 1 Computer Programming 77 1 Computer Programming 72 2 Business Administration 43 1 Business Administration 70 2 Accounting 44 1 Web Technologies-Programming 65 1 Total 432 Serdar Çiftci et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 2393–2396 2395 3. Results In this section, the results acquired as a result of the research have been analyzed in the directions of the aim of the study. Table 3 presents the results related to the first research question (Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to gender?). Table 3. Resistance level according to gender and T-test results Groups N X sd F p Male 198 26.48 6.46 Female 234 27.28 6.41 1.628 .203 Total 432 26.91 6.44 Table 3 showed that resistance level did not change according to gender [F(1,430)=1.628; p>0.05]. Table 4 presents the results related to the second research question (Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to age?). Table 4. Resistance level according to age and T-test results Groups N X sd F p Age <26 361 27.13 6.56 Age >=26 71 25.83 5.69 2.412 .121 Total 432 26.91 6.44 Table 4 showed that statistically significant difference was not found between resistance level scores of two different age groups. In other words resistance level did not change according to age [F(1,430)=2.412; p>0.05]. Table 5 presents the results related to the third research question (Do GUDEVS students’ resistance levels towards web based learning differ according to grade level?). Table 5. Resistance level according to grade level and T-test results Groups N X sd F p 1 289 26.15 6.18 2 143 28.46 6.69 12.671 .000 Total 432 26.91 6.44 Table 5 showed that there is statistically significant difference between resistance level scores of two different grade groups. In other words resistance level changed according to grade level [F(1,430)=12.671; p<0.05]. Resistance level was measured higher in grade 2 students compared to grade 1 students. Table 6 presents the results related to the fourth research question (Do GUDEVS students’ resistance level towards web based learning differ according to the program they attend?). Table 6. Resistance level according to program and T-test results Groups N X sd F p 1-Knowledge Management 62 24.55 6.266 2-Computer Programming 149 27.29 6.501 3-Business Administration 113 28.63 6.343 5.009 .001 4-Accounting 43 26.19 5.897 5-Web Technologies-Programming 65 25.82 6.197 Total 432 26.91 6.440 2396 Serdar Çiftci et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 2393–2396 Table 6 showed that there are statistically significant differences between resistance level scores of students from five different programs. In other words resistance level changed according to program [F(4,427)=5.009; p<0.05]. Significant differences were seen between programs 1 and 2; 1 and 3; 3 and 4; 3 and 5. 4. Discussion In related literature, it is stated that attitudes of students towards web based education significantly influences learning (Sanders & Morrison-Shetlar, 2001; Alomyan & Au, 2004). For this reason it is important for organizations serving web based education to consider students’ attitudes (Daniels, Tyler, & Christie, 2000). Also many researchers say that there should be more research about learner attitudes towards web based education (Berge, 1997; Stocks & Freddolino, 1998; Kurubacak, 2000; Arslan, 2002, Manzanares, 2004). This study aimed to assess the resistance level, which is taken as a dimension of attitude, of distance education students towards web based learning and to present the relationship of resistance level with age, gender, program and grade level. These learner attributes are related with learner attitudes. Findings of the study showed that grade level and program of students influenced resistance level towards web based learning. Now, it becomes important to find answers to the question “Why these factors affect resistance level?” by additional research findings. 5. Conclusion and Recommendation According to the findings of this study, resistance level, which is a dimension of attitude, towards web based learning was influenced by grade level of distance education students and program they were attending. In addition resistance level of distance education students towards web based learning did not chance according to age and gender. In order to achieve success in web based education, resistance level of students towards this environment must be decreased. Future research may find solutions for this problem. In addition it becomes important to find out similarities between students in the same program and between students of the same grade level. These students interact with each other during learning process and probably they share ideas about their learning environment. If they influence each other or not in terms of developing attitudes towards web based learning is another subject to be studied on. References Alexander, S. (1995). Teaching and learning on the World Wide Web. AUSWEB 1995 [Online] http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb95/papers/education2/alexander[2003 , October 9] Alomyan, H. & Au, W. (2004). Exploration of Instructional Strategies and Individual Difference within the Context of Web-based Learning, International Education Journal, 4(4), 86-92. Arslan, A. (2002). Evaluation Of Designing Criteria In Web Based Computer Instruction, Unpublished Master Thesis, Marmara University, stanbul. Berge, Z. (1997). Characteristics of Online Teaching in Post-Secondary Formal Education, Educational Technology, 37(3), 35-47. Daniels, M., Tyler, J. & Christie, B. (2000). On-Line Instruction in Counselor Education: Possibilities, Implications, and Guidelines. Virginia: American Counseling Association. Erdo an, Y., Bayram, S., Deniz, L. (2007), Web Based Instruction Attitude Scale: Explanatory And Confirmatory Factor Analyses, International Journal of Human Sciences, ISSN: 1303-5134 Karasar, N. (1999). Bilimsel Ara t rma Yöntemi. Nobel Publishing. Ankara. Keegan, D. (2002). The future of learning: From e-learning to m-learning. Retrieved September 7th, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://learning.ericsson.net/leonardo/thebook/chapter4.html#milearn K l ç, E., Karadeniz, .(2004), The Effects of Gender and Learning Style on Navigation Strategy and Achievement, Journal of Gazi Educational Faculty, 24(3) , 129-146 Kurubacak, G. (2000). Online Learning: A Study of Students Attitudes towards Web-Based Instruction, Unpublished Doctorate Thesis, University of Cincinnati, OH. Manzanares, M.G. (2004). Attitudes of Counseling Students’ Use of Web-Based Instruction for Online and Supplemental Instruction in a Master’s Degree Program of Study. Colorado State University, Unpublished Doctorate Thesis, Fort Collins, Colorado. Martindale, T. and Ahern, T.C. (2001). The effects of three web-based delivery models on undergraduate college student achievement. International Journal of Educational Telecommunication, 7 (4), 379-392. Sanders, D. W. & Morrison-Shetlar, A. I. (2001). Student attitudes Toward Web-Enhanced Instruction in an Introductory Biology Course. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33(3), 251-62. Stocks, J. T. & Freddolino, P. P. (1998). Evaluation of a World Wide Web-Based Graduate Social Work Research Methods Course. Computers in Human Services, 15(2/3), 51-69. 
work_fdjy4u42rbg5zkvsbshfyn5aue	----	Microsoft Word - Distance-Learning040615-最后版本P10047.r01_camera-ready.doc Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 44 DISTANCE-LEARNING COURSEWARE DISCRIMINATION FOR DISCERNMENT ABILITY TRAINING Changjie Tang, Sichuan University, China Rynson W.H. Lau, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Qing Li, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Jean W.H. Poon, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Tianqing Zhang, Sichuan University, China Abstract: Training students the discernment ability is an important task in distance education. To improve the training results, this paper makes following contributions: (1) suggests the web courseware on controversial social issues with different viewpoints for discernment training. (2) To construct training courseware, a method called DRPA (Discriminating via Representative Phrase Assaying) is presented with five algorithms, i.e. algorithms for extracting representative phrases, calculating characteristic array, determining the threshold array, objective judgment, and subjective judgment. (3) A new concept called Gymnastics Threshold is proposed and proved to be more accuracy than traditional threshold. (4) Extensive experiments are given to show that: DRPA is much more efficient and accuracy than traditional method. Keywords: Distance learning, discernment ability training, Automatic document discrimination, natural language understanding. BACKGROUND AND PROJECT MOTIVATION As an experiment of the distance learning M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree programs, one of the authors is currently teaching, partially via the Internet, a course named “Reading Selected Articles on the Web” (RSAW) to students across several provinces in China. In order to improve the learning quality and the performance of tutoring system, we have developed the Web Tutor Object Tree (WTO Tree) (Tang C. Lau R.W.H. Li Q.,Yin H. Li T. and D. Kilis. 2000)., a method to construct personalized courseware to adapt the teaching according to the ability of individual students. The popularity of distance learning has prompted the demands on web courseware discrimination, as illustrated in the following examples: Example 1. The International Debate Competition for University Students (IDCU) is being held annually in Asia and the Pacific region as well as other areas of the world. The competing teams will draw cuts to Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 45 determine their points of view (Pro or Con). After drawing cuts, the teams have 24 hours to prepare their debate. In order to use the web resources, the coaches and teams are in urgent need of a tool to help discriminate web courseware with different points of view on a specific topic. � Example 2. In a research area, there are often different academic camps holding different or opposed view points, for example, the arguments on human rights in Africa, the debate on heredity and aberrance in biology, the arguments about “goto” statement in programming languages, the controversy about universal schema in database area, etc.. In order to train the discernment ability of distance learning students, professors teaching the RSAW course need a tool to recognize and select web documents in different view points to organize the Web Tutor Tree (Tang C. Lau R.W.H. Li Q.,Yin H. Li T. and D. Kilis.2000).. Sometimes, a professor may prefer his/her students to read 60% read 60% of the papers in a particular point of view and 40% of papers in the other point of view. � The above examples show that the training student’s discernment ability is an important task for distance education. To enhance student’s discernment ability by distance education, we suggest the web courseware on controversial social issues with different viewpoints for discernment training. In order to construct good training courseware for this purpose and to check students’ exercises in discernment training, an automatic document discrimination method called DRPA (Discriminating via Representative Phrase) is proposed along with five algorithms in this paper. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives related works and deficiency of existing work, Section 3 discusses the limitation of traditional approaches for courseware discrimination and discusses the special approach in this work. Section 4 gives preliminary concepts and notions of DRPA. Sections 5 and 6 present the algorithms for extracting representative phrases, calculating characteristic array and threshold array, objective discrimination, and subjective discrimination. Section 7 shows some experimental results of the proposed method in a classroom environment, demonstrating the efficiency of the algorithms. Finally, section 8 briefly concludes the paper. RELATED WORK AND DEFICIENCY OF TRADITIONAL METHODS Document discrimination can be viewed as a special case of text classification that is widely used in e-commerce, e-services, virtual offices and network security (e.g., discriminating black emails), and has been studied extensively as many methods have been developed [Tang C., Lau R.W.H., Yin H. Li Q. Lu Y. Yu Z., Xiang L., and Zhang T. 1999), Tang C., Yu Z., You Z., Zhang T., and Yang. L. 2000, Mannila H. and Toivonen H.1999), M. Jiang, S. Tseng, and C. Tsai.1999). Various research directions have been explored, such as K-nearest neighbor (kNN) algorithms, neural networks , decision trees (ID3)( Damerau C., Weiss F.1994) , Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 46 rule learning, support vector machine (SVM), linear classifiers, and Naive Bayes methods. Some new methods have been studied in recent years for text classification (Tang C, Li Q. Rynson W.H.L. Huang X .2003). As the limit of paper space , the detail analyses and comparison for the related works are omitted here. By the special feature, the general text classification methods are not efficient for Web documents discrimination. Most existing methods discriminate documents based on keyword matching. Some of them may require human interaction. This raises two problems: （1） Low efficiency caused by the interactive process and the manual operation. （2） Low accuracy of identification including failure to report con (negative) courseware and treating pro (positive) as con courseware. A Web courseware is a set of semi-structural files (usually in the format of HTML, XML, PDF or emails) containing formatted elements and non-formatted elements, HyperText Links. The formatted elements include header, title, URL, author, and the other extractable parts by XML technique. The rest, i.e., non-formatted elements, are as heap of sentences. The Semi-structure feature has been studied extensively. The traditional keyword-matching approach includes two steps: a. Handling formatted elements The formatted part, such as header, title, author, URL, and email address, is stored as a set of database records in the format of (<header, weight_h>, <name, weight_n>, <author, weight_a>, <URL, weight_u>, ...), where weight_h is the weight indicating the contribution of the header to the classification, and so on. The weight values are initialized by the expert’s experience and re-evaluated after each session, i.e., they are being updated in the learning process. The process of handling formatted part is relatively mature, and hence will not be discussed in this paper. b. Handling non-formatted elements Since the non-formatted part is a set of sentences, the traditional processing methods to discriminate courseware usually include the following steps: • Predefine a set of sensitive words. • Extract sensitive words from the documents and compute the number of occurrences. If this number of occurrences is greater than a predefined threshold, the courseware is classified as Con (point of view); To overcome these limitations of traditional key words matching, this paper adopts the technique from natural language understanding. The details will be explained in rest sections. SPECIAL APPROACH FOR WEB COURSEWARE DISCRIMINATION Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 47 The discrimination of Web courseware is different from general document discrimination because Web courseware can be well organized into a Web Tutor Tree(Tang C. Lau R.W.H. Li Q.,Yin H. Li T. and D. Kilis. 2000) under a predefined topic. In addition, the different viewpoints are known and may be expressed by representative (pro/con) sentences. To overcome the special difficulties in Web courseware discrimination described above, this paper proposes a new method named DRPA (Discriminating web courseware based on Representative Phrase Assaying). First, DRPA extracts the representative sentences (such as the first and last sentences in a section) from a training set of web courseware. Second, it parses these sentences to get the main semantic elements. Third, it counts and assays pro/con elements. Finally, by employing a typical data mining method, DRPA gets the judgment rules for Web courseware. CONCEPTS AND NOTIONS Table 1 provides a summary of the notations and terminologies used in this article. The concepts of the representative phrase and gymnastics average threshold are the special contributions of this work. Symbol Explanation TrainWareS A set of Web courseware selected by the user satisfying the ENOUGH Criteria; see definition 1. TrainPhrSet The set of representative phrases of all the document in TrainWareS Sub, Pred and Obj. Subject, predicate and object in a sentence of natural language RepSentenSet The set containing the first and last sentences of each paragraph, and sentences with emphatic marks. RepSenten Member of RepSentenSet GetRepSentenSet(d, r) Procedure to get a RepSentenSet from document d. Con Con ratio of d; see definition 4 Pro Pro ratio of d; see definition 4 PhraseWeight A number indicating the contribution of the sentence to the classification and is initialized at the training stage. Score The average score of all phrases of d. CA The characteristic array of document d, CA = <Score, Con, Pro> GymnasticsAve(S) The gymnastics average value of S, See definition 5 Opt_threshold Optimistic threshold array of characteristics array featured by minimum Con and Pro; see definition 6 Pes_threshold Pessimistic threshold array of characteristics array featured by maximum Con and Pro; see definition 6 Gym_threshold Gymnastics threshold array of characteristics array featured by gymnastics average; see definition 6 Table 1. The notions and terminology used in this paper. The major deficiency of the traditional approach is that it only considers isolated keywords during the matching process, instead of the meaning of the Web courseware. Hence, it is a lexical but not semantic mechanism. This paper takes the semantic approach. To formalize it, we give the following definitions. Definition 1. Let TrainWareS be a set of Web courseware selected by the user satisfying the following Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 48 criteria (called Enough Criteria): 1. TrainWareS should be big enough for the discriminating task, say containing more than 200 Courseware documents. 2. Each document in TrainWareS is already classified (pro or con). 3. It should be representative enough for the task, say, containing the typical pro and con classes of courseware documents. � Experiments conducted on natural language processing show that some sentences condense the idea of a paragraph. To formalize this observation, we define the following concepts: Definition 2. The representative sentence set of a document, denoted as RepSentenSet, is the set containing the first and last sentences of each paragraph, all sentences from the first and the last paragraphs in that document, and sentences with emphatic marks. An element of RepSentenSet is denoted as RepSenten. � The procedure GetRepSentenSet(doc, RepSentenSet) is to obtain the set of representative sentences from a courseware document doc; this is a simple procedure, which details are omitted. In Web files, a paragraph is indicated by HTML or XML marks such as <p>, </p>, <br>, etc.. Linguistics research shows that 70% or more meaning of a sentence can be expressed by SPO-Structure (i.e., the expression of Subject, Predicate and Object). Thus, we have: Definition 3. Let S be an element in RepSentenSet. Its subject, predicate and object are denoted as Sub, Pred and Obj, respectively. Let Ф be the empty word. Then: 1. The set of 4-tuples {(Sub, Pred, Ф, PhraseWeight), (Ф, Pred, Obj, PhraseWeight), (Sub, Pred, Obj, PhraseWeight)}, denoted as RepPhrase, is called the representative phrase of S, where PhraseWeight is a number indicating its contribution to the classification and is initialized at the training stage. 2. The representative phrases of document doc are denoted as TrainPhr(doc). The set of representative phrases of all the document of TrainWareS, denoted as TrainPhrSet, is called the training phrase set. � Example 3. Consider the Web courseware for distance learning students in Economics. It includes documents about stocks from Yahoo!Finance (Zuo J, Tang C. and Zhang T.2002). Representative sentences of document doc are listed below: S1: The markets were up after a government report showed job growth and wages rose less than expected in May, raising optimism that the Federal Reserve can limit the number of interest-rate increases in coming months. S2: After some softness early in the morning, the Dow has scaled back from a loss while the Nasdaq and S&P added to their gains. Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 49 S3: The Nasdaq Composite rose 85.17 points to 4098.51 and it seems that the market can maintain the gains. S4: The S&P 500 rose 10.67 points to 1502.92. The corresponding representative phrases are shown in Table 2. Sentence Subject Predicate Object 1 Markets Were Up 2 Dow Scaled Back 3 Nasdaq Rose 4 S&P 500 Rose Table 2. Samples of representative phrases Intuitively, a courseware document is evaluated synthetically by assaying all phrases such as the number of Pro / Con phrases, and the average score of the phrases. To formalize this, we need to define the characteristic array of a document. Definition 4 (Characteristic array of a document) Let doc be a courseware document, and {p1, p2, ..., pn} be the set of representative phrases extracted from doc, with n being the size of the set. Let Negative and Positive be the numbers of all Con phrases and Pro phrases, respectively. 1. The con ratio of doc is defined as: Con = -Negative / n. 2. The pro ratio of doc is defined as: Pro = Positive / n. 3. The average score of all phrases of doc is defined as: ∑ == n i i nContriPhrpScore 1 /* . 4. The characteristic array of document doc is defined as: CA = <Score, Con, Pro>. � Note that Negative ≥ 0, Con ≤ 0, and the score in the characteristic array of doc is different from that of the representative phrase denoted by PhraseWeight. Definition 5 (Gymnastics Average) Let S be a set of real numbers. The gymnastics average value of S, denoted as GymnasticsAve(S), is the average value of the elements in S1, where S1 is the result of deleting 10% elements at the beginning and 10% elements at the end of S. � Note that the gymnastics average value is just like the scoring rule in such sport games as gymnastics and diving. Definition 6 (Threshold Array) Let TrainWareS be the training set, CA_Set = {CAi | CAi is a characteristic array of document di, ni ≤≤1 } be the set of characteristic arrays of TrainWareS. 1. The optimistic threshold array of CA_Set is defined as Opt_threshold(CA_Set) = (Con_threshold, Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 50 Pro_threshold, Score_threshold), where Con_threshold = Min{CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set}, Pro_threshold = Min{CAi.Pro | CAi in CA_Set}, and Score_threshold = Average({CAi.Score | CAi in CA_Set}). 2. The pessimistic threshold array of CA_Set is defined as Pes_threshold(CA_Set) = (Con_threshold, Pro_threshold, Score_threshold), where Con_threshold = Max{CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set}, Pro_threshold = Max{CAi.Pro | CAi in CA_Set}, and Score_threshold = Average({CAi.Score | CAi in CA_Set}). 3. The Gymnastics threshold array of CA_Set is defined as Gym_threshold(CA_Set) = (Con_threshold, Pro_threshold, Score_threshold), where Con_threshold = GymnasticsAve({CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set}), Pro_threshold = GymnasticsAve({CAi.Pro | CAi in CA_Set}), and Score_threshold = GymnasticsAve({CAi.Score | CAi in CA_Set}). � Observation 1. In the web leaning environment, let TrainWareS be the training set, CA_Set={CAi | CAi is a characteristic array of document di, ni ≤≤1 }, GymAveCon = GymnasticsAve({CAi.Con| ni ≤≤1 }), and GymAvePos = GymnasticsAve({CAi.Pos| ni ≤≤1 }). From the experimental statistics, it is true in most cases that: (a) Let i=Min{k | CAk.Con ≤ GymAveCon ≤ CAk +1.Con}. Then k is in the middle 10% of interval [0, n]. (b) Let j=Min{k | CAk.Pos ≤ GymAvePos ≤ CAk +1.Pos}. Then k is in the middle 10% of interval [0, n]. (c) Max{CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set} µ 110% * GymAveCon. (d) GymAveCon µ 90% * Min{CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set}. (e) Max{CAi.Pro | CAi in CA_Set} µ 110% * GymAvePos. (f) GymAvePos µ 90% * Min{CAi.Pro | CAi in CA_Set}. This observation is based on statistical results and can be explained as follows. The teachers select web documents as course material according to the natural distribution of the score (Pro and Con). Proposition 1. Suppose that the above observation is true for TrainWareS and n ≥ 10. Then the Gymnastics threshold is more accuracy than the pessimistic threshold and the optimistic threshold. Proof. The general proof for arbitrary n is prolixity and fussy. Here, we give a proof sketch for the statement on optimistic threshold, while the number of documents n=10. The principle for other cases is expected to be the same. It is easy to see that adding a very small positive number (close to zero), έ, to CAi.Con does not affect the whole statistical property. Hence, we may assume that no two optimistic threshold numbers are equal. Without loss of generality, we assume CA1.Con > CA2.Con > ... > CA10.Con. (This assumption simplifies the proof.) For simplicity, we denote Ci = CAi.Con, Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 51 Optimistic Con_threshold as OptCon = Min{CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set, 1 ≤ i ≤ 10}= C10, g = GymnasticsAve {CAi.Con | CAi in CA_Set, 1 ≤ i ≤ 10}, OptimiticsDisSum = |CA2.Con - OptCon| + |CA3.Con - OptCon| + ... + |CA9.Con - OptCon|. Note here that the top 10% of CAa.Con is ignored. GymnasticDisSum = |CA1.Con - GymCon| + | CA2.Con - GymCon| + ... + | CA9.Con - GymCon| Then g = (C2 + C3+ ... + C9) / 8. It is easy to see that C2 ≥ g ≥ C9. Suppose Ci ≥ GymCon ≥ Ci+1, where 1<i<10. Let Delta = (10-2*i) * GymCon + 8*OptCon + 2*( Ci+1 + ... + C9) , then OptimiticsDisSum – DistanceGymSum = (C2–C10) + (C3-C10) + ... + (Ci- C10) + (Ci+1-C10) + .... + (C9-C10) - [(C2-g) + (C3-g) + ... + (Ci-g)] - [(g - Ci+1) + .... + (g–C9)] = (10-2*i) * GymCon + 8*OptCon + 2*( Ci+1 + .... + C9) = Delta By (a) in Observation 1, i is around 4 or 5 (10% in the interval of [0,10]). Thus Delta=8*OptCon + 2*(Ci+1+ ...+C9)>0. This is true in most cases for the Web leaning environment under lemma’s assumption. Similar proof can be applied to optimistic Pro, pessimistic Con and pessimistic Pro. Thus the Gymnastics threshold is more accurate than the pessimistic threshold and the optimistic threshold, as desired. � The assumption for n ≥ 10 is used to simplify the statement concerning the Gymnastic Average procedure. The case n<10 is meaningless in practice. Based on the above concepts, the main idea of our assaying mechanism can be described by the following two steps: 1. Learning: Get the characteristic array from TrainWareS • Construct TrainWareS of courseware documents according to the ENOUGH Criteria. • Distill TrainPhr from TrainWareS by parsing technique. • Evaluate each phrase in TrainPhr by setting p.PhraseWeight to the default (expert defined) value. • Calculate the characteristic array for each courseware document in TrainWareS. • Mine the threshold array from the set of characteristic arrays of TrainWareS. 2. Application: Classify the specified courseware document doc • Extract representative phrases from document doc by parsing technique. • Get p.PhraseWeight by matching p in TrainPhrSet. • Calculate characteristic array CA of doc. • Classify doc based on comparing CA with the threshold array of TrainWareS. Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 52 DISTILLING REPRESENTATIVE PHRASES The grammatical analysis algorithm for representative sentences is borrowed from the XinYi Internet Chinese-English Translation System. It is a software product developed by us (Zuo J, Tang C. and Zhang T. 2002). The syntax knowledge, including sentence structure rules and the conjunction rules of verbs, is implemented as knowledge bases KB1 and KB2, respectively, in the XinYi system. The system uses verbs as the kernel of each sentence. It can analyze the semantics of verb tense. It can extract phrases such as (Subject, Predicate) and (Predicate, Object). The classification rules borrowed from the Oxford Dictionary form the main part of the verb rule base. The verbs are divided into 25 classes, which can be expressed as VP1, VP2, …, VP25. More details on this can be found in the prefix of the Oxford dictionary. Example 4. Consider the syntax rules in XinYi system: S(VERB1) → SUB + VERB1 + NOUN. This is a representative rule in KB1. It describes the sentence structure with a verb. It requires the structure to be something like “Subject be Object”. The sentence “It is a big room.” satisfies this rule. � Example 5. Consider the rule: PREPNO → PREP + NOUN. This is a representative rule in KB2. It describes the phrase structure in the form of “Preposition + object”. The object is a word or a Noun phrase. Based on the syntax knowledge bases KB1 and KB2, the bottom-up parsing methods are used to distill the grammatical elements such as subject, predicate and object from the sentence. In this way, we get the representative phrases. Algorithm 1 shows the process to distill representative phrases from a document. � Algorithm 1 (Distill representative phrase) Input: Courseware document doc. Output: Representative phrase set RepPhraseSet of doc. Steps: GetRepSentenSet(doc, RepSentenSet); RepPhrasesSet = Empty; for each RepSenten in RepSentenSet { Sentence_Pattern = Get_Pattern_From_KB1(Verb); // Verb is kernal of the pattern. // the result is: Sentence_Pattern = Subject_Phrase + Verb + Object_Phrase Subject = Extract_Subject(Subject_Phrase); // such as get Noue “Adjective+None” Oubject = Extract_Oubject(Object_Phrase); // such as get Noue from: “Adjective+ None+Adverb” RepPhrase = (Subject,Verb,Object); // Subject or Object may be Ф; RepPhraseSet = RepPhraseSet + RepPhrase; } Output RepPhraseSet; � Algorithm 1 is non-determinate. Thus, the back tracing mechanism is used to optimize the parsing process. The max back trace depth is set to 1,000. Our implementation of this algorithm in the XinYi system Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 53 can process more than 1,500 Chinese characters per minute with CPU working in frequency 400M(Yu Z. Tang C. and Zhang T. 2000). Observation 2. Let m be the average number of words in sentence of web document. Then m≥2 and 25≥m. This observation is based on the experiments on the real web documents. Proposition 2. Let n be the number of sentences of input documents. Assume observation 2 is true, then the complexity of Algorithm 1 is O(n). Proof. By the observation 2, at most n/2 sentences to be analyzed. And at most 25 words in a sentences. Note that in Algorithm 1 the functions GetRepSentenSe is trivial parsing. The other functions such as Get Pattern From KB1, Extract Subject(Subject_Phrase),And Extract_Oubject(Object_Phrase) are working with sentence for at most 25 words. Thus, the cost can be evaluated as 25d for some constant d. The total cost should be O((n/2)*25*d), i.e., O(n). ASSAYING AND DISCRIMINATION The characteristic array of a document is in the format CA = <Con, Pro, Score> (see Definition 4). It summarizes the characteristics of a document such as the percentage of Pro/Con phrases in the document. Algorithm 2 describes the process of calculating this characteristic array. Algorithm 2 (Calculating characteristic array of a document) Input: Courseware document doc, Stage. // Stage is “Training” or “Discriminating” Output: The characteristic array CA of a document. Steps: Get representative phrase set RepPhraseSet from RepSenten by Algorithm 1; Initialize characteristic array CA = <Con, Pro, Score> as <0,0,0>; TotalScore=0; TotalPharase=0; for each phrase p in RepPhrases { // Get p.Score: if (Stage == Training) { if (doc is pro) p.PhraseWeight is assigned a positive number by expert experience; if (doc is con) p.PhraseWeight is assigned a negative number by expert experience; } else if (Stage == Discriminating) p.PhraseWeight = TrainPhrSet.p.PhraseWeight; TotalScore = TotalScore+p.PhraseWeight; TotalPharase = TotalPharase + 1; if (p.PhraseWeight > T_Phrase) CA.Pro = CA.Pro + 1; else CA.Con = CA.Con -1; } CA.Score = TotalScore / TotalPhrase; output CA; � Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 54 As illustrated in section 3, one of the important steps in the training stage is to get the threshold array from TrainWareS. Algorithm 3 describes this process. Algorithm 3 (Calculating threshold array) Input: TrainPhrSet of TainSet, Style. // Style is in {Optimistic, Pessimistic, Gymnastics} Output: threshold array T_Array of TrainWareS. Steps: Calculate the set of characteristic arrays for all documents in TranSet by Algorithm 2. Denote result as VertorSet; if (Style == Optimistic) T_Array = Opt_Threshold(VertorSet); else if (Style == Pessimistic) T_Array = Pes_Threshold (VertorSet); else if (Style == Gymnastics ) T_Array = Gymnastics_Threshold (VertorSet); Output T_array; � In Algorithm 3, the input TrainPhrSet (of the training set) is in the form of TrainPhrSet={<Sub, Pred, Obj, PhraseWeight>}, where PhraseWeight is a value indicating the contribution of the sentence to the classification and is assigned based on expert experience during the data cleaning process. For example, (Dow Jones, goes, up, 16) represents a piece of good news and hence is given a high score. However, (NASDAQ, goes, down, -8) represents a bad news in the stock market. Now, we present two algorithms to judge the courseware documents. Algorithm 4 shown below is referred to as “objective” because it is based on the objective facts. It only uses the ratio of negative phrases to positive phrases extracted from each document in TrainWareS. Proposition 3 Let k be number of TrainPhrSet in TainSet. Then the complexity of Algorithm 3 is O(K). Proof . Note that the statement after “IF” is simple calculation for simple arithmetic calculation. Thus the main cost is in the t step “Calculate the set of characteristic arrays for all documents in TranSet by Algorithm 2 “, By proposition 2.it is linear.Hence the total cost can be evaluated as O(K). Algorithm 4 (Objective Discrimination algorithm) Input: The Courseware document doc to be judged, TrainWareS, Style. // Style is in {Optimistic, Pessimistic, Gymnastics} Ouput: The judging conclusion of doc. // "Yes" (doc is accepted) or "No" (doc is rejected) Steps: Extract TrainPhrSet from TainSet by Algorithm 1; According to Style, mine the threshold array of TrainWareS by Algorithm 3 and denote as T_Array; Extract representative phrases from document doc and denote it as RepPhrases; Match each phrase of RepPhrases and get its score; if (NOT matched) { p.score = 0; Get the characteristic array CA of doc by Algorithm 2; Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 55 } if (T_Array.Pro == 0) T_Array.Pro = 0.01; // avoiding zero as the divisor if (CA.Pro==0) CA.Pro = 0.01; // avoiding zero as the divisor Judge_Ratio = (-CA, Con / CA.Pro); Threshod_Ratio = (-T_Array.Con / T_Array.Pro) if (Judge_Ratio >= Threshod_Ratio) conclusion = "No"; // reject doc else conclusion = "Yes"; // accept doc � Algorithm 5 shown below is referred to as “subjective” because it is based on the score reflecting the subjective experience of the expert. Algorithm 5 (Subjective Discrimination algorithm) Input: TrainWareS and the courseware document doc to be evaluated, EvaluationStyle; // EvaluationStyle is in {Optimistic, Pessimistic, Gymnastics} Ouput: The Evaluation conclusion of doc; // Pro or Con Steps: Extarct TrainPhrSet from TainSet by Algorithm 1; According to EvaluationStyle, mine threshold array TrainWareS by Algorithm 3. Denote output as T_Array; Extract representative phrases from doc and denote as RepPhrases; Match each phrase of RepPhrases and get its score; if (NOT matched) p.score = 0; Get the characteristic array CA of doc by Algorithm 2; if (CA.Score < T_Array.Score) conclusion is “Con”; else conclusion is “Pro”; � EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSES To demonstrate the effect of our algorithms, we have conducted an initial classroom-based experiment. In this section, we report our experimental study in terms of the design and method of analysis. Objectives of the Classroom Experiment The experiment was carried out in a classroom because of three reasons: (1) An in-depth and thorough evaluation method for DRPA requires empirical comparison with human involvement in a real teaching environment, which can reveal the validity and robustness of DRPA. (2) We want to understand the cognitive process of human beings when they are discerning or grouping the texts. This can help us develop DRPA to perform more “intelligently” and in a more “humanized” manner. (3) Since the data collected in the classroom is believed to be more realistic and reliable, the result generated can serve as a standard reference for comparison with the one generated by DRPA. Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 56 Setup of the Classroom Experiment Downloaded documents, which were in the area of Economics, were distributed to a group of 30 Economics-majored students. They were asked to read these documents in a one-hour session and to discern the documents into pro and con on this topic; they were asked to underline the sentences that gave hints on their judgment. Their strategies, methods or behavior applied in the reading process were recorded. The experiment was conducted under a controlled environment in an invigilated classroom setting. The following were the detailed steps of the experiment: (1) Each person is distributed with a set of 10 pieces of documents. (2) They are asked to read these articles with their own strategy in an hour. (3) With the same topic defined in DRPA “The trend of Hong Kong economy”, students are asked to discern the documents into pro and con on this topic. (4) They were asked to underline the sentences that give hints on their judgment. (5) If the document has positive standpoints, then mark +. (6) After an hour, the documents are collected. (7) An interview is conducted after the reading session. (8) Their strategies, methods or behaviors used in the reading process are recorded. (9) Their discernment results are determined by analyzing the underlined sentences and the symbolic marks given on each document. After the experiments were conducted, the importance of each proposition and the performance in their discrimination are evaluated on the basis of how the text was discriminated and marked by the students according to the method discussed in the following section. Method of Analysis Results of the classroom experiment are analyzed within the framework in terms of reading frequency, sentence distillation, diagnostic units and the discrimination result. A. Reading Frequency To find out the reading frequency before making discernment is an important reference to understand the human reading process. Findings: Table 3 shows that students need to read 1.28 times in average before making final discrimination. It tells that, even as intelligent like human beings, we would read a document more than once in order to make a judgment if necessary. In DRPA, the “reading” and “discernment” processes are in one linear flow: distill Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 57 representative phrase ‡ calculating characteristic array of a document ‡ calculating threshold array ‡ objective discrimination algorithm ‡ subjective discrimination algorithm. Based on the finding about the human reading frequency, we would like to know if it is possible to make the discernment process more sophisticated and result more accurately in the way to “read” the document for over one time or adopt a recursive calculation. Frequency 1 2 3 4 Percentage 79% 14% 6% 1% Table 3. The notions and terminology used in this paper B. Sentence Distillation After their documents are collected, the underlined sentences which provide hints for discernment were counted and averaged. The result is shown in Table 4. DRPA Classroom Experiment Means 10.2 5.99 Table 4. The average number of distilled sentences Findings: From the result shown in Table 4, it is obvious that the number of sentences underlined by students in each document is smaller than that extracted by DRPA. The large number of sentences distilled by DRPA may indicate high degree of redundancy in the process of sentence distillation. The redundant phrases from DRPA may not bring any benefit to increase the hit rate in matching. The low matching rate in DRPA application implies that the locations where the representative sentences distilled suggested in DRPA (paragraph-initiated sentences / paragraph-last sentences / all sentences in first and last paragraphs) may not help get the most relevant and indicative sentences. C. Diagnostic Units Findings: From the result of their marked documents and feedback in the interview, it is found that, within any text, there exists different heuristics that may contain obvious hints and important information helpful for document discrimination. Table 5 is a summary of diagnostic units that the students mostly noticed and used in the reading process: Table 5. A summary of diagnostic units Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 58 Title Sub-title Tone of the sentence Synonyms First and the last paragraph Topic sentence Thematic words Getting insight from investigating the cognitive process of human being in reading, it is found that the semantic approach suggested in DRPA is not significant enough for corpus analysis. Rather, other components of NLP like the weight of titles, topic sentences in introduction and conclusion are believed as potential heuristics in contributing result with higher accuracy. D. Discernment Result Findings: Table 6 shows that 90% of the documents have the same result in judgment except Econ_C. Since the result generated by the human subjects is more reliable, the result of Econ_C generated by DRPA is believed to be incorrect. Document discernment is the process of spotting relevant hints and information from documents. It involves sophisticated and intelligent manipulation of given knowledge as well as knowledge of natural language (Riloff E. and Lehnert W. 1994). The conclusion we can draw from the results of two experiments is that a system like DRPA, which uses only the existing semantic structure to determine the relative importance of the representative phrases, performs well to a certain extent. However, we have found that redundant and irrelevant phrases distilled in DRPA may not contribute much to correct discrimination. Learned from classroom experiments, we can perform discrimination work more accurately and flexibly by considering a variety of hints or heuristics like the title or the topic sentence. In addition, the experiment tells that we have to extract sentences which are more representative and carries heavier weight than the one suggested in DRPA. This is important as it can minimize the ineffective distillation by extracting too many redundant and “less representative” sentences. Table 6. The discrimination results of a DRPA and classroom experiment Document DRPA Classroom Experiment Econ_A Pro Pro Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 59 Econ_B Con Con Econ_C Con Pro Econ_D Pro Pro Econ_E Pro Pro Econ_F Con Con Econ_G Con Con Econ_H Pro Pro Econ_I Pro Pro Econ_J Con Con Discussions We may now summarize the findings that we have obtained from the experiment: 1. Title: The title, heading or subheading in a document is a good candidate for discernment. From the definition of linguistics, title is defined as a phrase that summarizes the information of a text in a compressed and condensed way. It conveys the main position and main theme of content. Since the title has the indicative function, it should be extracted and treated as a “representative” phrase in training and discrimination stage. It is suggested that, in the training stage, title and subtitles are extracted and assigned a score for training as usual. This measure can increase the size of the training pool that improves the matching rate in comparison. With the addition of titles, the size of training pool can be increased by 16.3%. This can increase the hit rate in the subsequent comparison. In the discrimination stage, the title in the testing document is compared and scored for the first priority. If the title has already carried an obvious and indicative score, we may skip the process to extract representative phrases in the body part of document. Finally, based on the score of the title, we calculate its characteristic array and make judgment in the same way as in the original DRPA. Title matching is a reliable and simple method in which it can minimize the redundant representative phrases in the training and discrimination phase. Effective discrimination and accurate result can be achieved. 2. Subject Categorization and Pattern Recognition: As mentioned above, the dependence on cut off semantic structure may cause it to be too ambiguous to do assaying work. So, apart from semantic analysis, text pattern is another good indicator for classification. In content area, pattern recognition is a tactic for identifying organizational patterns in information we read or hear. It constitutes a key to the Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 60 basic understanding of the inherent logical structure underlying, providing potential useful approach for rational classification. With reference to the principle of content thinking information skills, there is a standardized “relationship” and “matching” between subjects and text pattern. For example, geographic document is always written in the Process Pattern while the historic documents are mostly in Sequence Pattern or Cause and Effect Pattern. After we understand the relationship, we have to identify the “hot spot” in different pattern because most of the relevant and important information are located in specific hotspot according to specific pattern. Figure 1 shows the relationship between the pattern and the location. Figure 1. The Generalization pattern related subject: Economics. Representative phrases, according to the “hot spot method” mentioned above, are extracted in “hot spot” (first paragraph) which should carry a heavy weight for discrimination. If there is no matching or the ratio of zero score in this hot spot is very high, then we extract and match the paragraph-initial and paragraph-final sentences from the rest of the document. Based on this summary, we may refine our method with the title method and “hot spot” approach as follows: Introduction (hot spot area) Supporting fact Supporting fact Conclusion For those documents belonging to generalization pattern, the statements in the first paragraph always contain the opinion and the standpoint of an author. Other part like supporting facts which contain data or example are relatively less important for classification. Conclusion mostly is only the summary of above information of the supporting facts and repeated claiming of theme or standpoint mentioned in the first paragraph. So, the sentences in the first paragraph should be extracted and scored with heavier weigh. Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 61 Refined Step: if (title not matched) { Extract representative sentence in hot spot; If (matching found) Scoring and Discrimination; else Extract paragraph initial and last sentences; // as suggested in DRPA } Scoring and Discrimination; Conclusions on the Classroom Experiment The title weighting and the hot spot method provide a guide for DRPA to distill representative phrases more flexibly and accurately. More than that, in the assaying process, the technique can keep recursive “reading” and “scanning” the document for several times when judging whether the distillation needs to enroll into the second round or third round. We can see that the refined DRPA has the features of prioritization and the hierarchical structure. It is “intelligent” enough to make decision conditionally. (Please refer to the refined steps in the previous subsection). Although there is no further experiment to test on other patterns for discrimination, it is believed that the performance is satisfactory even in other domains or patterns because the suggested approach for improving DRPA is to consider and dependent more on natural language understanding. CONCLUSIONS Train students the discernment ability is an important task in distance education. To improve the training effects, we have proposed a new method, called DRPA, to discriminate courseware document based on natural language understanding and Representative Phrase Assaying. Our main works includes: l Suggests the web courseware on controversial social issues with different viewpoints. l To construct the courseware for Discernment Ability, a method called DRPA (Discriminating via Representative Phrase Assaying) is presented with five-algorithms, i.e. algorithms for extracting representative phrases, algorithms for calculating characteristic array, algorithms for determining the threshold array, algorithms for objective judgment, and algorithms subjective judgment. l A new concept called Gymnastics Threshold is proposed and proved to be more accuracy than transitional threshold. l Extensive experiment algorithms are given. Our experimental results show that the algorithms are efficient. As a web courseware can be rather complex, much further work needs to be done. We are currently investigating issues on improving the accuracy of the evaluation and mining the threshold array by clustering technique. Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 62 Training students on the discernment ability is a new issue in Web education. This is just a beginning work. A lot of work remains to be done, including how to manage the examination for discernment ability training, and how to collect the Web documents with different viewpoints, etc.. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This project is in part supported by a CERG grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (RGC Reference Number: CPHK 77/95E), the National Science Foundation of China Grant #60073046,and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education(SRFDP）#20020610007. REFERENCES Tang C., Lau R.W.H., Li Q., Yin H., Li T., and Kilis D. (2000). Personalized Courseware Construction Based on Web Data Mining, WISE'00 Worshop on Web-based Education and Learning, 204-211. Tang C., Lau R.W.H., Yin H., Li Q., Lu Y., Yu Z., Xiang L., and Zhang T. ( 1999). Discovering Tendency Association Between Objects with Relaxed Periodicity and its Application in Seismology, Proceedings of ICSC ’99, LNCS Vol. 1749, 51-62. Tang C., Yu Z., You Z., Zhang T., and Yang L. (2000). Mine the Quasi-Periodicity From Web Data, The Journal of Computer, 23(1):52-59. Riloff E. and Lehnert W. (1994). Information Extraction as a Basis for High-precision Text Classification, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 12(3):296-333. Mannila H. and Toivonen H. (1999). Discovering Generalized Episodes Using Minimal Occurrence, Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. Jiang M., Tseng S., and Tsai C. (1999). Discovering Structure from Document Databases, Proceedings of PAKDD’99, 169-173. Fayyad U. and Piatetsky G. (1996), Advanced in Knowledge Discover and Data Mining (Eds), AAAI Press and MIT Press, 1-5. Zuo J, Tang C., and Zhang T. (2002). Mining Predicate Association Rule by Gene Expression Programming, WAIM02, International Conference for Web Information Age, LNCS Vol. 2419, 92-103. Yu Z., Tang C. and Zhang T. (2000), The Grammar Analysis Strategy for Machine Translation Systems, Journal of Micro and Mini Computer Systems, 21(3) 316-318. Damerau C. and Weiss F. (1994), Automated learning of decision rules for text categorization, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 12(3):233~251. Li T, Tang C., Zuo J., and Zhang T. (2001). Web Document Filtering Technique Based on Natural Language Understanding, International Journal Computer Processing of Oriental Language, 14(3):279-291. Tang C, Li Q., Lau R.W.H., and Huang X. (2003). Supporting Practices in Web-based Learning, ICWL03 (First International Conference on Advances in Web-Based Learning), LNCS Vol. 2436, 300-312. Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 63 Journal of Distance Education techniques,3(1),44-61, Jan-march,2005 64 The authors’ biography TANG Changjie received his MSc. from Department of Mathematics, Sichuan University in 1981. His current interests are in Web data mining. He has published 8 books and more than one hundred research papers in journals and international conferences, such as FODO, IFIP, SIGMOD, DASFAA, ICSC, TCS (Theoretical Computer Science) ,LNCS, JOS, JCST, SC (Science of China). He was a PC member of VLDB'97, DASFAA'99, ICSC'99, WAIM2000-04, and DASFAA2001-2004. He is a Professor of the Computer Department of the Sichuna University, and a vice director of the Database Society of the Chinese Computer Federation. (Email:chjtang@vip.sina.com, or tangchangjie@cs.scu.edu.cn) Rynson W.H. Lau received a B.Sc. first-class honors degree in Computer Systems Engineering in 1988 from the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1992 from the University of Cambridge, England. He is currently an associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Prior to joining the university in 1998, he taught at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. From 1992 to 1993, he worked at the University of York, England, on a defense project on image processing. Rynson Lau's research interests include computer graphics, virtual reality and multimedia systems. (Email: Rynson.Lau@cityu.edu.hk) Qing Li received his BEng. degree from Hunan University (Changsha, China), MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Souther California (Los Angeles, USA), all in computer science. He is currently an Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, as well as a Guest Professor of the Zhejiang University, and an Adjunct Professor of the Hunan University. His research interests include database modeling, multimedia retrieval and management, and e-learning systems. Dr Li has published over 150 papers in technical journals and international conferences in these areas, and is actively involved in the research community by serving as a guest and asssocaite editor to several technical journals, programme committee chair/co-chair, and as an organizer/co-organizer of major international conferences. Currently he serves as a councillor of the Database Society of Chinese Computer Federation, and as a Steering Committee member of the international WISE Society. (Email: itqli@cityu.edu.hk) Jean W.H. Poon received the Bsc from City University of Hong Kong in 2002 and M.A. degree from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2004. She is currently a teacher of a secondary school in Hong Kong. (E-mail: waihan_poon@yahoo.com.hk) Zhang Tianqing received the B.E. and M.E degree in computer science from Sichuan University, China, in 1993 and 1996 respectively. He is currently a Ph D candidate. in Computer Science, Sichuan University. His main research interests are database system. (Email:zhangtianqing@cs.scu.edu.cn) mailto:Email:chjtang@vip.sina.com mailto:tangchangjie@cs.scu.edu.cn mailto:Rynson.Lau@cityu.edu.hk mailto:itqli@cityu.edu.hk mailto:waihan_poon@yahoo.com.hk mailto:Email:zhangtianqing@cs.scu.edu.cn 
work_ffp6ifvd4rh5dofhdkfd5pqcuq	----	None 
work_flozadodpbdxpp722sqya2musy	----	Telidon: Its Potential and Problems for Traditional and Distance Education VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1, 1985 external options on the microcomputer to complement its local record keeping and financial analysis functions. At the end of the trial in October 1983 and through all 1984 the absence of a rea- sonable rural telecommunication service for Ontario presented a major block in fur- ther acceptance of this or any other Teli- don service. While access costs in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were reason- able at five and eight cents per minute respectively, Datapac in Ontario at 15 cents per minute was not available outside larger cities. The cost of a long distance call of 35 to 70 cents to reach a Datapac port or the University of Guelph network was seen by our participants as prohibitive. The pro- mise for 1985 is that an INET trial in zone 519 of Southwestern Ontario will be avail- able at 25 cents per minute. 11 II. The Instructional Applications and findings Telidon's tree structure and menu ap- proach makes it extremely easy for first time users. However, this structure was not found to be suitable for instructional purposes. Special action task software was written by Infomart to University of Guelph specifications. This enabled several interactive approaches to be taken in de- signing instructional sequences. The ma- jor emphasis in this first instructional trial was for testing and feedback modules to support PSI or other mastery type courses. Ten to twenty minute test modules were created in the Zoology, Ornithology, Neuroanatomy and Psychology courses. These were optional for students and were presented as opportunities for them to test themselves against the course material. The modules were tests of learning rather than as tests for mark accumulation. They did have the features of immediate feed- back to the student, suggestions for study following an incorrect response, randomi- zation of test items allowing multiple at- tempts until the achievement criteria was reached and feedback to the instructor in the form of printed reports of student per- formance. These modules were created by the Guelph Page Creation Centre in close consultation with the participating mem- bers of faculty. The materials were then uploaded from Guelph into Infomart's Winnipeg computer in similar manner to the provison of the agricultural content for GRASSROOTS. While the latter task was performed directly from Guelph, the inter- active nature of the instructional materials required software engineering intervention Continued on page 23. of the service, and maintenance on the equipment. With the system installed, the project team undertook to recruit several members of faculty to explore instructional applications of the medium for on-campus instruction and for possible distance education applica- tion. Four courses were selected with high visual content or the need for frequent and immediate feedback to students. These were a first year introductory course in Zoology, a first year Neuroanatomy course in Veterinary Medicine, a third year couse in Psychology and a fourth year course in Ornithology. A course in Extension Educa- tion used the Telidon systems test and feed- back capacity for a computer literacy quiz related to TV Ontario's "Bits and Bytes" series. GRASSROOTS Findings There was general agreement among par- ticipants that this farm information service was easy to use and provided valuable in- formation on weather and commodity mar- kets. It was also found that expectations of detailed information on such topics as her- bicides, feed ration balancing formulas and local market quotations were not as well met. The delemma of Telidon or videotex as a single service entity, as it was originally conceived, or as an extension of the micro- computer, emerged early in the trial. When the trial ended participants were invited to continue the service by acquiring a termi- nal through lease or purchase and paying ten cents per minute telecommunications charge to use the network. Eight trial par- ticipants elected to lease a terminal and no one bought since they indicated a desire for an integrated service with a microcompu- ter. During the trial a software decoder from Microstar, in Ottawa, became avail- able for the IBM PC. Several participants already owned Apple II plus micros; how- ever, no completely satisfactory decoder for the Apple was available and their owners elected to keep their options open by leasing a terminal. The participants in the trial covered a wide age spectrum from young to well established farm operators. The majority reported gross annual sales of agricultural products in excess of $200,000. This sug- gests that an economic threshold may well exist below which this videotex service is too costly to be justified. While the majority of respondents indi- cated they were seriously considering ac- quiring a microcomputer they were still looking. They were inclined to see the GRASSROOTS type of service as one of the figured to provide: 8 Guelph local phone dial-up access ports 3 University of Guelph campus access ports 3 In-watts access ports 1 Program port, Westex News, University of Western Ontario 1 Program port, Page Creation, University of Guelph. It was found that Bell's Datapac was not available outside of the larger urban cen- tres which rendered it inaccessible to the large rural areas. Access was possible to Datapac but incurred a 35 to 70 cents per minute long distance charge. A further complication was that Telidon terminals were equipped with split speed 1200/150 bps modems which were unsuitable on Bell's Datapac service although they could be made to work over the voice network. Modems at 1200 bps and compatible with Datapac cost approximately $1,000 at the time of the trial which rendered this op- tion unattractive. The third objective was to test the ser- vice on selected Ontario farms. The telecommunications problems have been identified and these placed serious finan- cial constraints on the project's ability to encompass a geographically dispersed farm audience which would be representative of Ontario agriculture. Through the participa- tion of several commercial agri-business firms 1 funds were made available to pro- cure additional terminals and to add a se- cond trail area. Chatham in the heart of Southwestern Ontario's cash crop region was selected as the second trial site and a four-port "mini-mux" line extension was installed reducing Guelph's local dial-ups to four. Terminals were installed on forty farms, thirty in the Guelph area in two waves of fifteen each and ten around Chatham. Farmers were selected by a committee of Guelph faculty and were offered the ser- vice on a no-charge basis for two months in return for agreeing to complete a de- tailed written questionnaire prior to termi- nal installation and a second questionnaire at the end of the period. 2 In addition on- liJ.le responses were solicited during the tnal. The offer of service included an inte- grated Telidon terminal (decoder, monitor and modeml, free telecommunication over the installed network, training in the use CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION I.These companies were Chipman Inc., ciba- Geigy, Cyanamid, Pioneer Hybrid and Shurgain. 2 Deloitte, Haskins and Sells, Management Consu!tants contributed the Market Research analySIS. Media Producer Graphic artist/exhibit designer Database Manager Research Assistant Writer Writer An initial target of 300 pages of Ontario content for the field trial was more than doubled with 688 pages being created. This included a market summary of Ontario farm prices supplied by the Ontario Minis- try of Food and Agriculture and updated daily. A Calendar of Events for the Ontario agricultural community listed events by region, by date and by subject. A user was able to scan the information available by using anyone of the three search modes. Agricultural extension courses in the Inde- pendent Study program were included in the database with an on-line course regis- tering system available. Several interactive farm management programs were pro- duced including a Crop Budgeting Aid and a demonstration Sire Selector program. Research reports and summaries of Animal Health Care seminars were included from the Ontario Veterinary College as well as an on-line ordering system for audio cas- settes of the Health Care sessions. Infomart undertook to expand its 24 hour weather forecasts to include Central and Western Ontario for the regions of Wind- sor, London, Owen Sound and Toronto. In addition several agribusiness companies contributed product information of interest to the Ontario farm community and trading information from the Toronto Stock Ex- change was made available. The second project objective was to make the GRASSROOTS database avail- able to Ontario farmers. To achieve this and to enable the Guelph Page Creation Centre to load the Ontario content into the Winnipeg computer, a dedicated 4,800 bps dataroute line was leased from Bell Canada. A sixteen port concentrator was installed at Guelph which provided two program ports on the Winnipeg computer for the Page Creation units and 14 simul- taneous user access ports. These were con- responsibilites) and the Manager of the "Page Creation Centre". Infomart provided training to the Page Creation staff on site at Guelph enabling staff to become competent with the two Norpak Information Provider Terminals. Two years later these staff report that the most valuable activity for them was the one week training at the beginning of the field trial which enabled them to achieve the re- quired standard. These staff members were all seasoned in their fields and had assign- ments as follows: Telidon Responsibility Previous experience Manager. Page Creation Centre Page Designers (3) GRASSROOTS Field Trial The first major project grew out of an in- vitation from Infomart, Winnipeg, to con- duct a joint six month field trial in introduc- ing its agricultural information service GRASSROOTS into Ontario. This project had three specific objectives: 11 to create a commercial class "Telidon Page Creation Centre" operating at in- dustry standard. 21 to create agricultural content of rele- vance to Ontario agriculture to be avail- able to Ontario farmers from the GRASSROOTS database in Winnipeg. 31 to test this Telidon service with as many representative Ontario farmers as facili- ties would permit. The agreement between the University of Guelph and Infomart was signed December 23, 1982 and preparatory work began immediately for the field trail which operated from April to October of 1983. Guelph appointed a three person project management team and assigned three regu- lar media production staff to the "Page Creation Centre". This was augmented by three temporary staff. In addition electron- ic staff were given fractional assignments on an "as required" basis. The manage- ment team comprised the project director, The Coordinator of Agriculture Extension, (both of whom had existing full-time 1982 the University of Guelph, along with several other educational institutions, was awarded a Telidon equipment grant from the Department of Communication under its Industrial Investment Stimulation Pro- gram (IISP). The proposal listed three areas of study and application. The first was an agricultural information service. The se- cond was an on-campus electronic infor- mation service for students and staff and the third was the use of Telidon in teach- ing. I. From Farms to Classrooms with Telidon as an agricultural extension medium as well as an instructional med- ium. From this experience several conclu- sions are drawn about the potential of videotex, to use the more generic term for Telidon, for traditional and distance educa- tion. Introduction Computers once meant "number proces- sing machines" and if we were not in- volved in teaching a subject with some mathematics we could conveniently leave the computer to the math and physics departments. The notion of computers as "logic machines" moved us a bit closer to considering their place more widely in the curriculum but for many of us the com- puter was a foreign object and too confus- ing with which to become involved. In the past couple of years the microcomputer has emerged, not only as a number processor but also as a processor of words and im- ages which places it at the heart of educa- tional work. One development of potential value to both traditional and distance education is the merging of Telidon technology 'Nith the microcomputer. Telidon in 1985 is quite a different crea- ture from Telidon of 1981 when the Canad- ian Department of Communication laun- ched its $27.5 million program to support Telidon's development. While the basic Telidon approach remains, that of a system of computer codes to produce colour graphic images, the early Telidon standard has given way to the North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax (NAPLPSI. Low cost adaptors for the home TV set supposed to be here by 1983 are still not here. There are adaptors or decoders but they are not low cost. What has hap- pened is that several microcomputers can now be outfitted with a software decoder from $99 to $199, depending on the micro, which give the computer the capability to function like a terminal. Predictions made by the University of Guelph in 1983 that Telidon would emerge as an enhanced capability of the microcomputer rather than as an "add on" to the TV set seem more likely of fulfilment than the reverse. This paper will report on work at the University of Guelph beginning in 1982 G. A. B. Moore is Associate Professor of Extension Education and Director of the Office for Educational Practice at the Uni- versity of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, NIG 2Wl. 10 by G.A.B. Moore CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION ed to deliver television signals over a large geographical area with signals to be re- ceived by small dishes and retransmitted to cable television. Presently 140 com- munities in British Columbia are able to receive Knowledge Network programming. In November 1982, there were 375,000 regular viewers throughout the province. In addition, some communities in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, Alber- ta and the northwestern section of the United States are able to tune in to Knowledge Network transmissions. The Knowledge Network provides edu- cational and general interest programming for children and adults, telecourses and live interactive educational broadcasts, consti- tuting a total of 98 broadcasting hours per week. Fifty-nine percent of the programm- ing is produced in British Columbia, the majority of which originates with educa- tional institutions responsible for post secondary and continuing adult education. The number of educational institutions, government ministries and agencies which provided and supported educational pro- gramming on the Knowledge Network in 1983 totaled 33 and include the Universi- ty of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, 15 two- year colleges, and several learning insti- tutes. The Knowledge Network is thus not a separate Distance Education institution, but rather one working part of the total commitment to "Distance Education" in British Columbia. The term "Learning System" is used to describe what happens when the existing educational structure in- cluding government plus universities, com- munity colleges and provincial institutes strive to cooperate to expand educational opportunity through the use of a variety of technological efforts, chiefly the telecom- munications satellite (Forsythe and Collin, 1983). Integral in the organizing principle of the "Learning System" are the Learning Sys- tem Working Groups, consisting of repre- sentatives from the participating educa- tional institutions. The Knowledge Net- work assists the members by providing the opportunity for the cooperation and pro- blem solving necessary to further devel- opment of the educational network. At the community level, Learning Cen- tres, part of local colleges when possible, have been established in 67 locations throughout the province. The Centres of- fer local residents a variety of services relating to Knowledge Network courses as well as other "Distance Education" efforts. Such services include audio conferencing opportunities to facilitate interaction with instructors and other students, special library services for degree students, etc. During 1982-83, 8,000 students enrolled in various degree and continuing education courses offered through the Knowledge Network by cooperating educational insti- 22 tutions. Analysis of student enrollments in- dicate that students residing in the more sparsely populated areas of the province and thus beyond physical accessibility to the three Universities located in the southern part of the province are partici- pating "Distance Education" students tend to be approximately 10 years older than full-time on-campus students, are em- ployed full-time and have families. Educa- tional opportunities are therefore being provided and more importantly accepted and used by those who otherwise might not be served. A new phase of development has been completed by a subsidiary corporation, the Knowledge-West Communications Cor- poration. It now operates as a broadband closed circuit service which links five teaching hospitals and the universities with two-way video, audio and data units. The Knowledge-West also acts as a Develop- mental Directorate for new ventures in closed-circuit satellite video conferencing, data network and electronic publishing (Forsythe and Collins, 19821. The implica- tions of this work are interesting and pro- mise future development. CONCLUSIONS As can be readily noted from this brief overview, the primary uses thus far for satellite communications have primarily been in areas of extending preparatory and first year university courses (USP, UWI, Knowledge Network) in-service teacher training (USP, UWI, KNI. continuing edu- cation (USP, KN) and in-service profes- sional training (e.g. agriculture, health; UWI, Indonesia, KNI. Non-formal educa- tion at all levels was attempted in both the Canadian and Indonesian projects. The on- ly country to attempt formal instruction at the primary level was India (SITE project as a prelude to INSAT I-B). Another parti- cularly beneficial use of satellite technol- ogy was in the use of audio teleconferenc- ing systems for direct instruction, tutorial counselling and project administration (USP, UWI, KN, and to be included in In- donesia). In the case of the IEC, this sys- tem (video transmission from central site and audio feedback) also proved useful as a decision making forum for adults con- cerned with mutual regional problems. While effective at the adult level, however, the literature suggests that teleconferenc- ing systems may not be viable for larger- scale education endeavours such as sup- port for in-school primary education (Casey-Stahmer and Lauffer, 1982). Thus while the current use of satellite technology for distance education is rela- tively limited, the literature is almost uni- form in suggesting two major trends within the next twenty years: 1) The expansion and use of satellite technology will render the accessibility to television and radio al- most universal within the next twenty years but the major trend for applying in- formation and educational services in the third world will remain with radio (Block, 19831. and 21 the nations that could profit most from satellite technology for both for- mal and non-formal educational devel- opment are those that can least afford them, because they lack the finances, in- dustrial base and technical infra-structure to maintain a comprehensive system (Polcyn, 19811. Small-scale terrestrial bas- ed projects will remain the norm for most of the developing world for some time. But for those countries currently on the edge of exploiting satellite television tech- nology such as China, Brazil, Mexico, In- donesia, Saudi Arabia and India, the fore- seeable prospects are encouraging. The ma- jor challenges to be faced by these nations are those of software development, or- chestration of human resources, and ac- tivities at the receiving end (feedback and motivation factors). whether it be school, home or village community centre based. These are precisely the problems faced by the major developed nations and there is little reason to expect that developing coun- tries will be different although the circum- stances may warrant different solutions. Canada, for example, is able to supply its own technology, has adequate financial resources, and target audiences which are relatively small from an international pro- spective. It is therefore free from many of the overwhelming concerns facing devel- oping nations and able to explore a varie- ty of issues which will refine the use of satellite technology for education. Satellites can provide the technical means to distribute educational material over large distances at increasingly afford- able costs but harnessing the technology to equalize educational opportunity will re- quire careful planning if this potentially major innovation is to be successfully exploited. References Academy for Educational Development. (1983a). Planning telecommunication applications in the West Indies. Uplink, March, 3. Academy for Education Development. (1983bl. Waves of information: using radio and communication satellite technologies for rural development. Paper presented at the Development Forum's Tenth Anniversary Col- loquium, Paris, February. Alfian, & Chu, G. (1981). Satellite televi- sion in Indonesia. Honolulu: East- West Center. Balderston, M. (1979). Satellite communi- cation for education in the South Pacific. Educational Technology, April, 26-30. Block, C. (1983). Communications and rural development. In I. Singh (Ed.). Telecommunications in the Year VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1, 1985 2000 (pp. 127-134). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Casey-Sathmer, A., & Lauffer, S. (1982). A new era of satellite communica- tion: Can education benefit from it? Paper presented at the Internation- al Council for Educational Media Con- ference, Mexico City, October. Coldevin, G. (19771. Anik I and isolation: Television in the lives of Canadian Eskimos, Journal of Communica- tion, 27, 14). 145-153. Coldevin, G., & Wilson, T. (19821. Educa- tion, television par satellite et impuis- sance chez des adoescents Inuit du Canada. Etudes Inuit, 6, (I). 29-37. Forsythe, K., & Collin, V. (19831. British Columbia - case study: Higher Education and the integration of a TELIDON Continued from page 11. to load the Telidon created pages to the ac- tion task software. Student access to the instructional ma- terials was provided through Telidon ter- minals located in the Library and in the Audio-Tutorial Laboratory of the Ontario Veterinary College. Students were issued with a course identification number and a personal password and signed on the sys- tem initially like a regular GRASSROOTS subscriber. The course IDs, however, were set up as a closed-user group and the students by-passed the standard menus to be taken directly to the appropriate materi- als for the assigned course. Telecommuni- cation between the terminals at Guelph and the Winnipeg database was achieved through the University's computer net· work to which the dataroute concentrator ports were linked. The instructional materials took two basic forms. The course in Zoology used a resource reference approach. Here many of the overhead visual materials used in class were available for reference and review on the terminal. Interactive features were introduced so that the student could contrast and compare different cell struc- tures or order the way in which an illustra- tion was presented. In the other courses in Neuroanatomy, Ornithology and Psychol- ogy a test and feedback approach was us- ed. Here students were presented with multiple choice or short answer questions. In some tests a second try was allowed after an incorrect response while in others the next item was presented immediately. The system described worked reasonably well but there were problems. Operating on a large database with a fluctuating user demand caused the system to have a vari- able response time. During periods when the 1500 GRASSROOTS subscribers ac- cessed the Chicago Board of Trade com- modity prices, a noticeable slowdown in the response time of the system provided new technology, Vancouver: Know- ledge Network. Hudson, H. (19811. A satellite network in the South Pacific. Uplink, June, 5. Lalor, G.(1984). Project report: University of the West Indies distance teaching experiment. Uplink, February, 6. Mody, B. (19791. Programming for SITE. Journal of Communication, 29, (4). 90-98. Polcyn, K. A. (1981). The role of communi- cation satellites in education and train- ing: The 1990s. Programmed Learn- ing and Educational Technology, 18, (4). 230-244. Shukla, S. (1979). The impact of SITE on primary school children. Journal of Communication, 29, (4). 99-105. UNESCO, (1981). Draft project docu- an aggravation to a student who had to wait up to 30 seconds (sometimes longer) for recognition and feedback to an entered response. The University's computer net- work was being expanded during the time of the trial and this led to occasional fail- ures in gaining access or being "dumped" during a session. Similarly, occasional in- terruptions of the GRASSROOTS system led to the same result. A frequent problem was the volume of traffic on the three University access ports which led at times to delays of up to 45 minutes in signing on. While this instructional system was be- ing used for on-campus students it was emulating a distance education mode. Any terminal on the GRASSROOTS system, with the appropriate ID and password, could access the instructional materials. When it is considered that the system ser- vices users in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, as well as those in GRASSROOTS America, the potential for a serious distance educational application can be appreciated. Student Reaction Surveys were conducted in the Winter Semester of 1984 among students using the system and a second survey was taken of students at the end of the first module in the Fall Semester of 1984. They reported the system as basically easy to use, the col- our graphics of value and expressed a desire for continued use. In the following tables the results of the Winter and Fall Semester surveys are shown. The above results come from two differ- ent types of student. The Neuroanatomy course is a fourth year Biological Science course which enrolled majors and the high level of positive response may be associat- ed with this group's broad exposure to a variety of methods over its academic career and its members' relative maturity. The Telidon materials used were designed for the first year Veterinary Medical students and were used by them in the previous ment, "INSAT for education", Paris: Author. UNESCO, (19721. A guide to satellite communication, Paris: Author. Valakakis, G., & Wilson, T. (19841. The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation: A survey of viewing behavior and audience preferences among Inuit of ten communities in the Baffin and Keewatin region of the North- west Territories. Concordia Univers- ity. Wigand, R. T. (1980). Selected social implications of direct satellite broadcasting. Paper presented at the International Communication Associa- tion Conference, Acapulco, Mexico. o TABLE 1 STUDENT RESPONSES TO TELIDON USE IN COURSES IN NEUROANATOMY AND INTRODUCTORY ZOOLOGY Neuroanatomy Zoology Number of enrolled students 20 600 Response rate 95% 33% Previous awareness of Telidon 65% 22% Previous use of Telidon 20% 6% Number of sessions used 1·3 Nominal duration of sessions 3D min. 30-45 min. Found system easy to use 92% 78% Value of colour graphics 100% 86% Accuracy of colour graphics 92% 68% Would you like to see the system used for marked examinations Yes - 77% 58% No- 23% 27% undecided· 15% semester. This course was not offered in the Winter Semester and the students were not available at the time of the survey. The content of the Biological Sciences' course in neuroanatomy was similar to the Veteri- nary course. The use of the Telidon test materials by a different instructor and the positive acceptance by the students suggest an interesting example of sharing and ex- change of costly resources. The Introductory Zoology course pre- sented a different student group. Here first year students generally are regarded as less flexible and more dualistic in their think- ing (perry, 19701. They do not have the degree of experience with a variety of methods as upper class students. As a group they were much less aware of the Telidon medium than the fourth year students and were generally less secure with its educational value. While those ex- pressing negative views of its use in mark- ed examination are approximately the 23 24 25 -- .., AMTEC Leadership Award The premier award given by AMTEC is the Leadership Award, a handsome engraved gold medallion. There may be no more than two recipients in anyone year, and it is given in recognition of outstanding service in the field of educational media. Following are the general criteria for the award: 1. The nominee must have been active in the educational media field for 10 years or more. 2. The nominee may have been active at either local, regional, national or international level. 3. The award may be presented to one who is active, retired or deceased. 4. Nominations may be made by any member of AMTEC. 5. The nomination must include a brief biographical sketch of the nominee as well as any other information which will be useful to the selection committee in making their decision. This should include the educational background and the reasons why the nominator feels the award should be made. Presentation of the award(s) will be made at the AMTEC Annual Con- ference Awards Function. This will be part of the annual conference in Calgary in June 1985. Nominations should be submitted to the Awards Chairman as soon as possible. Address all nominations to: David MacDougall Director of AV and TV Services Sheridan College of AA & T 1430 Trafalgar Rd. Oakville, Ontario L6H 1L1 .... -- ... CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION in the PSI plus Telidon sections reported a significantly greater satisfaction with the course than those in either the lec- ture/seminar or PSI plus VAX sections. Table 3 presents model responses obtain- ed from at least 66 per cent of the students. The student expectations for grade per- formance were achieved on the final exam- ination results. Section average for the lec- ture/seminar mode was 66.3% while in the PSI plus Computer Text (VAXI and PSI plus Telidon the average was 74.2% and 75.1 % respectively. While both PSI treatments yielded enhanced academic performance as measured by the common final exami- nation students in the PSI with Telidon sec- tions reported greater satisfaction with the course than students in either the lec- ture/seminar or PSI plus computer text sec- tions. Hermann also found less study time and greater satisfaction by students using Telidon than by other PSI students. In ex- amining student responses between the two groups using computer displayed test items, it was found that Telidon presented questions were perceived as "fair" while the same question asked in computer text on a regular CRT was seen as "difficult". In addition the same feedback given via Telidon was viewed as being "more helpful" than that given via the monochrome CRT. A third survey was conducted among Or- nithology students at the completion of the first test module in the Fall Semester, 1984. Similar methods of designing and deliver- ing the visual test items were employed as in the courses reported thus far. Table 4 presents the initial reaction of students to this use of Telidon enhanced instruction. Students were asked to compare this sys- tem with the traditional testing system. Among the responses three patterns emerg- ed, those favourable, those critical and those offering suggestions for improve- ment. Favourable comments were "easier to use, less work", "OK for self-testing", "OK but I'm not familiar with reading from a screen", "OK, but disheartening when you choose a wrong answer", "definite im- provement". Among the critical reactions were "impersonal", "limited range of responses", "prefer traditional, no al- lowance for ambiguity", "problem in get- ting the exact wording", "too inflexible with spelling", "puts more pressure on the individual with errors in key punching not noticed right away". The most frequent comment for im- provement was the request by nearly half of the respondents for the correct answer to be displayed. While this raises the ques- tion of the instructional intent it does pro- vide some indication of student unease with an automated system. Attempts were made in the design of some modules in other courses to relieve this tension by giv- ing a second try on multiple choice or short answer items. VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1, 1985 as much yes text/lecture text/lecture more little little nolno difference yes Model Response by >66% Lecture/Seminar PSIIVAX PSlfrelidon 1. Time and ef- fort com- pared to other cours- es same more as much 2. Amount of effort com- pared with other Lec- ture/Seminar methods as much 4. Help needed for organiz- ing a course need help 5. Exam mater- ial prefer- ence text/lecture courses 3. Apply this method to other 6. Exam type preference multiple choice multiple short choice answer 7. Preparation for modules- /seminars cram systematic systematic 8. Opinion about mo- dule method N/A like like 9. Module tests N/A difficult fair 10. Value of feedback N/A little help helpful 11. Mechanical details N/A easily under-easily under- stood/simple standable 12. Expected grade same higher higher "Behavioral Aspects of Drug Abuse" course, while the introduction of the PSI option resulted in a one letter grade aver- age improvement of student performance, it did not increase satisfaction with the course. A consistent flaw reported by stud- ents was an unrealized expectation that the contents of the course would be vividly and dynamically demonstrable. The actions of drug agents are frequently not ethically demonstrable and according to students were rarely clearly portrayed but wre high- ly boring. Attempts were made over a two year period to address the problem by introduc- ing fIlm and graphic material and the inclu- sion of the PSI option. In this study two sec- tions of the course were taught using tradi- tionallecture and seminar methods. Two sections offered a PSI format with module quizzes presented as computer text via a VAX computer system. Two other sections used the PSI format with student quizzes presented via Telidon using highly graphic and colourful material. All students wrote a common examination prepared and grad- ed independently of the course instructor. They also completed a questionnaire which surveyed study habits and attitudes (Herr- mann 1983). Herrmann (1984) found that the students TABLE 3 STUDENT RESPONSE PATTERNS TO THREE TREATMENTS IN A COURSE IN BEHAVIORAL ASPECTS OF DRUG ACTION Disadvantages • slow response time • impersonal • tested on material before studied in class • limited variety • access difficult • too trivial • wrong answers not cor- rected • spelling counts same as in the fourth year group a signifi- cant minority were uncertain. This sug- gests some caution in using "high tech" systems with students who may be general- ly insecure in a new environment. This has implications for distance education where the human factor is even more remote than in an anonymous class of 600. These student responses show a recogni- tion of positive attributes in the human learning domain for this type of automated study system. The items on the "disadvan- tage" side are thoe which fortunately are addressable. Some of these are technical and relate to the choice of equipment, e.g. slow response time, difficult access. The majority of negative points relate to mat- ters of instructional design such as the se- quence of tests related to the course sylla- bus, the triviality of limited variety of test items or the question of spelling and the handling of wrong answers. In free form comment students remarked upon its "ex- cellent aspects of colours and visual ac- curacy", "most impressive motivating fac- tor", "good visual representations" and "the graphics are great especially for neuroanatomy" . A second study was conducted by Herr- mann (1984) among 303 students in a course in "Behavioral Aspects of Drug Ac- tion". This course treats information from the fields of pharmacology, psychiatry and psychology. Its students come from a varie- ty of backgrounds and include a number of continuing adult students. The course is offered in the evenings which makes it the type of course eligible for consideration in a distance education mode. Recent approaches in the Department of Psychology have focussed on the learner rather than on the teacher. It has empha- sized methods applied to produce measur- able improvements in student retention and attainments. Among the methods us- ed has been the Personalized System of In- struction (PSI) developed by Keller (19681. This approach has been found to show im- proved student performance and increas- ed student satisfaction (Leppmann and Herrmann, 1982). However, in the Advantages • immediate feedback • emphasizes student learn· iog • self-pacing • goad practice questions • variety of questions • allows indiviuaL or group study • more objective • stimulates recall • opportunity for review TABLE 2 STUDENT PERCEIVED ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF TELIDON AS AN INSTRUCTIONAL MEDIUM CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION TABLE 4 STUDENT RESPONSE TO THE USE OF TELIDON DELIVERED TESTS IN COURSE IN ORNOTHOLOGY N = 15 1. Is this the first time Moderately easy to use 100% you have taken a Yes 100% test using Telidon? No 2. Did you have any problems with the Yes 53% system? No 47% 3. What was your Very easy to use 40% reaction to this Moderately easy to use 60% technology? Difficult to use Very difficult to use 4. Was the test... too long? 20% too short? 27% right length? 33% no answer? 20% 5. What was your im· added significantly? 33% pression of the useful 60% graphics used? not very useful 7% 6. Was the display much too slow? time ... too slow 20% acceptable 73% very good 7% 7. How did you find inaccurate 7% the graphic depic- some uncertainty 33% tion of content? acceptable 47% accurate 13% 8. Was the wording of Yes, very 27% question easy to Yes, fairly 60% understand? No, confusing 7% uncertain 7% 9. Would you like to have access to this materRil during the semester as a self· Yes 93% testing aid? No 7% III. Discussion and Implications While the two uses of the Telidon system reported here (agricultural extension and instructionI may appear unrelated to dis- tance education, it is in combining the find- ings of both studies that some guidance may be offered for distance education plan- ners. The agricultural extension field trial with GRASSROOTS revealed that it is possible for a university to collaborate with a com- mercial electronic publisher to their mutual advantage. The University was able to get up to spped in a very short period of time without the capital and operating expense associated with a major database delivery system and network. The system operator gained access to a region otherwise difficult to enter. It also gained experience in the design of action task software not then in use by the company. Ongoing working relationships were established which make it possible, subject to agreement on specific applications, for the GRASSROOTS system to serve a number of distance education projects. The existence of the GRASS- ROOTS network, relative ease of access, and economy of use should not be over- looked by other institutions interested in this technology for distance education, The analogy here is using the railway company to transport goods rather than building your own railroad or highway system. Secondly, from the agricultural field trial 26 emerged confirming evidence that Telidon is an easy-to-use home service for other- wise inexperienced computer users. This confirmation was also received from the specific on campus instructional applica- tions. Furthermore, while there were tech- nical reliability problems, they are of suf- ficiently short duration or limited fre- quency as not to man the general accepta- bility of this service for home based infor- mation access to extension and distance education resources. Two major hurdles, however, were iden- tified in the agricultural field trial which are of intense importance for distance edu- cation. The first is the entry cost of the ter- minal. A Telidon dedicated terminal with decoder, monitor and 1200 bps modem costs in the vicinity of $2,000 and is a single purpose device, An IBM PC type microcomputer with the necessary soft- ware decoder, colour board and modem will cost in the vicinity of $5,000 although the educationally priced IBM PC Jr can be put in service with a Telidon configuration for less than $2,000. The microcomputer decision will, for many potential distance education users, be based on more broad- ly defined needs than for the use of Telidon access. With costs of this magnitude and the elusive low cost TV Telidon adaptor not yet in sight one is led to conclude that the population of home access terminals is not yet sufficient to warrant major investments in creating Telidon materials for distance education. "How will the students access the data?" The second major hurdle is regional in significance and has to do with the availa- bility and cost of telecommunication ser- vices. In parts of Western Canada tele- phone line charges established for Telidon by the Government operated telephone companies are extremely reasonable at 5 cents per minute in Manitoba and 6-8 cents per minute in Saskatchewan. In contrast, Eastern Canada has no such provision with regular voice tariffs costing at least 50 cents per minute. In addition rural phone lines are frequently party lines and the attach- ment of data terminals to such lines is not permitted. The arrangement Infomart has made with Bell Canada for a special INET rate of 25 cents per minute in dialing area 519 is a move in the right direction but its cost structure will inhibit all but short ac- cess sessions by the majority of individual users. The recent breakup of AT & T in the United States is resulting in rate increases for some institutionally provided distance education services which threaten the con- tinuance of these services at least in pre- sent form. Since Canada is moving in a similar direction with telecommunications policy, potential applications of Telidon to distance education should examine this dimension carefully and then proceed with caution. From the instructional applications reported it can be seen that there is poten- tial for Telidon as an effective, user friendly and student accepted system. If the termi- nal problem and the costs of telecommuni- cation can be resolved within a specific dis- tance education project than our evidence suggests that Telidon is the only presently available practical method of displaying de- tailed graphic and textual information us- ing a range of colour. It appears to provide intrinsic motivation to students when pro- perly used. The Guelph trials, unlike the educational television panacea projects of the 1960s, undertook to limit the scope of the applica- tion of Telidon to one or two specific as- pects of the course. The project team work- ed with an educational philosophy which sought to emphasize student performance and output rather than teacher input, Most earlier media approaches have concen- trated on information input, i.e. the more senses you use the more you can share in. Knowledge of what is expected, student practice and awareness of achievement through feedback on performance seem to the author to be the most fruitful areas for improving student learning. The Keller PSI method and other approaches which em- phasize learner responsibility, especially in post secondary and distance education, have demonstrated that such improvement is achievable. These methods, however, are costly in providing intensive and fre- quent feedback and often result in com- promises which reduce the immediacy of the feedback and hence much of its educa- tional power. It is in this era where the Guelph trial concentrated its study of Telidon and where its initial success occurred. Conclusion The potential for Telidon in distance education lies more in the quality of th~ in- structional design decisions than in the technology. This has always been the case with educational media but the novelty of another system can blue one's vision of what comes first, purpose and plan or tool. There are many existing forms in which course content for distance education can be delivered. The test, the audiocassette, printed or film slide illustrations, all can deliver content at a fraction of the cost of Telidon or other computer based systems. What they cannot do as effectively nor as effeciently is provide students at a distance with frequent short tests of learning achievement and immediate feedback. It . is in identifying similar limited segments of distance education delivery where Telidon can make a useful contribution. NOTE Based on the difficulty of serving larger numbers of students on campus from a distant database, the University of Guelph and Tayson Information Technolgy have developed a standalone IBM PC based system, VITAL IVideotex Integrated Teaching and Learning System for Education and Trainingj. VOLUME 14, NUMBER I, 1985 References Herrmann, T. (19831. Tutoring in PSI... Person vs Computer. ERIC Document No. ED233251. Herrmann, T., & Leppmann, T.(198 11· PSI, Personalized for Whom? ERIC Docu- ment No. ED187765. Herrmann, T. (19841. "Telidon" as an Enhancer of Student Interest and Per- formance. Paper presented to the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August, 1984. Hofstetter, Fred T. (19831. The Cost of PLATO in a University Environment Journal of Computer Based Instruc- tion, 4, 148-155. Keller, F. S. (1968). Goodbye Teacher Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis 1, 79-89. Leppmann, P., & Herrmann, T.(19821. PSI, What are the Critical Elements? ERIC Document No. ED214502. Perry, W. G. Jr. (1970). Forms ofIntellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Tucker, M. S. (1983-84). Computers on Campus: Working Papers Current Is- sues in Higher Education 2, 0 MEDIA NEWS Continued from page 15 theory. As editor of that journal, Winn is certainly in the position to assess trends in content. Perhaps prospective authors/researchers in the field will answer his call for more papers on the topics of analysis and design, as well as the social aspects of educational technology. Copies of this conference paper may be found in the ERIC document collection as ED 243 440, or ordered from the EDRS (ERIC Document Reproduction Servicel. Note that EDRS has a new mailing address: 3900 Wheeler Avenue, Alexandria, Virginia 22304. The Association for Educational Communication and Technology (and ECTJ) may be contacted at 1126 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. CALL FOR PROPOSALS A major Secretary of State funded project is soliciting proposals from individuals in- terested in contributing secondary curricu- lum materials or research papers on trans- portation and communication. It is expect- ed that, based upon proposals submitted, persons selected to contribute will include teachers, college instructors, university level researchers, and other writers and researchers. Materials to be developed will discuss the social, political, cultural, and/or econo- mic aspects of transportation, resource ex- traction transportation, broadcasting and new communication technologies. Much, although not all, of the work commission- ed is expected to be regionally informed, nationally significant case studies. Small research grants ($500-1000) will be available to selected individuals. Oppor- tunities will be available for contributors to attend coordination meetings and/or workshops/symposiums in August, 1986, Expo year in Vancouver. The project will publish selected materials in either one of four teacher/learning booklets or a mono- graph. Selection of contributors will be made in January 1985. For more information contact: Dr. D.C. Wilson, Project Coordinator Department of Social and Educational Studies Faculty of Education University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia V6T lZ5 Dr. R. Lorimer, Project Coordinator Department of Communication Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia V5A IS6 0 ICEM CONFERENCE Continued from page 18. tain, Nigeria, Switzerland and the U.S.A. The theme of this year's conference was "Educational Technology to Enhance Lear- ning at a Distance". The program for each day consisted of a number of speakers followed by a symposium involving the speakers for that day. All of the program events were plenary session, with simul- taneous translation between English and French being provided over headphones. A wide variety of topics was presented along the theme of Distance Education: Think before you leap: How to reduce pro- blems in Distance Education (Dr. Bill Winn, University of Calgary) Extending opportunity: Telidon technology in Vocational Education (Amelia Turnbull, Alberta Correspondence School) Educational Teleconferencing (Dr. G. Barry Ellis, University of CalgaryI Educational Technology to enhance learn- ing at a distance: a systematic ap- proach (Dr. Ron J. McBeath, San Jose State University) New Realities in Educational Communica- tions (Peter L. Senchuk, ACCESS Alberta) Clearinghouse for Computer Software (Dr. S. Jim Thiessen, General Systems Research Ltd., Edmontonl Technology in Distance Education: Im- proving Man's humanity to Man (Dr. John S. Daniel, Laurentian UniversitYl By Making too many technological turns, one ends up going around in circles (Andre Hebert, University of Quebecl The TV Ontario Academy on Computers in Education - a Canadian distance- learning system: Bits and Bytes (Don Robertson, TV Ontario) Distance Education: the Nigerian experi- ence (Francis Z. Gana, Ministry of Education, Lagos) Format: Canada's National audiovisual information system (Donald Bidd, National Film Board, Montreal) Satellite Communications: Past Present and Future. (W. Terry Kerr, Depart- ment of Communications, Ottawa) Telidon: its use in Distance Education (Dr. Robert A. Abell, Alphatel Systems, Edmonton) Among the many AMTEC members at- tending the 1984 ICEM conference were president Bill Hanson, immediate past- president Barry Brown and president-elect Ed Crisp. President Bill addressed the ses- sion on the morning of the second day of the conference, bringing greetings on be- half of AMTEC and describing its function to the interested delegates. The chairman of the ICEM 1984 Con- ference was Hans Kratz of Alberta Educa- tion. (Many will remember him as chair- man of the highly successful AMTEC Con- ference held in Edmonton in 1979.) Hans took care of every detail including the weather, which was perfect. After this ex- perience let us hope that the Council de- cides to meet again in Canada before too long. ICEM was founded in 1950 under the name of International Council for Educa- tion Films; the name was changed in 1966 to International Council for the Advance- ment of Audiovisual Media, and in 1980 to International Council for Educational Media. ICEM enjoys Consultative Status, type A, from UNESCO, through the Inter- national Film and Television Council, and maintains a secretariat in Paris, France. 0 COMPUTER COMMUNICATION Continued from page 9. Holmberg, B. (1982). Recent research in distance education. Hagen: Zentrales Institut fur Fernstudienforschung. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. (19761· Ambigu- ity and choice in organizations. Bergen: Universitets-forlaget. Rekkedal, T. (19821. The drop-out problem and what to do about it. In J. S. Daniel, M. A. Stroud, &J. R. Thompson (Eds.), Learning at a distance (pp. 118-122). Edmonton: ICEE Publications. Stewart, D. (1982). Counselling in distance education - An overview. In A. Tait, & D. Stewart (Eds.), International Workshop on Counselling and Dis- tance Education lpp. 8-111. Milton Keynes: Open University/I.C.D.E. Thompson, G. (19841. The development of the educational telephone network at the University of Wisconsin. Inter- national Council for Distance Edu- cation Bulletin, 5 (2), 47-52. 0 27 
work_fnxtbpiajbelxn4uexnsh5kdnq	----	Sustaining Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers despite the COVID-19 Interruption: A Case of Emergency Distance Education"2279 sustainability Article Sustaining Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers despite the COVID-19 Interruption: A Case of Emergency Distance Education† Tuçe Öztürk Karataş 1 and Hülya Tuncer 2,* 1 English Language Teaching Department, Faculty of Education, Mersin University, Mersin 33343, Turkey; tozturkkaratas@mersin.edu.tr 2 English Language Teaching Department, Faculty of Education, Çukurova University, Adana 01330, Turkey * Correspondence: hulyatan@cu.edu.tr; Tel.: +90-322-3386084 (ext. 2793-23) † A preliminary version of this study was presented at the 6th International Conference on Lifelong Education and Leadership for All, ICLEL 2020, July 16–18, 2020, Sakarya University, Turkey. Received: 29 August 2020; Accepted: 1 October 2020; Published: 4 October 2020 ���������� ������� Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused teachers and students to abandon their physical classrooms and move into emergency distance education (EDE) settings. Thus, sustaining the quality in education has become a challenge during this transitional period. Within this context, the aim of this study was to explore the impact of EDE on language skills development (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) of Turkish pre-service teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). In this qualitative study, data were gathered from 118 pre-service EFL teachers about the advantages and disadvantages of EDE for their language skills development. Thematic analysis was used as a research design, and nine themes emerged for both advantages and disadvantages. The most important two themes for both categories are content and implementation of online courses and teacher’s role. This study pinpointed the eminence of these two themes, for if they are emphasized enough and handled efficiently, they play a huge role in developing language skills. The themes and sub-themes generated through thematic analysis showed the advantages and disadvantages of EDE for each skill in detail and also proved that EDE was most advantageous for writing skill and least advantageous for speaking skill. The participants stated that, since writing skill was constantly used for almost all homework, assignments and projects, that skill was nurtured the most. Nevertheless, speaking skill was ignored during online courses, and writing became the new mode of communication by replacing speaking. The outcome of the present study encourages preparedness for EDE against a possible second wave. Thus, the study is hoped to pave the way for anticipating issues and developing solutions for EDE contexts to preserve sustainability in higher education. Keywords: COVID-19; emergency distance education (EDE); English language skills; pre-service teachers; English as a Foreign Language (EFL) 1. Introduction COVID-19 is a health crisis that has affected and changed our habits and common elements of our life. In the digital age, the spread of COVID-19 is the first crisis with such global effects [1]. Across the globe, education has non-immunity [2], and in the related literature, the pre-COVID world has been defined with these words: “Up until very recently, worldwide higher education has lived a dream of prosperous global exchange and sustainable development . . . The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about enormous hindrance to the internationalization of higher education in our increasingly globalized, yet divided, world” [3] (p. 2). Indeed, COVID-19, announced as Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188; doi:10.3390/su12198188 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/8188?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su12198188 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 2 of 34 a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020 [4], rapidly became a massive international concern. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all spheres of life. In fact, the pandemic has endangered the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set to improve people’s lives and the natural world by 2030 [5]. It is accepted worldwide that one of the best public policy tools for teaching and learning is to go to school. However, with COVID-19, many countries have closed schools, colleges, and universities in order to save lives by reducing physical contact. Schooling at all stages has had to adapt learning, teaching, and assessment practices to quickly changing circumstances. This crisis immediately moved these practices to uncertainty for everyone. All on-going activities were immediately cancelled. The closure of schools, colleges, and universities has shifted teaching and assessment around the world to online platforms. This immediate and new world has been a massive shock for students, teachers, and families. According to a recent report by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) [6], currently, 1,575,270,054 learners are excluded from the normal learning process. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has become a major threat for the implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) [5,7,8] which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” [9]. With the circumstances of the COVID-19 interruption, urgent actions are needed to achieve the objectives of SDG 4 [7]. It is because of the fact that the global lockdown of schools and universities is going to cause major short and long-term consequences for institutions and individuals in terms of learning, teaching and assessment. On the positive side, while the spread of the virus has far-reaching consequences, the closure of schools has led to innovative methods of delivering education ensuring the continuity of studying by learners [10], proving that “Even though schools have closed, learning has not ended” [11] (p. 129). In order to overcome the COVID-19 disruption to education (SDG 4—Quality Education), the immediate response is “to turn to distance and online learning” [12]. In fact, various opportunities have been introduced to the field of education so as to continue education practices during emergency circumstances and maximize online platforms [13]. Considering higher education in particular, higher education institutions were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to sustain education through online facilities instead of traditional face-to-face education in physical classrooms [14,15]. Thus, many universities rescheduled their academic calendars and started to utilize various methods to enable the continuity of the curricula through virtual campuses, the media, or other digital environments. This action was necessary to promote undisrupted learning at this critical moment and prevent the expansion of COVID-19 on university campuses [6]. In the pre-COVID-19 world, “the expansion of e-learning products is one of the fastest growing areas of education” [16] (p. 1865). Online education opportunities were so much popular because they provided the effective and flexible contexts facilitating mutual interaction by eliminating time and location problems [17]. Those online practices including high-quality online education procedures or courses are titled by different terminologies such as “distance education,” “e-learning,” “virtual learning and teaching,” or “online learning and teaching.” All of them meet on the common ground that all “refer to the method of content dissemination and rapid learning through the application of information technology and Internet technology” [18] (p. 502). In such circumstances, learners are defined as distance learners who are “students using on-line, Web-based instruction at a distance from the main campus” [19] (p. 44). In fact, in addition to removing temporal and geographical hindrances, those online education procedures have flexible, adaptive, and individualized natures while fostering autonomous learning [20]. Indeed, the practices and procedures of distance education, remote teaching, and online instruction are not new and vague for pedagogy. However, learning and teaching procedures “have taken on renewed salience” due to the pandemic [21] (p. 108). It must be understood that “well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities working to maintain instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand those differences when evaluating this emergency remote teaching” [22] (p. 1). Alternative terms such as emergency remote teaching Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 3 of 34 (ERT), emergency eLearning, or emergency distance education (EDE) are used by researchers for the new online learning and teaching, with the purpose of drawing attention to the difference between online education during the pandemic and high-quality online education before the pandemic [1,20,22–24]. Emergency remote teaching (ERT) refers to the “temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances” [22] (p. 6). Its main purpose is to provide temporary support for the continuity of education [20]. That is why “online education” differs from “emergency online education” or “emergency distance education.” Thus, this transition might result in many challenges that teachers and students at all stages of schooling come across. It is because “teachers are not immune to the vulnerabilities due to Covid-19” [13] (p. 22). In fact, hurrying to move education online in these emergency circumstances might create difficulties in taking advantage of this virtual learning and teaching procedure. Quality education (SDG 4) that “never means education in the classroom” but refers to “the teaching learning process aimed to live and lead a life as a good citizen” [25] (p. 8) can be more uneven. All students may not have internet access, computers, and a suitable learning environment to handle the activities assigned through online education platforms. Such inequalities might threaten the objectives of SDG 4 [7,8]. Additionally, “the design process and the careful consideration of different design decisions have an impact on the quality of the instruction. And it is this careful design process that will be absent in most cases in these emergency shifts” [22] (p. 3). The quality of a course depends on a proper design and can take a long time to achieve; yet, due to the pandemic, a rapid approach for course implementation and delivery has been adopted. At this point, applications and implementation have taken many and diverse forms in EDE [23], and today, much research has been devoted to exploring this new learning environment, including ELT departments. The objectives of ELT departments in Turkey can be considered similar. An example statement of two state universities might clarify those objectives better: “[t]he objective of the program is to help students to achieve mastery of the English Language and thus provide them with the knowledge and practical skills for teaching English as a foreign language” [26,27]. In accordance with the departmental objectives, curriculum of ELT departments specified by the Higher Education Council (YÖK) of Turkey includes skill-based courses to help students to achieve mastery of the English Language. The courses for developing those skills are (first year) Reading Skills I and II, Writing Skills I and II, Listening and Pronunciation I and II, and Oral Communication Skills I and II and (second year) Critical Reading and Writing. The courses for teaching the skills are (third year) Teaching Language Skills I and II. In addition, some of the elective courses also focus on development of and teaching the four language skills [28]. Knowledge base is defined as “the expertise, understanding, awareness, knowledge, and skills that second-language teachers need to possess in order to be effective teachers” [29] (p. 32). Richards [30] proposes six dimensions for core knowledge base of second language teachers: theories of teaching, teaching skills, communication skills and language proficiency, subject matter knowledge, pedagogical reasoning and decision making, and contextual knowledge. It is within the third dimension (communication skills and language proficiency) that four language skills are included. Some scholars in the field [31,32] pinpoint the importance of communicative competence for L2 teaching. Uso-Juan and Martinez-Flor [33] put forward a framework for communicative competence by placing discourse competence at the center where all four language skills are embodied. Based upon these premises, there have been numerous studies focusing on skills development for non-native teachers—for instance, the ones concluding that non-native teachers of English feel incompetent about the language proficiency dimension [34,35]. There are studies within the Turkish context focusing on those feelings as well [36]—specifically on speaking skills [37,38] and on the need for more courses for linguistic competence of pre-service EFL teachers [39]. The four language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) are the heart of a language (L2) class. Regarding language education before COVID-19, it was common to realize some tasks or activities involving and integrating more than just one language skill. Certainly, however, it was very possible to see moments in which learners were engaged with a single language skill, especially during Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 4 of 34 the courses in language teacher training programs. The most likely scene was that of a class in which skills were integrated as in actual language use and rarely in isolation. Now, in the COVID-19 world, under the new emergency circumstances, the purpose of online language education should be “to provide and facilitate access to a multilingual community, which offers opportunities for sufficient input, output, and interaction in multiple modalities and settings with feedback from peers, the teacher, and technology with the possibility for individualization” [20] (p. 382). However, English language teaching varies in implementation and adaptation. Therefore, some new realities have started to emerge due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s profound effects. Though the use of online tools and practices is not something new for most language instructors and students, it is challenging [40]. For EDE, what is expected for future practices is not only sharing tools and materials for learners but dealing with learners’ needs and learning contexts. The main difference between distance education and EDE is about the way learners are engaged in the process. This difference is best stated with the following: “while distance education has always been an alternative and flexible option for learners, emergency remote teaching is an obligation, which means that we have to use different strategies and approach the case with different priorities” [1] (p. ii). Even in the pre-COVID world, where most of the online education activities were optional, the studies evaluating online programs were too few [41]. When the unsustainable educational context due to COVID-19 is considered, it becomes more urgent to evaluate the online activities conducted during this emergency pandemic process in case of a second wave. In order to be more innovative and effective about providing learning opportunities in the virtual environment, it becomes more crucial to deal with “the need of assessing the effectiveness of online educational opportunities” [17] (p. 118). In these unprecedented circumstances, what is important is not only content and knowledge of teaching and learning but also the medium utilized by teachers and educators [42]. Attempting quickly to implement EDE, little research attention has been considered in documenting and analyzing those attempts [43]. Additionally, the impact of EDE on the language teacher training context has not yet been fully understood. What is missing is an overview of the positive and negative aspects of EDE activities focusing on self-perception and evaluation of online activities by various stakeholders, especially students. Although some studies dealt with understanding the participants’ perspective [16,44–46], the lack of research on that was stated in the studies conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic by several authors [16,45–47]. At this point, a wider research perspective is needed to address this gap: the perspective of the students as the emergency distance learners [48]. In the reviewed literature, online learning experiences in the pre-COVID educational context are meaningfully diverse from the virtual experiences and courses sustaining instruction in response to the COVID-19 interruption. The different nature of this emergency—remote teaching and learning—should be taken into consideration while evaluating EDE practices [22]. Thus, the stakeholders—students, academic and administrative staffs—have been affected by urgent migration to EDE. Considering that EDE is a viable option for the continuity of education and learning in the current unsustainable circumstance that COVID-19 has caused, the question arises, “Does it work?” To this end, this study is driven by the crucial and decisive role of education “in directing societies towards changes that will result in a sustainable future” [49] (p. 2). In order to create an attempt to implement quality education (SDG 4) in the pandemic context, this study specifically aims to understand how the COVID-19 interruption has affected the development of language skills of pre-service EFL teachers. It focuses on clarifying the actual personal experiences and voices of Turkish pre-service EFL teachers on language skills development during this EDE process, which is accepted as an important facet of quality assessment and sustainability [50]. Thus, aiming to reduce the frangibility of SDG 4 during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study provides windows to pre-service EFL teachers by examining the advantages and disadvantages of EDE brought by the COVID-19 pandemic for sustaining the development of their language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 5 of 34 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Research Context In Turkey, there are nearly eight million students and more than 170 thousand (174,494) teaching staff in higher education [51]. When the localized transmission of COVID-19 virus was recorded on 10 March 2020, the Turkish government regarded it as a risk to national security and later implemented quarantine in areas where there were COVID-19 cases due to a spike in newly confirmed patients and local transmission. The Ministry of National Education (MoNE) of Turkey began carrying out online education on 23 March 2020 [52]. On the same day, universities in Turkey also started to run online courses through virtual platforms in order to prevent the increasing spread of COVID-19 and to maintain the health of students, teachers, and all educational staff [53]. Hence, students began to study and learn at home, and teachers worked from home. Face-to-face education in the classroom setting turned into online learning and distance education until the end of the semester. This abrupt shift from face-to-face education to online education was COVID-19 crisis-driven. This new online education procedure was conducted in emergency circumstances of the first wave of the pandemic. Thus, this EDE process brought new challenges for both students and teachers to sustain learning and teaching. Moreover, all assessment and testing practices conducted at universities in Turkey were moved to online platforms in accordance with the decision of YÖK. Midterm, final, and make-up exams were mostly evaluated through assignments and projects [48,54]. The move of the universities in Turkey to distance education modes or platforms did not affect each of those universities to the same degree: some were already conducting online courses, some did not have any experience of it, some were preparing, some tried to do their best in transforming, and so forth. However, the most common practice during EDE was adopting an online platform where students can log in and access virtual classrooms corresponding to the physical classes in the campus. When they click on the relevant course, they can see and follow the instructions of the lecturers synchronously and asynchronously. In addition, they can access the training videos and user manual about the use of the distance education platform, which provided flexibility for students. Within this context, teachers in ELT departments tried to adapt to the new normal and struggled to move their pedagogical practices to online environments, and they conducted their lessons either synchronously or asynchronously, or sometimes both. The two authors experienced similar things as well. Having no previous online teaching experience, they tried to implement their lessons through as many channels as possible to sustain student learning in addition to the platform of their universities. Since no single language teaching methodology was seen as comprehensive and flexible enough to fulfil the needs of learners during EDE, they conducted their courses as student-centered as possible: highlighting the importance of interaction, cooperation and collaboration for both student to teacher and student to student. However, these interactions were limited in the case of these two researchers and for most of the universities because participation was not obligatory, so the students could only watch the lesson recordings as well. On 15 June 2020, the academic calendars of the universities in Turkey were updated. The higher education institutions then recalibrated and started to continue their cancelled plans, actions, and activities in accordance with their own circumstances [55]. For the time being, the future of higher education institutions for the academic year 2020–2021 maintains its uncertainty with variety of alternatives including face to face, online, and hybrid solutions, although most of the universities have decided to conduct online courses. 2.2. Research Questions The idea for this study was generated by what the authors experienced during EDE. One of the authors was delivering Oral Communication Skills courses before the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the outbreak of the virus, she experienced difficulties in transforming the course to online platforms both in terms of the content and assessment techniques. The other author was also going Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 6 of 34 through problems with her students’ oral participation to her classes during EDE. Since EDE was a new process for both authors, they felt that skills development of their students, especially for speaking, was falling behind, and they decided to search for students’ perspective about the development of each skill in detail in order to compare and contrast them. The studies within the related field presented some supporting outcomes and also demonstrated the scarcity of such studies for EDE contexts. Thus, being aware of the current unsustainable circumstances that COVID-19 has caused in education, this study focused on the impact of emergency distance education (EDE, the preferred terminology in this study) on sustaining language skills development for Turkish pre-service EFL teachers. With this aim in mind, the study tried to find answers to the following research questions: 1. What are the advantages of emergency distance education on sustaining the language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) development of pre-service EFL teachers? 2. What are the disadvantages of emergency distance education on sustaining the language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) development of pre-service EFL teachers? 3. Which language skill (reading, writing, listening, or speaking) is most positively affected by the emergency distance education for pre-service EFL teachers? 4. Which language skill (reading, writing, listening, or speaking) is most negatively affected by the emergency distance education for pre-service EFL teachers? 2.3. Method The present study is a qualitative descriptive research based on thematic analysis (TA). TA is a descriptive method of “identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data” [56] (p. 6). The primary aim of using TA in this study is to gain a richer, deeper understanding of the impact of EDE on sustaining language skills development of pre-service EFL teachers by eliciting the experiences of those directly affected by EDE. To do so, some themes and sub-themes capturing crucial labels in relation to each research question were determined. In this study, themes represented “some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set” [56] (p. 10). Both themes and sub-themes generated through TA provided a rich thematic description and reflection of the content of the answer for each research question of this study. 2.4. Participants In this study, convenience sampling was used. The researchers asked their own students in the ELT departments of their universities to participate in the study. These students from two different state universities constituted more than half of the participants (63%). To gather as much information as possible, close colleagues working at ELT departments of the other state universities in Turkey were asked to distribute the questionnaire to their students. Because of the pandemic crisis, the researchers collected the responses through an online Google Forms questionnaire instead of in person. In total, 118 Turkish pre-service EFL teachers consisting of 80 females (68%) and 38 males (32%) from eight different state universities in Turkey participated in the study. The first-, second-, third-, and fourth-year students constituted 28%, 27%, 22%, and 22% of the participants, respectively. In total, these students, whose ages varied mostly from 18 to 24 years, constituted most of the participants (87%). All participants gave their informed consent for inclusion before they took part in the study, and the researchers ensured their anonymity at all stages of the study. The study also received its approval from the Ethics Committee of Çukurova University (09/09/2020-E.107086). 2.5. Data Collection Tool A questionnaire including open-ended questions (see Appendix A) was employed to collect data at the end of the spring term of the academic year 2019–2020. The questionnaire focused on the impact of COVID-19 on English language skills development. The first draft was administered to five non-participant pre-service EFL teachers. In accordance with the piloting outcomes, the researchers Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 7 of 34 made the necessary changes and prepared the final form of the questionnaire. While filling out the questionnaire, the participants were free to use English or Turkish. However, nearly all of the participants preferred to present their answers in English. 2.6. Data Analysis As stated above, TA formed the backbone of this study. The data for TA were gathered from open-ended responses from the questionnaire. TA was carried out by two researchers. In order to reduce the data into workable themes and subthemes related to each research question, this study followed six phases based on Braun and Clarke’s [56] methodology for TA: � Phase 1: familiarization with data; � Phase 2: generating initial codes; � Phase 3: searching for themes; � Phase 4: reviewing themes; � Phase 5: defining and naming themes; � Phase 6: producing the report. Prior to conducting TA, the participants were numbered, and the raw data of answers for each research question were compiled in a separate word file. Then, each researcher read and reread the data for each research question individually to become familiarized with the nature of the data. After they became familiar with the depth and breadth of all aspects of the content of the data, each researcher individually took notes to document initial lists of thoughts and ideas for coding of the first half of the data. They then discussed their notes and ideas for codes and decided on the route together before completing the whole analysis. In the second phase, they began the coding process together. Driven with the questions in mind, through the semantic and conceptual reading of the relevant data extracts, the researchers produced initial codes for each question by manually organizing the raw data into meaningful groups and labels. If the same subject matter was labelled with a different code, the most appropriate code was chosen. At end of this phase, the researchers had a long list of various codes for each question and each skill. In the third phase, they first stated the codes and the possible themes overarching those codes. After careful and detailed review of all extracts, they analyzed the relevant coded data extracts and sorted the codes into potential themes together. For some themes and sub-themes on which they disagreed, the discussion ended with a consensus. The researchers ended this phase by drawing a table sorting the different codes into themes and sub-themes for each question with the determined extracts. In the fourth phase, the researchers reviewed and defined the themes and sub-themes. They worked on each initial theme and sub-theme again by considering whether there were any problems with each theme or sub-theme or whether they fit with the data extracts. For problematic cases, the researchers reworked on that theme by creating a new theme or by reorganizing the extracts that did not fit into the existing themes or sub-themes. In the fifth phase, another round of analysis of each theme and sub-theme was performed. The researchers identified and named each theme and sub-theme making sure it was clear what each theme or sub-theme was about. In naming the themes, the researchers benefitted from the related literature as well. For instance, although the researchers named one of the themes for disadvantages as “technical problems” first, they then changed it into “technical issues,” since this terminology was used more frequently in the studies focusing on distance education. Using same or similar themes was thought to pave the way for a better comparison among the related studies. At the end of this phase, the researchers determined the frequency and percentage of codes related to each theme. In the sixth and last phase, in addition to the conclusions drawn from the data presented as themes and sub-themes, the researchers wrote up the conceptualization of this TA process in relation to existent literature on EDE for each research question. SPSS was utilized in the TA process for the calculation of the descriptive statistical information. During the TA process, inter-coder reliability was calculated as 0.95 [57], which indicated a high agreement between the coders. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 8 of 34 This six-phase procedure was repeated 10 times: four times for the first research question (advantages of EDE for reading, writing, listening, and speaking), four times for the second research question (disadvantages of EDE for reading, writing, listening, and speaking), once for the third question (the most positively affected skill), and once for the fourth research question (the most negatively affected skill). 3. Results The results of this study address the advantages and disadvantages of EDE for sustaining language skills development of pre-service EFL teachers and the skills which are most positively and most negatively affected. Based on the research questions, four patterns emerged from TA: (1) the advantages of EDE for the language skills development of pre-service EFL teachers, (2) the disadvantages of EDE for the language skills development of pre-service EFL teachers, (3) the most positively affected skill by EDE, and (4) the most negatively affected skill by EDE. The answers for each question were diverse in both semantic richness and length, and the patterns are presented through themes and sub-themes. Each theme is clearly linked to the patterns associated with one research question. Themes and sub-themes related to each pattern were often interconnected due to participants’ answers for each question being rich. The same extracts included more than one code and were categorized under various themes. The qualitative data gathered about each pattern were analyzed through thematic analysis, and the themes, sub-themes, and the descriptive statistical information related to them were demonstrated within the following sections and tables. 3.1. The Advantages of EDE for the Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers The first question of the questionnaire asked pre-service EFL teachers about the advantageous aspects of EDE for the development of each skill. Underneath of each skill in the online questionnaire, enough space was provided so that the participants could write the positive sides in detail. The thematic analysis of all the written responses related to advantages of EDE on sustaining language skills development of pre-service EFL teachers resulted in nine main themes clarifying the causes of this pattern: content and implementation of online courses, comfortable atmosphere of home, free time, properties of distance education platform, use of computers/online tools/resources, time and cost efficiency, teacher’s role, no advantages and no answer. Additionally, in total, there are 15 sub-themes across the nine themes. Indeed, the participants’ responses suggest the advantages of EDE on the development of each skill (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) separately, though the themes and sub-themes are the same. Table 1 summarizes the themes, sub-themes, the frequencies and percentages of themes associated with each skill separately. Table 1 demonstrates that the participants offered the advantageous aspects of EDE through a total of 142 comments for reading, 140 for writing, 151 for listening and 130 for speaking. According to the extracts of the participants, the content and implementation of online courses, comfortable atmosphere of home, and free time themes are the three main causes of the development of reading and writing skills, while in addition to the first theme in Table 1, the theme properties of distance education platform (22%) is identified as the primary cause of advantages for the development of listening skill. Additionally, considering the frequency of themes related to the development of speaking skill of the pre-service EFL teachers during EDE, it is important to note that nearly half of them identified the theme of no advantages (45%). However, some of the extracts show that during the EDE process, the themes content and implementation of online courses (24%) and comfortable atmosphere of home (18%) capture the reasons for the development of pre-service EFL teachers’ speaking skill. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 9 of 34 Table 1. Summary of thematic analysis (TA) for the advantages of emergency distance education (EDE) for sustaining the development of reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. Themes Sub-Themes Reading Writing Listening Speaking f 1 % f % f % f % 1 Content and implementation of online courses Content and amount of homework; nature of midterm and final exams, more legible reading materials 45 32 55 40 32 21 31 24 2 Comfortable atmosphere of home Stress-free; autonomous learning; enthusiasm and willingness for learning; motivation 21 15 19 14 16 11 24 18 3 Free time Time for more skills practice 31 22 21 15 16 11 7 5 4 Properties of distance education platform Time and place free nature of materials and online lessons; repeated watching availability of online lessons 3 2 6 4 33 22 - - 5 Use of computer/online tools/resources Wide variety of resources on the internet; use of online tools (dictionaries, etc.) 12 8 13 9 22 15 4 3 6 Time and cost efficiency -Saving time and money; use of a keyboard 8 6 5 4 1 1 2 2 7 Teacher’s role Feedback - - 2 1 - - - - 8 No advantages 17 12 16 11 24 16 58 45 9 No answer 5 4 3 2 7 5 4 3 TOTAL (frequencies are more than 118 since some responses of the participants included more than one theme) 142 101 140 100 151 102 130 100 1 f: frequency. Focusing on the responses of the participants for the first research question, the first theme generated by TA is the content and implementation of online courses. As part of the advantages of EDE for language skills development, this theme described the positive impact of what was included in the course and how the courses were implemented during the EDE procedure. The content and implementation of online courses was thus said to be a way of developing four skills: reading (32%), writing (40%), listening (21%), and speaking (24%). This theme is described with three sub-themes: (a) content and amount of homework, (b) nature of midterm and final exams, and (c) more legible reading materials. The first sub-theme is highly associated with what was expected from the pre-service EFL teachers to do as homework and assignment and how they were expected to handle them in order to be successful in the EDE process. The following statements of the participants exemplify the sub-theme content and amount of homework better (one statement may belong to more than one theme or sub-theme, but the dominant theme or sub-theme is given here): Participant 38 (P38): Most of our exams were assignments, and we were expected to understand assignments properly [for reading skills]. P57: Thanks to much homework (essays, movie reviews, paragraphs), I improved my writing skills in many ways such as the grammar, coherence, unity and content in a writing. P79: We always did our homework by writing. Even our communication with the lecturers was in written language. I can say that my writing skills have improved as I was constantly searching for new words and phrases to include in my homework. P2: I believe distance education improved my speaking a lot because I started to watch and listen myself that’s why it has become easier to discover my faults and concentrate on putting right. And I believe that I have become more fluent just because I was obliged to talk 10 min continuously yet at university I talked 3 min with intervals. In addition to this, the nature of the midterm and final exams are also mentioned underneath the first theme of the content and implementation of online courses. The way that the midterm and final exams and evaluations were conducted during EDE also affected the improvement of language skills of pre-service EFL teachers. It is highly associated with the influence of evaluation procedures on the development of skills. The extracts below express the participants’ opinions: Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 10 of 34 P92: Doing the exams as homework let us to read more. P109: I improved myself to read quicker thanks to my online exams. The responses of the participants also show that the first theme includes the use of more legible reading materials. This means that, in the virtual environment, it becomes easier and more available for pre-service EFL teachers to read the course materials in this emergency process. The following statements of the participants exemplify this sub-theme better: P74: Reading materials were clearer since we have them not like copy but on the PC, so they were easy to read. The second theme related to the advantages of EDE on the development of pre-service EFL teachers’ language skills is the comfortable atmosphere of home compared to classroom settings, and the participants felt free from stress resulting in motivation, enthusiasm and willingness for learning more during EDE. Thus, this theme was described by four sub-themes: (a) stress-free, (b) autonomous learning, (c) enthusiasm and willingness for learning, and (d) motivation. Indeed, home was depicted by some participants as stress-free environment in which they felt relaxed and comfortable in order to carry out learning practices for language skills development. Some of the participants reported this advantage of EDE with those words: P22: Sometimes learners cannot focus on specific texts because of the classroom environment. So at home, we can find a peaceful and silent learning environment to understand what we read. P11: I enjoyed writing more because I didn’t feel stressed, and I was in a comfortable mood to write most of the time. In addition to the stress-free circumstances, some participants describe how attending EDE at home provided the appropriate environment for pre-service EFL teachers to be more autonomous due to having the opportunity to learn on their own pace. Following extracts demonstrate the second sub-theme, autonomous learning: P1: I studied all subjects by myself and I understood that even if I think I need someone to teach something to me, I understood that actually I don’t need them. I can learn what I want by studying hard easily [for reading skills]. P45: Now that I can set my own pace, and there are no worries about missing a part, I don’t have to be alert, which leads to a more focused and relaxed listening. Due to those circumstances, the participants felt free from stress resulting in enthusiasm and willingness for learning more during EDE compared to classroom settings. It was because of EDE circumstances free from negative emotions such as shyness, anxiety, excitement, or nervousness. This situation was described by the third sub-theme, enthusiasm and willingness for learning, under the second theme. For example: P22: Sometimes learners cannot focus on specific texts because of the classroom environment. So at home, we can find a peaceful and silent learning environment to understand what we read. P1: When we are in class, I don’t feel comfortable and I generally feel nervous especially in our speaking lessons. I never could express my thoughts and emotions in the way I want. But with distance education, I could speak very well alone in my home. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 11 of 34 P84: It was a good opportunity to practice and improve my speaking skills without excitement at home. Additionally, due to this comfortable and relaxing atmosphere at home, they became more motivated to conduct effort to develop their language skills, which forms the last sub-theme, motivation: P90: I get what I should get from an audio record thanks to distance education. I can catch key words or phrases and that stress-free education atmosphere made me more motivated than before [for listening skills]. The third theme that describes the advantages of EDE for sustaining language skills development is free time, referring to participants’ spending their free time effectively for language skills progress. Some of the extracts show that, since EDE created some free time that they would not have during face-to face education, they had the chance of spending that free time effectively for the development of their language skills which is defined as the sub-theme time for more skills practice. For this reason, they had more time to conduct skill practices. Here are some extracts: P11: I think I improved my reading skills because I have a plenty of time to read and search. Also I don’t have to create a plan for this activity because I am free whole day. I can read whenever I want. Also, as you know some websites allowed us to access some useful reading materials to encourage people to stay at home. That’s why it was a good opportunity to improve my reading skills during the distance education. P27: I have started to write blog during the COVID-19 pandemic so it was an advantage for me again. P68: As the COVID-19 pandemic causes us to stay at our homes, we are able to find much time for writing. It is possible because we can keep a diary in English during this pandemic; so we can develop our writing skills or we can write what we have understood from our reading, summarizing it. Another thing about writing is to summarize what we’ve read via the internet or stage books, novel or magazines, etc. P11: I have enough space and time to read aloud at home to improve my pronunciation skills. I can also speak to myself even though it may sound like a crazy. The fourth theme concentrates on the properties of distance education platform. This theme is organized around two sub-themes: (a) time and place free nature of materials and online lessons and (b) repeated watching availability of online lessons. Considering the content of the extracts related to the advantages of EDE, they show that, whatever the platform is, the participants reflect no advantage from those platforms for speaking skill, while for the development of listening skill, this theme is the most highlighted one. The sub-theme time and place free nature of materials and online lessons refers to the efficiency of the system that pre-service EFL teachers could access whenever and wherever they wanted, and one participant explains this advantageous side of EDE for reading skills by stating that, P6: You have access to reading material online and you can utilize it with every electronic device everywhere at any given time. Additionally, the other sub-theme is repeated watching availability of online lessons, and it refers to flexible use of recordings of online courses in platform. Thus, some participants stated the chance of watching the online lessons again and again whenever they wanted. Some samples of the extracts pinpointing this advantage of watching online lessons repeatedly are: P104: If we don’t understand the paragraph type while doing our lesson, we can watch the record of the lesson [for writing skills]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 12 of 34 P49: We got a lot of chance to listen to the lecturers carefully. Even if we didn’t understand, we could always watch the lesson from the archive. The next theme, use of computer/ online tools /resources, makes reference to the availability of electronic devices and a wide range of online tools and resources in the virtual environment for the development of language skills. This theme includes two sub-themes: (a) wide variety of resources on the internet and (b) use of online tools (dictionaries, etc.). The wide variety of resources on the internet indicates the great range of resources, activities and materials pre-service EFL teachers can benefit from. During EDE, the internet provided a virtual environment for pre-service teachers, including various resources to accelerate their skills development. Some participants stated that, P6: When I am in front of a PC, I feel like I can use my imagination freely because I have limitless access to internet so if I want to check something or need inspiration it’s easy to find what I need [for writing skills]. P101: You can watch many things. For example, you can watch films or news, and by doing activities like these things, you can improve your speaking. The second sub-theme associated with use of computer/ online tools /resources is use of online tools (dictionaries, etc.), pointing to various applications and online programs such as online dictionaries or programs for spelling, pronunciation, and grammar correction. Some of the participants highlighted this advantage of EDE: P3: You can use online dictionaries easily while reading. P2: Thanks to the Microsoft apps, because they show the mistakes you did, so you pay more attention [for writing skills]. P51: When a person doesn’t feel relaxed among people, this person can join online conversations. So, it makes people feel good [for speaking skills]. The sixth theme is the time and cost-efficient aspect of EDE, in which the participants stated they saved their time and money through the use of EDE during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the process accelerated their skills development. This theme is structured by two sub-themes: (a) saving time and money and (b) use of a keyboard. Saving time and money indicates that, due to the fact that education was conducted online during the COVID-19 process, students did not have to waste their money and time. Some participants stated that they could spend the time and money they saved to develop their language skills. Additionally, it was much faster to reach resources on the internet to study for language skills development. Here are some extracts clarifying saving time and money: P39: I have more time to read and I don’t have to waste my energy in bus. Also I can find more resources on the internet it is much faster. P57: When I consider the face-to-face education, reading materials and articles were limited for me since I always had to pay to get a hard-copy of a material. However, with the help of distance education, I was able to reach the PDF and other materials easily without a problem. P33: Distance education provides more time and opportunities for us students compared to traditional methods (face to face education). I sometimes travel 2.5 h for a two-hour lesson in school, and the strangest part is that the outcome of a two-hour lesson at school takes 10 min at home to learn [for listening skills, translated]. P6: Everything else was awesome and I sincerely believe that Turkish education system should embody online education as primary way of education. It saves so much time that you can actually work on things you need to [for speaking skills]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 13 of 34 The second sub-theme, use of a keyboard, reflects the extensive use of a keyboard for carrying out their EDE practices and tasks, which accelerates the progress of their language skills. P6: Being able to work with a keyboard allows you to write fast and you can get it done quickly. Teacher’s role emerged as the seventh theme but only for writing skills. This theme is comprised of the sub-theme feedback, referring to the importance of getting regular feedback for the progress of writing skill: P94: The professor was always checking the works and she always gave feedbacks [for writing skills]. P107: Because of our teacher, our writing course was both enjoyable and beneficial. During this distance education period, we learnt what we were going to learn in face-to-face education without experiencing any difficulties. I think this situation is true for every student who participated to the course [translated]. In the comments and responses, the percentage of the participants who remarked that they did not encounter any advantages of EDE for language skills development cannot be ignored easily, especially for speaking skills (45%). Thus, this situation is described by the eighth theme, no advantage. P4: Because I was at home all the time and I didn’t have a chance to make practice. So, it became worse and worse . . . [for speaking skills]. P6: You can’t communicate vocally [for speaking skills]. Additionally, some comments do not present any clues or codes related to the advantages of EDE. Thus, the last theme is no answer, representing the existence of no appropriate answers presented by the participants for the advantages of EDE on the development of language skills. 3.2. Disadvantages of EDE on Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers The third question of the questionnaire asked pre-service EFL teachers about the disadvantageous aspects of EDE for the development of each skill. Underneath each skill in the online questionnaire, enough space was provided so that the participants could write the negative aspects associated with EDE in detail. With regard to the disadvantages encountered during EDE, the participants concentrated upon nine themes: the content and implementation of online courses, absence of a face to face classroom environment, insufficient teacher guidance, reading/writing on a computer, tablet or a phone, technical issues, lack of individual effort, the shift in the medium of communication from speaking to writing, no disadvantages, and no answer. Across those nine themes, there are 36 sub-themes. Table 2 depicts these nine themes, related sub-themes, and the frequencies and percentages of themes associated with each skill in detail. As it can be seen in the table, the participants put forward the disadvantageous aspects of EDE through a total 130 comments for reading, 121 for writing, 127 for listening, and 157 for speaking skills. Table 2 demonstrates that the theme with the highest percentage is no disadvantages for reading (37%), writing (36%), and listening (30%) skills; in other words, those participants felt that EDE had no disadvantages for sustaining development of their reading, writing, and listening skills. Nevertheless, the same cannot be uttered easily for speaking skills, as the theme with the highest percentage is content and implementation of online courses (38%). For listening skills, technical issues carry the same importance for disadvantage category with the same percentage (30%) of no disadvantages. Each theme and sub-themes underneath for disadvantages of EDE are explained in the following paragraphs with accompanying example sentences of the participants. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 14 of 34 Table 2. Summary of TA for the Disadvantages of EDE for Sustaining the Development of Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking Skills. Themes Sub-Themes Reading Writing Listening Speaking f 1 % f % f % f % 1 Content and implementation of online courses Lack or insufficient amount of skills-based content; amount and deadlines of homework; delivery of exams; materials used 16 12 19 16 24 19 59 38 2 Absence of a face to face classroom environment Desire for being in a classroom setting; feelings of belonging to a group; lack of peer interaction; lack of eye contact; absence of a suitable/comfortable atmosphere at home; lack of listening to or speaking English within the immediate environment 19 15 9 7 15 12 40 25 3 Insufficient teacher guidance Lack of (or insufficient) communication with the teacher; lecturing style of the teacher; need for a professional guidance; lack of (or insufficient) feedback; need for prompt answers; absence of authority 11 8 25 21 5 4 6 4 4 Reading/Writing on a computer, tablet or a phone Eye problems; loss of concentration; tiresome; online exams; preference for pen and paper; typing problems 18 14 9 7 - - - - 5 Technical issues Internet connection problems; lack of computer; sound problems (microphone, audio/ video lag); problems caused by distance education platform (uploading, capability, etc.); quality of the recordings 9 7 6 5 38 30 29 18 6 Lack of individual effort Self-criticism; less motivation; time management problems; irresponsibility; passive learner; lack of self-discipline and integrity; persistence in study habits; technological illiteracy 6 5 7 6 4 3 - - 7 The shift in the medium of communication from speaking to writing Participation to online courses via written communication instead of verbal - - - - - - 4 3 8 No disadvantages 48 37 44 36 38 30 15 10 9 No answer 3 2 2 2 3 2 4 3 TOTAL (frequencies are more than 118 since some responses of the participants included more than one theme) 130 100 121 100 127 100 157 101 1 f: frequency The first theme in Table 2 is content and implementation of online courses, and while it may be a disadvantageous factor for reading (12%), writing (16%), and listening (19%) skills, it is the most disadvantageous one for speaking skills (38%). There are four sub-themes underneath: (a) lack or insufficient amount of skills-based content, (b) amount and deadlines of homework, (c) delivery of exams, and (d) materials used. For the first sub-theme lack or insufficient amount of skills-based content, the participants stated that either that specific language skill was not highlighted enough within the course content or it was totally missing, as conveyed through the following statements: P21: We didn’t make progress about it. We could have practiced at least. Assignments were based on skimming, and so we just read articles for a general purpose, not for researching. P74: The problem is that there were no listening skills practices in the distance education besides teacher voice. P68: In the normal education (face to face education), there is a classroom atmosphere thanks to “real participants” (teacher and students) who are an observer and participant each, so there is a communication between them. This helps them to speak each other. But in the distance education, the person who speaks all the time is the teacher. For this reason, we—as students—cannot find any opportunity to join the lesson with our speaking ability. Therefore, I think this situation has a negative effect on students when we think about speaking skills. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 15 of 34 The second sub-theme emerged is amount and deadlines of homework, and while most of the participants highlighted that there was too much homework, few participants complained about the inefficiency of the content of the homework: P1: We have 10 different lessons and almost all of our teachers gave different homework every week in this process. Sometimes I felt really very tired doing all this homework and sometimes I could not finish all my homework before the deadline. Sometimes I didn’t sleep for my homework. Of course all of these things affected me negatively [for reading skills]. P83: Teachers don’t give enough reading material. I am assuming most of them just don’t care, or they think the students would hate it or whatever so they want to avoid conflict. P74: Too much writing skills were highlighted. The only problem is that it was too much used in homework, and our teachers or the system acted like there was just writing skills that we should work on. Delivery of exams is the third sub-theme, and participants focused on the disadvantageous effect of how exams were delivered together with how assignments replaced exams: P68: Before the pandemic, we—as students—were examined in the paper based exams, so we were supposed to write the answers down the papers within the limited time the teacher fixed before; so this situation expected us to think the knowledge about the questions and write the proper answers quickly. But during the pandemic, the teacher mostly gave us paper based assignments and they spread the deadlines of assignments for a very long time. For these reasons, the distance education may have a negative effect on students. P55: We had problems with online exams; the other things were fine [for listening skills, translated]. The last sub-theme is about the kind of materials used for online courses during EDE, and participants mostly focused on this sub-theme with regard to reading skills and the length of the reading materials: P59: Some of the texts that we have read were too long, and we lost concentration and had to read again. P85: Some classes sometimes included long materials, about 5 or more pages long ones with extreme details or academic languages. And we had to read most of them through the screen which was tiring a lot. The second theme in Table 2 for disadvantages brought by EDE is absence of a face-to-face classroom environment. This theme seems to affect speaking skills (25%) more than reading (15%), writing (7%), and listening (12%) skills. There are six sub-themes: (a) desire for being in a classroom setting, (b) feelings of belonging to a group, (c) lack of peer interaction, (d) lack of eye contact, (e) absence of a suitable/comfortable atmosphere at home, and (f) lack of listening to or speaking English within the immediate environment. Participants especially expressed their desire for being in a classroom setting, which proves the pivotal role of face to face classroom settings in students’ lives and which can easily be traced from the following statements: P28: I miss speaking in English with my friends; distance education is very bad about this subject. Face to face learning is better than online learning over speaking skills. P118: As we are not in a classroom setting and that is why we could not see each other (classmates), sometimes we could interrupt each other and it is annoying. It does not feel as in the classroom because the communication is better when it is face to face [for speaking skills]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 16 of 34 Closely related to the previous sub-theme, feelings of belonging to a group were emphasized as one of the disadvantageous sides of EDE. In other words, pre-service EFL teachers wished to be within a social group rather than attending online classes individually, demonstrating a need for camaraderie. P3: I like to participate in class but we did everything individually [for reading skills]. P12: Active listening builds strong relationship and communication skills. The pandemic has created message where you can not actively reflect back to a person who you are listening to and reflect on what’s been said, you show that you’ve been listening not just hearing but genuinely understand the feelings or messages they are trying to convey. P65: Not being able to form a regular classroom atmosphere causes problems in developing listening skills efficiently [translated]. P24: It was not efficient like the face to face speaking. Classroom environment is important for us to take lessons seriously. The next sub-theme is lack of peer interaction, which indicates the collaborative aspect of the face-to-face classroom environment. This sub-theme demonstrates how participants needed one another in the educational contexts: P100: I was writing in class and getting feedback from my friends before Corona virus, but I could not get this same atmosphere in online classes. P82: During face to face learning, you can be more relaxed by trusting your classmates on the instructions, or lectures given by the teacher. However, at home, you have less chance to ask your classmates about what the teacher said at any particular moment [for listening skills]. One of the most crucial dimensions of classroom communication is forming eye contact, and lack of eye contact was pinpointed by the participants as a barrier, especially for developing listening and speaking skills: P44: It is always better to listen to our teachers face-to-face by having eye contact [translated]. P30: In class, you got limited time and you have to think and answer directly but in online education it’s not the way how it goes. Talking with a person face to face and talking to a screen is different. Another sub-theme is the absence of a suitable/comfortable atmosphere at home, where the participants cannot concentrate on their studies efficiently. P22: Some learners may not find a peaceful environment to read and understand the texts at their home. P57: Even though I was able to reach any material that I needed, because of distractions in my home, I couldn’t focus enough and that affected my reading. P77: I had noise in the environment during online class no clear understanding possible [for listening skills]. The last sub-theme for the second theme in the table again focuses on their immediate surroundings and highlights the fact that there is a lack of listening to or speaking English within the immediate environment. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 17 of 34 P23: I listened to my lessons but I had no opportunity to improve it because there was no one who knows English in the house. P34: I had no advantage in terms of speaking skills since there was nobody around. The biggest issue is this virus infects everyone. So when nobody around to talk, this is so boring not only to improve the speaking skills but for communicating. The third theme emerged from the data is insufficient teacher guidance, which reveals the role of the teacher in the educational processes. The skill that was affected negatively the most from this theme appears to be writing with the highest percentage (21%) among the other skills. There are six sub-themes: (a) the lack of (or insufficient) communication with the teacher, (b) the lecturing style of the teacher, (c) the need for a professional guidance, (d) the lack of (or insufficient) feedback, (e) the need for prompt answers, and (f) absence of authority. The following statements elucidate the first sub-theme—lack of (or insufficient) communication with the teacher—better. P115: I’d like to know which words I mispronounced. If we were in school, the teacher would say it directly, but this was not possible because of distance education [for reading skills]. P93: When I had a problem or a question in writing something, I had little chance to reach my teacher and talk with her effectively. The lecturing style of the teacher is another sub-theme that might demonstrate what participants needed in online courses. P82: Most of the lecturers didn’t do their best to involve in the students, or pushed students to speak. Participants also articulated their need for a professional guidance through the following statements: P66: The only problem I have experienced about my reading skill during this pandemic is not being able to contact with my teachers easily. For example, I have read an article but I didn’t get some parts and because of the pandemic, I couldn’t contact with my teachers. P98: I didn’t have so many problems with regard to the development of the writing skills, but for some assignments it would definitely be better to have more input and support provided in advance. Next sub-theme is the lack of (or insufficient) feedback that the participants perceived as one of the disadvantages of EDE. P84: Writing skills is a lesson that requires feedback from the lecturer. So, not being able to contact the lecturer was a negative feature. P14: We didn’t have feedback from our listening teacher. Closely associated with feedback, the need for prompt answers is another sub-theme touched upon by the participants. P84: In face-to-face education, it was easier to see and learn how words are pronounced exactly, and receive instant feedback on mistakes made by the students. So, this was not possible with distance education [for listening skills]. P96: When I misunderstood my teacher, I could not ask it at the same time, and sometimes I realize very late that I misunderstood something [for listening skills]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 18 of 34 The last sub-theme identified is the absence of authority, which clearly indicates the demand of the participants for a more controlled and authoritative online atmosphere. P89: Teacher doesn’t control whether the students write or someone else. P38: We could have improved more if the all the students were on camera with the teacher at lesson time [for speaking skills]. P100: There was no discipline that much because we were attending classes online [for speaking skills]. In Table 2, the fourth theme regarded as a disadvantageous side of EDE is reading and writing on a computer, tablet or a phone, which should affect only reading (14%) and writing (7%) skills development. The six sub-themes below this theme are (a) eye problems, (b) loss of concentration, (c) tiresome, (d) online exams, (e) preference for pen and paper, and (f) typing problems. The following statements reveal the first sub-theme—eye problems—clearly: P39: Computer monitor is not good for eyes and it is not so practical [for reading skills]. P51: I have some problems with my eyes so it was difficult for me to read online sources. Also, I have a difficulty to understand what I read. I couldn’t concentrate on something while reading. It was distracting for me. Loss of concentration, which arose as the next sub-theme, is highlighted in the following statements: P8: Reading online is more distracting than reading physically P48: Reading the course materials on the Internet affected me badly because I generally prefer reading textbooks and they are more effective for me to understand. On the Internet reading, I couldn’t focus on the topics. Participants also pinpointed that reading online is a tiresome process for them: P85: Some classes sometimes included long materials, about 5 or more pages long ones with extreme details or academic languages. And we had to read most of them through the screen which was tiring a lot. P45: Some students, like me, did not have their books and such so we continuously had to read from a computer or phone screen. That was a serious problem for me. Online exams were perceived as one of the disadvantageous aspects of EDE due to the duration, typing, etc. P109: I had some difficulties in my exams to read fast. I sometimes got bored to read in front of my computer. P40: Typing and handwriting are very different from each other. I myself hate typing and online exams really forced me; I couldn’t use my time properly [for writing skills]. P73: The duration of the exam was not enough to answer the questions [for writing skills]. Some participants complained about reading and writing on technological devices since they had a preference for pen and paper. P80: I actually don’t like using technological devices. I’m kind of conventional and this situation made me feel worse when I read all things on my computer that’s why I even thought that I was going to be blind : Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 19 of 34 P11: I am a bit old-fashioned person, so sometimes I have difficulty with writing my answers and expressing my thoughts when the teacher expects me to answer. I like writing by using pen and paper more, and writing in the classroom activities seems more effective to me. P80: I hated to do lessons on my computer without using paper and my lovely pens. Therefore, the process was so difficult when I had to get used to technology more, and in the beginning I avoided using it, so this got me demotivated [for writing skills]. The last sub-theme of the fourth theme is typing problems encountered for writing. P8: Typing errors and lack knowledge of office programs are annoying for writing activity. P51: It took time more than enough to write files or homework. Because it always needs to adjust size, colours, etc. P64: We can come across with an application error while writing homework or maybe we cannot write the way we want in terms of structure. Table 2 illustrates that the fifth theme is technical issues with the accompanying five sub-themes: (a) internet connection problems, (b) lack of computer, (c) sound problems (microphone, audio/video lag), (d) problems caused by distance education platform (uploading, capability, etc.), and (e) quality of the recordings. The participants expressed that these issues especially affected their listening skills (30%) development, and then speaking skills (18%), followed by reading (7%) and writing (5%) skills. Internet connection problems are the most important technical issue among the others: P11: Sometimes we have connection problems about the internet or the system and we cannot even hear the teacher or classmates well. It causes wasting the lesson time, and I totally get distracted [for listening skills]. P85: We didn’t have the chance to speak. Even if we had, connection problems would constantly cut our voice, which happened with many teachers in every week. Lack of computer is another sub-theme which was regarded to impede development of skills: P107: Since we did not have the textbooks, our teacher sent the articles or other sources online, and I had to open the book from my phone and attend the class from a computer. However, since I do not have a computer, it was difficult to read, write, and respond using my phone [translated]. P26: I had problems caused by my old computer while writing. The next sub-theme is sound problems (microphone, audio/video lag), which hindered listening skills development: P40: Some instructors’ microphones were not good enough therefore I preferred to watch some lessons from archive records by stopping and playing every moment that I couldn’t understand [for listening skills]. P76: Minor sound problem because of the microphones used by some instructors [for listening skills]. P103: There was a synchronization problem in classes [for listening skills]. Some participants focused on the problems caused by the distance education platform (uploading, capability, etc.) as another sub-theme via the following statements: Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 20 of 34 P45: As we listen, sometimes the platform doesn’t work properly, and we are interrupted, it can be frustrating. P1: I had some problems in this course especially in sending my voice records and videos. Because the distance education system was new, it could not accept heavy files. For example, we could just send a voice record that was 8 MB. It caused some problems. For instance, because the “MB” was limited, we could not express our all thoughts in a good way or we could not speak everything we wanted about the subject that was sent by our teacher. P59: We weren’t able to speak most of the time due to the app that we use. The application doesn’t allow all the students to speak. P78: The system doesn’t support oral participation at all. This is not a good method for language teaching process [for speaking skills]. The fifth sub-theme of technical issues is the quality of the recordings, which might have been thought to be related to the flexibility aspect of EDE while creating troubles for some students, as in the following sentences: P38: Since technical problems aroused during online classes, I failed to listen to instructors properly from time to time. Moreover, when I couldn’t enter some lessons on time, some of the recorded lessons did not play due to the online system problems. P41: The lesson records may not be well recorded [for listening skills]. Another theme in the table is the lack of individual effort, for which the participants criticized themselves (except for speaking skills) and took responsibility for disadvantages in writing skills development (6%), followed by reading (5%) and listening (3%). Sub-themes for this theme are (a) self-criticism, (b) less motivation, (c) time management problems, (d) irresponsibility, (e) passive learner, (f) lack of self-discipline and integrity, (g) persistence in study habits, and (h) technological illiteracy. The first sub-theme—self-criticism—can be discerned in the examples below: P106: For me, I tried to handle my assignments with less reading. I couldn’t improve my reading any because I didn’t try. P117: I just focused on listening to lessons and unfortunately nothing more. The next sub-theme is less motivation demonstrated through the followings: P83: I know for majority of the students; it has the reverse effect because not everyone is motivated to be their better selves [for reading skills]. P114: Because I have not focused my lesson effectively. I got demoralized by this situation [for reading skills]. Time management problems constitute another sub-theme for disadvantages section: P15: The only problem is that since there is not discipline, I take it easy and forget the deadlines. This situation prevents me from writing faster [translated]. Irresponsibility emerged as one of the sub-themes can be sensed through these statements: P117: Reading skills mostly depended on us so I couldn’t read English. I couldn’t spend enough time for reading. Rather, I tried to deliver my exams’ works and was busy with them. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 21 of 34 P112: Since students do not feel strict responsibility during distance education, they do not focus on developing their writing skills. In addition, those skills are used only for homework, so they cannot be improved and instead they stay the same [translated]. The participants also mentioned they did not take action toward the objectives but remained passive learners: P107: I was not an active participant for the lessons [for reading skills]. P4: Even in normal times, I have bad listening skill, and during this time, I didn’t do anything to improve it. So, it became worse. At some points, I didn’t understand even what my teacher had said. It was terrible for me. In normal times, at least I listen to some listening passages at lecture, but at home, I listened nothing apart from online class. And it wouldn’t be enough. Next sub-theme is lack of self-discipline and integrity, for which the participants found faults in themselves. P22: Unfortunately, some learners may cheat themselves by using a copy-paste trick [for writing skills]. P67: Because I have mostly used computer (copy & paste) to prepare my homework, I can’t put anything on my writing skills. P15: As there are no strict rules in distance education, I work on the listening activities without forcing myself and according to my own pace, not in such a way as to develop my skills. For instance, I listen as much as I want. This situation affects me negatively in attaining better listening skills [translated]. For a few students, it was not so easy to change their routines, despite the reality around them; as a result, persistence in study habits emerged to be one of the sub-themes here. P45: Personally, I choose to write very brief paragraphs. And that’s not something ideal for distance education when we are mostly graded by our writing. The last sub-theme is technological illiteracy, for which few participants felt the need to prioritize. P83: We need to learn how to use technology better [for listening skills]. The seventh theme in Table 2 is the shift in the medium of communication from speaking to writing, and this was mentioned for speaking skills development only. Although it does not have a significant percentage (3%), it is worth mentioning because this theme is closely related to content and implementation of online courses for which the speaking skills has the most disadvantages (38%). The sub-theme here is participation to online courses via written communication instead of verbal, and it can be observed in the following statements: P36: Since we participated in lessons only by writing, it has lots of disadvantages for speaking skills [translated]. P42: There was a limited interaction. We could not talk, we could just write and because of my internet connection I was very slow at it, I could not even participate, ask or answer questions. P98: I believe that we didn’t have so much chance to practice our speaking skills, we would only answer some questions provided by the teacher(s), and it was easy not to participate for some of the students since there is no eye contact with the teacher or we could simply write rather than speaking. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 22 of 34 The eighth theme in the table is no disadvantages, and as a percentage, it seems that the majority of the participants reflected that they did not experience any disadvantageous aspect of EDE for sustaining reading (37%), writing (36%), and listening (30%) skills development, yet the situation may not be true for speaking skills (10%): P4: There wasn’t any negative effect about reading skills. P83: There was no problem regarding my writing skills. P70: I did not realize any problems about listening skills during the distance education. The last theme in Table 2 is no answer caused by the fact that a few students either wrote an inappropriate answer for the questions or wrote the same question again as a response. 3.3. The Most Positively and Negatively Affected Skills The third and the fourth patterns gathered by TA show the most positively and negatively affected skill during the COVID-19 pandemic process by EDE. The most positively affected skill and the most negatively affected skill were determined through the use of different patterns (the second and the fourth questions in the Appendix A) based on two research questions. This is because the least positively affected skill does not match the most negatively affected skill during EDE. Additionally, the responses of some participants identified more than one skill. Thus, the frequency of comments related to each of these patterns is more than the number of the participants. The thematic structures of two patterns are the same, but the frequencies and percentages for the themes vary. For ease of comparison, a summary of those two patterns is presented in the same table, as seen in Table 3. Table 3. Summary of TA for the most positively and negatively affected language skills during EDE. Skills The Most Positively Affected Skill during EDE The Most Negatively Affected Skill during EDE f 1 % f % 1 Writing 50 35 9 7 2 Listening 35 24 15 11 3 Reading 28 20 16 12 4 Speaking 16 11 85 64 5 None of them 8 6 6 5 6 No answer 6 4 2 2 TOTAL (Frequency is more than 118 since some of the participants wrote two or three skills together. That is, if the participants wrote writing and reading, both themes were tallied.) 143 100 133 101 1 f: frequency Table 3 summarizes the findings of TA analysis regarding the most positively and negatively affected skill. Those patterns include six themes: (a) writing, (b) listening, (c) reading, (d) speaking, (e) none of them, and (f) no answer. It is apparent that, while the theme writing is identified as the most positively affected skill, with only 35%, the theme of speaking stands out as the most negatively affected skill, with a much stronger stress (64%) over the other themes. The ordering of the skills for positive and negative effect also highlights this outcome. While writing has the highest percentage for the first column, it has the least for the second column. The same situation holds true for the fourth theme speaking in the opposite direction. The placement of themes of listening and reading within the columns has the same tendency as well. Thus, the frequencies of the themes generated for the pattern of the most positively affected skill show writing, listening, reading and speaking, in that order during the COVID-19 emergency circumstances with EDE. Additionally, the responses Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 23 of 34 of the participants for the description of the most negatively influenced skill demonstrate speaking, reading, listening and writing, in that order. This means the descriptive statistical information about the thematic structures of those patterns verify each other. 4. Discussion The onset of COVID-19 created an unsustainable environment for all educational systems by endangering the quality of education (SDG 4). The emergency circumstances of the pandemic hinder the fulfilment of the right of education. At this point, the absence of quality education (SDG 4) due to the COVID-19 interruption might impact development, “as people’s productivity and creativity will face barriers” [25] (pp. 7–8). Thus, e-learning or online learning and teaching practices regarded as EDE were immediately popularized. However, it is known that EDE makes some “vulnerable students in need of basic shelter, clothing, and lacking access to the internet disadvantaged” [8] (p. 108). Those inequalities threaten quality education (SDG 4). Considering those perspectives, the discussion conducted in this study does not focus on whether the sustainability of language skills development of pre-service teachers is weak or strong; rather, it gives voice to one group of EDE learners to understand how these emergency circumstances can be improved to overcome the absence of quality education and what the stakeholders can learn. In this respect, the present study sought to answer four research questions focusing on how EDE is advantageous and disadvantageous for sustaining the development of each of the four language skills and which skill has the most and the least advantage under the emergency circumstances. Each section of the questionnaire served as a cross-check of the answers of the participants; thus, rather than acting as separate sections, they complemented each other. 4.1. Research Question One What are the advantages of emergency distance education on sustaining language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) development of pre-service EFL teachers? Thematic analysis showed that advantages of EDE can be grouped around nine themes: content and implementation of online courses, comfortable atmosphere of home, free time, properties of distance education platform, use of computer/online tools/resources, time and cost efficiency, teacher’s role, no advantages, and no answer. All these themes show some parallelism with the five primary topics in the road map of distance education created on 17 March 2020 for Turkish universities: curriculum, infrastructure, human resources, content, and implementation [23]. It should be kept in mind that the content and implementation of online courses emerged as a theme in both the advantages and disadvantages section of the questionnaire, proving the fact that, if it is used properly and efficiently, the same theme can easily be transformed into an advantage to ensure a better online educational setting. In addition, although teacher ’s role or guidance was analyzed as a separate theme; the teacher is the only actor (most of the time) behind the content and its implementation. Interestingly, some participants stated that EDE could have advantages for speaking skill depending on the way the online courses are implemented. If teachers provide an interactive virtual environment and more peer/group activities, they believe that they can improve their speaking skills. This means that the content and implementation of the courses is associated with their effectiveness [17]. All the results indicate the importance of the status and responsibilities of the teacher in course design and implementation. In fact, teachers play a prominent role in the COVID-19 crisis, since they can “not only intervene with regard to knowledge and experience but also unavoidably exercise power in relation to that knowledge” [42] (p. 4). Besides, some of the participants highlighted the importance and positive atmosphere of their home which is free from negative emotions such as shyness, anxiety, excitement, nervousness, etc. They believe that, when they interact verbally in a virtual environment, they feel more comfortable and relaxed due to the removal of those negative feelings. Considering the comfortable atmosphere students have at home, EDE also offers self-paced learning for students and fosters their motivation, which is also supported by the literature [6,58,59]. Additionally, EDE led the participants Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 24 of 34 to use computer/online tools/resources, including various applications and online programs, such as online dictionaries and programs for spelling, pronunciation, and grammar correction. With EDE, some participants could also save their money and time, which provided more opportunities to develop their language skills. Another facet of distance education is that it necessitates more responsibility on the part of the learners because of its independent study mode [60]. This situation was reflected by some of the participants as both an advantage and disadvantage of EDE. It is advantageous since learners have more free time for developing their language skills (e.g., reading the books waiting to be read on their shelves or creating a blog and writing there regularly), which might be signs of learner autonomy and self-thriving. Another advantageous aspect of EDE is related to the properties of distance education platforms that provide access to course materials with temporal and spatial flexibility [6,58]. Through the use of the EDE platforms, pre-service EFL teachers can access the recordings and materials of the courses whenever and wherever they wanted, which demonstrates an advantage mostly for listening skills (22%) but none for speaking. Supporting this outcome, nearly half of the participants (45%) thought that EDE had no advantages for their speaking skills development. 4.2. Research Question Two What are the disadvantages of emergency distance education on sustaining language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) development of pre-service EFL teachers? The results of TA revealed the disadvantageous dimensions of EDE with the following nine themes: content and implementation of online courses; absence of a face-to-face classroom environment; insufficient teacher guidance; reading/writing on a computer, tablet, or a phone; technical issues; lack of individual effort; the shift in the medium of communication from speaking to writing; no disadvantages; and no answer. Data analysis of the “disadvantages section” demonstrates parallel results with the “advantages section.” For speaking skills, the participants stated that the main problem lay in the content and implementation of the online courses (38%) in which they had little or no speaking practice compared to face-to-face educational settings. This, in turn, affected them into mentioning the absence of a face-to-face classroom environment in which they desired to be placed. The shift in the medium of communication from speaking to writing also deteriorated the situation. Despite the fact that it is very hard to conduct interactive L2 speaking activities and practice using virtual educational platforms with more than four to six students [40], numerous participants put forward their desire for oral interaction during EDE. While the participants viewed EDE as having no disadvantages for the other three skills with 30% or more, it is only 10% for speaking skills. Reading and writing on a computer, tablet, or phone emerged as problematic for reading and writing skills because it may cause eye problems, loss of concentration, etc. For the development of listening skills, technical issues created disadvantages. Inadequate technological equipment and connection problems were disadvantages put forward by the participants. Similar challenging situations were also mentioned by other studies [14,59,61]. The students who had internet access and technical tools were more inclined to comply with the EDE requirements. Nevertheless, without overcoming the digital inequalities and problems, the same quality of online education cannot be provided for every student [11]. In Turkey, “students from low-income social groups were the ones most affected from the digital divide and unequal opportunities because the current emergency remote education practices adopted one size fits all approaches” [23] (p. 85). Before implementation of EDE and providing educational opportunities, it becomes more and more crucial to effectively evaluate various variables such as the target group, access to technological tools and devices, and the students’ health, social, and economic context. It is unfortunately due to the fact that “the one size fits all understanding does not work anymore” [1] (p. iii), and this situation creates a threat for realizing SDG 4. Focusing on education equality, which is one of the priorities for SDGs and SDG 4, teachers and institutions need to identify the students who are excluded from education and learning opportunities. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 25 of 34 In the disadvantages section of the questionnaire, some participants criticized themselves as lacking individual efforts, except for regarding speaking skills. They put the blame on themselves for being less motivated, irresponsible, passive, and technologically illiterate. They also stated they had some problems with time management, study habits, self-discipline, and academic integrity, which might be caused by the independent study mode of distance education [60]. In order to remove these problems and to be more motivated, the participants expressed that they needed teacher support, which is also suggested in the related literature. Teachers should “demonstrate their emotional presence, build a sense of community, support and care” for their students [23] (p. 86), and thus, a closer teacher–student interaction should be emphasized constantly during EDE [18,19]. More importantly, in this time of COVID-19, students have been longing for support and guidance more than ever. Needless to say, insufficient support from teachers can be regarded as a challenge of EDE, since “when things go back to normal, people will not remember the educational content delivered, but they will remember how they felt, how we cared for them, and how we supported them” [1] (p. iii). 4.3. Research Questions Three and Four Which language skill (reading, writing, listening, or speaking) is most positively affected by the emergency distance education for pre-service EFL teachers? Which language skill (reading, writing, listening, or speaking) is most negatively affected by the emergency distance education for pre-service EFL teachers? Most of the participants believe that EDE has positive effects on the development of writing skills. Another study also supports the same idea by stating that distance education students “tend to develop their writing and particularly reading skills more than oral and aural skills, in comparison to campus-based students” [62] (p. 24). This might be because the nature of the virtual environment tends to include writing tasks and activities much more than the activities of the other skills. This holds true for the assignments as well. What is more, in the absence of spontaneous interaction—which was the case with the participants in this study—speaking skills cannot be improved efficiently [63]. This situation was also verified by the participants’ statements and choices that writing is the most advantageous skill (35%), while the participants stated with a very high percentage (64%) that the most disadvantageous skill during EDE is speaking. 5. Conclusions The current COVID-19 pandemic can be regarded as an interruption for the achievements of SDGs. Focusing on SDG 4—quality of education—specifically, it is clear that this interruption has threatened the implementation of quality education and changed the commons of the educational context. In the new commons, the cruciality of EDE lies in the fact that it provides new virtual environments for sustaining learning and education. These new circumstances generated by EDE should be evaluated for many purposes, some of which are, to identify their impact on students’ learning experience; to provide us with insights into how and what the students are learning; to provide us with data on how online practices can be improved; and, finally, to provide an evidence base that can be used by other countries looking to implement online education. [64] (p. 18) Ultimately, the present study focused on advantages and disadvantages of EDE (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic) on sustaining language skills development. Despite the fact that the findings of the study show inequalities embedded in EDE for the implementation of SDG 4, such as lack of computers, internet connection problems, and the non-suitable learning environment, online education in emergency circumstances offers new, sustainable, and effective learning actions. However, knowing that “a systematic approach in investing, planning, and delivering online learning is an absolute must” [64] (p. 18), the pre-service EFL teachers stated that, if the content and implementation of online courses (materials, assignments, etc.) are suitably organized around language skills development, Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 26 of 34 and if the properties of distance education platform allow for the practice for those skills, they will benefit from them sufficiently. Teacher support and guidance, especially in giving feedback, carries importance for them, too. Moreover, EDE is advantageous since it allocates free time for focusing on skills development, provides a comfortable home atmosphere where they feel free from stress, presents time and cost efficiency, and offers the use of online tools and resources. Among the four skills, participants expressed that EDE was most beneficial for writing, since they had to depend on their writing skills for most of their exams and homework. Thus, the increased amount of practice led to the inevitable development of writing skills. On the other hand, EDE was disadvantageous because the participants missed the face-to-face classroom environment and needed instant teacher support. The students also indicated that they had problems with reading and/or writing on a computer, tablet, or phone. In addition, technical issues increased the problematic aspect of EDE. These aspects are worthy of discussion, especially for speaking skills, since pre-service EFL teachers could find little or no opportunities for speaking English neither at home nor during online courses. If the course was not specifically designed around speaking skills, then the participants felt that the development of those skills was ignored. They also stated that the mode of communication shifted from speaking to writing during EDE, and this situation affected them negatively. In conclusion, driven by the fact that “highlighting the danger of normalizing emergency eLearning is not the same as condemning all forms of online learning” [2] (p. 501), the present study assures preparedness for EDE in order to sustain language skills development against a possible second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. For non-native pre-service EFL teachers, language proficiency “will always represent the bedrock of their professional confidence” [65] (p. 254), and language competence is the most essential characteristic of a good teacher [66]. Thus, this study also provides beneficial reflections and insights for educators and universities in restructuring their forthcoming practices and actions for effective delivery of distance education for fostering sustainability of language skills development of pre-service EFL teachers both in the COVID-19 pandemic and post-COVID world. All in all, the introduction of social distancing as a precaution for the COVID-19 pandemic has radically transformed the current state of quality education (SDG 4). As a solution to overcome the emergency circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic in the educational context, EDE ensures a continuity in education and learning, although some inequalities are embedded in it. Driven by this perspective, this study highlighted the perspectives and voices of Turkish pre-service EFL teachers about EDE in order to improve and sustain the quality of education regarding the development of their language skills. The participants concluded that EDE procedures might be beneficial for sustaining language skills development to some extent; nevertheless, it creates disadvantages mostly for speaking skills, which was also documented in the field of distance education [67]. Considering the problem of both teachers and students in speaking English within the Turkish context [37,38,68], this issue should be a very important concern of teachers in designing and implementing online classes with the aim of providing paths for sustainable distance education in the future. 6. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research The results of the present study cannot be generalized for all pre-service EFL teachers in Turkey, but it represents beneficial ideas about the advantageous and disadvantageous aspects of EDE for development of four language skills. During EDE, universities in Turkey have utilized various platforms, but the study does not focus on the differences among those platforms. Diversity in teachers’ implementations of their courses could not be taken into consideration as well. Regarding the suggestions for further research, a study focusing on only one language skill (e.g., speaking) with a larger sampling may enhance our understanding in this field. Even the comparison of two online tools for enhancing a specific skill can be documented. Another suggestion might be to compare the EDE practices of two or more countries for facilitating the language skills of pre-service EFL teachers. Additionally, synchronous and asynchronous practices during EDE Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 27 of 34 might be compared so as to portray the points of comparison in detail. This study has pinpointed the importance of the teacher’s role and guidance both in choosing the content and implementing it together with supplying feedback. Thus, what teachers felt as to the development of language skills of pre-service EFL teachers during EDE might form the next step of this study with the aim of gathering their perspective from a closer perspective. 7. Implications and Suggestions for EFL Context Though it is not easy to predict what the educational context will be after COVID-19 [2], it is hoped that EDE will reduce the current education problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At this point, what needs to be done is to learn from our mistakes and then plan, design, and implement accordingly [1,48]. Otherwise, in the end, reality might take its revenge [42]. From this perspective, this study has some implications. It is known that pre-service EFL teachers have a certain level of language skills, but they should be provided with constant support and guidance for developing their skills. There are many courses within ELT departments except for those focusing specifically on skills development. Whatever the course content is, the following implications might be very beneficial for pre-service EFL teachers during EDE. The first and foremost implication is about digital literacy. Digital competences such as information and communications technology (ICT) and digital skills of teachers have already been given importance in the field [69]. This pandemic process has elevated the role of digital literacy as a very crucial component of education, especially for EDE contexts. Therefore, teachers should be supported with regular professional development activities focusing on digital literacy. In addition, curricula of ELT departments should be revised to embody courses about ICT, online teaching, and digital literacy for pre-service EFL teachers. In this aspect, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and podcasts can be beneficial, as it is demonstrated in the related literature [70] that they can help to develop the four language skills and can easily be adapted into online teaching contexts. The results of the current research also imply that learning and the development of language skills in virtual contexts could be facilitated by process-oriented activities, collaboration, cooperation, and interaction. The effectiveness and efficiency of EDE is highly related to the implementation and content of the courses. Collaborative online activities contribute to the success of online courses and activities [71] and offer some virtual social environments for students to become active distance learners [16]. Thus, for the development of the four language skills, the model of EDE for EFL contexts should include not only self-instructional materials for independent study but also cooperative and collaborative learning applications enhancing interaction in virtual EFL settings. These emergency situations might take place in the near future, since it is apparent that COVID-19 will affect the next term(s). Thus, it seems a well-grounded idea for the teachers to have plans for EDE scenarios; that is, their syllabi should be redesigned for EDE as Plan B. In doing so, each language skill should be handled conscientiously—with the motto of “curate before create”—by taking the following points into consideration in order to sustain language skills development: Reading: During EDE, students were given an abundance of reading assignments, which caused an unnecessary burden; for this reason, the amount of reading homework should be handled with care. Teachers might cooperate and assess the amount of homework together. In addition to the amount of homework, the content of the homework carries importance, too. Instead of repetitive, similar types of homework, teachers might choose to include various enjoyable assignments and even provide alternative reading texts so that students might feel that they have a say in the course. Too much reading on screen can create health problems, especially for the eyes. In fact, some of the students do not like reading on a screen; they want to feel real paper and books. To overcome this, first, the texts used during online education should be legible, and if possible, materials that are to be used for the term can be printed out and distributed. Because seeing how the teacher annotates the reading text creates awareness in reading and analyzing a text, from time to time, teachers might share their own annotated texts as well. There are many online tools that facilitate reading skills. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 28 of 34 Thus, the teacher might choose to implement lessons via those tools, such as Insert Learning, where students can highlight some parts of the text, insert a note, or even write a question on any web pages. For some reading sub-skills, such as identifying the main and supporting ideas, some mapping tools like MindMeister can be recommended. Writing: Since homework concept mostly includes writing during EDE, the amount of homework should be taken into consideration. Most mid-term and final exams consist of written homework too, and this increases the workload on the shoulders of the students. Teacher collaboration on the amount of homework may solve this problem, as it was suggested for reading skills. Creating a blog may increase the motivation of the students while adding variety into the course content. The feeling of responsibility for writing a blog may give students authentic objectives and an audience. Some students might be stuck in their routines and prefer a pen and paper to write instead of a computer, tablet, or a phone; therefore teachers might opt for some alternative ways to overcome this issue. For example, a format of sending and receiving written homework can be arranged according to the context, such as writing the homework on a paper, taking a photo, and sending it to the teacher (a suitable program for that can be found). The frequency of these might be arranged within that classroom context. These needs can be assessed at the beginning of the term together with the students. One other important point is feedback because, in the absence of feedback, students tend to feel that their homework is not read, and they question whether they are on the right path or not. Thus, teachers should provide feedback for every item of homework they assign. If they cannot, some automated writing evaluation systems (e.g., Virtual Writing Tutor) might be recommended. These tools are actually helpful to remove the workload for initial checks such as spelling, punctuation, etc. With the support of such virtual tools, teachers can concentrate on a deeper analysis for cohesion, coherence, etc. Besides, students can easily see their mistakes on their own and step in to improving their writing skills. One implication of this study is plagiarism; students may copy and paste from different sources and/or cheat during online exams. One solution for decreasing, if not eliminating, such instances of academic dishonesty might be to prepare an honor code (e.g., Harvard College Honor Code) that students read and sign at the beginning of the term [72]. Listening: Higher education institutes should select a platform where the online courses can be recorded and listened to whenever and wherever the students want. This flexibility is crucial for listening skills development and is highlighted as one of the advantages of distance education settings [58]. Due to the flexibility of the courses, language teacher training programs conducted virtually in the pandemic appeal to most pre-service teachers because it gives the flexibility and comfort of home in order to manage both their education and family life. Technical problems should be handled for this skill as well. Internet connection problems might be solved by the state or the university as much as possible, as in the examples of University of York providing financial support to its students without internet access or IT equipment [73], or 6 GB assistance by mobile operators in Turkey to help university students to reach open access the materials provided by YÖK [48]. The microphones of the lecturers should be checked regularly, and teachers should search for suitable podcasts or websites that give good listening practice in relation to their courses. Passively listening to their teachers might create boredom and monotony for pre-service EFL teachers, so whenever possible, there should be some space allowing them to listen to their peers or other sources. Teachers might invite one of their colleagues and implement a specific lesson together. In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations and institutions have begun holding free webinars. Teachers might choose a related webinar and suggest their students listen to it. Again, offering alternative webinars might attract the attention of the students and make them more motivated. In line with the course objectives, teachers might assign a task related to the webinar as well. As one of the listening sub-skills, note-taking can be stimulated and facilitated through some online tools. VideoAnt is one such tool in which the students can take notes while watching the uploaded videos. The annotations, together with the minutes taken, can be shared with the teacher in order to assess the development easily. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 29 of 34 Speaking: It is a well-documented fact that speaking skills are the hardest to obtain among other skills, and Turkish prospective teachers and students have been experiencing this problem for a long time. EDE has disadvantages regarding speaking, the skill most negatively affected by EDE as concluded in this study. To mitigate these disadvantages, the first thing to do would be to choose suitable platforms that allow verbal interaction. The present study demonstrated that students should be encouraged to speak and speaking-related tasks should be integrated into the online courses. This is the only skill that the participants did not have self-criticism over, which indicates that they expect some enforcement from their teachers. This situation underlines the importance of real-time lessons over recorded ones. For almost all lessons, teachers should encourage students’ participation in online courses. Since the oral participation of every student is not possible for every online lesson, teachers can arrange this before each lesson by nominating students or encouraging volunteers, thus giving turns to every student until the end of the term. Second, teachers should integrate pair and group work into their courses. At this point, educators should be more creative and find ways to provide more interactive practices and actions using online platforms and in virtual environments for pre-service EFL teachers. An idea of moving from an asynchronous writing assignment (e.g., discussion forums), where students can have enough time for pre-task planning and peer feedback, to a synchronous discussion might lessen the cognitive load for speaking [40]. Also, speaking homework could be designed where students can record themselves and submit their recordings. Teachers might even assign a “speaking buddy” for practicing at regular intervals, creating stronger bonds among peers. Assigning some images and charts might be good methods for speaking practice as well. Teachers might choose a relevant image and/or chart and send those before the lesson to give students enough time to concentrate. Their ideas can be discussed during online lessons together via pair or group work. Picture prompts and charts within the Learning Network of New York Times might work well for such scenarios. For encouraging individual effort for developing speaking skills, some automated speaking evaluation systems (e.g., ELSA) might be suggested. “‘Failure’ is common, and success is often a result of experience and learning from past failures” [43] (p. 1). For this reason, the online courses for pre-service EFL teachers during EDE should be designed around the combination of four language skills whatever the course is. In one way or another, in virtual EFL settings, the syllabi should include tasks, assignments and activities enhancing online opportunities for individual learning and interaction with a varying percentage of each skill. Inclusion of one or two activities for each skill instead of none is thought to bring success into the EDE of pre-service EFL teachers. Among the challenges and uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there are some things to take into consideration. The outcome of this study might be one such item to be included in that list in order to sustain quality education (SDG 4), regardless of the circumstances. Author Contributions: T.Ö.K. and H.T. conceived, wrote and reviewed the article together. Specifically, Data curation, T.Ö.K. and H.T.; Formal analysis, T.Ö.K. and H.T.; Methodology, T.Ö.K. and H.T.; Writing—original draft, T.Ö.K. and H.T.; Writing—review and editing, T.Ö.K. and H.T. Both authors read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: This research received no external funding. Acknowledgments: We would like to express our gratitude to the pre-service EFL teachers who participated in this study and to our colleagues who helped us in distributing our questionnaire. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Appendix A : Questionnaire The purpose of this study is to clarify the possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic process on the education of pre-service EFL teachers. Please answer the questions given below sincerely considering your own experiences and thoughts regarding the courses you received during the distance education. The answers you give will only be utilized for this study. You are free to use English or Turkish. Thank you for your help and contributions. My name/surname is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sustainability 2020, 12, 8188 30 of 34 Giving consent I hereby declare that I voluntarily participated in this study. I let the researchers use my responses as data as far as my identity remains anonymous. In addition, the researchers explained the purpose (effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on education) and nature of the study in detail and guaranteed that all information I provide for this study would be treated confidentially. Gender: (a) Male; (b) Female University: Which year: (a) 1st; (b) 2nd; (c) 3rd; (d) 4th Age: Questions 1. Considering the distance education you received during the COVID-19 pandemic, write in detail the specific advantages/positive effects you experienced with regard to your development of following language skills (1a, 1b, 1c, 1d): (1a) Reading skills (advantages of distance education): (1b) Writing skills (advantages of distance education): (1c) Listening skills (advantages of distance education): (1d) Speaking skills (advantages of distance education): 2. Considering the distance education procedure, which is the most positively affected skill (reading, writing, listening or speaking) by the COVID-19 pandemic? 3. Considering the distance education you received during the COVID-19 pandemic, write in detail the specific problems/challenges/negative effects you experienced with regard to your development of following language skills (3a, 3b, 3c, 3d): (3a) Reading skills (problems with distance education): (3b) Writing skills (problems with distance education): (3c) Listening skills (problems with distance education): (3d) Speaking skills (problems with distance education): 4. Considering the distance education procedure, which is the most negatively affected skill (reading, writing, listening or speaking) by the COVID-19 pandemic? References 1. Bozkurt, A.; Sharma, R.C. Emergency remote teaching in a time of global crisis due to Corona Virus pandemic. Asian J. Distance Educ. 2020, 15, i–vi. 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Introduction Materials and Methods Research Context Research Questions Method Participants Data Collection Tool Data Analysis Results The Advantages of EDE for the Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers Disadvantages of EDE on Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers The Most Positively and Negatively Affected Skills Discussion Research Question One Research Question Two Research Questions Three and Four Conclusions Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research Implications and Suggestions for EFL Context : Questionnaire References 
work_fplcwl3bozajvh4wftfmrdrziu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_frk7mo7g4jeuba7qji4quvxe5m	----	Students’ perceptions of academic quality and approaches to studying in distance education John T. E. Richardson * The Open University, UK (Submitted 6 August 2003; conditionally accepted 11 December 2003; accepted 4 February 2004) Attempts to demonstrate a relationship between students’ approaches to studying in higher education and their perceptions of their academic context have been bedevilled by limitations of the research instruments and the problem of aggregating students’ perceptions and approaches across different course units. The extended version of the Course Experience Questionnaire (Wilson et al., 1997) and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (Entwistle et al., 2000) were adapted for use in distance education and administered in a postal survey to students taking seven courses by distance learning with the Open University. Usable responses were obtained from over 2100 students. Both instruments proved to be remarkably robust, and the students’ scores on these two instruments shared 61% of their variance. Students’ perceptions of the academic quality of courses in distance education are strongly associated with the approaches to studying that they adopt on those courses. Introduction Interview-based research that was carried out in both Britain and Sweden during the 1970s identified three predominant approaches to studying in higher education: a deep approach, based upon understanding the meaning of course materials; a surface approach, based upon memorising course materials for the purposes of assessment; and a strategic approach, based upon obtaining the highest grades. The choice of one approach rather than another appeared to depend on the content, the context and the demands of specific learning tasks (Marton, 1976; Laurillard, 1979; Ramsden, 1979; for a detailed review, see Richardson, 2000, ch. 2). More recent quantitative studies have shown that the same students may exhibit different approaches, depending upon the demands of different course units (Eley, 1992), the quality of the teaching (Vermetten et al., 1999) and the nature of the assessment (Scouller, 1998). * Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. Email: J.T.E.Richardson@open.ac.uk British Educational Research Journal Vol. 31, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 7–27 ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/05/010007-21 # 2005 British Educational Research Association DOI: 10.1080/0141192052000310001 These findings suggest that changes in the design and the delivery of specific courses will affect how students tackle those courses. In particular, they imply that the choice of appropriate course design, teaching methods and modes of assessment will induce desirable approaches to studying. Unfortunately, there is very little empirical evidence that educational interventions can induce desirable changes in students’ approaches to studying (Gibbs, 1992; Kember et al., 1997; Hambleton et al., 1998). One explanation for this is that the impact of contextual factors is mediated by students’ perceptions of their academic environment. It follows that educational interventions will not be effective unless they serve to modify the students’ perceptions. However, this kind of account assumes that there is a direct association between students’ approaches to learning and their perceptions of the academic environment. In this article, I first review the evidence for this assumption that has been obtained in research carried out at campus-based institutions of higher education. The evidence proves to be equivocal because of limitations of the survey instruments and the problem of aggregating students’ accounts across different course units. I then present a new study that evaluates the assumption of a link between students’ perceptions and approaches to studying using robust instruments to obtain data from students taking individual courses by distance learning. Initial evidence on students’ perceptions and approaches to studying In the light of the results of interview-based research, Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) devised the Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) to obtain self-reports from students on various aspects of studying, subsumed under a ‘meaning orientation’, a ‘reproducing orientation’, an ‘achievement orientation’ and a ‘nonacademic orientation’. They also developed the Course Perceptions Questionnaire (CPQ) to obtain students’ accounts of eight different aspects of their academic environment. Ramsden and Entwistle obtained data on both instruments from 2208 students at 54 institutions of higher education, and they carried out a factor analysis on these data in order to identify scales of the CPQ and subscales of the ASI that loaded on the same factors. This yielded a number of relationships between the two instruments: (a) Perceptions of a heavy workload on the CPQ were associated with higher scores on the subscales of the ASI that defined a reproducing orientation (namely, Surface Approach, Syllabus-Boundness, Fear of Failure and Extrinsic Motivation). (b) Perceptions of clear goals and standards on the CPQ were associated with higher scores on the subscales of the ASI that defined an achieving orientation (Strategic Approach, Disorganised Study Methods, Negative Attitudes to Studying and Achievement Motivation, where the second and third of these subscales were scored in reverse). (c) Higher scores on the subscales of the ASI concerned with intrinsic motivation and the use of evidence were associated with a positive evaluation of the quality of teaching in general according to the CPQ. 8 J. T. E. Richardson Even so, Ramsden and Entwistle acknowledged that there was ‘not a great deal of overlap’ between the two sets of measures (p. 375; see also Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983, p. 184). Parsons (1988) gave the ASI and the CPQ to English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking students at a South African institution of higher education. In both cases, perceptions of a heavy workload on the CEQ were associated with high scores on the ASI scales defining a reproducing orientation. In general, however, Parsons’ results confirmed the impression from Ramsden and Entwistle’s study that there are few associations between scores on the ASI and the CPQ, and that even those associations that do attain statistical significance are relatively weak and unlikely to be of much practical importance (see also Meyer & Parsons, 1989). Measuring students’ perceptions of their academic context The failure to find stronger links between these two instruments might have been due to inherent weaknesses in the CPQ. Meyer (1988) developed a more detailed questionnaire, and he found a number of associations between students’ responses to the individual items and their scores on the ASI. On the basis of these results, Meyer and Muller (1990) devised six scales to measure ‘deep’ and ‘surface’ perceptions of the learning context and added the workload scale from the CPQ to yield a new instrument, the Qualitative Context Inventory. When this was administered together with the ASI, it was found that scores on the scales that measured deep perceptions of the learning context were closely associated with scores on the ASI subscales defining a meaning orientation, a phenomenon that Meyer and Muller called the ‘contextual orchestration’ of approaches to studying (see also Meyer, 1991). Entwistle and Tait (1990) used a modified version of the ASI and a new instrument concerned with students’ experiences and evaluations in a survey of engineering students at five Scottish institutions. On the one hand, students’ perceptions that the content of their courses was interesting and professionally relevant were associated with higher scores on meaning orientation. On the other hand, students’ perceptions of a difficult content and a heavy workload were associated with higher scores on reproducing orientation and non-academic orientation. In general, however, the degree of overlap between the two questionnaires was again relatively weak. In particular, there was no clear link between perceptions of good teaching and students’ scores on meaning orientation. On the basis of his experience with the CPQ and a similar questionnaire intended for use with schoolchildren (Ramsden et al., 1989), Ramsden (1991) devised a new instrument, the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). This was specifically intended as an indicator of the quality of teaching on particular degree programmes, and it contained 30 items in five scales corresponding to different aspects of effective teaching. The defining items of these scales are shown in Table 1. For each item, respondents indicate their level of agreement with a particular statement on a scale from 1 to 5. Half of the 30 items are consistent with the meaning of the scale to which they belong; the other half of the items have a meaning that is opposite to that of the scale to which they belong, and so these items are scored in reverse. Students’ perceptions of academic quality 9 Trigwell and Prosser (1991) administered the CEQ and a questionnaire containing just three subscales from the ASI to 55 nursing students. They found that the adoption of a surface approach was linked to perceptions of an inappropriate workload and perceptions of inappropriate assessment. However, other relationships between the students’ scores on the two questionnaires were small and not statistically significant. Even so, it could be argued that both the sample size and the research instrument that Trigwell and Prosser had used to measure approaches to studying were too limited and consequently were unlikely to detect more subtle associations with the students’ perceptions of their programme. Since 1993, an adapted version of the CEQ has been administered annually to all new graduates from Australian universities. This version contains only 17 of the original 30 items, and it entirely omits the Emphasis on Independence scale. However, it includes an extra scale that consists of six items concerned with the fostering of generic skills. The resulting 23-item version of the CEQ is usually supplemented by an item that is concerned with whether or not the respondents are satisfied with their courses in general. For research purposes, Wilson et al. (1997) proposed that the original 30-item version of the CEQ should be augmented with the Generic Skills scale to yield a 36-item questionnaire. Wilson et al. presented evidence from Australian students to demonstrate the reliability and validity of the latter instrument. Measuring approaches to studying Nevertheless, the failure to find stronger links between the CPQ and the ASI might also have been due to inherent weaknesses in the ASI. In particular, some of the ASI’s subscales do not appear to be very robust, particularly those intended to measure an achievement orientation and a non-academic orientation (see Richardson, 2000, pp. 90–96, 101–105, for a review). Richardson (1990) argued that it was appropriate to abbreviate the ASI to the subscales that had been consistently identified with a meaning orientation and a reproducing orientation in the original data reported by Entwistle and Ramsden (1983, p. 52). This yields Table 1. Defining items of the scales in the original Course Experience Questionnaire Scale Defining item Good Teaching Teaching staff here normally give helpful feedback on how you are going. Clear Goals and Standards You usually have a clear idea of where you’re going and what’s expected of you in this course. Appropriate Workload The sheer volume of work to be got through in this course means you can’t comprehend it all thoroughly.* Appropriate Assessment Staff here seem more interested in testing what we have memorised than what we have understood.* Emphasis on Independence Students here are given a lot of choice in the work they have to do. Note: adapted from Ramsden (1991, p. 134). Items with asterisks are scored in reverse. 10 J. T. E. Richardson a shortened instrument containing 32 items in eight scales, and this version of the ASI was successfully used in several research studies (see Richardson, 2000, pp. 113–118). Sadlo and Richardson (2003) administered Ramsden’s (1991) version of the CEQ and the 32 item version of the ASI to 225 students at schools of occupational therapy in six different countries. They found that the students’ scores on the two instruments shared more than half of their respective variance. They concluded that there was an intimate relationship between approaches to studying and perceptions of the academic environment. A canonical correlation analysis showed that high scores on the CEQ were associated with low scores on the ASI subscales concerned with a reproducing orientation rather than with high scores on the ASI subscales concerned with a meaning orientation. However, Sadlo and Richardson noted that their students’ scores on meaning orientation were relatively high in comparison with normative samples, which they ascribed to the applied nature of occupational therapy. Since 1992, Entwistle and his colleagues have been developing a new questionnaire, the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI; Entwistle et al., 2000). In its latest version, this consists of 52 items in 13 subscales that measure various aspects of a deep approach, a strategic approach and a surface approach. The subscales themselves are listed in Table 2. Once again, respondents indicate their level of agreement with each statement on a scale from 1 to 5. Entwistle et al. considered that the first three subscales in each approach were more consistently related to one another, but that the others were more peripheral and likely to show varying relationships across different samples of students. Kreber (2003) obtained data from 1080 Canadian students on the 52-item version of the RASI, the 23-item version of the CEQ and 11 new items concerned with the fostering of student independence. The students were asked to respond with regard to their perceptions and approaches to studying on particular course units rather than across their programmes of study. Analysis of the results confirmed the reliability and the intended factor structure of the 13 subscales in the RASI. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that, taken together, the students’ demographic characteristics and their perceptions of their course units accounted for 20.3% of the variance in their scores on Deep Approach, 16.5% of the variance in their scores on Strategic Approach and 36.7% of the variance in their scores on Surface Approach. Table 2. Subscales contained in the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory Deep Approach Strategic Approach Surface Approach Seeking Meaning Organised Studying Lack of Purpose Relating Ideas Time Management Unrelated Memorising Use of Evidence Alertness to Assessment Demands Syllabus-Boundness Interest in Ideas Achieving Fear of Failure Monitoring Effectiveness Students’ perceptions of academic quality 11 Unfortunately, when Kreber carried out a factor analysis of her students’ responses to the CEQ, the Good Teaching scale split into two separate scales concerned with the provision of feedback on students’ work and with the quality of classroom instruction, respectively. In the context of individual course units, the former is likely to depend on institutional policies and practices, whereas the latter is likely to depend on the competence of particular teachers. Perhaps more crucially for present purposes, Kreber did not report separately the proportion of variance in her students’ scores on the RASI that could be explained by variations in their scores on the CEQ rather than by variations in demographic variables such as age and gender. Nevertheless, Kreber’s study raises a more fundamental issue. The CEQ was intended to measure the quality of teaching across entire degree programmes, and Wilson et al. (1997) explicitly advised that it should not be used to obtain feedback on specific topics or teachers. However, the same students may evaluate different course units in different ways, depending on their perceptions of the teachers’ competence and of the assessment demands (Eley, 1992; Scouller, 1998; Vermetten et al., 1999). If the CEQ is used at the programme level, therefore, it provides merely an aggregate view that fails to reflect variations in the students’ experience across different course units. It may similarly not be useful to ask about students’ approaches to studying at the programme level if these, too, show variations across different course units. In fact, Prosser et al. (1994) modified the CEQ to refer to particular topics (such as mechanics in a physics programme or photosynthesis in a biology programme), while Lucas et al. (1997) used a version of the CEQ concerned with students’ perceptions of individual course units to compare their experience of large and small classes. However, it is not clear how easily students on full-time programmes can differentiate their experiences of different topics or course units. This issue may be less serious for students on part-time programmes and especially for those studying part-time by distance learning, because these students may be taking only one or two course units at a time. Accordingly, research in distance education may provide a clearer picture of the relationship between students’ perceptions of the quality of their courses and the approaches to studying that they adopt on those courses. Students’ perceptions and approaches to studying in distance education Distance-learning students may have perceptions and approaches to studying that are different from those of campus-based students. At a purely descriptive level, distance-learning students are less likely to have a social, extrinsic orientation to studying and are more likely to have a personal or intrinsic orientation to studying than campus-based students (Taylor et al., 1981). Distance-learning students also produce higher scores on the subscales of the ASI measuring a deep approach and lower scores on the subscales of the ASI that measure a surface approach (Morgan et al., 1980; Harper & Kember, 1986; Wong, 1992; Richardson et al., 1999). However, distance-learning students also tend to differ from campus-based students in a number of demographic characteristics. Most obviously, perhaps, 12 J. T. E. Richardson distance-learning students tend to be older than campus-based students. In terms of their orientations and approaches to studying, distance-learning students resemble older campus-based students and differ from younger campus-based students. Richardson (2000, pp. 179–180) concluded that differences between campus-based and distance-learning students could be ascribed to differences in age and other background variables rather than to differences in the mode of course delivery. Many Australian institutions deliver their programmes both in a campus-based mode and in a distance-learning mode. Both modes are included in the annual surveys of Australian graduates, and students’ scores on the 23-item CEQ have been compared in published reports. The consistent pattern is for graduates from distance-learning programmes to obtain higher scores on Good Teaching and Appropriate Assessment and to be more likely to agree that in general they are satisfied with the quality of their programmes. Johnson (1997, pp. 39–40, 1998, pp. 56–57, 73–74) suggested that these trends were due, not to the mode of study per se, but to the fact that campus-based students and distance-learning students tended to enrol on programmes in different disciplines that employed different modes of assessment. However, questionnaires developed for use with students at campus-based institutions of higher education may well need to be adapted for use with students in distance education. In particular, items that refer to ‘lecturers’ or ‘teaching staff’ may be inappropriate when the curriculum is delivered primarily by written course materials rather than through face-to-face instruction. In fact, most distance- learning institutions use various kinds of personal support (such as face-to-face tutorials, residential schools and teleconferencing) to try to narrow what Moore (1980) called the ‘transactional distance’ with their students. This means that teachers in distance education have specific roles as writers of course materials and as tutors, and this needs to be taken into account in the construction and analysis of student questionnaires. Richardson and Woodley (2001) amended the 36-item version of the CEQ for use in distance education by removing references to ‘lecturers’ or ‘teaching staff’ so that the items in question referred to tutors or to teaching material. The aim of their study was to compare perceptions of students with and without a hearing loss, and so they also amended the CEQ in accordance with good practice in the construction of assessment materials for people with a hearing loss (Nickerson et al., 1986; Vernon & Andrews, 1990, ch. 10). This required the use of simple vocabulary and syntax as well as the elimination of abstract and metaphorical constructions. These modifications might be expected to enhance the reliability and validity of the CEQ for respondents with no hearing loss, too (Miller & Herrmann, 1997). Richardson and Woodley obtained responses to the modified CEQ from 265 students with a hearing loss who were taking courses by distance learning with the Open University in the UK and from 178 students taking the same courses with no form of disability. The results confirmed the reliability and the intended factor structure of the CEQ except in two respects. First, the Good Teaching scale split into two separate scales concerned with good materials and good tutoring. This was Students’ perceptions of academic quality 13 not surprising, given the manner in which its constituent items had been reworded. Second, the original Emphasis on Independence scale was reflected in a factor that was more narrowly focused upon student choice rather than student autonomy. Lawless and Richardson (2002) administered Richardson and Woodley’s version of the CEQ together with a similarly modified version of Richardson’s (1990) 32- item ASI to students taking six different courses by distance learning with the Open University. Results from more than 1200 students confirmed the reliability and intended factor structure of the CEQ, except that once again the Good Teaching scale split into two separate scales relating to good materials and good tutoring, and the Emphasis on Independence scale proved to be more narrowly concerned with student choice. In addition, the students’ scores on the CEQ and the ASI shared 47% of their respective variance, confirming the idea of an association between students’ approaches to studying and their perceptions of their academic environment. Richardson and Price (2003) repeated Lawless and Richardson’s study with students who were taking two different courses in computing with the Open University. In both cases, tutorial support was provided by electronic mail rather than by face-to-face tutorials. Results from 241 students generally replicated Lawless and Richardson’s findings with regard to the reliability and factor structure of the CEQ, and the students’ scores on the CEQ and the ASI shared 64% of their respective variance. Although Lawless and Richardson and Richardson and Price also confirmed the intended factor structure of the 32-item ASI, in both cases the reliability of several of its subscales was fairly poor by conventional psychometric criteria. In other words, distance education appears to provide an appropriate context in which to assess the hypothesis of an association between students’ perceptions of particular courses and the approaches to studying that they adopt on those courses. Nevertheless, the results of previous studies may be qualified by the limitations of the survey instruments that have been employed. The CEQ and the RASI are psychometrically superior to the CPQ and the ASI, and therefore the present study was carried out to evaluate approaches to studying according to the RASI and perceptions of academic quality according to the CEQ in students taking seven courses by distance learning. The main interest lay in evaluating the extent and nature of the overlap between the students’ scores on the subscales of the RASI and the scales of the CEQ. Method Context The Open University was established in 1969 to provide degree programmes by distance education throughout the UK. Originally, nearly of all its courses were delivered by correspondence materials, combined with television and radio broadcasts, video and audio recordings, tutorial support at a local level and (in some cases) week-long residential schools. In recent years, however, the University has made increasing use of computer-based support, particularly CD-ROMs, 14 J. T. E. Richardson dedicated websites and computer-mediated conferencing. It accepts all applicants over the normal minimum age of 18 onto its courses without imposing formal entrance requirements, subject only to limitations of numbers on individual courses. The majority of the Open University’s courses run from February to October and are weighted at either 30 or 60 credit points, on the basis that full-time study would consist of courses worth 120 credit points in any calendar year. Students are permitted to register for two or more courses up to a maximum load of 120 credit points, but the majority register for just one course at a time. Courses contributing to the University’s undergraduate programme are classified as introductory, inter- mediate or honours, and since the year 2000 schemes of study that lead to a wide range of named degrees have been introduced. Nevertheless, the programme retains a modular structure in which prerequisite requirements are minimised. Most courses are assessed by a combination of written assignments (submitted by post or electronic mail) and traditional unseen examinations (taken at regional assessment centres). Participants Seven courses presented in 2001 were chosen for this study. To maximise the response rates, courses were chosen that had not been included in the annual survey conducted under the University’s quality assurance procedures during 2001. Four courses were chosen from the Arts Faculty, two were chosen from the Science Faculty, and the last was a multidisciplinary course. Three of these courses were rated at 30 credit points, and the rest were rated at 60 credit points. The courses themselves will not be identified here but will be simply referred to as Courses 1–7. Table 3 shows the number of students registered on each course and of those who responded to the present survey. Materials and procedure The 52-item RASI was modified for use with students in distance education and combined with the 36-item version of the CEQ devised by Richardson and Woodley Table 3. Characteristics and response rates for seven courses Course Faculty Level Credit points Number of students Number of respondents Response rate (%) 1 Arts Intermediate 30 621 358 57.6 2 Arts Intermediate 60 654 454 69.4 3 Arts Honours 30 384 240 62.5 4 Arts Honours 60 633 430 67.9 5 Science Intermediate 30 541 278 51.4 6 Science Intermediate 60 305 136 44.6 7 Multidisciplinary Intermediate 30 455 281 61.8 Students’ perceptions of academic quality 15 (2001). The CEQ was further modified to refer to the specific course that each student had taken in 2001, and the instructions referred to ‘your personal experience of studying [course] in 2001’. For each item, the participants were asked to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with the relevant statement on a 5-point scale from 5 for ‘definitely agree’ to 1 for ‘definitely disagree’, where the midpoint (3) was ‘only to be used if the statement doesn’t apply to you or if you really find it impossible to give a definite answer’. The questionnaire was mailed to students in January 2002, and a reminder was sent out later that month. Results and discussion A total of 2177 students returned completed copies of the questionnaire, representing an overall response rate of 60.6%; 36% of the respondents were male, 64% were female; and they were aged between 21 and 87 with a mean of 48.0 years. Table 3 shows the response rates for the seven courses. These varied significantly from one another, X 2 (6, N52177)590.62, p50.00, but in each case they would be considered adequate for a postal survey (Babbie, 1973, p. 165; Kidder, 1981, pp. 150–151). The first part of the data analysis was concerned with the psychometric properties of the CEQ and the RASI in the context of distance education. Their internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach’s (1951) coefficient alpha; their construct validity was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis; and their discriminant validity was evaluated by means of comparisons among the students taking the seven courses, adjusted for the possible effects of variations in age and gender. The second part of the analysis was concerned with identifying relationships between scores on the CEQ and scores on the RASI using canonical correlation analysis. Values of g 2 (equal to the complement of Wilks’ lambda) are provided as measures of effect size (Tabachnik & Fidell, 1996, p. 390). CEQ scores On examining the responses to the CEQ, it was found that 393 students had failed to provide a response to one or more of the 36 items. In most cases, these were isolated instances, and it was felt appropriate to regard them as items that did not apply to the student in question; accordingly, they were coded as ‘3’ (i.e., ‘doesn’t apply to me’). However, 25 respondents had missed more than four items, and they were dropped from further analysis. Accordingly, the final sample consisted of 2152 students who had provided usable sets of data. The different scales identified by Richardson and Woodley (2001) contain varying numbers of items, and so the students were assigned scores on each of these seven scales by computing the mean response across the relevant items. Descriptive statistics are provided in Table 4. The scores on all seven scales showed a satisfactory level of internal consistency, as evidenced by values of Cronbach’s (1951) coefficient alpha between 0.63 and 0.86. 16 J. T. E. Richardson An exploratory factor analysis was carried out on these scale scores. First, a principal components analysis was used to determine the number of factors to extract. This identified one component with an eigenvalue greater than 1, which explained 45.0% of the total variance. The idea that just one factor should be extracted was supported by Cattell’s (1966) scree test using both visual inspection and Zoski and Jurs’ (1996) objective procedure, and it was also confirmed by a comparison with the results of a parallel analysis of 1000 random correlation matrices using the program devised by O’Connor (2000). For the main analysis, the aim was to identify global dimensions underlying students’ perceptions. Principal axis factoring was therefore used to extract just one factor with squared multiple correlations as the initial estimates of community. The loadings of the seven scales on the single extracted factor are shown in Table 4. All seven scales showed loadings greater than 0.30 in magnitude, which indicates that this factor can be interpreted as an overall measure of perceived academic quality. However, the precise pattern of loadings implies that students’ perceptions of academic quality were determined somewhat more by their perceptions of receiving good materials and clear goals and standards than by their perceptions of receiving generic skills, good tutoring, appropriate assessment, choice in their studies, or an appropriate workload. A second-order factor-based scale, labelled ‘Perceived Academic Quality’, was constructed by computing each student’s mean score across the seven CEQ scales (cf. Pedhazur & Schmelkin, 1991, pp. 625–626). This scale exhibited good internal consistency, as shown by a coefficient alpha of 0.79. A 37th item (‘In general, I am satisfied with the quality of [course]’) is often included in the CEQ to validate its use as a measure of perceived quality. All of the students who had provided usable responses to the CEQ had responded to this item. The overall mean response on a scale from 1 to 5 was 4.25, and the modal response on all seven courses was 4, which implies a high degree of satisfaction. The correlation coefficients between the scores on the seven scales and the responses to Item 37 were: Appropriate Assessment, +0.39; Appropriate Workload, +0.43; Clear Table 4. Means, standard deviations, coefficient alphas and factor loadings of CEQ scales Scale No. of items Mean SD Coefficient alpha Factor loadings Appropriate Assessment 6 4.14 0.75 0.63 0.53 Appropriate Workload 5 3.08 1.09 0.85 0.47 Clear Goals and Standards 4 3.67 0.95 0.81 0.73 Generic Skills 7 3.23 0.83 0.82 0.60 Good Materials 3 4.01 0.84 0.76 0.74 Good Tutoring 8 3.72 0.81 0.86 0.58 Student Choice 3 2.73 0.79 0.67 0.52 Perceived Academic Quality 3.51 0.58 Note: N52152. Students’ perceptions of academic quality 17 Goals and Standards, +0.57; Generic Skills, +0.43; Good Materials, +0.66; Good Tutoring, +0.40; and Student Choice, +0.35 (p50.00 in each case). In other words, the students’ reported level of satisfaction with Open University courses was determined rather more by their perceptions of receiving good materials and clear goals and standards than by their perceptions of receiving generic skills, an appropriate workload, good tutoring, appropriate assessment, or choice in their studies. This is very similar to the pattern of loadings of the seven scales on the single extracted factor, and this in turn provides further support for the interpretation of this second-order factor as a measure of perceived academic quality. A univariate analysis of variance was carried out on the measure of perceived academic quality to compare the students who had taken the seven courses, controlling for the covariates of age and gender (which were unavailable for one student). There was a weak but statistically significant difference among the students who had taken the seven courses, F(6, 2142)53.57, g 2 50.01, p50.00. However, the effects of age, F(1, 2142)50.43, g 2 50.00, p50.51, and gender, F(1, 2142)52.84, g 2 50.00, p50.09, were not significant. In short, the seven scales of the CEQ proved to have satisfactory internal consistency according to the values of coefficient alpha. The construct validity of the CEQ was shown by the fact that they collectively defined a single higher-order factor that could be interpreted as a measure of perceived academic quality. Its discriminant validity was shown by the fact that it differentiated among students who had taken different courses. The latter variation was not particularly great, but this can be attributed to the common ‘house style’ of Open University courses and the impact of a rigorous and centralised system of quality assurance (Lawless & Richardson, 2004). RASI scores On examining the responses to the RASI, it was found that 89 students had not provided a response to one or more of the 52 items. In most cases, these were again isolated instances, and it was felt appropriate to regard them as items that did not apply to the student in question; accordingly, they were coded as ‘3’ (i.e., ‘doesn’t apply to me’). However, 28 respondents had missed more than four items, and so they were dropped from further analysis. Accordingly, the final sample consisted of 2149 students who had provided usable sets of data. Following Entwistle et al. (2000), subscale scores were assigned by computing the total scores across the relevant items, and therefore these scores vary between 4 and 20; scale scores were similarly assigned by computing the total scores across the relevant subscales. Descriptive statistics are summarised in Table 5. The scores on the 13 subscales generally exhibited a satisfactory level of internal consistency, as evidenced by values of Cronbach’s (1951) coefficient alpha between 0.50 and 0.82. An exploratory factor analysis was carried out on these subscale scores. First, a principal components analysis was again used to determine the number of factors to extract. This analysis identified three components with eigenvalues greater than 1, 18 J. T. E. Richardson which explained 60.8% of the total variance. The idea that three factors should be extracted was supported by Cattell’s (1966) scree test both through visual inspection and using Zoski and Jurs’ (1996) procedure, and it was also confirmed by comparison with the results of a parallel analysis of 1000 random correlation matrices using the program devised by O’Connor (2000). For the main analysis, the aim was to identify more global approaches to studying. Consequently, principal axis factoring was used to extract three factors with squared multiple correlations as the initial estimates of community. Finally, the extracted factor matrix was submitted to oblique rotation using a quartimin method. The loadings of the subscales on the three extracted factors are shown in Table 5. It is clear that the factors reflected a deep approach, a surface approach and a strategic approach, respectively. There was a positive correlation between the first and third factors, but there were smaller negative correlations between the second factor and both the first and third factors. A multivariate analysis of variance was carried out on the students’ scores on the three main scales of the RASI to compare the students who had taken the seven Table 5. Means, standard deviations, coefficient alphas and factor loadings of RASI subscales Subscale Mean SD Coefficient alpha Factor loadings 1 2 3 Deep Approach Seeking Meaning 16.35 2.73 0.68 0.67 20.04 0.20 Relating Ideas 15.20 2.85 0.63 0.84 20.03 20.08 Use of Evidence 15.85 2.53 0.61 0.77 0.11 0.09 Interest in Ideas 17.24 2.58 0.70 0.58 20.13 0.03 Total 64.63 8.72 Strategic Approach Organised Studying 13.15 3.44 0.55 0.02 20.19 0.68 Time Management 15.03 3.86 0.82 20.11 20.17 0.85 Alertness to Assessment Demands 13.31 3.19 0.58 0.07 0.25 0.40 Achieving 16.45 2.71 0.65 0.17 20.17 0.63 Monitoring Effectiveness 16.76 2.75 0.69 0.32 0.05 0.52 Total 74.69 11.85 Surface Approach Lack of Purpose 5.85 2.57 0.63 20.12 0.48 20.16 Unrelated Memorising 9.24 3.01 0.50 20.10 0.66 0.02 Syllabus-Boundness 10.98 3.39 0.59 20.31 0.43 0.07 Fear of Failure 11.90 4.47 0.80 0.12 0.62 20.12 Total 37.97 9.64 Factor correlations Factor 1 1.00 20.27 0.44 Factor 2 20.27 1.00 20.17 Factor 3 0.44 20.17 1.00 Note: N52149. Students’ perceptions of academic quality 19 courses, controlling for the covariates of age and gender. There was once again a statistically significant difference among the students who had taken the seven courses, F(18, 6045)58.08, g 2 50.07, p50.00, and there were statistically significant though weaker effects of age, F(3, 2137)520.15, g 2 50.03, p50.00, and gender, F(3, 2137)522.97, g250.03, p50.00. Univariate tests demonstrated that there were statistically significant differences among the students who had taken the seven courses in terms of their scores on Deep Approach, F(6, 2139)511.95, g 2 50.03, p50.00, Strategic Approach, F(6, 2139)54.43, g 2 50.01, p50.00, and Surface Approach, F(6, 2139)57.55, g 2 50.02, p50.00. Age was positively correlated with scores on Deep Approach, F(1, 2139)529.04, g 2 50.01, p50.00, and on Strategic Approach, F(1, 2139)550.31, g 2 50.02, p50.00, but negatively correlated with scores on Surface Approach, F(1, 2139)522.97, g 2 50.01, p50.00. Women produced higher scores than men on Strategic Approach, F(1, 2139)526.57, g 2 50.01, p50.00, and on Surface Approach, F(1, 2139)521.80, g 2 50.01, p50.00, but not on Deep Approach, F(1, 2139)51.83, g 2 50.00, p50.18. In short, the 13 scales of the RASI proved to have satisfactory internal consistency according to the values of coefficient alpha. The construct validity of the RASI was shown by the fact that they collectively defined three higher-order factors that corresponded to the three original approaches to studying. The discriminant validity of the RASI was shown by the fact that it differentiated among students who had taken different courses. The latter variation was not particularly great, but this can again be attributed to the common ‘house style’ of Open University courses and the impact of a rigorous and centralised system of quality assurance. Relationships between CEQ scores and RASI scores Of the 2177 respondents, 2137 students produced usable responses to both the CEQ and the RASI. Table 6 shows the correlation coefficients between their scores on the CEQ and the RASI. All but three of these correlation coefficients were statistically significant (a50.05, two-tailed tests), which is in itself unsurprising, given the size of the sample. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that the proportion of variance shared between the scores on the CEQ and the scores on the RASI was 61%, F(91, 13205)523.80, g 2 50.61, p50.00. A canonical correlation analysis was carried out on the within-group regression between the scores on the seven scales of the CEQ and the 13 subscales of the RASI. All seven canonical correlations were statistically significant, but only the first two canonical correlations accounted for an overlap in variance of more than 10%. The correlation coefficients between the first two canonical variates and the scores on the 20 dependent variables are shown in Table 7. The first canonical variate was positively associated with all of the scales of the CEQ, with the four subscales defining a deep approach, and with four of the five subscales defining a strategic approach, but it was negatively associated with the four subscales defining a surface approach. In other words, perceptions of academic 20 J. T. E. Richardson quality were positively related to the more desirable approaches to studying (a deep approach and, to a lesser extent, a strategic approach) and negatively related to undesirable approaches to studying (a surface approach). The absolute magnitude of the associations tended to be greater for the subscales defining a surface approach: in other words, positive perceptions of academic quality tended to be more strongly related to the discouragement of undesirable approaches to studying than to the encouragement of more desirable approaches. The second (and less important) covariate was positively associated with scores on Generic Skills, Good Materials, Fear of Failure, Monitoring Effectiveness, and Interest in Ideas, but negatively associated with scores on Appropriate Workload. This suggests that students who combined the peripheral aspects of all three approaches to studying perceived their courses as enhancing their generic skills at the expense of incurring a heavier workload. Conclusions In this study, the RASI was administered to a large, representative sample of students taking courses by distance learning. The results demonstrate that, like the CEQ (cf. Richardson & Woodley, 2001), the RASI is remarkably robust in the highly distinctive context of the Open University. This study also enabled a direct comparison to be made between students’ scores on the RASI and the same students’ scores on the CEQ. The results are consistent with those obtained by Table 6. Correlation coefficients between RASI subscale scores and CEQ scale scores RASI subscales CEQ scales AA AW CG GS GM GT SC Deep Approach Seeking Meaning 0.26 0.19 0.22 0.28 0.24 0.19 0.13 Relating Ideas 0.23 0.16 0.16 0.29 0.24 0.17 0.16 Use of Evidence 0.20 0.10 0.10 0.21 0.15 0.12 0.06 Interest in Ideas 0.27 0.15 0.20 0.34 0.35 0.19 0.20 Strategic Approach Organised Studying 0.15 0.13 0.17 0.18 0.13 0.10 0.08 Time Management 0.16 0.10 0.17 0.17 0.14 0.09 0.04 Alertness to Assessment Demands 20.01 20.04 0.04 0.17 0.06 0.09 0.02 Achieving 0.25 0.18 0.26 0.30 0.25 0.21 0.10 Monitoring Effectiveness 0.20 0.10 0.22 0.27 0.21 0.21 0.12 Surface Approach Lack of Purpose 20.33 20.31 20.39 20.28 20.42 20.27 20.22 Unrelated Memorising 20.42 20.42 20.40 20.21 20.30 20.22 20.17 Syllabus-Boundness 20.27 20.23 20.16 20.11 20.15 20.14 20.11 Fear of Failure 20.19 20.53 20.30 20.02 20.15 20.13 20.06 Note: AA, Appropriate Assessment; AW, Appropriate Workload; CG, Clear Goals and Standards; GS, Generic Skills; GM, Good Materials; GT, Good Tutoring; SC, Student Choice. N52137. Students’ perceptions of academic quality 21 Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) and by Parsons (1988) in demonstrating a link between students’ approaches to learning and their perceptions of the academic environment. The latter researchers compared students’ responses to the ASI and the CPQ, and the amount of overlap between the two instruments was far from impressive, suggesting that perceptions of the academic environment were not an important determinant of approaches to studying. Nevertheless, recent investigations have found a far higher degree of overlap between students’ responses to the 32-item version of the ASI and their responses to the CEQ: in three different studies, students’ scores on these two instruments shared between 47% and 64% of their respective variance (Lawless & Richardson, 2002; Richardson & Price, 2003; Sadlo & Richardson, 2003). The results of the present study are entirely consistent with this pattern: the students’ scores on the RASI and the CEQ shared 61% of their respective variance. (In a bivariate relationship, this would correspond to a correlation coefficient of 0.78.) The present results confirm that there exists an intimate relationship between students’ perceptions of the quality of their courses in higher education and the approaches to studying that they adopt on those courses. This, in turn, is consistent with the notion that approaches to Table 7. Correlations from canonical correlation analysis of CEQ scores and RASI scores Variate 1 Variate 2 Canonical correlations 0.65 0.42 Course Experience Questionnaire Appropriate Assessment 0.72 0.16 Appropriate Workload 0.77 20.57 Clear Goals and Standards 0.77 0.07 Generic Skills 0.55 0.61 Good Materials 0.70 0.40 Good Tutoring 0.50 0.27 Student Choice 0.40 0.23 RASI: Deep Approach Seeking Meaning 0.48 0.32 Relating Ideas 0.42 0.32 Use of Evidence 0.30 0.24 Interest in Ideas 0.50 0.50 RASI: Strategic Approach Organised Studying 0.31 0.19 Time Management 0.31 0.19 Alertness to Assessment 0.05 0.32 Achieving 0.51 0.34 Monitoring Effectiveness 0.40 0.40 RASI: Surface Approach Lack of Purpose 20.73 20.26 Unrelated Memorising 20.81 0.16 Syllabus-Boundness 20.43 0.06 Fear of Failure 20.63 0.69 Note: N52137. Correlations greater than 0.30 in absolute magnitude are shown in italics. 22 J. T. E. Richardson studying depend on the perceived content, context and demands of the learning task. In the present investigation, neither the age nor the gender of the students was related to their scores on the CEQ, which suggests that they were capable of evaluating their courses in a manner that was essentially independent of their personal circumstances. Nevertheless, both age and gender showed statistically significant but weak relationships with their scores on the RASI. As in other studies (for a review, see Richardson, 1994), older students were more likely to exhibit desirable approaches to learning and less likely to exhibit undesirable approaches to learning than were younger students taking the same courses. Moreover, as in previous research in distance education (Richardson et al., 1999), although not in campus-based education (Richardson & King, 1991), women were more likely to adopt a surface approach than men, but there was no gender difference in the adoption of a deep approach. Even so, the finding of an overlap between students’ scores on the CEQ and their scores on the RASI is correlational in nature. Strictly speaking, it says nothing about either the existence or the direction of a causal relationship between approaches to studying and perceptions of the academic environment. It is usually inferred that variations in students’ perceptions of their learning context give rise to variations in their approaches to studying (e.g. Ramsden, 1988; Trigwell & Prosser, 1991; Prosser & Sendlak, 1994; Prosser et al., 1994; cf. Biggs, 1987, pp. 9, 96). Nevertheless, it is in principle possible that variations in students’ approaches to studying give rise to variations in their perceptions of the learning context. Marsh (1987) suggested that students might rate their courses more highly if they received better grades; analogously, students might judge their programmes more favourably because they find they have adopted more congenial ways of studying. Yet another possibility is that the causal link between students’ perceptions of their academic environment and their approaches to studying is bidirectional, so that variations in perceptions give rise to variations in approaches to studying and vice versa (cf. Biggs, 1993). Finally, Trigwell and Prosser (1997) proposed that there was an internal relationship between perceptions of the academic environment and approaches to studying, so that perceptions and approaches ‘are not independently constituted but … are considered to be simultaneously present in the students’ awareness’ (p. 243; see also Prosser & Trigwell, 1999a; 1999b, p. 13). All of these accounts are equally consistent with the finding of an association between students’ perceptions of their academic environment and their approaches to studying. However, if variations in students’ approaches to studying give rise to variations in their perceptions of the learning context, then factors that affect their approaches to studying should, in turn, influence their perceptions of the learning context. It is hard to square this idea with the findings of the present investigation that students’ age and gender predicted their scores on the RASI but were essentially unrelated to their ratings on the CEQ. Similar results with regard to the effects of age were obtained by Sadlo and Richardson (2003). A fortiori, these findings are also Students’ perceptions of academic quality 23 inconsistent with the idea that the causal relationship between perceptions of the learning context and approaches to studying is bidirectional and with the idea of an internal relationship between perceptions of the learning context and approaches to studying: on both these accounts, any factors that influence students’ approaches to studying should also influence their perceptions of the learning context. In short, the present findings provide indirect evidence that students’ perceptions of their academic environment influence their approaches to studying, rather than vice versa. The fact that age and gender were related to scores on the RASI but not to ratings on the CEQ entails that demographic characteristics and perceptions of the academic environment are individually salient but mutually independent influences on approaches to studying. This conclusion is contrary to a model of student learning that was put forward by Prosser et al. (1994; Prosser & Sendlak, 1994), according to which perceptions of the learning context are influenced by demographic characteristics of the students themselves. However, it supports the more common assumption that student characteristics and contextual factors are distinct influences on approaches to studying (e.g. Newble & Entwistle, 1986; Biggs, 1987). Acknowledgements The author is grateful for James Hartley for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. References Babbie, E. R. (1973) Survey research methods (Belmont, CA, Wadsworth). Biggs, J. B. (1987) Student approaches to learning and studying (Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Research). Biggs, J. B. (1993) From theory to practice: a cognitive systems approach, Higher Education Research and Development, 12, 73–85. Cattell, R. B. 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work_fro7obpqmnal7mhfym6c7thvui	----	Volume 84 Issue 2 Spring 2010 The Journal of Dental Hygiene 75 An Analysis of Student Performance Benchmarks in Dental Hygiene via Distance Education Jodi L. Olmsted, RDH, BS, MS, EdS, PhD Abstract Purpose: Three graduate programs, 35 undergraduate programs and 12 dental hygiene degree completion programs in the United States use varying forms of Distance Learning (DL). Relying heavily on DL leaves an unanswered question: Is learner performance on standard benchmark as- sessments impacted when using technology as a delivery system? A 10 year, longitudinal examination looked for student performance differences in a Distance Education (DE) dental hygiene program. The purpose of this research was to determine if there was a difference in performance between learners taught in a traditional classroom as compared to their counterparts taking classes through an alternative delivery system. Methods: A longitudinal, ex post facto design was used. Two hundred and sixty–six subject records were examined. Seventy–seven individuals (29%) were lost through attrition over 10 years. One hundred and eighty–nine re- cords were used as the study sample, 117 individuals were located face– to–face and 72 were at a distance. Independent variables included time and location, while the dependent variables included course grades, grade point average (GPA) and the National Board of Dental Hygiene Examination (NB- DHE). Three research questions were asked: Were there statistically signifi- cant differences in learner performance on the National Board of Dental Hy- giene Examination (NBDHE)? Were there statistically significant differences in learner performance when considering GPAs? Did statistically significant differences in performance exist relating to individual course grades? T– tests were used for data analysis in answering the research questions. Results: From a cumulative perspective, no statistically significant differ- ences were apparent for the NBDHE and GPAs or for individual courses. Conclusions: Interactive Television (ITV), the synchronous DL system ex- amined, was considered effective for delivering education to learners if simi- lar performance outcomes were the evaluation criteria. Key Words: Distance Education, Distance Learning, Outcomes, Benchmarks, Dental Hygiene, Assessment, Student Performance, Allied Health This study supports the NDHRA priority area, Professional Education and Development: Validate and test measures that evaluate student critical thinking and decision making skills. ResearchResearch Introduction Educational opportunities con- tinue to grow exponentially in colleges and universities across the United States because of the implementation of technologi- cally based delivery systems.1 Distance learning (DL) or dis- tance education (DE), defined as the learner and facilitator separated by physical space, is facilitated by rapid advances in today’s technology.2 Technologi- cal changes, including computer use and fiber–optic cabling, syn- chronous interactive television systems (ITV) and other hybrid configurations, allow learning in other than the traditional face–to– face classrooms.3 In 2002, 1.6 million students took courses on–line across the United States. By 2003, the num- ber of online course enrollees climbed to 1.97 million, succeed- ed by 2.33 million in 2004.4,5 De- livery of online courses requires a technological platform and com- puter.6 Continued growth and ex- pansion of online coursework is now an integral element of main- stream higher education – 63% of schools offering undergraduate face–to–face programs also offer undergraduate programs online.7 Three graduate programs, 35 un- dergraduate and 12 dental hygiene degree completion programs in the United States now use vary- ing forms of DL.8,9 Even though a significant body of literature ex- ists documenting participant sat- isfaction using alternative mediums for delivering dental hygiene cours- es, 10–12 only one published quantita- tive research study existed verifying actual performance while receiving dental and dental hygiene education using various alternative delivery systems.13 Quantitative analyses of performance benchmarks from a programmatic perspective, such as grade point average (GPA), course 76 The Journal of Dental Hygiene Volume 84 Issue 2 Spring 2010 Review of the Literature The ADA CODA Standard 1 requires that “benchmarks or mea- sures of learning are used to demon- strate effectiveness”14 and are docu- mented in the areas of planning and assessment. Addressing the quality of educational programs is the in- tent of this Standard. Educational programs have a responsibility to assure the ongoing cycle of edu- cational assessment, planning and implementation. Evaluation assures learners receive current, relevant and cost efficient educational pro- gramming. Programs are account- able to stakeholders in assuring educational programs meets the ADA CODA Quality Standards. A key consideration of the Standards is broad–based, systematic, contin- uous data collection and analysis, which is designed to evaluate and promote achievement of program goals while maximizing academic success of enrolled students. The CODA Standard allows programs to identify their own goals, assur- ing competence within the disci- pline. Ongoing program assessment Methodology This research was designed to address the question: To what extent was learner performance on stan- dard benchmark assessments im- pacted when using technology as a delivery system? The evaluation of NBDHE scores, course grades and grades and scores on national ex- aminations provide research evi- dence of individual’s educational experiences in alternative delivery programs. The purpose of this study was determining whether face–to–face learners performed differently on established benchmark assessments than their classmates located at a distance. The defined benchmarks include course grades, GPAs and the National Board of Dental Hy- giene Examination (NBDHE). A longitudinal examination of bench- mark scores during a 10 year period looked for statistically significant differences in performance. Evalua- tion of entire educational programs, rather than single courses, addressed issues concerning data reliability, validity and the American Dental Association Commission of Dental Accreditation (ADA CODA) Stan- dard 1, relating to Institutional Ef- fectiveness. uses the NBDHE, GPAs and course grades to provide direct benchmark measures that are indicators of In- stitutional Effectiveness. Indirect measures, including retention, attri- tion, program transfer and employer satisfaction data also identify and document areas for continuing pro- cess and program improvements. Educational technology contin- ues transforming dental hygiene ed- ucation at a rapid pace. A review of the current dental hygiene literature indicates various program delivery models are being used by educa- tional institutions and program ad- ministrators to implement alterna- tive delivery methods for teaching and learning, as well as ongoing assessment.15–17 As institutions con- sider expanding learning using DL as a delivery modality, theoretical constructs need to be considered, such as those offered by Gussy et al18 and Magnussen,19 or theorized by this researcher. Additionally, as institutions consider advancing the profession at large by expand- ing educational opportunities for degree completion as suggested by Monson and Engeswick,20 it is cru- cial the concrete, statistical mea- sures of predictive performance be examined.21–22 A focus on statistical performance measures for authenti- cation instead of learner satisfaction data can provide a solid, evidence– based groundwork for continued use of DL for dental hygiene education. As dental hygienists seek to pursue degree completion and additional certification, it is important that both institutional and programmatic decisions are made based on solid predictors of academic performance over time rather than only student satisfaction surveys or outlier data from 1 or 2 courses.10–12 GPAs may ascertain program ef- fectiveness in the delivery of dental hygiene education. Learners were self–selected for statistical analysis based on location. The first group consisted of face–to–face (host site) learners while the second group consisted of learners located at a distance from the instructor via ITV. The study design evaluated if face– to–face and distance participants had statistically significant differences in performance.22 Independent vari- ables included location and time. Location determined group assign- ment while time included examin- ing graduate populations from 1997 through 2006. Dependent variables included course GPAs, cumulative GPAs and NBDHE scores. Research Questions Three questions were asked re- garding documentation of perfor- mance between face–to–face and distance college learners: Were there significant statistical 1. differences in performance on the NBDHE? Were there significant statistical 2. differences in GPAs? Were there significant statistical 3. differences in individual course grades? Population This study’s research population began with 266 students from the graduating classes of 1997 through 2006. One hundred and eighty–nine students graduated from the pro- gram in 10 years. There were 117 (44%) face–to–face instructor–lead learners, while 72 (27%) used the ITV system. All data files for the learners who graduated (n=189) were used for the study. Over the 10 year period, 77 stu- dents (29%) did not complete all ed- ucational coursework and graduate. Learners were required to complete exit interviews with a neutral party upon deciding to leave the program and institution. The data collected from individuals who did not com- plete the program (n=77) was used as part of the program effectiveness Volume 84 Issue 2 Spring 2010 The Journal of Dental Hygiene 77 Results Each of the study’s research questions are addressed based upon the statistical analyses while look- ing at each individual supposition. Discussion highlights findings from a program perspective, examining program effectiveness over time that may be of concern to allied health administrators and educators. Research Question 1 The first research question asked: Did significant statistical differenc- es in performance on the NBDHE exist between face–to–face and distance college learners? Cumula- tive data demonstrated no statisti- cally significant difference existed between host and distance learners’ performance over a 10 year period (Table I. Research Question 2 The second research question asked: Did significant statistical differences in GPAs exist between face–to–face versus DE college– level learners? No statistically sig- nificant differences existed between host and distance learners’ perfor- mance related to cumulative GPAs for the 10 cohorts (Table II). Research Question 3 The third research question asked: Did significant statistical dif- ferences in individual course grades Year Location N Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 114 89.19 183 –.109 .914 Distance 71 89.79 *p < .05 Table I: Ten year Cumulative Analysis of National Board Dental Hygiene Examination Scores by Host and Distance Learners Year Location N Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 117 3.37 186 –1.079 .282 Distance 71 3.43 *p < .05 Table II: Ten year Analysis of Cumulative GPAs by Host and Distance Learners process. Thirty–six persons (13.5%) not completing were located face– to–face and 41 persons (15.5%) re- ceived didactic education through ITV. Academic performance, while one reason for attrition, was not con- sidered a major factor. Attrition was equally distributed between both groups and was attributed to several categories beyond academic perfor- mance, including personal, health, ethical conduct considerations, mil- itary commitments, the profession not being “right” for the individual and death of 1 participant. It should also be noted the majority of attri- tion occurred during the first year of the program. The state where the research data was gathered has a statewide curriculum in place for dental hygiene education. This per- mits students to change academic location, if space is available, with- in the state. As individual personal situations change and people move, they can still complete educational programs elsewhere. While consid- ering the data, it should be noted a substantial number of individuals (n=14) transferred to different pro- grams within the state, taking ad- vantage of the statewide curriculum if personal situations warranted its necessity. Ten persons withdrew, citing they did not like instructor. This information is also important from a programmatic perspective as we consider CODA Standard 1. Seventy–five percent of participants completed the program and gradu- ated. Colleges and universities have the latitude under the auspices of CODA Standard 1 to determine ac- ceptable levels of attrition. While 29% of individuals not completing the program over a 10 year period might seem high, when considering Institutional Effectiveness, the pro- gram used the data to make continual revisions to the admissions process, faculty teaching assignments and tenure decisions. Positive impacts on increasing the state’s health care provider numbers and cost/benefit to the state’s economy were also factors documented to meet CODA Standard 1. Upon closer review, the data demonstrates, despite this attri- tion, the program was effective in providing and graduating dental hy- gienists using DL as an educational delivery mechanism. Data Analysis For each research question, inde- pendent group t–tests determined if any statistically significant differ- ences existed. Data was analyzed year–by–year, course by course and through cumulative comparisons. Furthermore, a t–test was applied to the aggregated group’s data. Only a portion of the data findings are re- ported here. Data analysis was con- ducted for documenting program effectiveness of DL. The results of this study, in documenting learner performance for an entire program, addresses one of 2 “gaps” noted in the scientific literature by Phipps and Merisotis23 – research learner outcomes for entire academic pro- grams and not just for individual courses. Phipps and Merisotis also recommended proposing and using a conceptual framework for consid- eration and potential testing for fur- ther DL research, which is posited separately by this author. Statistical Significance Statistical level of significance (p–value) was set at p<0.05. This value level is a routine alpha–level for probability testing of null hy- potheses. 78 The Journal of Dental Hygiene Volume 84 Issue 2 Spring 2010 exist between face–to–face and dis- tance college learners? Data was analyzed answering this question in 3 different ways: cumulatively, year by year and course by course, to identify any existing statistically significant trends. Only the results of the cumulative analysis are ad- dressed here. Comparing cumula- tive learner performance for the core dental hygiene courses revealed no statistically significant differences (Table III). It was determined no statistically significant differences existed in learner performance for the program’s entire didactic aca- demic curriculum over a 10 year period. It is important to note that year by year and course by course, statistically significant results were identified. The results were evaluated from a programmatic perspective while examining trends that might be of concern when considering CODA Standard 1. The results of the study, reflecting a 10 year period of com- parative data, identified no statisti- cally significant performance dif- ferences between face–to–face and distance learners on the various benchmark measures evaluated. Analysis of NBDHE scores, GPAs and cumulative core course grades were used to determine if CODA Standard 1 was met. Pro- gram completion rates, graduate success on the analyzed bench- marks, program improvement and change based on assessment data, plans, timelines and programs ef- fectiveness in meeting the stated missions, goals and strategic plans are all used as evidence document- ing Institutional Effectiveness. The data analyzed here as a component of effectiveness assessment sug- gests DE was as effective as tradi- tional methods for delivering edu- cational programming. Question 1 As a trend over time, no major differences were observed in per- formance on the NBDHE between host and distance learning cohorts. The research presented in Table I Oral Anatomy (508–101) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 107 2.96 134 1.223 .223 1997–2006 Distance 69 2.84 Dental Hygiene Theory I (508–113) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 114 3.73 184 1.445 .150 1997–2006 Distance 72 3.64 Nutrition (508–114) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 107 3.36 177 .001 .999 1997–2006 Distance 72 3.36 Periodontology (508–115) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 111 3.05 179 .853 .395 1997–2006 Distance 70 2.97 Oral Pathology (508–122) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 109 3.41 129 1.19 .233 1997–2006 Distance 72 3.30 Dental Pharmacology (508–123) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 116 3.35 185 .322 .748 1997–2006 Distance 71 3.32 Dental Hygiene Theory II (508–124) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 117 3.65 187 1.199 .232 1997–2006 Distance 72 3.57 Community Dental Health (508–131) Course Averages by Host and Distance Learners Student Year Location n Mean df t–value 2–Tailed Prob. 1997–2006 Host 116 3.70 186 –1.09 .913 1997–2006 Distance 72 3.71 *p < .05 Table III: Ten year Analysis of Core Dental Hygiene Courses provides exploratory, longitudinal DL data for this national benchmark, providing documentation of learner success as an example of evidence meeting CODA Standard 1. Question 2 Based on the GPA evidence pre- sented in Table II, the data suggests DE can be effective for dental hy- giene education. This data may also Volume 84 Issue 2 Spring 2010 The Journal of Dental Hygiene 79 Conclusion Allied health and dental hygiene programs should continue offering education using DL as an alterna- tive delivery mechanism. This re- search identified learners at various locations who performed equally well on standard benchmark as- sessments documenting program effectiveness. DL was considered an effective medium for delivering educational programming, and the use of DL should be continued. Ad- ditionally, DL could be used for de- livering not only other allied health programs, but could also deliver other educational programs in the Acknowledgement The author thanks Mary Jo Ti- etge and Amelia Ann Fox, techni- cal writer, and the administration, faculty and staff of the Wisconsin Technical College System dental hygiene program, which allowed this study to be conducted. Discussion The statistical analyses of per- formance outcomes suggest CODA Standard 1 was met as evidenced by the 10 year cumulative NBDHE and GPA data, and the cumulative course by course data. The results docu- mented learner performance for an entire academic program rather than only analyzing individual cours- es, addressing one of the research gaps noted by Phipps and Meriso- tis.23 The data also helps answer the question: Is it prudent for colleges’ and universities’ dental and dental hygiene programs to continue ex- pansion of the use of DE as a means of course and program delivery? Based on these preliminary research findings, the answer appears to be yes. It is important to note the study design limits findings to dentistry and might not be applicable to other provide preliminary evidence for this national performance bench- mark for DL programs. Further- more, from a program perspective, this data also documents learner success as another example of evi- dence meeting CODA Standard 1. Even though some learners might not prefer DL for educational deliv- ery, their individual performance, as evidenced by GPAs, was not im- pacted by its use. Question 3 Cumulative analysis of core di- dactic course grades also provides a pattern of evidence documenting meeting the intent of Standard 1. An examination of the data for signifi- cant trends indicates these courses’ cumulative averages have remained consistent and stable over time. The 8 core dental hygiene courses did not show statistically signifi- cant differences in performance between face–to–face and distance students. This study documents one programs’ successful delivery of a dental hygiene educational program while using DL. educational programming. Another question posed is: Can a perspective body of knowledge be generated regarding learner perfor- mance on given standard outcome measures? Performance measured by GPAs and course grades as na- tional benchmarks provide gener- alized, external validity to other programs because this study data lays the foundation for DL research related to academic programs. The findings of this research also pro- vide insights into the use of DL as a viable delivery mechanism for education. In addition, it provides a foundational basis for benchmark comparison for future DL research for programs considering using this method for program delivery. If similar performance outcomes are the decision–making factor, the study findings suggest the use of DE is a viable mechanism for educa- tional delivery. Finally, this research provides an analysis of performance over time, rather than 1 or 2 years, for an entire educational program using DL technologies. This data might assist administrators at vari- ous colleges or universities in de- cision–making processes regarding the implementation of DL program- ming for general education, allied health or, specifically, dental and dental hygiene programs. same manner. A path analysis should be under- taken as we consider inferring data back to larger populations for both GPAs and course grades. It must be stated that DL is not for every- one. Further research may include analyzing this national benchmark data and determining what factors promote student success in dental hygiene DL programs. Once research is conducted identifying persons for whom the DL option is not a preferred de- livery mechanism, strong recom- mendations could be made to that individual or individuals to pro- vide guidance into taking program courses with face–to–face cohorts for improving performance results, retention, learner satisfaction, per- severance and, ultimately, program completion and graduation. There is a need to replicate this study using data from asynchronous DL programs, which have replaced the synchronous model studied in the current paper. . Jodi L. Olmsted is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wis- consin Stevens Point in the College of Professional Studies, Health Sci- ences Department and was with the first DH program that began offer- ing its entire didactic curriculum to students via distance education. Jodi was the 2008 recipient of the ADHA Irene Newman Professional Development Award. She is the owner, president and distance edu- cation consultant for Kaleidoscope Consulting, LLC. 80 The Journal of Dental Hygiene Volume 84 Issue 2 Spring 2010 Wilson M. Distance Degrees. Oakland (OR): Um-1. pqua Educational Resource Alliance; 2001. Wahlstrom C, Williams BK, Shea P. The successful 2. distance learning student. Belmont (CA): Scratch- gravel Press; 2003. O’Lawrence H. The influences of distance learning 3. on adult learners. Techniques. 2006;81:47–49. Allen IE, Seaman J. Seizing the opportunity: The 4. quality and extent of online education in the United States, 2002 and 2003. Wellsley (MA): Sloan Con- sortium; 2003. Allen IE, Seaman J. Entering the mainstream: The 5. quality and extent of online education in the United States, 2003 and 2004. Wellsley (MA): Sloan Con- sortium; 2004. Rossman MH, Rossman ME. Facilitating distance 6. education. San Fransisco (CA): Jossey–Bass; 1995. Allen IE, Seaman J. Growing by degrees: Online ed-7. ucation in the United States, 2005. 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Accreditation standards for dental hygiene education programs. Chicago (IL): Ameri- can Dental Association; 2005. Gadbury–Amyot CC, Fried JL, Syme, SE. Technol-15. ogy in teaching and online (distance) learning: Two model programs. Access. 2007;21:10–17. Fried JL. Innovations in Education and Technology. 16. J Dent Hyg. 2007;81(1):1–9. Bray KS, Gadbury–Amyot CC, Mitchell TV. Pro-17. viding advanced degrees in dental hygiene via com- puter mediated distance learning: A model program. J Contemp Dent Pract. 2006;7(5):96–107. Gussy MG, Knevel RJ, Sigurdson V, Karlberg G. 18. Theoretical and practical considerations for the development of online international collaborative learning for dental hygiene students. Int J Dent Hyg. 2006;4(3):154–159. Magnussen L. Applying the principles of significant 19. learning in the e–learning environment. J Nurs Educ. 2006;47(2):82–86. Monson AL, Engeswick LM. ADHA’s focus on ad-20. vancing the profession: Minnesota’s dental hygiene educators’ response. J Dent Hyg. 2007;81(2):1–12. Alzahrani MJ, Thomson EM, Bauman DB. Pre-21. dictors of Student Success in an entry–level bac- calaureate dental hygiene program. J Dent Hyg. 2007;81(2):1–13. Bernard RM, et al. How does distance education 22. compare with classroom instruction? A meta– analysis of the empirical literature. Rev Educ Res. 2004;74(3):379–434. Phipps R, Merisotis J. What’s the difference? A re-23. view of contemporary research on distance learning in higher education. Washington, DC. National Edu- cation Association; 1999. References http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=1043-254x(2007)81:3L.62[aid=9141097] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0022-0337(2002)66:9L.1012[aid=7935139] http://www.adha.org http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/programs/dahlt/alliedus.asp http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/programs/dahlt/alliedus.asp 
work_fswocdan4ba7dkdt3u7cjcaqoa	----	IRMJ01mcmanus 20 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to understand the expectations and behaviors of business aviation pilots toward online learning. The authors believe that the company able to offer an integrated, individualized and useful online training experience will gain a significant competitive advantage. To that end, the authors have researched and synthesized studies that are currently available and relate to this important future product. In addition, an exploratory survey of business aviation pilots and interviews with key aviation industry players are used to determine current attitudes and expectations toward online learning. The scope of this paper will be limited to exploring the niche market of business aviation pilots using the aviation training company CAE SimuFlite and their new SimfinityTM .technology. However, the authors consider the concepts discussed to be applicable to all business aviation pilots. Keywords: active learning; business aviation industry; decomposed theory of planned behavior; visual imagery effective communication Distance Education in the Business Aviation Industry: Issues and Opportunities Mahesh S. Raisinghani, University of Dallas, USA Mohammed Chowdhury, University of Dallas, USA Chris Colquitt, University of Dallas, USA Pedro M. Reyes, University of Dallas, USA Nilofar Bonakdar, University of Dallas, USA Joseph Ray, University of Dallas, USA Jose Robles, University of Dallas, USA INTRODUCTION: BUSINESS AVIATION INDUSTRY The business aviation industry is a niche market within the general aviation industry concerned with air travel services specific for business customers. This in- dustry ranges from individuals owning one small piston-powered aircraft to multina- tional corporations that possess a number of larger long-range jet aircraft that can carry up to 19 passengers over several thou- sand miles. The majority of business avia- tion missions are conducted on demand. Only a handful of companies operate scheduled flights, and are typically known as “corporate shuttles.” According to the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), the number of companies operating business aircraft increased nearly 50% between 1999 and 2001. This is largely due to the corporate Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 21 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. world’s realization that the use of business aircraft as a means of transportation and a viable business tool leads to increases in efficiency and productivity (NBAA Busi- ness Aviation Fact Book, 2002). The world- wide fleet size for business aviation exceeds 22,000 aircraft, with the vast majority of business aircraft (more than 15,000) located in the United States (U.S.). Moreover, in a recent survey by Honeywell Aerospace Company, the expected number of business jet deliveries worldwide over the next de- cade will exceed 8,400 aircrafts, valued at more than $130 billion. Each aircraft that is scheduled for full-time operations would typically require five pilots per aircraft — more than 100,000 business pilots required worldwide (with more than 75,000 for the U.S. alone). This means that over the next 10 years, more than 40,000 new pilot posi- tions will be created due to the arrival of new aircrafts alone. STATE OF BUSINESS AVIATION TRAINING Business aviation pilots are highly trained and usually possess advanced pilot credentials, such as an Airline Transport Rating (ATP). In the U.S., business air- craft fly under strict regulations as defined by the Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The training required under the FAA and similar regulatory bodies worldwide is very specific, where a pilot in command (captain) requires continuous training ev- ery 6 months and a second in command (co-pilot) will require training at least once a year. The training is aircraft specific and is requisite for each aircraft the pilot flies. At a meta-level, the key difference between existing online education systems and those for aviation pilot training relates to the online education that is envisioned for successful pilot training. The intent of this study is to empirically explore the rel- evant concepts and ideas based on percep- tions and previous studies of pilots coupled with what is envisioned for the future of online distance learning (i.e., data centric, artificial intelligence, simulation and inter- active multi media). Today, this training is almost always conducted in a combination of personnel study, classroom lectures and simulator training. One major facility that conducts this type of training is CAE SimuFlite in Dallas, Texas. SimuFlite opened in 1984 as the first of its kind to offer multi-platform training in a comfort- able environment at one location. That same year, the first all-simulator business jet type rating was earned. Simulator training is the standard for today’s pilot to earn air- craft type ratings because it is more cost effective and safer than using actual air- craft. In the latter part of the 1980s, SimuFlite introduced a computer-based training (CBT) program called FasTrak. It was tedious and non-engaging. Pilot cus- tomers were dissatisfied; therefore, FasTrack was eliminated in 1991. Unfor- tunately, this failure damaged the reputa- tion of SimuFlite and followed them for many years. Today, SimuFlite has more than 375 employees and 29 full-flight mo- tion simulators. It has revenues of C$150 million and is owned by CAE of Canada. CAE is a conglomerate dedicated to aero- space, defense and marine control tech- nologies and training solutions. Based out of Canada, CAE generates revenues in excess of Canadian $1 billion and employs more than 7,000 people (CAE SimuFlite, n.d.). 22 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION CAE SimuFlite is the No. 2 provider of business aviation training, following Flight Safety International (FSI). Additionally, there are a number of smaller training fa- cilities that exist throughout the world. Growing competition due to increased mar- ket demands and substitute product offer- ings created by new technologies are threatening SimuFlite’s market share. To remain competitive and to continue to be a leader in business aviation flight training, SimuFlite is in an opportune position to com- bine the well-established training knowledge and techniques with the cutting-edge tech- nology of CAE in order to provide interac- tive distance learning. SimuFlite’s business strategy can be viewed as customer centric. By under- standing its client (the business aviator) as well as catering to the capricious and qual- ity-demanding nature of this niche market, a well-thought-out online ground school training program will not only cater to the new demands of the future computer-ori- ented business aviator but also to the cost- conscious aircraft operator who wishes to reduce the pilots’ time away for training. With the addition of other technologies and techniques, such as “virtual instructors,” customer relationship management (CRM) tools, differentiated instruction theories and broadband Internet, we could avoid a re- peat of the FasTrak failure. Today’s technol- ogy can provide for well-planned and -ex- ecuted differentiated data-driven instruction. LITERATURE REVIEW AND SYNTHESIS Pilots are by their education and vo- cation technically proficient. The pilot cul- ture is one that enjoys new and exciting technology and is very inquisitive and dili- gent. Pilots enjoy change and newness, but they want to be in control (Rose, 2001). Current Attitudes Current attitudes toward distance learning and/or CBT for business aviation pilots are reflected in the concerns over the failed history of SimuFlite’s FasTrack CBT training system. Clients were unhappy because they wanted more human inter- action than was possible with FasTrack (CAE, 2003). Further, many other online courses are not delivered in a way that is conducive to effective learning (Sand & Schoenfelder, 1998). According to Lehrer, Moore and Telfer’s (1999) research, traditional pilot ground training that instructors conduct in the classroom environment is more on a surface or rote level instead of the deep or intrinsic level they found was desired by pilots. Many instructors take the approach of preparing the student to pass an exam by “teaching to the exam.” One form of “teaching to the exam” is by using govern- ment aviation exam questions as talking points during class discussions and evalua- tions. They believe that there is a lack of congruence in how pilots and instructors approach learning, which can be overcome with the concept of “Structure of the Learning Outcome” (SOLO), first offered by Biggs and Collis in 1982. This five-level scaffolding approach can be combined with cooperative and collaborative learning and modeling to provide the deep or intrinsic learning desired by pilots. This scaffolding begins with the pre-structural level, where there is little understanding, and moves through five levels to the extended abstract level, where the pilot turns reflexively on oneself. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 23 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. According to Small, Lakowske, Breese and Callejo (1999), CBT is limited by the lack of full user interaction required to fully explore complex tasks that call for “what if” analysis. They support a “closed loop” system of training — feedback pro- vided using flight operations quality assur- ance (FOQA) programs and visualization systems — instead of the “open loop” system — infrequent feedback and little objective data to assess — used commonly today in pilot training. A groundbreaking 1999 study by the FAA on the use of personal computer- based aviation training devices took the position that CBT training coupled with emerging technologies will be very benefi- cial in reducing the pilot error accident rate from its staggering 87% level in 1999. The FAA also allowed for the substitution of CBT hours for actual flight hours, a major cost savings for pilots and an official in- centive for developing such systems. A Forrester survey of training man- agers and knowledge officers of 40 global 2,500 companies conducted by John P. Dalton reveals that general attitudes con- cerning online training reflect enthusiasm about online training possibilities. Cost sav- ings similar to the $80 million in travel and housing expenses saved by IBM as a re- sult of their global online learning efforts in 1999 (Delio, 2000) could also be realized by the business aviation industry. Differentiated Training Herold, Davis, Fedor and Parsons (2001) provide excellent concepts in pro- filing the pilot customer around three im- portant personality dispositions found to be directly related to training effectiveness; conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience. Combined with the Aviation Education Reinforcement Option (AERO), concepts mentioned in the 2000 study by Karp, McCurry, Turney and Harms; and the Holistic Technology — Based Training models (HTBT) set forth in the 1998 study by Hsu and White, it is clear that any interactive training program must begin with understanding the training pilot. HTBT is a “virtual learning envi- ronment” in which a thorough understand- ing of factors such as education and read- ing level, subject matter expertise, learning capabilities and experience of the student are essential. The pilots’ training needs are then tailored and fitted into a “collabora- tive learning environment.” In fact the HTBT models claim that the lack of col- laboration is the “Achilles Heel” of tech- nology-based training. The AERO and SOLO models men- tioned earlier both emphasize collaborative and cooperative learning. In the AERO model, collaborative learning is described as a team effort in which students are re- quired to define “roles and responsibilities” amongst themselves. The AERO model com- bines collaborative learning with cooperative learning techniques, in which small groups of students engage to solve a problem. “The AERO model incorporates elements of the adult education paradigm; learning style theory, including gender specific differences; cooperative and collaborative learning techniques; and personal computer-based flight simulator programs, to bridge the gap between the classroom and the flight line.” (Karp et al., 2000) Learning style theories must incorpo- rate auditory, visual and tactile learners. However, in a combined study of 117 pilots by Karp, Condit and Nullmeyer (1999), the following results showed a definite major- ity of pilots, 44.4%, are tactile learners. Yet, 24 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. the typical classroom setting for pilot train- ing is geared toward the auditory and vi- sual learner, with little support for tactile learning (Karp et al., 2000). There are four key requirements nec- essary for an effective distance learning program: Interactivity, Active Learning, Visual Imagery and Effective Communi- cation (Sherry, 1996). The technology cur- rently exists for an online pilot training pro- gram to provide all of these requirements, and advances in technology and communi- cations infrastructures will only improve those capabilities. Online courses are already very in- teractive, with chat rooms, e-mail and threaded discussion groups. Many univer- sity programs offer highly interactive online courses, and the theories surrounding these techniques continue to evolve. Addition- ally, instant messaging provides a great medium for impromptu communications between a student and teacher or fellow student. Active learning is the idea that a stu- dent should actually participate in the learn- ing process, rather than simply listening to a lecture or reading a book. Certain as- pects of the flight management system are available in a simulated manner, and deliv- ering a virtual aircraft terminal to a student is certainly possible. Broadband promises to enable high-quality streaming video on demand. It is currently possible to deliver television-quality video on demand; as tech- nology improves, the capability to send DVD- and even HDTV-quality video will be realized. This will enable pilots to view videos of cockpit scenarios or other train- ing materials when they are best able to absorb that information. Effective commu- nication is much less a technology issue as it is a responsibility of the training company. Students must be able to communicate with an instructor through one of the mecha- nisms mentioned above, and have their questions answered in a timely manner. Hardware and Software Requirements Increasingly complex technology and more demanding international airspace structures will challenge pilots of today and of the future. It is fortunate that the tech- nology for training is also improving rap- idly. The emergence of broadband Internet access has enabled most corporations and many individuals to overcome two of the fundamental limitations of the Internet: di- aling in to an ISP and paying by the minute for access. Today, broadband carriers such as AT&T Broadband (www.attbi.com) of- fer high-speed, always-on access to the Internet at a reasonable, flat monthly rate. As broadband emerges as a common ac- cess method for people connecting to the Internet, the opportunity arises to provide a much richer online experience than has been offered before. With high-speed broadband connections it is possible to de- liver video and audio on demand, as well as conduct live video conversations. In ad- dition, with the always-on feature of broad- band, it is possible to know when people are at the computer and contact them im- mediately in real time. What this means for distance learn- ing is that the opportunity to offer rich online content is very real; as broadband becomes more pervasive, the demand for these ser- vices will only increase (Butters, 1999). In the context of business aviation pilot train- ing, the possibility exists to create a virtual flight crew, all online but at different physi- cal locations, and present them with sce- narios and observe how they react. Addi- tionally, the ability to meet with and discuss issues with a professor via videoconference is already well within reach. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 25 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Differentiated learning models using modern educational concepts coupled with this improved technology will be essential. However, Sand and Schoenfelder (1998) remind us that the key driver for the adop- tion of new technologies should be their instructional value and not their capabili- ties. Maintaining focus on the instructional value of any new technology ensures that the training, in and of itself, delivers on its main goal of correcting a performance problem. The technology suite required for the proposed model will have to address the needs for collaborative learning, coopera- tive learning and learning style theory as discussed in the SOLO, AERO, IDRS and HTBT models previously mentioned. It must be able to profile the pilot and to ma- nipulate the learning style to provide the optimum array of audio, visual and tactile training that best matches the pilot’s per- sonality and learning style. Open standards such as XML will be important. Many col- laboration tools are currently available. One example, LearningSpaceTM software, pro- vides for live, instructor-led training that combines application sharing, whiteboards, chat, audio and video. It is compliant with the Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee Standards (AICC) and claims to be easy to use (Stokes, 2000). However, its compatibility with XML and other open standards is currently weak. Tools such as TraxMedia’s ToolBook IITM software are excellent tools for providing Web-enabled true/false, multiple choice, drag and drop, and match item lesson ca- pability (Selvaratnam, 2002). Simulation tools such as SimfinityTM, provide for reengineered application simulation. In other words, they use actual software code used to create the original application in the simulation (actual flight data). This is enor- mously advantageous to CBT models in that the pilots are able to train with the actual configuration of their respective aircraft and experience real aircraft performance (CAE, 2002). The CAE tool suite, seLearningTM, is currently being developed, but it is envisioned that it will provide an improved simulation environment with in- creased interactive content (CAE SimuFlite, n.d.). Security Issues Cyber-terrorism can be defined as the deliberate attempt to use the Internet to disrupt, cripple and/or cause havoc to an industry or business. Several different forms of cyber-terrorism prevail within our cur- rent environment, including computer hack- ing and the spreading of computer viruses. While the Internet is a marvel in tech- nological ingenuity, it does facilitate cyber- terrorism and has become a breeding ground for both domestic and international terrorists. Terrorists have been increasingly using technology to further their cause, and some of the most sensitive sites in the world are vulnerable to this threat. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense (1999) has reported more than 250,000 attempts against its computer system in one year alone, 62% of them successful. The boundary-less and ever-reach- ing infrastructure of the Internet provide terrorists with the incentive to be relent- less in their attempts, knowing that their goal is within reach with minimal chances of being caught. Adding to this vulnerabil- ity and, in many cases, causing their own demise, are the security practices of many organizations. A recent study showed that while most organizations prepared docu- ments outlining their Internet strategies, complete with benefits, costs and use, few of them had considered the security impli- cations. Those that had took into account 26 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. one or two specific areas of risk but re- mained vulnerable in others (Trapp, 1997). Emerging Technology We believe that rapid advancements in technology will enable “fully online, in- teractive, time and place independent” (Wentling et al., 2000) online pilot training in the near future. In addition to these tech- nology changes, “high quality e-learning products and services such as content providers, authoring tools, training man- agement, portals, delivery systems and integrated solutions” (Wentling et al., 2000), which are already available, will make distance learning for business avia- tion pilots more effective. One of the many advantages of online learning for pilots is that it “will bring together a heterogeneous group, with complementary and diverse skills. … Advances in e-learning technolo- gies will continue to occur. These advances will be wireless, highly intelligent, interac- tive and integrative, accessible and easy to use. E-learning technologies will allow for a humanized learning environment. Online teams will be able to see and hear each other in real time on enlarged computer screens that will have high resolution” (Wentling et al., 2000). By using video conferencing technol- ogy, pilots can learn from each other any- where in the world. This technology will provide customized learning, so pilots can have their own personalized learning ex- perience based on their preferences. Wire- less connectivity is another issue that will make online training easier and more ben- eficial for pilots in order to learn anyplace, anywhere. This, coupled with the arrival of 3G, wireless broadband services and rich multimedia will give online training for pi- lots a new face in the future. VALUE-ADDING (PROCESS) SYSTEM DESIGN While online training for business aviation pilots’ product service bundle is highly service intensive, it still follows the traditional transformation process. Figure 1 depicts the value-adding (process) sys- tem within the traditional transformation process. The value-adding (process) sys- tem design involves decisions about the system’s flexibility, degree of customer in- volvement, technology and structure of sup- ply chain configuration. These four factors, when taken together, create synergy with the potential to satisfy the customer. Flex- ibility refers to the system’s ability to re- spond to changes in the learning environ- ment and produce a wide variety of tailor- fitted outputs. Technology implies a wide variety of issues, such as computer science and information technology. However, tech- nology in the value-adding (process) sys- tem design involves decisions about levels of automation. The degree of customer in- volvement relates to the customer’s role in creating or customizing the product service bundle. Finally, the structure of supply chain configuration pertains to the structure of information flows. The system’s flexibility is one factor that creates a differentiated product for each customer. This is achieved through the interactive training program by adopt- ing the student’s prior knowledge base and tailor-fitting a collaborative learning envi- ronment in order to arrive at a desired out- put (e.g., highly trained business aviation pilot). This reduces the uncertainty in train- ing needs and variability in the final prod- uct. Online courses imply information technologies such as broadband Internet, Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 27 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. largely due to the distance-learning con- cept. Yet in the design of the value-adding (process) system, technology here refers to the levels of flexible automation for in- teractive feedback from “virtual instruc- tors.” This may be found in customer rela- tionship management tools, where the col- laborative learning stems from segmenting the learning to a micro-level of one in an “anywhere-anytime” atmosphere. The degree of customer involvement or “active learning” factor design should consider the customer’s possible varying degrees of computer and information sys- tem literacy. Because the online course is not conducted in the traditional classroom setting, the customer fully participates in the learning process by interacting with the information. The supply chain configura- tion is structured by the information flows. The distance-learning concept allows for higher levels of spatial convenience by pro- viding customers with access in a large number of places. This may include inter- active chat-rooms, whiteboards and video- on-demand. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This exploratory study is far from definitive, but it is expected to provide in- sight and guidance for others interested in this dynamic industry environment. Given the time and financial constraints, the scope of this study was limited to addressing only an online interactive training environment. Furthermore, since the organization that we focused on in study was CAE SimuFlite, the technological scope of this study was modeled on the tools SimfinityTM and seLearningTM created by CAE (CAE, 2003) along with current and emerging technology. The integration of online train- ing efforts with CRM and Enterprise Re- source Planning (ERP) is outside the scope of this study. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use determine actual in- tentions and behavior (Davis, 1989). The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989) is a popular theoretical model that could be used to adequately determine the behavior of an aviation pilot. However, Figure 1. Value-adding (process ) system within the traditional transformation process Value-Adding (Process) System Flexibility Technology Customer Involvement Supply Chain Configuration Inputs Product Service Bundle 28 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. online learning for business aviation pilots is currently not available; therefore, TAM could not be used to predict and explain the voluntary use of online learning for busi- ness aviation pilots. This study is based upon a simplified version of the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (DTPB) to measure the attitudes and intention to use online learn- ing for getting prepared for a check ride by business aviation pilots. The DTPB is an alternative version of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen 1985, 1991), used to test the conditions where individuals do not have complete control over their be- havior. The TPB states that behavior is a direct function of behavioral intention and perceived behavioral control. This model is depicted in Figure 2. Since no viable online training system for business aviation pilots currently exist, the goal of this study is to suggest how to predict online learning behavior for busi- ness aviation pilots by gaining a through understanding of the intentions and attitudes of the respondents. In order to create a reliable data set, all the constructs used in the instrument were derived from the sim- plified version of the DTPB. The study used the seven major constructs in testing the DTPB: perceived usefulness, ease of use, compatibility, peer influence, superior influ- ence, efficacy and technology facilitating conditions. The study could not use the construct of resource facilitating conditions because the uses of online learning for get- ting prepared for check ride by business aviation pilots were not available. Based on the literature review, a survey of pilots was appropriate to determine their openness to and expectations for online learning. The survey for commercial pilots con- sisted of 20 carefully selected questions (Appendix A). The responses were given using a 7-point Likert scale, designed to be independent variables used to determine specific user perceptions and expectations of online learning. The intent of our survey, especially the first few questions, was to gain insight into the “attitudes” of pilots to- ward online learning. The major focus of the survey was to unveil realistic percep- tions, expectations and attitudes of business aviation pilots toward the concept of online training. In the professional aviation world, the need for periodic training is routine and well defined, so the intent of any training program is clear. The function of any pilot training is to provide realistic scenarios and the relevant information on systems, pro- cedures, rules, environment to handle the scenario (i.e., engine fire in bad weather on approach to Chicago’s O’Hare Inter- national airport), so pilots can improve their “proficiency” and pass required check rides. In addition, pilots desire “intrinsic” knowledge. To maintain proficiency of pi- loting skills, business aviators are required to satisfactorily complete periodic FAA- approved ground schools covering related aircraft courses. They also must satisfac- torily complete periodically scheduled flight and simulator checks according to FAA and company standards and procedures. For that reason, this study was concentrated on the aviation training market in Dallas, Texas — a major provider of business avia- tion training — among the business avia- tion pilots at SimuFlite in 2003. Since there are business aviation pi- lots readily available at SimuFlite, a conve- nience sampling method was used to draw the sample from the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) area. Samples from 50 business aviation pilots were collected from area business locations: SimuFlite, Million Air of Addison and Piedmont of Love Field Air- port, Dallas. Incomplete questionnaires were discarded and an additional sample was drawn. In order to provide anecdotal Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 29 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. evidence to support the study, interviews were conducted with key officials from CAE SimuFlite and with pilot clients. ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS Following completion of the survey, the data was tabulated and entered into the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) software for analysis. Descriptive statistics were collected for each survey question, and the constructs’ independent variables (survey questions) were tested for reliability using reliability analysis to determine a Cronbach’s Alpha (acceptable a > 0.70). The results were then used for a factor analysis using a Varimax rotation. A value of l > 0.40 was assumed to show strength of relationship between the inde- pendent variables (survey questions) and the dependent variables (constructs). 1. Perceived Usefulness Forty-eight percent of the sample agreed that online learning will be benefi- cial for them to get prepared for a check ride, whereas 28% were neutral and 24% responded that it will be not be beneficial to take online training. It was found that 62% of the sample agreed that online learn- ing improves their ability to get prepared for a check ride, whereas 16% were neu- tral and 22% did not agree. 54% of the sample agreed that the advantages of online learning outweigh the disadvantages, Figure 2. Decomposed theory of planned behavior (Taylor & Todd, 2001) Perceived Usefulness Compatibility Attitude Resource Facilitating Conditions Peer Influence Subjective Norm Behavioral intention Ease of Use Self Efficacy Perceived Behavioral Control Technology Facilitating Conditions Usage Behavior Superior Influence 30 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. whereas 26% were neutral and 20% were negative. However, Figure 3 illustrates that the response is strongly positive towards online learning being advantageous. More- over, 66% of the sample agreed that over- all, online learning presents advantages for them, whereas 16% were neutral and 18% thought it would not be advantageous for them. Perceived Usefulness resulted in an unacceptable alpha of 0.6343. However, the study concludes that pilots are highly receptive to the possibility of online learn- ing as a substitute for current traditional methods, but could quickly turn if the prod- uct does not provide interactivity, flexibility and useful knowledge. 2. Compatibility Sixty percent of the sample agreed that online learning fits well with the way they take ground training, whereas 14% were neutral and 26% thought it will not be compatible with the existing way they are taking the ground training. Subsequently, 70% of the sample agreed that online learn- ing is compatible with their work style, whereas 12% were neutral and 18% think it will not fit with their existing work style. 3. Ease of Use The study reveals that 58% of the sample responded that online learning would not be more difficult to follow than current Figure 3. Histograms for the perceived usefulness construct Q1 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q1 F re qu e n cy 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.50 Mean = 3.5 N = 50.00 Q2 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q2 F re q ue n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.55 Mean = 4.6 N = 50.00 Q3 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q3 F re qu e n cy 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.58 Mean = 4.7 N = 50.00 Q4 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q4 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.47 Mean = 4.9 N = 50.00 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 31 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. training techniques, whereas 26% were neutral and 16% thought it would be diffi- cult to follow. Forty-four percent of the sample responded that online learning would not require greater mental effort than the current training environments, 32% were neutral and 24% thought it would require a lot of mental effort. In addition, 36% of the sample responded that online learning was not frustrating, whereas 28% were neutral and 36% thought it is often frustrating. The authors assume that the response regard- ing frustration was made in comparison with the existing way they are taking ground training. During pilot interviews, a nega- tive feedback towards online learning due to a perceived lack of interactive, audio, visual and tactical features was noted. Computer-based training, such as SimuFlite’s FasTrack, has caused frustra- tion and boredom for pilots in the past. Sixty percent of the sample respon- dents expect online learning to be clear and easy to understand, 20% were neutral and 20% do not expect it to be clear and easily understandable. The positive response clearly indicates that the majority of respon- dents expect online learning to be user friendly and easy to operate. Neutral re- sponses may indicate that they are not sure what it will be like, whereas negative feed- back toward clarity and understandability of online learning may be due to their pre- vious experience or lack of awareness of emerging online learning technologies. Subsequently, 78% of the sample re- spondents expect that online learning will be flexible to interact with, whereas only 8% were neutral and only 14% do not ex- pect it be flexible. The positive response clearly indicates that almost 80% of the respondents expect online training to flex- ible and tailored to their needs. This shows a very strong desire for flexibility in any online learning environment. Finally, the survey reveals that 62% of the sample respondent expects that online learning will increase their skill to get prepared for a check ride, whereas only 20% were neutral and only 18% do not expect it be flexible. The positive response clearly indicates that the majority of respon- dents expect online training will be able to help get them prepared for check ride at their own ease and convenience. 4. Peer Influence Thirty percent of the sample did not agree that their friends will have any influ- Figure 4. Histograms for the compatibility construct Q5 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q5 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.62 Mean = 4.5 N = 50.00 Q6 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q6 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.61 Mean = 4.8 N = 50.00 32 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ence on them to take online learning to get prepared for a check ride, whereas 60% were neutral and only 10% believe that their friends can influence them to a certain ex- tent. This negative response indicates that the respondents do not think that they will be influenced by their friends to take online learning. It was also observed that 32% of the sample did not agree that their fellow pilots will have any influence to take online learning to get prepared for check ride, whereas 48% were neutral and 20% be- lieve that their co-pilots can influence them to a certain extent for online learning. The negative response clearly indicates that one-third of the respondents do not think that their fellow pilots will have any influ- ence on taking online learning, whereas the Figure 5. Histograms for the ease of use construct Q7 6.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q7 F re qu e n cy 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.37 Mean = 3.1 N = 50.00 Q8 6.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q8 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.49 Mean = 3.5 N = 50.00 Q9 6.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q9 F re qu e n cy 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.42 Mean = 3.8 N = 50.00 Q10 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q10 F re qu e n cy 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.56 Mean = 4.8 N = 50.00 Q11 7.06.05.04.03.02.0 Q11 F re q u e n cy 30 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.35 Mean = 5.1 N = 50.00 Q12 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q12 F re qu e n cy 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.40 Mean = 4.8 N = 50.00 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 33 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. majority of the respondents provided a neu- tral response, indicating that they are not sure whether their fellow pilots will have any influence on them. 5. Supervisor Influence The survey reflects that Superior In- fluence was an important construct, and advise that more complete research be conducted in the future. Twenty-eight per- cent of the respondents agreed that their supervisor expects them to take online learn- ing, whereas a 38% majority were neutral and 34% did not believe that their supervi- sor will expect them to take online learn- ing. The positive response clearly indicates that 28% of the respondents assumes that their supervisor might expect that they should take online learning, whereas the majority of the respondents provide neu- tral response, indicating that they are not sure whether their supervisor will have any say regarding the interest for online learn- ing, and one-third of them eliminated the possibility of superior influence for online learning. Thirty percent of the sample did not agree that their supervisor will require online learning, 38% were neutral and 32% believe that their supervisor might require it in future. The positive response indicates that one-third of the respondents do think that in the future they will have no choice, since their supervisor will demand it; whereas a slight majority of the respon- dents provided a neutral response, indicat- ing they are not sure whether their super- visor will need it in future. One-third of the respondents do not believe their supervisor will require it in the future. A survey of the owner operators may provide valuable in- sights and is suggested for future research. Figure 6 indicates that pilots think their su- pervisor will require online learning, but they are not quite certain. 6. Efficacy Seventy-four percent of the sample agreed that they would feel comfortable using online learning, 14% were neutral and only 12% assumed that they would not feel comfortable using online learning. The re- spondents’ average age was 43. We ex- pected this generation of pilots to have much less confidence in using online learn- ing. Since the great majority of respondents Figure 6. Histograms for the peer influence construct Q13 5.04.03.02.01.0 Q13 F re qu e n cy 40 30 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.07 Mean = 3.6 N = 50.00 Q14 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q14 F re qu e n cy 30 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.34 Mean = 3.7 N = 50.00 34 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. assumes that they would feel comfortable using online learning, we believe the niche market of business aviation pilots is more receptive for this product than previously believed. Sixty percent felt confident they could connect to online learning; 10% were neutral and 30% assumed that they would not feel confident. The confidence at be- ing able to connect online indicates a high confidence and/or expectation of being able to use online learning anytime, anywhere. 7. Facilitating Conditions Resources Forty-two percent of the sample did not agree that there would be computer resource constraints for online learning, whereas 38% were neutral and 20% be- lieve there will be resource constraints. The negative response clearly indicates that the majority of respondents do not think they will face any resource constraint in using online courses. This may be interpreted as the pilots’ belief and expectation that their existing personal and work computers are adequate for online learning. Sixty-six percent of the sample did not agree that computer resources will be unavailable when they need to use them to take online learning, whereas 22% were neutral and only 12% believe there will be enough computer resources to get online Figure 7. Histograms for the supervisor influence construct Q15 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q15 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.52 Mean = 3.8 N = 50.00 Q16 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q16 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.41 Mean = 3.9 N = 50.00 Figure 8. Histograms for the efficacy construct Q17 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q17 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.36 Mean = 5.1 N = 50.00 Q18 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q18 F re qu e n cy 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.72 Mean = 4.6 N = 50.00 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 35 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. when they need. The response to this vari- able indicates a confidence and/or expec- tation for anytime, anywhere online learn- ing. CONCLUSION This study explored the emerging op- portunities and changing expectations con- tained in the vision of online learning for the business aviation pilot. It introduced and compared the concepts, perceptions and attitudes of online training for pilots and its relevance. The constructs Efficacy (EFF), Compatibility (COMP) and Perceived Use- fulness (PU) are clearly seen as the top three determinants, respectively, of the pi- lots’ perceptions of what quality online train- ing will provide. The responses to Facili- tating Conditions Resources (FCR) and Ease of Use (EU) constructs revealed a high degree of confidence in available re- sources and personal ability to perform online learning. The number of new pilot jobs created in the next decade is conservatively ex- pected to grow at more than 40%. In addi- tion to planned growth, the need to replace aging business aviation pilots as they retire will also be significant. Training needs will therefore grow exponentially, as will the expectation by regulatory agencies and customers that future aviation training adopt the best of emerging technologies and tech- niques. The attitude of today’s business avia- tion pilot is changing rapidly. Two impor- tant factors that are pushing this change are (1) the different training needs required by modern glass-cockpit aircraft, and (2) the quickly changing awareness by the av- erage pilot of new technologies, especially the Internet. Owners and operators of the business aviation industry will experience increasing financial pressure, as globaliza- tion and substitute products provide cheaper aircraft charters for the customer and cheaper training for pilots. To remain com- petitive and maintain leadership in business aviation flight training, SimuFlite has an opportune position to combine its well-es- tablished training knowledge and tech- niques with the cutting-edge technology of CAE to provide interactive distance learning. Pilots’ expectations of online learn- ing are high, but not overly demanding of current and emerging technology. More Figure 9. Histograms for the technology facilitating conditions construct Q19 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q19 F re qu e n cy 20 10 0 Std. Dev = 1.43 Mean = 3.5 N = 50.00 Q20 7.06.05.04.03.02.01.0 Q20 F re qu e n cy 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Std. Dev = 1.36 Mean = 3.0 N = 50.00 36 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. importantly perhaps are the pilots’ attitudes and beliefs brought out in the research, which clearly shows trends in the accep- tance of and confidence in online learning. It is very important that the online training experience be highly interactive, with au- dio, visual and tactile features. It must also be very flexible, and easy to understand and use. Lessons should be modular and not only provide required training goals but also permit the pilot to explore deeper if desired. Real time and/or a virtual class- room environment were considered very important to commercial aviation pilots. The advantages of interactive online learning will be realized when broadband Internet, wireless protocol and pilot familiarity con- verge, and a critical mass of use and ac- ceptance is achieved. Initially, to grow to the level of online training described above, a business unit such as CAE SimuFlite can use current interactive technology such as Simfinity to offer lesson modules that also combine some audio, video and textual training si- multaneously. Before implementation, how- ever, pilot reactions must be tested. Pilot interviews show that pilots are highly re- ceptive to online training but have a “show me” attitude. To introduce too limited a prod- uct likely will turn pilots away and make it more difficult to attract them in the future. The business aviation industry is poised to undergo a fundamental change in the delivery of flight training to its pilots in order to accommodate cost and schedule pressures. The aviation training companies that intelligently embrace integrated dis- tance learning to compliment flight training will be able not only to provide a more per- sonalized and differentiated product, but also to survive the inevitable technology- driven changes. REFERENCES Azjen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior. In J. Kuhl & J. Beckmann (Eds.), Action control: From cognition to behavior (pp. 11- 39). New York: Springer-Verlag. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211. Biggs, J.B., & Collis, K.F. (1982). Evalu- ating the quality of learning – The SOLO taxonomy. New York: Academic Press. Butters, G. (1999, Dec). Learning at lightspeed. Business 2.0. Retrieved Feb- ruary 16, 2003 from: www.business2. c o m / a r t i c l e s / m a g / 0 , 1 6 4 0 , 1 3 3 1 0 ,FF.html CAE Company Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved January 28 from: http://cae.com/en/ about/index.shtml CAE Press Release. (2003). CAE to de- velop seLearning™ courseware for ALSTOM power plants. January 22. Retrieved February 18, 2003 from: www.cae.com/en/newsroom/2003/ shtml/power_01222003_ref066.shtml CAE SimuFlite. (2002). CAE SimuFlite Premiers Boeing Business Jet Train- ing Program with CAE Simfinity™ Technology. September 10. Retrieved February 19, 2003 from: www.simuflite . c o m / p r e s s / 0 2 _ 11 p r. h t m l C A E S imuFlite CAE SimuFlite. (n.d.). Power systems and simulation. Retrieved February 19, 2003 from: www.cae.com/en/power/index. shtml CAE SimuFlite Company History. (n.d.) Retrieved February 19, 2003 from: w w w . c a e s i m u f l i t e . c o m / p r e s s / history.html Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 37 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Cyber terror the way of the future. (1999). AAP General News (Australia). July 13. Retrieved February 19, 2003 from: www.elibrary.com/ Davis, F.D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user accep- tance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319-340. Delio, M. (2000, Aug). Report: Online train- ing ‘boring’. Wired. Retrieved February 16, 2003 from: www.wired.com/news/ print/0,1294,38504,00.html Greenburg, P. (2001). CRM at the speed of light. McGraw Hill. Herold, D.M., Davis, W., Fedor, D.B., & Parsons, C.K. (2002). Dispositional in- fluences on transfer of learning in multistate training programs. Personal Psychology, Winter. Hsu, S., & White, J. (1998). Developing holistic technology-based training programs. Retrieved February 17, 2003 from: www.viats.org/papers/session 5a2.htm Karp, M., Condit, D., & Nullmeyer, R. (1999). F-16 cockpit/crew resource management. (AL/HR-TR-1999- XXXX, in progress). Mesa, AZ: Air Force Research Laboratory NBAA Business Aviation Fact Book (2002). Retrieved January 28, 2003 from: w w w. n b a a . o r g / f a c t b o o k / 2 0 0 2 / section4.htm#02 Karp, M.R., McCurry, W.K., Turney, M.A., & Harms, D. (2000). Aviation educa- tion for future airline pilots: An inte- grated model. Retrieved February 17, 2003 from: www.viats.org/papers/ session5d4.htm Leher, H.R., Moore, P.J., & Telfer, R.A. (1999). Approaches to learning: Is there a better way to prepare future pilots? Retrieved February 17, 2003 from: www.viats.org/papers/session 5d1.htm Mauro, R., & Barshi, I. (n.d.). Using an Internet-based decision research sys- tem in aviation training research. Re- trieved February 17, 2003 from: www.viats.org/papers/session5c2.htm Moore, G., & Benbasat, I. (1991, Sept). Development of an instrument to mea- sure the perceptions of adopting an in- formation technology innovation. Infor- mation Systems Research, 2(3), 192- 222. Rose, R.G. (2001). Practical use of pilot personality profile. February 8. Re- trieved February 18, 2003 from: w w w. a v w e b . c o m / n e w s / a e ro m e d / 181606-1.html Sand, K., & Schoenfelder, J. (1998). Simu- lation coupled with CBT creating a comprehensive training tool that in- creases transfer. Retrieved February 17, 2003 from: www.viats.org/papers/ session5a4.htm Selvaratnam, S. (2002). Tool to create e- learning content. Computimes Malay- sia, November 11. Sherry, L. (1996). Issues in distance learn- ing. International Journal of Educa- tional Telecommunications, 1(4), 337- 365. Retrieved February 19, 2003 from: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~lsherry/ pubs/issues.html Small, R.L., Lakowske, S.D., Breese, J., & Callejo, G. (1999). A future direction in pilot training. Retrieved February 17, 2003 from: www.viats.org/papers/ session5d2.htm Stokes, S. (2000). Learning space enlivens online training. Infoworld, July 24. Taylor S., & Todd, P. (1995, June). Under- standing information technology usage: A test of competing models. Informa- tion Systems Research, 6(23), 144-176. Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). Mapping a route toward differentiated instruction. Edu- cational Leadership, September. 38 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Trapp, R. (1997). Internet users ‘wide open to fraud.’ Independent, Sept 3, C39. Retrieved February 19, 2003 from: www.elibrary.com/ United States General Accounting Office. (1999). Aviation safety: Research sup- ports limited use of personal computer aviation training devices for pilots (GAO Report No. RCED-99-143). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 12. Retrieved Feb- ruary 19, 2003 from: www2.faa.gov/ nsp/nsp/GAO_PCATD.txt FAA 1999 Wentling, T.L., Waight, C., Strazzo, D., File, J., La Fleur, J., & Kanfer, A. (2000). The future of e-learning: A corporate and an academic perspective. NCSA Knowledge and Learning Systems Group, September. APPENDIX A Survey Instrument for Commercial Pilots 1. The online learning will be of no benefit to me. 2. Using the online learning will improve my ability to get prepared for check ride. 3. The advantages of the online learning will outweigh the disadvantages. 4. Overall, using the online learning will be advantageous. StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 39 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 5. Using the online learning will fit well with the way I take ground training. 6. Using the online learning will fit into my work style. 7. Instructions for online learning will be hard to follow. 8. Using online learning will require a lot of mental effort. 9. Using online learning is often frustrating 10. I expect online learning would be clear and understandable. StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 40 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 12. I expect it would be easy for me to become skilful at using online learning to get prepared for check ride. 13. My friends would think that I should prepare for check ride through online learning. 14. My fellow pilots would think that I should use online learning to get prepared for check ride. 15. My supervisor would think that I should use the online learning to prepare for check ride. 11. I expect online learning to be flexible to interact with. StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 41 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 16. I will have to use online learning to conduct ground training because my supervisor may require it in the future. 17. I would feel comfortable using the online learning on my own. 18. If I wanted to, I could easily connect to get prepared for check ride through online learning on my own. 19. There will not be enough computer resources for everyone to use for online learn- ing. 20. I won’t be able to use computer resources for online learning when I need it. StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 StronglyDisagree Neither AgreeNor Disagree StronglyAgree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 42 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. APPENDIX B Acronyms AERO Aviation Education Reinforcement Option AICC Aviation Industry Computer-based Training Committee Standards AT&T American Telegraph & Telephone CBT Computer Based Training CEO Chief Executive Office CRM Customer Relationship Management DVD Digital Video Disk ERP Enterprise Resource Planning FAA Federal Aviation Administration FMS Flight Management System FOQA Flight Operations Quality Assurance HDTV High Definition Television HTBT Holistic Technology Based Training IBM International Business Machines IDRS Internet-based Decision Research System JAVA Programming Language Developed for the Web MGT Management NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration PRM Partnership Relationship Management SOLO Structure of the Learning Outcome US United States WML Wireless Markup Language XML Extensible Markup Language Mahesh S. Raisinghani is a faculty member at the University of Dallas, Graduate School of Management, where he teaches MBA courses in e-Business and information systems. Raisinghani was the recipient of the Presidential Award and the King Haggar Award for excellence in teaching, research and service. His previous publications have appeared in Information and Management, Information Resources Management Journal, Information Strategy: An Executive’s Journal, Journal of Global IT Management, Journal of E-Commerce Research, Journal of IT Cases and Applications and International Journal of E-Business Research, among others. He serves on the editorial review board for leading information systems publications and is included in the millennium edition of Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and Who’s Who in Information Technology. Mohammed Shah Alam Chowdhury is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Dallas. He served as assistant professor of business administration at Jahangirnagar University and Chittagong University. He served as manager in the IT industry of Bangladesh. He has extensive experience in consulting, training and re-engineering at various SMEs in Bangladesh. He has several research publications in academic and professional journals and served on an editorial review board for the Journal of Business Administration. He is a member of Sigma Iota Epsilon. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 3(1), 20-43, Jan-March 2005 43 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Chris Colquitt is an aviation and aerospace professional, with more than 28 years of experience. After earning a BS in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, he served as a pilot and officer in the United States Navy. After seven years in the Navy, he joined American Airlines and flew their flagships all over the globe. Later, he accepted a position as a systems matter expert for the U.S. Air Force KC-10 Pilot training program with Raytheon and a systems engineer for the U.S. Navy’s new F18 Simulator development. While earning an MBA from the University of Dallas in Irving he flew as a pilot for Piedmont and trained and evaluated professional pilots at CAE SimuFlite. Currently he is on contract with NASA as a research pilot and aerospace engineer. Pedro M. Reyes is an assistant professor in the Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University. He received his PhD in operations management, an MBA in operations management, an MS in information systems and a BS in mathematics from The University of Texas at Arlington. His current research interests are in integrated logistics, supply chain management and operations control. Reyes’ research publications are included in Production and Inventory Management Journal, Journal of Global Information Technology, Knowledge and Process Management and Applied Mathematics and Computation. Nilofar Bonakdar Kadivi is a visiting scholar at Mountain View College, Dallas County Community Colleges. She serves as a full-time faculty member responsible to teach in and direct the Department of E-Commerce. She has four years’ experience teaching in the field of e- commerce and Web design. She holds a BS in economics from Azad University, Tehran, Iran, and an MBA in e-commerce from the University of Dallas. Joseph M. Ray is a program manager for Pintail Technologies. He has extensive experience managing and developing complex software projects at several startup companies as well as several Fortune 500 companies. He has been involved in software systems in a variety of domains, including supply chain management, defense, finance and the semiconductor industry. Additionally, he has worked as a technical trainer, teaching hands-on software development classes. He holds an MBA in e-Business and a BS in computer science. Jose E. Robles is a customer project leader at Nortel Networks. He has extensive experience in the definition, implementation and re-engineering of customer service business processes. While at Nortel Networks, Robles has served in various positions, ranging from Technical Services & Support to Service Introduction and Validation. Prior to service at Nortel Networks, Robles served in the U.S. Air Force. He holds a BBA in business management, MBA in information systems management and finance, and a Master of Management in e-commerce. 
work_ftjmqfqrtzctlg2nkrhbqycyja	----	Distance Education in Physics via Internet Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Distance Education in Physics via Internet Bodo Eckert, Sebastian Gröber, and Hans-Jörg Jodl Department of Physics, University of Technology Kaiserslautern, Germany We report here about three connected projects in physics: a very successful physics course at university level; a collection of several thousands multimedia materials worldwide, its status and evaluation and its dissemination; and about web experiments, i.e. experiments at location A which can be controlled by a user at location B via Internet. 1 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 1. Introduction During the last decades modern information and communication technologies (ICT) as well as the Internet have evolved to such an extent that a variety of opportunities in distance education allow to go beyond traditional forms. In particular, distance education in science disciplines like physics is confronted with the challenge to support student learners with experiments as it is the usual case in on-campus teaching. Real experiments, either demonstrations in lectures or hands- on activities in lab practices, play an essential role in introductory science courses at university (Kirschner et al. 1993), (Forinash, and Wisman 2001), (Kennepohl et al. 2005), (Lambourne 2008). Here we report on our efforts to realize a distance education course for physics majors at university. In order to make real experiments available to the students we produced a couple of remote labs controllable via the Internet. In addition, multimedia applications like simulations or interactive video can serve as educational aids or can replace static figures in textbooks or even real experiments. Since there exists are huge amount of multimedia materials available for physics teaching it has to be discussed if that can be used for teaching and learning purposes, i. e. the quality of the material has to be considered. Thus, we report here also on evaluation of multimedia material for physics education. 2. Distance lecturing in physics (FiPS) Because of the declining number of students in physics all over Germany, our department started a project in 1997 called FiPS (Früheinstieg ins Physik-Studium – early entrance in physics study), which was a university study at a distance for physics majors of the first and second semester, granted by federal funds. Figure 1 shows the distribution of first-year on- and off-campus students being enrolled at our physics department. For several years we have about 80-100 students in the distance courses without intense advertising. Fig. 1 The target group is mainly the students finishing secondary school (age 18-19 years), who have to fulfill their military or community services within about one year.1 During the last ten years an increasing number of these off-campus students are gifted students at secondary school (from 1% 2 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 in winter term 1999/2000 up to around 20% now) selected by their physics teachers (Fig. 2). All these students are excellent in many respects: knowledge in physics and mathematics, in computing or use of computers, eager to work hard, high intrinsic motivation, and excellent grades. Fig. 2 The lectures in physics (and mathematics through the department of mathematics) we offer here are first-year university, the so-called introductory physics (Fig. 3). Fig. 3 Our aim is to offer serious, highly accepted courses. Therefore, both the off- and on-campus students have to pass the same exam at our department at the end of the winter/summer term. The modules are accepted for transfer by all physics departments in Germany as well as in Austria and Switzerland, each weighing 12 credits (ECTS). Before starting our project in 1997, we made a worldwide inventory and found about 450 distance education courses dealing with physics more or less comparable with the courses at our university. The major fraction of these courses were located in large area countries, in particular in USA and Australia (21% and 19%, respectively), as well as in Canada and India (11% each). Common to all was the use of mostly ‘traditional’ methods (delivering printed manuscripts, written exams, sometimes video-lecturing or broadcasting, and/or telephone tutoring) according to the state-of-the-art technology (Bates 1995). Furthermore, these courses did not have the appropriate level or content for our purposes (Schweickert 2002) and did not fit into the German situation, see for example (Grimm, and Riquarts 1992), (Kappel et al. 2002). Almost all of these physics courses did not make extensive use of modern ICT or Internet for communication or some kind of computer based multimedia in supporting the learners. Even the Open Universities, though experts in developing and implementing communication technologies, were faced with challenges due to the diverse educational background, poor technical equipment, and rural 3 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 constraints, for example, of their target groups as well as providing lab practices in science courses, e. g. (Shott 1985), (Meester, and Kirschner 1995), (Ross, and Scanlon 1995), (Cilliers et al. 1997), (Garg et al. 1998), (Holmberg et al. 1998), (Kennepohl, and Last 1998). Our target group, on the contrary, is almost homogeneous in age and educational background. Furthermore, we did not plan to provide practicals in the framework of the distance courses, since the courses should serve as an early entrance in physics study, and the lab work is offered when students enter the on-campus stage (Fig. 3). However, at that time there were a few reports in literature on physics education at a distance which gave us the opportunity to learn the lessons and to try to avoid the pitfalls experienced by the authors (Ross, and Scanlon 1994), (Smith, and Taylor 1995), (Christian et al. 1997), (Frye 1997), (Safko, and Edge 1997), (Wilson 1997), (Venables 1998), (Wallin 1998), (Novak et al. 1999), (Suson et al. 1999). Again, these reports did not fit into our specific purposes. However, one of the most important impacts on our project was the decision to consequently use the Internet as preferred medium for distribution of course material and communication, although the connection bandwidth at that time was much lower as to date (56k modem against DSL). We had to cope with at least three major problems: First, due to the target group (off-campus, working all day long somewhere), we had to choose a traditional text book covering the first year of introductory physics (Demtröder 1994, 1995). The delivery of additional material like study guides, assignments etc. was realized via Internet. The major reason was to enable the students some kind of flexibility in working on the content with respect to their individual needs and duties. In addition, as reviews in literature pointed out, learning with hypermedia has only limited value (Dillon, and Gabbard 1998). Hence, a learning scenario completely organized as virtual environment seems not to be recommended weighed against the amount of load on the staff to create an environment of eventually doubtful success. Second, the physics lectures are based essentially on demonstration experiments. This shortage we overcame by integrating all kinds of multimedia such as videos, e. g. (The Education Group), see also section 3, animations and simulations, e.g. Physlets® (Christian, and Belloni 2004), interactive screen experiments (Kirstein, and Nordmeier 2007), and web experiments (see section 4). They were fully integrated in our teaching environment (i.e. in the reading/studying process of students, hyperlinked in the study guides and associated with the weekly assignments). For this purpose a media server has been developed and set-up which contains about 270 useful media of different kind covering the topics of the two courses (Roth 2001), (FiPS). Third, the learners need to communicate about physics and to discuss their problems in comprehension after studying the 4 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 text book or during problem solving. It was well recognized in literature that the learning process must be supported by interactions amongst the learners as well as by interactions with tutors, e. g. (Laurillard 1993). Therefore, we implemented various possibilities for discussion and tutoring: threaded e-mail newsgroup as discussion board, sorted by different topics like problem number or book chapter, for example. We adapted a web interface of this discussion board to allow students more flexible access on it. Our evaluation showed that the newsgroup discussion was highly accepted by the students (Schweickert 2001).2 Even if not every student participated to the discussion it was reasonably to assume that those individuals were able to benefit from as well (Sutton 2001). Although each student was individually assessed we fostered cooperation in problem solving by tutoring. Since social interaction was recognized as an important ingredient in distance education, e. g. (Sonnenwald et al. 1999), one thematic topic of the discussion forum was devoted to personal issues and exchange of thoughts and experience of general character, called ‘Café’. Moreover, besides the asynchronous forum we encouraged the students to make use of tools like ICQ, and phone or to organize meetings by private appointment3 or to meet during our offer of on-campus weekends. Another set of problems, apart from isolation of students, frustration about technical demands (Hara 2000) have been recognized too and was solved by pre-course assignments on technical issues (FiPS).4 However, as (Schweickert 2001) stated, most problems were caused by the limitations of the techniques and less by the students’ competence to use them. As a consequence, we built up this distance course in the following way: every week we provided a reading guide online, whose content concerns typically one chapter of the text book, that is the equivalent of a lecture for one week. The off-campus students were assigned to read one chapter in the book while they were taking hold in the hands of the study guide. This guide contains comments, questions, amount of time we recommend to invest, the weight of a specific topic (e.g. importance of certain content or concept), and links to media as an illustration (Fig. 4).5 Each week of the semester the off-campus as well the on-campus students have to solve about 4-6 problems, available online for download. After one week they have to send in their solutions by any means (paper, fax, e-mail; whatever is available at their present situation).6 These solutions are printed and passed to the tutors, who correct them and send them back to the students with detailed comments. In due time the students are provided with exemplary solutions of all problems for further studies and to allow them to classify their own solutions. In addition, the heading tutors provide each week a summary of performance of the solutions, e. g. when typical 5 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 problems in comprehension appeared, when misinterpretation was multiply observed, highlighting conceptual aspects of a problem, discussion of problem solving strategies, giving positive feedback, and so on. Fig. 4 An evaluation of the success of this distance lecturing is made internally every semester. After all tutors have corrected the solutions of their students (ca. 20 students per group, off- and on- campus) the success, i.e. the points achieved by the students in problem solving, is processed by a grading tool (Roth 2001), (FiPS). A typical result of performance in problem solving is shown in Figure 5. The bars in that figure indicate the percentage of students who solved or tried to solve a given problem. The diamond shaped symbols, on the other hand, indicate the success in problem solving, i. e. the average score for each particular problem (in percent). The students have to attain in total about 50% of the maximum points achievable to take part in the final exam at the end of the term; this is the reason why the evolution of bars is decreasing towards the end of the respective term. Fig. 5 This huge amount of data (ca. 100 students times ca. 12 weeks times ca. 5 problems) can be accessed via Internet and is supported by a the grading tool in different ways: (1) an individual student interested in his or her own success in comparison with the sum over all other students can follow his or her achievement points; (2) a tutor is able to take count of all students of his or her group individually; (3) whereas the lecturers and heading tutors can have a look at all the data. During weekly meetings of the teaching staff involved, the data are examined and discussed, like performance and drop-out rate; or if one particular problem was not solved at all then we are forced to reconsider the problem assigned; if a problem needed the use of multimedia and was not solved we had to look for the instructional design or feasibility of the material; etc. 6 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Since this distance lecturing is now working for more than 10 years for more than 1000 students we can state that it is highly accepted; without any additional publicity we have a more or less constant enrollment every term. 3. Multimedia in physics teaching and learning (MPTL) As the computer became widely available in educational institutions it was well recognized as a teaching/learning tool. In particular, the application in physics education was straightforward since physical phenomena can nicely be modeled by means of mathematics. Therefore, many simulations have been developed and one important issue, on the quality of the material as an educational aid, was getting more and more obvious. In the past, there have been many efforts to judge simulation software, though, in general, as largely disconnected activities locally at a national level, as an example for the USA (Donnelly 1999). During the last 30 years we have been collecting information about multimedia used in physics teaching and learning from around the world, e. g. (Jodl 1985), (Depireux, Jodl, and Wilson 1989), (Jodl 1997), (Eckert, and Ronen 2004); when we produced multimedia by ourselves, e. g. (Korsch, Jodl, and Hartmann 2007); when we installed our media server in the framework of FiPS (FiPS); and when we started an annual European workshop for interested colleagues in 1996 (MPTL). As a result, we know of several thousand multimedia materials worldwide at all kinds of students’ level (age 10-25 years) for teaching and learning physics. However, the major fraction is of poor quality. Mostly, standard topics are modeled always again by another author. In addition, an interested person, like a teacher at school, a lecturer at university, or a committed learner, cannot readily find these materials, in particular the valued ones. Furthermore, what he or she may find does not always fit exactly in what he or she is looking for. That’s why a group of educators and researchers in the field of computer based learning in physics decided to solve this problem in general and to offer a service for their colleagues. This group collected multimedia products, evaluated them, and made recommendations for those people involved in the teaching/learning process who do not have the time to search by themselves, whenever they need a multimedia item.7 The group consists currently of about 20 experienced professors/teachers in physics as peer reviewers - about ten from the USA (MERLOT-Physics) and about ten from Europe (EPS-PED). 7 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Each year another topic from introductory physics is chosen and updated again after four or five years. Both groups used their own (but slightly different) catalogue of criteria for evaluation (Table 1). Table 1 To collect the materials we used about ten different web servers and digital libraries in different countries. We are confident in finding about 80 to 90% of all material available through the Internet due to repetition and saturation effects. Then, in the first evaluation cycle, we look at these multimedia products (several hundred each year and topic) relative quickly applying KO criteria; for example, is this product working, is it physically correct, is it of relevance etc. In general, about 30% of the material is kicked out in this round. In the second cycle, the remaining material is divided among the reviewers such that each item is judged by at least two reviewers from the US members and the European members of the board. In the third cycle, we select only excellent material for recommendation in order to define a standard of what is ‘good’. The yield is below a few percent of total amount of material. The agreement between the two groups judging independently is, in general, more than 60 to 70% (Mason 2006). The result of this procedure is briefly presented in Table 2. The interested reader may have a detailed look at the annual reports, which contain all hyperlinks of the materials found. The reports are presented during international workshops (MPTL) every year to an audience of physics teachers/professors (ca. 100 participants) highlighting the best practice examples, as well as discussing ‘bad’ examples with respect to the applied criteria. Of course, the educational potential and benefit of multimedia can only be exploited if it is integrated in a meaningful learning environment, e. g. (Kozma 1991), (Laurillard 1993), (Muller et al. 2006). However, the focus of evaluation of multimedia is primarily on the particular material itself as a first step in judging its suitability. Table 2 8 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Next, we present an example (on the Coriolis force) where physics students at school and at university commonly have problems in understanding and where multimedia material may help to bridge. Since the Coriolis force is a real phenomenon, we selected from the various kinds of multimedia the video type. In general, videos are passively watched and a proper video analysis of the motion of an object is too time consuming. We, therefore, developed our own style of what we call a measuring video. That is, when looking at the video to solve a problem given in a lecture for homework, students have to perform quantitative readings (Wagner et al. 2006). Fig. 6 In the video, a ball rolls down an inclined rail mounted on a rotating disc. At the centre of the disc the ball leaves the rail and rolls further with constant speed (Fig. 6, set-up). A motor drives the disc with constant angular velocity. Now, this experiment is viewed by means of two separated cameras: one is mounted in the system at rest (the so called laboratory system), and one is mounted in the rotating system (the so called accelerated system; the rotating disc is an accelerated system even if the disc rotates with constant speed). Fig. 7 Figure 7 shows the results of one and the same motion after marking the trajectory at equidistant time intervals (left: view in the laboratory system at rest; right: view in the rotating system). We recognize in the left part of figure 7 an almost straight line as trajectory, because the ball after leaving the inclined rail is moving free of forces except that of gravity (and a negligible amount of friction). In the right part of figure 7 the trajectory is bent, because only in this frame of reference (the rotating disc) an additional force appears to be acting, this is the so called Coriolis force. The added value of this medium is that the learner can have a look at this experiment repeatedly; he or she may have a look qualitatively or quantitatively (e. g. if a problem is assigned); the 9 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 student can recognize details which he or she can never achieve by demonstration experiments in a lecture hall, only. As prototype examples, we realized several measuring videos of well-selected topics where students typically have comprehension problems: Coriolis and centrifugal force (Wagner et al. 2006), Navier-Stokes equation in fluid dynamics (Wagner et al. 2007), absorption and emission spectrum of sodium (Wagner et al. 2006), determination of Reynolds number (Wagner et al. 2003), Rayleigh criterion of optical resolution, entropy and melting line, Bernoulli equation (fluid dynamics), and determination of small length changes by means of a Michelson interferometer. To summarize our experience about multimedia in physics teaching and learning: First, there exists a huge collection of several 103 items; so there is no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’, unless a new software/technique appears on the market provoking new developments. Second, a group of peer-reviewers claim to know what a ‘good’ material is based on their experience and on evaluation criteria, therefore, ‘standards’ are known to future developers. Third, all kinds of multimedia materials are available from videos, animations, simulations, and remote experiments. Fourth, multimedia materials are used in many kinds of teaching/learning environments: e. g. traditional lecturing, blended learning, e-learning, self-paced learning. Fifth, multimedia items come along with textbooks, as a tutorial, as a stand-alone solution, or as a solution for a specific teaching situation. Finally, according to us there is an increasingly acceptance rate of multimedia materials among the younger generation even if, up to now, forces are at work which make implementation worse (Åkerlind, and Trevitt 1995). 4. Remotely controlled labs (RCL) Real experiments are central and essential in the teaching of physics at school and at university. There is still an ongoing debate on how far can real experiments be substituted or complemented by multimedia, in particular, in distance education. Remotely controlled laboratories are viewed as one important component in delivering real physics experiments and in teaching a variety of skills related to practical work. Figure 8 shows the principle of a remotely controlled lab. For example, a real experiment is set up at our department and the off-campus student at home can control this experiment via Internet. Of course, the principle of remote operation has been known for years in research and 10 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 technology. The merit here is that we exploited this technique in the field of physics education. During the last decade we have set-up about 20 remotely controlled labs. We have solved technical problems, such as the video transfer of data by means of web cameras, and didactical requirements, i.e. how an RCL should come along in comparison with the real on-campus lab. Details on this and a brief review on similar efforts worldwide have already been published (Gröber et al. 2007), (Gröber et al. 2008). Fig. 8 Why do we need RCLs as a solution in physics education? What is a ‘good’ RCL? Running real experiments has some disadvantages. For example, some teachers at their schools/universities do not have the proper equipment; the real experiment costs too much to perform it only once per year; to conduct the experiment quantitatively consumes too much time in class; to evaluate data of one specific experiment one would need to collect too many data; the performance of the experiment is somehow dangerous; and, last but not least, the off-campus students need more than a static figure of experimental setup and a table with measured values in a text book to gain insight in the real experiment. Before we started our project on larger scale we made a worldwide inventory; but we could not find a proper solution for our purposes of distance education in FiPS, cf. table 3 (Gröber et al. 2007). Table 3 Since we now have experience with RCLs for several years and since we have a critical knowledge about what is available (including solutions based on commercial software like LabVIEW©), we are able to specify essential requirements for remote labs which agree pretty well with efforts of other groups, e. g. (Forinash, and Wisman 2005), (Kennepohl et al. 2005), (Schauer et al. 2009). First of all, one must choose/select the proper topic. We recommend not to choose an item which can be executed without any problems as a real experiment in class. 11 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Second, when changing technical parameters, the user must have the possibility to watch what he or she is doing in the remote experiment via web cameras (authenticity). Third, the use of an RCL via Internet must be intuitively clear and the user should not be forced to read a detailed manual. Fourth, the user must get back (via Internet) his or her own measured data for further analysis or for being processed by additional tools. Fifth, the experiment must be robust enough to be used 24 hours a day over extended periods of time. Sixth, the presentation of one specific experiment must be autonomous, i.e. without reading further texts. Didactical material presented in the accompanying website will help the implementation in a teaching environment. Seventh, the RCL should be more interesting and more flexible the more actions are available in the lab user interface, i.e. variation and control of technical parameters. Finally, the use of RCLs must be free of charge, public in a common language, and independent of a specific operating system at the client side. Now, one example from our RCLs (table 4) will be briefly introduced: the wind tunnel. The aim is, on one hand, to teach physics students the main topics (like air friction, laminar and turbulent flow) and, on the other hand, to motivate non majors in physics or laymen to perform this experiment qualitatively (like the dependence of air drag on wind speed, on the cross section, and on the shape of a vehicle). The experimental set-up of this experiment is presented in figure 9. Table 4 Fig. 9 A homogenous flow of air is produced by a vacuum cleaner and is streaming from left to right. A real toy car on top of a thin steel wire is positioned into that flow such that the air friction on the car will bend the wire. The higher the wind speed the more the wire will be bent. This force on the car (i.e. the degree of bending) is measured by means of a strain gauge mounted on a steel blade below the wire. The modifications of this experiment for remote operation are as follows: (1) the user can choose between three different vehicles (sports car, off-road vehicle, and fire engine), different in their drag coefficient (CW value); (2) the user can vary the speed of wind, i.e. the relative velocity of air with respect to the vehicle; (3) the user can read the wind speed on a 12 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 standard speedometer; (4) the user can read the voltage of the strain gauge giving him or her the amount of force acting on the vehicle. Besides systematic measurements the user can have a look of what is going on: how much the wire is bent; when it is bent differently due to the shape of the given vehicle at constant speed. Systematic measurements then deliver results for the different drag coefficients of the three vehicles, and the dependence of air drag F on wind speed v (i.e. car velocity), according to F ~ v2. The structure of the website is presented in Figure 10, left part. In the middle the user can view the status of the experiment by means of streaming video. On the right side, the laboratory page can be viewed where the user can vary all technical parameters (e.g. choose a vehicle, start airflow, vary amount of flow). The user can take the measurements (read the wind speed, observe bending of wire with selected car, read voltage of strain gauge), and calculate the frictional force. Fig. 10 The value of this experiment as an RCL is multifold. First, it is a relevant experiment with respect to everyday life (e.g. design of vehicles, fuel consumption) which is difficult to perform (e. g. expensive setup). Second, the experiment can be performed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Third, the experiment is best suited as a project work; the user must inform oneself (e.g. Wikipedia, automobile industry), set up his or her own research program and evaluate his or her data. In the end, the user should realize the impact of air friction on car driving and on the waste of energy due to overcome this friction at high car speeds. An important issue with all RCLs is the interactivity (i.e. number of actions, their quality and complexity) which can be recognized at the laboratory page of each RCL. However, these actions do not consist only in pushing buttons, cf. (Oliver 1996). Behind this are the following activities which the user of an RCL or the experimenter of a real experiment has to perform in a meaningful way: select and position sources (e.g. of light, of radioactivity), select and position samples from a pool under investigation, vary technical parameters like angle, distance, number of scans, 13 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 measure and read values, choose proper time intervals for accurate measurements, re-align experimental set up, etc. All these capabilities and skills are typical for tasks given to students in a beginner on-campus laboratory course in physics, e. g. (Jodl 1997). The popularity and quality of our remote experiments is best reflected by the number of users per time. We have been collecting data since 2003 and in 2007 we registered about 15,000 visitors of our web portal (http://rcl.physik.uni-kl.de), which means an average of about 3-4 visitors per RCL per day worldwide (cf. table 5). Table 5 Most of our RCLs were built up by students in the course of their master’s thesis (4-6 months duration) in physics teacher education. The regular maintenance of each experiment is like that of a real experiment: replacing a light bulb, repairing electronics etc. On the other hand, we had chosen all components of the RCL experiment for a robust usage 24 hours a day over weeks. Currently, most RCLs are delivered to foreign institutions (schools, companies) where local technicians take care of the set up. In conclusion, these web experiments can trigger new ways of teaching and learning in comparison with traditional forms. For example, after the teacher has briefly introduced an experiment in reality in the class, maybe by running it qualitatively, then the students are assigned to conduct their own experiment remotely as homework. Some of the RCLs are very complex and powerful (e.g. radioactivity, or computed tomography) so students have to schedule their own measuring program depending on their research aims. Furthermore, some of the RCLs are best suited for self-studying with a tutorial aside (e.g. Fourier optics). 5. Conclusion 14 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 The examples described above (FiPS, MPTL, RCL) demonstrate the feasibility to implement modern ICT in distance education of physics. According to us, these powerful communication techniques are essential to trigger new ways of teaching/learning such as distance education, e- learning, blended learning, and student centered teaching as well as innovative learning environments. However, as the developments of the past decades have shown us educators didactical considerations often lag behind the rapid technological improvements. For example, many traditional methods of course delivery are easily be replaced by modern ICT, at least in well developed countries. Our initiatives reported here may be understood as a positive contribution to globalization in the sense that we are able to communicate worldwide, for example. We can be all at the same level and we can learn positively from each other, in principle. Acknowledgement We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Bund-Länder-Kommission für Bildungsplanung und Forschungsförderung (BLK), Intel© Education, German employers’ association Gesamtmetall, and the Eberhard-von-Kuehnheim foundation of BMW AG. We thank our co-workers in the FiPS project, Dr. M. Menzel, Dr. D. Roth, and Dr. F. Schweickert, our colleagues of MPTL as well as our students in the video project, S. Altherr, and A. Wagner. We finally express our thanks to the students in the RCL project and, last not least, our co-worker Dr. M. Vetter, who has driven the open-source approach in that project. Notes 1 Germany has conscription for male citizens, where men are obliged to serve in military service. However, they can refuse and, instead, have to serve in alternative civilian or community service in the field of health or social works, for example. 2 For example, on average we counted ca. 100 messages (questions, comments, replies etc.) per day which compares to ca. 80 students active in their study (during winter term 2000/01). We also found that the difficulty of writing formulas or drawing graphics due to the text based newsgroup was no restriction to the ongoing discussion. Where it was necessary students contributed to the discussion with attached images of graphs or formula. 3 For that purpose the students were initially grouped together by their regional proximity of home or place of work, as far as it was possible. 15 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 4 For example, we made questionnaires on the technical equipment of our off-campus students as well as on their familiarity with communication tools. In winter term 2000/01 (1999/2000) the result was: computer 100% (90%), modem or otherwise Internet access 91% or 93%, respectively (77%). Tools were rated as follows: e-mail 95%, FTP 39%, ICQ38 %. In the first beginning, some individuals had no access to computer; therefore, those students were supplied by laptop computers with built-in modems on loan. In the meanwhile, about ten years after beginning of the project, the demands resulting from technical problems as observed earlier (hardware, software, Internet connection and bandwidth) do no longer play any role. This confirmed our decision to consequently use the Internet. Since then, it is exciting to observe how students manage these modern technologies with a kind of naturalness, being it application of LaTeX for formulas in the homework assignments and many more. This continuing change in everyday use of ICT arises interesting questions like that on possible integration of features of the so called Web 2.0 for educational purposes. 5 The media are organized by and stored in a media server which has specifically been developed for that purpose (Roth 2001), (FiPS). 6 The submissions are typically in electronic format ranging from scanned handwritten solutions to word processed by means of LaTeX and pdf format, for example. 7 Only such material which is easy to access via Internet and, in general, free of charge has been collected. Since the beginning of the evaluation process an increasingly number of commercial products appeared on the market (stand- alone, or CD-ROM attached to a physics text book). This evolution has to be considered in the near future. References Åkerlind, G., and C. Trevitt. 1995. Enhancing Learning through Technology: When Students resist the Change. In ASCILITE ’95 – conference proceedings, eds. A. Ellis, and J. M. Pearce. Parkville, Vic, Australia: University of Melbourne. Available online at Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) http://www.ascilite.org.au/ Bates, A. W. 1995. Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education. London: Routledge. This book provides a general review of the state-of-the-art of technology (indeed, at that time) applied in distance education for decision makers together with a discussion of future trends. Cilliers, J. A., P. A. Kirschner, and I. Basson. 1997. Towards a new approach to distance education in physics: the first steps. South African Journal of Higher Education 11 (1): 114-121. 16 http://www.ascilite.org.au/ Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Christian, W., G. Novak, and E. T. Patterson. 1997. WebPhysics: Delivering Curricular Material Using the World Wide Web. In The Changing Role of Physics Departments in Modern Universities – Proceedings of ICUPE (AIP 399), eds. E. F. Redish, and J. S. Rigden, 417-430. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics. Christian, W., and M. Belloni. 2004. Physlet® Physics: Interactive Illustrations, Explorations, and Problems for Introductory Physics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Demtröder, W. 1994. Experimentalphysik 1: Mechanik und Wärme. Berlin: Springer. Demtröder, W. 1995. Experimentalphysik 2: Elektrizität und Optik. Berlin: Springer. Depireux, J., H. Jodl, and J. Wilson. 1989. Report on Working-Group 3: Software and Audiovisuals. In proceedings of the international conference teaching modern physics – condensed matter, ed. K. Luchner, 308-319. Singapore: World Scientific. Dillon, A., and R. Gabbard. 1998. Hypermedia as an Educational Technology: A Review of the Quantitative Research Literature on Learner Comprehension, Control, and Style. Review of Educational Research 68 (3): 322-349. Donnelly, D. 1999. Physics pedagogical software: The CIP software contest. Computer Physics Communications 121/122: 557-561. Eckert, B., and M. Ronen. 2004. Multimedia in Teacher Training – Outcome of the Workshop Discussion. In Quality Development in Teacher Education and Training – Second International GREP Seminar 2003, ed. M. Michelini, 465-466. Udine, Italy: Forum. 17 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 EPS-PED The Physics Education Division (PED) of the European Physical Society (EPS) hosts several working groups on educational issues. The website is at http://education.epsdivisions.org/ FiPS Unfortunately, this distant course is offered only in German language. The interested reader may have a look at the website, http://www.fernstudium-physik.de. Additional information, for example about course syllabus including media, discussion forum, grading tool, technical pre- course (partly in English) is available at http://pen.physik.uni-kl.de/fips/ Forinash, K., and R. Wisman. 2001. The Viability of Distance Education Science Laboratories. T.H.E. journal. Available online at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/15590 Forinash, K., and R. Wisman. 2005. Building real laboratories on the Internet. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning 15 (1/2): 56-66. Frye, S. 1997. Development of Introductory Physics as Distance Learning. Inquiry 1 (2): 78-80. Garg, S., S. Panda, and Vijayshri (eds.). 1998. Science and technology through open and distance education. New Delhi: Aravali Books International. Grimm, J., and K. Riquarts. 1992. Education in Germany. Physics Education 27 (6): 297-299. Gröber, S., M. Vetter, B. Eckert, and H.-J. Jodl. 2007. Experimenting from a distance - remotely controlled laboratory (RCL). European Journal of Physics 28 (3): S127-S141. 18 http://education.epsdivisions.org/ http://www.fernstudium-physik.de/ http://pen.physik.uni-kl.de/fips/ http://www.thejournal.com/articles/15590 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Gröber, S., M. Vetter, B. Eckert, and H.-J. Jodl. 2008. Remotely controlled laboratories: Aims, examples, and experience. American Journal of Physics 76 (4): 374-378. Hara, N. 2000. Student distress in a web-based distance education course. Information, Communication & Society 3 (4): 557-579. Holmberg, R., M. Liston, and L. Carter. 1998. Teaching Science at-a-Distance: what is so difficult? In proceedings of the 14th annual conference of the Canadian association for Distance Education – partners in learning (partenaires favorisant l’apprentissage), eds. J. Baggaley, T. Anderson, M. Haughey, 166-168. Athabasca: Athabasca University. Jodl, H. J. 1985. Microphysics (Report on Workshop 4). In Microscience – International Workshop on the Use of Microcomputers in Science Education (Vol. II), eds. G. Marx, and P. Szücs, 172-175. Veszprém, Hungary: International Centre for Educational Technology. Jodl, H. J. 1997. Use of Computers in Problem Solving and in Student Laboratories. In The Changing Role of Physics Departments in Modern Universities – Proceedings of ICUPE (AIP 399), eds. E. F. Redish, and J. S. Rigden, 431-448. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics. Kappel, H.-H., B. Lehmann, and J. Loeper. 2002. Distance Education at Conventional Universities in Germany. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 2 (2): 1-21. Kennepohl, D., and A. M. Last. 1998. Going the distance in Canada. Education in Chemistry 35 (1): 19-20. 19 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Kennepohl, D., and A. M. Last. 2000. Teaching Chemistry at Canada’s Open University. Distance Education 21 (1): 183-197. Kennepohl, D., J. Baran, M. Connors, K. Quigley, and R. Currie. 2005. Remote Access to Instrumental Analysis for Distance Education in Science. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 6 (3): 1-14 (article 6.3.3). Kirschner, P., M. Meester, E. Middelbeek, and H. Hermans. 1993. Learning objectives for science practicals at traditional and distance universities, Distance Education 14 (2): 260-282. See also literature therein. Kirstein, J., and V. Nordmeier. 2007. Multimedia representation of experiments in physics. European Journal of Physics 28 (3): S115-S126. Korsch, H. J., H.-J. Jodl, and T. Hartmann. 2007. Chaos: A Program Collection for the PC. 3rd ed. Berlin: Springer. Kozma, R. B. 1991. Learning with media. Review of Educational Research 61 (2): 179-211. Lambourne, R. 2008. Physics and Distance Education. In Connecting Research in Physics Education with Teacher Education – Vol. 2, eds. M. Vicentini, and E. Sassi. The International Commission on Physics Education (ICPE). Available online at http://web.phys.ksu.edu/ICPE/Publications/teach2/ Laurillard, D. 1993. Balancing the media. Journal of Educational Television 19 (2): 81-93. 20 http://web.phys.ksu.edu/ICPE/Publications/teach2/ Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Mason, B. 2006. A joint MERLOT and European view of multimedia in physics. MERLOT International Conference 2006. Ottawa, Canada 08/10/2006. Available online at http://conference.merlot.org/2006/MICO6/MIC06Thursday/MERLOTPhysics.ppt Meester, M. A. M., and P. A. Kirschner. 1995. Practical Work at the Open University of the Netherlands. Journal of Science Education and Technology 4 (2): 127-140. MERLOT-Physics The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching hosts a huge archive of links to multimedia material in a variety of disciplines. Each discipline is managed by an editorial board. The material is peer reviewed and described in detail. The website is at http://www.merlot.org MPTL Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning is part of the Physics Education Division of the European Physical Society. This working group organizes annual meetings where multimedia material is presented and discussed. In particular, a core team of the members collects and evaluates multimedia material on a specific topic of physics curriculum. Since 2004 there is a joint evaluation of material with the MERLOT-Physics editorial board. The website is at http://www.mptl.eu Muller, D. A., J. Eklund, and M. D. Sharma. 2006. The future of multimedia learning: Essential issues for research. In AARE Conference 2005, ed. P. L. Jeffery. Available online at The Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), http://www.aare.edu.au Novak, G. M., E. T. Patterson, A. D. Gavrin, and W. Christian. 1999. Just-in-Time Teaching: Blended Active Learning with Web Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 21 http://conference.merlot.org/2006/MICO6/MIC06Thursday/MERLOTPhysics.ppt http://www.merlot.org/ http://www.mptl.eu/ http://www.aare.edu.au/ Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Oliver, R. 1996. Interactions in multimedia materials: The things that matter. In The Learning Superhighway: New world? New worries? – Proceedings of the Third International Interactive Multimedia Symposium, eds. C. McBeath, and R. Atkinson, 303-308. Cannon Bridge, WA Australia: Promaco Conventions. Available online at http://www.ascilite.org.au/aset- archives/confs/iims/1996/lp/oliver.html Roth, D. 2001. FiPS: Früheinstieg ins Physikstudium – Entwicklung, Einsatz und Organisation multimedialer Elemente im Physik-Fernstudium. PhD diss., University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. (In German.) Ross, S., and E. Scanlon. 1994. Computers and the teaching of physics at a distance. In Deciding our future: technological imperatives for education – The 11th International Conference on Technology and Education, eds. M. Thomas et al., 1217-1219. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin, College of Education. Ross, S., and E. Scanlon. 1995. Open Science: Distance Teaching and Open Learning of Science Subjects. London: Paul Chapman. Safko, J. L., and R. D. Edge. 1997. Distance Education: Physics through the University of South Carolina for Pre-service and In-service K-12 Teachers. In The Changing Role of Physics Departments in Modern Universities – Proceedings of ICUPE (AIP 399), eds. E. F. Redish, and J. S. Rigden, 835-837. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics. Schauer, F. et al. 2009. Integrated e-learning – new strategy of the cognition of real world in teaching physics. In Innovations 2009 - World Innovations in Engineering Education and Research (iNEER). To be published. 22 http://www.ascilite.org.au/aset-archives/confs/iims/1996/lp/oliver.html http://www.ascilite.org.au/aset-archives/confs/iims/1996/lp/oliver.html Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Schweickert, F. 2002. FiPS: Früheinstieg ins Physikstudium – Organisation und Kommunikation im Fernstudium Physik. PhD diss., University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. (In German.) Shott, M. 1985. Teaching Physics at a distance. Distance Education 6 (1): 102-127. Smith, R. C., and E. F. Taylor. 1995. Teaching physics on line. American Journal of Physics 63 (12): 1090-1096. Sonnenwald, D. H., M. Iironen, J. A. Alpi, and H. Kokkinen. 1999. Collaborative Learning Using Collaboration Technology: Report from the Field. In Integrating Information and Communications Technology in Higher Education, eds. A. Eurelings et al., 241-258. Amsterdam: Kluwer. Suson, D. J., L. D. Hewett, J. McCoy, and V. Nelson. 1999. Creating a virtual physics department. American Journal of Physics 67 (6): 520-523. Sutton, L. A. 2001. The Principle of Vicarious Interaction in Computer-Mediated Communications. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications 7 (3): 223-242. The Education Group. The Video Encyclopedia of Physics DemonstrationsTM. The website is at http://www.physicsdemos.com/ Venables, J. A. 1998. Graduate Education on the Internet. Physics Education 33 (3): 157-163. Wagner, A., S. Altherr, B. Eckert, and H.-J. Jodl. 2003. Multimedia in physics education: a video for the quantitative analysis of the Reynolds number. European Journal of Physics 24 (3): 297- 300. 23 http://www.physicsdemos.com/ Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Wagner, A., S. Altherr, B. Eckert, and H.-J. Jodl. 2006. Multimedia in physics education: a video for the quantitative analysis of the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force. European Journal of Physics 27 (5): L27-L30. Wagner, A., S. Altherr, B. Eckert, and H.-J. Jodl. 2006. Multimedia in physics education: two teaching videos on the absorption and emission spectrum of sodium. European Journal of Physics 27 (6): L31-L35. Wagner, A., S. Altherr, B. Eckert, and H.-J. Jodl. 2007. Multimedia in physics education: teaching videos about aero and fluid dynamics. European Journal of Physics 28 (4): L33-L37. Wallin, J. F. 1998. Distance Learning and the World Wide Web. Computers in Physics 12 (4): 322-327. Wilson, J. M. 1997. How Computing and Communication are Changing Physics Education. In The Changing Role of Physics Departments in Modern Universities – Proceedings of ICUPE (AIP 399), eds. E. F. Redish, and J. S. Rigden, 357-373. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics. (Web sites accessed as of March, 17 2009) 24 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Tables Table 1: Review criteria of the two groups of referees (MPTL; Mason 2006). EPS – PED MERLOT – Physics Motivation User friendly: easy to start, understand, control, and is documented Attractive: appealing, interactive, and interesting Clear Description and Context Quality of Content Correct Models: numerical, textual, notation Important Topics: standard or unique Conceptual: understand parameters Effective Graphics Flexible: multiple uses Content Relevant: Important topic and media use Scope: broad and profound topic Correct: content accurate and models indicated Effectiveness as a Learning Tool Learner: level, challenge, control Relevant Knowledge: learning goals, application Experience: dynamic, flexible, interactive, progress Feedback: clear, immediate, positive Method Flexible: broad audience and topic Matching Target: correct level, background, objectives Realization: media is well used Documentation: operation, references, teaching process Usability Understandable: runs easily Intuitive: attractive, controlled, input/output Feedback: clear communication Documented 25 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Table 2: Evaluation and recommendation of multimedia materials, see (MPTL); joint activities of the EPS-PED group together with the MERLOT-Physics group are marked by an asterisk. Year MPTL meeting Field of physics Number of items 2008* XIII Cyprus Quantum Mechanics ~ 200; report in progress 2007* XII Wroclaw (Poland) Condensed Matter Physics, and Particle Physics ~ 100; ~ 10 excellent 2006* XI Szeged (Hungary) Electromagnetism ~ 700; 26 excellent 2005* X Berlin (Germany) Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics ~ 110; 11 excellent 2004* IX Graz (Austria) Mechanics ~ 250; 11 excellent 2003 VIII Prague (Czech Republic) Optics ~ 200; 5 excellent 2002 VII Parma (Italy) Quantum Mechanics ~ 30; 4 excellent 26 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Table 3: Summary of the worldwide inventory on remote labs (Gröber et al. 2007). Year Total number of remote labs Free to access * Worked without problems * Subjects * 2004 ~ 70 ~ 70 % ~ 15 % ~ 90 % engineering 2006 ~ 120 (~ 60 projects) ~ 20 % ~ 20 % ~ 60-70 % engineering ~ 30 % physics ** < 10 % other disciplines * In percent of total number. ** Including such remote labs dealing with electronics. 27 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Table 4: List of remote labs which have so far been set-up in the framework of our approach. Topics of physics curriculum Electron Diffraction (wave nature of electrons, example for structure determination by diffraction) Photoelectric Effect (model of light as particle, determination of Planck’s constant and work function) Millikan’s Oil-Drop Experiment (proving and determining elementary charge) Rutherford’s Scattering Experiment (exploring structure of atoms) Speed of Light (determination by a time- of-flight method) Fourier Transformation (based on diffraction of light) Radioactivity (exploring different kinds of radioactive radiation, absorption of radiation, statistical nature of nuclear decay) Diffraction and Interference of Light (various diffraction objects can be studied systematically), two variants Voltage-Current Characteristics of Semiconductor Devices (introductory electronics); two variants Oscilloscope (how does it work, preparation for lab work) Order-/Disorder (modeling, based on diffraction objects reflecting crystal structure) Examples for students’ project, motivational and lay-people oriented Toll System (model with toy train, how does it work, identifying moving vehicles) Robot in a Maze (playful approach to remote operation) Wind Tunnel (air friction of different vehicles, impact on gasoline consumption); see Figs. 9-10 Computed Tomography (how does it work, how to gain ‘hidden’ information) ‘Hot Wire’ Game (hoe to build and to control a robot based on toy construction kit) ‘World Pendulum’ (determining the Earth’s surface gravitational field strength depending on geographical latitude by means of distributed high-precision pendulums) Optical Tweezers (moving tiny particles with laser light, introduction to front-edge research) 28 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Table 5: Access rates and usage of some selected RCL experiments. We differentiate visitors and users: number of visits reflects how often the RCL lab was called up; users, on the other hand, are visitors who changed at least one parameter of the experiment. Period of tracking Visitors per day Fraction of users Averaged time of usage Topics of physics curriculum Electron Diffraction Aug – Nov 2006 Dec – May 2007 2.2 2.6 - 62 % 1) 2) Millikan’s Oil Drop Experiment Nov 2006 Feb – Apr 2007 May 2007 $ 3.2 3.2 6.3 - 68 % (51%)* - 3’ (3’40”)* Radioactivity Aug – Nov 2006 1.2 2.3 - 69 % - 7’ Diffraction and Interference of Light Nov 2006 Dec – May 2007 1.8 1.3 - 79 % - 3) Examples for students’ project, motivational and lay-people oriented Wind Tunnel Aug – Nov 2006 Dec – May 2007 2.5 2.4 - 73 % - 4) ‘Hot Wire’ Game Aug – Nov 2006 Dec – May 2007 1.1 1.5 - 73 % - 3’11” Resume 1 – 3 visitors per day 60 – 80 % or 1 - 2 users per day Several minutes working in the lab 1) About 45 % of the visitors changed the acceleration voltage at least 3 times per visit. 2) On average the users changed the acceleration voltage 6.1 per visit. 3) Averaged number of diffraction objects chosen by users was 4.0 per visit. 4) On average each user has chosen 1.6 vehicles different from the one which is pre-set when entering the laboratory site. * In parenthesis are given the values which indicate an, in principle, meaningful experimentation. $ Due to public announcement (hyperlink at Wikipedia) we could observe a strong increase in visiting this RCL. 29 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Figure Captions Fig. 1 Evolution of enrollment at the Physics Department of University of Technology Kaiserslautern (Germany), numbers of on-campus students (black bars), off- campus students (white bars). The duration of the FiPS project was from winter term 1998 till summer term 2002; after that this distance course is offered as a matter of routine by the department. Due to federal constraints the numbers of the summer term enrollments are slightly lower than that of the winter term: on average, on-campus students ~35 against ~55, off-campus ~49 against ~90. In consequence, we have more off-campus enrollments than on-campus and at almost constant level per semester. Fig. 2 Distribution of employment/activity of off-campus students in winter term 2000/01, as an example. The main group are students staying in community (civilian) and military service (~81%), however, the fraction of students in military service (~39% in winter term 1997/98) decreased in favor of students in civilian service and school. Currently, about 27% of the first-semester off-campus students (winter term) are at school (~17%, summer term). A growing fraction of off-campus students has an occupation, is enrolled at another university (study), or is abroad from Germany (now constantly at 10-15%). Fig. 3 Time line of the distance courses offered by the department of physics and by the department of mathematics at University of Technology Kaiserslautern. Fig. 4 Part of a typical study guide given once a week to the off-campus students, here as an example on the topic ‘frames of reference’ in mechanics. The whole study guide contains an introductory text about the book chapter, the reading guide organized as a table, and some additional remarks. The first column of the reading guide relates to the chapter of the text book. The second column (‘Hinw.’) contains numbers how deep a topic has to be treated and informs the students about the weight, for example, ranging from 1 (low) to 5 (high). The third column is devoted to the particular physics topic, additional questions and links to multimedia (arrows in 2nd column) are integrated. The last column (‘Zeit’) quotes an averaged time for studying a subchapter in order to facilitate students’ time planning. Fig. 5 Representative example of problem solving activity (bars) and success (diamond shaped symbols) during one semester off-campus exercises. The grey scale of the bars have the following meaning: a problem with multimedia application (white), standard calculus based physics problem (grey), and problem from the mathematical addition (black). Since there are 4-6 six problems assigned to the students each week and a semester has ca. 13 weeks, in total there are ca. 60 problems per semester. 30 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Fig. 6 Setup of the experiment on Coriolis and centrifugal force appearing in a rotating frame of reference. Left: scheme, right: still photo of the real setup (screenshot from the video). Fig. 7 Trajectories of one and the same ball rolling on the surface of a rotating disc. Left: observation of the movement in the system at rest (laboratory system), right: observation in the rotating, accelerated system (see fig. 6). The dots indicate the position after equidistant time intervals. For details see text. Fig. 8 Simplified scheme of a remotely controlled laboratory. Fig. 9 Sketch of the setup of the wind tunnel experiment (left). Three different vehicles can be exerted to an air flow of variable strength. Each vehicle is attached to a strain gauge (only one is shown here for simplicity). The real setup is shown for one toy vehicle in the photograph (right). Fig. 10 Screenshot of the laboratory website of the remote wind tunnel experiment. On the left the navigation menu can be seen which is organized like typical lab course exercises. On the right there are the control buttons of the experiment. In between the streaming video shows which of the three vehicles is currently placed in the wind tunnel as well as the relevant values of the wind speed and the voltage of the of the strain gauge. 31 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 WT WT WT WT WT WT WT WT WT WT ST WT ST WT ST WT ST WT ST WT ST WT ST WT ST WT 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03 04 04 05 05 06 06 07 07 N u m b er s Fig. 1 civil service 71% military service 10% occupation 8% school 6% study 2% abroad 1% others 2% Fig. 2 32 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 First semester Second semester Third semester higher Experimental Physics I (Mechanics, Thermodynamics) Mathematical additions I Experimental Physics II (Electrodynamics, Optics) Mathematical additions II Experimental Physics III (Introductory Quantum Physics) Theoretical Physics (Classical Mechanics) Mathematics for physics students I Mathematics for physics students II Analysis Off-campus (FiPS) On-campus Fig. 3 33 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Fig. 4 34 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 35 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 36 Submitted to American Journal of Distance Education May 2008, revision March 2009 37 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 
work_fznr3efl7nc7xnqogdiscu3yfe	----	Integration of virtual and academic counseling system in Distance Education For Health Management (DEHM) WCES-2010 Integration of virtual and academic counseling system in Distance Education For Health Management (DEHM) Ak n Marsapa *, Serpil Aytacb aDistance Education Programs, Ahmet Yesevi University,Ankara,06490,Turkey bFaculty of Eco.and Administrative. Sciences, Uludag University, Bursa,16136, Turkey Received November 15, 2009; revised December 3, 2009; accepted January 25, 2010 Abstract In information age, modern health organizations can use distance education of e-learning issues effectively and they can increase the speed of the learning process of development. Because, health systems can adapt changes by using innovations of leadership and they can reach learning organization level by understanding, thinking and doing well things properly. In this paper, we demonstrate the role of informal discussion about face to face Academic Counseling System (ACS) requirement HES. We try to explain of the synchronal integration of face to face e-learning process and adapting continuous training of the HRM. In this paper, for reaching expected high quality in training we want to explain the importance of academic counseling system and supporting by face to face training during HESM. Keywords: E-health; management; distance education; academic counseling systems; management information systems; e-learning. 1. Introduction Information technology is becoming integral to both the workplace and everyday activity of citizens in the rapid industrialization and long standing efforts to modernizing in the world. Economy in information technologies or the purpose of increasing incomes can provide advantages for the versatile use of institutional plans that are the velocity factor of internet era. In the renewal of the Distance Education for Health Management (DEHM), richness of academic interaction processes with active participation is an essential factor. In DEHM, internet-based interactive e-learning process requires a balanced synchronization in managerial, administrative, technical and reinforcement areas in health systems. Every country in the world economy of the 21st century- China, India, Japan, and EU countries- develops new fashion institutions and establishes the balance between harmony in harmoniousness. Moreover, creating ignition in harmony makes neurons provide common procedures at higher level of the system. Nowadays, transformation of huge institutions into short term project teams, partnership, alliance and common enterprises by division is very similar to these short term groups in the nervous system. There is still a long way in front of synchronization industry. Firstly, many small companies that haven’t reconstructed raw material and/or * Ak n Marsap. Tel.: +90532 4468891; fax: +90224 4428606 E-mail address: ak nmarsap@yahoo.com 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.263 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1956 Akın Marsap and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 y y g y steps that lead to deeper and more complicated temporary integrations of the problem. Anymore synchronization specialists want to achieve more than selling software. They want to serve directly to their customers and till the ultimate user by following the chain step by step (Toffler , 2006). The constant feedback that institution and managers provides to the workers provides a realistic background with regard to the awareness level. Obviously, getting negative feedback is more difficult than getting positive feedback. So, it is necessary that we appreciate and make use of constructive negative feedback (Yoney, 2007). Now, computers that are as big as a book are easily accessible. Changing conditions require new pedagogical objectives (Gardner, 2006). Knowledge, interest, sensitivity and experience are such notions that are acquired not just by their own lives but rather by using habits based on the past and experiences that are inherited from traditions (Onat, 2006). The distance education for health management involves development dynamism that is flexible and open to management, renewal and creativity. Institutional education, technology and service model procedures have the advantage of coordination competition Health and Research. The purpose is a constant improvement together with organizational productivity in the processes. In e-transformation institutional awareness, institutional culture change, background standards and accumulation of knowledge provides dynamism in the renewed web-based education, students develop their abilities in the areas they need with the help of various software equipment that include mutual interaction. Students adopt a teaching time and teaching style that are suitable for their own individual needs via educational environments that they enter as “asynchrony” different from classical classrooms and educational materials that they use. Different from traditional classroom environments students can continue interaction and communication in the classroom under their own control and without taking the teacher to the center. In DEHM, interactive e- learning process can enrich within the inner and outer business and academic counseling of face to face interaction dynamism. Richness harmonious can be design between cultural, artistic, sportive opportunities and face- to face activities is required. Practice involving studies, training, graduate interaction are possible with providing multiple participation for a more systematic interaction. Orientation, academic counseling and guidance can be provided in a way that is suitable for DE environment. In classrooms, students knowing each other more closely will motivate them. Academicians from other universities, people that are successful in the industry and other field specialists can be invited to the classes and linked to relevant geographic area. Human computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use (Dix et al., 2004). The main purpose human computer interaction is to improve new approaches to design usable and functional systems. This new systems can provide technology usability, efficiency and effectiveness. E-learning requires creative and innovative approach for delivering well designed, flexible, learner centered and interactivity for HR of the business (Khan, 2005) 2. The Increasing Importance of Creativity for Business Environments Active creativity is fundamental for solution to the current problems in the business environments. In scientific process, relevant sections’ (counselor/ academician, participants) revealing their creative potential against the defined problem area is important with regard to inspiring the studies that focus on scientific problem solving. The managerial and administrative dimensions of these conditions that are adapted in academic environments are paid attention within the scientific researches and experiences in academic environments; the notion of creativity has a determining role in producing information and using this information in academic, teaching-learning and social living conditions. In establishing new problem fields and reaching novel synthesis according to cause-effect relationship, the notion of creativity that intuitively looks the existing one critically provides solutions to social problems and its stance against individual/social problems that produces alternatives in academic environments is meaningful (Kaplan, www.universite-toplum.org/text.php3?id=159 - 24k). In science, events aren’t analyzed one by one, but rather according to their relationships with one another. Cause and effect are the concepts that go together and are related to the situations (Y ld r m, 1979). Today, the production and access of the knowledge at an increasing rate don’t reduce the role of creativity. In reaching at new synthesis evaluating the produced information by confirming it requires creativity. The purpose of education is not to renew what the previous generations have done, but rather to create human societies that have the ability to do something new over the previously done things. According to Piaget, creative and innovative people are supervisor and are kind of people that don’t admit everything offered to them as they exist (Sungur, 1992). It is useful to employ SevgAkın Marsapa and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 1957 creativity or interactive communication between academicians and students in the current education environment instead of transferring the already prepared knowledge to the individuals or claiming to teach everything. In this way, it is intended that learners positively affect the education environment by using their own initiative, being an active factor that produces information in the information process, taking a position as producer- consumer. Thus, using the potential of creativity can initially enable people to look at the life from a global perspective. In education field, flexibility in creative thinking is emphasized in training teachers as well as students (Yavuz, 1989). Yürekli (1996) indicates that academic staff need to learn together with learners s; that’s, knowledge production efforts are required. According to Inam (1995), the way to achieve this requires the university to be an institution where information is freely produced, discussed based on its own inner dynamics. 2.1. Efficiency factors of the increasing face to face interaction richness Nowadays, the aid provided by internet to the education processes is growing and increasing to the developing web platforms and the strong database relationships provided by content management support (Togay, K l ç and Karaaslan, 2006). In e-learning, a learning practice is shared simultaneously or not with other learners and teachers on an interaction environment that is established via computer nets. One of the basic aspects of web usage in education environments is the interaction among participants (Davidson- Shivers and Rasmussen, 2006:23). Establishing interaction in a web based education environment from all around the world that is free of an authority and fast makes an important contribution to learners using their initiatives and developing effective features that help them to achieve themselves. More than being a task attributed to somebody, academic counseling and web based education environments is an interactive notion that learners and teachers establish together. There is a need for visional enterprises and scenarios for the quality and standard development of DEHM. As a further study, more sensitive outcomes can be achieved as a result of the adaptation of other technologies of the artificial intelligence into the system (Öncü ve Varol 2006). While some people are good at active learning by interacting with others, some others may prefer to individual learning by themselves. While some learn with visual shapes more easily, other adapted verbal methods. The information that people confront within their daily life isn’t structured according to their learning preferences. Individuals should learn to use all the methods necessary for storing the knowledge they wonder or they have to learn in their long term memory and achieve the behavioral change that they are expected by transferring that knowledge into practice. That’s to say, they need learning to learn. (http://www.bilgikurdu.net/index.php?/Makale/Uzaktan-Egitimde-Modeller-insan-Kendi-Kendine-Ogrenebilir- mi.html, 3.03.2008). 2.2. E-learning provides face to face ACS of the DEHM The domain model consists of concepts, topics, exercises and tests. The teaching model uses both of learners centered and domain model to adapting presentation for the users; a) Increase of quality and standards of e-learning for the human resource of the business, b) Actualizations of e-books contains in the business training systems, c) Increase of e-research project studies for the human resource of the companies. d) Improving flexible participation and exchange programs based on actual business problems, e) Providing e-academic supports of other business and Universities toward to the all business. f) Providing face to face ACS to e-Learning of the DEHM can increase the quality of education. DE, which took its place in contemporary education system by teaching with letters, is in the renewed forms like web based education, synchronous education with the development of internet and internet Technologies. The academic studies that began with post and television can be used in live classrooms that are completely web based, supported by video conference system and simultaneous with other universities. Teleconference meetings that use internet web, electronic posts that replaced traditional posts, electronic books and periodic publishing that make up an alternative for the published resources are the models that are used as a past of internet based DE. Today, among these models, the most commonly used model is Web Based Distance Education (WBDE) model. In WBDE model, all of the different techniques that are used under the name of web based DE are utilized. HTML page structures are arranged to reach at the content, e-post lists are used to carry out the interaction safely and discussion lists and chat programs are used to increase the interaction. The most outstanding advantage of WBDE is that students can get 1958 Akın Marsap and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 access to the content involved in the system and use the resources as much as they want. An ideal model comes out when the provided flexibility is combined with the economical advantages (Carswell and Venkatesh, 2002; Maly and others 1998). For the reliability of the health system in the future, the determined global health education standards that involve DEHM expertise in the preparation to be done should be talking into account by considering the quality. 3. Interaction ACS can give common Platforms for DEHM What is important is implementing the technology into education that is suitable for the policy of DE and that will best serve the purposes of the institution and recipients (Alkan, 1997).In the technologies used in DE, the relationship among interaction environment, communication and technology gains importance. Interaction refers to the communication between two or more sides. However, interaction isn’t just used with this general meaning in DE. When interaction is mentioned, three different interaction levels that have a direct influence on the quality of the on-going education should be born in mind (Trentin. 2000). Here the interaction is carried out with a delay, and thus, feedback is transferred to learners with a delay as it is obtained from student with a delay. The synchronous refer to technologies where simultaneous interaction is provided. In this sense, all three levels of interaction can be achieved simultaneously by means of the technologies like video conference that provides interaction close to face to face interaction, interactive TV (Girginer, 2001). Environment (media) is the communication structure that involves special presentation of information. For this reason, every environment has peculiar features in presenting and organizing information. Same environment may involve several different presentation technologies. For instance, when a sound based environment is used, voiced conference may make simultaneous interaction possible while sound cassettes merely provide the interaction between participants and learning materials with one way interaction. In education, five environments are mentioned (Bates, 1995): face to face, graphics/ written texts, sound, images and computers. In the effectiveness of DES, pedagogical, financial, managerial, technological targets and objectives have an importance as a criterion (http:// www.odevsel.com/bilim/1869/uzaktan-egitimde-teknoloji-ve- etkinlik.html, 04, 03.2008). In 1999, in his study called The No significant Difference Phenomenon, Thomas Russel indicated that the view that DE was as effective as the traditional education was supported by the research conducted as he listed 355 studies that had been conducted since 1928 about the effectiveness of DES in DE literature (Russell, 1999). Therefore, other factors, as well, should be considered when the influence of one factor on effectiveness is taken in to account. For example, the contribution of the program or class that is developed as a factor affecting the effectiveness will be related to the use of appropriate technology in the presentation, a detailed observation of the target group, the institution’s providing its appropriate resources to this application (Girginer, 2001). Presenting the program or class to the learners who are qualified to get the education, developing the mentioned program or class according to the target groups needs and expectations will affect student satisfaction and success and closely related to this, it will affect the effectiveness. Another factor that influences the effectiveness is counselor teachers who make up the other side of education. Selecting and training the educators effectively may be a very important factor in the success of the program. So, it is highly important that educators are matched according to the program and needs of the learners (Moore- Thompson, 1997). This effectiveness process can be measured in various ways like the rate of reaching at learners, the rates of completing the programs, program/class exam results, the advantages of learning, the rate of being employed after graduation and observing changes in life standards. Education technology is a sophisticated process that systematically analyzes the problems that involves the notion of human learning, develops appropriate designs by employing all the components (human power, knowledge, methods, techniques, tools, regulations) that provide solutions, applies and evaluates these designs by managing them (Alkan, 1997:16). DEHM is an elaborate education technology that develops and evaluates education by designing it within the system of learner-teacher interaction (pedagogical, technological, and administrative) in the holistic interaction process that is free from time and location. With this respect, any kind of equipment that increases the quality of teaching learning is regarded as technology. The purpose of using technology in learning- teaching is to provide better values to such recipients as students, employers and governments in terms of education (Bates, 1997:93). The reasons for using technology n teaching- learning (Bates, 2000:16) are; to increase the access to learning and teaching, to increase the quality of learning, to decrease the cost of health education, to establish cost effectiveness in education, to make managers gain the ability to work with technology and to provide the abilities that they will need in the SevgAkın Marsapa and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 1959 private lives through technology. Inner structuring of institutions in educational institutions gains importance by structurally varying as the structures of educational institutions change with the development of technology. The functions of Educational Management System (EMS) involve the presentation of the contents of e- learning, recording, interaction and communication between the users and trainers, measuring and evaluating, observations and the reports of user education information and other procedures. In two way interaction that allows for direct interaction between the teacher and students at far corners, environments that are both individual and rich with communication systems are mentioned as students participate in the education either individually or in groups. Compared to the communication nets used by previous generations, the technologies in this formation may provide a much more equal communication net between learners and the teacher and among learners themselves (Bates, 1995). 3.1. Analysis of e-learning human computer interaction and user interfaces We analyze HR usability at the principle level. Principles reflect the highest level of requirements in a domain, which are based on the cognitive sciences success on HR. Principles are abstract, independent upon implementation suitable e-learning platform for HR training programs. The e-learning methodologies are based on common didactic principles (Miles, 2003, Doneva, 2007). Different instruments are employed to solve problems related to the application of standards, principles, guidelines and recommendations (Mariage, 2004). The principles of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and for usable user interfaces (UI) design are summarized in Table I. (Damaseviecius and Tankeleviciene, 2008). After all, we have extracted a subset of 10 principles, which we describe further as a common principal model: (1)Flexibility/learner-centeredness’ (2)Feedback/interaction (3)Affordance (4)Simplicity (5)Consistency/organization (6) Error tolerance (7) Standardization (8) Learn ability /memo ability (9) Accessibility/openness (10) Satisfaction/engagement Table 1. Principles of HCI and for UI design Principle Descriptions Example recommendations Accessibility The degree to which the system can be used comfortably by a wide variety of people Allow adjustment of font size Affordance Connection between a user interface and its functional and physical properties Use interface elements similar to real world Consistency/ organization A harmonization informative or agreement among parts of a system Use familiar patterns of interaction Error tolerance /reliability The ability of a system or component among parts of system Error messages should be expressed in plain language, indicate the problem, and suggest a solutions Feedback The return of information about the results of a process or activity Keep the user informed about the state and actions of the system Flexibility The easy with the which a system or component can be modified for use in applications or environments other than those for which it was specifically designed Allow the users to customize interface according to their preferences Learn ability/ memo ability The arability of the user to learn how to use a system and to remember its operational principles Dialogues should not contain information which is not irrelevant or rarely needed Satisfaction To comfort a system its users Avoid using very bright colors Simplicity The degree to which a system or component has a design an implementation that is straight forward and easy to understand Keep the number of interface elements visible to the user minimal Standardization Adherence to standards/recommendations/guidelines Follow standards and /or guidelines where possible Source: Damaseviecius, Robertas and Tankeleviciene, Lina, ‘Merging HCI and e-Learning Domain Oriented Design Principles for Developing User Interface for Mobile Devices, FL2008 Conference, Istanbul, 2008, pp.155-166. Cooperation could be defined as follows: people are involved in a common work process. The team is assessed as a whole, and compaction is minimized. Decisions are made by group consensus, especially for collective action. This principle holds true for the field of distance learning, where the cooperative work between learners and or teachers is most often materialized by a team work. The different actors (learner, tutor, author, and administrator) communicate and interchange together, in order to attain a common objective which is the construction of knowledge for learners ( Balla, 2008). Our objective is now to complete our application for the use and experiment it, in this field. We can set up this experiment to achieve principles goals. First, we wanted to validate the interest of 1960 Akın Marsap and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 corporation in this area and, we want to check the usability or the environment in particular access to the interactive units. Distance learning system implements this new type of corporations; 1. The need of cooperation in distance learning systems a. Means of help to cooperation (communication, support, interactivity) b. The interactivity process (the interactive scenario, constraints of teaching: the length of course, points of synchronization, organizational constraints) 2. Communications between actors ICLE 3. Integration of corporation in hypermedia documents 4. Modeling Informal discussion about face to face Academic Counseling System (ACS) is requirement HES. In additions, we are agreed to ACS requirement sessions conclusions for HES. In short, whether online or in the classroom, education is future and such distance learning is merely one medium or instruction among several others available in the realm of education all over the world. Since, e-learning is only a medium and not a methodology, whether or not this medium is effective would largely depend on the nature of the interaction ACS between the following key factors, namely a) the improvement of an e-learning course ware that is result driven of ACS , b) the development of teachers practical familiarity which the state of the art in distance education technology of ACS, and c) the commitment that the e-learners should be willing to make o assume leadership in the more individualized, and self- paced e-learning environment that is accessible to anyone who is willing to learn anything, anywhere. 4. E- Learning Opportunities with New Internet Technologies in DEHM In this section we discuss how to apply new design principles in an e-learning context. Some are the principles are apply easily. For example, multimodality is related to accessibility. Recently, programs for HR in the business are started by collaborating with DES companies or universities. Beyond borders programs are conducted by using novel DES internet technologies. New technologies (internet, fax video and so on) are partially used in DES; main reference resources and course books are sent from one country to another in a published way via posting. International or over business programs can be offered to learners from different countries. The accreditation of the programs by international business accreditation institutions is important with respect to the development dynamism that involves academic integration. Increasing the relationship of the DEHM and health industry will lead to economical social advantages that will eliminate strategic weaknesses in education while leading to various research and development projects, design of new trademarks, effective and productive functioning of techno- parks, multi- dimensional participation of synergy and the contribution that will lead to positive marks. DEHM institutions make a highly positive contribution in terms of climate change and sustainability of the ecological environment. Basic teaching material of DE is processed with digital course books that are designed for self learning, distance teaching techniques and with the guidance of counselor teaching staff. 4.1. Some of the critical issues of the e-learning systems for the DEHM; a. Sustaining academic counseling towards e-learning systems for the DEHM, b. Continuous weekly e-learning programs of voiced e-books and reference books for the participants, c. Health based research as in e-tests for multisystem for DEHM, d. E-home/hospital works and e-DEHM training projects on internet, e. E-library and research systems, e-business conferences and e-learning portals and free participation DEHM. f. Real life based case studies and real examples discussions for the DEHM learners of the systems. In DE system, designing interactive teaching environments based on information technologies provide several benefits: Curriculum sequencing and planning, tutoring strategies, device simulation and equipment training, domain expert system, multiple knowledge types, special purposes and intelligent/adaptive hypermedia. Different from the traditional mass communication of the internet, it affects the nature of communication differently: Volume, velocity, format and heading. Also, the possibility of vertical and horizontal communication between groups and people highly increases, links involving multiple texts in the sites. Personal control: Holding control over receiving and sending messages provides the opportunity to be able to find what is sought without needing to gather at a certain center and to decide what will be published (Gibson, Ward, 2000). The new sophisticated digital SevgAkın Marsapa and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 1961 environment where they can control the current knowledge and express themselves better without DE meditation can bring about an increase in the interaction between the manager and learners by decreasing communication gap to a great extent. 5. Conclusions Meaningful learning, as opposed to one-for-all structured (one uniform) learning, depends on concepts, of frames, that are presents in the learner’s cognitive structure. For learning to occur, each person mental structures require the understanding of that person’s; past history, present needs and an understanding of how he/she learn in different context (Roos and Unlu, 2008). Designing these versions can provide building an effective learning environment for using e-learning principles will be regard to the quality and new modifications of the system. The important thing is to eliminate the weak aspects that come out in the e- teaching process. The essential points involve reaching at the maturity of the system, its design and systematically using certain standards, increasing inter activeness by constantly updating the already prepared contents, its functionality, its quality and reaching at the structure of an attractive model by increasing student participation in classes within the substructures of internet that have become congenial to each other. What leads to the individual’s behavior change in the shortest time within the holistic structure of DE is the harmony of the pedagogical activities that has positive effects on him and job consequences. On the other hand, in DES, the effectiveness of the mixed education model that is a composition of face to face education opportunities can positively be increased as well as the courses held in web based classes via internet. In the processing of DEHM, the feeling that they are alone and lonely with the system, and the continuity of the feeling that the system is constantly supported can be provided by tracing the relationship of the system with users, their reactions, criticisms and the problems they confront. Students can get access to the relevant course counselors or trainers by means of e- mail, telephone and fax. Most of the courses are supported by websites via internet. Two sided verbal and visual connection provides opportunity for an interaction between teaching staff and distance education students. That people who couldn’t attend to the traditional education process in the past due to various reasons can reach at internet based education opportunities in DEHM via internet involves a basis that reinforces life- long education opportunities as the potential of internet connection system increases every passing day. Interaction in communication process, simultaneity (synchronous data flow), its eliminating time and place limitations facilitate DEHM development achieved by using the advantages of mass communication tools that are peculiar to new media beyond the traditional mass communication. Apart from DEHM, classrooms, television and books, internet based classes increase the dynamism of educational development, as well. The functioning of the fourth and last trend related to e- learning can be provided by using Learning Management Systems about learning architecture and learning standards. In increasing academic interactions among countries, inter- university programs, increasing intensive foreign language learning, wide participation in international conferences, potential development of the university, awarding academic interactions by encouraging them gain importance. Students directly carry out their communication with the faculty by means of e- mail, telephone and fax. Students acquire critical abilities peculiar to their own business environment and life in general. These abilities consist of the capabilities to collaborate in the groups and teams, the capability to write, the capability to search, the capability to communicate, the capability to share the multiple environment and the capability to reach at the resources in online learning association In e- learning, they are a version of DEHM that involves educational activities which are carried out without requiring the one teaching via internet technologies and the participants to be in the same place and at the same time. Communication tools such as movies, radio, television leaded to forming of this concept. In e- learning, which meets today’s learning requirements, asynchrony (individual) refers to individual’s self courses via internet and CD- ROM, classes recorded to videos, verbal- visual web presentations, online discussions, synchronous (live and simultaneous meeting of students and teachers in the internet based classrooms), internet based classrooms, visual- verbal conferences, telephone connection via internet, two- sided (interactive) and live satellite broadcasts. Though DE takes place outside the campus, the program can be combined with the education in the campus. DEHM accreditation program may provide national sufficiency from a single resource for DE programs. Providing the education that educators are asked part by part, linking it with previous knowledge and experiences, comparisons with the examples relevant to individuals’ own knowledge, experiences or working environments, varying presentations are awarded in providing support with feedbacks. The change of expectations in e- learning and the 1962 Akın Marsap and Serpil Aytac / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1955–1962 clear and prevalent influence of the technology that becomes widespread with the production of information show the development of pedagogical approaches that are influential in learning and teaching. New technologies provide students with the opportunity of higher quality interaction as published materials, visual and verbal cassettes, as well. Learners transfer, visa, insufficient funds, lack of information and common institutes are important factors that affect the quality of education. Closely related to this, novel common programs, support, network projects, additional credit transfer systems, English training, wide conferences and increasing the number of potential partners may enrich the flexible DEHM opportunities and interaction. On the other hand, university- industry and society collaboration in DEHM and academic interactions or academic counseling in the e- learning process will enrich them more. References Alkan, C., (1997). Education Technology, Ankara: An Publisment. Balla, Amar, (2008). A Pedagogical Cooperative Learning Environment: Application to cooperation in hypermedia documents, FL2008 International Conference, stanbul, pp.559-565. Bates, A.W., (1995). Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education, London: Routledge. Butner, Bonita K., (1999). Distance Technology: A National Graduate High Education Programs, Journal of Distance Learning Administrations 2, 3: 1-7. Carswell, A.D. ve Venkatesh, V.(2002). Learner Outcomes In An Asynchronous Distance Education Environment. Int. Journal of Human- Computer Studies , 56(5), 475-494. Damaseviecius, Robertas and Tankeleviciene, Lina, (2008). ‘Merging HCI and e-Learning Domain Oriented Design Principles for Developing User Interface for Mobile Devices, FL2008 Conference, Istanbul, pp.155-166. Davidson-Shivers, G. and K.L. Rasmussen (2006). Web-based Learning, USA: Merill-Prentece Hall. Dix, A.,Finlay, J., Abowd, G. and Beale, R. (2004). Human Computer Interaction, 3.ed. Addison-Wesley Pearson Education. Donewa, R., Denev, D. and Totkov G. (2007). Toward e-learning, or how to increase the learning into e-learning information. Technologies and knowledge, Vol.1, pp.13-18. Gardner, H., ( 2006). Five Paradigms for Future, Optimist Publishment, Istanbul, s. 19. Girginer, N., (2001). A Model Study for Technology in Distance Education, Dimensions of Distance Education, D Maliyet, Etkinlik Boyutlar ve Uzaktan E itime Geçi çin Kavramsal Bir Model Önerisi. Doctorate Thesis, Eski ehir. 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The Effects of Distance Education Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University. Onat, E., (2006), Travel to Sculptures, Istanbul, p. 54. Öncü, A., and Varol, S., (2006). “Improving Web Based Exam Evaluation Model with Professional System Technology”, IETC, 6th International Education Technology Conference”, 19-21 April, North Cyprus. p.1327-1331. Ross, A., and Unlu,K., (2008), Future Perspectives on Content Design Standards for Technology Enhanced Learning, II. International e-Learning for the Future 2008, e-Learning, Istanbul, pp.325-333. Russel, T., (1999). The No Significant Difference Phenomenon. NC: Office of Instructional Telecommunications North Carolina State University. Trentin, G., (2000), The Quality-Interactivity Relationship in Distance Education, Educational Technology 40, 1: 17-27, Jenuary-February. Toffler, A, H., (2006), Revolutionary Wealth, Knoph Borzol Book, (Translate: Selim Yeniçeri), Koridor, Istanbul, p. 72. 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work_g2ooudqkjvbcxaahtj74m27axu	----	Affective Realism of Animated Films in the Development of Simulation-Based Tutoring Systems | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2013040105 Corpus ID: 10544830Affective Realism of Animated Films in the Development of Simulation-Based Tutoring Systems @article{Ekanayake2013AffectiveRO, title={Affective Realism of Animated Films in the Development of Simulation-Based Tutoring Systems}, author={H. Ekanayake and U. Fors and R. Ramberg and T. Ziemke and P. Backlund and K. Hewagamage}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2013}, volume={11}, pages={96-109} } H. Ekanayake, U. Fors, +3 authors K. Hewagamage Published 2013 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. This paper presents a study focused on comparing real actors based scenarios and animated characters based scenarios with respect to their similarity in evoking psychophysiological activity for certain events by measuring galvanic skin response GSR. In the experiment, one group n=11 watched the real actors' film whereas another group n=7 watched the animated film, which had the same story and dialogue as the real actors' film. The results have shown that there is no significant difference in… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 1 Citations View All Topics from this paper Simulation Conductance (graph) Galvanic isolation One Citation Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Cyberball3D+: A 3D Serious Game for fMRI Investigating Social Exclusion and Empathy Evangelia Mavromihelaki, J. Eccles, +4 authors K. Mania Computer Science 2014 6th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES) 2014 5 PDF Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 30 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Affective game engines: motivation and requirements E. Hudlicka Computer Science FDG 2009 104 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Affective Learning — A Manifesto Rosalind W. Picard, S. Papert, +7 authors C. Strohecker Computer Science 2004 479 PDF Save Alert Research Feed A general framework for digital game-based training systems A. Brennecke Computer Science 2009 19 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Determining the Psychological Involvement in Multimedia Interactions H. Ekanayake, D. Karunarathna, K. Hewagamage Computer Science 2009 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Entertainment modeling through physiology in physical play Georgios N. Yannakakis, J. Hallam Computer Science Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 2008 123 View 1 excerpt Save Alert Research Feed Realistic versus Schematic Interactive Visualizations for Learning Surveying Practices: A Comparative Study H. Dib, N. Adamo-Villani, Stephen Garver Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2014 4 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Intelligent Biofeedback using an Immersive Competitive Environment Daniel R. Bersak, G. McDarby, D. McDonnell, B. McDonald, Rahul Karkun Computer Science 2001 119 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Affective Videogames and Modes of Affective Gaming: Assist Me, Challenge Me, Emote Me (ACE) K. Gilleade, A. Dix, J. Allanson Computer Science DiGRA Conference 2005 248 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Games for traffic education: An experimental study of a game-based driving simulator P. Backlund, Henrik Engström, M. Johannesson, Mikael Lebram Engineering 2010 49 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Emote toWin: Affective Interactions with a Computer Game Agent J. Kim, N. Bee, J. Wagner, E. André Computer Science GI Jahrestagung 2004 32 PDF Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 1 Citations 30 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_g2um4hk7bzd65fwqqnelneugqy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_gefchkvjjnarbiistaj3qzzo2u	----	[PDF] Distance education and the role of IT in India | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1108/02640470610660396 Corpus ID: 12625137Distance education and the role of IT in India @article{Rao2006DistanceEA, title={Distance education and the role of IT in India}, author={S. S. Rao}, journal={Electron. Libr.}, year={2006}, volume={24}, pages={225-236} } S. S. Rao Published 2006 Sociology, Computer Science Electron. Libr. Purpose – To highlight India's efforts in raising literacy levels through distance education (DE) by utilizing various technological choices, including information technology (IT), available in the country.Design/methodology/approach – This article discusses the education scenario, emergence of correspondence courses/open universities, government initiatives for IT enablement of education and DE, participating institutions and technology choices available in India. It examines the preparedness… Expand View via Publisher late-dpedago.urv.cat Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 30 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Background Citations 15 Methods Citations 2 Results Citations 2 View All Figures, Tables, and Topics from this paper figure 1 table I Digital library Emergence Networking hardware Population Unreachable memory Personal computer Library (computing) Internet backbone 30 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Attitudes towards distance education Z. Nedelko, Carmen Elena Cîrnu Psychology 2008 View 3 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Distance education and the role of library services in Iran: a case study of Shiraz University Distance Learners A. Khasseh, H. Moghaddam, A. Jowkar Sociology 2009 7 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed The Dynamics and Challenges of Distance Education at Private Higher Institutions in South Ethiopia Mulatu Dea Lerra Computer Science 2014 8 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed The role of academic libraries in supporting distance learning in Saudi higher education: a case study approach Fahad M. Alfrih Engineering 2010 7 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Analysis of Higher Education in Indian National Education Policy Proposal 2019 and its Implementation Challenges Sreeramana Aithal, S. Aithal Political Science 2019 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Enhancing academic library services provision in the distance learning environment with mobile technologies E. Acheampong, Franklin Gyamfi Agyemang Business 2021 Save Alert Research Feed Adopting MOOCs for afforable quality education S. Mohapatra, R. Mohanty Computer Science Education and Information Technologies 2016 11 View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Dewey, Desi, and DEC: Exploring the educational philosophy of Indian open, online, and distance education Dennis Maxey Computer Science 2014 View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed READINESS FOR E-LEARNING V. Potocan, Z. Nedelko, Carmen Elena Cîrnu Geography 2011 4 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed E-literature in the Frame of e-learning Z. Nedelko Computer Science 2009 1 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... References SHOWING 1-5 OF 5 REFERENCES Networking of libraries and information centres: challenges in India S. S. Rao Business 2001 13 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Broadband mobile via satellite: inmarsat BGAN A. Franchi, A. Howell, J. Sengupta Engineering 2000 22 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Bharti broadband networks”, paper presented at: ICBN’03 conference, available at: www.cse.ohio-state.edu jain/icbn/ftp/manjunath.pdf 2003 Developing Library and Information Services for Distance Education E. Watson Medicine 2003 15 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Satellite Communications T. Pratt Computer Science 1986 349 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Related Papers Abstract Figures, Tables, and Topics 30 Citations 5 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_gf3sraaacvfezedenuho7pitny	----	1539-3100_11_1_text.indb January-March, 2013 Vol. 11, No. 1 Special Issue on Technology-Enhanced Social Learning Guest Editorial Preface i Chengjiu Yin, Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan Xinyou Zhao, Advanced Research Center for Human Sciences, Waseda University, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Qun Jin, Networked Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Human Informatics and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Research Articles 1 TSI-Enhanced Pedagogical Agents to Engage Learners in Virtual Worlds Steve Leung, School of Computing and Information Systems, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada Sandeep Virwaney, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada Fuhua Lin, School of Computing and Information Systems, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada AJ Armstrong, School of Information, Communication and Engineering Technologies, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Edmonton, Canada Adien Dubbelboer, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada 14 PACALL: Supporting Language Learning Using SenseCam Bin Hou, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Hiroaki Ogata, Department of Information Science and Intelligent System, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Toma Kunita, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Mengmeng Li, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Noriko Uosaki, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan 31 Research Trends with Cross Tabulation Search Engine Chengjiu Yin, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Sachio Hirokawa, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Jane Yin-Kim Yau, Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Sweden Kiyota Hashimoto, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, Japan Yoshiyuki Tabata, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Tetsuya Nakatoh, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan 45 Design and Implementation of an Online Auxiliary System for Correcting Japanese Composition Yuqin Liu, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China Guohai Jiang, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China Lanling Han, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China Mingxing Lin, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China 58 Technical Feasibility of a Mobile Context-Aware (Social) Learning Schedule Framework Jane Y. K. Yau, Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden Mike Joy, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Copyright The International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (ISSN 1539-3100; eISSN 1539-3119). Copyright © 2013 IGI Global. All rights, including translation into other languages reserved by the publisher. No part of this journal may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except for noncommercial, educational use including classroom teaching purposes. Product or company names used in this journal are for identifi cation purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. The views expressed in this journal are those of the authors but not necessarily of IGI Global. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION TECHNOLOGIES Table of Contents IJDET is indexed or listed in the following: ABI/Inform; Aluminium Industry Abstracts; Australian Education Index; Bacon's Media Directory; Burrelle's Media Directory; Cabell's Directories; Ceramic Abstracts; Compendex (Elsevier Engineering Index); Computer & Information Systems Abstracts; Corrosion Abstracts; CSA Civil Engineering Abstracts; CSA Illumina; CSA Mechanical & Transportation Engineering Abstracts; DBLP; DEST Register of Refereed Journals; EBSCOhost's Academic Search; EBSCOhost's Academic Source; EBSCOhost's Business Source; EBSCOhost's Computer & Applied Sciences Complete; EBSCOhost's Computer Science Index; EBSCOhost's Computer Source; EBSCOhost's Current Abstracts; EBSCOhost's Science & Technology Collection; Electronics & Communications Abstracts; Engineered Materials Abstracts; ERIC – Education Resources Information Center; GetCited; Google Scholar; INSPEC; JournalTOCs; KnowledgeBoard; Library & Information Science Abstracts (LISA); Materials Business File - Steels Alerts; MediaFinder; Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD); PsycINFO®; PubList. com; SCOPUS; Solid State & Superconductivity Abstracts; The Index of Information Systems Journals; The Standard Periodical Directory; Ulrich's Periodicals Directory International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 31 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Keywords: Analysis, Learning by Searching, Research Trends, Search Engine, Text mining 1. INTRODUCTION When initiating a new research project, researchers are often required to conduct a research survey (also known as a literature review), collect papers of relevance and ana- lyze past and emerging research trends. These activities are integral to the research process for researchers of all types including those situated in governments or professional organizations as well as academic ones. As indicated by Hwang and Tsai (2011), “results analysis could help Research Trends with Cross Tabulation Search Engine Chengjiu Yin, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Sachio Hirokawa, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Jane Yin-Kim Yau, Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Sweden Kiyota Hashimoto, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, Japan Yoshiyuki Tabata, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Tetsuya Nakatoh, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan ABSTRACT To help researchers in building a knowledge foundation of their research fields which could be a time- consuming process, the authors have developed a Cross Tabulation Search Engine (CTSE). Its purpose is to assist researchers in 1) conducting research surveys, 2) efficiently and effectively retrieving information (such as important researchers, research groups, keywords), and also 3) providing analytical information relating to past and current research trends in a particular field. Their CTSE system employs data-processing technologies and emphasizes the use of a “Learn by Searching” learning strategy to support students to analyze such research trends. To show the effectiveness of CTSE, a pilot experiment has been conducted, where participants were assigned to do research survey tasks and then answer a questionnaire regarding the effectiveness and usability of the system. The results showed that the system has been helpful to students in conducting research surveys, and the research trend transitions that our system presented were effective for producing research trend surveys. Moreover, the results showed that most students had favorable attitudes toward the usage and usability of the system, and those students were satisfied in gaining more know ledge in a particular research field in a short period. DOI: 10.4018/jdet.2013010103 32 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. policymakers in governments and researchers in professional organisations to allocate the necessary resources and make plans for sup- porting future research and applications; Doing research survey could be good references for educators and researchers who plan to con- tribute to the relevant studies.” Being able to predict and detect emerging research topics is often a desired (or essential, even) element of conducting high-quality research. A number of methods have been proposed in the literature review within the area of information-based systems to help researchers identify emerging topics within a research area. Five of these dif- ferent methods/systems are described below: 1. Bun (2005) proposed an Emerging Topic Tracking System (ETTS) which is an information agent for detecting and track- ing emerging topics from a particular information area on the Web. It uses a new TF*PDF (Term Frequency * Proportional Document Frequency) algorithm to detect the changes in the information area of the user’s interest and generate a summary of these changes for the user at set intervals of time. This summary of changes consists of the latest most discussed research issues and may, as a result, reveal an emerging topic or topics. 2. Decker et al. (2007) used a semantic ap- proach that proposes a method for extract- ing the names of those researchers in their early stages of a research area, indicated by the amount of high-quality publications. It can be effective in retrieving many exact matches of researchers that have major contributions within the research area being explored. 3. The Hierarchical Distributed Dynamic Indexing (HDDI) system mentioned in Bouskila and Pottenger (2000) aims to identify features and methods for improv- ing the automatic detection of emerging trends by generating clusters based on semantic similarity of textual data. The rate of change in the size of clusters and in the frequency and association of features is used as input for applying machine learning techniques to classify topics as emerging or non-emerging. 4. Collaborative Inquiry-based Multimedia E-Learning (CIMEL) is a multi-media framework for constructive and collabora- tive inquiry-based learning (Blank et al., 2001). The semi-automatic trend detection methodology described in (Roy et al., 2002) has been integrated into the CIMEL sys- tem in order to enhance computer science education. Citations traces are used with pruning metrics to generate a document set for an emerging trend. Following this, threshold values are tested to determine the year that the trend was emerged. A multimedia tutorial has been developed to guide students through the process of emerging trend detection. 5. Moreover, some researchers used biblio- metric methodologies to analyze the trends and forecasts in different domains, such as e-commerce, supply chain management and knowledge management (Tsai, 2011; Tsai & Chi, 2011; Tsai & Chiang, 2011). Using a bibliometric approach, (Tsai & Yang, 2010) analyzed data mining and CRM research trends from 1989 to 2009 by locating headings “data mining” and “customer relationship management” or “CRM” in topics in the SSCI database. Especially, the approach utilized search categories such as publication year, cita- tion, country/territory, document types to explore the differences in the two fields. As mentioned above, research trend survey is an essential preliminary step for conducting any academic or non-academic research. In particular, many junior researchers experience difficulties in locating the appropriate keywords and subsequently experience difficulties for conducting a literature review in their research field(s). With the development of ICT technolo- gies such as data-processing, it is possible to design search engines to address such learning difficulties or research needs. Data-processing is a broad category which includes functions such as search engines, data mining, recom- mendations, and image recognition; and such International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 33 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. technologies have been utilized to build our Cross Tabulation Search Engine (CTSE) system. In this paper, we describe this system - Cross Tabulation Search Engine (CTSE) which we constructed in order to support in particular junior researchers for conducting and analyzing research trend surveys in a more straight-forward manner. Our CTSE system can analyze large amounts of information in a very short time in order to provide insight into the distinct changes occurring in different research fields and subsequently present ap- propriate and detailed emerging research trends for students/users. Our CTSE search engine has been popu- lated with 13326 articles and papers from SciVerse Scopus (http://www.info.sciverse. com/scopus/) that were publish from the year 1992 to 2012, and contain the keyword “e- learning”, these articles are all related to the use of computer technologies in education, which include “mobile learning”. To use our system, the user inputs keywords of topics that they intend to search and find information on. The system then presents to them a list of publica- tions including the years, authors, countries, etc. The user can then choose the x and y axes on the system to compare these publications using different categories (such as years, authors). The relevance of inputted keywords is calculated by our system using co-occurrence frequency. This means that if a word has a higher relevance to the keywords given in the abstracts of papers (i.e. co-occurrence frequency), these words are listed up as feature words. Subsequently, the system gives the user effective visualizations to understand the research trend transitions. The previous studies were about proposing new methods in the literature review within the area of information-based systems. Our CTSE system is distinct from the methods/systems in the five categories described above for analyz- ing research areas, in that our system not only presents the emerging topics of the completed research, but also presents current occurring emerging topic trends and gives the user effec- tive visualizations to understand the research trend transitions. In terms of pedagogical significance and effectiveness, our CTSE system has two features to facilitate these: 1. Users can use the system to analyze and compare knowledge/information and research methods in the literature review. The system can also retrieve and present related literature and papers to users and therefore helping the students to learn how to do literature retrieval and analysis naturally. 2. Students are able to retrieve large volume of information regarding the research trend progresses and keyword search transitions of their research field(s) using the system. Therefore, the pace in which students conduct scientific research and research trend surveys can be speeded up using the system and to subsequently obtain scien- tific research results and achievements at a quicker pace. Using this information, students become more knowledgeable about emerging research trends in their research area and decide their research topics accordingly, and make important decisions about their topics of interest, as well as allowing students to more accurately predict how they should position their own research in the future. The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, a literature review including tech- nologies, methods and learning strategies relat- ing to the foundation of CTSE is presented. In section 3, the CTSE system is described together with the implementation of it. In section 4, we present a pilot study using the CTSE system and a discussion and implication of the results obtained from this study. Finally, in section 5, conclusion and future works are discussed. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW In this section, a literature review concerning some of the technologies, methods and learning strategies motivating the design of the CTSE 34 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. system is presented. Specifically, these are Mindtools, and the “Learning by Searching” learning strategy. 2.1. Mindtools Mindtools are computer-based learning ap- plications which serve as extensions of the mind (Jonassen, 1996). Jonassen (1999, p9) described Mindtools as “a way of using a com- puter application program to engage learners in constructive, higher-order, critical thinking about the subjects they are studying”. Mindtools include databases, spreadsheets, concept maps, computer conferencing, simulation programs, and communication facilities such as online discussion forums and search engines (Wu et al., 2010). These tools are used to demonstrate how learners can model what they know, and build model, externalize learners’ conceptions (Bratt & McCracken, 2007). For example, Hwang et al. (2011) developed a Mindtool to help students organize and share knowledge for differentiating a set of learning targets based on what they have observed in the field. Our CTSE system can be regarded as a Mindtool in the sense that it allows informa- tion relating to research articles or papers to be organized and the relationships between these can be displayed visually to users. Users can use the CTSE to search for and analyze articles or papers in order to answer specific questions relating to their research. The system also teaches students to explore and examine the data in order to reveal important information relating to their research. The system also al- lows relational databases to be displayed. These databases enable users to interrelate information in several tables, which could support higher level thinking for advanced learners. 2.2. “Learning by Searching” Strategy The act of searching for information is a cognitive process that acquires knowledge actively and we have defined this act as ‘learn- ing by searching’, for the purpose of this study. Searching information online using search engines such as Google is a common everyday practice carried out by many people in order to obtain information, for solving problems or completing study tasks. Searching information online has becoming a part of many people’s everyday learning processes or activities. Given the advancement of internet and search engine capabilities, ‘learning by searching’ has become an important style of learning or obtaining of information utilized by academic/non-academic junior as well as senior researchers. Liu (2008) argued that the skill to ‘learn by searching’ is necessary for students and researchers. The cognitive processes underlying information searching have been investigated by a number of researchers. For example, State (2009) examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. It was found that the searching of information imitated a learning process rather than simply a way of obtaining information. Therefore implying that ‘learning by searching’ is a learning strategy, as opposed to a searching process. Similarly, Bruner (1967) suggested that students were more likely to remember concepts if they discovered them on their own. In the 21st century, ‘learning by searching’ pro- vides newly developed pedagogy to meet the knowledge needs of learners and it is a strategy that advocates students to take the initiative to acquire knowledge. However, search engines currently do not provide returned results which are categorized into different groups or areas (of research, for example). As part of our CTSE system, we have de- veloped a search engine which is able to support the ‘learning by searching’ learning strategy or process. Our search engine enables students to master some of the basic concepts and methods of searching and locating scientific literature survey during the process of document retrieval. Students can recognize and learn the research trends in depth through accessing and search- ing the data and viewing the analysis results provided by the system. Our search engine can support students’ individual learning, it can be used to broaden their sources of knowledge and improves their self-learning ability. The role of International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 35 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. the instructors is switched from the providers of information to the facilitators of students’ active and initiated individual learning. 3. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM We downloaded 13326 articles and papers which range from 1992 to 2012, as of June 24, 2011. Note that the number of documents of 2011 is small, since most of them are not open to public yet. Each document of the project contains, *title, project id, *period,*represe ntative,*members, genre, keywords, outline and amount. We indexed the marked(*) items to construct a search engine. We ignored the representative and members in our implementa- tion. We used special marks such as “y:2009” and “n:SachioHirokawa” to distinguish the year information and the name of the researcher from usual keywords, when they are indexed. 3.1. General Approach In order to help students to grasp the outline, problem, method and solution of the literature efficiently, our system provides a method of extracting sentences which describe existing research problems automatically; these prob- lems are retrieved from paper abstracts in the literature review using clue words. Johan et al. (2005) determined that “when two terms frequently co-occur in, for example, the same sentence, they are related. The more frequently they co-occur compared to how often they each occur individually the stronger we will assume their relationship to be”. Therefore, the feature words of search results should have the highest co-occurrence frequency with inputted keywords. Our system calculates relevance of inputted keywords using co-occurrence fre- quency. If the words have higher co-occurrence frequency, then the words have higher relevance of inputted keywords, and these words are list up as feature words. 3.2. Interface of the CTSE As show in Figure 1, a user can control his/her process by specifying (a) the queries for search and (b) the features to be displayed. The search results are shown in (d) matrix form together with (c) the ordinary listing of articles (see Appendix). The characteristics of our search engine is in the listing of articles obtained as a search result, but in the way that feature words of search result are displayed. User specifies 2 features from “word”, “year”, “country”, “au- thor”, “source” or “organization”. The number of articles that matched the pair of feature words are shown in a matrix map. Imagine that a list of articles outlines are obtained for a query “q”, that R1,R2,R3,R4 and R5 are the top 5 research- ers and that W1,W2,W3,W4 and W5 are top 5 feature words in the search result. The system conducts 5*5 search with “q and Ri and Wj” to calculate the number projects that matches the condition. The number is displayed in the (i,j)-th cell of the matrix. 3.2.1. Input Query and Parameters The “input query and parameters” includes “keywords “, “Detail menu”, “Detail list”, “DB”, “Exclusion of stop words”, “Sort by weight”,”Axes of matrix”, “Word”, “Year”,”Country”, “Author”, “Source” or “Organization”.. 3.2.2. Output of Features The output have features such as “to show the number of search results”, “to show the number of articles per year”, “to show the top-N of au- thors” and “to show top-M related words”. The fraction shows the number of articles that match the query and the keyword. The denominator displays the number of articles that match the query. A click on the faction yields a narrowing search using the query and the keyword. A click on the denominator yields a new search with the keyword without the query. 36 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 3.2.3. Matrix Display The search result is shown in a matrix, where the x-axis and y-axis are determined in 5 and the number in each cell means the number of documents that match both of x-axis and y-axis. The keywords, years, names of researchers in the first column and in the first row can be used for a new search. A click on a cell displays the list of titles of the articles in the lower frame. 3.2.4. List of Article Titles When users click on the cell. The top 10 titles of the articles will be shown from the list. 3.3. Analysis Samples In the remainder of this section, we show a case study with respect to the query “mobile learning”. Figure 1 displays the 478 articles retrieved by the query where the publication year and the country of the authors were chosen as the x and y axes, where the top 8 countries were chosen to be compared. We can see that the number of articles are increasing in Taiwan and China. On the other hand, UK, which had a large publication until 2008, has few articles in 2010. Spain is increasing the number of articles after 2009. The list of titles in lower-left of the Figure 1 displays the articles publish in 2008 by Chinese authors. The list is generated by a simple click on the cell where the line of “2008” and the column of “c:China” crosses. The detailed meta-data of the first article is shown in the lower-right of the Figure 1. A click on a title in the left lists gives the detailed information of the article. Analysis begins by a query from a user. However, once a user gives a query, he can choose the axes for his viewpoints, select the cell or the article to see in detail by a click with his mouse. All he needs to view the tabula- tion and evaluate the importance of particular target to be analyzed further. Figure 2 displays the top 5 organizations with respect to a query “mobile learning c:Taiwan”. Figure 2 is obtained by choosing the organization as both x and y axes. The cross Figure 1. Interface International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 37 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. tabulation shows the relationship of organiza- tions. We can found that the four universities (except Tamkang U.) have collaborative articles with joint authorship. To find the key researchers of each univer- sity, we chose the authors as y axis and obtain the Figure 3. The five articles by Tamkang U. are made by the group of “a:Shih_T.K. (4/33)” and “a:Chang_C.-Y. (3/5)”. The first line of Figure 3, we see the names of researchers fol- lowed by two numbers. The first number shows the number of the articles that matches the query by the researcher. The second number shows the number of all articles by the re- searcher. Thus, we can interpret “a:Shih_T.K. (4/33)” as that Shin T.K. is a senior researcher who have been working not only in mobile learning but in other related area and that Chang C.-Y. might be a young researcher who started recently and is focused in mobile learning. Figure 4 displays the author*author cross tabulation of the search result with respect to a query “mobile learning c:Taiwan o:Tamkang_ University”. This query is determined by click- ing the number “5” at the display of “o:Tamkang.U (5/75)” in Figure 3. We can see two groups. The first group consists of Kao T.-C, Chang C.-Y, Shih T.K. and Shih K.-P. The other consists of Chang C.S. and Chen C.H. Figure 5 shows the relationship of top 10 researchers with respect to “learning c:Taiwan o:Tamkang_University”. Figure 5 is an ex- panded analysis of Figure 4 by removing the keyword “mobile”. Figure 4 shows the organi- zational approach of Tamkang U. in the field of learning. 4. PILOT EXPERIMENT In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our CTSE system, an experiment was conducted. Nine students from the graduate school of In- formation Science and Electrical Engineering of our university participated in this experiment. These included four fourth-year undergraduate, four master and one PhD students. We required that participants must have some previous experience of conducting literature review or research surveys manually using Internet search engines in order to evaluate the system. All nine participants met this requirement. In this section, first the experiment meth- odology is described, followed by the study results from this experiment, followed by the results from a questionnaire study relating to the CTSE system, finally some qualitative feedback regarding the usefulness of the system. Figure 2. Analysis with organization by Organization Figure 3. Analysis with organization by Author 38 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 4.1. Methodology Participants were explained the functions of our CTSE system, how the system works and how they can use the system to perform vari- ous individual tasks such as how to find the researchers, investigate and analyze the research trends. The experiment required participants to perform four tasks (shown in Table 1) which consisted of conducting research surveys in the field of mobile learning using the CTSE system. They were asked to write down their research survey results accordingly with pen and paper. They spent about two hours in total on the tasks. They completed these surveys independently, without any instructions or any help from others. Their written papers were collected afterwards for data analysis. 4.2. Study Results Table 2 shows the participants’ results of con- ducting the four above-listed tasks in the form of research surveys using our CTSE system. The participants’ answers to the tasks showed that they retrieved the relevant information or knowledge about the mobile learning field. Tasks 1 to 3 required participants to retrieve factual information and participants have re- trieved these successfully; the answers by the nine participants were almost identical. Task 4 is a research-based question requiring more analytical and in-depth skills from participants, in order to obtain the answers to this task. From these results, we can conclude that using the CTSE system, it is possible for students to conduct research surveys in a shorter time and it can support their acquiring of information and knowledge. After the experiment had taken place, an evaluation questionnaire regarding the CTSE system was given to all of the participants to complete. Table 3 shows the questionnaire and the results. The questionnaire consists of 7 questions - Q1 to Q7 were measured using four-point Likert scales varied from ‘1 - strong- Figure 5. Expanded Analysis Figure 4. Analysis with Author by Author International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 39 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ly disagree’ to ‘4 - strongly agree’. The par- ticipants were also asked to comment on their answers and to provide some suggestions for improving the system. From Q1, the mean score of the question was close to 4 (strongly agree), which means that the participants strong agreed that the system was easy to find the required informa- tion such as researchers; Q2 and Q3 presented that 66.7% of the participants agreed that it was easy to find researcher groups and main research keywords, 33.3% of participants did not agree; From Q4, 83.3% of the participants confirmed the changes of mobile learning research trend for each year, 16.7% of them cannot; whereas, Q5 indicated that the opinions of the participants were divided, which means that it was not easy to investigate when the appearance of mobile learning occurred. Q6 presented that all of them agreed that it was easy to compare the differ- ences of mobile learning with courtiers. From Q7, 83.3% of the participants agreed that it was easy to compare the feature keywords of mobile learning, 16.7% of them did not. These results indicate that our CTSE can help researchers to perform research surveys easier than if done manually without the system. In some way, the ‘learning by searching’ strategy is also sup- ported as shown by the open-ended research task of finding the mobile learning research trend (task 4), participants must have acquired the information/knowledge in order to answer this question. It can be seen that some ‘learning by searching’ had taken place in this scenario. Table 1. Tasks Tasks Content (a) Find some of the main researchers in mobile learning area. (b) Find some influential research groups in the mobile learning area. (c) Find some main research keywords in the mobile learning area. (d) Investigate the research trends of mobile learning in the last 10 years and the appearance of mobile learning. Table 2. Results Summary From All Nine Participants Tasks Content (a) Martin S.S, Castro M.S., Barron- Estrada M.L., Huang Y.M. (b) National Central U, Athabasca U., Tamkang U. (c) Anywhere, Anytime, Wireless, Context, Phone, Mobile, Digital, M-learning, Devices, PDA, smart phone and tabulate PC (d) •Some paper were published in 1997, until 2003 the number of paper is still limited. But the number of the paper surged in 2004, until 2010 the number continued growth. •After 2007, the research on mobile learning increased very fast in China and Taiwan •From 2004, the number of the papers increased every year. •National Central U is very activity on the research of mobile learning •There are many papers from China and Taiwan, but there are not so many paper in Japan. •There are many papers from China and Taiwan, the papers increased recent two years in Spain •There are many studies on mobile learning from 2008 to 2010. •Asia is the most active areas in mobile learning research. •Spain has higher growth rate on mobile learning research. 40 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 4.3. Qualitative Feedback Regarding The Usefulness Of The System Positive feedback regarding the CTSE system was given by the majority of the participants. As shown by the study results, participants retrieved the main concepts of mobile learning such as “anytime, anywhere” and they found that many of these research papers were written by researchers in Taiwan, which was indeed the case. They can also describe the changes of the mobile learning research trends for each year accurately. Some of the positive feedback given by participants includes the following: • The system is useful for conducting re- search trends survey in that research transi- tions, researchers and research groups are highlighted by the system. One participant would recommend the system to others for conducting research surveys. • The system is helpful in providing vi- sualizations of the search results using time series, as well as locating accurately popular and new emerging research topics. • The system is relatively easy to use and par- ticipants were able to conduct the research survey more efficiently and effectively. • The system is helpful for searching for articles or papers under several different categories such as year, feature, word, coun- try, organization. It is useful as results can be displayed from different perspectives. Useful comparisons from these categories can also be made between one another and can be very useful. 5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS From SciVerse Scopus, we collected 13326 “e-learning” articles and papers that were published from the year 1992 to 2012. Using data-processing technologies, we built a Cross Tabulation Search Engine (CTSE) system, which is aimed for assisting junior researchers to conduct more efficient and effective research including development research surveys and analyzing research trends. The system em- phasizes the “learning by searching” learning strategy. As shown in our study experiment, participants were able to use the system to retrieve information about a research field and to obtain the necessary and accurate data regard- ing researchers, research groups, and research trends. Using this information, students can decide upon their research topic, narrow down their focus within a particular area and be able to keep up-to-date with current existing research, as well as knowing about research trends that have previously been taken place and which are of importance to the research work of current researchers. The CTSE system can provide researchers such information is a much shorter time than if they had done the search manually using Internet search engines such as Google. Table 3. Results Summary From All Nine Participants Questions SA/A D/SD M SD Q1 It is easy to find researchers in mobile learning 100% 0.0% 3.67 0.52 Q2 It is easy to find researcher groups in mobile learning 66.7% 33.3% 3 0.89 Q3 It is easy to find main research keywords of mobile learning. 66.7% 33.3% 3 0.89 Q4 It is easy to confirm the changes of mobile learning research trends. 83.3% 16.7% 3.5 0.84 Q5 It is easy to investigate a appearance of mobile learning 50.0% 50.0% 2.5 0.55 Q6 It is easy to compare the differences of mobile learning with court- iers. 100% 0.00% 3.5 0.55 Q7 It is easy to compare the feature keywords of mobile learning. 83.3% 16.7% 3 0.63 Note. SA/A-Strongly Agree and Agree; D/SD- Disagree and strongly disagree; M-Means; SD-Standard Deviation International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 41 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. As demonstrated in our pilot study, two hours was necessary for participants to find out the answers to the required questions/tasks. Normally speaking, this is a much shorter time than one would require to find on the Internet. This is because any Internet search engine would generate a much larger quantity of information on any particular keywords such as “mobile learning”, “anytime”, “anywhere”, etc, and young researchers may not be able to identify immediately which articles are of more impor- tance than others. Therefore, it would be more difficult to answer those questions in a short time by junior researchers using a standalone Internet search engine. The current limitations in the present pilot study are that the findings were based on an experiment with nine students; therefore, gen- eralizations about students’ attitudes could be difficult to make based on such a small sample size. However, this study has been sufficient to make the preliminary conclusions that our system can be effective for junior researchers to conduct research and retrieve relevant infor- mation. The research students at our university are currently using this system to conduct their research surveys and have commented the usefulness and effectiveness of the system. In the future, we plan to conduct an larger-scale experiment to evaluate the learning effective- ness of the system, as well as to make more in-depth comparisons between the participants’ results obtained using the CTSE system and using normal Internet search engines. To sum- marize, the main feature of our system is to analyze effectively and efficiently large amounts of information in the shortest time, providing appropriate research information and trends for students/users. REFERENCES Baker, R. S., Corbett, A. T., & Koedinger, K. R. (2004). Detecting student misuse of intelligent tutor- ing systems. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Maceio, Brazil (pp. 531-540). Baker, R. S. J. D., & Yacef, K. (2009). The state of educational data mining in 2009: A review and future visions. Journal of Educational Data Mining, 1(1), 3–17. Blank, G. D., Pottenger, W. M., Kessler, G. D., Herr, M., Jaffe, H., & Roy, S. … Wang, Q. (2001). CIMEL: Constructive, collaborative inquiry-based multimedia e-learning.In Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE). Bollen, J., Nelson, M. L., Manepalli, G., Nandigam, G., & Manepalli, S. (2005). 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In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Data Mining, Montreal, Canada (pp. 77-86). Roy, S., Gevry, D., & Pottenger, W. M. (2002, April 11-13). Methodologies for trend detection in textual data mining. In Proceedings of the Textmine ‘02 Workshop, Second SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, Chicago, IL. State, P. (2009). Search engines are source of learning. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 2, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releas- es/2009/11/091119111417.htm. Tsai, H. H. (2011). Research trends analysis by comparing data mining and customer relationship management through bibliometric methodology. Scientometrics, 83(2), 425–450. doi:10.1007/s11192- 011-0353-6. Tsai, H. H., & Chi, Y. P. (2011). Trend analysis of sup- ply chain management by bibliometric methodology. International Journal of Digital Content Technology and its Applications, 5(1), 285–295. Tsai, H. H., & Chiang, J. K. (2011). E-commerce research trend forecasting: A study of bibliometric methodology. International Journal of Digital Content Technology and its Applications, 5(1.12), 101–111. Tsai, H. H., & Yang, J. M. (2010). Analysis of knowl- edge management trend by bibliometric approach. In Proceedings of the WASET International Confer- ence on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy, Paris, France (vol. 62, pp. 174–178). Wu, P.-H., Hwang, G.-J., Tsai, C.-C., Chen, Y.-C., & Huang, Y.-M. (2010). A pilot study on conducting mobile learning activities for clinical nursing courses based on the repertory grid approach. Nurse Edu- cation Today. doi: doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2010.12.001 PMID:21196068. Chengjiu Yin received his PhD degrees from the Department of Information Science and Intelligent Systems, Tokushima University, Japan, in 2008. He is an Assistant Professor in the Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University. Currently he is committing himself in mobile learning, ubiquitous computing, language learning, text mining and SNS. He received the best paper award from ICIE in 2009. Dr. Yin is a member of JSiSE, JSET, and APSCE. Sachio Hirokawa is professor of Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University, Japan. He studied mathematics and computer science at Kyushu University. He was appointed to a research assistant at Shizuoka University in 1979, moved to Kyushu University in 1988 as Associate Professor and Professor in 1996. He received PhD in 1992. He has been involved in research and teaching in the area of mathematical logic and computer science. Since late 90s, His research focuses on search engine and text mining, where frequency analysis and visualization are the key features. He conducted 3 years project on search engine and became founder of start- up company Lafla (http://www.lafla.co.jp) to realize his technologies for commercial services. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 43 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Jane Yin-Kim Yau was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Learning and Knowledge Tech- nologies at Linnaeus University, Sweden from November 2010 - May 2012. In June 2012, she joined the Dept of Computer Science at Malmö University as a postdoc in Computer Science. She obtained her doctorate from the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK in 2011, which was focused on a mobile context-aware learning schedule framework with Java learning objects. She has published around thirty articles in journals and conferences in mobile learning. Kiyota Hashimoto has a BA and MA in Linguistics from Kyoto University, and Doctor of Engi- neering from Nara Institute of Science and Technology. He worked at Seiwa College and Osaka Women’s University, and currently is an associate professor at College of Knowledge & Infor- mation Systems, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan. Some of his interests are natural language processing, educational engineering for language learning/teaching, tourism informatics, and soft computing in general. Yoshiyuki Tabata is a Professor in the Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University. He received his BA and MA degrees from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan, in 1983 and 1986. He is a member of JGG, JDV, GDDJ, JAECS and JEI. His current interests are in language learning environments supported by ICT. Tetsuya Nakatoh is the assistant professor of Research Institute for Information Technology, Ky- ushu University, Japan. He studied computer science at Kyushu University. He was appointed to a research assistant at Kyushu University in 1993. He was appointed to an assistant professor at Kyushu University in 2007. He received PhD in 2010. Since the start of the 2000s, his research area is search engine, feature extraction, pattern discovery and string matching algorithm. 44 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 31-44, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. APPENDIX System Function Table 4. Title Functions (a) Input query and parameters 1. Keywords: search query string, the special keyword “z” returns all the documents. 2. Detail menu: toggle advanced search settings display. 3. Detail list: Toggle verbose results output. 4. DB: choice of databases such as e-learning or foreign. 5. Exclusion of stop words: The frequent words are excluded as stop words. 6. Results sorting method: Choose sort function from document frequency or weight(default). 7. Axes of matrix: x-axis and y-axis in matrix display can be chosen from “word”, “year”, “country”, “author”, “source”, and “organization”. 8. Word: Number of top ranked keywords to be analyzed for each year. 9. Year: year range. 10.Country: The number of countries to be analyzed. 11. Author: Number of top ranked authors to be analyzed for each year. 12. Source (e.g. Publisher): Number of top ranked sources be analyzed for each year. 13. Organization (e.g. University): Number of top ranked organizations for each year. (b) Output of Features 14. The number of search results. (c) Matrix display 15.The search results are shown in a matrix and the number of articles are also shown. (d) List of articles titles and abstract 16. The titles of the articles are shown by clicking each cell. 17. The abstract of the article is shown by clicking the titles. CALL FOR ARTICLES The Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (IJDET) would like to invite you to consider submitting a manuscript for inclusion in this scholarly journal. MISSION: The International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (IJDET) publishes original research articles of distance education four issues per year. IJDET is a primary forum for researchers and practitioners to disseminate practical solutions to the automation of open and distance learning. The journal is targeted to academic researchers and engineers who work with distance learning programs and software systems, as well as general participants of distance education. COVERAGE/MAJOR TOPICS: • Technology enhanced learning • Ubiquitous learning • Intelligent and adaptive learning • Pedagogical issues • Social learning • Distance learning for culture and arts • Virtual worlds and serious games for distance education All submissions should be emailed to: Fuhua Lin, Editor-in-Chief, oscarl@athabascau.ca An offi cial publication of the Information Resources Management Association International Journal of Distance Education Technologies ISSN 1539-3100 eISSN 1539-3119 Published quarterly Please recommend this publication to your librarian. For a convenient easy-to-use library recommendation form, please visit: http://www.igi-global.com/ijdet Ideas for Special Theme Issues may be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief. Copyright The International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (ISSN 1539-3100; eISSN 1539-3119). Copyright © 2012 IGI Global. All rights, including translation into other languages reserved by the publisher. 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work_gjkg5pslivhxxfpraggiaas4ym	----	Intelligent System of Distance Education of Engineers, Based on Modern Innovative Technologies Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect 1877-0428 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of HEAd´16 doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.07.034 2nd International Conference on Higher Education Advances, HEAd´16, 21-23 June 2016, València, Spain Intelligent System of Distance Education of Engineers, based on Modern Innovative Technologies Galina Samigulinaa * , Zarina Samigulina b aChief of the laboratory "Intellectual systems and forecasting", Institute of Information and Computing Technologies, str. Pushkeen 125., Almaty, 050010, Kazakhstan bDepartment "Automation and control", Institute of Information and Telecommunication Technologies, Kazakh National Research Technical University named after K.I. Satpayev, str. Satpaev 22, Almaty, 050013, Kazakhstan Abstract Nowadays, distance education is a promising direction for the training of engineers. There was developed the intellectual system of distance education for the training of qualified specialists of technical specialties on the expensive modern equipment in the laboratories of collective use. Processing of personal data for the purpose of selecting an individual educational plan for each student is based on the biological approach of artificial immune systems. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of HEAd´16. Keywords: Higher education institution, distance education, organizational learning, intellectual technologies, artificial immune systems, laboratories of a common use. 1. Introduction Nowadays, there is an acute problem of quality technical education organization to train specialists for modern high technologies. Often, higher and postgraduate education is not available to skilled specialists because full-time training does not allow to improve the skills on the job. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +7 727 293 02 40, 293 02 66 E-mail address: galinasamigulina@mail.ru © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of HEAd´16 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.07.034&domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.07.034&domain=pdf 230 Galina Samigulina and Zarina Samigulina / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 The problem may be exacerbated because of the geographical remoteness of potential students from higher education institutions. In such cases in the world there are used various mechanisms of the organization of the learning process. There was well proven a distance education (DE), which brings together various forms of education with the use of modern information technology. The world's leading universities with a long history practice a distance learning form, such as: University of South Africa1 - one of the first university with DE, the British Open University2 - the largest DE university, Fern University in Hagen3, etc. Distance education centers in Europe are the National Distance Education University4 in Spain and the Baltic University. Nowadays, there is developed a huge amount of educational platforms that offer their DE courses, such as: Coursera5; EDX6; Udacity7; Open Yale Courses8; Teamtreehouse9, etc. The DE organization is carried out by the Internet using special software (shells). The most common shells are: Sharepointlms, JoomlaLMS, OpenNet and MOODLE (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). Due to the open source code MOODLE10 became widely known, the system is translated into more than 75 languages and is used in almost 50 thousand organizations from 200 countries of the world. There are carried out various researches in the sphere of DE, for instance, analysis of the dynamics and efficiency of distance learning implementation based on different countries (Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey) which are presented in works [1,2]. Approaches based on the use of different simulators in the DE are shown in work [3]. Modern approaches to improve traditional methods of teaching online [4] enhanced by the approaches of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science. In work [5] the authors presented the latest developments in the DE field, such as the use of ontological models, the creation of virtual laboratories, open training systems, the use of artificial intelligence methods, etc. In addition to educational technologies there are carried out distance learning environment development for access to laboratories of a common use, thus the work [6] shows remote experimental system that allows students to have an access for distance researches to the photovoltaic module. In connection with the above, in order to solve the problem of highly skilled engineering staff training and distance education courses there can be relevant to use approaches of AI, which are used in the processing of students personal data, in the creation of individual education plans, in processing of multidimensional data, in forecasting results and in operational adjustment of process of knowledge acquiring, as well as in the use of laboratories of a common use. There is proposed the following structure of the article. The second section shows an intelligent system of distance education, which consists of two parts, the first part explains the principle of processing of students personal data on the basis of artificial immune system (AIS), and the second part describes the distance operation in laboratories of a common use. The conclusion is presented in the third section. 2. Intellectual system of distance education 2.1. Processing of students personal data on the basis of AIS Due to the fact that the DE system is a large automated self-contained resource it is expedient to use modern intellectual approaches of creating an individual path and rapid adjustment of the educational process. There are 1 [http://www.unisa.ac.za/] 2 [http: / /www.open.ac.uk/] 3 [https://www.fernuni-hagen.de] 4 [http://portal.uned.es/] 5 [https://www.coursera.org] 6 [https://www.edx.org] 7 [https://www.udacity.com] 8 [http://oyc.yale.edu] 9 [http://teamtreehouse.com] 1 0 [http://moodle.com] 231 Galina Samigulina and Zarina Samigulina / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 widely used the following approach of AI: Neural Networks (NN) [7,8], genetic algorithms (GA) [9,10], artificial immune system (AIS) [11] and other systems. There was developed intellectual distance education system (IDES) based on artificial immune systems [12-14]. Remark 1. Under the term artificial immune systems here are understood information technologies, which use the concept of theoretical immunology for various applications [15-17]. Remark 2. In the proposed approach of AIS as a mathematical model were taken the time series, which correspond to formal peptide (FP) [15] and the problem of image recognition based on the mechanisms of molecular recognition between the two peptides (antigens and antibodies) is solved. Remark 3. There was developed intellectual technology of information processing by AIS, which consists of two key elements. The first task is an effective study of the immune network. An inclusion in the model the features with little effect on the output parameter complicates its use and leads to information redundancy, to the increase of learning time of the immune network, to the increase of computing resources and to the increase of errors in solving the problem of image recognition based on AIS. All this leads to a situation where the forecasting according to the redundant model is less effective than according to the model of the optimal number of features that have maximum informativeness. The second major problem is the energy errors that inevitably arise in the processing of multidimensional data sets by the immune networks and during solving the problem of image recognition based on AIS. This problem is especially actual for structurally similar peptides that have roughly the same parameters and are at the boundaries of classes. Because of the energy errors they may be classified by mistake not in the right class. Algorithm of data processing based on AIS is given below. The block diagram of the developed intellectual system based on the algorithm 1 is shown in Fig. 1. СLient (Student) Personal Computer Testing of the students Data proceeding on AIS technology Data base of the Students individual features Individual education plan Access to shared laboratories Programmable logic controller (PLC) Equipment «Surface treatment» Equipment «Manipulator»Example: Schneider Electric Eqipment Fig. 1. The block diagram of DE. 232 Galina Samigulina and Zarina Samigulina / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 Algorithm 1. Processing of students personal data on the basis of AIS. (1) Testing. There is performed a basic test of the students on the studied disciplines, using the methods of psychology. Formed a psychological portrait of the students with a set of personal characteristics from the ability of information perception, to the availability of basic knowledge on the studied subjects. (1.2) Individual Features. Based on the results of testing there are allocated individual attributes (IA) of each student. (2) Data base. Then, the database on the basis of students IA is formed using Expert Knowledge Base. (3) Preprocessing data. Information in IA databases is presented in the form of time series, and may be redundant, therefore before data processing there is conducted a pretreatment by various methods, such as normalization, centering, and filling the missing data. (4) Data selection. in order to select the informative features there is used multi-algorithmic approach. It is based on the idea of using different methods of AI. For example, with the help of neural networks and NeuroShell software there can be distinguished an index of importance relative measure the of the parameter in the overall data set [13]. (5) Optimal structure of immune network. There is carried out the construction of the optimal structure of the immune network according to the coefficients of informative individual features, as well as the reduction of uninformative signs. (6) Student's classification. Then, the students are classified according to the level of knowledge, skills, creativity, logical thinking based on the opinions of experts, as well as the desired profile engineering education is determined. (7) Standard matrices forming. There is carried out the formation of the matrix standards: 1 2 { , , . . . , } К (1) where К - the number of classes for each class according to the informative features of the students with an optimal structure, singular value decomposition of the data matrix and determination of right and left singular vectors: 1 1 2 2 , , , , ..., , n n x y x y x y (2) where n the number of standard matrices [15-17]. Standard matrices are considered as antigens. (8) AIS teaching. After the construction of the optimal structure of the immune network there is required its training according to the standards, which is carried out with the help of a teacher. (9) Image matrices forming. Then there are formed image matrices on individual features of students: 1 2 { , , . . . , } n (3) where n – the number of images. Image matrices are considered as antigens. (10) Definition of the binding energy minimum. There is calculated the minimum value of the binding energy between formal peptides [15] - antigens and antibodies, and is solved the problem of image recognition: 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 , , T T T n n n n x y x y x y (4) Remark 4. As in the AIS approach the term binding network means any binding sequence of the formal peptides, then in order to build an immune network model. 233 Galina Samigulina and Zarina Samigulina / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 The minimum value shows the class to which the image belongs to: 1 2 : m i n , , n r K (5) (11) Estimation of the energy errors. This assessment is based on the properties of homologous proteins [16]. There is implemented a calculation of a Z factor. The value of a Z-factor is determined by the average number of standard deviations between the energy of the native structure and the energy of a random chain placement [14]. (11.1) Definition of the risk coefficients. There is carried out the recognition of protein structure according to the homologies and determination of the reliability of the forecast on the basis of AIS, depending on the value of Z - factor. There are calculated risk factors: 1 R i K Z , 1,i m (6) where m - the number of homogeneous peptides. As the technical implementation there is used a copyright software application package MATLAB [14]. (12) Estimation of the knowledge, decision-making. After the processing of students personal data there is carried out a comprehensive assessment of students knowledge, grouping on classes, forecasting the quality of received education by each student and prompt management of distance education process in the Internet environment. There are created the student's individual education plan based on combining of ready-made models of disciplines. An example of a discipline model on 3 credits used in the "Automation and Control" department at Kazakh National Technical Research University named after K.I. Satpaev (KazNTRU) for teaching graduate profile for technical specialties is presented in Fig. 2. 234 Galina Samigulina and Zarina Samigulina / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 The model of discipline «Microprocessor engineering of the Schneider Electric company» Electronic Elements and devices of automation 1 2 3 4 Automation of the typical Technological processes Database in the control systems Modeling and control in the complex systems 1 2 3 Prerequisites Post requisites Сompetence Pr1 Pr2 Pr3 Pr4 Pr5 Lab1 Lab2 Lab3 Lab4 Lab5 Terms of mastering the material 1-3 weeks 4-6 weeks 7-9 weeks 10-12 weeks 12-15 weeks (1) Knowledge of the technical characteristics of the equipment; (2)Knowledge of microprocessor technology devices and etc. (1) Knowledge of standard programming languages 5 controllers (ST, LD, IL, FBD, SFC) and etc. (1) Working with the «Surface treatment», «Manipulator», «Productice» equipment in manual and automatically mode and etc. Control measurement devices Theoretical аoundations of Electrical Engineering Lec 1 Lec 2 Lec 3 Lec 4 Lec 5 Lec 6 Lec 7 Enter exit Lec - lectures; Pr – practical classes; Lab – laboratory classes. Fig. 2. An example of a discipline model "Microprocessor engineering of Schneider Electric company". The advantage of this algorithm is: energy errors assessment based on the properties of homologous proteins in solving the problem of image recognition; the ability to assess the images that are on the boundary of classes, in order to avoid erroneous choice of education direction; reduction of errors in energy assessments, improving the reliability of the forecasting and the quality of education. 3. Access to the laboratories of a common use The DE intelligent system is designed for laboratories of a common use in "Kazakh-French educational center in the field of energy, electronics and maintenance of automated systems - Schneider Electric" (KazFEC) in KazNTRU. The lab potential is a modern industrial equipment in the field of microprocessor technology of Schneider Electric company. The software and equipment have the capacity of DE organization via OPC server (to read the data from the actual controller) and is to use software Unity Pro L and OPC Factory Server, which are capable to operate in a simulator mode. Simulation software of Unity Pro L allows to search errors in the project without regard to the actual programmable logical controller (PLC). All project tasks (Mast, Fast, AUX and Event), which are executed at the current PLC are also available in the simulator. Along with the program Unity Pro L the program of OPC Factory Server (OFS) can also operate in simulation mode. There are three ways to access the OPC server: in local mode, access through the classic DCOM configuration, network access through the INTERNET interface HTTP. Distance education via an OPC server with real equipment is proposed according to the following Algorithm 2. Algorithm 2. Access to the laboratories on the basis KazFEC. 235 Galina Samigulina and Zarina Samigulina / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 228 ( 2016 ) 229 – 236 (1) The student gets an access to a server that is connected with the database; (2) Downloads the necessary software and the task on his computer; (3) Makes the adjustment of simulators. (4) Makes the exercises in accordance with the task on designing a control system in the simulator mode. (5) Tests the developed control systems. (6) In the case of the correct execution of the exercises the student gets an access to the actual hardware through the INTERNET to test his program in standard connection mode. 4. Conclusion The proposed technology gives a wide range of possibilities for the establishment of a multilateral exchange of information between DE intelligent system based on AIS and real expensive equipment in the laboratories of a common use. Students of different target groups, including current employees of the enterprises, have the DE ability at work. Analysis of the personal data with the help of AIS allows to make individual learning direction based on modular training courses. Remote access to modern equipment makes it possible to obtain unique skills necessary for quality professional training in real time. Researchers conducted under the grant №0115РК00536 of MES RK on the theme: Development of information technology, algorithms and software - hardware for intelligent systems of complex objects control in the conditions of a parametric uncertainty (2015-2017 gg.). Acknowledgment The authors express their gratitude to the former deputy director of Kazakh-French educational center in the field of energy, electronics and maintenance of automated systems - Schneider Electric at the Kazakh National Technical University named after K.I. Satpayev (KazFETS), Dr. Ph.D François Girault (Paris, France) and Daniel Guyonvarch (Paris, France). References Zawacki-Richter, O., Bedenlier, S., Alturki U., Aldraiweesh, A., & Püplichhuysen D. (2015). The Development of Distance Education Systems in Turkey, the Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia. European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning 18(2), 113-129. Zhang, L. & Worthington, A.C. (2016). Scale and scope economies of distance education in Australian universities.Scale and scope economies of distance education in Australian universities. Studies in Higher Education. Khan, M.S. Rahman, S. (2015). Embodied head gesture and distance education. 6th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2015) and the Affiliated Conferences, AHFE 2015. 3, 2034-2041. Vasilenko, E.A., Meshcheryakova, T.V., Kol'tsova, E.M., Dikaya E.A. (2011). The development of information-education materials for systems of distance learning: “Protection of Intellectual Property,” an example of a course of study. Scientific and Technical Information Processing. 38(3), 193-200. Różewski, P., Kusztina, E., Tadeusiewicz, R., Zaikin, O. (2011). Intelligent Open Learning Systems. Axaopoulos, P.J., Fylladitakis, E.D. (2014). Photovoltaic engineering e-learning applications developed for remote laboratory experimentation systems. International Journal of Energy and Environmental Engineering. 78(5), 1-10. Luo, Q. Emotion Recognition in Modern Distant Education System by Using Neural Networks and SVM. (2009). Applied Computing, Computer Science, and Advanced Communication. 34, 240- 247. Salsedo, P.L., Pinninghoff, M.A., Contreras R.A. (2009). Knowledge-Based Systems: A Tool for Distance Education. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 5601, 87-96. Crespo, R.M., Pardo, A., Perez, J.P., Kloos, C.D. (2005). An Algorithm for Peer Review Matching Using Student Profiles Based on Fuzzy Classification and Genetic Algorithms. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 3533, 685-694. Márquez-Vera, C., Cano, A., Romero C., Ventura, S. (2013). Predicting student failure at school using genetic programming and different data mining approaches with high dimensional and imbalanced data. Applied Intelligence. 38(3), 315-330. Samigulina, G., Shayakhmetova A. (2015). The Information System of Distance Learning for People with Impaired Vision on the Basis of Artificial Intelligence Approaches. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies. 41, 255-263. Samigulina, G (2010). Distance education technology simulation on the basis of artificial immune systems. Computer science. 4(28), 105-11. Samigulina, G., Samigulina Z. (2010). The development of intelligent system of distance education control based on immune network modeling. 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work_got5k24qyvbuxm3hzs2wiycq7m	----	MERGA Teaching Mathematics Remotely: Changed Practices in Distance Education This investigation explored the challenges of creating meaningful mathematics practices for a community engaged in Distance Education (DE). Specifically, the study maps the influence of new technologies on the practices of a learning community where mathematics was taught remotely. The theoretical framework of this study utilised Bourdieu’s work on practice to consider the changed nature of the field, in this case, remote education provision, over time. By using Bourdieu’s notion of field, we are better able to understand the ways in which practices and discourses shape particular ways of working in rural education provision. The results of the study show that Field One was innovative and beyond the non-school world, while Field Two lagged behind the technological resources of the non-school world. Over the period of a decade, the advances in digital technologies have created new learning opportunities for distance education provision for rural and remote learners. However, within a Bourdieuian framing, we propose that other practices structure the field which either hinder or enhance learning opportunities. The paper presents two cases of the field in operation. In the first case, the field of distance education employed innovative satellite technologies that were being introduced. We argue that the learning community created by these structuring practices created a range of teaching practices around curriculum delivery, pedagogical approaches, assessment methods and how the community collectively worked to support students’ mathematics understandings. The second case, which is of the same site eight years after the introduction of the satellite technology, described how the community’s practices were adapted and changed to meet the needs of the students and the wider community in a changed field. The changes in technology create new opportunities through the structuring practices of the field. The paper compares these two fields that have been shaped by the emerging technologies and their impact on learning possibilities for both teachers and students in distance education. With the changing structuring practices in the distance education field, the paper draws on the ways in which these changes shape and reshape the habitus of the teachers and other stakeholders. In the period of the study, not only were there considerable changes in the digital technologies upon which the practices of the field were founded, but also significant changes that have occurred in the governance of these sites permeated the operations of the sites so as to reconfigure the practices in (potentially) different ways. These changes also impacted the ways in which distance education was offered and the learning potential for students and other stakeholders. Learning in Remote Communities Along with Indigenous students, those students living in rural and remote areas of Australia are among the country’s most disadvantaged in terms of most equity measures (Arnold, 2001; Considine & Zappalà, 2002; Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, 2000). From an educational perspective, rural students’ performance on standardised numeracy tests are 28% below the national average in Grade 3 and this increases to 36% by Grade 5. For students living in remote areas, the statistics are even more dramatic and concerning (48% below the national average in Grade 3 and 72% by Grade 5, MCEETYA, 2005). For students in remote areas, schooling is considerably different—both in context and structure—to the schooling received by the majority of the 2 population who live in metropolitan areas. Moreover, the pedagogy required to construct meaningful and engaging learning experiences for these students is, indeed, problematic and challenging. The educational disadvantage experienced by students living in rural and remote locations has increased despite the attention given to redressing the situation (Lyons, Cooksey, Panizzon, Parnell & Pegg, 2006; Ryan, 2001). The isolation experienced by these students and their teachers creates challenges that are seldom encountered elsewhere (Du Plessis & Bailey, 2000). Vast distances between homes and schools, challenging technology and communication issues, minimal face-to-face contact between students and their teacher, and untold social hardship from drought have resulted in situations where more “traditional” teaching and learning is contested (Lowrie, 2007). Moreover, the role of the parent (who is also required to act as an educational supervisor) dictates that mathematics education programs are very different to those “typical” practices which occur in most classrooms (Lowrie, 2006). Even in “best practice” situations, formal partnerships arrangements between teachers, students and their parents rarely move beyond the influence of the classroom teacher (Askew, 2004)—irrespective of how much involvement parents have in the construction of the mathematics curriculum and learning outcomes. In distance settings, the roles of teacher, students and parent are framed within a field that exists within a relatively narrow communication boundary. These limited experiences are intensified in DE settings since the social and cultural dynamics of the classroom are somewhat restricted. Students rarely (if ever) engage or collaborate with one another in terms of mathematics sense making and the opportunity to engage with others from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds are relatively restricted. Most social interactions occur when students attend “camps” or mini schools—and generally those limited opportunities are framed around subjects such as physical education, art and drama. Furthermore, the classroom teachers, especially in terms of mathematics, have limited opportunities to provide rich social-cultural experiences because most of their teaching is on a one-to-one basis. These restricted dynamics, if nothing else, create learning contexts different from traditional classrooms where up to 30 different viewpoints are likely to be considered in any mathematics lessons. For students studying in distance education settings, mathematics is not typically (re)presented is dynamic, socially connected, ways. More visually and communicatively rich technologies were considered to be one way of exposing students to some of the richness available in traditional classrooms (Lowrie, 2006). The body of research which highlights the complex social function of mathematics learning suggests that social-cultural dimensions (Lerman, 2001), gesture (Radford, 2009), collaboration (Goos, 2004), and cultural capacity (Zevenbergen, 2000) are critical in enhancing learning opportunities and sense making. This investigation describes the changed practice of a distance education learning community over time. Specifically, it considers the influence of technologies within mathematics learning contexts through site-based case studies of a DE school. The study explores the way in which teachers, families and their children create numeracy meaning from contexts that are detached from “regular” classroom experiences. These case studies are framed within Bourdieu’s (1991, 1993, 1998) notion of the field and describe practices which either hinder or enhance learning opportunities. This investigation outlines: 1. the mathematics practices associated with distance education across two fields; and 2. the influence of technological innovations of these practices. 3 Theoretical Framework In theorising this paper, we draw on the work of French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, whose theoretical project allows us to the consider the changing dynamics of the field which is, in this case, the field of distance education, and how these changed fields create different potentialities for the development of capital. In this study, we compare the site of distance education over a period of time. The field of distance education has altered considerably over this timeframe, and we argue that these changes have created different opportunities for learning. Using Bourdieu’s theoretical constructs of field, capital and habitus, we propose that there is a dialetic between constructs that must be understood if we are to understand the ways in which learning environments create opportunities for learning, which, in turn, become forms of capital that can be exchanged for objects of value within that field. According to Bourdieu’s tripartite model, the field regulates and is regulated by the practices within that field. Through these practices, participants have greater or lesser potential to accumulate forms of capital that can be exchanged for other rewards within that field. The potential for accumulation of capital is shaped by the habitus of the participant but also the habitus can be shaped by the practices within that field. Bourdieu and Wacquant explain this interplay thus: People are at once founded and legitimized to enter the field by their possessing a definite configuration of properties. One of the goals of research is to identify these active properties, these efficient characteristics, that is, these forms of specific capital. There is thus a sort of hermeneutic circle: in order to construct the field, one must identify the forms of specific capital that operate within it, and to construct the forms of specific capital one must know the specific logic of the field. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp 107-108, italics in original) The field is a site where there are competitive struggles among agents who seek to gain positions of power while positioning others. Through these struggles, the habitus of the agents can be revealed. In education the mythology that the classroom context is a site for apolitical knowledge production assumes an almost unchallenged status. A liberal view is that education is a site for creating knowledge among learners who may be more or less successful in that knowledge creation. But within Bourdieu’s theoretical project, the classroom becomes a site where there is a clear political process where agents and structures interact. Through this interaction, some students are more or less likely to be successful. Schooling is not an apolitical process, but through the structures within the field, some students will enter the field with greater or less capital as part of their habitus. Through the practices within a given field, these dispositions are given greater or lesser value and hence the different trajectories of learners are shaped by the practices of a field. Bourdieu is not structuralist or deterministic in his approach but sees that there is considerable scope for change. Education is an important field because of its capacity to confer capital, particularly cultural capital, upon its participants. Indeed, education can be referred to as an academic market in terms of its distribution of such cultural capital. (Webb, Schirato & Danaher, 2002, p. 110) What becomes important according to Bourdieu’s work is that as students enter the field of education, their habitus may align more or less with the practices of the field. Those dispositions within the habitus that align with the field may be seen as forms of capital – in this case, cultural capital, where cultural dispositions have been embodied by the learner and so position him/her more favourably within that field. Being able to speak the language of the classroom, having knowledge that is valued within that field, and 4 embodying cultural dispositions that are strongly aligned with the field make for greater opportunities for being positioned as a successful learner. The nature and function of this field is distinctive in distance education settings. The task for educators is for the reconstitution of the habitus of some learners so that it more strongly aligns with the practices within that field. When this occurs, the teacher is able to confer status on the learner through a range of structuring practices that reify the culture as a form of academic success. This differential recognition of habitus is described by Bourdieu and Wacquant as follows: ...social agents are not “particles” that are mechanically pushed and pulled about by external forces. They are, rather, bearers of capital and, depending of their trajectory and on the position they occupy in the field by virtue of their endowment (volume and structure) in capital, they have a propensity to orient themselves actively either toward the preservation of the distribution of capital or toward the subversion of this distribution. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 108-109, italics in original) Mills (2008) draws attention to what she refers to as reproductive and transformative habitus. In her work with rural students, Mills argued that where students resign themselves to the systemic failure of education, the reproductive habitus enables the reproduction of social disadvantage. However, the transformative habitus is one where the learners are proactive in reconstituting their habitus and thus enabling greater educational opportunity and outcomes. The art of good education is the potential of teachers to bring about a transformative habitus so that learners can feel empowered to engage with quality learning that will enable them to transition successfully from their marginalised social position to one of greater access and success in schooling and beyond. However, to assume that the teacher is solely responsible for such transformative practice belies the complexity of the learning context, so it is critical to understand the intersection of these variables. The teacher can be constrained by the structuring practices within the field and these contribute to the potentiality of transformative education. We draw extensively on this theoretical position to better understand the changing practices within distance education, and how such changes impact on the learning, and learning outcomes of rural/remote students who, by nature of their geographical location, participate in distance education learning environments. To apply Bourdieu’s constructs to the field of distance education, we are better able to understand how the changing practices within the field are creating environments that may work against the success of young learners and teachers. Method This investigation provides an in-depth case study of a learning community where children learn through distance education. The first phase outlines the field of distance education at a time when innovative satellite technologies were being introduced. It considers and describes the role of the particular distance education site that delivers instruction to these families in order to provide a comprehensive context for the study. Initially, interviews with eight key personnel from the distance education providers were conducted to gather information on the range and nature of services offered for the support of mathematics teaching and learning. These personnel included the executive director of distance education, the principal of distance education school and classroom teachers. Interviews were also conducted (at the residential school) with 12 parents with longstanding associations with this school. The four home supervisors were interviewed 5 and observed in the home on a typical school day. Moreover, time was spent watching the students engaged in a range of numeracy practices as the supervisor made sense of the curriculum. Data from each home site were combined with data from the interviews with personnel from the schools of distance education to form a rich contextualisation of the field. The first aspect of the field described effective strategies, processes and pedagogies in numeracy development of these rural and remote students. A Home Supervisor Interview Schedule was developed to initiate a conversation with the home supervisor in order to ascertain the influence the program had on both the pedagogical practice of the program and the relationship initiatives that emerged from the program. In addition, a School Interview Schedule was developed to ascertain teachers’ views of the program and to gain insights into how they developed learning partnerships with families. The second aspect of the field described the case study site eight years after the initial data collection phase. The principal of the school was re-interviewed in order to ascertain the changed practices within the field concerning policies, teacher pedagogies and students participating in the distance education environment. A focus group with ten primary and secondary mathematics teachers was conducted after the development of a semi-structured interview schedule. The focus group considered issues associated with the nature of teaching and learning environments, professional development experiences, technology challenges, student-teacher interactions, and teachers’ current pedagogical practices. A follow up site visit was also conducted where additional questions which arose from the focus group were both clarified and expanded upon. In addition, mathematics lessons were simultaneously observed from both the school site and a remote home site (hundreds of kilometres from the school). Detailed observation schedules were completed during these site visits. Results Field 1: Distance learning with new technological innovations Distance education, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, is coordinated from a centralised unit which was responsible for eight distance education schools. The distance education learning community which formed this case study site is structured quite differently to more typical school contexts. The face-to-face learning environment which surrounds most classroom practices is not present in distance education learning environments. Although the actual components which make up these learning environments are similar—including policies, resources, curriculum content and indeed all other aspects of a learning community—the impact and connectivity of these components are both distinct and variously influential. For example, if available technologies do not work well in the traditional classroom setting, other plans can be made, whereas in a distance education setting, the lesson cannot proceed. Furthermore, interactions between students in the “classroom” bear little resemblance to interactions within a conventional classroom, and therefore the process of engagement has to be thought about differently. The classroom teacher generally has a smaller number of children in their class (typically 14 in primary school). These children are usually hundreds of kilometres away from the school and may only see the teacher (in a physical sense) three or four times per year. Children in the class may see one another less than this. The advent of new technologies created opportunities for children and their teachers to engage and interact with one another beyond the static and one-way opportunities previously available. With radio communication systems for example, only one person could talk at a time, with 6 protocol in place to ensure that no one ever interjected in ways that could commonly occur in traditional classroom contexts. With email and video capacity, students could simultaneously respond to one another and to the questions the classroom teacher posed. Although this new form of communication could not be considered dynamic, it did provide different opportunities for learning to occur. These new classroom interactions were scheduled only twice a week and therefore a transmissive model of one-way communication was still dominant. Nevertheless, there seemed to be great hope for new forms of learning to take place since teleconferencing, audio-graphic conferencing, and satellite lessons were now available. One of the main differences between regular and distance education schools involves the implementation of learning activities and, in some cases, the development of learning programs by each child’s home supervisor. In most cases, the supervisor responsible for supporting student/teacher interaction was the mother of the child who must interpret the planned program and guide its implementation. In order to assist supervisors with program implementation, distance education teachers prepare accompanying notes for home supervisors on the planned program. Teachers encourage home supervisors and students to make regular contact with them during the school day—usually via telephone or email. A vital partnership between the teacher and supervisor was established through such engagement. This is not to say that parents in traditional classroom contexts do not have a strong influence over their child’s education, but this explicit and daily communication was undertaken as part of the formal learning process. What we found as noteworthy was that the supervisor still had the duel function of being a parent. Most curriculum content was developed and assigned to the students over a two-week period and included workbooks, the home supervisor guide, and accompanying resources. Ideally, these resources arrived at least one week before the current unit had been completed in order to provide home supervisors with sufficient time to prepare for unit implementation. Units of work, usually presented in themes, were common and obviously help with resourcing. For example, a theme on farm animals spread across literacy, social science and science curriculum areas. By contrast, mathematics units were not theme based and nor were they strand based. Consequently, the students may have been undertaking number-based activities on Monday through to Wednesday with measurement and spatial concepts addressed on Thursday and Friday respectively. This learning sequence was typical of many traditional classrooms at this time. Supervisors would receive a substantial mathematics resource kit that was used throughout the year. This kit included Multi- Attribute Blocks (MAB), counters, measurement devices, number line cards and an extensive array of mathematics puzzles and games. In addition, specific resources (e.g., counting frames for lessons on addition or Tangrams for spatial transformation activities) aligned to the fortnightly “themes” were received and then sent back to the school with the work completed during two weeks. Home supervisors were expected to correct student work when completed and write accompanying comments both for the student and teacher. Completed student workbooks were often returned with accompanying artefacts including photos, cassette recordings, and drawings, as a means of further evidence of student learning. These records of student activity were of great benefit to the classroom teacher since this was their primary source of information to assess student progress. The introduction of satellite communications The introduction of satellite technology was viewed, by most parents and teachers, as an opportunity to completely reshape the distance education learning environment. For 7 parents, in both their role as parents and supervisor, these new technologies were regarded as a support system which better replicated what would happen in a traditional classroom context—especially when children were being introduced to new mathematics concepts that they themselves were not comfortable in explaining. Furthermore, they thought it particularly valuable to have visual cues from teachers when demonstrating how to use mathematics materials (e.g., MABs) in order to support students’ conceptual development. Previously, the supervisor relied on instructions given in printed materials (that came with the resource tubs) to appreciate the philosophy and instructional intent of such resources. Interestingly, the supervisors felt that the increased communication capacity of the technology would be more beneficial to them in their supervisory role than it would for teachers in their role of engaging with students.. Since most supervisors (more than 85%) did not have any formal teaching experience or qualifications the prospect of being able to observe (visually with the new technology) how the classroom teacher was actually delivering lessons was regarding as being invaluable. The opportunity to observe the student/teacher interaction in a more dynamic (multimodal) form was considered to be a form of professional development for the supervisor. At this point in time, supervisors did not have access to any formal professional development. Most supervisors felt that the increased opportunities that would result in the new technologies would broaden the richness of classroom interactions and engagement. By contrast, they did not assume, or consider it necessary, that increased capacity for internet use would be a beneficial supplement to satellite capabilities. This was based on the belief that the resources supplied by the school, the teaching materials they could access and current teacher delivery were sufficient to students needs. Although the teachers recognised the steep learning curve they faced in utilising effectively these new technologies, they too had a high disposition for engaging with this medium of lesson delivery. Teachers were of the view that an increased technology capacity would allow learning material to be modified to students’ needs more easily or at least remain more current in their presentation. Some of the materials being used in the school were written more than 25 years ago. What can be seen in this context is how the structuring practices of the field, such as the emerging satellite technologies or the standard mathematics equipment made available to parents, as well as a curriculum of a substantial age, offered particular learning experiences to the various stakeholders, including students, supervisors and teachers. These structuring practices created various potentialities for restructuring the habitus. Parents, for example, were exposed to the new technologies that enabled them to better understand the ways in which mathematics learning could be facilitated. Thus, the embodiment of mathematics practices and culture into a mathematical habitus was being made possible through these structuring practices for rural/distance learners. Field 2: Distance learning beyond technological innovations The governance of distance education had changed since undertaking the initial investigation in Field 1. Within this state jurisdiction, the organisation of distance education had moved from a centralised- to a regional-governance approach. As a consequence, the technology capability of the school and its ongoing influence on mathematics had not been as influential as first anticipated in the eight years since the technology was rolled out. Increasingly, the school was responsible for the development of mathematics teaching programs rather than a collective approach as described in Field 1 where the program was formulated elsewhere. By way of example, the school was actually 8 now asked to pay the costs of printed materials from their own budget rather than such learning materials being supplied by a centralised body. Initially the school community maintained that new technologies would reshape practice. Such hopes were probably a reflection of what society in general thought new technologies would bring to the future. Although both teachers and parents thought that children would be eager to use the technology regularly, this has not been the case. Children are often more willing to complete tasks in the pencil-and-paper form since they prefer the “concreteness and physicality” of this medium. Consequently, a more blended form of learning has been established. Teachers have changed their practice to accommodate the technology rather than let the technology lead curriculum development. This approach has been established for a number of reasons. First, an overall reliance on technology was viewed to be problematic given the unreliability of access in terms of both functionality and bandwidth capacity. Second, many of the technology-based resources promoted a drill and practice mentality where students were more inclined to guess answers rather than think through the mathematical processes. Given the nature of delivery, teachers felt it important to have students represent their work in a pencil-and-paper form so teachers could have some insights into how the students worked out solutions. In other words, teachers’ practices required concrete representations that could help them assess students’ learning and at present, this type of facility is not available in technology-based delivery. Third, there is a view that even reliable technology resources (e.g., Moodle) needed to be presented in a blended form. For example, information which is presented in an online form was more valuable when printed materials were part of the learning experience. Finally, most assessment practices around Australia rely on pencil-and-paper assessment (e.g., National Assessment Programme –Literacy and Numeracy [NAPLAN]) and therefore teachers felt that students had to become familiar with such types of representations. Although the two-way radio technology is antiquated, parents particularly missed this form of interaction. Internet reliability meant that it was challenging to email other parents and long telephone conversations were a cost issue. The ease with which parents could communicate had diminished. When the satellite technology was introduced, it was restricted to students in primary schools. Surprisingly, this technology capability is yet to be afforded to secondary students. In terms of the delivery of mathematics, teachers felt it was more appropriate to interact with the children on a one-to-one basis through daily telephone conversations. Although it was acknowledged that the students did not have the opportunity to engage with other students in their mathematics lessons, the opportunity to target students at their current level of development was viewed to be more important and beneficial. One of the major changes in the delivery of mathematics has been the move from a designated supplier of content materials. In Field 1, learning materials were solely sourced from one provider (Learning Materials Production Unit, Education Queensland). Teachers delivered units from these artefacts and varied lessons only slightly. By contrast, this blended learning framework sources learning materials from a number of suppliers including TaLe (New South Wales Department of Education and Training [NSW DET]), McDonalds Maths online (http://mathsonline.com.au/) and the Rigby Maths Tracks (Leigh, 2008) program. These resources provide both online and printed materials with teachers creating individualised mathematics programs for students. In Field 2, teachers are required to develop their own resources for a variety of media and present those materials in multiple ways including through print, electronically, or on the web. To this point, the http://mathsonline.com.au/ 9 teacher’s role has changed markedly. Although it appears that such flexibility provides students with increased access to resources, and to some extent promotes more open-ended and flexible learning investigations, the actual practice more reflects teachers creatively weaving ideas and learning opportunities into individualised learning programs. Therefore, part of the changed practice involves teachers selecting and matching resources for students (and thus a changed practice). Nevertheless, students still receive “a package,” albeit one that is more blended in nature. It is noteworthy that one learning “series” has been replaced with a different mathematics resource—and this new resource is not one that was specifically designed for distance education. Parents, in particular, maintained that this new direction resulted in a less comprehensive package—and as such the students were more reliant on them, and their teachers, to complete assigned work. This shift in the structuring practices of the field manifest in the subjective structuring practices. In this instance, the shift in locus of control from the external resources to the parents meant that parent felt less confident in supporting their children’s learning.. By losing this confidence in how to teach due to the change in resources, parent felt disempowered and, hence, not as willing to engage as they had previously been. This subjectivity manifest in their beliefs about their capacity to confidently teach mathematics to their children. The communication and technology advances of recent years are not the fundamental initiator in the creation of individualised learning programs. Changes in student composition, and the redefined nature of learning contexts, have influenced the move toward specialised programs. More students are now enrolling into DE for reasons other than their rural/remote circumstances. For example, students deemed to be behaviourally challenging, or students with disabilities, account for a high proportion of enrolments. Moreover, rural populations have changed markedly over the past eight years with fewer small farms and fewer people working these farms. There is also a high proportion of Indigenous students in the school. Distance education has become specialised education— which is quite appealing for parents who feel their children do not “fit” mainstream schooling. Interestingly, it appears that these parents expect high levels of structure within lessons (and indeed the curriculum). Many of the students are challenging to supervise in the home, and parents appreciate the structure involved in routines. In contexts where technology is unreliable, and is embedded within a paradigm that relies on students being able to multitask and work dynamically, work books and pencil-and-paper-based mathematics activities satisfy their needs and expectations. Discussion The outcomes of this study are drawn together using Bourdieu’s theoretical framing as a way of making sense of the altered practices within the field and the impact that these changes have on quality learning opportunities for rural and remote students who undertake distance education. In a policy environment that promotes a range of learning opportunities for students and is cognisant of the needs and performances of rural and remote students, the paper raises serious concerns about the changes of the field of distance education and the subsequent learnings being made possible through these changes. The re-framing of distance learning due, in part, to the changed enrolment patterns of students, has created significant shift in practices. In Field 1, under different conditions and circumstances, there were high levels of access to new technologies, with teachers, parents and students developing high expectations for how these technologies would positively impact on practices. Indeed, all members of the learning community had high expectations for the changed learning environment, with a strong desire to embrace and utilise the 10 technologies to best effect. In Field 2 (see Figure 1), there was a dramatic shift in access to these technologies, and the communities’ expectations for the technology and their willingness to operationalise their practices within the field had become far less positive. Insert Figure 1 about here What we observe in these two fields are quite different practices. In the first field, the student population was relatively homogenous. They came to DE with similar habitus— that is, a rural habitus—and as such, the teachers’ role was to reconstitute that habitus into one which was more transformative in orientation. This enabled the learners (children and parents) to engage with mathematical ideas so that the home habitus would align more strongly with the school mathematics habitus. The possibilities brought about through the satellite technology was more enabling than the practices of the past, but also brought with it challenges for the teachers. They, too, had to reconstitute their teaching habitus to align with the changing demands of this new digital field. Collectively, these changes to the field and the practices within Field One, we would contend, were more enabling in bringing about mathematical habitus of learners that aligned with the field, thus positioning learners more favourably with the objective structuring practices of the field as represented through various objects including testing schemes. In contrast, in Field Two, we observe that the population attending DE has changed considerably. It now incorporates not only rural learners, but learners from a range of backgrounds disconnected with rural contexts. This diversity creates very different teaching environments, thus making it difficult for teachers to use the pedagogical tools that they had been able to employ in Field One. Whole-class teaching had shifted to one- on-one teaching which creates very different opportunities for mathematical learning and shaping of mathematical habitus. In this case, learners are being exposed to practices that create spaces for constituting mathematical habitus that have more transmissive and individual orientations than in Field One. What this offers are the more traditional habitus of mathematics. In line with the argument early in this paper, this creates a much more reproductive habitus where learners are being locked into old practices and, hence, old habitus, ones which the field of mathematics education has been seeking to address for a number of decades. The structuring practice of one-on-one teaching is failing to include the socio-cultural learning contexts that are so much a feature of contemporary mathematics education. The inability for the technological structuring practices of Field Two to have changed in the period of observations, suggests that there has been a hiatus in the field which has failed to move with the rapid changes in the non-school world. Where Field One was innovative and beyond the non-school world, Field Two lags behind the technological resources of the non-school world. As such, the technology became a structuring practice which is not abreast with the external world and thus, again, offered reproductive rather than transformative opportunities for DE students. What we have sought to bring out in this paper is that the changed circumstances of DE provision create different learning opportunities for students. The changes in the two fields have been shaped by a range of factors, not least of which are the technological innovations and the changing clientele of DE. Collectively these offer different potentialities for learning, and thus habitus creation (or reconstitution). Given that rural and remote students have been identified as groups of learners who are significantly at risk of poor performance in mathematics, we contend that there are structuring practices that are 11 offering enhanced and/or restricted potentialities for learning mathematics. We have found that using Bourdieu’s theoretical framing has allowed us to theorise this situation and to argue that the changes in the two fields need to be considered carefully for their ramifications for learning and access to school mathematics for students in distance education contexts. 12 Figure 1. The Repositioning of "Field" within Distance Education practices in Australia. Technology/Access Disposition/Expectations Field 1 Field 2 13 References Arnold, P. (2001). Review of contemporary issues for rural schools. Education in Rural Australia, 11 (1), 31- 42. Askew, M. (2004). Teaching and learning primary numeracy. Address presented to the Special Topic Group 1 at the 10 th International Congress on Mathematical Education, Copenhagen, Denmark. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question. London: Sage. Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: Chicago University Press Considine, G., & Zappalà, G. (2002). The influence of social and economic disadvantage in the academic performance of schools students in Australia. Journal of Sociology, 38 (2), 129-148. Du Plessis, D., & Bailey, J. (2000). Isolated parents’ perceptions of the education of their children. Education in Rural Australia, 10, 1-26. Goos, M. (2004). Learning mathematics in a classroom community of inquiry. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 35(4), 258-291. Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission [HREOC]. (2000). Emerging themes: National inquiry into rural and remote education. Sydney, Australia: HREOC. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC]. (2000). Recommendations: National inquiry into rural and remote education. Sydney, Australia: HREOC. Leigh, T. (2008). Maths Tracks NSW series. Melbourne, Australia: Pearson Education. Lerman, S. (2001). Cultural, discursive psychology: A sociocultural approach to studying the teaching and learning of mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 46, 87-113. Lowrie, T. (2007). Learning engagement in distance and rural settings: Four Australian cases. Learning Environments Research, 10, 35-51. Lowrie, T. (2006). Establishing school-family partnerships in distance education contexts: Pedagogical engagement in isolated settings. Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 96-114. Lyons, T., Cooksey, R., Panizzon, D., Parnell, A., & Pegg, J. (2006). Science, ICT and mathematics education in rural and regional Australia: The SiMERR national survey. Canberra, ACT: Department of Education, Science and Training. Mills, C. (2008). Opportunity and resignation within marginalised students: towards a theorisation of the reproductive and transformative habitus. Critical Studies in Education, 49(2), 99-111. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). (2005). National report on schooling in Australia 2005. Carlton South, Vic: Author. New South Wales Department of Education and Training [NSW DET]. Teaching and Learning Exchange. [TaLe] Accessed 10 June 2010 from http://www.tale.edu.au Radford, L. (2009). Why do gestures matter? Sensuous cognition and the palpability of mathematical meanings. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 70, 111-126. Ryan, R. (2001). Human rights, remote Australia, and the VET sector. Australian Training Review, 40, 28- 29. Webb, J., Schirato, T., & Danaher, G. (2002). Understanding Bourdieu. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zevenbergen. R. (2000). “Cracking the code” of mathematics classrooms: School success as a function of linguistic, social and cultural background. In J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 201-224). Westport, CT: Ablex publishing. http://www.tale.edu.au/ 
work_gq5iqs4dojemxkrcpfgeyvdcca	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_guz55jcnazfa7jjabqvqat427a	----	Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology Volume 4, 2007 Prisoners' Attitudes toward Using Distance Education Whilst in Prisons in Saudi Arabia Abdulkarim A. Al Saif University of Qassim, Saudi Arabia alsaif@manahij.net Abstract This research explores prisoners’ attitudes for undertaking distance-learning courses whilst in prison, and considers both the benefits and the difficulties experienced by prisoners as a result of their academic work. It is based on over 35 questionnaires completed by 300 current prisoners. The research was conducted in three prisons throughout the country in three different provinces. In addition to providing an in-depth account of the role that education can play during a prison sentence and beyond, it is intended that the experiences shared by these prisoners will provide the basis for additional guidance and support for future distance-learning inmates. The data of this study show that the prisoners in general demonstrated positive attitudes toward using distance education whilst in prisons. The remarkable finding was that the prisoners were self-motivated to engage in the computer and Internet use to continue their academic studies whilst in prison and learn new skills for getting jobs after prison. This finding supports the possibility of the prisoners’ engagement in distance education courses offered at prisons. Keywords: distance education, attitude toward distance education, prisoners, motivating factors, inhibiting factors. Introduction Most courtiers around the world, attempt to educate inmates in prison so that they will be some- thing other than inmates during subsequent phases of their lives. Offenders come to prison with much less education than the general population. This lower education level did not compel these persons to commit crimes, but it is a factor in the criminal's decision-making process. It creates a context in which an individual sees limited options, and therefore, does not believe that he or she has much to lose. Also, lack of education often is associated with a lack of regard for self, mani- fested in limited respect for others and institutions. According to Johnson (2001), a number of studies confirmed that educational programs are directly responsible for recent rise in the dropout rate and the decrease in crimes because many of those who drop out of high school or fail to qual- ify for admission to college or university do not possess the skills necessary to compete for jobs. Statement of Problem In Saudi Arabia, there is a prison in each main city around the country provided with a number of classrooms and text- books to provide a learning opportunity similar to the educational system applied outside prisons. Studying within whilst in prison is available for offenders who are interested to continue their education Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is per- missible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission. Prisoners' Attitudes toward Using Distance Education 126 during subsequent phases beside others duties. Since this educational system inside prisons fol- lows the overall educational system in the regular school, the learning opportunity, however, is not available for all the prisons specially those who have not attended schools before. In addition, learning and training opportunities in prisons are limited to certain subjects such as religious ses- sions, self-development sessions, electricity skills sessions, plumbing skills sessions which teach the basic skills of such subjects. Although, there is a lot of learning and training programs pro- vided by some governmental agencies, schools, and community colleges, the offenders are not allowed to attend such opportunities. Therefore, this study attempts to close the gap between the prisoners and outside society by bridging learning and training opportunities to prisons. Thus, this study attempts to explore the opportunities and difficulties for applying distance education system at prison by examining the offenders’ attitudes toward using distance education delivery system during subsequent phases. The distance system should provide the inmates with learning and training opportunities held outside the prison which would include formal and informal educa- tion. Distance Education for Prisoners In the literature, one may find that distance education has been defined from different perspec- tives over the years. As found in Simonson (1997), distance education can be defined as the ap- plication of telecommunications and electronic devices which enables students and learners to receive instruction that originates from some distance location. Today, distance education has become a popular technique in educational environments and communities and more accessible for every educational environments including level from K-12 to higher education. In addition, distance education can become a solution for instructional problems outside educational envi- ronments such as prisons. In prisons, prisoners can participate in educational programs outside the prisons, whilst in prison by utilizing distance education as a delivery system. Today, most of educational insinuations around the world have established their web courses using online peda- gogical techniques such as chats, discussions, web-based testing, or simulation sites on the Inter- net in order to create new opportunities for their students (Eastmond, 2000). If prisoners have the ability to utilize technology effectively, they can use distance education course, either as an aid to promote learning in the traditional classroom, or as a distance education medium. In such envi- ronments, instructors can utilize technology such as Web-Based Instruction (WBI) to post course materials such as a course syllabus, course schedule and meetings, reading materials, and course requirements. They can also use WBI to test students’ in-class learning on prison so that they can receive instant feedback in order to adjust their lecture plans. In some classes, instructors can use a stylus-based laptop, which incorporates the use of notes handwritten directly into the computer, when they lecture. At the end of each class, instructors can send their notes as e-mails to their students, which helps students focus on the lesson, rather than taking notes. The utilization of dis- tance learning as a delivery system in prison, have a lot of advantages for the prisons themselves such as increasing their confidence and engagements in their societies, and enabling them to ob- tain degrees as an access to employment. Purpose of the Study The primary purpose of this study is to identify the attitude of inmates toward using distance edu- cation during subsequent phases of their lives in prisons in Saudi Arabia The following research questions were addressed: 1. What are the relationships between selected inmates characteristics (demographics) includ- ing education background and inmates skills and access of technology (computer skills and access, Internet skills and access)? Al Saif 127 2. What are the relationships between selected inmates characteristics (demographics) includ- ing education background and inmates education whilst in prison? 3. What are the relationships between selected inmates characteristics (demographics) includ- ing education background and potential situations? 4. What are the relationships between selected inmates characteristics (demographics) includ- ing education background and distance education advantages? 5. What are the relationships between selected inmates characteristics (demographics) includ- ing education background and distance education disadvantages? 6. What are the relationships between selected inmates characteristics (demographics) includ- ing education background and training experiences? Methods The participants of this study included inmates (n = 300). These participants included female and male inmates from of three main prisons in three provinces; Riyadh, Makkah, Qassim. The in- mates participating in this study were held for various periods of time in prisons starting from one year to fifteen years. The study used a survey research design for data collection. The data col- lected from the survey, was used to examine the relationship between the dependent, independent, and antecedent variables. Instrumentation The main instrument used for data collection was the survey which consists of seven parts. Part I. Profile Characteristics. This part of survey consists of items (1-5) and they are to provide personal and professional characteristics of a participant in terms of age, gender, province, period, and education background. Part II. Technology Skills and Access. This part consists of six items (6-11) and they are to pro- vide information about the participants’ computer skills and access. The participants rated their skills and access by using a 5 –point Likert scale (1=none and 5= too high). Part III. Education in Prison This part consists of four items (12- 15) and they are to provide in- formation about the participants’ education in prisons. The participants rated their education from: never study at prison to study until college graduation. Part IV. Training Experiences: This part consists of three items ( 16-18) and they are to provide information about the training cycles that the participants have had in prisons which included computer training, plumbing training, electricity training, carpentry training, and others ( they state it). Potential Situations. This part consists of five items (19-23) and they are to provide information about the attitude of the participants toward some potential situations in distance education. The participants rated their usage by using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, and 5= strongly agree). Part V. Advantages of Distance Education. This part consists of six items (24-29) and they are to provide information about the attitude of the participants toward some advantages of distance education. The participants rated their usage by using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly dis- agree, and 5= strongly agree). Part VI. Disadvantages of Distance Education. This part consists of six items (30-35) and they are to provide information about the attitude of the participants toward some disadvantages of Prisoners' Attitudes toward Using Distance Education 128 distance education. The participants rated their usage by using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, and 5= strongly agree). Data Analysis Through the survey used, a large amount data was collected in this study. The data obtained were analyzed based on their relationship to the research questions through these seven major compo- nents: participants’ demographics and education background, computer and Internet skills and access, education whilst in prisons, training experiences, potential situations, and distance educa- tion advantages and disadvantages. Accordingly , the data were analyzed through two types of analysis; descriptive analysis and in- ferential statistical analysis. In the descriptive analysis, the data analyses were accomplished by using measures of central tendency (mean) and measures of variability (standards deviation) as well as frequency distributions of the responses. The inferential statistical analyses were con- ducted to address the seven research questions and examine the relationships among the major components. Discussion In this study, it was found that there is relationship between computer and internet skills and use, and the prisoners’ characteristics. It was found also that the computer and Internet skills and use were correlated with the age, which means that whenever the age increases, the technology skills and use decrease. This finding is compatible with what Gary (1997) found regarding the conse- quence of computer and Internet skills and use for using such technologies. It was also found that the technology skills and use were correlated with the gender, where the female prisoners have higher skills in using computer and Internet than their male mates. This finding could be ex- plained that the nature of girls’ majors in the study was purely scientific. This finding supports what Lindner, Murphy and Dooley (2001) found that female had the highest distance education value scores and stated a need for further research in this area. This study found that the prisoners’ attitude toward distance education advantages was positively correlated with their skills and use of computer and Internet. On the other hand, the attitude to- ward distance education disadvantages was negatively correlated with the technology skills and use. These findings led us to conclude that whenever a prisoner’s skills and use of computer and Internet increase, his/her attitude toward using distance education increases and vise versa. In ad- dition, the nature of study tasks that the prisoners involve in was found correlated with the tech- nology skills and use. In this study, it was found that the prisoners’ attitudes toward distance education advantages were positively correlated with educational level variables, which means that prisoners have high level of education considered the distance education advantages. Moreover, distance education advan- tages were related to training tasks at prison. The data show that the prisoners’ educational level and training tasks were correlated with poten- tial situations, distance education advantages, and disadvantages variables. This finding indicates that the type of tasks that a prisoner is approached to in prison, plays a great role in his/ her atti- tude toward distance education use. The correlation between educational level and training tasks and these variables supports what Murray (2001) found that there are many reasons why a pro- spective prisoner would choose to take online courses. However, it can be argued that the num- ber one reason is flexibility. The ability to log on anytime day or night from practically anywhere is attractive. Al Saif 129 Recommendations and Conclusions Recommendations for the Interior Ministry As found in many studies mentioned earlier, attitude toward participation in distance education always is influenced by the lack of knowledge of the nature of distance learning. Therefore, the Interior Ministry, as the agency responsible for prisons in Saudi Arabia, could introduce distance education services to prisoners prior to starting the service to ensure more involvement into dis- tance education activities. This introduction could be done by providing formal and informal seminars explaining the nature of the new paradigm. The Ministry could also initiate professional development process directed toward distance education by providing prisoners with awareness, seminars, and tutorial for distance education , prior implementing the system As it found in this study, the availability of a suitable infrastructure for distance learning programs was a significant factor for developing positive attitudes. Therefore, developing distance education infrastructure would be a very important factor for prisoners to participate in distance education program. Since Web-Based Instruction ( WBI) is the most popular distance learning style today, for most dis- tance education programs, the Ministry can support the utilization of prisoners for distance educa- tion especially WBI by providing prisons with adequate technology such as systems reliability connectivity/access, hardware/software, and setup. The prisoners should be able to recognize technologies’ strengths and weaknesses so they will be able to select the most appropriate ones for a particular lesson. Providing the prisons with sufficient introduction and reliable technology will be significant factor for successful implementation of distance education programs at prisons. Recommendations for Further Research 1. The present study was limited to prisoners’ attitude toward using distance education only. Interested investigators are, therefore, encouraged to a replicate this study with additional types of samples to include Interior Ministry administrators, faculty, and staff, beside the prisoners. 2. The current study concentrated on certain prisoners’ attitude factors toward using dis- tance education. It is recommended that future studies extend these factors by exam- ining additional attitudes factors, even as they attend to the results of this study. 3. The factors of prisoners’ attitude toward using distance education focused on this study could be explored further in different cultural contexts to see to what extent these cultures impact the adoption and implementation of distance education. 4. The current study used survey instrument only for collecting data; therefore, it would be appropriate if further researchers use additional tools such as using interview, ob- servation, and focus groups. Conclusions Today, most instructional institutions around the world face new challenges and make new deci- sions in the several areas especially learning delivery systems. Prisons, as responsible agencies for prisoners’ education, have to take the advantages of technology to offer education for prison- ers whilst in prisons. The purpose of this study was to identify the prisoners’ attitude toward us- ing distance education in Saudi Arabia. Substantially, the findings of this study indicate opportu- nities for successful distance education implementation at the prisons if attention is given to cer- tain issues. Thus, this study found that prisoners’ attitude of distance education is influenced by a variety factors such as computer and Internet skills and access. The educational level and training tasks were found a critical factor in demonstrating positive attitude toward distance education use. Prisoners' Attitudes toward Using Distance Education 130 The prisoners have demonstrated highly positive attitudes toward distance education use. They were in much agreement with the potential situations, distance education advantages. However, the prisoners were not in much agreement with distance education disadvantages. Encouraging such positive attitudes requires ultimate and efficient cooperation among the different levels of the Interior Ministry administration, and local universities and colleges, and all other relevant personnel. Effective and clear policies for distance education programs must be structured prior distance education implementation. Results The findings and discussion of this study will be published at a later date. References Arbaugh, J.B. (2001). How instructor immediacy behaviors affect student satisfaction and learning in web- based courses. Business Communication Quarterly, 64(4), 42-54. Arfaj, A. (2001). The perception of college students in Saudi Arabia towards distance web-based instruc- tion. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio University Main Campus, Athens. Dick, W., Carey, L., & Cary, O. (2004). The systematic design of instruction (6th ed.). Boston: Addison and Wesley Publishers. Dooley, K., & Murphrey, T. (2000). How the perspectives of administrators, faculty, and support units im- pact the rate of distance education adoption. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. Re- trieved July 21, 2004, from: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter34/winter34.htm Eastmond, N., & Du Plessis. (2000). An incremental approach to implement a web course. TechTrends, 44(3), 40-45. Gary, S. (1997). Training teachers, faculty members, and staff. In B. H. Khan (Ed.), Web based instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Johnson, J. (2001). Building bridges to the economic mainstream for African American male ex- offenders: A preliminary assessment of an inmate education re-entry program. Report Evaluation. North Carolina University, 2001. Khan, B. (Ed.). (1997). Web-based instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publica- tions, Inc. Lee, J. (2001). Instructional support for distance education and faculty motivation, commitment, satisfac- tion. British Journal of Educational Technology, 32, 2. Retrieved April 20, 2003, from the World Wide Web: ERIC database (EJ626765) Lee, J. (2002). Faculty and administrator perceptions of instructional support for distance education. Inter- national Journal of Instructional Media, 29(1), 27-45. Levine, T. (1992). Going the distance: A handbook for developing distance degree program using televi- sion courses and telecommunications technologies. Bethesda, MD. Lin, H. (2002). Motivating and inhibiting factors that affect faculty participation in distance education at Idaho State University. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Idaho State University. Pocatello, Idaho. Meyer, K. (2002). Does policy make a difference? An exploration into policies for distance education. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 5(4). Retrieved on February 2, 2005, from: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter54/Meyer_policy_54.htm Moore, M. (1998). Administrative barriers to adoption of distance education. The American Journal of Dis- tance Education, 8(3), 1-4. Al Saif 131 Murray, B. (2001). What makes students stay. eLearn Magazine. Retrieved from http://elearnmag.org/subpage/sub_page.cfm?article_pk=1301&page_number_nb=1&title=FEATURE %20STORY Nasser, R. A. (2000). Attitudes and concerns towards distance education: the case of Lebanon. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. Retrieved April, 15, 2003, from: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter34/nasser34.html Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovation. NY: The Free Press. Schifter, C. (2002). Perception differences about participating in distance education. Online Journal of Dis- tance Learning Administration. Retrieved April, 14, 2003, from: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/schifter51.html Simonson, M. (1997). Distance education: Review of the literature. Washington, D.C: Association for Edu- cational Communication and Technology (AECT). Biography Abdulkarim A. Al Saif received his Batchelor’s degree in Science of Arabic Language from Imam Mohammed Bin Saud University ,Qassim, Saudi Arabia, his Masters from Ball State University, Muncie Indiana, and his Ph.D. in Instructional Technology from Wayne State University, Detroit Michigan. From 2005 until the present he has been an assistant professor at the College of Education at the University of Qassim, where the main tasks are: teach pre-service teachers, supervise teacher training, teach undergraduate courses, and serving in research committees. He is also the webmaster of the manahij web site at http://www.manahij.net/, the vice dean of Academic Deanship at Uni- versity of Qassim, and The founder of Quality Assurance Scientific Association, Saudi Arabia. His publications and awards include: 2006 : " Students Attitude toward distance education at University of Qassim" published by Journal of European Teacher Network ( JETEN). 2001: Ball State University, Muncie Indiana, Graduate School, Deans’ Citation for Aca- demic Excellence. 2001. Ball State University, Muncie Indiana , MSA Service Award. 1998: Al Jazirah Newspaper, Saudi Arabia, several articles about the Modern Arab Lit- erature. 1997: Al Jazirah Newspaper, Saudi Arabia, several articles about contemporary issues in the Modern Arab Literature. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error /CompatibilityLevel 1.4 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 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work_gwaytftz3jbrdlfzpsjnbywq3y	----	Virtual experiment environments design for science education - Cyberworlds, 2003. Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on Virtual Experiment Environments Design for Science Education Young-Suk Shin Division of Electronics and information Communication Engineering, Chosun University ysshin@mail.chosun.ac.kr Abstract Virtual reality technology is reported that the use of virtual reality(VR) as an educational tool can increase student interests, understanding and creative learning because of encouraging students to learn by exploring and interacting with the information on virtual environments. This paper presents the virtual experiment (VE) environments for science education using virtual reality simulation. We developed the VE environments on the Web designed compatible to the learner levels through level analysis in the learning contents. The students can select the learning level in the exploring step of learning cycle model: regular, advanced and remedial courses according to the degree of their understanding or interest about the learning topic. The VE environments support students to learn scientific phenomena and concepts focusing on: the seismic wave, the earth's crust balance, radiation balance, the movement of ocean, solar system and the control of telescope in the science field of middle school. The responses of learning on VE environments have demonstrated that the VE environments can be used as a useful methodology in science education for middle school students. 1. Introduction Throughout the 21th century, the science education is to make a transition from an emphasis on delivering content through lectures to getting students “involved in some way in scientific inquiry, not just a hands-on experience.” In the science education, inquiry has always been difficult because the phenomena are so far out of reach – students obviously can not visit the Sun. However, the power of the modern day computer to do desktop virtual reality and computational modeling has created a new opportunity for inquiry approaching to learning [1][2] and teaching astronomy [3]. VR is defined as a highly interactive, computer-based multimedia environment in which the user becomes the participant in a computer-generated world. A key feature of VR is real-time interactivity where the computer is able to detect user inputs and instantaneously modify the virtual world in accordance with user interactions. VR means an fully immersive worlds created by computers but it can be extended to semi- immersive and non-immersive(desktop) VR. In spite of the disadvantage of non-immersive VR system, the non-immersive VR systems are by far the most common in the present because it is not only cost effective but also can be used in the network environments. Furthermore, they give an Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE additional benefit. The earth science field which is neither easy to perceive nor to measure in usual experiments can be presented on virtual experiment environments and can be viewed in many different perspectives in a virtual world. This paper presents the VE environments for the internet-based learning of earth science education in middle school and discusses the response of learning in the VE environments. 2. Bring VE environments into science education via the internet Today there is an increasing number of educators abandoning predominantly didactic, lecture-based modes of instruction and moving towards more learner-centered models in which students are engaged in problem solving and inquiry [4]. Recently, technological advances make possible new types of learning experiences, moving from transmission models where technology functions like textbooks, films, or broadcasts to environments in which the technology functions like studios and laboratories in which students immerse themselves within interactive contexts that challenge and extend their understanding [3][5]. Many such technologies have been discussed in the literature [6][7][8][9]. One interesting technology that has much potential in which to ground learning in rich environments is virtual reality [1][9][10][11][12]. Virtual reality technology may offer strong benefits in science education. It enables students to do things that they cannot do in the physical world (ex. Fly and go to places that do not exist.) These technologies allow students to enact basic scientific concepts (e.g., earth’s crust balance, seismic wave etc.) into dynamic, 3-D scale models. Distance learning has been popularized in recent years because of the fast development of computer systems and the spreading Internet connectivity. One of the major restrictions for distance learning in science and engineering education is the difficulty of experiment activities. One way to overcome these difficulties is to use the VE environments running on a Web browser instead of requiring hands-on experiments. Especially many physical phenomena in the earth science field which are neither easy to perceive nor to measure in usual experiments can be presented in the VE environments and can be viewed in many different perspectives in the virtual world. In addition, dangerous, high cost, and complicated experiments can be realized in a VE environment for distance learners. The VE environments therefore can be used to overcome the physical, safety, and cost constraints that limit schools in the types of environments they can provide for learning-by-doing. 3. VE environments’s design The teaching designers should have the clear idea on the knowledge and function that learners should have. Fig.1 shows a model describing how VE environments is designed. Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE Fig. 1. A designing process for VE environments First, we conducted the diagnostic test to grasp the intellectual level of what learners have already known. After giving learning topics of earth science field in the multiple choice tests, students make an answer to the questions. The multiple choice tests are commonly used in traditional textbooks and classrooms and need no elaborate explanation. Second, an instruction design to introduce new knowledge to students is provided. The instruction model basically adopted in this study is similar to the model of learning cycle [13]. The model of learning cycle is the one that was introduced to the SCIS (Science Curriculum Improvement Study) program to facilitate the basic concept of science and to develop the function of thought, and it is composed of mutually related three stages – exploration, concept introduction and concept application. The stage of exploration is the one that the learners act and solve the problems that they have been curious on their own. In this stage, the learners can get the experimental data while doing the interaction of preparing the experiment equipment on the table in the 3D VE experiments and conducting the experiments. The learners in this stage solve their curiosity and intellectual conflict to some degree. The concept introduction stage is the one that the teachers arrange the concepts including what the learners have not solved and is the stage to solve the intellectual conflict. The concept application stage is the one to make sure what has been learned and is the stage to apply it to the different situations of nature or the actual life. Third, the learning contents have been organized with three levels according to the degree of difficulty and been devised to put the learning subjects in a hierarchical structure. The learning contents in the learner level-based learning structure for learner-centered learning have been devised with analysis methods of the inquiry level [14] and the concept level for science education of middle school provided by the Department of Education [15]. The subjects of learning is also to put in a hierarchical structure in order to identify which concepts are prior to the others, and conceptual pyramids can be built. We followed the results of an official announcement by the Department of Education to analyze a hierarchical structure. After analyzing both inquiry level and concept level about the contents of learning, the levels of learning contents can be built to regular course(RGL-C), advanced course(ADV-C) and remedial course(RMD-C). Specially, the selection Analysis of learning contents Instruction design Developing Concept introduction Concept application Exploration Diagnostic Test Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE Table 1. A level analysis of the earth structure(High:H, Average:A, Low:L) Level Inquiry Concept Unit Sub-Unit Subject Learning -Type H A L H A L R M D - C A D V - C Remarks Concept ADV-C(iconic): the density variance of vapor and dust Constitution of atmosphere Inquiry RMD-C(symbolic):the test of oxygen mass in the air Concept ADV-C(enactive): radiation balance Atmosphere Perpendicular Structure of atmosphere Inquiry ADV-C(symbolic): the analysis of measured data in high level layer of the air Concept RMD-C(enactive): an electromagnetic wave Seismic wave Inquiry ADV-C(enactive): A draw of a cross- sectional of the Earth. Concept RMD-C(iconic): the damage of earthquake Earth Structure Earth interior Earth’s interior Inquiry RMD-C(symbolic): the inference of structure in the Earth interior of educational content using virtual reality was considered by mainly enactive representation among the learning types(enactive representation, iconic representation, and symbolic representation) of Bruner [16] and experimental attributes. Table 1 shows an example of learning contents was analyzed with both inquiry level and concept level. Finally, VE environments have been developed to open at our homepage for the free access of anyone including middle school students on the Web. This study used Superscape 3D Wed master software from VRT for development of the virtual experiment environments, which is a multifunctional tool to create, manipulate, texture, and animate shapes, group and ungroup objects, create various view points from which to view VR worlds among other features. This software is the virtual reality modeling language(VRML) editing tool. VRML is the WWW standard for VR and is a language similar to HTML in that it establishes a common standard for making VR easily distributed over the Internet. The worlds created from this software can be displayed on the web as fully interactive environments, or embedded in 2D HTML pages on a PC. It also has the advantage of being able to minimize the load of communication because the size of files is small. VE environments developed are now briefly introduced. Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE Fig. 2. VE environment of the seismic wave VE environment of the seismic wave Fig.2 that shows a virtual experiment environment of the seismic wave (P-wave, S- wave) of the internal earth. The waves and a value of velocity have been selected from the learners, then they can explore features of each wave selected in the 3D. The learners can understand the features of P-wave, S-wave and visually conduct the simulated experiment on how each wave proceeds. Fig. 3. VE environment of the earth's crust balance VE environment of the earth's crust balance Fig.3 is a virtual experiment environment for the earth's crust balance. This VE environment was designed to explore the earth’s crust floating on the mantle. The learners can drop by dragging optional blocks in a water tank with a mouse button and observe the length of blocks in the water tank according to the scale and density of blocks on the 3D. This VE environment designed a visual symbol as blocks of tree floating in a water tank in order to create concrete metaphor of the earth’s crust structure floating on the mantle. Fig. 4. VE environment of the radiation balance VE environment of the radiation balance Fig.4 is a virtual experiment that measures the change of internal temperature and the equilibrium temperature of each cup that is differently away from the light source. When the learner moves the cups with the thermometer to certain places by using the mouse and turn on the switch, the temperature of each cup will rise. Of course, the rise of the temperature varies with the distance respectively the colors of three cups into different colors, if the learner put the cups the same distance away and warm them with the same energy, the learner can also see the absorption degree of radiation energy according to the color on which cup's temperature rise most. Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE Fig. 5. VE environment of the ocean’s movement VE environment of the ocean’s movement Fig. 5 is a virtual experiment for the movement of ocean. The learners can observe the size of the wave in the water tank according to the strength of the wind. The strength of the wind can be adjusted to 1m/sec, 5m/sec, 10m/sec, and 20m/sec etc., and it is a virtual experiment necessary to understand the height of the wave and the wind velocity that actually look in the sea. Beside, we have developed VE environments of the solar system and telescope control system . 4. Results of student responses The VE environments developed have been evaluated to the reactions of learners on a Web targeting 701 middle school students for 6 months. The survey was conducted to find out the quality level and the possibility of use in the classes of the developed VE environments. The questions are composed of 3-phase Likert technique. The result of the learner responses is shown as in Table 2. About 70% of the learners who used this VE environment answered that this VE environment expresses the real world well. Such result seems to come from the fact that we tried to get the maximum similar environment to the real world by inputting the physical values such as the gravity value and mass value etc. of each object in a concrete manner and conducting the design. Table 2. The Result of student responses (Agree:A, Common:C, Disagree:D) Response(%) No. Questions A C D 1 Is the learning situation similar to the real situation? 70.2 19.4 10.4 2 Is it composed to understand the learning contents well? 74.4 13.2 12.4 3 Can the learners selectively study according to their level? 55.1 27.5 17.4 4 Is it possible for the learners to actively participate in the inquiry experimental environment? 72.3 17.0 10.7 5 Is it composed so that you can effectively achieve the inquiry objective? 76.1 19.4 4.5 6 Is the sense of immersion provided by this virtual experiment environment helpful in giving the learners interest and motivation? 82.1 14.9 3.0 7 Is the interaction of the learner on this virtual experiment environment easy? 74.6 20.9 4.5 We had those who had effectively reached the learning objective conduct the advanced learning and for those who had not reached the learning objective, we provided the arrangement of what they had studied before once again and had them do the supplementary learning so that they could do the complete learning. In the responses related to this, they said they could easily understand the learning contents Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE (74.4%), but the third question was not complete (55.1%). It seems that this result comes from the fact that the learning contents by level provided in this study was composed of the contents of remedial level and advanced level for the representative learning contents only related to the inquiry and experiment contents. Therefore, it is judged that we should design it by including the remedial and advanced learning contents for the various contents related to the inquiry and experiment contents in the future. As for the responses of the learners for the inquiry, 72.3% were positive for the degree of participation possibility, and 76.1% were positive for the achievement degree of the inquiry experimental objectives, which means the responses were relatively positive. what we should pay attention to the responses related to the inquiry experimental learning is that in case it is difficult to conduct the field experiments as in astronomy or geology, or it is costly or dangerous to do experiments, it has the effect of replacement for the actual situational learning when we provide the learning situations to the 3D VR space of the computer. The very positive responses of this questionnaire are the sense of immersion and interest inducement (82.1%). It seems that such result comes from the fact that while the existing learning programs were mostly 2D, this program was 3D so they could study while moving in 3D space as if they were doing 3D simulation games. The effect of the interaction is one of the fundamental functions to the 3D virtual experiment environments. The learners responded that the interaction effect was well considered in VE environments (74.6%). 5. Conclusions This paper presented virtual experiment environments considered learner levels in science education for middle school students. The learners who used the VE environments developed showed the positive responses totally. Such result indicates that for the inquiry learning tasks that need the interaction in the 3D space, it is possible to achieve the learning objective if using this method. In case of geology or geophysics where it is difficult to conduct the experiment and to obtain the inquiry experiment results, the VE environments can be the indirect situational learning. In order for the VE environment to be embodied as the program learning close to the real world, it should be designed and embodied so that it can get various experiment results in various experiment conditions. For this aspect, it is necessary to do sophisticated design and development reflecting the various situations related to the learning contents. I expect that the use of VE environment on the web-based will play the role of catalyst in establishing the realistic school education environment on the remote education. 6. Acknowledgement This study was supported by research funds from Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE Chosun University, 2003. 7. References [1] Mclellan, H., “Virtual reality”, In D. Jonassen(Ed.) Handbook of research for educational communications and technology. Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, MA, 1996, pp. 457-487. [2] Stratford, S.J., Krajcik, J., & Soloway, E., “Secondary students’ dynamic modeling processes: Analyzing, reasoning about, synthesizing, and testing models of stream ecosystems”, Journal of Science Education and Technology,7(3), 1998, pp. 215-234. [3] Barab, S.A., Hay, K.E., Barnett, M. G., & Squire, K., “Constructing knowledge and virtual worlds: Knowledge diffusion in future camp 97”, Presented at the annual meeting of the American National Research Association, San Diego, CA. 1998. [4] Land, S.M., & Hannfin, M.J., “A conceptual framework for the development of theories I action with open-ended learning environments”, Educational Technology Research and Development, 44, 1996, pp. 37-53. [5] Allen, B. S., & Otto, R. G., “Media as lived environments: The ecological psychology of educational technology”, D. Jonassen (Ed.), The Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology,1996. [6] Edward, L.D., “The design and analysis of a mathematical microworld”, Journal of Educational Computing Research, 12, 1995, pp. 77-94. [7] Jonassen, D. H., “Computers in the classroom: Mindtools for critical thinking”, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:Prentice-Hall, 1996. [8] Koschmann, T., “CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm (Edited Volume)”, Malwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996. [9] Winn, W., “The Virtual Reality Roving Vehicle Project”, Technological Horizons in Education Journal, 23(5), 1995, pp. 70-75. [10] Barab, S. A., Hay, K.E., Barnett, M.G., & Keating, T., “Virtual solar system project: Building understanding through model building”, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(7), 2000, pp. 719- 756. [11] Olson, S., “Stargazing”, Teacher Magazine, Feb., 1998, pp. 25-28. [12] Papert, S., “Situating constructionism”, Inl.Harel & S. Papert (Eds.). Constructionism:Research reports and essays, 1985-1990, Norwood, 1-11, NJ: Ablex, 1991. [13] Alkin, J.M., & Karplus, R., The Science Teacher, 29, (45), 1962. [14] Wood, D. A., “The Piaget process Matrix”, School Science and Mathematics, LXX IV(5), 1974, pp. 407- 472. [15] Department of Education, “Science Curriculum”, An official announcement : Department of Education, 1997(15), Korea. [16] Bruner, J. S., “Toward a theory of instruction”, New York : W.W. Norton, 1966. Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW’03) 0-7695-1922-9/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE Index: CCC: 0-7803-5957-7/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE ccc: 0-7803-5957-7/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE cce: 0-7803-5957-7/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE index: INDEX: ind: 
work_gwqwtu5pa5byndfvvx7np6a2rq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_gzfoh45fw5b2liz6s7uruziedy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_h2eu6e7jgras7awzqssyxqswli	----	Microsoft Word - 472A98CC-2DE6-084AF8.doc Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 1 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 THE OCCURRENCE AND CHARACTER OF STORIES AND STORY-TELLING IN A COMPUTER CONFERENCE1 Patrick J. Fahy, PhD Professor, Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University 7904 � 73 Street Edmonton, AB T6B 1Z6 CANADA 780-469-0549 patf@athabascau.ca 13 February 2007 1 Citation: Fahy, P. J. (2007). The occurrence and character of stories and story-telling in a computer conference. Distance Education, 28(1), pp. 45 � 63. Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 2 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 THE OCCURRENCE AND CHARACTER OF STORIES AND STORY-TELLING IN A COMPUTER CONFERENCE 13 February 2007 Abstract Constructivist views of online interaction often refer to the power of stories and the role of story-telling in the sharing and construction of knowledge, and the creation of learning communities. No empirical evidence of the presence or character of stories in online conferences has been systematically reported, however. This study described the occurrence of stories in a CMC (computer-mediated communication) transcript generated by experienced online communicators (graduate students), in relation to some of the expectations of a constructivist view of narrative in online interaction, and in contrast with a historical model for describing face-to-face interaction (Bales, 1950). Findings included the observation that, while stories occurred in about 1 posting in 5, students used stories markedly more often than the instructor-moderator; stories tended to be descriptive, rather than analytic, advisory, or hortatory; gender was not an issue in story use; and both story and non-story postings were highly group-supportive, providing information and answers to questions, and avoiding negative social interactions (a finding noted previously in moderated, academic conferences). Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 3 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Introduction Stories invite us to know the world and our place in it. (Witherall, Tran, & Othus, 1995, p. 40) Stories do social work. They not only help account for puzzling, unexpected, dramatic, problematic, or exemplary events, but also help confirm, redefine, or challenge social relations. (Tilly, 2006, p. 93) � human knowledge is encoded as stories about experiences and events. So, when people experience a problem or situation that they do not understand, they should be told stories about similar situations that function as lessons for the current problem. Learners retrieve from related cases advice on how to succeed, pitfalls that may cause failure, what worked or didn�t work, and why it didn�t work. (Jonassen, 1998, p. 10; emphasis supplied) As the above shows, constructivists see narratives and story-telling in educational situations as evidence of a community engaged in �learning as conversation� (Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell, & Haag, 1995) (Jonassen, 1998). In this view, social interaction occurs within the �call� of the story; the stories themselves convey �more than what is said� (Bruner, 1986, p. 35), providing access to compelling and meaningful problems in an authentic context (Coleman, Perry, & Schwen, 1997). The combination of social and cognitive engagement is seen as Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 4 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 potentially richly educational, promoting understanding beyond mere acquisition of facts (Gjedde, 2005; Zalewski, 2006), and bringing users into more �direct and primitive contact with the world� (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, in van Manen, 2003, p. 38). Story-telling seen in this way is also an expressive social form and an interpersonal vehicle, a means for projecting teaching presence in online groups (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001), and a resource for forming and sustaining learning communities. According to this outlook, the story form engages those involved with its evocative and imaginative elements; the act of collectively listening to a story promotes social coherence (community), based on the emotions, themes, and vicarious experiences shared by the listeners (Ritchie & Peters, 2001). The effects can be deep: in case-based learning, engagement with even brief pedagogic narratives can perturb listeners� beliefs (p. 4), sometimes causing reconsideration of fundamental convictions. There is the added benefit that knowledge gained through narrative appears to exhibit greater coherence, probability, and fidelity, resulting in better retention and increased higher-order understanding (Hirokawa, Clauson, & Dahlberg, 2003, p. 268). These claims about the occurrence and nature of stories in teaching and learning are unsubstantiated; the present literature contains no reports on the actual presence or character of stories resulting from online learner-learner or learner-moderator CMC (computer-mediated communication) interactions. The purpose of this study was to examine the occurrence and nature of stories and of story-telling in an actual CMC transcript, in order to assess whether and how stories are actually used in the online Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 5 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 learning process. The intention of the inquiry was to confirm the presence and examine the character of the online interaction in relation to stories, and to determine what story use might suggest about the online communities that generate them. Stories and online communities Story-telling is believed to help or hinder the building of interpersonal relationships, individually and at the group level. Stories and story-telling can initiate interaction (stories are often narrated in groups), and sustain it (listening and responding are shared experiences). In terms of network theory, the sharing of stories (or the sharing of elements such as morals and themes) is a form of �interlocked� social behaviour (Weick, 1979), a fundamental form of interrelationship in communities, and an ingredient in the formation and maintenance of all types of communities. Participants (narrator or audience) share in and reinforce the socio-cultural traditions of the group by their attendance. Such �interlocked� behaviours provide community members with common patterns of social behaviour, reinforcing basic group structures. The story, the act of (re)telling or performing it, and the role of audience member interconnect members and (re)build communities. With the growth of computer-mediated communications (CMC) in educational contexts, opportunities for the study of story use have been extended. To the degree that stories are forms of social engagement and group reinforcement, an examination of storytelling in CMC should reveal aspects of the social functioning and interpersonal environment of groups focused on learning. Previous work comparing face-to-face with Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 6 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 online groups has demonstrated that, while there are similarities, there are also some important differences between face-to-face and mediated group interaction, including less social stratification, more flexibility in roles (amounts of previous participation do not seem to restrict subsequent involvement, as they have been shown to do in face-to- face group situations) (Bales, 1950; Bales, Strodbeck, Mills, & Roseborough, 1951), and generally more �democratic� interaction among all group members, regardless of the individual participation levels of those involved (Fahy, 2006). Theoretical support for analysis of online storytelling in the manner employed here was found in the previous application of historical models to the analysis of face-to- face and online interaction (Fahy, 2004, 2006). Bales�s Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) model, used in this study, has been used to analyze �systems of human interaction� in small groups (1950, p. 257). As noted above (Fahy, 2004, 2006), the IPA was found to be applicable to both face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions. Use of the IPA model in contemporary contexts is also consistent with its developer�s intentions. Bales had earlier expressed his hope that the IPA would add to understanding and explication of �full-scale social systems,� through focus of the model on �partial� systems -- small groups (1950, p. 257). The IPA model Bales�s IPA model, summarized in Table 1, addresses both the task and the socioemotional agendas of groups. The following summarizes the IPA�s key assumptions about groups and interpersonal interaction: Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 7 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 1. Any group has two major functions (column 1, Table 1): 1) socio- emotional viability as a collection of human beings working together; and, 2) the accomplishment of its task, the overt �business� purpose for the group�s existence. Both functions must be successfully managed if the group is to be a fully effective entity. 2. In addressing socio-emotional and task functions, groups engage in a range of possible processes (the process column of Table 1). These twelve processes include the actions that may impact a group, positively or negatively affecting its socio-emotional functioning, as it strives to address its task(s). 3. The balance achieved in the group between socio-emotional and task agendas, and positive and negative processes, determines how well the group overcomes the six central problems of group communications identified by Bales (1950; third column, Table 1): integration, tension management, decisions, control, evaluation, and orientation (information management). Its success with these problems, in turn, determines how well a group develops as a community. Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 8 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Table 1: System of process categories in the IPA, related socio-emotional group functions, and common communications problems Column 1 Function Column 2 Process Column 3 Paired processes addressing group�s central problems of: 1. Shows solidarity, raises other�s status, gives help, reward 1 & 12 Problems of integration 2. Shows tension release, jokes, laughs, shows satisfaction 2 & 11 Tension-management Social-Emotional Area: Positive Reaction 3. Agrees, shows passive acceptance, understands, concurs, complies 3 & 10 Decision 4. Gives suggestion, direction, implying autonomy for other 4 & 9 Control 5. Gives opinion, evaluation, analysis, expresses feeling, wish 5 & 8 Evaluation Task Area: Attempted Answers 6. Gives orientation, information, repeats, clarifies, confirms 6 & 7 Orientation 7. Asks for orientation, information repetition, confirmation 7 & 6 Orientation 8. Asks for opinion, evaluation, analysis, expression of feeling 8 & 5 Evaluation Task Area: Questions 9. Asks for suggestion, direction, possible action 9 & 4 Control 10. Disagrees, shows passive rejection, formality, withholds help 10 & 3 Decision 11. Shows tension, asks for help, withdraws out of field 11 & 2 Tension-management Social-Emotional Area: Negative Reactions 12. Shows antagonism. Deflates other�s status, defends/asserts self 12 & 1 Integration From Bales (1950, p. 258). Identifying and classifying stories Interaction, in the form of conversational dialogue, has been linked to group learning by Jonassen (1998) and others (Kanuka & Anderson, 1998; Kanuka, 2002; Gunawardena, 1999; Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997; Garrison, 2000). Beder (1996) maintains that �groups, not individuals, are the object of education,� and that education must centrally involve participants (p. 74). In this view, stories form an Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 9 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 important part of interpersonal dialogue, concretely grounding social processes in accounts of direct experience, and, by the social interaction inherent in the story-sharing process, countering the erosion of social bonds due to distance, lack of face-to-face interaction opportunities, or the perceived impersonality of ubiquitous modern media (Ettling, 2001; Moore, 1991). To identify and analyze stories, in this study Jonassen (1998) and his colleagues� concepts of authentic problem-identification, and problem-solving in context, were adapted and applied. Constructivists hold that, where knowledge acquisition cannot rely on �neatly linear� processes, situated learning, with learner-learner interaction, is preferable. The model sees learning enhanced by context and by the �social, dialogical process� in which �communities � socially negotiate the meaning of phenomena,� (Jonassen, et al., 1995, p. 3). Jonassen�s (1998) published views on situated learning, quoted at the beginning of this paper, provided the criteria used to identify stories and storytellers in this study, and the theoretical focus of the inquiry. According to this rationale, stories are educational when they: 1. preserve context, by focusing on direct, first-person experience; 2. engage the group, as shown by group response(s); and, 3. have the intent of promoting learning (by the presence within them of didactic content and intent). Based on the above, in this study stories were defined operationally as exhibiting: Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 10 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 ! Immediacy: first-person perspective indicates the story is based upon direct experience with or direct observation of the ideas or situations described. ! Engagement: a response from at least one other member of the community demonstrates at least minimal engagement of the story-teller with the discourse community (Jonassen, 1998, p. 10); the initiation-response pattern also constitutes a double interact (Weick, 1979), indicating the story was considered to be socially �assessable� (Curtis & Lawson, 2001). ! Didactic purpose: The presence of at least one of the following, indicating the storyteller�s intention to impart insights and understanding (educate), and not merely to entertain, or engage in social �phatic communion� (�The language of conversation,� 2005), or in "unproductive social interaction" (Curtis & Lawson, 2001): (1) advice on how to succeed; (2) description of pitfalls to be avoided; or, (3) analysis of strategies that worked or didn�t work, and comments about why. The presence of the above, in addition to constituting a didactic purpose for the interaction triggered by the story (p. 6), may be seen as evidence of higher-order thinking � analysis, synthesis/interpretation, evaluation, and metacognition, in relation to the story�s ideas or experiences, transformed by cognitive and artistic effort into an engaging narrative (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956; Jonassen, 1998, p. 4; Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, et al., 2001). Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 11 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 The study Research focus, questions. The purpose of this study was to describe the occurrence and character of storytelling in a computer conference, as reflected by analysis of actual stories encountered in a CMC transcript, and from this analysis to describe aspects of the community within whose conversations the stories arose. The following questions were posed to guide the analysis: 1. What was the frequency of stories (Table 2)? 2. What were the characteristics of the stories observed, in relation to the criteria and didactic purposes predicted by constructivists (Jonassen, 1998) (Table 3)? 3. What small-group functions and processes were evident in postings containing stories that met the criteria for selection described above, reflecting on the nature of the online community from which the transcript was derived (Bales, 1950) (Table 4)? The transcript. The text transcript of a 13-week online graduate course, offered at a distance education university in Canada, was chosen for analysis. Of the 13 weeks of the course, the first week was devoted to introductions, while the remaining 12 weeks addressed course content. The transcript consisted of approximately 75,000 words, in 534 postings (430 postings, 80.5%, made by students; 104, 19.5%, by the course instructor). Twenty-six students participated in the online conference as an assignment in the course, worth 10% of the final grade. The discussion was moderated by the Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 12 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 instructor, who initially posted general �discussion-starter� questions or observations designed to engage students and provoke a response (see Attachment 2). The instructor also monitored and participated in the resulting interaction. Full marks for conference participation required students to post substantive comments a total of 14 times over the 13 weeks of the course. The CMC system used was proprietary to the university, but was typical of such systems in being text-only, in presenting messages with the number and titles of messages in the same thread (preserving interrelationships), and showing the identities of respondents and the date and time of each posting. Coding. Coding was conducted on the course transcript using a modified code- recode protocol. Recognizing that coding reliability is often problematic in transcript research (Fahy, Crawford, & Ally, 2001; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 2001; Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, Koole, & Kappelman, 2005), a �trial� coding event was conducted to test the coding system, followed by two �production� codings, conducted approximately six months apart, to identify and classify stories found in the transcript. The author conducted all codings. Multiple codes were assigned to posts if they clearly contained the presence of elements of more than one code. The need for multiple codings was rare, as shown below. Between the first (trial) coding and the first �production� coding (coding event 1), the coefficient of reliability (CR), the percentage agreement between the two codings (Holsti, 1969), was .75; between the two production coding events (coding event 1 and coding event 2) , the CR was .85. Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 13 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Story selection criteria. To be included, postings were required to: 1. describe a direct experience, in the first-person; 2. contain content describing what worked, or didn�t work (description), why it worked, didn�t work (analysis), or Advice). (Examples of each of these from the transcript are shown in Attachment 1); 3. receive at least one response, consistent with the criterion from network theory that a double interact is the basic unit of face-to-face or mediated social discourse (Weick, 1979, p. 35). Application of the above criteria to the transcript resulted in the selection of 303 of the 534 total postings (57%) for inclusion in the study. The nature of postings that received no responses was not explored in this study, and is unknown. Inclusion of these in the analysis was deemed problematic because so many reasons for the posting to be apparently ignored were possible (i.e., it was posted after the conference closed and was therefore largely unread by the group, or it contained material seen as tangential, irrelevant, or unproductive for some reason. The nature of postings that do not receive replies � in this study, 43% of the total � and how these affect the �exchange relations� (Cook, 1982) in the online community, clearly warrant further study, but do not form part of this inquiry. Findings Frequency of stories. Seventy-five stories were identified in 67 of the 303 postings analyzed (22%), including those authored by the instructor, an overall ratio of Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 14 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 approximately one story in every 4.5 postings. Stories occurred in the seven units of the course as shown in Table 2. Table 2: Occurrences of narratives in unit conferences (including the instructor) Unit # # of postings containing stories Total stories Total postings % postings containing stories Unit 1 (2 weeks) 17 20 147 11.6% Unit 2 (2 weeks) 4 4 61 6.6 Unit 3 (1 week) 9 10 67 13.4 Unit 4 (1 week) 8 9 59 13.6 Unit 5 (2 weeks) 9 10 72 12.5 Unit 6 (2 weeks) 11 11 57 17.5 Unit 7 (2 weeks) 9 11 71 12.7 Total 67 75 534 12.6 Table 2 shows that the occurrence of stories declined slightly over the term of the course: 57% of the stories appeared in the first half, and 43% in the second half. Possible explanations for this trend are offered below. Multiple stories in a single posting were rare: while more than one narrative occurred in a single posting in five of the seven units, no posting contained more than two stories. The instructor told fewer stories: of 104 instructor postings, only four contained narratives. Of these: - The first story did not occur until Unit 4; the remaining three followed in Unit 5 (1 story), and in Unit 7 (2 stories). - The types of the instructor�s stories were: advice (1 story), why? (1), and what worked? (2). Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 15 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 - Engagement with the instructor�s stories by students was minimal: only one student replied to each of the four posts containing them. Characteristics of stories. There were patterns in the types of stories told by students, as shown in Table 3. Table 3: Narrative types (per Jonassen, 1998), by unit, students� posts only Unit Type 1 � What worked/didn�t work? Type 2 � Why? Type 3 � Advice Total Unit 1 (2 weeks) 12 / 29% 5 / 45% 3 / 16% 20 / 28% Unit 2 (2 weeks) 2 / 5 0 / 0 2 / 11 4 / 6 Unit 3 (1 week) 5 / 12 4 / 36 1 / 5 10 / 14 Unit 4 (1 week) 4 / 10 1 / 9 3 / 16 8 / 11 Unit 5 (2 weeks) 5 / 12 0 / 0 4 / 21 9 / 13 Unit 6 (2 weeks) 6 / 15 1 / 9 4 / 21 11 / 16 Unit 7 (2 weeks) 7 / 17 0 / 0 2 / 11 9 / 13 Total (12 weeks) 41 (58%) 11 (16%) 19 (27%) 71 Avg. responses received from others 1.29 1.36 1.47 1.35 S.D. .559 .505 .964 .678 Men (n = 8) 13 / 32% 5 / 45% 5 / 26% 23 / 32% Women (n = 17) 28 / 68 6 / 55 14 / 74 48 / 68 The patterns noted in Table 3: - Most student stories (58%) were type 1, describing (but not analyzing) a situation or an example (What worked/didn�t work). - Students engaged least (16%) in type 2 analysis (Why?-type stories). - The average number of responses received from other conference participants to the various types of postings, while not statistically significant, was suggestive: the number of responses made to postings that contained explanations (Type 2 � Why?), and those that contained Advice Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 16 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 (Type 3), were higher than the average number of responses made to simple descriptions (Type 1 � What worked/didn�t work). In this transcript, narratives that lacked a didactic purpose (Type 1) produced less engagement (indicated by fewer responses from others). Gender. Gender has elsewhere been identified as affecting online behaviour (Herring, 1996; Yates, 1997; Fahy, et al., 2001; Fahy, 2002), but was not found to be a significant factor here. This fact is somewhat obscured in Table 3, where the higher number of women in the group accounts for the greater number of stories by them. When women and men were compared proportionally: - Use of stories by men and women was similar: women averaged .165 stories per post (S.D. = .096), while men averaged .188 (S.D. = .149) (F = .204, p = .656). - The occurrence of the three story types was very similar (for gender differences in Table 3, χ² = 1.33, p = .719). The above data suggest that �presence,� measured by amount of participation in the online conference, was not associated with the story types used by participants (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999), nor was it a function of individual levels of online conference participation: overall, the highest-contributing half of the study group (n = 12) did not differ from the lowest contributing (n = 13), in terms of the mean number of stories occurring in their postings (.188 vs. .157, respectively). Small-group functions and processes, from Bales�s (1950) criteria. Bales�s criteria were applied to classify the postings that received at least one response (n = 303), Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 17 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 including those that contained stories (n = 75), in order to determine the group functions, processes, and problems that were addressed, for both story- and non-story-containing postings. This analysis applied Bales�s precept that small groups comprise �microscopic social systems� (Bales, 1950, p. 257), whose workings are capable of illuminating those of larger and more complex communities. As shown in Table 4, postings with and without stories were similar, with specific categories predominating in both. Table 4: Expected and actual frequencies of Bales�s categories Bales�s Categories Instructor (n = 1) Students (n = 25) Occurrence by Type (n = 26) Actual # Expected # Actual # Expected # Story # / % No Story # / % 1. Shows solidarity 1 3.6 12 9.4 13 / 5.7% 4 / 5.3% 2. Shows tension release 0 0.8 3 2.2 3 / 1.3 1 / 1.3 3. Agrees 4 5.1 14 12.9 18 / 7.9 10 / 13.3 4. Gives suggestion 6 2.2 2 5.8 8 / 3.5 2 / 2.7 5. Gives opinion 20 34.8 104 89.2 124 / 54.4 44 / 58.7 6. Gives orientation 7 7.0 18 18.0 25 / 11.0 13 / 17.3 7. Asks for orientation 3 1.4 2 3.6 5 / 2.2 0 / 0 8. Asks for opinion 23 7.0 2 18.0 25 / 11.0 0 / 0 9. Asks for suggestions 0 -- 0 -- 0 / 0 0 / 0 10. Disagrees 0 2.0 7 5.0 7 / 3.1 1 / 1.3 11. Shows tension 0 -- 0 -- 0 / 0 0 / 0 12. Shows antagonism 0 -- 0 -- 0 / 0 0 / 0 Total 64 164 228 75 - Χ² = 102.24, df = 8, p < .001 - Bold/offset figures indicate 50% or more variance between actual and expected values. Striking in the above, in terms of the apparent social organization and environment of this small group, and addressing the nature of the socioemotional climate of the online community, were these findings: 1. The almost complete absence of negative socio-emotional interaction (categories 10 to 12); Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 18 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 2. The preponderance of certain category types: 77% of the postings fell into one of three categories, and over half fell into a single category: Category 5 � Gives opinion (55%), Category 6 � Gives orientation (13%), and Category 3 Agrees (9%). 3. The close similarity in the proportion of Bales�s types in both story and non- story posts. 4. These observations concerned differences between the story-telling behaviour and story use of students and the instructor-moderator; the instructor was found to be: a. Considerably less likely to give opinions (Category 5). b. Considerably more likely to ask for opinions (Category 8). c. Somewhat less likely than the students to show solidarity (Category 1), agreement (Category 3), and disagreement (Category 10). d. Somewhat more likely to give suggestions (Category 4), and ask for orientation (Category 7). 5. Overall, the postings with and without stories, both by students and the instructor, did not differ statistically in relation to the presence of Bales�s categories: for both, the most frequent types of posts were, in order of frequency, a. Attempted answers (Bales�s Categories 4 to 6; 69%); b. Positive socio-emotional reactions (Categories 1 to 3; 15%); c. Questions (Categories 7 to 9; 13%); and Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 19 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 d. Negative socio-emotional reactions (Categories 10 to 12; 3%). Conclusions and implications This study explored how constructivist assertions and criteria about the central importance of group interaction to meaningful learning (Jonassen, et al., 1995) were reflected in the actual presence of stories and story-telling in a small online group. The purpose was to describe and analyze empirically the occurrence and characteristics of stories in actual course-based CMC interactions, in relation to views found in the constructivist literature on stories and story-telling in learning. The three objectives were: 1) to determine how often stories occurred; 2) to classify the types of stories according to constructivist criteria (Jonassen, 1998); and, 3) to use the findings to infer interpersonal functions and processes present in the community that produced the stories (Bales, 1950). Overall, the ratio of stories to posts was 1:26 (a 4% occurrence) for the instructor, and less than 1:5 (a 22% occurrence) among students. The relatively modest use of narratives by the instructor might be seen by some as contrary to what is expected of the leader and model of the online community (Bruner, 1986). However, and importantly in relation to the issue of moderator presence here, the lack of story-telling did not indicate any want of teaching presence: by other standards, the instructor-moderator was highly involved in the online interaction, contributing frequently (he made over one-fifth of the posts), and interacting with all members of the group at least once. Contact with all members of the group gave the instructor a network density figure of 1.0, which, Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 20 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 according to Ridley and Avery (1979), is the most reliable measure of community involvement. Similarly, in Weick�s (1979) terms, the achievement of double interacts with all members of the group is a measure of the instructor�s success in engaging with the online community. The fact that the occurrence of stories declined slightly over the term of the course (57% occurred in the first half) might be associated with increasing socio- emotional comfort within the group: Molinari (2004) found that, with greater interpersonal familiarity, group members tended to focus more on problem-solving, decreasing socializing and relationship-building. If storytelling is related to relationship-building, that result might be expected. On the other hand, 90% of the stories containing analysis (type 2) occurred in the first half of the course, 45% of these were found in the first 2 weeks, and advice-focused stories were found about equally in both halves, suggesting that interpersonal comfort was relatively high from the beginning (see Table 3). The relation of measures of interpersonal �group comfort� to online activity requires further investigation. Story-telling in the group was found to be primarily descriptive (descriptions of occurrences or experiences constituted 58% of stories), with occurrences about evenly distributed throughout all course units (Table 3). Advice giving stories (27% of the total) and those featuring analysis (discussing why something had happened; 16%) followed in frequency, with distribution patterns as shown above (Table 3). Advice was almost exclusively reserved for the first half of the course: 90% of postings containing advice occurred in the first half of the term. Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 21 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Although some previous research in online interaction had noted gender differences, men and women did not differ here in their story-telling behaviour. This may constitute another indication of the character of interpersonal functioning in this community: women have been reported to be more attuned to and more often adversely affected by online group interaction patterns, effects, and dynamics (Yates, 1997; Herring, 1992, 1996; Rodino, 1997), but as they were not so affected here it may have been because the group was consistently harmonious. The effect of the unequal gender ratio in the group was not investigated; some researchers have reported negative effects when ratios are unequal (Bernard, Abrami, Lou, Borokhovski, Wade, Wozney, et al., 2004). Overall, the story types found in the interaction, and the distribution of postings in relation to Bales�s IPA (1950), indicated an inquiring, positive interpersonal group environment, and presided over by an instructor who more often solicited the views of others than he professed his own. Over half of the group�s postings offered opinions (55%) or gave information (13%), and another 9% gave support (agreement); there was a complete absence of tension- or antagonism-showing; and the instructor gave fewer of his own opinions, while asking for more of others�, than would have been expected statistically. In sum, the group spent over 70% of its conference time seeking answers, and 16% in providing positive support (consisting of showing solidarity, agreement, or tension-release strategies). This group appeared to confirm Jonassen�s (1998, p. 10) assertion: Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 22 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Learning most naturally occurs not in isolation but by teams of people working together to solve problems�. Problems are solved when a group works toward developing a common conception of the problem, so their energies can be focused on solving it. (Jonassen, 1998, p. 10) Other interpretations of these findings, constituting other implications for the research questions and the underlying constructivist rationale, are possible, and are offered for consideration in the context of this study, and as worthy of further investigation: - Stories appeared in this group to be less important than some theorists have claimed. The use of stories by other populations should be explored. - Use of the presence of stories in conferences to assess the cognitive or interpersonal merit of group interaction may be questionable, simply because stories were found to be relatively rare. The enthusiasm of constructivists like Jonassen (1998, p. 10) for the efficacy of �stories ... that function as lessons� is not supported by the findings of this study. - Even without an explicit invitation to do so, students spontaneously provided opinions, information, and advice to one another, about equally in postings with and without stories. Two contrasting interpretations of this finding arise: 1) such behavior was in contrast to the behaviour modeled by the instructor (who asked for opinions more than giving his own), and is a sign that students did not imitate what the instructor modeled; or, 2) because the instructor so often asked for opinions and information from students, Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 23 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 they were merely providing what was asked of them. Study is warranted of the purposes and motives of students as they participate variously in CMC. - Interpersonal behavior in this group was uniformly without negative socioemotional content: no instances of flaming or rudeness occurred, a finding observed elsewhere in similar moderated academic environments (Fahy, 2002). Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 24 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 References Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P. W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P. 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You had to delete the quiz, create a new quiz with the same name, and then enter the new (edited) questions. I wasted almost a whole day on this one. Most of the bugs have now been fixed by the 3.1.1 Patch. Guess what? We are upgrading again. I think the new version will be version 3.5. There is already a problem. Netscape 6 will not work with the new version�. Example 1.2: I remember my father, a former school teacher and principal, coordinating an outdoor education program for [a school district in Alberta, Canada] which included studying evolution and fossils "in DRUMHELLER" and studying biology "at PINELAKE". The students not only interacted but learned other social skills while on the road. They even accommodated those with health and physical impediments. Thus, the classroom was brought to the "real world." 2) Why it did/didn�t work Example 2.1: Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 32 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 I agree about the jumping on the bandwagon or keeping up with the Jones. Take Netscape 6. Touted as the new and improved browser that will beat IE5 hands down; installed it, hated the changes, lost half my ability to function effectively with it so took it off. It may be different and have some other things built in, but there's nothing wrong with 4.75. Sometimes less is more. Example 2.2: I opted to take a course on Excel and while it was Excel 97 rather 2000, I did learn some good basics from the class which was for one day. However there was another student there who had no computer (at least no spreadsheet knowledge) and the poor guy had a real tough time. What didn't help was the attitude and approach of the instructor towards his lack of knowledge. The instructor's rather ignorant (rude) approach showed me a better way of dealing with learners who are having a tough time. Patience would be part of that formula I'm sure??? 3) Advice Example 3.3: I think I have an answer for you [name]. It is delayed gratification. Yes I am chuckling a little but I am serious. Living out of the country where electricity and formats for hardware are not compatible (not to mention the outlandish costs) really forces you to think about what you NEED and what you WANT. My husband works for IBM in research and development. He is a techno-junkie. All the toys all the time. For the past 2 1/2 years that has been put on hold and it has been interesting to see that both of us function just fine on the equipment and software we brought with us. No major upgrades on hardware or software. Now when we get home I am sure some Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 33 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 changes will occur as we both see the need for faster modem access. I think if companies wait, and proceed with caution, then appropriate choices will come about. Example 3.2: I am on a business trip in a place called Arctic Bay, Nunavut, and it has been made so clear to me how important technology is in the delivery of distance education. Without the technology that makes possible the accessing of the Internet around the world, I would not be able to participate very effectively in this course�. Something that an organization must consider is that the basic infrastructure is in place to service any other add-ons that will provide the organization with the tools to deliver their services/education. Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 34 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 ATTACHMENT 2 Computer-Mediated Conference Starters Unit Intro: Briefly introduce yourself. Tell us about your work background, your career, your experiences in the program so far, and your particular interests in this course. Do you have a background in technology you want to mention? If you like collaborating, and are looking for a partner for a project or an assignment, this might be a good place to mention it. See the Assignments regarding collaborations. Unit 1: 1.1 The title of this course might raise some questions: what are advanced technologies? What do you expect when you see the term? What makes a tool a technology? What makes a technology advanced? Is there such a thing as a "non- advanced� technology? 1.2 Definitions are important, but may be difficult in this area. What is a "technology?" What is a "learning technology"? If there is a published definition you like, give it, and explain why you like it. 1.3 What are some differences between a technology and a gadget? Unit 2: 2.1 This unit deals with organizations, and the parts of organizations that technologies, as innovations, usually impact. Give an example (real, if possible) of how an organization might approach an important innovation like technology. How does it decide whether to adopt it or not? 2.2 Have you ever worked in or encountered what Senge would call a true learning organization? Describe some of its characteristics. 2.3 Describe a significant barrier to change in an organization or situation you are familiar with. What caused the barrier? What might reduce or eliminate it? Unit 3: Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 35 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 3.1 Based on your experience, what is a major merit or shortcoming of print in your situation or organization? 3.2 Describe how print works or fails in an important way as a training tool within your organization. 3.3 What future do you see for print in your environment? Especially, what changes do you expect to see in its use? Unit 4: 4.1 Based on your experience, what is a major merit or shortcoming of audio-based technologies in your organization? 4.2 Describe how audio-based technologies work or fail in an important way within your organization. 4.3 What future do you see for audio-based technologies in your organization? Unit 5: 5.1 Based on your experience, what is a major merit or shortcoming of video-based technologies in your organization? 5.2 Describe how video-based technologies succeed or fail in an important way within your organization. 5.3 What future do you see for video-based technologies in your organization? Unit 6: 6.1 Computer-based teaching or training (CBT) and communications technologies are, in the minds of some, the tools of our age - it seems that no self-respecting designer fails to include some kind of CBT in any serious funding proposal. What types of CBT are you familiar with, and how well do they work? Describe a major achievement or failing of CBT, in your experience. 6.2 Describe an experience you have personally had with CBT (computer-based training), positive or not, and what it taught you about this medium. 6.3 What do you see as the future of computer-based training (CBT) in your organization, if any? Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 36 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Unit 7: 7.1 At the risk of launching us into a Dilbert-like experience: describe a major achievement or failing of strategic planning in your organization. 7.2 Have you ever been in the role of change agent? Describe the situation, how you handled it, and any important or interesting outcomes. 7.3 Take some point discussed in this unit and comment on it. Did anything strike you as useful, absurd, contrary to your experience, biased, or otherwise interesting in some way? Unit 8: 8.1 If you have had experience with development teams, describe the team experience, especially your role. What improvements would have made the team more effective? 8.2 The Study Guide lists some criteria for selecting media (section 8.2). Comment on the list in relation to a specific application or organizational situation familiar to you. 8.3 Apply Bates�s ACTIONS model (section 8.3 of the Study Guide) or the SECTIONS model (pp. 65-66 of the textbook) to some development question. How well does the model apply? Which criteria are critical, in your experience? Stories and Story-Telling in a Computer Conference 37 Revised: 13 Feb 2007 Biography Patrick J. Fahy (patf@athabascau.ca) is a professor in the Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada. He teaches in the Master of Distance Education (MDE) program, coordinates the Graduate Diploma in Distance Education (Technology), and organizes the Centre�s annual Distance Education Technology Symposium (DETS). He has previously taught in the K � 12 system, was an instructor and program head of an adult basic education program, and worked for several years in the private sector. He lives in Edmonton with his wife, four sons, and two grandchildren. 
work_h5ked2vfvbh3tmnmcn23unlnzi	----	Using Technology to Structure and Scaffold Real World Experiential Learning in Distance Education ORIGINAL PAPER Using Technology to Structure and Scaffold Real World Experiential Learning in Distance Education Nikki James1 & Andrea Humez1 & Philipp Laufenberg2 # The Author(s) 2020 Abstract Team projects allow students to apply their technical skills to a real-world context and build twenty-first century competencies, including teamwork, project management and communication skills. However, the complex challenges that such experiential learning projects present for students and faculty can limit the scale of implementation. This article argues that Virtual Business Projects (VBP), a model of team-based experiential learning where teams of students complete a virtual business project for an industry sponsor, can mitigate these problems by leveraging instructional technology and learning analytics. The VBP model is deployed in multiple universities, which have provided more than 2500 Virtual Business Projects since 2015. We will discuss how innovative technology, embedded in thoughtful learning design, supports experiential learning by taking advantage of features such as customizable scaffolding, automated reflection and feedback loops, and learning analytics. Keywords Experiential learning . Instructional design . Team based projects . Industry engagement . Higher education Introduction The 4th industrial revolution, an era of human and machine augmentation (Bonciu 2017), presents complex challenges for educational institutions charged with preparing students for success. Recent studies suggest that the core competencies people need to be successful in this era are different from those needed for success in the 3rd industrial revolution, and that students are not adequately equipped with these skills before entering the workforce (Djankov and Saliola 2019; Wolff and Booth 2016). Employers are calling for a shift in what is taught and how it is taught, suggesting a transition towards pedagogies that immerse students in active and effortful work (Andrade 2016). In 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) developed a twenty-first Century Skills framework that identified founda- tional literacies, competencies, and character qualities re- quired for a successful career as we transition into the 4th industrial revolution (World Economic Forum 2015). In par- allel, literature has emerged analyzing how different pedagog- ical practices like service-learning, work-integrated learning, and project-based learning support the development of these WEF twenty-first Century Skills (Ahuna et al. 2014; Morgan 2016; Snape 2017; Tasso et al. 2017). Team consulting pro- jects are one such pedagogical practice employed in capstone courses in higher education (Case and Hoot 2019; Mattarocci and Ball 2018; Reidenberg and Long 2017). These capstones are referred to as capstone projects, capstone consulting teams, and various other names in the literature, but their nature is the same. Students work in teams to deliver a project for an industry client. For simplicity, we refer to them as Team Projects, and we use the term Virtual Business Project to refer to a technology-enabled Team Project. These Team Projects are immersive, providing real-world contexts in which students have the opportunity to learn. In essence, they are authentic learning experiences; that is, learn- ing experiences that are genuine and where learning is situated in real-life contexts (Karakaş-Özür and Duman 2019). The five standards of authentic learning introduced by Newmann and Wehlage (1993) and widely used in relevant research and * Nikki James nicole.james@online.liverpool.ac.uk; ni.james@northeastern.edu Andrea Humez a.humez@northeastern.edu Philipp Laufenberg Phil@practera.com 1 Northeastern University, Huntington Avenue – BV20, Boston, MA 02115, USA 2 Practera, Level 7, 11 York St, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00515-2 Published online: 6 June 2020 TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11528-020-00515-2&domain=pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6015-359X mailto:nicole.james@online.liverpool.ac.uk mailto:ni.james@northeastern.edu literature (e.g., Karakaş-Özür and Duman 2019; Lock and Duggleby 2017; Luo et al. 2017) are higher order thinking, depth of knowledge, connectedness to the world, substantive conversation, and social support for achievement. In order for students to extract as much learning as possible from such a rich learning experience, educators and instruc- tional designers need to leverage experiential learning theory. One of the core tenets of experiential learning is “learning results from synergetic transactions between the person and the environment” (Kolb and Kolb 2009, p. 44). The transfor- mation of experience into knowledge is achieved by the pro- cess of stepping through four learning modes known as the experiential learning cycle (Kolb and Kolb 2009). Moreover, feedback is an essential element of experiential learning, as it helps learners move through the four learning modes in the experiential learning cycle (Yeo and Marquardt 2015). However, it is a complex undertaking to step each student through the four learning modes at key learning moments, while simultaneously facilitating feedback from industry sponsors, peers and educators in order to inject valuable in- sight into students’ knowledge extraction process. The com- plexity makes this type of learning experience costly to deliv- er. Even at low scale, educational providers must expend sig- nificant resources to identify key learning moments and ad- dress issues like team conflicts, decreases in confidence, learn- er disengagement, mismatched expectations, or inefficient collaboration between faculty, students, and industry partici- pants. Thus, the administrative overhead to provide adequate student support and maintain quality at large scale, while si- multaneously satisfying industry partner needs, can be cost- prohibitive for many education providers. In this paper, we explore the challenges of delivering Team Projects, and how these challenges can be addressed by the effective use of the emerging technologies of the 4th industrial revolution (Almeida and Simoes 2019). Specifically, we focus on the use of data analytics and machine learning in the form of real-time learning analytics to augment facilitator instruc- tion (James 2020). We present “Virtual Business Projects” (VBP), a technology-enabled delivery model that is designed to provide students with an opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge about technical skills and twenty-first Century competencies in a real-world context. The use of the technol- ogy to structure and automate operational tasks lowers the overhead and therefore, the cost of providing high quality, authentic, experiential learning in online and blended learning environments. VBP is a scalable form of team project where teams of students complete a business project for an industry sponsor, aided by instructional technology. Finally, we argue that although emerging technologies like machine learning and learning analytics have the potential to augment educa- tors’ effectiveness, this potential can only be realized if tech- nology, pedagogy, and course development are collaborative and integrated (Lockyer and Dawson 2012). The VBP model was developed through collaborative technology, pedagogy, and course design, and has been provided at scale to more than 6000 online and distance education students. The Complexities of Team Projects A Team Project is a type of authentic and experiential learning that provides an opportunity for university students to apply the skills and competencies they are learning in the classroom to a real-world industry project. This type of learning com- bines key aspects of collaborative projects and internships, two high impact practices that have been widely tested and endorsed for their ability to promote active learning (Thorington Springer et al. 2019). It can also provide access to some of the benefits of an internship to students who are not able to take advantage of full internship or co-op opportuni- ties; for example, adult, non-traditional students who are al- ready working while in school, often in lower-level jobs. Industry sponsors provide the projects, bringing real-world context that adds authenticity and richness to the learning experience. Students get the opportunity to gain insight into different industries, get professional feedback on their work, develop a professional network, and produce artifacts that can be used in recruitment settings (Burns and Chopra 2017). Using this type of learning in the curriculum is not a new concept (McCubbins et al. 2016; National Research Council 2012). However, the complex delivery mechanics, time in- vestment, and consequent cost of delivery have meant they are predominantly used as premium learning experiences for advanced students (Beckem and Watkins 2012). The richness of a team project experience increases the complexity of the work students must do. Rather than merely explaining ideas and concepts as they might do in an essay, students have to apply these ideas and concepts to a new situation, which increases the level of cognitive ability re- quired for success (Irvine 2017). The ability to take knowl- edge and information acquired in one context and apply it to another is called transfer, and is influenced by a student’s ability to connect past learning with current and future con- texts (Jackson et al. 2018). There is little agreement on the nature of transfer in the academic literature, let alone how it should be examined or measured. The cognitive perspective of transfer examines the learner’s “mental representations of relations among objects” (Lobato 2012, p. 233). By contrast, the situative perspective examines the learner’s interaction with other individuals and the environment (Greeno 1997, 2006). Despite the debate about the nature of transfer, how it works, and how it is examined (Lobato 2012), in authentic and experiential learning programs students’ success is reliant on their ability to transfer theoretical knowledge from the class- room to a real-life situations. 637TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 In fact, in a Team Project, students are not only transferring theoretical knowledge into actions, they are transferring theo- retical concepts acquired individually in a classroom context to a project in a real-life business context. The National Research Council asserts that applying knowledge learned in the classroom to career performance is far transfer (2015), and is a greater cognitive leap than applying knowledge to a class- room activity or writing a theoretical paper for academic as- sessment. Applying Barnett and Ceci’s (2002), taxonomy of transfer, students participating in a Team Project are transfer- ring knowledge domains, physical context, social context, functional context, and modality all at once. Furthermore, Team Project success often requires aggrega- tion of new information with students’ existing knowledge. Aggregation of new knowledge to one’s existing knowledge base and transfer of knowledge to a new context are each complex mental processes individually. This complexity is multiplied when both mental processes need to happen in parallel. In addition to this complex mental process, students are working in a team. The ability to work in teams and collabo- rate effectively is a highly sought after competency for em- ployers (Ritter et al. 2017), which has resulted in team assign- ments and projects being increasingly prevalent in higher ed- ucation curricula (Borstler and Hilborn 2016; Burrell et al. 2015; Hobson et al. 2014). Like any technical skill, teamwork is built through practice and intentional development. However, team assignments and projects are often introduced into the curriculum without effective instruction (Lingard 2010). Embedding teamwork into the curriculum without ad- equate support and theoretical frameworks to aid understand- ing of teamwork can result in students developing bad team- work habits that could have a negative impact on their success as they move through their career. Depending on the academic level and life experience of each student, each student on a team could be anywhere from novice to expert on the Dreyfus Model of skill acquisition (Glover et al. 2018) for each of the skills required to work effectively in a team and to complete a project successfully. Faculty must meet the challenge of supporting these com- plex student learning needs while managing the additional layer of complexity created by the introduction of an industry sponsor into the learning collaboration (Lawson et al. 2011). Before the start of the course, industry sponsors need to be recruited, and potential projects evaluated to ensure they are aligned with learning outcomes and students’ experience lev- el. Once the course starts, faculty need to monitor industry sponsors to ensure they are getting good outcomes. Simultaneously, faculty need to ensure that student teams get the information, feedback, and support they need from the industry sponsor to effectively deliver those outcomes. Despite technology being a key to scale, the complexity of Team Projects is magnified when implemented in the context of distance and online education. Students have the additional challenge of managing their team collaboration and project delivery virtually, and in some cases, asynchronously due to time zone challenges. The Potential of Experiential Learning Technology to Enable Quality at Scale In order to deliver Team Projects at a scale that makes them cost-effective while maintaining the quality of the learning experience, the challenges mentioned above need to be over- come, and use of emerging technologies may be a way to do it. Emerging technologies like machine learning and real-time learning analytics hold the potential to support students at different levels, monitor reflective activities in order to high- light learning challenges, and automate the operational tasks required to leverage the use of feedback in instruction and to monitor engagement. This ability to automate operational tasks and provide data and insight to faculty enables faculty to provide more tailored support to students (James et al. 2018). Crawley et al. (2009), identify that the transition from face-to-face learning to online or technology-enabled learning results in a loss of affective cues used to intuit learner needs. Research that integrates learning analytics and learning sci- ence indicates that real-time learning analytics enabled by machine learning could offer a replacement for affective cues lost in technology-enabled learning (James 2020). In order to successfully enable the delivery of Team Projects at scale without compromising on quality outcomes, a technology tool should be built with authentic learning and experiential learning theory as core tenets of the design. Furthermore, the pedagogical underpinnings of the theory need to be reflected in the design’s features and functionality. Specifically, a desirable technology solution needs to support the scaffolding of learning content and instructor support, re- flection exercises, industry and peer feedback, and participant engagement. Scaffolding of Learning Content and Instructor Support Student participants extract valuable learning from experience by performing three main tasks: 1. applying domain knowledge to a real-world project, 2. managing team collaboration, 3. demonstrating effective project and industry sponsor management. All of these tasks are complex cognitive processes that are best learned through experience (Nenzhelele and Pellissier 2014; Proctor and Van Zandt 2018; Wilton 2011). However, 638 TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 learning all of them in parallel is a challenge and likewise, supporting students through the process is a challenge for faculty, especially with individual students at different profi- ciency levels for any given skill at any given point in time. Learning analytics explore and make meaning out of data points in a way that enhances understanding of the learner, their learning process, and the learners they are collaborating with (Baker and Inventado 2014; Dawson et al. 2016; Long et al. 2011; Siemens 2013). These insights can be used to decide when elements of support scaffolded into the instruc- tional design can be removed for individual students. This technology-enabled process can augment the faculty’s ability to accelerate advanced students and provide more support for those who need it. Reflection Exercises One of the learning modes in the experiential learning cycle is reflective observation. Reflective observation focuses on mak- ing meaning out of the current or past experience. It is follow- ed by an abstract mental process of combining reflective ob- servations with a student’s existing knowledge base, in order to generate new knowledge or greater understanding. This new knowledge or understanding is then applied through ac- tive experimentation (Kolb and Kolb 2009). A learner can extract learning from experience; however, stepping through all four phases of the experiential learning cycle optimises the potential for knowledge extraction and new understanding. Instructional technology can be used to trigger reflective practice at moments when there is likely to be a problem of practice that might lead to valuable knowledge extraction. Additionally, the instructional technology can be used to scaf- fold the reflective writing tasks, initially stepping students through each phase of the experiential learning cycle in isola- tion, then leaving the task more freeform as students develop the capability to step through the process on their own. Real- time learning analytics processes enabled by machine learning can analyze reflective writing in real-time to provide students with insights on their reflective process and how to develop it (Buckingham Shum et al. 2017). Industry and Peer Feedback Reflection and reflective assignments are prevalent in higher education (Wong 2016). However, scholars claim that effec- tive reflective practice requires the ability to identify that a problem exists (Newman 2018). Without industry and peer feedback, meaningful reflections are a difficult proposition for students who have limited reference points from profes- sional practice and are often novices in the skill they are attempting to develop. Feedback is a core instructional tool used to help students develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities (Brooks et al. 2019). In a traditional learning environment, feedback is pre- dominantly given by faculty and received by students. All learning management systems support this traditional feed- back loop. However, in a Team Project, the most valuable feedback is provided by industry sponsors who can provide industry insights, and by peers who can help each other with learning twenty-first Century Skills. Moreover, the ability to give and use feedback is a valuable professional skill (Donia et al. 2018). Nevertheless, facilitation of peer feedback and industry feedback can be labor intensive for faculty, particu- larly as teacher-student ratios increase (Bailey and Garner 2010). The labor intensity of administering feedback loops results in the giving and receiving of feedback being relegated to an informal part of the learning experience, which ignores some of the core value propositions of industry engagement and team projects. Instructional technology can structure and automate indus- try sponsor and peer feedback in the course design, making feedback more accessible and scalable as an instructional tool. Moreover, text mining and sentiment analysis can be used to highlight negative feedback that helps faculty to identify when industry partners or students are unhappy, or when there is team conflict. The real-time identification of these issues can enable faculty to intervene and provide support on the indi- vidual and team level at the right moment, rather than finding out about issues retrospectively through post-program surveys or interviews. Participant Engagement Learner engagement is a lead indicator of learner success (Groccia 2018), and is defined as “students’ cognitive invest- ment in, active participation with, and emotional commitment to learning particular content” (Bender 2017, p. 2). Driving engagement is particularly meaningful in online and distance education, where interactions and communication between students and teachers are reduced (Lee et al. 2019). Literature provides examples of pedagogical tools that can be used for engagement, including experiential and project- based learning themselves (Li et al. 2017). However, in order for them to have the desired effect, they need to be well de- signed. As the definition highlights, engagement is driven at three levels: action, emotion, and cognition. Instructional tech- nology could support engagement at all three levels in various ways. For action-based engagement, instructional technology should support gamification mechanics to provide students and industry sponsors with extrinsic motivation triggers for the desired behavior. Use of completion tracking, badges, and points can drive active engagement. On the deeper emo- tional and cognitive level, real-time learning analytics can be used to give faculty insight into emotional connectedness and confidence in the project. The learning analytics allow faculty 639TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 to intervene in the learning experience in real-time to resolve issues that may be causing students to lose confidence or disengage from the experience altogether. A Successful Example: Showcasing ‘Virtual Business Projects’ A Virtual Business Project (VBP) is a model of team project that is underpinned by Kolb’s experiential learning theory, integrates pedagogy, curriculum and technology, and is deliv- ered digitally. In a VPB, students work in teams to deliver a real-world project to an industry sponsor. It is a form of cap- stone project designed specifically for online and technology- enabled learning. In the mobilization phase of a VPB, faculty and program managers collaborate with industry partners to design projects that meet industry sponsor objectives while also aligning with the intended learning outcomes, students’ ability level, and the amount of time students have to work on the project. Once the program kicks off, teams of students are assigned to an indus- try project and participate in an online briefing meeting to gain an understanding of the project and industry sponsor expecta- tions, and to build team connectedness and project confidence. After the briefing meeting, students develop a project plan that re-defines the project, highlighting team roles, deadlines, and meetings with the industry sponsor. Once the project plan is submitted to the industry sponsor for feedback and approval, student teams execute the project, submitting it for feedback to the industry sponsor multiple times throughout the process to gain insight, build buy-in, and ensure the project is aligned to expectations. These industry feedback loops form an invalu- able part of the experience, as they help students identify problems, which in turn leads to more effective reflection exercises. In the final stages of the project, student teams de- velop a project report that is delivered to the industry sponsor in an online presentation. In parallel with the project delivery process, students work collaboratively to understand better and develop their team- work skills. Before starting the project, they evaluate them- selves on a list of teamwork skills, and identify how they plan to develop their weaker skills in the first phase on the project. After each project submission, student teams complete a follow-up self-evaluation and a peer evaluation of each of their team members. Once this process is complete, students receive an automated report that compares their self- assessment with peer assessments and aggregates constructive feedback from their peers. The students review this feedback, using it to identify which skills they plan to focus on devel- oping in the next phase of the project and how they are going to develop them. Due to synergy between the learning design and purpose- built technology, a small team of program administrators were able to deliver high-quality VBPs to more than 6000 students in the last two and a half years. In this showcase, we want to demonstrate how the Virtual Business Project model lever- ages Practera, an emerging experiential learning technology platform, to scaffold learning content, support reflective learn- ing, automate feedback, and drive student and industry spon- sor engagement. How Integrating Technology into the Instructional Design Supported High-Quality VBP at Scale In all VBPs, learners are provided with an app that guides them through the learning program and recommends the right actions at critical learning moments. The learning design in- cludes built-in points for students to engage in reflection, which are triggered by Practera’s ‘pulse check’ functionality and feedback from industry sponsors or peers. Students then capture their intended improvement points in a development plan that is accessible by faculty. All of the feedback, reflec- tion triggers, and development plan processes are embedded in the course design. The technology sequences and automates the operational tasks required to extract and distribute project work, feedback, and development plans. Leveraging the tech- nology to automate the process frees faculty from the opera- tional tasks and gives them the data they need to understand each student’s progress, so that they can provide tailored support. Instructors are supported by having access to real-time learning analytics and an automated experiential learning sup- port assistant to enable meaningful facilitation, even though they are not physically engaging with students throughout the course. The technology platform leverages insights from learning analytics research, processing the data in real-time and displaying it in a way that helps faculty identify students who need support in order to improve their performance (James et al. 2018). VBPs’ design highlights potential learning moments where students and teams may benefit from faculty support. Once students are in the VBP program, the technology analyses individual, team, and industry sponsor data points to identify when students are reaching these learning moments; it then notifies faculty. For example, faculty are notified when stu- dents are exhibiting a negative sentiment towards the project, student teams are experiencing dissonance, or industry spon- sors are disengaged. Once a learning moment is identified, faculty can use detailed insights presented about each student, team, or sponsor to personalize recommendations and support (Pardo et al. 2017). After faculty action, the intervention is logged to measure its efficacy and impact on the people involved. 640 TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 Scaffolding of Learning Content and Instructor Support The learning design of a Virtual Business Project allows for customizable scaffolding and instructor support to give stu- dents the right amount of support at the right time to perform their three essential tasks. 1. applying domain knowledge to a real-world project VBPs require students to engage in the transfer of in- formation from theoretical content from the course, aggre- gate this new information with existing knowledge, and apply it to the real-world context of the VBP. Individual students in the class will have different existing knowl- edge bases. Faculty can use the technology to control the hiding and unhiding of supportive learning content on an individual, team, or cohort level. They can decide to hide or reveal con- tent based on their evaluation of students’ ability and on feed- back from industry sponsors and peers. Furthermore, they can transfer the decision to the students themselves, enabling stu- dents to take more control of their VBP program. The tech- nology allows faculty to provide the right learning content at the right time in the project, so that students can effectively transfer theoretical knowledge to the project context in real- time. 2. managing team collaboration, The VBP model has a teamwork skill development process integrated into the design. Students complete a teamwork skill self-assessment and development plan before the project starts. After each project submission, students redo their self- assessment, complete a peer assessment on the same team- work skills, and update their development plan based on eval- uation and feedback from their peers. The teamwork skill development process itself provides a structure that helps stu- dents better understand how their peers receive their efforts to collaborate and work effectively in a team. Additionally, it provides a platform to discuss differences in expectations using a common language. Furthermore, students and industry sponsors complete a micro-reflection called a ‘pulse check’ after each project sub- mission. A pulse check is a series of three questions that stu- dents and industry sponsors have to answer before progressing into the next phase of the project. Using real-time learning analytics, Practera aggregates each team’s pulse check to un- earth the team’s overall health when it comes to collaboration and project confidence. Together, the ‘pulse check’ process and the self- and peer-assessment process provide data that faculty can use to gain insight about the cohesiveness of the team, their project confidence, and engagement levels. Faculty can use this data to further support teams’ teamwork and col- laboration skill development in real-time. 3. demonstrating effective project and sponsor management In addition to effective collaboration within their project team, students working on VBPs need to meet project dead- lines, keep industry sponsors up to date with the project, and manage sponsor expectations. Students who already have pro- fessional experience may be competent, or even experts, in project management and client management. However, for students without previous professional experience, especially those early in their degree programs, these are professional skills they can develop as part of the project experience. In a VBP, sponsor management and project management are included as learning objectives and designed into the as- sessment structure and learning content. The entire project, with its associated learning content, is structured using project management principles. In addition to learning content about the technical skills required to complete the project, students gain access to just-in-time learning content on how to effec- tively manage the project and sponsor expectations at that particular phase of the project. The learning content, delivered by industry professionals, suggests tasks that may facilitate more effective project or sponsor management, and explains why these particular tasks will likely lead to a better overall project outcome. Building project and sponsor management into the learning objectives and the instructional design provides students with the opportunity to learn these skills experientially while work- ing on the project. In addition, the provision of structured, front-loaded learning content and tips enables them to lever- age the experience of others to start at a higher level of profi- ciency. This structuring of learning content into the project delivery means that students can get the benefit of the industry engaged learning earlier in their academic program, without risk of developing a bad professional reputation. The benefits of building project management and sponsor management into the learning objectives extend beyond stu- dents to the faculty and industry sponsor. When student teams can effectively manage their project, and engage their sponsor through timely communication and reporting, it is easier for the industry sponsor to stay aware of how the project is progressing. This communication channel enables industry partners to provide expert insight that will help students com- plete more valuable work and ensure the project is staying aligned to the project brief. Reflection Exercises VBP’s include micro-reflections on team progress and project confidence as well as, written (or video) reflection on team- work skill development. Micro-reflection questions are 641TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 triggered when students submit project deliverables, and again after they review industry sponsor feedback on the deliver- ables. These automated micro-reflection questions are de- signed to facilitate a transfer from the concrete experience to the reflective observation mode of experiential learning. More extensive written reflection in the form of skill development plans is used for teamwork skill development. After each pro- ject submission, students re-evaluate their teamwork skills, reflect on how their implementation of their skill development plan went, and plan their skill development for the next phase of the project. In the first phase of the project, the reflection exercise is highly scaffolded, explicitly stepping students through reflec- tive observation, abstract conceptualization, and planning for active experimentation. As the project progresses, faculty can remove the scaffolding on an individual, team or cohort basis, depending on their students’ needs. Throughout a three-week VBP, each student completes six micro-reflections, two skill development plans, and one post- project reflection. Additionally, industry sponsors complete a micro-reflection after each time they provide feedback, three in total. Data from all of these micro-reflections and skill de- velopment plans are analyzed by the instructional technology to identify team dissonance, project confidence, and other collaboration issues. Faculty can use the insights from this analysis to provide tailored support to individual students, teams, and industry sponsors. Industry and Peer Feedback In a three-week VBP, student teams submit a project plan, a draft project report, and a final project report for feedback from industry sponsors. Following submission, industry spon- sors are notified, review the deliverable, and respond with both rubric ratings and written feedback. After industry spon- sors finalize the review, student teams are notified, look at the feedback, rate the usefulness of the feedback, and thank their industry sponsor for their insight. Additionally, after each pro- ject submission, students complete a peer review process in which they provide both ratings and written feedback on their team members’ teamwork skills. Throughout a VBP, a team of five students and one indus- try sponsor generates three industry sponsor-to-team feedback loops, 15 student-to-industry sponsor feedback loops and 60 peer-to-peer feedback loops. All of these feedback loops are automated and analyzed using technology. The analysis al- lows faculty to review potentially problematic feedback by exception and invest their time in providing additional sup- port, instead of operationally executing the feedback loops themselves. The automation of feedback by the technology allows for larger volumes of formative feedback in large cohorts of stu- dents, without a significant increase in operational time investment for faculty. The formative feedback can then be used as an instructional tool to help students develop their skills (Brooks et al. 2019), while also providing multiple op- portunities for students to develop their ability to give and receive feedback (Donia et al. 2018). Additionally, faculty can use the students’ helpfulness ratings to improve industry feedback rubrics and perhaps even select appropriate industry sponsors for different cohorts of students. Participant Engagement Engagement is a pre-requisite for knowledge extraction from a learning experience (Groccia 2018), and is driven by action, emotion and cognition. VBPs drive active student engage- ment using game mechanics, including achievement badges and progress bars. Badges and unlocking conditions are set up during the design of the learning experience. In order to drive good learning behaviors, the unlocking conditions can be based on completion of critical tasks like project submissions, or on completion of essential learning content. The emotional and cognition-based engagement mechanics of the VBP model are in their infancy stage and are primarily driven by the data captured from the action-based engagement mechanics, reflection exercises, and feedback loops. Faculty can use the indicators of team dissonance and project confi- dence to provide timely support interventions to students, teams, and industry sponsors. These interventions are trackable in the instructional technology, enabling educators to review all of their support interventions at the end of the VBP, and to reflect on which support interventions had an impact on student engagement and learning. Conclusions/Recommendations As the showcase of the Virtual Business Project model dem- onstrates, a technology-enabled delivery model exists which enables education providers to offer authentic, experiential learning at a level of quality that, until now, was cost- prohibitive at scale. Emerging technologies like machine learning and real-time learning analytics hold the potential to support scaffolding of learning, monitor reflective activities, and automate the operational tasks required to better leverage the use of feedback and participant engagement in online au- thentic and experiential learning. Moreover, the VBP model enables cost-efficient scale by systematically embedding team projects into online and distance education programs. In order to adopt emerging technology and experiential learning programs like VBP and advance the field of experi- ential learning, we recommend that faculty and instructional designers integrate technology into the pedagogical develop- ment of courses. Furthermore, they should use the Virtual Business Project model earlier in degree programs to develop 642 TechTrends (2020) 64:636–645 students’ ability to extract learning from experience, and do this in collaboration with learning analytics researchers to fur- ther improve the capabilities of real-time learning analytics for supporting experiential learning. Integrate Emerging Technology with Pedagogy Emerging technologies provide the most value when they are integrated explicitly with the design of the learning experi- ence. Faculty and instructional designers should embrace new technology and collaborate with engineers and data sci- entists through consistent feedback to help developing instruc- tional technology that enables active and authentic learning at scale. Research suggests that these collaborations enable data- driven curriculum redevelopment (Lockyer and Dawson 2012). However, learning analytics would need to be embed- ded into the course design in order to collect appropriate, accurate and useful data (Kovanović et al. 2017). The Virtual Business Project’s model has and continues to be iteratively developed by a consortium of learning designers, faculty, engineers, and learning analytics researchers. The de- velopment of the VBP model has held in tension the quality of the learning experience for individual students and the need for scalability. Throughout the various iterations of the VBP mod- el, both the pedagogy and instructional technology itself have been changed in order to maximize student learning. As expe- riential learning and online delivery both continue to increase in popularity, more models of experiential learning need to be purpose-designed for the online paradigm. Use the VBP Model to Develop Transfer and Knowledge Extraction Capability The Virtual Business Project model is designed to support the transfer of theoretical knowledge to a real-life business project by decreasing the complexity of the far transfer on the tempo- ral, functional, and knowledge domain of transfer (Barnett and Ceci 2002); step students through the experiential learning cycle in order to maximize their knowledge extraction; and facilitate the development of teamwork, project management, and sponsor management skills through structured peer and sponsor feedback. Implementing VBPs early in an undergraduate or graduate degree allows students to develop these capabilities at the beginning of their program. Providing opportunities to devel- op the ability to transfer knowledge and extract learning from experience will help students draw more learning out of other experiential learning programs during their degree program, for example, co-ops, internships, or capstone projects. Moreover, developing effective teamwork, project manage- ment, and sponsor management skills could put students in a better position to be able to turn industry engaged learning experiences into career opportunities. Collaborate with Learning Analytics Researchers Learning analytics is an emerging field of education technol- ogy research that leverages data sets from instructional tech- nology to understand learning. The literature acknowledges a gap in learning analytics research that is underpinned by learn- ing theory and learning science (Avella et al. 2016; Gašević et al. 2015; Kirkwood and Price 2014; Lodge and Corrin 2017; Lockyer et al. 2013; Reimann 2016). Effective collab- oration between instructional designers, faculty, and learning analytics researchers can lead to the development of more models of experiential learning that integrate technology into the pedagogy. Moreover, such efforts can provide insights to inform the development of instructional technology, so that it can better support authentic and experiential learning in online and distance education. Funding information This work is supported in part by funding from the National Science Foundation under award #1725941. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, and/ or recommendations are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of Interest Authors James, N and Laufenberg P are listed on a patent related to Practera technology. Author James, N and Laufenberg P own stock in Intersective Pty Ltd. who owns Practera technology. Ethical Statement This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. Conflict of Interest: Authors James, N and Laufenberg P are listed on a patent related to Practera technology. Author James, N and Laufenberg P own stock in Intersective Pty Ltd. who owns Practera technology. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adap- tation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, pro- vide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. 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work_h62whj64dra53o47b4xxvudgtm	----	Semantic web and its reflections in distance education Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.830 WCES-2010 Semantic web and its reflections in distance education Tuncay Sevindika *, Korhan Kay l b, Orhan Ünlükahramana,b aEducation Faculty, Firat University,Elazig, 23119, Turkey bDoctora / Master Students, Firat University, Elazig, 23119, Turkey Received November 10, 2009; revised December 11, 2009; accepted January 21, 2010 Abstract Due to the advances in web technology, sharing of information has become easier, but also more complicated. In searches through internet, search engines have been used and these search engines have also shown the content, un-related to the searches. The reason of this is that the data searched is only known to the searcher and can not be commented by the search engines. In solving all these problems, semantic web architecture, used as a new technology, was structured. The aim of this study is to determine what kind of usage area semantic web has in distance education platforms and to structure its ontological and architectural form. Moreover, URI and UNICODE, XML and RDF forms will be determined with their usage styles in distance education platforms. In conclusion, the semantic web-based properties of education environments are determined. Keywords:Education; ontology; semantic; technology;web. 1. Introduction Web platform (Ate , 2008) was emerged by computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee using HTML computer language and in time it made progress continuously in order to satisfy people needs. When these developments are examined; it is seen that the first technology is the static web pages in the web pages. All these developments revealed the concept of internet based distance education application as a new dimension which are made with Radio, Television and Computers. Distance education is a way of providing the education areas independent from time and enviroment by using communication technologies (Bulun and others, 2004). Thus, by this way; the people who can’t find any time to their education or individual development due to their working time or the inadequate education opportunities can get the intended education. In the Web technology, the communication between requester and server is made as a oneway and because of this HTLM language is used. In this technology, the oneway communication caused to the misfire of desired results in some points, thus it revealed the necessity of a new technology and so the Dinamic Web Technology was appeared. As for the Dinamic web technology communication, it is made by two-way. Owing * Tuncay Sevindik. Tel.: 0905068942277. E-mail address: tsevindik@gmail.com Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 5109–5113 © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector https://core.ac.uk/display/82357278?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=pdf-decoration-v1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 5110 Tuncay Sevindik et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 5109–5113 to this technology, the server responds the requester’s demands. In the point of responding, if the requester’s demands on the static web pages the server send the data which includes pages directly to the requester. If the dinamic web pages demand the data which has a purpose of the communication, the server work the dinamic pages within its scope and transform these to HTLM codes then it send to the requester. Owing to the web technology, the opened pages due to intended responses to the requester’s demands became dinamic. Also the other advantage of this technology is the keeping of the data in the server computers so all the authorised people can get the data and communicate easily. The developments in the Web technology increased and static web pages were called as Web 1.0 and dinamic web pages were called as Web 2 (Kardemirci, 2008). Great numbers of innovations which revealed with Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, facebook etc) increased the users of the web technology and the people which have got standart computer knowledge benefited the Web 2.0 technology thus the knowledge and data sharing increased each passing day. Because of the Web 2.0 technology, the increased users number and data sharing causes the confusion in the Web environment. Although the search engines (yahoo, google, bing etc.) were developed n order to avoid from this confusion and to filter this enormous library in the web, filtering wasn’t made sufficiently. Usually, a good deal of results irrelevant with searching are displayed. As for this, the search is just textual quality and there is inadeaquate logical searching process. For this reason, to get the meaningful knowledges in the web the new technology was needed. The name of this technology is ‘Semantic Web’. 2. Semantic Web and Architecture The most of the knowledge accumulations make difficult to reach the desired knowledge. Moreover, the fast increasing knowledge accumulations every passing day and the dissappearing of the people in the web were taken into consideration and it was aimed to advance the insufficient points of web 2.0. In order to solve this problemn, semantic web technnology was emerged (Karda ,2008). The development of this technology is organized by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) W3C is the international institution which determines the web technologies standarts and Tim Berners- Lee was the president of this institution in 1994. The basic architecture of semantic web is determined by W3C (Genço lu,2007). Figure 1. (Design And Implementation of an Example Semantic Web Based System,) The foundation of this architecture composes URI and Unicode. These layers determine the usage of international character set and make the identification of web resource separetely (Özacar, 2004). On this architecture it is appeared XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) and layers. XML is used by forming the rich web documents. As for Namespace, it allows the usage of different words accurately. On XML and Namespace layer RDF (Resource Description Framework) layer is found. This layer is used in the rapid access of web sources and connection between subject and verb in the connections and form. Above this layer it is found RDF schema. This layer is a frame which makes the works meaningful in the RDF sources. These words are needed to define according to their subjects and features. Ontology layer allows the great deal of complex semantic depiction and formed by advanced RDF Schema. Otherwise, as for that the other layer they are the dialectic, evidence and confidence layer for high degree semantic web(Öztürk, 2004). Semantic web architecture is designed on the basis of distance education according to structure Tuncay Sevindik et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 5109–5113 5111 which we mentioned above. 3. The features of Semantik Web and Educational Pages The knowledge demonstration with Semantic web is made by some popular concept way concerning artificial intelligence applications. Semantic web can differentiate distinctive knowledge demonstrations. This detail takes place with two important matters. These are ontology and logical forms.Ontology is used both in the defining of the circumstances, the continuity of the connections, the planning the circumstances and making the definitions clearly. (Öztürk, 2004).Formalising is translated by ontology machines. This operation is made by the calculation of the ontologies with machines and getting the results. 3.1. The general features of semantic web pages which will be educational formed Educational content must be organised and figured by in these ways. It must give the introduction knowledge about students’ area of interests, develop their knowledge in these areas and gain problem solving ability (Devedzic, 2006). The requirements which must be made by designer: He/she must enrich the educational content with the contexts as multimedia objects,samples, question, simulation etc. The tests which are suitable to pedagogical lessons and the lesson content which is compatible with lessons and units content must be formed. After all, educational semantic web ontology must be found. The mission of this ontology is become the unit of which determines the connection between the terminology hierarchy and concept. This structure which will be formed will supply the sharing the educational content, reusability and the usage in different educational areas. These pedagogical factors help us to determine the location, search, make selection, arrange and integrate otherwise they help us to get the educational content from different educational services (Devedzic, 2006). The students usually attend the education individually.This situation shows that the individual educational aims, styles and preferences must be taken into consideration. For this reason, semantic web must offer the applications which supplies the adaptation of the student and which are suitable to his/her personal characteristics. (Devedzic, 2006). 3.1.1 The student characteristics The students can have different characteristics as different age, personality, and occupational group. To take into consideration these differences supply to get the maksimum efficiency (Devedzic, 2006). 3.1.2. The characteristics of the teacher The teachers must choose the education material according to appropriate aim and must combine it. Area ontology must help the teachers as regards of explanation, filtration and the configuration of educational materials which were taken from different sources. Because of the teacher must evaluate the progress and the problem solving capacity of the student also his/her learning level, the semantic web interface which is used by teacher must have the flexible structure. Hereby, they can control the progress of the student (Devedzic, 2006). 3.1.3. The characteristics of the designer The software has three main components as educational content, teaching method and adaptation. Author actualizes two activities. 1. The authorship concernant the area: He/she determines terminology, area concept and associates and must make the taxonomy. 2. He/she must arrange the activities concerning the resource (Devedzic, 2006). 3.1.4.The mission of the system developer The person who makes the development must take into consideration that the teachers and the authors aren’t the computer specialist. This reality must become efficient in the web pages in other words the wieldy pages must be done. The page must be designed in such a manner that the last user can apply easily. It must be arranged easily with different areas. The best way of making this, the specialist design an ontology and combine the educational devices with the other areas. 5112 Tuncay Sevindik et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 5109–5113 The different system developer pedagogical and educational devices must be compatible with each other. Consequently, web pages must be designed in the manner that they have a structure which allow the different technologies (Devedzic, 2006). 3.2. Education content Education content must be defined clearly and the management units must be for education. The education materials are able to become different forms and they can be divided for different educational purposes. 3.3. The concept of learning model The education materials can be seen as resource in the technology supported education. The learning materials appear with the parts which were taken from lessons and the people learning activities. These are able to become in any of the scope. The only constraint is instead of the taking into consideration of the one person’s learning capacity, it must take into consideration the general learning. For instance, the writings in the electronic environment, multimedias, animations, video clips, simulation presentations, educational games, web sites, digital films, java applications and online lessons. The most of these applications can be reused and it is advantage to use different applications. 4. Educational Modelling Languages Models must support the model as pedagogical and must be done as semantic web supported and the requirements as following (Koper and Manderveld, 2004). Formulation: The learning allows the explanation of the objects clearly. It is important for automatic operations. Clear authoring: It must be written by dividing little learning objects to large learning objects. ntegrity: It must allow to make the bigger learning objects by organising the connections between the learning objects. Reusability: It must allow to repeat the application by determining learning complex units. Supportability: The learning objects must be interpreted well and determined the standarts in order to endure against technological changes. Convenience: It must be convenient to standarts and determinated definitions. Life cycle: Fabrication, modification, storage and distribution must be easy. In addition to this, each education designing model needs the following requirement (Devedzic, 2006). The adaptation to different model and teories must be easy. Education learning objects must come together and describe complex and a new different object. It must be able to indicate different education clearly. 5. Pedagogical Factors Educational semantic web possesses three main objects. It must possess productive knowledge storage and access system. It must offer to the people by increasing the getting of the knowledge of nonhuman factors. It must supply the connection in all the universe with the internal and external communication abilities of internet support. 6. Educational Ontology Educational ontologies are the framework of the semantic web systems. It is indispensable for students, teachers and authors. The filtering of the students documents, combining and integration are made by means of this ontology (Vladan Devedzic, 2006) Tuncay Sevindik et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 5109–5113 5113 The categories of educational ontology a. Area ontology: Semantic web and educational design ontology can’t continue without this ontology. Domain ontologies isn’t just required for semantic web and education it requires for all semantic applications. In education systems with semantic web author must present his/her ontology knowledge. b. Mission ontology: It consists of the education in any of the application area. Mission ontology supports the area ontology and it provides that the web applications solve the problem. This supplies ontology problems, scenarios,questions and replies. c. Teaching strategy ontology: This ontology supplies the experiment to the author. By teaching pedagogical events and behaviours it supplies teaching experiment to the author. d. Student model ontology: The designers which design semantic web education system construct the student model by using learning ontology concept. This ontology and concerned student model is required for the system coherence. e. nterface ontology: The aim of this ontology is to define the adaptive behaviour of semantic web education system. This ontology offers the transducer models to the different students. f. Communication ontology: Different semantic systems must be in communication with pedagogical factors and education servers. All of their content and words which are used must be designated by ontology (Devedzic, 2006). 7. Conclusion and Discussion In this study, it is seen that distance education environment is internet based and reveals new requirements. It is mentioned that, the matters as; the increasing of the user in the distance education environment , content and behaviour analyse become meaningful with the semantic web. It is thought that the Semantic web applications will more efficient and interactive with web 3.0. As in the Öztürk’s study in 2004, it is seen that ontolojical structure which represents the architecture in the web applications is the most important. Moreover, it must be remembered that URI and Unicode applications which constititues the foundation of the architecture are the main elements. Again, as it is seen in the Öztürk’s study (2004) in semantic educational applications it is made use of the concept concerning artificial intelligence and it is presented the arrangement of the semantic web in the education environment. In his study (2006) Devedzic defragmented education environments and semantic concepts also he determined the features and missions of the student, teacher, designer and system developer. As for Koper ve Mandervel (2004) they mention the requirements of semantic web supported education environment as formulation, concretization, integrity, reusability, supportability, convenience and life cycle. It is seen that all these studies support the distance education applications which are established on the internet platform. But, it is seen that the reflections of the semantic web applications to the distance education are inevitables to get more specific in forms of web mining, content mining etc. References Ate , A.F. (2008), Anlamsal Web ve Etmen Teknolojileri Kullanarak Katma De erli Telekomünikasyon Servisleri çin Bir Çerçeve Geli tirilmesi, zmir Bulun, M., Gülnar, B., Güran, M.S.(2004)E itimde Mpbil Teknolojiler, The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology - TOJET April Devedzic, V. (2006). Semantic Web and Education, Springer Science Business Media, (79-107) Genço lu, P. B. (2006), Design And Implementation Of An Example Semantic Web Based System (1-17) Karademirci, O. (2008), Anlamsal Web Teknileri Kullanarak GPS Tabanl Ba lam Bilinçli Mobil Uygulama, Ankara Karda , G. (2008), Anlamsal Web Ortam nda Çal an Çok Etmenli Sistemlerin Model Güdümlü Geli tirme,Bornova- zmir Koper, R. and Manderveld, J.(2004). Educational modelling language: modelling reusable, interoperable, rich and personalised units of learnings, British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 35 No 5 2004, 537-551. Özacar, T. (2004), Anlamsal Web çin RDF Tabanl Bir Ç karsama Motoru Tan mlama, Bornova- zmir Öztürk, Ö. (2004), Anlamsal Web çin Bir Ontoloji Ortam Tasar m ve Gerçekle tirimi, Bornova- zmir Vangkilde, I. (2003), A Web-Portal with Semantic Web Technologies,( IMM-THESIS-2003-31) 
work_h7uqtddltnftbedqlsjwzc4dua	----	aktualni_1_14.indd Матеріали наукових конференцій 114 Proceedings of scientifi c conferences Сучасні темпи розвитку суспільства, економіки та соціальної сфери потребують від освітніх установ упровадження нових методів освіти. Це стосується, перш за все, впровадження в навчальний процес дистанцій- них освітніх технологій, що відкрили нові можливості для отримання освіти і підвищення кваліфікації. Основна перевага дистанційного навчання – освіта поза межами навчального закладу, студенти можуть засвоювати необхідні знання у зручний для них час, із мінімальним відривом від основної діяльності. Дис- танційне навчання дає можливість студентам отримати консультації викладача і скласти контроль знань, не відвідуючи навчальний заклад [1–3]. Сьогодні освіта в Україні характеризується пошуком умов для професійної та соціальної самореалізації особистості. Основні причини переходу викладача у вищій школі від навчальної діяльності до самостійної пізнавальної роботи студента: потреба суспільства в ініціативних і грамотних фахівцях, потік інформації, що безперервно збільшується, постійне збільшення самостійної праці в загальному обсягові змісту про- фесійної освіти [4]. Постійне оновлення програмного забезпечення, вдосконалення комп’ютерної техніки, виникнення нових технологій визначає необхідність безперервної самоосвіти студентів і педагогів у галузі інформаційних технологій [5]. Мета роботи Теоретичне обґрунтування значення впровадження дистанційно-освітніх технологій в організацію самостій- ної роботи студентів ВНЗ для отримання якісної освіти. Матеріали і методи дослідження Виконали огляд наукових джерел, здійснили моніто- ринг і систематизацію даних. Результати та їх обговорення Рівень розвитку студента оцінюється його здатністю самостійно отримувати нові знання і використовувати їх у навчальній і практичній діяльності, тому провідним принципом організації моделі процесу є розвиток осо- бистості студента. У формуванні творчої активності одне із провідних місць посідає самостійна робота студентів (СРС). Тільки цілеспрямована систематична самостійна праця дає можливість глибоко засвоїти знання, виробити і закріпити вміння, перетворити їх на відповідні навички розумової діяльності [6]. Основоположними принципами в організації СРС є свідомість і активність, систематичність і послідовність, міцність і доступність, зв’язок теорії з практикою [7]. СРС треба виконувати під керівництвом викладача, адже саме він визначає систему СРС та її планомірне вклю- чення в навчальний процес; мету, зміст і обсяг, методи навчання, її місце і роль у навчальній роботі студента; навчає методам контролю і самоконтролю за якістю; вивчає й індивідуальні особливості студента, враховує її під час організації. СРС гармонійно доповнює ефективні коллаборативні підходи до навчання, коли вирішенням навчального за- вдання займається група студентів, при цьому кожен її учасник може самостійно вирішувати своє «підзавдан- ня» і брати участь у загальному «великому» рішенні. СРС повинна мати цілеспрямований характер і бути дійсно самостійною, спонукати студента працювати напружено під час її виконання [8]. Однак зміст і об- сяг СРС, що пропонується на кожному етапі навчання, мають бути посильними, а студенти – підготовленими теоретично і практично до виконання самостійної ро- боти. Для виконання СРС необхідно пропонувати такі завдання, виконання яких не припускає дії з готових рецептів і шаблонів, а потребує використання знань у УДК 378.018.43:378041]-057.875 О. О. Фурик, Т. Є. Оніщенко, О. В. Рябоконь, Б. Г. Тютюнщиков, В. Г. Савельєв, А. Г. Глактіонов Дистанційно-освітні технології в організації самостійної роботи студентів Запорізький державний медичний університет Ключові слова: дистанційно-освітні технології, самостійна робота студентів. Розглянули питання щодо застосування дистанційних освітніх технологій в ор- ганізації самостійної роботи студентів вищих навчальних закладів. Дистанционно-образовательные технологии в организации самостоятельной работы студентов Е. А. Фурик, Т. Е. Онищенко, Е. В. Рябоконь, Б. Г. Тютюнщиков, В. Г. Савельев, А. Г. Глактионов Рассмотрены вопросы применения дистанционных образовательных технологий в организации самостоятельной работы студентов высших учебных заведений. Ключевые слова: дистанционно-образовательные технологии, самостоятельная работа студентов. Актуальные вопросы фармацевтической и медицинской науки и практики. – 2014. – № 1 (14). – С. 114–116 Distance-educational technologies in the оrganization of students’ independent work O. O. Furik, T. E. Onishchenko, O. V. Ryabokon, B. G. Tutunshchikov, V. G. Savelev, A. G. Glaktionov The use of distance learning technologies in the organization of students’ independent work are discusses in the article. Key words: distance learning technologies, students’ independent work. Current issues in pharmacy and medicine: science and practice 2014; № 1 (14): 114–116 © О. О. Фурик, Т. Є. Оніщенко, О. В. Рябоконь, Б. Г. Тютюнщиков, В. Г. Савельєв, А. Г. Глактіонов, 2014 115 Матеріали наукових конференцій Proceedings of scientifi c conferences новій ситуації [9]. Лише в цьому випадку самостійна робота сприятиме розвитку та формуванню пізнавальних здібностей та ініціативи студентів. Під час організації СРС необхідним є диференційова- ний підхід, оскільки студентам для опанування знань, умінь і навичок потрібний різний час. Завдання, що пропонуються для самостійної роботи, повинні викли- кати інтерес, котрий досягається новизною поставлених завдань, незвичністю їхнього змісту, розкриттям перед студентами практичного значення пропонованого за- вдання або методу, який потрібно опанувати. Для організації СРС необхідно використовувати дис- танційні освітні технології при очній, очно-заочній і заочній формах навчання [10,11]. Очно-заочна форма рекомендована на ранніх етапах самостійного засвоєння навчальних курсів (переважно базових) і передбачає вивчення загальних для групи розділів програми в аудиторії з подальшим самостійним засвоєнням матеріалу відповідно до індивідуальних пла- нів. Кожен студент повинен мати доступ до матеріалів курсів системи електронного дистанційного навчання, що відповідає індивідуальним планам. Самостійне засвоєння відбувається в курсах, котрі розміщені у системі електронного дистанційного на- вчання. Протягом навчання студенти знайомляться з теоретичним матеріалом, беруть участь у колективних обговореннях, висловлюються, знайомляться з думками інших студентів і викладача, інтерпретують, ставлять пи- тання, виконують завдання, знайомляться з рецензіями на свої роботи, діляться власним практичним досвідом, беруть участь у науково-дослідницькій роботі. За допомогою звітів викладач аналізує навчальну ді- яльність кожного студента (групи студентів) у системі електронного дистанційного навчання; рецензує й оцінює роботи, відповідає на запитання; організовує і підтримує дискусію на форумах, спонукає студентів міркувати і реагувати на висловлювання один одного, направляє і контролює науково-дослідну роботу. Заочна форма може бути рекомендована на пізніших етапах самостійного засвоєння навчальних курсів, пере- важно профільних, і передбачає активніше використання дистанційних освітніх технологій. Уся змістовна частина самостійного засвоєння матеріалу також відбувається в курсах, що викладені у системі електронного дистанцій- ного навчання. Для взаємодії в режимі реального часу педагог і студенти мають використовувати аудіо- або відеоконференцію, чат; у режимі відкладеного часу – форум. Як при очно-заочній, так і при заочній формах навчан- ня у ВНЗ доцільним є створення дистанційної служби консультацій. Кожен студент через Інтернет має доступ до курсів із дисциплін системи електронного дистанцій- ного навчання. У курсах є всі необхідні для самостійної роботи теоретичні матеріали, рекомендації з виконання завдань різних типів. Необхідно організувати чергу- вання викладачів на форумах курсів, у чатах, аудіо- і відеокімнатах. Коли у самостійному засвоєнні матеріалу виникають труднощі, студент і викладач мають змогу ініціювати діалог. Під час організації праці служби кон- сультацій ефективним є використання взаємодопомоги студентів, робота у віртуальних групах. Для успішної організації самостійного засвоєння студентами базових і профільних навчальних курсів під час електронного дистанційного навчання необхід- ним є повноцінне формування основних компонентів освітнього середовища: діяльнісного, комунікативного, просторово-предметного [12]. Діяльнісний компонент є сукупністю різних видів ді- яльності, які необхідні для навчання і розвитку студентів. Найважливіші з них: розробка індивідуальних навчаль- них планів; гнучке поєднання онлайн, оффлайн і очного навчання залежно від особливостей кожного студента; розробка гнучкої системи оцінювання, що враховує ви- моги стандартів освіти і особливості кожного студента; технічне оснащення освітнього процесу; самооцінка студентів; науково-дослідна і творча діяльність. Комунікативним компонентом є простір міжособис- тісної взаємодії у безпосередній або предметно-опо- середкованій формі і способів взаємодії студента з певним освітнім середовищем та іншими її суб’єктами. Найважливіші елементи: гнучке поєднання навчання у процесі спільної діяльності (коллаборативний підхід) і самостійного навчання; партнерство викладача зі сту- дентом; вільна комунікація всіх учасників освітнього процесу з навчальних і ненавчальних питань; широке обговорення наукових досліджень. Просторово-предметний компонент – це сукупність просторово-предметних засобів, що забезпечують можливість необхідних дій і поведінки суб’єктів освіт- нього середовища. Найважливішими засобами під час організації дистанційного навчання є система електрон- ного дистанційного навчання (навчально-методичний комплекс, майданчик для вирішення навчальних завдань, портфоліо кожного студента, майданчики для комуніка- ції учасників освітнього процесу й обговорення наукових проблем, організації освітнього процесу, розклад занять, електронний журнал, електронний щоденник); засоби індивідуальної і колективної аудіо- і візуальної онлайн- взаємодії; засоби колективної роботи над матеріалами; віртуальна медіатека, підкасти як засоби доставки кон- тента і творчої самореалізації студентів. Висновки Організація СРС за допомогою сучасних дистанційних технологій сприяє безперервній самоосвіті й удоско- наленню професійної компетенції фахівця у будь-якій галузі, визначає успішність його особистого зростання і соціальну реалізацію. Список літератури 1. Образовательные технологии в подготовке специалистов : сб. научных статей по итогам работы МНПК (г. Минск, 20–21 марта 2003 г.) / Министерство образования РБ, Учреждение образования РБ, Учреждение образования «Минский государственный высший радиотехнический колледж»; [под ред. Н.А. Цырельчука]. – Минск : МГВРК, 2010. – Ч. 5. – 204 с. 2. Тавгень И.А. Дистанционное обучение: опыт, проблемы, перспективы / И.А. Тавгень. – Минск : БГУ, 2009. – 218 с. 3. Тихонов А.Н. Управление современным образованием: социальные и экономические аспекты / А.Н. Тихонов, Т.П. Во- ронина, О.П. Молчанова. – М. : Вита Пресс, 2008. – 150 c. 4. Цыганова Л.В. Стратегии самостоятельной учебной работы как основа ее эффективной организации / Л.В. Цыганова // Высшее образование сегодня. – 2009. – № 12. – С. 69–71. © О. О. Фурик, Т. Є. Оніщенко, О. В. Рябоконь, Б. Г. Тютюнщиков, В. Г. Савельєв, А. Г. Глактіонов, 2014 Матеріали наукових конференцій 116 Proceedings of scientifi c conferences 5. Трегубова Е.С. Самостоятельная работа в высшей ме- дицинской школе и ее роль в формировании личности будущего специалиста / Е.С. Трегубова, Н.А. Петрова, О.Б. Даутова // Материалы Всероссийской научно-методи- ческой конференции «Психолого-педагогические аспекты совершенствования качества медицинского и фармацевти- ческого образования», посвященной 90-летию САМГМУ. – 2009. – С. 160–161. 6. Мандриков В.Б. Особенности развития информатизации медицинского вуза на этапе создания системы качества образования / В.Б. Мандриков, А.Н. Голубев // Материалы Всероссийской научно-методической конференции «Пси- холого-педагогические аспекты совершенствования каче- ства медицинского и фармацевтического образования», посвященной 90-летию САМГМУ. – 2009. – С. 118–120. 7. Дудина М.Н. Новая образовательная парадигма: проблемы содержания образования / М.Н. Дудина // Образование и наука. – 2010. – № 2. – С. 3–16. 8. Гладышева М.М. Формирование исследовательских компетенций студентов в процессе самостоятельной учебной работы в техническом вузе / М.М. Гладышева, В.Д. Тутарова, A.B. Полыциков // Высшее образование сегодня. – 2010. – № 3. – С. 24–26. 9. Глушевская Е.В. Личностно-ориентированный подход в профессиональной подготовке студентов высших меди- цинских учебных заведений : дис. на соискание ученой степени канд. пед. наук / Е.В. Глушевская. – Ярославль, 2009. – 160 с. 10. Полат Е.С. Новые педагогические и информационные технологии в системе образования : учебное пособие / Е.С. Полат, М.В. Бухаркина, А.Е. Петров. – М. : Академия, 2006. – 400 с. 11. Гаврилов Н.А. Нормативно-правовое обеспечение дистанционных образовательных технологий в системе повышения квалификации работников образования / Н.А. Гаврилов // Труды XII Всероссийской научно-мето- дической конференции «Телематика-2005» (6–9 июня 2005 г.) / Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет информационных технологий, механики и оптики. – 2005. – С. 184–186. 12. Самостоятельная работа студентов : методические указа- ния : [Текст] / [А.С Зенкин, В.М. Кирдяев, А.С. Пильгаев, А.П. Паш]. – Саранск : Изд-во Мордов. ун-та, 2009. – 33 с. Відомості про авторів: Фурик О.О., асистент каф. інфекційних хвороб, Запорізький державний медичний університет, E-mail: furyko@i.ua. Оніщенко Т.Є., доцент каф. інфекційних хвороб, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Рябоконь О.В., д. мед. н., професор, зав. каф. інфекційних хвороб, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Тютюнщиков Б.Г., к. мед. н., асистент каф. інфекційних хвороб, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Савельєв В.Г., доцент каф. інфекційних хвороб, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Глактіонов А.Г., к. мед. н., асистент каф. інфекційних хвороб, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Надійшла в редакцію 28.01.2014 р. 
work_hanbydqvvjeedeuwadhbvk7fum	----	«Проблемы информационной безопасности в системе высшей школы» 115 структурах. На основании тестов разработан метод выявления оригинальных атрибутов файла и предложен механизм автоматизации этого метода для обработки большого количества файлов. Полученные результаты используются в сфере компьютерной криминалистики при восстановлении хронологии событий при инцидентах в сфере информационных технологий. СПИСОК ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ: 1. Lee R. Windows 7 MFT Entry Timestamp Properties [Электронный ресурс]: международные публикации по компьютерной криминалистике. SANS Forensics Community, 2010. URL: http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2010/04/12/windows-7-mft- entry-timestamp-properties. (дата обращения: 29.12.2012 г.). 2. Carrier B. File System Forensic Analysis. Addison Wesley Professional (издательство), 2005. 400 – 502 р. А. А. А. Наджи, Н. А. Кинаш, А. А. Тихомиров, А. И. Труфанов УГРОЗЫ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ ПРОЕКТАМ ДИСТАНЦИОННОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ В СТРАНАХ С ВЫСОКИМ ИНДЕКСОМ НЕДЕЕСПОСОБНОСТИ Введение Сложность реализации дистанционных форм образования в конкретной стране определяется множеством факторов, связанных с уровнем ее развития – социального, экономического, технического и т. д. Одним из общепринятых показателей низкого уровня развития является «рейтинг недееспособности» государств [1]. Например, по данным рейтинга недееспособности государств мира за 2012 г., Йеменская Республика (Йемен) занимает 8-е место. Правительство Йемена, учитывая значимость дистанционного образования (ДО), сформулировало национальную политику по его внедрению. Данная политика нуждается в активном воплощении, что требует ясного понимания и решения сопутствующих проблем информационной безопасности (ИБ) как одного из ключевых факторов успеха. Можно предполагать, что проблемы ИБ ДО в Йемене характерны для большинства стран с высоким индексом недееспособности. Метод исследования Первоочередными задачами при становлении новой области ИБ ДО являются: - анализ рисков; - разработка методов обеспечения ИБ в ДО с учетом новизны самого ДО. Также необходимо обратить внимание на возможность использования самой системы ДО как потенциального канала распространения иной – не академической – конструктивной или деструктивной информации. Основные результаты Если такие факторы, как мошенничество со стороны организаций, предлагающих услуги ДО; мошенничество со стороны студентов, преподавателей, персонала технической поддержки; угрозы Материалы XХ всероссийской научно-практической конференции 116 со стороны конкурентов; угрозы со стороны контролирующих органов; низкая подготовленность заинтересованных в получении ДО; низкая квалификация предлагающих услуги ДО; возникновение различных негативных явлений в физическом, нравственном и духовном здоровье обучаемого в системе ДО, являются известными и присущими любой системе ДО, то анализ рисков ДО в Йемене указывает на широкий спектр специфических угроз ИБ и на их сложную взаимосвязь. Следуя традиционной классификации, выделены следующие источники угроз (ИУ): антропогенные ИУ: - низкий уровень грамотности (Йеменская Республика занимает 154-е место в индексе образования, публикуемом ООН [2], причем этот показатель в последние годы только снижается), - терроризм, экстремизм, гражданская война (продолжается гражданская война против племени Аль-Хути, функционирует штаб Аль-Каиды на юге страны); техногенные ИУ: - проблема электроснабжения (в Йеменской Республике только 52 % населения имеют доступ к электричеству [3]; зафиксированы многочисленные случаи повреждения линий электропередачи злоумышленниками), - низкий уровень развития ИКТ (по данным нового рейтинга развития Интернета в странах мира, включающего пока 61 страну (2012 г.), Йемен занимает последнее место [4]; только 12 % населения используют Интернет), - высокая стоимость интернет-услуг (при полном отсутствии кабельных сетей два часа веб-серфинга через телефонную сеть стоят 1200 риалов (около $ 5,6); для граждан Йемена со средним доходом это означает трату половины зарплаты только на Интернет); природные ИУ: - проблемы с водоснабжением (проблема дефицита воды в Йемене является источником 80 % конфликтов внутри страны; вооруженные конфликты возникают между йеменскими племенами за скважины, подрывая социальную стабильность в стране. Это, в свою очередь, опосредованно осложняет перспективу развития ДО), - наркопотребление (в Йемене выращивается растение кат, которое жуют до 90 % мужского населения и 25 % женщин [5]. Большая часть зарплаты граждан Йемена уходит на покупку листьев ката, остальная часть средств – на поддержание семьи, оставляя образовательные услуги невостребованными. При этом значительное время йеменцы проводят за употреблением ката, который дает ощущение эйфории, сменяющееся спокойствием, и полностью отбивает стремление к учебе). Наряду с вниманием к функциональным уязвимостям системы ДО, с которыми взаимодействует комплекс угроз, не менее, а даже более важным представляется анализ топологической компоненты. Если функциональные уязвимости напрямую связаны с недостаточным финансированием защитных мероприятий, то структурные обусловлены организационными просчетами и ошибками проектирования. Моделирование композитной сети с социальной и технологической составляющими рассматривалось в качестве перспективного инструмента при построении топологически устойчивой системы ДО в Йемене, позволяющей учесть множество специфических, взаимовлияющих друг на друга угроз. Выводы Сформулирован набор наиболее значимых угроз, которые необходимо учитывать при построении устойчивой системы дистанционного образования в бедных странах арабского Востока. Предложено использование сетевых моделей для анализа информационной безопасности систем дистанционного образования с акцентом на их структурные уязвимости. «Проблемы информационной безопасности в системе высшей школы» 117 СПИСОК ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ: 1. http://gtmarket.ru/news/2012/06/19/4439 (дата обращения: 13.12.2012). 2. http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/103706.html (дата обращения: 13.12.2012). 3. http://espanol.doingbusiness.org/~/media/fpdkm/doing%20business/documents/profiles/country/YEM.pdf (дата обращения: 13.12.2012). 4. http://thewebindex.org/data/index/ (дата обращения: 13.12.2012). 5. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кат (дата обращения: 13.12.2012). А. П. Никитин МОДЕЛЬ СИСТЕМЫ ИДЕНТИФИКАЦИИ ПОЛЬЗОВАТЕЛЯ ПЕРСОНАЛЬНОГО КОМПЬЮТЕРА ПО ЕГО «КЛАВИАТУРНОМУ ПОЧЕРКУ» Целью работы является построение теоретической модели системы идентификации пользователей, основанной на применении динамических биометрических параметров. Данной теме посвящено значительное количество работ, однако ряд их носит сугубо теоретический характер, задачей других является аутентификация пользователя. Также в некоторых работах отмечаются ошибки как первого, так и второго рода, затрудняющие практическое использование предложенных схем. Причиной этого является рост объемов текстов и/или длительности обучения. Необходимость системы идентификации пользователя возникает в целом ряде случаев, например, когда стоит задача идентификации «анонимных» пользователей в сети Интернет. Вторым применением данной системы может быть мониторинг пользователей в процессе их работы за компьютером с целью предотвращения НСД в систему через АРМ, на которых уже выполнена аутентификация пользователей другими методами. Наиболее перспективным методом решения данной задачи представляется использование «клавиатурного» почерка, т. е. характерных особенностей работы пользователя с клавиатурой, которые позволяют однозначно идентифицировать пользователя. Система идентификации, предложенная в данной работе, имеет клиент-серверную архитектуру и состоит из двух компонентов – клиентской части, предназначенной для сбора статистики по клавиатурному «почерку», и серверной части, предназначенной для выполнения следующих функций: - построение на основе собранных статистических данных образов «почерка», - хранение образов, - сопоставление полученного образа с имеющимися в базе, - принятие решения об идентификации пользователя на основании сравнения полученного образа его «почерка» с уже имеющимися в базе данных. Клиентская часть комплекса реализуется с использованием приложений уровня ядра, перехватывающих сообщения драйвера клавиатуры. Серверная часть производит первичную обработку полученных от клиента данных. Затем происходит построение образа пользователя. Далее полученный образ последовательно сопоставляется со всеми имеющимися в базе образами. 
work_hbqwtqfzwbel7jruukrhayrbem	----	scorm-poster[1].doc SCORM-compliant SMIL-enabled Multimedia Streaming E-Learning System in Java EJB Environment Sheng-Tun Li Department of Information Management National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. stli@ccms.nkfust.edu.tw Chu-Hung Lin Department of Information Management National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. winf@ ai.nkfust.edu.tw Huang-Chih Hsieh Department of Information Management National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. jack@ai.nkfust.edu.tw ABSTRACT The emergence of the SCORM specification has shed a light toward standardization of e-learning which makes the reusability and interoperability of learning resources feasible. However, the existing SCORM-compliant asset model is over-simplified; only few asset types are defined. On the other hand, W3C’s declarative-style SMIL is becoming prevalent in designing Web- based instructions with the consideration of temporality and spatiality of the presentations. In addition, advances in real-time multimedia technologies can further vitalize these instructions. In this study, we propose a SMIL-enabled asset model with the enhancement of multimedia streaming. To render SCORM- compliant SMIL-enabled streaming contents, a Java applet-based SMIL RTP/RTSP LMS system is designed in the Java EJB environment to tackle the issue of platform interoperability. The resulting system demonstrates an encouraging direction towards more vivid and interactive SCORM-compliant e-learning. Keywords SCORM, e-learning, SMIL, multimedia streaming, EJB 1. INTRODUCTION The rapidly increasing expansion of the Internet has brought dramatic impact to one’s life and education alike. E-learning differentiates from the traditional learning in its ability to train anyone, anytime, and anywhere attributed to the openness of the Internet. Without the temporal and spatial limitation, one can have an independent and individual learning space. In general, digitalized courseware is managed by the so-called Learning Management System (LMS), which educates learners in the courseware and keeps track of their learning behaviors. However, most courseware in different LMS environments cannot be interoperable directly, which impedes the attempt to share learning resources. In addition, the heterogeneity existing in the different LMSs is another impediment. It is inconvenient to monitor and evaluate learner’s behavior from one environment to another. All these hinder the sharing of learning resources including LMSs and the contents. The emerging SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) standard has been developed to overcome these hurdles. The objective of the specification is to facilitate the interoperability between SCORM- compliant contents and SCORM-compliant LMSs, and to make the valuable resources become durable, interoperable, accessible, and reusable [1]. The present asset model of SCORM is over-simplified in supporting multimedia presentations; vivid multimedia streaming contents are usually excluded. In addition, designing the SCORM-compliant streaming contents is not a trivial task. Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) [2], built on XML, proposed by W3C provides a simple way to design multimedia presentations in a similar manner to HTML documents. The SMIL specification meets three requirements of multimedia document models, namely temporal, spatial and interaction. To vitalize the asset contents of SCORM, this study proposes a new asset model based on the SMIL and RTP/RTSP standards so that the features of spatiality, temporality, interaction, and streaming control can be added into assets. The extended asset model conforms to SCORM, and thus any SMIL-enabled asset can be imported to LMS and can communicate with LMS to track the learners’ learning progress. Moreover, to facilitate the interoperability of sharable course contents and LMS, we develop a LMS on the top of Enterprise Java Bean (EJB), a distributed component-based computing environment, for realizing SCORM- compliant SMIL-enabled multimedia streaming contents. 2. SMIL-ENABLED MULTIMEDIA- STREAMING ASSETS In SCORM, the mechanism of Content Packaging is designed for packing instruction contents and the navigation sequences. In a content package, the portion of “organizations” specifies the content structure and the browsed sequence of this content. The “resources” session describes the instruction materials needed in this content, such as the type and physical location of each physical file. To create a SMIL-enabled asset, one may define an unlaunchable asset, which refers to a physical filename ending with “.smil” (see Table 1, for example). Table 1. The unlaunchable SMIL-enabled asset ……… <!--unlaunchable asset--> <resource identifier="R_U1" type="webcontent"adlcp:scormtype="asset"> <file href="resource/intro.smil" /> </resource> ……… The intro.smil resource defines the rendering sequence of text, image, and sound objects, RTP/RTSP streams synchronously in different regions. Table 2 illustrates a porting of the resource. 3. SCORM-COMPLIANT LMS IN EJB Figure 1 shows the system architecture of the LMS in the EJB environment for realizing SMIL-enabled streaming assets. Initially, the client has to download an API Adapter applet from the Object Web Server. The applet is an EJB component responsible for communicating with the LMS Server to access learning resources. There are five enterprise Java beans in LMS Server on the EJB container. UserEJB, an entity bean, is in charge of confirming the legality of users and maintaining information of the users. cListEJB, an entity bean, maintains the list of instructions available in LMS so that students may choose the courses they like to browse. ReadEJB, an entity bean, tracks and records the learning behavior of each student in the data model defined in SCORM’s RTE in the background. This bean plays the most important role in the proposed LMS. C2SYSEJB, a session bean, allows teachers or system adminstrators to import courses or update course contents. In detail, this EJB object is responsible for unzipping the content package (a PIF file) of instructions, analyzing the imsmanifest, and allocating all physical files in approciate locatons in a content repository. Moreover, this session bean is the interface between EJB client and CourseEJB. CourseEJB, an entity bean, endorses the C2SYSEJB bean to access the content repository database. In the implementation, this entity bean is wrapped by CourseEJB in a session bean therefore one can access all the business functionalities without the overhead of polling the entity bean. Table 2. The content of SMIL resource: intro.smil <seq repeat="1"> <par endsync="last" repeat="1"> <rtp id="img-1" region="main" src="rtp://224.0.0.1:999/audio" dur="250s" fill="remove" /> </par> <rtsp region="main" src="rtsp://163.18.16.220/ProgID=1036806870" dur="250s" fill="remove" /> </seq> In order to support manipulating multimedia streams, SMIL Parser parse SMIL-enabled assets and extract embedded multimedia objects. If the extracted object is a RTP object, RTP Handler will be invoked to receive RTP media streams, synchronize audio and video srtream, and render them in the client screen [3]. On the other hand, when client obtains a RTSP object, RTSP Remote Controller is additionally called. Initially, RTSP Server returns a SDP (Session Description Protocol) message, which describes the information of RTP media to be transmitted. After parsing the SDP data by SDP Parser, RTP Handler receives and consumes the RTP stearms. During the playback, RTSP Remote Controller handles the RTSP protocol between client and RTSP Server. Besides, the client may issue the Play, Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind, or Stop command to control the streams. RTSP Remote Controller RTP Handler SMIL Parser SDP Parser API Adapter Applet EJB Conainer Course C2SYSUser cListRead Object Web Server ObjectObject Object RMI over IIOP API Adapter RTSP Server RTP Server Streaming media Server Client HTTP SMIL Applet RTSP over TCP/IP RTP over UDP/IP Local Content Repository Remote Content Repository LMS Server Figure 1. The proposed LMS architecture in EJB environment 4. EXPERIMENT The proposed SMIL-enabled multimedia streaming e-learning system has been experimented on the JBoss-3.0.3_Tomcat-4.1.12 EJB server [4]. Figure 2 illustrates the snapshot of browsing SMIL-enabled RTP/RTSP multimedia assets with a VCR-like control bar. Figure 2. The presentation of SMIL-enabled RTP/RTSP asset 5. CONCLUSIONS This paper proposed a SMIL-enabled asset model, which allows W3C’s SMIL documents with multimedia streaming objects to be embedded in instructions. We developed a Java applet-based SMIL player and LMS for realizing and rendering such assets on the learner’s Web browser. To handle the interoperability issue of LMSs, the developed LMS was built in the Java EJB component- based computing environment. With the SMIL-ability and the streaming multimedia objects of assets, instruction contents could be more vivid and interactive. The proposed asset model is adherent to the SCORM standard; thus it can be sharable, reusable, accessible and durable. The next research direction is to enhance the proposed LMS by incorporating a directory service such as LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) so that the remote SMIL-enabled assets can be interoperable and sharable. 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was partly supported by NSC91-2520-S-327-001, Taiwan. The first author is supported in part by the Innovation and Incubation Center at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology under contract 90B00025. 7. REFERENCES [1] Sharable Content Object Reference Model Version 1.2, http://www.adlnet.org/. [2] “Synchronized Multimedia,” http://wwww.w3.org/AudioVideo. [3] Li, S.-T. and Chen, H.-C., “An Architecture-neutral Approach to Web-based Synchronized Multimedia Presentations with RTP Video Streams,” The Seventh International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS'2001), Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan, September 26-28, 2001. [4] Jboss, http://www.jboss.org. 
work_hcgjjy7i3ndhrmvd4pxuljo6gm	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_hck2k2ilhzcpngbdqtkzmrrckq	----	General overview on distance education concept Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877–0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.04.404 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 3999–4004 General overview on distance education concept Tahir Tavukcua *, brahim Arapa, Deniz Özcan a aComputer Education & Instructional Technology, Near East University, Nicosia, 98010, North Cyprus Abstract In 21th Century, depending on the development of information and communication technology tool, restructuring studies have been also made on education as it is made on each sector. World states strike out the education policies in parallel with the develoment of communication technologies. Distance education concept has gained a different dimension by using Web 3.0 tools of internet instead of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 tools. Educational institutions have created new opportunities thanks to development of the internet and increasing the frequency use of it, and they also provide e-learning environment to provide Web support in Distance Education. Distance Education is a field of education that focuses on the pedagogy, technology, and instructional system designs that aim to deliver education to students who are not physically "on site" in a traditional classroom or campus. Nowadays , researches on the use of computer networks are becoming increasingly common in distance education technique. In this article, we have studied the history, limits, and advantages of distance education, and also the applications of distance education in our country today and in future. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance learning, e-lerning, web-aided education; 1. Introduction 1.1. Distance Education: Main definition Developing computer technology has brought innovations. Increasing of computer use filed has provided many opportunities, and has made the computer takes place in education. In computer technology, the use of internet network with the aim of communicating with other people has provided opportunity to deliver education to people who are away (Varol, 2007; Tuncay, N., & Uzunboylu, H., 2010). Distance education is an education system that teaching and learning actions have been performed via communication technologies and mailing services by the teachers and students being different environment ( man, 2005). Alkan (1998) defines the distance education as ‘it is a teaching method provided through varied environment and teaching units that interaction and communication between the planners and practitioners of educational activities and students have been specifically prepared in conditions that traditional teaching and learning methods limit the application of classroom activities.” Basic reasons of popularity of distance education in this era, and the adoption of developing information communication technologies to the distance education have been listed by man, 2005) as; * Tahir Tavukcu. Tel.: +90-392-2236464/110. E-mail address: tahirtavukcu@hotmail.com. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector https://core.ac.uk/display/82486447?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=pdf-decoration-v1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 4000 Tahir Tavukcu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 3999–4004 • Teachers and students are in different places. • The use of communication technologies. • The use of mailing services. • School attendance is not compulsory. • Special teaching methods. • One-way and two-way communication • Special programs, special tools and supplies. According to Gürol & At , 2001. Distance education has 6 indispensable features; 1. Teachers and students are in different places. 2. Existing of students and institution relationship. 3. The use of environment and tools such as printed materials providing communication between students and institution. 4. Possibility of face to face education at certain times. 5. Preperation towards the realization of two-way communication between students and institution. 6. Combining working life with education. Teaching processes are carried out in three-dimensional approaches in distance education method(Atasoy, 2004); a) Teaching with printed materials b) Teaching through publications c) Face to face teaching Implementation of distance education methods are applied in two ways as synchronous and asynchronous (Burma, 2004). Synchronous communication is a face to face communication that occurs at the same time but people do not have to be at the same place during that period. In the field of distance education, this communication type is based on sharing data and information by implementing two or more computers’ connections with each other over a computer network. As an example, communication proceeds with written text, audio tools, video and other techniques. In asynchronous applications, course content is presented to students as one way, and interaction is extremely limited. TV broadcast systems or materials such as books, CD ROMs, and video tapes are used in this application. (Jonassen, 2000). 2. History of Distance Education Distance education first started with sending letters and has come up today. Course notes that sent to students through the post formed the base of distance education. Teaching with letter has provided education almost in every branch of science for cultural development and professional trainning [1]. The British Open University, starting with newspaper and established in 1960s in England, lead to distance education in the history takes place below: First distance education studies started with Steno Lessons” in a newspaper in 1728. Composition courses with letter were given to women in Swedish University in 1833. Education with letter department was first opened in Chicago University in 1892. Hermands which is one of the leading institutions in the world in distance education established in Swedish in 1898. Language education was given in this institution. Postal elementary started in the US in 1906 . First radio station related to education was established in the US in 1919. 1920 ABD’de 176 radio stations were published with the purpose of education in the US in 1920. High school education with letter started in the US in 1923. Educational TV broadcast started in IOWA University in 1932-1937. Distance education was provided to students during the war years in France in 1930. “British Open University” was established in England in 1960. Tahir Tavukcu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 3999–4004 4001 3. Distance Education Today, many universities around the world give distance education services via internet. Students registered for distance education programs continue their education without leaving their environment. Students can follow their programs without being has to go to university thanks to distance education. It forces the limits of today’s conventional school institution and makes the education a virtual fact by removing it from international dimension (Aktay, 2002; Bravo, E., Enache, M., Fernandez, V., & Simo, P., 2010). Developing technology and changing definitions (Eryol, 2009): Web-based Learning Online Learning E-Learning Computer Based Learning Distance Education / Distance Learning ? Figure1. Technology adaptation in education As it is seen in figure 1’at the beginning of 1920s, the excitement of radio and television replaced with computer technologies in 2000s, and it can be said that computers and internet become slowly dominated in education sector as it is in all areas. 3.1 Web Based Learning Web based learning is that educational content can be watched with the web browser. Resource downloading from the web is not in this context. t can be accesible on the internet, local network or CD/DVD. Especially it can be used in places having full multimedia data or limited network connection. 3.2 Online Learning Online learning includes the educational materials which are avaliable in computer such as online support, online documents, and online services. Office asistant and web page creation wizards are also included in online learning. t is not necessary to use the network. 4002 Tahir Tavukcu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 3999–4004 3.3 Distance Education Distance education is based on the principle of the communication among the students and their tutors from the specific distance.it is not necessary to use the network. It can be more effective when used with e-learning. Typical examples of distance education with e-learning are web-based live educational broadcasts,video conferences, email and discussion groups. 3.4 E- Learning E-learning is the use of computer and internet technologies whenever and wherever students need education. Figure2. Electronic Learning Design Framework 4. Distance Education in Our Country First distance education application has been experienced in Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) Campus of Open University. In TRNC, private universities have brought new dimensions on distance education applications by using Learning Management System in undergraduate and master courses. Results of the study done in the Ministry of Education show that an internationally recognized company is getting prepared to establish an institute to give distance education. In this sense, it is seen that distance education applications are becoming prevalent in TRNC. Attempts to establish distance education center at Near East University in these days, and applications of distance education method in master courses in some private universities in TRNC provide contributions to the education sysytem of TRNC. 5. Advantages of Distance Education The most important advantage of distance education is to make lifelong learning easy. Advantages of distance education have been stated as below (Kaya, 2002): • Provides different education options • Facilitates mass education • Provides information from the first source • Gives individuals responsibility for learning • Provide individual and independent learning • Provides a rich learning environment for students • Reduces the cost of education, • Provides a standard in education program • Minimizes the inequality of opportunity Tahir Tavukcu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 3999–4004 4003 Comparison of traditional education with internet-based education system is given in table 1 (Hazmaçebi, 2002). Accordingly, internet-based education system is based on student-centred and constructivist approach. Students tend to be researcher and more cooperative. Table 1. Comparison of Traditional Education and Internet-Based Education System 6. Limitations of Distance Education Besides its advantages, distance education has also some limitations. Limits of distance education are listed as below (Kaya, 2002; Yurdakul, 2005): • Lack of individual assistance. • Blocks socialization of individuals. • Lack of immediate feedback. • Lack of communication and interaction. • Depends on access facilities and communication technologies. • Not effective for all lessons. • Has limitations in terms of face to face communication and interaction. • Limitations in communication due to excess number of students. •Although it is effective in cognitive acquisition, it is limited in developing of affectional and psychomotor behaviours. • Difficulties in the realization of application studies. • Not useful for students not having independent study habit. • Cost can be high according to used technology. 7. Results The model of this study named as Distance Education Concept is a literature survey. Our research states that distance education has gained a new dimension with development of information and communication technology. Web-based distance education has gained popularity, and this education system has been applied in everywhere due to becoming wide spreading of the internet. Every day, universities and even other educational institutions have put distance education concept in curriculum using both asynchronous (asynchronous) and synchronous (simultaneous) applications. Moreover, our daily lives cell phones have become part of the education system, and mobile learning concept has gained importance in people’s minds. It is seen that world states have made important changes in educational policy and have brought professional education together with internet by revising individuals’ education needs. Anymore distance education system has gained popularity in our country. Researchers and experts in this field have made studies on using distance education applications widely in primary, secondary and all the academic institutions. These studies present training design by taking limits and advantages of distance education system into consideration and provide significant benefit to information age. Especially, distance education is preferred by people who are disabled and volunteer for technology, and want to meet economic needs and people who could not have completed their education. Today, the spread of internet has made distance education people’s favourite within the scope of lifelong education. Researches and experts expect the spread of distance education in all education institutions by decreasing the limits of distance education to minimum level. Classroom activities Role of teacher Role of student Learning method Concept of knowledge Use of technology Traditional Education Teacher-centered Dominant in teaching Audience, passive in learning Memorization Accumulation of knowledge Exercises and practices Internet Based Education Student-centered Guides in teaching and learning Makes cooperation, active in learning Relationship between concepts and new discoveries Transformation of knowledge Communication, sharing and access to information 4004 Tahir Tavukcu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 3999–4004 References Gürol, M., At , B. (2001). Uzaktan E itimden Uzaktan Ö renme Anlay na Dönü mesinde WWW’nin Etkisi. Bili im Teknolojileri I nda itim (BTIE), 3–5 May s 2001, ODTÜ Kültür ve Kongre Merkezi: Ankara, s. 133-138 Aktay, Y. (2002) E itimde küresel imkânlar küreselle en dünyada e itimde f rsat e itli i ve özgürle im f rsatlar üzerine. Kuram ve Uygulamada itim Bilimleri. 2 (1) May s 2002 EDAM, stanbul. Varol, N., “ nternet’in Uzaktan E itimdeki Konumu” http://scholar.google.com D.H. Jonassen, Computers as Mindtools for Schools: Engaging Critical Thinking (2.nd Edition), Upper Saddle River, Prentice-Hall, inc, New Jersey, 2000. Demir, M ve Kaya, Z. (2002).Uzaktan Egitim Teknolojilerine Yönelik Materyal Kullan n Yasal Boyutlar , Uluslararas Aç k ve Uzaktan itim Sempozyumu, Eski ehir: Anadolu Üniversitesi http://aof20.anadolu.edu.tr/bildiriler/Mehmet_Demir.doc 14.01.2010 Atasoy A., Aç k ö retim lisesi televizyon ders programlar n de erlendirilmesi, http://egitek.meb.gov.tr/bulten/evt/evt7/evt3.html, 27.01.2010 Burma, A., Z., (2004) “AB’ye Geçi Sürecinde Meslek Elemanlar n Uzaktan Ö retimle E itimi” http://scholar.google.com Gökhan E., (2009) Ulusal Akademik A ve Bilgi Merkezi, III. Ulaknet Çal tay ve E itimi, E-Ö renme Çal ma Grubu Hamzaçebi, Ç. (2002). Bilgi Toplumu ve Egitim. T SK isveren Dergisi Nisan 2002, http://www.tisk.org.tr/isveren_sayfa.asp?yazi_id=508&id=30 03.01.2010 Yurdakul, B. (2005). itimde Yeni Yönelimler (Ed: Demirel, Ö.). PegemA Yay nc k: Ankara. Alkan, C. (1998). E itim Teknolojisi. An Yay nc k: Ankara. Kaya, Z. (2002): Uzaktan E itim. PegemA Yay nc k: Ankara. man, A. (2005): Uzaktan E itim. Ö reti Yay nc k: Ankara. [1]http://www.uluslararasiegitim.com/uzak/default.asp, 12.01.2010 Tuncay, N., & Uzunboylu, H. (2010). Anxiety and Resistance in Distance Learning. Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences, 5(2), 142- 150 Bravo, E., Enache, M., Fernandez, V., & Simo, P. (2010). An innovative teaching practice based on online channels: A qualitative approach. World Journal on Educational Technology, 2(2),113-123. 
work_hdlyxm3iynbnxcuqnj7ug6okcm	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 436 176 IR 019 801 AUTHOR Lockee, Barbara B.; Burton, John K.; Cross, Lawrence H. TITLE No Comparison: Distance Education Finds a New Use for "No Significant Difference." PUB DATE 1999-02-00 NOTE 8p.; In: Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers Presented at the National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT] (21st, Houston, TX, February 10-14, 1999); see IR 019 753. PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) Reports Evaluative (142) Speeches /Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Audiovisual Instruction; Comparative Analysis; *Distance Education; Educational History; *Educational Media; *Educational Technology; Evaluation Methods; Evaluation Problems; *Evaluation Research; Higher Education; Instructional Effectiveness; Intermode Differences; Literature Reviews; *Research Methodology; *Research Problems; Statistical Significance ABSTRACT This paper details the origins of the media comparison study methodology, its current use as an evaluation instrument in distance education, and recommendations for more stringent discrimination between research and evaluation in the field of distance learning. The following topics are discussed: (1) the history of research in instructional technology from 1968 to the present; (2) recent research in distance learning, including the difference between evaluation and research, and weaknesses in many instructional technology studies (e.g., failing to link the study to a robust theory, poor literature review, weak treatment implementation, measurement flaws, inadequate sample size, and poor analyses) that bias the research toward not finding a statistically significant difference; and (3) evaluation versus research in distance education, focusing on appropriate uses of media comparisons for distance program evaluation, as well as alternative methods and exemplary models. (Contains 55 references.) (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ti NO COMPARISON: DISTANCE EDUCATION FINDS A NEW USE FOR -"NO SIGNIFICANTOIFFERENCE" PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL Barbara B. Lockee Office of Educational Research and Improvement HAS BEEN GRANTED BY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION John K. Burton CENTER (ERIC) S. Zenor Lawrence H. Cross This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Virg inia Tech CO Minor changes have been made to C1 improve reproduction quality. Abstract .7 INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Recent exponential growth in the field of distance education has unfortunately not been matched with equal growth in a quality research base in terms of informing effective practice. In their 1996 analysis of the distance education literature, Mclsaac & Gunawardena state that "much research has taken the form of program evaluation, descriptions of individual programs, brief case studies, institutional surveys and speculative reports" (1996, p. 421). In the past few years, a particular form of study regarding the effectiveness of distance learning has enjoyed increased publication. Instructional technology professionals will recognize the methodology behind these reports as the media comparison study, newly revived for use in a distance education setting. Media comparison studies have historically formed the basis of much research in distance education (Mclsaac & Gunawardena, 1996; Schlosser & Anderson, 1994), but are lately becoming even more common. These studies are predictably plagued with the same design issues as their predecessors, however their "no difference" outcomes are being reported for politically different reasons. This paper details the origins of the media comparison study, its current use as an evaluation instrument in distance education, and recommendations for more stringent discrimination between research and evaluation in the field of distance learning. History of research in instructional technology Since the adoption of modern media for instructional purposes, innumerable attempts have been made to measure the effect that a given technology has on student achievement. Early in the history of electronic technologies like film and radio, educational researchers were driven to demonstrate that these revolutionary devices had a positive impact on learning (Saettler, 1968). The most common approach to attempt this investigation was the "media comparison" study, so named because of its strategy of comparing the learning outcomes of an experimental group receiving instructional content via one medium against the outcomes of a control group receiving the same content through a different medium. The most popular control group was the "traditional", or lecture format class, with the instructor serving as the delivery medium. Even though comparison studies were fairly simple in design, variations of the research strategy exist. Most maintained the "media" as the independent variable, but some used the same instructional method (e.g., presentation via live lecture vs. presentation via videotape of the same lecture) while others utilized different instructional methods and different media (presentation via lecture vs. problem solving via computer-based instruction) (Ross & Morrison, 1996). The use of media comparison studies dates back to the origins of mediated instruction. Early researchers in audiovisual education worked diligently to control all aspects of such experiments so that results would maintain validity and comparisons would be fair. For example, McClusky & McClusky produced a "Comparison of six modes of presentation of subject matter". Two trial experiments were conducted comparing six methods of presentation for the content depicted in two separate lessons: film only, slides with subtitles only, photographic pictures with subtitles only, and each medium with a supplemental question and answer session. Experiments were carefully controlled so participants viewed slide and print images for exactly the same time as such images appeared in the film. Recall of content was measured for each group using multiple-choice tests. The outcomes reflect some of the earliest evidence of what Russell (1997) calls the non-significant difference (NSD) phenomenon: "These comparisons show such inconsistent results that the film, slide, and print appear to possess no distinct advantage one over the other as far as these particular experiments are concerned" (Russell, 1997,p. 257). And, as history repeats itself, the tendency was to try this research design with the advent of any newer technological innovation, with consistent production of the same non-significant results. In 1983, Richard Clark, one of the most renowned critics of instructional technology research, detailed the problems inherent in media comparison studies and the improper assumptions about their outcomes. He stated that "these findings were incorrectly offered as evidence that different media were 'equally effective' as conventional means in promoting learning. No significant difference results simply suggest that changes in outcome scores did not C) result from any systematic differences in the treatments compared" (Clark, 1983, p. 447). Clark emphasized that .10 media are merely the delivery mechanisms for instructional content and do not impact the learning process. This perspective spurred great debate within the field of instructional technology (Clark, 1994a; 1994b; Kozma, 1991; -c" 1994a; 1994b; Jonassen, Campbell, & Davidson, 1994; Morrison, 1994; Reiser, 1994; Shrock, 1994; Tennyson, 465 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE 1994). While some contend that certain attributes of media can and do effect learning outcomes (Kozma, 1991; 1994a, 1994b), Clark maintains that it is instructional method that influences learning, not the delivery medium (Clark, 1983; 1994a; 1994b). While this debate will undoubtedly continue, the futility of comparison studies to measure the impact of media on learning is consistently recognized in the field of instructional technology (Ross & Morrison, 1996). A chronological collection of hundreds of such experiments can be found at http:/ /www2.ncsu.edu/oit/nsdsplit.htm (Russell, 1997). The database serves as a reminder to researchers that comparative designs will continue to provide predictable, non-significant outcomes. While the tendency is to compare learning outcomes via different media is to demonstrate the greater effectiveness of the newer medium, distance education comparison studies have given the argument a new twist. As evidenced in the following examples, the outcomes are now used to demonstrate that the distance-delivered instructional event is at least equal to the campus-based, face-to-face version. Kanner, Runyon, & Desiderato (1958) espoused this approach in less optimistic terms when summarizing their televised instruction research by stating that televised sessions were no more detrimental to classroom learning than face-to-face instruction. Recent research in distance learning As anyone involved in the support of distance education programming is aware, the resources required to deliver such programming to geographically and temporally dispersed learners are not inconsequential. Though cost- saving goals are often highlighted in plans for reaching new and different student markets, the front-end investments needed in course development, delivery infrastructures, teaching technologies, and support staff can be formidable (Keegan, 1996; Musial & Kampmueller, 1996). In analyzing the use of distance program evaluation data, Thorpe (1988) explains that administrators venturing into this new educational arena are expectedly anxious to use positive evaluation results to promote the desirable aspects of providing opportunities for remote student clientele. Increased access to such programming does not seem to serve as a satisfactory benefit for the implementation of distance education efforts. Stakeholders desire to demonstrate that participants in distance-delivered courses receive the same quality of instruction off -campus as those involved in the "traditional" classroom setting. What better way to determine the equality of experiences than to compare student achievement between the two groups? For example, according to New lands & McLean (1996) "The calming of fears about the quality of distance learning has been assisted by evidence that, in terms of assessment, distance students perform as well as internal students..." (p. 289). One of the most prominent early works in teleconferencing training, Bridging the Distance (Monson, 1978), employs a collection of comparison studies for this very reasonto ensure soon-to-be distance educators that off-campus students will be just as academically successful as their campus-bound counterparts. The guaranteed validation of equality of learner achievement has led to use of comparison studies about distance education in almost every imaginable discipline. The research design remains exactly the same as previously compared mediated experiences, the on-campus students serve as the control group, since their experience is unmediated, while the distant students provide the treatment group. For example, "The 38 South Carolina campus students, considered the control group in this report, completed either all or the majority of their degree programs in traditional classroom settings on the Columbia campus" (Douglas, 1996, p. 878). Repeatedly, outcomes are embodied in statements like "there was no real difference between grades of in-class and ITV students" (Fox, 1996, p. 362). Some authors offer additional analysis such as, 'There were no differences between pre-and post-tests (which measure increases in knowledge) across sites. This demonstrates that the program was effective in increasing knowledge..." (Reiss, Cameon, Matthews, & Shenkman, 1996, p. 350). Behind conclusions such as these is the conviction that distance learners are engaged in an equally rigorous instructional experience even though they are not participating in campus-based education. General unawareness of the history of instructional technology research, especially the out-dated notion of the effectiveness of comparison studies, is exemplified in a recent sociology journal through the following excerpt: Of greatest concern to us is the absence of well-crafted comparison studies, that examine not simply student attitudes towards distance learning, but the actual knowledge and skills that students acquire from televised teaching. Ideally, this demonstration could involve the same instructor teaching two sections of the same course during the same school term, one exclusively by live instruction and the other only by distance learning (Thyer, Polk, & Gaudin, 1997, p. 367). Instructional technology research journals are not exempt from the publication of such studies. In a 1996 issue of Educational Technology Research & Development, Whetzel, Felker, and Williams began their article "A Real World Comparison of the Effectiveness of Satellite Training and Classroom Training" with an analysis of research regarding the effectiveness of televised instruction, summing up the mixed results by re-stating Clark's (1994) view that "...any necessary teaching method can be delivered by many media with similar learning results (Whetzel, Felker, & Williams, 1996, p. 6). However, their study used a research design that compared the achievement of the on-site versus distant students: 466 3 -For the two courses in -which satellite and classroom training --were compared, an analysis of -covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare delivery modes for nonequivalent groups (satellite and classroom participants), using pretest score as the covariate and poshest score as the dependent variable (Whetzel et al.. 1996, p..10). The use of media comparison studies in distance learning is not-limited to higher education settings. Barry & Runyan (1995) assembled a "Review of Distance Education Studies in the U.S. Military" in which they cited eight "empirical studies that compared student achievement in distance learning courses to achievement in comparable resident courses" (p. 43). Their closing statement embraced the reliable non-significant difference results as proof that the U.S. military could safely continue to invest in the expansion of distance learning initiatives. Due to the expanded publication of studies like these, a distinction must be made between valid research in distance education and evaluation efforts for distance program confirmation. Methodology analysis Although we often use the terms interchangeably, as we have noted earlier, evaluation and research are not the same although they may share many methods. Evaluation is practical and concerned with how to improve a product or whether to buy and use a product. Studies that compare one program or media against another are primarily evaluation. Evaluations seeks to find the -programs that "work" more cheaply, efficiently, quickly, effectively, etc. Research, on the other hand tends to be more concerned with testing theoretical concepts and constructs or with attempting to isolate variables to observe their contributions to a process or outcome (Moore, Myers, & Burton, 1994, p. 35) Research studies generate hypotheses from theory. In the case of so called "hard"- sciences such as physics, these predictions are usually a quantitative point value, magnitude, or form function which become point predictions (Meehl, 1967). Point predictions become easier to refute as measurement improves, that is, the better the measurement the more the hypothesis is exposed to rejection. (Indeed many replications involve changes in measures rather than "study" conditions). Rejection, in the case of a point prediction, is a modus tollens refutation (i.e. T -> E, not E, therefore not T) (Popper, 1968). Research in the "soft" sciences however, does not, indeed cannot, test point predictions. Rather, the logical compliment of the predicted outcome, the point -null hypothesis (there is no difference-between, for example, two groups of participant's mean scores) is tested. Interestingly, the effect of this manipulation is that the theoretically derived hypothesis is not subjected to true modus tollens it cannot be logically refuted (Meehl, 1967). The null hypothesis can be accepted but not embraced as true, yet it's acceptance does not refute the core hypothesis (Orey, Garrison, & Burton, 1989). For this reason (among others such as the "loose" connection between theory and variables), it is often the case that "soft" science researchers -commonly speculate about what could have occurred when the null is accepted. Such post hoc speculation is permissible because the core hypothesis cannot be truly refuted. Such theories never actually die, researchers just sort of "...lose interest in the thing and pursue other endeavors" (Meehl, 1978, p. 807). Theory-based research studies are not good candidates to be "repurposed" as "negative" evidence that something didn't happen. A "second level" problem relates to what Reeves (1993, 1995) among others has referred to as pseudoscience. Reeves offers nine characteristics of pseudoscientific studies and estimates that perhaps 60% - 70% of "empirical-quantitative" studies in the major instructional technology research journals suffer from two or more of these flaws. The bulk of these weaknesses such as failing to link the study to a robust theory, poor literature review, weak treatment implementation, measurement flaws, inadequate sample size, and poor analyses (Reeves, 1993; 1995)) bias the research towards not finding a statistically significant difference (Burton & Magliaro, 1988). In other words, bad science and bad designs can produce no differences. The last two comments relate to both theoretical and evaluation comparative studies. The first comment is that when we test a hypothesis, we test not just the variable of interest, we also test the assumption of ceteris paribus (all things are assumed to be equal except' for those conditions that are actually manipulated) (Orey et al., 1989). It is in a fact a "folk" version of ceteris paribus which researchers often resort to when they explain the failure to find a predicted statistically significant difference by resorting to differences in the sample or task that were outside of what was being manipulated. To the extent that ceteris paribus is not-true, the results of the study (in either "direction") are suspect. With test such as ANOVA and ANCOVA, this relates to the assumption of homogeneity of variance. This assumption is often not tested because the tests are assumed to be robust to such violations (Thompson, 1993). Unfortunately,-it does not appear to be true with ANCOVA (see, e.g. Keppel & Zedeck, 1989) and may not be true of ANOVA either (e.g. Wilcox, Charlin, &Thompson, 1986). Second, in research or evaluation, measurement is a problem. Faulty measurement was another of Reeves' (1993, 1995) indicators of pseudoscience but in evaluation, particularly as it relates to "real world" educational contexts such as found in distance or-distributed education, the problem is often more insidious. The burden of showing reliability and validity for any test not in general use is always upon the researcher (Burton & Magliaro, 1988). Many studies related to distance learning use "teacher-made achievement tests" which may, or may not have 467 4 reliabilities or validaties established. Perhaps worse than using a test which produces scores which are largely error or unrelated to the content however, is the fact that such tests are often used a part of a graded exercise. Graded exercises may cause people who tend to make A's and B's simply work harder to overcome any problem in the instruction. The potential lack of adequate tests are measurement problems. The potential difference in effortare violations of ceteris paribus. In terms of statistics, many current researchers have argued that null hypothesis testing should be eliminated altogether (e.g. Carver, 1993) while others such as Thompson (1996) and Robinson & Levin (1997) would like to see such tests supplemented. Although there are differences, both camps tend to agree on two things: effect size and replication. Effect sizes should always be reported according to Thompson (1996) but, as Levin (1993) points out "to talk of effect sizes in the face of results that are not statistically significant does not make sense" (p. 379) Replication refers to repeating essentially the same experiment multiple times. No finding should ever stand on a single study. It is worth noting however, that while some believe that such experiments can inform social science theory (e.g. Phillips, 1992), others (e.g. Salomon, 1991) believe that no matter how well constructed experimental and similar research approaches are, "they are based on a number of assumptions, none of which fit the study of whole classroom cultures" (p.13). We assume this would include distant classrooms and distributed cultures. Finally we offer the following caveat related to accepting NSD studies as proof. Establishing a null is very much like the not guilty assumption of the US legal system. In both cases, the burden of proof is on overturning the assumption based on evidence. But failure to reject the null hypothesis means just that and nothing more; just as a legal finding of not guilty does not mean innocent. As Carver (1978) puts it: What is the probability of obtaining a dead person given that the person was hanged? Obviously, it is very high, perhaps .97 or higher. Now, let us reverse the question. What is the probability that a person has been hanged, given that the person is dead? This time the probability will undoubtedly be very low, perhaps .01 or lower. No one would be likely to make the mistake of substituting the first estimate (.97) for the second (.01); that is to accept (.97) that a person has been hanged given that the person is dead. Even though this seems an unlikely mistake, it is exactly the kind of mistake that is made with interpretations of statistical significance testing (pp. 384 385). Evaluation versus Research in Distance Education While it may have been the intent of the investigators of comparison studies cited herein to create generalizable findings, the motivation behind the studies were most likely to obtain information about the success of local distance education programs. Appropriate uses of media comparisons for distance program evaluation are detailed as follows, as well as alternative methods and exemplary models. Evaluation in distance education Program evaluations in education frequently look to achievement as a measure of success, and sometimes through the use of comparison studies as an evaluation method. Smith & Glass (1987) call such inquiries comparative evaluations, as the studies assess the effectiveness of a product or program by pitting it against an alternative product or program that is designed to meet the same needs. However, such comparisons work best if the treatment group and control group are similar in identity and can be randomly assigned (Fitz-Gibbon & Morris, 1978), which is usually not the case in distance education. Participants in higher education distributed courses are typically non-traditional learners who cannot attend class at the originating institution, hence their enrollment in distance programs. Not only are these students different demographically, but they also possess other characteristics which vary from traditional college attendees, such as prior knowledge and experience and level of motivation (Verduin & Clark, 1991). In any case, if comparative evaluations can be designed to represent comparable groups of learners, the results of such studies must be published as local findings instead of generalizable contributions to the theoretical base of distance education. Although student achievement is one common measure of distance program success, Keegan (1996), Holmberg (1989), and Thorpe (1988) recommend that program evaluators collect and report a number of other types of data to give the most exhaustive description of a distance education program. Saveyne & Box (1995) suggest the collection of information with regard to instructional design, participant attitudes (student and instructor), and implementation issues, such as technical quality, student support, etc. Keegan (1996) proposes a four-point evaluation scheme for distance programs which assesses 1) the quantity of learning achieved such as the number of new students served, attrition rates, time to program completion, etc.; 2) the quality of learning achieved measured by the effectiveness of the program in facilitating desired learning outcomes; 3) the status of the learning achieved indicated by the transferability of program coursework, recognition of degrees by employers or graduate institutions; and 4) the relative cost of the learning achieved acquired through the analysis of the cost-efficiency of distance programs relative to conventional programs, as well as the cost benefits of the distance program versus traditional programs (1996, pp.186-188). The case studies provided by Keegan (1996) are mindful examples of distance program evaluations, as they provide a thorough portrayal of program efforts through analysis of the aforementioned indicators. Another effective distance evaluation model can be found in the Flashlight Project (Ehrmann, 1994), an 468 5 BEST COPY AVAILABLE effort by the Annenburg/Center for_Public Broadcasting to help institutions of higher education assess their uses of instructional technology for distributed learning. If the intentions of investigators are to determine the effectiveness of distance education programs, these evaluation reports serve as exemplars due to their comprehensive approach. Research in distance education Those involved in the design, development, and implementation of distance education programs have access to a wealth of data from which to conduct valid research. For a summary of the existing literature base in distance education, see Mclsaac & Gunawardena (1996) and Schlosser & Anderson (1994). Interestingly, both pieces highlight the need to move away from the continued use of media comparison studies toward more productive lines of inquiry. If researchers are driven to investigate the effects of delivery media, perhaps they will heed Reeves' (1995) advice and design instructional technology studies that will indeed improve education. Examples of research that have served to inform the development of effective distance learning experiences can be seen in Garrison (1990) and Gunawardena, Campbell Gibson, Dean, Dillon, & Hessmiller (1994). Garrison (1990) analyzed the ability of audioconferencing to provide necessary levels of interaction for feedback as well as for student satisfaction. Distance delivery media also afford varied levels of social presence, as found by Gunawardena, et al. (1994). Knowing how media convey information and allow individuals to interact are important considerations in the design of distance programming. Indeed, more-researchers should leverage their involvement in distance education experiences to contribute to the knowledge base of the field. Mclsaac and Gunawardena (1996) indicate that what is needed is "rich qualitative information or programmatic experimental research that would lead to the testing of research hypotheses" (p. 421). While determining the efficacy of distance programs is important to all stakeholders, investigators must ensure that such inquiries begin with valid questions and that the intentions behind the study are well-defined. Concurrently, it is equally important that editors of professional journals also distinguish between research and evaluation in distance education and communicate that distinction to the authors of their manuscripts. Reference: Barry, M., & Runyan, G..(1995). 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work_hestbwm6mbbfzkgehplt45nsai	----	1539-3100_11_1_text.indb January-March, 2013 Vol. 11, No. 1 Special Issue on Technology-Enhanced Social Learning Guest Editorial Preface i Chengjiu Yin, Research Institute for Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan Xinyou Zhao, Advanced Research Center for Human Sciences, Waseda University, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Qun Jin, Networked Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Human Informatics and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Research Articles 1 TSI-Enhanced Pedagogical Agents to Engage Learners in Virtual Worlds Steve Leung, School of Computing and Information Systems, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada Sandeep Virwaney, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada Fuhua Lin, School of Computing and Information Systems, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada AJ Armstrong, School of Information, Communication and Engineering Technologies, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Edmonton, Canada Adien Dubbelboer, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada 14 PACALL: Supporting Language Learning Using SenseCam Bin Hou, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Hiroaki Ogata, Department of Information Science and Intelligent System, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Toma Kunita, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Mengmeng Li, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan Noriko Uosaki, University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan 31 Research Trends with Cross Tabulation Search Engine Chengjiu Yin, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Sachio Hirokawa, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Jane Yin-Kim Yau, Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Sweden Kiyota Hashimoto, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, Japan Yoshiyuki Tabata, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Tetsuya Nakatoh, Research Institute of Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan 45 Design and Implementation of an Online Auxiliary System for Correcting Japanese Composition Yuqin Liu, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China Guohai Jiang, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China Lanling Han, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China Mingxing Lin, School of Soft ware, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China 58 Technical Feasibility of a Mobile Context-Aware (Social) Learning Schedule Framework Jane Y. K. Yau, Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden Mike Joy, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Copyright The International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (ISSN 1539-3100; eISSN 1539-3119). Copyright © 2013 IGI Global. All rights, including translation into other languages reserved by the publisher. No part of this journal may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except for noncommercial, educational use including classroom teaching purposes. Product or company names used in this journal are for identifi cation purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. The views expressed in this journal are those of the authors but not necessarily of IGI Global. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION TECHNOLOGIES Table of Contents IJDET is indexed or listed in the following: ABI/Inform; Aluminium Industry Abstracts; Australian Education Index; Bacon's Media Directory; Burrelle's Media Directory; Cabell's Directories; Ceramic Abstracts; Compendex (Elsevier Engineering Index); Computer & Information Systems Abstracts; Corrosion Abstracts; CSA Civil Engineering Abstracts; CSA Illumina; CSA Mechanical & Transportation Engineering Abstracts; DBLP; DEST Register of Refereed Journals; EBSCOhost's Academic Search; EBSCOhost's Academic Source; EBSCOhost's Business Source; EBSCOhost's Computer & Applied Sciences Complete; EBSCOhost's Computer Science Index; EBSCOhost's Computer Source; EBSCOhost's Current Abstracts; EBSCOhost's Science & Technology Collection; Electronics & Communications Abstracts; Engineered Materials Abstracts; ERIC – Education Resources Information Center; GetCited; Google Scholar; INSPEC; JournalTOCs; KnowledgeBoard; Library & Information Science Abstracts (LISA); Materials Business File - Steels Alerts; MediaFinder; Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD); PsycINFO®; PubList. com; SCOPUS; Solid State & Superconductivity Abstracts; The Index of Information Systems Journals; The Standard Periodical Directory; Ulrich's Periodicals Directory 58 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Keywords: Context-Aware, Context-Aware Technologies, Mobile Context-Aware Learning Schedule Frameworks (mCALs), Mobile Learning, Technical Feasibility 1. INTRODUCTION The aim of our study is on mobile learning (hereafter, abbreviated as m-learning) and mobile social learning, particularly learning in different locations and under various contextual situations, from the perspective of university students, individually or collaboratively with others. We initially derived and designed a theoretical mobile context-aware learning schedule (mCALS) framework (Yau, 2011) from an extensive literature review. The objective of the framework is to recommend appropri- ate learning materials to students based on their current locations and circumstances. The framework uses a learning schedule (i.e. the built-in electronic organiser on mobile devices) to record learners’ study-related and unrelated events, as well as information regarding the events (including the location, start and finish times) are stored. Subsequently, this informa- tion is used to inform the location and avail- able time a student has for learning/studying at specific points in time. Additionally, a number of factors are taken into consideration for the Technical Feasibility of a Mobile Context-Aware (Social) Learning Schedule Framework Jane Y. K. Yau, Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden Mike Joy, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to show the technical feasibility of implementing their mobile context-aware learning schedule (mCALS) framework as a software application on a mobile device using current technolo- gies, prior to its actual implementation. This process draws a set of compatible mobile and context-aware technologies at present and can be used as a reference point for implementing generic mobile context-aware applications. The authors’ mCALS framework retrieves the learner’s location and available time contexts via the built-in learning schedule (i.e., electronic organizer) on a mobile device. These contexts together with the learner’s learning styles and knowledge level (on a selected topic) are used as the basis for the software ap- plication to suggest learning materials that are appropriate for the learner, at the time of usage. This retrieval approach eliminates the use of context-aware technologies and the need to directly request the user to enter context information at the time of usage. The authors develop a fully functional prototype of this framework for learners to plan their individual as well as social learning activities amongst one another to make their individual learning processes collaborative and as a way to enhance individual and social learning experiences. DOI: 10.4018/jdet.2013010105 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 59 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. recommendation of appropriate learning materi- als to students. These are the student’s learning styles, knowledge level, concentration level, frequency of interruption at that location and their available time for learning/studying. The suggestion mechanism suggests to learners ap- propriate learning materials from the learning object (hereafter, abbreviated as LO) repository within our framework, for learning at that length of time and type of location. We propose that this learning schedule retrieval approach can be 1) a successful self-regulated learning strategy as the act of pre-planning of studying events can be motivating for self-regulated learners to carry out their studies; 2) an effective method for eliminating the use of context-aware tech- nologies and the need to directly request context information from users, at the time of usage; and 3) a successful environment in which to facilitate social learning opportunities. Figure 1 shows the conceptual model of mCALS. In order to determine the potential deploy- ment of the framework as an m-learning ap- plication by intended users, we carried out six feasibility studies. First, a pedagogical study was conducted using interviews to explore together with students (a) what their learning requirements were when studying in a mobile environment, (b) whether the framework could potentially be used effectively to support their studies and, (c) using this user-centred under- standing, refined user requirements of the framework. Second, a diary study was con- ducted where we collected data and analysed the usability feasibility of the framework by (a) determining whether students could plan their daily schedule ahead and keep to it, (b) ascer- taining which learning contexts were important and, (c) establishing which learning materials were appropriate under which situations (Yau, 2011). The results from our completed diary study suggested that participants were mostly in their planned locations as the planned and actual locations had matched entirely. There were discrepancies between the planned and actual start and finish times, suggesting that the actual available time of a learner may not always be retrieved accurately. In the light of this, we propose to use the retrieved location and avail- able time as default values which will then be verified by location-detecting technologies and by the learner. More precisely, two verification methods can be added to strengthen our frame- work – 1) GPS and Wireless LAN technologies to verify the learner’s location, and 2) a request for learners to confirm whether the retrieved available time is accurate. Two validation studies relating to the framework were also conducted. The first one was an online experiment utilizing Java LOs. Figure 1. Conceptual model of mCALS 60 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Participants of this study were suggested ap- propriate LOs to study with, based on their amount of available time, current motivation level for learning and their proficiency level of Java. The second validation study was an investigation into high-quality Java LOs avail- able in the public domain (Yau, 2011). Finally, a technical design of the framework was car- ried out to determine whether the framework at present could realistically be implemented using current mobile technologies. This paper presents the results of this technical feasibility study, which offers a fast approach to demon- strate that our framework is implementable, without the substantial resources required to actually implement and deploy such a mobile software application. If the application were to be implemented, it may also very quickly be out of date in one or two years’ time, given the fast development of computer technologies. Figure 2 shows the studies conducted for designing and evaluating mCALS. Note that all phases of the studies have been completed, and can be found in Yau (2011). The data analyses of the three feasibility studies and two validation studies show that (a) a learning schedule approach is successful to an extent in obtaining location and available time information to indicate accurate values of these contexts, (b) different learners may require different personalization strategies when select- ing appropriate learning materials for them in mobile environments, and (c) the mCALS framework is particularly well-suited for self- regulated students. The validation studies show that 1) the proposed suggestion rules are effec- tive in recommending appropriate materials to learners in their situation, in order to enhance their learning experiences, and 2) there is a sufficiently large number of high-quality LOs available in the public domain that can be in- corporated for use within our framework. Fi- nally, the development of mCALS has been considered from three perspectives – peda- gogical, usability and technical. These perspec- tives consist of critical components that should be considered when developing and evaluating m-learning software applications. This paper reports the results of the final phase, the technical feasibility study. The struc- ture of the paper is as follows. The technical feasibility study is introduced in section 2, and the potential individual component technologies are discussed. In section 3 we examine how the component technologies can be integrated together to form an implementation of mCALS, Figure 2. The studies conducted to design/evaluate mCALS International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 61 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. and section 4 is devoted to a discussion of how the mCALS framework supports social learning activities. In section 5 we conclude and offer suggestions for future work. 2. TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY STUDY AND COMPONENT TECHNOLOGIES In order to establish whether our framework is technically feasible, and how it might be used to create social learning opportunities, we examined four components of the framework: • Calendaring technologies for the learning schedule; • Location verification technologies; • Learning object and learning style support for learning contexts; • Learning systems supporting suggestion rules. Consideration was then given to how these components can be integrated together into the framework implementation, and the framework can then be extended for creating social learn- ing opportunities. 2.1. CALENDARING TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE LEARNING SCHEDULE Our proactive approach of using a learning schedule is a simple and effective technique for retrieving a learner’s location and avail- able time, via their built-in electronic diary on mobile devices. Currently, most Windows CE-based, Apple Mac-based and Linux-based mobile computers, smartphones and PDAs con- tain built-in electronic diaries/calendars; these diaries can also be used and accessed offline. Online diaries can also be accessed via the web, for example, through Microsoft Outlook ‘web access’ features or using a web calendar such as Google Calendar. Events stored on the latter calendar can also be synchronised with Micro- soft Outlook, Apple iCAL and Mozilla Sunbird calendar applications. A read-only version of Google Calendar can also be viewed offline. The Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile calendar application can be installed on most Windows-based mobile phones or computers. If necessary, calendar events stored on the desk- top or laptop computers can be synchronised to the mobile device (and vice versa), via the mobile network, a wired or wireless connection. Outlook Mobile is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 and works on both touch and non-touch screen mobile phones or devices. Palm Pilot, Psion, and Timex Data Link Watch were found to be popular personal or- ganisers (Brown & Crawshaw, 1998), and an investigation of PDAs for the use of electronic diaries was conducted by Drury (1999) showed that the Psion Series 5 PDA was useful for users who require additional office applications, the Franklin REX PRO was useful for users who wished to simply replace their paper-based di- ary, and the 3COM Palm Pilot III was suitable for users who were in-between these two sce- narios. Whilst these are now old technologies, it is useful to note that richer calendaring is an established functionality of mobile devices. A user’s location and available time at a particular point in time can easily be retrieved from the learner’s events stored on any of the calendar applications built into or installed onto mobile devices, such as those mentioned above. Users would include for each of their events the following information – geographic location, type of location, time start, time finish and nature of the event. Via the standard Microsoft Import/Export (from and to vCal/iCal) feature, Outlook cal- endar applications can automatically convert events information into iCalendar format (and vice versa), this format is known as .ics or .ical format. Note that vCal was the standard used prior to iCal. This feature also enables calendar events (or calendar-based data) to be easily sent to other users via email and the receiver can easily accept or decline the proposed events. An add-in for Microsoft Outlook, for example SyncWiz, gives additional benefits such as allowing Outlook calendar events (and con- tacts) to be exported, imported, backed up and 62 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. synchronised to other mobile, desktop and/or laptop computers. Overall, the purpose of the iCalendar format is to provide compatibility for capturing and exchanging calendar and scheduling informa- tion between events stored on a calendaring and scheduling application (such as Personal Infor- mation Manager (PIM) or a Group Scheduling product) and other applications. The iCalendar format is a suitable exchange format between different applications or systems because it is defined in terms of MIME content type. iCal- endar objects can be exchanged via several transports - such as SMTP, HTTP, a file system, desktop interactive protocols, point-to-point asynchronous communication, wired-network and unwired transport (Dawson & Stenerson, 1998). In order to illustrate how the location and time available at a particular point in time can be retrieved from users’ events, the following example of an iCalendar object is given in Box 1.The code illustrates an event occurring on 14 August 2011, 09:00:00 until 09:59:59, and taking place at University Campus in a lecture theatre. The iCalendar Core Object Specification (Ibid) is primarily used for providing a standard capturing means for calendar events, to-do and diary/journal entry information. Additionally, it can be used to convey free/busy time informa- tion as well as allowing iCalendar object methods to be defined. Such a method is a set of usage constraints for an iCalendar object. Dawson and Stenerson (1998) identified a number of methods that can be defined to carry out certain tasks such as a) to request an event to be scheduled, b) reply to an event re- quest, c) send a cancellation notice for an event, d) modify or replace the information of an event, e) reply to a free or busy time request and so on. An open source Python library for parsing iCalendar data was constructed by Max (2006). The class method Calendar.from_string() can be used to parse the text representation of the calendar data in order to create a Calendar instance with their attributes described in the input data. When a Calendar object had been instantiated, the walk() method can be used to process each attribute in the calendar event. In order to access individual attributes, the get- item() API can be used (Hellman, 2007). The script in Box 2 written in Python for retrieving a learner’s location and their available time has been adapted from (Ibid). 2.2. Location Verification Technologies To counter against the possibility that learners are not adhering to their schedules entirely leading to the retrieval of their current locations and available times being inaccurate, two ad- ditional methods have been incorporated into our framework: 1. Location-verification methods, using context-aware sensor technologies such Box 1. BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//hacksw/handcal//NONSGML v1.0//EN BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20110814T090000Z DTEND: 20110814T095959Z GLOCATION: University campus TLOCATION: Lecture theatre SUMMARY: Lecture END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 63 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. as GPS, or a location-based positioning technique such as Wireless LAN, can be used for retrieving and verifying the loca- tion of a learner. A GPS receiver can detect the appropriate outdoor locations and the Wireless LAN positioning technique can detect both indoor and outdoor locations using a wireless network connection. The location information is used to alert the system when and if the retrieved and scheduled location does not match and for identifying the learner’s actual location in order to confirm whether they are keeping to their schedule. 2. A user-verification method i.e. an inter- active approach for requesting users to confirm that their available time was ac- curately retrieved. This prompts the user at the beginning of a learning session to check and/or indicate whether their avail- able time that that tool had retrieved was accurate, and this information is used to update the schedule, if necessary. When necessary, the user is asked to input their available time into the system. 2.2.1. Overview of Various Technologies Used for Location- Tracking in Different Applications GPS receivers have been used by several researchers including Fithian et al. (2003), Ogata and Yano (2004a; 2004b), Ryu and Parsons (2008), and Gil (2012) for detecting the location of learners. Note that GPS may not always be reliable and accurate especially when recording travelling GPS data, such as when students travel from location A to location B (Kochan et al., 2006; Gil, 2012). Our work did not consider transition periods as important, only the location and available time of a learner at the beginning of their learning session is important. This assumption is based on our extensive literature review and our interview data results (Yau, 2011) that learners may not always want materials to be altered if there is a change in their learning situation. The Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) positioning technique can be used for location-tracking and retrieval in indoor as well as outdoor environments, where signals can be retrieved from the wireless network being accessed. The location of a learner can be implied by the access point or station that they are connected to (Li et al., 2006). This technique was used in the language learning, butterfly-, and bird-watching applications of Chen et al. (2007, 2002 and 2004) respectively. In the first application, a WLAN was used to detect the location of a learner in the playground of a school environment for the suggestion of English vocabulary learning. In the latter two applications, a WLAN was not used for posi- tioning learners but rather for transmissions to be sent to and from learners and the instructor. A WLAN card built-in or inserted into a lap- Box 2. from icalendar import Calendar, Event cal_data = Calendar.from_string(open(‘events.ics’, ‘rb’).read()) //For parsing the text representation of calendar data, as described above. for event in cal_data.subcomponents: if event.name == ‘VEVENT’: print ‘GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION:’, event[‘GLOCATION’] print ‘TYPE OF LOCATION:’, event[‘TLOCATION’] // The above 2 lines obtain both the geographic and type of locations of the event, then outputs them. getCurrentTime () = currentTime availableTime = event[‘DTSTART’] – currentTime print availableTime // The above 3 lines obtain the current point in time and the start time of the learner’s next event to determine their available time, which is then outputted. 64 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. top computer functioned as the local server, and learners each using a PDA equipped with WLAN acted as clients. Transmissions were sent wirelessly to and from the learner’s PDAs and the local server for immediate information retrieval concerning the butterflies and birds being observed. The WLAN positioning technique can be implemented with minimum effort, as modern mobile devices have built-in wireless access capability and the common availability of WLANs within educational institutions. The signal strengths of WLAN contribute to their accuracy as a positioning technology (Li et al., 2006). In the GUIDE visitor and context-aware m-learning applications (Cheverst et al., 2000; Chen et al., 2007), two methods were used – a location-tracking method (such as WLAN) and direct request from the users. In the latter application, learners could make corrections to their locations using a default list of locations supplied by the system. This method was also used in the work of Cui and Bull (2005). A separate Bluetooth GPS device such as GlobalSat BT-338 can be attached to the mobile device, such as in the work of Ryu and Parsons (2008). This is done by setting up a Bluetooth connection between a Bluetooth GPS receiver and a Pocket PC; and can be used as a substitute in those mobile devices which do not have a built-in GPS receiver i.e. the older and less expensive mobile devices models. Types of locations (such as library, lec- ture theatre), as opposed to their geographic co-ordinates, can be hard-coded for location- tracking and stored in a database or SQL server. The position of a learner can then be located on the university campus map. The server can be accessed using a mobile network; the one that researchers of this work (Ibid) had deployed was Vodafone New Zealand. To relate the contextual information and the location data, a Microsoft SQL server was used and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 was used to implement each component of the software to enable the location-tracking (Ibid). A prototype using locations defined by semantic markers associ- ated with specific geographic positions was developed by Fithian et al. (2003) by replacing geographic co-ordinates with names or types of locations such as movie theatre. Mobile devices and physical environments which were equipped with RFID writers and tags respectively can be another method of location-retrieval (Wu et al., 2008; Ogata and Yano, 2004a; El-Bishouty et al., 2010). In the JAPELAS application (Ogata and Yano, 2004a), the implementation of their system consisted of six models – Learner, Environmental, Educa- tional, IR Communication, Location Manager and Polite Expressions Recommender. In their Environmental model, the rooms which were used for the application were stored and can be detected by the Location Manager using either RFID tags or GPS. RFID tags were attached to indoor environments, and more precisely, to the entrance door to a room. The researchers used GPS for location-tracking of learners in outdoor environments. In the TANGO and Chinese Language Learning applications (Ogata and Yano, 2004a; Chen and Chou, 2007), the use of their RFID reader/writer was attached onto a Compact Flash memory card which was then slotted into the memory slot of their PDA. The RFID tags could read/write within a 5 cm distance. Retrieval of the device’s location was also made available using Wireless LAN. In the evaluation experiment of Chen and Chou (2007), they had attached RFID writer tags onto different parts of the walls within a classroom to represent different underground stations in Taipei. These four main technologies described in this section are all technically feasible to deploy, as is clear from the projects we have referred to. However, each has both pros and cons, and none is the optimal solution. • GPS is a mature and reliable technology, but does not generally work indoors. • Wireless LANs are also reliable and pro- vide sufficient accuracy, but are not often available outdoors. • RFID tags can provide extra semantic lo- cation information, but require substantial International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 65 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. effort to set up and also require mobile devices to be physically close to the tags. • Hard-coded co-ordinates have the same benefits as RFID tags but are likely to be less flexible to manage. Our framework can therefore be strength- ened by combining the use of GPS and Wireless LAN technologies and interactive user input, since GPS and Wireless LAN are reliable and easily implementable methods for outdoors and indoors respectively and can be accessed by receivers already contained in most mobile devices without further programming or con- figuration. Most modern mobile devices have built-in GPS receivers attached, and if this is not the case, a Bluetooth GPS can be easily attached to the device to achieve the same capability. Likewise, most modern mobile devices have built-in WiFi. Within our university, a strong wireless connection is available in most of the departments and buildings as well as in a number of social and administrative build- ings (University of Warwick, 2012), and this supports our claim that a WLAN can be used successfully to retrieve the location of a learner located within these buildings. 2.3. Learning Object and Learning Style Support for Learning Contexts Our framework incorporates Java LO and a LO typically includes a set of rich metadata for describing which learners are appropriate for that object. Six advantages of constructing learning materials as LOs were identified (Yau, 2004), as follows. • Flexibility of learning materials since LOs were initially designed to be used in multiple contexts. • Metadata tags facilitate ease of updates, searches and content management. • Customization: A personalized learning experience for each individual learner is easier to be constructed due to the modu- larity of LOs. • Interoperability: LOs are compatible for use within different applications. • Facilitation of competency-based learn- ing: Since metadata tags describe each LO, learners are able to fill their gaps in knowledge by searching for appropriate objects to learn. • The value of content is increased each time they are used since additional costs of new design and development can be avoided with acts of reuse. Information about the suitability of LOs for learners based on their learning styles and knowledge levels can be stored in the learn- ing object metadata, and information about a learner’s learning styles can be obtained via an initial questionnaire and/or proficiency tests to ascertain their knowledge level. For example in the work of Lee et al. (2005), they had de- fined a Java LO ontology for allowing different learning strategies and/or paths to be utilized (for example, a number of topic prerequisites were specified) and as a result facilitated adap- tive learning. In the context of introductory Java program- ming, the difficulty level of each topic of was established in Yau (2004). This was based on a large number of students’ perceived difficulty levels within basic Java; in the order from easy to difficult, the nine topics were comments, assignment, expressions, if-statements, input- output, arrays, methods and classes. Given that a learner’s knowledge level in introductory Java was known, this information can be used to ascertain which Java LO would be appropri- ate for them. LOs are usually stored in global learning object repositories. Repositories are usually built on a client/server architecture employing brokerage services and provide peer-to-peer access to the local repository of the LOs. For example, 1) Codewitz (www.codewitz.org) was an international project which created many LOs for learning programming contained in their so-called Material Bank repository, 2) Merlot (www.merlot.org) contained 34020 learning ob- jects in disciplines including Biology, Business, 66 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Engineering, History, Mathematics, Psychology and World Languages, and 3) CAREO (careo. prn.bc.ca) contained 994 learning objects. Different LOs standards have been estab- lished by different standards initiatives such as the Learning Technology Standards Commit- tee (LTSC) (IEEE LTSC, 2005) which created the Learning Object Metadata (LOM), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (www.dublincore. org) which created the Dublin Core Metadata (DCM), the Instructional Management System Global Learning Consortium (www.imsglobal. org) which created the IMS Learning Resource Metadata (LRM) Specification and Advanced Distributed Learning (www.adlnet.org) which created the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). Common between each of these standards/specifications is the promotion of LOs to be exchangeable across any web-based learning systems. SCORM was written in order to store and catalogue and retrieve Shared Con- tent Objects (SCOs) within and from different web-based intelligent learning environments, and to promote SCORM-compliant Learning Management Systems (Ibid). The learning styles and knowledge levels contexts can be deployed into our framework through the utilization of Learning Object Meta- data for describing LOs (IEEE LTSC, 2005). We propose that additional metadata tags can be added to the IEEE LOM specification so that suitable LOs can be fitted to the criteria of m-learning students and so that LOs can be easily searched and selected for different situ- ations. An extension to LOM and IMS Learner Information Profile (LIP) Standards has been proposed by Chan et al. (2004) to cover mobile and informal learning scenarios. The necessity for this proposal was to include these forms of learning in the current usage of LOM and standards alike, as the LOM had been previously designed to aim at web-based learning using desktop and/or laptop computers. Their proposed Mobile Learning Meta- data (MLM) (Ibid) comprises of 3 top level classifications – Learning Object, Learner and Settings (describes the context state of the learning environment such as the location of the learner or LO). The Learner classification is then divided into two sub-categories – Learner Profile (contains static information about the learner and their preferences) and Learner Model (contains dynamic information relating to the learner’s knowledge and learning history. Conceptually, the relevant LO is located by the context-aware engine of an m-learning system using the information provided by the Learner and Setting classifications by accessing the metadata of the LO. Information within the Set- ting classification is generation dynamically to describe current values of context information. Corresponding to their MLM (Ibid) learning styles (or learning preferences) are described in 2.1.2.2 in the Learner Profile of the MLM (as per IMS LIP), knowledge level is described in the Learner Model of the MLM, which is currently works-in-progress. The amounts of available time context which apply in both of our framework designs can be inferred using the duration attribute described in 1.4.7 of LOM and MLM which state the duration of time the LO is required to take for completion. (Please refer to Chan et al. (2004) for 2.1.2.2 in the Learner Profile and 1.4.7 of MLM). Bradley et al. (2009) have also examined extensively various techniques of how to design LOs appropriately to fit onto the screens of mobile devices. Specific LOs in introductory Java programming have been created and a Java LO ontology (Lee et al., 2005) was cre- ated to facilitate different learning paths and strategies for different learners; hence creating different Java learning courses and is a reus- able and sharable ontology. Java LOs are also widely available from LO repositories such as Codewitz (see above). 2.4. Systems Supporting Suggestion Rules Learning In this section, we present a brief overview of technologies (including mobile devices, operat- ing systems and programming language used for implementation) of related applications. Toshiba Genio-e PDA with Pocket PC 2002 operating system, and Visual C++ 3.0 were used International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 67 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. in the JAPLEAS and TANGO projects (Ogata & Yano, 2004a). The same technologies were used in the Knowledge Awareness Map (Ogata and Yano, 2004b) with the addition of a server program implemented with a Java servlet via Tomcat. The TANGO prototype was constructed using a server-client architecture; the server implemented with a Java servlet and each client i.e. learner uses a Toshiba Genio-e PDA with Pocket PC 2002, equipped with Personal Java (a Java edition for mobile and embedded systems). Note that usually software applications can be implemented, compiled and tested on desktop and/or laptop computers, and then synchro- nised to be run on a compatible version of the programming environment on mobile devices. A Ubiquitous-Learning System for the Japanese Polite Expressions (ULSJPE) (Yin et al., 2010) was developed based on the JA- PELAS application (Ogata and Yano, 2004a). The improvement made included the ability a) to obtain the learner’s location automatically, either via their personal schedule or using GPS or RFID technologies, and b) to upload the learning records of learners to the server, which are then transmitted and shared by other learners. A data server-client architecture prototype using Embedded Visual C++ 4.0 was implemented; the data and client server configuration was implemented on a desktop computer and a Pocket PC 2003 respectively. The Data server consists of four components – Location manager (manages the scheduled, GPS and RFID location data), Learner Info manager (facilitates for learners the retrieval and reading of learning records of other learners), Education manager (facilitates the retrieval and reading of learning materials) and the Server communication (manages the communications with the mobile devices). The Client server consists of three main components – Learner- module (contains learner information which is entered by the learner before using the system), Environmental-module (provides location information about the areas where learning is being conducted using schedule, GPS and RFID location methods, and the Educational-module (manages learning materials i.e. Japanese polite expressions). Based on a set of rules for polite expression of the Japanese language, the Polite Recommender Manager selects appropriate expressions for learners based on each differ- ent situation. In the system architecture of the context- aware English vocabulary learning application (Chen et al., 2007), the Context Analysis agent analyzes a combination of factors including the learner’s location, learning requirements and preferences (including leisure learning time), then the English Learning Materials searching agent searches and selects appropriate learning materials to students based on these factors. The application begins to sense the location of the learner when they select the ‘learning by context’ button within the application. The positioning result is then shown which users have the possibility of correcting, if necessary, via a constructed list of locations. Embedded Basic 3.0 and Visual C++ were used for constructing the Chinese Language Learning System (CLLS) (Chen and Chou, 2007) on a HP IPAQ with Pocket PC 2003. It consisted of three components – location detection, learning materials and record/play function. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 was used for the construction of the client-server architecture of the location-aware learning reminder appli- cation (Ryu and Parsons, 2008) on a HP IPAQ 6700; one of its main functions was to direct users to various lecture theatres as new students were often unaware of where these were. The user’s current position is represented on the screen map of the application and a path to their selected position is displayed to direct them to requested locations on campus. The user’s location, movement and any rotation are syn- chronized with the map. Their next destination can also be selected from their course calendar and the path to the location appears on the map. The authors noted that a major challenge was related to the privacy protocols imposed by the university to store student’s data, however, consent of each student was obtained. A MySQL Server database was used for storing locations (such as latitude, longitude, campus and type 68 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. of location) and students’ information (such as name) and networked with the PDA server, the purpose of which is to provide contextual information to students in the locations they are situated in. PDA clients access the server via the wireless network and also have GPS receiving capabilities. To implement our framework, a mobile device possibly with a Windows-based operat- ing system can therefore be used, together with a programming environment such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Compact Framework, Visual Studio, Basic or C++ for Pocket PC. The capabilities of Visual Studio .NET have been extended to create, utilize and debug ap- plications suitable for use on Pocket PC and Windows-based devices. A rich subset of the full .NET framework is supported by the .NET Compact Framework, whilst still capable for the use on resources-constrained mobile devices; features include rapid development and com- prehensive class libraries (Microsoft, 2003). Microsoft SQL database server can be used for allowing information in our Student and Learning Object Repository databases to be stored, and transmitted to other system com- ponents such as to the suggestion mechanism. A set of suggestion rules can thus be integrated successfully into our suggestion mechanism within our framework, and these rules can be written using any programming languages and can be embedded within the .NET Compact Framework programming environment. 3. TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION In the previous section, we surveyed the cur- rent technologies which might support the four components of our framework, and for each component identified, each of those technolo- gies were both feasible and practical. In this section, we demonstrate how the various com- ponents of the framework can be incorporated together successfully using current mobile and context-aware technologies, as shown by Figure 3 in which the various components are labelled and explained. 1. GPS and Wireless LAN: These options can be switched on to detect the location of the learner when outdoors (using GPS technol- ogy) and indoors (using wireless LAN positioning technique), as discussed in 2.2 2. Learning Schedule and Calendar Events: Most modern mobile devices have built-in learning schedules and the calendar events can be converted with minimal effort into iCalendar format, as was established in 2.1 3. The Python script presented in 2.1 for retrieving the location and available time information from the calendar events is embedded, compiled and run within the .NET Compact Framework programming environment/Microsoft Visual Studio. This programming environment supports any object-oriented and visual programming languages and has extensive class libraries and functions readily available (Microsoft, 2003). Microsoft Visual Studio is an In- tegrated Development Environment and supports the .NET Compact Framework. 4. The suggestion mechanism is used to store a set of suggestion rules embedded in Per- sonal Java; this is compatible for use within mobile applications, as was discussed in 2.4. Additionally, research conducted by Meawad and Stubbs (2006) showed that at the time of writing there were almost 250 million Java-enabled mobile devices on the market and by 2006 there would be an expected increase of 1 billion Java-enabled devices. Currently, there may be over 10 billion on the market (Howard, 2010). 5. A Java LO repository such as Codewitz or Java LOs created by Lee et al. (2005), Leeder et al. (2004) and Chalk & Qi (2005) can be incorporated into our framework, as established in 2.3. A database server such as Microsoft SQL is usually used for stor- ing and retrieving these objects and these repositories are usually built on a client/ server architecture (Yau, 2004); database servers such as SQL Server Compact Edition are compatible for use on mobile devices. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 69 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 6. Learning objects use metadata tags written in XML, eXtensible Markup Language, which is a system for storing and exchang- ing information on the web for describing information about the objects. XML is a platform-independent language; its files are compatible for use within any web- based system and data can be transmitted between many incompatible formats. Wire- less Markup Language (WML), a subset of XML, can be used to create content to be displayed on mobile devices (Yau, 2004). 4. EXTENDING THE FRAMEWORK TO SUPPORT SOCIAL LEARNING ACTIVITIES Our framework can be used as a tool for ar- ranging collaborative social learning meetings/ activities with peers and these can be held either remotely, or in person, depending on the geographical locations of the learners. Each individual learner has a schedule which can be made public and can be shared amongst his/her peers, and vice versa. New learning activities can be slotted into the schedule and take place virtually via the mobile devices, or physically in person. With the new capabilities of the Internet and computing technologies, the direction that the mCALS framework will aim toward is to provide social learning for students. Additional features that can be incorporated into the frame- work include social networking functions, for example, which identify learners of the same interests or other contexts and when they have free time to meet together for learning. Precise instances of potential intended social learning activities using our framework are: • A mechanism can be used to identify the same interests, location and/or other con- texts of users (such as same or similar level of knowledge on a particular topic, similar learning style). Users can recommend and add other users as peers based on similar identified interests such as for the learning of Java, or similar available times that they have so that they are able to meet either virtually or physically. One of the intended outcomes of this function of our framework is to increase social interactions amongst learners and in order to gain the associated benefits of collaborative social learning. • If a learner is unable to attend to a meet- ing, he/she may suggest other users to attend this. Meetings (such as for solving a particular learning task) can be recorded and made available for the community to access; comments and reviews can also be added by members of the community. Figure 3. System architecture showing compatibility of various components 70 International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. A blog can be kept for encouraging and promoting social activities. A community of similar interests/contexts can be set up in this way to promote collaborative social learning. Social learning appears to be very benefi- cial for students for increasing their learning effectiveness and enhancing their learning experiences. However, this needs to be more widely tested, as in our framework; we will test this as part of the future work. A comparison can be made between the learners who learn individually with our framework, and those who learn socially with other students also using our framework. Limited research on context-aware social learning applications has been conducted since this is still a very new field. Some examples of related work on context-aware social learning research/applications are: • A recommendation mechanism proposed by Huang et al. (2010) aims to support collaborative learners to carry out mobile computer-supported collaborative learning activities including the sharing of knowl- edge and a space where learners can interact with one another. • Yang & Chen (2008) discussed the methods in which social network-based system can be used to support interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer networks. Their aims were to overcome two current challenges in knowledge shar- ing – 1) finding the relevant knowledge and, and 2) finding relevant collaborators to interact with. 5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK In this paper, we addressed several issues relating to the technical feasibility of our mCALS framework, and also for extending it for creating social learning opportunities. We first discussed the feasibility of implementing our proactive retrieval approach via learning schedules, available through the use of built- in electronic diaries contained within modern mobile devices. To counteract the possibility that learners may not adhere to their planned schedules, two methods can be incorporated to strengthen our framework – location-tracking via technologies such as GPS and Wireless LAN and user-verification which request users to confirm the available time retrieved by the system, and update if necessary. In summary, mCALS is a framework in which appropriate learning materials (in the form of learning ob- jects) can be recommended to learners based on their learning contexts (location, available time, knowledge level). The learning schedule component within the framework is original in the context-aware mobile learning field as well as the recommendation mechanism itself, incorporating the different contexts and recom- mendation of Java learning objects. We provided an overview of the tech- nologies, including mobile devices, operating systems and programming languages used for implementation of related research works on mobile learning systems. Finally, we concluded with a set of technologies appropriate for the implementation of our framework for use on a mobile device. A system architecture has been constructed to demonstrate the compatibility between the different technologies used within the different components of the architecture, and explanations of these were presented. Our future work includes the real implementation of our framework and a technological evaluation of it to be taken place with university students within our institutions, as well as extending our framework to include collaborative learners for conducting social learning in order to increase individual and social learning experiences and effectiveness. The social aspect of the frame- work and the benefits this will bring to learners will then form the focus of our future works. The contribution of the research presented in this paper is the establishment of a proac- tive approach (described in 2.1) for retrieving learners’ locations and available time contexts via the use of a learning schedule for use within context-based or context-aware m-learning International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 11(1), 58-73, January-March 2013 71 Copyright © 2013, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. software applications. The underlying design mechanism of the learning schedule approach is simple and the learner is responsible for record- ing and conforming to their learning schedule (i.e. diary or planner on a mobile device). The proposed advantages of this approach include making a learner’s learning status or situation throughout the day known to the mobile device via the learning schedule. The learning schedule approach has the potential a) to eliminate the use of context-aware technologies, b) to tackle inac- curacies and unreliability in location-tracking technologies and c) to overcome technological constraints of memory limitations on mobile devices for operating additional location- tracking programs. The learning schedule approach has been partially successful in accurately retrieving the learners’ contexts, as demonstrated by the findings of our diary study. Participants in this study were asked to keep a (learning) diary for two days and details of their learning ses- sions for these two days. The recorded time and location details in the learning sessions were then verified against the information in the original diary to determine how closely the planned and actual locations and available amount of time were. The findings showed that a learner’s planned and actual location is more likely to match than their available time (Yau, 2011). 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work_hixbe55lyfb4foet4n76ygiw5i	----	Microsoft Word - ba8a-0cba-28ec-933b Online and Face to Face Composition in the Various Types of Learning Style Hamonangan Tambunan1*, Marsangkap Silitonga1, Nelson Sinaga1 {* hamonangantambunan@unimed.ac.id, marsangkap@unimed.ac.id, nel7naga@gmail.com } Electrical Engineering Education Program, Universitas Negeri Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia1 Abstract. The experiments have been conducted on electro technical teaching for ensuring the most suitable combination of online learning and face-to-face in blended learning on the certain type of learning style. There were 166 participants involved and scattered in five groups. The full online (OL) and full face to face (F2F) were control groups, and there were three combinations of online and face to face in different forms made, namely 25-75, 50-50, and 75-25 OL-F2F. The Learning Style Questionnaire and Electro technical Competencies Test were used in tracing the participants’ learning styles and testing their competence. The 2-Way Anova, Sig. 0,05 shown the group of theorist and pragmatist learning style were better learned by the same OL-F2F composition, while the activist and reflector style were by the 75-25 and 25-75 of OL-F2F composition respectively. Keywords: Online, face to face, learning style 1 Introduction The optimal learning outcomes are the main goals in all of the learning activities, therefore It always be chosen the most suitable approach [1]. Based on their implementation, the learning form can be dinguished in three approaches. The first one is the online learning, which is the fully utilizing information and communication technology [2][1][4]. The second is the face-to-face learning, which is commonly called the traditional learning[5]. The third is the combination of the online and face to face, which is called the blended learning [6][7]. It’s stated the online learning has the superiority because the learners can learn individually anywhere, anytime and offers immediate access to specific information [8];[2];[10];[11]. In general, the students have diverse backgrounds, so their characteristics are also different in speed and strength in learning. In the other side, the face to face learning is also superior in the specific fields especially in mentoring for the weak students [12]. The teacher plays a more active role in this learning. Based on their advantage and disadvantage, combining the two of them can become a promising form because the traditional learning can be supported by web based on-line approaches. It has been stated that one way to integrate is to make computer-mediated and face to face learning activities overlap in time [3]. The media and the tools are employed in an e-learning environment with a number of pedagogic approaches, and irrespective of the learning technology used[14]. It is possible to provide several benefits including to increase the perception and discipline on the learning[15][16], to form the learning autonomy through involvement in deep learning [17]. The chance to collaborate are open, so who are the weaker can get help from those who are more skilled [4]. ACEIVE 2018, November 03-05, Medan, Indonesia Copyright © 2019 EAI DOI 10.4108/eai.3-11-2018.2285725 As well as the resources utilized and the important problems from institutions can also to be overcome [5];[20]. The organically technologies integrated in this learning, can complement the face-to-face approach through online methods. So the delivery, the teaching models the learning styles play an important role in these learning environments [6]. Providing the wider students’ discussion opportunities in increasing the sutdents’ understanding can be done by making the different learning approach [7]; [8];[24]. It can also enhance the learning motivation and satisfaction which have a positive impact on the learning outcomes [9]; [10];[27];[28];[11]. So far It was claimed that the learning outcomes can be obtained well through the blended learning [12];[31];[32], but there is only a few explanations of the learning styles types different role and the most suitable composition of the online and face-to-face learning in the blended learning. Although the learning style different is recommended not to be disseminated [13], but based on daily experience, it is very important to consider when doing learning so that it can provide more optimal results, especially to use a particular learning approach. The learning style type is divided into four types, namely activist, theorist, pragmatist, and reflector [34];[14], and the combination of the online and face-to-face learning is impossible made according to the needs [15]. The combination of blended forms with the certain types of learning styles that are most appropriate, is important to consider the learning approach needed, and to develop the certain intellectual level [37], and the different learning process [16]; [17];[40]. Thus the obstacles between the learning process in class, on campus, and network-based learning are eliminated, and the conditions of optimal learning experience can be formed [41]. In this paper we will describe the appropriate combination of online and face-to-face learning on electrotechnical blended learning, for different types of the learners learning styles. 2 Methodology 2.1. Electrotechnical Competence in Blended Learning The knowledges, skills, and the other internal factors of individuals related in doing work, called competencies, are the main objective of the learning and training activities [42][18]. To be competent in the field of electrotechnics must understand the engineering sciences, engineering analysis and investigation, engineering design, and engineering practice [44]. Some complex things are learned in this case, so for these pupose, the dynamic models is required to form the understanding specific competencies, and critical reflections of the learner [45]. The learning that gives instructor and the learner the opportunity to interact during the learning process, is needed to form the positive student perceptions toward learning, the better processes and environment, and the information literacy components [46];[19];[20]. Also the cognitive control, cognitive style, learning style, initial ability of students, and the type of model chosen in learning to guarantee the success of learning, is important to be considered [21]. Combining the two separate paradigms, namely classrooms-synchronous, and online- asynchronous is named as blended learning [22], which integrate and plan pedagogically the online and face-to-face learning. The part of the time of face-to-face activities can be replaced by online activities [23]. The combination of the two of them is impossible to acomodate the varities of learning characteristics [24]. In other word, the learning can be done in the classroom and at a distance, or using a mixture of different pedagogical strategies by (a) combining various pedagogical approaches such as constructivism, behaviorism, cognitive learning approaches to produce optimal learning outcomes with or without the use of instructional technology; (b) combining forms of instructional technology and web-based training with face to face where programming is led by instructors; and (c) mixing or combining instructional technology with actual work tasks to create a harmonious effect on learning and work (Gil and Garcia in [25]). The internet becomes a place for online learning, and instructional medium, which is incorporated into the learning media by integrating several delivery modalities both synchronous and asynchronous [54]. It is described that the learning, the media, and the instructional environments are the elements of the component unity of blended learning [26]. The synchronous and asynchronous learning, with their advantages and disadvantages, are included in the learning environment. The interaction between the teacher and the learner that occurs through face-to-face, is called a synchronous form, and the acronym is through online. The specific positive attributes of each environment are intended to ensure optimal use of resources in achieving the instructional goals and the learning goals. The media is needed as a tool to deliver content, which is possible in various forms with the different uses. This is becaused of no single media is inherently better or worse than others [27]. With the media, the instructors and the students are possible to continue for establishing the communication both directly and indirectly. The shipping media used does not change the desired content because sometimes the presentation of learning that is offline can be managed through an online learning system [28]. This is intended to support the achievement of learning objectives so that the most appropriate learning strategy is chosen. Strategy is a product of learning objectives, namely to serve, ensure learning goals, and facilitate learning transfer. The synchronous teaching form is applied to traditional classes, virtual classrooms, direct product practice laboratories, interactive chatrooms and mentoring [29]. Live classroom and traditional classes provide opportunities for teachers and students to meet face-to-face in the same place for complex, broad, program or new content, which requires face-to-face interaction, expert observation, cultural formation, networking, problem solving or material will be presented by the teacher [30]. The obstacles in planning of learning is overcome by understanding the teaching, adjusting the best media with performance goals, maintaining the interactive online provision, ensuring the participant commitment and follow ing-up of non-live elements, and ensuring the all elements of the mix are coordinated [31]. So the flexibility of blended learning appear to become a transition from passive learning to active learning, where the focus of the class shifts from the presentation format to one of active learning. Then students are placed in situations that encourage them to read, speak, listen and think; To offer students an opportunity to be better together or individually; To bring together online and face-to-face class components, and mixing delivery systems, making it possible for students to learn by accessing material in various important modes because students often have different learning styles; To add a human touch to teach so that interactive content allows a high level of interest, accountability, and real judgment can be created; To increase individualization, personalization and relevance so that learners can adjust learning content to the unique needs of different students; and The best offer for students because teachers and students have greater flexibility and accessibility without sacrificing face-to-face contact. This becomes an approach with effective and low-risk strategies and can meet the challenges of transformational change, where technological developments bring education to a better level (Hodgson in [32]). The composition of the right mix of online and face-to-face learning on blended learning is possible to provide broad opportunities for better competency formation, which is based on the results of the analysis of curriculum content in developing the teaching materials used. The materials can be sorted based on the level of difficulty they have, to be packaged in learning with a variety of mixes between online and face to face. 2.2. Electrotechnical Competence in Blended Learning The different backgrounds allow for the different learning characteristics, especially learning styles. The effectiveness of achieving learning objectives can be determined by the learning style[62];[33], which is distinguished as activist, theorist, pragmatist, and reflector [14]. They can be inventoried through real experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation by testing their approach in learning situation [17]. Based on their respective characteristics, that the desire for practical tasks with very little theory, by emphasizing new experiences will be shown by a type of activist. Generally, focus on activities such as games, problem solving, simulation, lots of action and excitement. They can lead and be the center of attention, make ideas without worries about practical constraints, respond to challenges with certainty and take risks, and are happy with team problem solving [64]. While those who wish to rest a lot and travel, read and discuss, are the characteristics of the types of reflector. This type shows the best in activities where there are opportunities to observe and consider. There are strong elements of passive involvement such as listening to a speaker or watching a video to think before acting or contributing, opportunities for research, and problems can be investigated in depth by reviewing what is happening, and asked to make a report by carefully analyzing the situation or problem. Likewise the interaction with other people without the risk of feeling, come forward, and can complete a display without being under pressure [34]. The desire for leaflets to be studied was shown by a type of theorist. This illustrates that the most good learning for this type is from learning activities that form part of the conceptual whole, such as the model for theory, there is time to explore the interrelationships between elements, can explore the theories and methodologies underlying the subject being investigated, stretched intellectually, there are clear, clear objectives for activities, there is dependence on rationality and logic, can analyze situations and then generalize their findings, and they are asked to understand complex situations [35]. While the desire for shortcuts and tips is a characteristic of the pragmatic in learning, namely learning by activities where there is a clear link back to work-related problems. While the desire for shortcuts and tips is a hallmark of pragmatic learning, namely learning with activities where there is a clear link back to work-related problems, the material is directed to techniques that make their work easier to be able to practice what they have learn, and can relate to successful role models, and there are many opportunities to apply what has been learned [36]. The relevance is clear and learning is easily transferred to their work and what is done is practical such as compiling action plans or testing techniques or procedures [37]. It seems the differences that appear primarily in facing the learning situations can be accommodated through a variety of the possible combinations of online and face-to-face learning. The most appropriate and effective combination of online and face-to-face, for individual tasks and learning, will optimize the competency formation [16];[38]. 2.3. Design and Participants Our sample was taken as many as 166 participants who are placed in five classes of the electrotechnical course in Electrical Engineering Education Program of the State University of Medan. Each of class are learned in the different approach namely Group 1 Online (OL), Group 2 Face to Face (F2F), Group 3 25/75 OL/F2F blended, Group 4 50/50 OL/F2F blended, and 75/25 OL/F2F blended, which envolved 35, 36, 33, 32 and 30 of participants respectively. 2.4. Tools and Materials The learning materials was developed for five different approaches used which encompassed the relation between magnetism and electricity, the production of EMF and current, the faraday's law and electromagnetic induction, the direction of induced EMF and current, Lenz's Law, and the dynamically induced EMF. All of them were validated first by envolving three experts of learning design, electrotechnical teaching material, and instructional media respectively. The elearning facilitation of the electrical engineering education departments with the url addresed: http://jpte-ft-unimed.edu20.org was used in this experiment. 2.5. Data Collection Tools There were two of data collection tools used in this research. The one was the Kolbs’ learning style questionnare in browsing the participants’ learning style type. And the two was the electrotechnical competency test instruments, which consisted of 30 items of objective test, 20 items of the structured essay tests, and 10 points of the skills assessment. The competency score is determined by combining the three measurements with the maximum measurement weight, each of which is objective test = 30, test essay 40, skill assessment 30. 2.6. Procedurs Each of the learning group by involving the different teachers to conduct the experiment. All of the teacher was given the directions to equate perceptions about the implementation of the designed treatment. The learning was done in six time at the same time as learning takes place. The learning styles types of participants are traced using the learning style questionnaires available. And the electrotechnical competencies of all experimental groups were tested simultaneously at the end of the learning activity. The competency data of each group is validated, then sorted based on the group learning and the participant learning style type. Data were tested using 2-Way ANOVA at 5% significance level with the SPSS Program. 3 Result and Discussion 3.1 Results The scores of electrotechnical competencies of all groups with blended learning were higher on average compared to the two groups of full online and full face to face (Table 1). Table 1. Competencies description based on Learnings Learnings N Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound Full Online 35 64.287 536 63.227 65.346 Full face to face 36 59.528 .518 58.505 60.551 25/75 OL-F2F 32 79.778 .549 78.693 80.862 50/50 OL-F2F 33 82.750 .558 81.646 83.854 75/25 OL-F2F 30 71.687 .572 70.557 72.816 It’s provides the highest competency int the same composition between online and face- to-face learning compared to other combinations, which is followed by a combination of 75- 25 OL-F2F, and 25-75 OL-F2F. When viewed from the competency score based on the type of learning style (Table 2), it appears that the competencies of the pragmatic learning style type group are the highest compared to the other types, followed by activists, theorists, and reflectors. Table 2. Competences description Based on Learning Style Learning Style N Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound Activist 41 72.978 .501 71.987 73.969 Theorist 42 69.611 .452 68.717 70.505 Pragmatist 44 75.778 .495 74.800 76.756 Reflector 39 68.056 .506 67.056 69.057 The average competency scores based on the learning style type group are varied (Table 3). The competencies of the activist types are higher in the combination of 75-25 OL-F2F, while the theorist and pragmatist types are mixed with the same composition OL and F2F, and the type of reflector in a blend of 25/75 OL-F2F. Table 3. Competencies Description Based on Learnings and Learning Style Learnings Learning Style N Mean Std. Deviation Full Online Activist 6 74.17 3.764 Theorist 9 66.67 2.500 Pragmatist 9 62.22 2.635 Reflector 11 54.09 3.754 Full face to face Activist 9 47.78 2.635 Theorist 10 57.00 2.582 Pragmatist 9 63.33 2.500 Reflector 8 70.00 3.780 25/75 OL- F2F Activist 9 77.78 2.635 Theorist 10 70.50 3.689 Pragmatist 8 82.50 2.673 Reflector 6 88.33 2.582 50/50 OL- F2F Activist 10 78.50 2.415 Theorist 9 86.67 2.500 Pragmatist 6 95.83 3.764 Reflector 7 70.00 4.082 75/25 OL- F2F Activist 6 86.67 4.082 Theorist 9 67.22 2.635 Pragmatist 8 75.00 3.780 Reflector 7 57.86 2.673 It was found that both of the learning approaches and learning styles varieties influenced the competence significantly at the 0.05 level of significance. F = 336,900, Sig. ≤ 0.05 and F = 49.037, Sig. ≤ 0.05 (Table 4). The interaction between the various of blended learning and the learning styles types are also significantly affect the competence (F = 82.802; Sig. ≤ 0.05). Table 4. Tests of Learnings (Lrn) and Learning Style (LS) Effects Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Corrected Model 24050.226a 19 1265.801 132.069 .000 Intercept 821673.414 1 821673.414 85730.330 .000 Lrn 12915.942 4 3228.985 336.900 .000 LS 1409.979 3 469.993 49.037 .000 Lrn * LS 9523.335 12 793.611 82.802 .000 Error 1399.322 146 9.584 Total 847975.000 166 Corrected Total 25449.548 165 a. R Squared = .945 (Adjusted R Squared = .938) Based on the different test in average scores of the competencies among all of the learning approaches groups showed the significant differences. It seems the reflector type is better taught through the combination of 25-75 OL-F2F in blended learning by comparing to the others combinations, and the 50-50 OL-F2F of combination provides the better competencies for both of the pragmatist and theorist type. Graphically It is drawn in Figure 1. The activist types of learning style appear to be more appropriately taught by a combination of 75-25 OL-F2F, which is shown by the highest competence mean score. 3.2 Discussion The results of this study further emphasize the importance of the right learning form in the various students’ backgrounds. The students’ competence based on the various learning forms and the learning styles types are diverse. The learning outcomes through online learning and face to face are significantly different. It is in line with the findings of Smith et al (2017) [39] that the results through online learning are higher on average compared to face to face. This is possible because of the students can freely access teaching materials at unlimited times and places. This condition gave the wide range of learning opportunities which supported the students by these learning flexibilities. The online learning enables fellow the students to collaborate and interact well as stated by Horspool & Lange (2012) [40];[41];[42]. These are different from the findings of [43] who previously claimed that online and equivalent learning activities could be effective for students. These investigation found the groups’ competency taught through the blended learning is better than the scores taught by full online and face-to-face learning. This ensures that by combining the online and face-to-face learning provides the better results, which gives the understanding that the combination of the two of them can cover the weaknesses of each of them, in line with the findings of [44] in learning at u-Museum, and Wong, Pine, & Tsang (2000) [45] in training programs in the hospitality and tourism industry. The similar things were found by [46] on learning in Slovenian Universities which illustrate the variety of backgrounds of students can be overcome by integrating online learning with face-to-face. It can be accommodated as stated by [47], and the difficulties experienced by students in both approaches, online and face to face can be mutually covered as stated by [48]. Each of the activist, theorist, pragmatist, and reflector type has its own characteristics so they needed the different form of learning. The activists type turned out to be more prominent in dominant learning online. This is possible because of the person with an activist type prefers learning activities without the intervention of others. This type wants more practical tasks and very few theories as stated by [49]. The greater portion of online learning allows students to focus on the present and carry out activities such as games and problem solving. Likewise, the theorist type is characterized by the desire for leaflets to be studied, and the pragmatist type who wants shortcuts and tips, but the formation of competencies will be better if they are taught by a balanced combination of the online and face-to-face learning. This shows that both of them have in common that lack of learning can be fulfilled by teachers helps through face-to-face contact with teachers who teach as stated by [50]. While the reflector type tends to give better results when dominant face-to-face, with the characteristic that getting optimal results when accompanied by a lot of rest to go and read and discuss as stated by Rassool & Rawaf (2008) [51]. This finding is a refutation of the statement that learning styles are myths [13], because it is evident that different types of learning styles when taught with different approaches will provide more optimal results. 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work_hk3ebu5wnjf5hmja3nzik7dzey	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_hl77l3up2zenfpfk6tbljtbshu	----	Learner Support in Distance and Networked Learning Environments: Ten Dimensions for Successful Design Distance Education, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2002 Learner Support in Distance and Networked Learning Environments: Ten Dimensions for Successful Design Catherine McLoughlin Australian Catholic University, Australia ABSTRACT How do educators and instructional designers assess the effectiveness of the learning environments they design? One important means of ensuring the effectiveness of instruction in distance and face-to-face settings is through provision of learner support. Increasingly, as learners utilize the World Wide Web for collaborative learning, support systems contribute to the processes of learning and assist the learner in developing competencies and con� dence in self-regulated learning and social interaction. Originating in the socio-cultural perspective of Vygotskyan theory, the term scaffolding refers to learning support based on social constructivist models of learning. As the World Wide Web becomes increasingly integrated into the delivery of learning experiences at primary, tertiary and secondary levels, the concept of scaffolding needs to be reconsidered because it is not readily translated into contexts where the teacher is not present, such as in online learning environments. The aim of this paper is to offer a conceptualization of the term scaffolding in distance learning, to provide examples of how learners can be supported in the processes of constructivist inquiry in a range of learning settings, and to offer principles for the design of learning support that can be applied across a range of instructional settings. Why Do We Need Learning Supports? Educators are the � rst to admit that not all learners are willing to execute the tasks and activities that lead to successful learning, and that learners need support and structured learning experiences (Collis, 1998; Laurillard, 2002). The recognition that teaching has a supportive dimension has long been recognized (Biggs, 1999). Scaffolding is the term widely used to describe effective learning support with an interesting history. Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) originally coined the term scaffolding as a metaphor to describe the effective intervention by a peer, adult or competent person in the learning of another person. The term can be traced to Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development, which refers to a learner’s optimal developmental potential, if assistance that is timely and appropriate is provided by another person (Vygotsky, 1978). The appeal of the concept of scaffolding lies in the fact that it directs attention to the need for support in the learning process, and does so in a way that emphasizes that good teaching is necessarily responsive to the state of understanding achieved by particular learners. In distance learning settings, the metaphor of scaffolding is appealing in principle, yet elusive and problematic. With reference to distance learning, Garrison and Baynton (1987) ISSN 0158-791 9 print; 1475-0198 online/02/020149-1 4 Ó 2002 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/0158791 0220000 09178 150 C. McLoughlin TABLE 1. Design guidelines for constructivist learning · Provide experience of the knowledge construction process · Provide experience in and appreciation of multiple perspectives · Create learning tasks that are relevant and authentic · Encourage ownership and voice in the learning process · Embed learning in social experience · Encourage the development of multiple modes of representation · Encourage self-awareness of the knowledge construction process propose that the learner support system includes the resources that the learner can access in order to engage in the learning process (learning materials, library, teacher/facilitator), and resources, which relate to the mediation of the communication process (media and technol- ogy). While correspondence education relied on detailed comments written by a tutor, open and distance learning has diverged by using a range of media and by introducing the notion of small group dialogue and interaction with learners. Research on student learning has had profound and far-reaching in� uences on how current practitioners design learning environments and on how they conceptualize learner support systems (e.g., Inglis, Ling & Joosten, 1999; Jarvela, 1995; Roschelle & Teasley, 1995). Examples of the issues surroundin g transfer of learning support to online settings can be seen in the published policies of many universities (Brigham, 2001; Sparks, 1996). The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the core principles of effective scaffolding do not differ from the original Vygotskyan conceptualization of optimum cognitive development through assistance, but the role of ICT and online environments has created a need to rethink issues of agency, and the respective roles of peers, facilitators and teachers in offering learning support. In addition, the social, collaborative and communicative aspects of online learning have created new possibilities for redesigning learning support systems (McLachlan-Smith & Gunn, 2001; McLoughlin & Oliver, 1998b). Traditional Scaffolding in Practice If we assume that constructivist learning involves students in goal-directed, intentional knowledge building, then it is possible to identify instructional design guidelines that enable the creation of effective environments that support learning. According to Oliver and McLoughlin (2001) the principles underpinning constructivist learning can be summarized as shown in Table 1. That is, in order to support learning, the task, teacher and environment must provide certain conditions for learning. An explanation of scaffolding, or support for learning in the practise of face-to-face teaching is given by Tharp and Gallimore (1988) and other authors. Levels of support may vary in form, substance and complexity depending on the context. Support may take the form of a teacher modelling the target performance of a task, or giving verbal explanations that identify the elements of the task and strategy. In a similar vein, Beed, Hawkins and Roller (1991) have described forms of support as follows: Learner Support 151 · Assisted modelling: Teachers provide some coaching and models that enable the completion of the task. · Element identi� cation: The teacher identi� es the elements of the desired approach or strategies to help students complete the task. · Strategy naming: The teacher articulates a relevant strategy and students employ it on their own. Roehler and Cantlon (1997) focus on the types and characteristics of scaffolding in learning conversations in face-to-face settings and several different types are identi� ed: · Offering explanations: Explicit statements are given by an expert to elaborate on learners’ emerging understandings. · Inviting students’ participation: Learners are given opportunities to assume control of the knowledge-building process. · Veri� cation and clari� cation of students’ understandings: If emerging understandings are reasonable, the teacher veri� es the students’ responses. If the understandings are erroneous, the teacher offers clari� cation. · Modelling of desired behaviours: This includes making thinking visible, as in think-aloud, showing what someone thinks about the learning process at a given moment. · Generating questions and comments as in think-aloud: This occurs, for example, when a teacher shows how to articulate a problem-solving process by talking through the steps. Teachers generate questions and comments initially and students then take over the questioning role. · Inviting students to contribute actively: Learners are encouraged to contribute clues in order to complete a task and to articulate their understandings of task demands. As technology extends learning beyond the classroom to learning communities, so must roles and concepts of learning and teaching be reconsidered (Brown & Campione, 1994; Collis, Winnips & Moonen, 2000). While research conducted in face-to-face settings forms the initial groundwor k on scaffolding as the conceptual basis for learning support, a great deal of research in distance education has con� rmed that many dimensions of the original conceptu- alization by Wood et al. (1976) are still relevant in contexts mediated by technology. For example, effective e-moderation utilizes many of the strategies listed above (Salmon, 2001). Scaffolding in Distance Learning and Online Settings Some similarities and differences emerge when we compare recent work on learner support with earlier research on scaffolding conducted in the 1980s. A major difference is that earlier work was conducted in face-to-face classrooms, where forms of verbal interaction were the most common forms of scaffolding (Palincsar, 1986; Rosenshine & Meister 1992; Tharp, 1993). Teachers and learners occupied the same space, and engaged in learning processes in the social context of a conventional classroom, with its prescribed rules, roles and expecta- tions. This often limited scaffolding to teacher-initiated discourse. For example, in many traditional classrooms, teacher questioning has been shown to be a form of task structuring and a means of supporting learning (Edwards & Westgate, 1994). If we consider face-to-face teaching in comparison with distance learning, which is primarily resource based and 152 C. McLoughlin FIG. 1. Key elements of learning support in a distance learning setting. self-paced, direct intervention and support by a teacher is not always possible, for example in virtual classrooms or in contexts where learning is asynchronou s and self-paced. In addition, the nature of scaffolding in face-to-face classrooms was assumed to be asymmetric in that the teacher was regarded as the expert, and the student was the novice (Tharp, 1993). Recent advances in communications technologies and in pedagogy envisage an active, participatory role for students, as initiators and co-participants in self-regulating learning processes (Collis & Moonen, 2001). As technology becomes increasingly integrated into the delivery of learning experiences at primary, tertiary and secondary levels, the concept of scaffolding needs to be extended. This calls for a reconsideration of the nature of learner support and for the alignment of the original theory with current teaching and learning practices. McLoughlin and Oliver (1998a) discuss the forms of scaffolding that are required to foster higher order thinking in distance education settings mediated by technology. Effective support would need to include the encouragement of re� ective thinking, provision of social support for dialogue, interaction and extension of ideas with feedback from peers and mentors on emerging issues. These support features are depicted in Fig. 1 and they represent core elements of support for the learning process in environments mediated by technology. While the principles underpinning support for learning may not vary according to context, the agency of the teacher in online and face-to-face contexts is different from face-to-face settings, and the diagram depicts three aspects of support, which can be provided by peers and by online functionalities, without requiring direct teacher intervention. For example, in learning from the World Wide Web, distributed groups of learners can be assisted in the learning process by different technological functionalities which enable dialogue, re� ection and interaction, thus affording opportunities for social support and the creation of an online community. Similarly, peer support that is provided through discussion forums allows sharing of information, review of ideas and feedback among groups of learners (McConnell, 2000). Collaborative work can be supported by developing World Wide Web tools to support or scaffold group processes and cognition, for example by providing virtual workspaces, document exchanges and databases for student work. Collis and Moonen (2001) have “re-engineered” academic courses and developed a number of cognitive tools to enable group work and to provide various forms of assistance and guidance for learners. A number of scaffolding solutions using information and communications technology (ICT) tools to enable cognitive outcomes that underpin successful learning are categorized and examples are provided based on the work of Collis et al. (2000), Winnips (2000) and Oliver and McLoughlin (2001). Table 2 describes the different forms of support and associated learner interactions which range from information access, through collaborative inquiry Learner Support 153 TABLE 2. Categories of scaffolding across different teaching contexts Scaffold Description · Orientation: communication Students are provided with a clear description of what they of expectation should achieve, and what the target performance is, e.g., through a Web page or printed guide · Coaching The learner receives support via software to help performance of a task, e.g., presentation and demonstration are contextualized via computer application (e.g., audio � le) · Eliciting articulation Articulation is encouraged in order to express current understanding and re� ection, e.g., peer communication via a bulletin board on procedures for problem solving · Task support Support structures are created so that the learner is able to perform the task, e.g., through provision of heuristics or resources that enable task engagement and activity · Expert regulation Support is based on provision of expertise by an expert or mentor, showing examples and desired learning outcomes · Conceptual scaffolding Help is provided when the problem or task is presented so as to focus the learner towards problem de� nition where there may be multiple interpretations. This may be achieved through the presentation of parallel scenarios and problems that enable the learner to practise analytic skills · Metacognitive scaffolding Metacognitive scaffolding can be provided by a cognitive tool (e.g., an electronic notepad) to enable students to record their thinking while engaging with an actual problem. This supports the underlying processes associated with learning management and re� ection · Procedural scaffolding Procedural scaffolding supports learners in using available tools and resources. In Web-based teaching, this may be in the form of access to databases, support for collaborative learning and resource sharing · Strategic scaffolding Strategic scaffolding is afforded by emphasizing alternative courses of action and learning pathways that might be applied in classroom contexts. The presentation of multiple scenarios, events and perspectives enables students to engage in planning and decision making strategies to networked forms of communication (Wild, 1999; Winnips, 2000; Winnips & McLoughlin, 2001). These forms of scaffolding may be offered online and in distance settings by a facilitator and/or a range of technologies, while in a face-to-face context teacher intervention would be 154 C. McLoughlin essential. Nevertheless, consideration of other recent work in technology-supporte d environ- ments illustrates how the concept of scaffolding has expanded to include many alternative forms of support, increased responsibility for students and a reduction in the direct intervention of the teacher that characterized earlier work on scaffolding. A Range of Technological Approaches to Enable Scaffolded Learning While Vygotskyan theory provides the theoretical anchoring needed by making an explicit connection between social interaction and cognitive development, other forms of support can be provided by technology, thus enabling learners to engage in cognitive change and skills advancement. Apart from utilizing the functionalities of the World Wide Web to support learning, recent research in technology-mediated environments presents an array of possibili- ties and perspectives on scaffolding. By investigating these applications it is possible to compare and extrapolate common features and propose principles for future research. The following four examples of scaffolded instruction using hypermedia provide contrasting scenarios for recent interpretations of assisted instruction. What is notable about these is the agency of technology, and the absence of direct teacher intervention. Computer-Supporte d Intentional Learning Environments (CSILEs) This approach, conceived by Scardamalia and Bereiter (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1992, 1994; Scardamalia, Bereiter, McLean & Woodruff, 1989) provides a powerful collaborative medium based on anchored design and discourse space, in which students can negotiate and construct new understandings. In the environment, the teacher’s role is transformed from that of manager to facilitator of student collaborative processes. A CSILE is an experimental computer system which can mediate shared spaces for collaborative knowledge building. The basis for this is a shared communal database, which gives students a common space to create and communi- cate ideas and representations that emerge from individual and group work. In addition to supporting social interactions needed for shared understanding, it provides the resources required for reaching reciprocal understanding, and facilities for the shared product to be expanded, altered, clari� ed, elaborated and manipulated for new meanings to emerge. A shared database of text and graphics notes allows learners to access and collaborate on the creation of knowledge objects. CSILEs have inspired further work and have provided a supportive medium for a number of projects (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993, 1996). Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) In an intelligent tutoring system, learners are guided through learning processes and provided with structures and sequences of tasks to assist them. Well-known examples can be seen in the work of Anderson, Boyle, Corbett and Lewis (1990) where students are taught to solve algebra word problems, develop programs and generate geometry proofs. By reducing the complexity of the task and providing cognitive structuring, an ITS can scaffold learning. In an intelligent tutoring system, a learner’s progress is charted against an expert model of the process, which the student is expected to model. Intelligent tutoring systems have been criticized for lack of authenticity in the learning environment, and for creating tasks where students do not have to engage in Learner Support 155 real-life problem solving (Guzdial & Kehoe, 1998). In ITS environments, collaboration in learning is less essential than in other apprenticeship settings. Goal-Based Scenarios (GBSs) Goal-based scenarios are learning settings in which students have to engage in an authentic task where they are presented with a goal to achieve. The objective is for students to acquire and develop the requisite process skills and conceptual knowledge to attain the goal (Schank, 1992; Schank, Fano, Bell & Jona, 1994). Students are provided with technology-based resources to achieve these goals, and their performance is compared to that of successful models of the process. If a learner cannot achieve the goal, scaffolding is provided in the form of process information, which gives corrective feedback in story form to help the learner address the problem. In a GBS, students interact with agents embedded in the system, rather than with socially based collaborators or peers. GBSs are nevertheless unable to provide feedback or support for complex abstract processes where there is no single solution (Schank, Berman & McPherson, 1999). Design Support Environments (DSEs) Design support environments are aimed at supporting learning through a form of software-re- alized scaffolding tailored to assist students to engage in the design of software or instruction. In DSEs the environment is simpli� ed by providing a large number of cases, coaching students in the design process and reducing support when performance improves (Hmelo & Day, 1999). Instead of providing students with assistance in problem solving, they simply scaffold the design process. A further feature of some DSEs is that they provide adaptive scaffolds, where students can choose to turn off supports that are not required, thereby increasing their independence. Effective Scaffolding: Summarizing the Literature Examples of a range of technology-based scaffolds can be found in the literature cited and each offers a unique perspective on assisted forms of learning, comparable with the Vygot- skyan conception of apprenticeship learning proposed by Collins, Brown and Newman (1989). While each form of scaffolding provides learning support, each may differ in the degree and nature of assistance offered for social engagement, peer learning and task structuring. In face-to-face settings the teacher plays a direct interventionist role, while in distance settings scaffolds can be created by software, technological tools and Web-based functionalities. Nevertheless, there remains agreement that the principles of scaffolding that support learning can be identi� ed and that these principles apply across face-to-face and distance education settings (Hmelo & Day, 1999; Oliver & McLoughlin, 2001; Winnips, 2000). Effective scaffolding is characterized by: · reducing the scope for failure in the task that the learner is attempting; · enabling learners to accomplish a task that they would not be able to achieve on their own; · moving learners to a new and improved zone of understanding; · bringing learners closer to a state of independent competence. 156 C. McLoughlin On this basis, and having reviewed present and past developments in scaffolding, it is possible to propose guidelines that can be applied to the design of effective learning support. Design of Scaffolds: Dimensions That Support Both Process and Product Out- comes If the result of successful scaffolding is independent performance, and movement by the learner into a new zone of development, it should be possible to systematize the design of scaffolds and develop principles that can be applied across a range of learning environments. Through the application of constructivist principles drawn from a range of contexts where technology is used to foster self-regulated learning, and by extrapolating the principles of learning support underpinning these designs, a set of dimensions is proposed to enable the design of learning support (Oliver & McLoughlin, 2001; Winnips & McLoughlin, 2001). The design guidelines proposed take the form of 10 dimensions of successful learner support, similar to Reeves and Reeves’ (1997) notion that learning online can be evaluated according to a number of principles. Each dimension is represented as a continuum with contrasting values at each end. The individual dimensions need to be aggregated in order to create effective instructional scaffolds. (1) Goal orientatio n Goal orientation b c highly focused unfocused The goal for the support can range from highly focused to unfocused or non-speci� c. For scaffolding to succeed, it must be planned and designed to achieve independent learning and task performance. For example, it is not enough to help students when they are in dif� culty. The level and amount of support should be goal directed so that learners know how and when it can be applied, so that they receive help to achieve a particular learning goal. For example, helping students to � nd resources on the Web to complete as assignment equips them with a focused form of support that enables task completion while fostering independent learning. (2) Adaptabilit y Adaptability b c � xed � exible This dimension refers to the � exibility of the scaffold to meet the needs of a diverse range of students. Optimally, support should be capable of modi� cation by students and be “faded” or reduced as learner competence grows. Scaffolds are intended to work within the learners’ zones of development so that improvement beyond the current level of competence is facilitated. Effective scaffolding diminishes when students achieve a greater degree of competence. Scaffolding must be � exible enough to engage the learner at his/her present level of understanding and to diminish once improved performance is achieved. An example may Learner Support 157 be the use of an online chat tool to support socialization of learners new to online learning, with the tool being adaptable to group size, learning styles, pedagogy and task. (3) Accessibility Accessibility b c high low The scaffold needs to be accessible to students when they need it, in the form of “just-in-time” support. In face-to-face classrooms, teachers can monitor the situation and intervene to coach or model a process when needed, but in Web-based settings, tutorial supports can provide this form of assistance. For example, an online frequently asked question tool or FAQ (with input from a moderator according to need) can be made accessible to all learners in a course of study, which may help to develop self-directed learning. (4) Alignment Alignment b c high low This means that the support should be aligned with task goals and learning outcomes so that the learning experience is a seamless one for the student. Aligning scaffolds with task and assessment design ensures consistency and structure in course design (see Biggs, 1999). For example, if collaborative learning is the desired outcome, a scaffold such as a collaborative workspace that enables multiple perspective and sharing of ideas would be appropriate. (5) Experiential value Experiential value b c high low To foster effective learning, it is important to make sure that the learners are not just exposed to inert facts and information but that that they are afforded an experience that enables them to plan, act and re� ect. Scaffolds should enable transfer of skill to a novel task and provide concerted support for learning. For example, the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (1996) have created a focal event or situation as an “anchor” or focus for learning, and their research indicates that these concrete supports help students to create new knowl- edge. (6) Collaboratio n Collaboration b c supported unsupported 158 C. McLoughlin Learning though social dialogue and collaboration has been a feature of much of educational research more recently. Many argue that one of the strengths of technology is that it supports collaboration and dialogue (McConnell, 2000). Recent emphasis on social constructivism, and use of the Web as a tool to scaffold collaboration and create shared public representation of knowledge indicates that this dimension of scaffolding is already well accepted. (7) Constructivis m Constructivism b c strong weak The scaffolding activity should be designed to support knowledge construction (strong scaffold), not memorization or rote learning (weak scaffold). For example, cognitive appren- ticeship theory has drawn attention to scaffolding, with an emphasis on modelling expert performance, with students articulating their understandings and gradually approximating expert performance (Collins et al., 1989). Technology-based scaffolding supports knowledge construction by representing learners’ ideas, beliefs and understandings, and by offering tools for accessing needed information so that learners can create new knowledge. Provision of hyperlinked resources linked to a learning task may be used to support exploration and promote resource selection and synthesis of information. (8) Learning orientatio n Learning orientation b c teacher regulation learner regulation As successful learning is a purposeful activity engaged in by learners, the role of the teacher is to foster independent learning and self-regulation. If competence is the desired level of achievement, then scaffolds must be designed to ensure that the learner progresses from teacher regulation to self-regulation and learner self-direction. Effective scaffolds are not intended to increase teacher intervention or supplant learner-generated activity but to encour- age self-regulation and re� ection by learners on their own processes and actions. (9) Multiplicity Multiplicity b c one-dimensional multi-dimensional Scaffolds must be designed to support many facets of the learning activity. Researchers have suggested various forms of scaffolding (see Table 1), which are intended to support key aspects of the learning process such as metacognition, re� ection, articulation and comparison of multiple perspectives. The multiplicity continuum proposes that scaffolds can range from Learner Support 159 one-dimensional (limited to one aspect of learning) to multi-dimensional (applicable to many aspects of learning). For example, threaded computer conferencing may provide support for collaborative problem solving, with articulation and elaboration of views, thereby providing multiple forms of support. (10) Granularit y Granularity b c low granularity high granularity The EDUCAUSE Instructional Management System (IMS) uses the term “relative size of a resource” as their working de� nition of granularity. The relative size of instructional resources ranges from low to high granularity as follows: curriculum, course, unit, topic, and lesson fragment (Wiley, South, Bassett, Nelson, Seawright, Peterson & Monson, 1999). A large resource has low granularity. In learning and teaching, high granularity is a property of resources and strategies as tasks need to be broken down into component parts or decon- structed. High granularity in scaffolding enables learners to select and reconstruct the parts that are meaningful to them within a task and are therefore more ef� cient. Scaffolds therefore need to be created at the level of task and fragment, as the micro-level of task engagement is critical to learning. Conclusions Instructional designers and teachers in higher education need to ensure quality learning support for students as learning environments are increasingly designed according to the principles of resource-based and independent learning. A great deal of research has indicated that learners need to be given more control over their learning environment and the activities they undertake. Nevertheless, in some cases, online environments may take for granted the skills of learners and overlook their need to have a repertoire of learning strategies. Designing scaffolds for learning involves conceptualizing new roles for learners and teachers in fostering task engagement, social interaction and peer feedback. In a sustainable learning environment, support must be designed in a principled way in order to ensure that learners progress from teacher-directed activity to self-regulated activity. The principles of scaffolding discussed here are based upon research in self-regulated learning, socio-cultural and constructivist learning theory and learner-centred psychological principles. The article proposes that the term scaffolding offers a conceptual framework for effective learning support as it provides a clear de� nition of the characteristics of learning support. Three core aspects of scaffolding applicable to distance and online learning are identi� ed as task and peer support and support for social interaction, while the agency of the teacher/facil- itator in offering this support will differ, depending on the context. In addition, examples of categories of scaffolding are summarized from existing research and may be applied across a range of learning contexts (see Table 2). The proposed 10 design dimensions are based on ingredients of effective scaffolding identi� ed from the literature and from current empirical research in the � eld. 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work_hmpclipi2ra65gmmdbeddpknpq	----	The Effectiveness in Distance Education for Iranian Higher Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1315 – 1319 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.818 CY-ICER 2012 The effectiveness in distance education for Iranian higher education Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi a * a Department of education ,Islamic Azad University,zanjan branch, ,Zanjan,Iran Abstract Nowadays there are numerous alternatives to the traditional teaching model which generally try to improve the quality of university education. This study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of experiential learning in distance education in Tehran University. The learning methods based on experience promote the development of certain skills required for student learning like, teamwork, use of logical, knowing how to plan, being participative, motivation, information sharing to achieve goals, knowing how to apply knowledge to practical tasks, analyzing and synthesizing data, among others. As we analyze students lear n better when they enter into direct contact with their own experiences. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Skills, experiential learning, teaching tool, distance education. 1. INTRODUCTION Because of the training needs that people have throughout their lives, teaching should be adapted to the new social circumstances and also to the demands of students and businesses. In this respect, it should be noted that the student population is an increasingly heterogeneous entity, meaning that the education system should find the new keys to efficiently satisfy student needs for achieving their objectives. So with this study, we aim to determine the learning method that students consider to be the best. In this article, we present the proposed teaching model: the inclusion of a business simulation game in the distance education model of the “Strategic Management” course given by the Iran National Distance Education University (UNED). This model was developed as part of the research project called “Simulation as a teaching method in Business Administration and Management studies”, undertaken in the framework of “Research Networks for Teaching Innovation: Development of Pilot Projects for Adaptation of Teaching to the Iranian Area” (BANA E COSTA, 2009) that was promoted and funded by the Tehran National Distance Education University (UNED). To do so, we propose multi-criteria methodology based on the MACBETH method, which classifies the alternatives on the basis of qualitative judgments about differences of attractiveness between criteria. 2 TYPES OF EDUCATION Teaching is not only the mere transmission of information, but rather is a process that requires understanding and assimilation by the recipient of the transmitted message. Therefore, it is essential that the channel selected by the teacher (the way to transmit the information) be the proper one to achieve the teaching objectives and the learning * Masoumeh sadat Abtahi. Tel.:00989367118445 E-mail address: m_almasi2020@yahoo.com Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1316 Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1315 – 1319 principles, which to a great extent depend on the effectiveness of the selected method or methods. Therefore, learning enables people to become involved and put all their senses to use, creating spaces for reflection about how they do things. This is the reason why the methods proposed below are especially important; if they are properly used, they lead to highly significant, lasting levels of learning, as the recipient develops a series of crucial skills to make the acquisition of knowledge effective. Several authors propose the use of mixed teaching systems (complementing different methods) to foster the development of skills among students and thus obtain the greatest possible pedagogical performance (BANA E COSTA,1997,b). To explain the different methods that are usually applied to business teaching, and more specifically to Strategic Management instruction, we are going to classify these methods by the type of teaching provided to the student. In this way, we will be able to identify the methodology or methodologies that help to achieve the expected learning results based on the development of skills which we believe are essential for students to expand their knowledge of Business Administration and Management. 2.1 Traditional Teaching As teaching involves a transmission of knowledge from professors to students, all the different aspects of the traditional teaching system develop certain skills, including the ability to concentrate on achieving the main objectives pursued, the use of analytical and conceptual thinking, the search for information and application techniques, decision making and the ability to think (BANA E COSTA,1997,a). It is necessary to complement this methodology with experiential learning approach which, as we will see here after, is more of a philosophy of education than a tool and which is based on the premise that people learn better when they enter into direct contact concepts (such as a master class), but rather, through exercises, simulations or dynamics, it encourages people to assimilate the principles and put them into practice in order to develop a greater number of personal and professional skills. 2.2 Experience-Based Learning experiential learnin Consequently, the advocates of this theory consider that students should actively participate in their own learning process in order to boost their ability to perfects the work of other authors in this field, e.g. (BANA E COSTA,2009), (BANA E COSTA,2009)and( GROS distinguished by the central role that experience plays in the learning process. As we will show later, this model assumes that, in order to learn something, the information that is received must be worked on and processed. According to this idea, we can start with a direct, specific experience, or else with an abstract experience such as the one we have when we read about something or when we are told about it. The experiences we have, either concrete or abstract, are then transformed into knowledge when we elaborate on them in one of two ways: either by reflecting on and thinking about them, or else by actively experimenting with the information received. For this reason, whatever the methods or techniques to be used, they should help the student become involved in his/her learning experience; the student is the one who should observe, test, analyze and participate in the various activities of the process to integrate the new knowledge. Bearing this in mind, experiential learning influences the student in two ways; it improves his/her cognitive structure and modifies attitudes, values, perceptions and behavioral patterns. These two elements of the individual are always present and interconnected. Therefore, student learning is not a development isolated from cognitive development, but rather a change in the whole cognitive affective- social system. It is thus through active, significant and experiential participation that students will build new and meaningful knowledge that will influence their education and result in responsibility for and commitment to their own learning. Only when learning is meaningful does the deliberate intention to learn arise(GROS and simulation models. Both allow the student to live through a business situation and to learn through the experience 1317 Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1315 – 1319 in a more effective way, by applying knowledge to practical tasks(BANA E COSTA,2009) and enabling the student to develop skills such as those related to decision making and problem solving, teamwork, negotiation and the use of VALLS,2008). The Case Method: This method can be considered as a pedagogical technique somewhere between traditional teaching methods and practical training(BANA E COSTA,2009). Business Games: It can be safely said that business simulation games combine the advantages of other methods, especially those referring to student participation and decision making. This is why they are considered as one of the VALLS,2008) . The main difference between these techniques is that, while in the case method the solutions are compared in a group discussion and the students cannot know the results of their decisions, in a business game the simulation provides objective, continuous feedback on the consequences of those decisions, which results in a closer approximation to the reality of business and a greater motivation for the students. Nevertheless, we should be cautious and realize that, at least at present, there is no one game, nor a set of them, that is capable of providing a complete business education because it is not possible to capture all the real day to day problems that businessmen face. In addition to the methods mentioned above, we should include projects and company internships in the experiential teaching techniques, as they are based on the premise of thes 3 APPLICATION OF THE EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING USING BUSINESS SIMULATORS TO A REAL CASE Since one of our objectives is to test business management simulators as a suitable teaching method for undergraduate courses, we have conducted a pilot test with a group of students from the Iran National Distance Education University. We should mention that this was a special case because the game would be played in a distance education setting by students who had the advantage of already having some business experience. A pilot -year course of the Business Administration and Management undergraduate degree program. Since the ideal number of participants for a simulation would be from 25 to 30, 24 students were selected for the test out of a total of 35 applications from students in the course. The methodology used was as follows: The game selected for the seminar was the INTOP simulation game. A message was posted on the student forum of the course webct, and on the course Teaching Staff and General Queries web, which explained the project and requested student volunteers to take part in it. The request explained that 24 students would participate and that the selection would be made in keeping with the order of application. Each of the participants was assigned to a work team with 4 or 5 people who assumed the responsibility for managing one of the computer-simulated market businesses. The first sessions focused on s and techniques for analyzing the information to be provided to each team at the end of each period, and after processing the decisions that had been made. The simulation was developed with a distance teaching model. In an early mail, the coordinator sent to the members of each team the composition of each group, a game manual, some templates for decision making and the rules to be followed, which included the timeline for decision making. After that, and using the e- mail of the WebCT platform, the head of each period. In accordance with the organization of the game, the coordinator had to send the result of the decision within two days. On the established date, the team, in accordance with the results received and its business strategy, would send the next decision, and so on. The students were evaluated according to their participation and the final report submitted by each simulation team. 4 SELECTION OF THE MOST ADEQUATE METHOD Having analyzed the teaching methods considered as most suitable for teaching Business Administration and having presented the teaching project, we can now proceed with an analysis of the ideal teaching Obviously, none of the teaching methods described above is comprehensive enough to succeed in sufficiently developing the indicated skills and transforming the student into a true manager. We stress that the ideal thing is to 1318 Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1315 – 1319 combine methods1; therefore, in the case under study, we have chosen to combine business simulators with the traditional distance education provided by the UNED. 4.1 Description of the Methodology Used The methodology used in this work is based on a multi-criteria analysis to obtain a classification of the previously analyzed teaching methods (which act as classifiable alternatives) in terms of the pedagogical skills developed by them (which act as criteria or variables to be considered). The selection of a multi-criteria methodology is based on the existence of multiple criteria (in these case, skills) which should be evaluated and classified from a uniform in this case, a teaching method which satisfies all the selected criteria as far as possible. However, it should be noted that there will be no -criteria problem will depend on the individual preferences of each evaluator or group of evaluators. These preferences may be quantitatively or qualitatively expressed, and there are different methods for processing the information. In the case under study, qualitative information is available (expressed in affirmative and negative terms) on the opinion of a group of students regarding the extent to which certain teaching methods develop a series of pedagogical skills. This information was compiled through a survey taken of a total of 24 students from the Strategic Management course given in the UNED by the Business Organization Department2. To process the data, we have used the MACBETH method introduced by Bana e Costa and Vansnick in 1994 and developed in the autumn of 2002 via the M-MACBETH software by the same authors, together with De requires exclusively qualitative judgments about the differences of attractiveness between elements, to generate scores for the options of each criterion and to weight the criteria (BANA E COSTA, 2009). The application of this technique includes a series of phases that begin with a first stage of structuring, which establishes the criteria and options that should be evaluated, along with their respective performances. In a second phase, the attractiveness scores or preferences of each option are evaluated with respect to the different criteria on a semantic scale of 7 categories: null, very weak, weak, moderate, strong, very strong and extreme, thus enabling the evaluator to express generated are entered into the software, which suggests different possibilities in the cases of inconsistency. Once the matrix of qualitative judgments is consistent, the software evolves towards a quantitative evaluation model that provides an overall score scale which reflects the attractiveness of the alternative in question with respect to the whole set of criteria and which should be confirmed by the evaluator(BANA E COSTA,2009). Finally, the sensitivity and robustness of the model results are analyzed, considering a key factor in the multi-criteria method: data uncertainty. 5 CONCLUSIONS This experience with distance teaching of t teaching of skills that a person preparing for a management post should have, and also the need to adapt the Business Administration teachings to the Iranian Higher Education Area. Using a business simulator, the students have had the chance to learn business management concepts and skills and put their knowledge of the subject into practice. This article proposes a method for distance teaching of management skills that uses a dual methodology: traditional teaching and experiential learning. When judging the benefits of the different teaching methods for the learning approaches. References ACKOFF, R. L. (1959). Game, decisions and organization. Journal of General Systems, vol.4, pp.145-150. AIDAR, A. (2006): Cases and business games: the perfect match! Developments. Journal of BusinessSimluation and Experiential Learning, vol. 33, pp- 204- 212. 1319 Masoumeh Sadat Abtahi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 ( 2012 ) 1315 – 1319 AUSUBEL, D. P. (1976). (1997a)..Applications of the MACBETH Approach in the Framework of an Additive Aggregation Model. Journal of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis,vol. 6, pp. 107-114. BANA E COSTA, C.A. AND VANSNICK, J.C. (1997b).A theoretical framework for Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique (MACBETH) -24. BANA E COSTA, C.A. AND VANSNICK, J.C. (1999).The MACBETH Approach: basic ideas, software, and an application. in Meskens, N. and Roubens, M., Advances in Decision Analysis, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, PP. 131-157. BANA E COSTA, C.A., DE CORTE, J.M. AND VANSNICK, J.C. (2009), M- usuario, www.m-macbeth.com Journal of Revista Complutense de - 150. ESCOBAR, B. y LOBO, A. (2006). herramienta para la innovation docente: experiencia en turismo. - 47. 
work_hnhm7qbi2bbwpddleftjreugpa	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_hohzbmua2ng3tm567dlsofssi4	----	Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 1 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. AbstrAct Besides the ability of making learning more interesting, educators and researchers have been exploring other pedagogical potentials of computer games. How to employ games for construc- tivist learning and teaching has become an attention in the field of education and game design in recent years. This article gives an introduction to game-based learning. On top of discussing games’ intrinsic educational traits from the motivational, cognitive and socio-cultural perspec- tives, we also review two recent foci of game-based learning. The first one is “education in games” which is an approach for adopting existing commercial games for educational use. The second is “games in education” in which the games are designed specifically with underlying pedagogy for some curricula. Keywords: please provid IntroductIon The pervasive spread of computer games has made a significant impact on different aspects in our society (Newman, 2004). Sustaining spontaneous players’ engage- ment (Gee, 2003) and exploiting proactive players’ communities (Prensky, 2006) are substantive features of today’s games. This emerging attention has been one of the main reasons for the increasing number of educa- tors and researchers worldwide (e.g., Chiu et al., 2005; Halverson, 2005; Shaffer 2006; Squire, 2005; Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2007) to treat game-based learning as a topic of seri- ous research in the field of education. There has been a great promotion of shift in education from a didactic model of instruction to a constructivist model that emphasizes more an active learner role. Learning is believed to be at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive (Quinn, 2005). Harnessing computer Games in Education Morris S.Y. Jong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Junjie Shang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Fong-Lok Lee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Jimmy H.M. Lee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 2 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. On the other hand, some researchers (e.g., Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2002; Gee, 2003) also believe that the computer game world is totally learner-centered, and is therefore a possible venue for realizing a constructiv- ist learning paradigm. This article aims at discussing the intrinsic educational traits of computer games from different perspec- tives and reviewing some recent research on game-based learning strategies. Intrinsic Educational traits of computer Games Since the early 1980s, employing human game-playing motives to facilitate learn- ing has been a significant research focus of game-based learning (Squire, 2003; Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2007). More recently, some researchers (e.g., Gee, 2003; 2005; Squire, 2005; Prensky, 2006; Shaffer, 2006) have also argued that games’ underlying cognitive, social, and cultural features can offer various “educative” opportunities for learners. In the following, we discuss games’ intrinsic traits that promote learn- ing in a constructivist fashion from the motivational, cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives. Motivational Perspective Research evidence (e.g., Bisson & Lunck- ner, 1996; Cordova & Lepper, 1996) has shown that fun and enjoyment are important in the process of learning as learners can be more relaxed, motivated and willing to learn. Based empirically on a series of surveys, observations and interviews with game-players, Malone (1980) gave his intrinsic motivation theory, which asserts that challenge, fantasy, control, curiosity, cooperation, recognition and competition are the most significant elements that make game-playing fun and engaging, and sustain players’ continual motives. Malone advo- cated that schools should try to integrate game elements into curricula so as to arouse students’ intrinsic learning motives. Bowman (1982) tied his study on game-playing and learning with the psy- chological conception of flow—a state of optimal experience, whereby a person is so engaged in an activity that self-conscious- ness disappears, and time becomes distorted (Csikzentmihalyi & Larson, 1980). In the flow state, individuals work on complex, goal-directed task(s) not for external re- wards, but for the exhilaration of doing. Bowman believed that learning with games is an effective means to bring students to the flow state of learning. Computer games are fun, pleasurable, challenging and rewarding (Prensky, 2001). From both empirical and theoretical points of view, learners will be more motivated and engaged in educational activities if these activities take place in a form of game-playing. Cognitive Perspective The traditional school curricula are often fragmented into small and unconnected pieces (Papert, 1993). The original inten- tion is for making learning easier, but this usually ends up with depriving the ratio- nale behind the knowledge itself, creating unrealistic learning contexts, and making learning boring. Learning should be an active process based upon concrete expe- rience (Piaget, 1964). Without chunking or turning contents into a series of split- screens, a well-designed game can do well in presenting near real-life contexts for individuals to acquire knowledge and skills unintentionally rather than deliberately (Gee, 2003). This is situated learning—a learning paradigm that Lave and Wenger (1991) have been advocating. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 � Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. When discussing the educational potentials of computer games, we should classify the games into mini-games or complex-games (Prensky, 2006). In general, playing mini-games takes around several minutes to an hour to complete. Usually, these games contain simple challenges and contents, with neither ethical dilemma nor human players’ interactions. On the contrary, complex games require players’ dozens of hours (or even more) of con- centrated attention to master with. Players are demanded to acquire new and multiple skills, and communicate (or collaborate) with other players inside and outside the games (Gee, 2003; Quinn, 2006). Most tasks therein are generative and open-ended with neither prescribed strategies nor solu- tions. Players have to analyze the perceived information and contexts in complex games proactively. They also have to apply their existing knowledge and skills to formu- late strategies, make decisions, and then examine results. Complex games offer the prospect of user-defined learning environments (Halv- erson, 2005) in which individuals can tryout and get feedbacks on their assumptions and strategies. This is a new cognitive way for learners to acquire knowledge and skills in a constructivist fashion (Bisson & Lunck- ner, 1996; Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, & Gee, 2005). Socio-Cultural Perspective How to educate learners is not seen as how to build representations in each of their heads, but how to engage them in social practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Knowledge itself arises from social needs, fulfills social func- tions, and is tied inherently with cultural conditions (Cole, 1996). Thus, learning is not just a process of mastering facts, or even doing complex tasks, but rather, participating in socio-cultural practices. This requires learners to develop their own identity in relation to others. Most of today’s game-playing activities are situated socially and culturally (Gee, 2003), entwining practice, participation, community and identity. The gamer gen- eration prefers human competitors and/or collaborators rather than purely artificial intelligence (AI) (Prensky, 2001). Players meet online and form teams to discuss chal- lenges, complete quests, and solve puzzles. Moreover, nearly every prevalent game does not simply appear alone as a game itself, but exists logically as a game system (Prensky, 2006). In each of these systems, besides a complex game and a synchronous chat platform therein, it also consists of players’ self-initiated components, such as online discussion forums, fans’ sites, and blogs, and so forth. All of these com- ponents enable and encourage individuals to share, discuss, evaluate and apply the community knowledge co-constructed by the community members. In didactic schooling approaches, learning takes place through teaching and testing (Gee, 2005) and students can gain standardized learning experiences only (Halverson, 2005). Compared to those tra- ditional approaches, game-based learning can create a more social and cultural world that helps individuals learn by integrating thinking and social interactions (Shaffer et al., 2005). The whole learning process does not need to be face-to-face or take place in schools. computEr GAmE-bAsEd LEArnInG Learning and teaching with computer games has been discussed since the early 1980s (e.g., Malone, 1980; Bowman, 1982), � Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. but regrettably most of today’s educational games are still lacking in quality (Egenfeldt- Nielsen, 2007, p. 19). According to Squire’s (2003) review of game-based learning, the most popular genre of learning games adopted in schools has been drill-and- practice. Without taking either the versatile advantages of games’ intrinsic educational traits or today’s computing technologies, drill-and-practice games have just been promoting rote memorization (Card, 1995). These games offer no opportunities for learners to interact, create, and share what they create with other learners. In recent years, however, some researchers in this field (e.g., Chiu et al., 2005; Halverson, 2005; Squire, 2005; Shaffer 2006) have been trying to tackle this problem. In the following, we discuss and give some ex- amples of representative work on two recent foci of game-based learning. The first one is “education in games”, that is, the educa- tional use of existing commercial games. The second is “games in education”, that is, designing learning games with underlying pedagogy for specific curricula. Education in Games Squire (2005) studied how to integrate a prevalent commercial game, Civilization III1, into U.S. high-school classrooms. Civilization III allows players to lead a civilization from 4000 B.C. to the present, in which players compete for political, scientific, military, cultural, and economic victories. In this game, each player has to seek out geographical resources, manage economics, plan the growth of his/her own civilization, and engage in diplomacy with other players competitively and collabora- tively. Squire introduced playing Civiliza- tion III as a new cognitive approach for motivating high-school students to under- stand some “used to be boring” topics in World History. Gee (2003) also advocated exploring the possibilities of adopting commercial games in education. Commercial game designers try their best to make their games hard but fun, time-spending but enjoyable, complex but learnable; otherwise, nobody will keep on playing their games. Thus, many of bestselling commercial games (e.g., Full Spectrum Warrior2) are already “state of the art” learning games, and actu- ally most of these games are based on the principle of distributed authentic profes- sionalism (Gee, 2005). Distributed authentic professionalism refers to the distribution of authentic profes- sional expertise between NPCs (non-player characters) and players’ avatars while play- ers are engaged in specific activities, values, and ways of seeing during game-playing. Professional knowledge and practices are embodied through the interactions between NPCs and players. Thus, players can gain first-hand experiences on how members of these professions think, behave, and solve problems. The whole cognitive process is both situated socially and culturally. Games in Education Shaffer (2006) gave a more detailed ac- count of Gee’s (2005) idea of distributed authentic professionalism. Members of a profession have an epistemic frame—a particular way of thinking and working, that is, a grammar of a particular culture. In other words, epistemic frames are the conventions of participation that learners become internalized and acculturated. Thus, developing individuals to be members of a particular professional is a matter of equip- ping them with a right epistemic frame. The development should be grounded with meaningful activities that align with the Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 � Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. cored skills, habits, and understandings of that professionalism. To accomplish this, Shaffer advocated immersing learners to participate in, what he has been calling, epistemic games. Instead of adopting existing commer- cial games, in recent years, Shaffer together with his research team have developed a number of epistemic games. These games are designed for learners to participate in simulations of various professional com- munities that they might someday inhabit. The communities include, for example, biomechanical engineers in Digital Zoo3, ecological thinkers in Urban Science4, as well as journalists in Journalism.Net5, and so forth. Folklore-based learning (Lee, Lee & Lau, 2006) is another games-in-education example. Folklore-based learning is a game-based situated learning paradigm in which learning activities are in an interac- tive adventure highlighted by problem- solving tasks situated in a folklore-based story plot. This paradigm aims as not only empowering learners to learn in an authentic situation, but also offering interesting story episodes as a motivating agent for less initiated learners. As prototype work, Lee et al. developed a folklore-based learning game, namely, Tong Pak Fu and Chou Heung6, on the subject of probability. This game is composed of several game-playing stages. In each stage, learners are presented a problem, from sample space construction in the first stage, to simple probability, and to conditional probability, and eventually the “Monty Hall Problem” (Fowler, 1996) in the last stage. Throughout the game-play- ing process, learners have to experience and tackle the problems within predefined learning contexts. Pedagogy for Game-Based Learning Only leaving learners to float amidst rich experiences but without teachers’ guidance in the process of game-based learning does not work (Gee, 2005). Learners often have difficulties in making connections between the scenarios happening in a learning game and the corresponding real-world system that the game intends to represent (Clegg, 1991). Moreover, games make assumptions and more or less contain biases (Thiagara- jan, 1998); even a high-fidelity simulation game still cannot represent reality. We believe a learning game by itself may unlikely facilitate effective learning, unless opportunities of initial enablement, reflection and generalization of abstrac- tion are embedded therein. Game-based learning is necessary to be concatenated with pedagogy, and thus we proposed VISOLE—Virtual Interactive Student-Ori- ented Learning Environment (Chiu et al., 2005; Jong et al., 2006). VISOLE is a three-phase construc- tivist pedagogical approach to empower game-based learning, which encompasses the creation of a near-real-life online interactive world modeled upon a set of multi-disciplinary domains. In Phase 1 (Multi-disciplinary Scaffolding), teachers act as cognitive coaches to activate students’ learning motive and assist students to gain some high-level abstract knowledge upon a selected multi-disciplinary framework. In this phase, students are equipped with “just enough” knowledge, and given some possible knowledge pointers. Thus, in the next learning phase they will be able to acquire the necessitated knowledge in a learner-centered fashion. Phase 2 (Game-based Learning) deploys an online multi-player interac- tive game portraying a virtual world. The scenarios therein become the dominant 6 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. motivator driving students to go on to pursue the inter-related understandings of the multi-disciplinary abstractions encoun- tered in Phase 1. In the game, each student participates as a character who takes part in shaping the development of the virtual world for a period of time. All missions, tasks and problems in the game are genera- tive and open-ended with neither prescribed strategies nor solutions. Since every single action can affect the whole virtual world, students have to take into account the overall effects associated with their strategies and decisions to others. “Living” in this virtual world, students have to not only acquire the subject-specific knowledge in an interdisci- plinary fashion, but also the generic skills of problem analysis, strategy composition and decision making, and so forth. Phase 3 (Reflection and Debriefing) interleaves with the activities in phase 2. Af- ter each game-playing session, students are required to write in their reflective journals to internalize their learning experiences. On the other hand, teachers monitor the progress of students’ development of the virtual world at the backend. They look for and try to act on debriefable moments to “lift” students out of particular situations in the game. These debriefing activities aim to help students to transform their game-play- ing experiences into learning experiences, so that they can reflect and generalize their gained knowledge and skills. Respectively during and at the end of this phase, teachers extract problematic and critical scenarios arisen in the virtual world, and then conduct just-in-time and summative case studies with their students by deploying some face-to-face debriefing classes. FARMTASIA7 (Luk et al., 2006) is an educational game developed which is based on the pedagogical paradigm of VISOLE, involving the subject areas of geography (natural environment and hazards as well as environmental problems), biology, economics (including government and production system) and technology, while the “virtual world” consists of interacting farming systems. Empirical research (Jong et al., 2007) has shown that VISOLE could empower students (K-10) to acquire multi- disciplinary knowledge, and on the other hand offer opportunities for enhancing their generic skills for managing problems. concLusIon And dIscussIon In the past, game-based learning used to be interpreted as a means for “sugaring” didactic schooling (Aylett, 2005). The premise was that learning is not fun but game-playing is fun, and the introduction of game elements should be able to make learning more interesting. In recent years, a number of educators, researchers (e.g., Gee, 2003; 2005; Chiu et al., 2005; Shaffer, 2005; Squire, 2005) and practitioners from the commercial sectors (e.g., Quinn; 2005; Prensky, 2006) have been exploring various educational potentials of computer games, and opportunities for adopting game-based learning into the contemporary education systems. In this article, we discuss the intrinsic educational features of today’s computer games that favor constructivist learning. We also review some recent research interests on the educational use of com- mercial games, such as Gee’s initiative (2003; 2005), and Squire’s work (2005). Educators and researchers in this approach focus on investigating the possibilities of a direct transformation of entertainment to edutainment. On the other hand, we go through some “games in education” in- stances, such as Shaffer’s epistemic games Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 � Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. (2006), Lee et al.’s (2006) folklore-based learning paradigm, and Chiu et al.’s (2005) VISOLE pedagogy. The games involved in these instances are designed specifically for some curricula with an underlying pedagogy. Educators and researchers in this approach focus mainly on adopting commercial game’s “educative” (such as motivational, cognitive and socio-cultural) traits in developing “educational” games. We have no intention to argue that all learning should be via game-playing. How- ever, we believe that game-based learning could be an integral part of our education systems allowing a variety of contemporary pedagogical approaches to co-exist and interplay. Some researchers argued that today’s educational environment is still not flexible enough to accommodate game- based learning in place (e.g., Squire, 2005), and the real integration of computer games into formal schooling has not yet been explored systematically (e.g., Halverson, 2005). Besides discussing how to design and develop the best computer games for the educational use, another urging issue is the actual adoption, implementation, and evaluation of game-based learning within school and institution settings. rEfErEncEs Aylett, R. (2005). And they both lived happily ever after? Digital stories and learning. In: G. Dettori, T. Giannetti, A. Paiva, & A. Vaz (Eds.), Technology-mediated narrative environments for learning. Amsterdam: Sense Publishers. Bisson, C., & Lunckner, J. (1996). Fun in learn- ing: The pedagogical role of fun in adventure education. Journal of Experimental Education, 9(2), 109-110. Bowman, R. (1982). A Pac-Man theory of motivation. Tactical implications for classroom instruction. Educational Technology, 22(9), 14-17 Card, O. (1995). What are computers doing at school. Windows Sources. Chiu, L., Luk, T., Lee, J., Lee, F., Leung, Y., & Chau, K. (2005). Virtual interactive student- oriented learning environment (VISOLE): A new Web-based learning paradigm. Proceed- ings of the 9th Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education, (pp. 834-837). Hawaii, USA. Clegg, A. (1991). Games and simulations in social studies education. In: J. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teach- ing and learning (pp. 523-528). New York, NY: Macmillan. Cordova, D., & Lepper, M. (1996). Intrinsic mo- tivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Educational Psychol- ogy, 88, 715-730. Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (1980). Intrinsic rewards in school crime. In: M. Verble (Ed.), Dealing in discipline. Omaha, NE: Uni- versity of Mid-America. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. (2002). Thoughts on learning in games and designing educational computer games. www.Game-research.com. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. (2007). Educational potential of computer games. New York, NY: Continuum. Fowler, G. (1996). Monty Hall (let’s make a deal) problem. Retrieved February 23, 2005 from http://www.nadn.navy.mil/MathDept/courses/ pre97/sm230/MONTYHAL.HTM Gee, J. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Gee, J. (2005). What would be a state of the art instructional video game look like?. Retrieved July 28, 2007 from http://www.innovateonline. info/index.php?view=article&id=80 8 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(1), 1-9, January-March 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Halverson, R. (2005). What can K-12 school leaders learn from video games and gaming?. Innovate, 1(6). Retrieved July 28, 2007 from h t t p : / / w w w. i n n o v a t e o n l i n e . i n f o / i n d e x . php?view=article&id=81 Jong, M., Shang, J., Lee, F., & Lee, J. (2006). A new vision for empowering learning and teaching with IT: The VISOLE approach. Proceedings of the Hong Kong International IT in Education Conference 2006: Capacity building for learning through IT, (pp. 18-25). Hong Kong, China. Jong, M., Shang, J., Lee, F., & Lee, J. (2007). 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work_hqtdkejtwnhjhksxa237cl6sjy	----	Distance Education Vol. 31, No. 2, August 2010, 175–192 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2010 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2010.503343 http://www.informaworld.com Developing a mobile learning solution for health and social care practice J.D. Taylora*, C.A. Dearnleyb, J.C. Laxtonc, C.A. Coatesd, T. Treasure-Jonese, R. Campbellf, and I. Hallg aOffice of the Pro Vice Chancellor Assessment Learning and Teaching, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK; bSchool of Health Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK; cFaculty of Medicine and Health, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK; dFaculty of Health Placement Unit, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK; eSchool of Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK; fEcommnet Ltd, Newcastle, UK; gMyKnowledgeMap, York, UK Taylor and FrancisCDIE_A_503343.sgm (Received 4 January 2010; final version received 26 June 2010) 10.1080/01587919.2010.503343Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2010Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.312000000August 2010J.D.TaylorJ.D.Taylor@leedsmet.ac.uk In this article we share our experiences of a large-scale five-year innovative programme to introduce mobile learning into health and social care (H&SC) practice placement learning and assessment that bridges the divide between the university classroom and the practice setting in which these students learn. The outputs are from the Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL), which is working towards a framework of interprofessional assessment of Common Competences in the H&SC professions. The mobile assessment process and tools that have been developed and implemented and the outcomes of the first-stage evaluation of the mobile assessment tools are discussed from the student perspective. Keywords: mobile learning; mobile assessment; common competencies; shared services; practice placement learning; health and social care students; work-based learning Introduction Practice-based education is a core element of all health and social care (H&SC) profes- sional programmes and is an essential component for registration to practice. Profes- sional practice is based on a ‘network of knowledge’ acquired as a result of experiences in practice (Moon, 1999, p. 53). Current government policy promotes the implementation of interprofessional education (IPE) (Craddock, O’Halloran, Borth- wick, & McPherson, 2006), and consequently current education and training for H&SC students has to encompass elements of interprofessional learning. Fundamental to the care of service users within modern H&SC practice is for all professionals to have a high level of professional competence in communication, teamwork, and ethical practice. Assessment of these common competences is increasingly a key focus in many IPE programmes (Simmons, Wagner, AJeCeries, & Reeves, 2010). The ALPS (Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings) programme involves five UK universities (the universities of Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds, Leeds Met, and York St John) and its National Health Service (NHS) partners comprising the *Corresponding author. Email: J.D.Taylor@leedsmet.ac.uk 176 J.D. Taylor et al. Educational Commissioning, Yorkshire and Humberside Strategic Health Authority, clinical networks, professional and statutory regulatory bodies, and 16 H&SC profes- sional groups. The ALPS programme is using mobile devices to deliver learning resources and assessments to enrich, enhance, and extend practice learning. A key aim of the ALPS programme is to assist students to feel confident, as well as competent, at the start of their professional careers. The ALPS approach to improve confidence and competence of students is to build on the Boud (2000) theory of sustainable assessment. Students are encouraged to take feedback from a variety of sources, reflect on that feedback, and deduce further action to improve performance. This student activity is predominantly reflection ‘on’ and ‘in’ action (Schön, 1995) and enhances the richness and quality of the students’ reflections, thus helping them in developing lifelong learning skills. ALPS aimed to achieve this by using interpro- fessional learning opportunities, common interprofessional assessment tools (to assess the Common Competences of Communication, Teamwork, and Ethical Practice), and a mobile learning (m-learning) solution using mobile devices; phone-sized hand-held computers – the HTC Vario I and Vario II. The potential of mobile devices for learning and assessment is of increasing inter- est to the H&SC professions (Sandars & Pellow, 2006) and the wider higher education community (Anderson & Blackwood, 2004). The personal nature of m-learning and the interactivity of this mode have been found to encourage learner engagement (Savill-Smith, Attewell, & Stead, 2006). Key features of m-learning are that it provides ‘just enough, just for me, just in time’ learning (Nycz & Dragon, 2005) often typically situated (in the workplace or field) and contextualised through interaction with tutor, mentor, or peers. Authentic learning environments in higher education typically involve these characteristics (Herrington & Herrington, 2006). Studies in health settings have been undertaken mainly in the USA and Australia and have focused on nurses (Miller et al., 2005), paramedics (Norman, 2005), and doctors (Scheck McAlearney, Schweikhart, & Medow, 2004). These studies investigated the use of mobile devices to provide access to information and assessed the usability of the devices for health care professionals. Walton, Child, and Blenkinsopp (2005) explored the perceptions of health care students regarding the use of mobile devices in the form of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in the community. They have been found to be an effective resource for students, especially for reference materials (Miller et al., 2005). Very few studies have assessed the effectiveness of PDAs for practice assessment and those that have been reported have mainly involved self- assessment activities with medics (Bent, Bolsin, Creati, Patrick, & Colson, 2002; Engum, 2003) and nurses (Kneebone, Nestle, Ratasothy, Kidd, & Darzi, 2003; Koeniger-Donohue, 2008). A number of early m-learning pilots involving the use of mobile devices were conducted by ALPS to assess the readiness of the partner institutions to adopt mobile technologies for H&SC practice placement learning and assessment. These pilot stud- ies demonstrated that the benefits of m-learning for students were improved lecturer and peer support, better access to information and resources, and the ability to record and reflect on their clinical experiences in real time (Dearnley et al., 2009; Haigh, Dearnley, & Meddings, 2007; Parks & Dransfield, 2006; Taylor, Coates, Eastburn, & Ellis, 2006, 2007). Where mobile devices were used for assessment, students valued the increased student-centredness of the process (Sandars & Dearnley, 2009). ALPS subsequently commissioned the development and implementation of a tailor-made innovative m-learning architecture designed to support the assessment of Distance Education 177 the ALPS Common Competences to include mobile delivery of common interprofes- sional assessment tools and to provide any time, anyplace access to the assessments, learning materials, and tutor support. This article presents the findings from a first-stage evaluation of the ALPS mobile assessment processes using the ALPS mobile architecture, from the student perspective. Research question The research question investigated in this study was: how do students perceive the impact of ALPS mobile assessment processes upon their learning and assessments in practice settings? Materials and methods The evaluation of the mobile assessment processes from the student perspective is an ongoing two-stage evaluation. Stage one is now complete and will be reported on here. This first-stage evaluation involved a qualitative investigation conducted using a mixed-methods approach. Cohort-specific focus groups were undertaken with eight of the ALPS professional groups: dietetics; midwives; dental hygiene and therapy; speech and language therapy; occupation therapy; audiology; social work; and child- branch nursing. In addition to the focus groups, students were invited to complete online diaries/blogs. It was anticipated that they could do this on their mobile devices and then upload them to the e-portfolio entries or email them directly to the research- ers. Few students engaged in this activity, despite financial rewards (book tokens) being offered. This is interesting in itself and perhaps reflects the students’ heavy workloads. However, a few students did send diary notes to us and these were informative and contributed to the thematic analysis. A final schedule of questions for the focus groups was developed using an iterative process of peer review by a group of researchers from the five partner institutions. The ALPS research officer attended all focus groups to ensure consistency across partner sites and the recordings of the discussions were transcribed verbatim. Each partner site undertook independent thematic analysis of focus group sessions prior to an analysis workshop at which outcomes were shared and discussed, and overall key outcomes agreed. Ethics The investigation of students’ perceptions of the introduction of these devices for assessment purposes was considered to be a curriculum and teaching development project that did not require ethical review by an NHS Research Ethics Committee or approval from the NHS Research and Development Office. Ethical approval was sought from partner university ethics committees. This process was made easier by an agreement early in the collaboration, that the ethics committee of each university would recognise the decisions of partner institutions. Thus, collaborative research was initially scrutinised by the ethics committee of one university, and the outcomes relayed to the committees of partners. Informed consent was obtained from those taking part and students had the right to withdraw from the study and their anonymity was respected at all times. 178 J.D. Taylor et al. Each student was issued with an ID-type card to carry, certifying that their device had been issued as a learning and assessment tool by their university. Patient confidentiality was secured by requiring students to sign a ‘Contract of Use’ drawn up jointly by the five ALPS partner universities with legal support. The contract also had a number of governance purposes, including responsible ownership of the device, where to go for help and fair usage of the device, particularly advice on appropriate use of the camera function in line with NHS policy and guidelines. In reality, many H&SC workers own mobile devices with such capabilities and in some cases this issue had not been addressed. Indeed the work of the ALPS CETL (Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning) acted as a catalyst in these instances for Trust mobile device policies to be developed. Participants ALPS is a large-scale implementation with over 900 users across the partnership, who have been supplied with HTC Vario smartphones and unlimited free data connectiv- ity. A convenience sample of 79 students from eight of the ALPS professional groups were recruited from across the programme to take part in the first-stage evaluation of students’ experiences of the ALPS mobile learning and assessment processes. Instruments The ALPS common assessment tools A centrepiece to the work of ALPS has been a Common Competency Mapping exercise involving all of the 16 professional groups. This exercise led to the produc- tion of three Common Competency Maps on the topics of teamwork, communication, and ethical practice. The interactive Communication Map is illustrated in Figure 1. Figure 1. The ALPS Communication Map. The map is divided into clusters, dimension statements, elements, and performance criteria. The Common Competency Maps define the skills and standards that students must reach to be assessed as competent in the respective areas (Holt et al., 2010). The maps were used to generate an assessment toolkit that was used to assess the Common Competences. So far five assessment tools have been developed and used in the practice assessment scenarios: ● Gaining consent ● Providing information to a colleague ● Knowing when to consult or refer ● Demonstrating respect for service user during an interaction ● Working interprofessionally. Each tool enables students to collect 360-degree feedback from a range of participants in the assessment scenario, including the practice educator (from their own or a different profession), peers (from their own or a different profession), service users (and carers), and self. The ALPS common assessment tools were developed using agreed best practice from the different professions involved in the ALPS programme. For example, social work students already gain feedback from service users at some time during their practice placement experience. This concept of service user feedback is also being considered in the nursing profession (Speers, 2008) and is rapidly gaining acceptance across other professions, supported to some extent by the work of ALPS. Distance Education 179 The self-assessment section of each tool consists of a series of open-response questions, whereas the remaining sections have a mixture of open-response and multiple-choice question types. There is also a section in each tool for students to reflect on the feedback they have been given and to develop an action plan that can be signed off by a practice educator, thus ensuring that feed forward is a key outcome of the process. The notions of feed up, feedback, and feed forward embodied in the ALPS assessment tools are recognised as important strategies for effective feedback to occur. They enable the student to gain a better understanding of the performance requirements to achieve the learning goal (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). The ALPS common assessment tools have been used in paper-based, electronic, and mobile formats. In the mobile format used in this study, each question is displayed on a different page to take account of the screen size of the mobile devices. The mobile format takes advantage of the affordances of devices and allows evidence of compe- tence to be captured as text, supported by the predictive text and spell-check functions, and in an audio format using the voice recorder. Figure 2 shows a question page from the ‘Gaining consent’ ALPS Mobile Assessment Tool with an example of an open- ended question and the ability to record the response in both text and audio formats. Figure 2. Question page from the ‘Gaining consent’ ALPS Mobile Assessment Tool illustrating an example of an open-ended question and the ability to record the response in text or audio formats. The ALPS assessment cycle and mobile assessment architecture Work-based learning in H&SC is built around a tripartite relationship between the learner, the workplace, and the university. The systems architecture was developed by Figure 1. The ALPS Communication Map. The map is divided into clusters, dimension statements, elements, and performance criteria. 180 J.D. Taylor et al. ALPS to reflect this dynamic relationship and support the ALPS pedagogic processes. The ALPS mobile assessment cycle is depicted in Figure 3. Figure 3. The ALPS assessment cycle. The ALPS mobile architecture (Figure 4) links together software to create, pack- age, and securely push out the assessments and learning materials to the students’ devices. Figure 4. The ALPS assessment suite architecture. The ALPS mobile assessment client on the devices enables students to view, complete, and save their completed assessments onto the device and then upload them to their e-portfolio (Figure 5). Here they can review their completed assess- ments and any additional feedback posted by their university tutor. The e-portfolio also has the facility for students to keep a blog of their experiences. Students can also upload photographic images, when permitted within the constraints of health care settings, captured using the camera function of the mobile device to supplement their blogs. Figure 5. The ALPS e-portfolio student view page. The e-portfolio has functionality to alert the tutor, when logged in, to any new assessments that have been uploaded to it by the students (Figure 6). The tutor can match the student’s performance on the assessment with the relevant skills defined in the ALPS common competency frameworks (Figure 7). Figure 6. ALPS e-portfolio tutor view page.Figure 7. ALPS e-portfolio competency framework page. The system synchronises every few hours, and if it fails because no connection is available, will persist until a connection is made. This, combined with advice to the students to leave their mobile devices turned on and charged up, ensures that assess- ments are delivered promptly to the students’ devices even when they have been out of network coverage for a few hours, or students have had their device switched off. In practice, this means that students are still able to complete assessments whether Figure 2. Question page from the ‘Gaining consent’ ALPS Mobile Assessment Tool illustrating an example of an open-ended question and the ability to record the response in text or audio formats. Distance Education 181 Figure 3. The ALPS assessment cycle. Figure 4. The ALPS assessment suite architecture. 182 J.D. Taylor et al. Figure 5. The ALPS e-portfolio student view page. Figure 6. ALPS e-portfolio tutor view page. Distance Education 183 they are in a ward, in a lead-lined room taking an X-ray, in a city centre, or out in a rural community location. Students have to log into the device using a username and password. The system encrypts the data that is stored on the device and storage card at login, during trans- mission, and following upload of an assessment to the e-portfolio. There is provision for central device management so that a device can be disabled and any data wiped if it is lost or stolen. This addresses the security concerns raised by most health care settings concerning data security and patient confidentially. Training and support All students received standard training on how to use the device and the assessment software in a face-to-face, classroom-based session. As the purpose of ALPS is ulti- mately to embed the programme at an institutional level, the session was delivered locally by partner site representatives assisted by core team members. It was recogn- ised in the design that the training programme had to be a genuine combination of information technology (IT) and pedagogy to prevent the focus becoming the technol- ogy rather than the learning experience (ALPS CETL, 2010). All stakeholders from across the partnership had access, via the ALPS website, to a suite of online training tools, including videos and written documentation, which could be shared with practice assessors. A selection of briefing documents for practice assessors was also developed and distributed via university link tutors and practice Figure 7. ALPS e-portfolio competency framework page. 184 J.D. Taylor et al. learning facilitators, and all assessor training and update programmes included infor- mation about the ALPS processes. All practice managers were informed about the work of the CETL and posters were prepared and sent to appropriate practice settings for display in clinical areas used by students during their placement. A shared ALPS helpdesk based in Learner Support Services at the University of Bradford provided support and advice to all users across the whole of the ALPS programme. Results Generally speaking, the results can be divided into two sets – those concerned with the hardware of the mobile device and those concerned with the assessments that were delivered via the devices. Key themes within the hardware category were ‘becoming familiar with the devices as learning tools,’ ‘device functionality,’ and ‘training.’ Key themes within the assessment category were ‘the challenge of gaining service user and/or carer feedback’ and ‘assessment for lifelong learning.’ A smaller, additional category emerged which was related to culture, client group, and context. These cate- gories and themes will now be discussed. Mobile devices Becoming familiar with the devices as learning tools Many students reported in the focus groups that there was a considerable commitment of time required to become familiar with the devices and if they could not see an added value compared with that of their existing practice, they would not persevere. There were two notable situations, however, where students found the devices particularly valuable to their learning. One was where they were working in commu- nity settings and had no computer access; for example, social work students working in sheltered accommodation or occupational therapy students on work placement away from home and university and living in rented accommodation. In these cases the devices provided valuable links to social or academic networks. The other was students with dyslexia. For these students the inherent benefit of pocket spell-checking facilities and audio recording was sufficient to motivate them to learn how to use the technology (Dearnley & Walker, 2009). As one student said: I’m dyslexic, so I record everything on it then I can type it up later on. Or if I’m having a thought and I’m stood in the kitchen and I haven’t got a piece of paper to hand I’ll get my Dictaphone and record it to a Dictaphone and then transcribe it later on, but it has taken me a while to get used to my own voice because I don’t like it. Clearly the role of mobile devices in learning goes beyond the functions of a mobile phone, but not all students realised this. For example, one student reported that the lack of phone access on this device was a barrier to engagement: I think when you get your own mobile phone though you get really excited about it and you want to find out about it … at the end of the day, when you have a device that you are going to use all the time and you might rely on it every single hour of the day to make phone calls or to receive texts from people, you’re going to want to learn how to use it. But this it’s like – well what’s it going to offer me if I can’t phone? Distance Education 185 Because this student did not recognise the learning opportunities of a mobile device taking time to become familiar with its functions was not a priority in her busy sched- ule. As more students and staff start to engage with mobile devices that offer more than phone and text functions, it is likely that the opportunities they offer for learning will be more recognisable. Device functionality Issues relating to the functionality of the devices were reported by most groups. This included the small size of the screen (audiology) and the poor quality of the camera (midwives). Some students reported that the password protection made it difficult to engage practice educators; that is, they couldn’t leave the device with them to complete the assessment documents at a later date. However, from an educational perspective, this is a positive aspect of mobile assessment; students have to maintain control over the process and be present when the assessor gives them feedback and potentially therefore engaged in the feedback dialogue. This supports the findings of the ALPS m-learning pilot studies. Although students reported that the device functionality was ‘good for reflecting’ and ‘good for quick notes,’ some of the other functionality issues had a less favourable impact on student learning and assessment. A common problem was that the Internet access slowed down after essential security software was added to the device. As one student said: The programmes are good – like Word – it’s the connection to the Internet that’s slow. Another student reported: ‘My device wouldn’t sync.’ She obtained help from the helpdesk but the device then froze when she tried to open documents, so she gave up. This was a familiar tale and relates to the earlier theme of students becoming familiar with the devices and learning how to use them. If they encountered technical difficul- ties, their enthusiasm for the devices soon wavered. Although they would approach the helpdesk initially, they would generally give up after encountering a couple of problems. Finally, a social work student made the following comment about functionality which may relate to how she had configured her device: A big (for me) shortcoming of the calendar function – it deletes appointments etc a week after the date has passed. I often look back through my diary to check what I’ve done, what date I did something, etc. I think this may be enough to send me back to a paper diary. The range of functionality issues reported here demonstrates some of the challenges inherent in a large-scale mobile learning and assessment initiative. These go beyond issues of software application and student and staff engagement, to issues related to particular devices and particular student needs. They involve technical support for student engagement and staff training. Training There was a need to ensure that students, their lecturers, and their practice assessors fully understood the potential uses of a mobile device for learning in practice settings. 186 J.D. Taylor et al. Student training was extensive, as discussed above. However, it became clear during the evaluation that some students had not used their devices to full capacity because they had not learned how to really use them. An example of this was the audio func- tion. Dyslexic students in the MEDS project1 found this invaluable as they were able to capture their thoughts quickly without having to worry about writing them down in an acceptable way. They reported being able to respond to the assessment questions and reflect in practice, which they would not otherwise have been able to do (Dearnley, Walker, & Fairhall, 2010). Arguably this should be true for all students, yet few seemed to harness this learning opportunity and reported the reasons for not doing so was the lack of knowledge/understanding of how to do it (despite it being an integral part of the training package). As several students said that they didn’t like hearing their own voices, it is likely that using the mobile audio function to full capac- ity for enhancing reflection will take time to gain acceptance. This also demonstrates the need for those facilitating mobile learning to be mindful of the wider capabilities of the devices for supporting learning. Overall then the key findings related to student use of mobile devices for practice- based learning and assessment were that for students to fully engage with mobile devices and take time to learn how to use them the devices must be seen to offer significant benefits over alternative tools. Cognisance should be taken of all the inher- ent benefits to learning within the device, such as audio functions, spell-check, rather than focusing on specific tasks and ensure that a robust technical support system is in place. The mobile assessment processes The challenge of gaining service user and/or carer feedback In many of the ALPS professions, gaining feedback on performance from service users (i.e., patients/clients) and/or their carers was a new process. For others, such as social work students, this was accepted practice; our findings reflect this variance. Students who were new to gaining service user feedback tended to focus their discus- sion more on the process and expressed concerns about reliability and validity of feed- back obtained, for example: ‘It won’t be honest’ or ‘They’ll be worried that the service they receive might be effected if they, if they’re not complimentary about you.’ Others, however, like these social workers, related their concerns to the use of mobile devices to record the feedback: I think to get proper service user feedback it has to be anonymous really … or at least have, if it’s not completely anonymous, at least have somebody else other than yourself getting it. She went on to say: I couldn’t give them that (the device) and expect them to use it, it’s easier to give them a paper form, a paper copy and then they sent it back to me, when, when one of their carers could help them fill it in [i.e., their usual practice]. Other professions, however, liked the assessment processes and found no prob- lems in getting service users to complete them, as these midwives said: Distance Education 187 I thought they were good, I thought they were easy use, for your women to fill in. Yeah I think probably the most useful was feedback from the women that you look after. Clearly there were professional differences here, based on culture, history, and client group. Although the realities of service user and/carer assessment of practice per se continue to be debated by the professions, it is clear that an informed judgment will always be required in relation to suitability of the circumstances and whether or not it is appropriate for feedback to be obtained on a mobile device, will be part of that equation. Assessment for lifelong learning The key element within the ALPS mobile assessment processes is the capacity for students to obtain formative feedback on specific areas of practice regularly through- out their placement. This is in addition to the more general feedback and in some cases grades, which they obtain at the end of their placement. Students recognised this strength, and how it supported their learning. As one said: But this does go towards our course because we’ve got lifelong learning to think about. Mobile assessment seems to support lifelong learning because it allows access any time anyplace and allows regular engagement with learning and assessment processes in short bursts. Students reported preferring the devices to carrying a lot of pieces of paper and found this encouraged them in their work; they also like getting feedback on their practice assessment from their university-based lecturers: You see it’s nice getting the comments from [Tutor] because I don’t get to see [Tutor] a lot in clinic … and I can see if we’d been doing that from the start that would have been good because he’d have been able to see how I’d progressed. Being reflective is fundamental to lifelong learning. Helping students to develop the skills of reflection is not easy. It is not unusual for students to pay lip service to reflec- tion, while concentrating on ‘assignments’ that will be ‘summatively assessed’ and will get them the grades. ‘Becoming reflective’ is like learning to drive: you have to learn the rules before it becomes buried as tacit knowledge and results in spontaneous actions (Dearnley & Matthew, 2007). There was some indication that the mobile assessments, in generating regular reflection on/in practice through structured self-assessment, were indeed beginning to embed the ‘rules’ of reflection. As one student said: It takes me a long time to get my head round when I could do these things, but once I’ve got into the habit of doing them then I do them all the time. Generally, students in this study liked the reflective nature of the formative assess- ments. Again, however, there were some differences of opinion across professions based on previous experiences and expectations. Culture, client group, and context Interestingly, there appeared to be clear differences in acceptability and usage across the professions, which could be accounted for by differences in the culture, client 188 J.D. Taylor et al. group, and context in which they operated. For example, audiologists, who regularly use technology in their practice, reported widespread use, as opposed to some social work students who felt that the technology created a barrier between them and their client group. So we found that students fell into two overall extreme categories; those who used the mobile device a lot and those who didn’t use it at all. Discussion A number of practical, logistic, and educational issues influenced our decision to ‘go mobile’ and issue ALPS mobile devices to students in order to access and complete the ALPS assessment tools. These issues also helped to define the design and specifi- cation of the ALPS mobile architecture. There was no guarantee that students had access to PCs, laptops, or even a login to a wireless network in the placement setting, which would facilitate use of the web version of the assessment tools. NHS Trusts often employ firewalls that make online access difficult. Also the portability of the mobile device lends itself to delivery of the ALPS assessments to students who are on the move, which is especially useful in community settings. It was considered high risk (at the time) to rely on using students’ own mobile phones, as while most students had mobile phones, the capabilities of the phones varied greatly (Sandars & Pellow, 2006). Another consideration in the design of the project was that some ALPS students worked in locations with limited or no connectivity; for example, social work students working in certain remote rural areas or radiography students working in lead-lined rooms. This meant the system needed to work offline, or at least in a sometimes disconnected environment, which is a feature of the ALPS archi- tecture. Healthcare Trusts were concerned about data security so there needed to be a fit with their IT and security policies, which the system provides for by ensuring data is encrypted and that access to the device is via a secure login. Tutors needed to feel confident that any feedback gathered by students was genuine and trustworthy so the ability for practice educators to sign off the assessments on the device allayed their concerns. Karadeniz (2009) has shown that although there is no significant difference between the achievement level of the students who took paper-, web-, and mobile- based assessment, our findings indicate that students had positive perceptions of web- and mobile-based tests, compared with paper, due to the ease of use, and comprehensive and instant feedback. The aim of this study was to gain insights on how the mobile delivery of the ALPS assessment and learning processes can help H&SC students to gain maximum benefit from the interprofessional learning opportunities on offer to them while on practice placements. Our findings show that there is still much to learn about the impact of mobile learning and assessment on the learning experience. For example, there appears to be a clear difference across the professions due to culture, client group, and context in which they are used. It is likely, therefore, that in professional education, early users will be those professions that already use technology as part of their work. The ALPS mobile assessment processes were designed to encourage reflection both ‘in’ and ‘on’ action (Schön, 1995); this is largely through the self-assessment processes that are central to use of the ALPS tools. Reflection is well recognised for its importance in the learning process (Dearnley & Matthew, 2007) as is the role of self-assessment in effective learning, for future professional development and lifelong learning (Boud, 1995; Taras, 2001). The ALPS mobile device enabled reflection anywhere, any time by allowing students to make quick written notes or to use the Distance Education 189 audio facility to capture thoughts, or even to take a photograph that can be revisited to evoke memories and more thorough consideration. Self-assessment is an extension of reflective practice and this too can be undertaken in a more informal, but in the moment, approach, using the ALPS mobile assessment process. Students recognised these benefits and reported using the devices for reflecting on the bus journey home or in their lunch breaks. Students liked the idea of having something where they could look up information on the move, even when working in isolated settings. For this ideal to be realised, it became clear from our work that a number of things were important to students. They didn’t like our devices, which increasingly became outdated – they liked their own. They didn’t want to carry two devices, and they wanted the device they did carry to be a phone as well as having Internet access. We underestimated how much training and support our students needed. Oblinger (2003, 2004) considers that the key traits of today’s learners are that they are digitally literate, ‘always on,’ mobile, experimental, and community-oriented. We had there- fore assumed they were mostly ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001), but this assumption was not borne out in our experience. The ALPS assessment scenarios can be used at different stages of an individual student’s career and also by different professions at different levels of their academic development. For example, the dental hygiene and therapy students used the ‘Gaining consent’ for peer feedback in their second-year paediatric placement, in order to enhance their feedback skills and reflective skills. Norcini (2003) noted that general- isations about peer assessment are difficult to derive and that this form of assessment can be good or bad depending on how it is carried out. The audiology students used the same tool for their level-three students in general clinics, while in practice. The tutors of dentistry asked the students to complete an assessment about how they gained consent from their patients when completing a tooth extraction. The students did the procedure, completed the assessment, gathering evidence from their practice assessor, peers, and in some cases even the patient, and uploaded this to their e-portfolio. Their tutors back in the university then reviewed the assessments and gave feedback that could be seen immediately by the students, who could take onboard the feedback for future practice. Students also used the dialogue with their tutor as an opportunity to discuss what other learning materials (e.g., video clips of technical procedures) could be usefully delivered via the ALPS m-learning platform. In conclusion, work-based learning is a method of learning using the work envi- ronment as a place for study; it is a growing approach used in both the commercial sector and within secondary, further, and higher education generally. The UK government push for a wider choice of educational opportunities, especially in the curriculum for 14–19 year olds, has resulted in specialist schools and academies offering a range of options including work-based learning (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007). There is an increasing trend for more degree programmes, outside of H&SC, to include a work placement as students are able to gain real-world experience in authentic settings and develop skills and competences vital to their future employment opportunities. Currently, much of the research evidence on the impact of shared learning concentrates on the taught elements of programmes rather than the work-based experience. The problem is that the opportu- nities available for shared interprofessional learning in the practice environment are neglected as practical and organisational difficulties often stand in the way. Mobile technologies offer a vehicle to overcome some of these difficulties. The approach 190 J.D. Taylor et al. and processes adopted by ALPS have, therefore, the potential to be used more widely across the higher education sector to bridge the divide between the classroom and work-based learning. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful for the support of the ALPS Evaluation Group. This work was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Notes 1. Mobile Enabled Disabled Students (MEDS) was a separate study funded by ALPS to inform the development of the mobile assessment process in relation to accessibility. Notes on contributors Jill Taylor is a national teaching fellow with a long track record in both medical and educa- tional research. As a co-director of the University Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team Jill has a strategic role leading the adoption and embedding of TEL across Leeds Metropolitan University. Chris Dearnley has a keen interest and a comprehensive research portfolio in learning and assessment for health care practitioners. Her main area of research is pedagogy for health and social care practice, including learning technologies that promote inclusivity and support inde- pendent learning for all students. Julie Laxton is the CETL ALPS teaching fellow for the Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Leeds. A dietitian by background, Julie has experience in the field of education, learning, and teaching, particularly from a practice (NHS) perspective. Catherine Coates is director of the Faculty Health practice Learning Unit at Leeds Metropolitan University and is an ALPS CETL teaching fellow. Her main focus of activity is the promotion of best practice in work-based learning and the development of personal and professional skills in her students. Tamsin Treasure-Jones is the ALPS mobile technologies manager. She has worked in higher education as a project manager for 10 years, on projects in online learning, business support, and knowledge transfer. Robert Campbell is managing director of eccommnet Limited and has over 25 years’ experi- ence in the IT industry. 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work_hre7rnolb5hshcreuw6q45o2xi	----	Distance Education Accounting Students’ Perceptions of Social Media Integration Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.495 ScienceDirect IETC 2014 Distance education accounting students’ perceptions of social media integration Annelien van Rooyen* University of South Africa, College of Accounting Sciences, Pretoria, 0003, South Africa Abstract Online student support is frequently used by distance education institutions worldwide, but in South Africa it remains a challenge to educators as not all students have access or can afford using the internet regularly. However, as most students at the University of South Africa (Unisa), a distance education institution, have mobile phones, opportunities emerge for academics to make use of social media. Accounting lecturers incorporated a number of social media applications into a second-year module and on the basis of the evidence provided it is evident that using social media can enhance the teaching and learning of Accounting. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. Keywords: Accounting; BBM; distance education; Facebook; Holmberg’s theory; MXit; social media; South Africa; student perceptions; Whatsapp 1. Introduction There is a crying need for professional accountants in South Africa. This has been confirmed in a study commissioned by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) in 2008 who then estimated that South Africa was short of 17 000 accountants and 5 000 chartered accountants (CAs) (Enslin-Payne, 2011; Innocenti, 2009; PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2012). A CA candidate can qualify within seven years, but this is not the norm in South Africa as on average only one out of five students who start will successfully pass through university within the allotted timeframe (Van der Post, 2010). This results in an annual growth in the CA profession of only * Corresponding author. Tel.: +27-12-4294539; fax: +27-12-4298109. E-mail address: vrooyaa@unisa.ac.za © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.495&domain=pdf 445 Annelien van Rooyen / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 around 5% (Bates & Poole, 2003; Bates, 2005; Bean & Eaton, 2000:48; Enslin-Payne, 2011) which will definitely not ease the shortage soon. Before a CA candidate can write SAICA’s qualifying examination (QE) in South Africa, the candidate must obtain a BCom Accounting (CA stream) degree and pass a Certificate in Theory of Accounting (CTA) postgraduate qualification at an accredited university (Van der Post, 2010). These undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications are offered by most residential universities as well as the University of South Africa (Unisa), the largest distance education (DE) and open distance learning (ODL) institution in the country (University of South Africa, 2013). Although Unisa has been offering its undergraduate BCompt degree (the required BCom Accounting degree for the CA stream) and the CTA postgraduate qualification for many years, the number of Unisa students passing the QE examination has been low (2009–37.8%) when compared to residential universities (2009–62.2%) (Olivier & Bulman, 2009). There is thus an urgent need to increase the success rate of both the BCompt and the CTA postgraduate DE students at Unisa as this will inevitably help to alleviate the shortage of accountants and CAs in South Africa. Research by a variety of scholars in the DE and ODL fields have established that students’ success depends not only on the quality of the learning package, but also on the quality and scope of support given to these students (Bates, 2005; Birch & Volkov, 2007:291; Garrison & Vaughan, 2008; Simonson, Smaldino, Albright & Zvacek, 2012; Simpson, 2008:159; Waddoups & Howell, 2002:1). An important theory which focuses on students’ support and success is Holmberg’s theory of didactic conversation (Saba, 2003:4). Holmberg is of the opinion that if facilitators practice an empathetic approach in DE, their students’ learning outcomes will improve (Bernath & Vidal, 2007:432; Simonson et al., 2012:48). Holmberg further argues that communication within a natural conversation can be understood and remembered easily and that the concept of conversation can be successfully translated for use by media and made available to DE students (Holmberg, 2003; Simonson et al., 2012). Holmberg’s theory further states that this feeling of connectedness tends to promote study pleasure and motivation, particularly if well-developed instructional materials exist and two-way communication supports study (Holmberg, 2003; Simonson et al., 2012). Two-way conversation is indeed necessary in the field of accounting studies, as students often struggle to understand different concepts and calculations. Although the use of computers and the internet have given DE a new dimension, this is not always the case in South Africa as many of the registered students at Unisa come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds and live in remote areas which have poor infrastructure and lack sustained electricity supply. Research conducted in the past confirmed that not all the students in a second-year Accounting course (FAC2602) have access to computers and to the internet (Prinsloo & Van Rooyen, 2007:59). If the FAC2602 lecturers thus want to increase communication between lecturers and students, they have to consider making use of a technology to which almost all students have access and which they can afford. As previous research indicated that most students have a mobile phone (Van Rooyen, 2010:47), the FAC2602 lecturers decided to make use of mobile phones and social media application software (apps) such as Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry Messaging (BBM), Whatsapp and MXit to assist students. The FAC2602 students registered during the first semester of 2012 were invited to make use of the apps to ask the lecturers questions and to communicate with other students via these platforms. This research project explored the possibilities of assisting these students in a more synchronous manner. Students were able to discuss problems with their lecturers during the day, at night and over weekends via these social media apps. Students also formed study groups and regularly communicated with other students on the same module. Limited research has been conducted on the use if social media to enhance student support through deductive conversation in the field of accounting education and more particularly in South Africa. The research project reported in this paper was part of a case study examining the impact of technologies on Accounting students’ retention and success rate at Unisa. Obtaining both quantitative and qualitative data from students, this paper reports on Accounting students’ perceptions on the possibilities of using social media apps to support them with their studies. 2. Research design and method As explained previously, during the first semester of 2012, social media was introduced in the FAC2602 module to assist students with their studies. At the end of the first semester of 2012, these students were asked to provide 446 Annelien van Rooyen / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 feedback regarding their perceptions and experiences on the possibilities of using social media to assist with teaching and learning. 2.1. Research design As part of a case study, this project used a mixed-method design which combined both qualitative and quantitative approaches for data collection and analysis. An online LimeSurvey questionnaire (LimeSurvey, 2014) with both closed and open ended questions was designed and the link to the questionnaire was send to all students registered for the FAC2602 module. In addition to a few demographic questions, the students were asked to give feedback on the following five questions: a. With regard to the use of different technologies in the FAC2602 module, with which one of the following statements do you agree? I would prefer to study without technology interventions. I would prefer fewer technology interventions in the module. I would prefer the use of technology as is currently the case. I would prefer the use of more technologies in the module. b. What are your perceptions with regard to the use of technologies in the FAC2602 module? c. With regard to the use of technologies in a Unisa module, with which one of the following do you agree? I think the use of technologies makes studying at Unisa easier and more interesting. I do not think the use of technologies in Unisa modules is helping me. I think the use of technologies interferes with my studies. d. What would you change with regard the use of technologies at Unisa? e. What are your perceptions on the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, BBM, Whatsapp, MXit etc) in academic support? 2.2 Participants The participants in the study were the second-year Accounting students registered in die first semester of 2012. The link to the questionnaire was made available to students between 2 June 2012 and 6 August 2012. A total of 2 121 students were registered for the FAC2602 module during the first semester of 2012; 155 students completed the questionnaire which represents 7.3% of the registered students during that semester. Although this was a small percentage, the data obtained assisted the lecturers to plan future student support strategies. 2.3 Data analysis The quantitative data were analysed using SPSS Statistics version 21 and the three open-ended questions using Atlas.ti®. All data are reported anonymously, the extracts are direct quotes and grammar, punctuation and spelling errors have not been corrected. 3. Findings Both quantitative and qualitative data were received from the FAC2602 students and are discussed below. 3.1. Results and discussion of the quantitative data Feedback from the first question regarding the use of technologies in the FAC2602 indicated a large number of participants in favour of the use of technologies in the module. The fact that almost 94% of the participants supported the use of technologies in the FAC2602 module, created opportunities for lecturers to incorporate even more technologies into the module to assist students (See Figure 1). 447 Annelien van Rooyen / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 93.63% 3.82% 2.55% Makes studying at Unisa easier and interesting Does not help Interferes with my studies 1.87% 4.37% 51.88% 41 .88 % Study witho ut techn ologies Fewer tec hnologies Techno logies a s current M ore te chnolo gies Subsequently, the participants were asked to indicate the effect the use of technologies had on their studies at Unisa. Once again a large number of participants (93.63%) said it made studying at Unisa easier and more interesting (See Figure 2). Figure 2. Use of technologies at Unisa Figure 1. Use of technologies in the FAC2602 module 448 Annelien van Rooyen / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 3.2 Results and discussion of the qualitative data The results from the open-ended questions are briefly presented here according to three main themes that emerged: Perceptions on the use of technologies in the FAC2602 module Perceptions on the use of social media for academic support at Unisa Possible changes regarding the current use of technologies at Unisa It was evident from the feedback that most of the participants perceived the current use of technologies in the FAC2602 module positively. Many of the participants emphasised the greater access they have to study materials, as may be seen in the following responses: The use of technologies in the FAC2602 module was very helpful and something I would like to see more of. It created greater access to more study material and tools. as well as It is helpful. Not everyone has access to all technologies. Therefore it is good to try and accommodate all technologies so that you can have access to those you do can use. Some of the participants confirmed the problems they often encounter with online technologies but by using mobile technologies they could overcome some of these problems, for example As a full time working student, I do not always have access to my e-mails, but with the mobile technologies, it was much easier, as I believe that 95% of all students have cell phones, so it is much more accessible. and Problems are solved anywhere and anytime students don’t have to go home or cafe to access computers and internet. Participants were of the opinion that students enjoy the use of social media, as expressed by one participant Students always got smile when they get messages from their social media, this reduces the frustration and emotional tension not to able to access information as required . and others praised the incorporation of mobile technologies in the following manner The world is fast becoming all online and it is enterprising of UNISA to try adapting and keeping up by making use of mobile technologies and social networks and cell phones, and I am sure many students appreciate this. as they perceive this way of communication being effective at Unisa as is evident in Mobile technologies are an excellent form of communication, as almost every UNISA students has a cell phone and it brings the students at different places. On the other hand, there were also some negative comments from participants regarding the current use of technologies, as seen in the following responses: using a mobile phone is not my preference to communicate with the lecturer or other student. as well as Those would interrupt my studies. You can not seriously expect me to follow FAC2602 on twitter. Sorry I do not agree with that. Social media and studies do not go together. Concerns regarding connectivity and access were once again emphasised, as one participant mentioned internet and cell phone connectivity may not be available in the more rural area. and another said As much as the facilities are there on the FAC2602 but I do not have access to some always. However, perceptions obtained from the participants regarding the use of social media for academic support at Unisa were generally positive, as may be seen from the following responses: It is beneficial because the technology is within reach and can be accessed at any time. 449 Annelien van Rooyen / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 and Easier and cheaper form of communication and fast access. Much preferred. Many of the participants also highlighted the fact that they use some of the social media apps already and are thus familiar with the apps, for example I like it, especially BBM and Whatsapp, because I got access on them. and I found BBM very useful, and also found the group to be inspiring and supportive. as well as It is a great idea as some of us use it and some are cheaper most students can afford them. I Prefer BBM, Twitter and Whatsapp. Participants were of the opinion that mobile technology can play an important role, as some of the participants emphasised Well the use of mobile technologies is the way to go, because student and/or employees are working off their blackberries, ipads, smartphones.etc but what about the students who don’t have access to these technologies. and I also think that more students have access to MXit, Facebook, etc. via their mobile phones than they have to a computer with internet connection, which also makes it a better form of communication. and also Mobile technologies are an excellent form of communication, as almost every UNISA students has a cell phone and it brings the students at different places. Once again some of the feedback reflected a less enthusiastic view on the possibilities of using social media for academic support, as some were saying I hate chatting apps, especially blackberry, I do have Facebook but I hardly log on. as well as Some are a waste of time, I only use Whatsapp to communicate with my family and colleagues and the few close friend I have. and None - I am not on Facebook, Twitter etc. AND I do not want to be on it. Regarding the changes participants would recommend on the use of technologies at Unisa, the following are ideas received from the participants: I won’t really change anything, and UNISA can certainly use technology to communicate with students as much as they can, just don't take away our good old fashioned hard copy study material!!!! and Great potential. Lecturers who can be actively (on a daily basis) be involved on something like a Facebook page for the module can build a relationship with the students in the same way public questions in a classroom situation can be addressed. Great potential there. Also build a student community feeling. Some of the participants also want other modules to make use of these apps, as was seen in the following responses: Facebook page per module will be useful. Students can have conversations on the page's wall post suggestions in the same way as the myUnisa forums, just with better usability. and I think it is a wonderful idea and definitely think the other modules should consider doing this as wel. as well as I would recommend the use of technologies in other modules, because it makes it easier, for student to stay encouraged and abreast with the module and schedule. Three of the participants almost summarised the whole project by saying Most of students almost all do have the mobile and social media you have mentioned so it for their convenience to have good quality of communication and clear contact with their lecturer. Whatsapp and Facebook are good two- way of communication, but not all students might have access to Whatsapp because certain type of cell phones can accept Whatsapp. and Because most students have social media, and with Unisa being a distance learning institution; mobile 450 Annelien van Rooyen / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 444 – 450 technology plays an important role that serves a link between the lecturer and student. Firstly it’s cheaper to write a message/comment/questions/clarity regarding the module, and the lecturer can then answer/advise, thus making it an interactive session. and finally Most students are more familiar with MXit, Whatsapp, etc., than with email - I think they also feel more comfortable using this type of media to communicate, which will give them the confidence to speak up if they struggle with a concept. I also think that more students have access to MXit, Facebook, etc. via their mobile phones than they have to a computer with internet connection, which also makes it a better form of communication. 4. Conclusion In general, feedback received from the participants were positive regarding the possibilities of using technologies and more specific social media for academic support at Unisa. The fact that Accounting modules at Unisa need to increase students’ success rates and the possibilities these social media apps now provide to lecturers, make this indeed an opportunity to explore more rigorously. These readily available and affordably technologies have the capability to increase didactic conversation, which is a critical ingredient for student success in the DE and ODL environment. Technologies are fast becoming a part of the instructional process and although the use of social media for academic support has only just begun, it can be a valuable tool as can be seen by the response of a participant who said I have not used social media for academic support but I believe there is a place for it seeing that social media is part of our everyday life. Therefore lecturers need to remind themselves that students are, as a participant correctly stated, part of a generation that mostly communicates via mobile technologies. Social media can indeed assist Accounting lecturers at Unisa to answer to the cry for more professional Accountants in South Africa. References Bates, A.W. (2005). Technology, e-learning and distance education (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bean, J.P. & Eaton, S.B. (2000). A psychological model of college student retention, in J.M. Braxton (Ed.). Reworking the student departure puzzle (pp. 48–61). Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press Bernath, U. & Vidal, M. (2007). The theories and the theorists: why theory is important for research. Distances et Savoirs, 5(3):427–458. Birch, D. & Volkov, M. (2007). Assessment of online reflections: engaging English second language (ESL) students. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(3): 291–306. Enslin-Payne, S. (2011). No skills shortage quick fix. [Online] Available from: http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/no-skills-shortage- quick-fix-1.1061800?pageNumber=1 [Accessed: 22 May 2012]. Garrison, D.R. & Vaughan, N.D. (2008). Blended learning in higher education: framework, principles, and guidelines. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Holmberg, B. (2003). Distance education in essence. Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssysem der Universität Oldenburg. Innocenti, N.D. (2009). Accountants like gold dust in South Africa. [Online] Available from: http://news.reuters.efinancialcareers.co.za/News_ITEM/newsItemId-19835 [Accessed: 13 June 2012]. LimeSurvey. (2014). Features. [Online] Available from: https://www.limesurvey.org/en/about-limesurvey/features [Accessed: 25 May 2014]. Saba, F. (2003). Distance education theory, methodology, and epistemology: a pragmatic paradigm. In: Moore, M.G. & Anderson, W.G. (Eds.) Handbook of distance education. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Olivier, M. & Bulman, F. (2009). 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[Online] Available from: http://www.unisa.ac.za/Default.asp?Cmd=ViewContent&ContentID=17765 [Accessed: 25 June 2014]. Van der Post, W. (2010). CA training in South Africa. [Online] Available from: http://www.greyconsulting.co.za/mediareleases/CA%20TRAINING%20IN%20SOUTH%20AFRICA.htm [Accessed: 22 May 2012]. Van Rooyen, A.A. (2010). Effective integration of SMS communication into a distance education accounting module. Meditari Accountancy Research, 18(1): 47–57. Waddoups, G.L. & Howell, S.L. (2002). Bringing online learning to campus: the hybridization of teaching and learning at Brigham Young University. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 2(2): 1–13. 
work_hslq2jepazgvdntaybk6gqpw6u	----	Microsoft Word - 07 lee.DOC Asia Pacific Education Review Copyright 2003 by Education Research Institute 2003, Vol. 4, No. 2, 181-188 1 The need for learner support in distance education comes from the recognition that distance learning is often mediated by networked computers with individualistic interfaces that require learners to work alone during most of the learning process. Since neither the instructor nor their peers are physically present for help and direct access to learning resources and facilities is somewhat limited, distance learners have unique needs that go far beyond the existing student support services in traditional education settings. Many researchers and practitioners have long suggested that successful student learning in distance education settings can be achieved only through appropriate support services (Feasley, 1983; Gunawardena, 1988; Sahoo, 1993; Watkins & Wright, 1991). Thus, it is not surprising that the level of support for distance learners is widely used as part of the accrediting Ji-Yeon Lee, Department of Educational Psychology, University of South Carolina, U.S.A. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ji-Yeon Lee, Department of Educational Psychology, University of South Carolina, 145 Wardlaw Hall, Columbia, Sc 29208, U.S.A. Electronic mail may be sent to via Internet to leejy@sc.edu. criteria adopted by most accrediting agencies (Broad, 1999; Institute for Higher Education Policy, 2000; Mantyla & Gividen, 2000). According to a comprehensive survey by the National Center for Educational Statistics (1999), nearly 1/3 of all 2-year and 4-year postsecondary institutions offered distance courses in 1997-98, and an additional twenty percent of them were planning to offer distance courses within three years. As more and more post-secondary institutions are offering distance education programs or planning to do so in the near future, there is a great need for research on designing and implementing learner support services. Nevertheless, the majority of existing studies on learner support are based on large-scale correspondence programs (i.e., Open University in U.K.), and few of them provide a comprehensive analysis of support services in web-based environments or guidelines for establishing and managing learner support systems in dual-mode institutions (Simonson, Schlosser, & Hanson, 1999). There can be several forces underlying the gap between research and the practice of learner support, but Robinson Current Status of Learner Support in Distance Education: Emerging Issues and Directions for Future Research Ji-Yeon Lee University of South Carolina U.S.A. This study examines the literature on learner support with the aim of helping institutions of higher education plan and implement support services for distance learners. The following issues emerged as areas of particular importance to future research in distance learner support: 1) the lack of research on cost-effectiveness; 2) the lack of empirical research; and 3) the need for a learner-centered approach in designing and implementing learner support. These issues are discussed in detail to enhance our understanding the role of learner support in post-secondary level distance education programs. It is further argued that future research should focus more on developing and refining methods for cost-benefit analysis of learner support, developing a general framework of the learner support model in dual-mode institutions, and developing systematic methods to identify, analyze, synthesize, and assess the needs of distance learners. Keywords: learner support, distance education, higher education Ji-Yeon Lee 182 (1995) comes up with two reasons to explain the situation. First, learner support has been perceived as peripheral to the ‘real business’ of distance education which is developing course materials. Second, many researchers tend not to consider learner support as a suitable topic for research since it is contingent on local circumstances and thus not easy to generalize the findings. His points may have been relevant in the past when distance education was viewed as an inferior alternative to traditional face-to-face education and the emphasis was on the product, rather than the process. The public awareness of distance education is changing, if it has not already changed, and distance education is considered as a major and increasingly important component in higher education these days. Distance learners have become more sophisticated, diversified, and demanding than ever, and they expect a lot more than well-designed learning material. More importantly, the competition among distance education providers is such that if an institution fails to satisfy the students, it will lose them to one of its competitors. Thus many institutions offering distance education programs are struggling to better meet the needs of their students. Unfortunately, previous research studies on learner support are not able to provide much guidance for the institutions to cope with these problems, and all the parties involved in distance education are learning the lessons in a hard way – by trial and error. The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of research on these three issues and suggest recommendations for future research on learner support in distance education. Based on an extensive review of the literature, three issues have emerged as the most problematic areas in research on learner support: 1) the cost-effectiveness of learner support; 2) the lack of empirical research and the difficulties in generalizing research findings as a result; and 3) the need for a learner-centered approach. The researcher believes that tackling these issues with greater depth could help enhance our understanding of learner support in distance education and advance research in this area. Definition of Learner Support Defining the key elements and boundaries of learner support is critical in conducting research on this subject since it provides a criterion in determining the standard or quality of learner support. However, learner support is rather a broad concept and its definition has varied from one researcher to another. Some consider resources and interactivity as critical in defining learner support while others put more emphasis on individualization or customization of services (Garrison & Baynton, 1987; Tait, 1995; Thorpe, 1988). Robinson (1995) and Tait (1995) introduced the notion of supplementary versus holistic approaches to supporting learners in distance learning environments. The former limits learner support to an add-on to course materials or other learning experiences while the latter regards it as a crucial factor, which pervades the entire education program. In other words, distance students’ learning experience would not be complete without the support, according to the holistic approach. It seems that more and more researchers are taking a holistic approach and considering learner support as an integrated part of the course and entire learning process (Sache & Mark, 2000; Scalzo, Matela-Rodier, & Ferrauilo, 2000). From this complementary perspective, learner support is all about providing access to both resources and opportunities that lead to lifelong learning (Reid, 1995; Smith, 2000). It extends the range and duration of services and emphasizes the importance of providing quality information, advice and guidance from pre-enrollment and post-graduation stages. Hardy and Boaz (1997) even extend the concept of learner support into the next level – “learner development” meaning preparation of the learners for a distance learning experience beyond providing the technical assistance. In this paper, the holistic viewpoint of learner support is promoted and learner support is defined as the provision of information, training, and resources for distance learners to assure quality learning. Elements of Learner Support There is an almost infinite variation of learner support systems in distance education, and as Sewart (1993) has noted, each system is unique in a sense that it is dealing with a different student population in a different context. Thus, developing a general yet representative framework of learner support has been a challenging task for researchers and practitioners in this area. One of the most comprehensive lists of elements of such system has been developed by Keast (1997). He identified four distinctive types of support for distance learners - administrative support, instructional support, technical support, and counseling/tutorial support. This list is by no means exhaustive and does not include library support, a very important category that is increasingly the focus of attention these days. Nevertheless, it encapsulates the key functions of learner support and most support services suggested by other researchers or practitioners fall under Keast’s categories (Aoki Current Status of Learner Support 183 & Pogroszewski, 1998; Frieden, 1999; Reid, 1995; Sache & Mark, 2000; Tait, 1995). Each category will be further elaborated in the following section, and considering the special relevance to current emphasis on informational technology in distance education, library support will be added to Keast’s four elements of the learner support system. Academic/Tutorial Support Academic/tutorial aspect of support is largely based on the Open University model in the U.K. where students have access to local study centers and tutors who supervise their academic progress and help with problems (Sahoo, 1993; Watkins & Wright, 1991). In more recent web-based distance education programs, the focus of academic support gears toward facilitating collaborative learning and increasing interactivity between distance students and instructors or among distance students. Some of the examples of such services include syndicate or learning groups, support by the instructor on request, workshops to assist students in developing specific skills or bridging skill gaps, supervisory support on research projects, and “learning contracts” (Carlson, Downs, Repman, & Clark, 1998; Carnwell, 2000; Lyall & McNamara, 2000). Administrative Support According to Frieden (1999), Administrative support services involve maintaining basic program functions such as admissions, registration, course scheduling, student records, and financial transactions. These services are often taken for granted as Web-based, database systems have become more available and students are given more access to, and control over, the overall administrative process. However, when they are not planned carefully, administrative support services cause the greatest frustration for distance students. Technical Support Abate (1999) defines technical support as monitoring the efficient operation of delivery media and offering technical assistance. While many research studies have been conducted on the use of new technologies in designing and developing distance courses, few of them directly focus on the use of new technologies to provide support services for distance courses. Examples of technical support services include providing a toll-free number for students to contact technical support staff, requiring faculty to schedule online office hours via e-mails or other electronic communication tools, and devoting additional on-campus facilities to support the off-campus population. Counseling Support Counseling support includes various aspects of guidance and advising. In correspondence studies or other delivery media with more individualistic interfaces, the focus of such services tends to be on how to deal with academic concerns and/or career advising. In many web-based distance education programs, counseling support services also address ways to improve communication skills and increase interactivity, even helping students network with alumni and build a sense of community (Aoki & Pogroszewski, 1998). Many institutions are also requiring orientation sessions that bring distance students on campus in order to familiarize them with the services that are available. Such sessions would provide an opportunity to learn the interfaces used to access the services as well as a chance to interact with the support personnel on-campus (Thompson, Winterfield, & Flanders, 1998). Library Support Access to adequate library services and resources is essential for the attainment of academic excellence in post-secondary education. Thus, distance learners need to be entitled to the library services and resources equivalent to those provided for students in traditional campus settings. However, traditional on-campus library services often fail to stretch themselves to meet the library needs of distance students. In response to such disparities, a set of guidelines has been proposed by the Association of College and Research Libraries (2000) for distance education programs to ensure that library support meets the students’ needs in fulfilling course assignments (e.g., required and supplemental readings) and to accommodate other information needs as appropriate. Some specific examples of such library services include region-wide borrowers cards, consortia membership between academic libraries, and fax/online capabilities for timely document delivery (Aoki & Pogroszewski, 1998). In his review of the literature on distance learning library support, Stephens (1996) has stressed that what is in great need in library support is not only books and journals per se, but making instruction and other opportunities available for students to help them conduct independent library research. To be able to fill the gap, distance library services need to be more Ji-Yeon Lee 184 customized and empowering for distance learners. Aoki and Pogroszewski (1998) proposed examples of such services, including the provision of toll-free telephone numbers for the library help desk and access to multiple databases and an online public access catalog. As many researchers and librarians have long suggested (Smith, 2000), a combination of special funding arrangements, proactive planning, and promotion is necessary to provide such services. Emerging Issues in Learner Support Many researchers have predicted that advances in technology would make it easier to provide quality support services with increased interactivity and automatization (Bates, 1994). However, for all these dramatic changes in terms of course delivery, from correspondence to audio/video conferencing systems and the Internet, many issues remain the same, with the technology having the potential to add yet another source of trouble. Some of the remaining issues of learner support in distance education are more critical and have greater implications for future research than others. This section will address those important issues in more detail. The pressing issues are: 1) the cost-effectiveness of learner support services; 2) the lack of empirical research and difficulties in generalizing the research findings as a result; and 3) the importance of a learner-centered approach in learner support. Cost-Effectiveness of Learner Support The first issue relates to the question of “How can we scale customized support services in a cost-effective way?” In order to better meet the diverse needs of distance students, support services need to be more individualized (Brent, 1999; Sahoo, 1993). Providing such services is not an inexpensive proposition, however, and the underlying assumption is that the greater the input to the provision of learner support services, the greater the completion rate and/or learning outcomes (European Commission, 1996). On this point, there are relatively few studies that offer guidelines on this area, and most of them are focused on cost analysis of technology infrastructure (Brent, 1999; Rumble, 1999; Whalen & Wright, 1999). Although these cost estimation studies do offer policymakers some insight into the types and range of costs associated with distance education program in general, we can only infer from this broader framework how much it will cost to provide certain support services. One of the biggest challenges in approaching the cost-effectiveness of leaner support is the fact that the relationship between the input and output is not a straight-line equation, and as the level of support moves beyond a certain point, the curve of student success seems to be flatten out (Sewart, 1993). The fact that there are relatively few references to direct and indirect costs involved with various support services also make it even more difficult to measure the cost-effectiveness of certain support services (Tait, 1995; Wagner, 1999). The issue of cost-effectiveness in providing learner support services is also dictated by the mission and aims of the institution concerned. The range and standards of learner support services provided by an institution will be eventually determined by whether it is more concerned about services or making profits from offering distance education programs. The bottom line in any case is that there are some basic services that the institution needs to provide regardless of the costs to guarantee the quality of education. The minimum quality of education is often imposed by accrediting agencies through national standards, and it is entirely up to each institution to decide whether or not to offer services beyond the required minimum level. Cost-effectiveness of learner support is likely to be achieved when the support system is structured to do “more with less,” and this requires some creativity on the part of institutions. One such example of scaling student services is partnering with other organizations such as businesses and school districts (Hickman, 1999). This may be an appropriate method for providing quality services by providing broader access and cutting the expenses on support staff training and maintenance by delegating the services to specialists. Lack of Empirical Research and Difficulties in Generalizing the Findings The second issue revolves around the dominance of pragmatism in research into learner support. There are almost infinite variations of learner support in distance education practice. The choices and uses of certain services from the huge service pool are largely based on practicalities rather than universal research findings. This leads to a tendency that pragmatism outweighs empirical inquiry or research in the area of learner support, as indicated by Robinson (1995). Based on the review of previous research and practice in this area, he has concluded that learner support is heavily contingent on local circumstances. There is nothing wrong with research informed by practice, and the contingent nature of learner support seems to be prone to such ‘how to do it’ type of case studies. Current Status of Learner Support 185 However, there are missed opportunities where we can further exploit this critical issue in distance education. Christenson (1973) has made an interesting argument on how empirical research in social sciences may be used as a form of framework to guide practice. In developing a theory of social science, a researcher’s own desires to extend the applicability of best observed practices often leads him/her to emphasize observations too much at the expense of theoretical reasoning. The researcher believes that this may explain one of the major problems associated with pragmatic research in distance education. In a case study, the generalizability of findings and its predictive power are somewhat limited to its contextual boundaries where the practice is emulated. Thus, this type of research often advocates the status quo rather than advancing theories and seeking/predicting changes beyond what has been observed. Obviously each support system is unique in a sense that it is dealing with a different student population in a different context, however, we can always benefit from using a general framework or model for learner support, grounded in learning theories and supported by empirical data. Without such a framework, every institution needs to learn what does and/or does not work for them by trial and error. The worst part is that students have to suffer while each institution is experimenting with different models of learner support. Need for a Learner-Centered Approach The last issue relates to the need for a learner-centered or customer-focused approach in planning and implementing learner support. Nobody can better understand the difficulties that distance learners have to go through than the learners themselves. Yet, in many institutions offering distance education programs, learner support is based on top-down provision rather than analysis of learners’ needs (Sache & Mark, 2000; Scalzo et al., 2000; Tait, 1995). This problem has been elegantly put by D. Sewart (1987) as follows: It does not seem unfair to suggest that there is an overwhelming tendency within the field to offer systems from the viewpoint of the institution teaching at a distance rather than from the viewpoint of the student learning at a distance (p.72). Traditionally, education has been interpreted as a provider-led activity, rather than a customer-led activity. In this mindset, the central question of identifying student needs is often neglected. In the past, when distance education was viewed as a product, rather than a process, the quality of learning was largely determined by the quality of learning material and institutions were still able to operate successfully under the provider-oriented mode. Things have been changed, however, and today’s distance learners are much more sophisticated, diversified, and demanding than ever, and they expect a lot more than well-designed learning materials. Besides this, the competition among distance education providers is such that if an institution fails to satisfy the students, it will lose them to competitors. Understanding of learners becomes critical in providing appropriate support services for the survival of distance education institutions. When incorporating a learner-centered approach in designing and implementing learner support systems, we have to understand that it is a continuous process, rather than a one-off activity. Different learners may have different needs, and those needs may change over time. Such diversity or volatility can only be traced by systematic and continuous efforts to identify, analyze, synthesize, and assess distance learners’ needs. As suggested by Nunan (2000), a user-pay system might be a solution to meet complex, diverse student needs and expectations. By generating choices and options that can be purchased according to individual needs and preferences, an institution can achieve customization in a more cost-effective way. It is important to note, however, that diversified user-pay systems can be an insightful resolution to design and deliver learner-centered support services only when they are followed by accurate descriptions of each option and counseling services. We have to consider that learners may not be able to make informed decisions to select what is best for them. Additionally, certain basic services such as library support or technical support should be provided by an institution in order to avoid compromising the overall quality of education at the expense of convenience or cost reduction. Directions for Future Research Learner support in distance education needs to be justified not only pedagogically but also financially, and to be able to do so, research on learner support should contribute to the following areas: 1) developing/refining the methods of cost-benefit analysis; 2) developing a general model of learner support in web-based, dual-mode institutions; and 3) providing a ways to systematically incorporate the needs of distance learners in designing and implementing learner support services. The claims that providing appropriate learner support Ji-Yeon Lee 186 services will increase the quality of learning as well as student retention and satisfaction have been made frequently and loudly. Yet these claims are rarely accompanied by supporting data. Without empirical evidence, learner support services become vulnerable to financial fluctuation. The only way to deal with this issue is to come up with sound methodologies to measure the cost-benefit of learner support, which leads to the first item on the agenda – developing cost-benefit analysis methods for learner support. The framework suggested by Cukier (1997) is promising in that it includes a ‘value-directed’ benefit dimension. With this value-oriented model, institutions can measure the value added by intangible activities such as various learner support services. Cukier proposed three types of benefit measures - performance-oriented, value-oriented, and value-added benefits, and it is believed that future research on learner support can benefit from applying his multi-dimensional framework. Second, the learner support models based on correspondence programs and their underlying assumptions need to be tested under new web-based distance education programs in future research. Large-scale, text-based distance education institutions such as the Open University in the UK have well-grounded learner support systems such as tutoring, counseling, and advising, and have served as a model for learner support system in previous research (Sewart, 1993; Singh, 1988; Tait, 1995). However, dual mode institutions that are now developing web-based distance education programs are facing different challenges in establishing and standardizing administrative procedures and support systems to accommodate new technologies and diversified learner populations. Lastly, future research needs to adopt a learner-centered approach in designing and implementing learner support services and develop ways to identify, analyze, synthesize, and assess student needs and systematically adapt the support system to those needs. To do so, we should be able to utilize the varied methods presently available to us to efficiently communicate with distance learners. 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work_huurpby34zgq5c5pb7c5lnx43i	----	Distance education: the role of self-efficacy and locus of control in lifelong learning Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.132 WCETR 2011 Distance education: the role of self-efficacy and locus of control in lifelong learning Sergio Severinoa*, Fabio Aielloa, Maura Cascioa, Luisa Ficarraa, Roberta Messinaa aUniversity of Enna “Kore”, Italy Abstract Nowadays the use of information and communications technology in distance education is an increasing and widespread phenomenon, crossing physical and temporal boundaries. Distance learning provides the flexibility needed for adults to continue their education or training while working or fulfilling family responsibilities (Bates, 2005). The rapid growth of knowledge in the area of health requires operators to continue to study and learn, just to keep up with the knowledge base of the job and to develop their careers. This study aimed to explore, in the context of distance education, the role of some of the main psychological features involved in learning achievement, such as self-efficacy (Zimmerman, 2002) and locus of control (Fazey & Fazey, 2001). The survey analysed the relations among training goals achievement (based on distance education), self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Schwarzer, 1993), and locus of control (Rotter, 1954; Perussia & Viano, 2008) in a group of 115 health professionals. The results show a significant relation between internal locus of control and learning achievement in distance training. Furthermore, a significant relation between self-efficacy and locus of control was found. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Lifelong Learning; Distance Education; Information Communication Technology; Self-efficacy; Locus of control; Career development 1. Introduction This survey originates from an important regional health care project, named SETT (Italian acronyme: SErvizi di Telemendicina e Teleformazione. This project includes the improvement of DL Services, Telemedicine and DL courses related to medical topics), that aimed, on an experimental basis, to improve distance learning (DL) services through web-based training (WBT). DL courses, which were opened to 3,000 health professionals picked from the Regional Health System, concerned medical topics and were based on self-regulated learning (SRL). To avail of DL courses, health professionals used personalized passwords and IDs; at the end of each course they had to correctly answer at least 75% of the items in multiple-choice questionnaires to obtain Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits. The purpose of CME is different from that of primary medical education, because CME allows adults, having family or work responsibilities, to continue their education or to enrol in training sessions (Bates, 2005). Whereas primary medical education provides the basic foundation necessary for the initial license to practice medicine, CME ensures exposure of the licensed physician to current medical information. This new * Sergio Severino. Tel.: +39-0935-536421; fax: +39-3600220457. E-mail address: sergio.severino@unikore.it Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 706 Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 information should be incorporated into the physician’s practice and, therefore, should improve the quality of medical practice and the physician’s career development. Distance education, considered in its various features, is the result of an evolution that has capitalized on the results, presenting countless solutions compared with the number of ways of implementation. It is often stressed that learning is essentially a social process (Brown & Duguid, 2000) and how, by contrast, DL is seen as a resolution to learning with the following characteristics: 1. exclusive and inimitable communication modalities; and 2. strong social dynamism in relationships. Distance learning has evolved as follows: DL - first generation: consisting mainly of education by mail, addressed to adults, managed by private agencies and not directly geared to the labour market; DL - second generation (20th century): utilization of audio-visuals (VHS-video home system) and media (telephone, fax, television, video conferencing) as training and educational tools, mainly oriented to schools and professionals, mainly for young people rather than adults, and provided by governmental organizations. The second generation transitions the impersonal communication to a widespread modality that sees the change from “one to many” to “few to many”; DL - third-generation: off-line (floppy disk, videodisc, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM) and online (Web) information technology. Nowadays WBT is DL, focused on the experience of the students rather than on didactic teaching. DL promotes independent and customized learning (Boccia Artieri, 2002), but it is still discontinuous in space and time (extended network access), thus making true the “separation of contexts” (Thompson, 1995). New interactions become available: it proposes itself as the place itself occurs (Rivoltella, 1999) and as a seat of new ways of social presence. Known also as e-learning, DL indicates a new method of acquiring knowledge. It is based on peer exchange, and it provides a dynamic and polycentric relationship among different network subjects (Boca, Pace, & Severino, 2009). The e-learning is related to the era of the knowledge society and information; it is an expression of post- modernity, characterized by disembedding and, therefore, by the decline of face-to-face interactions. In the opinion of Giddens (1994), social relations are removed from local contexts and are characterized by an indefinite space- time dimension. The main principles of DL are: interactivity with the learning objects (LO) and the other learners involved; learning by doing, to encourage the development of personalized training; dynamism, which refers to the need to acquire new just-in-time skills; modularity, which is related to the possibility of organizing DL contents according to the educational goals and user requirements; flexibility, intended as the implementation, timing, and utilization of contents (LO); multimedia, which is related to the integration of multiple forms of media (texts, graphics, audio, video, etc); re-use of LO, which are developed to be implemented on any platform; traceability, with the learning management system (or platform) allowing to follow the student’s interaction; and human interaction, through the support of more professionals (tutors, teachers, and so on), which creates a stimulus learning environment, even online (Severino, 2008). Most of the training process carried out in the network takes place with the interaction of the participants in a real learning community; this allows overcoming the exclusion of the single and mainly allows the development of the relations with the group (Severino, 2008; Calvani, 2006). Group learning dynamics in the virtual context imply the acquisition of new abilities to make the education process easier (Severino & Messina, 2010). Virtual learning groups generate collective intelligences (Levy, 1995) that communicate in real time. This context creates new forms of interactions (Calvani & Rotta 2000): the classical one-to-many communication is replaced by the many-to-many communication. 707Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 Information and communications technology represents an opportunity for adult training because it allows the preserving, developing, and sharing of knowledge, an increase in efficiency, and the saving of time and money. This is very important in the training of health professionals. The most operative DL is the blended approach, composed of a mix of different learning environments (face-to-face instruction and WBT). Andragogy is a unified theory of adult learning and education. While pedagogy has a hierarchical and vertical structure, since the teacher has full responsibility for decisions about the content, methods, and evaluation, andragogy theory (Knowles, Holton E.F., & Swanson R.A., 2008) is based on the following key assumptions: The need to know - Adults feel the need to know why they should learn something. Tough (1979) found that when adults begin to learn something by themselves, they invest considerable energy to examine the benefits they draw from learning. The first task of the facilitator is to help learners in the awakening of consciousness (Freire, 1973). The self-concept of the learner - With the development of the person (from youth to adult), the self- concept moves from a sense of total dependence to a growing sense of independence and autonomy. The adult must feel that his own self-concept is respected by the educator and therefore must be placed in a situation of autonomy (versus dependency). The role of experience - The adult experience guarantees a greater cultural heritage and repertoire (background, motivations, needs, interests, goals) as well as improved autopoiesis and self-reference (possibility of using internal resources, relying solely on their own capacity). Therefore, with a group of adults in training, being characterized differently from a group of young people, there is a need to focus on the individualization of teaching strategies and techniques and on experiential learning, rather than on transferring learning, plus the mutual help activities among peers. Obviously, a person’s having more experience can also result in negative traits, as may be seen in greater rigidity and resistance to new ideas and different ways of learning. The willingness to learn - What is taught to adults should enhance their skills and abilities; they should be able to effectively apply such knowledge to their everyday work life. Orientation towards learning - Adults learn new abilities if these abilities are presented as being immediately useful in their working environment. Motivation - In the case of adults, endogenous motivations are generally stronger than exogenous pressures. Tough (1979) found that all adults are encouraged to grow further in their profession (ascending vertical social mobility), but such growth is often hampered by a negative concept of the self as a student, or by the inaccessibility of training due to various factors (resources, lack of time, difficulty). Knowledge and ability as social phenomenon are mixed in with the skills, beliefs, and forms of organized life (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Therefore, it becomes more interesting if it is reported as part of the health professionals’ education, in which each individual participates to a different degree and with his own contribution of experience. In fact, the health sector needs to build abilities that support and assist an adjustment and an increase requiring high specialization. Reinforcing knowledge through collaborative methods (Calvani, 2006; Wenger, 1998) allows the development of technical abilities as well as the cognitive dimension, which contributes to complete the individual’s education. The virtual classroom method gives pliability and proximity to individual training paths (Trentin, 2001, 2005). Motivation plays a central role in adult learning, since it influences the choice to attend a training course and to apply proper learning strategies (Hough, 1984). There are many constructs of importance in understanding motivational processes: outcome expectancies (Feather, 1982; Vroom, 1964), attributions (Miller, Brickman, & Bolen, 1975), goal directedness (Covington, 2000), intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation (Deci, 1975), locus of control (Rotter, 1954, 1966), self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), volition (Kuhl & Fuhrmann, 1998), self-regulation (Zimmerman, 2002), and self-control (Rosenbaum, 1989). A common thread that runs through many of these constructs is the identification of internal and external sources of motivation. More specifically, locus of control (LOC) is defined as a generalized expectancy of internal as opposed to external control of reinforcements (Lefcourt, 1976). This feature plays an important role in learning goals achievement. Along with LOC, self-efficacy is another effective predictor of students’ motivation and learning (Zimmerman, 2000). 708 Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 2. Purpose of study The aim of this survey was to analyse the structure of the possible relations among training goals achievement (based on DL) on one hand, and the subjects’ features together with self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Zimmerman, 2002) and LOC (Rotter, 1954; Fazey & Fazey, 2001; Perussia & Viano, 2006) on the other. The analyses were conducted on a group of 115 health professionals coming from the 587 health professionals belonging to the Regional Health System. In this paper the possible relationship between the variables involved in the study was assessed by the most popular techniques of analysis of relations. Harter (1990) and Bandura (1997) have recorded achievement behaviours such as persistence, challenge, interest, curiosity, resilience to failure, and commitment to progress as being associated with high self-perceived competence, with high motivation at the intrinsic end of the motivational continuum (Deci et al., 1991; Ryan & Powelson, 1992) and with high behaviour-outcome contingency expectations or internal LOC. The use of one construct to infer autonomous characteristics was not, in itself, felt to be sufficient. The combinations of high or low self-perceptions of motivation and competence and internal or external control at the beginning of university study were chosen as the focus for the identification of the potential for autonomous learning (Fazey & Fazey, 2001). Self-efficacy has been the topic of numerous studies involving adult learners, most recently involving computer self-efficacy and online education. This survey aimed to explore the relationship between self-efficacy and adult learning in the health context. According to Bandura (1994), self-efficacy represents the people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives. He further explains that people with a strong sense of self-efficacy view challenging problems as tasks to be mastered, develop a deeper interest in the activities in which they participate, form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities, and recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments. Nevertheless, Bandura (1977) states that, expectation alone will not produce desired performance if the component capabilities are lacking. Although self-efficacy beliefs are a powerful influence on behaviour, a number of contextual factors, including social, situational, and temporal circumstances under which events occur, can affect results. The literature demonstrates that LOC influences learning achievement: people who recognize that the outcome of the activity is contingent upon behaviour (Rotter, 1966; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2003) are described as having an internal LOC. At the other end of the continuum is an external LOC, in which individuals perceive themselves as having little or no control over their achievement. In the locus of control measures, a high score on ‘internal’ control, with a low score on ‘external’ and ‘unknown’ control factors, would indicate autonomy-related LOC. The emphasis here is that autonomous learners perceive themselves to be in control of their success and failure in a learning context (Fazey & Fazey, 2001). With regard to Knowles' thought (1980), adults are available to learn only if new knowledge is to help them cope effectively with life or job situations and if they feel themselves to be responsible for their own decisions. 3. Data description The DL courses were originally intended for 587 health professionals belonging to the Regional Health System, all of whom were registered in a Learning Management System (Moodle, open source) customized for the project. The analysis included 115 health professionals who voluntarily participated in the study, following an email introducing them to the purpose of the study and their being sent an attached questionnaire composed of different instruments as shown in the “Instrument and methods” section. The subjects, in particular, were physicians and hospital nurses, distributed among three typologies of DL courses, differentiated by assigned CME (6, 8, or 12). In relation to assigned CME credits, participants had to respond to 30 multiple-choice questions in the “I” type of DL course, to 40 multiple-choice items in the “II” type of DL course, and to 60 multiple-choice questions in the “III” type of DL course. At the end of each course, the SRL gained through the DL course was assessed through a specific online questionnaire filled out by every subject. Different scores (xi) coming from different scales were standardized (zi), through a ratio of two differences: the first one between each original score and the minimum score, the second being the range (maximum minus minimum score) of the original scale: 709Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 min( ) max( ) min( ) i i i i i x x z x x This procedure yielded a new set of scores zi (0, 1), hereafter named self-regulated learning (SRL). Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of variables by DL course typology. Table 1. Distribution of subjects by some principal characteristics and typology of course. I II III Tot. F emale 4 0.9 30.8 36.2 37.4 M ale 5 9.1 69.2 63.8 62.6 m ean 5 1.3 51.3 48.4 49.9 st d.dev. 5.4 4.4 6.1 5.8 P hysician 1 8.2 30.8 19.0 20.0 Nurse 4 5.4 30.8 34.5 38.3 Other 3 6.4 38.4 46.5 41.7 m ean 3 4.2 33.7 33.9 34.0 st d.dev. 3.6 4.7 3.6 3.7 m ean 1 7.9 17.6 18.3 18.1 st d.dev. 3.0 4.4 2.8 3.1 m ean 0 .540 0.569 0.285 0.41 5 st d.dev. 0 .283 0.227 0.223 0.28 1 Total 3 8.3 11.3 50.4 100. 0 SRL Int ernal LOC DL Course Gender (%) Age Self-efficacy Professi on (%) 4. Instrument and Methods In this survey some instruments were administrated to the subjects involved. Respondents filled out their responses to the questionnaire, briefly illustrated as follows: Online multiple-choice questionnaire: At the end of each course, a self-regulated learning degree was assessed through an online multiple-choice questionnaire filled out by every subject. To finish their studies and to receive the related CME credits, participants had to get 75% of the multiple-choice items right. The online multiple-choice questionnaire was strictly related to the DL course’s contents and duration. Minimum and maximum self-learning questionnaire scores were different according to the assigned CME value. To compare the scores belonging to the different scales, a transformation procedure was applied to obtain a unique distribution of values. Perceived self-efficacy was investigated through the Italian version of the Perceived Self-efficacy Test (Schwarzer, 1993), a self-report instrument composed of 10 items rated on a four-point Likert scale, covering the degree of belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to achieve certain goals. The scale presents good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha ranges from 0.75 to 0.94). Internal locus of control was assessed through the Italian version of the Mini Locus of control scale (Perussia & Viano, 2008), a self-report instrument composed of six items rated on a four-point Likert scale. The scale presents a quite clear and defined factorial structure based on three factors: Chance, Powerful others, and Internality. The scale was developed to measure the internal and external control beliefs of adults. Specifically, Chance measures external locus of control, Powerful others represents the influences applied from the social context, and finally Internality is related to the will, the personal capabilities. Psychometric indices of validity and reliability are available at www.itapi.org, the website directly managed by Perussia and Viano. Internality, factor 3, plays a fundamental role in explaining the internal LOC, as suggested by the analysis. 710 Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 A two-step analysis was conducted before studying the possible effects of self-efficacy and internal LOC on SRL score. An explorative analysis was first conducted, based on both graphical investigation and nonparametric tests, to know if the subjects’ responses varied according to their features, such as gender, age, and typology of course (see Table 1). At this stage, box plots and the Mann-Whitney U test were carried out. Then the structure of the relationship among the instrumental variables was studied, to see if and how self-efficacy, internality, internal LOC, and SRL change simultaneously. The analysis was conducted applying the Kendall tau coefficient of cograduation and using once again the box plot and the U test. The aim here was to know which variables could be useful to decompose the observed variability of the SRL score. The last phase of the analysis was devoted to decompose the variability of the SRL score, conditioning on the variables selected by the previous analysis of relationship. As will be seen later, the hypothesis was that there could be a conjoint effect of two or more variables on a third one. In other words, this meant investigating statistical interactions, in which the response (the standardized score on the SRL scale) to one factor depends on the level of the other factor. Here, the reference model was the factorial experiment. To carry out the analysis, the subjects’ scores on the internality scales were categorized based on their quartile. 5. Findings and Results The results of the analysis on the points listed above are the following: i. The explorative analysis suggests that only two instrumental variables are significantly related to two subjects’ features: internality with age and SRL with the typology of course. Table 2 shows the results of the nonparametric tests (the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA test) for each couple of variables. Figure 1 shows four box plots; the first two illustrate the lack of association whereas the latter two, in contrast, show the above-mentioned relationship between the couples of variables. For the first two, there seems to be no difference between the score distributions conditioning on gender or age. In Figure 1 are represented the box-plots for the SRL (standardized) score in function of gender, age, and typology of course, and the box plot of internality based on age. The two latter box plots show how the distribution of internality and of SRL score depend on age and typology of course, respectively. Female Male Gender -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . st d sc or es Median 25%-75% Min-Max Young Old Age -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . st d sc or es Median 25%-75% Min-Max 711Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 Young Old Age 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 In te rn al ity Median 25%-75% Min-Max I II III Course -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . st d sc or es Median 25%-75% Min-Max Figure 1. Box plots of SRL score and Internality, conditioning on gender, age, and course. It can easily be seen that the SRL score does not change in function of gender and age, but it seems to vary slightly according to the typology of SRL course. On the other hand, it can easily be seen that internality varies (both in median and in distribution) as age varies. Younger subjects have higher and less spread-out levels of internality. These findings are supported by the results of nonparametric tests on the medians. We compared the scores of subjects on each instrumental variable, conditioning on gender, age, and course. Table 2 reports the results (values and significance levels) of the Mann-Whitney U test (first two columns, gender and age) and the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA test (third column, course). As mentioned earlier, there are only two worthy results: the first for the relation between internality and age (p = 0.02) and the second for SRL and typology of course (p = 0.09). On the basis of these results, we can conclude that the typology of the course should be the first factor to include in the factorial experiment for the final analysis. Table 2. Results of nonparametric test (values and significance) on variables for independent groups. Gender Age Course U p-value U p-value K-W Anova p-value Self-efficacy 1444.0 0.551 1460.0 0.743 0.134 0.935 Internality 1545.0 0.989 1118.5 0.019 2.344 0.310 Internal LOC 1525.0 0.897 1387.5 0.451 0.204 0.903 SRL score 1446.5 0.559 1429,0 0.611 4.750 0.093 Bold results are significant at p < 0.1. ii. Rank correlations among the rough scores of the instrumental variables were carried out. Table 3 shows the results. There are many significant coefficients of correlation among ranks. The results show that the relations observed on our data set agree with the literature relatively on the association between self-efficacy and internal LOC. One more interesting relation emerges for self-efficacy and internality, which has a higher coefficient, indicating a stronger association. With respect to the SRL score, it can be seen that it is significantly and negatively associated with both internality and internal LOC. The relations have the same direction but a little different strength, with the second one higher than the first. On the contrary, no relation was observed between SRL and self- efficacy. Table 3. Kendall Self- efficacy Internality Internal LOC SRL score Self-efficacy 1.000 0.361 0.137 -0.059 Internality - 1.000 0.224 -0.140 Internal LOC - - 1.000 -0.194 SRL - - - 1.000 Bold correlations are significant at p < 0.05. 712 Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 To confirm the previous results, a further analysis was carried out. The rough scores of the first three instrumental variables were categorized into four classes based on the quartiles (Schwarzer, 1993; Perussia & Viano, 2008) of each distribution. The goal here was to check if in categorizing the three instrumental variables, their relation with the SRL score varies or not. This is why further factors (one or more) must be drawn from this analysis for the factorial experiment. To do this, analyses of box plots (Figure 2) and the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA test (Table 4) were carried out. The results suggest an overall effect of internality and internal LOC on SRL score. Moreover, when these two relations are compared, the conclusion could be drawn that internality acts better than internal LOC on the SRL score, that is, the first one better explains the observed variability of the SRL score. Also on this occasion, no relation was observed between SRL and self-efficacy. I II III IV Self-efficacy (cat.) -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . (s td ) sc or es Median 25%-75% Min-Max I II III Internality -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . (s td ) sc or es Median 25%-75% Min-Max I II III IV Internal LOC -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . (s td ) sc or es Median 25%-75% Min-Max Figure 2. Box plots and Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA test applied to SRL score, conditioning on the remaining instrumental variables. Graphical analysis shows that conditioning SRL score on self-efficacy does not produce any systematic difference among the medians. Instead, conditioning on the internality and internal LOC causes differences among medians to come out. In Table 4 it is appreciable that internality produces a more significant effect on medians than does internal LOC, despite their uneven pattern. As a consequence of this evidence it seems more suitable to use as a factor the internality rather than the internal LOC, because of the former’s higher capability to explain the variability of the SRL score. Table 4. Results of Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA by Rank for SRL score. Grouping variable K-W Test p-value Self-efficacy 3.018 0.389 Internality 9.442 0.009 713Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 Internal LOC 7.492 0.058 Bold values are significant at p < 0.05. iii. Finally, a factorial experiment was applied using two factors drawn from the previous analyses: the typology of course from the first analysis, and the (levels of) internality from the second. That is, the model was a 3 3 two-factor experiment, because no subject got a score higher than the third quartile (Q3 = 8) on internality and, as above mentioned, there are three types of course. The assessment of the principal and interaction effects on the SRL score was conducted in an ANOVA two-way context. Table 5 reports the results, in which the investigated effects are all significant (or at least almost significant). Table 5. ANOVA decomposition of the SRL score: test over all effects. Degree of freedom S.S. (Sum of Square) M.S. (Mean Square) F-test p-value Intercept 1 9.125 9.125 127.464 0.000 Course 2 0.354 0.177 2.472 0.089 Internality 2 1.039 0.520 7.258 0.001 Course*Internality 4 0.712 0.178 2.485 0.048 Error 106 7.588 0.072 Total 114 9.378 Bold values are significant at p < 0.05. This means that the SRL standardized score varies according to the level of internality (higher for the second level, lower elsewhere, last row of Table 6) and the type of course attended (decreasing from the first to the third type, last column of Table 6). More interesting, however, is the interaction effect internality course, because the effect of the two factors is not additive: internality acts on SRL score with different magnitude and direction, depending on the type of course with which it is associated. In other words, the SRL means vary in a different way based on the different combination of levels of internality with the type of course. In fact, as can easily be seen from Table 6, considering the first type of course, the SRL means are decreasing, starting from the first to the third level of internality (difference in magnitude); on the other hand, considering the second and the third type of course, the means before are increasing and then decreasing, starting from the first to the third level of internality (difference in direction and in magnitude). Table 6. Observed SRL means for the interaction effect internality course. Level of internality Type of course I II III I 0.518 0.500 0.255 0.424 II 0.188 0.750 0.250 0.396 III 0.305 0.341 0.276 0.307 0.337 0.530 0.260 0.363 The graphical analysis (Figure 3) of the interaction effects shows that: 1. Given the lowest level of internality, subjects gained a higher (mean) score on the SRL scale when they attended the first course, rather than the other two. On the other hand, it seems that subjects gained the worst score when they attended the second type of course; 2. Given the second level of internality, subjects gained the highest SRL score when they attended the second course; 3. Given the highest level of internality, subjects gained the same (low) score on the SRL scale, apart from the type of course they attended. 714 Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 I II III Course -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 S .R .L . (s td ) sc or es Internality levels I II III Figure 3. Graphical analysis of the interaction affects internality course on SRL score. To confirm the graphical suggestions, contrast analyses were carried out. The first row of Table 7 shows the contrast test, based on the second course, between the subjects’ group with the second level of internality (Figure 3 “red line”) and the subjects’ group with the first level (Figure 3 “blue line”). The t test confirms that the mean of the group with the second level of internality is significantly higher than that of the group with the first level. On the other hand, the third row shows the contrast test, given the lowest internality (Figure 3 “blue line”), between the group of subjects who attended the first course and the group that attended the second course. This contrast is not significant, despite the graphical hint, and it could be due to the extremely low number of subjects included in the second group. The remaining two contrasts are significant, demonstrating that the graphical differences displayed are almost everywhere relevant. Table 7. Analysis of the contrast for between-group factors on the means (course x internality) of the SRL score. Contrast Estimate Std. Err. t p-value CI(95%) Lower CI(95%) Upper 22 21 0.563 0.232 2.428 0.017 0.103 1.022 22 23 0.500 0.168 2.982 0.004 0.168 0.832 11 21 0.330 0.201 1.646 0.103 -0.067 0.728 22 32 0.409 0.148 2.767 0.007 0.116 0.702 Bold values are significant at p < 0.05. 6. Conclusions and recommendations The rapid growth of knowledge in the health area involves professionals continuing with their studies to improve their own knowledge and/or career. Knowles' "andragogy" – supposedly the adult equivalent of "pedagogy" (1973) – is a leading brand in adult education theory. Knowles supported the following assumptions: Adult learners need to know why they need to learn something, before undertaking to learn it; Adults need to be responsible for their own decisions and to be treated as capable of self-direction; Adult learners have a personnel background that represents the richest resource for learning; Adults are available to learn those things they need to know to cope effectively with life situations; Adults are motivated to learn to the extent that they perceive it will help them perform tasks they confront in their life situations. The findings of this research suggest that, as Knowles (1980) maintained, extrinsic motivation (such as a raise or career development) wields a more incisive effect on adult learning than does an intrinsic one. Furthermore, analysis of data suggests that factors such as internality and difficulty of the course affect the DL of the adult. 715Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 For these reasons the findings of this survey can be better argued, calling back attention to the following issues: Registration in DL courses. Health professionals did not adhere voluntarily to DL courses – the SETT project was realized on experimental bases. Therefore, participants were recommended by the Central System to attend the course. Research context. The opportunity to acquire CME credits is the most important motivational factor to attend DL courses, since it allows health professionals to develop their career. CME represents an assumption of responsibility for health professionals; the explosion in medical knowledge over the last 25 years has increased the demand for several forms of continuing education and, in response, multitudes of postgraduate courses, taped lectures, and DL training. Research context created in students an external motivation mainly oriented to acquire CME credits. Difficulty level of the course. The difficulty of the course can be distinguished based on the contents, duration, and number of CME credits, as illustrated in the “Data Description” section. The most difficult courses are included in the third typology. The first typology of courses allows health professionals to acquire a number of CME credits slightly lower than the second one, but it is harder than the latter. The survey results suggest that self-regulated learning performance is influenced by some of the factors mentioned above. Even though this survey wonders if self-efficacy and LOC are the main variables on DL processes, the output demonstrates the importance of the relation between LOC and external motivation (acquiring CME credits). Our research was conducted in a context in which subjects developed external motivation that interacts, in our opinion, with the levels of internality and the typology of the course. As the literature has amply demonstrated, individuals with internal LOC engage in learning processes more than do individuals with external LOC because the former believe that the achievement of training goals depends on their will. In this case they develop positive expectations and they are more motivated to learn. Nevertheless, as Trevisani (2000) points out, adults generally do not present a solely internal or external LOC; rather, they move on a continuum, searching for an optimal fit in their belief system. The interaction between internality and typology of course on the SRL score, as shown in Table 5, is one of the main findings that came out from the analysis. According to the analysis of the interaction effects, (Figure 1), it is easily appreciable that individuals with the highest level of internality gained a low score on the SRL scale. In our opinion this result could be associated with the subjects’ propensity to consider their goal achieved when CME credits are obtained. On this basis, we argue that these subjects only aim to pass the test. In fact, the analysis of the contrast for between-group factors shows that the performance of this group (posed on the III level of internality) is not affected by the difficulty of the course (Figure 3). Thus, in each DL course subjects with the highest internality probably identified the acquisition of CME credits as the main purpose of DL and they did not worry about their test performance. Another worthy hint is that subjects with the lowest level of internality (Figure 3) have the worst SRL score; this performance is posed on the easiest (II) typology of course, as indicated in section 3, “Data Description”. In this case the effect of low internality on SRL performance is clear. Then the highest and the lowest levels of internality act on the SRL score in the same way. Finally, analysis of the contrasts (Table 7) suggests that subjects who got a medium-low level of internality obtained significantly different SRL scores; in this group (posed on the II level of internality) the highest SRL score was observed in correspondence with the second typology of courses (the easiest). In sum, the combined effect of difficulty of the course, internality, and extrinsic motivation (acquiring CME credits and developing career) had a crucial role in SRL performance. As Fazey and Fazey (2001) maintain, autonomous people perceive themselves to be in control of their decision making, take responsibility for the outcomes of their actions, and have confidence in themselves (see, for instance, Deci & Ryan, 1985; Bandura, 1988; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2003). Many authors link these characteristics to the sense of self, which enables autonomous people to act within a personal belief system, providing them with the framework for their decision making and personal planning (Bandura, Hamilton, Bower , 1988; Zimmerman & Schunk, 1976). In conclusion, this exploratory survey seems to suggest that in learning processes, and more exactly in DL, adults refer to an articulate and complex system of psychological features (not solely reducible to the variables here investigated) that interact with specifically contextual factors. Thus, considering the relevance of the analysed themes, we suggest further developments following some recommendations, specifically, comparing the results with 716 Sergio Severino et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 705 – 717 surveys conducted in the paying DL context and where communication tools contribute to the development of virtual communities. The next survey should have an adequate sample. References Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), (pp. 191-215). Bandura, A. (1989). A social cognitive theory of action. In J. P. Forgas & M. J. Innes (Eds.), Recent advances in social psychology: An international perspective. North Holland, Elsevier. Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior, 4, (pp. 71-81). New York: Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman [Ed.], Encyclopedia of mental health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998). Bandura, A. 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work_hxqmesr4jbdyjpe5jsebn7fx6u	----	ajpe95 1..10 RESEARCH ARTICLES Comparison of Two Lecture Delivery Platforms in a Hybrid Distance Education Program L. Douglas Ried, PhD, a and Katherine Byers, PhD b aCollege of Pharmacy, University of Florida* bTexas Tech University Health Science Center Submitted June 13, 2008; accepted October 18, 2008; published August 28, 2009. Objective. To compare students’ preferences for and academic performance using 2 different distance education course content delivery platforms. Methods. A randomized, crossover research design was used to compare traditional video with a 4-panel platform among learners on multiple campuses within 1 college of pharmacy.1 The outcomes were students’ preferences for delivery platform and examination scores. Rasch analysis was used to assess unidimensionality and the difficulty of examination items. Hierarchical logistic and multiple regression models were used to assess students’ preferences and academic performance. Results. The logistic model predicting preference for the 4-panel or traditional platform was not significant, but African-Americans and Hispanics were more likely to prefer the 4-panel platform than Caucasian and Asian students. The delivery platform did not impact students’ academic performance. Students who did well on the semester’s previous 2 examinations scored higher on the questions related to schizophrenia. Students with higher Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) scores performed better on the bipolar questions than students who preferred the traditional video platform. Conclusion. The additional faculty time, effort, and cost invested in presenting the class material in a 4-panel platform, and the students’ extra time and effort spent viewing the 4-panel platform did not produce a comparable benefit in student preference and performance. Keywords: distance education, academic performance, distance learning, educational technology, learning style, learning preferences, assessment INTRODUCTION The pharmacist shortage in the United States is attrib- uted to an inability to train new pharmacists at the same rate as the growth in demand for pharmacists.1 Schools and colleges of pharmacy are pressured to graduate more students to lessen the gap between the supply and demand for pharmacists. The high cost of starting new pharmacy schools and the difficulties in finding qualified new fac- ulty members have spurred exploration into options for training pharmacists. Some existing schools and colleges of pharmacy have increased their on-campus class size, while others have addressed space or resource constraints by employing distance education programs. Video-based instruction is effective in distance edu- cation because students are able to view lectures at their own pace, instructions can be reviewed multiple times, class material is more accessible, and study time is spent more efficiently. 2-4 The lack of interaction with the instructor, however, is a disadvantage.4 Nevertheless, distance-learning strategies have been adopted because they are effective and cost-efficient. The best way of delivering content is equivocal. While studies have shown academic achievement is im- proved when instructors respond to students’ different learning styles,5 others have shown no difference.6 Al- though students may have more than one learning style, they usually have a preferred style.7 Thus, while students in the same class receive the same instruction, the teach- ing strategy used may be effective for some students and ineffective for others. Multiple platforms are available to deliver content at a distance; however, not all platforms are equivalent with regard to students’ learning. 8,9 Platforms can be more or less aligned with students’ preferences.10-12 Making the decision even more complex, not all delivery platforms cost the same to develop and deliver. Real costs are associated Corresponding Author: L. Douglas Ried, PhD, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, 100 Campus Drive, Weatherford, OK 73096, Tel: 580-774-3105. Fax: 580-774-7020. E-mail: doug.ried@swosu.edu *Affiliation at time of study. Current affiliation: Southwestern Oklahoma State University. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 1 with faculty and programmer effort and time, and soft- ware and hardware requirements; however, more expen- sive platforms may be warranted if they also are more cost effective. The College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida (UF) doubled enrollment by implementing a hybrid dis- tance education program in August 2002.3 The traditional video platform format has predominated since the incep- tion of the program. It has been characterized as ‘‘a talking head with slides’’ and targets visual and audio senses. Lectures are digitally recorded at the Gainesville campus and video streamed via the Internet, enabling students to watch the lectures online within 2 hours. The content is the same for all 4 campuses, as are the teaching method- ologies for all of the courses in the curriculum. Depending on the course, the majority of students on the Gainesville campus also view the lectures via the video platform rather than attending the ‘‘live’’/tradi- tional classes. As an alternative, the college experimented with a 4-panel format, an interactive multimedia platform designed to address students’ different learning preferen- ces and determine the most suitable method to deliver the courses’ content to meet the needs of faculty members and students (Classroom 24/7, formerly DigiScript, Saddleback, NJ). It consists of 4 panels appearing in 1 large window on the computer screen. The video and audio content are synchronized and appear in 1 panel. Transcripts of the lecture narrative, PowerPoint slides, and outlines appear in the other 3 panels. The 4-panel platform allows students to pinpoint and select specific content within a presenta- tion by clicking on embedded outline links. Other orga- nizational features include bookmarks, a search function, and handout tabs. Finally, the self-assessment quizzes with feedback embedded within the lectures offer stu- dents additional opportunities to interact with the course content and make self-assessments regarding whether they need to review a specific part of the lecture. These active-learning strategies are designed to enhance student learning. 13 These strategies are effective in live lectures14 and some speculate they may be effective in Web-based courses.8,15 The effectiveness of adding self-assessment questions and feedback to a content delivery platform are mixed.16-19 In fall 2005, both the traditional video and 4-panel platforms were employed in a second-year pharmacother- apy course. This pilot study compared students’ prefer- ences and academic performance using the 2 platforms. Our hypotheses were that students: (1) would prefer the 4-panel format, and (2) academic performance with the 4-panel format would be higher. METHODS Study Description This pilot study used a randomized crossover research design (Figure 1). It was conducted during the psychiatry segment of the second-year pharmacotherapy course. To ensure students were exposed to both platforms before being randomized into a study group, the first 2 topics covered in the course were delivered to all students using the same format. First, 2 lectures on the treatment of de- pression were presented to all of the students using the 4-panel platform. Next, lectures on the treatment of anx- iety were presented via the traditional video platform. The students were exposed to the 4-panel platform prior to the study to lower the learning curve associated with new technology. The anxiety lectures were delivered in the traditional format after the 4-panel format and before ran- domization to serve as a quasi-washout time period. Following these common lectures, students in each of the classes at the College’s 4 campuses were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups. Students in one group received 2 lectures on the treatment of bipolar affective disorder via the traditional video platform, while students in the other group received the same lectures via the 4-panel video platform. Next, students on the campuses that received traditional video platform of the bipolar lectures received 4-panel presentations for the treatment of schizophrenia; while students who had previously received the 4-panel bipolar presentations received the schizophrenia lectures via the traditional video platform. Students were told be- forehand that the 4-panel platform was going to be tested on more than 1 occasion to see which delivery method they preferred, and that at least 2 disease topics would be in the 4-panel format, but they were not told which topics or when. The lecturer and course content were exactly the same and both groups of students viewed exactly the same video and audio portions of the lectures in both platforms. Outcome Variables Examination scores on relevant content. Students’ learning was assessed using 13 items embedded in the Figure 1. Design of a research study comparing two lecture delivery platforms for a hybrid distance education program. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 2 third examination of the semester to test the material pre- sented postrandomization. The examination questions pertaining to the psychiatry lectures were identified by the course coordinator. Five items were included for the depression and anxiety lectures, but were not included in the students’ examination score outcome measure be- cause all students received this material using the same delivery platform to reduce confounding. 1 Students’ total examination scores were obtained by summing the value of the logits for individual students on the 8 remaining items.20 Individual students’ logit scores for the 4-panel items were compared to the logit scores for the traditional video platform items. The examination also consisted of an additional 37 items covering throm- boembolic disorders, Alzheimer’s, attention deficit hy- peractivity disorder, obesity, and insomnia. Preference for lecture video presentation. Stu- dents’ preferences for the lecture platforms were assessed via 2 questions embedded within an Internet-based survey administered at the end of the semester. Students were contacted by e-mail and offered extra credit points to complete the Internet-based survey instrument. Students were asked, ‘‘Which of the following state- ments most accurately describes your preferences regard- ing the video presentations?’’ Students expressed their preferences by choosing 1 of 3 options: I preferred the 4-panel platform (11); I have no preference between the 4-panel platform and the traditional video platform (0); or I preferred the traditional video platform (�1). Students were asked to report how much they preferred the chosen video platform using a Likert scale. The categories were: (1) just a little more, (2) somewhat more, (3) a lot more, or (4) it was the best. The value assigned to the preference category was multiplied by the degree of preference choice so scores ranged from �4 to 14. Finally, students were asked to state whether they strongly agreed, agreed, were neutral, disagreed, or strongly disagreed with the statement, ‘‘I think that I learned the material better when I used the 4-panel plat- form compared to the regular video streaming.’’ Students also were asked to identify the most helpful features of the 4-panel platform. Predictor Variables Lecture delivery platform. The primary predictor in this study was the course content delivery platform. DigiScript randomized the delivery order and assignment of the campuses to the platforms (Classroom 24/7, for- merly DigiScript, Saddleback, NJ). The investigators and students were blinded both to the campuses and the order in which the platforms were delivered. Randomization was not revealed until all of the data were collected. The primary differences between the 2 platforms were embedded within the enhanced features of the 4-panel platform. Multiple-choice questions were periodically embedded as part of the 4-panel format. Students were required to answer the questions correctly before moving forward with the rest of the content. Students received feedback regarding their response to the question imme- diately upon submitting the answer. Covariates. Covariates associated with academic success were added to the model. 3,21,22 Students’ demo- graphic characteristics included age, gender, and race (Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and other). Indicators of preadmission academic achievement included earning a bachelor’s degree prior to admission to the pharmacy college (1 5 yes, 0 5 no), science/math grade point average (GPA), and percentile scores on the PCAT. Two measures of students’ current academic per- formance included in the models were the sum of their scores on the first 2 examinations of the semester in the same course and whether they were ‘‘out of sequence’’ with the rest of their academic class (1 5 yes; 0 5 no). Out of sequence students were those with academic difficulty or who were behind in the curriculum for personal reasons. Statistical Analyses The bivariate relationships between students’ charac- teristics, preadmission academic performance, examina- tions scores, and platform preference were examined using Pearson’s chi-square tests for categorical variables and independent t tests for continuous variables. Hierarchical logistic regression models were fit to predict students’ preference for the 4-panel or traditional lecture delivery platform. If the chi-square statistic for the change in the -2 log likelihood value was significant, the prediction of the students’ probability of preferring the 4-panel delivery platform over the traditional delivery platform was improved. A 1-parameter item response (Rasch) model was used, which is based on a probabilistic model that orders items and subjects simultaneously using maximum like- lihood estimation. 20 The result arranges items along a difficulty continuum and subjects along an ability contin- uum.23 Rasch analysis was performed using WINSTEPS, Version 3.31 (WINSTEPS, Chicago, IL). WINSTEPS provides detailed statistics for each item and the overall instrument. We used the default rating scale model with groups equal to 1 which assumes all of the items share the same underlying rating scale structure. We used it as orig- inally conceptualized for use with dichotomous items23 scored as correct or incorrect. Item difficulties and person measures are mapped in logits or log-odds units along the same linear continuum. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 3 Rasch models also provide statistical results regard- ing items’ unidimensionality and hierarchical ordering. Unidimensionality refers to whether the instrument mea- sures a single construct.24 Mean square standardized resid- uals (MnSq) and standardized Z scores identify how well each item fits the hypothesized unidimensional construct. For low-stakes multiple-choice questionnaires, a reason- able MnSq value is # 1.3 or 30% variance. 24 Items . 1.3 ‘‘diverge unacceptably from the expected ability/diffi- culty pattern’’.24(p26) In addition to MnSq statistics, ZSTD estimates the improbability of participant responses. Items with Z scores of 2 or higher are considered too un- predictable.25 Items exceeding both the MnSq and ZSTD criteria (MnSq $ 1.3 and ZSTD $ 2.0) were considered ‘‘misfitting.’’24 Item hierarchy orders items sequentially from least to most difficult. A student’s ability is measured by logits, derived from transforming ordinal data into an interval scale. A student’s position on a unidimensional scale is evaluated by ordering item difficulty and person ability on the same linear continuum. Students’ raw scores can be misleading if items are not in a logit scale and hierarchical order. For example, if 2 students receive identical raw scores on a test, they do not necessarily have the same level of ability since one student may have correctly an- swered more of the most challenging items. 24 Two measures of academic performance were exam- ined using linear regression models: (1) students’ scores on the 2 previous examinations, and (2) the sum of stu- dents’ logit scores on the test items representing learning on the postrandomization materials. In each case, the de- mographic and prepharmacy academic variables were first added to the model. Next, the predictor variables (ie, lecture delivery platform) were added to the equation. Significant change in the coefficient of determination (R2) indicates improvement in prediction of students’ ac- ademic performance. The study was conducted according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The University of Florida Institutional Review Board approved the study protocol. The a priori level of statistical significance was set at #0.05. SPSS was used to conduct the statistical analyses (SPSS for Windows, version 15.0, Chicago, IL.) RESULTS Description of the Sample Three hundred twenty-eight students were enrolled in the class and 65% was female. Students’ average age was 25.8 years (range, 19 to 53 years); their average prephar- macy science and math GPA was 3.4 6 0.3; and their average maximum composite PCAT score was 86.9 6 12.3. The majority (69.2%) of the students were white, 19.2% were Asian, and 11.6% were African-American, Hispanic, or other. The majority (45.7%) attended the Gainesville campus; other students attended the Jackson- ville (16.2%), Orlando (16.8%), or St. Petersburg cam- puses (21.3%). One hundred twenty-four (37.7%) of the students had earned at least a bachelor’s degree before admission. Next, we compared students’ demographic character- istics and prerandomization academic performance according to platform presentation order. On average, the students who viewed the 4-panel platform first were older (Table 1). This difference in age among participants was an unavoidable result of the prerandomization pro- cess for the Gainesville campus students, who were as- signed to watch the traditional video first, were younger on average and represented nearly 40% of the College’s student body. They were also more likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree and had a lower average composite PCAT score before admission. However, the average pre- pharmacy science and math GPA, proportion of out-of- sequence students, race, gender, and average on the first 2 examinations of the semester in the class were similar. Demographic data were incomplete for 3 students, so they were excluded. Predictors of Academic Performance on Examination 1 and Examination 2 Female students scored between 4 and 5 points higher than male students. African-American and Hispanic stu- dents, and those students who indicated their race was ‘‘other’’ scored nearly 7 points lower than Caucasian stu- dents, and increasing age was associated with lower scores on examination 1 and examination 2 (Table 2). Examination scores were higher among students with higher science/math GPA and PCAT scores. Students earning a bachelor’s degree prior to admission also scored nearly 4 points higher on the 2 examinations. When the variable representing the lecture presentation platform was included in the model, the overall model remained significant (p , .001). However, neither the unstandard- ized regression coefficient representing the platform vari- able nor the model’s R 2 change was significant. Unidimensionality and Hierarchy of Examination Items The items on the third examination showed accept- able unidimensionality, except for the anxiety 2 and schizophrenia 1 items. The standardized Z score for the anxiety 2 item was too high. Anxiety 2 and schizophrenia 1 items were the hardest and easiest question to answer, respectively. Item presentation order did not significantly influence the 95% confidence interval. The only item American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 4 outside of the 95% CI of the error of the items in the presented order was bipolar 2. When the test items were arranged from easiest at the bottom to most difficult at the top, less than 20 students scored less than the mean for item difficulty. The mean of the students’ ability level was approximately 1½ logits above the mean of the item difficulty, indicating that more than 90% of the students were able to correctly answer test items of average difficulty. Platform Preference Students’ platform preference was investigated as a plausible explanation for scoring well or poorly on the post-randomization examination items. Nearly 84% (n 5 273) of the 325 eligible students responded to the end of the semester survey. Nearly 75% of these students (n 5 201) opined that the 4-panel platform was easy to use. Just over 51% of them (n 5 140) preferred the traditional video platform, 100 (36.6%) preferred the 4-panel Table 1. Demographic Characteristics and Academic Performance According to the Platform Delivered First After Randomization (N 5 328) Demographic Characteristics and Achievement Traditional Platform (n5203) 4-Panel Platform (n5125) P Male (n 5 116), No. (%) 69 (34.0) 47 (37.6) 0.59 Female (n 5 212), No. (%) 134 (66.0) 78 (62.4) Age, years (SD) 24.5 (4.3) 27.8 (6.4) ,.001 Prepharmacy SMGPA (SD) 3.4 (0.3) 3.4 (0.4) 0.67 Average PCAT composite score 88.0 (11.1) 85.18 (14.0) 0.04 Bachelors degree or higher (n 5 124), No. (%) 66 (32.5) 58 (46.4) 0.02 Race White (n 5 227), No. (%) 141 (69.5) 86 (68.8) 0.61 Asian (n 5 63), No. (%) 41 (20.2) 22 (17.6) African-American, Hispanic, Other (n 5 38), No. (%) 21 (10.3) 17 (13.6) Out of sequence, No. (%) 19 (9.4) 20 (16.0) 0.10 Score on examination 1 80.7 (11.4) 78.7 (10.3) 0.13 Score on examination 2 78.5 (11.0) 76.6 (9.8) 0.12 Abbreviations: SMGPA 5 science and math grade point average a Chi-square with Yates discontinuity Correction, 1 degree of freedom. b Pearson chi-square. c t test Table 2. Predictors of the Sum of Examination 1 and Examination 2 Scores Step 1 Step 2 Variable Beta P Beta P Female Gender �.12 0.02 �.12 0.02 Black �.11 0.03 �.11 0.03 Asian �.03 0.55 �.03 0.55 Age �.25 ,.001 �.25 ,.001 SMGPA .24 ,.001 .24 ,.001 PCAT .23 ,.001 .23 ,.001 Yes, Bachelors Degree .11 0.05 .11 0.05 Out of Sequence .11 0.04 .11 0.04 Lecture Platform NA NA �.01 0.81 Adjusted R2 0.19 0.19 Model F-Ratio 9.27 8.65 Degrees of freedom 8,316 9,315 Model p value ,.001 ,.001 F-Ratio of Change 0.06 Degrees of freedom 1,315 p-value of change 0.81 Abbreviations: P 5 alpha error (p value); Beta 5 Standardized OLS Regression Coefficient; SMGPA 5 Science and Math Grade Point Average; PCAT 5 Composite Score on the Pharmacy College Admission Test. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 5 presentation platform, and 33 (12.1%) indicated no prefer- ence. When asked which feature was most helpful, 58.1% responded the ability to print the lecture narrative, while 25% responded the self-assessment and feedback feature. The remaining 4-panel features accounted for a small pro- portion of the remaining responses, including the lecture slides (5.9%), key word search features (3.3%), embedded outline (2.6%), notes (1.8%), and bookmarks (0.7%). Most (40.1%) of the students were neutral regarding whether they learned better with one platform than the other; however, 28.3% opined they learned better with the 4-panel platform and 31.6% stated they learned better with the traditional video platform. Contrary to conven- tional wisdom, which would be that students would learn better using their preferred platform, students who thought they learned more using the 4-panel platform were more likely to prefer the traditional video platform (51.1%). Those who thought they learned more using the traditional video platform were more likely to prefer the 4-panel platform (62.0%), and those who were neutral about their learning were more likely to be neutral about their platform preference (60.6%; p , 0.001). The logistic model predicting students’ platform pref- erence was not significant. Race was the single significant variable. African-Americans, Hispanics, and other races were nearly 3 times more likely to prefer the 4-panel platform compared to Caucasian students. The findings were the same for the ordinary least squares regression and are available from the authors upon request. Comparison of Students’ Academic Performance According to Delivery Platform The average logit scores on the examination items were 4.5 6 3.3 and 1.3 6 1.5 for the schizophrenia and bipolar questions, respectively. The average difference in the logit and raw scores between the 2 presentation for- mats were similar (schizophrenia logit score 5 4.6 6 3.2 vs. 4.4 6 3.4, independent t test(323) 5 0.53, p 5 0.59; bipolar logit score 5 1.4 6 1.5 vs. 1.2 6 1.5, independent t test(323) 5 1.06, p 5 0.29. Consistent with the bivariate findings, the delivery platform did not have a significant impact on students’ academic performance after controlling for the covariates. Students who received the course content on the 4-panel platform scored , 1 point higher than those who received the content using the traditional video platform for both topics combined. Gender, race, age, prepharmacy science/ math GPA, PCAT score, prior BS degree, and whether the student attended one of the distance campuses or the Gain- esville campus did not influence academic performance. Students who did well on the semester’s previous 2 examinations scored higher on the questions related to schizophrenia (Table 3). The raw logit scores on the schizophrenia questions were impacted the most among students who were ‘‘out of sequence,’’ averaging 1.29 logits lower (95% CI 5 0.09, �2.66) than students who were on track within the college’s curricular sequence. On the bipolar questions, students with higher PCAT scores performed better (Table 3). Students who preferred the traditional video platform scored lower than students who expressed no platform preference. Students who preferred the 4-panel platform also scored lower than those with no preference, and students with higher previous examina- tion scores scored higher. The same relationship and pat- tern of results was seen for academic performance and platform preference for the schizophrenia course content, but it was not significant. DISCUSSION The specific hypotheses of this pilot study were (1) students would prefer the 4-panel format because of the multiple learning styles involved, and (2) the academic performance of students assigned to the 4-panel format would be better than that of students using the traditional format. This finding was initially surprising because the 4-panel platform was designed to appeal to more learning styles. Upon reflection, we identified several possible explanations. In a study of medical students, approxi- mately 36% preferred receiving course-related informa- tion using only 1 learning style, including when asked to choose among visual (learning from graphs, charts, flow diagrams), auditory (learning from speech), printed word (learning from reading and writing), or kinesthetic (touch, hearing, smell, taste, and sight). However, nearly 64% preferred using 2 or more learning styles. 26 The tradi- tional video platform already combined visual and audi- tory learning to engage students. The 4-panel platform added kinesthetic learning in the form of questions and feedback, and the printed word in the form of transcrip- tions of the lecture. Although the 4-panel platform was used to present 2 lectures (1 topic) to all students before the campuses were randomized, students were more fa- miliar with the traditional video platform. The traditional video format had been used the entire previous year and during the current semester, with the exception of the pilot lectures. Some students may have had difficulty adapting to less familiar methods of instruction. 27 Perhaps it should have been more surprising that nearly 40% of the students preferred the 4-panel platform. Next, central to the prin- ciples of ‘‘instructional preference’’ is the notion of how individuals prefer to learn, whether through lectures, in- dividual study, or small-group studies. The 4-panel plat- form included neither small group studies nor live interaction with the instructor. For those who preferred American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 6 more personal interactions, the 4-panel platform was ba- sically no different than the traditional video platform. Lastly, the most frequently cited benefit of the 4- panel platform was the word-for-word transcription of the lecture rather than the questions and feedback feature. Conversely, the most frequently voiced objections were that: (1) it took longer to complete the lectures because they had to answer the questions and read the feedback, and (2) they could not ‘‘speed up’’ the lectures as they had been able to do with the traditional platform. Although this comment is largely speculative, the extra time it took students to complete the questions and feedback in the 4-panel format may have been a cost that some felt did not benefit them enough to make it worthwhile. Given the relatively small benefit gained in their examination scores, students’ preference may be justified. Future work should look at students’ motivations for learning and con- cordance of the platform features with those motivations. For example, both of the most frequent objections to the 4-panel platform were features that increased the amount of time it took students to complete course content. The second hypothesis predicted that students’ aca- demic performance would be better on the material pre- sented using the 4-panel platform. Students’ academic performance was not improved using the 4-panel plat- form. Theoretically, teachers can improve learning by adapting learning tasks and teaching methods to students’ preferences. 28 The 4-panel platform added a download- able transcript of the lecture that students could read, in addition to the self-assessment and feedback opportuni- ties. In both cases, the students scored marginally higher with the 4-panel platform, but our findings did not cor- roborate studies that demonstrated self-assessment ques- tions and feedback improved students test scores. 13 We did not have a direct measure of the learning styles; there- fore, we assumed that the features added more learning styles to the 4-panel platform. However, while more learning styles may have been incorporated, they may not have aligned with students’ preferred learning styles any better than the traditional platform. The hypothesis that students’ actual performance in the course was related to their preferred content delivery platform was partially supported and, surprisingly, oppo- site to our expectations. Students may have a preference for a specific platform, but it may have little influence on performance. 29,30 Conventional wisdom suggests that American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 7 adapting instruction to students’ preferred learning styles should improve their academic performance. However, the literature is mixed and learning preference and learn- ing styles are not consistently associated with academic performance.17-19,31 In one study, significant improve- ment in performance did not persist after a delay of sev- eral months, although learning platform differences were seen immediately after the training.15 One plausible ex- planation for our finding of no difference is that testing occurred 2 weeks after the lectures were presented. While 2 weeks seem to be a short time, factors associated with short- and long-term knowledge retention are not well understood.32,33 Contradictory to our hypothesis, we found that objective measures of academic performance (ie, examination scores) were diametrically opposed to students’ own perceptions of how much they learned. Students’ demographic characteristics were hypoth- esized to be associated with platform preference and academic performance. In some studies, students’ prefer- ences for learning strategies and outcomes were associ- ated with personal and contextual factors, such as academic discipline, prior education, age, and gen- der, 21,22 but not in other studies.15,26,34,35 Demographic characteristics played a small role in our comparison of the 2 platforms, with the exception of race. Both prefer- ence variables examined in this study showed that African-Americans, Hispanics, and racial groups other than Asian were significantly more likely to prefer the 4-panel platform compared to Caucasian students. While demographic characteristics (eg, age and gender) have been shown to be predictors of success in pharmacy school, our findings only partially support other studies that showed science/math GPA and past academic perfor- mance (eg, examination scores and maintaining adequate progress in the curriculum) may be among other predic- tors.3,21,22 We based this observation on the fact that stu- dents in the 2 platform groups performed equally well on the first 2 examinations of the semester (, 2% difference on each of both examinations). While many of these var- iables predicted students’ total scores on examination 1 and examination 2, it was their performance on these 2 examinations that predicted students’ scores on the items testing the postrandomization course material. This find- ing indicates these demographic and prepharmacy aca- demic achievement factors did not directly impact postrandomization academic performance between the 2 platforms. Rather, they were mediated by students’ per- formance on the current semester’s course (Figure 1). Moreover, after both the platform and preference varia- bles were added to the model, the coefficients represent- ing the impact of the demographic and preference variables remained nearly identical. So, it seems that de- mographic characteristics and the delivery platform’s im- pact on students’ academic performance is independent from their lecture platform preference. In fact, students’ perceptions about which platform helped them learn bet- ter were opposite to their preference and those with no preference scored better. Limitations Interpretation and incorporation of these findings should only be done within the context of its limitations and should be considered in the design of any future work into educational programs. Individual students on the same campus viewed the lectures within the same format. We have no evidence they were aware that the platform was different among the campuses for the postrandomiza- tion schizophrenia and bipolar lectures. We think students were successfully desensitized to the experiment by pro- viding washout lectures using the traditional video format before randomizing campuses to platform and by provid- ing them with the same video of the same lecturer in both platforms. Therefore, the primary differences between the 2 platforms were the quizzes, feedback, and printed lec- ture transcript. Randomization was not individual student based, but rather campus based. Therefore, biased findings and mis- interpretations may have resulted from the ecological fallacy.36 That is unlikely, however, since 2 campuses randomized into the same intervention group differed on their content delivery platform preferences. The finding of a nonsignificant difference in aca- demic performance also may be because the intervention was not strong enough or may have been underpowered. Both platforms had the same lecturer on the screen and the same audio narrative. The additional transcription, em- bedded questions, and feedback may not have been suf- ficient to impact their preference or their performance. Another platform with different features may have been a better venue to show learning differences. In other cases, the findings may have been underpowered because of the small sample size of the comparison groups. For example, the alpha error for students out of sequence (n 5 39) was p 5 0.07 for step 2 in Table 3, but the magnitude of the regression coefficient revealed that it had the second larg- est impact on students’ performance on the schizophrenia questions. A similar situation occurred with the compar- isons of the traditional and 4-panel platforms with those with no preference (n 5 33) for the bipolar questions. Even so, this study was a legitimate evaluation of 2 dif- ferent commercially available platforms, which was our original goal. If the obtained difference in academic per- formance were replicated over the typical 100-point ex- amination, it would have made , 2% difference in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2009; 73 (5) Article 95. 8 average student’s total score. These findings were espe- cially useful for decision-making purposes since the 4- panel was significantly more costly to deliver and the College continued to use the traditional video format. We were unable to include more questions in the test of the outcome and unable to psychometrically test the questions embedded in the course’s third examination in advance. The variability in the outcome was also limited because 1 of the post-randomization items was answered correctly by almost everyone. The schizophrenia and bi- polar questions were only 16% of the third examination because the rest of the topics presented during the semes- ter (eg, sleep products, stimulants) were tested in the same examination. In addition, 10% of the items tested the de- pression content of the first 4-panel lecture and the anx- iety content within the washout video. Therefore, nearly three-fourths of the examination questions were unrelated to the trial. While not optimal, the conditions in this study showed that a legitimate demonstration of a randomized trial is possible in academic and scholarly research. While this study has limitations, it has important strengths in comparison to most pharmacy educational interventions. First, it is a cross-over design where stu- dents serve as their own control; significantly increasing the power of the study. Campuses were randomized and students and researchers were unaware of assignment un- til after the course concluded. The 2 platforms and test items also were delivered within the everyday educational process of the college, rather than presenting the students with a special test of the content, as is the case with most studies of educational interventions. Finally, all of the students were initially introduced to the learning platform at the same time before the measured questions. The orig- inal format was also added so that it might washout the after effects of any platform-specific learning difficulties with the first exposure to the new platform. The washout strategy appeared to work because the difference in learn- ing effect size was approximately equal and independent of the order in which the 4-panel platform was presented. CONCLUSIONS Pharmacy students’ academic performance was not significantly impacted by whether lectures were delivered using a traditional or 4-panel learning platform. The extra faculty time, effort, and cost put into presenting the class material in a 4-panel platform, and the students’ extra time and effort required to review the material, did not produce a comparable benefit in student preference and performance. Factors other than the platform technology were more important in influencing students’ preference and academic performance. Students’ perceptions were in opposition to the conventional wisdom; namely, students who preferred the traditional video format thought they learned better with the 4-panel platform and those who preferred the 4-panel platform thought they learned better with the traditional video format. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was presented at the 109th Annual Meet- ing of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), July 2008, Chicago, IL. The authors would like to acknowledge Kristin Weitzel, PharmD. At the time of this research Dr. Weitzel was a faculty member at the University of Florida, Col- lege of Pharmacy, and course coordinator for the pharma- cotherapy course where these platforms were tested. We would also like to thank Markus Maxim for his assistance with collating and cleaning the data and for conducting some of the preliminary data analyses. Herr Maxim was an exchange student from the Fachbereich Pharmazie, the University of Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf, Germany. 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work_hgjpfwsq4jcvvfoimx7f7h6cgm	----	IDENTITY POSITIONING OF DOCTORAL STUDENTS IN NETWORKED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS Marguerite L. Koole, Dip. Multimedia Production, BA, MEd February, 2013. This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK. This thesis was completed as part of the Doctoral Programme in e-Research & Technology Enhanced Learning. This thesis results entirely from my own work and has not been offered previously for any other degree or diploma. Signature ........................................................ ii Marguerite L. Koole, Dip. Multimedia Production, BA, MEd Identity Positioning of Doctoral Students in Networked Learning Environments Doctor of Philosophy, January, 2013 Abstract As the highest degree awarded, successful completion of a doctorate demands that learners work at a conceptual level. The demands of independent, original research intended to extend knowledge in a field can lead to oscillating feelings of confidence, acceptance, and belonging—intellectually and socially. Exposure to new ideas, norms, and ethics can cause learners to question their position within their various social contexts. The descriptions of doctoral experiences of identity positioning in networked learning environments is the focus of this thesis. I set out to examine to what extent doctoral students in two NL programs experience identity positioning; how they describe this process; and whether or not positioning might be described differently by students in different fields. This investigation took place at a distance university in Canada in which the learners used networking technologies to exchange information and discuss ideas. Participants were solicited from doctoral courses offered via networked learning in education and business. The main method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed and coded through qualitative open coding in which I sought themes indicative of social positioning. Discourse analysis was also used to aid in the analysis of interview transcripts, allowing deeper interrogation of the meanings of and relationships between specific utterances appearing within the transcripts. The results indicate that doctoral students experience identity positioning across multiple aspects of their lives including, but not limited to their social, intimate, professional, and academic contexts. The importance of this work is partially directed towards the concerns of governments and funding agencies that may pass over the intangible benefits of doctoral studies in search of direct and measureable economic and social outcomes. More importantly, this work is intended to draw attention to the variety of social contexts that may impact doctoral students’ experiences, and how these influences might influence learners’ persistence, completion, and enjoyment of doctoral studies. iii Contents Abstract  .................................................................................................................  ii   Contents  ................................................................................................................  iii   Acknowledgements  ..............................................................................................  vii   Publications  derived  from  work  on  the  Doctoral  Programme  ..............................  viii   List  of  abbreviations  and  Canadian  terms  ..............................................................  ix   List  of  figures  and  tables  .........................................................................................  x   Chapter  1:  Introduction  ..........................................................................................  1   1.1  Introduction  .............................................................................................................  1   1.1.1  The  nature  of  doctoral-­‐level  studies  .......................................................................  2   1.1.2  Issues  associated  with  doctoral  studies  ..................................................................  5   1.1.3  Networked  learning  .................................................................................................  7   1.1.4  A  social  constructionist  approach  ...........................................................................  8   1.2  Overview  of  this  investigation  ..................................................................................  9   1.2.1  Purpose  ...................................................................................................................  9   1.2.2  Theoretical  framework  in  brief  ................................................................................  9   1.2.3  Methodological  approach  .....................................................................................  10   1.2.4  Scope  .....................................................................................................................  11   1.3  Key  terms  ...............................................................................................................  11   1.3.1  Discourse  ...............................................................................................................  11   1.3.2  Learning  .................................................................................................................  12   1.3.3  Identity(-­‐ies)  /  self(-­‐ves)  ........................................................................................  12   1.3.4  Social  position  .......................................................................................................  12   1.3.6  Identity  positioning  ...............................................................................................  13   1.5  Personal  reflections  ...............................................................................................  13   1.4  Thesis  outline  .........................................................................................................  15   Chapter  2:  Review  of  the  Literature  ......................................................................  16   2.1  Introduction  ...........................................................................................................  16   2.2  The  technology-­‐enhanced  learning  landscape  ........................................................  16   2.3  A  social  constructionist  approach  to  identity  ..........................................................  18   2.3.1  Social  constructionism  ...........................................................................................  18   2.3.2  Relational  dialogue,  learning,  and  identity  ............................................................  19   2.3.3  Key  theorists  ..........................................................................................................  20   2.3.4  Authenticity,  fragmentation  and  embodiment  of  identity  ....................................  22   2.3.5  Belonging  and  alienation  .......................................................................................  26   2.4  Social  positioning  and  the  social  positioning  cycle  (SPC)  .........................................  27   iv 2.4.1  Social  positioning  ...................................................................................................  27   2.5.2  The  social  positioning  cycle  as  a  framework  .........................................................  30   2.5.3  The  social  positioning  cycle  and  community  of  practice  (CoP)  .............................  31   2.5.4  The  social  positioning  cycle  in  detail  .....................................................................  33   2.5  Doctoral-­‐level  study  as  an  identity  positioning  experience  .....................................  36   2.5.1  Appropriation  and  individual  proclivity  .................................................................  37   2.5.2  Transformation  and  liminality  ...............................................................................  40   2.5.3  Publication  and  expression  ...................................................................................  43   2.5.4  Conventionalization  and  influence  ........................................................................  44   2.6  Contexts  of  identity  positioning  in  doctoral-­‐level  study  ..........................................  45   2.7  Personal  reflections  ...............................................................................................  49   2.8  Summary  ...............................................................................................................  50   Chapter  3:  Methodological  Approach  ...................................................................  52   3.1  Introduction  ...........................................................................................................  52   3.2  Qualitative  approach  .............................................................................................  53   3.2.4  Qualitative  coding  .................................................................................................  53   3.2.5  Discourse  analysis  .................................................................................................  53   3.2  Data  collection  .......................................................................................................  57   3.3.1  Phase  1:  Pilot  study  ...............................................................................................  57   3.3.2  Phase  2:  Semi-­‐structured  interviews  .....................................................................  61   3.4  Data  analysis  ..........................................................................................................  62   3.5  Limitations  and  considerations  ...............................................................................  64   3.5.1  Limitations  in  interview  procedures  and  practice  .................................................  64   3.5.2  Limitations  of  the  technology  used  during  the  interview  .....................................  67   3.5.3  Limitations  in  transcription  procedures  and  practice  ...........................................  68   3.5.4  Limitations  in  analysis  ...........................................................................................  68   3.5.5  Trustworthiness  and  credibility  .............................................................................  69   3.6  Research  ethics  ......................................................................................................  72   1.7  Personal  reflections  ...............................................................................................  73   3.8  Summary  ...............................................................................................................  75   Chapter  4:  Research  Findings  ................................................................................  76   4.1  Introduction  ...........................................................................................................  76   4.2  Overview  of  the  data  collected  ..............................................................................  76   4.2.1  Survey:  Demographics  ...........................................................................................  76   4.2.2  Survey:  Perception  of  influence  of  doctoral  studies  .............................................  80   4.3  Analysis  .................................................................................................................  82   4.3.1.  Coding  ..................................................................................................................  82   4.3.2.  The  social  positioning  cycle  as  an  organizational  framework  ..............................  82   v 4.3  Interview  responses  illustrating  social  positioning  .................................................  85   4.3.1  Positioning  within  general  society  .........................................................................  86   4.3.2  Positioning  amongst  friends  and  family  ................................................................  92   4.3.3  Positioning  within  the  professional  context  ........................................................  100   4.3.4  Positioning  within  the  doctoral  cohort  ................................................................  106   4.3.5  Positioning  within  the  academic  department  .....................................................  115   4.3.6  Positioning  within  the  academy  ..........................................................................  121   4.4.  Personal  reflections  .............................................................................................  128   4.5.  Summary  .............................................................................................................  129   Chapter  5:  Discussion  .........................................................................................  130   5.1  Introduction  ..........................................................................................................  130   5.2  Demographics  and  technological  setting  ...............................................................  131   5.2.1  Age  ......................................................................................................................  131   5.2.2  Technology  and  the  doctoral  student  experience  ...............................................  132   5.4  Contexts  of  identity  positioning  ............................................................................  134   5.4.1  General  society  context  .......................................................................................  136   5.4.2  Friends  &  family  ..................................................................................................  137   5.4.3  Professional  .........................................................................................................  139   5.4.4  Cohort  ..................................................................................................................  141   5.4.5  Academic  department  .........................................................................................  143   5.4.6  Academia  .............................................................................................................  145   5.4.7  The  social  positioning  cycle  as  a  framework  .......................................................  147   5.5  Identity  positioning  in  different  fields  of  study  ......................................................  150   5.5.1  Business  students  vs.  education  students  ...........................................................  150   5.7  Personal  reflections  ..............................................................................................  152   5.7  Summary  ..............................................................................................................  153   Chapter  6:  Conclusions  and  Implications  ............................................................  155   6.1  Introduction  ..........................................................................................................  155   6.2  Answering  the  research  questions  .........................................................................  156   6.2.1  How  do  doctoral  learners  in  NL  programs  describe  identity  positioning?  ..........  156   6.2.2  How  do  doctoral  students  in  NL  programs  experience  identity  positioning  in   relation  to  their  field  of  study  (Education  or  Business)?  ..............................................  157   6.3  Contributions  of  this  research  ...............................................................................  158   6.4  Implications  for  doctoral  education  .......................................................................  159   6.5  Further  research  ...................................................................................................  160   6.6  Reflections  on  the  research  process  ......................................................................  162   6.7  Concluding  comments  ...........................................................................................  164   vi References  .........................................................................................................  165   Appendix  A:  Invitation  to  participate  ..................................................................  181   Appendix  B:  Online  survey  .................................................................................  184   Appendix  C:  Interview  schedule  .........................................................................  187   Appendix  D:  Permission  to  use  figure  (the  social  positioning  cycle)  ....................  191   vii Acknowledgements This study would not have been possible without the assistance and support of many people. Thank you to the research participants who voluntarily and patiently spent the time to describe their doctoral journeys. Words cannot adequately express my gratitude to my supervisor, Gale Parchoma. Gale agreed to meet with me prior to my application to the program and has been there for me ever since. She has guided my journey and helped me wade through issues of commensurability and philosophy. Gale has instilled in me an appreciation for the ethic of care between mentor and student. Thank you to my viva committee members, Dr. Glynis Cousin and Dr. Paul Ashwin, for their well-considered feedback and challenges to this work. Thank you to Alice Jesmont and the staff of the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology at Lancaster University. I very much appreciated their friendly guidance and assistance through the administrative aspects of doctoral study. I would also like to express my appreciation to Athabasca University for giving me the opportunity to take Research and Study Leave, allowing me to engage in my research full-time for one year. Thank you to Burke Mortimer, a reference librarian at Athabasca University for his supportive attitude and assistance. To my cohort-mates, Claire, Jane, and Sue: I thank them for their friendship, cheerfulness, support, Skype chats, and peer editing. It is my hope to return these gifts, especially as they complete their doctoral journeys and take on new challenges. Last, but not least, a warm thank-you to my husband, Gene, who listened when I was perplexed, was patient when I was impatient, and supportive when I was difficult. His insights on my work were invaluable. He keeps me humble. viii Publications derived from work on the Doctoral Programme Peer-reviewed journal (based on module work) Koole, M., & Parchoma, G. (2012). The ethical and practical implications of systems architecture on identity in networked learning: A constructionist perspective. Interactive Learning Environments, 20(3), 203–215. doi:10.1080/10494820.2011.593526 Book chapter (based on module work) Koole, M., & Parchoma, G. (2012). A model of digital identity formation in online learning networks. In S. Warburton & S. Hatzipanagos (Eds.), Digital identity and social media. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Conference presentations (based on thesis research) Koole, M. (2012). An introduction to phenomenography. Paper presented at Research in distance education symposium: Teaching and learning in a wired world (RIDES2012). Edmonton, AB. Koole, M. (2012). Ontological and epistemological threshold crossings of doctoral students in networked learning environments: My ontolo- . . . what? Paper presented at the 4th Biennial Threshold Concepts Conference and 6th NAIRTL Annual Conference (June 27-29). Dublin, Ireland. Koole, M. (2012). Doctoral student identities in networked learning. Poster presented at Losing momentum? Current challenges in learning and technology. Oxford, UK. Souleles, N., Bonzo, J., Costello, J., & Koole, M. (April, 2012). A social constructionist approach to phenomenographic analysis of identity positioning in networked learning. In M. Koole & J. Costello (Symposium organizers), Variations in the Experience of Phenomenographic Research at the 8th International Conference on Networked Learning. Maastrict, NL. ix List of abbreviations and Canadian terms Abbreviations DA Discourse analysis NL Networked learning SPC Social positioning cycle TEL Technology-enhanced learning Canadian Term British Term Candidacy Confirmation Course Module Program Course Professor (general term) Full-professor, assistant professor, associate professor, lecturer, and tutor x List of figures and tables Figures Figure 1.1.   The social positioning cycle. ............................................................ 10   Figure 2.2.   The social positioning cycle. ............................................................ 30   Figure 2.3.   The social positioning cycle and community of practice. ............ 32   Figure 2.4.   The social positioning cycle (detailed view). ................................. 33   Figure 2.8.   The social positioning cycle and the academic cycle. ................... 36   Figure 4.1.   Age range of interview participants ............................................... 78   Figure 4.2.   Gender of interview participants .................................................... 79   Figure 4.3.   Marital status of interview participants ......................................... 80   Figure 4.4.   Areas of perceived impact. ............................................................... 81   Figure 4.6.   The social positioning cycle with discourse analysis techniques (adapted from Harré, 2010). .................................................................................... 83   Figure 4.7.   Summary of positioning within general society ........................... 86   Figure 4.8.   Summary of positioning amongst friends and family ................. 92   Figure 4.9.   Summary of positioning within professional contexts .............. 100   Figure 4.10.   Summary of positioning within the doctoral cohort ................. 106   Figure 4.11.   Summary of positioning within the academic department ...... 115   Figure 4.12.   Summary of positioning within the academy ............................ 121   Figure 5.1.   The social positioning cycle. .......................................................... 135   Figure 5.2.   Active vs. passive positioning ....................................................... 149   Figure 6.2.   The social positioning cycle. .......................................................... 158   Tables Table 3.1.   Clusters of discursive techniques. ..................................................... 60   Table 3.2.   Coding hierarchy. ................................................................................ 64   Table 4.1.   The participants. .................................................................................. 77   Table 4.2.   Occupation of interview participants. .............................................. 78   Table 4.3.   Discursive techniques ......................................................................... 82   Table 5.1.   Summary of key areas of social positioning .................................. 148   1 Chapter 1: Introduction They don't understand what a doctorate is. And, in fact, when I first went into the program, I mentioned to my teacher-aid that I was going to take a doctorate. And, she said, "Why are you going to become a doctor for? You're already a teacher. Medicine's yucky.” – Study participant 1.1 Introduction The above quote highlights the experience of some learners in discussing their decision to start a doctoral degree: friends, family, co-workers, and community members may react in unexpected ways. Post-graduate degrees offered through online communications and learning technologies permit interaction between learners from different geographic, social, cultural, political, economic, and occupational backgrounds. While studying, these learners remain not only connected to, but often immersed in these environments. Consider the possible answers to the question: “Who are you?” Responses may elicit information about relational positions, skills, values, and experiences. These answers may differentiate or link the speaker and other participants in a shared discourse. For example, the statement, “I am a doctoral student”, positions the speaker amongst others who have attained their own levels of education. A key aim of this thesis is to explore how networked learners in doctoral programs reposition themselves when confronted with discourses that challenge or conflict with their perceived identities, relationships, norms, and values. What kinds of discourses lead graduate-level learners to reconsider their understanding of their communities and their place within them? Identity is a complex phenomenon that is neither purely individual nor purely social in its construction; rather, it is co-constructed through dialogue embedded within a context of relationships. As will be argued, one’s self conception(s) is a significant factor in learning and the formation of social knowledge. And, the impact of these processes in networked environments can impact personal, professional, and local boundaries. It is challenging to theorize and define identity. It is an aspect of the human existence that can be experienced, constructed, negotiated, enacted, and deciphered, yet remains elusive because of its ephemeral nature. Identity 2 positioning occurs within a context of discourses. Within these discourses, individuals are exposed to opinions, behaviours, and perspectives that may be incongruent or conflicting with already held views. These conflicts may lead individuals to evaluate and shift their position relative to a given discourse(s). In their 2011 literature review of professional identity development, Trede, Macklin and Bridges noted that few of the articles they found provided in- depth definitions of identity. They noted that Lawler (2008) described identity as involving the recognition of similarity and difference. I would add that discernment of identity is made possible through recognition of unique patterns of similarity and difference of individuals’ characteristics. The descriptions of doctoral experiences of identity positioning in networked learning environments is the focus of this thesis. This investigation took place at a distance university in Canada in which the learners use networking technologies to exchange information and discuss ideas. Participants were solicited from doctoral courses offered through networked learning in education and business. The learners were invited to complete a brief survey allowing purposeful sampling. Selected participants were then invited to semi-structured interviews. The resulting transcripts were subjected to analysis through open coding. Discourse analysis was also used to gain insights regarding the underlying nuances within the participants’ interview comments. In writing this thesis, I offer my interpretation of the participants’ social positioning experiences in networked learning contexts. At the end of each chapter, I will offer reflections on my research journey: what lead to this research project, positions that guided my work, and my relationship with this project. In the first section of this chapter, I describe the context of doctoral education, technology-enhanced learning (TEL) and networked learning (NL), and the social constructionist nature of this investigation. The second section will provide a brief overview of the study design. The final section will provide definitions for the key terms used in the following chapters. 1.1.1 The nature of doctoral-level studies The doctoral degree can be traced back to the University of Paris in the 12th century (Bourner, Bowden, & Laing, 2001). The attainment of such a qualification entitled an individual to participate in a guild (Chiteng Kot & 3 Hendel, 2011). In the 19th century, the Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) as a research degree was created at Berlin University. The PhD degree later appeared at Yale in the USA in 1861, Toronto in Canada in 1897, and Oxford in the UK in 1917 (Chiteng Kot & Hendel, 2011). There now exists a variety of doctoral degrees such as professional, applied, practitioner, and clinical doctorates (Chiteng Kot & Hendel, 2011) with a variety of routes to completion including module-based, research-based, publication-based, portfolio-based, work-based and, in the case of fine and performing arts, exhibition/theatre-based (Costly & Lester, 2011; Paltridge, Starfield, Ravelli, & Nicholson, 2011). To this list of variations, we can add changes in modality. Online technologies mean that doctoral programs can be delivered primarily or partially at a distance. Attempts have been made to differentiate between the traditional PhD and professional doctorates. However, because of the variations in characteristics of both types of doctorates, they can be viewed on a continuum of more to less traditional (Bourner, Bowden, & Laing, 2001; Chiteng Kot & Hendel, 2011; Neumann, 2005). Notwithstanding efforts to modify traditional PhD courses to accommodate the demands of knowledge production and social accountability in the current economy (Kuang-Hsu, 2003), the newer professional doctorates are seen to offer greater flexibility to accommodate the needs of professionals and practitioners as well as offering cohort experiences that are less solitary and more supportive than traditional PhDs (Loxley & Seery, 2011; Neumann, 2005; Wellington & Sikes, 2006). In the social sciences, numbers of professional doctorates have been increasing in the areas of education, business, management and administration, social work, and law (Leonard, Becker, & Coate, 2005). Compared to science students (in traditional programs), education students (in professional programs) are often middle-aged, mid-career professionals with significant experience, may have some level of authority and seniority, and hold a master’s degree or professional designation (Costly & Lester, 2011; Kamler, 2008). Learners in professional fields may wish to pursue opportunities in academia, but may also have various other aspirations such as attaining senior positions in their institutions, becoming involved in policy development, or working freelance (Leonard, et. al., 2005). In addition, to motivational factors, the doctoral experience may be complicated by familial and financial issues. 4 The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Barber, 2004) defines doctorate as “the highest university degree in any faculty”. This is echoed in a definition offered by Park (2007): “The doctorate is the highest academic degree that a university can award to a student who has successfully completed a defined programme of work in a particular field of study” (p. 4). Although doctoral degrees may be completed through a variety of different routes, doctoral degrees require learners to work at a conceptual level (Trafford, 2008). The literature suggests that doctoral students are expected to • work independently (particularly in the social sciences); • have a solid background in their field of study, including both seminal works and current developments; • evaluate historic and new contributions to the field; • examine the field critically, reflectively, creatively, and analytically; • be able to identify gaps in knowledge enabling a unique contribution to the field; • conceptualize an original research project that will extend knowledge in their field; • participate in peer dialogue through publications and conferences; and • be able to communicate and defend their understanding of their field. (Chiteng Kot & Hendel, 2011; Hockey, 1994; Kamler, 2008; Lovitts, 2005; Phillips & Pugh, 2008; Wellington & Sikes, 2006) Alongside this list, doctoral students need to familiarize themselves with the norms, ethics, and techniques of their field. They are expected to forge links between concepts, synthesize ideas, critique the work of others, and accept critique of their own work (Trafford, 2008). As Barnacle (2007) acknowledges, it is not so much a question of acquiring or producing knowledge, but “being able to engage with the problematical status of knowledge” (p. 186). Traditionally, the research degree was viewed as a rite of passage (Hockey, 1994) in which the student becomes independent and autonomous in the research endeavour (Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000). The Western European cartesianist view is that science is objective and requires the separation of reason from emotion with abstract thought autonomous from that of 5 everyday life (Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000). To an extent this view still underlies expectations creating a separation between a novice embedded in the world and an objective researcher legitimized as a steward of knowledge overseeing a given field (Lee & Williams, 1999). A more social constructionist lens would view knowledge as co-constructed with multiple perspectives possible and contingent upon personal, social historical, and cultural contexts (Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2007). As learners work within the boundaries of the academic context, their identities take shape. “When people enter what is for them a new social context such as higher education, they are likely to find that its discourses and practices support identities which differ from those they bring with them” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 33). At the doctoral level, learners need to adjust to expectations of a community viewed as the upper echelon of academia and, sometimes, society. 1.1.2 Issues associated with doctoral studies Kuang-Hsu (2003) noted that the 1980s saw heightened concern with poor completion rates in the social sciences. The Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (2004) conducted a 10-year cohort study of 66% of graduate students admitted in 1992. They found that rates of completion for doctoral students across universities range between 34% and 71% with life sciences graduating the largest number of students over the 10-year period. Bourke, Holbrook, Lovat, & Farley (2004) examined the statistics from two data sets involving 1796 doctoral students in Australia. They found that “the most reliable estimates of completing and withdrawing candidates from the yearly cohorts of students enrolling in a PhD was 70 and 30 per cent (respectively) after up to six years of full-time equivalent enrolment, called ‘candidacy’ time” (p. 13). A study done by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (2007) found that “of the students who started a full-time PhD programme in 1996-97, 76 per cent completed their PhD within 10 years” and that “those starting a part-time PhD programme in 1996-97, 48 per cent completed their PhD within 10 years” (p.2). And, according to the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States, only 57% of students who begin their doctoral degree complete within 10 years (2008). Even at the highest completion levels, this suggests that nearly 24% to 30% of students do not complete their PhDs within 10 years. And, this is possibly higher for part-time 6 students. “Attrition from doctoral programs can be a serious issue in terms of human and national investment and research capacity building in contemporary economies” (Kiley & Wisker, 2009). Doctorate degree holders may be recognized as the “primary originators of new research and key instruments in the transmission of knowledge to future generations” (King, Eisl-Culkin, & Desjardins, 2008). Yet, the discourses surrounding doctoral degrees are problematic. Governments and funding agencies are challenged to rationalize support of higher level degrees without adequate evidence of contribution to national economic and social progress. In the UK, researchers are encouraged to “convert their research outcomes into genuine improvements for UK society and the economy, and thus produce ‘economic impact’” (Research Councils UK, 2012, p. 3). The value of doctoral education is questioned because of: “high attrition rates, prolonged time-to-completion, the relevance of doctoral study to the real world, and the extent to which doctoral graduates contribute to the workplace, knowledge economies, and the social, cultural and economic development of nation states” (Halse & Mowbray, 2011, p. 519). Increases in doctoral enrolments around the world, accompanied by an increasingly diverse doctoral student demographic with wider age ranges, more part-time enrolments, different purposes, and a variety of employment choices following graduation contribute to the difficulty to measure the complex ways in which doctoral research affects society (Halse & Mowbray, 2011). Nevertheless, doctoral studies may have significant impacts on society as learners emerge with increased “resilience, creativity, determination and problem-solving abilities that shape the subjectivities and identities of individuals and make a longer term contribution to the public and social good” (Halse & Mowbray, 2011, p. 521). Wellington and Sikes (2006) also note “it is more a case that the doctorate has had influence and impact (sometimes obliquely) on professional attitude, disposition and confidence rather than directly affecting ‘performance’” (p.724). Currently, there is little research on either how TEL and NL will impact completion rates nor on the impact success, or challenges of NL-trained academics in their professional, personal, or academic worlds. 7 1.1.3 Networked learning When the first research degree was established at Berlin University, knowledge was transmitted from master to apprentice (Barnacle & Mewburn, 2010). Information was contained in books, and students manually transcribed lessons to paper. Today’s electronic technologies, in contrast, have enabled new ways of communicating with people and accessing resources. Ylijoki (2011) discusses a process of acceleration in academic research accompanied by decreased government funding and increased market demands for research output. Academics are expected to produce more with less. Increases in speed of dissemination and technological advances are associated with increased pressure to reposition their research within the academic community and global markets. While related, TEL and NL differ in focus. The phrase, “technology-enhanced learning” derives more so from funding agencies than from the academic world (Parchoma, 2011). The term places an emphasis upon the role of technology and the ability to provide cost-effective access to education to a large number of people. NL, however, emphasizes the relationships between learners, tutors, and resources without privileging any particular relationships or technology (Parchoma, 2011; Jones, Ferreday, & Hodgson, 2008). In a NL environment, learners can access a large variety of resources, experts, and learners with less face-to-face interaction; technology mediates these relationships (Hodgson, McConnell, & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2012). Values associated with humanistic and radical pedagogy were also drawn upon in the evolution of NL (McConnell, Hodgson, & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2012). This led to an emphasis upon collaborative environments characterized by openness, self-directed learning, authenticity of purpose, supportiveness, collaborative assessment, and continuous assessment during the learning process (McConnell, Hodgson, & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2012). Through current technologies, information can be disseminated rapidly and, as new information becomes available, meaning shifts in relation to the field and the individuals working within the field. In other words, as learners collaborate in NL environments how they perceive, interpret, and understand the world affects how they act upon the world and how they create artefacts, reify knowledge, and externalize experiences (Hopwood, 2010). With this 8 view, I take a relational, social constructionist approach to identity development in NL environments. 1.1.4 A social constructionist approach The social constructionist nature of this thesis merits some explanation. Social constructionism was popularized, primarily in Sociology by Berger and Luckmann’s publication of The Social Construction of Reality in 1966. It has since spread through many different fields such as History, Anthropology, Political Science, Communications Studies, Literature, and to some extent in Psychology (Best, 2008). As Weinberg (2008) writes, the origins of social constructionism can be traced through the work of great philosophers such as Hegel and Marx who explored the interactions of social and individual processes. Some philosophers began to ponder the degree to which knowledge was socially embedded and constructed, leading critical theorists, in particular, to theorize about the emancipatory power of recognizing previously unquestioned, taken-for-granted assumptions (Hacking, 1999; Freire, 1993; Mezirow, 1978). Language as a structural force, source of consciousness, and a means of action in the world grew in philosophical importance in the structuralist view. Post-modernists, however, react negatively towards the concept of universal and linguistic laws of behaviour. Social constructionists today may or may not support the views of either modernists or post-modernists. They may fit on a continuum of views in which one extreme sees an underlying, independently-existing reality versus a view of multiple realities on the other extreme. Their position on this continuum may reflect their opinions of whether or not two people can have the same perspective on reality (Burr, 2003; Edwards, 1997; Harris, 2008). More importantly is the ability to judge the distortion of one’s understanding of the world (Weinberg, 2008). Social constructionists do not necessarily reject historical influences that have affected the emergence of cultural practices and concepts, but expose patterns of thought and behaviour. Social constructionists are generally anti-foundational; that is, there is no underlying objective state or universal pattern of reality. Instead, they would suggest, many social realities exist (Burr, 2003; Foster & Bochner, 2008). Language plays a critical role in the shaping of the social world (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 2009; Burr, 2003). Ideas and concepts are linguistically and socially embedded. People share meanings and coordinate 9 activity through communication (Gergen, 2009). Ideas and concepts are constructed within lived experience in a socio-historic context which, in a dialectic sense, both “enables and constrains meaning and actions” (Foster & Bochner, 2009, p. 92). Yet, constructionists do not necessarily align with social determinists. They would contend that people are self-aware and have the capacity to examine themselves, those around them, and their circumstances—and, importantly, can act upon these observations (Hacking, 1999). Finally, constructionism is non-dualistic: the mind and the body, the body and the environment, the individual and society shape and reshape each other. “Identity is not socially determined but socially constructed” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 12). 1.2 Overview of this investigation 1.2.1 Purpose For NL students, the boundaries between professional, social, and academic contexts can become blurred. As the learner’s cultures collide, their underlying values, narratives, experiences, and pedagogical expectations become salient. The main goal of this thesis is to explore how doctoral students in NL graduate programs experience challenges to their current identities, norms, and relationships across the various boundaries of their social worlds. The main research questions: 1. How do doctoral learners in NL programs describe identity positioning? 2. How do doctoral students in NL programs experience identity positioning in relation to their field of study (Education or Business)? 1.2.2 Theoretical framework in brief Positioning refers to how individuals interact, co-create, and perceive themselves in relation to one another (Harré, 2010). Within the boundaries of the academic context, learners’ identities take shape as they react to discourses that may at times support their self-conceptions and at other times may cause reflection upon, discomfort with, and/or rejection of these conceptions. Their 10 efforts to make sense of incongruent discourses may lead to relative repositioning of oneself. To explore identity positioning, I draw upon Harré’s (2010) social positioning cycle (Figure 1.1) as a framework for exploring personal and social processes of identity formation (quadrants: Q2 and Q3) as well as conventionalized processes and observable expression (quadrants: Q1 and Q4). Figure 1.1. The social positioning cycle. The transformation from Q2, appropriated/observed discourses, to Q3, liminal space, may be triggered by a critical event (variation) leading to awareness and evaluation. Emergence from Q3 can be detected in Q4 through publication; that is, in Q4, a learner narrates or enacts the new or retrenched identity. This framework will be explained in detail in Chapter 2, the literature review. 1.2.3 Methodological approach I decided to conduct a qualitative study in order to explore and describe the range of learners’ perceptions of experiences as they may approximate or 11 differ from those of other learners. Using a preliminary questionnaire, nineteen participants were solicited from online (networked) doctoral programs in education and business from a distance university in Canada. During semi-structured interviews, they were asked to describe their experiences as doctoral students according to a list of questions (Appendix C). I used open coding which allowed me to create coding-categories as I noted possible and salient social positioning descriptions in the transcripts. I also applied codes derived from discourse analysis (Potter, 1996; Gee, 2011) to more deeply interrogate the meaning and structure of specific utterances within the participants’ transcribed comments. As themes emerged, I examined them for patterns and co-occurrences. These procedures are described in detail in Chapter 3 (methodological approach). 1.2.4 Scope I had originally envisioned studying both master-level students and doctoral- level students with the intent of comparing social positioning between the two groups. The scope of this study was, however, intentionally limited to doctoral students from education and business to control the range of variability encountered. Doctoral studies are intense experiences because of length of time to completion, financial considerations, and criticality of thought. These factors suggested to me that positioning experiences would likely be greater at the doctoral-level than those experienced at the master- level. I noted during the interviews, that some of the participants felt their master’s work was more formative for them. Nevertheless, this investigation has yielded rich insights about the experiences of doctoral learners as they pass through the challenges of their learning journeys. 1.3 Key terms The terms listed here are used throughout this thesis and are integral to understanding this work. The terms are not in alphabetical order; rather, they are presented so as to build upon one another. 1.3.1 Discourse As Potter (1998) suggests discourse concerns “talk and texts as parts of social practices” (p. 105). Discourse implies both the process and product of 12 interaction; it mediates between individuals and culturally-shaped perceptions of reality (Ivanič, 1998). I use the term in the sense that Gee (2011) offers: “ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity” (p. 201). The ways in which someone uses discourses may change depending upon context and the others present within that context. These shifts can occur as the individual moves through new, unique environments garnering more and different experiences. 1.3.2 Learning There is a close tie between learning and identity. Learning involves a transformation in the ways in which an individual conceptualizes (constructs) his/her world (Edwards & D’Arcy, 2004). Through this process, how individuals view their relative positions to their environment and others within it also transforms. 1.3.3 Identity(-ies) / self(-ves) In this thesis, I often use the terms identity and self in the plural (except in phrases such as identity positioning thresholds in which identity is used as an adjectival modifier). This is done in order to avoid suggesting that an individual has one identity. I take a social constructionist view of identity in which, as per Ivani� (1998), the self(-ves) undergoes a double construction firstly by drawing upon the constraints and opportunities available within the social milieu and secondly through the social shaping of one’s interpretation of his/her self(-ves). Social contexts offer possibilities for enactment and interpretations from which individuals may choose. 1.3.4 Social position An individual’s position is relative to others within a given social context. Harré (2010) refers to positioning as a “discursive process” in which speakers negotiate their identities (p. 48). “A subject position is a possibility in known forms of talk [discourse]; position is what is created in and through talk as the speakers and hearers take themselves up as persons” (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 62). Ivani� also uses the term “positioned” because it captures “the tension between the freedom people have to identify with particular subject positions 13 through their selection among discoursal resources, and the socially determined restrictions on those choices” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 11). 1.3.6 Identity positioning Identity positioning occurs within the context of discourses. Whilst learners engage in discourse with each other in a given context, they may be exposed to conflicting opinions, behaviours, and perspectives. These conflicting experiences may lead them to re-evaluate their own opinion, behaviours, and perspectives. If discourses are sufficiently critical, individuals may explore how to change these facets of their identity(-ies). Changes in these elements may affect how the social interactions are ordered—that is, an individual’s relational position(s) within the social discourse(s) can shift. Identity positioning may occur when a learner detects variations that challenge his/her understanding of his/her own social position within a given discourse to such a degree that s/he must consider changing his/her outward narrative, observable behaviour, and/or his/her understanding of the discursive experience. In recounting an identity positioning experience, the learner can describe how s/he felt or behaved before a given experience and if (or how) it was different after the experience. The learner may also describe experiencing a state of unknowing or indecision at some point in the process. This state of unknowing may indicate a liminal space in which he/she was unable to decide how to describe him/herself or how to engage within a given discourse. 1.5 Personal reflections This investigation was inspired through my own experiences as a distance graduate student. I completed both my master’s and doctoral degrees online with a minimum of physical, face-to-face contact with my fellow learners and professors. During both programs, I worked nearly full-time with the exception of the last two years of my doctoral degree. I enjoyed the flexibility of the programs and the lack of observable department politics. I could focus on reading and writing. As I progressed, I remained immersed in my own family, friends, and professional life. But, my experiences in my master’s program were somewhat different from those of my doctoral program. My master’s program was not cohort-based, 14 and I did not really feel I “knew” the other learners. And, I was little concerned about this. There were times when I would start a new course and commit myself to getting to know my classmates, but within the first few weeks, I began to focus on my own studies, relinquishing any motivation to communicate with peers other than within the seemingly perfunctory and mandatory online text-based discussions. Getting to know the other learners simply did not seem relevant. As I began my doctoral degree, I saw that I would be studying lock-step with my cohort through various modules during the first few years. It seemed that I would have to find a way to work with my fellow students during group projects and peer editing. In the first few text-based forums, it seemed to me that various members of my cohort were expounding upon their academic and professional experience, their level of knowledge, and their ability to criticize (rather than “critique”) ideas. It seemed like a bit of chest-beating to me. Although, I participated in this show, I became interested in these interactions. How were we presenting ourselves and to what end? Who were these people, really? And, how did I fit in with them? Participating in the forums became relevant as I saw my own interactions relative to theirs. And, through on-going interaction, I could observe our interactions over time—to the extent that a participant could self-observe. As I drew closer to some of my cohort-mates, we would discuss the defensiveness and frustration we sensed. As some cohort-mates dropped out or intercalated with later cohorts, we would ponder why. My own fascination with our relative positioning amongst my cohort led me to consider studying identity formation and positioning in more depth. And, working with doctoral students in a professional role at another university, I came to view this project as having significance in its potential to illuminate areas of difficulty that might challenge doctoral students’ progression through their studies. Through this study, I have come to believe that doctoral study is much more than learning to work at a conceptual level or learning to deal with the problematic nature of knowledge or contributing to the body of knowledge in one’s discipline. It transforms the relational position of the learner to society, her/his family, co-workers, and the academic world. 15 1.4 Thesis outline In addition to this introductory chapter, this thesis contains five additional chapters: • Literature review: This chapter discusses literature pertaining to TEL and NL. It outlines how I have taken a social constructionist approach to identity and offers a discussion of theories of identity generally and in NL environments. The chapter then moves to a discussion of the theoretical framework: the social positioning cycle (adapted from Harré, 2010. The chapter ends with key literature regarding doctoral study as an identity positioning experience. • Methodological approach: This chapter opens with a brief description of open coding and discourse analysis. Subsequently, it outlines the procedures used in data collection, and analysis. The chapter closes with a discussion of the limitations of the study and acknowledgement of the research ethics procedures. • Research findings: This chapter opens with an overview of the data collected. The chapter briefly reviews Harré’s social positioning cycle and outlines the discursive techniques used in the analysis. The majority of the chapter is devoted to representing the participants’ descriptions of their social positioning experiences. • Discussion: This chapter ties the results to the literature review. Firstly, it opens with a discussion of the demographics of the participants and the technological setting in which they studied as well as the setting in which the study took place. The chapter discusses the participants’ experiences of positioning in light of current literature. The chapter closes with a discussion of the differences found between education and business students. • Conclusions and implications. 16 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature Thoughts are not parts of the mind, but moments in a narrative, the author of which is myself. The episodes of the story each person tells of—and to—himself or herself are unified by virtue of the fact that each person deploys a concept of self and indulges in the socially inculcated practice of self-predication. -- Harre, 2010, p. 131 2.1 Introduction Communications technologies open possibilities for communications with people outside local boundaries. Increasingly able to reach beyond the local, the “burden of identity is shifting towards the person” (2011, recording time 98:15). Wenger suggests that this is one of the characteristics of modernity and that “the 21st Century will be the century of identity” (2011, slide 14). One of the underlying purposes of this thesis research is to explore how doctoral learners in NL environments see themselves and their relationships with others, how and when these perceptions are repositioned, and what leads to these shifts. In this chapter, I will provide a background for the technology- enhanced learning landscape in which this research was conducted. In the second section, I will outline the social constructionist approach that I take towards identity positioning, alluding to some of the key theorists upon which I have drawn. In this section, I will also discuss identity as it pertains to both face-to-face and networked environments. The third section introduces social positioning. The fourth section introduces the social positioning cycle (SPC) as a framework for understanding social interaction. In the fifth section, I use the SPC as a framework for discussing online identity, the doctoral experience, and related literature. In the last section, I examine the literature for evidence of research on doctoral students’ experiences within different contexts. 2.2 The technology-enhanced learning landscape The use of computers and communications networks in education has influenced a variety of learning approaches of which TEL is but one. TEL is a broad term encompassing a large array of technical and pedagogical options. This thesis focuses specifically on NL and, as such, places an emphasis on relational aspects of online learning. In NL, learning and identity are seen to 17 emerge from interaction within networks of people and resources (Parchoma, 2011; Ferreday, Hodgson, & Jones, 2006). Exposure to networks is both enhanced and limited by the learning environments. To elaborate, the media of the learning environment influence positioning by aiding and/or restricting certain manners of expression. At the same time, participants actively struggle to manipulate the medium and available symbols with which to position themselves (Savin-Baden & Sinclaire, 2007). Trede, Macklin, and Bridges (2011) conducted a literature review on professional identity development in higher education resulting in the location of 20 relevant journal articles. My own search through the literature has revealed that there are even fewer studies on the formation and maintenance of learner identity in NL, perhaps due to the relative youth of the field (Goodyear, Banks, Hodgson, & McConnell, 2012). The first NL conference was held in 1998 at Lancaster University (McConnell, Hodgson, & Dirckinck-Holmfeld 2012), and has become an emerging area of interest. In NL, how an individual understands her/his relational position influences emotional processes connected to learning and social development. Hypothetically, awareness of the learning-self can enable individuals to better evaluate troublesome experiences (Land, Cousin & Meyer, 2005; Meyer & Land, 2005). The ability to harness opportunities and choices arising from such struggles could, perhaps, allow a greater sense of agency to emerge (Davies & Harré, 1990). One’s awareness of self-as-learner—along with the potential for an increased sense of security and agency in learning activities— may transfer across learning situations and influence the formation of the learner’s other identities be they personal, professional, or academic (Coll & Falsafi, 2010). Epistemologically, this relational approach complements a social constructionist view in which discursive experience with people and resources influences an individual’s self-conception, goals, and future social behaviour. Identities are constructed through discourse, reciprocality, and reflectivity; they are in continuous flux, construed differently from different relational positions. 18 2.3 A social constructionist approach to identity This thesis takes up identity from a social constructionist view of learning in relation to identity and doctoral-level study. Through the use of communications technologies, doctoral students in NL programs are able to interact across physical, socio-linguistic, and political boundaries. Doctoral students can continue to work and live within local contexts yet interact with others who may be located on different continents. 2.3.1 Social constructionism Philosophers have pondered issues concerning personal identity and its relation to ethics from the time of the ancient Greeks. They have taken perspectives from the psychological, biological, and narrative in an effort to answer questions pertaining to ethics, illness, and existence itself (Olson, 2010; Schechtman, 1996; Shoemaker, 2009). Fitzmaurice (2011) outlines four key stages in leading to current conceptions of identity. She notes that in the mid- seventeenth century, identity was acquired through shared practice and the acceptance of given truths as transmitted through authority. The work of Descartes opened the door to the questioning of authority permitting individual thought and reflection. The 19th and early 20th century led to an interest in individual freedom and ability of individuals to shape their own identities. Finally, in Fitzmaurice’s fourth stage, the post-modernist movement, identity became conceptualized as continually changing, subject to influences of individual and context in a process of co-construction. I do not take an extreme view of social constructionism in which the world and all our conceptions of it are purely socially constructed (Hacking, 1999). Nor do I take an individual constructivist view in which identity is shaped within the individual mind (Gergen & Gergen, 2008; Gergen, 2009). The constructionist position that I take is that a learner’s conceptions of identity are continuously co-constructed, shaped, and reshaped by his/her ability to discern variation in behaviour and narrative within unfolding contexts of interaction. Within this view, identity is “fluid, particularistic, and sociohistorically embedded” (Weinberg, 2008, p. 14). Identity, like other human products is not inevitable, but contingent. Learners can actively direct their own future by constructing who they are in relation to their context. 19 Philosophically, social constructionists see individuals’ conceptions as constantly changing through dialogue. Although unable to access others’ subjective perceptions diretly, constructionists recognize that people may perceive their conceptions to make up an already existing, objective reality. Berger & Luckmann (1966) grapple with this in their description of the processes of externalization, objectivation, and internalization (p. 104). In my research, I try to consider descriptions from the perspective of the research participants and the original context of the described experience. I try to avoid reaching beyond their descriptions of their experience in order to presume an underlying reality or essence. This philosophical orientation is different from that of critical realists who support, to varying degrees, the dualistic, Cartesian separation of mind and world. Instead, I take the position that the mind and the world work together as a whole. What this suggests about identity research for me is that as individuals interact with each other and the world they perceive around them, they constantly create and re-create their sense of self(-ves) and their conceptions of their world. As identities and social positions mutate, individuals might even be said to be shifting discourses. 2.3.2 Relational dialogue, learning, and identity A quick search of the internet on the topic of student identity will return a number of different approaches and theories. Some of the most common concern roles—that is, the student role, the teacher role, and in the case of doctoral studies, the role of the supervisor. The word, role, is somewhat troublesome within a social constructionist perspective. It suggests a fixed set of duties or social behaviours that are defined a priori to actual social interaction. The Differentiated Model of Role Identity Acquisition is used to examine the alignment of behaviour to roles within a social group (Collier, 2001). But, like Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory, it takes pre-existing roles as a starting point (Desrochers, Andreassi, & Thompson, 2002). By contrast, social constructionists would more favourably view identity as ephemeral, and under constant construction and deconstruction (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Burr, 2003). It is contingent upon contextual factors including the constantly changing identities of the participants themselves alongside their social, cultural, economic, and technological resources. Individuals can choose, adapt, and reject social behaviours that they observe. 20 Language is significant in the shaping of one’s identity and perceptions of the surrounding world (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Gergen, 2009; Burr, 2003). Words, ideas, and how they are applied are dependent upon social context. But, this is not to suggest that ideas are completely socially determined. As socially aware beings, people are capable of examining their experiences and conceptualizations as they interact with others in the world (Hacking, 1999). This ability to examine and self-reflect enables them to become agents in their own evolution. The question for social constructionists is not whether there is an underlying reality or true identity, whether the mind and body are separate—nor for that matter whether the person is separate from the world. Rather, they are more likely to be interested in processes of co-construction as the individual evolves alongside society. Relational dialogue is a process through which individuals “construct meaning about who [they] are, as well as creating norms and values that determine what is seen as accepted knowledge within a given social and cultural context” (Ferreday, Hodgson & Jones, 2006). Whilst discourse may temporarily reify concepts, it also helps influence understanding of self and the world through a continuous cycle of reconstruction (Hutton, 1988; Merchant, 2006). As Wenger (1998) suggests, identity is what connects the individual and the social. In a learning context, the “situated construction of oneself as a learner is a fundamental part of the educational experience” (Coll & Falsafi, 2010, p. 219). Lave and Packer (2008) further emphasize that academic work is made possible through human relations: Learning is construed as the reconstruction of the way a subject is engaged in the world, so that the subject herself or himself is reconfigured, and at the same time there is a reconfiguration of the production and reproduction of objects, whether they be texts, other persons, social events, or institutions. (Lave & Packer, 2008, p. 43). 2.3.3 Key theorists The significance of dialogue in identity and learning is seen in the seminal works of Cooley (1922), Mead (1934), Vygotsky (1978), and Goffman (1959). Already in the 1920s, Charles Cooley (2009) went so far as to say that the mind and society “are aspects of the same whole” (p. 42) that the individual with all 21 his/her attributes are all social, “part of the collective development” (p. 19). He used the metaphor of the looking-glass to describe how an individual develops his/her concept of self as it is reflected back at him/her by others. This metaphor persists in the literature as seen in the more recent work of Chayko (2008) who suggests people take on behaviours and roles that they observe of others, and they adapt their own performances and behaviours depending on how they perceive others view them—others become mirrors to the individual. Writing in 1934, Mead contended that social processes generate the mind and the self. He suggested that language, even when used internally in thought, is essentially social—although it is arguable whether or not it is an “objective phenomenon of social interaction” (Morris, 1934, p. xvi). Mead suggested that understandings emerge through social activity. He began considering private and public experience as opposites, but relative to one another. The notion of self and the ability to self-reflect could arise if an individual could view him/herself as an object (me). Similar to Vygotsky’s work later, he also envisaged a process of internalization in which individuals use their experiences with conversation and gestures as symbols for thinking. The me, he suggested emerged through social process whilst the I is the agent of activity, change, and agency. Mead argued that the meanings individuals attribute to symbols might be similar, but are unlikely to be identical, necessitating the need for cooperation. An individual acts whilst others react or readjust creating a relationship between acts. “Meaning is a content of an object which is dependent upon the relation of an organism or group of organisms to it” (p. 80). Through interaction, individuals learn to adjust their relationship towards objects and each other. Internalization allows them to discern patterns and relationships in their social environment, something Mead refers to as the generalized other (p. 90). According to Wiley (2011), Mead distanced himself from Cooley, yet they shared some similarities such as the ideas of role-taking, inner-speech, the social-self, and the I and the me. For Mead, reflexivity had two meanings: 1) reflexivity between people, and 2) self-reflectivity. Building on the work of both Cooley and Mead, Wiley suggests that Cooley’s mirror is really two mirrors: It is first a mirror reflecting the world in all its aspects, including the physical, social and cultural. This mirror gives us phenomenological consciousness. But 22 the self is also a second mirror, reflecting everything in the first mirror. This second mirror captures the way the self is self-conscious, or, in Mead’s terms, has reflexivity. The self is turned onto itself. (p. 184) Vygotsky (1978) also noted that memory and the formation of concepts occurred twice: firstly, among people (socially, publicly) and secondly, inside the individual (internally, privately). With regard to identity, Vygotsky (1978) noted a connection between the development of speech and the learner’s ability to view oneself as both “subjects and objects of their own behaviour” (p. 26). He also hypothesizes about how “socialized speech” becomes a tool for thinking as it is internalized (p. 27, 57). Goffman (1959) took a turn towards the dramaturgical. But, similar to Cooley, Mead, and Vygotsky, he also recognized the significance of shared awareness (Scheff, 2003). He viewed social interaction as an interweaving of performances, interpretations of performances, and reactions to performances. Learning to interact socially involves the ability to manage impressions through technical, political, structural, cultural, and dramaturgical techniques used within a given social establishment. Through impressions management, individuals can project their own identities and interpret those of others. Ivanič (1998) notes that Goffman’s dramaturgical approach is criticized because it suggests that people are completely free to perform as they please and that performances are seemingly problem free when enacted. However, Koole and Parchoma (2012) suggest through the Web of Identity model that there are tensions inherent in such performances and that performances are adapted from socially available possibilities. Goffman (1959) also acknowledged that interaction is not without difficulties. Discontinuities can be detected between appearance and manner: “the dilemma of expression versus action” (p. 33). He also noted that status, position, and social places are not material, but patterns of behaviour recognized within members of a given context. This, too hints at a relationship between the individual and the socio- cultural context. 2.3.4 Authenticity, fragmentation and embodiment of identity One may argue that status and social position are kinds of identities—whether identities of individuals, groups of individuals, or establishments. Identities are relational and affected through dialogue and patterns of interaction. One 23 may additionally argue that individuals are active agents who choose patterns of behaviour in response to the reactions and expectations of others. This suggests that a given individual may choose from a variety of behaviours at different times and contexts (Hyland, 2002). That is, an individual may have multiple and shifting identities. This raises troublesome questions regarding authenticity, fragmentation, and embodiment as the individual moves into doctoral studies and into online, networked environments. The question of authenticity is further exacerbated in the world of online communications. Whilst text is often viewed as “stable, graspable, and knowable”, digital text “belongs to the realm of the inauthentic” (Bayne, 2006, p. 7). And, in the academic world, printed and published texts are still used to measure worthiness (Bayne, 2006). As learners engage in less traditional doctoral programs particularly via NL, their interactions might feel less tangible and their outputs less legitimate; their relational positions might be perceived as less authentic. Cranton and Carusetta (2004) define authenticity as “the expression of the genuine self in the community” (p. 7). Presuming that individuals have one, true identity is a somewhat realist view of identity. Lee and Williams (1999) suggest that a sense of a single, coherent identity may be possible through an ability to forget, ignore, or disclaim evidence that contradicts one’s current or desired self-conception(s). Yet, individuals can choose to take on different appearances and manners. As active agents, they can choose to break rules. Doctoral students, for example, may shift between identities as students, undergraduate tutors, peers, and experts depending on the context. I would suggest that context, though it plays a role, does not completely determine an individual’s behaviour or development (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Billet, 2006). In the case of online, networked doctoral students, what appearances and manners should they adopt? Frequent contact amongst individuals can reveal patterns which can aid in shaping a general sense of someone’s identity(-ies) as well as detecting anomalies and inconsistencies. Chayko (2008) has noted that, over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to obfuscate certain elements of one’s online identity, especially gender (Chayko, 2008). Breaking rules, inconsistent behaviours, or obfuscation of identity may cause confusion between what one says and what one does, and can lead to social repercussions such as marginalization or punishment if infractions are considered sufficiently 24 bothersome to others. Infrequent contact amongst individuals can lead to lack of trust or a sense of identity fragmentation (Goffman, 1959, Giddens, 1991). In face-to-face settings, learners can draw upon a variety of gestures and facial expressions, clothing, posture, accents, and other physiological factors in order to both present an identity and to interpret others’ identities. In-person interactions are seen to emanate directly from the speaker, and by extension, are assumed to be more authentic. Technology-mediated texts (communications) seem to be separated from the speaker or writer and may be regarded as somehow less authentic (Land & Bayne, 1999). Face-to-face speech is sometimes assumed to be un-mediated, but this assumption is questionable: “face-to-face . . . appears deceptively to approximate the ideal speech situation. It is of course no such thing and is as mediated, though by no means as self-evidently, through linguistic signs and signifiers that are as independent of the self and as dependent on a linguistic system and interpretation as any written text” (Land & Bayne, 1999, p. 739). Matheson and Zanna (1988) suggested that fewer cues in online environments, by contrast, could reduce access to others’ private feelings, values, and beliefs. Sproull and Kiesler’s (1986) research has led them to suggest that lack of cues in online learning environments had an equalizing effect on communication because characteristics such as nationality, occupation and social position are more difficult to detect. However, networked learners may choose different cues upon which to base their assumptions of others. For example, in my experience as a doctoral student, orthography, eloquence, quality of argument, and speed of response may be taken as indicators of erudition, class, or cleverness. And, in limited-cue environments, participants may take more time to compose themselves—that is, they may take more care in shaping how they present themselves (Walther, Gay, & Hancock , 2005). In online environments, individuals may form impressions of each other that are as deep as in face to face environments— sometimes even more intimate (Walther, 1996). Land and Bayne (1999) argue that online writing can give an individual more freedom in the expression and variety of identities. They add that the seemingly unified appearance of the in-person identity may appear to fragment or shift. I would argue that rather than simply reducing cues, mediated environments alter the means of expression; that is, the individual’s personal characteristics (such as autonomy, motivation, and skill), and environmental characteristics (such as 25 tools, social hierarchies, and permitted behaviours) affect dialogue and vice- versa. In transactional distance theory, these factors are said to affect interaction between learners and instructors, learners and learners, and learners and content (Moore, 1991, 1997). A fourth form of interaction was later added to this list: learner-interface interaction (Hillman, Willis, & Gunnawardena, 1994). The medium may enable or prevent learners from accessing content, their instructors, or each other. The interface, then, can affect confidence, emotions (such as fear) or sense of empowerment (Koole, 2006). Online, it may seem that individuals can create an unlimited number of identities and withhold fragments of themselves causing a sense of de- contextualization (Giddens, 1991) and disembodiment. Hughes and Oliver (2010) refer to the disembodiment argument as the incorporeal fallacy which suggests that “learners are somehow disembodied when learning online, subjected to an inauthentic experience that is risk-free and therefore meaningless” (p. 2). One might respond to the issues of fragmentation and disembodiment by arguing that in any social setting, it is impossible to have complete knowledge of another individual (Sarup, 1996). Yet, identity(-ies) may show continuity across situations. For example, Christensen (2003) found that the Inuit shared aspects of their day-to-day lives online. This had the effect of strengthening their sense of belonging to their own communities. The medium of the Internet merely changed how they expressed their views of themselves and the world. Austin (1975), in his work on speech acts, also recognized that “the divorce between the ‘physical’ actions and acts of saying something is not in all ways complete—there is some connection” (p. 114). Bayne (2005) supports this idea by suggesting that researchers may “under- recognize the significance of embodiment” (p. 30). She adds that who we are online is affected by our embodied experiences. Furthermore, I would suggest that interaction via computers requires individuals to physically manipulate their devices to produce an effect that can be observed by others. It can also be argued that online interaction may be equally “real” as, or at least, informed by embodied interaction (Chayko, 2008). Hopwood and Paulson (2011) contend that the social constructionist perspective on embodiment is that of “a fleshless body of discursive production” (p. 3). This does not seem to do justice to the constructionist 26 perspective. I would suggest that what is more important from the constructionist perspective, rather, is not embodiment itself, but how bodies are discursively constructed and how the body is perceived to affect experience and interaction and vice-versa. For example, stress, fatigue, and exhilaration may be perceived in the body, but the identification and effects of such feelings are defined and labelled socially. 2.3.5 Belonging and alienation Awareness of oneself involves discernment of one’s own identities in contrast to those of others. This idea is reflected in Ricoeur’s (1992) concepts of idem and ipse, temporal continuity of self and differentiation of self from others, respectively. However, Ricoeur recognized that idem and ipse evolve together. A social constructionist position would suggest that idem and ipse mutually influence one another as they co-evolve. The relationship between belonging and differentiation can be somewhat counter-intuitive. One might assume that belonging to a community will be associated with feelings of acceptance and comfort. Group interaction, in theory, can allow learners to find others who may become “role models, mirrors, and sounding boards” (Chayko, 2008, p. 160). In learning environments, belonging to a community may require a certain degree of adherence to norms of behaviour, limiting creativity and alternative views (Ferreday & Hodgson, 2008). Individuality can threaten group standards resulting in efforts to stymie individual expression and agency (Bonnett, 2009). To an extent, the tension between individual expression and group conformity can be viewed as necessary for learning and performance as it can stimulate reflection and acquisition of strategies by leading a learner into a state of liminality. In a phenomenological study of belonging at the workplace, McClure and Brown (2008) observed that successful performance of duties was related to the individual’s ability to negotiate “issues of inclusion and participation, levels of influence, dealing with problem members, dysfunctional behaviour, and dominance and risk-taking norms” (p. 6). But, one’s sense of belonging is affected by other factors: 1) frequent and positive interaction, and 2) the perception that there is a stable bond that is likely to continue into the future (McClure & Brown, 2008). Walther (1996) also notes that the anticipation of future interaction is likely to encourage cooperation. 27 Discomfort may arise from conflicting discourses, the resolution of which may result in alienation or a strengthened sense of belonging. “It would seem to me that every person’s identity is a site of struggle between conflicting discourses . . . and in the struggle of discourses, not only words change their meanings, but identities also” (Sarup, 1996, p. 73). Sorting through conflicting discourses can stimulate critical reflection and, potentially, a greater understanding of one’s own identity relative to other individuals within various contexts. 2.4 Social positioning and the social positioning cycle (SPC) Harré’s work on social positioning can enable a deeper examination of how and why individuals vary in their experiences and tacit understanding of themselves and their place amongst others. The individual’s transformed or retrenched perspective may manifest in different ways thereby co- constructing, de-constructing and re-constructing those involved. 2.4.1 Social positioning Social positioning is an approach to the study and understanding of human interaction (Harré, 2000, 2005, 2010; Harré & Slocum, 2003). From a social constructionist view of identity, individuals may be seen to co-create social reality through discursive practices. Howie and Peters (1996) trace the roots of Harré’s social positioning back to the work of Austin, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and Wittgenstein. Harré (2000) contrasts Vygotsky’s focus on the significance of interaction between the individual and others with Stein’s idea of personalization in which the individual simply exists “as a given” (p. 734). He concludes that regardless of which is taken to exist a priori, the individual or society, they co-create each other’s identities: “an individual emerges through the processes of social interaction, not as a relatively fixed end product but as one who is constituted and reconstituted through the various discursive practices in which they participate” (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 46). Language is an important element in positioning theory. As per Wittgenstein (1986), there is a connection between language and one’s perceptions of the world. Wittgenstein’s idea of language games is complex but draws attention to the importance of language as a meaning creating activity: “The meaning of a 28 word is its use in language” (¶43). He refers to language games as “objects of comparison” (¶130) and “a measuring-rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond” (¶131). Vygotsky (1962) examined language development in children. He posited that there is a close relationship between thought and language; between inner thought and outwardly manifested expression: All our observations indicate that inner speech is an autonomous speech function. We can confidently regard it as a distinct plane of verbal thought. It is evident that the transition from inner to external speech is not a simple translation from one language into another. It cannot be achieved by merely vocalizing silent speech. It is a complex, dynamic process involving the transformation of the predicative, idiomatic structure of inner speech into syntactically articulated speech intelligible to others. (p. 148) Harré also draws upon the work of Austin (1975) in the recognition of language as a force of social action. According to Austin, actions become acts under certain conditions such as appropriateness of context, participants, procedures, words, and gestures. Acts must be experiences by others; otherwise, they remain actions. The key terms to which Harré refers include the utterance, the speech act, illocutionary force, and perlocutionary effect. An utterance becomes a speech act when it is received or recognized by another individual. A sentence with a “sense and reference” is an example of a locutionary act (Austin, 1975, p. 109). The illocutionary force refers to the social power that the speech act carries with it. For example, is a given sentence intended to warn, convince, or surprise? To have social force, illocutions follow social conventions. The perlocutionary effect refers to what is actually accomplished by the speech act. For example, was someone convinced by the speech act? Perlocutions do not have to follow social conventions. Although drawing upon Austin, Harré did not follow Searle’s (1975) focus on individuals’ intentions in which speakers choose either words that reflect the world (assertions) or words that shape the world (commands). Such a focus places emphasis on the speaker’s intentions rather than co-creation. Instead, Harré retains a strong focus on intersubjectivity—the emergence of meaning as utterances are exchanged and interpreted (Mühlhäusler & Harré, 2010). In Harré’s view, speech acts are not deterministic; one speech act does not cause 29 another one. Rather, a given speech act creates a social space in which other speech acts may be possible at different levels of appropriateness (Harré & Gillet, 2010a). Furthermore, individuals have the choice of which speech act to use and whether or not to break rules whilst negotiating the social space. This supports the view of individuals as agents capable of some degree of self- determination, yet acting within a social context (Davies & Harré, 1990). In social positioning theory, speech acts are objects (actions, tools) in the social world whilst people are subjects (spaces, locations for speech acts). Language is significant in that it enables and shapes both public discourse and private thought. Speech acts serve to bridge distances between subjects (Mühlhäusler & Harré, 2010). Because each individual is unique, s/he may interpret speech acts in unique ways and s/he may develop unique competencies in interpreting and reacting to perceived speech acts, allowing discernment of identities: “Each human individual stands at a unique intersection point of human discourses and relationships” (Harré & Gillet, 2010b, p. 185). The uniqueness of conversational participants offers both richness in terms of the sharing and shaping of information, as well as tension because of the underlying challenge of whether or not full sharing is possible due to the limitations of language in accurately representing one’s understanding. In this view, meaning and identity are relational. Intersection points are comprised of social locations for speech acts (i.e., points at which subjects meet, positions). Positions may be thought of as relational configurations allowing individuals to co-occupy locations. Positions are ephemeral and shifting sets of possible behaviours or obligations relative to a given social situation. Harré refers to these as moral orders (Harré, 2010). Individuals are not entirely free to enact any identity, rather society provides possible discourses that individuals can choose, modify, or combine (Hyland, 2002). Participants in a conversation will develop an understanding of themselves and others based on behaviour and biographical information of people and situations (including moral orders) to which they might have access (Davies & Harré, 1990). Biographical information may be developed through experience over time or the explicit sharing of information and stories. The SPC (figure 2.2) provides a model for understanding how individuals negotiate interaction and align themselves relative to others. 30 2.5.2 The social positioning cycle as a framework The SPC has been referred to by Harré (2010) as “Vygotskian space” (p. 144), and by Cheville (2010) as the “Vygotsky cycle” (¶3). Drawing upon the work of Vygotsky (1962, 1978), Harré (2010) recognized that social interaction is the foundation of much of an individual’s behaviour and learning, supporting the view of identity formation as a cyclical learning process within a social context. The social positioning cycle (SPC) depicted in figure 2.2 has two axes: manifestation (public versus private expression) and location (relational space, people as locations for speech acts). Figure 2.2. The social positioning cycle. The quadrants of the framework aid in the conceptualization of how social and individual interactions may shape identity repositioning activity. Movement through the cycle highlights on-going influence between social and individual processes—processes which cannot be separated in a social view of learning. Quadrant 1 (Q1) represents the greater social context. As the learner appropriates tacit and explicit information from others, s/he moves into Quadrant 2 (Q2), a location that is still somewhat collective, but with a private manifestation. In the private half (bottom) of the diagram, the learner transforms Q2 information into Quadrant 3 (Q3), a private, individual location where the learner accumulates, evaluates, and integrates the transformed 31 knowledge. Quadrant 4 (Q4) is the location where the individual publicly expresses or enacts the transformed knowledge. Re-entering the cycle by moving from Q4 to Q1, other individuals may or may not adopt or conventionalize the information that the individual has expressed publicly. An individual appropriates and moulds that which s/he appropriates from society and others potentially conventionalize information into practices and beliefs of the collective. Overlaying other theories and perspectives of the learning process upon the SPC can aid in understanding the positioning process. For example, the following section compares the SPC to the community of practice. 2.5.3 The social positioning cycle and community of practice (CoP) Although some might disagree with the use of the phrase CoP within the context of formal learning and student identity with regard to whether or not students form communities of practice (Reynolds, 2009). There are, nevertheless, some interesting overlaps between the SPC and CoPs (Figure 2.3). Like Harré, Wenger (1998) views learning as emerging from social interactions. A community of practice is a collection of people engaged in a mutual enterprise. As members share experience and understanding, they develop a repertoire of “routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions or concepts” (Wenger, 1998, p. 83). They exist and evolve within a larger historical, technological, socio-cultural context, and may work across community boundaries. A CoP is not necessarily the same as a formally structured educational group; rather, it is often informal in its structure and enactment. Nonetheless, the product of the community may become reified and bounded by practices. The CoP metaphor works well with the SPC concepts of location and manifestation. Wenger (1998) sees CoPs as functioning within a “geography” of activity with its own “relations of locality, proximity, and distance” (p. 130). He refers to the local and the global which may correspond to the individual and the collective, respectively. The academic world is one that defines boundaries and marks them through practices, ceremonies, and the issuing of credentials that legitimize a learner’s entry into a profession or practice. These markers may be viewed as reification. For Wenger, reification and participation work together. These two processes both require interaction 32 between the group and the individual. Participation involves engagement in activities with other people. Reification refers to an artefact of activities or practices of groups of people and may be important in conventionalization of expressed behaviours. In Figure 2.3, both participation and reification are mapped onto the public quadrants of the diagram (Q1 and Q4). Conventionalization and reification of doctoral work in the form of publication and presentation marks one’s entry into an academic CoP as the knowledge reaches beyond the student- supervisor or student-institution relationship permeating the greater academic sphere. Figure 2.3. The social positioning cycle and community of practice. Wenger also views the learner as participating in multiple CoPs, brokering and coordinating perspectives. The learner, therefore, develops a trousseau of experiences which s/he appropriates through experience with and observation of the collectives (communities of practice to which s/he belongs). As the various discourses from of the communities are encountered, they may conflict with one another perhaps destabilizing the learner’s position. Such experience may lead to decisions of integration or alienation— that is, the individual can choose between aligning with beliefs and practices of the collective or changing his/her position relative to them. It is as the individual brings together “participative experience” and “reificative 33 projections” with which s/he negotiates his/her identity (Wenger, 1998, p. 151). Whilst there appears to be a focus on social processes, individual experience and liminality also appears in the CoP literature. In Figure 2.6, experience and liminality are both located in the bottom quadrants as more private processes to resolve experience-dilemmas. Human learning involves interaction between both the social and the individual. 2.5.4 The social positioning cycle in detail I interpret the SPC through Harré’s description complemented by concepts derived from Mead (1934), Wenger (1998), and Sfard and Prusak (2005). Figure 2.5 depicts these viewpoints. Figure 2.4. The social positioning cycle (detailed view). Quadrant 1 (Q1): Primary Structures / Society / Other / Reification The “other” in Q1 represents the individual’s social context. Q1 represents the social/collective pool of psychological conceptions, processes, values, and 34 states. In the academic world of the doctoral learner, Q1 also encompasses reified entities and artefacts such as credentials, ceremonies, and sanctioned social and ethical behaviours (Sfard and Prusak, 2005). Published literature, studies, statistics, theory, and other forms of academic discourse are examples of reified entities in Q1. Quadrant 2 (Q2): Unities / Variations / Generalized Other / Experience Appropriation reflects two important factors in learning: 1) ideas, practices, and resources available to the individual through the social, and 2) the role of agency in the individual’s striving to fulfil needs according to his/her proclivities and values (Billet, 2006). The “generalized other” in Q2 represents the “attitudes of others . . . crystallizing all these particular attitudes into a single attitude or standpoint” (Mead, 1934, p. 90) which the individual appropriates or absorbs from the social context. Through the appropriation of primary structures, the individual creates “unities”—that is, systems of understanding (coherence) of one’s identity in relation to the surrounding world (Mead, 1934). These unities make up the individual’s current self- conception and relational position (Sfard and Prusak, 2005). In this quadrant, the individual internalizes socio-cultural ideals and values, which are sometimes integrated as taken-for-granted objectifications (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, Hacking, 2000). For example, a new doctoral student may defer to his/her supervisor, a perceived academic norm appropriated from graduate-school-narratives (Q1). Similarly, Loxley and Seery (2011) speculate that doctoral students enter their studies with folkloric conceptions of the PhD, for example, as a solitary endeavour or the academy as an ivory tower (p. 10). Quadrant 3 (Q3): Personal Processes / Liminal Space / Me The “me” (Q3) is focused on memory and imagination, self-consciousness, contemplation, and thoughts evaluating the self(-ves) using the viewpoints and skills appropriated into his/her perception of the generalized other. Whilst deeply shaped by society, individuals are still capable of independent and unique thought and reactions. The individual can draw upon both social knowledge and individual proclivity. Although an individual exercises agency in selective appropriation of primary structures and the creation of unique unities, critical incidents may trigger disruption and transformation. A 35 critical story is one in which “core elements that, if changed, would make one feel as if one’s whole identity had changed” (Sfard & Prusak, 2005, p. 18). A critical incident may result in the perception that one’s identity or internalized values are not in harmony with those newly experienced. This creates a kind of conceptual space that opens up new ways of thinking or acting as well as new constraints (Dahlin, 2007). If the disharmony is sufficiently critical, the individual may seek to re-establish unity through an examination of his/her current self-conception, the critical event, and/or appropriated values. Hypothetically, during re-examination, the individual conceptualizes a desired identity based on a variety of needs. A new trajectory can be based upon timeless, idealistic, and/or intrinsic values such as completing one’s doctorate in order to manage an organization more effectively or increasing knowledge for the benefit of society, or for personal learning and achievement (Becker, & Coate, 2005; Harland & Plangger, 2004; Leonard, Loxley & Seery, 2011; Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Wellington & Sikes, 2006). Alternatively, motivations can be more fluid, context-dependent, and instrumental such as completing ones doctorate for higher pay, greater status, to remain employed, to change jobs or careers, and/or for promotion (Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Wellington & Sikes, 2006). Quadrant 4 (Q4): Repositioning of Identity / New or Retrenched Identity / I / Participation Individuals can publish their identity(-ies) (Q4). The “I” (Q4) is the part of one’s identity that is focused on public expression. It is the enactment and the narration of the “I” whom others from Q1 observe or experience. Indeed, the “Other” (Q1, society) may, in turn, be shaped by the “I”. Readjustment of the desired identity can be enacted or expressed, allowing the new story to be endorsed by self or others. For example, through observation of behaviours and dialogue over time, others can evaluate whether or not the individual’s behaviour supports his/her statement, “I understand theory X.” Enacted or expressed transformations present new opportunities and constraints. They may also act as a kind of multiplier (Bendixen & Rule, 2004, p. 76). As the adaptations are conventionalized partially or wholly, the effects can ripple through an individual’s social network(s) and beyond. On some occasions, one’s story can be adopted by the collective through conventionalization and become reintegrated into the primary structure (Q1). In the academic world, 36 this might mean the development of a theoretical model or conceptual breakthrough that becomes recognized throughout one’s field. 2.5 Doctoral-level study as an identity positioning experience This section will tie the theories (above) to the research on doctoral students, identity, and positioning. The discussion of the doctoral experience will be structured around the processes in the SPC: appropriation, transformation, publication, and conventionalization. The SPC operates at multiple levels: academic, personal, and professional. It accommodates academic processes in which individuals appropriate, examine, transform, and publish theories and ideas. At some point, some of the individuals’ transformed ideas may ultimately be conventionalized back into the pool of literature in or beyond the field of study (Figure 2.8). As the learner moves through the cycle, his/her relationship with the academic knowledge and practices (such as the literature, methodologies, and argumentation) transforms (Bruce, 1994). Figure 2.8. The social positioning cycle and the academic cycle. Doctoral learners not only become experts in an area, but also become, themselves, transformed as they learn to embody knowledge differently (Barnacle & Mewburn, 2010; Bansel, 2011). At the doctoral level, learners are 37 expected to move beyond a linear view of academic research and teaching as knowledge-production and knowledge-transfer to a much more fluid and iterative view of knowledge and their role in relation to it (Harland & Plangger, 2004; Ivanič, 1998). Learners may experience self-doubt, social and intellectual isolation as they struggle to understand their own intellectual and social positions as well as others’ perceptions of them (Hockey, 1994; Hopwood, 2010; Morton & Thornley, 2001). This is corroborated by a study by Anderson & Swazey (1988), who found that nearly half of the doctoral students surveyed felt that their studies challenged their self-conceptions. Gardner (2010) notes that the transition into doctoral studies is also accompanied by “a great deal of ambiguity regarding the expectations . . . ambiguity then feeds into the need for self-direction” (p. 76). 2.5.1 Appropriation and individual proclivity In his work on conceptual frameworks at the doctoral level, Trafford (2008) suggests that crossing through thresholds invites learners to acknowledge the challenge of conceptual work as well as the accepted ways of viewing and treating ideas within their discipline. This is not to say that the learner must adopt accepted practices, but s/he should be aware of them. Recognition of these accepted viewpoints can, to a certain extent, be acquired through reading. Indeed, a key aspect of the graduate and post-graduate experience is the acknowledgement of “deep indebtedness to the masters, to authorities in the field, through the literature review” (Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000, p. 143). But, doctoral learners also learn about academic conduct, research, writing, and teaching through observation and social interaction (Golde, 2000; Trafford, 2008; Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., 2010). Swietzer’s (2009) research draws attention to the importance for doctoral students to develop relationships with fellow students and tutors as they enter their course of studies. The significance of social interaction is additionally reflected in the work of Trigwell and Dunbar-Goddet (2005) who observed that completion rates are generally higher in the sciences to which they attribute supervisory differences and greater opportunities for teamwork in the sciences. By comparison, they noted that students in the social sciences, particularly education, often work alone. Similarly, Morton, & Thornley (2001) describe social science and mathematics degrees as more isolating than science degrees as the former requires more individualized effort than that 38 required by the science “apprenticeship model” (p. 114). Kuang-Hsu’s (2003) research suggested that chemistry students rated the quality of supervision and research environment (in terms of collegiality and shared resources) higher than education students rated theirs—although the education students perceived their supervisors as more productive and available. In Kuang-Hsu’s study, education students were found to be less likely to feel like “full members” of the research community whereas chemistry students sometimes even regarded their supervisors as colleagues (p. 23). Further differences were noted by Wright and Cochrane (2000) that the younger science students completed their doctorate faster than older science students and that older social science students completed their degrees more quickly than younger students. They suggested that it is possible that the subjectivity of social science research may have a greater impact upon learners’ values and belief systems challenging their conceptions of personal identity. Older students, who have hypothetically crossed through more developmental stages than younger students, would possibly cope better with such challenges in the social sciences. In his work on student attrition in higher education, Tinto (1987) noted that interaction may not “guarantee persistence”, but its absence “almost always enhances the likelihood of departure” (p. 117). Tinto further acknowledged external factors such as membership in non-academic communities, financial circumstances, poor employment prospects in the field of study may contribute to the decision to leave, but he maintained that a learner’s general experience within the academic institution has a greater impact on persistence. There is an important distinction between social interaction and academic interaction. Whilst the two are interrelated, academic interaction involves scholarly activities leading to induction into an academic community of practice (Golde, 2000; Tinto, 1987). “Inscription into that subject position [of scholar] demands submission to academic-disciplinary regimes and norms, a process of self-formation which produces identities and capacities specific to that regime” (Lee & Williams, 1999, p. 10). In a literature review, Bourke, Holbrook, Lovat, and Farley (2004) provide a long list of factors that affect doctoral student completion rates—particularly institutional guidelines and belonging, supervision relationships, cohort relationships, and student characteristics such as gender, age, motivation, and entry qualifications. Funding, employment while studying, and non-academic networks were also noted. 39 There are many resources available on the student-supervisor relationship (Delamont, Parry, & Atkinson, 2006; Girves & Wemmerus, 1988; Johnson, Lee, & Green, 2000; Lee & Williams, 1999; Lindén, Ohlin, & Brodin, 2011; Phillips & Pugh, 2008). Although the supervisor may be seen as the overseeing eye and authorizing hand of doctoral study, the quality of the doctoral learner’s experience may not solely depend upon supervisory practices and supervisory interaction. Within the academic environment, learners acquire a sense of the values, ethics, and conduct accepted within their field of research and research practices (Anderson & Swazey, 1988). Peers appear to play an important role into the academic induction process. This is supported by the findings of Fitzmaurice (2011) who noted that early-career academics judge their own performance against that of their peers. Switzer’s (2009) study on doctoral student networks and professional identity development found that learners did not perceive their advisors as very important during the first year, in particular. Similarly, Trigwell and Dunbar-Goddet (2005) found that postgraduate students at Oxford did not view their relationship with their supervisor as important as the intellectual climate of their department. Keefer & Parchoma (2012), however, observe that the supervisor perspective on the significance of the supervisory relationship is different. In their study, supervisors note that “loose ties between supervisor-supervisee theoretical, methodological, or disciplinary interests” (¶5) can be the source of difficulties ranging from development of research questions, methodological expertise, theoretical frameworks, and researcher voice, for example. It would seem, then, that both peers and supervisors are significant for learners’ growth as academics and researchers. Gardner (2010) defines socialization as “the process through which an individual learns to adopt the values, skills, attitudes, norms, and knowledge needed for membership in a given society, group, or organization” (p. 63). Reactions of learners to forces of socialization may vary. Interested in determining the most important relationships for doctoral learners during the different stages of their studies, Swietzer (2009) asked learners about their roles of doctoral student, research assistant, teacher, and how their perceptions were related to attaining a career as a faculty member. Based on their responses, she was able to classify doctoral students into two general categories: perceiving fit and assessing fit. Perceiving fit students were strongly oriented to their professional identities and the attainment of tangible goals 40 whilst the assessing fit students were more focussed on the quality of their experience and their growth as human beings. Although faculty teaching these students had thought that age, experience, and relationship-identities (such as spouse, father, mother, and professional) were most likely to predict openness to socialization, Sweitzer (2009) found that the perceiving fit students were more susceptible to academic socialization because they wish to be perceived as fitting in with academic norms. Assessing fit students, on the other hand, were more concerned with finding a fit for their personal needs and growth. She concluded that “their self-descriptions were much more likely to contribute to how (un)willing they were to be socialized” (p. 16). This finding suggests that the learner has some degree of choice in what s/he appropriates from the academic environment. 2.5.2 Transformation and liminality Entering into unknown academic territory can lead to uncertainty about one’s purpose, ability, and understanding of the academic world and his/her place in it. Loss of one’s previous identity may be accompanied by emotional reactions or even a sense of crisis (Lee & Williams, 1999). Hockey (1994) argues that the transition into doctoral student status can be problematic because expected behaviours, expectations and standards are ill-defined and vague (Hockey, 1994). He also suggests that the first year is the most precarious time for a doctoral student “as it is within that time that students initially encounter and experience intellectual and social processes at their point of maximum novelty, and in turn, difficulty” (p. 177). Acceptance into a doctoral program may be accompanied by privileges that symbolize initiation to a community. Boundaries between student and professor may become blurred allowing, for instance, less formal forms of address during social encounters. For some learners, this also represents a change in status which might also signal changes in social and professional position (Hockey, 1994). New ways of thinking may cause a learner to further reconsider his/her position relative to others who may or may not think similarly (Trafford, 2008). Discomfort resulting from these new ideas may stimulate self-reflection and creativity in problem-solving or may introduce feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. Lovitts (2005) sees creativity in relation to the individual and the field of study. But, the concept of relational agency would suggest that creativity also 41 encompasses relationships with others. Bendixen and Rule (2004) propose that doctoral students resolve dilemmas through a combination of logic and analysis (internal, private processes), and dialogue, particularly argumentation (external, public presentation) (also see Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., 2010). Further, they contend that peers are often the source of troublesome knowledge (introducing new perspectives and questions), are often sought out to assist with problem solving (prior to seeking the assistance of authority figures), and may be significant in resolving or reshaping “epistemic doubts” (p. 75). Social interaction with peers may aid learners in realizing that others share similar struggles intellectually, financially, and emotionally. Hockey (1994) discusses a “de-mythologization” (p. 185) process in which individuals shed their preconceptions of academia that may have been acquired through contact with non-academic subcultures. Doubts about intellectual adequacy may dissipate upon realizing that their peers are also struggling. Along with such realization, learners may become more comfortable in both sharing and accepting emotional support. Hadjielia- Drotarova’s (2010) research also highlighted the importance of sharing amongst peers not only with regard to resources, routines, and tools, but support with everyday life and personal issues. In a longitudinal study of undergraduate learners, Baxter Magolda (2004) observed that the learners who she identified as having crossed into stages of independent knowing and/or contextual knowing often still sought external guidance in problem solving (p. 38). She concluded that intellectual development was not only cognitive, but was affected by the learners’ sense of identity and their relationships: “Interviewees who developed complex ways of knowing often could not live those ways of knowing until they had developed complex ways of seeing themselves and their relationships with others” (p. 38). She notes that learners with a strong sense of their identity(- ies) showed less concern for what others thought of them, were more open to explore different perspectives, and demonstrated a greater ability to choose and integrate ideas. In tracing the social and emotional development of a group of doctoral learners, Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., (2010) have noted similar trends. Early in the degree process, doctoral learners experience anxiety as they start to acquire the academic language and learn the norms of the academic environment (also see Swietzer, 2009). This discomfort sometimes feels threatening as it challenges their confidence. After the first year, learners often note more conceptual development. In later stages, 42 learners become more open to criticism and are more willing to share feelings of confusion and apprehension. The reduction in defensiveness was seen as a sign that the learners had crossed through a threshold: “a kind of maturity and learning leap” (p. 37). They also noted that such growth was also accompanied by greater self-awareness and reflexivity. As learners grapple with confusion and apprehension, they cross into processes of interpreting, evaluating, transforming, rejecting, and creating new information. In order to work at such a conceptual level, one needs to be able to discern aspects of a given concept in light of different perspectives. Whilst one’s skills may be influenced by socialization, the learners’ unique biographies will affect their ability to discern variation and make choices. “Human agency operates within and through social structures, but is not necessarily subjugated by them” (Billet, 2006, p. 63; also see Hopwood, 2010). Some of this is related to their history of experiences, the interweaving of personal, professional, and academic lives as well as individual physiological, mental, and emotional characteristics. Wellington & Sikes (2006) write: “what has happened to us in the past affects the things that happen to us in the present, both through the social, cultural, academic and economic capital we possess and are able to draw on, and through the identities we have developed and had attributed to us” (p. 732). The complexity of the learners’ biographies can shape motivations for entry to and completion of doctoral courses. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations may intertwine (Wellington & Sikes, 2006). In addition, one’s sense of agency is also affected by how one sees oneself relative to others and learns to adjust this self-conception (Hopwood, 2010). Edwards and D’Arcy (2004) offer an interesting extension to the concept of agency—that is, relational agency. They suggest that relational agency is not the same as collaboration, rather involves accessing others as resources. In a study of 45 doctoral students engaged in an academic writing class involving peer critique, Caffarella and Barnett (2000) noted that the students used their exposure to others’ writing and feedback to their own writing as means of comparison. They noted that emotions dissipated as the students gained more experience in giving and receiving critique, it never completely disappeared. 43 2.5.3 Publication and expression In the context of doctoral education, the process of publication offers multiple meanings and enactment of one’s identities whether as researcher, teacher, statistician, technician, father, mother, peer, etc., and expression of one’s research, opinions, theories, or hypotheses in presentations, papers and the doctoral thesis. In addition to peer interaction, Harland and Plangger (2004) found that doctoral students with teaching assistantships found the classroom a safe environment for rehearsing arguments and sharing research prior to more formal presentations. Part-time and networked learners, however, may not have the classroom as a venue for sharing their work. Some may need to seek out presentation and publishing opportunities. Written texts may be thought of as instantiations or “temporary identities” (Ivanič, 1998, p. 237) of previously appropriated and transformed ideas. They may be indicative of the author’s position in relation to dominant social and academic discourses and patterns of behaviour—that is, through written text, an author may challenge and/or reaffirm practices and beliefs (Ivanič, 1998). Writing, in particular, is tightly interrelated with identity: “students find doctoral writing difficult because texts and identities are formed together, in and through writing” (Kamler, 2008, p.286). “It is primarily through writing that doctoral candidates learn how to position themselves as scholars by adopting disciplinarily appropriate ways of establishing and defending knowledge claims” (Barnacle & Mewburn, 2010, p. 434). The ways in which an author chooses to express ideas can align him/her with particular positions (Hyland, 2002). Both the content and the author may be de-constructed and re-constructed in the production of an academic text (Ruth, 2008). Voice, in the context of writing, is the author’s public expression of identity reflecting the author’s auto-biographical self, discoursal-self, and authorial- self (Ivanič, 1998). It might be said that all text is double voiced (spoken, written, or otherwise communicated) in that the voice read or heard in a given instant also reflects other voices from the socio-cultural context (Ivanič, 1998; Bakhtin, 1986). (Note the similarity to Wiley’s (2011) contention that Cooley’s mirror is really two mirrors.) Drawing upon the identities available in the disciplinary or academic context(s), the writer forms a sense of his/her own positions and history of positions. The discoursal self refers to “the impression—often multiple, sometimes contradictory—which they consciously or unconsciously 44 convey of themselves in a particular written text” (p. 25). In other words, it is a site of struggle, movement, and potential resolution. The view of self as author is connected to one’s conceptions of authority and voice. These views of self are interrelated and can have an impact upon performance. Castelló, Iñesta, and Monero (2009) found a relationship between graduate students’ awareness of voice, self-regulation, and quality of the texts they produced. Students showing a high awareness of voice appear to shift focus from “content or on the more formal requirements of the text to the consideration of the epistemic and social function of writing” (p. 1127). In other words, these students were more likely to reflect on their own position(s) in relation to the content and audience in a cycle of discursive co-construction of voice and text. The text, author, and socio-cultural context can become tightly interwoven. 2.5.4 Conventionalization and influence As a rite of passage, acceptance into the academic community can be marked by increased confidence in one’s understanding of the field as well as the ability to articulate it and defend one’s position within it (Morris, Cheng, Wisker, Warnes, Lilly, Robinson, & Trafford, 2009; Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., 2010). A particularly poignant passage from a learner describing her own passage into academia was that she felt she was “taking part in a conversation” amongst peers (Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., p. 30). In writing of his own passage into academia, Bansel (2011) observes that peer-review is a mechanism for recognition and regulation of academic performance. Acceptance of a text for publication in an academic journal may result in feelings of acceptance into the community. To an extent, it also connotes legitimization of one’s work and serves as a record of one’s identity as a scholar. Successful publication implies authorship, authenticity, and authority (Ruth, 2008). A report by Jenkins (2004) for the Higher Education Academy in the UK notes that post-graduate students sometimes see themselves as “participants, albeit peripheral, in research communities of practice” (p. 28). In interviews by Wisker, Price, Moriarty and Marshall (2010), doctoral students indicated that as they acquired a greater sense of belonging in the academic community, they also began to take more responsibility for their work, felt more independent, and sensed less power inequalities with others in their academic environments. This may arise from increased confidence not only in 45 acquisition of knowledge in one’s field, but also in one’s ability to clearly articulate and defend positions (Wisker, Morris, et. al., 2010). At the same time, a learner can begin to feel tensions between their academic, personal, and professional identities. It is possible that this occurs as learners transfer skills across social milieux. There is evidence that professionals who take up doctoral courses apply their academic skills to their professional work or other situations of practical application (Wellington & Sikes, 2006). Publication and conventionalization can shift the position of the individual amongst his/her peers in the personal and professional environments. The next section will explore other context that may affect the learning experiences of doctoral students. 2.6 Contexts of identity positioning in doctoral-level study Graduate students experience varying degrees of stress during their studies; the literature documents stress due to isolation, role conflicts, professional demands, family responsibilities, and gender-related issues of acceptance within academic departments (Ali & Kohun, 2006; Ali & Kohun, 2006; Hockey, 1994; Mallinckrodt & Leong, 1992; Simon-Maeda, Churchill & Cornwell, 2006). Having conducted a review of the literature on the doctoral experience in the UK, Leonard and Becker (2009) conclude that the majority of the literature documents “reflective, conceptual or philosophical articles and reports, with occasional empirical studies and re-analysis of national statistics, written from the perspective of policy-makers, higher education managers and supervisors” (p. 71). In their literature review, they discuss literature on science versus non-science doctoral experiences, access to supervisors and department facilities, methodology courses, academic research cultures, peer interaction, and towards the end of the chapter, there is one small paragraph on external support such as that from employers, families, partners, and friends. I, too, found a dearth of information in the literature on the learners’ personal and social context. Whereas in distance program, physical movement of learners to access educational opportunities is reduced or, in some cases, unnecessary. Traditional, face-to-face programs, may necessitate learners moving to different cities or countries in order to access education (Altbach & Knight, 2011). Physical displacement can result in shifts in social and support 46 networks. In addition to social isolation, doctoral studies in the social sciences may require a high degree of autonomy and solitary time to work on highly individualized research. As a result, learners may struggle to locate sources of support within and outside academic contexts. In the world of NL, doctoral learners environments can remain embedded in their professional and personal environments whilst interacting with their fellow learners, professors, and others in the academic community. Synchronous and asynchronous technologies permit a variety of ways of interacting through audio, video, text-based communications tools. The question is whether or not this flexibility may introduce a greater complexity in the social positioning experiences of doctoral students. Or, would such students have greater access to support? What additional factors might be at play? A doctoral dissertation by Myers (1999) investigated factors contributing to doctoral student attrition in an Educational Administration program. Eleven students responded to survey questions and subsequent semi-structured interviews. Myers found that the most significant contributing factors were: frustration and/or loss of interest (36%), financial difficulties (27%), and family factors (18%). Interestingly, all participants indicated that they had the full support of their families and significant others. Meyers also listed as contributing factors: paying job or professional responsibilities, change of job, and varying levels of support from employers. Hopwood (2010) interviewed 19 doctoral students across various social science departments and interdisciplinary research centres in two UK universities. He concluded that “relationships made a difference (at times negative as well as positive) in three realms: the academic, the personal, and the professional” (p. 109). The academic realm included relationships surrounding the doctoral research and study environment. The personal realm included family and friendships. The professional included professional relationships often rooted in their “prior working lives” (p. 109). He notes that there is little in the literature concerning relationships external to and predating the learners’ doctoral studies. The effects of family commitments were found to be highly significant in a study conducted by Brown and Watson (2010) on the experiences of female doctoral students. In their study, they interviewed eight women. All the participants had children, one an ill husband, another an ill mother. Two of 47 the eight were single parents. Childcare, in particular, affected the participants timing of their doctoral degrees as well as their ability to participate in academic activities such as conferences. Others discussed the tension in the family as they attempted to balance their roles (wife and mother) with their student roles. Holley and Gardner (2012) conducted a study of the experiences of first- generation doctoral students. These students are defined as doctoral students of whom neither parent had obtained an undergraduate degree. In addition to institutional and disciplinary characteristics and financial issues, they had also noted that family and community had a significant influence on the students’ experiences. As their participants progressed in their studies, the gap between their experiences and those of their family, friends, and peers also increased. Day-to-day academic experiences and home/community lifestyles were significantly different. Some participants noted that they continued to receive support from family even though there was little understanding of their studies. In other cases, the financial burden of doctoral studies created some tension as their degrees were not always considered to be economically worthwhile. In 2007, Ivankova and Stick conducted a mixed-methods study in which they identified seven internal and external factors that they suggest contributed to student persistence in a doctoral program in a distributed doctoral program in educational leadership in higher education. They had surveyed 278 current and former doctoral student, then purposively selected four for qualitative case study analysis. In the interviews, the participants had indicated a variety of non-academic sources of support including employers, colleagues in the workplace, family members, and even pets. Academic sources of support included the academic advisors, classmates, and various university services. The authors concluded that the quantitative analysis indicated that family, significant others, and employers did not significantly affect persistence. But, they also indicated that two thirds of the participants commented on these relationships as affecting their distance studies in some supportive way. Maher (2005) conducted a qualitative study involving thirteen students enrolled in a cohort-based master’s degree in Education. Although this study involved master’s-level learners, the learners’ developing of their understanding of each other is illustrative of some of the experiences 48 described by participants in my investigation. She collected data over a ten- month period. At the outset, most of the interviewees held “modest” expectations of the contribution their fellow learners would offer their experience (p. 200). Some expected some degree of emotional and intellectual support; others were concerned about unequal commitment and participation amongst the cohort. As the program progressed, Maher noted that, for some learners, external stresses from teaching jobs led to dissatisfaction with the program. As, the months passed, the learners described having a “shared sense of history” with their fellow students (p. 202). Some also commented on how the cohort members began to relax with participation-levels evening out, but also with a deeper engagement in discussions and keener critical thinking skills through sharing perspectives. Over half the interviewed learners commented on being part of a team and began to describe themselves in terms of role-responsibilities such as nurturing, peace-making, and “task-master” (p. 203). Some learners described the cohort in family terms and felt that they began to speak a shared language, building knowledge and understanding of each other. Problems in collaboration due to personality and intellectual differences remained for some learners. Cohort members gained a sense of empowerment as they banded together to voice concerns over their program to their instructors. Relationships with instructors appeared similar to relationships with other, non-cohort master’s programs. Through her investigation, Maher concludes that relationships amongst cohort-members continuously evolved. Govender and Dhunpath (2011) describe a cohort-seminar model for a doctoral program at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa (also see de Lang, Pillay & Chikoko, 2011). The development of this model was prompted by concerns about doctoral student attrition along with issues of isolation, lack of support, and inability to meet academic expectations. Within this model, learners would come together for six weekends a year during their program and engaged in various activities such as chairing sessions, exchanging feedback, and engaging in debate. The intent was to facilitate the development of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in which learners could collaborate and cooperate. The researchers conducted qualitative interviews with eight cohort members in different phases of their doctoral programs and four who had already completed. Their analysis revealed that, in general, students shared emotional and academic support regardless of the overall cohesiveness of the given cohort. They suggest that 49 “an equally significant dimension of the cohort model is that the potential for conflict generates simultaneously a productive space, where students negotiate the multiple and sometimes contradictory voices of cohort supervisors, appointed supervisors and peers as students find and affirm their own voices” (p. 10). This suggests, like Maher’s study, that positioning is fluid and continuous. But, Govender and Dhunpath’s work also adds the dimension of conflict as a possible social space for growth. Personal and professional factors also affect doctoral students. Simon-Maeda, Churchill, and Cornwell (2006) conducted an ethnographic case study of a group of cohort-members in a doctoral program in English as a Foreign Language in Japan. Their study describes constraints such as “a lack of institutional resources, the marginalization of qualitative research, full-time work responsibilities, and language and academic discourse barriers (p. 2). The cohort members created a community of practice consisting of peer- editing, online discussions, and workshops. The authors suggest that doctoral study is highly influenced by the learners’ positions as doctoral students, teachers, and family members. They indicate that their research elicited terms such as “identity transformation” and “apprenticeship to academic discourses” (p. 19). Their conclusion is similar to the hypothesis that has emerged in my own investigation in doctoral student identity in NL: “successful entry into challenging academic environments is dependent on strategic integration of personal histories and collective practices” (p. 19). Although limited, the literature on the doctoral study appears to support the idea that learners experience identity positioning across a variety of contexts. Within the general academic context, they might position themselves in relation to their department, the institution, the discipline (field of study), and/or research on a national-scale (Jenkins, 2004). Other significant contexts include the family and workplace. A search of the literature revealed little information of other possible contexts that influenced doctoral learners’ experiences. 2.7 Personal reflections I first became aware of Harré’s work in social positioning whilst attending a workshop series in qualitative research mid-way through my doctoral program. I felt as if his work and the SPC brought me back full-circle to my original academic interests in languages, linguistics, and social psychology. 50 As I explored social positioning as a possible framework for my research, I felt enthralled with how my prior doctoral papers on identity meshed with this theory. Furthermore, as a doctoral student studying by distance, I sensed the multiplicity of contexts pulling me away from my studies: family responsibilities, obligations at work, community events, and social interactions (or lack thereof). Harré’s social positioning theory made sense as a lens through which to view these tensions and explore the discourses that might challenge or support learners through their doctoral trajectories. I began to wonder if an awareness of the possible influences might aid learners. Perhaps they could better prepare themselves and their families. Perhaps they could make helpful connections with supportive friends, co-workers, and mentors. I began writing this literature review early in the research process. Naturally, it started at the proposal stage. Whilst awaiting research ethics approval, I continued the literature review. I returned to it again after writing a rough draft of the findings chapter as I saw issues emerge in the data. And, I returned to it again after roughing out the discussion chapter and during my final revisions. In this way, writing the literature review was very iterative. As I moved through different stages of the research and writing-up process, the literature review continued to evolve. This allowed me to continuously locate relevant research and concepts to inform and challenge my findings. 2.8 Summary Doctoral learners cross boundaries between academic, personal, and professional identities. In each environment, they interact differently and have varying feelings of self-efficacy and agency in accordance with their participation and competence. As they interact with others, they effectively negotiate their identities relative to others in their environments. The SPC is neither individualist nor social-determinist. It shows how the location of human interaction (collective or individual) and the expression (public or private) interweave in such a way that the individual and society co-create each other. The relational nature of identity formation and the significance of language and interaction are commensurate with the underpinnings of NL: “a social constructionist view that assumes that learning emerges from relational dialogue with and/or through others in 51 learning communities” (Hodgson & Watland, 2004, p. 126). By examining learners’ descriptions of experience through the SPC lens, it is possible to explore how doctoral learners navigate through changing relative positions. And, we might better understand the array of challenges that might impinge upon the learning experience. In the following chapter I will outline the methodological approaches I used to examine the kinds of experiences that lead to identity positioning amongst doctoral students in NL. 52 Chapter 3: Methodological Approach I've begun to consider using methodologies that two or three years ago I may not have even considered because I would have been afraid to try it. And, now I realize that [doctoral] research is an opportunity to develop my skills. So, if you don't think you're a very good interviewer, you can learn how to be an interviewer. You can learn some interview skills. – Study participant 3.1 Introduction The main goal of this thesis is to explore how doctoral students on networked learning courses experience challenges to their identities, norms, values, and relationships—that is, their sense of social positioning. I set out to explore the kinds of critical stories or troublesome experiences that lead to identity positioning experiences. Studying identity is a challenge. The conceptions individuals hold of self(- ves), others, and the surrounding world cannot be observed directly by researchers. The situation is further complicated because people vary in their discernment of aspects of the phenomena that surround them; they differ in how they experience these phenomena and how they remember them. A researcher, nevertheless, can make use of empirical methods that allow some degree of access to the individuals’ memory of their experiences. An important goal of this qualitative research is to provide rich descriptions reflecting multiple perspectives allowing the development of a snapshot view representing both individual and collective experience. Specifically, my aim was to elicit descriptions of ways in which doctoral students describe their experience social positioning in NL environments. As a social constructionist piece, this is a daunting challenge because these descriptions may be shaped through the interview experience itself. The main method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed and coded through qualitative open coding in which I sought themes indicative of social positioning. Discourse analysis was also used to aid in the analysis of interview transcripts, allowing the researcher to more deeply interrogate the meaning and structure of specific utterances appearing within the transcripts. In the sections that follow, I will 53 discuss open coding, discourse analysis, and the procedures used in data collection and analysis. 3.2 Qualitative approach In this section, I will describe the open coding as a method for conducting typological qualitative research and discourse analysis as a complementary methodology. 3.2.4 Qualitative coding Although I am approaching this project using Harre’s (2010) social positioning cycle (SPC) as a framework for understanding social interaction, I used an open-coding approach to identify patterns pertaining to social positioning. Coding allows the organization of messy and complex data into a more comprehensible format. Saldaña (2008) describes coding as a “heuristic” (p.8); it is a tool for exploration. Coding involves multiple iterations in which each cycle “further manages, filters, highlights, and focuses the salient features of the qualitative data record for generating categories, themes, and concepts, grasping meaning, and/or building theory” (p. 8). During the iterative coding process, codes can be sorted into themes representing patterns as they become apparent. In some processes this can lead, eventually, to theory generation (Ezzy, 2002). In my project, however, I am interested in exploring learners’ descriptions of their experiences of identity positioning. I used an open coding method in which I created codes and sub-codes when I noted comments that might indicate positioning. I also used some pre-set codes based on discourse analysis techniques described in the following section. 3.2.5 Discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA) arose from sociology often with an emphasis on social constructionist perspectives. Discourse analysts are interested in how people use language to achieve desired ends and how they construct their worlds and their accounts of their worlds (Potter, 1998). Wetherell, Taylor and Yates (2001) define DA as “a theory of language and communication, a perspective on social interaction and an approach to knowledge construction across history, societies and cultures” (p.1). Another aim of DA is to uncover 54 the underlying meaning of utterances and social actions. In many cases, language is action. Gee (2011) argues that it is through a cyclical relationship between language and perceptions of reality that people constitute both who they are and the world within which they exist. In studies of selfhood and identity, DA can inform researchers as to how people represent themselves through stories and linguistic acts (Wetherell, et. al. 2001). Säljö’s (1997) concept of accounting practices refers to socio-culturally shaped linguistic practices (discursive techniques) used to achieve particular purposes. He offers an excellent example of a phrase that can easily lead researchers astray: “I don’t know” (p. 182). In reading a transcript, a researcher might interpret this phrase at face value. However, the speaker may be indicating that s/he is not concerned about the issue at hand or that s/he is not interested in discussing it. In this way, a variety of intentions may underlie seemingly simple utterances. Gee (2010) offers a list of 42 questions derived from a list of six tools of inquiry and seven building tasks (p. 121). To ask all 42 questions of each utterance in each transcript would be a mammoth task. The importance of Gee’s list, however, is that is provides the researcher with a sample of the kinds of questions she may draw upon. Most relevant here, the tools of inquiry include questions about the situatedness of meanings (context), social languages and grammars (language used for particular social situations), figured worlds (models to mediate between institutions and sub-institutional levels), intertextuality (references to texts, written and verbal, outside the current text), discourses (linguistic and non-linguistic techniques that help create recognizable identities), and conversations (disputes among societal-level discourses). For each of these tools, he asks several questions: how is the speaker or writer trying to enact, depict, recruit, use, connect, disconnect, privilege, disprivilege, and/or give significance to things? Elsewhere in the discourse analysis literature, one finds many possible discursive techniques. The following list of techniques was useful for this study. • Heirarchy of modalization refers to the framing of a statement. A speaker can assert something as a fact to varying degrees of certainty. This technique can be used to create or reduce validity of an assertion (Potter,1996). Compare, 55 these three examples: 1) Phonics is a successful method for teaching reading. 2) I guess that phonics is a good method. 3) Phonics is possibly a good method. • Counter knowledge refers to the use of misinformation; assertions without any support (Thompson, 2008). For example, Phonics is useless [no support]. • Stake inoculation can be used to position oneself as close to or distanced from people, things, or events (Potter,1996). Other ways can include statements that suggest the contrary to common belief is true such as I’m not pro-phonics, but I have found it very helpful. • Stake confession involves a slight twist on stake inoculation in that the speaker confesses to have a bias and uses the confession to support an assertion (Potter, 1996). For example, I learned that way myself and I learned how to read just fine. • Category entitlement refers to the positioning of an individual as a member or non-member of a category of people who have knowledge or experience of a given subject. Entitlement can be connected to members of professions, community leaders, relatives, friends, or even “urban myths” (Potter, 1996, p. 134). For example: I believe that phonics is a better approach to teaching reading than whole language; thousands of teachers can’t be wrong. Or, the younger, less experienced teachers now simply don’t get it. • Out-there-ness involves making reference to external actors or sources that might be considered trustworthy (Freesmith, 2008; Potter,1996). The empiricist repertoire, for example, suggests that a given observation can be made by anyone at a given scene. The speaker is impersonal and distanced from the assertion. Facts seemingly have their own agency and speak for themselves: The statistics indicate that young readers taught by phonics are able readers. Like out-there-ness, consensus and corroboration externalize arguments by referring to witnesses (Potter,1996). • Active voicing refers to the practice of taking the voice of another in an attempt to approximate what the other intends to say (Potter, 1996). For example, I remember the young readers who I was teaching via the phonics method—and they would often say, “I can say the words and hear them in my 56 head.” So, I think there is some value to the method. • Goffman’s (1981) idea of footing refers to the positioning of people as principal (representation), author (source), or animator (speaker). Consider, for example, the phrase, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” In this utterance, it is suggested that the speaker is neither the author nor the representation and, therefore, cannot be held accountable for the content of the message. Potter (1996) notes that this is similar to the footing taken by news reporters who also separate themselves from who says what. • In detail and focalization strategies, detailed descriptions are “full of definite characters . . . indexicals [pronouns] . . . and active voicing” (Potter, 1996, p. 163). The significance of details depends on the point of view (focus). In some cases, a narrator appears to have access to the emotions of the other characters: My students benefited from increased happiness and confidence in their ability to sound-out the words. In other cases, the narrator has a more general, global view external to the character’s feelings: My students began to sound-out the words without asking me for assistance. The opposite to detail is vagueness. • Nominalization involves the transformation of a verb into a noun allowing the categorization of behaviours. It can be used to avoid attributing agency to a given action or providing a sense of neutrality (Billig, 2008; Potter, 1996). Passive voice is also commonly used to avoid the attribution of agency (Billig, 2008). This examples demonstrates the use of both techniques: Damage has been done by whole-languagizing the reading curriculum. • In extremitization, a speaker will exaggerate to stress her point (Potter, 1996; Freesmith, 2008): The whole language approach to teaching reading has rendered a whole generation virtually illiterate. Of course, in minimization, the opposite occurs. Within the context of this study wherein I am drawing upon Harré’s (2010) social positioning cycle, the above discursive techniques helped me triangulate the data on how the participants position themselves. Whilst I took care great care not to read too much into the speaker’s utterances, these techniques allowed me to speculate speculation about the participant’s accounts of their relevant relative positions. For example, the level of certainty indicated in the hierarchy of modalization, nominalization, and/or passive 57 voice may suggest the speaker’s confidence or her/his willingness to sound confident within the original context or the interview context. Stake entitlements (inoculation and confession) may indicate how a speaker positions him/herself relevant to other people, ideas, and circumstances. Active voicing and footing may suggest how the speaker understands how others view him/her. Extrematization, minimization, and X/Y format might suggest that the speaker is manipulating the facts. I found these clues helpful in questioning the transcripts further and look at them from different perspectives. 3.2 Data collection The research took place at a distance university in Canada in which the learners rely primarily upon networking technologies to interact with their instructors and peers, exchange information, and discuss ideas. The participants were solicited from doctoral courses in education and business. The data was collected in two phases: a pilot study (August 11, 2011) and semi-structured interviews with 18 participants (August 23 to September 30, 2011). 3.3.1 Phase 1: Pilot study A potential issue with this study is the ability to accurately access the participants’ experiences from a “second order” perspective—especially with regard to tacit knowledge or abstract ideas (Richardson, 1999). Success in this is influenced by my own capacity as a researcher to ask the questions in such a way so as not to lead the participants, but to open a space for dialogue in which the participants describe their experiences of the context or phenomena under investigation (in this case, identity positioning experiences). Therefore, a main goal of the analysis in the pilot study was to determine the trustworthiness of the survey and interview questions. I was interested in determining if the participants’ social positioning experiences were accessible. One participant was selected from the list of volunteers. 3.3.1.1 Procedures I sent the pilot participant an email-letter of invitation introducing me, the researcher, the nature and conditions of the study, consent information, and a 58 link to an online survey (Appendix A). The online survey served a dual purpose 1) recruitment and 2) the gathering of demographic data in order to identify a purposeful sample of potential participants (see Appendix B). The procedures for the first phase were: 1. distribute the letter of consent to all potential participants; 2. select one participant from the online survey data; 3. invite the participant to an interview; 4. record the interview; 5. transcribe the interview; 6. analyse the interview procedures and responses; 7. adjust the procedures and interview schedule as needed. I conducted the interview using Adobe Connect. During the semi-structured interview, the participant was asked first to reflect upon her experience as a doctoral student. Then, she was asked to describe how her experiences had affected her relationships within and outside her doctoral program. She was asked for her thoughts on any ways in which her conceptions of identity were challenged and how she resolved any issues. I transcribed the interview recording. It included indicators such as hesitation, laughter, repeated words, word stress, and when a softer voice was used. To do this, I used a small subset of the Jeffersonian transcription notation system (Wetherell, Taylor, & Yates, 2001). I decided not to encode changes in tones and inflections so that the transcripts more readable. Less transcription detail also reduced distractions from the primary focus: the content. The transcription was typed using “f4” (free software from http://www.audiotranskription.de). F4’s time-stamp encoding allowed the transcription to remain synchronized to the audio file as it was imported into the Atlas.ti software package for qualitative coding. This was useful later, during analysis, because I could click on any word in the transcript and listen to the recording for additional clues to meaning. 3.3.1.2 Analysis Because this pilot study involved only one doctoral student, I felt it was premature to begin sorting the quotes into categories or to start interpreting their meanings except, perhaps, as a means of testing the software. I felt that 59 attempts to enter into analysis too soon may bias analysis of subsequent interviews by reducing the trustworthiness of the final interpretations if they are to be considered representative of the collective experience of all the participants (Kelly, 2002). So, any attempt here to discover any categories was primarily an attempt to see if the interview questions allowed access to the participants’ experiences of identity positioning of the participants. Memoing directly after the interview was helpful in recalling the tone of the interview as well as some of the subtle impressions I detected during the conversation. In starting the analysis, my intention was to read the transcript through once or twice. However, I found myself wanting to take pen to paper immediately as I already noticed some discursive techniques and identity positioning experiences. I allowed myself to jot down words and thoughts in the margins of the transcript. And, I extended my initial memo as I reflected on what I was seeing. I applied DA techniques such as those listed in the section above in order to examine specific utterances. To better manage the large number of discursive techniques, I decided to clusters the techniques as possible indicators of identity positioning processes (Table 3.1). With each pass, I focussed on one cluster. I found that this made the analysis more controlled and allowed my thoughts to focus on fewer ideas at once, yet allowed sufficient detail to provoke thought and reflection on the possible identity positioning activity. 60 Indicators (Potter, 1996) Discursive techniques 1. Confidence (CO) Portraying one’s confidence or level of certainty. 2. Proximity (PX) Stake management (confession, inoculation), consensus, corroboration, category entitlement. Positioning oneself in relation to the issue discussed. 3. Others’ positions (OP) Footing, active voicing. Representing the voice of another and/or representing oneself as another. 4. Fact/event manipulation (FEM) Exaggerating, minimizing, highlighting only certain facts. 5. Detail (DE) Detail, focalization, vagueness. Indicators (Gee, 2010) Discursive techniques 7. Situatedness (SI) References to context. Shifts of perspective. 8. Social languages and grammars (SLG) Language used for particular social situations. 9. Figured worlds (FW) Models, taken-for-granted viewpoints, or simplified pictures of situations sometimes used to evaluate appropriateness of behaviours or performances. 10. Intertextuality (IN) References to texts, written and verbal, outside the current text. 11. Discourse and conversations (DC) Linguistic and non-linguistic techniques that indicate positions (recognizable identities, roles) in debates, arguments, issues, or themes. Table 3.1. Clusters of discursive techniques. 61 3.3.1.3 Pilot Outcomes & Adjustments to Procedures The process from sending the letter of information and consent (Appendix A) to retrieving and scheduling the interview flowed smoothly. The participant indicated that the instruments seemed clear and she appeared to be able to answer the questions without asking for much additional clarification or rephrasing. The interview process, however, required additional reflection. Ideally, semi- structured interviews allow some flexibility for following different threads that might lead to new insights or increased depth of insights. This requires the researcher to listen attentively to what the participants says and how s/he says it. Taking notes during the interview was helpful, but was distracting at times. I decided that I would take less detailed notes and jot down only key words and phrases from the participant, as well as my own impressions and additional questions. This lighter note-taking allowed key terms as references for circling back to comments for additional exploration. The discourse technique clusters (Table 3.1) was a more manageable way of applying the myriad of choices in the discourse analysis phase. Although overwhelming at times, I felt that DA stimulated greater depth of inquiry into the interview transcripts than open coding alone. 3.3.2 Phase 2: Semi-structured interviews Having made adjustments in the interview questions, I proceeded to interview an additional 18 individuals from the pool of volunteers. I was able to schedule each volunteer for an interview according to their convenience. I targeted 30 minutes for each interview. However, the actual interviews took 45 minutes on average. Sixteen of the interviews were conducted and recorded using Adobe Connect and a Livescribe pen (for backup). One participant spoke to me on Skype while in a moving vehicle. I recorded it with a Livescribe pen. The background noise was a minor impediment during transcription. Another participant preferred a face-to-face interview which I also recorded with a Livescribe pen. The face-to-face interview provided an interesting contrast as I had to be aware of my own facial expressions and 62 gestures during the interview. It added different possibilities of co- construction. I was cognizant of opening and closing each interview in a manner that provided a means of transitioning between the interview and the participants’ immediate environments and activities (Olson, 2011). After welcoming the participant, I would ask him/her where s/he was located and what s/he was doing just prior to the interview. During the interviews, the semi-structured format permitted flexibility in how questions were asked; frequently an answer to one question naturally led to another question without the need for a contrived segue. I took notes on the computer during the interviews. This allowed me to quickly jot down key phrases and ideas to which I could return later in the interview. In all interviews, I asked all questions on my list. But, sometimes I gleaned additional information as the conversations deviated depending on how the participants wanted to address the topics being discussed. At the end, I thanked each volunteer for their participation and transitioned out of the interview format (closing) and into a lighter conversation. Finally, I wrote brief notes about the interviews about my reflections of the tone and most salient ideas that were discussed. I began transcription within days of each interview, but fell behind as the interviews progressed. I used the same tools as during the pilot: f4 software and a foot pedal. I reduced the number of transcription notations to primarily indicators of pauses, hesitations, and emphasis. As indicated, I could easily return to the audio segments within Atlas.ti because the transcripts remained synchronized to the audio recordings. 3.4 Data analysis Data analysis began after all interviews were completed. Analysis was a highly iterative process involving successively reading, coding, reviewing, and re-coding: 1. I read each transcript three times to absorb the gist of each interview. I made some preliminary memos. 2. I began coding for DA techniques along with memos about my decisions. 63 3. I re-read the coded transcripts and made adjustments, adding more memos indicating how the codes were changed and why. 4. I read the transcripts again and began creating codes to highlight the experiences that the participants described (open, inductive coding). 5. I re-read the coded transcripts and made adjustments. I began to expand and collapse codes. I created extensive memos explaining changes, uncertainty, and questions. At times, I listened to some of the transcripts again to remind myself of a given participant’s tone of voice. This step re-occurred several times. I kept backups of each coding session in case I wanted to return to a previous coding hierarchy. I re-read the coded transcripts for each discursive technique, then each experience code. I made adjustments and noted my reasoning. The coding hierarchy that resulted included the codes listed in Table 3.2. (Note: The DA codes were simplified once more when writing up Chapter 4; these codes are indicated in parentheses in Table 3.2.) 6. I printed the transcripts with all the codes. I read through them and began writing general themes on sticky-notes and arranged them on my desk. Moving the sticky-notes into different groups, logical patterns began to emerge. As the patterns emerged, I ran different queries in Atlas.ti in which I conflated some of the codes and, with Boolean operators, located co- occurrences of discursive techniques and experience themes. I arranged the sticky notes again as I detected co-occurrences. 7. I combed through the transcripts once more to locate other possible quotes that may have escaped the computer generated lists. 8. The patterns that emerged is reported in Chapter 4, research findings. 64 Discourse Analysis Experiences Gee_discourses (DC) Gee _figured (FW) Gee _intertext (IN) Gee _situate (SI) Gee _style (SLG) ACADEMIA-HOME ACADEMIA-WORK AH-HA COHORT ID: DOCTORAL STUDENT ID: RESEARCHER EMOTIONAL MASTER'S METHODOLOGY ONTOLOGY EPISTEMOLOGY PUBLICATION Potter_certain (CO) Potter_detail (DE) Potter_manip (FEM) Potter_proximity (PX) • Potter_proximity_cat_entitl • Potter_proximity_cons-corr • Potter_proximity_out_there • Potter_proximity_stake_conf • Potter_proximity_stake_innoc Potter_voice (OP) Table 3.2. Coding hierarchy. 3.5 Limitations and considerations There are many issues associated with qualitative interviews, transcription procedures, and analysis associated with face-to-face interviews remained— that of bracketing, the ever-changing nature of experience, interviewer-effects, individual versus collective emergence of categories, de-contextualization-re- contextualization, linguistic limits to expression, and the reconstitution of utterances into abstract categories. 3.5.1 Limitations in interview procedures and practice Taking a constructionist perspective, I view interviews as a process in which meaning is co-constructed between the interviewer, the interviewee, the context, and the medium of communication. Some might contend that interviews conducted purely at a distance through technological mediation might affect the quality of the data collected. However, I would argue that there was a consistency between the methodology and the research context. The participants in this project were studying primarily at a distance with the exception of one mandatory, week-long face-to-face meeting at the commencement of the program. They might meet up with their fellow 65 students at conferences or other events, but their asynchronous and synchronous course discussions, submission of assignments, and other course-related activities occur at a distance. The data for this study primarily came from semi-structured interviews conducted at a distance via telephone or online networking technologies permitting real-time conversations. Since the participants were online learners, use of such technologies for the interviews was congruent with how they were interacting with their professors and fellow learners on their doctoral courses. James and Busher (2009) suggest: “Whether research is conducted in sight or on site, the methodology has to be consistent with the integrity of the research topic and context” (p. 39). Adobe Connect was the same system that the participants used in their online seminars for their courses. Therefore, it appeared to be a natural choice for this study. The Livescribe pen was, with the exception of the face-to-face interview unnoticeable and unobtrusive. Sometimes qualitative researchers, whilst attempting to bracket their own opinions and knowledge of experiences, use interview methods in order to elicit descriptions of the participants’ experiences that are recorded and transcribed directly and as accurately as possible without interpretation (Dall’Alba, 2000). Bracketing the researcher’s preconceptions and preventing the participant from pre-reflective work can be very difficult (Kelly, 2002, Kvale, 1995). As per constructionist tendencies, the viewpoints of a researcher or participant on a given topic at a given time is formed through interaction between the individual and surrounding phenomena, the individual and her/his prior-experience, the individual and his/her socio-cultural origins, and the individual and the language s/he uses to express her/his descriptions. The interview itself is co-constructed with the participant (Mayam, 2009). The participant’s description of her/his experiences may be a product of discourse within the interview as participants strive to provide accounts that are appropriate to the interview situation or that meet the desires of the interviewer (Fleming, 1986; Säljö, 1997). With this understanding of the constitutive nature of the research interview, it can be challenging to untangle the relationship between discursive practices and that being discussed in the interview. 66 Interviews can take place on two levels: the interpersonal contact between the interviewer and the participant and at a metacognitive level in which the participant recounts her/his awareness of an experience (also see Fleming, 1986; Richardson, 1999). In some cases, it might be helpful within the context of the co-constructed interaction, for the researcher to share her/his own experiences. However, “leading too much” can influence the participants’ responses (Bowden, 2000). As such, it is useful to record and transcribe anything researcher discloses during the interview as well as that of the participants. I attempted to balance the flow of conversation whilst covering all the questions I had planned to ask. And, I allowed the participants to digress during the interviews. Although I had asked explicitly about the participants’ troublesome experiences during the interviews, I did not set out to illicit utterances specifically coinciding with the specific quadrants in the SPC. Rather, my intention at the interview stage was to hear the participants’ stories about their doctoral experiences pertaining to various aspects of their identities both inside and outside their academic contexts. So, I tried to guide the participants to recount their experiences in their doctoral journeys with troublesome experiences being just another aspect of their experiences. I sensed that the students were quite candid. But, I was careful not to push the participants into discussions of potentially sensitive issues that would pit them against each other, their professors, or the administration of the university. I asked the participants to withhold names and I assured them that, in the final report, I would use pseudonyms and attempt to obscure details that might allow them to be identified. My being the administrator (non-faculty) for the Doctor of Education program may have affected the interviews by introducing some power issues; However, I also bore the identity of a fellow doctoral student. If anything, I felt very much one of them. I found myself struggling to withhold my engagement with their narratives, failing at times when as I admitted, “I have experienced that, too.” Once each interview was officially completed and I had shut off the recording devices, I would transition the participants back to their day’s activities. There were times when we would converse for an additional half hour. Some openly expressed having appreciated discussing their doctoral experiences. 67 3.5.2 Limitations of the technology used during the interview In this study the interviews were conducted primarily at a distance using similar technologies to those that the participants were using in their doctoral programs. Seventeen of the interviews were conducted through Adobe Connect, one through a mobile telephone, and one face-to-face. Having two alternative-format interviews, face-to-face and mobile, allowed a comparison of the interview process via different media. (The mode, speech, remained unchanged.) The face-to-face interviewee, a Business student was physically present at one of the University’s regional offices in order to attend her candidacy (confirmation) exam. As such, a face-to-face interview was appropriate. The face-to-face interview felt more intimate. It was more animated; however, the participant was, herself, lively and animated. So, it is difficult to determine whether the tone of the interview was related to the participant’s personality or if it was an effect of the face-to-face medium. I was not able to study my own body language to ascertain how I may have influenced the face-to-face interview, but I was aware of my actions during the interview. In particular, I would nod and change facial expressions in order to encourage the participant to continue or to indicate whether I understood. Online, I would say “uh-huh” and “yes” to achieve similar effects. The mobile interview suffered from breaks in the cellular connection and distracting noises. So, I did not indulge in asking additional questions. This resulted in a shorter interview (approximately 30 minutes instead of 45 minutes) with fewer digressions from the interview schedule. It is unclear if my verbal prompts for continuation and understanding were effective. But, there were times when I had to ask the mobile participant to repeat some statements. The resulting data did not appear substantially different. I did not detect obvious characteristics that would make the face-to-face transcript stand out as different from the others. The mobile interview was difficult to hear which resulted in a transcription with ellipses and parenthetical notes when the recording was unclear. Nonetheless, the interviews followed the same protocols and all the same questions on the schedule were asked. The participants, regardless of the medium, participated in a “live” conversation replete with hesitations, reflective moments, self-corrections (such as grammar and word choice). 68 3.5.3 Limitations in transcription procedures and practice Analysis of interview transcripts is fraught with its own series of questions. The act of transcription is viewed by some as an act of translation and de- contextualization inevitably resulting in loss of meaning (Dortins, 2002; Kvale, 1996). Dortins (2002) argues that it is also a process of re-contextualization leaving the door open to different interpretations during analysis. The concepts of transduction and remediation may also be raised with regard to the transcription process (Haythornthwaite & Andrews, 2011). Transduction involves the change from one type of interaction (mode) to another; remediation involves the change from one means of transmission (medium, channel) to another. For example, the act of recording a live interview would be an example of remediation because the medium has changed from live to electronic, but the mode (speech) remains the same. Transcribing the recording, however, is an example of transduction because the mode is shifting from auditory to print. Haythornthwaite & Andrews (2011) suggest that it is important to recognize these processes as they may affect how individuals interpret the content of the interaction. It is possible that individuals may associate different prior experiences and knowledge with different modes and media resulting in different understanding of the interviews. I am not able to comment on how remediation (via transcription) may have altered my interpretation of the interviews. 3.5.4 Limitations in analysis As with the design of the research project and the co-constructed nature of the interview, the structure that emerges from the data is highly contingent upon the researcher’s interaction with the data (Åkerlind, 2005; Richardson, 1999). Therefore, the faithfulness in representing the experiences of the participants is mediated through these interactions and limited by the researcher’s ability to linguistically describe or otherwise depict the participants’ stories. Like phenomenographic researchers I focussed on exploring the variation of experience at the collective level (Booth, 2008; Trigwell, 2000) in order to create a snapshot of experiences of a group of individuals at a single point in time. Therefore, some critics would argue that the faithfulness of representation is also problematic because of de-contextualization and reductionism (Kelly, 2002). To a degree it is a reductionist process. Meanings 69 can be altered in the process of analysis by further removal of the participants’ descriptions from the context of the interview as well as by the reduction of complex, unique expressions to abstract, generalized categories (Dortins, 2002; Kelly, 2002; Säljö, 1997). I attempted to mitigate this problem by working iteratively between the categories and the original transcripts (Åkerlind, 2005). Booth (2008) describes this as “an issue of working with wholes and parts of wholes, de-contextualising and re-contextualising parts to form new wholes that tell a different story from the original whole” (p. 453). As such, I tried to balance a focus on individual participants against a tendency to drown individual voices within the crowd. I, too, sought a balance between the collective snapshot and faithfulness to individual voices. Additional limitations applied to the analysis. The resulting snapshot(s) of experience is a partial representation; they are comprised of parts of utterances from various individuals and reconstituted by the researcher into abstract constructs (Åkerlind, 2005; Booth, 2008). There is a variety of ways to represent the relationships between the variations in the ways of experiencing conceptions. The representations of the data might more accurately reflect the researcher’s way of experiencing the data than the participants’ ways of experiencing the described phenomenon. This raises questions as to the manner in which these relationships were discovered, described, and depicted. It also raises questions about the ability of the researcher to bracket his/her own preconceptions during the analysis phase (Kelly, 2002). 3.5.5 Trustworthiness and credibility Reliance upon interviewing and resultant descriptions of the participants’ experiences at the collective level present some interesting challenges with regard to trustworthiness and credibility. Issues of trustworthiness can arise at various levels of participation: the researcher’s awareness, the collective categories of description, and the participants’ level of awareness of their experiences (Collier-Reed, Ingerman, & Berglund, 2009). Within the qualitative research literature, authors variously discuss trustworthiness using the terms such as validity and reliability (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007; Guba & Lincoln, 2006). I will, however, use the terms trustworthiness, credibility and applicability of research outcomes. In doing so, Kvale’s (1999) classification of types of validity will be used to organise and discuss the main issues of 70 trustworthiness: in craftsmanship, as communicative practice, and as pragmatic application. 3.5.3.1 Trustworthiness in craftsmanship Craftsmanship refers to the quality in which a research project is designed, the data collected and analyzed, and the results disseminated. This is sometimes referred to as internal trustworthiness (Collier-Reed et. al., 2009). Kvale (1999) adds that craftsmanship involves the processes of checking, questioning, and theorizing; that is, the soundness of the research design and process is dependent on a researcher’s understanding of the topic and the methods. Ideally, a match between the goals, content, and methods can assist the researcher in assessing the appropriateness of sampling, interview settings, interview questions, level of detail in transcriptions, and analysis procedures. These decisions are related to dependability, accuracy, consistency, plausibility, fittingness, and corroboration (Cohen et. al., 2007; Creswell, 2009). Issues of intersubjectivity, to an extent, can be addressed through reflexivity (Sin, 2010) and the bracketing of preconceptions. Sandbergh (1997) argues that trustworthiness can be approached through interpretative awareness. Interpretative awareness requires that a researcher “demonstrate how s/he has dealt with his/her intentional relation to the individual’s conceptions being investigated” (p. 209). To accomplish this, Sandbergh (1997, p. 210) suggests the use of the processes of phenomenological reduction in which the researcher: • recognizes her/his orientation toward the research experience; • describes the interview data collected rather than attempt to explain it; • treats all data collected as equally significant; • tests different interpretations of the data throughout analysis; and • considers how the participant and the experience co-create each other and how the participant perceives and conceives of this process. In my attempt to develop interpretive awareness in this research, I used memoing extensively. This aided me to revisit my thoughts and decision during the iterative process of coding and typological analysis. 71 3.5.3.2 Trustworthiness as communicative practice Credibility in communicative practice is achieved through persuasive argument in which a researcher defends a position. In qualitative studies, this can be done at the level of the participants, the practitioners (consumers of research), the research team, and the research community (Kvale, 1999). Interpretive studies sometimes use member checking or peer debriefing in which the research participants are asked to review the research results and comment on the accuracy to which the results reflect their contributions and views (Åkerlind, 2005; Creswell, 2009). This can be problematic for two main reasons. Firstly, the participants’ understandings of their experiences can change over time after interview (Åkerlind, 2005). Secondly, in a collective representation of experience, an individual may not be able to recognize her/his contributions (Collier-Reed, et. al., 2009). Further, as per a social constructionist viewpoint, language represents experience imperfectly. As such, Sin (2010), drawing upon the work of Anderberg (2000), recommends asking participants to clarify the meaning of their utterances. Clarification can be sought immediately within the context of an interview or in subsequent communications with the participants. Some qualitative researchers recommend working with other researchers to verify the accuracy and comprehensiveness of their coding and categories. One method is through inter-rater reliability (IRR) (Collier-Reed, et. al, 2009; Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, Koole & Kappelman, 2006; Sandbergh, 1997). In IRR, two or more coders independently code a transcript or collection of transcripts and compare the results. The degree of agreement is often calculated as a percentage and disagreements may either be negotiated or left and recorded as disagreements. Sandburgh (1997) critiques this method for two main reasons. Firstly, the independent coders are unlikely to be fully aware of the researcher’s data collection, decision processes, and theoretical knowledge. Independent coders may not be aware of how the categories were constituted from the participants’ utterances (also see Collier-Reed, et. al, 2009). In some cases, an utterance may have contributed to the formation of more than one category. In other cases, only portions of an utterance may have been drawn upon in the formation of a category(s). Secondly, use of statistics to validate agreement amongst raters is incommensurate with interpretivist epistemology in general (also see Mayam, 2009). In any case, IRR 72 was not an available method during this research project as I was working independently. Dialogic reliability is another means of establishing trustworthiness (Bowden, 2000; Collier-Reed, et. al, 2009). It is most often used to discuss and critique data analysis. It can also be used to examine the underlying theory and procedures. Such procedures can alleviate concerns over bias in research conducted by a lone researcher in that it can enhance the possible ways of viewing the data. In contrast to IRR, dialogic reliability permits the researchers to explain and defend how the categories of description were constituted as well as their structural and referential relationships to each other. Because this research project is a doctoral thesis, I primarily rely upon my own judgement; however, I discuss my results with my supervisor and some of my fellow cohort-mates. Therefore, to a limited extent, I have used dialogic reliability to verify the logic of my classifications and procedures. 3.5.3.3 Trustworthiness as pragmatic application Kvale’s (1996) interest in what he called pragmatic validity connects research to the ability to use or apply the outcomes of research. This type of trustworthiness may be seen as complementary to a social constructionist perspective in that it recognizes research as a potential means of social transformation through exposure of taken-for-granted assumptions (Hacking, 1999). For Collier-Reed et. al. (2009) trustworthiness is tied to the purpose of the research and may take the forms of critical potential and performative potential—that is, the potential to raise awareness of problems, and the potential to transform those involved in the research including the participants, researchers, and those who might use the research. For example, the conclusions that emerge from the data collected in this study may inform researchers, practitioners, and learners of how doctoral learners perceive who they are and who they are becoming. Using such work, practitioners can, potentially, assist doctoral students in adjusting both to doctoral-level studies and to membership in the academic community. 3.6 Research ethics Research ethics had been granted from both Lancaster University and Athabasca University. All participants were provided with letters of consent 73 (Appendix A) and were informed that they could withdraw at any time. I reiterated the research ethics statements at the start of each interview. I did not use deception techniques and answered the participants’ questions about my research as honestly as I could. After the interviews had been transcribed, I changed each participant’s name to a pseudonym and worked with these names throughout analysis. The key to the identities of the participants was saved on a CD-rom and stored on my work computer along with all other thesis-related data. My work computer was protected with PGP encryption. After analysis was completed, the data was deleted from the hard-drive, the trash emptied, and the disk defragmented. The data was then housed on a secure server at my place of work. I also saved the original recordings on a CD-rom and stored it in a safety-deposit box at a bank. 1.7 Personal reflections I began this study with the intension of using phenomenography as the primary methodology. I wanted to explore how learners experienced identity positioning whilst engaged in doctoral studies. I rejected phenomenology because I felt it was too essentialist—that is, I do not fully support the idea that there is an essential way to experience doctoral studies. I liked phenomenography’s focus on descriptions of a limited number of variations of experience (Marton, 2000, Marton & Booth, 1997). However, using the SPC as a theoretical framework and having conducted the majority of my literature review prior to data collection, it came to my attention that this was not commensurate with the “emergence” of categories of description in the phenomenographic tradition. As a result, I simplified the lenses within the study. I decided to loosen the reigns of methodology to permit the SPC to be the main methodological device supported through discourse analysis and open coding. The SPC did not guide my coding directly. Rather, I followed the steps outlined above and tried to let the salient experiences of the participants to emerge. However, it is likely that the SPC played a more subconscious role my recognition of which experiences were salient. Nonetheless, I owe a debt to phenomenography and variation theory in shaping my approach, particularly with regard to the focus on descriptions of experience from a second-order perspective. 74 The use of more than one methodological approach enhanced the research. In this study, I used both open coding and discourse analysis. In this way, I was able to view the interview transcripts from different perspectives. These different perspectives mutually informed each other. The discourse analysis permitted a micro-view of the participants’ words and possibilities for what the words meant both within and beyond the context of the interview. The insights from the micro-view helped in understanding nuances in the participants’ expressions and how they could indicate identity positioning. Various authors have written about the co-constructed nature of interviews (Dall’Alba, 2000; Fleming, 1986, Olson, 2011, Säljö, 1997). Although the focus of the interviews in this study were on the participants’ descriptions of their experiences, the research design, including the schedule, the timing, the questions, the way the questions were asked, and the context of the interviews, was conceptualized and conducted by me, the researcher. At times, it can be difficult to know when a participant is striving to fulfil the needs of the research and his/her project or when a statement is newly emergent during the interview itself (Fleming, 1986; Säljö, 1997). It is important, then, for me as a researcher to be aware of the possibility that my interviews may result in a description of experience that may have occurred in the past, but may have been re-shaped within the context of the interview. As such, Sandbergh’s (1997) interpretive awareness became important in my own research experience. As a novice researcher, I found great value in questioning my role as the researcher and how my professional and student positions affected the study. Transparency in communicating one’s positions is important for the research participants as they determine whether or not they wish to participate in the study. Transparency is also important in communicating the results of a study for allowing the readers to ascertain possible bias as they construct their own insights from the results. The research ethics process, itself, asks researchers to question the potential for harm to the participants and reinforces a sense of respect for the participants during and after the investigation. To an extent, I was caught in my own learning threshold from which I emerged recognizing the value of transparency and the research ethics process. 75 3.8 Summary In this chapter, I have described the procedures, methods, and issues I considered in my planning, data collection, and analysis of the participants’ descriptions of their experiences of social positioning in networked learning. I have shown how the pilot study led to a streamlining of the interview and data analysis procedures. I closed by outlining some reflections on the limitations of online interviewing (e-research) and addressing these potential sources of bias. Chapter four provides a description of the results from the application of these methodologies and their associated methods. 76 Chapter 4: Research Findings “Master’s level studies are like the hors d’ouevres. They give a taste of the ideas and possibilities. Doctoral studies are like the entrée - they allow for a more complete work and for greater satisfaction” – Study Participant 4.1 Introduction This chapter offers an overview of the data collected and presents the data within the social positioning cycle (SPC) (adapted from Harré, 2010). Quotes have been selected to illustrate the participants’ experiences. The application of discourse analysis was used to support the interpretation of the quotations as examples of positioning. 4.2 Overview of the data collected 4.2.1 Survey: Demographics In total, 23 doctoral students from the Doctor of Education and Doctor of Business Administration programs participated in the initial survey (see Appendix B). The study involved students from 4 cohorts with start dates in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, respectively. Both programs are cohort-based and learners are encouraged to work together in groups, engage in peer editing, and participate in online discussions and presentations. Of the 23 survey respondents, 19 agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews (see Appendix C) conducted by cellular telephone, Adobe Connect synchronous communication software, and one was available for a face-to- face interview. Two students were living in the United States whilst 17 were living in Canada. Table 4.1 lists each participant’s name (pseudonym), program, and stage in program: • Early (E): 0-2 courses completed, • Mid (M): 3-6 courses completed, • Candidate (C): candidacy/confirmation completed, 77 • Late (L): writing up and/or preparing for final oral defence/viva. These codes will appear beside the name of each participant at the introduction of each quote presented in section 4.3 in which the results are described. Program Name Stage of program Code Education (n=15) Barry Early (E) Candace Early (E) George (mobile) Early (E) Maria Early (E) Brenda (Pilot 1) Mid (M) Denise Mid (M) Karen Mid (M) Nancy Mid (M) Sylvia Mid (M) Tom Mid (M) Bruce Candidate /Mid (C) Maureen Candidate/Mid (C) Betty Candidate (C) Peter Late (L) Tina Late (L) Business (n=4) Gina (face-to- face) Mid (M) Steve Mid (M) Vince Mid (M) Rob Candidate (C) Table 4.1. The participants. 78 The students had self-identified as being amongst the following list of occupations (Table 4.2): Field Type Number Education Post-secondary professor, lecturer, instructor 5 Learning designer 4 Teacher (K-12) 2 Health Care Nurse 1 Educator 1 Management Director (post-secondary) 1 Executive officer 2 Accountant 1 Other Writer 1 Not indicated N/A 1 Total 19 Table 4.2. Occupation of interview participants. Age ranges of the interview participants were mostly in the 40 to 49 and 50 to 59 ranges (Figure 4.1). Statistics on doctoral students in Canada show that the average age of education students at graduation is 46 while the average age for professional fields in general is 40 (Gluszynski & Peters, 2005). Figure 4.1. Age range of interview participants 79 Female participants outnumbered males at, roughly, a 60-40 split, (Figure 4.2). Statistics on doctoral students in Canada show that approximately 65% of education students are female compared with 38% female in other professional fields of study (Gluszynski & Peters, 2005). Figure 4.2. Gender of interview participants Marital status was included because of its relevance to potential sources of support and context. Figure 4.3 shows that the majority of the respondents (63%) were married or in common law relationships. This appears similar to Gluszynski & Peters (2005) statistics indicating 67% of Canadian doctoral graduates as married (and/or common law). 80 Figure 4.3. Marital status of interview participants 4.2.2 Survey: Perception of influence of doctoral studies In addition to the collection of demographic data, the survey was also used to explore whether or not the students saw their doctoral experiences had affected their lives. At this point, the students had only a very brief introduction to the study via the letter of consent and the survey itself (see Appendices A and B). Figure 4.4 shows that the area in which the students saw the greatest impact was upon their level of confidence (14 respondents). 81 Figure 4.4. Areas of perceived impact. The next greatest area of perceived impact was in their academic ability (10 respondents). Together, the categories, view of work self and professional relationships was indicated by 17 respondents of the respondents as a significant influence in their lives. The areas least perceived to have been affected by doctoral-level studies included personal relationships (2 respondents), preference for field of study (2 respondents), values (2 respondents), and ability to think critically (4 respondents). 82 4.3 Analysis 4.3.1. Coding After all the interviews were transcribed, each transcript was read three times from start to finish. I made preliminary memos about potential patterns and interesting observations. Then, using Atlas-ti, I analysed the transcripts for discursive techniques (Table 4.3). These techniques were helpful in attempting to understand the participants’ sub-liminal appropriations of societal discourses and their self-talk. Subliminal appropriations are ideas that an individual has absorbed from social discourses of which s/he may not be fully aware (from Q2 of the social positioning cycle, see p. 30). Table 4.3. Discursive techniques Indicators (Potter, 1996) Indicators (Gee, 2010) 1. Confidence (CO) 6. Situatedness (SI) 2. Proximity (PX) 7. Social languages and grammars (SLG) 3. Others’ positions (OP) 8. Figured worlds (FW) 4. Fact/event manipulation (FEM) 9. Intertextuality (IN) 5. Detail (DE) 10. Discourse and conversations (DC) As the patterns emerged from memoing and manipulation of sticky notes on my desk, I ran a variety of queries in Atlas.ti allowing me to quickly access quotes corresponding to the co-occurrences. Finally, I re-read the transcripts again to locate other possible quotes that may have escaped the computer generated output. 4.3.2. The social positioning cycle as an organizational framework In the following sections, the learners’ descriptions of their experiences will be organized by collective: general society, friends and family, professional, 83 cohort, academic department, and the academy. The SPC will be used to provide a visual summary of the learners’ descriptions of experience for each collective. New or retrenched identity enacted, visible Associated discourse analysis techniques: • Positioning (PX) • Situatedness (SI) • Social languages and grammars (SLG) • Fact and event manipulation (FEM) Social values, practices, mythologies , discourses Awareness, liminality, decisions Associated discourse analysis techniques: • Confidence (CO) • Detail (DE) Appropriated, experienced, observed discourses Associated discourse analysis techniques: • Others’ positions (OP) • Intertextuality (IN) • Figured worlds (FW) • Discourse and conversations (DC) • Detail (DE) Figure 4.6. The social positioning cycle with discourse analysis techniques (adapted from Harré, 2010). The cycle has two axes: manifestation (public versus private expression) and location (relational space, people as locations for speech acts). As per figure 4.6, crossing the axes results in four quadrants: • Quadrant 1 (Q1) refers to the pool of practices and discourses to which an individual is exposed as he/she interacts within a given collective. Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Private Location Collective Individual 84 • Quadrant 2 (Q2) refers to those practices and discourses that an individual might appropriate, observe, or experience (overtly or subliminally). • Quadrant 3 (Q3) is the internal space for positioning work. This is the area in which the learner evaluates questions, rationalizes, and considers that which s/he has become aware of in Q2. • Quadrant 4 (Q4) is the location in which an individual publicly enacts, publishes, or expresses the decisions and identities that have resulted from the positioning work in Q3. These expressions may, in turn, influence the pool of practices and discourses in Q1. As will be seen in the subsequent section, I refrained from placing quotations in Q1. Empirically, in this study, I am relying upon second-order observations. As such, I can only access the learners’ descriptions of their experience. I was not able to directly observe the pool of practices and discourses directly. I can only report on the learners’ observations of the pools to which they refer (Q2). The discursive techniques aided me in understanding the participants’ descriptions of experience and the work that they were doing to understand and alter their positions. As analysis proceeded and quotes sorted into the various quadrants, patterns emerged in which discursive techniques appeared generally associated with specific quadrants (see figure 4.6 above). Detail (DE) and fact-event manipulation (FEM) were difficult to consistently place within a single quadrant. It was unclear if the recollection of details or manipulation of information was directed towards me, the interviewer, or if this represented observations or opinions of the learners’ experiences. 85 4.3 Interview responses illustrating social positioning The descriptions and quotes that appear in this section are arranged according to the main collectives that were discussed during the interviews: general society, friends and family, professional, cohort, academic department, and academia. Figures 4.6 to 4.11 provide a visual representation of the learners’ descriptions that illustrate the variations in which the study participants (individually and collectively) described their experiences. Codes indicating each speaker’s stage in their program (Table 4.1) as well as occurrences of relevant discursive techniques (Table 4.3) have been integrated into the quotations. Underlined portions of the quotations indicate key statements during analysis. To the right of each quotation, there is a brief description of how the participants appear to position themselves through their descriptions. 86 4.3.1 Positioning within general society Within this context, the main discourses that the participants described as troublesome and transformative pertain to the value of doctoral studies, how one should contribute to society, and how one should behave in society at particular ages. Reinforced value on serving society o choosing to teach Increased sense of understanding society o teaching as means of perpetuating understanding amongst people Appreciation of others in society o increased interaction and sharing ideas o critiquing ideas Rejection/adoption of age myths o decision to persist in doctoral studies Changing practices and perspectives o moving children to private school Values Practices Mythologies Discourses Sensing: o anxiety Questioning o reasons for study o benefits of study (social and personal) o studying after 50 years of age o others’ behaviours / reactions o information circulating in the media Observed practices and values: Usefulness of doctoral studies o status o intelligence o practicality Expected behaviours at certain ages Figure 4.7. Summary of positioning within general society Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Private Location Collective Individual 87 The usefulness of doctoral studies As Brenda recounts a conversation, she describes how doctoral studies contribute to her life in expanding her ability to think more critically and carefully. She expresses anxiety (Q3) about the perceived lack of usefulness of doctoral studies (Q2), but also indicates how she applies her newfound critical skills. Quotation Positioning as Brenda (M): When I first got accepted to the program, I remember talking to somebody about the process of going back to school. And that person said to me, "What? You're not smart enough already? You're going back to school to become smarter?" (FW, OP) And, it was a bit of a—it stung a little bit. But, I thought, "Oh, I'm trying not to be boastful or, you know, a smartass" (PX) . . . So, then what's the difference between [the master’s] and doctoral studies? . . . just more conscious, more thoughtful, more reflective about applying those critical skills and critical edge (SI). So, it makes me wonder what we mean by "smarter". Do you know more stuff? Do you do more things? I suppose (CO). Humble Intelligent Brenda (M): That idea that, you know, that you can write an entire research thesis/dissertation on some tiny—to everyone else— meaningless thing (OP, DC). And . . . I get some anxiety about that. You don't want to be the one who wrote their dissertation on garbage collection (FEM). Useful Brenda (M): I think there's an assumption that you're really specializing (OP). So, you're focusing in on a tiny, esoteric area of interest. And, that's true to some extent (PX) . . . But, there's also a more expansive side to it (SI) . . . while you're drilling down, you're also widening the way you look at questions to capture the essence or all the possible permutations of that topic. Specialized, but useful 88 Steve goes a step further in his analysis in suggesting that greater understanding of the world (Q4) can have a positive impact upon society (Q1). Quotation Positioning as Steve (M): And, so I think I'm gaining that [general studies] in the doctoral program as well as at a greater level, too, (SI) because of all the various theories that in business come primarily from, you know, the social sciences, which are about living, about life, about people particularly in organizations, in groups and interactions (IN) . . . But, the more people that have that general perspective and more of a reflective attitude, I think, the more of those types of people you have in an organization or in society the better (DC). Understanding society; reflective Barry indicates some struggle (Q3) with the status others might attribute to those with higher education (Q2). But, he also suggests that higher-level studies can increase one’s voice and agency (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Barry (E): In some ways, you know, it is an unfortunate aspect of our society in general (PX). It's not necessarily that I am now more educated after only one year in the program, but being in the program—being someone who is pursuing a doctoral degree gives you more status. And, that's not in a—not in a negative sense. And, it is not of a desire for status, but you are seen as someone whose opinion matters (OP). Humble (non- status seeking); having a voice; respected Enhanced understanding of the world The participants described the evaluative work (Q3) they did as they began to question the values and practices that they had observed (Q2). In Sylvia’s case, she examines herself and what she thinks she knows (Q3). And, she sees herself changing (Q4). 89 Quotation Positioning as Sylvia (M): Yes. And, I'm totally confused right now (CO) . . . Well, I look at what we know or what we think we know, and then the theories don't always explain what's happening . . . There's certainly no universal theories (FW). And, there's such a difference between kind of concrete day-to-day knowledge, and beliefs and belief systems and even though belief systems aren't necessarily something that you know (IN). Truth-seeking Sylvia (M): Well, when I think about what I know—if someone says to me, "You must know a lot" (OP). I don't think I do. I know a very little bit about a very specific part of [type of] education. But, I see trends and I see patterns much more broadly than I did before (SI). Seeing trends; humble Karen provides a more concrete example of how her behaviour has changed. She more closely scrutinizes information (Q3), and she makes visible changes in her family life by moving her children to a private school (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Karen (M): I think I read, say like a newspaper (IN), for example, if they have backed up their point of view with research. I'm a bit more critical of accepting the research without thinking about it (SI). Critical Karen (M): Alright, here's another complete, complete off the wall change that has been linked to my doctoral studies— I've taken my kids out of public schooling and put them into private schooling and that is something I thought about, but not really considered (PX). And, then in [course number] . . . we spent quite a lot of time talking about private schooling just because there's a bunch of us in my cohort that have kids . . . it really helped me think about how the education system is run in this country and how they base all their objective testing (SI). Critical (with physically observable change) 90 Age discourses Some of the participants described their evaluations (Q2) of the social discourses about age-related roles and behaviours. Maria questions certain “myths” (Q2) in light of her own life choices. Quotation Positioning as Maria (E): . . . I think that we sort of have as a society bought into that myth of 'freedom-55', and we're not supposed to work past 55 (DC). And, I think that's crazy (FEM) . . . if I look logically that seems insane to me to be doing a doctorate at age [50-59] (PX). Unusual; older Both Steve and Tina discuss shifts in perspectives as people age. Steve comments on shifts in political positions and how that might be related to his doctoral studies (Q3). Within the greater context of their interviews, these comments appear to serve a rationalization function for their decision to take on and persist in doctoral study (Q4). Nevertheless, rather than rejecting age- discourses, they locate themselves within the discourses. Quotation Positioning as Steve (M): I've had a few major, I guess a few major life events. So, I think my views have definitely shifted (SI). Yeah. And, part of it is just maybe getting older (PX). I'm almost 50 now . . . And, I find myself being more of a social liberal than I certainly was at 20 or 30 (DC, SI). Is that part of the doctoral program? Maybe it contributes to that. But, maybe also the other events in my life—(CO). Social liberal; experienced Tina (L): Well, I think that is part of being more well-read and I think that's true as we get older . . . I just think education just does that for you. It sort of opens windows or puts on a pair of glasses that you look at things differently (SI). Well-read; older; wiser 91 Understanding society & contributing back Peter describes his sense of connectedness (Q3) with other learners across Canada and attributes this to his doctoral experience. Quotation Positioning as Peter (L): I've learned how to work with people at a distance [through] online collaborative assignments. . . I have certainly got a way better appreciation about . . . the learning culture across Canada because I've had them [the cohort] to be able to talk to and . . . find out their life situation and why they got in and what they're doing and where they're going (PX). Peer; more informed The comments by Betty and Gina more strongly connect their doctoral programs with contributing back to the greater society (Q1). Quotation Positioning as Betty (C): I would say that the program is, um, trying to achieve having individuals in society that care about education . . . Critically think about the merits of [area of] education, the strategies used behind it . . . And, to create life-long learners along the way who . . . basically who can contribute to society in one way or another in terms of improving education in whatever sector (FW). Valuable; shaping others Gina (M): I've been, over the years, going down a path of a lot of self- reflection (SI) . . . And, frankly, I'm done making money for shareholders, and lining other people's pockets (FEM). I want to be doing something of value. And, working for one of the educational institutions in town, to me, adds value not only to me and my students, but to the community (PX). Valuable to community 92 4.3.2 Positioning amongst friends and family The most salient narratives in this context were related to how friends and family members reacted to the participants’ doctoral studies. Figure 4.8 provides a visual summary of the participants’ descriptions. Increased commitment to self Setting priorities leading to how one spends one’s time o reading, reflecting, conversing o technology enabling management of multiple priorities Control over information about one’s doctoral studies o scaffolding o simplification o withholding o humility o open communication Accepting support of others Becoming a role model Values Practices Mythologies Discourses Feeling alienated Examining priorities o time o activities o people o self Observed reactions of others to one’s doctoral studies o disinterest o rejection o lack of understanding o familiarity with academic identity o surprise o excitement o criticism o support o acceptance Figure 4.8. Summary of positioning amongst friends and family Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Individual Private Location Collective 93 Feelings of alienation The study participants described how they experience less engagement (interaction) with friends and family. Having time for everyone was a significant issue (Q3) that arose in some of the interviews. Quotation Positioning as Denise (M): Relationship-wise, on a personal level, I don't have the time that I had for relationships prior to starting—and that's caused some angst with some of my friends (OP). And, and that's, you know that's their problem, not mine (PX) . . . And, people are blaming it on my studies (OP). Distanced from others Nancy (M): I told myself that I was going to immerse myself in my studies as much as I can. And . . . I cloistered myself . . . I was losing my grip on reality at some point (FEM) because it was just too much . . . You know, I mean, academics really do that (FW). It's the emotional costs of academia. And . . . you're away from the social world . . . You feel that sense of alienation (PX). Distanced from others When the participants told friends and relatives about starting doctoral studies, they noted a range of reactions (Q2). Quotation Positioning as Denise (M): I think my younger brother was surprised. My older sister was just, "It's going to be too much work for you." My parents were quite excited about it. Then, I have siblings who live away and they were quite excited about it . . . Most of my friends were very supportive of me starting the program, and are still supportive. There are a few less happy, but they are the minority (OP, CO). Various Steve (M): I guess it would range from dumbfounded to, like "Why would you want to do that?" To, I guess interested. I don't know if I would say excited. I don't know—intrigued maybe. (OP, CO). Various; uncertain 94 Bruce (C): Most of my friends know exactly who I am. And, they go, "There you go. I hope you're having fun." . . . But, those that don't, "It's just—It's Bruce." . . . I have two sisters . . . My younger sister is a Dean of the [faculty] at a university. She has a master's degree. But, she dismisses me . . . It's unfortunate. Yeah. I have great difficulty with her. I don't quite know what it is. My mother-in-law doesn't quite understand it. But, she goes, "He's doing some schooling" . . . My kids are okay with it. I don't think they fully appreciate or understand what's involved. But, they're very supportive (OP, PX). Various Some participants noted that various friends and family members appeared to lack interest and comprehension of doctoral studies and research (Q2). Gina observed how her partner assumed he could not understand, so he didn’t try. This led her to an increased sense of alienation (Q3). She attempts to come to terms with this, but returns to the issue throughout her interview. Quotation Positioning as Gina (M): Oh, yeah . . . It's a very alienating process . . . In terms of you're now reading stuff that such a small percentage of the population reads or is interested in (FW). That you're already marginalizing yourself (PX). Because the people around you have no idea what you're talking about if they even choose to ask you what you're reading about (FEM). That most people assume right away like my partner . . . "Well, I probably won't understand it anyway, but what are you working on? (OP) . . . But, I realize now, it's them concerned with their own insecurities (PX). Alienated, but others have the problem Steve also comments on a general lack of support and interest (Q2) from family also causing anxiety (Q3). Quotation Positioning as Steve (M): And, even at home before my wife and I split up. And, she's got a master's degree in [field] . . . She said, "No. I do that [discuss theory] at work. I'm tired of that. I'm not going to do it at home." So, I don't have any friends that are that way inclined either (OP, PX). Alienated; alone 95 Setting priorities In order to address these issues, some participants describe sorting through their priorities and attempting to balance commitments (Q3). Technology-enhanced learning increased comfort in the integration of personal and academic aspects of their lives. In effect, studying by distance permitted Candace to manage multiple priorities (Q4). Karen describes a rather complex sorting of priorities and balancing of responsibilities (Q3). Her musings lead her to an acceptance of support and increased commitment to her studies. She notes her actions as providing examples for her children (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Gina (M): So, with two young children—when I started the program, I had a #-year old and a #-year old—I didn't have the ability to just read 10 articles a weekend (DE) . . . So, it was also an exercise in prioritization for me in terms of what actually is important to me (SI). Family as priority Bruce (C): It's probably if nothing else it's solidified what's important to me . . . You know, it's the idea that it reinforced my love of reading, of reflection, and wanting to sit down and talk with others (SI) . . . Friends and family as priority Quotation Positioning as Candace (E): I think a lot of that is because school is also very flexible. So, I don't actually have to miss, you know, 50th wedding anniversaries . . . So, when things are a little bit hectic if I'm absent for a little while, they're quite forgiving (OP). Flexible; multiple positions at once 96 Having set her priorities, Maria becomes increasingly committed to her own growth (Q4). Controlling information and managing relationships Reacting (Q3) to a sense of rejection, lack of understanding, and lack of support (Q2), some participants described withdrawing or withholding information about their studies (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Karen (M): I mean, when you're so intensely involved in something, it affects all aspects of your life. On a personal level, I've had to rely on my husband's support as well. And . . . [he] takes on more of the child care duties (DE) . . . So, it's definitely, I rely on him a lot. And, sometimes I worry that I'm so preoccupied with myself (CO). I ask him every now and again, "You would tell me if me doing this doctorate is a problem in our relationship." And, I let him know that if it was, he could—he can tell me that, and I would stop. 'Cause obviously my relationship is more important than my doctorate, I think in terms of my children, obviously, they get less of me because I study (PX). So, I think I struggle with that as a mother. But, I also think it's a very good role model for my daughters to see that learning is a life-long thing (PX). And, sometimes I worry that I just think that in order to make myself feel better (CO). But, I do think my kids see me studying, they see me organizing my life and how I read and my notes. I see that they take on some of that in their own homework and study. So, it's affected my personal life, but I think it's positive (SI). Role model; wife; mother Quotation Positioning as Maria (E): I've made it very clear that the rest of my life is my journey. . . . So, I'm doing this for me. And, I think like a lot of women, they've given up a lot for their families (DC). And, I feel I'm doing this for my family. And, I'm not really looking for approval from anybody else (CO, PX). Woman who has had to sacrifice; self as priority 97 Quotation Positioning as Sylvia (M): I've stopped telling people outside the school (SLG) that I'm even taking a doctorate. And, when I was in [country], the wives had this little dinner that somebody organized. And, so I went. And, part way through, one of the women actually whose sister-in-law I work with, she's a teacher, said that I was doing a doctorate. And, most of the women physically recoiled from me (FEM, DE). Rejected Gina (M): And, I remember someone . . . one of the professors in the program saying, "If people ask you about your research, don't tell them. Just say, 'It's going great.' If they ask a second question, give them one more sentence" (SLG) . . . because they really don't want to know (OP) . . . And, [the professor was] so right. I will say to people, "Yeah, it's going great. I've got this great, new topic." And, most people at that point go, "Oh good." . . . And, they don't ask again. It's done (OP). Yeah, I was surprised at just how isolating it would be. Isolated Rob (C): Oh, my family was—my parents were really happy. They're well educated . . . I really haven't told too many of my friends just because I don't think they, they understand what a doctoral program is (OP), what's involved with it. And, I would rather just keep that to myself (SLG) . . . Isolated Sylvia (M): My one brother just says, "Oh, you guys in Education. You just keep going to school." (FW) Okay. So, that's fine . . . Well, mom and dad are both gone. Dad would have been thrilled. Mom kind of . . . Other relatives that I've been in contact with, they're pleased (OP). And, they like the idea of it. But, they're not people I can discuss it with ( SLG). Isolated Some participants described trying to discuss their studies amongst friends and family whilst maintaining humility (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Rob (C): I mention just the general area that I'm studying because if I get into more of the details, a lot of friends and family tend to get lost or Humble; respectful 98 don't understand it (OP). Because it's kind of . . . it's at a higher level . . . I don't want to come across as demeaning them or as talking down to them if they're not really going to understand what I'm doing (SLG, PX). Brenda (M): You try to be as simple as possible as you watch their eyes glaze over (SLG, OP). And, it's not that I try to avoid that question, but I haven't made a big deal about it. You know, you just say that I'm going back to school. But, I'm not real comfortable with waving that flag around too much.(PX). Humble; approachable Other participants described using techniques such as scaffolding, exemplification, and increasing clarification as social situations unfold (Q4). These techniques appear to help the participants co-occupy (co-location) social locations by bridging gaps in understanding. Quotation Positioning as Candace (E): Sometimes if they don't really know what it means (OP), the only extra clarification I say is it's basically the highest qualification in this field. And, that makes sense to them (SLG). Co-locating Tom (M): Probably pretty generally. I'll say "[type of] education." And, then, they want to know what that is and what that means (OP). That's usually as far as it goes. Unless I’m talking to somebody who has been involved in higher education, then I talk at kind of the next level. . . (DE, SLG) Co-locating Peter (L): A lot of people are curious, "What are you doing?" I tell them I'm doing a doctorate in [field of education] and, you know, and I'll often add on, "I'm trying to design learning in places like Facebook." And, everybody goes, "Oh, okay. That makes sense." . . . But, I frame it in a way that they understand it in their own lives. And, they go, "Oh, okay. That's understandable." (OP, SLG). Co-locating Barry (E): I say I'm studying [field] . . . And, then I [go into detail], if Co-locating 99 it's usually with family members, they have some background already (SLG) . . . it doesn't usually take a lot of explaining. I think that they immediately sort of jump to, "Oh, you're going to be a professor like your dad." (OP) And, that's close enough for me. I don't usually try and go too deeply into the distinctions between [kinds of] education and things like that (SLG). Although there were many stories of negative reactions, some participants also detected high levels of support from key individuals in the family or friend-circles—especially those who share in understanding the doctoral experience (Q2). These stories appeared to correspond to less self-examination and less alienation than the more negative stories (Q3). In the interviews, these stories held a sense of comfort and acceptance of the learner as s/he moved into his/her doctoral studies. Quotation Positioning as Betty (C): I always had a lot of support from my husband . . . both my family and my in-laws have been very supportive of it (OP). And, I haven't noticed a huge change in my relationship with any of them. I know, my brother-in-law is also doing his PhD in Education at [university]. And, so we kind of talk about it, or you know, complain about it . . . or what have you, and have a competition as to who's going to defend first (PX, DE). Accepted; understood Peter (L): My family's—my dad's—sort of followed that route, although he never finished his doctorate. So, our family, in terms of my immediate family, sister and parent, have had that as an identifier (PX). Accepted; understood Vince (M): So, we [Vince and his wife] commiserate with each other with respect to our studies and our time commitment, which is kind of fun, too. . . And, now mutually [supportive] in our two doctorate roles. So, it's affected our relationship in terms of having less free time for one another, but probably a pretty good understanding of one another's priorities . . . So, we did actually do quite a bit in terms of sharing theory and looking at the whole approach of literature reviews and how do you write proposals and different things like that (PX, IN). Accepted; supported; understood 100 4.3.3 Positioning within the professional context Increased sense of agency o introducing new ideas and practices Synthesizing of academic and workplace knowledge Increased status o having a voice in decision making Job stability o promotion o prestige o worthiness Rejection / support o change jobs o strengthen network Values Practices Mythologies Discourses Craving for intellectual engagement Alienation, sense of becoming different Desire to influence the workplace Examining old practices and workplace identity Observations in the workplace: Few others with doctorates o hostility and sense of threat o Lack of understanding of doctoral work Others with doctorates o support network o Lack of alignment Traditional/expected practices and attitudes o non-adherence leading to conflict Figure 4.9. Summary of positioning within professional contexts Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Private Location Collective Individual 101 Alignment in the workplace For some participants, they note that there are few other doctoral students or professionals with doctorates in the workplace (Q2). As a result, some participants described craving a level of engagement that seemed lacking in their current workplace. Steve noted a sense of misalignment and lack of engagement with academically-inclined co-workers (Q3): Some participants described some misalignment in the workplace because of differing approaches and practices (Q2). Whilst Candace noticed a divide between her work and studies, Bruce and Nancy both recounted sensing a degree of conflict arising from disagreement with established practices. George senses that his colleagues struggle with his new identity (Q2). Quotation Positioning as Candace (E): And, I just my actual teaching job, a lot of it is done using online technologies . . . what I found was I love online learning. (PX) But, where I'm at, it's actually still quite new . . . So, that's why I sort of had to break out of what I call a traditional [health care] preparation for my position. And, I went into the education domain (SI). Isolated (changing practices) Bruce (C): And, so I've changed the way I see my classroom (SI). And, I know that when I look around and how I originally was teaching and how many of my peers teach. They they're trainers . . . And, so I've Isolated (changing practices) Quotation Positioning as Steve (M): Intellectual support, that would be tough because I would say that's what's lacking right now (OP) . . . But, I hope to have some— some of that intellectual conversations with some colleagues here . . . probably the doctoral faculty is in the minority here yet because I think the transition from a college to a university . . . But, it has been lacking in the past. Companies I've worked for in the last little while have been, not huge companies, so the [field] departments I managed have been small. So I didn't get any intellectual stimulation at work (PX, DE). Intellectually isolated 102 become somewhat of an anomaly. And, it's become—it's difficult for me at times (PX) . . . Nancy (M): And, so I want to take writing from like being a cognitive activity to being more of a skill-based activity—the teaching of the writing, that is (SI). And, that's going to result in a little bit of a conflict with the, the person who's, who's in charge of the writing program because he's like into Bloom (OP). And, I'm trying to get away from Bloom (PX). Isolated (changing practices) George (E): Yeah. A unique situation with the school . . . people knew me as a [professional designation] first, and then, you know, it's hard to accept change. I don't know (OP, PX). Isolated (changing field of study) There was, however, a range of acceptance from others in the workplace (Q2). In Karen’s case, she found a support network made up of like-minded colleagues (Q3). Status and influence Early in his doctoral experience, Barry appears unsure of the potential impact of his studies upon his professional life (Q4). Later in the interview, he suggests that increased status may be a vehicle to agency and promotion in the workplace especially in non-university institutions (Q4). He indicates struggling with this discourse of status, yet appears to embrace the shift in position (Q3). Quotation Positioning as Karen (M): From a work perspective, I've got some great colleagues who are also going through the doctoral process. So, we get together, and have a right moan, or compare, or people that complete, we celebrate their completion. And, they give us advice. So . . . I have that network at work which is great (PX). Member; peer 103 Brenda and Karen both described the interplay between their work and doctoral studies (Q3). Karen and Tina both elaborate on how this interplay affects her practice and acceptance in the workplace—in influencing students and colleagues (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Brenda (M): I was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to keep up with developments in the field . . . and stay on top of the literature (IN). And, I'm less concerned about that now (SI) . . . But, I think the feeling I've got is that I'm building on—as you read, you are really learning and synthesizing (SI, PX). . . And, maybe because I'm working in the same field that I'm studying in, things get more consolidated. Unstated /ambiguous; consolidating knowledge Quotation Positioning as Barry (E): I'd have to say, not much. The master's program did do that [change in thinking] for me in a big, big way (SI). Um, that was a major turning point in my life. Or, at least, a pivotal point where I really went from seeing myself in relatively junior kind of position within an institution to really shifting where I saw myself and my contributions (PX). And, then, you know subsequent to finishing the [master's], I have had some really good fortune to move through positions here at the [institution] and have a far more senior role. So, I don't think that for me the doctoral program would be sort of personally transformational . . . But, you know, it's also—keep in mind—that I'm only a year in (CO). I have not written my dissertation. And, this could well change. If you were to interview me in two or three years, I may have discovered a level and a transformation that I wasn't expecting (PX). Already having status; possible future positioning Barry (E): But, I derive much greater satisfaction from my work if I have a role in shaping what it is that I'm doing. And, I think that there's some stature that comes with having completed doctoral studies (FW) that helps you to be in a position like that . . . And, for some people, the idea of more and more people within the organization having doctoral credentials, it might be slightly threatening (OP, PX). Attaining status; threatening others 104 Karen (M): I also tie in my assignments with work projects, which really helps. And, I found that I'm more confident. I feel that I know more what I'm talking about. And, I'm a bit more articulate (CO). Increasing confidence Tina (L): Well, for example, in doing the [activity], in the lab . . . In an undergrad or even in my masters, I would have looked at providing the experience for the student . . . I would have just provided it. I would have done a few surveys after (DE). But, now I see that the act of providing the practice lab, the simulation practice lab. And, making the connections for the distance students at a doing-level and at a social- level I think I can go beyond that . . . And, also when I think about it— when I do it, I look at the literature that supports it [IN]. So, it just really widens my perspective (SI). Integrating knowledge Karen (M): I can see how much I benefited from structured, organized training [experienced in doctoral courses] (SI). And, I feel that other people could also benefit. I feel quite strongly that higher education professors often could benefit from some training in pedagogy and methods. That doesn't necessarily make me popular at work (PX). Unpopular; integrating practices Tina (L): I am in such a different place than I was in my undergrad, in my master's. I just have a—it gives me a vision. It gives me a pair of glasses that I see things from just totally different perspectives (SI). Again, it [pushes] me to do more, to help others to get to that point (PX). Influential; wise Three participants noted how their doctoral studies were connected to increased competence, knowledge, skills, and respect (Q4) Quotation Positioning as Gina (M): [Institution went through a change.] And, so I didn't get renewed. And, I just became a, part-time lecturer. So, I was very aware at that point that if I didn't get a doctorate, I wasn't going to be teaching there full-time (PX, DE). Worthy; knowledgeable Tom (M): At a professional level, I'm a faculty member in a field which Worthy; 105 doesn't really require a doctorate (SI) . . . But, it's helpful, professionally, as a faculty member to have a doctorate. Also, I have a fairly active consulting practice—again, there's sort of business interests in having a doctorate—can charge more, you can possibly get more clients and so on (FW). knowledgeable Karen (M): And, because I work at a college, and I already had a master's, um, the doctorate is the next level in terms of promotion (PX), etc. . . . I didn't want to get a second master's. A second master's wouldn't have the same clout, the same effect as getting a doctorate (FW). So, it's—it's really for career. Worthy; knowledgeable; status 106 4.3.4 Positioning within the doctoral cohort During the interviews, the doctoral cohort emerged as a significant location of positioning. Figure 4.10 provides a representation of the participants’ descriptions of their experience. Increased confidence o at similar stage of development o acceptance of differences o decreased defensiveness o willingness to share insecurities o increased collaboration and sharing o mutual support and sharing o acting and portraying self as leader Rejection/acceptance of cohort o seeking intellectual stimulation through reading and external sources o Future collaboration Values Practices Mythologies Discourses Fear of divulging o lack of knowledge o lack of intelligence o poor level of expression Seeking o reassurance o comfort o connection Observations of cohort behaviour: o defensiveness / openness o competition / collaboration o collegiality and supportiveness o frustration o differing prior education and experience o shallow discussions o Values: accountability, integrity Figure 4.10. Summary of positioning within the doctoral cohort Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Private Location Collective Individual 107 Comparing backgrounds The participants recount anecdotes illustrating their initial uncertainty of their position within the cohort (Q3). They observe backgrounds of their cohort- mates (Q2) and compare these backgrounds with their own (Q3). They also distinguish their cohort from other cohorts. Quotation Positioning as Maria (E): Well, the value of the cohort, I could see even from the shared experience in the summer . . . I think everybody comes with different expertise in different areas, different gaps (OP). And, we can all learn from each other’s different styles or different presentations, and their own uniqueness (FW). And, hopefully, develop trust and learn to share and help each other (PX). Equally experienced though different backgrounds Sylvia (M): I'm kind of envious (PX) of my—the colleagues and cohort who are [working] in a higher-education environment because it seems that they're just thinking that way all the time. They're thinking in terms of theories and trends and big pictures (OP). Lacking experience Sylvia (M): We're friendly and supportive, but not chummy (SLG). And, actually had a discussion about that last year. I think it was with [professor-1]. Because she's said—and [professor-2]'s mentioned, too— that we're very different from cohort [number]. And, cohort [number], I guess, is very chummy and they see each other a lot (OP) . . . But, we're not super close (SLG) . . . Part of it is because we're separated by distance. And, part of it is because we're not all Canadian. Apparently the [other] cohort is all Canadian (PX). Separated by distance, but cooperative; unique cohort Alignment with peers appeared to be a measure of progress and intellectual worthiness (Q3) but was accompanied by oscillating feelings of competence and incompetence. Quotation Positioning as Maria (E): I was a bit surprised that we were given an assignment Inadequate; 108 before the orientation. And, we had to work with a partner . . . And, you know you were able to sort of share some of the doubts and maybe what was ahead (PX). And, it's perhaps took away some of the fear. And, it kind of boosted confidence that you knew quite a bit. And, that you— they hadn't made a kind of a mistake by accepting you into the program (CO) . . . even sharing something like the imposter-syndrome that you feel, "Oh, my god. They've made a mistake in accepting me. What were they thinking?" You know, everybody sitting there feeling that a little bit. imposter Maria (E): One thing that I did notice when I was working with that younger student. . . I was getting frustrated with him because he was so into using the technology (PX) . . . And so, I think he thought I was a real dope in terms of the technology (OP) . . . And, I felt quite inadequate (PX). So, I was relieved to hear [Professor] say [technical solution] (OP) . . . And, I went, "Oh my god. Thank goodness. Something practical that I can—I don't have to take another degree in technology to get through this" (SI, CO). Adequate Sylvia (M): They've broadened my view of what should be studied . . . And, so they look at areas that I would have skipped if I had a choice because I’m not mathematical and statistical. And, they look at different aspects of learning that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of or considered (SI). Others as resources Bruce (C): To talk to your peers to get a sense of where they are. It helps—it certainly helped me to feel that I was on track relative to my peers. Whether the lot of us were on track was another question. But, most of us, I think, feeling that we were within a reasonable distance of each other (PX, OP). Adequate Being valued Value-themes (Q2) such as integrity, accountability, and leadership were significant for some participants. 109 Quotation Positioning as Maureen (C): I think they view me as an active person in the cohort, somebody that they can reach out to. Somebody that is very willing to share whatever as far as any types of tools that I may have . . . Yeah, and I think that they see me as somebody that has set a goal and is working really hard towards that goal. And, living the learning, right? (OP, FW). Having integrity Betty (C): I think different people in the cohort view me differently. I know one person views me as someone she can talk to, and someone that'll be supportive of her and will listen to her, and is there step-by- step along the way with her at all times. And, accountable . . . We don't communicate all that often, but when we do, it's really great. Okay. So, it's almost, they know I'm there in the periphery (OP, PX). Accountable; supportive Brenda (M): I did get the sense that in my last course that I'm a little privileged because I'm in this institution, you know in this same institution that we're studying in (PX, OP). So, then you should probably use that position with care and be helpful (SI). Accountable Gina (M): And, I've had to also pull back from that [leadership] role because I don't have to fight everybody else's fights for them (SI) . . . I really believe in justice and fairness (PX). And, when I see injustice, I want it changed . . . They know I'm outspoken. And, open. And, seemingly approachable (OP). Leader; just; approachable Early in her program, Candace notes the potential importance of developing collaborative relationships for future endeavours (Q3; potential for influence on Q1). 110 Bonding and support Early in his program, George indicates his uncertainty at the possibility of a collaborative bond amongst cohort members (Q2). Meanwhile, Maria chooses not to bond with another student (Q3). Some participants indicate feeling connected to their cohort by virtue of sharing a common experience (i.e., doctoral studies) (Q3) leading to support and sharing amongst the cohort (less sharing with non-cohort) (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Tom (M): Many of us are in the same boat (PX). They're, uh, professionals who are getting a doctorate. So, that's the main kind of support group. Talking about it with friends and family, they don't Similar Quotation Positioning as Candace (E): I think that, you know, relationships are developed between, you know, what could be future colleagues and partners in research once this program is over . . . One person in my cohort is already talking about . . . everybody can sort of write a chapter of a book or something and make a bigger contribution as a whole . . . (DE, OP). Colleague; peer Quotation Positioning as George (E): I already know there is some frustration from all of them (OP) . . . So, I don't know if some will drop out. But it'll be interesting to see how the cohort's developing; how the bonds are there with that community feeling. But, how much collaborative interaction we'll have will yet to be seen (CO). Uncertain Maria (E): So, it was a frustration with me to try to work with somebody from a completely different background and a completely different style than I had (SLG) . . . So, I decided that I certainly wasn't going to work with him if I could avoid it on any future seminars because he didn't listen (SI). Different; incompatible 111 really understand what it entails (OP). Nancy (M): Well, it has opened doors actually . . . because once the relationships develop— we're there supporting each other. And, we're also all in the same basket kind of thing. So we, we sympathize and, I don't know, maybe we understand each other's strengths (PX). Similar Brenda (M): You don't want to feel like you're boasting about something (PX). And, yet, it is so exciting. Maybe that's why it's so important—those connections with your cohort—because they know what that experience is like (PX). And, you can share that with them easily and openly (SLG). Similar Maureen (C): The cohort has provided the collegiality and the support from, from the beginning (OP). And, now, I'm finding where we may not always have . . . the accessibility . . . to the faculty or to the [acronym] department in general for the support we're looking for (PX), we're seeking that support from each other (SI) . . . It can be academic support . . . emotional support. It may be just collegiality also in that it's just nice to be able to talk to somebody else who's walking in the same shoes (PX). Similar; part of a team Candace (E): I really like the cohort model. When I did the master's it wasn't a cohort model (PX) . . . But, with the cohort, like I actually feel like I have relationships with these people (SI) . . . But, it's nice to just share the experience with somebody who's going through the same thing, who understands. Similar Tina (L): I really felt strongly about bringing the students together [face-to-face] for that one opportunity would really help bring them together online. And, it really worked . . . And, it kind of also was solidified and maybe it came about because of that first initial cohort meeting we had in the doctoral program (SI). . . It's great for a sense of connectedness (PX). And, again, I keep going back to my own research . . . there is a lot in the literature about students and students' dissatisfaction sometimes with strictly online because you feel so isolated and lonely and disconnected (IN). Similar; connected 112 Tom (M): Academically, it's kind of an interesting mix of the support of a collaborative group, but it's also competitive. And so you know people who are first to respond to a posting or who I'm told that our particular cohort is a bit unusual in how open we are with our work (OP). So, for example, we're at the point now where most of us post our completed assignments for others to read (SLG). Similar; collaborative; competitive Behavioural expectations Some participants express conceptions of how doctoral students should interact in academic discussions with regard to participation, academic integrity, and effort (Q2). Some carefully shape their online performance by taking time in drafting responses (Q4). The first two descriptions from Tina and Rob suggest how shifts in confidence may lead to changing behaviours (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Tina (L): Sometimes they'll talk . . . on discussion boards because I remember in the beginning it would take me an hour. I painstakingly wrote it out and rethought it and read what others wrote—for one posting (SLG). An hour. That's a long time . . . I got more confident as I went along (CO). Confident Rob (C): I started to get more comfortable. And, I started to post fairly extensive postings (CO). And, I read a lot of, a lot of additional readings. So, it's almost like people looked up to me as, for myself, as being a leader in the cohort (PX). Confident; leader Rob (C): Besides the [plagiarism], which was a big shocker, I was surprised about the—I thought at the doctoral level that, everybody would be putting 110% effort in . . . I thought the bottom [lazy] group would disappear once we got into the doctoral program (FW). And, that was a shocker to me that it didn't happen (SI) . . . It upset me . . . Now, mind you, from my perspective, I put in the effort because . . . I know that the more work you put in, hopefully later on it pays off when you start doing your dissertation (SI). Hard-worker 113 Gina, a business student, repeatedly discussed the troublesome nature of developing collegial practices within her cohort (Q3). Criticality, depth, and not knowing Some participants describe a general criticality, depth, collaboration, and non- confrontational discussion in the online forums (Q2). Brenda alludes to a general reluctance to challenge one another or to admit not knowing. There is difficulty in achieving a balance between challenging and ensuring smooth social interaction (Q3). Quotation Positioning as Brenda (M): People seem very open to sharing their ideas. Perhaps we are a polite group (CO) . . . there isn't ever much disagreeing going on. Lots of verifying and affirming. Once in a while people are brave enough to say "I don't get this can somebody help me out” (OP). Part of polite group Tom (M): And, so in some senses, I think it's done mostly as a, "Here's Collaborative; Quotation Positioning as Gina (M): It's an isolating process . . . And, I offered to read people's papers. I—we had a . . . student in the class. And, I corrected 2, 3, maybe 4 of his papers along the way. And, how many of my papers did he read? I'm going to give you a hint. Zero (FEM). So, again, it's partially a factor of me being a helper and a giver as opposed to a taker (PX). Caring; sharing Gina (M): Yeah, we have our own little sub-sects now . . . I thought there was going to be more collegiality, but it was more competitive than I realized. People just wanted—maybe it's because we're in a [Business]- degree, but there wasn't a lot of helping each other . . . And, someone posted something and you came back and asked them a question—not a criticism—but, "Clarify this." Or, "whichever, whatever." All of a sudden, they're like jumping down your throat . . . (OP) Truth-seeking; non-defensive; threatening to others 114 something that you guys might be able to learn from. And, I can learn from your comments back on it" (OP). And, it's very much collaborative. But there is an element of competitiveness, I think, in there, too. competitive Sylvia (M): In that I'll disagree with them a little more than they disagree with each other . . . I think sometimes they think I either ask tough questions or have a tough point of view (OP) . . . And, that's something I'm working on purposefully because it's something that I haven't been able to do a lot of (PX) . . . Sometimes I think they don't know quite how to take me (OP). Tough; wanting to challenge ideas; misunderstood Steve, a business student, elaborates on his struggle to achieve depth in discussion but which is met with defensiveness and conflict (Q2). He resorts to reading journal articles to achieve depth (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Steve: It's a small cohort and a wide range of interests . . . So, really, I'd say there's one person out of that cohort that I can identify with a little bit (PX) . . . So, unfortunately I don't find a lot of opportunity for those discussions in areas that interest me within that cohort. And, I find that some of them too are not very good at—well, some of them are . . . if you disagree with some of them, most of them get really upset (OP). Truth-seeker; rejected; self- sustaining Steve (M): I know some of them don't like me very much (OP). And, I think that's because I am very much—I do want to get to the bottom of things, I guess. I am much more questioning than most of them (PX) . . . And, some have taken that very poorly. In fact, one has . . . made it personal by name-calling when I have questioned some of his beliefs about a specific topic (PX). Steve (M): I would say that some of them get really upset when you don't agree with them. Others try really, really hard not to disagree with anybody (OP). So, as a result, I find a lot of the discussions that are supposed to happen to be very shallow . . . So, I find I get most of my intellectual stimulation, I guess, from the readings. I read a lot of journal articles and get it that way (PX, IN). 115 4.3.5 Positioning within the academic department During the interviews, the participants revealed some of the struggles they experienced whilst attempting to locate themselves within the academic department (figure 4.11). Increased confidence o sharing writing o expressing academic positions o aligning oneself o understanding methodology o passing performance measures Values Practices Mythologies Discourses Fear, shock, confusion of/from • not meeting standards • lacking ability • lack of control • lack of preparation • conflicting expectations Questioning ontology • alignment with academic positions • conflicting positions/expectations Questioning epistemology • certainty of knowing, how one knows, what one knows Evaluating self against measures • candidacy • defence (viva) Observations of the academic department: o expectations of behaviour o reading, discussion o relationships with professors o standards of performance Figure 4.11. Summary of positioning within the academic department Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Private Location Collective Individual 116 Anticipating departmental expectations Unclear academic standards of the academic department (Q2) is a source of troublesomeness for the participants. This difficulty appears related to the participants’ varying levels of confidence and their understanding of expected workloads and participation (Q3). Epistemology and ontology challenged participants to varying degrees. Two of the business students, in particular, recount various levels of apprehension as they began their doctoral studies. Whilst Vince expected a transition (Q3). Gina and Rob, both describe being more shocked at the beginning of their studies (Q3). New vocabulary, philosophical discussions, and producing academic writing appear to be troublesome areas challenging their prior identities as high-achievers (Q2). Rob adds, during his interview, how he emerged from this state of self-doubt (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Vince (M): I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I basically didn't understand a lot of that when I started. Again, not having the background. So, I don't think any surprises. (PX). (Somewhat ambiguous perspective.) Prepared Gina (M): I was ready to leave after the first three weeks. 'Cause I just thought, I don't understand any of this (CO) . . . In business school, the Initially unprepared Quotation Positioning as Denise (M): Working on the doctorate program has for the most part increased my self-confidence. Occasionally it decreases my self-esteem, especially as deadlines approach (CO). I think this may be common among students (OP). Similar to other students Steve (M): So far, I think it's pretty much what I expected: a lot of reading and participation in the online discussions (DC). I wouldn't say I have found it overly onerous. I have, I think I have estimated the time that I needed to put into it. And, uh, I've been able to do that. I have certainly enjoyed it so far (PX). Ready/suited to doctoral studies 117 first academic journal I think I opened was in my doctoral program (PX). And, so, that was a whole new world . . . I was a highest honours student in my undergrad and in my master's. Scholarships all the way through, top of the class (PX). And, all of a sudden, I was sitting there going, "I don't think I can do this" (CO). Rob (C): I was lost for the first week or two. I really questioned if I should be in it because when you're kind of out in the practitioner world and you do very well at your job, and you've performed well in any courses you've taken, you're really very confident in yourself (PX)— what I found is that when I went in the doctoral program, all of a sudden you're exposed to articles and readings that are a foreign language to you (SI). Initially unprepared Rob (C): But, now, I probably have a better understanding of research methodologies . . . because of doing more research in that area and having read more broadly and more deeply, in that area I have a much more rich and nuanced understanding of what that means (PX, SI). Adjusted There were varying reactions to new ideas. Nancy, for example, provides a somewhat ambiguous description of her journey through philosophical issues (Q3). Quotation Positioning as Nancy (M): I think being academically inclined (PX) . . . Because I do esteem that as an epistemology that is more grounded and more real than some of the things that people think they know . . . And, understanding those arguments, too. And, but then sort of like how do we know anything? And, Dr. [Name]'s class we took post-modernism and (?) the university or whatever. These articles by [writer]. And, they really do speak to the heart of universities in the sense of who's knowledge is of most worth? And, how that knowledge represents your identity. And, oh, it's an incredible maze . . . And, I think it has influenced my own epistemology and ontology (PX). Prepared, but adapting 118 Rob’s observation of the behaviours of academics (Q2) within the department help reduces anxiety (Q3) about admitting his own lack of knowledge (Q4). Being accepted and meeting standards Barry describes his feelings of acceptance (Q3) with the department based on the reaction of a former professor (Q2). Some participants described their attempts to enact appropriate behaviours and control over their own doctoral journeys (Q4). This drew attention to an underlying tension between control and conformity (Q3), and the need to balance potentially conflicting or overly high expectations (Q2). Quotation Positioning as Rob (C): Well first it would be just when you're dealing with paradigms, epistemologies, ontologies all of this new language . . . even through the courses, I found that some of the, you know, even the PhDs or whoever's teaching sometimes they say, "Sometimes we have to actually go back and just clarify because there's so many definitions and interpretations of each one." (OP) So, I'm not as concerned about something like that. But, definitely through the doctoral program, too, is that there's no problem saying you're not sure what this is, you have to check on it (PX, CO). Similar to academics; non- defensive Quotation Positioning as Barry (E): When I went for my orientation for the doctoral program, professors that I hadn't seen or spoken to in a few years remembered my name, remembered things about me. [Professor] came up and gave me a hug. You know, it was all those kinds of things (DE). There was a tremendous sense of community in that program without necessarily, you know, all being buddies and things like that. There was a real sense of belonging and acceptance that I really appreciated (PX). Accepted 119 Quotation Positioning as Maureen (C): I'm finding that sometimes we have control over how much we learn. But, some things, we don't have control over. And, so it's been really interesting learning new things and trying to stay ahead of what the expectations are as a doctoral student (FW) . . . Well, it's kind of nebulous, isn't it? (CO) Lacking control Denise (M): The other thing that sort of surprised me about the program is . . . I have to write a proposal that meets [professor's] requirements which may or may not be congruent with my supervisor's requirements and expectations (PX). In-between positions Maria (E): And, [invited doctoral student] seemed to talk in a very different language which was highly abstract (OP). And, when they bring in somebody like that who thinks at a different level than, I would think, the average doctoral student, and seems sort of revered by the profs, it's a little bit daunting (OP) . . . And, you feel that you're going to be held against sort of that high standard and part of you is saying, "Can I do it?" And, “Do I want to do it?” (CO) Un-prepared; below standard The participants express varying levels of confidence in their ability to meet expectations (Q3). For Betty, relationships with supervisors had the effect of destabilizing or building a sense of adequacy and alignment (Q3). Quotation Positioning as Betty (C): The ability for myself to do research came up [with the first supervisor]. And, again, I think that was because of suggestions that were given to me from the initial advisor indicating that I may need to take some courses from the master's program to get me up to speed. And, I really felt that I shouldn't have been accepted in the program if there was a feeling that I didn't have the necessary skills or experience to complete the program (PX). And, so there were definitely times that I felt, you know, "What am I doing? Am I not fit for this? Will I not be able to complete this?” (CO) . . . I was lucky enough to be able to find Initially inadequate; adequate in the eyes of a different supervisor 120 Belonging and alignment with the academic departments’ appear related to successful defence of candidacy and the oral defence (viva) (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Betty (C): At work, I was able to tell my director, that "Look. I'm done. It's passed. I'm a candidate now." And, I could sense that he was really happy that things had progressed finally in terms of that (OP). So, overall, it was just huge. And, since then, I've been a little bit more relaxed now, too (CO). Worthy Bruce (C): You need to ask me this question after I've withstood the rigor of the defense of my dissertation. Then, I will know—that will tell me if I'm a researcher. Because . . . I have a pretty good idea what I need to know to withstand the rigors of my defence. I need to know how . . . how I've arrived at the things I've arrived at through my data and my understanding of my data (CO). Uncertain; determined by performance against standards Tina (L): Well, I think that, well for example, the writing, the dissertation . . . I'm feeling more comfortable and more confident in my writing. Through all the writing that we've had to do for the assignments through the program. And, I just think that I approach it in a different way (CO, SI). Worthy someone to take me on. And, it's been really good ever since (SI). Gina (M): I mean very quickly, I started learning that the people who use the biggest words didn't actually know what they were saying (FEM). And, so as soon as I started learning that, I started becoming more and more interested in the authors that spoke in more plain language. And, found myself very much aligned with professors in the program that were more human (PX). Human; ordinary 121 4.3.6 Positioning within the academy Informing practice o expanding knowledge o tying knowledge to practice Increasing confidence o becoming a peer Expressing o careful arguments o commitment to values (such as academic integrity) Values Practices Mythologies Discourses New ideas / challenges o exploring, examining and weighing o increasing one’s repertoire New expectations o loss of confidence Questioning conflicting ideas o considering others’ views o possible critique of the masters in the field Questioning one’s place and self presentation Observations and preconceptions “academia”: o how academics behave and think o a safe-haven of thought o the academic mystique o infallibility Figure 4.12. Summary of positioning within the academy Conceptions of the academic world Some participants entered their doctoral studies with preconceptions of what “academia” means (Q2). Intertextuality (IN) and reference to figured worlds (FW) refer to acquired myths. Conventionalization On A pp ro pr ia tio n Transformation Pu bl ic at io n Manifestation Public Private Location Collective Individual 122 Quotation Positioning as Nancy (M): I think I've put a pretty high value on doctoral studies (PX) . . . Like it's really kind of a safe haven . . . There's, there's kind of a—I know there's like academic ambition, and there's different factors that make people corrupted. But, I see it as a less corrupted environment. You know, just because of the autonomy of the university professors (FW). Part of a “pure” endeavour Brenda (M): There's a really interesting aura, this doctoral business. You know, there's a mystique to it or a (FW)—there's a lot of things that I didn't understand the level of study before I started doing it. I really like it and I feel very at home in that environment (PX). Fitting into a mystique Steve (M): Well, one thing, I guess that has surprised me in reading one of the papers that I read by—it was three scholars that have written a lot of stuff together on this topic . . . And, they misrepresented a paper that they referenced. And, you know, I found that by looking up their reference to this article and reading the whole thing and they clearly, substantially misrepresented what that article was (IN) . . . Some that I have read are not very good papers—not written well, not argued well. Well, so, one of the things that I've—that's caught my attention [and] surprised me is that I guess, academia, like anything else, even doctoral researchers, people who have already achieved their doctorates—are not always right and make some mistakes, and they don't agree. So, I guess they shouldn't be put on a pedestal as, like some people might think (DC, FW). Challenging the academic- infallibility myth “Accepted” academic practices and discourses Tom, Gina, and Betty all describe their struggle to position themselves within the academic world (Q2). Betty and Tom appear more hesitant whilst Gina choses a pragmatic strategy (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Tom (M): And, in some ways, before I was very self-assured because I came in with a professional background, was quite assured of my Less assured in academic 123 knowledge and abilities based on my performance in the professional world (PX). And, now I'm kind of changing streams into this research world. And, it's a world where I'm more of the youngster, and I don't have the same experience. And, probably not as self-assured in this world as I was in the professional world (CO, PX). environment Betty (C): I would consider potentially teaching on the side. But, it's not—at this point, it's not something I want to consider yet fully. And, mostly because I'm still not sure what I think of research (CO) . . . So, I'll have a better idea in about a year as to whether I want to go the research front or if I want to do, go the more administrative front (CO). Uncertain Gina (M): Frankly, I think a lot of—it's still bullshit (FEM) . . . What I do know because I've been told by teachers that I can't sit on the fence— that I'm not allowed to be both someone who believes in positivist research but also believes in sense-making (DC). Well, sorry, but I do. I've got a foot in both camps (PX). Truth-seeking Gina (M): Oh, I've just jumped into the positivist camp for doing my dissertation. And, I will play that little game and do that. And, then, afterwards I will probably go over to discourse analysis and deal more with a lens that makes more sense to me (PX). I do not understand how anyone can say, "The truth is out there." Now, just go find it with your little quantitative methods (FEM, PX). Feigned / strategic position The participants note an increasing depth of understanding as they are exposed to more readings and as they think through their writing (Q3). Although Tom claims that his epistemological position has not shifted significantly, he exposes that his depth of understanding of the field and his epistemological position has changed. Denise and Steve also note an increased depth of understanding of their philosophical positions (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Tom (M): One of my master's programs was in theology, so we did a fair amount of that sort of thing. And, so it hasn't changed significantly I don't think . . . So, even though I teach in the area of business, we Acquiring academic /intellectual 124 spend a lot of time talking about: What is the purpose of business? What is its role in society? And, how do you know that? And, what is it grounded in? And so on. It was a part of my world before, I guess (SI). depth and increased self- understanding Tom (M): I did a paper on [theorist]. And, just probably read 2000 pages about [theorist] and some of his original work, translated (DE). And, so doing that kind of in-depth research, as opposed to doing, you know, firing off a paper at a master's level. I think that there is a greater depth of understanding (SI). (Note the contrast with the previous quote.) Acquiring academic /intellectual depth and increased self- understanding Steve (M): I have focused on the Academy of Management Review (IN). I've read a lot of papers from there to get a better understanding of the epistemology and where my, I guess, bias is or where my preference is (SI). Acquiring academic /intellectual depth and increased self- understanding Karen (M): Yeah, and if you asked me [about ontology and epistemology] two years ago, I'd have said, "What?" So, one thing is that I now know what they mean. And, I've spent a lot of time struggling with those two words in particular (PX) . . . But, now at the doctoral level, I've had a chance to look back and see how much the post- structuralist approach in my bachelor's degree influenced, has influenced the way that I think. And, know that post-structuralism is something that is a big part of me in how I think and how I approach research (SI). Acquiring academic /intellectual depth and increased self- understanding In addition to sensing an increased depth of understanding, Denise and Brenda also describe taking different approaches to reading and learning (Q4). Quotation Positioning as Denise (M): I think that my depth of understanding when I'm reading an article has increased (SI) . . . I would read 3 or 4 journal articles a week before I started the program (DE). But, I think that the program through the class discussions and through the assignments, I've really come to really read the journal articles differently (SI). In-depth reader Brenda (M): It wasn't very long ago, I had to write in the margins of Able to 125 the book that's what this means, that's what this means . . . And, if you asked me to articulate my personal philosophy, I'd grapple around and struggle (PX). articulate positions Brenda (M): Earlier on like when I was in my master's studies . . . the argument that you're trying to present or articulate in that writing is more intuitive than conscious (PX). And, now, I find myself being more conscious of the argument that I'm trying to build . . . Now, it's more nuanced . . . I think it's more of a conscious process (SI). Writer with sensitivity and nuanced expression Appreciation of the writing process Some participants describe an increased appreciation for the writing process (Q3). Peter notes a heightened sensitivity to the relationship between thinking, writing, research, and the literature review. Quotation Positioning as Peter (L): When I write, I clarify what I'm thinking. And, then, I re- write and re-write it. And, I go back and forth. And, in that, I end up finding a lot more support for my own definitions and stuff like that (PX) . . . And, now, because I'm writing more and . . . being questioned about it, I've had to set up a lot of explanations, which is the whole point (SI). Strong writer Peter (L): And, even after I did my [master’s] thesis, I didn't publish because I didn't understand that last part telling other people about what you're doing in researching. Nor did I really understand, even though I did a literature review, how you draw a literature review into what you're doing (PX). So, in other words, how you tie your current practice into, or your current research into past research (SI). User of writing as a tool (tie research to practice) Steve (M): Well, I guess initially because I knew it was part of an academic career, so. And, part of it is that you have to [publish] if you want to, uh, get a tenured professorship position (DC)—which is what my goal is. But, having started down this path, I really enjoy the knowledge acquisition. So, I really learn a lot from reading. And, that's User of writing as a tool (promotion); research as a tool for self- 126 probably my primary method of learning anyway. So, I am looking forward to doing research to, just to continue expanding my knowledge. I enjoy learning (PX). development Positioning through writing appears associated with growth in confidence and perceiving oneself as having an influence in the field (Q4, possible Q1). Quotation Positioning as Maureen (C): I have grown as a writer. I have grown with confidence too in that when I first started in the program, I would write something and would re-write it . . . I may go through the same process now. But, I'm more sure of what I'm saying. I know that I'm more assertive. I think that I'm growing in confidence when I first wrote a paper for publication, I was so nervous about it (CO, PX). Published; author; confident Maria (E): I can see the value of that now whereas perhaps when I finished my master's in [health care field] in [year], I wasn't really thinking like that when they said, "Oh, you need to publish" (OP). And, all of that. I thought, "Oh, gosh. That's so much work." You know, "Who needs that?" And, now, I think about it's about informing practice—especially when there's a whole new area like [field of] education and teaching online (SI). Influential in the field/practice Peter (L): I think that the big thing that my courses provided, or did for me was to connect me to the research community, to give me an understanding about the publishing and academic publishing system (DC). Confidence has been a huge one for me . . . I was a pretty confident person before. So, I wouldn't say that it's changed that. But, I'm confident in a different world, an academic world, a research world (CO). Connected to the academic community; peer In addition to increased confidence and connectedness, Peter describes a sense of acceptance associated with dissemination of research and contribution to the academic literature (Q4, possible Q1). 127 Positioning oneself as a peer Some participants appeared to struggle with how the academy appears to value different degrees (i.e., professional versus philosophical) as well as selected methodological techniques, and philosophical perspectives (Q3). Participating in online seminars with scholars in his field provided Bruce with an opportunity to measure his growth and see himself as becoming a peer, increasing his confidence (Q3). Quotation Positioning as Peter (L): At the end of my thesis for my master's, I had an application that I was unable to find a place to disseminate it besides my own school division (PX). I would say my doctorate experience allowed me to change that because one of the first things I did was actually publish some of that once I got into my doctorate (PX) . . . And, overtime, because in the last 6 months, I've still been writing. And, now I have a chapter [published] on it in a book. Influential; contributor Quotation Positioning as Betty (C): But, internally, I know that it's, um, an EdD and I know there are some differences between the two. So, I call myself someone who is pursuing their EdD, but other people call me someone that is pursuing their PhD (OP). . . But, [I am] definitely not a researcher (PX). Not at this stage. In the process of becoming; uncertain Gina (M): And, most of the market research is all in the positivist camp (IN). And, if you want to get published, or if you want to be recognized as anything within that field, then you've got to play their games (DC, OP) . . . So, I figured if I didn't understand their language, how could I possibly bring them over to understanding where my thinking was at? So, I figured, perhaps incorrectly, that it would be easier for me to learn their world first. And, then, fall into more of an interview process, open- ended qualitative discourse analysis, narrative analysis part later . . . (PX) Strategic positioning 128 Special cases involving perceived forms of academic dishonesty (or mistakes) (Q2) caused particular surprise (Q3), but appeared associated with a strengthening of values regarding academic practices (Q4). 4.4. Personal reflections Having re-examined and re-organized this data so many times and via differing methodologies (phenomenographic categories of description, open coding, discursive techniques, print-outs, and sticky notes on my desk), I have come to see these quotes in a multitude of ways. The various lenses I tried on led me to slightly different shades of interpretations. Yet, what remains clear to me is that the participants, like me, experienced identity positioning throughout the different social contexts of their lives. Although my personal situation was unique to me, their descriptions were very much familiar to me. I was fortunate to have had time away from work and reduced working hours during my doctoral studies, but I understood the need for setting priorities, of having to sacrifice some aspects of my life for successful completion of the degree. Although fairly confident myself, I understood their insecurities in Quotation Positioning as Bruce (C): Anyway, we had [speakers] from all across the country and the United States. . . And, then, to feel that you can comfortably stand on the same plank as them and have a conversation. To feel that it was a peer conversation (SI) . . . I began to realize that I could do it (CO) . . . [He sought clarification from a speaker] "Okay. What you're really saying from my perspective is X and Y and Z" . . . And, I got a response back that said I wasn't that far off (PX). Peer; confident Quotation Positioning as Rob (C): It was to an extent that I was shocked. And, it [plagiarism] occurred more than once, more than one individual. So, what I—from there it's, my values as far as ensuring that I give credit no matter what to who deserves it is so important. I've always felt that way even in work. I would never take credit for something that someone else did (PX). And, it just further enhanced that aspect when I saw that even at—I thought at the doctoral level that this would not happen. And, that kind of opened-up my eyes (SI). Having integrity 129 undertaking a doctoral degree. Stories of support and rejection also resonated. I, too, found myself withholding comments about doing a doctoral degree for fear of seeming out of reach or uncomfortably erudite amongst some of my non-academic acquaintances. And, I experienced varying levels of support. As part of my own preparation for doctoral studies, my husband made me promise to save some time for him. It was the best promise I had made. It ensured, ironically, on-going support from him and healthy distractions. I could share with him my thoughts and struggles with the doctoral process; his support was invaluable. I can see how this collection of quotations—even without additional discussion in the following chapter—can be a significant source of reflection for learners considering doctoral studies. 4.5. Summary In this chapter, I reported the descriptions of experience of 19 individual students’ at different stages in their doctoral journeys. Having surveyed and subsequently interviewed these students, I was able to organize their stories according to Harré’s social positioning cycle (SPC). I cannot claim to have depicted all the different ways of experiencing positioning. However, the selected quotes reflect salient issues that arose during the interviews with respect to the participants’ observations of their sense of their place within their 1) societal interactions, 2) friends and family, 3) professional lives, 4) cohort relationships, 5) academic department, and 6) the greater academy. The interpretation of the quotes was a messy, iterative process that required continual shifting between the transcripts, the codes, and the arrangement of sticky notes on my desk. It was also challenging to depict graphically the categories of description so that the resulting figures would convey the richness of the participants’ experiences. The sample quotations provide a snapshot of the participants’ collective experiences at the time of the interview. The quotes provide a starting point from which researchers and practitioners can reflect upon potentially troublesome experiences that may hinder or, with [care] create spaces for growth and successful completion of doctoral degrees. Chapter Five offers a discussion of the data, how it challenges or supports the literature, and how the findings might be used to enhance doctoral education. 130 Chapter 5: Discussion Needless to say, our stories did not emerge from an existential vacuum but rather were profoundly shaped by evolving circumstances in our everyday lives as doctoral students, teachers, researchers, and family members. We believe this is relevant to the field as a whole, and what is at stake is nothing less than doctoral students’ academic identities. — Simon-Maeda, Churchill & Cornwell, 2006, p. 18 5.1 Introduction From the perspective of the SPC, identity positioning is a discursive process in which individuals locate themselves relative to one another. The process may be stuttered, iterative, repetitive, halted, and confusing. Confrontation with alien or conflicting discourses may stimulate an awareness of difference. Some variations in experience may or may not come into awareness and may or may not cause lasting changes in the observer. Overt attempts to discern the sources, reasons, and means of integration or rejection of these variations can lead to liminality and self-questioning. The goal of the study was to explore how students experience identity positioning. One of the main goals was to identify those experiences that cause doctoral students to evaluate themselves in relation to other people around them. The research questions were as follows: 1. How do doctoral learners in NL programs describe identity positioning? 2. How do doctoral students in NL programs experience identity positioning in relation to their field of study (Education or Business)? This chapter will be divided into three main sections. The first section will discuss the demographics of the participants and the effects of the technology on the participants’ experiences during their doctoral studies. The second section will provide a observations of the learners’ experiences of identity positioning and how those observations are reflected in the literature. In the final section, the experiences described by the business students will be compared to those of the education students. 131 5.2 Demographics and technological setting All the participants in this study were located in North America (17 Canadians and 2 Americans) and studying by distance. The instructors were also distributed throughout Canada. There were 4 business students and 15 education students. The courses were offered primarily through a Moodle learning management system providing access to static resources and asynchronous discussion forums and Adobe Connect for synchronous discussions. 5.2.1 Age The majority of the participants were slightly older than the statistics for Canadian doctoral students. Nine students were in the 50-59 age range whilst six were in the 40-49 age range. The average age for Education doctoral students in Canada is 46 and other professional fields approximately 40 (Gluszynski & Peters, 2005). Of the participants, 18 of 19 were working. This might bear a relationship to the age difference of the research sample compared to the statistics. The participants had indicated a variety of reasons for undertaking doctoral studies: to advance their careers, to maintain faculty positions in light of institutional changes, for personal interest, and as a retirement option (distance teaching). If they had decided to attend more traditional doctoral programs, course scheduling and requirements for physical attendance could have impacted their professional lives. As Loxley and Seery (2011) observe, newer professional doctorates offer flexible alternatives for professionals and practitioners to maintain careers whilst engaging in advanced studies. This supports the work of other researchers who observe that education students, in particular, are often middle-aged and in mid-career (Costley & Lester, 2011; Kamler, 2008). Mid-career professionals may have motivations related to attaining higher positions professionally (Costley & Lester, 2011; Kamler, 2008), but also have lives replete with financial and familial responsibilities. So, it is reasonable that online doctoral programs would appeal to mature students in mid to late-career situations. During the interviews, societal age-discourses were the source of some tension and will be further discussed in section 5.4 below. 132 5.2.2 Technology and the doctoral student experience 5.2.2.1 Technology in academic environments The data from this study does not provide information on how the technological requirements for the two doctoral programs might have affected the participants’ decision to commence and persist through their programs nor does it offer insights regarding technological readiness. But, the participants did reflect upon how the technology-enhanced environment affected their interactions and confidence. For example, Maria, an early stage participant (enrolled in her first course) noted how she could not easily establish a rapport in order to select a like-minded project partner. It would be interesting to return to this participant to ask whether or not she was able to acquaint herself sufficiently with her cohort-mates as she engaged with them through subsequent course work online. Hypothetically, more frequent contact should enable individuals to discern patterns of behaviour and inconsistencies helping them to decode identities (Chayko, 2008). Sylvia (mid- stage) felt that her multi-national cohort was not as “chummy” as other cohorts because of differences in nationality as well as the greater physical distance between them (different continents). Peter (late stage), however, noted how he gained knowledge about people in other parts of the world due to his increased connections in the doctoral program. The above examples show a possible progression from early to middle to late stage experience and merits further study. It is possible that there was a distance-effect at work since there were few opportunities outside the one-week residentials for in-person meetings with instructors or cohort members. During the interviews, the learners, though located at a distance, indicated that they were in regular contact with each other. Maureen (candidate/mid-stage) recounts how she felt cohort members reached out to each other as their contact with faculty members waned after the courses were completed. She described contacting others for support as well as garnering comfort in knowing that others were going through similar experiences. The emphasis on the relational nature of online learning in NL theory (Ferreday, Hodgson, & Jones, 2006) appears in line with Maureen’s description of her emotional processes associated with her learning and development (i.e., increased comfort and feelings of being supported). NL appears to offer possibilities for relational activity; the seeking of emotional 133 connection is not necessarily confined to physical learning contexts (Bendixen & Rule, 2004; Hockey, 1994; Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., 2010). Although the participants in this study had selected attend a NL-based doctoral program, their comments suggest that they still needed interaction and support. Cohort- based NL programs may offer a type of community of practice or support network for students (Govender & Dunpath, 2011). However, it is also possible that in the absence of a cohort, learners may locate or create their own support networks. There is room for additional research on the online- doctoral experience—in both individual and cohort-based formats. 5.2.2.2 Technology and non-academic environments Many of the participants refer to alienation related to specialization of knowledge and others’ lack of understanding. This may reflect a widening gap between the students and their communities as noted by Holley and Gardner (2010). Whilst the above examples (in section 5.2.2.1) describe the cohort experience, it is also important to note that distance doctoral study has an impact upon other relationships. Within the interviews, there are narratives of alienation from friends, family, and professional contacts possibly related to the need for solitary time for study (such as “cloistering” oneself). Although doctoral students in traditional programs would also need study time, the networked environment may heighten the sense of aloneness. Yet, as one participant noted, the flexibility of distance study allows the possibility for continued interaction in the personal sphere since students have more control over their own schedules. This flexibility allows learners to attend family events, for example. Ivankova and Stick (2007) suggest that distance study frees students from the constraints of face-to-face study, allowing them to sort their priorities and balance their employment and other obligations with their study time. So, it is possible that taking a NL degree might enable learners to remain connected to their support networks. However, being rooted in multiple worlds semi-simultaneously may exacerbate gaps in beliefs and practices between the learners’ social, professional, and academic worlds. It is unclear whether NL learners will become more attuned to differences than learners in more traditional programs, nor is it clear if increasing gaps in practices would create more or less turmoil. 134 5.2.2.3 Technology and the learners Technological expertise also had an impact upon the learners’ confidence. This was not merely because some students had more advanced knowledge of current technologies than others. The semi-permanent nature of the online forums in learning management systems such as Moodle means that a learner’s voice, expression, and opinions are recorded to varying degrees of permanency. This may affect a learner’s willingness to participate. Doctoral students who perceive that there is a relationship with one’s writing and one’s identity (Barnacle & Mewburn, 2010; Hyland, 2002; Ivanič, 1998, Kamler, 2008) may experience anxiety in text-based communications (Kamler, 2008; Castelló, Iñesta, &Monero, 2009). In the interviews, Denise described how, early in her doctoral studies, she would spend an hour crafting a single forum response. She and other participants also described how they became increasingly confident in their writing and their online interactions as they progressed through their courses. These results tend to support the notion that individuals adapt to the networked medium and learn to position themselves (Savin-Badin & Sinclaire, 2007). This can also be viewed as an advantage of TEL environments in that learners can take time to craft their performances (Walther, Gay, & Hancock, 2005). Through time, several individuals appeared more comfortable and gradually became more confident in their writing. 5.4 Contexts of identity positioning Social positioning theoretically occurs by means of interaction and negotiation (Davies & Harré, 1990). As individuals interact discursively they take up different positions relative to others (Figure 5.1). In the sub-sections that follow, I will indicate in parentheses quadrants of the SPC that are relevant to the participants’ experiences in the six contexts. At the end of this section, I will summarize the experiences and the relevance of the SPC. 135 Figure 5.1. The social positioning cycle. In my literature search, I found that there was a paucity in literature on non- academic contexts and the doctoral experience. Yet, in this study, I found that the participants experienced identity positioning on multiple levels—not just the academic level. Hopwood (2010) also notes that “the current literature tends to focus on relationships grounded in encounters that take place during doctoral study, only incidentally acknowledging those that may predate the doctoral experience in references to the role of friends and family” (p. 107). Sweitzer (2008) notes a similar trend in the literature in that there is much written about student-advisor relationships, but that there is less acknowledgement of doctoral students’ relationships outside their academic programs. She goes on to suggest that external relationships can affect the doctoral students’ learning experiences as early as the first semester. Högskoleverket (2012), the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, reported that 35% of doctoral students surveyed responded that they had left their studies for social reasons. As learners approached graduation, they reported quitting for reasons of illness, family situation, inadequate supervision, unsatisfactory study environments, loss of motivation, and lack of funding. Through this research, I have come to appreciate the importance of the learners’ varied contexts of interaction upon their progress and their overall enjoyment during their studies. In the following sub-sections I discuss 136 the participants’ descriptions of their positioning experiences across contexts alongside current literature on the doctoral student experience. 5.4.1 General society context Tinto (1987) acknowledged the importance of membership in non-academic communities as well as interaction with others as important in student persistence at the undergraduate level, in particular. A study by Bourke, Holbrook, Lovat, and Farley (2004) also list non-academic networks as one of many factors significant in doctoral student completion. But, of the literature I have found, only Holley and Gardner (2012) discuss the impact of community upon doctoral learners: they note a growing divide between the learners’ academic experiences and their day-to-day community experiences (Q3). Within the society context, key sources of anxiety revolved around perceptions of uselessness of doctoral-level studies and being viewed as too old to continue one’s studies (Q1/Q2). Usefulness was addressed, to an extent, through demonstration of the participants’ increased understanding and appreciation of society and their potential to add value to their community(-ies). Teaching was a visible enactment of contributing to society (movement from Q4 to Q1). Some participants described their examination of social expectations of age- appropriate activities (Q1). This was possibly a salient topic in the interviews because of the age range of the participants. Some of the participants who were over 50 felt that their experience over the years allowed them to bring a degree of wisdom and perspective to their doctoral studies. An individual cannot reject her/his age, but s/he can challenge age-discourses. The challenging of social expectations of upper-middle-aged learners appeared to help some participants to draft a new position for themselves. In some cases, it was as a wiser, more knowledgeable member of society (Q4). To an extent, the participants’ reflections on age-discourses revealed a tension (Q3) between social disapproval and the shaping of a new persona targeted at regaining acceptance. The participants also recognized that their perceptions had changed with regard to general knowledge about the world. Their comments indicated they had developed an increased sensitivity to patterns and sharper skills in 137 evaluating societal practices (Q3). For example, one participant described having selected a different school for her children based on discussions during one of her courses (Q4). Other participants recounted becoming more thoughtful and critical of information disseminated in the media such as newspapers. The participants described how their studies enabled them to better connect with and contribute to society in a general sense. It appears that the participants were more overtly aware of negative opinions on their doctoral studies than they were of their appropriation (Q1 to Q2, Figure 5.1) of more subtle social knowledge. It is unclear from the interviews how engagement in doctoral studies sharpened the participants’ awareness of social patterns and practices. Holley and Gardner’s (2012) study of first- generation doctoral students describes an increased gap between the learners’ academic and non-academic lives. Perhaps awareness of differences in practices grows as the gap in practices between the learners’ worlds grows. It is possible that learners attempt to apply practices and concepts from one world into the other and become aware of incompatibilities For example, should a doctoral learner begin to apply academic techniques (such as discourse analysis or deconstruction) while having political conversations in a pub amongst trades workers, s/he might meet with ridicule or social rejection. Through the reactions of others (Cooley’s (2009) looking glass), the learner may become aware of her/his shifting position. As Wiley (2011) contends, the double mirror of social interaction provides phenomenological consciousness as well as self-consciousness and self-reflectivity. 5.4.2 Friends & family Although family and social contacts are mentioned in the literature as a significant source of support for doctoral students (Högskoleverket (2012), there appear to be few research studies in this area that explain how or why friends and family contexts are important in the doctoral student experience. In the initial survey of my study, few respondents felt that their doctoral studies had an effect upon their personal relationships. However, during the interviews, relationship management amongst friends and family was an important endeavour for many of the participants. Demands upon the participants’ time led them into prioritization activity (Q3); they needed to determine who and what would merit their attention—should friends, family, or studies would take precedence? Some participants encountered situations 138 in which others did not wish to engage with them (Q2). In some cases, others were perceived to assume that the doctoral students’ work was too difficult to understand. At times, friends and/or family members were described as intimidated by, uninterested in, or even hostile towards their doctoral experiences. Several participants described feeling distanced from others, sensing alienation, and outright rejection. Yet, others also described feeling accepted, understood, and supported. Questions of status did not appear salient amongst friends and family. For me, what became salient in examining the participants’ comments on their friend and family positioning were the ways in which they managed these relationships. The participants who expressed less anxiety seemed to find ways of bridging the gap between face to face and their academic worlds. Attempts to garner or maintain acceptance appeared to coincide with the development of techniques to control and present information appropriately (such as through scaffolding and simplified descriptions of their research) to different audiences (Q4). In other words, some participants were active agents in their positioning in that they selected techniques contingent upon the reactions and expectations of others at various times and within various contexts (Hyland, 2002). Scaffolding and sharing information about one’s doctoral studies, enables learners to enter into a form of relational dialogue (Ferreday, Hodgson & Jones, 2006) with friends and family. In this form of dialogue, individuals can actively co-construct their identities in relation to one another. Some participants also commented on balancing the amount of information that they would divulge about their doctoral work so as to avoid demeaning or boring their listeners—or, for one participant to avoid ostracism. Maintaining humility while interacting was an important theme for some participants. In other cases, the participants preferred withholding information about their studies. This may have had the effect of deemphasizing their individuality and reducing threat to group standards (Bonnett, 2009). It is possible that appearing similar to others and/or adherence to norms might limit the learners’ growth and creativity (Ferreday & Hodgson, 2008). However, it might also server to harmonize social interaction and maintain support within non-academic contexts such as 139 friends and family. It is possible that for, some participants, maintenance of relationships that may be unreceptive to academic-activity is preferable to loss of relationships. It is unclear why some participants were more willing to enter into dialogue than others who would withhold information about their doctoral studies. It is also unclear whether or not such individuals were more confident, had less concern for what others thought of them, or had particularly supportive relationships elsewhere. At the academic level, Wisker, Morris, Cheng, et. al., (2010) note that doctoral students in the later stages of their programs become more open to criticism and sharing their apprehensions. Hypothetically, their confidence increases and they become more sure of who they are. Baxter Magolda (2004) suggests that learners with a strong sense of identity showed less concern for what others thought of them and were more willing to integrate ideas. A reduction in defensiveness might also occur in non- academic contexts. Peter, for example, who provided the most detailed description of scaffolding was in the later stages of his doctoral program. Alternatively, differences in defensiveness between the participants are unrelated to developmental stages, but reflect idiosyncratic patterns of interaction. More research on social positioning of doctoral students in the friends and family context is recommended. 5.4.3 Professional Some participants who worked within academic settings reported that they were able to find others with whom they could discuss their doctoral experiences. It appeared, however, that other participants lacked such contact in the workplace. Misalignment in the professional context, perhaps due to changing relative status or shifting identities, appeared to be associated with disengagement from co-workers (Q2). Bonnett (2009) notes that individuality can threaten group standards and result in efforts to stymie individual expression and agency. Indeed, two participants, described the conflict they detected (Q3) as their teaching practices changed due to information they were absorbing during their doctoral studies. Other participants noted that there was a positive interplay between their studies and work and described integrating knowledge and practice. The individual who noted the greatest effect upon her work (Q4) was a late-stage 140 participant who was readying herself for her defence (viva). It would be interesting to interview the other study participants upon entering the same phase to explore whether they could also describe effects of their higher-level studies (such as exposure to the literature in the field, authorship, and critical thinking skills) upon their work. Although questions of status do not appear salient amongst friends and family, such questions arise in the professional context. This may suggest that one’s status within intimate circles is already established or that status is ascribed due to criteria unrelated to academic prowess. In professional environments, however, outward appearance and performance may be reified and subject to judgement more readily (Q4 to Q1). It is possible, then, that professional position (status) may shift as others become aware of an individual engaging in post-graduate studies. As Wellington and Sikes (2006) note, the doctorate might influence attitudes and confidence more than performance. Over time, one might also assume, others will be able to observe whether or not doctoral studies increase/improve the students’ performance within professional contexts (Chayko, 2008). Levels of respect might, then, continue adjusting with on-going interaction as performance and confidence change. During the interviews, participants commented on perceived changes in their competence, knowledge, and skills as a result of their post-graduate experience. Some participants hoped for increased job stability—particularly those whose institutions were transitioning from community college to university status. In such cases, having a doctorate was a symbol of increased competence. At the level of the organization, issues of status and respect were improved through identification as a doctoral student. But, at the colleague- level, participants experienced isolation and unpopularity if their doctoral student status was perceived as threatening. Co-workers who were described as supportive were often those who also had doctorates or were also studying at the doctoral level. Within the professional context, there seemed to be an on-going thread of tension (Q3) between group conformity and individuality in which new or different ideas and practices may threaten others (Bonnett, 2009) as if expression and agency of the individual constrains expression and agency of other individuals in a zero-sum game. McClure and Brown (2008) found that 141 fear, rejection, and competition were associated with feelings of not- belonging. The participants of this study described various levels of acceptance at work (Q2) suggesting that their co-workers were threatened to varying degrees by the individual participants’ learner-status. This supposition, however, does not take into consideration the complexity of the work environment with regard to stress-levels, group dynamics, duties, responsibilities, competition, effectiveness of leadership, and personal and idiosyncratic aspects of personalities. As McClure and Brown (2008) state, “people are multifaceted social creatures” (p. 12). Nevertheless, there appeared to be some corroboration across the participants’ descriptions of the status and rejection-discourses in their professional context. 5.4.4 Cohort Participants discussed their sense of belonging, isolation, and value amongst their fellow students. Bendixen and Rule (2004) note that peers introduce new ideas and perspectives to one another and may attempt to solve problems together prior to seeking assistance from professors. In the cohort category, alignment appeared to bring a sense of support as it provided a location for open conversations about the doctoral experience whether intellectual, financial, or emotional (Hadjielia Dotarova, 2010). Chayko (2008) suggests that group interaction can help individuals find others who may act as role models, sounding boards, and sources of feedback. Misalignment amongst cohort members appeared associated with disinterest in each other’s writing. Competitiveness, defensiveness, and varying levels of participation in online discussion forums also punctuated some cohort interactions. Baxter Magolda (2004) proposes that intellectual development is interrelated with social relationships. According to her, learners with a stronger sense of their identity are less concerned about what others think of them, are more open to new perspectives, and can more easily integrate and evaluate ideas. Wisker, Morris, et. al. (2010) and Switzer (2009) also note how doctoral students’ confidence is challenged as they enter their doctoral studies (Q3). Reduction of defensiveness, which Wisker, Morris et. al. (2010) recognize as a threshold crossing, appears connected to greater self-awareness and reflexivity. I would add, based on these interviews, that the establishment of a comfortable position within the cohort may alleviate the learners’ focus on self-protection and enable them to focus on learning. According to Chayko 142 (2008) frequent contact can aid learners to detect patterns of others’ behaviours. So, it is possible that on-going, sustained interaction over time might also lead to a better understanding of one’s relational position to other members of the cohort. Within the cohort context, the participants described tensions between their reluctance to challenge one another’s knowledge with their desire for more direct interactions focusing on questioning and argumentation (Q3). As mentioned previously, levels of defensiveness may be associated with self- reflexivity and self-awareness (Wisker, Morris, et. al., 2010). In his study of group dynamics in an NL course, McConnell (2005) noted that achieving balance between self-reflection and getting on with tasks is a significant issue in online group dynamics. He recognized that in the particular groups he was studying that the individuals’ reflections upon group dynamics may also be indicative of “a real and genuine concern for each other” (p. 34). However, in different groups and different contexts, it may also be associated with frustration and disappointment with the group interaction. The participants of my study described situations in which they were unable to achieve a balance between politeness and satisfyingly critical online discussions. Some participants who attempted to stimulate critical discussion described ensuing hostility as some cohort members reacted in defensive, hostile ways. Other participants saw questioning and critique as opportunities for growth and collaboration. Sylvia, for example noted an increased awareness of her own tendencies (to avoid statistics) when confronted by her cohort-mates approaches. She then describes exploring new academic territory as prompted by her cohort-mates. Yet, she also notes that her cohort-mates did not always know how to interpret her intentions as she challenged them in online discussions. Her experiences reveal a complexity in cohort interactions in which members experiment with alternative ways of presenting and challenging themselves (and others), using other cohort members as their looking-glass. Positioning in the cohort milieu was complicated by peer comparison (Q3). Cohort members judged appropriateness of behaviour and gauged intellectual worthiness through comparison and competition. Caffarella and Barnett (2009) noted in their research that anxiety associated with peer comparisons (peer editing) never completely disappeared, but would 143 dissipate with experience. Other researchers also recognize the importance of peer relationships in doctoral programs (Sweitzer, 2009; Trigwell & Dunbar- Goddet, 2005; Kuang-Hsu, 2003). Trigwell and Dunbar-Goddet (2005) link teamwork to higher completion rates based on their research comparing the experiences of science and education students. Tensions arising from peer- comparison and competition may lead to a sense of crisis (Lee & Williams, 1999) and/or create a conceptual space for intellectual growth and self- reflection (Govender & Dhunpath, 2011; Trafford, 2008) (Q3). However, my results do not provide insights on the degree to which peer comparison and competition foster or hinder student performance and persistence in doctoral programs. The participants expressed concerned about whether or not their cohort-mates viewed them as reliable, supportive, having integrity, or being a leader. These ideas point to an underlying discourse of what it means to be a respected part of a group. For the education students integrity was associated with using the technology. In one quote “living the learning” was a reference to studying, teaching, and communicating through online technologies as the learner, herself, was studying the topic of educational technology. As a doctoral student in educational technology, actively engaging with technology appeared to legitimize (Q4 to Q1) the participant as a steward of knowledge in the field (Lee & Williams, 1999). 5.4.5 Academic department Some participants, particularly the business students, reflected upon their sense of unpreparedness as they began their studies. Other students expressed various understanding of expectations and even “folkloric conceptions” of the academic world (Q1) (Loxley & Seery (2011, p. 10). There were various descriptions of self-doubt and insecurity (Q3). This variety of descriptions was reflected in the literature in relation to the learners’ struggle to understand their intellectual and social positions within an academic context where expectations of behaviour and performance seem ill defined and where boundaries of interaction shift from those previously learnt during bachelor- level or master-level experiences (Hockey, 1994; Hopwood, 2010; Morton & Thornley, 2001). Gardner (2010) also suggests that doctoral students must contend with the ambiguity of expectations and the shift to greater self- direction (Q3). The need for alignment with the academic department 144 appeared manifested in concerns over control and expectations. Some participants struggled with meeting academic standards and writing documents that conformed to the expectations of multiple professors (Q3). The participants sometimes found themselves trying to locate individuals (professors and supervisors) whose approaches and expectations were compatible with their own (possibly remaining in Q3). Some participants exercised choice in how they aligned themselves (for example, as a researcher, as a positivist, or alignment with plain-speaking professors) (Q4). Two of the participants of this study elected to work with faculty members who could support their needs and growth rather than attempting to change their orientations and conform to expectations. In Sweitzer’s (2009) terminology, learners who actively align themselves with others would likely be classified as “assessing fit” rather than “perceiving fit” learners. Active, conscious positioning may be connected to a strong sense of relational agency (Edwards & D’Arcy, 2004) in which learners reach out to others in their environment as resources. Nevertheless, relationships with faculty members were significant for the participants. Girves and Wemmerus (1988) suggest that faculty-student relationships are connected to completion rates. Failure to align with faculty members, may impact doctoral learners through reduction of support and confidence. Participants varied in their struggles with ontology, epistemology, methodology, and their adjustment to doctoral-level study. Comments regarding the academic department suggest that the ability to support and defend their arguments was an important indicator of academic development and acceptance; that is, the establishment of oneself as a peer (Q4). Passing candidacy (confirmation) and successful defence of the thesis (viva) was viewed as legitimating the students’ crossing (rite of passage) into an academic role such as PhD candidate, researcher, and/or academic (Q4 to Q1). There was evidence in the transcripts of academic socialization within the department context (Golde, 2000; Trafford, 2008; Wisker, Morris, et. al., 2010) through observation and interaction with professors (Q2 to Q4). Rob, for example, appears to appropriate behaviours of his professors. Rob’s comments show a reduction of defensiveness as he learns, through observation, that one can admit lack of knowledge without losing respect 145 from others. This would suggest that supervisors and other members of the academic department can, through their behaviour, influence doctoral students who may then appropriate these discourses and enact them (Q2 to Q4). 5.4.6 Academia Feelings of misalignment in the academic department and the academy appeared to result in the participants’ questioning their own abilities (Q2 to Q3). Self-doubt arising from the struggle to understand their intellectual and social positions (academic language and norms) as they proceed through doctoral studies is corroborated by the research of Anderson and Swazey (1988), Sweitzer (2009), and Wisker, Morris, et. al. (2010). Anderson and Swazey’s (1988) survey research indicated that “nearly half of [the doctoral] students disagreed that their prior basic concepts had been reinforced supports the conclusion that graduate school has considerable strength as a change process of the most fundamental kind, for better or for worse” (p. 10). The initial survey that I used to solicit volunteers was also used to explore how the respondents’ perceived their doctoral studies to have influenced their lives. Of the 19 interviewed participants, 14 felt that their confidence had increased. Over half (10) felt that their academic ability had been affected. But, only four respondents felt that doctoral studies had affected their ability to think critically. Yet, during the interviews, several participants commented on their increased depth of understanding of the field (including methodology, philosophy, publishing, and writing). This appeared to be closely associated with exposure to literature in the field. Growth in writing skills appeared to be associated with clarity of thinking and awareness of nuanced meanings. The ability to see connections in the literature, to comfortably read the publications of academics in the field, and to converse with academics outside of their academic department appeared to increase the participants’ confidence. It is yet unclear why there was a disparity between survey answers on critical thinking and interview reflections on depth of understanding. It is possible that, at the time of the survey, the participants felt that their critical thinking ability was already well developed. Perhaps the participants saw critical thinking and depth of understanding as unrelated processes. 146 Writing appeared to be a significant source of tension and aspiration (Q3). This is not surprising as writing has been traditionally, and continues to be, an important means of entering into academic discourse and identity positioning (Ivanič, 1998; Kamler, 2008; Barnacle & Mewburn, 2010). Participants who entered into the world of publication (Q4) reported developing a sense of belonging, contribution, and confidence. Successful publication in academic journals can offer legitimization and recognition of academic performance (Q1) (Bansel, 2011; Ruth, 2008). This would suggest that it is important to encourage doctoral students to publicly share their work through journals and other publishing opportunities. However, the data from this study does not provide information regarding learner readiness and, as such, when a student should begin to publish. Furthermore, publishing may not be of interest to doctoral students whose intentions are to seek non-academic employment subsequent to graduation. The late-stage participants who had completed candidacy and were readying themselves for their oral defence (viva) noted the importance of publishing their work. Publishing may be a means of measuring their adequacy by standards external to the academic department (Q3). Another participant measured his growth through interaction with a respected academic during a doctoral student seminar. The ability to articulate and defend one’s position is noted to be a rite of passage into the academic world (Morris, et. al., 2009; Wisker, Morris, et. al., 2010). It also implies an overall influence of appropriated expectations of academic performance (Q1) upon learner identity (Q4). The learner’s growth in confidence in reading, writing, communication, and interest in publishing may indicate that the participants were gaining clarity in their understanding of their own position relative to other “thinkers” in the academic world (Q3). Ivanič (1998) contends that writing positions the author relative to dominant social and academic discourses and, therefore, is closely interrelated with identity. A sense of “taking part” in the conversation may suggest that a learner is crossing a threshold or rite of passage into academia (Q3 to Q4). Experiences that I had expected but did not detect in the transcripts included being cited by other researchers and being invited to conferences to speak. Such experiences would indicate that the individual was moving into 147 conventionalization (Q4 to Q1). However, there were no participants who had indicated having experienced this kind of conventionalization. Movement into Q1 via conventionalization might more likely appear in interviews with early- career academics. 5.4.7 The social positioning cycle as a framework The learners’ experiences are summarized in Table 5.1. Displaying the results in this way highlights some features of the SPC. For example, the Q1 column of Table 5.1 contains some empty fields. Theoretically, Q1 represents social values, practices, mythologies, and discourses. It can be thought of as the social information. The fields are empty because it is empirically difficult to access such information, even through research participants’ descriptions. A researcher can infer this information, but cannot observe it directly. The SPC implies that the social positioning process flows in one direction and that individuals pass through each quadrant in cycles of transformation. In considering the complexity, I began to wonder if it were possible to skip quadrants entirely. Because individuals are born into social relationships, it is not possible to avoid Q1 (although the contexts experienced are unique to individuals). In Q2 individuals appropriate social information through observation or experiencing it through the senses. And, the individual’s activity is observable to others in Q4—regardless of any transformations or evaluative work by the individual. However, it seems possible that individuals can intentionally or unintentionally skip Q3. And, individuals can appropriate ideas, behaviours, values, and practices from society (Q1 to Q2), and enact them without awareness (Q4). Without evaluation, enactment or expression of Q2-unities implies passive positioning. Figure 5.2 offers shows a diagonal line from Q2 to Q4 depicting passive positioning. An employee who performs time-consuming, ineffective procedures without questioning them may be exemplifying passive positioning. Active positioning, on the other hand, is associated with evaluative work (Q3) and is depicted as the arrow in the bottom left corner of the diagram. An employee who notices that procedures are ineffective and considers how they might be improved is showing evidence of evaluative work (Q3). Some of the participants of this study described how their doctoral work affected their teaching practices and resulted in some tension in the workplace (movement into Q4). 148 Context Q1 – Values, beliefs, and discourses Q2 – Observations of others, sources of appropriation Q3 – Tensions and evaluative work Q4 – Performance, publication, and enactment Social - Age-expectations - Usefulness of doctoral studies - Gap between academic and non-academic practices and beliefs - Evaluating age-discourses and societal practices - Positioning as wiser, knowledgeable - Understanding of social practices - New behaviours adopted - Knowing how and when to use academic and non-academic discourses Friends & family - Interest in and comprehension of learners’ academic work - Prioritization of time, activities, and people -Scaffolding, rephrasing, contextualizing, simplifying, and withholding information about doctoral studies Professional - Co-worker engagement/acceptance/ rejection -Institutional approval of doctoral work - Tension between group conformity and introduction of new practices acquired in doctoral studies - Alienation, status - Application of academic information and practices into work situations - Change in voice or agency - Seeking other employment - Strengthen network Cohort - Observations of cohort behaviour and abilities - Seeking reassurance and connection - Comparison of self against peer behaviours and abilities - Tension between social comfort and intellectual challenge in discussions - Conflict, rejection, acceptance - Reduction of defensiveness - Adjusting social position amongst cohort - Adoption of behaviours garnering respect from cohort (sharing, leadership, collaboration) Academic department - Folkloric conceptions of academic life - Ambiguity/clarity of department standards and expectations - Observations of faculty members’ behaviours - Conflicting/unclear expectations and standards - Understanding faculty behaviour - Questioning epistemology and ontology - Passing candidacy, viva defence - Adoption of faculty behaviour - Increased confidence - Varying alignment with faculty - Epistemological / ontological positioning Academy - Folkloric conceptions of academic life - Publication as legitimization - Reading published works; attending academic conferences - Comparison of work against standards in the field and with work of established academics - Publication as a measure of belonging and contribution to the field - Positioning on values (i.e., plagiarism) Table 5.1. Summary of key areas of social positioning 149 Figure 5.2. Active vs. passive positioning However, social positioning is more complex than can be represented in a model. There are instances in which individuals may realize discrepancies in practices, beliefs, and/or values, but who may choose to ignore it. One participant in this study, Denise, described how her friends were unhappy with the time she had given them after starting her doctoral studies. She actively decided not to take the problem on herself; rather, she decided that it was their problem. Neither passive nor active positioning can account for this. The individual is active in the decision not to work through the tension, which suggests that she is avoiding Q3. Yet, at the same time, she has actually made a decision (suggestive of Q3 work) to avoid the problem. Her comment suggests that she is acutely aware of a problem, and that she has processed it to an extent. Denise’s avoidance-positioning technique raises additional questions about Q3 work. The activity in Q3 may fit on a continuum from intensive evaluative work to brief or superficial evaluations. Either (intensive or light) work can result in delayed decision-making or snap judgements. Individuals can get stuck in Q3 or exit quickly. The SPC does not provide a means of predicting the time an individual will take to process contradictory observations and/or tensions arising from experiences and observations in Q2. Although, it is 150 tempting to use the quadrants to link events and behaviours causally, researchers must be careful in making such interpretations. For my purposes in this study, the most useful aspect of the SPC was the identification of Q3 activity. The participants’ descriptions of troublesome moments during their doctoral experiences have highlighted the types of issues that cause them to consider where they belong in their social environments. Encountering acquaintances, friends, family, and co-workers who question or criticize a student’s decision to begin doctoral studies can trigger self-reflection. Seemingly abrasive interactions in online forums amongst cohort-mates can lead to self-doubt and defensiveness. Hostility amongst colleagues at the workplace can result in a sense of alienation. The SPC cannot help predict what events will trigger self-reflection, transformation of self-conception, or shifts in behaviours and practices. But, it can be used as a lens to examine how individuals have reacted in such situations. Observations of others can, perhaps, help us to develop our own techniques and to consider alternative pathways through our own journeys. 5.5 Identity positioning in different fields of study 5.5.1 Business students vs. education students Because there were only four business students interviewed (fifteen education students), it is difficult to compare the two groups. Therefore the following comments can be viewed as notes for further investigation. There were three main areas of difference in the experiences described by the two groups: preparation for doctoral studies, perceptions of leadership, and competitiveness. Although one business student did not appear surprised by the difficulty and workload, others described nearly dropping out in the first few weeks of their program. Two participants had described themselves as high achievers academically and professionally which appeared to make the challenge of doctoral studies all the more difficult. However, the difficulty in adjustment, as noted through their comments, appeared related to the students’ preparation at the undergraduate and graduate level of business studies. They described how they had never/seldom been exposed to academic journals prior to their doctoral studies. Philosophical jargon, especially, epistemology 151 and ontology was like reading a foreign language. The education participants appeared to have adjusted with greater ease. Although being challenged by ideas such as epistemology and ontology, the education students more frequently focussed on meeting expectations, passing candidacy (confirmation) or the viva defence. The two business students who initially had struggled with adjustment indicated having overcome this threshold within the first year. Hockey (1994) posits that the first year is the most precarious in doctoral studies. In their follow-up study of new doctoral students for the 1999/2000 and 2000/2001 academic years, Högskoleverket, the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (2012) found that most of the students they surveyed had left before completing 50% of their programs and that one out of ten had completed around 80% of their studies upon leaving their program (the researchers note that late-leavers may be under- represented). The results of my study also recognize the importance of the first year; however, there is insufficient data from this study to suggest that other stages in the doctoral journey are not equally significant. Competition and peer comparison was apparent amongst both groups. The education students appeared more inclined to use such comparisons to gauge their own development and locate resources for support and self- improvement. One education student noted a conflict with a project partner, but it appears that the problem did not escalate; rather, she described reflecting on her own reaction to it and decided to avoid the cohort member in future projects. Amongst the business students, however, descriptions of conflicts in online discussion forums appeared more frequent in the transcripts. Regardless of the degree of conflict, both groups described having difficulty achieving a balance between critical discussion and maintaining social decorum and comfortable social interaction. One of the business students reflected on the nature of the business degree, suggesting that it would attract learners with a certain set of values. This was an interesting observation. For example, being recognized as a leader amongst the cohort arose in the interviews with the business students suggesting that this was a significant discourse for them. For the education students, being viewed as supportive and as a part of the group appeared to be more important. Learners who select different programs of study may bring with them different discourses of what is valuable and what is appropriate. Further research on this topic might reveal possible underlying discourses and 152 different mind-sets. Understanding the possible array of values and goals of doctoral learners may assist professors and program designers to address learner needs and harness conflict and competition so as to create environments that foster collaboration and learning. It is possible that the conflict and defensiveness experienced by the participants is related to the learners’ lack of preparation upon entering their programs. As mentioned earlier, the work of Baxter Magolda (2004) associates intellectual development with social relationships. And, the work of Wisker, Morris, et. al. (2010) associates reduction of defensiveness with increased self- awareness and reflexivity. It would be useful to conduct further research on cohort relationships and group-reflexivity amongst learners in doctoral-level programs in NL. 5.7 Personal reflections At one point in my doctoral journey, I was asked if I might consider focusing my study on the academic aspects of the doctoral student experience; that is, to relinquish writing about the society, friends and family, and professional contexts of the participants. However, having had such a challenge in finding literature on these very contexts of the doctoral experience, it strengthened my resolve to continue in this direction. Being a doctoral student, I can attest to the significance of social, professional, and academic contexts as significant factors. And, I would propose that they may be equally significant to the practices, environments, and quality of interactions in the cohort, the academic department, and the academy. In the literature, the words “isolation” and “alienation” appear (Ali & Kohun, 2006, 2007; Morton & Thornley, 2001; Trigwell & Dunbar-Goddet, 2005), but the source(s) of isolation are complex. Isolation due to lack of academic contact is different than isolation due to lack of affection, unconditional acceptance, and professional respect, for example. Any of these factors can contribute to stress and reduction of confidence. For me there are some important questions: How many doctoral learners have given up because of lack of these particular factors? As more and more NL programs arise, will fewer learners report feeling isolated since they remain situated within their personal and professional environments? Or, will NL learners report a greater disparity between their academic and non-academic contexts? 153 In my case, I began my doctoral journey with trepidation because I expected isolation. However, I found that I could maintain my connections with family and friends throughout my degree. I could disappear into my basement for a few weeks to study, but emerge still to see friendly, supportive faces. Working at the same time, for me, meant that I had to prioritize my time and balance my focus. This was frustrating at times. However, by prioritizing my time and by scheduling ahead, I could to varying degrees anticipate and dissipate stress. I could distribute my self-esteem and my support network. Armed with stories of other students’ experiences—of isolation, self-doubt, alienation, rejection, support, belonging within various personal, professional, and academic environments—perhaps new doctoral students can also anticipate and better plan for support. With regard to the SPC, I began to consider how the SPC might apply to my personal experience. When I experience anxiety, I do not always know why. But, I naturally begin to explore possible reasons for it. The anxiety will bring me into evaluative processes (Q3), which lead me to consider possible reasons for the anxiety. This leads me to examine observations and experiences from my surroundings (Q2). At other times, I know what is causing the anxiety, and I consider possible solutions or whether or not evaluating the anxiety is necessary. My Q3 activity can be lengthy or brief. I discussed the SPC with a close family member and discovered that we disagreed on the extent to which an individual can skip Q3 activity. I concluded that the variations in which we employ evaluative tools and the length of time we spend in Q3 can be very idiosyncratic and can be related to the degree to which experiences are emotionally charged. For me, this attests to the complexity of human behaviour and the necessity to view frameworks and models as abstract tools that may not always reflect our behaviour. 5.7 Summary The shaping of learner identities is relational, not only amongst learners, but also with the medium through which they communicate (Hopwood, 2010; Savin-Baden & Sinclaire, 2007). As such, I opened this chapter with a discussion on the interrelationship between the technology and learner interactions. I then outlined the main sources of anxiety and positioning for each of the most salient social contexts for the doctoral learners who 154 participated in this study. The chapter closed with a comparison of the descriptions of experience of the education and business participants. Chapter 6 will summarize the answers to the research questions, implications, contributions of this research, and areas for further research. 155 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Implications The self is not something that exists first and then enters into relationship with others, but it is, so to speak, an eddy in the social current and so still a part of the current. It is a process in which the individual is continually adjusting him[her]self in advance to the situation to which he[she] belongs, and reacting back on it. — Mead, 1934, p. 182 6.1 Introduction In addition to defining an eddy as a “small whirlpool”, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Barber, 2004) defines it as “a usu. relatively insignificant trend, opinion, mood, etc. going contrary to the prevailing currents of thought, attitudes, etc.” On the contrary, I would suggest that an eddy can play a more significant role; an eddy can change the course of social currents or merge with them almost imperceptibly. As individuals progress through their studies, their self-conceptions become a significant factor in their learning and acquisition of social knowledge; that is, identity connects the individual to the social (Coll & Falsafi, 2010; Lave & Packer, 2008; Wenger, 1998). As they proceed through their studies, their growth as individuals ripples through the various social contexts in which they interact. This rippling effect, however, can cause some discomfort as new paths are explored and old paths become obscured. This study has explored identity positioning of doctoral learners in NL environments. This was a qualitative study based on methodologies involving open coding and discourse analysis. The social positioning cycle (SPC), adapted from social positioning theory (Harré, 2010), was used as a theoretical lens guiding the analysis and organization of the data. As the highest degree awarded, successful completion of a doctorate demands that learners work at a conceptual level. The demands of independent, original research intended to extend knowledge in their field can lead to oscillating feelings of confidence, acceptance, and belonging—both intellectually and socially. Exposure to new ideas, norms, and ethics can cause learners to question their position within their various social contexts whether academic or non-academic. The intent of this study was to explore these 156 challenges and how learners enter into and emerge into new relational positions. The importance of this work reverberates in the concerns of governments and funding agencies that may pass over the intangible benefits of doctoral studies in favour of direct and measureable economic and social outcomes (Halse & Mowbray, 2011; Research Councils, UK, 2012). More importantly, this work is intended to draw attention to the variety of social contexts that may impact doctoral students’ experiences. In this chapter, I will briefly summarise the key findings and answers to the research questions set out in Chapter 1. I then discuss contributions to the field, implications for doctoral education, and, finally, areas for further research. 6.2 Answering the research questions 6.2.1 How do doctoral learners in NL programs describe identity positioning? The interviews with the participants in this study suggest that doctoral students experience identity positioning—that is, shifts in their relational positions to others—in multiple contexts. The literature offers information about cohort/peer experiences at different levels of study (Bendixon & Rule, 2004; Caffarella & Barnett, 2000; Govender & Dhunpath, 2011; Maher, 2005; Simon-Maeda, Churchill & Cornwell, 2006) as well as the influences of the academic departments/institutions (Hockey, 1994; Sweitzer, 2009), and the discipline (Bansel, 2011; Barnacle & Mewburn, 2010; Kamler, 2008; Lovitts, 2005; Wisker, Price, Moriarty & Marshall, 2010). The data from this study suggests that there are significant non-academic contexts that also have an important impact upon doctoral students: community, society, friends, family, and the workplace. However, these non-academic contexts are little mentioned in the literature. Hopwood (2010), and Sweitzer (2008) also note a the gap in the literature on the non-academic relationships of doctoral learners. Within the field of NL, there is even less information which is partially due to the relative youth of the field, which emerged in the late 1990s (McConnell, Hodgson, & Dirkink-Holmfeld, 2012). This study highlights the ways in which learners locate and shape their position(s) within social contexts—that is, how they see their identities emerge and their perceptions of how they are perceived by others (Wiley’s (2011) double mirror). For each context (society, friends and family, professional, 157 cohort, the academic department, and the academy), the participants found support or lack of support, acceptance or lack of acceptance, understanding or lack of understanding. Their descriptions of their experience often highlighted their ways of managing their relationships—through degrees of sharing, withdrawing, prioritization, rationalizations, and changing practices. Their experiences and their reactions to these experiences were as unique as their own biographies. Yet, the descriptions of experience as depicted in the SPC figures (Chapter 4) offers a collective view of the participants’ experiences and positioning techniques. 6.2.2 How do doctoral students in NL programs experience identity positioning in relation to their field of study (Education or Business)? The main differences between education and business students’ experiences of social positioning were in the areas of preparation for doctoral studies, perceived importance of leadership, and competitiveness. The education students’ interviews suggested that they adjusted to doctoral-level studies with greater ease compared to the business students who described having less previous exposure to academic journals and experiencing more shock upon entry to their first year of study. Both groups described the challenge of working with epistemological and ontological concepts. The education students’ interview comments appeared to emphasize the value of being part of a group and being supportive. There were more narratives of direct conflict amongst the business students and comments about being viewed as leaders. Commonalities include the need to belong and the desire for challenging, but respectful intellectual discussions. By examining the described experiences of learners from different fields, it is possible to gain insights as to how to better prepare them for doctoral level studies. Though philosophical terminology is challenging for many doctoral learners, the results of this study suggest that business students would benefit from more experience in reading and analysing academic works prior to enrolment. This may be of concern in other professional fields in which the master-level preparation may be skills or competency-based (Klein-Collins, 2012) rather than more philosophical. Furthermore, professors may need to draw upon different techniques to facilitate discussions with groups of students who share (or do not share) certain values. Group dynamics can be very complex and idiosyncratic depending upon the composition of a given 158 group. Although it appeared that there was more overt conflict amongst participants in the business doctoral degree, participants of both groups expressed dissatisfaction with online discussions. An implication of this study is that more research into facilitation of discussions amongst doctoral learners in NL is necessary, and that this research should be extended across academic fields. 6.3 Contributions of this research One of the main contributions is the use of the SPC (Figure 6.2) as a tool to examine doctoral student experiences in NL environments. As a lens, the SPC helped me, as a researcher, view the learners’ descriptions of experience from a second-order perspective, yet separating observation of others (appropriated discourses, Q2) from emotional reactions, problem solving and theorizing at the individual level (internal positioning work, Q3). It also helps in sorting out the enactment (Q4) of an individual’s personal work. The SPC is a lens; it highlights process rather than the end-point. This is commensurate with a social constructionist view of identity, which is constantly being constructed, deconstructed, and co-created through interaction with others. Figure 6.2. The social positioning cycle. 159 A challenge in using this framework arises in Quadrant 1. As an empirical tool, it is not possible for a researcher to observe the primary structures in which unique individuals are immersed, except perhaps the most reified and visibly marked social discourses such as credentials, ceremonies, and written laws. One can attempt to extrapolate from the descriptions ascribed to the other quadrants, but this would reach beyond the realm of empirical observation and into the realm of inference. The intent of this study was to explore how students described their experiences and to identify potential problem areas for further research and possible intervention. The SPC also assumes that social positioning moves in one direction through cycles of transformation. As per the discussion (Chapter 5), it seems that it might be possible to move through the SPC without moving through Q3, active examination of experience. In this case, positioning may be more of a passive process. However, an individual may actively choose not to process conflicting information or troublesome events. In such a case, would the individual be engaging in passive or active positioning? Alternatively, it is also possible that individuals move through Q3 to different durations and intensity suggesting that positioning may be thought of on a continuum of activeness rather than in terms of a binary of active or passive. 6.4 Implications for doctoral education Practitioners and researchers can use the SPC framework as a tool to identify discourses that might be ontologically challenging for doctoral learners. Awareness of these discourses can help in better preparing learners and shaping learning environments that might increase learners’ persistence and completion of degrees. Researchers in Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom note that 10-year completion rates are approximately 57% to 76% (Bourke, Holbrook, Lovat, & Farley, 2004; Canadian Association of Graduate Studies, 2004; Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2007). Persistence, then, is an important goal for researchers and practitioners It might also be argued that this research acknowledges the experience of doctoral students and the challenges they face through their doctoral journeys. Work such as this may help learners and professors anticipate the challenges that might be encountered. Learners may self-examine why they 160 are experiencing fluctuations in engagement, interest, and respect from others. And, they may take some comfort in knowing that others have similar experiences. Learners who are aware of challenges to their identities can possibly prepare themselves and consider ways of managing their relationships. Some might find it helpful to consider how to interact with others in ways that are comfortable. Learning to describe their research in ways that are meaningful to others depending on their own experience and contexts (scaffolding) could help them manage social interactions. Orientation sessions for new doctoral students might include discussion of how friends, family, and co-workers may react to the learners’ new academic world. Orientation sessions might also offer discussion of cohort collaboration, academic critique, and how to engage in academic discussions. Academic departments can clarify expectations and standards of performance—perhaps by offering samples of good writing and analytical work. Academic departments can further clarify expectations for conference participation and publication. 6.5 Further research A number of questions arose presenting opportunities for further research. I recognize that the SPC analysis presents an abstract representation of the participants’ descriptions of their positioning experiences. The results represent comments from this particular group of individuals at a particular point in time, a snapshot of the participants’ experience. Though attempting to reflect the depth and breadth of the participants’ descriptions, ultimately, the results are still reductionist and decontextualized by their very nature as a representation (Kvale, 1996). Achieving description that balances richness with representation is challenging as only a limited number of quotations can be selected from a body of transcripts that are both individually compelling and complete in themselves. But, to what extent are the experiences described by this group/sample similar to/different from the experiences of other NL doctoral learners from different programs? To what extent is this research useful to other doctoral learners? Along the same lines, I would like to see additional interviews conducted to further explore the additional contexts significant to doctoral learners identity development. For example, to what extent is the relationship between the learner and the institution important in NL doctoral programs? As noted in 161 Chapter 5, the discussion, this is a possible context that was not represented in this study. It is possible that the institution, perhaps as a physical entity, is not as significant for distance learners as it is for face-to-face, on-site learners. This line of thinking opens up research opportunities for examining the experience of NL versus on-site learners. How might their experiences be similar and different? How might academic socialization be similar or different in NL compared to face-to-face programs? What are the implications for universities that rely on alumni involvement and donations? There appears to be a gap in the current literature on doctoral studies. The effects and influences of positioning in personal, societal, and professional contexts on the doctoral student experience do not appear to have been documented. As online doctoral programs evolve and proliferate, there will be a greater need to explore such relationships. Hypothetically, students enrolled in such programs may remain embedded within their communities whilst studying. It is important to explore how stressors and support-levels from community, friends, family, and the workplace may affect persistence and completion rates. A particularly interesting aspect of this study, for me, was the cohort relationship. As networked learners, their relationships were mediated through communications technology. Some participants described their struggles in finding project partners whilst others described their anxiety to post messages in the online forums. There appeared to be a trend towards increased confidence and an increased sense of getting to know the cohort members (though with varying degrees of “chumminess”) as they progressed into the later stages of the study. However, the study did not provide adequate evidence to fully support hypotheses on developmental stages of transformation of learners through doctoral studies. It is possible, rather, that some of the experiences described by the participants were contingent upon their unique personalities and contexts. Nevertheless, additional research could be done to explore the experiences of doctoral learners as they progress from early to middle to the latter stages of their studies. How do their perceptions of their cohort and their place within their cohort change as they progress? To what degree does the establishment of a “comfortable” identity position within the cohort alleviate the learner’s defensiveness and enable greater focus on learning and sharing? To what degree does peer comparison and competition foster or hinder student performance and persistence? 162 The doctoral learners’ professional contexts are further areas of interest for me. Do factors such as position, status, and acceptance in the workplace arise from other criteria, knowledge, or behaviours? Further research could focus on a study of learners at the different stages (early, middle, and late) to explore their descriptions of how their doctoral-level studies have affected their professional identities and activities. For example, to what extent does exposure to academic literature inform their activity at work? Does their training in methodology transfer to problem-solving at work? There were no participants who had indicated having experienced conventionalization (movement from Q4 to Q1) in which their identity enactment has been observed and adopted by others within academic contexts. One participant, Peter, described having started to publish and attend conferences, but he did not indicate that his work was being accepted as “knowledge” within the academic world. Is conventionalization something that might be more apparent as the learner transitions from doctoral learner to early career academic? When should doctoral students be encouraged to publish? And, how might publishing affect their adjustment to the identity of researcher? Finally, what kind of conventionalization might take place in the other contexts (friends and family, social, and professional)? More domain-specific research could be done to explore how identity positioning might be experienced by learners from different disciplines and fields. This study has suggested that some of the differences between Business and education students include preparation for doctoral studies, competitiveness, and the importance of being perceived as a leader. Further investigation may aid professors and learning designers to better address the needs of doctoral learners in specific fields of study. 6.6 Reflections on the research process The research process offered some insights to me as I, myself, transition into new identities through my own doctoral studies. Through this journey, I saw connections between theories, literature, and the data. I questioned each step. With each question, new perspectives arose. 163 Towards the end of this journey I was asked to simplify the lenses that I was using. I streamlined the study to primarily focus on the social positioning cycle (adapted from Harré, 2010) and discourse analysis. Prior to this alteration, I had blended the social positioning cycle, threshold concepts, discourse analysis, and phenomenographic analysis into one seemingly elegant model; however, analysis and presentation of the data was complex, potentially drowning itself in detail. I realized that different lenses provided me with different views of the data. Lenses are not wrong or right; they answer different questions and bring focus to different aspects of the study participants’ experiences. In effect, simplifying my lens helped me to focus my analysis within the social positioning cycle. After adopting a more simplified lens, it became apparent that there is a gap in the literature on the doctoral student experience—particular that of the personal, community, and professional contexts. Upon this realization, I enlisted the aid of a research librarian who confirmed my observation. He provided me with only five journal articles written within the last five to ten years—four articles that I had not already located. I am now preparing materials for potential applicants to our doctoral program. The intent is to help individuals assess their support networks and general readiness to begin their doctoral studies. And, I am planning to publish some articles on identity positioning and learning adjustment of doctoral students in networked learning environments. I had selected the topic of doctoral student identity in NL because it was connected to both my profession as an administrator of a networked doctoral program as well as my position as a learner in a networked doctoral program. During my doctoral journey, I felt influences from my professional and personal circles, which are still impinging on my experience even as I complete my degree. Friends, family, co-workers, and cohort-mates are asking, what was the most surprising outcome in your study? What did you learn? It was a journey unique to my own biography, proclivities, interactions, and social contexts. I can share some of my experiences to varying degrees of truthfulness as I re-construct, de-construct, and co-construct my reflections with whomever is asking at a given time. With time, I hope to gain more perspectives on my own experience. 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The main goal of this thesis is to explore how doctoral students in networked graduate programs experience and resolve challenges to their conceptions of their current identities, norms, values, beliefs, sense of agency, and relationships in professional, personal, and/or online contexts. If you agree to participate, please click on the link at the end of this letter (below) to complete a brief questionnaire. The questionnaire asks for basic demographic information, your program of studies, the number of courses you have completed, and whether or not you perceive your studies to have affected your identity(-ies). The questionnaire should take only 5 to 10 minutes, maximum. You may choose to participate in the survey only. But, if you are willing to be interviewed, the questionnaire will provide you with a field to indicate your preferred contact email and/or telephone number. Due to scope of the study, not all volunteers will be invited to interviews. But, for those who are, the interviews will take place in two main phases: 1. Phase 1 will involve interviews (via telephone, Skype, or Adobe Connect) in which interested participants will be asked about any critical stories from their learning experiences and how these experiences have affected their identities, norms, values, beliefs, sense of agency, and relationships. [Duration: 30 to 45 minutes maximum.] 2. Phase 2 will involve follow-up email for you to review the transcripts and provide additional comments. 182 These interviews will be recorded and transcribed to better enable with analysis. Identities will be, and identifying comments (such as workplace and institutional affiliations) anonymised. Risks There are no known risks, costs, or remuneration for anyone participating in this research. I guarantee the following conditions will be met:   1. The survey data is anonymous unless you agree to be interviewed and provide your name and contact information. But, your name and other identifying terms will be anonymised in the final thesis. 2. Your participation in this research is voluntary; you have the right to withdraw at any point in the study prior to analysis for any reason without any prejudice; in this case, all or some of the information collected will be destroyed according to your preference. Note that it will be almost impossible for the researcher to locate anonymous survey data and therefore requests for destruction of such data will not be possible. 3. All research notes, interview transcripts, and communication will be maintained on secure, password-protected Athabasca University computers and the Athabasca University Adobe Connect system. 4. The data and analysis from this study may be published and/or presented at conferences. 5. If you wish, you will be able to access the thesis after completion.   You are encouraged to ask any questions at any time about the nature of the study and the methods that I am using. Your suggestions and concerns are important to me; please contact me about the study at the address and/or phone number listed below. Benefits for participants   It is my hope that participation in this study will raise your awareness of the importance of identity and interaction in online learning. In addition, for those of you who are considering conducting research in the future, I will openly discuss my procedures, data collection, methodology, and other 183 aspects of the project once the interview phases are complete. Experience participating in research projects can help you design your own studies in the future.   Contacts For more information, you are welcome to contact me: [contact information]. You may also contact my PhD supervisor, [contact information]. Consent to Participate I have read and understood the information contained in this letter, and I agree to participate in the study, on the understanding that I may refuse to answer certain questions, and I may withdraw at any time prior to analysis. If you agree with this statement and wish to participate, please click on this link to the online survey:    [URL].   Ethics Review   Note:  This  study  has  been  reviewed  by  the  Lancaster  University  Research  Ethics Committee. Should you have any comments or concerns regarding your treatment as a participant in this study, please [contact information]. Note: This study has been reviewed by the Athabasca University Research Ethics Board. Should you have any comments or concerns regarding your treatment as a participant in this study, please contact the Office of Research Ethics at [Contact information]. Your help with this project is very much appreciated. Sincerely, Marguerite Koole [Contact information] 184 Appendix B: Online survey [Introductory screen] Dear participant: The purpose of the questionnaire is to gather some preliminary data about how doctoral students in networked learning graduate programs experience and resolve challenges to their identities, norms, values, beliefs, sense of agency, and relationships. This survey is designed to collect some preliminary data as well as to locate students who are willing to be interviewed about identity in networked environments. Ethics: Anything you say in this survey will be held strictly confidential. Your contributions will be anonymous in any future uses of the information you provide. The data gathered in this study will be used for my PhD thesis at Lancaster University. Your participation is voluntary and you have the right to withdraw or quit the survey at any time. Any information you provide is much appreciated. This questionnaire should take you no more than 5 to 10 minutes. This study has been reviewed by the Lancaster University Research Ethics Committee. Should you have any comments or concerns regarding your treatment as a participant in this study, please contact [contact information]. This study has been reviewed by the Athabasca University Research Ethics Board. Should you have any comments or concerns regarding your treatment as a participant in this study, please contact the Office of Research Ethics at [contact information]. Consent By clicking the “Next” button below, you agree that you have read and understood the letter of information and consent emailed to you. In other words, by clicking the “Next” button, you are indicating your consent. 185 [Questions begin] Demographic Information 1. Please indicate a. Your gender [M/F] 2. Marital status a. Married b. Single c. Other __________ 3. Your age range a. 18-29 b. 30-39 c. 40-49 d. 50-59 e. 60+ 4. Your occupation a. Name of occupation b. Number of years in occupation 5. Current job a. Number of years in current job 6. Your program of studies a. Doctor of Education b. Doctor of Business Administration 7. The number of courses completed in your program 8. The number of courses in progress in your program 9. During your course(s) in the program you have indicated above, can you recall any events or experiences that may have caused you to reconsider or question a. your choice of job? b. your field of study? 186 c. your personal relationships? d. your professional relationships? e. other aspects of your life? f. your beliefs? g. your values? h. your identity? 10. If you have selected any of the above options, please comment briefly on what happened (i.e., what event happened? What made you reconsider this/these things?) Prompts: a. The event I experienced was: b. Before the event, I thought/felt: c. After the event, I thought/felt: d. Are you willing to be part of a 20 to 30 minute interview by Adobe Connect, Skype, or telephone? i. Yes [A field for contact information] ii. No 11. Submit with thank-you message. 187 Appendix C: Interview schedule Introduction [Welcome] [Grounding, relaxation: Where are you located right now? How are you?] Thank you for helping me with my study. Your responses will be anonymised. And, you will have an opportunity to review the transcript at a later date at which time you can modify or add additional comments and reflections. The study has been reviewed by ethics committees at both Lancaster University in the UK and Athabasca University. Do you have any questions? About the interview process As we begin the interview, I just want to explain a little about the interview process itself. The title of my study is: Identity Positioning Thresholds of Doctoral Students in Networked Learning Environments. This study is the basis for my doctoral thesis in E-Research and Technology-Enhanced Learning in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. The main goal of this thesis is to explore how doctoral students in networked learning programs experience and resolve challenges to their conceptions of their current identities, norms, values, beliefs, sense of agency, and relationships in professional, personal, and/or online contexts. As you will have read in the letter of consent and the survey, I am interested in learning more about how doctoral students experience doctoral studies. I’m interested in those “ah-ha” moments that have changed how you view yourself or how you view the people or circumstances of your life. The duration of this interview should be approximately 30 to 45 minutes. Should you wish to discontinue the interview at any time, please let me know. The interview is semi-structured. There are some specific questions that I have. But, I also want the interview to be flexible enough to explore the things 188 that you have found significant. At times, it might seem like I am asking the same question multiple times. When this happens, it is done in order to explore a slightly different angle. I might pause from time to time. This allows me to think about your responses before moving on. [Begin interview] 1. I would like to ask you to take a few minutes to tell me about your experience so far. For example, what do you think of this level of study? 2. Why did you decide to undertake doctoral studies? 3. How has your doctoral experience affected your life? (Prompts: relationships, your profession, your way of thinking.) 4. What research topic are you working on [or thinking of working on]? 5. How do others in cohort (and instructors) view you? 6. Describe the doctoral program. What are the program outcomes? Critical story(-ies): Can you remember an event or experience that may have shocked your or that has caused you to reflect or question: 1. your relationships? 2. your values? 3. your beliefs? 4. your job? 5. your career? 6. your course of studies? 7. your identity? 8. your ideas of research, research capabilities? 9. other aspect of your life? If yes, explore these questions: 189 1. How did your viewpoint on [your identity/circumstance identified above] change? 2. How long did you ponder the experience? 3. What new factors made you rethink your viewpoint? 4. Did the experience feel uncomfortable? Describe how you felt. 5. Did you feel an obligation (or, did you feel compelled) to change your behaviour or viewpoint? 6. Prior to the experience, was there something that you took for granted, but now see as “questionable” or uncertain? 7. What was your viewpoint on [your identity/circumstance identified above] before this experience? 8. What did you think was an acceptable viewpoint/behaviour/position before the experience? 9. What aspects of your background might have caused you to have this (prior) viewpoint? 10. Before this experience, how would you have described yourself? 11. How would you describe yourself as a result of the experience? If no, explore these questions: 1. Do you feel that you have not changed much as a result of your studies? Please explain. 2. Have you felt mostly comfortable with your learning experiences so far? Please explain. 190 3. Have you found that your studies in X have strengthened your viewpoints? Please explain. 4. Have you found that you have become more confident in your viewpoints/positions/relationships/beliefs/values? Please explain. [Grounding, relaxation: What are you going to be doing today? As appropriate.] [Thank you.] 191 Appendix D: Permission to use figure (the social positioning cycle) From: Bavister, Rosemary [ROSEMARY.BAVISTER@contractor.cengage.com] Sent: 15 June 2012 04:56 To: Koole, Marguerite (koole) Subject: FW: Permission to use Copyrighted Material in a Doctoral Thesis Dear Marguerite Re Figure on page 144 in ‘People and Societies’ Thank you for your email, I can confirm that permission has been granted as detailed below: Permission is granted for use of the above material in your forthcoming dissertation to be in sent in both print and electronic formats to Lancaster University, Athabasca University and to the National Library of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, and to be stored on the dissertations database, subject to the following conditions: 1. The material to be quoted/produced was published without credit to another source. If another source is acknowledged, please apply directly to that source for permission clearance. 2. Permission is for non-exclusive, English language rights, and covers use in your dissertation only. Any further use (including storage, transmission or reproduction by electronic means) shall be the subject of a separate application for permission. 3. Full acknowledgement must be given to the original source, with full details of figure/page numbers, title, author(s), publisher and year of publication. Yours sincerely, Rosemary Bavister Permissions Administrator 192 Taylor & Francis Books (UK) Tel: +44 (0) 1264 342781 Fax: +44 (0) 1264 342792 Rosemary.Bavister@contractor.cengage.com Cengage Learning EMEA Ltd, Cheriton House, North Way, Andover, Hants, SP10 5BE, a Limited company registered in England and Wales under company number 929655. ethesis_for_library ethesis_for_library.2 ethesis_for_library.3 
work_i6lxhvj3qzff7ltf3atttsnb6i	----	Distance Education Vol. 30, No. 1, May 2009, 5–21 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2009 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587910902845972 http://www.informaworld.com Addressing the context of e-learning: using transactional distance theory to inform design Robyn Bensona* and Gayani Samarawickremab aFaculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Australia; bInstitute of Teaching and Learning, Deakin University, Australia Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_384769.sgm (Received 3 September 2008; final version received 23 February 2009) 10.1080/01587910902845972Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Research Article2009Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.301000000May 2009Dr. RobynBensonRobyn.Benson@med.monash.edu.au The rapidly expanding range of options available for innovative e-learning approaches based on emerging technologies has given renewed importance to teaching and learning issues that have long been familiar to distance educators. These issues arise from the separation between learners, and between teacher and learners, which occurs when learning is undertaken wholly or partly online. There may be important implications that emerge from aspects of separation, depending on whether students are studying primarily on-campus, off-campus, trans- nationally, or in specific contexts such as the home, the workplace, fieldwork locations, or other places made possible by mobile learning technologies. We suggest that the context of learning has significant implications for e-learning design, and that one way of analysing these implications is to draw on understandings from distance education, particularly the theory of transactional distance. We use cases from two Australian universities to illustrate the practical application of these implications to e-learning design, including designs that involve Web 2.0 technologies. Keywords: e-learning design; context; transactional distance; Web 2.0 technologies Introduction The role of context is an important factor to consider in learning design if learning is seen as being grounded in the student’s experience. In the design of e-learning, this suggests a need to consider the specific implications of the range of contexts in which learning might take place. For example, the design of an e-learning component for use in a lecture theatre or computer laboratory is likely to be quite different from a similar component designed for use at home by off-campus students, or for use in a classroom in another country. In this article, we present a conceptual approach for including the context of learning and teaching as a specific aspect of e-learning design. This approach for analysing the learning context and accommodating it in e-learning design draws on characteristics of distance education that may be seen as having particular implications for e-learning. We illustrate the approach through selected examples from e-learning showcase websites at two Australian universities. *Corresponding author. Email: Robyn.Benson@med.monash.edu.au 6 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema Theoretical background Links between distance education and e-learning According to the influential definition by Keegan (1996), characteristics of distance education include the quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learner; the influence of an educational organisation in planning and preparing learning materials and providing student support; the use of technical media; the provision of two-way communication; and the quasi-permanent absence of the learning group so that students are usually taught as individuals rather than in groups. The emergence of the third and subsequent generations of distance education (Bates, 1991; Nipper, 1989; Taylor, 1999) has had a major impact on the last of these characteristics. The use of computer-mediated communication, which began to accelerate during the 1980s (e.g., Mason & Kaye, 1989), has evolved to include a focus on online communities of practice (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), based on ideas from social construc- tivism (Vygotsky, 1978), which have been dominant in conceptualising social engage- ment online. The importance of the group is fundamental to recent advances in social software using Web 2.0 technologies (O’Reilly, 2005), including blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networking services (such as MySpace and Facebook), and virtual worlds, which are founded on group interaction as the central aspect of online engagement (Shirky, 2003). Aside from these developments, the evolution of e-learning approaches in higher education has reflected the other characteristics of distance education to varying degrees. The quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learners, and between learn- ers, which characterises both e-learning and distance education, raises considerations related to distance, although the specific learning and teaching context will determine the extent of the distance involved. In this article, we draw on the theory of transac- tional distance (Moore, 1980) to analyse some broad aspects of e-learning contexts in order to identify implications for learning design. Learning, teaching, and context The specific role of context in the experience of learning is influenced by the perspec- tive from which it is viewed. From a phenomenographical perspective (Marton, 1981), students’ reality is inextricably part of the context of their learning experience and requires the teacher to endeavour to see the world through the learner’s eyes. The use of this perspective in accommodating the world of learners studying in non-traditional settings has highlighted the range of factors that affect their learning (Chambers, 2002; Morgan, 1993; Morgan & Beaty, 2005). This view also underpins Laurillard’s conver- sational framework for technology-based learning (2002). Evans (1994) noted the impact on learning of the broader contexts of students’ lives, including social and educational background, money, gender, power, work, play, time, and age. From a constructivist perspective, the world is seen as being separate from the student (Marton & Booth, 1997) but the individual or social construction of meaning that is involved in learning is conceptualised as occurring best through contextualised real-world tasks because ‘knowledge is individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interpretations of experiences in the world’ (Jonassen, 1999, p. 217). Oliver (2000) drew on Grabinger (1996) to summarise old and new assumptions about learning from a constructivist perspective, demonstrating the importance of realistic contexts in the new assumptions, in contrast to the decontextualised nature of learning Distance Education 7 associated with previous assumptions. From an experiential learning viewpoint, learn- ing may be seen as a function of the relationship between learners and the learning milieu with the learner’s personal foundation of experience, the learner’s intent, and the learning milieu forming ‘a network or nexus of cultural, social, institutional and psychological variables’ (Boud & Walker, 1991, p. 17). Perspectives that emphasise the importance of the learner’s experience and recognise the multiplicity of contextual factors which may affect learning are particularly relevant when the learners are adults who are taking advantage of the flexibility offered by e-learning. Given the expanded opportunities that advances in e-learning technologies offer for when and where learning takes place, a key implication for learning design is to address students’ needs in a huge variety of learning contexts. These extend from campus-based contexts to blended learning environments involving ‘the thoughtful integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences’ (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004, p. 96) to circumstances where learners have little or no common exposure to the campus context and all (or nearly all) learning takes place in the learner’s own context. This freeing-up of the time and place of study means that, as well as the context of home, work, computer laboratories, libraries, community centres (or places in between), learning can occur in other states or coun- tries, on ships, in hospitals or prisons, and so on. Kirkwood (1995, 2000) illustrated the importance of context in the experience of distance learning by focusing on the factors affecting home-based learning. There are implications for this kind of analysis in relation to online learning across many contexts (including work-based learning, fieldwork, and the multiplicity of contexts made possible by mobile learning) because the technology introduces an element of distance that is not present in face-to-face teaching. The teaching institution also has a dominant contextual influence on learning, determining e-learning policies, infrastructure, systems, and procedures that impact directly on student support. Within this framework, teachers’ contextual influences and conceptions of learning also affect the learning contexts that they design for their students. Further contextual variables include access issues, pedagogical support, and the skills and responses of staff and students to the use of various technologies, especially when students with a range of contexts and backgrounds may be in the same class. It is beyond the control of the individual teacher to address many of the contextual issues present in online teaching. However, one way of analysing some broad aspects of the learning context so that they can be addressed in the learning design is to focus on the extent of the distance between teachers and learners, and between learners. Design decisions can then be based on the implications that emerge from this analysis. We outline an approach to this process later in this article, using six authentic cases drawn from two Australian universities to illustrate our argument. Transactional distance theory and context The theory of transactional distance (Moore, 1980) provides one way of analysing the learning and teaching context by considering it in terms of the separation between learners, and between teacher and learners. The idea that transactional distance involves the psychological (rather than geographical) distance between learners and the teacher which is bridged through the appropriate balance of dialogue, structure (course design), and learner autonomy (Moore & Kearsley, 2005) provides a means 8 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema of considering how these design elements can be addressed based on the teacher’s knowledge of the learning and teaching context. Moore (1991) suggested that dialogue (D) and structure (S) are inversely related. High levels of structure (+S) combined with limited or low levels of dialogue (−D) contribute to high transactional distance. Increasing dialogue (D) then becomes a major implication for design, though this is influenced by the third variable, learner autonomy (A). Garrison (2000) noted that learner autonomy (A) is less easily explained as it may refer to personal autonomy or autonomy associated with the learning materials themselves. Both high and low transactional distance may be acceptable depending on the characteristics of the learners and their level of autonomy (Kanuka, Collett, & Caswell, 2002). Moore (1977) had previously acknowledged the possibility of both high dialogue and high structure (+D+S) (as in correspondence programs), and of low dialogue and low struc- ture (−D−S) (as in self-directed independent study programs). He subsequently noted that high structure and high dialogue can reduce transactional distance (Moore, 1993) and suggested that instructors in doubt should err on the side of too much structure rather than too little, arguing that the right balance between structure and dialogue is dependent on the educational sophistication of the learner and the subject content (Moore, 2004). Transactional distance theory, e-learning, and context Developments in learning technologies have led to renewed interest in transactional distance theory. In the 1990s, studies of synchronous electronic interaction empirically confirmed concepts associated with transactional distance (e.g., Bischoff, Bisconer, Kooker, & Woods, 1996; Bunker, Gayol, Nti, & Reidell, 1996; Saba & Shearer, 1994). Despite some criticism of the concept for its inability to explain processes and predict events, and to correlate transactional distance with learning outcomes (Chen, 2001a, 2001b; Chen & Willits, 1998; Cookson & Chang, 1995; Gorsky & Caspi, 2005a), others have continued to see value in the idea of transactional distance and to explore its implications. Several studies have focused on aspects of dialogue and structure. Murphy and Cifuentes (2001) noted that ‘[a] delicate balance between course structure and dialogue of the instructor and learners is critical for online learner success’ (p. 298). Shea, Pickett, and Pelz (2003) and Stein, Wanstreet, Calvin, Overtoom, and Wheaton (2005) have supported the central role of structure in student satisfaction and perceived learning in online learning environments. The latter also supported the suggestion that high structure and high dialogue can reduce transactional distance. Wikeley and Muschamp (2004) noted the need for both high dialogue and high structure in e-learning environments involving doctoral students studying at a distance. They argued that ‘whilst dialogue needs to be increased … it is better achieved by tightening the structure to allow greater adaptability of content through careful moderation by tutors’ (p. 125). Other studies have explored the role of interaction in transactional distance. Moore (1989) identified three forms of transactional interaction (learner–instructor interaction, learner–content interaction, and learner–learner interaction) but his definition of dialogue as interaction between teacher and learner distinguishes it from the other forms (Moore, 1991, 1993). It is dialogue rather than interaction that he used to hypothesise the inverse relationship with structure in relation to transactional distance. However, Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena (1994) added learner–interface interaction to the Distance Education 9 other forms of interaction identified by Moore in order to accommodate the character- istics of electronic teaching. Subsequently, Chen (2001a, 2001b), Zhang (2003), and Lemone (2005) examined the effects of these four variables on Web-based learning. Zhang found that the strongest factor that affected students’ transactional distance and engagement with learning was the transactional distance between student and students, followed by transactional distance between student and teacher. Lemone demonstrated how cultural influences affected transactional issues relating to these four variables in a study involving Nepali and Icelandic students. Dennen, Darabi, and Smith (2007) have identified some important aspects of instructor–learner interaction in online courses. Dron, Seidel, and Litten (2004) illustrated the inverse relationship between dialogue and structure in a blended learning environment. Dron (2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) has also introduced other ideas relating to transactional distance and e- learning, in particular by analysing dialogue and structure in terms of transactional control. He noted that transactional control is concerned with choices, either by teacher or learners, and he examined the control issues that emerge in the use of social software, including the potential for structure to arise as a result of dialogue. Dron (2007b) explained that transactional control theory ‘does not aim to replace transactional distance theory as it says nothing significant of the psychological gap between learner and teacher, but it helps to explain some of its dynamics.’ He commented that ‘[s]tructure equates to teacher control, dialogue to negotiated control, and autonomy to learner control’ (p. 60). On the basis that an inverse rela- tionship between structure and dialogue was integral to transactional distance, he had previously noted a ‘loophole’ in the ‘law’ of transactional distance in virtual learning environments when structure is generated through dialogue to create an environment that has both high structure and high dialogue at the same time (Dron, 2004). Learners working collaboratively in wikis, for example, would be creating the structure of the environment by negotiating control through dialogue, while at the same time exercising their learner autonomy by controlling the creation of the wiki. The autonomy of learners appears to be particularly important to their ability to work in Web 2.0 environments where the opportunities for collaboration have ‘changed the way learners can retrieve, share and evaluate information, and create knowledge’ (Benson & Brack, 2009, p. 74). These Web 2.0 websites are markedly different from the static, non-interactive websites associated with Web 1.0 (O’Reilly, 2005). Web 2.0 functionalities respond to a need noted by Saba (2005) that ‘educational systems of the future must respond to learner differences dynami- cally as the learning process evolves and not necessarily be based on pre- determined programs’ (p. 264). However, students’ readiness to use these technolo- gies needs to be considered. Kennedy, Judd, Churchward, Gray, and Krause (2008) drew on empirical evidence to suggest that students who comfortably use them for social and entertainment purposes may not necessarily have the skills to use the same technologies for learning. In e-learning contexts, the teacher’s understanding of the learners is important to the way they are supported through structure and dialogue. E-learning design is depen- dent on this understanding. In an editorial about the importance and influence of context in e-learning, Searle (2008) commented that ‘[u]nderstanding the relationship between learning and technology is all about understanding context’ (p. 2). A recent instructional systems design model (Morrison, Ross, & Kemp, 2004) included four key elements in instructional design (process, systems, outcomes, and delivery) with the focus of delivery on considerations about transactional distance. In the following 10 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema section, we propose another conceptual approach for addressing context as part of e- learning design that combines a constructivist framework with transactional distance theory. A conceptual approach for addressing context as part of e-learning design We draw on Oliver and Herrington’s framework (2001) for describing critical elements of online learning settings to conceptualise the management of transac- tional distance in e-learning design. In this framework, based on a constructivist perspective, the design focus is on learning tasks which are aligned with the planned learning outcomes and assessment, with appropriate resources and learning supports provided to allow students to complete the tasks. Using this framework, we have previously suggested that management of transactional distance can be considered as primarily influencing the supports that need to be provided in specific contexts, which, in turn, may influence the design of learning tasks, learning resources, and assessments, as illustrated in Figure 1 (Benson & Samarawickrema, 2007). We regard provision for learner–content interaction and learner–interface interaction as elements of structure and consider dialogue as communication between learners or between teacher and learners. This view is supported by the idea of structure as including activities with automatic feedback programmed in advance, thereby contributing to intrapersonal dialogue, as opposed to interpersonal dialogue through open-ended social and emotional engagement with other people (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005b). Figure 1. Including management of transactional distance as a factor in e-learning design (based on Oliver & Herrington, 2001, p. 17). Our analysis of the design patterns that have emerged across a number of differ- ent units with a range of learning and teaching contexts suggests that a classroom can support low dialogue and low structure (−D−S) in the online components used because the face-to-face context provides for low transactional distance. However, in contexts characterised by medium transactional distance (such as blended �������� �� �������� �� ��� � �������� � ����� ��� � �������� � ��� ���� �� �� � �� � �� � ���� � ���� �� ������ � ���� �������� ���� ������ �� � � �� ������ ��� ��� �� �� � �� ������� �������� ������ �� ������� ����� ��� � ���������� �������� ������ �� �� ���� ��� ��� ������ �� �� ���� ��� ������� �� ����� ��������� � �������� � ���������� �� ���� �� �� ������ ���������� ��� ������ ����� ��� ������� � Figure 1. Including management of transactional distance as a factor in e-learning design (based on Oliver & Herrington, 2001, p. 20). Distance Education 11 learning environments), an inverse relationship between structure and dialogue is evident, though the specific aspects of the relationship will depend on the context and on the autonomy of the learners. As transactional distance becomes potentially greater in off-campus and transnational units which are wholly or partly online, there appear to be benefits in both high dialogue and high structure (+D+S) to meet learners’ needs. Thus, it seems that the degree of learner autonomy may be less important in contexts with low or high transactional distance, compared to contexts characterised by medium transactional distance. We illustrate this in the authentic cases presented in the following section. We consider that these design patterns are likely to be evident in any successful approach to e-learning which addresses the context of the learners, and that it would be valuable to explore this further through empirical research. Examples of successful approaches to addressing context in e-learning design The cases below demonstrate how basic knowledge about the learning context has been used to manage transactional distance by balancing dialogue, structure, and learner autonomy to reflect the design patterns outlined above. We have selected these cases as specific examples to illustrate a range of learning and teaching contexts from class- rooms to partially and fully online environments that extend to transnational settings. The cases have been previously judged as successful examples of e-learning design and included in showcases of effective teaching. Therefore, implicitly, the designs could be expected to include appropriate characteristics for managing transactional distance. The showcases are Monash University’s Designing Electronic Learning and Teaching Approaches (DELTA) for the Health Professions (a faculty-level password- protected site) and Deakin University’s Contemporary Online Teaching Cases (available at http://www.deakin.edu.au/itl/teach-learn/cases/index.htm). The design patterns in the selected cases are representative of the other cases available on the sites in terms of the management of transactional distance. Case 1: on-campus, classroom enhanced (−−−−D−−−−S+A) In a postgraduate counselling unit, the lecturer draws on a series of video vignettes on DVD of clients (represented by actors) presenting challenging situations faced by counselling psychologists in order to help students to practise, reflect on, and evaluate their own counselling skills. When the lecturer uses these vignettes in class she selects them in any order from the linear structure of the DVD to meet the needs of the specific situation. She asks students to write immediate responses (as a counsellor would) and then discuss these in small groups. Because access to a face-to-face learn- ing context tends to reduce transactional distance, and dialogue and structure are provided in the surrounding face-to-face context, the small, unstructured e-learning components (−S) can be used in a class in various ways and there is no requirement for online dialogue (−D). Although the autonomy of these postgraduate learners is high (+A), learner autonomy does not appear to be so important in this context because the teacher can accommodate high or low autonomy in the face-to-face setting. Consequently, the low transactional distance (−D−S) of the classroom- enhanced context can accommodate limited e-learning design, irrespective of learner autonomy (A). 12 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema Case 2: on-campus, blended (−−−−D+S−−−−A) E-learning activities and resources have been designed to complement on-campus teaching in a large second-year undergraduate pharmaceutics class of over 200 students. This blended learning approach was introduced to replace resource-intensive practical classes in tablet making, which could only accommodate eight students at a time. The teaching staff provide videotaped segments of the tablet production process along with online lecture material and revision quizzes on the unit website to offer a structured (+S) alternative to practical classes suitable for second-year undergraduate students, who might be expected to demonstrate low levels of autonomy (−A). There is no online dialogue (−D) as the opportunity for dialogue is available in the face-to- face setting. This e-learning design therefore illustrates an inverse relationship between structure and dialogue (−D+S) that is tailored to the characteristics of the learners and the learning context. Case 3: workplace-based, blended (+D−−−−S+A) A blended learning environment has also been provided for a class of final-year public relations students undertaking a Bachelor of Arts degree, who are required to serve a mandatory work placement. The lecturer works with the Faculty Office to organise these semester-long work placements for his students, who may choose to serve their practicum in companies in Australia or overseas. As part of the unit assessment, he requires learners to submit two assessable items: a work report and an analysis of how theory is connected to their placement work. He asks learners to negotiate the scope and extent of these assessments individually, based on the work involved in their placement. This activity is in keeping with the learner autonomy (+A) that character- ises the independence of final-year students about to join the workforce. Negotiation is managed via the learning management system and the lecturer maintains a high level of online dialogue (+D) with his dispersed student group while also ensuring that the learners stay connected with each other. The site also connects students to their assessable e-journals. The unit is deliberately loosely structured (−S) to accommodate the different workplaces and roles in which students will be involved. As in case 2, the medium transactional distance of the blended learning environ- ment is characterised by an inverse relationship between dialogue and structure, and the specific characteristics of the context, along with the level of learner autonomy, determine whether the focus of the e-learning design needs to be on dialogue or structure. In case 2, transactional distance is managed through face-to-face dialogue and high levels of structure in the online materials to accommodate the low autonomy (−A) of learners, while case 3 illustrates management of transactional distance with high online dialogue (+D) to suit the limited online structure and the context of the workplace setting. This is possible because of the high autonomy (+A) of the learners. In these two cases, the nature of the blended learning environment determines whether the design focus needs to be on dialogue or structure. Case 4: on-campus, multiple campuses, wholly online (+D−−−−S+A) A unit entitled ‘The Strategic Academic’ in the Graduate Certificate of Higher Education has been designed for wholly online study because the learners (new academic staff members) are located on multiple campuses. The course is mandatory for all new academics and must be completed during their probationary period. The Distance Education 13 unit assessment is planned to ensure that learners understand their professional environment, reflect on how to manage it, and define strategies to move forward in their profession. Therefore, students define their individual career goals and related study plans as part of their assignment. Towards this end, the lecturer has designed a unit site on the learning management system, providing a range of digital resources to support learning. The site offers a basic unit outline and the required deadlines in addition to the discussion space for the dialogue. The unit structure is deliberately low (−S) in order to allow learners to negotiate their assignment and unit outcomes individually. These highly autonomous learners (+A) identify their own learning needs and outcomes and work with the lecturer to develop their measures for success, using extensive online dialogue (+D) to negotiate learning outcomes with her and to engage with the other learners via threaded discussion forums. In this case, the combination of wholly online teaching in an on-campus teaching context provides another example of medium transactional distance, with manage- ment features similar to those in case 3. In case 4, high dialogue and high learner autonomy have accommodated low structure (−S) enabling transactional distance to be bridged individually through learners negotiating structure and content. As a consequence of individually negotiating and making choices related to content and pace, learners demonstrate greater control, and levels of dialogue are higher than in case 3. Case 5: off-campus + transnational, wholly online (+D+S−−−−A) A wholly online approach has also been used in a core computer ethics unit in the Bachelor of Technology degree. This is a large class of urban and rural Australian students and international students from several countries, including Australian students studying from overseas. The lecturer teaches this group of 500 final-year undergraduates with the help of three tutors. They use the learning management system to deliver all resources, including learner guides, schedules, announcements, and instructions. The only print resource the students receive is a letter in the mail giving their username and password to access the system. The unit is highly structured (+S) to ensure that all learners in the large cohort move through the semester at the same pace. Accordingly, learners work through a series of assessable activities at specified times, leading on to a compulsory final examination. If assessable items are not submitted online on the specified dates, the system rejects them. The design also provides for a high level of dialogue (+D) via the online discussion space. Each assessable item has its own dedicated threaded discus- sion moderated by a designated tutor. Further opportunities for dialogue are provided by a general discussion space where announcements are made by the lecturer and general queries are raised by students. Wikis are used for the small-group project work. Although these are final-year students who might normally be regarded as autonomous learners, because of the size and dispersion of the group, transactional distance is managed by allowing for only low levels of autonomy (−A). This case illustrates that when transactional distance is high, as in off-campus or transnational contexts where teaching occurs online, high dialogue and high structure (+D+S) appear to be important because the extent of the transactional distance suggests that high levels of support through both avenues need to be built into the e- learning design in order to bridge it. 14 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema Case 6: off-campus + transnational, partially online (+D+S+A) A postgraduate unit on social work and aged care is offered to small classes of students enrolled in a Master of Social Work degree. Students consider current social policies in relation to ageing and examine whether or not these promote healthy ageing. The unit is designed to accommodate off-campus Australian students as well as others at locations around the world. All are practising social workers. The material is Australian-based but offers the opportunity of sharing the experiences of interna- tional students. To teach the unit, the lecturer provides a set of distance education print materials which complement a unit website within the university’s learning management system, as well as a DVD of interviews with elderly people. These unit components are highly structured, with activities designated in the print materials to guide students’ use of the other components. This includes discussion activities which students undertake within specified timeframes on the unit website. Students’ partici- pation in these activities forms 80% of the assessment in the unit. The website also contains other visual and aural resources, including audio clips from four social work practitioners in each topic containing their comments on the implications of that topic for their work. Students are encouraged to draw on these comments in their written assignment (worth 20%), which focuses on the implications of their learning for their own practice. Although these learners have potentially high levels of autonomy (+A) as post- graduate students and practising social workers, the unit is characterised by both high levels of dialogue (+D) to facilitate their engagement and high levels of structure (+S) Figure 2. Relative levels of dialogue, structure, and autonomy in the selected learning contexts. Distance Education 15 to maximise support across their diverse learning contexts. Considering cases 5 and 6 together, it seems that high levels of dialogue and structure are suggested by high transactional distance, even when learner autonomy is high. Figure 2 illustrates the relative levels of dialogue (D), structure (S), and learner autonomy (A) of each of the above cases, demonstrating how low transactional distance is associated with low levels of online dialogue and structure (−D−S), and high transactional distance with high levels of dialogue and structure (+D+S), which appear to be likely irrespective of learner autonomy. In contrast, e-learning contexts involving medium transactional distance are characterised by the inverse relationship of dialogue and structure and seem to be most affected by the level of learner autonomy. Garrison (2000) has commented that ‘[u]nderstanding transactional distance very much depends upon whether we are discussing a two-by-two matrix, a single continuum, or distinct clusters’ (p. 9). As indicated by Figure 2, the approach suggested here lends itself to the use of a two-by-two matrix. Figure 2. Relative levels of dialogue, structure, and autonomy in the selected learning contexts. In the next section, we consider some implications for e-learning design that emerge from this analysis. Implications Implications of using transactional distance theory to address context in e-learning design The above analysis suggests some practical strategies that can be undertaken during the planning of an e-learning design to ensure that opportunities provided for dialogue and structure offer appropriate support in a given learning and teaching context. We consider that wholly online learners in the early years of a course might be expected to demonstrate low levels of autonomy and require high levels of structure in order to bridge the transactional distance. This might therefore involve structured online tasks (to facilitate intrapersonal dialogue) that are completed in specified timeframes, and plentiful guidance through scaffolding strategies. When learning activities require interpersonal dialogue, this may also need to be structured by the teacher, perhaps using Salmon’s e-moderation model (2003), with substantial support provided early so that more complex discussion tasks are introduced when students are more able to interact comfortably in an online environment. In contrast, more mature learners with higher levels of autonomy studying in blended learning environments and supported by some face-to-face contact may be able to manage their own learning easily, and may readily form online communities of practice, where much of the dialogue involves social construction of knowledge through learner–learner interaction, and structure can be minimised. A preliminary analysis of the teaching context to identify the expected transac- tional distance provides a means of determining the levels of dialogue and structure which may be indicated to support students appropriately in planning the learning design, bearing in mind the expected general level of learner autonomy. This then offers a basis for considering any further information that is available about the learners’ contexts and characteristics. Analysis of this information will be influenced by the theoretical concepts that the designer adopts about the role of context in learn- ing. This process helps to flesh out the specific nature of the dialogue and structural elements to be included to support students. Consideration of these elements may also influence the design of resources and the activities themselves, as suggested by 16 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema the interrelationship of support, resources, and activities in Oliver and Herrington’s model (2001). If a teacher was designing the online component of a research methods unit to be offered in a blended learning environment (face-to-face lectures and online tutorials) and planned an online activity to help students to write a research proposal, the nature of the context and the expected autonomy of the learners would help to refine the related decisions. If the task was designed from a constructivist perspective, students could be asked to critique a research article in a journal to construct knowl- edge about key components of a research project using an authentic resource. If the students were undergraduates who were unfamiliar with research processes, and whose autonomy in this area was low, one approach would be to break down the online task into small, structured components and provide well-chosen and easily accessible online resources to assist them. Given the availability of the face-to-face environment, requirements might be explained in the related lecture and opportuni- ties offered for face-to-face clarification. The design of the online teaching compo- nent could then be represented as −D+S−A. However, if these were postgraduate students who were familiar with research methodology and whose level of autonomy was high, the main features of the activity might remain the same, but there would be less need for online structure. Online support might primarily take the form of dialogue for clarifying concerns as they arise (+D−S+A). If some of these students were studying off-campus, then the high level of online structure might be main- tained, including opportunities for dialogue (+D+S+A), in order to maximise the online support available because these students have no access to face-to-face support. The additional contextual information that is available about any of these groups of students would further inform the way the supports are designed. For example, most of the undergraduate students might be working about 25 hours a week, and could therefore study only in small blocks of time, or a number of the off-campus postgraduate students may have limited access to high-speed Internet connections. Although teachers might intuitively take some of this contextual information into consideration when designing learning activities, the value of the concept of transactional distance is that it provides another lens through which to consider e- learning design, which has very practical implications for informing the way the balance of dialogue and structure is managed in relation to the expected level of learner autonomy. In general, practical implications to consider in designing for high transactional distance environments include the ongoing involvement of teachers and sensitivity to learner needs in order to ensure that levels of dialogue are appropriate to support learners. Where high structure is implicated, an upfront investment in planning and time is required as well. Even where considerable control of dialogue or structure is delegated to the learner, there are implications for careful planning, management, and evaluation by the teacher to establish requirements and monitor progress to ensure that learning outcomes are met. Implications for e-learning designs that involve Web 2.0 technologies The above implications remain largely applicable when the e-learning design includes the use of Web 2.0 technologies by students. However, in some circumstances the levels of support provided may need to be greater than those offered in online learning Distance Education 17 environments with which students are more familiar. When Web 2.0 technologies are used, it is important to distinguish between the role of dialogue and structure in managing transactional distance (which is under the control of the teacher) and the role of dialogue and structure within the selected Web 2.0 environment, which allows learners control of that environment to facilitate emergent structure and collaborative learning negotiated through dialogue. Transactional distance is likely to be high for students who are less familiar with learning in Web 2.0 environments, which, as indicated earlier, may include net generation students with widely varying access to, and skills and preferences for using, emerging technology-based tools for learning. Teachers need to take account of this when planning the activities, resources, and supports that contribute to the design of such an environment. In a blended learning context, when a teacher expects students who are unfamil- iar with Web 2.0 technologies to use a wiki to undertake a student project, consider- able support may be needed to compensate for their low autonomy in this area. Some support may be provided face-to-face but high levels of online dialogue may be needed as students clarify requirements, together with high levels of online support as the teacher increases the structure surrounding the wikis in order to provide more guidance to students. By increasing online dialogue and support to reduce the transactional distance for these learners, the design pattern (+D+S−A) resembles that described earlier for e-learning contexts involving high transactional distance. For off-campus or transnational learners who already require high levels of support, the learning design may need to provide for even higher levels of dialogue and structure. With these higher levels of support, learners are likely to be in a better position to use social software such as blogs and wikis and experience the empowerment of learner control through learner–learner interaction. When learners use the shared online space to build their learning environment collaboratively in a wiki, the choice made by the teacher to delegate control to the students in turn increases the students’ choices within that context and their ability to manage dialogue and structure. However, once students have developed the confidence to engage with their peers in the Web 2.0 context, then the high levels of dialogue and structure that may charac- terise their engagement relate to the nature of the medium, rather than to transactional distance, and consequently do not actually indicate a loophole in the law of transac- tional distance (Dron, 2004). Conclusion In this article, we have considered the importance of addressing the learning and teaching context in e-learning design and have suggested that one way of approaching this is to consider the separation between learners, and between teacher and learners, in terms of the transactional distance involved. Learner support can then be managed by designing levels of dialogue and structure that are appropriate for the learners and the learning context in order to reduce transactional distance. We have illustrated this idea with a series of case studies that indicate that low levels of dialogue and structure are sufficient for e-learning contexts involving low transactional distance, while contexts involving high transactional distance may be best supported by high levels of dialogue and structure (+D+S). In both these contexts, the expected level of learner autonomy appears to be less important than in contexts involving medium transac- tional distance. We suggest that it is in contexts of medium transactional distance that 18 R. Benson and G. Samarawickrema the inverse relationship of dialogue and structure is most likely to be appropriate and most likely to be affected by the level of learner autonomy. This approach offers a practical way of making initial design decisions by analys- ing a given e-learning context. These principles can be extended to e-learning contexts involving Web 2.0 technologies, despite the fact that dialogue and structure are under the learners’ control when they work in these contexts. The principles continue to be applicable because it is important to distinguish between the role of dialogue and structure in managing transactional distance (which is under the control of the teacher) and the role of dialogue and structure within the Web 2.0 environment. We have proposed that for many students lack of familiarity with the use of Web 2.0 technologies for learning may mean that teachers need to design for high levels of dialogue and structure surrounding the Web 2.0 environment in order to support students. Further analysis of the above ideas in a broader range of contexts, particularly drawing on empirical evidence, may provide useful insights for e-learning design. Although the concept of transactional distance is not measurable and from a scientific perspective the theory is open to critique (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005a), the variables on which it is based are intuitively relevant to teaching. It offers a clear reminder that the design of e-learning is not a one-size-fits-all enterprise and provides a strategy for an analytical approach that is responsive to the characteristics of learners and the context of their learning. Acknowledgements We acknowledge those responsible for the case studies considered in this article: Dr Janette Simmonds, Ian Larson, Suzanne Caliph, Keri Jones, and Lesley Hewitt of Monash Unive- rsity; and Ross Monaghan, Dr Julia Walsh, and Dr Jo Coldwell of Deakin University. This article extends the ideas presented in the conference paper by Benson and Samarawickrema (2007). 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work_i6pmmihuv5e3xcqbee73iogu24	----	[PDF] Using Learning Analytics to Support Engagement in Collaborative Writing | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2017100105 Corpus ID: 28576613Using Learning Analytics to Support Engagement in Collaborative Writing @article{Liu2017UsingLA, title={Using Learning Analytics to Support Engagement in Collaborative Writing}, author={M. Liu and A. Pardo and Li Liu}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2017}, volume={15}, pages={79-98} } M. Liu, A. Pardo, Li Liu Published 2017 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Online collaborative writing tools provide an efficient way to complete a writing task. [...] Key Result Results show that students agreed with what the visualization conveys and visualizations enhance their engagement in a collaborative writing activity. In addition, students stated that the visualizations were useful to help them reflect on the writing process and support the assessment of individual contributions.Expand View via Publisher opus.lib.uts.edu.au Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 3 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Background Citations 1 Methods Citations 1 View All Figures, Tables, and Topics from this paper figure 1 table 1 figure 2 table 2 figure 3 table 3 figure 4 table 4 figure 5 table 5 figure 6 table 6 figure 7 View All 13 Figures & Tables Social affordance 3 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Eye-Write: Gaze Sharing for Collaborative Writing Grete Helena Kütt, K. Lee, Ethan Hardacre, Alexandra Papoutsaki Computer Science, Psychology CHI 2019 3 Highly Influenced PDF View 14 excerpts, cites methods Save Alert Research Feed Quantifying Collaboration in Synchronous Document Editing Adrian Pace, L. Baligand, Stian Håklev, Jennifer K. Olsen, Nore de Grez, B. Wever Computer Science SwissText 2018 1 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Text mining in education Rafael Ferreira Leite de Mello, M. Ferreira, A. Cavalcanti, E. Costa, C. Romero Computer Science Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Data Min. Knowl. Discov. 2019 11 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 56 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Tracer: A Tool to Measure and Visualize Student Engagement in Writing Activities M. Liu, R. Calvo, A. 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work_i6yn43wfvvhzjb7qwjyhkwhhkm	----	This article was downloaded by: [University of Bristol] On: 28 October 2014, At: 06:56 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK American Journal of Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hajd20 Exploring Factors Influencing Collaborative Knowledge Construction in Online Discussions: Student Facilitation and Quality of Initial Postings Andri Ioannoua, Skevi Demetrioua & Maria Mamaa a Cyprus University of Technology Published online: 26 Aug 2014. To cite this article: Andri Ioannou, Skevi Demetriou & Maria Mama (2014) Exploring Factors Influencing Collaborative Knowledge Construction in Online Discussions: Student Facilitation and Quality of Initial Postings, American Journal of Distance Education, 28:3, 183-195, DOI: 10.1080/08923647.2014.926780 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2014.926780 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hajd20 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/08923647.2014.926780 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2014.926780 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education, 28:183–195, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0892-3647 print/1538-9286 online DOI: 10.1080/08923647.2014.926780 Exploring Factors Influencing Collaborative Knowledge Construction in Online Discussions: Student Facilitation and Quality of Initial Postings Andri Ioannou, Skevi Demetriou, and Maria Mama Cyprus University of Technology Although lots of studies have investigated collaborative knowledge construction in online courses, the factors influencing this process are yet to be fully determined. This study provides quantitative and qualitative types of evidence on how (naturally emerged) student facilitation and quality of ini- tial postings influence collaborative knowledge construction in online discussions. We analyzed the discourse of nine student groups (N = 34) working on a case problem in an online discussion forum. We found that student facilitation was an important contributor to the process. In contrast, the con- tribution of low-quality postings in early stages of the discussion can jeopardize the process. This work is an attempt to address quality in online learning by helping instructors decide on encouraging student facilitation in online discussions as well as structuring and carefully monitoring the content of initial discussion postings. Collaborative learning is consistent with a sociocultural perspective on learning. From this perspective, knowledge is constructed socially in the interactions among people before it is inter- nalized as individual knowing. Learning collaboratively does not just entail sharing a workload or individual knowledge with one another but rather comparing and understanding multiple per- spectives on an issue (e.g., Scardamalia and Bereiter 2006; Stahl 2006). Gallini and Barron (2002) explained that successful collaborative learning is generally marked by the amount of communication, interaction, and reflection that takes place—that is, how often students engage in explaining and justifying their thinking to one another and negotiate their interpretations and solu- tions to establish meaning. Collaborative learning is particularly popular in online, asynchronous courses. Typically supported by asynchronous threaded discussion forums, learners engage in social exchange, interaction, discussion, and collaboration in an effort to construct knowledge together. For more than fifteen years, researchers have been investigating collaborative knowl- edge construction in online learning settings and several approaches and models have been employed to study this process (e.g., Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson 1997; Weinberger and Fischer 2006; Zenios 2011). In general, productive collaboration in online learning groups Correspondence should be sent to Andri Ioannou, Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts, Cyprus University of Technology, 94 Anexartisias Street, Iakovides Building 2nd Floor, Limassol 3040, Cyprus. E-mail: andri.i.ioannou@cut.ac.cy D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 mailto:andri.i.ioannou@cut.ac.cy 184 IOANNOU, DEMETRIOU, MAMA addresses (a) contributions of content and ideas related to the group task; (b) reflections and cognitive/metacognitive exchanges (asking questions, exchanging conflicting opinions, provid- ing explanations); and (c) evidence of knowledge construction—that is, having new insights as a result of the discussion, making deep connections, and synthesizing information (i.e., Hmelo- Silver 2003; Stahl 2006). Furthermore, researchers have examined factors influencing the success of collaborative knowledge construction. Group composition (in terms of gender, status, culture, and expertise), size of group, nature of the task and task structuring, participants’ individual char- acteristics, and the role of the instructor and tools/interfaces supporting the learning task have all been identified as variables influencing collaborative knowledge construction in online settings (Hmelo-Silver, Chernobilsky, and Nagarajan 2009; Resta and Laferrière 2007; Roschelle 1992). In this study we attempt to advance the research in this area by focusing on two factors: student facilitation and quality of initial postings. The study draws upon the literature suggesting that the presence of a student leader in an asyn- chronous online course promotes regular participation by the rest of the students (Tagg 1994), with the emphasis placed not only on the frequency of contributions but also, and most impor- tant, on the quality of the learning process and the meaningful construction of knowledge within the online community (Aviv et al. 2003; Garrison and Cleveland-Innes 2005). The influence of student facilitation is echoed in several e-learning studies that examine student-led facilitation techniques (Baran and Correia 2009) or the role of the moderator who, structuring a student- centered course, should be encouraged to assign responsibilities and leadership roles to the participants (Maor 2003). Researchers discuss how student facilitation takes the edge off the authoritative influence of a teacher (Akyol and Garrison 2011) and how students show preference toward student-led, rather than instructor-led, online discussions (Rourke and Anderson 2002). Still there are concerns that low critical thinking and irrelevant contributions take place when the discussion is guided by peers (Rourke and Anderson 2002). Assessing the quality of students’ postings in online discussions and their impact on the ongo- ing collaboration has not been thoroughly investigated to date. Ho and Swan (2007) found that quality—defined by them as “substantive contributions that expressed beliefs or values” (7)— was the most important criterion for predicting responses to a discussion posting compared with quantity, relevance, and manner. Other researchers have focused on structuring online discussions and creating evaluation rubrics to ensure meaningful discourse and knowledge construction will take place (e.g., Gilbert and Dabbagh 2005). Yet, there seems to be lack of work examining how high-quality postings, and especially low-quality postings, influence the progression of online discussions and the construction of knowledge. Also, researchers have yet to explore how post- ings help build the context for other future postings and how this influences the overall knowledge construction process (Wise and Chiu 2011). This work is part of a broader investigation where collaborative learning in discussion forums and wikis has been studied (Ioannou and Stylianou-Georgiou 2012). Here, we provide quantita- tive and qualitative types of evidence on how (naturally emerged) student facilitation and quality of initial postings may influence collaborative knowledge construction in online discussions. The main criteria for identifying a student facilitator in this work included their core presence in guiding and structuring the discussion toward the final product, their frequent undertaking of summarization of the points and ideas articulated (by themselves and others), and the acknowl- edgment of their contribution by their colleagues (e.g., Aviv et al. 2003; Baran and Correia 2009; Garrison and Cleveland-Innes 2005). Also, a high-quality (initial) posting was identified as a new D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION 185 contribution, reflective of the student’s belief and/or opinions and supported by sufficient evi- dence where necessary (see Ho and Swan’s 2007 definition). This work is an attempt to address quality in online learning, both by helping instructors decide on encouraging student facilitation in online discussions and by structuring and carefully monitoring the content of initial discussion postings. METHOD Participants Our sample consisted of thirty-four graduate students in an online learning theories course taught over 16 weeks at a public university in the northeastern United States. Most of the participants were female (79%) in-service teachers (95%) between 22 and 54 years of age (M = 37, SD = 10.8). Procedures Students were randomly assigned into nine groups: seven groups of four students and two groups of three students. Student collaboration was carried out virtually using the threaded discussion forum of the school’s learning management system (WebCT). The activity lasted roughly two weeks and took place three weeks before the end of the course. Students were tasked to work in their groups on a case problem adapted from a book special- ized on the case method for teacher education (Dottin and Weiner 2001). Students were to apply concepts learned in the course to produce a comprehensive solution to the problem of the case. In order to guide their activity, students were provided with guidelines on how to approach the analysis of a case problem (also adapted from Dottin and Weiner 2001). Briefly, the guidelines involved directions on (1) how to define the problem; (2) how to identify facts, stakeholders, and unanswered questions in the case; (3) how to offer interpretations using theoretical, pedagogical (application of theory), and professional knowledge; and (4) how to produce a consensus solution plan. The discussion was led by the students themselves and there were no specific requirements about the number or quality of contributions to the discussion. The instructor monitored the group discussions, but her intervention was purposely restrained. In general, she did not provide content or content feedback, but instead she tried to encourage discussion by giving structural feedback (e.g., “You need to base your arguments on instances from the case and to support those with theory”) and acknowledging students’ contributions (e.g., “This is a good argument . . .”). Analysis The corpus of collaborative discourse of all nine groups was automatically captured in the discus- sion forum—a total of 252 messages were collected for analysis. The analysis was conducted in two levels: (a) coding and counting the group’s discourse in order to understand the general con- tent structure of the discussion and (b) exploring the collaborators’ contributions as they occurred D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 186 IOANNOU, DEMETRIOU, MAMA chronologically to constitute evidence for the role of the factors of interest (student facilitation and quality of initial postings) in the collaborative knowledge construction process. Code-and-Count Content Analysis Initially, two coders with professional backgrounds in educational technology (authors of this arti- cle) became acquainted with the data by reading all the discourse thoroughly. Then, a number of coding schemes from previous investigations were reviewed to decide whether one of them could describe our data corpus (e.g., Aviv et al. 2003; Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson 1997; Marra, Moore, and Klimczak 2004; Puntambekar 2006; Weinberger and Fischer 2006). This effort was in line with researchers such as Rourke and Anderson (2004) and De Wever et al. (2006), who strongly encourage the reuse of coding schemes developed in previous research to foster their replicability and validity. We decided to use Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson’s (1997) coding scheme, which con- ceptualizes the processes of collaborative knowledge construction in virtual environments as a series of successive (though not necessarily strictly sequential) phases. Besides being a good fit for our data corpus, this coding scheme is both theoretically and empirically validated and one of the few content analysis protocols with an existing research base (e.g., De Wever et al. 2006; Marra, Moore, and Klimczak 2004; Wise and Chiu 2011). Two coders worked closely together to refine the coding scheme in context and to decide what aspect of the content constituted evi- dence for each coding category: (1) Sharing/Adding, (2) Negotiating meaning, (3) Elaborating, (4) Evaluating/Testing of proposed synthesis, and (5) Consensus/Applying constructed knowl- edge. See Table 1 for the coding scheme with excerpts of students’ discourse categorized in different phases. The entire corpus of collaborative discourse of each group was analyzed using the coding scheme of Table 1. During coding, the post was taken as the unit of analysis—an acceptable practice in related works (e.g., Wise and Chiu 2011) and was considered in relation to the over- all discussion. Each message was categorized under one, and only one, of the categories for the phases of collaborative knowledge construction. In cases of two or more applicable phases (usually in lengthier postings), the contribution was coded in the higher phase (e.g., if a posting included elements of Phase 2, Phase 3, and Phase 4, it was coded as Phase 4). Given the develop- mental nature of this coding scheme (i.e., higher levels of knowledge construction are implied by more advanced phases), this practice was deemed appropriate and allowed us to be systematic. Approximately 50% of the discourse was coded by the two coders together. The remaining 50% was coded by each coder independently and percentage agreement was computed to be 89% (kappa statistics = 7.6); disagreements were fully resolved by discussion between the coders. Messages that only aimed the monitoring of the team progress, planning the task, using the tech- nology, and socializing were not coded; this also included any statements contributed by the instructor. In the end, we calculated frequencies of codes across phases and groups as shown in Table 2 to understand the general content structure of the discussion across groups. Chronological Visuals For a chronological examination of within-group collaboration, we plotted all discourse and actions on a chronological visual—a method inspired by Hmelo-Silver et al.’s (2011) CORDTRA D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 TA B L E 1 C o lla b o ra tiv e K n o w le d g e C o n st ru ct io n C o d in g S ch e m e P h a se C a te g o ry D es cr ip ti o n E xc er p ts fr o m th e d a ta 1 S ha ri ng / A dd in g A st at em en t of ob se rv at io n or op in io n; D efi ni ti on , de sc ri pt io n, id en ti fi ca ti on of a pr ob le m . “J us t th ou gh t of so m et hi ng el se .M ay be Jo e’ sa pa re nt s do n’ t kn ow w ha t se rv ic es ar e ou t th er e fo r th em so m ay be th ey ne ed to be ed uc at ed on w ha t se rv ic es th ey ar e en ti tl ed to ha ve .” (P ar ti ci pa nt fr om G ro up 1) 2 N eg ot ia ti ng m ea ni ng A gr ee m en t (S ta te m en t of ag re em en t w it h ot he r pa rt ic ip an ts ,c or ro bo ra ti ng st at em en ts pr ov id ed by ot he r pa rt ic ip an ts ); D is ag re em en t (S ta te m en t of di sa gr ee m en t w it h ot he r pa rt ic ip an ts ,r es ta te m en t of a pa rt ic ip an t’ s po si ti on ,a dv an ce m en t of ar gu m en ts in su pp or t of an op po si ng st at em en t) . A gr ee m en t: “I ag re e w it h yo u th at Jo e’ s lo w se lf -e ffi ca cy an d lo w m ot iv at io n ar e im po rt an t pa rt s of th e pr ob le m .I al so th in k hi s pe rc ei ve d la ck of re le va nc e of th e co nt en t of w ha t he is le ar ni ng in sc ho ol is al so a bi g pr ob le m .” (P ar ti ci pa nt fr om G ro up 6) D is ag re em en t: “I re sp ec tf ul ly di sa gr ee ,a nd th in k th at S he rr y sh ou ld at le as t at te m pt to co nt ac t th e pa re nt s. S he ca n fi nd ou t fr om th em if he ha s an y ti m e to do hi s ho m ew or k or if he re al ly is ob li ga te d to he lp hi s m om ca re fo r th e ki ds to su ch a gr ea t ex te nt th at he ca nn ot co m pl et e hi s w or k. ” (P ar ti ci pa nt fr om G ro up 9) 3 E la bo ra ti ng B ui ld in g of pr ev io us st at em en ts / m ea ni ng s; C la ri fi ca ti on s. “D o yo u th in k gi vi ng hi m a le ad er sh ip ro le is a ba d id ea ? I ha ve tr ie d th is be fo re w it h st ud en ts in m y cl as s. S om et im es ,t he le ad er sh ip ro le gi ve s th em a bo os t of co nfi de nc e. It ap pe ar s th at Jo e ha s “b ee n on th e ed ge ” fo r so lo ng th at he ne ed s th e bo os t, li ke ye st er da y! !! H ow ev er I do se e ho w yo ur op in io n is va li d. ” (P ar ti ci pa nt fr om G ro up 4) 4 E va lu at in g/ T es ti ng of pr op os ed sy nt he si s R ev ie w of th e ne w sy nt he si s w it h th e pr os pe ct of fi na li zi ng it . “H i te am .H er e is m y re vi se d ve rs io n w it h ci ta ti on s to th e ca se : In or de r to tr ul y he lp Jo e be co m e a be tt er an d hi gh er ac hi ev in g st ud en t, S he rr y no t on ly ha s to fo cu s on Jo e in th e cl as sr oo m bu t al so as an in di vi du al ou ts id e of th e ac ad em ic da y. . . . Jo e ne ed s to ha ve a sh if t in hi s th in ki ng or pa ra di gm in or de r to be co m e a be tt er st ud en t. T o he lp fa ci li ta te th is tr an sf er S he rr y w il l ne ed to ca ll on re so ur ce s th at ar e ou ts id e he r co nt ro l, li ke so ci al se rv ic es an d ot he r in st it ut io ns th at ca n pl ay a ro le in ke ep in g Jo e fo cu se d on ac ad em ic s w hi le st il l be in g ab le to he lp hi s fa m il y. . . .” (L on g po st in g of sy nt he si s of co nt ri bu ti on s; P ar ti ci pa nt fr om G ro up 9) 5 C on se ns us / A pp ly in g co -c on st ru ct ed kn ow le dg e S um m ar y of ag re em en ts ; A pp li ca ti on of ne w kn ow le dg e; M et ac og ni ti ve st at em en ts of ch an ge s in kn ow le dg e or w ay s of th in ki ng . “I fe el ou r di sc us si on sh ow s th at M ot iv at io n is on e of th e fa ct or s th at ne ed to be ad dr es se d. O nc e m ot iv at io n is fi ll ed al on g w it h ai di ng in hi s ho m e li fe I be li ev e th at Jo e w il l do m uc h be tt er at sc ho ol .A ls o w e al l se em to ag re e th at Jo e la ck s in se lf -e ffi ca cy ,w hi ch re la te s to m ot iv at io n. I su gg es t w e fo cu s on m ot iv at io n fo r ou r so lu ti on pl an as on e of th e m aj or ke y fa ct or s in he lp in g Jo e. ” (P ar ti ci pa nt fr om G ro up 2) a Jo e is th e na m e of th e bo y m en ti on ed in th e ca se pr ob le m . 187 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 188 IOANNOU, DEMETRIOU, MAMA TABLE 2 Number of Codes Across Phases and Groups Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Total Group 1 3 3 2 6 1 15 Group 2 10 2 5 2 1 20 Group 3 7 2 2 3 1 15 Group 4 4 4 3 2 1 14 Group 5 13 7 6 6 1 33 Group 6 20 5 19 4 2 50 Group 7 7 10 13 8 4 42 Group 8 9 4 7 11 2 33 Group 9 7 14 3 5 1 30 Total (%) 80 (32%) 51 (20%) 60 (24%) 47 (19%) 14 (6%) 252 (100)% technique and used in a number of previous works (e.g., Ioannou 2011; Ioannou and Stylianou- Georgiou 2012). That is, for each group, we generated a spreadsheet scatterplot using the group’s coded discourse. The time of the contribution runs at the top of the visual (e.g., two weeks dura- tion of the activity in two days breakdown).1 The learners and discourse categories are listed on the right of the visual, whereas each time point on the visual represents a leaner’s coded contri- bution. In general, these visuals are inspected for patterns and serve as pointers to the discourse to help understand the collaboration process on a chronological spectrum, beyond coding and counting. For the sake of space, we present the visuals of four groups—two groups with an emerging student facilitator (Figures 1 and 2) and two groups with low-quality initial postings (Figures 3 and 4). The researchers carefully inspected the visuals of all nine groups and here they discuss collective results and consistent patterns with reference to Figures 1–4 (all other visuals can be provided upon request). FIGURE 1 Chronological Visual of Group 5 (Facilitator). 1We note that the two days breakdown creates an overlap of the scatters on the visual when contributions are close to each other timewise (e.g., one hour apart). This breakdown is unavoidable for the presentation of the visuals in an A4-page, yet the researchers work from a fully populated visual in spreadsheets where a detailed study of students’ interactions is possible. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION 189 FIGURE 2 Chronological Visual of Group 8 (Facilitator). FIGURE 3 Chronological Visual of Group 2 (Low-Quality Initial Postings). FIGURE 4 Chronological Visual of Group 3 (Low-Quality Initial Postings). RESULTS An initial consideration of Table 2 and the visuals of all groups showed that some collaborative knowledge construction occurred in all groups. Consistent with prior work (Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson 1997; Wise and Chiu 2011), Phase 1 statements (Sharing/Adding) accounted for the largest proportion of the overall discussion (32%)—representing between 20% and 50% of the talk depending on the group—and suggesting that students devoted a significant amount of their discussion in stating their positions and sharing information about the case problem before they produced more advanced statements toward a comprehensive problem solution (e.g., Phases 4–5). Yet, considering the total number of codes across phases (Table 2), we found that collaborative D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 190 IOANNOU, DEMETRIOU, MAMA knowledge construction was more apparent in some groups than others; this triggered a more in-depth examination of the groups’ collaboration in relation to the factors of interest: student facilitation and quality of initial postings. Student Facilitation A detailed examination of the visuals and associated groups’ discourse showed that two groups— Group 5 and Group 8 (Figures 1 and 2)—were supported by an emerging student facilitator. In both groups, the student facilitator emerged in the early stages of the discussion; she possessed core presence in guiding and structuring the discussion toward the final product; participated frequently, often undertaking the summarization of the points and ideas articulated; and her con- tribution was acknowledged by her colleagues. Overall, Groups 5 and 8 appeared successful in engaging in the collaborative knowledge construction process in that (1) their discourse involved contributions along all phases of knowledge construction; (2) all group members participated in this process; and (3) there were numerous constitutions suggesting engagement with the task (33 contributions in both groups) but not too many (e.g., >40 contributions), which could be suggesting difficulty in coming to a consensus, or too few (e.g., <20 contributions), which could be suggesting limited engagement with the task. Our analysis of results demonstrates how the emerging facilitator might have had a positive influence on the process. Specifically, in Group 5 (Figure 1), the facilitator (Member B) took the initiative to describe the situation and define the problem making sure she set out common grounds of discussion with the rest of the participants. Upon interaction with the other group members, she next tried to identify secondary issues and revise the problem definition. She often (from the beginning until the end) summarized the other students’ postings evaluating and extracting the central ideas that would construct the final argument. Managing time in view of the assignment deadline was another initiative on her behalf. Overall, her postings were lengthy but not authoritative as her tone and style were not discouraging to other group members. She clearly expressed her opinion, but at the same time she invited others to add to or modify her points. Also, she frequently encouraged and motivated her colleagues to contribute, such as the following: I was just about to post that some of the issues might be taken care of by a change in the learning environment. Varying routines and presentations might help. . . . I think Colleague 1 or Colleague 2 hit on this too! Great job. (Student facilitator, Group 5) At the end, she indicated her satisfaction from their collaboration and appreciated the outcome as a successful one. Her role as a facilitator was reflected in one of the other participants’ postings who, when finalizing the group’s consensus, said to her, “Will you take a final look at this and then post it to the group consensus discussion? I can do this if you want, but I don’t want to post without your final ‘once over.’” The student (Member B) who emerged as a facilitator in Group 8 (Figure 2) demonstrated sim- ilar facilitation patterns. She took the initiative to start and direct the discussion, and although this group had a rather late start in the activity (see Figure 2), its members worked intensively during Week 2 and managed to complete the task on time. Her postings, albeit not lengthy, inspired the contribution of the rest of the participants; for example: D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION 191 I think that’s right [facilitator name]. Thanks for posting! (Member A, Group 8) My pleasure, you did a lot of work for all of us on Readers workshop and responsive classroom. Thank you. (Student facilitator, Group 8) She frequently integrated the several contributions into one summary document while leading the discussion under a critical evaluation angle. Also, she often reviewed and monitored the group’s progress. Her colleagues did recognize her significant contribution, as shown in comments such as “Your hard work really helped me out a lot.” She contributed the most up until the end of the discussion, occasionally giving the impression that she did so trying to meet her colleagues’ expectations, such as the following: Ladies, we are almost at the end!!! I am not sure who wrote the closing paragraph, but it pulled things together well. I added to it on the doc and have posted here again for final comments/edits/revisions. (Student facilitator, Group 8) In both groups, the emerging student leader often drew from theories in the course textbooks and readings to initiate discussion in some direction; for example: Are Joe’s nonacademic needs being met? According to Ormrod (p. 486), students are more likely to focus on their schoolwork when their nonacademic needs have been met. (Student facilitator, Group 5) In other cases, student leaders drew from their experience and, with examples from their teaching practice, they indicated how they would respond to the problem described in their case study activity. In this way, they encouraged the rest of the participants to construct and elaborate on those examples, such as the following: Based on my experience, the teachers would benefit from finding out what Joe’s interests are. While he seems to be ok in math, the teachers of other subjects would do well to find out what other areas of knowledge he is confident about. They could use his interests to help spur work in language arts, reading, science, social studies, etc. . . . (Student facilitator, Group 5) Overall, our findings constitute evidence of the positive influence of the emerging facilitator in Groups 5 and 8. Low-Quality Initial Postings Group 2 and Group 3 appeared to be less successful in engaging in the collaborative knowledge construction process for a couple reasons. As evident in Table 2 and Figures 3 and 4, these groups (1) experienced large periods of inactivity within the two weeks of the collaborative activity (e.g., three- to four-days gaps), (2) their number of contributions was relatively low, and (3) some group members did not contribute equally. Our detailed examination of the groups’ discourse suggested that the contribution of low-quality postings in early stages of the discussion may have jeopardized the collaborative knowledge construction process. In particular, in both Groups 2 and 3 the initial postings involved undeveloped, single-sentence statements that were neither reflective of the students’ belief and/or opinions nor were supported by sufficient evidence. In fact, these postings represented a (bulleted) list of ideas without elabo- ration or supporting information from the course content or the learners’ professional experience D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 192 IOANNOU, DEMETRIOU, MAMA TABLE 3 Example of Low-Quality Initial Postings (a Bulleted List of Ideas) Subject: Possible Intervention/Solution Group 2—Member B (coded as Phase 1) • Karen needs to make connections with her students (text to self, text to others, text to world). • Karen needs to balance the needs of all her students. • Karen should create a classroom environment where students feel safe participating. • Karen needs to assess her students to find the specific area or skill where they are struggling. • Karen should take more time in preparing for her lessons; this is a new reading adoption and skimming the story before class is not sufficient. • Karen needs to create discussion during reading rather than using a few questions at the end. • Karen has to reflect on her teaching practices more regularly. • Discipline practices need to be more consistent. • Consult with other teachers on differentiation. Subject: RE: Possible Intervention/Solution Group 2—Member A reply (coded as Phase 1) ∗Karen absolutely needs professional development on effective reading strategies (think-pair-share, guided reading groups, reader workshops, read alouds, think alouds, literature circles, making reader text connections, etc.). ∗Karen must address her classroom environment and stop alienating the more difficult kids by choosing kids who are academically superior; she’s segregating her class. ∗She absolutely needs to review the new curriculum to see where certain student interests may be highlighted. ∗She needs to use minilessons to address questions that come up during a discussion or lesson. Subject: RE: Possible Intervention/Solution Group 2—Member B reply (coded as Phase 1) ∗Karen needs to address reading levels and adjust materials accordingly. ∗Investigate available resources to help make the class size more manageable (i.e., paraprofessional support, parent volunteers, etc.). ∗Attend professional development activities that promote current “best practices” in reading pedagogy. (see Table 3 for an example). This practice not only did not invite other group members to build on a reflective discussion but also was adopted and continued for the majority of discussion. This constitutes evidence that low-quality postings contributed in the early stages of the discussion can jeopardize the progress of collaborative knowledge construction. DISCUSSION Although lots of studies have investigated collaborative knowledge construction in online dis- cussions, the many factors influencing this process are yet to be determined. In this work, we examined how student facilitation and quality of initial postings may influence collaborative knowledge construction in online discussions. We found that naturally emerged student facilitation was an important contributor to the col- laborative knowledge construction process, consistent with findings of several previous studies (Baran and Correia 2009; Hew and Cheung 2011; Maor 2003; Ng, Cheung, and Hew 2012). Furthermore, our study overcomes concerns that student messages tend to be of low critical think- ing and irrelevant to the topic when the discussion is guided by their peers (Rourke and Anderson 2002). In fact, our results constituted evidence of successful student-led online discussions pass- ing through phases of knowledge construction until a group solution is agreed. These findings D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION 193 might help instructors impose student facilitation in online discussions. In this case, future work may focus on the establishment of explicit guidelines for student facilitators that will encourage contributions from all group members along all phases of knowledge construction. However, as evident in this study, facilitators do naturally emerge and have a positive influence without any guidance. Perhaps all instructors need to do is encourage students to actively pursue this role within their online groups. With regard to this finding, we acknowledge a limitation of the study to conduct a detailed analysis of Group 9 (30 contributions), which appears to be successful without the presence of a facilitator. Further, based on our observations, we argue that too many contributions (e.g., >40; see Groups 6 and 7) could be suggesting difficulty in coming to a consensus, whereas too few contributions (e.g., <20; see Groups 1–4) could be suggesting limited engagement with the task. However, in future studies this assertion should be documented systematically. In contrast to the positive influence of a student facilitator, this study further uncovered the possibly negative effect of low-quality contributions in the early stages of the discussion. As evi- dent in this study, low-quality initial postings were imitated by other group members throughout the discussion, possibly resulting in the limited engagement in the collaborative knowledge con- struction process. This finding suggests the importance of imposing guidelines for the structure of contributions in online discussion. Also, some extra monitoring in the early stages of the discus- sion, coupled with modeling of high-quality initial postings, might be a good practice on behalf of online instructors and tutors. Considering that researchers have yet to explore how postings help build the context for other future postings in online discussion (Wise and Chiu 2011), this study provides initial insights in this direction. Future work can focus on atomizing the identification of low-quality postings in online dis- cussions. Such atomization would allow the prompt notification of the instructor or facilitator. Also, future work could further examine how high- and low-quality postings influence the pro- gression of online discussions and collaborative construction of knowledge. This study provides initial evidence for the negative influence of low-quality initial postings. The opposite might also be true and merits investigation; for example, can high-quality early contributions set the basis for successful engagement in the collaborative knowledge construction process? The time of contribution of such postings is also a factor that merits investigation; for example, do low- quality postings cause more harm when contributed earlier, than later, in the discussion? Do high-quality postings create more benefits when contributed earlier, than later, in the discussion? Such questions are vital to explore in order to better understand what influences collaboration and knowledge construction in online learning settings and how we can better structure online discussions. Overall, this work suggests that assessing the quality of students’ postings in online discussions and their impact on the ongoing collaboration is an important direction for future research. In closing, with regard to this finding, we acknowledge a limitation of this study to conduct a detailed analysis of Groups 1 and 4, which appeared less successful although they did not hold low-quality initial postings similar to Groups 2 and 3. CONCLUSION Although our findings are tentative, demanding replication, this study provides some new insights that may inform the design and instruction in online courses. First, planning for student D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 194 IOANNOU, DEMETRIOU, MAMA facilitation in online discussion, or simply encouraging learners to pursue this role, may have a positive influence in the collaborative knowledge construction process. Second, structuring online postings in terms of content and monitoring/modeling high-quality postings in the early stages of online discussion may set the basis for learners’ engagement in the collaborative knowledge construction process. At the same time, this study calls for more investigations of student facilita- tion and quality of postings in online discussions that will enrich our understanding of designing for online learning and provide practical implications for online instructors. REFERENCES Akyol, Z., and D. R. Garrison. 2011. Understanding cognitive presence in an online and blended community of inquiry: Assessing outcomes and processes for deep approaches to learning. British Journal of Educational Technology 42 (2): 233–250. Aviv, R., Z. Erlich, G. Ravid, and A. Geva. 2003. Network analysis of knowledge construction in asynchronous learning networks. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 7 (3): 1–23. Baran, E., and A. P. Correia. 2009. Student-led facilitation strategies in online discussions. Distance Education 30 (3): 339–361. De Wever, B., T. Schellens, M. Valcke, and H. Van Keer. 2006. Content analysis schemes to analyze transcripts of online asynchronous discussion groups: A review. 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Analysis of a global online debate and the development of an interaction analysis model for examining social construction of knowledge in computer conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research 17 (4): 397–431. Hew, K. F., and W. S. Cheung. 2011. Student facilitators’ habits of mind and their influences on higher-level knowledge construction occurrences in online discussions: A case study. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 48 (3): 275–285. Hmelo-Silver, C. E. 2003. Analyzing collaborative knowledge construction: Multiple methods for integrated understand- ing. Computers & Education 41 (4): 397–420. Hmelo-Silver, C. E., E. Chernobilsky, and A. Nagarajan. 2009. Two sides of the coin: Multiple perspectives on collabora- tive knowledge construction in online problem-based learning. In Investigating classroom interaction: Methodologies in action, ed. K. Kumpulainen, C. E. Hmelo-Silver, and M. Cesar, 73–98. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense. Hmelo-Silver, C. E., R. Jordan, L. Liu, and E. Chernobilsky. 2011. Representational tools for understanding complex computer-supported collaborative learning environments. In Analyzing interactions in CSCL: Methods, approaches and issues, ed. S. Puntambekar, G. Erkens, and C. E. Hmelo-Silver, 83–106. New York: Springer. Ho, C., and K. Swan. 2007. Evaluating online conversation in an asynchronous learning environment: An application of Grice’s cooperative principle. The Internet and Higher Education 10 (1): 3–14. Ioannou, A. 2011. Online collaborative learning: The promise of wikis. International Journal of Instructional Media 38 (3): 213–223. Ioannou, A., and A. Stylianou-Georgiou. 2012. Mashing-up wikis and forums: A case study of collaborative problem- based activity. Educational Media International 49 (4): 303–316. Maor, D. 2003. The teacher’s role in developing interaction and reflection in an online learning community. Educational Media International 40 (1–2): 127–138. Marra, R. M., J. L. Moore, and A. K. Klimczak. 2004. Content analysis of online discussion forums: A comparative analysis of protocols. Educational Technology Research and Development 52 (2): 23–40. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION 195 Ng, C. S. L., W. S. Cheung, and K. F. Hew. 2012. Interaction in asynchronous discussion forums: Peer facilitation techniques. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 28 (3): 280–294. Puntambekar, S. 2006. Analyzing collaborative interactions: Divergence, shared understanding and construction of knowledge. Computers & Education 47 (3): 332–351. Resta, P., and T. Laferrière. 2007. Technology in support of collaborative learning. Educational Psychology Review 19 (1): 65–83. Roschelle, J. 1992. Learning by collaborating: Convergent conceptual change. The Journal of the Learning Sciences 2 (3): 235–276. Rourke, L., and T. Anderson. 2002. Using peers teams to lead online discussions. Journal of Interactive Media in Education 2002 (1). Available online at http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/article/2002-1/80 Rourke, L., and T. Anderson. 2004. Validity in quantitative content analysis. Educational Technology Research and Development 52 (1): 5–18. Scardamalia, M., and C. Bereiter. 2006. Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, ed. K. Sawyer, 97–115. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stahl, G. 2006. Group cognition: Computer support for building collaborative knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Available online at http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/mit/ Tagg, A. C. 1994. Leadership from within: Student moderation of computer conferences. The American Journal of Distance Education 8 (3): 40–50. Weinberger, A., and F. Fischer. 2006. A framework to analyze argumentative knowledge construction in computer- supported collaborative learning. Computers & Education 46: 71–95. Wise, A. F., and M. M. Chiu. 2011. Analyzing temporal patterns of knowledge construction in a role-based online discussion. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 6 (3): 445–470. Zenios, M. 2011. Epistemic activities and collaborative learning: Towards an analytical model for studying knowledge construction in networked learning settings. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 27 (3): 259–268. D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of B ri st ol ] at 0 6: 56 2 8 O ct ob er 2 01 4 http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/article/2002-1/80 http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/mit/ ABSTRACT METHOD Participants Procedures Analysis Code-and-Count Content Analysis Chronological Visuals RESULTS Student Facilitation Low-Quality Initial Postings DISCUSSION CONCLUSION REFERENCES 
work_ibk2xdgzuraclmmwtqwgwhhepm	----	Opinion of Teaching Staff in Distance Education Systems, Regarding the Assessment and Evaluation Process Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 4661 – 4665 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.314 WCES 2012 Opinion of teaching staff in distance education systems, regarding the assessment and evaluation process Metin Iskenderoglu a, Tuba Aydogdu Iskenderoglu b*, Mehmet Palanci c a Karadeniz Technical University, Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon, 61335, Turkey b Karadeniz Technical University, Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon, 61335, Turkey cKaradeniz Technical University, Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon, 61335, Turkey Abstract The purpose of this study is to understand the opinion of teaching staff in distance education systems, on the assessment and evaluation process, and to compare their opinion with the one observed within the context of formal education. In this respect, interviews were carried out with 4 teaching staff working in both distance education and formal education frameworks. The participants revealed that exams and assignments were the most frequent means used in assessment and evaluation process in distance education, whereas the most important problems faced in this process is the inability to make observations, and the inevitable comparison with formal education. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance education, assessment, evaluation, 1. Introduction Distance education is defined as an institutional education activity wherein students, teachers, and teaching materials at separate locations are brought together with the help of communication technologies. Another definition would be to take classroom activities in conventional learning-education, to outside the class. Distance education activities have a history of more than 200 years. For instance, in 1728, Boston Gazette published advertisements for shorthand lessons by mail. In Turkey, however, the history of distance education activities began with “Teacher Training Report” presented by Dewey in 1924. As a concept, it began to materialize by 1927 (Alkan, 1997). Currently, distance education system is used in associate degree, undergraduate, and graduate programs at more than 10 universities. The fast-paced development of information technologies led to the implementation of distance education practices distinct from conventional teaching methods. Following such developments closely is the problem of how to evaluate the education and learning outputs (Karal et al. 2010). Crucial to, as in the case of all systems, the institutions that provide distance education as well as to students, is to determine the extent of what the students actually learn in the education process. This process is invaluable for the feedback it provides to both parties (Altan and Seferoğlu, 2009). Such feedback serves not only to the purpose of certifying the achievement of the students through grading, certificates, documents etc., but also enrich the education activities, and review and improve the education process and the assessment tools (Simonson et al., 2003) * Tuba AYDOGDU ISKENDEROGLU Tel.: +90-505 661 16 45 E-mail address: tiskenderoglu@ktu.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 4662 Metin Iskenderoglu et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 4661 – 4665 The flexibility provided by developments in internet technologies was translated in flexibility in assessment and evaluation, and it became possible to launch online education projects. Online assessment activities employed in evaluation processes have both advantages and limitations. Providing to students flexibility in terms of timing, faster gathering of data, reduced costs, and reduced burden on teaching staff are among its most prominent advantages (Dommeyer, Baum, Hanna, and Chapman, 2004; Anderson et al., 2005). On the limitations side of the picture are; the need for computers and internet access to administer exams, lack of security inherent in examination design, the possibility that the students may cheat, the inability to check if the student himself/herself took the exam personally, conditions, obstacles of communication, and lack of information and skills regarding online education (Kerka and Wonacot, 2000; Shuey, 2002; Benson, 2003; certain prerequisites should be met to remove these limitations. The prerequisites they specified include reliability, which is a must for validity of internet-based assessment processes, prevention of cheating of students, making sure that the person who is supposed to take the exam is the one actually takes it, establishment of scope validity i.e. the balance between items-topics , the ability to update exam questions through continuous item analysis, provision of a comfortable environment for the student, and equipment of client computers with uninterrupted power supplies. Furthermore, the importance of active communication with a view to rendering online applications more effective is underlined. (Graham et al., 2000). Assessment and evaluation is considered to be crucial to ascertain the achievement rate regarding the objectives of education and how much the individuals took from the offering, and to provide feedback to the theory (Kara, 2009). The most important factor in achieving this aim lies with the teaching staff responsible with the course teaching staff engaged in distance education, regarding assessment and evaluation process, as well as the solutions they developed for the cases they come across. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to understand the opinion of teaching staff in distance education systems, on the assessment and evaluation process, and to compare their opinion with the one observed within the context of formal education. What is the opinion of teaching staff in distance education systems, on the assessment and evaluation process, and what are the differences/similarities compared with the opinions within the context of formal education? 2. Method Qualitative research is the approach adopted in this study. The method employed in the study is the action research, known as the model wherein the teacher acts as the researcher. Cohen and Monion (1989) define action research as the methods developed to provide practical solutions to problems faced at a particular moment of the education-learning process. The researcher took an active part and lectured in a distance education system. The sample of the study comprises the teaching staffs who teach both in formal education programs and the programs executed in Karadeniz Technical University Distance Education Application and Research Center. Two among the participants (A, B) are lecturers teaching for associate degree programs, while the other two participants (C, D) are faculty members, teaching for undergraduate programs. The participants were requested to describe the assessment and evaluation methods they use within the framework of distance education system, and how they execute the process, and finally, to compare this with its equivalent in formal education. In the study, data was collected through interviews where open-ended questions were asked. The analysis was carried out by classifying responses according to themes and codes. The fundamental purpose of content analysis is 3. Findings 3.1 Which method(s) do you employ in order to measure the achievement of the student in the distance education system? What are the criteria you consider in choosing the method(s)? 4663 Metin Iskenderoglu et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 4661 – 4665 The responses to questions are provided in Table 1 and Table 2. Table 1: Assessment and evaluation methods employed by staff teaching in distance education system Examination Homework Lesson Evaluation Project Confidential Evaluation A X X X X X B X X X X X C X D X X Table 2: Criteria affecting the choice of assessment and evaluation methods employed by staff teaching in distance education system Verbal Lesson Rules of School Applied Course A X X X B X X X C X D X X A glance on Table 1 and Table 2 reveals that lecturers A and B use all assessment and evaluation methods. The participants explain why they use all methods by stating that the courses they teach are verbal-intensive courses focused on application. They also note that they are bound when calculating the grade of the students, with the percentiles specified in KTU Registrar Regulation. Teaching staff C, on the other hand, stated that (s)he applied only exams to measure the success of students, due to course-specific reasons. In the interview teaching staff C communicated his view on the subject as follows: ment, we apply tests as the system would allow it. The final exam on the other hand, comprises a classical exam focused on application. This is not the ideal I have in mind. I want to achieve the objective through assignments, and in particular, assignments replacing the second midterm for grading the achievement and level of the student. However, since I am unable to adapt to the system quite well, collecting the assignments looks like more work than it is worth. The students cannot voice inquires about assignments. Yet in formal education, feedback is a faster process. hours, that would cost me valuable lecturing time, which is not a very att Teaching staff D, on the other hand, uses exams and assignments to evaluate achievement. However, the (s)he stated his/her doubts about the grade reflecting the achievement of the student well. 3.2. What are the assessment and evaluation related problems you face when teaching over distance education system? The responses provided to the question are shown in Table 3. Table 3: The assessment and evaluation related problems faced by teaching staff in the distance education system. Encountered Problems A B C D Poor communication with students X X X Reaching to students X Understand that student understand or not understand the topic X X X X X X X X Student interaction X X Time limitation X X aprelininary information X X Difficulties of following process X Suspense and secrecy X X X X X Attendance-absence X Experience about system X X Range of examinations X Online examination reliance X Comparision of formal education and distance education students X X X Table 3 shows the problems faced by the teaching staff. The problems vary by the contents and characteristics (verbal, practical etc.) of courses. The common problems faced by the teaching staff mostly converge on the lines of 4664 Metin Iskenderoglu et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 4661 – 4665 failure to see whether the students understood the topic taught, inability to make observations, uncertainty and confidentiality 40 students are shown online, I get no answers to my on the 15 which actually answers. On the other hand, in an actual classroom, I get a general idea if they understand or not. Can the student perform the application? I request answers through my questions, which subsequently make a 3.3. What are your solutions for better assessment and evaluation in the distance education system? Responses to the question are presented in Table 4. Table 4: The solutions developed by teaching staff for more efficient assessment and evaluation in the distance education system Developed methods for encountered problems A B C D Peer education X Active using of forums X Mail X Sustain asynchronous part X X X X Creating platform X X X X Blog, facebook X Web site X X Increasing motivation X Creating question bank X Consultancy service X Student-centered education X X X Following development of students X Homework-project X X X In Table 4 various methods used by teaching staff for better assessment and evaluation are summarized. The common method is to ensure participation in the class through feeding a discussion among students, and to or have missed. 3.4 Comparison of distance education with formal education The findings reveal that the teaching staff in distance education programs face various problems during their teaching experience, and develop different solutions to overcome these problems. When assessing a course offered, the teaching staff base their analysis on the assessment developed in formal training. This point is clear in the interviews. Teaching staff B summarizes it as follows: In effect, we use formal education as an index of 100%. We then strive to measure our success in distance education by comparing it against the formal education. We compare distance education applications against formal education. We teaching through the distance educ Teaching staff C also harbors similar views, while teaching staff D argues as follows: assessment tools for distance education, for assessment will never be the same as that in formal education. We know that for sure. We cannot decide if a student is to pass or not, through a single exam. We have to make that clear. Passing or failing through some last 4. Discussions, Conclusions and Suggestions The conclusions of this study put exams and assignments as the most widely used assessment-evaluation methods employed in the distance education system. Yet there are some problems faced in the evaluation process. According to teaching staff, the communication problems in distance education lead to failure of students and 4665 Metin Iskenderoglu et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 4661 – 4665 teachers in getting to know each other, and also to different perceptions of mutual expectations (about assignments, projects etc.) with respect to evaluation and assessment. This point supports the findings of Baturay and Bay (2009). The distant locations of students during the assessment activities applied in distance education, and lack of al. (2009) supports the finding that students find it easier to cheat in online education. Another problem with respect to assessment and evaluation process is the lack of any authority to provide clarification in case some matters regarding exam questions cannot be understood clearly and fully. The participants in the study recommend strengthening of the asynchronous part of the system, the provision of a discussion environment and feeding a discussion environment in order to preclude such problems. The environments where the students will take the exam should be conducive to online examinations. The selection of the most applicable one among assessment and evaluation methods within the framework of distance education, and rendering the process more effective may help in determining the learning rates of the students (Karal et al., 2010). It is also necessary to train teaching staff to take part in distance education, in order to ensure that they use the system more effectively. The system should be enriched with course related documents, lecture notes, and content. The education materials in the system should be understandable by the students, and should be compliant with standards. The students must be provided advisory services. The advisory services would also help accumulated detailed information about students, which would in turn help in better functioning of the system, and foreseeing as well as preventing any deficiencies in advance. When evaluating the achievement outputs of students, the student-oriented grading system should be employed to support the students in improving themselves on dimensions they are not up to par in. Furthermore, the courses should be grouped in accordance with their contents. This may help preventing the imposition of uniform teaching and evaluation for all courses. References Anderson, H. M., Cain , J., & Bird, E. (2005). Online Student Course Evaluations: Review of Literature and a Pilot Study. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 69(1), 34-43. That Chose Distance Education). Journal of Ziya Gokalp Faculty of Education, 7(13), 17-26. Benson, A. (2003). Assessing participant learning in online environments. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 100, 69 -78. Dommeyer, C.J., Baum, P., Hanna, R. W., & Chapman, K. S. (2004). Gathering faculty teaching evaluations by inclass and online surveys. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(4), 611-623. Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Craner, J., Lim, B., & Duffy, T. M. (2000). Teaching in Web Based Distance Learning Environment: an Evaluation Summary Based on Four Courses. Center for Research on Learning and Technology Technical Report No.13. Indiana University, Bloomington. (2010). . WCLTA 2010, 1597-1601 Kerka, S., & Wonacot, M. (2000). Practitioner file: Assessing learners online. Columbus, OH: Clearinghouse for Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. Accessed May 16, 2009 from:http://ericacve.org/fulltext.asp McCombs, B., & Vakili, D. (2005). A learner-centered framework for e-learning. Teachers College Record. 107(8), 1582-1600. Shuey, S. (2002). Assessing Online Learning in Higher Education. Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, 16(2),13-18. Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2003). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. The opinions of students and teaching staff about online education implementations. Accessed May 22, 2009 from: http://www.tebd.gazi.edu.tr/arsiv/2005_cilt3/sayi_2/197-216.pdf Yavuz, C. & www.ilet.gazi.edu.tr/dergi/30 225-241 in social sciences). Ankara: 
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Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. 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As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_iphyl7sccneb5na53dyo2qruym	----	Lewis, Richard F., "Using Canadian Sesame Street segments in elementary classrooms to teach French" Lamy, Therese and Henri, France, "Tele-Universite: ten years of distance education in Quebec" Vazquez-Abad, Jesus & Mitchell, P. David, "A systems ap- proach to planning a tele-education system" lTV UTILIZATION Videorecording Netche, 19704 - 30 min. videocassettes, sd., col. The topics are: The Television Perspective, Instructional Design, Developing a Plan, and Implementing a Plan. NO PLACE FOR LONE RANGERS Videorecording, Univ. of Wise., 1980 12 min., sd., col. This program presents basic elements of a successful teleconference. TELECOURSES Videorecording, Magic Lantern, 1980-83 This is a collection of credit and non-credit courses which combine 26 half hour videocassettes with texts, study guides, and faculty manuals. Courses range from studies in cultural anthropology to business management to computer literacy. 12 INTERACTIVE TECHNIQUES Videorecording, Univ. of Wise, 19804 videorecordings approximately 10 min. ea., sd., col. This is a training set for teleconferencing. It focuses on practical tips and guidelines. TELE-EDUCATION IN CANADA Slides, Telecom Canada, 1982 These slides are part of a marketing package which pro- motes tele-conferencing in Education, Medicine and in- dustry. Contact: Terry Fredrick or Monica Jordanoff (1-800-267-74001 TELIDON Videorecording, Can. Dept. of Communication, 1981 15 min., sd., col. Produced by the National Film Board, with Dr. David Suzuki, this presentation shows the Telidon information retrieval system. VIDEO COURSES FOR TRAINING AND HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT Marlin, 1979-83 Produced by Time-Life, these courses come complete with printed materials, workbooks, and leader manuals. The courses offered include Writing Skills, and Management Development. WHERE THE ACTION IS Videorecording, Univ. of Wise., 1980 10 min., sd., col. An overview and a discussion of teleconferencing. 17 Mediography CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION Winer, Laura R & de la Mothe, John R., "Computers, education and the 'dead shark syndrome'" PROGRAMMED LEARNING AND EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 20:3, August 1983 Special Canadian issue Daniel, John S., "Independence and interaction in distance education: new technologies for home study" Forsythe, Kathleen, "The human interface: teachers in the new age" , Rich, Tom, "The impact of computers on Canadian schools" Jean, J., Belanger, R, & Sapp, R.D., "Project U-TRAIN/CAL: NATAL as an authoring language" Carl, Diana R, "Creating a duet: using video and video- teleconferencing to meet the needs of the community" COMMUNICATING THROUGH COMPUTERS Videore- cording, Univ. of Wise., 1980 10 min., sd., col. The focus of this program is computer conferencing and computer mailing. COMMUNICATION Videorecording, TVO, 1978 15 min., sd., col. From "The Fast Forward Series", the program deals with the movement of communication and the technology which makes it possible - satellites, fibre optics, digital switching systems. DESIGNING INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION PRO- GRAMS Videorecording, NAVC, 1975 13 min., sd., col. The basic elements all outlined - assessing the need; determining the audience and instruction problem; developing the objective and script; and evaluating the program. ELECTRONIC MEETINGS Videorecording, Univ. of Wise., 1980 10 min., sd., col. Audio, video and computer conferencing are the subject of this program. THE FOURTH NETWORK Videorecording, Gt. PI. Inst. TV, 1972 20 min., sd., col. An examination and exploration of the role of educational television. The focus is on current activities and future potential. INDIAN SATELLITE lTV EXPERIMENT Videorecording, Gt. PI. Inst. TV, 1978 28 min., sd., col. A documentation of the Indian Satellite lTV Experiment, this program examines the objectives, records the experi- ment, shows the research and evaluates the results. Media on Distance Education CABLE OF THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE Motion Picture, q Cable TV Info. Ctr/Washington, 1976 11 min., sd., col. This program explores the history and future of cable tele- communications. t By Nancy Lane More and more educators and institutions are becoming in- volved in Distance Education. The following is a listing of media relevant to the topic. INSTRUCTIONAL INNOVATOR, 28:6, September 1983 Guber, Lyn, "ABCT's response to the Report of the Na- tional Commission on Excellence in Education" Wilkinson, Gene, "Using media to make instruction more effective" Hansen, Viggo P., "Using media to teach math" Sigda, Robert B., "Using media to teach science" Beebe, Thomas H., "How to write your own instruc- tion using a computer authoring system" McMeen, George R, "Toward the development of rhetOric and context in the communication of meaningful verbal in- formation in multimedia instructional materials" Sherman, Thomas M., "Is schooling an unnatural act?" VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1, 1984 MEDIA AND METHODS, 20:2, September 1983 Hunter, C. Bruce, "A guide to selecting educational software" Livo, Norma J., " Storytelling: an art for all ages" OPEN CAMPUS, No.8, 1983 (Occasional papers published 'I by the Distance Education Unit, Deakin University, Victoria 3217, Australial Special Canadian issue. Shobe, Charles R, "Telecommunication technologi,es and distance education: a report on recent Canadian initiatives" Mugridge, Ian, "Consortia in distance education: some Cana- • dian ventures" Murphy, Peter J., "The Orion Project: an innovation before its time" Shale, Douglas G., "The Office of Institutional Studies at Athabasca University" PROGRAMMED LEARNING AND EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 20:1 February 1983 Morrison, W. & Cunningham, R., "Diagnostic assessment - "r a teacher's view" McCall, J., Bryce, T.G.K., & Robertson, I., "Assessing foun- dation science practical skills in the classroom" Mortimer, C.G., "The application of diagnostic assessment to the teaching of historical skills" Perfect, Hugh & Robinson, Jannet, "An approach to diagnostic testing in the Scottish 0 Grade biology course" Simpson, Mary & Arnold, Brian, "Diagnostic test and criterion-referenced assessments: their contribution to the resolution of pupil learning difficulties" Parkinson, B.L., Mitchell, RF., & Johnstone, RM., "Mastery learning in modern languages - a case study" Drever, Eric, "Curriculum objectives as assessment criteria - some problems of validity" Black, H.D., "lntroducing diagnostic assessment" Brown, George & Daines, John, "Creating a course on lectur· ing and explaining" PROGRAMMED LEARNING AND EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 20:2, May 1983 Brian, Robert, "Sequencing instruction: a cognitive science perspective" Davis, B. (et. al.l, "A comparison of the effects of film and videotape presentation on student recall" Webb, Graham, "The tutorial method, learning strategies and student participation in tutorials: some problems and some suggested solutions" Duchastel, Philippe C., " Independent study strategies: reactions to study guide components" From the Media Periodicals THE COMPUTING TEACHER, 11:2, September 1983 Levin, Will, "Interactive video: the state-of-the-art teaching machine" Stiehl, Ruth & Streit, Les, "You can develop packages which teach computer skills" Kundert, K.R., "An Apple a day - computers?" Traberman, Tama, "Using interactive computer techniques develop global understanding. EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION AND TECH- NOLOGY, 31:2, Summer 1983 Cassidy, Michael F. & Knowlton, James Q., "Visual literacy: a failed metaphor?" Bruning, Iva L., "An information processing approach to a theory of instruction" Hannafin, Michael J., "The effects of instructional stimulus loading on the recall of abstract and concrete prose" EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 23:8, August 1983 Some thoughts on the improvement of American public education: an interview with Ralph W. Tyler" Wright, Elizabeth E. & Pyatte, J.A., "Organized Content Technique (OCT): a method for presenting information in education and training" Rampy, Leah (et al.l, "Computers in the schools: 21 critical issues for policy decisions" EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 23:9, September 1983 Rothe, J. Peter, "Critical evaluation of educational software from a social perspective: uncovering some hidden assumptions' , Grossnickle, Donald R let al.), "Profile of change in education: microcomputer adoption status report" 16 By Patrick Wright BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 14:2, May 1983 Reid, Fraser J.M. & Champness, Brian C., "Wisconsin Educational Telephone Network: how to run educational teleconferencing successfully" Harris, N.D.C. & Tarrant, RD., "Teleconferencing and distance learning" McConnell, David & Sharples, Mike, "Distance teaching by Cyclops: an educational evaluation of the Open Univer- sity's telewriting system" Choat, Ernest, "A strategy for reviewing the role of educa- tional television in infants' schools" Dechastel, P. & Steve, M., "lnstructional goals: determina- tion and specification" Collier, K.G., "Learning technology departments and institu- tional management policy" THE COMPUTER TEACHER, 11:1, August 1983 Stronge, James H., "Finding computer-related technology in the public schools" Schwartz, Helen J., '''But what do I write?' - literary analysis made easier" Stiehl, Ruth E. & Anderson, Edwin, "Media center builds media packages to teach basic microcomputer skills" Ryba, K.A. & Chapman. J.W., "Toward improving learning strategies and personal adjustment with computers" Upitis, Rena, "The synthesizer: a bridge from reality to ideals in music education" 
work_i5eozmpi4vayrmzx4wku6uhtny	----	Curtin University of Technology Science and Mathematics Education Centre Development and Validation of an Instrument for Assessing Distance Education Learning Environments in Higher Education: The Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) Scott L. Walker This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Science Education of Curtin University of Technology November 2003 ii This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgment has been made. Signature: Date: November 13, 2003 iii ABSTRACT Globally, as distance education has become firmly embedded as a part of the higher education landscape, governments and institutions are calling for meaningful research on distance education. This study involved designing, developing and validating a learning environment survey instrument for use in distance education-delivered courses in post-secondary education. Specifically it involved merging two distinctive areas of study: psychosocial learning environments research and distance education research. The unique social structure of asynchronous distance education learning environments requires a unique and economical instrument for measuring the perceptions of distance education course participants. The research followed a three- stage instrument-development process of identifying salient scales, developing survey items, and field testing and analysing data using item analysis and validation procedures. This was followed by an investigation into the associations between the psychosocial learning environment and students’ enjoyment of distance education. The results yielded a new six-scale, 34-item Web-based learning environment instrument suitable for use in a number of asynchronous post-secondary distance education environments. The new instrument, the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES) assesses Instructor Support, Student Interaction and Collaboration, Personal Relevance, Authentic Learning, Active Learning, and Student Autonomy. Analyses of data obtained from 680 subjects supported the factorial validity and internal consistency reliability. The results also indicated statistically significant associations between the distance education learning environment and student enjoyment of distance education. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The undertaking and successful completion of a project of this nature is only possible with the assistance of several people. I would like to thank the following people who have been involved in this process. I would like to express thanks and appreciation to my principal supervisor, Professor Barry J. Fraser, without whom the completion of this project would have never been possible. Despite the 16,800 km (10,439 mi.) distance between San Marcos, Texas and Perth, Western Australia, the world became a smaller place with the prompt attention, guidance, and editorial direction I received. I would also like to extend a ‘thank you’ to the administrative staff at the Curtin University of Technology, Science and Mathematics Education Centre. Without the aid of folks like Petrina du Plessis and Rosalie Wood, I would never have been able to handle the more mundane administrative parts of my educational process from such a distance. Also having a significant hand in this undertaking was Jacquelyn Alexander, PhD, formerly the dean of my school at Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU). Dr. Alexander manipulated the higher education system in mysterious ways to keep me employed as I worked toward this goal. When I had the fleeting notion 10 years ago to aim toward a doctorate, unbeknownst to him, my step-father pointed the direction that my mother, unbeknownst to her, had laid as a foundation. Thanks go to Jackie Elliott, EdD, and Althea Walker Elliott, for the examples they set. Finally, I must thank my wife, Kelly, and my children, Chloe and Quinton, for the role they have played in allowing me substantial time to think and write and work when I could have been with them instead. Without their understanding, none of this would have been possible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv List of Tables x List of Figures xi Chapter 1 – Background and Rationale 1 1.1 Introduction: Distance Education in Universities 1 1.2 Distance Education Terms and Usage 4 1.3 Learning Environments 4 1.4 Aims of this Study 6 1.5 Significance of this Study 6 1.5.1 Significance in Distance Education 7 1.5.2 Significance in Higher Education 8 1.5.3 Significance in the Field of Learning Environments 9 1.5.4 Summary of the Discussion of Significance 10 1.6 Overview of Other Thesis Chapters 11 Chapter 2 – Literature Review 12 2.1 Introduction 12 2.1.1 Terminology 13 2.1.2 Background to Learning Environments Research 14 2.1.3 Need to Describe Learning Environments in 15 Today’s Rapidly-Expanding Higher Education Market 2.2 Evolution of Psychosocial Environments Research 18 2.2.1 History of Psychosocial Environment Research 18 2.2.2 Environmental Press 19 2.2.3 Contemporary Research on Psychosocial 21 Environments 2.2.4 Evolution of Learning Environments Research 23 2.2.5 The Influence of Learning Environments on 25 Student Outcomes vi 2.2.6 Learning Environment Instruments 26 2.2.6.1 Science Laboratory Environment 28 Inventory (SLEI) 2.2.6.2 Constructivist Learning Environment 29 Survey (CLES) 2.2.6.3 What is Happening in this Classroom 30 (WIHIC) Questionnaire 2.2.6.4 Questionnaire of Teacher Interaction 32 (QTI) 2.2.6.5 Other Contemporary Learning 33 Environment Instruments and Their Uses 2.2.7 Categories of Learning Environments Research 34 2.2.7.1 Differences Between Students’ and 35 Teachers’ Perceptions of the Same Class 2.2.7.2 Cross-Cultural Learning Environments 37 Research 2.2.7.3 Associations Between Student Outcomes 39 and Learning Environments 2.3 Distance Education Research 43 2.3.1 Distance Education Learning Environments in 46 Distance Education Research 2.4 Distance Education Learning Environments Research 48 2.4.1 Technology-Oriented Learning Environments 49 Research 2.4.2 The First Look at Distance Education Learning 50 Environments 2.4.3 Subsequent Distance Education Learning 50 Environments Research 2.4.4 Emerging Distance Education Learning 51 Environments Research 2.5 Student Satisfaction 52 2.6 Chapter Summary 55 vii Chapter 3 – Research Methods 57 3.1 Introduction 57 3.2 Categories of Analysis 57 3.3 Data Collection 60 3.4 Overview of the Stages in the Development of the 62 Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) 3.4.1 Overview of Stage 1 – Identification and 62 Development of Salient Scales 3.4.2 Overview of Stage 2 – Writing Individual Items 63 3.4.3 Overview of Stage 3 – Field Testing and Analyses 63 3.5 Stage 1 – Identification and Development of Salient Scales 63 3.5.1 Review of Scales from Previously-Developed 63 Instruments and Development of New Scales 3.5.2 Strategies for Developing New Scales and 64 Adapting Previous Scales 3.5.3 Review of and Consistency with the Literature 66 Related to Distance Education Learning Environments 3.5.3.1 Relationship Dimension 66 3.5.3.2 Personal Development Dimension 67 3.5.3.3 System Maintenance and Change 68 Dimension 3.5.4 Preliminary Scales 68 3.5.5 Review of Preliminary Scales by a Panel of Experts 68 3.5.6 Outcomes of Stage 1 71 3.6 Stage 2 – Writing Individual Items 71 3.6.1 Consideration of Negatively-Worded or 72 Reverse-Scored Items 3.6.2 Validating Items 73 3.6.2.1 Expert Panel’s Comments 73 3.6.2.2 Development of the Web-Based Form 74 3.6.2.3 Pilot Test 74 3.6.3 Final Version of the DELES 75 3.6.4 Scale of Student Enjoyment 78 viii 3.7 Stage 3 – Field Testing and Analysis 78 3.7.1 Field Testing 79 3.7.2 Field Test Sample 79 3.7.3 Item Analysis and Factor Analysis 80 3.8 Chapter Summary 80 Chapter 4 – Data Analysis and Results 83 4.1 Introduction 83 4.2 Reliability and Validity of the DELES 83 4.2.1 Validity 84 4.2.2 Reliability 89 4.2.3 Limitations of the Data Collected 90 4.3 Final Version of the DELES 91 4.4 Associations Between Student Enjoyment and Learning 91 Environment Factors 4.4.1 Associations Between the DELES Scales and 91 Students’ Enjoyment of Distance Education 4.4.2 Discussion of the Strongest 94 Enjoyment-Environment Association 4.4.3 Discussion of the Weakest 94 Enjoyment-Environment Association 4.4.4 Consistency with Previous Research on 95 Associations Between Attitudes and Learning Environments 4.4.5 Limitations of Analysis of Enjoyment-Learning 97 Environment Associations 4.5 Conclusion 97 Chapter 5 – Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations 100 5.1 Introduction 100 5.2 Overview of this Thesis 100 ix 5.3 Major Findings 102 5.3.1 Development and Validation of a New 102 Learning Environment Instrument for Post-Secondary Distance Education 5.3.2 Investigation of Associations Between Enjoyment 103 of Distance Education and Six Psychosocial Learning Environment Scales 5.4 Distinctive Contributions of My Study 104 5.5 Constraints and Limitations 106 5.6 Recommendations for Future Research 107 5.7 Concluding Comments 108 References 110 Appendix A – Scale and Item Review Panellists 137 Scale Review Panellists 137 Item Review Panellists 138 Appendix B – Final Revised Version of the Distance Education 140 Learning Environment Survey (DELES) Appendix C – Satisfaction Scale of Enjoyment of Distance 143 Education x LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Frequency of DELES field test responses by level of study 60 being undertaken Table 3.2 Preliminary set of DELES scales before review by a panel of 69 distance education experts Table 3.3 Learning environment scales remaining after review and 70 reduction by expert panel Table 3.4 Scale descriptions and sample items after pilot test 76 Table 3.5 Items in the Enjoyment scale 78 Table 4.1 Factor loadings for a refined 34-item version of the DELES 86 Table 4.2 Scale reliability using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 89 for DELES and Enjoyment scales Table 4.3 Listing of items in the refined version of each Distance 92 Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES) scale Table 4.4 Associations between six DELES scales and student 93 enjoyment using simple correlation and multiple regression analyses xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Diagram of the relationship between the two distinctive 13 areas of research in social ecology and distance education Figure 2.2 Classification of press in terms of positive and negative 20 characteristics Figure 2.3 Classification of press in terms of beta and alpha 21 characteristics Figure 3.1 Categories and levels of analysis 58 1 Chapter 1 BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE 1.1 INTRODUCTION: DISTANCE EDUCATION IN UNIVERSITIES Distance education has become a firmly embedded part of the higher education landscape over the last decade. Networked digital communication has facilitated an explosive growth in this relatively new method of reaching learning populations to the point that the higher education trend to produce distance education units and programs has been referred to as a “land rush” (Molenda & Harris, 2001, p. 6) to get online. Molenda and Harris note that 60 percent of all United States colleges and universities have Internet-based courses. Meanwhile, the United States Army currently has over 15,000 soldier-students enrolled in its University Access Online and plans to increase enrolments to 80,000 by the end of 2005 (Lorenzo, 2002). At the same time, Australian universities are experiencing converging influences driving them “towards online, for profit education on a global scale” initiated by a “desperate need to improve income to compensate for the lack of public funding” (Gururajan, 2002, ¶ 2). This issue is of sufficient consequence that it prompted former Deakin University Vice-Chancellor, Malcolm Skilbeck, to pose the question “Does the university have a future?” (Skilbeck, 2001, p. 61). While change is inevitable in higher education, regardless of the forces driving it, quality in education must remain high, lest universities lose their status as degree- granting bodies and become little more than market players in the global corporate milieu. Fifth-generation distance education, which is defined by the convergence of telecommunications and computing technologies available today (Taylor, 2001), has come to a point where higher education chances falling prey to “the commoditization of the educational function of the university, transforming courses into courseware, the activity of instruction itself into commercially viable proprietary products that can be owned and bought and sold in the market” (Noble, 1998, ¶ 6). In consideration of this statement, universities must consider not only how distance education is presented in terms of its value in the market, but also in terms of its value to the learner (Morgan & McKenzie, 2003). 2 Many distance education classes and seminars are modelled after a traditional face- to-face, instructor-centred, deductive perspective on teaching (Diaz, 2000; Palloff & Pratt, 1999)—the same instructional model used by the ancient Greeks. In this classical mode of education, an instructor is positioned as the expert oracle espousing knowledge to a group of students who produce products to be evaluated by the expert. Discussion between the expert instructor and the student is often couched in terms of the value of the products that students produce in relation to the expert’s opinion. In the light of the fissure between how education is classically delivered, what we know about how people learn (Palloff & Pratt, 1999), and trends in how distance education can become commoditized, the question at hand becomes: “What leads to successful teaching and learning in distance education?” When teaching and learning leaves the four walls of a classroom and enters an electronic environment, perhaps a new education paradigm must be adopted in order to facilitate student success. Successful students lend credence to what makes higher education unique. “In this new e-learning environment there is no viable option for the university to do as it has always done. To do so will be to become more and more marginalised” (Spender, 2001, p. 25). Distance education is more than the simple transfer of an existing instructivist’s verbal lecture to an electronic textual/image/audio environment which is enclosed within the pre-packaged structure of an off-the-shelf Internet-based course administration application. A critical component in any distance education environment is the human factor (Morgan & McKenzie, 2003). The role of people and the interaction between people in the distance education environment is essential to the development of a high functioning distance education class (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). “Future development in online education will require universities to re- evaluate the pedagogies of the campus learning environment” (Commonwealth Department of Education, Science & Training, 2002, ¶ 52). Computer-mediated distance education classes have a distinctive social structure, unlike those found in a face-to-face class. This social structure has a strong impact on students’ learning and students’ satisfaction with the class and the method by 3 which the class is presented in the digital world (Swan, 2001). There is a firm need for a social connection and a sense of presence in electronically-mediated distance education (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). Advantageous to distance education is the fact that distance and social class play a limited role in student interaction. Social interaction is limited only by time and access. In the asynchronous distance education setting, participants can become a part of a social milieu with anyone who has access to a computer. “Connections are made through sharing of ideas and thoughts” (Pallof & Pratt, 1999, p. 15). Furthermore, it is through personal relationships and interactions between participants that learning is developed. Because the psychosocial environment of the distance education classroom is quite different from that of a face-to-face or place-based class, it must be cultivated and developed in order to become an effective medium for education. Diaz (2000) suggests that the current focus on distance education research is wholly framed within a dichotomy between instructor-centred and student-centred learning perspectives that leads to a black-and-white view of instruction that supports passive learning and a strong dependency on students conforming to a dependent (passive) style of learning. The area of study distinctively missing from the body of research related to distance education involves the character of the learning environment and what types of distance learning environments are successful (Diaz & Cartnal, 1999; Harnish & Reeves, 2000; Lane, n.d.). Nevertheless, emerging literature suggests that this trend is shifting as more and more components of distance education learning environments are being considered in recent and emerging research (Graham & Scarborough, 2001; Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001; Swan, 2001; Tu & Corry, 2001). My study was designed to consider the character of the post-secondary distance education environment in terms of what researchers and practitioners find influential and to seek associations between the psychosocial environment and the attitudes of students. To begin, this chapter defines terms as they are used in this thesis (Section 1.2). Then it briefly introduces the notion of learning environments (Section 1.3), and this is followed by the aims of this study (Section 1.4). The significance of this study (Section 1.5) is described in terms of learning environment research in distance education, learning environments in general, distance education research, and research in higher education. I then conclude the chapter (Section 1.6) with an 4 outline of the remainder of this thesis—providing readers with a comprehensive overview of the work at hand. 1.2 DISTANCE EDUCATION TERMS AND USAGE The term ‘distance education’ is used to define instructional delivery that does not restrict students to being physically present in the same location as an instructor (Steiner, 1995). For clarification, it should be noted that multiple modes of distance education are available. These modes can be categorised as those that are synchronous, requiring students and their instructor to gather at some place, or places, at a given time, and those that are asynchronous, for which students and their instructor are not confined to time and place. Asynchronous distance education includes, but is not limited to, delivery of instruction using the postal system to mail text-based materials, audio or video cassettes or CD-ROMs, computer-based conferencing, Web-based bulletin boards, or e-mail (Leach & Walker, 2000). Meanwhile, synchronous forms of distance education include those delivered by Web-based chats, Internet relay chats, multiple-user domains (MUDs), satellite television broadcasts, radio broadcasts, audio-conferences, and two-way videoconferences, which are occasionally referred to as interactive television (Steiner, 1995). This study focuses on education delivered by any means of electronic, computer-mediated asynchronous Internet communication, irrespective of the arrangement, software, or equipment used. Given the above distinctions, much of the literature does not distinguish between the delivery modes used in distance education; rather, authors interchange terms such as ‘distance learning’, ‘distance education’, ‘open learning’, and ‘distributed learning’. Therefore, the intentions of the authors and reported results are occasionally difficult to interpret when reviewing the associated body of literature. 1.3 LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS Learning environments studies capture education participants’ perspectives of the psychosocial environments in which they participate on a day-to-day basis. As participants deeply involved in classroom environments, students and instructors 5 have unique viewpoints of what goes on in that environment (Fraser, 1998b). Capturing and contrasting student and instructor perspectives, which often differ, and considering those perspectives in relation to observations of external investigators is the essence of learning environments research. Herbert Walberg and Rudolf Moos, in independent research, developed and formalized learning environments research. Walberg developed the Learning Environment Inventory (LEI) (Walberg & Anderson, 1968) to capture student perspectives of their learning environments in classes in which Harvard Project Physics curriculum materials were being used. Moos (1974, 1976) conceptualised universal social climate dimensions omnipresent in social organizations such as health institutions, correctional institutions, and schools. He later developed the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) to capture teacher behaviour, teacher-student interaction, and student-student interaction in schools (Moos, 1979) using his social climate dimensions as a framework. These early learning environments instruments established a historical benchmark on the face of learning environments research that continues to expand today with considerations of associations between student learning outcomes and learning environments, cross-cultural/cross-national studies, evaluation of educational innovations (Fraser, 2002a), and multi-level organization analyses (e.g., classroom studies, school studies, studies of students as they move to higher grade levels, personal student perceptions and shared student perceptions) (Fraser, 1998b). An evolving learning environments research trend involves study of the fast- changing distance education learning environment. Few studies have been conducted exclusively on distance education learning environments, although numerous studies have focused on other areas of distance education. This study supports the merging of two previously distinctive fields of study, distance education research and learning environments research, which began as a realisation for the need of this sub- discipline only a decade ago (Jegede, 1992). Chapter 2 (Section 2.2) expands on this introduction to learning environments research by presenting the evolution of this area of study, the influence that learning environments have on student outcomes, and a detailed outline of numerous learning 6 environment instruments that have been developed over the last three decades to aid investigators in measuring various aspects of learning environments. 1.4 AIMS OF THIS STUDY This study essentially involved the development and validation of a new learning environment instrument for distance education at the post-secondary level. While numerous learning environment instruments exist, only three are available specifically for this level and method of education (Chang & Fisher, 2001a; Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998; Taylor & Maor, 2000). The main purpose of this study was to facilitate the investigation of psychosocial aspects of post-secondary asynchronous distance education that support social and inductive perspectives of learning by developing and validating a new learning environment instrument. A secondary aim was to investigate associations between student satisfaction and the nature of the distance education learning environment in order to identify what psychosocial characteristics influence the affective aspects of distance education students. 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY Three learning environment instruments are currently available for higher education distance education—the Distance and Open Learning Environment Survey (DOLES), the Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (COLLES), and the Web Based Learning Environment Instrument (WEBLEI). The DOLES focuses on Internet-delivered education by means of five core scales (Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Personal Involvement and Flexibility, Task Orientation, and Material Environment) and two optional scales (Communications Technology Resources and Study Centre Environment) (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). The COLLES considers the quality of online learning environments from a social constructivist perspective with six scales (Relevance, Reflection, Interactivity, Tutor Support, Peer Support, and Interpretation) (Taylor & Maor, 2000). The WEBLEI focuses exclusively on Web-based learning (Chang, 1999; Chang & Fisher, 2001a) 7 by means of four scales (Emancipatory Activities, Co-participatory Activities, Qualia, and Information Structure and Design Activities). The availability of the new instrument resulting from my study, the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES), will enable practitioners and researchers to examine educational learning environments in tertiary education settings in a different way. The DELES has the potential to provide opportunities to collect information as outlined below: • Learning environment instruments are economical in that they do not require trained observers and time-consuming coding (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). And, unlike the DOLES and the WEBLEI, the DELES can easily be employed by practitioners, evaluators, and researchers alike because it is in the form of a Web-based instrument—available to anyone with a Web browser. Further, because it is a Web-based instrument, data need not be transcribed from paper response forms. This offers fewer opportunities for errors in data collection. • The learning environment can be assessed in terms of beta press, that is, from the perceptions of the learner, rather than exclusively in terms of alpha press, or that which is assessed by a detached third party (Murray, 1938). This offers the dual advantage of characterising a setting through the eyes of both the observer and of the participants, thus collecting information that an observer could overlook or deem insignificant (Fraser, 1998a). • Student and instructor perceptions can be contrasted with those of external evaluators or observers by means of this instrument. • The DELES assesses the new psychosocial dimensions of Student Interaction and Collaboration, Authentic Learning, Active Learning, and Student Autonomy, which are not included in existing learning environment instruments. 1.5.1 Significance in distance education In the context of the larger research setting, in an era of an increasing call for national and international distance education, researchers and evaluators will be able 8 to use the learning environment instrument developed in my study to complement distance education research that currently focuses primarily on student achievement, attitudes and behaviours (Harnar, Brown, & Mayall, 2000), student participation (Grasinger, 1999), the role of technology in a distance education environment (Jamieson, 1999), the ‘no significant difference’ between traditional vs. distance education argument (Lane, n.d.), and the ‘how-to’ reports of instructional methods found predominantly in conference proceedings (Squire & Johnson, 2000). 1.5.2 Significance in higher education What is most significant about this study in terms of higher education is that e- learning, a corporate term for electronic learning, has developed to the point that education as a consumer-based commodity (Connell, 2001) is creating new demands upon universities to become “market actors” (Traub, 2000, p. 50) in what is predicted to be a US$23 billion market in the United States alone by 2004 (Kercher, 2002). During this period of “corporatization” (Molenda & Harris, 2001, p. 3) of universities and colleges—in which higher education institutions are increasingly operating like businesses—these institutions are experiencing pressure to become part of the profit-driven market (Tait, 2003), but they must preserve that which gives them status as unique institutions of higher learning (Rose Communications, 2001). Trends also point toward diminishing instructor autonomy and governance in terms of instructional direction (Molenda & Harris, 2001). Post-secondary distance education, which is not grounded in high-quality teaching and learning theory, with respect to social and psychological determinants and effects of the environment in which they are presented, stands to become diminished, appearing less of a scholarly pursuit and more “work-for-hire” oriented (Traub, 2000, p. 5), thus blurring the lines between university status and business profit making. Finally, as pressure increases on higher education instructors to teach in some form of distance model, those with several years of experience teaching in face-to-face classrooms will need to develop new models and methods if they are to continue to provide the high-quality teaching demanded by a global education market (Slay, 1998). The DELES, once applied, is likely to assist instructors in improving their 9 teaching, which aids in maintaining the historical significance of the university, leading to improvements in post-secondary distance education as a whole. 1.5.3 Significance in the field of learning environments In terms of other learning environment instruments that are already established, and those that are emerging, the DELES will lend itself to the “bricolage of theories, methods, and prior histories” (Tobin, 1998, p. 130) that shape how we view learning environments by adding a distance education learning environment instrument. Higher education institutions are beginning to see distance education as more than an add-on to the ways in which teaching and learning have traditionally been conducted. They are beginning to consider distance education as a genuine alternative form of education with its own audience, purposes, and patterns (Clinton, 2002). My study addresses this phenomenon by approaching it as a new direction for learning environments research. Today aspects of the ever-growing body of learning environment research looks deep into traditional education environments. However, studies in distance teaching and learning are relatively new in learning environment research. Modifications of learning environment questionnaires suited for use in cross-cultural applications, the expansion of instruments suited for use at different education levels (Fraser, 2002a), and the growth of learning environment research specific to ever-expanding subject areas (e.g., Goh & Tobin, 1999; Teh & Fraser, 1994; Zandvliet, 2002) are examples of the depth of learning environment studies. Meanwhile, however, other aspects of learning environment research must focus on altogether new ways of teaching and learning that are embedded in new learning environments such as asynchronous distance education. The DELES, while perhaps suitable in some aspects for traditional learning environments, was developed with new ways of teaching and learning in mind. While the steps in the development and validation of the DELES followed precedent set during the development of previous learning environment instruments, little of this instrument was adapted from traditional instruments themselves. The vast majority of the DELES is derived exclusively from considerations of fifth-generation (Taylor, 2001) distance teaching and learning, which is a relatively recent line of learning environment research. 10 1.5.4 Summary of the Discussion of Significance These three significant areas of contribution—toward distance education, higher education, and learning environments research—offer the education community a new and unique perspective on distance education learning environments in higher education through a combination of topics that have yet to be considered in this way. While there is an expectation that information technology will significantly contribute to teaching and learning (Cuban, 2001; Mioduser, Nachmias, Lahav, & Oren, 2000), it is only what goes on in a technology-rich learning environment, in this case a post-secondary distance education environment, that will ever truly make a difference in how people learn (Cookson, 2002). Technology and telecommunications in education, in and of themselves, do not improve education. It is how they are used that make the largest contributions to education (Harris, 1998). Distance education has been characterized as taking us “one step ahead for the technology, and two steps back for the pedagogy” (Mioduser et al., 2000, p. 73). Conceivably, we are experiencing what has been termed a cultural lag (Ogburn, 1964)—the difference between innovation and the way in which a culture reacts to it. For instance, at one point in history, automobiles were viewed as horseless carriages and the internal combustion engine was seen as a way to replace the horse rather than as a way to provide a whole new means of transportation. Steam engines were placed in sailing vessels, not to provide a primary source of locomotion, but to serve as a back-up to sail power when there was no wind (Tinker, 2000). Likewise, in some cases, distance education has been viewed as a technological extension of the traditional college or university classroom rather than as a completely new way of educating (Cookson, 2002). Given that there is a complex process of cultural maturation that must be achieved with any new way of doing things, there too must be a new ways of researching and asking questions about these new ways of doing things. Despite the newness of electronically-delivered distance education in the overall history of education, researchers are already calling for revisions in distance- education models (Diaz, 2000; Mioduser et al., 2000; Tait, 2003; Taylor & Maor, 11 2000). If nothing else, this study will contribute to distance education by looking at it from a teaching- and learning-centred perspective, a psychosocial perspective to be more precise, and not from a technocentric perspective, nor a perspective bound to traditional educational models. 1.6 OVERVIEW OF OTHER THESIS CHAPTERS Chapter 2 reviews literature related to learning environment research as a body of knowledge, how learning environments can be studied, a brief history of learning environment research instruments, and distance education learning environments. Chapter 3 details the methods that I used in the design and development of a learning environment survey instrument intended exclusively for distance education in higher education. This includes a report of three stages in the development and validation of the learning environment survey instrument: (1) identification and development of salient scales; (2) writing individual items; and (3) field testing the instrument and analysing the resulting data. Chapter 4 is a presentation of the results of analyses of the data utilized to validate the instrument and to investigate associations between the learning environment and student enjoyment of distance education. Chapter 5 outlines the conclusions and limitations related to the instrument validation, implications of the research, and recommendations for future research related to the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey. 12 Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides a review of literature in four areas related to my present study: the evolution of psychosocial environment research; distance education research in general; distance education psychosocial learning environments; and student satisfaction. The major section (Section 2.2) concerning the evolution of learning environments research includes fundamental theories behind the study of psychosocial environments and the work that ultimately led to the study of environments in terms of education. This is followed by a presentation and description of an ever-increasing body of survey instruments that are used in learning environments assessing, as well as a discussion of several lines of learning environments research. Then, to begin linking learning environments and distance education, the next section (Section 2.3) outlines distance education research in general terms. Following on, the next section (Section 2.4) brings the two disciplines of learning environments and distance education together. It begins with a description of research on fragmented portions of distance education learning environments. This is followed by a discussion of learning environments research that takes a somewhat more holistic view of the distance education learning environment as a combined subset of distance education research and psychosocial learning environment research aimed at asking and answering questions of social ecology in terms of Internet-based distance education. The final section (Section 2.5) delves into aspects of student satisfaction, especially in terms of post-secondary education, as my study involved assessment and investigation of student satisfaction. I have selected these topics to present in this chapter because they represent the merging of two distinctively different research topics—social ecology and distance education. I start from the broadest of categories in each and move toward a specific niche suitable for contributing to the greater body of knowledge related to tertiary education. Figure 2.1 presents this convergence in which learning environment research is a sub-field of psychosocial environment research within the broader scope of social ecology. Internet-based distance education falls under the umbrella of 13 distance education in general, and narrowly-focused and incremental studies in Internet-based distance education more specifically. These two divergent research areas come together in this chapter and loosely follow this converging path culminating in the ultimate topic at hand in my study, that of post-secondary distance education learning environments. Figure 2.1. Diagram of the relationship between the two distinctive areas of research in social ecology and distance education There is a strong tradition in learning environments research to study associations between students’ perception of their psychosocial environment and affective learning outcomes such as attitude, self-esteem, and satisfaction (Fraser, 2002a; Wong, Young, & Fraser, 1997). Therefore, a final section in this chapter introduces the concept of student satisfaction in distance education, an area where any linkages between satisfaction and psychosocial environments have gone unstudied until now. 2.1.1 Terminology The term learning environment carries with it a variety of meanings. It has been used to indicate a type of learning task (Tynjälä, 1999), to denote virtual spaces found in computer applications and on the Internet (Fulkerth, 2002; Gibbs, 1999), and to refer to the classroom psychosocial environment (Henderson, Fisher, & Fraser, 2000). A 14 quick review of today’s educational psychology textbooks reveals chapters on learning environments that focus on deviant behaviour management, classroom management in terms of rules and discipline, student motivation, instructional methods, the physical layout of desks and chairs, and even the colour that the classroom is painted (Chesebro & McCroskey, 2002; Slavin, 2000; Snowman & Biehler, 2003; Woolfolk, 2001). In this study, the concept of environment, unless otherwise noted, refers exclusively to the psychosocial environment. Again though, even when the environment is overtly framed exclusively in these terms, literature reveals differing terminology to explain the concept of environment. In Owens’ (2001) textbook on organisational behaviour in educational settings, he notes the use of terms synonymous with environment that include an organisation’s atmosphere, personality, tone, or ethos. Moos used the term “social climate” and “personality of the environment” (1979, p. vii), although he notes that he was criticized for attributing personality to an environment. For the sake of consistency, I will use the term psychosocial environment throughout this study when writing generally on the topic of environment. I will use the term learning environment when referring to the psychosocial environment in education. For further clarity, I should note that this study is ultimately concerned with learning environments in asynchronous distance education. 2.1.2 Background to learning environments research Learning environments research, just over three decades old, is firmly established (Fraser, 1998a; Goh & Khine, 2002; Tobin & Fraser, 1998) among a variety of educational research and evaluation methods dominated by the assessment of students’ academic achievement (Fraser, 1998b). While quantitative measures of classroom effectiveness are often based on "narrow testable, standardized, superficial, and easily forgotten outcomes", other areas of schooling are less emphasized (Kyle, 1997, p. 851) and a complete image of the process of education is not formed within the research. In the early 1960s, Bloom pointed to measurements of educational environments as decisive components for prediction and successful learning manipulation (Anderson & Walberg, 1974). Since then, numerous studies 15 have demonstrated that students' perceptions of their educational environments can be measured with survey instruments, with their assessments being valid predictors of learning (Anderson & Walberg, 1974; Fraser, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 2002b; Moos, 1979). Thus, evaluation turns away from individual student achievement and toward the effectiveness of the environment of the learning organization (Walberg, 1974). Moreover, variables within learning environments themselves can be manipulated to achieve different affective and cognitive learning outcomes (Anderson & Walberg, 1974). In many studies of associations between learning environments and learning outcomes, learning environments have dimensions that have consistently been identified as determinants of learning (Fraser, 1986; Khine, 2002). Learning environments which students perceive as affirmative, favourable, and fulfilling tend to lead toward increased student achievement (Chang & Fisher, 2001a). Recently, Asian researchers have adapted and cross-validated Western-originated learning environment instruments (Fraser, 2002a), demonstrating the universality of this perspective in educational research. Cross-national studies utilizing samples from multiple countries have also recently been conducted, allowing researchers to consider those perspectives with which one becomes familiar in his/her own culture to be exposed and made overt and questionable in the context of a different culture (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999; Fraser, 2002a; Zandvliet, 1999). 2.1.3 Need to describe learning environments in today’s rapidly-expanding higher education market There are increasingly strong indicators of the need to accommodate tertiary education students in a globalised economy in order to create, distribute, and exploit knowledge for international competitive advantages (Commonwealth Department of Education, Science & Training, 2000; Hinde, 2000; Organisation for Economic Co- operation & Development, 2000; Salmi, 2000; Wagner, 1998). Many universities, large and small alike, are marketing globally (Hinde, 2000; Salmi, 2000) and developing borderless programming. Australia has become a leader in education exporting (Hanley, 2002; Hinde, 2000) due in part to late-1980s government shifts in policy that allowed full-cost tuition to be charged to international students, coupled with reductions in public funding for universities. This policy shift launched 16 Australian universities into an aggressive pursuit of overseas students, not for cultural awareness or foreign policy goals, but for market-driven pursuit of foreign income. This shift toward looking outward has led Australia’s strong distance education tradition to become one of the fastest-growing segments in Australian tertiary education (Marginson, 2002). At the opposite end of the global education market spectrum are individual universities that are not part of education exportation on a mega-scale within a national movement. Rather, they are taking advantage of micro-scale opportunities for self-sufficiency. For example, in 2000, the 121-year old University of the Incarnate Word, a private 4000-student Catholic University in the United States, opened a campus in Guangzhou, China (University of the Incarnate Word [UIW], 2002). Around the same time, this small university implemented their Universe Online program, a degree-offering distance education program (UIW, n.d.), in part to take advantage of revenue advantages of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ US$453 million eArmyU program (Lorenzo, 2002). These two actions demonstrate the same trend toward self-sufficiency as any education exporting university in Australia, yet on an individual and necessarily smaller scale. The same need for self-sufficiency on an individual, university-by-university level has been listed as one of the reasons why Hispanic Caribbean institutions in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba have taken initiatives to become involved in the global market (Canino, 2002). Marginalized countries are seeing greater tertiary education impacts spawned from the global marketplace too. Institutions such as Great Britain’s Open University and India’s Indira Gandhi National Open University, among others, have traditionally supported education in developing regions with print-based media and radio. However, these media typically lack social interaction. Advances in technology and the ability of some countries to leap frog in technology and telecommunications have created openings for newer, digital-based distance education programs to step in (Eastmond, 2000). Large-scale government-sponsored programs, such as AusAID’s Virtual Colombo Plan, which is funded as a portion of AusAID’s AU$280 million education-sector budget (Commonwealth of Australia, 2002), is set up to support substantial education exporting by means of distance education through virtual 17 universities, such as the proposed Curtin African Virtual University (Curtin University of Technology, 2002). However, despite opportunities for the expansion of borderless education in a global market, the quality of university education must remain high, lest universities become little more than knowledge-production houses feeding the global consumption of education (Traub, 2000). Traub asks, “Who will bother to come to the university’s defense once it starts behaving like every other institution in the [Wall Street] culture?” (2000, ¶ 5). Marginson (2002) suggests that Australian student-staff ratios resulting from the “commercialization of foreign education” have already led to “downward pressures in quality” (p. 24). Regarding the exportation of education to developing regions, Eastmond (2002) notes that globalised distance education is “not a panacea that will solve the world’s educational problems; in fact, if not done right, distance education will exacerbate poor quality instruction and contribute to education problems in developing countries” (Conclusion, ¶ 1). The question of what is the right way to do distance education still remans. From the perspective of asking this question, assurances of quality in education move to the forefront and must be addressed (Olsen, 2000). Learning environment research can provide some of these assurances by means of addressing what factors shape effective learning environments. Many of these factors are beginning to be considered in distance education research, yet they are often considered in isolation. In 1976, Moos wrote that “the growth of new institutional environments has increased the need for accurate descriptions of these environments” (p. 351). He went on to postulate, in reference to the events of the late 1970s, that: …currently available descriptions of social environments are inadequate. The environment is usually described as it is seen by a small and unrepresentative sample of the people in it… In addition, no ‘feel’ of how the environment actually functions is provided. (p. 351) Moos’ statements regarding ‘new environments’ and ‘currently available descriptions’ are no less pertinent today than they were in the ‘70s in regard to distance education in our contemporary globalised world order. Perhaps knowledge about distance education research and psychosocial distance education learning 18 environments will be increased somewhat by this study, which is little more than the tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of learning environments in distance education. 2.2 EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOSOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS RESEARCH 2.2.1 History of psychosocial environment research The concept of psychosocial environment and the enduring features and processes that give social milieus their strength and vulnerability (Moos, 2002), have multidisciplinary roots extending back to the mid-1930s to the psychological field theory of Kurt Lewin and the personality theory of Henry Murray (Moos, 1976). Lewin formulated his psychological field theory from his experience with the physical theory of electromagnetic fields, combined with Gestalt psychology, to conclude that the environment influences the person and that the person influences the environment (Moos, 1976; Murray, 1938). Lewin defined his idea with the representative formula of B=f(P,E), whereby B represents behaviour, f is function, P is the person, and E is the person's environment (Lewin, 1936). Lewin noted that "every scientific psychology must take into account whole situations, i.e., the state of both person and environment" (1936, p. 12). Thus, determinants of B are describable by composite measures of P and E (Stern, 1974). Lewin's purpose for this definition was to conceptualise human behaviour with new strategies in psychological research in which functional relationships and states of interaction are emphasized over those of correlation of disjointed responses derived from isolated stimuli—the prevailing psychological trend of the time (Stern, 1974). It is perhaps noteworthy to add here that, despite 12 references to Lewin’s work in Murray’s (1938) Explorations in Personality, Murray stated regarding Lewin’s theory that, “If we were concerned with the individual merely as a unit in a field of social forces, then perhaps he might be treated as physicists treat a body: his behaviour might be represented by an arrow” (p. 73). Murray postulates that it is “dynamically pertinent” (1938, p. 120) to analyse an environment in terms of the attributes of what press is applied, rather than solely in the isolation of the present. 19 2.2.2 Environmental press Murray developed a theory that included not only the notion of one’s internal need, or personal determinants of behaviour, but also the concept of environmental press, which represents external determinants of behaviour (Moos, 1976). Press, in these terms, is the directional influence that the environment has on one’s behaviour. Press has a directional tendency with properties not obtainable by the sum of the parts of the environment or situation (Murray, 1938). As diagrammed in Figure 2.2, an environment’s press has positive and negative quantifiable aspects in terms of its ability to benefit or harm. Likewise, the press of an environment has a qualitative aspect relating to the type of effect that it has on a person. Both positive (enjoyable) and negative (not enjoyable) press can be mobile or immobile. Mobile press impacts on persons who are passive in a particular setting and can be further defined as docile or autonomous press—docile when the press is regulated by the person and autonomous when regulated by the environment. Immobile press has no impact on persons unless the person alters the press. Thus, in terms of one’s external psychosocial environment, components or characteristics of an environment, if manipulated, result in a different environment and can have an impact on those existing within that environment (Murray, 1938). Murray further defined press as being either alpha press (the actual press as far as it can be determined by an observer) and beta press (a person’s interpretation of the environment based upon his/her apperception). Beta press is what determines behaviour (Murray, 1938). The difference between the alpha and the beta press is referred to by Murray as “delusion” (1938, p. 122). What is important here has less to do with delusion and more to do with what a person does in the light of his/her perceptions in the research which I address. When a person recognizes the direction of the environment, that is, what the environment is doing to the person, s/he has pressive perception, which inevitably leads to some type of change in behaviour. Furthering this concept, when a person draws upon experience to predict what the environment could do to him/her, it is referred to as pressive apperception—leading to an unconscious reaction to the potential of the environment (Murray, 1938). Contemporary learning environment studies are 20 concerned more with the beta press in lieu of, or in addition to, the alpha press, rather than differences between the two. Pre ss Positive (enjoyable) Neg ative (not enjoyable) Mo b ile (af f ects person if pers on is pas s ive) Imm ob ile Auton o mou s (ac tiv ity is initiated by the env ironment) Do c ile (ac tiv ity is regulated by the pers on) Mo b ile Imm ob ile Auton o mou s Figure 2.2. Classification of press in terms of positive and negative characteristics Stern, Stein, and Bloom (1956) expanded Murray’s concept of press and further rationalized that people view the environment in terms of: their own highly-selective subjective perceptions that result from their experiences gained in previous situations—the private beta press; and in terms of their shared view as a member of a group immersed in a given environment—the common beta press as diagrammed in Figure 2.3 The common beta press “usually reflects some of the means by which the group maintains its orientation to reality” (Stern, Stein, & Bloom, 1956, p. 37). The common beta press and the private beta press can be different from one another and also have the potential to differ from the view of the researcher (alpha press) who is not a part of the environment. 21 Pre ss Be ta (pa rticipa nt) Alp ha (ob se r ve r) Pr ivate (pers on's perc eption) Co mm on (shared perc eption) Figure 2.3. Classification of press in terms of beta and alpha characteristics 2.2.3 Contemporary research on psychosocial environments In the 1970s, Rudolf Moos attributed an increased awareness and action related to the natural environment to an upsurge of interest in human environments. He noted that human ecologists became concerned with the way in which people grow and adapt in their environs, and that psychologists and sociologists became more concerned with creating environments that lead to the maximization of human functioning and competency (Moos, 1976). Moos had been studying environments for over a decade when, in The Human Context, he put forward “five different, yet related, conceptions of how the [psychosocial] environment works” (1976, p. 29). These conceptions are: 1) the perspective of evolution and human ecology, with environments being limiting on the actions of people; 2) the perspective of social Darwinism, with environments choosing, or favouring, people with stronger characteristics; 3) that environments motivate and challenge individuals, facilitating individual and social growth in terms of the development of civilizations; 4) a social ecological approach, with individuals seeking information about environments in order to select those with the greatest probability for success; and 5) individuals seeking to increase their control over environments in order to increase individual freedom, akin to modern philosophy in regard to our natural environment (Oelschlaeger, 1991). The integration of these five concepts led to the development of the perspective that Moos termed “a social ecological approach” (1976, p. 28) 22 designed to help us to comprehend the influence of the psychosocial environment from the viewpoint of the individual and to enhance our psychosocial environments to enrich the quality of life. From this conceptual perspective, Moos described what have long stood as environmental system domains in social ecology that can infinitely depict different environments in terms of three dimensions: 1) the Relationship Dimension, 2) the Personal Growth Dimension, and 3) the System Maintenance and Change Dimension (Moos, 1974, 2002). Through subsequent work, Moos demonstrated the enduring quality of these dimensions in terms of family, work, school, health, military, prison and community social contexts (Moos, 1976, 1979, 2002). The Relationship Dimension distinguishes the nature and strength of personal relationships. This is the “extent to which individuals are involved in the environment and the extent to which they tend to support and help each other” (Moos, 1974, p. 19). Aspects encompassed by this dimension include: cohesion, expression, support, affiliation, and involvement. The Personal Development Dimension is characterized by personal growth and self-enhancement opportunities offered by the environment. Aspects related to this dimension include: independence, achievement, task orientation, self-discovery, anger, aggression, competition, autonomy, and personal status (Moos, 1974). The System Maintenance and Change Dimension considers the degree of control of the environment, the orderliness, clarity in expectations, and responsiveness to change. Aspects characterizing this dimension include: organization, control, order, clarity, innovation, physical comfort, and influence (Moos, 1974). Moos suggested too that the System Maintenance and Change Dimension is well suited for making cross- cultural comparisons of social organizations. It is through the framework of these dimensions that investigators can begin to characterize and integrate the impacts that social environments have on individuals and groups. Environments, especially when couched in terms of Murray’s concept of temporal tendencies, tend to preserve the individual characteristics that are compatible with their prevailing aspects (Moos, 2002). The settings in which we find ourselves, in families, schools, work, etc. are “ubiquitous in everyday life, are highly salient for the people who live and work in them, and exemplify how individuals 23 construct and select life contexts that profoundly influence their morale and behavior” (Moos, 1996, ¶ 6). When participants in an environment are offered information about their environment, opportunities for adaptation to the environment can affect the participants’ expectations of the social milieu. Further, given information about the social climate of an environment, participants have potential opportunities to alter their environment positively to promote productivity within it. Likewise, when stakeholders participating in an environment are supplied with information on what is an ideal environment, they can use that information to shape their own environment toward the goal of making it an ideal environment. “Practical applications of the concept of social climate”, such as in school settings, “make it one of the most exciting and potentially useful ways of characterizing environments” (Moos, 1976, p. 352). Research into psychosocial environments must be ongoing due to the nature of ever- changing environments. “We have not reached the goal Murray (1938) espoused more than 60 years ago: A [sic] common taxonomy of individuals’ needs and environmental press that enables us to identify the presence of a person-environment match” (Moos, 2002, Enigma III section, ¶ 2). This is due, in part, to the fact that research on psychosocial environments faces the dilemma that environments themselves “are likely to have only evanescent effects because they are superseded by the demands of new environments” (Moos, 1996, ¶ 17). The study for which this review of the literature provides support involves one of these new environments— the distance learning environment. 2.2.4 Evolution of learning environments research Following the progression of research in psychosocial human environments generally, I now consider its evolution into the specific domain of educational environments. Hartshorne and May (1928) and Newcomb (1929) similarly noted that students’ behaviour could be altered by the environment in which they were immersed. Hartshorne and May verified that personality traits were poorly correlated to students’ tendency to participate in deceitful behaviour, such a cheating on examinations, given the opportunity in differing situations. Newcomb noted that students’ talkativeness during lunch periods was a highly stable trait; however, the 24 same trait did not carry over to other situations. These early studies demonstrated that investigators must consider the environment in which behaviour takes place in order to predict individual student actions, because students’ values change according to the expectations of the setting (Moos, 1979). Nearly three decades after these early studies, Pace and Stern (1958) recognized and investigated the association of major fields of study with social climates in institution-wide college and university settings, in part by developing and implementing the 30-scale, 300 true-false item College Characteristics Index (CCI). Pace (1962, 1967) measured the five social climate scales of practicality, community, awareness, propriety, and scholarship through the development and implementation of the College and University Environment Scale (CUES). He searched for associations between the degree by which the environment impacts intellectual capacity and academic competition. However, these studies were conducted at a broad level, involving analysing whole institutions. While important in the evolution of studies in learning environments, the scope needed to be more narrowly focused. Walberg and Moos, independent of one another, began considering psychosocial environments and their influence on student outcomes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their work can be considered the “starting points for contemporary classroom environment research” (Fraser, 1990, p. 201) that “took off in the 1970s” (Tobin, 2000, p. 223). Methods of studying learning environments during that time, and perhaps still today, can be distinguished as conforming to three forms: 1) elaborate coding schemes for teacher and student activities, 2) “global observation scales,” and 3) “perceptual indexes” (Moos, 1979, p. 138). Self-report perceptual indexes focusing on classroom environments included peer judgement and teacher nomination in the Classroom Climate Inventory (CCI); the Learning Structure Questionnaire (LSQ) based on dimensions of teacher-centeredness, class- centeredness, and self-directed dimensions; Walberg’s widely-used Learning Environment Inventory (LEI) focusing on cohesiveness, friction, speed, and disorganization (Anderson & Walberg, 1974; Fraser, 1986); and the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) developed by Trickett and Moos that considers teacher behaviour, teacher-student interaction and student-student interaction (Moos, 1979). 25 Until the introduction of the CES, though, perceptual indexes “lacked the guidance of theoretical or conceptual frameworks producing isolated findings that are difficult to organize into a coherent body of knowledge about classroom functioning” (Moos, 1979, p. 138). The CES, and the numerous instruments that followed, defined the classroom environment in terms of the shared perceptions of the participants (common beta press), rather than those from outside observers’ views alone (alpha press). Students, with their distinctive frame of reference generated from spending numerous hours as learners, have a large interest in what is going on around them in their educational environments "and their reactions to and perceptions of school experiences are significant" (Fraser, 1998b, p. 527) given that environments, like people, take on distinctive personalities (Insel & Moos, 1974; Kiritz & Moos, 1974). Moreover, students have the advantage of familiarity with differing learning environments and have distinctive impressions of classroom environments (Moos, 1979). This point of shared perceptions, coupled with the framework of Moos’ (1974) universal environment dimensions of Relationship, Personal Relevance, and System Maintenance and Change investigated by means of a perceptual index, led to a solid theoretical structure for considering psychosocial environments in educational settings. 2.2.5 The influence of learning environments on student outcomes Walberg led classroom environment research further by posing two important questions. “Do the educational means, that is, the manipulation of the environment, justify the ends?” “If so, to what extent or with what degree of productivity?” (Walberg, 1981, p. 81). Walberg suggested that, where B=f(P, E) was adopted in psychological settings to explain behaviour, researchers in education had, unconditionally perhaps, adopted L=f(A, T) where learning (L) is a function of an individual’s aptitude (A) and the instructional treatment (T). He suggested though that the factors that are not manipulated in the natural setting of education, those being factors of the environment, carry more weight than deliberate instruction. Therefore, he presented the formula L=f(A, T, E) to include the learning environment (E) (Walberg, 1981). This supposition has been supported by others in terms of 26 student assessment being incomplete without consideration of the classroom context (Englemann, Granzin, & Severson, 1979; Ysseldyke & Elliott, 1999). In Walberg’s same theory of educational productivity work, he postulated that psychosocial characteristics in classrooms provided valid indicators of factors of student achievement, and perhaps even goals of their own accord to balance academic measurement by means of test scores alone (1981). Others have followed suit in agreeing that there is an association between psychosocial characteristics of classrooms and student learning achievements and viewpoints (Fraser, 1998a) (see Subsection 2.2.7.3). Moos (1979) cited demonstrations of this linkage by several researchers, including Bennett, Epstein and McPartland, Kennedy, Forman and McKinney, Fraser, O’Reilly, Soloman and Kendall, and Stallings. Moos also made the point that, given that there are real, observable outcomes that can be manipulated through environments, teachers can alter the social environment within their classrooms to influence outcomes. By following the four steps of 1) systematic learning environment assessment, 2) feedback to teachers with practical issues stressed, 3) implementation of positive changes, and 4) reassessing the classroom environment in a perpetual loop, social climate changes could be made (Fraser, Sinclair, & Ledbetter, 2001; Moos, 1979). This early extensive body of research on learning environments demonstrated that instructors, cognizant of the learning environments that they support, could utilize classroom environments studies to discover differences between their perceptions and those of their students and then attempt to make improvements in the actual classroom environment, based upon the preferences of students, to lead to increased productivity and achievement. Later, as we are about to see in Section 2.2.6 researchers developed highly-economical, easy-to-implement, easy-to-score inventories such as the My Class Inventory (MCI) to aid teachers in their own assessment of what is going on in their classrooms (Fraser, 1998b). 2.2.6 Learning environment instruments Although students must be able to demonstrate measurable content skills, education consists of more than curricular content and quantifiable student outcomes. The 27 quality of the environment in which students learn plays a paramount role in those things that we desire for education (Fraser, 1986, 2002b). While classroom learning environments can be altered with the intention of enhancing student outcomes, as previously noted (see Section 2.2.5), education practitioners and researchers must have a means by which they can measure the learning environment before they can enact any changes in that environment that will lead to improving the effectiveness of education. Qualitative observation, inquiry, ethnography, student and teacher interviews, and case studies, among other qualitative and subjective forms of assessment and evaluation, have commonly been used by researchers to gather information on educational environments. However, in order to bridge the gap between the third-party observer/researcher’s views and the students’ and teachers’ own perceptions of what goes in on their environments, a less subjective, qualitative, and economical means of measuring the learning environment exists through the use of learning environment survey instruments. This alternative research method is based on validated, efficient, and broadly relevant questionnaires that students and teachers complete for researchers’ gathering of perceptions of learning environments from the stakeholders’ perspectives (Fraser, 1998a). There has been a “prolific development of questionnaires” (Tobin, 2000, p. 223) in this field and investigators are able to select salient scales and the items within them for the purposes of their own studies without having to independently construct new instruments. Learning environments research instruments have been utilised in multiple countries, at multiple educational levels, and in any number of educational subject areas (Fraser, 2002b). These instruments have been utilised by “hundreds of researchers, thousands of teachers, and millions of students around the world” (Fraser, 2002b, p. vii). Early instruments used in the measurement of psychosocial environments in education include the Learning Environment Inventory (LEI), the My Class Inventory (MCI), the Class Activities Questionnaire (CAQ) (Steele, House, & Kering, 1971), and the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) (Moos & Trickett, 1974). The LEI, patterned after Hemphill's Group Dimensions Description Questionnaire, was established in the 1960s (Anderson & Walberg, 1974; Fraser, 1998a). It assumes that the students, as well as the teacher, are determinants of the 28 learning environment (Steele, House, & Kering, 1971). The MCI is a simplified version of the LEI, adapted for use with younger children aged 6-12 years. The CAQ was constructed to measure Bloom's six-level taxonomy (Anderson & Walberg, 1974) consisting of: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Unlike the LEI, MCI, and CAQ that considered only the students’ perceptions of the actual environment, the CES was designed for use in secondary classrooms with several forms of the instrument: the student expected form for use in a new class, the student preferred (“ideal”) form, the student actual form, the teacher preferred, and the teacher actual (Moos & Trickett, 1974). Meanwhile, the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) focused exclusively upon perspectives at the post-secondary level with multiple forms (Fraser, Treagust, & Dennis, 1986). Instruments that are more contemporary than those briefly reviewed also are numerous and ever growing. The following subsections describe several influential instruments (Fraser 2002a) that include the Science Laboratory Environment Instrument (SLEI) (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992), the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997), the What is Happening in this Classroom (WIHIC) questionnaire (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999), and the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) (Wubbels, 1993). These subsections are then followed by a brief presentation of some other instruments. 2.2.6.1 Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) The SLEI is geared toward the science laboratory classroom experiences of secondary and post-secondary students for whom the science laboratory is a separate class (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992). The SLEI, cross-nationally field tested with 5,557 students in 269 classes in six countries (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1995), has 35 items equally divided amongst five scales of Student Cohesiveness, Open-endedness, Integration, Rule Clarity, and Material Environment. The frequency response alternatives are Almost Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, and Very Often, and approximately half of the items are reverse scored. The SLEI introduced the concept of a personal version to learning environment instruments to augment the class version and to aid in differentiating between within-class 29 subgroups, such as boys and girls (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992). Using the SLEI, Harrison, Fisher, and Henderson (1997) found they were able to differentiate between students’ perceptions in biology, chemistry and physics in three ways. Students perceived physics as more open-ended than biology or chemistry classes; chemistry classes had greater rule clarity; and physics and chemistry were more integrated than biology. The SLEI has been reported as being cross-validated in its English form in Singapore (Quek, Wong, & Fraser, 2001; Wong & Waldrip, 1996; Wong, Young, & Fraser, 1997) and Brunei Darussalam (Riah & Fraser, 1998a). A Korean-language form has also been validated from responses of 439 Korean students (Lee & Fraser, 2001; Lee & Kim, 2002) adding to the strength of this important instrument through rigorous testing and validation in multiple languages and cultures. 2.2.6.2 Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) The CLES, aimed toward secondary students, aids teachers and investigators in examining the utilisation of constructivist teaching methods and teachers’ epistemological assumptions (Fraser, 2002b). The original form of the CLES “was based largely on a psychosocial view of constructivist reform that focused on students as co-constructors of knowledge” (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997, p. 293), yet did not consider the cultural context of the classroom under examination. Considering that the very culture in which a class exists has a strong influence on psychosocial environment perceptions and learning, the CLES was redesigned in an attempt to capture this critical element (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997). The redesigned CLES contains the five scales of Personal Relevance, Uncertainty, Critical Voice, Shared Control, and Student Negotiation. It has 30 items, with six items per scale. The response alternatives for each item consist of Almost Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Almost Never. Departing from traditional learning environment instruments and setting a precedent for new instruments, the number of negatively-worded items was reduced to only one (Fraser, 1998b) to minimize the conceptual complexity of the instrument. 30 Like the SLEI, the CLES too has been validated in a Korean version (Lee & Kim, 2002) and an English-language version has been developed in Singapore—the General Paper CLES (GPCLES) —which adds a scale of Political Awareness and Ethic of Care (Fraser, 2002b). The five-factor CLES has likewise been translated into Chinese for use in Taiwan and demonstrates scale reliability when evaluated in an Australian-Chinese cross-national study (Aldridge, Fraser, Taylor, & Chen, 2000). It has been translated into Korean and, when administered to 1083 students in 24 classes, it replicated the original five-scale factor structure (Kim, Fisher, & Fraser, 1999). The CLES has also been found to be useful in an evaluation of systemic reform in Texas (Dryden & Fraser, 1998). 2.2.6.3 What is Happening in this Classroom (WIHIC) Questionnaire The WIHIC questionnaire, perhaps one of the most widely adopted and modified learning environment instruments (Fraser, 2002a), focuses on secondary classrooms and is designed to bring economy to the field by combining the most relevant scales from existing questionnaires (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999) to meet the contemporary concerns of education today by considering such classroom dimensions as equity and constructivism (Zandvliet, 1999). Like the SLEI, the WIHIC too has a personal version designed to elicit students’ perceptions of their individual classroom roles, and a class version aimed at examining students’ perceptions of the classroom as a whole (Aldridge & Fraser, 1997). The WIHIC is a seven-scale instrument with eight items each in the scales of Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Involvement, Investigation, Task Orientation, Cooperation, and Equity. The WIHIC’s response choices are Almost Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, and Very Often, with no reverse-scored items. Evidence of the widespread use of the WIHIC includes its treatment in South Africa where it has been modified for a unique practical application. Student teachers conducting their teaching practice at a distance implement the instrument, modified for their primary school mathematics classes and certain nuances of South African culture, as a means to aid the student teachers’ university supervisors in assessing their classroom teaching practices because the instructors themselves cannot be present to observe (Ntuli, 2001; Ntuli, Aldridge, & Fraser, 2003). The WIHIC has 31 also been employed and cross-validated in Brunei Darussalam (Khine, 2002; Riah & Fraser, 1998b) and in Singapore (Chionh & Fraser, 1998; Fraser & Chionh, 2000), both in English, while it has also been translated and validated in Chinese (Aldridge & Fraser, 1997; Aldridge, Fraser, Huang, 1999), Korean, (Kim, Fisher, & Fraser, 1999), and Indonesian (Margianti, 2002). It has also been used recently in India for the first time to investigate the perceptions of students in science classes (Koul & Fisher, 2002) and to investigate differences in mathematics classroom environments in Australia, Canada, and England (Dorman, Adams, & Ferguson, 2001). Further, with the aid of the WIHIC, a recent Canadian study noted differences between the perceptions of male and female students in mathematics and science classes that use laptop computers (Raaflaub & Fraser, 2002, 2003). Additional evidence of the widespread adoption of the WIHIC is apparent in a Canadian-Australian study that used the WIHIC and additional scales related to ergonomics, workspace, computer, visual, and spatial environments, to consider students’ perceptions of the psychosocial learning environment within the physical environment of computerized classrooms (Zandvliet, 2002). Attesting further to the robust nature of the WIHIC, it has been adapted as the foundation for the development of other instruments. For example, the WIHIC was used as the base for the Technology-Rich Outcomes-Focused Learning Environment Inventory (TROFLEI). Six of the TROFLEI’s nine scales are based upon the WIHIC (Fisher, Aldridge, Fraser, & Wood, 2001). The WIHIC was also used as the basis of the Chinese Language Classroom Environment Inventory (CLCEI) in a Singapore secondary schools Chinese language study context. The CLCEI differs from the Taiwanese Chinese version of the WIHIC noted above due to differences between the way the Chinese language is used in Singapore and Taiwan (Chua, Wong, & Chen, 2001). Modifications have also been made so that the WIHIC could be used to investigate parent perceptions in conjunction with student perceptions in a primary school setting (Allen & Fraser, 2002) and to investigate classroom learning environments associated with a mentoring program for primary school science teachers (Pickett & Fraser, 2002). 32 2.2.6.4 Questionnaire of Teacher Interaction (QTI) The QTI, originally developed in the Netherlands, began with 77 items related to the nature and quality of the interpersonal relationships between students and their mathematics and science teachers (Wubbels, 1993; Wubbels & Levy, 1993). It has since been reduced to a 64-item United States version and thereafter a 48-item Australian version (Goh & Fraser, 1998; Scott & Fisher, 2001). The QTI, unlike many other learning environment instruments, relies upon Leary’s (1957) two- dimensional theoretical model and uses a circumplex ‘map’ to graph results by plotting influence (dominance-submission) along a vertical axis and proximity (cooperation-opposition) along a horizontal axis (Wubbels, Créton, & Hooymayers, 1992). The QTI contains scales that assess students’ perceptions of eight aspects of behaviour, namely, Leadership, Helping/Friendly, Understanding, Student Responsibility/Friendly, Uncertain, Dissatisfied, Admonishing, and Strict Behaviour. The response scales range from Never to Always. As with the SLEI, the CLES, and the WIHIC, the QTI has been widely used and modified to fit specific circumstances. In terms of differences in cultural discernment, the QTI has been used to examine teacher behaviour perceptions of Asian-American and Hispanic-American students (den Brok, Levy, Rodriguez, & Wubbels, 2002) and, in an altogether different adaptation, Australian students’ perceptions of teacher behaviour were examined in terms of the use of laptop computers in their classrooms (Stolarchuk & Fisher, 1998). Among these and other modifications, the QTI was tailored to assess teacher-principal interactions with the same eight scales with the Principal Interaction Questionnaire (Cresswell & Fisher, 1997). The QTI was used in Australia to examine the perceptions of senior secondary biology students (Fisher, Henderson, Fraser, 1995), confirming its validity and reliability in yet another setting. Fisher, Goh, Wong, and Rickards (1996) conducted a cross-national study of secondary science students and their teachers in Australia and Singapore using the QTI. And, it has also been adapted and used in a large-scale study in Singapore to investigate student-teacher interactions in primary school mathematics classes (Goh & Fraser, 1996, 1998, 2000). It has also been used in a 33 variety of translated versions, including a Malay version (Scott & Fisher, 2001), a Korean version (Kim, Fisher, Fraser, 2000), and an Indonesian version (Soerjaningsih, Fraser, & Aldridge, 2001). The Indonesian version was used to describe and compare post-secondary Management and Computer Science course students’ perceptions of the interactions between the students and their instructors (Soerjaningsih, Fraser, & Aldridge, 2001), further demonstrating the widespread applications of the QTI. 2.2.6.5 Other learning environment instruments and their uses While the SLEI, CLES, WIHIC, and QTI are among the more influential contemporary instruments (Fraser, 1998b), there is no shortage of other instruments that have a specific focus or that have been modified or adapted from previous instruments to serve a particular purpose. Among these are the Geography Classroom Environment Inventory (GCEI), a four-scale questionnaire intended for assessing and investigating computer-aided learning classroom environments (Teh & Fraser, 1994). The New Classroom Environment Instrument (NCEI) is a nine- scale inventory applied in classes using mathematical computer modelling (Newhouse, 1994). The Computer Laboratory Environment Instrument (CLEI) has foundations in the SLEI (Newby & Fisher, 1997) and the Computer-Facilitated Learning (CFL) environments instrument was developed for use in technology-rich university courses (Bain, McNaught, Mills, & Lueckenhausen, 1998). The Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment Survey (CMLES) was developed specifically to evaluate constructivist-oriented learning environments that make use of interactive multi-media in teacher professional development (Maor, 1999). Meanwhile, the original College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI), developed in 1986, was enhanced in response to the notion that students who were more involved in classroom activities might have more favourable perceptions of the classroom environment than those with less involvement (Nair & Fisher, 2001). The above review attests to the robust nature of learning environment instruments. Meanwhile, several distinctive lines of research have been commonly conducted with the aid of these instruments. These are presented next. 34 2.2.7 Categories of learning environments research As learning environments research continues to mature, investigators are using established and well-validated instruments and their subsequent modifications in broadening and deepening the questions assessed in relation to person-environment interaction. Researchers are looking toward other disciplines as well to forge truly cross-disciplinary research that influences studies in learning environments. For example, McRobbie and Thomas (2001) used the WIHIC to go beyond simple characterization of classroom learning environments to include a study of participants’ perceptions when the environment underwent intentional change. Fisher and Waldrip (2002) have integrated traditional learning environment dimensions with dimensions of culture extracted from anthropology, sociology, and management to measure classroom factors related to cultural sensitivity with the Cultural Learning Environment Questionnaire (CLEQ). Even further, learning environments research has reached beyond interdisciplinary considerations and into established cross-cultural studies. For example, Zandvliet (2002) integrated workplace ergonomic aspects in the technology-rich classroom with psychosocial considerations of Canadian and Australian students through a unique combination of the use of the What is Happening in this Classroom (WIHIC), the Computerized Classroom Ergonomic Inventory (CCEI), and a student satisfaction scale borrowed from the classic Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) (Fraser, 1981). These studies and others, when considered holistically, tend to fall into distinctive categories. As recognized by Fraser (2002a), there are six common learning environment research categories that focus on 1) student outcome-environment associations, 2) evaluation of educational innovations, 3) differences between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the same classroom, 4) determinants of classroom environments, 5) utilisation of qualitative research methods, and 6) cross- national/cross-cultural studies. Nevertheless, other lines of research certainly exist, yet in less frequently researched categories. For example, Fraser (1998b) noted trends related to the measurement of school-level environments, studies on links between non-educational environments and educational environments, studies related to the transition from primary school to high school, applications in teacher education, and utilization of learning environment instruments for teacher 35 assessment. Nonetheless, the strongest line of study from any of the categories above appears to be investigating outcome-environment associations (Fraser, 2002a). As with previous learning environment studies, my study also examined associations between student outcomes and the psychosocial learning environment, but specifically for distance education environments (see Chapter 4, Section 4.4). Therefore, I thoroughly review the literature related to this line of study in Subsection 2.2.7.3 below. Likewise, given the unique ability of distance education to be able to easily reach across cultures and political boundaries, I have included an expanded subsection on cross-national/cross-cultural aspects of learning environment research (see Subsection 2.2.7.2). Finally, while additional data continues to be acquired, the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES), which I preliminarily validated in my study, has concurrently been used to investigate differences between students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the same class (Walker, 2001b). Subsection 2.2.7.1 briefly introduces this line of study. Discussion of the remaining categories of learning environments research, namely, evaluation of educational innovations, determinants of classroom environments, and the use of qualitative research methods becomes too lengthy to discuss in this review. However, an in-depth accounting of these three lines of research can be found in Fraser (1998a, 1998b) and with a focus on the Asian context in Fraser (2002a). 2.2.7.1 Differences between students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the same class A highly utilitarian line of learning environments research focuses on 1) differences between students’ perceptions of their classroom environments and their instructors’ perceptions of the same environments, and 2) students’ preferred environment in contrast to the actual classroom environment (Fisher & Fraser, 1983; Fraser, 2002a). Often this line of study involves administering a given learning environment instrument to measure students’ preferred environment with a preferred version of the instrument. This is then followed up by measuring their perceptions of the actual environment using an actual version of the same instrument. At the same time, the instructor responds to an instructor version of the instrument, thus producing three sets of data related to perceptions of the same class. Each version of the instrument contains the same items, but they are worded slightly different in each version to 36 capture students’ perceptions of the preferred and actual environment. The instructor version has the same items, yet it is modified to capture the instructor’s perceptions. See Chapter 3, Section 3.2 for further discussion of measurement of perceptions. A common pattern that has been replicated in a variety of studies is that students prefer a more positive environment than their classroom environments actually give them (Fraser, 2002a; Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992; Margianti, Fraser, & Aldridge, 2001). This same pattern has occurred in distance education learning environment research as measured with the Distance and Open Learning Environment Survey (DOLES) (Walker, 2001a) and the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES) (Walker, 2002b). On the other hand, results of studies comparing instructors’ perceptions of their classroom learning environment to those of their students has indicated that instructors have a tendency to see their classes “through rose-coloured glasses” (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992, p. 6; Fraser, Sinclair, & Ledbetter, 2001; Giddings & Fraser, 1990; Walker, 2002a). Feedback from these types of practical applications of classroom participants’ perceptions can be used as a foundation for dialogue and improvement of classroom environments (Fraser, Sinclair, & Ledbetter, 2001; Yarrow, Millwater, & Fraser, 1997). The National Key Centre for School Science and Mathematics at Curtin University of Technology has produced a series of What Research Says to the Science and Mathematics Teacher publications describing how learning environments instruments can be used to aid education practitioners in discerning differences between their perceptions of their classroom environment and those perceptions that their students hold (e.g., Fraser, 1989; Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992; Wubbels, 1993). The rationale behind identifying these differences is grounded in findings that suggest that “the classroom environment that is most conducive to high quality learning is one where there is congruence between student perceptions of actual and preferred environments” (Yarrow, Millwater, & Fraser, 1997, p. 70). When instructors use learning environment instruments to measure students’ perceptions against their own, they can graph the differences and easily recognize discrepancies. Instructors interested in improving their classroom learning environment can make adjustments in their teaching that address these discrepancies 37 as a means to enhance learning in their classrooms (Fraser & Fisher, 1986; Yarrow, Millwater, & Fraser, 1997). In an asynchronous distance education learning environment, this line of research can be especially useful given that instructors and students might not actually ever meet. Thus, instructors rarely receive subtle contextual cues from students for what is really going on in their distance education classes (Swan, 2001). Some studies have indicated perceptual differences between distance education instructors’ views of their asynchronous learning environments and the views of their students whereas, with face-to-face studies, certain environment characteristics were viewed as more positive by the instructor than by the students (Walker, 2001b, 2002a). In this vein of study, action research using distance-education oriented learning environment instruments to measure the participants’ perceptions of their class climate stands to be very useful in improving the psychosocial nature of distance education learning environments. 2.2.7.2 Cross-cultural learning environments research In what seems to be a natural expansion of learning environments research, there has been a trend toward cross-cultural studies and internationalization of this research genre, most notably and well documented in Asia (Gopinathan, 2002). While a comprehensive look at the history and depth of cross-cultural learning environments research is too broad for presentation here, it is worthwhile to make note of some of these efforts. Walberg, Singh, and Rasher (1977) translated the LEI into Hindi for a large-scale study of Indian students, establishing the validity of utilizing learning environment instruments that have been developed in Western countries in foreign contexts. Later, in the 1980s, in the micro-state of Brunei Darussalam, investigators began considering learning environments in conjunction with students’ attitudes toward science. This was followed by applications of the Individualised Classroom Environment Questionnaire (ICEQ), Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), and modifications of the WIHIC and the QTI designed to address local cultural contexts (Khine, 2002). Indonesia has been another beneficiary of cross- 38 cultural work in learning environments through the emergence of modified and translated versions of the ICEQ, the LEI, and the Classroom Environment Scale (CES). These have been followed by adaptations of the WIHIC and the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) (Margianti, 2002). Learning environments research in Korea emerged in the early 1990s in terms of the environment in science classes. Adaptations and translations of components of the ICEQ, the SLEI, and the CES have been carried out in research into student perceptions of new curricula. The CES was translated and modified for cultural context differences to study students’ perceptions of science classes at different education levels, among other studies in Korea (Lee & Kim, 2002). Goh (2002) reports the emergence in the early 1990s of learning environments research at all educational levels and across disciplines in Singapore. Learning environments research in Singapore consists of studies using the ICEQ, portions of the QTI and MCI, and the Chemistry Laboratory Environment Inventory (CLEI). Establishing a second generation cross-cultural transfer of learning environment instruments between two Asian countries is a version of the WIHIC, developed in Mandarin for students in Taiwan (Yang, Huang & Aldridge, 2002), that has been adapted to investigate students’ perceptions of their Chinese Language class environment for students in Singapore—the Chinese Language Classroom Environment Inventory (CLCEI) (Goh, 2002). Aldridge and Fraser (1997) conducted a large-scale, quantitative-qualitative, cross- national study of secondary students’ perceptions of their science classes using the WIHIC. In this study, the WIHIC was administered to 1879 students in Taiwan and 1081 students in Australia. For deeper insight into the differences in between the students’ perceptions the quantitative study was followed by qualitative analyses that focused on the scales that had the largest differences between the Taiwanese students and the Australian students. This study ultimately found that students’ perceptions of their learning environments are influenced by socio-cultural factors, noting that caution must be exercised in using Western-developed instruments in cross-national investigations. 39 Perhaps the most widely-adopted learning environment instrument across cultures has been the WIHIC. The WIHIC has been validated and used in Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States (Fraser, 2002a; Yang, Huang, & Aldridge, 2002). Further, adding to evidence of the global implications of how entrenched learning environments research is becoming, there is evidence of a language of ‘ownership’ among investigators when they refer to certain learning environment instruments. For example, Lee and Kim (2002) make reference to the “Korean version of the CLES” (p. 179) implying its specificity to the Korean language and culture. Similarly, Margianti (2002) makes note of the use of the “Indonesian version of the What Is Happening In This Class?” questionnaire (p. 157). This concept of unique ownership, coupled with new instruments emerging out of various cultural contexts (i.e., Geography Classroom Environment Inventory from Singapore) (Teh & Fraser, 1994), is perhaps an indication of the depth to which learning environments research’s roots have grown since Moos’ early work in the 1970s. 2.2.7.3 Associations between student outcomes and learning environments Research involving learning environment instruments has a strong tradition of considering associations between perceptions of the psychosocial characteristics of classrooms and students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes (Fraser, 1998a, 1998b, 2002a). Beyond the variance in learning outcomes that can be attributed to individual student characteristics lies that which can be attributed to students’ perceptions of the environment in which they learn. Learning environments research has consistently demonstrated, across nations, languages, cultures, subject matter, and education levels, that there are associations between classroom environment perceptions and student outcomes (Fraser, 1998a, 1998b, 2002a). Often affective student outcomes are considered as integral parts of studies of educational environments. While the term ‘affective’ could have different meanings to different individuals who consider the use of the term, perhaps Klopfer’s (as cited in Fraser, 1977) six affective categories, that set the stage for the oft-used Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) (Fraser, 1981), can be used as a guide in determining what is meant by ‘affective outcomes’. Klopfer lists students’ 1) attitude 40 toward the subject matter, 2) attitude toward inquiry, 3) adoption of attitudes similar to the subject at hand, 4) enjoyment of the learning experience, 5) interest in the subject matter at hand, apart from the learning experience, and 6) interest in the subject of study as a career as affective categories. Additional affective considerations have included students’ satisfaction in the classroom, which is to educational outcomes what job satisfaction is to workplace productivity (Zandvliet, 1999), and efficacy which has been measured by a scale of Student Academic Efficacy using such items as “I am good at this subject”, or “I am an intelligent student” (Fisher, Aldridge, Fraser, & Wood, 2001). Regardless of which affective outcomes one considers, their influences can be measured by their associations with learning environment variables of interest to the researcher (Fraser, 1977). Commonly, learning environment research includes investigation of associations between an affective scale and the psychosocial scales at hand. Conventional multiple regression analyses are regularly conducted in order to investigate these associations but, on occasion, the Hierarchical Linear Model is used (e.g., Wong, Young, & Fraser, 1997) to takes the hierarchical character of the learning environment into account (Fraser, 2002a). The remainder of this subsection presents previous studies for which associations were investigated between psychosocial learning environments and student outcomes. These studies are reviewed in terms of investigations between 1) learning environments and affective outcomes, 2) learning environments, cognitive achievement and affective outcomes, and 3) variations using multiple learning environment instruments and specific outcome instruments. Koul and Fisher (2002) conducted the first investigation in India that considered student attitudes and psychosocial environment perceptions. They used the WIHIC and a scale of students’ attitude toward their science lessons with 1,021 grade 9 and 10 students, finding positive associations between students’ attitude toward science and the WIHIC scales. Majeed, Fraser, and Aldridge (2001, 2002) conducted an analysis of student satisfaction and three scales of a version of the My Class Inventory (MCI) designed for use in mathematics classes in Brunei Darussalam. Using a version of the WIHIC modified for use in South African primary-school 41 mathematics classes, Ntuli, Aldridge, and Fraser (2003) found positive associations between the seven WIHIC scales and student satisfaction in classes taught by student teachers. Likewise, in the first post-secondary learning environments study in Singapore, Myint and Goh (2001) discovered positive and statistically significant associations between CUCEI scales and student attitudinal scales of Difficulty and Speed. Further evidence of positive associations can be found in Zandvliet’s (2002) study that utilized the WIHIC and a scale of student satisfaction. In this study, Zandvliet reported a positive association between five WIHIC scales and the scale of satisfaction that he utilized. Associations between psychosocial scales and both cognitive and affective outcomes have also been investigated and reported in numerous cases. Students’ responses to the QTI scales, Computer Science and Management students’ achievement scores, and their responses to affective scales of leisure interest in computers and attitudes toward the Internet were investigated in Indonesia (Soerjaningsih, Fraser, & Aldridge, 2001). This study utilized the newly-developed Test of Computer-Related Attitudes (TOCRA) that, in its original form, contained three scales modified from the Test of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA) and one new scale concerning attitudes toward the Internet. After factor analysis though, only two of the TOCRA scales held up and these two remaining scales resulted in unexpectedly mixed associations, suggesting that perhaps the 422-student sample was insufficiently large. An Indonesian version of the WIHIC, one scale assessing attitude toward lectures (modified from the TOSRA), and cognitive achievement were included in a study of outcome-learning environment associations by Margianti, Fraser, and Aldridge (2001) using responses from a 2,498-student, post-secondary sample. The seven WIHIC scales were found to be positively associated with the cognitive achievement scale and the student attitude scale. Previously, Fisher and Stolarchuk (1998) had used the Science Classroom Environment Survey (SCES), the Test of Enquiry Skills (TOES), a measure of cognitive achievement, and a five-item scale of students’ enjoyment of science lessons to investigate environment-outcome associations in Australian grade 8 and 9 classrooms using laptop computers. The results were mixed, demonstrating minimal associations that possibly indicate that consideration should be given to how laptops are utilised in mathematics classrooms at this 42 educational level. Similarly, using the same sample, Stolarchuk and Fisher (1998) used the QTI, the TOES, and an attitude scale to investigate associations between student outcomes and teacher-student interpersonal relationships. They found that, in laptop-using classrooms, teacher-student relationships have positive associations with students’ affective and cognitive outcomes. Yet other studies have adapted multiple instruments to investigate specific outcome- environment associations. For example, Fisher, Aldridge, Fraser, and Wood (2001) adapted scales from multiple, widely-used general classroom instruments and individually-developed scales to initially develop the Technology-Rich Outcomes- Focused Learning Environment Inventory (TROFLEI) with 24 items in three scales. The TROFLEI has since been revised and now contains 76 items in 10 scales (Aldridge, Fraser, Fisher, Trinidad, & Wood, 2003). In their most recent study, Aldridge et al. (2003) measured students’ attitudes toward their subject matter, attitudes toward computer usage, academic efficacy, and student achievement in conjunction with their perceptions of the psychosocial classroom environment. For a sample of 1035 students, they determined that there were several statistically significant positive associations between the three attitude scales and the psychosocial scales of their newly-developed TROFLEI. For a subsample of 386 students, they determined that, of the ten psychosocial scales, there were positive and significant associations with student achievement for six scales. Likewise, in secondary chemistry classes in Singapore, Quek, Wong, and Fraser (2001) investigated associations between the science laboratory classroom environment, teacher-student interactions, and student attitude using the Chemistry Laboratory Inventory (CLEI), the QTI, and the 30-item Questionnaire on Chemistry- Related Attitudes (QOCRA). They found a number of significant positive associations between the CLEI and the three QOCRA scales of Attitude to Scientific Inquiry in Chemistry, Adoption of Scientific Attitudes in Chemistry, and Enjoyment of Chemistry Lessons. The also found statistically significant associations between six of the eight QTI scales and one QOCRA scale, namely, Enjoyment of Chemistry Lessons. However, only one of these associations, that between Enjoyment and Helping/Friendly teacher behaviour, continued to be significant when all QTI scales were mutually controlled. 43 The variety of recent studies involving perceptions of psychosocial characteristics of classrooms and students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes has been well documented. Walberg’s (1981) assertion that psychosocial characteristics in classrooms provide valid predictors of student outcomes (see Section 2.2.5) has undoubtedly been supported through these and other studies of associations between learning environments and student outcomes. Nevertheless, Moos’ (2002) supposition of the enigma that plagues psychosocial environment research still holds true. By the very nature of changing environments, their study must continue to grow and change along with the evanescent effects of new environments. This is to say that, in all of the learning environment studies outlined here, with the exception of the Distance and Open Learning Environment Scale (DOLES), no instrument deals with the asynchronous distance education environment—a relatively new learning environment. While Section 2.4 below specifically discusses distance education learning environments, it is at this point that I should identify the notion that no distance education learning environment studies found in my review of the literature overtly considers associations between the learning environment and student outcomes. Perhaps my study will be the first. However, before too much headway is made toward the treatment of distance education learning environments themselves, we must start at the beginning and consider research in distance education in order to set the stage appropriately. 2.3 DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH Although distance education evolved in the early 1700s in the form of postal- delivered correspondence (Jayroe, 1998), recent advances in and proliferation of technology and telecommunications have created possibilities that stretch the boundaries of post-secondary distance education (Harnar, Brown, & Mayall, 2000). Developments in distance education have changed how we communicate and learn (Leh, 1999) and will continue to do so as growing numbers of students become distance learners and a growing number of instructors become distance educators. Distance education, in general terms, relies upon a combination of technologies spanning the spectrum from print correspondence to high-bandwidth synchronous 44 videoconferencing. Although a variety of models exist for distance education using various available tele-media (Leach & Walker, 2000), rapid changes in technologies do not in themselves create effective distance education opportunities. Few commercial, large-scale, technology-driven, virtual learning environments are designed with a systemic view of learning grounded in learning theory (Spector, Wasson, & Davidson, 1999). Commercial virtual learning environments focus primarily on course administration rather than on learner relationships, personal development, or expectations and control and little, if any, instructional input is integrated into distance education course design (Cook, 2000). Put succinctly, teaching and learning do not improve because of improved distance education technology or the use of distance education technology (Cookson, 2002; Jamieson, 1999). Learning is likely to improve when instruction is grounded in practical learning theory. Currently, distance education research is narrow and is not keeping pace with the growth of distance education implementation around the world (Boling & Robinson, 1999). While a plethora of literature on the distance education phenomenon is available, original empirical research on distance education is still limited (Merisotis & Olsen, 2000; Olsen & Wisher, 2002). Distance education evaluation is concentrated primarily on 1) student outcomes (achievement, grades, test scores), 2) attitudes of students and instructors, and 3) satisfaction of students and instructors (Diaz & Cartnal, 1999; Harnar, Brown, & Mayall, 2000; Institute for Higher Education Policy [IHEP], 1999; Lane, n.d.; Olsen, 2000). Murphy and Cifuentes (2001), citing multiple reviews of literature, report criticisms of the rigor of distance education research, noting that, in some cases, less than three-quarters of distance education literature focuses on learning—most focuses on technology and the role of the instructor. They also report that as little as one-third of the distance education literature is research based, while the remaining two-thirds is either theory or anecdote. And, while they see a shift away from telecommunication theory and toward teaching and learning, there is still limited research investigating the “psychological and communications space” in distance education (p. 286). 45 Further, postulated in the context of distance education system evaluation, Harnish and Reeves (2000) discovered the emergence of distance education evaluation primarily in terms of: 1) Training (programming skills, barriers, availability, identification of needs, costs); 2) Implementation (administration, costs, fees course credits, institutional ownership, priority for use, integration, coordination); 3) System Usage (information collection, electronic data collection, accuracy); 4) Communication (information sharing around internal, local, and regional issues of concern regarding distance education); and 5) Support (fiscal, staff, faculty, instructional, administrative resource allocation). While traditional student outcome assessment and student attitudes are important, as are technical issues, system implementation components, and even positive-leaning anecdotal description, we must be able to understand students’ learning environment needs in order to create the most advantageous learning experiences in distance education (Howland & Moore, 2002). Mioduser, Nachmias, Lahav, and Oren (2000) identified and described a taxonomy of web-based learning environments as a “practical tool for describing the complexity of the educational kaleidoscope that has been generated by the Web” (p. 57). Their taxonomy consists of 100 variables categorised into four dimensions that can be considered for research purposes: 1) the descriptive dimension; 2) the pedagogical dimension; 3) the knowledge dimension; and 4) the communication dimension. Nevertheless, while it is necessary to pick apart, categorise, and develop distance education schema based on hindsight and content analyses, and to develop new categories of distance education nomenclature for the purpose of study, theoretical implications and practice, what remains conspicuously missing are studies of components related to psychosocial learning environments (Kreijns, Kirschner, & Jochems, 2002). My study focused not on a new conceptualization of learning environments in distance education, but rather on those ideas grounded in established learning environments research based on time- honoured theoretical principles. 46 2.3.1 Distance education learning environments in distance education research Despite criticisms of distance education research, independent distance education psychosocial learning environment factors, considered in terms of Moos’ (1974) social organization dimensions (Relationship, Personal Relevance, System Maintenance and Change), are being studied in what has been deemed fifth- generation distance education (Taylor, 2001). However, when categorised in terms of Moos’ three dimensions, most distance education literature focuses on those components found in the Relationship Dimension, such as collaboration, interaction, and instructor support. Oren, Mioduser, and Machmias (2002) remark on the importance of considering social climate in distance education and follow up by summarising five studies of social climate in Web-based environments. However, they focus primarily on group and interpersonal interaction, excluding, or at least not considering, other social-psychological factors. Further, the research method of the studies that they summarise consists primarily of counting and categorising messages from online classes, yielding little insight into personal relevance or system maintenance and change. Diaz (2000) calls for analysis of the quality of student-student and student-instructor interaction so that certain aspects of these types of relationships can be altered in order for improvements to be made that can influence distance education practices. This call follows Slay’s (1998) proposed theoretical framework for distance education teaching that outlines a need for considerations of student-student and student-instructor interactions, as well as control and structure within the distance education learning environment, thus taking into account two of Moos’ three social organization dimensions. Regarding the System Maintenance and Change Dimension, Cox, Preston, and Cox (1999), using empirical survey research, identified student locus of control as being correlated strongly with motivation in distance education students. Similarly, Wang and Newlin (2002) present student locus of control as having a moderate correlation with student performance in distance education. They consider locus of control to be a global trait—an attribute that is durable and constant across time and environment—and link this control to instructor support and peer-to-peer interaction. In their qualitative study, Melland and Volden (2001) made note that clarity in online class syllabi plays an important role in influencing student security. 47 Youngblood, Trede, and DeCorpo (2001), studying pilot distance education classes, revealed that over 80% of their study population indicated that the instructor’s role in establishing an organized environment with clear expectations contributed to the success of an online class. Certainly numerous other investigations related to distance education environment system maintenance and change have been produced. However, there is an exceedingly strong focus on interaction—a factor in the Relationship Dimension. O’Reilly and Newton (2001) suggest that instructors and students alike must adapt to new forms of interaction offered in online learning environments. They reported in one student survey that they conducted that 82% of the responses strongly favoured peer-to-peer interaction. They indicate that mutual support, social cohesion, motivation, and confidence are all learning by-products of interaction. Lattu (2000) offers that student-instructor interaction in online distance education provides a “dialogic contact between learner and material” (p. 1) whereby the learner receives evaluative feedback, as opposed to simple one-way instruction dominated by the instructor. Swan (2001) identifies and labels three types of interaction in online education, namely, interaction with 1) content, 2) instructors, and 3) classmates. She observes that interaction with content does not equal learning. Design of instruction is a strong component of how students learn by means of their interactions with content, thus indicating that distance education must be more than posting content materials. She further remarks that the psychological distance between students and the instructor is reduced by immediacy of instructors (e.g., instructors’ use of humour, self-disclosure, praise, etc.). Finally, she notes that peer interaction leads to successful discussion and that instructors place high value on student-student interaction. Considerations of interaction in distance education inevitably lead to the contemplation of community development and collaboration derived through interaction. However, interaction can be limited to simple online communication, with or without a learning purpose, that does not lead to collaboration. Collaboration, the antithesis of competition, suggests that students cooperate as members of a group through consensus (Walker & Resta, 2002). Online community, in terms of distance education, refers to a group’s bond formed by means of communication and social 48 interaction and involves all members sensing that they belong and that their contributions are appreciated and respected (Lefoe, Gunn, & Hedberg, 2001; Tu & Corry, 2001). While an extensive description of literature related to distance education interaction, collaboration, and community is too detailed to provide here, it is noteworthy to point out that some studies are considering online learning environments as communities in terms of how participants see themselves (Tu & Corry, 2001) in relation to the social structure of that community. Graham and Scarborough (2001) connect collaborative learning skills and increases in student- student communication to students’ personal growth and development—a component of the Personal Relevance Dimension. Others consider social presence and self-disclosure in terms of group process and online community development as it relates to the success of collaboration in online learning (Cifuentes & Murphy, 2000; Gunawardena, Nolla, Wilson, & Lopez-Islas, 2001; Kollock & Smith, 1999). Components of these studies in community and collaboration cross over between the Relationship Dimension (e.g., involvement, affiliation, peer cohesion) and some relevant aspects of the Personal Development Dimension (e.g., competition or lack thereof, personal growth). However, for the most part, research that takes a holistic view of the distance education psychosocial learning environment remains limited (Teh, 1999). Perhaps, similar to learning environments research of the 1960s and 1970s, distance education learning environments research today lacks “the guidance of theoretical or conceptual frameworks producing isolated findings that are difficult to organize into a coherent body of knowledge” (Moos, 1979, p. 138) about distance education class functioning. 2.4 DISTANCE EDUCATION LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS RESEARCH While there are several learning environments studies related to classroom use of computers and technology, researchers have documented that there is limited research on psychosocial perceptions of Web-based learning environments (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998; Taylor & Maor, 2000; Teh, 1999). This section introduces the brief history of distance education learning environments research, noting the first such investigation and those that are recent and emerging. It also includes a look into the scales, based on Moos’ social organization dimensions, which are evolving in distance education learning environments research. 49 2.4.1 Technology-oriented learning environments research Learning environments research has been conducted and associated survey instruments have been developed that relate to computer uses in classrooms or laboratories, telecomputing, and computer-mediated communication. Briefly, examples of technology-related learning environments instruments include the Geography Classroom Environment Inventory (GCEI) that investigates gender inequities, among other factors, in computer assisted learning in Singapore (Teh & Fraser, 1994), the Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment Survey (Maor, 1999), the Computer Classroom Environment Inventory (CCEI), the Computer Laboratory Environment Inventory (CLEI) (Newby & Fisher, 1997), and the Technology-Rich Outcomes-Focused Learning Environment Inventory (TROFLEI) (Fisher, Aldridge, Fraser, & Wood, 2001). Related research includes studies of perspectives of computer-mediated learning environments specific to teacher education (Admiraal, Lockhorst, Wubbels, Korthagen, & Veen, 1998; Goh & Tobin, 1999), computer-facilitated learning environments in higher education (Bain, McNaught, Mills, & Lueckenhausen, 1998), collaborative distance learning environment design (Spector, Wasson, & Davidson, 1999), the function and useability of virtual learning environment software (Britain & Liber, 1999), and students’ perceptions of their learning environments in mathematics and science classes that use laptops (Raaflaub & Fraser, 2002, 2003). Nevertheless, technology-oriented learning environments research, while closely associated with today’s technology-oriented distance education environments, does not fully capture salient characteristics of distance education despite both having technological features as a part of the educational milieu. Additionally, while telecomputing studies and computer-mediated communication studies are relative to distance education, they do not organize distance education learning environments research into a consistent psychosocial framework. Research specifically on distance education learning environments must be developed and conducted on its own terms. 50 2.4.2 The first look at distance education learning environments In 1995, the development of the Distance and Open Learning Environment Scale (DOLES) (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1995) was a pioneering investigation bringing learning environments research and distance education research together into one cohesive body of study. And, like early distance education research, it too had aspects focusing on technology and interaction. The DOLES considered participants’ perspectives of salient scales of the environment primarily in distance education science classes originating from Queensland and Western Australian universities. The DOLES is a paper-based instrument initially validated using 660 student responses to the five core scales of 1) student cohesiveness, 2) teacher support, 3) personal involvement and flexibility, 4) task orientation and material environment, and 5) home environment. Optional scales are student centre environment, validated using 464 responses, and technology resources, validated with 169 responses (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). 2.4.3 Subsequent distance education learning environments research The previously-mentioned Geography Classroom Environment Inventory (GCEI), validated with 348 responses form computer-assisted learning classrooms in Singapore (Teh & Fraser, 1994), was later applied in undergraduate-level distance education geography classes. Teh (1999) considered internal consistency and discrimant validity of 92 responses to the paper-based version for asynchronous distance education students in Singapore. The GCEI consists of the four scales of 1) gender equity, 2) investigation, 3) innovation, and 4) resource adequacy. The initiation of geography distance education learning environment research is important in this case due to the scarcity of a combination of geography education research and distance education research in Singapore (Teh, 1999) and elsewhere. The Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (COLLES) was developed from its three-scale predecessor, the Constructivist Virtual Learning Environment Survey (CVLES) (Taylor & Maor, 1998), to measure aspects of the quality of online learning environments from a social constructivist perspective in an 51 effort to ensure that “technological determinism doesn’t overshadow sound educational judgement” (Taylor & Maor, 2000, Conclusion section, ¶ 1). The COLLES, arranged in the six scales of 1) relevance, 2) reflection, 3) interactivity, 4) tutor support, 5) peer support, and 6) interpretation, has been applied to support social constructivism epistemologies of teaching and learning during the construction and utilisation of Web-based software in online education (Dougiamas & Taylor, 2002). The results of the COLLES, in triangulation with other class assessment methods, has led to “significant and possibly radical” changes in the way in which online discussions are conducted in an Internet-based postgraduate class in Western Australia (Dougiamas & Taylor, 2002, p. 8). Another recent distance education learning environment instrument is the Web Based Learning Environment Instrument (WEBLEI) that considers Web-based learning effectiveness in terms of a cycle that includes access to materials, interaction, students’ perceptions of the environment, and students’ determinations of what they have learned (Chang & Fisher, 2001a). These factors are summarised in the four scales of 1) emancipatory activities (viz., convenience, efficiency, autonomy), 2) co-participatory activities (viz., flexibility, reflection, interaction, feedback, collaboration), 3) information structure and design activities (e.g., clear objectives, planned activities, appropriate content, material design and layout, logical structure), and 4) qualia, a scale of attitude (viz., enjoyment, confidence accomplishment, success, frustration, tedium). The WEBLEI was piloted and initially validated from responses using 334 postsecondary students enrolled in a class that could be taken either in a hybrid fashion (partially online, partially face-to- face) or taken 100% online. Just over 73% of the responses were from students taking the class online (Chang & Fisher, 2001b). 2.4.4 Emerging distance education learning environments research The Online Learning Environment Survey (OLLES) is currently undergoing development in New Zealand. The OLLES considers the eight scales of 1) reflective thinking, 2) information design and appeal, 3) order and organization, 4) active learning, 5) affective support, 6) student cohesiveness and affiliation, 7) computer anxiety and competence, and 8) material environment and rule clarity (J. Clayton, 52 personal communication, May 5, 2003). These scales are nearly equally spread across Moos’ three social organization dimensions, addressing gaps in many general distance education studies previously mentioned that go without a strong theoretical framework. The DOLES, GCEI, COLLES, WEBLEI, and OLLES, with their differing variations and foci, are leading to promising knowledge development in terms of distance education learning environments. Perhaps these instruments will be looked upon as benchmarks from which other research on psychosocial learning environments in distance education will grow. However, as previously noted, no distance education learning environment instruments have considered environment-outcome associations. Because student satisfaction can presumably lead to increased student outcomes in the same way that job satisfaction can lead to increased worker productivity (Zandvliet, 1999), my study investigated associations between distance education psychosocial characteristics and student satisfaction. The next section considers what the literature has to say about the importance of student satisfaction. 2.5 STUDENT SATISFACTION As previously noted in Subsection 2.2.7.3, there is a strong tradition of researchers investigating environment-outcome associations. Similarly, my study also examined these associations. As noted in Chapter 1, Section 1.1, one of the design aspects of this study was to seek associations between the psychosocial learning environment in distance education and student attitudes, specifically students’ enjoyment of distance education. Studies of student and instructor satisfaction in distance education have been well documented (Jegede & Kirkwood, 1994; McAllister, 2001; Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2003). However, Felix (2001) notes that students who prefer working in distance education settings often seek them out and are the ones who are most successful in them. He also points out that there are few studies that tie instructional strategies to effective changes in student attitudes. Seeking to discover relationships between positive student attitudes and the psychosocial environment could possibly lead to favourable changes in distance education environments. Yet, 53 no studies in distance education learning environments were found that involve attempts to investigate these associations. Student satisfaction is used consistently in post-secondary education to measure how effectively a program or institution delivers what students expect, need, and want, and it is associated with student achievement (Kuh, 2001a, 2001b). Student satisfaction is also a key indicator of educational quality (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2000) and can be measured for strength of relation to learning environment characteristics. With the addition of an attitudinal scale to a study of psychosocial learning environments, the relationship between learners’ attitudes and their perceptions of the psychosocial learning environment can be investigated (Fraser, 1981). What is unique in relating student satisfaction to the psychosocial learning environment in distance education is that there is a discrepancy in the results of studies in the literature related to student satisfaction and distance education, primarily where student-to-instructor involvement occurs. Cannon et al. (2001) indicate dissatisfaction by students when surveyed with items related to direct instructor feedback. Eastmond and Kim (2000) note that, when the Korean corporate-operated, degree-granting Cyber Multi Campus outsourced its distance education classes to instructors who were subject-matter experts, yet not experienced educators, the satisfaction of students was lower than when instructors versed in instructional design taught the classes. Moreover, learners were infrequently satisfied with the classes when the instructors’ role was simply content development and not interaction with students. In an accredited MBA marketing distance education environment, Ponzurick, France, and Logar (2000) reported a high level of dissatisfaction with presentation, participation, and activities in a distance education environment when compared to a face-to-face learning environment. However, in contrast to these studies, LaRose and Whitten (2000) discovered that, in an online environment, learner attitudes and immediacy in the design of the class are comparable to those of a traditional classroom environment and that collaborative activities led to comparable levels of student satisfaction and achievement when compared to those of a face-to-face environment. This disagreement in the results 54 found in the literature regarding student satisfaction in online learning environments needs further consideration. When classified in terms of Kirkpatrick’s four-level framework of evaluation within a distance environment (Walker, 1998), the researcher gains a subjective measure of the learners’ reactions to the materials, instructor, instructional method, and environment by employing measures of satisfaction. Human resources training development programs regularly use any number of formal approaches to identify what Kirkpatrick (Phillips, 1991) referred to as level-one reaction evaluation information related to training. The following are well-established examples of satisfaction survey instruments used in corporate training for seeking level-one data: Reaction Outcomes (Bell System Approach), Reaction Evaluation (CIRO Approach), Training Satisfaction (Saratoga Institute Approach), and Reaction (IBM Approach) (Phillips, 1991). Following level-one reaction evaluation is the second of Kirkpatrick’s four levels, participant learning. The third level is that of the performance of the learner, and the fourth level is that of results or outcomes produced from learning (Phillips, 1991). This fourth level is typically not measured in educational settings, but is necessarily measured in terms of performance outcomes in task-oriented corporate training situations. The research at hand in this study incorporates Kirkpatrick’s level-one measure of student satisfaction in terms of Kirkpatrick’s framework by means of a measure of student satisfaction through enjoyment of distance education. Further research could incorporate Kirkpatrick’s level-two learning (cognitive achievement) as a measure in addition to satisfaction as has been done in learning environments research before (see Subsection 2.2.7.3). Rather than relying on corporate training instruments, I modified the scale of Enjoyment of Science Learning Experiences from the Test of Science Related Attitudes that was originally developed to measure the science-related attitudes of secondary school students (Fraser, 1981). This scale consists of eight items (see Appendix C), including “Distance education is stimulating” and “I enjoy studying by distance”. In my study these eight items had the same five frequency response choices as the psychosocial environment items, namely, Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Never. 55 2.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY The term learning environments carries with it several connotations in today’s world of digital communications for teaching and learning. This study uses the term strictly in the sense of the psychosocial learning environment. Learning environments research is solidly grounded in early 19th century research that includes the psychological field theory of Lewin (1936), personality theory of Murray (1938), and education behaviour research of Hartshorne and May (1928) and Newcomb (1929). These theoretical underpinnings have been built upon and enhanced by Pace and Stern (1958) and strongly influenced the conceptual framework of Moos (1976, 1979) who continues to expand on social ecology concepts today. Further expansions were undertaken by Walberg (1974, 1981) alongside a plethora of work by Fraser (1986, 1998a, 1998b) who began contributions in the mid-1970s. Thus well-established, learning environments research has expanded even further with strong evidence of its universality through research in numerous Asian countries (Goh & Khine, 2002). Heavily utilised learning environment instruments that I have reviewed in this chapter include the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997), the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) (Wubbels, 1993), the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992), and the What is Happening in this Class (WIHIC) questionnaire (Fraser, Fisher, & McRobbie, 1996). These are only four among the numerous instruments and modifications of instruments that exist today. One of the lines of research that is traditionally generated from using learning environment instruments is the investigation of environment-outcome associations. This chapter presented three aspects of this specific research direction, which include using environment instruments and affective scales, using environment instruments and scales of cognitive achievement alongside affective scales, and utilising multiple learning environment instruments and specific outcome instruments such as the Questionnaire on Chemistry-Related Attitudes (QOCRA). Research in distance education in general has demonstrated that technology expansions are difficult to keep up with and, despite our current role in fifth- 56 generation distance education (Taylor, 2001), we are still trying to solidify future directions in distance education. Often, though, the look forward is based upon looking backward at literature laden with anecdote and nominal empirical rigor and, in many cases, considered in terms of traditional methods of educating by means of instructor-centred, didactic education models, and the assessment of the achievements of students by means of examinations or non-validated surveys. While social climate in distance education is not the ultimate research topic, it does have its role because changes in learning environments have strong impacts on learning outcomes. The perceived shortfalls in distance education research in terms of well- founded psychosocial conceptualizations are not for the lack of trying. Studies have recently demonstrated movement toward an increasing consideration of psychosocial components, yet they remain disjointed without a guiding theoretical framework. My review of learning environments research literature reveals that there are few instruments that focus exclusively on learning environments for postsecondary asynchronous distance education, despite the number of studies on distance education as a whole. However, this situation is rapidly changing following the advent of the Distance and Open Learning Environment Scale at a time of increases in telecomputing use in education. Teh (1999), Taylor and Maor (2000), Chang and Fisher (2001a, 2001b), and Clayton (in press) are in the midst of contributing to the ever-growing body of knowledge related to psychosocial learning environments in distance education. Others are certainly contributing to this growing body of knowledge, but a review of any literature related in some way to distance education is a moving target in the fast-paced adoption of distance education by postsecondary institutions and the rapid expansion of ubiquitous telecommunications and technology. In fact, despite the relative infancy of distance education research, pundits are already calling for epistemological reform in the way in which distance education is conducted (Taylor & Maor, 2000) and we have barely scratched the surface in regard to distance education research or in collectively figuring out in which direction we are headed. 57 Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHODS 3.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter describes a three-stage approach used to develop, implement, and validate a questionnaire—the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES)—which is a new learning environments instrument for international, post- secondary distance education settings. The design and development was guided by past learning environments research and practice, consistency with previously- developed learning environment instruments, and relevance to distance education learning environments. This chapter also describes the types of analysis for which the instrument was designed and the means by which the data were collected (see Section 3.2). Section 3.3 describes the target population and how the data were collected using the DELES. It also presents an overview of a three-stage, multi-step approach used to develop the instrument (see Section 3.4) where Stage 1 was identification and development of salient scales, Stage 2 was writing individual items, and Stage 3 was field testing and analysis. Section 3.5 describes in detail how the scales were developed and reviewed, while Section 3.6 describes in detail how the items were developed and reviewed. Ultimately, the DELES, which was face validated by a panel of distance education practitioners and researchers, was field tested with nearly 700 respondents (see Section 3.7). 3.2 CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS The development of a learning environment survey instrument requires a choice from multiple and interrelated layers of categories of analysis (see Figure 3.1). These varying categories, in narrowing order, are outlined and explained further below under the categories of: education level, environment level, form, measurement of perception, and psychosocial dimension: Education Level – This research focuses on post-secondary education learning environments—those of college and university programs. 58 Environment Level – The literature distinguishes between two learning environment levels, that of the classroom and that of an entire school (Fraser, 1998b). My research focuses on classroom-level environments. Edu ca tio n L ev el P ri m ary S eco nd a ry T erti ary Enviro nm en t L ev el S ch o ol Cla ss F orm P erso na l Fo rm (Pri va te Pre ss) Cla ss Fo rm (Co n sen sua l P re ss) Me a su re me n t o f Perc ep tio n S tu d en t Actu al S tu d en t P re fe rre d Psych oso cia l Dimen sio n Rel a tio n shi p Dim e nsi o ns P erso na l Deve l op me n t Dim e nsi o ns S yste m M ai n ten a nce a n d S yste m Cha n ge Dim e nsi o ns In stru cto r Figure 3.1. Categories and levels of analysis Form – The assessment of a learning environment from the participants’ point of view (beta press) (see Murray, 1938; Chapter 2, Section 2.1.1) can involve either private beta press (perceptions that individual students have of an environment) or consensual beta press (a shared perception that members of a group have about an environment) (Stern, Stein, & Bloom, 1956; see also Fraser, 1998b; McRobbie, Fisher, & Wong, 1998). Because these two forms of beta press can differ from one another, researchers are justified in distinguishing between the two in their development of survey instruments (Fraser, 1998a, 1998b; McRobbie, Fisher, & Wong, 1998). Further, Personal Forms of learning environment instruments assess a student’s perception of his or her role in the environment of a classroom (private beta press), while Class Forms assess a student’s perception of the classroom environment as a whole (consensual beta press). Personal Forms have proven more valid, especially when within-classroom subgroups of individual students are under study (McRobbie, Fisher, & Wong, 1998). My study focused on the Personal Form (private press). 59 Measurement of Perceptions – Learning environment perceptions can be measured in three ways: 1) Actual environment, for which students give their perception of how the environment currently is. 2) Preferred environment focuses on the ideal learning environment that students prefer. 3) Instructors’ perceptions of the actual environment, which can be compared to the perceptions of the students. Preferred and Instructor versions in learning environment survey instruments are variations on the Actual version. A statement in an Actual version of a survey might read “Activities are carefully planned in this subject”, whereas the same statement in the Preferred version might read “Activities should be carefully planned...” Likewise, the Instructor’s version might read “I carefully plan activities…” This study was conducted using an Actual survey version that can be modified to address the preferred environment of students and instructors’ perceptions of the actual environment. Psychosocial Dimensions – Moos (1974) conceptualised three overarching dimensions characterising and discriminating among subunits within social organizations. These dimensions are the Relationship Dimension, the Personal Development Dimension, and the System Maintenance and Change Dimension (see Chapter 2, Section 2.2.3). The Relationship Dimension distinguishes the nature and strength of personal relationships. The Personal Development Dimension is characterized by personal growth and self-enhancement opportunities offered by the environment. And, the System Maintenance and Change Dimension considers the degree of control of the environment, the orderliness, clarity in expectations, and responsiveness to change (Moos, 1974). One of the primary tasks involved in this study was to adequately cover each of these three dimensions with the scales. 60 3.3 DATA COLLECTION The target population for this study was higher education students in distance education-delivered classes in public and private universities and colleges. The field test version of the instrument was announced by means of e-mail discussion groups and direct e-mail, which led to a wide set of responses. The survey sample was a nonprobability sample of convenience drawn from voluntary participants enrolled in post-secondary distance education classes. The field test version of the survey was available as a Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) form on the World Wide Web. The sample of respondents consisted of 680 post-secondary students enrolled in distance education classes in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, United States. However, the majority (83.7%) of the responses were from students in the United States. To be clear, this study was not intended to compare responses from students in different countries, it is intended to gain insight on distance education learning environments in general. Regarding education levels, the majority of the respondents (72.6%) were graduate-level students, while 27.5% were undergraduate students as indicated in Table 3.1. Table 3.1. Frequency of DELES field test responses by level of study being undertaken Level of Study Frequency Percent Doctoral 130 19.1 Masters 364 53.5 Undergraduate 186 27.4 Total 680 100.0 Prior to field testing, the Web-based form was pilot tested by distance education students (see details in Section 3.6.2.3) and then revised, based upon e-mail feedback from the respondents. Web-based surveys have grown in popularity in post-secondary education with the increasing amount of information available on the Web, increasing competition for a more diverse student population, and more demand for flexible education settings 61 (Ballantyne, 2000). Advantages of using the Web for surveys include easy-to- complete forms and flexible time and place to respond. Advantages to researchers occur in reduced opportunities for the introduction of errors due to data transfer from paper forms and a reduction in the time that it takes to transfer data. It is also more economical because paper-based forms do not have to be distributed and returned. Further, there is evidence of improvements in the quality of responses due to a reduction of the number of respondents making double responses to single items and in making no responses to items (Cummings & Ballantyne, 1999). On the other hand, Web-based surveys are subject to the same errors as paper-based surveys and these error possibilities must be addressed: 1) coverage errors, 2) sampling errors, 3) measurement errors, and 4) nonresponse errors (Dillman & Bowker, 2001). Coverage errors occur as a result of not having a known nonzero chance of being included in a survey, which is the case in Web-based surveys administered to the general public. Such occurrences have become increasingly common with broadcast news-media Web-based opinion polls (Dillman & Bowker, 2001). However, when all of the members of a population, for instance post- secondary distance education students as surveyed for the DELES, have access to computers and the Internet, coverage errors are less of a concern (Dillman & Bowker, 2001). Sampling errors that result from surveying only a sample of a selected population, rather than an entire population, are likely in this initial study using the DELES. This type of error does not indicate that the sample has been improperly extracted or that the data were improperly analysed or that such an error can be attributed to the design of my study. It is simply an acknowledgement that sampling errors are a natural part of survey research and should not affect the interpretation of the results (Huck, 2004). Measurement errors that result from poorly-worded items and poor instrument layout have been addressed in the development of the DELES at multiple points that include items being modified from previously-validated learning environment instruments (see Section 3.6), content validation by a panel of experts (see Subsection 3.6.2.1), and a pilot test administered to distance education students (see Subsection 3.6.2.3). Nonresponse errors, that occur from respondents not selecting a response to a given item, were eliminated by means of the technical design of the Web-based instrument. In the 62 DELES pilot test and field test, if a participant did not respond to an item, she or he was prompted to go back to select a response to that particular item before submitting the survey. Thus, the four major sources of survey error have been addressed in my study and attempts have been made to reduce them during data collection using the DELES. 3.4 OVERVIEW OF THE STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISTANCE EDUCATION LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS SURVEY (DELES) The development of the DELES used a common three-stage approach following Fraser (1986) and Jegede, Fraser, and Fisher (1998) for developing learning environments instruments. Stage 1 included identification of salient scales within Moos’ (1974) three social organization dimensions of Relationship, Personal Development, and System Maintenance and Change. Stage 2 involved writing individual items within the scales. Stage 3 involved field testing items followed by item analysis and validation procedures. Below, in Sections 3.4.1, 3.4.2, and 3.4.3, are brief descriptions of the steps involved in each stage. The remainder of the chapter, Sections 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7, describes each stage in detail. 3.4.1 Overview of Stage 1 – Identification and development of salient scales Stage 1 consisted of four steps that led to the identification and development of salient scales. The first step involved reviewing previously-developed learning environment instruments (Fraser, 1986, 1998a, 1998b). The second step within this stage included reviewing the literature related to psychosocial learning environments in distance education. This crucial step sought to identify key components that researchers and practitioners consider as important in high-quality distance education learning environments. The third step was to classify new scales using Moos’ three psychosocial dimensions in order to ensure adequate coverage of these dimensions. Finally, the fourth step was to develop a set of preliminary scales to distribute for review by a panel of experts. 63 3.4.2 Overview of Stage 2 – Writing individual items Stage 2 involved three steps. Step one was a consideration of negatively-worded or reverse-scored items. Step two involved both adapting items used in previously- validated learning environment questionnaires and developing new items for the new scales identified in Stage 1. Step three involved subjecting the entire set of items to face validation by a panel of experts. It also involved pilot testing reviewed items with one distance education class for Web-form useability and layout and determination of how best to process the digital data efficiently from the Web-based forms. 3.4.3 Overview of Stage 3 – Field testing and analyses Stage 3 required two steps. Step one included field testing the draft instrument with a large sample from the target population in order to collect sufficient responses to utilize in the statistical analysis. Step two involved factor analysis, aimed at identifying items whose removal would enhance the instrument’s factor structure, and internal consistency reliability analysis to determine the extent to which items within a scale measure the same construct as other items within that scale. 3.5 STAGE 1 – IDENTIFICATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SALIENT SCALES 3.5.1 Review of scales from previously-developed instruments and development of new scales As discussed by Fisher and Fraser (1990), new inventories require scales that identify important aspects of the environment under study. I followed the precedent of modifying and adapting scales from previously-validated and tested instruments (Fish & Dane, 2000; Fisher, Rickards, & Fraser, 1996; Maor, 1999; Newby & Fisher, 1997), as well as creating new scales tailored to specific learning environments. For this study, I reviewed a variety of previously-developed instruments (see Chapter 2, Subsection 2.2.6) and adapted appropriate scales from 64 previous inventories including the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997), the Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (Taylor & Maor, 2000) and the Distance and Open Learning Environment Scale (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). I also created scales based on literature pertaining to the characteristics of high-quality distance education learning environments. As outlined in detail later, a panel of distance education experts subjectively validated the appropriateness of the scales selected for this study—the scales modified from previously-developed scales and those scales developed new for this instrument. 3.5.2 Strategies for developing new scales and adapting previous scales The selection of previously developed scales and the development of new scales was guided by Hase and Goldberg’s (1967) National Science Foundation-supported study on strategies for the development of personality inventory scales. Their research purports that there are three primary strategies for developing and validating such inventories: 1) intuitive, 2) internal, and 3) external. Within the intuitive strategy falls the intuitive-rational and the intuitive-theoretical strategies for scale development. The categorisation of the scales developed for my study fall under the intuitive-rational development category following Fraser (1986). This categorisation is termed as such due to the intuitive understanding of the subject matter by the researcher. Validity within this categorisation of scales in the case of this study was contingent upon the subjective opinion of the researcher, comments from an expert panel, and results of the pilot test which involved readability comments. While no specific psychological theory was followed under this category of scale development, I relied upon guidance from literature pertaining to learning environments and distance education, as well as that literature specific to distance education learning environment research (see Section 3.5.3). The scales were then refined through factor and item analyses and by selecting items that contributed to high internal consistency of their a priori scale, as well as to consistency with the instrument’s a priori scale structure. 65 In addition to the intuitive-rational strategy, the intuitive-theoretical strategy, while still relying on filtering by means of high internal consistency, is based upon a given psychological theory. An example of a learning environments instrument using the intuitive-theoretical strategy is the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) which derives scales based upon Leary’s (1957) clinical psychology model (Wubbels, Créton, & Hooymayers, 1992). Within Hase and Goldberg’s internal development strategy falls the factor- analytical strategy. Factor analysis can be used for exploring the structure of a pool of items, or to confirm and refine the a priori structure of an instrument. In this study, survey responses were subjected to factor analyses for confirmation and refining of the a priori (intuitive-rational) structure rather than for exploration and the creation of a new structure. Within the external development strategy falls the empirical group discriminative strategy. In developing scales from this perspective, the researcher administers the instrument to persons falling on opposite poles of the personality or other trait being measured. Items within these scales are examined from the point of view of discriminating between the two groups at some level of statistical significance. Those items with significant discriminating power remain in the scale. Hase and Goldberg found that, when constructing scales using these strategies, there were little differences in the outcomes and that they were “equivalent in their validity across 13 diverse criteria” (1967, p. 242). They went on to state that “dogmatic assertions of the superiority of one strategy over another are premature” (pp. 242-243). The development of my instrument used a combination of the intuitive-rational strategy and the internal factor-analytical strategy. The intuitive-rational strategy, while subjective, is based on my experience in instructional design for distance education and training and my work as a distance education instructor since 1996. It is also based on my review of the literature. In order not to rest my entire study on my subjective opinion alone, I utilised input from a panel of volunteer distance 66 education researchers and practitioners selected through my review of the literature. In a pilot study, I also utilised the knowledge of graduate-level teachers who were immersed as students in the distance education environment in order to obtain feedback on item clarity within the scales used for assessing high-quality distance education psychosocial environments. Complementing the qualitative experiential input in the intuitive-rational strategy used in this study was the quantitative internal strategy that was used to refine scales and remove faulty items. Item and factor analyses were used to identify items whose removal improved either scale internal consistency or fit to the a priori structure of the instrument. 3.5.3 Review of and consistency with the literature related to distance education learning environments Literature related to distance education is prolific. However, when filtered for indications of its relevance to distance education learning environments, the number of sources drops in number to a level that allows for the salient characteristics of distance education learning environments to be identified and categorised under Moos’ (1974) three dimensions of Relationship, Personal Development, and System Maintenance and Change. The following sections describe views of distance education used in the development of new scales and adaptation of previous scales that are consistent with these dimensions. 3.5.3.1 Relationship dimension Clearly, over one-third of the scales in this study represent characteristics of distance education that tend to fall within the Relationship Dimension (Moos, 1974), which involves individuals being active in their learning environment and engaging with one another. Peer collaboration, review, interaction, exchange, contribution, and community development are keywords continually identified as indicators of high-quality distance education environments that promote thinking and learning (Butler, 2001; Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996; Fahy, 2003; Frederick, Cannon, Umble, Steckler, & Shay, 2001; Golbeck & Sinagra, 2000; Hartley, 2000; Ho & 67 Tabata, 2001; Levine, 2003; Morihara, 2001; Nader, 2001; Oren, Mioduser, & Machmias, 2002; Owen, 2000; Park-Kim, 2001; Zhu & McKnight, 2001). Likewise, the opportunity for interaction between the student and the instructor is continually represented in the literature as a leading indicator of a high-quality distance education environment (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996; Ho & Tabata, 2001; Morgan & McKenzie, 2003; Morihara, 2001; Park-Kim, 2001; Zhu & McKnight, 2001). Sinagra and Golbeck (2000) summarized the strength of the need for relationship- oriented interaction in distance education by stating that, “from a Piagetian, constructivist perspective, the symmetrical nature of peer relationships presents an ideal context for promoting the development of thinking” (p. 22). Of related importance to this dimension is that asynchronous interactions—student- student, student-instructor, and student-class—are not temporally constrained. Students have the luxury of more time to do much deeper thinking. Also, they are able to devote substantially more time to creating comments or responses in their distance education environments than in traditional face-to-face classroom scenarios. Yet, all individuals involved in the learning process must contribute to the activities of the class in order to benefit themselves and for others in the environment to benefit (Seagreen & Stick, 1999). 3.5.3.2 Personal development dimension The opportunities offered by the distance-education learning environment for self- enhancement and development of self-worth, personal development, independence, intellectual pursuit, and academic achievement make up Moos’ (1974) dimension of Personal Development. Fewer references to characteristics of this dimension were found in the literature directly related to distance education. However, key indicators include such aspects of learning as authentic learning, problem solving, active learning, student reflection, and scaffolded activities (Ballard, 2003; Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996; Hartley, 2000; Ho & Tabata, 2001; Markel, 1999; Merrill, 2001; Morihara, 2001; Owen, 2000). 3.5.3.3 System maintenance and change dimension 68 System Maintenance and Change (Moos, 1974) is the extent to which the distance education environment is orderly, organized, and clear in expectation, student control is possible, and the environment is student focused, responsive to change, and orderly. In this dimension, motivational goals are mastery goals, locus of control is student-oriented, and effort and outcome are seen as interdependent (Cox, Preston, & Cox, 1999; Jegede, Taplin, Fan, Chan, & Yum, 1999). Students are provided with overviews of assignments and advanced organizers (Park-Kim, 2001), there is room for student decision-making (Brookfield, 2003) and activity initiation, and expectations are clearly set forth by the instructor (Owen, 2000). Murphy et al. (2003) discovered, in their content analysis investigation of one distance education class, that graduate teaching assistants were involved in these types of activities for 62.5% of the time in which they interacted with students. 3.5.4 Preliminary scales Based on the literature previously cited, a set of 14 preliminary scales were created to address Moos’ three social organization dimensions. Three of the scales were adapted from the previously-developed Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997), one from the Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey (COLLES) (Taylor & Maor, 2000), and four from the Distance and Open Learning Environment Survey (DOLES) (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). Six new scales identified as being characteristic of high-quality distance education were developed based on converging evidence from the literature noted in Section 3.5.3. The entire set of 14 scales (see Table 3.2) was prepared and delivered to a third-party panel for scrutiny. 3.5.5 Review of preliminary scales by a panel of experts One of the desirable design features of learning environment survey instruments is that they are economical (Fraser, 1986). After the preliminary list of scales in Table 3.1 was developed, they required reduction in the number of items in order to generate an economical survey instrument. 69 Table 3.2. Preliminary set of DELES scales before review by a panel of distance education experts Moos’ Dimension Scales Identified for this Study Scale Description Student Negotiation Extent to which there are “opportunities for students to explain and justify to other students, listen to other students, reflect on viability of others’ ideas…” (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997) Student Cohesiveness “Extent to which students are in contact, communicate with each other…” (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998, p. 6) Instructor Support “…extent to which the teacher is approachable and responds quickly with feedback…” (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998, p. 7) Student Interaction & Collaboration Extent to which students have opportunities to interact with one another, exchange information and engage in collaboration Relationship – Individuals are involved in the environment and support/help each other; personal relationships between inhabitants; involvement, affiliation, support, assistance, peer cohesion Instructor Interaction Extent to which student have the opportunity to interact with the instructor Personal Relevance “Connection between students’ out-of- school experiences” and their classroom experiences (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997) Authentic Learning Extent to which students have the opportunity to solve real-world problems that are authentic Active Learning Extent to which students have the opportunity take an active role in their learning Personal Development – Opportunity afforded by the environment for self- enhancement and development of self-esteem; personal growth and development; autonomy, independence, intellectuality, academic achievement, competition Reflective Thinking Extent to which students have the opportunity to reflect upon their own thinking and learning (Taylor & Maor, 2000) Shared Control Extent to which students are invited to share in teacher control of the learning environment, including design and management of learning activities and the determination of assessment criteria (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997) Personal Involvement & Flexibility “…extent to which students can make choices about their learning” (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998, p. 8) Task Orientation & Material Development “The extent to which the distance education materials provide clear expectations and are well-organised and clear” (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998, p. 8) Student Autonomy Extent to which students have opportunities to initiate ideas and make their own learning decisions, and the locus of control is student oriented System Maintenance & Change – The environment is orderly, clear in expectation, control, responsive to change, order, organization, clarity, control Order & Organization Extent to which materials and/or the instructor provide clear expectations, topics and student activities are well organized 70 To achieve the goal of reducing the number of scales, and to reduce subjectivity in that reduction, the seven new scales developed from the literature review and the seven scales adapted from previous learning environment surveys, along with their descriptions, were presented to a panel of experts following precedent in previous scale developments (Fish & Dane, 2000; Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). A 14-person panel of distance education researchers and practitioners was assembled after being identified through literature review and a call for participation via 10 international distance education-specific e-mail discussion groups (see Appendix A). The panel was asked to rate each preliminary scale related to its appropriateness, relevance, and suitability for post-secondary distance education. The number of preliminary scales was then reduced based on the panel’s rankings and comments. This reduction resulted in the retention of six scales assumed key to the study of post-secondary distance education (see Table 3.3). Table 3.3. Learning environment scales remaining after review and reduction by expert panel Moos’ Dimension Scale Scale Description Instructor Support “…extent to which the teacher is approachable and responds quickly with feedback…” (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998, p. 7) Relationship – Individuals are involved in the environment and support/help each other; personal relationships between inhabitants; involvement, affiliation, support, assistance, peer cohesion Student Interaction & Collaboration Extent to which students have opportunities to interact with one another, exchange information and engage in collaboration Personal Relevance “Connection between students’ out-of-school experiences” and their classroom experiences (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997) Authentic Learning Extent to which students have the opportunity to solve real- world problems that are authentic Personal Development – Opportunity afforded by the environment for self-enhancement and development of self-esteem; personal growth and development; autonomy, independence, intellectuality, academic achievement, competition Active Learning Extent to which students have the opportunity take an active role in their learning System Maintenance & Change – The environment is orderly, clear in expectation, control, responsive to change, order, organization, clarity, control Student Autonomy Extent to which students have opportunities to initiate ideas and make their own learning decisions, and the locus of control is student oriented 71 3.5.6 Outcomes of Stage 1 Stage 1, involving identification and development of salient scales for inclusion in the DELES, was completed by reviewing literature pertinent to distance education, identifying relevant psychosocial factors found to be converging in the literature, and then converting those factors into 14 scales, with five representing Moos’ (1974) Relationship Dimension, four representing the Personal Development Dimension, and five related to the System Maintenance and Change Dimension. These 14 scales were submitted to and reviewed by a panel of distance education researchers and practitioners. This resulted in a reduced set of six scales, with two representing the Relationship Dimension, three representing the Personal Development Dimension, and one representing the System Maintenance and Change Dimension. 3.6 STAGE 2 – WRITING INDIVIDUAL ITEMS Once salient scales had been identified, the next step in the development of this survey was to write a set of items to measure each scale. In writing items, consideration was given to maximizing the conceptual similarity between the items within a given scale and avoiding items that could measure any scale other than their intended scale (Fraser, 1986). For the scales of Instructor Support, adapted from the DOLES, and Personal Relevance, adapted from the CLES, items from those instruments were tailored for use in this distance education instrument. The items for the remaining scales were created new specifically for this study. The subsections below outline the method used to develop individual items, beginning with a discussion of the use of negatively-worded items. Next, I outline how the items were assessed for face validity and readability, and I give a description of how items were modified to reduce ambiguity. This is followed by a listing of the items after face validation by a panel of experts and a pilot test of the survey using a small sample of distance education graduate students who were asked to comment on item clarity and page design. 3.6.1 Consideration of negatively-worded or reverse-scored items 72 Reverse-scored items are found in several earlier learning environment instruments such as the My Class Inventory (MCI) (Fraser, 1989), the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992), and the School-Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ) (Fisher & Fraser, 1990). However, negatively-worded items or reverse-scored items have questionable utility in guarding against passive responses (i.e., those responses marked without the respondent making a conscious choice) (Barnette, 2000). In terms of response accuracy and internal consistency, studies have revealed higher reliability when all items are worded positively (Chamberlain & Cummings, 1984; Schreisheim, Eisenbach, & Hill, 1991; Schriesheim & Hill, 1981). Negatively-worded items, when mixed with positively-worded items, have been found using factor analyses to solicit differing response patterns (Benson, 1987; Knight, Chisholm, Marsh, & Godfrey, 1988). Barnette (2000) concludes that mixing positive and negative item is not a recommended procedure and that negatively-worded items cannot be considered direct opposites of positively worded counterparts. Further, Taylor, Fraser, and Fisher (1997) explicitly noted, in their remarks about negatively-worded items in the Constructivist Learning Environment Scale (CLES), that students became confused due to the complexity in item structure in relation to the response categories. Therefore, they opted to diverge from the tradition in which learning environment instruments use both positively- and negatively-worded items. Instead, they minimized the use of negatively-worded items in the final version of the CLES to include only one negatively-worded item in the 30-item instrument (Fraser, 1998b). Meanwhile, the What Is Happening In This Class? (WIHIC) questionnaire, that combines modified versions of salient scales from a number of learning environment instruments (Fraser, 1998a, 2002a; Zandvliet, 1999, 2002), was also designed to have no negatively-worded items. Aldridge et al. (2003) chose to use positively- worded items only in their development of the Technology-Rich Outcomes-Focused Learning Environment Inventory (TROFLEI) “in order to minimise confusion to students” (p. 8). 73 Because the use of reverse-scored and negatively-worded items can reduce the reliability and validity of instruments and scales, I utilized neither negatively- worded nor reverse-scored items in the DELES. 3.6.2 Validating items Fifty-five items were initially developed and distributed to a panel of distance education practitioners for their comments on each individual item’s suitability, face validity, readability, and freedom from ambiguity (Fraser, 1986; Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). The following subsections outline this procedure in more detail. Subsection 3.6.2.1 discusses comments made by a panel of experts, Subsection 3.6.2.2 describes the development of the survey as a Web-based form, Subsection 3.6.2.3 discusses a pilot test of the initial Web-based instrument, and Section 3.6.3 summarizes the results with a table containing the initial instrument. 3.6.2.1 Expert panel’s comments Fifty-five items were modified from existing instruments or were newly developed to fit within the six scales in the first draft of the DELES. These items and their corresponding scale descriptions were submitted to an eight-person panel of volunteer post-secondary distance education practitioners and researchers (see Appendix A) who had previously participated in reviewing and commenting on the face validity of the scales. The panel was asked to respond by e-mail with their comments regarding 1) the suitability and appropriateness of each individual item to its scale, 2) item ambiguity, and also to give 3) additional comments as needed. Seven panel members responded and their comments led to the elimination of seven items, reducing the questionnaire from 55 to 48 items, rewording of some items for clarity, readability, and brevity, and the transfer of one item to a more appropriate scale. This second draft of the items was then prepared for the Web-based form as described in the next subsection. 3.6.2.2 Development of the Web-based form After alterations were made to the instrument’s items based on the panel’s comments, the instrument was converted to a survey that included instructions and a 74 five-point frequency response scale of Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, and Always. This frequency response scale follows precedent set in previous instruments such as the Science Laboratory Environment Instrument (SLEI) (Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992), the What Is Happening In this Classroom (WIHIC) questionnaire (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999), and the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997). However, what is unique about the DELES is that, unlike most learning environment instruments, it is Web-based. I created the initial version of the DELES for the Web using the online application WWW Survey Assistant (Schmidt, 1996), a Web-based survey editor that generates a Hyper-Text Mark-up Language (HTML) form document and Practical Extraction and Report Language (PERL) Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script for survey developers, without developers having to know how to write a computer program. The Web-based survey instructions asked respondents to select a response using a ‘radio button’ mark in a Web form for each item and then to click a ‘submit’ button to complete and send the form—both of which are common actions for even novice Web users. One of the advantages of this method of gathering data is that, due to the nature of this Web form, respondents were required to make a response for each item, because they were not able to submit the survey otherwise. This guaranteed that 100% of the responses received would be useable. Additionally, the use of a Web-based form allowed students from anywhere in the world, and at any time of the day or night, to complete the survey. It also eliminated errors that can be introduced in data transfer from paper-based questionnaires to statistical analysis software. 3.6.2.3 Pilot test The initial form of the survey was administered to a graduate-level distance education class (N=12) via the Web. Students were asked to respond to survey items and then comment via e-mail regarding the survey’s readability and ambiguity, if any, overall Web page set-up, and useability of the Web page. Because the students were dispersed across a wide geographic area in a true distance education class, e- mail was selected as the most economical means by which to gather the students’ comments. All 12 students completed the survey and responded with comments via 75 e-mail. After the pilot test, minor wording changes were made to reduce item ambiguity on two items. The pilot test data were successfully retrieved from the Web-based database and rendered in a case-wise format in the data analysis software application SPSS version 11.01. This pilot study served three purposes: 1) to test the layout and technical workings of the Web-based instrument, 2) to identify the ease or difficulty in retrieving the raw data for analysis, and 3) to utilize distance education students to obtain feedback on item clarity and Web-page useability. The pilot study was important because the ease of navigating through Web-based survey instruments and the simplicity of the page formatting are of “paramount importance” to the responses that one receives in Web surveys (Bowker & Dillman, 2000, p. 18). 3.6.3 Final version of the DELES Two items were altered based on respondents’ comments after the pilot version of the DELES was administered. Item 5 was changed from “In this class…the instructor adequately addresses my class content questions” to “In this class…the instructor adequately addresses my questions”, Item 30 in Table 3.4 previously read: “In this class…I am given ill-defined assignments.” While the term ‘ill defined’ is perhaps common in the educator’s lexicon, it is not common for a more general audience. Therefore, the item was altered to read: “In this class…I am given assignments with more than one solution.” After these changes were made, an new Web version of the survey was created for field testing, thus completing Stage 2— writing individual items. Table 3.4 presents the DELES dimensions, scale names, scale descriptions, and items as used in the field-test version. 76 Table 3.4. Scale descriptions and sample items after pilot test Dimension Scale Scale Description Items Instructor Support “…extent to which the teacher is approachable and responds quickly with feedback…” (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998, p. 7) In this class… 1. If I have an inquiry, the instructor finds time to respond. 2. The instructor helps me to identify problem areas in my study. 3. The instructor responds promptly to my questions. 4. The instructor gives me valuable feedback on my assignments. 5. The instructor adequately addresses my questions. 6. The instructor treats me with respect. 7. The instructor encourages my participation. 8. It is easy to contact the instructor. 9. The instructor provides me with positive and negative feedback on my work. Relationship Student Interaction & Collaboration Extent to which students have opportunities to interact with one another, exchange information and engage in collaboration In this class… 10. I work with others. 11. I relate my work to other’s work. 12. I share information with other students. 13. I discuss my ideas with other students. 14. I collaborate with other students in the class. 15. Group work is a part of my activities. 16. I share my assignments with others. Personal Relevance “Connection between students’ out-of-school experiences” and their classroom experiences (Taylor, Fraser, Fisher, 1997) In this class… 17. I can relate what I learn to my life outside of university. 18. I am able to pursue topics that interest me. 19. I can connect my studies to my activities outside class. 20. I apply my everyday experiences in class. 21. I link class work to my life outside university. 22. I learn things about the world outside university. 23. I apply my out-of-class experience. Personal Development Authentic Learning Extent to which students have the opportunity to solve real-world problems that are authentic In this class… 24. I study real cases related to the class. 25. I use real facts in class activities. 26. I communicate with practitioners of the topic I am studying. 27. I work on assignments that deal with real-world information. 28. I work with real examples. 29. I enter the real world of the topic of study. 30. I am given assignments with more than one solution. continued 77 Active Learning Extent to which students have the opportunity take an active role in their learning In this class… 31. I take an active role in my learning. 32. I contribute to my own learning. 33. I explain my thinking. 34. I explore my own strategies for learning. 35. I seek my own answers. 36. I solve my own problems. 37. The instruction involves me in finding my own meaning related to what we study. 38. I am encouraged to think for myself. System Maintenance & Change Student Autonomy Extent students have opportunities to initiate ideas and make their own learning decisions, and the locus of control is student oriented In this class… 39. I incorporate my ideas in the class. 40. My ideas are valued. 41. I am motivated by various opportunities to be successful. 42. I make decisions about my learning. 43. I work during times I find convenient. 44. I am in control of my learning. 45. I play an important role in my learning. 46. I contribute to the class. 47. I give input. 48. I approach learning in my own way. Response choices are: Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Never. © 2003, Scott Walker 78 3.6.4 Scale of student enjoyment In addition to the scales and items listed in Table 3.4, an attitudinal scale of Enjoyment of Distance Education was included in the field test in order to gather data for investigating any associations between the psychosocial scales of the DELES and the attitudinal scale of Enjoyment (see Appendix C). Subsection 2.2.7.3 of Chapter 2 reviews previous studies that have sought to identify outcome- environment associations. The scale of Enjoyment of Distance Education consists of eight items that were modified from the Test of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA)(Fraser, 1981). The Enjoyment scale used the same Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Never response categories as those of the DELES to facilitate continuity in responses instead of using the TOSRA’s original response options of Strongly Agree, Agree, Not Sure, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree. Table 3.4 contains a listing of the items in the Enjoyment scale. Table 3.5. Items in the Enjoyment scale Scale Items Enjoyment of Distance Education • Distance education is stimulating. • I prefer distance education. • Distance education is exciting. • Distance education is worth my time. • I enjoy studying by distance. • I look forward to learning by distance. • I would enjoy my education more if all my classes were by distance. • I am satisfied with this class. Response choices are: Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Never. 3.7 STAGE 3 – FIELD TESTING AND ANALYSIS The third stage of developing a learning environment instrument involves conducting a field test with the target population, followed by statistical analysis of the item responses in terms of internal consistency and validity (Fraser, 1986; Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998). The purposes of these analyses are to refine the instrument and to provide evidence of the overall reliability and validity of the refined scales. This section describes the field-testing, including a description of how 79 the field test was conducted and the sample of students who responded. This is followed by a brief description of the data analyses methods, which are described more fully in Chapter 4. 3.7.1 Field testing Because this instrument was located on the World Wide Web, it was completed by respondents through a Web browser. Therefore, just as time and place are not important in asynchronous distance education, neither were they important when responding to this instrument. In October 2001, an e-mail call for participation was made during the Teaching Online in Higher Education Conference to all 227 online conference participants asking those with post-secondary distance education students to ask their students to respond to the DELES field test on the Web. In November 2001, another call for participation was made to Curtin University of Technology – Science and Mathematics Education Centre staff who were teaching via distance that semester, requesting they ask their distance education students to respond to the Web-based instrument. These two calls for participation resulted in 106 useable responses. In February 2002, another e-mail call for participation was made to a number of distance-education oriented e-mail discussion groups and to conference participant e-mail lists. Also, through direct e-mail to college and university instructors who were known to be teaching online during that semester, I asked them to ask their post-secondary distance education students to respond to the Web-based DELES. The 2002 calls for participation resulted in 574 useable responses. The 2001 and 2002 responses combined resulted in 680 sets of replies useable for analysis. 3.7.2 Field test sample Responses were collected from 186 undergraduate students, 364 Masters-level graduate students, and 130 Doctoral-level graduate students. The majority of the responses came from students studying in the United States, totalling 569, while 42 responses were from Australia, 12 from Canada, and 48 from New Zealand. The remaining responses came from students in nine separate countries and were included in the response set. However, unlike traditional learning environments 80 research, this sample does not focus on a known class or school population, which offers some limitation to this method of field testing. 3.7.3 Item analysis and factor analysis Item and factor analyses were conducted to serve two purposes: to refine the DELES scales; and to provide evidence regarding reliability and validity of the refined scales. Data were analysed for internal consistency reliability using the SPSS 11.01 software to calculate Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficient to measure internal consistency in terms of intercorrelations among items. Specifically, this is a measure of the extent to which items within a scale measure the same construct as the other items in the same scale. Those items that were not highly correlated with their respective scales were removed and data were reanalysed until all the items with the lowest item-scale correlations were removed and the alpha coefficient was maximized. The construct validity of the a priori scales that were developed using the intuitive- rational strategy were investigated using principal component factor analysis. This method of analysis is used to ascertain the fundamental structure of a relatively large set of variables (Garson, 2001) and to refine the scales where necessary rather than to develop new scales. Essentially, this establishes whether items within a scale measure the construct assessed by that scale and not the construct assessed by any other scale. A factor loading of 0.50 was used as the criterion for retaining items based on precedent (Fish & Dane, 2000). This analysis led to the elimination of items. The analyses of the refined data set provided evidence to support the overall reliability and factorial validity of the refined scales. The results of these analyses are presented in Chapter 4. 3.8 CHAPTER SUMMARY 81 The Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES) was developed to assess characteristics of tertiary distance education environments from students’ personal perspectives, based upon an overarching classical structure of Moos’ (1974) three social organization dimensions. The method by which the DELES was developed followed a three-stage approach modified from Fraser (1986) and Jegede, Fraser, and Fisher (1998), that included Stage 1, the identification of salient scales, Stage 2, modifying items from previous learning environment instrument and developing new items for newly-developed scales, and Stage 3, field testing the instrument and conducting item analysis and validation analyses. In Stage 1, eight scales were modified from three previous learning environment instruments—the CLES (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher, 1997), the COLLES (Taylor & Maor, 2000), and the DOLES (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1998)—while six scales were newly developed based on converging literature. These 14 scales were reduced to the six most salient scales by means of review and comment by a panel of distance education experts and practitioners. One of the remaining scales was adapted from the DOLES and one was adapted from the CLES. Four scales were newly developed specifically for the DELES. Stage 2 required writing individual items for the four new scales and modifying items from the CLES and the DOLES scales to fit the distance education learning environment. Fifty-five items were subjected to comments from the panel of experts (N=8) and were subsequently modified and reduced to 48 items. These 48 items were formatted for use in a Web-based instrument using the response categories of Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, and Always, and then subjected to a Web-based pilot test that sought comments about the useability of the Web form from 12 graduate-level university students enrolled in a distance education course. Stage 3, as described in this chapter, was a field test of the initial Web-based DELES which involved 680 responses during a two-semester data acquisition time frame. The resulting data were analysed for internal consistency reliability using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient to determine intercorrelation among items. The 82 construct validity of the a priori scales was investigated using principal component factor analysis to ascertain the structure of the scales and to refine the scales. Chapter 4 presents and describes in detail the analysis of the field test data to provide information about scale reliability and validity. It also reports the results of analyses of associations between the six learning environment scales and an attitudinal scale assessing student enjoyment of distance education. 83 Chapter 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 4.1 INTRODUCTION Chapter 3 described the field testing component of Stage 3 of the development and validation of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES), which involved gathering 680 unique and useable responses from post-secondary distance education students through a Web-based survey instrument. This chapter goes on to describe the conclusion of the three-stage approach to developing a valid learning environment instrument by, first, detailing the steps in the factor analysis and item analysis that I used to determine which items should be eliminated to improve the instrument’s reliability and validity and, second, reporting evidence of the overall reliability and validity of the refined version. The statistical analyses were conducted using the SPSS version 11.01. The item and scale analyses resulted in a final six- scale, 34-item version of the DELES that initially began with 48 items in six scales. This chapter also outlines the methods and results of analyses used for identifying associations between the six psychosocial learning environment scales and student satisfaction. The satisfaction scale was comprised of items related to enjoyment of distance education. Associations between the psychosocial scales and the satisfaction scale were investigated using simple correlations and multiple regression analyses modelled on previously-conducted studies of associations between student satisfaction and psychosocial environment scales (e.g., Fraser, 1998b; Zandvliet, 2002; Chapter 2, Section 2.5). 4.2 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE DELES As outlined in detail in Chapter 3, the development of the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) utilized the intuitive-rational strategy in which only items with high internal consistency remain in the final instrument. It also relies upon the internal strategy (Hase & Goldberg, 1967), whereby only those items with high factor loadings on their own scales and low loadings on other scales 84 are kept in the final instrument. This section describes the methods by which the DELES was refined and its validity and reliability were determined. The aim of these analyses was to establish the DELES as a reliable and valid learning environment instrument based on data obtained from the sample of 680 distance education students enrolled in post-secondary classes as described in detail in Chapter 3, Sections 3.3 and 3.7.2. The sample included undergraduate students, Masters-level graduate students, and doctoral-level graduate students. The majority of those in the sample population were studying at institutions in the United States, while some responses were from Australia and New Zealand, and a small number of respondents were studying in a variety of other countries. 4.2.1 Validity Validity was considered in terms of content or ‘face’ validity and also in terms of construct validity during the development of the DELES. Chapter 3, Section 3.5.5 addressed verification of content validity of the scales through a review by a 14- person panel (see Appendix A) of distance education researchers and practitioners. Section 3.6.2 addressed the content validity of individual items through an item review by an eight-person panel of distance education researchers and practitioners (see Appendix A). Construct validity, on the other hand, was investigated as described below using principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. The aim of factor analysis is to ascertain the fundamental structure of a comparatively large set of variables (Garson, 2001). This method of analysis is consistent with the intuitive-rational method of learning environment instrument development (Fraser, 1986) and has recently been used (Dorman, in press) to determine if items load on a priori scales. In essence, in my study, factor analysis provides information about whether items within a given scale are measuring that scale and no other scale. Only those items with a factor loading of at least 0.50 (Fish & Dane, 2000) with their own scale, and less than 0.50 with all other scales, were kept in the refined instrument. 85 With the advent of easy-to-use computer programs for analysing data, factor analysis has gained ground as a statistical tool (George & Mallery, 2001). Cattell brought attention to the use of factor analyses in the 1940s by reducing 4,500 personality attribute names down to 200 questions that measured 16 personality traits in an instrument that is in its fifth version today—the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) (Cattell & Cattell, 1995). Nevertheless, despite the ease with which one can conduct the statistical operations of a factor analysis today, dealing with “indeterminacies are logical, not statistical, in nature” (Kim & Mueller, 1978, p. 46). Therefore, the determination of which items to discard were based upon background knowledge of the subject matter, supported by statistical analysis, as outlined in Hase and Goldberg’s (1967) intuitive-rational strategy for developing instruments of this nature. Table 4.1 presents the rotated component matrix based on individual items. Fourteen (14) ‘faulty’ items of the original 48 items were identified and removed, leaving only 34 items suitable to remain in the instrument. The faulty items that were removed either loaded below the 0.50 threshold in their own scale or above 0.50 on scales other than their own. Six scales were originally developed for the DELES field test and, after factor analysis, the same six scales remained: Student Interaction and Collaboration, Instructor Support, Personal Relevance, Authentic Learning, Student Autonomy, and Active Learning. In the Student Interaction and Collaboration scale, seven items were originally developed and only one was lost. The Instructor Support scale was developed with nine items and factor analysis eliminated one item. In the original seven-item scale of Personal Relevance, no items were lost. However, in the scale of Authentic Learning, three items were lost of the original eight. The Student Autonomy scale was originally developed with 10 items, but lost five. Finally, the scale of Active Learning was conceived with seven items, yet lost four in factor analysis. Overall a six-scale instrument with 34 items was left after factor analysis. Exploratory analyses consisted, in part, of considering factor loadings both with and without a scale of satisfaction included. The satisfaction scale was included in my study so that I could investigate relationships between student satisfaction with 86 Table 4.1. Factor loadings for a refined 34-item version of the DELES Factor Loading Item Student Interaction & Collaboration Instructor Support Personal Relevance Authentic Learning Student Autonomy Active Learning INSTSUP1 .69 INSTSUP2 .73 INSTSUP3 .83 INSTSUP4 .84 INSTSUP5 .80 INSTSUP6 .63 INSTSUP7 .62 INSTSUP8 .76 INTER9 .90 INTER10 .83 INTER11 .85 INTER12 .86 INTER13 .90 INTER14 .87 RELEV15 .75 RELEV16 .69 RELEV17 .81 RELEV18 .78 RELEV19 .83 RELEV20 .55 RELEV21 .70 AUTH22 .61 AUTH23 .77 AUTH24 .80 AUTH25 .84 AUTH26 .69 ACT27 .63 ACT28 .79 ACT29 .75 AUTON30 .65 AUTON31 .65 AUTON32 .81 AUTON33 .75 AUTON34 .61 % variance 14.31 14.10 13.88 10.35 8.50 6.01 Factor loadings smaller than 0.50 have been omitted. INSTSUP = Instructor Support, INTER = Student Interaction & Collaboration, RELEV = Personal Relevance, AUTH = Authentic Learning, ACT = Active Learning, and AUTON = Student Autonomy. N=680. distance education and students’ perceptions of the psychosocial learning environment (see Chapter 2, Subsection 2.2.7). Because factor analysis uses a correlation matrix of data from a sample population, investigators can conclude that the outcome will be different when differing sample data are used. Therefore, investigators use a statistical test with which to examine the adequacy of a particular sample (Kim & Mueller, 1978). 87 In this study, I relied upon the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy that served to evaluate the appropriateness of using factor analysis based on my sample data. The KMO uses interpretive adjectives to rate the adequacy of samples. A measure of 0.90 and greater is marvellous, 0.80 to 0.89 is meritorious, 0.70 to 0.79 is middling, 0.60 to 0.69 is mediocre, scores of 0.50 to 0.59 are miserable, and those falling below 0.50 are unacceptable (George & Mallery, 2001). The KMO calculation for this study determined a distribution of adequate values for conducting factor analysis to be 0.91 when the satisfaction scale was considered. When the scale of satisfaction was not considered in the factor analysis the KMO was also 0.91. Analyses from both perspectives led to the same faulty items. Because the scale of satisfaction was adapted, with permission (B. J. Fraser, personal communication, June 15, 2001), from the Test of Science-Related Attitudes and has been validated and used since at least 1981 (Fraser, 1981), it was determined that the final factor analysis and presentation of data would not include the scale of satisfaction as recommended by Majeed, Fraser, and Aldridge (2002). Further exploratory analysis was conducted by comparing the simple structures of a normalized orthogonal (varimax) rotation to that of a normalized oblique (oblimin) rotation (Fish & Dane, 2000). Again, this led to identification of the same faulty items. Only the orthogonal rotation findings from the final analysis are presented in Table 4.1. The bottom row of Table 4.1 shows the percentage of variance for each factor. The scale of Student Interaction and Collaboration accounted for the highest proportion of variance among the items—the eigenvalue divided by the number of variables—at 14.31%. This was followed closely by the Instructor Support scale which explained 14.10% of the variance. The Personal Relevance scale explained 13.88% of the variance, while the Authentic Learning scale explained 10.35%. These four scales account for slightly more than half (52.64%) of the variance in the items within the instrument. To a lesser degree, the scale of Student Autonomy explained 8.50% of the variance while the Active Learning scale accounted for only 6.01% of the variance among the variables. The cumulative variance explained by all six DELES scales was 67.15%. While nearly 33% of the variance was unaccounted for, one must assume that either the unaccounted variance is due to measurement error or that 88 the true variance is exclusive to the individual items (Jaeger, 1993). Nevertheless, reducing 34 items to six planned scales offers economy of description of what is being measured. The first factor identified was Student Interaction and Collaboration. All a priori items loaded exclusively on this factor with loadings ranging from 0.83 to 0.90, except for one item which was lost due to its low factor loading. The items within this scale also accounted for the maximum proportion of variance at 14.31%. The items in the second factor, Instructor Support, loaded exclusively on this factor, with the loadings ranging from 0.62 to 0.84. Again, one item was lost due to its loading falling below the 0.50 threshold. The third identified factor was that of Personal Relevance with its a priori items loading entirely on this scale and with factor loadings ranging from 0.55 to 0.83. No items were lost from this scale due to low factor loadings. The fourth factor was identified as Authentic Learning. The items that were kept had factor loadings ranging from 0.61 to 0.84. Three of these items were lost due to factor loadings being below 0.50. The fifth identified factor was Student Autonomy. Four of the original items loaded greater than 0.50 within other factors, and one item loaded below the threshold on its own scale. The remaining items loaded between 0.61 and 0.81. The sixth identified factor was that of Active Learning. Three items in this scale were lost because they loaded too high on other scales. One item within Active Learning had a loading with its own scale that did not reach the threshold and was subsequently removed. The remaining three items associated with this factor had loadings that ranged between 0.63 and 0.79. When considering discriminant validity through factor analysis, each scale should measure a unique dimension not measured by another scale. Discriminant validity was improved by removing any item whose factor loading either fell below the 0.50 threshold within its a priori assigned scale or was above 0.50 with and of the other five scales. Seven items were lost due to low loadings with their own scales, while another seven were lost due to high loadings with scales other than their a priori scales. Further research replicating this study should be conducted in the future with larger and different samples to demonstrate the replication of similar results, because any 89 given sample will never perfectly reflect its population. While deviations might be reduced with increases in sample size, deviations will still occur (Kim & Mueller, 1978) even with larger samples. Therefore, it will be important to replicate the factor analysis procedures each time the DELES is used in order to demonstrate that the factor structure presented here is not peculiar to my sample. 4.2.2 Reliability One interpretation of reliability, synonymous with consistency, dependability, and accuracy (Kerlinger, 1986), involves whether or not an instrument is consistent internally. Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficient is designed to measure the internal consistency of a scale in terms of item intercorrelations. That is, to what extents do items within a scale measure the same construct as the other items in the scale? The alpha coefficient has a range of -1 to 1, with 0 indicating no internal consistency, 1 indicating perfect internal consistency, and -1 indicating perfect inconsistency (George & Mallery, 2001). In the development of the DELES, each scale was assessed for internal consistency. Table 4.2 presents the alpha reliability for each refined DELES scale, as well as for the separate satisfaction scale, for the sample of 680 students. Table 4.2. Scale reliability using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for DELES and Enjoyment scales Scale Number of Items α Reliability Instructor Support 8 .87 Student Interaction & Collaboration 6 .94 Personal Relevance 7 .92 Authentic Learning 5 .89 Active Learning 3 .75 Student Autonomy 5 .79 Enjoyment 8 .95 N=680 Low internal consistency can result from any number of sources. For example, items about which survey participants have no opinion or insufficient information, or those that require too accurate a response, can lead to data that are not reliable (de Vaus, 2001). Yet, high reliability is not necessarily an assurance of high-quality results or 90 validity. However there can be no high-quality results or validity without reliability (Kerlinger, 1986). The internal consistency reliability (coefficient alpha) ranged from 0.75 to 0.94 for the six DELES scales. Using a generally applied ‘rule-of-thumb’ this range is considered acceptable to excellent (George & Mallery, 2001), since the closer the alpha is to 1, the greater the internal consistency of the items. The alpha for the scales of Student Interaction and Collaboration (0.94) and Personal Relevance (0.92) are considered ‘excellent’, while the scales of Authentic Learning (0.89) and Instructor Support (0.87) are considered ‘good’. The remaining DELES scales of Student Autonomy (0.79) and Active Learning (0.75) are deemed ‘acceptable’. Likewise, the attitude scale of Enjoyment had an alpha of 0.95, which can be considered ‘excellent’ using this rule-of-thumb. 4.2.3 Limitations of the data collected In presenting validation and reliability results, it must be acknowledged that this study’s procedures do not completely conform to those followed in many past learning environment instrument developments and validations. In many cases, one would also report the factor analysis and alpha reliability data for class means, as well as the results of the analysis of each scale’s ability to differentiate between classrooms, as in previous investigations (Fraser, 1998b; Wubbels, 1993; Zandvliet, 2002). In this preliminary validation, data were not captured in a way that allowed identification of each student’s class membership. The data were only collected with the individual student as the unit of analysis. Class data are often captured and calculated in order to investigate the degrees of difference or similarity between two units of statistical analysis, that of the individual student and that of the class mean (Fraser, 1986), which provides much richer data interpretation. Likewise, insufficient data were available to distinguish reliability between countries. Further data collection with a larger, more-defined international sample is desirable to allow these analyses to be conducted in an ongoing effort to supplement the validation information on the DELES. 91 4.3 FINAL VERSION OF THE DELES To recapitulate, factor analysis was conducted on 680 responses of a preliminary version of the DELES. This resulted in the removal of 14 of 48 a priori learning environment items that either loaded below a 0.50 threshold in their own scale or loaded at greater than 0.50 on a scale other than their own. The construct validity of the DELES was supported using principal component factor analysis, whereas the internal consistency reliability of the refined DELES scales was reported using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Table 4.3 shows the wording of the 34 items that remained in the DELES after this preliminary validation. The complete DELES, including the five-point response categories of Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Never, is shown in Appendix B. 4.4 ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN STUDENT ENJOYMENT AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FACTORS In previous learning environment research, investigations of associations between student outcomes and the nature of the classroom environment are common (Fraser, 1986, 2002a; Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1992) (see Chapter 2, Subsection 2.2.7.3 for a detailed review of past studies of the influence of learning environments on student outcomes). This section describes the analyses and results for associations between the dependent variable of students’ enjoyment of distance education and the independent variables consisting of scales of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES). This section also elaborates on the strongest and weakest associations, offering speculative explanations. This is followed by a statement regarding the limitations of this part of my research and possible future opportunities for enhancing the use of the DELES when considering student outcomes in terms of their distance education learning environments. 4.4.1 Associations between the DELES scales and students’ enjoyment of distance education Associations between the attitudinal dependent variable and the independent variables of the psychosocial learning environment were explored for this study. 92 This section describes the associations between students’ enjoyment of distance education using an eight-item scale of Enjoyment (see Table 3.4 and Appendix B) modified from the Test of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA) (Fraser, 1981) and the six refined DELES learning environment scales previously described. Analyses were conducted using simple correlation and multilinear regression analysis using the individual student as the unit of analysis. Table 4.4 presents the results. Table 4.3. Listing of items in the refined version of each Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES) scale Scale Items Instructor Support In this class… 1. If I have an inquiry, the instructor finds time to respond. 2. The instructor helps me identify problem areas in my study. 3. The instructor responds promptly to my questions. 4. The instructor gives me valuable feedback on my assignments. 5. The instructor adequately addresses my questions. 6. The instructor encourages my participation. 7. It is easy to contact the instructor. 8. The instructor provides me with positive and negative feedback on my work. Student Interaction & Collaboration In this class… 9. I work with others. 10. I relate my work to other’s work. 11. I share information with other students. 12. I discuss my ideas with other students. 13. I collaborate with other students in the class. 14. Group work is a part of my activities. Personal Relevance In this class… 15. I can relate what I learn to my life outside of university. 16. I am able to pursue topics that interest me. 17. I can connect my studies to my activities outside of class. 18. I apply my everyday experiences in class. 19. I link class work to my life outside of university. 20. I learn things about the world outside of university. 21. I apply my out-of-class experience. Authentic Learning In this class… 22. I study real cases related to the class. 23. I use real facts in class activities. 24. I work on assignments that deal with real-world information. 25. I work with real examples. 26. I enter the real world of the topic of study. Active Learning In this class… 27. I explore my own strategies for learning. 28. I seek my own answers. 29. I solve my own problems. Student Autonomy In this class… 30. I make decisions about my learning. 31. I work during times that I find convenient. 32. I am in control of my learning. 33. I play an important role in my learning. 34. I approach learning in my own way. Response choices are: Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Never. 93 Table 4.4. Associations between six DELES scales and student enjoyment using simple correlation and multiple regression analyses Psychosocial Scale r β Instructor Support .25** .12** Student Interaction and Collaboration .23** .14** Personal Relevance .31** .23** Authentic Learning .28** .16** Active Learning .12** .00 Student Autonomy .24** .11** Multiple correlation (R) R2 .46** .21** N=680 individuals, **p<.01 In Table 4.4, the simple correlation (r) represents the bivariate relationship between Enjoyment and each psychosocial learning environment scale. The standardized regression coefficient (β) represents the association between the Enjoyment scale and each learning environment scale when all other learning environment scales are mutually controlled. The coefficient of multiple correlation (R) indicates the multivariate relationship between the Enjoyment scale and the set of six learning environment scales, with 1.0 being a perfect correlation. The coefficient of multiple determination (R2) denotes the proportion of variance in Enjoyment accounted for by the set of six learning environment scales. Table 4.4 shows that the simple correlation between Enjoyment and the DELES scales ranges from 0.12 to 0.31. All simple correlations are positive and statistically significant (p<0.01) for all six scales. The multiple correlation between Enjoyment and the set of DELES scales (R) is 0.46 and is statistically significant. The proportion of variance explained (R2) is 0.21. In order to ascertain which DELES scales are independently related to Enjoyment when all other DELES scales are mutually controlled, the standardized regression coefficients in the last column of Table 4.4 were examined. This table shows that all DELES scales, with the exception of Active Learning, are independently and positively significantly related to Enjoyment. All significant simple correlations and regression weights are positive, suggesting that a higher level on the DELES scales is associated with greater enjoyment of distance education. 94 4.4.2 Discussion of the strongest Enjoyment-environment association Table 4.4.1 demonstrates that the strongest association between Enjoyment and a DELES scale occurred for Personal Relevance for both simple correlation and multiple regression analyses. Personal Relevance in this study consists of such notions as students’ ability to relate class content to personal and professional activities outside of the university setting. The Personal Relevance scale also considers individual students’ opportunities for being able to bring out-of-class experiences into the class setting. Perhaps this relatively strong association can be interpreted as one that we should expect in post-secondary education—students enjoy a distance education class more when they can relate the subject matter of that class to their personal lives. Otherwise, why would students take the class? A brief consideration of the level of study being undertaken by the students who responded to the field test of the DELES, from which these data were analysed, might offer further insight into the strength of this Enjoyment/Personal Relevance association. It could be argued that, given the fact that 72.6% (see Chapter 3, Table 3.1) of the respondents were graduate students, and graduate students tend to be more conscientious in terms of their time and personal reasons for advancing their education, these students enjoy more that which has significance to their lives outside class. Of course, this argument is speculative and requires more careful study in the future. 4.4.3 Discussion of the weakest Enjoyment-environment association In Table 4.4, the weakest Enjoyment/environment association for both the simple correlation and multiple regression analyses is represented by the scale of Active Learning. Active learning exemplifies the extent to which students take part in their learning by solving their own problems, exploring their own learning strategies, and seeking their own answers. While active learning was identified as a key indicator of high-quality distance education in the literature (see Chapter 3, Section 3.5.3.2) related to personal development, this scale had a weak association with students’ enjoyment of distance education. Given further exploration, the popular notion that 95 distance education, by virtue of the medium through which it is conducted, replaces passive learning through “active exploratory and inquiry-based learning” (Wilson, 2002, p. 638) could be held up as common, speculative, anecdotal distance education mythology. It could also be argued in this case that post-secondary students are more comfortable with their “habits of passive learning” (Sutdliff, Cogdell, Hansell, & McAteer, 1999, p. 53) that are common in many educational settings, thus resulting in this lack of association between students enjoying distance education and learning in active ways. A potential approach to exploring this issue further would be to develop an additional scale related to Passive Learning and to explore how that scale is associated with student enjoyment of distance education. This lack of association between Enjoyment and Active Learning does not tell us, though, that active learning diminishes the quality of distance education. It merely identifies a weak relationship between students being active in their learning and overall enjoyment of distance education. It could be the case that active learning is not associated well with enjoyment in the face-to-face learning environment either. Because Active Learning is a new scale that was developed exclusively for the DELES, and has not been used in other learning environment instruments, further research with this scale is desirable. 4.4.4 Consistency with previous research on associations between attitudes and learning environments Looking back to Walberg’s (1981) discussion of educational productivity (see Chapter 2, Subsection 2.2.5), it is evident that learning environments have influences on and associations with student outcomes, both cognitive and affective (Fraser, 2002a). Learning environment research has commonly investigated and demonstrated positive associations between students’ perceptions of their learning environments and students’ attitudes across subjects, across levels of study, and across international borders (Fraser, 1986, 2002a) (see Chapter 2, Subsection 2.2.7.3). While the individual results of this productive body of research are too broad to describe here, recent selected literature has reported positive 96 attitude/learning environment associations. For example, Scott and Fisher (2001) reported statistically significant (p<0.001) associations between a scale of Enjoyment of Science Lessons and the eight learning environment scales of a Malaysian version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction for primary school students (QTIE) (the QTIE is the Malay translation of the English-language Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction for Primary schools (QTIP)). They found that students enjoyed their science lessons more when teachers demonstrated leadership and were strict, helpful/friendly, and understanding. They discovered a negative association indicating that students enjoyed their science lessons less when teachers were uncertain, dissatisfied and admonishing, and allowed student freedom. They noted that, when all the other learning environment scales were held constant, teachers’ helpful and friendly behaviour had the most impact (β=0.30) on the students’ enjoyment of their science lessons. Likewise, Zandvliet (2002) reported statistically significant (p<0.01) positive associations between students’ attitudes using selected items from the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) and five scales of the popular What is Happening in this Class (WIHIC) questionnaire (Aldridge, Fraser, & Huang, 1999). When all the learning environment scales were mutually controlled, Task Orientation, the extent to which it is important to stay on the subject matter, had the strongest association with Student Satisfaction (β=0.46). This suggests that, in the technology-rich classroom, the focus of Zandvliet’s study, students are more satisfied, and perhaps more productive, when they are allowed to complete activities and are not pulled from their tasks. As with these previous studies and others, my investigation of associations between students’ attitudes and psychosocial scales resulted in statistically significant positive associations. This adds more support to Walberg’s (1981) notion that learning environments have influences on and associations with student outcomes. However, as with any study, my research is not without its limitations (see next section). 97 4.4.5 Limitations of analysis of Enjoyment-learning environment associations The present study involving DELES data provides the first study of post-secondary distance education that investigates associations between the distance education learning environment and student satisfaction. However, this is not to suggest my use of the DELES scales to investigate Enjoyment-environment associations is not without limitations. The investigation of associations between student enjoyment of distance education and the six scales of the DELES might have been more informative if class mean data were also captured so that so that satisfaction-environment associations could be explored at the class mean level. Likewise, the outcome of student enjoyment could be complemented by measures of additional cognitive and affective student outcomes. Further, the sample used for this study is not necessarily representative of any particular population. The sample would need to be better defined and associations further investigated in order to draw more confident and generalizable conclusions for use in distance education learning environments. Lastly, as in previous research, the correlational analyses used in my study do not establish a causal link between learning environment and student enjoyment. 4.5 CONCLUSION This chapter has presented the last of the three stages in the development and validation of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey—data analysis for a sample of 680 students. Principal component factor analysis was conducted to support the six-scale a priori structure of this psychosocial learning environment instrument. Fourteen (14) faulty items of an original 48 items were identified and removed. The faulty items that were removed either loaded below a 0.50 threshold in their own scale or above 0.50 on scales other than their own. The remaining 34 items in the six a priori scales accounted for a cumulative variance of 67.15%, with the scale of Student Interaction and Collaboration accounting for the highest variance of 14.31%. 98 Internal consistency reliability analysis was calculated using Chronbach’s alpha coefficient to identify to what extent the items within each scale measure the same construct as other items within their scale. Overall, the alpha coefficients of the six scales ranged from 0.75 to 0.94. The analyses of these data based on 680 field test responses supported the efficacy of a new learning environment survey instrument suitable for use in exploring post-secondary distance education environments. Also reported were simple and multiple correlation analyses of the associations between six distance education psychosocial learning environment scales and a dependent variable of student enjoyment of distance education. Similar to previous investigations of associations between student attitudes and learning environments, the simple correlation analysis (r) resulted in statistically significant (p<0.01) positive associations for all scales. In the case of the DELES, these correlations ranged from 0.12 to 0.31. When all other learning environment scales were mutually controlled, the standardized regression coefficients (β) identified five statistically significant independent associations ranging from 0.11 to 0.23, with the scale of Personal Relevance having the strongest association. The multiple correlation between student enjoyment and the set of DELES scales (R) was 0.46 and statistically significant. Questions about student satisfaction with distance education learning environments are important ones that have not been asked before. Too many ‘feel good’ distance education assumptions are made and must be substantiated. Practically speaking, in terms of the bottom line in many higher education policy rooms, student retention in distance education is a real concern. Researchers and practitioners must explore these associations further, not only for the sake of college and university fiscal standing, but also for the sake of developing distance education learning environments that support positive student attitudes. It follows that students who are satisfied with distance education are also likely to produce higher achievement outcomes, which is another crucial consideration in the ongoing development of high-quality distance education. Finally, the limitations acknowledged in this chapter include the fact that preliminary validation and reliability analyses for the DELES did not involve class mean data. 99 Perhaps future inclusion of a larger sample, that would permit validation and reliability analyses to be conducted between countries, would provide replication of the present findings, improve generalisability, and further support the DELES as a tool for assessing learning environments in distance education. Similarly, in the investigation of associations between student enjoyment and the six DELES scales, the use of class mean data could offer further insight. The investigation of associations between student outcomes and the learning environment could also be complemented by the inclusion of a range of cognitive and affective scales. Additionally, the broad sample could be narrowed and better defined for more salient and practical results in specific distance education settings. Chapter 5 includes an expanded discussion of my study’s limitations, as well as a discussion of future directions that one could take in learning environments research using the DELES. 100 Chapter 5 CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 INTRODUCTION Using a learning environment framework in research in distance education is relatively new within the fields of both learning environments and distance education. With rapid changes in technology and telecommunications, more post- secondary education institutions are conducting some form of education by distance. This study has developed a new learning environment instrument that allows researchers and practitioners to gain insights into the psychosocial environments in distance education classes—an uncharted territory. This chapter begins with a summary of my thesis in Section 5.2, with each chapter summarised. Section 5.3 addresses the major findings of my study, followed by Section 5.4 that describes three major contributions of my study. The constraints and limitations of my study are outlined in Section 5.5, whereas Section 5.6 sketches out recommendations for future research related to my study. 5.2 OVERVIEW OF THIS THESIS The first chapter of this thesis provides a general distance education and learning environments background, in addition to the aims and significance of this study. The look at distance education (Section 1.1) focuses on post-secondary distance education and continuing trends toward significant increases in this means of reaching student populations. I attempt to make the point that much distance education today is still based on a face-to-face, lecture-oriented model and that there is the need for re-thinking how we teach and how students learn in this mode on its own terms. I also point out that there is a prolific commoditisation of post-secondary distance education and strong considerations must be made in terms of quality so that universities and colleges do not become merely players in a business-driven education market. I also presented a brief introduction to psychosocial learning environments (Section 1.3) and an outline of the aims and significance of this study 101 (Sections 1.4 & 1.5). My study’s aims are 1) to develop and validate a new post- secondary distance education learning environment instrument and 2) to examine attitude-environment associations related specifically to distance education. Finally, I point out that this study is significant in three ways. First, in terms of distance education, this study expands on current and past distance education research. Second, in terms of contributing to knowledge regarding the maintenance of high- quality higher education it grounds distance education in thoughtful teaching- learning theory with respect to the social and psychological determinants and effects of the distance education learning environment. Third, it contributes to a bricolage of learning environments research, whereby distance education is studied on its own terms as a genuine alternative form of education, rather than as an add-on to traditional studies. Chapter 2 is a review of literature in four parts. It covers the 1) evolution of psychosocial environment research, 2) distance education research in general, 3) distance education psychosocial learning environments, and 4) student satisfaction. Section 2.2 takes into account the evolution of learning environments research by including elemental theories behind the study of psychosocial environments and by reviewing work that eventually led to the study of environments in educational settings. This includes a presentation and description of the ever-increasing body of learning environment instruments, as well as an examination of several lines of learning environments research. Section 2.3 outlines distance education research in general terms, followed by Section 2.4, which brings the two disciplines of learning environments and distance education together, beginning with a description of fragmented research on distance education learning environments found to date. Finally, Section 2.5 explores aspects of student satisfaction, especially in terms its value in post-secondary education and in ways in which it can be measured. Chapter 3 describes the methods that I used to develop and validate the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES). It also presents the categories of analysis (Section 3.2) and the method that I used for collecting data (Section 3.3). The approach I utilised was one consisting of three stages. Stage 1, consisting of four steps, was the identification and development of salient scales. New scales were developed based on the literature on high-quality distance education, while other 102 scales were modified from previous learning environments instruments (Section 3.5). Stage 2 consisted of three steps for writing individual survey items, both new items and those adapted from other learning environment instruments (Section 3.6). Stage 3 was a two-step process that consisted of field testing the new instrument and analysing the data (Section 3.7). Chapter 4 is a detailed expansion of the data analysis step in Stage 3 of the development of the DELES, as well as a statistical examination of associations between the dependent variable of students’ enjoyment of distance education and the psychosocial scales of the DELES. Validity and reliability analyses were conducted by means of factor analysis (Subsection 4.2.1), which supported the factorial validity of the DELES, and item analysis (Subsection 4.2.2), which verified the reliability of the DELES. Section 4.4 details the analyses used to identify enjoyment-environment associations and goes on to discuss the strongest and weakest associations, speculating on potential reasons for each. Chapter 4 is concluded with a look at previous outcome-environment research and limitations found in this study. 5.3 MAJOR FINDINGS The aims of this study were twofold. First, I set out to develop and validate a new learning environment instrument exclusively for use in post-secondary distance education learning situations. Second, I investigated associations between enjoyment of distance education and psychosocial factors related to distance education learning environments in order to identify which factors influence affective aspects of distance education as perceived by students. Each of these two aspects of my study are presented below. 5.3.1 Development and validation of a new learning environment instrument for post-secondary distance eduction The field-test version of the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES), along with an attitude scale of Enjoyment, were administered to a sample of distance education students via a form on the World Wide Web. The survey was administered over a four-month period, resulting in 680 responses. The data were 103 analysed to determine the validity and reliability of the instrument in terms of factor structure and internal consistency reliability. The six-scale a priori structure of the DELES was supported through principal component factor analysis. Fourteen faulty items of the original 48-item field test version were identified and removed. The faulty items that were removed either loaded below a 0.50 threshold in their own scale or above 0.50 on scales other than their own. The remaining 34 items accounted for a cumulative six-scale variance of 67.15%, with the scale of Student Interaction and Collaboration accounting for the highest proportion of variance (14.31%). Internal consistency reliability analysis (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient), used to identify the extent to which items within each scale measure the same construct as other items within their scale, ranged from 0.75 to 0.94. This analysis resulted in a new 34-item, six-scale learning environment survey suitable for exploring post- secondary distance education learning environments. 5.3.2 Investigation of associations between enjoyment of distance education and six psychosocial learning environment scales Simple correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to determine any associations between students’ perceptions of their distance education learning environment and their enjoyment of distance education. The simple correlation analysis resulted in statistically significant positive associations between all six DELES scales and the scale of student enjoyment of distance education. When all other psychosocial scales were mutually controlled, the scale of Personal Relevance stood out as having the strongest association with Enjoyment, suggesting that the extent to which there are opportunities for students to make connections between their out-of-class experiences and their in-class experiences has a significant link with their enjoyment of distance education. The second strongest outcome-environment association was between the scale of Authentic Learning and Enjoyment. Authentic learning, the extent to which students have the opportunity to solve real-world problems in class, has an association with 104 their attitude toward distance education. Closely following the Authentic Learning- Enjoyment association is the Student Interaction and Collaboration-Enjoyment association. The extent to which students have opportunities to interact with one another, exchange information, and engage in collaboration is related to students’ enjoyment of learning by distance education. At the opposite end of the outcome-environment spectrum was the Active Learning- Enjoyment association. Their was negligible association between the scale of Active Learning and students’ enjoyment of distance education. In other words, in my study, the extent to which students have the opportunity to take an active role in their learning has little bearing on their enjoyment of distance education. Given this information, it is safe to speculate that, with this population— predominantly graduate-level distance education students (72.6% of the field-test respondents were graduate-level students)—psychosocial aspects of instructional design of distance education courses should focus on personally-relevant learning. This should be closely followed by instructional activities that are as authentic as possible. And, the instruction should be designed to allow students to have ample opportunities for collaboration and interaction amongst themselves. 5.4 DISTINCTIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF MY STUDY My study has contributions to offer in at least three areas: 1) distance education research in general, 2) higher education studies, and 3) in learning environments research. First, in terms of distance education, this study supports the widely-held notion (Butler, 2001; Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996; Fahy, 2003; Frederick, Cannon, Umble, Steckler, & Shay, 2001; Golbeck & Sinagra, 2000; Hartley, 2000; Ho & Tabata, 2001; Levine, 2003; Morihara, 2001; Nader, 2001; Oren, Mioduser, & Machmias, 2002; Owen, 2000; Park-Kim, 2001; Zhu & McKnight, 2001) that student interaction and collaboration are noteworthy factors in high-quality distance learning. The scale of Student Interaction and Collaboration ranks in the top half of the positive outcomes-environment associations when all other scales are mutually controlled. While student interaction and collaboration are important, my study also suggests that interaction and collaboration amongst students is not an exclusive 105 element to creating high-quality distance education. Instructors and instructional designers seeking to develop high-quality distance education must look further than strategies for developing opportunities for student interaction and collaboration. My study suggests they must also lend strong credence to the extent to which they approach personal relevance for students and how authenticity is addressed in the instructional design of the distance education psychosocial learning environment. Second, in terms of contributions toward higher education studies, we can clearly see in my study that learning environment characteristics have positive associations with student satisfaction, which addresses recent calls for research into student satisfaction in distance education (Morgan & McKenzie, 2003). The DELES was developed without the pretence that distance education is add-on education, or somehow a secondary quality of education. It was designed with the notion in mind that distance education is a unique and alternative form of education. Given the information contained herein, we can see that if colleges and universities want post- secondary students to be satisfied with the way in which we aim to teach them and expect them to learn in this environment, we must then consider the role these psychosocial influences play on distance education learning environments. Likewise, not only has this study demonstrated that there is value in paying attention to the distance education learning environment, college and university educators now have an economical instrument they can use for measuring what is going in their distance education classes in terms of the six psychosocial scales contained within the DELES. In fact, given the nature of the ease in distribution of the DELES as a Web-based instrument, it has been gaining use, even during the writing of this thesis, to aid instructors in over 100 distance education classes to measure the psychosocial learning environments in their educational settings. Third, in terms of contributions toward the field of learning environments research, this new instrument is designed to consider altogether new learning environments. Although distance education is not chronologically new, there is certainly a recent proliferation and new widespread acceptance of it (Cookson, 2002), especially in higher education. Following this trend in the rapid expansion of distance education is this new instrument. Learning environment researchers and education practitioners 106 now have a new instrument with which they can measure that which goes on in our distance education classes. As a concrete demonstration of this contribution toward learning environment research, I should point out that I have already given permission in two cases for components of the DELES to be modified for use in other learning environments research—exactly the type of contribution research should make toward its own discipline. 5.5 CONSTRAINTS AND LIMITATIONS As with any research study there are potential flaws in design, data, and interpretation. In my study one consideration that must be taken into account is the fact that the one-sample design does not lend itself to cross-validation. And, as with other research on psychosocial environmental factors, it is constrained on the principle that the potential effect on any one scale depends upon the milieu in which the research is conducted (Moos, 2002), providing only limited quantitative generalisability by any one study. Further, given that my instrument was Web-based, the sample is not as well defined as it would be with conventional samples deliberately drawn from particular university courses. Regarding the validity and reliability of the scales, the newly developed scale of Active Learning, with its three items in the final version of the instrument, demonstrates validity and reliability based on factor and reliability analyses. However, given that this scale originally contained eight items in the field-test version of the instrument, it calls into question the true value of considering active learning in psychosocial learning environments studies in distance education. The validation of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES) is restricted by the notion that respondents were students with an affinity toward distance education. Those students who might demonstrate less of an attraction to distance education may have opted not to participate, leaving responses to those students with favourable opinions. Likewise, in terms of investigating outcome- environment associations, the same consideration may be true that only those students who enjoy distance education to begin with may have been the predominant 107 respondents, resulting in more positive outcome-environment associations than if all distance education students in a given population responded. Further related to outcome-environment associations is the consideration that the scale assessing student attitude is narrow and restricted to items related only to student enjoyment of the distance education environment. Attitudes toward distance education can be more comprehensively defined than just by enjoyment. An expansion on considerations toward student satisfaction is warranted in future studies. 5.6 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Distance education learning environments research is still in its initial stages. This study is distinctive because it contributes to the overall body of knowledge related to distance education, to studies of higher education, and to learning environments research in a new and emerging area. However, further studies related to these three areas needs to be continued. A larger, more targeted sample and capturing class data would be desirable in order to expand upon the generalisability of what I have reported in this initial development and validation. A cross-national study would be advantageous in order to introduce larger variation in learning environment perceptions and student attitudes. Also, a set of studies differentiating between undergraduate students and graduate students may shed light on differences in the perceptions of students seeking their first degree versus students seeking second or third university degrees. There are likely to be differences between these two categories of students and what distance education learning environment factors are most suitable for each. Additional studies could expand on the popular line of learning environment research of investigating outcome-environment associations and consider students’ cognitive achievement in terms of its association with the psychosocial scales validated in my study. Likewise, investigations between affective outcomes other than student enjoyment and psychosocial environment factors could be investigated 108 to address previously made calls for further research in distance education by others (Cookson, 2002; Morgan & McKenzie, 2003). It is also interesting to note that the scale of Student Interaction and Collaboration represents an active mode of learning for students. Participants in my study gave responses that indicated this scale is associated with their enjoyment of distance education. However, when students responded specifically to items in the scale of Active Learning, the results indicated no association with their enjoyment of distance education—an unexplained dichotomy that could stand further investigation, likely by qualitative methods. Further, the validation and reliability analyses, following previous learning environment research methods, were only conducted on data from the actual form of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES). An expanded study could be conducted using the same analyses of data from the preferred version and the instructor version in order to create a more holistically validated instrument. Finally, the structure of my six scale-DELES could be further supported and investigated by confirmatory factor analysis within a structural equation modelling framework, following a recent call for the need for such to determine the structural attributes of learning environment instruments (Dorman, in press). 5.7 CONCLUDING COMMENTS Research on psychosocial learning environments in distance education faces the dilemma that the environment itself has only ephemeral effects because it is quickly outmoded by the changes resulting from the introduction of new technology, thus the introduction of new ways of teaching and learning in this new learning environment. I support the notion that “This growth of online educational opportunities needs to be matched by a similar growth in educational research focused upon the learning environments created in the digital world” (Clayton, in press). 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Idrus Associate Professor Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia Rick Merritt, Ph.D. Manager of Technical Training/Adjunct Instructor Correspondent Services Corporation/UBS PaineWebber/University of Denver, USA Bonnie Morihara, Ph.D. Program Associate for Distance Learning Oregon University System, USA Martin Omukuba Monitoring and Evaluation Officer CARE International, Kenya 138 Carolyn C. Robertson, Ph.D. Director of Distance Learning Tarrant County College, USA John M. Slatin, Ph.D. Director, Institute for Technology and Learning University of Texas at Austin, USA Frank M. Slapar Adjunct Professor/Professor Emeritus California National University for Advanced Studies/Pittsburg State University, USA Arun Kumar Tripathi Research Assistant Telecooperation Research Group, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany ITEM REVIEW PANELLISTS Angela S. Burger Professor of Political Science University of Wisconsin Colleges, USA Susan M. Butler, Ph.D. Science Education North Carolina State University, USA Daph Crane Instructional Designer/Program Evaluator Bow Valley College, Calgary Alberta, Canada Fran Hunter Distance Learning Coordinator, College of Education Texas A&M University, USA Rozhan M. Idrus Associate Professor Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia Rick Merritt, Ph.D. Manager of Technical Training/Adjunct Instructor Correspondent Services Corporation/UBS PaineWebber/University of Denver, USA Carolyn C. Robertson, Ph.D. Director of Distance Learning Tarrant County College, USA 139 Frank M. Slapar Adjunct Professor/Professor Emeritus California National University for Advanced Studies/Pittsburgh State University, USA 140 Appendix B FINAL REVISED VERSION OF THE DISTANCE EDUCATION LEARNING ENVIRONMENT SURVEY (DELES) 141 142 143 Appendix C SATISFACTION SCALE OF ENJOYMENT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 144 14270_downloaded_stream_14270 14271_downloaded_stream_14271 14272_downloaded_stream_14272 14273_downloaded_stream_14273 14274_downloaded_stream_14274 14275_downloaded_stream_14275 14276_downloaded_stream_14276 14277_downloaded_stream_14277 14278_downloaded_stream_14278 14279_downloaded_stream_14279 
work_ipreolkkgnaufig4vfdikg35fi	----	The Study on the Development of Internet-based Distance Education and Problems Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 1876-6102 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Hainan University. doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2012.02.253 2012 International Conference on Future Electrical Power and Energy Systems The Study on the Development of Internet-based Distance Education and Problems Gao Guohonga,Li Ninga,Xiao Wenxianb,Wan Wenlongc aSchool of Information Engineer,Henan Institute of Science and Technology,Henan Xinxiang, China, e-mail:Sanyuerj03@126.com ,lining@hist.edu.cn bNetwork Center,Henan Institute of Science and Technology,Henan Xinxiang, China e-mail: Xwenx@yeah.net cForeign language department,Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Henan Xinxiang, China e-mail:wanwenlong@hist.edu.cn Abstract The modern Internet-based distance education is steadily moving forward, and has attracted more and more people’s attention and gradually showed strong development momentum. But some pressing problems also exist. Based on the current situation of the development of distance education in China, combining many years of experience and practice of investigation in distance education, the characteristics of the development of distance education are elaborated in the article, the importance of multimedia courseware in distance education is pointed out, and the problems existed in distance education and their perfecting countermeasures are particularly analyzed. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer] Keywords: Internet; distance education; problems; solutiot 1.Introduction With the spread of such information technology as computer networks, satellite communication network, cable television networks, people's ways of living and learning are undergoing profound changes[1]. Modern distance education established on the basis of computer networks is booming in China, which exerts an important impact on the development of modern educational technology, and this new way of education is worthy of our in-depth study and discussion. General speaking, the features of network distance education include multimedia teaching, interactive demonstration, interactive guidance, control of the keyboard, monitoring and remote control, classroom management, online examinations and so on. Compared with traditional classroom education, network distance education shows tremendous advantages with the features of the richness of its resources, sharing, interactivity and collaboration of teaching activities[1]. Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Hainan University. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Gao Guohong et al. / Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 1363 2.The characteristics of distance education 2.1.Openness The so-called “openness”, is the opening of the goal, namely the schools are open to learning objects; educational resources or teaching courses are open; educational methods or the ways of management are open; educational facilities and time are open. In distance education, it is different from traditional education in education and teaching system which pays more attention to the cultivation of innovation ability. With the premise of ensuring the educated having the basic ability of learning, a "lenient entry, stringent exit" approach is taken, and the checking of the education quality is not put at the entrance, but on exit; in teaching management, instead of taking the principle of survival of the fittest, on the basis of ensuring the quality of basic education, many educational opportunities are provided for people as many as possible; in educational methods, the working reality of serving staff with the different professional backgrounds and working hours must be considered; alternative education services should be provided, in particular, a variety of educational resources should be optimized and combined to serve for the educated[2]. 2.2.Flexibility Flexibility of distance education shows as follows: 1) It is able to meet the individual requirements of the educated, to give greater autonomy to the educated. The educated can learn in the way chosen by himself to improve learning efficiency, and therefore change the passive learning to active acceptance. In distance education, the educated is responsible for the individual learning progress; learning evaluation is to focus on the progress of learning rather than the success or failure of their examination results. The learning of the educated requires the cooperation of the educated with teachers in order that the content of the learning is in line with job requirements. The learning of the educated is mainly autonomic learning while the school is to provide more learning conditions and services. 2) Distance education has wide coverage, flexible means of communication, and educational resources and learning are free from the constraints of time and place, able to provide education services for the educated at any time, anywhere. 3) Distance education units can achieve various forms of cooperation of many higher education units, and complementary advantages, fully playing the role of tertiary education. 2.3.The popularity The advantages of the popularity is based on the first two ones: It is because of the openness of distance education, will it be possible to provide educational opportunities for the educated with the different basis and different experiences; at the same time, also due to the flexibility of distance education, it is possible for the educated with different backgrounds and different occupations to accept further education. Therefore, distance education has the characteristics of the popularity. 2.4.The sharing of social resource Using the Internet, distance education provides the learners with the greatest wealth of information, so that the learning is changed from the process of passively recording outside information into the process of learner’s selection of information[3]. From the material sense, e-learning breaks the constraints of time and space; it is not necessary for schools to arrange classrooms for students, not even the solution of the accommodation for the students, and the time and cost of the students using for transportation can also be 1364 Gao Guohong et al. / Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 greatly reduced. Teaching activities are out of geographic restrictions, and extend to country and the world, achieving the sharing and optimization of educational resources. In addition, because online learning information is in the form of an e-mail, a copy of the information is simple, rapid and economical, saving a lot of book costs. 3.The current problems in distance education At present, the whole distance education market is growing rapidly, and has great potential. However, distance education in China is still in development stage, if the distance education of open university system is not included, a real sense of distance education just started in 2000. So far, there are still many uncertainties about China's distance education, and the future direction of development is still in a process of trial. There are several major problems after analyzing: 3.1.Quality of courseware Distance education is taught through the medium of courseware. In the process of the courseware production, teachers provide static content, and the multimedia production staff digitalize it, which leads to the phenomenon that the one who is professional but does not understand technology, while the one who understands technology but is not professional. Therefore, how to improve instructional design and the quality of courseware is an important topic distance education faces. 3.2.Policy supports but the guidance direction is not sure In distance education, our current national policy is very loose. According to relevant regulations of the Ministry of Education, the pilot institutions can implement self-management, having autonomy in enrollment, issuance degree, deciding of assessment methods, deciding of the professional direction. Particularly, in professions, appropriate to relax the policy to distance education. Distance education can breakthrough in the restrictions of 253 professions for current students, as long as having the process of scientific evidence by experts[4]. However, in the way of promoting the development of distance education and future development direction, there are still disagreements within the field of education. The policies relating to distance education which have been issued gave the various experimental college considerable autonomy, but the power conflicts with the responsibilities of relevant environmental authority. In addition, some experts believe that the pilot institutions do not have too much, and having 15 of them are enough. So far, China's online education colleges are pilot institutions, exploring the future scientific mode of distance education in China through pilot projects. 3.3.The fund is enough while the talents are lack Most of the current distance education projects are carried out by means of the cooperation of schools and businesses. The companies are optimistic about the great development prospects of distance education in China, so they have invested abundant capital, technology in this market. Therefore, at present, the money is not the main factor for distance education[5]. At this stage, the biggest problem is the lack of talents. Distance education is a systematic project, which requires a combination of human and material resources from schools, businesses, society, a combination of traditional teaching methods and modern educational technology and a combination of education and teaching activities and business operation activities. It requires not only skilled professionals, but also management personnel who are familiar with teaching steps and the methods of business. Especially in the current period of initial development, more compound down-to-earth talents who have far-reaching vision are needed. But in fact, it is still lack of such comprehensive talents at present, which will have great impact on our future direction and the pace of development of distance education. Gao Guohong et al. / Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 1365 3.4.Lack of resources and duplication of similar projects Shortage of resources is currently a common problem in the education information industry in China, because of which so many schools have put into force to conduct the associated development and construction. But now they are each doing their own, often multiple schools and companies make courseware duplication, resulting in a large waste of resources. Meanwhile leading to uneven quality of software resources and some are directly applied to the traditional paper-based lesson plans, lack of vitality. These products will affect the teaching effect; lose the advantages of information technology education, which also affected the promotion of distance education. 4.The solutions to the problems of the development of distance education 4.1.Construction of multimedia distance learning hardware and software platform with computer network as the core To implement modern distance education, schools must first build the hardware platform of modern distance education, which mainly includes: configuring audio and video equipment, audio-visual classrooms, FM radio, computer and other media facilities, install satellite antennas, VBI and IP receiver equipment, set up applicable computer network, and launch a remote ATM video broadcast system, and increase the building of Internet technology -based distance education site. In the construction of multimedia distance teaching platform, software is the key. The software system of distance teaching includes system software and application software, the core of system software is operating system. With the support of the operating system, language processing, database and other system soft wares and video playback software, email delivery software and other application soft wares provide teachers and students with tools and services. In the process of building distance teaching software platform in the process, we should pay attention to one principle: simple and universal, and thus facilitate students’ access to learning resources. 4.2.Construction of Teaching Resources Distance education software, hardware platform in many schools has taken shape, while what lacks most is teaching resources, which is also the key whether distance education has the ability to obtain good results. The building of distance teaching resources not only requires substantial capital investment, and requires lots of manpower, especially the need for the persons who have both teaching experience and knowledge of software development. Such talents have been very lack, and at the same time because the school teaching routine must be conducted, the manpower which can be put into distance teaching is limited, so the independent development of all new distance learning resources are very difficult to afford, and it is not necessary[5]. Therefore, the current schools should be adapted to local conditions, better and more economical to build distance teaching resources. General speaking, should take the following main ways: The collection, transformation, integration of traditional teaching resources The early distance education accumulated a large number of texts, tapes, videos, pictures and other forms of resources. Through modern information technology they can be transformed and integrated into distance learning resources suitable for multimedia and computer networks teaching. The collection of sharing resources Many shared resources online are completely free, or free of charge within the specified time, or are free in a certain function. We can gather a variety of free sharing resources through various channels to enrich distance teaching resource library. Purchase or exchange of multimedia network resources 1366 Gao Guohong et al. / Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 If the required teaching resources are more mature, and the development is diseconomic, or unable to develop, you can buy them. Some teaching resources can be obtained by way of exchange, then save money and simplify matters, and can share resources with others. The new development of resources such as electronic lesson plans and online courseware Some teaching content is not readily available, and the only way is to positively develop. There are many forms to develop resources; generally it should choose their own development, the development by commission or cooperative development based on specific circumstances. The reusability, portability and platform independence of learning resources and comprehension, diversity, simple operation and interaction of content should be achieved. 4.3.Strengthen the training of teachers to improve the level of modern distance education In distance teaching, teaching center is changing from the "teaching" of the teachers in the traditional teaching into a student's "learning", students becoming the subject of teaching. But the leading role of teachers in teaching is still very important, and without the leading role of teachers, teaching is also difficult to carry out. Therefore, when building teaching platform and teaching resources, it should also enhance the training of teachers’ quality in the teaching environment. This mainly refers to the required qualities teachers possess in distance education, which includes: The establishment of new teaching ideas and concepts, and the active exploration of new teaching methods For many teachers, particularly older teachers have become accustomed to the traditional classroom teaching, and also accumulated a wealth of teaching experience in this respect. In the face of online distance teaching, they do not adapt to this new teaching environment first from teaching ideas and concepts. They will be excluded from new teaching methods in the psychology, still using traditional teaching methods to make it difficult to raise the quality of distance education. Therefore, the training of teachers should be strengthened to enhance their understanding of distance education, help them change educational ideas, face the new teaching environment with a positive attitude and explore new teaching methods. The master of the basic knowledge and basic skills in distance teaching To fully play a leading role in distance education, teachers should not only update the concepts of education, but also master the basic knowledge and basic skills of online distance teaching, which mainly include: computer basics, multimedia teaching theory, the making of multimedia courseware, basic network knowledge. 4.4.Focus on students’ ability to access to online teaching resources and master the learning method of distance education Modern distance education resource is supported by modern information technology, which is an important tool and method achieved by open students. Students should be comfortable to accept distance education, master the basic knowledge and skills of online distance learning, which include: the using of the basics of computer, basic operation of Windows, browsing Web pages on the Internet, able to participate in BBS discussion, able to download the file, able to send and receive E-Mail and able to demand multi-media courseware. If students participating in distance education do not have the necessary knowledge of modern information about computer networks, even if whatever rich teaching resources, modern distance education will not succeed. Therefore, the top priority of making modern distance education successful is to carry out the education and training of modern information technology, to cultivate the students’ learning self-government capacity access to modern teaching resources. 4.5.Strengthens the teaching reform and builds teaching quality assurance system The reform of teaching materials Gao Guohong et al. / Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 1367 The traditional materials are paper-made, and relatively old, basically for face to face classroom teaching. In order to adapt to different levels of individual learning needs, a variety of media materials must be prepared. At the same time of the preparation of the new textbooks, more efforts should be spent on the design of digital materials based on computer network teaching. An important principle reflected in teaching materials is: to guide students, and how to get other related materials, learning resources and how to get counseling should be introduced in the teaching materials. The reform of teaching forms The aims of modern open education are anyone can get any course of education at any time and place, but the knowledge level, learning time, learning sites of students in distance education are not uniform, so in the organization of teaching, the teaching organization of individual learning as a center, and supplemented by collective teaching is generally used. The collective learning is mainly group learning- based. Broaden the educational ideas The school running in the past is mostly the running path of independence. Because personnel, finance, and material of individual school are limited, so professional-caliber of running school and school size are affected. Adopting such full range of school running as taking joint schools can not only complement each other, share resources, but also expand the size of school, and improve operating efficiency. 4) Reform teaching management and achieve the modernization of management methods of teaching The achievement of the modernization of teaching management mainly starts from the reform of administration contacts management and the strengthening of curriculum management, and establish a scientific integrate question bank and the scoring system, enabling assessment computerized. Computer scoring is fast and accurate, and can step on the questions for analysis to find some defective title, to improve test reliability and validity. The results of computer scoring can result in timely importing into line query system to facilitate the opening up students in timely cross-probing. The education departments at all levels should attach great importance to support the development of distance education The key of whether a new thing can healthily develop lies in the attention and support of government. Despite our distance education to a large extent is taking the road of the market, but in many respects still needs the support and coordination of relevant government departments. The awareness of distance education of the leading cadres, determines its degree of support for distance education, but also determines whether distance education can rapidly develop. This requires that the leading cadres should have ideas of modern education and advance awareness, regularly participate in the training about the knowledge of modern education, improve awareness, emancipate their minds and change their ideas. Attach importance to the whole society, the rapidly growing popularity of distance education can be. 5.Conclusion In short, Internet-based distance education is a sunrise industry, with full development potential. Distance education in china will be continuous, rapid development in the coming years. We should use our advantage of specialized courses of computer, as well as the advantage of teacher profession, to produce more and better courseware and related software in network distance education, and do our best to make due contributions to the cause of distance education in China, making distance education in our country develop along the vigorous and healthy path and making modern means of education benefit millions of students and the vast majority of the educated. References [1] GUO Chun-cai,Remark on the New Development of Mordern Distance Education, Journal of Educational Science of Hunan Normal University,2010(01) [2] DONG Shi-long; DONG Jun-min; XUE Hui,The reflections on the assurance of quality guarantee system in the modern distance education, Journal of Hubei Radio & Television University,2009(02) 1368 Gao Guohong et al. / Energy Procedia 17 ( 2012 ) 1362 – 1368 [3] Xie Yangbin; Sang Xinmin,Learning Assessment and Resource Evaluation:Two Tough Battles of Distance Education, Modern Distance Education Research, 2010(07) [4] Gai Xiaochun Wang Li Jiang Fuchen ,The Construction and Development of Extramural Learning Centers in Modern Long-distance Education, Journal of Northeast Agricultural University(Social Science Edition, 2010(03) [5] SU Hong,An Overview of Tutor Training and a Case Study, Journal of Guangzhou Radio & TV University, 2008(01) 
work_iq7vsvbsmbeyrd3fyg2hxdjckm	----	Impact of distance education via interactive videoconferencing on students’ course performance and satisfaction HOW WE TEACH Generalizable Education Research Impact of distance education via interactive videoconferencing on students’ course performance and satisfaction Olga M. Klibanov,1 Christian Dolder,2 Kevin Anderson,1 Heather A. Kehr,1 and J. Andrew Woods1 1School of Pharmacy, Wingate University, Wingate, North Carolina; and 2Veterans Affairs Northern California Healthcare System, Mather, California Submitted 19 July 2016; accepted in final form 9 November 2017 Klibanov OM, Dolder C, Anderson K, Kehr HA, Woods JA. Impact of distance education via interactive videoconferencing on students’ course performance and satisfaction. Adv Physiol Educ 42: 21–25, 2018; doi:10.1152/advan.00113.2016.—The impact of dis- tance education via interactive videoconferencing on pharmacy stu- dents’ performance in a course was assessed after implementation of a distance campus. Students filled out a “Student Demographic Sur- vey” and a “Precourse Knowledge Assessment” at the start of the course and a “Postcourse Knowledge Assessment” and a “Postcourse Student Perceptions Survey” at the end of the course. The primary end point, a comparison of course grades (%) between the main and distance campuses, was examined using the two-sample t-test. We examined the relationships among demographics, campus location, course grades, grade point average, pre- and postcourse knowledge assessments, and postcourse perceptions as our secondary end points with parametric and nonparametric tests. Data from 93 students were included in the analysis [main campus (n � 81); distance campus (n � 12)]. Students on the main campus achieved a significantly higher final course grade (87 vs. 81%; P � 0.02). Scores on the Postcourse Knowledge Assessment were also significantly higher compared with those of students on the distance education campus (77 vs. 68%; P � 0.04). Students on both campuses reported self- perceived improvement in their knowledge base regarding various aspects of infectious diseases. Compared with the students on the distance campus, those on the main campus were more likely to subjectively perceive that they had succeeded in the course (P � 0.04). Our study suggests that students on the main campus achieved a higher final course grade and were more likely to feel that they had succeeded in the course. Students on both campuses reported im- provement in knowledge. distance campus; distance education; distance learning; interactive videoconferencing INTRODUCTION The advancements of technology have led to many academic institutions offering distance-learning opportunities to stu- dents. Distance education can be categorized as either synchro- nous or asynchronous. Synchronous technology allows for “live” interaction between the instructor and the students (e.g., audioconferencing, videoconferencing, web chats). Asynchro- nous technology involves significant delays in time between instruction and its receipt (e.g., E-mail, earlier video recording, discussion forums) (4). Limited data are available regarding the overall success of distance-learning programs within a Doctor of Pharmacy pro- gram. Several studies performed at schools of pharmacy in the United States suggest that teaching via interactive videocon- ferencing (IVC) to students on a satellite campus did not adversely affect students’ academic performance (3, 7–10). One study suggested that, although students’ performance in the course was not affected, instructors’ teaching performance was rated lower by students on the satellite campus (3). Two meta-analyses have evaluated distance learning in nonphar- macy disciplines and have found that student satisfaction and performance are minimally affected by the distance-learning setting (1, 2). A satellite campus was opened at the Wingate University School of Pharmacy in the Fall of 2011 and is located 140 miles from the main campus. There is a dedicated building for the pharmacy school on the distance campus, with electronics- enabled classrooms, laboratory space, meeting rooms, and faculty offices. In addition to full-time administrative and computer information technology (IT) support staff, the dis- tance campus comprises ~6 full-time faculty members, com- pared with ~24 full-time faculty members on the main campus. Synchronous technology utilizing IVC is the main method of delivering course content to the satellite campus. The main purpose of our exploratory study was to evaluate whether distance education via IVC had an impact on phar- macy students’ performance in an Infectious Diseases Pharma- cotherapy course and to assess students’ perceptions and sat- isfaction with the course. MATERIALS AND METHODS Experimental design. Based on previously published recommenda- tions regarding opening a satellite campus (4, 6), faculty implemented changes to their courses to build relationships with the distance students, to promote distance students’ engagement during class, and to ensure consistency across sites. Changes included a day- long visit to the distance campus in the middle of the course, directing questions to the distance site and/or specific student at the site (instead of asking a question to the class at large), making all class materials available online to all students 48 h before class, and posting all grades simultaneously to all students enrolled in the course. Technical assistance and training are also instrumental when distance campuses are being developed (1) and were imple- mented at our program, with an increase in IT staff on the main campus, hiring of IT staff on the distance campus, and faculty development programs on delivering courses via IVC. Participants in this study were second-year students enrolled in the Infectious Diseases Pharmacotherapy course, as part of their 4-yr Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: O. M. Klibanov, School of Pharmacy, Wingate University, 515 N. Main Street, Wingate, NC 28173 (e-mail: o.klibanov@wingate.edu). Adv Physiol Educ 42: 21–25, 2018; doi:10.1152/advan.00113.2016. 211043-4046/18 Copyright © 2018 The American Physiological Society Downloaded from journals.physiology.org/journal/advances at Carnegie Mellon Univ (128.182.081.034) on April 5, 2021. http://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00113.2016 mailto:o.klibanov@wingate.edu doctoral degree Pharmacy program. Infectious Diseases Pharmaco- therapy at our institution is a 3-semester-hour class and meets 3 times/week (75 min/class period), for 10 consecutive wk in the Spring semester. The course was team-taught by three main campus phar- macy faculty members. The course format was mainly didactic, with patient cases incorporated throughout the lecture to engage students in a discussion and to enhance learning of the material. There were three exams in the course: exams 1 and 2 carried a weight of 30% of course grade, and the final exam carried a weight of 40% of the final course grade. Course materials used for both campuses were identical, and delivery of material was simultaneous (synchronous) via IVC. On the first day of class, all students enrolled in the course were asked to complete a “Student Demographic Survey” and a “Precourse Knowledge Assessment.” The Student Demographic Survey was composed of six questions regarding the students’ demographics, prior education level, work experience in the field of pharmacy, and five Likert-scale questions regarding their self-perceived baseline comfort level with microbiology and antibiotics. The Precourse Knowledge Assessment consisted of 20 multiple choice questions that evaluated the students’ basic knowledge of microbiology. The stu- dents’ performance on this assessment did not factor into the overall course grade. On the last day of class, the students were asked to complete another survey and an assessment. The “Postcourse Student Percep- tions Survey” included six questions regarding their satisfaction with the course, their self-perceived performance, and change in knowl- edge base. The “Postcourse Knowledge Assessment” had 40 multiple choice questions, which included the same 20 questions from the first day of class assessment and 20 new questions on topics taught in the course. The students’ performance on this assessment did not factor into the overall course grade. Completion of surveys and assessments were voluntary. Results of the surveys, assessments, as well as overall course grades were recorded, separated by campus, and blinded to the researchers before analysis. All procedures were approved by the institutional review board. Statistical analysis. The primary endpoint of this study was to assess whether distance education via IVC had an impact on final Infectious Diseases Pharmacotherapy course grades. Secondary end- points were to assess whether distance education via IVC had an impact on the students’ grade point average (GPA) at the end of their second year of pharmacy school, the Postcourse Knowledge Assess- ment scores, and perceived improvement in knowledge and course satisfaction (assessed with the Postcourse Student Perceptions Sur- vey). Baseline characteristics between the two campuses were evalu- ated using the two-sample t-test for continuous variables (i.e., age) and �2 analysis for nominal data (i.e., sex, prior educational background, prior microbiology background, practical antibiotic experience). Fisher’s exact test was used for comparisons of nominal data with small cell sizes. The primary outcome was examined using the two-sample t-test. Secondary outcomes investigating the relationships among demo- graphics, educational and practical background, pre- and postclass surveys, course grades, test scores, end-of-semester GPA, and campus location were assessed via a variety of statistical tests, as appropriate. Pre- and Postcourse Knowledge Assessment scores between cam- puses were analyzed via two-sample t-tests. GPA data between campuses were also examined using two-sample t-tests. Investigating possible relationships between demographic variables and academic performance was undertaken using Pearson correlation and ANOVA (with Tukey’s post hoc tests as necessary). The Kruskal-Wallis test was used when comparing the campuses on items from the Student Perceptions surveys, and the Wilcoxon-signed rank test was employed when examining Student Perceptions surveys within a campus loca- tion. Due to the difference in sample size between the two campuses, separate variance tests were used for all analyses involving t-tests. For all inferential statistics, significance was set at �0.05. RESULTS A total of 108 students were enrolled in the Spring 2014 course: 92 on the main campus and 16 on the distance campus. Only data from the students who completed the surveys and assessments from the first and last day of class were included in the analysis (81/92 (88%) students on the main campus; 12/16 (75%) of students on the distance campus). Student baseline demographics were similar between the two groups, with the majority of students being female and having 4 yr or more of college education (Table 1). Our results showed that students on the distance campus had significantly lower overall course grades compared with students on the main campus (81.5 vs. 86.9%; P � 0.02) (Table 2). Despite Table 1. Student baseline demographics Variable Main Campus Distance Campus P Value n 81 12 Age, mean (SD), yr 25 (2) 28 (5) 0.12 Sex, n (%) 0.52 Women 46 (57) 8 (67) Men 35 (43) 4 (33) Education level before pharmacy school, n (%) 1.00 2 yr of undergraduate coursework 23 (28) 5 (42) 4 yr of undergraduate coursework 43 (53) 6 (50) Graduate degree 3 (4) 1 (8) Other 12 (15) 0 Prior background in microbiology, infectious diseases, antimicrobials, n (%) 1.00 No background 1 (1) 0 1 College-level course 65 (80) 12 (100) �1 College-level course 15 (19) 0 Other 1 (1) 0 Practical experience in preparing/dispensing antibiotics, n (%) 0.89 None 30 (37) 5 (42) �1 yr 27 (33) 5 (42) 1–2 yr 17 (21) 1 (8) �2 yr 8 (9) 1 (8) Values are means (SD) or n (%); n, no. of students. Note: percentage numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number. 22 IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00113.2016 • http://advan.physiology.org Downloaded from journals.physiology.org/journal/advances at Carnegie Mellon Univ (128.182.081.034) on April 5, 2021. having similar assessment scores regarding basic microbiology on the first day of class, students on the distance campus had significantly lower Postcourse Knowledge Assessment scores on the last day of class, as well as lower pharmacy school GPA at the end of the semester, although the GPA difference did not reach statistical significance (Table 2). Evaluation of Postcourse Student Perceptions Survey re- sults suggests that students on both campuses felt that they had significant improvements in their knowledge of infec- tious diseases and antimicrobials on the last day of class compared with the first day of class (Fig. 1). A comparison of perceptions between students on the two campuses showed that students on the main campus felt significantly more confident in their ability to identify the causative organism of an infection and to appropriately counsel a patient on antibiotics (Fig. 1). Postcourse Student Perceptions Survey results showed some disparities between the different campuses and their satisfac- tion with the overall course structure. Whereas students on both campuses felt that the number of patient cases and active-learning activities was sufficient to enhance their learn- ing of the material, students on the main campus were more likely to be satisfied with the amount of credit hours and duration of the course (P � 0.001) and were more likely to have an overall feeling of success in the course compared with students on the distance campus (P � 0.04). DISCUSSION Distance education is becoming an increasingly popular method of teaching in higher learning institutions, including health education. A satellite campus opened at our school of pharmacy in 2011, but no formal evaluation has been per- formed to compare the performance of students at the two campuses in the Infectious Diseases Pharmacotherapy course. Our study had three main findings. The overall course grades were statistically significantly lower in the group of students on the distance campus compared with the students on the main campus. Students on both campuses perceived significant im- provements in their knowledge of antimicrobial and various infections. Students on both campuses were generally satisfied with the course, although main campus students were more Table 2. Course grades, Pre- and Postcourse Knowledge Assessment scores, and GPAs End Point Main Campus (n � 81) Distance Campus (n � 12) Mean Difference (95% CI) P Value Primary end point Course grade, % 86.9 (7.1) 81.5 (9.5) �5.4 (�10.0 to �0.8) 0.02 Secondary end points Precourse Knowledge Assessment score, % 65 (10) 60 (13) �4.3 (�10.9 to 2.2) 0.19 Postcourse Knowledge Assessment score, % 76.7 (9.7) 68.3 (12.1) �8.4 (�16.3 to �0.5) 0.04 Pharmacy school GPA, end of second year 3.4 (0.4) 3.2 (0.4) �0.2 (�0.47 to 0.00) 0.05 Values are means (SD); n, no. of students. CI, confidence interval. Pre-Course Main Pre-Course Distance Post-Course Main Post-Course Distance Fig. 1. Pre- and Postcourse Student Perceptions Survey results (scale: 1 � completely disagree; 5 � completely agree). Q1: When given the name of an organism, I can correctly state whether it’s a gram-positive, gram-negative, anaerobic, or fungal organism. Q2: When given the name of an antibiotic, I can correctly state which class of antibiotics it belongs to. Q3: When given a name of an infection, I can correctly state which organism is likely causing it. Q4: When given a name of an antibiotic, I can correctly state its spectrum of antimicrobial activity. Q5: When given a name of an antibiotic, I feel comfortable that I can counsel a patient correctly on the important side effects and monitoring parameters with that drug. aP � 0.001: main campus postcourse mean score vs. main campus precourse mean score. dP � 0.005 and fP � 0.05: main campus postcourse mean score vs. distance campus postcourse mean score. bP � 0.003, cP � 0.004, and eP � 0.002: distance campus postcourse mean score vs. distance campus precourse mean score. 23IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00113.2016 • http://advan.physiology.org Downloaded from journals.physiology.org/journal/advances at Carnegie Mellon Univ (128.182.081.034) on April 5, 2021. likely to feel that they succeeded in the course and to have favorable feelings about the amount of credit hours and dura- tion of the course. The results from our small study were surprising, especially since course materials used for both campuses were identical, and delivery of material was synchronous. The main difference in the delivery of course material was the location of the instructor on the main campus. Although a satellite campus was opened in 2011 at our school, this course is taught in the spring of the second year of pharmacy school. Therefore, one hypothesis for the lower course grades on the satellite campus in Spring 2014 could be that this was only the second time this course was taught using IVC, and the main campus faculty were still relatively inexperienced at relaying the information to the students on the satellite campus effectively. Although faculty were always available to answer any students’ ques- tions via email and phone, perhaps the availability of faculty on the main campus made the students on the main campus more comfortable asking questions regarding the course material during face-to-face encounters, either before/after class or during faculty members’ office hours. Another hypothesis for lower course grades on the satel- lite campus revolves around baseline demographics related to students’ prior practical experience in preparing/dispens- ing antibiotics. Twice as many students on the main campus had more than 1 yr of practical experience with antibiotics compared with students on the satellite campus (30 vs. 16%). Although we did not see any statistically significant differences in any of the baseline characteristics, our sample size was small. The findings of our exploratory study contradict those that have been reported in the majority of studies from other schools of pharmacy with a satellite campus, albeit none of the published studies were performed in an Infectious Diseases Pharmacotherapy course. Analyses from four different school of pharmacy have pre- viously shown that students’ performance in the pharmacy curriculum (examination scores, course grades, GPA) was not adversely affected by distance education (3, 7–10). It should be noted that these studies were not uniform in their design and had some notable differences from our report. Most were performed over 15 yr ago, when technology was not as ad- vanced as it is today (3, 7, 8, 10). Published trials either had much smaller (3, 10) or larger (8, 9) class sizes, and two of the studies had more than one distance campus (7, 8). A 2004 meta-analysis of 39 nonpharmacy school-related studies found that, on average, there was a small improvement in perfor- mance (test scores, grades) for the distance education courses (2). Course content made a difference, with natural sciences and education courses having no effect, military-related in- struction showing lower course performance, and foreign lan- guage instruction demonstrating superior performance when distance education was instituted (2). Results from a study performed in a Clinical Pharmacoki- netics course at the West Virginia University School of Phar- macy did mirror our results. The study found that students on the satellite campus, receiving instruction via IVC, had statis- tically significantly lower final course grade compared with the students on the main campus receiving “live” instruction (87.8 vs. 90.7%; P � 0.02), although the authors concluded that all students performed well overall, despite the statistical differ- ence (5). Our study has several important limitations. We did not include end-of-semester course and instructor evaluation re- sults; this information would have been very useful in com- paring distance students’ satisfaction with the course and instructor and relating our data to the other published studies in this field. Our study had a small sample size and included data only from one course and one semester. It would be interesting to see how the results from this course compare with the results from other courses in our program and from subsequent years, as the distance campus became more established and faculty got more experience with teaching via IVC. Our survey data are subjective and may not be reproducible or applicable to other groups of students. Outdated publications in the field of IVC distance pharmacy education make it challenging to apply our study results to experiences at other institutions. As distance campuses become more common in higher education, data regarding students’ performance in the classroom and satisfaction with this type of learning should be collected in a prospective, longitudinal manner. Conclusion. In contrast to the results of the majority of studies performed at schools of pharmacy with distance cam- puses, our study showed that, in the Infectious Diseases Phar- macotherapy course in the Spring 2014 semester, the overall course grades were lower in the group of students on the distance campus compared with the students on the main campus. Mirroring the final course grades, subjective survey results showed that distance students were less likely to feel that they succeeded in the course. DISCLOSURES No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the authors. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS O.M.K. and K.A. performed experiments; O.M.K. and C.D. analyzed data; O.M.K., K.A., H.A.K., and J.A.W. interpreted results of experiments; O.M.K. prepared figures; O.M.K. and C.D. drafted manuscript; O.M.K., C.D., H.A.K., and J.A.W. edited and revised manuscript; O.M.K. approved final version of manuscript. REFERENCES 1. Allen M, Bourhis J, Burrell N, Mabry E. Comparing student satisfaction with distance education to traditional classrooms in higher education: A meta-analysis. Am J Distance Educ 16: 83–97, 2002. doi:10.1207/ S15389286AJDE1602_3. 2. Allen M, Mabry E, Mattrey M, Bourhis J, Titsworth S, Burrell N. Evaluating the effectiveness of distance learning: A comparison using meta�analysis. J Commun 54: 402– 420, 2004. doi:10.1111/j.1460- 2466.2004.tb02636.x. 3. Chisholm MA, Miller AW, Spruill WJ, Cobb HH, Reinhardt BO, Terry AV, Leese L, Wade WE. Influence of interactive videoconferenc- ing on the performance of pharmacy students and instructors. 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Distance education: using compressed interactive video technology for an entry-level Doctor of 24 IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Advances in Physiology Education • doi:10.1152/advan.00113.2016 • http://advan.physiology.org Downloaded from journals.physiology.org/journal/advances at Carnegie Mellon Univ (128.182.081.034) on April 5, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1602_3 https://doi.org/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1602_3 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2004.tb02636.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2004.tb02636.x https://doi.org/10.5688/aj640207 https://doi.org/10.5688/aj670394 https://doi.org/10.5688/aj670394 https://doi.org/10.5688/aj700110 Pharmacy Program. Am J Pharm Educ 67: 118, 2003. doi:10.5688/ aj6704118. 7. MacLaughlin EJ, Supernaw RB, Howard KA. Impact of distance learning using videoconferencing technology on student performance. Am J Pharm Educ 68: 58, 2004. doi:10.5688/aj680358. 8. Ried LD, McKenzie M. 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work_irrppzh6z5ff5h5n6ajja4zvfe	----	Microsoft Word - applsci-1065455.docx         Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11031214  www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci  Article  Improving Technological Infrastructure of Distance Education  through Trustworthy Platform‐Independent Virtual Software  Application Pools  Atilla Ergüzen 1, Erdal Erdal 1,*, Mahmut Ünver 2 and Ahmet Özcan 1  1  Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Kırıkkale University,    Kırıkkale 71450, Turkey; atilla@kku.edu.tr (A.E.); aozcan@kku.edu.tr (A.Ö.)  2  Department of Computer Programming, Kırıkkale Vocational School, Kırıkkale University,    Kırıkkale 71450, Turkey; munver@kku.edu.tr  *  Correspondence: erdalerdal@kku.edu.tr; Tel.: +90‐318‐357‐4242‐1549  Abstract: Distance education (DE), which has evolved under the wings of information technologies  in the last decade, has become a fundamental part of our modern education system. DE has not only  replaced the traditional education method as in social sciences and lifelong learning opportunities  but also has significantly strengthened traditional education in mathematics, science, and engineer‐ ing fields that require practical and intensive study. However, it is deprived of supporting some key  elements found in traditional educational approaches such as (i) modern computer laboratories with  installed special software suitable for the student’s field of interest; (ii) adequate staff for mainte‐ nance and proper functioning of laboratories; (iii) face‐to‐face technical support; (iv) license fees.  For students to overcome these shortcomings, a virtual application pool is needed where they can  easily access all the necessary applications via remote access. This research aims to develop a plat‐ form‐independent virtual laboratory environment for DE students. This article has been developed  specifically to guide DE institutions and to make a positive contribution to the literature. Technol‐ ogy Acceptance Model (TAM) has been used to explain student behaviors. It was concluded that  students using the platform performed more successful grades (12.89%) on laboratory assessments  and that the students using the developed platform were found to be more satisfied with the edu‐ cation process.  Keywords: education; engineering education; laboratory; distance learning    1. Introduction  With the rapid developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT)  and internet usage over the last decade, significant changes have occurred in every aspect  of people’s lives [1]. The contribution of the internet to these developments is undoubt‐ edly very important. Thanks to these technological developments and the changes, it has  been possible to access the internet cheaper than in the past [2]. The use of the internet has  become widespread and has begun to affect people in all aspects. According to the Turk‐ ish Statistical Institute (TSI), 76.3% of households in Turkey had internet access in 2016.  When the ratio of the number of mobile phone population in Turkey is considered, 96.9%  of people were found to have a mobile phone. In total, 65.2% of people with the internet  connection at home prefer smartphones and tablets for daily routines, such as surfing,  sending e‐mails, connecting to news sites, and social networks [3].  Although computers have been used very often, nowadays this situation has com‐ pletely changed; mobile devices, smartphones, and tablets have become widespread and  Citation: Ergüzen, A.; Erdal, E.;    Ünver, M.; Özcan, A. Improving  Technological Infrastructure of    Distance Education through Trust‐ worthy Platform‐Independent    Virtual Software Application Pools.  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214. https://  doi.org/10.3390/app11031214  Received: 21 December 2020  Accepted: 21 January 2021  Published: 28 January 2021  Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu‐ tral with regard to jurisdictional  claims in published maps and insti‐ tutional affiliations.    Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.  Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.  This article is an open access article  distributed under the terms and con‐ ditions of the Creative Commons At‐ tribution (CC BY) license (http://cre‐ ativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  2  of  17    indispensable. Tablets or tablet computers are small independent mobile computers that  house a thin LCD monitor and provide data entry and data control via this screen. They  are usually preferred for their powerful hardware, portable dimensions, internet connec‐ tions, and all the other functions they have. These critical innovations have also affected  the policies of the countries, in this way, Increasing Opportunities and Improving Tech‐ nology (IOIT) Project was launched in 2016 in Turkey. This project aims to provide the  best education for each student, to reach the best quality education contents, and to pro‐ vide equality of opportunity in education so it is reported that 10600000 tablets will be  distributed by the Ministry of National Education within the period of the next 4 years  [4]. Table 1 shows the device sales worldwide in recent years and the number of devices  expected to take place in the following years. Demand and sales of mobile devices that  take place in Turkey show similarities with the numbers worldwide [5].  Table 1. Worldwide device shipments by device type, 2016‐2019 (millions of units) [5].  Device Type  2016  2017  2018  2019  Traditional PCs (desk‐based and notebook)  220  204  195  188  Ultra‐mobiles (premium)  50  59  70  80  Total PC market  270  263  265  269  Ultra‐mobiles (basic and utility)  169  162  161  160  Computing devices market  439  425  426  429  Mobile phones  1893  1882  1926  1932  Total devices market  2332  2307  2352  2361  Consequently, a critical question arises regarding how mobile devices will affect peo‐ ple’s habits, lifestyles, and educational concepts. Today, students use their smartphones  and tablets at all stages of their education, regardless of class or age. Distance education  (DE) has become a phenomenon worldwide, with universities offering distance learning  programs in the light of the developments that have changed people’s lifestyles and tech‐ nology infrastructure, and it has become possible for people to study more than one field  without the time and space limitation [6,7].  DE is a virtual educational approach in which it accommodates multiple training  models. DE provides more flexible lecture management models that are based on syn‐ chronous or asynchronous courses. There is also a lot of work in the literature to attract  the attention of the learners and to make DE more interactive. A distance educational ap‐ proach is preferred where the traditional teaching and learning methods are inadequate  or inappropriate. The distance, capacity, and educational deficiencies found in the tradi‐ tional education model can be overcome with  the DE model. Especially,  in countries  where economic opportunities and cross‐cultural understanding are limited, a distance  educational approach could be a good choice for economic solutions and online cross‐ cultural learning activities also [6–8].  Traditional DE has been adopted as an attractive and preferred method of education  all over the world. In each educational year, the number of students who attend the DE  model increases by 5% approximately. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  has reached more than 200 million page clicks on 2300 different distance learning courses  in the 2016/2017 academic year [9]. A total of 360,000 foreign students are studying at  Harvard University in this way [10]. All these indications are that the distance learning  method is accepted by prominent universities and that it will be a future phenomenon in  the field of education.  Just as in the world, Turkey is also impressed by this trend and DE has started to  become popular. As of 2013, over 60 academic departments via DE in Turkey are provided  by universities at undergraduate and graduate levels. All these opportunities have facili‐ tated to access the desired educational environment, so this increasing demand leads to  an e‐learning sector in Turkey. This sector is expected to exceed USD 240 billion between  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  3  of  17    2016 and 2023 with an annual growth rate of 5% nearly while the world is USD 164 billion  in 2015 [11].  Despite all these benefits and advantages, in some areas where DE is applied, it lacks  some of the basic supporting elements found in formal education. The applicability of DE  is not especially productive in fields were specially designed large‐scale application soft‐ ware or laboratory environment practice is a mandatory requirement in engineering edu‐ cation. There are virtual or remote laboratory designs that are proven to be very versatile  and valuable especially for the students in Science, Technology, and Engineering (STE)  fields which is a necessity to develop laboratory exercises to supplement the theoretical  lectures. Additionally, there are studies in the literature, which are developed based on a  specific  lecture  in  different  fields  [12,13].  These  laboratories  have  the  following  ad‐ vantages [12]:   Usability: laboratories can be accessed at anytime from anywhere.   Observability: laboratories can be monitored and recorded by more than one person.   Accessibility: laboratories can also be used by people with disabilities.   Safety: dangerous experiments can be done safely.  However, the benefits and deficiencies of any developed technological design or ap‐ plication should be addressed objectively. The Technology Acceptance Model which ex‐ plains the intentions of consumers is used to undertake necessary research in evaluating  the efficiency of the system developed [14,15]. TAM is a theory of information systems  that model how students use and adopt the technology. TAM is one of the widely used  models for describing the factors that have the greatest influence on user acceptance of  information systems. Davis (1989) developed TAM to explain the effects of user percep‐ tions of system factors that are thought to be effective on users’ acceptance of information  systems. TAM is the most widely used modeling approach in information systems mod‐ els. The reason for this is that TAM is understandable and easy to apply. TAM contains  two key factors as shown in Figure 1. These are perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived  ease of use (PEU) [16].  PU and PEU are very significant in defining the usage and acceptance of information  technologies. Davis (1989) defines these two factors as important that shape the intentions  of individuals in using information systems [16].  These two variables play the main role in determining the attitudes of individuals  who use information technology systems. Davis (1989) describes the PEU of technology  as easy to learn, and that the use of this technology can be effortlessly learned. Many em‐ pirical studies have provided strong evidence that PU directly affects personal intentions  in the context of new technology. Conversely, the effects of PU are more controversial and  are not simply defined as PEU’s effects [16].    Figure 1. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).  In literature, studies have generally been based on evaluating students’ learning out‐ comes, satisfaction, and even the effectiveness of virtual or remote laboratories according  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  4  of  17    to their educational background even studies identifying the prerequisite analysis to rec‐ ognize the needs and possibilities to integrate new technologies and methods for lab‐ based learning in the field of Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things [12,13,17,18]. How‐ ever, according to our knowledge, there is no virtual or remote laboratory model in the  literature, this is the key point of this study. In this study, a platform‐independent virtual  laboratory system suitable for computers, smartphones, and tablets has been developed  for DE students in information technology. Our motivation for developing this platform  is to provide a better education level through institutional plans and processes. With the  help  of  the  security  layer  that  contains  student‐specific  information  and  security  measures, students have access to developed platforms and lecture materials shared by  the lecturers in the laboratory. The developed platform is still being used by Kırıkkale  University Distance Education Center. To assess the success of the developed platform,  two random groups of 43 students were used which is the limitation of the study. Tradi‐ tional DE training and assignments were defined to the first group and traditional DE  training and developed laboratory platform were opened to access to the second group.  Both groups were given the same lectures and the same assignments for 4 weeks. At the  end of this period, one final homework was given to both groups and their success rates  were compared. Besides, the TAM was used to explain the student behaviors of the de‐ veloped laboratory system. At the end of the study, it was concluded that students using  the platform performed 12.89% more successful grades and that the students using the  developed platform were more satisfied when the satisfaction surveys were compared. At  the end of this work, a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis  was presented to identify gaps in the developed system and suggest possible ways to re‐ solve the defects. In this study, the deficiencies in the literature were solved, the literature  on the state‐of‐the‐art approach was contributed by a better and effective method, and a  basic study was undertaken which bridges the gap in the literature.  2. Literature Review  It is imperative to apply and implement technology‐driven systems to achieve qual‐ ity learning processes in information technology and engineering education. Laboratory  experiments are needed to increase professional skills, create professional practices, de‐ velop analytical concepts, and ensure student participation at the highest level, in fact,  studies that verify the versatile benefits of laboratory facilities for engineering students  are available in the literature [19]. Students can easily run the software installed on the  server as if it were installed on their computers on the browser. Especially expensive, dif‐ ficult to install software that requires expensive hardware features that are installed on  the server and made available to students on the internet. Thus, students can access ex‐ pensive software labs from anywhere and whenever they want without going to school.  These laboratories have crucial educational tools that allow students to access real inter‐ faces and tools as if they were physically in the laboratory. However, there are also diffi‐ culties and barriers to be overcome as defined below, as well as the advantages of the  developed virtual or remote laboratories.  The first and the most important problem encountered in the virtual and distance  learning laboratories developed is that the control systems and physical equipment can‐ not be seamlessly integrated into the laboratories. This area uses server‐client, 3‐tier archi‐ tecture, and standards for laboratory systems applied to different areas. These kinds of  laboratories in the literature can address a specific subject or lecture and also on behav‐ ioral, cognitive, affective, and cognitive learning outcomes in higher education [20,21].  The developed approach that is appropriate for the curriculum is presented which is to  enhance the overall student laboratory experience.  Another challenge in this area is creating or updating the educational content in the  laboratory. The maintenance and management of the developed laboratory are giving the  system administrator additional responsibility. As the number of simulations and physi‐ cal systems involved in the laboratory increases, it is difficult for system administrators to  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  5  of  17    control the whole system and control its contents. The solution to this problem in the lit‐ erature is the CMS, Content Management System, tools that make it possible to support  the platform more easily and to manage it more effectively [22]. However, the manage‐ ment and maintenance of the CMS also cause problems in this manner. In the laboratory  approach, we developed in this study, the system administrator is only in charge of intro‐ ducing students and instructors to the system. All additional materials and files used in  the laboratory are copied to the personal folders of the students when they are added to  the system by the teaching staff. In other words, the students who are attending distance  learning in the field of information technology and engineering can instantly view the  materials added to their folders by the instructor when they access the system.  Another key problem with this area is that the developed laboratories are dependent  on the computer resources used by the students and continuance intention [18,23]. Inter‐ faces, simulations, and online systems that take the resources of student computers de‐ pend on the characteristics of these computers, thus affecting the quality of education. In  the laboratory approach that we developed in this study, all necessary system require‐ ments and resources are provided by the servers. In this way, students can access all la‐ boratory facilities of good quality and fast at any time and place. Regardless of the capac‐ ity of the student computer, all students are given server resources equally. This criterion  is one of the most important elements of our study.  Another problem that arises is the phase in which students install software on their  personal computers. Software development tools are used in laboratories especially in in‐ formation technology and engineering education. Students in distance learning in this  area need to install software on their personal computers that will be used to access the  lab facilities. However, this  installation requires experience, time, and extreme  license  costs, and even sensor technologies with developing technology [24]. Due to these diffi‐ culties, students cannot install the tools that they need on their personal computers. The  developed laboratory in this study is based on the principle of hosting all necessary soft‐ ware on the servers and running one click without any cost. In this way, students have  access to the necessary memories of without any difficulty.  The next obstacle is due to the nature of DE. Students can perceive this education as  a video game because they think that this system is virtual, not actual. This prediction is  accompanied by the lack of attention and the lack of responsibility and seriousness of the  students, however, despite all its shortcomings, DE is defined as a never‐ending education  model. In order for this never‐ending education model to be more efficient, it is stated that  virtual environments should be used [17]. In the proposed laboratory approach, the stu‐ dents can listen to the lecturer’s narration at the same time and work instantly in the la‐ boratory environment which is one of the strengths of this study. Besides, thanks to note‐ based follow‐up objects such as paper and homework that are given by the lecturer, stu‐ dents can approach the system seriously and responsibly. Teachers can guide students  through virtual lesson tools. In this way, students can learn which applications to do in  the virtual laboratory, understand how to do it, and receive sample codes. Thus, maxi‐ mum interaction is provided between the student and the teacher in the laboratory envi‐ ronment.  As a result, the laboratory solutions developed for the DE system have some defi‐ ciencies and issues that need to be improved. A lot of work has been done in this area and  solutions have been produced; however, there is still no complete solution in the litera‐ ture. When the solutions are examined, it is seen that problems such as integration, edu‐ cational content management, student computer resource usage, license problem, and ex‐ perience required installation or attention deficiencies of students are found. The reason  for these problems is due to the nature of traditional DE or the lack of developed solutions.  In this study, the laboratory environment required for information technology and engi‐ neering education was improved by eliminating the deficiencies in the literature. Primary  features of the developed exclusive platform are listed; (a) suitable architecture for multi‐ Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  6  of  17    ple‐courses, (b) license‐free for applications, (c) no need for installation, (d) platform‐in‐ dependent usage, (e) regardless of user’s computer performance, (f) easy‐to‐learn content  updates and insertion, (g) encouraging learning through the integration of laboratory ex‐ periment and lecture at the same time. In this context, the developed information technol‐ ogy and the remote education laboratory applied in the field of engineering are bridging  the gap in the literature.  3. Materials and Methods  3.1. General Background  The scope of this work is the development of the laboratory environment needed by  DE students in information technology. The research was conducted in the 2017/2018 ac‐ ademic year spring semester for five weeks using software assignments on the web pro‐ gramming lecture. For five weeks, two groups of 43 people were randomly assigned to  the distance learning courses in information technology and engineering. Group 2, which  has the same traditional DE as Group 1, also used a newly developed laboratory platform  in the laboratory experience. In the study, four assignments were given to both groups  thus student habits were formed on both systems. In the fifth week, a final assessment  was given to students and the results of all the assignments were compared. Assignments  have the following features:   In the web programming course, students can design and program dynamic web  pages over the asp.net platform.   Homework was determined according to the topics of the current week which in‐ cludes page design and coding.   All communication with students and teachers was carried out via the current LMS.  Therefore, the assignments were sent to the students, and tracking was done through  this platform.   The same homework was given to each group, but students were asked to solve them  individually.   After the assignments were determined, 4 days was given and finally received over  the active LMS.   Assignments were evaluated by other professors who are experts on the subject.  The success of the groups in the comparison was statistically analyzed. Besides, a  questionnaire based on the TAM was conducted in Group 2, which was trained using the  developed laboratory. This questionnaire was analyzed with the Likert scale to get more  consistent results.  3.2. Motivation  The developed system is suitable for the use of all branches of science that need soft‐ ware in the laboratory. All software installed on the server can be made available to stu‐ dents for all engineering fields.  3.3. Design Achievements  A web‐based remote laboratory implementation for engineering education has been  improved. The developed laboratory system architecture is as shown in Figure 2. It pro‐ vides students with easy access from inside and outside of the campus. In this way, stu‐ dents can use the laboratory system where and when they want it. However, students  who want to access the laboratory system from outside the university campus can access  this system through the remote desktop gateway server. Otherwise, the firewall located  on the campus will not allow access to the laboratory system. The students can use the  same system as on campus by using the username and password information given to  them. The students can use the same system as on campus by using the username and  password information given to them, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that is defined in  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  7  of  17    [25].  Platform‐independent  development  allows  students  to  use  the  system  with  smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers.  Universities have know‐how in distance education. For this reason, the proposed sys‐ tem is one of the areas and applications that students mostly demand and need. Software  and hardware costs are high in countries generally. For this reason, it is difficult for stu‐ dents to cover the license costs and use of up‐to‐date software. Therefore, it was a neces‐ sity to present all software to the students through the system developed.  In the scope of this work:  1. The developed system was integrated to the current LMS for students to log into the  system directly;  2. In addition, a log module was developed where all the work is recorded, especially  the entrance/exit of all students, is recorded;  3. The VPN layer was added to the system infrastructure only as an extra security layer;  4. The laboratory software required by the students according to their departments was  integrated into the system. In this way, the following benefits were obtained;  i. Without paying license costs;  ii. Without installation on their own computers;  iii. Providing students with weak computers without any disruption and using  server power for all transactions;  iv. Live laboratory application environment integrated with virtual classroom was  developed. In this way, students and lecturers can use software such as in the  real classroom and laboratory environment.  5. There are solutions close to this solution in the market. However, these solutions are  not fully integrated into distance education and are solutions with high license costs.  We developed this system on servers, which are our university’s own resources, and  integrated with LMS.    Figure 2. System architecture.  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  8  of  17    Students in the campus network can access the user login screen on the virtual desk‐ top by typing in the internet browsers. The login screen, which welcomes the students  who want to use the laboratory system, is in this virtual server. At this stage, the username  and password information given is requested from the students and the user authentica‐ tion is done through the active directory domain controller virtual machine according to  [26]. This authentication server also contains primary information about students. In this  way, class information of the students is taken, and the appropriate and defined programs  are presented to the students for their curriculum. Students can open and use the software  they want to study by clicking on the program link from the programs listed. It is the  Remote Desktop Session Host virtual server where the session information is generated  by the system after the students’ authentication and all the programs and software pre‐ sented to the students are hosted and executed. In case the number of students or the  number of programs and software needs to increase, adding a new Remote Desktop Ses‐ sion Host virtual server to the architecture is enough to meet this need described in [27].  The developed laboratory system is designed in a scalable and modular structure. A file  server was created to prevent overloading of the system and to work with the files that  students produced as a result of their work and shared by the academic staff as in [28].  All files in the system are configured to be hosted on this file server. All licenses used in  the laboratory system with some basic license requirements are hosted in the Remote  Desktop Licensing virtual server defined in [27]. In this way, it is possible to perform  transactions without needing to interfere with other licensed virtual servers in case of a  possible license requirement, renewal, or failure. A load balancing mechanism was also  added to the architecture to avoid problems such as interruptions, faults, and speed loss  in the laboratory system and to operate the system efficiently as in [29]. Load balancing  operations are performed via the remote desktop connection broker virtual server defined  in (Hannifin et al., 2010). Additionally, an architectural role‐based design proposed in the  developed laboratory system and a role diagram are presented in Figure 3.    Figure 3. Laboratory system role schemes.  Thanks to the developed laboratory system students are provided access to this sys‐ tem regardless of location and time without costs such as license, installation, and speed.  In this way, students can easily use expensive and specialized laboratories from wherever  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  9  of  17    they are, every day of the week. Thus, the cost of establishing and operating large labora‐ tories within institutions is greatly reduced.  3.4. Research Participants  The evaluation of the developed laboratory system was carried out through the web  programming lesson homework given in the 2017/2018 academic year spring semester.  The students who participated in the evaluation were randomly divided into two groups.  Lectures and assignments were given  to 43  (N = 43) students  in  the  first group    through traditional DE. In the second group, 43 (N = 43) students were given lectures via  traditional DE, and assignments were given through the developed laboratory system. A  total of 86 (N = 86) students studying in the same academic program were selected to  evaluate the system from Kırıkkale University that has more than 35,000 students. With  average annual university graduation of 6000 students, more than 7000 young students  come to the university each year. To evaluate the developed laboratory system, all the  students in the relevant school agreed to use the system and complete the questionnaires.  3.5. Instrument and Procedures  Three different questionnaires were applied to the groups that were established to  evaluate the developed laboratory system. In the first part of the questionnaire, students  were asked about their demographic information. With this survey, demographic infor‐ mation such as age, gender, level of income, and professional experience related to the  participants were analyzed. In the second part, the final assignments given by 86 students  (N = 86) were read and graded by the academic staff. The first comparison of the perfor‐ mance of the laboratory system on students’ assignments was evaluated. In the last part  of the questionnaire, 39 questions consisting of five Likert measurement systems includ‐ ing perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, intention, and actual behaviors  for information technology usage were asked in the second group, and students who used  this system during the course. All the questionnaire forms were included in the analysis  and the SPSS 22 computer program was used to analyze the survey results.  3.6. Experimental Setup  To evaluate the developed infrastructure, the “web programming” course, in which  the number of students is slightly higher, was determined. Students were randomly di‐ vided into two groups. Group 1 continued to receive training with classical laboratory  methods as in previous years. Group 2 used the newly developed laboratory infrastruc‐ ture as part of the study. However, promotional activities and demo activities were car‐ ried out about the new system developed for students to have more consistent and precise  views.  Afterwards, five different pieces of homework in 5 weeks were attended to by stu‐ dents during the academic year. The grades of the students were evaluated and recorded  by independent instructors.  The obtained values were analyzed by statistical methods. Additionally, question‐ naires were applied to learn the perspectives of the students on the developed system and  to examine its acceptability. The values obtained as a result of the surveys were also ana‐ lyzed by statistical methods. All the steps are shown in Figure 4 below.  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  10  of  17      Figure 4. Detailed data collecting process flowchart.  4. Data Analysis  4.1. Questionnaire 1: Demographic Profiles  The demographic information of the students participating in the questionnaire is  given in Table 2.  Table 2. Demographic information of the attendances.  Variable  Variable Levels  N  Percentage (%)  Age  16–26  53  61.62  27–37  27  31.41  38–48  4  4.67  49 and over  2  2.32  Gender  Male  78  90.69  Female  8  9.30  Income rate  TRY 750 and less  14  16.27  TRY 751 ‐ TRY 1500    32  37.20  TRY 1501 ‐ TRY 2250    23  26.74  TRY 2251 ‐ TRY 3000    12  13.95  TRY 3000 and over  5  5.81  Professional experience  1–3 years  68  79.06  4–6 years  14  16.27  7 year and over  4  4.65  According to Table 2, 61.62% of the participants had a range of 16–26, 31.41% had 27– 37, 4.67% had 38–48, and 2.32% had 49 years of age and above. A total of 90.69% of the  respondents were male, 9.31% were female. In total, 16.27% of the participants have an  income of 750 TL or less, 37.20% have an income between TRY 751 and TRY 1500, 26.74%  have an income between TRY 1501 and TRY 2250, 13.95% is between TRY 2251 and TRY  3000, and 5.81% have TRY 3000 and above. A total of 79.06% of the participants have 1–3  years, 16.27% 4–6 years, and 4.65% 7 years and above professional experience.  4.2. Questionnaire 2: Impact of Developed System on Student Assignments  The effects of the developed system on student assignments grade were also meas‐ ured. DE students in the field of information technology were divided into two groups.  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  11  of  17    The same software assignments were given to both groups for 5 weeks in web program‐ ming. While the first group created all the assignments for the traditional DE approach,  the second group created all the assignments through the new laboratory system. To read  all the assignments belonging to both groups, information technology and engineering  staff in charge of teaching were determined. To read all the assignments belonging to both  groups, independent information technology, and engineering staff were determined. All  assignments from students were randomly mixed and read by independent instructors.  Independent lecturers were asked to evaluate all assignments over 100 points. Besides,  Group 1 students traditionally attended 2 h of weekly laboratory lessons, but Group 2  students spent 27.89% more time in the online laboratory system than Group 1 students.  The average of all grades belonging to the groups is shown in Table 3 for each week.  Table 3. Group and week based results of software assignments.  Week  Assignment  Subject  Group 1  (N=43)  Group 2 (N=43)  1  1  HTML Basics    67.41  65.54  2  2  CSS Basics  72.23  74.69  3  3  Javascript Fundamentals  71.78  79.23  4  4  C#.NET Basic Web Components  64.12  80.49  5  Final assignment  Designing a Static Web Page  69.71  82.60    Mean    69.05  76.51  The subjects that students will learn within the scope of the determined course each  week were determined in advance in the curriculum. Table 3 contains the topics covered  in the course each week. Each week after the lesson, the instructor defined an assignment  for the students. Group 1 was asked to complete the homework in the laboratory hour of  the lesson, as in the classical education teaching model. However, the students in Group  2 completed their assignment using the newly developed system. Assignments were eval‐ uated by a different professor weekly, but the results were collectively explained to the  students at the end of the 5th week.  As seen in Table 3, there is a difference of 12.89 (18.49%) between final assignments  and 16.46 (10.80%) by the average of all weeks. It was found that the group that the system  was applied to performed more successfully than the weekly and the final assignment.  The graph for the better evaluation and observation of the separately obtained values is  shown in Figure 5.    Figure 5. Week‐assignment group note distribution.    1 2 3 4 Final Assignme nt Mean Group 1 (N=43) 67.41 72.23 71.78 64.12 69.71 69.05 Group 2 (N=43) 65.54 74.69 79.23 80.49 82.60 76.51 0.00 10.00 20.00 30.00 40.00 50.00 60.00 70.00 80.00 90.00 Week ‐ Assignment Group 1 (N=43) Group 2 (N=43) Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  12  of  17    4.3. Questionnaire 3: Technology Acceptance Model  The research model used at this stage of the study is the classical TAM shown in  Figure 1 [14,16]. In the questionnaire, 13 questions about the perceived benefit for use of  information technology, 13 questions about perceived ease of use, four questions about  attitude change, seven questions about intention change, and two questions about meas‐ uring last behavior variable were asked.  The materials in the measurement tool were derived from the work of [19]. In re‐ sponding to the survey tool, the situations described by the materials are arranged as “To‐ tally Participating”, “Partly Participating”, “Participating”, “Poorly Participating”, and  “Neither Participating”. The measurement tool was arranged according to the factors and  the average of the responses taken from the students in response to the answers listed in  the form, provided in Table 4.  Table 4. Mean and standard deviation values of TAM components.    Expressions  Mean  Standard De‐ viation  P e rc e iv e d  E a se   Using the new laboratory system makes my lessons and assignments easier  4,55  0,947  Using the new laboratory system increases my mastery of the lecture  4,43  0,927  Using the new laboratory system improves performance in the classroom  4,46  0,813  Using the new laboratory system meets my classroom needs  4,32  0,959  Using the new laboratory system saves me time  4,57  0,692  Using the new laboratory system allows me to perform tasks faster  4,58  0,532  Using the new laboratory system provide support for important issues in the classroom  4,31  0,663  Using the new laboratory system, I can do more work  4,56  0,667  Using the new laboratory system reduces the amount of time I spend on unnecessary work  4,42  0,712  Using the new laboratory system increases productivity in the classroom  4,56  0,781  Using the new laboratory system increases the quality of my work    4,12  0,928  Using the new laboratory system improves the efficiency of my work  4,43  0,693  In general, using a new laboratory system is useful for my job  4,36  0,832  In te n ti o n   I intend to use the new laboratory system in the future when my profession is concerned  4,39  0,798  I will try to apply the changes that will occur in the new laboratory system  4,29  0,652  I intend to use the new laboratory system regularly in the near future  4,32  0,672  I will try to follow the innovations in the new laboratory system  4,47  0,741  I think that the use of new laboratory systems will increase in the future  4,52  0,802  I will strongly recommend the use of the new laboratory system to colleagues  4,04  0,891  P e rc e iv e d  E a se  o f  U se   Using the new laboratory system makes work more complicated  1,79  0,991  I often make mistakes when using the new lab system  2,23  0,972  I find it boring to use the new laboratory system  1,98  1,019  I need more guidance when using the new lab system  2,77  1,082  I need to make a greater mental effort when using the new laboratory system  2,54  1,127  My mistakes are easier to find thanks to the new laboratory system  4,14  1,002  Thanks to the new laboratory system, I can easily do what I want about my lessons  4,54  0,702  The new laboratory system can lead to unexpected results  2,63  0,921  Using a new laboratory system makes me confused  2,13  1,071  The use of the new laboratory system is easy for me to understand  3,92  0,809  The new laboratory system helps to remind me of my duties  3,98  0,831  The new laboratory system guides me through my duties  3,74  0,841  In general, I find it easy to use the new laboratory system  3,85  0,864  A tt it u d e   I am happy to use the new laboratory system  3,86  0,701  Using the new laboratory system makes me tense  2,11  1,102  I think that the use of the new laboratory system is detrimental  2,41  1,156  I find it unnecessary to use the new laboratory system  1,93  1,029  B e h a v io r  I use the new laboratory system very often outside the campus  3,81  0,914  I use the new laboratory system very often inside the campus  3,65  0,961  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  13  of  17    Besides, all students were informed in detail about the newly developed system be‐ fore the surveys. Besides, demo sessions were held for 2 weeks for both groups to get used  to the systems.  In terms of perceived use and intention in Table 4, it is seen that the average is gen‐ erally over four points. Four values correspond to the expression “I agree” on the scale.  Accordingly, it can be said that the perceived usefulness and intentions of the participants  to use information technology products are high.  From the point of view of perceived ease of use, the highest arithmetic average (4.54)  stands out as “I can easily do what I want to do with my lesson thanks to the new labora‐ tory system”.  When we look at the same way from the standpoint of attitude, the highest arithmetic  average (3.86) stands out as “I am happy to use the new laboratory system”.  Finally, the highest arithmetic mean (3.81) is the “I use the new laboratory system  very often outside the campus” in the part of the behavior.  Relationships between the TAM components were examined utilizing a correlation  analysis and the results are listed in Table 5.  Table 5. Correlation analysis results.    Perceived Use‐ fulness  Perceived Ease  of Use  Attitude  Intention  Behavior  Perceived  Usefulness  1  ‐0,121  ‐0,165  0,743  (**)  0,148  Perceived  Ease of Use  ‐0,121  1  0,497  (**)  0,044  ‐0,013  Attitude  ‐0,165  0,497 (**)  1  0,131  ‐0,151  Intention  0,743 (**)  0,044  0,131  1  0,186  Behavior  0,148  ‐0,013  ‐0,151  0,186  1  (**) Significant with 0.01 error margin  When we look at the results of the correlation between variables, it is seen that posi‐ tive and statistically significant relationships exist between perceived usefulness and per‐ ceived ease of use and attitude. Regression analysis was performed on the data obtained  and the results are presented in Table 6.  Table 6. Regression analysis results.    Intent to Use Dependent Var‐ iable Information Technolo‐ gies  Attitude Toward the Use of De‐ pendent Variable Information  Technologies  Actual Behavior for Use of De‐ pendent Variable Information  Technologies  Independent  Variables  β    P    F  R²  β    P    F  R²  β    P    F    R²   Perceived Use‐ fulness  0,743  0,000*    47,882  0,563  ‐0,165  0,259  1,301  0,029          Perceived Ease  of Use          0,497  0,001*  13,019  0,239          Attitude  0,131  0,439  0,598  0,021                  Intention                  0,186  0,228  1,486  0,033  Model  0,781  0,000  29,971  0,619  0,511  0,003  6,921  0,254  0,186  0, 228  1, 486  0,033    Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  14  of  17    5. Discussions and Suggestions  DE is one of the areas that gain importance every day and draw attention to its ad‐ vantages. Apart from the traditional advantages that the DE approach includes, there are  also unresolved pending problems. One of the most important problems in distance learn‐ ing is the laboratory requirement in education. Although extensive research has been car‐ ried out on educational outcomes of DE, to our knowledge a small number of comparative  studies exist which specifically focus on technological improvements in DE. To address  this need, studies have been carried out in the literature, but studies are generally local or  course‐dependent solutions. In this study, a laboratory system for DE students was devel‐ oped in the area of information technologies. The study was evaluated with the question‐ naires and assessments given to the students.  The effect of the newly developed laboratory system on student assignments was  examined and details are presented in Table 3. According to the results obtained, the new  laboratory system has a positive impact on the students’ homework grades as per the  weekly and final assignments given to the students. However, when the results of the first  two weeks are examined, it is seen that there are very small differences between the stu‐ dents who use the new laboratory system and the assignments given in the traditional DE  approach. It is considered that the main reason for this small difference is that the student  is accustomed to the new laboratory system and that students are not given orientation to  this area. Therefore, it is recommended that detailed training of the end‐user is given to  get full performance in the newly developed systems.  The dimensions that are effective in the formation of students’ behavior towards the  use of the system were examined. The following results were achieved.  1. It was concluded that the “perceived ease of use” did not affect the attitude towards  the behavior.  2. The “perceived ease of use” by the students resulted in a positive attitude towards  the behavior.  3. It was concluded that the “perceived usefulness” positively affected the intention to  use.  4. It was concluded that behavioral attitudes towards the use of the system do not affect  the behavioral intention.  5. The intention to use the developed system does not affect the behavior.  There are different frameworks and approaches used in the analysis of a product and  its strategic position. One of the most frequently used is the SWOT analysis, which is short  of “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats”. SWOT analysis is used to appraise  the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats involved in the Web‐Based Remote  Laboratory Implementation. Thanks to this analysis, it can be determined how the devel‐ oped system is successful and perfect. The SWOT analysis of the system is as shown in  Figure 6. In this part of the study, the result of the analysis was evaluated and addressed.  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  15  of  17      Figure 6. SWOT analysis.  6. Conclusion  Technology has become cheaper and widespread every day. This rapid development  has also affected the field of education. As a result of this interaction, the concept of DE  which has been used for years has come to the forefront. However, with the progress of  digital concepts, instead of traditional DE methods, technology‐focused DE methods have  begun to be investigated and developed. In this study, a new platform‐independent, tech‐ nology‐based laboratory system architecture for computers, smartphones, and tablets was  developed for DE students of information technology to handle the problem of the lack of  laboratories, the most important shortcoming in the traditional DE approach. With this  system, it is aimed to increase the usability of the application in the traditional DE system.  In the 2017/2018 academic year, the software projects of the DE students in web tech‐ nology and engineering have been used to test this new laboratory system. A total of 86  students in the class were randomly divided into two groups of 43 people. The same as‐ signments were given to both groups and assignments were evaluated by independent  instructors. The average score of 69.05 was obtained in the first group given traditional  DE assignments. The average of the second group given assignment via the newly devel‐ oped laboratory system was determined as 76.51. The mean score of the first group was  69.71 in the final assignment after the usage habits of the students have been formed and  the average score of the second group using the developed new laboratory system was  found to be 82.60. A difference of 12.89% was observed between the two groups. It is also  aimed to reveal the reasons for using the new laboratory system in the study through  TAM. For this purpose, in the academic year of 2017/2018, field research was conducted  for web programming courses of DE students in engineering and engineering fields. The  results obtained from the TAM model are listed below.  Perceived use and intention trends for students’ use of the system in the course of the  course are quite high.  It is seen that the students’ ease of use is perceived in the process of using the imple‐ mented laboratory for the lecture process and the attitude towards the behavior is affected  positively. This means that if students can use the newly developed laboratory easily, they  Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 1214  16  of  17    will show an attitude towards using these products. This finding is consistent with the  results obtained by [16] and [30].  The perceived use in the formation of students’ behaviors towards the use of the  newly developed laboratory in the course of study seems to positively influence the in‐ tention to use. This means that if the newly developed laboratory is used by the students  that and they find it useful, they can be said to intend to use these products. This result is  again consistent with [16].  The students’ attitudes towards behavior during the newly developed laboratory con‐ cluded that perceived benefit has no effect on behavior and intention does not affect behavior.  In conclusion, the laboratory environment required for information technology and  engineering education was improved by eliminating the deficiencies in the literature in  this study. In this context, the developed information technology and the remote educa‐ tion laboratory applied in the field of engineering are bridging the gap in the literature.  Author Contributions: Conceptualization, E.E., A.E, M.Ü.; methodology, E.E., A.Ö.; software,  A.E., A.Ö.; validation, A.E., E.E., and M.Ü.; formal analysis, E.E., and A.E.; investigation, E.E., and  A.E.; resources, A.E.; writing—original draft preparation, E.E.; writing—review and editing, E.E.,  A.Ö., and M.Ü. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  Funding: This work was partly supported by the Kırıkkale University Department of Scientific  Research Projects (2016/107).  Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.  Informed Consent Statement: Student consent was waived because real identities were not used.  Data Availability Statement: Data available on request due to restrictions e.g. privacy or ethical  concerns. The data presented in this study are available on request from the authors.  Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the  design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data, in the writing of the man‐ uscript or in the decision to publish the results.  References  1. 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work_iw7ktu4pcrb57kzmgxozevbzae	----	Journal of Research on Technology in Education 407 JRTE, 40(4), 407–426 Effectiveness of Personal Interaction in a Learner-Centered Paradigm Distance Education Class Based on Student Satisfaction Shu-Hui Hsieh Chang and Roger A. Smith Iowa State University Abstract This study examined relationships between students’ perceptions of course-related interaction and their course satisfaction within the learner-centered paradigm in distance education. A Students’ Perceived Interaction Survey (SPIS) instrument was developed to examine nine separate hypotheses about the nature of course-related interaction. A volunteer sample of 855 students from the 949 students enrolled in Computer Science 103—Computer Literacy and Applications at Iowa State University in the fall of 2005 was used. This study employed a multiple linear regression. It concluded that student-instructor personal interaction, student- student personal interaction, and student-content interaction, along with students’ perceptions of WebCT features and gender were predictors of course satisfaction. In this study 94% of the participants indicated they were satisfied with the course. No significance was found in the relationships between student satisfaction and student-teaching assistant (TA) personal interaction, the student’s prior partial online distance education experience, the student’s prior entirely online distance education experience, and academic year. (Keywords: interaction, learner-center, student satisfaction, distance education.) INTRODUCTION Distance education has become widely used around the world today and is available in a number of forms that reduce the time and space constraints pres- ent in traditional classrooms (Verduin & Clark, 1991). Distance education is especially advantageous because it makes learning accessible to students all day, everyday, giving them immense control over their own learning schedules. Within this new educational paradigm, virtual classrooms provide students with an environment that allows them to access information conveniently (Ko & Rossen, 2001). According to Perez’s (2001) research, many students reported that the main disadvantage of distance education was a lack of personal interaction between the instructor and the students. Opportunities for students to meet with their instructor in a face-to-face environment were nonexistent, preventing students from asking questions, engaging in discussions, and exchanging non-verbal cues with the instructor (Perez, 2001). In Rost’s (2000) research regarding distance education, online instructors utilized forms of technology that lacked personal interaction, decreasing the quality of education. Although many studies have considered different variables related to student performance and satisfaction, few studies have examined 408 Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 the relationship between interactivity, the effectiveness of technology used in distance education, and course satisfaction levels of distance education learn- ers. Concerns about the quality of distance learning can be addressed better if researchers understand how students perceive interaction in virtual classrooms and how technology contributes to their learning. PROBLEM OF THE STUDY AND HYPOTHESES This study determined whether there was a relationship between students’ perceptions of how effective course-related interaction was and their level of course satisfaction. The Students’ Perceived Interaction Survey instrument (SPIS) was developed by the researchers to measure nine variables within the learner-centered paradigm in distance education. These variables included: stu- dent-instructor personal interaction, student-teaching assistant (TA) personal interaction, student-student personal interaction, student-content interaction, gender, academic classification, students’ prior experiences with distance educa- tion in a partially online class setting, students’ prior experiences with distance education in an entirely online class setting, and students’ perceptions on the ef- fectiveness of particular WebCT features in helping them learn. Based on these variables, nine hypotheses were developed. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY This study served three purposes: 1. To identify the relationships between student-instructor personal interaction and course satisfaction, student-TA personal interaction and course satisfac- tion, student-content interaction and course satisfaction, and student-stu- dent personal interaction and course satisfaction. 2. To identify the relationship between students’ perceptions about the effec- tiveness of WebCT features for their learning and course satisfaction. 3. To identify the relationships between course satisfaction and specific student demographics such as gender, academic classification, and prior distance education course experiences. LITERATURE REVIEW In an educational setting, interaction through communication and collabo- ration is the most central mechanism educators use to encourage students to become active learners. As the distance education system evolves, interactive processes, especially those that imitate the interactive processes in traditional face-to-face classrooms, have been attracting special attention. The insufficient amount of interactive learning opportunities within the online course environ- ment is considered one of the major downsides of distance education (Perez, 2001). In response to this lack of interaction, educators should examine thoroughly the current status of the distance education field and study the factors that de- fine and influence the current designs and contents of distance education. In a world that constantly develops new technologies, understanding these factors Journal of Research on Technology in Education 409 is important to anticipate and modify the newest educational methods to cor- respond with the newest technologies. The internet has become an invaluable asset to distance education because it allows students to learn through various technologies, such as two-way video and computer-mediated communication. This enables students to play an ac- tive role in the learning process and provides flexibility and convenience for learners (Willems, 2005). Increased interaction, made possible by utilizing the newer two-way communication technologies, has immense impact upon dis- tance education. Inadequate faculty training, lack of knowledge of online course design, and doubt about real-time classroom concepts working in the online environment determines a need for theoretical and empirical research on course design prin- ciples for online instructors (McCombs & Vakili, 2005). Furthermore, Barrett, Bower, and Donovan (2007) indicated it is critical for online instructors to shift from the traditional teacher-centered to the learner-centered teaching style. New Education Model: The Shift to a Learner-Centered Paradigm Olson and Wisher (2002), in examining 47 studies on Web-based courses in higher education, found many cases where faculty members were not trained adequately in online instructional design. The American Psychological Associa- tion addressed this concern and developed 12 learner-centered principles in 1990, then revised the list into 14 learner-centered principles in 1995 (Alexan- der & Murphy, 1998). McCombs and Whisler (1997) defined the learner-cen- tered paradigm based on these principles: The perspective that couples a focus on individual learners (their hered- ity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities, and needs) with a focus on learning (the best available knowledge about learning and how it occurs and about teaching practices that are most effective in promoting the highest levels of motivation, learning, and achievement for all learners) (p. 9). McCombs et al. (2005) indicated that online educators should implement these 14 learner-centered psychological principles into curriculum design. These principles included: 1) nature of the learning process, 2) goals of the learning process, 3) construction of knowledge, 4) strategic thinking, 5) thinking about thinking, 6) context of learning, 7) motivational and emotional influences on learning, 8) intrinsic motivation to learn, 9) effects of motivation on effort, 10) developmental influences on learning, 11) social influences on learning, 12) individual differences in learning, 13) learning and diversity, 14) standards and assessment. This learner-centered dynamic curriculum focuses on the needs of individual learners and provides opportunities to gain expertise as goals and projects progress. In addition, the curriculum provides students the opportunity to learn anytime, anywhere, encourages learning autonomy, assesses students’ backgrounds to understand individual needs, promotes interaction and col- laboration with other students, allows students to share their personal needs and interests with others, observe the learning progression and feedback, and change 4�0 Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 according to students’ needs. They concluded that teachers should include learners in decisions about learning processes and respect students’ individual backgrounds and abilities while simultaneously focusing on promoting motiva- tion, overall achievement, and learning. White (2005) stated that online educators should focus on developing learn- ers and understanding their perspectives on distance education. Miller (2007) reported that students in learner-centered online classrooms produced higher- quality course projects and mastered concepts better than those in non-learner- centered online classrooms. The learner-centered model has become a key com- ponent for online distance education, breaking from the traditional teaching model. Chou (2001) conducted a research study at the University of Hawaii on an upper level undergraduate course based on learner-centered instructional design and employed constructivist and small group cooperative learning activities in the curriculum. The study utilized WebCT and other computer media com- munication systems such as Palace and Active World. Chou identified two ele- ments that impact the different patterns of interaction, one being the design of leaner-centered online activities. These activities, which include student-moder- ated discussion, small group cooperative learning projects, and constructivist- based instructional activities, were found to enhance interpersonal relationships and increase opportunities for students to share information and build knowl- edge while collaborating with others. They also allowed students to express their viewpoints and take responsibility for their learning to reduce confusion in the online environment. The second element Chou identified was the technological attributes that enhance social presence and effective communication. Student perceptions of the technological attributes of the course management system af- fect how frequently they engage in online interaction. In order to promote stu- dent learning and interaction, instructors should help students become familiar with the technology at the beginning of the semester. The faster the students learn the technological features needed to complete coursework, the faster they can concentrate on learning the course material. In Chou’s (2001) study, out of a variety of different course management sys- tems, students rated the WebCT chat feature to be the most straightforward and reliable. These research results showed the incorporation of learner-centered instructional design and constructivist, and cooperative activities into distance education enhanced student learning. Well-planned, synchronous activities executed through a well-designed and trustworthy course management system can indeed promote student interaction and active learning. These studies indicate the online course management system is one of the most important elements impacting a student’s learning and satisfaction. Many researchers reported that WebCT helped online educators develop active and ef- fective online courses (Cheng-Chang, 2003; Freeman & Field, 2004; Hutchins, 2001; Kendall, 2001; LeRouge, Blanton & Kittner, 2002; Robertson & Klotz, 2001; Sabine, 1998; Spilotopoulos & Carey, 2005). WebCT offers several ac- tive tools that can facilitate meaningful interaction between instructors and stu- Journal of Research on Technology in Education 4�� dents, students and teaching assistants, students and students, and students and the course design and content, including discussion forums and chat features (Dabbagh & Schmitt, 1998; McGreal, 1998; Morss, 1999). Maurino (2006) indicated that threaded discussions served as a vehicle for the development of a student’s in-depth learning and critical thinking skills. The online discussion activities contributed to student’s course participation and satisfaction, their learning outcomes and facilitated interaction (Goodell & Yusko, 2005). Interaction: A Critical Factor in Online Distance Education Moore (1989) categorized three types of interaction in distance education: student-content, student-instructor, and student-student interactions. Zhao, Lei, Yan, Lai ,and Tan (2005) and others agree that personal interaction is the fundamental element that facilitates learning in distance education. Miller, King, and Doerfert (1996) emphasized that students desire personal contact with their instructors and peers, along with a high-quality level of tech- nology in the distance education environment. New techniques must be con- structed that make time for students to interact, because personal interaction between teachers and students, students and students, and students and course content directly relates to student course satisfaction. Stravredes (2002) empha- sized the importance of interaction by affirming that student achievement and positive attitudes increased as the level of interaction increased. Gao (2001) investigated the effects of different levels of interaction on achievement and attitudes of college students in a Web-based learning environ- ment. The results of the study showed that active learning on the part of stu- dents directly contributes to their learning outcomes. Gao declared that provid- ing feedback from instructors helps reinforce the learning material and provides further motivation for students to become even more active in the learning process. LaPointe and Gunawardena (2004) conducted a research study to under- stand the relationship between peer interaction and learning outcomes in computer-mediated conferencing. The online courses LaPointe and Gunawar- dena studied were very diverse; the courses ranged from teaching basic skills to teaching theories, and covered many levels of education. Courses for associate, bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees were all incorporated into the research, all of which were designed using asynchronous online discussions. The final research results indicated peer interaction had a strong direct effect on learning outcomes. Moreover, human interaction with technology is the primary way students learn in the online environment; therefore, it is crucial for online educators to develop a learning environment that promotes student-instructor, student-con- tent, and student-student personal interactions (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005). These online courses can bring people all over the world together to dis- cuss course content at the same time, producing an incredible interactive online learning experience. To reach this goal, having a qualified educator who has the ability and knowledge to design effective materials that allow learners to partake in an enriched interactive learning experience is essential (Porter, 1997). 4�� Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 Student Satisfaction Course satisfaction is a critical component in improving learning achievement in the traditional classroom and the distance education environment. Many researchers have examined the factors that influence student satisfaction in dis- tance education (Freddolino & Sutherland, 2000; Fredericksen, Pickett, Shea, Pelz, & Swan, 2000; Niles, 2002). Researchers believe student satisfaction, which reflects a student’s attitude toward learning, should be studied and im- proved by all educators so that students can excel in a distance education setting (Biner, Dean, & Mellinger, 1994). Moore (2002) stated that social interaction prompted by the instructor and prompt instructor feedback were both linked to students’ satisfaction with the course. The most significant contributor to perceived learning in these online courses was the interaction between the instructor and the students. Students reported that the higher the level of interaction with the instructor or their classmates, the higher the level of learning they achieved in the course. With the advancement of the Internet, educators have an unmatched oppor- tunity to design and conduct effective distance learning courses filled with help- ful features that promote communication and interaction. However, dangers accompany these promises made by ever-improving technology. Educators must understand that utilizing these advanced technologies will not automatically make their distance learning courses more dynamic and interactive. In fact, more hard work is required by the instructor to effectively adapt the technolo- gies to develop clear, interactive online courses. Within the advancements of education, the role of interaction has changed considerably along with the development of pedagogical approaches and meth- odologies. Even though the degree of interaction varies between traditional and distance settings, research about the implications of interaction on student learning has identified that interaction positively affects students’ abilities to learn. Conversely, lack of interaction makes learning boring and difficult. Therefore, further research focusing on the specific implications of interaction on student learning should increase understanding on how to integrate interac- tion most effectively in distance education settings to maximize students’ abili- ties to learn. Because WebCT is one of the most prominent resources utilized by distance education, it is important to examine the effectiveness of WebCT features on the incorporation of interaction in distance education, the impact of interaction on student learning, and students’ attitudes about learning within the learner-centered paradigm. Furthermore, studies focusing on innovative uses of technology that promote interaction in distance learning would be espe- cially beneficial to teachers. These types of specialized studies expand teachers’ knowledge about the different types of interaction that can occur within the on- line setting. Because interaction has been defined as a crucial component of the learning process, educators must familiarize themselves with interaction’s impact on the quality of learning, experiment with various approaches to interaction, conduct research exploring the effectiveness of these different types of interac- tion, and eventually implement their findings into distance education courses so students can reap the benefits of this knowledge. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 4�3 METHODOLOGY The methodology developed for this study included the research design, the development of the instrument and the pilot test, the participants’ characteris- tics, the sampling procedure, and the data collection and analysis techniques. Research Design A survey was developed for this particular study called the Students’ Perceived Interaction Survey (SPIS). The survey was administered to the participants through WebCT during the week of November 29 to December 7, 2005. Participant Characteristics Computer Science 103—Computer Literacy and Applications, at one large Midwestern university, is a one-semester online computer literacy and ap- plications course. In the fall of 2005, 949 students enrolled in the class and 25 teaching assistants were employed to help grade student homework. These Computer Science 103 students volunteered to participate in this study while taking the course. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors with various ma- jors in various colleges participated, along with different ethnicities and genders. Development of the Instrument and Pilot Test The survey was developed in four phases. In phase one, the original version of the survey was prepared and initial exploratory data were collected. Phase two consisted of a survey review by an expert committee of professors. Phase three involved a pilot test where 20 Computer Science 103 teaching assistants took the survey, along with 46 Computer Science 103 students. The survey was re- vised at each phase and finalized in the fourth phase. Validity and Reliability of the Instrument To examine the validity and reliability of the Students’ Perceived Interaction Survey (SPIS) instrument for distance education, factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha tests were conducted. Factor analysis was one of the primary statistical methods used in this research. By using the principal component method, in- dividual factors were extracted from each of the scales. Kaiser’s rule and Scree plots were used to determine the number of factors. To justify the factor analy- sis results, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) was examined. To access internal consistency, the Cronbach’s alpha statistic, based on standardized item scores for a set of unidimensional items, was calculated. After running the factor analyses for parts 2–6, most of the values of the Kai- ser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) were greater than 0.8. These results indicated that the factors were well defined and the probability would be high that if another sample was obtained and the analysis repeated, the resulting factors would be consistently the same (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). Most of the reliability of Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized Items scores for each factor were greater than 0.7. A Cronbach’s alpha score greater than 0.7 indicates strong internal consistency of a construct (Cronbach, 1951). These scores indicate how consistently individuals respond to the items within a scale. Table 1 (p. 414) shows the factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha scores for the six factors found in the SPIS. 4�4 Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 Data Collection and Data Analysis The survey results were analyzed using SPSS 14.0 for Windows. The Univari- ate General Linear Model Procedure and Linear Regression Procedure in SPSS were used to perform a multiple regression analysis to determine the relation- ship between the independent variables and course satisfaction. Descriptive sta- tistics were calculated for each of the demographic variables: age, gender, race, college classification, and prior distance education experiences. RESEARCH MODEL AND FINDINGS To examine the relationship between course satisfaction and other inde- pendent variables, a multiple linear regression model was developed by the researcher. The most appropriate statistical method to analyze the data was re- gression analysis. The model used a set of continuous and categorical variables to predict course satisfaction. For the categorical independent variables, dummy variables were created. The model developed was as follows: where Y = Course satisfaction X 1 = WebCT effectiveness X 2 = Prior partial online experience X 3 = Prior entirely online experience X 4 = Student-TA interaction X 5 = Student-instructor interaction X 6 = Student-student interaction Factor Analysis Reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized) Overall Part Variable # of Items Questions KMO % of Variance # of Factors 1 WebCT Features N/A Only need correlation with part 6 2 Student– TA 3 10-12 0.656 70.384 1 0.787 3 Student– Instructor 7 15-18, 21-23 0.836 42.093 1 0.765 4 Student– Student 5 25-29 0.736 44.651 1 0.685 5 Student– Content 5 42-45, 47 0.804 54.588 1 0.786 6 Course Satisfaction 6 38-41, 46, 48 0.821 54.901 1 0.833 Table 1: Factor Analysis and Reliability for the Final SPIS Survey Journal of Research on Technology in Education 4�5 X 7 = Student-content interaction Z 1 = Gender (Male) Z 21 = Year (Freshman) Z 22 = Year (Sophomore) Z 23 = Year (Junior) Examination of Overall Model The F test (shown in Table 2) was used to examine the overall multiple re- gression model. The null hypothesis was H0 : βi = 0, while the F statistic was 179.447. The p-value was < 0.001, meaning the model was significant. The R square value of 0.702 indicated that all the independent variables together pre- dicted 70.2% of the variability of course satisfaction, which was fairly high. The assumptions of this model—independence, normality, and equality of variances—were satisfied. Because students completed the surveys at times that were personally convenient as opposed to a classroom setting, independence can be assumed. The histogram of standardized residuals showed the residuals close- ly followed a normal distribution. The results of the Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances (Table 3, p. 416) indicated the F value was 1.427 and the P- value was 0.191. Therefore, the null hypothesis was not rejected and the model met the equality variance assumption; the error variance of the dependent vari- able was equal across groups. VIF (variance inflation factor) was used to assess multicollinearity, which ex- ists when the independent variables correlate with each other. If a VIF value is above 10, then these values indicate serious multicollinearity, which inflates the Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F One Tailed Significance* Corrected Model 285.660 11 25.969 179.447 < 0.001 Intercept 1.400 1 1.400 9.671 0.001 Gender 1.289 1 1.289 8.909 0.002 Academic Year 0.497 3 0.166 1.145 0.165 WebCT Effectiveness 2.045 1 2.045 14.133 < 0.001 Partial Online Experience 0.001 1 0.001 0.006 0.471 Entirely Online Experience 0.112 1 0.112 0.774 0.190 Student–TA 0.107 1 0.107 0.737 0.196 Student–Instructor 1.103 1 1.103 7.621 0.003 Student–Student 1.958 1 1.958 13.527 < 0.001 Student–Content 85.787 1 85.787 592.788 < 0.001 * One-tailed significant p-value was divided by the two-tailed p-value from SPSS output. R2 = .702 Table 2: Test of Between Subjects Effects 4�6 Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 standard errors of the regression coefficients. At a result, t-tests would not be accurate for testing deviation of the regression coefficient from zero. According to Table 4, VIF statistics for this model were between 1.084 and 3.372. These statistics did not indicate any multicollinearity problems. Because all the as- sumptions for multiple regression were satisfied, this model was used to test the research question. Testing the Null Hypotheses, Findings, and Discussion Nine hypotheses were tested using the multiple regression model at an alpha level of 0.05 (one tailed). The multiple regression results took into account the relationships of all variables in the model simultaneously, and thus provided a more accurate measure of how any one independent variable was related to the dependent variable. The regression model estimated the partial slopes between each of the predictor variables and the dependent variable. This estimate dif- fered from the bivariate correlation between these variables, which did not par- tial out the relationships among the other variables in the model. The research results demonstrated that student-instructor interaction, stu- dent-student interaction, and student-content interaction, along with gender and student perceptions of WebCT features were predictors of course satisfac- tion. In this study 94% of the participants indicated they were satisfied with the course. Moore (1989) found that there were three critical types of interaction in distance education: student-instructor, student-student, and student-content, which this study supports. Interaction is considered the key to success in tradi- tional classrooms, as well as in the distance education environment (Fulford & Zhang, 1993). The results of this study strongly support this perspective. Testing the First Null Hypothesis: According to the results shown in Table 4 for student-instructor interac- tion, the p-value for the t test was 0.003, which was less than 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. The results showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between students’ scores on the student-instructor interaction items in the SPIS instrument for distance education and students’ scores on the course satisfaction items in the SPIS instrument for distance education. Table 3: Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances Dependent Variable: Course Satisfaction F df1 df2 Significance 1.427 7 842 0.191 This tested the null hypothesis that the error variance of the dependent variable was equal across groups. Design: Intercept + Gender + Academic Year + WebCT Effectivess + Partial Online Ex- perience + Entirely Online Experience + StudentTA Interaction + StudentInstructor Interaction + StudentStudent Interaction + StudentContent Interaction Journal of Research on Technology in Education 4�7 Student-Instructor Interaction is a Predictor of Course Satisfaction Moore and Kearsley (1996) indicated that the instructor is responsible for facilitating student-instructor, student-student, and student-content interac- tions in the distance education classroom environment. In addition, interaction between the instructor and students greatly impacts students’ perceptions of distance education (Hiltz, 1995). Computer Science 103 presented several op- portunities for student-instructor interaction, which contributed to students’ levels of satisfaction with the course. These opportunities included: 1) face-to- face orientation sessions in the first week of the semester, 2) effective commu- nication via WebCT e-mail, 3) synchronous chat sessions to develop interactive communication, 4) access to a frequently updated grade book, 5) constructive feedback about students’ performances, 6) opportunities to reflect on learning and identify ways to improve performance. In this study 90.4% of the participants stated that they enjoyed the class very much. The prompt feedback and constructive comments from the instructor increased students’ enjoyment levels and influenced their course satisfaction. Testing the Second Null Hypothesis: The mean of the student-TA interaction variable was 5.171. According to the results shown in Table 4, the regression coefficient of the student-TA interac- Table 4: Parameter Estimates Parameter B Std. Err t One-Tailed Significance* VIF Intercept -0.0567 0.153 -3.579 0.002 Gender(Male =0) 0.0810 0.027 2.985 0.002 1.084 Gender(Female = 1) 0 . . . . Year [Freshman = 1] 0.094 0.052 1.818 0.035 3.261 Year [Sophomore =2] 0.080 0.049 1.642 0.051 3.372 Year [Junior =3] 0.075 0.053 1.417 0.079 2.609 Year [Senior] 0 . . . . WebCT Effectiveness 0.117 0.031 3.759 < 0.001 2.069 Prior Partial Online Experience -0.001 0.010 -0.075 0.471 1.288 Prior Entirely Online Experience 0.015 0.017 0.880 0.190 1.141 Student – TA 0.017 0.020 0.858 0.196 1.491 Student – Instructor 0.105 0.038 2.761 0.003 2.205 Student – Student 0.079 0.021 3.678 < 0.001 1.466 Student – Content 0.756 0.031 24.347 < 0.001 2.107 * One-tailed significant p-value was divided by the two-tailed p-value from SPSS output. 4�8 Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 tion variable was estimated to be 0.017. The corresponding p-value for the t test was 0.196, which was greater than 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis was not rejected. It suggested that there was no positive and significant relationship between the students’ scores on the student-TA interaction section in the SPIS instrument and their scores on the course satisfaction section in the SPIS instru- ment. However, several circumstances could explain these results. Computer Science 103 was a large class that consisted of 949 students divided into 40-per- son sections with a total of 25 sections. A total of 25 section TAs were assigned to grade students’ homework and answer questions about course material. In general, students appreciated the work of the TAs, but students’ opinions about the quality of their own TA varied significantly, potentially affecting students’ perceptions of student-TA interaction. Therefore, compared to other factors such as student-instructor interaction, student-student interaction, student-con- tent interaction, WebCT features, and gender, student-TA interaction was not significant in predicting course satisfaction. Testing the Third Null Hypothesis: According to the results for student-student interaction shown in Table 4, the p-value was less than 0.001 for the third hypothesis. Therefore, the null hypoth- esis was rejected. The results showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between the students’ scores on the student-student interaction section in the SPIS instrument for distance education and their scores on the course satisfaction section in the SPIS instrument. Student-Student Interaction is a Predictor of Course Satisfaction Students in an online classroom environment often feel isolated because of a lack of interaction with other students. It is crucial for online instructors to develop a curriculum that actively promotes student-student interaction. There were several student-student interactions that occurred as part of this study that contributed to increasing students’ levels of course satisfaction; namely: 1) constructivist-based hands-on projects and simulation tests, 2) discussion board case study projects, 3) a student homepage design project, and 4) chat sessions. Students responded positively to these activities; discussion board postings from Computer Science 103 totaled more than 51,000 over the course of the semes- ter. Over 97% of survey participants indicated they appreciated the opportunity to work with partners on the case study projects, and 83.6% indicated they posted at least 60 comments about the work of other groups. Students also appreciated the chat sessions—many participants (90%) within this study in- dicated that they liked the opportunity provided for them to get to know their fellow students in the Computer Science 103 online community. Testing the Fourth Null Hypothesis: The results for student-content interaction, shown in Table 4, indicated the p-value for the t test for hypothesis four was less than 0.001. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. The results showed that there was a positive and signifi- cant relationship between the students’ scores on the student-content interac- tion section in the SPIS instrument and their scores on the course satisfaction section in the SPIS instrument. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 4�9 Student-Content Interaction is a Predictor of Course Satisfaction Several types of student-content interaction contributed to students’ satisfac- tion with the course. In this study, over 96.8% of the participants reported that the Computer Science 103 WebCT course materials were well organized, and about 94.2% indicated that they were satisfied with the quality of the stream- ing lectures. Well-organized course material and streaming lectures can assist student learning, facilitate student-content interaction, and increase learning retention. According to Choi and Johnson (2005), video-based instruction methods provided higher retention rates than traditional text-based instruction. Johnson’s assertions are supported by the results of this study. Furthermore, the instructor posted simulation projects and many other con- tent-rich course materials in each weekly module for students to learn. Because of the instructor’s extra efforts, over 97.1% of the participants indicated that they were satisfied with the content of the course. Furthermore, 93.2% of the participants responded that they were satisfied with the amount of learning they achieved in the class. Testing the Fifth Null Hypothesis: In the results for gender shown in Table 2, the p-value for the t test was 0.002, which was less than 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected, suggest- ing that the mean score of females was less than the mean score of males on the course satisfaction items in the SPIS instrument for distance education. The mean for males was 5.263, while the mean for females was 5.164. Males were more satisfied than females with the course, although the practical difference is small. Gender as a Predictor of Course Satisfaction The results of this study demonstrated that both male and female participants were very satisfied with the course. However, males were slightly more satisfied with the course than females. This online course provided flexibility, social pres- ence, a cooperative learning community, along with high quality student-in- structor, student-student, and student-content interactions. These components were satisfactory for both male and female students. However, Pascarella and Ternzini (2005) indicated that men performed better than women performed in the areas of mathematics and science, and Kearsley (2000) and many others stated that males held more positive attitudes toward computers and technology than females (Furger, 1998; Shashaani, 1994; Spender, 1995, Ullman, 1997). Furthermore, Keinath (1991) indicated that females often felt like they did not have enough time to complete everything they wanted, not only in coursework, but also in all aspects of life. Because the coursework for Computer Science 103 was demanding, females might have felt they had less time to accomplish the required assignments in the class and were therefore less satisfied than males with the course. Testing the Sixth Null Hypothesis: According to the results shown in Table 2, the p-value for the t test related to classification in college was 0.165, which was greater than 0.05. Therefore the 4�0 Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 null hypothesis was not rejected. There was no positive relationship between students’ academic classifications and students’ scores on the course satisfaction section in the SPIS instrument for distance education. Zhang (2005) also found that there was no significant relationship between age and how receptive distance education learners were. However, Lim (2001) found that there was a negative relationship between academic status and course satisfaction. The results of this research are consistent with Zhang’s findings, in- dicating no significant relationship between academic classification and course satisfaction. Testing the Seventh Null Hypothesis: Table 4 shows a p-value for the t test related to students’ experience with dis- tance education was 0.471, which was greater than 0.05. Therefore, the null hy- pothesis was not rejected. There was no positive relationship between students’ prior experiences with distance education in partially online class settings and their scores on the course satisfaction section in the SPIS instrument. Discus- sion regarding this hypothesis is closely tied with the next hypothesis, and will be included in the next section. Testing the Eighth Null Hypothesis: According to the results shown in Table 4, the p-value for the t test related to experience with a totally online class was 0.190, which was greater than 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis was not rejected. There was no positive relation- ship between students’ prior distance education experience in an entirely online class and their scores on the course satisfaction section in the SPIS instrument. Several factors could have contributed to these results. First, the course was well organized, helping students easily find the information they needed. Sec- ond, successful orientation sessions may have helped students understand what they needed to do to succeed and made online learning easy and enjoyable. Third, the technologies adopted by the instructor promoted active learning. Fourth, the course instructor maintained a high level of communication with students, helping them stay on task and be more satisfied with the course. All of these factors could help explain why prior distance education experience did not impact students’ course satisfaction. Testing the Ninth Null Hypothesis: The mean of the WebCT features variable was 5.055. According to the results shown in Table 4, the p-value was less than 0.001. Therefore, the null hypoth- esis was rejected, suggesting that there was a positive and significant relationship between students’ scores on the effectiveness of WebCT features section in the SPIS instrument for distance education and students’ scores on the course satis- faction section in the SPIS. The instructor adopted several WebCT features that promoted active student learning and increased interaction between students and the instructor, other students, and the course content. The use of these features also built an online learning community. Overall, 97.5% of participants within this study stated Journal of Research on Technology in Education 4�� that the WebCT features used in this class were easy to learn. The results of this study are consistent with Lai (2004) and others who concluded that effective WebCT tools enhanced the student learning experience (LeRouge et al., 2002; Hutchins, 2001). CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY As distance education has become a more and more popular educational prac- tice, it is crucial to examine online course quality. For students to successfully learn, teachers must present clear goals and objectives so students do not get frustrated (Porter, 1997). Instructors in the online environment must focus on learners’ needs and plan and execute their lessons clearly and effectively to help students learn the maximum amount of information (Barker & Patrick, 1989; Knowlton, 2000). There are many ways to promote learner achievement in online class envi- ronments, but learner satisfaction is one especially important component in successful distance education courses (Ritchie & Newby, 1989). Some research- ers believe student satisfaction should be examined before learning outcomes, because students’ negative opinions can hinder their learning (Biner, Dean & Mellinger, 1994). Student satisfaction should be taken into account by in- structors because attitudes are often indicative of success. Barrett et al. (2007) reported that the online instructors need to shift their teaching styles from teacher-centered to learner-centered paradigms in order to facilitate better on- line learning environments and promote student satisfaction. Based on these research findings, several recommendations have been made regarding how to create a learner-centered online classroom that incorporates effective WebCT features, increases student-instructor interaction, increases student-student in- teraction, and increases student-content interaction. The results of this research can help educators create a rich distance education environment that encour- ages students to enjoy what they’re learning and perform well. These research results showed that student-instructor, student-student, and student-content interactions, as well as gender and WebCT features are predic- tors of course satisfaction. The following are suggestions for future research: 1. Investigate if increased interaction will increase student learning outcomes measured by grades or academic achievement. 2. Replicate this study on a national level for undergraduate students who are taking a similar course using various course management systems. 3. Replicate this study in other courses in other subject areas. 4. Conduct a qualitative research study to investigate students’ perceptions of the relationships between interaction and their course satisfaction. 5. Conduct an experimental study with a control group to measure if increas- ing interaction will increase course satisfaction. One group would require little to no interaction, while another group would be given a sufficient amount of interaction. 6. Conduct the same study on different course management platforms other than WebCT. 4�� Summer �008: Volume 40 Number 4 7. Determine if the research results concerning gender and preference re- mained consistent in other subject matter. This course was a computer sci- ence course; perhaps a broader subject area would change the results. 8. Determine whether other factors affect interaction, such as students’ learn- ing styles and instructors’ teaching styles, which are not addressed in this study. Further study is needed in these areas. Contributors Shu-Hui Hsieh Chang is the director of distance education and a Black- board/WebCT senior certified trainer for the Computer Science Department at Iowa State University. She has developed several online courses and has taught Computer Science 103 entirely online with about 1,000 students each semester for the past four years. Her main research interests include computer technolo- gies in education, curriculum and instructional design, and evaluation and assessment in both traditional and distance education settings. Dr. Chang is a member of the university’s Distance Education Council. (Address: 116 Biscayne Street, Port Lavaca, TX 77979; 361.552.4702; shchang@iastate.edu) Roger A. Smith is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University. 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work_j2k5bvuhojh4pixeg3vuiua6gi	----	US-China Education Review B, August 2018, Vol. 8, No. 8, 329-337 doi: 10.17265/2161-6248/2018.08.001 The multiple intelligences (MI) theory was proposed by Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner (1983). He stated that intelligence is an ability that operates in multiple forms in life. And the human brain possesses a minimum of eight basic intelligences including: linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalistic intelligence (Gardner, 2006). Education should provide opportunities to assist students in developing their strengths (Shearer, 2009). Gardner’s proposal of the MI theory in 1983 had a huge impact on improving education in schools (White, 2008). Hanafin (2014) pointed out that the application of MI theory in the classroom could assist students in learning. MI theory describes the diversity of intelligence and emphasizes that all children can be educated most appropriately by discovering each child’s strength and assisting him or her accordingly. This provides children with the opportunity for success and The Effect of Multiple Intelligences-Based Instruction on Learning Motivation and Learning Achievement in Science Courses Yi-Chen Chang, Jeng-Fung Hung National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of implementing multiple intelligence (MI)-based instruction on the science learning motivation and learning achievement of 7th grade junior high students. This quasi-experimental research study utilized questionnaires and tests of science learning motivation and learning achievement, and examined collected data through use of the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and a t-test were performed in order to explore the differences between the science learning motivations and learning achievements of the experimental group (N = 39), who were subjected to teaching based on MI theory, and the control group (N = 36), who were subjected to traditional lectures. The results of the study show that, after implementing MI-based instruction, the students in the experimental group significantly outperformed those in the control group in terms of science learning motivation, science learning value, and active learning strategies, while the students with low learning achievement showing an improvement in their learning attitude that allowed them to develop a positive learning attitude toward biology classes and raised their class participation and preference for biology classes. Keywords: multiple intelligences (MI), learning motivation, learning achievement Introduction Yi-Chen Chang, Ph.D. candidate, Graduate Institute of Science Education and Environmental Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University. Jeng-Fung Hung, Ph.D., professor, Graduate Institute of Science Education and Environmental Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University. DAVID PUBLISHING D LEARNING MOTIVATION AND LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE COURSES 330 upholds the education principle of nurturing every child. The application of Gardner’s MI theory can strengthen an individual’s learning process and inspire active learning in education (Hopper & Hurry, 2000). MI theory is an educational philosophy that advocates the different potentials of each individual to allow students to discover their own learning method (Saban, 2009). Instructors conducting MI learning activities must acknowledge that all types of intelligence are equally important. This is in stark contrast to traditional education perspectives that emphasize the development and application of linguistic and mathematical intelligence (Stewart, 2009). Traditional teaching activities are not advantageous to the development of individual learning activities, while MI theory is a learning channel that makes knowledge easily obtainable (Tracey, 2009). The application of MI in Taiwan’s education system emphasizes that the focus of instructor attention should be on students’ strengths in intelligence, while also encouraging students to develop their weaker intelligences. When MI theory is integrated into learning, students can apply the knowledge they learn in daily life and cultivate the ability to take their knowledge with them (Yang, 2015). Literature Review Pintrich, Marx, and Boyle (1993) emphasized that the learning goals, science learning value, and self-efficacy of students play a key role in students’ construction or reconstruction of scientific concepts. Brophy (1998) and Pintrich and Schunk (1996) pointed out that self-efficacy, personal goal orientation, mission value, and the learning environment affect student learning motivation. Brophy (1998) and Pintrich and Schunk (1996) also pointed out that a given learning environment includes the instructor’s teaching strategy, teaching activities, and teacher-student interactions that will impact student learning motivation. Brophy (1998) further pointed out that instructors create a learning environment to improve student confidence in learning, while also paying attention to the internal and external motives of students and inspiring their desire for learning in order to meet the needs of students; this is the strategy used to induce motivation. When inspiring learning motivation in students, instructors can select teaching activities that are suitable for the students, these activities must be related to the current experiences and needs of the students. Providing students with a choice in their learning method can improve their learning motivation (McLean, 2003). The perspective above complies with the spirit of Gardner’s MI theory by emphasizing individual differences and maintaining that, through appropriate education and encouragement, along with the appropriate design and arrangement of learning activities, those differences become factors that can determine intelligence levels. Instructors should identify a learner’s strengths in terms of intelligence and use diverse teaching methods to improve the weaker areas of his/her intelligence (Armstrong, 2017; Gardner, 1999, 2006). The past literature has shown that implementing MI theories in teaching natural sciences can improve the learning motivation, learning achievement, and learning attitude of junior high and elementary school students (Hsu, 2003; Tsai, 2002; Lin, 2001; Lei, 2001; Cutshall, 2003; Ozdemir, Guneysu, & Tekkaya, 2006; Abdi, Laee, & Ahmadyan, 2013; Pratiwi, Rochintaniawati, & Agustin, 2018), but that it results in no significant difference in learning achievement and attitude (Ma, 2002; Köksal & Yel, 2007). However, the subjects of MI theory studies in Taiwan were mostly elementary school students. There was little exploration of biology courses taken by junior high students who were facing greater academic pressures from the education system. The primary subjects of learning are students, and it is important to regain ownership of the theme of learning to increase their learning motivation and acquire knowledge. Therefore, this study explored the effect of MI LEARNING MOTIVATION AND LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE COURSES 331 theory in the biology education of junior high students in order to serve as a reference for education and further research. Research Questions Based on the purposes of this study, two research questions were proposed as follows: 1. Is there a significant difference between the effects of teaching based on MI and those of traditional lectures on the science learning motivation of junior high students? 2. Is there a significant difference between the effects of teaching based on MI and those of traditional lectures on the learning achievement of junior high students? Method The research participants of this quasi-experimental research study were 75 7th grade junior high students from two classes: 39 participants in the experimental group took part in a six-week biology course based on MI, while 36 participants in the control group took part in a traditional lecture-based course. Before and after their courses, both groups of students were given pre- and post- tests in the form of science learning motivation questionnaires and learning achievement tests. The research instruments that were used in this study included a science learning motivation questionnaire (students’ motivation toward science learning [SMTSL]) and a learning achievement test. The SMTSL questionnaire was developed by Tuan, Chin, and Shieh (2005) with a sample size of 1,407 participants and Cronbach α of 0.89, and consists of five-point Likert scales for self-efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, performance goal, achievement goal, and learning environment stimulation. In this study, the SMTSL questionnaire showed a Cronbach α of 0.86 for the pre-test and a Cronbach α of 0.90 for the post-test. The learning achievement test included biology test scores from the first and second biology sectional exams, the contents were designed and reviewed by experts with master’s degrees in science education and biology, and the first test was a pre-test that was administrated before the participants took the classes, so as to exclude instructor subjectivity. Therefore, the test scores were considered as a representation of learning achievement. The experimental group of this study underwent education based on MI theory that utilized materials, such as “Understanding the Structures and Functions of Plants” and “Animal Digestion”. The researchers referenced related literature (Lin, 2008; Armstrong, 2017; Gardner, 2006, 2011) to design the teaching materials based on MI theory, which were then given to experts with science education doctorates, science education master’s degrees, master’s degrees in biology, and other specialists for review. The materials were designed according to the following principles: 1. Student-centric course design where students are the protagonists of education while instructors provide assistance in learning; 2. Activities should utilize as many intelligences as possible to comply with the principle of respecting individual strengths of MI, so that students can come in broad contact with stimulants of all intelligences; 3. Design activities that are diverse and interesting to improve student learning motivation; 4. During the teaching process, instructors should provide many opportunities for students to learn in order to build their confidence and experience with success. This study utilized MI theory as a teaching tool when dealing with course content. Multiple teaching methods were utilized to incorporate classroom methods to stimulate different intelligences, splitting students LEARNING MOTIVATION AND LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE COURSES 332 into groups for course activities and using teaching activities that incorporated stage performances, role playing, drawing, hands-on activity, study sheets, and other content to increase the range and number of stimulants in the learning environment, so that each student could select his/her advantageous intelligence and use his/her preferred method to participate in the course activities. This allowed them to integrate with the teaching scenarios, so that they were no longer passively listening to lectures. This approach was similar to Gardner’s (1999) proposal of using MI theory to improve the learning results of students, so that they understand content and methods (Gardner, 2006). Table 1 is a MI activities chart for the structures and functions of plants topic, while Table 2 is a MI activities chart for the animal digestion topic. The control group listened to the traditional educational lectures, in which the instructor was the protagonist who relayed knowledge to students. The education of students was thus passive in nature. Table 1 MI Activities Chart of Plant Structures and Functions Topic Intelligence utilized Activity Linguistic Discuss, report, or listen to the reports or descriptions of others. Logical-mathematical Categorize the types of plants. Spatial Look at images, observe, and draw plant structures. Bodily-kinesthetic Walk around campus, observe leaves, and demonstrate the characteristics of plants. Interpersonal Discuss with others, cooperate, and give reports. Intrapersonal Set goals and reflect on whether they have been achieved. Naturalist Walk around campus and observe leaves. Table 2 MI Activities Chart of Animal Digestion Topic Intelligence utilized Activity Linguistic Discuss, report, or listen to the reports or descriptions of others. Logical-mathematical Think about problems. Spatial Look at images and videos, observe, and draw the structures of digestive organs. Bodily-kinesthetic Arrange digestive organs into their correct positions. Interpersonal Discuss with others, cooperate, and give reports. Intrapersonal Set goals and reflect on whether they have been achieved. Naturalist Observe and identify digestive structures. The quantitative data in this study are processed and analyzed by using the statistical package for social science (SPSS). An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to analyze the science learning motivation questionnaire results, while a t-test was performed to analyze the learning achievement test results, with the level of significance being set to α = 0.05, in order to analyze the effects on the science learning motivation and learning achievement of the two groups after learning. This study conducted analysis, induction, and integration of qualitative data including student study sheets. Results The Effect of Different Types of Education Instructions on Science Learning Motivation Tables 3 and 4 show the results of the science learning motivation questionnaire analysis. After the MI-based instructions was implemented, the experimental group showed superior active learning strategies LEARNING MOTIVATION AND LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE COURSES 333 compared to the control group, with the difference being significant (p = 0.00 < 0.05). The science learning value of the experimental group were also superior to those of the control group, with the difference being significant (p = 0.04 < 0.05). The science learning motivation of the experimental group was also stronger than that of the control group, with the difference being statistically significant (p = 0.02 < 0.05). In addition, the self-efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, achievement goal, learning environment stimulation, and total scale scores of the experimental group all showed greater improvement than those for the control group, signifying that there was a positive increase for most of the learning motivations. Table 3 Summary of the ANCOVA for the Experimental and Control Groups’ Science Learning Motivation Title of subscale Source of variation SS df MS F P η2 Self-efficacy Group 18.89 1 18.89 1.12 0.29 0.015 Error 1,211.81 72 16.83 Active learning strategies Group 81.93 1 81.93 3.59 0.00 * 0.15 Error 1,447.08 72 20.38 Science learning value Group 18.74 1 18.74 4.00 0.04 * 0.053 Error 332.39 72 4.62 Performance goal Group 27.82 1 27.82 3.07 0.08 0.041 Error 652.19 72 9.06 Achievement goal Group 10.24 1 10.24 1.63 0.21 0.022 Error 453.01 72 6.29 Learning environment stimulation Group 37.67 1 37.67 2.40 0.13 0.032 Error 1,131.81 72 15.72 Total scale Group 734.19 1 734.19 4.94 0.02 * 0.068 Error 10,561.77 72 148.76 Note. * Title of subscale p < 0.05. Table 4 Mean (M), Standard Deviation (SD), and Adjusted Mean (AdjM) Results for the Experimental and Control Groups’ Science Learning Motivations The experimental group (N = 39) The control group (N = 36) M SD AdjM M SD AdjM Self-efficacy 28.31 4.24 28.07 26.81 5.83 27.06 Active learning strategies 34.16 3.08 34.06 31.97 3.18 31.96 Science learning value 21.51 2.25 21.61 20.72 3.03 20.61 Performance goal 14.92 3.83 14.91 16.11 3.21 16.12 Achievement goal 19.41 2.51 19.48 18.80 2.71 18.73 Learning environment stimulation 23.21 3.58 23.55 22.47 4.99 22.10 Total scale 141.88 12.89 141.85 136.40 13.02 136.41 When the researchers analyzed the reason for the positive increases in the science learning motivation of the experimental group students, the students made statements, such as “The teacher made biology more vibrant and interesting”, “The teacher had confidence in me”, “The teacher kept encouraging us”, “Biology class is fun and interesting”, and “We were able to perform on stage in the biology class”. LEARNING MOTIVATION AND LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE COURSES 334 S02: Biology is a fun subject, plus the class was interesting and we performed on stage, while I did well on each test, so I like biology. (This student scored 100 on the test and is a high achieving student.) S04: I only studied biology, because the teacher had confidence in me and the class was more fun. (This student showed a 15-point improvement on the test and is a low achieving student.) S20: The biology teacher in the class was more interesting and fun, so I started paying more attention in class, so that I only wanted to study biology. (This student showed a 19-point improvement on the test and is a low achieving student.) S29: The teacher helped us like biology by making the deep material more vibrant and interesting. The biology teacher also kept encouraging us, so I enjoyed the subject. (This student is a low achieving student.) Education with meaning requires analysis of student interactions with new information to aggressively construct educational content with individual meaning. The new information interpreted by the individual is then integrated into existing knowledge that has been understood (Raffini, 1996). Pintrich and Schunk (1996) pointed out that if students feel the value and meaning of learning goals, they actively participate in learning missions and use active learning strategies to integrate previous experiences and new experiences. Raffini (1996) pointed out that providing students with the choice to use any method to complete their work inspires student to participate actively in learning and encourages student achievement, this can improve their learning motivation. Therefore, the implementation of MI-based instruction can improve science learning motivation and also improve the learning attitudes of low achieving students, including the participation in and preferences of students towards biology courses. The Effect of Different Types of Education Instructions on Learning Achievement Table 5 shows the results of the learning achievement analysis. The implementation of MI-based instruction did not lead to a significant difference in learning achievement results between the experimental and control groups (p = 0.06 > 0.05). However, Table 6 shows a school-wide ranking of biology learning achievements and that the experimental group improved from 5th place to 1st in the school. Table 5 The t-Test for the Learning Achievement of the Experimental and Control Groups Tests Groups M SD t P d First science sectional exam The experimental group 75.59 17.86 0.49 0.48 0.13 The control group 71.50 18.23 Second science sectional exam The experimental group 79.21 19.50 3.48 0.06 0.81 The control group 78.00 15.11 Note. * Test p < 0.05. Table 6 School-Wide Ranking of the Biology Learning Achievement of the Experimental and Control Groups The experimental group ranking The control group ranking First sectional exam 5 7 Second sectional exam (after MI-based instruction implemented with experimental group) 1 3 Total of 7th grade classes in the school 15 15 The researchers analyzed the reason for the learning achievement improvements of the students in the experimental group, and out of all the tested subjects (language, English, math, social studies, and biology), only the subject of biology received praise from the students: “I am highly interested in biology”, “I like taking LEARNING MOTIVATION AND LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE COURSES 335 biology classes”, “Biology is fun, joyful, and interesting”, and “It feels nice to take biology classes”. S10: Because biology is fun and I enjoy the class, I only like biology. (This student showed a 20-point improvement on the test and is a mid-achieving student.) S27: I only want to study biology, because I understand what the teacher is talking about. (This student showed a 14-point improvement on the test and is a low achieving student.) S36: I like taking biology, because the teacher’s class is special and interesting, so I focus very hard in the biology class. S38: The teacher’s class is pretty fun so I enjoy it very much, which is why I only want to study biology. (This student showed a 14-point improvement on the test and is a low achieving student.) S39: I only want to study biology, because I think the subject is very fun. (This student showed a 33-point improvement on the test and is a low achieving student.) When the MI-based instruction was implemented, the students were able to select their intelligence strengths to learn and participate in the course content according to their own preferences. They obtained a sense of achievement in the learning process and felt that the class was fun, the subject was easier to study, they displayed interest in the subject, and they only wanted to take biology, because they understood the course content. This improved their learning achievement, indicating that learning motivation is the factor that impacts learning achievement (Brophy, 1998) to give students a positive learning attitude towards biology class. Conclusions and Recommendations This study investigated 7th grade junior high students and their learning of biology. The results of the study show that, after implementing multiple intelligences-based teaching, the students in the experimental group significantly outperformed those in the control group in terms of science learning motivation, science learning value, and active learning strategies; the self-efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, achievement goal, learning environment stimulation, and total scale scores of the experimental group all improved. These results show that there was a positive increase for most learning motivations; the learning attitudes of students with low learning achievement were improved, so that they had positive learning attitudes toward biology and improved student participation in and preference for biology courses. MI theory emphasizes individual differences and the search for suitable methods to help students learn. The following were key points in designing and implementing the teaching activities of the researchers: 1. Design student-centric courses. Students are the protagonists in education while instructors are there to assist them; 2. Activities should include as many intelligences as possible to comply with the MI theory principle of respecting individual differences. Give each student a sense of participation and broad contact with stimulants of all types of intelligence; 3. Design activities that are diverse and interesting to promote learning motivation in students; 4. During the learning process, instructors should give students the opportunity to learn by caring for the students and encouraging them with a gentle tone. Giving students confidence and experience of success can build good teacher-student interactions and increase science learning motivation in students. The utilization of MI-based instruction in the biology education of 7th grade junior high students in this study had positive effects and can serve as a reference in future education and research efforts. 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work_j5dvrnprwncuncnej4eu6ngr2a	----	2_baile-gonzalez_ei_rTCE_ene2016-n3.indd Sumario 1. Introducción 2. Metodología 3. Resultados 4. Discusión 5. Referencias bibliográficas Anexo www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016, págs. 9-28). TCyE 9 Fecha de entrada: 30-11-2015 Fecha de aceptación: 07-12-2015 1 J. I. Baile Ayensa, vicerrector de ordenación académica de la Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (udima). 2 M.ª J. González-Calderón, decana de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud y de la Educación de la Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (udima). Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC Extracto: Introducción. La enseñanza a distancia en el ámbito universitario se ha extendido a nivel internacional desde hace más de cuatro décadas, teniendo en los últimos años un especial desarrollo gracias al uso de las tecnologías de la información y la comu- nicación (TIC). Existen pocos estudios que investiguen la valoración de los estudian- tes universitarios acerca de la enseñanza a distancia con herramientas basadas en las TIC en comparación con la enseñanza tradicional presencial; tampoco existen estudios acerca de qué técnicas son mejor valoradas ni por qué, lo que justifica el presente estudio. Metodología. Se realizó una encuesta a 117 estudiantes del grado de Psicología de la Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (Udima) a través de un cuestionario de 15 ítems implementado vía Google Docs. Resultados. Los estudiantes consideran la enseñanza a distancia fundamentada en las TIC similar o superior a la enseñanza presencial; de igual forma, valoran positiva- mente cómo dicha metodología ha potenciado sus capacidades y resultados acadé- micos. Por otro lado, las herramientas didácticas que permiten una mayor autonomía al estudiante y que requieren de menores recursos técnicos son las más valoradas. Discusión. Los resultados obtenidos son coherentes con los de otras investigacio- nes en diferentes niveles de enseñanza y/o poblaciones. Paradójicamente, las herra- mientas síncronas o más innovadoras no fueron las mejor valoradas, probablemente por el perfil singular del estudiante a distancia. Palabras claves: educación a distancia, educación presencial, e-learning, tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC). José Ignacio Baile Ayensa1 y María José González-Calderón2 Este trabajo ha obtenido el Accésit Premio Estudios Financieros 2015 en la modalidad de Educación y Nue- vas Tecnologías. El jurado ha estado compuesto por: don Gorka J. Palazio Arko; don Antonio Bautista García-Vera; don José María de Moya Anegón; don Javier García Vilum- brales y doña Clara Eugenia Núñez Romero-Balmas. (Los trabajos se presentan con seudónimo y la selección se efectúa garantizando el anonimato de los autores). Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 10 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com 1. INTRODUCCIÓN 1.1. La educación a distancia: defi nición y principales características En la actualidad se suele diferenciar entre tres grandes formatos de educación, que a grandes rasgos serían: • Educación presencial. Donde coinciden docente y estudiante en el mismo contexto físico y temporal. • Educación a distancia. En la que existe una se- paración física entre el docente y el estudiante, y no tiene por qué haber sincronía temporal. • Modalidades mixtas. Donde parte de la ense- ñanza se realiza presencialmente y otra parte a dis- tancia. En el intento de apresar el concepto de educación a distancia, García (1987), tras analizar numerosas de- fi niciones de diversos autores, llega a la conclusión de que la misma se caracteriza por los siguientes aspectos: • Separación entre profesor y alumno. • Utilización sistemática de medios y recursos técnicos. • Aprendizaje individual. • Apoyo de una organización de carácter tutorial. • Comunicación bidireccional. The opinion of university students on distance education using ICT Abstract: Introduction. Distance education within the univer- sity context has been spread worldwide for more than four decades and has been mainly developed in the last years thanks to the use of the information and communications technology (ICT). There are few studies investigating the opinion of university students on distance education using ICT tools com- pared with traditional learning (face to face). There are no studies on the best valued teaching tech- niques either nor why they are considered so. This lack of research justifies the present study. Methodology. A survey was conducted among university students of Psychology from the Open University of Madrid (Udima). 177 students took part in the study filling in a 15 item questionnaire through a Google Docs. Results. The students consider distance educa- tion using ICT to be better or as good as traditional (face to face) education; they also highly value this methodology as far as the improvement of their capabilities and academic achievement is con- cerned. Besides, the best valued didactic tools are those that seem to allow higher autonomy to the stu- dent and have less technological demands. Discussion. The results of this research are similar to those found in previous studies that analyzed other educational levels or populations. Paradoxically, syn- chronous or more innovative tools were not the best valued, probably because of the unique profile of the student within the distance education system. Keywords: distance education, face to face education, e-learning, information and communication technologies (ICT). J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 11 1.2. La enseñanza universitaria on-line 1.2.1. ¿Por qué implantar la enseñanza universitaria on-line? Desde hace más de 40 años la enseñanza universitaria a distancia es un hecho. En los años sesenta del siglo XX se fundó la Open University en el Reino Unido y una década después la Universidad Nacional de Educa- ción a Distancia (UNED) en España, ambas con demostradas garantías de efi cacia en su labor. Asimismo, iniciado ya el siglo XXI, han ido apare- ciendo las universidades on-line, que fundamentan la enseñanza a dis- tancia en las TIC. Esto último se puede explicar por una serie de cambios sociales y educativos, entre los que destacan los siguientes: • La necesidad de cualifi cación y formación continua adicional, algo que demanda el mercado laboral en la actualidad (cursos de pos- grado, idiomas o nuevas tecnologías). • La generalización de la enseñanza universitaria a distancia me- diante los medios tradicionales, donde los estudiantes, que se cuentan por millones, reclaman la mejor atención docente posible. • La escasa disponibilidad de tiempo que ciertos estratos de la pobla- ción pueden dedicar al estudio y a los desplazamientos asociados a la enseñanza presencial por motivos de toda índole. • La globalización, que lleva a que alumnos residentes en otras ciu- dades o países por motivos laborales o familiares deban estudiar en universidades a distancia en sus países de origen; asimismo, ciertos individuos que desean cursar sus estudios en universidades ubicadas fuera de sus lugares de origen, pero no pueden despla- zarse presencialmente allí, pueden obtener la formación anhelada gracias al e-learning. • Las enormes posibilidades técnicas de las TIC como herramientas de enseñanza-aprendizaje que permiten superar ciertas limitacio- nes de las anteriores técnicas, como, por ejemplo, la generaliza- ción de las clases por videoconferencia, la realización de prácticas en entornos virtuales, etc. Esto le lleva a elaborar la siguiente de- fi nición integradora: «La educación a distancia es un sistema tecnológico de comuni- cación masiva y bidireccional, que sustituye la interacción per- sonal en el aula del profesor y alumno como medio preferente de enseñanza por la acción sis- temática y conjunta de diversos recursos didácticos y el apoyo de una organización tutorial, que propician el aprendizaje autónomo de los estudiantes» (García, 1987, pág. 8) La educación a distancia posee ciertas características que la singularizan frente a la enseñanza presencial tradicional, las cuales podrían concretarse básica- mente en las siguientes: • El profesor y el estudiante no coin- ciden en el espacio ni en el tiempo dentro de la acción educativa. • Se emplea una tecnología educativa específi ca como medio principal en la actividad educativa (corresponden- cia, multimedia, informática, internet). • Se programa la enseñanza de una forma más sistemática. • Se capacita a los docentes en la di- dáctica de la enseñanza a distancia (el profesor como tutor). • El compromiso de los estudiantes con el proceso de aprendizaje (nivel de au- tonomía, motivación, etc.) es mayor. La modalidad on-line en enseñanza universitaria parece favorecer las capacidades y resultados académicos de los estudiantes en mayor medida que la metodología presencial Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 12 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com • La reducción de los costes que supone el uso de las TIC, al no existir la necesidad de enviar materia- les escritos al alumno o debido a la automatización de las tareas de evaluación, lo que repercute en el abaratamiento de las enseñanzas tanto para institu- ciones como para estudiantes. • La fl exibilidad asociada al empleo de las TIC, de modo que es el estudiante el que puede ajustar el tiempo dedicado al estudio y la realización de las ac- tividades a sus rutinas cotidianas e idiosincrasia. Las anteriores ideas confi rman los benefi cios del uso de las TIC en la enseñanza universitaria, algo que ya está claramente reconocido por la literatura científi ca (Bautista, Borges y Forés, 2006; Sánchez y Calvo, 2012; Sangrá, 2001). 1.2.2. ¿Qué condiciones o requisitos son necesarios a nivel social para que pueda implantarse la enseñanza uni- versitaria on-line? La implantación de la modalidad on-line en las ense- ñanzas universitarias requiere un contexto sociocultu- ral determinado, así como ciertas características tanto en el profesorado como en el alumnado, que son las que han ido confi gurando esta opción como una ense- ñanza de calidad y se convierten en referentes para su desarrollo. Desde el punto de vista del contexto social y uni- versitario se requiere que el formato on-line sea es- timado y valorado como un método válido para la en- señanza a este nivel de formación, lo cual no puede afi rmarse que esté generalizado en la actualidad. Por otra parte, el país, las instituciones y los estudiantes deben tener acceso a los medios técnicos adecuados para su correcto seguimiento, como puede ser la exis- tencia de adecuadas y accesibles conexiones a inter- net, ordenadores o dispositivos informáticos con cierto software, etc. Y, por último, debemos señalar que se requiere que haya existido una formación previa ade- cuada de los docentes en esta modalidad de enseñan- za, la cual requiere el dominio de ciertas habilidades didácticas y técnicas que no siempre están generaliza- das en las plantillas académicas; esto último conlleva otra necesidad, la de un equipo de especialistas en las TIC y en la formación on-line a disposición tanto de los equipos docentes como de los estudiantes, que atien- dan las necesidades de formación de ambos y resuel- van posibles contratiempos técnicos que puedan tener lugar en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. En relación a los docentes, además de la formación previamente citada, se requiere que estos asuman y reconozcan la validez del formato on-line como me- dio de enseñanza a la hora de impartir su materia específi ca. Asimismo, la institución universitaria para la que trabajen debe poner a su alcance la necesa- ria instrumentalización técnica (o, en su defecto, ellos mismos la tendrán que adquirir). Por último, antes de comenzar la docencia on-line, deben haber alcanzado las necesarias competencias didácticas y tecnológicas imprescindibles en esta modalidad de enseñanza (por ejemplo, asumir la importante labor de tutorización que suelen requerir los estudiantes o manejar con soltura la plataforma educativa que van a utilizar). Para los estudiantes también existen unos requeri- mientos básicos, muy similares a los que se establecen para los docentes: por una parte, una actitud favorable hacia la modalidad de enseñanza on-line (que la reco- nozcan como válida a nivel universitario); por otra par- te, deben disponer de los medios técnicos, propios o fa- cilitados por la institución universitaria, para el acceso y seguimiento de la enseñanza; y, por último, es necesa- rio reseñar que para el seguimiento de una enseñanza a distancia en general y, por ende, en la modalidad on- line se suele requerir un mayor grado de autonomía y motivación que en la enseñanza presencial. No obstan- te, en relación a este último aspecto, es preciso matizar que esta modalidad de enseñanza puede posibilitar un mayor seguimiento y control de la actividad del estu- diante que otros formatos, lo cual ayuda a incrementar su implicación en el proceso de aprendizaje. Los resultados obtenidos en esta investigación son coherentes con otros trabajos que indagan sobre los aspectos aquí estudiados, las bondades de la modalidad de enseñanza on-line J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 13 1.2.3. ¿Qué inconvenientes puede conllevar la enseñanza on-line en el ámbito uni- versitario? La modalidad de enseñanza on-line a nivel universita- rio puede presentar ciertos inconvenientes que se de- ben tener en cuenta. Estos están asociados, por un lado, a que en esta modalidad de formación se requie- re adquirir unas competencias específi cas de alto nivel y, por otro, a que es necesario garantizar totalmente que el estudiante que realiza las actividades es real- mente al que se le va a acreditar su formación. En con- creto, las difi cultades que podemos encontrarnos son fundamentalmente cuatro: • Existen dudas de que ciertas capacidades más procedimentales y actitudinales, no tanto concep- tuales, puedan adquirirse totalmente en una ense- ñanza on-line. Esto está llevando a proponer nume- rosos programas mixtos, donde ciertos contenidos se trabajen obligatoriamente de manera presencial, no imprescindiblemente en la sede de la institución formativa, sino en entornos cercanos al domicilio del estudiante. • Como se indicaba previamente, en la enseñanza universitaria debe garantizarse que el estudiante al que se va a acreditar es el que ha realizado las acti- vidades formativas, especialmente si dicha acredi- tación implica dotarle de ciertas habilitaciones pro- fesionales, con las importantes implicaciones que esto conlleva. En formación on-line esto puede ser un problema si todo el contacto con el estudiante es a distancia, lo cual debe ser resuelto por la rea- lización de ciertas actividades de forma presencial o a través de sistemas de identifi cación a distancia, en los cuales se está trabajando en la actualidad, pero que aún están sin perfeccionar. • Toda enseñanza a distancia, también la modalidad on-line, requiere que el estudiante tenga cierta au- tonomía y mayores niveles de autocontrol y moti- vación. Si bien las herramientas on-line pueden ayudar a ello, dado que permiten una tutorización individualizada, a veces automática, el entorno on- line puede facilitar la dispersión de la atención o una desmotivación inicial por considerarlo excesivamen- te complicado. • Una última difi cultad de la enseñanza on-line, más bien un riesgo, es que se confunda el medio con el fi n, con el contenido. A veces las herramientas didácticas son tan novedosas, tan impactantes o requieren de tal dominio técnico o recursos perso- nales, que toda la actividad del estudiante gira en torno al conocimiento de la herramienta y no tanto al aprovechamiento de la misma para su formación. Es algo que ya han puesto de manifi esto diferen- tes autores, como Padilla y Hernández (2013, pág. 118) cuando afi rman que «se requiere asumir que las tecnologías no son un fi n en sí mismas sino un instrumento de apoyo y que como tales responden a las intenciones didácticas otorgadas por quienes hacen uso de ellas». Por estas difi cultades, y otras no analizadas en este trabajo, el impacto de las TIC en la enseñanza todavía no ha alcanzado el nivel deseable; incluso la Comi- sión Europea lo reconocía en 2008 de una forma clara al apuntar que «el impacto de las TIC en la educación no ha sido tan grande como se esperaba. En particu- lar, la transformación que han experimentado las em- presas y los servicios públicos a través de las TIC no ha llegado todavía a los procesos educativos. La in- tegración plena de las TIC en los sistemas de educa- ción y de formación requiere aún cambios profundos en la organización y equipamiento de los principales entornos educativos: las aulas, los puestos de trabajo y el aprendizaje informal» (Comisión Europea, citado por Gutiérrez, 2010, pág. 27). Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 14 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com 1.3. Enseñanza a distancia versus enseñanza presencial Desde la aparición de la enseñanza a distancia uno de los tópicos que ha preocupado a los profesionales implicados en este ámbito de estudio es dilucidar si dicha modalidad es comparable con la enseñanza presencial o si alguna de ellas es mejor que la otra. Desde entonces se han realizado diversos estudios, centrándose en las dos últimas décadas específi camente en el análisis de la modalidad de enseñan- za a distancia que emplea las TIC frente a la presencial. Uno de los trabajos de referencia al respecto fue el desa- rrollado en 2009 por el Departamento de Educación de EE. UU., a través de su ofi cina para la planifi cación, evalua- ción y desarrollo de políticas educativas, en el que se eva- luaban las evidencias de las prácticas educativas on-line. Este estudio revisó las investigaciones que al respecto se habían llevado a cabo en EE. UU. entre 2003 y 2008 con es- tudiantes de primaria y/o secundaria (USDE, 2010). En dicho estudio se pretendía resolver las siguientes dudas, las cua- les representan los principales tópicos en este planteamien- to comparativo: ¿qué efi cacia tiene la enseñanza on-line en comparación con la enseñanza presencial?; ¿mejora el aprendizaje si a la enseñanza presencial se le añade la en- señanza on-line?; ¿qué prácticas educativas están asocia- das a una mayor efi cacia de la enseñanza on-line?, y ¿qué condiciones infl uyen en la efi cacia del aprendizaje on-line? Este tipo de dudas son las que desde hace años interesan a los investigadores de la enseñanza on-line, y sobre las que todavía no hay repuestas defi nitivas. Es más, hay muchos ámbitos donde la investigación ha sido muy escasa o anec- dótica, como la enseñanza universitaria, donde la modali- dad on-line se ha ido generalizando más lentamente que en otros niveles educativos debido a las dudas sobre si ciertos contenidos pueden impartirse mediante dicha modalidad y al valor profesionalizante o habilitante que posee la certifi - cación que se obtiene tras la formación. Es importante re- cordar que en la enseñanza de adultos y/o en la enseñan- za universitaria los potenciales de las TIC y las enseñanzas on-line todavía están infravalorados e infrautilizados, como señala Gutiérrez (2010). En este debate se ubica la investigación que se presenta en este informe, que pretende avanzar en el conocimiento de las características de la modalidad educativa on-line y su aceptación a nivel universitario, así como analizar sus posi- bles ventajas o desventajas respecto a la enseñanza tradi- cional presencial dentro del contexto universitario español. 1.4. Objetivos de la investigación El presente estudio se enmarca dentro del para- digma de la enseñanza universitaria on-line y tiene como objetivo principal estudiar la opinión y valo- ración que hacen los propios estudiantes de esta modalidad de aprendizaje y de algunas de sus he- rramientas; en concreto, se analizarán las opinio- nes de estudiantes de una disciplina del campo de las ciencias de la salud, la Psicología. Se plantean los siguientes dos objetivos específi cos: • Conocer la opinión de los estudiantes acer- ca de la enseñanza universitaria on-line recibida; en este caso, de la disciplina de Psicología. En concreto, se investigarán los si- guientes aspectos: – ¿Cuál es el grado de satisfacción de los es- tudiantes con la formación recibida bajo la metodología on-line? – ¿Consideran los estudiantes la enseñanza on-line equiparable, en términos generales, a la formación en enseñanza presencial? Esto se estudiará en función de las experiencias personales de estos en ambas modalidades. – ¿Consideran los estudiantes que la ense- ñanza on-line es equiparable a la formación presencial en cuanto al contacto existente con los profesores y los compañeros? – ¿Consideran los estudiantes que la ense- ñanza on-line facilita o mejora las habilida- des y capacidades de los estudiantes? • Examinar qué opinión le merecen a los estu- diantes todas y cada una de las herramientas didácticas utilizadas en la enseñanza on-line (foros, wikis, glosarios, etc.), así como la plata- forma en la que estas se presentan (Moodle). La modalidad on-line de enseñanza universitaria puede favorecer la interacción con el profesorado J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 15 2. METODOLOGÍA 2.1. Características de la mues- tra y del centro educativo Para realizar la investigación se contó con el universo de estudiantes matriculados en el grado de Psicología de la Udima en el momento de la investigación, 234 suje- tos, de los cuales participaron voluntaria- mente 117 (47 hombres y 70 mujeres). En los gráfi cos 1 y 2 puede observarse la distribución de la muestra en función de su edad y su nivel educativo previo. Como puede apreciarse, la mayor parte de los sujetos se encuentran entre los 31 y los 50 años de edad, dato habitual entre el alumnado que estudia a distancia en nues- tro país. Asimismo, más de la mitad de la muestra posee al menos la titulación de diplomado universitario. Se trata, por tan- to, de una muestra con un nivel académi- co previo elevado, quizá por encima del promedio habitual en estudiantes a dis- tancia, lo que previsiblemente también les hace más exigentes respecto de la docen- cia recibida y las herramientas didácticas empleadas en el proceso de enseñanza- aprendizaje, en este caso, las TIC. Este aspecto es positivo, ya que los parti- cipantes no solo podrán comparar la ense- ñanza presencial y on-line en general, sino que la mayoría de ellos podrán contrastar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en am- bas modalidades en el máximo nivel educa- tivo, el universitario, al haber sido recepto- res de las dos. Como rasgo más destacable de la Udima, en la que se llevó a cabo la investigación, y haciendo honor a su lema «La universidad cercana», encontramos la existencia de un elaborado programa de tutorización de los estudiantes con dos importantes líneas de trabajo: • El profesor debe asumir la tarea de tuto- rización de sus estudiantes y realizar un Gráfi co 1. Distribución de la muestra en función de la edad de los par- ticipantes Gráfi co 2. Distribución de la muestra en función de la formación aca- démica previa de los participantes 67,5% 12,0% 20,5% De 31 a 50 años Más de 50 años Menor de 30 años 47,0% 40,2% 12,8% Secundaria y/o curso de prueba de acceso Diplomado, licenciado o graduado Máster o doctorado seguimiento personalizado de la actividad académica de los mis- mos; así, por ejemplo, debe ponerse en contacto con cualquier estudiante que durante cierto tiempo no esté realizando la acti- vidad on-line o realizar sesiones de orientación académica vía videoconferencias, entre otras funciones. • El profesor adquiere unos compromisos en la atención de la actividad académica del estudiante que favorecen la interac- ción con este, como pueden ser los referidos al cumplimien- to de los plazos temporales establecidos para responder las dudas del alumnado en los foros de tutoría o para proporcio- nar las califi caciones y feedback asociados de las actividades entregadas a través de los buzones. De hecho, el estudiante puede contactar con el profesor a través de diferentes vías: foros de tutoría, vía telefónica, correo electrónico, mensajería interna, videoconferencias, etc. En aquellos medios en los que el contacto es asíncrono, el profesor debe contestar al estudiante en un plazo muy reducido de tiempo. Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 16 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com 2.2. Instrumentos de evaluación y varia- bles objeto de estudio Para realizar el presente estudio se elaboró un cuestio- nario ad hoc que recogiera los principales contenidos necesarios para responder las preguntas planteadas, el cual puede observarse en el anexo fi nal. Este estaba constituido por 15 ítems (preguntas de opción múltiple con distintas opciones de respuesta asociadas). Las sie- te primeras hacen referencia a la valoración del alumna- do comparando la enseñanza presencial tradicional con el e-learning (modalidad de aprendizaje a distancia on- line). Mediante estos ítems se puede analizar por cuál de las dos modalidades se decantan los alumnos: en cuál consideran que la interacción con el profesorado y sus compañeros es mejor, si consideran la metodolo- gía a distancia adecuada para su formación, si esta ha potenciado sus habilidades de estudio y/o rendimiento académico y el grado general de satisfacción con la en- señanza a distancia empleando las TIC. Los ocho ítems restantes permiten estudiar la valoración del alumnado acerca de la plataforma educativa empleada en la uni- versidad de referencia (Moodle), así como de las diver- sas herramientas virtuales utilizadas habitualmente en las aulas asociadas al grado de Psicología (glosarios, wikis, foros, etc.) y de los materiales audiovisuales o vi- deoconferencias que permiten fundamentalmente rea- lizar clases virtuales o transmitir información relevante por parte del profesorado a los alumnos. A continuación, se presenta una breve explicación de las distintas herramientas virtuales que fueron objeto de consulta a los participantes del estudio, las cuales se corresponden con aquellas empleadas con mayor frecuencia en el grado de Psicología de la Udima. To- das ellas se recogen en Landeta (2007, 2010). La plataforma educativa: Moodle Constituye un lugar de encuentro y comunicación no solo entre profesores y estudiantes, sino también entre compañeros (estudiante-estudiante). Asimismo, es el lugar donde se encuentran los contenidos didácticos, contenidos documentales, actividades didácticas, etc., y el medio para realizar la evaluación de las compe- tencias adquiridas. Las posibilidades didácticas de la plataforma Moodle han sido ampliamente reconocidas (Çelik, 2010). Los aspectos más destacables de esta plataforma, cuyo uso está muy generalizado en el entorno educa- tivo, son los siguientes: • Permite establecer vías de comunicación síncro- nas y asíncronas muy efi caces mediante tablones de anuncios, foros de debate o tutorías, mensajería interna, etiquetas, etc. • Posibilita integrar gran cantidad de recursos docu- mentales: documentos de texto, audiovisuales, imá- genes, etc. • Presenta numerosas actividades de aprendizaje integradas en la plataforma: subida de archivos, foros evaluables, glosarios, cuestionarios, talleres, wikis, etc. • Dispone de un avanzado sistema de califi cación de las actividades y seguimiento del alumnado a través de un completo libro de califi caciones. • Logra un seguimiento exhaustivo de la actividad del estudiante: cuándo accede a la plataforma, qué do- cumentos consulta, qué actividades realiza, qué ca- lifi caciones obtiene, etc. De cara a los estudiantes, es una plataforma muy intui- tiva, por lo que se puede navegar por las aulas sin ape- nas formación técnica previa. Es sencilla, ya que en una única pantalla se presenta toda la información relevante del aula de la asignatura; y resulta motivante gracias, entre otros aspectos, a la autoevaluación que posibilita. Para los profesores también resulta muy intuitiva, por lo que tampoco requiere una excesiva formación téc- nica previa, es fácil de editar y permite elegir entre sis- temas de feedback (retroalimentación) automático o manual. Con respecto a las herramientas didácticas, se observa que el carácter síncrono o asíncrono de las actividades que estas permiten llevar a cabo no determina su valoración, siempre que la acción síncrona no impida la reproducción posterior y «en diferido» de la actividad J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 17 Elluminate (Blackboard Collaborate) Consiste en un programa de videoconferencia em- pleado para impartir clases, realizar sesiones de tuto- ría, elaborar vídeos didácticos, etc. Esta herramienta presenta las siguientes ventajas: • Es muy sencilla de utilizar, ya que a ella se accede mediante un link y cualquier sistema operativo per- mite descargarla; de hecho, su uso es muy intuitivo y no requiere formación específi ca. • Permite la instrucción masiva, al no existir un número de alumnos límite que puedan asistir a una sesión. • Proporciona formación tanto síncrona como asín- crona, ya que pueden grabarse las clases para su visualización posterior por parte de aquellos estu- diantes que no pueden acudir en directo a la sesión correspondiente. • Posibilita la comunicación profesor-estudiante y es- tudiante-estudiante. En relación a esta última mo- dalidad es importante comentar que pueden crear- se sesiones para que los alumnos realicen trabajos colaborativos sin presencia ni ayuda del profesor. • Presenta gran versatilidad y fl exibilidad de uso, al posibilitar compartir el escritorio. Entorno Second Life Consiste en un entorno virtual 3D donde los estudian- tes, mediante avatares, realizan actividades didácti- cas, como juicios virtuales, simulación de tratamientos psicológicos, visita a museos, etc. La universidad a la que pertenecen los participantes posee una isla en Second Life con distintas aulas y otras ubicaciones dedicadas a la educación. Las ven- tajas que presenta son las siguientes: • Resulta muy motivante, por el entorno virtual. • Permite llevar a cabo actividades didácticas que en otros contextos no se pueden realizar, como la si- mulación de terapias. • Puede emplearse tanto como actividad síncrona como asíncrona. Esta herramienta sí presenta como hándicap la nece- sidad de poseer ciertas competencias, así como deter- minados requerimientos técnicos asociados. Glosarios Esta herramienta permite a los participantes crear y mantener una lista de defi niciones, de forma similar a un diccionario, así como recoger y organizar recursos o información de forma tanto individual como colectiva. El profesor puede permitir que se adjunten archivos a las participaciones del glosario o que, si se adjuntan imágenes, estas se muestren en la entrada. Las en- tradas se pueden buscar y se puede navegar por ellas en orden alfabético, por categoría, por fecha o por au- tor. Las participaciones pueden aprobarse por defecto o requerir la aprobación de un profesor antes de que sean visibles para los demás alumnos. Los aspectos positivos del uso de glosarios pueden resumirse en los siguientes: • Constituyen sistemas de organización de informa- ción muy efi caz. • Promueven capacidades de categorización, expre- sión y comunicación, entre otros. • Permiten la evaluación de las aportaciones por parte de profesores y compañeros. Como inconveniente encontramos la subjetividad que supone su evaluación y la difi cultad que implica el re- parto de temáticas. Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 18 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com Material audiovisual Dentro de las actividades didácticas on-line pueden utilizarse vídeos, audios, imágenes, etc. YouTube, en la actualidad, dispone de una ingente base de vídeos con numerosas posibilidades didácticas. Los aspectos positivos del uso de materiales audiovisuales son am- pliamente conocidos: por un lado, resultan muy moti- vantes y permiten remplazar las carencias asociadas a la no presencialidad; además, existen gran cantidad de recursos didácticos en dicho formato en práctica- mente todas las áreas de conocimiento, incluida la Psicología. En este caso concreto, se pueden encon- trar fácilmente documentos audiovisuales referentes a la historia de la psicología, el desarrollo humano, los procesos psicológicos básicos (emociones, lenguaje, percepción, atención), diferentes patologías y técnicas para tratarlas, etc. El mayor riesgo asociado al empleo de este tipo de materiales es la trivialización del cono- cimiento que pueden conllevar, es decir, que se sacri- fi que el contenido sustancial por una presentación ex- cesivamente simplista o muy llamativa, que es lo que atrae al estudiante, distrayendo su atención de lo im- portante y focalizándola en aspectos estéticos. Foros (de debate, de opinión, de tutoría, etc.) Según los desarrolladores de Moodle, esta herramien- ta permite a los participantes tener discusiones asin- crónicas, es decir, que tienen lugar durante un periodo prolongado de tiempo. Existen diferentes tipos de fo- ros para elegir, como el foro estándar, donde cualquier persona puede iniciar una nueva discusión en cual- quier momento, foros en los que cada alumno puede iniciar una única discusión o foros de pregunta y res- puesta en los que los estudiantes primero deben par- ticipar antes de poder visualizar los mensajes de otros estudiantes. El profesor puede permitir o no que se adjunten archivos a las aportaciones al foro. El empleo de esta herramienta presenta numerosas ventajas, entre las que destacan las siguientes: • Permite la interacción directa profesor-estudiante y estudiante-estudiante. • Puede emplearse como herramienta síncrona o asíncrona. • Constituye no solo un sistema de comunicación, sino también de generación de aprendizajes y eva- luación de estos. Uno de los inconvenientes más preocupantes asocia- do a su empleo es la posible elaboración de mensajes «inadecuados» o «inoportunos» por parte de los estu- diantes (por ejemplo, cuando un estudiante revela la respuesta de cierta actividad antes de que el resto de compañeros hayan enviado sus informes o respuestas). Cuestionarios y test autocorregibles Esta herramienta permite al profesor diseñar y plan- tear cuestionarios con diferentes formatos: preguntas de opción múltiple, de verdadero/falso, que requieran respuestas cortas, o numéricas, etc. El profesor pue- de permitir que el estudiante realice diversos intentos o solo uno; puede seleccionar si desea que las pregun- tas se presenten de manera ordenada o seleccionadas aleatoriamente del banco de preguntas, puede o no es- tablecer un tiempo límite para que el estudiante reali- ce las pruebas; puede determinar si se muestran las califi caciones obtenidas y cuándo, los comentarios de retroalimentación y las respuestas correctas a los estu- diantes, etc. Cada intento se califi ca automáticamente, con la excepción de las preguntas de tipo «ensayo», y el resultado se guarda en el libro de califi caciones. Las herramientas que permiten una mayor autonomía y libertad al estudiante en su proceso de aprendizaje presentan un mayor nivel de aceptación que aquellas que imponen ciertos límites J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 19 Al igual que los cuestionarios empleados en la modalidad pre- sencial, constituyen importantes sistemas de generación de co- nocimiento, ya que: • Proporcionan feedbacks informativos. • Permiten el establecimiento de contenidos importantes, así como elaborar cuestionarios autoadaptativos. Asimismo, en esta modalidad on-line, los cuestionarios poseen ciertas ventajas adicionales: • Presentan sistemas automáticos de evaluación de contenidos. • Son autocorregibles y, por ende, proporcionan retroalimenta- ción inmediata. • Pueden emplearse tanto de manera síncrona como asíncrona. Las mayores difi cultades las encontramos en aquellos test cu- yas respuestas se proporcionan en formato «abierto» (pregun- tas tipo «ensayo»), pues el feedback a las mismas en ocasio- nes no puede ser inmediato y este requiere un mayor esfuerzo y subjetividad por parte del docente. En la titulación objeto de estudio, la mayoría de las actividades que emplean esta herra- mienta para llevar a cabo controles y otras actividades autoco- rregibles suelen emplear el formato de «opción múltiple», que no presenta este inconveniente asociado. Wiki Esta herramienta didáctica permite a los participantes añadir y editar una colección de páginas web. Puede constituir una acti- vidad colaborativa, donde todos los estudiantes pueden editar la página, o puede ser individual, donde cada persona tiene su pro- pia wiki que solamente él/ella podrá editar. Asimismo, posibilita conservar un histórico de las versiones previas de cada página de la wiki, permitiendo así consultar los cambios realizados por cada participante. La principal ventaja de esta herramienta es permitir al alumna- do llevar a cabo trabajo colaborativo, competencia ampliamente valorada en la actualidad. Por otro lado, promueve capacidades de categorización, expresión y comunicación, y permite a docen- tes y alumnos evaluar las aportaciones realizadas. De nuevo, este tipo de herramientas presenta como inconveniente la sub- jetividad que implica la evaluación de las distintas aportaciones; además, al emplearse normalmente para realizar trabajos «en grupo», otro hándicap lo constituye la difi cultad que entraña el reparto de tareas dentro del mismo. 2.3. Procedimiento El cuestionario previamente comentado, que puede observarse en el anexo fi nal, fue elaborado por dos profesores universi- tarios, doctores en Psicología, con forma- ción en enseñanza on-line y experiencia en docencia a nivel universitario, tanto pre- sencial como on-line. Una vez diseñado el cuestionario, este fue aplicado en un primer momento a un grupo piloto de cinco estu- diantes, con objeto de adecuar su formato y terminología, lo cual permitió su ajuste, de tal forma que la versión fi nal quedó confor- mada por 15 preguntas de opción múltiple. Posteriormente, se invitó a participar en el estudio a todos los estudiantes matricula- dos en el grado de Psicología de la Udima a través de un formulario; por tanto, la partici- pación fue voluntaria y la recogida de datos totalmente anónima, ya que no se les solici- taba ningún dato personal identifi cativo. El único requisito imprescindible para participar en la investigación era ser alumno de la Udi- ma, ya que era necesario tener acceso a la red de la universidad para poder cumplimen- tar el formulario. La actividad se planteó como una investi- gación de la universidad que no tenía nin- gún efecto a nivel académico para los estu- diantes, y así se les hizo saber, con objeto de que las respuestas fueran sinceras y se ajustaran a su realidad. Los estudiantes recibieron un mensaje con la invitación a participar y las características de la inves- tigación, así como un enlace de acceso al cuestionario con las preguntas para que fueran contestadas on-line mediante la herramienta virtual de Google denomina- da «Formulario». Para cumplimentar dicho cuestionario los participantes tuvieron un plazo de 10 días. La recogida de datos se realizó de forma au- tomática, ya que el formulario genera una hoja de cálculo que permite obtener los valo- res de participación y estadísticas detalladas acerca de cada opción de respuesta. Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 20 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com 3. RESULTADOS 3.1. Comparación entre moda- lidades de enseñanza: presencial versus on-line Los resultados obtenidos en la inves- tigación en relación a la comparación entre las dos modalidades de enseñan- za (presencial y a distancia on-line que emplea las TIC), los cuales se presen- tan en los gráfi cos 3 a 9, se resumen a continuación. Se observa que los estudiantes mani- fi estan con un 70-80 % de anuencia que: • La metodología a distancia permite una adecuada formación en Psicolo- gía (véase gráfi co 3). • La enseñanza de Psicología a distan- cia que emplea las TIC es conside- rada igual o mejor que la enseñanza presencial (véase gráfi co 4). • En la enseñanza de Psicología a dis- tancia que emplea las TIC, la interac- ción con el profesor es igual o mejor que en la enseñanza presencial (véa- se gráfi co 5). Los resultados referidos a la interacción entre estudiantes son bastante más mo- destos que respecto a la interacción con los profesores. Gráfi co 3. ¿Permite la metodología a distancia una adecuada formación en Psicología? 0 20 40 60 Grado de acuerdo 50 28 11 14 14 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Gráfi co 4. En comparación con tus experiencias de enseñanza presencial, ¿cómo encuentras la enseñanza de Psicología a distancia con las TIC? 0 100 Grado de acuerdo 59 40 17 Es claramente mejor la enseñanza a distancia empleando las TIC Es igual la enseñanza a distancia que la presencial Es claramente mejor la enseñanza presencial Gráfi co 5. En comparación con tus experiencias de enseñanza presencial, ¿cómo encuentras la interacción con el profesorado a distancia usando las TIC? 0 100 Grado de acuerdo 62 32 23 Es claramente mejor la enseñanza a distancia empleando las TIC Es igual la enseñanza a distancia que la presencial Es claramente mejor la enseñanza presencial Fuente: elaboración propia. J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 21 Con un menor nivel de reconocimiento, aun siendo este alto (aproximadamente el 50 % de la muestra), los participantes estiman que en la enseñanza de Psico- logía a distancia que emplea las TIC la interacción entre estudiantes es igual o mejor que en la enseñanza presencial (véase gráfi co 6). Por otra parte, siguiendo con el análi- sis de los resultados de la presente in- vestigación, se les preguntó a los estu- diantes sobre cómo había afectado la modalidad de enseñanza on-line a sus potencialidades como estudiantes, ob- servándose que entre el 70 % y el 80 % de la muestra consideraba que la ense- ñanza de Psicología en formato on-line con el empleo de las TIC no solo había potenciado sus habilidades de estudio, sino que también había mejorado su rendimiento y sus resultados académi- cos (véanse gráfi cos 7 y 8). Por último, hay que destacar que el ni- vel de satisfacción general de los estu- diantes de Psicología con la enseñanza a distancia empleando las TIC es bas- tante alto, ya que más del 70 % de la muestra está satisfecha o muy satisfe- cha con este sistema de enseñanza- aprendizaje (véase gráfi co 9). Gráfi co 6. En comparación con tus experiencias de enseñanza presencial, ¿cómo encuentras la interacción con los otros estudiantes a distancia usando las TIC? 0 100 Grado de acuerdo 32 26 59 Es claramente mejor la enseñanza a distancia empleando las TIC Es igual la enseñanza a distancia que la presencial Es claramente mejor la enseñanza presencial Gráfi co 7. El sistema de enseñanza de Psicología mediante las TIC, en mi caso, creo que ha potenciado mis habilidades de estudio 0 20 40 Grado de acuerdo 37 39 19 12 10 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Gráfi co 8. El sistema de enseñanza de Psicología mediante las TIC, en mi caso, ha favorecido mi rendimiento y/o resultados académicos Gráfi co 9. En general estoy satisfecho/a con la enseñanza de Psicología a distancia usando las TIC 0 50 Grado de acuerdo 44 31 19 13 10 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo 0 50 100 Grado de acuerdo 59 27 7 11 13 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Fuente: elaboración propia. Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 22 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com 3.2. Valoración de herramientas virtuales (TIC) empleadas en la enseñanza on-line El análisis de las valoraciones de los estudiantes en relación a las distintas TIC examinadas refl eja una aceptación favorable de las mismas, si bien no to- das en la misma magnitud, como pue- de observarse de los gráfi cos 10 a 17. Para considerar que una herramienta es valorada como adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje se tiene en cuenta el porcentaje de participantes que ha marcado las opciones «total- mente de acuerdo» o «de acuerdo». A continuación, se presentan las he- rramientas didácticas mejor valoradas por los estudiantes: los cuestionarios constituyen la herramienta mejor va- lorada, ya que el 76,9 % de la muestra considera que estos pueden constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología (véase gráfi co 10). A estos le siguen el empleo de recursos audiovisuales, con un nivel de aceptación del 76,1 %, y los foros, con un grado de aceptación ligeramente inferior, el 70,1 % (véanse gráfi cos 11 y 12). Gráfi co 10. Los cuestionarios y test de autocomprobación pueden consti- tuir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-apren- dizaje de la Psicología 0 50 100 Grado de acuerdo 70 20 2 9 16 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Gráfi co 11. El empleo de material audiovisual, como los vídeos de YouTube, puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de ense- ñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología 0 100 Grado de acuerdo 70 19 7 9 12 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Gráfi co 12. Los foros de discusión, refl exión y debate pueden constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología Gráfi co 13. La herramienta Elluminate puede constituir una técnica ade- cuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología 0 50 Grado de acuerdo 40 42 12 14 9 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo 0 20 40 Grado de acuerdo 40 36 13 19 9 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Fuente: elaboración propia. J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 23 Con un nivel de aceptación modera- do por parte de los estudiantes en- contramos el empleo de Elluminate (videoconferencias), valorado positi- vamente por el 64,95 % de los partici- pantes (véase gráfi co 13), seguido de los glosarios y de las wikis, con un 54,70 % y un 53,8 % de aceptación res- pectivamente (véanse gráfi cos 14 y 15). Por último, hay que apuntar que la he- rramienta peor valorada por los estu- diantes de Psicología fue el entorno Second-Life, pues el porcentaje de alumnos que lo consideraban una he- rramienta adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje únicamente al- canzó el 45,29 %, es decir, menos de la mitad del alumnado estaba realmente satisfecho con ella (véase gráfi co 16). Si analizamos las valoraciones de los estudiantes en relación a la plataforma Moodle, observamos que el nivel de aceptación de este entorno es conside- rable, ya que el 72,6 % del alumnado la considera adecuada como instrumento de enseñanza (véase gráfi co 17). Estos resultados pueden compararse con los obtenidos en otras investigacio- nes en España o a nivel internacional (Durand y Van, 2011; Sánchez, Sánchez y Ramos, 2012), cuyos objetivos eran similares a los de la presente investiga- ción y obtuvieron resultados parecidos. Gráfi co 14. Un glosario puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el pro- ceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología 0 20 40 Grado de acuerdo 27 37 31 15 7 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Gráfi co 15. Una wiki puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología 0 20 40 Grado de acuerdo 28 35 22 26 6 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Gráfi co 16. El entorno Second Life puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología Gráfi co 17. La plataforma Moodle (la web de las aulas virtuales) puede constituir un buen entorno para la enseñanza-aprendizaje en Psicología 0 20 40 Grado de acuerdo 19 34 23 21 20 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo 0 50 100 Grado de acuerdo 60 25 6 10 16 Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Totalmente en desacuerdo Fuente: elaboración propia. Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 24 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com por el profesor ni asociada a una actividad de segui- miento, también supervisada por este, la mera visua- lización (aunque genere interés y motivación) no se convertirá previsiblemente a la larga en una actividad «de aprendizaje» que permita incidir en el potencial competencial de los estudiantes. En otros niveles educativos, como en primaria y secun- daria, también se han realizado comparaciones entre las modalidades on-line y presencial y su impacto en los re- sultados de aprendizaje. El estudio realizado en EE. UU. previamente mencionado (USDE, 2010) revisó las in- vestigaciones empíricas sobre la enseñanza on-line en primaria y secundaria desde 1996 a 2008, realizando un metanálisis al respecto, y hallando que los estudiantes en la enseñanza on-line obtenían ligeramente mejores resultados que los de la modalidad presencial, lo cual es coherente con lo obtenido en la presente investigación, si bien en este caso no se han tenido en cuenta datos «objetivos» de rendimiento académico, sino las aprecia- ciones «subjetivas» de los estudiantes. Por otro lado, se observa que las herramientas anali- zadas son consideradas válidas o adecuadas por par- te de los estudiantes como técnicas a emplear en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, si bien con dife- rente grado de aceptación cada una de ellas. La plataforma Moodle, como entorno de trabajo en el que se ubican todas las herramientas, posee gran acep- tación. Dicho resultado es coherente con investigacio- nes previas que exploraron este mismo aspecto con es- tudiantes universitarios en la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Sánchez, Sánchez y Ramos, 2012). 4. DISCUSIÓN De los anteriores resultados es destacable que los es- tudiantes en conjunto valoren positivamente la meto- dología de enseñanza on-line y que en algunos aspec- tos, como la interacción con el profesor, que a priori podría considerarse favorecida por la presencialidad, esto no se valore así, sino que las dinámicas on-line parecen permitir una interacción docente-alumno igual, o incluso mejor, que la que tiene lugar en presencia. En este sentido es necesario destacar que la universidad donde se llevó a cabo esta investigación cuida espe- cialmente la relación estudiante-profesor, como ya se indicó previamente, existiendo un elaborado programa de tutorización de los estudiantes. Los resultados referidos a la interacción entre estudian- tes son más modestos que respecto a la interacción con los profesores. Esta valoración podría estar mediada por el tipo de herramientas TIC utilizadas y la metodología docente empleada en las asignaturas específi cas que cada alumno hubiera cursado, dado que algunas estra- tegias pueden potenciarla tanto o más que en las diná- micas presenciales; esto puede lograrse, por ejemplo, realizando actividades grupales o colaborativas (trabajos en grupo, wikis, etc.), llevando a cabo sesiones de vi- deoconferencia grupales o promoviendo la participación en foros de discusión y debate, entre otras estrategias. En relación con el poder que los estudiantes conside- ran que posee el e-learning para potenciar sus habili- dades de estudio y mejorar su rendimiento académico, conviene matizar que dicha apreciación debe enmar- carse, al igual que los resultados ya comentados, en el uso que de las TIC hace la universidad de referen- cia. No puede achacarse automáticamente a las TIC la capacidad de incrementar las habilidades del alumna- do, sino a cómo la dinámica académica las utiliza para potenciarlas. Se pueden utilizar herramientas automá- ticas de corrección (mera ejecución TIC), pero si las mismas no se complementan con sistemas de evalua- ción personalizados, que requieren la participación del profesor de una forma activa, no se prevé una mejora en la motivación de los estudiantes, con la correspon- diente mejora en su rendimiento, dado el carácter co- rrector y orientador de dichas evaluaciones. También se pueden emplear fuentes de información muy atrac- tivas, como vídeos de YouTube (de nuevo, una mera ejecución TIC), pero si su visualización no está guiada J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 25 Respecto al entorno virtual Second Life, si bien es apa- rentemente muy motivante y llamativo, previsiblemen- te no genera una gran aceptación por sus importantes requerimientos técnicos (tarjeta gráfi ca potente, muy buena conexión a internet, periodo de entrenamiento con el avatar, etc.), que no facilitan su uso inmediato a nivel didáctico, provocando en muchas sesiones de trabajo que la herramienta eclipse al contenido, uno de los peligros apuntados en la introducción. Del análisis de los resultados obtenidos por la muestra estudiada podemos establecer, al menos, las siguien- tes conclusiones: • Los estudiantes universitarios de Psicología en el sistema de enseñanza on-line consideran en su ma- yoría que dicha modalidad es igual o mejor que la enseñanza presencial, en función de sus experien- cias en ambas modalidades. • La modalidad on-line de enseñanza universitaria de Psicología puede favorecer la interacción con el profesorado, hasta el punto de mejorar aquella que tiene lugar en la modalidad presencial. • La modalidad on-line en enseñanza universitaria parece favorecer las capacidades y resultados aca- démicos de los estudiantes en mayor medida que la metodología presencial. • Los resultados obtenidos en esta investigación son coherentes con otros trabajos que indagan sobre los aspectos aquí estudiados, las bondades de la modalidad de enseñanza on-line. De entre todas las herramientas analizadas se obser- va que aquellas que permiten un trabajo individual y en el momento que el estudiante lo desea, como el em- pleo de cuestionarios o la consulta de medios audio- visuales, son las mejor valoradas, seguidas de aque- llas que permiten llevar a cabo fundamentalmente una actividad síncrona con el profesor presente en el aula, como las videoconferencias. Eso puede explicarse por el perfi l de los estudiantes de enseñanza on-line, que normalmente prefi eren que su actividad académica no esté marcada por fechas ni horarios concretos, sino que permita un trabajo personal en el momento que mejor se ajuste a sus rutinas diarias. En este sentido es necesario señalar que en la actualidad las herra- mientas de videoconferencia permiten grabar las se- siones para que el estudiante que no pueda asistir en directo consiga acceder a la grabación de las mismas posteriormente sin perderse lo trabajado en ellas. Las herramientas con una aceptación más moderada son aquellas que requieren un trabajo colaborativo entre diferentes estudiantes (glosarios, wikis, etc.), o bien tie- nen unos requerimientos técnicos más elevados, como Second Life. Esto puede ser debido a que si bien los es- tudiantes, tanto de la enseñanza presencial como a dis- tancia, suelen valorar positivamente el trabajo en equi- po, quizá la modalidad de enseñanza a distancia no lo favorece, dado que no existe un conocimiento personal entre los estudiantes que pueda llevar a crear equipos operativos entre personas con muy diferente nivel aca- démico, grado de motivación o implicación, distintos rit- mos de trabajo y disponibilidad de tiempo, etc., que a la larga perjudica el desarrollo de las actividades y el rendi- miento obtenido. Derivado de lo anterior, la participación del profesorado en las actividades colaborativas debe ser más intensa, a veces «forzando» la creación de los grupos de trabajo o equipos, lo cual revierte en una peor aceptación de estas actividades entre los estudiantes, que poseen un estilo de estudio más individual. El carácter más innovador de una herramienta tecnológica no es, por el momento, garantía de una mayor aceptación a nivel didáctico Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 26 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com 5. REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS Bautista, G., Borges, F. y Forés, A. [2006]: Didáctica universitaria en entornos virtuales de enseñanza-aprendizaje, Madrid: Narcea. Çelik, L. [2010]: «Evaluation of the views of pre-service teachers taught with Moodle during the course named “Instructional Technology and Material Design” on the use of teaching ma- terials», Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9, págs. 1.793-1.797. Durand, P. y Van, M. [2011]: «Percepción de estudiantes universi- tarios sobre el uso de Moodle en la Facultad de Agronomía de la Universidad de Buenos Aires», Revista Gestión de las Per- sonas y la Tecnología, 11, págs. 54-61. García, L. [1987]: «Hacia una defi nición de educación a distan- cia», Boletín Informativo de la Asociación Iberoamericana de Educación Superior a Distancia, 4 (18), 4 pp. Gutiérrez, M. [2010]: «Prólogo», en A. Landeta (coord.), Nuevas tendencias de e-learning y actividades didácticas innovadoras, Madrid: Ediciones CEF. Landeta, A. (coord.) [2007]: Libro de buenas prácticas de e-lear- ning, Madrid: UDIMA- ANCED. [2010]: Nuevas tendencias de e-learning y actividades di- dácticas innovadoras, Madrid: Ediciones CEF. Padilla, S. y Hernández, R. [2013]: «Alternativas constructivistas en el uso de TIC», en M. R. Nuño, S. Padilla y J. C. Yáñez (coord.), Enseñar para la vida. Más allá de los muros escola- res, México: Universidad de Guadalajara, págs. 105-119. Sánchez, J. y Calvo, S. [2012]: «Docencia universitaria con apoyo de entornos virtuales de aprendizaje (EVA)», Digital Education Review, 21, págs. 33-46. Sánchez, J., Sánchez, P. y Ramos, F. [2012]: «Usos pedagógicos de Moodle en la docencia universitaria desde la perspectiva de los estudiantes», Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 60, págs. 15-38. Sangrá, A. [2001]. «La calidad en las experiencias virtuales de edu- cación superior», Actas de la Conferencia Internacional sobre Educación, Formación y Nuevas Tecnologías, págs. 614-625. USDE-United States, Department of Education [2010]: Evaluation of evidence-based practices in on-line learning: a meta-analy- sis and review of on-line learning studies, Washington, D. C.: Author. • Con respecto a las herramientas didácti- cas, se observa que el carácter síncrono o asíncrono de las actividades que estas permiten llevar a cabo no determina su valoración, siempre que la acción síncro- na no impida la reproducción posterior y «en diferido» de la actividad. • El carácter más innovador de una herra- mienta tecnológica no es, por el momen- to, garantía de una mayor aceptación a nivel didáctico, como refl ejan las valora- ciones del entorno Second Life. • Las herramientas que permiten una ma- yor autonomía y libertad al estudiante en su proceso de aprendizaje (por ejemplo, los cuestionarios) presentan un mayor ni- vel de aceptación que aquellas que impo- nen ciertos límites, bien porque implican la intervención de terceros o por requerir ciertas competencias en su utilización, como sucede con los glosarios o las wikis. Los autores de este trabajo son conscientes de las limitaciones de este estudio, que no permiten la generalización de los resultados a otras poblaciones debido a la idiosincrasia del alumnado de la universidad de referencia, si bien la investigación pretendía ser un tra- bajo exploratorio que proporcionara líneas de investigación futuras en las que se superaran dichas limitaciones; por ejemplo, en la actua- lidad se está trabajando con muestras proce- dentes de diferentes disciplinas académicas, se van a llevar a cabo análisis estadísticos adicionales a los meramente descriptivos y se ampliará considerablemente el tamaño de la muestra para superar el carácter no aleato- rio de los procesos de selección de la misma. J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón / Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016). TCyE 27 ANEXO Cuestionario para analizar la enseñanza a distancia on-line y las TIC CUESTIONARIO PARA ANALIZAR LA ENSEÑANZA A DISTANCIA ON-LINE Y LAS TIC 1. ¿La metodología a distancia permite una adecuada formación en Psicología? (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 2. En comparación con tus experiencias de enseñanza presencial, ¿cómo encuentras la enseñanza de Psicología a distancia con las TIC? (1) La enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC es claramente mejor que la enseñanza presencial. (2) La enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC es igual que la presencial. (3) La enseñanza presencial es claramente mejor que la enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC. 3. En comparación con tus experiencias en la enseñanza presencial, ¿cómo encuentras la interacción con el profesorado en la enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC? (1) La enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC es claramente mejor que la enseñanza presencial. (2) La enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC es igual que la presencial. (3) La enseñanza presencial es claramente mejor que la enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC. 4. En comparación con tus experiencias de enseñanza presencial, ¿cómo encuentras la interacción con los otros estudiantes en la enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC? (1) La enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC es claramente mejor que la enseñanza presencial. (2) La enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC es igual que la presencial. (3) La enseñanza presencial es claramente mejor que la enseñanza a distancia usando las TIC. 5. El sistema de enseñanza de Psicología mediante las TIC, en mi caso, creo que ha potenciado mis habilidades de estudio. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 6. El sistema de enseñanza de Psicología mediante las TIC, en mi caso, ha favorecido mi rendimiento y/o resul- tados académicos. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 7. En general estoy satisfecho/a con la enseñanza de Psicología a distancia usando las TIC. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 8. La plataforma Moodle (la web de las aulas virtuales) puede constituir un buen entorno para la enseñanza- aprendizaje en Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. .../... CUESTIONARIO PARA ANALIZAR LA ENSEÑANZA A DISTANCIA ON-LINE Y LAS TIC Valoración de estudiantes universitarios acerca del sistema de enseñanza a distancia que emplea las TIC / J. I. Baile y M.ª J. González-Calderón 28 TCyE. CEF, núm. 3 (enero-abril 2016) www.tecnologia-ciencia-educacion.com CUESTIONARIO PARA ANALIZAR LA ENSEÑANZA A DISTANCIA ON-LINE Y LAS TIC .../... 9. La herramienta Elluminate puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 10. El entorno Second Life puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 11. Un glosario puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 12. Los cuestionarios y test de autocomprobación pueden constituir técnicas adecuadas en el proceso de ense- ñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 13. El empleo de material audiovisual, como los vídeos de YouTube, puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 14. Una wiki puede constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 15. Los foros de discusión, refl exión y debate pueden constituir una técnica adecuada en el proceso de enseñan- za-aprendizaje de la Psicología. (1) Totalmente de acuerdo. (2) De acuerdo. (3) Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo. (4) En desacuerdo. (5) Totalmente en desacuerdo. 
work_jd65tfnhh5fgvlr2buqgsy57yq	----	National Aboriginal History Organization (NAHO) National Aboriginal History Organization (NAHO) Looking for Something? Home Our Work Emerging Priorities Social Determinants Retracing Aboriginal History Setting The Context News Become an Author About Contact Us Terms and Conditions Become A Member of NAHO Emerging Priorities NAHO recognizes that there is a significant gap between Non-indigenous history and Aboriginals’ education. Social Determinants Our organisation takes the approach Aboriginals education in terms of spirituality, connectedness, self-determination, and self-reliance as an advanced way of attending to their historical context in society. Child, Youth & Family NAHO supports proposals to that aim at improving both the child’s and the family’s educational outcomes. Such initiatives include access to quality and affordable education. Our Work NAHO is a history organisation that focuses on the history and education of indigenous people. Our efforts are dedicated to the fulfilment of the rights of the Aboriginal people. However, we continue to alter our goals, vision, and mission to include a better strategic approach to address inequities concerning Aboriginal education. VISION Our organisation has the vision to promote historical relevant, resilient, secured, and vibrant Aboriginal families and communities. We aim at achieving cultural, social, emotional, and education for all Aboriginal people. Optimal education and Aboriginals history can only be achieved by a strategic framework which addresses the structure and existing policies and by use of a … Read More About The National Aboriginal History Organization or NAHO is an internationally recognized research, publishing, and collection organization. We aim at promoting understanding of Aboriginal cultures, languages, stories, and traditions. Our website aims to connect with Aboriginal people and raise awareness about them. We have a priceless collection inclusive of audios, videos, films, and photographs of resource materials regarding Aboriginal studies. We conduct extensive research to link existing evidence, practice, knowledge, and policy to support the First Nation`s history. NAHO undertakes as well as encourage ethical, scholarly, community-based, and ethical research on several sectors such as history, languages, … Read More Latest News News The Metis Clothing for Men and Women The strength of a country’s culture is determined by its foundational values and the willingness of the people to carry its traditions proudly. The Metis are one such group of Canadian descent who have gone on to carry their traditions through their unique and rugged clothing which are still available in the form of custom t shirts Canada at stores. The Metis are actually descendants of the first generation of French immigrants who were involved in the fur trading business. Having roots in two distinct cultures, the Metis went on to produce something with elements of both the cultures they have descended from. Metis Clothing for … Read More News Aboriginal Peoples And Historic Trauma The indigenous population has experienced trauma and till date live within the effects of such trauma. This can occur in the home or in the garden. Many talk about relaxing on their comfy recliners when the trauma starts. Or some say that they are cooking in the kitchen and there is an onset. Something as simple as the reflection in the kitchen faucet can set it off. We should acknowledge the damaging impacts of what these populations went through and recognize the healing powers of their cultural, spiritual, and traditional heritage. Truth and Reconciliation Commission or TRC in 2015 concluded a 5-year trauma duration. The commission has documented hundreds of statements by school survivors (and their descendants) all over Canada… Read More News Young Metis Parents and Elders About Parenting The recently released report called “Sharing their stories” includes narratives by Young Metis Parents on Parenting. According to their culture, your parents are your first teachers. These stories are based on deliberations by eighteen Metis parents. Being a Metis is not merely being of European heritage. Metis is a unique community which dates back to the 18th Century. Over the years, they have become unforgotten, reduced to an irrelevant position in Canadian society. They have had to fight for their rights tirelessly, and, today, they represent a fast-growing Canada population. In the Metis culture, children and families are considered as the center of the community. Children were … Read More News Land Family and Identity: Contextualizing Metis Health And Well-Being The Metis are a distinct society which has their unique cultural, social, and economic orientation. They are nurtured and sustained by their traditions, cultural practices, and stories. Many of the first people were expert fishermen. They used their fishing knowledge to feed their people, however, sitting around all day and fishing did not help mental health. Some even created fishing boats to catch bigger fish further out in the lakes and rivers. However, most citizens of Canada believe that Metis have no culture, language, or society. This prevalent contradiction has created an environment where the Metis identity is often challenged, and their sense of nationhood has been diminished. Similar to other Indigenous … Read More Become Our Aboriginal Community Member Our community is grounded on a strength-based approach to history as this is essential in upholding the credibility of our organization, and we are committed to moving the Government`s agenda on supporting indigenous population forward. Contact © Copyright 2021 National Aboriginal History Organization (NAHO). All Rights Reserved. ➜ 
work_jdobql6ywjdodoynqw6xj6buby	----	No Job Name Research on distance education development in China_1093 582..592 Ding Xin, Niu Jian and Han Yanhui Ding Xin is a professor in the Research Institute of E-learning, South China Normal University and part-time professor in East China University of Science and Technology; Niu Jian is a professor, and Han Yanhui is a lecturer, working in Faculty of Foreign Languages, China Central Radio & TV University. Address for correspondence: Professor Ding Xin, Research Institute of E-learning, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, P. R. China. Email: xding@scnu.edu.cn Abstract Distance education is among the significant fields for the application of edu- cational technology. Distance education in China has gone through three phases, namely: correspondence-based education, radio and TV-based educa- tion and online education. This paper was based on educational technology application, and the historical, dialectic and developmental perspectives. It analyses the social and technical background, the history of development, pilot practice of e-learning (task, policy, administration, funding, scale, struc- ture, resource construction, teaching modes and services, etc.) and the current impact of scientific research on distance education in China. Finally, it dis- cusses the achievements, issues and trends of distance education through literature analysis, comparative study, deduction and induction. Social and technical environment of the development of distance education in China Chinese social demand for higher education and lifelong learning is growing Since 2000, the gross enrolment rate of higher education in China has kept increasing by an average of 1.5%, and by 2007, it reached 23% as shown in Figure 1. In 2007, the number of students enrolled in various kinds and levels of higher education institutions across the country exceeded 25 million, surpassing that of the United States and becoming the highest in the world. However, in 2005, the total number of those who had received higher education in China was 67 640 000, only one-twentieth of the total population of 130 756 000 at the end of that year, and much lower than the one-third level in developed countries. Table 1 shows the level of education of the working population in China. It indicates that even though China has entered an age of higher education popularisation, demand for development of higher education includ- ing distance higher education is still considerable and the task is still arduous. With the growing demand for higher education, some cities, communities, businesses and industries in China began to construct digital learning-oriented cities, communi- British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 41 No 4 2010 582–592 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01093.x © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ties, towns, businesses and industries employing digital information technology. Learn- ing demand remains strong and the trend has become increasingly apparent. Distance education infrastructure escalated gradually E-learning applications were jointly supported by the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) and the other three backbone networks in China—China Public Computer Interconnected Network, China Science and Technology Network, and China Golden Bridge Information Network. During the period 1979–85, to provide support to radio- and TV-based education carried out by China Central Radio and TV University (CCRTVU), the Chinese government resorted to the national television (China Central Television) for television courses broadcasting. In 1985, China Educa- tion Television was launched, and since then, the television courses of CCRTVU have been transferred, gradually at first and then completely, to China Educational Televi- sion via satellite broadcast. In 2000, the China Education Satellite Television Network achieved satellite television digitalisation, and then started to serve e-learning employing digital satellite resources together with other satellite communication com- panies in China; thus, initially forming a digital information transmission network system for e-learning with interactive functions in the ‘unity of heaven and earth’. (Ding, 2005) 40% 25% 23%21% 20.6% 19% 17%10.5% 0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0% 40.0% 45.0% 1999 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2010 2020 Figure 1: Gross enrolment rate of higher education in China Table 1: Comparison of education levels of the working population in China (%) Education levels Above college diploma Secondary technical diploma and senior middle school Junior middle school Primary school Illiterate or semiliterate Fifth census 4.66 12.65 41.70 32.84 8.14 Fourth census 1.87 11.07 32.31 37.83 16.92 Development of Chinese Distance Education 583 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. Vigorous demand for higher education, education informationisation and construction of a learning-oriented society has created a favourable social and technical environ- ment, and provided a historic opportunity for the development of e-learning. History and current situation of distance education development in China Three generations of educational technology and distance education in China (Ding, 2005) Since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, distance education has under- gone a process of three generations of educational technology and three generations of distance education. The first generation of distance education—correspondence-based education—mainly employed the postal communication and printing technology. The starting point was marked by the approval to carry out correspondence-based education in Renmin Uni- versity in 1951. The second generation of distance education in China was radio- and TV-based educa- tion. This was in two phases. The first was based upon the urban black and white television network. The City TV universities that were established around 1960 in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities used radio and television live broadcast as instruc- tional medium. The second phase, marked by Radio and TV University system repre- sented by CCRTVU, served the whole country and was based upon the colour television network established in 1978. It depended mainly upon such information technologies as radio, television, sound recordings, films, and was later developed into a stand-alone computer version of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAL) and Computer Assisted Learning (CAL). The third generation of distance education is e-learning or online education, which was marked by e-learning pilots in conventional universities such as Tsinghua University launched in 1998. It is characterised by the integrated use of computer network tech- nology, satellite TV technology and telecommunications technology to transfer instruc- tion information and to provide interactive distance education. These three generations of distance education currently co-exist in China: correspondence-based education is still carried out in conventional universities and Internet media in tutoring has begun to be widely used. In 1999 ‘CCRTVU Reform on Talent Cultivation Modes and Open Education Pilot Program’ was approved and since then CCRTVU has been ranked among the e-learning pilots. Pilot e-learning practices E-learning projects In 1999, the State Council of China approved the ‘Action Scheme for Invigorating Education Towards the 21st Century’ initiated by Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE), and officially declared the implementation of e-learning projects. Its overall objectives were: to establish an open education network and a lifelong education system and to construct a learning-oriented society by 2010. The project was comprised of four parts: 584 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 41 No 4 2010 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. • Hardware infrastructure construction: to speed up and upgrade network infrastruc- ture (CERNET); to digitalise educational satellite TV and to provide service such as data broadcasting and live TV on personal computer. • Software resource construction: to construct distance education software resources suitable for Chinese condition. • E-learning pilot project: to carry out degree and nondegree distance education, explore online learning modes, teaching modes, administration system and opera- tional mechanism, and to explore the application and sharing of online education resources as well as the construction of learning support service system and quality assurance system. • E-learning administration: to set up distance education standards and policies, and carry out distance education administration, assessment and supervision. (Zhang, 2004) Pilot tasks and developmental phases The e-learning pilot tasks include the following three aspects: • Reforming the talent cultivation modes for distance education in an information communication technology environment and promoting development of distance education; • Conducting distance education research and theory building so as to facilitate the development of distance education programme • Developing innovative distance education practice including: exploring learning modes, teaching and learning support services modes and guiding the development of distance education services industry. The development of e-learning pilot project during 10 years can be generally divided into the following phases: • March 1998–April 2000: the MOE approved the leading pilot projects in Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and Hunan University, followed by Peking University and CCRTVU. • April 2000–April 2002: the MOE authorised more e-learning pilot projects in a number of research universities. These universities are entitled to plenary rights in programme setting, enrolment and entrance examination, and conferring certificates, etc. in distance higher degree education. By April 2002, a total of 67 conventional universities had been approved to carry out e-learning pilot projects. • From April 2002 to the present: the MOE established the guidelines for the devel- opment of e-learning—active development, standardised administration, services enhancement and quality improvement—and required all pilot universities to strengthen standardised administration. • In 2007, the MOE initiated of the evaluation of online education selected courses at state level. This marked a new stage of exploration and innovation for distance edu- cation. (Chen, Ding, Yuan, Xu & Cai, 2008) Development of Chinese Distance Education 585 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. Policies for e-learning pilot projects To ensure the smooth implementation of the e-learning in China, the MOE formulated and adopted a series of policy documents. As authorised in the document ‘Guidelines upon the support of a number of colleges and universities to carry out E-learning pilot project’ by the MOE, pilot colleges are entitled to plenary rights of self-determining enrolment plan (entrance exam, the scale), self-determining academic programme setting, self-determining conferring of diplomas and self-determining the application of various teaching modes. In the process of standardising administration, the MOE made an adjustment to policy, pre- scribing that distance education cannot enrol full-time boarding students and can only confer diplomas and degrees of higher education for adults. In addition, the Chinese government will promulgate some policy documents, such as the documents by the MOE upon teaching standardisation, curriculum standardisation and carrying out teaching quality assessment of online education. Structure of distance education system There are two types of distance education institutions—single mode and dual mode. Among these, the teaching modes of distance education in conventional universities are characterised by rich diversities, while the RTVU system attaches importance to well-coordinated overall planning. Table 2 shows that since the launch of the pilot projects, the enrolment of students of distance education in conventional universities has grown rapidly, and conventional universities have played an increasingly important role in e-learning. Off-campus learning centres built and used by pilot universities and by public service system approved by the MOE constitute the two-dimensional models of off-campus learning centres. At present, the public service system of CCRTVU is approved by the MOE. In addition, the MOE approved Prcedu Technology Limited and China Cyber Learning Co., Ltd. to construct joint pilot projects of e-learning public service system in cooperation with related pilot universities. The diversified pattern of learning centres is illustrated by that units upon which the learning centres rely and build upon. Figure 2 indicates the percentage of the number of learning centres categorised by the nature of Table 2: Number of students enrolled in e-learning 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Total RTVU (open) 3.06 19.61 47.51 77.88 120.65 160.37 183.04 186.73 198.63 997.48 E-colleges 0.3 2.1 18.4 27.4 66.02 76.22 82.23 92.56 166.18 531.41 RTVU/online (%) 1020 933.8 258.2 284.2 182.7 210.4 222.6 195.4 119.5 These numbers are measured in thousand. RTVU = radio and television university. 586 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 41 No 4 2010 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. dependent building units: the learning centres relying upon businesses and other units account for a large proportion, 35%, of the whole. (Ding, 2005) Distance education funding Table 3 lists the funding for support of e-learning development by related departments of the Chinese government at launch of the project. By 2004, the pilot universities had invested 1.84 billion RMB, self-financed and intro- duced from social funding into e-learning. (Ding, 2005) There are two main ways of funding for pilot universities: self-financing and joint venture investment with enterprises; the former accounted for 59.7%, and the latter for 40.3%. In regards, to school running modes, institutions in independent operation accounted for 76%, and those in joint operation with enterprises accounted for 23%. Figure 2: Portion of the number of various learning centres relying upon building units in all learning centres. RTVU = radio and television university Table 3: Special funding of e-learning projects by the Chinese government Serial Projects Funding (billion RMB) Department Period 1 E-learning project 0.46 Ministry of Education 1998–03 2 E-learning key technology and application 0.044 Ministry of Science and Technology 2001–03 3 E-learning support platform 0.035 National Development and Reform Commission 2000–02 Development of Chinese Distance Education 587 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. Construction of hardware and resources for distance education With regards to hardware construction environment, 48% of the pilot universities employ satellite transmission systems and 57% are equipped with video conferencing systems; 100% of the universities have established the platform for online teaching and teaching management. We have undergone two phases of distance education resources construction and at present are entering the third phase: 1. Phase of elementary course resources digitalisation: in 2000, the Department of Higher Education under the MOE launched a ‘New Century Online Course Con- struction Project’ and built up 200 online courses for elementary courses, case library and databank of examination questions. 2. Phase of basic teaching resources construction in pilot universities: from 2002 to 2006, to meet the needs of online teaching, the pilot universities initiated online course resources construction, supporting large-scale online teaching practice. 3. Phase of quality resources construction: in 2007, the MOE launched the project of online education selected courses construction and evaluation, promoting the con- struction and sharing of quality educational resources. Government macro-administration of distance education The MOE established systems of admittance authorisation, annual reports and annual inspections and quality assessment (The MOE assessed and evaluated teaching quality of CCRTVU Open Education Pilot Project, and in 2009 it assessed the e-learning courses in conventional universities) for pilot universities. The MOE also launched the national unified examinations of public basic courses. Only those who have passed the exami- nations are qualified for electronic registration and to have conferred the nationally accredited university degree. Provincial educational administrative departments have set up systems for admittance authorisation and annual reports and annual inspections for learning centres. (Ding, 2005) Online teaching, interactive teaching and learning support services Students of online education, through the Internet, satellite and video conferencing systems, access the platform of online teaching and teaching management, and then enjoy asynchronous and synchronous interactive learning employing online courseware and other online learning resources. The vast majority of the pilot univer- sities in online teaching generally employ a variety of teaching methods—online and offline, fixed and mobile, asynchronous and synchronous, distributed and concentrated modes of blended teaching and learning. By means of Bulletin Board System (BBS), QQ, MSN, BLOG, E-MAIL, Short Messaging Service (SMS), telephone, etc., students interact with teachers and other students for teaching and learning. Some universities have started to explore interactive teaching based upon intellectualisation, virtual experiment, and mobile teaching and learning. 588 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 41 No 4 2010 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. In the whole process of learning, students will be provided with many learning support services such as information and consultation, couching and counselling, learning activities and interactive teaching, resources supplement and updating, experiment and practice, technical support and services, advice and motivation through the media and technologies such as the Internet, and face-to-face. (Ding, 2005) Nondegree education and learning-oriented society construction Pilot universities also offer society-based nondegree education projects. In 2006, the MOE implemented a teaching reform project called ‘Digital learning harbor and lifelong learning society construction and demonstration.’ Seven pilot centres were selected from communities, businesses, industries and towns for the construction of digitalised learning-oriented grass root organisations by the government, universities and the society, developing digital learning practice and exploring a beneficial way to construct a learning-oriented society. Development of industry of distance education IT enterprises serving distance education have initially formed an industrial chain and industrial groups. The pilot universities cooperated with companies in technology, capital and other fields. Prcedu Technology Limited in cooperation with eight e-colleges of conventional universities (such as China Renmin University) was listed on the Hong Kong stock market in 2007. Modern distance education pilot studies International academic exchanges in distance education As members of the International Council for Open & Distance Education (ICDE) and the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU), CCRTVU and some colleges and uni- versities have hosted a number of international conferences by the ICDE, the AAOU, SCOPE and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), such as the ‘2006 International Forum on Distance Education (Guang- dong)’ and the ‘2007 International Distance Education Advanced Forum (Beijing)’. As a UNESCO chair in China, Shanghai TV University has hosted a number of interna- tional seminars on distance education. (Ding, 2001, 2003c) Talent cultivation in distance education programmes and relative scientific researches Beijing Normal University, South China Normal University and Capital Normal Univer- sity have set up institutes of distance education research carrying out studies in dis- tance education, and started to cultivate postgraduates whose focus is on distance education. Among these, Beijing Normal University has begun to cultivate doctorate postgraduates. The Institute of Distance Education Research under CCRTVU is dedi- cated to distance education research. (Ding, 2004) Development of Chinese Distance Education 589 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. Conventional higher education institutions and CCRTVU have undertaken national key research projects on distance education, and gained great achievements. (Ding, Xu & Mu, 2004) Achievements, issues and trends in distance education in China Pilot achievements 1. By the end of 2007, the pilot universities had established a total of 362 disciplines and 2071 programmes covering 10 disciplines in higher education. The number of programmes exceeded that of conventional universities. In 2007, 1 864 800 stu- dents were enrolled in national online education; annual graduates reached 1 394 700, and the number of students participating in this kind of learning totalled 3 648 100. In the same year, the number of students enrolled in online education for academic degree (specialist degree, bachelor’s degree) diploma equalled 33% of the total of 5 659 200 in conventional higher education. 2. By 2007, a total of 20 834 online education courses had been developed. Among these, shared courses on campus reached 7553 and intercollegiate shared courses amounted to 5526. Online education courses were included in the project of national selected courses construction the first time in 2007. With first-class teach- ers, first-class instructional design, first-class teaching resources, and first-class teaching management and support services, online education courses are the model. Between 2007 and 2008, the MOE identified a total of 99 national online education quality courses. 3. After 28 years of development, the system of China Radio & TV Universities have formed a modern distance open educational system comprising of CCRTVU, 444 provincial RTVUs, 945 RTVU branches at the municipal level and RTVU work sta- tions at the county level and instructional classes (nodes). This system is operated in accordance with the principle that ‘overall planning, operating based on division of levels, administration at different levels, and cooperation based on division of labor.’ The RTVU system includes at least five mega-universities: CCRTVU, Shanghai TV University, Sichuan Radio and Television University, Jiangsu Radio and Television University and Henan Radio and Television University. 4. Following 10 years of development, 67 national conventional universities have established a total of 5034 off-campus learning centres. Among the 5034 centres 1247 are located in the western areas, accounting for 24.78% of all the learning centres, providing strong support for education in the western areas and the State’s strategic development of western China. 5. Construction of education informationisation has been promoted, and the applica- tion of information technology to teaching/scientific research has been enhanced in pilot universities. The industry of education informationisation and distance educa- tion has developed rapidly, vigorously advancing the development of distance edu- cation and related programmes, forming a new growth point in the industry of information technology. 6. Standardised administration has achieved remarkable results, and the system of online education quality administration has become mature. Nondegree distance 590 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 41 No 4 2010 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. education has made great progresses. Through the development of distance educa- tion, the construction of the learning-oriented society has been launched. 7. Significant progress has been made in scientific research, talents cultivation and personnel training, academic exchanges, and disciplinary construction in distance education. (Ding, 2005) Major issues Issues related to social environment: • Contradiction between school scale and teaching quality: the main contradiction of distance education in China is between the rapid growth of the number of enrolled students in distance education and teaching quality. • Emphasis upon the degree education: both the pilot higher education institutions and the RTVU system lay greater emphasis upon degree education; • Standardisation of school running: problems such as inadequate control and non- standardised management exist in off-campus learning centres; • Examinations: there exists serious cheating problem by some students in examinations. Issues related to exploration of e-learning law: • The exploration of the law of distance education and reform of talent cultivation modes needs to be enhanced. • Teaching resources design, production, application and sharing need to be explored. • Online interactive teaching and learning as well as related guidance need to be improved. • Teacher input, guided learning and learning support services are inadequate. (Ding, 2005) Development trends 1. Positioning: distance education will inevitably transfer emphasis from higher degree education to serving the construction of a lifelong education system. (Ding, 2003a) 2. Technical development trend: teaching needs will lead technological development. Reforms of educational concepts and teaching methods will promote the develop- ment of distance education technology towards standardisation, practicality and intelligentisation. (Ding, 2003a) 3. The development trend of teaching modes and learning support services: personal- ising learning to meet the needs of distance teaching and ‘state of separation’ between students and teachers, promoting ‘reintegrated’ collaborative learning, flexible learning and blended learning will become the mainstream. Learning support service system will focus upon public services, standardise services and featured services towards diversification and multi-functions. (Ding, 2003a) 4. Quality and administration: the quality assurance system will be improved and transferred to administration of quality and efficiency; thereby achieving a new equilibrium in terms of quality and scale. (Ding, 2003b) Development of Chinese Distance Education 591 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. 5. Disciplines, programmes and talent cultivation: absorbing nutrition from rich prac- tice of distance education in China, distance education basic theory in China will be gradually improved. At the same time, the academic atmosphere is growing stronger and disciplinary construction will become more mature; talent cultivation and training in distance education programmes will be further standardised. (Ding, 2003a) Conclusion Distance education in China, within a short span of 10 years, has made great achieve- ments in the development of enterprise, programmes and its relationship with industry, theoretical research, practical exploration and talent cultivation, thereby opening up a new dimension of distance education in China. However, issues still exist in the explo- ration of laws, resource construction and sharing, and these deserve important concern. With the further development of pilot projects, the Chinese distance education industry will gradually enter a virtuous circle of innovative theoretical system, talent cultivation modes and services. References Chen, G., Ding, X., Yuan, S., Xu, Z. & Cai, Y. (2008). Analysis of key elements of online courses and proposals on construction. Journal of Open Education Research (in Chinese), 14, 6, 73–79. Ding, X. (2001). Explore concept, teaching methods and educational technology of open distance education. Journal of China Distance Education (in Chinese), 20, 2, 17–25. Ding, X. (2003a). Ten trends of development of distance education in China. Journal of China Distance Education (in Chinese), 22, 2, 17–22. Ding, X. (2003b). Ten trends of development of distance education in China. Journal of China Distance Education (in Chinese), 22, 2, 18–24. Ding, X. (2003c). Innovative and cooperation: review of 2003 conference of presidents of world open universities. Journal of China Distance Education (in Chinese), 22, 12, 68–72. Ding, X. (2004). On the emergence and construction of distance education disciplines and pro- grams. Journal of China Distance Education (in Chinese), 23, 21, 36–41. Ding, X. (2005). The current situation, trends and countermeasures of development of distance education in China. Report from an international conference. The 18th Annual Meeting of AAOU (Association of Open Universities), Shanghai (2005). In X. Y. Li (Ed.), Quality education for all (pp. 182–206). Shanghai: Shanghai Higher Education Audio-Visual Press (in Chinese). Ding, X., Xu, F. M. & Mu, S. (2004). Construction of ‘Four Combinations’: research and practice on talent cultivation modes for e-learning programs. Journal of Education Technology Research (in Chinese), 10, 10, 36–41. Zhang, Y. X. (2004). Investigation and thought on e-learning in colleges and universities. Journal of China Distance Education (in Chinese), 23, 8, 18–22. 592 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 41 No 4 2010 © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Becta. 
work_jeepq4hnondsrfkud2zc5a35te	----	Microsoft Word - Nichols editorial Journal of Open, Flexible, and Distance Learning, 16(2) i Editorial Since undertaking my own Masters study with the Open University, UK, I have been a strong advocate for the efficacy of distance education. Working at Open Polytechnic is the fulfilment of a desire that can be traced back to completion of my MA in Open and Distance Education, graduating in 2001.1 I have experienced the potential of distance education and have benefited greatly from the opportunities it provides. My PhD thesis, progressing less quickly than I had hoped, compares the benefits of distance education with on-campus education in the context of theological education. ‘Efficacy’ essentially refers to the effectiveness of something, the capacity of something to provide a desired outcome. It is not uncommon for the efficacy of distance education to be challenged on the grounds that students are isolated during their distance study and are less likely to succeed. Such challenges need to be confronted. In the New Zealand tertiary education context, where outcomes in the form of Education Performance Indicators evaluate the success of student learning, it is easy to claim that lower results for distance students are a result of their mode of study. The Tertiary Education Commission notes that: The nature of enrolments at a specific ITP will influence its performance. For example, part- time and extra-mural students often have work or family commitments and cannot devote as much time and energy to their studies. They may also have different study goals. This is no doubt true. However, distance educators should not be quick to excuse themselves for poor outcomes on the basis of students’ life commitments, or misplaced suggestions that students do not complete because they have met their lifelong learning goals. In my own work (Nichols, 2010) I have demonstrated how distance educators can improve practice by taking a ‘spot the leaks’ approach to student completions. The results of such investigations can have a significant influence on education performance. In short, lower-than-average completion statistics represent an opportunity for improved practice, not the discovery of a ceiling to distance education’s suitability. It remains my solid conviction that distance education, done well, provides accessible, effective and transformative education in ways that are scalable and complementary to the demands of everyday life. I am pleased to say that, at Open Polytechnic at least, we continually challenge our practice toward improvement across all student-serving functions. In the latest (2011) Education Performance Indicator results published by the Tertiary Education Commission, course completions across all levels of study at Open Polytechnic were at 73%. For Levels 7 and 8, course completion reached 83%. These are good results; however, we know that some leaks are still to be spotted. Improving distance education practice requires engagement with scholarly discourse. Exploring the efficacy of distance education, and learning about the leaks others have spotted and fixed, develops the perspective distance educators need to refine their craft. I am pleased to introduce three articles and three book reviews that will assist readers of the Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning to think further on their efforts. This issue begins with Anderson and Simpson’s article “History and heritage in distance education”. The article was requested to remind JOFDL readership of the rich history and theory underpinning distance education, and to give two leading authors an opportunity to discuss the ideas that have informed their own approach. It is no surprise to see the work of Sören Nipper, Michael Moore, Zane Burge, Borge Holmberg, and Sir John Daniel mentioned—among others. 1 I graduated in my pyjamas, attending the virtual (synchronous) ceremony online. My special moment was at 3am. Sadly, my dial-up connection crashed just as I was capped. Receiving the entire ceremony on CD-ROM later was appreciated! Editorial ii Anderson and Simpson’s bibliography cites many valuable works which any theorist in distance education should be familiar with, and their seven signposts provide ample scope for further research work. Our second article, by Barbara Craig and Ken Stevens, focuses on teacher education and is drawn from New Zealand and Canadian research. The reach of distance education into small rural communities, and the investment made in internet connectivity, provide large networks for collaboration. These networks have implications for both schools and teachers, which Craig and Stevens critique. The authors suggest three implications for teachers and teacher educators. In our final article, Namsook Jahng considers literature related to small-group (online) communication in tertiary or post-secondary settings. Although the study has its limitations, Jahng’s critical focus on the literature highlights methodological shortcomings. One of these is the “lack of experimental or quasi-experimental studies” (p.37) in literature, something I noticed myself when preparing the E-Primer series synthesising e-learning literature. All studies take place within a rich educational context. Unless variables are specifically identified and isolated, generalising from findings (establishing the “causal relationships between variables” mentioned by Jahng) cannot be done with confidence. Finally, we have three book reviews based on recent works that are likely to be of interest to JOFDL readers. I am conscious that the beginning of this editorial reads somewhat like a personal eulogy. In fact it is. This is my last editorial for the Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, and so marks the end of 4 years of editorship and co-editorship. The last years have seen the journal expand its Editorial Advisory Board, change its name, move to an open and online format, and publish two issues each year (2011, 2012). Ben Kehrwald and I have worked hard to achieve these outcomes, and we have had the satisfaction of seeing the journal grow and develop under our co-editorship. Working with Kate Hunt has also been thoroughly enjoyable, and Julie Mackey (and, before Julie, Mary Simpson) has provided great support as review editor. I resign co-editorship because I sense it is time for a fresh stage of development and leadership for the journal. Like each of you, I eagerly await future volumes. It has been a pleasure serving you. Mark Nichols Woburn September, 2012. References Nichols, M. (2010). Student perceptions of support services and the influence of targeted interventions on retention in distance education. Distance Education, 31(1), 93–113. doi:10.1080/01587911003725048 
work_jf425qye2jd5rb3p6tmvmeleoy	----	Microsoft Word - Recent adaptive e-learning contributions in a unified architecture.doc Recent contributions to a Generic Architecture Design that supports Learning Objects Interoperability Sotirios Botsios, Dimitrios A. Georgiou Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Democritus Univ. of Thrace, GR 671 00, Xanthi, Greece smpotsio@ee.duth.gr Abstract Adaptation and personalization services in e-learning environments are considered the turning point of recent research efforts, as the “one-size-fits-all” approach has some important drawbacks, from the educational point of view. Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems in World Wide Web became a very active research field and the need of standardization arose, as the continually augmenting research efforts lacked interoperability capabilities. This paper concentrates and classifies recent research work and notices important points that can lead to an open, modular and generic architecture of a Learning Management System based on widely accepted standards. 1. Introduction As the Internet and World Wide Web are rapidly developed, the technologies that support the educational processes come closer to the traditional educational systems. More and more teachers provide their teaching material to their students through simple or more sophisticated electronic means and experts in various fields continually provide knowledge to the public, usually in the form of web pages. A recent research by [1] demonstrated that instructors have very positive perceptions toward using e-learning as a teaching assisted tool. Regarding to learners’ attitudes, self-paced, teacher-led, and multimedia instruction are major factors one expects to affect learners’ attitudes toward e-learning. According to Brusilovsky and Miller (2001) [2], Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Educational Systems provide an alternative to the traditional ‘just-put-it-on-the-Web’ approach in the development of Web-based educational courseware. In their work Brusilovsky and Pyelo, (2003) [3] mention that Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Educational Systems attempt to be more adaptive by building a model of the goals, preferences and knowledge of each individual student and using this model throughout the interaction with the system in order to be more intelligent by incorporating and performing some activities traditionally executed by a human teacher – such as coaching students or diagnosing misconceptions. According to Brusilovsky and Pyelo, (2003) [3] existing Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Educational Systems are very diverse. They offer various kinds of support for both students and teachers involved in the process of Web-enhanced education. In their introductory article they address several technologies appeared (until 2003) in Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Educational Systems and provide a catalog of sample systems that provide these technologies. Also Brown et al (2005) [4] mention that the ultimate objective of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia is to create the ‘perfect’ online lesson for every learner – utilizing a common set of learning resources. The ‘rules’ that are used to describe the creation of such a system are not yet standardized, and the criteria that need to be used pedagogically effective rule-sets (i.e. adaptation parameters) are, as yet, poorly mentioned. Many experimental Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems have been created – each to their own unique specifications. As yet, however, no combined effort has been made to extract the common design paradigms from these systems. The scope of this paper is to provide a starting point for the development of a generic, open and modular architecture for the retrieval of learning objects from disperse learning objects’ repositories (LORs) to an e-learning environment. Rehak and Mason (2003) [5] consider learning object as a digitized entity which can be used, reused or referenced during technology supported learning. Practically, LOs acquisition is achieved by querying LORs distributed over the internet. This LO “journey” must comply with widely accepted standards. A brief description of research work is also presented. This description classified according to the adaptivity strategy published by several authors aiming to underline the need of unification. Properly modified techniques and methods from the referenced work are suggested for application to the architecture’s foundation to provide an open, modular and distributed solution, closely coupled to given standardizations. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In chapter 2 there is a brief description of the different areas of e- learning systems’ adaptive behavior, namely adaptive navigation, presentation and content retrieval. In chapter 3 the most commonly cited adaptivity parameters are classified and several research efforts are mentioned in order to justify the connection of each parameter with the e-learning procedure. An overview of the most commonly accepted standards for e-learning is given in chapter 4. In chapter 5 we provide a review table of the research efforts that connect adaptivity behaviors with some adaptivity parameters and standards. Following, a first attempt for the design of a generic, open and modular architecture for LOs retrieval from LORs is described and the relations of the proposed architecture with other ones found in literature are given. Chapter 7 consists of the properly modified methods and techniques found in literature which could be applied in the modules and become the foundations of the proposed architecture. This paper closes with some conclusions and an overview of our planned future work. 2. Adaptive navigation, presentation and content retrieval, Brusilovsky (2001) [6], revising his previous classification Brusilovsky (1996) [7], defined a generally accepted and very commonly cited taxonomy of adaptation types. He defined two main categories as content level adaptation (adaptive presentation) and link level adaptation (adaptive navigation) in order to distinguish accordingly various areas of e-learning systems’ adaptive behavior. The first class includes paradigms of systems that can adapt the presentation of the provided learning material to a stored student model. Examples could be the presentation of visual material instead of text, or the presentation of audio instead of visual. Another example could be the change of the text paragraphs content to display more or less info at the same time (conditional text). The general idea is that the system has the ability to present alternative views to a user, according to some adaptivity parameters which are discussed later on. This ability requires that the content is already constructed in alternative views or the content is constructed at run-time from finer grained elementary material. Systems that provide adaptive navigation support can suggest and implement, direct navigation, free navigation (through a menu) or different variants of link hiding, disabling, removal, creation, annotation, dimming etc. Again, these links variations can be built at authoring time or at run-time. The problem that arises –and still is an open one- is the bridging of the gap between these adaptation techniques and free, distributed, standardized learning material from different authors in the hyperspace. Restated, how can an e-learning system put in the most appropriate order and present in the best way “bits and pieces” of LOs placed in disperse LORs of the vast hyperspace. Authors provide adaptive content retrieval alternatives to approach the previously stated problem. Course Sequencing (Brusilovsky et al 2003) [8], or Adaptive Content Scheduling (Watson et al 2007) [9] techniques is the kernel of such scientific efforts. These techniques create a research field close to the field of adaptive navigation support. 3. Adaptivity parameters In this section, we provide brief analysis and literature review of some commonly cited adaptivity parameters. Other parameters could also be found in literature, not very commonly though, such as user context of use (location, technology, time), visual or other impairments, etc. [10] The review and analysis of such parameters are out of the scope of this paper. 3.1 Cognitive style – cognitive abilities The roots of the word cognition lie on the Latin word cognosco, which in turn comes from the ancient Greek word γιγνώσκω ~ gignosko. The closest translation of the Greek word is I am aware of or I have the property of understanding. There exists a great variety of models and theories in the literature regarding learning behavior and cognitive characteristics i.e. Learning Styles (LSs) or Cognitive Styles (CSs) [11]. Although some authors do not distinguish between LSs and CSs [12], there are others who clearly do [13], [14]. According to Riding and Rayner (1998) [15], CS refers to an individual’s method of processing information. The building up of a learning strategies repertoire that combine with CS, contribute to an individual’s LS (see next subsection). In particular, as Jonassen and Grabowski (1993) [16] reported, LSs are applied CSs, removed one more level from pure processing ability usually referring to learners’ preferences on how they process information and not to actual ability, skill or processing tendency. According to Lemaire (1999) [17], Cognitive Abilities are mechanisms that allow humans to acquire and recognize pieces of information, to convert them into representations, then into knowledge, and finally to use them for the generation of simple to complex behaviors. According to Antonietti and Giorgetti (1998) [18] three main kinds of data can be used to measure cognitive styles: behavioral, self-report, and physiological. Behavioral data can be obtained by recording the final results of a given task or the procedure applied when performing the task. Most of the time, the task consist of filling out a paper-and-pencil test, a multiple choice test or a sorting test. Self-reports require that people evaluate themselves by describing introspectively the way they performed tasks by checking personal habits or preferences, or by endorsing statement about what they think of themselves (for example keeping diary). Finally, some physiological measures can be interpreted as hints of particular cognitive preferences in processing stimuli. Observations of physiological measures have indicated that, when someone is asked a question that requires some thinking, eyes make an initial movement to the left or right. There are many different classifications of cognitive styles as different researchers emphasize on different aspects (Riding and Cheema, 1991) [19]. Field dependence/independence is probably the most well-known division of CSs and, as Witkin et al (1997) [20] notice, it refers to a tendency to approach the environment in an analytical, as opposed to global, way. Their research indicated that field dependent learners are less likely to impose a meaningful organization on a field that lacks structure and are less able to learn conceptual material when cues are not available. Many experimental studies have demonstrated the impact of field dependence/independence on the learning process. Research by Jonassen and Wang (1993) [21] indicates that students with different CSs choose different strategies for learning. Furthermore, they argue that field independent learners generally prefer to impose their own structure on information rather than accommodate the structure that is implicit in the learning material. In their work, Triantafillou et al (2004) [22], investigate the hypothesis that adaptive hypermedia accommodating CSs can be beneficial for the observed learning outcomes. A prototype system, designed to be adapted to individual CSs, was developed and an empirical study was conducted. A list of teaching strategies, applied as adaptation techniques, is adopted in their prototype system for field dependent and field independent learners. For example, a menu from which learners can choose to proceed in the course in any order is provided for field independent learners. This menu is hidden from field dependent users’ interface. Their results, both quantitative and qualitative, support the evidence that students of their experimental group (teaching strategies applied) performed significantly better than students in the control group (teaching strategies not applied). Bernard and Mammar (2005) [23] present an environment called “Cognitive User Modeling for Adaptive Presentation of Hyper-Document”. The aim of their proposed environment is to adapt a hyper-document presentation by selecting the elements that best fit the user cognitive profile/abilities. The environment is based on four components: a cognitive user model, a hyper-document generator, an adaptive engine and a generic style sheet to present the adapted hyper-documents. They view the presentation adaptation as a process of selection of the most suitable combination of multimedia items (text, images, audio and video) that describe a concept or provide an explanation. The best combination is the one that most fits the user cognitive abilities. In order to model these abilities, they have defined a cognitive profile, which is a set of valued indicators representing elementary cognitive functions. To validate their approach they defined an innovative protocol, which consists of proposing adaptation based on randomized profile and analyzing performances according to the distance between the real and the randomized profile. The results showed that adaptive presentation of hyper-documents can significantly contribute to the improvement of the performance of users in memorizing and understanding hyper-documents. In Karampiperis et al (2006) [24] work, authors selected two cognitive characteristics, namely working memory capacity and inductive reasoning ability (available from the Cognitive Trait Model (Kinshuk and Lin, 2002) [25]), to create adaptivity algorithms. According to Miller (1956) [26], working memory is the cognitive system that allows us to keep active a limited amount of information for a brief period of time to temporarily store the outcome of intermediate computations during problem solving to perform further computations on these temporary outcomes. Inductive reasoning skill is described by Heit (2000) [27] as the ability to figure out the rules/theories/principle from observed instances of an event, described as working opposite to deduction, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. In their experiment they simulated different learner behaviors in navigating a hypermedia LOs space, and measured the selection success of the proposed selection decision model as it is dynamically updated using the simulated learner’s navigation steps. The simulation results provide evidence that the proposed selection methodology can dynamically update the internal adaptation logic leading to refine selection decisions. 3.2 Learning style The issue of estimating a learner’s LS in the scope of providing tailored education has been addressed in the literature several times. Learning theories converge to the fact that students learn and acquire knowledge in many different ways, which has been classified as LSs. Felder and Silverman (1988) [28] claim that students learn by observing and hearing; reflecting and acting or by reasoning logically and intuitively. Students also learn by memorizing and visualizing; drawing analogies and building mathematical models. LS classifications have been proposed by Kolb (1999) [29] and others (Honey and Mumford, 1992 [30]; Dunn, Dunn, 1992 [31]; Felder, Silverman, 1988 [28]). Most of the authors categorize them into groups and propose certain inventories and methodologies capable of classifying learners accordingly. The Kolb’s LS model (Kolb, 1984) [32] is one of the most well know and widely used in research. According to the model students have a preference in the way they learn: a. Concrete Experience or Abstract Conceptualization and b. Active Experimentation or Reflective Observation. The model is represented in a two dimensions graph, as shown on Figure 1. The preference is diagnosed by analysing subject’s responses in given questions of a questionnaire. Table 1. Description of D. Kolb’s LSs. Assimilator Their characteristic question is “What?”. This type of learners prefers information that is presented in an organized way and likes to have time for reflection. Converger The characteristic question for this learning type is “How?”. They like to work actively on well- defined tasks and learn by trial-and-error. Accomodatror The characteristic question for this learning type is “What if?”. They like applying course material in new situations to solve real problems. Diverger The characteristic question is “Why?”. They respond well to explanations of how course materials relate to their experience, interest and future careers. Milosevic, Brkovic et al (2007) [33] Active Experimentation Abstract Conceptualization Accommodating Diverging Converging Assimilating Concrete Experience Reflective Observation Figure 1. D. Kolb’s learning cycle In his work, Brusilovsky (2001) [6] noticed that several systems that attempt to adapt to LS had been developed, however it was still not clear which aspects of LS are worth modelling, and what can be done differently for users with different styles. Since then great efforts have been made and a quite large number of surveys have been published that remark the benefits of adaptation to LS. ACE (Adaptive Courseware Environment) is a WWW-based tutoring framework, developed by Specht et al (1998) [34], which combines methods of knowledge representation, instructional planning and adaptive media generation to deliver individualized courseware over the WWW. Experimental studies within ACE showed that the successful application of incremental linking of hypertext is dependent on students’ LS and their prior knowledge. In their research, Graf et al (2007) [35] show how cognitive traits and LSs can be incorporated in web-based learning systems by providing adaptive courses. The adaptation process includes two steps. Firstly, the individual needs of learners have to be detected and secondly, the courses have to be adapted according to the identified needs. The LS estimation in their work is made by a 44-item questionnaire based on Felder-Silverman LS model. In another work, Papanikolaou, Mabbott et al, (2006) [13] conducted empirical studies on two educational systems (Flexi-OLM and INSPIRE) to investigate learners’ learning and cognitive style, and preferences during interaction. The Index of Learning Styles questionnaire was used to asses the style of each participant according to the four dimensions of the Felder-Silverman LS model. It was found that learners do have a preference regarding their interaction, but no obvious link between style and approaches offered, was detected. Other examples which implement different aspects of the Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles are WHURLE (Brown and Brailsford, 2004 [36]; Moore et al, 2001 [37]) and ILASH (Bajraktarevic et al, 2003) [38]. Part of the Carver, Howard et al (1999) [39] work was to develop an adaptive hypermedia interface that provided dynamic tailoring of the presentation of course material based on the individual student’s LS. By tailoring the presentation of material to the student’s LS, the authors believe students learned more efficiently and more effectively. Students determine their LS by answering a series of 28 questions. These forms were based on an assessment tool developed at North Carolina State University (B.S. Solomon’s Inventory of Learning Styles). In iWeaver from Wolf (2002) [40] the Dunn and Dunn model is used. The Milosevic, Brkovic et al (2007) [33] approach tend to pursue adaptation according to generated user profile and its features which are relevant to the adaptation, e.g. the user’s prefernces, knowledge, goals, navigation history and prossibly other relevant aspects that are used to provide personilized adaptations. They discuss lesson content’s design tailored to individual users by taking into consideration LS and subject matter learning motivation. They also mention how LOs metadata can be used for LO retrieval according to the specific needs of the individual learner. They relied on the Kolb’s learning style model. They suggest that every LS class should get a different course material sequencing. 3.3 Learning behavior - motivation In this paper with the term Learning Behavior we address the easily changeable psychological-emotional state of the learner while interacting with an e-learning system. Boredom, frustration, motivation, concentration, tiredness are emotional conditions that, among others, are considered important for the effectiveness of the learning process. Tracing learner’s behavior in real time is a quite challenging task. In her work, Conati (2002) [41] address the problem of how an interactive system can monitor the user’s emotional state using multiple direct indicators of emotional arousal. A Dynamic Decision Network was used to represent the probabilistic dependencies in a unifying framework between possible causes and emotional states (anger, reproach, motivation, arousal) on one hand, and between emotional states and the user bodily expressions they can affect on the other hand (following the Ortony, Clore and Collins cognitive theory of emotions). Detection of user’s body expressions, such as eyebrow position, skin conductance and heart rate, requires special sensors. The system was applied on computer-based educational games instead of more traditional computer-based tutors, as the former tend to generate a much higher level of students’ emotional engagement. Another approach that exploits novel methods of resolution for fine-grained user profiling based on real-time eye-tracking and content tracking information is presented in Gutl et al (2004) [42] work. The authors introduced the Adaptive e-Learning with Eye-Tracking System, a system that utilizes a monitor mounted camera that records the eye of the participant and trace the gaze in a scene through imaging algorithms. Real- time information of the precise position of gaze and of pupil diameter can be used for assessing user’s interest, attention, tiredness etc. Both of the above mentioned examples utilized a kind of sensors to capture users’ behavioral indicators. In Chen et al (2005) [43] work, authors propose a Dynamic Fuzzy Petri Net inference engine that monitors “browsing time” and “browsing count” of users’ interaction with their system. According to them, whenever the learner spends too much time on a specific section, he/she is very interested in it or confused by it. Regardless, the auxiliary learning content should be provided. With fuzzy rules like this one, the engine provides an appropriate dynamic learning content structure and normalizes the exercise grade using a course intensity function. Milosevic et al (2006) [44] examined the users’ motivation as a factor of learning efficiency. According to the authors motivation is a pivotal concept in most theories of learning. It is closely related to arousal, attention and anxiety. Increasing learner’s motivation during online course is one of the key factors to achieve a certain goal. For example, highly motivated students tend to learn faster and to accept learning material in larger quantities, while low motivators must be presented with smaller knowledge chunks with appropriate feedback, trying to increase their motivation. They propose a pre-course test to asses the user’s motivation level, which they import it in user model to adapt the provided learning material. 3.4 Knowledge Level Some researchers emphasize that personalization in e-learning systems should consider additional adaptivity parameters such as different levels of learner knowledge, and learning goals. Brusilovsky (1996) [7] pointed out that AH systems can be useful in any application area where a hypermedia system is expected to be used by people with different goals and knowledge and where the hyperspace is reasonably big. Brusilovsky (2003) [45] notices that users with different goals and knowledge may be interested in different pieces of information presented on hypermedia page and may use different links for navigation. AH tries to overcome this problem by using knowledge represented in the user model to adapt the information being presented, limit browsing space and consequently minimize the cognitive load. In most cases researchers who taken into account knowledge level, goals and/or course material difficulty proposed solutions that provided adaptive navigation (or course sequencing) services. Two works published by Specht & Kobsa (1999) [46] and Brusilovsky & Rizzo (2002) [47], experimented on adaptive navigation methods with subjects of different previous knowledge level. Both of them concluded that learners with higher previous knowledge seem to prefer non-restricting adaptive methods, while learners with low previous knowledge can profit from the guidance of more restrictive adaptive methods. The idea of Baldoni et al (2004) [48] is to introduce the pre-requisites and effects of each instruction material unit (LO). Given a set of LOs, annotated by pre-requisites and effects, it is possible to compose reading sequences by using the standard planners based on graph algorithms. In their work, they also introduced some learning strategies, i.e. sets of rules for selecting those LOs which are the most suitable to the student, expressed only in terms of competences. Chen et al (2006) [43] proposed a system based on modified Item Response Theory which provides learning paths that can be adapted to various levels of difficulty of course materials and various abilities of learners. Meanwhile, the concept continuity of learning pathways is also integrated by analyzing concept relation degrees for all database courseware while applying personalized curriculum sequencing. To prevent the learner from becoming lost in course materials, the system provides personalized learning guidance, filters out unsuitable course materials to reduce cognitive loading, and provides a fine learning guidance based on individual user profile. Experimental results indicated that their system can recommend appropriate course materials to learners based on individual ability, and help them to learn more effectively in a web-based environment. 4. Standards for e-learning Nowadays e-Learning applications are getting widely spread in the Internet. As a result, an increasing demand for reusable and sharable LOs arises. Groups such as SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model), IEEE LTSC (IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee), IMS (Instructional Management Systems) and AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee) have undertaken significant work on LOs schemas. The SCORM standard was developed by the Department of Defense’s ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) initiative. Today SCORM is a widely accepted collection of standards in e-Learning applications. SCORM seeks to establish a collection of specifications and standards adapted from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive suite of e-Learning capabilities that support the interoperability, accessibility and reusability of web-based learning content (SCORM, 2004) [49]. It can be considered as a collection of “technical books” which are presently grouped under three main topics: a. Content Aggregation Model (CAM), b. Run-time Environment (RTE) and c. Sequencing and Navigation (SN). SCORM CAM defines how learning resources are defined with the XML metadata. Learning resources in SCORM are assets, Sharable Content Objects (SCOs) and Activities. Assets are electronic representations of media that can be collected together to build other assets. If this collection represents a single launchable learning resource that utilizes SCORM RTE to communicate with an LMS, it is referred to as an SCO. An Activity is a meaningful unit of instruction that may provide learning resources (assets or SCOs) or be composed of several subactivities. SCORM CAM consists of three different parts: a. Content Model which describes the low level components of instruction (assets, SCOs and content aggregations), b. Metadata, i.e. information describing the instruction material, and c. Content Packaging. [49] SCORM RTE defines the communication procedures between a Learning Management System and the instruction material. It consists of three parts: a. Launch, which defines a common way for LMS to start Web-based learning resources, b. Application programmable interface, which is the communication mechanism for informing the LMS of the state of the learning resource and c. a standard set of elements used to define the information being communicated, the Data Model. [49] SCORM Sequencing and Navigation (SN) defines a method for representing the branching and flow of learning activities in any SCORM conformant LMS. The learning resources flow could be both predefined by the content author and run-time created by user interactions with content objects. [49] IMS Learner Information Package specification LIP is a collection of information about a learner or a producer of learning content. The specification addresses the interoperability of internet based Learner Information systems with other systems that support the Internet learning environment. Storing information regarding recording and managing learning-related history, goals, preferences and accomplishments is described in LIP specification. [50] 5. Adaptivity parameters and standards As mentioned in the introduction, one of this paper’s contributions is to provide a classification of research efforts that connect adaptivity parameters and standards (see table 2). Each paper examines adaptivity parameters which appear in the second column and adaptivity types (adaptive presentation, navigation, content retrieval) which are placed in the third column. The forth column provides the reference to given standardizations and specifications and the fifth column provides some information about the assessment method used to capture the adaptivity parameter. Specific, properly adopted, methods and techniques from research efforts of table 2 are selected to underlie the generic architecture, which is described in the next section. One can notice that some of the referenced scientific work is annotated as standards extension proposals. Authors of these papers propose certain standards additions in order to create adaptive courses. In specific, Ray- Lopez et al (2008) [51] argue that current standards do not fully support content personalization. They study the adaptation possibilities of the SCORM standard and present an extension to permit the instructors to create adaptive courses with flexible structures, as well as to define the rules that permit the system to decide which activities are the most appropriate for a particular student. The adaptivity is provided at two levels: SCO level and activity level. Adaptivity at SCO level is achieved by defining a new type of SCO: the self-adaptive SCO, which self-configures based on a set of user’s characteristics. Adaptivity at activity level consists in offering different combinations of subactivities to achieve the objective of the parent activity. Other examples of standard extension proposals are the Rumetshofer et al (2003) [52] work, where the parent element <Psychological> is suggested to be added in IEEE LOM, and Sampson’s et al (2002) [53] effort, where extensions over the IMS content packaging specification are suggested. Table 2. Classification of recent research which reference to standardization and adaptivity parameters adaptivity parameter assessment method reference to standardization adaptivity type learning style Kolb Learning Style Inventory <learningResourceType> adaptive navigation Milosevic, et al (2007) motivation pre-, post- tests <SemanticDensity> adaptive presentation Yordanova (2007) general - <title> <language> <description> <keyword> <format> <learningResourceType> <interactivityLevel> <difficulty> <taxonPath> - Watson et al (2007) knowledge level SCO performance assessment SCORM interaction elements adaptive content retrieval Karampiperis et al (2006) cognitive style > working capacity monitoring navigation steps <aggregationLevel> <interactivityType> <interactivityLevel> <semanticDensity> <difficulty> <typicalLearningTime> <learningResourceType> adaptive content retrieval Chen et al (2006) knowledge level modified Item Response Theory <description> <keyword> <difficulty> adaptive content retrieval Chen et al (2005) learning behavior Dynamic Fuzzy Petri Net Activity Tree of <organization> SCORM Rollup Rules adaptive content retrieval Baldomi et al (2004) knowledge level - <purpose> <taxon> adaptive navigation Rey-Lopez et al (2008)* dependent to each LMS dependent to each LMS <adaptation> <organization> <item> adaptive content retrieval adaptive presentation Rumetshofer et al (2003)* cognitive style learning strategy skill assessment center (questionnaires) <psychological> <cognitive style> <learning strategy> <learning modality> <skills> adaptive content retrieval, presentation, navigation Sampson et al (2002)* learner profile (general) questionnaire to create an IMS LIP based profile <rules> <domain ontology> <LO meta-data> <questions & tests> <competencies> <user profiles> adaptive content retrieval *standards extension 6. Generic architecture – a first approach 6.1 General Description In this section a brief description of the proposed generic architecture is given (figure 2). The model describes a solution to the scenario of distributed LOs adaptive retrieval and presentation from a web-based Learning Management System (LMS), as it seems to be the dominant practice. Practically, LOs acquisition is achieved by querying LORs distributed over the internet, using LOs metadata standards. The database queries must have solid structure with strictly defined parameters. SCORM compliant Learning Management System Learning Object and Domain Models Repositories 1 3 adaptive content retrieval relevance estimation engine 2 Cognitive style Cognitive style estimation Learning Style Learning style estimation engine Knowledge Level Knowledge & Goals Assessment 6 Learning Behavior Learning behavior estimation 7 User Model 8 Adaptive Techniques (Adaptive navigation and Adaptive presentation support) 9 Current state & user interactions Returned “relevant” Learning Objects Learning Objects ready for display User interaction & cognitive style assessment User interaction & learning style assessment User interactions & competency assessment User interactions & behavior assessment Query for “relevant” Learning objects 5 4 learner Adaptivity Parameters Modules teacher Instructor author psychologist theoretical educator educational technology engineer LMS moderator Figure 2. A first approach of the generic architecture. The criteria of the retrieval, presentation and navigation (sequencing of the LOs) are in accordance with the adaptivity parameters examined in section 3. - Cognitive Style, cognitive abilities - Learning Style - Learning Behavior, motivation - Knowledge level The above parameters are considered independent to each other, by the means of absence of influence. The values of these parameters are resulted from separate modules, accordingly. The numbered list which follows, describes the most important aspects of the architecture’s modules. The “x” symbol in the corner of some boxes implies that the module could be disabled or not present, without disturbing the LO’s retrieval, but, of course, disabling some, or all, of these modules the system becomes less parametric or less “intelligent”. 1. Learning Management System (LMS). The beginning and the end of the e-learning experience. The LMS captures user interactions and forwards them to next modules. Also, the LMS is responsible to receive and display the returned LOs. Of course, both captured user interactions and received LOs must be standardized. 2. According to visited LO (in figure 2: current state) and user interactions –information that is send from the LMS- the relevance estimation engine is responsible to create the appropriate query to “ask” LORs for “relevant” LOs. Algorithms proposed by Chen et al (2006) [54] and Watson et al (2007) [9] could be applied to provide a taxonomy of “relevant” LOs. Taking under consideration user interactions and LOM, these algorithms are inference engines that provide selection rules to filter LOs from disperse and vast LORs. 3. Learning Objects and Domain Models Repositories receive a query and return a number of “relevant” LOs. A catalogue of some large LORs with sharable LOs can be found in Nash (2005) [55]. 4. The User Model is responsible to store (keep personal user data, preferences data and history related data) and forward user interactions to adaptivity parameters modules (see 5, 6, 7 and 8), receive their assessments and export a final filtered taxonomy of the Learning Objects that have received from 3. 5. Learning Behavior. This module is dedicated to learning behavior diagnosis. A suggestion for estimating learning behavior from user’s interaction is proposed by Chen et al (2005) [43] and Milosevic et al (2007) [33] (see table 2). 6. Competence Level. This module supports the assessment of user’s knowledge and goals. The modified item response theory from Chen et al (2006) [54] or SCO performance assessment from Watson et al (2007) [9] are two alternatives for this purpose (see table 2). 7. Learning Style. Similarly to 5 and 6, this module produces results for user’s LS. Milosevic et al (2007) [33] developed a solution that “connects” user’s LS to specific LOM (see table 2). 8. Cognitive Style. This module is dedicated to estimate the user’s CS. The module receives user interaction related data and exports an assessment. An example application is the Karampiperis et al (2006) [24] work. Data about user navigation is used to export LOM (see table 2). 9. All the algorithms to provide adaptive navigation and adaptive presentation services are the last stage of this architecture. This module receives user model information and produces a filtered taxonomy of learning objects, applies the appropriate algorithms and forwards the data to be displayed in the interface of the LMS. We must also mention that our model, as an AEHS, is created in favor of the learner, but it should be supported by others, such as: a. Instruction material providers (educators, teachers, authors etc) b. System moderators c. Cognitive Psychologists (assessment engines) d. Administrators e. Educational Technology Engineers 6.2 Relations to other Architectures The proposed architecture has some similarities to components of other architectures one can find in literature. As already mentioned, one of this paper’s objectives is to gather, formalize and generalize other research efforts on this field. In referenced work, researchers seek to create an architecture which meets specific needs, but the basic aspects of their efforts can be considered as the following: a. A pool, database, repository of the instruction material and the domain models (possible relation to instruction material) � (3) b. An assessment method: An engine that tries to capture some user characteristics � (5, 6, 7, 8) c. A user model generation process: Techniques that gather results from the assessment engines and create a dynamic user “instance” which is used throughout the e-learning experience � (4) d. An adaptation process: Techniques based on rules that map user model to the instruction material � (4 to 9) e. A user interface generator: An engine which produces the final screenshot of the e-learning experience which is displayed to the user’s screen � (9 to 1) f. Agents that capture user interactions with the interface � (1 to 2) Note that agents or society of agents function between each component. In his work, Oliveira (2002) [56] presents a generic architecture for AEHSs, which is resulted from known AEHS architectures’ analysis and other adaptive systems, as well. In our paper we refer to the very significant parameter of standards, which has not been included in his work. Some of the above modules can be found in Bernard and Mammar (2005) [23] work. Authors present an environment called “Cognitive User Modeling for Adaptive Presentation of Hyper-Document”. The proposed environment is based on four components, namely a cognitive user model, a hyper-document generator, an adaptive engine, and a generic style sheet to present the adapted hyper-documents. Adaptive presentation is viewed as a process of selection of the most suitable combination of multimedia items (text, images, audio and video) that describe a concept. The best combination is the one that better fits the user cognitive abilities. A generic architecture is also described in Karampiperis et al (2005) [57] work. It follows a two layer architecture: a Runtime Layer and a Storage Layer. The Runtime Layer consists of an Educational Content Presenter, a Behavior Tracker and an Adaptation Rule Parser. The Storage Layer consists of a User Model, an Adaptation Model, the Educational Resources (LOs) themselves and a Domain Model, where the connections of Educational Resources with concepts are held. These connections are represented in the <classification> element of the IEEE LOM standardization. An interesting part of that work is the use of the IMS LIP specification for representing User Model elements. For example user’s LS is represented with Accessibility/Preference/typename and Accessibility/Preference/prefcode IMS LIP elements. Another example that utilizes some of the above mentioned modules is found in Chen et al work (2006) [54]. The modular system architecture consists of a courseware analysis module, a courseware recommendation agent, which is responsible to match user interaction with course material, and finally a learning interface agent. 7. Methods and Techniques In what follows a short description of a new approach to certain model’s components functionality is presented 7.1 Relevance Estimation Engine The establishment of a LOs taxonomy concerning the “distance” each LO of a certain LOR has from the LO currently in use, is still an open problem. Watson et al (2007) [9] ask: How would the student select the correct learning objects to achieve the learning objectives, when assuming that he/she has access to the repository filled with various learning objects? If the student is allowed to pick learning objects, the pathway could become illogical and confusing. On the other hand, if the student followed a static linear pathway through the learning objects, the outcome would not necessarily match his/her individual needs. Facing questions of this kind, we seek to estimate the concept relation degree of two LOs. Several methods have been proposed, such as “estimation of concept relation degree” proposed by Chen et al (2006) [54] or “Pathway generator” proposed by Watson et al (2007) [9]. For the scope of this paper we will briefly describe a slight modification of Chen’s vector space model. Each LO is represented as a vector in a multidimensional Euclidean space. Each axis in this space corresponds to a linguistic term obtained from word segmentation process of specific LOM fields (<title>, <description>, <keyword>, <coverage> from the <general> element and the children elements of the <contribute> element). These fields are selected following the Najjar et al (2005) [58] research results and recommendation of an iterative usability study conducted to examine the usability of a search tool used to find learning objects in ARIADNE Knowledge Pool System. The coordinate of the ith LO in the direction corresponding to the kth linguistic term can be determined as follows: log k ik ik lo N w tf N = ⋅ where wik represents the weight that express the participation of the kth term in the ith LO, tfik is the term frequency of the kth term, which appears in the ith LO; N denotes the total number of LOs and klo N is the number of LOs containing the kth term. Assume that there are m terms in total under union of all linguistic terms of the ith LO and jth LO. The concept relation degree, rij, between the ith and jth LO can be found using the cosine-measure, listed as follows: 1 2 2 1 1 m ih jh h ij m m ih jh h h w w r w w = = = = ∑ ∑ ∑ where ci=[wi1,wi2,...,wik,...,wim] and cj=[wj1,wj2,...,wjk,...,wjm], respectively, represent the vectors in a multidimensional Euclidean space for the ith and jth LO. Assume that there are totally n LOs in a LOR, the concept relation matrix for all courseware can be expressed by the matrix R, and listed as follows: 11 12 1 21 22 2 1 2 r ... ... R= ... ... ... ... ... n n n n nn n n r r r r r r r r ×             Obviously the value of the items of the main diagonal is 1. In the following example we provide results from our preliminary experimentation on the algorithm. The obtained results provide a measure of relation between LOs that reflect on our intuitional hypothesis of relevance. Table 3 present the value of the <description> node of metada file from selected LOs. The first 4 lines display real LOs, retrieved from the open LOR “Australian Flexible Learning Toolboxes”. The last two lines display imaginary LOs. The first of these is considered as “relevant” to one of the real LOs, while the second is irrelevant to every single one of the real LOs. We should mention that, for the scope of this preliminary experimentation, we applied the algorithm only in the <description> node’s values, because we just wanted to get some indication of the algorithm’s efficiency. Table 3. The description metadata value from 6 LOs LO identifier description metadata value 1 The multimedia designer Jacob introduces a number of key concepts about digital imaging, photography and digital video including file types for specific applications (bitmaps, jpegs, gifs, tifs etc), bit depth, resolution, compresssion,video dvd, connectivity, video legal colours, image scanning, health and safety and asset managment while working with digital images, video and or multimedia. 2 In this project the learner will have to measure performance and usability of a site they've created and create a report based on those findings. The learner is situated in a fictitious company (Arachnoid Web Services) having commenced work as a Junior Web Designer. 3 This activity describes a pratical multimedia project that involves image manipulation, sound editing and multimedia design and export. A local travel agency, Top Travel has asked us to produce a second multimedia presentation for their web site promoting the various attractions on offer in this region. We need approximately 30 digital photos of the local area incorporated with a sound track into a multimedia sequence. This presentation will incorporate text that encourages tourism to our local area. We will use Movie Maker to assemble the whole presentation There are 7 other activities in this series that contribute understanding required to undertake the whole project. These are: All about Images Digital Cameras Prepare for a Photo Shoot Image Manipulation Removing Red Eye Digital Sound Movie Maker As you work through this series you will develop your tourism project. 4 This activity describes how to remove red eyes in digital images caused by flash bounce. As you remove red eye from an image, you will learn to use a number of Photoshop tools and processes including eyedropper, filters, paintbrush, hues and blends. 5 Measuring the importance and performance of a web site, from a Web Designer's point of view. 6 Alice in the Wonder Land. Some pictures from the book. Following the LOs selection, we applied word segmentation techniques. We removed articles, pronouns, prepositions, words that do not significantly contribute to a text’s meaning and also considered every word without its ending (for example we removed the –ing, -er, -ist, -s and other endings of the words). The result of the application of these techniques is a set of 140 linguistic terms. The application of the relevancy estimation engine resulted in the following 6x6 relation matrix: 1.000 0.086 0.207 0.210 0.081 0.025 0.086 1.000 0.168 0.133 0.344 0.104 0.207 0.168 1.000 0.216 0.099 0.077 R= 0.210 0.133 0.216 1.000 0.037 0.019 0.081 0.344 0.099 0.037 1.000 0.067 0.025 0.104 0.77 0.019 0.067 1.000                   The given results justify intuitional considerations. r 1 r2 r3 r4 r5 r6 r 1 r2 r3 r4 r5 r6 0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0 ,9 1 Figure 3. LOs relevancy distribution 7.2 Learning Style As mentioned earlier in this paper, user’s LS is considered as an important parameter which should be taken under consideration in the e-learning experience. Each user’s LS is extracted by applying methods proposed by cognitive scientists. As an example of LS estimation in an on-line system we can address the Botsios et al work [59]. Their work is based on Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (Kolb, 1999) [29]. Instead of using just a static questionnaire to estimate the learner’s LS, authors implemented the Fault Implication Avoidance Algorithm (FIAA) and a Probabilistic Expert System. Taking into account the structure of Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory, FIAA dynamically creates a descending shorting of learner’s answerers per question, decreases the amount of necessary input for the diagnosis, which in turn can result to limitation of possible controversial answers. The applied Probabilistic Expert System analyzes information from responses supplied by the system’s antecedent users (users that complete the questionnaire before the present user) to conclude to a LS diagnosis of the present user. Evidence is provided that the effect of some factors, such as cultural environment and lucky guesses or slippery answers, that hinder an accurate estimation, is diminished. Their system gives a “clear” LS estimation (no “grey” estimation areas), making the results of practical use in an AEHS. After diagnosing user’s LS, the user model match diagnosed LS to a LO in optimum way. Milosevic et al (2007) [33] discuss about designing lesson content tailored to individual users, taking into consideration, among others, LS and how LOM could be used for LO retrieval according to the specific needs of the individual learner. They relied on the Kolb’s LS model. They suggest that every LS class should get a different course material sequencing. Specifically, they take advantage of the LOM element <learningRersourceType>, which, according to IEEE LOM recommended vocabulary, it takes one of the following values: exercise, simulation, questionnaire, diagram, figure, graph, index, slide, table, narrative text, exam, experiment, problem statement, self assessment, lecture. They also propose that learning material should contain knowledge modules: theory, examples, practice and test, represented with appropriate LOs. Besides, each page should provide optional links to Index, Problem sets, Case study and Group discussion ordered according to the LS diagnosis conducted earlier. The table summarizes teaching activities enclosed in adaptation algorithm. A value (1,2,3) is assigned to each knowledge module stating its importance. Contents that have value 0 assigned to them denote that such content type should not be presented to the learner. Table 4. Teaching activities (LOs) and learning resources types according to user’s LS Teaching activities AC/RO (assimilator) AC/AE (converger) CE/AE (accommodator) CE/RO (diverger) theory 1 lecture 0 0 1 lecture examples 2 slides, examples 1 experiment, simulation 2 simulation, experiment 2 simulation practicing 0 2 self assessment, exercise 1 problem statement 0 tests 3 exam 3 exam 3 exam 3 exam optional links index +3 +3 +3 +1 problem sets +1 +2 +2 +3 case study +2 +1 +1 +2 Milosevic et al, 2007 [33] In their paper Milosevic et al (2007) [33] provide the following example. Assimilator LS should be presented with (1) theoretical content, followed by (2) example and then (3) test. Practicing should not be presented as obligatory knowledge module, since people of this LS don’t like studying through application on knowledge. In the optional part, links should be ordered by 1) problem sets, 2) case study and 3) index, without group discussions. 7.3 Cognitive Style As mentioned earlier, learners of different cognitive characteristics require content presentation tailored to their learning needs. In Karampiperis et al (2006) [24] work, authors selected two cognitive characteristics, namely the working memory capacity and the inductive reasoning skill to create adaptivity algorithms. Working memory capacity diagnosis and the adaptation rules are briefly described in the next paragraph. Working memory capacity diagnosis is made by tracing user’s navigation patterns. Lin (2003) [60] suggests that non-linear navigation in the learning space, constant reverse navigation and frequent revisit of learned material are indications, among others, of low working memory capacity. When the working memory capacity of the learner is Table 5. working memory capacity and LOM elements low high InteractivityType Expositive Active InteractivityLevel Very low, low Very high, high SemanticDensity Very low, low Very high, high Difficulty Very easy, easy Very difficult, difficult Karampiperis et al, 2006 [24] low then a. the number of the paths and the amount of information presented to the learner should decrease to protect the learners from getting lost in the vast amount of information, b. the relevance of the information should increase to raise the possibility that the learners will get the most important information and c. the concreteness of the information should increase so the learner can grasp the fundamental rules first and use them to generate higher-order rules. The opposite should happen if the working memory capacity of the learner is high (linear navigation pattern, rare or none reverse navigation, infrequent or none revisit of learned material). The LOM elements that are relevant to the pedagogical adaptation to working memory capacity are <InteractivityType>, <InteractivityLevel>, <SemanticDensity> and <Difficulty> of the <Educational> parent element. 7.4 Motivation – learning behavior By the term “level of user’s motivation” is denoted the measure of student’s focus of attention on the teaching process, especially on the learning material presented to the student. User’s motivation can be assessed recording users’ interaction. Chen et al (2005) [43] propose two characteristics that need to be monitored, namely: browsing time and browsing count. Browsing time is the total time a learner persists in a certain learning section. <typicalLearningTime> element of the <Educational> parent node can keep such an information. Whenever the learner spends too much time on such a LO, he/she is either very interested in it or confused by it. Regardless, the motivation level can be considered as high. Browsing count is the frequency with which a particular LO is addressed. Browsing count can also be an indication of motivation and confusion. In their work Milosevic et al (2007) [33], they chose to incorporate the element <SemanticDensity> of the <Educational> parent element, denoting the complexity and the semantic quantity of LO. Each LO can have semantic density between 1 and 5, i.e. providing low motivators with LOs that have <SemanticDensity> smaller than or equal to 2, moderate motivated students with LOs of smaller or equal to 4 <SemanticDensity> and finally high motivators with LOs annotated 5 to their <SemanticDensity> tag. 7.5 Knowledge level In this paragraph we describe the mapping of the user’s ability or knowledge to LOs’ difficulty level, which can be annotated in the <Difficulty> node of the <Educational> element. The algorithm is proposed by Chen et al (2006) [54] in their “courseware recommendation agent”. The courseware recommendation agent first estimates learner ability using a Bayesian estimation procedure, then evaluates the modified information function value of LOs in the LOR and creates a LO descending sorting. A LO, which is high in this taxonomy, is considered as the most suitable for the user’s current knowledge level. To estimate the learner’s ability, the item characteristic function with a single difficulty parameter is used. The formula is defined as follows: ( ) ( ) ( ) 1 j j D b j D b e P e θ θ θ − − = + where Pj(θ) denotes the probability that learners can understand the jth LO of the LOR at a level below their ability level θ, bj is the value of <difficulty> node of the jth LO and D is a constant 1.702. For the estimation of user’s ability level, θ, a Bayesian procedure is described in the same paper (Chen et al, 2006). The quadrature form to approximately estimate learner’s ability is given by the following formula: ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 1 1 1 1 1 ˆ 1 jj jj q n uu k k j k j k k j q n uu k j k j k k j A P P A P P θ θ θ θ θ θ θ θ − = − =  −  =  −  ∑ ∏ ∑ ∏ where θ̂ denotes the learner’s ability of estimation, θk is the kth split value of ability in the standard normal distribution, A(θk) represents the quadrature weight at a level below the θk ability level and uj=1 or uj=0 if the answer is understood or not understood from the learner, respectively (this value is obtained from leaner feedback to the jth LO). In this algorithm, learner abilities are limited between θ=-1 and θ=1. That is, learners with ability - 1 are viewed as the poorest, those with ability 0 are viewed as having moderate abilities and those with ability 1 are viewed as having the best abilities. Finally, the maximum information functions is used to create a descending sorting of LOs. The maximum information is defined as follows: ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2 2 1.7 1.7 1.7 1 j j j b b I e e θ θ θ − − − =    +       where Ij(θ) is the information value of the jth LO at a level below user’s ability level θ, bj is the difficulty parameter of the jth LO. A LO with the maximum information function value indicates that the system gives the highest recommendation priority. 8. Conclusion and Future Work There exist a wide variety of diverse Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Educational Systems. The ‘rules’ that are used to describe the creation of such systems are not yet fully standardized, and the criteria that need to be used pedagogically effective rule-sets (i.e. adaptation parameters) are, as yet, poorly mentioned (Brown et al., 2005) [4]. In this paper we provide a starting point for the development of a unified architecture capable to retrieve LOs from disperse LORs and to direct them to every user tailored to his/her needs. This LO “journey” must comply with widely accepted standards. The model is based on a distributed architecture. Interoperability, information sharing, scalability and dynamic integration of heterogeneous expert fields are considered as the major advantages of the proposed model. a. Interoperability: support for available standards, technology and platform independent. b. Information Sharing: user information, learning objects, services and assessment tools. c. Scalability: continuous update of each module’s functionality (Learning Objects, monitoring tools, cognition and learning style theories, sequencing and navigation algorithms). d. Integration of heterogeneous expert field: independent module development and dynamic adaptation to the latest criteria. This paper aims to gather step by step recent research work concerning adaptivity parameters, to investigate their connection with widely accepted LO standards and to provide suitable methods and techniques from the literature which can be applied in a generic architecture for the retrieval of learning objects from disperse learning objects’ repositories to an e-learning environment. Further detailed development of the above described generic architecture may be in focus of software engineers’ attention. Also, a further literature review will might bring in light more elegant methods and might discover most recent approaches in adaptivity parameters diagnosis. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. This work is supported in the frame of Operational Programme “COMPETITIVENESS”, 3rd Community Support Program, co financed. - by the public sector of the European Union – European Social Fund. - by the Greek Ministry of Development – General Secretariat of Research and Technology. 10. References 1. 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work_jhq6cmwgeze67jrkfrwkdrrll4	----	Views on Modular Assessment and Evaluation Process in Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2073 – 2077 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.430 WCES 2012 Views on modular assessment and evaluation process in distance education Hasan Karala, Ayca Cebib* a Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, 61040, Turkey bDistance Education Center, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, 61040, Turkey Abstract Thanks to developing information and communication technologies, distance education enables to perform distance education applications different from traditional teaching methods. Assessment and evaluation in distance education is among current interest areas with the developing distinct distance education applications. The current study aims to determine views on assessment and evaluation process in distance education by identifying which modules (exam, forum, chat, assignment, wiki etc.) should be used for online assessment process and which criteria should be taken into consideration while evaluating a student performance. In this context, the study was carried out with 91 registered participants at Karadeniz Technical University. The study was a descriptive study, therefore; the data was gathered via a questionnaire developed by the researchers. The study concludes that assessment and evaluation process involves not only online exams but also modules such as forum, assignment, wiki, dictionaries which shows students’ process performance. In modular assessment and evaluation process, students’ answers should be considered qualitatively and quantitatively by teachers. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Moduler Assessment and Evaluation, Distance Education ; 1. Introduction With the rapid developments in communication and information technologies and the spread of the internet with each passing day has brought great opportunities in the field of education as well as in many fields. The distance education where students and teachers are in different places in terms of time and space or in both conditions has become more attractive (Özkul, 2003). With widespread distance learning activities, assessment and evaluation process in distance education is started to be discussed. Although activities in distance education are attempted to be continued as in the traditional education, it is stated that there has been some problems especially in assessment and evaluation process and also students cannot be evaluated well enough in the process (Shuey, 2002). Compared to the traditional classroom teaching, different educational problems are encountered in distance education. This is why distance educators asses students not only with exams and assignments but they also find useful to collect data with different tools (Altan & Seferoğlu, 2009). In distance learning applications, traditional methods of assessment and evaluation, multiple choice, fill in, short answer or long explanations, are generally used (Simonson et al., 2003). However Kalelioğlu and Gulbahar (2010) * Ayça Çebi Tel.: +90-462-377-7125 E-mail address: aycacebi@ktu.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 2074 Hasan Karal and Ayca Cebi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2073 – 2077 have emphasized the need to use alternative tools as well as traditional measurement tools to increase the effectiveness of activities and to execute process evaluation in terms of effectiveness of education and student achievement as the communication between teachers and students is limited in distance education process. Learning management systems (LMS) which are growing in parallel with the developments in distance education applications renew itself with new add-ons and new modules with each passing day. Learning management systems enable traditional learning activities and they also have modules which enable us to evaluate students in the process (Watson & Watson, 2007). Effective use of these modules (wiki, blog, workshop) and analysis of students' log records have great importance to contribute process evaluation (Ingram, 1999). In addition, many criteria such as participation in discussions on time such as online forums, the nature of participation, acting in accordance with the forum rules, length of the messages and supporting with references are reported as the criteria to be taken into account in process evaluation (Dabbagh, 2000; Fleming, 2008). With this frame, the purpose of the study is stating the comments on assessment and evaluation process in distance education to introduce the thoughts about which modules in on-line process should be participated in the 2. Method The study was conducted with 91 participants registered to distance education graduate program in Karadeniz Technical University. As the participants were the experts in different levels of The Turkish Ministry of National Education, they were able to assess the study in the eyes of teacher as well as in the eyes of students. Descriptive design was used for the research. These are the studies in which participants' views or interests and abilities of a subject are determined (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006). Data of the study were obtained through questionnaires developed by researchers. The survey consists of likert and open-ended questions. Questionnaire used in this study was examined by experts and it was applied to working groups after necessary adjustments were made. Demographic characteristics of the survey working group are consist of 5-point likert-type questions related to which modules should be taken into account in online assessment and evaluation and the criteria in these modules. To determine the gap, the formula 5-1/5 was used and the value 80 was found. Accordingly, if the c -4.20, they are totally agree with the thoughts in the study, if it is 4.19-3.40, they are highly agree with them, if it is 3.39-2.60, they are partially agree, if it is 2.59-1.80, they are less agree, if it is 1.79-1.00, they are never agree with the thoughts in the survey. The data was analyzed with the descriptive analysis method. 3. Finding In this section, the demographic characteristics of participants and the views related to alternative evaluation criteria in assessment and evaluation process in distance education will be given respectively. Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of students participating in the study. Table 1. Demographic characteristic of participants FEATURES N % Gender Male 84 92.3 Femal 7 7.7 Professional Experience 6-10 years 41 45.1 11-15 years 37 40.7 16 years and more 13 14.2 Distance Education Experiences One Semester 58 63.7 Two Semesters 33 36.3 2075 Hasan Karal and Ayca Cebi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2073 – 2077 When the data examined in Table 1, 84 of the participants (92.3%) are male, 7 of them (7.7%) are female participants. While the participants are students in graduate program with no thesis in distance education, they are also performing as teachers. In terms of professional experience, 41 participants (45.1%) have 6-10 years experience, 37 (40.7%) have 11-15 years of professional experience and 13 (14.2%) have and 16 years and more experience. When the participants are examined in terms of their distance education experiences, it is seen that the majority of participants (63.7%) have taken courses for one semester, while the others (36.3%) have taken courses for two semesters. Synchronous and asynchronous modules are used in distance education allow researchers to evaluate the participants outside the traditional assessments as online exams. Table 2. Participants' views on evaluation modules that can be used in distance education Items X Sd criteria that must be in the assessment and evaluation process. 3.35 1.46 The evaluation must be done only according to the results of the exams. 2.58 1.37 The number of discussions in forums (frequency) should be considered as an evaluation criterion. 2.32 1.30 Student participation in synchronous courses should be an evaluation criterion. 3.00 1.43 Notes from quizzes must be taken into account in assessment and evaluation. 2.95 1.29 Participation to the questionnaires is a criterion that should be taken into account in evaluation process. 3.10 1.51 Material sharing in system should be considered as an assessment and evaluation criterion. 2.60 1.44 Evaluation of the quality of homework and projects is a criterion to be considered in the assessment and evaluation process. 3.76 1.13 Loading homework and projects to the system on time should be evaluated as an evaluation criterion. 2.98 1.35 Notes taken as a result of evaluating the quality of the responses written in forums should be taken into account in assessment and evaluation process of distance learning. 3.38 1.14 Participating in discussions in the forums on time should be considered as an assessment and evaluation criteria. 1.95 1.39 Acting appropriate in forums should be considered as an evaluation criterion in distance education. 2.55 1.20 process as alternative evaluation options. 2.36 1.14 When the data in Table 2 is examined as a whole, it can be said that the results obtained from alternative evaluation modules that synchronous and asynchronous systems used in distance learning are submitted and the log records can be used to as a criterion to evaluate distance education. However, the participants are not totally agreed on seeing quantitative values such as frequency of participation, or the submission timely as evaluation criteria. In evaluation process (X = 3.35). It is thought that students should be evaluated only according to their exam results(X = 2.58). Also, it can be said that they agree less with the thought that the frequency of participation in online discussions (X = 2.32), participation in discussions on time (X = 1.95) and behaving properly in forums (X = 2.55) should be criteria in distance education. In addition, it is stated that they agree less with the thought that wiki, blog, workshop and etc that LMS provides should be alternative evaluation criteria in participating into modules(X=2.36). But they are 2076 Hasan Karal and Ayca Cebi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2073 – 2077 partially agree with the thought that the notes taken after the evaluation of the discussion in forums can be taken account as criteria in assessment process of distance learning (X=3.38). They are partially agree with the thought that participation in synchronous courses (X = 3.00), grades obtained from quiz (X = 2.95), participation in the questionnaires through the process (X = 3.10), material sharing in the system (X = 2.60), and loading homework and projects on the system on time (X = 2.98) should be considered as evaluation criteria. Also they think that the grades for the evaluated homeworks and projects should be taken into account as evaluation criteria (X=3.76). taught in distance education, which criteria do you take into account to do an evaluation?" are analyzed, the data in Table 3 were obtained. Tablo 3. Participant comments on the evaluation criteria in the process of distance education Evaluation criteria in distance learning process N=91 %=100 Exam results 72 79.1 Spent time in synchronous course 35 38.5 Active participation to the course 30 33.0 Homework or projects 28 30.8 Quality of the response in the forums 19 20.9 Spending time in asynchronous system 15 16.5 Numbers of the answers in the forums 5 5.5 Information sharing in environments as wiki, blog etc 3 3.3 When the data in Table 3 is analyzed, it can be seen that exams should be taken account in the evaluation process of distance education as well as it is in traditional education. Preferences are in high level in using synchronous attendance time (log records), level of active participation in courses as well as in traditional education, quality of homework and projects in assessment and evaluation process of distance education. While some of the participants see synchronous participation as a criterion, the others think that the time spent for engaging with course materials in an asynchronous environment is a criterion too. In addition, it is seen that the participants prefer the evaluation of the quality of the responses on the forums to the number of the responses. Moreover another small group think that 4. Conclusion It is stated that traditional evaluation methods can be used in distance education too, assessment and evaluation assignment, blog and forum can be thought as evaluation tools. Quantitative values (frequency of use, response time, etc. these modules. Qualitative assessment is perceived as more important than qualitative assessment. This result is similar to the results that Hara et al (2000) and Yorke et al (2006) obtained before. It is thought that security weaknesses in online exams can be solved by giving more importance to the evaluation process. Howland and Moore (2002) states that students dislike forum discussions. On t opinions on considering forum responses as an criterion in assessment and evaluation process contrast with Howland and Moore's (2002) study. This difference is thought to be due the sample group being different. In distance education, while students are evaluated, in addition to the exams, the log records, analysis of student behavior, participation in the discussions on forums, material and information sharing, sending homework and projects on time and properly, active participation to the synchronous courses should be considered as other criteria. 2077 Hasan Karal and Ayca Cebi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ( 2012 ) 2073 – 2077 References Altan, T., & 3.International Computer & Instructional Technologies Symposium (ICITS 2009). 7-9 October 2009, Karadeniz Technical University Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon. Cotton, D. & Yorke, J. (2006) Analysing online discussions: What are students learning?in Who's learning? Whose Technology? (Editors: Markauskaite L, Goodyear P & Reimann P), Sydney University Press. Pages 163-171. Dabbagh, N. (2000). Online Discussion Protocols and Rubrics. (visited Oct. 3, 2011) http://mason.gmu.edu/~ndabbagh/wblg/online-protocol.html Fleming, D. L. (2008). Using Best Practices in Online Discussion and Assessment to Enhance Collaborative Learning. In College Teaching Methods & Styles Journal, 4(10), 21-39. Fraenkel, J.R., & Wallen, N.E. (2006). How to design and evaluate research in education. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hara, N., Bonk, C.J., & Angeli, C. (2000). Content analysis of online discussion in an applied educational psychology course. Instructional Science, 28, 115-152. Howland, Jane L. & Joi L. Moore (2002). Student Perception as Distance Learners in Internet-Based Courses. Distance Education, 23 (2), 183- 195. Ingram, A. L. (1999). Using Web Server Logs in Evaluating Instuctional Web Sites. Journal of EducationTechnology Systems, Volume: 28. , 1(3). URL:http://www.etad.net/dergi/index.php?journal=etad&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=17 . E- - KKM, 30 Nisan 2003, Ankara. Shuey, S. (2002). Assessing Online Learning in Higher Education. Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, 16(2),13-18. Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2003). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Watson W. R. & Watson S. L. (2007). An Argument for Clarity: what are learning management systems, what are they not, and what should they become?. TechTrends, 51(2), 28-34. 
work_jhy6wboqh5gv7dsf2llxwecsva	----	Insights from the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project This article was downloaded by: [University of Cape Town Libraries] On: 22 August 2011, At: 22:56 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 Insights from the Health OER Inter- Institutional Project Ken Harley a a School of Education and Development, University of KwaZulu- Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa Available online: 15 Aug 2011 To cite this article: Ken Harley (2011): Insights from the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project, Distance Education, 32:2, 213-227 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2011.584848 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2011.584848 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Insights from the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project Ken Harley* School of Education and Development, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (Received 14 January 2011; final version received 20 March 2011) Open educational resources (OER) are gaining ascendancy in education, particu- larly in higher education. Logic suggests that the potential benefits of OER are likely to be greatest in resource-poor contexts such as Africa. However, little is known about the feasibility and sustainability of their use in African institutions. In the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project, OER Africa and the University of Michigan collaborated with medical schools in Ghana and South Africa to help develop OER and tools for facilitating the integration of these into the existing curricula. The article draws upon data from the various evaluations of this pro- ject as a basis for generating understandings on initiating and sustaining OER in African contexts. Keywords: open educational resources; African OER; Health OER; health sci- ences; sustainability; cultural and social capital Introduction Sub-Saharan Africa has declined vis-à-vis all other areas of the world in trade investment, production, and consumption (Castells, 2000). The effect of this on edu- cation is marked, with a 30% decline in public expenditure per student over the last 15 years (Experton & Fevre, 2010, p. 2). This has resulted in a decline in the quality of teaching and research at university level due to growing enrolments amidst limited funding, and massive brain drain of talented professors (Holm & Malete, 2010, p. 14). The gross enrolment ratio (GER) in tertiary education is a low 3% (UNESCO, 2010). Health services are also not immune to these circumstances. According to the World Health Report (World Health Organization, 2010), 19 African countries allo- cate less now than they did in 2001 when their heads of state signed the Abuja Declaration to spend 15% of their national budgets on health. The report notes that up to 70% of medical equipment in sub-Saharan Africa stands idle as a conse- quence of ‘a lack of user training and effective technical support’ (World Health Organization, 2010, p. 66). These circumstances indicate that the potential benefits of open educational resources (OER) could be great in Africa. But given the paucity of research on African higher education, the low levels of technology penetration, and the lack of infrastruc- ture and requisite skills (Butcher, 2003, n.d.), little is known about the feasibility and sustainability of the use of OER and how they might help in health education. *Email: ken.harley@gmail.com Distance EducationAquatic Insects Vol. 32, No. 2, August 2011, 213–227 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online � 2011 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2011.584848 http://www.informaworld.com D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 OER use: the new approach in Africa Since being used for the first time at a 2002 UNESCO conference (Hylén, 2006), the term OER has become part of the everyday discourse of teaching and learning. Best understood as ‘educational resources that are freely available for use by educa- tors and learners, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees’ (OER Africa, n.d.a), OER and the movement supporting them have quickly gained acceptance. International organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD, n.d.) and UNESCO (1995–2011, 2011) pro- mote OER because of their potential to contribute to social equity by providing broader access to quality education. Major funders of OER projects include the Hewlett Foundation (http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open- educational-resources) and the South African Shuttleworth Foundation (http://www. shuttleworthfoundation.org). The Hewlett Foundation has funded, for example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Courseware initiative and Connexions at Rice University (http://cnx.org/), which claims to house one of the largest OER repositories in the world. In 2008, the Shuttleworth Foundation (n.d.a) convened a meeting in Cape Town to bring together the OER community. Participants at this meeting, who came from many nations, drafted the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, which urged governments and publishers to make publicly funded educational materials freely available via the Internet (http://www.capetowndeclara- tion.org). This declaration has been described as ‘utopian in its general outlook’ (Deacon & Wynsculley, 2009, unpaginated), but to date, more than 234 organiza- tions and 2214 individuals have signed up to its principle (Shuttleworth Foundation, n.d.b), which represents a powerful symbolic legitimation of OER. Governments in the developed world are showing interest in OER, particularly in the form of open textbooks. In California, for example, there is a public–private Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP, 2002). Support of OER is not simply an altruistic undertaking: it can be a money-saving decision. The adoption of OER has a compelling logic. It is difficult to counter such argu- ments as ‘we can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience’ (Anderson, 2009, p. 5). But the logic and affirmation of OER does not mean that organizations and academ- ics will uncritically embrace their use to the extent that it becomes normative. Thus, notwithstanding the persuasive ideological, financial, and altruistic appeal of OER, questions of who is using OER, for what purpose, and to what effect are debated at conferences, in the literature, and online. Many such questions remain unanswered (Hylén, 2006). This is because the OER agenda is more complex than may appear at first glance. There are legal issues, such as intellectual property rights, financial implications, and academic concerns, and together they leave us with the question: Why should educational knowledge and products be given away free? Even with licensing that provides flexible options for materials developers to retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and use their work, such as Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses), there is a widespread fear that if course materials are placed online they will be stolen (Anderson, 2009). Such fears are not completely irrational, given that traditionally, organization and dissemination of knowledge was confined to special persons and transmitted in con- texts where the owners of the knowledge exercised ‘the jealous eye of a threatened priesthood’ (Durkheim, 1961, p. 1). Openness can threaten academics’ sense of 214 K. Harley D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org http://cnx.org/ http://www.capetowndeclaration.org http://www.capetowndeclaration.org http://creativecommons.org/licenses knowledge structures, control, and continuity. Although OER is a ‘disruptive innova- tion,’ it has nevertheless secured a number of early adopters (Stacey, 2010, unpagi- nated). But the question that must be asked is: Does this apply in African contexts? The study The study concerned a project initiated by OER Africa (http://www.oerafrica.org). OER Africa is an initiative of the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE) (http://www.saide.org.za), funded by the Hewlett Foundation. Established in 1992, SAIDE seeks to employ innovative education methods in transforming education systems and redressing inequalities. It envisages OER having a powerful, positive role to play in African higher education (Welch, 2009). Ngugi (2009) observes: The potential application of OER as a means to increasing access to quality, affordable and cost effective educational resources cannot be underestimated within a context where one of the major costs to African educational systems is that of acquiring peda- gogically sound learning materials . . . Currently, most OER projects are undertaken in the developed world. Even those intended to benefit Africa. This often results in mate- rials being developed by educationalists who do not necessarily have immediate insight into the context and challenges of educational delivery in Africa. (p. 1) One of OER Africa’s foremost projects has been the Health OER Inter-Institu- tional Project (hereafter referred to as Health OER). The project’s design phase ran from November 2008 to December 2009 and involved collaboration between the Health Science colleges and faculties in: � University of Michigan (U-M), which provided the platform for collaboration � Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) � University of Ghana (UG) � University of Cape Town (UCT) � University of the Western Cape (UWC). At UWC, the project is functioning separately in two different units, namely, the Faculty of Dentistry and the School of Public Health (hereafter referred to as UWC Dentistry and UWC SOPH). Further, the Hewlett Foundation funding enabled a focus on the consolidation, growth, and sustainability of Health OER in 2010–11. The data on which this arti- cle is based were drawn from the two project evaluations: � Health OER Inter-Institutional Project: Formative Evaluation of Health OER Design Phase (OER Africa, 2009). � Health OER Inter-Institutional Project: Phase 2 Evaluation: Consolidation and Sustainability (OER Africa/ University of Michigan, 2011). The purposes of these evaluation studies were threefold: (1) To evaluate the initial design and implementation of Health OER in the insti- tutions, and discover how the various activities and outputs related to the different institutional orientations. Distance Education 215 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 http://www.oerafrica.org http://www.saide.org.za Higher education is not noted for rapid change, especially when this is radi- cal. Institutions jealously guard their autonomy and there could be the ‘not invented here’ syndrome, so it was important to see not only how, but why, the institutions reacted to the introduction of this new approach to educa- tional resources. (2) To ascertain the sustainability of Health OER. It was also necessary to track the development and use of African-produced OER through the phases of consolidation and extension that would hope- fully lead to the treasured goal of sustainability. (3) To determine whether an OER culture was being developed. OECD (2007) observes that virtually every successful OER project involves collaboration between disparate individuals, a community that is energized and motivated to complete, publish, and support its work, and a critical mass of content that can be used as a base from which a specific community of practice can create an enhanced or customized version exactly suited to their specific needs. ‘The OER movement has its champions, some of whom pro- mote it somewhat evangelically’ (OER Africa, 2009, p. 24). But the wide- spread adoption of Health OER required more than this. It called for a paradigm shift to a participatory and collaborative culture of learning. Initiating the OER project Evaluation of the introduction of Health OER into the institutions was based on the activities and outputs detailed in Table 1. These activities and outputs also needed to be examined in the institutional con- texts predating the introduction of Health OER. At UG and KNUST, development of Health OER was a totally new undertaking. Development of policy to support OER had to be started from scratch, in tandem with the creation of the OER. By contrast, the academics in the Health Sciences and some other faculties at UCT had already, on their own initiative, begun producing web-based materials and courses long before the university’s signing up to the Cape Town Open Education Declara- tion. One academic had started making his materials freely available on his website in 1995, and at the time of introducing Health OER, one web-based occupational health course was already in its third cycle. Thus, the need here was not for a single consolidated drive to embed OER in institutional policy (Hodgkinson-Williams & Gray, 2009), but rather the formalization of on-the-ground developments to aggre- gate the existing initiatives. UWC presented yet a third model: ‘In 2005 UWC’s Senate passed an ambi- tious Free Content, Free/Open Courseware Policy, which removed institutional Table 1. Activities and outputs for evaluation of Health OER. Activities Outputs Institutional policy engagement Detailed policy strategies to facilitate OER activities Health OER publishing projects Published and implemented OER learning materials 216 K. Harley D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 obstacles to publication of open educational resources’ (UWC, 2007–2008). The terms ambitious and removed institutional obstacles allude to its visionary OER policy. However, there was, and still is, no easily identifiable OER champion, and the capacity and resources to drive OER mainstreaming were, and remain, limited. At the time of the formative evaluation, staff familiar with the free content policy described it as having no impact on their work. One academic deemed it ‘vacu- ous’ (OER Africa, 2009, p. 10). Of the two UWC units participating in the Health OER project, SOPH was already offering distance programmes to students Africa-wide. SOPH’s predisposi- tion to Health OER was evidenced in its contributing two of the nine resources on UWC’s free courseware site by 2009. By contrast, OER were entirely new to UWC Dentistry, and the inherited culture of the faculty was not conducive to openness. There had been a merger of units from two different universities with very different institutional cultures and faculty reported that there were still strong departmental boundaries. The key features of the participating institutions at the commencement of the Health OER project are given in Table 2. UG and KNUST are grouped together because of their essential similarities. The formative evaluation concluded that meaningful and productive policy engagement had occurred (OER Africa, 2009, p. 13). In less than a year, the two Ghanaian institutions (UG and KNUST) had drafted the policies necessary to enable and support OER. The team managing OER Health played an unasser- tive but supportive role in commenting on these policy drafts, which were in the institutional approval process by the end of 2009. In the two other institutions, it was a question of building on what were the largely symbolic policies already in Table 2. Key features of participating institutions at project commencement. UG and KNUST UCT UWC Dentistry UWC SOPH Prior orientation to OER OER introduced as a new concept to the Health Sciences Prominent individual academics were active e-learning/ OER producers OER introduced as a new concept to the faculty SOPH had two resources available as OER prior to project Development of OER policy Started from scratch Developing organically on basis of existing practices No substantive institutional driving force to operationalize existing OER policy that was largely symbolic Development of OER resources Started from scratch, in tandem with policy development Diverse types of e-learning/OER materials developed by individuals prior to project Started from scratch; OER creation disconnected from policy development Strong background in materials development for distance education Role of the Health OER Project Initiated a new paradigm Complemented existing initiatives and developments Initiated a new paradigm Added a new open licensing dimension to existing resource- based teaching Distance Education 217 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 place by capitalizing on the past and current OER initiatives. In UWC, the OER Health Management team conducted a detailed review of the institutional policies regarding OER. At UCT, there were already champions who could promote the approach on the basis of enterprising OER production that was already in motion. With respect to published and implemented OER materials, the expectations and contractual targets were either met or exceeded by an impressive margin. Sixteen original productions had been completed, with a further three scheduled for comple- tion in January 2010. OER developed in Ghana (by UG and KNUST) and by UWC Dentistry were of the discrete learning-object genre; that is, they were based on a single learning objective. Making good use of the U-M copyright clearance process (dScribing), UCT and UWC SOPH had developed OER ranging from case studies to entire modules. Some of these resources were already in use internally and scheduled for public release after institutional approval, and many of these are now on the OER Africa website (http://www.oerafrica.org/healthproject/HealthPro- jectHome/tabid/956/Default.aspx). It was clear that OER had appeal. Particularly notable was the progress in the Gha- naian institutions, despite their starting from scratch. At UG and KNUST, a visiting U-M professor who was an expert in educational materials production was driving the project. With the possible exception of UWC, the emergence of OER champions in respect of production and institutional policy-making was also creating momentum. The two greatest threats to the project were workload in OER production and the quid pro quo principle. The OER creators were prepared to share their resources but expected to benefit from accessing the others’ OER. Openness is a fine goal but raises questions about costs and mutual benefits, and at this stage, there was little evidence of OER being shared. However, by the end of 2009, there was evidence that, with appropriate sup- port, Health OER could gain a foothold in African higher education, even where the concept was previously unknown. However, questions needed to be asked about OER sustainability. Vollmer (2010) suggests that sustainability depends upon evidence that OER can develop from an interesting experiment to a demonstrated model that empowers teachers, boosts student achievement, and saves money in the process. How sustainable is OER Health? The critical questions needing answering in terms of sustainability within the indi- vidual institutions and across the institutions are given in Table 3. In regard to the individual institutions, these questions were based upon Bourdieu’s three states of cultural capital (1986, pp. 241–258): (1) the embodied state, where it is found in long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body (2) the objectified state, where it is found in cultural goods such as books (3) the institutionalized state, where it formalizes dispositions into codes and regulations. Although all of these forms of capital are essential for sustainability within indi- vidual institutions, the full potential of adaptation, reuse, and creation of OER 218 K. Harley D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 http://www.oerafrica.org/healthproject/HealthProjectHome/tabid/956/Default.aspx http://www.oerafrica.org/healthproject/HealthProjectHome/tabid/956/Default.aspx depends upon collaboration between institutions. In regard to inter-institutional collaboration and sharing, the questions were framed in terms of social capital. As Putnam (2000) observes, ‘a society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital’ (p. 19). Social capital, or what the World Bank (1999) terms ‘social glue,’ is particularly relevant to Health OER because the initia- tive will be most powerful and effective when it is embedded in a network of reci- procal social relations. Embodied cultural capital The OER champions at KNUST and UG have engaged in reflective practice that has resulted in jointly authored papers, such as that by Tagoe et al. (2010) presented Table 3. Critical questions regarding sustainability in Health OER. Domain of sustainability Analytic category Indicators/empirical questions Within individual institutions Embodied cultural capital � Acceptability and relevance of OER? � Preparedness to create OER? � Is there a sufficient threshold of academics confident, competent, and active in OER production and use? Objectified cultural capital � Is OER production doable and viable? � What has been produced? � Are productions original or adapted from existing sources? � Have OER produced in one participat- ing institution been used in another? Institutionalized cultural capital � Is institutional policy amenable to OER? � Is there alignment of relevant struc- tures (e.g., ICT, library)? � Is there funding for OER? Are there support structures for OER produc- tion? Across individual institutions: the broader social level Social capital � Is OER production and use linked to a durable academic network that bonds similar professionals across institutions, and generates social trust and reciprocity? � Does project management provide suitable support and promote wider networking and collaboration? � Is the website a pivotal resource for networking? Distance Education 219 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 at the 7th Annual Open Education Conference. In all of the institutions, the aca- demics have expressed reflective views on their OER experiences. The promise of OER was initially perceived somewhat ambiguously, but over time there was evi- dence of capacity to produce effective OER. Moreover, the pool of OER producers was shown to be growing. There was also evidence of a growing OER culture in the Health Sciences, although the nature of this varied institutionally, being associ- ated with the institution-specific features indicated in Table 2. In UG and KNUST, an OER culture was nurtured and consolidated by the Pro- vosts and key figures in the Health Sciences and spread incrementally. This was very much of a home-grown culture spearheaded by those with institutional power, plus the support of the visiting professor from U-M. As shown earlier, Health OER at UCT built on existing OER activities. Some of these were funded projects; others were unfunded projects undertaken by individual academics. Led by a Dean who is an energetic exponent of OER, the creation of OER has become well accepted in the Faculty of Health Sciences and some other faculties. With strong support from the Centre for Educational Technology and the office of the DVC Teaching and Learning, the culture of openness has grown organically in both the top-down and bottom-up processes across campus. UWC presents yet another picture. Here OER development was occurring independently within Dentistry and the SOPH, both seemingly remote from any OER activities and support in the institution. Dentistry could be characterized as having an OER sub-culture originally confined to the project coordinator and a few staff working on OER although a Deputy Dean (Teaching) subsequently became responsible for the project and an OER producer. The OER culture is still confined to those with a contractual relationship with OER Health. By con- trast, in UWC’s SOPH, with its tradition of distance education and expertise in resource development, open licensing is but a step away. Health OER has fos- tered a more expansive culture of openness within a culture already predisposed to openness. The first point worth noting is that while the OER cultural capital has assumed very different forms across institutions, in each it had been rooted in the specific institutional circumstances. The second point to be observed is the different back- grounds of the OER producers. Some had become involved because they enjoyed working with technology; others were attracted to Health OER despite a lack of technical background or ICT skills. There appears to be no correlation between age and OER adoption. In fact, the most prolific producer was an octogenarian. The third point to be made is the unintended consequence of OER production – the pro- motion of collegiality and the strengthening of working relationships across institu- tional hierarchies. The creation of OER involved senior staff, junior staff, and students. Not only did such breaking down of traditional barriers make OER involvement more appealing, it also helped to generate the cultural element essential to the entire OER enterprise: trust. Objectified cultural capital The 16 OER produced in the design phase were initially used internally, but by November 2010, the OER Africa website (see OER Africa, n.d.b) was housing 24 licensed OER developed by all four participating universities. Obstetrics and Gynae- cology were dominant, but the list now also includes Internal Medicine, Basic 220 K. Harley D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 Sciences and Laboratory Medicine, Behavioural Sciences, Otorhinolaryngology, Occupational Therapy, Public Health and Family Medicine, and Public Health. Because of different production and approval methods in the participating institu- tions, it is not possible to say how many OER are currently in development but production is proceeding apace. The majority of the OER are of the learning-object type but there are also entire courses and modules, lectures, tutorials, and case studies. Such diversity makes the pool of OER relevant and attractive to a wide range of potential users and suitable for a variety of purposes. Institutionalized cultural capital The current situation in relation to OER policy, production, and support at the five universities is summarized in Table 4. As well as observing that policy development has followed particular institu- tional cultures and processes, it is interesting to consider the various meanings of ‘policy.’ De Clercq (1997) characterizes these as: � symbolic – rhetoric about intentions � substantive – guidelines regarding what the governing body should do � procedural – what action will be taken through which mechanisms � material – provision of resources for appropriate actions. The UG and KNUST institutional polices are essentially symbolic and substan- tive, providing commitment to OER and guidelines for production and access. Pol- icy intention, such as ‘faculty members should have clearly defined protected time’ for OER development, is enabling but aspirational (OER Africa/ University of Michigan, 2011, p. 20). More detailed policies for staff appointments, job descrip- tions, workloads, are needed. However, a trajectory has been established for the Table 4. Summary of institutionalized cultural capital across the participating institutions. UG KNUST UCT UWC Dentistry UWC SOPH Process of policy making Mainly top- down – led by Provost Mainly top- down – led by Provost Top-down and bottom-up No strong operational institutional thrust; OER Africa has contributed to policy review Policy progress Institutional OER policy complete; final approval pending OER policy has been approved at institutional level OER environment being created organically through aligning resources and structures Institutional policies are under review; first steps being taken to mainstream the project within Faculty Institutional policies are under review; the school is not fully mainstreamed within UWC; 80% of SOPH funds are derived through private grants, foundations, and agencies Distance Education 221 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 translation of policy intention into procedural and material policies at both of these institutions. The OER are of the learning-object type, so it is appropriate for stan- dardized production processes to be used and division-of-labour structures have been put in place. Academics provide the content and the technical specialists carry out the production work. UG has established its own production unit, while at KNUST the Department of Communication Design plays a pivotal role. By contrast, UCT, having demonstrated its commitment to OER by signing the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, does not appear to see any need for either a symbolic or a substantive OER policy. With many staff producing OER, and ini- tiatives such as the Opening Scholarship project and web portal, UCT OpenContent directory (http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/), both launched in February 2010, the thrust is towards aggregating and ordering a rich fund of existing assets. Institutionalizing OER is more a matter of organically weaving together top-down and bottom-up ini- tiatives rather than one of overarching policy articulation, so there is greater focus on the procedural and material policy domains. In the case of UWC, the 2005 policy document, although in accord with core UWC values, has essentially remained at the symbolic level and the UWC Dentistry and SOPH OER developers are left to develop policies and procedures within their own faculties. Social capital The 2009 Cape Town Workshop may have brought together institutions and indi- viduals interested in OER, but these did not translate into new collaborative net- works. Any networking that exists is historical rather than a result of the Cape Town Workshop or Health OER. It comprises academics in cognate areas that have traditionally collaborated on an institutional basis. This is particularly true of the Provosts and a number of leading academics at UG and KNUST. The lack of significant new networks emerging in the Health OER project may be explained by the fact that the initial focus was on internal OER production. The model adopted was one of an incremental process in which the academics develop resources for their own students before release as OER. A notable exception to this has been the UWC Oral Radiography OER, which is digitizing and cataloguing an archive of more than 30,000 dento-maxillofacial radiographs to make this unique collection available to the broader professional community. However, the Health OER management team is helping to establish the neces- sary networks. Its members have a high profile nationally and internationally and the OER Africa website is also pivotal in representing the project and extending the network. The extent of social capital to date is summarized in Table 5. Judgement regarding sustainability Drawing on Rogers’ depiction (1983) of the stages of innovation acceptance, Stacey (2010) argues that OER have come through the innovation phase, are striving for adoption, and aspire to cross into the early majority stage. Referring to Moore’s portrayal (1991) of the chasm that can occur between the early adoption and early majority stages, Stacey points out that many disruptive technology innovations do not successfully cross the chasm and simply disappear – and that the adoption of OER is a disruptive innovation. Health OER has reached, or is shortly to reach, this 222 K. Harley D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/ chasm. Is the movement with its early adopters positioned to cross the chasm to an early majority and normativity? Table 6 provides a judgement on prospects of sus- tainability at each institution if Health OER funding were no longer available. Such judgement is purely speculative. Moreover, because it merely concerns indi- vidual institutions, it is not illuminating in regard to the key issues contributing to general sustainability. A more instructive perspective on sustainability emerges from the fact that, as shown, the institutions represent profound differences in history, resources, and prior orientation to OER. This very diversity is valuable in exposing the variation in conditions within which OER development can operate. Because of these institutional differences, OER have taken on different forms and trajectories, both in policy development and OER genres. Although these typologies embody marked differences, each has its own logic. Taking the UG/KNUST typology as an example, the focus on learning objects implies that a standardized learning design model is appropriate. OER of this type can be used anywhere to support any existing curriculum and the pedagogical issues are generic. Both institutions have adopted this approach. On the other hand, given the number of UCT academics who have Table 6. Prospects of sustainability. UG KNUST UCT UWC Dentistry UWC SOPH Sustainable within Health Sciences, and possibly the institution Vulnerability: over-reliance on Provost Sustainable within Health Sciences, and probably also within the institution Vulnerability: over-reliance on Provost Sustainable within the institution: there are multiple institutional OER champions; various sources of funding for OER have been accessed Sustainability seems unlikely at present, but recent appointment of Deputy Dean (Teaching) with responsibility for the Health OER project has promise of moving the project beyond that of ‘project’ status only Sustainability within the School seems likely, if ‘soft’ funding can be sustained Table 5. Summary of social capital across institutions. UG and KNUST UCT UWC Dentistry UWC SOPH Within the project: networking across participants Networking with each other (but this mainly predated Health OER) Individual networking with other individuals mainly outside the project Little networking Little, but some individual networking with individuals outside the project Broader networking Flourishing networking on the part of Health OER management team is linking the project with broader networks Website is a pivotal resource for providing access to resources and for networking Distance Education 223 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 produced OER on their own initiative, there is logic in that institution’s strategy of keeping all aspects of production, including quality assurance, close to the author(s). Respecting institutional autonomy, acknowledging institutional integrity, and encouraging the institutions to take ownership of OER development gives the pro- ject credibility; and credibility enables these institutions to utilize their own resources to support OER in ways that contribute to viability. Without credibility and viability, sustainability would be unlikely. However, these alone will not ensure sustainability. Many other factors will undoubtedly come into play as a project grows. However, contrary to any staff concerns that others would appropriate their work, benefit unfairly, or criticize their endeavours, copyright clearance activity within individual institutions has in fact helped to regularize and restore practices that protect authors’ rights. In clearing existing resources for copyright, this process has dealt with attribution that was reportedly almost normatively cavalier, especially in regard to the use of images. Conclusion So what are the implications for OER development and sustainability in the broader African context? In the design phase of Health OER, it was evident that significant institutional progress was rooted in the resonance of OER with African conditions. Designing and utilizing OER to meet the challenge of staff–student ratios emerged strongly, particularly in Ghana. In many clinical situations 25 or more students was the norm, and in one Pharmacology Department the student numbers had increased from 32 to 250–260 over recent years. When students in clinical situations are crowded around a patient, experiment, or small-scale demonstration, as occurs, for example, in Dentistry, they have either limited or no view of the case in hand. It has been concluded that the essential preconditions for sustainability – credi- bility, and viability – have been achieved within the participating institutions. Eval- uation of the first two years of the project validates the rationale on which Health OER was based: the need for OER use in Africa and relevant OER produced by Africans. However, the project has not yet met the expectation that OER creators would ‘make use of OER from the developed world and adapt it for appropriate use locally’ (Ngugi, 2009, p. 2). In fact in one case, the converse has occurred. KNUST’s OER prepares students for treating one of the most neglected but treat- able tropical diseases, the Buruli ulcer, caused by an organism belonging to the same family of bacteria that cause tuberculosis and leprosy. This particular OER has not only been used at KNUST and by local community health workers but at U-M in the USA. Because there are no, or very few, existing African resources, and because many from elsewhere appear inappropriate, the academics in the Heath OER project reported that it was easier to produce these OER themselves, starting from scratch. This runs counter to the proposition that OER enable the creation of new courses and courseware to be accelerated through collaborating, harnessing existing materials, and sharing costs. In this case, developing the OER only increased the workload of the pressurized staff. The issues of African academics regarding OER from elsewhere as inappropriate for adoption and adaptation and the trade-offs between the extra workload and the educational benefits are issues requir- ing further exploration. Research by Anderson (2009) and others suggests an overwhelming hesitancy on the part of OER creators to adapt or reuse other academics’ content. It might be 224 K. Harley D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 surmised that the traditional modes of working individually are so deeply ingrained in academe that when embarking on OER production, academics will not start by searching for suitable resources that they might use or build upon, or it may be that existing resources are so inadequately tagged that accessing them is too time-con- suming. It was found that UWC SOPH was developing its own taxonomy because it found the Dewey system too medical and inappropriate for the school’s stronger framing within the social sciences. However, content is but one aspect of OER; another is pedagogy and another is cultural consonance. Quality teaching and learning in any discipline requires the materials and methods to be tailored to the specific contexts and cohorts of students. As shown, some OER producers are primarily concerned with addressing the prob- lems of large student numbers. Others emphasize the importance of OER that enable medical students to practise in contexts which lack the necessary high-tech equipment. Some Ghanaian and South African OER developers have stressed the importance of cultural consonance between the teaching and learning materials, students’ characteristics and patients they will be dealing with, particularly with regard to communications. Health practitioners need to understand what the patients are telling them about symptoms, just as the patients have to understand what they are being told about the treatments and prescriptions. One of the Health OER projects takes social/communication needs into account by requiring the students to become proficient in two of the indigenous languages of the pop- ulations they serve. A clinical skills DVD covering the examination of respira- tory, neurological, and cardiovascular systems is also being translated into indigenous languages. Overall, the evaluation data show that some African developers are prepared to embark on the hard route of producing OER from scratch in order to meet pressing needs in specifically African health education and training contexts. However, despite encouraging progress in the Health OER project, there is still much to be discovered and acted upon to ensure that African-produced OER incorporate appro- priate content and pedagogical methods, can be used sustainably by and between different institutions and health agencies, are appropriate in different cultural and community contexts, and can be useful in national and regional contexts. Research into such issues is already occurring within the Health OER project. Notes on contributor Ken Harley is a former Head of Department and Interim Dean at the then University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg). As an Emeritus Professor, he managed the National Review of Academic and Professional Programmes in Education in South Africa (2005–2007). In addition to publishing widely on curriculum and teacher education he has carried out several evaluations of projects in east and western Africa. References Anderson, T. (2009). Are we ready for open educational resources? Paper presented at the International Council for Open and Distance Education 23rd World Conference, Maas- tricht. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/terrya/icde-disruptive-o-e-rs Bourdieu, P. (1986). Forms of capital. In J.E. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York, NY: Greenwood Press. Butcher, N. (2003). Infrastructure and use of ICT in education in Africa: An overview. Paris: Association for the Development of Education in Africa. Retrieved from http://www. adeanet.org/pubadea/publications/pdf/dol_ICT_eng.pdf Distance Education 225 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 http://www.slideshare.net/terrya/icde-disruptive-o-e-rs http://www.adeanet.org/pubadea/publications/pdf/dol_ICT_eng.pdf http://www.adeanet.org/pubadea/publications/pdf/dol_ICT_eng.pdf Butcher, N. (n.d.). Infrastructure in Africa. Paper presented at the Symposium on OER in Health, United States Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved from http://www.oerafrica.org/ResourceDownload.aspx?assetid=149&userid=-1 California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP). (2002). Retrieved from http://www. opensourcetext.org Castells, M. (2000). The information age (Vol. III: End of Millennium). Oxford: Blackwell. Creative Commons. (n.d.). About the licenses. Retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/ licenses Deacon, A., & Wynsculley, C. (2009). Educators and the Cape Town Open Learning Decla- ration: Rhetorically reducing distance. International Journal of Education and Develop- ment Using ICT, 5(5). Retrieved from http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/index.php De Clercq, F. (1997). Policy intervention and power shifts: An evaluation of South Africa’s education restructuring policies. Journal of Education Policy, 12(30), 127–146. doi: 10.1080/0268093970120302. Durkheim, E. (1961). Moral education. London: Collier-Macmillan. Experton, W., & Fevre, C. (2010). Financing higher education in Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved from http://go.worldbank.org/PF9X36TMV0 Hewlett Foundation. (n.d.). Open educational resources. Retrieved from http://www.hewlett. org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources Hodgkinson-Williams, C., & Gray, E. (2009). Degrees of openness: The emergence of open educational resources at the University of Cape Town. International Journal of Educa- tion and Development Using ICT, 5(5). 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(n.d.b). Cape Town open education declaration: View signatures. Retrieved from http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/read-the-declaration Stacey, P. (2010, October 26). Foundation funded OER vs. tax payer funded OER – A tale of two mandates [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://edtechfrontier.com/2010/10/26/foun- dation-funded-oer-vs-tax-payer-funded-oer-a-tale-of-two-mandates/ Tagoe, N., Donkor, P., Adanu, R., Opere-Sem, O., Engleberg, C., & Lawson, A. (2010). Beyond the first steps: Sustaining Health OER initiatives in Ghana. Paper presented at the 7th Annual Open Education Conference, Barcelona. Retrieved from http://openac- cess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/4849 UNESCO. (1995–2011). Open educational resources. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/ new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/ UNESCO. (2010). Reaching the marginalized (EFA Global Monitoring Report). Paris & Oxford: UNESCO & Oxford University Press. UNESCO. (2011). Towards OER university: Free learning for all students worldwide. Retrieved from http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31227&URL_DO=DO_ TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html University of Western Cape (UWC). (2007–2008). Free courseware at UWC. Retrieved from http://free.uwc.ac.za/freecourseware Vollmer, T. (2010). Open education in higher ed: Textbooks, OpenCourseWare, and the ‘S’ word [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://mediapolicy.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/ open_education_in_higher_ed_textbooks_opencourseware_and_the_s_word-36273 Welch, T. (2009). Working with OER in African contexts: What are we learning? Paper pre- sented at the NADEOSA conference, University of South Africa, Pretoria. World Bank. (1999). What is social capital? Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http:// web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/ EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK:418217~pagePK:148956~ piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html World Health Organization. (2010). Health systems financing: The path to universal cover- age (World Health Report). Geneva: Author. Retrieved from http://whqlibdoc.who.int/ whr/2010/9789241564021_eng.pdf Distance Education 227 D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs it y of C ap e T ow n L ib ra ri es ] at 2 2: 56 2 2 A ug us t 20 11 http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/read-the-declaration http://edtechfrontier.com/2010/10/26/foundation-funded-oer-vs-tax-payer-funded-oer-a-tale-of-two-mandates/ http://edtechfrontier.com/2010/10/26/foundation-funded-oer-vs-tax-payer-funded-oer-a-tale-of-two-mandates/ http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/4849 http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/4849 http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/ http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31227&amp;URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&amp;URL_SECTION=201.html http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31227&amp;URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&amp;URL_SECTION=201.html http://free.uwc.ac.za/freecourseware http://mediapolicy.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/open_education_in_higher_ed_textbooks_opencourseware_and_the_s_word-36273 http://mediapolicy.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/open_education_in_higher_ed_textbooks_opencourseware_and_the_s_word-36273 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK:418217~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK:418217~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK:418217~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK:418217~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html http://whqlibdoc.who.int/whr/2010/9789241564021_eng.pdf http://whqlibdoc.who.int/whr/2010/9789241564021_eng.pdf 
work_jilcctcwajh57ntkf3kkazouny	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_jj4vsxn3nrgaxpttciw5qwkgb4	----	- 1 -Please cite this article in press as: M. Cantabella, R. Martínez-España, B. López, A. Muñoz. A Fine-Grained Model to Assess Learner-Content and Methodology Satisfaction in Distance Education, International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, (2020), http://dx.doi.org/10.9781/ijimai.2020.09.002 A Fine-Grained Model to Assess Learner-Content and Methodology Satisfaction in Distance Education Magdalena Cantabella, Raquel Martínez-España*, Belén López, Andrés Muñoz Escuela Politécnica, Universidad Católica de Murcia (Spain) Received 3 March 2020 | Accepted 9 September 2020 | Published 14 September 2020 Keywords E-learning, Learning Management System, Learning Analytics, Student’s Success, User Monitoring. Abstract Learning Management System (LMS) platforms have led to a transformation in Universities in the last decade, helping them to adapt and expand their services to new technological challenges. These platforms have made possible the expansion of distance education. A current trend in this area is focused on the evaluation and improvement of the students’ satisfaction. In this work a new tool to assess student satisfaction using emoticons (smileys) is proposed to evaluate the quality of the learning content and the methodology at unit level for any course and at any time. The results indicate that the assessment of student satisfaction is sensitive to the period when the survey is performed and to the student’s study level. Moreover, the results of this new proposal are compared to the satisfaction results using traditional surveys, showing different results due to a more accuracy and flexibility when using the tool proposed in this work. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: rmartinez@ucam.edu DOI: 10.9781/ijimai.2020.09.002 I. Introduction IN the new era of Education, the use of Information Technologies (IT) has already consolidated itself as a fundamental asset. The application of these technologies has allowed, among others, the integral development of distance education, especially at the higher education level. One of the tools that has enabled this development are the Learning Management System (LMS) platforms. These platforms allow students to work independently, facilitating the interaction with other users by means of collaborative tools and providing new methods for resource management that help to strengthen new teaching and learning models. Moreover, the LMS platforms act as content managers that provide students with a wide variety of resources. A current trend regarding distance education is concerned with evaluating the quality in this methodology [1]-[3]. The main items that are considered in this process are the quality of the available resources, the quality of student-student and student- teacher interactions and the flexibility and ease of use of the LMS. A conventional approach to obtaining the data to evaluate these items is through surveys, interviews and/or focus groups. However, these methods do not seem totally well-suited for distance education methodology due to absence of objective measures, lack of evaluation of specific distance education items or imposing a period to complete the survey while using a virtual environment which is available 24/7, among others [4]-[5]. An alternative approach is based on the use of Learning Analytics (LA) methods [6]-[7]. This strategy focuses on analyzing the information about the users’ activity that is recorded in the LMS, which allows to establish behavioral profiles not only for students but also for lecturers [8]-[11]. While both approaches foster the gathering of complementary information to assess the quality of teaching, it is detected a lack of fine-grained information about the student’s satisfaction with respect to the content provided by the lecturer. In other words, there is a gap in the methods applied to obtain detailed information about the quality of each specific resource in each lesson of any subject, namely text documents, multimedia contents, self-assessment tests, assignments, etc. In this paper it is proposed a simple and effective method based on the use of smileys integrated into an LMS to collect these data. As a result, the evaluation of these substantial data can help lecturers to detect not only content that should be improved but also what type of content is the most enjoyed by the students. As a proof of concept, we evaluate the application of this method in a case study at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), Spain. The main objective of this study is to develop a method to measure the student’s satisfaction respect to the available resources and methodology in each of the units of each subject. With these assessments an evaluation will be carried out to, on the one hand, analyze the students’ behavior with respect to this method depending on factors such as their study level or time period when they perform the proposed evaluation method and, on the other hand, compare with data from traditional surveys answered by the same group of students so as to check if there are significant differences among the results of both methods. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Related works in the area are reviewed in Section II. The methodology followed in this work and the method proposed for student satisfaction evaluation is explained in Section III. Section IV discusses the results obtained in the case study developed to evaluate our proposal. Finally, Section V summarizes the findings obtained in this work. - 2 - International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence II. Related Work In order to evaluate the quality of the methodologies applied in distance education, it is necessary to distinguish the most relevant factors that allow an integral analysis of the main milestones in such methodologies. Initially, the evaluation applied to distance learning only focused on evaluating the quality of the software or the LMS technologies in use [12]-[13], leaving aside the evaluation of the methodology and contents of the courses, being both crucial aspects for measuring the quality. Later on, Plomp and Ely [14] included a more complete evaluation of the quality of distance education courses by suggesting four categories to evaluate: (1) course design, (2) resource selection, (3) methodology and (4) software training for lecturers. One of the main criticisms of this work was that it proposed the instructors as the only ones responsible for reviewing and verifying the quality of the contents, being questionable whether other agents were needed in this process or whether the instructors had enough time for this laborious procedure [15]. There have also been efforts in defining standards and frameworks to evaluate the quality of distance education, for example by adapting software evaluation standards such as the ISO9241-210 “Ergonomics of Human System Interaction”, higlighting the fact that the user experience has a fundamental role to evaluate the functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, portability and maintainability of the LMS [16]-[17]. On the other hand, the SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) proposal [18] includes a set of rules for the reuse of content between LMSs in order to achieve a learning process with a common structure. It uses a set of standards and specifications that analyze the relationships and levels of granularity between the materials of different units in order to automatically manage the content of those units and reuse it between different platforms. A third proposal reflects on how to describe, capture, and communicate more effectively the complex and iterative nature of data visualization design throughout the research, design, development, and deployment of visualization systems and tools [19]. Recent studies have identified that the quality of the available services and the students’ satisfaction are of great relevance for measuring the quality of distance education. Many researchers agree that student satisfaction is an important factor to be valued because it is in many cases linked to their academic performance and university experience [20]-[23]. Now with the use of LMS platforms, this student satisfaction in higher education, transformed into their university experience, is considered as a key component, since if the student is not satisfied with some component of the online course, he/she has a greater probability to transfer to other institutions [24]- [25]. The lecturer’s feedback is also a very important factor, as shown by several research works stating that developing new tools in the LMS or updating them without taking into account the satisfaction of the instructors negatively affects the results of the distance learning course [26]-[28]. Different models, surveys and questionnaires have been used to measure student satisfaction, see for example [24], [29]-[31] to name just a few. Despite the differences in such evaluation items, it is possible to identify a common set of main factors affecting student satisfaction. These factors include student-lecturer interaction, student-student interaction, the learning content (resources) and system flexibility and support [24]. In this regard, the use of LMS positively impacts student satisfaction, higlighting the availability of resources, system accessibility, and its tools as the determinants factor of LMS self- efficacy [31]. The inclusion of the learning content among these factors is noteworthy, since it emphasizes that the effective configuration of curriculum content and pedagogical content is necessary to create an effective learning experience. In this work we investigate how to evaluate in a more detailed manner this learning content. New assessment models have also been considered in this study to identify student satisfaction. Currently it is a challenge to develop new tools that specifically assess the resources available to students in LMS. Findings on this research line will help institutions by providing them with psychometric properties that add pedagogical value to distance learning. In [32], a framework has been designed to guide institutions to better improve student’s satisfaction and further strengthen their e-learning implementation. Authors have shown that the satisfaction can be predicted mostly by student’s interactions. Another interesting project can be found elsewhere [33], where authors introduce an intelligent classroom system that is able to classify student’s satisfaction by examining the parameters of the physical environment obtained with different intelligent devices. Whilst these works focus on particular interaction and physical context information, they do not evaluate the resources and methodology of the course. Following this research line on measuring the student’s satisfaction, the work proposed in this paper advances in the evaluation of learning content by providing a method to assess different types of specific content in a more fine-grained level compared to the works reviewed above. III. Materials and Methods This work proposes a new method to evaluate students’ satisfaction with respect to specific elements of learning content in distance courses. A case study to evaluate this method has been developed in the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), where several blended and online courses are available. In particular, Sakai1 has been used as the LMS platform for this study, since it is the one adopted in UCAM. A regulation for these blended and online modalities exists to ensure that lecturers use a common framework with the aim of, on the one hand, providing students with quality resources and, on the other hand, ensuring that the students continue engaged in the course and therefore reducing drop-out rates. To achieve these two objectives, the regulation establishes certain parameters that have been designed by the Vice-Rectorate of Virtual Education at UCAM. Among the most important parameters, for lecturers there is a certain maximum number of days to correct tasks or to answer forums or private messages. This allows the students to know beforehand what the waiting times are and thus they are able to do a better planning. To keep track of these answer times and the compliance of the lecturers with the regulation, the university utilizes a tool called Online Data [34], which is integrated within the Sakai LMS. This LMS also provides a tool for organizing content called “Lesson Builder” that allows students to browse learning content of various types organized by topics or units. This content includes every available resource from text material to audiovisual material, as well as direct access to assignments, forums, videoconferences or self-assessments. However, the Lesson Builder tool does not allow gathering students’ opinions about each of the provided content. For this reason, a specific tool based on the representation of smileys has been developed in this work to allow students to evaluate such contents organized in their corresponding units. Fig. 1 shows an example of the smileys tool integrated into a Lesson Builder unit. As can be observed, at the top of each unit it is displayed three smiley emoticons. Each of these emoticons allows student to express their satisfaction with the learning content of that unit. The students can express their satisfaction related to the 5 dimensions that are directly related to each unit: media resources, 1 https://sakaiproject.org/ - 3 - Article in Press text resources, assignments, self-assessment and methodology. These five dimensions are grouped into two general categories, namely “Resources” and “Methodology”. The Resources category groups the first 4 dimensions, while the Methodology category is composed of the dimension with the same name. The Resources category aims to analyze student satisfaction with respect to the available resources, assignments and self-assessment items. The methodology category evaluates the follow-up of the lecturer for that unit. Each dimension is assessed using a Likert-type scale from 1 (strong negative perception) to 5 (strong positive perception). Thus, when the student clicks on any of the smileys a satisfaction evaluation screen is displayed (see Fig. 2). Fig. 2. A screenshot showing how the student’s satisfaction is gathered for the learning content of each unit once a smiley emoticon has been clicked on. If the chosen option is the sad smiley, all the dimensions are marked with one star. If it has been the neutral smiley, three stars are marked for each dimension (exactly as it appears in Fig. 2). If the student selects the happy smiley, then the five stars will be highlighted for each dimension. Regardless of the selected smiley, the student could modify the satisfaction for each item individually and he/she may even write comments to justify the evaluation or suggestions to improve the contents. Students can anonymously evaluate each unit at any time during the academic year. Evaluations can be updated at any time; however, the system only stores the most recent evaluation. Observe also that a student can evaluate separately the different units of a subject, therefore the same subject can have several evaluations from the same student (one for each unit in the subject). Once the data is gathered using the smileys tool, a statistical analysis will be performed to find if there are any significant differences in the results of student satisfaction according to the students’ study levels and according to the different periods of time of an academic year (divided into months). These analyses will distinguish between student satisfaction with respect to the Resources category and the Methodology category. The non-parametric statistical test of Kruskal- Wallis, the Dunn-Bonferroni test post hoc and the Kolmogorov- Smirnov test will be used for statistical analysis. On the other hand, prior to the implementation of this new tool based on smileys, only traditional surveys had been used at UCAM to evaluate student satisfaction (an example of the questionnaire used in this survey can be found in Annex I). In these traditional surveys, students are asked to evaluate four dimensions with respect to the lecturers’ performance in the LMS: Methodology, Planning, Resources and General Overview. These dimensions are graded by the students following a Likert-type scale from 1 (strong negative perception) to 5 (strong positive perception). The activation of these traditional surveys takes place only in the last month of each academic quarter prior to the final exams. Responses to these traditional surveys are also anonymous and a student can only take one survey per subject (differently from the smileys method, where the evaluation takes place at the unit level and there could be more than one response by the same student for the same subject). In order to search for differences between the results of both types of evaluation of student satisfaction, a preliminary comparative study between the results for the Resources and Methodology dimensions of each method will be analyzed in this work using the visualization tool QlikSense [35]. To perform the case study a total of 245 students have participated Fig. 1. A screenshot of a Lesson Builder unit integrating the smileys tool (upper right corner). Content is intentionally blurred for the shake of lecturer’s privacy. - 4 - International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence from 49 different blended and online courses during the 2018/19 academic term, classified in four study levels: Degree, Master, Ph.D. and Own Degree (i.e., university specific degrees endorsed by the prestige of the university but without the official recognition of the State as in the rest of the degrees). For the evaluation of the learning content one subject for each one of the 49 courses has been selected. Table I shows the number of subjects and students involved in the case study classified by study level along with the number of responses gathered in each level through the smileys tool (Resp. Smileys) and the number of responses obtained in traditional surveys (Resp. Traditional). It should be noted that the students who have participated in both surveys are the same, but since the surveys are anonymous, it is not possible to match the students’ answers in both surveys in order to make an association between the two responses (i.e., they cannot be considered as samples of related responses). For this reason, the available data set is considered a set of independent samples and hence the justification for the application of the Kruskal-Wallis statistical test for the analysis of results. TABLE I. Number of Subjects, Students and Responses Involved in Each Study Level. The Study Has Been Performed During the 2018/19 Academic Year Level Degree Master Ph.D. Own Degree Total Students 50 100 20 75 245 Subjects 10 20 4 15 49 Resp.Smileys 582 211 63 63 919 Resp.Traditional 49 97 19 75 240 The data shown in Table I comprises the dataset for the study performed in this work. Specifically, the dataset consists of the following attributes: • Type of survey: Traditional or smileys method. • Subject: Subject that receives the evaluation. • Study level: Level of studies to which the subject corresponds. • Assessment for methodology: Assessment on the scale of 1 to 5 made for the methodology section. • Assessment for resources: Assessment on the scale of 1 to 5 made for the resource items. • Date: Date of the survey. Using this dataset, in this paper we consider the following research questions: • RQ1. Are there differences in the resource evaluation according to the students’ study level when using the smileys tool? • RQ2. Are there differences in the methodology evaluation according to the students’ study level when using the smileys tool? • RQ3. Are there differences in the resource evaluation according to the period of the survey response when using the smileys tool? • RQ4. Are there differences in the methodology evaluation according to the period of the survey response when using the smileys tool? • RQ5. Are there differences in students’ satisfaction results about resources and methodology depending on the type of survey (traditional vs. smileys)? The first four RQs perform a study focused only on the proposed smileys tool. The RQ1 studies the differences in the evaluation of the resources dimension depending on the level of studies that the student is taking. RQ2 studies the differences in the methodology dimension depending on the level of studies the student is taking. RQ3 studies if there are differences in the evaluation of the resources dimension depending on the academic period in which the student answers the survey. RQ4 studies if there are differences in evaluation in the methodology dimension depending on the academic period in which the student responds to the survey. Finally, RQ5 analyzes at a global level if there are differences in the evaluation of the resource and methodology dimensions when the evaluation is done by means of the traditional surveys compared to the new smileys tool. IV. Results This section explores the results of the analysis proposed in Section III. Firstly, a general view of the results obtained by means of the smileys tool is displayed in Fig. 3. It shows the average values obtained for each dimension evaluated through this tool (see Section III) along the academic year for all the study levels. Although the data are shown from January to December, it is important to bear in mind that Fig. 3 reflects the two academic quarters in the Spanish academic year: the first quarter begins in mid-September and ends in January (with the final exams for this period) and the second quarter begins in mid- February and ends at the end of June (again with the final exams for this second period). September was the month for the remedial exams at UCAM in the 2018/19 academic year. Analyzing the results obtained for each dimension, in general they follow the same trend. The best valued dimension is the media resources followed by the text resources, while the worst valued one is the self-assessment content. The increase in better average values coincides with the initial months of each quarters, namely September and February, and with the period of examinations corresponding to the months of January, May and the end of August/beginning of September. The lowest averages are shown for the Christmas period (December) and summer (June, July and August), both of them included in the holiday periods at UCAM. Next, it is performed a statistical analysis of the results of the student satisfaction gathered by means of the smileys tool to evaluate research questions RQ1-RQ4. For all of them, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is applied in the first place to check for the normality of data. The test returns a p-value = 0.0 for each research question, therefore it can be stated with a 95% confidence level that the data do not follow a normal distribution for any research question. Therefore, non-parametric tests must be applied and the Kruskal-Wallis test is used as the non- parametric alternative to the One-Way ANOVA. In order to adjust the p-value and get the significant differences at a general level, the Dunn- Bonferroni post-hoc test is applied when necessary. A. Research Questions RQ1 & RQ2 The null hypothesis to tackle RQ1 indicates that there are no significant differences in the student satisfaction regarding the Resource category for any study level (with a 95% confidence level). The Kruskal-Wallis test returns a p-value=0.048, and therefore the null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, there are significant differences in the student satisfaction regarding the Resource category depending on the study level with a 95% confidence level. Table II shows the p-value and the adjusted p-value obtained after using the Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc adjustment test for RQ1. This table only shows combinations of pairs that have significant differences in the p-value with a confidence value of 95%. As can be seen on an individual level (p-value without adjusting), there are significant differences between the student satisfaction related to resources of own-degree and master’s degree, as well as between the satisfaction related to resources of degree and master’s degree. As can be seen in Table IV, Own-degree students are more satisfied with the available resources (slightly above 4 points) than the Master’s students, whose satisfaction is lower and stands at 3.4 points. This table also shows - 5 - Article in Press the difference in satisfaction about resources between Master’s and Degree students. In this case, the difference is somewhat smaller, since the average satisfaction of the latter is 3.7 points. At the general level (adjusted p-value) there are no significant differences in satisfaction between Degree and Master’s students, but there are still significant differences between the satisfaction in the Own-degree and Master’s students with a confidence level of 93%. TABLE II. P-Value Results with 95% Confidence Level Obtained with Kruskal Wallis Test and Adjusted P-Value Obtained with Dunn- Bonferroni Post Hoc Test for the Student’s Satisfaction Regarding the Resource Category Grouped by Study Levels Pairs of study Level Own-degree / Master Degree / Master P-value 0,011 0,048 Adjusted p-value 0,065 0,288 Regarding RQ2, the null hypothesis indicates that there are no significant differences in student satisfaction regarding the Methodology category for any study level (with a 95% confidence level). The Kruskal-Wallis test returns a p-value=0.01, and therefore the null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, there are significant differences in the student satisfaction regarding the Methodology category depending on the study level with a 95% confidence level. Table III indicates the p-value and the adjusted p-value obtained after using the Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc adjustment test for RQ2. This table only shows combinations of pairs that have significant differences in the p-value with a confidence value of 95%. In the comparisons between pairs, there are significant differences regarding the satisfaction about the methodology in the study levels of Own- Degree and Degree, Degree and Master and Degree and Ph.D. Note that at the general level they are not significant, as demonstrated through the adjusted p-value. TABLE III. P-value Results with 95% Confidence Level Obtained with Kruskal Wallis Test and Adjusted P-value Obtained with Dunn- Bonferroni Post Hoc Test for the Student’s Satisfaction Regarding the Methodology Category Grouped by Study Levels Study Level Own-degree / Master Degree / Master Degree/Ph.D. P-value 0,035 0,039 0,017 Adj. p-value 0,209 0,234 0,101 For the smileys tool, the values of Table IV show the mean values (standard deviation in sub-index) for the resource and methodology evaluation, only showing the pairs of study levels for which there are significant differences. TABLE IV. Average Results of the Student Satisfaction Regarding Resources and Methodology Levels Grouped by Study Levels (Data Gathered Through the Smileys tool). The Sub-Indexes of Each Mean Value indicate Its Standard Deviation Study Level Degree Master Ph.D. Own Degree Resources 3.71.8 3.41.7 3.61.7 4.01.3 Methodology 3.81.8 3.51.9 3.32.0 3.61.9 B. Research Questions RQ3 & RQ4 The null hypothesis related to RQ3 indicates that there are no significant differences in the student satisfaction for any month of the year regarding the Resource category (with a 95% confidence level). The Kruskal-Wallis test returns a p-value=0.0, and therefore the null hypothesis is rejected. Thus, there are significant differences in the student satisfaction with respect to the Resource category depending on the month of the year in which the evaluation is conducted. Table V shows the p-value and the adjusted p-value obtained after using the Dunn- Bonferroni post hoc adjustment for RQ3. The first column shows the number of the month instead of the name, indicating by a ‘/’ which pairs of months have significant differences. This table only shows combinations of pairs that have significant differences in the p-value with a confidence value of 95%. Among individual pair comparisons (according to the p-value) there are significant differences between July and the following months: April, May, June, September, October and November; and between the months of June and September and May and June. In a general interpretation of the results (observing the adjusted p-value), there are only significant differences between the month of July and the following months: April, May, September, October and November. This result coincides with the data displayed in Fig. 4, being July the month when students give a worse evaluation of resources compared to the other months. Finally, the null hypothesis related to RQ4 indicates that there are no significant differences in the student satisfaction for any month of the year regarding the Methodology category (with a 95% confidence St at is ti ca l A ve ra ge s Avg(Media Resources) Avg(Text Resources) Avg(Methodology) Avg(Assigment) Avg(Self- assessment) 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Fig. 3. Average values for each dimension (media resources, text resources, assignments, self-assessment tests and methodology) evaluated through the smileys tool along the academic year. - 6 - International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence level). The Kruskal-Wallis test returns a p-value=0.0, and therefore the null hypothesis is rejected. Thus, there are significant differences in the student satisfaction with respect to the Methodology category depending on the month of the year in which the evaluation is conducted. TABLE V. P-Value Results with 95% Confidence Level Obtained with Kruskal Wallis Test and Adjusted P-Value Obtained with Bonferroni Post Hoc Test for the Student’s Satisfaction in the Resource Category Throughout the Academic Year Pairs of Months P-value Adjusted p-value 7/4 0,004 0,03 7/5 0,0 0,001 7/6 0,009 0,09 7/9 0,0 0,002 7/10 0,0 0,004 7/11 0,0 0,0 6/9 0,042 0,4 6/5 0,01 0,1 TABLE VI. P-value Results with 95% Confidence Level Obtained with Kruskal Wallis Test and Adjusted P-value Obtained with Bonferroni Post Hoc Test for the Student’s Satisfaction in the Methodology Category Throughout the Academic Year Pairs of Months P-value Adjusted p-value 7/1 0,03 0,2 7/2 0,004 0,03 7/3 0,0 0,001 7/4 0,01 0,1 7/5 0,0 0,0 7/6 0,001 0,01 7/9 0,0 0,001 7/10 0,001 0,007 7/11 0,0 0,0 7/12 0,01 0,1 4/11 0,023 0,2 Table VI presents the p-value and the adjusted p-value obtained after using the Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc adjustment test for RQ4. Again, the first column shows the month number instead of the name. This table only presents combinations of pairs that have significant differences in the p-value with a confidence value of 95%. In an individual comparison of pairs, it can be seen that there are significant differences in the assessment of student satisfaction in the Methodology dimension between the month of July and the following months: January, February, March, April, May, June, September, October, November and December. There are also significant differences between June and May and between June and September. This can be seen in Fig. 4 since in June the satisfaction values regarding the methodology are lower than in May and September. Analyzing the global results with the adjusted p-value, there are only significant differences globally between the month of July and the following months: February, March, May, June, September, October and November. These differences are appreciated visually in Fig. 4. In summary, the significant differences in the student satisfaction value for the Resources and Methodology dimensions are different with respect to the months in the academic year, with July being the worst rated month in terms of satisfaction in both the Resources and Methodology categories. C. Research Question RQ5 Fig. 5 shows a bar graph which compares the results obtained by the two methods of satisfaction evaluation presented in Section III, namely traditional surveys and the smileys tool. The error bars represent the 95% confidence interval for the average values. The results are analyzed with respect to the two comparable categories of each method (Resources and Methodology) and grouped by the different study levels. For the traditional survey method, the blue color has been selected to represent the average value for Resources and the yellow color for the average value of Methodology. For the smileys tool method, the green color has been selected to represent the average value of Resource and the red color for the average value of Methodology. A more in-depth statistical analysis cannot be applied at the moment as the disaggregated data for the traditional survey method have not been made available, but only the mean values and standard deviation of each evaluated category for each study level. All study levels have been considered for this study. However, it is important to highlight that, at the time of this study, the university had not implemented yet quality assessment processes in Ph.D. courses by means of traditional surveys due to their recent implementation (from 2015). In this case it has not been possible to perform a comparative study with the results obtained by the smileys tool method. It is observed that, in general, the results obtained through traditional surveys show a greater student satisfaction than when using the smileys tool. This fact may be caused due to several factors: Firstly, traditional surveys are designed to evaluate the learning content and the methodology of any subject in a global manner, whereas the smileys tool allows for a more fine-grained evaluation. Therefore, if the content or the methodology of a specific unit is evaluated not as positive as the rest of the units, it may affect the global evaluation. St at is ti ca l A ve ra ge s Avg_Smileys(Resources) Avg_Smileys(Methodology) 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Fig. 4. Average values for the Resource and Methodology categories throughout the academic year (in months) obtained from the smileys tool. - 7 - Article in Press Secondly, traditional surveys are activated during a limited period of time and in a specific interval of dates. On the other hand, the smileys tool allows students to evaluate (and revaluate) any content at any time, including the period after examinations. In this way, students have more occasions to reflect on their satisfaction about the learning content or the methodology. A last factor might be related to the fact that, according to some authors, memory is more important than actuality [36]. Thus, the results of traditional survey may be influenced by a general positive memory of the course combined with the temporal distance (which usually highlights positive memories and occludes negative ones) between this memory and the moment when the survey is answered, usually two or three weeks after the course has been completed. Contrarily, the smiley approach proposed in this work does not benefit from this memory factor, since it allows students to express their satisfaction at any time. Studying the graph among study levels, the results obtained by the traditional surveys do not present significant differences between the average values of Resources and Methodology dimensions for the different study levels. However, according to the results obtained by means of the smileys tool it can be observed that the resources are better valued than the methodology in Own Degree and Ph.D. courses and the opposite case is found for Master and Degree courses. D. Discussion and Limitations After analyzing the quantitative results of our study, some reflections and limitations are now discussed. In the first two RQs, we differentiate between the assessments in the dimensions of resources and methodology carried out by the students with the smileys tool depending on their level of study. The result shows that students at the grade level perform higher assessments of resources and methodology than students at other levels of study. This is assumed to be due to the fact that the students of Master and Ph. D. are more demanding students, who have a student profile that is already less time consuming and who are looking for more elaborated materials. However, these students are provided with materials such as scientific articles to encourage research activities and these resources along with the methodology followed take longer than expected by the students. With respect to RQs 3 and 4, related to the period in which the surveys are answered, the results indicate that July is the month with the worst results. Analyzing this result and consulting the statistics of the number of students who enter the subject in July and do not do so in the rest of the year, the number of students who make the most negative assessments coincide. This implies that these students have not followed the subject and do not have a full perspective of it, which causes the evaluations to fall both in resources and in the methodology of the subject. Finally, regarding RQ5, where the results are compared between the traditional surveys and the new proposal of the smileys tool, it is concluded that the latter are more effective and the student expresses his/her opinion at any time, obtaining a finer granularity of the methodology and resources of a subject, by carrying out unit by unit evaluations and not in a global way. Regarding the limitations of the study, they are mainly derived from the comparison between the two survey methods studied. Despite the fact that similar criteria are measured in both methods, we found differences in the results that may be caused by several limiting factors. On the one hand, the assessment of each unit using the smileys tool does not allow to have a global vision of the subject, and there may be significant differences in each one of them, based on objective aspects such as the fact that the lecturer may not dedicate the same time to the elaboration of the materials in one unit or in another or even has more or less knowledge of certain topics of the subject. On the other hand, the general overview provided by traditional surveys may be influenced by factors such as student qualifications, quality of the correction of assignments as perceived by the student, or level of difficulty of the exam (partial or final) and depends on the time at which the survey is conducted. Another limitation in this comparison is given by the anonymous method of data collection, which while we believe to be the correct manner of collecting students’ opinions, does not allow us to make a more accurate study using related samples as we cannot match the answers of the same student in both methods of assessing his/her satisfaction. V. Conclusion and Future Work According to the current trends on quality evaluation applied to distance education, there exists a main focus on the assessment of student satisfaction, differentiating four categories to be evaluated: (1) student-student and student-lecturer interactions, (2) learning resources, (3) methodology and (4) flexibility and ease of use of the Learning Management System software. The main methods to perform the evaluation of these categories are based on surveys containing general questions and activated during a specific and limited time. Although the data obtained using these surveys are valuable for a global overview on the quality in distance courses, there is a lack of fine-grained methods for obtaining the student satisfaction on specific learning contents and methodologies in these courses. St at is ti ca l A ve ra ge s Own Degree Degree Ph.D.Master Avg_survey(Resources) Avg_survey(Methodology) Avg_smileys(Resources) Avg_smileys(Methodology) 5 4 3 2 1 0 Fig. 5. Comparison of average student satisfaction results obtained through traditional surveys and smileys tools with respect to Resource and Methodology categories and grouped by study level. The error bars represent the 95% confidence interval for the average values. - 8 - International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence This work proposes a new evaluation model through a tool based on the representation of smileys, which allows student to evaluate in a simple and intuitive manner the learning resources and the methodology applied at each unit of any subject in any course and at any time during the academic year. A case study has been carried out to evaluate this proposal and the results demonstrate that both the student’s study level and the period when the satisfaction evaluation is performed are sensitive factors to take into account when interpreting the evaluation results. Hence, it has been observed that better qualifications on the learning content are obtained during non-holiday periods. Likewise, it has been detected that the resources and methodologies related to two specific study levels, namely Degree and Own-degree levels, are better valued than the rest. Finally, by comparing student satisfaction results obtained from traditional surveys with the results obtained through the tool proposed in this paper, it can be observed that the latter seems to be more accurate since the way of gathering data is more specific and flexible. As a future work, we are investigating the use of semantic analysis to detect the most highlighted topics and sentiments in the opinions written by the students when using the smileys tool. It is also important to design a process to transfer the results obtained with this new tool to the lecturers in a simple and effective manner, with the aim of improving the lecturer’s awareness about the quality of these elements. We are also planning to analyze students’ changes of opinion throughout the course. To do this we will extend the smiley tool so that it can store a log of the changes in the evaluation performed by the students. Annex I. Questionnaire for Traditional Survey UCAM UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICASAN ANTONIO STUDENT SATISFACTION SURVEY Please rate your satisfaction with the following aspects with a score of 1 to 5: (from 1: Strongly disagree to 5: Strongly agree) STUDENT SATISFACTION SURVEY - LECTURER ASSESSMENT PLANNING 1 2 3 4 5 1. The planning (date, duration, etc.) of the activities in the Teaching Guide (Syllabus) seems to me to be adequate and useful for the development of the subject 2. The development of the course programme is in accordance with the commitments made in the Teaching Guide (Syllabus) 3. The lecturer encourages self-learning, guides me in task planning and gives me correct guidance in the development of tasks METHODOLOGY 1 2 3 4 5 4. The lecturer motivates active participation and generates interest in the subject 5. The lecturer organizes, structures and clearly explains the content in his/her classes 6. The lecturer encourages the development of the capacity for reflection, analysis, synthesis and reasoning 7. The tutoring of the subject bt the lecturer is adequate 8. The lecturer applies the evaluation systems set out in the course's Teaching Guide 9. The lecturer promotes teamwork to develop communication and relationship skills RESOURCES 1 2 3 4 5 10. The teaching resources (audiovisual media, virtual campus material, etc.) used by the lecturer are adequate to facilitate learning 11. The study materials (books, articles, electronic resources, etc.) used in the course are appropiate GENERAL OVERVIEW 1 2 3 4 5 12. The lecturer is an expert in the subject 13. Evaluate in a global view work developed by the lecturer in the subject, considering all the previous aspects - 9 - Article in Press Acknowledgment This work is supported by the Spanish innovation project funded by the UCAM under grant PID-05/19. Authors would like to thank the Online Vice-Rectorate of this University for their participation in this paper. References [1] A. Corbi, and D. Burgos, “Review of current student-monitoring techniques used in e-learning focused recommender systems and learning analytics. the experience api & lime model case study”, International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2, no. 7, pp.44-52, 2014. [2] S. K. Parahoo, M. I. Santally, Y. Rajabalee, and H. L. Harvey, “Designing a predictive model of student satisfaction in online learning”. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 1-19, 2016. [3] S. N. Uribe and M. Vaughan, “Facilitating student learning in distance education: a case study on the development and implementation of a multifaceted feedback system”, Distance Education, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 288- 301, 2017. [4] M. A. O’Neill and A. Palmer, “Importance-performance analysis: a useful tool for directing continuous quality improvement in higher education”, Quality Assurance in Education, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 39-52, 2004. [5] V. Teeroovengadum, T. Kamalanabhan and A. K. Seebaluck, “Measuring service quality in higher education: Development of a hierarchical model (HESQUAL)”, Quality Assurance in Education, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 244-258, 2016. [6] R. Ferguson, “Learning analytics: drivers, developments and challenges”, International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, vol. 4 no. 5/6, pp. 304–317, 2012. Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/36374/ [7] V. A. Secades, and O. Arranz, “Big Data & eLearning: A Binomial to the Future of the Knowledge Society”, International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 29-33, 2016. [8] M. Cantabella, B. López, A. Caballero and A. Muñoz, “Analysis and evaluation of lecturers activity in Learning Management Systems: Subjective and objective perceptions”, Interactive Learning Environments, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 911-923, 2018. [9] M. Cantabella, R. Martínez-España, B. Ayuso, J. A. Yáñez, and A. Muñoz, “Analysis of student behavior in learning management systems through a Big Data framework”, Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 90, pp. 262 – 272, 2019 [10] A. Espasa, and J. Meneses, “Analysing Feedback Processes in an Online Teaching and Learning Environment: An Exploratory Study”, Higher Education, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 277–292, 2010. [11] B. E. Shelton, J-L. Hung and P. R. Lowenthal, “Predicting student success by modeling student interaction in asynchronous online courses”, Distance Education, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 59-69, 2017. [12] W. S. Cheung, “A new role for teachers: software evaluator. In Proceedings of the IFIP TC3/WG3.” in Proceedings of 5th International Working Conference on Exploring a New Partnership: Children, Teachers and Technology, 1994, pp. 191–199. [13] D. Hawkridge, “Software for schools: British reviews in the late 1980s”, Computers and learning, pp. 88–108, 1990. [14] T. Plomp and D. P. Ely, “International encyclopedia of educational technology”, ERIC, 1996 [15] V. F. Sharp, “Computer education for teachers: Integrating technology into classroom teaching”, Wiley, 2008. [16] W. Nakamura, L. Marques, L. Rivero, E. Oliveira and T. Conte, “Are generic UX evaluation techniques enough? A study on the UX Evaluation of the Edmodo Learning Management System”, In  Brazilian Symposium on Computers in Education (Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação-SBIE), vol. 28, no. 1, p. 1007, 2017. [17] G. Ssekakubo, H. Suleman and G, Marsden, “Designing mobile LMS interfaces: Learners’ expectations and experiences”,  Interactive Technology and Smart Education, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 147-167, 2013. [18] C. Fallon and S. Brown, S., “E-learning standards: a guide to purchasing, developing, and deploying standards-conformant e-learning”. CRC Press, 2016. [19] S. P. McKenna, “The Design Activity Framework: Investigating the Data Visualization Design Process” Doctoral dissertation, The University of Utah, 2017. [20] H. Al-Samarraie, B. K. Teng, A. I. Alzahrani and N. Alalwan, “E-learning continuance satisfaction in higher education: a unified perspective from instructors and students”, Studies in Higher Education, vol. 43, no. 11, pp. 2003–2019, 2018. [21] T. Markova, I. Glazkova and E. Zaborova, “Quality issues of online distance learning”,  Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,  vol. 237, pp. 685-691, 2017. [22] Q. T. Pham and T. P. Tran, “Impact factors on using of e-learning system and learning achievement of students at several universities in vietnam”, In O. Gervasi et al. (Eds.), International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2018, pp. 394–409, Springer International Publishing, 2018. [23] I. S. Weerasinghe and R. L. Fernando, “Students’ satisfaction in higher education”,  American Journal of Educational Research,  vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 533-539, 2017. [24] E. Martínez-Caro, J. G. Cegarra-Navarro and G. Cepeda-Carrión, “An application of the performance-evaluation model for e-learning quality in higher education”, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, vol. 26, no. 5-6, pp. 632–647, 2015. [25] W. Sahusilawane and L. S. Hiariey, “The Role of Service Quality Toward Open University Website on The Level of Student Satisfaction”, Journal of Education and Learning, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 85-92, 2016. [26] I. Almarashdeh, I., “Sharing instructors experience of learning management system: A technology perspective of user satisfaction in distance learning course”, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 63, pp. 249- 255, 2016. [27] N. C. Gee, “The Impact Of Lecturers’ Compeencies On Students’ Satisfaction”, Journal Of Arts and Social Science, vol 1, no. 2, pp. 74-86, 2018. [28] M. Kangas, P. Siklander, J. Randolph and H. Roukema, “Teachers’ engagement and students’ satisfaction with a playful learning environment”, Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 63, pp. 274-284, 2017. [29] R. Yilmaz, “Exploring the role of e-learning readiness on student satisfaction and motivation in flipped classroom”, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 70, pp. 251–260, 2017. [30] X. Zhai, J. Gu, H. Liu, J. C. Liang and T. Chin-Chung, “An experiential learning perspective on students’ satisfaction model in a flipped classroom context”, Journal of Educational Technology & Society, vol. 20, no. 1, 198-210, 2017. [31] R. Prifti, “Self–efficacy and student satisfaction in the context of blended learning courses”,  Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, pp. 1-15, 2020. [32] M. Asoodar, S. Vaezi and B. Izanloo, “Framework to improve e-learner satisfaction and further strengthen e-learning implementation”, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 63, pp. 704-716, 2016. [33] A. Uzelac, N. Gligorić and S. Krčo, S., “System for recognizing lecture quality based on analysis of physical parameters”,  Telematics and Informatics, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 579-594, 2018. [34] M. Cantabella, B. López-Ayuso, A. Muñoz and A. Caballero, A., “Una herramienta para el seguimiento del profesorado universitario en entornos virtuales de aprendizaje”, Revista Española De Documentación Científica, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 153, 2016. [35] M. García and B. Harmsen, B., Qlikview 11 for developers. Packt Publishing Ltd, 2012. [36] D. A. Norman, “The way I see it. Memory is more important than actuality”, Interactions, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 24-26, 2009. Magdalena Cantabella Magdalena Cantabella obtained her B.S. in Computer Science at the Catholic University of Murcia in 2008 and her M.S. in New Technologies in Computer Science applied to Biomedicine AT the University of Murcia in 2012, she obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2018 at the University at the Catholic University of Murcia. Since 2010 she is an associate professor in the Polytechnic School within the Department of Degree in Computer Engineering of the Catholic University of Murcia. Her areas of research include massive statistical analysis of data, e-learning and definition of user profiles. - 10 - International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence Belén López Belén López obtained her M.S. in Computer Science from the University at Murcia and her PhD in Computer Science at the same University. She has 18 years of experience in teaching, both in Degree and Master courses at University Level, include e-learning methodology. She has participated in several educational innovation projects from which publications in the area of educational innovation have been obtained. At the moment she is the Dean of the Degree in Computer Engineering of the Catholic University of Murcia and Heat of the Online Department at this University. Her areas of research include teaching assessment and e-learning methodology evaluation. Raquel Martínez-España Raquel Martínez-España is an associated professor in the Technical School at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), Spain. She obtained her M.S. in Computer Science in 2009 and her PhD in Computer Science in 2014 at the University of Murcia. She has worked on several research projects in artificial intelligence and education. Raquel has participated in various academic and industry projects. Her research interests include data mining, big data, soft computing, artificial intelligence and intelligent data analysis. Andrés Muñoz Andrés Muñoz is a senior lecturer in the Technical School at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), Spain. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2011 at the University of Murcia. He has worked on several research projects in artificial intelligence and education. His main research interests include argumentation in intelligent systems, Semantic Web technologies and Ambient Intelligence and Intelligent Environments applied to education. 
work_jnj6ycc2x5fqxokf6fopirmqwm	----	Social presence, identity, and online learning: research development and needs Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdie20 Distance Education ISSN: 0158-7919 (Print) 1475-0198 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 Social presence, identity, and online learning: research development and needs Patrick R. Lowenthal & Vanessa P. Dennen To cite this article: Patrick R. Lowenthal & Vanessa P. Dennen (2017) Social presence, identity, and online learning: research development and needs, Distance Education, 38:2, 137-140, DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 Published online: 09 Jul 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 7621 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 2 View citing articles https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdie20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cdie20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cdie20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-07-09 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-07-09 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172#tabModule https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172#tabModule Distance eDucation, 2017 VoL. 38, no. 2, 137–140 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172 EDITORIAL Social presence, identity, and online learning: research development and needs Scholars across many disciplines have grappled with questions of what it means for a person to be and interact online. Who are we when we go online? How do others know we are there and how do they perceive us? Within the context of online learning, scholarly questions tend to reflect more specific concerns focused on how well people can learn in a setting limited to mediated interactions lacking various communication cues. For example, how can a teacher and students come to know each other if they cannot see each other? How can they effectively understand and communicate with each other if they are separated by space and, in many instances, time? These concerns are related to issues of social presence and identity, both of which are complex, multi-faceted, closely interrelated constructs. Social presence The theory of social presence dates back to the work of Short, Williams, and Christie in the 1970s. Short, Williams, and Christie (1976), like many still today, were interested in how media influences how people communicate. They believed that some media were better at establishing the quality or state of being ‘there’ than other media. Over time, though, as people began participating in online learning environments, online educators began questioning Short et al.’s technologically deterministic understanding of social presence. Those early online educators were still interested in how media influences the way people communicate but they were more interested in the ways that instructors and students make up for the loss of visual cues in online learning environments, that relied completely on text based communication, while still being able to share who they are as ‘real’ people. Identity Identity is a fluid construct, one that is negotiated both with our interaction partners and within the context in which it is being performed (Seargeant & Tagg, 2014). We construct our identities through the stories that we tell (Deumert, 2014), and that construction is a lifelong process in which we ‘become the narrator of our own story without completely becoming the author of our life’ (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 131). In other words, we tell others who we are, but we are not entirely in control of who we are or how others see us. Social presence and identity in online learning Establishing one’s social presence and identity in online learning environments can be difficult due to limited communication channels and transactional distance (Moore, 2007). Text-based communication is used heavily in many online learning settings, including the ones discussed in this special issue, leaving learners to establish both social presence and identity in the absence of substantial visual and aural cues. Online learners have varying degrees of social presence, based largely on how much they contribute to class; whether they are socially anonymous depends not © 2017 open and Distance Learning association of australia, inc. http://www.tandfonline.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172&domain=pdf 138 EDITORIAL on their volume of contributions but rather the degree to which they share identity cues within their course communications (Christopherson, 2007). The contextual nature of identity means that people share versions of themselves in the dif- ferent online settings they encounter. Of concern to many online instructors and learners is not only the identity one shares while being present in a class, but also the identity that is refined and developed within the class – an identity that may be focused on entry into a profession. For example, students in a teacher education class are not just college students, but are becoming teachers. Similarly, students in an organic chemistry class may be starting to form their identities as research scientists or physicians – or distancing themselves as they determine that their future profession will not be related to that discipline. The special issue The purpose of this special issue is to try to stimulate or reignite a conversation between schol- ars examining social presence as well as those examining the role of identity in online learning environments. This special issue pushes us to consider how online learning has developed and changed over time in terms of technology, pedagogy, and familiarity. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, online instructors and learners were pioneers, and relatively little was known about how to foster social presence in online learning environments. The communication and course tech- nologies used in early online courses were still fairly rudimentary in terms of the interactions they enabled. Over time, though, with advancements in technology and pedagogy, coupled with increased experience of instructors and students communicating online, issues with social presence and identity continued to evolve. The articles in this special issue take up various such themes. By doing so they bring together researchers working in these two areas and, in turn, various perspectives, whether focused on formal or informal learning, and whether situated in private or public discourse contexts. In the first article in this issue Lowenthal and Snelson report on an investigation of how highly cited researchers define social presence. They illustrate how differently researchers define social pres- ence and how this continues to change over time. They specifically found that while researchers tended to define social presence in terms of the behaviors one uses (e.g., immediacy behaviors) and/or the degree to which one perceives another person(s) as being a ‘real’ person (and to a lesser degree, ‘there’), about 20% of the time researchers in highly cited articles defined social presence more in terms of connection, belonging, and community. Further, they conclude that social presence, collaboration, and community are three important, but different constructs in the online learning literature and that researchers must make a concerted effort not to confuse them. In the next article, Phirangee and Malec investigated the interrelationship between social presence, identity, and community. More specifically, they focused on how some students feel disconnected or othered in online courses. Through a series of in-depth semi-structured inter- views, they identified the three ways students are othered in online courses – (a) professional, (b) academic, and (c) ethnic–each of which can lead to feelings of disconnection and isolation when learning online. One way that instructors attempt to address feelings of isolation is to leverage social network- ing platforms. In the third article in this issue, Dennen and Burner report a study of traditional college-aged students’ perceptions of using Facebook in their coursework. They found that while a majority of students used Facebook for social purposes, most students were not comfortable being ‘friends’ with their instructors on Facebook. As a result, students reported that they would self-censor or adjust their privacy settings to avoid context collapse between their social identities and their classroom identities when using Facebook as a part of their coursework. DISTANCE EDUCATION 139 An increasing number of online educators are experimenting with using synchronous com- munication technologies to improve social presence in online learning environments. In the next article, Walker reports on an investigation of how bilingual students used language to establish social presence and identity positions in an international context. These participants relied on both humor and cultural signs to communicate with each other as they switched between lan- guages throughout their conversations. A sense of play and personal sharing was productively used by participants in this study. Two of the articles examined how social presence, and specifically peer interaction, shapes identity in collaborative learning situations. Jaber and Kennedy, like Walker, studied students in an international context, examining how students from four different continents experienced group work in an online program. Interviews revealed that trustworthy social interaction was important to these students, who felt it supported them emotionally and helped them learn. By sharing with each other, some students began to think of themselves differently. In contrast, Xie, Lu, Cheng, and Izmirli examined conflictual presence in peer-mediated online collabora- tive settings. Through discourse analysis, they found that tensions play an important role in the establishment of identity among students in an online class. Specifically, students may explore their own identities by contrasting them with or distancing them from classmates’ identities, and in so doing also ascribe identities to others in the class community. Together, these two articles suggest that all types of peer interactions, whether supportive or conflictual, play an important role in student identity formation. Grounding their work in the Community of Inquiry framework, Maddrell, Morrison, and Watson investigated the relationship between social presence and student learning. They conducted a study with 51 graduate students in five distance education courses but found no relationship between the students’ perceptions of social presence and student learning. This finding is note- worthy given the number of studies that have assumed that social presence is necessary for learning to occur, and demonstrates that the relationship between social presence and learning is one that still needs exploration, for example to tease out whether there is a minimum threshold of presence that is beneficial to learning but beyond which learning will not be enhanced. Öztok and Kehrwald bring this special issue full circle, arguing, like Lowenthal and Snelson, that the lack of clarity on how researchers define social presence is problematic. In particular they illustrate that researchers often confuse what social presence is with what social presence does. They conclude by arguing that we should focus on the salience of interpersonal relationships if we are to understand the relational aspects of being online. Collectively these articles show the diverse ways that educational researchers have explored social presence and identity. They also highlight some of the nuanced concerns online educa- tors might have in these areas. The lack of an agreed upon definition of social presence makes it difficult for researchers to build upon each other’s work and for educators to synthesize and act upon empirical recommendations. At this time, it is safe to say that social presence within online courses is important, but less certain is whether educators should focus on how social presence is being performed versus how it is being perceived. The performance vs perception tension is apparent in the various definitions of presence, and also in the many ways that social presence has been researched. In terms of identity, these articles make apparent that identity in an online class is much more complex than playing the general role of a student or an instruc- tor. Instructors should remain alert to the role that ethnicity and gender play in online settings, and the various ways that students might perform expertise. Additionally, at times it may be important to consider not only the identity that students present formally to a class, but also who students are becoming professionally, and the various on and offline identities they are juggling concurrently with the class. Both of these areas – social presence and identity – remain relevant topics of exploration for online learning researchers. Some of the critical work that remains to be done includes negotiating 140 EDITORIAL and refining the current nomenclature and definitions related to these constructs to a point where a common language can be adopted among educational researchers; greater empirical explo- ration of the relationship between social presence and student learning gains; and generating a deeper understanding of how identity performance and development in online courses is related to both social presence and learning. In terms of educational practice, addressing these areas is not trivial. Educators will benefit from research literature that uses consistent language, as well as solid empirical evidence that both demonstrates the forms of social presence and identity sharing that support student learning in different distance education contexts and provides guidance for facilitating social presence and fostering identity sharing and development. References Christopherson, K. M. (2007). The positive and negative implications of anonymity in internet social interactions: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 3038–3056. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2006.09.001 Deumert, A. (2014). The performance of a ludic self on social network(ing) sites. In P. Seargeant & C. Tagg (Eds.), The language of social media (pp. 23–45). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Moore, M. G. (2007). Theory of transactional distance. In M. G. Moore (Ed.), Handbook of distance education (pp. 89–101). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ricoeur, P. (1986). Life: A story in search of a narrator. In M. C. Doeser & J. N. Kraay (Eds.), Facts and values: Philosophical reflections from Western and non-Western perspectives (pp. 121–132). Dordrecht: Springer. Seargeant, P., & Tagg, C. (2014). Introduction: The language of social media. In P. Seargeant & C. Tagg (Eds.), The language of social media (pp. 1–20). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: Wiley. Patrick R. Lowenthal Boise State University patricklowenthal@boisestate.edu Vanessa P. Dennen Florida State University  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2076-074X https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2006.09.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2006.09.001 mailto: patricklowenthal@boisestate.edu http://orcid.org http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2076-074X Social presence Identity Social presence and identity in online learning The special issue References 
work_jodzgz6ggjcjhfzoavmxo4caka	----	10972_2008_9089_19_3-web 255..267 A Comparison of Rural Elementary School Teacher Attitudes Toward Three Modes of Distance Education for Science Professional Development Leonard Annetta Æ James A. Shymansky Published online: 5 March 2008 � Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008 Abstract Distance education is a significant topic of discussion among faculty at all levels of education. This study produced evidence regarding the attitudes toward three distance education delivery modes for science professional development. The study involved 94 elementary school teachers who were participating in a profes- sional development project. The three distance education strategies studied were live, interactive television (Live); videotape presentations with live wrap-around discussions (Video); and asynchronous, Web-based sessions with streamed video presentations supported by interaction through discussion boards (Web). A repeated measures design was used to analyze the attitudes of the study participants. Data on the participants’ attitudes toward their distance education involvement were col- lected through the CTLSilhouette TM instrument. Introduction and Purpose of the Study In 1998, a United States Department of Education study suggested that well over 70% of institutions of higher education would provide distance education courses by 2003 (Lewis, Snow, Farris, and Levin 1999). The same study stated that an estimated 1,680 institutions were already offering more than 54,000 distance education courses. Lewis et al. also reported that an estimated 70 million adult learners were involved in some form of continuing education. It has been estimated that 2.6 million students enrolled in distance education courses in the fall of 2004, an increase of nearly 25% from 2003 (The Sloan Consortium 2004). L. Annetta (&) College of Education, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801, USA e-mail: len_annetta@ncsu.edu J. A. Shymansky College of Education, University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO 63121-4400, USA 123 J Sci Teacher Educ (2008) 19:255–267 DOI 10.1007/s10972-008-9089-4 Distance education has become a very popular avenue for fulfilling course requirements or professional development for teachers. The most commonly cited benefit of distance education is the time flexibility it brings to the end user. However, this and other studies are needed to determine if the aforementioned avenues foster positive attitudes toward professional development from a distance. The purpose of this study was to compare participant attitudes toward three different delivery modes used for their science teaching professional development: (a) Interactive television, identified as Live mode in this study, is a two-way communication medium that allows presenters and students to be at a distance, yet they are able to see and hear each other in real time; (b) Interactive television with live discussions wrapped around videotaped presentations, identified as Video mode, are tape-delayed sessions of a presenter, which are then broadcast over the same channels as interactive television, with a live discussion directed by a facilitator; and asynchronous instruction, identified as Web in this study, is the most commonly used mode of distance education today and allows students to be separated from their instructors by time, space, or both. Specifically, in this study, we sought to answer the question, ‘‘Which mode of distance education do practicing elementary school teachers prefer for professional development in science?’’ Literature Review With the growth of the Internet, the current distance education focus has dramatically shifted in the direction of network and Internet-based technologies. Hickman (2003) reported that the Internet is being used more than other continuing education delivery strategies, such as Interactive Television (ITV), correspondence, and live-remote location combinations. The use of distance education continues to increase annually by 40% (Gallagher 2002). In a comparative study of science learning as a factor of these interventions, Annetta and Shymansky (2006) reported that participants in the Live mode scored higher on content knowledge tests (multiple choice, constructed response, and vignettes) than participants in the Web and Video modes. Participants in the Web mode outperformed participants in the Video mode on multiple choice and constructed response. As current educational reform in the United States demands more qualified teachers, professional development of inservice teachers becomes more critical than ever before. However, the longevity of distance education as a vehicle for professional development highly depends on teacher attitudes toward the delivery strategy. Science researchers have given much attention to attitudes because of assumed relationships between attitude and many other variables, such as learning and comfort with technology (Koballa 1988). Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) reported that the most important reason for studying attitudes is the relationship of attitude to behavior. Swan (2001) reported that such factors as design clarity, interaction with instructors, and active discussion significantly influenced satisfaction and perceived learning of material. Interaction between instructor and the learner is possibly the most important function of distance learning support (Wheeler 2002). 256 L. Annetta, J. A. Shymansky 123 In a study by Wearmouth, Smith, and Soler (2004), teachers in a professional development computer conferencing course preferred to read a threaded discussion between two or more experts, rather than actively participate in the discussion. However, Newton, Oswald, and Stuart (2002) reported that teachers who have been involved in teacher workshops prior to the distance education component found higher distance course satisfaction, regardless of their age, teaching experience, or prior experience with distance education. It is no secret that elementary teachers have traditionally had negative attitudes toward science (Skamp 1991; Yates and Goodrum 1990). It is speculated that the negative attitudes about science stem from preservice education programs. Although there is a large body of literature on professional development, there is very little related literature on what or how distance learning could play a role in addressing problems of new standards, accountability, professional development and pedagogy, and content knowledge (Lezberg 1999). With new policy and reform effecting what we teach and how we teach, it is crucial that we explore the best ways in which distance learning technologies can provide professional development before taking the classes to the masses. Methods Setting of the Study A professional development project targeting teachers in rural school districts separated by great distances provided an opportunity to research alternative forms of distance delivery systems. The Science Co-op Project 1 was a National Science Foundation research initiative that focuses on local systemic change in rural school districts in the Midwestern United States. The Science Co-op Project targeted more than 1,300 teachers and more than 20,000 students in 38 school districts spread across approximately 40,000 square miles of land area. The study took place during the fall of the 3rd year of the Science Co-op Project. In the project, the Live delivery strategy was originally proposed for the distance professional development to take advantage of the established videoconferencing network. The Video delivery strategy emerged in the 2nd year in response to technical problems encountered during the 1st year in trying to connect two distinctly different communication systems across two states and the difficulty experienced in recruiting quality scientists (as presenters) for the 2nd year. The 3rd year of the project incorporated an asynchronous, Web-based (Web) delivery mode due to increased pressure from both the university and videoconferencing network administrations. The elementary school teachers engaged in the professional development within the project are referred to as the students or study participants. A quasi-experimental 1 This paper is based upon research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI- 9911857. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Elementary School Teacher Attitudes 257 123 design, supplemented with follow-up telephone and e-mail conversations with participants, was used to investigate the perceived effectiveness of the three distance-learning strategies for science professional development. The data collection process unfolded in two phases. Phase I of the research involved recruitment of the participants and the assessment of their prior science knowledge, predisposition to constructivist teaching methods, and technology self- efficacy. Phase I was accomplished during the 40-hour summer workshop in June 2002. The results of the prior knowledge test and the participant predisposition to constructivist teaching provided an even bell curve that allowed participants to be stratified across three modes of Live, Video, and Web communication modes. The 94 participants were stratified with high, middle, and low achievers distributed across each of the three modes. Special care was taken to stratify those participants who had already been exposed to one of the three modes across the other modes. Phase II consisted of the intervention and data collection, which was conducted over a 12-week period. Study Variables The independent variable of this study was the distance education delivery mode: (a) live, two-way audio and video (Live); (b) videotape with wrap-around discussion (Video); and (c) Web-based, asynchronous sessions (Web). The dependent variable was attitudes toward delivery modes. The following describes the science expert presenters, the delivery modes, and the presentation and discussion format. Presenters of the distance education sessions were scientists from three research universities, one biotechnology research company, and master teachers from local school systems. They were coached on the presentation and discussion formats with information about the project goals and the audience’s limited science background. Student misconceptions were gathered from the teachers in the study well in advance of the actual presentations. These misconceptions were brought to the attention of the science expert presenters prior to their session. The misconceptions also became part of the postsession survey each participant completed. The Delivery Modes The Live sessions were conducted from an origination site from which the science expert presenter and the session facilitator broadcast and up to eight remote sites from which the teachers participated. At the remote sites, teachers met in small groups in media rooms within their school district. These rooms contained television monitors on which they could see and hear in real time the speaker and the teacher groups at the other sites. A camera mounted on the back wall of the room at the origination site captured the science expert presenter and a camera mounted on the front wall at each of the remote sites moved automatically to the teacher participant who was speaking. Audio was captured through microphones at the science expert podium and at the teacher desks controlled by a single button that allowed the audio 258 L. Annetta, J. A. Shymansky 123 to be muted during small-group discussion. The Live sessions followed a structure of an approximately 30-minute science expert presentation, followed by 10 minutes of on-site collaboration of teachers in small groups to generate specific questions for the science expert presenter. After circulating through each site and allowing for the science expert presenter to respond to particular questions, the small groups again met for 10 minutes to share ideas for incorporating the new knowledge into their classroom practice. These ideas were finally shared with the entire group involved in that session. The sessions were didactic in nature and never imparted any hands- on activities to the teachers. The participants had one week to complete and submit a postsession online survey. The videotapes, used in the Video mode, were taken from the Live 30-minute presentations that were broadcast the previous week. The Video sessions were aired on the same network over which the Live sessions were broadcast. As in the Live sessions, there was an origination site from which the videotape was played by a session host and, again, as many as eight remote sites were involved for any given session. At the remote sites, teachers met in small groups in media rooms within their rural school district and had a facilitator in the room to gather questions and facilitate discussion. Within these sessions, the teachers viewed a presentation were then led through a discussion with the other sites about what types of questions they would have from the presentation and how they might be able to integrate what they learned into their classrooms. Finally, the teachers viewed the discussion section videotaped during the previous week’s Live presentation and reformulated a list of questions, because some of their own questions were often common to what they viewed on the videotape. Specific questions were e-mailed to the science expert presenter or posted on the project website. Answers to the questions were again posted on the Web site and e-mailed to all participants who had participated in that Video session. The participants had one week to complete and submit a postsession online survey. The Web component was distinctly different from the previous two modes in a number of ways. The fundamental notion of asynchronous communication is that it disregards time and place. Participants were flexible in terms of when and where they engaged in these sessions. Rather than viewing a live science expert presenter or videotape of a presentation, participants in this mode viewed a streamed video of the Live presentation. This was accomplished by digitizing the videotape of the original Live session in Macintosh Imovie.� The teachers interacted with each other through a discussion board within the framework of the Blackboard� course- management system. The participants had 1 week to view the streamed video and interact in the discussion room. These participants had a 2nd week to complete the postsession online survey. Research Design and Sample Teachers participating in the 3rd year of the project were randomly assigned to one of the three distance delivery modes in which they selected at least four science Elementary School Teacher Attitudes 259 123 topics from the six topics offered. The topics offered and the number of participants involved in those topics in their respective delivery mode is represented in Table 1. As each teacher participated in the succession of four or more topics within their assigned delivery mode, the measurement of the dependent variable (attitude toward delivery mode) was repeated. Participants included 7 males and 87 females. Teaching experience ranged from novice (32% taught for 5 years or less) to more seasoned (21.5% taught 20 or more years). However, most of the participants were in their first 10 years of teaching (56%). There was a substantial number of participants (74%) with little or no formal science education coursework on their college transcripts. Of the teachers in the study, 8% specialized in science or secondary science education, and 19.4% reported that they had some distance education experience in the Live mode. Instrumentation Washington State University developed an online data collection tool known as CTLSilhouette, 2 which is the software that carries the Flashlight Online 3 service. The instrument used in this study was a modification of CTLSilhouette and was designed to ascertain the teacher participants’ attitudes about the effectiveness of the mode of distance delivery for the science professional development in which they participated. This online instrument allows for anonymity and easy conversion to the statistical software used for analysis. Each participant in the study was assigned a unique login ID to ensure anonymity. The instrument probed individual attitudes toward the different components of their respective modes, using a four- point Likert-type format (with a ‘‘Not applicable’’ as a fifth choice; see Appendix). Reliability scores from the CTLSilhouette instrument were determined through double-blind ratings. The items in the database were greater than 90% reliable. The participants also completed a survey after each session to share data on their attitudes toward the technology and the perceived effectiveness of the professional development session. 4 Table 1 Participant breakout per topic and mode of delivery Topic 1 (Biotech- nology) Topic 2 (Space science) Topic 3 (Population variation) Topic 4 (Simple machines) Topic 5 (Rocks & fossils) Topic 6 (Weather) Live (31 participants) 6 30 16 31 30 27 Video (32 participants) 6 26 15 25 32 30 Web (31 participants) 6 26 14 27 29 28 2 http://www.ctlt.wsu.edu/CTLSilhouetteinfo.asp 3 http://flashlightonline.wsu.edu/ 4 This survey can be obtained from the authors. 260 L. Annetta, J. A. Shymansky 123 http://www.ctlt.wsu.edu/CTLSilhouetteinfo.asp http://flashlightonline.wsu.edu/ Data Analysis Responses to items on the postsession survey were subjected to a maximum likelihood factor analysis to identify the major scales within the data set. The extracted factors were subjected to varimax rotation, which maximized the variance of loadings within each factor. Results of the varimax rotation yielded the following factors: Factor 1: My knowledge was enhanced. Factor 2: Effective interactions occurred. Factor 3: Technical difficulties hampered my learning. Factor 4: The session built confidence in my science knowledge. Each factor was transformed into a z score (-1–+1) and treated as a dependent variable in a mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA), which was used to test the null hypothesis of no difference in attitudes toward learning science among teachers who participated in Live, Video, and Web instruction. Factors of mode of distance education and science background, represented by semester hours of science content taken during the Bachelor’s, Master’s or beyond-Master’s level, were fixed; t tests were used to examine differences in the means for effects of the fixed factors, mode, and science content experience on Factors 1–4. Results Factor analysis performed on the attitudinal scales from the postsession surveys provided evidence that at least three, but not more than four, factors are present in the battery of attitude items. Table 2 provides the significance test run on 366 observations. In the primary analysis, each factor score (expressed as z scores) was treated as the dependent (response) variable in a mixed-model analysis with fixed factors mode and teaching experience and with subject ID as a random factor. There was a significant difference in z scores for Factor 2 (p \ .001) as a function of mode of distance delivery. However, the other 3 factors proved statistically nonsignificant: Factor 1 (p = .17), Factor 3 (p = .28) and Factor 4 (p = .45). There were no significant z scores for factors 1, 3, and 4. There were also no significant differences in z scores for any factors as a function of teacher science background. A follow-up t test on the significant results for Factor 2 showed that teachers rated the Live mode significantly higher in effective interactions than both the Video and Web modes and the Video mode significantly higher than the Web mode as well (see Table 3). Table 2 Chi-square test for significance of attitudinal factors Test df V2 Probability H0: 4 Factors are sufficient 24 34.7097 [.0728 Elementary School Teacher Attitudes 261 123 Discussion Mode of delivery had a significant influence on Factor 2, effective interaction occurred. Sherry (1996) argued that successful distance education should not be an independent and isolated form of learning. On the other hand, Franklin, Yoakam, and Warren (1996) contended that introverted students who are too shy or lack the self-confidence to participate in the traditional classroom setting will potentially open up when provided the opportunity to interact via e-mail or in chat rooms. So, which perspective is most defensible, based on the results of this study? The Live group perceived much greater interaction than the Video and Web groups (see Fig. 1). If one accepts that oral communication is innately the most effective form of communication, live, collaborative interaction among learners will result in a sense of community that recognizes individual needs, strengths, peer support, and cognitive synergy (Cooper and Mueck 1990). In the Live and Video sessions, the participants had the opportunity to be part of a first-hand support group. The small-group, on-site discussions provided a chance for those who understood the presentation to share their insights with others in the group. Consequently, this gave the shy or the student who did not understand the material the opportunity to observe and ask questions of others at their own site without having to interact with the entire population. The Web group had the least effective communication, as nonverbal commu- nication through typing was the only avenue to communicate with others involved in the session. Asynchronous learning allows for more time flexibility, but this flexibility comes at a price. A deep, meaningful discussion online requires exceptional typing and grammatical skills to communicate effectively, and this is too time intensive for most people. This was seen as a major deterrent in the Web mode. The Web group spent an average of almost 11 hours online watching the streamed video and working in the discussion board, compared to the 2 hours that participants in the Live and Video groups spent on a given topic. The time delay in posted threads may not have given the participants the feeling that they were truly interacting. Perhaps it would have been more efficient if there had been a set time for a chat room, rather than asynchronous discussion. Perhaps a voice-simulated discussion board that transforms voice messages to text is the next technology that needs to be developed if Web instruction is to be the delivery mode of choice. Those who are not proficient at typing or those who would rather not type would then be able to express their thoughts and ideas orally, and others could see their work as written text. With the onset of higher bandwidth Internet connections, the possibility for web conferencing could add another possibility for rich, Table 3 Difference in least squares means on mode effect on perceived effectiveness of interactions Mode contrast Mean contrast Error df t Probability Lower Upper Live versus Video 0.84 .17 92.4 5.04 \.0001 0.51 1.18 Live versus Web 1.64 .17 62.8 9.51 \.0001 1.30 2.00 Video versus Web 0.8 .18 64.4 4.44 \.0001 0.44 1.15 262 L. Annetta, J. A. Shymansky 123 interactive synchronous instruction. Simply put, interaction between students and content is a critical component of learning—whether the instruction is campus- based or over distance education channels (Anderson 2002). In the teaching profession, where a lack of enough time is always the enemy, it is difficult to feel you are getting enough substance from a course when you are spending the majority of your time reading, typing, re-reading and re-typing. This is the essence of an online discussion, yet students in an asynchronous environment never received the cognitive closure that would have completed their learning. In the book Web-Teaching, Brooks (1997) predicted that students who are poor at self-regulation easily can be ‘‘slaughtered’’ in the WWW-based courses (p. 135). Mode of delivery did not significantly influence Factor 3 (perceived technical difficulties). This is noteworthy, since the use of technology invariably produces some difficulty for the user. Although some of the participants expressed difficulty hearing the science expert presenter and seeing the multimedia in all three modes, the majority did not find this to be a major deterrent on their professional development experience. These technical difficulties were minor and were easily circumvented by the science expert presenter’s e-mailing the notes, PowerPoint presentations, and so forth to the participants if participants expressed any problems seeing the presentation. This actually became a trend, as the participants asked for this information prior to each session so they would not have to endure not seeing the graphics during the sessions. It also allowed the participants to feel that they did not need to take copious notes during the sessions. Although the PowerPoint TM presentation was not provided before the session, invariably the participants received all of the information they requested after the session. Mode of delivery did not have a significant influence on Factor 4 (session built confidence in my science knowledge). Although it was assumed that elementary school teachers have traditionally held negative attitudes toward science (Skamp 1991; Yates and Goodrum 1990) due, in part, to a lack of content knowledge, most teachers expressed confidence about their science knowledge. An explanation for this 0.75 -0.09 -0.88 -1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1 Mode M e a n o f P e rc e iv e d E ff e c ti v e I n te ra c ti o n Live Video Web Fig. 1 Mode effect on the perception of effectiveness of interaction Elementary School Teacher Attitudes 263 123 might be that some of the participants were in their 3rd year of this professional development project, and they had gained significant science knowledge and confidence in their science teaching during that time. Furthermore, it was made very clear to each science expert presenter prior to their session that the audience generally lacked a strong science background and that the presentation should be prepared with that in mind. Since each of the three groups viewed the same presentation, it is no surprise that there was not a significant difference between the modes. Implications for Practice The results of this study provide answers to questions not addressed by those who have advocated for the departure of brick-and-mortar education and the arrival of cyber-based education. Although this study sheds light on elementary school teacher attitudes toward distance education for science professional development, the reality is that the adult participants in this study represent the age bracket of students who are enrolling in most postsecondary institutions today. There is a need to reach the masses for the purposes of professional development, and using distance education technologies just might be the vehicle. The results of a study released by Horizon Research (Fulp 2002) reported that almost three quarters of the science teachers in grades K–5 had 15 or fewer hours of science coursework. More than 75% of the sample reported a need for professional development to deepen their own science knowledge. Professional development that focuses on specific content— and how students can learn that content—provides opportunity for active learning and that is integrated into the teachers’ daily practices is more likely to produce enhanced knowledge and skills and, thus, will have a greater positive effect on student achievement outcomes (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, and Suk Yoon 2001). This is especially true for those in underserved, rural areas who are traditionally isolated from quality professional growth (Renyi 1996; Williams et al. 1995). Quality instruction in distance education, however, is another critical aspect of successful distance education. Too often instructors are not trained in effective use of the technologies available; and, thus, they do not design their lessons to take advantage of these technologies. In this study, it was deemed pertinent not to train the instructors so the results would be generalizable to the field. But teaching via distance technology is extremely time intensive if done properly. It would, therefore, not be unreasonable to suggest that each distance education course be considered a greater load (e.g., one and one-half courses) than that allocated for a traditional course. As Svetcov (2000) noted, we are at the beginning of some very exciting times. Schank (1994), a computer scientist at Northwestern University who runs an online learning service, perhaps summed up the future of distance education best: We are witnessing the dawn of a new era in education. In the beginning it will look a lot like what it is replacing, just as early movies were simply filmed plays. But like the movies, online education will evolve into something very different from what now exists. (http://www.cognitivearts.com) 264 L. Annetta, J. A. Shymansky 123 http://www.cognitivearts.com Appendix Postsession Survey 1. My gender: Male Female 2. The highest degree I’ve earned: Bachelor’s Bachelor’s + 15 Master’s/Equivalence Doctorate 3. My specialization in my BA/BS was: Elementary Education Science Secondary science education Other 4. I have _____ years of teaching experience. 0–5 6–10 11–15 16–20 21–25 26–30 Over 30 5. Tonight’s session was: Live, 2-way interactive with science expert presenter and other sites Taped, wrap-around video Asynchronous, Internet learning 6. Have you ever taken or are you currently taking a course that was asynchronous, Web- based with online discussion with other members? Yes No 7. Have you ever taken or are you currently taking a course that was videotaped with 2-way interactive with other members but not the science expert presenter? Yes No 8. Have you ever taken or are you currently taking a course that was live, 2-way interactive with the science expert presenter? Yes No Elementary School Teacher Attitudes 265 123 from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Strongly disagree Disagree Agree Strongly agree Not applicable 9. If there were technical difficulties, the session was negatively impacted. 10. Your knowledge of science content and/or pedagogy was greatly enhanced in this session. 11. You have discussed what you learned in this session with other teachers and/or administrators who did NOT participate in the session. 12. The amount of interaction during the session between science expert presenter and teacher and/or between teacher and teacher was sufficient. 13. The clarity of the instruction was good. 14. I feel comfortable asking questions to the science expert presenter. 15. I find the use of multimedia (PowerPoint, Internet, Video, etc.) to be helpful in learning the science concepts. 16. I find it difficult to see the monitor clearly. 17. I frequently find it difficult to hear the science expert presenter and questions asked from other sites. 18. The content covered in this session is relevant to my work. 19. Sufficient opportunity was provided for exchange of ideas during the session. 20. Having participated in this session I now feel more confident to teach a lesson in this content area. Rank the following in the order of preference. 1 being the highest preference and 4 being the lowest preference. I prefer: 1 2 3 4 21. Live, 2-way interactive with the science expert presenter and others in the session. 22. Videotaped presentations with wrap-around discussion. Based on your personal experiences in this session, indicate your responses below on the scale 23. Asynchronous, Web-based sessions. 24. Face-to-face, traditional sessions. Rank the following in the order of preference. 1 being the highest preference and 4 being the lowest preference. I learn more through: 1 2 3 4 25. Live, 2-way interactive with the science expert presenter and others in the session. 26. Videotaped presentations with wrap-around discussion. 27. Asynchronous, Web-based sessions. 28. Face-to-face, traditional sessions. 266 L. Annetta, J. A. Shymansky 123 References Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Anderson, T. (2002). An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. Retrieved March 20, 2003, from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper63/paper63.htm Annetta, L. A., & Shymansky, J. A. (2006). The effect three distance education strategies have on science learning for rural elementary school teachers in a professional development project. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43, 1019–1039. Brooks, D. (1997). Web teaching: A guide to interactive teaching for the World Wide Web. New York: Plenum Press. Cooper, J., & Mueck, R. (1990). 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Elementary School Teacher Attitudes 267 123 http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper63/paper63.htm http:\\www.horizon-research.com http://www.cognitivearts.com http://www.forbes.com/best/2000/0911/050.html http://www.forbes.com/best/2000/0911/050.html A Comparison of Rural Elementary School Teacher Attitudes Toward Three Modes of Distance Education for Science Professional Development Abstract Introduction and Purpose of the Study Literature Review Methods Setting of the Study Study Variables The Delivery Modes Research Design and Sample Instrumentation Data Analysis Results Discussion Implications for Practice Appendix References << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (None) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (ISO Coated v2 300% \050ECI\051) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true 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work_jtze4p554neirgrcf5riziopbq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_jus5qsadmva3hom6pqx7d2pizq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_jv3tmmi2gvdi3lugjtipc7h3g4	----	Microsoft Word - 3.doc ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. — 2016. — № 2. 68 2. Костікова І. І. Сучасні методологічні підходи професійної підготовки вчителя засобами інформаційно-комунікаційних технологій / І. І. Костікова // Педагогiка, психологiя та медико- бiологiчнi проблеми фiзичного виховання i спорту. – 2008. – № 8. – C. 79–83. 3. Ляска О. П. Основні моделі підготовки інженера-педагога в аграрному вузі / О. П. Ляска. [Електронний ресурс] – Режим доступу: http://sconference.org/publ/nauchno_prakticheskie_ konferencii/pedagogicheskie_nauki/teorija_i_metodika_professionalnogo_obrazovanija/12-1-0-208. 4. Лодатко Є. О. Моделювання педагогічних систем і процесів: монографія / Є. О. Лодатко. – Слов’янськ: СДПУ, 2010. – 148 с. 5. Лозовецька В. Т. Модель / В. Т. Лозовецька // Енциклопедія освіти; гол. ред. В. Т. Кремень. – К.: Юрінком Інтер, 2008. – 516 с. 6. Цырельчук Н. А. Инженерно-педагогическое образование как стратегический ресурс развития профессиональной школы: монография / Н. А. Цырельчук. – Минск: МГВРК, 2003. – 400 с. REFERENCES 1. Horbatyuk R. M., Kabak V. V. Pidhotovka maybutnikh inzheneriv-pedahohiv do profesiynoyi diyal'nosti zasobamy komp"yuternykh tekhnolohiy [Training future engineers-teachers to the profession by means of computer technology], Lutsk, VMA «Teren» Publ., 2015. 264 p. 2. Kostikova I. I. Suchasni metodolohichni pidkhody profesiynoyi pidhotovky vchytelya zasobamy informatsiyno-komunikatsiynykh tekhnolohiy [Modern methodological approaches to teacher training by means of information and communication technologies]. Pedahohika, psykholohiya ta medyko- biolohichni problemy fizychnoho vykhovannya i sportu, 2008, vol. 8., pp. 79–83. 3. Lyaska O. P. Osnovni modeli pidhotovky inzhenera-pedahoha v ahrarnomu vuzi [Basic models of teacher preparation engineer in the agricultural university]. Available at: http://sconference.org/publ/nauchno_prakticheskie_konferencii/pedagogicheskie_nauki/teorija _i_metodika_professionalnogo_obrazovanija/12-1-0-208 (accessed 30.11.2010). 4. Lodatko Ye. O. Modelyuvannya pedahohichnykh system i protsesiv [Modelling of educational systems and processes]. Slovyansk, «SDPU» Publ., 2010. 148 p. 5. Lozovets'ka V. T. Model' [Model]. Entsyklopediya osvity. Akademiya ped. nauk Ukrayiny. Yurinkom Inter, 2008, p. 516. 6. Cyrel'chuk N. A. Inzhenerno-pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie kak strategicheskij resurs razvitija professional'noj shkoly [Engineering-teachers education as a strategic resource for the development of vocational schools]. Minsk, «MGVRK» Publ., 2003. 400 p. УДК 378.147 Р. М. ГОРБАТЮК, Л. М. РОМАНИШИНА ЕКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНА МОДЕЛЬ ДИСТАНЦІЙНОГО НАВЧАННЯ МАЙБУТНІХ ФАХІВЦІВ У ВИЩОМУ НАВЧАЛЬНОМУ ЗАКЛАДІ Розглянуто застосування інформаційно-комунікаційних технологій у вищих навчальних закладах України. Запропоновано систему накопичення й обміну знаннями, яка складається з аудиторного фонду, лабораторій, семінарів, поширення досвіду, практичної інформації, науково - дослідного сектора, автоматизованого робочого місця, мережевих форумів і чатів, електронних ресурсів, інформаційного простору. Обґрунтовано модель дистанційного освітнього процесу, що базується на загальнотеоретичних засадах моделювання, відповідно до яких визначено її характеристики, як педагогічного об’єкта. Згідно з науково-педагогічними підходами модель є складною системою із структурними елементами, що включають цільову, змістову, функціональну, організаційну й оцінну підсистеми. Для визначення її ефективності проведено педагогічний експеримент за середнім рівнем засвоєння знань, часом на підготовку майбутнього фахівця з конкретної теми навчальної дисципліни, активністю студентів на заняттях. Ключові слова: інформаційний простір, дистанційне навчання, модель, система, структурні елементи, експеримент. ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. – 2016. – № 2. 69 Р. М. ГОРБАТЮК, Л. М. РОМАНИШИНА ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНАЯ МОДЕЛЬ ДИСТАНЦИОННОГО ОБУЧЕНИЯ БУДУЩИХ СПЕЦИАЛИСТОВ В ВЫСШЕМ УЧЕБНОМ ЗАВЕДЕНИИ Рассмотрено применение информационно-коммуникационных технологий в высших учебных заведениях Украины. Предложена система накопления и обмена знаниями, которая состоит из аудиторного фонда, лабораторий, семинаров, распространения опыта, практической информации, научно-исследовательского сектора, автоматизированного рабочего места, сетевых форумов и чатов, электронных ресурсов, информационного пространства. Обоснована модель дистанционного образовательного процесса, базирующаяся на общетеоретических принципах моделирования, согласно которым определены ее характеристики как педагогического объекта. В соответствии с научно-педагогическими подходами, модель является сложной системой со структурными элементами, которые включают целевую, содержательную, функциональную, организационную и оценочную подсистемы. Для определения ее эффективности проведен педагогический эксперимент по среднему уровню усвоения знаний, времени на подготовку будущего специалиста по конкретной теме учебной дисциплины, активностью студентов на занятиях. Ключевые слова: информационное пространство, дистанционное обучение, модель, система, структурные элементы, эксперимент. R. GORBATYUK, L. ROMANYSHYNA EXPERIMENTAL MODEL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION FUTURE EXPERTS IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS The paper deals with the use of information and communication technologies at higher educational institutions of Ukraine. Knowledge accumulation and sharing system, which consists of classroom fund, laboratories, workshops, exchange of experience, practical information, research sector, workstation, network forums and chat rooms, electronic resources, information space has been suggested. Distance education process model, based on the general theoretical principles of modeling, according to which the model’s characteristics are defined as a pedagogical object, has been substantiated. The model is a complex system of the structural elements, which include: aim, content , functional, organizational and evaluation subsystems. To assess its effectiveness a pedagogical experiment has been carried out on the average level of knowledge retention, time to prepare special ists in a particular subject’s content area, students’ participation in the cl assroom. Keywords: information space, distance learning, model, system, structural elements, experiment. В умовах глобалізації світових економічних процесів одним із пріоритетних підходів до організації навчального процесу у вищій школі є створення освітнього середовища, яке би сприяло розвитку творчої особистості, здатної вільно орієнтуватися в навколишньому інформаційному просторі. В сучасному світі все більшого значення набувають знання та інформація. відбувається стійке зростання інтересу різних (державних, комерційних, громадських тощо) організацій до проблем ефективного навчання та підвищення кваліфікації фахівців. Останнім часом широкого поширення набуває дистанційна форма навчання, яка частково заміняє заочну форму. З огляду на територіальні особливості України і зростаючі потреби якісної освіти в регіонах дистанційне навчання швидко розвивається і займає чільне місце в сфері освітньої діяльності. Напрям автоматизації освіти швидко розвивається. Розробляються нові програмні комплекси різних масштабів, що реалізують численні функціональні вимоги і використовують нові наукові і технологічні досягнення. Незважаючи на значну кількість доступних програмних засобів, існують проблеми, які виникають під час вибору і впровадження системи управління навчанням, зокрема: розрізненість та несумісність існуючих систем і навчальних матеріалів; жорсткі вимоги багатьох систем до технологічних та апаратних платформ щодо їх адаптованості і масштабності; складність підтримки, змін і розширення систем; проблеми ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. — 2016. — № 2. 70 інтеграції в загальному інформаційному просторі і технологічній інфраструктурі конкретного навчального закладу. Дослідженню особливостей становлення дистанційного навчання у вищій школі України приділяється значна увага. Проблемами забезпечення дистанційної професійної освіти займаються, зокрема, В. Биков, М. Михальченко, Л. Лещенко та інші науковці; можливості дистанційного навчання в українських ВНЗ розглядають у своїх працях Р. Гуревич, Т. Гусак, В. Олійник, П. Стефаненко та ін. Однак, аналіз стану проблеми реалізації дистанційного навчання у практику вищої школи показав, що поряд із певними досягненнями ця педагогічна проблема потребує подальшого дослідження. Метою статті є обґрунтування експериментальної моделі дистанційного навчання майбутніх фахівців у ВНЗ України. Сучасна дидактика базується на розвитку у студентів здібностей до пошуку, аналізу та систематизації інформації. У зв’язку з цим актуальною стає проблема навчання студентів якісно й ефективно використовувати інформацію, оскільки збільшується потреба в пошуку необхідних знань у потоці даних, що постійно зростають. За останні роки значного розвитку набуває дистанційна модель навчання з системою управління знаннями, яка включає: управління зовнішніми потоками інформації; навчання; обмін знаннями; структуризацію знань в навчальному закладі; спільну роботу в групах; управління взаємовідносинами з представниками інших освітніх систем тощо. В умовах широкого застосування інформаційно- комунікаційних технологій і зростаючого обсягу інформації для будь-якого ВНЗ важливо надати суб’єктам навчання доступ до систематизованої інформації, забезпечити збереження та систематизацію процесу отримання знань (опора на принцип наочності в роботі з інформацією), надійність зберігання даних, доступність для використання (простота управління), доступ до інформації з будь-якого місця [2, с. 63–64]. Головним недоліком чинної моделі освіти є те, що весь навчальний процес зводиться до заучування інформації, а не до розвитку вміння пошуку знань. Здебільшого ВНЗ стають конвеєром поширення інформації, а ті, хто вже її отримав, просто йдуть, нічого після себе не залишаючи. За такої ситуації втрачається значний запас знань, досвіду, який за час навчання набув студент, а це, відповідно, перешкоджає можливості подальшого навчання і розвитку особистості, розширенню горизонтів пізнання. Модель системи управління знаннями у ВНЗ представлено на рисунку 1. Рис. 1. Модель системи управління знаннями у ВНЗ. На перший погляд, представлена модель системи управління знаннями суб’єктів навчання є простою, однак ВНЗ неминуче зіткнеться з певними складнощами: перепідготовкою викладачів у рамках нової системи; розвитком здатності майбутніх фахівців думати, аналізувати, а не заучувати інформацію; формуванням потреби у викладачів і студентів обмінюватися знаннями, сприяючи збагаченню загального інформаційного простору навчального закладу; виробленням у педагогів і суб’єктів навчання творчого почину в контексті засвоєння нових знань на основі зібраної інформації і практичного досвіду. Сутність використання системи управління знаннями студентів полягає в збагаченні знань не тільки завдяки аналізу і структуризації теоретичного матеріалу, а й за рахунок обміну досвідом у Професорсько- викладацький склад Суб’єкти навчання Інформаційний простір обмін досвідом Знання ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. – 2016. – № 2. 71 сфері його практичного застосування. Кожен день студента – це лабораторний експеримент на перевірку теоретичних знань [3, c. 178]. Система управління знаннями дозволяє «оживити» процес навчання майбутніх фахівців, підвищити стійкість і мобільність їхніх знань. При цьому усувається проблема неактуальних знань, які стають баластом вищої школи. Дистанційна модель системи управління знаннями – це можливість взаємного безперервного збагачення суб’єктів навчального процесу новими знаннями. Пропонуємо систему накопичення й обміну знаннями у ВНЗ, яка складається з таких компонентів (рис. 2):  аудиторний фонд навчального закладу – інформація з аудиторій може надходити в загальний інформаційний простір у режимі on-line/off-line. Студент у режимі реального часу може перебувати в аудиторії разом з іншими студентами переглядаючи відео-, аудіо- , текстовий варіант лекцій;  лабораторії, семінари, обмін досвідом – більш складний елемент накопичення знань, пов’язаний з обміном інформацією, який може відбуватися всередині інтернет-мережі локально (конференція через skype, чати, форуми), на конференціях;  практична інформація, науково-дослідний сектор – найбільш важливий спосіб отримання практичних знань і перевірки теоретичних тверджень. Тут студенти є дослідниками і можуть ділитися своїми враженнями, поглядами, спостереженнями з іншими студентами або викладачами, відправляючи свої думки в загальний інформаційний простір навчального закладу;  автоматизоване робоче місце (АРМ) студента з виходом в Інтернет – особистий простір студента для відбору потрібної інформації і переведення її в розряд знань, а також для обміну досвідом і спілкування з викладачами;  мережеві форуми, чати – важливі дистанційні інструменти обміну знаннями і досвідом (комунікації в системі);  електронні ресурси – частина інформаційного простору, який спочатку наповнюють викладачі, відбираючи найбільш цікаві книги, публікації, статті для студентів. Вторинний етап накопичення інформації в бібліотеці пов’язаний зі створенням посилань всередині конкретної цифрової книги і внесенням нової літератури в інформаційний простір студентами;  інформаційний простір – елемент системи, що забезпечує її функціонування. Він є носієм загальної інформації і прикладних знань; крім цього, дозволяє простежити процес переродження інформації в цінний практичний досвід і навпаки. Рис. 2. Система накопичення та обміну знаннями у ВНЗ. Інформаційний простір ВНЗ Мережеві форуми, чати Практична інформація, науково-дослідний сектор АРМ студента Електронні ресурси Аудиторний фонд Лабораторії, семінари, обмін досвідом ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. — 2016. — № 2. 72 Впровадження системи накопичення та обміну знаннями не відкидає традиційну модель навчання студентів, а, навпаки, доповнює її цінним змістом. Інформаційний простір ВНЗ є загальним ресурсом для всіх складових системи, кожна з яких збагачує інформаційне поле відповідним ресурсом, завдяки чому інформація набуває фахового спрямування. Таким чином надається можливість управляти знаннями на відстані – дистанційно. При цьому набутий досвід не буде втрачено, він стане надбанням студентів, викладачів, усієї системи. Пропонований спосіб навчання характеризується мобільністю і видозмінюється за появи нових умов як всередині навчального закладу, так і в процесі виникнення чинників поза системою, які перебувають у полі сприйняття студентів і професорсько-викладацького складу. Розглянемо описову модель дистанційного навчання майбутніх фахівців, що базується на загальнотеоретичних засадах моделювання, відповідно до яких визначено її характеристики як педагогічного об’єкта: модель повинна включати такі компоненти, що безпосередньо впливають на якість навчального процесу; модель повинна мати структуру, яка легко діагностується і контролюється на всіх стадіях її реалізації; модель має забезпечувати не тільки контроль за освітнім процесом, а й можливість його коригувати [1, c. 292]. Згідно з науково-педагогічними підходами модель є складною системою із структурними елементами, що включають цільову, змістову, функціональну, організаційну й оцінну підсистеми. Цільова підсистема відображає мету освітнього процесу в рамках моделі дистанційного навчання майбутніх фахівців. Такою інтегральною метою є особистість кожного суб’єкта освітнього процесу вищої школи. Визначаючи мету, враховано, що будь-яка педагогічна модель – не самодостатній об’єкт, а потребує відповідного обґрунтування. У зв’язку з цим цільовий компонент моделі визначали за такими чинниками: соціальним замовленням на високу якість освіти та особистість, яка володіє затребуваними в сучасних умовах інтелектуальними якостями, що дозволяють їй здійснювати соціальну взаємодію (освітню комунікацію); суб’єктно-особистісними інформаційно-комунікативними потребами учасників (студентів) освітнього процесу. У контексті визначеної мети вирішуються взаємопов’язані завдання щодо формування і розвитку соціально зумовлених комунікативних якостей особистості та цілісної освітньої системи, здатної забезпечити соціальне замовлення та індивідуальні потреби студентів. Змістова підсистема реалізує визначену мету і включає мотиваційно-ціннісний, когнітивний, креативний, рефлексивно-діяльнісний компоненти. Оскільки дистанційне навчання передбачає освітню взаємодію, що базується «на основі програмування, алгоритмізації, стандартизації способів і прийомів навчання або виховання, з використанням комп’ютеризації та технічних засобів», потрібне цілеспрямоване структурування змісту освіти [3, c. 51]. Центральним елементом змісту дистанційної освіти є нормативні документи конкретної спеціальності (спеціалізації). Однак щоб зміст був повноцінно засвоєний студентами, вони мають оволодіти раціональними способами роботи в дистанційному режимі, причому не тільки з технологічної сторони, а й змістової, соціально-культурної та освітньої. Таким чином, у структуру змісту включено чотири аспекти: інформаційний, соціальний, культурологічний і загальноосвітній. Відповідно, всі навчально-методичні матеріали та посібники, що використовуються студентами, повинні містити, разом із програмними матеріалами дисциплін, відповідні вказівки і навчальні матеріали для оволодіння названими аспектами навчальної діяльності. Функціональна підсистема відображає функції моделі (ціннісно-змістову, когнітивну, стимулюючу, орієнтаційну, ідентифікації та персоніфікації, адаптаційну), які реалізують її зміст. Розкриваючи названі функції зазначимо, що вони співвідносяться з комунікативними якостями особистості і спрямовані значною мірою на їх розвиток: – ціннісно-змістова функція орієнтує педагогічну роботу зі студентами на створення позитивної мотивації до освітньої комунікації; – забезпечення умов для формування ціннісного базису відносин і взаємодії зі світом загалом, освоєння ціннісних орієнтирів діяльності; ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. – 2016. – № 2. 73 – когнітивна функція спрямована на формування міцних знань на основі розвитку когнітивних процесів (пам’яті, мислення, уваги тощо), забезпечення інформаційної бази розвитку освітнього процесу і в ньому – кожної особистості; – стимулююча функція забезпечує особистісну активність студентів в освітньому процесі, створення однакових умов комунікативної діяльності і самореалізації; – функція ідентифікації та персоніфікації спрямована на створення умов для ефективної соціалізації та здійснюється у вигляді соціального навчання студентів, що сприяє засвоєнню соціальних норм і правил культури спілкування в дистанційному режимі; – персоніфікація забезпечується умовами для індивідуальної (персональної) діяльності відповідно до власних особливостей (мислення, сприйняття, відображення світу тощо); – орієнтаційна функція спрямована на забезпечення безперервності розвитку освітнього процесу і кожного його учасника шляхом висунення нових орієнтирів розвитку, корекції поставлених цілей, вибудовування перспектив розвитку; – адаптаційна функція спрямована на активізацію механізмів фізичної, психічної і соціальної адаптації студентів до умов дистанційного навчання, здібності не тільки пристосовуватися, а й перетворювати інтелектуально-освітнє середовище за допомогою власної активної інформаційно-комунікативної діяльності. Організаційно-методична підсистема структурована сукупністю форм і методів педагогічної комунікації в дистанційній освіті, що забезпечують умови для розвитку освітнього процесу. Вони представлені проектними, інформаційними, соціально-діяльнісними формами, а також інформаційно-репродуктивними, інформаційно-комунікативними, проблемними, евристичними, проектно-дослідними методами. Оцінювальна підсистема включає критерії оцінки ефективності реалізації моделі дистанційного освітнього процесу у ВНЗ. Вона має багатокритеріальний характер і орієнтована на оцінку позиції та досягнень особистості студента як суб’єкта освітньої комунікації, а також стану системи дистанційного освітнього процесу. Безумовно, важливе значення при цьому мають форми і зміст вхідного, поточного і підсумкового контролю, що дозволяють управляти освітнім процесом, враховувати індивідуальні результати кожного студента в процесі планування і подальшої організації його навчання. Значну увагу приділяємо самоконтролю студентів за допомогою самотестування з використанням автоматизованих засобів і програмного забезпечення. Результатом впровадження моделі є системний розвиток ВНЗ зокрема, в реалізації інтелектуального і комунікативного потенціалів студентів, а також у формуванні їх соціальних якостей. Для оцінки ефективності моделі дистанційного навчання майбутніх фахівців проводився педагогічний експеримент у Тернопільському національному педагогічному університеті імені Володимира Гнатюка і Бердянському державному педагогічному університеті. До експерименту були залучені студенти спеціальності «Професійна освіта (комп’ютерні технології)». Експеримент проводився у два етапи. Його суть полягала в тому, що в експериментальних групах навчання проводилося з використанням засобів дистанційних технологій, а в контрольних групах навчання проводилося традиційними методами. Решта умов навчання, що впливають на засвоєння знань, формування вмінь і навичок студентів, були однаковими. Експериментальна навчальна група становила 29 студентів, а контрольна – 27. Оцінка ефективності підготовки фахівців із застосуванням технологій дистанційного навчання проводилася за такими показниками: середнійй рівень засвоєння знань; час на підготовку фахівця з конкретної теми навчальної дисципліни; активність студентів на заняттях. На першому етапі (II семестр 2014–2015 навчального року) проведено контрольний експеримент, в ході якого виявлено рівень сформованості знань, навичок і вмінь в різних навчальних групах з дисципліни «Інженерна та комп’ютерна графіка». На рівні першого етапу експерименту між експериментальною і контрольною групами статистично значущих відмінностей немає (табл. 1). Таблиця 1 ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. — 2016. — № 2. 74 Різниця за показником середнього балу між експериментальною і контрольною групами Отримані оцінки Групи Кількість студентів Середній бал Середнє квадратичне відхилення Експериментальна 29 7 4,0 0,41 Контрольна 27 5 3,8 0,45 На підставі даних, отриманих в ході першого етапу експерименту, виявлено, що відмінність за середнім балом і середнім квадратичним відхиленням має незначний характер. Ця обставина дала підстави для переходу до другого етапу. Другий етап експерименту проводився в I семестрі 2015–2016 навчального року. Суть експерименту полягала в тому, що за загальною програмою дослідження проводилися заняття в експериментальній та контрольній групах. Однаковими умовами експерименту були: цілі і завдання підготовки майбутніх фахівців з навчальної дисципліни «Інженерна та комп’ютерна графіка»; контроль за підготовкою студентів, що проводився з однакових тем програми; створення однакових умов під час виконання залікових і контрольних заходів для об’єктивного порівняння існуючої і пропонованої методик. Різниця у навчальному процесі підготовки майбутніх фахівців спеціальності «Професійна освіта (комп’ютерні технології)» полягала в тому, що в контрольній групі використовувалися традиційні методи навчання та екзамен, а в експериментальній групі застосовано методику персоналізації освіти на основі технологій дистанційного навчання. Під час апробації експериментальної методики навчання проведено оцінку за такими критеріями: – середній бал в групі – X; – середнє відхилення в групі – S. У процесі педагогічного експерименту отримано наступні дані: XK = 3,78; SK = 0,128; XЕ = 4,24; SЕ = 0,120. За χ2-критерієм між результатами контрольної та експериментальної груп є статистично значущі відмінності за рівнем значущості 0,05. Ефективність застосування експериментальної методики з використанням технологій дистанційного навчання за критерієм рівня знань визначали за формулами: , , де KБ – коефіцієнт ефективності за середнім балом; KP – коефіцієнт ефективності за середньоквадратичним відхиленням. Підставляючи у формули числові значення, отримуємо: KБ = 1,12; KP = 0,94. З огляду на це вважаємо, що застосування експериментальної методики з використанням технологій дистанційного навчання на 12 % збільшує рівень знань студентів і на 0,06 % зменшує діапазон оцінок від середнього бала. Для оцінки міцності отриманих знань у другому семестрі 2015–2016 навчального року під час екзаменаційної сесії було проведено повторний іспит одночасно в обох групах. Знання студентів оцінювалися за середнім балом і середнім рівнем залишкових знань в експериментальній і контрольній групах. Середній бал в групах: = 4,06; = 3,53. Ефективність застосування експериментальної методики з використанням технологій дистанційного навчання за критерієм міцності знань визначали за формулою: де Kмц – коефіцієнт міцності знань. ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ І ТЕХНІЧНІЙ ОСВІТІ Наукові записки. Серія: педагогіка. – 2016. – № 2. 75 Отже, студенти експериментальної групи мають міцніші знання (коефіцієнт міцності знань більший в 1,72 разу) порівнюючи зі студентами контрольною групи. Запропонована модель більш чутливо реагує на реальні потреби суспільства, оскільки педагог в ній виконує допоміжну функцію керівника, а не основного носія інформації, від якого вимагається сучасний стиль управління, нова особистісна позиція, формування нового типу аналітичного і критичного мислення, стилю комунікативної та інтелектуальної діяльності, нового напряму на спільну діяльність, спільної побудови проектів і програм, які забезпечують функціонування та взаємозв’язок усіх компонентів системи освітнього процесу. За таких умов майбутні фахівці повною мірою розвивають навички самостійної дослідницької діяльності, вміють спілкуватися і працювати в команді. Впровадження експериментальної методики з використанням технологій дистанційного навчання дозволило збільшити коефіцієнт міцності знань студентів в 1,72 разу. З огляду на це дистанційна форма навчання в Україні має бути визначена як один з інструментів, що забезпечує інноваційний підхід до освітньої діяльності, з урахуванням профільних особливостей конкретного ВНЗ. Для ефективного використання зазначених технологій необхідно визначити цільову аудиторію, а також перелік навчальних дисциплін, які можуть бути ефективно реалізовані. Перспективами подальших розвідок буде більш поглиблена реалізація експериментальної методики з використанням технологій дистанційного навчання в процесі вивчення дисциплін професійної і практичної підготовки. ЛІТЕРАТУРА 1. Горбатюк Р. М. Структурно-функціональна модель технології формування педагогічної фасилітації майбутніх інженерів-педагогів / Р. М. Горбатюк // Сучасні інформаційні технології та інноваційні методики навчання у підготовці фахівців: методологія, теорія, досвід, проблеми: збірник наукових праць. Вип. 44. – Київ; Вінниця: ТОВ фірма «Планер», 2016. – С. 290–294. 2. Гуревич Р. С. Інформаційно-комунікаційні технології в професійній освіті майбутніх фахівців / Р. С. Гуревич, М. Ю. Кадемія, М. М. Козяр. – Львів: ЛДУ БЖД, 2012. – 380 с. 3. Стефаненко П. В. Дистанційне навчання у вищій школі: монографія / П. В. Стефаненко. – Донецьк: ДонНТУ, 2002. – 400 с. REFERENCES 1. Horbatiuk R. M. Strukturno-funktsionalna model tekhnolohii formuvannia pedahohichnoi fasylitatsii maibutnikh inzheneriv-pedahohiv [Structural and functional model of formation of educational facilitation of future engineer teachers], Suchasni informatsiini tekhnolohii ta innovatsiini metodyky navchannia u pidhotovtsi fakhivtsiv: metodolohiia, teoriia, dosvid, problemy: zbirnyk naukovykh prats. Vol. 44. Kyiv, Vinnytsia: TOV firma «Planer», 2016, pp. 290–294. 2. Hurevych R. S. Informatsiyno-komunikatsiini tekhnolohii v profesiynii osviti maibutnikh fakhivtsiv [Information and communication technologies in the professional education of future professionals], Lviv: LDU BZhD, 2012. 380 p. 3. Stefanenko P. V. Dystantsiine navchannia u vyshchiy shkoli: monohrafiia [Distance learning in higher education: a monograph], P. V. Stefanenko. Donetsk, DonNTU, 2002. 400 p. УДК 378.004 О. В. СОКОЛЮК ФОРМУВАННЯ ЗДОРОВ’ЯЗБЕРІГАЮЧОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ ВИКЛАДАЧІВ ВИЩИХ НАВЧАЛЬНИХ ЗАКЛАДІВ ЗАСОБАМИ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНО-КОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ Представлено теоретичне обґрунтування процесу формування здоров’язберігаючої компетентності викладачів вищих навчальних закладів засобами інформаційно-комунікаційних технологій як необхідної умови якісної підготовки майбутнього фахівця. Визначено поняття 
work_jvwnogyo7jetpezarmffa7adry	----	628 Journal of Power Electronics, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2010 JPE 10-6-7 Distance Education in Soft-Switching Inverters Dan Lascu†, Pavol Bauer∗, Mircea Băbăiţă∗∗, Mihaela Lascu∗, Viorel Popescu∗, Adrian Popovici∗, and Dan Negoiţescu∗ †∗ Dept. of Applied Electronics, Politehnica University Timişoara, Romania ∗∗ Dept. of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Abstract The paper describes aspects regarding an E-learning approach of resonant ac inverters. The learning process is based on “Learning by Doing” paradigm supported by several learning tools: electronic course materials, interactive simulation, laboratory plants and real experiments accessed by Web Publishing Tools under LabVIEW. Built on LabVIEW and accompanied by a robust, flexible and versatile hardware, the experiment allows a comprehensive study by remote controlling and performing real measurements on the inverters. The study is offered in a gradual manner, according to the Leonardo da Vinci project EDIPE (E-learning Distance Interactive Practical Education) philosophy: theoretical aspects followed by simulations, while in the end the real experiments are investigated. Studying and experimenting access is opened for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week under the Moodle booking system. Key Words: Engineering education, Remote controlled experiments, Internet-based distance measurement, Courseware, Resonant inverters. I. INTRODUCTION The rapid changes in society and technology have also generated a demand for more flexible engineers having more qualifications than just a high level of technical or scientific specialization. Distance learning has been promoted across the entire education sector due to the increasing number of people that educate themselves as part of their professional development. The drawback of a pure theoretical approach in a curriculum is that less attention is paid to the phenomena looming around laboratory experiments and real components. The results of this, corroborated with the rapid development of computer simulations, were that hands-on laboratory experi- ence was vanishing and that computer simulations gained more and more attention. However, it is of crucial importance for the student to gain practical experience. Physical experiments help the students in practical testing and allow them to see the influence of second and higher order effects or parasitics that are often difficult to simulate as in reality. Hence it is of great importance to make the student familiar with the real world experience. Although classical hands-on laboratories are very useful, they may have limitations regarding space, time and staff costs. These problems can be significantly alleviated by using remote experiments and remote laboratories, when the students operate with real systems, although they are not present in the laboratory. For engineering related distance ed- ucation the use of a web-based delivery mechanism is the only Manuscript received May 3, 2010; revised Aug. 19, 2010 † Corresponding Author: dan.lascu@etc.pt.ro Tel: +40-256-403343, Fax: +40-256-403295 ∗ Dept. of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands ∗∗ Dept. of Applied Electronics, Politehnica University Romania realistic method for providing hands-on experience, allowing remotely located students to complete laboratory assignments unconstrained by time or geographical considerations. They can change parameters, perform experiments, observe results in graphical or numerical form and download them [1], [2]. Modern education shifts emphasis from teaching to learning, assuming that knowledge is not transferred, but the learner himself constructs knowledge on the basis of prior knowledge and additionally acquired information. While in the teaching- oriented approach the student is rather passive, in the vision of learning-oriented the student plays an active role, constructing knowledge on the basis of prior knowledge and additionally acquired information, with teaching as a facilitating precondi- tion. This approach is referred to as constructivism and neo- constructivism [3], [4]. In this spirit, in order for the “Learning by doing” or “Learning by experimenting” approaches to be successful, clear learning objectives have to be formulated. The course module “Resonant AC Circuits” presented in the paper is integrated in the Leonardo da Vinci EDIPE program framework. It is dedicated to bachelor students, particularly to the students in Politehnica Univesity Timişoara enrolled in Telecommunications Systems and Technologies studies but also to anyone interested in understanding resonant inverters operation. II. LEONARDO DA VINCI PROJECT AND ITS PHILOSOPHY The Leonardo da Vinci project EDIPE was approved to create a full set of distance experiments called PEMCWebLab in an integrated learning platform, providing the user with a practical experience in Power Electronics and Electrical Drives Distance Education in Soft-Switching Inverters 629 Fig. 1. Structure of the distance laboratory for E-learning. practical teaching of resonant inverters. Fig. 2. The booking window education. The participants are twelve universities with the span across the EU. The results were: • Elaboration of clear learning objectives for distance ex- perimental education, • Guidelines for project oriented measurements, • Synthesis oriented experimental work, • Technology and technical documentation for distance practical education and measurements via Internet, • Different experiments, each with its own specificity. The learning issues addressed in the PEMCWebLab inte- grated learning platform are: • Learning objectives; • Education; • Animation and Simulation; • Experiment. The order of these issues is important. For safety reasons no student will be allowed to perform any experiment until he or she has proofed adequate knowledge regarding the requested experiment. First the learning objectives are defined, while a theoretical background of each individual experiment is given in part Education. For the “Resonant AC Circuits” module the learning objectives are summarized below: 1. Prerequisites: Minimum knowledge on sinusoidal circuits analysis, including phasors. Elementary transfer functions calculation and interpretation. Fig. 3. Hardware architecture of the “Resonant AC Circuits” module. 2. Series resonant inverter (SRC) behavior. Resonant fre- quency, characteristic impedance and quality factor def- initions and significance. 3. Understanding switch implementation in a SRC loaded bridge topology. Applying and handling with sinusoidal approximations in high quality factor resonant circuits. Elementary zero current and zero voltage switching phe- nomenon understanding. 4. LCC resonant inverter behavior. Resonant frequency, and quality factor definitions and significance. Open circuit output voltage and short circuit current values. Elliptical nature of the output characteristic of a resonant circuit. 5. Other resonant inverters: parallel resonant inverter (PRC), LLC inverter and dual of the SRC. Interactive animation and/or Simulation are the steps pre- ceding the real Experiment. After completion of the real experiment the students are given a questionnaire and they have to submit their report for the final evaluation. All learning procedures are recorded for future reference and analysis. Studying and experimenting access is opened for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. III. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION Each experiment has its own server because it is located in a different location, as Fig.1 shows. Remote users first log onto a main booking server, located at the University of Maribor, after which they will be directed to the specific server for actually performing the experiment into a separate individual page. The booking system is based on the Moodle course management system [5]. In addition to the original booking system, some modifications have been made [6], enabling easy booking creation for those remote experiments that were developed under the LabVIEW Web Publishing Tools. The layout of Moodle pages for all experiments is uniform. The Moodle window for booking the experiment is presented in 630 Journal of Power Electronics, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2010 Fig. 4. The Switching Board Interface block diagram. Fig. 2. The users are divided in two groups: authorized users and guests. Only authorized users can control the experiment. The guests can only observe measured values and waveforms but they have no control of any part of the system. The local server uses LabVIEW [7] for controlling the experiment. The Web Publishing Tools that come with Lab- VIEW are used both for interfacing and remote controlling the experiment, namely to choose the converter type, select the desired waveforms and perform different measurements. The proposed hardware solution depicted in Fig. 3 is based on a so called “Power Board” manufactured in Politehnica University Timişoara that offers good modularity and simple connectivity. The PCI-MIO-16E-1 DAQ card together with the SCB-68 shielded I/O connector block for DAQ devices are used for acquisition and measurements. The Switching Board Interface (SBI) is controlled from LabVIEW and its purpose is for configuring the desired inverter topology and to select the signals for data acquisition. Its block diagram is presented in Fig. 4. It contains a 32 bit shift register, each output being buffered in order to be able to switch on and off a relay matrix. As the NI PCI-MIO-16E-1 acquisition board is used, the three inputs I1, I2 and I3 in the register area are connected to the digital outputs O1, O2 and O3 of the acquisition board respectively. The registers are 8-bit serial-in parallel-out D-type SN74HC594 [8] shift registers. The storage clock SRCLK of each register is connected to digital output O1 of the acquisition board, while output O2 is connected to each shift register clock RCLK input. Both clocks are positive edge triggered. Serial input data is provided by the digital output O3. The parallel outputs of the registers form a 32-bit word, each bit addressing a relay in the relay matrix. For buffering purposes, four ULN2804 high-voltage high- current Darlington arrays are used, allowing up to 500mA for driving the inductor coil of the relay. The relays play a double role: they contribute in the configuration of the desired inverter topology while other relays provide the signals of interest to the acquisition board as the number of analog inputs is limited. In order to ensure safe operation, the order the relays are switched is important, namely the configuration is settled without connecting the power supply. Only after that the power supply is connected. When finishing an experiment the power supply is disconnected first, then the rest of the power circuit and measured signals. IV. DESCRIPTION OF THE LEARNING PROCESS LabVIEW main program operates according to the flow chart depicted in Fig. 5. Functionally, it consists of two main WHILE loops: one for selecting the experiment from the list and one for performing measurements when an experiment is activated. In both loops, for security reasons, the program monitors the user’s connection state such that if the remote panel window is left without normally exiting the program, the experiment is automatically closed and a warning message is displayed. Otherwise, the experiment would remain perma- nently connected, which could be dangerous for the power circuit. All LabVIEW classical buttons are disabled except for the START button, such that only the program buttons are available for the user. This allows that as long as the power circuit configuration is in establishment or the program is switching from one experiment to another, no control is available for the user, again for safety reasons. Simulations are performed before any experiment in order to understand the basic operating principles of the resonant converter under study. The component values are the same as those that will be used later for breadboard. Simulations are performed using the Caspoc package [9]. The user friendly interface allows one to build and change the power circuit using drag and drop procedures. Another interesting feature of Caspoc is the animation capability which is extremely useful in switching circuits, as it reveals the on and off devices at a certain time moment and the currents paths as well. Of course, the simulated waveforms are obtained without parasitic elements or measurement noise, which is quite an advantage as it offers the possibility to compare them to the real ones and notice the differences. For example, the simulation results for Distance Education in Soft-Switching Inverters 631 Fig. 5. Flow Chart of the main LabVIEW program. the LCC resonant inverter below resonance are depicted in Fig. 6. State plane trajectories are also possible. The hard turn on and soft (zero-current) turn off transitions of the transistors are obvious. The student will have to decide whether it is possible to replace the transistors with naturally-commutated thyristors and to justify the answer. From the simulation results it is also clear that diode turn-off transition is not lossless. This is a good starting point to put the student to anticipate what will happen when real diodes will be used. Then he or she will be asked to provide a solution to assist the transistors turn on process and finally the small inductors introduced into the legs of the bridge will be the expected answer. Each of these will be verified by simulation, which is very simple as they imply minor modifications of the circuit. Corresponding to the two mail WHILE loops in the main program two panels are handled by the user. When entering the experiment the Selection Front Panel (SFP) is displayed. It is a simple panel where the user only selects the desired topology for investigation: series resonant inverter (SRC), LCC inverter, parallel inverter (PRC), LLC inverter or the dual of the series Fig. 6. Simulated waveforms in the LCC resonant inverter: resonant current, transister current and transistor corresponding freewheel diode, this up to down order. inverter. An example of SFP is presented in Fig. 7 for the LCC inverter. The panel dedicated for measurements, visualizing waveforms and for changing parameters is the Measurement Front Panel (MFP). For the LCC resonant converter the MFP is shown in Fig. 8. In the main program each experiment is assigned its own DAQ Assistant. This individualization is necessary because each experiment has its specific signals set required to be analyzed. Any signal from the list can be displayed with a selectable gain and analyzed separately or together with any other signal or removed from the displayed signal list. As two or more signals can be displayed in a scope, phase shift between them can be revealed which is important in studying zero voltage or zero current switching. Acquisition can be frozen any time thus facilitating to perform measurements on the displayed waveforms using cursors. The user can measure time, dc, amplitude or rms of harmonics, overall rms, phase shift and total harmonic distortion (THD). The spectrum is also available in the dedicated spectrum analyzer. 632 Journal of Power Electronics, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2010 Fig. 7. Selection front paid As resonant inverters operation strongly depends on the switching frequency that is the main control parameter, the switching frequency can be adjusted from the MFP with some upper and lower default limits for safety reasons. In each experiment the equivalent quality factor is estimated and the student is asked to draw a conclusion in what circum- stances the sinusoidal approximation [10] is valid and how the real measurements match or not with the results provided by the sinusoidal approximation. Emphasis is devoted also to device stresses such as peak resonant currents and peak resonant voltages. For the LCC and LLC inverters the other important frequencies such fm and f∞ that result from the Bode diagrams [10] are put in evidence. As an example, the same LCC inverter simulated in Fig. 6 is practically investigated. The waveforms are those in Fig. 8 when the switching frequency is chosen to be 4 kHz. Soft zero current switching turn off can be observed. Compared to the simulation, it can be seen that the hard turn on transistor, similar to PWM, is accompanied by high current spikes. The high current spikes are due to the freewheel diode in antiparallel with the transistor in the same leg, corroborated with the energy stored in the drain-to-source capacitances and in the depletion layer capacitance of diodes, that is also lost when the transistor turns on. This is a typical phenomenon when the LCC converter is operated below resonance. Figure 9 presents the same converter when operated at 7kHz, that is above resonance. It is obvious that soft zero voltage switching turn on is achieved since the transistors conduct after their respective antiparallel diodes. On the other side, it can be seen that transistor turn off transitions are not lossless as neither the transistor current nor the transistor voltage is zero. Different other tasks have to be performed by the students, such as operation above resonance, operation at fm and f∞, in each situation examining the soft switching condition. Then, for a fixed switching frequency, the student will be asked to measure the amplitude of output voltage and current fundamentals, in open circuit, short circuit and for different resistive loads. Finally he has to come out to the elliptical nature of the output characteristic. V. CONCLUSIONS The PEMCWebLab was conceived as a complete educa- tional solution in the field of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives. The “Resonant AC Circuits” module described in the paper offers five types of resonant inverters to be studied. The simulation and animation before any experiment help the student to understand the basic operation principles of these topologies. Although simulation is useful, the real distance experiments allow the user to see the differences between ideal and real waveforms affected by nonidealities and parasitics. The students can both visualize the main waveforms and to perform a lot of measurements on the acquired signals. In Politehnica University Timişoara a Distance Learning Cen- trum (see http://www.csid.upt.ro/) exists where students from different companies of electronic profile do their studies in electronics. We also carried out an investigation focused on students’ opinions and views about this modern teaching tool and how they perceive the E-learning concept. They were asked to fill in a questionnaire in which an evaluation of the remote laboratory was performed. Their opinions were favourable and they really got it as an educational benefit. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work has been performed within the project ”Elearn- ing Distance Interactive Practical Education (EDIPE)”. The project was supported by the European Community within framework of Leonardo da Vinci II programme (project No CZ/06/B/F/PP-168022). The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Com- munity, nor does it involve any responsibility on its part. Distance Education in Soft-Switching Inverters 633 Fig. 8. Measurement front panel – LCC resonant converter experiment, fS = 4kHz. Fig. 9. Measurement front panel – LCC resonant converter experiment fS = 7kHz 634 Journal of Power Electronics, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2010 REFERENCES [1] P. Bauer, J. Dudak, D. Maga, V. Hajek, “Distance practical education for power electronics,” International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 23, Issue 6, pp. 1210-1218, 2007. [2] P. Bauer, V. Fedak, V. Hajek, “Survey of distance laboratories in power electronics,” 39th IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference (PESC 08) Records, Vol. 1-10, pp. 430-436, Jun. 2008. [3] O. Rompelman and E. de Graaff, “The engineering of engineering education: curriculum development from a designer’s point of View,” European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 31, No 2, pp 215- 226, 2006. [4] D. H. Jonassen, K.L. Peck and B.G. Wilson, Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective, pp. 2-18, 1999. [5] Moodle - www.moodle.org [6] D. Hercog, B. Villaca, B. Gergič and M. Terbuc, “Moodle booking system for remote experiments,” Proc. Int. Symp. Remote Eng. Virtual Instrumentation, pp. 1-8, 2006. [7] National Instruments, LabVIEW Measurements Manual, 2007. [8] Texas Instruments - www.ti.com, Apr. 11th, 210. [9] Caspoc, Simulation Research - User Manual - http://www.simulation- research.com, Apr. 11th, 2010. [10] R. W. Erickson, D. Maksimović, Fundamentals of Power Electronics – second edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. [11] S. Ang, A. Oliva, Power-Switching Converters, Second Edition, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2005. Dan Lascu was born in Timişoara, Romania, on June 30, 1961. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering and the PhD. degree in electron- ics from Politehnica University Timişoara, Romania. Since 1990 he has been with the Politehnica University Timişoara, Applied Electronics Department, and since 2007 he has been a full professor in the Power Electron- ics Group. His current research is in the field of switch- ing converter synthesis, converter modelling, converter simulation, active power factor correction and soft-switching techniques. Dr. Lascu is a member of the Romanian Electronics Engineer Association (AIE) and IEEE member. Pavol Bauer received his Masters in Electrical Engi- neering at the Technical University of Kosice (‘85) and Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology (’95). Since 1990 he is with the Delft University of Technology, currently as an Associate Professor at the Dept. of. Electrical Power Processing. He has published over 210 journal papers and papers at the international conferences in his field, holds an international patent and organized several tutorials. He is teaching Power Electronics, Electrical Drives and related subjects. Dr. Bauer is a senior member of the IEEE member of EPE and also member of international steering and scientific committees of numerous international conferences. Mircea Băbăiţă was born in Orastie, Hunedoara, Ro- mania on July 18, 1964. He received the degree in electrical engineering from the Politehnica University of Timişoara in 1989. Since 1991 he has been with the Politehnica University Timişoara, Faculty of Elec- tronics and Telecommunications, Applied Electronics Department. He had 6 weeks scholarship at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland – 2000, 2 weeks scholarship at Uninersity of Mannheim, Germany – 2002. He has published more than 50 technical papers, 6 books and 20 grants in the field of digital logic, motor drives and power electronics. M. Băbăiţă is a member of the Romanian Electronics Engineer Association (AIE) and a member of the Romanian Robotics Engineer Association (AIR). Mihaela Lascu was born in Timişoara, Romania, on May 7, 1962. She received the degree in electrical engi- neering from the Politehnica University of Timişoara in 1986 and the PhD. degree in electromagnetic compat- ibility and measurement techniques in 1998. Now she is associate professor with the University of Timişoara. Her current research is the field of graphical program- ming, biomedical signal processing and numerical tech- niques applied in electromagnetic compatibility. Dr. M. Lascu is a member of the Romanian Electronics Engineer Association (AIE). and a member of the Romanian Association of Electromagnetic Compatibility (ACER). Viorel Popescu was born in Hitiaş, Romania, on April 15, 1947. He received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in computer engi- neering from Politehnica University Timişoara in 1969 and 1981 respectively. Since 1970 he has been coped in the Power Research Team at the Electronics and Telecommunications Faculty from Politehnica Univer- sity Timişoara, where he is currently a full professor of Power electronics since 1993. He has published more than 100 technical papers and 7 books in the field of switched-mode power supplies, monitoring, control and diagnostics of drives and robotics. His currently research interests include harmonic pollution produced by electronic power systems, PWM techniques for power converters, active power filters and intelligent control of power electronics equipment. Prof. V. Popescu is a member of Romanian Electronics Engineer Association (AIE) and IEEE member. Adrian Popovici was born in Timişoara, Romania on February 5 1964. He received the B.S. and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Politehnica University of Timişoara in 1989 and 2004 respectively. Since 1991 he has been with Politehnica University Timişoara, Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications, Ap- plied Electronics Department. His research interest is in matrix converters, low power systems and materials for electronics. Dan Negoiţescu was born in Timişoara in 1966. He received the B.S. and PhD degrees from Politehnica University of Timişoara in. 1992 and 2005 respec- tively. Since 1994 he is with Politehnica University of Timişoara presently being an associate professor in the Power Electronics Group. His main research concerns active power filters, switched-mode power supplies and modern control in power electronics 
work_jwysj2gl4fhnfmsni6d5mju4dq	----	Author template for journal articles Developing government policies for distance education: lessons learnt from two Sri Lankan case studies Article Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A., Rassool, N. and Williams, S. A. (2014) Developing government policies for distance education: lessons learnt from two Sri Lankan case studies. International Review of Education, 60 (6). pp. 821- 839. ISSN 1573-0638 doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-014- 9442-0 Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/37267/ It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work. See Guidance on citing . To link to this article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11159-014-9442-0 Publisher: Springer Publisher statement: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11159-014-9442-0 All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/71187/10/CentAUR%20citing%20guide.pdf copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement . www.reading.ac.uk/centaur CentAUR Central Archive at the University of Reading Reading’s research outputs online http://www.reading.ac.uk/centaur http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/licence 1 Developing government policies for distance education: Lessons learnt from two Sri Lankan case studies Tharindu Rekha Liyanagunawardena  Andrew A. Adams  Naz Rassool  Shirley A. Williams Abstract Education, especially higher education, is considered vital for maintaining national and individual competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. Following the introduction of its “Free Education Policy” as early as 1947, Sri Lanka is now the best performer in basic education in the South Asian region, with a remarkable record in terms of high literacy rates and the achievement of universal primary education. However, access to tertiary education is a bottleneck, due to an acute shortage of university places. In an attempt to address this problem, the government of Sri Lanka has invested heavily in information and communications technologies (ICTs) for distance education. Although this has resulted in some improvement, the authors of this article identify several barriers which are still impeding successful participation for the majority of Sri Lankans wanting to study at tertiary level. These impediments include the lack of infrastructure/resources, low English language proficiency, weak digital literacy, poor quality of materials and insufficient provision of student support. In the hope that future implementations of ICT- enabled education programmes can avoid repeating the mistakes identified by their research in this Sri Lankan case, the authors conclude their paper with a list of suggested policy options. Keywords distance education; e-learning; developing countries; policy perspective, Sri Lanka Résumé ((The French translation of the edited version of the abstract will be added here later)) School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AY, UK e-mail: t.r.liyanagunawardena@reading.ac.uk A. A. Adams Centre for Business Information Ethics, Meiji University, 1-1, Kanda Surugadai, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101- 8301, Japan e-mail: aaa@meiji.ac.jp N. Rassool Institute of Education, University of Reading, London Road Campus, 4 Redlands Road, Reading RG1 5EX, UK e-mail: n.rassool@reading.ac.uk S. A. Williams School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AY, UK e-mail: shirley.williams@reading.ac.uk mailto:t.r.liyanagunawardena@reading.ac.uk mailto:aaa@meiji.ac.jp mailto:n.rassool@reading.ac.uk mailto:shirley.williams@reading.ac.uk 2 Introduction Our contemporary world is experiencing an unprecedented pace of change. Much of this acceleration has been fuelled by the advance of technologies, globalisation, the growth of the knowledge economy and increasing global market competition. Within this context, knowledge has become a commodity within the international labour market and “economic advantage will accrue to countries in which the population acquires competence in processing information into knowledge and applying it in work and everyday life” (UNESCO 2002, p. 17). The redefined workplace requires new ways of working, relying to a significant extent on high skills and expert knowledge (Brown et al. 2001; Rassool 1999). In industrialised economies, both repetitive manual labour and simple information-processing tasks have either been automated or outsourced to developing economies (Klein 2002). Within this context, “knowledge workers” (Drucker 1970) have gained significance as a major source of labour. As knowledge has become an increasingly important factor, education, especially at higher levels, is considered vital for maintaining national and individual competitiveness. Furthermore, due to the rapid rate of knowledge creation, and more importantly, its short shelf-life in this new economy, there is a growing need for continuous skills updating and lifelong learning. The global market created for higher education by the ratification of education as a tradeable service in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 1 has resulted in many private sector providers entering the higher education sector. Governments, especially in developing countries which had not previously allowed private providers to participate in the higher education sector have had little choice but to change their policies as they found themselves unable to afford the investment needed to create an adequate state higher education infrastructure to support the new educational market demands. The World Bank, which previously emphasised basic education and provided only ad-hoc support for tertiary educational development, is now actively promoting the 1 Created by the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the purpose of removing legal obstacles to services trade, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), sometimes also referred to as the Uruguay Round Agreement, came into force in 1995 (WTO 1995) 3 quality and relevance of tertiary education (World Bank 2002). The opportunities offered by distance education, facilitating both part-time and full- time study and reducing geographical constraints regarding travel and access, have come to be regarded by some as the most efficient expansion route for tertiary education. One of the major benefits of distance education lies in its potential for making knowledge and skills accessible to indigenous peoples and others located in remote, rural areas who do not have convenient access to higher education institutions and where there is often a shortage of well-prepared teachers and other educational professionals (UNESCO 2002, p. 30). As such, distance education potentially plays a significant role in bringing about equity and thus maximising human resource development, which, in turn, benefits the economic and social development of the country. Increasingly, information and communications technologies (ICTs) are being used in delivering distance education programmes because of a perception of lower costs and improved quality. ICT costs can be considered to have two components: costs to institutions and costs to learners. Potential advantages for learners are flexible access regarding time and location, a wide range of opportunities for learning and qualification and the facility to overcome cultural and social barriers as well as an inadequate physical educational infrastructure (UNESCO 2002). For example, the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) 2 has opened up learning opportunities from leading universities worldwide to a global audience (Liyanagunawardena et al. 2013c). However, distance education (particularly if it is ICT-based) bears significant challenges of its own, and for some combinations of course structure, subject, learner situation and provider situation the desired access goals may either not be deliverable at all or prove to be more costly than increasing traditional face-to-face delivery. Whilst many governments in developing countries have stepped up opportunities for access to higher education through non-traditional forms of delivery such as distance education or 2 Having emerged relatively recently (in the last six years ) on the distance learning scene, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are online courses aimed at unlimited participation – in some cases in open access format – via the Internet. Besides providing course materials such as texts, illustrations, videos etc., an important feature of MOOCs are interactive user forums. 4 e-learning 3 , many of these new courses have been undermined because of their poor quality, which has resulted in high levels of dropout and/or failure to achieve any broadening of participation 4 (despite this often being one of the primary goals of a programme). In the case of Sri Lanka, for example, it was acknowledged that the distance education degree courses offered by many of the state universities fell below the required standard (Kaye 2002). The higher education system in Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is the best performer in basic education in the South Asian region with a remarkable record in terms of high literacy rates and the achievement of universal primary education (Jayaweera and Gunawardena 2007; Riboud et al. 2007). This strong focus on initial education has come at the price of a relatively low proportion of the population entering higher education. In India, 47 per cent of Indians (aged 15 and over) were literate in 2000, while 4.7 per cent were educated above secondary level (Riboud et al. 2007); in Sri Lanka, in the same year, 91 per cent were literate, but just 2.3 per cent of adults aged 30+ (excluding the Northern and Eastern Provinces, which likely had an even lower rate due to civil war) had an education above secondary level (DoCS 2011a). The “Free Education Policy” of Sri Lanka, introduced in 1947, allows every child to access school education free of charge in state schools (up to the age of 19 years or the Advanced Level Exams – Year 13) and is also a primary contributor to Sri Lanka’s current literacy rate. However, at tertiary level, state universities (currently the largest provider of higher education) have only around 22,000 places a year for new entrants (catering for just about 3 per cent of the school-leaving age cohort), albeit with no enrolment or tuition fees. Even though there are private higher education institutions, their high fees are beyond the financial means of most potential students. This acute shortage of affordable higher education opportunities in Sri Lanka creates fierce competition in the Advanced level General Certificate of Education (A-level GCE) 3 The term e-learning (electronic learning) refers to an education process involving the use of ICTs for learning purposes. 4 By the term broadening of participation, we mean opening up opportunities which draw in more students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and rural areas, whereas the term increasing participation refers to a general rise of enrolments in absolute numbers. 5 examination, which is also used for university entrance evaluations. The University Grants Commission 5 (UGC) of Sri Lanka uses a statistical method (Z-score) to standardise A-level results to evaluate candidates for university entrance (Kulatunga 2008). Furthermore, there are strict policies in place to ensure that candidates from all districts get a chance to enter university. Up to 55 per cent of the available places are allocated based on the ratio of population of the district to the population of the country, and there are special quotas for under-developed districts due to the lack of educational facilities in those districts (NEC 2009). These selection criteria are currently being revised 6 since they are regarded as being unfair on students who have studied in districts considered to be “developed”. With the exception of a few programmes which have aptitude tests, there is no means of entering the state universities governed by the UGC other than by obtaining the Z-score specified for intake. Students failing to secure a place in the state university system can seek higher education through the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL), external degrees (distance learning programmes) offered by some of the state universities or programmes offered by private institutions. Unlike state university face-to-face programmes, which are free, all these alternative courses can only be accessed by fee-paying students. Moreover, the majority of the courses offered in Sri Lankan universities (including courses in medicine, engineering, veterinary science and dentistry) are conducted only in English while school education is usually conducted in the local languages (Sinhala and Tamil) with English as a compulsory subject. For a comparative overview of the options, see Table 1. Table 1 Comparative overview of undergraduate university education options in Sri Lanka institution terms of admission type fees language of instruction state universities (Sri Lanka currently has 18 A-level GCE;* Z-score;** a small number of programmes face-to-face no enrolment or tuition fees (in addition many students most courses are taught in English 5 The University Grants Commission (UGC) governs 15 of the 18 state universities. The remaining three, governed by the Ministry of Education, provide higher education opportunities for Buddhist clergy and armed force personnel. 6 For current admission criteria see UGC 2013, p. 7. 6 of these, with 15 being open to the public – see footnote 5) have aptitude tests; regional quotas to ensure equal opportunities for students from all districts receive scholarships or bursaries) admission tests and/or obtaining necessary level at A-level GCE* (or approved qualifications) distance fees for enrolment, tuition and examinations apply mostly in English some distance education courses provide tuition while others publish a syllabus and conduct examinations for which students prepare by attending private tuition (Kaye 2002) private universities vary face-to-face and distance high fees most courses are taught in English Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) necessary A- level GCE* (or approved qualifications) or completion of foundation courses distance with some face-to- face components fees for enrolment, tuition and examinations apply (but are nominal in comparison to private universtities’ course offers) first year of an undergraduate programme may be completed in local languages or English but from second year onward English- medium is mandatory * Advanced level General Certificate of Education ** Z-score is a statistical method used by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Sri Lanka to standardise A-level results to evaluate candidates for university entrance 7 The Distance Education Modernization Project (DEMP) The Distance Education Modernization Project (DEMP), funded by a loan from the Asian Development Bank (2003–2010), marked the dawn of the use of modern technology in distance education in Sri Lanka. Through the development/deployment of distance education technologies, it aimed to increase access to post-secondary education in Sri Lanka while improving the quality and relevance of teaching and learning. The project intended to facilitate online learning for at least 225,000 students (Loxley et al. 2003). This capacity was expected to double over the first 5 years of the project, and the project aimed to provide the opportunity of post-secondary education to 1.4 million additional students over a period of 18 years. DEMP consisted of three components: (1) The Distance Education Partnership Programme. This focused on improving distance education programme content, quality and distribution. It also included the development of the National Distance Education Network (NDEN), which links OUSL centres with other public and private post-secondary institutions in order to share resources. Through this national network, online distance education programmes are made accessible to students, and partner institutes are able to use it to host their online distance education programmes. This service is called the National Online Distance Education Service (NODES). (2) The Public Private Partnership Programme (PPP). The programme emphasised the sharing of resources between public and private educational institutions including matching grants for student stipends, sharing information, participation in a standardised accreditation system, providing access to online distance learning courses and involvement in sharing programmes with overseas universities (Loxley et al. 2003). (3) The OUSL Capacity Enhancement Programme. This aimed to enhance and upgrade the OUSL’s facilities and encourage staff development. However, as in many other developing countries, the use of ICTs for instruction in Sri Lanka inevitably raises the question of affordability and accessibility of the programmes 8 because computers and the Internet are not widely “accessible” (Liyanagunawardena et al. 2013a, 2013b, 2013d). In order to improve accessibility, an island-wide network of 26 telecentre facilities (NODES Access Centres, called NACs) was established, 7 which was to provide access to students registered in online distance education programmes offered under DEMP. Method This paper addresses the policy issues arising from our research into the impact of ICTs on distance education in Sri Lanka. Using an ethnographic research approach, we investigated the implementation of ICT-enabled distance education programmes in two universities: Orange Valley University (OVU) and Yellow Fields University (YFU) (pseudonymous), which were both offering programmes under the DEMP initiative. We selected these two universities as our case studies because they differed in their approach to implementing ICT-enabled distance education and in their experience in distance education. OVU had been a conventional university until it implemented its fully-online distance education degree programme, while YFU has been teaching distance learners for many years, offering a variety of programmes (certificates, degrees, higher degrees, etc.). YFU introduced ICTs to its distance education spectrum more cautiously than OVU, with many programmes having non-compulsory online components and very few having compulsory online components. Thus our comparative approach would provide a good view of the range of ICT-enabled distance education implementations in programmes. All data collection was carried out between December 2009 and March 2011 8 . The sample population for these two case studies included students, lecturers and administrators of these universities. Our research project was advertised through official channels and participation was voluntary. Because OVU had only one programme under this initiative, which was an IT programme, we selected a comparable IT programme 7 This network was set up in addition to the telecentres owned by “Sarvodaya” (a non-governmental organisation) and the approximately 700 Nanasala centres established under the government’s eSri Lanka initiative. 8 Subsequent to our data collection, the fully-online provision of OVU’s distance education programme was discontinued. 9 from YFU’s range of programmes for our survey. Besides carrying out these two case studies, we also interviewed carefully selected people from policy authorities (National Education Commission, University Grants Commission, and the Ministry of Higher Education), DEMP officials and university officials to obtain a holistic view of the initiative at policy level, implementation level and end-user level. To collect our data, we used semi-structured interviews (with officials, students and lecturers), documentary evidence (student registration details, NAC usage statistics and Learning Management System activity logs) and self-completion questionnaires (for students). The reason we opted for semi-structured interviews was that they provided general guidelines to carry out the interview with flexibility to generate rich qualitative data through probing. The interviews, which were audio recorded and transcribed, were conducted either in English or in Sinhala, depending on the participant’s preference. Questionnaires were employed to gather views from a wider sample and to invite interested participants for interviews. At an early stage we realised that an online survey (using the Bristol Online Surveys tool) 9 prepared for the study was taking too long to load and this discouraged participation. Thus only e-mail and printed questionnaires were actually employed for our data collection. We decided to present the questionnaire in Microsoft® Word 2003 format, since it was unlikely that newer versions of this software would be available in most Internet cafés and on Sri Lankan home computers. The e-mail questionnaires were only distributed in English since the Unicode Sinhala fonts used for the questionnaire might not have been available on recipients’ computers, especially on public Internet access points where users do not have privileges to install fonts. Printed questionnaires were distributed in both English and Sinhala, according to each participant’s preference. Questions were organised into five sections: (1) programme details; (2) the use of ICT in the programme and student views; (3) the use of ICTs for learning; (4) opportunities for using ICTs (with space provided for comments at the end of the section); and (5) demographic details. The rationale for employing documentary evidence as a data source in this study 9 Created by the University of Bristol, UK,, the online survey tool “Bristol Online Surveys (BOS) is an easy-to-use service that allows you to develop, deploy, and analyse surveys via the Web. No complicated set-up or technical knowledge is required” (http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/support/about). 10 was to supplement data collected from other sources. For example, activity logs provide time series data of learning environment use by students, which can be analysed along with students’ statements of use in order to complement data obtained using questionnaires and interviews. In total 129 questionnaires, 33 individual interviews and 2 group interviews were used for the analysis. Our data collection summary is presented in Table 2. Table 2 Summary of data collection Questionnaires Interviews Group interviews Orange Valley University (OVU) 33 14 1 Yellow Fields University (YFU) 96 13 1 Education policy authorities no 6 no Total 129 33 2 Results In the following section, we present our results organised by the following aspects: population demographics (enrolled students); sample demographics, computer ownership and Internet access; household income; access centres; cost, language, computer proficiency; and learning materials and learner support. Population demographics Population demographics of the OVU fully-online programme showed that 39 per cent of the students enrolled in the programme were female. The comparable YFU IT programme only had 26 per cent females. Female participation in the Sri Lankan IT industry is only 21 per cent (ICTA 2007); therefore the female participation rate in both programmes was encouraging, especially when compared with developed economies such as the UK, where men outnumber women 5:1 in the IT sector (Pretorius and de Villiers 2009). Exactly one half of OVU students were from the Western Province (the capital Colombo and the surrounding area), while in the YFU IT programme their share was as 11 high as 83 per cent. Considering that only 28 per cent of the Sri Lankan population resides in the Western Province (DoCS 2010), both these programmes seem primarily to serve the needs of Western Province dwellers. There are several plausible explanations. Since the YFU IT programme recruited students with work experience in the IT industry, it is likely that these distance learners were working in Colombo or the Western Province (even if they originated from elsewhere in the country), because the IT industry in Sri Lanka is mostly concentrated in these areas. Another possibility is that since both these programmes were advertised as “online” degrees (even though the YFU programme’s compulsory online component in fact only amounted to roughly 20 per cent of the course as a whole), only people who had ready access to the Internet and computers registered, resulting in an over-representation of students from the Western Province. Sample demographics Our OVU sample consisted of 33 per cent females, while the whole of the YFU sample (including students from IT, Science, Technology and Engineering programmes) consisted of 46 per cent females. Our comparison of sample gender distribution is illustrated in Fig 1. Figure 1 Sample gender comparison 12 Sixty-seven per cent of the OVU sample were from the Western Province; in the YFU sample the corresponding figure was 54 per cent. A comparison of sample geographic distribution is presented in Fig 2. YFU has teaching/learning centres around the country and questionnaire data were collected on four occasions (3 at a Colombo centre, 1 at a regional centre). This could be a reason for the increased number of students from outside the Western Province in the sample. Figure 2 Sample geographic distribution Computer ownership and Internet access The ownership of computers among participants of both universities (OVU: 85% and YFU: 68%) was much higher than the Sri Lankan national average of 11.4 per cent in 2009 (DoCS 2009), as illustrated in Fig 3. 13 Source for national average data: DoCS 2009, Table 1 Figure 3 Comparison of computer ownership Ninety-one per cent of OVU and 45 per cent of YFU student participants had home Internet access (some students who did not have home computers accessed the Internet using their mobile phones). There were YFU students, especially from rural and/or low- income groups who solely depended on either NACs or University computer laboratories. By contrast, many OVU students who previously depended on NACs later decided to acquire their own home connections due to the difficulties they had had to face in using communal facilities. Household income The median monthly household income for the OVU sample was Rs 34,376 (£ 191); in the YFU sample it was Rs 22,709 (£ 126). A comparison of student household incomes against the national median household income Rs 23,746 (£ 135) (DoCS 2011b) is shown in Fig 4. Sixty-three per cent of the OVU students came from households earning more than the national median household income, which partly explains the very high level of resource ownership among OVU students. 14 Source for national average data: DoCS 2011b, Table H1 Figure 4 Comparison of median household income (in Rs) Students who depended on communal access had to spend a considerable amount of time travelling to their closest centre to access the Internet. For example, an undergraduate from Kandy had to take several buses, taking an hour and half on the bus (not considering the waiting times for buses) to use the nearest access centre; 10 another student from a remote village in Hambantota which had no fixed-line or mobile broadband coverage (as of 2010), had to travel at least 60 km to the nearest NAC at Ambalantota. He used a mobile broadband connection to access the Internet while boarded in Colombo but criticised his provider for not delivering value for money. Access centres The NACs provided a valuable service to students who did not have computers and/or connectivity to the Internet. However, the excessive administrative procedures and their closure at the weekend were major problems (especially for employed students). One interview participant was asked to produce a letter from the Vice Chancellor of his university in order to have access to headphones to listen to a video lecture, while another said that there was no facility to use a “pendrive” (USB memory stick) to store 10 This access centre was a regional centre of her university, the nearest NAC was even more distant. 15 downloaded content. Another student studying for an IT degree, who wanted to use software which was not installed on the NAC computers, was unable to obtain permission to install it. The policy to block some websites such as YouTube TM was also a problem for students, who only had access to the Internet from NACs and wanted to use YouTube TM for educational purposes, specifically to watch YouTube TM videos relating to product designs similar to what they were designing (for more details see Liyanagunawardena et al. 2013a; 2013b). NAC usage statistics showed that some of the centres are greatly underutilised. For example, Anuradhapura NAC was used by only one individual from August to October 2009 (Liyanagunawardena 2012). By contrast, Colombo and Kandy NACs were heavily utilised. Because all these centres were equipped with the same set of equipment, while some resources were idling in remote locations, users in other centres had restrictions in terms of access times, to ensure fair access for all. Due to all these reasons, respondents who had used NACs felt it was difficult to solely rely on them and bought their own computers and connectivity as soon as they could. Cost OVU’s online educational course offer was considered “pricey” by almost all participants; yet students registered for it due to the university’s good reputation. Personal communications revealed that a large proportion of the fee went into the university’s payment to the NODES to get NAC access to course registrants. Even students who never used a NAC facility had to pay this fee since it was bundled into their course fee. By contrast, students felt that YFU’s course offers were “value for money” and “affordable”. This could also be a reason why a majority of students from the OVU online programme were from high-income households while YFU programmes were more attractive to students from low-income households. Language YFU students’ English language skills varied widely, with students from Colombo 16 demonstrating a higher level of English proficiency than their peers from more rural regions On the other hand, OVU students reported above-average English language proficiency. Even though English is taught as a compulsory subject in the school curriculum, the resources to learn English vary widely among urban and rural schools. For example, a YFU student who had studied in a rural school blamed the lack of resources and lack of motivation for the lower standard of English learning in rural areas. According to tutors/lecturers, a majority of the students from “outstations” (away from Colombo), who had studied the school curriculum in local languages found it difficult to adjust to English-medium instruction at university. Despite all OVU students rating their level of English as above average, OVU’s interview participants speculated that some students, especially those from rural areas like Madawachchiya, dropped out of programmes due to difficulties they encountered in understanding English-medium instruction. It is worth noting that our questionnaire only reached those students who had remained in the programme for the third year, and it is possible that students with weak in English already dropped out earlier. Computer proficiency Our questionnaire listed four tasks relating to computer/Internet use, and the respondents’ ability to accomplish those tasks was interpreted as their computer proficiency. All OVU respondents reported very high levels of computer skills. This was not surprising, since these students were in the upper years of an IT degree. YFU students also had adequate general computer skills. However, 9 per cent of the YFU respondents had never used a search engine; 5 per cent had never sent an e-mail with an attachment. Two per cent of the YFU participants had never used or did not want to use a computer. There was one student, a 25-year-old female teacher from Badulla, who reported that she did not know how to use the computer facilities available to her. Tutors of both universities have observed some students having difficulties even with basic computer skills. For example, one tutor from OVU (where students reported very high levels of computer skills) mentioned a student who, in an inaugural session held to introduce the online learning platform, was not aware of how to type an “@” sign. 17 There was no uniform way of introducing the online learning platform to students. OVU organised a workshop for all new entrants; by contrast, at YFU it was the individual lecturer’s responsibility. While some organised inaugural hands-on sessions or a lecture with a projection screen, others relied on a letter sent out to students which described the logging-in process. But many students were unable to comprehend this information on their own, even just to log into the system. Even though our survey showed that most OVU students had good English language skills and good computer skills, it is worth noting that there was a very high dropout rate (out of the cohort of 98 students who registered in 2007, only 36 remained with the same cohort after 3 years) and the sample we were able to reach was made up of students who remained in the programme. It is likely that students who had poor English skills and/or poor computer skills had already dropped out from the programme by the time we conducted our research. Learning materials and learner support We also found there were issues relating to online learning materials. Some lecturers initially had doubts as to why their material needed reviewing by others, including other lecturers and pedagogic experts, showing that there was a lack of knowledge and understanding of distance education practices among OVU staff. Students reported instances where they posted questions online and had to wait for weeks to receive a reply. There were also issues with the learning materials: some were erroneous; others were copied from unreliable Internet sources such as Wikipedia (with no mention of the source); most of the time online course materials were text-only portable document format (PDF) notes; and in instances where online quizzes were employed, these either posed the same questions on each and every attempt, or students had to re-take online quizzes due to poor connection quality. OVU distance-learning students did not have access to university library facilities, 11 in contrast to their counterparts at YFU. Thus they had to solely rely on provided course notes and free online resources unless they could afford to pay a premium for library membership at the British Council or similar 11 OVU library facilities were only accessible to face-to-face/physically on-campus students. 18 institutions. Because some notes provided to students contained errors, and tutors took a while to answer queries about them, many students were frustrated. DEMP had greatly overestimated both the number of students who would register for the programme and the fee chargeable to a student for the use of NAC facilities. In the wake of the project (which ended in 2010), this has resulted in an infrastructure which is not economically viable. One can see many similarities between DEMP and the African Virtual University project 12 , which has also been criticised for its high cost, limited accessibility, and limited sustainability (Amutabi and Oketch 2003; Munene 2007). Discussion The goal of the Sri Lankan government was to increase participation in higher education. Their great success following educational investment at primary and secondary levels has led to a logjam at the tertiary level. An unwillingness to introduce fees for the majority of students, combined with a lack of funding to quickly increase face-to-face teaching and learning capacities, led the Sri Lankan government to invest in an ICT-enabled distance education approach. This did lead to some improvements, but was hampered by the reliance on ICTs and a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead of being monolithic, the plan consisted of two initiative approaches: (1) funding the development of ICT-based distance education programmes to complement course offers of existing face-to-face universities (an example of this is OVU); and (2) funding the “modernisation” of existing distance education programmes with ICTs (an example of this is YFU). Within the goal of increasing participation, there was also a desire to broaden (or at least to retain the existing level of) participation among students coming from outside the privileged social class. Our study identified clear flaws in the approach, which should be noted by the Sri Lankan government in future policies and should also be carefully studied by other developing countries investing in expansion of their higher education sector in order to compete in the global knowledge economy. Many of our findings have been corroborated by the Asian Development Bank, who found DEMP to be “highly relevant” to Sri Lanka’s strategies and vision but admitted 12 For more information on the African Virtual University project, see http://www.avu.org/. http://www.avu.org/ 19 that the project had been “less effective”, “less efficient” and “less likely sustainable” than expected (ADB 2011). The successes of ICT-based distance education Existing high-quality programmes from high-prestige universities (such as OVU), are viable for quick and cheap expansion based on fee-paying students. The benefits to students are twofold. First, there is the chance of an education where before they had no opportunity to follow their preferred subject in their preferred location/university. Second, the ability to study flexibly, whether part-time or full-time, also in terms of credits, allows for the maintenance of family ties and of employment. The work–study option is particularly important in bootstrapping the system based not on post-graduation fee-loan repayment but on upfront ongoing fee payment. The most successful students are those in urban areas with access to Internet infrastructure and sufficient income to pay fees, purchase computers and subscribe to a broadband Internet connection. Initial problems with the development of the courses seem to be rectifiable, given appropriate oversight of the system and this more focused student body. Mainly, it seems, due to the cost of supporting NACs, the OVU online programme was discontinued (Liyanagunawardena 2012). Without that cost, students enrolled in any distance learning course are left to provide their own resources. However, this also means that those with the resources are then not paying twice, particularly since an analysis reported elsewhere (Liyanagunawardena 2012) shows that NAC charges are actually almost similar in cost to lower-range Internet access packages. The potential additional cost is of having to buy a PC, but this investment can then also benefit other household members when they share the computer with the student. The failures of ICT-based distance education Many of the failures of ICT-based distance education are due to circumstantial disadvantages which are not sufficiently taken into account by some course providers. Many students based in rural areas are lacking in one or more of the following:  Access to the Internet: some areas are not served by any service provider and for 20 those which are, the costs are often higher, for worse service, than in urban areas.  Incomes are too low to support purchase of suitable computers and subscription to the Internet even where service is available.  English-based tuition is too much of a step up for those previously educated in Sinhala or Tamil and who were educated in schools with few resources for English learning.  Central provision of computer centres is too inflexible on too many axes to provide substantial access across the geographic regions.  Prior computer skills are lacking in those from rural areas, which poses particularly severe difficulties for those also lacking good proficiency in English. Other reasons for failure which emerged from our research were:  The lack of support services provided by the educational institutions for students starting online education in distance-learning mode.  The lack of knowledge and awareness of lecturers/tutors in terms of providing online support for students.  Poor quality and poor presentation of some course materials.  The non-availability of library facilities for distance learners.  The question of sustainability of the system. Policy options There is a need to:  Allow high-prestige universities in urban areas to offer flexible courses, with clear monitoring of quality. Require the courses to have the same standards as face-to- face courses for examinations. Possibly remove the requirement of distinguishing between face-to-face and distance education programmes, and perhaps even apply identical assessment criteria and degree course names. Invest in these high-prestige universities to help with start-up costs, but place them under the obligation to move on to self-sustaining fees. Possibly offer ongoing government-funded bursaries for students from poor urban backgrounds with just-missed levels of educational 21 attainment for face-to-face courses (or even for those who achieved the relevant level, but not for the course they wanted or the location they wanted/needed). This should hopefully reduce the number of students taking up face-to-face places for which they are not entirely suited (our study revealed that a significant number of students on the new distance learning programmes offered by OVU were also studying a different subject on a face-to-face programme at another state university).  Stipulate the provision of library facilities, both online and physical, for true distance learning students by enforcing mutual deals with universities in different cities providing library and perhaps computer-lab resources in return for allowing them to run their own online courses or perhaps by allocating part of the student’s fee to pay a convenient institution for access.  Focus on enhancing the existing OUSL distance education provision for widening participation. It already has the expertise and structure to offer courses in rural areas, starting with Sinhala/Tamil study combined with English proficiency enhancement, and uses a mixed ICT/non-ICT approach which also suits those without significant prior computer skills and/or access. For areas where it is feasible, instead of NACs invest in providing equipment and (probably wireless) broadband access for students as part of the fee structure – this needs careful economic analysis for each region. Consider the provision of cheaper mLearning 13 options such as low-cost video/media-players which can replace time-specific broadcasts on TV of existing and updated visual material with anytime, anywhere access. Materials can be downloaded in bulk to such players during irregular visits to Internet-connected sites or sent out on hard storage devices (e.g. CDs, DVDs etc.) and passed around among students by post or through face-to-face contact.  Stipulate cross-compatibility and open up upper-year entry between OUSL 13 The term m-learning, slightly newer than the term e-learning, stands for mobile learning. This mode of learning can involve the use of various comparatively small mobile electronic devices such as handheld computers, MP3 players, notebooks, mobile phones and tablets. 22 programmes and other distance education programmes. In particular, allowing those lacking English and computer skills to complete the OUSL foundation years and then proceed to the other programmes would perhaps be the best structural option. Conclusion Under the right circumstances, ICT-enabled distance education programmes have the potential to increase access to higher education by providing flexibility for the learner. Due to many reasons, including lack of infrastructure/resources, lack of English language skills and digital literacy, poor quality of materials and insufficient support provided to students, the present implementation of the system in Sri Lanka has been less than successful in recruiting a sufficient number of students to be able to self-sustain the system. It is particularly important for governments to research the real constraints on students to whom they wish to provide access to higher education. Furthermore, governments need to align new programmes with targeted structures which allow students to succeed, while providing suitable investment for providers to produce financially and academically sustainable programmes. It is clear from this Sri Lankan case study that broadening participation (including students from all socioeconomic regional backgrounds) and increasing participation (in absolute numbers) may require very different structures. Acknowledgement The first author would like to thank the University of Reading, UK, for the PhD studentship she received. References Amutabi, M. N. & Oketch, M.O. (2003). Experimenting in distance education: The African Virtual University (AVU) and the paradox of the World Bank in Kenya. International Journal of Educational Development, 23(1), 57–73. ADB (Asian Development Bank) (2011). Completion Report – Sri Lanka: Distance Education Modernization Project. Asian Development Bank. Brown, P., Green, A. & Lauder, H. (2001). High skills: Globalization, competitiveness 23 and skill formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DoCS (Department of Census and Statistics) (2009). Computer literacy in Sri Lanka – 2009. Department of Census and Statistics Newsletter, 1(1). Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics. DoCS (Department of Census and Statistics) (2010). Estimated mid-year population by sex and district – 2010. Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics. DoCS (Department of Census and Statistics) (2011a). Social Conditions of Sri Lanka. Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics. Accessed 22 February 2014 from http://www.statistics.gov.lk/social/social%20conditions.pdf. DoCS (Department of Census and Statistics) (2011b). Household income and expenditure survey – 2009/10 final results. Household Income and Expenditure Survey. vol. 11 (March 2011). Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics. Drucker, P. F. (1970). The effective executive. London: Pan Books. ICTA (Information and Communication Technology Agency) (2007). Rising demand: The increasing demand for IT workers spells a challenging opportunity for the IT industry. Colombo: Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka. Jayaweera, S. & Gunawardena, C. (2007). Social inclusion: Gender and equity in education swaps in South Asia – Sri Lanka Case Study. UNICEF Regional Office South Asia. Kathmandu: UNICEF. Kaye, A. R. (2002). The current situation of external degrees in Sri Lanka: A Personal assessment based on a visit to Sri Lanka. S.l.: Commonwealth of Learning. Klein, N. (2002). No Logo. New York: Picador. Kulatunga, D. (2008). Education guide: Sri Lanka, 3rd edn. Battaramulla, Colombo: Neptune Publications. Liyanagunawardena, T. R. (2012). Information communication technologies and distance education in Sri Lanka: A case study of two universities. PhD Thesis, University of Reading, Reading, UK. Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Adams, A.A., Rassool, N. & Williams, S.A. (2013a). Using non-personal computers for e-learning: Sri Lankan Experience. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 1(2), 152–158. Liyanagunawardena, T., Adams, A. , Rassool, N. and Williams, S. (2013b). Telecentres and e-learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(5), E156–E158. Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A. & Williams, S. (2013c). MOOCs: A systematic study of the published literature 2008–2012. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(3), 201–227. Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Williams, S. & Adams, A.A. (2013d). The impact and reach of MOOCs: A developing countries’ perspective. eLearning Papers, 33 (Special Issue MOOCs and Beyond). Loxley, W., Ho, S., Vandenabeele, C., Gutierrez, L. et al. (2003). Report and recommendation of the president to the Board of Directors on a proposed loan to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka for the distance education modernization project. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Munene, I. I. (2007). Experimenting in distance education: The African Virtual University (AVU) and the paradox of the World Bank in Kenya – A Rejoinder. International Journal of Educational Development, 27(1), 77–85. http://www.statistics.gov.lk/social/social%20conditions.pdf 24 NEC (National Education Commission) (2009). National policy framework on higher education and technical and vocational education. Colombo: National Education Commission. Pretorius, H.W. & de Villiers, C. (2009). An analysis of the international discourse about women in information technology. In Proceedings of the Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (pp. 179–186),.New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Rassool, N. (1999). Literacy for sustainable development in the age of information, Multilingual Matters Ltd., Clevedon. Riboud, M., Savchenko, Y., & Tan, H. (2007). The knowledge economy and education and training in South Asia. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) (2002). Open and distance learning: Trends, policy and strategy considerations. Paris: UNESCO. UGC (University Grants Commission) (2013). Admission to undergraduate courses of the universities in Sri Lanka. Academic year 2013/2014 (based on the G.C.E. (A/L) examination 2013). Colombo: UGC Sri Lanka. Accessed 25 July 2014 from http://www.ugc.ac.lk/downloads/admissions/local_students/Admission%20to%20U ndergraduate%20Courses%20of%20the%20Universities%20in%20Sri%20Lanka% 202013_2014.pdf . World Bank (2002). Constructing knowledge societies: New challenges for tertiary education. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. WTO (World Trade Organization) (1995). General agreement on trade in services (GATS). Geneva: WTO. Available online at http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm. The authors Tharindu Rekha Liyanagunawardena is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Computing Research Group – School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, UK. Her principal research interest lies in the area of social implications of information and communication technologies, especially eLearning. She completed her PhD (titled "Information Communication Technologies and Distance Education in Sri Lanka: a case study of two universities") at the University of Reading in 2012. She is co- creator and lead facilitator of the “Begin Programming: build your first mobile game”, a popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the FutureLearn platform. Currently she is working on several projects relating to Open Educational Resources (OERs) and MOOCs. Andrew A. Adams is a Professor of Information Ethics in the Graduate School of Business Administration and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics at Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. He is also a Visiting Professor in the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading in the UK. He has a wide range of http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm 25 research interests in multi-disciplinary fields looking into social, legal and ethical aspects of computing. Naz Rassool is a Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, The University of Reading. She has published widely within the fields of the political economy of language in education; literacy and development; language relations within the global cultural economy; New Managerialism in education and the sociology of technology in education. She is the author of Global Issues in Language, Education and Development: Perspectives from Postcolonial Countries (2007); Literacy for Sustainable Development in the Age of Information (1999); co-author with Louise Morley of School Effectiveness: Fracturing the Discourse (1999) and co-edited with Kevin Brehony of Nationalisms Old and New (1999). Shirley A. Williams is a National Teaching Fellow and a Professor of Learning Technologies at the University of Reading, UK. She is also an Honorary Professor at University College London. She is currently involved in a number of research projects related to learning technologies, communities, social networks, digital identity and knowledge transfer. She is the Director of Open Online Courses at University of Reading, the University is a Futurelearn partner. 
work_jxafhw6vvzhe5n36m5j3wy3zoq	----	Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among Female University Students in Sweden Vol.:(0123456789) European Journal of Population (2019) 35:795–823 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-018-9503-3 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among Female University Students in Sweden Linus Andersson1 Received: 20 November 2017 / Accepted: 23 October 2018 / Published online: 28 November 2018 © The Author(s) 2018 Abstract The expansion of tertiary education is key to understanding postponement of first births. Currently, online distance education is changing the nature of university enrolment. In this study, I suggest that online distance education impacts on fertility by facilitating the transition to parenthood among students. I examine the relation- ship between online distance education and first births during university enrolment. Using survival analysis of register data for the 1968–1991 female cohorts, I exam- ine the impact of distance and campus education on first-parity transitions during university enrolment between 2004 and 2012 (N = 938,768). Results indicate that the negative association between enrolment and first parity conception differs sub- stantially between campus and distance enrolment. Compared to non-enrolment, the hazard of first parity conception is 70% lower during campus enrolment but 43% lower during distance enrolment. These findings are discussed in relation to edu- cational heterogeneity and fertility postponement and the impact of technological innovation on family dynamics. Keywords Technology · Fertility · Sweden · Education · Student fertility · Fertility postponement 1 Introduction University students have low rates of first birth, despite favourable age and sex ratios on campus (Begall and Mills 2012; Blossfeld and Huinink 1991; Hoem, 1986; Lappegård and Rønsen 2005; Baizán and Martin-Garcia 2006; Tesching 2012; Thalberg 2013). Increased enrolment in higher education is a key com- ponent in the postponement of parenthood (Balbo et  al. 2013; Blossfeld and Huinink 1991; Skirbekk 2008). Today, student populations are still growing or have stabilized at high levels. Moreover, tertiary enrolment itself is increasingly * Linus Andersson linus.andersson@sofi.su.se 1 Swedish Institute for Social Research, Universitetsvägen 10 F, Stockholm, Sweden http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0347-3802 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10680-018-9503-3&domain=pdf 796 L. Andersson 1 3 being postponed to older ages (OECD 2009), which is likely to further increase postponement. Importantly, the completion of education is central to age at first birth (Ní Bhrolcháin and Beaujouan 2012; Neels et al. 2017). Consequently, fac- tors that affect the timing of fertility after the completion of tertiary education can necessarily only explain a limited amount of the variation in age at first birth. It is therefore essential to understand which factors influence the transition to par- enthood during tertiary enrolment. One such factor may be online distance education (ODE). Parallel to the trend towards expansion in higher education, the last decade has seen an even more rapid growth in ODE (Allen and Seaman 2010). Universities are increasingly offering distance courses and full programmes at distance, and some are exclu- sively using ODE platforms (Cowen and Tabarrok 2014). In Sweden, up to 20% of enrolled students in 2009 obtained credits from courses conducted at a dis- tance (Amneus et al. 2011). ODE platforms offer flexibility in combining studies, work and activities in the home (Edmonds 2010; Mårald and Westerberg 2006). The next section will therefore argue that ODE may facilitate childbearing and childrearing among students. The central role of higher education for postponed fertility is well documented (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991). An expanding literature has also documented that the transition to parenthood differs substantively between study disciplines (Hoem et al. 2006), study intensity (Spéder and Bartus 2017) and occupations (Begall and Mills 2012). The teaching platform (ODE vs. brick-and-mortar enrolment) repre- sents an unexplored part of this puzzle. Fertility researchers have emphasized that changes in the flexibility and organization of educational institutions are central to understanding and formulating policy regarding the timing of first births (Lutz and Skirbekk 2005). Policy advocates have also argued that distance tertiary educa- tion is necessary to meet the needs of students with increasingly heterogeneous life courses (Peters 2009). To date, however, there is no empirical research on the asso- ciation between ODE and the transition to parenthood. Furthermore, the association between ODE and student fertility constitutes a concrete example of how technology may impact on fertility (e.g. Bellou 2015; Chesley and Johnson 2014). Students may select into ODE on the basis of childbearing intentions, and ODE may stimulate fertility among students. Hence, new technologies may be producing a horizontal differentiation of higher education based on student childbearing behav- iour. The present study focuses on establishing an associative relationship by asking: Are university students more likely to become parents during online enrolment than campus enrolment? I use individual level longitudinal data obtained from national registers, which include the entire female population of Sweden in the cohorts born between 1968 and 1991. Uniquely, Swedish educational registers also include data on the teaching platform (campus or distance) for each academic course. For each academic term between 2004 and 2012, I distinguish between states of enrolment pursued with or without the inclusion of a substantial amount of distance studies. Controlling for study types (full- or part-time studies, degree completion and continuity) and soci- odemographic characteristics, I model the risk of first parity conception during these forms of enrolment, compared to non-enrolment, using event-history models. 797 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… 2 Theoretical Framework and Previous Research Below, I briefly discuss the theoretical explanations and known correlates of student parenthood and the role of educational enrolment for the transition to parenthood. I also present an argument about the role of ODE for student parenthood and outline a general hypothesis. 2.1 University Enrolment and Fertility Educational enrolment and level of educational attainment are critical aspects in most theories on the timing of first birth. According to new home economics (Becker 1981), the decision to start a family takes the form of a cost–benefit calcula- tion, with the costs consisting in time spent on parenting instead of labour or human capital accumulation. Foregoing the latter is more costly for those with a high or prospectively high earning capacity, which produces a lower likelihood of first birth among the highly educated and those enrolled in higher education (Gustafsson 2005). Empirical support for this theory is found in the positive relationship between childlessness and the level of education across many countries and institutional con- texts (Wood et  al. 2014). However, the most prevalent pattern is that rather than rejecting parenthood altogether, individuals with a tertiary education enter parent- hood after tertiary graduation, at a later age than those with lower levels of educa- tion, but quite rapidly following the completion of their university studies (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991). Therefore, low fertility among students is commonly construed as reflecting a deliberate postponement behaviour. One important implication of this conclusion is that in addition to the post-enrolment fertility delay found among uni- versity graduates (Gustafsson 2005), enrolment itself acts as a central proximate fac- tor behind increased age at first birth (Ní Bhrolcháin and Beaujouan 2012; Blossfeld and Huinink 1991; Hoem 1986). For students then, the postponement of parenthood is in part a strategic choice to increase the payoff provided by higher education, e.g. in the form of labour mar- ket positioning (Sweeney and Cancian 2004) and finding a highly educated part- ner (Oppenheimer 1994). At the same time, however, there are more rudimentary explanations for fertility postponement among students. Studying requires time and effort (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991). The need to commute or travel locally to attend courses compromises social interactions in the non-university social sphere and complicates childrearing. Labour market attachment, which is often a require- ment for becoming a parent, may be hard to achieve in combination with rigid study schedules (Spéder and Bartus 2017). Further, exposure to and expectations of cam- pus culture, including scheduled activities and extracurricular activities, may distract from or be difficult to reconcile with family formation. Physical social interactions with students, who are less likely to have near-future childbearing in mind, may also offset social learning mechanisms (Bernardi 2003) that promote childbearing plans. Age and sequencing norms further steer the transition to parenthood towards the period subsequent to the conclusion of higher education (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991; Liefbroer and Billari 2010). 798 L. Andersson 1 3 Previous research on determinants of student fertility has focused on economic activity and part-time work among students. Spéder and Bartus (2017) have noted that working during one’s studies is a predictor of student first birth transitions and they suggest that such “double-status positions” enhance student fertility by miti- gating role conflict. In Sweden, Thalberg (2013) has presented similar results and suggests that since earnings are related to eligibility for parental leave insurance, working students will have higher fertility rates. Having contact with the labour market as a student might also provide the means to satisfy the “affordability clause” (Rindfuss and VandenHeuvel 1990) for childbearing, overcoming a critical amount of uncertainty and risk. Part-time students have been found to be more likely than full-time students to marry (Thornton et al. 1995), and this finding could extend to parenthood. A number of studies have also found correlations between student fertil- ity and educational domains leading to occupations that might be easier to combine with childbearing, such as teaching (Hoem et al. 2006; Lappegård and Rønsen 2005; Baizán and Martin-Garcia 2006; van Bavel 2010). In contrast, parent students in regular brick-and-mortar education report a lack of institutional support (Brown and Nichols 2013), that they struggle with schedules that are difficult to reconcile with parental obligations (Moreau 2016) and that they have to cope with stigmatizing ste- reotypes from the university campus environment, which portray them as both bad students and bad parents (Estes 2011). To summarize, the impediments to entering parenthood as a student are not only linked to the issue of utility maximization based on earnings capacity, they are also a matter of practicalities. This is an important distinction, since it indicates that stu- dents may be willing, but simply not able, to have children. It is possible that many students are focused on optimizing their human capital, whereas others may be less concerned about their labour market prospects (Hakim 2003) and might consider becoming a parent during enrolment, provided that it is possible to resolve certain critical practical issues. On the basis of this perspective, we might expect that vari- ous factors linked to the study environment, including certain technological and institutional innovations, may predict student fertility. 2.2 Online Distance Enrolment and Fertility ODE has been promoted for its presumed fit to the needs of non-traditional students (Cowen and Tabarrok 2014). It has been argued that ODE bridges both cultural and physical distance (Jacob et al. 2016) and offers a flexibility that enables individuals to combine studies with adult roles and responsibilities (McIntosh 2005). University students have reported flexibility to be an important reason for choosing an online study platform (Kowalski et al. 2014). In interviews, distance students have empha- sized that online platforms help them to combine the parental obligations with higher education (Edmonds 2010). In Sweden, general skill attainment as well as flexibility and overcoming distance barriers have been mentioned as motivations for participating in online education (Mårald and Westerberg 2006). If ODE enables the combination of university studies with other engagements, it influences at least three interconnected mechanisms that impact on student fertility: the cost of childbearing, 799 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… parental leave eligibility and role conflict. ODE may influence the cost of having a child during the specific life course phase of university studies (Gustafsson 2001, 2005). First, childbearing entails opportunity costs in terms of foregone investment in human capital, such as education and work experience, as well as the direct loss of income from paid work, and direct monetary costs of childrearing. But provided that childlessness is not considered an option, one may find it efficient to have one’s first birth as a student because the opportunity costs of lost income and labour mar- ket experience are lower for students (as students normally do not work full-time to begin with). Furthermore, the presence and anticipation of a motherhood wage penalty might make student childbearing particularly appealing to women, since one factor affecting the motherhood wage penalty is the loss of work experience during the child’s infant years. In anticipation of employer preconceptions and discrimina- tory practices towards employed mothers, the prospect of engaging in careers that are unbroken by lengthy leaves might be highly valued. However, the time costs of studies entailed by transportation and participation at fixed hours need to decrease enough for this parallel activity to be manageable. To the extent that this neces- sary flexibility is enabled by ODE, distance enrolment may have a positive effect on student childbearing. Second, in welfare states that condition parental leave on individual income, employment can be associated with a rapid transition to child- bearing (Matysiak and Vignoli 2008). Students who also work are not locked out from the parental leave system. Eligibility for parental leave receipt might matter for the childbearing decisions of students. Again, if ODE provides the flexibility to maintain a connection to the labour market during studies, this enables the transi- tion to parenthood. Third, it has been proposed that sequencing norms, and norms about the conditions under which a child should be raised, prevent student child- bearing (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991). The role of student is arguably tied to the practices involved in participation at the many venues of the university. The role of mother and carer is tied to the household. Because of their ability to separate them- selves from the campus environment, distance students may be less subjected, or less exposed, to negative sanctions and expectations tied to their role as students and mothers. If parallel employment also shifts the students towards the normative role of earners (cf. Spéder and Bartus 2017), and ODE accommodates such a combina- tion, then distance enrolment is an enabling factor for student fertility. The mecha- nisms behind direct effects of ODE on childbearing are intrinsic to indirect effects that predict selection into ODE based on childbearing intentions. The difference lies in when and how childbearing decisions are made. Childbearing plans are formed continuously. ODE may be used strategically to accommodate childbearing, since parenthood is potentially easier to combine with ODE than traditional studies. At the same time, a re-evaluation about childbearing plans and decisions while in dis- tance education, regardless of the initial reason for enrolling, could tilt actions in favour of childbearing. Previous research clearly shows that flexibility, mobility and being independ- ent of the campus environment are beneficial to student parenthood and that online education is characterized by flexibility, mobility and independence from campus. Hence, ODE may positively influence the perceived and actual feasibility of mak- ing the transition to parenthood as a student. Students who are already looking to 800 L. Andersson 1 3 have a child may select into this platform, while students who choose ODE for other reasons may find the option of becoming parents to be consistent with this form of study. This leads to the study’s main hypothesis: enrolment in distance education will be less negatively associated with transition to parenthood than enrolment in campus education. Of course, the reasoning above also predicts distance enrolment to occur shortly after transitioning to parenthood. This follows from the assump- tion that individuals formulate childbearing decisions in anticipation of the future. An awareness that studies can be pursued from home after childbirth, via distance studies, would promote both childbearing and subsequent enrolment in ODE. This is the reverse temporal sequence but is indicative of the same substantive trajectory of combined studies and parenthood. In the event-history framework of this study, I focus on analysing the impact of distance enrolment on the risk of transitioning to parenthood, but provide complementary analyses of parity, conception and platform type in “Appendix” Table 10. 3 The Swedish Context The Swedish educational system is characterized by a low degree of tracking and a high degree of tertiary enrolment, free tuition at all levels and universal student loans and entitlements. For higher education, the level of study activity and parallel employment among Swedish university students lies at the average in a European comparison (Eurostudent 2015). It is possible that the subsidized financial situation of students eases the transition to parenthood. At the same time, a generous earn- ings-related parental leave system encourages stable employment prior to childbear- ing (see Thalberg 2013 for an extended discussion). In comparison with many other Western countries, the transition to parenthood during and after enrolment might be more compatible with Swedish conditions (Billari and Philipov 2004; Liefbroer and Corijn 1999). Swedish university students either compile sets of courses freely or study within the framework of a more restrictive programme. As there are only a few fully online distance programmes and no exclusively online universities, by far the most prev- alent use of distance education involves alternating between distance courses and on-campus courses as a means of compiling the requisite number of courses to com- plete tertiary education. Sweden was relatively early in its development of ICT. In 2004, all municipalities had at least one broadband provider (PTS 2004), and about 80% of the population aged 18–44 had access to the Internet at home. By 2010, this figure had increased to over 95% (Finndal 2010). The number of students enrolled in distance education increased by 100% between 2002 and 2009 (Amneus et al. 2011). In 2011, every fourth university student had registered for at least one credit-award- ing online distance course (Swedish register data, author’s own calculations). These figures are comparable to those of other developed countries such as the USA (Allen and Seaman 2010). Cross-sectional bivariate measures indicate that online students tend to have lower retention rates, are more likely to be female, and are older than campus students (Amneus et al. 2011). 801 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… 4 Method 4.1 Data and Sample The paper employs administrative register data from Statistics Sweden covering the entire Swedish population. The data provide longitudinal monthly information on childbirths. The date of conception is defined by subtracting 9 months from the date of childbirth. Information on tertiary enrolment on individual courses is available per term. I include all women born between 1968 and 1991 who were registered as living in Sweden in 2004, giving a total of 1,458,241 individuals. Since the char- acteristics of distance students are less well known than those of campus students, I did not restrict the sample to typical enrolment ages. The population examined includes all individuals who could have entered tertiary education during the obser- vation period and who could be followed for at least 3 years between the ages of 18 and 44. The results section will present year and cohort-specific regressions. The observation window spans the period from 2004 to 2012. The year 2004 was chosen as the starting date due to the availability of data and because by then the level of Internet access was high and the supply of distance courses was quite extensive. The final observation year, 2012, corresponds to the latest available data. After applying left censoring of conception prior to 2004, the analytical sample consists of 938,768 individuals, of whom 345,232 experienced first parity conception during the obser- vation period. 4.2 Educational Measures Studies are performed in different ways and student fertility may be limited to spo- radic, non-continuous, non-committed forms of education. Previous measures of online education consist mostly of dichotomous indicators, e.g. ever being in educa- tion in a given year. This disregards the extent of students’ studies (e.g. Allen and Seaman 2010) and it seems plausible to distinguish between enrolment in substan- tial amounts of ODE and spells where online studies constitute only a small propor- tion of all studies. I differentiate between part-time and full-time studies. A term in which a student accumulated at least 22.5 study credits (75% of full-time activity or more) is considered full-time; a term producing fewer study credits is considered as being part-time. The academic terms are set to overlap the summer break so that term one runs from January to June, while the other runs from July to December. Completed rather than registered courses are used for all tertiary categories due to variation in attrition between platforms. For each academic course, there is information on whether or not it was given at distance. The official criterion for reporting a course as a distance course is that “Teacher and students are separated in time and/or space”. This could include any procedure, ranging from letter correspondence to web-based courses, but distance must be the mode of learning. By 2004, however, it is reasonable to assume that all distance courses were supported by online platforms in some sense, as email 802 L. Andersson 1 3 correspondence was common practice by this time. The lion’s share of distance edu- cation is pursued in alternation with campus education. Since the most prevalent usage of online courses involves taking a mix of online and campus courses during the years of formal education (rather than exclusively online or campus trajectories), the distinction made in the analysis focuses on the amount of distance online plat- form usage during a given term. A dummy for distance education takes the value one if at least 15 distance course credits were accumulated during the term in ques- tion (corresponding to half a term of full-time studies). Thus, full-time terms (75% study activity or higher) and part-time terms1 (less than 75% study activity) are both considered to contain a significant use of distance education if at least 15 credits (50% or more of full-time study activity) relate to online courses. The selection of threshold levels is discussed in the results section and tested in Table  3. Informa- tion on the study platform (online or campus) is only available for higher education. Secondary and non-tertiary post-secondary education is measured using registra- tion information on a yearly basis. This operationalization results in eight discrete time-varying states: non-enrolment (reference category), upper secondary educa- tion, post-upper secondary non-tertiary, full-time tertiary with less than 15 ECTS distance credits; full-time tertiary with 15 or more ECTS distance credits, part-time tertiary with less than 15 ECTS distance credits, part-time tertiary with 15 or more ECTS distance credits. 4.3 Other Measures I include two variables to account for confounding effects of social origin. Parental SES is associated with tempo in the transition to parenthood, and the efficient use of new technologies may be stratified by social origin. I include a proxy for Social class background, based on the parent’s occupation [whichever parent has the high- est ranking occupation (Erikson 1984)]. Decennial census data from 1960 to 1990 include socio-economic index scales (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992) that are coded into five levels closely resembling the EGP schema (labour contract, mixed contract, professional, proprietors and farmers and unknown). Taking online courses may place greater demands on language proficiency. For this reason, I include a dummy variable labelled Migrant background indicating whether or not an individual was born in Sweden. Transition speed varies by the level of education attained and this may also be the case for students. Educational level might confound the results if distance users have obtained a degree while enrolled to a greater extent than campus students. Therefore, I include a yearly time-varying, non-lagged, categorical variable for completed Edu- cational level (compulsory, secondary, post-upper secondary non-tertiary, tertiary graduate or at least 2  years of studies, tertiary postgraduate.) If sparsely populated 1 In practice, this means that half-time distance studies range from 15 to 22 while half-time campus studies range from 1 to 22. I decided to keep the present imbalance, as the main purpose is to discrimi- nate between part-time and full-time enrolment. Limiting part-time students to a 15–22.5 credits defini- tion did not impact on the estimates. 803 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… and remote areas disproportionately use online education, regional variations in fer- tility might confound the effects of distance education on student fertility. I therefore include a yearly time-varying dummy indicating the characteristics of the Region of residence in which an individual is registered at any given time (metropolitan, urban and rural) from the “H-region” classification of Statistics Sweden (SCB 2015). Partner resources predict fertility among students and could confound the rela- tionship between platform and event. Civil status is included as a yearly time-vary- ing categorical variable, denoting individuals as married, not married or of unknown status. Unfortunately, information on cohabitation is not available for the present sample. Distance course-takers may on average be older. As age is associated with likelihood of first parity conception, Age and Age squared are included. Calendar year is included to account for Period effects. 4.4 Analytical Strategy The first conception event is observed from 2004 to 2012. Individuals enter at-risk status from the age of 18 and onwards, depending on cohort entry. Individuals are censored at event, death, migration, turning 45, or in April 2012. I use piece-wise constant baseline intensity models (Hoem 1993). The strategy used here is to utilize the population scale data to show main effects across detailed educational groups and relevant subgroups, paying special attention to practices that may differ between online and campus platforms (e.g. Lappegård and Rønsen 2005). First, I describe the analytical sample. I show how different proportions of online education within a term are related to student fertility. Second, I examine the general association between transition to parenthood in full- and part-time distance stud- ies and campus studies, relative to non-enrolment and disaggregate this model by age and cohort. Third, I disaggregate the model by disposable income quartiles and educational field. For income measures, the age-specific rank of disposable income was calculated based on the entire Swedish population for each calendar year. While working hours would be a preferable variable, this measure captures available resources and provides a rough indication of work activity. For educational field, I use Statistics Sweden’s schema that identifies the following separate fields: educa- tion and teaching, humanities and art, social science, natural science, technology, agriculture, health and services. Finally, I present results from sensitivity analyses, i.e. a set of complementary analyses that tap into the choice of distance versus cam- pus education (Table 8), the transition to second parity (Table 9) and the implication of partner resources (Table 10). These analyses are restricted to “Appendix” as they extend beyond the aim of the present study, but nonetheless provide the reader with important information about ODE and fertility. All models, unless otherwise specified, employ non-enrolment as the reference category. Results are presented as hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals. Unless otherwise stated, all models include controls for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level. 804 L. Andersson 1 3 5 Results 5.1 Descriptive Results The upper section of Table 1 shows the number of individuals, conceptions and per- son-months by different enrolment statuses. 40,495 individuals can be seen to be in full-time distance enrolment and 24,326 in part-time distance enrolment. 1573 (full-time) and 1157 (part-time) conceptions have been recorded for these groups. Together they account for 9% of the observed tertiary enrolment person-months. The lower section of Table 1 shows the percentage of person-months across all vari- ables used by campus and distance enrolment spells. Note that the data only pertain to the period 2004–2012 and only to women who have not reached first parity. In the present sample, the ages at which distance enrolment occurs (44% above age 25) are higher than those for campus enrolment (26% above age 25). As expected, distance education occurs increasingly frequently over the period examined. Distance edu- cation is more evenly spread across birth cohorts, reflecting its usage among older individuals. Working class background is overrepresented in distance compared to campus educational spells (parent manual occupation = 24% for campus and 31% for distance). Distance enrolment occurs more often from small towns and rural areas than do campus studies (campus 11%, distance 28%). Individuals with a migrant background contribute somewhat fewer spells of distance than campus education. Four per cent of campus enrolment spells were contributed by married students, and the corresponding figure for distance enrolment is 8%. Distance enrolment spells are somewhat more common among individuals from the highest income quartile (cam- pus 13%, distance 17%). Distance students spend somewhat more time as students while also having at least 2  years of previous university experience (campus 48%, distance 53%) or having a postgraduate degree (campus 4%, distance 8%). This may possibly simply indicate that skills-upgrade studies are more prominent among dis- tance than among campus courses. Distance enrolment occurs more in the humani- ties and social sciences than in the natural or technical sciences. Still, health and medicine is a common field of study among distance students. Taken together, this descriptive information indicates that distance studies, more often than campus stud- ies, occur in populations with characteristics that are predictive of a rapid transition to parenthood. This is in line with the general idea that distance study platforms are perceived as being practical from a childbearing perspective and attract individu- als with parenthood in mind. At the same time, distance education appears to be a widely dispersed study platform that is also found, for example, among urban (40%) and metropolitan (32%) populations and within normatively expected study ages (e.g. 22–25 = 42%). 5.2 Survival Model Results Table  2 presents hazard ratios for all enrolment statuses (please see “Appen- dix” Table  7 for estimates of all included variables). It is clear that, in line with 805 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… Table 1 Descriptive statistics Enrolment status Subjects 1st parity Person-months Share person-months in Uni. enrol. Population size and events across all enrolment statuses Not in education 919,924 298,940 42,726,994 Upper secondary 308,586 2641 2,651,082 Further 234,213 15,572 4,34,1700 Full-time University, no distance 307,957 10,962 6,251,307 0.44 Full-time University, distance 40,495 1573 354,294 0.06 Part-time University, no distance 324,413 14,387 4,541,411 0.47 Part-time University, distance 24,326 1157 176,798 0.03 Totale 938,768 345,232 61,043,586 100 Variable distribution across campus and distance enrolment Share person months Campus Distance Age 18–21 0.26 0.14 22–25 0.48 0.42 26–29 0.18 0.25 30–33 0.05 0.11 34–37 0.02 0.06 38≥ 0.01 0.03 Period 2004 0.12 0.06 2005 0.12 0.09 2006 0.12 0.09 2007 0.12 0.09 2008 0.12 0.10 2009 0.12 0.14 2010 0.12 0.17 2011 0.12 0.18 2012 0.04 0.07 Cohort 1968–1972 0.06 0.12 1973–1977 0.17 0.20 1978–1982 0.24 0.21 1983–1987 0.27 0.24 1988–1990 0.26 0.23 Social background Manual 0.24 0.31 Non-manual 0.10 0.11 Prof. 0.46 0.41 Self/farm 0.07 0.08 Unknown 0.13 0.10 806 L. Andersson 1 3 Table 1 (continued) Variable distribution across campus and distance enrolment Share person months Campus Distance Region of residence Metropolitan 0.46 0.32 Urban 0.42 0.40 Small town and rural areas 0.11 0.28 Unknown 0.00 0.00 Migration status Born in Sweden 0.89 0.93 Born Abroad 0.11 0.07 Civil status Not married 0.96 0.92 Married 0.04 0.08 Unknown 0.00 0.00 Income quartile 1st 0.24 0.23 2nd 0.36 0.31 3rd 0.27 0.28 4th 0.13 0.17 Unknown 0.00 0.00 Attained education Compulsory 0.00 0.00 Upper Secondary 0.13 0.10 Post-upper secondary non-tertiary 0.35 0.29 University graduate degree or at least 2 years of studies 0.48 0.53 University postgraduate degree 0.04 0.08 Unknown 0.00 0.00 Educational field Education and teaching 0.10 0.16 Humanities and art 0.14 0.17 Social sciences 0.33 0.32 Natural sciences 0.11 0.08 Technology 0.07 0.03 Agriculture 0.00 0.00 Health 0.20 0.17 Services 0.04 0.05 Unknown 0.01 0.00 N subjects 319,901 53,595 N person-months 10,792,718 531,092 807 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… previous research, enrolment has a negative effect on the transition to parent- hood. Interestingly, there is a striking difference between the types of educational platforms in tertiary education. The risk of first birth conception during full- time campus enrolment is 70% lower than, or about one-third of, that of some- one who is not enrolled (1–0.30). In contrast, the corresponding risk for enrol- ment that includes a substantial usage of online distance platforms is only 43% lower (1–0.57). For part-time campus enrolment, the risk is 50% lower (1–0.50) and for part-time distance enrolment it is 21% lower (1–0.79). For both full- and part-time enrolment, the negative impact is considerably smaller for periods of enrolment that include a high usage of online distance platforms. Part-time stud- ies are associated with a higher risk than full-time studies, but the positive impact of distance enrolment on the transition to parenthood is seen in both modes of study activity. To put the magnitude of the effect sizes into perspective, the differ- ences in risk between platforms found here are at least as large as the differences between female- and male-dominated educational fields in Norway reported by Lappegård and Rønsen (2005). Figure  1a, b presents the estimates for full-time campus and distance enrolment for age and cohort-specific models. The model corresponds to that of Table  2. We see that the gap between distance and campus education decreases, but remains pre- sent, for all but the oldest age group. The effect is most pronounced for births at particularly young ages, but the differences also remain clear among the prime first parity age groups of 28–32  years. Confidence intervals overlap for women above the age of 32. For the very late first births, the gap is reversed. The general decrease in the gap across age groups is also consistent with the idea of an overall compres- sion of the childbearing tempo as women approach the biological boundary of child- bearing. The analysis based on cohorts shown in Fig. 1b reaffirms the pattern. Later Table 2 Enrolment effects on first birth conception (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Not in education 1.00 Upper secondary 0.56*** (0.53–0.58) Post-upp. sec. non-ter. 0.67*** (0.66–0.68) Campus full-time 0.30*** (0.29–0.31) Distance full-time 0.57*** (0.29–0.31) Campus part-time 0.50*** (0.49–0.51) Distance part-time 0.79*** (0.75–0.84) N 938,768 808 L. Andersson 1 3 cohorts, who also are younger during the observation period, present the most siz- able effect. 5.3 Subgroup Analysis Some students may consider their main activity to be work rather than studies, and may present corresponding childbearing behaviour. If online platforms are used exclusively to facilitate parallel employment, their impact on non-/sporadically working students should diminish when students are stratified by labour market attachment. Table 3 uses a proxy for such behaviour in the form of quartiles of dis- posable income. Estimates of upper secondary and further education are excluded for clarity. First, we see that tertiary enrolment has a negative effect on the transi- tion to parenthood irrespective of the level of disposable income. Second, the effects of distance education do not appear to be confounded by an overrepresentation of online platform usage in the highest income group. Rather, in all income groups, distance enrolment is linked to a higher risk of conception than campus enrol- ment. Finally, while the medium–high and highest income earners have a higher risk of conception across all platforms, the risk associated with distance enrolment increases more clearly across the four income groups. As is evident from the descriptive data in Table  1, distance enrolment is some- what more common in the disciplines of education and teaching and health. These are fields that have been argued to attract family-oriented individuals since they, to a greater extent than other disciplines, lead to occupations with lower career pen- alties for periods away from employment and that offer the possibility of working part-time or flexible hours. Since the strategies, resources and needs of university institutions are discipline specific, institutions differ in their provision of online Fig. 1 a Tertiary enrolment platform effects by age group (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI). b Tertiary enrolment platform effects by cohort group (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI). Source: Swedish Regis- ter data. Both figures show estimates controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 809 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… distance platforms. The link between campus and distance enrolment and fertility may thus be affected by the supply of courses across different disciplines. Table  4 presents enrolment effects by different educational fields. Estimates of upper sec- ondary and further education are excluded for reasons of parsimony. As has been found in previous research (Lappegård and Rønsen 2005), different fields of educa- tion are linked to different implications for the transition to parenthood during enrol- ment. For full-time studies, students of education and teaching and health stand out as having a high risk, while students of technology, natural science, social science and agriculture are quite unlikely to become parents during enrolment. Students of services, humanities and arts and unknown fields of study lie between these two groups. These differences across different fields could reflect human capital invest- ment in prospective careers, such that students of technology anticipate a greater need to establish themselves on the labour market than aspiring teachers or nurses. The differences might also reflect a selection of individuals who are looking to have children into educational fields that lead to so-called family-friendly occupations. The nature of the studies in different fields may also be more or less compatible with the transition to parenthood. All fields carry a higher risk in part-time enrol- ment than in full-time enrolment, and teaching students who are studying part-time show a particularly high risk. As regards the differences across platform, distance enrolment has consistently weaker effects than campus enrolment in the correspond- ing educational fields. Overall, it appears that the effect of distance education is not Table 3 Tertiary enrolment effects on first birth conception by income quartiles (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil sta- tus and educational level. Subjects with partners of unknown income (N = X) were grouped in a separate category that is not presented for parsimony. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Not in education 1.00 – Campus full-time, lowest income quartile 0.30*** (0.29–0.31) Distance full-time, lowest income quartile 0.38*** (0.34–0.43) Campus full-time, medium–low income quartile 0.28*** (0.27–0.29) Distance full-time, medium–low income quartile 0.52*** (0.47–0.56) Campus full-time, medium–high income quartile 0.29*** (0.28–0.30) Distance full-time, medium–high income quartile 0.67*** (0.61–0.73) Campus full-time, highest income quartile 0.43*** (0.41–0.45) Distance full-time, highest income quartile 0.88* (0.79–0.98) Campus part-time, lowest income quartile 0.37*** (0.36–0.38) Distance part-time, lowest income quartile 0.47*** (0.40–0.54) Campus part-time, medium–low income quartile 0.43*** (0.41–0.44) Distance part-time, medium–low income quartile 0.79*** (0.70–0.89) Campus part-time, medium–high income quartile 0.57*** (0.55–0.59) Distance part-time, medium–high income quartile 0.86** (0.78–0.95) Campus part-time, highest income quartile 0.75*** (0.72–0.77) Distance part-time, highest income quartile 1.00 (0.90–1.11) N 938,768 810 L. Andersson 1 3 Table 4 Tertiary enrolment effects by educational field on first birth conception rates (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Not in education 1 – Campus full-time, education and teaching 0.51*** (0.48–0.53) Distance full-time, education and teaching 0.88** (0.80–0.96) Campus full-time, humanities and art 0.29*** (0.28–0.31) Distance full-time, humanities and art 0.39*** (0.34–0.45) Campus full-time, social sciences 0.24*** (0.23–0.25) Distance full-time, social sciences 0.42*** (0.38–0.47) Campus full-time, natural sciences 0.20*** (0.18–0.22) Distance full-time, natural sciences 0.48*** (0.40–0.58) Campus full-time, technology 0.16*** (0.14–0.17) Distance full-time, technology 0.24*** (0.15–0.38) Campus full-time, agriculture 0.20*** (0.15–0.27) Distance full-time, agriculture 0.00*** (0.00–0.00) Campus full-time, health 0.39*** (0.38–0.40) Distance full-time, health 0.77*** (0.69–0.85) Campus full-time, services 0.25*** (0.23–0.28) Distance full-time, services 0.55*** (0.45–0.68) Campus full-time, unknown 0.21*** (0.17–0.25) Distance full-time, unknown 0.60 (0.31–1.14) Campus part-time, education and teaching 0.79*** (0.76–0.82) Distance part-time, education and teaching 1.11 (0.99–1.25) Campus part-time, humanities and art 0.43*** (0.41–0.45) Distance part-time, humanities and art 0.59*** (0.50–0.69) Campus part-time, social sciences 0.41*** (0.40–0.42) Distance part-time, social sciences 0.64*** (0.57–0.72) Campus part-time, natural sciences 0.40*** (0.37–0.42) Distance part-time, natural sciences 0.80* (0.66–0.98) Campus part-time, technology 0.35*** (0.32–0.38) Distance part-time, technology 0.94 (0.67–1.30) Campus part-time, agriculture 0.28*** (0.20–0.39) Distance part-time, agriculture 0.34 (0.05–2.39) Campus part-time, health 0.64*** (0.61–0.66) Distance part-time, health 0.89 (0.78–1.01) Campus part-time, services 0.47*** (0.43–0.52) Distance part-time, services 0.81 (0.62–1.06) Campus part-time, unknown 0.40*** (0.32–0.50) Distance part-time, unknown 2.00* (1.02–3.91) N 938,768 811 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… driven by distance course supply in specific educational fields. Among part-time dis- tance enrolees in education and teaching, the risk of making the transition to par- enthood is not significantly different from that of individuals who are not enrolled in education, but these estimates also have fairly wide confidence intervals. How- ever, the risk of making the transition to parenthood also approaches that of the non-enrolled population for those in full-time distance enrolment in teaching and education (CI 0.80–0.96). These findings could be driven by unknown qualitative aspects of distance education in certain fields. It might, for example, be that distance skills-upgrade courses are more commonly offered within teaching and education, and are being taken by students who are already rooted in a profession, and who are at higher risk of becoming parents. However, the findings may also reflect a double selection effect whereby individuals who are looking to have children are selecting into both family-friendly fields and, as I have argued, family-friendly educational platforms. In this case, one interpretation would be that students of teaching are using distance education as one part of their strategy to achieve their fertility inten- tions during their period of study. 5.4 Sensitivity Analyses and Alternative Specifications As discussed in the methods section, the separation of enrolment terms into cam- pus and distance categories is based on a specific definition. In the absence of a gold-standard, I have reasoned that above half a term worth of credits constitutes a plausible threshold for a substantial usage of online platforms. To examine the valid- ity of this threshold, I modelled increasing categorical levels of the amount of dis- tance study. I expect there to be a certain substantive amount of ODE usage needed to make a difference for demographic behaviour. A greater proportion of distance enrolment should have a more salient effect than smaller proportions. If there is an effect of some usage of online distance platforms, but this is similar across different amounts of distance education during a given term, then it is likely that the results are being driven by forces with little relevance to my argument. Model 1 in Table 5 presents the main effects of tertiary enrolment categories on the risk of first birth conception, by differing amounts of distance usage. Non-enrolment is the reference category. Students taking for example 7.5 ETCS (one standard course) online during a term show no or only minor differences by comparison with students enrolled in campus only (0.29 vs. 0.30). Students taking 8–15 distance credits show only a mar- ginal difference (0.35 vs. 0.30) with overlapping confidence intervals. Noticeable higher estimates are found for higher amounts (above 15 ETCS) of online education (0.52 vs. 0.30 and 0.62 vs. 0.30). This suggests an association between distance edu- cation and student fertility, and also strengthens the argument for the use of a thresh- old (of around at least half a term worth of credits) for substantial online usage. To provide an alternative perspective, Model 2 instead specifies full-time enrolment (in any platform) as the reference category and includes a continuous variable for online ETCS credits to produce a linear estimation (capped at 30 ETCS, mean = 13.1, SD = 8.3). This estimate suggests that the risk of becoming a parent increases by 2.6 812 L. Andersson 1 3 Table 5 Full-time tertiary enrolment effects on first birth conception across amount of online education in full-time enrolment (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Including controls for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Model 1 Model 2 Not in education 1.00 3.34 (3.29–3.42) Full-time campus 0.30*** (0.29–0.31) 1.00 Full-time distance (1–7 distance ETCS) 0.29*** (0.26–0.33) – Full-time distance (8–14 distance ETCS) 0.35*** (0.27–0.44) – Full-time distance (15–22 distance ETCS) 0.52*** (0.49–0.56) – Full-time distance (> 22 distance ETCS) 0.62*** (0.58–0.67) – Distance ECTS (continuous) – 1.02*** (1.02–1.02) N 938,768 938,768 Table 6 Enrolment effects on first birth conception and first birth (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI). Alternative specifications a Main model b Conditional on enrolment resulting in degree c Controlling for isolated study spells d Date of birth instead of date of conception. Controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level e Latest year of studies treated as non-enrolment ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Model 1a Model 2b Model 3c Model 4d Model 5e Not in education Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref. Upper secondary 0.56*** (0.53–0.58) 0.55*** (0.52–0.57) 0.54*** (0.52–0.56) 0.20*** (0.19–0.22) 0.57*** (0.55–0.60) Post-upp. sec. non-ter. 0.67*** (0.66–0.68) 0.71*** (0.70–0.72) 0.67*** (0.65–0.67) 0.31*** (0.30–0.32) 0.68*** (0.67–0.69) Campus full-time 0.30*** (0.29–0.31) 0.18*** (0.17–0.19) 0.25*** (0.24–0.25) 0.13*** (0.13–0.13) 0.31*** (0.31–0.32) Distance full-time 0.57*** (0.29–0.31) 0.41*** (0.38–0.46) 0.44*** (0.42–0.46) 0.32*** (0.30–0.34) 0.58*** (0.54–0.61) Campus part-time 0.50*** (0.49–0.51) 0.34*** (0.32–0.35) 0.36*** (0.35–0.37) 0.34*** (0.34–0.35) 0.52*** (0.51–0.53) Distance part-time 0.79*** (0.75–0.84) 0.68*** (0.60–0.77) 0.47*** (0.45–0.50) 0.52*** (0.48–0.55) 0.86*** (0.80–0.92) N 938,768 651,831 938,768 927,159 938,768 813 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… percentage points for each additional online credit point acquired within a term of full-time education, relative to a full-time exclusively on-campus term. Several alternative sensitivity tests to the main findings presented in Table 2 are displayed in Table 6. For reference, the results of Table 2 are shown again in Model 1. The interpretations following Model 1 have presumed that distance and campus students have somewhat similar study trajectories. Even if studies constitute the main activity during a given term, it might be speculated that online distance educa- tion might be disproportionately used by students with no intention of pursuing a complete programme of formal higher education. Studying with a more leisurely orientation could in itself reduce the effect of enrolment on childbearing behaviours, which would make comparisons with campus studies moot. In Model 2, individuals who did not receive a degree are excluded from the student population. Compared to Model 1, the risk of first birth conception during enrolment becomes lower, but the gap between distance and campus enrolment persists. Another way in which dis- tance and campus studies may be functionally different would be if ODE is overrep- resented in the context of sporadic non-continuous studies. Anticipatory behaviour might also lead individuals who are opting out of the labour market in expectation of becoming pregnant to resort to short-term enrolment spells as a temporary activ- ity. In Model 3, I include a dummy for single-spell terms, defined as an enrolment term that is not sequentially preceded by a previous enrolment term. We again see a reduction in the risk of first birth conception in tertiary enrolment. It is therefore plausible that the effects of platform type can in part be attributed to specific types of study strategies. However, the estimates presented in Models 2 and 3 still repro- duce the overall patterns of the substantive differences between platforms found in Model 1. This result hints that differences between online and campus enrolment in the transition to adulthood are not a direct artefact of platform-specific educational trajectories.2 I have used date of conception to ameliorate state/date issues since childbirth might increase the likelihood of anticipatory changes in educational status (Lief- broer and Corijn 1999). However, if most conceptions occur near the completion of tertiary studies, birth will occur following the termination of enrolment and does not, arguably, constitute student fertility. If such behaviour is overrepresented among the users of online platforms (i.e. if distance studies are disproportionately used dur- ing the very final stages of university studies) using the date of conception will pro- duce artificial differences. Model 4 presents estimates of first birth risk using date of birth rather than conception. Across all enrolment types, the hazard of student parenthood is consistently lower compared to the estimates in Model 1, indicating that among students, the transition to parenthood is skewed towards later periods of the enrolment period. However, the pattern of differences between platforms remains, both for full- and part-time studies. To further tap into this issue, Model 5 uses date of conception but treats the last two terms of studies as non-enrolment. This specification counts only events occurring within study spells “mid-term” as 2 These estimates must be interpreted with some caution due to the problems associated with anticipa- tory analysis. 814 L. Andersson 1 3 student childbearing. Again, campus distance differences are smaller compared to Model 1 but a substantive gradient remains. This suggests that online platforms are compatible with the student transition to parenthood throughout the period of ter- tiary studies, and are not solely utilized to ease the transition towards the very end of the study period. As argued in the theoretical section, I have assumed that the relationship between distance education and childbirth could go both ways. Thus far, the survival models censor on the event of childbirth, and they hold non-enrolment rather than campus enrolment as the comparison. I include complementary analyses of how childbear- ing and conception predict distance enrolment, holding campus enrolment as the reference category. “Appendix” Table 8 predicts platform type in a cross section of the entire female student population in 2004 and 2011. Compared to campus stud- ies, distance studies are slightly favoured among those who already are parents, but clearly favoured during first conception periods. This reflects the reasonable conclu- sion that ODE may be preferred by parents in general, and that its effect is not only confined to impacting choices regarding transition to parenthood. Finally, in “Appendix” Tables 9 and 10, I look at second-order parity. If distance education impacts on higher parity student childbearing, it is again support for the practicality of ODE. However, we see in Table  9 that platform differences are smaller here than in first-parity models. This may indicate that higher-order student parents are highly select, but runs counter to the intuitive explanation of mothers using ODE to combine multiple roles and activities. Estimating second parity rather than transition into parenthood has the advantage of identifying partners via biologi- cal ties to firstborns. I use this information to show differences in distance enrolment over partner’s income quartiles. “Appendix” Table  10 shows that higher partner income is associated with a higher likelihood of student childbearing, and that this pattern is quite similar for campus and distance students. 6 Discussion and Conclusion Educational enrolment is pivotal to understanding fertility postponement. Further, large student stocks and increasing ages at enrolment and at the completion of edu- cation give cause to explore the antecedents of student fertility. The present study has extended the literature on the heterogeneous effects of education on fertility by considering the difference between online and on-campus education. Using register data on all Swedish women born from 1968 to 1991, I have assessed whether the risk of transition to parenthood during university studies is related to the usage of online distance education (ODE). The results show that when all or a high proportion of a period of enrolment is conducted at distance, the negative association between educational enrolment and the risk of transition to parenthood is considerably smaller. Descriptive find- ings show that online studies are disproportionately utilized by individuals with a high transition risk, such as older and married students. At the same time, a higher likelihood of first birth is still found among distance students across age and cohort groups, in so-called family-friendly educational fields and among students within 815 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… different income brackets even when controls are included for sociodemographic characteristics. I have shown that while study patterns—the way individuals use ODE and brick-and-mortar education, respectively—probably explain part of the effect, the impact of ODE on fertility is found for full-time and part-time students, for students who do and do not graduate and for students with both adjacent study spells and with no contiguous study spells. I have suggested a few reasons for the observed association. Some of the funda- mental attributes of online distance learning, such as flexibility, mobility and inde- pendence from campus, are consistent with the needs of parent students. Distance education may enable fertility by promoting double-status positions (Spéder and Bartus 2017) and by transforming studies into a domestic activity that is compat- ible with work and parenthood. Such an interpretation is supported by the fact that effects were particularly prominent among part-time students, students with higher yearly incomes, student earners and students aiming at family-oriented occupations such as teaching. The property of enabling fertility need not imply a causal relation- ship, but it does provide an intuitive explanation for why distance education would be a preferred option in connection with transitioning into parenthood. The central take-home message from the present study is that the educational platform may be considered an important factor, with differentiated effects on fertility. This finding is of particular importance in light of the rapid expansion of distance education. Will the diffusion of online platforms causally increase student fertility or the fertility tempo among those with a tertiary education? The present paper does not employ the type of design that would be necessary to answer this question. Many of the students who become parents during distance studies are probably a select group who would have become parents regardless of the available study platforms. In this case, the diffusion of online platforms produces a dividend, based on educational platform, for an existing demographic behaviour, but would not impact on student fertility as such. Indeed, fertility intentions may govern the choice into or type of tertiary education (Cohen et  al. 2011). Yet another counterfactual is that individu- als observed to be taking online courses, and who experience childbirth during their studies, might have opted out of tertiary education altogether if ODE had not been available. However, studies in family planning (Hammerslough 1992), for example, have shown that fertility and family behaviour are impacted by access to resources and innovations that provide practical assistance to intended behaviours. To the extent that distance education provides enabling practical assistance to student par- enthood, it is conceivable that at least a part of the student population are using online platforms as a tool to help them realize their childbearing intentions. This group might be responsive to the increasing supply of distance online courses. The results in the present paper can thus be seen as providing a tentative indication of the possibility that online distance education reduces the postponement of childbearing for subgroups of university-educated individuals, increasing their chances of real- izing their fertility intentions. Online distance studies can be conceptualized as a technology that enables particular fertility behaviours. The different rates of transition to parenthood dur- ing enrolment hint that campus and distance education may be qualitatively dif- ferent experiences. One possible interpretation is that as online distance education 816 L. Andersson 1 3 becomes more ubiquitous within tertiary educational institutions, the university experience changes; campus life becomes increasingly optional, flexibility increases and distance and commuting become less of a problem, providing a leeway for stu- dent parenthood. This is a plausible scenario that constitutes a clear illustration of how the life course is regulated by concrete structuring environments such as uni- versity campuses, and of how technological innovations can alter these structuring conditions. This illuminates the need for further study of ODE as a means by which information communication technologies (ICT) are affecting the life course (Ches- ley and Johnson 2014). Finally, the awareness of a relationship between the transition to parenthood and distance education might be informative for policy makers. Caution is needed on this point. This is the case in part because the present study is not based on a causal design, but also because education functions within broader complex systems whose effects are difficult to forecast. Nonetheless, actors with an interest in childbearing or lifelong learning policies might benefit from a careful consideration of the findings from this study. Several limitations should be noted. While I distinguish study intensity, this study cannot address the issue that the nature of online studies may be different from that of campus studies. This also includes the issue of the financial returns to education, which is fundamentally tied to fertility. Better data on the content of online and cam- pus education, including a comparison of complete programmes of tertiary studies, would have been of benefit here. Furthermore, individuals were observed during a limited 8-year period and no data have been included from the period after 2012. This is a period in which new technology has powerfully expanded the use of online learning platforms. The latest enrolment cohorts on which this study is based, and which contain the highest proportions of distance students, completed their educa- tion subsequent to the conclusion of the observation period. A longer time frame would be beneficial, but this is of course a shortcoming that affects most studies of current phenomena. Finally, while the population level coverage is advantageous with respect to external validity, Sweden may also be a problematic case to general- ize from, since higher education and parenthood occur in a context of subsidized students loans and parental leave schemes that are not representative of all devel- oped countries. Despite these limitations, the present study has made several contributions. It is the first paper to investigate the role of online distance tertiary education in the transition to parenthood. I draw on standard theories of transition to parent- hood to elaborate on the function of distance education for childbearing post- ponement via student parenthood. I provide novel population-based empirical findings that provide support for the existence of a link between distance educa- tion and the transition to parenthood across several relevant subgroups. The pre- sent paper has taken a first step that will provide a basis for future inquiries into the possible role of distance education for childbearing behaviour. Addressing selectivity and reverse causality is important, and should be an aim for future 817 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… studies. Identifying a random components in regional Internet access, recent studies use broadband rollout to tease out exogenous variation in ICT usage (see Bellou 2015; Billari, Giuntella and Stella 2017). In the present case, broadband rollout is highly diffused during the observed period, and is linked to distances to university and other predictors of enrolment, which complicates its function as an instrument. However, for other contexts and periods, this strategy, as a means of estimating outcomes of ODE net of selection, holds great promise. Furthermore, despite the extensive coverage of the data in the present study, turning to limited but more detailed sources is likely to be fruitful. Having in- depth information on ODE and brick-and-mortar versions of similar educational programs, or on particular tertiary institutions that implement online learning platforms at different periods in time, may allow for different designs that might aid inference. On this note, one important question is whether or not the spread of online education enables non-traditional students to enrol and thus causally empowers underprivileged groups. The flow into online education among those who are already parents, and its impact on higher-order births, is also a topic for future research. Much can be done to develop and model mechanisms. For example, do distance students’ patterns of social interaction, partnering and labour market trajectories differ from those of their peers on campus, and does this affect fertility? Also, given the well-documented role of the university as a marriage market, what are the implications of online distance enrolment for assortative partnership formation? Examining large educational institutions that offer full programs on both online and campus platforms might provide a means of addressing these issues. Acknowledgements This research is supported by a Grant from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE, dnr 2012-1741). I thank Michael Gähler, Juho Härkönen, Frida Rudolphi, Margarita Chudnovskaya, Roujman shahbazian and participants of the SUDA Demo- graphic Colloquium Series and the SOFI Level of Living Group Seminars for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of interest I have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Ethical Statement This research is conducted in compliance with the ethical standards of the Swedish Research Council. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Interna- tional License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Appendix See Tables 7, 8, 9 and 10. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 818 L. Andersson 1 3 Table 7 Effects of all covariates included in the model from Table 2 on first birth conception (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Enrolment status Not in education (ref) 1.00 – Upper secondary 0.56*** (0.53–0.58) Post-upper secondary non-tertiary 0.67*** (0.66–0.68) Campus full-time 0.30*** (0.29–0.31) Distance full-time 0.57*** (0.54–0.60) Campus part-time 0.50*** (0.49–0.51) Distance part-time 0.79*** (0.75–0.84) Period 2004 (ref) 1.00 – 2005 1.00 (0.99–1.02) 2006 0.99 (0.98–1.00) 2007 1.00 (0.99–1.01) 2008 1.01 (0.99–1.02) 2009 1.02** (1.01–1.04) 2010 0.98** (0.97–0.99) 2011 0.97*** (0.96–0.99) 2012 0.69*** (0.67–0.70) Social background Manual labour (ref) 1.00 – Non-manual labour 0.94*** (0.93–0.95) Professional 0.85*** (0.84–0.86) Self-employed or farmer 0.90*** (0.89–0.92) Unknown 0.94*** (0.93–0.96) Region of residence Metropolitan (ref) 1.00 – Urban 1.13*** (1.12–1.13) Small town and rural areas 1.27*** (1.26–1.28) Unknown 0.66*** (0.62–0.70) Migration status Born in Sweden (ref) 1.00 – Born Abroad 0.82*** (0.81–0.83) Civil status Not married (ref) 1.00 – Married 4.12*** (4.08–4.15) Unknown 1.00 (1.00–1.00) Attained education Compulsory (ref) 1.00 – Upper secondary 0.85*** (0.84–0.87) Post-upper secondary non-tertiary 0.81*** (0.79–0.82) University graduate degree or at least 2 years of studies 1.10*** (1.08–1.11) University postgraduate degree 1.13*** (1.12–1.15) Unknown 0.53*** (0.51–0.55) Age 2.24*** (2.22–2.26) Age squared 0.99*** (0.99–0.99) N 938,768 ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 819 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… Table 8 Odds of enrolment in distance education compared to campus education, by parity, conception and control variables. Cross section of student population in 2004 and 2011 (odds ratios and 95% CI) a Birth occurred during 2005/2012 2004 2011 Parity 0 (ref) 1.00 – 1.00 – 1 1.32*** (1.25–1.38) 1.11*** (1.05–1.18) 2 1.19*** (1.14–1.25) 1.06* (1.01–1.12) 3 or more 1.13*** (1.06–1.19) 0.98 (0.92–1.04) Conceptiona No birth 1.00 – 1.00 – 1st birth 1.17*** (1.07–1.29) 1.62*** (1.47–1.80) 2nd birth 1.43*** (1.28–1.59) 1.54*** (1.35–1.76) 3rf birth 1.07 (0.89–1.28) 1.16 (0.95–1.42) Social background Manual labour (ref) 1.00 – 1.00 – Non-manual labour 1.60*** (1.48–1.73) 1.29*** (1.16–1.44) Professional 1.52*** (1.40–1.65) 1.33*** (1.19–1.48) Self-employed or farmer 1.37*** (1.26–1.49) 1.37*** (1.22–1.53) Unknown 1.57*** (1.43–1.72) 1.30*** (1.15–1.46) Region of residence Metropolitan (ref) 1.00 – 1.00 – Urban 1.29*** (1.25–1.33) 1.38*** (1.33–1.43) Small town and rural areas 2.49*** (2.40–2.58) 3.00*** (2.89–3.13) Unknown 2.29** (1.25–4.22) 9.34*** (5.31–16.43) Migration status Born Abroad 0.83*** (0.78–0.88) 0.82*** (0.75–0.89) Civil status Married 1.20*** (1.16–1.25) 1.18*** (1.14–1.23) Attained education Compulsory (ref) 1.00 – 1.00 – Upper secondary 1.49 (0.95–2.33) 0.80 (0.61–1.05) Post-upper secondary non-tertiary 0.80 (0.51–1.25) 0.56*** (0.43–0.74) University graduate degree 0.71 (0.45–1.11) 0.80 (0.61–1.05) University postgraduate degree 1.08 (0.51–2.29) 0.54* (0.29–0.98) Age 1.37*** (1.35–1.39) 1.35*** (1.33–1.37) Age square 1.00*** (1.00–1.00) 1.00*** (1.00–1.00) N 186,708 178,311 820 L. Andersson 1 3 Table 9 Tertiary enrolment effects on second birth conception (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil status and educational level ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Not in education 1.00 Upper secondary 0.56*** (0.49–0.63) Post-upp. sec. non-ter. 0.76*** (0.75–0.77) Campus full-time 0.62*** (0.60–0.63) Distance full-time 0.70*** (0.65–0.74) Campus part-time 0.76*** (0.74–0.78) Distance part-time 0.86*** (0.80–0.92) N 938,768 Table 10 Tertiary enrolment effects on second birth conception by partners’ income quartiles (hazard ratio estimates and 95% CI) Controlled for period, age, age squared, social background, region of residence, migrant status, civil sta- tus and educational level and income rank. Second-birth with first-birth parents: Censoring at divorce ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 Not in education 1.00 – Campus full-time, p lowest income quartile 0.46*** (0.43–0.50) Distance full-time, p lowest income quartile 0.53*** (0.44–0.64) Campus full-time, p medium–low income quartile 0.59*** (0.56–0.62) Distance full-time, p medium–low income quartile 0.69*** (0.61–0.77) Campus full-time, p medium–high income quartile 0.71*** (0.67–0.74) Distance full-time, p medium–high income quartile 0.74*** (0.66–0.83) Campus full-time, p highest income quartile 0.79*** (0.74–0.83) Distance full-time, p highest income quartile 0.83** (0.73–0.95) Campus part-time, p lowest income quartile 0.57*** (0.54–0.61) Distance part-time, p lowest income quartile 0.81* (0.67–0.98) Campus part-time, p medium–low income quartile 0.72*** (0.68–0.75) Distance part-time, p medium–low income quartile 0.81** (0.72–0.93) Campus part-time, p medium–high income quartile 0.83*** (0.80–0.87) Distance part-time, p medium–high income quartile 0.92 (0.81–1.04) Campus part-time, p highest income quartile 0.94** (0.90–0.98) Distance part-time, p highest income quartile 0.90 (0.78–1.04) N 477,323 821 1 3 Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among… References Allen, I. 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work_jxv7noif3rdw7nr2g6jgcy46pu	----	Not the same person anymore 1 “Not the same person anymore”: groupwork, identity and social learning online Rowaida Jaber, Eileen Kennedy Rowaida Jaber, Education, Laureate Online Education – University of Liverpool, Liverpool UK, Jaber_row@yahoo.com Corresponding author: Eileen Kennedy, 1) UCL Knowledge Lab, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, 23-29 Emerald Street, London WC1N 3QS, UK, 2) Education, Laureate Online Education – University of Liverpool, Liverpool UK, eileen.kennedy@ucl.ac.uk mailto:Jaber_row@yahoo.com mailto:eileen.kennedy@ucl.ac.uk Not the same person anymore 2 “Not the same person anymore”: Groupwork, identity, and social learning online This paper argues that identity may be key to understanding why social presence has been considered so important to successful learning experiences. A qualitative case study of 10 students and 4 tutors in an online postgraduate education program was conducted. The research applied the work of Goffman to explain the relationship between social presence and support for the social production of identity online. Semi-structured individual and group interviews revealed the importance of trustworthy social interaction to support students’ performance of identity and identity shifts in fostering deeper social learning. Implications for the design of effective online learning experiences are provided. Keywords: social presence; groupwork; interaction; learning technology; distance education Introduction Online groupwork has been championed for its capacity to produce deep, productive, social learning (Laurillard, 2012), with the potential to enable learners to achieve a degree of metacognition and even social metacognition or co-regulation of learning (Garrison & Akyol, 2013, 2015). This kind of learning has implications for the learners’ sense of identity, in its capacity for transformation of learners’ relationship to self, and to their relationships with others and the world around them (Hughes & Oliver, 2010). Social Presence has been argued to play the vital role of mediating online interactions that create knowledge by providing a “supportive learning environment in which students feel comfortable” (Akyol & Garrison, 2011, p. 188). However, a lack of clarity over what creates social presence and how it contributes to learning may explain why online classes can still be "impersonal and lack the simple but meaningful verbal and nonverbal cues and the overall social presence and immediate response-time" (Cunningham, 2015, p.34). The research question for this paper is, how and why do specific elements of communication create social presence in online groupwork contexts, and what relationship does social presence have to being able to learn Not the same person anymore 3 online, particularly at a deeper, metacognitive level? To answer this question, the paper explores the relationship between social presence and identity in online learning. In so doing, it seeks to provide further guidance for tutors and online learning designers to create learning environments that support students to achieve individual and social metacognition online. The paper draws on Goffman’s (1959; 1972) accounts of the presentation of self and face- work to examine online interactions between learners through the thematic analysis of interviews with postgraduate online students and their tutors. The analytical framework provided by Goffman is able to highlight the role of less controllable behaviours and unintentional communication in promoting social presence to support learners’ shifting identities online. This approach can therefore contribute to a clearer account of what is at stake in building social presence online and how best to achieve it. Shifting Identity Online As software becomes pervasive in everyday life while seeming to disappear into the cloud (Helmond, 2010), attention to the way software constructs learner identities in educational contexts is increasingly important. The social web has long been perceived as an arena where users can become “self-made people” (Reid, cited in Hine, 2000, p. 118). As a result, the shifting experience of identity has become a focus for research on learning and teaching online. Savin-Baden (2010), for example, suggested that online environments offer the potential for users to play with multiple identities. Yet, the design, norms, and practices of online learning environments are implicated in the production of the identities of learners. Theorists of social networking sites (for example, Van Doorn, 2009; Van House, 2011) have drawn on Butler (1999)’s concept of performativity to show that identities are discursively produced as a result of interactions with the online environment which both enables and constrains the performance of identity. Online learning is very much a part of this social web, Not the same person anymore 4 yet while research on social presence has explored the social dimensions of online learning (Lowenthal, 2009), implications for learner identities have received less attention. This paper argues that identity may be key to understanding why social presence has been considered so important to successful learning experiences. Social Learning and Identity Online Social presence and online learning Social presence has been variously defined as a “sense of being with another” (Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003, p. 456), a “self-projection,” or a “recognition of the potential for two-way communication” (Kehrwald, 2010, p. 40). Kehrwald (2010) argues that perspectives on social presence range from belief in “a complete lack of presence through notions of telepresence, co-presence and co-location, to views involving psychological engagement and finally to views involving complex behavioural engagement” (p. 40). Early conceptualisations of social presence in telecommunications saw it as the capacity of media to allow communicators to be salient and capable of interaction (Short, Williams, and Christie, 1976). The Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI), developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000), applied the concept of social presence to online learning contexts, arguing that it has a role in supporting learning online. The CoI framework proposed that knowledge is developed through an interaction between three presences: Teaching Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Social Presence. According to the CoI framework, social presence has three components: affective expression, open communication and group cohesion and is understood as, the ability of participants to identify with the group or course of study, communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop personal and affective relationships progressively by way of projecting their individual personalities. (Garrison, 2012, p. 252) Not the same person anymore 5 Research suggests that establishing social presence in online learning contexts can have a positive effect on perceived learning (Lowenthal, 2009). In particular, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2010) argued that, the role of social presence in establishing group cohesion online was central, since the capacity to create a shared sense of social identity with their peers was of utmost importance for online students. However, the relationship between social presence and learning, particularly learning at the metacognitive level, should be unpacked further. Laurillard (2012) argued that an effective way of encouraging metacognition is for students to articulate their ideas and share them with their peers, for example by grading each others’ work or revealing that others have different conceptualisations. Groupwork is, therefore, important to learning, and the growing range of digital technologies to support discussion and collaboration make it eminently feasible to achieve online. However, there are important socio-emotional dimensions to online groupwork (Vuopala, Hyvönen, & Järvelä, 2016), and for it to be successful, a level of social presence needs to be established to create an environment that is comfortable enough for all students to participate and feel confident that their individual contributions will be welcomed and respected. Since learning often involves shifting perspective—or at least ‘modulating’ one’s concepts in Laurillard’s (2012) terms—students need to feel comfortable to expose half- formed or incorrect ideas without fear of undermining their identity in the group. Social presence can therefore be thought of as a characteristic of environments that enable students to feel secure in their performance of identity and to be able to trust the identities they encounter online. This way of understanding social presence emphasises its connection to learning as well as its role in affirming students’ group and individual identities. The emotional aspects of online learning are at the heart of Robinson's (2013) research, which explored social presence and collaborative groupwork, concluding that Not the same person anymore 6 groupwork can produce emotional states such as frustration, feeling constraints, difficulty, or lack of control due to the absence of a sense of immediacy. Robinson (2013) recommended that students working in groups “adopt a range of verbal immediacy behaviors so that their peers can get to know and trust them" (p. 306). While studies such as Robinson (2013) confirm the vital role of social presence in learning in groups, there remains a gap between understanding that social presence is necessary for learning, and a full articulation and explanation of the characteristics of an online environment necessary for learning to take place. Biocca, et al. (2003) argued for an elaborated understanding of social presence to facilitate the operationalization of the concept and improve the online environment. Without this, it is difficult for online learning designers to understand why to incorporate opportunities for communication that promotes social presence, and therefore, when, where and in what form those opportunities should come. Biocca et al. (2003) argue that Goffman’s concept of co-presence was key to understanding the dynamics of social presence as it provided “the basis for a subtle, elaborated, and developed approach to social interaction” (p. 463). However, social interaction for Goffman was strongly linked to the performance of identity, and to return to Goffman's (1959; 1972) detailed exploration of face-to-face encounters may provide the missing detail to explain why social presence is so necessary for successful online learning, and what kinds of learning activities could promote it. The promise of such an approach would be to refine the process of designing for social presence to support social learning. Performing identity online The effectiveness by which online learners are able to communicate their identity has been shown to impact meaningful discussions and dialogic interactions, which in turn support a deep approach to learning (Ke, Chávez, Causarano, & Causarano, 2011). However, the online learning environment can inhibit learners’ capacity to construct their identities for others Not the same person anymore 7 (Brooks & Pitts, 2016; Robinson, 2013), particularly the ‘canonical’ asynchronous discussion forum thread (Oztok, 2013, p. 25). Goffman theorised the production of self in dramaturgical terms of an actor performing for an audience. Goffman’s insights remain surprisingly effective in illuminating the complexities of online interaction despite being developed in a markedly different context (Brooks & Pitts, 2016). According to Goffman, the self is a product of the entire social scene in which it is performed – both the audience and the actor have a stake in the credibility of the performance. Identity is a result of social interaction, therefore. Online, however, the altered mode of communication presents challenges for both the performer and the audience. Goffman (1959, p. 13) argues that when someone encounters another, they “seek to acquire information” about that person or use what knowledge they already have. This information helps people to shape expectations of others and to understand what will be expected of them. In an online learning environment, very little information about others is available, particularly the subtle communication cues that promote mutual trust. As a result, learners can neither know how to act themselves, nor what expectations they can have of each other. Goffman (1959) suggests that there are two sources of information at stake: expressions given and expressions given off (p. 16). While expressions given refer to intentional communication, expressions given off refer to largely non-verbal cues, which—because they are more difficult to manipulate—are considered by others a more reliable indicator of one’s state of mind, whether or not this is really true. In an online—predominately textual— environment, opportunities for expressions given off are much reduced. However, students continue to attribute expressions given off to each other—taking offence, for example, at someone’s response in a forum. In a face-to-face encounter, Goffman (1959) suggests that “others are likely to check up on the more controllable aspects of behaviour by means of the less controllable” (p. 19) in order to ascertain a sense of ‘truth’ behind another’s apparent Not the same person anymore 8 response. This means that individuals may surreptitiously monitor others’ behaviours, looking for ‘tells’ that contradict their expressed position, showing how they really feel—for example, a smirk that belies an explicit response. This source of information is largely closed to students online. Reduced communication also affects online students’ capacity to manage others’ impressions of them, and students therefore lose capacity to perform their identities online, which may be decidedly different from their sophisticated use of communication offline. This explains how immediacy in online communication can build trust among learners. Goffman (1959) suggests interpersonal communication involves an “infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery” (p. 20), where individuals are routinely suspicious of each other’s’ behaviours and rely on their observations of unguarded moments to judge the truth of the situation. It is no surprise, therefore, that the inability to do this online and to present oneself as one would wish would cause insecurity and anxiety. In Goffman’s (1972) terms, this would affect students’ capacity to maintain ‘face,’ the image they have of themselves in which they have attached their feelings. Goffman (1972) argued that individuals perform “face-work” in order to neutralise incidents that could threaten face, for example, displaying poise to avoid showing embarrassment. Online students often have to communicate ideas in writing, as opposed to using what Goffman (1972) describes as the more fleeting and nuanced “deniable communication” (p. 30) that is possible in spoken discussion. Without the capacity for subtle hints and suggestions, the self-exposure inherent in written communication makes online learning an ongoing threat to face. Students must grapple with new concepts and new ways of working very visibly in discussion forums, often without the capacity to edit their posts once submitted. The risk involved in performing identity in writing requires students to engage in excessive virtual face-work, for example, Not the same person anymore 9 carefully drafting submissions offline to maintain face. Goffman (1959) pointed to the importance of a “backstage area” where the impression given by an individual’s public presentation of self “is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course” (p. 115). As a corollary to the challenges of performing identity online, the online learning environment provides constant access to a backstage area—no-one can see you when you do not post. Virtual face- work, rehearsed backstage, is therefore, part and parcel of learning online. Without face-work in “encounters of both an immediate and mediated kind” social interactions would be a “hazardous thing for feelings and faces” (Goffman, 1972, p. 31). In online groupwork, the lack of information available prevents students from easily agreeing on a “definition of the situation” (Goffman, 1959, p. 24) to guide how to proceed with the task. The role of the tutor (and other students) may be critical, therefore, in promoting “protective practices” or “tact” (Goffman, 1959, p. 25) to smooth over problematic behaviours that serve as disruptions to a shared understanding of group identity and purpose online. Otherwise, online groupwork can lead to anxiety and excessive impression management, creating a volatile, affective environment (Kennedy & Gray, 2016). However, online practices that promote embodied communication, where non-verbal information can more effectively be given off—‘tacit knowledge’ in Oztok’s (2013) terms—might achieve the kind of social presence that creates mutual trust among participants and supports social learning. Methodology This research began as a part of a larger study that explored the factors surrounding individual and social metacognitive learning on a postgraduate online education program. A case study approach (Gray, 2014) was adopted for this study because our focus was on the ways that collective entities—online student groups—learn together. A qualitative case study therefore allowed multiple sources of data to be collected to examine the complex processes Not the same person anymore 10 that are unlikely to be adequately captured through either a quantitative instrument or a single data source (Yin, 2008). Participants The participants were 4 tutors and 10 students in a postgraduate online program. Four participants were located in North America, three in Africa, two in the Middle East, two in East Asia and three in Europe. The students were all education professionals preparing for the thesis stage of their program following a series of taught modules over a period of 18 months. The tutors were all experienced online educators. Data collection Three rounds of semi-structured interviews were conducted online within two months via Skype: focus group interviews with 2-3 students, followed by individual interviews with students, and individual interviews with tutors. Focus group interviews were chosen to help student participants recall their social learning experiences, while individual interviews allowed them to explore the issues in more depth. Individual interviews with tutors were conducted because a different perspective could be provided by tutors, who did not have direct experience of learning, but were skilled in observing the process of learning and had an overview of interactions in online forums and access to the students’ written outputs. A total of 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted: 4 focus group interviews with students, 10 individual interviews with students, and 4 individual interviews with tutors. Ethical approval was obtained prior to data collection, and the interviewer had no relationship of authority with the participants. Pseudonyms replace names in the discussion. Data Analysis The data was thematically analyzed following the 6-step approach of Braun and Clarke (2006). Initially, interviews with students and tutors were analysed separately. Following a process of familiarization with data, initial codes were generated and themes began to Not the same person anymore 11 emerge. These themes were reviewed and merged into new themes as the main themes became salient. However, as the data from tutors and students were brought together, a meta- theme of identity emerged across the two data sets. The meta-theme of identity and social presence is the focus of the discussion in this paper. Limitations The results of this research pertain to the case study under examination: postgraduate online education students. The participants’ disciplinary background and level of study meant that they were highly reflective about their own learning, which is not necessarily typical of all students. However, the results can offer insights which may otherwise be difficult to elicit. These findings can contribute to explanation building (Yin, 2009) of the factors that contribute to successful online learning environments. Results During group and individual interviews, participants related incidents where they experienced metacognition both individually and as shared experiences during groupwork. In the course of this, however, the theme of identity and social presence emerged in descriptions of the learning self and in reflections on the way social interaction online was effective or not in supporting metacognitive learning. In terms of descriptions of self, the students repeatedly made reference to their own sense of identity in terms of how they saw themselves as learners and their strengths or limitations. The students also referred to changes in identity that occurred as a result of studying online, for example, how their understanding of themselves or their topic transformed. Students reflected on the way social interaction and communication online affected their capacity to learn at a deeper level. The tutors described the change and transformation within students based on their experience of observing students’ interactions in forums and tutorials, and in reflections in the learning logs they kept Not the same person anymore 12 during the program. Tutors also described positive and negative social interactions within their groups and the impact of these on learning. Because of their overarching perspective, tutors were more able to provide contextual explanations for unsatisfactory online interactions, and more confident in identifying productive social learning encounters. The next section makes connections between these results and Goffman’s work on the performance of self and the literature on social presence. Discussion Performing and Transforming Learning Identities Online Whilst reflecting on social learning online, student participants in the study regularly identified themselves as particular kinds of learners in relation to others. In contrast to more critical members of the group, Lilly described herself as having an “agreeing” nature: when I read something I absorb rather than making critique on it. Another participant, Bella, reflected on her identity as a learner within a group as being “useful because I can tie lots of different thoughts together” but “rubbish in a straight line”: I am awful, so I need to see all the different points and bring them to one… so it's really useful if somebody who thinks linearly works with me then we can normally find a way to get things done. Adam saw himself as adept with learning technology, which, despite his fairly negative experience of online social interactions, gave him an identity in the group by helping those less confident. These students had therefore, a clear image of themselves as learners, a learning “face” in Goffman’s (1972) terms, in which they invested feelings and wanted to perform. Not the same person anymore 13 For professional educators, becoming a student again could be seen as a potentially hazardous circumstance. The participants existed between multiple identities and failure as a student posed a real risk to their professional face. For example, Lisa described her mixed feelings at being a student online while an expert at work, and how that made her incapable of sharing her "ignorance" and "insecurity" with the whole class, preferring to converse with only one or two others. Social interactions that helped students to understand more about themselves as learners could be seen as protective practices (Goffman, 1959) supporting students’ learning face: And he said, … you've got some strengths that are different from most people, so what you need to do is just write them down and do your thesis based on your strengths. (Bella) The students’ attachment to their learning faces fed into their search for others in the program with whom they identified. Lily looked out for other students who shared similar thoughts and ideas. Lisa actively looked for 'study pals' and when her study pal decided to quit the program she looked for another. However, Adam found his lack of common interests with others on the program a barrier to developing friendships. if I had interact with people who had the same interests, and the same goals and mind… maybe I would be more engaged with the conversations… Bella expressed frustration with the way learners were allocated to groups, indicating a desire to have her learning face recognised: I'm not entirely sure who decides who we're working with, and how much they know about the people they're putting together. Nevertheless, students’ identities did not always remain stable as they progressed throughout the program, with many experiencing transformation as learners. This instability highlights Not the same person anymore 14 the importance of interactions with trusted others to provide feedback during such periods of transition. Transformations Some of the students found that they changed their perspective on themselves as they progressed through the program. For example, Lisa’s change of thesis topic indicated a transformation for her: I would never have imagined that I would be doing my thesis on […]. If you’d ask me that two or three years ago… I would be… What!! Are you crazy?!. Some of the students reflected on social support for a changing understanding of themselves as learners. Lisa described how small group participation could challenge beliefs and transform approaches to learning: sometimes we hang on to ways of doing things because we've done that thing before and it feels comfortable and... occasionally it would take a team to say... NO we won't do it this way let's do it in another way. Franc expressed surprise that he valued a “visually appealing” concept map produced by a group member, even though he had previously disliked concept mapping, reconsidering his own approach in the light of his classmate’s “minimalist approach”. Among the tutors, both Rose and Mary discussed how students experienced change during their learning process, seeing this change in their reflective logs: when they go back and they start thinking about who they are, and what that has changed about them, they realized the depth of their learning, they're not the same person anymore, they don't think about things the same way (Rose) I can observe these slow changes, more or less, in all the students. (Mary) Not the same person anymore 15 Rose identified a number of students who asked constantly to be in the same group and were always "talking to each other in the main thread" (i.e. in the whole class discussion forum). Rose argued that the group members “have recognized learners that they feel connection to and they feel confident in them” to both support their development as learners: they've always pushed each other’s boundaries… and they did it consistently from module to module. (Rose) While transformations can occur in all learning situations, support from others is not straightforward online. Social presence can be understood as the product of online interactions that ease such tensions around multiple and shifting identities. Participants’ reflections on the success of online social interactions can, therefore, help identify the characteristics of online social presence and will be discussed next. Trustworthy Social Interaction In Goffman’s terms, behaviour that appears less controllable, and therefore less easily subject to artifice or manipulation—expressions given off—can appear especially trustworthy sources of information. Vague definitions of social presence (Biocca et al. 2003) can be given more substance if we apply this insight to help explain why certain communication tools and techniques—“richer media” (Cheung, Chiu, & Lee 2011, p. 1338)—are effective in producing it. Participants like Bella were articulate in describing experiences that produced a sense of “immediacy” (Robinson, 2013) online: those real sparks happened only in the one-to-one atmosphere, it was there and present but you could say it wasn’t vividly colored or as intense in the large cohort as it was… on the one-to-one… (Bella) However, participants were equally vocal in lamenting the absence of such “sparks”, for example, in the feedback from tutors, where the lack of face-to-face interaction led to Not the same person anymore 16 feelings of isolation. Sandra was, therefore, highly appreciative of a tutor who posted her introduction to the module as a video: it was more a face-to-face thing… you were more involved, it's not just pen and paper… she could get to us, she could talk to us on the video. (Sandra) The capacity of video (perhaps in combination with one-to-one interactions) to ease communication was affirmed by the tutor, Justin, who suggested that it was possible to achieve social presence in individual tutorials (conducted via Skype) because of the immediacy of communication: we have a synchronous relation, because we can ask questions and we can have answers on time, and … it's a real conversation… The immediacy of the response in audio-visual, synchronous communication reduces the possibility of manipulation (controllable behaviour in Goffman’s terms) which could help to explain what is meant by ‘real’ communication in this account. The absence of face-to-face communication was felt by students such as Meg who described feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction with the level of engagement from others. Meg considered that videoconferencing should therefore be a requirement for small groupwork “even if we don't have it as an entire group” despite different time zones: … I'd get up at 3 O'clock in the morning to have a conference call with someone. I mean we don't have to do it every time… The importance of additional information that produces less guarded communication is similarly indicated in Lisa’s account of changing her perception of a “picky” tutor when shared details about his family with her, …and it was like… wow! Suddenly he turned into a person. (Lisa) Not the same person anymore 17 In the program, students were required to write in academic style with references in the whole class discussion forum, and Sandra expressed her pleasure at being able to reliquish these formalities in small groupwork: the only time we really interacted was when we were like put in our groups… … it wasn't that structured… so you could write … more comfortably… than when we were interacting in the discussion forum … in the big group. The freedom of informal communication in the small groups could furnish students with the additional information required to help participants shape expectations of themselves and others and define their situation. By contrast, when too little information was forthcoming, a sense of deep dissatisfaction occurred. For example, Lisa described her disappointment when she experienced poor participation from peers in the forums, giving an example of a classmate who sent a response to her own detailed post, saying only, "I agree!" A similar absence of information was felt by Adam, who complained that "there was no real flow" without face-to-face interaction with peers: we never even talked to each other… we didn't know how each other… how we looked, or how we sounded like…. Adam complained that he rarely received responses from others to his posts. For Adam, interaction with peers in the forums was "just to get the assignment done". Adam had taken a break from the program, which could partly explain his lack of identity with his group since he joined a different cohort on his return to study. He frequently described feeling “frustration”, “isolation” and “detached from the program”. However, Adam talked positively about the time when he used to Skype with his first cohort, and described his experience during that time as "great …more enjoyable" adding that it helped to know that others are going through the same situation. Adam appeared to have invested in the face he presented to Not the same person anymore 18 his original cohort, a face that was lost later since he no longer shared a “definition of the situation” (Goffman 1959, p. 24) with his new group. Backstage While the lack of immediate social interaction "certainly didn't help" (Franc), many students appreciated having easy access to a backstage area to rehearse their performance of self. Jane, for example, preferred online learning contexts to face-to- face learning, because she had time and space to present a more considered learning face: sometimes it's kind of hard to just think in depth and be reflective at the moment… …I feel like I can convey a more intelligent response in writing than… than face-to-face- interaction This was important to student participants who felt the need to manage multiple, and sometimes competing, professional and learning identities: … you don't want to share too many specific details about your organization … because… if the information was released … sometimes it wouldn't be good for you professionally maybe. (Jane) Lisa similarly concealed “sensitive issues” to protect her organisation. Lisa also believed it to be more professional to hide her negative feelings from others, leading to “a love-hate relationship with the learning teams”: … I guess I felt that… at this level we should… share … our struggles …but also maintain a kind of professionalism … to get the work done. Some students described their peers as “reserved” (Franc) at the beginning of the program, suggesting a desire to remain backstage and not reveal themselves to others: many learners… [were] not open about what it was that they … do (Meg) Not the same person anymore 19 The tutor Alice suggested this desire to dwell backstage may be related to feelings of belongingness: they just feel that they don't belong to the group so they feel like their family life is… is a private life, they don't want to bring it into the learning space. So, while easy access to backstage can be a valued part of the online experience, helping students manage their identities, students saw real learning benefits accrue from revealing the self: if it's a face and a person and you know that face and you know a little bit more about them... I think it'll be less likely to let them down in the team work… it'll be less likely to leave them hanging... not answered. (Lisa) The next section further explores this relationship between social interaction and support for learning identities online. Support for Learning Identities Online Social interaction online can be a major source of support for students as they manage their multiple and transitioning identities. Zak, like Adam earlier, spoke positively of the role of social interaction in supporting his learning and his attitude to learning; "knowing that people are in the same boat as us actually helps us to move on". Meg talked about the way “one individual being placed in a group makes a difference to the entire group…" and can bring about transformation in others. This was echoed by Lisa, who was exposed to a different perspective through a friendship on the program: because she was in a different field than me…she was bringing quite different perspectives. Not the same person anymore 20 However, encountering alternative perspectives can be challenging for learners, leading to what the tutor, Justin described as “social cognitive conflict”. Zak emphasised the importance of trustworthy social interaction with peers in such situations: I'm more comfortable in discussing ideas with my peers when I develop friendships with them … sometimes I get apprehensive about asking questions with someone whom I'm not close to, so when you have friendships with a lot of peers, it's so much easier for you to ask questions… or to be critical. However, the absence of this kind of supportive social interaction led to feelings of isolation, communicated as deep dissatisfaction with the low participation from others in small groups: I felt like I was just crying out into the wilderness and not even getting an echo back!. (Lisa) The benefits to learning that arise from information-rich social interactions were described by Adam in relation to his positive experiences with his first cohort. While Adam maintained he could not remember the content of most modules, the… course that I said there was something positive about, I remember exactly what it was [about]… even after it, the Skype would be on constantly for me… we talk… we made friends Conclusions Groupwork has a vital role to play in helping online students achieve deeper learning outcomes. During the interviews, most student participants expressed the need to have more social interaction, relating it to emotional support as well as learning. However, when students are geographically separate from each other, and meet only online, it can be challenging to achieve the level of trust required to make the most of the opportunities groupwork offers. By focusing on the relationship between the performance of identity in and the construction of social presence in online groupwork, this study adds a new and critical Not the same person anymore 21 dimension to a growing body of literature exploring ways to support productive social interaction for learning online (for example, Ayoko, Konrad, & Boyle, 2012; Crosta, Manokore, & Gray, 2016; Vuopala et al., 2016). Goffman’s (1959, 1972) insights into the complexity of social interaction help explain why certain practices can produce a feeling of social presence online. Through social interaction in groupwork, learners receive feedback that they can use to shore up their shifting sense of identity. Social presence can be understood, therefore, as the effect of social interaction that leads to trustworthy communication. The communication will be experienced as trustworthy if it promotes opportunities for “expressions given off” or moments of (seemingly) less controllable, spontaneous behaviour. Calls for immediacy in online communication are calls for communication practices that provide less guarded communication that builds trust by leaking unintended information. This is important because online learning environments reduce opportunities for less controllable behaviours and provide an ever-present backstage area offline to rehearse communication. The lack of fixity experienced by learners, juggling multiple professional and personal roles while experiencing transformation of self in the course of learning, can produce insecurity and cause learners to retreat to the backstage to protect conflicting identities. However, the safe space of the backstage needs to be abandoned if online students are to experience social presence – or meaningful social interaction to support learners through the self-reflection and transformation involved in deep (metacognitive) learning. Implications for practice An understanding of social presence as a support for identity online can guide online learning designers and tutors by pointing to the incorporation of learning experiences that provide for less controllable behaviours and unintentional communication. This might include requiring students to switch on their camera in videoconferences (at least for short periods) to establish Not the same person anymore 22 trust. Audio-visual communication within a course could allow students not simply to see the tutor but also each other, for example, in video introductions. Where cohort sizes are too big for each student to appear on camera, video of representative students in discussion could support identification with the wider group. In this, the issue is less about technology than its capacity to reveal learners to each other in ways that disassemble their rehearsed performances of self. The most important consideration is the provision of opportunities for spontaneous and unintentional – trustworthy – communication. This in turn will build social presence to support the social production of identity required for effective learning online. Notes on Contributors Rowaida Jaber is an Educational Assessor at the Ministry of Education, Jordan and a Doctoral candidate in Higher Education on the University of Liverpool online EdD programme. Eileen Kennedy is a Senior Research Associate with the Centre for Global Higher Education at UCL Institute of Education and a Doctoral Thesis Supervisor at University of Liverpool- Laureate Online Education. 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work_jzymff255vgcjbb6dyywxzrb34	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 394 437 HE 029 131 AUTHOR Epper, Rhonda Martin TITLE Coordination and Competition in Postsecondary Distance Education: A Comparative Case Study of Statewide Policies. PUB DATE 11 Apr 96 NOTE 48p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New York, NY, April 8-12, 1996). PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Case Studies; Comparative Analysis; Competition; Cooperative Programs; *Distqnce Education; *Educational Policy; Higher Education; Program Development; *Public Policy; *Statewide Planning; Technological Advancement IDENTIFIERS Colorado; Maine; Minnesota ABSTRACT A study examined the experiences of three staLes (Minnesota, Maine, Colorado) concerning the development of distance education at the postsecondary level, and the implications of each state's public policy approach. The study's principal objective was to better understand the forces for coordination and competition in state systems of higher education by examining stat2 policies and structures for distance education, and secondarily, to combine higher education and business conceptual models to explain changes brought about by technology. Data were gathered from planning and policy documents on distance education in the state higher education executive officers' libraries and from interviews with 10-15 key informants in each state. Data analysis reduced the information to case study form. The three case studies are presented here, as are findings and policy implications concerning distance education and competition, structures, and statewide coordination. The paper concludes that coordination and competition can and must co-exist, that careful consideration of the economic and organizational decisions needed is crucial to success, and that states and institutions are responding to new market demands. (Contains 44 references.) (MSE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made Ic from the original document. *********************************************************************** rkc COORDINATION AND COMPETITION IN POSTSECONDARY DISTANCE EDUCATION: A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF STATEWIDE POLICIES by Rhonda Martin Epper Research Associate State Higher Education Executive Officers Presented at the Annual Meeting of The American Educational Research Association April 11, 1996 New York City Rhonda Martin Epper State Higher Education Executive 707 17th Street, Suite 2700 Denver, Colorado 80202-3427 (303) 299-3627 (303) 296-8332 FAX e-mail: repper@ecs.org Officers BEST COPY AVAILABLE U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION EDtjIATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI This document has been reproduced as reCefved from the person or orrfan4aonn u(Nerldilfly Minor changes have been made f 0 ooe !Cp!Jd..A.:So Points of view or optntons Stated tn Mrs document do riot necessariIy represent &kat OEM poselon cr pol.Cy I) PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAs BEEN GRANTED By Rhonda Martin Epper To THE EDUCATIONAL RESOuRCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Contents Introduction 1 1 5 5 8 14 23 30 38 Background for the Study Objectives of the Research Method The Minnesota Case Study The Maine Case Study The Colorado Case Study Findings and Policy Implications Conclusion Introduction Colleges and universities better be very sure of the value we add in our residential environments. While we still believe that "character" education requires person-to-person contact and long-term mentoring, we had better substitute technology where possible so we can concentrate on what makes us unique. My colleagues and I feel a little like Rolls Royce employees when they first heard of Henry Ford. (Jim Mannoia, Houghton College, 1995) This quote illustrates the struggle of traditional institutions of higher education in the face of rapid technological change. Faculty and administrators, preserving their market niche or carving out new ones, search for the proper balance between face-to-face and technology- enhanced instruction. While institutions wrestle with the appropriate place and use of technology, state governments press them to accommodate more students at a lower cost. As the principal providers of higher education services in the United State,. state governments are concerned with providing greater access to postsecondary opportunities. Accommodating more students during fiscal retrenchment requires policymakers and educators to look for creative solutions. One solution, which has captured the attention of state policymakers, is making greater use of new technologies, including postsecondary distanue education. Background fur the Study Postsecondary education is no longer tied only to traditional campus classrooms, nor does it necessarily originate in the same state or even the same nation as the user. These new forms of instructional delivery are facilitated through the practice of distance education, defined for this study as any formal approach to learning in which a majority of the instruction occurs via electronic comn ..zations. This study's analysis reveals that without 1 state-level policy coordination, distance education efforts can be costly, duplicative, or marginalized within a state. Underpinning and informing the study were three major themes from three separate bodies of literature: statewide coordination of public higher education, competition, ana public policy for distance education. Statewide Coordination "For the greater part of the century, the relations between public institutions of higher education and state government have been marked by increasing anxiety" (Moos & Rourke, 1959, p. 1 ). The anxiety of the past two decades has been caused in part by the changing role of state government from provider of financial support to parmer with institutions in the resolution of key policy issues (Hines, 1988). Statewide coordination began as early as 1784 when New York created the State Board of Regents, but did not fully develop until after World War II during the growth period of higher education (Mil lett, 1984). Statewide coordination was offered as "an omnibus solution to the ills of wasteful competition and unregulated growth in public higher education" (Moos & Rourke, 1959, p. 203). State officials turned to coordinating and centralized boards as a solution to proliferation of new degree programs and unnecessary duplication of courses and programs. Robert 0. Berdahl (1971) divided the evolution of state higher education agencies into four periods: 1. Complete autonomy of institutions lasting from colonial days to the late 19th century; 2. Creation of single statewide governing boards beginning in the late 19th century. reaching a peak in the first two decades of this century. . .; 3. Creation of voluntary arrangements gaining impetus in the 1940s ard 1950s; and 4. Creation of statewide coordinating boards beginning in the 1950s. . . (Pliner, cited in Berdahl, 1971, p. 26) 2 In the 1990s, statewide coordinating and governing boards are deeply involved in the resolution of key higher education policy issues. One perennial policy issue is how to provide state citizens greater access to postsecondary opportunities. To the extent that distance education offers a potential solution to this issue, it spans both educational and political jurisdictions. Com etition In his 1986 book, Hi2her Learning, Derek Bok described competition as one of three distinguishing characteristics of American higher education. Colleges and universities compete with one another for faculty members, for students, for funds, and most importz.ntly, for prestige. However, there is no single goal toward which the competitive rivalry is addressed, as is the case in for-profit industries, i.e., market share and profits (Porter, 1980). Educational innovations, such as new instructional technologies, often are perceived as adding prestige and competitive advantage in attracting students. Furthermore, faculty members and administrators pay attention to programs and initiatives established at sister institutions, and often copy those tried elsewhere (Bok, 1986). However, the desire to innovate and adopt new innovations is often not strong enough to overcome the inertia of tradition. In for-profit industries, competition is o;ten the mechanism that drives individuals and organizations to surmount such inertia and to strivc continuously to improve. But competition, notes Bok, "succeeds only to the extent that customers, judges, or other trusted sources can define success in some legitimate way in order to establish a standard and reward those who best achieve it" (p. 177). In higher education, that ability is ambiguous at best. Students and other interested parties have difficulty comparing the quality of their education with that of other colleges and universities. What students can easily compare is cost and convenience; therefore, programs designed to meet the needs of nontraditional students possess a 3 competitive advantage in that particular student market. Throughout this study, the theme of competition, as it relates to distance education and other new instructional technologies, was demonstrated as a powerful force that changed both ins'; :ional and public policy in the states under investigation. Public Policy and Postsecondap Distance Education Scarce research exists that examines the influence of public policy on distance education programs in the United States. Such influence is a major theme in the present study. Important previous work in this area includes Nancy Zeller's (1995) "Distance Education and Public Policy." In this article, she compared the United States' lack of a comprehensive public policy agenda for distance education to Canada and other countries. Her study showed that government interest in the United States is focused on technical, regulatory, administrative, and cost issues rather than more pressing public policy issues, such as, improving access to postsecondary education. For a successful statewide program, institutional administrators must consider access and other important policy issues when developing distance education programs. Likewise, state leaders must reexamine outdated policies that may interfere with institutional plans to extend educational services to distant students. The relationships between state coordination, distance education, and the competitive pressures brought to higher education through new technologies are of escalating political and educational importance. In its 1995 Campus Trends, the American Council on Education identified more than one third of higher education institutions making extensive class use of electronic technology. Nearly half of all institutions responding to the annual survey indicated that they would offer more courses through distance education over the next five years (EI-Khawas, 1995). With so many institutions now interested in distance education, it is vital that state-level plans and policies for distance education be compared and explored. There are simply too many scarce tax dollars at stake for this issue to be left unexamined. Objectives of the Research This research examined three states' experiences with distance education development and the implications for the public policy approach taken. The principal objective of the study was to better understand forces for coordination and competition in state systems of higher education by examining state policies and structures for distance education. A secondary objective was to extend the research on statewide coordination of higher education by combining higher education and business conceptual models to explain the changes brought about by technology. Guiding research questions developed from the literature include the following three major concerns: 1. In the states under investigation, how has distance education influenced the competitive environment in higher education, particularly in the trLicet for nontraditional, adult education? 2. What distance education structures, if any, are most suitable in helping a state meet its goals for improving access to postsecondary education? 3. Technology and distance education have introduced new forces in higher education, resulting in a conflict between traditional principles of statewide coordination (limit duplication, divide up turf, equalize resources) and those of competition. How are these conflicts being resolved in the three case study states? Using the conceptual lenses of coordination, competition, and distance education public policy, each of the three questions was explored in Minnesota, Maine, and Colorado. Method This study employed a comparative case study research design using qualitative data. The nature of the research questions in this study required an in-depth exploration into state- 5 level policies and politics surrounding distance education. The complexity of the variables, therefom, made the qualitative paradigm a logical choice for the type of data to be used within the case study design. The case study design was chosen because it offered "a means of investigating complex social units consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon" (Merriam, 1988, p. 32). Within the same study, more than one case may be included (Yin, 1989). These are called "multiple case studies" or "comparative case studies." The present research consisted of three case studies, with the primary unit of analysis being the state-level approach to the use of postsecondary distance education. Data Collection The multiple case study design encompasses the state-level planning efforts for postsecondary distance education from three states: Minnesota, Maine, and Colorado. These three states were chosen through purposive sampling, based on the assumption that "one wants to discover, understand, gain insight; therefore one needs to select a sample from which one can learn the most" (Merriam, 1988, p. 48). Additionally, an expert panel from the field of higher education public policy provided advice and review during the selection process. Final selection of the state cases was based on the expert panel's advice and a review of statewide distance education and telecommunications plans for higher education. This investigation included an examination of enabling legislation, state reports, telephone interviews, and a review of the literature. As Yin (1989) suggests, multiple sources of evidence were used to gather data. Document analysis, interviews, and observations all were used as evidence in this study. Document analysis and observations. For each state, the researcher examined documents located in the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) library relating 6 to postsecondary distance education. These documents included statewide plans, legislation that addressed distance education, and system or coordinating board policies relating to distance education. These documents were supplemented by additional documentation collected during site visits to the three states. Documents collected at the sites included such items as planning documents, policie::, legislation, memoranda, meeting minutes, and agenda items. In addition to the documents and interviews, direct observations were conducted of legislative hearings in Minnesota and Colorado. Fieldnotes were also utilized to record the researcher's notes, observations, reflections, and ideas throughout the research process. Conducting the interviews. Between February and September 1995, unstructured, in- depth interviews were held with key informants in each state. Because many of the informants in all three states were high-level officials within their states, the researcher used a specialized form of in-depth interviewing described by Marshall and Rossman (1989) as "elite interviewing" (p. 94). Elite respondents are considered to be "the influential, the prominent, and the well-informed people in an organization or community" (p. 94). In each state, the researcher conducted 10 to 15 interviews lasting from 45 minutes to 2 hours each. The interviews were audiotaped to faciPtate data transcription and analysis. Data Analysis Strategies Through the process of data analysis in the present study, conceptual categories were developed from interview, observational, and documentary data sources. Conceptual frameworks derived from prior literature were used in building the categories, although new variables and relationships were seen. In the process of analysis, data were organized, reduc1 and consolidated to form the case record or case study data base (Yin, 1989). Marshall and Rossman (1989) describe this process as one of "reduction" and "interpretation." To facilitate such reduction and interpretation, categories and themes were developed to 7 ir erpret the meaning of the data. Interview transcripts were coded following guidelines suggested by Merriam (1988). The data analysis process was aided by the use of a qualitative data analysis computer program called QSR.NUDIST. NUDIST stands for Non-numerical Unstractured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing. The software creates an environment to store and explore data and ideas, to minimize clerical routine and maximize flexibility, and to discover new ideas and build upon them. For the present study, NUDIST was used primarily to code and index interview segments online, which were later retrieved, sorted, and regrouped into more meaningful categories. The fmal step in the analysis process was to build abstractions across the multiple cases in the study. The NUDIST software greatly enhanced the researcher's ability to compare and contrast interview responses through searching the index system by state or by thematic issue. In the next three sections, summaries of the three case studies are presented. The Minnesota Case Study In the early 1990s, Minnesota faced growing demand for higher education in the Twin Cities area as well as the challenge of providing access to programs in sparsely populated rural areas of the state. In 1993, at the request of the Minnesota Higher Education Coordinating Board (MHECB), the legislature allocated nearly $5 million to establish a statewide higher education telecommunications network. The legislature also established a Telecommunications Council with authority to plan and develop the statewide network, now known as the Learning Network of Minnesota. In 1995, MHECB made some drastic legislative recommendations for change in the way higher education is delivered. Essentially, it proposed the adoption of a structure for alternative delivery of higher education modelled on the British Open University and the 8 I 1. British Columbia Open Learning Agency. The structure would have initially wotked as a consortium of existing colleges and universities, but eventually taken on a life of its own, developing and distributing course materials. The justification for such an entity was based on MHECB's growing belief that courseware materials can increase learning at a lower cost. At the same time, MHECB proposed that the legislature establish a "credit bank" to evaluate and award credit for the new open learning agency (MHECB, 1995). Joseph P. Graba, then executive director of MHECB, crafted the 1995 legislative recommendations, which argued that the legislature's investment to date in the Learning Network of Minnesota was simply in the "technological highway, not what travels across it" (MHECB, 1995, p. 15). Graba described a growing movement that provides courses to students outside traditional classrooms--citing Mind Extension University, the National Technological University, and a commissioned study by Helmut Schweiger (1995) of distance learning worldwide. The use of multimedia course materials was noted as a growing trend. The MHECB recommendations stated: The use of distance education courseware materials will proliferate. Unless Minnesota becomes a developer, even an exporter, of such materials, it will become an importer, relying on the expertise and knowledge of organizations and institutions beyond its borders.. . Minnesota is faced with a choice: whether simply to take advantage of the materials prepared by others and become an importer of such material or to draw upon its own talented faculty and successful institutions to develop and disseminwe courseware that contributes to learning inside and outside Minnesota. (MHECB, 1995, p. 17) That scenario apparently compelled several legislators to take action. Based on the MHECB recommendations, identical bills were introduced in both the senate (March 13, 1995) and house (March 9, 1995) to create an alternative delivery structure and credit bank, and mandate the coordinating board to begin planning for an open learning institution in the state. These bills were sponsored by key legislators who carried a good deal of influence in key committees (Lewenstein, personal communication (pc), 1995). The bill, if enacted, would 9 create a consortium of the University of Minnesota, the newly merged Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), and the Minnesota Private College Council to (1) identify statewide learning needs, (2) acquire, develop, and distribute learning resources, and (3) facilitate the delivery of learning opportunities to residents of Minnesota (Minnesota House of Representatives, 1995, pp. 1-2). In essence, the bill would have created a new educational entity. Stated in the MHECB recommendations was, "this initiative initially challenges the existing institutions and systems to meet the needs within existing structures," but ultimately it sought independent status as advocated in the Schweiger study. The recommendation continued, "this proposal envisions the initial effort to implement alternative Jelivery evolving into the creation of an open learning institution that could grant degrees" (MHECB, 1995, p. 17). Response from Higher Education Community In interviews with various constituenc'es of higher education, respondents were asked to respond to the proposed legislation. Reactions were mixed. David Laird, president of the Minnesota Private College Council, was less than enthusiastic, stating, "the frustrating part of the discussion is that the coordinating board is myopic by thinking Minnesota institutions should be necessary partners. Their thinking doesn't allow for other strategic relationships outside the state that may be much more natural or more important" (Laird, pc, 1995). Don Riley of the University of Minnesota was even more direct with his objections: What wasn't clear to me in Joe's proposal was some sense of competitive advantage. In our partnerships with industry and other institutions, we will only enter into areas that we feel are strategic, where we have competitive advantage and intend to remain a leader in the field. Where we don't think we can compete, we will outsource to someone else. It's not clear to me that the consortium will work this way. They have an overinflated view of their ability to deliver and compete in the marketplace. (Riley, pc, 1995) Others, however, indicated an appreciation for the need and potential for such a delivery 10 13 structure. Terrence Mac Taggart, chancellor of the State University System said, "I think the idea is a good one." But he advised caution: The territorial concerns are going to be paramount. MHECB is fighting for its identity right now, and other people are probably going to look at it as an attempt to provide a rationale for MHECB. The other problem is there is a history of conflict between MHECB and institutions, and unfortunately--very unfortunately--a good idea like this one is going to have an uphill fight. (Mac Taggart, pc, 1995) The president of the faculty union for the State University System, Edgar Twedt, was not even aware of the proposal. Even so, his reaction was negative. "I think the faculty response will be negative because of bad feelings toward the coordinating board, even without evaluating the merit of the idea. Faculty will think MHECB hasn't served a useful purpose in the state, so they must be trying some other way to control" (Twedt, pc, 1995). In April 1995, during the final days of legislative deliberations, the newly appointed academic vice chancellor for the newly merged Minnesota State College and University system (MnSCU), Dennis Hefner, publicly came out in opposition to the bill. In a letter to the state representative who authored the legislation he stated: I have continuing discomfort with the bill, even after the changes suggested at our meeting. In particular, the arguments for a statewide marketing program do not add much value to the distance learning functions already occurring within the state. Secondly, I feel very strongly that the long run viability of the approach requires significant involvement of on-campus faculty. Moving away from direct campus responsibility for distance learning could undercut the growing inventory of distance learning programs offered by MnSCU campuses and may lose much of the public support which has been generated for distance learning. (Hefner, 1995, p. 1) In addition to this system opposition, some legislators questioned the wisdom of creating yet another council for higher education telecommunications, when they had just funded one in 1993. According to MHECB staff member Phil Lewenstein, some saw the new structure not as creating healthy competition, but as "another mouth at the table" at a time when they were having trouble funding the existing 64 public higher education institutions (Lewenstein, pc, 11 1995). The bill was never passed by the 1995 legislature, but because neither the house nor the senate took action to defeat the bill, it remained an active piece of legislation that conceivably could be enacted in the second half of the legislative biennium in 1996. Competitive Forces Changing student demographics, structural changes in revenue sources for states, technological advances, and a changing economy that depends more heavily on the skills and knowledge of its workers are all forces that invite the entry of new competitors into higher education. Traditional higher education, according to two higher education leaders, has not adjusted quickly enough or well enough to these changes. Joe Graba of MHECB expressed his dissatisfaction with higher education's progress: A knowledge-based economy focuses attention on how well we are doing and how responsive we are in deferring to the needs of our learners. This may sound overly harsh, but I think that higher education is a mainframe operation in a world that has moved from mainframes to minis to laptops. And we're still back in the mainframe mentality in higher education. (pc, 1995) Terrence Mac Taggart, then chancellor of the Minnesota State University System, also supported this view: I think a pretty good case can be made that much of the falloff in credibility in higher education has been our own fault for failing to prove relevant performance to the various customers we serve--students, families, legislators, the state. . . I think we need either to reform and improve ourselves or be content with a much diminished role and reduced support in this enterprise. (pc, 1995) One type of threat perceived by sevelal persons interviewed was private sector companies moving in not only to meet new demand, but to take away market share from traditional higher education. In a conference designed to build support for the 1995 alternative delivery legislation, Joe Graba painted a sobering picture for legislators and others present: 12 ib The fastest growing demand and greatest learning needs are with the currently employed. Our higher education institutions need to escalate attention to this unmet need. It has been in the last 10 to 15 years that this market has exploded. Higher education is allowing the massive development of private sector competitors. (Open and Distance Learning Conference, 1995) In a similar legislative forum, Graba further emphasized this point: We need to think radical here. Higher education in the mid-nineties is where the railroads were in the mid-forties. Economics is going to change learning. We will see a proliferation of for-profits emerging to meet unmet needs.. . We shouldn't be overly threatening, but this is serious! We're creating our own competitors. We need to bring up our own provider base. (Policymakers Forum, 1995) For other individuals interviewed, the threat of competition was perceived to be not nearly so close, nor so daunting. Terrence Mac Taggart expressed skepticism over the possibility that traditional higher education would be driven out of business: "the market for higher education is not perfectly competitive; it's monopolistically competitive. I'm not certain people would make that many different choices if there were more providers" (pc, 1995). Those holding a more conservative position, therefore, believed the demand for traditional higher education would not significantly change, despite technological advances. For those making the decision to offer the proposal, however, the threat of competition by new providers was a clear factor. Individuals in the latter category existed outside academia and included legislators, coordinating board members, and coordinating board staff. Ironically, one of the reasons for the proposal's introduction, the threat of competition, may also have been a reason for its demise. When the alternative delivery structure emerged as a legislative proposal, institutional administrators and faculty made their positions known. Some perceived the alternative delivery structure not as a response to outside competition, but as a potential new competitor within the state system. Others, particularly the University of Minnesota, recognized the need to compete with new providers, but questioned the ability of this proposed structure to help Minnesota institutions compete in a global educational market. 13 Ultimately, a lack of support from campus administrators contributed in part to the alternative delivery proposal's failure. Faculty did not directly oppose the bill in a formal way because they simply were not organized around this issue. Institutional administrators, primarily from the University of Minnesota and the new system of state colleges and universities, strongly opposed the bill. Without the support of these key players, the proposal never gathered enough momentum to overcome the political and budgetary obstacles it faced. In addition, uncertainty over changes in the state's postsecondary governance structure, which were implemented in July 1995, contributed to the political climate in which the bill was rejected. After statewide policy discussion and the bill's stalemate in the legislature, distance education and curricular development remained at the campus level. In other words, it remained with existing competitors within the system. The bill's lack of support is consistent with Schweiger's analysis of open and distance learning worldwide. He suggests that most successful distance learning operations exist outside traditional higher education systems. Those that attempt to enter traditional higher education systems are usually "choked off" by existing institutions (1995). Although this policy was not adopted, it represents an attempt at c,mprehensive state policy for distance education. In addition, Minnesota's previous policy approaches had developed the Minnesota Learning Network and a multi-sector telecommunications council to carry out statewide policies concerning distance education. The Maine Case Study In 1985, Maine was ranked 49th among states in the number of high school graduates going to college and 50th in the number of adults enrolling in any form of higher education. The University of Maine System (UMS), a governing board, decided at that time to address the problem of delivering higher education to isolated regions of the state. The Education 14 Network of Maine (Ed Net) was officially inaugurated in September 1989. Today the Education Network delivers credit-bearing courses leading to associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees to more than 100 Maine locations each semester (University of Maine at Augusta, 1989, 1992). Maine's strategy for delivering distance education initially was to designate a lead institution, the University of Maine at Augusta (UMA), to direct and administer the Education Network (Wagner, 1994). However, a number of important subsequent decisions made by the University of Maine System Board of Trustees caused consider:able controversy within the state. First was the separation of Ed Net from the University of Maine at Augusta in May 1994. The other six campus within the system were not using the network to its full potential, in part because of ite. affiliation with the Augusta campus. System officials and board members wanted to encourage other campuses to utilize the network. Therefore, the board of trustees separated Ed Net from Augusta and designated it as an independent, free- standing entity within the University of Maine System. The decision to separate Ed Net from Augusta represented one step toward greater centralization of postsecondary distance education. In January 1995, the trustees took a giant leap, organizationally and politically, by authorizing the Education Network of Maine to grant degrees and seek independent regional accreditation. Following this decision, there were faculty protests by way of position papers, newspaper editorials, legislative testimony, and ultimately collective votes of "no confidence" in the chancellor from all seven campuses. On the other hand, distant students from all over the state voiced their support for accreditation and expansion of services provided by Ed Net. In the end, the chancellor resigned and the board postponed its decision to seek accreditation. The political wounds suffered ran deep among all faculty, students, and administrators 15 embroiled in the controversy. The following discussion explains in greater detail the board's decision and subsequent reactions and consequences. Rationale for the Decision Since the Education Network of Maine began its operations in 1989, the UMS Board of Trustees had looked for ways to better serve adult learners. Students enrolling in ITV courses originating from multiple campuses had been facing a tangled web of inconsistent administrative procedures. For example, in a concept paper, UMA President George Connick described a fictional distant student named "Amy" and the obstacles she faced in registering for four Interactive Television (ITV) courses. Amy was required to make a total of 28 contacts by phone or mail to individuals in various academic departments, admissions offices, registrars offices, and financial aid offices on each of the four campuses (Connick, 1994). This report, "Educating Amy," prompted faculty and administrators involved with distance education to recognize that they needed to be more responsive to the needs of distant students. One way Ed Net had responded to this need was to create a Teleservice Center so that its distant students could "take care of business" without having to come to campus. Students dial a toll-free number, which connects them with experienced student services personnel who respond to questions ranging from admissions to billing. It was this same desire to better serve the off-campus student that drove the board's decision for the Education Network of Maine to seek separate accreditation. In a set of recommendations to the UMS Board of Trustees, George Connick and his staff at Ed Net outlined the rationale for such a move. The recommendations were spelled out in the document, "Education Network of Maine: Implementation of Phase II." In this document, the Education Network of Maine was defined not as a traditional provider of education, but as a facilitator, offering existing providers several vehicles for degree delivery. When two or more 16 i9 campuses collaborate to offer a degree program over Ed Net, or if students want to build their own degrees from courses on various system campuses, several questions arise. First, which institution will grant the degree? Second, who will determine quality standards and ensure program effectiveness? In the "Phase II" document, Connick recommended as next steps that the Education Network of Maine be granted permission to seek accreditation so that it might solve some of these problems by offering consortial or joint degrees from the UMS campuses (ENM, 1995). On January 23, 1995 the Board of Trustees accepted the "Phase II" recommendations and granted permission for the Education Network of Maine to seek independent accreattation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (Price, 1995a). Faculty Reactions Faculty concerns centered around four issues: the rapid pace and process by which decisions about Ed Net were being made, the organizational structure of Ed Net, the quality of the Interactive Television (ITV) learning experience, and the technology employed by Ed Net. Among the most impassioned protesters of the board's decision were faculty from the flagship campus in Orono, the University of Maine. Even before the decision to seek accreditation, faculty at Orono were uncomfortable with the speed of development of Ed Net. On December 14, 1994, the Orono faculty senate passed a resolution insisting on more faculty oversight of the Education Network of Maine. The resolution stated that Ed Net presented unique problems because it lacked a permanent, tenured faculty, and referred to the faculty role in Ed Net as "the major issue currently facing higher education in Maine" (Hale, 1994). Faculty also asked the board to take no further action on Ed Net until the faculty question was straightened out. However, the board of trustees pressed ahead with their plan the following month. 17 Both the Orono and Augusta faculty assemblies prepared a responses to the "Phase II" document and board decision. The Orono faculty's primary concerns dealt with the faculty role in ensuring quality programming on Ed Net. Augusta faculty members were more concerned with process. Regarding organizational structure, the UMA faculty criticized "the inordinate amount of power and resources being put into the hands of Ed Net without serious consideration of the complementary role of campuses" (Faculty Assembly, 1995, p. 2). "Why," they asked, "must the Phase II recommendations stress competition and haste?" (Faculty Assembly, 1995, p. 1). They also expressed concern that "Phase II" failed to acknowledge Maine students as Ed Net's first priority as opposed to new national and global markets. Augusta faculty members, having been the primary users of the system, were more critical of the decision process and the organizational structure of Ed Net than they were of the learning experience and choice of technology. Other faculty members expressed their concerns through the press. In a full-page editorial published by the Bangor Daily News Robert Klose, assistant professor of Biological Science at University College, wrote: What is so insidious about this project is that it has come upon us like a thief in the night. Or like a freight train. Unforgivably, there has been no invitation to the people of Maine to enter into the dialog of need, appropriateness, and cost-effectiveness of ITV and Ed Net. . . what is saddest of all is that the reckless, rather than measured installation of this system shows the utmost contempt for ihe culture of the university. .. and that the real decisions about what will be taught, how it will be transmitted, and who will teach it, are being left to businesspeople who may very well may be involved in little more than empire-building. (Klose, 1994) Other faculty critics presented testimony at regular board meetings and at legislative hearings held in response to the controversy. At the January 23, 1995 board meeting, a faculty member from the University of Solthern Maine commented, "With EdNet and the Community College, you are buying a costly pig in a poke that falls short of expectations" (Hale, 1995, p. 1). In response to the systemwide faculty imbroglio, special legislative 18 t hearings were held in the months following the board's January 1995 decision. Several faculty members presented testimony, "but it was the same faculty that went back to every legislative meeting" according to George Connick (pc, 1995). "Finally the legislature began to ask some questions about who these people were. They were beginning to say 'Wait a minute. Why do these people have so much time to come down here and talk?' So it began to reverberate against them" (Connick, pc, 1995). Members of the legislature began to view these faculty protestors as self-serving. Faculty reactions to the board's decision for Ed Net to seek accreditation cannot be taken out of context from other decisions concerning distance education, such as, the separation of Ed Net from Augusta. The 1995 decision, however, when put in combination with those previous and the absence of a faculty contract since 1991, became a flashpoint for faculty criticism and public debate. Student and Citizen Support As the bickering went on, many students stood by watching their educational dreams tossed around like a political football. Some were not content to sit on the sidelines. From the islands, valleys, backwoods, and far reaches of the state came letters to the faculty senates, legislators, and newspapers. For example, Ida W. Page, a student at the Ellsworth Center, wrote to the Ellsworth American: I am a student of ITV at the Ellsworth Center of the University of Maine at Augusta, and am tired of people judging the best way for me to obtain my education. I, as a single parent, raised three children in Ellsworth and they have all attended college. Now it is my turn to get an education.. . The Orono faculty would have you believe I am not getting a quality education; I disagree. They would have you believe I am not capable of getting knowledge without the professor seeing the color of my eyes. (Page, 1995) Mark F. Wamsley, a student at the East Sullivan/Winter Harbor site, delivered a presentation 19 to the Orono faculty senate, in which he stated: To start, I take offense to all the recent negative publicity which paints the image of distance learners as "unmotivated" students and the ITV courses as a passive way to learn. .. I have had the opportunity to attend both on-campus classes and the ITV programs. I am a full-time employee, full-time parent of three small children, half-time student, active in the community, and, along with my wife who is a full-time student, full-time mother, part-time employee, we home school our children. This is not your typical "unmotivated individual." By no means am I trying to imply that I am better than any other distant learner, but that I am probably closer to a typical distant learner than a "traditional student." (Wamsley, 1995) The students' message was unified and clear: they wanted critics of Ed Net to understand that for nontraditional students who are highly motivated to learn, Ed Net offers educational opportunities they otherwise would not be afforded. Ordinary citizens, concerned by the actions of and reactions by members of the university community, weighed in on the debate. Their voices, much like the students, were resoundingly in favor of Ed Net. To the general public, faculty protesters appeared arrogant and self-serving. For example, one citizen from Presque Isle said, "the real reason the University of Maine faculty are dead set against the introduction of ITV is the union can foresee that less faculty are going to be needed for a higher quality education product" (Underwood, 1995, p. 3B). Citizens around the state who had seen the benefits of Ed Net in their communities offered little sympathy for the faculty protesters. Despite their best efforts, the distant voices of students and citizens were faint compared to the shrill protests of faculty. Though they reaffirmed their support for Ed Net and distance learning, the Board of Trustees would finally back off its decision for Ed Net to seek accreditation. Administrative Consequences In the months following the board's decision in January 1995, tension between faculty and system administrators mounted. Adding impetus to the accreditation concern were three issues: (1) A merger of the University College in Bangor with two-year programs in Augusta to form a new Community College of Maine; (2) a perceived centralization of the system inferred from the Chancellor's remarks to the legislature on a common course catalog and "exit examinations"; and (3) the long-simmering lack of a faculty employment contract (Price, 1995b). The situation came to a head at the board's regular meeting on March 27, 1995. Faculty and traditional students from throughout the system formally presented resolutions of "no confidence" in UMS Chancellor J. Michael Orenduff. The board voted to strongly support the chancellor. However, by the first week in April he had decided to leave his office (Price, 1995b). On April 5, 1995 the board appointed former chancellor Robert L. Woodbury as interim chancellor. Woodbury had held the post from 1986 to 1993. At its regular meeting on May 22, 1995, the board voted to "affirm its commitment to distance education" and reaffirmed the role of the Education Network of Maine (UMS, 1995, p. 1). A. this meeting, the board also resolved that the Education Network of Maine was not authorized to seek degree-granting authority or to pursue accreditation "at this time" (UMS, 1995, p. 2). In July 1995, several months following his departure, Orenduff reflected, I think what happened with the Board is they thought, and I thought that perhaps a change in the chancellor's office would deflate some of the rhetoric which was really kind of bizarre and nasty, and allow things to move forward. Interestingly enough, after I resigned and they asked Bob [Woodbury] to come back and fill the position, the kind of vocal critics came to Bob and said "now we want to un-do all of this." The only thing they undid was the accreditation. So the same faculty are still mad that the thing is separate. (pc, 1995) Interim Chancellor Woodbury made clear that the Ed Net issue is not going to go away. He indicated that the pace of Ed Net's expansion might slow, but the ultimate direction will remain the same (Lazar, 1995). 21 2.1 . . , Competitive Forces Leaders within the university system, especially George Connick and J. Michael Orenduff, believed telecommunications would increasingly allow the outside world to compete with the University of Maine System. In other words, some educational entity would serve the residents of Maine who cannot or choose not to attend one of the seven traditional campuses. The choice for the University of Maine System, it was thought, was to provide those services or risk becoming a non-player in a rapidly changing educational market. When asked if the threat of competition had influenced his thinking on distance education, George Connick, president of Ed Net, replied, Yes. It isn't an abstract threat, it is a real threat. We are seeing the technologies change in this state to the point where it is going to be possible for anybody to be a provider, and the only way that the University of Maine System is going to survive is if it adds value to the educational enterprise. Part of the problem is that people have forgotten they are not in the campus business; they are in the education business. And what we are seeing is this massive effort to protect campuses, to protect my office, to protect where I work, to protect where I teach. The students, because they are older, have quickly caught on to what the issues are here. What the faculty furor has done is really begin to clarify what is at stake here and the faculty can't win that battle. They are absolutely not going to win it. (pc, 1995) J. Michael Orenduff, the embattled former chancellor, also felt strongly that students would have more choices in the future than what ,e University of Maine System could provide. In response to the same question posed to Connick, Orenduff replied, I think that is the underlying issue for those in Maine and nationwide. . . [Education] is going to be more consumer oriented. It is going to be available right in your home, and you are not going to have to pay higher fees. It probably will be cheaper, you won't have to look for parking places, and you won't have to put up with the bureaucracy of the university. We have approximately the same number of traditional students in higher education today as we did a half century ago--two or three million. The rest of the higher education students are not interested in all of the trappings that go with higher education. They just want the degree, they want the economic advantage, and they want the knowledge. I think we are in for a revolution, and like most revolutions it's going to have to initially overcome the entrenched interest. (pc, 1995) 22 Thus, according to Connick and Orenduff, significant changes are in store for higher education if it is to remain relevant and competitive in our society. The policy steps taken by the University of Maine System on Ed Net are of a new variety for statewide higher education governing boards. While political mistakes may have been made in carrying out those steps, they represent not the old functions of protecting geographic territories of service, but rather of breaking down geographic boundaries and bureaucratic obstacles faced by students. Competition, in the case of Maine, was an impetus both to expand and limit the scope of Ed Net_ George Connick and J. Michael Orenduff perceived Ed Net as a competitive advantage in the national and global market for higher education. Existing competitors, acting as a cartel within the state system of higher education, perceived Ed Net as a potential threat to their own competitive position in the statewide market for higher education. The Colorado Case Study Distance education has a long and complex history in Colorado. Beginning in the 1970s and in some cases earlier, postsecondary institutions around the state were offering courses to students at a distance. State level policymakers made several attempts in the early 1980s and early 1990s to coordinate the disparate activities that had sprung up around the state. However, even legislative mandates proved unable to bring about institutional coordination of distance education. Instead, institutions continued operating independent distance education programs, and several grassroots organizations developed to improve cooperation. The year 1995 was a watershed for distance education development in Colorado. In that year, three events stand out as the most critical for postsecondary distance education. First, the legislature established technology as one of five priority funding areas for higher 23 2 education and appropriated $2 million for that purpose. The Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE), the statewide coordinating board, allocated the funds to institutions through a competitive grant process. Second, CCHE changed its long-standing policy on geographic service-area boundaries so that cash funded distance learning programs were free to compete throughout the state. This policy change represents the changing roles of statewide coordinating boards, influenced in part by changes in technology. CCHE commissioners and staff members recognized that certain policies were either outdated, over- but densome, or irrelevant, and took steps that would facilitate greater use of distance education in the state. Third, the legislature created a 12th community college, the Colorado Electronic Community College. It also appropriated nearly $12 million in capital development funds to higher education technology projects, $9 million of which went to the community college system primarily for a production and electronic curriculum development center. Colorado Electronic Community College On March 20, 1995, legislators passed House Bill 95-1196 and authorized the creation of the Colorado Electronic Community College (CECC). The specific language in the legislation named the "Colorado Community College and Occupational Education System College" as a 12th c mmunity college in the state system (State of Colorado, 1995, p. 4). Perhaps because it was less controversial, the name Colorado Electronic Community College was not used in the legislation itself, but used only after the community college system had been given statutory authority to operate its own separate college. As Jerry Wartgow, president of CCCOES and CECC's architect, observed: We managed to get legislation passed last session with very little controversy. I'm getting calls from people all over the country asking if they can get tapes of the testimony and asking what our legislative strategy was. People from Maine are asking us, "how did you manage to do this, and why weren't the 24 2 institutions opposed to it?" I don't know if everyone was asleep at the switch or what, but we weren't. I went directly to the majority leader of the house and said, "here's what I want to do long-term." We just went for it. (pc, 1995) After legislative approval of the concept, Wartgow quickly began using the new name and began implementing his virion. A representative from Colorado State University, who wished not to be identified, thought the process by which CECC was created was "sneaky." He stated, "there just wasn't a lot of discussion around the state. It was kind of the Stealth bill" (pc, 1995). The CECC concept was developed in collaboration with Jones Intercable, which operates Mind Extension Univtsrsity and other educational ventures. In cooperation with Jones and other partners, CECC initially will serve as an "umbrella" organization that will offer a full range of transferable general education curricula through a number of technologies, including cable television, to students in Colorado and the nation. Mary Beth Susman, CECC's executive director, said Jones found the partnership attractive because of some unique features of the Colorado community college system, such as, a core transfer agreement with all four-year schools, common course descriptions, common course numbering, common course titles in the core, and common course syllabi. In the fall of 1995, CECC began using the service:, of Mind Extension University to deliver curriculum to distance learners across the country who wished to complete an entire Associate of Arts or Associate of Science degree through this prugram. In its first semester on the air, CECC operated as follows. Jones made available CECC programming to its millions of cable customers throughout the United States and also provided admissions, billing, records, bookstore, and student advising support to CECC students. Faculty members from the 11 community colleges in Colorado were responsible for creating, managing, and delivering the instructional services to CECC students (CECC, 1995). CECC's legislative authority does not give it accreditation, which would allow it to grant 25 0 degrees. Therefore, Arapahoe Community College initially is serving as the transcriptor and degree-grantor for CECC (Susman, pc, 1995). Mary Beth Susman explained: What I am doing is sort of brokering the A.A. degree for the CECC student. They will have all the resources of the 11 community colleges for this degree. But we didn't want to develop a whole student services side to the college, that is just too expensive. But our students still need fmancial aid advising, placement advising, etc. So we asked the colleges who might be interested, and willing to be a loss leader just to be a part of the project. We selected Arapahoe because they are seen as the transfer college in the state--not that you can't transfer from others--but that is an image that Arapahoe had projected and held on to in the eyes of the citizenry. We felt that it would be a good college to start with. (pc, 1995) According to Jerry Wartgow, CECC eventually will seek its own accreditation. He stated that CECC will use Arapahoe "as an umbrella for credibility under which to build this." But at some point, "that credibility will have to move over to the Colorado Electronic Community College" (pc, 1995). As long as the institutions were cooperating, however, Wartgow did not see an immediate need to seek accreditation. In his words: The great thing about the legislation for Colorado Electronic Community College is that we haven't had to use it for anything. It just sits there. But if a college or faculty starts balking, we'll just say, "okay, maybe we should just run it through Colorado Electronic Community College," then there will be much more receptivity to change. In other wolds, we don't have to go out begging. All we would have to do is get accredited, and by going in with Jones, we could get accreditation status. (pc, 1995) In September 1995, CECC offered five courses: psychology, English composition, ethics, sociology, and statistics (Mind Extension University, 1995, p, 106) A total of 60 students were registered from Colorado, California, New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Florida, and Hawaii (Susman, pc, 1995). CECC chose outstanding faculty members from the eleven campuses, each of whom had won teaching awards and had experience teaching at a distance, to teach the first five courses. In the spring of 1996, CECC plans offered eight courses to over 100 students. 26 2 , When the legislature decided to create CECC, it also wanted to make sure faculty and other public and private users would be trained in the use of educational technology. Toward that end, legislators appropriated $8.7 million in capital development funds in 1995 to the community college system. The majority of those funds would be used to build a state-of- the-art curriculum production facility. The new facility will be located at the Lowry Higher Education and Advanced Technology Training Center, which is the site of a closed Air Force base undergoing conversion to civilian uses. The new facility will provide opportunities for faculty to produce their own curriculum products, such as, CD-ROM masters, video programs, and Internet curriculum (CECC, 1995). Jones Intercable will be a major leaseholder of the facility, producing income that will allow CECC to keep equipment current and operate training programs at the facility. The new curriculum development and training facility is scheduled to begin operation Fall of 1996. Competitive Forces Postsecondary distance education in Colorado lacked statewide coherence because of institutional resistance to centralization, existing competitive rivalries among institutions, and little policy direction from system governing boards or CCHE. Resistance to centralized authority. Previous attempts by policymakers to bring together institutions of higher education on distance education delivery had ended in frustration. Attempts by CCHE in 1981 and 1989 to organize a statewide structure for distance education were "sabotaged" by the institutions before they ever got off the ground (Grieder, pc, 1995). Part of the reason lies in the governance structure of the state, and past relationships between institutions and CCHE. A representative of the University of Colorado, who wished not to be identified, said institutions had purposely left CCHE out of the knowledge-loop on echnology issues for fear that CCHE's involvement would result in 27 3 0 regulation. Institutions, operating under separate governing boards, had developed sound distance education programs without state-level involvement, and hesitated to give up ownership. However, in 1995 and 1996, institutions were beginning to build grassroots efforts to cooperate among themselves through institutional alliances known as Telecoop, the Colorado Learning Network, and the Higher Education Telecommunications Alliance (HETA). Existing competitive rivalry. A result of institutional resistance to a statewide effort has been multiple delivery systems across the state. In addition to a compressed video network known as CIVICS, which spans the state, numerous educational and governmental bodies have developed network capacities that, in many cases, are duplicative. For example, in 1995, Colorado Mountain College was developing a compressed digital video network to connect all of its campuses at 13 sites. This network is separate from the community college system initiatives, though at some point the technologies should be able to interconnect. Norm Murray of the State Division of Telecommunications noted: The state of Colorado at this time does not have any single authority in telecommunications. That is why you are seeing the CIVICS network and the Northeast Alliance of the CLN, and the Colorado Mountain College network, and the state rural health network, and a host of others. These networks keep popping up, but there doesn't seem to be a central authority or direction. (pc, 1995) In 1996, the University of Colorado at Boulder had proposed creating yet another network, which would serve as the statewide fiber backbone using a sophisticated ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) technology. There is a sense of ownership among those involved in distance education. Everyone wants to be the leader, and the result is everyone ends up stepping on each other's toes. Steve Tilson from Front Range Community College described this sense of ownership: It is an interesting position for somebody like me to be in because I got into this five years ago. And for three and a half years I was the prophet in the wilderness. I, and people like me, were writing memos that never got read, holding meetings that nobody came to, pounding on desks, and ranting and 28 31 raving and having people chuckle at us. Now all of a sudden, we're in the limelight. And it's not always a comfortable feeling. There is a great sense of possession--"This is mine. Nobody else wanted it, but it was mine." Now all of a sudden everybody wants it. (pc, 1995) Thus, a fierce rivalry among postsecondary institutions and individuals involved with distance education has contributed to the lack of coordination in the state. The new market entrant. The community college system, led by Jerry Wartgow, created the ColorLdo Electronic Community College in response to a perceived market need, and a belief that if they did not meet that need, someone else would. At first, there were some concerns among the existing 11 community colleges that the new college would be in competition with their existing distance learning programs. Mary Beth Susman explained: There were some very rational concerns. Some of the colleges wondered if we were creating a 12th college that would be in competition with their programs. But first of all, we are not FTE funded, so our tuition will be higher. I'm charging $120 per credit hour, and a community college credit is something like $52 per credit hour. So we didn't threaten them in that way. Second, a large part of our market is going to be outside Colorado. (pc, 1995) Steve Tilson, president of Telecoop, initially had some concerns, but believed that the system needed to gain whatever competitive advantage it could against present and future outside competitors. He remarked: If we don't do it they will they are. The only thing we have that gives us an edge is reputation from legitimacy and rigor and soundness of quality and that is eroding quickly. We had better get our ducks in a row, better stop competing with each other and doing all the stuff that we have traditionally done. We are going to lose a lot of people and a lot of good parts of the old paradigm, but it is going to happen. It is not going to be easy or quick or cheap, but it better start happening because the alternative is higher education in this country falling into the hands of big business. I'm enough of a traditional academic that I think that is a very bad idea. (pc, 1995) There was recognition by some that higher education was becoming more competitive beyond the state borders, and that Colorado institutions needed to prepare for that competition. Jerry Wartgow also shared this conviction. He noted that four-year institutions in Colorado were 29 "dropping the ball" by letting institutions like the University of Phoenix take away their market share (pc, 1995). When asked whether the threat of competition had influenced his views on distance education, Wartgow replied: I don't know if competition is the driving force, but I use it all the time to try and bring faculty and reluctant administrators around. It's not so much the threat of competition as it is meeting a market need. If we don't come around to meet that need, however, someone else will. Places like the University of Colorado at Boulder never have to worry. There is always going to be a certain percentage of the high school graduates in this state, traditional college age kids who want to go to Boulder and live in the dorm and have parties, and they will do very well and get a good education. I would be really worried if I were some of the other ones--that aren't CU Boulder--about competition in the future and about survivability. (pc, 1995) The threat of outside competition clearly was an important factor in the community college system's decision to create the Colorado Electronic Community College. Policymakers and educators in Colorado have developed and supported postsecondary distance education as a policy tool to extend access and to reach new markets. While there was much distance education activity in Colorado in 1995, the community colleges were the only postsecondary institutions to bring about a statewide comprehensive program. Findings and Policy Implications At the time of this study, each state had introduced a significant policy initiative relating to distance education. Minnesota's proposed alternative delivery structure, Maine's network separation and accreditation, and Colorado's electronic community college each stimulated debate within the policy and education communities. At the conclusion of the study, the Minnesota initiative had stagnated in the legislature, aspects of the Maine plan had been curtailed, and Colorado's initiative was just getting started. By no means do these obstructed policies imply failure, but,rather untested state-level action to respond to new demands. The new policy initiatives represent only part of the state distance educauon 30 3 (i stories. Each new initiative was built upon active institution- and state-based distance education programs, which had successfully served various student populations for many years. The three state approaches had several policy ramifications, which are discussed next. Distance Education and Competition The first research question of this study asked how distance education influenced the competitive environment in higher education in each of the three states. The availability of distance education technologies changed the competitive environment in Minnesota, Maine, and Colorado most distinctly by expanding the traditional markets of colleges and universities. It could be argued that the markets were there to begin with, but distance education has enabled higher education institutions to better serve new student populations, particularly working adults and those geographically isolated from a campus. Classic business models can help explain this competitive environment. Kotler (1988) discusses the "marketing concept," which holds that "the key to achieving organizational goals consists in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors" (p. 17). Kotler distinguishes the marketing concept from the "product concept," which holds that "consumers will favor those products that offer the most quality, performance, and features. Managers in these product-oriented organizations focus their energy on making good products and improving them over time" (p. 14). Table 1 contrasts the traditional higher education "product concept" against the higher ethication "marketing concept," which represents the direction in which some institutions and states are moving because of increased competition. 31 3 Table I The Higher Education Product and Marketing Concepts Starting Point Focus Means Ends (a) Traditional Higher Education Product Concept Institution, faculty Teaching, Recruiting, Research > promoting Enrollments through reputation, prestige (b) The Higher Education Marketing Concept Student market Customer needs Coordinated marketing Enrollments through customer satisfaction Note. Adapted from Kotler, 1988, p. 17. This study found that each of the three states were at some stage of moving from an "institution" and "product" focus toward the marketing concept of a student and customer focus. Maine had advanced the most toward this concept through its student outreach activities, such as, the teleservice center, the Educating Amy studies, and market needs assessments conducted by the Education Network of Maine. The Colorado Electronic Community College developed in response to a perceived market need, as did the proposal for an alternative delivery structure in Minnesota. The four-year institutions in those two states, however, were less interested in a statewide effort to coordinate delivery of distance education. At the same time, there were forces working against the marketing concept. Three forces, in particular, weighed heavily against the new market forces: a focus on the "product" of higher education, existing competitive rivalries, and systemwide and state level politics. In Maine, for example, faculty concerns over the quality of the "product" and internally focused questions of governance temporarily derailed plans to expand the Education Network of 32 J Maine. In Colorado, competitive rivalries among institutions and their numerous distance education programs precluded the development of a statewide focus on the needs of learners and consumers of postsecondary education. Minnesota experienced similar "turf" concerns among institutions. These turf concerns in Minnesota combined with the threat of a new "internal" competitor and system level politics ultimately staved off the proposed new alternative delivery structure. Distance Education Structures The second research question concerns which distance education structures are most suitable for helping a state meet its goals for access to postsecondary education. The answer can be explained by first examining a conceptual model for distance education delivery structures. In Zeller's (1995) distance education policy framework, four policy approaches to statewide distance education delivery arc presented (See Table 2). Table 2 Properties and Policy Dimensions Related to the Four Models of Distance Education Properties Policy-Oriented Dimensions Laissez-Faire Consortia Coord. Council <----- ----------- ----- ------ ----------- Comprehensive --> PurPose Single Broad Planning/ Coordination Local State Level Ownership/Control of the Technical Capacity Dispersed Concentrated Access/Clientele Served Narrow Broad Programming Limited Comprehensive Role of Institutions Individual Collaborative Cost Efficiency Duplicated Costs Cost Efficient Note. From Zeller, 1995, p. 126 33 St' Zeller categorizes statewide approaches along a policy-oriented continuum ranging from "laissez-faire," where no state-level plan for distance education exists, to "comprehensive," where the state views distance education as an instrument of public policy to increase postsecondary participation. After data analysis, the three states in this study can be placed at several points ;long the continuum (See Table 3). Table 3 Distance Education Policy Continuum Laissez-Faire Consortium Coord. Council Comprehensive Colorado 4-yrs -no state level comprehensive plan. -clientele is employed professionals, mostly graduate level. -institutions initiate distance education independent from one another. Minnesota -routine state level planning through Tele- communications Council. -various student populations served. -limited number of degrees offered. -institutions cooperate to a limited extent, mostly on technical rather than program issues. Colo CC's -systemwide planning at community college board. -wide range of associate degrees offered. -system designed for undergraduates seeking two-year degrees. -institutions cooperate in delivery of programming. Maine -planning, coordination, and delivery assigned to one entity. -instiLlIti.,1; may also participate in the system. -system designed to provide access to anyone who needs it. -range of associate's, bachelor's and master's degrees offered. Note. Adapted from Zeller, 1995, pp. 128-130 In Colorado, the policy approach to distance education for four-year institutions was very close to "laissez-faire." However, recent actions by the four-year institutions, such as, their participation in the Higher Education Telecommunications Alliance (HETA), suggest a modest move toward the "consortium" approach. Colorado community colleges, however, operate closer to the "comprehensive" end of the continuum. System level policies, such as, common course numbering and course descriptions, and articulation agreements allow the 34 3 community college system to serve students statewide through distance education. Their ability to act as a unified system was one reason Jones Intercable entered into a joint venture with them to create the Colorado Electronic Community College. Minnesota was judged to be at the "coordinating council" point on the continuum. The Minnesota legislature created the Telecommunications Council in 1993 for the expressed purpose of developing a statewide vision and plan for distance education, developing and implementing policy, distributing state funds to areas of state priority, and coordinating with all public sectors, including K-12 education. Through this council, Minnesota was able to connect the numerous distance education networks around the state into a regionally-based Minnesota Learning Network. Had the proposal for a separate alternative delivery structure passed, Minnesota would have moved closer to the "comprehensive" approach on the continuum. Maine fits very near to the "comprehensive" policy approach. The Education Network of Maine operates as a separate entity witln the University of Maine System. It has no affiliation with any one of the seven universities in the system. Zeller (1995) and Schweiger (1995) argue that this "single entity" model enables the broadest range of student populations to be served in the most cost-effective manner. The driving issue for policymakers in creating the Education Network of Maine was to increase the level of participation in postsecondary education, especially in geographically isolated regions of the state. They have met that goal. At the end of 1995, the Education Network of Maine was serving students from the associate degree level through the masters degree level in over 120 locations. The three states' policy approaches, however, leave unanswered a critical question regarding access to postsecondary opportunities: whi benefits and who pays? There appears to be a relationship between the policy approach to distance education and the student population group served. To simplify the argument, the state operating closer to the "laissez- 35 3 c, faire" end of the continuum serves primarily those students of more affluent means. In Colorado, most distance education offered by four-year institutions serves professionals seeking continuing education. For example, the University of Colorado at Boulder's CATECS program offers graduate engineering courses primarily to students who are reimbursed by their employers. Similarly, Colorado State University's SURGE program serves graduate students in engineering and business. The University of Northern Colorado delivers continuing education for teachers. On the other hand, the two programs operating closer to the "comprehensive" end of the continuum serve less affluent student populations. The Education Network of Maine and the Colorado Electronic Community College serve students attempting to complete their first and second years of college. Since the A.A. degree is generally not financed by employers, the state subsidiws these programs with the expressed intention of raising the education levels and quality of life of its citizens. Thus, the underlying rationale for public investment in and coordination of distance education is that individual institutional and private sector solutions can lead to "cherry picking" the most attractive and profitable courses and programs, without regard to meeting public goals. This finding cannot be generalized beyond the three states in the study, but is consistent with Zeller's (1995) characterization of the four policy approaches. Distance Education and Statewide Coordination The third research question centers on the conflict between traditional principles of statewide coordination and the new values introduced by technology and distance education. A review of literature on statewide coordination shows a set of dominating principles since the late 1950s. Some of these principles included the following: prevention of unnecessary program duplication, maintenance of mission distinction, definition of geographic service areas, equitable distribution of resources, and systemwide planning (Gienny, 1959; Glenny, 36 '3) 1971; I3,wdah1, 1971; Mil lett, 1984). Each of the three statewide distance educaticn programs in some way challenged the traditional principles governing statewide coordination. In substitute for the old regulatory principles were newer "market-based" principles. Minnesota's proposal for an alternative delivery structure introduced new concepts like "partnering" for curriculum development and "marketing" curricular products beyond the state's borders. These ideas extend beyond the coordinating board's notable focus on curtailing institutional desires to expand their missions and programs. Additionally, the proposal for a Minnesota Credit Bank challenged institutions' historic control over degree requirements determined by "seat time." In Maine, the Education Network of Maine had conducted statewide needs assessments to determine programming that would be offered over the network. This market orientation stands in stark contrast with the traditional internal approach to program development, which begins with approvals at the departmental level and finally reaches the coordinating or governing board for review and approval. In addition, Maine had begun "importing" degree programs from outside the state to meet demands for programs that the in-state institutions would not or could not provide on the network. This concept runs counter to the old ideas of "protecting the turf' of local institutions. Similarly, Colorado relaxed its traditional service area boundaries for non-state-subsidized distance education programs so that all institutions could begin to compete statewide without artificial geographic constraints. Finally, Colorado set up a new funding system through which institutions compete for funds in areas the legislature designates as high priority. Although the base funds are still allocated through a formula, the new approach steps away from the "equal distribution" concept and allows those institutions that are best meeting state needs to be rewarded. Table 4 illustrates some of these old principles of coordination gleaned from the literature contrasted with newer principles emerging from this study. 37 4 0 Table 4 Principles of Statewide Coordination of Higher Education Old (Regulation) New (Competition) Role & Miss Ion based oti program differentiation, geographic territory Role & Mission based on institutional capacity, partnerships, market needs assessment Quality assumptions based on inputs: selective admission, financial resources, faculty credentials, low student/faculty ratio, seat-time Quality assumptions based on outputs: learning outcomes are measured through competency- based curricula: employer satisfaction Delivery Structure campus-based Delivery Structure home-based, community-based, includes broadband networks for video and multimedia courses Funding based on: 1) equal treatment for mission and level 2) subsidizing institutions- bricks and mortar Funding based on: 1) responsiveness to state and market needs 2) subsidizing students (vouchers) 3) strategic and focused Student Population 18-24 year-olds Student Population lifelong learners Institutional Goals prestige and stability (Bowen, 1977) Institutional Goals serve the market, competitive advantage Scope of Coordination limited to traditional higher education institutions Scope of Coordination cross-sector coordination, including business, K-12, libraries, and other governmental agencies Conclusion In the new competitive environment of higher education, the need for state coordination has changed, but not disappeared. In fact, one might argue that a public or quasi-public body that is concerned primarily with the "public purposes" of higher education is an even greater necessity in this age of entrepreneurship (Mingle & Epper, 1996). State boards, as in the past, will need to be advocates for the less powerful and affluent student populations. 38 4 y ;. This study illustrates that coordination and competition can and must coexist. Porter (1980) describes several ways in which competitors coordinate with one another to raise entry barriers in an industry (i.e., protect themselves from new competitors) and to achieve better bargaining position with suppliers. Similarly, state higher education institutions must coordinate in order to compete. It is difficult for institutions acting alone to make the front- end investments required to provide a high-quality distance education product to a large number of students. In Colorado, for example, a lack of coordination among four-year institutions has produced a disaggregated collection of courses and specialized programs, mostly for employed students. The Colorado community college system, on the other hand, is well positioned to move as a system to meet emerging market opportunities. This result may have broad implications for governance in the future, pushing institutions toward consolidated systems or formal partnerships. The broader implications of this research relate to the will of state policymakers to immediately invest public funds in postsecondary distance education. They are asking questions about the wisest investment strategies, the most effective organiza :onal structures, how to resolve conflicting policies, and other policy decisions. In short, there is a sense among policymakers of being "left behind" if they do not act quickly. As thi:: study has shown, each of these policy decisions has profound implications and should not be made without careful consideration. This research also points to a healthy prognosis for the future of public higher education. States and institutions are responding to the new market demands, even if it is only at the periphery of many institutions. If institutions continue operating closer to the "marketing concept," then new competitors will face a formidable challenge from the well established, though transformed system of public higher education. 39 1" REFERENCES Primary Sources Colorado Commission on Higher Education. (1981, September). Task force on the imlicationsof gch_ _National technology: final report. Denver, CO: Author. Colorado Commission on Higher Education. (1989, December). The statewide telecommunications s stem: a ilan for the or anization of a statewide educational telecommunications Denver, CO: Author. Colorado Electronic Community College. (1995). 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work_k7yxm25ybvb7pe6vqujsktjgli	----	Distance Education Vol. 30, No. 1, May 2009, 47–61 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2009 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587910902845956 http://www.informaworld.com A model for self-regulated distance language learning Maureen S. Andradea* and Ellen L. Bunkerb aUtah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA; bBrigham Young University, Hawaii, USA Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_384767.sgm (Received September 2008; final version received 23 February 2009) 10.1080/01587910902845956Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Research Article2009Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.301000000May 2009Maureen SnowAndrademaureen.andrade@uvu.edu The role of learner autonomy and self-regulated learning in distance education has received much attention. The application of these concepts impacts course design and, potentially, learner achievement. In the case of distance language learning, course designers must consider not only how to help learners gain communicative competence but also language learner strategies that support success. Although the concepts of autonomy and self-regulated learning share some similarities, they have been variously defined and applied to distance education. Current research and discussion has not synthesized the ways in which these factors can be more fully utilized to improve distance education. Based on a critical review and synthesis of the literature on autonomy and self-regulation, this article contributes a new model for distance language learning. The model provides guidance for course designers and assists instructors in supporting their students. Keywords: distance language learning; self-regulated learning; autonomy; model of self-regulated distance learning; learning strategies Language learning from a distance has unique challenges. It has always been more problematic than acquiring knowledge in other subjects due to the lack of opportunity for interaction (Hurd, 2006). Second language acquisition theory indicates that not only do learners need comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985) (i.e., sources of reading and listening appropriate to their proficiency level), but also opportunities for output (Swain, 1995). Output focuses on production of language, rule testing, and the devel- opment of discourse skills. Related to output, learners must have the opportunity to interact in the target language to negotiate meaning, make input more comprehensible, get feedback, and recognize the need to change their language to achieve successful communication (Long, 1996). In distance language courses, input can be provided relatively easily through print and aural materials. Written forms of output are also feasible. Providing authentic oral interaction opportunities in which learners are communicating purposefully in a variety of contexts and learning to modify their language according to feedback, however, is more difficult. Restrictions on interactivity challenge the ability of learn- ers to achieve communicative competence (Hymes, 1971), which involves the use of appropriate language across settings, topics, and interlocutor relationships. Even in technologically advanced countries such as Hong Kong, course designers have grappled with the challenge of promoting interactivity through learner-accessible and affordable technology (Poon, 2003). Other programs have avoided the issue by *Corresponding author. Email: maureen.andrade@uvu.edu 48 M.S. Andrade and E.L. Bunker focusing on reading, writing, and listening rather than speaking (Ros i Solé & Hopkins, 2007). Some models support interactivity by implementing a blended approach that entails media- or print-based materials with face-to-face instruction (Bown, 2006; Sanders, 2005; Vanijdee, 2003). Other options for interaction include computer-mediated communication or virtual learning environments. Internet-based software for conferencing, for example, allows learners and teachers to participate in video or audio conferences through networked computers (Hampel & Hauck, 2004; Stickler & Hampel, 2007). Given the complexities of distance language learning, course designers must consider how to structure courses and create appropriate activities to help learners recognize success, and if communicative competence is desired, bridge the ‘transac- tional distance’ (Moore, 2007, pp. 90–91) to produce meaningful interaction. In addi- tion, an understanding of learning strategies and learner characteristics is critical to closing the gap – the distance between the learner and the teacher, or the learner and other learners. These areas of research encompass sometimes overlapping concepts such as cognition, metacognition, motivation, autonomy, and self-regulated learning. The latter two concepts are particularly central to understanding how the relationships among teachers, learners, and institutions promote successful distance language learning. Autonomy and self-regulated learning have both been defined as learners taking responsibility for their own learning (Benson, 2001; Dembo & Eaton, 2000; Holec, 1981; Holmberg, Shelley, & White, 2005; Muller-Verweyen, 1999; Vanijdee, 2003; White, 2003). Although sometimes viewed synonymously, the concepts have distinct characteristics. We posit that the notion of self-regulated learning has been underutilized in the field of distance language learning. This article contributes a new model for distance language learning that synthesizes research on autonomy and self-regulated learning. We next turn to an in-depth examination of these two concepts. Autonomy and self-regulated learning in distance education One of the foundational theories in distance education is Moore’s theory of transac- tional distance (1972, 2007), which includes three key variables: dialogue, structure, and learner autonomy. Dialogue refers to the interaction between the learners and teacher, and is built into the design of the course. Structure is the degree to which the course accommodates learners’ preferences and needs in terms of course objectives, goals, and evaluation. Learner autonomy involves the learner’s ability to create a learning plan, find resources that support study, and self-evaluate. At one end of the spectrum, full autonomy allows the learner to determine study goals, how to accomplish these goals, and how much to learn. At the other, a lack of autonomy restricts the learner from all decision-making power related to the course. Oxford’s view of autonomy (2008) is similar to that represented by Moore’s theory (1972, 2007) in that in a fully autonomous context, learners make both planning and implementation decisions, whereas in situations involving a lesser degree of auton- omy, learners make only some decisions which are related to implementation. Autonomy does not imply complete independence or a lack of support but rather a state of interdependence between teachers and learners (Little, 1995). Dialogue is represented in a distance course through interaction with the course instructor and the materials, which reflect a teaching voice (Anderson, 2007; Moore & Kearsley, 1996; Distance Education 49 White, 2005) or ‘the link between teacher and learner’ (Hurd, 2001, p. 136). The act of reading the course materials could be considered a type of internalized social interaction (Little, 1995) between the reader and the author. Depending on the opportunities for oral and written communication, however, this interaction does not necessarily remove factors of social isolation that may not be conducive for learning languages (Hurd, 1998a). Other researchers refer to autonomy as involvement and choice in learning, self- direction, the capacity to learn in terms of self-awareness and willingness to be an active learner, acting independently, and making decisions about what and how to learn, setting goals, and measuring progress (Holec, 1981; Hurd, 1998b, 2005; Little, 1991; White, 2003). Autonomy is connected to learner choice and can be extended to various aspects of a distance course, such as selection of materials and activities, individual goal setting, self-pacing, and self-evaluation. A broader conceptualization of autonomy focuses on the learner’s capacity, or attitudes and abilities that allow learners to take responsibility for the learning process (Vanijdee, 2003). A complete understanding of autonomy is problematic as its defining characteris- tics overlap and vary. No single definition is accepted; thus the concept remains ‘elusive’ (Hurd, 2005, p. 1). Autonomy involves metacognition, strategic competence, and reflection as well as choice and decision-making (Hurd, Beaven, & Ortega, 2001). It has been described as making decisions about what and how to learn, self-direction, involving the capacity to learn or what the learner brings to the task in terms of self- awareness and willingness to be an active learner, accepting responsibility, taking control, and acting independently with setting goals and time management as additional elements (Garrison, 2003; Holec, 1981; Hurd, 1998a; White, 2003). Central to the idea of autonomy is freedom of choice – learners choose what, where, and how to learn. The concept of self-regulated learning places less emphasis on choices and more on leading learners toward being effective without reliance on teacher structure. It focuses on how learners can take control of the learning process. Garrison (2003) believes that the concept of autonomy does little to guide educators in improving distance courses as it fails to recognize the psychological and cognitive elements involved in learning. He advances the concept of self-directed learning and proposes three dimensions: self-management (the process of balancing teacher and student control), self-monitoring (cognitive responsibility), and motivation (commit- ment to learning goals). These dimensions are all encompassed within the concept of self-regulated learning (i.e., cognition, metacognition, motivation) with the additional element of behavior (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1997). Self-regulated learning has been specifi- cally defined as ‘the ability of learners to control the factors or conditions affecting their learning’ (Dembo, Junge, & Lynch, 2006, p. 188). The cognitive element of self- regulation refers to the use of learning strategies to understand and remember infor- mation; the metacognitive component is related to planning, setting goals, monitoring, and evaluating; motivation involves self-motivation, taking responsibility for one’s successes and failures, and developing self-efficacy, which results in increased effort and persistence; behavior consists of seeking help and creating a positive learning environment for study (Dembo et al., 2006). For Oxford (2008), the use of learning strategies promotes learner autonomy. She categorizes strategies for language learning into metacognitive, affective, cognitive, and social-affective. These categories are similar to the four dimensions of self-regulated learning. In this sense, Oxford would consider autonomy and self-regulated learning 50 M.S. Andrade and E.L. Bunker to be synonymous. Her conceptualization of autonomy also reflects the idea of choice, or decision-making, for the learner. Although definitions vary and overlap is evident between the concepts of autonomy and self-regulated learning, we posit that applying the framework of self- regulation and its four primary components – cognitive, metacognitive, motivation, behavior – provides an organizational structure around which to conceptualize and discuss factors affecting learner success. Autonomy appears to be the preferred term in distance language learning while self-regulated learning is more commonly used in the field of education. We recognize that Oxford’s learning strategy categories (2008) are comparable to the self-regulated learning categories of Zimmerman and Kitsantas (1997) and have been specifically applied to language learning. However, we base our model on self- regulated learning, specifically the six dimensions introduced by Dembo et al. (2006), which further develop the components of cognition, metacognition, motivation, and behavior. These six dimensions – motive, methods, time, physical environment, social environment, and performance – can help course designers focus on materials and assignments that will directly help students. The elements of time, social environment, and physical environment are particularly useful to the distance education context. These dimensions will be discussed in depth later in the article when we introduce the model. Another advantage of using the self-regulated learning components and the related six dimensions is that our model can be applied to any educational context, not only language study. To demonstrate the benefits of applying the framework of self-regulation (as defined by Dembo et al., 2006; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1997) to distance language learning, we next explore how the characteristics of autonomy identified in distance language learning studies can be conceptualized within the four components of self- regulated learning. The final goal for using this framework is to build the elements of self-regulated learning into course design. Distance learning courses Autonomous language learners have been identified by such behaviors as the use of cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective strategies, awareness of language learn- ing strategies, the ability to self-diagnose, seeking exposure to English, willingness to be responsible for learning, following course materials, self-reliance, self-management, persistence in solving problems, preparation for tutor sessions, and self-monitoring (Vanijdee, 2003). Student success in a Russian class using an independent study model depended on an internal locus of learning (i.e., the belief that learning occurs within the learner rather than on the transfer of knowledge from an expert) and the affective strategies of self-motivation and self-encouragement (Bown, 2006). The written reflections of English language learners taking an online course that sought to increase metacognitive and self-regulatory skills demonstrated that learners increased their awareness of the language learning process and themselves as language learners (Ushioda, 2008). The course had a positive effect on affect, increas- ing learners’ confidence to use the target language, which promotes communicative autonomy (Little, 1995) or the ability to use the language independently. Student responses demonstrated gains in metacognitive knowledge, including the ability to self-assess, set learning priorities, and express beliefs about desired or achievable Distance Education 51 outcomes. Specific detail about what accounted for the gains in terms of elements of course design was not provided. Distance learners of French claimed improved approaches to learning, the acquisition of new skills such as self-monitoring, reflection, planning, prioritizing, self-discipline, and responsibility (Hurd, 2000). Motivation was enhanced by positive self-talk, goal setting, interaction with French native speakers, and reading. Learners improved their metacognitive and self-management skills. Distance learners of French, German, and Spanish were given supplementary materials to develop critical reflection, metacognition, and autonomy (Murphy, 2005). In general, these learners were active, involved, sought interaction opportunities, and took control. Using the language helped them see progress and was motivating. All of the learners demonstrated some critical reflection ability but those who used the supplementary materials demonstrated this to a greater extent. It should be noted that none of these studies claimed to be measuring self- regulated learning, although they all focused on aspects of this concept – cognition, metacognition, motivation, and behavior. The studies either cited autonomy as their emphasis or characteristics related to ‘taking control of the language learning process’ (Vanijdee, 2003, p. 75). What is lacking in all of these details is an organizing struc- ture around which to conceptualize the various aspects of autonomy. Without this, researchers, educators, and course designers must manage long lists of characteristics, many of which have multiple definitions. Before introducing this structure, which is based on self-regulated learning research, we briefly summarize characteristics of successful distance language learners and course design factors that support that success. Successful distance language learners and course design A considerable amount of research has been conducted with regard to distance language learning and specific elements within the areas of learning strategies, affec- tive factors, and learner characteristics. These studies indicate that motivation is central to success (Bown, 2006; Harlow, 2007; Hurd, 2000, 2006; Poon, 2003; Thang, 2005; Vanijdee, 2003) as are characteristics such as goal setting, interaction, enthusi- asm, persistence, confidence, and risk taking (Hurd, 2000; Vanijdee, 2003). Various skills and learning approaches related to metacognition – planning, monitoring, and reflecting – also give learners an advantage (Anderson, 2007; Garrison, 2003; Hurd, 2000; Murphy, 2005; Vanijdee, 2003). Students who take responsibility for their learning and exhibit self-management characteristics, are active and involved, and practice self-encouragement or positive self-talk are likely to realize success in acquiring a language from a distance (Hurd, 2000). [Learners] should be able to re-evaluate their role and responsibility as language learners. They should be able to assess their personal learning needs, have an idea of how to moni- tor progress, and be able to manage time effectively. They also need to use language- learning strategies in effective, flexible and creative ways. (Thang, 2005, p. 252) Learners must be able to construct knowledge, reflect critically, be actively involved, and make choices for effective language learning (Murphy, 2005). Furthermore, beliefs about learning, teacher and learner roles, and the use of affective strategies to handle negative emotions impact distance language learning (Bown, 2006). 52 M.S. Andrade and E.L. Bunker The question for course designers is how these various characteristics, skills, and strategies can be supported. Although knowledge of learning strategies is not a guarantee that learners will apply them or that they will become autonomous (Little, 1995), increasing awareness of strategies and providing guided opportunities for their use will help learners gain the confidence necessary ‘to become autonomous users of their target language’ (Little, 1995, p. 176). Training is needed to help students become aware of useful approaches and strategies, modify attitudes about learning (Bown, 2006; Thang, 2005; White, 2003), and manage emotional challenges (Bown, 2006). Considering learner characteristics and needs in early design stages is important, so that pertinent learner support is developed within the course (White, 2003). Additionally, syllabus design must be clear with measurable goals and objectives and students should be guided to helpful resources (Bown, 2006). Study guides can be designed to focus on the development of strategies and allow more flexibility and choices to support a variety of learning styles. Students are not used to thinking about their feelings regarding the process of language learning and that makes languages difficult to study (Oxford, 1994). This suggests the need for reflection and self- awareness. Through course activities and materials, metacognitive training must lead students to identify effective and ineffective strategies. Students do not necessarily learn well when they learn alone (Hurd, 1998a) nor does critical reflection on the learning process come easily (Little, 1995). Students need to know what it takes to be an effective language learner, and autonomy needs to be managed by teachers, who act as facilitators to help students develop strategies and skills. The key to success must lie partly in the support systems available to students and the extent to which diverse individual learning needs are addressed, but even more importantly is the degree to which these support systems encourage language learners to develop strategies that work for them personally, and which lead to more effective learning methods and enhanced learning outcomes. (Hurd, 2000, p. 37) Materials should be designed to train learners in these strategies to enable them ‘to move beyond the prescribed subject matter to engage with language resources in their environment and, as part of this, to exercise choices as language learners’ (White, 2003, pp. 153–154). As reflected in Moore’s theory of transactional distance (1972, 2007), course designers must consider the gap between the learner and the teacher created through distance and structure the instruction to provide learners with sufficient guidance. Opportunities for dialogue within a distance language class are particularly critical to help the learner develop communication skills. Transactional distance increases or decreases depending on the degree of dialogue and structure. Structure is provided through lessons, objectives, themes, illustrations, and projects, whereas dialogue consists of tutorials, telephone contact, questions and answers, videoconferencing, email, and other modes of communication. Structure in distance courses is frequently provided with a study guide that sequences activities and assignments and leads learners through the course. A charac- teristic form of dialogue is assessment feedback, which helps learners review their progress and provides meaningful interaction. Such feedback can encourage and moti- vate students, give them a sense of their competence, create dialogue, and clarify the relationship between performance and strategy use (White, 2003). Distance Education 53 When low degrees of structure and dialogue are present, transactional distance is high and learners have to be more autonomous. Even in cases of low transactional distance, learners require more support than they would need in a classroom due to barriers created by the learning context, which can be isolated. To realize a state of autonomous learning, consideration must be given to the development of ‘cognitive dispositions’ including motivation, strategic planning, and metacognitive awareness (Garrison, 2003, p. 167). A new model What is lacking from the research cited is an all-encompassing model that acts as a framework from which to examine elements related to autonomy and self-regulated learning. Such a model is needed to guide designers in building course components that support the development of self-regulated learners. Presently, studies related to these areas in distance language learning are diverse and use a multiplicity of related terms and explanations, making it difficult to determine what needs to be included in a course for language learning to be successful. Few models or theories of distance language learning exist, and all have limitations in terms of aiding course designers. For example, White’s learner-based theory of distance language learning (2005) encompasses the concept of learner–context interface. According to this theory, learn- ers construct an interface as they interact with the learning context. Learner factors, including characteristics of self-directed learning, affect how the interface is constructed, which, in turn, affect ‘individual learner attributes … and the kind of identity s/he develops as a distance language learner’ (p. 64). White’s theory concerns learners and does not directly point to design parameters that promote successful language learning in distance education contexts. Another model for consideration posits a relationship among autonomy, learning strategies (i.e., cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective), and interaction with self-instructional materials (Vanijdee, 2003). The explanation provided for the model is limited in that it simply indicates that a relationship exists among these elements and that the way learners interact with course components reflects their degree of autonomy. The model does not adequately account for the range of factors related to autonomy apparent in the literature on distance language learning nor does it investi- gate the interplay of the various components. Garrison (2003) argued that within distance education, the concepts of autonomy and control are insufficient. Consideration must also be given to cognition, metacog- nition, and motivation, which are preconditions to self-directed learning. These elements should not merely be controlled through well-designed packages, but students must be taught how to learn. Garrison stated, ‘A good starting point might be the integration of the theory and practice of SDL [self-directed learning] and critical thinking (cognitive and metacognitive abilities) in a distance education context’ (p. 166). The model of self-regulated distance language learning (Figure 1) addresses this need. Figure 1. Model of self-regulated distance language learning: optimizing transactional distance through self-regulated learning strategies (S = structure, D = dialogue). Model of self-regulated distance language learning Central to the model are six dimensions of self-regulated learning – motive, method, time, physical environment, social environment, and performance (Zimmerman, 1994, 54 M.S. Andrade and E.L. Bunker 1998). These dimensions are based on the four key psychological components of self- regulated learning: cognition, metacognition, motivation, and behavior. They address the questions of why, how, when, where, with whom, and what. Although these six dimensions have been advocated for use in web-based learning (Dembo et al., 2006), they have not been considered in distance language learning applications nor have they been related to Moore’s theory of transactional distance (1972, 2007). Findings from the studies reviewed on distance language learning and autonomy, affective factors, and learning strategies/styles can all be conceptualized within the model’s framework. The dimensions extend how distance language learning is conceived and support Moore’s theory of transactional distance. The model demonstrates how learners interact with the variables of structure and dialogue to become self-regulated distance language learners. (Structure and dialogue are represented by S and D in Figure 1; the + and − symbols represent greater or lesser degrees of structure and dialogue.) Learners begin a course with individual levels of self-regulated learning, commitment, and language proficiency. They interact with the course content, materials, and technology, instructors and other learners, and various entities of the host institution. The level of structure provided by the course within lessons and activities can provide scaffolding that supports self-regulated learning. Greater levels of structure initially result in less autonomy in the sense of choice, but the structure helps students to become more self-regulated, increases capacity for autonomy, and decreases transactional distance. Similarly, the level of dialogue within the course, specifically tutorials, conferenc- ing, feedback, and communication, must be high to give students the opportunity for the interaction needed to improve language proficiency and to provide the scaffolding necessary to improve self-regulated learning. This initially results in a decrease in autonomy in the form of independence but decreases transactional distance and ultimately serves to increase learners’ self-regulation, capacity for autonomy, persis- tence in the course, and language proficiency. As learners interact with the structure and dialogue of the course and develop self- regulated learning skills, they reflect on and monitor their performance, set new goals, and continue to improve and build on the strategies they encounter and practice. The last stage of the process is becoming a self-regulated language learner, with increased capacity for autonomous learning, persistence in the course, and improved language Learner: increased levels of SRL Capacity for autonomy Persistence in course Language proficiency Motive Methods Time Physical environment Social environment Performance Interaction Learner: initial levels of SRL Commitment to the course Language proficiency +/ñS +/ñD Figure 1. Model of self-regulated distance language learning: optimizing transactional distance through self-regulated learning strategies (S = structure, D = dialogue). Distance Education 55 proficiency. As learners become more independent and self-regulated, they can be successful with less structure and dialogue. Although we focus on language learning in our application of the model, the model can be easily adapted to any learning context. The six dimensions As the six dimensions of self-regulated learning (Dembo et al., 2006) are central to the model, they merit further explanation, including specific applications to distance language learning. Motive is related to the reasons (why) for learning and involves setting goals, positive self-talk, and strategies for managing emotions such as control- ling test anxiety. Two types of motivation are often discussed in language learning – integrative or instrumental (Gardner & Lambert, 1972). The former refers to a desire to integrate with speakers of the target language while the latter focuses on using the language to achieve a specific goal. When learners have meaningful reasons for acquiring a language such as a desire to associate and speak with native speakers, pursue further education in the language, or travel to or live in a country where the language is spoken, acquisition is more successful. In distance language learning, motivation plays a central role (Bown, 2006; Harlow, 2007; Hurd, 2000, 2006; Poon, 2003). Motivation may be lacking in a distance course if learners are removed from the target language environment as they may not have an immediate need or opportunity to use the language. Courses that provide opportunities for goal setting, model how to develop positive self-talk, and help learners manage their emotions, which may improve motivation. Managing emotions is also related to lowering the affective filter (Krashen, 1981), or factors such as anxiety, inhibitions, and personality characteristics that may interfere with acquisition. Method refers to how learners learn, including strategies such as summarizing, note-taking, asking questions, rehearsal, and visual representations. Tools built into a course to help learners improve and evaluate their strategies provide greater structure, which, according to Moore (1972, 2007), decreases autonomy as learners have fewer choices. However, structure can provide the necessary scaffolding for successful learning. Strategy training for language learning could include using inventories such as Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (1990) to create awareness, multiple intelligences surveys (e.g., see Silberstein, Dobson, & Clarke, 2002), and sharing strategies with other learners to expand students’ repertoires (the latter also relates to the social environment dimension). Strategies might include think-aloud protocols (Anderson, 2004), rubrics to evaluate success on a task, reflective journals, or other types of self-evaluation. Techniques for learning vocabu- lary and grammar rules, improving reading and writing, and so forth may also be emphasized. The third dimension, time, involves consideration of when to study and for how long. It addresses procrastination and time management. Time management aware- ness can be built into the course with features that indicate the approximate length of time it should take to do a particular activity. Time management is a critical skill for distance learners as distractions and other responsibilities (e.g., work, family) often interfere with working on a distance course. Similarly, procrastination is a reality in asynchronous courses since regular meeting times are not set. Learners must set a regular schedule for working on the course in the same way they would attend a class 56 M.S. Andrade and E.L. Bunker and plan homework time. Information and suggested tips for structuring time in order to be successful can be integrated into the course. Physical environment (where) focuses on ensuring the learner’s surroundings support the act of studying (e.g., quiet, free of distractions, comfortable) and the abil- ity to restructure surroundings as needed. This is particularly important to distance learning as classroom settings and study facilities may not be available; thus, learners have to restructure their environments to make them conducive to study. For language learners, this might mean having a place where they can listen to language materials and engage in oral drills and practice. The social environment (with whom) considers the ability of the learner to seek help when needed, know where to find help, and know how to frame requests and evaluate assistance. An example of this was given earlier related to having learners share successful methods for learning with each other. In the context of language learning, the environment provides the opportunity for interaction and the develop- ment of communicative competence (Canale & Swain, 1980). Learners need to create opportunities for practice with the language either in the home country environment or through technologies built into the course. Learners’ affective filters, that is, levels of anxiety, inhibitions (Krashen, 1981), must be low to encourage risk taking and experimentation with the language. Suggestions for how environmental factors can be used to learners’ benefit, including ideas for interacting with target language users, and other such related assignments, can be provided in the course. Additionally, teachers or tutors can provide dialogue in a variety of forms to create interactivity. Finally, performance, or what is learned, includes observing, reflecting, making judgments, and comparing current performance to short- and long-term goals in order to make needed adjustments. As learners engage in the process of acquiring knowledge, or skill in a language, they observe their behaviors, reflect on perfor- mance, evaluate, and refine or set new goals. Reflective journals are one means of accomplishing this. Feedback from tutors on reflective journals (van den Boom, Paas, & van Merrienboër, 2007) and reflection on performance (Murphy, 2005) have proven effective in distance learning. Similarly, technology-enhanced learning in the form of reflective weblogs has demonstrated that students were in control of their own learn- ing (Baggetun & Wasson, 2006). Feedback through the process of interaction also helps learners notice the gap in their linguistic forms and communicative abilities (Swain, 1995). Receiving negative feedback leads learners to consider alternate ways to express their ideas and supports hypothesis testing. Providing opportunities for output allows learners to recognize the need to improve their language skills. All of these dimensions have been related to success in web-based learning (Dembo et al., 2006), and all can be taught and developed, making them appealing in distance language learning. Many applications of these dimensions currently exist in distance language learning courses. French, German, and Spanish learners utilized materials designed to help them reflect on their performance throughout the course (Murphy, 2005). Students participated in a skills audit which listed skills that might be needed for the assignment (method). They identified skills they needed, reflected on their strengths and weaknesses, decided what to work on, and formed an action plan (motive). They also completed self-assessment sheets to reflect on their work, determine what to discuss with their tutors, and assess their goals (performance). Using a reflection sheet, they summarized feedback they received on assignments, self-assessed, reviewed their priorities, and set new goals (performance). A tip sheet explained what students should do when assignments were returned, and a skills sheet Distance Education 57 provided advice on how to develop language skills and referred students to other sources of help (method/social environment). Forms of support such as these that are built into a course can be used to help students develop effective language learning strategies and become self-regulated learners. Having a model to guide students and teachers will ensure a well-balanced approach to developing all six dimensions of self-regulated learning. A preliminary case study We next present a case study to demonstrate how course designers used the model of self-regulated learning in the course development process and how instructors have used it to guide students. Following an administrative decision to require the English as a second language (ESL) program at a university in the USA to develop and teach English language courses at a distance, faculty members, including the authors, began planning for this mandate. With knowledge of the literature about autonomy in both language learning and distance education and the literature on self-regulated learning for university-level students, the faculty began to consider how such characteristics might be included in course designs in the distance courses. As a first step, concepts from self-regulated learning were used for writing prompts for learner journals in a campus-based course. The purpose of this test was to measure how the students would respond in their journals to questions about their study habits and attitudes and if reflection on various aspects of the six dimensions would be beneficial. Responses to the journal topics indicated that students who engaged in reflection and evaluation of their habits and strategies recognized value in this process in terms of strategy awareness and improved learning. These responses led the developers to continue exploring these concepts in their distance design work. The first course designed for distance education delivery was an intermediate-level reading class where the elements of self-regulated learning were incorporated into the study guide in a manner similar to the learner journal prompts in the campus-based class. However, this initial in-house research and development experience pointed to the need for a clear guide for incorporating components of self-regulated learning into the distance language courses in a more structured and deliberate way. The model presented in this article emerged from the literature review and this initial research and development experience. Subsequently, course development teams have used the elements of the model in the design of another intermediate-level ESL course. As part of the course, students do an initial self-assessment (survey) related to their perceptions of themselves as distance language learners. Following this preliminary assessment, activities using the dimensions of the model – motivation, methods of learning, use of time, physical envi- ronment, and social environment – are provided. Each week, students choose an activity they wish to do based on personal outcomes from the beginning self-assessment. At the conclusion of each activity, they submit a reflective journal to the teacher (via email) on their experience with the selected activity. Teachers then respond to each journal. The journal, along with the teacher response, helps students review their performance, adjust or adopt new strategies, and consider new or revised learning goals. The sets of activities were designed to include more activities than needed as well as to have multiple activities from each dimension, allowing the students to exercise some choice (i.e., autonomy) in the self-regulated learning activities they complete. The students then do a mid-term and end-of-course performance measurement. 58 M.S. Andrade and E.L. Bunker The course development team found the elements of the model conducive to the design process and productive in nature. Research on the usefulness of the self- regulated learning components in the design is being collected and analyzed. Initial impressions from instructors and students are positive. These results will be reported in detail at a later date. Future offerings of the course will lead to additional data over time. Implications and conclusion Teaching foreign languages by distance is of interest to a considerable number of educational institutions. This interest is largely motivated by the desire to decrease costs (Hurd, 1998a; Sanders, 2005) or to increase the student pool. Institutions facing financial challenges are moving toward course delivery models involving autonomous learning (Hurd, 1998a) such as distance courses, blended learning, and self-access centers (Ding, 2005). As English language skills are in much demand, the need for related courses is widespread. With pressures for language departments to restructure their courses and offer them through distance education or technology-based models, understanding the components for successful distance language learning is essential. The model presented in this article allows educators and designers to account for features that will improve success not only in distance language learning, but poten- tially in all distance learning. It also provides a framework for future research in that elements of the model can be tested to determine which aspects of self-regulated learning are enhanced by particular elements of design and technological applications, and how these elements can be used to create structure and dialogue (Moore, 2007) appropriate to learners’ needs, and overcome the gaps created by distance. Dembo et al. (2006) have commented that ‘there is to date little literature concerning self- regulation in Web-based learning’ (p. 198). There is even less information related to the application of self-regulation to distance language learning. Applying the concept of self-regulated learning to distance language learning demonstrates the benefits of synthesizing research across disciplines. Indeed, more must be known about how all distance students employ strategies related to cognition and metacognition, how these strategies affect learning outcomes, and how courses can be written to develop these skills (Anderson, 2007). Future research must also consider how self-regulation affects actual gains in language proficiency and academic achievement. The model of self-regulated distance language learning provides a framework by which designers, instructors, and institutions can conceptualize, implement, and measure the effects of self-regulation on learning. Through this model, learners can be led to greater levels of autonomy through the application of self-regulated learning strategies and to greater levels of success. Notes on contributors Maureen Snow Andrade is the associate dean of University College at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, in the USA. 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work_kea35eiqz5cunmnxvycckkygle	----	doi:10.1016/S1096-7516(03)00019-8 Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 A practical framework for evaluating online distance education programs Alfred P. Rovai* School of Education, Regent University, 1000 Regent University Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23464-9800, USA Received 28 December 2002; received in revised form 6 February 2003; accepted 21 February 2003 Abstract The case is presented for distance education administrators that evaluation is an essential element of successful distance education programs. A synthesis of the program evaluation and distance education research literature is used to form a framework for conducting evaluations of online programs. Evaluators should assess student performance, determine program and cost effectiveness, monitor quality to include technology and support services, evaluate course design and instruction, and ascertain teacher and student satisfaction. Strategies tailored to obtain such information are described within the context of an open-systems approach. An inventory of potential evaluation questions for input, process, output, and impact evaluations that respond to the potential needs of internal and external stakeholders are listed along with quantitative and qualitative data requirements that can be helpful in responding to these questions. D 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Program evaluation; Distance education; Higher education; Program effectiveness 1. Introduction There is a concern among some educators that distance education is compromising the quality of education (e.g., Nissenbaum & Walker, 1998; Trinkle, 1999). These educators are worried that technology will cheapen traditional education and destroy the special relationships 1096-7516/03/$ – see front matter D 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S1096-7516(03)00019-8 * Tel.: +1-757-226-4861; fax: +1-757-226-4857. E-mail address: alfrrov@regent.edu (A.P. Rovai). A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124110 instructors have with their students. They cite research evidence suggesting that some courses taken at a distance are impersonal, superficial, misdirected, and potentially dehumanizing and depressing, and that they disrupt the interactions that create a learning community. On the other hand, substantial research evidence exists suggesting that the course-delivery medium is rarely the determining factor for a variety of educational outcomes, including student satisfaction, perceptions, and learning (e.g., Russell, 1999), and that strong feelings of community can be developed in distant learning environments (e.g., Rovai, 2001). However, the validity of much of the research involving comparisons of online and traditional media (Russell, 1999) has been questioned by researchers who claim that no significant difference is an inconclusive result. In particular, Lockee, Moore, and Burton (2001, p. 62) believe that ‘‘a finding of no significant difference between face-to-face instruction and distance-delivered instruction does not mean they are equally good or bad.’’ Moreover, such studies often violate the assumption of ceteris paribus, that is, all factors are the same except for the conditions that are manipulated. One solution offered by these researchers is that research should move away from comparison studies and focus on evaluations of specific distance education programs, a view promoted by this article. Statistics reveal that not all distance education programs are equally effective. For example, Carr (2000) reported significant variation in distance education dropout rates among schools, with some postsecondary schools reporting course-completion rates of more than 80% and others finding that fewer than 50% of students finished their distance education courses. Moore, Thompson, Quigley, Clark, and Goff (1990) and Verduin and Clark (1991) suggested that teaching and studying at a distance can be as effective as traditional instruction provided: (a) the method and technologies used are appropriate to the instructional tasks, (b) there is student-to- student interaction, and (c) there is timely teacher-to-student feedback. Quality of course design and instruction are of primary importance to the success of distance education programs, as they are for traditional programs, and course design and instructional methods effectively adapted to the technology are more important than the types of technology used to deliver the program. Most distance education administrators realize that they are in a highly competitive marketplace where quality and service are strongly related to success. Consequently, schools offering programs at a distance must compete with each other as well as with traditional programs to attract students. Schools must offer quality programs at a competitive price to be successful. Carnevale (2001) reported that the American Federation of Teachers requested that colleges not only acknowledge, but also assume the standards and collective bargaining agreements to protect the quality of distance education. Evaluation is an essential component of program improvement and renewal and long-term success. Willis (1993, p. 70) cautioned that ‘‘even the best designed or adapted distance delivered course will likely require revision.’’ Moreover, distance education program evaluation results can be extrapolated to improve other distance education programs. According to Verduin and Clark (1991, p. 184): Good evaluation will also assist distance educators in thinking about what they are trying to do and achieve as they implement programs and activities. Continued development in distance education is essential and evaluation can reveal what is effective and what is not. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 111 Evaluations resulting in program refinements are highly important if quality is to be achieved and maintained. Galbraith, Sisco, and Guglielmino (1997, p. 113) stated, ‘‘Evalu- ation is an essential element in effective programs for any target group.’’ Scriven (1981) reported that a common use of program evaluation is for accountability purposes. He also identified other uses to include (a) determining program effectiveness, (b) identifying program weaknesses to enable administrators to improve program effectiveness, (c) providing evidence of effectiveness to doubters, and (d) providing information that can be used for program renewal. Keegan (1996) recommended that the evaluation of any distance education program should focus on four aspects: (a) the quantity of the learning (i.e., enrollment, new learner markets, and course-completion rates), (b) the quality of the learning (i.e., effectiveness of courses or program to enable desired learner outcomes), (c) the status of the learning (i.e., transferability of coursework and employer recognition of degrees and certificates), and (d) the relative cost of the learning (i.e., institutional cost effectiveness and cost benefits). Measurement and judgment both have a legitimate role in program evaluations provided the evaluator distinguishes between both types of information. A comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of distance education programs should be based on multiple sources of evidence and the convergence of different measures. However, there has been a tendency in evaluations of distance education programs to be less rigorous and to rely on the use of limited self-reports and qualitative evaluations (Campbell, Lison, Borsook, Hoover, & Arnold, 1995). For example, learners may only be asked to rate how much they liked specific aspects of the distance learning system, and course evaluations may focus on how they liked the course design and the instructional methods used by the instructor. Fewer evaluators use the data from a comparison group (e.g., from another section of the course) and only a very few attempt evaluations that use experimental designs. The purpose of this article is to draw from the program evaluation and distance education professional literature to synthesize a framework for evaluating online distance education programs. Such programs are delivered via the Internet and typically use e-learning software such as the Blackboard Learning System, Lotus LearningSpace, and WebCT. Added to this synthesis are the experiences of the author both as a practitioner of distance education and program evaluation for over a decade. The framework provided by this article is meant to assist those individuals who are involved in the direction, planning, or conduct of an evaluation by outlining a methodology and list of potential evaluation questions that can be used to help inform a comprehensive program evaluation. Fig. 1 outlines the evaluation framework described in this article. The process starts with identification of the purpose of the program evaluation. For example, why is the evaluation necessary and what types of decisions will be made about the program? Should emphasis be placed on input, process, outcome, or impact issues? Once the purpose of the evaluation is understood, the type of evaluation can be determined. Then, evaluation strategies and questions can be developed in parallel. The specific evaluation questions to be used for any program evaluation should be based on the information needs of the evaluation’s users and decision-makers, and the strategies used to respond to these questions should be selected Fig. 1. A program evaluation framework that synthesizes the systems model of evaluation by Rossi et al. (1999), with the evaluation strategies identified by Worthen et al. (1997). A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124112 based on an understanding of the broader context in which the program operates. For example, there may be a variety of complex issues involving the distance education program that requires inclusion of an adversary-oriented strategy to ensure that all views are presented and considered during the evaluation process. A description of the types of evaluations and supporting strategies followed by an inventory of potential questions for use in an evaluation of online programs are presented below. 2. Types of program evaluation According to Posavac and Carey (2002), evaluation is a collection of methods, skills, and sensitivities necessary to determine whether a human service is needed and likely to be used, whether it is conducted as planned, and whether the human service actually does help people. Evaluations of human service programs are conducted to answer questions and address issues that are raised by stakeholders. The process of identifying and selecting evaluation questions is central to the evaluation and normally represents an early step in the program evaluation planning process. Once selected, the evaluation questions provide a direction for the program A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 113 evaluation. Plans are then developed to gather evidence that allows the evaluator to answer these questions. A common method of categorizing program evaluations is by whether they are formative or summative or a combination of the two (Scriven, 1981). Formative evalua- tions focus more on process and feedback to determine the extent to which the program is operating as intended. The idea behind the formative evaluation is to ensure that the course or instructional product is meeting its stated goals as efficiently and effectively as possible and that the program is being implemented as planned. The focus, therefore, is on academic quality management. Summative evaluations, on the other hand, seek to discover if the program made a difference. That is, the emphasis is on determining the results or outcomes of the program. Summative evaluations are often used for accountability purposes. The systems model is an alternative approach to program evaluation (Rossi, Freeman, & Lipsey, 1999). Here, one can categorize an evaluation by type, as an input, process, output, and/or impact evaluation. Frequently, all types are included in the same evaluation. This approach is similar to Stufflebeam’s (1971) CIPP model (i.e., context, input, process, and product), where context focuses on planning decisions, input on structuring decisions, process on implementation processes, and product on outcome attainment. Moore and Kearsley (1996, p. 5) suggested that a systems approach is very helpful to understanding distance education and that ‘‘the systems model provides a tool that not only helps us recognize many of the issues that separate distance education from conventional education, but also helps us distinguish good distance education from bad.’’ The systems view of program evaluation represents a departure from, and refinement of, the view of categorizing evaluations as formative or summative. However, the approaches are overlapping and can be viewed as different paths to the same goals. A key consideration in using the systems approach is the acknowledgement that a distance education program is an open system, and consequently, feedback from a variety of internal and external stakeholders is essential for system adjustment and improvement. Stakeholders may include learners and instructors, staff, administrators, policymakers, boards, vendors, consultants, community groups, accrediting agencies, government organizations, businesses, and employers. The systems approach to program evaluation is highly compatible with strategic planning, which has the goal of strengthening the management decision-making process by having it recognize and address key internal and external factors that affect the organization. Since programs delivered at a distance consist of multiple components, e.g., the e-learning software, academic and technical support, presentation of content, and interaction, evaluators must recognize that all components of the program must work together in an efficient manner if the entire system is to be effective. Consequently, it is important to evaluate distance education programs by how they work as a whole rather than by evaluating individual components without regard to overall program effectiveness. By way of analogy, there is no need to have an expensive, high-performance carburetor in a motorbike if the rider rarely revs the engine past 5000 rpm. 2.1. Input evaluation An input evaluation identifies and evaluates system capabilities to include equipment and technical expertise, alternative program strategies, and the designs used to meet the target audience and satisfy their needs. The purpose is to provide information on the quality of resources used by the program and to determine how to best use these resources to achieve program objectives. According to Moore and Kearsley (1996), important inputs that should be evaluated include student characteristics, instructor/tutor experience, competence of administrative staff, efficiency of course development, and institutional cooperation/support. A systematic examination of alternative economical models may also be required to predict and compare the expenditure (and potential revenue) of different models for each program component as well as the effectiveness of the overall program (Phipps & Wellman, 2001). When evaluating program inputs, it is important to examine student needs, the number of students served, and program costs. According to Willis (1993), a needs assessment can provide the external data to verify the need for the program, identify the factors that led to the instructional need, and provide evidence that the instruction being planned can effectively meet this need. An input evaluation can also help forecast future costs and the sustainability of the program being evaluated, validate program and course objectives, and provide information for refining and positioning the program in competitive distance education markets. It is also important to identify the needs of online instructors and to evaluate the extent to which these needs are satisfied. Distance education instructors must be trained to teach at a distance. According to Eaton (2000), president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation in the United States, instructors are frequently thrust online without the proper training or time to manage effective online learning, thus, creating an input problem. Wilson (2001) reported that a study of distance education in Kentucky’s higher education system revealed faculty willing to use the technology but needing more institutional support. In particular, she reported that the Kentucky faculty were (a) unsure of the instructional efficacy of distance education, (b) unconvinced about personal involvement in distance education, (c) underprepared in areas related to distance education, (d) under time pressure, (e) not rewarded for their work with distance education, and (f) feeling undersupported by the university infrastructure. Clay (1999) asserted that training for distance instructors is a continuous process and that instructor support should be ongoing. Such training programs should be periodically evaluated to determine whether or not to continue or modify the existing training. 2.2. Process evaluation For a process evaluation, the evaluator must examine not only what is happening within the program as it is being implemented but also what should be happening and is not. It provides information about the state of all components of the program to include determining teacher and cost effectiveness. Cost effectiveness entails accomplishing the intended program goals by providing maximum values for limited expenditures. Program elements to be measured are applied against the cost, and the comparison of cost and effectiveness form the A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124114 A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 115 basis of this analysis. Cost effectiveness analysis produces a dollar figure per unit of analysis, e.g., number of students graduating or increased enrollments for a school. Quantification might also focus on revenue or profit increases in the form of return on investment. A minimum threshold should be determined above which the program needs to perform to sustain support. The evaluator must also analyze and evaluate the e-learning system as a whole, as well as by subsystems, to include instructor effectiveness. After all, technology is not self-imple- menting. In large measure, the teacher influences the effectiveness of any learning envi- ronment. There may be a great e-learning system that results in poor learning because of teacher ineffectiveness (a process problem). On the other hand, a marginal e-learning system (an input problem) can result in a superior learning experience because of the abilities of an exceptional instructor. As part of process evaluation, one should also address the ongoing instructional efficiency of the teaching/learning process. Since learning is inherently a social process (e.g., Duffy & Cunningham, 1995), measurement of variables, such as sense of community and weekly rates and quality of student–student and instructor–student interactions, can be useful as proxy measures of learning. In particular, online students are more motivated when contacts with instructors are frequent, especially regarding feedback pertaining to how well they are performing on their assignments. They also value participation in small groups, particularly discussion groups. 2.3. Output evaluation An output evaluation seeks to determine the immediate or direct effects of the program. It consists of collecting, analyzing, and judging results such as how much the program was used, how many people were reached and graduated, the extent to which program objectives were met, and changes in skills, knowledge, or attitudes. Graduation rates and learner achievement in the form of course grades or standardized test scores are frequently used as output evaluation measures. Moore and Kearsley (1996) also identified several outputs that provide valuable information of the overall effectiveness of distance education programs, e.g., student satisfaction ratings, completion rates, and staff turnover. 2.4. Impact evaluation Impact or outcome evaluations address the longer-term results of the program and the extent to which the program reduced or eliminated student needs and the effects of the program on society at large. This type of evaluation typically involves tracking the performance of program graduates in their program-related job and often involves the use of graduate and employer surveys. It seeks evidence of the degree to which the program has reduced/eliminated student educational needs and the migration of need satisfaction towards more sophisticated ends, longer-term as well as unintended program effects, and evidence of program effectiveness (value) at the societal level (Worthen, Sanders, & Fitzpatrick, 1997). It also seeks to determine how staff and faculty attitudes, behaviors, and goals changed because of the program. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124116 3. Evaluation strategies Within the context of the type of evaluation (i.e., an input, process, output, or impact evaluation) described above, specific evaluation strategies are used to collect data. In selecting the strategy or combination of strategies, the evaluator must consider the interests of all stakeholders and how these interests can best be served. Worthen et al. (1997) identified six evaluation strategies that are frequently used, either singly or in some combination, to collect data for educational program evaluations. These six strategies are described below. 3.1. Objectives-oriented Arguably, the most popular strategy is the objectives-oriented evaluation strategy. The distinguishing feature of this strategy is that the evaluation focuses on determining the extent to which program and instructional objectives have been met. Consequently, this approach is highly suited to distance education programs that have highly defined objectives, and the purpose of the evaluation is to determine if, and to what extent, these objectives have been met. Major weaknesses often cited regarding this strategy include the difficulty of evaluators to operate in a program environment with ill-defined objectives, to identify unintended program outcomes, and to measure learning. Grades, often used to operationalize learning, can have little relationship to what students have learned as students may already know the material when they enroll, or their grades may be more related to class participation, or work turned in late, than to learning. Furthermore, grades may not be a reliable measure of learning, particularly for performance tests, as different teachers and even the same teacher over time will not likely assign grades in a consistent manner. Therefore, using grades as a measure of learning can be problematic. 3.2. Management-oriented The management-oriented strategy is meant to serve decision-makers and is particularly useful for making decisions about the reallocation of funds. The rationale for using this strategy is that ‘‘evaluative information is an essential part of good decision making and that the evaluator can be most effective by serving administrators, policy makers, boards, practitioners, and others who need good evaluative information’’ (Worthen et al., 1997, p. 97). Aweakness of this strategy is that it tends to reinforce the status quo of management rather than balancing the interests of management with those of other internal and external stakeholders. If management does not value distance education, evaluation results will likely reflect this bias. Woolcot (1997), for example, provided evidence that in some schools distance education is neither valued nor rewarded and is not seen as a means to faculty tenure or promotion. 3.3. Consumer-oriented The market-driven, consumer-oriented strategy, typically summative, adheres to the type of evaluation used by the Consumers Union. Consequently, the central theme of this strategy is the A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 117 development of information on products for use by consumers (i.e., students). Such an approach has particular appeal for distance education programs because of the increasing competition among such programs. Limitations on the use of this model in a distance education context arise as the result of individual student differences. What appeals to one student may not appeal to another. Aptitudes (Ehrman, 1990), affective states (Westbrook, 1997), and learning styles (Dille & Mezack, 1991) are likely to interact in complex ways and respond differentially to distance education content, context, and preferred learning style (Coggins, 1988). 3.4. Expertise-oriented The expertise-oriented approach to evaluation, widely used by accrediting agencies, depends primarily upon professional expertise to judge an educational program. The worth of a curriculum is evaluated by curriculum experts who observe the curriculum in action, examine its content and underlying learning theory, and render a judgment about its value. However, this strategy has a potential weakness in the evaluation of distance education programs. A subject matter expert may know the content area but may not know how to design a course that best uses the information technologies available to the school to present content. Moreover, theory and research has not kept pace with the accelerated and accelerating growth of information technologies (Simonson, Schlosser, & Hanson, 1999). Consequently, expert testimony will be affected by the limited body of research literature. A final weakness is the limited reliability of expert testimony. Different experts may not make the same judgments and recommendations regarding the program. 3.5. Adversary-oriented The adversary-oriented strategy attempts to reduce bias by attempting to assure fairness by incorporating both positive and negative views into the evaluation itself. Several models have been used for adversary evaluations, to include structured public debates, such as town hall meetings, and the use of opposing evaluators that debate the issues. The idea of using this model is not so much to win a verdict as it is for all stakeholders and evaluators to acquire a better appreciation of the issues involved and to gain insights into other points of view (Worthen et al., 1997). For distance education, this strategy can be helpful if students and faculty members are identified who support and oppose the distance education program and are provided the opportunity to present their points of view to the evaluators. 3.6. Participant-oriented Finally, the participant-oriented or naturalistic strategy involves all stakeholders and is used in qualitative research studies. Huxley (1959, p. 272) wrote an excellent metaphorical description that accurately captures the spirit of this strategy: The best way to find things out. . .is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun—bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124118 if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from the thickets, and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone and if you are patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun does. A possible weakness to the participant-oriented approach is that each stakeholder is likely to have different criteria regarding program value and effectiveness. For example, some faculty may be opposed to the concept of distance education altogether. Tenured faculty who are heavily invested in traditional education may view change as a threat to their traditional roles (Beaudoin, 1990). They may also rebel against collective curriculum authorship or producing instructional materials that others will use (Rumble, 1989). Some faculty may even fear being exposed as poor teachers in a medium that broadcasts and records their work (Wilkes & Burnham, 1991). If the evaluator attempts to find common ground and to satisfy all stakeholders, the evaluation is likely to become ineffective, and those designing and conducting evaluations may focus on answering questions that are not relevant, but to which everyone agrees. 4. Evaluation questions Drawing on the types and strategies of evaluation and the issues regarding distance education described above, a list of potential evaluation questions is presented below. These questions do not represent a comprehensive list. Instead, they respond to the potential areas of weakness of the programs identified in the professional literature, and outlined above, and from the personal experiences of the author in evaluating programs. No single plan can be used for all evaluations. The nature of the program and the requirements of decision-makers will influence the specific set of evaluation questions selected by the evaluator. Posavac and Carey (2002) suggested that responses to the following questions often help inform the development of evaluation questions: 1. What program will be evaluated? What e-learning system is used to deliver the program? 2. Who will use the results of the evaluation? 3. What is the purpose of the evaluation? What issues have been raised, e.g., low persistence rates, poor student satisfaction, or low enrollment? How will the results be used? What decisions need to be made regarding the program, e.g., continuance, expansion, reducing costs? 4. Who is going to conduct the program evaluation? 5. How will the program evaluation be conducted? What method(s) should be used? What are the available resources? What are the constraints (e.g., time and money)? Also provided below are possible evaluation strategies and quantitative and qualitative data requirements that will be helpful in responding to these questions. Common sources of data are school records, student and instructor surveys, course evaluations, expert reviews, A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 119 case studies, e-learning system statistical data, interviews, and focus groups. The evaluation questions presented below are organized by type of evaluation, starting with input evalua- tions. 4.1. Input evaluation questions Is the program accredited? If so, is the accrediting agency recognized by the appropriate organizations, such as the Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation? What are the fixed and variable costs associated with this program? What is the best way to use program resources? 1. Suggested strategy: management- and expertise-oriented. 2. Data requirements: information regarding program accreditation, the e-learning system, support services and funding levels, and costs. Is the school’s admission policy sufficiently rigorous? What types of students and instructors are attracted to the program? How many students are served by the program? Is the program reaching its intended audience? Why or why not? How effective was student preenrollment counseling? Does the school provide students with advertising, recruiting, and admissions information that adequately and accurately represent the program and services available? 1. Suggested strategies: consumer- and management-oriented. 2. Data requirements: student demographics, TOEFL scores for non-English-speaking students, standardized test scores, prior academic achievement, and employment status, instructor qualifications, entrance requirements, and other data as appropriate and available in school and program records. What are the educational needs of students targeted by the program? Are program and course objectives sufficiently responsive to these needs? Are course materials current? How efficient is the course development process? How does the school ensure that students admitted possess the knowledge and equipment necessary to use the technology employed in the program? What evaluation and assessment methods does the school use to measure student learning? How does the program ensure the integrity of student work and the credibility of the degrees and credits awarded? 1. Suggested strategies: objectives-, management-, consumer-, expertise-, and participant- oriented. 2. Data requirements: program and course objectives, student ratings of the relative importance of each need (i.e., objective), availability of competing resources to satisfy needs, currency of course materials, identification of additional needs, the degree to which the curriculum responds to student needs (i.e., student need satisfaction), and student course evaluations. A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124120 How were faculty selected to teach at a distance? Are instructors qualified to teach the content of their courses? Are instructors qualified to teach online? What is the extent to which instructors control the content of their courses? What are the needs of instructors? What is the extent to which these needs are satisfied? What relevant professional development activities and support services are provided instructors? What is the administrative and teaching burden of instructors? Do the instructors feel adequately prepared to use the e-learning system? Are instructors sufficiently competent in designing courses for delivery using the e-learning system? Have instructors adopted the specialized teaching techniques considered appropriate for the e-learning system? What is the nature and extent of support services needed for instructor success? 1. Suggested strategies: management-, consumer-, expertise-, and participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: instructor needs, instructor ratings of the relative importance of each need, extent to which each need is satisfied, availability of competing resources to satisfy each need, and instructor satisfaction (e.g., with compensation, workload, training, and teaching load). Is the e-learning system adequate for the program? To what extent does the e-learning system meet program requirements? Are there any e-learning system integration issues and interoperability concerns, bandwidth and scalability problems, or lack of features and functionality? Is the e-learning system suitable in terms of cost, given the volume of student activity and the number of students involved over the length of the program? How easily can course materials be produced using this technology? Is the current technology still cost effective? Would other technologies allow for a more cost-effective program? 1. Suggested strategies: management-, expertise-, and participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: technology availability and ease of use, quality of vendor support, student course evaluations, learner reactions to the learning environment (e.g., general level of acceptance), effect of the e-learning environment on the students’ progress and performance, areas of weakness requiring remediation, and additional uses and value provided the school by the e-learning system infrastructure. 4.2. Process evaluation questions How well are students satisfied with the program? How does student satisfaction compare with that of courses offered on-campus? What are the consistently most/least popular courses and why? Was the program equally effective for all participants? Why or why not? Are there characteristics that distinguish satisfied and dissatisfied students? Does the school apply this information to admission and recruiting policies and decisions? 1. Suggested strategies: management-, consumer-, and participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: courses offered, course enrollments, enrollment trends, overall course persistence rates, student reasons for refunds and enrollment termination, percent of A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 121 students who take follow-on distance education courses, student progress (students should remain in the program long enough to meet their immediate educational goals and reenter and exit as their goals change), and course evaluations. What is the nature and extent of support services needed for student and instructor success? Are these support services responsive to student and instructor needs? To what extent are these resources used? Does the school monitor the use and quality of support services? 1. Suggested strategies: expertise-, consumer-, and participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: student and instructor support needs, scope of support services provided (e.g., online library databases, delivery of course materials, academic advising, counseling, program administrators, student placement, registrar’s office, financial aid, etc.), and adequacy of support services. Is the program implemented as intended? How efficiently is the program being imple- mented? What is the level of interaction between students and instructors and among students? Does the instructor provide timely feedback to students? What program compo- nents or activities are the most and least effective? To what extent is the learner involved in setting goals and in choosing the tasks, assessments, and standards to reach those goals? How is the integrity of student work assured? 1. Suggested strategies: objectives-, management-, consumer-, and participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: management effectiveness, e-learning system cost structure, student enrollment and satisfaction, learner performance in the learning environment, adequacy of curriculum and instruction, adequacy of student assessment, instructor teaching loads, instructor effectiveness, timeliness of instructor feedback, instructor persistence rates, student time on task (deals with the amount of time a student spends in dealing with the content of the course), interaction rates, and cost effectiveness. 4.3. Output evaluation questions What are the program results? Are courses transferable? Are certificates or degrees awarded by the program recognized by the appropriate profession? What structures or policies in the school or e-learning environment are supporting or hindering outcomes and overall program effectiveness? Were program and course objectives achieved? What program and course design components appeared to contribute the most and least to the attainment of these objectives? Do students feel that they gained the desired knowledge and skills? 1. Suggested strategies: objectives-, management-, expertise-, and participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: transferability of coursework, recognition of degrees and certificates, access (i.e., identified students who enroll but who could not or would not have enrolled in a face-to-face program), persistence (i.e., program and course completion rates), relevance A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124122 (i.e., the extent to which the program corresponds to student perception of needs), gratification (i.e., the extent to which the program enhances the students’ self-esteem and sense of integrity), skill development (e.g., educational gains), use of program opportunities, quality of student effort (e.g., grade trends), and graduation rates. 4.4. Impact evaluation questions What are the effects of the program on graduates? As a result of completing the program did they receive increased pay, acquired professional certifications, received promotions, etc.? Did the program have any unintended impacts? 1. Suggested strategy: participant-oriented. 2. Data requirements: impact (the extent to which the program reduced/eliminated student needs), percent of graduates believing their instructional programs met their goals, attitudes of graduates concerning the program, changes (if any) in student educational expectations, level of employer satisfaction, benefits of the learning to an employer, changes in learner job performance, learner performance on the job (e.g., supervisor ratings), and return on investment in terms of cost and organizational impact. 5. Conclusion The evaluator concludes the work by developing a holistic evaluation based on the analysis of information. Such an evaluation is not as simple as merging multiple viewpoints by performing cuts and pastes using one’s word processor. Viewpoints may well have interaction effects with each other, e.g., one viewpoint may be more beneficial for some students and not for others. In such cases, trade-off decisions must be made. The goal, at this point of the evaluation, is to identify factors that decrease costs and improve overall learning and organizational impact. The economic key is to spread development and revision costs over large numbers of learners and to drive down ongoing costs. One way this can be accomplished is by automating much of the learning support in course readers, tutorials, simulations, and online responses to frequently asked questions. Programs that are well defined will include norms (i.e., program standards and expect- ations) that evaluators use to judge the worth of the program. One source of such norms is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, the national coordinating body for national, regional, and specialized accreditation. However, in some cases no such norms exist, or are so vague that they are of little use to the evaluator. In such cases, the program evaluation should include a norm-setting phase in which all relevant stakeholders are included. A major issue will be how high to set the bar. Benchmark targets can be set by using outcomes obtained from the school’s comparable traditional programs, such as persistence rates, satisfaction, and learning, or by comparing current outcomes to previous classes with the expectation that a specified amount of yearly growth should be achieved. Alternatively, an expert panel of A.P. Rovai / Internet and Higher Education 6 (2003) 109–124 123 educators can be convened to decide on the norms used to judge various aspects of the program. Additionally, the outcomes documented in the evaluations of comparable online programs could be adopted. Whatever method is used to establish norms, the norms should be agreed to before the start of the evaluation to avoid the situation where standards are set based on actual program outcomes. The approach to evaluation presented in this article draws heavily on open-systems theory (Rossi et al., 1999). This theory provides a simple, familiar, and intuitively logical model that facilitates an appreciation for a variety of program processes including marketing, admis- sions, advising, course design, teaching, learning, and support services. Program evaluation is essential to distance education when it is defined in open-systems terms. When the structure and functions of a program change, systems theorists call the process morphogenesis. Applied to distance education programs, morphogenesis changes the program’s procedures, services, and behavior to better serve the mutual interests of the school, the program, and its internal and external stakeholders. The results of periodic program evaluations provide the impetus for this change. Without periodic renewal, programs tend to be drawn toward disorganization and eventual demise (Katz & Kahn, 1978). 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A practical framework for evaluating online distance education programs Introduction Types of program evaluation Input evaluation Process evaluation Output evaluation Impact evaluation Evaluation strategies Objectives-oriented Management-oriented Consumer-oriented Expertise-oriented Adversary-oriented Participant-oriented Evaluation questions Input evaluation questions Process evaluation questions Output evaluation questions Impact evaluation questions Conclusion References 
work_kfu4vahzsvgexp2cey4gxlsagu	----	[PDF] Quality assurance in distance education: The challenges to be addressed | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1023/B:HIGH.0000016420.17251.5C Corpus ID: 13962130Quality assurance in distance education: The challenges to be addressed @article{Stella2004QualityAI, title={Quality assurance in distance education: The challenges to be addressed}, author={A. Stella and A. Gnanam}, journal={Higher Education}, year={2004}, volume={47}, pages={143-160} } A. Stella, A. Gnanam Published 2004 Psychology Higher Education Integration of technology in all forms ofeducation has narrowed down the gap between theon- and off-campus students and has resulted inthe use of the more broad-based term`distributed learning'. Consequently, distancelearning is seen as a subset of distributedlearning, focusing on students who may beseparated in time and space from their peersand the instructor. The new forms and meaningsit is acquiring, its convergence withtraditional learning and its global impact poseseveral challenges. It… Expand View on Springer qou.edu Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 131 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 11 Background Citations 63 Methods Citations 3 Results Citations 1 View All 131 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Establishing Quality Assurance Systems for E-Learning Jin Li Business 2009 First International Conference on Information Science and Engineering 2009 2 Save Alert Research Feed Quality assurance and e-learning : blue skies and pragmatism R. Oliver 2005 75 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Accreditation Of Online And Distance Learning Programs Saye Nihan Cabuk Anaper, D. Ulucay, A. Cabuk Computer Science 2013 4 Save Alert Research Feed Quality enhancement for e-learning courses: The role of student feedback M. Jara, Harvey Mellar Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2010 62 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Quality in Open and Distance Learning Institutes Naheed Shaban, M. Qureshi Computer Science 2013 Highly Influenced View 4 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Towards Achieving Quality Distance Education, Challenges and Opportunities: The Case of the Zimbabwe Open University G. N. Shava, C. Ndebele Political Science 2014 9 Highly Influenced PDF View 6 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Review of Literature. T. Ryan Psychology 2015 97 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Learning Institutes: A Glimpse of E-Leaners’ Perspective M. M. Qadri 2019 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Evidence-based quality assurance: an alternative paradigm for non-traditional higher education D. Rees Medicine 2007 1 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Quality Assurance in Open and Distance Learning A. Manzoor Sociology 2018 2 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 28 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Chea, D. Washington Political Science 2002 287 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Distance Learning in Higher Education Gary A. Berg Political Science 1998 57 PDF Save Alert Research Feed E-Learning in Post-Secondary Education: the Situation of Switzerland Matthis Behrens 2001 1 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Tertiary education in the twenty-first century: challenges and opportunities J. Salmi Political Science 2000 36 Highly Influential PDF View 6 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed The chronicle of higher education Gail A. Herndon Computer Science 1977 2,593 PDF Save Alert Research Feed E-Learning in Post-Secondary Education, Report of the OECD Seminar on E-learning E-Learning in Post-Secondary Education, Report of the OECD Seminar on E-learning 2001 Assuring quality and standards in higher education: The contemporary context and concerns A. Stella, A. Gnanam Engineering 2002 6 Save Alert Research Feed Distance Learning Guidelines Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) 2002 Quality Assurance for Distance Learning: Issues for International Discussion and Action, CHEA International Seminar III on Academic Quality: Policy, Preferences and Politics Quality Assurance for Distance Learning: Issues for International Discussion and Action, CHEA International Seminar III on Academic Quality: Policy, Preferences and Politics 2002 DETC Accreditation: Overview. Washington DC: (DETC) DETC Accreditation: Overview. Washington DC: (DETC) 2001 ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract 131 Citations 28 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_kly2syl3erhd3hiwsbgvq3r3ba	----	CDIE667961 81..98 Student perceptions of satisfaction and anxiety in an online doctoral program Doris U. Bolligera* and Colleen Halupab aDepartment of Professional Studies, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA; bHealth Education Program, A.T. Still University, Kirksville, Missouri, USA (Received 29 March 2011; final version received 11 July 2011) Eighty-four students in an online health education doctoral program taking the first course in the program over one year (four quarters) were surveyed in regards to their computer, Internet, and online course anxiety, and overall course satisfaction. An 18-item anxiety tool with domains in computer, Internet, and online learning was administered in the first and last weeks of an educational research course to assess for changes in student anxiety. A 24-item satisfaction tool with domains regarding the instructor, technology, setup, interaction, out- comes, and overall satisfaction was administered at the end of the course. Results show a significant negative correlation between anxiety and student sat- isfaction. Student anxiety levels were in the relatively moderate range; changes in anxiety levels over time were not significant. Participants who felt anxious when using computers or the Internet, or when taking online courses experi- enced anxiety with other domains. Keywords: student satisfaction; anxiety; online doctoral students Online education has experienced an explosive growth rate over the past few years. In fall 2008, 4.6 million students in the USA were enrolled in at least one online course—a 17% increase from the number reported the previous year. The increase was much higher than the overall student body growth (1.2%) in higher education (Allen & Seaman, 2010b). In fall 2009, the number of online students increased by almost 1 million—to 5.6 million (a 21% increase). The growth rate for enrollment in online courses is not expected to drop off in the foreseeable future (Allen & Sea- man, 2010a). When discussing online education, several benefits come to mind. The key aspects are flexibility and convenience (Bolliger, 2003; Rekkedal & Qvist-Eriksen, 2004). Online education allows individuals who cannot participate in residential courses access to higher education (Bower & Kamata, 2000). It opens up potential professions and college programs throughout the country to nontraditional students, as well as traditional students who want to live at home to minimize educational costs. Many nontraditional students prefer online learning over campus-based courses (Halsne & Gatta, 2002). There are also several drawbacks to the online learning environment, such as possible lack of face-to-face social interaction, academic and technical skills, *Corresponding author. Email: dorisbolliger@gmail.com Distance Education Vol. 33, No. 1, May 2012, 81–98 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online � 2012 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.667961 http://www.tandfonline.com motivation, time, limited access to resources, and technical difficulties (Muilenburg & Berge, 2005). Other potential issues are low student performance and satisfaction (Navarro, 2000; Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009). The issue of course satisfaction of doctoral students in online courses or pro- grams in general is not well documented. Particularly, not much attention has been paid to the satisfaction of online doctoral students who are working health-care pro- fessionals. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2011) reported the demand for doctoral nursing programs (both research- and practice-based) “increased significantly” in 2010 ({1). Projects of the Carnegie Foundation with a focus on doctoral degrees (e.g., the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, the Carne- gie Project on the Education Doctorate, or the Preparation for the Professions Pro- gram) sparked discussions across the country about the preparation and quality of doctoral students at US universities (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, n.d.). Subsequent publications such as that by Walker, Golde, Jones, Bue- schel, and Hutchings (2008) highlight the importance of this issue. Although younger students may have grown up using various types of computer technologies, most students in online doctoral programs are nontraditional stu- dents—many are between 45 and 60 years of age. According to the Atlantic Interna- tional University (n.d.), a university that offers online undergraduate and graduate programs, the average age of their bachelor to doctoral degree students is 42 years. These students did not grow up using these types of technologies and many obtained their undergraduate degrees 25 or more years previously, before online programs were available. In contrast, the median age of individuals awarded doctoral degrees was 33.0 years in 2004–2005 and 32.7 years in 2005–2006 (Snyder & Dillow, 2010). Because this segment of the population typically consists of older individuals who are returning to higher education to obtain a doctoral degree after spending a considerable amount of time in the field, returning graduate students may be less comfortable with the online delivery format than their traditional counterparts. Theoretical framework Student satisfaction Student satisfaction is defined as the learner’s perception of the value of educational experiences in an educational setting (Astin, 1993). Student satisfaction is an impor- tant issue and should be considered in the evaluation of course and program effec- tiveness. It is one of the five pillars of quality in online education, together with learning effectiveness, access, faculty satisfaction, and institutional cost- effectiveness (Sloan Consortium., 2002); however, it is a complex construct as it comprises many factors (Wickersham & McGee, 2008). Student satisfaction is an important concept because it may ultimately lead to higher levels of motivation, engagement, learning, performance, and success (Sahin & Shelley, 2008; Wicker- sham & McGee, 2008). Factors associated with student satisfaction in distance learning are flexibility, computer expertise, and usefulness (Sahin & Shelley, 2008). In the online environ- ment several factors, such as instructor behavior, reliable technology, and interactiv- ity influence student satisfaction (Bolliger & Martindale, 2004; Dennen, Darabi, & Smith, 2007). Student perceptions of task value and self-efficacy, social ability, instructional design issues, and the quality of the delivery system and multimedia instruction are also important elements (Liaw, 2008; Lin, Lin, & Laffey, 2008). 82 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa Herbert (2006) investigated the quality of online instruction in undergraduates and graduates at a medium-sized Midwestern university. He found the most impor- tant variable in student satisfaction was responsiveness of the faculty to student needs. In a sample of 276 students at a large university in northern Taiwan, Shee and Wang (2008) found that learner interface is the most important aspect of stu- dent satisfaction. Furthermore, Liaw (2008) found that self-efficacy is an important dimension of student satisfaction. Computer-related problems (Frankola, 2001) and failure to understand online media (Herbert, 2006) are two of the primary reasons for adult learners drop- ping online courses. Anxiety associated with technology can have a negative influence on student performance and satisfaction (Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen, & Yeh, 2008). Technological anxiety In an information age, most learners in postsecondary education institutions need to be computer literate to participate fully and maximize their learning. Basic technol- ogy skills include being familiar with operating systems; using word processing, spreadsheets, and databases; working with communication and presentation software programs; and navigating the Internet (Kay, 2008). Computer anxiety Anxiety is defined as a conscious fearful emotional state. Computer-related anxi- ety has been defined as someone being “uneasy, apprehensive, or fearful” about using computers (Igbaria & Parasuraman, 1989, p. 375). Beckers and Schmidt (2001) suggested “computer anxiety is a multidimensional construct” (p. 46) and identified several constructs. These include positive and negative beliefs about computers, insecurity, nervousness, apprehension, fear, intimidation, and hesitation (Beckers & Schmidt, 2001; Heinssen, Glass, & Knight, 1987; Saadé & Kira, 2007). Negative emotions associated with computer use can affect the overall learning experience. “Frustration, confusion, anger, anxiety, and similar emotional states can affect not only the interaction itself, but also productivity, learning, social relation- ships, and overall well-being” (Saadé & Kira, 2007, p. 1193). Research has shown learners with high levels of computer anxiety are at a disadvantage compared to individuals with lower anxiety levels (Saadé & Kira, 2007). Computer anxiety has been reported to be quite high in college students (Rosen & Weil, 1995; Saadé & Kira, 2007). Researchers pointed out that even though the number of individuals who have self-reported computer phobia has decreased, many adult learners are still fearful of computers. Rosen and Weil (1995) reported three anxiety factors for undergraduate college students in the USA: interactive computer learning anxiety, consumer technology anxiety, and passive computer learning anxi- ety. They noted that almost 32% of students reported anxiety about a variety of computer applications, including taking online courses and computer-scored tests. Conrad and Munro (2008) noted negative user attitudes can be caused by computer anxiety. Igbaria and Parasuraman (1989) developed a conceptual model of computer anxiety and attitudes toward computers that included demographics, personality Distance Education 83 traits, and cognitive styles. They pointed out that computer anxiety influences indi- viduals’ attitudes toward computers. Kay (2008), who investigated the relationship between several types of emotions and acquisition of computer knowledge, found there is an inverse relationship between anger and anxiety and computer knowl- edge gain. Internet anxiety Online learners need to have the skills to be successful in the online environment. They need to have not only computer skills but also proper skills to navigate the Internet and utilize appropriate resources. Students have different levels of computer literacy including Internet navigation skills (Montelpare & Williams, 2000), and some may “find the Internet confusing and intimidating” (Simonson et al., 2009, p. 235). Researchers reported that online learners encountered confusing instructor feedback and instructions on course Web sites (Hara & Kling, 2001), which caused anxiety. Experts have found there is a positive correlation between anxiety and negative attitudes toward technology (Conrad & Munro, 2008; Rosen, Sears, & Weil, 1987). Halupa (2004) examined attitudes toward computers, the Internet, and online learn- ing, and reported that all respondents had a slightly positive attitude toward these three factors, and that age had a significant effect on attitudes toward the Internet— older members demonstrated a less positive attitude toward the Internet. However, age was not a significant difference in determining attitudes toward computers or online learning. Online course anxiety Because the number of students who take online courses in higher education has increased dramatically over the past few years, computer-related anxiety remains an important issue to educators (Saadé & Kira, 2007). Most online learners have to utilize computers, the Internet, and other software programs such as course management systems. Hara and Kling (2001) reported students experienced sev- eral types of distress in an online course: anxiety, frustration, and confusion. Many instructors expect students to interact frequently with online content and with one another using information and communication technologies. For these students, the fear of computer technologies may be compounded. Frankola (2001) and Diaz (2002) found 20–50% of undergraduate students were not retained in traditional classes; Diaz estimated online student attrition was another 10–20%. Anxiety and dissatisfaction with online learning contributes to this problem. Methods Purpose There is a gap in the literature concerning student anxiety and student satisfaction in online doctoral programs. The purpose of this study was to determine doctoral students’ technological anxiety and their satisfaction in the online environment. The research questions were: 84 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa (1) How satisfied are doctoral students with a required writing-intensive research-design course that is delivered online? (2) How much technological anxiety do participants exhibit in the online envi- ronment at the beginning of the course? (3) How, if so, will participants’ anxiety change during the semester? (4) Is there a correlation between technological anxiety and student satisfaction? (5) Do participants who feel anxiety in one domain tend to feel anxiety in other domains? Do participants who feel satisfied in one domain tend to feel satis- fied in other domains? Setting and sample The study was conducted at a small, accredited university in the USA. The univer- sity offers online graduate degree programs and professional certificates in a variety of health-care fields and has five colleges at two locations in the USA. The institu- tion’s enrollment in spring 2009 exceeded 3400 students; most were female (60%) and approximately 17% were classified as under-represented minorities. Most stu- dents have various health-care backgrounds, including medicine and osteopathy, allied health, mental health, and nursing, while some have a secondary education background. One hundred and three students were enrolled in one graduate-level online course over the course of four quarters during one academic year. Of these, 84 stu- dents (81.6%) completed the course. The four-credit hour course is taught every quarter and its grading method is a letter grade. It is a required introductory research-design course for admitted doc- toral students in the health education field. In this writing-intensive course, students need to develop a solid draft of their applied research dissertation proposal that is shared with their dissertation committee members. Course requirements include the selection of committee members, completion of weekly assignments (e.g., topic selection, annotated bibliography, research topic description, literature review), and timely participation in at least one discussion thread. Students work individually on assignments, share their submissions with peers, and receive formative feedback from peers and the instructor at several stages. The instructor was a seasoned professional who had taught online graduate-level courses for over six years and had extensive experience in supervis- ing doctoral-level research; she had also previously served as program chair. Instruments The researchers developed two instruments to collect data from participants in order to investigate student satisfaction and anxiety with their online courses. The student satisfaction questionnaire was based on Bolliger and Martindale (2004) and has 24 five-point Likert scale questions ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) that address the following student satisfaction elements: (a) instructor, (b) technology, (c) course setup, (d) interaction, (e) outcomes, and (f) overall satisfaction. These items were derived directly from the literature addressing elements integral to student satisfaction in online environments (Bolliger & Martindale, 2004; Herbert, 2006; Liaw, 2008; Lin et al., 2008; Sahin & Shelley, 2008; Shee & Wang, 2008). The instrument also included three open-ended and seven demographical questions. Distance Education 85 The instrument was piloted prior to the data collection phase and had an internal reliability coefficient of .92. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the subscales were acceptable (ranging from .69 to .86) with the exception of the technology subscale (a = .53). All students in two courses (a total of 67) completed the questionnaire. After the pilot testing, some items were slightly modified based on the feedback of respondents in order to improve their clarity. The researchers developed a course anxiety scale based on constructs defined in the literature (Beckers & Schmidt, 2001; Heinssen et al., 1987; Kay, 2008; Saadé & Kira, 2007). Three elements were included: (a) computers, (b) the Internet, and (c) online courses. Constructs included insecurity/confidence, anxiety, relaxation/ner- vousness, excitement/apprehension, enjoyment/aversion/fear, intimidation, confu- sion, and empowerment. The instrument included 18 five-point Likert scale items ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to determine the instruments’ internal reliability after the data collection phase had concluded. The student satisfaction questionnaire’s reliability was high (a = .91), and the reliability of all subscales was acceptable: (a) instructor (a = .82), (b) technology (a = .76), (c) course setup (a = .60), (d) interaction (a = .60), (e) outcomes (a = .72), and (f) overall satisfaction (a = .85). The internal reliability coefficient for the anxiety scale was high (a = .93). All three subscales also had a high internal correlation coefficient: (a) computers (a = .89), (b) Internet (a = .86), and (c) online courses (a = .90). Data collection All students enrolled in the course were invited to participate in the study by their instructor via email. The instructor assigned identifying codes to all students and provided them with links to the instruments, which were housed in an online utility tool located at a different institution and managed by one of the researchers. To keep student responses confidential the course instructor did not have access to the data. All participants were informed about the data collection methods prior to its commencement by providing them with details in the informed consent form; they were assured that all responses were confidential. The anxiety scale was made available during the second and last weeks of each quarter. The student satisfaction questionnaire was available during the last two weeks of each quarter. Students were reminded via email to complete the instru- ments. The response rate for both anxiety scales was 48.8%. Of the respondents, 41 students completed the anxiety scale twice, and 46 students (54.8%) completed the anxiety and satisfaction instruments at the end of the semester. Data analysis All personal identifiers were removed before the data analysis phase began. Fre- quencies and descriptive statistics were generated before six negative items on the satisfaction instrument and seven positive items on the anxiety scale were recoded. Descriptive statistics were generated to evaluate learners’ satisfaction and anxiety. Paired-samples t-tests were conducted to evaluate whether anxiety levels of participants changed over time. Correlation coefficients were computed among participants’ total anxiety and satisfaction scores, and instruments’ subscales. Qualitative data were analyzed using open coding. The data were closely exam- ined in order to develop categories for participants’ responses. Responses to the 86 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa three open-ended questions were sorted into discrete parts after comparing similari- ties and differences (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Results Most participants were female (63.0%) and almost 61% were Caucasian. Their ages ranged from 24 to 59 years (M = 42.33) (Figure 1). Almost all respondents had earned a master’s degree (95.7%); only 4.3% had been awarded a doctoral degree. Most of the participants (78.3%) had previous health-care experience. The number of online courses taken prior to the research-design course ranged from 0 to 50. Of the participants, 32.6% were new to online learning; the research- design course was their first online course (Figure 2), and 10.9% of individuals were still relatively new to the online environment as they had taken only one prior online course. The majority (71.7%) indicated they would not have been able to take the course if it had not been offered in the online setting. When individuals were prompted to share the most important reason they enrolled in the course, they indicated the availability of the course (and program) in the online format gave them much needed flexibility in their already busy lives. Many respondents mentioned they had busy work schedules, long commutes, and travel requirements. Several mentioned prior family commitments. Some mentioned the convenience and affordability of the programs. Another factor was that the course was a program requirement and that their overall goal was to obtain their degrees. Participants were also focused on their final goal—completing the dissertation successfully. They mentioned practical reasons for enrolling in the course, such Figure 1. Age composition of sample (N = 42). Distance Education 87 as learning about applied research foundations, understanding dissertation require- ments, and obtaining support throughout the proposal-writing process. Others expressed reasons for enrolling that were related directly to their professions. They wanted to become better professionals by being able to help others and participate in professional development to obtain new skills. A few individuals needed a new challenge, whereas some participants thought obtaining a doctoral degree would assist them to advance their careers or serve as a good marketing tool. Additional comments pertained to the programs at the university. Individuals liked the idea of an applied dissertation, found the length of the program appealing, or had good experiences with program coordinators. They also mentioned that the university and programs had good reputations. Research question 1: How satisfied are doctoral students with a required writing- intensive research-design course that is delivered online? Of the 24 items, 20 items had a mean score at or above 4.00. Only four items had a mean score below 4.00 (Table 1). Over 90% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the following items: item 6 (97.8%); item 20 (95.7%); items 4 and 24 (95.6%); items 3, 7, 10, and 21 (93.5%); item 2 (93.4%); and items 22 and 23 (91.3%). Only six items yielded less than 80% agreement; these were items 5 and 12 (78.2%); item 15 (76.1%); and items 8, 9, and 14 (73.9%). All subscales had a mean score above 4.00. The instructor subscale yielded the highest mean score (M = 4.47) of all six subscales, closely followed by the overall subscale (M = 4.43). The interaction subscale had the lowest mean score (Table 2). These results show that participants were overwhelmingly satisfied with the online research-design course. Figure 2. Number of online courses completed by respondents (N = 46). 88 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa T ab le 1 . M ea n sc o re s an d st an d ar d d ev ia ti o n s fo r sa ti sf ac ti o n sc al e it em s. It em M S D 1 . C la ss as si g n m en ts w er e cl ea rl y co m m u n ic at ed to m e. 4 .1 1 .9 9 2 . F ee d b ac k an d ev al u at io n o f p ap er s, te st s, an d o th er as si g n m en ts w as g iv en in a ti m el y m an n er . 4 .6 1 .7 7 3 . T h e in st ru ct o r m ak es m e fe el th at I am p ar t o f th e cl as s an d b el o n g . 4 .5 9 .7 8 4 . I am d is sa ti sfi ed w it h th e ac ce ss ib il it y an d av ai la b il it y o f th e in st ru ct o r. (r ec o d e) 4 .5 7 .6 6 5 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th e u se o f “t h re ad ed ” o n li n e d is cu ss io n s an d /o r fo ru m s. 3 .9 1 1 .0 7 6 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th e u se o f em ai l. 4 .3 3 .5 2 7 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h h o w I am ab le to n av ig at e w it h in W eb C T (t h e co u rs e m an ag em en t sy st em ). 4 .1 7 .7 1 8 . I am d is sa ti sfi ed w it h d o w n lo ad ti m es o f re so u rc es in W eb C T . (r ec o d e) 4 .0 2 .8 0 9 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th e fr eq u en cy I h av e to at te n d cl as s (e .g ., lo g in to th e co u rs e) . 3 .8 3 .9 0 1 0 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th e fl ex ib il it y th is co u rs e af fo rd s m e. 4 .5 0 .6 2 11 . I am d is sa ti sfi ed w it h th e le v el o f se lf -d ir ec te d n es s I am g iv en . (r ec o d e) 4 .1 5 .7 9 1 2 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h h o w m u ch I en jo y w o rk in g o n p ro je ct s b y m y se lf . 4 .1 1 .9 2 1 3 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th e q u al it y o f in te ra ct io n b et w ee n al l in v o lv ed p ar ti es . 4 .0 2 .9 8 1 4 . I am d is sa ti sfi ed w it h th e p ro ce ss o f co ll ab o ra ti o n ac ti v it ie s d u ri n g th e co u rs e. (r ec o d e) 3 .8 9 .9 5 1 5 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h h o w m u ch I co u ld re la te to th e o th er st u d en ts . 3 .9 1 .9 4 1 6 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h h o w co m fo rt ab le w it h p ar ti ci p at in g I b ec am e. 4 .2 0 .6 5 1 7 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th e le v el o f ef fo rt th is co u rs e re q u ir ed . 4 .2 4 .7 4 1 8 . I am d is sa ti sfi ed w it h m y p er fo rm an ce in th is co u rs e. (r ec o d e) 4 .0 2 1 .0 2 1 9 . I w il l b e sa ti sfi ed w it h m y fi n al g ra d e in th e co u rs e. 4 .0 7 .9 0 2 0 . I am sa ti sfi ed w it h h o w I am ab le to ap p ly w h at I h av e le ar n ed in th is co u rs e. 4 .4 6 .5 9 2 1 . I am sa ti sfi ed en o u g h w it h th is co u rs e to re co m m en d it to o th er s. 4 .4 3 .6 2 2 2 . C o m p ar ed to o th er co u rs e se tt in g s, I am le ss sa ti sfi ed w it h th is le ar n in g ex p er ie n ce . (r ec o d e) 4 .2 6 .6 8 2 3 . M y le v el o f sa ti sf ac ti o n in th is co u rs e w o u ld en co u ra g e m e to en ro ll in an o th er co u rs e in th is se tt in g . 4 .4 6 .6 6 2 4 . O v er al l, I am sa ti sfi ed w it h th is co u rs e. 4 .5 9 .5 8 N o te : N = 4 6 . Distance Education 89 Most satisfying course aspects The most often quoted satisfying elements pertained to student learning: learning about the proposal-writing or research process and the amount of learning that took place in nine weeks. Respondents were satisfied with their progress and the amount of work they produced. Not only did they feel more confident about conducting research but also they were excited about starting the dissertation process. One per- son, who had completed an online course for the first time wrote: “I am most satis- fied with being able to get through the first online course. I have been able to not only keep up but have actually excelled.” One emerging theme pertained to the instructor. Students commented about the instructor’s timely feedback and responses to questions, helpfulness, supportiveness, and openness. Respondents indicated the instructor motivated and encouraged them throughout the course. Three individuals commented about their anxieties: “This is a new experience, and I was somewhat apprehensive. [The instructor] was able to take my anxiety levels down.” And “[the] feedback was great, decreased my anxi- ety.” Another student wrote: “It eased ALL of my fears of beginning, researching, and completing the dissertation.” Interaction with the instructor and peers was important to respondents. Discus- sions with other students in similar situations or with similar questions or problems were valued by learners. The collaborative effort by peers and the instructor was mentioned by several individuals; one person wrote: “I think that the participation from the entire class helps to form a support system. The discussion portion is my favorite!!” Others enjoyed the peer review process and appreciated the fact that they were able to voice their opinions. Several learners were satisfied with the course content because it was “applica- ble,” “engaging,” and “challenging.” They described the layout and pace as appro- priate. Six respondents indicated that the flexibility of the online environment was most satisfying as it allowed them to participate “when possible,” left them “in charge of the time,” and enabled them “to interact with individuals who are located in geographically diverse areas.” Elements that could increase learner satisfaction Of the respondents, 22 did not have any suggestions as to how their satisfaction with the course could be improved. However, several shared elements pertaining to instructional and supportive resources, interaction, and technology. Learners would have appreciated more detailed instructions about assignments, grades, and Table 2. Mean scores and standard deviations for satisfaction subscales. Subscale M SD Instructor (1–4) 4.47 .65 Technology (5–8) 4.11 .61 Setup (9–12) 4.15 .55 Interaction (13–16) 4.01 .60 Outcomes (17–20) 4.20 .61 Overall (21–24) 4.43 .53 Note: N = 46. 90 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa participation. Others needed additional feedback from the instructor and more time to complete assignments. Seven students either were not satisfied with their perfor- mance or felt they did not complete all requirements successfully. Some of them indicated they were not able to devote enough time to the course or to feel at ease during the quarter. Some participants wanted more interaction and would have liked to get to know their peers better. One person suggested a quarterly optional meeting for course participants. In contrast, two learners thought the course included too many discussions. Resources that would have been helpful to learners were tuto- rials for statistics, statistic software programs, and examples of dissertations completed at the university. Two students experienced difficulties with the course management system when submitting assignments or accessing graded assignments. Research question 2: How much technological anxiety do participants exhibit in the online environment at the beginning of the course? Possible scores on the anxiety scale were 18–90 based on 18 items ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). On each of the three subscales, possible scores ranged from 6 to 30. At the beginning of the quarter, participants’ scores on the anxiety scale ranged from 18 to 58 (M = 33.46; SD = 8.70). Subscale scores ranged from 6 to 23 with mean scores ranging from 10.24 to 12.95. Interestingly, the highest level of anxiety was not related to computers or the Internet but to online courses. See Table 3 for mean scores and standard deviations for all scale items. Results indicate participants’ anxiety levels were in the lower range and therefore relatively moderate. Research question 3: How, if so, will participants’ anxiety change during the semester? Participants’ scores on the first anxiety scale ranged from 18 to 58 (M = 33.46; SD = 8.70) and from 18 to 54 (M = 34.12; SD = 9.34) on the second scale. On the sub- scales, scores ranged from 6 to 23 with mean scores ranging from 10.24 to 12.95 (Table 4). Overall mean score for the anxiety scale and mean scores for the comput- ers and the Internet subscales increased slightly over time. In contrast, the mean score for the online course subscale decreased slightly. However, results of several paired-samples t-tests showed that changes in participants’ anxiety levels over time were not statistically significant. Research question 4: Is there a correlation between technological anxiety and student satisfaction? Correlation coefficients were computed among anxiety and satisfaction scores. The results show there is a significant correlation between anxiety and satisfaction, r(44) = .50, p < .001. Students with lower technological anxiety scores experienced higher levels of satisfaction in the online environment than learners with higher anxiety scores (Figure 3). Distance Education 91 Research question 5: Do participants who feel anxiety in one domain tend to feel anxiety in other domains? Do participants who feel satisfied in one domain tend to feel satisfied in other domains? Correlation coefficient analyses were conducted among the three anxiety subscales and the six satisfaction subscales. Using the Bonferroni approach to control for Type I error across the three correlations, a p-value of less than .017 (.05/3 = .017) was required for significance on the anxiety scales. The results of the correlational analyses show all three correlations were statistically significant (Table 5). Partici- pants who felt anxious when using computers or the Internet, or when taking online courses experienced anxiety with other domains. For the satisfaction subscales, a p-value of less than .003 (.05/15 = .003) was required for significance in order to control for Type I error across the 15 correla- tions. Table 6 shows 12 out of the 15 correlations were statistically significant. In general, participants who were satisfied with technology and setup of, and overall experience with, their online courses were satisfied with other elements of the online course. Three correlations among subscales were not statistically significant: instructor-interaction, instructor-outcomes, and interaction-outcomes. Table 4. Mean scores and standard deviations on subscales. Subscale Anxiety 1 Anxiety 2 M SD M SD Computer (1–6) 10.24 3.40 10.73 4.06 Internet (7–12) 10.27 3.09 10.93 3.40 Online course (13–18) 12.95 4.04 12.46 4.38 Note: N = 41. Table 3. Mean scores and standard deviations for anxiety scale items. Item M SD 1. I am insecure about my computer skills. 1.73 .92 2. I am anxious when I work on computers. 1.59 .74 3. I am quite relaxed when I work with computers. (recode) 1.78 .79 4. I am apprehensive about working on computers. 1.61 .70 5. I avoid working on computers. 1.29 .46 6. I am less intimidated by computers than most other people I know. (recode) 2.24 .97 7. I feel confident about navigating the Internet. (recode) 1.44 .63 8. I get anxious when I am required to use Internet resources. 1.76 .83 9. I get nervous about getting lost in cyberspace. 1.59 .77 10. I get excited about using the Internet. (recode) 2.07 .69 11. I enjoy browsing the Internet. (recode) 1.66 .62 12. I get confused when working with the Internet. 1.76 .80 13. I am confident about working in the online environment. (recode) 1.80 .68 14. I get anxious when I think about logging into my online course. 2.07 1.06 15. I get nervous when I am required to participate in online discussions. 2.17 1.05 16. I am apprehensive about enrolling in online courses. 1.93 .88 17. I am scared that someone will misinterpret my text-based messages in the online environment. 2.73 .98 18. I feel empowered in my online course. (recode) 2.24 .92 Note: N = 41. 92 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa Discussion Almost 62% of the students in this research study were over the age of 40 years; the mean age was 42 years. This reflects the average age of students reported by other online universities offering graduate programs, such as the Atlantic Interna- tional University (n.d.). Over 32% of the students in the study had never taken an online class before. For an additional 10.9% of this population, this was only the second online course they had taken. This could be attributed to the age of this Table 5. Correlations among the three anxiety subscales. Computer Internet Internet .69⁄⁄ Online courses .36⁄ .51⁄⁄ Note: N = 41. ⁄p < .05; ⁄⁄p < .001. Table 6. Correlations among the six satisfaction subscales. Instructor Technology Setup Interaction Outcomes Technology .62⁄⁄ Setup .48⁄ .62⁄⁄ Interaction .28 .53⁄⁄ .54⁄⁄ Outcomes .40 .57⁄⁄ .56⁄⁄ .39 Overall .45⁄ .58⁄⁄ .77⁄⁄ .66⁄⁄ .62⁄⁄ Note: N = 46. ⁄p < .01; ⁄⁄p < .001. Figure 3. Scatterplot displaying a negative correlation between technological anxiety and student satisfaction (N = 46). Distance Education 93 population; it is unlikely that many of them had ever received any formal computer training initially in high school or at the undergraduate level on learning manage- ment systems. Satisfaction Overall, the doctoral students were exceptionally satisfied with their online course. Many students noted they would not be able to obtain a doctorate degree were it not for the flexibility of the online learning component. In addition, 93.5% strongly agreed or agreed with the statement “I am satisfied with the flexibility this course affords me.” This supports the premise of other researchers that flexibility is a key component of student satisfaction (Bolliger, 2003; Rekkedal & Qvist-Eriksen, 2004). The responses of these students also support Sahin and Shelley’s assertions that two factors associated with student satisfaction in distance learning are flexibil- ity and usefulness (2008), as well as Lin et al.’s assertions that task value impacts satisfaction (2008). Students found the course useful and 95.7% strongly agreed or agreed with the statement “I am satisfied with how I am able to apply what I have learned in this course.” In addition, Halsne and Gatta (2002) noted nontraditional students prefer online learning; these doctoral students were nontraditional students and many stated they selected this program because they were employed full time and had families. The instructor subscale yielded the highest satisfaction score out of the five subscales. Shee and Wang (2008) and Herbert (2006) noted that frequent, quality interaction with instructors increases student satisfaction. However, student satisfac- tion in this population was also composed of more than one factor, as noted by Sahin and Shelley (2008) and Wickersham and McGee (2008). Anxiety Several students noted they were anxious about taking this online course; this supports Saadé and Kira’s supposition that computer anxiety is important to edu- cators (2007), as well as Rosen and Weil’s findings that students suffer from computer-related learning anxiety (1995). Since the majority of the population of this study was primarily over 40 years of age, this can also be related to Halu- pa’s findings that older adults tend to have a less positive attitude toward the Internet (2004). Students reported slightly higher anxiety at the beginning of the course com- pared to the end of the course, but this difference was not statistically signifi- cant. Surprisingly, student anxiety was relatively low to moderate; this contrasts with Saadé and Kira’s findings that computer anxiety is quite high in college students (2007). Because 95.7% of these students already had a master’s degree and 4.3% already had one doctorate degree, this could be attributed to the fact that the students in this study were already seasoned or highly motivated learn- ers who strived to obtain a doctoral degree. However, students displayed multidi- mensional aspects of anxiety concerning performance insecurity, hesitation, and nervousness (Beckers & Schmidt, 2001; Heinssen et al., 1987; Saadé & Kira, 2007). This sample did not report significant technical problems as noted by Frankola (2001), or a failure to understand the online media as cited by Herbert (2006). 94 D. U. Bolliger and C. Halupa Students in this study who felt anxiety in any of the three domains tested (com- puters, Internet, and online learning) also experienced anxiety with other domains. This reflects Saadé and Kira’s statement that negative emotions can impact the over- all learning experience (2007). Anxiety and satisfaction A significant negative correlation between anxiety and satisfaction was found. Stu- dents with less anxiety were more satisfied than those with higher anxiety. Saadé and Kira (2007) noted learners with higher levels of computer anxiety are at a disadvantage. Feeling disadvantaged can definitely impact satisfaction with the course and course delivery. Also of note is the highest anxiety reported by participants is related to the tak- ing of online courses. Because the students in this sample had almost completed the course when the satisfaction scale was administered, it is probable that some of the initial anxiety was alleviated at that point. Frankola (2001) and Diaz (2002) found the attrition rate of students is 20–50% in undergraduate traditional courses and 30–60% in online courses. Interestingly, the attrition rate for the four quarters over a calendar year in the initial class in the doctoral program was only 18.4%. This could be related to the moderate computer, Internet, and online course anxiety and the high student satisfaction reported with the course. Conclusion Some limitations of this study need to be noted here. First, the study took place at one institution. Second, the population included students in the field of health sciences only. Other researchers might wish to include learners in other subject areas and/or multiple sites. Third, a high percentage of participants were Caucasian females even though the student population at this institution includes a high number of minority and under-represented students. At first, these results might be interpreted as culturally biased; however, 51% of total doctoral degrees granted in 2007–2008 were awarded to females. The percentage of women who graduated with doctoral degrees in the health professions and sci- ences was even higher—almost 73%. In the academic year 2005–2006 over 80% of individuals who were awarded doctoral degrees in all fields were Cau- casian (Snyder & Dillow, 2010). Last, all data was self-reported. Therefore, readers should interpret them with caution because the results are somewhat limited in generalizability. This research study was performed to attempt to help bridge the information gap in the literature regarding doctoral student satisfaction in online learning. Grad- uate students in online programs are usually older, nontraditional students who may experience anxiety particularly with online course delivery systems. However, par- ticipants reported low or moderate levels of anxiety and were satisfied with this writing-intensive course. Because there was a statistically significant relationship between anxiety and satisfaction, online instructors should consider the integration of online student orientations, student-centered approaches, and planned interven- tions in order to alleviate student anxiety, which could result in higher student satisfaction. Distance Education 95 Notes on contributors Doris U. Bolliger is an assistant professor in the Department of Professional Studies at the University of Wyoming where she teaches primarily online graduate-level courses in instructional design and technology. Her research interests include satisfaction, communication, interaction, community, and interventions in the online environment. Colleen Halupa is the assistant dean of online learning at LeTourneau University and an assistant professor in the health education doctoral program at A.T. 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work_kmopebl74ra7lgaken3ilcaxue	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 360 475 CE 064 055 AUTHOR Jegede, Olugbemiro J. TITLE Distance Education Research Priorities for Australia: A Study of the Opinions of Distance Educators and . Practitioners. PUB DATE Jul 93 NOTE 22p.; Paper presented at the Biennial Forum of the Australian and South Pacific External Studies Association (11th, Adelaide, Australia, July 21-23, 1993). PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Access to Information; Adult Education; *Distance Education; *Educational Research; Foreign Countries; *Information Needs; Postsecondary Education; *Research Needs; *Research Problems; *Teacher Attitudes IDENTIFIERS *Australia ABSTRACT A group of 56 randomly selected members of the International Council for Distance Education who were based in Australia were surveyed regarding their opinions on distance education research priorities for Australia. A five-page questionnaire was used to gather biographical details about respondents and opinions regarding available level of research information, areas of distance education needing priority research attention, and problems encountered in research in distance education. Of the 56 questionnaires mailed in Australia, 36 (64 percent) were returned. Seventeen respondents had taken distance education courses at some time. The following were rated as areas of distance education about which little research information is available: discipline-based context, cost-benefit analysis, relationship between open learning and distance education, industrial and business training context, and role of distance education in national development. Respondents believed that more research is needed on virtually every aspect of distance education. The following areas were mentioned as requiring priority research attention: instructional and communications technology, industrial and business training context, role of distance education in national development, student support services, evaluation, and equity and access. Time allocation, funding, and professional advice were the three most frequcntly mentioned research problems. (Contains 15 references.) (MN) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Distance Education Research Priorities for Australia: A Study of the Opinions of Distance Educators and Practitioners Olugbemiro J Jegede Research and Development Unit Distance Education Centre University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, QLD 4350 A Paper ?resented at the 11th Biennial Forum of the Australian and South Pacific External Studies Association, Held at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, 21-23 July 1993. U.S. DEPARTMENT OE EDUCATION OtfiCe 04 Educakonal Reseacco and Improvement E UCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI Tres document has been Nwoduced as cetenved from the person Or organi:Shon otrornalmo rt C k finor changes hane been made to frnrirOvereproductron otAhly Pocras of yrenc or optn.o.5 stated rn le's dor , mem do nOf necesserrly represent offic-a. OERI posflOn Or 000Cy "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY ./4 TO THE ED1V ATIO(NAlL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 0 4.4 4sUi. V L Abstract The advantages of undertaking research in distance education are numerous. They include those which impact on national development,, educational practice, professional practice in distance education, policy and management, and the constant review of research needs and methodology. Research in distance education has suffered from a number of problems which include lack of coordination and focus and the involvement of comparatively few researchers. Future development in distance education would require a coordinated effort in establishing research priorities in Australia to effectively drive distance education theory and practice. One of the criteria in setting research priorities should be that derived from experts and practitioners of distance education. This paper reports on the Australian data collated from an investigation carried out as part of a world-wide study of the opinions of distance educators and practitioners regarding: (1) the availability of research information; (2) the areas in which research efforts should be concentrated; and (3) the order of priority to be given to such research areas in distance education. Using a five-part questionnaire (with a Cronbach's Aplha reliability coefficient of .89), the results suggest the need for a concerted effort to embark on vigorous research in almost all areas of distance education. The distance educators and practitioners have also prioritised the areas of research and have ranked the difficulties they face doing research in distance education. The results are discussed and their implications for distance education practice and fiirther research indicated. Introduction The inclusion of research in almost any endeavour that humans undertake underscores the significance attached to its utility value. Within education, research has impacted on knowledge about education and its practice. According to Borg and Gall, (1983) research should specifically influence directly or indirectly, the processes of teaching and learning . The Australian Research Council (ARC) acknowledges that in this country, Australian educational research has influenced: 'the provision of knowledge that leads to more successfiil educational practices; the development of better understanding of educational processes as they are experienced by participants; and the refinement and alteration of the questions which guide both research and policy development' (ARC, 1992: p. x). Education is concerned primarily with human learning, irrespective of where, when and how the learning takes place. In distance education however, as opposed to the conventional face- to-face mode of education, teaching and learning occur in a situation in which most or all the teaching is conducted by a teacher separated in space and time from the learner. Keegan (1990) has listed six elements of distance education. They are: separation of teacher and learner; influence of an educational organisation; use of media to link teacher and learner to educational content; two way exchange of communication; learners as individuals rather than grouped; and education as an industrialised form. In distance education, the expected outcomes of learning are determined and dependent on efficient and effective design of materiais to fit the peculiar characteristics and needs of the adult learner (Jegede, 1992). The teaching of course content must also be done using appropriately selected media to complement the print based materials. All these complex activities in the delivery of education at a distance aggregate to form enormous tasks which apparently leave very little room for distance educators and practitioners to think about the place of research let alone undertake research in distance education. The information available indicates that research is only just beginning to be given some mention within national or regional frameworks. For example, the first time American leaders in distance education met to review and discuss research in distance education was in 1988 (Moore, 1988). Moore is of the opinion that this was probably the first time that such a group met for this purpose anywhere in the world. A similar symposium was held in Australia for the first time at Deakin University in 1989; a second symposium was held in 1991; the third is planned for November, 1993. In the Latin American region, a workshop was organised in 1990 to analyse the results of research carried out to diagnose the current situation of distance education in the Americas (Villarroel, 1992). With regard to Africa, the first Pan-African meeting on distance education took place in Tanzania in 1990 under the auspices of UNESCO. In India the first comprehensive project in distance education was launched very recently by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Singh, 1992). What ali this indicates is the absence of much needed research activities in distance education all over the world. Indeed, with regard to the volume of research in distance education in Australia, the entries in the Australian Education Index (AEI) indicate that the distance education literature output between 1980 to 1989 stood at only 2.0 per cent of the Australian literature (when Out-of- school Education, Adult Education and Continuing Community and mass Education are included). Some have attributed the paucity of research in distance education to a number of reasons which include: the field of distanc education being relatively young; distance education providers and practitioners often being overwhelmed by the sheer volume, complexity and variety of activities involved in the provision of education at a distance; and the tendency to regard research as ancillary to distance education (Coldeway, 1990). The above reasons could in part be responsible for Coldeway's criticism of distance education research as not planned, conducted, and/or reported in a systematic manner. And yet the choice of learning and teaching strategies, instructional design, development, production and delivery of instructional materials using any form of communications technology or a multimedia approach would require that empirical evidence be generated to support their educational significance. This would seem to be an important argument to back the recommendation of ARC that 'the national educational research effort needs to be guided by a set of priorities to a greater extent than is presently the case' (p. 70). Given the myriad of issues attendant to the delivery of distance education, prioritising its research effort to maximise efforts and assuring effectiveness and concertedness would appear to be in order. The second reason for the identification of priority areas for distance education research stems from the indication that if its escalating demand being currently witnessed is anything to go by, learning in non-formal settings is likely to be a substantial growth area in education in the foreseeable future. According to Evans (1992) distance education, as part of Australia's educational fabric, is being called upon to do more, and to do it more efficiently and more diversely than ever before. For this to be achieved satisfactorily, issues including those relating to instructional design of materials, technology, learning and teaching strategies, access and equity, and quality need to be addressed in a methodical and logical manner. 2 Another reason which is related to the above is that it is only by setting priority areas that the where and how of the concentration of research effort could be properly addressed. For instance the questions of funding, relevancy, timing, and policy formulation of research in distance education at both the national and institutional levels become much easier to deal with if priorities are identified. It is important that as the issue of priority in research is being discussed in the wider educational circles, cognisance is taken of the need to pay particular attention to distance education. It is not uncommon that when policy decisions are being made, especially in educational matters, that either those most concerned are not contacted or the contacts are made at such a late stage that their opinions are given little consideration. As the future of distance education in Australia is currently being considered, it would be worthwhile to begin by obtaining the input of distance education experts and practitioners regarding the concentration and priority of research effort in their field. This, apart from ensuring that the position of one of the groups central to distance education is sought very early in the decision making process, encourages healthy and hopefully fruitful debate within the community of distance education experts and pracf.tioners. This study therefore investigated the opinions of the community of experts in distance education in Australia regarding: (1) the availability of research information; (2) the areas in which research efforts should be concentrated; and (3) the order of priority to be given to such research areas in distance education. Methodology Sample This paper reports on the data relating to samples from Australia within a large research study conducted in all the regions of the world. All the distance educators and practitioners who are registered as individual members of the International Council for Distance Education formed the population of the study. Using the 1992 membership list, 200 members were randomly selected across the various regions of the world as a sample. Fifty-six of these distance educators and practitioners sampled were Australia based. 3 Instrumentation and Procedure of Administration The instrument consisted of a five-page questionnaire divided into five sections. Section A related to biographical details while sections B, C and D sought opinions regarding level of research information, where research effort should be concentrated upon, and areas needing priority research attention respectively, within distance education. Section B sought responses to the 22 items contained in the section on a five-point Likert type scale of 'Adequate Information Available', 'Barely Adequate Information Available"Little Information Available' `No Information Uailable', and 'Don't Know' scored as 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 respectively. Section C also sought responses to the 22 items contained in the section on a five-point Likert type scale of 'Commence Research', 'More Research Needed"Less Research Needed' `No More Research Needed', and 'Don't Know' scored as 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 respectively. Section E required respondents to rank the 15 listed difficulties faced in research in distance education. The instrument underwent a series of validating procedures by a panel of judges selected from a cross section of experts in distance education, research methodology, communications and data analysis. The questionnaire was mailed to the subjects of the sample within a 3-day period accompanied by a letter requesting that they send the cil.estionnaire back as soon as completed. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was calculated to be .89. Results and Findings Of the 56 questionnaires mailed out in Australia, 36 were returned representing 64 percent response rate. The sample contained 17 females and 19 males. Seventeen respondents had at one time studied through distance education while 19 had not. Other demographic variables of the sample are summarised in Figures I & II. The analysis of the frequencies of responses to the items in Section B of the questionnaire indicated that the majority of the experts and practitioners of distance education in the sample of the study are of the opinion that the level of information available from research in distance education is only just barely adequate or adequate (see Table 1). With specific reference to the experts on responses regarding the level of information available for the different broad groupings in distance education, five areas attracted 40 percent and above agreement as having little information available. They are discipline-based context (48.3%), cost benefit analysis (42.4%), relationship between open learning and distance education (41.9%), 7 4 industrial and business training context (40.6%), and role of distance education in national development (40.6%). TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE Table 2 contains the frequency tabulation of the opinions of experts and practitioners in the study sample regarding the areas in distance requiring concentration of research effort in Australia. The results as contained in the table indicate that the experts believe more research is needed in virtually all the areas. Worth noting are the areas which attracted 70% and above agreement among the experts as requiring concentration of research effort. These are: learner characteristics (70%), design and development of study materials (83.3%), instructional and communications technologies (84.4%), student support services (74.1%), development of students study skills (72.4%), systems for the provision of feedback to students (70%), and evaluation (77.4%). TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE The areas in distance education most frequently mentioned as requiring priority research attention in Australia by the study sample are: instructional and communications technology (59.4%), industrial and business training context (53.6%), role of distance education in national development (48.3%), student support services (46.7%), evaluation (46.9%), equity and access (45.2%), design and development of study materials (45.2%), and interactive multimedia (41.9%). Table 3 has the details of the frequency tabulation of the responses to all the items in Section C. TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE The results of the ranking of difficulties faced by distance education experts and practitioners undertaking research in Australia as opined by the sample of this study are as shown in Table 4. Time allocation, funding, and professional advice were the three greatest difficulties identified. 5 TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE The comparisons of the results of the opinions of the experts and practitioners of distance education sampled on the basis of the moderator variables of gender, years of working experience in distance education, area of specialisation in distance education, present position at work, highest qualification obtained, source of research funding, whether they studied via the distance education mode, and if those who studied by the distance education mode were successful are shown in Tables 5, 6, & 7. When submitted to ANOVA only the variables of years of working experience in distance education, and if those who studied by the distance education mode who were successful yielded significant differences (p < .05) in opinions with regard to areas requiring priority attention in distance education research (see Table 7). The analysis was followed by Scheffe tests of post hoc contrasts of the means to detect where the significant differences lay. The pattern of differences did reveal that those who had over 20 years of working experience in distance education and those who were not successful as distance education students suggested more priority attention to the areas :n distance education needing research. TABLES 5, 6 & 7 ABOUT HERE Discussion, conclusion and implications This study as a part of a larger investigation examined the opinions of distance education experts and practitioners in Australia with regard to (1) the availability of research information, (2) areas in which research efforts should be concentrated, and (3) the order of priority to be given to such research areas in distance education. The results and findings of the study suggest that according to the experts, there is a severe shortage of research information and also that there is need to embark on a vigorous research effort in almost all areas. The experts have also prioritised the areas of research and have ranked time allocation, funding and professional advice as the three top difficulties they face doing research in distance education. 6 9 The issue of the non-availability of research information is hardly surprising as there is a logical relationship between conducting research and information available from research activities. As most of the experts have said, there is not much distance education research being carried out. It is therefore expected that there will be no available literature. This is in agreement with the situation as noted by Coldeway (1990) and supports the observation of the ARC (1992) that 'the education literature during the 1980s appeared to pay relatively little attention to education that occurs in non-formal settings' (p. 12). Almost all the areas of broad groupings of research activities in distance education have been nominated by the experts as requiring concentration of research effort in Australia (see Table 2). If research data is scarce, it makes sense to suggest that all areas should be examined. Of particular interest is the fact that seven areas attracted over 70% agreement, as shown in Table 2. Moore (1988) and Jegede (1992) have argued the need to base all activities and practices within distance education on sound empirical base through research. The argument could be more strongly made considering the heavy reliance on education as an instrument for total national development (Sharma, 1986). The development of the human resources within a nation requires extreme caution to avoid errors which could result in unfortunate consequences. It therefore needs no stressing that all educational activities must begin from sound research information. Taylor (1989) has, with specific reference to South Asia, listed six areas in which research in distance education should focus on. They are: 'understanding the factors which affect the learning processes of students who are at a distance from the providing institution; demonstrating the efficacy of particular instructional strategies; demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of particular combinations of instructional media; evaluating the utility of different distance education techniques in formal and non-formal educational contexts; exploring the economic impact of distance education on national development; and contributing to the theoretical understanding of distance education'. (p. 87 & 88). The different areas mentioned in this study by the experts in Australia as requiring concentration of research activities seem to agree in the main with what Taylor (1989) has recommended for South Asia. Indeed, as could be seen on Table 3, the six top broad groupings of research areas judged by the experts to require priority attention also fall broadly within the recommendations. The distance education experts and practitioners sampled have ranked time allocation and funding as the two top difficulties they face. This seems to agree with the opinions of their counterparts in other parts of the world (Jegede, 1993). "RC (1992) has reported that, on 1 0 7 average, about 15 percent of education academics' time is allocated to research. Given that most distance educators and practitioners are heavily occupied with the overwhelming demands of design, development, delivery, and management of distance education, it will not be a surprise if the time allocated for research by distance eductors and pracdtioners is much lower than the ARC figure for education in general. It does appear that most of the distance educators and practitioners who engage in research use funding other than direct government research grants. The results of this study indicated that the use of personal sources of funding is prevalent. According to ARC (1992), Australia spends only 0.35 per cent of its education expenditure on educational research, compared with 0.5 per cent in the United States of America. Education, which receives about two per cent, on average, of the annual ARC large grants (Bundy, 1990), is classified under Humanities and Social Sciences. There appears to be a general feeling in Australia that educational research receives an inadequate share of the ARC funds. Distance education receives only about 10 per cent of these funds. Detailed discussion of issues affecting fund allocation, eg, application for ARC grants and success rates, classification to reflect the scope of educational research and intra-institutional allocations of research funds are beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to state that even with funding for commissioned research and consultancies in distance education, research into the various areas of distance education is grossly under-funded. As mentioned earlier, if the increasing demand for distance education as is currently being witnessed is an indication that learning in non-formal settings is likely to be a substantial growth areas in education in the foreseeable future, then there is every argument for making distance education a priority rr search area in Australia. There are those who might argue against priority setting in research due to the great variability among researchers, interests, diffuseness of effort and lack of consistent connection with professional practice (Hattie, 1990). However, this argument may not hold if it is considered that educational institutions, government agencies, departments, research organisations and individual researchers establish their own priorities to guide their research acdvities. A number of issues are implicated from the results of this study. Firstly, it is obvious from the results of this research that very little has been accomplished by way of research in distance education and there is therefore a need to embark on research into all areas of distance education, The low level or near absence of research provides practitioners with neither valuable information nor an empiricaily rooted basis for actions considering the high level of demand for education at a distance. Second, more time and funds need to be committed to research in distance education than at present if Australia is to fully and effectively meet the demands for alternative delivery of education. According to Evans (1992) research has an 8 1 1 important but difficult place in the changes which surround distance education. The nature of research is that it requires time and resources to actualise. There is a need to give these factors some consideration in the bid to commit all resources and time to meeting the demands for distance education. Third, the need for distance education to be on the priority list of educational research in Australia and for the research within distance education to be prioritised cannot be overemphasised. As mentioned by Moore (1988), there is an academic need for review and analysis of research and for the organisation of a research agenda for distance education practitioners and providers all over the world. Fourth, for more comprehensive data on research in distance education and for a continual review of the place of research, an extension of this study with a more rigorous design with a large sample would be worthwhile . Embarking on such a study on a periodic basis would be beneficial for planning, management and delivery of distance education. 9 1 41 References Australian Research Council.(1992). Educational Research in Australia. Report of the Review Panel on Strategic Review of Research in Education. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Borg, W.R. and Gall, M.D. (1983). Educational Research: An Introduction. Fourth edition. New York: Longman. Bundy, A. (1990). Australian faculty directory. Blackwood, SA: Auslib. Coldeway, D.O. (1990). Methodological issues in distance education. In M.G. Moore (Ed.). Contemporary issues in American Distance Education. New York: Bergamot Press. Evans, T. (1992). Introduction: celebrating differences in research in distance education. In T. Evans & P. Juler (Eds.). Research in Distance Education, 2. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Hattie, J. (1990). Performance indicators in education. Australian Journal of Education, 34, 249-276. Jegede, O.J. (1992). Constructivist epistemology and its implications for contemporary research in distance learning. In T. Evans & P. Juler (Eds.). Research in Distance Education, 2. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Jegede, 0. J (1993). Expert opinions about distance education research in developing countries. Kakatiya Journal of Distance Education. (forthcoming) Keegan, D.J. (1990). Foundations of distance education. 2nd Ed. London: Croom Helm. Moore, M. (1988). Editorial : The American symposium on research in distance education. ;"he American Journal of Distance Education. 2(3), 1-3. UNESCO (1990). "Priority: Africa. Programme of Action Proposed by the Director-General (1990-1995)". Proceedings of a Seminar on Distance Education. Arusha, Tanzania, September 24-28. Sharma, M. 91986). Issues in distance education. In Asian Development Bank (Ed.) Distance Education in Asia and the Pacific Vol 1. Manila, Philippines. Singh, B (1992). IGNOU launches research project on correspondence/distance education in India. Bulletin of the International Council for Distance Education, 29, 43-44. Taylor, J.C. (1989). "Distance education in South Asia: Problems and prospects". Paper prepared for the Asian Development Bank's round table conference on distance education for South Asian countries. Islamabad, Pakistan. Villarroel, A. (1992). "Report from Latin America". Bulletin of the International Council for Distance Education, 29, 20-21. 3 10 Demographic Variables of the Respondents - Figure I Gender Plannin 8.8% Males 52.8% Management 50.0% Instructional Design 17.6% Years of Working Experience in DE Design & Development 14.7% Research & Document 14.7% ers t Support .9% Instructional Dew lopm Research 2.9% Com. Technolows% 5.9% Educ/Inst. Tech 5.9% 11-20 years 38.9% Teaching 32.4% Top Management Area of Specialisation in DE Present Position at Work 26.5% Administrative Offi 5.9% 11 Demographic Variables of Respondents - Figure II Highest Qualification Source of Research Funding Bachelor degrereirl .4% (consultancy) Doctorate 41.7% Yes 47.2% No 52.8% Studied by DE 5 My Institution 37.5% Yes 76.5% Personal (Self) 37.5% None sought 9.4% External - national 6.3% No No response 5.9% 17.6% Successful by DE 12 TABLE 1: Frequency tabulation of responses of experts in Australia regarding the level of information available for the different broad groupings in distance education. Broad Groupings of Research Areas Adequate information available Barely adequate information available Little information available No information available Don't know 1. Theory and Philosophy 15 10 6 0 (48.4) (32.3) (19.4) (0.0) (0.0) 2. Learner Characteristics 13 8 8 0 2 (41.9) (25.8) (25.9) (0.0) (6.5) 3. Equity and Access (compensadng for disadvantage) 5 11 8 1 6 (16.1) (35.5) (25.8) (3.2) (14.4) 4. Design and development of study materials 11 16 4 0 1 (34.4) (50.0) (12.5) (0.0) (3.1) 5. Instructional & Communications Technology 14 12 5 0 1 (43.8) (37.5) (15.6) (0.0) (3.1) 6. Teitteaching and learning 12 12 6 0 2 (17.5) (37.5) (18.8) (0.0) (6.3) 7. Management and Planning 6 11 11 1 4 (18.2) (33.3) (33.3) (3.0) (12.1 S. Student support services 8 15 5 1 3 (25.0) (41.7) (13.9) (3.1) (9.4) 9. Development of students study skills 8 14 7 1 3 (22.2) (42.4) (21.2) (0.0) (9.1) 10. Systems for the provision of feedback to students 4 11 0 4 (12.5) (40.6) (34.4) (0.0) (12.5) 11. Interactive Multimedia 8 14 9 0 2 (24.2) (32.3) (27.3) (0.0) (6. I ) 12. Discipline based cc ltext 0 8 14 1 6 (27.6) (48.3) (3.4) (20.7) 13. Cognition and metacognition 7 6 9 3 9 (21.0) (30.0) (10.0) (30.0) 14. Cost benefit analysis 3 11 14 2 3 (9.1) (33.3) (42.4) (6.1) (9.1) 15. Relationship between open Itarning and distance 5 9 14 0 4 education (16.1) (29.0) (41.9) (0.0) (12.9) 16. Industrial and Business training context. 1 12 13 0 6 (3.1) (37.5) (40.6) (0.0) (18.8) 17. Research Methodology 13 7 11 0 1 (40.6) (21.9) (34.4) (0.0) (3.1) 18. Evaluation 13 10 8 1 0 (40.6) (31.3) (25.0) (3.1) (0.0) 19. Expert Learning Systems 4 8 9 4 7 (12.5) (25.0) (28.1) (12.5) (21.9) 20. Role of distance education in national development 5 7 13 3 4 (15.6) (21.9) (40.6) (9.4) (12.5) 21. Teacher Educal:on 13 8 6 1 3 (41.9) (25.8) (19.4) (3.2) (9.7) 22. Professional development of distance education 6 10 12 1 3 (18.8) (31.3) (37.5) (3.1) (9.4) *p<.05 1 e! TABLE 2: Frequency tabulation If responses of experts in Australia regarding the areas in distance education requiring concentration of research effort. Broad Groupings of Research Areas Commence Research More Research needed Less Research Needed No more Research needed Don't know 1. Theory and Philosophy 0 18 8 2 1* (0.0) (62.1) (27.6) (6.9) (3.4) 2. Learner Cbancteristics 1 2.1 8 0 0 (3.3) (70.0) (26.7) (0.0) (0.0) 3. Equity and Access (compensating for disadvantage) 3 18 1 2 6 (10.0) (60.4) (3.3) (6.7) (20.0) 4. Design and development of study materials 2 25 3 0 0 (6.7) (83.3) (10.0) (0.0) (0.0) 5. Instructional & Communications Technology 2 27 1 2 0 (6.3) (84.4) (3.1) (6.3) (0.0) 6. Teleteaching and learning 2 20 5 3 1 (6.5) (64.5) (16.1) (9.7) (.3.2) 7. Management and Planning 4 14 6 1 3 (14.3) (50.0) (21.4) (3.6) (10.7) 8. Student support services 0 20 2 1 4 (0.0) (74.1) (7.4) (3.7) (14.8) 9. Development of student study skills 4 21 2 2 0 (13.8) (72.4) (6.9) (6.9) (0.0) 10. Systems for the provision of feedback to students 2 21 2 1 4 (6.7) (70.0) (6.7) (3.3) (13.3) 11. Interactive Multimedia 5 20 1 3 1 (16.7) (66.7) (3.3) (10.0) (3.3) 12. Discipline based context 3 16 3 1 5 (10.7) (57.1) (10.7) (3.6) (12.9) 13. Cognition and metacognition 2 16 4 1 6 (6.9) (55.2) (13.8) (3.4) (20.7) 14. Cost benefit analysis 5 18 3 4 0 (16.7) (60.0) (10.0) (13.3) (0.0) 15. Relationship between open learning and distance 1 20 2 3 4 education (3.3) (66.7) (6.7) (10.0) (13.3) 16. Industrial and Business training context 6 14 2 1 4 (18.8) (59.4) (6.3) (3.1) (12.5) 17. Research methodology 2 17 5 3 1 (7.1) (60.7) (17.9) (10.7) (3.6) 18. Evaluation 3 24 2 2 0 (9.7) (77.4) (6.5) (6.5) (0.0) 19. Expert Learning Systems 2 16 3 2 6 (6.9) (55.2) (10.3) (6.9) (20.7) 20. Role of distance education in national devclopment 7 14 5 0 5 (22.6) (45.2) (16.1) (0.0) (16.1) 21. Teacher Education 1 15 4 3 5 (3.6) (53.6) (14.3) (10.7) (12.9) 22. Professional devek ement of distance educators 5 20 3 1 3 (15.6) (62.5) (9.4) (3.1) (9.4) *p<.05 1 7 14 TABLE 3: Frequency tabulation of responses of experts in Australia regarding the areas in distance education requiring priority research attention. Broad Groupings of Research Areas High Priority Medium Priority Low Priority 1. Student support services 14 14 1* (46.7) (46.7) (3.3) 2. Industrial and Businers traihing context 15 5 8 (53.6) (17.9) (28.6) 3. Equity and Access (compensating for disadvantage) 14 13 4 (45.2) (36.1) (12.9) 4. Discipline based context 4 16 6 (15.4) (61.5) (23.1) 5. Expert Learning Systems 6 17 5 (21.4) (60.7) (17.9) 6. Professional development of distance educators 12 12 6 k40.0) (40.0) (20.0) 7. Theory and PhPosophy 8 9 (28.6) (32.1) (39.3) 8. Development of student study skills 11 15 3 (37.9) (51.7) (10.3) 9. Cognition and metacognition 5 13 9 (18.5) (48.1) (33.3) 10. Role of distance education in national development 14 8 7 (48.3) (27.6) (24.1) 11. Management and Planning 12 12 6 (48.0) (40.0) (20.0) 12. Learner Characteristics 9 17 4 (30.0) (56.7) (13.3) 13. Systems for the provision of feedback to students 12 16 3 (38.7) (51.6) (4.7) 14. Cost benefit analysis 11 14 6 (35.5) (45.2) (19.4) 15. Teacher Education 8 10 10 (28.6) (35.7) (35.7) 16. Design and development of study materials 14 16 (45.2) (51.6) (3.2) 17. Evaluation 15 14 3 (46.9) (43.8) (9.4) 18. Instructional & Communications Technology 19 9 4 (59.4) (28.1) (12.5) 19. Interactive Multimedia 13 12 6 (41.9) (38.7) (19.4) 20. Relationship between open learning and distance education 8 13 8 (27.6) (44.8) (27.6) 21. Teleteaching and learning 10 13 5 (35.7) (46.4) (17.9) 22. Research methodology 7 15 9 (22.6) (48.6) (29.0) p < .05 15 TABLE 4: Rank ordering of difficulties faced by experts in Australia with research in distance education. Difficulties with ReFearch Frequency Rank Order 1. Competency in research methodoloD 9 9 2. Access to relevant literature 6 5 3. Funding 11 2 4. Professional advice 6 3 5. Finding the right audience 6 6. Time Allocation 12 1 7. Technical advice 5 11 8. Lack of personal interest in research projects 6 9. Finding a researchable problem 4 14 10. Lack of my institution's interest in my research efforts 5 6 11. Report writing 4 11 12. Political interference 6 14 13. Research project management 5 4 14. Lack of personal enhancement from research 5 10 15. Others (please state) 4 15 19 16 TABLE 5: Summary of ANOVA of the responses of the experts regarding the level of information available by selected demographic variables Variable Sum of Squares DF F-ratio Probability Position 953.72 4 0.83 0.51 Work Experience 104.05 2 0.17 0.84 Area of Specialisation 1105.60 5 0.96 0.46 Highest Qualification 140.69 3 0.15 0.92 Source of Funding for 1393.30 4 1.38 0.28 ReseLrch Gender 603.85 1 2.31 0.14 Studied by DE 98.61 1 0.34 0.56 Successful as a DE student 756.90 1 2.13 0.18 * p < .05 20 17 TABLE 6: Summary of ANOVA of tlx :esponses of the experts regarding areas in distance education requring concentration of research effort by selected demographic variables. Variable Sum of Squares DF F-ratio Probability Position 403.18 4 0.63 0.64 Work Experience 207.87 3 0.44 0.72 Area of Specialisation 638.70 6 0.67 0.67 Highest Qualification 234.02 3 0.50 0.68 Source of Funding for 171.04 4 0.25 0.90 Research Gender 3.49 1 .02 0.88 Studied by DE 20.00 1 0.13 0.71 Successful as a DE student 301.04 1 3.02 0.13 *p<.05 2 1 18 TABLE 7: Summary of ANOVA of the responses of the experts regarding areas in distance education requring priority research attention by selected demographic variables. Variable Sum of Squares DF F-ratio Probability Position 188.38 5 0.92 0.49 Wbrk Experience 390.25 3 3.11 0.04* Area of Specialisation 487.70 7 1.50 0.23 Highest Qualification 127.32 4 0.55 0.70 Source of Funding for 54.19 4 0:20 0.93 Research Gender 4.84 1 0.08 0.77 Studied by DE 18.06 1 0.32 0.57 Successful as a DE student 294.85 1 6.11 0.03* *p<.05 19 
work_kp3brjirr5ffze4j5pa3hoqj6i	----	The contribution of distance education to health promotion in Chile The contribution of distance education to health promotion in Chile Judith Salinas*, Carolina Muñoz, Andrea Albagli, Gloria Araya, and Fernando Vio Nutrición Pública, Universidad de Chile, INTA, Avda El Libano 5534, Macul, Santiago, Chile *Corresponding author. E-mail: jsalinas@inta.uchile.cl Summary The objective of this paper is to present the distance education’s contribution to developing health promotion in Chile, through evaluation of a postgraduate certificate program for professionals, and a training course for nurse technicians working in primary healthcare, with an 8-month follow-up after program completion. The program methodology was participatory, interactive and reflective, with mentoring support, exercises, group work and discussions as well as content pertinent to the needs of practice. The evaluation was quali-quantitative with an analysis of the student profile, the implemen- tation process, outcomes at the end of the training and impacts on workplace changes. The results showed a high rate of student approval (87 and 76%), good academic performance and a high level of satisfaction with the methodology and knowledge delivered. The participants’ final projects were adapted to local work places realities and were implemented by 62.6% of technicians and 43% of pro- fessionals, in addition to changes in work practices that favor health promotion. The level of fulfillment of participants’ expectations was very high and the most frequent barriers to implementing the final project were lack of time and personnel, along with minimal support from management and low priori- tization of health promotion. This study shows the effectiveness of a distance training model for profes- sionals and technicians that can reach the most remote parts of the country, where there is no access to presencial training, with an educational program centered on work activities and current health challenges. Key words: primary healthcare, health promotion programs, Chile, training, competencies INTRODUCTION The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) has encouraged an initiative to revitalize primary health- care (PHC) with a focus on equity (PAHO, 2007, 2010) and developing the competencies of healthcare personnel through the use of information and communication tech- nologies (ICT) (Nebot et al., 2009; PAHO, 2010). The subject of health promotion training has had a sig- nificant progress during the last years, particularly into academic fields and among the health services sector (Arroyo, 2009). The Galway Consensus Statement on domain of core competency in health promotion aimed to consolidate a core suite of skills, knowledge and abil- ities needed for effective health promotion practice and how best they can be achieved (Barry et al., 2009). There is an emerging literature on competencies re- quired for health promotion practice in diverse social and cultural settings. Having qualified human resources Health Promotion International, 2016, 1–9 doi: 10.1093/heapro/daw023 © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Health Promotion International Advance Access published April 22, 2016 at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://www.oxfordjournals.org http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ is essential to deliver quality health promotion actions, and this includes qualifications both from undergraduate and postgraduate studies, as well as technical and profes- sional continuing education. Models and programs from 14 countries of the Latin America Region have been documented and disseminated in a publication of Inter-American Consortium of Universities and Training Centers of Health Education and Health Promotion Personnel (CIUEPS), with the support of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (UIPES) and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/ WHO). Among countries with an academic history in the subject is possible to mention México, Brazil, Cuba, Peru, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Chile (Arroyo, 2010). In Chile, the Health Ministry (Ministerio de Salud, or MINSAL) has adopted the Comprehensive Health Care Model with a Family and Community Approach; one of its pillars is health promotion (MINSAL 2007, 2014). These change processes require new capacities that enable providers to respond to the current healthcare needs of the population. The socio-epidemiological reality of the country is characterized by an advanced post-transition with popu- lation aging, a predominance of cardiovascular diseases, cancer and mental health problems. This situation is aggra- vated by the lack of equity in healthcare (Vio et al., 2008). Despite progress made by healthcare system reform and the national health promotion plan (Salinas et al., 1999, 2007), adaptation of PHC to this socio-epidemiological reality and formulation of government health promotion policies, there are still many issues to be addressed in the country. In 2013, there were 54 652 primary healthcare workers in Chile, with an average density of 35.95 basic profes- sionals (physicians, nurses and midwives) for every 10 000 inhabitants, while for Latin America as a whole, the average was 25 professionals for every 10 000 inhabitants, accord- ing to PAHO/WHO figures. The composition of this workforce for Chile was as follows: 32% high-level nurse technicians; 38% professionals (physicians, dentists, nurses, midwives, nutritionists, social workers, psychologists and others); 18% administrative assistants; and 12% service assistants (Brahm, 2014). Primary healthcare centers serve 76% of the total population of the country through a national network made up of 2125 outpatient service establishments; 45% of these are family health centers (Centros de Salud Familiar, or CESFAM) and 55% are rural health clinics (Postas de Salud Rural, or PSR) (Gattini and Alvarez Leiva, 2011). A strong primary healthcare center must have multidis- ciplinary health teams with the capacity to act in a com- prehensive way in regard to health problems, develop skills to interact with different community groups, and facilitate social participation processes and intersectoral action. In this context, and considering how distance educa- tion has helped improve public service (Barrios et al., 2008; Umaña, 2013), the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos, or INTA) at the University of Chile cre- ated the Continuing Education Program in Health Prevention and Promotion (Programa de Educación Permanente en Prevención y Promoción de Salud, or PROEPSA) to contribute developing the skills of PHC teams. The program’s theoretical framework is built on a conception of continuous education centered on practice- based learning. The pedagogical approach is structured on the students’ work activities, emphasizing interaction and reflection (Davini, 1995; Vasquez, 2007a, b; Medina Ferrer, 2013). Technical and pedagogical management of the program is based on a constructivist approach to educa- tion, which is understood as a social process of ‘learning by doing’ (Schön, 1987; Freire, 2004; Tremblay et al., 2014). The conception of health promotion as a discipline for study and practice is considered a political and social pro- cess that encompasses not only actions aimed at bringing about change in individual behavior for a healthier life- style, but also actions designed to modify social and envir- onmental conditions, in order to mitigate their impact on health. PROEPSA supports a network of professionals and technicians distributed over a wide geographic area who exchange experiences and build practice-based knowledge with an integral approach to health promotion that em- phasizes the social determinants of health (Jackson et al., 2013). It is worth noting that INTA has developed health promotion training programs since 2002 for a variety of recipients, with different durations and formats (Salinas and Vio, 2011a, b; Salinas et al., 2014). The postgraduate certificate program described in this paper is the 10th ver- sion, while the training course is the 2nd version. The objective of this article is to present the evaluation of the distance education program for PHC workers; the program consists of a postgraduate certificate for professionals and a training course for high-level nurse technicians. Participants in both programs were located throughout the country and follow-up was conducted 8 months after completion. The expectation is that dis- tance education will address the problem of unequal ac- cess to personnel training for people in remote parts of the country, strengthen healthcare teams by transforming their practice and contribute to improving PHC and local public policies from a health promotion and equity perspective. 2 J. Salinas et al. at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ METHODS The study consisted of a quali-quantitative evaluation of a training program for PHC workers. It includes an analysis of the student profile, the implementation process, results after completion of the training and the impact perceived by graduates 8 months after the program ended. The educational methodology promotes interaction through study groups and supports individual learning by each student at their own pace and according to their own interests. To achieve this, the students are offered on- going mentoring by 7 professors and 12 professional in- structors, all of whom have experience with PCH and health promotion. Subjects There were 162 professional participants in the certificate program whose average age was 36 years and with 10 years of work experience on average in primary health- care. In the group, 79% were women and 40% were from rural districts. Social sciences and education professionals (social workers, psychologists and educators) made up 38% of participants, while 62% represented the biomed- ical area (nutritionists, midwives, nurses, physical thera- pists, dentists and others). Everyone who participated had a university degree representing at least 4 years of study (Table 1). In the training course, there were 172 technicians whose average age was 37 years and with an average of 9.7 years of work experience. In the group, 89% were women and 46% were from rural districts (Table 1). High-level nurse technicians received on average 2 years of training and work in all PHC programs (family health, dental health, children’s health, women’s health, adult health, nutrition, social assistance, pharmacy and others). These are the healthcare workers who are typically the first to come into contact with patients and the community. The technicians had significantly less experience with distance education than the professionals. For 85% of the technicians, this was their first experience with dis- tance education, compared with 31% of the professionals (Table 1). Intervention The certificate program included 268 h and was offered over 8 months, from 25 June 2012 to 1 April 2013, with 15 learning units and a final project (Figure 1). The training course was 120 h long and was offered over 4 months, from 1 August to 30 November 2013, with six learning units and a final project (Figure 1). The pedagogical model was one of networked learning with a collaborative, active and participatory method- ology that promotes open exchange of ideas, reflection and group analysis to build knowledge. Figure 2 outlines its objectives, content and resources. Evaluation The evaluation process included: • Evaluation of learning through individual and group ex- ercises, participation in discussion groups, knowledge tests and preparation of a final project. These activities were graded on a scale from 1 to 7; the minimum passing score was 4. • Evaluation of the program, through surveys at the beginning and end of the program and follow-up; the variables are presented in Table 2. In addition, the cer- tificate program students completed a mid-term survey, given its longer duration. The course included a test of knowledge at the beginning and end. Program manage- ment included continuous monitoring of the activities and use of the Moodle platform, version 2.6.3. Table 1: Profile of participants and academic results Postgraduate certificate for professionals N: 162 Training course for technicians N: 172 Gender* Female 79% 89% Male 21% 11% Age (average in years) 36 37 Work experience in PHC (average in years) 10 9.7 Previous experience with distance education** With experience 69% 15% No experience 31% 85% District Urban 60% 54% Rural 40% 46% Passed 87% 76% Final grade Average ± SD 5.4 ± 1.2 5.3 ± 1.6 Range 1.2–6.9 3.0–7.0 Final project topic Diet-physical activity 67 51 Tobacco and alcohol 10 19 Mental and sexual health, others 23 30 Training program for PHC professionals and technicians in health promotion. Chile 2013. SD, standard deviation. *χ2 test = 6.4749, p < 0.011. **χ2 test = 73.9451, p < 0.000. Contribution of distance education to health promotion 3 at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ Statistical analysis A descriptive analysis was developed of the variables for all of the training subjects according to indicators of the profile, performance and evaluation of the students. The number of cases and proportions were used for general re- sults, as well as the median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum when appropriate. The χ2 test was calcu- lated to compare groups, using STATA 10.1 for Windows. RESULTS Academic performance Table 1 shows the pass rates, with higher values for profes- sionals than technicians (87 and 76%, respectively), but these differences are not significant. The reasons for failure were poor performance or deferment. The average final grades were 5.4 and 5.3, respectively. In both groups, the most common topics for the final projects were healthy eating and physical activity (67% of professionals and 51% of technicians), followed by to- bacco, alcohol, promotion of mental and sexual health and other specific areas, mainly in relation to children. In terms of methodological spaces, the technicians focused on educational work in their health centers while profes- sionals valued work with educational establishments and at the community level in their districts. Final survey According to the results of the final survey at the end of the training, both groups positively evaluated the usefulness of the content and the educational methodology (referring to the academic activities, educational materials and inter- action). This survey had a rate response of 92.9% in both cases. The teaching activities that consisted of individual exercises and group discussions and exercises were as- sessed as positive (close to 90%), as were all the education- al materials (guides, classes, readings and others). The interaction receiving the highest marks was working Fig. 1: PHC training program syllabus. Chile 2013. 4 J. Salinas et al. at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ with mentors (95%), followed by 90% who said they had positive interactions with professors and 78% with their peers. As for fulfillment of objectives and expectations, knowledge acquisition and overall satisfaction with the program, 95% evaluated these positively. Regarding the open-ended questions, in both groups, it was found that the main barrier to participation in teach- ing and learning processes was lack of time and lack of support from superiors. In fact, only 20% said they were given time to study during work hours. Follow-up survey The follow-up survey applied 8 months after the end of each training program (January and August 2014, respectively) had a high rate response, reaching 67% in both cases. The contribution to improving health promotion in primary healthcare through implementation of interven- tions developed in the final project showed excellent re- sults, with more than 50% of the projects later implemented in practice. This occurred to a greater extent among technicians than professionals (62.6 versus 43% who said they had fully or partially implemented the final project). The usefulness of the content, measured in terms of its applicability and increased reflexibity and self-efficacy in their work, was high for both groups. As shown in Figure 3, more than 80% of the participants said the train- ing increased their ability to think critically about practice and their self-efficacy in their work; this was higher among technicians (96.4 and 98.4%). Meanwhile, the applicabil- ity of the content was valued significantly more by profes- sionals than technicians (78.5 versus 46.9%). Regarding changes in work practices, 30% of the pro- fessionals reported that training had some effect, such as being given new responsibilities, improved salaries or receiving a mark of merit. Referring to changes in their du- ties, the professionals said the following: according to 52%, the training stimulated their community work; 43% made some improvement to a program; 42% incor- porated health promotion activities into their annual healthcare programs; 38% created new projects or pushed for new administrative measures; and 32% started pro- cesses to systematize or evaluate their health promotion experiences. Fig. 2: Pedagogical model of training program for PHC professionals and technicians. Chile 2013. Contribution of distance education to health promotion 5 at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ The technicians identified important changes in their work practices: 57% said they now frequently offer infor- mal education when working with patients; 53% provide advice on healthy living; 20% conduct group educational activities at the health center; 21% work in the commu- nity; 17% participate in design and planning educational or community health activities; and 8% participate in edu- cational or community activities in other sectors. Fulfillment of expectations remained high, similar to the survey at the end of the training, with figures over 90% for both groups. Finally, 98% of the technicians and 95% of the professionals would recommend the program to other people. The most frequently cited barriers to implementing the program content and the final project in participants’ workplaces were: lack of time and personnel, management with low levels of confidence in team capacities, low pri- oritization of health promotion, lack of financial resources and administrative red tapes. DISCUSSION The PHC training program was implemented with two groups of similar size (162 and 172 students, respectively) and similar characteristics in terms of age, years of work experience and regional distribution throughout the coun- try. The participants were from all parts of the country, including rural, isolated and remote districts. Although the technicians had significantly less experience with distance education, they participated very actively in the educational process, and like the professionals, they per- formed well academically and reported similar effects on their work performance, strengthening their skills in health promotion (Suárez Conejero et al., 2013). An ad- vance orientation regarding the use of the platform and ICT provided by PROEPSA contributed to this result. The program participants were workers with the great- est time of service, closeness to patients, community lead- ership and potential to constitute a critical mass that can make the changes needed to revitalize PHC through effective implementation of health promotion; this does not usually occur with physicians and management personnel. Table 2: Program evaluation variables and instruments Variables Start End Follow-up Demographic information Age x Gender x Employment information Professional or technical training x Place of work, type of PHC establishment x Years of work experience x Workplace region and district x Previous experience in distance education x Educational methodology Academic activities (discussions, individual and group exercises, tests, final project) x Educational materials x Interaction with mentors, professors and peers (quantity and contribution to learning) x Barriers to participation in training program x Assigned work hours for studying x Fulfillment of objectives x Fulfillment of expectations x x Knowledge acquisition x x Overall satisfaction with the training program x x Usefulness of content Applicability x x Reflexivity on work practices x x Self-efficacy x x Implementation of theoretical, methodological and practical content x Barriers to implementing content x Implementation of final project x Barriers to implementing final project x Changes in work practices Engaging in health promotion activities x Personal effects x Recommendation of the training program x Training program for PHC professionals and technicians in health promotion. Chile 2013. Fig. 3: Usefulness of training program content. Follow-up survey of PHC professionals and technicians (N Professionals: 108, N Technicians: 115). *χ2 test = 19.8455, p < 0.000 (comparison between professionals and technicians of applicability variable). 6 J. Salinas et al. at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ The evaluation model provides a systematic vision of the teaching and learning process and the impact in terms of skills development and workplace practice, both when the training ended and with follow-up some time later. The explosive development of distance teaching pro- grams, its growing use and effectiveness in healthcare (D’Agostino et al., 2014) has unfortunately not been sub- ject to systematic evaluation or subsequent follow-up to measure its contribution to policy development and imple- mentation of the changes it seeks to bring about. Very few public health evaluations have been reported, with an even smaller group relating to health promotion. Some worth mentioning are the evaluation of a distance learning pro- gram on environmental health in Cuba (Olite and Mercedes, 2004) and two mixed programs that combine online and in-person learning: PAHO’s International Health Program (Auer and Guerrero, 2011) and the health promotion program in Mexico (Magaña et al., 2010; Alcalde et al., 2013). The Mexican program is the only health promotion training program that has been assessed, and it included: a master’s degree in public health with a specialization in health promotion, a 160 h health promo- tion leadership certificate and short, 50 h courses for health promoters. The results were positive and demon- strated that healthcare personnel in states where training was provided acquired a comprehensive perspective of health promotion, which then translated into better management. The academic results of the certificate and the course were similar, with average final grades of 5.4 and 5.3 and approval rates of 87 and 76%, respectively. The ap- proval rate is higher than that reported by other authors (Sigulem et al., 2001). The positive evaluation of the pedagogical, interactive, participatory and practically applicable activities, consist- ent with the nature of health promotion, favored knowl- edge acquisition and practice improvement. The most important results of the training program were observed in the follow-up evaluation of the usefulness and implementation of the theoretical content, methodologies and practices, as well as the high number of workers who implemented the final project. This is a commendable effort, since participation in the program is voluntary and does not have the formal support of supervisors, a situation that is similar to what is observed in medical training programs (Montero and Valdés, 2008). The final projects were consistent with local realities and contributed to national priorities. The technicians de- veloped a larger number of educational interventions, which may be influenced by the emphasis of the individual perspective of nurses on health promotion (Kemprainen et al., 2013) and also by the greater recognition of their assistance work. Meanwhile, the professionals oriented their work largely toward the educational sector or local government, probably influenced by the fact that they had greater training in health promotion, the continuity in Chile of the healthy schools strategy (Salinas and Vio, 2011a, b) and the community work component contained in district health promotion plans since 1998 (Salinas et al., 2007). The notable increase in self-efficacy and reflexivity on their work practices in both groups is consistent with the conceptualization of the health promotion program with a social determinant of health approach applied to the local reality and with the incentive of working in teams and net- works through the methodology used. The greatest applicability of the content for the techni- cians may be influenced by the strengthening of their com- munity leadership roles in small towns and carrying out educational work at their own health centers. Meanwhile, for the professionals, the challenge of intersectoral action implies greater time, political will and working with other sectors. The barriers to implementing content and the final pro- ject are similar to those observed in previous studies and to what was reported in Mexico (Alcalde et al., 2013; Ramos et al., 2014). These barriers reflect inadequate understand- ing of health promotion by management, the low value given to team work and the lack of public policies that guarantee continuity of actions and improved health out- comes, from an equity perspective (Etienne, 2013). This study demonstrates the contribution of distance education to development of health promotion and the effectiveness of an interactive training model with profes- sionals and technicians, which is able to reach the most remote parts of the country where people do not have access to in-person training (Guri-Rosenblit, 2005). In addition, it confirms the positive effect at the local level of a methodology based on learning by doing, with a practice-centered approach (Vasquez, 2007a, b). What is needed currently is an effective distance learn- ing system, which should evolve from a concept centered on information delivery (information-centric) or the use of new communication technologies (technology-centric) (Vasquez, 2007a, b) to a practical learning system that assists but does not interfere with the work of PHC teams. It should address the needs related to everyday activities, with content that is pertinent and adequate in terms of quality and quantity. The development of health promotion requires integrated, interdisciplinary and reflective healthcare teams, capable of leading change in healthcare systems, which is what this ongoing, inclu- sive training initiative is designed to do. Contribution of distance education to health promotion 7 at U niversidad de C hile on A pril 22, 2016 http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/ Finally, it should be mentioned that the changes and social transformations that health promotion seeks to achieve go hand in hand with changes in educational para- digms and a new healthcare model with a biopsychosocial and equity-based approach. REFERENCES Alcalde J., Molina J., Castillo L. (2013) Contributions of training to the promotion of health in State Health Services: compara- tive analysis in eight states in Mexico. Salud Pública de México, 55, 285–293. Arroyo H. (2009) La formación de recursos humanos y el desar- rollo de competencias para la capacitación en promoción de la salud en América Latina. Global Health Promotion, 16, 66–72. Arroyo H. (ed.) (2010) Promoción de la Salud. Modelos y experiencias de formación académica-profesional en Iberoamérica. 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work_kqmdvn5yv5eg5b4m2p75537kva	----	Distance Education: Using Compressed Interactive Video Technology for an Entry-Level Doctor of Pharmacy Program American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND ASSESSMENT Distance Education: Using Compressed Interactive Video Technology for an Entry-Level Doctor of Pharmacy Program Deborah H. Kennedy, PharmD, Ceressa T. Ward, PharmD, and Miriam C. Metzner, PharmD College of Pharmacy-West Palm Beach Program, Nova Southeastern University New responsibilities for faculty members and changing student perspectives have occurred with the establishment of an entry-level Doctor of Pharmacy program delivered by compressed interactive video (CIV). The purpose of this article is to describe the experiences of distant site faculty and make recommendations for the successful use of CIV technology in an entry-level Doctor of Pharmacy pro- gram. Information obtained from the literature was used in conjunction with the authors’ experience to discuss the roles and responsibilities of a distant site facilitator, problems encountered when deliver- ing instructional material via CIV, and recommendations for effective teaching via CIV. Future plans and research questions are also addressed. Keywords: distance education, compressed interactive video INTRODUCTION Since January 1995, the College of Pharmacy at Nova Southeastern University located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida has delivered instructional material by com- pressed digital video 2-way conferencing technology or compressed interactive video (CIV). This technology has been essential for the delivery of the nontraditional, post-baccalaureate, Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program. The postbaccalaureate program is transmitted to students located in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Orlando, Sarasota, Tampa, and West Palm Beach, FL; and Ponce and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The class size at each distant site ranges from 2 to 25 students. To date, approximately 260 students have graduated from the nontraditional, post-baccalaureate, PharmD program.1 The success of the nontraditional, postbaccalaure- ate PharmD program prompted the College of Phar- macy to integrate a pilot CIV distance education pro- gram into its existing entry-level PharmD curriculum. The learning format for the distant sites is synchro- nized with the entry-level PharmD program at the main campus in Fort Lauderdale. This synchronous format is defined as students attending class at the same time and receiving the same instructional material (eg, lec- tures, handouts, examinations, etc), regardless of geo- graphical location. The average class size for the entry level PharmD program at the Fort Lauderdale campus is approximately 120. With the addition of 2 distant sites, 1 in West Palm Beach (class size range: 35 to 45 students) and the other in Ponce, Puerto Rico (class size range: 25 to 30 students), the total entry-level PharmD class size is now approximately 180.1 Since the majority of the instructors are located at the Fort Lauderdale campus, approximately 80% to 90% of in- structional material is transmitted from the local site (Fort Lauderdale) to the distant sites (West Palm Beach and Ponce). Due to a large number of entry-level PharmD ap- plicants from the Palm Beach, Martin, and St. Lucie County areas of Florida, and Nova Southeastern Uni- versity’s mission to provide convenient, high-quality education, West Palm Beach was identified as the first distant site location.1 The West Palm Beach distant site for the entry-level PharmD program was established in August 2000 and was developed 62 miles north of the main College of Pharmacy campus. The West Palm Beach Pharmacy program began with a faculty and staff consisting of a program director, a director of ex- periential education, an assistant professor of pharma- ceutical sciences, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice, and an administrative assistant. Their respon- sibilities included facilitating an average of 19 semes- ter hours of courses per semester per entry-level Corresponding Author: Deborah H. Kennedy, PharmD. Mailing Address: 3970 RCA Boulevard, Suite #7006, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33410. Tel: 561-622-8682, ext. 26. Fax: 561-622-9205. E-mail: kennedyd@nova.edu. 1 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. At each lecture podium, the instructor has at his or her disposal a CIV control panel, a computer, a docu- ment camera, a digital white board (Smartboard®), a videocassette recorder (VCR), and a digital versatile disk (DVD) player. In the classroom there are video cameras, television monitors, and microphones. The CIV control panel allows the instructor and/or CIV technician to adjust the video cameras, mute or unmute the sound, and alternate images from the computer, document camera, digital white board, VCR, and/or DVD player. There are 2 video cameras: one to broad- cast the instructor’s image and another to broadcast an image of the classroom and students. The video cam- eras can be adjusted to focus on different areas of the classroom or to zoom in on the instructor or students. Television monitors located in the distant classroom provide an alternative to the large screen for the stu- dents to watch the lecture. There is also a television monitor in front of the lecture podium that enables the instructor to view students at the distant sites. The in- structor can view only one distant site at a time. Hand- held microphones and ceiling microphones distributed throughout the classrooms facilitate communication between the distant site students and the local site in- structor. See Figure 1 for a diagram of the classroom. PharmD class, addressing student affairs issues, estab- lishing sites for the professional experience program, developing a compounding laboratory, and developing a drug information and resource center.1 Except for laboratory experiences, all courses in the entry-level PharmD curriculum are transmitted via CIV. Approximately 90% of this coursework is trans- mitted from Fort Lauderdale to the distant sites and the remaining 10% of instructional material originates from West Palm Beach. Laboratory experiences in the entry-level PharmD curriculum consist of pharmaceu- tics, communications skills, and patient care manage- ment, and comprise approximately 10% of the entry- level PharmD curriculum. These experiences are repli- cated at the distant sites and are led by the distant site faculty. Patient case discussions in therapeutics courses are conducted separately at each distant site, and then final discussions are transmitted to all distant sites via CIV. All students must attend the program full time. As previously described, the program is synchronous with the Fort Lauderdale program where all students attend class at the same time with the only difference being their geographical location. Only a synchronous learn- ing opportunity is offered for traditional students in West Palm Beach. Thirty-eight students were enrolled for the first year of the program. By August 2001, the faculty was expanded, with the addition of an associate professor of pharmacy administration, an assistant pro- fessor of pharmacy practice, and a part-time instructor. Total student enrollment at the West Palm Beach cam- pus was 71. In addition to the West Palm Beach exten- sion, the College established a second distant site in Ponce, Puerto Rico, using the same synchronous CIV technology format.1 This article describes the experi- ences of the distant site faculty at the West Palm Beach program during the first 2 years. During transmission of instructional material, the instructor, CIV technician, and students are present in the local classroom. At the distant sites, a facilitator, CIV technician, and students are present in the distant classroom. Thus, the major difference in the personnel who are present at the local classroom compared to those present in the distant classrooms is the presence of either an instructor or facilitator. When there is more than one distant site involved in transmission, control of the audio and video originates from a central loca- tion at the main campus in Fort Lauderdale.2 ROLE OF THE FACILITATOR THE DISTANT CLASSROOM For the first 2 years of the distant program, 7 fac- ulty members from the WPB campus shared responsi- bility for facilitating the courses. Course facilitation was required for approximately 19 hours per week for each pharmacy class per semester. For each faculty member, facilitation time in the classroom ranged from 5 to 20 hours per week. The distant classroom is defined as a classroom that does not have the instructor present in the classroom during delivery of instructional material. The classrooms at all locations are equipped for CIV and can function either as a local or distant classroom. Electronic com- munication between sites is enabled by CIV technology using 3 integrated services digital network (ISDN) lines for high-speed transmission. The lecture material is si- multaneously projected onto large screens at the local and distant sites. During instruction, the local site stu- dents can see the instructor and lecture material at the same time, while distant students can see only the in- structor or the lecture material at any given time. Essential Functions Distant site facilitation is a multifaceted position with the primary goal of providing leadership and in- struction to pharmacy students. Table 1 describes the essential activities of a distant site facilitator. From our experience and the literature, students at distant sites 2 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. Figure 1. Diagram of a distance education classroom. (a) The projector, cameras, and rear TV monitors are suspended from the ceiling. (b) The lecture podium has a CIV control panel, com- puter, document camera, VCR, DVD player, handheld and lavaliere microphones. rely on distant site facilitators for academic and emo- tional leadership.3 Thus, faculty members invest addi- tional time outside of the classroom for student advis- ing and development. At least once a semester, distant site faculty meet with their assigned student advisees to discuss the students’ academic performance, outline steps for overcoming areas of difficulty, and inform them of professional opportunities. Also, distant site facilitators motivate distant students and maintain their enthusiasm for the program.4 Distant site facilitators do not answer questions regarding course content. Any questions regarding course content are deferred to the instructor teaching the material. Overall, distant site facilitators have accepted full responsibility for ensur- ing and promoting the educational and professional development of the distant students. Classroom Management Based on our experience, facilitators manage both the technology and students at the distant sites. While a CIV technician is either present or available during delivery of instructional material, instruction is im- proved when facilitators are skilled at the basic opera- tions of the CIV equipment. Responsibility for who manages the distant site classroom becomes unclear because there is both an instructor and facilitator(s) present in the local and distant classrooms, respec- tively. We have learned that it is not possible to expect the instructor to simultaneously maintain control of the local classroom, efficiently present material, and man- age the behavior of students in the distant classrooms. Therefore, the distant site facilitators must assist by 3 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. Table 1. Essential Functions of a Distant Site Facilitator • Serve as a liaison between the students and course coordinator/content professor • Act as the distant site’s “eyes and ears” • Address student concerns • Duplicate and distribute course materials • Assist students in asking and answering questions during transmission • Facilitate classroom instructional activities (ie, small group discussions) • Maintain a professional classroom decorum • Proctor examinations • Maintain the integrity and security of examinations • Ensure delivery of examinations and assignments to the course professor • Communicate course grades and performance to both students and administrators • Review exams with students • Conduct study groups or review sessions for students maintaining control of their respective distant site. This may include taking attendance, minimizing distractions or excessive talking, dismissing students from class for unprofessional behavior, enforcing the dress code, and forbidding food and drink in the distant classroom. Since students at the distant sites respond better when the instructor is involved with distant site class- room management, it is critical that the instructor sup- port the actions of the distant site facilitators. As distant site facilitators, we have drawn attention to students who appear confused or act inappropriately by using the camera to zoom in on those students. This cues the in- structor to call upon these students to clarify issues and allows the instructor to regain control of the distant classroom. If the instructor does not acknowledge nota- ble behavior at the distant sites, distant students are more likely to either continue their unprofessional behavior or become discouraged when problems are not addressed. The end result is dissatisfaction with the instructor and/or the program. To prevent this from occurring, both the distant site facilitators and the instructor must work together to maintain control of all learning sites. Problems Encountered With CIV As described below, many of the problems re- ported in the literature when using CIV technology for instruction have also been observed at Nova Southeast- ern University College of Pharmacy. Some examples and potential solutions used at Nova Southeastern Uni- versity College of Pharmacy are also discussed. Depersonalization of the instructor is likely at the distant site. This occurs because the students do not see the instructors “live.” Similar to watching television, students become detached from the image that is pro- jected. For example, students at the West Palm Beach campus act as if the lecture is a television show or a movie. This problem is magnified by distant students’ feelings that instructors do not pay attention to them. This problem can be remedied if the instructor ac- knowledges the students at the distant site by stating, for example, “It looks empty at site X. Where are the other students?” or “Who is the student in blue that just walked into the classroom 20 minutes late?” Pop quiz- zes and mandatory attendance have also been effective methods of ensuring student attendance and attention. The behavior of the instructor towards distant stu- dents can significantly affect their conduct. Distant students have described feeling like “second class citi- zens” and being seen as inferior to their local site classmates. At the inception of the West Palm Beach program, instructors who were either unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable with the technology excluded or ignored the distant students during their presentation of instruc- tional material. Most often, instructors were focused on their interactions with the local students, leaving the distant students to passively follow along. Including the distant students in classroom activities required a significant alteration of teaching style for many in- structors, as well as some mastery of the technology. As comfort with the technology grows, some instruc- tors are more apt to include the distant students in classroom activities. Distant students find it more difficult to concen- trate for long periods of time and have shorter attention spans when watching a television for several hours.5,6 However, 80% (28/35) of students in an elective at our College of Pharmacy reported that they did not have a difficult time concentrating on material delivered by CIV. As observed at our College of Pharmacy and re- ported in the literature, distant students and instructors 4 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. have very few visual cues, which makes the classroom more formal and hinders relationship building.7,8 Meth- ods used to build relationships with instructors and stu- dents at the College include using chat rooms, holding planned interactions, and delivering instructional mate- rial through an interactive game format (eg, Jeopardy®). Using facilitators knowledgeable in the class subject area also promotes interactive activities. For example, in a geriatrics elective, interactive games and journal as- signments are led and graded by facilitators knowledge- able in geriatrics and/or internal medicine. Student anxieties are increased when they see themselves projected onto a large screen and/or hear their voices on the speakers, especially when called upon to answer questions or when asking questions.9 This type of performance anxiety reduces the chance of interactivity occurring between the instructor and the students at the distant sites. Midpoint survey results from an elective delivered via CIV at the College showed that 48% (17 of 35) of students preferred not to ask questions during class and 57% (20 of 35) pre- ferred to ask questions of the instructors outside the classroom. While only 37% (13 of 35) reported that they did not ask questions in class because their image or voice would be transmitted, this is contrary to what is actually observed in the distant classroom. In gen- eral, students have verbally disagreed or shown disap- proval when facilitators approach distant students with the microphone. Students have also been observed to cover their faces or change their behavior when they realize their image is being transmitted from the distant site. This behavior improves as distant students become accustomed to the CIV technology. Instructors may believe that distant students are not willing to participate in class. This can occur because it is more difficult to see distant students’ facial expres- sions and movements and because of increased reliance on the audio response of distant students to measure in- teraction. Since audio responses from the distant class- room can be delayed or decreased for several reasons, instructors may believe distant students are not inter- ested. Instructors should allow a 5- to 15- second delay before expecting a response from the distant sites. De- lays in response occur due to the need to “unmute” dis- tant microphones when facilitators keep their sites muted to avoid background noise and/or feedback; the time required to deliver a microphone to the student, if needed; and the time delay in sound transmission due to the CIV technology or audio difficulties.9,10 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TEACHING VIA CIV Overcoming the challenges of teaching via CIV re- quires substantial effort on the part of the instructor. Focus should be placed on changing teaching methods (pedagogy) rather than trying to disregard the technol- ogy.11 Some of these adjustments include developing a different teaching philosophy, identifying successful learner characteristics at distant sites, designing inter- active courses, modifying teaching strategies, and re- vising student evaluation and assessment.4 For any fac- ulty member committed to excellence in teaching, the rewards from the additional time invested in develop- ment are invaluable. Based on our experience and re- view of the literature, the following recommendations can be made to ensure optimal instruction via CIV. Plan Interaction Instructors should implement classroom activities to engage distant site students during lectures.4 When- ever responses are solicited from a distant class, the entire distant site or a specific distant student should be addressed directly. Instructors who ask questions by stating the site and/or student name are more successful at soliciting responses compared to instructors who ask the question to the class at large. This also improves interactivity by using a consistent approach for interac- tions between the distant sites. An example would be to state: “What does Mr. or Ms. Student at the West Palm Beach site think about this?” In our therapeutics series, the use of a randomized list of student names to call upon promotes attendance, class participation, and pre- class preparation of material at the local and distant sites. Calling names off a roster allows the chance for random roll call to be taken and does not allow outspo- ken students to obtain more participation points than reserved students. More importantly, calling on stu- dents from all sites minimizes the perception of isola- tion by the distant students. For students too timid to ask questions during class, instructors at the College have asked students to write down 2 things they learned during lecture and any questions they still have at the end of class. These responses are forwarded to the instructor to assess the effectiveness of teaching and increase interactivity outside of class. Build Relationships with Students Instructors should build and maintain relationships with students outside of the classroom. The ideal way to establish a relationship with distant students is to visit the distant sites early in the course.9 Interactions with instructors increase during an on-site visit and 5 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. Allow Additional Time continues after the instructors return to their home sites.6,11 Once distant students meet the instructor in person, the television or movie star persona of the in- structor diminishes. Thus, students are more likely to initiate future communications with the instructor dur- ing or outside of class time. Students at West Palm Beach have reported feeling that the instructor cares about the distant students when they travel to the dis- tant sites. In order to adjust for any technical difficulties that may occur, instructors should include extra time to pre- sent instructional material. This accounts not only for technical issues (audio or visual difficulties, micro- phone handling), which can cause loss of interaction up to 36% of the time, but time for student interaction and questions.3 To make the most of instructional time in the classroom, student announcements should be lim- ited to the time in between classes. A timer that is pro- jected onto the screen or monitor can increase instruc- tor and student awareness of when class will resume either between classes, during breaks, or after group discussions. Instructors have been encouraged to arrive promptly at the end of the preceding class in order to use the time in between classes for the setup of any necessary equipment or programs. This ensures that class will start on time and that valuable lecture time is not lost due to technical difficulties. Basic etiquette that includes the procedure on how students and facili- tators should use the microphone and the mute feature should be determined.12 This minimizes the time that can be lost while waiting for students to respond. Other strategies have been suggested to build rela- tionships with distant students. They are: initial or pe- riodic face-to-face meetings, exchanging individual journals among locations, use of Internet course tools to exchange information (eg, WebCT, Blackboard, chat rooms, bulletin boards), formation of groups comprised of students from different sites, student led discussions, utilization of a list-serve, and/or providing virtual or telephone office hours.8 While it would be ideal for students from different sites to interact with each other, this is not as critical as student interactions with the instructor.3 Even with the use of the Internet and list- serves, distant learners can still feel alienated by the instructor.5 One study showed that even with the avail- ability of alternate means of interaction, students did not use these methods, but they did report increased satisfaction with the course.3 At the College of Phar- macy, a classroom with technical capabilities was des- ignated for distant students wishing to schedule virtual office hours with the instructor. These office hours al- lowed students to use CIV to interact with the instruc- tor on a one-to-one basis. After 2 years of the distant program, distant students have rarely used this method of communication due to the difficulties with schedul- ing an appointment time. List-serves have also been developed to improve communication; however, stu- dents seldom use this method. Some instructors have expressed dissatisfaction with the number of interruptions made by the distant sites. Interruptions by distant students may be due to decreased instructor availability immediately after class or by office hours. The students at West Palm Beach do not feel that they have easy access to instruc- tors, so they like to have the material explained thor- oughly during class time. Instructors should be aware that distant students and facilitators try to minimize unnecessary interruptions. During the first year of our distant program, distant students were asked not to schedule their early experi- ence rotations on Mondays or Fridays. This time would be reserved for make-up sessions in the event of an interrupted transmission during regular class time. This was used several times. Since the technology has im- proved, this request is no longer necessary. Instructors should also engage all personnel who support a successful learning experience for the distant students. To maximize interaction with students, instruc- tors teaching in a distant program should also develop open communications with faculty, facilitators, and staff involved with their course at the distant sites. For in- stance, communications must take place regularly with the CIV technician, support staff, and most importantly, the distant site facilitator.9,10 This lets the facilitator know ahead of time about any specific planned interactive exer- cises and allows smooth operation during class time. In- structors who regularly communicate with the distant sites have improved delivery of instructional material, communication of announcements, administration of ex- aminations, and decreased student frustration compared to instructors who do not communicate with the distant sites. Advance Preparation of Material Instructors should have all instructional material completed and distributed at the start of the class. A great source of frustration expressed by distant students occurs when instructional materials are not available prior to the start of class. Thus, preparation of all in- structional material should be completed with ample time for delivery of course materials to and for duplica- tion of the material at the distant sites. By providing in- structional materials to students in advance, the students’ fear of missing information when visual aids do not 6 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. transmit clearly is alleviated. Any supplemental infor- mation should also be distributed prior to class to mini- mize the anxiety of distant students. To ensure optimal delivery of instructional material, faculty members are encouraged to have all instructional material for the en- tire semester ready to distribute to all students on the first day of class. Some course coordinators also use WebCT for distribution of course materials. Prepare Material for Transmission Instructors should adjust the appearance of instruc- tional material for CIV. Due to the resolution of tele- vised images; font sizes should be enlarged for ade- quate visibility by the distant sites.13 For PowerPoint® presentations, the most effective font size for title text is a minimum of 40 and for slide text, a minimum of 28. Ideally, title text should be 44-54 fonts and slide text 32-36 fonts for PowerPoint® presentations. A general rule for slide text in a PowerPoint® presenta- tion is a maximum of 6 lines with a maximum of 6 words per line. To minimize distractions, PowerPoint® backgrounds with movement or audio should be avoided. For other documents, the optimum number of characters in a line that can be read at the distant sites is less than 27 and the number of words is 30. Also, intricate slides, pictures, or diagrams do not project well to the distant sites. The ideal fonts are those with minimal curves, such as Arial or other sans serif fonts. Fonts like Times New Roman or other serif fonts have more curves that may blur when transmitted, thus, making them difficult to read. Material used on a document camera should have adequate margins to avoid cutting off the image.12,14 Color schemes for vis- ual aids should be basic with significant contrast be- tween the background and the text (ie, black and white, blue and white). Bright color combinations, such as yellow and white, should be avoided because they can blur when transmitted to the distant sites. Enhance Instructional Delivery Instructors should also adjust their presentation style and appearance for CIV. To prevent sending a blurry image, instructors should avoid swift, jerky movements. The use of CIV results in loss of natural motion because the cameras are only able to focus pre- cisely when the subject is still. Hence, if instructors pace, their movement may result in transmission of a swerving image that can be bothersome to the distant site students and may even cause motion sickness. In- structors should develop techniques to maintain eye-to- eye contact with distant students by looking directly into the appropriate camera. Speaking clearly, dis- tinctly, and slowly is important. Distant students are much more sensitive to voice qualities, such as pitch, tone, volume, pausing, and pacing.9 Appropriate dress consists of solid, neutral to medium colors that do not merge into the classroom décor. Tweeds, large stripes, polka dots, busy patterns, or brilliant whites should not be worn. Whites cause shimmering at the distant sites. Wearing a jacket or vest is recommended to allow proper placement of a lavaliere microphone.10,12,14, Students have reported that keeping the camera fo- cused on the instructor increases interactivity.6 How- ever, distant students can only see one image at a time, either the PowerPoint® presentation, document cam- era, or the instructor. This makes it difficult to always send an image of the instructor. For this reason, trans- mitting a document or computer graphic for longer than 15 seconds should be avoided, unless the instruc- tor can be shown simultaneously.6 An instructor at our College has successfully used a computer-connected video camera (WebCam) to simultaneously transmit their image and the instructional material. This allows distant students to observe the instructor and transmit- ted image at the same time, which may enhance learn- ing.2 When a WebCam is not used, CIV technicians will often assist by periodically changing the camera from the document or image to the instructor. How- ever, there are instances in which transmitting a graphic for longer than 15 seconds may be necessary. This may occur when distant students need to tran- scribe new material that is being presented. This is not a problem for local students who can view the instruc- tor and the image at the same time. If instructors do not ensure that enough time is given for distant students to write down new information, additional delays may occur when class is interrupted to ask the instructor to re-transmit or repeat information. Any questions asked, either from the local or dis- tant sites, should be repeated. This applies predomi- nantly to those questions asked at the local site because the instructor and local students may hear the question clearly, but the question is lost during transmission to the distant sites. Students at the distant sites often be- come frustrated when they hear the answer to an un- known question. Also, repeating the original question prevents distant students from asking that same ques- tion again. Therefore, it is good practice for the instruc- tor to repeat all questions regardless of the site of origination. Develop Basic Operational Skills Instructors involved in presenting information us- ing CIV technology should be adept at the basic opera- tions of the equipment. This includes managing minor 7 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. Table 2. Summary of Common Problems and Possible Solutions for CIV Teaching Common Problems Depersonalization of the instructor Stereotyping distant students Strained relationship building Difficulty concentrating Increased student anxieties Possible Solutions Planned interaction with distant site classrooms Use of additional measures for relationship building Account for additional time to present instructional material Provide instructional material prior to the start of the semester Adjust instructional material for optimal transmission Enhance instructor delivery of instructional material Develop basic skills for the operation of CIV equipment Maintain consistency across all sites • • • • • • • • • • • • • While the above recommendations are focused on improving instruction to distant students, it is important not to overlook students in the local classroom. Results from the development of a compressed video program for a telecommunications course showed that tradi- tional classroom activities were compromised when trying to involve the distant site.5 Students at the in- structor’s home site were distressed when the instructor taught from distant sites.6 This observation is also con- sistent with our experience. Faculty members are en- couraged to teach from the distant sites at least once a month. Currently, 80% to 90% of instructional material originates from the Fort Lauderdale campus. When Fort Lauderdale instructors teach from West Palm Beach or when West Palm Beach instructors teach from West Palm Beach, the students in Fort Lauderdale recognize the subtle differences in instruction that oc- cur when they become the distant site students. Suc- cessful instruction via CIV uses interactive techniques that should consistently involve students at all sites. See Table 2 for a summary of the common problems encountered via CIV and possible solutions to improve teaching with CIV technology. issues such as adjusting the volume, microphone (mute or unmute), and camera settings. In addition, instruc- tors should be able to switch between applications such as the computer, the document camera, the digital white board (Smartboard®), the VCR, and the DVD player. Instructors planning to use any of the above mentioned peripheral equipment should test their floppy disks, CD-ROMs, videocassettes, and/or DVDs to ensure operation and to prevent delays during class. This also allows the faculty member the opportunity to identify illegible overheads or incompatible computer programs and the time to develop alternative plans if needed.13 Hands-on training is critical for both instruc- tor and students. A pre-class session where the class meets informally to use the delivery technology and learn about the roles and responsibilities of the distant faculty members, facilitators, and technical support staff members should be considered.8 New student ori- entation at our College includes a session during which the director of information technology or the CIV tech- nician is available to explain how the CIV system op- erates and to answer questions. These sessions can also include discussions on the role of CIV in education, as well as in their career. FUTURE PLANS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS Maintain Consistency Across Sites Any decisions affecting the students should be consistent across all sites. Students from local and dis- tant sites often communicate with each other and knowledge of differences between deadlines, time re- quired to return grades, etc, disturbs the students. All examinations, grades, homework, and answer keys should be returned in a timely manner and simultane- ously to students at local and distant sites. Based on the first 2 years of experience with CIV technology and the increasing number of students, the West Palm Beach program established an “academic facilitator” position. Currently, 2 full-time faculty members serve as academic facilitators. This relieves the other West Palm Beach faculty from the shared facilitation responsibilities and allows them to focus on clinical, teaching, or scholarly activities. Other respon- sibilities of the academic facilitator may include facili- 8 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. tating laboratory discussions for classes such as com- munication skills and patient care management, grad- ing quizzes to enable prompt return to students, serving as faculty advisors, teaching lectures, and engaging in scholarly activities. The academic facilitators at the West Palm Beach program have earned their PharmD degrees and completed residency and/or fellowship training. Due to the decreased number of distant site faculty members and support personnel, we have found that it is preferable to have distant site facilitators with advanced training due to the other duties and obliga- tions they may be required to assume. Students have responded more favorably to facilitators who have earned a PharmD degree compared to other staff mem- bers who may facilitate classes. However, to perform their essential functions during class, distant site facili- tators do not need additional training other than in op- eration of the CIV equipment. At NSU, the advantages and disadvantages of having a distant site versus an academic facilitator present in the classroom is an area that requires further examination. Currently, the majority of classes are broadcast from the Fort Lauderdale campus. As the number of distant site faculty increase, a larger number of lectures will originate from the distant sites. As a result, faculty members at the main campus may have increasing dis- tant site facilitation responsibilities until an “academic facilitator” position is created at the Fort Lauderdale campus. The current instructional dynamics will also change because the majority of students are located at the main campus in Fort Lauderdale. Thus, continued development of teaching strategies for the delivery of instructional material via CIV must take place. While CIV technology has been able to provide pharmacy education to those who may be geographi- cally limited, it remains to be determined whether de- livery of educational material via CIV will produce similar academic outcomes compared with those achieved through traditional delivery of instructional material. Future research should be conducted to evaluate and assess entry-level PharmD student per- formance in a traditional learning environment com- pared to the performance of students receiving instruc- tion through CIV. Use of CIV technology was evalu- ated by a retrospective review of student performance in a pharmacotherapy series. The courses were taught during the third year of an entry-level PharmD pro- gram. A total of 79 students were reviewed. There were 33 students at the local site and 46 students at 2 distant sites. There was not a significant difference in mean GPA prior to enrollment in the course series (P>0.05). Differences in grades achieved for students taking integumentary, bone and joint, neurosensory, and psychiatry courses at the local site compared to the distant sites were not significant (P>0.05 for all courses).15 While this information is a positive indica- tion that the delivery of instructional material via CIV is effective, the critical question is whether there is a difference in learning outcomes regarding the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of clinical problems. Our students will receive all 3 years of their didac- tic coursework via CIV. Currently, all student learning is assessed using traditional examination methods in each course in the curriculum. In a pharmaceutics course, a comparison of test performance based on geographical location (Fort Lauderdale compared to West Palm Beach, P = 0.23) and relationship to the instructor (distant compared to local, P = 0.89) did not show a significant difference in performance.2 A simi- lar evaluation of examination performance is being conducted for a therapeutics course. Another study evaluating students in pharmacotherapy and pharma- cokinetic courses demonstrated that there were no dif- ferences in student performance based on whether the instructor was at a distant or local site. However, there was an unfavorable difference in student responses on teaching evaluations for distant instructors compared to those for live instructors (P<0.0014).16 The use of a comprehensive examination at the completion of 3 years of didactic coursework has been implemented to assess student academic performance prior to starting their fourth year rotations. The primary purpose of this examination is to assess the achievement of established educational outcomes. This examination will also be used to evaluate differences in performance based on geographical location of didactic education. A com- parison of student performance in clinical rotations during the fourth year will also be stratified by geo- graphical location. A determination of the relationship of baseline characteristics (ie, prepharmacy grade point average, Pharmacy College Admission Test scores, demographic information) with academic performance between distant and local students is also planned. Other assessments used to evaluate the level of student concern with technology (eg, technical problems, qual- ity of audiovisuals, etc) are ongoing. An alternative viewpoint is that distance education actually does not affect student learning.17 Thus, rather than focusing research on performance outcomes, re- search should be focused on student attitudes towards CIV, differences in student responsibilities, successful learner characteristics at distant sites, economic con- siderations, instructor effectiveness, and course de- sign.17 Other issues that should be addressed include 9 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2003; 67 (4) Article 118. 4. Sherry L. Issues in distance learning. Int J Educ Telecommu- nications. 1996;1:337-65. ownership of instructional material and changes in fac- ulty workload due to additional preparation time needed to develop coursework delivered by CIV or travel to and from the distant sites.12 5. Jones C, Klopfenstein BC. And the walls came tumbling down: Augmenting the distance education experience. Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Convention. November 1997. Chicago, Ill: ERIC Digest, ED 427753. CONCLUSIONS 6. Sorensen C, Baylen DM. Interaction in interactive television instruction: Perception versus reality. Paper presented at the An- nual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. April 1999. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: ERIC, ED 429590. There are many challenges to overcome with de- livery of instructional material by CIV. First, students and faculty members should understand the roles and responsibilities of the distant site facilitators, distant site faculty members, instructors, and CIV technicians. Second, instructors should be aware of and adjust for the problems that are encountered when delivering in- structional material via CIV. By planning interactions with all sites, using additional measures to build rela- tionships with students, accounting for additional time to present instructional material, preparing instructional material ahead of time, adjusting teaching styles and presentation materials, understanding how to use CIV equipment, and ensuring consistency across all sites, instructors can ensure successful teaching in a CIV classroom. 7. Scollay SJ. Distance learning with compressed interactive video: What are the issues? Preliminary thoughts. Teaching at the University of Kentucky. Available at: http://www.uky.edu/ UGS/tlc/news/newsltr2-3.html. Accessed August 13, 2002. 8. Willis B. Strategies for teaching at a distance. ERIC Digest. 1992: ED 351008 9. Bruce MA, Shade RA. Effective teaching and learning strate- gies using compressed video. Tech Trends. 1995;40:18-22. 10. Williams M. The egghead and the TV eye. ERIC Digest. 1996; ED 398870. 11. MacIntosh J. Learner concerns and teaching strategies for video-conferencing. J Contin Educ Nurs. 2001;32:260-5. 12. Zalon ML. A prime-time primer for distance education. Nurse Educ. 2000;25:28-33. 13. Reznich CB. Videoconferencing for instructional and ad- ministrative purposes: The audience reacts. Medical Education Online. Available at: http://www.utmb.edu/meo/. Accessed Au- gust 13, 2002. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank Graciela Armayor, PharmD, W. Cary Mobley, PhD, and Josè Rey, PharmD, for their careful review of and insightful sug- gestions for the manuscript. 14. Keegan D. Distance education technology for the new millen- nium: Compressed video teaching. ZIFF Papiere 101. December 1995, Fern University, Hagen, Germany, ERIC, ED 389931. 15. MacLaughlin EJ, Supernaw RB, Howard KA. Impact of dis- tance learning technology on student performance. Poster pres- entation at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Annual Meeting. July 2002, Kansas City, Mo. REFERENCES 1. Ward CT, Rey JA, Mobley WC, Evans C. Establishing a dis- tance learning site for a traditional, entry-level, Doctor of Phar- macy program. Am J Pharm Educ. 2003;67:153-9. 16. Chisholm MA, Miller AW, Spruill WJ et al. Influence of interactive videoconferencing on the performance of pharmacy students and instructors. Am J Pharm Educ. 2000;64:152-8. 2. Mobley WC. Adaptation of a hypertext pharmaceutics course for videoconference-based distance education. Am J Pharm Educ. 2002;66:140-3. 17. Carter A. Student perception of instruction using a compressed video network. J Educ Technol Syst. 1997-1998;26:187-98. 3. Kelsey KD. Participant interaction in a course delivered by interactive compressed video technology. Am J Distance Educ. 2000;14:63-74. 10 INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND ASSESSMENT Distance Education: Using Compressed Interactive Video Technology for an Entry-Level Doctor of Pharmacy Program 
work_kqznsw7eivakhktbzs2gp4ptdu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_krfaxkcdwvdm5luifo3oeqcgiy	----	Effect of Teaching using Whole Brain Instruction on Accounting Learning | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2009070104 Corpus ID: 6273000Effect of Teaching using Whole Brain Instruction on Accounting Learning @article{Lee2009EffectOT, title={Effect of Teaching using Whole Brain Instruction on Accounting Learning}, author={Li-Tze Lee and J. C. Hung}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2009}, volume={7}, pages={63-84} } Li-Tze Lee, J. C. Hung Published 2009 Computer Science, Psychology Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. McCarthy (1985) constructed the 4MAT teaching model, an eight step instrument developed in 1980, by synthesizing Dewey’s experiential learning, Kolb’s four learning styles, Jung’s personality types, as well as Bogen’s left mode and right mode of brain processing preferences. An important implication of this model is that learning retention is improved in the whole brain treatment group and thus this model is effective in retaining learning information as long term memory. Specifically, when… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 10 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Methods Citations 1 Results Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Dewey Decimal Classification 10 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Developing Brain Based Learning (BBL) Model Integrated with Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) Model on Science Learning in Junior High School in Malang Baiq Sri Handayani, A. D. Corebima, H. Susilo, S. Mahanal Computer Science 2020 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Promoting student learning by having college students participate in an online environment C. Lo, Ebony L. Johnson, Kimberly A. Tenorio Psychology 2011 11 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Business Report Writing Students' Perceptions of Their Ability to Succeed in an Online Environment vs. Students' Performance in an Online Course Kelly Wilkinson, Tena B. Crews Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2009 4 Save Alert Research Feed Management capability in a structural modelling of the quality of economics and accounting education in Indonesia Oding Supriadi, Mutrofin Computer Science 2020 Highly Influenced PDF View 6 excerpts, cites methods and results Save Alert Research Feed Distance Learning in Architecture/Planning Education: A Case Study in the Faculty of Architecture at Selcuk University H. A. Meşhur, H. A. Bala Engineering 2015 2 Save Alert Research Feed Mentoring academic staff at a higher education institution : a whole brain approach Hannelie Scheepers Political Science 2014 Save Alert Research Feed Authentic cases and media triggers for supporting problem-based learning in teacher education M. Keppell Psychology 2008 14 Save Alert Research Feed Advertising the accountant: a stereotype in crisis Frances Miley, Andrew P Read Sociology 2014 1 Save Alert Research Feed Using word clouds to develop proactive learners Frances Miley, Andrew P Read Psychology 2011 34 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Accessing ICT Enabled Content in Low-Income Countries: Think Big, Start Small, and Scale Up S. Negash Economics, Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2010 11 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 60 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Training within a Cooperative Group Learning Context on Computer Achievement and Anxiety: An Aptitude-Treatment Interaction Study Valentina McInerney, D. Mcinerney, H. Marsh Psychology 1997 71 Save Alert Research Feed Effects of the 4MAT System of Instruction on Students' Achievement, Retention, and Attitudes Rhonda M. Wilkerson, K. White Psychology The Elementary School Journal 1988 21 Save Alert Research Feed The Effects Of Cooperative Learning Methods On Achievement, Retention, And Attitudes Of Home Economics Students In North Carolina R. Abu, J. Flowers Psychology 1997 51 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Learners as information processors: Legacies and limitations of educational psychology's second.. R. Mayer Sociology 1996 267 Save Alert Research Feed Effects of approach to teaching on student achievement, retention, and attitude Harry N. Boone Psychology 1990 29 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Generative Teaching of Comprehension M. Wittrock Psychology The Elementary School Journal 1991 112 Save Alert Research Feed Encouraging Thinking in High School and Middle School: Constraints and Possibilities. Ervin F. Sparapani Psychology 1998 14 Save Alert Research Feed In Search of . . . Brain-Based Education J. Bruer Psychology 1999 128 Save Alert Research Feed Training Strategies for the Twenty-First Century: Using Recent Research on Learning to Enhance Training B. M. Dwyer Psychology 2002 35 Save Alert Research Feed The act of discovery. J. Bruner Psychology 1961 1,743 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... 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work_kvhbk36tt5dizae424xy3neggq	----	tifs-corradi-2937640-proof.pdf IE EE P ro of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY 1 Relative Privacy Threats and Learning From Anonymized Data Michele Boreale, Fabio Corradi , and Cecilia Viscardi Abstract— We consider group-based anonymization schemes,1 a popular approach to data publishing. This approach aims2 at protecting privacy of the individuals involved in a dataset,3 by releasing an obfuscated version of the original data, where4 the exact correspondence between individuals and attribute5 values is hidden. When publishing data about individuals, one6 must typically balance the learner’s utility against the risk7 posed by an attacker, potentially targeting individuals in the8 dataset. Accordingly, we propose a unified Bayesian model of9 group-based schemes and a related MCMC methodology to learn10 the population parameters from an anonymized table. This allows11 one to analyze the risk for any individual in the dataset to be12 linked to a specific sensitive value, when the attacker knows13 the individual’s nonsensitive attributes, beyond what is implied14 for the general population. We call this relative threat analysis.15 Finally, we illustrate the results obtained with the proposed16 methodology on a real-world dataset.17 Index Terms— Privacy, anonymization, k-anonymity, MCMC18 methods.19 I. INTRODUCTION20 WE CONSIDER a scenario where datasets containing21 personal microdata are released in anonymized form.22 The goal here is to enable the computation of general popula-23 tion characteristics with reasonable accuracy, at the same time24 preventing leakage of sensitive information about individuals25 in the dataset. The Database of Genotype and Phenotype [32],26 the U.K. Biobank [36] and the UCI Machine Learning repos-27 itory [47] are well-known examples of repositories providing28 this type of datasets.29 Anonymized datasets always have “personal identifiable30 information”, such as names, SSNs and phone numbers,31 removed. At the same time, they include information32 derived from nonsensitive (say, gender, ZIP code, age,33 nationality) as well as sensitive (say, disease, income)34 attributes. Certain combinations of nonsensitive attributes, like35 �gender, date of birth, ZIP code�, may be used to uniquely36 identify a significant fraction of the individuals in a population,37 thus forming so-called quasi-identifiers. For a given target38 individual, the victim, an attacker might easily obtain this piece39 of information (e.g. from personal web pages, social networks40 AQ:1 Manuscript received January 18, 2019; revised May 2, 2019 and August 7, AQ:2 2019; accepted August 15, 2019. This paper was presented at the Proceedings of SIS 2017 [5]. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was Prof. Xiaodong Lin. (Corresponding author: Fabio Corradi.) The authors are with the Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, AQ:3 Applicazioni (DiSIA), Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy (e-mail: fabio.corradi@unifi.it). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIFS.2019.2937640 etc.), use it to identify him/her within a dataset and learn the 41 corresponding sensitive attributes. This attack was famously 42 demonstrated by L. Sweeney, who identified Massachusetts’ 43 Governor Weld medical record within the Group Insurance 44 Commission (GIC) dataset [46]. Note that identity disclosure, 45 that is the precise identification of an individual’s record in 46 a dataset, is not necessary to arrive at a privacy breach: 47 depending on the dataset, an attacker might infer the victim’s 48 sensitive information, or even a few highly probable candidate 49 values for it, without identity disclosure involved. This more 50 general type of threat, sensitive attribute disclosure, is the one 51 we focus on here.1 52 In an attempt to mitigate such threats for privacy, regulatory 53 bodies mandate complex, often baroque syntactic constraints 54 on the published data. As an example, here is an excerpt from 55 the HIPAA safe harbour deidentification standard [48], which 56 prescribes a list of 18 identifiers that should be removed or 57 obfuscated, such as 58 all geographic subdivisions smaller than a state, 59 including street address, city, county, precinct, ZIP 60 code, and their equivalent geocodes, except for the 61 initial three digits of the ZIP code if, according to 62 the current publicly available data from the Bureau 63 of the Census: (1) the geographic unit formed by 64 combining all ZIP codes with the same three initial 65 digits contains more than 20,000 people; and (2) 66 the initial three digits of a ZIP code for all such 67 geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people 68 is changed to 000. 69 There exists a large body of research, mainly in 70 Computer Science, on syntactic methods. In particular, 71 group-based anonymization techniques have been systemat- 72 ically investigated, starting with L. Sweeney’s proposal of 73 k-anonymity [46], followed by its variants, like �-diversity [30] 74 and Anatomy [49].In group-based methods, the anonymized - 75 or obfuscated - version of a table is obtained by partitioning 76 the set of records into groups, which are then processed to 77 enforce certain properties. The rationale is that, even knowing 78 that an individual belongs to a group of the anonymized 79 table, it should not be possible for an attacker to link that 80 individual to a specific sensitive value in the group. Two 81 examples of group based anonymization are in Table I, adapted 82 1 Depending on the nature of the dataset, the mere membership disclosure, i.e. revealing that an individual is present in a dataset, may also be considered as a privacy breach: think of data about individuals who in the past have been involved in some form of felony. We will not discuss membership disclosure privacy breaches in this paper. 1556-6013 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3949-3837 IE EE P ro of 2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY TABLE I A TABLE (TOP) ANONYMI ZED ACCORDI NG TO 2-ANONYMI TY VI A LOCAL RECODI NG (MI DDLE) AND ANATOMY (BOTTOM) from [9]. The topmost, original table collects medical data83 from eight individuals; here Disease is considered as the84 only sensitive attribute. The central table is a 2-anonymous,85 2-diverse table: within each group the nonsensitive attribute86 values have been generalized following group-specific rules87 (local recoding) so as to make them indistinguishable; more-88 over, each group features 2 distinct sensitive values. In general,89 each group in a k-anonymous table consists of at least k90 records, which are indistinguishable when projected on the91 nonsensitive attributes; �-diversity additionally requires the92 presence in each group of at least � distinct sensitive values,93 with approximately the same frequency. This is an example94 of horizontal scheme. Table I (c) is an example of application95 of the Anatomy scheme: within each group, the nonsensitive96 part of the rows are vertically and randomly permuted, thus97 breaking the link between sensitive and nonsensitive values.98 Again, the table is 2-diverse.99 In recent years, the effectiveness of syntactic anonymization100 methods has been questioned, as offering weak guarantees101 against attackers with strong background knowledge – very102 precise contextual information about their victims. Differen-103 tial privacy [18], which promises protection in the face of104 arbitrary background knowledge, while valuable in the release105 of summary statistics, still appears not of much use when it 106 comes to data publishing (see the Related works paragraph). 107 As a matter of fact, release of syntactically anonymized tables 108 appears to be the most widespread data publishing practice, 109 with quite effective tool support (see e.g. [37]). 110 In the present paper, discounting the risk posed by attackers 111 with strong background knowledge, we pose the problem in 112 relative terms: given that whatever is learned about the general 113 population from an anonymized dataset represents legitimate 114 and useful information (“smoke is associated with cancer”), 115 one should prevent an attacker from drawing conclusions about 116 specific individuals in the table (“almost certainly the target 117 individual has cancer”): in other words, learning sensitive 118 information for an individual in the dataset, beyond what is 119 implied for the general population. To see what is at stake 120 here, consider dataset (b) in Table I. Suppose that the attacker’s 121 victim is a Malaysian living at ZIP code 45501, and known 122 to belong to the original table. The victim’s record must 123 therefore be in the first group of the anonymized table. The 124 attacker may reason that, with the exception of the first group, 125 a Japanese is never connected to Heart Disease; this hint 126 can become a strong evidence in a larger, real-world table. 127 Then the attacker can link with high probability the Malaysian 128 victim in the first group to Heart Disease. In this attack, 129 the attacker combines knowledge of the nonsensitive attributes 130 of the victim (Malaysian, ZIP code 45501) with the group 131 structure and the knowledge learned from the anonymized 132 table. 133 We propose a unified probabilistic model to reason about 134 such forms of leakage. In doing so, we clearly distinguish the 135 position of the learner from that of the attacker: the resulting 136 notion is called relative privacy threat. In our proposal, both 137 the learner and the attacker activities are modeled as forms 138 of Bayesian inference: the acquired knowledge is represented 139 as a joint posterior probability distribution over the sensitive 140 and nonsensitive values, given the anonymized table and, 141 in the case of the attacker, knowledge of the victim’s presence 142 in the table. A comparison between these two distributions 143 determines what we call relative privacy threat. Since posterior 144 distributions are in general impossible to express analytically, 145 we also put forward a MCMC method to practically estimate 146 such posteriors. We also illustrate the results of applying our 147 method to the Adult dataset from the UCI Machine Learn- 148 ing repository [47], a common benchmark in anonymization 149 research. 150 A. Related Works 151 Sweeney’s k-anonymity [46] is among the most popu- 152 lar proposals aiming at a systematic treatment of syntactic 153 anonymization of microdata. The underlying idea is that every 154 individual in the released dataset should be hidden in a 155 “crowds of k”. Over the years, k-anonymity has proven to 156 provide weak guarantees against attackers who know much 157 about their victims, that is have a strong background knowl- 158 edge. For example, an attacker may know from sources other 159 than the released data that his victim does not suffer from 160 certain diseases, thus ruling out all possibilities but one in 161 IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 3 the victims’s group. Additional constraints may be enforced162 in order to mitigate those attacks, like �-diversity [30] and163 t-closeness [27]. Differential Privacy [18] promises protec-164 tion in the face of arbitrary background knowledge. In its165 basic, interactive version, this means that, when querying a166 database via a differentially private mechanism, one will get167 approximately the same answers, whether the data of any168 specific individual is included or not in the database. This is169 typically achieved by injecting controlled levels of noise in the170 reported answer, e.g. Laplacian noise. Differential Privacy is171 very effective when applied to certain summary statistics, such172 as histograms. However, it raises a number of difficulties when173 applied to table publishing: in concrete cases, the level of noise174 necessary to guarantee an acceptable degree of privacy would175 destroy utility [12], [13], [44]. Moreover, due to correlation176 phenomena, it appears that Differential Privacy cannot in177 general be used to control evidence about the participation178 of individuals in a database [4], [26]. In fact, the no-free-179 lunch theorem of Kifer and Machanavajjhala [26] implies that180 it is impossible to guarantee both privacy and utility, without181 making assumptions about how the data have been generated182 (e.g., independence assumptions). Clifton and Tassa [10] crit-183 ically review issues and criticisms involved in both syntactic184 methods and Differential Privacy, concluding that both have185 their place, in Privacy Preserving- Data Publishing and Data186 Mining, respectively. Both approaches have issues that call187 for further research. A few proposals involve blending the188 two approaches, with the goal to achieve both strong privacy189 guarantees and utility, see e.g. [28].190 A major source of inspiration for our work has been191 Kifer’s [25]. The main point of [25] is to demonstrate a pitfall192 of the random worlds model, where the attacker is assumed193 to assign equal probability to all cleartext tables compatible194 with the given anonymized one. Kifer shows that a Bayesian195 attacker willing to learn from the released table can draw196 sharper inferences than those possible in the random worlds197 model. In particular, Kifer shows that it is possible to extract198 from (anatomized) �-diverse tables belief probabilities greater199 than 1/�, by means of the so-called deFinetti attack. While200 pinpointing a deficiency of the random worlds model, it is201 questionable if this should be considered an attack, or just202 a legitimate learning strategy. Quoting [10] on the deFinetti203 attack:204 The question is whether the inference of a general205 behavior of the population in order to draw belief206 probabilities on individuals in that population con-207 stitutes a breach of privacy (. . .). To answer this208 question positively for an attack on privacy, the suc-209 cess of the attack when launched against records that210 are part of the table should be significantly higher211 than its success against records that are not part of212 the table. We are not aware of such a comparison213 for the deFinetti attack.214 It is this very issue that we tackle in the present paper.215 Specifically, our main contribution here is to put forward a216 concept of relative privacy threat, as a means to assess the217 risks implied by publishing tables anonymized via group-based218 methods. To this end, we introduce: (a) a unified probabilistic 219 model for group-based schemes; (b) rigorous characterizations 220 of the learner and the attacker’s inference, based on Bayesian 221 reasoning; and, (c) a related MCMC method, which generalizes 222 and systematizes that proposed in [25]. 223 Very recently, partly inspired by differential privacy, a 224 few authors have considered what might be called a rel- 225 ative or differential approach to assessing privacy threats, 226 in conjunction with some notion of learning or inference 227 from the anonymized data. Especially relevant to our work 228 is differential inference, introduced in a recent paper by 229 Kassem et al. [24]. These authors make a clear distinction 230 between two different types of information that can be inferred 231 from anonymized data: learning of “public” information, con- 232 cerning the population, should be considered as legitimate; 233 on the contrary, leakage of “private” information about indi- 234 viduals should be prevented. To make this distinction formal, 235 given a dataset, they compare two probability distributions 236 that can be machine-learned from two distinct training sets: 237 one including and one excluding a target individual. An attack 238 exists if there is a significant difference between the two dis- 239 tributions, measured e.g. in terms of Earth Moving Distance. 240 While similar in spirit to ours, this approach is conceptually 241 and technically different from what we do here. Indeed, in our 242 case the attacker explicitly takes advantage of the extra piece 243 of information concerning the presence of the victim in the 244 dataset to attack the target individual, which leads to a more 245 direct notion of privacy breach. Moreover, in [24] a Bayesian 246 approach to inference is not clearly posed, so the obtained 247 results lack a semantic foundation, and strongly depend on the 248 adopted learning algorithm. Pyrgelis et al. [39] use Machine 249 Learning for membership inference on aggregated location 250 data, building a binary classifier that can be used to predict 251 if a target user is part of the aggregate data or not. A similar 252 goal is pursued in [35]. Again, a clear semantic foundation 253 of these methods is lacking, and the obtained results can be 254 validated only empirically. In a similar vein, [3] and [17] have 255 proposed statistical techniques to detect privacy violations, 256 but they only apply to differential privacy. Other works, such 257 as [23] and [33], have just considered the problem of how 258 to effectively learn from anonymized datasets, but not of 259 how to characterize legitimate, as opposed to non-legitimate, 260 inference. 261 On the side of the random worlds model, Chi-Wing Wong 262 et al.’s work [9] shows how information on the population 263 extracted from the anonymized table – in the authors’ words, 264 the foreground knowledge – can be leveraged by the attacker 265 to violate the privacy of target individuals. The underlying rea- 266 soning, though, is based on the random worlds model, hence 267 is conceptually and computationally very different from the 268 Bayesian model adopted in the present paper. Bewong et al. [2] 269 assess relative privacy threat for transactional data by a suitable 270 extension of the notion of t -closeness, which is based on com- 271 paring the relative frequency of the victim’s sensitive attribute 272 in the whole table with that in the victim’s group. Here the 273 underlying assumption is that the attacker’s prior knowledge 274 about sensitive attributes matches the public knowledge, and 275 that the observed sensitive attributes frequencies provide good 276 IE EE P ro of 4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY estimates both for the public knowledge and the attacker’s277 belief. Our proposal yields more sophisticated estimates via a278 Bayesian inferential procedure. Moreover, in our scenario the279 assumption on the attacker’s knowledge is relaxed requiring280 only the knowledge of the victim’s presence in whatever group281 of the table.282 A concept very different from the previously discussed pro-283 posals is Rubin’s multiple imputation approach [43], by which284 only tables of synthetic data, generated sampling from a285 predictive distribution learned from the original table, are286 released. This avoids syntactic masking/obfuscation, whose287 analysis requires customized algorithms on the part of the288 learner, and leaves to the data producer the burden of synthesis.289 Note that this task can be nontrivial and raises a number of290 difficulties concerning the availability of auxiliary variables291 for non-sampled units, see [42]. In Rubin’s view, synthetic292 data overcome all privacy concerns, in that no real individual’s293 data is actually released. However, this position has been ques-294 tioned, on the grounds that information about participants may295 leak through the chain: original table → posterior parameters296 → synthetic tables. In particular, Machanavajjhala et al. [31]297 study Differential Privacy of synthetic categorical data. They298 show that the release of such data can be made differen-299 tially private, at the cost of introducing very powerful priors.300 However, such priors can lead to a serious distortion in301 whatever is learned from the data, thus compromising utility.302 In fact, [50] argues that, in concrete cases, the required pseudo303 sample size hyperparameter could be larger than the size of304 the table. Experimental studies [7], [8] appear to confirm305 that such distorting priors are indeed necessary for released306 synthetic data to provide acceptable guarantees, in the sense307 of Differential Privacy. See [50] for a recent survey of results308 about synthetic data release and privacy. An outline of the309 model presented here, with no proofs of correctness, appeared310 in the conference paper [5].311 B. Structure of the Paper312 The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section313 II we propose a unified formal definition of vertical and314 horizontal schemes. In Section III we put forward a probabilis-315 tic model to reason about learner’s and attacker’s inference;316 the case of prior partial knowledge of the victim’s attributes317 on the part of the attacker is also covered. Based on that,318 measures of (relative) privacy threats and utility are introduced319 in Section IV. In Section V, we study a MCMC algorithm to320 learn the population parameters posterior and the attacker’s321 probability distribution from the anonymized data. In Section322 VI, we illustrate the results of an experiment conducted on a323 real-world dataset. A few concluding remarks and perspectives324 for future work are reported in Section VII. Some technical325 material has been confined to Appendix A.326 II. GROUP BASED ANONYMIZATION SCHEMES327 A dataset consists of a collection of rows, where each row328 corresponds to an individual. Formally, let R and S, ranged329 over by r and s respectively, be finite non-empty sets of330 nonsensitive and sensitive values, respectively. A row is a pair331 (s, r ) ∈ S × R. There might be more than one sensitive and 332 nonsensitive characteristic, so s and r can be thought of as 333 vectors. 334 A group-based anonymization algorithm A is an algorithm 335 that takes a multiset of rows as input and yields an obfuscated 336 table as output, according to the scheme 337 multiset of rows −→ cleartext table −→ obfuscated table. 338 Formally, fix N ≥ 1. Given a multiset of N rows, d = 339 {|(s1, r1), . . . , (sN , r N )|}, A will first arrange d into a sequence 340 of groups, t = g1, . . . , gk , the cleartext table. Each group in 341 turn is a sequence of ni rows, gi = (si,1, ri,1), . . . , (si,ni , ri,ni ), 342 where ni can vary from group to group. Note that both the 343 number of groups, k ≥ 1, and the number of rows in each 344 group, ni , depend in general on the original multiset d as well 345 as on properties of the considered algorithm – such as ensuring 346 k-anonymity and �-diversity (see below). The obfuscated table 347 is then obtained as a sequence t ∗ = g∗1 , . . . , g∗k , where the 348 obfuscation of each group gi is a pair g ∗ i = (mi , li ). Here, 349 each mi = si,1, . . . , si,ni is the sequence of sensitive values 350 occurring in gi ; each li , called generalized nonsensitive value, 351 is one of the following: 352 • for horizontal schemes, a superset of gi ’s nonsensitive 353 values: li ⊇ {ri,1, . . . , ri,ni }; 354 • for vertical schemes, the multiset of gi ’s nonsensitive 355 values: li = {|ri,1, . . . , ri,ni |}. 356 Note that the generalized nonsensitive values in vertical 357 schemes include all and only the values, with multiplicities, 358 found in the corresponding original group. On the other hand, 359 generalized nonsensitive values in horizontal schemes may 360 include additional values, thus generating a superset. What 361 values enter the superset depends on the adopted technique, 362 e.g. micro-aggregation, generalization or suppression; in any 363 case this makes the rows in each group indistinguishable when 364 projected onto the nonsensitive attributes. For example, each 365 of 45501, 45502 is generalized to the superset 4550∗ = 366 {45500, 45501, . . . , 45509} in the first group of Table I(b). 367 Sometimes it will be notationally convenient to ignore the 368 group structure of t altogether, and regard the cleartext table 369 t simply as a sequence of rows, (s1, r1), (s2, r2), . . . , (s1, sN ). 370 Each row (s j , r j ) is then uniquely identified within the table 371 t by its index 1 ≤ j ≤ N . 372 An instance of horizontal schemes is k-anonymity [46]: 373 in a k-anonymous table, each group consists of at least k≥ 374 1 rows, where the different nonsensitive values appearing 375 within each group have been generalized so as to make them 376 indistinguishable. In the most general case, different occur- 377 rences of the same nonsensitive value might be generalized in 378 different ways, depending on their position (index) within the 379 table t : this is the case of local recoding. Alternatively, each 380 occurrence of a nonsensitive value is generalized in the same 381 way, independently of its position: this is the case of global 382 recoding. Further conditions may be imposed on the resulting 383 anonymized table, such as �-diversity, requiring that at least 384 � ≥ 1 distinct values of the sensitive attribute appear in each 385 group. Table I (center) shows an example of k= 2-anonymous 386 and � = 2-diverse table: in each group the nonsensitive 387 IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 5 TABLE II SUMMARY OF NOTATI ON values are indistinguishable and two different sensitive values388 (diseases) appear in each group.389 An instance of vertical schemes is Anatomy [49]: within390 each group, the link between the sensitive and nonsensitive391 values is hidden by randomly permuting one of the two392 parts, for example the nonsensitive one. As a consequence,393 an anatomized table may be seen as consisting of two sub-394 tables: a sensitive and a nonsensitive one. Table I (c) shows395 an example of anatomized table: in the nonsensitive sub-table,396 the reference to the corresponding sensitive values is lost; only397 the multiset of nonsensitive values appears for each group.398 Remark 1 (disjointness): Some anonymization schemes399 enforce the following disjointness property on the obfuscated400 table t ∗:401 Any two generalized nonsensitive values in t ∗ are402 disjoint: i = j implies li ∩ l j = ∅.403 We need not assume this property in our treatment – although404 assuming it may be computationally useful in practice (see405 Section III).406 For ease of reference, we provide a summary of the notation407 that will be used throughout the paper in Table II.408 III. A UNIFIED PROBABILISTIC MODEL409 We provide a unified probabilistic model for reasoning on410 group-based schemes. We first introduce the random variables411 of the model together with their joint density function. On top412 of these variables, we then define the probability distributions413 on S × R that formalize the learner and the attacker knowl-414 edge, given the obfuscated table.415 A. Random Variables416 The model consists of the following random variables.417 • �, taking values in the set of full support probability418 distributions D over S × R, is the joint probability419 distribution of the sensitive and nonsensitive attributes in420 the population.421 • T = G1, . . . , Gk , taking values in the set of422 cleartext tables T . Each group Gi is in turn a423 sequence of ni ≥ 1 consecutive rows in T , Gi =424 (Si,1, Ri,1), . . . , (Si,ni , Ri,ni ). The number of groups k is425 not fixed, but depends on the anonymization scheme and 426 the specific tuples composing T . 427 • T ∗ = G∗1, . . . , G∗k , taking values in the set of obfuscated 428 tables T ∗. 429 We assume that the above three random variables form a 430 Markov chain: 431 � −→ T −→ T ∗. (1) 432 In other words, uncertainty on T is driven by �, and T ∗ 433 solely depends on the table T and the underlying obfuscation 434 algorithm. As a result, T ∗ ⊥⊥ � | T . Equivalently, the 435 joint probability density function f of these variables can be 436 factorized as follows, where π, t, t ∗ range over D, T and T ∗, 437 respectively: 438 f (π, t, t ∗) = f (π) f (t|π) f (t ∗|t). (2) 439 Additionally, we shall assume the following: 440 • π ∈ D is encoded as a pair π = (πS , πR|S) where πR|S = 441 {πR|s : s ∈ S}. Here, πS are the parameters of a full 442 support categorical distribution over S, and, for each s ∈ 443 S, πR|s are the parameters of a full support categorical 444 distribution over R. For each (s, r ) ∈ S × R 445 f (s, r |π) = f (s|π) · f (r |πR|s) 446 We also posit that the πS and the πR|s ’s are chosen inde- 447 pendently, according to Dirichlet distributions of hyper- 448 parameters α = (α1, . . . , α|S|) and βs = (βs1, . . . , βs|R|), 449 respectively. In other words 450 f (π) = Dir(πS | α) · � s∈S Dir(πR|s | βs ). (3) 451 The hyperparameters α and β may incorporate prior 452 (background) knowledge on the population, if this is 453 available. Otherwise, a uniformative prior can be chosen 454 setting αi = βsj = 1 for each i, s, j . When r ∈ R 455 is a tuple of attributes, we shall assume conditional 456 independence of those attributes given s, so that the joint 457 probability of r |s can be determined by factorization. 458 • The N individual rows composing the table t , say 459 (s1, r1), . . . , (sN , r N ), are assumed to be drawn i.i.d. 460 according to f (·|π). Equivalently 461 f (t|π) = f (s1, r1|π) · · · f (sN , r N |π). (4) 462 Instances of the above model can be obtained by specifying 463 an anonymization mechanism A. In particular, the distribution 464 f (t ∗|t) only depends on the obfuscation algorithm that is 465 adopted, say obf(t). In the important special case obf(t) acts 466 as a deterministic function on tables, f (t ∗|t) = 1 if and only 467 if obf(t) = t ∗, otherwise f (t ∗|t) = 0. 468 B. Learner and Attacker Knowledge 469 We shall denote by pL the probability distribution over S × 470 R that can be learned given the anonymized table t ∗. This 471 distribution we take to be the average of f (s, r |π) with respect 472 IE EE P ro of 6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY to the density f (� = π|T ∗ = t ∗). Formally, for each (s, r ) ∈473 S × R:474 pL(s, r |t ∗) �= Eπ∼ f (π|t ∗)[ f (s, r |π)] = � D f (s, r |π) f(π|t ∗) dπ.475 (5)476 Of course, we can condition pL on any given r and obtain477 the conditional probability pL(s|r, t ∗). Equivalently, we can478 compute479 pL(s|r, t ∗) �= Eπ∼ f (π|t ∗)[ f (s|r, π)] = � D f (s|r, π) f (π|t ∗) dπ.480 (6)481 In particular, one can read off this distribution on a victim’s482 nonsensitive attribute, say rv, and obtain the corresponding483 distribution on S.484 We shall assume the attacker knows the values of T ∗ = t ∗485 and the nonsensitive value rv of a target individual, the victim;486 moreover the attacker knows the victim is an individual in487 the table. Accordingly, in what follows we fix once and for488 all t ∗ and rv: these are the values observed by the attacker.489 Given knowledge of a victim’s nonsensitive attribute rv and490 knowledge that the victim is actually in the table T , we can491 define the attacker’s distribution on S as follows.492 Let us introduce in the above model a new random vari-493 able V , identifying the index of the victim within the clear-494 text table T . We posit that V is uniformly distributed on495 {1, . . . , N }, and independent from �, T , T ∗. Recalling that496 each row (S j , R j ) is identified within T by a unique index497 j , we can define the attacker’s probability distribution on S,498 after seeing t ∗ and rv, as follows, where it is assumed that499 f (RV = rv, t ∗) > 0, that is the observed victim’s rv is500 compatible with t ∗:501 pA(s|rv, t ∗) �= f (SV = s | RV = rv, t ∗). (7)502 The following crucial lemma provides us with a characteri-503 zation of the above probability distribution that is only based504 on a selection of the marginals R j given t ∗. This will be the505 basis for actually computing pA(s|rv, t ∗). Note that, on the506 right-hand side, only those rows whose sensitive value - known507 from t ∗ - is s contribute to the summation. A proof of the508 lemma is reported in Appendix A.509 Lemma 1: Let T = (S j , R j ) j ∈ 1...N . Let s j be the sensitive510 value in the j -th entry of t ∗. Let rv and t ∗ such that f (RV =511 rv, t ∗) > 0. Then512 pA(s|rv, t ∗) ∝ � j : s j =s f (R j = rv | t ∗). (8)513 Note that the disjointness of generalized nonsensitive values514 of the groups can make the computation of (8) more efficient,515 restricting the summation on the right-hand side to a unique516 group.517 Example 1: In order to illustrate the difference between518 the learner’s and the attacker’s inference, we reconsider the519 toy example in the Introduction. Let t ∗ be the 2-anonymous,520 2-diverse Table I(b). Assume the attacker’s victim is521 the first individual of the original dataset, who is from522 Malaysia(= M ) and lives in the ZIP code 45501 area, hence523 TABLE III POS TERI OR DI S TRI BUTI ONS OF DI S EAS ES F OR A VI CTI M WI TH rv = (M, 45501), F OR THE ANONYMI ZED t ∗ I N TABLE I(B). NB: FIGURES AFFECTED BY ROUNDI NG ERRORS rv = (M, 45501). Table III shows the belief probabilities of 524 the learner, pL(s|rv, t ∗), and of the attacker, pA(s|rv, t ∗), for 525 the victim’s disease s. We also include the random worlds 526 model probabilities, pRW(s|rv, t ∗), which are just proportional 527 to the frequency of each sensitive value within the victim’s 528 group. Note that the learner and the attacker distributions have 529 the same mode, but the attacker is more confident about his 530 prediction of the victim’s disease. The random worlds model 531 produces a multi-modal solution. 532 As to the computation of the probabilities in Table III, 533 a routine application of the equations (2) – (8) shows that 534 pL and pA reduce to the expressions (9) and (10) below, 535 given in terms of the model’s density (2). The crucial point 536 here is that the adversary knows the group his victim is in, 537 i.e. the first two lines of t ∗ in the example. Below, s ∈ S; 538 for j = 1, 2, s j denotes the sensitive value of the j -th row, 539 while t is a cleartext table, from which t− j is obtained by 540 removing (s j , rv). It is assumed that the obfuscation algorithm 541 A is deterministic, so that f (t ∗|t) ∈ {0, 1}. 542 pL(s|rv, t ∗) ∝ � D f (π) f (s, rv|π) � t :A(t )=t ∗ f (t|π) dπ (9) 543 pA(s j |rv, t ∗) ∝ � D f(π) f(s j , rv|π) � t− j :A(t )=t ∗ f (t|π) dπ. (10) 544 Unfortunately, the analytic computation of the above integrals, 545 even for the considered toy example, is a daunting task. 546 For instance, the summation in (9) has as many terms as 547 t ∗-compatible tables t , that is 6.4 × 105 for Example 1 – 548 although the resulting expression can be somewhat simplified 549 using the independence assumption (4). Accordingly, the fig- 550 ures in Table III have been computed resorting to simulation 551 techniques, see Section V. 552 An alternative, more intuitive description of the inference 553 process is as follows. The learner and the attacker first learn 554 the parameters π given t ∗, that is they evaluate f (πDis|t ∗), 555 f (πZIP|s |t ∗) and f (πNat|s |t ∗), for all s ∈ S. Due to the 556 uncertainty on the ZIP code and/or Nationality, learning π 557 takes the form of a mixture (this is akin to learning with 558 soft evidence, see Corradi et al. [11]). After that, the learner, 559 ignoring the victim is in the table, predicts the probability of 560 rv, pL(rv|s, t ∗), for all s, by using a mixture of Multinomial- 561 Dirichlet. The attacker, on the other hand, while still basing 562 his prediction pA(rv|s, t ∗) on the parameter learning outlined 563 above, restricts his attention to the first two lines of t ∗, thus 564 realizing that s ∈ {Heart, Flu}. Then, by Bayes theorem, 565 and adopting the relative frequencies of the diseases in t ∗ as 566 an approximation of f (s|t ∗), the posterior probability of the 567 diseases for the victim can be computed. 568 IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 7 Remark 2 (attacker’s inference and forensic identification):569 The attacker’s inference is strongly reminiscent of two famous570 settings in forensic science: the Island Problem (IP) and the571 The Data Base Search Problem (DBS), see e.g. [1], [14]572 and more recently [45]. In an island with N inhabitants a573 crime is committed; a characteristic of the criminal (e.g.574 a DNA trait) is found on the crime scene. It is known that the575 island’s inhabitants posses this characteristic independently576 with probability p. It is assumed the existence of exactly577 one culprit C in the island. In IP, one island’s inhabitant I ,578 the suspect, is found to have the given characteristic, while579 the others are not tested. An investigator is interested in the580 probability that I = C .581 When we cast this scenario in our framework, the individ-582 uals in the table play the role of the inhabitants (including583 the culprit), while rv plays the role of the characteristic found584 on the crime scene, matching that of the suspect. In other585 words - perhaps ironically - our framework’s victim plays here586 the role of the suspect S, while our attacker is essentially587 the investigator. Letting S = {0, 1} (innocent/guilty) and588 R = {0, 1} (characteristic absent/present), the investigator’s589 information is then summarized by an obfuscated horizontal590 table t ∗ of N rows with as many groups, where exactly one591 row, say the j -th, has S j = 1 and R∗j = R j = 1 (the culprit),592 while for i = j , Si = 0 and R∗i = ∗ ( N − 1 innocent593 inhabitants). Recalling that the variable V in our framework594 represents the suspect’s index within the table, the probability595 that I = C is596 Pr(V = j |RV = 1, t ∗) = Pr(SV = 1|RV = 1, t ∗)597 = pA(s = 1|rv = 1, t ∗).598 Then applying (8), we find599 pA(s = 1|rv = 1, t ∗) = f (R j = 1|t ∗) f(R j = 1|t ∗)+(N −1) f (Ri =j = 1|t ∗) 600 = 1 1 + (N − 1) f (Ri = j = 1|t ∗) . (11)601 By taking suitable prior hyperparameters, f (Ri = j = 1|t ∗) can602 be made arbitrarily close to p. For ease of comparison with603 the classical IP and DBS settings, rather than relying on a604 learning procedure, we just assume here f (Ri = 1|t ∗) = p605 for i = j , so that (11) simplifies to606 pA(s = 1|rv = 1, t ∗) = 1 1 + (N − 1) p (12)607 which is the classical result known from the literature.608 In DBS, the indicted exhibiting rv is found after testing 1 ≤609 k < N individuals that do not exhibit rv. This means the table610 t ∗ consists now of k rows (s, r ) = (0, 0) (the k innocent,611 tested inhabitants not exhibiting rv), one row (s, r ) = (1, 1)612 (the culprit) and N −1 −k rows (s, r ∗) = (0, ∗) (the N −1 −k613 innocent, non-tested inhabitants). Accordingly, (11) becomes614 (letting j = k + 1, and possibly after rearranging indices),615 (13), as shown at the bottom of this page. Letting f (Ri = 616 1|t ∗) = p for i > k + 1, equation (13) becomes 617 pA(s = 1|rv = 1, t ∗) = 1 1 + (N − 1 − k) p 618 which again is the classical result known from the literature. 619 Finally note that our methodology also covers the possibility 620 to learn about the probability of the characteristic, f (Ri = 621 1|t ∗), but here we have only stressed how the attacker strategy 622 solves the IP and DBS forensic problems. Uncertainty about 623 population parameters and identification has been considered 624 elsewhere by one of us [6]. 625 We now briefly discuss an extension of our framework to 626 the more general case where the attacker has only partial 627 information about his victim’s nonsensitive attributes. For a 628 typical application, think of a dataset where R and S are 629 individuals’ genetic profiles and diseases, respectively, with an 630 adversary knowing only a partial DNA profile of his victim; 631 e.g. only the alleles at a few loci. Formally, fix a nonempty 632 set Y and let g : R → Y be a (typically non-injective) 633 function, modeling the attacker’s observation of the victim’s 634 nonsensitive attribute. With the above introduced notation, 635 consider the random variable Y �= g(RV ). It is natural to 636 extend definition (7) as follows, where g(rv) = yv ∈ Y and 637 f (Y = yv, t ∗) > 0: 638 pA(s|yv, t ∗) �= f (SV = s | Y = yv, t ∗). (14) 639 It is a simple matter to check that (8) becomes the following, 640 where g−1(y) ⊆ R denotes the counter-image of y according 641 to g: 642 pA(s|rv, t ∗) ∝ � j : s j =s f (R j ∈ g−1(yv) | t ∗). (15) 643 Also note that one has f (R j ∈ g−1(yv) | t ∗) = 644� r∈g−1(yv) f (R j = r | t ∗). An extension to the case of partial 645 and noisy observations can be modeled similarly, by letting 646 Y = g(RV , E ), where E is a random variable representing 647 an independent source of noise. We leave the details of this 648 extension for future work. 649 IV. MEASURES OF PRIVACY THREAT AND UTILITY 650 We are now set to define the measures of privacy threat and 651 utility we are after. We will do so from the point of view of 652 a person or entity, the evaluator, who: 653 (a) has got a copy of the cleartext table t , and can build an 654 obfuscated version t ∗ of it; 655 (b) must decide whether to release t ∗ or not, weighing the 656 privacy threats and the utility implied by this act. 657 The evaluator clearly distinguishes the position of the learner 658 from that of the attacker. The learner is interested in learning 659 from t ∗ the characteristics of the general population, via pL . 660 The attacker is interested in learning from t ∗ the sensitive 661 pA(s = 1|rv = 1, t ∗)= f (Rk+1 = 1|t ∗) f (Rk+1 = 1|t ∗) + k f (Ri∈{1,k} = 1|t ∗) + (N − 1 − k) f (Ri>k+1 = 1|t ∗) (13) IE EE P ro of 8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY value of a target individual, the victim, via p A. The last662 probability distribution is derived by exploiting the additional663 piece of information that the victim is an individual known to664 be in the original table, of whom the attacker gets to know the665 nonsensitive values. As pointed out in [34], information about666 the victim’s nonsensitive attributes can be easily gathered from667 other sources such as personal blogs and social networks.668 These assumptions about the attacker’s knowledge allow a669 comparison between the risks of a sensitive attribute disclosure670 for an individual who is part of the table and for individuals671 who are not. The evaluator adopts the following relative,672 or differential, point of view:673 a situation where, for some individual, p A conveys674 much more information than that conveyed by pL675 (learner’s legitimate inference on general popula-676 tion), must be deemed as a privacy threat.677 Generally speaking, the evaluator should refrain from pub-678 lishing t ∗ if, for some individual, the level of relative pri-679 vacy threat exceeds a predefined threshold. Concerning the680 definition of the level of threat, the evaluator adopts the681 following Bayesian decision-theoretic point of view. Whatever682 distribution p is adopted to guess the victim’s sensitive value,683 the attacker is faced with some utility function. Here, we con-684 sider a simple 0-1 utility function for the attacker, yielding 1 if685 the sensitive attribute is guessed correctly and 0 otherwise.686 The resulting attacker’s expected utility is maximized by687 the Bayes act, i.e. by choosing s = argmaxs�∈S p(s�), and688 equals p(s). The above discussion leads to the following689 definitions. Note that we consider threat measures both for690 individual rows and for the overall table. For each threatened691 row, the relative threat index Ti says how many times the692 probability of correctly guessing the secret is increased by693 the attacker’s activity i.e. by exploiting the knowledge of694 the victim’s presence in the table. At a global, table-wise695 level, the evaluator also considers the fraction GTA of rows696 threatened by the attacker.697 Definition 1 (privacy threat): We define the following pri-698 vacy threat measures.699 • Let q be a full support distribution on S and (s, r ) be a700 row in t . We say (s, r ) is threatened under q if q(s) =701 maxs� q(s �), and that its threat level under q is q(s).702 • For a row (s, r ) in t that is threatened by pA(·|r, t ∗), its703 relative threat level is704 Ti(s, r, t, t ∗) �= pA(s|r, t ∗) pL(s|r, t ∗) . (16)705 • Let NA(t, t ∗) be the number of rows (s, r ) in t threatened706 by pA(·|r, t ∗). The global threat level GT A(t, t ∗) is the707 fraction of rows that are threatened, that is708 GT A(t, t ∗) �= NA (t, t ∗) N . (17)709 Similarly, we denote by GTL(t, t ∗) the fraction of rows710 (s, r ) in t that are threatened under pL(·|r, t ∗).711 • As a measure of how better the attacker performs than712 learner at a global level, we introduce relative global713 threat:714 RGTA(t, t ∗) �= max{0, GT A(t, t ∗) − GTL(t, t ∗)}. (18)715 Remark 3 (setting a threshold for Ti): A difficult issue is 716 how to set an acceptable threshold for the relative threat level 717 Ti. This is conceptually very similar to the question of how to 718 set the level of � in differential privacy: its proponents have 719 always maintained that the setting of � is a policy question, 720 not a technical one. Much depends on the application at hand. 721 For instance, when the US Census Bureau adopted differential 722 privacy, this task was delegated to a committee (the Data 723 Stewardship Executive Policy committee, DSEP); details on 724 the operations of this committee can be found in [19, Sect.3.1]. 725 We think that similar considerations apply when setting the 726 threshold of Ti. For instance, an evaluator might consider the 727 distribution of the Ti values in the dataset (see Fig. 3a–3h in 728 Section VI) and then choose a percentile as a cutoff. 729 The evaluator is also interested in the potential utility 730 conveyed by an anonymized table for a learner. Note that the 731 learner’s utility is distinct from the attacker’s one. Indeed, the 732 learner’s interest is to make inferences that are as close as 733 possible to the ones that could be done using the cleartext 734 table. Accordingly, obfuscated tables that are faithful to the 735 original table are the most useful. This leads us to compare two 736 distributions on the population: the distribution learned from 737 the anonymized table, pL, and the ideal (I) distribution, pI, 738 one can learn from the cleartext table t . The latter is formally 739 defined as the expectation2 of f (s, r |π) under the posterior 740 density f (π|t). Explicitly, for each (s, r ) 741 pI(s, r |t) �= � D f (s, r |π) f (π|t) dπ. (19) 742 Note that the posterior density f (π|t) is in turn a Dirichlet 743 density (see next section) and therefore a simple closed form 744 of the above expression exists, based on the frequencies of 745 the pairs (s, r ) in t . In particular, recalling the αs , β s r notation 746 for the prior hyperparameters introduced in Section III, let 747 α0 = � s αs and β s 0 = � r β s r , and γs (t) and δ s r (t) denote the 748 frequency counts of s and (s, r ), respectively, in t . Then we 749 have 750 pI(s, r |t) = αs + γs (t) α0 + N · β s r + δsr (t) βs0 + γs (t) . (20) 751 The comparison between pL and pI can be based on some 752 form of distance between distributions. One possibility is to 753 rely on total variation (aka statistical) distance. Recall that, 754 for discrete distributions q, q � defined on the same space X , 755 the total variation distance is defined as 756 TV(q, q �) �= sup A⊆X |q( A) − q �( A)| = 1 2 � x |q(x ) − q �(x )|. 757 Note that TV(q, q �) ∈ [0, 1]. Note that this is a quite 758 conservative notion of diversity since it based on the event 759 that shows the largest difference between distributions. 760 Definition 2 (faithfulness): The relative faithfulness level of 761 t ∗ w.r.t. t is defined as 762 RF(t, t ∗) �= 1 − TV� pI(·| t) , pL(·| t ∗) �. 763 2 Another sensible choice would be taking pI (s, r| t) = f (s, r| πMAP ), where πMAP = argmaxπ f (π |t) is the maximum a posteriori distribution given t . This choice would lead to essentially the same results. IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 9 Remark 4: In practice, the total variation of two high-764 dimensional distributions might be very hard to compute.765 Pragmatically, we note that for M large enough, TV(q, q �) =766 1 2 Ex ∼q(x )[|1− q �(x ) q(x ) |] ≈ 12M �M i=1 |1− q �(xi ) q(xi ) |, where the xi are767 drawn i.i.d. according to q(x ). Then a proxy to total variation768 is the empirical total variation defined below, where (si , ti ),769 for i = 1, . . . , M , are generated i.i.d. according to pI(·, ·| t):770 ETV(t, t ∗) �= 1 2M M� i=1 ����1 − pL(si , ri | t ∗) pI(si , ri | t) ���� . (21)771 772 Remark 5 (ideal knowledge vs. attacker’s knowledge):773 The following scenario is meant to further clarify the extra774 power afforded to the attacker, by the mere knowledge that775 his victim is in the table. Consider a trivial anonymization776 mechanism that simply releases the cleartext table, that is777 t ∗ = t . As pL = pI in this case, it would be tempting778 to conclude that the attacker cannot do better than the779 learner, hence there is no relative risk involved. However,780 this conclusion is wrong: for instance, pI(·|rv, t) can fail to781 predict the vicitim’s correct sensitive value if this value is782 rare, as we show below.783 For the sake of simplicity, consider the case where the784 observed victim’s nonsensitive attribute rv occurs just once in t785 in a row (s0, rv). Also assume a noninformative Dirichlet prior,786 that is, in the notation of Section III, set the hyperparameters787 to αs = βsr = 1 for each s ∈ S, r ∈ R. Then, simple788 calculations based on (20) and the attacker’s distribution789 characterization (8), show the following. Here for each s ∈ S,790 γs = γs (t) denotes the frequency count of s in t , and c a791 suitable normalizing constant:792 pI(s|rv, t) = ⎧⎪⎪⎨ ⎪⎪⎩ 1 + γs |R| + γs c, if s = s0 2(1 + γs0 ) |R| + γs0 c, if s = s0 793 pA(s|rv, t ∗) = 0, if s = s0 1, if s = s0. (22)794 As far as the target individual (s0, rv) ∈ t is concerned, we795 see that while pA predicts s0 with certainty, predictions based796 on pL = pI will be blatantly wrong, if there are values s = s0797 that occur very frequently in t , while s0 is rare, and N is large798 compared to |R|. To make an extreme numeric case, consider799 |S| = 2, |R| = 1000 and γs0 = 1 in a table t of N =800 106 rows: plugging these values in (22) yields pL(s0|rv, t ∗) =801 pI(s0|rv, t) ≈ 0.004, hence a relative threat for (s0, rv) of802 1/ pL(s0|rv, t ∗) ≈ 250.803 V. LEARNING FROM THE OBFUSCATED TABLE BY MCMC804 Estimating the privacy threat and faithfulness measures805 defined in the previous section, for specific tables t and t ∗,806 implies being able to compute the distributions (5), (6) and (8).807 Unfortunately, these distributions, unlike (19), are not available808 in closed form, since f (� = π| T ∗ = t ∗) = f (π|t ∗) cannot809 be derived analytically. Indeed, in order to do so, one should810 integrate f (π, t|t ∗) with respect to the density f (t|t ∗), which811 appears not to be feasible.812 To circumvent this difficulty, we will introduce a Gibbs sam- 813 pler, defining a Markov chain (X i )i≥0, with X i = (�i , Ti ), 814 converging to the density 815 f (� = π, T = t|t ∗) 816 = f �� = π, S1 = s1, R1 = r1, . . . , SN = sN , RN = r N | t ∗� 817 (note that the sensitive values s j in T are in fact fixed and 818 known, given t ∗). General results (see e.g. [41]) ensure that, 819 if �0, �1, . . . are the samples drawn from the �-marginal of 820 such a chain, then for each (s, r ) ∈ S × R 821 1 M M� �=0 f (s, r |��) → � D f (s, r |π) f (π|t ∗)dπ = pL(s, r |t ∗) 822 (23) 823 1 M M� �=0 f (s|r, ��) → � D f (s|r, π) f (π|t ∗)dπ = pL(s|r, t ∗) 824 (24) 825 almost surely as M −→ +∞. Therefore, by selecting 826 an appropriately large M , one can build approximations of 827 pL(s, r |t ∗) and pL(s|r, t ∗) using the arithmetical means on 828 the left-hand side of (23) and (24), respectively. Moreover, 829 for each index 1 ≤ j ≤ N , using samples drawn from the 830 R j -marginals of the same chain, one can build an estimate of 831 f (R j = r j | t ∗). Consequently, using (8) (resp. (15), in the case 832 of partial observation) one can estimate pA(s|rv, t ∗) (resp. 833 pA(s|yv, t ∗)) for any given rv (resp. yv). 834 In the rest of the section, we will first introduce the MCMC 835 for this problem and then show its convergence. We will then 836 discuss details of the sampling procedures for each of the two 837 possible schemes, horizontal and vertical. 838 A. Definition and Convergence of the Gibbs Sampler 839 Simply stated, our problem is sampling from the marginals 840 of the following target density function, where t ∗ = g∗1 , . . . , g∗k 841 and t = g1, . . . , gk (note that the number of groups k is known 842 and fixed, given t ∗). 843 f (π, t|t ∗). (25) 844 Note that the r j ’s of interest, for 1 ≤ j ≤ N , are the elements 845 of the groups gi ’s, for 1 ≤ i ≤ k. The Gibbs scheme allows 846 for some freedom as to the blocking of variables. Here we 847 consider k + 1 blocks, coinciding with π and g1, . . . , gk . 848 This is natural as, in the considered schemes, (Ri , Si ) ⊥⊥ 849 (R j , S j )|π, t ∗ for (Ri , Si ) and (R j , S j ) occurring in distinct 850 groups. Formally, let x 0 = π 0, t 0 (with t 0 = g01 , . . . , g0k ) 851 denote any initial state satisfying f (π 0, t 0|t ∗) > 0. Given 852 a state at step h, x h = π h , t h (t h = gh1 , . . . , ghk ), one lets 853 x h+1 �= π h+1, t h+1, where t h+1 = gh+11 , . . . , gh+1k and 854 π h+1 is drawn from f (π|t h , t ∗) (26) 855 gh+1i is drawn from 856 f (g|π h+1, gh+11 , . . . , gh+1i−1 , ghi+1, . . . , ghk , t ∗) 857 (1 ≤ i ≤ k). (27) 858 IE EE P ro of 10 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY Running this chain presupposes we know how to sample859 from the full conditional distributions on the right-hand side860 of (26) and (27). In particular, there are several possible861 approaches to sample from g. In this subsection we provide a862 general discussion about convergence, postponing the details863 of sampling from the full conditionals to the next subsection.864 Let us denote by t−i �= g1, . . . , gi−1, gi+1, . . . , gk the table865 obtained by removing the i -th group gi from t . The following866 relations for the full conditionals of interest can be readily867 checked, relying on the conditional independencies of the868 model (2) and (4) (we presuppose that in each case the869 conditioning event has nonzero probability)870 f (π|t, t ∗) = f (π|t) (28)871 f (g|π, t−i , t ∗) ∝ f (g|π) f (t ∗|g, t−i ) (1 ≤ i ≤ k). (29)872 As we shall see, each of the above two relations enables sam-873 pling from the densities on the left-hand side. Indeed, (28) is a874 posterior Dirichlet distribution, from which effective sampling875 can be easily performed (see next subsection). A straight-876 forward implementation of (29) in a Acceptance-Rejection877 (AR) sampling perspective is as follows: draw g according to878 f (g|π) and accept it with probability f (t ∗|g, t−i ) = f (t ∗|t).879 Here, f (t ∗|t) is just the probability that the obfuscation880 algorithm returns t ∗ as output when given t = g, t−i as input.881 Actually, to make sampling from the RHS of (29) effective,882 further assumptions will be introduced (see next subsection).883 Note that, since the sensitive values are fixed in t and known884 from the given t ∗, sampling g in (29) is actually equivalent to885 sampling the nonsensitive values of the group.886 In addition to (29), to simplify our discussion about conver-887 gence, we shall henceforth assume that, for each group index888 1 ≤ i ≤ k, the set of instances of the i -th group that are889 compatible with t ∗ does not depend on the rest of the table,890 t−i . That is, we assume that for each i (1 ≤ i ≤ k):891 {g : f (t ∗|g, t−i ) > 0} = {g : f (t ∗|g, t �−i ) > 0} ∀ t−i and t �−i892 �= Gi . (30)893 For instance, (30) holds true if the anonymization algorithm894 ensures t ∗ is independent from ti−1 given a i -th group g: t ∗ ⊥⊥895 t−i | g.896 Let x = (π, g1, . . . , gk ) denote a generic state of this897 Markov chain. Under the assumption (30), the support of the898 target density f (x |t ∗) is the product space899 X �= D × G1 × · · · × Gk . (31)900 By this, we mean that {x : f (x |t ∗) > 0 } = X . This is901 a consequence of: (a) the fact that Dirichlet only consid-902 ers full support distributions; and (b) equation (29), taking903 into account the assumption (30). Let X 0, X 1, . . . denote the904 Markov chain defined by the sampler over X and denote by905 κ(·|·) its conditional kernel density over X . Slightly abusing906 notation, let us still indicate by f (·|t ∗) the probability distri-907 bution over X induced by the density f (x |t ∗). Convergence908 in distribution follows from the following proposition, which909 is an instance of general results – see e.g. the discussion910 following Corollary 1 of [41].911 Proposition 1 (convergence): Assume (30). For each (mea- 912 surable) set A ⊆ X such that f ( A|t ∗) > 0 and each x 0 ∈ X , 913 we have κ(X 1 ∈ A|X 0 = x 0) > 0. As a consequence, 914 the Markov chain (X i )i≥0 is irreducible and aperiodic, and 915 its stationary density is f (x |t ∗) in (25). 916 B. Sampling From the Full Conditionals 917 Let us consider (28) first. It is a standard fact that the 918 posterior of the Dirichlet distribution f (π|t), given the N 919 i.i.d. observations t drawn from the categorical distribution 920 f (·|π), is still a Dirichlet, where the hyperparameters have 921 been updated as follows. Denote by γ (t) = (γ1, . . . , γ|S|) the 922 vector of the frequency counts γi of each si in t . Similarly, 923 given s, denote by δs (t) = (δs1, . . . , δs|R|) the vector of the 924 frequency counts δi of the pairs (ri , s), for each ri , in t . Then, 925 for each π = (πS, πR|S ), we have 926 f(π|t) = Dir(πS | α+γ (t))· � s∈S Dir(πR|s | βs + δs (t)). (32) 927 Let us now discuss (29). In what follows, for the sake 928 of notation we shall write a generic i -th group as gi = 929 (s1, r1), . . . , (sn , rn ) (thus avoiding double subscripts), and let 930 g∗i = (mi , li ) denote the corresponding obfuscated group in 931 t ∗. As already observed, given an obfuscated i -th group g∗i = 932 (li , mi ), when sampling a i -th group g from (29), one actually 933 needs to generate only the nonsensitive values of g, which are 934 constrained by li , as the sensitive ones are already fixed by 935 the sequence mi . In what follows, to make sampling from (29) 936 effective, will shall work under the following assumptions, 937 which are stronger than (30). 938 (a) Deterministic obfuscation function: for each t and t ∗, 939 f (t ∗|t) is either 0 or 1. 940 (b) For each 1 ≤ i ≤ k, letting g∗i = (li , mi ), with mi = 941 s1, . . . , sn , the i -th obfuscated group in t ∗, the following 942 holds true: 943 Horizontal schemes 944 Gi={g = (s1, r1), . . . , (sn , rn ) : r� ∈li for 1 ≤ � ≤ n } (33) 945 Vertical schemes 946 Gi = {g = (s1, ri1 ), . . . , (sn , rin ) : 947 for ri1 , . . . , rin a permutation of li }. (34) 948 Assumption (a) is realistic in practice. In horizontal 949 schemes, assumption (b) makes the considered sets Gi ’s pos- 950 sibly larger than the real ones, that is li ⊃ {r1, . . . , rn }. This 951 happens, for instance, if in certain groups the ZIP code is 952 constrained to just, say, two values, while the generalized code 953 “5013*” allows for all values in the set {50130, . . . , 50139}. 954 We will not attempt here a formal analysis of this assumption. 955 In some cases, such as in schemes based on global recoding, 956 this assumption is realistic. Otherwise, we only note that the 957 support X of the resulting Markov chain may be (slightly) 958 larger than the one that would be obtained not assuming (33) 959 or (34). Heuristically, this leads one to sampling from a more 960 dispersed density than the target one. At least, the resulting 961 distributions can be taken to represent a lower bound of what 962 the attacker can actually learn. 963 IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 11 Fig. 1. Sampling from f (g|π, t−i , t ∗) (g ∈ Gi ) for horizontal schemes, across all the groups. Under assumptions (a) and (b) above, for each 1 ≤ i ≤ k,964 it holds that g ∈ Gi if and only if f (t ∗|g, t−i ) = 1. Therefore965 sampling according to the right-hand side of (29) reduces to966 the following:967 draw g ∈ Gi with probability ∝ f (g|π) (1 ≤ i ≤ k). (35)968 We discuss now how to implement (35) effectively. This969 will achieve sampling from the full conditionals (29) without970 resorting to a presumably inefficient AR method. We deal with971 the two cases, horizontal and vertical, separately.972 a) Horizontal schemes: In order to generate g =973 (r1, s1), . . . , (rn , sn ) ∈ Gi , for each � = 1, .., n, we draw974 r� ∈ li with probability ∝ f (r�|s�, π). Explicitly, (29) now975 becomes976 f (g|π, t−i , t ∗) = ⎧⎪⎨ ⎪⎩ 0, if g /∈ Gi n� �=1 f (r�|s�, π)� r∈li f (r |s�, π) , if g ∈ Gi (36)977 thus satisfying (35). Note that this is equivalent to sam-978 pling each row independently. The sampling process of979 f (g|π, t−i , t ∗) for horizontal schemes across all the groups980 of the table is illustrated graphically in Fig. 1.981 b) Vertical schemes: Let li = {| r1, . . . , rn |}. We have982 that g ∈ Gi if and only if g = (s1, ri1 ), . . . , (sn , rin ), for983 some permutation (ri� )1≤�≤n of r1, . . . , rn . Here, sampling984 the nonsensitive values of g row by row would involve to985 gradually reduce the sample space. A sampling procedure986 along these lines is possible, but nontrivial, see Appendix B.987 We discuss here a more straightforward sampling procedure,988 based on generating gi ∈ Gi in a single shot. We adopt a989 single-iteration Metropolis within Gibbs scheme. Essentially,990 this consists in running a Metropolis method that targets the991 distribution ∝ f (g|π) with support Gi , for one iteration.992 Specifically, let us write the current value of the i -th group in993 the Gibbs Markov chain as ghi . Following Casella and Robert994 [40, Ch.10], this step consists in drawing g ∈ Gi according to995 a proposal distribution J (g|ghi ) and accepting it, that is letting996 gh+1i = g, with probability997 � �= min 1, f (g|π) J (ghi |g) f (ghi |π) J (g|ghi ) � (37)998 while keeping gh+1i = ghi with probability 1 − �. The999 resulting MCMC method is still theoretically sound: see Casella1000 TABLE IV SUMMARY OF THREAT AND FAI THF ULNESS MEAS URES F OR ANONYMI ZATI ON ACCORDI NG TO K-ANONYMI TY AND �- DI VERS I TY and Robert [40, Ch.10.3.3]. As to the proposal distribution 1001 J (g|ghi ), a possibility is generating g ∈ Gi via a pure random 1002 permutation of the n nonsensitive values in li ; or just to swap 1003 the nonsensitive values of two randomly chosen positions 1004 in ghi . In both cases, the proposal is symmetric, and (37) 1005 simplifies accordingly as follows, where r1, . . . , rn is the 1006 sequence of sensitive values in the poposed g: 1007 � = min 1, �n �=1 f (r�|s�, π)�n �=1 f (r h � |s�, π) � . 1008 VI. EXPERIMENTS 1009 We have put a proof-of-concept implementation3 of our 1010 methodology at work on a subset of the Adult dataset extracted 1011 by Barry Becker from the 1994 US Census database and 1012 available from the UCI machine learning repository [47]. This 1013 is a common benchmark for experiments on anonymization 1014 [38]. In particular, we have focused on the subset of 5692 rows 1015 also considered by the authors of [38], with the following 1016 categorical attributes: sex, age, race, marital status, education, 1017 native country, workclass, salary class, occupation, with occu- 1018 pation (14 values) considered as the only sensitive attribute. 1019 We will discuss implementation and results details separately 1020 for vertical and horizontal schemes. We will then briefly 1021 discuss convergence issues of the employed MCMC method. 1022 A. Horizontal Schemes: k-Anonymity 1023 Using the ARX anonymization tool [37] we obtained two 1024 different k-anonymous versions of the considered dataset, 1025 enjoying respectively k-anonymity and �-diversity4 for k = 1026 � = 4 and k = � = 6. The average size of the groups 1027 was respectively of 38 rows (k = � = 4) and of 355 rows 1028 (k = � = 6). 1029 The results we have obtained are summarized in Table IV. 1030 For reference, we include the following information in the last 1031 two lines: baseline accuracy, the fraction of rows correctly 1032 classified using the empirical distribution obtained from the 1033 frequencies of the sensitive values in the anonymized table 1034 – i.e., the fraction of the most frequent sensitive value; and 1035 3 Python code and data available from the authors. 4 Recall that �-diversity requires at least � distinct values of the sensitive attribute in each group. IE EE P ro of 12 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY ideal accuracy, the fraction of tuples threatened under pI.1036 As a further element of comparison, we also consider an1037 attacker whose reasoning is based on the random worlds1038 models, and include in the table GTRW, the fraction of rows1039 correctly classified assuming all tables compatible with t ∗1040 equally likely. Like in [25], we compute ABSA and ABSRW,1041 the absolute error under the distribution derived under pA and1042 under the random worlds distribution pRW, respectively. ABS1043 is defined as N� i=1 � s∈S |1{si =s} − p(s|ri , t ∗)|, where p(·) might1044 be either of pA(·) or pRW(·). Note that, since the considered1045 anonymized tables do not enjoy disjointness between groups1046 (see Remark 1), also in the random worlds perspective the1047 probability of each sensitive attribute may well be ≥ 1/�.1048 In our experiments, when � = 4 the attacker outperforms1049 random worlds classification, while when a more powerful1050 obfuscation is adopted the two results are quite similar.1051 The remaining rows in Table IV consider the privacy threats1052 and faithfulness measures introduced in Section IV. As a1053 general comment, small variations of � and/or k do not produce1054 dramatic changes. The faithfulness level is stable, but does not1055 reach a satisfactory level. The attacker is anyway in a position1056 to correctly classify the sensitive attribute of individuals in the1057 table ≈ 2.3 − 2.5% more often than the learner. We found the1058 maximum value of TiA for the threatened rows is about 13.8,1059 meaning the attacker can be up to ≈14 times more confident1060 than the learner about the guessed value.1061 A more informative summary of our analysis is provided by1062 the scatter plots and histograms of Figure 2. The scatter plots1063 are obtained from the threat levels under pL and under pA.1064 The number of rows (s, r ) in which pA(s|r, t ∗) ≥ pL(s|r, t ∗)1065 roughly equals those in which pA(s|r, t ∗) ≤ pL(s|r, t ∗),1066 although globally the attacker has a slight advantage in terms1067 of number of threatened rows. In Figure 2 we also report the1068 empirical distribution log2 TiA for tuples threatened under pA1069 and under pL. We also have evidence of positive skewness,1070 as shown by the value of γ (the third standardized moments1071 of the empirical distributions). Recalling that log2 TiA = 11072 means pA(s|r, t ∗) = 2 pL(s|r, t ∗), the histograms show that1073 pA(s|r, t ∗) is often more than twice pL(s|r, t ∗) leading to a1074 log2 TiA ≥ 1. In particular, when k = � = 4, log2 TiA is1075 at least 1 for ≈ 6% of the individuals threatened under pA,1076 meaning ≈ 0.6% of the whole table. Conversely, log2 TiA1077 is close to 0 for most of the rows in which pA(s|r, t ∗) ≤1078 pL(s|r, t ∗).1079 B. Vertical Schemes: Anatomy1080 Using a freely available anonymization tool [22], we have1081 obtained two anatomized versions of the considered dataset,1082 with groups of size � = 4 and � = 6, respectively. The1083 resulting tables also enjoy �-diversity. The results we have1084 obtained are summarized in Table V. Concerning the random1085 worlds approach, we note the following. Anatomy partitions1086 the tables in groups all of size �. Therefore, although disjoint-1087 ness is not satisfied, just as in the horizontal case, the sensitive1088 attribute frequencies equal 1/� in each group. This implies1089 that the probability of a sensitive value depends on how many1090 groups contain the victim’s nonsensitive attributes and on1091 Fig. 2. Results for k-anonymity. Top (� = k = 6): scatter plots of pL vs pA for tuples threatened under pA (a), and under pL (c); (b) and (d) are the histograms of log2 TiA for these two cases. Bottom: same for � = k = 4. The skewness value (γ ) represents the third standardized moment of the empirical distribution. Dark red areas show where the attacker performs better than the learner. their frequencies in each group, leading often to multimodal 1092 distributions. We assume that a guess may be obtained ran- 1093 domly choosing between the equally likely sensitive attributes. 1094 Accordingly, the fractions of threatened rows, GTRW, are 1095 averaged over 500 different sampling. Here, it is apparent that 1096 the our attacker is able to classify better than the random 1097 worlds scenario. We note that, as � increases from 4 to 6, 1098 the fraction of rows threatened under the distributions derived 1099 by the learner (GTL) and by the attacker (GT A) decreases 1100 significantly. Moreover, as � grows both the relative threat 1101 RGTA and the faithfulness level RF decrease, which implies 1102 a trade-off between privacy and the utility conveyed by the 1103 table. 1104 Again, for a more informative summary of our analysis, 1105 we look at scatter plots and histograms, displayed in Figure 3, 1106 where we compare pA and pL on threatened rows. It is 1107 apparent here that the attacker is more confident than the 1108 learner in the majority of the cases, even when focusing on 1109 the rows threatened under pL. This is in contrast with the 1110 horizontal case, where the attacker exhibits smaller threat 1111 IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 13 TABLE V SUMMARY OF THREAT AND FAI THF ULNESS MEAS URES F OR ANONYMI ZATI ON ACCORDI NG TO ANATOMY levels on the rows threatened under pL (Figure 2, (d) and (h)).1112 As far as the histograms are concerned, an even greater1113 skewness than the horizontal case is evident here. In particular,1114 the attacker can be up to ≈ 287 times more confident then1115 the learner, being the maximum TiA about 286.19. Moreover,1116 when � = 4, the individuals with log2 TiA ≥ 1 are ≈ 26% of1117 the rows threatened under pA (≈ 8% of the whole table). This1118 means that there are 483 individuals in the dataset for which1119 the threat level under pA is at least twice as much the threat1120 level under pL.1121 C. Discussion1122 Comparing the horizontal and the vertical cases for the1123 considered dataset, the following considerations are in order.1124 • In the horizontal case, we have a situation of low faith-1125 fulness and low privacy threat, irrespective of the value1126 of k and �. Indeed, in both cases the average group size1127 is well above k, and this has a negative effect on the1128 inference capabilities of both the learner and the attacker.1129 The slight numerical differences observed between the1130 cases k = � = 4 and k = � = 6 are basically an artifact1131 of the anonymization tool. Yet, in relative terms, one can1132 observe a significant increase in the number of tuples1133 threatened by the attacker, over the learner.1134 • In the vertical case, one obtains a greater faithfulness1135 at the price of a greater privacy threat. This difference1136 from the horizontal case is partly explained by the smaller1137 group size, which now coincides with �. Now moving1138 from � = 4 to � = 6 has a tangible negative impact1139 on the inference capabilities of both the learner and the1140 attacker. In relative terms, one can observe an even more1141 marked increase of the number of tuples threatened by1142 the attacker, over the learner.1143 The above considerations partly depend on both the original1144 dataset and the details of the employed anonymization tool.1145 D. Assessing MCMC Convergence1146 For each of the considered anonymized datasets, we ran a1147 MCMC as introduced in Section V for M = 100, 000 runs.1148 The convergence of each chain to the stationary distribu-1149 tion was assessed via a methodology based on comparing1150 sub-sequences of the sample sequences with one another. More1151 precisely, as for the population parameters distribution (32),1152 we used the method proposed by Geweke [21]. The Geweke1153 Fig. 3. Results for Anatomy. Top (� = 6): scatter plots of pL vs pA for tuples threatened under pA (a), and under pL (c); (b) and (d) are the histograms of log2 TiA for these two cases. Bottom: same for � = 4. The skewness value (γ ) represents the third standardized moment of the empirical distribution. Dark red areas show where the attacker performs better than the learner. proposal is based on an adapted two-samples test on the means 1154 in sub-sequences of the chain. 1155 After a burn-in of 50,000 iterations, we compared the last 1156 25,000 samples against 5 blocks of of 5,000 consecutive sam- 1157 ples each, taken starting from the 50,000-th iteration. We found 1158 that all the distributions πR|S produced a test statistic within 1159 two standard deviations from zero, thus providing evidence of 1160 convergence. 1161 As for the distribution of the cleartext table, f (t|π, t ∗), we 1162 used a test specifically designed for categorical distributions 1163 by Deonovich and Smith, called Weiß procedure [15]. The 1164 approach is based on a χ 2 test adjusted for the autocorrelation 1165 induced by the chain. The test is based on partitioning the 1166 whole sample sequence into sub-sequences, and then testing 1167 the homogeneity between the empirical distribution of each 1168 sub-sequence and the empirical distribution of the whole 1169 chain. After a burn-in of 50,000 observations, we compared 1170 5 sub-sequences of 10,000 consecutive samples each. For the 1171 vertical scheme, we assessed the convergence for each row of 1172 the table, thereby demonstrating the stationary of f (t|π, t ∗). 1173 IE EE P ro of 14 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY For the horizontal scheme, some of the rows did not exhibit1174 evidence of convergence. However, we found that, starting1175 with several independent chains, very similar results in terms1176 of the proposed assessment measures were obtained.1177 In the vertical case, within the Metropolis step both the pure1178 random permutation and the swap group generation strategies1179 (Section V-B) were experimented. The obtained results are1180 consistent; however, the pure random permutation strategy1181 shows a much higher rate of rejection, suggesting that the1182 swap strategy should be preferred.1183 VII. CONCLUSION1184 We have put forward a notion of relative privacy threat that1185 applies to group-based anonymization schemes. Our proposal1186 is based on a rigorous characterization of the learner’s and1187 of the attacker’s inference, in a unified Bayesian model of1188 group-based schemes. A related MCMC algorithm for posterior1189 parameters estimation has also been introduced. Experiments1190 conducted on the well-known Adult dataset [47] have been1191 illustrated.1192 Our analysis emphasizes the risks posed by the mere fact1193 that an attacker can look up a released anonymized table.1194 This prompts an obvious alternative: release the parameters1195 of the posterior distribution learned from the cleartext table1196 ( pI, in our notation). This may not always be possible, or be1197 a good idea, for several reasons. First, certain organizations1198 must release datasets as part of their mission, e.g. census1199 bureaus. Second, especially in the case of high-dimensional1200 data, the computation of the posterior is feasible only assum-1201 ing suitable conditional independencies, whereby potentially1202 important correlations are lost; see [10] and references therein.1203 Third, parameters release itself is not exempt from risks for1204 privacy. In particular, although differentially private release of1205 the parameters is possible [16], it seems that quite strong1206 priors are necessary to obtain acceptable guarantees; see1207 [50, Ch.6] and references therein. In conclusion, further1208 research is called for in order to understand under what1209 circumstances data and/or parameters release can be done1210 safely.1211 APPENDIX A1212 PROOF OF LEMMA 11213 We first characterize the probability f (V = j |RV = rv, t ∗),1214 for an arbitrary j ∈ {1, . . . , N }. Bayes theorem yields1215 f (V = j |RV = rv, t ∗) ∝ f (RV = rv|V = j, t ∗) f (V = j |t ∗)1216 = f (R j = rv|V = j, t ∗) f (V = j |t ∗)1217 ∝ f (R j = rv|V = j, t ∗) (38)1218 = f (R j = rv|t ∗) (39)1219 where (38) follows from f (V = j |t ∗) = f (V = j ) = 1/N1220 (independence of V ), and (39) follows because, as easily1221 checked, for any fixed j , independence of R j and V is1222 preserved by conditioning on t ∗. Now we have, for every s ∈ S1223 pA(s|rv, t ∗) (40)1224 = f (SV = s | RV = rv, t ∗)1225 = � j f (SV = s, V = j |RV = rv, t ∗)1226 Fig. 4. Sampling from θ (g|π, t ∗) for vertical schemes. = � j f (SV = s|V = j, RV = rv, t ∗) f (V = j |RV = rv, t ∗) 1227 = � j f (S j = s|V = j, R j = rv, t ∗) f (V = j |RV = rv, t ∗) 1228 = � j : s j=s f (S j = s|V = j, R j = rv, t ∗) f (V = j |RV =rv, t ∗) 1229 (41) 1230 = � j : s j =s f (V = j |RV = rv, t ∗) (42) 1231 ∝ � j : s j =s f (R j = rv|t ∗). (43) 1232 where (41) and (42) follow from the fact that, for s j = s, 1233 f (S j = s, t ∗) = 0, while for s j = s obviously f (S j = s|V = 1234 j, R j = rv, t ∗) = 1. Finally, (43) follows from (39). 1235 Note that in (43) each term on the RHS actually is the joint 1236 probability f (R j = rv, S j = s|t ∗), being s j = s embedded in 1237 the range of the summation. 1238 APPENDIX B 1239 AN ALTERNATIVE GROUP SAMPLING METHOD FOR 1240 VERTICAL SCHEMES 1241 We consider the following method for sampling g ∈ Gi . 1242 Draw n values ri� , � = 1, . . . , n, as follows: 1243 1. draw ri1 from li according to a distribution ∝ f (r |s1, π); 1244 2. draw ri2 from li \ {| ri1 |} according to a distribution ∝ 1245 f (r |s2, π); 1246 … 1247 n. draw rin from li \ {| ri1 , . . . , rin−1 |} according to a distrib- 1248 ution ∝ f (r |sn, π). 1249 For a multiset l�, let σ (l�|s�, π) �= � r in l� f (r |s�, π) denote 1250 the probability of extracting some element appearing in l� 1251 (disregarding multiplicities) according to f (·|s�, π). Using this 1252 notation, the probability of returning exactly the sequence 1253 ri1 , . . . , rin , hence g = (s1, ri1 ), . . . , (sn , rin ) ∈ Gi , as a result 1254 of the above n drawings, can be written as 1255 θ (g|π, t ∗) �= f (ri1 |s1, π) σ (li |s1, π) · f (ri2 |s2, π) σ (li \ {| ri1 |}|s2, π) · · · f (rin |sn, π) f (rin |sn, π) 1256 = �n �=1 f (ri� |s�, π) ν(g|π) 1257 where we denote by ν(g|π) the denominator of the expression 1258 on the RHS of �= above. The sampling process of θ (g|π, t ∗) 1259 for vertical schemes across all the groups of the table is 1260 illustrated in Fig. 4. We note that θ (g|π, t ∗) is dependent on 1261 the chosen ordering of the sensitive values s1, . . . , sn , which 1262 IE EE P ro of BOREALE et al.: RELATIVE PRIVACY THREATS AND LEARNING FROM ANONYMIZED DATA 15 may invalidate condition (35). 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work_ky2e5spjsvfzlpg2r65x622k4m	----	62 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. abstraCt Considering the popularity of the Internet, an automatic interactive feedback system for E- learning websites is becoming increasingly desirable. However, computers still have problems understanding natural languages, especially the Chinese language, firstly because the Chinese language has no space to segment lexical entries (its segmentation method is more difficult than that of English) and secondly because of the lack of a complete grammar in the Chinese language, making parsing more difficult and complicated. Building an automated Chinese feedback system for special application domains could solve these problems. This paper proposes an interactive feedback mechanism in a virtual campus that can parse, understand and respond to Chinese sentences. This mechanism utilizes a specific lexical database according to the particular ap- plication. In this way, a virtual campus website can implement a special application domain that chooses the proper response in a user friendly, accurate and timely manner. Keywords: grammar; interactive feedback; lexical database; natural language; segmenta- tion method iNtroduCtioN The easiest way to communicate to users is to talk to them in their natural language. Considering the popularity of the Internet, an automated interactive feedback system for e-learning Web sites is becoming in- creasingly desirable. However, it still is difficult for a computer to understand the meaning of some natural languages. At pres- ent a three-year old child can understand and respond to languages better than a computer can. To understand the natural language, a computer must be trained to understand a single sentence. Then, it would need to be trained to analyze longer sentences or paragraphs. In principle, there are at least a Chinese interactive feedback system for a virtual Campus Jui-Fa Chen, Tamkang University, Taiwan Wei-Chuan Lin, Tak Ming College, Taiwan Chih-Yu Jian, Tamkang University, Taiwan Ching-Chung Hung, Tamkang University, Taiwan IGI PUBLISHING This paper appears in the publication, International Journal of Distance Education Technologies , Volume 6, Issue 4 edited by Shi-Kuo Chang &Timothy K. Shih © 2008, IGI Global 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.igi-global.com ITJ 4443 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 63 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. two skills that a computer should be able to apply to a single sentence: 1. Defining the meaning of each word in the sentence. 2. Transforming the linear structure of a sentence into another structure that rep- resents the meaning of that sentence. The first step of processing a Chinese sentence is seeking the meaning of each lexicon in a dictionary. However, there can be many meanings for each lexicon, and the computer must have the ability to choose the right one. Even if that is accomplished, it is still difficult for the computer to pro- cess the Chinese sentence because there are no spaces used to segment the lexicon. Therefore, a segmentation method is needed before parsing the Chinese sentences. The second step of understanding a Chinese sentence is transforming the seg- mented lexicons into a structure that can be understood by a computer. In general, the transformation procedure can be divided into three parts: A. Syntactic analysis procedure: In this procedure, the input lexicon is trans- formed into a specific structure that represents the relationship between lexicons. However, not all the combi- nations of lexicons of a sentence are legal. The computer must eliminate the illegal combinations to ensure a correct performance. B. Semantic analysis procedure: This procedure obtains the meaning of the sentence from the established struc- ture. The obtained meaning is a unit of knowledge representation, which can be mapped to the corresponding object or event in the actual world. C. Pragmatics analysis procedure: This procedure determines the real purpose of the sentences and gives the appropri- ate response to users. The remainder of this paper is laid out as followed. The next section discusses the related works on syntax and semantic analysis, followed by a description of the proposed four subsystems of segmentation, syntactic analysis, semantic analysis, and the response subsystems. The next sec- tion provides some examples to show the implementation of the proposed method. Finally, there is conclusion and some fu- ture works. revieW of related Works link Grammar technology Most sentences in a natural language are structured so that arcs that connect words may not cross each other. This phenomenon is called planarity in the link grammar system (Sleator & Temperley, 1991). A link grammar consists of a set of words and has a linking requirement. The linking requirements of each word are contained in a dictionary. To illustrate the linking require- ments, Figure 1 shows a simple dictionary for the words “a,” “the,” “cat,” “mouse,” and “chased.” The linking requirement of each word is represented by the Figure 1 above the word. Each of the lettered boxes is a connec- tor which is satisfied when it is “plugged into” a compatible connector, as indicated by its shape. If the mating end of a con- nector is drawn facing to the right, then its mate must be to its right facing to the left. Exactly one of the connectors attached to a given black dot must be satisfied. Thus, the “cat” requires a D connector to its left 64 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. and either an O connector to its left or an S connector to its right. Plugging a pair of connectors together corresponds to drawing a link between that pair of words. Figure 2 is the simplified form of Figure 1 and shows that “the cat chased a mouse” is part of the language. Table 1 encodes the linking requirements of the example in Figure 2. The link grammar dictionary consists of a collection of entries, each of which defines the linking requirements of one or more words. These requirements are speci- fied by a formula of connectors combined by the binary associative operators & and or. Precedence is specified by parentheses. A connector is simply a character string ending in + or -. Memory-based Parsing system Most methods of semantic analysis first recognize the verb of a sentence and then determine the correctness on the semantics of lexical entries around the verb. Memory- based parsing (Chung, & Moldovan, 1993, 1994a, 1994b; Kim & Moldovan, 1993) also begins with the restrictions of a verb to determine the correctness of subject and object. The memory-based parsing system consists of four modules: • Concept sequence layer: Keeps the restrictions of the subject and object of each verb for both syntax and se- mantics. • Syntactic layer: Keeps all parts of speech for comparing the syntactic restrictions. • Semantic concept hierarchy: Defines the relationship of all nouns, and is Figure 1. Words and connectors in the dictionary the cat chased D D S S O a D mouse D O Words Formula a the cat mouse Chased D+ D- & (O- or S+) S- & O+ Table 1. The words and linking requirements in a dictionary Figure 2. The simplified form of Figure 1 The cat chased a mouse D S O D Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 6� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. used for verifying the semantic restric- tions. • Instance layer: Contains the lexical en- tries of a sentence typed by the user. Figure 3 shows an example of a memory-based parsing with a concept sequence [agent, MURDER, object] for murder-event. At the top of the knowledge base is the concept sequence layer, which consists of concept sequence roots and elements. The semantic concept hierar- chy and syntactic layer connect concept sequence elements with concept instances in the instance layer. Concept instances are produced from phrasal inputs and are connected to the corresponding syntactic category and semantic concept nodes. The result of parsing is represented by connecting instances of concept sequence roots and corresponding concepts in the instance layer. the ProPosed systeM overview There are many learners in a virtual cam- pus, and each learner has his or her own preference. Although the search goal can be found by a belief network, as considered in customization, using only the default category to analyze is insufficient. When a learner logs onto a virtual campus, if he or she is an existing learner, the system could load his learning profile to achieve the customization. If the learner is new, the system could administer a quiz to determine an initial learning profile. The flowchart is shown in Figure 4 The proposed Chinese interactive feedback system (Chen, Lin, & Jian, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c; Chen, Lin, Jian, & Hung, 2005) is divided into four sub-sys- tems: the segmentation system, syntactic analysis system, semantic analysis system, Figure 3. Part of knowledge base used for processing: “The Shining Path” Concept sequence layer [agent, MURDER, object] murder-event agent10 MURDER10 object10 first last next next Syntatic layer noun-group syntactic Instance layer shining-path#1 instance lexical “the shining path” Semantic concept hierarchy thing physical abstract is-a is-a animate inanimate is-a is-a human non- human is-a is-a human- group person is-a is-a terrorism- organization is-a nation is-a shining path FXLM is-a is-a is-a instance 66 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. and response system. Thus, learners can use Chinese sentences to interact with the virtual campus. When the learners input Chinese sentences, the segmentation system separates the learner’s input sentences and gives the appropriate part of speech for each segmented lexical entry. The syntactic analysis system parses these segmented lexical entries to judge whether the sentence is legal and gives the syntactic part of each lexical entry. The semantic analysis system judges the correctness of the semantics and provides a semantic learning method based on the learner’s habits. Finally, a response system gives the learner the response re- sult according to the encoding of the input sentence. segmentation system One difference between the Chinese and English language is that the Chinese lan- guage has no obvious separation to segment the lexical entry. Therefore a segmentation method to parse the Chinese language is necessary. Figure 5 shows the architecture of the Segmentation System. The segmentation system structure is divided into four sub-systems: the segmen- tation system, corpora-comparing system, keyword in context comparing system, and weighted calculation method (Chen, Lin, & Jian, 2003a). These subsystems are explained as follows: 1. Segmentation: Segmentation separates the user’s input sentences and compares the separated units with those obtained from the corpora-comparing system. 2. Corpora-comparing system: This system includes two steps: corpora- comparing and part-of-speech(POS) saving. It compares the receiving strings with those in the corpora and saves the results to build a segmenta- tion tree. 3. Keyword in context comparing system: After building a segmentation tree, the system compares the POS with the keyword in context according to the grammar rules and deletes the improper segmentation tree. This mechanism is divided into the Unknown Word Judg- ment System and Context-proofreading System. 4. Weighted calculation system: Because there may be more than one kind of segmentation result, each result’s weighted value is computed to find the most proper one. The segmentation result with the largest weighted value is the most suitable result. Figure 4. Flowchart of feedback system User login Reasoning system User’ s degree Response suitable teaching material User learning User logout User’ s profile Update First login ? NO Simple testYes Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 6� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. �e���e��t�t���� There is no space between lexical entries in the Chinese language to help segmenta- tion. Chinese characters are composed of two continuous bytes in representation. The system judges whether this word is Chinese code when segmenting sentences to put the pointer’s displacement in the best place. However, in transmitting, some special Chi- nese words have a special『\』inserted after transmitting through the network browser. The system would remove the『\』 prior to segmenting the sentences. The main functions of the segmenta- tion system are: 1. The consideration of special Chinese words in the user’s input sentences serves to avoid punctuation-transfer- ring mistakes 2. The transfer of punctuation in the user’s input sentences serves to obtain the same dividing code. The system splits the continuous Chinese words and numbers them into strings and adds a dividing code both in front of and be- hind the strings. The system also adds a dividing code behind the empty word of the user’s input sentence. In addition the system also splits the user’s input sentence and compares the segmented lexical entries with the corpora-com- paring system. Figure 6 shows the segmentation system process. Most Chinese lexicons possess at most six characters. The segmentation length of a Chinese sentence should be limited to avoid segmenting a sentence into many impossible ways. For example, a sen- tence composed of n words should have 2n-1 possible segmentations. A maximum matching (Chen & Liu, 1992) mechanism is used to segment a sentence. Basically, the maximum matching method compares a string started at the kth character with a lexical database and finds out all possible segmentations. If C(k), C(k)_C(k+1), C(k)_C(k+1)_C(k+2) are stored in the lexical database, the maximum matching Figure 5. The architecture of the segmentation system User's Client WWW Server HTML PageInput Chinese Language prehandle sentence segmenting lexical entries comparing corpora record POS establish Segmentation tree professional corpora comparing with keyword in context grama rule Computing weight form word mark rule Segmentation Tree wordbuilding rule and weight Segmentation tree and results 68 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. method would choose the longest word and continue with C(k+3). Because the length of most of the Chinese lexicons do not exceed six characters, the maximum length of a word in a sentence is set to six characters. C�rp�r�-C���p�r���� ��ste�� After the segmentation system separates the sentences, it compares string length and context. The system records all match- ing POSs and adds the information of the lexical entries to a segmentation tree. If no POSs match, the system feeds back a false value and recalls the unknown word judgment sub-system to determine whether this word is an unknown word. If the lexi- cal entry is determined by the system to be an unknown word, then the entry is saved into the segmentation tree. Because most new unknown words are proper names, the system often sets the POSs of these unknown words to be temporary nouns, and continues processing the following set of strings. If the system still cannot find the corresponding POS in the corpus database of one to six continuous words or cannot find the proper unknown word after processing by the unknown word judgment system, it views these six continuous words as an unknown word and adds the unknown word into the segmentation tree. The corpora structure used in the system is shown in Table 2. The saved data format contains the numbers of words, context, POS, types, and word probability. They are explained as follows: A. Numbers of words: To speed up the comparing of the corpora, the informa- tion of the numbers of lexical entries are recorded so that the system does not have to search the entire database, greatly improving the efficiency of the system. B. Context: Refers to the recorded context of the lexical entry. C. POS: Records the POS of the lexical entry. If the number of the POS is larger than one, the system separates the sen- tence with “,” as a divided symbol. D. Types: This paper is focused on mutual conversation segmentations in the basic Figure 6. Segmentation system’s flow chart source special chinese Y punctuation transform into divide char. Y N form word N insert divide char. Y send segmented words N divide char. N move pointer remove surplus 『/』 Numbers of words Context POS Types Word frequency Table 2. Corpora data structure Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 6� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. computer concept domain. Therefore, the type is used to mark the kind of special domain database that is used for the lexical entry. E. Word frequency: Shows how often the lexical entry has appeared in the equilibrium corpus database. The in- formation is used primarily for weight calculation. U��k������ W�rd Jud���e��t ��ste�� This system searches the segmented lexical entries for unknown words. After the sys- tem receives strings, it splits N continuous words continuously and compares them with the corpus database. If the proofread- ing is successful, the system feeds the first words of the lexical entry back to the posi- tion where the string engages. The system sets the string which is beyond the position of being an unknown word and saves it into a segmentation tree. If the system fails when compared, it feeds back 0 to show that this word is not an unknown word. Figure 7 shows the flow of the unknown word judgment system. T��e ��t� �tructure �f t��e �e���e��t�t���� Tree N�de The system adds the segmented lexical entry into the segmentation tree to speed up node searching. The segmentation tree structure can make data saving more flexible by increasing or decreasing segmentation nodes. The segmentation tree is a six node tree. The tree structure is shown in Figure 8. Every node in Figure 8 follows from zero to at most six sub-nodes which are added dynamically when compared with the corpora. The original input sentence connects the first node of the root to the following branches. In this way the system can dispose of space dynamically to save and display the segmentation results. Every node of the segmentation tree is composed of the following node structure as shown in Figure 9. Each node records the information after the system searches the database which is convenient for the context-proofreading system and the weighted-calculating system. The fields in Figure 9 are explained as follows: Figure 7. Unknown word judgment system process string and pointer i=1 comparing success Y return ptr i<= MaxLen Y i=i+1 N N return 0 �0 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. A. Context: The context of the lexical entry. B. Length: Records the length of the strings. C. Array of POS: Records the POS of a lexical entry (up to six) with a pre-set value of an empty string. D. Result of database searching: Re- cords the searching result of this lexical entry. If the searching result is found from the corpus database, it is recorded as true. However, if it is an unknown word, it is recorded as false. E. Down-connection and up-connec- tion: Records the number of the up- per or lower nodes, referring to the upward or downward lexical entry. If there is no up or down connection, it records 0. Because the system deals at most with six continuous words when segmenting sentences, the array size of the down-connecting is six and that of the up-connecting array is one. root three-word four-wordtwo-word five-wordone-word six-word Figure 8. Segmentation tree structure Context Result of database searching Length up-connectionArray of POS down-connect ion array Figure 9. Node data structure Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 �1 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Context-Proofreading system This system uses the segmentation tree built in the corpora-comparing system to evaluate the context according to the grammar recorded in the grammar principle database. This system deletes segmentation sub-trees which are not matched with the grammar and decides the POS which the lexical entry belongs to. When proceeding with the grammar proofreading, the system only compares the POS of the front lexical entry rather than proofreading the whole article so that the system can determine the POS of the lexical entry in the oral language conversation more correctly while increasing speed and flexibility of the judgment. The main reason for adopting the method of judging the relationship of the grammar between the front and rear words is that grammar structure is usually not perfect in an oral language conversation. If the system uses only grammar rules it would find errors in determining the POS. In contrast, if the system checks only the relationship between the front and rear words, it would correctly determine the POS. The detailed procedure is shown in Figure 10. Weighted-Calculation system The weighted-calculation system is used to judge the correctness of segmentation results when there is more than one result after grammar analyzation, as a segmented Chinese sentence may have more than one suitable way for splitting. This system com- putes the weights according to the lexical entry building principle, with the segmenta- tion result having the largest weight being the correct one. The process of the weighted calculation is listed as follows: Weight = Weights of length * Weights of searching result * Word frequency A. Weights of length: The longer lexical entry has a higher priority according to the lexical entry-building principle. Therefore, the longer the length the larger the weight . B. Weight of searching result: The weight of the searching result changes based on whether this word is an unknown Figure 10. The flow chart of the keyword in context comparing system Segmentation tree move pointer to sub-tree fit in with grammar Y record analysis result delete this sub-tree N have un-search sub-tree Y finish analyze N have un-search sub-tree Y finish analyze N �2 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. word or not. In principal, the weight of a known word is larger than that of an unknown word. However, according to the principle of long lexical entry privacy, the system sets the weight of an unknown word to be the same as N-continuous words. Therefore, the weight of an unknown word is only slightly larger than a one-continuous known word. C. Word frequency: Shows how often the lexical entry appears in the equilibrium corpora. The more often the lexical entry appears, the higher frequency it has. After calculating the weighted sum of all nodes on every branch the system can find the segmented result that is the most suitable for the lexical entry-build- ing principle. syntactic analysis system The main function of the syntactic analysis system is to transform the lexical entries of the input sentence into a structure that can represent the relationship of these lexical entries. However, not all the input sentences are legal in syntax, and the system should provide a fault-tolerance mechanism. With a fault-tolerance mechanism, the system can tolerate common mistakes in general oral conversation and thereby increase the level of fluency in the conversation. Figure 11 shows the flowchart of the syntactic analysis system which utilizes the “Word-based Link Grammar” (Sleator & Temperley, 1991) as the parsing method of the syntax. Word-based link Grammar The method of the Word-based Link Gram- mar defines the linking rules on each lexical entry for making the link relations. The syntactic analysis system obtains the rela- tions as the syntactic parts of each lexical entry. Table 3 shows the linking rules of each part of speech. When the syntactic analysis system starts analyzing, it obtains the linking rules of each lexical entry from a dictionary and makes a link according to these linking rules. The parsing algorithm is shown as Algorithm 1. Figure 11. Flowchart of the syntactic analysis system Segmented sentence Fault-tolerance syntactic parser Special error rules Link grammar rules and general error rules Definition of general error rules Identify of user Legal in syntax yes no Error log Adjustment of error rules Semantic analysis system Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 �3 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. F�u�t-T��er���ce Mec������s�� The sentences that have a syntax error usually appear in oral conversations and those sentences that are difficult to parse. Therefore, it is necessary for the syntactic analysis system to provide a fault-toler- ance mechanism. The proposed syntactic analysis system provides the fault-tolerance mechanism by modifying the linking rules of interrelated lexical entries. Figure 12 shows an example of fault-tolerance pro- cessing by omitting the preposition . In the first block of Figure 12, after the segmentation system process, the correct Chinese sentence is segmented into , , and and their parts of speech are “Pa”, “D”, and “N” respectively. The system obtains the linking rules of each lexical entry from the dictionary and checks if the linkage of each lexical entry is correct. However, in the second block of Figure 12, because of the omission of preposition , the sentence can not make a connection between lexical entry and by means of the linking rules. Therefore, in the last block of Figure 12, with the defining of error linking rules “Err_D”, the lexical entry and can make a connection by linking rules “Err_D” so as to provide the fault-tolerance processing. semantic analysis system The semantic analysis system, as shown in Figure 13, transforms the structure of the sentence, as constructed by the syntactic analysis system, into the semantic meaning. part of speech linking rules Noun(N) (S+ or O-)&(Q- or())&(@Adj- or ())&(Do- or ())&(Ds+ or ())&(Cn1+ or ())&(Cn2- or ()) Personal pronoun(Pa) (S+ or O-)&(@Adj- or ())&(Ds+ or ())&(Cn1+ or ())&(Cn2- or ()) Demonstrative(Pb) (Bs+ or Pq+) Doubt pronoun(Pc) (S+ or O-) Quantifier (Q) (num- or Pq- or (Pq- & num-))&(Q+) Adjective(Adj) (Adj+ or Bj-)&(Adva- or ())&(Noj- or ())&(Ca1+ or ())&(Ca2- or ()) Adverb-decorate adjective(Adva) (Adva+) Adverb-decorate verb(Advb) (Advb+) Negation(No) (Noj+ or Nov+) Auxiliary verb(Hv) (Hv+) Transitive verb(Vt) (Hv- or ())&(S-)&(O+)&(Advb- or()) Intransitive verb(Vi) (Hv- or ())&(S-)&(Advb- or()) Preposition(D) (Ds- & Do+) Conjunction(C) (Ca1- & Ca2+)or(Cn1- & Cn2+) Indicative(Bv) (Bs- or S-)&(O+ or ())&(Bj+ or ()) Table 3. The linking rules of each part of speech �4 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Comment: Sentence: sentence inputted by user Token: segmented lexical entry First_Token: first lexical entry of sentence Last_Token: last lexical entry of sentence Token_Link: flag of whether the lexical entry is linked or not Link_Grammar: linking rules of lexical entry Disjuncts: linking rules in disjunctive form Syntactic_Error: syntactic error flag Right_Links: right connectors of linking rules Left_Links: left connectors of linking rules Syntactic_Part: syntactic part Syntactic_Error_Procedure: procedure when errors exist on syntax BEGIN get Tokens of Sentence segmented by the segmentation system END BEGIN FOR(i=First_Token to Last_Token) BEGIN set Token_Link off get Link_Grammar of the ith Token from Dictionary make Disjuncts of the ith Token END set Syntactic_Error off FOR(i=First_Token to Last_Token) BEGIN FOR(j=next Token of the ith Token to the Last_Token and exist Right_Links) BEGIN IF(one of jth Token's Left_Links matches one of ith Token's Right_Links) THEN BEGIN 1.make a link between the ith and the jth Token and assign Syntactic_Part 2.set both ith and jth Token's Token_Link on 3.remove the Disjuncts of the ith Token and the jth Token that are without a link 4.remove this link from the Disjuncts of the ith Token END END IF(ith Token's Token_Link=off) THEN BEGIN set Syntactic_Error on END END IF(Syntactic_Error=on) THEN BEGIN call Syntactic_Error_Procedure() END END Algorithm 1. Syntactic analysis system Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 �� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. The system judges the correctness of the semantics and provides a semantic learning method based on the user’s oral habits. Because the judgment of semantics only determines the correctness of the subject and the object around the verb, the proposed system searches for the verb of a sentence in advance. If there is no verb in the sentence, the system will continue to the next sub-system after retaining the semantic meaning in the semantic network. The parsing algorithm of semantics is shown as Algorithm 2. Me���r�-B�sed P�rs���� ��ste�� The proposed system utilizes the “Memory- based parsing system” (Chung & Moldo- van, 1994b) as the parsing method of the semantics. There are three parts in the memory-based parsing system: the con- Figure 12. Fault-tolerance processing with omitting of the preposition cept sequence layer, the semantic concept hierarchy, and the instance layer. Concept sequence layer The concept sequence layer keeps both the syntactic and the semantic restrictions of the subject and the object around the verb. As shown in Figure 14, the concept sequence layer takes the verb as the principal element. The verb element links to both the subject and the object elements via the pointers to obtain their restrictions. The detailed contents are explained as follows: • Structure of the verb:  Lexical entry of the verb: Save the context of the verb.  S: Link to the restriction of the subject.  O: Link to the restriction of the object. �6 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Figure 13. Flowchart of the semantic analysis system Comment: Token: lexical entry First_Token: first lexical entry of asentence Last_Token: last lexical entry of a sentence Syntactic_Part: syntactic part Verb: the verb of a sentence Subjective_Token: the lexical entry of a subject Objective_Token: the lexical entry of a object Verb_Token: the lexical entry of a verb Semantic_Error_Procedure: the procedure when an error exist in the semantics Semantic_Network: semantic network BEGIN FOR(i=First_Token to Last_Token) BEGIN IF(exist Token which Syntatic_Part is a Verb) THEN BEGIN search Subjective_Token and Objective_Token that is related to this Verb_Token check semantics between Subjective_Token and Verb_Token check semantics between Verb_Token and Objective_Token IF(semantics is not illegal) THEN BEGIN call Semantic_Error_Procedure() return END according to Subjective_Token, Verb_Token and Objective_Token create Semantic_Network END END FOR(i=First_Token to Last_Token) BEGIN IF(Token isn't in Semantic_Network) THEN BEGIN insert the Token into the Semantic_Network according to the link END END END Algorithm 2. Semantic analysis system Result of syntactic analysis Is there any verb Get the verb Get subject and object around the verb Semantic parsing Is legal in semantic Concept sequence database Semantic concept hierarchy Error lognoyes yesnoResponsion system Semantic meaning Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 �� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Figure 14. Structure of the concept sequence layer  Time: Link to the parts of the sen- tence regarding time.  Place: Link to the parts of sentence regarding place.  Sentence: Link to the sub-sen- tence. • Structure of the subject or the object:  Syntactic restriction: Record the restriction of the syntax.  Semantic restriction: Record the restriction of the semantics.  Ellipsis flag: For judging whether the subject or the object element can be omitted.  Lexical entry or sentence: Link to the actual lexical entry or sub-sen- tence of the subject or the object. Based on the structure of the concept sequence layer, the system provides not only verification of semantic restrictions but also a basis of encoding of the input sentence. semantic Concept hierarchy The semantic concept hierarchy defines the relation of the nouns according to the meaning of the nouns. The semantic restric- tions of subject and object in the concept sequence layer directs them to get their restrictions via the pointers. The structure of the semantic concept hierarchy is shown in Figure 15. The detailed contents are explained as follows: • ID: Store the identity number of the noun. • Lexical entry: Store the context of the noun. • ID of parent: Keep up-link of the parent’s ID. instance layer In the instance layer, the proposed system records the lexical entries and obtains the semantic restrictions from the concept sequence layer by comparing the lexical entry of the verb with the verb elements in the concept sequence layer. Figure 16 takes Verb Subject Object Structure of concept sequence layer Structure of verb Lexical entry of verb Link S O Time Place Syntactic restriction Semantic restriction Ellipsis flag Link Lexical entry or sentence Sentence Structure of subject or object �8 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. as an example for parsing by the above three layers. Because each lexical entry of subject and object could find a path to reach their semantic restric- tions, the example sentence is legal. The parsing path of the subject is “ 「 」「 」「 」” and the path of the object is “「 」「 」「 」”. learning Mechanism of semantics In the procedure of semantics processing there could be some inconsistency between the system and the user. Because of this problem, the system should provide a learn- ing mechanism (Kim & Moldovan, 1995) for reducing the differences between the system and the user. The proposed learn- ing mechanism is divided into two parts: generalization and specialization. Ge��er���z�t���� Generalization of the learning mechanism loosens the semantic restrictions. Figure 17 shows examples of generalization: There are two conditions of generaliza- tion when differences appear between the system and the user: • The restriction layer of the system is greater and equal to the restriction layer considered by the user, as shown on the left side of Figure 17. Should the user decide that one of the oblique nodes should be corrected, the system would find the lowest common parent node (meshed node) of the oblique node and the restriction node (black node) as the new restriction. • The restriction layer of the system is less than the restriction layer considered by the user as shown on the right side of Figure 17. If the user decides that the meshed node on top of the restriction node (black node) should be corrected, this meshed node would become the new restriction node. specialization Specialization of the learning mechanism shrinks the semantic restrictions. Figure 18 shows an example of specialization. If a user decides that one of the nodes (oblique node) under the restriction node is illegal in semantics, the system would change the restriction by eliminating all the illegal nodes under the restriction node Figure 15. Structure of semantic concept hierarchy Object Entity Abstract Creature Non-Creature Animal Plant Human Non-Hunan You Me Teacher DogCat GrassFlower Stone Semantic concept hierarchy database ID Lexical entry ID of parent Structure of node Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 �� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Figure 16. Example of semantic verification Figure 17. Generalization Figure 18. Specialization or Old restriction New restriction Old restriction New restriction New restriction Old restriction New restriction and the meshed nodes would become the new restriction nodes, as shown in Figure 18. If the illegal node considered by the user is above or the equal to the restriction node, the system would ask the user what the restriction should be. semantic Network The purpose of the semantic network (Quillian, 1968) is to store and represent the meaning of semantics so as to apply it in the inference mechanism. The semantic network describes the relationship between an object and an event. There are three ele- 80 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ments in a semantic unit: entity, attribute, and value: • Entity: The principal part of a seman- tic unit that represents an object or event. • Attribute: An arc that describes the attribute of the entity. • Value: The result of the attribute that describes the entity. F i g u r e 1 9 u s e s t h e s e n t e n c e as an example. The meshed node is one of the nodes in the concept hierarchy layer, and the actual lexical entry in the instance layer uses the arc of the attribute ‘instance-of’ to form a semantic unit of semantic network with the concept node . With the link of the attribute ‘instance-of’ the actual lexical entry inherits the property or the capability from the concept node. The system transforms the linkage into the semantic unit subject . Consequently, the unit of semantic network is established through linkage by the syntactic parser. response system In the past, learners have had to know ex- act keywords when using a search engine. However, two identical keywords in dif- ferent contexts produce different meanings and therefore return different, sometimes undesirable, results. For example, “tell me about the specifications of Bluetooth” and “tell me about the applications of Blue- tooth,” although having the same keyword, have different meanings. The first sentence concerns hardware specifications of Blue- tooth, and the second, software applications of Bluetooth. Learners then would have to filter the data from the results by themselves. The Bayesian Network(BN) and Natural Language Understanding(NLU) (Arai, Wright, Riccardi, & Gorin, 1998; Carpenter & Chu-Carroll, 1998; Kuhn & De Mori, 1995; Miller & Bobrow, 1994; Pieraccini & Levin, 1992) are used to decipher ambigu- ous sentences and evaluate the searching preferences of different learner. Before attempting to develop a system, the application domain should be defined as it is very difficult to solve problems of uncertain domain. The application domain of the proposed system is set to the basic computer concept. As shown in Figure 20, understanding natural language queries for a specific application domain involves parsing the input query into a series of domain-specific keywords and searching for the goal of the learner’s query. A search- ing goal assumes that within a restricted application domain, there is a finite set of semantic keywords (M) as well as a finite set of searching goals (N). The searching goals SGi and keywords Ki are all binary decisions, and the keyword Ki is true if it appears in the speech. In this way, the Figure 19. An example of semantic network 我 石頭subject object 石頭 instance-of Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 81 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. proposed system can formulate the NLU problem by making M binary decisions with N BNs. The BN for the searching goal SGi takes the input as a set of keywords K extracted from the learner’s query. The BN then gives a posterior probability P(SG | K) for the binary decision. The connection of the BN assumes conditional independence among the set of keywords K, meaning that there are direct links between the goal and the concept nodes and no linkages among the concepts nodes. This is equivalent to a naïve Bayes formulation. When applying the Baysian rule the proposed system assumes that the searching goal SGi is present if P(SG | K) is greater than a threshold θ or absent otherwise. θ may be set to 0.5 for simplicity because P(SGi = 1 | K) + P(SGi = 0 | K) is equal to 1. This formula provides a method to reject out-of-domain queries(OODQ). A query is classified as OODQ when all BNs vote negative for their corresponding goals. As- suming that the searching sentence contains i keywords denoted by KWi , every keyword affects the searching goal. The searching sentence can be represented as Figure 20 and Formula 1. According to the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle, every node in the BN provides the complexity of the network by a magnitude of Lnetwork. Lower values for the Lnetwork reflect lower network complexi- ties. Each node also provides the accuracy in modeling the data by a magnitude of Ldata. Lower values for Ldata reflect higher accuracy. In this way, the total description length Ltotal provided by the given node is defined by Ltotal = Lnetwork + Ldata. The total description length of a network is the sum of all the concept nodes in the network. The trained BN topologies is shown in Figure 21. There are two keyword groups (maximal sets of nodes that are all pairwise linked)—(SG, K1, K2) and (SG, K3) which show that the keyword groups can com- municate through the separator node SG. Each keyword group Ki relates to a joint probability P(SG, Ki). The keyword group (SG, K1, K2) relates to the joint probability P(SG, K1, K2), and the keyword group (SG, K3) relates to the joint probability P(SG, K3). Given a learner’s query, the proposed system derives the presence and absence of the various keywords K and updates the joint probability according to Formula 2. The updated joint probability is eventually marginalized to produce a probability for the searching goal P*(SG). Figure 20. Belief network of keywords and searching goal Keyword_1 Keyword_2 Keyword_n……… Searching Goal 82 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. The BN framework from NLU is ex- tended to mixed-initiative dialog modeling. The idea is to enable BNs to automatically detect missing or spurious keywords ac- cording to domain-specific constraints captured by their probabilities. If a missing keyword is detected, the BN prompts the dialog to display the necessary informa- tion to the learner. If a spurious keyword is detected, the BN prompts the dialog to notify the learner regarding the unnecessary information. Automatic detection of miss- ing and spurious keywords is achieved by the technique of backward inference which involves probability propagation within the BN. Considering the inferred searching goal SGi for a given learner’s query, the goal node of the corresponding BN is instanti- ated (to either 1 or 0) to test the network’s reliability in each of the input keywords. If the BN topology is assumes conditional independence among the keywords, the up- dated probability of the concepts would be P(Kj | SG). However, in the proposed BN in which the keywords depend on each other, the updated searching goal probability P*(Ki) would propagate to update the joint probabilities of each keyword group P*(Ki , SGi). In this way, each P *(Kj) can be ob- tained by marginalization. This procedure is described by Formula 3 and is similar to the procedure described by Formula 2 for updating concept probabilities. Based on the value of P*(Kj), the system makes a binary decision (by thresholdθ) regarding whether Kj should be present Figure 21. Trained topology of BN and keyword groups 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 3 2 1 ( | , ,...., ) ( , ,...., , ) ( , ,...., ) ( , ,...., ) ( | ) ( | ) ( | ) n n n i n n P SG KW KW KW P KW KW KW SG P KW KW KW P KW KW KW P KW KW P KW KW P KW KW (1) KW1, KW2, …., KWn : search keywords SG : Searching Goal Formula 1. Keyword_1 Keyword_2 Keyword_3 Searching Goal SG, K1, K2 SG, K3SG Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 83 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. or absent. This decision is compared with the actual occurrence of Kj in the learner’s query. Should the binary decision indicate that Kj is absent and it appears in the input query, the keyword is labeled spurious and the dialog would invoke an explanation. If the binary decision indicates that Kj should be present but it is absent from the query, the keyword is labeled missing and the dialog would invoke the prompting act. Using keywords and searching goals to categorize knowledge domains is not al- ways desirable as some learners just browse casually in which case a wider variety of search results is preferred. Therefore, the system records browsing habits as another factor that affects the knowledge domain. The corresponding BN is shown as Fig- ure 22 and the probability is described by Formula 4. The last part is to determine the content and degree of the response to learner. The learning results could be judged by some type of test where a high score indicates a good learning effect and a low score indi- cates a poor learning effect. The modified BN is shown as Figure 23 and the probability is described by Formula 5 and 6. eXPeriMeNtal results The implementation uses the following ex- ample sentence to describe the process of each step. Formula 2. * * * ( )( , ) ( | ) ( ) ( , ) ( )i i i P K P SG K P SG K P K P SG K P K (2) P*(K): Initialized by the presence or absence of the concepts in the learner’s query. P(SGi, K) : Joint probability obtained from the training set. P*(SGi, K) : Updated joint probability. * : Denotes an updated probability with knowledge about the presence or absence of the various concepts in the learner’s query. * * * ( )( , ) ( | ) ( ) ( , ) ( ) i i i i i i P SG P K SG P K SG P SG P K SG P SG (3) P*(SGi) : Updated from instantiating the searching goal node. P(K, SGi): Joint probability of the keyword group obtained from the training set. P*(K, SGi): Updated joint probability of the keyword group. Formula 3. 84 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Figure 22. Bayesian network of knowledge domain Figure 23. Bayesian network of teaching material difficulty Keyword_1 Keyword_1 Keyword_n…… Knowledge Domain Hardware Software Network. . . Browse record Searching Goal Examination Result Excellent Good Poor Teaching Material Difficulty Basic Normal Hard Keyword_1 Keyword_1 Keyword_n…… Knowledge Domain Hardware Software Network. . . . Browse Record Searching GoalExamination Difficulty Formula 4. ( | , ) ( | ) ( | , ) ( | ) P BR KW SG P KW SG P KW BR SG P BR SG (4) P(KD|BR,SG): Probability of knowledge domain P(BR): Probability of learner’s browse record. P(SG): Probability of searching goal. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 8� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. segmentation system The segmentation system divides the example sentence into lexical entries and gives each lexical entry a suitable part of speech as follows. Figure 24 shows the list branching from the first to the fourth layer. Table 4 shows the segmentation table of sentence in Figure 24 The segmentation system divides the example sentence into lexical entries and gives each lexical entry a suitable part of speech as follows: : Demonstrative pronoun [Pb] : Quantifier [Q] : Noun [N] : Transitive verb [Vt]: Transitive verb [Vt] : Adjective [Adj] : Adjective [Adj] : Noun [N] 1. : (Bs+ or Pq+) (()(Bs)) (()(Pq)) 2. : (num- or Pq- or (Pq- & num- ))&(Q+) ((num)(Q)) ((Pq)(Q)) ((Pq,num)(Q)) 3. : (S+ or O-)&(Q- or())&(@ Adj- or ())&(Do- or ())&(Ds+ or ())&(Cn1+ or ())&(Cn2- or ())(1) (({Q},{@Adj},{Do},{Cn2})(S,{Ds},{C n1})) ((O,{Q},{@Adj},{Do},{Cn2})({Ds},{ Cn1})) 4. : (Hv- or ())&(S-)&(O+)&(Advb- or()) ((S)(O)) Formula 5. ( | , ) ( | ) ( | , ) ( | ) P ED ER KD P ER KD P ER ED KD P ED KD (5) P(ER|ED,KD): Probability of examination result. P(ED): Probability of examination difficulty. P(KD): Probability of knowledge domain. Formula 6. ( | , ) ( | ) ( | , ) ( | ) P ER TMD KD P TMD KD P TMD ER KD P ER KD (6) P(TMD|ER,KD): Probability of teaching material difficulty. P(ER): Probability of examination result. P(KD): Probability of knowledge domain. 86 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ((Hv,S)(O)) ((S,Advb)(O)) ((Hv,S,Advb)(O)) 5. : (Adj+ or Bj-)&(Adva- or ())&(Noj- or ())&(Ca1+ or ())&(Ca2- or ()) (({Adva},{Noj},{Ca2})(Adj,{Ca1})) ((Bj,{Adva},{Noj},{Ca2})({Ca1})) 6. : (Adj+ or Bj-)&(Adva- or ())&(Noj- or ())&(Ca1+ or ())&(Ca2- or ()) (({Adva},{Noj},{Ca2})(Adj,{Ca1})) ((Bj,{Adva},{Noj},{Ca2})({Ca1})) 7. : (S+ or O-)&(Q- or())&(@Adj- or ())&(Do- or ())&(Ds+ or ())&(Cn1+ or ())&(Cn2- or ()) (({Q},{@Adj},{Do},{Cn2})(S,{Ds},{C n1})) ((O,{Q},{@Adj},{Do},{Cn2})({Ds},{ Cn1})) After obtaining the above linking grammars, the system begins to parse the sentence according to the above algorithm. The linking process of the first and second lexical entries are shown in Figure 25. Because the first lexical entry contains only its relation to the second lexical entry with the linking requirement ‘Pq’, the link- ing results of the first and second lexical entries are set to true and it records the linkage ‘(Pq,1,2)’ in the linking table. The linkage ‘(Pq,1,2)’ denotes that the first lexi- cal entry connects leftward to the second lexical entry via the connector ‘Pq’. The linking result of the third lexical entry is still false as a result of having no relation- ship with the first lexical entry. The final Figure 24. List of separating from the first layer to the fourth layer Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 8� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. START STRING WORD RESULT Start at C(1) C(1) O C(1)_ C(2) X C(1)_C(2)_C(3) X C(1)_C(2)_C(3)_C(4) X C(1)_C(2)_C(3)_C(4)_C(5) X C(1)_C(2)_C(3)_C(4)_C(5)_C(6) X Start at C(2) C(2) O C(2)_ C(3) X C(2)_C(3)_C(4) X C(2)_C(3)_C(4)_C(5) X C(2)_C(3)_C(4)_C(5)_C(6) X C(2)_C(3)_C(4)_C(5)_C(6)_C(7) X Start at C(3) C(3) X C(3)_ C(4) X C(3)_C(4)_C(5) O C(3)_C(4)_C(5)_C(6) X C(3)_C(4)_C(5)_C(6)_C(7) X C(3)_C(4)_C(5)_C(6)_C(7)_C(8) X     Table 4. The segmentation table of sentence 88 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. result of the syntactic analysis is shown in Figure 26. semantic analysis system After the syntactic analysis procedure, the system can determine that the fourth lexical entry is a verb and that the third and seventh lexical entries are the subject and object, respectively, according to linkages (S,3,4) and (O,4,7). The system determines the correctness of the semantics, and the sen- tence is classified as legal if it conforms to semantic restrictions. Finally, it transforms these linkages into semantic meanings as shown in Figure 27: Figure 25. Process of syntactic analysis Figure 26. Result of the syntactic analysis • (S,3,4)subject • (O,4,7)object • (Adj,5,7)characteristic • (Adj,6,7)characteristic CoNClusioN aNd future Work This paper applies the linking of grammar to describe the syntactical construction of sentences and proceeds to verify and record the semantics according to the construction. At the end, the proposed system replies to the user by finding the suitable response derived from the response database. Ac- cording to the implementation results, the proposed system could correctly describe I D Lexical entry Linking result Disjunctions (()( Pq )) I D Lexical entry Linking result Disjunctions 1 這 True 2 個 True (( Pq )( Q )) (( Pq , num )( Q )) I D Lexical entry Linking result Disjunctions 3 處 理 器 False (( { Q } ,{ @ Adj } ,{ Do } ,{ Cn 2 } )( S ,{ Ds } ,{ Cn 1 } )) (( O ,{ Q } ,{ @ Adj } ,{ Do } ,{ Cn 2 } )( { Ds } ,{ Cn 1 } )) Pq Linking table ( Pq , 1 , 2 ) Linking result : The used disjunctions of each lexical entry : 這 個 處 理 器 有 許 多 新 的 功 能 Pb Q S O Adj Adj (()(Pq )) ((Pq )(Q )) (()(S)) ((S)(O )) (()(Adj )) (()(Adj )) ((O,@Adj )()) （Pq,1,2）、（Q,2,3）、（S,3,4）、（O,4,7）、（Adj,5,7）、（Adj,6,7） Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 8� Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. the relationship between lexicons. Fur- thermore, with the use of memory-based parsing, the proposed system can check the correctness of the semantics and provide a learning mechanism by changing the se- mantic restrictions of the concept sequence layer. Finally, by classifying the response databases and using the verb of the sentence as the search key, the response system greatly reduces the amount of response results and increases speed and accuracy. Of the numerous possible applications in the future, one could further develop the interaction between computer and user by utilizing user characteristics and habits, allowing the proposed method to generate a variety of improved responses. With the continual progression of the computing age and the increasing need for improved methods of automated communication, the future of the proposed system remains both worthwhile and practical. refereNCes Arai, J., Wright, G., Riccardi, & Gorin, A. (1998). Grammar fragment acquisition using syntactic and semantic clustering. The 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Carpenter, B. & Chu-Carroll, J. (1998). Natural language call routing: A robust, self-organizing approach. The 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Chen, J.-F., Lin, W.-C., Jian, C.-Y. (2003a). Using the keyword in context segmentation method for collaborative design in a Chinese Web site. The 10th ISPE International Confer- ence on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications, pp. 967–975. Chen, J.-F., Lin, W.-C., Jian, C.-Y., Ho, T-.Y., & Dai, S.-Y. (2003b). Using the keyword in context segmentation method for a Chinese Web site. 2003 International Conference on Computer- Assisted Instruction, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan, pp. 74-80. Chen, J.-F., Lin, W.-C., Jian, C.-Y., & Hung, C-.C. (2003c). A Chinese automatic interactive feedback system for applying in a Web site. The Second International Human.Society@Internet Conference, pp.238-248. Chen, J.-F., Lin, W.-C., Jian, C.-Y., & Hung, C-.C. (2005). A Chinese interactive feedback system for an e-learning Web site. Journal of Information Science and Engineering, 21(5), 929-957. Chen, K. J., & Liu, S. H. (1992). Word iden- tification for mandarin Chinese sentences. Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Nantes, pp.101-107. Chung, M. & Moldovan, D. (1993). Parallel memory-based parsing on SNAP. Parallel Processing Symposium, Proceedings of Seventh International Conference, pp. 680-684. Chung, M. & Moldovan, D. (1994a). Applying parallel processing to natural-language process- Figure 27. Semantic network of example sentence 有處理器 功能subject object 許多,新的 characteristic �0 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(4), 62-�0, October-December 2008 Copyright © 2008, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ing. IEEE Expert [see also IEEE Intelligent Systems], 9(1), 36-44. Chung, M. & Moldovan, D. (1994b). Memory- based parsing with parallel marker-passing. Pro- ceedings of the Tenth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications, pp. 202-207. Kim, J-.T. & Moldovan, D.I. (1993). Acquisition of semantic patterns for information extraction from corpora. Proceedings of Ninth Confer- ence on Artificial Intelligence for Applications, pp.171-176. Kim, J-.T. & Moldovan, D.I. (1995). Acquisi- tion of linguistic patterns for knowledge-based information extraction. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 7(5), 713-724. Kuhn, R. & De Mori, R. (1995). The applica- tion of semantic classification trees for natural language understanding. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Machine Intell., 17, 449-460. Miller, S. & Bobrow, R. (1994). Statistical language processing using hidden understand- ing models. The Human Language Technology Workshop, 278-282. Pieraccini, R. & Levin, E. (1992). Stochastic representation of semantic structure for speech understanding. Speech Communication, 11, 283-288. Quillian, M.R. (1968). Semantic Memory. In Semantic information processing, pp. 216-270. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sleator, D. & Temperley, D. (1991). Parsing English with a link grammar. Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science technical report CMU-CS-91-196. Jui-Fa Chen (陳瑞發) received his PhD, MS, and BS degrees in the department of computer science and information engineering from TamKang University (TKU), Danshui, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998, 1992, and 1990, respectively. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Informa- tion Technology in TamKang University (TKU). His research interests include intelligent avatar, peer-to-peer communication, and software engineering. Wei-Chuan Lin (林 偉 川) received his PhD, MS, and BS degrees in the department of computer science and information engineering from TamKang University (TKU), Danshui, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998, 1986, and 1984, respectively. After graduated from TKU, he worked in the Institute of Information Industry until 1993. He is an assocated professor in the Department of Information Technology in Takming College, Nei-Hoo District, Taipei, Taiwan, since 1993. His research interests include intelligent avatar, peer-to-peer communication, and software engineering. Chih-Yu Jian (簡志宇) eceived his PhD, MS, and BS degrees in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering from TamKang University (TKU), Danshui, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2007, 2001, and 1999, respectively. His research interests include intelligent avatar, peer-to- peer communication, and software engineering. Ching-Chung Hung (洪慶全) received his MS and BS degrees in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering from TamKang University (TKU), Danshui, Taipei, Tai- wan, in 2002, 2000. After graduated from TKU, he worked in Internet Information Corporation until now. 
work_l3zf6jq6dna6dch736ul3iuid4	----	85550 501..516 Development of a web-based self-training package for information retrieval using the distance education approach Chutima Sacchanand School of Liberal Arts, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangkok, Thailand, and Vipa Jaroenpuntaruk School of Science and Technology, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangkok, Thailand Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this project was to develop a web-based self-training package for information retrieval using the distance education approach. Design/methodology/approach – The package was developed using the distance education approach with STOU Plan, STOU Plan 2000 and GMS-VU applied. The distance education model for the web-based self-training package was composed of five stages: identifying the learners, design of the package, production of the package, establishing the delivery system, and evaluation. The system development methodology was based on the system development lifecycle (SDLC) with a combination of waterfall, phased and prototyping approaches. There are several phase in SDLC to carry out: problem and objective identification, requirement determination, requirement analysis, package design, package implementation, delivery system and evaluation. Evaluation of the package was conducted in two phases: formative evaluation and summative evaluation using the focus group discussion method. Formative evaluation was conducted during the package development by experts in the field prior to the summative evaluation. The summative evaluation was conducted after the package development had been completed as a pilot study for field trial by target users, consisting of junior library staff and library users. All comments were reviewed and refined in terms of instructional content, design, overall opinion and learning progress before put on production. Findings – The package consists of three main components: About the project, Study modules, References and further readings. Study modules, which is the most important component, consists of ten instructional modules focusing on information retrieval, and self-assessment through pre-test and post-test. The package includes multimedia such as images and sound to attract learners during their learning session. The delivery mode for the self-training package offers both online and off-line modes. Online mode is offered when there is network facility and internet connection available, while offline mode is offered through CD-ROM without requiring network and internet connection. The features and functions of both modes are identical. Moreover, print materials are also included as supplementary media. Originality/value – Since the module is a self-directed learning or self-training tool in information retrieval it can be employed for junior library staff and library users; it provides a training tool for librarians to train library users and supports human resource and development to narrow digital divides and support the right to access information. Keywords E-learning, Computer based learning, Information retrieval, Distance learning Paper type Research paper The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm Research Funded by the Advancement of Librarianship Program (ALP), International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) 2004. Web-based self-training package 501 Received 23 May 2005 Revised 19 November 2005 Accepted December 2005 The Electronic Library Vol. 24 No. 4, 2006 pp. 501-516 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0264-0473 DOI 10.1108/02640470610689197 Introduction The political, economic, social and technological context of education is changing. Education has been moving very fast during the past decade, from traditional classroom settings or face to face instruction and from correspondence study in the distance education system to online education. Of all possible distance education formats, the internet has become the most widely used (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). The internet, a medium for information transmission, and especially the world wide web has broadened the scope of traditional education and conventional distance education to include e-learning, virtual universities, virtual courses and virtual libraries. A new form of teaching and learning, web-based instruction or online learning has gained considered popularity, especially in the field of library and information science. Distance education, especially web-based instruction is an attractive mode of delivery for information literacy instruction and is a fully integrated instructional medium. It is a viable means to enhance information catering to professionals and workers to keep abreast with the changing workforce and provide greater impetus in the area of continuing education. Web-based instruction has many advantages. It enables individuals to learn by themselves and encourages self-directed learning, self reflection, learner-centered learning and just in time learning. It also accommodates an individual’s learning style, promotes active learning, and broadens the scope of conventional distance education to anywhere, any time and any pace. Due to the status reports provided by the 10th ASTINFO Consultative Meeting, Regional Seminar/Workshop on Information Education Strategies for the 21st Century, held in Beijing, China from September 18-19, 1995 and the Consultative Meeting and Workshop in Planning Human Resource Development for Information Societies, held in Bangkok, Thailand from March 3-7, 1997, the following courses of action were recommended on a regional basis: (1) the need to retool and upgrade the skills of librarians who are already on stream in such areas as computing and telecommunications, in order to improve the quality of information services; (2) the need to develop distance learning packages on specific topics to meet high priority training needs; and (3) the meeting also agreed that distance learning is a mode that can be used for continuing education of information professionals and workers (STOU and UNESCO, 1997). In addition, the evolution of information and communication technologies has presented a number of problems and challenges for policy-makers and administrators in the higher education field. A particularly important issue is the existence of “digital divides”, both among and within nations. In response to such issues, UNESCO with the support of Prof. Wang Yibing (Specialist in Higher Education) initiated a project for the establishment of a Greater Mekong Subregion Virtual University (GMSVU). The initial workshop on Feasibility Study for Establishment of Greater Mekong Subregion Virtual University (GMSVU), held at STOU in August 2001, identified Tourism, ICT and Mekong Studies as the first three fields of common interest that would form the components of a pilot project. EL 24,4 502 The GMSVU pre-pilot project proposed by Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) had the following outcomes: . a virtual campus model adapted to the national context, including descriptions of organizational, functional and technical aspects; and . a prototype e-learning module installed on the VClass system and a method for evaluating the module for the GMSVU pre-pilot project (Jaroenpuntatuk, 2002; Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, 2004). Learning now has to be continuous and almost a “way of being” (Vaill, 1996). It can be anticipated that enormous changes in technological developments will continue in the twenty-first century and the need on the part of faculty and students to acquire computer and information skills will need to keep pace with other changes (Rader, 1998). Knowledge about effective and efficient access to information and the ability to retrieve and use information are a necessity. This has given librarians opportunities to take a more central role in the distance education process. Their major missions are to find ways to ensure that distance learners have access to information resources, can acquire information skills and then become information literate. Librarians play a critical role in facilitating access to information, and this is reflected in the changing titles that librarians are now given – including cybrarians, webrarians and knowledge officers. Librarians provide a wide variety of formal and informal instructional programs. To support the changing environment and mentioned recommendations, and as distance education is the most useful and cost-effective means of enhancing or updating information and library skills and qualifications (Stoker, 1995, p. 3) and information retrieval is one important performance indicator of information literacy, the researchers developed a project using the distance approach, aiming at junior library staff and library users in developing countries for self-directed learning in conducting their own searches, and for librarians in providing user education or information literacy instruction to library users especially distance learners. The objective of the project was to develop a web-based self-training package for information retrieval using the distance education approach. This study is significant in that: it is a self-directed learning or self-training tool in information retrieval for junior library staffs and library users; it provides a training tool for librarians to train library users; and it supports human resource development to narrow digital divides and support the right to access information. The expected outcome of the project is a web-based self-training package for information retrieval using the distance education approach offered both online and offline, and supplemented by printed materials. Review of related literature A review of literature involving studies and research relevant to distance education, web-based instruction and information literacy instruction was conducted. It is divided into the following major headings: distance education, distance learners, library services to distance learners, information literacy, teaching information retrieval, web-based instruction in information retrieval, librarians’ roles, and research related to information retrieval instruction. The literature review shows that distance education has gained popularity in recent years due to its many strengths. Information and communication technologies have Web-based self-training package 503 driven distance education forward from printed to digital resources and led to the emergence of a great number of distance learners. This has greatly affected ways of teaching and learning and led to educational reform and promotion of the realization of lifelong learning. Information literacy has become a survival skill which is desirable for all. Amidst the information revolution, knowledge and competencies in information retrieval are needed. Librarians share their roles with faculty in providing information literacy instruction to distance learners. The library literature is replete with research studies on information literacy in academic libraries in a variety of specialized areas. However, less research has been done on library instruction to distance learners. While several surveys have been conducted to assess faculty attitudes or perceptions of library instruction, only a few address off-campus library services or adjunct faculty. Behrens (1993) in her study of lecturers’ attitudes to library skills at the University of South Africa, describes numerous obstacles to distance learning which have a direct bearing on the learning of library skills. These obstacles include faculty awareness of the role of library skills in independent learning, student and faculty workload and the time needed for additional library research beyond the compulsory study package, and faculty’s knowledge of library skills. It is apparent that faculty had not given the matter much thought. In 1998, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) formed a joint task force to examine the educational role of libraries. It is reported in the background of the blueprint for collaboration, that the associations share the goals of lifelong learning and ensuring that students at all educational levels are prepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, through the development of information literacy skills. The challenge of providing distant services to remote students will require unique attention to ensure that students are acquiring the skills necessary to become independent learners and not simply having librarians exercise these skills on their behalf (Adams et al., 1998, p. 4). Librarians can contribute actively by providing distance learners with various forms of library instruction, bibliographic instruction or user education for effective assessing and evaluation information sources. It is through the development of these generic skills that academic librarians can contribute to the creation of self-directed learners and self-reliant researchers (Popoola, 1992). They have an impact on lifelong learning by providing organized interfaces to resources and information in libraries and increasingly through the internet. Knowledge and skills in information retrieval have been shown as outcomes of information literacy instruction. In the ARCL “Objectives for information literacy instruction: a model statement for academic librarians”, information literate student who can retrieve information online or in person using a variety of methods is one performance indicator. A variety of technologies have been used as delivery systems to facilitate distance learning and interactive activities between teachers and learners, especially web-based models of learning. The web is identified by Casey (1998) as a technology acting as a source of information, electronic book, teacher, and communication medium between teachers and students, simultaneously. The world wide web is considered to be a tool appropriate for delivering instruction to a remote audience. Several web sites have been developed to provide learners with access to user education. EL 24,4 504 Web-based instruction enables individuals to learn by themselves, encourages self-directed learning, self reflection, learner-centered learning, just in time learning, accommodates an individual’s learning style, active learning, and broadens the scope of conventional distance education to any where, any time and any pace. Vishwanatham et al. (1997) emphasized that the most important impact of online instruction was the ability to reach a larger number of users than would not have been possible in the traditional classroom setting while achieving a level of depth not possible in the typical one-hour, one-meeting instruction class. Web-based instruction has been used intensively with high priority on the development of information literacy skills among the students. It is an attractive mode of delivery for information literacy instruction and a fully integrated instructional medium for distance education as well as for conventional universities. The web has increasingly been integrated into both curriculum content and the teaching and learning process to enhance face-to-face courses in the traditional universities and supplement distance learning materials. Libraries have also been involved in providing information instruction via the web. Research related to information retrieval instruction are mostly doctoral dissertations. They are relevant to information retrieval instruction or as part of information literacy instruction. Many research conducted show positive findings about the use of web-based instruction/tutorials as appropriate tools incorporated into existing educational programs and expanding programming opportunities for effective search, access and use of information from databases, and for personal, professional and instructional purposes. The learning theories, teaching method and instructional design tutorial models, e.g. model synthesizing both instructional design pedagogy and web-design concepts were proposed. In addition, search strategies, e.g. the use of Boolean and user interface features were also studied. A previous study examined manual/electronic versus an electronic only approach to train novice database users in information retrieval from an electronic database. A total of 82 undergraduate university students were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups: manual than electronic or electronic only. All participants completed instructional activities during stage one of the study using systematically designed instructional package which presented skills and concepts that had been defined as prerequisites for information retrieval. Participants then completed three sets of instructional activities during stage two of the study in which they developed, consolidated and applied information retrieval strategies in using an algo-heuristic model of information retrieval. During these instructional activities measures of retrieval effectiveness and retrieval efficiency were taken. Stage three of the study required participants to evaluate the accuracy of retrieved information, and measures of evaluation effectiveness were taken. The statistically significant positive correlation between performance on the criterion-referenced mastery test and measures of information retrieval and evaluation performance provided support for the requirement for mastery of the defined entry level skills and concepts before participants begin electronic information retrieval. The study findings indicate that by achieving mastery of the defined entry level skills, and applying these skills using an algo-heuristic model for developing information retrieval strategies, some novice Web-based self-training package 505 database users can achieve levels of competence equivalent to experienced database users with just six hours of instruction. Previous research made randomized, blinded study addressed whether and to what extent the methodology by which information literacy skills instruction occurred impacted on first-year medical students’ information retrieval skills, perceptions regarding the use of library and information resources, and performance outcomes on a MEDLINE searching exercise. A group of 128 first year medical students enrolled in a problem-based learning course participated in information-retrieval skills training. Students were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups. The control group participated in a traditional, instructor-lead information-retrieval training session, while the intervention group participated in identical instruction via a web-based tutorial. Data were gathered from several sources including: (1) a pre-instruction survey and pre-test; (2) the evaluation of students’ MEDLINE searches; (3) a post-instruction survey and post-test; and (4) a three-month follow-up survey measuring students’ use of information resources in support of PBL activities during the previous semester. MEDLINE searching assignments directly linked to the PBL patient cases were electronically captured, blinded, and independently evaluated and scored by three reference librarians, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of students’ searching skills. Results provided a picture of students’ MEDLINE skills, information usage behaviors, and attitudes. Statistical tests showed that intervention group students scored an average of 2.84 out of a possible four points on the MEDLINE exercise, and control group students scored an average of 2.60. Follow-up data collected three months post-training examined students’ MEDLINE searching behaviors. Results indicated that 55 percent of control group students performed six or more MEDLINE searches during the semester, while 38 percent of intervention group students used MEDLINE six or more times. The corresponding value of 0.053 approached statistical significance. Librarians can use this information in designing and implementing more effective learning modules for both on-campus and off-campus learners, appropriately incorporating the use of web-based tutorials into existing educational programs, and expanding programming opportunities to include the integrated use of web-based and traditional learning modules. Educational content on the internet is rapidly increasing. Academicians and businesses are placing more course material on-line to supplement classroom and business training situations. In addition significant increases in undergraduate enrollments in information system courses and the rapid pace of new knowledge in the field leads researches to call for new innovative approaches to learning. Prior researchers have reported that this new web-based training technology (which has its foundation in computer-based training) has not integrated sound pedagogical practices into the authoring process when developing new tutorials. Learning theories and concepts pertinent to instructional design tutorial models were reviewed and also the design factors affecting successful web-based tutorials were summarized. A model synthesizing both instructional design pedagogy and web-design concepts is proposed. EL 24,4 506 Research methodology The self-training package for information retrieval employs the distance education approach to transfer knowledge and experience to students and users, with contents arranged into self-instructional packages in both online and offline forms supplemented by printed material. STOU Plan, STOU Plan 2000 and the GMSVU Model were applied in the development of the self-training package. The distance education model for the web-based self training package is composed of five stages: identifying the learners, design of the package, production of the package, establishing the delivery system and evaluation as shown in Figure 1. (1) Identifying the learners through preliminary surveys. The target groups of this self-training package were identified as follows: . they are distance learners, adult learners, and self-directed learners; . they are non-english native speakers, usually they use english as their second language; . they have high motivation and are willing to take responsibility for their own education. they learn in a variety of ways. they often feel compelled to take an active role in their own learning; and . their weaknesses are that they lack information literacy skills especially information retrieval. They need to undergo instruction in information literacy. (2) Design of the self-training package. This includes analysis of subject contents and course modules, identifying learning objectives, and designing instructional media which must be set up in such a way as to fit the aim of the project, facilitate the use of distance teaching techniques and suit the Figure 1. Distance education model for the web-based self-training Web-based self-training package 507 characteristics and needs of target users of this self-training package. The self-training package was designed not only by the researchers but by the course team members, comprising six outstanding content specialists and an educational technologist in library and information science from various universities and agencies. It consists of three main components: about the project; study modules, which is the main component, and references and further reading. The delivery mode was online and offline, supplemented by printed materials. (3) Production of the self-training package. At first in the project proposal, the researchers proposed to develop and choose CAI (computer assisted instruction) recorded on CD-ROM. After working on the project, the researchers decided to move to the “web” as a main media due to the rapid technological change during the time of working on the project and the many advantages of the web especially in relation to the idea of “anywhere, any time and any pace”. Therefore, the self-training package will be delivered in both online and offline modes, supplemented by printed media depending, upon the convenience of the target users. The web-based self-training package which contains various kinds of multi-media, comprising images, video, pictures and sound was evaluated in terms of content validity and instructional quality, visual and user interface design, multimedia design, audience consideration and overall opinion from six experts. In addition, the reliability was tested by carrying out a pilot study with a sample of six target users. (4) Establishing delivery systems. In order to communicate knowledge to the learners. the distance education system established according to the “STOU Plan” “STOU Plan 2000” “GMSVU Plan” is thus in the nature of “anywhere”, “any time” and “any pace”. Course content is transferred to learners through web-based instruction. Learners are, therefore, able to obtain knowledge and experience from their homes, libraries, university campus and, educational study centers as well as the internet and their community. However, as developing countries still face problems relating to technological infrastructure and networks that limit access to the internet, the off-line and printed media were developed to bridge the digital divide. (5) Evaluation. There are two types of evaluation. The first is evaluation of learners’ learning progress through self-assessment from pre-test and post-test and exercises at the end of each module. The second type of evaluation is system evaluation, which will be conducted in order to obtain feedback that can be used to improve the effectiveness of the self-training package and assure its quality. Findings The web-based self-training package for information retrieval was developed using the distance education approach. STOU Plan, STOU, 2000 and GMSVU were applied. The distance education model for the web-based self-training package is composed of six stages: identifying the learners, design of the package, production of the package, establishing delivery systems and evaluation. The package development process is based on a System Development Life Cycle or SDLC. The process consists of problem and objective identification, requirement EL 24,4 508 determination, requirement analysis, package design, package implementation, delivery system and evaluation. The SDLC is applied a combination of waterfall, phased and prototyping approaches in order to maximize the outcome: . Waterfall approach, in accordance with its name, the development moves forward from phase to phase in the same manner as a waterfall. The key advantage of waterfall approach is that the system requirements must be identified clearly and explicitly. However, this approach tends to require long development times, which affect budget and schedule. . Phased approach collects fundamental requirements which are categorized into a series of versions. The first version will serve as a base for design and implementation. Phased development has the advantage of getting a system into the users’ hands quickly. However, the drawback of this approach is the incomplete system that might be hard to manage and meets users’ expectations. . Prototyping approach performs analysis, design and implementation concurrently and will iterate these activities repeatedly until the system is complete. The researchers use the prototype as a requirement analysis tool for the experts to offer comments and then proceed with the package refinement to re-analyze, re-design and re-implement as a second prototype. After the prototype is completed, a field trial is carried out by distributing the working prototype to the target groups for trial. This process continues in a cycle until the prototype provides enough functionality. The result of development is a self-training package which consists of three main components: (1) About the project. This component provides information and background on the project. (2) Study modules. This is the most important component since it provides self directed learning content. It consists of ten instructional modules focusing on information retrieval as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3. Self-assessment through pretest and posttest as well as review questions to evaluate learning progress of learners are included. (3) References and further readings. This provides references used by the researchers in doing this project and related URLs links to information resources for further readings. The package evaluation was based on a focus group technique, which consisted of two phases: formative and summative evaluation: (1) Formative evaluation was conducted during the package development. The formative evaluation was done by experts in the field before the summative evaluation. The purpose of this evaluation is to get feedback from experts in the field in terms of instructional quality and content validity; visual design, user interface design and multimedia design; expert consideration focuses on ease of use and clear navigation, with the content delivered to the target audiences in an appropriate manner; overall opinions toward the package and reliability of the package such as pre-test and post-test. Web-based self-training package 509 (2) Summative evaluation was conducted as a pilot study after the package development was completed. All comments from the formative evaluation were reviewed and refinement of the package was done before proceeding to target users namely, junior library staffs and library users, of the package. The purpose of summative of evaluation is to get feedback from target users of the package in terms of instructional quality, content validity, clarity in instructional content, explanation and presentation of content; visual design, user interface design and multimedia design; audience consideration and learning progress. Figure 2. An example of study modules Figure 3. An example of the content of module 1 EL 24,4 510 Data collection using group discussion with supplement interviews were chosen. For the experts group, the evaluation was based on the given criteria, for the formative evaluation as referred above. For target users, they assessed the package from their homes or offices, trying out the package as if in a real situation. The target users were required to proceed through four steps in pretest, learning the study modules with review questions, posttest and then evaluate the package. Data analysis is based on qualitative data as the evaluation criteria are open and focus group discussion broadens the scope of feedback from both groups of participants. All comment of participants were grouped and analyzed for further package refinement. The evaluation results were used for package refinement. There are two versions of the package: (1) The first version is the prototype version used for the field trial. Researchers used all the comments of the experts to improve the prototype before release to the target users group for summative evaluation. (2) The second version is the refined version to deliver to the target users who are junior library staffs and library users and other interested persons. The researchers improved the package based on the comments of the target user sample group during the summative evaluation. The final outcome is a working version, which will be accessible through the web. The delivery system of the package can be both online and offline. Online mode needs an internet connection while offline mode uses CD-ROM without network correction. Printed materials are also included as supplementary media. The system and platform requirement for target learners to interact with the package is the common PC used in offices with internet connection. The web browser for the package can be Internet Explorer or others. Discussion and recommendations The strong points of the web-based self-training package are: . Accessibility. Using the distance education approach makes the package accessible to all based on concept of anyone, anywhere, any pace and anytime. In addition, it can be used as a means of extending continuing education to all people, and providing lifelong education. . Flexibility. Using the web delivery mode helps broaden the scope of conventional distance education as well as offering an open platform and compatibility environment. The learners can access the web-based self-training package from the widest possible range of computing and communications equipment. Moreover, course design focusing on a learner-centered system provides flexible and unrestricted learning environment. Therefore, learners can choose to learn any module as appropriate for their individual learning needs. . Ease of use. Using simple language and basic concepts of information retrieval helps facilitate the success of learners who are at the beginning stage. In addition, it can be used as an English training tool for non native English speakers. The use of web standard language makes it easier for users to interact and there is no steep learning curve. Web-based self-training package 511 The limitations of the web-based self-training package are: . Limitation of target users. As the content of the modules focuses on library staff and users in the non-native speaking developing countries, the package might be too simple for those who have more advanced knowledge and experience in the field. However, the researchers solved this limitation by providing references and related URLs for further studies. . Limitation of delivery system. The system to facilitate the e-learning mode has not yet been implemented. These facilities include synchronous and asynchronous mode such as communication tools (e.g. e-mail, chat room, web-board), interactive tools (e.g. thread discussions, chat-room), knowledge-based system, and learning management service (e.g. registration, information). Recommendations The researchers recommend the following courses of action for future improvement and research: . Extend to e-learning environment with interactive learning environment such as collaborative and communication tools, learning management service, assessment system, learning administration system, database and knowledge based system. . Develop more self training packages in other specific topics using the e-learning approach to meet high priority training needs of librarians. This will support the recommendation of the UNESCO Consultative Meeting and Workshop in Planning Human Resource Development for Information Societies held in Bangkok (1997). . Develop a joint project between IFLA-ALP and UNESCO to offer certificate programs and training courses in library and information science through the GMSVU. The pilot project could start with the extension of this package to an e-learning environment. . Develop a pilot project on digital library models for developing countries in the Asia Pacific region. Conclusions This paper has descibed a project the aim of which was to develop a web-based self-training package for information retrieval using the distance education approach. The package was developed with STOU Plan, STOU Plan 2000 and GMSVU applied. The distance education model for the web-based self-training package was composed of five stages: identifying the learners, design of the package, production of the package, establishing the delivery system, and evaluation. The system development methodology was based on the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with a combination of waterfall, phased and prototyping approaches. Several phases in the SDLC were carried out: problem and objective identification, requirement determination, requirement analysis, package design, package implementation, delivery system and evaluation. Evaluation of the package was conducted in two phases: formative evaluation and summative evaluation using the focus group discussion method. Formative evaluation was conducted during the package development by experts in the field prior to the summative evaluation. The EL 24,4 512 summative evaluation was conducted after the package development had been completed as a pilot study for field trial by target users, consisting of junior library staffs and library users. All comments were reviewed and refined in terms of instructional content, design, overall opinion and learning progress before put on production. It is evident that further reseach is necessary to extend the e-learning environment. References Adams, K., Bicknell-Holmes, T. and Latta, G.F. 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Association of College and Research Libraries (2000), “Blueprint for collaboration AASL/ACRL task force on the educational role of libraries”, available at: www.ala.org/acrl/blueprint/ html/guides/index/html Association of College and Research Libraries (2001), “Objectives for information literacy instruction: a model statement for academic librarians”, available at: www.ala.org/acrl/ guides/objinfolit.html Association of College and Research Libraries (2001), “Presidential committee on information literacy”, available at: www.ala.org/acrl/nili/ilit1st.html Association of College and Research Libraries (2002), “Introduction to IL”, available at: www. csusm.edu/acrl/il/intro/newil.html Brown, C.M. (1999), “Information literacy of physical science graduate students in the information age”, College & Research Libraries, Vol. 60 No. 5, pp. 426-37. Bruce, C. (1977), The Seven Faces of Information Literacy, Aslib, Adelaide. Buckland, M., Butler, M.H., Kim, Y., Norgard, B. and Plaunt, C. (1995), “Partnerships in navigation: an information retrieval research agenda”, paper presented at the ASIS Annual Meeting, October, Chicago, IL, available at: www.asis.org/asis-95/appers/norgard. html Caspers, J., Fritts, J. and Gover, H. (2001), “Beyond the rhetoric: a study of the impact of the ACRL guidelines for distance learning library services on selected distance learning programs in higher education”, Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 31 Nos 3/4, pp. 127-48. Cavanagh, A.K. (2001), “Providing services and information to the dispersed off-campus student: an integrated approach”, Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 149-66. Clyde, S.E. (1997), “Library bibliographic instruction: a challenge to deliver off campus”, Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 109-13. Cooper, R., Dempsey, P.R., Menon, V. and Millson-Martula, C. (1998), “Remote library users-need and expectation”, Library Trends, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 1-14. Dennis, A. and Wixom, B.H. 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(1997), “Testing the surf: criteria for evaluating internet information resources”, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, Vol. 8 No. 3, available at: http://info.lib.uh. edu/pr/v8/n3/smit8n3.html (accessed October 12, 2003). Smith, S.S. (2001), Web-Based Instruction: A Guide for Libraries, American Library Association, Chicago, IL. South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE) (1994), Open Learning and Distance Education in South Africa. Report of the International Commission, SAIDE, Braamfontein. Srisa-an, W. (1986), “Higher education development in Thailand”, Distance Education, STOU, Nonthaburi. McConnell, S. (1996), Rapid Development, Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA. Stueart, R.D. (1997), “Preparing information professionals for the next century”, Planning Human Resource Development for Information Societies, STOU & UNESCO, Bangkok. Thomas, G.M. (1995), “Education-past, present, future”, in Walling, D.R. (Ed.), At the Threshold of the Millennium, Phi Delta Kappa, Bloomington, IN. UNESCO (2003), UNESCO Thesaurus: Hierarchical List, available at: www.wlcc.ac.uk/unesco/ MTterms/530.htm. Weilbut, V. (1999), “Developing information literacy: a coordinated effort”, Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 159, January/February, pp. 4-5. Weiss, S. (2004), “Information retrieval projects”, available at: www.cs.jhu.edu/ ,weiss/projects.html (accessed June 21, 2004). Whitson, D.L. and Amstuz, D.D. (1997), Accessing Information in a Technological Age, Krieger Publishing, Malabar, FL. About the authors Chutima Sacchanand is Associate Professor, School of Liberal Arts, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Thailand and was the Head of Project. He has a BA, MA (Library Science), MLS (Information Science), and EdD from Charles Sturt University, Australia. He was President of the Thai Library Association from 1999 to 2000. Chutima Sacchanand can be contacted at: chutimastou@yahoo.com Vipa Jareonpantarak is Associate Professor, School of Science and Technology, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Thailand. He had a BSc, MSc (Computer Science), PhD (Computer Science) from the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. EL 24,4 516 To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 
work_ktdkparzxzdl5be7paqj5ts76i	----	The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education MOTIVATIONS FOR OLDER ADULTS’ PARTICIPATION IN DISTANCE EDUCATION: A STUDY AT THE NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF TAIWAN A Thesis in Adult Education by Jr-Shiuan Liang © 2006 Jr-Shiuan Liang Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education May 2006 This thesis of Jr-Shiuan Liang was reviewed and approved* by the following: Derek C. Mulenga Assistant Professor of Education Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee Gary W. Kuhne Associate Professor of Education Rayne A. Sperling Associate Professor of Education Edgar P. Yoder Professor of Agricultural and Extension Education Ian E. Baptiste Associate Professor of Education In Charge of Graduate Programs in Adult Education *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT The present study investigated the factor structure of motivation constructs as expressed by older adult learners and examined how these constructs correlated with older adults’ socio-demographic characteristics, perceptions of the distance education learning environment, and student satisfaction. Furthermore, the study explored the relative contributions of each factor to student satisfaction. Given the exploratory and descriptive purposes of this study, a cross-sectional survey research design was chosen for implementation. The population under study was older adults aged 55 and above registered as students at the National Open University of Taiwan (NOUT) in the Spring Semester 2005. Older adults affiliated with one of the identified six regional study centers (Taipei, Taipei [2], Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hualien study center) were targeted as potential participants in this study. Motivation, as reflected in personal goals, was operationalized as the reason for older adult learners’ participation in distance education. Motivation was measured using the Reasons for Participation Scale (Steele, 1984). The perceived learning environment at NOUT was measured using a modified Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (Walker, 2003b). The survey was distributed to a sample of 990 older students; 371 completed it (Mean age = 61). Study results revealed four major motivation constructs that attracted older adults to NOUT, namely, keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, escape and social contact, and adjustment. Several similarities and differences exist between this study and past research. First, the motivations for older adults’ participation in educational programs may be interpersonal and intrapersonal, expressive and instrumental in nature. iv Second, in discovering the primary motivation—intellectual stimulation, this study confirmed the literature (Boshier & Riddle, 1978; Bynum & Seaman, 1993; Furst & Steele, 1986; Kim & Merriam, 2004; Lamb & Brady, 2005; Scala, 1996; Swindell, 2002; Swindell & Vassella, 1999) that cognitive-related motivation is the strongest reason for older adults’ participation in educational activities. Third, it is also noteworthy that the social interaction component of a program may not be as appealing to older adults who choose distance learning over the face-to-face learning environment. Furthermore, the absence of degree-seeking motivation add further support to the belief that expressive reasons may be more important than instrumental reasons for learning in later life. The overall findings confirmed the assumption that the motivational dispositions an individual adopts are very sensitive to context and are influenced by how the individual perceives the environment (Ames, 1992; Ford, 1992). The learning environment at NOUT was perceived in terms of instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, and personal relevance. The factor of personal relevance appeared to be the most important predictor in explaining all four motivation constructs, and was the strongest predictor in explaining student satisfaction, followed by the factor of instructor support. It is the perceived distance education learning environment, rather than motivation dispositions and socio-demographic characteristics, which are a more powerful predictor of learning outcome. In other words, when older adult learners perceived a supportive climate within their learning environment and were able to relate the subject matter of the class to their personal lives, they tended to be more satisfied with the distance education provided by NOUT. A brief discussion of implications and suggestions for future research are provided. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES …………………………………………………………………… viii LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………………………….. ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………………………..……………….. x Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………… 1 Context of the Study ……………………………………………………………... 1 Conceptual Framework …………………………………………………………... 6 Research Questions ………………………………………………………………. 7 Definitions of Terms Used in the Study ………………………………………….. 8 Motivation ……………………………………………………………………. 8 Older Adult …………………………………………………………………... 8 Distance Education …………………………………………………………... 9 Significance of the Study …………………………………………………….…... 10 Chapter 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ……………………………………….. 13 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 13 Overview of Motivation Theory …………………………………………………. 13 Goal Orientations …………………………………………………………….. 19 Goal Content …………………………………………………………………. 21 Study of Motivation within the Context of Distance Education …………………. 28 Achievement Goals in Old Age ………………………………………….…... 29 Motivation of Residential Older Adult Learners ……………………… 30 Motivation of Distance Older Adult Learners ………………………… 38 Socio-demographic Characteristics …………………………………………... 42 Distance Education Learning Environment ………………………………….. 46 Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY……………………...…………………………………. 48 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 48 Research Design ………………………………………………………………….. 48 Population and Sampling …………………………………………………….…... 50 Survey Instrument ………………………………………………………………... 51 Motivation ……………………………………………………………………. 52 Distance Education Learning Environment ………………………………….. 54 Student Satisfaction…………………………………………………………… 55 vi Personal Characteristics ………………………………………………….…... 56 Data Collection Procedure ……………………………………………………….. 57 Data Analysis …………………………………………………………………….. 58 Research Question One ………………………………………………………. 59 Research Question Two ………………………………………………….…... 60 Research Question Three …………………………………………………….. 63 Chapter 4 RESULTS …………………………………………………………….…… 65 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 65 Socio-demographic Characteristics of the Respondents …………………………. 65 Motivation Constructs of Older Adult Learners at NOUT ………………………. 69 Reliability of the Factor Summated Scores …………………………………... 74 Differences in Motivation Constructs When Examined by Socio-demographic Characteristics, Perceptions of Distance Education Learning Environment, and Student Satisfaction ………………………………………………………………. 74 Differences by Socio-demographic Characteristics ………………………….. 74 Relationships between Motivation Construct Values by Perceptions Regarding Distance Education Learning Environment ………………….…… 80 Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Student Satisfaction …….. 87 Factors Influencing Student Satisfaction..………………………………………... 89 Chapter 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION …………………………………….. 93 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 93 Motivation Constructs of Older Adult Learners at NOUT ………………………. 94 Differences in Motivation Constructs When Examined by Socio-demographic Characteristics, Perceptions of Distance Education Learning Environment, and Student Satisfaction ………………………………………………………………. 99 Differences by Socio-demographic Characteristics ………………………….. 99 Relationships between Motivation Constructs by Distance Education Learning Environment ……………………………………………………….. 100 Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Student Satisfaction …….. 101 Factors Influencing Student Satisfaction at NOUT ………………………….…... 102 Implications ………………………………………………………………………. 106 Limitations of the Study ………………………………………………………….. 108 Recommendations for Future Research ………………………………………….. 109 REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………….. 111 vii Appendix A Distance Education Learning Environments (DELES) Permission Letter 128 Appendix B Multistage Sampling Map………………………………………………. 130 Appendix C Reasons for Participation Scale…………………………………………. 132 Appendix D Distance Education Learning Environment Survey…………………….. 137 Appendix E Personal Information…………………………………………………….. 142 Appendix F Chinese Version Questionnaires and Cover Letter……………………… 144 Appendix G IRB-approved Informed Consent……………………………………….. 153 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 4-1: Socio-demographic Profile of the Respondents…………………………... 68 Table 4-2: Reasons for Participation………………………………………………….. 72 Table 4-3: Descriptive Results of Motivational Constructs by Socio-demographic Characteristics…………………………………………………………….. 77 Table 4-4: ANOVA Results of Motivational Constructs by Socio-demographic Characteristics…………………………………………………………….. 79 Table 4-5: Distance Education Learning Environment……………………………….. 81 Table 4-6: Student Satisfaction……………………………………………………….. 83 Table 4-7: Correlations between Motivation Constructs and Distance Education Learning Environment……………………………………………………. 84 Table 4-8: Multiple Regression of Motivation Constructs by Distance Education Learning Environment Components……………………………………… 86 Table 4-9: Multiple Regression of Student Satisfaction by Motivational Constructs... 88 Table 4-10: Multiple Regression of Student Satisfaction by Socio-demographics, Motivation Constructs, and Distance Education Learning Environment…. 91 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1. The relationships between motivation and related variables……………. 7 x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I was very fortunate to meet a diverse and wonderful group of faculty, staff and students during my graduate studies. For their friendship and hospitality I am grateful. My heartfelt appreciation goes to my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Derek C. Mulenga, for his continual guidance and support. He has been a driving force for clarity and kept me focused on my academic life. My gratitude also goes to the other members of my committee. I am grateful to Dr. Gary W. Kuhne for his candor and expertise in distance education. His kind and valuable advice added immeasurably to my dissertation experience. To Dr. Rayne A. Sperling, her enthusiasm and concrete knowledge of motivation theory provided me with insights and stimulated my thinking. To Dr. Edgar P. Yoder for his assistance in research methodology and statistics. His patience and encouragement empowered me to bring a strong end to my study. It has been a privilege to have the opportunity to benefit from all of them. Special thanks to Dr. Scott L. Walker for the use of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey, and Dr. Edward J. Furst and Dr. Betty Lou Steele for the use of the Reason for Participation Scale. The completion of this study would not have been possible without the instruments. The study would have never been accomplished without the help of the National Open University of Taiwan. I would also like to thank all of the instructors who helped implement the survey and all of the older adult learners who spent time completing the survey for this study. xi Last but not least, I would like to express my tremendous gratitude and affection to my family. First, I am grateful to my father, Jin-Zao Liang, who always believed in me and told me I could achieve whatever I set my mind to. While I missed his physical presence, I know that his faith in me lives on. My mom, Lei-Mei Lin, is my light and my strength. Her love and encouragement have sustained me throughout this long process. I am truly grateful that she is able to share so proudly in my achievement. To my beloved Yi-Fan Tung, you are a true friend as well as a wonderful husband. Thanks for standing by me through every ordeal. To my brother, Yu-Chuan Liang, thanks for taking care of everything back home while I was away. Words can never convey the depth of my gratitude, and this work is dedicated to all of you. 1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Context of the Study The growing interest in aging within most behavioral and social sciences arises from recent demographic trends in the developed and much of the developing world. According to United Nations projections, every region of the world will experience an increasing older population age structure over the next 50 years. The increases will be particularly rapid in contrast to past trends in less-developed regions (United Nations, 2001). Rapid declines in fertility and increases in life expectancy over the last two decades have created a rapidly aging society. By 2050, the number of older persons 60 years or over are expected to triple by 2050, and those above 80 are expected to be even more marked, passing from 69 million in 2000 to 379 million in 2050, more than a fivefold increase (United Nations, 2001). Taiwan witnessed the aging of society when its older population (aged 65 and up) reached 7% of the total population in 1993, based on U.N. standards (Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2000). Over the past several decades, Taiwan has undergone a number of changes that have had an effect on the demographic and socioeconomic structure of society. The current population aged 65 and older totals 2 million, which represents 9% of the population in 2004, a ratio of nine adults to one senior (Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2005). In particular, the first wave of the baby boom generation, born during 1946–1964, will reach age 65 in less than 6 years. At the crest of the aging of the baby boomers, 25% of the population will be 2 65 years old or older in 30 years (Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2005). Together with better medical care and increased life expectancy, individuals who live to age 65 can expect to live an additional 16 years in average. Never in the history of the Taiwan have so many adults lived so long and remained so active and healthy (Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2000, 2002). These demographic patterns have profound economic, political, social, cultural, and educational implications. Legislation to provide services for older people was introduced in Taiwan in 1980 through the Welfare Law for the Aged, and in recent years the implications of Taiwan’s aging population have been increasingly recognized in policy and planning (Bartlett & Wu, 2000). However, in terms of older adult education policy, there is not yet a comprehensive model to follow or substantial experience with proven results to serve as a guide. It is also evident that the modern educational system will experience an increase in demand that could exceed its capacity unless careful planning for the future is implemented. In addition, the change in economic structure that will accompany this demographic reality mandates a significant role for education: teaching new skills for coping with age-related phenomena such as leisure, retirement, housing, health, death, finances, families, and political realities (Fisher & Wolf, 1998; Peterson, 1983). In empirical studies, for example, it has been shown that learning can slow or compensate for some of the cognitive declines associated with aging. Schneider (2003) even suggested that the economy would benefit overall from higher levels of learning on the part of older people, if, for instance, Alzheimer’s disease or other types of senile dementia could be delayed until a later point in the life course. Accordingly, investments 3 in educational programs to further health-maintaining lifestyles would be economically reasonable against the background of the high costs of treating illness in later life. It is believed that learning is integral to successful aging (Jarvis, 2001; Lamdin & Fugate, 1997; Weaver, 1999). Perhaps one of the greatest challenges we face is the need to find new or better ways to foster the opportunities of older adults to live to the full, be independent, and maintain their mental and physical health through their later years. Thus, beyond providing the necessary health and social support services for older persons, it is also important to address their learning needs. Discussions about education for older adults have indicated that older people are capable of learning and willing to learn. Additionally, some believed that continuous learning could help older persons to live a better life in terms of health, well-being and independence (Fisher & Wolf, 1998; Hiemstra, 1994; Lamdin, & Fugate, 1997; Schaie & Willis, 2002). During the past decades, educational gerontology gradually emerged as an academic discipline in Western literatures. The dramatic success of community and recreation programs for older persons, the Universities of the Third Age, and Elderhostel programs further demonstrate that many older persons are thriving in a learning environment. Data from the 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2001 Adult Education Surveys of the National Household Education Surveys Program, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), indicated that the percentage of older Americans participating in adult education programs continued to grow. The percentage of people in the United States aged 65 and older who took at least one adult education class more than doubled—from 8.4% in 1991 to 22% in 2001. The increase among the “younger-old” (ages 65–75) surpassed that of any other age group (Hamil-Luker & Uhlenberg, 2002; 4 Kim, Collins Hagedorn, Williamson, & Chapman, 2004). This trend of an increasing older learning population happened in Taiwan as well. There was an estimated 12% increase in people aged 55 years old and over who were participating in adult education programs between the year 2002 and 2003. Among them, people aged 55–64 is the largest group while the growth rate in the 65–70 age group surpassed any other two groups (Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2005). Meanwhile, the growth of information technology and the expanding power of computers have transformed the way education occurs and creates new ways of learning. With more and more seniors embracing such information technology with growing confidence, distance education, in which teachers and learners are separated by geographical distance, opens doors to them for pursuing subjects of their interests. Communication via distance education is through correspondence or other forms of technology such as radio, television broadcast, computer networks and multimedia (Jarvis, 1990; Moore & Kearsley, 1996). Distance education can help senior citizens who wish to become involved in education, as either a learning or social experience, to overcome barriers present in more traditional campus settings. Issues such as flexibility of time and space, physical disability, geographic isolated location, or lack of safe transportation are all moot points when one is involved in a distance learning program. In her review of issues and trends in gerontology education, Weaver (1999) suggested that there has been a shift in preferred learning modalities among older learners—a movement away from the traditional classroom toward a more self-directed, technology-based medium of delivery. She called for collaborative efforts among legislators, educators, service providers, and others 5 working together to expand learning options for seniors, particularly in rural areas, by using distance education technology. However, with ample benefits documented, why are older adults not flocking to distance education programs? What factors may prevent their enrollment? The study of motivation to participate in learning is one of the major keys to this question. It has been long believed that motivation is one of the most important components of learning in any educational environment. In fact, some researchers have argued that learning and motivation are so interrelated that one can’t fully understand learning without considering motivation (Maehr, 1984; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Wlodkowski, 1999). However, the growth of the elder learning population coupled with technology revolution has broadened the scope of gerontological, adult and distance education, hence giving new meaning and reformulating the motivational constructs of the third agers. Unfortunately, little research has been done about older learners in the field of distance education, and fewer yet have focused on the content structure of their motivation for participating in a highly competitive academic setting. Similar to the field of educational psychology as well, the majority of researchers concentrated their efforts either on the motivations of children in the elementary and middle grades or on undergraduate students (Furchtgott, 1999; Murphy & Alexander, 2000). Only recently has renewed attention been given to motivation and the aged, but these studies have somehow been confined to the study of motivational influences on cognitive performance in laboratory settings (Filipp, 1996). 6 Therefore, by studying the motivation of the current older distance learning population, we can have a better and clearer picture of who they are, what they are looking for, and what barriers they encounter during their learning. And since old age is a period often characterized by physical decline, cognitive changes, and changing social roles, we need to understand the role of motivation in these changes as well as their implications for education. With the bulk of the related literatures on participation motivation in old age being from a Western perspective, Taiwan provides an ideal setting for a probe on this topic given the substantial differences in culture, economy, and various social characteristics from the United States and other Western countries. The purpose of this study was threefold. First, the study sought to identify the factor structure of motivational constructs expressed by older adult learners in order to develop a typology of their motivations for participating in distance education programs. Second, the study tried to determine how the motivational constructs of older adult learners correlate with their socio-demographic characteristics, and their perceptions of and satisfaction with the distance education learning environment. Finally, the study identified the factors that may contribute to older adult learners’ satisfaction in a distance education program. Conceptual Framework In an area where there has been little research on motivation and aging in an academic setting, this study is an effort to link current literature focused on achievement motivation––specifically, goal theories––with considerations of age-related changes in biological, cognitive, and social needs across the life span. For the purposes of this study, motivation for participation as reflected in the personal goals of older adult learners was 7 operationalized as reasons why they engage in a distance education learning environment. The conceptual framework (see Figure 1-1) hypothesized that older adults’ social- demographic characteristics and their perceptions of the distance education learning environment were correlated with personal goal dimensions. Individual motivations in turn influence the learning outcome––in this case, student satisfaction. Person-in-Context Distance Education Learning Environment Socio- demographic Characteristics S Motivations conceptualized as Personal Goals Figure 1-1. The relationships between motivation and its related variable Research Questions 1. What are the motivation constructs of older adult learners at the National Op University of Taiwan (NOUT)? 2. How do the motivation constructs of older learners at NOUT correlate with t socio-demographic characteristics, and perceptions of and satisfaction with t distance education learning environment provided by NOUT? 2.1. What are the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants? Student atisfaction s. en heir he 8 2.2. Are there differences between the motivation construct values when examined by socio-demographic variables? 2.3. Is there a relationship between the motivation constructs and distance education learning environment variables? 2.4. Is there a relationship between the motivation constructs and student satisfaction? 3. When examined simultaneously, what relative contribution do the socio-demographic characteristics, motivation constructs, and distance education learning environment have on student satisfaction? Definitions of Terms Used in the Study Motivation Motivation is a process in which goal-directed activity is instigated and sustained. As a process, people do not observe motivation directly, but infer it from behaviors such as choice of tasks/interests, effort, persistence, and verbalizations (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). In this study, motivation is reflected as goals that are defined as cognitive representations of what individuals are trying to achieve, and their function is to direct behavior toward attaining these outcomes (Ford, 1992). In short, goals provide impetus for and direction to action. Accordingly, motivations, conceptualized as goals, are operationalized as reasons “why” an individual engaging in a distance education learning environment. Older Adult Older adult learners are defined as persons age 55 and over in this study. This age definition is used because older adulthood is commonly associated with retirement, and most people do intend to retire early (Hermalin, Chan, Biddlecom, & Ofstedal, 2002). 9 Although age 65 is often viewed as the official retirement age, under the Civil Servant Retirement Regulations and Labor Standards Law, employees in Taiwan can retire either when they reach age 60, complete 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 15 years of service (Ofstedal, Chan, Chayovan, Chuang, Perez, Mehta, & Hermalin, 2002). Accordingly, if this study had defined older adults as those age 65 and older, it would have overlooked individuals in the important transition years (ages 55 to 64). Later in the data analysis stage, the researcher further identifies four subgroups of older adults as the transition period group (aged 55–64), the young-old (aged 65–74), the old-old (aged 75–84), and the oldest-old (aged 85 and up). Distance Education The term distance education covers various forms of teaching and learning at all levels and in situations in which the teachers and students are separated by geographical distance and communication is through correspondence or other forms of technology, such as radio, television, satellites, computer networks and multimedia. Its main characteristic is that it relies on noncontiguous, i.e., mediated, communication (Holmberg, 1990, as cited in Wolf, 1996). Perraton (1982) summarized and synthesized Peters’ (1971), Holmberg’s (1981), and Moore’s (1972) discussions of distance education. He defined distance education as “an educational process in which a significant proportion of teaching is conducted by someone removed in space and/or time from the learner” (p. 34). The distance education context of this study took place in the National Open University of Taiwan (NOUT). NOUT offers higher education-level courses. Individuals over the age of 20 can register as either a full-time or part-time student. Full-time students are recommended to take five to ten course credits each semester. After 10 completing 128 credits, they receive a bachelor’s degree. Part-time students, on the other hand, are not allowed to take more than eight credits each semester. Courses are tuition- free for older adults who are 65 years old and above. NOUT courses are delivered using one-way broadcast media including radio, television, and videotaped lectures combined with correspondence instructions. Students are also required to attend four face-to-face instructions at the regional learning center during the span of each course. Recently, NOUT began to adopt computer-aid instructional programs by using computer networks and multimedia as subsidiary delivery methods. The teacher can conduct a computer conference interaction in real time or asynchronously by email and bulletin board. However, the computer-aided instruction is optional; teachers are encouraged to incorporate it into the existing course structure. In the study, students at NOUT primarily learn through correspondence materials, television, and radio. Although computer-aided instruction is available for use, it has not been extensively considered by the teachers at NOUT. Significance of the Study The increasing diversity in the older learning population, coupled with technological advances, is making new demands on our educational system. It is vital for adult educators not only to keep our research updated, but also to nudge the current educational system to respond to such phenomena promptly and appropriately. However, the impacts of using information technology as a learning tool by older adults are not well documented, perhaps because it is a relatively recent phenomenon that is undergoing constant change. Even fewer empirical studies focus specifically on their learning motivations in a higher education setting. More importantly, the prevailing research in 11 relating fields is mostly done in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Basically it represented a Western philosophical perspective. Therefore, the results of this study not only build a fundamental base for similar research in the future, but also provide implications for instructional practice and educational theory and research from a different socio-cultural perspective. Moreover, by recognizing the dynamics of older adult learners’ motivation constructs and categorizing them into a conceptually sound typology, we can have a better understanding of human motivation in an educational setting and its effects on behavior from an aging stand point. The integration and systematization of findings give us some sense of how things are related so that we can begin to study the relationships among different factors. Meanwhile, we can identify the types of educational programs that will satisfy older adults’ needs. For instance, programs offer independence studies are not going to motivate learners who are looking for social contact unless the program provides some opportunities for interactions. These insights could assist administrators, adult educators, and instructional designers in developing educational programs that meet the curricular needs of older learners, and further increase their satisfaction and enrollment. And hopefully, the results of this study will be used in developing a justification system to support both institutional and government policy by building an awareness of the various needs of this growing population. Finally, research on motivation has long been used to explain dropout behavior in the field of adult education. It is not surprising that educators are interested in attracting non-participant segments of the general population or allaying dropouts. By improving our knowledge of those who have already participated or are currently participating, we 12 then will have a clear picture of their needs, expectations, and other potential factors that may affect their participation. Building upon a firmer knowledge base, we can devote our efforts to creating new opportunities for the disadvantaged groups to enlarge their participation. This is especially of importance for administrators and adult education organizations to consider the implications of these experiences for the development of a more supportive learning culture. 13 Chapter 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Introduction This chapter contains a discussion of the current literature on achievement motivation and age-related learning issues. The review is organized into two sections. The first section begins with a brief review of contemporary motivation theory, with emphasis on goal theories. The second section examines the motivation of older adults within the context of distance education. Older adults’ motivation to participate in both residential education programs (e.g., Elderhostel programs, Learning in Retirement institutes, University of the Third Age, senior centers) and distance education programs (e.g., Open University, University of the Third Age online) are reviewed, followed by a close look at selected socio-demographic characteristics and their influence on participation motivation. Finally, a review of the contextual attributes of the distance education learning environment is provided. Overview of Motivation Theory People have always speculated about the “why?” of action. There is usually a desire to understand the basis of one’s activities. Some of this may be attributed to mere curiosity, but more likely, it is an attempt to control or influence one’s behavior. The Latin root of the word “motivation” means “to move”; in this sense the study of motivation is the study of action. In an achievement setting, motivation researchers are eager to find out the various aspects of student activity in a classroom, such as the direction of behavior, the intensity of behavior, the persistence of behavior, or the 14 cognitive and affective reactions that accompany behavior. However, one major problem in studying motivation is that there is no commonly accepted definition and no one all- encompassing theory of motivation (Filipp, 1996; Murphy & Alexander, 2000; Schaie & Lawton, 1998). Approaches to study motivation vary, but they all share the key assumption that human behavior is an expression of some underlying intent. Early motivation theorists viewed motivation as observable behaviors. Motivation is conceptualized in terms of drives (Hull, 1943) or needs (Murray, 1938) from within a person. Hull (1943) believed that human behavior is a result of the constant interaction between the organism and its environment, and motivation is “the initiation of learned, or habitual, patterns of movement or behavior” (p. 226). The environment provides the stimuli and the organism responds; all of this is observable. He viewed the drive as a stimulus, arising from a tissue need, which in turn stimulates behavior. Hull's learning theory focuses mainly on the principle of reinforcement. When a S-R relationship is followed by a reduction of the need, the probability increases that in future similar situations the same stimulus will create the same prior response. These biological or psychological needs were believed to create a state of arousal and the state of arousal resulted in action or behavior to satisfy the need. However, much of the research has only been conducted with animals because it would be unethical to deprive humans of such basic needs. While such physiological drives may be sufficient to explain the actions of some animals, human behaviors are much more complex. As adults, our behaviors, in addition to basic physical needs, reflect cultural expectations, socialization experiences, and learned behaviors. 15 In contrast, contemporary motivation theorists address people’s cognition and how these affect behaviors. Motivation is viewed as a process rather than a product (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Although theorists agree with the importance of the cognitive process, they disagree about which process is more important. The motivational process is conceptualized as attributions (Graham, 1994; Weiner, 1985, 1986), perceptions of competence (Bandura, 1989; Pajares, 1996; Zimmerman, 2000), expectancy-values (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), and goals (Ames & Archer, 1988; Dweck, 1989; Elliot & Thrash, 2001; Pintrich, 2000; Pintrich, Conley, & Kempler, 2003; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Wentzel, 1992, 2000; Wolters, 2004). As cognitive models of motivation, attribution theory, self-efficacy theory, and self-determination theory address beliefs about ability. The attribution theory proposes that an individual use a variety of information sources as data in order to make inferences (attributions) about the causes of success and failure (Weiner, 1985, 1986). The most prevalent inferred causes in achievement-related contexts are ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, mood, help or hindrance from others, etc. Among them, ability and effort are the most dominant perceived causes of achievement outcomes. These causes are characterized into three dimensions, namely, locus (internal versus external), stability (stable versus unstable), and controllability (controllable versus uncontrollable). For example, ability is considered to be internal and relatively stable while effort is considered to be external and relatively unstable. As incorporated with expectancy-value theory, value in the attribution theory is defined as emotions that include pride, gratitude, shame, guilt, pity, helplessness, schadenfreude, sympathy, contempt, and anger (Hareli & 16 Weiner, 2002). These emotions are then predictive of choice, persistence, and achievement behavior (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Studies have shown that self-efficacy beliefs are significantly related to achievement motivation (Bandura, 1989, 1997; Jackson, 2002; Pietsch, Walker, & Chapman, 2003; Zimmerman, 2000). Self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute courses of action to attain certain outcomes (Bandura, 1989, 1997). Students’ self-efficacy beliefs determine their level of motivation, as reflected in choice of tasks, persistence and effort. In other words, the stronger the belief in their capabilities, the greater and more persistent are their efforts. How individuals interpret the results of their performance outcomes informs and alters their environments and their self-beliefs, which in turn inform and alter their subsequent performances. Therefore, self-efficacy beliefs are sensitive to contextual factors and are task- and domain-specific; and may be enhanced by performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotion arousal. In a study examining the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and test performance for college students taking an introductory psychology course, Jackson (2002) found that self-efficacy beliefs predicted learning performance and were affected by efficacy-enhancing communication. Although self-efficacy beliefs have been reported to be correlated with other self-beliefs, motivation constructs, and academic choices, changes, and achievement, it is argued that the effect sizes and relationships greatly depend on the manner in which self-efficacy and criteria tasks are operationalized and assessed (Pajares, 1996). 17 A third perspective on control beliefs for motivational dynamics is self- determination theory ([SDT]: Deci & Ryan, 1985; Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Deci and Ryan have suggested that motivated actions are self- determined to the extent that they are engaged in wholly volitionally and endorsed by one’s sense of self. SDT distinguishes between different types of motivation based on the different reasons or goals that give rise to an action. The most basic distinction is between intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, and extrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome. Moreover, the level of intrinsic motivation in a person is determined by three psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The more these needs are met through some activities, the more pleasure a person gets from the activity and is motivated to continue it. Extrinsically motivated behaviors, on the other hand, are instrumental in nature and can be categorized into external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and integrated regulation. In the discussion of rewards and intrinsic motivation, Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (2001) concluded that the undermining of intrinsic motivation by tangible rewards is indeed a significant issue. Whereas verbal rewards tended to enhance intrinsic motivation and neither unexpected tangible rewards nor task-noncontingent tangible rewards affected intrinsic motivation, expected tangible rewards did significantly and substantially have a negative effect on intrinsic motivation. The key difference between attribution theory and the intrinsic motivation of SDT is that attributions are post hoc explanations for performance after some feedback about success or failure has been provided to the student (Pintrich, 2003). The control beliefs 18 that are of concern to intrinsic motivation are prospective beliefs of the student before he or she begins a task. The above three perspectives on beliefs differ in motivational dynamics and roles in the theoretical models, but each type of construct is important and is usually positively correlated with one another. Accordingly, they may combine and interact with each other to influence student self-regulation processes and outcomes. In addition to beliefs, one other prominent perspective in the study of achievement in education settings is goal theory. How the term “goal” is operationalized varied in studies, but it was often used to designate a complex set of processes (Ford, 1992; Spera & Wentzel, 2003; Wentzel, 1999), or to designate specific outcomes (Elliot & Thrash, 2001). Austin and Vancouver (1996) defined goals as “internal representations of desired states, where states are broadly construed as outcomes, events, or processes” (p. 338). Central to goal theories of motivation is the notion that people set goals in ways that are uniquely individualized, and that these goals can be powerful motivators of behavior. These personalized goal approaches assumed that the goals that drive behavior are accessible by the individual; they are not unconscious motives. In addition, these approaches acknowledged that in terms of daily life, motivational dispositions are constrained to a particular context. To distinguish from achievement motives, achievement goals and orientations are assumed to be cognitive representations of what individuals are trying to do or what they want to achieve and are more domain-, situation-, or task-specific (Thrash & Elliot, 2001). A number of goal theories reflect a general social cognitive perspective of motivation (Austin & Vancouver, 1996). Among them, goal orientation and goal content theories are the two most relevant and applicable approaches in explaining learning behavior. There 19 are some subtle, but nevertheless, important theoretical differences between these two approaches. Goal orientations represent an integrated pattern of beliefs that leads to “different ways of approaching, engaging in, and responding to achievement situations” (Ames, 1992, p. 261), and are more specific to achievement tasks. Goal content, on the other hand, attempts to specify the range of potential goals that could subserve motivated behavior. The following section addresses these two perspectives, but with more focus on the goal content perspective. Goal Orientations Murphy and Alexander (2000) point out that the area with the greatest proliferation of categories and subcategories is the research on goals and goal orientations. However, one main problem with research on goals and goal orientations is the large number of different labels that have been used for similar constructs. Most models propose two general goal orientations that concern an individual’s reasons for or purposes in pursuing a task. For example, in Dweck’s model, the two orientations are labeled learning and performance goals (Dweck, 1989), with learning goals aimed at increasing one’s competence in understanding, mastering, and figuring out something new and the performance goals concerned with validating one’s competence. On the other hand, Ames (1992) labels them mastery and performance goals. With a mastery goal, individuals are oriented toward “developing new skills, trying to understand their work, improving their level of competence, or achieving a sense of mastery based on self-referenced standards” (p. 262). In contrast, performance goals orient individuals to focus on their ability and self-worth, to do better than others by surpassing normative-based standards and to receive public recognition for their superior 20 performances. Several other researchers have labeled them mastery and performance goals as well (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2003; Elliot, 1999; Pintrich et al., 2003). Accordingly, this review uses the terms mastery and performance goals to refer to the two general goal orientations. Both mastery and performance goals are associated with a divergent set of competence-related affects, cognition, and behavior. Mastery goals are often hypothesized to be linked to a positive set of results, such as persistence in failed tasks, deep processing of learning materials, or enhanced task enjoyment; performance goals are often hypothesized to be linked to a negative set of results, such as withdrawal of effort due to failure, and decreased task enjoyment. Recent research on goal orientations has developed from the above dichotomy to a trichotomy. Researchers have questioned the maladaptive pattern of performance goal orientation; they proposed that the “classic” goal orientation theory that considers only two orientations, mastery and performance, is quite general and confusing because of mixed research results. Consequently, they make a distinction between two different types of performance goals: a performance-approach goal and a performance-avoid goal (Elliot, 1999; Elliot & Covington, 2001; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Harackiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot, & Thrash, 2002; Sideridis, 2003). Performance approach- oriented students are trying to do better in a normative competence or outperform all other classmates. Performance-avoidance students, on the other hand, are trying to avoid failure by all means, even if they have to avoid working on the task. It is suggested that mastery goals are positive related to adaptive cognitive and self-regulation strategy use in the classroom. 21 However, the empirical picture is less clear for whether performance goals elicit negative processes and outcomes. Pintrich (2003) concluded that research that did not distinguish approach and avoidance performance goals tend to find that performance goals are negatively related to students’ use of deeper cognitive strategies. But with research that distinguished between these two types of performance goals, results often indicate that it is specifically the performance-avoidance orientation that leads to maladaptive patterns of behaviors and not the performance-approach (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2003; Elliot, 1999; Harackiewicz et al., 2002). Although this approach/avoid distinction is accepted in reference to performance goals, some researchers suggest a need for a 2 × 2 achievement goal framework with mastery-approach/avoidance goals and performance-approach/avoidance goals (Elliot, 1999; Pintrich, 2000). Prototypic exemplars include perfectionists who strive to avoid making any mistakes or doing anything incorrectly, and individuals in the latter part of their careers (athletes) or lives (elderly persons) who begin to focus on not performing worse than before, or not losing their skills, abilities, or memory. Elliot and McGregor (2001) examined the feasibility of a four-goal model and found empirical support for the differentiation of the four goals. Moreover, it appears that mastery avoid goals are mainly related to negative outcomes such as more anxiety and less adaptive approaches to studying and learning. However, Pintrich et al. (2003) pointed out that this is still not a well-accepted extension and more research is needed. Goal Content Goals are stable, higher-order entities that function as abstract, organizing structures and remain fairly stable over time (Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Chulef, Read, 22 & Walsh, 2001; Ford, 1992; Ford & Nichols, 1987). The goal constructs and the interactions among them has been proven useful in understanding and predicting the behavior in which individuals engage (Chunlef et al., 2001), and are related to the corresponding underlying motives (Emmons & McAdams, 1991, cited in King & Emmons, 2000). Therefore, goal content approach attempts to specify the range of potential goals that could subserve motivated behavior. The purpose is to develop a widely accepted taxonomy of human goals through a systematically classifying method. The importance of content analysis in the study of human motivation is that it is more or less the first step in the task of systematically describing and classifying the breadth of human goals. Efforts from personality and motivational researchers have led to the development of domain-specific, self-report measures of goals. Most of this work has involved the researchers deriving empirical taxonomies through either nomothetic (Chulef et al., 2001; Ford, 1992) or idiographic (Emmons, 1996; Little, 1983; Lawton, Moss, Winter, & Hoffman, 2002) self-report methods. In the nomothetic approach, the general procedure is to present subjects with a standardized list of goals and have subjects rate these goals on a preselected dimension, typically importance or relevance. Intercorrelations of these rating are then subjected to factor or cluster analysis to generate taxonomy of human goals. Martin Ford (Ford, 1992; Ford & Nichols, 1987) proposed Motivational Systems Theory (MST) as a comprehensive model of motivation for all human behavior, not just achievement in classroom contexts. The MST is conceptualized in the living systems framework, which represents an organismic-contextual model of human development. Central to this view is the notion that people are active organisms who intentionally set 23 and strive for goals. There is a strong emphasis on goal directedness at all levels of organization. In other words, goals organize and direct the activity of the system. The model attempts to provide a comprehensive theory of motivation, in which motivation is defined as “the organized patterning of an individual’s personal goals, emotional arousal processes, and personal agency beliefs” (Ford, 1992, p. 248). Motivation = Goals × Emotions × Personal Agency Beliefs Personal agency beliefs (PABs) are beliefs regarding the probability of goal attainment. Two factors influence PABs: context beliefs and capability beliefs. Context beliefs are beliefs about the responsiveness of the environment surrounding the goal, thus including perceived controllability and outcome expectancies. Capability beliefs are equivalent to self-efficacy beliefs regarding personal resources (e.g., time, effort) that individuals believe they have for accomplishing the goal. Thus motivation is an integrative construct representing the direction in which a person is going, the emotional energy and affective experience supporting or inhibiting movement in that direction, and the expectancies a person has about their goal attainment. He classifies the contents of goals into a taxonomy that has 24 general categories under a two-part hierarchy: desired within-person consequences and desired person- environment consequences. Within-person goals include affective, cognitive, and subjective organization goals. Affective goals are feelings and emotions that individuals want to experience or avoid, including subgoals such as entertainment, tranquility, happiness, bodily sensations, and physical well-being. Cognitive goals include four kinds of goals, with the first three representing different levels of cognitive engagement, namely, exploration, understanding, and intellectual creativity. The fourth cognitive goal 24 is to maintain a sense of self-confidence, pride, or self-worth. Subjective organization goals represent a complex mix of both affective and cognitive states, including utility and transcendence goals. On the other hand, person-environment goals comprise self- assertive social relationship, integrative social relationship, and task goals. Both of the self-assertive social goals and integrative social relationship goals consist of four subgoals. Each of the self-assertive goals is paired with an integrative goal to reflect the general tension between individuality and the group, such as individuality versus belongingness, self-determination versus social responsibility, superiority versus equity, and resource acquisition versus resource provision. The final category of goals, tasks goals, refer to how we choose to relate to the different types of tasks we confront in our lives, such as mastery, task creativity, management, material gain and safety goal. When compared to Murray’s (1938) taxonomy of needs, there is a great deal of overlap. For example, Ford’s mastery goal resembles Murray’s achievement (nAch) while entertainment is similar to Murray’s play (nPlay). The difference is that Ford’s taxonomy is more specific and less global than Murray’s taxonomy, but yet represents a more comprehensive list of goals than Maslow’s five hierarchical needs (Maslow, 1970). Moreover, Ford highlights the notion of multiple goals that people can and do pursue within one situation. Finally, unlike Maslow, Ford does not propose that there is a hierarchy to the 24 goals in the taxonomy. In that sense, no one goal is more important or more fundamental than any of the other goals. But when it comes to the individual and the pursuit of multiple goals, he suggests that goal hierarchies help the individual set priorities and coordinate the multiple goals that might be evoked in any situation. As a result, within any one situation, there might be a larger overall goal as well as many 25 subgoals that help the individual to evaluate his progress and guide his overall direction to the larger target goal. Building upon the work of previous researchers, Chulef et al. (2001) offered a hierarchical taxonomy of human goals based on the semantic-similarity judgments of naïve subjects (laypeople) who sorted a quite extensive set of goals into conceptually homogeneous categories. All 135 goals were sorted into a 30-cluster solution with three major categories: 1) family, marriage, sex, and romance; 2) interpersonal goals related to interacting with people in general; and 3) intrapersonal goals. Furthermore, in order to examine how particular age groups are similar and different in the way they conceptualize motivational constructs, the taxonomy of the total sample was compared to that of the three subsamples: young group (aged 17–30), middle age group (aged 25–62), and older adult group (aged 63–92). They found that the basic structure of the taxonomy was shared by the three groups; however, there were some differences that can be understood in terms of people of different ages facing different life tasks. For example, only the older adult group made a distinction about placing physical goals that strictly contain health-related goals into a separate higher-order cluster. This might suggest the salience that health has for older adults. On the contrary, the younger group perceived physical goals as instrumental to the pursuit of social goals. The majority of the taxonomies developed aim to explain behavior across situations and ages; little was done concerning age-related changes and differences in the motivation literature. Given the range of individual differences and the complexity of the contextual factors affecting motivation, we might be better advised to concentrate on particular sorts of people, in well-defined circumstances, preferably over a relatively 26 narrow span of years. In a study identifying dimensions of individual differences in the content of older adults’ personal goals and examining the relationship of goals to demographic, age-related transitions, and contextual variables, Rapkin and Fischer (1992) surveyed 179 older adults (aged 60 and over) participating in a Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). They identified ten life goal content factors: 1) active improvement, 2) maintenance of social values and relationships, 3) disengagement, 4) energetic life-style, 5) safety and security, 6) stability, 7) increased reliance on services, 8) easy life, 9) reduced activity, and 10) independence in living situation. The ten life goal factors were then grouped into three general goal factors, namely, global motivation factor (1, 2, 3), support concerns factor (5, 7, 10), and desired pace and complexity factor (4, 6, 8, 9). An examination of influences on the three goal factors suggested that long- standing disadvantages in education and job status might increase disengagement and the desire for security and having an easy life, while higher socioeconomic status is related to independence and maintenance of social relationships. Being widowed is related to disinterest in or rejection of increased challenges and demands. More importantly, the emergence of themes regarding the pace and complexity of life signified the desire to have greater stimulation and challenge, and to reduce demands. Generally, desire for an energetic life-style was related to being married and healthy. It was suggested that low occupational status relative to level of education may signify unfinished business, which may encourage elders, younger men in particular, to keep striving. The results of the above study are consistent with the perspective that elders’ personal goals must be conceptualized in terms of multiple motivational forces active in later life. Results also show some overlaps with those identified by older subgroup in the 27 study by Chunlef et al. (2001). They both include interpersonal and intrapersonal categories but vary in given factor/domain names and importance of each factor. Overall, they both indicate that health-related concerns, and social and intellectual maintenance goals are shared within this age group. In a similar study, Smith and Freund (2002) investigated the life domain and motivational orientation reflected in the possible selves of older adults aged between 70 and 100 in Berlin. Possible selves are highly personalized hoped-for and feared images of the self that function as incentives (goals) for action within domains. Possible selves reflect an individual’s motivation for trying to control the direction of her/his future life; they represent specific, individually significant hopes, fears, and fantasies (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Over the four-year longitudinal study, participants were asked to generate at least two important hopes and fears about their future. Data presented hopes and fears in six life domains: personal characteristics (e.g., personality disposition, emotions, physical appearance, body image, political and religious attitudes), health and functional capacity, interest and activities (e.g., hobbies, daily routines), social relationships, life events, and cognition. Three motivational orientations were identified: self-improvement (gain or re-experience), self-maintenance, and prevention/minimization of loss. It is suggested that the motivational orientations of old (aged 70–79) and very old (aged 80–103) persons expressed in their possible selves were related to well-being. Most hopes reflected approach motivation (self-improvement) whereas most fears reflected avoidance motivation. Becoming more oriented toward maintenance was linked to a lower decline in life satisfaction over time. The key contribution of this study is that it provides evidence that the future-oriented motivation reflected as possible selves 28 functions relatively well into very old age. The possible selves of older adults were highly personalized and varied. In most instances, inter-individual differences outweighed age-related differences. It is suggested that idiosyncratic changes in objective life circumstances play an important role in the dynamics and functioning of personal goal contents. Study of Motivation within the Context of Distance Education Motivational process cannot be understood without taking into account a variety of contexts within which a person is imbedded. One of the hallmarks of the goal content perspective is that the personal goals an individual adopts are very sensitive to contextual features. Goals can emanate either from the individual or from the context. The baseline principle is that a whole person always functions as a unit in coordination with the environments in which they are functioning biologically, psychologically, cognitively and socially. These contextual features are so interrelated that changes in motivational parameters are likely to influence other motivational processes and other parts of the person-in-context system, and vice versa (Ford, 1992). In other words, the situation and the person will interact in complex ways to influence behavior patterns. We as researchers always need to take into consideration what the individual brings to the situation in terms of prior personal and developmental experiences. Of course, there are many different potential factors, but in this study we concentrate on a few personal factors specifically in old age and learning environment factors specifically in the distance education learning environment. 29 Achievement Goals in Old Age Most of the research on achievement motivation focused on traditional achievement-related contexts such as schools or work settings, in which older adults are rarely to be found as subjects. And yet, a few hypotheses have been proposed. Raynor and Entin (1983) argued that people, as they age, change from a more extrinsic to a more intrinsic orientation; and goals related to striving and getting ahead are assumed to change to goals related to preserving their accomplishments and integrating the various aspects of their lives (cited in Filipp, 1996). However, empirical evidence to support such a view is insufficient given that the conceptual meaning and scope of motivational constructs varied in the study of aging. When examining age-related decline in motivation dispositions, Halisch and Geppert (2001) found a substantial impact of motivational determinants especially achievement and power on the well-being in old age. They also found gender differences in motivation dispositions. Achievement and power motivations were higher in males than in females; females, in turn, were affiliation- motivated to a somewhat higher degree. Meanwhile, in the field of adult education, there has been some research on learning and aging. Discussions of older adult education often assume that the elderly are capable of learning and willing to learn, moreover, some researchers think that continuous learning helps older adults to live a better life (Fisher & Wolf, 1998; Hiemstra, 1994; Schaie & Willis, 2002). Many programs designed specially to meet older learners’ needs have developed in the past 20–30 years; among them, Elderhostel and University of the Third Age may be the most famous (Hiemstra, 1998). Most important of all, the 30 overwhelming open and distance learning institutions that mushroomed all over the world had provided tons of opportunities and choices for older adult learners as well. As a result, helping older people learn to become more autonomous and independent in their later lives, and trying to shift the emphasis from “doing for” them to helping them “do for themselves” are particularly necessary. Their motivation toward learning, therefore, is clearly a function of many factors. In the following review, the motivational factors that influence older adults’ participation in both residential education programs and distance education programs are examined. Residential education programs include Elderhostel programs, tuition-waiver programs, Learning in Retirement institutes, and University of the Third Age. Little research has been done on older distance learners, and fewer yet on the structure of their motivation constructs for participation. As older distance learning participation rates increase, a better and clearer understanding of the characteristics of these older distance learners and the reasons for their enrollment are of great importance to adult educators, administrators, and educational gerontologists. Motivation of residential older adult learners. The motivations of older learners have been studied by Roger Boshier. Together with various associates, he has conducted a series of studies over a 15-year period culminating in two large-scale analyses. To operate the motivational variables at issue, Boshier (1971) first developed the 48-item Education Participation Scale (EPS) and then refined it to a version with 40 items (reasons for participation) cast on a four-point Likert scale of influence. The widespread use of successive versions of the EPS in North America has produced a large database in adult education (Boshier & Collins, 1983; Turner, 1996). Essentially, Boshier and associates aimed their research at the structural foundations of motivations as measured 31 by the EPS. In the first of the two large-scale analyses, Boshier and Collins (1983) constructed a factor analysis on a pooled master file of 12,191 cases. They contributed six motivation domains, namely, social contact, social simulation, professional advancement, community service, external expectations, and cognitive interest. The researcher has no quarrel with a general recommendation to use the EPS framework but I would question the idea of adopting it further for use with older generations. This is because the cited analyses (Boshier, 1971; Boshier & Collins, 1983, Turner, 1996) have largely sampled adults in the 18–55 year age span—the years of gainful employment. Older adult learners aged 60 and over, however, usually are retired and represent a stage of life marked by an abrupt transition, increased leisure time, and various adversities such as declining powers and loss of significant others. Later, Boshier and Riddle (1978) administered the modified EPS with job-related items deleted to older students enrolled in courses designed especially for older people. They classified motivations as a) escape/stimulation, b) social welfare, c) social contact, and d) cognitive interest. The additions were tested on a group of 84 students averaging 70 years of age. The four-factor solution accounted for 49% of the variance in participation. Among them, cognitive interest was the most powerful motivator, and escape/stimulation was the least important reason that older adults took part in educational programs. Pritchard (1979) supplemented the modified EPS (of Boshier & Riddle, 1978) with 20 reasons pertaining to self-understanding, psychological adjustment, and self-actualization. The results confirmed the four factors found in Boshier and Riddle (1978), and added two additional factors of adaptation/self-understanding and self- actualization. 32 Attempts were also made by Kim and Merriam (2004) to clarify basic parameters associated with learning among older adults. They surveyed 189 older adults aged 50 and older who were attending a Learning in Retirement institute (LIR). The survey was a modified version of Boshier’s 1991 EPS (A-form) with items relating to communication improvement, educational preparation, and professional advancement omitted. Consistent with previous studies, cognitive interest was the most influential factor in participation in LIR courses, followed by social contact. On the other hand, respondents appeared to be less motivated by social stimulation and family togetherness factors. Furst and Steele (1986) conducted a two-stage mixed-method study to explore the motivations of older adults participating in university-level courses. They first interviewed 22 participants who were at least 62 years old, with the selection emphasis on continuing learners. Ten days after their interviews, participants were asked to fill out the Reasons for Participation Scale (RPS) to check consistency of responses over time. Two years later, 56 older learners who were selected using similar criteria to those used to select the first sample were surveyed using the same instrument. The combined samples consisted of 78 older adults from 62 to 85 years old with a relative high level of education. The results yielded a nine-factor solution that accounted for 68.5% of the total variance, including keeping up/becoming involved, fulfillment, stimulation and self- maintenance, practical achievement, self-understanding/personal adjustment, formal attainment and recognition, qualifying for privileges, prerequisite knowledge, and intellectual stimulation and enjoyment. Some of the factors corresponded with those found in Boshier and Riddle (1978); for example, intellectual stimulation and enjoyment, stimulation and self-maintenance, and formal attainment and recognition matched 33 cognitive interest and escape/stimulation, respectively. However, the drawback of their study was that the results from the factor analysis were not robust enough due to the small sample size. As a result, there was a great many overlaps between items, which as a result led to a failure to provide a “clean” interpretation. In a different context, Bynum and Seaman (1993) administered RPS to a large sample of older adults who participated in Learning in Retirement (LIR) Institutes. Their survey had a few modifications. The modified version contained 30 items (instead of 32 items); items related to earning a degree were dropped since LIR offers noncredit courses. A total of 452 older adults over 50 years of age who had enrolled in LIR courses in five southeastern states were surveyed. Their findings identified four components to older learners’ motivation: namely, self-actualization, perceived cognitive gap, intellectual curiosity, and social contact. They hypothesized that interpersonal and social motivation would be dominant since LIR offered noncredit courses and involved participants in the administrative and instructional process. Surprisingly, however, intellectual curiosity appeared to be the most powerful underlying motivation. This not only confirmed what was found in previous studies, but also suggested that LIRs provide intellectually stimulating activities even though they are not associated with other college- and university-sponsored programs for older adults. The appearance of self-actualization factor led them to conclude that such factors would be more readily evidenced within noncredit programs in institutions of higher education. Even though the overall results coincided with the literature, the use of the label “self-actualization” was disputable. It is the researcher’s understanding that the concept of self-actualization implied personal growth through the realization of one’s potential 34 and capabilities (Maslow, 1970). It is the feeling of making progress toward reaching one’s full potential, achieving both what one wants and is best suited to do. But when examined closely with the underlying items in the self-actualization factor, the item contents were more likely to translate into personal growth or self-improvement, which are not the same thing as self-actualization. Such items include: “to enable me to cope better with the challenges of daily living”, “to gain insight into my personal problems”, or “to re-examine my perspective on one or more contemporary issues”, etc. An emerging body of qualitative research supplied a deeper understanding of who these learners are and what their experiences have been in participating in learning activities. Results from these studies (Laanan, 2003; Lamb & Brady, 2005; Little, 1995; Martin, 2003) generally do not contradict the quantitative studies cited, but rather expand and elaborate upon it. During in-depth interviews with five older adults (55 years and older) regarding their motivation to participate in learning activities during the retirement transition, Adair and Mowesian (1993) concluded that the needs and goals to learn were instrumentally or expressively oriented, which corresponded with various developmental tasks related to later life. Instrumental learning was found to be primarily related to health, finances, and social support activities; it enabled the participants to manage basic survival needs and maintain both personal effectiveness and independence. Expressive learning, on the other hand, provided immediate gratification of needs and goals associated with identity, affiliation, and competence. Martin (2003) interviewed four older adults ranging in age from 68 to 73, who maintain continued participating in a LIR institute over a period of at least two years. The findings identified with those from previous studies: that intellectual stimulation and 35 socialization were the strongest motivations when searching for learning opportunities. In addition, what made older adults choose LIR courses over the college courses was the interactive nature of LIR courses, through which peer members share their knowledge and experiences, and build companionship with people their own age. The impact of LIR experiences on older adults became apparent from the recurring four themes of personal growth, self-esteem, contribution (to family and society), and empowerment, which often overlapped and reinforced each other. A similar study was done by Lamb and Brady (2005), who interviewed long-term participants on their experiences in one Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI, a later name for the Learning in Retirement Institute) and its impact on their sense of well being. Forty- five members aged 55 and older, who registered in at least one LLI course over three years, were interviewed in six focus groups. The findings revealed four major motives for continuing to participate in LLI courses: intellectual stimulation, community support, self-esteem, and spiritual renewal. What is interesting about this study was that the benefits of spiritual renewal as reasons for participation showed up for the first time on the chart in the related literature. This subject came up during the discussion about the openness and trusting atmosphere within the LLI learning environment. The authors explained that the desire to explore spiritual issues might result from two underlying motivations: a need to go beyond participants’ own formal religious training, and a desire to understand other spiritual traditions. The findings proved that once again older learners persist in adult education programs for intricate and multifaceted reasons. The choice made by older adults to attend classes in formal education settings has received attention as well. Laanan (2003) analyzed a secondary data that contained 114 36 older adults aged 55 and above attending 36 public two-year colleges across the U.S. When asked about their degree aspirations at the institution in which they had enrolled, the majority of older adults were pursuing associate degrees. However, to “learn more about things” ranked higher than to “gain general education” as their reasons for attending community colleges, followed by “improve reading and study skills” and “become a more cultured person”. Overall, theses findings supported those from previous studies that the motivation for older adults’ participation in education was to maintain intellectual engagement. The academic reputations of the school and special program offerings outranked financial concerns as the strongest factors to influence older adults’ decisions about which community college to attend. During a series of in-depth interviews with sixteen older adults (mean age = 74) enrolled in both graduate and undergraduate programs at various universities throughout the southeastern United States, Little (1995) identified four motivations that explained their degree-seeking behavior: improving self-esteem, keeping old age at a distance, developing a mature sense of caring, and handling loss and grieving process. Improving self-esteem was the primary motivation for older adults seeking a degree in higher education. Unlike most of the conclusions from previous studies in which cognitive stimulation was the strongest motivator, Little (1995) suggested that improving self-esteem was the primary motivation for older adults seeking a degree in higher education. In a sense, education functions to repair or enhance self-esteem in old age. This study confirmed the connection between education and developmental tasks; in other words, learning in later life fulfills a function in older adulthood development. 37 Using a slightly different measurement from mainstream quantitative research, participants in Scala’s (1996) study answered yes or no to a list of reasons for coming back to school at old age (instead of rating Likert-type items). One hundred and ninety one older adults aged 60 and older who had been enrolled at a local college between 1983 and 1992 were interviewed by phone. Expressive motivations such as “enrichment/love of learning” were the most important reasons for taking courses in a higher education setting, followed by “filling a void after life changes” and “interest in specific courses/subjects”––both were instrumental in nature. Another important aspect of her study was an exploration of the reasons for older adults no longer attending school. As expected, the most cited reason was health problems, either personal or those of a family member. Other reasons for leaving school included a lack of time and transportation, scheduling, and expenses. Academic difficulty was the least important reason for older adults’ departure from school. Regardless of the number of motivation categories identified through the above studies, most studies found that a cognitive-related factor was the strongest motivation reported by older adults who were participating in various residential learning activities. However, the commonly held belief that the reason for adults’ engagement in educational activities is the need for socialization and for affiliation with members of their own age cohort (Fisher & Wolf, 2000) was challenged. There is no doubt about the importance of social interaction in old age, but decision about associations differed depending on their choices of educational programs. Older adults who chose to participate in programs such as Elderhostel, Learning in Retirement institutes, and senior centers where programs are designed specifically for older people, reported enjoying the companionship of people 38 their age. On the other hand, older adults who chose to participate in traditional higher education settings where courses are highly structured and the majority of the students are between 19 to 25 years old reported that forming connections with younger students was of major importance in their participation. It is often expressed that associating with and learning from younger generations made them feel younger and gave them a sense of well-being. Furthermore, the existence of instrumental motivations that “lie outside or beyond the act of learning” (Kingston, 1982, p. 45) cannot be overlooked. This is of special importance for those who participate in higher education settings. After all, socializing is most frequently given as a reason in conjunction with other instrumental reasons (Wirtz & Charner, 1989). It is safe to conclude that any program that seeks to attract older adults must respond to both the expressive and the instrumental needs of the population. Finally, it is also imperative to put the developmental tasks of older adulthood into consideration when examining older adults’ motivations for participating in educational programs. Developmental tasks associated with late adulthood included retirement adjustment, death and bereavement, and decline in health and strength. Therefore, educational programs should facilitate late life transitions and help participants to cope with challenges posed by developmental tasks. Motivation of distance older adult learners. Even though there is limited literature on the motivation structure of older adult learners in the distance education environment, I believe that older learners participating in any distance education programs form a distinctive group that differs from those participating in face-to-face senior programs. There seems to be more challenges in distance education programs than in residential 39 senior programs for older learners. First, they are geographically isolated from other learners and instructors. Second, most of the distance education programs are highly structured and academic-oriented, so that older students in such programs study under pressure like traditional college students do; they must complete assignments in time, and pass final exams to obtain a degree. Third, most of them must overcome their latent technophobia; they must learn to use new computer skills, to navigate Internet, and to communicate through electronic mail. These are all big changes for them. Although there is no commonly accepted definition and measurement of ‘motivation’, researchers who conducted the following studies tended to operationalize motivations as the reasons for participation. Kelly (1989) compared four groups of older adults who were participating in different learning environments: British Open University (BOU), other distance educational programs, liberal adult education programs (including U3As), and Local Education Authority (LEA) institutions in the United Kingdom. Results indicated a few differences between older students in BOU and older students in other educational organizations. Approximately two-thirds of the older students in the three other groups were studying to keep their mind active, and it is evident that the desire to keep mentally alert, to develop subject interests and to continue their own personal development are themes common to many older adults. However, the reason most frequently mentioned by BOU students for studying was to “make up for lack of opportunities or missed opportunities in the past”. The second rated reason for studying was “to keep my mind active”. To “continue developing as a person: stretching myself” and to “get a degree” were both the third highest given reasons. The main difference between the older BOU 40 students and other over-60 students was that a much lower percentage were studying to make up for missed opportunities in the past. According to Kelly (1989), some older people see BOU as “the University of the second chance” (p. 70) and as an opportunity to gain access to degree-level courses. Overall, four themes categorized the reasons for older students’ participation in BOU courses: namely, missed opportunities, active retirement, a second chance, and subject interest. Other studies showed that older learners wanted to engage in further study to foster a sense of achievement, and wanted to learn for the pleasure of learning (Johnson, 1995). Similar results were found in Silverstein, Choi, and Bulot’s (2000) study. They surveyed 984 older adults aged 52 to 87 enrolled in both traditional campus settings and distance education. For those aged 60 and over, expressive reasons such as “becoming a more informed person”, “general interest in subject matter”, “keeping my mind active”, and “something I’ve always want to do” were significantly related to their age. Another important finding was that the majority (87%) of older learners considered the receipt of a tuition waiver an incentive in their enrollment. Studies by Swindell (2000, 2002; Swindell & Vassella, 1999) found that the majority of older adults participating in OnlineU3A were attracted by the “opportunity to learn new things”. The next highest reason was to “communicate with stimulating people”, closely followed by “enjoyment in doing new things”. The weakness of the above studies, however, is the lack of completeness and generalization that will enable readers to draw a conclusion in some specific subject areas, as Boshier and Collins did in their 1983 study. Researchers did not categorize those individual items into the concept of “factor”, “domain”, “dimension” or “taxonomic 41 category”. Though factors are tentative and subjective, it would be easier for readers to understand and believe that there is some reality behind the name if researchers can name the factor. Although Boshier (1976) argued that “factor names merely try to capture what seems to be the central theme of the factor” (p. 31), he admitted that the reality of factors such as those measured by the E.P.S. or R.E.P. will only be known through research that “investigated the psychological underpinnings of life-chance and life-space motivation” (p. 31). Therefore, a more prudent and feasible way for Kelly (1989) and Silverstein, Choi, and Bulot’s (2000) studies was to apply factor analysis to achieve the clustering process, and factor scoring to ascertain the extent to which each participant was enrolled for the reasons that constitute each motivational construct, rather than using percentages. The next step was to relate the factor scores through correlation or analysis of variance to socio-demographic variables. In summary, a review of studies on older adults learners’ motivations for participation showed several similarities and slight differences between those who participated in general senior programs and credit distance education programs. Participants in both groups are foremost motivated by a desire to learn, to keep mentally alert, to develop subject interests, and to continue their own personal development, categorized as cognitive interests and fulfillment/self-actualization. In addition, social contact also was viewed as an important factor in several studies. Therefore, for those who participate in noncredit, face-to-face senior programs, we may foster a hypothesis that interpersonal and social motivators would be paramount for participation. As for those enrolled in credit distance education programs, most want to make up for missed opportunities, to get a degree, to get a better education, to be better informed generally, 42 and to prove something to themselves: all suggest that education in retirement is perceived as a personal benefit to make up for earlier deprivation or misfortune or perhaps as a reward for earlier self-denial. Socio-demographic Characteristics Socio-demographic characteristics have proven to be the most consistent predictors of participation. It is well-documented that the greater proportion of older adults participating in learning activities is female, married, well-educated and better off financially than nonparticipants (Bynum & Seaman, 1993; Kim & Merriam, 2004; Lamdin & Fugate, 1997; Lamb & Brady, 2005; Manheimer et al., 1995, Martin, 2003; Scala, 1996; Swindell, 2000, 2002). It is frequently suggested that the best predictor of whether an adult is likely to take part in adult education is his/her level of formal education. Generally, the higher the level of formal education, the higher the likelihood of participation. A bachelor’s degree or higher appeared to be the mean level for participation in older adult education programs (Lamdin & Fugate, 1997). Therefore, it is possible that the relatively lower participation rate among current older adults may be in part a cohort effect. As the education level of future elder cohorts rises, their participation in adult education may also increase (Schaie & Willis, 2002). When the relationships between motivation factors and education attainment were examined, Kim and Merriam (2004) found that level of education predicted social stimulation negatively. The more educated participants were, the less they were motivated by social stimulation. Gender is another well-discussed factor that may be an important source of differences in participation. The general perception is that the greater proportion of those who participate in older adult education programs is female. However, many researchers 43 (Lamdin & Fugate, 1997; Scala, 1996; Williamson, 2000) explained that the results could be misleading for several reasons. The first is the issue of women’s greater longevity: women outlive men so there are more of them to draw from. Even though this explanation may be legitimate in a statistical sense, it does not explain why more women than men pursue learning activities in later life. Scala (1996) found that older women were more likely to state that they returned to undergraduate studies because “they always wanted to go to college, but never had the chance”. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to attend due to “job training or to get a degree”, and “interest in specific subject/courses” (p. 755). She further concluded that such gender differences seem to reflect cohort differences. Women in the current cohort of elderly were unlikely to receive much higher education, whether because it was considered unnecessary or because they were already married and raising kids at the traditional college age. Williamson (2000), however, confirmed gender differences in older people’s participation in adult education. In a mixed-method study in Australia, Williamson (2000) surveyed 190 members of the University of the Third Age (U3A) and further interviewed 56 of those surveyed. He found that the reasons men were less likely than women to participate in learning activities appeared to cluster around the issues of retirement and gender role socialization. Men were inclined to “sit” in retirement while women wanted to be free. For women, after an adult lifetime of household routines or traditional roles of primary care giver, U3A had offered them the opportunity to get out of the house and to join a group of people with similar interests. But for men, the sense of how well they retired in terms of seeing retirement as another beginning of life, not the end of it, shaped their personal dispositions and willingness to participate in learning activities after 44 retirement. For some men, their health problems at or after retirement compounded the usual difficulties of retirement and added to their desire to “sit”. Employment may also have an effect on motivation for participation and experience in the learning environment. Older adults who were employed might face more time constraints and pressure than those who were retired. Scala (1996) found that older adults who were employed or who were seeking degrees were more likely to report participation motives that were instrumental in nature. Meanwhile, the significance of marital status in predicting motivation for participation in later life was found in Kim and Merriam (2004). Marital status appeared to predict social contact and family togetherness factors. Older adults who were married were less motivated by social contact than those who were widowed, divorced, or single. On the other hand, unmarried older adults scored lower in family togetherness than married participants. Contradicting previous literature, age, gender, and employment status did not predict any of the motivation factors in their study. The influence of socio-demographic variables in predicting older adults’ participation in educational programs is equivocal given that the evidence to date is somewhat circumstantial. Studies at the British Open University (BOU) from 1984 to 1995 showed that men outnumbered women in enrollment and were more likely to have a degree or equivalent qualification. Kelly (1989) compared older BOU students and other older distance education students. He found that both groups were more likely to be male and to have some educational qualifications. However, older BOU students were not significantly better qualified than other older learners. In other words, BOU had attracted people with no or few educational qualifications as well as those with a degree. In general, 45 both men and women were found to have had positive memory of school earlier in life and had a positive wish to resume study, but had had their education interrupted by World War II (Johnson, 1995). One-third of the students over 60 had retired; the vast majority of BOU male students were married in contrast to approximately half of the women who were either single, widowed or divorced (Cutress, Morrison, & Palmer, 1983). Generally they do as well as younger BOU students, and even better on course assignments but not as well on final exams (Kelley, 1989, 1992). Similar patterns were also found in Taiwan; Chen (1999) surveyed 151 older students at the National Open University in Taiwan (NOUT). She found that the majority of NOUT older students were male with a mean age of 72. Most of the participants were highly educated, with a college/university level of education. As expected, the majority of the older students were retired and enrolled as full-time students. Even though the attempt to conclude which socio-demographic variable could best adequately explain the variance in motivation factors was not successful, the review did raise some interesting questions. Are there differences in personal characteristics between older adults who participated in residential education programs and those in distance education programs? Are older distance learners unrepresentative of their generation? Or is it as Kelly (1989) suspected, that older adults enrolled in any OU are the educational elite whose experience had little relevance to other older adult learners. With the above questions unanswered, it is only fair to say that the older learning population is and will continue to be too heterogeneous to provide a basis for a profile. Since the transition points or life events were proven to be important motivational triggers (Jamieson, Miller, & Stafford, 1998), the potential need for educational activity 46 will be growing as people are gradually experience life events such as divorce, retirement, and death during the life course. It is strongly believed that the elderly as a group are diverse in their interests and that a wide range of course offerings is needed to satisfy their needs and desires. Distance Education Learning Environment In addition to personal factors, the study reported on in this thesis also examined how the learning environment influences older adult learners’ motivation constructs. The term “learning environment” has been used to refer to the psychosocial characteristics of classroom environments (Jegede, Fraser, & Fisher, 1995, 1998; Walker, 2002, 2003a, b, c). In this study, distance education learning environment is used to investigate the psychosocial aspects of post-secondary asynchronous distance education that support social and inductive perspectives of learning. Moore (1990, 1993) proposed that distance education could be categorized into Dialog, Support, and Structure in terms of its components. Dialog refers to the purposeful and constructive interaction directed towards improving and enhancing student learning. The usefulness of dialog depends on the content of the course, the characteristics of the students and the instructor, and the learning environment. Structure is a measure of the educational program’s responsiveness to the needs of the individual learners. It represents the program’s educational objectives, teaching strategies, and evaluation methods. Finally, support is described as the perceived support learners receive from the instructor and the institution offering the courses. It can be explained in terms of support for instruction, materials, or technical support. Research involving learning environment instruments has consistently demonstrated the presence of associations between perceptions of classroom/educational 47 environment and students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes (Ames, 1992; Walker, 2003b; Wentzel, 1999, 2000). Cognitive learning outcomes in most motivational research are operationalized as course grades, performance on classroom tests, or performance on standardized achievement tests. Affective outcomes are often categorized as learners’ satisfaction in the classroom, self-efficacy, intrinsic interest, or attitudes toward the subject matter and inquiry. Brady and Fowler (1988) operationalized learning outcomes as humanities/critical thinking and human relations/personal development. They surveyed older adults participating in Elderhostel programs. They found that even though socio-demographic and educational variables may be helpful in predicting initial participation, it is the motivational factors that were the stronger predictors of learning outcomes. Due to the scope of the present study, affective outcome is limited solely to students’ satisfaction, with a focus on learners’ enjoyment of distance education. Learners’ satisfaction is usually a key indicator of educational quality (Walker, 2003b). In addition, research from diverse perspectives has shown that student satisfaction or enjoyment of learning is greater when classroom environments are perceived as encouraging student involvement (Ames & Archer, 1988). 48 Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY Introduction This chapter describes in detail the research methodology used to conduct the study. It is organized into five sections: 1) research design; 2) population and sampling; 3) survey instrument; 4) data collection procedure; and 5) data analysis. Research Design Given the exploratory and descriptive purposes of this study, a cross-sectional survey research design was chosen for implementation. The main purpose was to explore the factor structure of motivational constructs expressed by older adult learners at NOUT. Further, the study examined whether a relationship existed between the identified motivational constructs and participants’ socio-demographic characteristics and their perceptions of the distance learning environment provided by NOUT. In this study, older adults are defined as persons age 55 and over. This age definition is used because older adulthood is commonly associated with retirement, and most people do intend to retire early (Hermalin et al., 2002). Although age 65 is often viewed as the official retirement age, under the Civil Servant Retirement Regulations and Labor Standards Law, employees in Taiwan can retire either when they reach age 60, complete 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 15 years of service (Ofstedal et al., 2002). Accordingly, if this study had defined older adults as those age 65 and older, it would have overlooked individuals in the important transition years (ages 55 to 64). 49 Participants completed two self-administered questionnaires. Motivation, as reflected in the personal goals of older learners, was operationalized as the reason for participating in a distance learning environment context. Hence, motivation of older learners at NOUT was measured using Reasons for Participation Scale (R.P.S.) developed by Steele (1984; Furst & Steele, 1986). The questionnaire consisted of 32 four-point Likert scale items measuring the degree to which a stated reason for participation in educational programs was a motivating factor for the subject. Second, a modified version of the Distance Education Learning Environment Survey (DELES; Walker, 2003a, b, c) was used to evaluate participants’ perceptions of the distance education learning environment at NOUT. The modified DELES consisted of 29 four- point Likert-type items measuring instructor support, student interaction & collaboration, personal relevance, and student satisfaction. Finally, selected socio-demographic variables, including age, gender, educational attainment, employment status, academic status, and academic major, which may influence the variance in learners’ motivation for participation were investigated as well. Attempts were made to acquire both authors’ permissions to use both the DELES1 and R.S.P2. Committee members who served as my expert panel reviewed the final version of the combined questionnaire. They reviewed the construction, operationalization, wording, format, and question flow of the questionnaires to ensure construct and content validity. After it was approved, the English version questionnaires 1 Copyright 2003 by Scott L. Walker, ScEdD. Adapted with permission. See Appendix A. 2 Dr. Edward Furst has retired from the University of Arkansas. In a telephone communication on April 19, 2005, he had no objection to the R.S.P. being used in the present study. However, the researcher was unable to reach the other author, Dr. Betty L. Steele. The personnel in the Department of Vocational and Adult Education of University of Arkansas were unable to find her contact information since she has married and changed her last name. 50 were translated into Mandarin since the research context was Taiwan. The translation process followed the APA guidelines to reduce bias in language. One certified linguist in Mandarin, one faculty member from the National Taiwan University with expertise in adult education, and one faculty member from NOUT with expertise in distance education and older adult learning were invited to validate the Chinese version questionnaires in order to ensure accurate, clear and unbiased communication. In addition, the researcher conducted a field pretest of the Chinese version of the self-administered questionnaires on ten Taiwanese graduate students with distance learning experience at Pennsylvania State University (Mean age = 33) and two former NOUT students (Mean age = 62) in person. The purpose of the pretest was to find out how the survey instrument worked under realistic conditions and the approximate time for completing the survey (Fowler, 1993). Participants completed the questionnaire as they would if they were part of a survey. After completing the survey, the researcher discussed with each of the participants the questionnaires in terms of the clarity of the instructions and questions, and whether there were any problems in understanding the sorts of answers expected. Population and Sampling The population under study was older adult learners aged 55 and above registered as students at NOUT in the Spring Semester 2005. Data from the administration office showed that 1,191 students fit the above description. Among them, 558 (47%) were female and 633 (53%) were male students. Around 78% of the older student population was between 55 and 64 years old. Seventeen percent were between 65 and 74 years old 51 while 6% were between 75 and 84 years old. Only five people were aged 85 years old and above. NOUT maintains thirteen regional study centers, of which eleven are on the main island of Taiwan, namely, Taipei, Taipei (2), Hsinchu, Taichung, Chiai, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Keelung, Ilan, Hualien and Taitung study centers. The other two, the Penghu and Kinmen study centers, are located on other smaller islands. Upon the suggestion of the NOUT, the researcher used multistage sampling techniques to produce a sample that is more likely to reflect the total older learning population at NOUT (Kalton, 1983). The researcher first divided Taiwan into three sections––north, middle, and south––based on general population distribution (see Appendix B). Second, with help from the NOUT, the researcher systematically selected two centers from each section. The six identified centers included the Taipei, Taipei (2), Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hualien study centers. Finally, older adult learners who 1) were 55 years old and up, 2) enrolled in the Spring Semester 2005 at NOUT, and 3) affiliated with one of the six regional learning centers were recruited to participate in this study. The size of the study sample was 990 people, which represented 83% of the total older student population. There were a fairly even proportion of men and women. As anticipated, the majority of the sample was between 55 and 64 years old, which comprised 78% of the study sample. Survey Instrument This study used two instruments in order to measure motivation constructs and the perceived distance education learning environment. 52 Motivation Motivation, operationalized as reasons for an individual’s engagement in a distance learning environment context, was measured using the Reasons for Participation Scale (R.P.S) (Furst & Steele, 1986; Steele, 1984). The R.P.S consisted of 32 four-point Likert-type items—no, little, moderate, or much influence; each measured the degree to which a stated reason for participation in educational programs is a motivating factor for the subject (see Appendix C). The initial set of scale items for R.P.S. was modeled after the Educational Participation Scale (E.P.S.; Boshier, 1971) and the Reasons for Educational Participation Scale (Burgess, 1971, cited in Steele, 1984), and the Older Learner Participation Scale (Pritchard, 1979). The factor solution yielded nine varimax factors, which together accounted for 68.5% of the total variance. The nine factors were keeping up/becoming involved, fulfillment, stimulation and self-maintenance, practical achievement, self-understanding/personal adjustment, formal attainment and recognition, qualifying for privileges, prerequisite knowledge, and intellectual stimulation and enjoyment. Participants were asked to circle the extent of influence of each factor on each statement and to add any reasons not covered at the end of the survey. They were told to concentrate on a recent course taken at NOUT, on the assumption that such a focus would give more reliable and valid responses than generalized judgments (Boshier, 1976). The reliability of the ratings as recorded by each person and item reliability were tested using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient; both indicated high consistency for a majority of R.P.S. items. 53 In the present study we chose to use R.P.S over another highly regarded instrument, Education Participation Scale (E.P.S) by Boshier (1971, 1978, 1991; Boshier & Collins, 1983, 1985) for several reasons. First, when the adjusted version of E.P.S. with job-related items deleted was applied to older learners’ participation in adult education courses (n = 84, Mean age = 69.7), the four-factor solution accounted for 49% (as compared to 68.5% of R.P.S.) of the variance in participation (Boshier & Riddle, 1978). In addition, the R.P.S. not only covered a variety of reasons in a relatively short form (32 items as compared to 42 items in E.P.S.), but also broadened the scope of the reasons by incorporating previous research, particularly those appropriate to persons in retirement or in the transition to retirement. Reasons related to late-life development, concerns for adaptation, self-understanding, and self-actualization, which were considered important for older learners in academic settings (Little, 1995; Manheimer et al., 1995; Scala, 1996). Finally, the E.P.S. seemed to be more suitable for use with adult learners in general, while the R.P.S. was designed to measure older learners who continue long-term participation in higher education settings. Studies that use E.P.S. to measure older adults’ motivation for participation usually have to make modifications on the scopes of the survey instrument. For instance, O’Connell (1990) expanded the Boshier and Riddle (1978) version of E.P.S. to assess older people’s participation in Elderhostel programs. Kim and Merriam (2004) modified the new version of the E.P.S. (Boshier, 1991) when surveying older adults (age 50 and above) engaging in courses in a Learning in Retirement institute. They eliminated three of the seven factors—communication 54 improvement, education preparation, and professional advancement––since those items were considered inappropriate in the context of their study. Distance Education Learning Environment Walker (2003a, b, c) developed a learning environment instrument for higher education courses delivered via distance education using asynchronous technologies—the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES). The DELES has been field-tested and resulted in 680 responses primarily from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Fifty-six field-tested items were reduced to 42 items after principle component factor analysis and internal consistency reliability analysis. It contains six psychosocial scales and a seventh attitudinal scale of satisfaction (enjoyment of distance education). These scales were: 1) instructor support, 2) student interaction and collaboration, 3) personal relevance, 4) authentic learning, 5) active learning, and 6) student autonomy. Together they accounted for 67% of the variance in students’ perceptions of distance learning environment. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for instructor support was .87, .94 for student interaction and collaboration, and .92 for personal relevance (Walker, 2003b). To reduce the cognitive load of the participants, and to facilitate easy administration and collection of valuable data, this study employed a modified version of DELES (see Appendix D). The modified DELES consisted of the three major components, eight-items for instructor support, six-items for student interaction & collaboration, and seven items for personal relevance, for a total of 21 items, which together explain 42.3% of the variance. All of the items loaded ‘clean’ on the factors. Participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each item. The 55 original response scale was 5 = always, 4 = often, 3 = sometimes, 2 = seldom, and 1 = never. However, due to cultural differences in Asian cultures where people are more likely to score at the middle value on an odd-numbered scale, this study decided to adopt a four-point Likert scale with “sometimes” deleted. With no center or neutral point in the response scale, participants had to declare the extent of the frequency with which each item appeared to them. In addition, the modified four-point Likert scale was consistent with that of R.P.S. Student Satisfaction Student satisfaction has been consistently used in as a factor in post-secondary education to evaluate a program’s or institution’s effectiveness in delivering what students expect, need, and want, and is associated with student achievement (Kuh, 2001; Walker, 2002). To investigate the associations between student satisfaction and the psychosocial learning environment, Walker added eight items from the student satisfaction scale to the DELES. The satisfaction scale focused on students’ enjoyment of distance education (see Appendix D). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .95 (Walker, 2003b). The reason for adopting this scale was to ascertain whether there are relationships between identified motivational constructs and student satisfaction in NOUT, and to examine the factors that may influence older students’ satisfaction with the NOUT. Participants indicated the extent to which they agreed on each item using a four-point Likert scale ranging from 4 (always) to 1 (never). For the same reasons explained earlier, the scale was changed from a five-point to a four-point Likert scale. 56 Personal Characteristics The selected socio-demographic questions (see Appendix E) were placed at the end of the survey since the provision of personal information is often considered a more sensitive area in Asian culture. Questions about age, gender, education level, employment status, academic status, and academic major served to gather baseline information. The purpose was to determine whether these personal factors would explain the differences in older learners’ motivation to participate in a distance education setting. Age. Participants were asked to indicate the year in which he/she was born. This variable was treated as a nominal scale, with 1 indicating 55–64 yrs, 2 indicating 65–74 yrs, 3 indicating 75–84 yrs, and 4 indicating 85 yrs and up. Gender. Gender was treated as a dichotomous nominal scale, with 1 indicating male and 2 indicating female. Level of education. This question asked participants to indicate their highest education attainment. This variable was scored as nominal into six levels, with 1 indicating less than high school, 2 indicating high school graduate, 3 indicating two-year associate postsecondary degree, 4 indicating four-year bachelor degree, 5 indicating graduate school including both master and doctorate degrees, and 6 indicating other. If choosing “other”, participants were asked to give a specific answer. Employment status. This variable identified whether the participant had retired from work. It was treated as a nominal scale, with 1 indicating retired, 2 indicating semi- retired, 3 indicating not retired yet, and 4 indicating other. By choosing “semi-retirement” and “other”, participants were asked to give a specific answer, such as have retired but 57 continue to work as part-time or volunteer work, being a housewife/homemaker, or never being employed, etc. Academic status. This question asked about participants’ current academic status at NOUT. It was treated as nominal data, with 1 indicating part-time student, 2 indicating full-time student, and 3 indicating other. By choosing “other”, participants were asked to give a specific answer. Academic major. This question asked participants to indicate their current academic major at NOUT. It is treated as a nominal scale, with 1 indicating humanities, 2 indicating social sciences, 3 indicating business, 4 indicating public administration, 5 indicating living sciences, 6 indicating management and information, 7 indicating have not decided, and 8 indicating have more than one major. Data Collection Procedure Besides correspondence, television and radio broadcast, and computer-based instruction, NOUT students also receive face-to-face instruction from the instructors. Students were expected to attend the face-to-face session four times at the regional study centers during the span of each course. In order to get a higher response rate at comparatively lower cost within a shorter time period (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003; Trochim, 2001), the study employed a direct administration mode of data collection. In other words, participants were given a questionnaire to complete in their classroom at the end of their final face-to-face session. After obtaining permission from the NOUT, the researcher communicated directly with each of the directors of the selected six regional study centers. Due to issues of student privacy and time-space constraints in which the last face-to-face session was 58 scheduled on the same date, it would be more efficient and appropriate if the course instructors distributed the survey to the target audiences directly. Therefore, a cover letter along with Chinese version questionnaires (see Appendix F) were given to each instructor when he/she came into the regional study center office to pick up the class roster. The cover letter informed the instructors about the study, explained its purpose, and requested their help in identifying the potential subjects and distributing the questionnaires. After the participants completed the survey, they either returned it to the course instructor or the appointed drop box in the study center office. Although both R.P.S and DELES questionnaires were characterized as self- administered instruments, detailed instructions on how to answer the questions properly were included with the questionnaires. Additionally, a human subjects form was incorporated with the cover letter to assure participants about confidentiality and safety in participating in this study. Finally, the researcher’s contact information was provided on the cover letter that accompanied the questionnaires; participants were encouraged to contact the researcher directly regarding the study. Data Analysis Data were processed using the computer-based Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 12.0 for Windows). Descriptive statistics were used to profile the participants. Inferential statistics, including principal component factor analysis, analysis of variance, and multiple regression analysis, were used to reach conclusions about the three research questions guiding this study. The use of inferential statistics was justified even though the sample for this study was not randomly selected from an abstract population—older adult learners participating in distance education in Taiwan. Huck 59 (2004) suggests that inferential statistics apply when the researcher intends to generalize the findings beyond the current sample to an abstract population, which serves only hypothetically as a larger “mirror image” of the sample (p. 115). Research Question One Research question one explored the motivation constructs expressed by older adult learners at NOUT. It was measured using the 32-item Reasons for Participation Scale ranging from 0 (no influence) to 3 (much influence). Item scores were subjected to principal component factor analysis (PCA) to uncover the latent structure of the 32 variables. Other than reducing the number of variables without losing much of the information, the other reason for conducting PCA specifically is to produce a small number of uncorrelated principal components (Afifi, Clark, & May, 2004). A common rule for running PCA is to have at least 10–15 participants per variable; Field (2005) reviewed previous studies and concluded that a sample of 300 or more would most likely result in a stable factor solution. The researcher used PCA with a varimax rotation of factors and discarded principal components with eigenvalues under 1.0. Once the number of principal components was selected, the researcher decided which item to retain based on its factor loadings. The significance of a factor loading depends on the sample size. Steven (1992) suggested that for a sample size of 300, a loading greater than .298 can be considered significant (as cited in Field, 2005). In this study, items with factor loadings less than .50 were eliminated. Subsequently, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was calculated to estimate the reliability (internal consistency) for each factor. The alpha coefficient value ranges from 60 0 to 1; a general rule of thumb is that reliability coefficients should be at least .70 and preferably higher (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003; Isaac & Michael, 1995). Research Question Two This research question consisted of four sub-questions. It examined the differences in motivation constructs when examined by socio-demographic characteristics, perceived distance education learning environment, and student satisfaction. Question 2-1. This question attempted to provide a profile for the study sample in terms of gender, age, level of education, employment status, academic status, and academic majors. All variables were treated as nominal type of data. Descriptive statistics including frequency, mode, skewness value, and percentage were applied. Question 2-2. The second sub-question examined the effects of the socio- demographic characteristics on the values for the motivation constructs identified from research question one. The socio-demographic characteristics of the participants (X) were treated as a nominal type of data while the motivation constructs (Y) served as interval/ratio. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to uncover the main and interaction effects of the independent variables on the dependent variable. Generally, ANOVA is robust when 1) there is a normal distribution of the sample; 2) independent variables are uncorrelated; and 3) there is a relatively equal number of people in each category of the independent variables, or within a ratio of 4 to 1 (Field, 2005; Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). Skewness value was used to test normality. A skewness value ± 2.0 is acceptable (George & Mallery, 2005). Levene’s test was used to test the homogeneity of variance. 61 Furthermore, participants’ age, level of education, and academic major were recorded to obtain more meaningful interpretations and robust results. Age was recorded into two categories: those who were 55–64 and those who were 65 years old and above. Level of education was recoded into two categories: those who had less than a college degree and those who were college graduates and further. Finally, academic majors were recorded into three categories: those who had one major, those who had not yet decided, and those who had more than one major at NOUT. Question 2-3. The third sub-question tested the relationships between the identified motivation constructs (Ys) and distance education learning environment variables (Xs). The perceived distance education learning environment was measured using the modified DELES with 21 items. The DELES item scores were first subjected to principal component factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Based on Walker’s (2003a, b, c) study, it yielded three categories, namely, instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, and personal relevance. Afterward, Pearson’s correlation was used to measure the associations between the independent variables and dependent variables. Correlation coefficient ranged from 0 (random relationship) to 1 (perfect linear relationship) or −1 (perfect negative linear relationship). Generally, the correlation coefficient value of ± .10 represents a small effect, ± .30 is a medium effect, and ± .50 is a large effect (Field, 2005). The correlation coefficient squared (R²) was used to interpret the percent of the variance in the motivation constructs (Ys) explained by the perceived distance education learning environment (Xs). Although R² is a useful measure of the substantive importance of an effect, it cannot be used to infer causal relationships. To further explore the 62 relationship between those two factors as proposed in the conceptual framework (see Figure 1-1, p. 7), multiple regression was used to analyze the predictive importance of the perceived distance education learning environment in motivation constructs. Question 2-4. The fourth sub-question investigated the relationships between motivation constructs and participants’ satisfaction with the distance learning offered by NOUT. Student satisfaction was measured using the eight-item DELES satisfaction scale. Both independent (motivation constructs) and dependent (satisfaction) variables were treated as interval/ratio type of data. Multiple regression analysis was implemented to, first, explain the proportion of variance in student satisfaction accounted for through various motivation constructs as expressed by the participants, and, second, explore which of the motivation construct variables may predict high student satisfaction. Prior to analysis, motivation construct values were examined for the fit between their distributions and the assumptions of multivariate analysis. Skewness values were used to check normality while bivariate scatterplots were used to assess linearity and homoscedasticity. If both variables are normally distributed and linearly related, the scatterplot is oval-shaped. Condition index was used to determine the existence of multicollinearity. The presence of multicollinearity, in which two or more independent variables were highly correlated, made it difficult to determine the separate effects of the dependent variables. The regression model may be biased when a high condition index appears. Belsely, Kun, and Welsch (1980) suggested rules for multicollinearity: “a condition index > .30 for a given dimension coupled with at least two variance proportions for an individual variable > .50” (as cited in Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001, p. 85). 63 Multiple regression yielded a regression equation and b coefficients. The b coefficient was the slope of the regression line: the larger the b, the steeper the slope, the more the dependent variable changed for each unit change in the independent variable. The size of R-square was used to estimate the proportion of variance in student satisfaction explained by the motivation constructs collectively. R-squares ranged from 0 to 1, with 1 representing a situation in which the model perfectly predicts the observed data. The probability indicated the likelihood that a statistical result would have been obtained by chance. The smaller the number (p < .001), the less likely the results were due to chance. Research Question Three This question examined the collective and separate contributions of three blocks of independent variables, including socio-demographic characteristics (X1), motivation constructs (X2), and distance education learning environment (X3) on student satisfaction (Y). First, all of the nominal variables in participants’ socio-demographic characteristics were dummy coded into quasi interval/ratio data. Then a hierarchical block multiple regression was carried out. Each set of independent variables was entered in a planned order to test its expected effects. Independent variables with lesser importance were entered first whereas the major set was evaluated for what it added to the prediction over the lesser set (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). Therefore, socio-demographic characteristics of the participants were entered first so that its effects could be controlled. The second block to enter was motivation constructs, which were hypothesized to be related to learners’ satisfaction. The final block to enter was distance education learning environment variables to see what they added to the prediction. 64 F-tests were used to compute the significance of each block of variables to the explanation reflected in R-square. The size of R-square was used to estimate the proportion of variance in student satisfaction explained by the three blocks of the independent variables separately and collectively. The b coefficients were used to explain the estimated predictive importance of the independent variables. Field (2005) suggested that 15 participants per predictor would be necessary to obtain a reliable regression equation. 65 Chapter 4 RESULTS Introduction This chapter presents the results for the current study as based on the data analysis procedures outlined in the previous chapter. The purposes of this study were to investigate the factor structure of motivation constructs as expressed by older adult learners and to determine how the motivational constructs correlated with older adults’ socio-demographic characteristics, perceptions of the distance education learning environment, and learning satisfaction. A summary of the socio-demographic characteristics of the National Open University of Taiwan (NOUT) respondents was reported first even though it was constructed as a sub-question of the second research question. Subsequently, an overview of statistical data analysis results from principal component factor analysis was presented (Research Question One). Then the findings for the motivation constructs when examined through different blocks of independent variables were presented (Research Question Two). Finally, the relative contribution of socio-demographic factors, motivation constructs, and distance education learning environment on student satisfaction were examined (Research Question Three). Socio-demographic Characteristics of the Respondents The subjects in this study were older adult learners aged 55 and older from six regional study centers including Taipei, Taipei (2), Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hualien of NOUT in the Spring Semester 2005. From a sample of 990 older students 66 targeted via a survey, 403 responded. The return rate was 41%; the adjusted usable return rate was 37% with 32 incomplete questionnaires not included. The researcher was aware that a higher return rate would lend more credibility to the study. There was no official attempt to examine non-response bias. Table 4-1 displays the data that provides a profile of the study sample. A total of 371 older learners at NOUT completed the survey (Mean age = 61). Around 80 % of the respondents were between 55 and 64 years old. Learners in the young-old age group (aged 65–74) and the old-old age group (aged 75–84) comprised 15.4% and 5.1% of the sample, respectively. No one in the oldest-old age group (aged 85 and up) participated in this study. Gender distributions were quite even in this sample, with 48% male and 52% female. But when examined more closely by age and gender, it was interesting to find that female (56%) outnumbered male (44%) learners in the younger age group (55–64 years old) while males (64%) dramatically outnumbered females (36%) in the older age group (65 years old and up). When asked about their highest education attainment, a majority of the older adult learners (56.3%) were high school graduates. Older adult learners with a four-year bachelor degree comprised the second largest group (24.3%) in the sample, followed by those with less than a high school diploma (11.9%), two-year associate postsecondary degree (6.2%), and graduate school including both master and doctorate degrees (1.3%). Considering that compulsory elementary and secondary education did not begin in Taiwan until 1968, this profile of older NOUT learners revealed them to be much more educated than those in their age cohort. 67 As for their current employment status, most older adult learners in NOUT were retired (42.3%), 34.5% were not yet retired. About 16.2% of respondents were semi- retired. They reported themselves to be doing part-time work, participating in volunteer work, being a stay-at-home babysitter taking care of grandchildren, trying to restart a second career, or being a substitute teacher (working only when needed). Seven percent of the respondents chose the answer, “other”. They often described themselves as a housewife, missionary (as lifelong career), self-employed, in-between jobs, or never being employed. When cross-examined by age, about 52% of respondents in the younger age group (55–64) were either retired or semi-retired while 41% remained in the workforce. This indicated a trend toward early retirement. As expected, the majority of respondents (78%) in the older age group (65 and above) were retired. When examined by their involvement in the NOUT, a majority of the older adult learners (88.1%) were registered as full-time students, which means that they need to take 128 credits to graduate. Roughly one of ten (11.9%) was studying as a part-time student. As for their choice of major, participants were divided among Humanities (13.7%), Social Sciences (13.7%), Business (10.8%), Public Administration (7.0%), And Management and Information (7.8%). Living Sciences seemed to be a more popular choice, with 25.6% of the sample. In general, the majority of the participants (78.7%) had one academic major while 5.4% of the sample remained undecided. It was surprising to see that 15.9% of the respondents had more than one major. When cross-examined by age and gender, males aged 55-64 appeared to be more likely to have more than one major. 68 Table 4-1 Socio-demographic Profile of the Respondents Characteristic Frequency Percent (%) Age 55-64 295 79.5 65-74 57 15.4 75-84 19 5.1 85 and up 0 0.0 371 100.0 Gender Male 178 48.0 Female 193 52.0 371 100.0 Level of Education Less than high school 44 11.9 High school graduate 209 56.3 Two-year associate postsecondary degree 23 6.2 Four-year bachelor degree 90 24.3 Graduate school 5 1.3 371 100.0 Employment Status Retired 157 42.3 Semi-retired 60 16.2 Not retired yet 128 34.5 Other 26 7.0 371 100.0 Academic Status Part-time 44 11.9 Full-time 327 88.1 371 100.0 Academic Major Humanities 51 13.7 Social sciences 51 13.7 Business 40 10.8 Public administration 26 7.0 Living sciences 95 25.6 Management and information 29 7.8 Have not decided 20 5.4 Have more than one major 59 15.9 371 100.0 69 Motivation Constructs of Older Adult Learners at NOUT Research Question One explored the motivation constructs expressed by older adult learners at NOUT. Motivation, operationalized as the reasons for older adult learners’ participation in distance education, was measured using the 32-item Reasons for Participation Scale with potential responses ranging from 0 (no influence) to 3 (much influence). Item scores were subjected to principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation to uncover the latent structure of the 32 variables, and items with factor loadings less than .50 were omitted. Results were shown in Table 4-2. The KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test) measure of sampling adequacy (> .9) and Bartlett’s test (< .05) indicated a multivariate normal distribution for the data set and was robust for conducting a factor analysis to yield distinct and reliable factors (Field, 2005; George & Mallery, 2005). Five components were retained with eigenvalues greater than 1, and together they explained 59.7% of the variance. However, one of the components was dropped since it contained only two items. The two items were Q27 (To help me earn a degree, diploma, or certificate) and Q29 (To complete some previously unfinished learning), and they explained a relatively small proportion of the variance (3.2%). Meanwhile, in order to retain the most orthogonal structure, items with ambiguous loadings (i.e., loading fairly high on more than one factor) and those items with loadings lower than .50 were eliminated. Six items, including Q11 (To enable me to cope better with the challenges of daily living), Q12 (To share a common interest with my spouse or friend), Q13 (To improve my ability to participate in community work), Q14 (So that other would have a higher respect for me), Q31 (To prepare myself for retirement living), and Q32 (To maintain or enhance my self-respect), on the Reasons for Participation Scale 70 were omitted. The remaining 24 items factored into four components, namely, keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, escape and social contact, and adjustment, and together they accounted for 56.5% of the variance. Factor I, keeping up and fulfillment, consisted of seven items. The main theme was introspections about oneself and the desire to be involved in the contemporary world. For example, the reasons older adult learners enrolled at NOUT may be due to a re- examination of the learner’s perspective on one or more contemporary issues (Q22), to re-examine myself and my role in life (Q17), to keep up with what is going on in the world (Q18), and to become more effective as a citizen (Q20). A secondary theme of this factor was fulfillment, the act of consummating something. Older adults who chose to take courses at NOUT might want to develop an undeveloped talent (Q19), to feel a sense of achievement (Q16), and to gain insight into human relations (Q21). Factor II, intellectual stimulation, consisted of eight items. The term intellectual stimulation covered a variety of submotives. It included both instrumental and expressive goals. Learning focused toward some external outcome(s) has been viewed as instrumental while learning centered on enjoyment or self-actualization has been viewed as expressive-oriented (Hiemstra, 1982; Manheimer et al., 1995). Instrumental reasons to participate in NOUT included pursuit of earlier interests that I could not get around to before (Q9), to supplement a narrow previous education (Q5), to satisfy a desire to develop new interests (Q15), to gain insight into my personal problems (Q3), and to acquire knowledge to help with other educational courses (Q1). Reasons such as to learn just for the joy of learning (Q8) and to satisfy an inquiring mind (Q24) were concluded to be expressive. Additionally, intellectual stimulation sometimes involved a fear of 71 cognitive decline for older adults: i.e., to keep my mind active and alert by making intellectual demands upon it (Q6). Factor III, escape and social contact, consisted of six items. It depicted a need to change and to step out of the routine of life, and included items such as getting a break in the routine of home or work (Q7) and getting relief from boredom (Q2). Sometimes another way to escape the current situation is to re-experience the feeling of being a student, such as by qualifying for privileges such as use of library, swimming pool, etc. (Q4). Moreover, items on this factor embodied a desire for social interaction and activity; in other words, older adult learners participating in NOUT were seeking opportunities to become acquainted with congenial people (Q10), to participate in group activity (Q20), or to comply with the recommendations or urging of someone else (Q23). Factor IV, adjustment, consisted of three items. The main theme was the concerns for personal problem and adjustment in later life. Older adult learners who decided to take courses at NOUT may desire to acquire knowledge on a particular subject (Q25), to learn a specific skill (Q28), and to gain assistance during a crisis in their personal life (Q26). Despite Furst and Steele’s (1986) interpretations of this factor, that it was not common in this age group; the emergence of this factor was important since it corresponded with Manheimer’s (1992) notion that older learners’ motives tend to emphasize either an adaptational or transformational perspective due to the developmental change during older adulthood (as cited in Manheimer et al., 1995). 72 Table 4-2 Reasons for Participation Factor and Item Overall Crobach Alpha Factor Loading Index M Index SD Eigenvalue Variance Explained (%) Keeping Up and Fulfillment .90 1.77 .66 13.09 40.90 To become more effective as a citizen (Q20) .72 To re-examine my perspective on one or more contemporary issues (Q22) .70 To gain insight into human relations (Q21) .65 To develop an unfulfilled talent (Q19) .64 To feel a sense of achievement (Q16) .62 To re-examine myself and my role in life (Q17) .61 To keep up with what is going on in the world (Q18) .60 Intellectual Stimulation .87 2.01 .58 2.23 6.98 To learn just for the joy of learning (Q8) .70 To pursue earlier interests that I could not get around to before (Q9) .67 To keep my mind active and alert by making intellectual demands upon it (Q6) .65 To supplement a narrow previous education (Q5) .61 To satisfy an inquiring mind (Q24) .57 To satisfy a desire to develop new interests (Q15) .56 To gain insight into my personal problems (Q3) .53 To acquire knowledge to help with other educational courses (Q1) .52 73 Table 4-2 (continued). Factor and Item Overall Crobach Alpha Factor Loading Index M Index SD Eigenvalue Variance Explained (%) Escape and Social Contact .79 1.14 .63 1.47 4.58 To get a break in the routine of home or work (Q7) .68 To get relief from boredom (Q2) .62 To qualify for privileges such as use of library, swimming pool, etc. (Q4) .62 To comply with the recommendations or urging of someone else (Q23) .61 To become acquainted with congenial people (Q10) .57 To participate in group activity (Q20) .55 Adjustment .80 1.64 .71 1.28 4.00 To acquire knowledge on a particular subject (Q25) .64 To learn a specific skill (Q28) .62 To give me help during a crisis in my personal life (Q26) .58 Note. n = 371. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) = .956, Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity = .000. The theoretical score range for Keeping up and Fulfillment, Intellectual Stimulation, Escape and Social Contact, and Adjustment was 0-3, with 0 = no influence and 3 = much influence. 74 Reliability of the Factor Summated Scores Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated for each factor to assess the reliability (internal consistency) of the resulting scale (see Table 4-2). The reliability coefficients for four factors ranged from .79 to .90. Considering the commonly minimal acceptable level for internal consistency, .70 (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003; Isaac & Michael, 1995), these values suggested that these four factors could be perceived to provide reliable summated scores and used in further analysis. Differences in Motivation Constructs When Examined by Socio-demographic Characteristics, Perceptions of Distance Education Learning Environment, and Student Satisfaction Research Question Two examined the differences in motivation constructs of older adult learners at NOUT when examined by their socio-demographic characteristics, their perceptions of the distance education learning environment, and their satisfaction with the distance education provided by NOUT. The differences were presented in three sections: differences by socio-demographic characteristics, relationships between motivation construct values by perceptions regarding distance education learning environment, and relationships between motivation constructs and student satisfaction. Differences by Socio-demographic Characteristics ANOVA was conducted to ascertain which effects the socio-demographic characteristics have on the values for the four motivation constructs, keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, escape and social contact, and adjustment. The skewness values (all within – 1.0 to + 1.0) and Levene’s test results showed that the assumptions requiring a normal distribution and homogeneity of variance were met for 75 each of the four motivation construct score distributions. Table 4-3 reports the descriptive results for the four motivation constructs when examined by gender, age, highest level of education, employment status, academic status, and academic major. The summated item average score range of motivation constructs was 0-3. The results of ANOVA are presented in Table 4-4. The results showed no differences in keeping up and fulfillment scores when examined by gender, age, level of education, employment status, and academic status. Only academic major had a significant effect, F(2, 368) = 4.91, p < .01. Results indicated that people who had one major or more than one major scored higher on the keeping up and fulfillment factor than those who had not yet decided their major. Similarly, gender, age, level of education, and employment status did not have an effect on the second motivation construct scores, intellectual stimulation. There was, however, a significant effect of academic status F(1, 369) = 5.61, p < .05 and academic major F(2, 368) = 8.63, p < .01 on the construct score of intellectual stimulation. Older adult students who registered as full-time students sought (had a higher score for) more intellectual stimulation than did part-time students. Meanwhile, older adult learners who had one major or more than one major scored higher on the intellectual stimulation factor than did those who had not yet decided on their major. In the third construct of escape and social contact, there were no significant differences when examined by any of the socio- demographic characteristics. Finally, the only significant effect for the adjustment construct was academic major F(2, 368) = 3.75, p < .05, which indicated that older adult learners with one major or more than one major at NOUT participated to a greater extent for reasons of adjustment than those who had not yet decided on their major. 76 Also, the researcher examined first-order interactions, and results for interactions appear as a footnote in Table 4-4. For example, for the keeping up and fulfillment construct, there were two interactions; both of them had a rather small effect size. 77 Table 4-3 Descriptive Results of Motivational Constructs by Socio-demographic Characteristics Keeping Up and Fulfillment Intellectual Stimulation Escape and Social Contact Adjustment Variable M SD n M SD n M SD n M SD n Gender Male 1.75 .65 178 1.95 .60 178 1.14 .64 178 1.68 .72 178 Female 1.78 .67 193 2.05 .56 193 1.15 .63 193 1.60 .70 193 Age 55-64 1.76 .64 295 2.00 .56 295 1.14 .63 295 1.63 .70 295 65-84 1.81 .72 76 2.01 .64 76 1.16 .65 76 1.67 .76 76 Level of Education Less than college 1.76 .65 276 2.01 .57 276 1.15 .62 276 1.63 .73 276 College and above 1.79 .68 95 2.00 .60 95 1.13 .66 95 1.64 .66 95 Employment Status Retired 1.77 .69 157 2.03 .58 157 1.18 .68 157 1.67 .76 157 Semi-retired 1.69 .63 60 1.95 .59 60 1.08 .61 60 1.51 .59 60 Not retired 1.78 .64 128 1.99 .58 128 1.11 .58 128 1.65 .68 128 Other 1.91 .66 26 2.09 .59 26 1.21 .67 26 1.65 .71 26 78 Table 4-3 (continued). Keeping Up and Fulfillment Intellectual Stimulation Escape and Social Contact Adjustment Variable M SD n M SD n M SD n M SD n Academic Status Part-time 1.65 .64 44 1.81 .50 44 1.28 .63 44 1.55 .74 44 Full-time 1.78 .66 327 2.03 .59 327 1.13 .64 327 1.65 .71 327 Academic Major One major 1.78 .66 292 2.00 .56 292 1.16 .64 292 1.63 .71 292 Not decided 1.34 .58 20 1.57 .60 20 .99 .52 20 1.28 .61 20 More than one major 1.85 .65 59 2.18 .60 59 1.14 .61 .59 1.78 70 59 Note. The theoretical score range for Keeping up and Fulfillment, Intellectual Stimulation, Escape and Social Contact, and Adjustment was 0-3, with 0 = no influence and 3 = much influence. 79 Table 4-4 ANOVA Results of Motivational Constructs by Socio-demographic Characteristics Keeping Up and Fulfillment Intellectual Stimulation Escape and Social Contact Adjustment Variable F p Effect size F p Effect size F p Effect size F p Effect size Gender .19 .66 .00 2.77 .10 .00 .07 .80 .00 1.19 .28 .00 Age .48 .49 .00 .02 .88 .00 .03 .87 .00 .18 .67 .00 Level of Education .14 .71 .00 .04 .85 .00 .11 .74 .00 .01 .92 .00 Employment Status .73 .52 .00 .47 .71 .00 .59 .62 .00 .82 .48 .00 Academic Status 1.52 .22 .00 5.61 .02* .02 2.30 .13 .00 .69 .41 .00 Academic Major 4.91 .00** .03 8.63 .00** .05 .62 .54 .00 3.75 .02* .02 Note. Keeping Up and Fulfillment (Gender × Academic major) F = 3.98**, Partial Eta Squared = .03; (Age × Level of education × Academic major) F = 6.41*, Partial Eta Squared = .02; Intellectual Stimulation (Level of education × Employment status) F = 2.68*, Partial Eta Squared = .03; (Gender × Academic major) F = 3.09*, Partial Eta Squared = .02; Escape and Social Contact (Education* Academic Status) F = 4.26*, Partial Eta Squared = .01; Adjustment (Age × Level of education) F = 4.88*, Partial Eta Squared = .02. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. 80 Relationships between Motivation Construct Values by Perceptions Regarding Distance Education Learning Environment One sub-question of the second research question tested the relationships between distance education learning environment variables (Xs) and the four motivation constructs (Ys). Before correlation was conducted, principal component factor analysis was used to determine the factor structure of the distance education learning environment items. A modified version of DELES (Walker, 2003a, b, c) was used to measure the distance education learning environment at NOUT; item scores ranged from 1 to 4. The measure of KMO (> .9) and Bartlett’s test (< .05) indicated a multivariate normal distribution of the data set and was considered robust for conducting factor analysis (Field, 2005; George & Mallery, 2005). Three components, as expected, were retained with eigenvalues greater than 1; together, they explained 62.49% of the variance. Results are shown in Table 4-5. All twenty-one items had a factor item loading above .60, and resulted in three components, including instructor support with eight items, student interaction and collaboration with six items, and personal relevance with seven items. The Cronbach alpha coefficients for the three component summated scores ranged from .88 to .91, which were considered to yield reliable scores. In addition to instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, and personal relevance, the modified DELES also included a separate student satisfaction scale that focused on perceived enjoyment of distance education. Results are shown in Table 4-6. Student satisfaction consisted of eight items with factor loadings above .80. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was .95. 81 Table 4-5 Distance Education Learning Environment Factor and Item Overall Crobach Alpha Factor Loading Index M Index SD Eigenvalue Variance Explained (%) Instructor Support .91 2.99 .58 8.27 39.37 If I have an inquiry, the instructor finds time to respond (Q1). .79 The instructor helps me identify problem areas in my study (Q2). .81 The instructor responds promptly to my questions (Q3). .79 The instructor gives me valuable feedback on my assignments (Q4). .73 The instructor adequately addresses my questions (Q5). .82 The instructor encourages my participation (Q6). .67 It is easy to contact the instructor (Q7). .73 The instructor provides me positive and negative feedback on my work (Q8). .71 Student Interaction and Collaboration .88 2.43 .59 2.10 9.98 I work with others (Q9). .75 I relate my work to other's work (Q10). .70 I share information with other students (Q11). .80 I discuss my idea with other students (Q12). .82 I collaborate with other students in the class (Q13). .77 Group work is part of my activities (Q14). .73 82 Table 4-5 (continued). Factor and Item Overall Crobach Alpha Factor Loading Index M Index SD Eigenvalue Variance Explained (%) Personal Relevance .89 2.95 .51 2.76 13.14 I can relate what I learn to my life outside of university (Q15). .71 I am able to pursue topics that interest me (Q16). .60 I can connect my studies to my activities outside of class (Q17). .79 I apply my everyday experiences in class (Q18). .75 I link class work to my life outside of university (Q19). .75 I learn things about the world outside of university (Q20). .74 I apply my out-of-class experience (Q21). .78 Note. n = 370 for Instructor Support and Student Interaction and Collaboration; n = 371 for Personal Relevance. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) = .928, Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity = .000. The theoretical score range for Instructor Support, Student Interaction and Collaboration, and Personal Relevance was 1-4, with 1 = never and 4 = always. 83 Table 4-6 Student Satisfaction Factor and Item Overall Cronbach Alpha Factor Loading Index M Index SD Eigenvalue Variance Explained (%) Student Satisfaction .95 2.81 .64 5.90 73.74 Distance education is stimulating (Q22). .82 I prefer distance education (Q23). .86 Distance education is exciting (Q24). .87 Distance education is worth my time (Q25). .86 I enjoy studying by distance (Q26). .90 I look forward to learning by distance (Q27). .87 I would enjoy my education more if all my classes were by distance (Q28). .85 I am satisfied with distance education (Q29). .83 Note. n = 369. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) = .927, Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity = .000. The theoretical score range for Student Satisfaction was 1-4, with 1 = never and 4 = always. 84 The correlation analysis results summarized in Table 4-7 reveal a statistically significant relationship between motivation constructs and distance education learning environment. Instructor support (r = .27), student interaction and collaboration (r = .26), and personal relevance (r = .43) were all positively associated with keeping up and fulfillment. Only personal relevance had a medium effect that accounted for 18.8% of the variability in keeping up and fulfillment. Second, both instructor support (r = .32) and personal relevance (r = .48) had a medium effect on the construct of intellectual stimulation, and accounted for 10.4% and 23% of the variability, respectively. Subsequently, only student interaction and collaboration (r = .38) had a medium effect on escape and social contact, which explained 14.6% of variance. Finally, each of the distance education learning environment variables had a medium effect on the construct of adjustment; together, they accounted for 42.1% of the variability. Table 4-7 Correlations between Motivation Constructs and Distance Education Learning Environment Instructor Support Student Interaction and Collaboration Personal Relevance Pearson Correlation .27** .26** .43**Keeping Up and Fulfillment p-value .00 .00 .00 Pearson Correlation .32** .21** .48**Intellectual Stimulation p-value .00 .00 .00 85 Table 4-7 (continued). Instructor Support Student Interaction and Collaboration Personal Relevance Pearson Correlation .21** .38** .28**Escape and Social Contact p-value .00 .00 .00 Pearson Correlation .32** .31** .48**Adjustment p-value .00 .00 .00 Note. n = 370 for Instructor Support and Student Interaction and Collaboration; n = 371 for Personal Relevance. **p ≤ .01, two-tailed. However, the results of the correlation coefficient do not indicate in which direction causality operates, multiple regression was used to further explore the predictive importance of the perceived distance education learning environment on motivation constructs. Table 4-8 summarizes multiple regression results for four motivation variables regressed separately on the three distance education learning environment variables. Each regression model was significant (p < .001), but each explained only about 20% or less of the variance in the dependent variable. Most importantly, the results verify the association between motivation constructs and perceived distance education learning environment as proposed in the conceptual framework (see Figure 1-1, p. 7) that students’ perceptions of the distance education learning environment in fact influence students’ motivational dispositions. 86 Table 4-8 Multiple Regression of Motivation Constructs by the Distance Education Learning Environment Components Keeping Up and Fulfillment Intellectual Stimulation Escape and Social Contact Adjustment Variable t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b Instructor Support 1.15 .25 .07 2.45 .02* .13 .55 .58 .03 1.95 .05* .13 Student Interaction and Collaboration .94 .35 .06 −.81 .42 −.04 5.63 .00** .33 1.72 .09 .11 Personal Relevance 6.78 .00** .50 7.90 .00** .50 2.13 .03* .15 6.83 .00** .53 Model Summary R square .20 .24 .16 .24 F-statistic 30.35 38.61 23.38 38.29 p-value .00** .00** .00** .00** Note. n = 369. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. 87 Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Student Satisfaction Multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the relationships between motivation constructs and satisfaction of the NOUT older students, and to establish the relative importance of keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, escape and social contact, and adjustment on student satisfaction. Table 4-9 summarizes the regression results. The regression analysis showed the significant influence of the four motivation constructs on student satisfaction (F = 13.15, p < .01). Thirteen percent of the variance in student satisfaction was explained by the four motivation constructs together. Among them, adjustment was the only significant factor (t = 3.93, p < .01) in explaining differences in student satisfaction, which accounted for 26% of the explained variance. 88 Table 4-9 Multiple Regression of Student Satisfaction by Motivational Constructs Keeping Up and Fulfillment Intellectual Stimulation Escape and Social Contact Adjustment Variable t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b Student Satisfaction −.37 .71 −.03 1.85 .07 .16 −.29 .78 −.02 3.93 .00** .26 Model Summary R square .13 F-statistic 13.15 p-value .00** Note. n = 369. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01 89 Factors Influencing Student Satisfaction Hierarchical block multiple regression was used to examine collective and separate contributions of three blocks of independent variables, including socio- demographic characteristics (X1), motivation constructs (X2), and distance education learning environment (X3), on student satisfaction (Y). Results are summarized in Table 4-10 (see pp. 91–92). Each independent variable block was entered in a planned order with socio- demographic characteristics entered first, followed by motivation constructs, and distance education learning environment entered last. Results of the model summaries were in the exact order as well. Model 1 indicated that, collectively, socio-demographic characteristics had no statistical influence on student satisfaction. However, when motivation constructs were added in Model 2, it showed a significant relationship, which indicated that motivation constructs were making a significant contribution to the model (F = 5.61, p< .001). Adjustment (t = 3.48, p < .001) was the only significant factor among the motivation constructs. Together with socio-demographic characteristics and motivation constructs, Model 2 explained 14% of the variance in student satisfaction. When distance education learning environment joined the regression in Model 3, a significant relationship was also found (F = 10.37, p < .01), explaining 28% of the variance in student satisfaction. Instructor support and personal relevance were of significant importance, indicating that the distance education learning environment was an important factor in explaining student satisfaction, with 14% of the variance. When all three blocks of independent variables were examined together in Model 4, the combined results showed a significant relationship (F = 10.37, p < .01). The three 90 independent variables collectively explained 28% of the variance in student satisfaction. It was surprising to find that the influence of motivation constructs, specifically the factor of adjustment, was no longer significant. On the other hand, the factors of instructor support and personal relevance in the distance education learning environment remained significant influences in explaining student satisfaction. Among them, the factor of personal relevance accounted for 38% of the explained variance while the factor of instructor support accounted for 24% of the explained variance in student satisfaction. 91 Table 4-10 Multiple Regression of Student Satisfaction by Socio-demographics, Motivation Constructs, and Distance Education Learning Environment Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Variable t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b Socio-demographic Characteristics Age .21 .83 .02 −.49 .62 −.04 Gender .18 .86 .01 .36 .72 .02 Level of Education −.60 .55 −.05 −.72 .47 −.05 Employment Status 2.05 .04 .15 1.29 .20 .08 Academic Status .76 .45 .08 .42 .68 .04 Academic Major 1.49 .14 .14 .37 .71 .03 Motivation Constructs Keeping Up and Fulfillment .08 .93 .00 .08 .94 .00 Intellectual Stimulation 1.39 .16 .12 −.17 .86 −.02 Escape and Social Contact −.18 .86 −.01 −.28 .78 −.02 Adjustment 3.48 .00** .23 1.88 .06 .12 92 Table 4-10 (continued). Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Variable t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b t-stat. p-value b Distance Education Learning Environment Instructor Support 3.99 .00** .24 3.99 .00** .24 Student Interaction and Collaboration .11 .91 .00 .11 .91 .00 Personal Relevance 4.83 .00** .38 4.83 .00** .38 Model Summary R square .02 .14 .28 .28 F-statistic 1.45 5.61 10.37 10.37 p-value .19 .00** .00** .00** Note. n = 368. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. 93 Chapter 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Introduction This study investigated the factor structure of motivation constructs as expressed by older adult learners and examined how the motivation constructs interacted with older adults’ socio-demographic characteristics, perceptions of the learning environment, and student satisfaction with a distance education learning environment. Furthermore, the study examined the relative contributions of socio-demographic characteristics, motivation constructs, and distance education learning environment factors on student satisfaction. The study took place at the National Open University of Taiwan (NOUT). Two self-administered questionnaires––Reasons for Participation Scale and a modified Distance Education Learning Environment Survey––were used. Older adults who were 55 and above, registered as a student during Spring Semester 2005 and affiliated with one of the selected six regional study centers (Taipei, Taipei (2), Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hualien study center) were targeted as potential participants in this study. From a criterion-based sample of 990 older students, 371 completed the survey. The overall findings are discussed in terms of the three main research questions: 1) motivation constructs of older adult learners at NOUT; 2) differences in motivation constructs when examined by socio-demographic characteristics, perceptions of distance education learning environment, and student satisfaction; and 3) factors influencing 94 student satisfaction at NOUT. The implications and limitations of the study findings are discussed. Finally, recommendations for future research are provided. Motivation Constructs of Older Adult Learners at NOUT Research Question One explored the motivation constructs expressed by older adult learners at NOUT. In this study, motivation was measured using the 32-item Reasons for Participation Scale (RPS). The results yielded a four-factor solution; Table 4- 2 (see pp. 72-73) listed the factors and the item composition of each factor. The four motivation constructs that explain the reasons for older adults’ enrollment in courses at NOUT were keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, escape and social contact, and adjustment. Factor I, keeping up and fulfillment, represented two sub-themes. One was introspections about oneself and the desire to be involved in the contemporary world, and the other was the act of consummating something important to oneself. Factor II, intellectual stimulation, included both expressive and instrumental reasons. Other than the enjoyment of learning, it also involved a fear of cognitive decline in old age. Factor III, escape and social contact, represented two sub-themes––a need to change and to step out the routine of life and a desire for social interaction. The last factor, Factor IV_adjustment, had to do with concerns for personal problems and adjustment in later life. Although the factor of adjustment was not pervasive in most of the prior studies (e.g., only found as “adaptation/self-understanding” in Pritchard [1979]; “self- understanding/personal adjustment” in Furst & Steele [1986]), the emergence of this factor was important in terms of developmental tasks for each life stage. As people age, they start to face a variety of changes. Some of these changes involve retirement from the 95 workforce, decreased physical strength, reduced income, death, and bereavement. One possible explanation for the emergence of this factor is that older adults hoped that NOUT courses facilitate late life transitions and help them cope with challenges posed by developmental tasks. In addition, the results supported Manheimer’s (1992) notion that older learners’ motives tend to emphasize either an adaptational or transformational perspective due to developmental changes during older adulthood (as cited in Manheimer et al., 1995). When compared with studies that also employed RPS with older adult learners, the four-factor solution resulting from this study was more solid for two reasons. First, items retained within each factor were more definitive, no items had ambiguous loadings and all had factor loadings higher than .50, and therefore provided a “clean” interpretation. On the other hand, there was a great deal of overlap between items in the nine-factor solution by Furst and Steele (1986), and yet still two factors contained less than three items. Their decision to retain so many factors not only compromised statistically the data reduction purpose of the factor analysis, but also weakened the interpretability of their findings. Second, the appropriateness of the factor titles in this study in which each title corresponded closely with the underlying item content was stronger than those of Bynum and Seaman (1993). They modified the RPS by eliminating two degree-seeking items to fit their research context. Despite using the same criteria to retain possible factors as in the present study and yield a four-factor solution as well, the results in terms of items retained and composition varied, and hence, provided a somewhat different interpretation from the present study. 96 Two factors matched closely. Intellectual curiosity and social contact, respectively, matched Factor II_intellectual stimulation, and Factor III_escape and social contact. The factor of perceived cognitive gap did not show up in this study, but the representative items were merged into either Factor I_keeping up and fulfillment or Factor II_intellectual stimulation. The composition of the factor self-actualization resembled those of Factor I; however, the use of such titles is disputable. The concept of self-actualization implied personal growth through the realization of one’s potential and capabilities (Maslow, 1970). It is the feeling of making progress toward reaching one’s full potential, achieving both what one wants and is best suited to do. But if examined closely according to the underlying items in the self-actualization factor, we found that the item contents were more likely to translate into personal growth or self-improvement, which are not the same thing as self-actualization. Examples include items such as “to re- examine my perspective on one or more contemporary issues”, “gain insight into human relations”, or “to keep up with what is going on in the world”. To avoid ambiguity, the present study labeled it as “keeping up and fulfillment” in terms of its two sub-themes. The factor of intellectual stimulation (M = 2.01, SD = .58) appeared to be the strongest attractor of older adults to NOUT; the factor of keeping up and fulfillment (M = 1.77, SD = .66) was the second most influential motivator, followed by the factor of adjustment (M = 1.64, SD = .71). The lowest motivator based on overall mean values was escape and social contact, which yielded a mean score of 1.14 (SD = .63). The study added further support to the conclusions of previous research on older adults’ participation in education programs: that they were more influenced by the cognitive- related factor than by any other factors (Boshier & Riddle, 1978; Bynum & Seaman, 97 1993; Furst & Steele, 1986; Kim & Merriam, 2004; Lamb & Brady, 2005; Scala, 1996; Swindell, 2000, 2002; Swindell & Vassella, 1999). The main differences between the findings of this study and those of previous research were the relative importance of each motivation factor. In this study, the factor of escape and social contact was found to be the least important for older adults in NOUT, while it was the second most important factor in most studies (e.g., the social contact of Boshier & Riddell [1978]; the social contact factor of Bynum & Seaman [1993]; the social contact factor of Kim & Merriam [2004]; the community support of Lamb & Brady [2005]). Results from these previous studies suggested that older adults wanted to participate in an experience that would keep their mind engaged while at the same time offer an opportunity either to meet people their own age or to form connections with the younger generation depending on the research context. However, evidence in this study indicated that older adults taking courses at NOUT were less motivated for social reasons. The same phenomenon was observed at the British Open University (BOU; Cutress et al., 1983; Kelly, 1989, 1992). The reason ‘to make new friends/meet congenial people’ was least mentioned by older BOU students. Such evidence suggests that the proportion of social interaction was not as important to older distance learners as to those who participated in residential education programs. The relative importance of the motivation factors showed a clear pattern of older adults being more influenced by intrapersonal than by interpersonal reasons. The most striking finding was the absence of degree-seeking motivation, particularly given that this study took place at a highly academic-oriented environment. The fact that NOUT is a highly recognized academic institute and offers credit and 98 degree-granting courses may have fostered a hypothesis that receiving formal degree attainment and recognition would be important. In addition, findings from the British Open University (Cutress et al., 1983; Johnson, 1995; Kelly 1989, 1992) emphasized the significance for older students at BOU of making up for a lack of opportunities or missed opportunities in the past and getting a degree than at other educational organizations. It is this degree-seeking motive that separated older adults at BOU from any other educational organizations. However, such motivation was not pervasive among older NOUT students. In fact, the factor was dropped since it contained only two items and explained a fairly small percentage of variance in motivations. A majority of older NOUT students (60%) indicated that the reason for earning a degree, diploma or certificate had no or little influence on them. In contrast, 66% of the participants reported that the reason for completing some previously unfinished learning had moderate or much influence on their participation at NOUT. Before jumping to a quick conclusion, we need to understand that participants in this study were born between 1920 and 1950, and had experienced their compulsory schooling during the Japanese colonization and World War II. For this age cohort, compulsory education ended at primary school, which may explain the desire among older NOUT students to complete unfinished learning. But most participants in this study have retired from their jobs. They certainly did not need a degree to advance their careers. The present findings suggest that NOUT may prove attractive to older adults who were denied the opportunity in earlier life to continue with their education, but earning or not earning a degree may not seem as important to them at this stage of life. 99 Differences in Motivation Constructs When Examined by Socio-demographic Characteristics, Perceptions of Distance Education Learning Environment, and Student Satisfaction Research Question Two examined the differences in the motivation constructs of older adult learners at NOUT when examined by their socio-demographic characteristics, their perceptions of the distance education learning environment, and their satisfaction with the distance education provided by NOUT. The differences are presented in three sections: differences by socio-demographic characteristics, relationships between motivation constructs and distance education learning environment, and relationships between motivation constructs and student satisfaction. Differences by Socio-demographic Characteristics A total of 371 older adults at NOUT, averaging 61 years of age, completed the survey. The majority of them (80%) were between 55 and 64 years old, and consisted of a fairly even proportion of men and women. As anticipated, the majority of participants had completed high school or higher and were clearly from a more advantaged educational background than the average older Taiwanese (Huang, 2005). Most of the participants (42.3%) were retired while 16.2% were semi-retired. The majority of the older adults registered as full-time students and had one academic major. Living science appeared to be the most popular choice of study. The profile of this sample generally fit the descriptions of older NOUT students in 1997 (Wu, Lin, Chiang, Huang, & Chen, 1997). However, it was also interesting to observe a few changes over the eight-year range. These included an increase in the proportions of full-time older students, and the emergence of older students who had more than one academic major. Such patterns of 100 growing involvement and persistent participation not only indicated that more older students were committed to NOUT, but also suggested NOUT as a great learning outlet for older adults in Taiwan. An examination of the effects of socio-demographic characteristics on each motivation construct surprisingly showed that gender, age, level of formal education, and employment status had no significant difference on participants’ motivational disposition at NOUT (see Table 4-4). Academic status, however, reflected a difference in the factor of intellectual stimulation. Older adult students registered as full-time students sought more intellectual stimulation than part-time students. The most unexpected and exclusive finding in this study was the differences due to academic major in motivation constructs. Differences in the scores for the factors of keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, and adjustment were found for the variable academic major. The differences occurred between older students who had one major or more than one major and those who had not yet decided on their major. For example, older adult learners who had one major or more than one major scored higher on the keeping up and fulfillment factor than those who had not yet decided their major. The results may suggest that it is the extent of commitment that makes a difference in older students’ motivational disposition at NOUT. Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Distance Education Learning Environment A modified Distance Education Learning Environment Scale (DELES; Walker, 2003a, b, c) was used to measure older adult learners’ perceptions of the NOUT learning environment. As anticipated, the learning environment was represented in terms of instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, and personal relevance (see 101 Table 4-5). The results (see Table 4-7) indicated that instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, and personal relevance were positively correlated with each of the four motivation constructs expressed by older NOUT students. However, each of the learning environment components had a small to medium effect on the motivation constructs. The researcher examined the predictive power of instructor support, student interaction and collaboration, and personal relevance on the four motivation constructs (see Table 4-8). Personal relevance appeared to be the most important predictor in explaining all four motivation constructs. In other words, for older NOUT students, the more they can connect their personal experiences to the course materials and classroom experiences, the more they are motivated. Student interaction and collaboration significantly explained the factor of escape and social contact. The higher the extent to which older adults have opportunities to interact with one another, exchange information and engage in collaboration, the higher their social contact scores. Meanwhile, instructor support significantly influenced the factors of intellectual stimulation and adjustment positively. That is, when older NOUT students perceived more instructor support during their learning process, they felt more encouraged intellectually, and adjusted better to challenges in later life. Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Student Satisfaction Older adults’ satisfaction toward NOUT was regarded as a learning outcome in this study, which focused on their enjoyment of distance education. It was measured using the eight-item DELES satisfaction scale (see Table 4-6); item scores were subjected to multiple regression analysis (see Table 4-9). The results indicated that four motivation 102 constructs together appeared to have a significant influence on older NOUT students’ satisfaction. Among them, the factor of adjustment was the strongest predictor in explaining student satisfaction. In other words, the more an older adult is motivated by concerns for personal problems and adjustments in later life, the more likely he/she will find NOUT courses satisfying. This may further suggest that courses offered by NOUT are applicable to those who are in need of acquiring knowledge on a particular subject, learning a specific skill, and getting help during a personal crisis. Factors Influencing Student Satisfaction at NOUT Research Question Three examined the collective and separate contributions of three blocks of independent variables, including socio-demographic characteristics, motivation constructs, and distance education learning environment on student satisfaction (see Table 4-10). When examined separately, both motivation constructs and perceptions of distance education learning environment had a significant effect on older adults’ satisfaction at NOUT. To be specific, the motivation factors adjustment, instructor support and personal relevance of distance education learning environment were important factors in explaining student satisfaction. However, when all of the variables were included in the analysis, it was students’ perceptions of the distance education learning environment that was the most significant factor relating to student satisfaction. The influence of adjustment was not significant; only instructor support and personal relevance of the distance education learning environment remained significant for student satisfaction at NOUT. The factor of personal relevance was the strongest predictor, explaining 38% of the explained variance while instructor support accounted for 24% of the explained variance in student 103 satisfaction. The finding that personal relevance had the most influence on student satisfaction is consistent with Walker’s (2003a, b, c) findings. Walker (2003b) field- tested the full scale of the DELES on 680 postsecondary distance education students, and found that personal relevance had the strongest correlation with students’ enjoyment of distance education. One may speculate that older adults in this study and graduate students in Walker’s alike were more aware of their time and personal reasons for advancing their education. They would enjoy distance education more when they can relate the subject matter of that class to their personal lives. Furthermore, the significance of instructor support on satisfaction in this study indicated that older adult learners enjoyed the distance education classes more when they felt the course instructor was approachable and responsive. In summary, this study found that four motivational constructs attracted older adults to NOUT, namely, keeping up and fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, escape and social contact, and adjustment. Several similarities and differences exist between this study and past research. First, the motivations of older adults participating in educational programs may be interpersonal and intrapersonal, expressive and instrumental in nature. Second, in discovering the primary motivation—intellectual stimulation—this study confirmed the literature (Boshier & Riddle, 1978; Bynum & Seaman, 1993; Furst & Steele, 1986; Kim & Merriam, 2004; Lamb & Brady, 2005; Scala, 1996; Swindell, 2000, 2002; Swindell & Vassella, 1999) that cognitive-related motivation is the strongest reason for older adults to take part in educational activities. Third, it is also noteworthy that the social interaction component of a program may not be as appealing to older adults who choose distance learning over the face-to-face learning environment. In 104 addition, the absence of degree-seeking motives add further support to the finding that expressive reasons may be more important than instrumental reasons for learning in later life. The results of the present study not only validated the associations proposed in the conceptual framework (Figure 1-1, see p. 7), but also added further evidence to the association between the perceived learning environment and learning outcomes––in this case, student satisfaction and enjoyment of distance education. The overall results confirmed the assumption that the motivational dispositions an individual adopts are very sensitive to context and are influenced by how the individual perceives the environment (Ames, 1992; Ford, 1992; Wentzel, 1999, 2000). The results in terms of how personal context influences motivational disposition suggested that the extent to which an individual committed himself/herself to educational programs makes a difference in his/her motivational dispositions. In contrast, the lack of associations between some of the well-documented socio-demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, level of education, and employment status) and motivation constructs does not tell us much, since they have no influence on the motivation processes and behavior patterns. It merely tells us that controlling for these socio-demographic variables and addressing issues of causality remain of considerable interest for researchers. More extensive longitudinal analysis addressing such issues is needed. Furthermore, the factor of personal relevance appeared to be the most important predictor in explaining all four motivation constructs. In other words, for older NOUT students, the more he/she can connect his/her personal experiences to the course materials and classroom experiences, the more he/she is motivated. The factor of personal 105 relevance also appeared to be the strongest predictor in explaining student satisfaction, followed by the factor of instructor support. It is the perceived distance education learning environment, rather than motivation dispositions and socio-demographic characteristics, which are suggested to be a more powerful predictor of learning outcome. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that when older adult learners perceived a supportive climate within their learning environment and were able to relate the subject matter of the class to their personal lives, they tended to be more satisfied with the distance education provided by NOUT and gained more enjoyment from it. Finally, the results of this study challenged some stereotypes about the implementation of older adult education in Taiwan. Lin (2004) analyzed different ways to implement older adult education in Taiwan; she surveyed 312 professionals including leaders in educational institutes and organizations for older people, administrators in social and educational departments, and scholars. Based on their opinions, distance education is not recognized as a desirable way to carry out learning activities for older adults in Taiwan. However, results from this study revealed that there might be disparity between professionals and older adults who were actually taking distance education courses. Participants in this study showed great satisfaction with NOUT; they enjoyed learning through distance education. Although one may argue that the high satisfaction is due to the relatively highly educated samples, we cannot overlook the importance of NOUT in providing academic-structured, mind-stimulating, learner-centered, and self- directed learning activities. 106 Implications The area of education for older adults is only going to become more pervasive in the future. As the proportion of older adults continues to grow and with it the demand for education for older adults, it is important for administrators of older adult education programs to know how to attract, plan for, and accommodate this population on their campuses. One of the major tasks for program planners and service providers is to match organizational goals and institutional policies with the actual educational needs of older people. Lack of correspondence between organization goals and educational needs of older adults will result in programs that are unattractive to the target population. Even though this study does not and cannot imply that the NOUT experience is appropriate for every older adult; it sheds light on the possible application of distance education to older adult learning in the near future. Older adults in this study wanted to participate in experiences that were intellectually stimulating, kept them involved in the contemporary world, helped them adjust better in later life, and yet at the same time, provided an opportunity for social interaction. Distance education provides participants with an activity that meets older adults’ educational needs in ways that senior centers, community centers or traditional universities/colleges cannot. While senior and community centers may provide social opportunities, they often do not provide intellectually challenging activities. Traditional university/college courses may provide academic content, but they often have strict requirements for enrollment and are often expensive. To the contrary, distance education courses in Taiwan usually are tuition-free for older adults who are 65 years old and older, have no enrollment threshold, provide access and time flexibility, 107 and provide opportunities to interact with people of diverse backgrounds. Moreover, its self-pacing nature has proved to facilitate and improve older adult learning (McDonald, 1995). Meanwhile, the fact is that older adults are heterogeneous and have a diverse array of learning interests and needs that can only be met through alternative forms of adult education that are responsive to those needs. No matter how the learning activity is organized and carried out, via either formal or informal education programs, it all comes down to one question: how can we make this older learning population satisfied? One fundamental concern for adult educators and instruction designers is to provide them with quality education and rich learning experiences. Student satisfaction is a key indicator of educational quality (Walker, 2003b). The results from this study indicated that perceived learning environment, personal relevance and instructor support to be exact, is the strongest predictor in explaining student satisfaction. Therefore, more effort should be made when designing course materials and learning activities to make connections between students’ out-of- school experiences and their classroom experiences. In addition, instructors’ attitudes in terms of their approachability and responsiveness to the needs of older learners have a great influence on student satisfaction as well. It is very likely that older adults find themselves spending considerable time relearning how to learn or redeveloping the required study skills and routines after a long absence from school, even though they are intellectually capable. It can be difficult to pick up the books again and break through the non-studious habits of life; hence, the significance of instructor support is only natural to expect. Only when older adult learners perceive a supportive climate within their learning 108 environment and are able to relate the subject matter of the class to their personal lives, will they enjoy the learning process and be more satisfied with educational programs. Limitations of the Study The study has several limitations that need to be addressed. First, the sample for this study was not randomly selected. Instead, it was a two-stage systematic sample based on suggestions from the NOUT. Therefore, the results from this study may not be generalizable beyond the context of NOUT. In addition, the majority of the participants in this study were between 55 and 64 years old, hence, the findings from this study have limited generalizability for those aged 65 years old and older. Second, this study was cross-sectional in nature. That is, older adults who registered as students in the Spring Semester 2005 were surveyed. Consequently, it is impossible to assess how motivational disposition and its impact on the perceived distance education learning environment and learning outcome may change over time. Third, to reduce the cognitive loading of older participants, this study used only parts of the DELES with three learning environment variables. However, with the significant results of perceived distance education learning environment on motivations and student satisfaction, the researcher cannot help but wonder: if the full scope of the DELES had been implemented, would those omitted factors (e.g., authentic learning, active learning, and student autonomy) affect motivation dispositions and student satisfaction differently? In addition, since little research has been done on the perceived learning environment and participation motivation of older adults, more such research is desirable. 109 Given these limitations, the results of the present study provide valuable and useful information about older adults’ motivational dispositions toward distance learning, and how they interact with the perceived distance education learning environment and student satisfaction. The findings begin to scratch the surface of what we need to know about this growing population of older adults in higher education. Recommendations for Future Research The increasing life expectancy together with the trend toward earlier retirement mean that men and women will spend a greater proportion of their lives in retirement than earlier cohorts. Given the changing age structure in Taiwan and the aging of the huge baby boomers, there are and will continue to be interests in older adult learners, who they are and what they bring to an educational experience, what they want to achieve, and whether they achieve it. The findings from this study suggest that more research needs to be conducted to expand our understanding of this unique population. First, longitudinal studies are needed to gain insights into the changes in the patterns and motivational dispositions of older adults in educational programs as they age and to identify predictors of persistence in education. One feasible way is to collect data at the beginning point of their enrollment, and conduct a follow-up survey at a later time. With longer intervals between two administrations, participants receive increasing exposure to contextual influences that might lead to genuine changes in motivational dispositions and learning outcomes. Second, results from qualitative studies would supplement a more extensive and deeper understanding of older adult participation in education. A semi-structured in-depth 110 interview is an excellent data collection strategy that could help illuminate the quantitative findings from survey instruments. Third, a larger and more representative sample would be desirable to expand the generalizability of the motivation constructs found in this study. Replicating this study on a cross-national sample within the context of distance education or on other educational contexts would not only validate the latent structure of motivation constructs, but also explore the differences between groups of older learners and impacts of different educational contexts on motivations. In addition, based on Huck (2004)’s concept of marginally significant results, the researcher did examine the fifth factor in the motivation constructs, which was not retained in the present study. 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(1997). 國立空中大 學高齡學生參與動機和學習行為相關因素之研究 [Participation motivation and learning behavior of older students at the National Open University of 127 Taiwan]. Retrieved June 5, 2002 from http://www.nou.edu.tw/~research/fram_01/data_tatol_01.htm Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 82-91. http://www.nou.edu.tw/~research/fram_01/data_tatol_01.htm 128 Appendix A Distance Education Learning Environments (DELES) Permission Letter 129 Scott L. Walker, ScEdD 614 Larue San Marcos, TX 78666 walks@txstate.edu Distance Education Learning Environments (DELES) Permission Letter Jr-Shiuan Liang has been granted permission to use the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) for the purpose of his doctoral research project “Motivations of older adults participating in distance education: A study at the National Open University of Taiwan” at Pennsylvania State University with the following usage rights being granted: One time U.S. rights for e-mail distribution of the Preferred, Actual, and Instructor forms of the DELES through One time worldwide rights for e-mail distribution of the Preferred, Actual, and Instructor forms of the DELES One time U.S. rights for Web posting of the Preferred, Actual, and/or Instructor forms of the DELES, or parts thereof, to be removed from the Web after April 11, 2006. One time worldwide rights for Web posting of the Preferred, Actual, and Instructor forms of the DELES to be removed from the Web after date One time worldwide rights for the Preferred, Actual, and Instructor forms of the DELES or parts thereof. ___________________________ April 25, 2005 Scott L. Walker , ScEdD Date 130 Appendix B Multistage Sampling Map 131 Multistage Sampling This map indicates the location of thirteen regional study centers of the NOUT. To sample the population, Taiwan was divided into three sections––north, middle, and south–– in the first stage. Each section contained four or five regional study centers. Later in stage two, two centers from each section were systematically selected. The six identified centers included Taipei (2), Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualien, and Taipei study centers (in a clockwise direction). North section Taichung Kaohsiung Taipei (2) Taipei Middle section South section Tainan Hualien 132 Appendix C Reasons for Participation Scale 133 Reasons for Participation Scale Listed below are 32 reasons you may have had for enrolling courses at the National Open University at Taiwan. It is designed to indicate the extent to which each of the reasons listed below would influence you to participate. Please concentrate on a particular, recent course you take at National Open University at Taiwan. Your participation in this survey is voluntary, and will not influence your grade for this course. The information that you provide in this survey is also confidential. Thank you for your assistance. None of the reasons listed below is intended to be more important than any other one. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. Be frank. Your opinion is what is wanted on each item. Please weigh each statement as a possible influence. Do this by rating each statement on a four-point scale (No influence, Little influence, Moderate influence, Much influence). Please circle your choice for each statement. 1. To acquire knowledge to help with other educational courses No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 2. To get relief from boredom No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 3. To gain insight into my personal problems No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 4. To qualify for privileges such as use of library, swimming pool, etc. No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 5. To supplement a narrow previous education No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 134 6. To keep my mind active and alert by making intellectual demands upon it No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 7. To get a break in the routine of home or work No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 8. To learn just for the joy of learning No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 9. To pursue earlier interests that I could not get around to before No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 10. To become acquainted with congenial people No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 11. To enable me to cope better with the challenges of daily living No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 12. To share a common interest with my spouse or friend No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 13. To improve my ability to participate in community work No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 14. So that other would have a higher respect for me No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 15. To satisfy a desire to develop new interests No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 16. To feel a sense of achievement No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 135 17. To re-examine myself and my role in life No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 18. To keep up with what is going on in the world No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 19. To develop an unfulfilled talent No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 20. To become more effective as a citizen No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 21. To gain insight into human relations No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 22. To re-examine my perspective on one or more contemporary issues No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 23. To comply with the recommendations or urging of someone else No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 24. To satisfy an inquiring mind No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 25. To acquire knowledge on a particular subject No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 26. To give me help during a crisis in my personal life No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 27. To help me earn a degree, diploma, or certificate No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 136 28. To learn a specific skill No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 29. To complete some previously unfinished learning No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 30. To participate in group activity No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 31. To prepare myself for retirement living No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 32. To maintain or enhance my self-respect No influence Little influence Moderate influence Much influence 137 Appendix D The Modified Distance Education Learning Environment Survey 138 Distance Education Learning Environment Survey This survey contains 21 statements about practices that take place in this class, followed by eight statements regarding your opinion about distance education. This survey is designed to collect data on some of the issues relating to the learning environment. Your participation in this survey is voluntary, and will not influence your grade for this course. The information that you provide in this survey is also confidential. Thank you for your assistance. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. Your opinion is what is wanted on each item. Please think about how well each statement describes what this class is like for you. Do this by rating each statement on a five-point scale (Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, Always). Please circle your choice for each statement. In this class… 1. If I have an inquiry, the instructor finds time to respond. Never Seldom Often Always 2. The instructor helps me identify problem areas in my study. Never Seldom Often Always 3. The instructor responds promptly to my questions Never Seldom Often Always 4. The instructor gives me valuable feedback on my assignments. Never Seldom Often Always 5. The instructor adequately addresses my questions. Never Seldom Often Always 139 6. The instructor encourages my participation. Never Seldom Often Always 7. It is easy to contact the instructor. Never Seldom Often Always 8. The instructor provides me positive and negative feedback on my work. Never Seldom Often Always In this class… 9. I work with others. Never Seldom Often Always 10. I relate my work to other’s work. Never Seldom Often Always 11. I share information with other students. Never Seldom Often Always 12. I discuss my idea with other students. Never Seldom Often Always 13. I collaborate with other students in the class. Never Seldom Often Always 14. Group work is a part of my activities. Never Seldom Often Always In this class… 15. I can relate what I learn to my life outside of university. Never Seldom Often Always 140 16. I am able to pursue topics that interest me. Never Seldom Often Always 17. I can connect my studies to my activities outside of class. Never Seldom Often Always 18. I apply my everyday experiences in class. Never Seldom Often Always 19. I link class work to my life outside of university. Never Seldom Often Always 20. I learn things about the world outside of university. Never Seldom Often Always 21. I apply my out-of-class experience. Never Seldom Often Always The following items refer to your satisfaction with distance education. 22. Distance education is stimulating. Never Seldom Often Always 23. I prefer distance education. Never Seldom Often Always 24. Distance education is exciting. Never Seldom Often Always 25. Distance education is worth my time. Never Seldom Often Always 26. I enjoy studying by distance. Never Seldom Often Always 141 27. I look forward to learning by distance. Never Seldom Often Always 28. I would enjoy my education more if all my classes were by distance. Never Seldom Often Always 29. I am satisfied with distance education. Never Seldom Often Always 142 Appendix E Personal Information 143 Personal Information 1. When were you born? Year Month 2. What is your gender? Male Female 3. What is your highest level of education completed? Less than high school High school graduate Two-year associate postsecondary degree Four-year bachelor degree Graduate degree (master or doctorate) Other (Specify) 4. What is your retirement condition? Retirement Semi-Retirement, please specify Non-retirement Other, please specify 5. What is your academic status at National Open University? Part-time Full-time 6. What is your major? Humanities Social Sciences Business Public Administration Living Sciences Management and Information Undecided 144 Appendix F Chinese Version Questionnaires and Cover Letter 145 高齡者的學習動機與學習環境之研究 以國立空中大學為例 敬啟者： 您好，我是美國賓州大學成人教育研究所的博士班研究生，很冒昧地打擾您幾 分鐘來填寫這份問卷。此問卷是為了要更了解目前在空中大學的高齡學生（55 歲 以上）的學習動機與其對學習環境及滿意度而設計的，共分為三個部分： (一) 學習動機：旨在探究是什麼原因讓您選擇在空中大學修課 (二) 學習環境：旨在獲知您對目前空中大學學習環境的看法和滿意度 (三) 個人基本資料。 此問卷的目的純粹是想瞭解您的觀點，所以並沒有對或錯的答案。參與本問卷 是一項自發性的工作，其結果並不會影響您的上課成績。所有結果僅供研究參考， 謝謝您的協助。 關於這份問卷： ◎當你填寫這份問卷時，請就一門最近修的課或正在修的課來回答。 ◎為了維護您意見的私密性，此問卷並不會問涉及個人隱私的問題，例如姓名及 聯絡方式等。 ◎如果您對這研究有任何疑問，請與聯絡我。再次感謝您的協助。 研究者：梁芷瑄 研究計畫指導者: Dr. Derek Mulenga 美國賓州大學成人教育所 美國賓州大學成人教育所 Email：jul103@psu.edu Email：dcm10@psu.edu TEL：(06) 238-2438 TEL：(814) 863-3492 146 一. 學習動機 問卷填寫說明： 學習動機共包含 32 個可能的原因。請依據每個原因對您的影響程度，勾選最 適當的選項（毫無影響，有些影響，頗有影響，非常有影響）。請就一門最近修 的課或正在修的課來回答。 1. 為獲得知識以幫助其他正在學習的課程。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 2. 為填補無聊的空閒時間 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 3. 為更深刻理解自己的問題，例如個人身心狀態，對家庭、社會、人生的疑惑。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 4. 為能享有當學生的福利，例如使用學校圖書館、游泳池、學生票優待等。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 5. 為了彌補以前所受教育的不足。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 6. 為能藉由學習活動的刺激，讓頭腦保持靈活。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 7. 能暫時紓解家庭或工作的例行公事。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 8. 單純是為了學習時所帶來的快樂。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 9. 為追求先前未能完成的興趣。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 10.為能認識志趣相投的人。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 11.讓我更能面對日常生活的挑戰。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 12.為能和配偶或朋友分享共同的興趣。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 147 13.為增進參與社區工作的能力。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 14.為獲得別人的尊敬。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 15. 渴望學習新事物。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 16.為獲得成就感。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 17.為能重新審視自己和在生活中自己的角色。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 18.為能跟得上時代。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 19.為展現自己以前未能發揮的潛能。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 20. 為讓處事更有效率。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 21.為更洞悉人際關係。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 22.為能重新審視自己對時事的觀點。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 23.因為他人的推薦或鼓勵。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 24.為滿足求知慾。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 25.為了獲得某一專業領域的知識。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 26.為加強生活中的危機處理能力。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 27.為獲得學位及文憑。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 28.為了學習某種技能。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 148 29.為了完成先前中斷的教育。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 30.為了參與團體活動。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 31.為退休生活做準備。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 32.為了維持或提高自信心。 □毫無影響 □有些影響 □頗有影響 □非常有影響 請問還有其他原因讓您選擇在空中大學修課嗎？請說明 149 二. 遠距教學學習環境 問卷填寫說明： 這份學習環境共包含 21 項關於面授的敘述和 8 項有關您對遠距 教學的看法。請依據這堂課的經驗來評斷下列的陳述。並勾選最適合的 選項（從不，不常，經常，總是）。 在這堂課… 1. 當我有疑惑時，面授老師會花時間回答我。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 2. 面授老師會協助我尋找問題之癥結。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 3. 面授老師總能及時回答我的問題。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 4. 面授老師對我的作業給予寶貴的意見。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 5. 面授老師能適當地解決我的疑問。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 6. 面授老師鼓勵我參與課程相關活動。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 7. 我很容易能聯絡到面授老師。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 8. 面授老師對我的作業能同時給予正面和反面的意見。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 在這堂課… 9. 我有和其他同學互動。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 10.我在做作業時會參考其他同學的作法。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 11.我會和其他同學分享資訊。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 150 12.我會和其他同學討論我的看法。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 13.在課堂活動中, 我會與其他同學合作。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 14.團隊(分組)活動是我學習的一部分。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 在這堂課… 15.我能把我所學和校外生活相結合。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 16.我能自由的選擇我有興趣的研究課題。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 17.我能將我的學識應用於課堂之外的活動。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 18.我能將日常經驗應用在課堂上。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 19.我能將課堂上的作業與校外生活相連結。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 20.我能學到對社會動態的掌握。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 21.我能在學習中運用課外的經驗。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 以下項目是有關您對遠距教學的滿意度 22.遠距教學的方式能勾起我的學習意願。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 23.我比較偏好遠距教學。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 24.遠距教學讓我學習意志高昂。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 25.我花在遠距教學上的時間是值得的。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 151 26.我很享受這種有距離的學習方式。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 27.我期盼這種有距離的學習方式。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 28.如果所有的課都是透過遠距教學的模式, 我會比較享受學習的樂趣。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 29.我對目前所接受的遠距教學感到滿意。 □從不 □不常 □經常 □總是 152 三. 個人基本資料 (1)您出生於民國＿＿＿年＿＿＿月。 (2)您的性別是 □ 男性 □ 女性 (3)就讀空中大學前，您的最高學歷是 □ 小學 □ 四技 □ 中學 □ 二專 □ 高中 □ 技術學院、大學 □ 高職 □ 碩士 □ 五專 □ 博士 (4)工作狀況 □ 已經退休 □ 半退休，請說明＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ □ 尚未退休 □ 其他，請說明＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ (5)在空中大學裡，您的學生類別是 □ 全修生 □ 選修生 □ 其他，請說明＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ (6)在空中大學裡，您所選讀的科系 □ 人文學系 □ 生活科學學習 □ 社會科學系 □ 管理與資訊學系 □ 商學系 □ 公共行政學系 □ 尚未決定 153 Appendix G IRB-approved Informed Consent 154 VITA Jr-Shiuan Liang Education 2002–2006 Ed.D. in Adult Education, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. 2000–2002 M.Ed. in Adult Education, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. 1995–1999 B.S. in Agricultural Extension, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Professional Experience 2002–2004 Graduate Assistant, Adult Education Program, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Student Leadership Committee, Dept. of Learning and Performance Systems, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. 2002 Intern, The Gerontology Center, Pennsylvania State University 1999–2000 Administration Assistant, Wen-Shun Industrial Corp., Tainan, Taiwan. Awards/Honors 2004–2005 Floyd B. Fischer Graduate Fellowship in Adult Education Lavanda P. Muller Graduate Fellowship in Education 2002 Burdett E. Larson Graduate Fellowship Rose Drexel Award in Education 1999 Industrial Association Scholarship, Tainan, Taiwan Thesis_Liang 010606_part1.pdf ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLES Chapter 1 Motivation Older Adult Distance Education Goal Orientations Goal Content Achievement Goals in Old Age Motivation of residential older adult learners. The motivati Motivation of distance older adult learners. Even though the Distance Education Learning Environment Chapter 3 Motivation Personal Characteristics Socio-demographic Characteristics of the Respondents Socio-demographic Profile of the Respondents Reasons for Participation M M Reliability of the Factor Summated Scores Differences by Socio-demographic Characteristics Distance Education Learning Environment SD SD SD Multiple Regression of Motivation Constructs by the Distance Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Student Sati Differences by Socio-demographic Characteristics Relationships between Motivation Constructs and Student Sati Implications Limitations of the Study Recommendations for Future Research 
work_l4ass7ci7rc2fo3oxnz2mayleu	----	Turkish Studies - International Periodical For The Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013, p. 37-45, ANKARA-TURKEY ÇEVRİMİÇİ UZAKTAN EĞİTİMDE KULLANILAN FARKLI ÖLÇME DEĞERLENDİRME YAKLAŞIMLARINA İLİŞKİN BİR İNCELEME Yunus BALTA* Yalın Kılıç TÜREL** ÖZET Örgün eğitimin zaman ve mekâna bağımlı olması, eğitici sayısının kısıtlı olması ve öğrencilerin okullarda eğitim görme zorluğu gibi sorunlar eğitim hizmetinde teknolojinin kullanılmasını gerekli kılmıştır. Uzaktan eğitim, geleneksel eğitimin özelliklerinden dolayı eğitim seviyesini arttırmak ve hayat boyu öğrenmeyi gerçekleştirmek için önemli bir alternatiftir. Yüz yüze ve çevrimiçi derslerde öğrenme sonuçlarını değerlendirmek için çeşitli yöntemler kullanılır, ancak aralarında bazı farklılıklar vardır. Çevrimiçi ölçme değerlendirme yaparken bu farklılıklar göz önünde bulundurulmalıdır. Bu çalışmamızda, uzaktan eğitim uygulamalarında kullanılan ölçme ve değerlendirme yöntemlerine ilişkin kapsamlı bir literatür taraması yapılması amaçlanmıştır. Farklı ölçme-değerlendirme yöntemlerinin tanıtılması ve kullanımlarına ilişkin avantaj ve dezavantajların sistematik bir şekilde ortaya konulmasının, gerek uzaktan eğitim veren kurumlar gerekse bu kurumlarda ders veren öğretim elemanları açısından önemli bir eksikliği gidereceği öngörülmektedir. Öğrenme yeterliliklerini bireylere kazandırabilmenin ve teknolojiyi öğretim amaçlı kullanabilmenin önemi teknolojinin gelişimiyle oldukça artmıştır. Bu iki durum, öğretim stratejilerinden tekniğe, planlamadan değerlendirmeye kadar birçok alanda farklı yaklaşımların sergilenmesi gerekliliğini ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Çevrimiçi eğitimde sürekli değerlendirme yapılması; geri dönüt, öğrenciden öğrenciye farklılık gösteren öğrenme hızının kontrolü ve değerlendirme süreci sonunda elde edilecek öğrenme kalitesi açısından önemlidir. Bu çalışma ile ortaya konacak farklı ölçme ve değerlendirme yöntem/yaklaşımlarının bir sonraki adımda planlanan öğretmenlerin çevrimiçi ölçme ve değerlendirme yaklaşımları hakkındaki bilgi, yeterlilik ve görüşlerinin incelenmesine yönelik çalışma içinde bir temel oluşturması amaçlanmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Uzaktan eğitim, ölçme değerlendirme, çevrimiçi ölçme değerlendirme, e-portfolyo. * Öğretmen MEB, Elazığ, El-mek: byunus23@hotmail.com ** Fırat Üniversitesi, Elazığ, Türkiye, El-mek: yturel@gmail.com mailto:yturel@gmail.com 38 Yunus BALTA – Yalın Kılıç TÜREL Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 AN EXAMINATION ON VARIOUS MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION METHODS USED IN ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION ABSTRACT Dependence of the formal education on the time and place, limitation in the number of the lecturers and the compulsory schooling necessitate the use of technology in educational services. Distance education, due to the properties of traditional education is an alternative education system in order to realize the lifelong learning and to increase the educational level of people. Various methods are used to assess learning outcomes in the face-to-face and online courses, but there are some differences between them. These differences should be considered during online measurement and evaluation processes. In this study, we aimed to conduct a comprehensive literature review on measurement and evaluation methods used in distance learning implementations. We think that introducing various measurement and evaluation methods and systematically posing their advantages and disadvantages can fill an important gap in terms of the institutions that open online programs and online instructors who work in these institutions. The importance of using the technology for educational purposes and to make individuals gain the learning proficiencies has increased considerably with the development of technology. These two situations reveal the need for different approaches, from teaching strategies to techniques, from planning to evaluation. In online education, continuous assessment is important in terms of feedback, control of the learning speed which vary from student to student and learning quality obtained from the evaluation process the different measurement and evaluation methods/approaches to be presented during this study is intended to establish a foundation in their work towards examined that different measurement and evaluation methods/approaches. Key Words: Distance education, assessment, measurement and evaluation, online measurement and evaluation, e-portfolio. Uzaktan Eğitim Kendi içerisinde özel yöntemler ve uygulamalar barındıran uzaktan eğitim sistemleri bu özellikleriyle, farklı beklentileri karĢılamada önemli bir yöntem olarak ortaya çıkmıĢtır. Sadece uzaktaki öğrencilerin kendi aralarında ve öğretmenlerin öğrencileri ile etkileĢimi boyutundaki teknolojik olanakların artması bile günümüz uzaktan eğitim uygulamalarını klasik uygulamalara göre çok ayrıcalıklı bir konuma taĢımıĢtır. Bu bağlamda uzaktan eğitim hizmetleri belli bir plan içerisinde sunulmaktadır. Hızlı geliĢen teknoloji, kitle iletiĢim araçları sayesinde eğitim alanında ihtiyaç duyulan alternatif gereksinimlere daha hızlı cevap verilebilmektedir. Mektupla baĢlayan uzaktan eğitim teknolojileri, telefon, radyo, TV, bilgisayar ve günümüzde bilgisayara bağlı olarak Ġnternet ve ağ teknolojilerinin kullanımı ile eğitimde önemli bir yer tutmuĢtur (Çallı, Bayram ve Karacadağ, 2002). Çevrimiçi Uzaktan Eğitimde Kullanılan Farklı Ölçme Değerlendirme Yaklaşımlarına İlişkin Bir İnceleme 39 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 Teknoloji temelli uzaktan eğitim programlarında çevrimiçi etkileĢim aracı olarak video konferans, bilgisayar konferansı, internet televizyonu, yazılı ve sesli posta ya da elektronik sohbet (chat) uygulamaları öğrencileri ve öğretmenleri birbirine oldukça yakınlaĢtırmıĢtır. Bu sayede yüz yüze eğitim yoluyla karĢılanamayan çeĢitli öğrenme ve etkileĢim ihtiyaçlarını, uzaktan eğitim ile karĢılamak olanaklı hale gelmiĢtir (ġimĢek, 2006). Uzaktan eğitimde kullanılan eğitim modelleri, yararlanılan iletiĢim türüne göre iki ana bölümde incelenebilir. Senkron (eşzamanlı) öğretim modeli; öğrencinin web üzerinden eğitim alırken aynı zamanda öğretici ile de iletiĢimin kurulabildiği öğretim Ģeklidir. Asenkron (eşzamansız) öğretim modeli ise öğrenciye kendi program ve çalıĢma düzenine göre herhangi bir öğretici ile canlı bağlantı kurmadan belirli zaman aralığında çalıĢmasını tamamlama olanağı veren öğretim Ģeklidir. Ölçme ve Değerlendirme Eğitim, insan davranıĢlarını geliĢtiren bir sistem olarak görülmektedir. Bu sistemin girdileri, süreci, çıktıları ve kontrolü vardır. Eğitim sisteminde kontrol, değerlendirme öğesi sayesinde yapılır. Ölçme ve değerlendirme aĢaması, uygulanan bir programın eksik ve yetersiz yanlarının belirlenmesi, öğretimin iyileĢtirilmesi ve program geliĢtirme sürecinde bilgi toplama ve yönlendirme görevini yerine getirir (Baykul, 2000).Belli bir alanda bireylerin ne derecede bir öğrenme gücüne ya da düzeyine sahip oldukları ölçmeler yapılarak belirlenir. Ölçme eğitimde vazgeçilmez bir unsurdur. Eğitim alanında yapılan değerlendirme etkinlikleri amaçlarına göre tanılayıcı (diagnostic), biçimlendirici (formative) ve düzey belirleyici (summative) olmak üzere üç gruba ayrılır (Demirel, 2006). Tanılayıcı (diagnostic) değerlendirme, öğrencilerin öğretim programına baĢlamadan önce ön koĢul niteliğindeki özelliklerinin ortaya konulması için yapılan değerlendirmedir. Öğrencinin ilgili özelliklerinden elde edilecek sonuçların değerlendirilmesi öğretim sürecinin biçimlendirilmesine bilgi sağlar (Demirel, 2006). Biçimlendirici (formative) değerlendirme, öğretim sürecinin bir parçasıdır (Senemoğlu, 2002). Öğretim sürecinde yer alan pekiĢtireç, ipucu, dönüt, düzeltme, öğrenci katılımı, kullanılan yöntem ve stratejiler, araç ve gereçler gibi değiĢkenler, öğretim hizmetinin niteliğini artırmada önemli bir iĢleve sahiptir (Demirel, 2006). Sözü edilen değiĢkenlerin etken olduğu bu süreçte öğrenme ürünleriyle ilgili görülen eksiklik ve yanlıĢlıklar düzeltilir. Bu sayede öğretmen, öğrenmeyi engelleyen, beklenmeyen problemleri tespit edebilir, sürecin kontrolünü elinde tutabilir. Düzey belirleyici (summative) değerlendirme ise öğretim süreci sonunda öğrencilerin öğrenme düzeylerini belirlemede kullanılır. Biçimlendirici değerlendirmeden farklı olarak öğrencilerin programa giriĢ davranıĢları ile çıkıĢ davranıĢları arasındaki eriĢiler puanlanır. Bu puanlara dayanılarak “geçti-kaldı” veya “baĢarılı baĢarısız” gibi kararlar verilir (Demirel, 2006). Sonuç olarak, doğru Ģekilde yapılan ölçme ve değerlendirme, eğitimde kaliteyi arttıracak, öğretmen ve yönetim için karar vermeyi kolaylaĢtıracak, öğrenciyi öğrenme konusunda motive edecek ve aileleri bilgilendirecek bir süreç bütünüdür (Toker, 2005). Bir eğitim sisteminin baĢarısı sistemin felsefesine uygun ölçme ve değerlendirme yöntemleriyle değerlendirme yapılmasına bağlıdır (Balcı ve Tekkaya, 2000:42). 40 Yunus BALTA – Yalın Kılıç TÜREL Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 Çevrimiçi Ölçme ve Değerlendirme Öğrenme yeterliliklerini bireylere kazandırabilmenin ve teknolojiyi öğretim amaçlı kullanabilmenin önemi teknolojinin geliĢimiyle oldukça artmıĢtır. Bu iki durum, öğretim stratejilerinden tekniğe, planlamadan değerlendirmeye kadar birçok alanda farklı yaklaĢımların sergilenmesi gerekliliğini ortaya çıkarmaktadır (Demirli, 2007). Çevrimiçi öğretim ve öğrenim de farklı yaklaĢımlar içermekte olup yapılacak ölçme ve değerlendirmeler de normalden farklı olacaktır. Çevrimiçi eğitimde sürekli değerlendirme yapılması üç konu açısından önemlidir: 1. Geri dönüt, 2. Öğrenciden öğrenciye farklılık gösteren öğrenme hızının kontrolü, 3. Değerlendirme süreci sonunda elde edilecek öğrenme kalitesi, Yukarıda belirtilen konularda aksama ve eksiklik yaĢanmaması için çevrimiçi eğitim sürecinde sürekli ölçme ve değerlendirme etkinlerine yer verilmelidir. Öğrenmeler, ödevler ve değerlendirmelerle pekiĢtirildiğinde, öğrencinin performansını ve tatminkârlığını olumlu yönde etkileyecektir (Buzzetto-MoreveAlade, 2006; Lynch, Goold ve Blain, 2004). Öğrenciler verilen ödevlerle veya kendi kendini sınamaya yönelik yaptıkları alıĢtırmalar sonucu kazandığı deneyimle, ne bildiğini ve ne yapabildiğini öğrendiği gibi, bilgi düzeyini, yeteneklerini ve zayıf yönlerini de öğrenme imkânı bulacaktır. Bunlar öğrencinin önceki konuları gözden geçirmesine ve konuları daha detaylı incelemesinde motive edici unsurlar olarak nitelendirilebilir. Etkili Çevrimiçi Değerlendirmenin Esasları Angelo ve Cross (1993), değerlendirmenin etkili olabilmesi için değerlendirmenin ders içinde yapılması gerektiği görüĢünü savunmaktadırlar. Angelo ve Cross, etkili bir sınıf değerlendirmesinin özelliklerini Ģöyle sıralarlar: Öğrenci merkezli, öğretmen yönlendirmeli, karĢılıklı olarak fayda sağlayan, biçimlendirici, konuya özel, süregelen ve zihinlere kazınmıĢ örneklerden oluĢan vb. Verilen bu özellikler her ne kadar sınıfta yüz yüze eğitimle alakalı özellikler olsa da sanal sınıf ortamında da etkili olarak uygulanabilir. Öyleyse, bu ilkeler çevrimiçi ortama geçildiğinde nasıl değiĢiklik gösterirler? AĢağıda sanal değerlendirme yaparken öğrencilere rehberlik edebilecek bazı ilkelerden bahsedilmiĢtir (Palloff ve Pratt, 2009:44-45).  Öz değerlendirmelerin yer verildiği öğrenci merkezli değerlendirmeler planlamak.  Değerlendirmeye yardımcı olmak adına, ödevler, projeler ve grup çalıĢmaları için not çizelgeleri hazırlamak.  Öğrencilerin de birbirlerini yorum yaparak değerlendirebileceği ortak çalıĢmalara yer vermek.  Ders hedeflerine ve içeriğine uygun değerlendirme teknikleri kullanmak.  Çevrimiçi olarak çalıĢması zevkli, anlaĢılması kolay ve açık değerlendirme tekniklerine yer vermek.  Değerlendirmenin nasıl olması gerektiği konusunda öğrenciyle birlikte çalıĢıp onun fikirlerini almak (Palloff ve Pratt, 2003:101-102). Çevrimiçi Uzaktan Eğitimde Kullanılan Farklı Ölçme Değerlendirme Yaklaşımlarına İlişkin Bir İnceleme 41 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 Çevrimiçi Eğitimde Değerlendirme Yöntemleri Çevrimiçi eğitimde kullanılan değerlendirme yöntemleri Geleneksel ve Alternatif değerlendirme yöntemleri olmak üzere iki baĢlık altında incelenmiĢtir. Geleneksel Değerlendirme Yöntemleri Sözlü sınavlar: Çevrimiçi eğitimde sözlü sınavlar, öğretim elemanları ile öğrenciler sohbet odalarında veya video konferans ile bir araya getirilerek gerçekleĢtirilir. Yazılı sınavlar: Yazılı sınavların internet ortamında cevabının alınabilmesi için „Çok Satırlı Metin GiriĢi (Textarea)‟ kullanılabilir. Öğrenciden gelen cevaplar bir veritabanı veya dosyada tutulabilir. Fakat e-öğrenme için iyi bir değerlendirme Ģekli değildir. Çoktan seçmeli testler: GeliĢmiĢ ülkelerde öğrencilerin baĢarılarını ölçmede en çok kullanılan sınav yöntemidir. Ġnternetteki birçok sınav bu yöntem kullanılarak hazırlanmıĢtır. Bunların yanı sıra; kısa cevaplı sınavlar ve doğru – yanlış testleri de kullanılır. Alternatif Değerlendirme Yöntemleri Değerlendirme yaklaĢımları sürekli sorgulanmıĢ ve alternatif yaklaĢımlar öne sürülmüĢtür. Anderson (1998:5, akt: Demirli, 2007), alternatif değerlendirme yaklaĢımlarının öne sürülmesini, öğrenmenin nasıl meydana geldiği ile ilgili düĢüncelerin yenilenmesi ve yeni kavramların ortaya çıkmasına odaklanarak, yansız değerlendirme kaygısına ve öğrenciler arasındaki farklılıkların artmasına bağlamaktadır. Otantik Değerlendirme: Öğrencilerin günlük yaĢamda muhtemel olarak karĢılaĢabilecekleri sorunları ve bu sorunları çözme yeteneklerini ve yeterliliklerini sergilemelerini gerektiren bir tür değerlendirme biçimidir. Öğrencilerden fikirler üretmeleri, bilgiyi kaynaĢtırmaları ve gerçek dünyada kullanımları için gereken görevleri tamamlamaları istenir (Archibald, 1991). Otantik değerlendirme yaklaĢımında çoklu değerlendirme yöntem ve teknikleri kullanılır. Bu yeni değerlendirme yaklaĢımında, öğrencinin öğrendiği Ģeyleri ne kadar hatırlayabildiğini anlamak değil, öğrencinin önceki bilgilerinde meydana gelen niteliksel değiĢimleri anlamak ve öğrenme sürecini geliĢtirmek önemlidir (Tynjala, 1999). Gerçek dünya çevresinde, öğrencilere aynı Ģartlar altında çalıĢmalarına aynı materyalleri kullanmalarına olanak sağlanır. Simülasyon faaliyetleri ve gerçek dünya olayları bu tür değerlendirme metotlarıyla araĢtırılabilir. Portfolyo Değerlendirme: Portfolyo değerlendirme, öğrencinin geliĢiminin tam bir resmini yansıtan çalıĢmaların toplamıdır. Geleneksel anlayıĢın ön gördüğü bir tepkiyi seçmek ya da iĢaretlemekten ziyade üretimi gerektiren performans değerlendirmenin bir biçimi olarak ifade edilebilir. Paulson ve arkadaĢları (1991:60) portfolyoyu; “öğrenenin çabalarını, geliĢimini ve baĢarılarını yansıtan öğrenci çalıĢmalarının amaçlı bir toplamı” olarak tanımlamaktadır. Bu toplamda öğrenen, içeriğin seçimine ve seçim ölçütlerinin belirlemesi sürecine aktif olarak katılır. Elektronik portfolyolar, geleneksel portfolyoların tüm olumlu yönlerini taĢımalarının yanı sıra öğrenenlerin daha zengin, tam ve gerçek geliĢimini ve öğrenme resimlerini sunmaya katkı sağlamaktadır. Öğrenciler, dokümanlarını çoklu ortam unsurlarından yararlanarak çeĢitli formatların kullanımıyla (resimler, grafikler, sesler, filmler, metinler vb.) sunarak devamlı geliĢimi ve değiĢimi yansıtabilirler. 42 Yunus BALTA – Yalın Kılıç TÜREL Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 Performans Değerlendirme: Mueller (2005) performans değerlendirmede, öğrencilerin gerçek hayatta karĢılaĢılan problemlerle yüz yüze getirildiğini ve öğrencilerden bu problemlere gerekli bilgi ve becerileri kullanarak çözüm getirmeleri istendiğini belirtmiĢtir. Performans değerlendirme ile öğrenciler daha esnek bir değerlendirme süreci içinde bulunmaktadırlar. Değerlendirme ölçütlerinin dikkatli bir Ģekilde belirlenmesi öğretmenlere süreç sonunda ortaya çıkan ürünü değerlendirmede karar verme aĢamasında yarar sağlar. Açık Kitap: Uzaktan eğitimde öğrenci baĢarısını değerlendirmek için kitaplara bakmanın izin verildiği sınavların da kullanılabilir olduğu savunulmaktadır (Olt, 2002, akt. Rakes, 2008). Kitap açık yapılan sınavlar öğrencileri üst düzey düĢünme becerileri yönünden sınamaktadır. Öğrenci sahip olduğu kaynaklardan rahatça ulaĢabileceği bilgiyi sadece hatırlamak için değil, kullanarak ve düzenleyerek soruları çözmeye çalıĢmaktadır (Rakes, 2008). Değerlendirme Listeleri (Rubrik): Öğrencinin ödev ve değerlendirme beklentilerini anlamalarına ve kaliteli bir değerlendirmeye yardımcı olur. Conrad ve Donaldson (2004) rubriklerin öğrencilerin grup çalıĢması içerisinde hem kendi hem de takım arkadaĢlarının performanslarını somut olarak değerlendirmelerine yardımcı olacağını belirtmiĢtir. Öğretmenin derste ''ġu an ne ve nasıl yapıyorum?'' gibi soruları da ayrıca önemlidir. Değerlendirme tablolarının kullanımı ayrıca varsayımları da almaya yardımcı olur. Bu, bir öğrencinin ders materyali ve akranları ile nasıl bir etkileĢim içerisinde olduğunun gerçekçi bir resmini ortaya koyar ve ölçülebilir bir materyal sunduğundan not düĢüĢü, memnuniyetsizlik gibi konuların tarafsızlık ve ölçülebilirlik dairesi içerisinde ele alınmasını sağlar. Her bir görev için ayrı ayrı puanlar vermek yöntemi daha da kolaylaĢtırır(Palloff ve Pratt, 2009:68). Akran Değerlendirme: Öğrenci tarafından hazırlanan araĢtırma, ödev ve proje gibi çalıĢmaların kendi arkadaĢları tarafından değerlendirilmesidir. Öğrenciler akran değerlendirme yaparken, arkadaĢlarının yapmıĢ olduğu çalıĢmaları kendi çalıĢmaları ile kıyaslayarak ve alternatif bir bakıĢ açısı kazanmaktadır. Öğrencilerin arkadaĢları tarafından değerlendirilmesi ve geribildirim alması öğrencinin öğrenme sürecine olumlu katkılar sağlamaktadır (Aldağ ve Gürpınar, 2007). Grup Çalışmalarının Değerlendirmeye Dâhil Edilmesi Grup çalıĢması, öğrencilerin kendilerinden etkilenerek daha derin bilgi seviyesine ulaĢmalarına yardımcı olur. Böylece sanal öğrenme topluluğunun oluĢumunu güçlendirerek, sanal bir dersin temel aracı oluĢturulmuĢ olur. Brookfieldeld (1995), grup çalıĢmalarının ilk olarak öğrenci yaratıcılığını ve eleĢtirel düĢünme becerilerini geliĢtirdiğini ileri sürmüĢtür. Birlikte çalıĢma, ayrıca sanal bir derste anlamlı diyalogların geliĢmesine zemin hazırlar. Bir Ģeyi baĢkalarıyla birlikte öğrenmek, öğrencinin bilgiyi daha derinden almasına, kendi bilgisini geniĢletmesine, tecrübelerini paylaĢmasına, yapıcı bir geri dönüt ve eleĢtiriler almasına olanak sağlar. Sanal ortamda grup projeleri, özellikle de bu projelerin değerlendirilmesi bir rekabet ortamı içerisinde geliĢir ve bu da birlikte çalıĢmayı pekiĢtirir. Ortak çalıĢmayı değerlendirirken hatırlatılması gereken en temel kural, ortak çalıĢmaların en iyi ortaklaĢa yani hep beraber değerlendirilmesi gerektiğidir. Ortak bir çalıĢmanın bitiminde, genellikle öğrencilerden öncelikle çalıĢmaya sunmuĢ oldukları bireysel katkıları sorulur daha sonra bu grup içindeki diğer arkadaĢlarından da istenir (Palloff ve Pratt, 2009:116-121). Grup çalıĢmalarında yapılan ödev için iki not verilir. Birisi grubun ortaya koyduğu çalıĢmaya, birisi de her bir bireye ayrı ayrı bireysel performansından dolayı verilen nottur. Genelde, yüz yüze iĢlenen derslerde, zaman kısıtlamaları bu tür değerlendirme yönteminin kullanımını engelleyebilmektedir. Ancak, eĢzamanlı olmayan (asenkron) çevrimiçi ortamda, Çevrimiçi Uzaktan Eğitimde Kullanılan Farklı Ölçme Değerlendirme Yaklaşımlarına İlişkin Bir İnceleme 43 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 dokümanlar ve ödevler kolaylıkla diğer öğrenciler tarafından sunulabilmekte ve görüntülenebilmektedir. Yukarıda sunulan değerlendirme yöntemleri dıĢında alan yazında değinilen bazı farklı değerlendirme yöntemleri de kullanılmaktadır. Angelo ve Cross (1993) tarafından bireysel değerlendirme konusunda önerilen „Bir Dakikalık Sınav‟ (One-Minute Paper), öz değerlendirme sırasında, Stephen Brookfield'in (1995) kullandığı Kritik Durum Anketi (Critical Incident Questionnaire, CIQ) ve öğretici değerlendirme ve öz değerlendirme sırasında kullanılabilen, Öğrenme Amaçlı Öğrenci Değerlendirmesi (SALG) yöntemleri de çevrimiçi eğitimde baĢvurulabilecek diğer yöntemlerdendir. Kopyacılık ve Hile Çevrimiçi değerlendirmede hile ve kopyacılığı en aza indirmek veya engellemek için, rastgele karıĢık test, kısa sınav (quiz) ve açık kitap sınav örneklerine baĢvurulabilir. Fakat hile konusunda, öğrenci ders için hazırladığı ödevi özgün olarak kendi baĢına hazırlayıp hazırlamadığı konusunda güvenirlik sorunları yaĢanmaktadır. Örneğin sanal sınavlarda öğrencinin yerine bir baĢkasını sınava sokma ihtimali her zaman bulunsa da bunun her ders için ve sürekli gerçekleĢmesi mümkün görünmemektedir. Bu ihtimali en aza indirmek için ders dönemi içerisinde çeĢitli kısa değerlendirme çalıĢmalarına yer verilebilir. Performans odaklı değerlendirmeler de hileyi en aza indirecektir. Sadece öğrencinin bilebileceği konularda ödevler vermek de bu konuda baĢvurulabilecek baĢka bir önlemdir. Ayrıca, öğrenciden ödevi birden değil de yaptıkça göndermesini isteyerek, hileyi erkenden tespit etmek veya önlemek mümkün olabilir. Ayrıca, öğrenci kaynakların doğru kullanımı konusunda eğitilmelidir. McNett (2002), ödevlerde son gün çaresizliği yüzünden hile ve kopyacılığın arttığını öne sürmektedir. Öğrenciden ödevini aĢamalı olarak istemek sadece hile ve kopyanın önüne geçmekle kalmaz, öğretmeninde konuya daha hâkim olmasını ve öğrencinin yazma stilini anlamasını kolaylaĢtırır. Herhangi bir ani değiĢiklik yapmak, potansiyel hileye sebebiyet verebilen ve öğretmenin kaçınması gereken tehlike iĢaretidir. Sonuç olarak, öğrencilerden materyalin bulunması değil de bulunan malzemenin iĢlenmesi istenmelidir. Hile yapan öğrenciyi öncelikli olarak cezalandırmaktansa, öğrenci odaklı yaklaĢımlarla öğrencileri kendi çalıĢmalarını ortaya koymaları konusunda eğitimler verilmeli, referansları ve kaynakları kendi çalıĢmalarının yararına nasıl kullanabilecekleri öğretilmelidir. Sonuç Günümüz eğitim dünyası köklü ve hızlı bir biçimde değiĢim yaĢamaktadır. Bu değiĢimin bir yansıması olarak öğrenmeye ve öğretmeye yönelik yeni yaklaĢımlar ortaya atılmaktadır. Özellikle son zamanlarda, yaratıcı ve kritik düĢünme, problem çözme, öğrendiklerini yeni durumlara uyarlayabilme ve bilgi teknolojilerini etkin kullanabilme bireylerden beklenen temel beceriler olarak benimsenmiĢtir (Demirli, 2007). Birçok eğitimci, uzaktan eğitime katılan öğrencilerin geleneksel yüz yüze eğitim alan öğrenciler kadar öğrenip öğrenmediklerini sorgulamaktadır. AraĢtırma sonuçları; doğru metot ve teknoloji kullanıldığı, öğrenciler arasında iletiĢim sağlandığı ve öğretmen-öğrenci arasında karĢılıklı iletiĢim olduğu sürece uzaktan eğitimin en az yüz yüze eğitim kadar veya değerlendirme sonuçlarına göre daha baĢarılı olduğunu göstermiĢtir. Özetle, çevrimiçi değerlendirme yapılırken aĢağıdaki ilkeler göz önünde bulundurulmalıdır:  Öğrenci merkezli değerlendirmeler, çalıĢmalar ve ödevler tasarlamak, 44 Yunus BALTA – Yalın Kılıç TÜREL Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013  ÇeĢitli öğretme teknikleri, değerlendirme ölçütleri içeren dersler hazırlamak, hile ve kopyayı engelleyici ödevler istemek,  Öğrencinin, katkılarını değerlendirmek, kullanmak ve ödüllendirmek,  Öz değerlendirme için temel oluĢturan öğrencinin performans beklentilerini gösteren rubrikler kullanmak,  Ödevler ve değerlendirmeler konusunda çabuk geri bildirim almayı sağlamak,  "Kitap açık " modeliyle testler ve kısa sınavlar (quiz) hazırlamak,  Çevrimiçi değerlendirmeleri etkili kılmak için, performans değerlendirmesi, otantik (gerçek) değerlendirme, projeler, portfolyolar, öz değerlendirmeler, arkadaĢını değerlendirme (peer-assessment) ve tartıĢma ödevlerinin de içinde bulunduğu haftalık ödevlere baĢvurmak gerekmektedir. KAYNAKÇA ANGELO, T.ve CROSS, K. P.(1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques. San Francisco:Jossey- Bass. ALDAĞ, H. ve GÜRPINAR, K. (2007). Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Sunu Becerilerini Etkileyen Faktörler, Akademik BiliĢim Konferansı 31 Ocak - 2 ġubat 2007, Kütahya. ARCHĠBALD, D. (1991). Authentic Assessment: What it Means and How It Can Help Schools. Madison, WI: National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development, University of Wisconsin. BALCI, E. Ve TEKKAYA, C.(2000). Ölçme ve Değerlendirme Tekniklerine Yönelik Bir Ölçeğin GeliĢtirilmesi, Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 18, 42-50. BAYKUL, Y. (2000). Eğitimde ve Psikolojide Ölçme: Klasik Test Teorisi ve Uygulaması, Ankara, ÖSYM Yayınları. BROOKFĠELD, S. D.(1995).Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, San Francisco:Jossey-Bass. BUZZETTO-MORE, N.ve ALADE, A. (2006). Best Practices in e-assessment. Journal of Information Technology Education, 5. Retrievedfrom (http://jite.org/documents/Vol5/v5p251 – 269Buzzetto152.pdf) (EriĢim Tarihi: 05.06.2012). CONRAD, R. M. ve DONALDSON, A. (2004).Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction, San Francisco: Jossey - Bass. ÇALLI, Ġ.; BAYRAM, Y. ve KARACADAĞ, M.C.(2002). Türkiye'de Uzaktan Eğitimin Geleceği ve E-Üniversite, Açık ve Uzaktan Eğitim Sempozyumu, 23-24 Mayıs, Anadolu Üniversitesi. DEMĠRLĠ, C. (2007). Elektronik Portfolyo Öğretim Sürecinin Öğrenen Tutumlarına ve Öğrenme Algılarına Etkisi, (Doktora Tezi), Fırat Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ. DEMĠREL, Ö.(2006).Planlamadan Değerlendirmeye Öğretme Sanatı, Ankara:PegemA Yayıncılık. LYNCH, K.;GOOLD, A. ve BLAĠN, J.(2004).Students' Pedagogical Preferences in the delivery of IT capstone courses. Journal of Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 1, 431-442. Çevrimiçi Uzaktan Eğitimde Kullanılan Farklı Ölçme Değerlendirme Yaklaşımlarına İlişkin Bir İnceleme 45 Turkish Studies International Periodical For the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 8/3, Winter 2013 MCNETT, M.(2002).CurbingacAdemicDishonesty in Online Courses, Pointers and Clickers, Illinois Online Network, Retrieved from (http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/pointersclickers/2002_05/index.asp) (EriĢim Tarihi: 05.06.2012). MUELLER, J.(2005). The Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Enhancing Student Learning Through Online Faculty Development. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 1(1). (http://jolt.merlot.org/documents/vol1_no1_mueller_001.pdf) (EriĢim Tarihi: 05.06.2012). PALLOFF, R. M. ve PRATT, K.(2003). The Virtual Student: A Profile and Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. PALLOFF, R. M. ve PRATT, K. (2009). Assessing the Online Learner. San Francisco: Jossey - Bass. PAULSON, F.L., PAULSON, P. R., ve MEYER, C. A. (1991). What Makes a Portfolio a Portfolio? Educational Leadership, 48(5), 60‐69. RAKES, G. (2008). Open Book Testing in Online Learning Environments. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 1(9). http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/issues/PDF/7.1.1.pdf (EriĢim Tarihi: 05.06.2012) SENEMOĞLU, N.(2002). GeliĢim Öğrenme ve Öğretim: Kuramdan Uygulamaya. Ankara: Gazi Kitapevi. ġĠMġEK, H.(2006). Sosyal Bilimlerde Nitel AraĢtırma Yöntemleri, Ankara: Seçkin Yayıncılık. TOKER, N. (2005). Eğitimde Ölçme ve Değerlendirmenin Kullanımı ve Önemi, (http://www.egitim.com.tr/) (EriĢim Tarihi: 05.06.2012) TYNJALA, P.(1999). Towards Expert Knowledge? A Comparison Between a Contructivist and a Traditional Learning Environment in University, International Journal of Educational Research, 31(5), 357- 442. http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/ 
work_l52qx3jnirgoll4ueawa7ktade	----	ed318421.tif.pdf DOCUMENT RESUME ED 318 421 IR 014 325 AUTHOR Bates, A. W. TITLE Technology for Distance Education: A 10 Year Prospective. INSTITUTION Open Univ., Walton, Bletchley, Bucks (England). inst. of Educational Technology. REPORT NO IET-Paper-274 PUB DATE Dec 87 NOTE 38p.; Paper presented to the Long Term Review Group of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (Heerlen, The Netherlands, December 7-8, 1987). PUB TYPE Viewpoints (120) -- Reports - Descriptive (141) -- Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MFO1 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *Audiovisual Aids; *Computer Assisted Instruction; *Distance Education; *Educational Technology; *Electronic Publishing; Evaluation Criteria; Foreign Countries; *Futures (of Society); Higher Education IDENTIFIERS *Europe (West) ABSTRACT This paper provides an overview of new technologies likely to be widely available wi*bin the next 10 years for teaching in Europe. It begins by presenting a framework which draws distinctions between different technologies based on their educational applications, for teaching or operational purposes, for communicating within or between systems, or for various levels, types of courses, or users. Evaluation criteria such as availability, organizational environment, and educational and operational rationales are also discussed. The following technologies are then discussed: (1) electronic publishing; (2) audiovisual media, including terrestrial broadcast television and radio, videocassettes, satellite, cable, and videodiscs; and (3) computer technology, including teaching about computers, computers az study tools, educational communications, administration, pre-programmed computer-based learning, and artificial intelligence It is suggested that home-based learning, center- or work-based learning, and ommunications within and between systems are likely to dominate distance education during the next 10 years. It concluded that technological decisions need to be preceded by policy and educational decisions, while recognizing at the same time that the availability of new technology allows for major changes in distance education. (8 references) (MES) ****************1k***************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. k***********************3%*********VA*********3%**3%****3%*************W* U.E DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION office 01 Educatiu.ial Research and Irnp,ovemen, EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER tERICI This document has been reproduced as received horn the person or organization originating it C Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality o.nts of view or opinions slated m Ms cicx:u merit do not necessarily represent Oficial OE RI posqon or povvcy !ET PAPER NO. 274 EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF DISTANCE TEACHING UNIVERSITIES Long Term Review Group Heerlen 7-8 December, 1987 TECHNOLOGY FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION: A.10 YEAR PROSPECTIVE Dr. A.W.Bates Professor of Educational Media Research,. The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom 26 November, 1987 Y) 7*- BEST COPY AVAILABLE 1 2 'PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL IN MICROFICHE ONLY HAS BEEN GRANTED BY A, W. Bates TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTE9 (ERIC)." Contents Introduction page no. 3 Gazing into the crystal ball: past experience 3 A framework for assessing technology 5 The technologies 7 - text - audio-visual media 10 terrestrial broadcast television and radio 10 - video-cassettes 12 satellite 15 - cable 22 - video-discs 24 - computer technology 25 teaching about computers 26 computers as study tools 27 - educational communications 27 administration 29 - pre-programmed computer-based learning 29 artificial intelligence 30 The dominant t !chnologies 32 - home-based learning 32 centre or work-based learning 34 communications within and between systems 34 Conclusions References 3 2 .` AID ". 35 36 Introduction We are living through an- exciting time regarding technological developments of relevance to distance education. There is, to say the least, a lot happening: artificial intelligence, compact discs, electronic publishing, home computers, satellites, video-discs, to name but a few. What is the potential for these and other 'technological developments for distance education? Perhaps even more importantly, what steps should European distance teaching institutions take to ensure that the 'right' media are chosen, and what needs to be done to ensure that appropriate technologies are not only chosen, but are properly harnessed and used to increase the effectiveness of distance education in Europe? This paper attempts to provide an overview of new technologies likely to be widely available for distance teaching in Europe within a 10 year time-frame, attempts to look at the decision-making :And organisational requirements necessary to ensure that technology is properly used, and also looks at the implications of technological developments 'for European-wide co-operation and delivery of distance teaching materials. Gazing into the crystal ball: past experience Any attempt to look into the future is by definition speculative; it is also influenced by personal views and weighted towards audio-visual media. This paper should then be seen as a basis for discussion, and not a definitive statement of the future 10 years from now. We can learn a lot about the future by looking back into the past. In 1977, a colleague and I produced a report: 'Alternative Media Technologies for the Open University' (Bates and Kern, 1977). This looked at new technologies in the pipe-line, and already existing technologies that were not being used, including audio-cassettes, floppy audio discs, audio 3 4 records, super 8 mm, video-cassettes, telephone teaching, viewdata, electronic blackboard, digital cassette vision (CYCLOPS). and home computer terminals linked by telephone to main frame computers. It is salutary to note that, despite the potential of these new technologies, the only majoL change, and certainly the most cost-effective, in the British Open University's technology over the last 10 years has been the introduction of audio-cassettes, virtually replacing radio. There are important lessons to be learned from this. Audio-cassettes are low cost, all students already have facilities at home, they are easy for academics to produce, and cheap and easy to distribute, students find them convenient to use, and when designed properly they encourage student activity (our audio-cassettes are rarely lectures). These factors are likely to apply just as forcibly to any new technologies that become integrated into distance education over the next 10 years. A more consoling point is that it has taken 10 years before some of the technologies being discussed in 1977 have become a practical reality for distance education. For instance, video-cassette recorders and home computers are only now at a point where they are feasible for extensive use in distance learning. There are several reasons for this 10 year incubation period. Home-based technologies have to be very low cost and easy to use. It can take 10 years from the introdatior14-Aechiriatogy-4 into the market place before it becomes available in most homes. Furthermore, it usually takes several years from the time that a distance teaching institution positively assesses the potential of a technology to the time it is actually introduced, even on a small scale, into its teaching. The reason that this is consoling is because it means that the future is with us now: the technologies 'chat are going to be in widespread use in 10 years' time already exist, at least in prototype form. Any major new developments that arise over the next 10 years, and not yet known about, are unlikely to be at a stage where they will be practically useful for distance education by 1997. A framework for assessing technology One distinction I wish to make is between technologies for teaching, and technologies for operational purposes. For instance, technologies for teaching are much more influenced by the likely home (or student work) environment, and therefore have to be relatively low cost; technologies for operational purposes (student registration, publishing) are more likely to be introduced to improve institutional efficiency; although cost rema'ns an important factor, a high cost of investment for operational purposes may well be Justified in terms of increased efficiency. A second distinction needs to be made between technologies used within a distance teaching system, and technologies used for communicating between different systems. The latter is particularly important with respect to European co-operation. A third distinction that needs to be made is between different levels. types of courses, and students. Some courses (e.g. foundation and/or science courses) are likely to need a different mix of media from other courses (e.g. third level and/or arts courses.) Similarly, some students, such as professional engineers requiring up-dating; will, requiredifferent-- technologies from others, such as housewives wishing to return to work. It is also important to identify the most useful criteria for deciding on the potential of new technologies. Cost is obviously one important criterion, and learning effectiveness another. but there are other equally important factors, such as availability to students, user friendliness, and the organisational environment, There will also be major variations from country to country in the speed 5 6 at which various technologies are likely to be available, not so much for operational purposes, but for teaching purposes. For instance, the number (and type) of micro-computers in homes in France or Germany is likely to be different from that in Spain or Portugal over the next 10 years. Technology is more likely in this respect to increase inequalities between countries than reduce it, as far as the provision of distance education is concerned. Another factor which needs to be considered, and to which little attention is usually paid, is the organisational environment necessary for successful innovation. There are basically two ways in which a new technology may be used within a system. The first is for a new technology to be added to an existing system. This usually means that it does not play a central role, and adds cost to the system. The second is for a new technology to replace an existing technology. This usually means not only changing technologies but methods of working. Changes in technologies will need to be accompanied by structural changes within the organisation, as well as changes in individual work-practices, to ensure that resources and decision-making powers match the requirements of the new technology. This is usually the main barrier to innovation, since those with decision-making powers are often those who control the resources associated with the 'old' technologies that are under threat. Lastly, and most importantly, there remains-- the-;eciucationaLand,-;--.. operational rationales for using technology. What learning or teaching or administrative benefits will they bring? What benefits would be lost by replacing 'older' technologies, such as print? For these questions to be answered, it is necessary to make decisions about what kind of teaching and learning we want. Similar decisions also need to be made about what kind of work environment we want for staff in distance teaching. Choice of technology therefore is not just a technical decision but requires value judgements as well. While it is impossible for me to cover all these questions in this paper. they do provide a framework for making judgements about the appropriate choice of technology, mid my personal responses to some of these issues have influenced my interpretation of significant future developments. The technologies Text Electronic publishing will be a major development in distance teaching. Over the next 10 years, I would expect at least 70% of the various steps in publishing to be carried out electronically in most European distance teaching institutions. It will in fact be technically possible for electronic publishing to cover all the stages, from author's first draft right through to access by students. However, 100% electronic publishing is still likely to be rare. There is likely to be some re-keying, particularly for first drafts, many institutions will still prefer to paste up graphics, where colour or high quality graphics are required, and most institutions will still print hard copy for distribution by mail to students. for reasons given on p.9. However, electronic publishing can both reduce the costs and increase the speed of production of core texts, it will enable core texts to be up-dated more easily, permitting 'demand printing' each year, and it also allows supplementary materials to be -renewed-teachlrear .at. far-less cost. The move to electronic publishing will have major implications for work roles, requiring co-operation from the work force. It will need a considerable training programme, not only for publishing staff such as editors, but also for academic or subject expert staff. One consequence of electronic publishing is that it will provide institutions with more flexibility for contracting in subject expertise from 7 outside the institution. Electronic publishing will enable, an author at any location in Europe to prepare materials for a distance teaching institution. This will require a re-appraisal of the benefits and disadvantages of full-time, permanent academic staff. Indeed, electronic publishing, combined with electronic mail and conferencing, opens up the possibility of small, independent, commercial institutions providing distance learning courses - possibly run by academic staff made redundant by a change to contract hirqigl While the power of accreditation will be an important factor maintaining the popularity of distance teaching universities, the competition from small, independent commercial companies designed specifically to exploit the potential of electronic publishing and communications and therefore able to offer low-cost and flexible learning packages, should not be underestimated. This raises an important issue regarding the quality of distance teaching materials. Quality control is likely to remain, indeed to become an even more important issue, where materials are remotely prepared. or prepared by commercial companies. Where electronic publishing has already been introduced in distance teaching universities, there is evidence of courses being constantly altered and up-dated, at the expense of new course development, particularly when combined with continuous enrolment. The need for strong procedures governing the production and up-dating of course materials is likely to be even greater. _ . a.. Zinfiql:i.&;;;Diapz.ife.......+.41.....Ci.--- However, even quality control is possible at a distance. The remote course team can operate through electronic mail and conferencing facilities (see pp.27-29). Authors can be provided with 'frameworks' for designing distance teaching materials. For instance, Shannon Timmers. of the Open Learning Institute. Canada. has designed an 'author's template', which is a computer software package that provides headings and a check-list of questions for authors to work through when preparing teaching texts at a distance. 8 Electronic publishing highlights the importance of clear policies based on value judgements about what kind of institutions we need and want for higher distance education. Do we want authors working to a pre-determined framework? Is the course team concept essential for quality control? These are not technological but edupational issues. It is equally important that decisions about electronic publishing are not entirely production driven. It is possible to deliver course textual material entirely electronically to students with a home computer, a monitor and a modem. However, is this the most convenient or appropriate way to provide te.,tual materials to learners? Properly printed text has many advantages over both screen- delivered text and text printed on home computer printers. Printed text is portable, easily accessible, easy to skim and search, relatively cheap to deliver, can provide higher quality graphics and design, and above all is easier to read, compared with either home printed materials or, even more so, screen-based text. Technical developments over the next 10 years (e.g. the introduction of colour and large-screen monitors, and better quality low-cost printers; improved indexing software) may cause this view to be revised, but even these developments will not overcome some of the other limitations of electronic text, such as lack of portability. Therefore I expect 'core' texts, while prepared electronically, will still be printed, but supplementary materials that change each year (e.g. assignment questions and cut-off dates) will be delivered to students electronically. Nevertheless, the pressure to move to 100% electronic delivery, once the high initial cost of electronic publishing and home computing has been met, is likely to be strong. The relative advantages and disadvantages of print over electronic text, in terms of learning effectiveness, does need to be researched more thoroughly, to provide stronger empirical grounds for decision-making. Lastly, electronic publishing should facilitate considerably joint 91u production, sharing or adaptation of materials between different institutions, at least where the same language is used, since draft texts can be_ electronically distributed and edited across different centres. Audio-visu 1 media, While nearly all European distance teaching institutions currently depend on large quantities of textual material for at least undergraduate teaching at a distance, there is a good deal of variety between distance teaching institutions in the use of audio-visual media. The British Open University makes substantial use of television and audio, compared with Fernuniversitat, for instance. The value of audio-visual media, in relation to its cost, is still a controversial issue in distance education. There is no doubt, in my view, that well-designed audio-cassettes, combined with printed material, are an extremely cost-effective medium; and that television has valuable and unique roles to play in distance education, but requires high levels of expenditure on production to exploit its unique characteristics. For me. the argument is not about whether or not to use audio-visual media, but in which forms to use them (see Bates, in press, for a full discussion of the value of television in distance education). Terrestrial broadcast television and radio . Broadcast television, and to a lesser extent radio, could still have a useful role to play in distance education, even in 10 years' time. Broadcasting will still be an extremely valuable form of publicity for distance teaching institutions. It will still be one of the few methods of distribution guaranteed to be T.-...:'able to all students anywhere n a single country. However, both these roles are dependent on getting access to national broadcast channels at convenient and popular times. Broadcasting will still be the cheapest way to deliver audio-visual material to large numbers of students (i.e. over 500 students per course for television and 1,000 students per course for radio). It will still be valuable for introducingstudents to a subject, for providing an overview, or for raising awareness. These latter roles are less dependent on good quality transmission times, since off-air recording facilities will be available to most students in many European countries in. 10 years time. The key question though is whether it will be possible politically to get access to any form of terrestrial broadcast television for educationalpurposes in 10 years time. The advent of satellite and cable, trends towards deregulation and competition, and the relatively small numbers of students following any particular course at any one time, are likely to discourage terrestrial broadcasting organisations from giving a regular, quality commitment to transmission of distance teaching programmes. Terrestrial broadcasting is also limited to national communication.although some cross-border traffic is beginning (e.g. UK programmes arenow also relayed on cable in Belgium and Norway; Belgium can receive broadcasts from Holland, West Germany, France, and Luxembourg, as wellas the UK). These are not European-wide communications though, butlimited to neighbouring countries. Lastly, production for terrestrial broadcasting is likely to remain extremely expensive, because of the professional production standards required by broadcasting organisations. Other forms of distribution, such as cable and video-cassette, do allow for more flexible and experi.mental low-cost production, such as tutored video instruction or use of low-cost portable equipment for collecting and editing material. At the same time, there is a high risk that poor quality production, in professional terms. may also lead to poor quality material in educational terms. Neve.-theless, this is an open issue. The dramatic reduction in the cost of production equipment for television, and the increasing availability of alternative means of distribution to terrestrial broadcasting, do mean that video production is now a more realistic possibility for many distance teaching institutions, at least in terms of cost. Video-cassettes Table 1: European home video-recorder access. 1987 Country %TV Homes 1986 1987 Belgium 18% 22% Denmark 28% 34% France 23% 30% German Fed Rep 36% 44% Ireland 39% 44% Italy 8% 14% Netherlands 37% 44% Norway 31% 37% Portugal 38% 39% Spain 21% 28% United Kingdom 51% 61% EEC 31% 38% Screen Digest, 1987 Broadcasting is an ephemeral medium. This has caused a number of problems for learners within the British Open University system. The loss of quality transmission time caused serious problems for us in the early 1980s. In 1977 viewing on transmission averaged 65% (i.e. on average, a student would watch about two-thirds of the programmes on a course; or 13 12 two-thirds of the students on a course would watch each programme, on average). By 1984 this had dropped to 48%. The situation however was saved by the arrival in an increasing number of homes of the video-cassette recorder. The overall viewing rate is now around 60% (combining both viewing on transmission and on cassette). Table 1 (above) gives figures for video-cassette ownership in Europe In 1987. In a survey carried out at the end of 1986 (Kirkwood, 1987), 60% of Open University students on new courses had a VCR in their own home, and 77% reported that they either had access at home or `convenient access elsewhere'. The rate of growth of OU students owning VCRs over the last five years has if anything increased. Thus I expect over 80% will have their own VCR by 1990. It may be worth pointing out that this will far exceed students' ownership of home computers, and there is no problem of standardisation on VCRs (VHS seems to rule supreme). Furthermore, studies by the BBC Audience Research Department have found that ownership of VCRs in Britain is not income-related (e-Izcept for the unemployed), while ownership of home micros is. If the trend in Britain is followed elsewhere in Europe, it seems reasonable to assume that nearly all students will have access to video recording equipment at home, or at least convenient access elsewhere, by the end of 1297, in most countries represented by EADTU. The value of the video-cassette lies not just:in "itsabillik-Iti-:alloW:fStidents;',;E:.---:-.;-.4-7.,-;: to view programmes at more convenient times. It also enables learning from television to be much more effective. Indeed, the video-cassette is to the broadcast what the book is to the lecture. Table 2 (below) compares the control characteristics of broadcasts and cassettes. If a major value to students of television is its ability to link concrete examples to abstract ideas, and to enable learners to interpret and analyse material, it would seem essential that learners can access the television material at the appropriate point in their studies, that they can 114 stop and reflect on what they have just seen before moving on to the next part of the programme, and that they can watch the same scene as many times as necessary to interpret it. Table 2: Broadcast vs recorded TV Broadcast Cassette Fixed time to view Available when needed Ephemeral/once only Repetition/search/mastery Difficult to reflect Analysis/relating/reflection One speed Individually paced Integration more difficult Integration easier One lesson learned from audio-cassettes is that changing the technology of distribution also has implications for the design of the teaching materials. At the British Open University we are experimenting with certain design features to encourage students to make better Lic- of the control characteristics of video-cassettes (see Table 3 below). 7-The increased availability of videc-cassettesV1IV-have" three major implications. The fitst should be a marked improvement in the learning effectiveness of television, if the control characteristics are properly exploited; secondly, video-cassettes offer alternative distribution possibilities for distance teaching institutions without access to broadcasting; thirdly, lower production costs for video compared with national broadcasting will make television a more practical possibility for some distance teaching institutions. Once again, though, quality control will be important. 1 Table 3: Implications for programme design of videocassettes Satellite 1. Use of segments 2. Clear stopping points 3. Use of activities 4. Indexing 5. Close integration with other media (e.g. text, discussion) 6. Concentration on audio-visual aspects. The 1980s have been dominated by the expansion of video-cassette ownership in Europe. The 1990s will be dominated by the expansion of satellite broadcasting. To what extent will satellite--(or-dable)-pfaride'' alternatives to terrestrial broadcasting? There are basically two kinds of satellites, low-powered and high-powered (the latter usually called Direct Broadcast Satellites or DBS). Essentially, though, DBS transmissions can be received directly in homes using small and cheap dish aerials, while low-powered satellites require a larger and more expensive dish, with television signals usually being redistributed by cable or terrestrial transmitters to people's homes. Satellites though can also transmit voice and data signals, using a fraction of the capacity of a television channel, and hence at far less cost, a point of particular significance for distance education. The European Space Agency's launch rocket, Ariane, has the demanding schedule of one satellite launch a month from September. 1987, over a period of several years. A substantial proportion will be European satellites, both iow-powered and DBS . With a 1 in 15 chance of a launch failure, a lot could go wrong. Nevertheless, there will almost certainly be a rapid expansion in satellite capacity in Europe, from the current 21 television channel capacity to somewhere around 100 television channels within the next five years (CIT Research. 1987). Parallelling these developments in space, there is expected to be a rapid expansion in the numbers of people capable of receiving satellite transmission in Europe, either relayed through cable systems, or through direct reception. Low-powered transmissions can now be received on equipment costing around £1,000 (US$1,600), consisting of a 1.4 metre steerable dish, a 'black box' of electronics to convert the signal for reception on a standard. domestic TV monitor, and a tuner to find ti..e desired satellite and the desired channel on each satellite. DBS on the other hand can be received on much smaller aerials (between 0.5 and 0.9 metres in diameter). The total cost of DES reception equipment (in addition to a 'standard' domestic TV monitor) is likely initially to be around £500 (US$800), dropping eventually to around £200 (US$320). In 1986 there were 10,000 satellite TV receivers in Western Europe. This figure is expected to rise to 1 million shortly after 1990. By 1996, 46 million (40%) of West European households are expected to receive satellite services, either directly or via cable (Tydeman, 1987). However, it will be at least 10 years before a majority of homes in Western Europe can access satellite transmissions, a point of significance to those distance education institutions a genuinely open access policy. 7 16 Transmission costs range for full bandwidth television from free up -linkand transmission facilities for educational users (on OLYMPUS), to £1,800 (US$2.880) an hour on Eutelsat (including transponder charges)for peak evening transmission. While not insignificant, transmission costs though will usually be minor compared to the costs of production, administration and ground support services. Neither reception nor transmission costs are likely to be a significant barrier to the use of satellites for distance education in Europe, compared with finding suitable programming, and paying for it. Several countries outside Europe already have extensive experience of using satellites for distance education, in particular Canada, India, USA, Australia, Indonesia, the University of the South Pacific (USP) and the University of the West Indies (UWI). In addition, a number of countries have participated in Project SHARE, a series of health and education applications linking developed with developing countries via the INTELSAT system. From these experiences, it is important to distinguish between both the media used (TV, audio, data) and the technical configuration (point-to-multipoint or network): 1. Broadcasting: the dissemination from me point to many points, for teaching purposes, with no return communications via satellite. 2. Interactive broadcasting: one-way satellite television, with terry strial telephone used to allow students to call in (voice only) to the broadcast. 3. Two -way audio communication between several points, for both teaching and administrative purposes. 4. Two-way audio communication between several points, for both teaching and administrative purposes, supplemented by low-band graphics such as slow-scan TV or electronic writing. 5. Satellites can also be us- d for carrying electronic mail, computer conferencing, text transfer and access to remote data-bases, at lower cost than even voice communication. 6. There has been no major use yet in distance education of two-way full bandwidth television communications (video-conferencing), presumably because of the very high costs. Satellite is rarely the only communication technology; most systems using satellites in distance education also make use of terrestrial telephone services as well. As with terrestrial systems, two key questions are: why does one need full bandwidth television, given the huge difference in cost, especially if the satellite is merely relaying lectures: and why does one need to transmit, rather than mail video-cassettes? There are several initiatives already underway for the use of satellites for distance education in Western Europe. 1. OLYMPUS. This large and experimental satellite, built by the ESA and able to cover 60% of Western Europe with a single high-powered television transmission, is due to become operational in 1989. The ESA is offering free transmission on Olympus to educational users and has appointed an educational programming committee, under the chairmanship of Dr. Alan Hancock, of UNESCO, to allocate programming. 2. DELTA. Quite independently, the European Economic Commission (EEC) is funding a large initiative, totalling £14 million (20 million ECUs), to start in 1988, to improve the technological and communication infra-structure for education and training within Europe. This project includes a proposal for a satellite-bred European educational 18 communications network, suggesting that there will be opportunities for funding satellite-linked activities within the DELTA programme. 3. PACE this is a consortium of multi-national companies (including IBM, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, British Telecom, Thomson, etc.), using both satellite awl computer communications, to deliver a Programme of Advanced Continuing Education in Europe to companies throughout Europe, drawing on key researchers in European universities and companies. This is being funded partly by sponsorship and partly by the sale of courses, and begins in 1988, probably using Eutelsat. 4. COMETT. This is another EEC initiative, designed to increase co-operation between European enterprises and universities, through the joint production of courses and training initiatives. One strand of the COMETT programme request bids for the use of multi-media technology (including satellites), and provides funding possibilities for joint programmes between European distance teaching universities. PACE has already received some funds under the COMETT programme. COMETT started in 1987, and is expected to continue at least until 1989. There are therefore considerable opportunities for funding distance education satellite projects of a joint nature. It is possible to think of many different ways in which satellites could be used, but they all depend on an institution's policy regarding activities on a European-wide basis. 1. Extension of courses beyond national bcundaries. There are two main obstacles to this at the moment. European distance teaching institutions do not have the resources to provide the ground support, such as registration, counselling and tutorials, at a local level, to any major extent outside their own country. Secondly, it is probably better to work in co-operation rather than in competition with other distance teaching institutions. I understand that EADTU is developing a policy for co-operation in cree transfer, joint course production and inter-instit-.4tional co- operation. This is essential, because until decisions have been made about what roles distance teaching universities will play in providing courses across national boundaries, there is no rationale for using a European satellite facility to support courses, and no means to provide the necessary infrastructure. However, the window of opportunity for educational satellite use in Europe is quite small; time is not on our side. 2. Joint research n course production. Distnce_education courses cost a great deal to design. Given the high cost of design and production, there is great potential benefit in the design and production costs being shared between institutions who would also use the materials. Also, there may be areas where joint research activities between staff in different distance learning institutions, particularly research into distance education itself, could be developed. Satellite communication could be used to facilitate such activities, allowing for the exchange of materials and conferencing. However, this is dependent on co-operative agreements between different institutions being reached. Satellite communication may be one way to further this, but there may be others. 3. Establishing a distance education communications network. Satellites could form the base of an inter-institutional communication network (or even for communications within a system). Again, though, without a clear strategy for co-operation between distance teaching institutions, it is not possible to determine either the role or the likely amount of traffic for satellites in networking (for further details of how satellites could be used as part of an international educational network. see Bates, 1987). In the meantime, while inter-institutional co-operation between the established European distance teaching institutions is slowly building up, new organisations such as PACE are stepping into the gap. PACE is 20 21 specially designed to exploit the European-wide coverage of satellites andthe funding requirements of EEC initiatives. It is interesting to note thatonly 40_ of the 170 Olympus proposals were for distance education, andfew of these came from the established European distance teachinguniversities. This suggests that there is a need for greater urgency on thepart or the established European distance teaching organisations to workout how they can best work together, and how satellites might help inthat co-operative working. It is therefore possible to identify a number of constraints hindering thegreater use of satellites for distance education in Europe. 1. A policy regarding trans-national distance education in Europe is anecessary pre-condition for any distance teaching institution before it candecide whether to use satellites. In parallel with defining the roles ofeach institution beyond its national boundary, it is also necessary toidentify clear educational needs and target groups for which the use ofsatellites would be appropriate. This requires careful market researchinto educational needs that transcend national boundaries, cultures andlanguages. Co-operation between distance education institutions is likelyto be essential to maximise the benefits of using satellites. 2. Success is likely to go to those courses which use a combination of technologies and course design appropriate t6-4.-Eufope-ah4ide-'-iiidieiicer---- -..-This suggests that as far as the use of satellites is concerned, there is aneed to design courses specially for a European-wide audience, ratherthan the use or even adaptation of existing courses. It also suggests theneed for new types of course design, built round satellite and othertechnologies. 3. Joint production of courses intended for international use in Europeis likely not only to reduce the cost to any single institution, but also toavoid cultural ethnocentricity. 21 22 4. Experience in using broadcast television and radio for distance _ education indicates the need to provide adequate print and tutorial support and follow-up, and the need for a clear educational rationale for using television, audio or data, for any satellite initiatives. 5. The supporting costs, and especially the cost of production, are likely to be far greater than the actual transmission and reception costs of satellites. 6. The restricted access to satellite reception for certain target groups must be remembered, particularly where oper. access is paramount. 7. Governments will need to ease FIT control over access to up-links and tariffs if educational use of satellites is to be encouraged. In particular, educational institutions need to be able to up-link directly from their sites. As with other technologies, educational goals need to be determined first, but are inevitably influenced by the availability of a technology. Just as it would be a mistake for satellite technology to determine educational priorities, it would also be a mistake for distance education institutions to ignore the potential of satellites. Successful use of satellites will require some adaptation of our teaching methods, but at the same time should allow new target groups to be reached. Cable Probably no other medium will vary as much in its availability between different European countries as cable television. Some countries (such as Holland and Belgium) are already extensively provided: in others, such as the U.K., France and West Germany, cable penetration is low, and is unlikely to reach even 50% coverage within 10 years, under the most 22 optimistic estimates. There has been a lot of high pressure salesmanship about the interactive possibilities of cable television for education. However, the interaction possible on co-axial cable systems is extremely limited; fibre-optic cabling will permit greater interaction, but there will be very few homes with a direct, two-way fibre optic cable link. Distribution is likely to be via fibre optic cable for the trunking, but the links into individual houses are likely to remain co-axial, for cost reasons. 'Star' fibre-optic capability, whereby any single point on the system can link to any other point at full television bandwidth, will almost certainly be limited to antra- and inter-institutional communications, and even these are likely to be few and far between by 1907. Cable television is essentially a local distribution facility. It has potential for campus-based higher education institutions to extend their teaching off-campus, in the areas covered by a cable network, or for local support (tutorials, discussion groups, etc.) for national distaace teaching institutions. Cable may also be used as a means of distributing video programmes distributed nationally, where terrestrial broadcasting facilities are not available. The successful use though of cable for distance education depends on the widespread availability of cable in the homes in the target area, and, as always with television, on the resources available for production. Given the limited funds available to campus-based institutions for off-campus teaching in most European countries, and given the other priorities for local support (i.e. face-to-face tutorials and personal counselling) in national distance teaching institutions, locally-produced programming is likely to be limited to relaying lectures and studio discussion, with in some cases live phone-in sessions from students and other viewers. Cable may in some countries result in alternative distance education 23 offerings at a local level from conventional higher education, but I would be surprised if this presents a major competitive threat to European distance education institutions. Cable may also offer an alternative system of distribution for television programmes for national distance teaching institutions where terrestrial broadcasting services are not available, but for such institutions cable is always likely to be a poor alternative to national terrestrial broadcast distribution. Video-discs Video-discs have great potential for education and especially training. They can be used either in a stand-alone form, in the same way as a video-cassette, but with much more precise and convenient control; or combined with a micro-computer. The latter can be used for video-enhanced pre-programmed computer-based learning, and/or as a huge audio-visual data-base, with the computer enabling access according to any pre-specified criterion. However, the value of video-discs for distance education is lizely to be severely limited over the next 10 years. There are two main limitations. The first is the lack of equipment in student homes. Less than 1% of homes in Europe currently have a video-disc player. Laservision (the most suitable form of video-disc technology currently available for education) in particular is being developed primarily for the 'professional' market. Taus while Laservision is likely to be valuable within conventional institutions, summer schools or even study centres, and also at the work-place, where the same training programme is required in many outlets, it is unlikely to find its way into a majority of European homes over the next 10 years. Currently. the minimum cost of a computer-controlled video-disc workstation is £2,000 (USE3,200), which puts it out of the home market in its present form. The second limitation on the use of computer-contro..ed video-discs is 24 25 the very high cost of production. There are various ways in which these costs can be kept down, e.g. joint production, where the costs are shared by several institutions, or 'generic' discs, which are basically archives of video material, around which an individual institution can write its own computer programme, but even in these instances, production costs are still relatively high, given the likely number of users. Thirdly, the technological future of video-discs is still uncertain. CD-V (compact disc video) has just reached the consumer market in Japan. These are compact discs which combine sound and pictures, and could also include data. This technology is though just emerging, and as with all new technology of this kind, is initially aimed at the entertainment market. It is not yet clear that it will emerge in a form suitable for education, or if it does, how long it will be before educational material appropriate for distance education is available. CD-V is likely to reach a much higher home market penetration than Laservision, but I would be surprised if it is in more than 60% of European homes by 1997, given the rate of market penetration of earlier technologies such as colour TV, video-cassettes and audio-only compact discs. Video-discs then are likely to be a technology with valuable but limited use for distance education over the next 10 years. I expect to see some development for distance education, and it is certainly a technology that needs to be closely monitored. mputer technology Until recently it has been necessary to use local centres to deliver computer-based distance teaching, either on terminals linked to a central mainframe computer, or on stand-alone micro-computers located at the local centre. Consideraole problems have been encountered in this method of delivery, such as queueing, inconvenience, or students physically unable to reach the local cent: Ps at the times when the service is available. This has been a major restriction on the extensive use of computers for distance education. However, in Feliary, 1988, the British Open University will offer three courses requiring students to have a home computer, one of which (DT200) will have 1,500 students, and in 1989, it will offer a foundation course (1:102) to approximately 4,000 students which will also .requi:7e each student to have a home computer. This has been made possible primarily by the reduction in costs of 'business-standard' (i.e. MS-DOS) computing equipment to a level which allows students to purchase or rent machines, and by some additional funding from government sources to subsidise the courses. It is important to distinguish between the different potential uses of home computers in distance education. I have put these in what I consider to be the order of importance: 1. Teaching about computers 2. Computers as study tools 3. Educational communication 4. Administration 5. Pre-programmed computer-based learning Teaching about computers There is a great demand for courses which improve people's knowledge, understanding and skills in using computer technology. Whether it is learning about programming, computer hardware, or computer systems, access to computer equipment is essential for this kind of course. 27 26 Computers as study tools There is another important role for computers though, and that is as a general tool for helping the study process. Word-processing, spread sheets, and access to data-bases can help students with note-taking, essay-writing, and bibliographies. It is unlikely that &tudents would be required to have access for this sole purpose, but students will increasingly acquire computers voluntarily for this purpose. Educational communications Because written or graphic information entered through a computer keyboard or even a television camera can be digitised, computers can also transfer words and still pictures between different sites. In fact, data transmission works out much more cheaply per word than voice transmission, because being digitised it can be re-coded and packed tightly, then sent very quickly to the other end, where it is decoded and unpacked back into 'normal' text and pictures, thus occupying less capacity on the telephone system than speech. This has several major implications for distance education. It means that any student or tutor with access to a computer with word-processing software connected to a telephone can communicate.:with:-anrother similarly connected student or tutor, in the form of written messages, i.e. via 'electronic mail'. Consequently, tutors can communicate quickly with students and vice versa. An assignment can be sent to the tutor, marked and returned to the student as quickly as the tutor can get round to marking it. Alternatively, tutors and students can join computer 'conferences', where everyone who wishes can contribute comments or discuss a particular topic, and where the conference is available for reading whenever the student wishes, no matter how dispersed the students. Lastly, remote data-bases can be accessed, and information can 28 27 be copied from the data-base and be down-loaded into the students' or tutors' own computer and stored for later use. Computerised communications need not be limited to mail and conferencing facilities, but can also be used for the transfer of large quantities of text, such as drafts of course units, provided that the material has been keyed in through a computer keyboard; similarly, it can be used for transferring large quantities of research data. Such services require local micro-computers or terminals, a black-box or integrated chip called a mudem which codes the computer information into a suitable form for transmission via the telephone system, a main frame computer on which resides the communications software which acts as the mail system, and good computer communications procedures. The British Open University is introducing .a computer communication system for 1500 students and 80 tutors following a course on information technology in 1988, and is already using computer communications with the Universities of Guelph, Athabasca and British Columbia in Canada, and Deakin University in Australia. It is possible to communicate in this way with any European university connected to the EARN system, provided as a free data communications service by IBM. There are several advantages of electronic communications. First, it is relatively easy for both students and tutors to use. Secondly. there are no 'up-front' production costs, as with pre-programmed computer-based learning. The teaching and learning occurs through natural communication between teachers and learners. Thirdly, electronic communication alows for other forms of communication, besides didactic teaching, such as discussions. and socialising with other students. if at a distance. Fourth, it allows for a more open-ended and social form of learning than pre-programmed computer-based learning, thus being appropriate for subject areas where interpretation and controversy are important. At the moment, the British Open University is using electronic communications as an additional service for students; it is possible though to envisage certain advanced-level courses where the course design would be radically different, with far greater emphasis on student-tutor communication, both by telephone and electronically, and with far less emphasis on specially prepared texts. This will have major implications for course design, will radically change the role of the academic, and will also radically change the cost structure of a course. Administration Once students and tutors have electronic communication, this can beused for administrative purposes as well. Student registration, fee payment via credit card, assignment grades, delivery of up-dated course or university information are all possible electronically. The pott.,..ual for reducing administrative costs are substantial; however, there are also major implications in respect of re-designing admission and registration procedures, staff re-training, and changes in organisational structures. Itis for these reasons that I suspect that the role of electronic communication for administrative purposes is likely to take some time to occur, and is likely to follow academic developments. Pre-programmed computer-based learning Pre-programmed computer-based learning refers to any form of teaching where the learner is directed by, and interacts with, pre-programmed teaching material contained in the computer software. This is called variously CAL, CB1, CAI, etc. I shall use the term CBL (computer-based learning). The distinction between CBL and electronic communication isthat in the latter case, the interaction is through a computer terminal but with other sources, such as another learner, tutor or administrator, and not with the computer programme itself. CBL can present and store information requiring low levels of symbolic representation (e.g. words, numbers and simple line drawings). It is useful for manipulating quantifiable and rule-governed variables, as in simulations. It is useful for testing students' knowledge and identifying areas where further study is necessary. It allows students to work at their own pace and to obtain feedback on their progress. However, CBL, has been around for some time now, and has come in for a great deal of criticism. For instance, a report by the OECD's Centre for Research and Innovation states: 'all the experts and users unanimously deplore the mediocrity and unsuitability of the courseware currently available or the high cost of good quality courseware'. CERI, 1983 The CERI report complains about poor computer graphics, no colour or voice input, and the difficulty of transferring courseware between different types of machines. Such courseware is also criticised for using poor learning strategies. There is a heavy emphasis on drill and practice, passive page-turning, and the use of limited responses (single keys or individual keywords). A major problem is that good quality CBL requires more powerful micros than those available for home use. There is of course high quality courseware available and much of it has been developed in distance teaching institutions. However, it is very expensive to produce, and may require on-line access to a mainframe. Artificial intelligence Will artificial intelligence, such as 'intelligent' tutoring, or expert 31 30 systems, result in better CBL, i.e. overcoming the criticisms above, within the next 10 years? This is perhaps one of the most difficult technological questions to answer. There are threepossible answers to this question, depending on which experts you approach. The first answer is: 'Yes, if you give us enough money for research.' The second answer is: 'Yes, but not within 10 years, because the basic knowledge base on which to design useful artificial intelligence for CBL is not yet in place, and it will take more than 10 years to develop that knowledge base to a level that is useful for CBL, and then convert that knowledge into useful teaching materials for hc:ne-based students.' The third answer is: 'No, not at least in my lifetime.' This may be for a number of reasons. There is a view that no matter how sophisticated the computer software and the design of the courseware, people learn best outside a machine environment, through social interaction, through feelings and sensitivities that can never be reproduced in a computer programme (see for instance, Weizenbaum, 1986). Another group would argue that although it may be technically possible to use artificial intelligence techniques to teach effectively through computer-based learning, the cost of designing and delivering such teaching materials can be justified only in exceptional circumstances, and these will not apply to the majority of subjfkA areas to be taught at a distance. Even if such courseware could be developed, it will need so much computing power that it could not run on the kind of machines that students are likely to have in their homes even 10 years from now, My own view is that there are already some areas where CBL is useful (those outlined on p.30), and that over the next few years a wider range of areas will be identified as a result of artificial intelligence developments and the increasing power of home micros. However, my own view is that CBL will almost certainly be only one component. and a 32 31 relatively minor component, of distance learning, over the next 10 years. This is because I believe that higher education should be as much about interpretation and the application of high-level intellectual skills of analysis, application and original thinking as about reproducing accurately handed-down knowledge, and that CBL is a long way from being able to handle much of the thinking and learning that I believe to be important in higher education. The dominant technologies What technologies then are likely to dominate distance education over the next 10 years, and what are the implications for distance education? Home-based learners Table 4; Home Access to chnolo gyi We stern Europel Print (via mail) Now 1997 100% 100% Terrestrial broadcasts (radio and TV) s 100% Audio-cassettes 90-99% 99% Telephone 50-90% 70-99% Cable TV 10-80% 20-80% Video-cassettes 30-60% 50-99% Viewdata Home computer Compact disc Satellite 'IV Video disc player 1-40% 5-90% 1-40% 10-70% 5-35% 50-90% 0-5% 5-63% 0-1% 5-35% 33 32 For this group, availability of equipment in the home is, in my view, the most important criterion. If distance teaching 4s to be home-based, and as open as possible to all kinds of students, account must- be made of the limited technology available in the homes for every potential student. As indicated in Table 4, home-based learning will still be limited in some European countries to very few technologies for all potential students: i.e. print, and audio-cassettes. For other European countries, the telephone, terrestrial broadcasting (but not for European-wide education), video-cassettes and home-computing (for selected courses) will also be possible for all potential students. Compact disc players are also expected to reach high penetration in some EEC countries by 1997, but whether this will still be sound and data only, or video a:; well, is uncertain. However, there will be difficulties in home-based access for several other technologies. Neither satellite TV reception nor home computing is expected to be in more than 65% of homes in any European country by 1996. This could mean that for some home-based target groups (particularly the unemployed and the less educated), these technologies will still be inappropriate for home learning, unless special provision can be made. It also seems unlikely that video discs will be a serious proposition for home-based learning in the near future. Lastly, there are very large national variations, particularly regarding cable TV and viewdata (i.e. telephone-based teletext services). It can be seen that increased dependence on technology for teaching can not only widen the difference between provision in different European countries, but can also reduce the open-ness of an individual institution. On the other hand, technology does make possible (indeed requires) a wider variety of course design. I foresee three main kinds of course, with a variety of intermediate positions: 34 33 1. The current, primarily text-based course, but with greater use of electronic publishing. 2. 'Lecture-based' courses, using cable, satellite or video-cassette based technology, supplemented by set reading (text-books, etc.). 3. Electronic courses, using the telephone and electronic communications, with limited textual support. based primarily on interaction between tutors and students on a regular and on-going basis. It is likely that these different kinds of courses will be directed at different kinds of students. Centre- or work-based learning To some extent, this decision will depend on what technology is already available for other purposes. For instance, if every employee to be trained already has access to their own computer terminal and screen for work purposes, then this can be used Elsa for training purposes. Certainly, education and training located at the work-bench or in local centres will be less restricted. For instance, at a reception or work-station cost of between UK£400 and £1000, satellite TV and computer-based learning become realistic propositions for individuals at their work-place or in local centres. Even video-discs become viable where they can be shared by several users, or in businesses where they are likely to have another function as well (such as marketing holidays in travel agents). Communications within and between systems There are far fewer restrictions on the use of technology here. Virtually anything should be possible in 10 years time. Technology can be used for training of tutors and regional staff at a distance, for joint production of 35 34 courses between different institutions, and for development of joint policies between institutions, all done at a distance. For instance, using acombination of telephone teleconferencing and electronic mail, this 'meeting' could be held without any of us having to travel from our desks. However, for this to happen, a number of steps need to be taken. Policy-makers and academics in each institution need work-place micro-equipment and electronic communication facilities; there needs tobe common standards agreed for electronic mail; governments and the EEC need to be lobbied regarding satellite regulation. These are primarily technical issues, but they depend on policy regarding co-operation between institutions being put into place first. Conclusions Technology for home-based learning will still be relatively restricted in anumber of countries, even 10 years from now. For some countries, therewill be a wider range of technologies for distance teaching, and greaterpotential for cross-national delivery of courses. This could lead to a much wider variety of course design and delivery, with major implications for organisational structures and work roles. There is a danger though that too great a commitment to new technologies could limit the open-ness of ditance teaching institutions. Communication within and between institutions will be considerably eased by technology, although steps needto be taken now to standardise technology and procedures between different institutions. Technology will change the nature of the distance learning experience. Technological developments need to be preceded and accompanied byresearch and evaluation. to monitor carefully not only the learning butalso the cost and organisational implications. It is important that research priorities are carefully defined. At the moment, governments are givingpriority to basic research in the areas of artificial intelligence. and for 35 36 development of interactive video. However, distance teaching institutions should be investing in more immediate and practical issues, such as monitoring student access to equipment, the design implications of video-cassettes, evaluating new types of course design 'based on new technology, and studying the cost and organisational implications of introducing new technology. The main point to emerge though is that technological decisions need to be preceded by policy and educational decisions, although at the same time it needs to be recognised that the availability of new technology does allow for major changes in the way we teach at a distance. The choice to be made though is not what technology but what kind of teaching we want to provide. References BATES, A.W. (1987) Satellites for Commonwealth Education: Some Policy Issues: Main Report London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 63 pp. BATES, A.W. (in press) 'Television, learning and distance education', International Council for Distance Education Bulletin. BATES, A. W. and KERN, L. (1977) Alternative Media Technologies for the Open University Milton Keynes: Open University Institute of Educational Technology, 72 pp CIT RESEARCH (1987) New Satellite Communications in Western Europe London: CIT KIRKWOOD, A. (1987) Access to Video Equipment for Study Purposes- Undergraduate Students in 1986 Milton Keynes: Open University Institute of Educational Technology, 18 pp. 37 36 SCREEN DIGEST (1987) World Video Markets Review', Screen Digest. November, pp.249-256 TYDEMAN, J. (1987) Cable and Satellite Television Reception in West Europe Luxembourg: Societe Europeenne des Satellites VVEIZENBAUM, J. (1984) 'Artificial intelligence' in Computer Power and Human Reason.: London: Penguin 3 37 
work_l5eyyktiirbafnwjiw4osobh6y	----	10.11648.j.ijaaa.20180402.11 International Journal of Architecture, Arts and Applications 2018; 4(2): 10-16 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijaaa doi: 10.11648/j.ijaaa.20180402.11 ISSN: 2472-1107 (Print); ISSN: 2472-1131 (Online) Architecture, Virtual Reality, Spatial Visualization, Learning Styles, and Distance Education Michael Duwain Brazley School of Architecture, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, USA Email address: To cite this article: Michael Duwain Brazley. Architecture, Virtual Reality, Spatial Visualization, Learning Styles, and Distance Education. International Journal of Architecture, Arts and Applications. Vol. 4, No. 2, 2018, pp. 10-16. doi: 10.11648/j.ijaaa.20180402.11 Received: May 23, 2018; Accepted: July 17, 2018; Published: August 20, 2018 Abstract: What is the next generation of learning technology: the cellphone, your watch, virtual reality, or all of the above. The research question being asked is: How can Virtual Reality (VR) assist students in learning? This research proves that virtual reality technology does enhance 3D spatial visualization skills of students. Due to the nature of their learning styles, many students need to interact with 3D scenes to enhance their spatial visualization skills, to see and understand the 3D model. This research proves that virtual reality technology will assist in giving both online and face-to-face architectural students a better education and help them to improve their spatial visualization skills. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Spatial Visualization, Learning Styles, Distance Education 1. Introduction Each year the number of students taking at least one online course increases. This study investigates using virtual reality to increase 3D spatial visualization skills for both online and face-to-face teaching of architectural students. Everyone has their own learning style(s); virtual reality and M-Learning (mobile learning) for architectural students include visual and real-world contexts, followed by verbal information for best results. Interaction between teacher and student, real world problems, and making their own decisions about learning, gives architectural students the most satisfaction with M-Learning and Virtual Reality [8]. Due to the nature of spatial visualization, many students need to see and interact with 3D scenes to get tangible feelings of the 3D model. The outcomes of this research include but is not limited to the following: a better understanding of online education, how to enhance 3D spatial visualization skills with the use of Virtual Reality technology, a reduction in the gender gap in spatial visualization abilities and making this knowledge generalizable. 2. Literature Review Constructivism is a belief of learning based on the idea that knowledge is created by the individual through his/her contacts with their environment [31]. Constructivists believe in individual understanding of reality [33]. Sjoberg [33] argues that constructivism is a learning methodology that gives learners the opportunity to gain experiences by which they can solicit their own questions and build their own models. Sjoberg [33] also argues that constructivism enables a community of learners to participate in reflection, activities, and discourse; inspires learners to ownership of ideas and purse independence, shared social relationships, and enablement as the goal. Learning becomes a self-regulatory activity: students figure out things for themselves instead of responding to stimuli. Constructivists argued that everyone has their own special learning style. Sometimes, the learning styles have as much to do with how the brain works as environment. Autopsies have been performed on both dyslexic and normal brains. The dyslexic brain showed even development on both spheres of the mind, while the normal mind showed asymmetrical growth in only one sphere. Equal development of both spheres permits learning- 11 Michael Duwain Brazley: Architecture, Virtual Reality, Spatial Visualization, Learning Styles, and Distance Education differently Student to enjoy special gifts. They “see” things 3-dimensionally, giving them a unique kind of spatial awareness. This allows some of them to be, among other things, excellent architects, inventors, directors of film and theatre, interior decorators, and teachers for other learning- differently students (students who learn differently) [3]. 2.1. Learning Styles Mobile learning has been compared to constructivist learning involving creativity and spontaneity [17]. Corrent- Agostinho [1] argues four general principles of a constructivist-learning situation: (1) learning is a development of construction; learning happens through social consultations of meaning; learners are occupied with authentic contexts; philosophical thinking is a final goal. “However, at the postgraduate level, provision of extensive background material as downloadable text-based or media- rich resources is vital if mobile learners are to start constructing their own understanding of complex issues” [6]. Ferriman [13] argues that there are seven categories of learning styles: visual, physical, aural, verbal, logical, social, and solitary. In the visual category, individuals use images, pictures, color, and diagrams to learn. The physical category individuals learn by doing. Aural, people use sound to learn, recordings, rhythms, and music. The verbal category, individuals use words to learn, reading aloud, speech, and writing. The logical category, individuals use logic and reasoning to comprehend a concept. Social, these individuals learn best in groups and enjoy working with others. The solitary category includes individuals that enjoy working & learning alone. It is safe to say that most individuals have no one learning style but use a combination of styles to learn. Architect use visual, physical, logical, and solitary styles to learn. 2.2. Attributes Relevant To M-Learning First, mobile learning will not be effective unless you have high-quality internet service. M-learning opportunities are created when educational technologies and resources are coupled with mobile devices. Despite socio-political isolation, cultural or geographical distance, mobile learning allows contact and communication with other professionals. Lessons from the past have taught us that effective pedagogy leads to effective learning [6]. Beckmann argues other attributes relevant to mobile learning include: rather than the technology, it is the student that is mobile; learning is intertwined with other actions as part of life; learning can produce as well as gratify goals; the management and control of learning can be dispersed; context is built by students through interaction; formal education can both conflict and complement mobile learning; mobile learning increases ethical issues of ownership and privacy. Mobile learners construct their own conceptual understanding of the social and physical world and interact accordingly. Gary Long and Carol Marchetti [25] argue, that students that take online courses with high levels of interaction make better grades, report more learning than students in similar face-to–face classes. 2.3. M-Learning It has been argued by many that the best predictors of student satisfaction with online courses are: learner-instructor interaction, internet (and software) self-efficacy, and learner- content interaction. It was also argued that gender, year in school, and learner-learner interaction were not factors in student satisfaction with online courses. Barriers to M- Learning include internet down, cheating, miscommunication, and lack of student motivation. Architectural students claim to learn best with visual instruction, followed by ‘real world’ context [8]. A survey given to online architectural graduate students in 2013, revealed that they learn best with visual information, followed by real world contexts and third with verbal information. Graduate students appeared to be very satisfied with their learner-instructor interaction; not as enthusiastic or satisfied with learner-learner interaction; showed mixed satisfaction for authentic learning; expressed some satisfaction for active learning and personal relevance. The majority of students expressed satisfaction with student autonomy and their online class. The scales that brought the students the most satisfaction are Learner-Instructor Interaction, Active Learning, Student Autonomy, and Satisfaction with M-Learning [8]. Graduate students listed “anytime, anywhere learning” as one of the major benefits to M-Learning. Some of the barriers to M-Learning mentioned were: software, missing personal connections, communication, and D2L. Students commented that video and recorded lectures along with online D2L classes would help improve M-Learning [8]. Felix Kamuche [20] argues “This study provides clear evidence that faculty can use learning styles data to help them design creative matches with students learning preferences. …Clearly, the author can say students learned better when instruction was geared toward their learning style”. Everyone has their own learning style(s); M-Learning for architectural students should include more visual and real-world contexts, followed by verbal information for best results. Interaction between teacher and student, real world problems, and making their own decisions about learning, gives architectural students the most satisfaction with M- Learning. Scribner and Anderson [32] argue the success of integrating teaching methods that enhances different learning styles to improve scholarship. The literature review and the results of this research study support the following recommendations for teaching graphical representation. Educators in technical education programs should 1. Incorporate instructional methods that address modality learning styles when teaching spatial visualization 2. Use modality learning styles to help students with a single dominant learning style strengthen weaker International Journal of Architecture, Arts and Applications 2018; 4(2): 10-16 12 learning styles 3. Incorporate tools such as sketching, three-dimensional handheld models, three-dimensional solid model software, and orthographic and isometric projections to aid in developing spatial visualization [32]. 2.4. Spatial Visualization Spatial ability is characterized as one’s innate capability to visualize and rotate objects, mentally, before formal training, i.e., one is born with the gift [36]. But spatial visualization skills can be acquired or learned through training. “It is well documented that spatial visualization skills are teachable [9, 4, 23]. Sheryl Sorby [35] was one of the first researchers to connect the gender gap with spatial visualizations skills. “Unfortunately, studies show that 3-D spatial visualization skills of women often lag behind those of their male counterparts” [35, 36, 39, 40]. Smith [34] and Maier [26] found visualization skills to be a major predictor of success in technical professions. In her paper, Sorby explains the Piagetian theory of the three stages of spatial visualization development, the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test, and the development of a new curriculum to improve spatial visualization skills. The course consisted of four hours of lab and lecture per week for ten weeks, computer lab manual, textbook, and instructional aids. The Pre- and Posttest responses were studied according to gender; spatial visualization skills improved overall but the gender gap continued to exist [35, 15, 38, 40]. It is argued that computer & video games, physical sports, construction toys, and courses such as drafting, math, and shop have a positive relationship with 3D spatial visualization skills [14, 28, 15, 39]. Sorby argues that spatial visualization skills training has a positive impact on grades earned, student retention and graduation rates for students of all ages, especially underrepresented minorities and women [41, 42]. Yet in another study “…it was determined that the spatial skills of some minority groups, in particular African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native American males, appear to be significantly lower than those of White students” [41]. The spatial skills of international students were also found to be behind the majority of American students. Toptas, Celik, and Karaca [43] in their study of 8 th graders using Google Sketch Up (GSU) software, argues that there was a significant increase in spatial visualization skills, differential aptitudes, and mental rotation skills after the posttests. The use of Google Sketch Up helped to improve all students’ spatial visualization skills; but female students, compared to male students, performed better on the posttests [43]. If the debate is to be moved forward, a better understanding of other types of training programs that increase spatial visualization such as three-dimensional virtual reality programs need to be developed. We may want to revise our treatment program. Students may require more time outside of the classroom to work with GSU. …If students are provided with a computer for use, we can log the amount of time they use the software and for what purpose [43]. Feng, Morgan, and Ahmed [12] argue that existing learning materials and courses are not well suited to aid students in developing their spatial visualization skills and that a new approach is needed. “The main contention of this study is that a thorough understanding of students learning styles and abilities combined with the exploitation of advances in Virtual Reality technology, especially online Virtual Reality applications, has the potential to offer an effective instruction tool for improving CAD student’s spatial visualization skills” [12]. A learning environment of virtual models in Web3D will allow students to gain a better understanding of 3D objects and increase their spatial visualization skills [12]. Ji Young Cho [10] questions whether the existing spatial visualization test are ‘domain-specific’ and if they should be. If the tests are domain-specific, one domain does not fit everyone. Cho [10] also argues improvement of spatial visualization scores by way of virtual reality technology. This raises a question about whether existing tools measure domain-specific spatial ability as well and whether the development of tool to measure domain-specific spatial skills are needed. In research of and training for spatial ability, one of the recent changes regards the use of virtual environment technologies. Many recent publications [30], have reported the improvement of spatial tests through the use of virtual reality [10]. Dayana Farzeeha Ali, et al., [2] argues students that are taught with virtual environment courseware have improved skills of mentally rotating 3D objects, and visualizing cross sections of objects. “New and innovative approaches to using technology, including the use of various hardware and software, has shifted the paradigm and introduced nontraditional methods teaching and learning” [7]. Spatial visualization skills of students are positively enhanced by virtual environment courseware [19] “The findings from this study support the conclusion that the virtual learning environments become one of the key factors in the delivery of education in the higher learning institutions” [2]. Distinct advantages of virtual learning environments include: the mobile learning aspect gives students anytime, anyplace access; the unique character of virtual reality is a motiving influence to students to increase their spatial visualization skills; and the technology of Web3D which integrates Flash, XML, HTML, 2D drawings and 3d models [12]. In addition, it has been established that existing tutorials and learning materials are not well suited to assist students in developing their spatial ability. It is increasingly acknowledged that there is a need for a new approach, which fosters CAD students’ spatial visualization skills… It is the contention of this study that a thorough understanding of students’ characteristics, learning styles and abilities 13 Michael Duwain Brazley: Architecture, Virtual Reality, Spatial Visualization, Learning Styles, and Distance Education combined with the exploitation of advances in Virtual Reality technology, especially online Virtual Reality applications, has the potential to offer an effective instructiontool for improving CAD students’ spatial visualization skills [12]. Jianping Yue [47] used first year community college and high school students to perform a classical experiment, using control and experimental groups to test spatial visualization performance with conventional isometric drawings and realistic 3D views. He found that all groups that studied with realistic 3D views performed better on the spatial visualization tests than the control groups [21, 22]. The high school group studying realistic 3D images showed the greatest improvement, with a 15% increase on their posttests [47]. “The study results provide evidence that 3D solid model enhances students’ performance on visualization tests, thus making it a better tool to be used in spatial visualization tests to help students visualize virtual objects and to allow educators to obtain accurate assessments of students’ visualization abilities” [47]. 2.5. Promoting Generalizability and Transferability of the New Genre The most practical issues addressing this new genre is how to improve one’s visualization skills and how do you reduce the adjoining gender gap. We believe the answer to both questions are ‘Virtual Reality’. Literature reviews has shown that the use of virtual reality has significantly improved one’s spatial visualization skills while all but eliminating the gender gap. Current research includes: middle & high school students learning science by means of mixed-reality technologies, augmented reality technologies, Internet System for Networked Sensor Experimentation (iSENSE) technologies, simulation and embodied learning, gaming toward positive social behaviors and health, collaborative problem solving through digital sketching & touch, PerSketchTivity – empowering engineers through perspective sketching (something architects have been doing for years – digitally sketching), workflow visualization systems for design-based research, using gaming to improve visualization skills, removing gender differences in 3-D spatial skills, and multi-media software for the development of 3-D spatial visualization ability. Our new learning platform incorporates the majority of the above research but is developed along a new paradigm using both ‘learning styles’ and architecture. The existing engineering models has had limited success for the last twenty-five or more years; our new learning platform, incorporates among other features ‘3D & Virtual Reality software’, is ideal for addressing today’s issues. Some of the weaknesses of our solution are the dependence upon the internet, computers, and headgear. The type of lessons we are expecting to extract from this innovation include; how do students use virtual reality activities; what kind of practices and new opportunities will virtual reality afford students and teachers; and how do these new opportunities relate with learning? We know that virtual reality is more effective than similar activities without simulations and sensors but does it promote deep and coherent learning? And what kind of curriculum and instructor support best enhances scholarship based virtual reality learning? 3. Methodology The research methodology is a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The qualitative methods we have already seem in the literature review. The quantitative methods come by way of Virtual Reality course projects and open-ended survey questions given to the 2017 online Graduate Architectural Thesis Studio and 2017 Senior Urban Design face-to-face studio. Both classes received the same open-ended survey with the exception that the seniors were asked for extra credit to explain by way of essay, the process they used for their virtual reality presentation. 4. Analysis of Data The graduate thesis studio had eleven (11) students and the senior urban design studio had twelve (12) students. Each graduate student was asked to draw a virtual reality 3D walkthrough in and around their thesis building project. The senior urban design studio was organized into four groups of three students each and asked to draw a virtual reality 3D walkthrough around their design project. The seniors were also given extra credit if they could transfer the 3D walkthrough into their smart phones to be used in virtual reality headsets supplied by the school. Both architectural studios were asked the same four (4) open-end questions: 1) Have you ever drawn 3D’s walkthroughs before? 2) Did you find the 3D walkthroughs difficult? 3) Was drawing the 3D’s walkthrough a good educational experience? 4) Tell me in your own words what you thought of the 3D walkthrough experience, your opinion of the exercise, and how it could be improved. The graduate thesis students were about even on Question #1, having drawn a 3D walkthrough in the past, with five (5) ‘Yes’ and six (6) ‘No’ answers. Question #2, finding the 3D’s difficult, had the same split, with five (5) ‘Yes’ and six (6) ‘No’ answers; most thought that the experience was very time consuming. For Question #3, all eleven (11) students thought that the 3D’s walkthroughs were a good educational experience. Students comments to Question #3 include the following: Creating the 3D panorama tours that I have decided to purse are great educational experience in my opinion. It has helped me to really explore the space and make changes based on how the interior perspectives changes when you turn around in the space [11]. I find the 3D walk-through very educational because it is the visual aspect of all of these individual design elements International Journal of Architecture, Arts and Applications 2018; 4(2): 10-16 14 come together for a vision of a project that is un-built. It gives the designer and users an idea how the space will feel and how users can move through the space. Where spaces may be too tight, or feel too large, where views are blocked (privacy) and framed (focal point). Walk-throughs visually help make sure the design is on track [16]. Some of the graduate comments to Question #4, what they thought of the 3D experience are as follows: It’s very time consuming but in the end, very informative in showing things you may not have visualized in the design [29]. I think that 3D walkthroughs are another tool in the architect’s toolbox and can come in handy for certain jobs to better show a client what something might feel and look like. …All that being said I think the 3D experience is the way the industry is trending and will become a necessary skill to have [18]. My experience with the walk-through has been good overall, time consuming and hard on the computer, but it has definitely helped aid in the overall design of my project and gives the audience a better understanding. I think you are on the right path as VR is becoming more integrated into the design and architecture field. One tip would be to explore the different software/options for the student earlier as it seems many are not familiar with the method and delivery [46]. It is of interest to note that of the eleven graduate students, the two female students decided to develop ‘Panorama 360 pictures’ instead of a 3D walk-through video. The ‘Panorama’ is a device where you link six digital pictures together to give you a 360 view of one space; not nearly equal to the visualization experience of the 3D walk-through of the entire building. This appears to be an example of the gap in spatial visualization skills between men and women. The seniors were more at ease with the 3D walkthroughs than the graduate studio; it is believed that the youth of the studio and group efforts made the difference. For Question #1, only one (1) student out of twelve (12) had previously drawn a 3D walk-through. But nine of the twelve (12) students expressed no difficulty doing so. And for Question #3, all twelve students thought that the 3D walkthroughs were a good educational experience. In answering Question #3, one of the groups stated the following: As a group, we do think creating walk-throughs were a good learning experience. The walk-through allows us as designers to better translate our design to our clients, so learning how to create these realistic walk-through will help us in the future as grad students and while working in an architectural firm [27]. In Question #4, the seniors were to express in their own words the 3D walk-through experience: We think 3D walk-throughs will become increasingly common in the future. As technology and our skills advance they will become easier to make, yet more complex in character [45] As a group, we agree that it was beneficial to our design and a good exercise in 3D rendering software. Improvements that could be made is incorporating the 3D walkthrough into a semester long project, so there will be ample time to create a quality walkthrough and develop the project on a more human scale [5]. The senior urban design studio was also given extra credit if they use essay form to describe constructing their 3D walk- throughs presentations and putting them into Virtual Reality headsets. Most of their essays were similar with the exception of whether they used Sketch-up or Revit software: For our groups personal experience with the 3D walk- throughs, we started by creating our sites, buildings, etc. in Sketch-up, so that we had all of the spaces and faces of buildings finished. We then took that master Sketch-up file and put it into the rending software Lumion. While in Lumion we each took our perspective views, added land-scaping, people, vehicles, and updated building materials to create the most realistic environments we could. Once everything was added, our perspectives were taken and we took a series of screen shots through the site in a way that provided the walk-through. Lumion then knotted all of these images into one smooth movie style walk-through. This file was then rendered for multiple hours to produce an HD quality experience. To get this video into the goggles, just upload the rendered movie file into iFun Video Converter to make it VR compatible. The final step is for adding music to the video and all you have to do is load your final movie into windows movie maker and load an audio track that fits your design feel [27]. From this analysis, it has become apparent that younger designers (seniors) have an easier time with the 3D software and instruction than the older ones (graduate students). And that group work makes the 3D virtual reality project easier. 5. Conclusion This research has proven its hypotheses, that Virtual Reality technology does enhance 3D spatial visualization skills of students, for both online and face-to-face classes. Due to the nature of their learning styles, many students need to interact with 3D scenes to enhance their spatial visualization skills, to see and understand the 3D model. The comments of students indicate that Virtual Reality gives them a better understanding of their building project than a physical model. Students need very little instruction from their professors to learn how to use Virtual Reality technology; they are for the most part self- taught. It also appears that Virtual reality does promote deep and coherent learning. It is hypothesized that training students in 3D Virtual Reality technology, especially females, will help reduce the gender gap in spatial visualization abilities. 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work_lb3r75hrpjcp3c26xblkggitku	----	Open and Distance Education Programs of Anadolu University Since the Establishment Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1004 ScienceDirect INTE 2014 Open and distance education programs of Anadolu University since the establishment Bahar BERBEROĞLUa* aAnadolu Üniversitesi, Açıköğretim Fakültesi 26470, Eskişehir, Türkiye Abstract: In our study we evaluated the policy of Anadolu University in reaching to the community in wider sense. We examined the relationship of time with the number of programs by using linear models for 1982-2014 period. We used some specific dummy variables in the model to express the structural changes over time. According to oursignificant model, we made predictions for the next few years. In conclusion we realized that since the establishment, Anadolu University tried to answer to the demands of society from a broader perspective by monitoring the technologic developments in the world related to open and distance education. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. Keywords: Anadolu University, Open and Distance Education, Time Series, Dummy Variable, Structural Changes 1. Introduction The size of the demand for higher education both in the terms of campus or open and distance education, depends on the employment opportunities of the graduates more than the offered training programs and the names and images of the education institutions. If we assume that, all of the programs are starting after considering the employment opportunities and achievements of the students, the number of the programs will gain vital importance. For this reason, in this study by considering the structural changes, we tried to evaluate the linear relationship between the time variable and the number of open and distance education programs at Anadolu University for 1982-2014 period. As in many time series structural breaks, jumps and changes in trend may occur in the data of the historical development of Open and Distance Education. Here time is the independent variable and the number of programs is * Tel: +90 222 3350580 E-mail address: bdirem@anadolu.edu.tr © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1004&domain=pdf 3359 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 the dependent variable. These structural breaks can be observed in the data of universities as seen in various data of some countries. We discuss the structural changes which we observed in the number of programs, in the linear regression models in the scope of dummy variables. We take the subject into consideration on Anadolu University Open Education Faculty's programs. Therefore, we examined the number of programs which are opened and closed in 33-year time frame. Because for opening new programs in a university, especially in open and distance learning does not depend on only the resources, economic power, technology, sub-structure and academic staff of that university. This decision is at the same time, depends on the expectations of the young population, the demand for community education, the demand for public education in the country and many other factors. Therefore, the number of programs is a very significant variables which should be considered. 2. Open and Distance Education Programs of Anadolu University From Yesterday to Today As known, the first important example of open and distance education applications in Turkey can be regarded as YAY-KUR which was established as the result of the decision to promote the mass education policy of the 2nd Five-Year Development Plan, and nearly 50 YAY-KUR schools (vocational schools) was initiated in the years of 1975 and 1974. Yet again in the period of the 2nd Five-Year Development Plan, Eskişehir Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences established closed-circuit television system in order to make mass education in an educational institution for the first time in Turkey, with this organization, Eskişehir Academy has already established the infrastructure of open and distance education. Because in this system courses given in the television studio could be delivered to a large mass of students located in the classroom. The successful implementation of the Academy had been closely followed, examined and learned by the public administration. Indeed, in 1982 a law numbered 2547 was enacted with the goal of restructuring higher education in Turkey. While this law was being drafted the success of Eskişehir Academy was taken into account and Open Education Faculty was established at Anadolu University in Eskisehir as a first in Turkish Education System. In fact, with the establishment of this faculty we need to mention here that a very serious phenomenon has emerged. The law numbered 2547 which was acted by the need of restructuring Turkish higher education, first of all probably aimed to raise the rate of enrollment to higher education. This target would stay as a distant dream even today, without the success and the establishment of Anadolu University Open Education Faculty at that time. Anadolu University was the first university which started open and distance education with Economics and Business Administration program in Turkey, Anadolu University Open Education Faculty has wasted no time since 1982. From the first day, trained staff of the University started to prepare the textbooks according to distance learning techniques which were delivered to students in order to support television lectures. So, television programs and textbooks were used as effective training tools. Anadolu University, started to implement a powerful open and distance education system with a slogan that emphasizes both the objectives and the target points very clearly. This slogan was, planting the flag of Anadolu University in every city in the country and to offer the opportunity of higher education to all society throughout the country. Although working according to this exciting slogan, capacities of Economics and Business Administration Program in the early 80s, were limited. However, the nature of the massive demand for higher education remained for a while. But in time, the social demand has reached saturation point. Especially in the second half of the 90s 'application and registration' demands are met with significantly increased capacity by 40% and 50% at first, then fell to 25% in subsequent years. Individual demands of those who want to study in this period gained priority and weight. Therefore in these years, by taking the concentrations of individual interests and expectations into account new educational programs were opened in order to meet different demands towards the different new programs (Barkan, 1998, pp. 288-310). During the legislative changes made in the years 1993-1994, two new faculties was established with the names of Economics and Faculty of Business Administration at Anadolu University to carry out the programs of business and economics. By such organization, the expression of open education was eliminated from the diplomas. With this operation, encountering of graduates with a false perception who have equal rights with formal education graduates had been largely been prevented. Between 1990 and 1997 covering seven years, Open Education Faculty by opening several degree completion programs experience a very volatile period. These license completion programs were opened as a result of public demand and offered by the public depending on its opportunities. Thus, every day on the way to a meet a larger mass of students which was the main target and coverage, transient elevations and stability were observed. 3360 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 However, in this period Anadolu University followed the spread of open and distance learning technology and developed at the level of our world and country by succeeding in face-to-face teaching support applications with the support of country level offices which were built. While many similar open and distance education institutions around the world were failing in face-to-face teaching supports for open and distance education students. Anadolu University also induced society’s education and training demand by the help of its country wide offices. This application, as undoubtedly increase the visibility and reputation of Anadolu University, and was able to increase its resources an also contributed substantially to the subject to remain unrivaled until today. Between 1993 and 2008, Anadolu University built some new structures in order to move beyond the traditional functions of distance education and started to use much more intensive modern communication technologies. Among these, Anadolu University realized the first video-conference trial in 1997. In 1999, lectures in marketing were given by video-conferencing technology to the students in the Economics Department of Ahmet Yesevi Turk and Kazak International University in Kazakhstan. As another first, Knowledge Management Distance Education Program was opened in 2001. More Internet and computer technology in this section, based on real-time began to be engaged in teaching courses. Students attended live classes in a virtual classroom environment with the course instructor. 2001-2002 academic year, "Second University" program was launched. By 2008, Rector of the University opened a discussion and asked the university's senior academicians and management what lessons can be given by trained staff of open and distance education. A draft which has been prepared opened up for discussion by presenting proposals for new programs. After taking contributions to these proposals new programs were opened. However, these programs can be opened at short time, but that was not only because of the request of the Rector. The main reason was that the university's technological infrastructure had become available for this change. During this period, the Computer Research and Application Center (BAUM) were also ready with experience and equipment gained over the years and also have the possibility to evaluate many different exams of very large mass of students and else. In recent years, interactive learning environment is enriched for learners by offering interactive e-books, video, audio, animations. In this way, the "Information" is transferred to learners with different center distance education techniques coming out of the ordinary. Apart from that, students began to take face-to-face lectures aiming to bring together academicians and experts online, and e-seminars continues. Open Education exam are given to e-services in order to prepare students for the final exam more effectively and efficiently. Today discussion groups using customized courses cover both the instructor and course related courses, which are responsible for the exchange of information with other distance education students. Furthermore chat environments can be created. Thus, Anadolu University, creating more flexible learning models are trying to create a digital revolution. Anadolu University, also in recent years opened offices as well as Western Europe, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria and by giving weight to Open Education in Azerbaijan is showing trends of globalization 3. Methodology The time variable can affect the dependent variable in two different ways. First generally, dependent variable in the examined time series may have a trend by the effect of time. Second, time variable may have a certain effect on time series data over a certain range and also may have another effect in another range (Draper & Smith, 1981, Ağaoğlu, 1989). A number of reasons may be cited on structural changes and jumps in the series. Multiple different trends can occur in this case. In such cases, multiple regression model with dummy variables is likely to be more suitable for the trend of the event. (Ağaoğlu, 1989). Matrix of structural changes are as follows: 3361 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 The first column of the matrix above is established for the constant term. The second, third and fifth columns specify three different trends and the dummy variables are referred respectively as X1, X2 and X4. X3 is set to zero for all points on the first line and then goes to 1 for all points on the second linet o allow for a jump (positive or negative) from the first line to the second. In the same way, X5 is set to zero for all points on the second line and then goes to 1 for all points on the third line to allow for a jump (positive or negative) from the second line to the third. If no other predictor variables are involved we can fit the model. X3 is the dummy variable which provides the jump to the second part from the first, and X5 provides the jump from the second part to the third. According to these explanations our model are as follows: (1) 4. Application Our data set consists all of the started open and distance education programs including degree, associate degree and bachelor's degree completion programs since the establishment of Anadolu University. Distribution of programs in the data set is as follows: Figure 1: Open and distance education programs including degree, associate degree and bachelor's degree completion programs since the establishment of Anadolu University. 4.1. The Structural Changes in Our Analysis : As mentioned above there are two important structural change points in our study: 3362 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 1. Establishment of the Faculties with the names as Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Business Administration in 1993-1994. In addition, opening several new programs at the Open Education Faculty 2. The opening of many new programs in 2008 with the initiative of the Rector. Therefore, we considered that the number of programs has a vital importance in our study. Then when we create the series, we saw these two major structural changes. According to these structural changes and our data set was divided into 3 periods as, from 1982 to 1992, 1993 to 2008 and 2009 to 2014. 4.2. Models of Our Analysis: By considering structural breaks 4 models are produced in the study. While constructing the models, the distribution of the number of programs in the scatter diagrams is taken into account and models were produced accordingly with 4 assumptions below: Model I: Model with structural changes and with existing trends in 3 periods. Model II: Model containing structural changes, without an existing trend in 3 periods. Model III: Model having structural changes without a trend in 1.period, but with trends in 2. and 3. Periods. Model IV: Model of structural changes without a trend in 1. and 2., but with trend in the 3. Period. Model I s.e.: (2.528) (0.373) (0.212) (3.142) (0.934) (3.494) t : -1.244 4.171 -1.325 3.790 -2.354 8.418 F = 91.384 and Sy=3.91 R2=0.944 and Adj R2 = 0.934 Figure 2: Model I According to 0.05 significance level Model II is significant. But, β0 and β2 coefficients are statistically insignificant at 0.05 significance level. Because of the insignificant coefficients in Model I, we created Model II. In this model we only took jumps into consideration, and we assumed that there are no trends in all pieces. Model II s.e.: (1.547) (2.010) (2.456) t : 3.996 9.519 8.761 F=125.414 and Sy=5.13 R2=0.893 and Adj R2 = 0.886 3363 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 Figure 3: Model II All coefficients of Model II are statistically significant at 0.05 significance level. Thus, we reached a significant model in Model II. However, we cannot say that there is a clear trend between 1982 and 1989. Accordingly, for the sake of reaching to a more significant model, without considering the trend in the 1. Period we produced Model III. Model III s.e.: (1.484) (0.267) (2.779) (1.177) (4.399) t : 4.165 -1.052 7.641 -1.870 6.685 F= 69.299 and Sy=4.92 R2=0.908 and Adj R2 = 0.895 Figure 4: Model III Model III is significant according to 0.05 significance level. However, the coefficient β2 is statistically insignificant and β4 coefficient is significant at the 0.10 significance level. All other coefficients are significant at 0.05 significance level. Here, we concluded that there is no trend in the 1993-2008 time period due to the insignificant value of β2. Then we continued with the assumption that there is a trend in the period between 2009 and 2014 and produced Model IV. 3364 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 Model IV s.e.: (1.487) (1.931) (1.179) (3.776) t : 4.158 9.905 -1.866 7.156 F= 91.69 and Sy=4.93 R2=0.905 and Adj R2 = 0.895 Figure 5: Model IV Model IV is significant according to 0.05 significance level. However β4 coefficient is statistically significant at the 0.10 significance level. And all other coefficients are also significant at 0.05 significance level. The level of significance at 0.10 is accepted in many social studies or in topics related to social issues. But here, β4 coefficient because of the probability value 0.072, is rejected at 0.05 significance level. 4.3. Projections of the Models: Model II has bigger standard error than others. β4 coefficient of Model IV, which gives the slope of the 3. Period is statistically significant at the significance level of 0.10. As mentioned 0.10 significance level is accepted in social areas such as education. Therefore, it is difficult to specify the best model precisely at this stage. But, we can say that Model IV gives an early warning signal and this warning is noteworthy to mention that there is a reduction in the number of programs in recent years. The Model II is a model that shows a trend in the balance. Therefore, we must focus on both models and their warnings. According to Model II and Model IV, predictive values of the number of programs in following years was different from each other. The Number of Programs in Model II and Model IV are listed in Table 1: Table 1: Forecasting Values Model II Standard Error.= 5.13 Model IV Standard Error= 4.93 Forecasting years Expected Values Expected Program Numbers Forecasting years Expected Values Expected Program Numbers 2015 46.834 47 2015 41.334 41 2016 46.834 47 2016 39.134 39 2017 46.834 47 2017 36.934 37 5. Result and Evaluations Here the standard error of Model IV is 4.93 and only one coefficient of this model with the value of significance level 0.10 is accepted. From the statistical point of view, Model II is found to be statistically significant at 0.05 significance level both in terms of coefficients and model, and Model II has 5.13 standard error value. According to this model, in 1993 and in 2009 sudden increases occurred in the numbers of Open or Distance Education Programs 3365 Bahar Berberoğlu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 ( 2015 ) 3358 – 3365 and these increases are reflected in the form jumps in the graphics. There is no trend in three different periods. Depending on the Model II, our forecasts about the number of enrollments for 2015 and following years is, 46.834. This shows us the number of our programs in the coming years will be approximately 47. The decrease in the number of programs in 2009-2014 period, which is statistically significant at the 0.10 level is forcing us about the acceptability of Model IV in our analysis. As cited before, in many studies on social issues such as on education 0.10 significance level can be accepted. Furthermore, this model also provides early warning signals and according to Model IV there has been a sudden increase in the number of Anadolu University Open and Distance Programs in 1993 and 2009 and this is reflected in the form jumps in the figures. However, although continuing efforts of Anadolu University to use technology in open and distance learning recently there is a falling trend in program numbers, which can be accepted as a negative sign in the policy of giving education opportunities to the society in broader sense. Two key demands are effective in opening new programs. The first one is social demand. Our university must follow the changing goals, priorities and transformation in society, and analyze and identify them carefully. Accordingly, university must organize a suitable open education and distance education policy. It is easy and necessary to give an example from the past. As we mentioned before, establishing two new faculties with the names of Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Business Administration in 1993 and eliminating the expression of open education from the diplomas. This operation prevented graduates from encountering a false perception. As for the future, universities should establish warm relations with the community and public administration a nd should continue to develop its infrastructure for new educational technologies. For this purpose, it is necessary for our university to maintain its power in every aspect. References: Ağaoğlu, E. (1989). İki Farklı Eğilime Sahip Zaman Serisinin Modellenmesi – (1970-1987) Türk İhracat Gelirlerine Uygun Tahmin Modeli, Fen- Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, C:2, S:1, 135-149. Barkan, M. (1998). Açıköğretim’de Değişim Rüzgârları: İngiliz Açık Üniversitesi’nde Uygulanan Değişim ve Yeniden yapılanma Programının Ulaştığı Sonuçların AÖF için Doğurgaları (1), Kurgu Dergisi, S:15, 288-310. Draper, N.R. & Smith, H. (1981). Applied Regression Analysis, Second Edition, John Wiley and Sons, 250-252. 
work_ldgn4h6vhzavzdhfwc5zdhg44q	----	A Proposed Model of Photovoltaic Module in Matlab/SimulinkTM for Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.307 ScienceDirect 13th International Educational Technology Conference A Proposed Model of Photovoltaic Module in Matlab/SimulinkTM for Distance Education Zekiye ERDEMa*, M.Bilgehan ERDEMb aSakarya University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering 54187, Sakarya, Turkey b Sakarya University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering 54187, Sakarya, Turkey Abstract This paper define a circuit-based simulation model for a PV cell in order to allow estimate the electrical behavior of the cell with respect changes on environmental parameter of temperature and irradiance. An accurate PV module electrical model is presented based on the mathematical equations. The general model was implemented on MATLAB/Simulink environment, and accepts irradiance as variable parameters and outputs the I-V characteristic. A particular typical solar panel was used for model evaluation, and results was compare with points taken directly from the manufacturer’s published curves and show excellent correspondence to the model. With this proposed module different types of PV modules could be developed and students could be investigate and learn the P-V or V-I characteristics easily. Furthermore, a by-pass diode is added to the PV cell design with this addition, in different insulation combinations will be able to investigate likewise partial shade. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey. 1. INTRODUCTION Recent developments in computer hard-ware and software now make it possible to provide students with interactive programs that can be considered as midway between regular labs and lecturers and that allow us to display multiple-view representations of given dynamic system, and some of its attributes, on the computer screen (Rosal, 2005) Virtual laboratories are recognized as an attractive complement to traditional engineering laboratories. Among other advantages, they do not require expensive and dedicated equipment, reduces the required time for instruction, and promote student involvement and learning (Muñoz & Díaz, 2010) MathWorks * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 264 295 58 26 E-mail address: zekiye@sakarya.edu.tr http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 56 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 tools for technical computing and simulations widely used across various engineering and science disciplines. MATLAB Programming language and interactive environment well suited for computing, algorithms, data processing and visualization. Moreover, Simulink Environment is a practical tool for graphical and model-based simulation of dynamic systems (Eker & Cervin, 1999) (Nchez, Esquembre, Marti, Dormido, & Canto, 2005)(Swamy, Kuljaca, & Lewis, 2002)(Valera, Díez, Vallés, & Albertos, 2005). The sun's heat and light provide an abundant source of energy that can be harnessed in many ways. Photovoltaic power systems convert sunlight into electricity directly. Research and development efforts are under way to improve efficiency and reduce cost of photovoltaic power systems in applications ranging from roof-top residential to large industrial or electric utility sites .Photovoltaic systems have become globally accepted as a practical and feasible tool for power generation. Researchers’ efforts for facilitating PV systems utilization and their integration to currently available systems have been always inspired by the national goal of having renewable and clean energy sources. These efforts successfully solved many of the problems that are attached to PV systems (Mohamed, 2012) Therefore, for a student it is important to learn the characteristics and details about the PV systems before graduation. However, for colleges it is expensive to build a real PV system laboratory. This paper define a circuit-based simulation model for a PV cell in order to allow estimate the electrical behavior of the cell with respect changes on environmental parameter of temperature and irradiance. An accurate PV module electrical model is presented based on the mathematical equations. The general model was implemented on MATLAB/Simulink environment, and accepts irradiance as variable parameters and outputs the I-V characteristic. A particular typical solar panel was used for model evaluation, and results was compare with points taken directly from the manufacturer’s published curves and show excellent correspondence to the model. With this proposed module different types of PV modules could be developed and students could be investigate and learn the P-V or V-I characteristics easily. Furthermore, a by-pass diode is added to the PV cell design with this addition, in different insulation combinations will be able to investigate likewise partial shade. 2. MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF THE PV CELL Nomenclature I &V Cell output current and voltage Iph Photon or light generated current Io PV junction saturation current Rs Series Resistance RsH Shunt Resistance T Operating temperature ISC Short circuit current at 25 o C and under 1sun G Solar Insulation in W/m2 refG 1000 W/m 2 KI Short ckt. Current temperature coefficient at ISCR 57 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 Tref Nominal Temperature Np Number of parallel connected cells Ns Number of series connected cells The simplest model of a PV cell consists of a current source in parallel connection with a diode as shown in figure 1. Photo current Iph is directly proportional to solar radiation G. Temperature T and photo current Iph have a linear relationship according to equation (1), where Iph(ref) is photo current which corresponds to reference temperature Iref. Equation (2) gives photo current at reference temperature. is a constant given by (3). In equation (2) and (3) Iref is the nominal radiation given by PV’s constructor and ISC is the short circuit current. All symbols are presented on figure 1 and used in equations refer to a single PV cell (Nema, Nema, & Agnihotri, 2009). Fig 1. PV Cell equivalent circuit The Mathematical Equations for PV Cell ( ) 0(1 ( ))refph ph T refI I K T T (1) ( ) ( )refph T SC Tref ref G I I G (2) ( ) ( ) 0 SC T SC Tref ref I I K T T (3) Diode’s current is given by (4), where CellV and CellI are output voltage and current for a single PV cell respectively, oI Io is diode’s saturation current, TV thermal voltage of it and SR is in series resistance. exp 1Cell Cell SD o T V I R I I V (4) Current SHI through shunt resistance SHR according to Ohm’s law is equal to: 58 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 Cell Cell S SH SH V I R I R (5) Taking into account equations (1) – (5) and applying Kirchhoff’s current law, I –V characteristic equation (6) is resulted for PV cell: exp 1Cell Cell S Cell Cell SCell ph o T SH V I R V I R I I I V R (6) Substituting in (6) equations (7) and (8) which gives output voltage V and current I respectively for Ns in series and Np in parallel PV cells and ignoring current through shunt resistance, equation (9) gives the general I – V characteristic for PVs. Equation (10) gives the output power of a PV module consisted of (Ns x Np) cells. S CellV N V (7) P CellI N I (8) exp 1 S S P ph P o S T N V I R p I N I N I N V (9) S P Cell CellP N N V I (10) Equation (10) is able to be extended for a single PV array which consists of a number of PV modules and for a PV farm with many arrays. 59 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 3. Modeling The PV Cell and Different Input PV Modules A. PV Cell and PV Module Model Due to the formulations in section 2 the interface model of PV Modules has been developed in MATLAB/Simulink environment. A parameter login screen is designed for different type PV modules which is shown in Fig. 2 (b). To prevent the hot spot and short circuit problems a by-pass diode is added as shown in Fig. 2 (b). In addition to the PV cell model also PV module is designed. A practical method is used while developing the PV module with a gain (Ns) block which can be seen in the right part of the Fig. 2 (a). Fig 2. (a) PV Cell and PV Module design in MATLAB/Simulink (b) PV Module parameter login screen B. A Current-I- nput II and Voltage-Input PV ModuleII In Maximum power point trackers researcher has to be develop an algorithm and this algorithm could be different outputs like maximum current or maximum voltage, therefore designer or student could need different input PV modules for simulations. For this purpose, two types of PV Modules are designed for the user. With the current input and voltage-input PV modules provides a flexible environment to the user. Fig 3. (a) Current-input PV Module (b) A Voltage-input PV Module CELL MODULE 60 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 4. Determination of V-I and P-V Characteristics Student can easily determine the PV characteristic with proposed PV modules with connecting them in series. For a realistic PV system simulation, it is better to connect series the PV modules. Fig. 4 shows the simulation between six series connected PV modules. In this fashion, the output power of the PV system is about 510 W. The output P-V and I-V characteristics in Fig. 5 are obtained from that simulation. Fig. 4. 6 array connected in series for a PV system simulation and determined the characteristic curves P-V and I-V characteristics are key points for understanding the PV systems. The need for the Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) is acquired from these characteristics. It can be clearly seen from Fig. 5(a) that there are only one maximum power point in each power curve and the purpose of the MPPT’s are operate the PV systems at these maximum power points in different insolation levels. In Fig. 5. (a) different power curves are occurs due to different insolation conditions. When the insolation level is raised the output power is raised continually until the insulation is reached its maximum level. Fig. 5. (a) P-V characteristic (b) I-V characteristics 5. Reliability test of the model The reliability of the system is tested with using real PV module parameters and the simulation results are compared with the data sheet values. The real data which is obtained from data sheet is login as shown in Fig. 6 G=2G= 00 W/m/mW 222222222222222222222222222222 G=4GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG=4GGGGGGGGGGG 00 0 W/mW/mmmmmW/mmmmm/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm2222222222222222222222222222 G=6G=G=GGGG=GGG=GGGGG=GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG 00 0 W/m/m/m/m/m/mW/m/m/m/m/mW/m/m/m/mW/m/mmmmmmmmmmmmm/mmm/mmmm22 G=8G=G=G=GG=G=8G=G=G=GG=G=G=G=GG=G=GGGGGG=GGGGG 00000 W/mW/WWW/W/WWWWWW/W/WWWWWWW/WWWWW/W/W/WW/WW// 2 G=1000W/m2 Insulation rising 61 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 (a) and the real parameters from data sheet are shown in Fig. 6 (b). Although, in the PV modules data sheets has plenty of parameters, with proposed model a few of them enough to develop a realistic PV module. To the login screen the short circuit current, open voltage, voltage and current values at the maximum power point values are entered as shown in Fig. 6 (a) and the real values from data sheet is given in Fig 6 (b). Fig. 6 (a) Parameter login screen with real data sheet values (b) data sheet parameters The maximum power for one module is 85 W and 6 module is connected in series which makes the total output power 510 W and voltage value is equal to 103.2 V. The comparison tables of the real data and the simulation results are given in Table 1 and 2 respectively. Table 1. The real data results Table 2. The Simulation results Insulation MPP Power (W) MPP Voltage(V) MPP current (A) Insulation MPP Power (W) MPP Voltage (V) MPP current (A) 1000 W/m2mm 510 (85*6) 103.2 (17.2*6) 4.95 1000 W/m2m 510.8243 103.4057 4.9400 6. Partial Shade Condition Simulations If a PV array is partially shaded by a building, a tree, and/or clouds as shown in Fig 7 (a), it becomes insufficient for conventional MPPT schemes to extract maximum power. If modules with different optimal currents, caused by uneven insolation, are connected in series-parallel, MPPs often appear in the power versus voltage characteristic. In our interface model it is also possible to make a shade condition simulation. In Fig. 7 (b) the sixth panel is exposed to a shade condition. The student only changes the insulation rate to see the effect of the partial shade condition to the PV system. + - 1 2 3 4 5 66666666666 1000 W/m2 1000 W/m2 1000 W/m2 1000 W/m2 1000 W/m2 600 W/m2 G=600 W/m2 P=354W G=1000 W/m2 P=423WW P V PV curve in partn partial shadia ee in pare in par Voltl Watttttt Fig 7. (a) Partial shade occurs because of a tree (b) partial shade simulation results 62 Zekiye Erdem and M. Bilgehan Erdem / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 55 – 62 7. Conclusion An accurate PV module electrical model is presented and demonstrated in MATLAB/Simulink for a typical 60W solar panel. Given solar insolation and temperature, the model calculates the current for a given voltage. The results from the MATLAB™ model show excellent correspondence to manufacturer’s published curves. Finally the model development was used to show the effect of: insolation, temperature, ideality factor and series resistances .This paper is the first step to develop a complete solar photovoltaic power electronic conversion system in simulation. The final objective is develops a general model to simulate the electrical behavior of the PV systems in a grid connected application. With this study students will be able to simulate the PV system without a laboratory. 8. References Eker, J., & Cervin, a. (1999). A Matlab toolbox for real-time and control systems co-design. Proceedings Sixth International Conference on Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications. RTCSA’99 (Cat. No.PR00306), 320–327. doi:10.1109/RTCSA.1999.811266 Mohamed, A. (2012). AC 2012- - ERS IN PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEMS Smart Control of Power Electronic Converters in Photovoltaic Systems Abstract. Muñoz, J., & Díaz, P. (2010). A Virtual Photovoltaic Power Systems Laboratory, (1), 1737–1740. -Source Tool to Develop Interactive Virtual Laboratories Using MATLAB / Simulink *, 21(5), 798–813. Nema, R., Nema, S., & Agnihotri, G. (2009). Computer simulation based study of photovoltaic cells/modules and their experimental verification. … Journal of Recent …, 1(3). Retrieved from http://ijrte.academypublisher.com/vol01/no03/ijrte0103151156.pdf 49(1), 42–47. Rosal, J. (2005). The Role of Interactivity in Control Learning *, 21(6), 1122–1133. Swamy, N., Kuljaca, O., & Lewis, F. L. (2002). Internet-based educational control systems lab using NetMeeting. IEEE Transactions on Education, 45(2), 145–151. doi:10.1109/TE.2002.1013879 Valera, B. A., Díez, J. L., Vallés, M., & Albertos, P. (2005). Virtual and Remote Control Laboratory Development, (February), 35–39. 
work_lg7lobbkhrga3d747ezpphg27y	----	Microsoft Word - Ravi_ChallengesforDistanceEducationinEritrea_Dec-2006[1][1– 191 Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE January 2007 ISSN 1302–6488, Volume: 8 Number: 1 Article: 15 CHALLENGES IN INTRODUCING DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN ERITREA: Some Observations and Implications Dr. Ravinder RENA M.A., B.Ed., LL.B., M.Phil., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Economics Dept. of Business and Economics Post Box No: 7956 Eritrea Institute of Technology – Mai Nefhi (Under the Ministry of Education) Asmara, ERITREA ABSTRACT All over the world, distance mode of education is gaining a momentum and becoming more popular than conventional education. It is a system in which schools, universities and other educational agencies offer instruction wholly or partly by mail. Eritrea is a newly independent country in Africa is been facing many challenges particularly in its education sector. It did not have more educational institutions at tertiary level. Thus the distance learning is the best option for this country. An attempt is made in this paper to discuss various problems related to the establishment and development of distance education. It also provides the distance education programmes so far undertaken in the country with concluding remarks. Keywords: Distance Education, Eritrea, Ministry of Education, Asmara University. INTRODUCTION All over the world, it is now evident that distance mode of education is gaining a momentum and becoming more popular than conventional. It is to be noted that the learners in developed countries preferring distance learning to conventional education. The Distance Education (DE) is an educational phenomenon that marked a big educational and structural change in a short duration of time than the preceding schools of education (Harry, 1992). It has become a vital issue in education and in strategic planning for regional, national and international development (Khan, 1993; Keegan, 1996; Wills, 1998). Since the tertiary education is costlier than school education, many countries have developed policy frame works for the development of distance education at tertiary level for the fact that it promotes further education to upgrade and update the skills and the knowledge of the contact students. In addition, it creates the possibility of increased access to tertiary education at more cost effective-level (Terry and Juler, 1991; Saint, 1999). Mass education is attained through distance learning because of modern technology where the world is becoming boundary less. Technical developments have greatly contributed for the development of distance education (Daniel, and Mega, 1996; Rumble, and Oliveria, 1999). Further, 192 distance education is changing with an alarming speed, particularly as educational processes become increasingly globalize in terms of physical reach and scope of courses and programmes of study offered. Eritrea has launched distance education programmes but hampered due to various factors. The world map vividly shows that Eritrea is strategically located in the horn of Africa, sharing border with the Sudan to the north and west, Ethiopia to the south, Djibouti to the south east and the Red Sea to the east respectively. It has a human population of about 4 million. It covers an area of 124,320 sq kms, stretching from 18.22’ to 12.42’ degrees longitude. Eritrea’s coastlines extend about 1200 kms, flanked by coral reefs and 354 islands, including the important Dahlak Archipelago (Killion, 1998:1; Rena, 2005a). The war devastated nation fought for thirty years (1961-1991) bravely to obtain its de facto independence on 24 may 1991 and its official independence on 24 May1993 after a UN supervised referendum in which 98.8% of the people voted in favour of independence (MoE, 1999; Rena, 2005b). Soon after the independence it has been working ceaselessly to develop the education in the country. Distance Education is at its infancy. Why Distance Education in Eritrea? The curriculum designers and makers while trying to publish quality school books to all grades had the main pre occupation how to increase the number and improve the quality of the learning force against the daunting background of: i) The acute shortage of teachers after liberation in 1991 to staff the schools; ii) The limited capacity of the one teacher training (ATTI) and its subsidiary branch Eritrea Institute Technology (EIT); iii) An enormous increase in elementary school enrolment and thereby construction of many new schools; iv) A two years university diploma has for long been a technical requirement for being middle school teachers in the country; v) The reluctance because of cultural or religious reasons of females or members of some ethnic groups to move away from their homes and families for training purposes; vi) The economic and domestic difficulties that prevent many teachers, particularly from remote regions from taking up training away from their localities; and vii) The need to educate the disadvantaged irrespective of age, sex and place. Whilst spending on educational provision has increased greatly, there are limited budgetary means to cater the financial costs that a new nation has to face when rebuilding infrastructure expanding medical, and welfare services and advancing economic and business opportunities (Rena, 2005c). The data is collected from different sources related to distance education both from the public sector and the private sector. Informal discussions made with many concerned people and the stakeholders of this distance programme. The government officials (related to this program), students and staff of the College of Education in Eritrea Institute of Technology (EIT)-Mai Nefhi; Asmara Teacher Training Institute, elementary teachers (who are learning their distance education in Asmara University).Teachers working in some secondary schools (of Zoba Maekel) like Red Sea, Asmara Comprehensive, Barka, Denden, Issak Teweldemedhn and some students and employees are contacted and discussions held with them. All in all 10 directors (including heads), 30 teachers, and 60 students at all levels are contacted. An in-depth interview is conducted with them. The data also collected from the relevant documents. Besides, researcher also used open ended interview in order to free the interviewee to discuss openly when asked. The study was conducted during the period October 2005 to March 2006.The paper is been organized into five sections. The second section provides the distance education programmes implemented in Eritrea. Section three discusses the challenges for the DE in its implementation in the country. Section 193 four provides some policy implications in the implementation of the DE programme. The final section provides the concluding remarks. DISTANCE EDUCATION IN ERITREA The Ministry of education declared the policy that extended education opportunities to all Eritreans irrespective of their age, sex and geographical location in Eritrea.1 Besides, Eritrea proposed that it be included as one of the “Fast track” EFA (Education for all) countries, to hasten its educational progress. In line with this, it has made a lot of changes to assure the correct implementation of a standard system of education wholly put in practice in schools of different levels. The teachers in return were/ are given successive professional training in work shops, seminars, and short and long term refresher courses to up grade their professionalism and work esteem (Rena, 2006). Many schools were/are built equipped with modern mode of teaching learning mechanisms. Meanwhile the government is following required implementation of: Significant expansion of integrated, low cost and community based early childhood programmes; Universal access and quality primary education for all to be by 2015 Parallel to reducing male illiteracy to about 10 percent by 2010, achieve female literacy of at least 60 percent; and Expanding ‘life long’ learning to achieve a modern cultural transformation among disadvantaged groups in rural and urban areas through distance education mode of delivery(MoE, 2006). Asmara University is given the authority to give immediate answer to the implementation to give “equal opportunity” at tertiary level education offering distance education. Indeed, no system of distance education can remain efficient if it remains static. It must be sensitive to trends and changing need in education, and must have the flexibility to modify its programme and practices, and to expand in response to the needs of the community it is serving. Ministry of Education has recognised the above issues and is working on the importance in improving the education system in Eritrea (Rena, 2005b). Its vision is ultimately to attain particularly a quality of education, access and relevance. Distance learning, a new mode of delivery, would undoubtedly promote educational quality and relevance in many ways, if we all work on the validating role of distance education (MoE, 1999; Rena, 2006). The Ministry of Education is embarking the strategies to resolve the problems mentioned above by supplementing proper distance education programmes in the schools that it aims to establish soon. Thus, the Institutions to be established require better managerial skills than conventional programmes. In the past one and half- decade, one of the government’s main priorities was to rebuild, expand and improve the educational system by developing policies that would favour greater access, equity and quality of education(Rena, 2005a; MoE, 2003). The Distance Education Programs for Elementary Teachers (DEPETE) in Eritrea Under the DEPETE program, the Ministry is striving to up-grade knowledge and skills of teachers qualitatively and quantitatively. The DEPETE programs are discussed hereunder: With a view to impart quality education and create a professional work force to cater to the nation’s need, the state of Eritrea now has adopted a rapid 194 transformation policy to bring about an effective change in the education sector in 2003. This lays out long term vision and strategy to lift Eritrea forward. Along side the increase in the number of schools and students, there has been a marked increase in the number of teachers (Araya, 1998). In 1991, there were 4,504 teachers about half of these were Ethiopians who immediately left for Ethiopia of their own will there by creating an acute shortage of teachers. While there are many different factors that play a role in improving the quality of education, teachers academic and professional qualification is very crucial. Hence distance education will improve the quality of teacher education in particular and the quality of education in general (Taye, 1992; Rena, 2005b). The need to have effective and efficient teachers could promote the standard of education sooner or later as aimed by educators in the department of curriculum. The programme of teaching teacher was initiated with funding from the Italian government and technical assistance from UNESCO. Five hundred untrained teachers from three regions (zobas) – Debub, Gash Barka and Northern Red sea were involved in summer 1996 (Ministry of Education, UNESCO and the Government of Italy, 1996). It was phase-I, the pilot phase, which evolve trainees required to attend: Two–five week face-to-face workshop sessions at the main regional training centres during the 1996 and 1997 summer vacations; One mid year workshop for two weeks in February 1997 at the main regional training centres; and Monthly tutorial/workshops at the local teacher resource centres with trainees receiving self–instructional correspondence texts through the academic year. There was a continuous assessment throughout the programme with assignments, tests, projects, work set as part of the work shop sessions. Assessments were also made on the classroom practiced of the trainees. Examination was given and the examinees who succeeded received a certificate equivalent to that awarded to graduate of the Asmara Teacher Training Institute (ATTI). The DEPETE (Distance, Education programmes for Elementary Teachers in Eritrea) programme was regarded as a vital element of the Ministry of Education which was embarked to improve the quality and quantity of qualified teachers at elementary level, while the pilot was in progress preparations were also going on to include 1,500 unqualified elementary teachers from all six zobas with special priority to the other remaining three zobas already excluded in the Phase-1 ( Maekel, Anseba and Southern Red Sea). There some funding problem initially, however the Ministry was anxious and determined to continue the program and tried its best to look for a reliable and sustainable source of funding not only to undertake phase-II but also to advance in the future years till all untrained/unqualified/teachers in the system are trained through distance learning along side the conventional (traditional) learning (Araya, 1998). The main objectives of DEPETE were t: 1. Provide in–service – training programmes for approximately 2,000 untrained elementary school level teachers through a distance learning model of teaching. 2. Establish a capacity and lay a foundation for developing a distance learning organization for teachers and other educational staff in the national school system. 3. Through provision of a local based training programmes, encourage and enable more female trainees and also those from the ethnic groups to participate (marginalized groups) 4. Indirectly give feed back to the present initial teacher training programmes 195 5. Institute and promote the role that Teacher resource centres can in local and in service training. 6. Promote an effective system DE training programmes in Eritrea. 7. Continually upgrade and train teachers, school directors supervisors and other educational staff through a Distance Education model without separating them from their work. 8. Continue to the promotion of quality education in an equitable way. Rationales for DEPETE The distance education programmes for elementary teachers in Eritrea (DEPETE) is an attempt to overcome some of the above problems from the limited experience of distance education known as DEPETE has the following rationale to bear in mind. Hence, it was emphasised that the Ministry of Education provisions in order to: 1. Increase access of learning and training opportunity 2. Reach target groups with limited access to conventional education 3. Support the quality of existing educational structures. 4. Improve cost effectiveness 5. Enhance and consolidate capacities 6. Increase greater flexibility in the design and delivery of curriculum content than is normally associated with class room teaching. The quality of teaching defines the quality of education and the quality of education in turn facilities the contribution that the next generation of teachers is able to offer to learners. While there are a number and different variables and factors in class room effectiveness, the most important component is the teacher. Moreover, the government’s decision to extend the middle school cycle (programme) from two to three years in 2003/04 academic year has created a further pressure to the desperate demand for teachers in middle schools. The critical shortage of qualified teachers mainly at the primary level has been the key challenge for educational development. Therefore, redressing the huge demand for teachers and improving the quality of teaching and learning process still remains to be formidable task. The researcher felt resourceful in his studies after he deeply assessed all the researches made by the Ministry in its firm establishment of distance education programs right after independence, even if, some of the distance education program implementations failed due to certain constraints mentioned by the researcher. CHALLENGES FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMME Why the Ex-distance Learning in Eritrea Ceased? The DEPETE programme launched to improve elementary teachers work esteem and professionalism. This improvement throughout distance learning was successful for which the staff authorities in the Ministry of Education, Italian government and UNESCO should be proud of. It will render more help for its continuity to updating and upgrading teachers who could possibly alleviate the standard education system along with the country’s development. The discontinuity of the distance education sector before seven years is not amazing. It was because of lack of expertise, lack of experience, logistic, quality materials and student support services. Spending on educational provision has increased greatly. The government of Eritrea being new government that inherited destroyed infrastructure and low human power due to the wars that passed and the border dispute could not fulfill the demands of its people as it wishes. 196 Hindrances Suggested by Asmara University Committee The study project is not a through feasibility study of establishing whether a distance education is the right thing to do at this time. But it rather a study limited on designing and proposing structural framework, required facility and a time to start it (Araya, 1998). This limitation led the committee division in Asmara University to mark some basic assumptions that: There is enough demand for distance education There will be reasonable postal and communication services infrastructure in the country. There will be enough resources to establish it. The other limitation of the study is that the distance education programme be an integrated part of the current regular and extension programmes leading to a uniform undergraduate degree. The admission requirements to the distance education programme are that same to that of the regular and extension programmes. The content of the course and the standard of examination of distance education is the same to that of the other two programmes. The academic staffs of the Asmara University are going to be flexibility in all of the three programmes. Faculty Barriers in Distance Learning Programs in Eritrea 1. The biggest problem for distance programs is the lack of support by the faculty. The endorsement by department faculty is viewed as a critical instruction element in any distance education program. Faculty roles must change the most in administering distance learning programs (Rena, 2005c). They may change teaching styles to that of a mentor, tutor and facilitator. They must meet the needs of distance students with face-to-face contact. Since the majority of distance learners are adults, teachers may need to change their teaching style. This may be a challenging for teachers who are used to teaching 18 to 22 years old. Faculty is responsible for changing their course content to accommodate diverse student needs and expectations. So long as college faculty feels there is a burden associated the distance education programme currently in place, there will be little support for expanding distance education opportunities. 2. Teachers may lack the basic skills or hardware to fully participate in distance education. It is interesting to note, however, that students respond to this changing environment more adeptly than teachers do. Obtaining proper equipment and training is critical in teacher acceptance of distance learning. 3. Another problem perceived by faculty is the threat to tenure and human resource staffing. Depending on the school and the academic department, courses taught as part of a distance program may not always count toward tenure considerations thus causing a disincentive for participation by some non-tenured faculty (Wood, 1996) if one professor can serve thousand of students there will be obviously be fewer professors and fewer departments and faculties. Schools must not underestimate this resistance and should be very aware of the possibility of overburdening faculty and staff. 4. Teachers also have problems respecting the academics of distance courses. One way of enhancing commitments is by forcing distance courses through the same approval process an on-campus course. The final barrier is the teacher’s acceptance of distance learning programmes. Teachers with enthusiasm for thin non-traditional 197 course work are best suited to teach them. One way to mitigate these potentially serious problems is by selecting teachers who are relatively senior people, good teachers, like the idea of distance learning and want to participate in it. Interest and motivation are not success factors reserved only for the student. Faculties who want to teach distance courses are certainly more likely to be successful than faculty that are forced to teach these courses. Organisational barriers in Eritrea Students and teacher concerns represent the human aspects of distance programmes. Organisational problems, especially infrastructure and technology problems, also present challenge. Faculties who teach distance education courses need organisational and administrative support from the Institution. Funding should be provided to create an administrative unit that is to be responsible for managing the programme. Institutional teachers must be committed to distance programmes. (Marrs 1995:21) agrees when he says, “without this support, distance education is at risk of significance to the Institution”. A primary concern for both learning Institutions and students is available for both the student and the Institution. Institutions must consider the initial costs as well as the continuing costs of installing, maintaining, using and upgrading technology to support distance services. Institutions must also plan to have competent computer staff to support internet use. This staff must then be kept up-to-date on the newest, fastest, cheapest technology available; therefore, on going staff must be considered. The student must also incur technology costs, if the internet is used, then the student must have access to a computer, modern and associated software. In addition to cost considerations, the technology itself presents many problems; one issue is in adequate telecommunications facilities. Harry (1992:190) mentions that “the existing telecommunications systems are unlikely to place too much reliance on them for teaching, support or information searching.” That is the reason why some developing countries will use, print, cassettes, and radio delivery methods. Such circumstances prevent some instructors from producing or using advanced media and providing higher quality material for students. Distance education via simultaneous two-way-audio-visual interaction systems such as video teleconferencing, brings an additional set of issues to be considered by the instructor and effective models for this delivery system need to be identified (Sweet, 1986). Asmara university, given its unique socio potential environment and resource constraints is likely to be one of the “mixed – mode department model” of Institutions, to find a solution to the crucial points above believing that the development of national distance education capabilities being the stepping stone by which all nations will proceed into the future. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 1. Time constraints were another limiting factor that hinders the depth and width of the study. 2. The committee was not able to get in time relevant, up to date and enough literature to conduct the study. 3. With scattered students, dispersed part-time tutors, far-flung logistics, reliable communication services, time sensitive communication services, time sensitive production and distribution of learning materials, and detailed student records, 198 successful distance education programmes require management team with above average skills in organisation, logistics and problem solving. This management team need not be large, but it must be capable. 4. Students who enroll in distance learning courses do so for convenience. They are either time bound due to work or travel schedules or location–bound due to geographic or family responsibilities.2 Distance learning is student–centred learning; thus knowing the characteristics and demographics of the distance learners helps us understand the potential barriers to learning. 5. Problems and barriers encountered by the student fall into several distinct categories; student support and services, alienation and isolation, lack of experience, and training. Distance learners are more likely to have insecurities about learning and these insecurities are founded in personal and school related issues such as financial costs of study, disruption of family life, perceived irrelevance of their studies and lack of support from employers. These pressures often result in higher dropout rates than among traditional students (Sweet, 1986). 6. The concern for the distance student is the perceived lack of feedback or contact with the teacher. Because there is not daily or weekly face-to-face contact with teachers, students may have trouble in self-evaluation. Keegan (1996) believes that the separation of student and teacher imposed by distance removes a vital “link” of communication between these two parties. The link must be restored through overt Institutional efforts so that the teaching–learning transaction may be “reintegrated “(Keegan, 1996:120). These barriers can be mitigated through technological method such as e-mail, computer conferencing and electronic mail can be integrated into the delivery of the course to provide the missing interaction. It is important that the student receive prompt feedback in any Institutional setting particularly in distance learning where the learner is impaired by the lack of causal contact with the teacher and other students. This is especially important for those students who live outside metropolitan areas. They may not have access to reliable telecommunication, computers and postal mail. The frustrations resulting from problems with communication between student academic Institution are factors of which distance education planners should be aware (Wood, 1996). 7. Area of concern distance students is the lack of support and services such as providing tutors, academic planners, schedulers, and technical assistance. The isolation that results from the distance learning process can complicate the learning process for adult students, support for distance learners should not be overlooked when planning distance programmes, students need tutors and academic planners to help them complete courses on time and to act as a support system when stress becomes a problem. 8. A problem area is the feeling of alienation and isolation reported by distance students. Students of all kinds want to be part of a larger school community, and simply of “a correspondence” course. The “distance” aspect of distance learning takes away much of the social interactions that would be present in a traditional learning environments. 9. A problem is prevalent with newer distance students. If distance learning Institutions is serious about providing equity of educational opportunity to all, then 199 careful consideration must be given to the special needs of students undertaking distance education for the first time. Of particular importance is the design of study materials for distance students. The Determinants for Effective Distance Learning It is believed that open/distance learning could play a very useful part in any given country’s education sector development plan. It could be helpful provision in meeting some the many professional development and upgrading needs the country’s plan identifies and priorities. All effective distance learning programmes depend upon “three legs” of good learning materials, effective student supports, and efficient logistics (Moore, and Kearsley, 1996). Good learning materials The type of the teaching materials to be prepared depends on the objectives and financial resources of the Institution. That is depending on the short and long range plan and objectives of the Institution, teaching materials will have to be prepared in terms of priorities. Moreover, the variety of the teaching materials depends on the Institutions available financial resource. The more the resources the more the varied the teaching materials become. For example, if the Institution has sound financial resources, It can in addition to printed material, use radio and television provided there facilities of transmission and access to receivers. Study materials have to be effectively designed for “self learning”. They must be very clear, interactive, relevant and available media in appropriate ways. They also need to include well designed, unambiguous assessment materials (Carrol, 2004). The material can be entirely print based or use of a variety media, depending on what is available and the effectiveness of different media for learning purposes. They can be created locally or sourced from else where, with or without customisation. It is felt that it is better if the teaching materials be prepared by the team. This however, can be left to the respective department. Preparing of teaching material for one course will be given an average of time load of six month for one instruction. Efficient logistics One deterrent is that distance education normally requires considerable up – front investment to train staff, design curriculum prepare materials and acquire the selected technology. Once this sizeable hurdle is passed, the comparatively modest recurrent costs of the programme can usually covered in large part by student fees. The investment in costly facilities and their maintenance thus enabling more funds to be used in support of teaching inputs and learning activities in crucial to promote education of valour. Logistics covered such things as getting materials to students and ensuring effective communication. In particular students must be able to get their assignments to their tutors and tutors must be able to get the marked assignments back to students. Students’ support services In distance education student support is universally understand as the most critical factor influencing student success (Keast, 1997). Timely feed back to students on their performance, on –site tutoring and access to library and laboratory materials are essential for student achievement in tertiary distance education programmes. Without it, student drop-out rates will rise and eliminate any advantages of cost-effectiveness for distance learning. 200 IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT All teachers in Eritrea should receive moral and economic support which is compatible with their level so that they will protect the value of their profession; since teaching and learning is an endless process, teachers should also be given adequate on-the-job training parallel with the technological advancement of the world. Therefore, the quality of education in Eritrea should go parallel with the development of teachers. Hence, it is to be suggested that the teachers should upgrade their skills through the distance education. The drafted strategies, which are accepted by curriculum designers and makers, to be deployed in open/distance learning institutions, need careful, follow up. The learning strategy that blends several, options where necessary, include upgrading teachers, professionalism and capital building at zoba (province) and local office levels. The open/distance learning institutions established are centres to support Eritrea’s open/distance learning activities, however, the materials were created and whichever institutions performed the accreditation functions. Hence, it is suggested that Material Support 1) A standard curriculum must be made in the country and books for the distance learning must contain a set of learning outcomes that enable all contact learners what to know understand and do in the on-going courses they will undertake to achieve a certificate, diploma, degree. 2) The study manuals, readers, and study guides must be prepared to the existing Eritrean, external and newly created resources to guide the tutors have the same line in teaching and learning processes and to help the learning to pursue their success studies accordingly. 3) Adequate teaching aid materials like audio, video cassettes, printed material must be prepared to enhance and promote learning in wherever the students are. 4) The MOE or the University of Asmara must posses a printing press. It is unthinkable to start the distance education program in the assumption that teaching materials could be produced by outside printing press. 5) The modules written should reflect Eritrean education system, must be written with their challenges, and the proposed solutions to satisfy many groups of learners. 6) The accusation of a DE expertise in one of the prerequisite for preparation of teaching materials, training and assisting on the total operation of the program helping the academic staff in writing courses is crucial. 7) DE relies more and more on the availability of the internet and the world wide-web must be practiced. Students Support 1) Central, regional and local office should be clearly mandated to perform student support function at all levels. 201 2) The offices must inform the tutors to include face-to-face individual support system both personal and academic to encourage learners. And the offices must employ tutors who are committed and dedicated to help learners to overcome their study difficulties. 3) Tutors must become more professional, more interested in pedagogical aspects of higher education and more motivated to integrate their research and teaching interest in a holistic way. This will lead to greater job satisfaction, better academic programs, improvement of student leaning and practitioners’ insights and contributions to the advancement and knowledge in higher educations. 4) Tutors should understand more about how learners learn and respect the learners own existing knowledge of structure. 5) Tutors or facilitators must converse with learners and help them understand what they are having difficulty or to challenge and extend an early provisional grasp of course materials. 6) Tutors should encourage support at every possible point in learners’ life and tutors should also choose assessment methods to encourage learning involvement. 7) Tutors should be available to assist groups who request help to be able to sort out problems in a constructive way and make simple tutoring while modeling group work. 8) Tutors must encourage where learners meet other learners to set up peer learning group. Besides, tutors engaged in learners support must be provocative in demonstrating the crucial contribution of learners support to prove the success of DE and educational knowledge. 9) Tutors must enable students develop skills of problem solving inquiry, information gathering, analysis, interpretation, communication, and other essential process skills while exercising a learner- cantered approach. 10) Tutors have to be committed to improve their tutorial in order to better assist their learners and have strong interest in strengthening the tutorial system as a whole. Tutors have also to face tremendous challenges like: dedication, creativity and flexibility and be a sensitive to a number of complex issues and have to build leaner centeredness and quality assurance of all levels. Logistic Support 1) Central, regional, and local offices should be used to proved good logistic. Things to be accomplished once, tasks that concerns students, groups and tutors should be done locally. 2) The institution which is investing a considerable amount of money in recurrent costs of tutorials and learning centres must surely and extremely interested in promoting action research while serving its tutors and learners. 3) The administration, tutors and the facilitators and the employees must be rewarded, trained, and paid sufficiently. 202 4) The central, regional and local office, should be given full responsibilities to perform logistical function to ensure the smooth running of DE institutions. 5) Quality materials must be bought to motivate the learner while pursing their over- all studies. 6) The concerned offices should allocate a good budget to buy modern devices like e- net; computers based learning programs, CD-ROMs, print media, Audio/ video cassettes, video conferencing and the web. 7) Central, regional and local offices must strive to build institutions well equipped with quality material, libraries, and laboratories. Institution/Centre Selection In order to select appropriate site for opening DE centres in different regions of Eritrea, it is advisable to take the following points into account. 1) The availability of organized post office telephone services and the availability of secondary school. 2) Easily accessible to students in the area and reasonable number of student recommended is not to be lees than 60 students. 3) Institution must surely and extremely try to resolve problems that could arise in the courses of time. 4) Institution must encourage its departments and staff to undertake evaluation of different kinds. It must be committed to quality assurance and continually involving staff in assessment and self-evaluation. 5) Institution must make space available and study group use at times suitable and convenient for learners (i.e. study centres). 6) Institutions must employ the tutors who are committed and dedicated to help learners to overcome study difficulties. 7) Institution must include face-to-face individual support system both academic and personal that encourages learners’ centeredness. Institution must contain quite a number of role players: a course coordinator, the regional or local tutors, administrative staff and the tutors. 8) Institution should embrace learners concerning activities based on the expressed needs of learners with their specific circumstances. CONCLUSION It is challenging to study critically about any given model of distance education at the starting in the country. However, an attempt is made to study carefully all the distance education programmes ever tried by the government. The distance education is changing with an alarming speed, particularly as educational processes become increasingly globalize in terms of physical reach and scope of courses and programmes 203 of study offered. Eritrea has launched distance education programmes but hampered due to various factors. In distance learning students and teachers will find themselves playing different roles than is the norm in traditional education. More than any other teaching method distance learning which exercises new mode of delivery, requires a collaborative effort between student and teacher unbounded by traditional limits of time, space and single instructor effort. Distance education as a provision will undoubtedly help the learners to enhance the acquisition of new knowledge and skills to lead a better life. Hence, joint work of the government and private sectors is needed to lay a firm ground to the implementation of the correct programmes. Since Eritrea is a young nation with 15 years of age needs to establish the strategy for the development of its education through the distance education and thus achieve self- sufficiency in this sector. Notes: Provisional Government of Eritrea (1991) Department of Education, Policy of Education, (October 2). 2 Most of the students or the youngsters are working under national service just for the payment of Nacfa 145 (less than $ 7 dollars) per month. It is obvious that the amount is not sufficient to meet the common expenses like taking tea and snacks; hence they have to work in many places in order to win the bread and survive in the society. BIODATA and ADDRESSES of AUTHOR Dr. Ravinder Rena, born 18-09-1970. He is an economic researcher, editor, and writer with 15 years of experience in the field of teaching and research. He is a widely known economist and author of eight books. His recent Books are: A handbook on the Eritrean Economy: Problems and Prospects for Development; Financial institutions in Eritrea both published by the New African Press, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2006. Dr. Rena is a recipient of the University Gold Medal, awarded to the best Ph.D. scholars in the fields of Economics, Commerce, and Business Management at the Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. Academically, he has earned his M.A. (Eco.), M.Phil. (Eco.), and B.Ed. from Osmania University; B.A. and LL.B. degrees from Kakatiya University, Warangal, India. He has been working in Eritrea for the last one decade, currently working at Eritrea Institute of Technology — Mai Nefhi (under the Ministry of Education) in the State of Eritrea since 2004. He has also served as a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Dept. of Economics, Banking and Finance at Asmara Commercial College (under the Ministry of Education) in the State of Eritrea during the period 1997-2004. Prior to this he worked as a Lecturer in India. His areas of specialization in teaching are: business and managerial economics, banking and finance, development economics, research methods, the Eritrean economy, and economics of education and agricultural economics, in research. He is been based in Eritrea for a decade, and has written more than 100 articles (mostly on Eritrea and Africa) in peer reviewed international and national journals, magazines, and newspapers such as: Finance India, Eritrean Studies Review, Global Child Journal, African Development Review, Eastern Africa Journal of Humanities and Sciences (EAJHS), The African Symposium, Africa Quarterly, Manpower Journal, Osmania Journal of Social Sciences, Indian Journal of Millennium Development Studies, and Journal of African and Asian Studies , Eritrea Profile, kalingga among others. Further, he is an editorial board member, Global Child Journal (U.S.); editor, Science Vision (Eritrea); on the board of directors of the WOMEN (Women Organization Micro Finance Education Network), an international NGO based in U.S.; and advisor to the board of the To Love Children International NGO, based in U.S. Dr. Rena also serves as a reviewer for the International Journal of Educational Development using ICT, The African Symposium , and African Studies Review. 204 Dr. Ravinder Rena M.A., B.Ed., LL.B., M.Phil., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Economics Dept. of Business and Economics Post Box No: 7956 Eritrea Institute of Technology– Mai Nefhi (Under the Ministry of Education) Asmara, Eritrea. Email: ravinder_rena@yahoo.com , ravinder_rena@rediffmail.com REFERENCES Araya, B. (May, 1998). Project Evaluation: DEPETE Phase-I, University of Asmara, Eritrea. Carrol, D. ( February, 2004). Pedagogy and Assessment in the new curriculum. Ministry of Education, Asmara, Eritrea. Daniel, J.S. Mega, (1996). Universities and Knowledge Media, Technology Strategies for Higher Education. London, Kogan Page Ltd. Harry, K. (1992). Distance Education today and tomorrow. A personal Perspective. Educational Media International, 29(3), 189–192. Keast, D.A. (1997). Towards an Effective Model for Implementing Distance Education Programs. American Journal of Distance Education, 11(2), 39–55. Keegan, D. (1996).The Foundation of Distance Education. London: Croom Helm. Keegan, D. and Rumble, G. (1982).Distance teaching at University level. In Rumble, G. and Harry, K (ed) Distance teaching Universities. New York: St. Martins press, p.15. Keegan, D. (1983). On Defining Distance Education. In Stewart, D. Keegan, D. and Hoeberg, B.(Eds.) Distance Education. New York: St. Martins press, p.27. Khan, J. (1993). Human Resource Development in the public sector; A Developing Country experience, International Journal of Public Sector Management 61(1), 48–58. Killion, T. (1998).Historical Dictionary of Eritrea. Lamhom: Scarecrow Press. Marrs, L. (1995). An Analysis of Distance Education and Educational Technology. Offices of continuing Education and Information and Telecommunication Services. Bellingham, Washington: Western Washington University. Ministry of Education, UNESCO and the Government of Italy (1996). Guidelines for Policy Framework on Open and Distance Education. Asmara: Eritrea. (January 23). Ministry of Education (June 1999). Our People are our future: A frame work for the development of human resources in the education sector. Asmara: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (2003). Eritrea: Basic Education Statistics 2002-2003. Eritrea. Asmara, Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (2006).Tertiary Education in Eritrea: Issues, Policies, and Challenges. 13 (56 and 57) (Part- I and II on 20 and 23 September). Eritrea Profile p.2-3. Ministry of Education 205 Brief Description of DEPETE: Tasks and Achievements, Department of National Pedagogy, Ministry of Education, Asmara, Eritrea. Moore, M.G. (1990). Recent Contribution to the Theory of Distance Education. Open Learning, 5 (3), 10–13. Moore, M. G. (1994). Is the cultural problem in International Distance Education? In Melody M. Thompson(Ed) Internaitonalism in Distance Education: A vision of Higher Education. Moore, M. G. and Kearsley, G. (1996). Distance Education: A System View. Belmont: California: Wadsworth Publishing. Rena, R. (2005a). Gender Disparity in Education–An Eritrean Perspective, USA: Global Child Journal 2(1),43-49. Rena, R. (2005b). Eritrean Education – Retrospect and Prospect, Nairobi (Kenya): Eastern Africa Journal of Humanities and Sciences, 5(2).1-12. Rena, R. (2005c). Financing of Education in Eritrea–A Case Study on Zoba Maakel, Albany (USA): The African Symposium, 5(3) 113-128. Rena, R. (2006). Education and Human Resource Development in Post-independent Eritrea-An Analysis, Barbados (West Indies), International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 2006, Vol. 2, Issue 4. Rumble, Grevile and Joao Oliveria (1999). Vocational Education at a Distance. International Perspectives. London: Kogan Page. Saint, W. (1999). Tertiary Distance Education and Technology in Sub Saharan Africa. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, ADEA working group on higher education. Sweet, R. (1986). Student Drop Out in Distance Education the Foundations of effective Practice. San Francisco, Calilfornia: Jossey – Bass Publishers. Taye, A. (1992). A Historical Survey of state of Education in Eritrea. Asmara: Educational Materials Production and Distribution Agency (EMPDA). Terry, E. & Philip J. (1991). Research in Distance Education, London: Macmillan 1991:1. Wills, B. (1998). Effective distance education planning: lessons learned. Educational Technology, 38 (1), 57–59. Wood, H. (1996) Designing Study Materials for Distance Students, New York: Dryden Press. 
work_lhv5izfuo5gu3gutbsnrn3qax4	----	مرفق (1) 39 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts Effectiveness of distance education using mobile applications on performance level some sports activities in P.E. lesson * Abdallah Abdel Halim Mohamed Abstract The study aimed to using distance education through WatsApp messenger application via the educational group and monitor its effectiveness on performance level some sports activities of P.E. lesson (Skills of: shooting in basketball “the free throw”, underhand serve in volleyball and running with the ball in handball) for preparatory stage pupils. the researcher used the experimental method by the experimental design of one group using pre-post measurements, the study was conducted on a sample of (20) pupils of preparatory stage with 33.33% of the total population in the year 2016/2017, results indicated that distance education via the educational group (through WatsApp application) led to a higher level of skills under research. Keywords: Distance education, Educational group, Applications, WatsApp, P.E. lesson, Volleyball, Basketball, Handball. * Department of Teaching Methods, Faculty of Physical Education, Sadat City University, Egypt. Distance education, or distance learning, sometimes called e-learning, is a formalized teaching and learning system specifically designed to be carried out remotely by using electronic communication. Because distance education is less expensive to support and is not constrained by geographic considerations, it offers opportunities in situations where traditional education has difficulty operating. Students with scheduling or distance problems can benefit, because distance education can be more flexible in terms of time and can be delivered virtually anywhere. [23] Distance education can truly be defined as the way of getting education without visiting a school or attending a class physically. Earlier the material 40 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts related to the distance education course was delivered through mail but due to increasing use of internet and technological advancements today it is available on your computer or mobile screen with the help of various tools like email, multi-media learning tools, interactive communication Such as networks, educational groups, educational packages and video conferencing tools like ezTalks Cloud Meeting etc. [50] Distance education is the delivery of instruction and the fulfillment of course work from remote locations; allowing instructors and students to interact without being in the same place. New technologies have made distance education an increasingly popular option for institutions and students alike. The Internet, e-mail, educational groups, video conferencing, and other interactive systems allow schools to experiment with unique modes of teaching and learning, use resources that do not reside on their own campuses, and attract faculty and students who are far from campus or cannot travel to campus very often. The first Open University is United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) that was established in the late 1960s and initially utilized television and radio as its main methodologies. Now a days almost all open universities use distance education technologies as basic teaching approach. [38] Now, the advent of the educational groups, the internet, Social networks and widespread use of the mobiles & computer has led to a huge growth in distantly delivered tuition and study. [47] With the development of technology, distance education is becoming increasingly popular in students’ education. A learner can complete a large amount of the classes at convenience. Most of the classes under distance education programs don’t require even to attend a session at a particular time and place. A learner can do and review the assignments and can do homework at its convenience. [42] Information technology made the whole affairs very easy as online or networks classes solved all possible https://www.eztalks.com/video-conference/free-video-conferencing-tools.html https://www.eztalks.com/video-conference/free-video-conferencing-tools.html 41 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts convenience concerns. Through use of technology it becomes easier to quickly look through study materials and can be well mastered. Distance education is so designed that it allows a learner focus more strongly on curriculum, time and effort in fields that contain new information and proficiency. Distance education also allows a learner to obtain study materials at convenience and amount at a faster speed against that of slow pace of the normal classroom settings. The learners join conversations in the discussion areas with flexibility and get instant feed back in form of reviews from networks or online classmates’ comments. [14] Distance education will remain distinctive in future as well as an innovative approach for electronically delivering, well-designed, learner oriented at anywhere, anytime through use of the internet. Distance education will remain as part of E learning, web based learning through virtual classrooms and digital teamwork, where contents will continue to be delivered through internet, audio, video tape, and conferencing through video; satellite and etc. [19] He rapid and intense use of Information and communication Technology in education will continue to play a role in developed countries facilitating them to establish more and more information and communication technology based universities. [52] Although distance education is not a new trend, but has got a huge increase due to developing technology. Distance education delivery will finally emerge as strong education approach with use of phone, desktop and TV at a same time in future. When distance education commenced using information technology, it was not well accepted and the equipment needed to provide it was expensive. That has now radically changed. And technology is being well used in video, audio text, graphics, animation, and simulation. Distance education is undergoing huge transformation and has and will never reach to a stage of saturation as much is yet to be explored and presented in this field. New and well established institutions are coming up with latest equipment and large data base to provide distance education to a growing population that wants higher 42 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts education out of traditional classroom setting. [18] Benefits of Distance education Tabor, Sharon (2011) [50] points to the benefits of distance educationas follows: * Adaptability and Freedom: One of the main advantages of distance education can be the personalized approach to get education regardless of the channels or mediums you are using for this purpose. Whether you are getting study materials online or through post you can learn only when a connection is developed between the material of the course and you. You get freedom to deal with the study material in distance education process. You can plan your learning process as per your convenience instead of sticking with a fixed schedule. * Self-inspiration: The distance education encourages you tom motivate yourself to learn due to the absence of a tradition teacher to guide you. You will have to create a learning environment and control it effectively so that a band of self-motivation develops in you to inspire you to learn for your personal growth. You can cultivate this band in you by engaging yourself in distance education methods. * Flexibility to Choose: You will have to follow a set schedule of learning as per the curriculum of the school if you are following traditional ways of learning. But different types of distance education allows you to set your learning schedule as per your convenience without following a regular schedule of learning. Even if you are out of touch form learning process, distance education program offers you flexibility to choose your course of learning. * Easy to Access: If you cannot attend regular classes due to various reasons like time constraints and distance etc. then distance education can be the best option for you to access the benefits of your education. If you opt for correspondence course for distance education then you will have to make postal delivery as a connection between you and your distance education center. But if you have a computer and internet connection then you can opt for an online learning method by using some video conferencing software like ezTalks cloud Meeting etc. It will allow you to interact with your teachers https://www.eztalks.com/elearning/different-types-of-distance-learning.html https://www.eztalks.com/elearning/different-types-of-distance-learning.html https://www.eztalks.com/ https://www.eztalks.com/ 43 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts face-to-face to resolve your problems. Moreover you can continue learning even without taking leave from your job. * Earn While You Learn: Those who want to improve their resume by getting higher education and without breaking their existing job then distance education can be the best option for them. You can go on earning your livelihood along with improving your qualification as distance education will accommodate both, learning as well as earning. * Saves Money and Time Both: By joining a distance education course you can save money and time spent in travelling to nearby educational institution. Distance education allows you to access your learning center online without any additional cost. Moreover the course offered at distance education centers are cheaper than the courses provided at traditional education centres. * Easy Access to the Experts: The students in traditional classes have limited options to guide them but distance education by video conferencing will provide you expanded opportunities to access the experts in your course even if they are not located in your town or country. They can easily get connected with you from any part of the world to share their expertise and experiences with you. Such facility is not possible in traditional classrooms. * Communicate with Other Educational Institutions: You can also be in touch with several other e-schools by getting distance education through video conferencing software. You can also connect with the students located at far of locations from you, anywhere in the world, to mutually share the experiences and problems along with solving problems of each other. The distance education through video conferencing also allows you to hone your interactive skills by collaborating with others from different work environments and cultures. Such facilities will not be available in traditional classroom education system. [50] Thus, distance education, or distance education, is a field of education that depends on the https://www.eztalks.com/elearning/distance-learning-by-video-conferencing.html https://www.eztalks.com/elearning/distance-learning-by-video-conferencing.html 44 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts Information technology, and instructional systems that plan to provide learning to students who are physically not present in a class room setting. In stead of attending courses personally, teachers and students communicate at times of their convenience and choosing and exchange printed or electronic material through any suitable technology; There are many different methods that are used in the distance education. The most popular and effective are e-mails, forums, faxes, educational groups, audio and video recordings, print materials, web and video conferencing, internet radio, telephone, live streaming and much more others. [52] Therfore, this study is based using of distance education via an educational group through WatsApp application, which offered content of lessons for the purpose of learning some skills in P.E. lesson, The researcher observation through his supervision of schools that methods and means used to skills learning in general lacks the motivation of the learner and the desire to learn more skills, as period after using these methods the learner sense monotony and boredom, these traditional methods doesn’t commensurate with what the world reached of technological uses and applications in the educational process. Thus, through the practical observation, the researcher noted that sports activities skills`s for preparatory stage pupils of P.E. lesson in is characterized by randomness, poor performance and lack of coordination in motor sequence, and pupils cannot develop a correct perception of the skills in mind which leads to weak performance level in some sports activities of P.E. lesson. Therefore, this study is an attempt to raising the level of pupils' performance with one of the most modern methods in the field of P.E. lesson, by using distance education via an educational group for studying its effect on some sports activities of P.E. lesson. Objective: The aim of this study was studying effect of using distance education via an educational group (through WatsApp messenger application) on performance level some sports activities of P.E. lesson for preparatory stage pupils (performance level of; Shooting “the free throw” skill in basketball, Underhand serve skill in volleyball & Running with the ball skill in handball). A research hypothes: 45 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts There are statistically significant differences between the average of the pre-and post- measurements for research group in the level of skills performance under research in favor to the post measurement. Methodology Method: The experimental approach was used for one group, using pre- post measurements. Research sample: The research society consisted of 60 pupils in the second graders in Sadat City Languages School - City Sadat for the year 2016/2017. The basic sample was randomly selected from the pupils of the research society. The total number of the sample was (20) pupils with 33.33% of the total population. And (15) pupils by 25% of the total research community and outside the basic research sample as exploration sample. Thus, the basic sample and outside the basic research sample consisted of (35) pupils by 58.33% of the total population. Tools: 1- Data recording forms: Forms for recording the data for the research sample were prepared. (Appendix 1) 2- Tools and devices: Restameter device for measuring height and weight, distance tape measure, bearings, medical balls, tennis balls, volleyballs, basketballs and handballs. 3- Fitness elements tests: (Appendix 2, 3) The fitness elements tests for the skills under research were identified through the following references: * Basketball: (Mohamed, Abdel-Dayem 2009) [37], (Mohamed 2003) [35], (Ahmed 2014) [4], (Hassan, Nahar 2012) [17], (Moustafa 2007) [40], (Gamal, El-Deeb 2008) [16]. * Volleyball: (Ahmed 2013) [5], (Zaki 2012) [55], (Farid et al. 2012) [15], (Mohamed, Hamdy 2005) [36], (Mohamed Alhefnawi 2013) [31], (Ayman 2006) [13], (Tarek, Ayman 2006) [51], (Mohamed, Ayman 2005) [32], (Ayat 2009, 2016) [10,11], (Ali 2014) [9], (Ahmed, Ali 2005) [3], (Marwan 2012) [30], (Ali 2010) [8], (Ayat, Eman 2016) [12] and (Rehab et al. 2013) [46]. * Handball: (Sobhy 2012) [48], (Kamal, Mohamed 2001) [22], (Kamal 2003) [21], (Mohamed Nasr 2016) [33]. These references were used to identify: - Fitness elements needed to perform the skills under research. - Measurement tests for the fitness elements (physical tests). The experts' opinion (Appendix 6) was reviewed. 46 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts The experts pointed out that the fitness elements (accuracy, strength, capacity, coordination, and flexibility) Shown in Appendix (2). The experts also pointed to the most appropriate tests (Table 1 & Appendix 3) for measuring these physical elements, which obtained an agreement rate higher than75%as follows: - Aiming at overlapping rectangles test. (Arm accuracy) - The fist strength using the dynamometer test. (Strength) - Push a medical 3 kg ball a distance test. (Arm capacity or Arm power) “Power = speed & strength” - The vertical jump (Jump up) to measure the muscular capacity of the legs. (Legs capacity or Legs power) “Power = speed & strength” - Through tennis ball on wall and receive it test. (Coordination) - Trunk bending forward down (Standing. folding) test. (Flexibility) - Zigzag running or the winding run test (Running between impedes). (Agility). - 50 metre Sprint test. (Speed) 4- Skillful tests: Through the following scientific studies and references: Basketball; (Marzouk 2011) [29], (Abdel- Nasser 2016) [1], (Mohamed, Abdel- Dayem 2009) [37], (Mohamed 2003) [35], (Ahmed 2014) [4], (Hassan, Nahar 2012) [17], (Moustafa 2007) [40] and (Gamal, El-Deeb 2008) [16]. Volleyball; (Ali 2014) [9], (Ahmed, Ali 2005) [3], (Ayman 2006) [13], (Tarek, Ayman 2006) [51], (Mohamed, Ayman 2005) [32], (Ayat 2009, 2016) [10,11], (Marwan 2012) [30], (Rehab et al. 2013) [46], (Afaf et al. 2014) [2], (Ayat, Eman 2016) [12] and (Mohamed, Hamdy 2005) [36]. Handball; (Sobhy 2012) [48], (Kamal, Mohamed 2001) [22], (Kamal 2003) [21], (Abdel-Nasser 2016) [1] and (Mohamed Nasr 2016) [33]. The skillful tests were determined to measure performance level of the skills under research. In addition, the expert opinion (Appendix 6) was used to determine the tests to measure the skills, Experts agreed to the tests of (Shooting “the free throw” test in basketball, Accuracy of underhand serve test in volleyball, Running with the ball test in handball) as shown in Table (1) & Appendix (4). Table (1) Percentage of experts' agreement on physical, skillful tests (N=3) 47 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts Variables Physical and skillful tests Agreement ratio Accuracy Aiming at overlapping rectangles test. (Arm accuracy) 100% Strength The fist strength using the dynamometer test. (Strength) 67% Arm capacity Push a medical 3 kg ball a distance test. (Arm capacity) 100% Legs capacity The vertical jump (Jump up) to measure the muscular capacity of the legs (legs capacity) 100% Coordinatio n Through tennis ball on wall and receive it test. (Coordination) 100% Flexibility Trunk bending forward down (standing. folding) test. (Flexibility) 100% Agility Zigzag running or the winding run test (Running between impedes). (Agility) 100% Speed 50 metre Sprint test. (Speed) 100% Skillful tests: Shooting “the free throw” test in basketball 100% Accuracy of underhand serve test in volleyball 100% Running with the ball test in handball 100% It is clear from the table that experts agreement percentage on the physical and skillful tests was at (67, 100%). Table (2) Validity and stability of physical and skillful tests N=20 (test validity), N=10 (test stability) Variables unit Distinct N1=10 Non distinct N2=10 Mean differences T. value M ±SD M ±SD Accuracy Degree 7.96 2.17 4.55 2.01 3.41 6.45 * Strength Kg 19.93 2.78 16.31 2.72 3.62 6.80 * Arm capacity meter 3.88 0.62 2.72 0.56 1.16 3.81 * Legs capacity Cm 20.35 4.22 12.39 3.12 7.96 13.28 * Coordination Degree 5.98 0.65 3.86 0.59 2.12 4.06 * Flexibility Cm 7.42 1.04 5.09 1.21 2.33 4.59 * Follow Table (2) Validity and stability of physical and skillful tests N=20 (test 48 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts validity), N=10 (test stability) Variables unit Distinct N1=10 Non distinct N2=10 Mean differences T. value M ±SD M ±SD Agility Second 10.04 2.02 13.67 2.04 3.63 6.91 * Speed Second 9.95 1.55 14.43 1.42 4.48 7.96 * Shooting “the free throw” test in basketball Degree 12.57 2.8 5.95 2.04 6.62 11.57 * Accuracy of underhand serve test in volleyball Degree 12.84 1.61 7.35 2.99 5.49 9.75 * Running with the ball test in handball Degree 39.25 5.68 22.58 5.21 16.67 24.63 * Variables unit 1st 2n.d CC M ±SD M ±SD Accuracy Degree 4.55 2.01 4.62 2.15 0.91* Strength Kg 16.31 2.72 16.29 2.65 0.93* Arm capacity meter 2.72 0.56 2.71 0.54 0.96* Legs capacity Cm 12.39 3.12 12.41 3.17 0.94* Coordination Degree 3.87 0.59 3.91 0.62 0.94* Flexibility Cm 5.09 1.21 5.13 1.25 0.95* Agility Second 13.67 2.04 13.64 2.02 0.93* Speed Second 14.43 1.42 14.46 1.44 0.92* Shooting “the free throw” test in basketball Degree 5.95 2.04 6.05 2.12 0.89* Accuracy of underhand serve test in volleyball Degree 7.35 2.99 7.42 3.02 0.91* Running with the ball test in handball Degree 22.58 5.21 22.56 5.17 0.95* The value of t-table at a significant level (18, 0.05)= 2.10 (two directions), the t- value (cc) at a significant level (8, 0.05) = 0.738 (two directions) Sperman It is clear from Table (2) that there are statistically significant differences between the two distinct and non- 49 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts distinct groups, indicating the validity of the tests. It is also evident that there is a correlation between the first and second applications indicating the stability of the tests. Distance education style design through WatsApp messenger application: Distance education style was designed via the educational group as shown below: 1- Objective of Distance education style: The distance education style through the educational group was aimed to know its effect on the performance level of (Shooting in basketball, Underhand serve in volleyball and Running with the ball in handball) for preparatory stage pupils. 2- Skillful level of the research sample: The skillful aspects was determined by the tests under research (Appendix 4). 3- Distance education style content: The distance education style content was determined through the following scientific references (Ayman 2006)[13], (Tarek, Ayman 2006)[51], (Mohamed, Ayman 2005) [32], (Suzanne 2007) [49], (Ayat 2009, 2016) [10,11], (Rehab et al. 2013) [46], (Afaf et al. 2014) [2], (Mohamed, Hamdy 2005)[36], (Ali 2014) [9], (Ahmed, Ali 2005) [3], (Marwan 2012) [30], (Ali 2010)[8], (Zaki 2012) [55], (Farid et al. 2012) [15], (Mohamed Alhefnawi 2013) [31], (Mahmoud 2016a,b) [26,27], (Marzouk 2011) [29] and (Abdel-Nasser 2016) [1] by including some multimedia; videos, pictures and texts in an educational group contains skillful aspects of Shooting in basketball, Underhand serve in volleyball and Running with the ball in handball skills. The stages of the technical performance of the skills under research were described (Appendix 5). 4- The educational group: An educational group was designed or created contain the reading and seing the explanation, information and educational videos of the skillful aspects of the skills under research on the WhatsApp. WhatsApp Messenger was chosen because of dealing ease with it and the spread of its use in mobile phones between pupils. Therefore, the 50 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts possibility of easily browsing at any time and from anywhere. 5- Style of teaching: The instructional style was used in the study was the individual or self-learning style through the use of each puiple for the educational group (WhatsApp Messenger) by individually. 6- The educational group features: - All pupils can communicate with each other in the educational group. - Display and download text, images, graphics and video. - Sound control during video playback. -Repetition of images, graphics and video more than once. - Pause during video playback. 7- The experts' opinion: The experts' opinion (appendix 6) of distance education style and agreement was obtained on the educational group was designed, and the experts agreed to instructions and contents of the group. 8- The exploratory study: The distance education style was tested by presenting the educational group (WhatsApp) on the sample of the exploratory study in order to identify the clarity of the pictures, drawings and video were contained on the educational group. The result of this experiment was the clarity of all the contents of the distance education style on the educational group. Application: Distance education style was implemented on the basic study sample (50 pupils), as shown in table (3): Table (3) Time distribution of the research group Content Time Application Duration 12 weeks Number of units (lessons) per week 2 units in week Total number of units 24 units Unit time Open time (Time available 24 hours a day) Distribution of the educational content (skills) on the total units for the research group: 52 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts The research group was study by the distance education style via the educational group, Table (4) shows the distribution of educational content of the research group. Table (4) Distribution of the educational content (the skills under research) on the total units for the research group The educational content (Study content) on the educational group Units Week Shooting in basketball “the free throw” 1, 2 1 Shooting in basketball “the free throw” 3, 4 2 Underhand serve in volleyball 5, 6 3 Underhand serve in volleyball 7, 8 4 Running with the ball in handball 9, 10 5 Running with the ball in handball 11, 12 6 Shooting in basketball “the free throw” 13, 14 7 Underhand serve in volleyball 15, 16 8 Running with the ball in handball 17, 18 9 Shooting in basketball “the free throw” 19, 20 10 Underhand serve in volleyball 21, 22 11 Running with the ball in handball 23, 24 12 Moderation of sample distribution: Table (5) Distribution moderation for basic and exploratory research sample (N=70) Parameters Unit Statistical analyses Mean Median SD SK Age year 13.14 13.00 0.54 0.78 Hight Cm 141.71 142.00 8.50 -0.10 Wight Kg 40.84 41.00 6.95 -0.07 Physical Tests: Accuracy degree 4.54 4.60 2.00 -0.09 Strength Kg 16.32 16.50 2.75 -0.20 Arm capacity meter 2.71 3.00 0.54 -1.61 Table (5) 52 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts Distribution moderation for basic and exploratory research sample (N=70) Parameters Unit Statistical analyses Mean Median SD SK Legs capacity Cm 12.41 12.00 3.14 0.39 Coordination degree 3.91 4.00 0.61 -0.44 Flexibility Cm 5.07 5.00 1.19 0.18 Agility Second 13.69 14.00 2.05 -0.45 Speed Second 14.44 14.50 1.41 -0.13 Skillful Tests: Shooting “the free throw” test in basketball degree 5.97 6.00 2.06 -0.04 Accuracy of underhand serve test in volleyball degree 7.40 7.50 3.01 -0.10 Running with the ball test in handball degree 22.56 23.00 5.20 -0.25 Table (5) shows that the values of Skewness coefficients ranged from (+3, - 3), indicating the moderated distribution of the basic and exploratory sample. Results Table (6) Significance of the mean differences between the pre- post measurements of the research group in the performance level of (Shooting in basketball, Underhand serve in volleyball and Running with the ball in handball) skills Parameters Research group (distance education style) N=20 Mean Differences T. value Pre Post M ±SD M ±SD Shooting “the free throw” test in basketball 5.97 2.06 11.40 2.64 5.43 8.47* Accuracy of underhand serve test in volleyball 7.40 3.01 10.92 2.93 3.52 4.23* Running with the ball test in handball 22.56 5.20 29.88 5.42 7.32 11.67* T Table value at a significant level (19, 0.05) = 1.73 (one direction) Table (6) shows statistically significant 54 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts differences between Pre-Post measurements of the research group at a significant level of 0.05. Discussion The results of Table (6) show that there are statistically significant differences between pre and post mean values of thes research group in performance level some sports activities of P.E. lesson for preparatory stage pupils at a significant level (0.05) for the post measurement. These results indicate that the distance education style via the educational group was a positive effect on performance level of sports activities or the skillful level under research (Shooting in basketball, Underhand serve in volleyball and Running with the ball in handball skills). This indicates that the distance education style led to the correct perception of how to perform skills (performance level of sports activities under research). The images, drawings, texts and videos were attached to the educational group was a positive result on the level of sports activities of P.E. lesson. Also, The researcher attributed the reason for these differences to the experimental variable only, which is represented in the distance education style. The researcher also attributes the progress made to the research group to clarifying the skillful performance (Skills of: shooting in basketball, underhand serve in volleyball and running with the ball in handball) through The educational videos on the educational group. Thus, the higher level of skillful performance for the research group. The previous results is consistent with many studies which was indicated that use of the distance education style via WhatsApp and Internet in the educational process shows an improvement and effectiveness in the learning process and the higher level of skillful performance in general, such as the study of (Ahmed Talha 2011) [7], (Ahmed Saher 2011) [6], (Rania 2008) [43], (Rasha 2007) [44], (Mar Pérez et al. 2015) [28], (Koen et al. 2015) [24], (Rehab 2011) [45] and (Jean 2015) [20]. Thus, the researcher attributed the reason of differences between pre and post 55 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts measurements to the experimental variable only, which is the distance education style. The researcher also attributes the progress in sports activities or skills under research to relying on the distance education style via the educational group and its various media (texts, pictures, graphics, audio and video) and thus a positive effect on variables of research (Shooting, Underhand serve and Running with the ball) and this is due to the attractiveness and effectiveness of distance education style. Accordingly, The distance education style contribute in a positive way in improving sports activities of P.E. lesson & skillful performance in general, and active learning using technology through WhatsApp (the educational group) contributes positively to enhance skillful variables under research. On the other hand, The researcher attributes the progress of the experimental group to the interaction between the puiple and the learning through WhatsApp which the pupils controlled what they are subjected to and controlled the sequenceof the presentation, time. As WhatsApp help to learn according to the self-speed of each puiple, in addition to the formation of the optimal perception of the performance of skillful in how to emplement the skills under research through the educational group. Thus, provide the puiple feedback, which was helped to develop his movement perception. Therefore, the effectiveness of distance education style via the educational group, This previous results is consistent with (Magdy 2003) [25], (Osman et al. 2006) [41], (Yaseen 2006) [53], (Yogesh 2004) [54], (Mohamed, Makarem, Hany, 2001) [34] and (Moustafa 2009) [39]. Accordingly, This proves that distance education style leads to higher level of performance and learning as a result of the practice of what has been explained and presented on WhatsApp (the educational group). Thus, reflected in the level of pupils' performance. Thus, A research hypothes is achieved, which stated that there are statistically 56 Assiut Journal For Sport Science Arts significant differences between the pre-and post-measurements for the research group (distance education style via the educational group through WatsApp application) in the level of skillful Performance under research (sports activities of P.E. lesson) in favor to the post measurement. Conclusions Distance education style via the educational group (through WatsApp messenger application) has effective on performance level some sports activities of P.E. lesson (skills of: shooting in basketball “the free throw”, underhand serve in volleyball and running with the ball in handball) for preparatory stage pupils. Recommendations - Encouraging the using distance education style via the educational group because of its positive effect in raising the sports activities level of P.E. lesson (skills of: shooting in basketball “the free throw”, underhand serve in volleyball and running with the ball in handball). - Introducing learning through the distance education style within the curricula of the scientific subjects in the faculties of physical education. - Conducting further studies on the effectiveness of distance education style in other sports activities aspects. 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work_lnvextcxenagvoycvxu75xcida	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_lo5he4i5bnc2llszzvzxfwf72i	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_lqggdaixcnbnvkcgaifz2ecvv4	----	Evidences of Validity of The Brazilian Scale of Learner's Attitude Towards Distance Education Programs | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJICTE.2018010101 Corpus ID: 41058269Evidences of Validity of The Brazilian Scale of Learner's Attitude Towards Distance Education Programs @article{Junior2018EvidencesOV, title={Evidences of Validity of The Brazilian Scale of Learner's Attitude Towards Distance Education Programs}, author={Francisco Antonio Coelho Junior and Mariane Cortat and Clarissa Leite Flores and F. M. Santos and Gleidilson Costa Alves and Cristiane Faiad and W. Ramos and A. R. D. Silva}, journal={Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ.}, year={2018}, volume={14}, pages={1-16} } Francisco Antonio Coelho Junior, Mariane Cortat, +5 authors A. R. D. Silva Published 2018 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. Onlinelearningisoneofthefastestgrowingtrendsineducationalusesoftechnology.Inthisstudy, aninstrumenttomeasurethesocialattitudesoftheBrazilianstudentsbasedondistanceeducation wasdevelopedandvalidated.Thestudypopulationconsistedofpublicadministrationundergraduate students that hasbeenprovidingbydistance educationbyUniversityofBrasília, inBrazil.The sampleofthestudyconsistedof590Brazilianstudents.Thescalehas41items,withtotal… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 7 CitationsBackground Citations 1 Methods Citations 1 Results Citations 2 View All 7 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency The Mediating Role of Medical Students’ Attitudes towards Distance Education in the Relationship between E-Learning Styles and Academic Achievements Melih Dikmen Psychology 2020 View 2 excerpts Save Alert Research Feed Attitudes towards Online Learning: What Do Brazilian Students Think About? Francisco Antonio Coelho Junior, Erica de Aguiar Botelho, M. C. Rêgo, Cristiane Faiad, W. Ramos Psychology 2019 1 PDF View 18 excerpts, cites background, results and methods Save Alert Research Feed e-Learning Readiness and Perceived Learning Workload among Students in an Indonesian University. A. Widyanti, S. Hasudungan, Jaehyun Park Psychology 2020 2 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites results Save Alert Research Feed Influence of remote education on consumer value of university education A. Bogoviz, S. Lobova, Julia V. Ragulina, A. Alekseev Business 2019 Save Alert Research Feed Evaluation of Competitiveness of University with Remote Education: Methodological Recommendations and Russian Experience. A. Bogoviz, S. Lobova, Julia V. Ragulina, A. Alekseev Political Science 2019 4 Save Alert Research Feed Remote Education vs Traditional Education Based on Effectiveness at the Micro Level and Its Connection to the Level of Development of Macro-Economic Systems. E. Sibirskaya, E. Popkova, L. Oveshnikova, I. Tarasova Business 2019 14 Save Alert Research Feed Possibilities and barriers for practical application of internationally recognized diplomas of remote education Y. G. Tyurina, Mariya A. Troyanskaya, Lilia V. Ermolina, A. Bogoviz, S. Lobova Business 2019 3 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 13 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency THE ATTITUDE SCALE TOWARDS DISTANCE NURSING EDUCATION (astDNE) Belgian Boz Yuksekdag, G. U. Barlas Computer Science 2015 1 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Challenges and Instructors' Intention to Adopt and Use Open Educational Resources in Higher Education in Tanzania. J. Mtebe, R. Raisamo Psychology 2014 90 PDF Save Alert Research Feed e-Learning, Online Learning, and Distance Learning Environments: Are They the Same?. J. Moore, Camille Dickson-Deane, Krista Galyen Computer Science 2011 716 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior I. Ajzen, M. Fishbein Psychology 1980 20,067 Save Alert Research Feed Attitudes and the Prediction of Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature S. Kraus Psychology 1990 1,366 Save Alert Research Feed How do online course design features influence student performance? S. S. Jaggars, D. Xu Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2016 133 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Interactive learning online: challenges and opportunities M. Sabin, A. Settle, Rebecca H. Rutherfoord Computer Science SIGITE '12 2012 4 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Forming attitudes that predict future behavior: a meta-analysis of the attitude-behavior relation. Laura R. Glasman, D. Albarracín Psychology, Medicine Psychological bulletin 2006 962 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Residual Effects of Past on Later Behavior: Habituation and Reasoned Action Perspectives I. Ajzen Psychology 2002 1,020 View 1 excerpt Save Alert Research Feed As atitudes políticas na Espanha, segundo uma estrutura dimensional indutiva A. M. Díaz Political Science 2004 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... Related Papers Abstract 7 Citations 13 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_lqlefzphmfa4pfxe5az55b4oie	----	Live Broadcast Classroom: A Feasible Solution for Chinese Rural Weak Education | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2017070103 Corpus ID: 43368220Live Broadcast Classroom: A Feasible Solution for Chinese Rural Weak Education @article{Zhou2017LiveBC, title={Live Broadcast Classroom: A Feasible Solution for Chinese Rural Weak Education}, author={Yuxia Zhou and Y. Xiong}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2017}, volume={15}, pages={31-46} } Yuxia Zhou, Y. Xiong Published 2017 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Inequity between urban and rural education prevalently exists in China. A Lack of qualified teachers is the main reason for disadvantaged education in rural areas. In order to solve this problem, Live Broadcast Classroom was adopted for use in grade 5 English classes. 90 students and 3 teachers of 3 classes from two primary schools in Yunnan Province were selected as participants. As for methodology, quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Results showed it was feasible to use Live… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 3 CitationsBackground Citations 1 Methods Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Interaction design 3 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Under the Fair View of the Construction of Rural Basic Education of English System X. Liu Sociology 2019 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Learn Tao Xingzhi's Educational Thoughts: Revitalize the Education Activity of Chinese Rural Yali Yin 2018 Save Alert Research Feed New Measures of Chinese University Library Knowledge Service under the Cloudization Background Jiayin Liu, C. Chen Computer Science 2018 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites methods Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 12 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Distance learning, virtual classrooms, and teaching pedagogy in the Internet environment K. Harper, K. Chen, D. Yen Computer Science, Chemistry 2004 80 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Inequality in Basic Education in China: A Comprehensive Review H. Cheng Political Science 2009 20 PDF View 1 excerpt Save Alert Research Feed Online Education: Perspectives on a New Environment L. Harasim Computer Science 1990 691 Save Alert Research Feed Getting the Mix Right Again: An Updated and Theoretical Rationale for Interaction T. Anderson Sociology 2003 616 PDF Save Alert Research Feed A New Method for Analyzing Patterns of Interaction D. C. A. Hillman Computer Science 1999 107 Save Alert Research Feed Design-based research and technology-enhanced learning environments F. Wang, M. Hannafin Computer Science 2004 1,410 Save Alert Research Feed Three Types of Interaction K. Harry, Magnus John, D. Keegan Psychology 2013 611 Save Alert Research Feed Modes of Interaction in Distance Education: Recent Developments and Research Questions T. Anderson Engineering 2003 345 Save Alert Research Feed Editorial: Three types of interaction M. Moore Psychology 1989 1,268 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Discourse strategies: Subject index J. Gumperz Sociology 1982 2,371 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 3 Citations 12 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_ltrwg3f7u5g4jieq2inctbgt24	----	Mountain Heights Academy | Utah Online Public School Grade 7-12 - 404 Error About Our Story Our Team Our Policies Open Education Resources Enrollment Enrollment Options Fees & Waivers FAQs Success Stories Recognition News & Media Request Info myMHA Trailblazer Life Site Search Request Info myMHA Trailblazer Life Site Search About Our Story Our Team Our Policies Open Education Resources Enrollment Enrollment Options Fees & Waivers FAQs Success Stories Recognition News & Media 404 Error Sorry, that content may have moved.  Please navigate using the menu above. back to top Connect Contact Us 9067 South 1300 West Suite 204 West Jordan, UT 84088 Office: 801.721.6329 Donate © 2020 All Rights Reserved About Our Story Our Team Board Administration Office Staff School Counselors Counseling Staff Student Services Mentors Faculty Support Staff Our Policies Open Education Resources Enrollment Enrollment Options Full Time Part Time Summer Fees & Waivers FAQs Success Stories Recognition News & Media 
work_lxnntab2crb4xatl356uac3smu	----	Supporting the reuse of effective CSCL learning designs through social structure representations Authors: Serena Alvino a; Juan I. Asensio-P rez b; Yannis Dimitriadis b; Davinia Hern ndez-Leo c Affiliations: a University of Genoa and Institute for Educational Technologies, Italy b School of Telecommunications Engineering, University of Valladolid, Spain c Department of Technologies, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain DOI: 10.1080/01587910903023215 Published in: Distance Education, Volume 30, Issue 2 August 2009 , pages 239 - 258 Abstract Distance and blended collaborative learning settings are usually characterized by different social structures defined in terms of groups' number, dimension, and composition; these structures are variable and can change within the same activity. This variability poses additional complexity to instructional designers, when they are trying to develop successful experiences from existing designs. This complexity is greatly associated with the fact that learning designs do not render explicit how social structures influenced the decisions of the original designer, and thus whether the social structures of the new setting could preclude the effectiveness of the reused design. This article proposes the usage of new representations (social structure representations, SSRs) able to support unskilled designers in reusing existing learning designs, through the explicit characterization of the social structures and constraints embedded either by the original designers or the reusing teachers, according to well-known principles of good collaborative learning practice. The article also describes an evaluation process that involved university professors, as well as the main findings derived from it. This process supported the initial assumptions about the effectiveness of SSRs, with significant evidence from both qualitative and qualitative data. Keywords: learning design; computer-supported collaborative learning; collaborative scripts; social structures 1. Introduction Recent approaches to instructional design (ID) point out that the design process, as put into practice by expert designers, is not a procedure but a problem-solving process. It can be assumed that it is not possible to identify a perfect solution, since reality is often ill-structured and rich in complex variables. Heuristics and good practices held as effective for a specific problematic situation guide skilled designers through different decision-making steps, which progressively contextualize the design by introducing constraints (Greeno, Korpi, Jackson, & Michalchik, 1990; Silber, 2007). The key role http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713412832� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713412832~tab=issueslist~branches=30#v30� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g913327446� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0007� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0023� played by ID heuristics and practices in this view makes the prospect of rendering explicit, formalizing, sharing, and reusing them in different contexts more and more important in order to support unskilled designers in the decision-making steps involved in traditional, as well as in open, distance, and flexible learning design processes. This prospect has become especially significant for the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in which computer-mediated (face-to-face or distance) interactions among learners are promoted as a key factor for improving learning, but where good practices about how to structure these interactions have until now hardly been shared by experts. Recently, the bridge between collaborative learning and traditional ID methods (Dillenbourg, 2002) by means of CSCL scripts has attracted much attention. CSCL scripts computationally specify, sequence, and distribute the roles and activities involved in a CSCL situation, thus providing a certain degree of scaffolding for fostering learners' engagement in more potentially effective interactions (Weinberger, Collar, Dimitriadis, M kitalo-Siegl, & Fischer, 2008). The inherent complexity of collaboration structures and the need to avoid excessive coercion in scripted collaboration (Dillenbourg, 2002), among other factors, make the process of creating effective collaborative learning designs in the form of CSCL scripts a daunting task for unskilled instructional designers or practitioners. Several types of research initiatives have tackled this challenge by investigating the creation of communities in which CSCL scripts are shared and exchanged (see, for instance, the Cloudworks initiative at the Open University in the UK, at http://cloudworks.open.ac.uk/); defining CSCL script design processes based on the reuse of patterns, exemplars, and other script components (Hern ndez-Leo, Harrer, Dodero, Asensio-P rez, & Burgos, 2007); and developing CSCL script authoring tools based on practitioner-friendly abstractions and graphical representations (Hern ndez- Leo, Villasclaras-Fern ndez, Asensio-P rez, & Dimitriadis, 2007). The intense international research effort is also exemplified by several workshops at international conferences (e.g., Vignollet, David, Ferraris, Martel, & Lejeune, 2006); research projects and European research teams within the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence (Kaleidoscope, 2003-2009); specific international books (Botturi & Stubbs, 2007), and standardization processes, for example, within the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2003). This article focuses on a particular design problem that unskilled instructional designers or practitioners encounter when trying to create-by-reuse an existing CSCL script in their particular learning context, the so-called script instantiation problem. This problem is one significant example of the importance of rendering explicit the constraints that the original designer considered when making design decisions. The lack of information about those constraints could lead an unskilled designer to develop an ineffective CSCL script. To address the problem, the article proposes, illustrates, and provides evidence in support of a new formalism for modelling and visualizing social structures involved in a CSCL activity, called social structure representations (SSRs). SSRs are intended to complement existing design processes for CSCL scripts, so that unskilled designers may be aware of and consider important constraints when designing social structures (e.g., number of groups, dimension, composition) for their particular learning environment (including resources, tools, and services). Note that the issue addressed in this article is particularly significant in distance learning situations in which interactions are necessarily mediated by information and communication technology tools, since the effectiveness of the design decisions may be valid only for a http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0004� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0028� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0004� http://cloudworks.open.ac.uk/� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0010� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0011� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0027� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0015� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0013� given set of tools. Further, flexibility is even more necessary in the case of complex collaborative learning situations, such as the ones studied in this article. The article is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces and defines the instantiation problem tackled by the article and illustrates it by means of a case study. Section 3 introduces the SSR proposal, and Section 4 describes the SSR evaluation process which was undertaken. That evaluation process, based on a mixed quantitative-qualitative evaluation method, engaged real practitioners (university teachers) who were unskilled in CSCL in a process of reusing an existing CSCL script for realistic design scenarios which were formalized with the IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) educational modelling language (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2003). These educators compared the complexity and effectiveness of reusing the script with or without the help of SSRs. Finally, Section 5 concludes the article and outlines some future short- and medium- term research lines derived from the findings. 2 The instantiation problem when reusing CSCL scripts Usually a learning design process starts from a general idea of an effective learning path and develops through different steps by contextualizing the design until the implementation of a session (Silber, 2007). In particular, the design of CSCL scripts is a process, spanning from their conception to their execution, which comprises different phases in which the designers progressively enrich the script by elaborating a range of aspects, such as structure, activity description, content-specific resources, supporting computing tools, and group structure. Several CSCL script design processes can be found in the literature (e.g., Dillenbourg & Tchounikine, 2007; Hern ndez-Leo et al., 2006; Weinberger et al., 2008), each one proposing a different set of phases that should lead to a ready-to-execute script. Script authoring and script instantiation are commonly considered to be two important phases in existing CSCL script design processes. Although there is no consensus on the number, nature, sequence, or even the terminology of the involved phases, authoring comprises the steps performed by the designer to create a potentially effective general script, while instantiation comes later and includes the specific characteristics and data for a script to be run in a specific learning situation. This article focuses on formalized CSCL learning designs which have been authored but not yet instantiated, in particular on the problems that arise when trying to reuse a CSCL script that has been created for a specific setting (and maybe instantiated in it) in a different educational context. Section 2.1 firstly presents a pattern-based CSCL script authoring process proposed by the authors and described in Hern ndez-Leo et al. (2006). This process, which has been implemented in an authoring tool, supports unskilled designers and practitioners in the creation of CSCL scripts formalized with IMS LD (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2003). Secondly, it outlines a script instantiation process, showing how it is normally separate from the authoring phase to facilitate the reuse of the script in different educational contexts. Starting from these premises, Section 2.2 shows how this division can generate problems when a third-party teacher reuses the script and re-contextualizes it in a new educational context. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0013� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0023� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0005� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0012� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0028� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0012� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0013� 2.1 Authoring and instantiating a collaborative script The CSCL script design process proposed by Hern ndez-Leo, Asensio-P rez, and Dimitriadis (2005) is based on the selection and combination of so-called collaborative learning flow patterns (CLFPs). The good practices for collaborative learning contained in CLFPs are formalized with the IMS LD specification language to create a CSCL script which can be instantiated into specific learning scenarios. An IMS LD authoring tool specialized for CSCL called Collage (Hern ndez-Leo et al., 2006) supports this CLFP-based script design process (see also http://ulises.tel.uva.es/collage). The usage of patterns is a key element of this process as it enables existing collaborative learning techniques that have proven to be effective to be reused by unskilled instructional designers or practitioners. Examples of collaborative learning techniques formalized as CLFPs include Brainstorming and Jigsaw. For a complete description of Collage CLFPs, please visit http://ulises.tel.uva.es/collage/clfps. One of the cases in which the CLFP-based script design process has been applied was in a blended course on grid computing technologies that took place in March 2007 within the context of a Spanish R&D project called MOSAIC. The MOSAIC course involved 12 PhD students from three universities (with four students from each site). Their final goal was to collaboratively create a concept map on the topic of grid computing after reading a set of basic scientific papers about the subject. Four synchronous sessions lasting a total of 8.5 hours were available for performing a set of learning activities aimed at achieving that final goal. The technical support for the course was provided by the .LRN (n.d.) learning management system (LMS), which includes an IMS LD interpreter (Escobedo, de la Fuente, Guti rrez, Pardo, & Delgado, 2007). The script authoring phase of the CLFP-based design process comprises two main steps supported by the Collage tool: • Firstly, the Collage user (teacher or instructional designer) is provided with a detailed description of the CLFPs in terms of the types of learning objectives and tasks they are suitable for. Using that information, the Collage user selects one or several CLFPs. (CLFPs can be combined by structuring one activity of a CLFP according to the sequence of activities prescribed by another one.) For the MOSAIC situation, three CLFPs (Pyramid, Jigsaw, Think-Pair-Share) were selected and combined (as shown in Figure 1). For instance, the Jigsaw CLFP was selected to foster interactions potentially effective for promoting positive interdependence, discussion, and individual accountability. • Secondly, the Collage user customizes the selected CLFPs by including the description of activities and roles, as well as the resources (learning objects and computing tools) to be used in each activity. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0009� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0012� http://ulises.tel.uva.es/collage� http://ulises.tel.uva.es/collage/clfps� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0018� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0006� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#F0001� [Enlarge Image] Figure 1. CSCL script of the MOSAIC course, as represented in the Collage tool. For the MOSAIC course, for example, following the Jigsaw prescriptions, students were divided into discussion groups and assigned three papers about a specific topic intended to increase their expertise in the topic. After the discussion in the expert groups, the groups were reorganized into new Jigsaw groups. In the Jigsaw group, students had to explain their ideas on their expert subjects to others and then had to collaborate to propose a joint conceptual map. The script designers also gave specific references about the tools that should be provided to support each activity. The final product of the above two steps is a so-called IMS LD Unit of Learning (UoL) that contains a structured XML document with all the information provided by the Collage user, as well as the learning material (e.g., electronic documents) and the tools (or references to them) that are intended to be used throughout the script enactment with the real users. After the described script authoring phase, and before its enactment, a UoL must undergo the so-called production phase (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2003). During production a UoL is instantiated by specifying the number of groups, the involvement of participants in the different learning activities, possible moderators or experts, and the specific schedule. As we mentioned before, the division between the authoring phase of a UoL and its instantiation is intended to facilitate the reuse of the UoL in different educational contexts. http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0001g.gif� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0013� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0001g.gif� In the MOSAIC course, the course designers created four Jigsaw groups (each with three participants) whose members were expected to carry out some of their activities in four expert groups (of four participants each). However, the instantiation phase has not yet been addressed in a standard way by the community. In the MOSAIC case, the UoL instantiation was carried out by a specific tool provided by the LMS, while an instantiation tool specifically applicable to UoLs created by Collage is now available. That tool, called InstanceCollage (Hern ndez- Gonzalo, Villasclaras-Fern ndez, Hern ndez-Leo, Asensio-P rez, & Dimitriadis, 2008), uses the same graphical abstractions characterizing Collage and takes into account some inherent restrictions of the CLFPs when creating and populating groups, thus facilitating the instantiation process in complex collaborative learning scenarios. 2.2 Issues in reusing a collaborative script Taking into account the description of the MOSAIC course we can now go on to analyse the issues that may arise when a new, unskilled designer wants to reuse such a design and instantiate it for execution in different environments. The designers of MOSAIC used Collage to create a UoL to be run in a specific predefined context, and in the authoring phase took into account several constraints for runtime, concerning the instantiation phase. For example, they considered the number and characteristics of students attending the course (12 PhD students from three Spanish universities) and the available time (two weeks), as well as the specific aim of the group activity (collaborative construction of a shared conceptual map). On the basis of these contextual constraints, they identified their communication needs and the necessary tools. Then, in the script instantiation process they created small collaborative groups which would work at distance to produce an artefact and provided these groups with specific editing tools and a synchronous communication tool. As it can be inferred by these premises, in the MOSAIC context this UoL turned out to be very effective when it was put in practice with the real participants of the course (de la Fuente, Pardo, Delgado, Asensio, & Dimitriadis, 2008); but what would happen if other teachers decide to reuse this UoL in their own educational context? IMS LD has not addressed satisfactorily the complexity of collaborative activities, and therefore several problems have been reported in modelling collaborative learning processes, which are related, among other things, to defining groups or structuring the flow of collaborative learning activities (Hern ndez-Leo et al., 2005; Miao, Hoeksema, Hoppe, & Harrer, 2005). Specific tools such as Collage or Recourse (see TENCompetence, n.d.), focusing on this particular pedagogical approach (collaborative learning), present to their users only the required functionality (Hern ndez-Leo et al., 2005), and so overcome the complexity of authoring a collaborative script (Koper, 2006). Unfortunately, teachers reusing a collaborative UoL (independently of the authoring tool used by the creator of the learning design), have to face other problems concerning the instantiation process. The MOSAIC UoL contains well-defined objectives, prerequisites, content, didactic strategies, activities, and task descriptions, as well as suggestions for implementation. It http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0008� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0003� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0009� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0019� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0025� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0009� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0016� also embeds a selection of resources and links to the tools required by each phase of the activity. However, the flow-centred representation of the learning process, which characterizes IMS LD specification, lacks important information about, for example, flows of resources and artefacts, the need for reference experts or moderators, and especially the structure of the learning groups, in terms of their number, dimension, and composition (Persico & Sarti, 2005). This is partially due to the fact that in IMS LD- compliant authoring tools the learning design is taken as a starting point to solve educational problems (Koper, 2006). Nevertheless, when using an instantiation tool, such as InstanceCollage, to generate a specific session, a teacher has to make some key design decisions concerning just these important aspects. In addition, a UoL normally introduces into the design process a range of constraints which are naturally embedded in the activities defined by the designer. In fact, as mentioned before, a design process usually occurs by a progressive contextualization because each decision or choice progressively contextualizes the design, introducing constraints (Silber, 2007). When reusing a script a teacher integrates in his/her own design process the product of another design process at a particular contextualization level. Thus, he/she should be well aware of the constraints characterizing both his/her own context and the script (Alvino, 2008). In a CSCL design process we can identify three main types of constraints (Alvino, 2008): (1) initial - technical, financial, and contextual constraints characterizing the specific learning context; (2) structural - constraints deriving from choices and decisions made during the design process which affect other choices (i.e., objectives, contents); and (3) heuristic - constraints related to the application of heuristics and good practices for effectively structuring the community of learning, organizing collaborative activities, and modelling the learning environment. Reusable scripts are normally characterized by structural and heuristic constraints. For example, the need for a decomposable topic is structurally embedded in the Jigsaw pattern, since it is based on discussion in expert groups, which is then followed by work in the heterogeneous Jigsaw groups to solve a problem. To be effective, the activity requires as many expert groups as the number of subtopics, or a multiple of it. This information can be made explicit in a UoL only in an open-text field by a very scrupulous designer. Otherwise, designers reusing a Jigsaw UoL would face an important hidden structural constraint. Alternatively, for example, heuristic constraints can be identified in a UoL in relation to the use of particular communication tools or with the aim of groups (e.g., production of an artefact or decision-making) (Zang & Ge, 2005). In fact, according to literature on design good practices (Kabanoff & O'Brien, 1979; Trentin, 2001; Zang & Ge, 2005), the definition of the aim affects choices about the number of groups (e.g., four Jigsaw groups), their dimensions (e.g., three persons in a Jigsaw group) and compositions (in terms of roles involved, required competencies, or need of homogeneity or heterogeneity), the need for guidance and particular communication tools (synchronous or asynchronous). The aforementioned information is not rendered explicit in an IMS LD UoL because this is not information required by the specification. Thus, for example, an unskilled teacher reusing the UoL instantiated in the MOSAIC course might create a session characterized by groups of 15 students who should interact in a chat to produce an artefact, without any guidance of a moderator. A skilled practitioner will realize that these design choices are unlikely to result in an effective learning experience because, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0022� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0016� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0023� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0001� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0001� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0029� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0014� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0026� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0029� for example, the effectiveness of a communication tool in enabling a predefined objective is strictly connected with the number of users. In addition, a group aimed at producing an artefact should be composed of a small number of members because decision-making and ongoing-mediation processes are difficult to carry out in large groups (Kabanoff & O'Brien, 1979; Trentin, 2001). In conclusion, we argue that when reusing a collaborative UoL, teachers need important information about how to structure an effective session and need to be aware of all the constraints (structural or heuristic) inherent in the script. However, current learning designs cannot effectively support such a process because the information required is not made explicit. In the following sections, the SSR is proposed as a solution to this problem and the findings from an evaluation of the approach by practitioners, employing the MOSAIC situation, is presented. 3 Enhancing CSCL scripts reuse by sharing design practice representations: the SSRs As mentioned before, a collaborative UoL is more focused on the activity flow than on its structures, especially concerning groups. While resources and services associated with each phase of the activity are made explicit, the social structures of groups that follow one another in the activity flow are usually not described. According to Persico and Sarti (2005), social structures denote group configurations in terms of number, dimension, composition, and participants' tasks. Only this last characteristic is expressed in IMS LD in terms of roles. Persico and Sarti (2005) argued that generally instructional designers refer to heuristics or best practices in order to form groups, making decisions about size, heterogeneity, and participants' tasks, taking into account contextual constraints such as the number of course participants, tutors available, the type of activity to be carried out, and the participants' competence; in most cases decisions regarding social structures impact on the affordances that the communication environment has to offer and favour the interaction flow in the desired directions. These heuristics can be rendered explicit to support unskilled teachers in the design of open, distance, and flexible learning processes (Alvino, 2008). In particular, these formalized practices can be very useful to foster an effective reuse of CSCL scripts, which are often characterized by different structural and heuristic constraints concerning collaborative groups' social structures (Alvino, 2008). Formalisms such as UML diagrams, conceptual maps, flowcharts, and decision trees are widely used in education to represent and clarify complex relationships or flows (Paquette, L onard, Ludgren- Cayrol, Mihaila, & Gareau, 2005) and to render explicit, share, and reuse their heuristics. However, teachers need an appropriate means which makes apparent the critical features of their design, such as groups' social structures and the relative constraints. Starting from these premises, we propose the SSRs as an innovative means which allows for modelling and visualizing social structures involved in CSCL activities. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0014� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0026� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0022� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0022� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0001� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0001� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0021� Information about how to instantiate effective social structures can be very important to support an unskilled teacher in reusing a UoL. In addition, many structural and heuristic constraints characterizing the script affect group structuring. Starting from these premises, we tried to integrate the use of IMS LD in the design process to specify aspects of the design with other representations that allow for modelling and visualization of social structures involved in a CSCL activity using SSRs. SSRs propose a graphical way to represent the solution to an educational problem in a CSCL context, through a set of schemata. The problem can be formalized at different levels of abstraction; that is, SSRs can be associated both with general, abstract scripts (such as a pedagogical pattern) and with more contextualized and formalized ones (such as UoLs). In particular, they focus on a particular task or activity and formalize a picture of the social structures characterizing groups (in terms of their number, their dimension, and their composition), also illustrating their relations to the learning environment. Each schema describes a particular phase of the activity according to a unifying template composed of three main sections: • Resources: The SSR represents the resources of the activity (for example, reference materials, groups' artefacts, bibliographies, Web references) as an input or as an output of the process (signified by the direction of the arrows). It also relates each resource to individual students, roles, or groups. • Community of learning: The SSR represents groups in terms of their social structures, including their number, dimension, and composition. In addition, experts or moderators who could be useful in the activity are represented as playing a mediatory function between students and resources or tools. • Events, services, or tools: The SSR is subdivided into two main sections, devoted to representing events, services, and tools that support distant or face-to- face sessions. When SSRs are formalized at an abstract level this information is represented in terms of the functions which events, services, or tools can play in a CSCL environment (Koschmann, 1996). SSRs support the representation of an educational problem by focusing on social structures, and they may be associated with a learning design in order to complement the information embedded in it. In particular, they may overcome some limitations of IMS LD UoLs by providing an additional, complementary representation of collaborative activities and the groups they involve. SSRs are not supposed to be self-contained but they should be associated with a learning design in order to complement the information embedded in it. The educational problem can be formalized at different levels of abstraction; that is, SSRs can be associated both with general, abstract scripts (such as a pedagogical pattern) and with more contextualized and formalized ones (such as UoLs). In particular, these representations may overcome some limitations of scripts based on IMS LD or other languages by providing an additional, complementary representation of collaborative activities and the groups they involve. Similarly to this proposal based on the use of SSRs, there are other research initiatives (Botturi & Stubbs, 2007; Paquette et al., 2005; Persico & Sarti, 2005) dealing with visual artefacts for supporting educational modelling and ID tasks. Some of those initiatives tackle the problems of instantiating CSCL scripts. However, none of them http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0017� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0002� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0021� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0022� has studied the particular issue of modelling design decisions with respect to social structuring in order to improve reusability of existing scripts. SSRs can also support unskilled teachers in the instantiation of a learning design, such as a UoL, because they represent all the structural and heuristic constraints inherent in the learning design itself. While structural constraints are formalized as static, independent variables for a specific phase or task, the heuristic ones are expressed in terms of ranges of possibilities. Figure 2 shows an SSR representing the 'expert group' phase of the Jigsaw activity as formalized in the UoL implemented in the MOSAIC course. In the upper section resources involved in the 'expert group' phase are represented, including reference papers and individual and collaborative artefacts (which are considered both as outputs and as inputs to the process). In the middle section the community of learning is illustrated by homogeneous groups and moderators, with geometric figures representing individuals characterized by similar properties which are relevant for the specific task (in this case, students who read the same papers). In the lower section we show that this is a distance phase of the activity supported by a repository, a concept mapping tool, editing tools, and an instant messaging tool. [Enlarge Image] Figure 2. Instance level SSR of the MOSAIC Jigsaw's expert groups phase. The schema in Figure 2 also represents two main constraints characterizing the specific expert group phase. By means of different colours (seen here in grey), it represents both fixed design elements and dependent variables (in terms of ranges of possibilities). We may also observe a structural constraint (see Section 2.2) in the first two sections: the need for a decomposable topic embedded in the Jigsaw activity (subtopics A, B, C) and the necessity for as many 'expert groups' as the number of subtopics or a multiple of it (groups Ax, Bx, Cx, where x 1). In the second and in the third sections, a heuristic http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#F0002� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0002g.png� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#F0002� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0002g.png� constraint is shown concerning the dimension of expert groups. Since the groups are to collaboratively produce artefacts by communicating through an instant messaging tool, according to principles of good practice in CSCL (Kabanoff & O'Brien, 1979; Trentin, 2001; Zang & Ge, 2005), groups should be composed of a maximum of six members. Thus, one may expect that SSRs provide teachers with important complementary information about scripts that is not usually explicit in learning designs, such as those that refer to social structures and constraints. In the following section, an evaluation process that aims to analyse the support SSRs provide to unskilled practitioners is described. 4 Evaluation of SSRs In this article we argue that, because of their support for formulating shared representations of group social structures, SSRs play a complementary role to learning designs (UoLs) and support unskilled teachers in reusing and instantiating scripts for their particular educational context. To test this idea we undertook an evaluation process (Stake, 1995) focusing on three main issues of interest in the design process: 1. when reusing UoLs, unskilled teachers lack information about how to effectively instantiate them, especially in terms of groups structuring; 2. SSRs provide complementary information to the ones provided by learning designs (UoLs); 3. SSRs effectively support unskilled teachers in reusing and instantiating scripts. These issues have been investigated by actively involving unskilled teachers in a design process focused on the analysis of a predefined UoL and on its instantiation into different scenarios. Although the design process is controlled, the predefined and new scenarios are strongly based on realistic contexts (in this case, the MOSAIC course). Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data about teachers' choices and opinions in two different design situations, with and without the support of SSRs. In the following subsections, the methodological aspects are described first, followed by a discussion of the results. 4.1 The methodology of the evaluation process The evaluation process involved 10 Italian university professors, who were selected on the basis of similar characteristics in terms of educational skills and experience with online learning design. For different reasons, all of the teachers were interested in online learning and thus they were eager to participate in the proposed controlled experience. Some of them had just begun to manage their own online academic courses, while others had already been working in various online tutoring activities, although none of them had specific online learning design skills. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0014� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0026� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0029� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0024� The teachers were engaged in a highly structured design process including five main phases (see Figure 3). [Enlarge Image] Figure 3. Overview of the evaluation process, with data sources represented by means of parchments. Firstly, teachers attended a preliminary training session (Phase I) aimed at introducing the concept of a UoL and providing an overview of the main functionalities of Collage, which was employed by the initial designers at the MOSAIC course as well as by the teachers during evaluation so that they could analyse it. We chose Collage to support the evaluation process for a number of reasons. Firstly, Collage's user-friendly interface allowed teachers to easily analyse the UoL they had to reuse, even if they were not able to understand IMS LD computing formalism (XML language). In addition, Collage is a high-level IMS LD-compliant authoring tool that is specialized for CSCL (Hern ndez- Leo et al., 2006), thus it may reduce the difficulties in modelling collaborative learning processes (Miao et al., 2005) but, at the same time, it maintains compliance with IMS LD Level A (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2003). So teachers could evaluate the value and limitations of IMS LD UoLs without having specific XML writing skills. Finally, the same editor had been used by the original MOSAIC designers and therefore its use could be appropriate in this case too. In the next phase, for simplicity's sake teachers were invited to analyse the UoL that comprised only the Jigsaw activity of the MOSAIC course (see Figure 1 and Section 2.1). In addition, they received a document illustrating the design scenarios in which they were about to participate (scenarios document). The document invited them to analyse the UoL by means of the Collage tool (Phase II) and then to instantiate it into three different sessions (Phase III), corresponding to three different realistic educational scenarios. The first scenario was characterized by the same contextual constraints of the MOSAIC session; in the second scenario the session involved more students (60) and more time available (six weeks) and the same communication tool (instant messaging tool); the third scenario dealt with 75 students and three weeks of available time, after which teachers were supposed to structure parallel sessions using a different communication tool (a forum). These scenarios were defined to stress particular design choices, especially related with good practices for the structuring of CSCL groups. Teachers then had to document the main design elements characterizing the three sessions, which were the result of instantiating the same UoL into these three scenarios (thereby producing Design Annotation Document I - DAD_I). Once completed, teachers were invited to analyse a Web-based tutorial which provided an SSR-based hypertextual and interactive modelling of the GRID Jigsaw UoL (Phase IV) (see Figure 4). Finally, teachers were asked to fill in another version of the Design Annotation Document (DAD_II) (Phase V) in which they annotated any change they wanted to apply to previous designed sessions once they had analysed information provided by the SSRs. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#F0003� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0003g.gif� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0012� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0019� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0013� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#F0001� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#F0004� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0003g.gif� These documents also allowed teachers to express their meta-reflections about the process in an open-text field. [Enlarge Image] Figure 4. SSRs tutorial and pop-up mechanism for navigating variables and constraints. This highly structured design process allowed the comparison of the different paths and choices taken by the teachers. Normally a design process is influenced by many variables, such as the characteristics of the teacher (experience, skills, preferences, attitudes), the educational context (contextual constraints, characteristics of the target learners, financial constraints), and the availability of resources and services (technologies, learning objects, learning designs) (Greeno et al., 1990). To foster comparability, we involved teachers with similar characteristics and experiences and we set a predefined design context characterized by fixed constraints. In particular, as mentioned before, the 10 teachers had similar characteristics in terms of their educational skills and experience with online learning design. In addition, their experience with UoLs and Collage had been made reasonably uniform by the initial training session. They also carried out their design process within the same realistic educational scenarios, which fixed some crucial context constraints (e.g., number of participants, academic context, technological constraints, timetable). Finally, the teachers could rely on the same resources (the UoL) and communication tools (an instant messaging tool in the first two scenarios and a forum in the third). Within this design process we evaluated the teachers' choices on the basis of our initial issues of interest, aware also that in a multidimensional process such as this some of the variables were beyond our control. A mixed evaluation method combining quantitative and qualitative data gathering was applied. Quantitative data are considered useful for showing trends. Qualitative results are used to confirm or reject those trends, to understand them, and to identify emergent features in the particular design situation. The same mixed evaluation was employed in http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0004g.gif� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0007� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0004g.gif� previous case studies aimed at evaluating the functionalities and potentialities of Collage (Hern ndez-Leo et al., 2006). Table 1 shows the different data sources employed in the evaluation process according to this mixed method. Teachers' characteristics were investigated with an initial self- administered questionnaire (INITIAL_QUEST). The two Design Annotation Documents provided a form to describe the main design elements of the three sessions, firstly without the SSR support (DAD_I) and secondly with this kind of support (DAD_II). Finally, a questionnaire-based interview (FINAL-INTERVIEW) was carried out to collect teachers' opinions and feedback. Findings from the qualitative and quantitative data were triangulated to provide stronger evidence for drawing conclusions. Table 1. Data sources for the evaluation process and labels used in the text to quote them. Data source Type of data Labels Self-administered ex ante questionnaire Quantitative and qualitative data about teachers' educational skills in learning design [INITIAL_QUEST] Design annotation documents Record of the main design elements characterizing the three sessions with respect to two different design situations (with and without SSR support) [DAD_I] [DAD_II] Final questionnaire- based interview Qualitative teachers' opinions and feedback [FINAL- INTERVIEW] 4.2 Results and discussion The initial questionnaire was aimed at evaluating whether the 10 teachers really had similar learning design skills and experiences. Data analysis suggests that (a) all of them had some or limited experience in structuring or managing online learning groups; (b) 8 out of 10 declared they knew some techniques or good practices to support CSCL and were able to list up two or three examples; (c) 8 out of 10 had heard about IMS LD UoLs, but only one teacher had ever seen a UoL and none had reused this kind of script. So the teachers' learning design skills were quite similar and even the initial training session provided them with a similar level of knowledge about IMS LD UoLs and Collage. Data collected by means of the questionnaire-based final interview has been aggregated to identify trends and further used to select meaningful quotations from the open answers. The Design Annotation Documents provided two types of qualitative data: the main design elements characterizing the three sessions and some meta-reflections on the process. Firstly, each designed session was evaluated according to a quality scale (1 = completely ineffective; 2 = partially ineffective; 3 = quite effective; 4 = completely effective). Note that during Phase III each participant designed three sessions and http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0012� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#T0001� annotated them in [DAD_I]. Then during Phase V they could modify their previous designs, creating three new sessions, annotated in [DAD_II]. This evaluation was carried out by a researcher on the basis of three main criteria: (a) level of understanding of Jigsaw activity's flow and structure; (b) effectiveness of choices about group dimensions, taking into account the aim of groups and the tool supporting distance communication (see Section 2.2); (c) the creation of parallel sessions (or parallel courses) when the number of students is high, so as to set an ideal and effective number of participants in each session. These criteria refer to well-known CSCL heuristics and good practices (Kabanoff & O'Brien, 1979; Trentin, 2001; Zang & Ge, 2005) that are also valid for the SSR of the MOSAIC course. A further analysis classified improvements on the basis of the three aforementioned evaluation criteria, and finally basic quantitative processing (means, distribution) was performed on these data. These quantitative data were triangulated with the personal meta-reflections that some teachers annotated in the documents. Table 2 summarizes the main findings and relates them to the three issues of interest of this evaluation process. Table 2. Conclusions from the evaluation process. Evaluation goals Findings Support data A. When reusing UoLs, unskilled teachers lack information about how to effectively instantiate them, especially in terms of groups structuring. ✓ PHASE III: teachers encountered problems in the instantiation process. ✓ PHASE III: teachers lacked information about how to structure groups in the sessions. - [INITIAL_QUEST] - [DAD_I]: session rating - [DAD_I] and [DAD_II]: meta- reflections - [FINAL- INTERVIEW]. B. SSRs provide complementary information to the ones provided by learning designs (UoLs). ✓ PHASE V: teachers didn't lack information about how to structure groups in the sessions. ✓ PHASE V: teachers perceived an effective support in designing sessions. - [FINAL- INTERVIEW]. C. SSRs effectively support unskilled teachers in reusing and instantiating scripts. ✓ PHASE V: teachers added improvements on their designs concerning group structuring. ✓ CONCLUSION: teachers evaluated positively SSRs. - [DAD_I] and [DAD_II]: session rating - [DAD_I] and [DAD_II]: meta- reflections - [FINAL- http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0014� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0026� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#CIT0029� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#T0002� Table 2. Conclusions from the evaluation process. Evaluation goals Findings Support data INTERVIEW]. The first two findings of Table 2 provide evidence that when reusing UoLs, unskilled teachers lack information about how to effectively instantiate them, especially in terms of group structuring. In particular, the quality level of the sessions described in Design Annotation Document I shows that teachers encountered problems in instantiating the predefined UoL according to the proposed scenarios. On a scale of 1-4 as mentioned above, the mean of quality level was 2.6 for the first (simpler) scenario, 2.2 for the second, and 2.1 for the third (the most complex). As to the first scenario, the one characterized by the same contextual constraints of the MOSAIC course, only four teachers created a completely effective session, each of which was based on the same group structuring implemented for the MOSAIC course. As to the second and the third scenarios, only one completely effective session was designed. Most teachers (6) misunderstood the nature of the Jigsaw activity, structuring groups without taking into account the main structural constraints (see Section 2.2) of this activity. This misunderstanding caused them to repeat the same mistake in both of the other sessions they designed in Phase III. In addition, while structuring groups they did not consider some heuristic constraints concerning group dimensions and assigned too many students to the same session. These data provide evidence that the teachers encountered some problems in instantiating the UoL. Further support comes from some of the comments provided by the teachers in the meta-reflection section of the Design Annotation Document 2. One teacher commented that 'constraints concerning groups dimensions and related to the selected communication tool were not explicit in the UoL.' While another one affirmed, 'By the analysis of the UoL, I couldn't understand that students should produce a collaborative artefact. I realized it when watching at SSRs.' These assertions also support the second finding. During the first design process (Phase III) teachers lacked information about how to structure groups in the sessions. We can find analogous assertions analysing data from the final interview. According to 7 out of the 10 teachers, the information that Collage provided to formalize in a UoL was not sufficient to support them in the instantiation of an effective session. In addition, when asked more specifically about group structuring, 9 teachers out of the 10 re-stated that UoLs do not foster the expression of sufficient information about how to structure groups in terms of number, dimension, and composition. This is not a limitation inherent to the specific tool that was employed, but in the IMS LD language to which Collage is compliant. In addition, the concrete UoL provided as much information as it could within the IMS LD specification. The teachers acknowledged that it was well described, but they perceived that UoLs in general do not provide sufficient modes of expression to support the instantiation process. Some of them confirmed that the UoL 'lacked precise information about how to structure groups' and 'the information provided is sufficient only for expert designers' but 'is not sufficient for inexperienced teachers.' Others affirmed this saying, 'design steps are well structured but the UoL lacks detailed information about how to structure groups'; 'these pieces of information are not provided unless the designer puts them in the open-text fields devoted to descriptions; what is provided is organizational information.' http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#T0002� The third and fourth findings in Table 2 suggest that SSRs provided complementary information to what is offered through learning designs (UoLs). In particular, qualitative and quantitative data from the final interview show that in the second design process (Phase V in which support was provided by the SSRs): • teachers did not lack information about how to structure groups in the sessions; • teachers perceived an effective support in designing sessions deriving partly from UoL description and partly from the SSRs. According to 7 out of the 10 teachers, information provided by the joint use of a UoL and the corresponding SSR was sufficient to instantiate an effective session. In addition, 9 out of the 10 teachers affirmed that this joint use provided sufficient information about how to effectively instantiate groups (in terms of number, dimension, and composition) in a session. These findings are also supported by some teachers' comments, for example: 'they are complementary because they provide two different points of view on the same process'; 'they complete each other, providing fundamental information about how to instantiate these scripts'; 'they are complementary because UoLs provide support for general-level choices, while SSRs provide support for the more detailed group-structuring design step.' As to SSRs, teachers also commented that 'information about how to structure groups is contained in SSRs'; 'this information is rendered explicit by SSRs by means of a number of variables represented with different colours'; 'the groups structuring results from the analysis of the variables that SSRs underline.' Finally the last two findings shown in Table 2 support the argument that SSRs effectively supported unskilled teachers in reusing and instantiating scripts. In particular, comparison of the Design Annotated Documents confirms that in the second design process (Phase V, with the support of SSRs), teachers improved the structuring of groups. The mean quality level changed from 2.6 to 3.1 in the first scenario, from 2.2 to 3.2 in the second, and from 2.1 to 3.2 in the third. In particular, 8 out of the 10 teachers improved their designs somehow; 3 of them added improvements in all scenarios, 3 in two scenarios, and 2 teachers in only one scenario. Classifying the improvements according to the aforementioned evaluation criteria we can find that: • 31% of them concerned the level of understanding of Jigsaw activity's flow and structure; • 41% concerned the effectiveness of choices about group dimensions, taking into account the aim of groups and the tool supporting distance communication; • the remaining 28% concerned the effective use of parallel sessions to set an ideal number of participants in each session. Additionally in the meta-reflection section of Design Annotated Document II teachers' comments included 'SSR has been useful to immediately understand that I was wrong about groups structuring'; and 'SSRs allow revisiting the UoL and understanding if the design has gone far afield.' Quantitative and qualitative data from the final interview provided support for the last finding: that teachers evaluated SSRs positively. According to 8 of the 10 teachers, SSRs provided a very useful support to instantiate a UoL. Qualitative comments from the final interview reinforce this: 'SSR helps to give an overall vision of the process' and http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#T0002� http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a913265505&fulltext=713240928#T0002� 'it provides support in the more detailed and specific steps of the design process.' Others affirmed that 'it provides a global and complete vision of the process'; 'it provides information that are not embedded in the UoL such as information about groups or the moderators'; and 'without SSR you're likely to do mistakes in the design process.' Only two teachers affirmed that SSRs were 'quite useful,' both arguing that their utility depends on the level of ID competencies of a teacher. In addition, 8 of the 10 teachers declared that SSRs are quite easily understood. As two teachers mentioned: 'constraints are explicit and clear so SSRs don't leave space for misunderstandings or wrong interpretations'; and 'at the first sight information I needed came up.' Only two teachers declared that SSR were 'a little complex to be understood,' commenting 'it is not so immediate but, once understood, the logic [by interacting with the system] provides very precious information'; 'the language is a bit specific but on the whole it is very complete'; and 'there is much information that requires time to be analyzed, but it is very useful if provided together the UoL.' Some teachers provided suggestions such as 'it lacks a preview or a simulation of the session' or 'it would be nice if a designer could manipulate diagrams to build a personalized activity structure.' Based on the above mixed evaluation process in a controlled environment and using realistic scenarios with practitioners relatively unskilled with respect to the learning design, there is significant triangulated evidence that supports the aforementioned findings. Thus, some light has been shed on the issues of interest in this study, upholding our initial assumption: SSRs play a complementary role to learning designs (UoLs) by formulating shared representations of group structures and support unskilled teachers in reusing and instantiating scripts for their particular educational context. 5. Conclusions This article has illustrated some challenges that a teacher can encounter when reusing a CSCL script and proposed SSRs as a possible solution. Supporting the representation of groups' social structures, as well as the structural and heuristic constraints embedded in the script, SSRs effectively support the script instantiation into different educational contexts. In particular, SSRs can overcome some well-known limitations of IMS LD concerning the representation of groups, allowing their visualization as a specific entity, characterized by social structures (number, dimension, composition) and explicit relations with the whole community of learning (e.g., individuals, teachers, experts, moderators). A collaborative activity is no longer described exclusively according to the activity flow and the associated resources, but on the basis of the structures which characterize each task or phase. This perspective provides complementary information to a teacher who may analyse a UoL in order to reuse and instantiate it in his/her own context. Findings from the mixed method evaluation which involved teachers in a controlled design experience based on realistic scenarios clearly point out the support provided by SSRs, both in terms of the improvements made to designs and the positive perceptions of participants. This shows that SSRs can support the representation of a learning design through a complementary focus on the social structures' perspective, and as such can be effectively associated with a script to support its instantiation. One should bear in mind that SSRs represent a part of the context in any learning situation, even when individuals learn within a social group (class or community), although its importance is greater in the case of CSCL due to its inherent complexity and the importance of social structures in collaborative learning. Also, the main contribution was illustrated through the main standard learning design language, although it may be applied to other computer interpretable or visual languages that have been proposed in the literature. As to future work, in the short term a more rigorous formalization of SSR semantics will be carried out. Additionally, there is a clear need to study the possibility of sharing SSRs together with the associated script, so as to allow a teacher to effectively select a script for reuse on the basis of the embedded constraints and their coherence with the specific contextual situation. At the software support level, Collage may be modified so as to allow the creation of SSRs while formalizing the UoL, in such a way that both elements can be shared together to support a possible reuse and the subsequent instantiation process. Finally, a new Collage version may be developed to dynamically show during the script authoring all the implications on constraints represented in the SSRs, thus supporting a more aware authoring process. Acknowledgements This work of the GSIC/EMIC group at the University of Valladolid, Spain, has been partially funded by projects IST-FP6-034567, TSI2005-08225-C07-04, and VA009A05. Special thanks are due to the 10 teachers participating in the SSRs' validation process. A special mention is due to Luigi Sarti and Paola Forcheri (Italian National Research Council) for their precious feedback. Notes on contributors Serena Alvino is consulting professor for the E-learning for adults and organizations course at the University of Genoa. Since 2002, she has been collaborating with the Institute for Educational Technologies of the Italian National Research Council investigating the use of CSCL, focusing on the instructional design of collaborative online courses. Juan I. Asensio-P rez is an associate professor at the University of Valladolid, Spain. His research interests include distributed systems particularly, distributed CSCL applications, and integrated systems and network management. Yannis A. Dimitriadis is a professor at the University of Valladolid, Spain. His research interests include CSCL and distributed systems. Davinia Hern ndez-Leo lectures in the Department of Information and Communications Technologies of Pompeu Fabra University and is a member of the GTI research group. Davinia's main research interests are educational telematics, CSCL, techniques for the design of educational situations, and learning technology standards and specifications. References • 1. Alvino, S. (2008) Computer Supported Collaborative Learning e riusabilit : Un approccio all'integrazione di risorse riusabili in processi di apprendimento collaborativo [CSCL and reusability: An approach to the integration of reusable resources in collaborati University of Genoa , Italy — Unpublished doctoral thesis [your library's links] • 2. Botturi, L. and Stubbs, T. (eds) (2007) Handbook of visual languages for instructional design: Theories and practices Information Science Reference , Hershey, PA [your library's links] • 3. de la Fuente, L., Pardo, A., Delgado, C., Asensio, J. I. and Dimitriadis, Y. A. Diaz, P., Kinshuk, I. Aedo and Mora, E. (eds) (2008) Collaborative learning models on distance scenarios: A case study. Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies Los Alamitos, CA IEEE Computer Society Press pp. 278-282. [your library's links] • 4. Dillenbourg, P. Kirschner, P. A. (ed) (2002) Over-scripting CSCL: The risks of blending collaborative learning with instructional design. Three worlds of CSCL: Can we support CSCL? pp. 61-91. Open Universiteit Nederland , Heerlen, the Netherlands [your library's links] • 5. Dillenbourg, P. and Tchounikine, P. (2007) Flexibility in macro-scripts for computer-supported collaborative learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 23:(1) , pp. 1-7. [your library's links] [ crossref ] • 6. Escobedo, J. P., de la Fuente, L., Guti rrez, L., Pardo, A. and Delgado, C. (2007) Implementation of a learning design run-time environment for the.LRN learning management system. Adaptation and IMS learning design [Special issue]. Journal of Interactive Media in Education — Retrieved March 29, 2009, from http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2007/07/ [your library's links] • 7. Greeno, J. G., Korpi, M. K., Jackson, D. N. and Michalchik, V. S. (1990) Processes and knowledge in designing instruction Stanford University , Palo Alto, CA [your library's links] • 8. Hern ndez-Gonzalo, J. A., Villasclaras-Fern ndez, E. D., Hern ndez-Leo, D., Asensio-P rez, J. I. and Dimitriadis, Y. A. Diaz, P., Kinshuk, I. Aedo and Mora, E. (eds) (2008) InstanceCollage: A graphical tool for the particularization of role/group structures in pattern-based IMS-LD collaborative scripts. Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies Los Alamitos, CA IEEE Computer Society Press pp. 506-510. [your library's links] • 9. Hern ndez-Leo, D., Asensio-P rez, J. I. and Dimitriadis, Y. (2005) Computational representation of collaborative learning flow patterns using IMS learning design. Educational Technology & Society 8:(4) , pp. 75-89. [your library's links] • 10. Hern ndez-Leo, D., Harrer, A., Dodero, J. M., Asensio-P rez, J. I. and Burgos, D. (2007) A framework for the conceptualization of approaches to 'Create-by-Reuse' of learning design solutions. Journal of Universal Computer Science 13:(7) , pp. 991-1001. [your library's links] • 11. Hern ndez-Leo, D., Villasclaras-Fern ndez, E. D., Asensio-P rez, J. I. and Dimitriadis, Y. Botturi, L. and Stubbs, T. (eds) (2007) Diagrams of learning flow patterns' solutions as visual representations of refinable IMS learning design templates. Handbook of visual languages for instructional design: Theories and practices pp. 394-412. Information Science Reference , Hershey, PA [your library's links] http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Computer%20Supported%20Collaborative%20Learning%20e%20riusabilit%26agrave%3b%3a%20Un%20approccio%20all%26rsquo%3bintegrazione%20di%20risorse%20riusabili%20in%20processi%20di%20apprendimento%20collaborativo%20%5bCSCL%20and%20reusability%3a%20An%20approach%20to%20the%20integration%20of%20reusable%20resources%20in%20collaborati&rft.aulast=Alvino&rft.auinit=S%2e&rft.date=2008&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� 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http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=Journal%20of%20Universal%20Computer%20Science&rft.atitle=A%20framework%20for%20the%20conceptualization%20of%20approaches%20to%20%26lsquo%3bCreate%2dby%2dReuse%26rsquo%3b%20of%20learning%20design%20solutions&rft.aulast=Hern%26aacute%3bndez%2dLeo&rft.auinit=D%2e&rft.volume=13&rft.issue=%287%29&rft.spage=991&rft.epage=1001&rft.date=2007&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Handbook%20of%20visual%20languages%20for%20instructional%20design%3a%20Theories%20and%20practices&rft.atitle=Diagrams%20of%20learning%20flow%20patterns%26rsquo%3b%20solutions%20as%20visual%20representations%20of%20refinable%20IMS%20learning%20design%20templates&rft.aulast=Hern%26aacute%3bndez%2dLeo&rft.auinit=D%2e&rft.spage=394&rft.epage=412&rft.date=2007&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� • 12. Hern ndez-Leo, D., Villasclaras-Fern ndez, E. D., Asensio-P rez, J. I., Dimitriadis, Y., Jorr n-Abell n, I. M. Ruiz-Requies, I. et al. (2006) COLLAGE: A collaborative learning design editor based on patterns. Educational Technology & Society 9:(1) , pp. 58-71. [your library's links] • 13. IMS Global Learning Consortium (2003) IMS learning design version 1.0 final specification — Retrieved October 15, 2008, from http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/index.cfm [your library's links] • 14. Kabanoff, B. and O'Brien, G. E. (1979) The effects of task type and cooperation upon group products and performance. Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance 23:(2) , pp. 63-181. [your library's links] • 15. Kaleidoscope (2003-2009) — Retrieved February 28, 2009, from http://www.noe-kaleidoscope.org/pub/ • 16. Koper, R. (2006) Current research in learning design. Educational Technology & Society 9:(1) , pp. 13-22. — Retrieved October 9, 2008, from http://www.ifets.info/journals/9_1/3.pdf [your library's links] • 17. Koschmann, T. D. (1996) CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm Lawrence Erlbaum Associates , Mahwah, NJ [your library's links] • 18. .LRN — Retrieved March 29, 2009, from http://www.dotlrn.org/ • 19. Miao, Y., Hoeksema, K., Hoppe, H. U. and Harrer, A. Koschmann, T., Suthers, D. and Chan, T. W. (eds) (2005) CSCL scripts: Modelling features and potential use. Proceedings of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning 2005: The next 10 years! pp. 423-432. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates , Mahwah, NJ [your library's links] • 20. Open University Cloudworks — Retrieved October 25, 2008, from http://cloudworks.open.ac.uk/ • 21. Paquette, G., L onard, M., Ludgren-Cayrol, K., Mihaila, S. and Gareau, D. (2005) Learning design based on graphical modelling. Educational Technology & Society 9:(1) , pp. 97-112. — Retrieved March 29, 2009, from http://ares.licef.teluq.uqam.ca/Portals/29/docs/pub/ingenierie/Graphic%20Know ledge-based%20V2.pdf [your library's links] • 22. Persico, D. and Sarti, L. Chiazzese, G., Allegra, M., Chifari, A. and Ottaviano, S. (eds) (2005) Social structures for online learning: A design perspective. Proceedings of Conference on Methods and Technologies for Learning pp. 51-59. Wit Press , Palermo, Italy [your library's links] • 23. Silber, K. H. (2007) A principle-based model of instructional design: A new way of thinking about and teaching ID. Educational Technology 47:(5) , pp. 34- 37. [your library's links] • 24. Stake, R. E. (1995) The art of case study research Sage , London [your library's links] • 25. TENCompetence ReCourse learning design editor — Retrieved March 29, 2009, from http://www.tencompetence.org/ldauthor • 26. Trentin, G. Maddux, C. D. and Johnson, L. (eds) (2001) Designing online courses. The Web in higher education: Assessing the impact and fulfilling the potential pp. 47-66. Haworth Press , London [your library's links] • 27. Vignollet, L., David, J. -P., Ferraris, C., Martel, C. and Lejeune, A. Kommers, P., Kirschner, P., Sampson, D., Kinshuk and Koper, R. (eds) (2006) Comparing educational modeling languages on a case study. ICALT 2006: Advanced technologies for life-long learning. Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies Los Alamitos, CA IEEE Computer Society Press pp. 1149-1151. [your library's links] http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=Educational%20Technology%20%26amp%3b%20Society&rft.atitle=COLLAGE%3a%20A%20collaborative%20learning%20design%20editor%20based%20on%20patterns&rft.aulast=Hern%26aacute%3bndez%2dLeo&rft.auinit=D%2e&rft.volume=9&rft.issue=%281%29&rft.spage=58&rft.epage=71&rft.date=2006&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/index.cfm� http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=IMS%20learning%20design%20version%201%2e0%20final%20specification&rft.date=2003&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� 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http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3ajournal&rft.genre=conference&rft.title=IEEE%20Computer%20Society%20Press&rft.atitle=Comparing%20educational%20modeling%20languages%20on%20a%20case%20study&rft.aulast=Vignollet&rft.auinit=L%2e&rft.spage=1149&rft.epage=1151&rft.date=2006&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� • 28. Weinberger, A., Collar, I., Dimitriadis, Y., M kitalo-Siegl, K. and Fischer, F. Balacheff, N., Ludvigsen, S., de Jong, T., Lazonder, A., Barnes, S. and Montandon, L. (eds) (2008) Computer-supported collaboration scripts: Perspectives from educational psychology and computer science. Technology- enhanced learning: Principles and products pp. 155-173. Springer-Verlag , Dordrecht, the Netherlands [your library's links] • 29. Zang, K. and Ge, X. Figueiredo, A. D. and Afonso, A. P. (eds) (2005) Dynamics of online collaboration: Team task, team development, peer relationship and communication media. Managing learning in virtual settings: The role of context pp. 98-116. Information Science Publishing , London [your library's links] List of Figures [Enlarge Image] http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Technology%2denhanced%20learning%3a%20Principles%20and%20products&rft.atitle=Computer%2dsupported%20collaboration%20scripts%3a%20Perspectives%20from%20educational%20psychology%20and%20computer%20science&rft.aulast=Weinberger&rft.auinit=A%2e&rft.spage=155&rft.epage=173&rft.date=2008&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Managing%20learning%20in%20virtual%20settings%3a%20The%20role%20of%20context&rft.atitle=Dynamics%20of%20online%20collaboration%3a%20Team%20task%2c%20team%20development%2c%20peer%20relationship%20and%20communication%20media&rft.aulast=Zang&rft.auinit=K%2e&rft.spage=98&rft.epage=116&rft.date=2005&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� http://sfx.upf.edu/upf?url_ver=Z39%2e88%2d2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ffmt%3akev%3amtx%3abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Managing%20learning%20in%20virtual%20settings%3a%20The%20role%20of%20context&rft.atitle=Dynamics%20of%20online%20collaboration%3a%20Team%20task%2c%20team%20development%2c%20peer%20relationship%20and%20communication%20media&rft.aulast=Zang&rft.auinit=K%2e&rft.spage=98&rft.epage=116&rft.date=2005&rfr_id=info:sid/informa%3ainformaworld&rfe.genre=article&rfe.jtitle=Distance%20Education&rfe.volume=30&rfe.issue=2&rfe.date=2009%2d8� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0001g.gif� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0001g.gif� Figure 1. CSCL script of the MOSAIC course, as represented in the Collage tool. [Enlarge Image] Figure 2. Instance level SSR of the MOSAIC Jigsaw's expert groups phase. [Enlarge Image] Figure 3. Overview of the evaluation process, with data sources represented by means of parchments. http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0002g.png� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0003g.gif� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0002g.png� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0003g.gif� [Enlarge Image] Figure 4. SSRs tutorial and pop-up mechanism for navigating variables and constraints. List of Tables Table 1. Data sources for the evaluation process and labels used in the text to quote them. Data source Type of data Labels Self-administered ex ante questionnaire Quantitative and qualitative data about teachers' educational skills in learning design [INITIAL_QUEST] Design annotation documents Record of the main design elements characterizing the three sessions with respect to two different design situations (with and without SSR support) [DAD_I] [DAD_II] Final questionnaire- based interview Qualitative teachers' opinions and feedback [FINAL- INTERVIEW] Table 2. Conclusions from the evaluation process. Evaluation goals Findings Support data A. When reusing UoLs, unskilled teachers lack information about ✓ PHASE III: teachers - [INITIAL_QUEST] http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0004g.gif� http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/image?path=/713412832/913265505/cdie_a_402494_o_f0004g.gif� Table 2. Conclusions from the evaluation process. Evaluation goals Findings Support data how to effectively instantiate them, especially in terms of groups structuring. encountered problems in the instantiation process. ✓ PHASE III: teachers lacked information about how to structure groups in the sessions. - [DAD_I]: session rating - [DAD_I] and [DAD_II]: meta- reflections - [FINAL- INTERVIEW]. B. SSRs provide complementary information to the ones provided by learning designs (UoLs). ✓ PHASE V: teachers didn't lack information about how to structure groups in the sessions. ✓ PHASE V: teachers perceived an effective support in designing sessions. - [FINAL- INTERVIEW]. C. SSRs effectively support unskilled teachers in reusing and instantiating scripts. ✓ PHASE V: teachers added improvements on their designs concerning group structuring. ✓ CONCLUSION: teachers evaluated positively SSRs. - [DAD_I] and [DAD_II]: session rating - [DAD_I] and [DAD_II]: meta- reflections - [FINAL- INTERVIEW]. Supporting the reuse of effective CSCL learning designs through social structure representations Abstract 1. Introduction 2 The instantiation problem when reusing CSCL scripts 2.1 Authoring and instantiating a collaborative script 2.2 Issues in reusing a collaborative script 3 Enhancing CSCL scripts reuse by sharing design practice representations: the SSRs 4 Evaluation of SSRs 4.1 The methodology of the evaluation process 4.2 Results and discussion 5. Conclusions Acknowledgements Notes on contributors References List of Figures List of Tables 
work_ly6b3iouhbgcrfbufpfnyor74u	----	Implementation of Multi-Agent based Digital Rights Management System for Distance Education (DRMSDE) using JADE (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 343 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Implementation of Multi-Agent based Digital Rights Management System for Distance Education (DRMSDE) using JADE Ajit Kumar Singh 1 , Akash Nag 2 , Sunil Karforma 3 , Sripati Mukhopadhyay 4 Department of Computer Science, The University of Burdwan, Burdwan, India 1, 3 Department of Computer Science, MUC Women‟s College Burdwan, India 2 Abstract—The main objective of Distance Education (DE) is to spread quality education regardless of time and space. This objective is easily achieved with the help of technology. With the development of World Wide Web and high-speed internet the quality of DE is improved because now Digital Content (DC) can be easily and in no time distributed to many learners of different locations in text, audio and video formats. But, the main obstacle in digital publishing is the protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of DC. Digital Rights Management (DRM) that manages rights over any digital creation is the only solution to this problem. In this paper, we have made an attempt to implement a Digital Rights Management System for Distance Education known as DRMSDE. We have identified that Multi- Agent System (MAS) based technology is very popular for such type of implementations. Keeping that in mind, we have chosen one of the most popular Multi-Agent based tools, namely JAVA Agent Development Framework (JADE), for our system. This paper presents an overview and the system architecture for the proposed implementation. Keywords—Distance Education (DE); Intellectual Property Rights (IPR); Digital Rights Management (DRM); Multi-Agent System (MAS); JADE I. INTRODUCTION The advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) touches every aspect of life [1], and knowingly or unknowingly we all are part of this technological revolution. The areas that are affected most are telecommunication, commerce, education, health and the media industry. Education with ICT reaches every corner of the globe within a fraction of a second under the domain of DE. DE is the most demanding and popular education system running in parallel to the traditional education system. The reason behind the popularity of DE is the flexibility of studying with respect to time and place. The main source of DE is DC that includes assignments and text tutorials along with advanced audio and video tutorials. DC may easily be copied and used by multiple users simultaneously. This advantage of DC sometimes becomes problematic because unauthorized users can also use and even modify DC, which is against the content-creators‟ IPR. Our main purpose is to protect IPR using the technology available with us, and thereby, preventing misuse of content. Maintaining the rights of the different users in DE is a big challenge and it affects the quality of DE. DRM is the only solution to this problem. DRM is a combination of hardware and software, collaborating to protect the rights of content creators. There are two generations of DRM [2]; in the first generation DRM, digital contents are locked and the users, who pay, then only use the content. Second Generation DRM includes identification, protection, monitoring, and tracking of all forms of rights, permissions etc. In this study, we have designed and implemented a Distance Education System (DES) with DRM for protection of IPR for DC. Here we are using both approaches. For text tutorial, we are using second generation DRM and for advanced tutorial we are using first generation DRM. Our system is known as DRMSDE [3]. Here we are using MAS [4, 5] approach for the implementation of our system. An agent based approach is a new paradigm for software implementation. Agents are programs that take some input from systems as well as from some other agents, and perform actions for the system. In MAS at least two or more agents cooperate to achieve system goal. Real world problems can be successfully implemented using MAS. One of the major advantages of agent-based system is that we can easily upgrade the system by introducing a new agent. In case of DE, new experiments are done every time. MAS is good for domains like DE. There are so many tools to implement MAS but among all, JADE [6] is very popular. JADE, is a software framework that is used to build MAS. It is a middleware that includes a run-time environment, library and graphical tools. JADE is in compliance with FIPA specification, it has predefined programmable and extensible agent model that helps to develop MAS. JADE is the most popular agent development tool. This paper is organized in six sections; Section 2 discusses some literature on agent-based DES. Section 3 describes the proposed DRMSDE system model in which we discuss the different components of our system. Section 4 presents the proposed system architecture, while Section 5 discusses implementation details. Finally, Section 6 concludes our work throwing some light on future applications and scope for improvement. II. RELATED WORK In the life cycle of DC we need to protect it from unauthorized users by DRM techniques [7]. DRM can be achieved in two ways [8]-using Right Expressions, and (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 344 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org through Authentication and Authorization. In Right Expressions, permissions and conditions are expressed in machine-readable form using Right Expression Language (REL) and right expressions follow DC throughout its life which is very essential for commercial distribution. In Authentication and Authorization technique, users are first authenticated based on their login credentials (usually a login ID and password). After successful authentication; the system checked whether they are authorized to perform certain actions on DC based on the type of user. The general architecture of a DRM-based educational system is shown in Fig. 1. In a country DE is hosted by either public or private sectors. Regardless of who provides education, an effective DRM system is very much essential for fare use. We now list below some existing Education Systems based on DRM that are in use throughout the world: A. BOKAHRI-IMBLS [9] BOKHARI Intelligent Multi-agent based e-Learning System (BOKHARI-IMBLS) is a research model developed in Aligarh Muslim University in 2014 by Prof. Mohammad Ubaidullah Bokhari and his scholar Sadaf Ahmad. This is a web-based interactive E-Learning system designed for the distance learning environment using MAS. The main objective of the system is to incorporate intelligence, accessibility, interactivity, adaptability, collaborative and security into a single system. Its architecture has four levels which are user level that describes human agents, web level describes high interactive websites, system level has Seven interactive Agents (Student Interface Agent (SIA), Tutor Interface Agent (TIA), Collaboration Agent (CA), Intelligent Decision Support Agent (IDSA), Test/Evaluation Agent (TA), Lesson Planning Agent (LPA) and Security Agent (SA)) to achieved system goal and finally the storage level describes profile and content database. BOKHARI-IMBLS takes care of security issues of E-learning systems. B. EDU-DRM The Turkish government is taking an initiative to promote digital education in schools under a project called “Movement of Enhancing Opportunities and Improving Technology” known as FATIH in 2011 [1]. Under this project thousands of schools and classes are equipped with modern ICT tools. DC are created by many authors. FATIH project requires a DRM System to monitor and distribution of DC. EDU-DRM is a new DRM system for FATIH. In EDU-DRM, bitwise logic based encoding approach is used to implement REL that require minimal space in the database. Fig. 1. General Architecture of DRM in Education. C. Jorum Though the dictionary meaning of „jorum‟ is a large vessel, here it represents a large digital repository. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is designed as an e- Learning repository for staff in UK Universities and colleges to share, reuse and re-purpose e-learning and teaching resources (Jorum) in 2005. Teaching and supporting staff create the repository and use it for preparing a lesson plan for students. Parts of this repository use DRM for security. Some materials of JORUM are free but some are protected by DRM [8]. JORUM uses two licenses, one allows re-purposing of content and the other does not. D. FDRM Federated Digital Rights Management (FDRM) [10] is a DRM solution in the field of education and research. The purposes of the FDRM project are to support local and inter- institutional sharing of resources in a discretionary secure and private manner and protecting the rights of user and creator. In FDRM rights records are written in XML. The FDRM has Resource Attribute Authority, Object Attribute Resolver, License Service and Resource Manager Components for secure content delivery using PGP or JSP and an Apache module or in JAVA. In the next section we will now describe DRMSDE system model. E. EduSource eduSource is a project by Canadian public-private partnership for the network of learning objects in French and English language and accessible to all Canadians for DRM implementation in eduSource. New Brunwick Distance Education Network (NBDEN) one of the partners of eduSource plays a lead role [11]. eduSource is designed to support multiple DRM models, including free access, co- operative sharing, fee-based, subscription-based, etc. [8]. In eduSource Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) and XML are used in implementing DRM. F. COLIS The Collaborative Online Learning and Information System (COLIS) is a distributed online learning project incorporated with DRM and funded by the Australian Federal Government Department of Education Science and Training (DEST) in the year 2002 [8]. The learner enters into the system with login ID and password and session length. After successful login, the learners see their names on the title and select course under courses. The learner chooses DC for access but before accessing the content an “End User License Agreement and Copyright notice” is displayed that show some copyright related terms and conditions. If the learner has the access right then he or she uses it. Otherwise, Digital Right Error will occur [12]. III. DRMSDE SYSTEM MODEL The DRMSDE is a prototype model for securing DE in which the rights of different users are properly maintained. In our system, the major components are users, DC and roles/rights of users on Digital material. In this section we explain each component in details as follows: (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 345 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org A. Users Presently in DRMSDE we allow following three types of users to use the system which are: 1) Administrative manager: An Administrative manager is a group of experts who control the entire system. 2) Learner: A group of knowledge-seekers/students, i.e. consumers of our system. 3) Content creator: Content Creators are a group of teachers who create content, i.e. they are producers of DC on different topic for different subject in a particular course and inform learners about their creations periodically. B. Tutorial The core component of DE is its tutorial. In our proposed system we broadly classify tutorials into two types: one is DE tutorial and another is advanced tutorial. The DE tutorials are provided by the DE authority to users that has valid DRM code. Advanced tutorials are also maintained by the DE authority but for accessing advanced tutorials, learners have to purchase a license key from DE authority. After getting the license key learners are able to use both tutorials related to his/her course because a DRM code is given to all registered users. The concept of DE tutorial and Advanced Tutorial are similar to textbooks and reference books for a particular subject. C. Roles of Users Roles of a user are determined on the basis of what the user may do. Roles of our users are: 1) Administrative manager: Administrative Managers are the super user of DE System. They assign Access rights to other users of the system and fully access the entire DC and other databases. 2) Learner: The Learners can view; download copy and print DC related to their course for a specified period of time but cannot erase and modify DC. 3) Course creator: Course creators are group of teachers responsible for creating, managing and modifying tutorials. In the next section we will describe DRMSDE system Architecture. IV. DRMSDE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Proper rights management is essential for the implementation of DE successfully. The main objective of our proposed Multi-Agent based DRMSDE system is to provide a secure environment in which authorized Learners can freely access their own DC according to their rights, needs and their own convenience. Our proposed system is shown in Fig. 2. The agents of our system that perform various operations are Learner Agent, Content Creator Agent, Administrative Manager Agent and Authentication Agent. Fig. 2. DRMSDE System Architecture. (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 346 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Each individual agent is now described below: 1) Learner Agent: It Receives UserId and Password from Learner interface and checks the authenticity of a user by communicating with the user database. The Learner Agent communicates with a Directory Service Agent for available Content Creator Agents and communicates with appropriate Agents for the tutorial requested by the Learner. 2) Content Creator (CC) Agent: CC Agent receives UserId and Password from CC Interface and matches these with the UserId and Password of Content Creator stored in the user database and display an appropriate message to CC. CC agents register to Directory Service Agent (DSA) so that Learner agent can find them when required. CC Agents create tutorials of a different type for different courses and inform the learners about the tutorial for access through DSA. Tutorials are available in two forms one is paid and other is free. 3) Administrative Manager Agent (AMA): Like Learner and Content Creator Agent, Administrative Manager Agent also receives UserId and Password from its Interface and checks the authenticity of administrative Manager through User Database. AMA registers Learners and Content Creators. It also initiates Authorization Agent when Learner wants to access tutorial. 4) Authorization Agent: This agent is responsible for authorizing the learners when he or she tries to access the tutorial. Our system provides two modes of tutorial access one is free and another paid. To access the free tutorial, learners have to enter DRM code, which is a code given to the Learner by our system at the starting of each semester. DRM code is course and semester specific. Authorization agent matched DRM Code with free tutorial and after proper verification from database Agent allow learner for access. In case of paid tutorial Learners have to follow License procedure with AMA and with License Key Authorization Agent authorizes the Learner for the paid tutorial. Besides the above agents, when the main container is launched, two agents, which are Agent Management System (AMS) and Directory Facilitator (DF) are automatically started by JADE. All the user defined agents are initiated by AMS [13] 5) Agent Management System (AMS): Basically AMS supervises the entire JADE platform. It is the contact point for all agents that need to interact in order to communicate with each other. All agents contact each other through AMS. 6) Directory Facilitator (DF): DF is the agent that implements yellow page service used by any agent wishing to register its service for other available services. In our system agents are registered with DF and Learner request the DF for a list of active CC agents. The JADE DF accepts subscriptions from agents that wish to be notified whenever a service registration is made that match some specified criteria. In the next section we will now discuss DRMSDE system Implementation. V. DRMSDE SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MAS can be built with any programming language [14], but Object Oriented Programming Language is better because the concept of objects and agents is similar to some extent. Besides programming language, the software platforms and frameworks are key to implement MAS. The platform provides a middleware to support execution and other essential operations. For our System Implementation, we are using popular Windows 8.0 operating system. JAVA, a powerful Object Oriented Programming Language for system development, for the database we are using MYSQL and for agent interaction JADE 3.4 is used. We choose JADE [15] to build our system because of the following reasons:  JADE is one of the best modern agent environments.  JADE is capable to work on distributed and heterogeneous platform.  JADE is open source software compliant with FIPA specification.  JADE architecture matches with our system requirement.  JADE simplifies development of agents and their communication. A. System Execution [16, 17] To see the working of agents in our DRMSDE we need to execute the system. When we run our Agent-Based DRMSDE system then JADE environment demanded user id and password for authentication of administrative manager agent. This creates administrative manager agent and start Administrative manager GUI (see Fig. 3) and JADE environment (see Fig. 4) are displayed. Fig. 3. Administrative Manager GUI. (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 347 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Fig. 4. JADE Environment. From the administrative manager GUI, admin can create different courses, enroll Learners (see Fig. 5) to various courses and register content creators (see Fig. 6 ) into our system who provide audio, video and text tutorial in two modes free and paid. Fig. 5. Learner Enrollment. Fig. 6. Content Creator Registration. After successful enrollment of Learners and registration of Content Creator each content creator prepares tutorials (see Fig. 7) on different topic of different courses and semester. Fig. 7. Tutorial Management. (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 348 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org When tutorials are managed by different content creators then content creators‟ create their agent by using JADE environment and for authentication process, they provide valid user id and password. Now Learners have created their own agents by providing authentic user id and password to JADE environment. After entering into the system search tutorial GUI helps Learners to search tutorial (Fig. 8) Fig. 8. Search Tutorial When Learner enters their course, semester and paper for which tutorial is required then DF Agent provides all the details of the CC agents. It is up to the Learners to choose paid or free tutorials. After selecting tutorial if it is free, then learners need to enter DRMCODE (Fig. 9(a) & (b)) and for paid tutorial License Key is required for authentication process then only tutorials are accessed by Learners according to their rights. But if DRMCODE and License key are not matched which means Learner is not authorized to access tutorial then access denied message is displayed. The most exciting property of Agent is their ability to communicate with each other. Agents are communicated with different agents by sending and receiving messages. These things can be easily expressed by JADE‟s built-in sniffer. This sniffer is a tool that receives messages from all agents in the system, reasons for the information, and presents it from different points of view. The tool is able to visualize messages as a low-level UML sequence diagram and provides a high- level view via dynamically created traceable workflow diagrams. The sniffer view of our DRMSDE system is shown in Fig. 10. (a) (b) Fig. 9. Authentication using DRMCODE. (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 349 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Fig. 10. Sniffer Agent. B. System Classes In our system we have implemented ContentCreatorAgent , LearnerAgent and UniversityAgent classes for creating ContentCreator , Learner and Administrative Manager Agent respectively with the help of JADE built in AMS agent . Agent communications are also initiated by AMS. Agents need interface to perform some action through actionPerformed(…) methods. ContentCreatorGUI, LearnerGUI and UniversityGUI classes are used for ContentCreator , Learner and Administrative Manager Agent respectively. TutorialRequestPerformer class implements a ticker behavior which executes the Learner request on every tick. TutorialRequestServer class catches all incoming requests from Learner agents and replies to them accordingly and DBHelperclass interacting with database. Fig. 11 shows all the classes of our system. C. System Database Model We are using MYSQL database to fulfill our database requirements. The records of different users, tutorials as well as rights of different users are very efficiently managed by MYSQL. The snapshot of different tables and their interactions are shown in Fig. 12. Fig. 11. System Classes. (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 350 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Fig. 12. DRMSDE Database. VI. LIMITATIONS OF DRMSDE Though our system is doing well with DE domain we have noted a few limitations of our study. In this section we are highlighting them:  Our system allows only three types of users.  If an unauthorized user tries to enter into the system then such entries are not noticed by the Administrative Manager.  After the authentication and authorization process if a user download tutorial then our system has no control on that tutorial. VII. SYSTEMS COMPARISONS Now we compare DRMSDE with some of the existing MAS based education system and the results are represented by Table I. From Table I, it is clear that except ABITS and BOKHARI-IMBLS other intelligent systems are not considered rights management into their systems. In ABITS, DRM is used partially were as in BOKHARI-IMBLS security agent is used for DRM. Our system has also authentication agent for DRM. Now we compare our system with BOKHARI-IMBLS, see Table II. We think rights management is an important issue for the quality of DE and we focused fully on DRM in it that manages rights of the different user of the system. Our goal is to protect DC from an unauthorized user and monitor the activity of authorized user so that learner cannot misuse the DC and use according to their rights. Whenever a learner is completed it course its accesses rights have become invalid. (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 351 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org TABLE I. SYSTEMS COMPARISONS NAME OF SYSTEM PURPOSE OF DEVELOPMENT PROPOSED BY / DEVELOPED BY TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS NAME OF AGENTS DRM ELECTROTUTOR [18] MULTI-AGENT BASED E- LEARNING SYSTEM FOR DISTANCE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENT LEARNING ENVIRONMENT JADE, KQML PEDAGOGICAL , COMMUNICATION , STUDENT MODEL , REMOTE NO AGENT BASED INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEM(ABITS) [19] ADOPTIVE WEB-BASED TUTORING SYSTEM NICOLA CAPUANO, MARCO MARSELLA , SAVERIO SALERNO HTML, VRML, CLASS, XML/RDF [10] EVALUATION, AFFECTING AND PEDAGOGICAL PARTIALLY NO AGENT FOR DRM BAGHERA[20] A WEB BASED ENVIRONMENT FOR TEACHING GEOMETRY PROOF CARINE WEBBER , LORIS BERGIA, SYLVIE PESTY AND NICOLAS BALACHEFF JATLITE, FIPA-ACL STUDENT‟S PERSONAL INTERFACE, TUTOR, MEDIATOR, TEACHER'S PERSONAL INTERFACE ,ASSISTANT NO MAS-PLANG[21] TEACHING SUPPORT UNIT CLARA-INÉS PEÑA, JOSE-L MARZO, JOSEP-LLUIS DE LA ROSA JADE,JAVA SCRIPT, XML, RMI, CGI, FLASH SONIA, SYNTHETIC, USER , DIDACTIC , SUPERVISOR , PEDAGOGIC, CONTROLLER, EXERCISE ADAPTER NO EMOTIONAL MULTI- AGENTS SYSTEM FOR PEER TO PEER E-LEARNING (EMASPEL) [22] COLLECTIVE AND COLLABORATING E- LEARNING SYSTEM ON THE PEER TO PEER NETWORK MOHAMED BEN AMMAR , MAHMOUD NEJI , ADEL.M ALIMI MADKIT , JXTA INTERFACE, EMOTIONAL,CURRICULUM , TUTOR , THE EMOTIONAL EMBODIED CONVERSATIONAL NO AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO DYNAMIC ADAPTIVE LEARNING (ABDAL) WORKS FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT SHANGHUA SUN, MIKE JOY, AND NATHAN GRIFFITHS APPLETS [23] PREFERENCE , ACCOUNTING , EXERCISE, TEST NO ALLEGRO [24] TO SUPPORT TEACHING LEARNING PROCESS ROSA M. VICCARI, DEMETRIO A. OVALLE, JOVANI A. JIM´ENEZ CASE BASED REASONING, LEARNING OBJECT, COLLABORATIVE FEATURE TUTOR , STUDENT , INTERFACE, EXPERT, DIAGNOSIS, COLLABORATIVE NO BOKHARI INTELLIGENT MULTI-AGENT BASED E-LEARNING SYSTEM (BOKHARI- IMBLS) [9] WEB-BASED INTERACTIVE E- LEARNING SYSTEM DESIGNED FOR THE DISTANCE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT MOHAMMAD UBAIDULLAH BOKHARI AND SADAF AHMAD PROMETHEUS METHODOLOGY STUDENT INTERFACE AGENT, TUTOR INTERFACE AGENT, COLLABORATION AGENT , INTELLIGENT DECISION SUPPORT AGENT , TEST/EVALUATION AGENT , LESSON PLANNING AGENT AND SECURITY AGENT YES TABLE II. BOKHARI-IMBLS VS. DRMSDE BOKHARI-IMBLS DRMSDE No of User This System allow two users DRMSDE allow three user Right Management of Users Not Consider Rights Management is key to our system Encryption of DC Advanced Encryption Standard, or AES, is used to encrypt database Development of encryption technique for DC is under process. Security Achieved by login id and password DRMSDE has two level of security  Authentication is done by user id and password  Authorization is done by DRM code (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019 352 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org VIII. CONCLUSION DE and DRM are two popular domains of research. In this paper, we used both of them and implement a Multi-agent based model called DRMSDE using JADE. Our main objective is to protect DC from unauthorized users and also promote fair use of DC among authorized user. For DRM here we use Authentication and Authorization model that is widely accepted in the domain of education. Different users of the system are guided by intelligent Agents at each level so that we protect our system from unauthorized access efficiently. Agents interact with the database to verify the users‟ authenticity and authorization. After successful verification agents allow users to access the database. Though rights of the user may depend on institutional policy and our system is ready to easily accommodate those changes by modifying Agents or introducing new Agents if required. Our purpose is to increase security, quality, trust, and accessibility of DE with intelligent agents. The rights of users are solely maintained in our system. In future to enhance the quality of DRMSDE we will design some agents in our system that constantly monitors our system and inform the administrative manager if some unauthorized users are trying to access our DC, and for protection of DC we will develop a suitable encryption and decryption technique. ACKNOWLEDGMENT I acknowledge Prof Ahmet ŞANSLI for answering my questions related with his system EDU-DRM and allow me to access his paper “EDU-DRM: A digital rights management (DRM) system for K-12 education” which in press. REFERENCES [1] A. Ozmen , A. Şansli , V. 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Ahmad , Literature Review , Designing Multiagent Intelligent System for Interactive e-Learning, PhD Thesis. Aligarh Muslim University, India ,2014. [20] C Webber, L Bergia, S Pesty and N Balacheff, Baghera project: a multi- agent architecture for human learning, Proceedings of the Workshop Multi-Agent Architectures for Distributed Learning Environments, AIED2001, San Antonio, TX, USA, pp-12-17,2001 [21] Clara-Inés Peña, Jose-L Marzo, Josep-Lluis de la Rosa, Intelligent Agents in a Teaching and Learning Environment on the Web, Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, ICALT2002, Kazan, Russia ,pp- 21-27, 2002. [22] M. B. Ammar , M. Neji , A. M. Alimi , Emotional multi-agents system for peer to peer elearning (EMASPEL), DIWEB'06 Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on Distance Learning and Web Engineering, Corfu Island, Greece, pp- 164-170 ,2005. [23] S. Sun, M. Joy, N. Griffiths, An agent-based approach to dynamic adaptive learning, in Agent Based Systems for Human Learning (ABSHL) Workshop, the 4th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS), Utrecht, Netherlands, pp-48-58, 2005. [24] R. M. Viccari, D. A. Ovalle, J. A. Jim´enez, ALLEGRO: Teaching/Learning Multi-Agent Environment using Instructional Planning and Cases- Based Reasoning (CBR), in Centro Latinoamericano de EstudiosenInformática (CLEI) Electronic Journal, vol 10 , issue 1, paper 4, 2007. 
work_lraubxsob5e6lauleq7pubnbva	----	490 Journal of Engineering Sciences Assiut University Faculty of Engineering Vol. 43 No. 4 July 2015 PP. 490 – 514 انتعهيى عن تعذ فى انعًارج اصتكشاف ايكانياخ وفرص )دروس يضتفادج ين انتجارب انعانًيح( يعتىق يحًىد حضن يحًذ عبِؼخ إٌّيب -أعزبر ِغبػذ ثمغُ اٌؼّبسح ثىٍيخ إٌٙذعخ m_maatouk@yahoo.com (Received 11 June 2015; Accepted 15 July 2015) ضخيه ْ يُ ػٓ ثؼذ، وّب ا زٍؼ ٌيت ٌا عيبد االرقبالد ٚاالٔزشٔذ أوجش األصش فٝ رطٛس أعب زىٌٕٛٛ ٌّزغبسعٌ ىجيش ٚا ٍزطٛس ٌا وبْ ٌ ٝ يُ اٌؼٌب زٍؼ طٍت ػٍٝ ٌا ٝ صيبدح االلجبي اصديبد ٌا ٌّزضايذ أدٜ ٌا طٍت ا ٛاوجخ ٘زا ٌا يذٜ ػٓ ِ زٍم يُ ٌا زٍؼ ٚػغض ِئعغبد ٌا ،ُ ي زٍؼ ٓ ٌا ٌّٕوِ زا ا ٘ ٌزؼٍُي ػٓ ثؼذ اال أْ اٌجشاِظ ػٍٝ ّّٕٛؽخ ػٓ هشيك ا ٌٍجشاِظ ٚاٌذسعبد ٌا اعغ ٚثشغُ االٔزؾبس اٌٛ ٔزؾبس ؽزٝ اآلْ ٌٚؼً رٌه يشعغ اٌٝ ؾذٚدح اال ٌؼّبسح ال رضايِ ٜ اٌذساعيخ فٝ ِغبي ا ٌز ّؼّبسٜ ا يُ ٌا زٍؼ خقٛفيخ ٌا طالة ٚاالعبرزح ٝف اعزذيٛ٘بد اٌزق ّجبؽش ثيٓ ٌا ّذ ػٍٝ اٌزفبػً ٌا ُ يؼز ي زٍؼ ي ِٓ ٌا زٛؾ ٌيخ فٝ ٌا ٕب رىّٓ االؽىب ٘ ٚ ّيُ ٝ يُ ػٓ ثؼذ ف ٌٍزٍؼ ٌّزبؽخ يبد ٚاٌفشؿ ا ٚاعزىؾبف االِىٔب ٌجؾش دساعخ ي ٘زا ا ٝ اٌزؼٍُي ػٓ ثؼذ، ٌٌٚزه يؾٚب يذٜ ٌا اٌزٍم يُ ػٓ ثؼذ ِغزخذِب اٌؼّبسح ٌٍزٍؼ ٌيخ زغبسة اٌذٚ ٓ ٌا ِ زؾٍيً اٌؼذيذ ٌ ٌىّٝ ٝ ثؾميٗ إٌٛػٝ ٚا ٌزؾٍٍي ٕٙظ ا ٌّ غبي ا ِ فٝ ٚد ٌزٝ رزؼٍك ثزؼشيفبد ٚؽذ زغبإالد ا ٓ ٌا ِ ؼذيذ جؾش ثطجيؼزٗ االعزىؾبفيخ اٌٝ االعبثخ ػٍٝ ٌا ٌٚمذ رٛفً ٌا اٌؼّبسح، ٝ ٛء ػٍ ّؼّبسٜ ٚاٌمبء اٌن يُ اٌ زٍؼ خٌ خقٛفيخ ٌا لٛف ػٍٝ أوضش٘ب ِالّئ يُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚاٌٛ ٌٍزٍؼ فخ ٌّخٍز ٌيت ا ٚامؾخٌ العب ّغزخذِخ فٝ ٌر يبد ٌا ٌزٕم ٓ ا ٌيت اٌؼذيذ ِ ٙب، ٚأعب ٌ ٝ ؽبٌخ االػزّبد االوبدّي زخققبدٚ جشاِظ ٌٚا ٛاففبد ٌا ٔٛػيخ ِٚ ه،ٚ جبؽشح جؾش رقتِ زا ٌا زبئظ٘ زٜ يغؼًٔ ، األِش ٌا ٌزقُّي ٘بد ا ٝ ٝف رذسيظ اعزذٛي ّىٔب ٔفقبي ٌا خ اال ؾٍى ِ ت ػٍٝ اٌزٍغ ُ ٝ ِغبي دػ ُ ف ّي ٝ اٌّئعغبد اػٍّيخ رق يخ ف ٍيخ اٌزؼٍّي ٕيخ ٌزطٛيش اٌّؼ بسيخ.اٌخطو اٌزم يخ اٌّّؼ ألوبدّي عيب اٌزؼٍيُ كهًاخ يفتاحيح: ٜ، رىٌٕٛٛ ُ اٌّؼّبس ُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ، اٌزؼٍي ٓ ثؼذ، اٌزؼٍي ُ ػ ٝ اٌؼّبسحاٌزؼٍي ِبريخ ف .، ٚاٌّؼٍٛ . يقذيح1 ُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌؼبٌُ .1.1 اٌزطٛس اٌّزغبسع ٌٍزؼٍي ٌضالصخ ٚاالرقبالد ثقٛسح عشيؼخ فٝ اٌؼمٛد ا ٝ رطٛسد رىٌٕٛٛعيب اٌؾبعجبد ِّب وبْ ٌٗ أوجش األصش ف ّبميخ اٌ ّبمٝ ٚاٌزٜ عجت رطٛسا ٕز رغؼيٕبد اٌمشْ اٌ قطٍؼ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشِٚٔٝ يُ ٚاٌزؼٍُ ٚظٙٛسِ رطٛس أعبٌيت اٌزٍؼ ِغ زؼٍيُ ٓػ ثؼذ ٚثخبفخ ِغبي ٌا ٍخ فٝ بئ ٘ ٔزشٔذ لفضح يُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٌٚمذ أؽذس ظٙٛس اال يت اٌزٍؼ وجيشا فٝ أعٌب ّزغبسع ٚظٙٛس ب اٌ ٝ رطٛ٘س ب اْ اصديبد اٌطٍت ػٍٝ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌؼبٌ ٌيخ اٌغشػخ، ّو ٔزشٔذ ػب أعيبي ِزؼبلجخ ٌؾجىبد اال ٓ ثؼذ ] ُ ػ ٝ اٌزؼٍي ٓ ِٛاوجخ ٘زا اٌطٍت اٌّزضايذ أدٜ اٌٝ صيبدح االلجبي ػٍ ٜ ػ ُ اٌزمٍيذ [.1ٚػغض ِئعغبد اٌزؼٍي رزضايذ 1996أٗ ِٕز ػبَ ٌٚمذ أظٙشد االؽقبئيبد اٌزٝ رشفذ ؽغُ اٌطٍت اٌؼبٌّٝ ػٍٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ اػذاد اٌطالة ِٓ خالي اٌٛعبئً اٌّخزٍفخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ وً ِٓ أِشيىب ٚوٕذا ٚثؼل دٚي غشة أٚسثب ِمبثً صيبدح فٝ اػذاد اٌطالة اٌّغغٍيٓ فٝ ثشاِظ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزمٍيذٜ لذس٘ب % 10رضايذا صبثزب ثّؼذي ؽٛاٌٝ ح فٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ رٍه اٌجٍذاْ وبٔذ ِٓ ٔقيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ عٕٛيب ِٚؼظُ اٌضيبد% 5اٌٝ 2ؽٛاٌٝ ِٓ mailto:m_maatouk@yahoo.com mailto:m_maatouk@yahoo.com 491 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 ِٓ ِئعغبد % 65فبْ 2007-2006. ٌٚمذ اظٙشد االؽقبئيبد أٔٗ فٝ اٌؼبَ األوبديّٝ [4] هشيك االٔزشٔذ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌؼبٌٝ فٝ أِشيىب أفجؾذ رّٕؼ ٔٛػبُ ِٓ أٔٛاع اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ِٓ خالي اٌجشاِظ ٚاٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ . ٚأينب فٝ اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح األِشيىيخ اسرفغ اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌّغغٍيٓ فٝ ثشاِظ ِٚمشساد دساعيخ ػٍٝ [13] % ِٓ عىبْ 78ثّب يمبسة ِٓ ؽٛاٌٝ 2011ٍِيْٛ فٝ ػبَ 245اٌٝ 2003ٍِيْٛ فٝ ػبَ 2االٔزشٔذ ِٓ 3.6اٌٝ 2005ْٛ فٝ ػبَ أِشيىب، وّب اْ أػذاد ِغزخذِٝ االٔزشٔذ ؽٛي اٌؼبٌُ لذ صادد ِٓ ؽٛاٌٝ ٚاؽذ ثٍي % ِٓ اعّبٌٝ عىبْ اٌؼبٌُ ٚغبٌجيخ إٌّٛ رؤرٝ ِٓ دٚي اٌقيٓ 34ثّب يٛاصٜ ؽٛاٌٝ 2011ثٍيْٛ فٝ ػبَ ٚإٌٙذ ٚاٌجشاصيً ٚسٚعيب ٚأٔذٚٔيغيب، ِٚٓ اٌغذيش ثبٌزوش أْ اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح االِشيىيخ رزقذس ٚرمٛد اٌؼبٌُ ؽيش [7]عيخ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚرالؽمٙب فٝ رٌه اٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ثؾىً ٘بئً فٝ ِغبي رطٛيش اٌّمشساد اٌذسا أْ اٌّٛمٛع ٌٗ أثؼبد ألزقبديخ فؼٍٝ عجيً اٌّضبي ثٍغ ؽغُ االيشاداد ٌّمشساد ٚثشاِظ رذسط ػٓ هشيك ، ٌٚزٌه فبْ 1999ثٍيْٛ دٚالس فٝ ػبَ 225اٌٛعبئً اٌّخزٍفخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح االِشيىيخ جيئخ اٌغذيذح ٌٍزؼٍُ رّضً عٛلب سائغخ ٌألػّبي رزٕبفظ فيٙب اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌؾشوبد ٚاٌؾىِٛبد وّب ينبف ٘زٖ اٌ اٌٝ رٌه أْ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌجبؽضيٓ أوذٚا أْ رٍه اٌغٛق عٛف رزٕبِٝ فٝ اٌّغزمجً ٔظشا ٌٍضيبدح اٌّطشدح فٝ .[14]اٌطٍت ػٍٝ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌؼبٌٝ ِب ثؼذ اٌذسعخ اٌغبِؼيخ األٌٚٝ قطٍؼ اٌغبِؼبد اٌىجٜش ِٚغ يُ ػٓ ثؼذ ظٙشِ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ٓػ ثؼذ Mega universitiesرٕبِٝ أػذاد هالة اٌزٍؼ ب ِب ثيٓ ٝ 500000اٌٝ أوضش ِٓ 100000فٝ اٌؼبٌُ ٚ٘ٝ اٌزٝ يزشاٚػ أػذاد اٌطالة ٙث ٜ رؤصيشا ف هبٌت ٚ٘ٝ األلٛ زقٕيفبد ع ٔذ اٌغٛق اٌؼبٌّٝ ٌٍزؼٍُي اٌؼبٌٝ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚٝ٘ ٚفمب ألؽذس ٌا يشال ِ ِؼزٝ ٚ [47]جؼخ عبِؼبد، عب ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح [44]ٚعبِؼخ دسثٝ [36]ثبٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح األِشيىيخ ٚاٌغبِؼخ اٌّفزٛؽخ [27] دسيىغً ٔيغيب ّفزٛؽخ ثؤٔٚذ ٔذيشا غبٜٔذ اٌّفزٛؽخ ثبٌٕٙذ [50] ٚاٌغبِؼخ اٌ ّب [13]ٚعبِؼخ عٕٛة أفشيميب [33]ٚعبِؼخ ا . و ِؼبد أخشٜ ٕيف ًِض عبِؼخ فٛٔيىظاؽزٙشد عب يُ ٓػ ثؼذ خبسط ٘زا اٌزق ٔزه [49] ٝف ِغبي اٌزٍؼ ٚعبِؼخ ارال ٛيغشيخ اٌّفزٛؽخ [24]اٌذٌٚيخ ثؤِشيىب غ ٔيبٚ [35]ٚاٌغبِؼخ ٌا ّفزٛؽخ [29] عبِؼخ فيشْ اٌّفزٛؽخ ثؤٌّب ٚاٌغبِؼخ اٌ ٌيضيب ٚأينب لذ ٌؾمذ اٌذٚي اٌؼشثيخ ثمطبس [34]ثّب ؾئذ . زؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٔؤ َ ٌا ِؼخ اٌّفزٛؽخ اٌؼشثيخ فٝ ػب اٌغب ب اٌشئيغٝ فٝ اٌىٛيذ 2002 ْ [23]ِٚم٘ش ٚاالسد جؾشيٓ ِٚقش ٌٚا بْ ٚافجؼ ٌٙب ؽزٝ اآلْ عزخ فشٚع فٝ ٌٕج ٌؼَب ٛديخ، ٚفٝ ا غؼ ِؼخ دثٝ اٌزويخ 2002ٚػّبْ ٚاٌٍّّىخ اٌؼشثيخ ٌا ؾئذ ًو ِٓ عب ٚاٌغبِؼخ [30]أينب ٔأ غٛسيخ ؾئذ [41]االفزشاميخ ٌا ّب ٔأ ؾئذ اٌغبِؼخ 2008فٝ ػَب [28]اٌغبِؼخ اٌّقشيخ ٌٍزؼٍُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ و ُص ٔأ ٔيخ يذيخ اٌؼشثيخ 2011ٝف ػَب [39]اٌغؼٛديخ االٌىزشٚ زؼٍيُ ٓػ ثؼذ فٝ ِؼُظ اٌغبِؼبد اٌزٍم ٔزؾشد ثشاِظ ٌا ٚلذ ا ْ ٌذيٙب ثشاِظ ٚػّبداد ُ عبِؼبد اٌٍّّىخ اٌؼشثيخ اٌغؼٛديخ اآل ْ ِؼظ ً اٌّضبي فب ُ ػٓ ثؼذ. فؼٍٝ عجي ٌٍزؼٍي اؽىبٌيخ اٌجؾش .1.2 ٍجشاِظ ٚاٌذسعبد إٌّّٛؽخ ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ اال أْ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ٚثشغُ ٘زا االٔزؾبس اٌٛاعغ ٌ ٛاء فٝ اٌغبِؼبد اٌىجشٜ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٔزؾبس ؽزٝ اآلْ فٙٝ غيش ِزبؽخ ع فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح ال رضاي ِؾذٚدح اال ب ٚأ فٝ اٌغبِؼبد اٌؼشثيخ ٌٍزؼٍيُفٝ اٌؼبٌُ اٌزٝ ػٓ ثؼذ، ٚاٌٛالغ ْأ وٍيبد اٌؼّبسح ؽؤٔٙب ؽؤْ اٌؼذيذ عجك رو٘ش ٙب ػٓ ِٕب٘غٙب اٌزمٍيذيخ ٌيّىٓ رذسيغ رخ فٝ رطٛيغ ِٓ اٌزخققبد اٌؼٍّيخ اٌزٝ رغذ فؼٛثخ ثذسعبد ِزفٚب ْ االػزّبد فٗي ثبٌذسعخ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ، ٚينبف اٌٝ رٌه خقٛفيخ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼّبسٜ رارٗ ؽيش يىٛ ً األ ٔيخ ِٓ خالي اٌزفبػ ّبسيخ ٚػّشا ؾشٚػبد ِؼ ٔزبطِ ٌٚٝ ػٍٝ اعزذيٛ٘بد اٌزقّيُ ؽيش يمَٛ اٌطالة ثب ثيٓ اٌطالة أٔفغُٙ ثؼنُٙ اٌجؼل، ٕٚ٘ب رىّٓ االؽىبٌيخ ٚاٌقؼٛثخ فٝ اٌزؾٛي اٌّجبؽش ثيُٕٙ ٚثيٓ االعبرزحٚ ٔفقبي اٌّىبٔٝ ثٓي اٌطبٌت ٚاالعزبر ٌٚزٌه يؾبٚي ٘زا ِٓ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزمٍيذٜ اٌٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ؽي ش يؾذس اال ٔيبد ٚاٌفشؿ اٌّزبؽخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌؼّبسح ٚاٌزٜ يقت فٝ ِغبي دػُ اٌجؾش دساعخ ٚاعزىؾبف االِىب ؽذ أخطو رطٛيش اٌؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ فٝ اٌّئعغبد األوبديّيخ اٌّؼّبسيخ ٚثخبفخ ػٕذ اػزّبد ػٍّيخ رقّيُ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ أٚ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ وؤؽذ ِشرىضاد ِٚٛعٙبد اٌزطٛيش. أعبٌيت أ٘ذاف اٌجؾش .1.3 يٙذف اٌجؾش اٌٝ اعزىؾبف االِىبٔيبد ٚاٌفشؿ اٌّزبؽخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح ٚاعزخالؿ ثؼل اٌّئؽشاد ٚاٌّٛعٙبد اٌزٝ رُٙ اٌمبئّيٓ ػٍٝ اٌزطٛيش ٚاٌزؾذيش ٌٍؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ فٝ وٍيبد اٌؼّبسح 492 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ ٔٝ وّٛعٗ ٌٍزؾذيش اٌزمٕٝ وؤؽذ ٚثخبفخ ِٓ يخططْٛ الػزّبد أؽذ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ أٚ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚ ِشرىضاد اٌخطو اٌزطٛيشيخ ٌٍؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ ثىٍيبد اٌؼّبسح. رغبإالد اٌجؾش .1.4 ً: ِب ٘ٝ ٌٚزؾميك أ٘ذاف اٌجؾش ثطجيؼزٗ االعزىؾبفيخ وبْ ِٓ اٌطجيؼٝ هشػ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌزغبإالد ِض ؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح؟ ً٘ ٕ٘بن وٍيبد عبٌيت اٌّخزٍفخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ؟ ِب ٘ٝ اٌزغبسة اٌذٌٚيخ ٌٍزاأل ٌٍؼّبسح أٚ عبِؼبد رمذَ ثشاِظ ِؼّبسيخ ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغزٜٛ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط أَ فمو ثشاِظ ػٍٝ ِغزٜٛ اٌذساعبد اٌؼٍيب؟ ً٘ ٘زٖ اٌجشاِظ ِؼزّذح؟ ِب ٔٛػيخ رٍه اٌجشاِظ ٚاٌزخققبد اٌغبٌجخ ػٍيٙب؟ ِب اعيخ اٌالصِخ ٚاٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ ٚاٌغبػبد اٌذساعيخ اٌّؼزّذح ٌٍؾقٛي ػٍٝ اٌذسعخ؟ ٘ٛ ػذد اٌّمشساد اٌذس ِب ٘ٛ اٌّذٜ اٌضِٕٝ ٌالٔزٙبء ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ ًٚ٘ اٌزغغيً ٌٍجشٔبِظ يىْٛ ِزبؽب هٛاي اٌغٕخ أَ فٝ أٚلبد أعبٌيت ِؾذدح؟ ويف أِىٓ اٌزغٍت ػٍٝ ِؾىٍخ االٔفقبي اٌّىبٔٝ فٝ رذسيظ اعزذيٛ٘بد اٌزقّيُ؟ ِب ٘ٝ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼّبسٜ؟ ِٚب ٘ٝ اٌزمٕيبد اٌّالئّخ ٌزؾميك رٌه؟ ًٚ٘ ٘ٝ فٝ ِغبي اعزخذاِب األوضش اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ رمٕيبد ِزمذِخ؟ ًٚ٘ افزمبد ِضً ٘زٖ اٌزمٕيبد يؼزجش ِؼٛلب أِبَ رطجيمبد اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح؟ ِٕٙغيخ اٌجؾش .1.5 زٕبٚي يؽيش Quantitativeٚاٌىّٝ Qualitativeيؼزّذ اٌجؾش ػٍٝ إٌّٙظ اٌزؾٍيٍٝ ثؾميٗ إٌٛػٝ اٌغبٔت إٌٛػٝ رؾٍيً اٌزغبسة اٌذٌٚيخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح العزخالؿ اٌذسٚط اٌّغزفبدح ظ االوبديّيخ زٕبٚي اٌغبٔت اٌىّٝ االؽقبئٝ رؾٍيً اٌجشاِيٌٚالعبثخ ػٍٝ ثؼل رغبإالد اٌجؾش صُ اٌّغزخٍقخ ِٓ رٍه اٌزغبسة ٚفمب ٌّزغيشاد ِؾذدح ٚرٌه العزخالؿ ثؼل اٌّئؽشاد اٌٙبِخ ٌٚالعبثخ ػٍٝ اٌغضء اٌّزجمٝ ِٓ رغبإالد اٌجؾش، ٚفيّب يٍٝ ٍِخـ ٌالعشاءاد اٌزٝ اؽزٍّذ ػٍيٙب ِٕٙغيخ اٌجؾش: ػيٕخ أٌٚيخ .1.5.1 يخ ِٓ أؽٙش 28أِىٓ ؽقش ػذد ِؼخ ٍٚو ب ثشاِظ رؼٍُي ػٓ ثؼذ عب زٝ ٌذٙي اٌّئعغبد األوبديّيخ ؽٛي اٌؼبٌُ ٌا اليبد اٌّزؾذح االِشيىيخ ٚاٌٍّّىخ ٘ب، ٚلذ ؽٍّذ اٌؼيٕخ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌذٚي ِضً اٌٛ غبثك روش ٕٙب اٌغجؼخ اٌىجبس ٌا ِٚٓ ثي ٔيغيب ِٚقش ٚعٛسيب ٚاٌغؼٛد ٌيضيب ٚعٕٛة افشيميب ٚإٌٙذ ٚأذٚ ٔيب ِٚب ٝ ٚاٌىٛيذ.اٌّزؾذح ٚعٛيغشا ٚاٌّب يخ ٚدث ػيٕخ ٔٙبئيخ .1.5.2 ٚثشاِغٙب االوبديّيخ ٌٚمذ رُ ػًّ دساعخ ؽبٍِخ ٌٍغبِؼبد اٌزٝ رنّٕزٙب اٌؼيٕخ األٌٚيخ ِٓ ؽيش رخققبرٙب ّب ٘ٛ ِٛمؼ 14رُ اعمبه ٌجشاِظ اٌّؼّبسيخ و ٘ب ِٓ اٌزخققبد ٚا خ إٌٙبئيخ ٚرٌه ٌخٍٛ عبِؼخ ٌُ رؾٍّٙب اٌؼٕي ٗ ( ثٍّؾك اٌجؾش 1ثغذٚي ) ؽيش غٍجذ ػٍيٙب اٌزخققبد إٌظشيخ ٚثخبفخ اداسح األػّبي اٌزٜ ال رىبد رخٍٛ ِٕ عبِؼخ ٚثبٌٕغجخ ٌٍزخققبد اٌؼٍّيخ وبْ اٌزخقـ اٌغبٌت ٘ٛ اٌؾبعجبد ٚرىٌٕٛٛعيب اٌّؼٍِٛبد اٌزٜ ال رىبد ٌٕغجخ ٌٍزخققبد إٌٙذعيخ ٌُ رظٙش عٜٛ فٝ عبِؼزيٓ ّ٘ب دسيىغً ثؤِ شيىب رخٍٛ ِٕٗ عبِؼخ أينب ٚثب ً ّيخ ػٍيب فٝ إٌٙذعخ اٌىٙشثيخ ٕٚ٘ذعخ إٌظُ ثغبِؼخ دسيىغ ٚأذيشاغبٔذٜ ثبٌٕٙذ ٚ٘ٝ ػجبسح ػٓ دسعبد اوبدي ٕخ إٌٙبئيخ ػٍٝ ٜ، ٚثزٌه اؽزٍّذ اٌؼي عبِؼخ ٚوٍيخ 14ٚإٌٙذعخ اٌّيىبٔيىيخ ٚإٌٙذعخ اٌّذٔيخ ثغبِؼخ أذيشاغبٔذ ٕبٌٚٙب ثبٌذساعخ اٌزفقيٍيخ ٚاٌزؾٍيً إٌٛػ ٝ ٚاٌىّٝ الؽمب وزغبسة دٌٚيخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح، يزُ ر ِٚٓ اٌغذيش ثبٌزوش اْ ِؼظُ ٘زٖ اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد ثجشاِغٙب فٝ ِخزٍف اٌزخققبد اٌّؼّبسيخ ػٓ هشيك (RIBA) اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ِٛفٝ ثٙب ِٓ اٌّؼٙذ اٌٍّىي ٌٍّؼّبسييٓ اٌجشيطبٔييٓ ٙبئيخ [21] ٚثزٌه فبْ اٌؼيٕخ إٌ اٌزٝ رغزٙذف لطبع اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼّبسٜ، ٚلذ ثٍغ ػذد [Purposive Sample [17٘ٝ ِٓ ٔٛع اٌؼيٕبد اٌؼّذيخ صػذ 14ثشٔبِغب دساعيب ِٛصػخ ػٍٝ 61اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ إٌٙبئيخ عبِؼخ ٚوٍيخ وّب روش عبثمب ٚاٌزٝ ٛر ّب فٝ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ فمو ِب ثيٓ اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح مؼ ِذٜ سيبدح وً ِٕٙ االِشيىيخ ٚاٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ِّب ٛي ثؼذ ؽيش أّٔٙب ألذَ اٌجٍذاْ رطجيمب ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ّٚ٘ب اٌشائذربْ فٝ ٘زا اٌّغبي االْ ٚثيّٕب رزٛعٗ اٌجشاِظ اِظ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌٛاليبد اٌذساعيخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ٔؾٛ ثشاِظ اٌذساعبد اٌؼٍيب رزٕٛع ثش الؽمب . رٛمؼ اٌذساعخاٌّزؾذح ٌزؾًّ ثشاِظ اٌّشؽٍزيٓ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط ٚاٌذساعبد اٌؼٍيب وّب 493 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 اٌّزغيشاد ٚاٌؼٛاًِ .1.5.3 خ اٌجؾش ػٍٝ ِغّٛػخ ِؾذدح ِٓ 61ػٍّيخ اٌزؾٍيً اٌىّٝ ٌؼذد رؼزّذ ّزنّٕخ ثؼٕي ثشٔبِغب دساعيب اٌ اٌّزغيشاد ٚاٌؼٛاًِ اٌزٝ رقف ثىً دلخ اٌجشٔبِظ اٌذساعٝ ِضً اٌزخقـ اٌؼبَ ٚاٌذليك ٌٍجشٔبِظ، اؽقبئيبد ُ، ِذٜ ٚففيخ ٌٍّٕٙظ اٌذساعٝ، األعٍٛة اٌّغزخذَ فٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ، اٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّغزخذِخ، أعٍٛة اٌزميي ِشٚٔخ رٛليزبد اٌزغغيً، ؽبٌخ االػزّبد األوبديّٝ ٌٍجشٔبِظ، ٔٛػيخ اٌّزطٍت إٌٙبئٝ ٌٍزخشط ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ. ً االؽقبئٝ .1.5.4 أعبٌيت اٌزؾٍي ع ي ٔٛ ِٓ ٔيخ جيب ِٛبد ٌا ثخبفخ ٌاشع ففٝٚ ًي اٌٛ زٍؾ ي Pie Chartُز اعزخذاَ أعبٌيت ٌا ٛيتٚعذٚا زج ط ٌا اٌّضٚد Cross Tabulation اٌّزغيشاد ِٓ يٓ ٔخ ثيٓ إص ٙب اٌّمبس ِٓ خالٌ ىٓ ٝز ّي زىشاسٜ ٌٚا ع ِٓ عذاٚي اٌزٛصيغ ٌا ٔٛ ٘ٝٚ ٔٗ ُر ػًّ اٌزؾًٍي االؽقبٝئ ِٓ اٌغذيش ثبٌزوش أ ّب،ٚ ِظ ٚدساعخ هجيؼخ اٌؼاللخ ثيٕٙ ٔب . 19االفذاس SPSSثبعزخذَا ثش انتعهيى عن تعذ أصانية تعاريف ويفاهيى أصاصيح عن. 2 ٔب يُ اٌّشرجطخ ثؤعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ رجذٚ أؽيب ِٓ اٌّف٘ب ٕبن اٌؼذيذ ٔب أخشٜ ِزؾبثٙخ٘ ٙب ٚأؽيب ِخزٍطخ ثجؼن ِضً اٌزؼٍُي االٌىزشٚٝٔ ّذ اٌجؼل زؼٍيُ اٌّؼز ٔزشٔذ ٌٚا يُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ اال ػ ٚاٌزٍؼ يُ اٌّفٛز ٚاٌزؼٍُي ِٓ االٔزشٔذ ٚاٌزٍؼ ُ ا ُ اٌّخزٍو ٚاٌزؼٍي ٓ ِٕظٛس اٌجؾش اٌؾبٌٝ. ٌغٛايػٍٝ اٌؾبعت ٚاٌزؼٍي ٙب ِ ٓ ِٕبلؾزٙب ٚرٛميؾ ٌٚزٌه وبْ الثذ ِ ‘ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ’ِقطٍؼ .2.1 قطٍؼ ٘ ِ ٌجبؽضيٓ ثؾْؤ يُ ٓػ ثؼذ’ٕبن عذي ثيٓ ا زٍؼ قطٍؼ ‘ٌا ِْ زؼٍُ ػٓ ثؼذ’ؽيش يشٜ ثبؽضْٛ أ Distance ‘ٌا Learning شادف ٌّقطٍؼ يُ ػٓ ثؼذ’ِ٘ٛ زٍؼ قطٍؼ Distance Education‘ ٌا ْٚ أِْ ْٛ آخشْٚ يش ٌٚىٓ ثبؽض زؼٍُ ٚأٍعٛة ٌا ّزؼٍُ ٚيشوض ػٍٝ اٌ ٚأؽًّ زؼٍُ ٓػ ثؼذ ألٜٛ ِٓ أ٘ذاف اٌجؾش اٌؾبٌٝ [15] ٌا يظ ٌٗٔ . ٚاٌغذيش ثبٌزوش أ ٌٓى ٚ ٚاٌزؼٍُ قطٍٝؾ اٌزؼٍُي ٘زا اٌغذي اٌجؾٝض ؽٛيِ ّب اٌجؼل.ٌا عٛف يُز اٌذخٛي ٝف شادفٓي ٌجؼنٙ ّب ّو ِٙؼ زؼبًِ Distance Learningاٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ .2.2 عزبر ثذأد ِٕز ٚلذ هٛيً ٚرؼزجش اْ فىشح اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚاٌزغٍت ػٍٝ اٌؼبئك اٌّىبٔٝ ثيٓ اٌطبٌت ٚاأل ّ٘ب ِٓ أٚائً اٌذٚي اٌزٝ ثذأ فيّٙب اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚرٌه ٚاٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذحوً ِٓ اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح االِشيىيخ صُ Correspondence Education( ثبعزخذاَ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ ثبٌّشاعٍخ 1700َش )فٝ ثذايخ اٌمشْ اٌضبِٓ ػؾ ( رُ اعزخذاَ االراػخ صُ اٌزٍفضيْٛ 1960َ-1920فٝ ثذايبد اٌمشْ اٌؼؾشيٓ ٚؽزٝ اٌخّغيٕبد ِٓ ٘زا اٌمشْ ) ذيٛ ٚأعٙضح ( رُ اعزخذاَ رغغيالد اٌىبعيذ صُ اٌفي1980َ-1970فٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚثؼذ رٌه فٝ اٌضّبٔيٕبد ) ( ظٙش اٌّيىشٚفيٍُ ٚاٌّيىشٚفيؼ ٚرطٛس 1990َ-1980صُ فٝ اٌزغؼيٕبد ) Slide Projectorsػشك اٌؾشائؼ اٌجش اٌزٍيفضيٛٔٝ ثبعزخذاَ اٌىبثً ٚاأللّبس اٌقٕبػيخ صُ ؽذصذ اٌطفشح اٌىجيشح فٝ رطٛس أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ِٕز أٚاخش اٌمشْ اٌؼؾشيٓ ٚؽزٝ اآلْ ٚرٌه ثؼذ اٌزطٛس اٌىجيش فٝ أعٙضح اٌؾبعت اٌؾخقٝ ٚظٙٛس ٚصٛسح االرقبالد اٌالعٍىيخ ٚظٙٛس Broadbandٙٛس عيً اٌجشٚدثبٔذ االٔزشٔذ ٚرطٛس٘ب اٌّغزّش ؽزٝ ظ أعٙضح اٌىّجيٛرش اٌّؾٌّٛخ ٚأعٙضح اٌزٍيفٛٔبد اٌّؾٌّٛخ اٌزويخ ٚأعٙضح اٌزبثٍذ ٌزّىٓ اٌطالة ٌيظ فمو ِٓ ِغشد اوزغبة اٌخجشاد اٌزؼٍيّيخ ػٓ هشيك اػبدح ػشك اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ اٌزٜ عجك ؽفظٗ ٚرغغيٍٗ ثؾىً ِغ غيشُ٘ ِٓ اٌطالة Synchronousٌٚىٓ أينب ِٓ اٌزؾبسن اٌٍؾظٝ اٌزضإِٝ Asynchronousِٕٝ الرضا أْ اٌٛامؼ ِٓٚغ اٌّؾبمش أصٕبء اٌّؾبمشح فٝ ِؾبوبح وبٍِخ ٌّب يؾذس فٝ اٌّؾبمشاد اٌزمٍيذيخ. ِٚ جبي اٌّٛاد اٌزؼٍيّيخ اٌزطٛس فٝ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ اسرجو ثذسعخ ٚصيمخ ثبٌزطٛساد اٌزمٕيخ فٝ ٔمً ٚاعزم ٚػٍٝ رٌه يّىٓ رؼشيف اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ثؤٔٗ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ ٚاٌزؼٍُ اٌزٜ يزنّٓ اعزخذاَ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد ٌٕمً ٚاعزمجبي اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌّٛاد اٌزؼٍيّيخ عٛاء وبْ فٝ ؽىً ٍِفبد Telecommunicationاالرقبي ػٓ ثؼذ بد أٚ فٛس أٚ فٛد أٚ فيذيٛ أٚ ثش ِجب ؽش ثٛاعطخ فيذيٛوٛٔفشٔظ ِغ اٌزؾىُ اٌىبًِ فٝ ٔقيخ أٚ ثئب .[9،15،14] اخزيبس اٌّىبْ ٚاٌضِبْ ٚاٌّذٜ اٌضِٕٝ ٌٍؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ ٌٚمذ روش اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌجبؽضيٓ ِضايب اعزخذاَ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ًِض رخفيل رىبٌيف اٌذساعخ فٝ اٌىٍيبد ٓ ٚاٌغبِؼبد ٚأينب رخفيل رىبٌيف رذسيت اٌؼبٍِيٓ ثغش ِب يزطٍت ِذسثي ؾشوبد ػٕذ ك اٌزؾذيش ٚاٌزطٛيش ثٌب 494 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ خبسط إٌطبق اٌغغشافٝ ٌزٍه اٌؾشوبد وزٌه اِىبٔيخ رذسيظ االػذاد اٌىجيشح ٚاٌّزضايذح ٌٍطالة ِغ رخفيل وضبفخ اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ ٚرؾغيٓ ٔغجخ االعزبر اٌٝ اٌطالة وّب رّىٓ اٌطالة ِٓ اٌزفبػً ٚاوزغبة اٌخجشاد ِٓ Lifelongطبلُٙ اٌّؾٍٝ وّب يذػُ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ االرغبٖ اٌؼبٌّٝ ٔؾٛ اٌزؼٍُ ِذٜ اٌؾيبح ألشأُٙ خبسط ٔ Learning ٌٝاٌغذيش ثبٌزوش أْ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ الصاٌذ ِىٍفخ فٙٝ رؼزّذ ػٍٝ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد رؾزبط ا ِٓٚ ش ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ أعٛس اٌّؾبمشيٓ ٚاٌفٕييٓ خ ٚرؾذيش ٚرذسيت ثؾىً ِغّز . وّب رذػُ اٌؼذيذ [14،16،22] فئب رؾغيغ اٌّٛاهٕيٓ ػٍٝ اٌزؼٍُ ِٓ اٌؾىِٛبد اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚرٌه ٌٍؼذيذ ِٓ االعجبة ِضً إٌّبفغخ االلزقبديخٚ ِذٜ اٌؾيبح ٚرؾميك اٌّغبٚاح ثيٓ اٌّٛاهٕيٓ ِٓ ؽيش اٌٛفٛي اٌٝ ِخزٍف ِقبدس اٌزؼٍُ ٚاٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ فشؿ ً اٌخذِبد ً أينب رؾٛي . [10] اٌزؼٍيّيخ وغٍؼخ يّىٓ ِٓ ٚسائٙب رؾميك ِٕفؼخ الزقبديخ رؼٍيّيخ أفن e-Learningُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ياٌزؼٍ .2.3 ٚاالرقبالد عٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌؾبعجبدأاٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ يّىٓ رؼشيفٗ ثبٔٗ ٌيٛفش خذِبد اٌزؼٍيُ ٚاٌزؼٍُ ِزخطيب ػٛائك اٌّىبْ ٚاٌضِبْ فٙٛ يّىٓ اٌطبٌت ِٓ اخزيبس اٌٛلذ ٚاٌّىبْ ُ ِٓ االٔزشٔذ يِضً اٌزؼٍ االعبٌيتٚاٌّذٜ اٌضِٕٝ ٌٍزؼٍُ، وّب يٕذسط رؾذ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ زّذ ػٍٝ اٌؾبعت ٚاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو ٚاٌزؼٍيُ اٌغٛايُ اٌّؼيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚاٌزؼٍيٚاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّفزٛػ ٚاٌزؼٍ اٌّؼّبسٜ. ٚلذ أفجؼ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٌٗ دٚسا ثبسصا فٝ اٌؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ ٚثخبفخ فٝ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ [2،8] ؽيش أفجؼ ِٓ اٌّؼزبد اآلْ اعزخذاَ رمٕيبد رىٌٕٛٛعيب اٌّؼٍِٛبد وّغبػذ فٝ رذسيظ اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ زمٍيذيخ ؽيش رغزخذَ فٝ اظٙبس اٌّٛاد اٌزؼٍيّيخ ٌٍطالة ثطشق ِجزىشح رؼزّذ ػٍٝ فْٕٛ اٌغشافيه ثبٌطشيمخ اٌ اٌشلّٝ ٚاٌفيذيٛ ٚاٌشعَٛ اٌّزؾشوخ أينب اعزخذاَ ثشِغيبد أٔظّخ اٌّؾبوبح ٚأٔظّخ اٌٛالغ االفزشامٝ Virtua l reality ٚاداسح اٌٍمبءاد ٚاٌّئرّشاد االفزشاميخ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثبعزخذاَ ثشِغيبد اٌّؾبسوخ Online Collaboration ًثشٔبِظ أدٚة وٛٔىذ ِضAdobe Connect ، ٜٛوّب أمبفذ أٔظّخ اداسح اٌّؾز Virtualٚاٌزٝ رغّٝ أينب ثؤٔظّخ اٌزؼٍُ فٝ اٌجيئخ االفزشاميخ Learning Content Managementاٌزؼٍيّٝ Learning Environment فبلب ػشينخ ٌٍؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ ِضً اربؽخ اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ ٌٍّمشساد اٌذساعيخ آ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ِٓ ِؾبمشاد ٚوزت ٚفيذيٛ٘بد رؼٍيّيخ ٚفقٛي افزشاميخ ٚرمبٚيُ ٚاِىبٔيخ أداء اٌزّبسيٓ ِضً اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚإٌّزذيبد ٚاالخزجبساد ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚاربؽخ ِغبي ٚاعغ ٌٍزٛافً االعزّبػٝ ربؽذ ػشك اٌّبدح أٚاٌمٛائُ اٌجشيذيخ ٚغشف اٌّؾبدصخ ِٚٛالغ االٔزشٔذ ٌىً ِٓ االعبرزح ٚاٌطالة وّب اٌزؼٍيّيخ ػٓ هشيك اٌغجٛساد اٌزويخ ٚاٌٙٛارف اٌزويخ ِٚٓ أؽٙش أٔظّخ اداسح اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ ؽبٌيب ثالن .[3،5،6] اٌزٜ يزّيض ثؤٔٗ ِفزٛػ اٌّقذس Moodleِٚٛٚدي Blackboardثٛسد Computer based learning ؾبعتاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ اٌ .2.4 ٘ٛ ّٔو اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ فيٗ اٌّزؼٍُ ػٍٝ اعطٛأبد ِذِغخ رؼٍيّيخ يمَٛ ثزؾغيٍٙب ِٓ خالي عٙبص اٌّالئّيٓ ٌٗ ٌٚىٓ ِٓ أُ٘ ػيٛثٗ ٔمـ اٌىّجيٛرش، ِٚٓ أُ٘ ِّيضارٗ أْ اٌّزؼٍُ يّىٕٗ اٌزؼٍُ فٝ اٌّىبْ ٚاٌٛلذ . [15] اٌزفبػً االعزّبػٝ ٚفؼٛثخ رؾذيش اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ Web based learning/ Web Facilitatedاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ .2.5 يّىٓ ِٓ خالٌٗ رٛافً اٌطالة ِغ ثؼنُٙ اٌجؼل ِٚغ ٚ يؼزّذ عضئيب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٘ٛ ّٔو اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزٜ أعزبر اٌّمشس اٌذساعٝ ثؾىً رضإِٝ ٚغيش رضإِٝ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ ِغ عٌٙٛخ رؾذيش اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ ِؾذٚدح ال يّىٓ ٚاٌزٝ ػٕذِب رىْٛ عشػخ أزمبي اٌجيبٔبد خالي ؽجىخ االٔزشٔذ ٗ يؼزّذ ػٍٝٔأٌٚىٓ ِٓ ػيٛثٗ . [15] أٚ سعَٛ ِزؾشوخ أٚ ِؾبوبح رقّيُ اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ فٝ فٛسح فيذيٛ اٌزٛعغ فٝ ػٕذ٘ب Blended Learning/ Hybridاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو .2.6 زمٍيذيخ يُ ثبٌطشيمخ ٌا ِظ ثيٓ اٌزٍؼ ٍّيخ اٌذ يُ االٌىزشٚٝٔ Class learning٘ٛ ػ ٚ٘ٛ أٍعٛة e-learningٚثيٓ اٌزٍؼ ٓ ٙب االعزفبدح ِ يُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ؽيش يّىٕ زٍؼ يُ ػٓ ثؼذ أٚ ٌا زٍؼ زٝ ٌُ رجذأ ثؼذ فٝ رطجيمبد ٌا ّيخ ٌا ي زٍؼ يفيذ اٌّئعغبد ٌا يذيخ أٚ فٝ زٍم ّؾبمشاد ٌا ٛيش اٌ ٛاء فٝ رط يذيخ ع زٍم يخ ٌا زؼٍّي غ اٌؼٍّيخ ٌا ٚدِغٙبِ ٛعيبد االٔزشٔذ عشاء ثؼل ارىٌٕٛ ٚأين ّبسٓي ٌز ّٕزذيبد االخزجبساد ٚا ٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌ بػٝ ثيٓ ٌاطالة ًِض ا عبًئ اٌزفبػً االعّز ٛفيشٚ ب فٝ ر 495 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 ّؾبدصخ يخ [15] ٚغشف اٌ ّخقـ ٌٍؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍّي ٛلذ اٌ يُ اٌّخٍزو رمٍيـ أٚ رخفيل ثؼل ٌا ّيض اٌزٍؼ ِّب ي ٚ ، زؼ ٔزشٔذ ؽيش رُز اربؽخ اٌّبدح ٌا يُ ٓػ هشيك اال ٌٛٛعيبد اٌزٍؼ ٔيب لًج ِيؼبد اٌزمٍيذيخ ثبعزخذَا رىٕ ٍيّيخ ٌٍطبٌت ٌاىزشٚ زطجيك اٌؼٍّٝ فيّب يطٍك ٍػيٗ ّٕبلؾخ ٌٚا يذيخ ٌٍ زٍم ّؾبمشح ٌا ٛلذ اٌفؼٍٝ ٌٍ ٖ ’اٌّؾبمشح ثؾيش يخقـ ٌا ثبالرغب ّخزٍو Inverted Classroom Model ‘اٌؼىغٝ ٌٍفقً اٌذساعٝ ٌزؼٍيُ اٌ ْٛ أْ يىْٛ ا ٓ يزٛلؼ جبؽضي ٕبن وضيش ِٓ ٌا ٘ٚ ُ اٌغب ٛ ّٔو اٌزؼٍي ٝ اٌّغزمًج٘ ٝ اٌىٍيبد ٚاٌغبِؼبد ف .[11،12،22] ئذ ف Online Learningاالٔزشٔذ ِٓاٌزؼٍيُ .2.7 رؼشيف ٘زا إٌٛع ِٓ اٌزؼٍيُ أوضش فؼٛثخ ِٓ األٔٛاع اٌغبثمخ ٌٚىٓ أوضش اٌزؼشيفبد ؽيٛػب أٔٗ اٌزؼٍيُ ٔٗ أعزبر ٕٚ٘بن ثؼل اٌجبؽضيٓ يؼشفٛٔٗ ػٍٝ اٌّؼزّذ وٍيب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ وٛعيٍخ ٌٍزٛافً ثيٓ اٌطبٌت ٚاأل . ٚيّش ٘زا إٌّو ِٓ اٌزؼٍيُ ؽبٌيب ثٕمٍخ ٔٛػيخ ٚرطٛس وجيش [19] افذاس أٚ ؽىً عذيذ ِٚطٛس ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٌيٗ اٌّئعغبد اٚاٌزٜ عزة Cloud Computingظٙش ِفَٙٛ اٌؾٛعجخ اٌغؾبثيخ 2009ؽيش أٔٗ ِٕز ػبَ اٌزؼٍيّيخ ثّب رٛفشٖ ِٓ عٛدح ػبٌيخ ٌخذِبد اٌجشِغيبد ٚرطجيمبد اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ اٌّمذِخ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ ثزىٍفخ ِٕخفنخ، ٚاٌؾٛعجخ اٌغؾبثيخ ٘ٝ أؽذس رىٌٕٛٛعيبد االرقبي ثيٓ اٌغٙبص اٌخبدَ ٚاٌغٙبص ّؼبٌغخ ٚرخضيٓ اٌّؼٍِٛبد ِٓ األعٙضح ؽيش يزُ ٔمً ػٍّيبد اٌ Server-client technologyاٌطشفٝ اٌطشفيخ )وّجيٛرش، عٙبص ٌٛؽٝ، رٍيفْٛ روٝ ٚغيش٘ب( اٌٝ ِب يغّٝ ثبٌغؾبثخ االٌىزشٚٔيخ ٚ٘ٝ ػجبسح ػٓ ؽجىخ ِزقٍخ ِٓ األعٙضح اٌخٛادَ اٌزٝ رؼًّ ثذْٚ أمطبع ٚيزُ اٌٛفٛي اٌيٙب ػٓ هشيك االٔزشٔذ ِٚٓ خالي اٌخذِبد االٌىزشٚٔيخ ِضً ثؼل اٌجشِغيبد ٚاٌزطجيمبد ِٚغبؽبد اٌزخضيٓ رٍه اٌؾجىخ يزُ رمذيُ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ ٚاداسح ِٚؾبسوخ اٌٍّفبد ٚاٌزطجيمبد ٚاٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚغيش٘ب ٚثزٌه رزؾٛي رىٌٕٛٛعيب اٌّؼٍِٛبد ِٓ ِٕزغبد اٌٝ خذِبد رٛفش٘ب ؽشوبد ِؾٙٛسح فٝ ِغبي رىٌٕٛٛعيب اٌّؼٍِٛبد ِضً ِٛلغ عٛعً دسايف Google drive ٌؾشوخ عٛعً ِٚٛلغ ْٚ دسايفOne drive ٌؾشوخ ِيىشٚعٛفذ ٚاٌؾجىخ اٌغؾبثيخ اٌزويخ Cisco Cloud Inteٌؾشوخ عيغىٛ lligent Network ْٚيّىٓ ٌٍّئعغبد اٌزؼٍيّيخ راد اٌّٛاسد اٌّؾذٚدح أ ٌيف ؽشاء رغزفيذ ِٓ اٌخذِبد اٌّمذِخ ِٓ رٍه اٌؾشوبد ٔظيشِمبثً ؽٙشٜ أٚ عٕٜٛ ٚرٌه ثذال ِٓ رؾًّ رىب . [6] أعٙضح خٛادَ ٚرىبٌيف فيبٔزٙب ٚوزٌه رىبٌيف اٌجشِغيبد ٚرؾذيضٙب Mobile Learningاٌزؼٍيُ اٌغٛاي .2.8 ُ اٌغٛاي ٘ٛ ٘زا إٌٛع ِٓ اٌزؼٍُ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ األعٙضح اٌّؾٌّٛخ ٚاٌزٝ رؼًّ ِٓ خالي اٌؾجىبد ياٌزؼٍ اٌّؾٌّٛخ ٚاألعٙضح اٌٍٛؽيخ ٚاآلٜ ثٛد ٚاٌزٍيفٛٔبد اٌزويخ ٚاٌزٝ رٍجٝ ِزطٍجبد اٌؾبعتاٌالعٍىيخ ِضً أعٙضح ِغزخذِيٙب فٝ صٛاْ ِؼذٚدح فٝ أٜ ٚلذ ٚفٝ أٜ ِىبْ، ِٚٓ أُ٘ ِّيضاد اٌزؼٍيُ اٌغٛاي أٔٗ يغّؼ ط ّبساْ يٌٍّغزخذِيٓ ِٓ اعزغالي األٚلبد اٌنبئؼخ ٚاعزضّبس٘ب فٝ اٌؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ ِضال يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت ِضال ٚ٘ٛ ِغبفش فٝ اٌطبئشح أٚ فٝ اٌمطبس ٚثزٌه يزّىٓ ِٓ اداسح ،ٔؾطخ اٌزؼٍيّيخ خبسط اٌفقً اٌذساعٝاأل ٚلزٗ ثفؼبٌيخ ٚاعزضّبسٖ فٝ ػًّ أٔؾطخ ِٕزغخ، ٌٚىٓ ِبصاٌذ ٕ٘بن ثؼل اٌّؾبوً فٝ األعٙضح اٌّؾٌّٛخ ِضً . ٚفٝ رمشيش [10،18،15،20] أعؼبس٘بفغش ِغبؽخ اٌزخضيٓ ٚلقش ِذح اٌجطبسيخ ٚأِبْ اٌجيبٔبد ٚاسرفبع ٌؾشوخ اسيىغْٛ ٚ٘ٝ ٚاؽذح ِٓ اٌؾشوبد اٌشائذح فٝ ِغبي رىٌٕٛٛعيب االرقبالد فٝ 2012رُ ٔؾشٖ ػبَ ِّب 2018اٌؼبٌُ اْ ػذد ِغزخذِٝ األعٙضح اٌّؾٌّٛخ فٝ اٌؼبٌُ عٛف يضيذ ػٓ أسثؼخ ثالييٓ ِغزخذَ فٝ ػبَ . [10] اٌغذيذح ٌٍزؼٍُ ِٕز اآلْ ٚفٝ اٌّغزمجًيٛمؼ أّ٘يخ االعزفبدح ِٓ ٘زٖ اٌجيئخ ُ اٌّفزٛػ .2.9 Open Learningاٌزؼٍي ٜ يخزبسٖ ّىْب اٌز ٝ اٌ زؼٍُي يذسط اٌطبٌت ف ِٓ ٌا ّٕو ٘زا اٌ ِىزجخ ،ٝف ً ٚأ ٝف ٝ إٌّضي ٚأ ٝف اٌّؼ ّضبي ف ً اٌ ٝ عجي ٍػ ب يؾقً ٍػٝ دػُ فٕٝ ِٓ اٌّشؽذ ٌجشٔبِظ ٌاذساعٝ ّو ٔغبص ِزطٍجبد ا ٕٝ ال ٌجشٔبِظ اٌِض ب يغزطيغ أْ يخطو ا ّو ٕزذيبد اٌطالة ٛفيشِ غ ر زاِ يّٝ٘ ّيخ ٝف ِؾيطٗ االٍل بد رؼٍي شوض خِذ األوبديّٝ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ ٚأ ِٓ خاليِ ّيخ ؽنٛس ٚؽجى ِظ االوبدي جشا ب رزطٍت ثؼل ٌا ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ، ّو شاد ٚاٌّئّر بٝػ ٚاٌٍمبءاد ٛافً االعّز ٌز بد ا ٙبيخ األ ٔ ّمشس ٚأ ؽنٛس ػطالد ِىضف خالي ٌا ع دساٝع ّذح أعٛج ٌ ِؼخ ِمش اٌغب عٌاطٌبت اٌٝ .[13] عٛج 496 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ ىً ِمبسٔخ ثيٓ ٘زٖ األعبٌيت ( فٝ ؽ1ٚلذ أِىٓ رٍخيـ األعبٌيت اٌغبثمخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ وّب فٝ عذٚي ) ِٓ ؽيش اٌّفَٙٛ اٌؼبَ ٚاٌّزطٍجبد اٌزمٕيخ األعبعيخ ٚأُ٘ اٌّّيضاد ٚاٌّؾذداد ٚاٌؼٛائك. ِمبسٔخ ثيٓ األٔٛاع اٌّخزٍفخ ألعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ (:1جذول ) انًتطهثاخ انتقنيح انًفهىو انعاو أصانية انتعهيى عن تعذ األصاصيح وانعىائكانًحذداخ أهى انًًيزاخ ة ٌٍللزؼٍُ يؼزّللذ . اٌزؼٍيُ ثبٌّشاعٍخ1 أعلٍٛ ٝ اٌجشيذ ٚٝٔ ػٍ االٌىزش ٚ ٜ أ ٓ اٌؼبد ً ثي ٛاف ٍز ٌ عزبر.اٌطبٌت ٚاأل ثشيللذ اٌىزشٚٔللٝ - ثبالمللللللبفخ اٌللللللٝ اٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ. عٌٙٛخ االعزخذاَ. - ِٕخفل اٌزىٍفخ. - ػذَ اِىبٔيخ اٌزٛافلً - اٌزفلللبػٍٝ ثللليٓ اٌطبٌلللت عزبر.ٚاأل ُ االٌىزشٚٝٔ. 2 ة اٌللزؼٍُ اٌللزٜ اٌزؼٍي أعللٍٛ عيب يؼزّذ ػٍٝ رىٌٕٛٛ اٌؾبعجبد االرقبالد ٌيٛفش خذِبد اٌزؼٍليُ ٛائك ُ ِزخطيب ػ ٚاٌزؼٍ اٌّىبْ ٚاٌضِبْ. أعٙضح ؽبعت. - أزشٔذ. - ثشِغيلللللللللللللللبد - ِؾبسوخ. أٔظّللللللللللخ أداسح - ٌزؼٍيّٝ. ٜ ا اٌّؾزٛ اِىبٔيلللخ اٌزٛافلللً - اٌزفبػٍٝ ثيٓ اٌطبٌلت عزبر.ٚاأل اٌلزؾىُ اٌىبِللً فللٝ - ٜ اداسح اٌّؾزللللللللللللللٛل اٌزؼٍيّٝ. اسرفبع اٌزىٍفخ. - اٌؾبعللخ اٌللٝ اٌقلليبٔخ - ٚاٌزؾذيش. اٌؾبعلللخ اٌلللٝ رلللذسيت - اٌّغزخذِيٓ. . اٌزؼٍلللليُ اٌّؼزّللللذ 3 ػٍٝ اٌؾبعت ة اٌللزؼٍُ اٌللزٜ أعللٍٛ ٗ ٌاطبٌت ػٍٝ يؼزّذ في اعللللطٛأبد ِذِغللللخ ّيخ يمَٛ ثزؾغيٍٙب رؼٍي .ٝ ٖ ٌاؾخق ٝ عٙبص ػٍ ؽبعللللللللللللللللللللللت - ؽخقٝ. اعلللللللللللللطٛأبد - ِذِغخ رؼٍيّيخ. عٌٙٛخ االعزخذاَ. - ِٕخفل اٌزىٍفخ. - اِىبٔيلللللخ اٌطبٌلللللت - اٌللللزؼٍُ فللللٝ اٌّىللللبْ .ٗ ٌ ٓ ْ اٌّالئّي ٚاٌضِب فللللللللؼٛثخ رؾللللللللذيش - اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ. ػذَ اِىبٔيخ اٌزٛافلً - اٌزفلللبػٍٝ ثللليٓ اٌطبٌلللت عزبر.ٚاأل . اٌزؼٍلللليُ اٌّؼزّللللذ 4 ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ة اٌللزؼٍُ اٌللزٜ أعللٍٛ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ عضئيب . أعٙضح ؽبعت - أزشٔذ - ؾبسوخ - ثشِغيبدِ اِىبٔيلللخ اٌزٛافلللً - اٌزفبػٍٝ ثيٓ اٌطبٌلت عزبر. ٚاأل افش خذِللخ - ملشٚسح رلٛل أزشٔذ ثغشػبد ػبٌيخ. ة يذِظ ِلب ثليٓ . اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو5 أعٍٛ هشيمللللللللخ اٌفقللللللللً اٌزمٍيذٜ ٚثيٓ اٌزؼٍيُ رزُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ؽيش خ اٌّبدح اٌزؼٍيّيخ اربؽ ٌٍطبٌت اٌىزشٚٔيب لجً .ِيؼبد اٌّؾبمشح أعٙضح ؽبعت - أزشٔذ - ثشِغيلللللللللللللللبد - ِؾبسوخ رمٍلللللللليـ صِللللللللٓ - اٌّؾبمشح اٌزمٍيذيخ. اٌزشويلللللللض ػٍللللللللٝ - اٌزطجيمبد اٌؼٍّيخ. يش اٌّملللشساد - رطلٛل اٌؾبٌيخ اٌزمٍيذيخ. يش - مللللللللشٚسح رطلللللللٛل ائؼ اٌذساعيخ. اٌٍٛ األػجبء االمبفيخ ػٍٝ - ػنللٛل ٘يئلللخ اٌزلللذسيظ يش ِؾبملشارٗ فللٝ ٌزطٛل .سلّٝؽىً . اٌزؼٍللللللللليُ ِلللللللللٓ 6 االٔزشٔذ ة اٌللزؼٍُ اٌللزٜ أعللٍٛ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ وٍيب . أعٙضح ؽبعت - أزشٔذ - خللللللللللللللللللللذِبد - اٌؾٛعجخ اٌغؾبثيخ ِزٛعو اٌزىٍفخ. - اعلللزّشاسيخ رمللللذيُ - اٌخذِبد االٌىزشٚٔيخ ذْٚ أمطبع.ث رطجيملللبد اٌجشِغيلللبد - ِبصاالد ِؾذٚدح. ِبد. - ٓ اٌّؼٍٛ ِؾىٍخ أِ ٜ . اٌزؼٍيُ اٌغٛاي7 لللللز ُ ٌا لللللي ٌزٍؼ أعللللٍٛة ا ٝ األعٙللللضح للللذ ػٍلللل يؼّز ٓ ل ًِ ل ٝ رّؼ ٌزل ٌٛخ ا اٌّؾّ خالي ٌاؾجىخ ٌاالعٍىيخ. أعٙضح ِؾٌّٛخ - أزشٔللذ )ؽللجىخ - العٍىيخ( االعللزغالي اِىبٔيلخ - لذ. األِضً ٌٍٛ اربؽخ اٌزؼٍُ فٝ أٜ - ٚ صِبْ. ِىبْ اسرفلبع رىٍفلخ األعٙلضح - اٌّؾٌّٛللللخ ِللللغ فللللغش ِغبؽخ اٌزخلضيٓ ٚلقلش ِذح اٌجطبسيخ. ة رؼٍلللُ . اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّفزٛػ8 ِلللشْ أعلللٍٛ اٌطبٌلت ؽيلش يلزؾىُ اٌّلللذٜ اٌضِٕلللٝ فلللي .ِٚىبْ اٌذساعخ ثشيللذ اٌىزشٚٔللٝ - ثبالمللللللبفخ اٌللللللٝ اٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ االٔزشٔذ - ٝ رخطيو - اٌّشٚٔخ ف اٌجشٔبِظ اٌضِٕٝ. - ٝ ُ اٌفٕ ثٛاعطخاٌذػ اٌّشؽذ األوبديّيٝ. ِبصاي االػزّبد ثؾلىً - ٝ ػٍٝ هشق اٌزؼٍُ أعبع اٌزمٍيذيللللخ ِضللللً اٌىزللللت ػخ. ٚاٌّؾبمشاد اٌّطٛج 497 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 انتجارب انذونيح فى يجال انتعهيى عن تعذ فى انعًارج .3 ُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح اٌزغشثخ األِشيىيخ .3.1 ٌٍزؼٍي (Boston Architecture College (BAC [25] فٝ ثٛعطٓ وٍيخ اٌؼّبسح .3.1.1 بسح فٝ ثٛعطٓ صالس بداد خجشح دسعبد ِبعغزيشرّٕؼ وٍيخ اٌّؼ زؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚأسثغ ٙؽ ٝ ػٓ هشيك ٌا ، فٙ ّبسح’فٝ ِبعغزيش رّٕؼ بد اٌذٌٚٝ فٝ اٌؼّبسح ‘ اٌؼ National Architecture Accreditingِؼزّذ ِٓ ٘يئخ االػّز Board (NAAB) ٝ ٕٙب ف ِٓ اٌّّىٓ اْ يٕزٝٙ اٌطبٌت ِ غخ اٌٝ عجؼخ فقٛي دساعيخ ِظ ِٓ ّخ ٚيغزغشق اٌجشٔب ٚٔقفخالي ٚٔقف اٌٝ صالصخ أػٛاَ ٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ اعزخذاَ اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ ٚسفغ ،ػبِيٓ بَ اٌطبٌت ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ ا ِزبؽخ هٛي اٌٛلذ ِأ زىْٛ ً اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذٌ ٛاف عزخذاَ ثشٔبِظ ٌٍز ٚاأل ٝ Voice Threadعزبر ٚ٘ٛ ثشٔبِظ اٌزفبػٍٝ ثيٓ اٌطالة ٌجشٔبِظ اٌذساٝع أزظبَ اٌطبٌت ف ، وّب يزطٍت ا ع ثًى فقً دساعٝ ثشٔبِظ دساعٝ ِىضف داخً االعزذيٛ ثبٌىٍيخ جشٔبِظ ،ٌّذح أعٛج ْ يؾقً اٌطبٌت أ ٚيزطٍت ٌا ّذح اٌخبفخ ثبٌز ػٍٝ ؾشوبد ٚاٌّىبرت اٌّؼّبسيخ ػذد ِٓ اٌغبػبد اٌّؼز بسح فٝ ٌا ذسيت اٌؼٍّٝ فٝ ِغبي اٌّؼ بٌٝ ػذد عبػبد مّٓ ٔطبٗل اٌغغشاٝف يقً اّع ٚ ِؼزّذح بئخ عبػخ رذسيت ثٛالغ عبػخ ِ ؽيش رؾزغت ًو يغت ٌجشٔبِظ،ٚ ّذح ٝف ا ّؼزّذح ِٓ صٍش اٌٝ سثغ ػذد اٌغبػبد اٌّؼز ْ يمَذ اٌطبٌت رمشيش ػٓ اٌزذسيت أاٌزذسيت اٌ ٓ ف ٝ ِمبثٍخ ؽخقيخ ِغ اٌطبٌت ثبٌىٍيخ.ِشري ٓ أؽذ أػنبء ٘يئخ اٌزذسيظ ف ِ ٗ ُ رمييّ ٝ اٌغٕخ ؽيش يز ىٍيخ ػذد ٕؼ ٌا ّب ّر ، األٚي 2و ضبٝٔ فٝ ‘اٌزقُّي اٌّغزذاَ’فٝ ِبعغزيش فٝ دساعبد اٌزقُّي ٝ ’ٌٚا ٔخ اٌّجبٔ فيب ِذح اٌذساعخ ٝف ‘اٌزبسيخيخ ِٓ ٚرغزغشق ِغ ًو ٌجشٔب ٝ يٓا ٙب ف ِٕ ِٓ آٌّّى ْأ يٕزٝٙ اٌطبٌت أسثؼخ فقٛي دساعيخ ،ٓ ي ّب خالي ػِب ٕؼ ؽٙبدادو ِظ رّ يخ أسثؼخ ثشا زقُّي اٌّغزذَا Certificate خجشح رمَذ اٌٍى ِغبي ٌا يزطٍت ٚ ،فٝ ٖ اٌجشاِظ. ٝ ٘ز ً ف سيٛط ٌٍزغغي ٝ دسعخ اٌجىبٌٛ اٌجشٔبِظ اعزيبص عزخ ِمشساد دساعيخ وّب يزطٍت ؽقٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍ ٝ عبْ فشٔغيغىٛ .3.1.2 San Francisco Institute of Architecture [38] أوبديّيخ اٌؼّبسح ف ؽيش يغت ػٍٝ (Textbook)رؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ فٝ اٌىٍيخ ػٍٝ اٌىزبة أٚ اٌىزت ٌىً ِمشس دساعٝ عئٍخ فٝ ٔٙبيخ وً فقً ٚيزُ اٌزٛافً ْ يمشأ اٌفقٛي اٌّمشسح ِٓ وً وزبة صُ يغيت ػٍٝ لبئّخ األأاٌطبٌت ، ٚرشعً اٌىٍيخ ٌٍطالة اٌغذد اٌؼبدٜ أٚ ػٓ هشيك اٌجشيذ ِغ أعزبر اٌّبدح ػٓ هشيك اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ثبٌجشاِظال رٛعذ أيخ ِزطٍجبد دساعيخ وؾشه ٌالٌزؾبق ٚ ،اسؽبداد اٌذساعخ ػٓ هشيك اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ػّبس ٚيّىٓ أْ يجذأ اٌجشٔبِظ فٙزٖ االوبديّيخ رمجً اٌطالة ِٓ وبفخ اٌخٍفيبد اٌزؼٍيّيخ ِٚٓ وبفخ األ ،اٌذساعيخ ٚػذد صالصخ دسعبد ثىبٌٛسيٛط خّغخ دسعبد ِبعغزيشاالوبديّيخ ػذد رّٕؼٚ ،فٝ اٌٛلذ اٌزٜ يؾذدٖ اٌطبٌت األوبديّيخ اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ االػزّبد االوبديّٝ ؾبٚيرٚ ،خجشحؽٙبدح 12دسعخ فٕٝ ِؼّبسٜ ٚػذد 2ٚػذد ٌجشاِغٙب اٌذساعيخ داخً اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح االِشيىيخ ٌٚىٕٙب ٌُ رؾقً ػٍٝ االػزّبد االوبديّٝ ثؼذ. ّيخ ّجبٝٔ اٌخنشاءِبعرّٕؼ األوبدي ِٚبعغزيش اٌؼٍَٛ فٝ اٌ ِخ ِٓ يزطٍتٚ غزيش اداسح االػّبي ٝف االعزذا وً ّذ 48ت ػٍٝ ؽقٛي اٌطبٌ يٓاٌجشٔبِغ ٝ اٌٝ ِمشس ثبالمبفخ 16ح ِٓ خالي دساعخ عبػخ ِؼز ِؾشٚع ثؾض ٔقف اٌٝ صالصخ أػٛاَ ٌجشٔبِظ ِٓ ػبَٚ ِذح اٌذساعخ فٝ ا ّيخ ٚرغزغشق اداسح فٝ ِبعغزيش ، وّب رّٕؼ األوبدي ٚػبد ّذح ِٓ خالي دساعخ 36يزطٍت اٌجشٔبِظ ؽقٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ ؽيش اٌّؾش ٝ ِمشس ثبالمبفخ 12عبػخ ِؼز اٌ ِذح اٌذسا ٚرغزغشق يٓ، ِؾشٚع ثؾضٝ ٌجشٔبِظ ِٓ ػبَ اٌٝ ػِب يخ عخ فٝ ا بسحفٝ ِبعغزيش وّب رّٕؼ األوبدّي اٌّؼ ٌجيئٝفٝ ِٚبعغزيش ٕبءا يٓاٌجشٔبِغ ًو ِٓ يزطٍتٚ اٌزقّيُ ا ٚث ٌجشٔبِظ ٌزغغيً فٝ ا رؾذيذ ِغزٜٛ اٌطبٌت لًج ا ِخ ٌىٝ يؾقً اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش الص رزشاٚػ ػذد ٚ ،ػٍٝ رٌه يزُ رؾذيذ ػذد اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح ٌا جشٔبِظّاٌغبػبد اٌ ّذحٌ ّبسح ؼز ّذح رزطٍت دساعخ ِٓ 114اٌٝ 25ِٓ ِبعغزيش اٌؼ ِمشس 37اٌٝ 8عبػخ ِؼز ِٓ اٌّّىٓ ٚ ،ٝ ؾشٚع ثؾض ِ ِظأدساٝع ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ جشٔب ػ ػذد ػبَ اٌٝ عزخ أػِٛٓ ْ يغزغشق ٌا ّب رزشٚا َ، ثيٕ ا زقّيُ اٌجيئٝ ِٓ اٌغبػبد اٌّ بعغزيش ٌا جشٔبِظِ ِمشس 25اٌٝ 8عبػخ ِؼزّذح رزطٍت دساعخ ِٓ 75اٌٝ 25ؼزّذحٌ ٓ ٓ اٌّّى ٝ ِؾشٚع ثؾضٝ، ِٚ ٝ ثبالمبفخ اٌ ٝ أسثؼخ أػٛاَ.أدساع َ اٌ ٓ ػب ْ يغزغشق اٌجشٔبِظ ِ سيٛط اٌؼٍَٛٚرّٕؼ األوبديّيخ سيٛط اٌؼٍَٛ فٝ اٌزقّيُ اٌجيئٝ فٝ اٌؼّبسح ثىبٌٛ ِظ وً يزطٍتٚ ٚثىبٌٛ ثشٔب ٝ 12عبػخ ِؼزّذح ِٓ خالي دساعخ 36 يزطٍت اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝاعزيبص ِغزٛييٓ دساعييٓ ًو ِّٕٙب ِمشس دساع 498 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ أْ يزخشط ثؼذ اعزيبص اٌّغزٜٛ األٚي ٍطبٌت ٚيّىٓ ٌِٓ ػبَ اٌٝ ػبِيٓ اٌّغزٜٛ اٌٛاؽذٚيّىٓ أْ يغزغشق بدح فٕٝ فٝ اٌفْٕٛ ٚاٌؼّبسح ػٍٝؽبفال 12رمذَ األوبديّيخ وّب ،أٚ ؽٙبدح فٕٝ فٝ اٌفْٕٛ ٚاٌزقّيُ اٌجيئٝ ٙؽ فٝ ِٛمٛػبد ِزمذِخ رزؼٍك ثبٌّجبٔٝ اٌخنشاء ؽيش Certificateخجشح ؽٙبداد ِٓ خالٌٙب بِظ رّٕؼٔثش غخ ِمشساد دساعيخ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ِٓ خالي 18اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ثشٔبِظ وً يزطٍت ٌخ اعزيبص ّخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ سعب ٓ )ػبَ دساعٝ( 15-10ثؾضيخ ِقغشح ) .ففؾخ( ٚيّىٓ دساعخ اٌجشٔبِظ فٝ خالي فقٍيٓ دساعي University of California Berkeley Extension [43] عبِؼخ وبٌيفٛسٔيب ثيشوٍٝ .3.1.3 رمذَ اٌغبِؼخ ثشٔبِغب دساعيب ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ػجبسح ػٓ ؽٙبدح فٝ اداسح اٌّؾشٚػبد Certificate Program in Project Management ٚال رٛعذ ِزطٍجبد دساعيخ ِغجمخ ٌٍزغغيً فٝ ٘زا ِؼزّذح عبػخ 14اٌجشٔبِظ ٌٚىٓ يفنً اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط، ٚيزطٍت اٌجشٔبِظ اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ٚاالخزجبساد ،فقٛي دساعيخ( 3ِمشساد دساعيخ ٚيّىٓ االٔزٙبء ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ خالي ػبَ ) 6ِٓ خالي دساعخ Proctored Finalاٌغبِؼخ عٛاء فٝ داخً أِشيىب أٚ خبسعٙب ٌذٌٍّٜمشساد رزُ فٝ ِشاوض ِؼزّذح Examination ٌزٛافً اٌزفبػٍٝ ثيٓ اٌطبٌت ٚهشيمخ اٌزذسيظ رؼزّذ ػٍٝ اٌّؾبمشاد ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ ٚا وّب أْ ٕ٘بن ٔٛػبْ ِٓ رغغيً اٌّمشساد فٕٙبن رغغيً ِؾذد ثؤٚلبد Vimeoعزبر ثبعزخذاَ ثشٔبِظ ٚاأل ً غيش ِؾذد ثؤٚلبد ِؼيٕخ ثً يزُ ػٍٝ ِذاس اٌغٕخ. ثذايخ ٚٔٙبيخ اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ ٕٚ٘بن رغغي Harvard Extension School, Distance Learning [31] عبِؼخ ٘بسفبسد .3.1.4 بسيخ دساعيخ ثشاِظأسثغ ٘بسفبسد رمذَ عبِؼخ ٓ ثؼذػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ِّؼ ٕؼ ٙٝ، فػ ِخ رّ ِبعغزيش فٝ االعزذا ِضً اٌّجبٔٝ اٌخنشاء ٚاالداسح اٌجيئيخ بداد خجشح رخققيخ فٝ ِٛمٛػبد ب رّٕؼ اٌغبِؼخ صالس ٙؽ ّو ِمشساد دساعيخ بدح اٌخجشح اعزيبص أسثؼخ ِخ ؽيش يزطٍت ثشٔبِظ ٙؽ ٚاالعزذاِخ، اداسح اٌّٛاسد اٌطجيؼيخ، ٚاالعزذا ب ثبٌىبًِ ػٓ هشيك االٔزشٔذ فٝ خالي فقٍيٓ دساعيٓ وّب يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت أْ يغ ؾٙبدح يّىٓ دساعٙز زىًّ ٘زٖ ٌا بسفبسد ٌٍؾقٛي ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش. ِٚٓ اٌغذيش ثبٌزوش اْ ٕؼ عبِؼخ٘ ً ال ّر دسعبد أوبديّيخ رذسط ثبٌىبِ ٝ ؽزٝ اآلْ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚأّب رىْٛ اٌذساعخ خٍيو ِٓ ِمشساد رذسط ػٓ ثؼذ ٚأخشٜ رزطٍت اٌؾنٛس ٌٍغبِؼخ ف ٚ 9اعزيبص ّبعغزيشاٌ ٚيزطٍت ثشٔبِظ Blended Learningاٌفزشح اٌّغبئيخ ِمشساد دساعيخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ سعبٌخ أ ثذايخ اٌذساعخ رىْٛ ِؾذدح ثزٛليزبد اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ ِمشس 11اعزيبص ٚ ،ٝ ٔٙبئ دساٝع ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ ِؾشٚع ٓ 3اعزيبص يغت ػٍٝ اٌطبٌت أْ يىْٛ ؽبفال ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح اٌجىٌبٛسيٛط ٚوّب ،ثبٌغبِؼخ ِمشساد دساعيخ ِ ِظ اٌّبعغزيش( B) عيذ عذا ثزمذيش ال يمً ٓػاٌجشٔبِظ ٚاالعزّشاس ٝف ثشٔب ٌزغغًي ٓ ،ٌىٝ يزّٓى ِٓ ا ِٚٓ اٌّّى ٙبيخ ٔ ِٕزقفٚ ٙب اخزجبساد ب أْ ِؼظُ اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ٌ ٌجشٔبِظ ِٓ صالصخ اٌٝ أسثؼخ أػٛاَ، ّو أْ يغزغشق ا يّىٓ أْ رزُ االخزجبساد ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ أٚ داخً (Open-book Examsاٌّفزٛػ )ثٕظبَ اٌىزبة اٌفقًٚ ً ٚخبسط أِشيىب Proctored Examsاٌغبِؼخ أٚ فٝ ِشاوض ِؼزّذح خبسعٙب داخ ِٓ اٌّمشساد، إٌٛع األٚي يؼزّذ صالصخ أٔٛاعٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ رذسيظ اٌّمشساد ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ ػٍٝ ٌٍطبٌت هٛاي االعجٛع، ٚإٌٛع ػٍٝ اسعبي اٌّؾبمشاد فٝ فٛسح ٍِفبد فيذيٛ ٌٍطالة ثؾيش رىْٛ ِزبؽخ اٌضبٔٝ ِٓ اٌّمشساد يؼزّذ ػٍٝ اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ ؽيش يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت أْ يزبثغ اٌّؾبمشاد ػٓ هشيك ثش أٚ Adobe Connect عزبر ثبعزخذاَ ثشاِظ ِضً اٌزٛافً اٌزفبػٍٝ ِغ األ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ وّب يّىٕٗ ِجبؽش Blackboard Collaborate ، ِمشساد ِخزٍطخ ػجبسح ػٓٚإٌٛع اٌضبٌشHybrid Courses ٚاٌزٝ ثبالمبفخ عجٛع فٝ ِؾبمشاد ِىضفخ اٌٝ اعزخذاَ االٔزشٔذ فٝ اٌزذسيظ رزطٍت ؽنٛس اٌطبٌت ٚاالٔزظبَ فٝ ٔٙبيخ األ داخً اٌغبِؼخ، ٚثبٌشغُ ِٓ أْ ٕ٘بن اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ اٌزٝ يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت دساعزٙب ػٓ هشيك ٌشعبٌخ أٚ اٌّؾشٚع فٝ ٔٙبيخ اٌجشٔبِظ رزطٍت ؽنٛس اٌطبٌت اٌٝ اٌغبِؼخ.االٔزشٔذ ٌٚىٓ ا Atlantic International University [24] عبِؼخ ارالٔزه اٌذٌٚيخ .3.1.5 ٔزه اٌذٌٚيخ غبِؼخث وٍيخ اٌؼٍَٛ ٚإٌٙذعخ رّٕؼ اليبد اٌّزؾذح األِشيىيخ ارال سيٛط ثبٌٛ دسعبد اٌجىبٌٛ ب داخً ٚاٌّبعغزيش ٚاٌذوزٛساٖ فٝ اٌؼّبسح ٚاٌذساعخ ثبٌىبًِ ػٓ ثؼذ ٌٚىٓ رٍه اٌذسعبد غيش ِؼزشف ٙث ٚاٌجشٔبِظ اٌذساعٝ ِشْ ثؾيش يخزٍف ِٓ هبٌت آلخش ٚفمب ٌٍزٛافً ثيٓ اٌطبٌت ،األِشيىيخ اٌٛاليبد اٌّزؾذح ٚاٌّؾشف االوبديّٝ ٚٚفمب ٌخٍفيخ اٌطبٌت االوبديّيخ ٚخجشرٗ اٌؼٍّيخ ٚيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت أْ يجذأ اٌجشٔبِظ اٌذساعٝ فٝ 499 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 ّب أٜ ٚلذ ٚال رٛعذ فقٛي دساعيخ ٌٚىٓ رٛليزبد اٌذساعخ رُز ثبالرفبق ثيٓ اٌطبٌت ٚاٌّؾشف االوبديّي، و ٙبيخ اٌجشٔبِظ ٔزشٔذ ؽيش يزُ سفغ يزنّٓ اٌجشٔبِظ االوبديّٝ ِؾشٚع ثؾضٝ فٝ ٔ ٚاٌذساعخ ثبٌىبًِ ػٍٝ اال يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت ٙب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثؾيش رىْٛ ِزبؽخ أِبَ اٌطبٌت هٛاي اٌٛلذٚ ٛيبر ٚوبفخ ِؾز اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ٚ اسعبي اٌٛاعجبد اٌذساعيخ ألعزبر اٌّبدح ػٓ هشيك ٔزشٔذ ٚأ اسعبٌٙب ثبٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ أ سفؼٙب ػٍٝ اال ٙب ثبٌجشيذ يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ عبػبد ِؼزّذح ٔظيش خجشاٗر اٌؼٍّيخ ٚاٌزٝ ِٓ اٌّّىٓ وّب ،اٌؼبدٜ اسعبٌ يخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ ٚ ،أْ رقً اٌٝ صٍش عبػبد اٌجشٔبِظ يزطٍت ثشٔبِظ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح اٌضبٛٔ ٕزبْ خ ٚيزطٍت ثشٔبِظ اٌّبعغزيش اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ صالس عٕٛاد ع جشح ػٍّيخ، ٝ خّظ عٕٛاد خجشح ػٍّيخ. خجشح، ثيّٕب يزطٍت ثشٔبِظ اٌذوزٛساٖ اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح اٌّبعغزيش ثبالمبفخ اٌ ,University of Missouri [48] عبِؼخ ِيغٛسٜ، وٍيخ اٌؼٍَٛ االٔغبٔيخ ٚاٌجيئيخ .3.1.6 College of Human Environmental Sciences رّٕؼ وٍيخ اٌؼٍَٛ االٔغبٔيخ ٚاٌجيئيخ ثغبِؼخ ِيغٛسٜ ثؤِشيىب صالصخ دسعبد ػٍيب فٝ اٌؼّبسح ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ً ػٓ ثؼذ ٘ٝ ِبعغزيش اٌؼٍَٛ فٝ اٌؼّبسح ِٚبعغزيش اٌفْٕٛ ٝف اٌؼّبسح ٚدوزٛساٖ اٌفٍغفخ فٝ اٌؼّبسح ٚيزطٍت و عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚيّىٕٗ االٔزٙبء ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ فٝ ػبِيٓ ٚٔقف 30ثشٔبِغٝ اٌّبعغزيش ؽقٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ ِٓ ٍزغغيً فٝ اٌجشٔبِظ ٚيزطٍت ثشٔبِظ اٌذوزٛسٖا ؽقٛي ،وّب يؾزشه ؽقٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط ٌ قٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ دسعخ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ثؼذ أْ يىْٛ لذ ؽقً ػٍٝ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط، ٚفٝ ؽبٌخ ؽ 72اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ عبػخ ِؼزّذح 42اٌّبعغزيش فيّىٓ رخفيل ػذد اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح اٌّطٍٛثخ ثؾيش يىْٛ ألً ػذد عبػبد ٘ٛ Qualifierاخزجبس اٌّٛاد اٌّئٍ٘خ ، األٚي ٌٍ٘ٛؾقٛي ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌذوزٛساٖ ِغ مشٚسح اعزيبص اخزجبسيٓ Exam ٚ ٛ٘ ٌٝٔضب ٙبء ِٓ اػذاد اٌشعبٌخ ٚرمذيّٙب ٌٍّٕبلؾخ صُ Comprehensive Examاالخزجبس اٌؾبًِ ا االٔز Defense of Dissertation، ٚ ٓؾشٚع رقّيّٝ ٌٚى ْٛ يٕزٙٝ اٌجشٔبِظ ّث ٓ ففٝ ثشٔبِظ ِبعغزيش اٌفٕ ٝ وً ِ ٚرٙزُ اٌىٍيخ ثّغبٌيٓ ثؾضييٓ سئيغييٓ فٝ ،ثشٔبِظ ِبعغزيش اٌؼٍَٛ ٚدوزٛساٖ اٌفٍغفخ يٕزٙٝ اٌجشٔبِظ ثشعبٌخ ثؾضيخ عبئو اٌشلّيخ رطجيمبد اٌٛ ّب اٌزقُّي اٌجيئٝٚ ٔزشٔذ ِغ ٚعٛد ٚسػ ٚ ،اٌؼّبسح ٘ اٌذساعخ ثبٌىبًِ رؼزّذ ػٍٝ اال ً اٌذساعٝ اٌقيفٝ ثبٌغبِؼخ. ػًّ اخزيبسيخ يّىٓ ٌٍطالة ؽنٛس٘ب فٝ اٌفق ّبسح .3.1.7 ذسعخ اٌؼ ِ،ٜ ٕٛ ٌي ؼخ عٕٛة أ Southern Illinois University, School of Architecture [40] عِب رّٕؼ ِذسعخ اٌؼّبسح ثغبِؼخ أٌيٕٜٛ ثؤِشيىب دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش فٝ اٌؼّبسح ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ؽيش ؽٙش 20-16عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚيّىٕٗ االٔزٙبء ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ فٝ خالي 42يزطٍت اٌجشٔبِظ ؽقٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ ٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ؽيش يزُ NAABؼزّذ ِٓ ٘يئخ االػزّبد اٌذٌٚيخ اٌجشٔبِظ ِ أْ وّب عزبر ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ فٝ ٔفظ اٌٛلذ، رمذيُ اٌّؾبمشاد ٌٍطالة عٛاء ثؾىً رضإِٝ، ؽيش يزٛاعذ اٌطالة ٚاأل ٚأينب ثؾىً غيش رضإِٝ ؽيش رزبػ اٌّمشساد ٌٍطالة هٛاي اٌٛلذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ، وّب رٛعذ ثؼل ِشح ٚاؽذح ؽٙشيب فٝ ػطٍخ ٔٙبيخ االعجٛع، اٌّمشساد اٌزٝ رزطٍت ؽنٛس اٌطالة ٌٍّؾبمشاد فٝ اٌغبِؼخ ٌٍزغغيً فٝ اٌجشٔبِظ. ٚيغت أْ يىْٛ اٌطبٌت ؽبفال ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط ُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح .3.2 اٌزغشثخ اٌجشيطبٔيخ ٌٍزؼٍي اٌجشاِظ اٌّزبؽخ ثبٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد اٌجشيطبٔيخ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح ٘ٝ فٝ ِغزٜٛ اٌذساعبد اٌؼٍيب فمو بعغزيشيزطٍت ٚ٘ٝ ػجبسح ػٓ ثشاِظ ِبعغزيش ِزؾبثٙخ فٝ ٔظُ اٌذساعخ اٌٝ ؽذ اٌزطبثك أؽيبٔب فجشٔبِظ اٌّ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ِمغّخ ػٍٝ صالصخ أعضاء، األٚي ػجبسح ػٓ ِغّٛػخ اٌّٛديٛالد أٚ 180اٌؾقٛي ػٍيٗ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚاٌغضء اٌضبٔٝ ػجبسح ػٓ ِغّٛػخ اٌّٛديٛالد 60ٚرّضً Core Modulesاٌّمشساد األعبعيخ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚاٌغضء اٌضبٌش ػجبسح ػٓ اػذاد 60ٚرّضً Specialist Modulesٚ اٌّمشساد اٌزخققيخ أ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚرؼزجش ؽشه الرّبَ ِزطٍجبد اٌّبعغزيش، ٚيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت 60ٚرّضً Dissertationسعبٌخ ثؾضيخ أٚ االوزفبء ثؼذد Post Graduate Certificateعبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚاٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح خجشح 60االوزفبء ثؼذد ، ٌٍٚزغغيً فٝ ثشٔبِظ اٌّبعغزيش يزطٍت Diplomaػٍٝ دثٍَٛ دساعبد ػٍيب عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚاٌؾقٛي 120 ؽقٛي اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط ٚرؾميك اٌّغزٜٛ اٌّطٍٛة فٝ اٌٍغخ االٔغٍيضيخ. 500 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ ّبسح .3.2.1 ٌؼ ٌٍؼ ؼخ وبسديف، وٍيخٚ Cardiff University, Welsh School of Architecture [26]عِب ٌٍؼّبسح ثغبِؼخ وبسديف ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ِبعغزيش فٝ اٌزقّيُ اٌجيئٝ ٌٍّجبٔٝ ػٓ هشيك رّٕؼ وٍيخ ٌٚؼ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚيغت ػٍٝ اٌطبٌت أْ يٛفش وبفخ اٌزغٙيضاد اٌزمٕيخ اٌالصِخ ٌٍزٛافً ػٓ هشيك االٔزشٔذ، اٌجشٔبِظ أغبص ٚيّىٓرغؼخ ِمشساد دساعيخ ِٚؾشٚع رطجيمٝ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌشعبٌخ ػٍٝ ٚيؾزًّ اٌجشٔبِظ فٝ صالس عٕٛاد. University of East London [45]عبِؼخ ؽشق ٌٕذْ .3.2.2 رّٕؼ اٌغبِؼخ ِبعغزيش فٝ اٌؼّبسح ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ثؼٕٛاْ دساعبد ِزمذِخ فٝ اٌجيئخ ٚاٌطبلخ ِمشساد 9فقٛي دساعيخ( ثؼذ اعزيبص 6-3ٚيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت االٔزٙبء ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ فٝ خالي ػبَ أٚ ػبِيٓ ) ٛفيش ثيئخ رؼٍُ افزشاميخ ِٓ خالي وٍّخ( ، ٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ ر 14000دساعيخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌشعبٌخ ) ٛيبد اٌّمشساد ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ وّب ِٕزذيبد إٌمبػ ِٚؾز ٙب أاالٔزشٔذ ؽيش رٛفش اٌغبِؼخ غشف اٌّؾبدصخ ٚ ٔ عبعيخ ٌىً ِؾبمشح ثؾيش رشعً ِٛاد ِطجٛػخ اٌٝ اٌطالة فٝ ثذايخ اٌّمشس ثٙب ػٕبٚيٓ اٌىزت ٚإٌمبه األ ِٕبلؾخ ٕبس ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ، عزبأيزّىٓ اٌطبٌت ِٓ ِزبثؼخ ٚ غيّ ر اٌّبدح ثؾًى ِجبؽش ٚرفبػٍٝ ِٓ خالي عٍغبد ٌا ٌجب ِٓ خالي فشق ػًّ ِٓ أوّب ٔزشٔذ ٚغب ٕ٘بن ِزطٍجبد ػٍّيخ ٌٍّمشس فيزُ رٌه ِٓ خالي اال ٔٗ ارا وبٔذ ؽذ ِٛمٛػبد اٌّؾبمشاد ِغ ػًّ ػشك أاٌطالة ٚيؼزّذ اٌزمييُ إٌٙبئٝ ٌٍطبٌت ػٍٝ ػًّ ِمبي ثؾضٝ فٝ ٝ ٌٗ ٚاسعبٌّٙب ألعزبر اٌّبدح ػٓ هشيك سفؼّٙب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ أٚ ػٓ هشيك اسعبٌّٙب ثبٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ. رمذيّ Heriot Watt University[ 32عبِؼخ ٘يشيٛد ٚاد ] .3.2.3 رّٕؼ عبِؼخ ٘يشيٛد ٚاد ثبعىزٍٕذا ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌذسعبد االوبديّيخ ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ فزّٕؼ ِبعغزيش إٌٙذعخ اٌّؼّبسيخ ِٚبعغزيش اداسح اٌّؾشٚػبد اٌّؼّبسيخ ِٚبعغزيش فيبٔخ اٌّجبٔٝ ػٓ ثؼذ، اٌزبسيخيخ ِٚبعغزيش االعىبْ ٚاٌزطٛيش اٌؼمبسٜ ِٚبعغزيش فٝ اٌزطٛيش اٌؼمبسٜ ٚاٌزخطيو ِٚبعغزيش فٝ ٌزخطيو اٌؾنشٜ ٚااللٍيّٝ، اٌزخطيو االعزشاريغٝ ِٚبعغزيش فٝ االداسح اٌؼّشأيخ اٌّغزذاِخ ِٚبعغزيش فٝ ا ِمشساد 8فقٛي دساعيخ( ثؼذ اعزيبص اٌطبٌت 4ٚيّىٓ االٔزٙبء ِٓ ثشٔبِظ اٌّبعغزيش فٝ خالي ػبِيٓ ) دساعيخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌشعبٌخ، ٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ رٛفيش ثيئخ رؼٍُ افزشاميخ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ بػ ِٚؾزٛيبد اٌّمشساد ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ.ؽيش رٛفش اٌغبِؼخ غشف اٌّؾبدصخ ِٕٚزذيبد إٌم Open University[ 36اٌغبِؼخ اٌّفزٛؽخ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ] .3.2.4 رّٕؼ اٌغبِؼخ ِبعغزيش فٝ االداسح اٌجيئيخ ؽيش يؾزًّ اٌجشٔبِظ ػٍٝ صّبٔيخ ِمشساد دساعيخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ وٍّخ( أٚ ثذال ِٓ اٌشعبٌخ يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت اعزيبص ِمشس امبفٝ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ ِؾشٚع 15000-10000اٌشعبٌخ ) ٚيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت االٔزٙبء ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ فٝ خالي صالس عٕٛاد، ٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ اسعبي اٌغبِؼخ ِقبدس ٌٍطبٌت لجً ثذايخ وً ِمشس دساعٝ اٌىزت اٌذساعيخ ٚوزٌه اعطٛأبد ِذِغخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌّؼٍِٛبد اٌخبفخ ثبٌّمشس ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ، أينب ٕ٘بن دػُ فٕٝ ِزٛافً ٌٍطبٌت ثٛاعطخ ِشؽذ أوبديّٝ ؽيش يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت اٌزٛافً ِؼٗ ػٓ هشيك اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ أٚ اٌزٍيفْٛ أٚ ػٓ هشيك اٌفيذيٛوٛٔفشٔظ اٌّشاوض اٌّؼزّذح ٌذٜ اٌغبِؼخ ثٛاعطخ االٔزشٔذ، أينب يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ اٌذػُ اٌفٕٝ ِٓ خالي داخً اٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ٚخبسعٙب ؽٛي اٌؼبٌُ، أينب رٛفش اٌغبِؼخ ٌٍطالة ِٕزذيبد إٌمبػ ِٚغّٛػبد اٌزٛافً ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ، ِٚٓ اٌغذيش ثبٌزوش اْ ثؼل اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ وبٔذ رزطٍت ؽنٛس اٌطبٌت عبئً االرقبي اٌّغّٛع ٚاٌّشئٝ ٚثؾىً رفبػٍٝ ػٍٝ ٌّذح أعجٛع دساعٝ ِىضف ثبٌغبِؼخ ٌٚىٓ ِغ رمذَ ٚ َ ِؼٙب ؽنٛس اٌطبٌت ٌٍغبِؼخ. أاالٔزشٔذ فجؾذ رٛعذ ؽٍٛي ثذيٍخ اليغزٍض Robert Jordon University[ 37عبِؼخ سٚثشد عٛسدْٚ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ] .3.2.5 The Scott Sutherland School of Architectureرّٕؼ وٍيخ عىٛد عيضسالٔذ ٌٍؼّبسح ٚاٌجيئخ اٌّجٕيخ and Built Environment ثغبِؼخ سٚثشد عٛسدْ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح أسثغ دسعبد ِبعغزيش فٝ اداسح اٌّؾشٚػبد فٝ ِٛمٛػبد ِخزٍفخ ِضً اداسح اٌزقّيُ، اداسح ِؾشٚػبد اٌزؾييذ، اداسح رشؽيذ اٌطبلخ ؾزًّ اٌجشٔبِظ ػٍٝ صّبٔيخ ِمشساد دساعيخ ثبٌّجبٔٝ، ٚاالداسح االلزقبديخ ٌّؾشٚػبد اٌزطٛيش اٌؼمبسٜ، ٚي فقٛي دساعيخ(، ٚرؼزّذ هشيمخ 3ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌشعبٌخ ٚيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت االٔزٙبء ِٕٗ فٝ ػبَ ٚٔقف ) 501 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثؾىً وبًِ فيّب ػذا االخزجبساد فيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت أدائٙب فٝ ِمش اٌغبِؼخ أٚ ػٍٝ ٍٝ رٛفيش ثيئخ افزشاميخ ٌٍزؼٍُ ِٓ خالي رٛفيش اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ االٔزشٔذ، وّب رؼزّذ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ ػ ٚاٌزٝ ِٓ خالٌٙب يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت اٌزٛافً ِغ أعزبر اٌّمشس ثؾىً رفبػٍٝ ِغ رٛفيش اٌؼذيذ ِٓ ِؾزٛيبد اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ِٚقبدس اٌّؼٍِٛبد ٚثخبفخ اٌّىزجخ االٌىزشٚٔيخ ٚأينب رٛفيش غشف اٌّؾبدصخ ِٕٚزذيبد ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ، ٚيؼزّذ اٌزمييُ ثؾىً أعبعٝ فٝ اٌّمشس ػٍٝ اػذاد اٌطبٌت ٌٍزمبسيش ٚاٌّؾشٚػبد إٌمبػ اٌجؾضيخ ٚأغبص ثؼل اٌّٙبَ ٚاالخزجبساد ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ. University of Greenwich[ 46عبِؼخ عشيٓ ٚيؼ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ] .3.2.6 ٌزؾييذ ّبسح ٚا يخ اٌؼ ٕؼ ٍو ٚيؼ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح School of Architecture and Constructionرّ ِؼخ عشٓي ثغب 3 ٝ زطٛيش اٌؼمبسٜ، ِٚبعغزيش ف ٚػبد، ِبعغزيش فٝ ٌا بعغزيش اداسح اٌّؾش بسح ِ٘ٝ بعغزيش ٝف ِغبي اٌّؼ دسعبدِ ٕز ػبَ ٓ ثؼذِ زؼٍُي ػ ّٕؾآد ٌٚمذ ثذأد اٌغبِؼخ فٝ ٌا خ داخً أغٍزشا ، ٌٚره ِٓ خالي ِشاوض ٌٜذ اٌغبِؼ1990اداسح اٌ ٝ ٛػخ اٌخبفخ ثبٌّمشس اٌزذسيغ زذسيظ ػٍٝ رضٚيذ اٌطبٌت ثبٌّٛاد اٌّطج رؼزّذ هشيمخ ٌا ؼبٌُ،ٚ ب ؽٛي ٌا أٚ خبسٙع فٛي ِىبٔيخ اٌٛ ّب يزّزغ اٌطبٌت ثب ٙب ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ، و زٝ يزُ رذسيغ ٚعٛد اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌّمشساد ٌا ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ ّب رؾز ِؼخ ث ٚٔيخ ٌٍغب ِظ ٌٍّىزجخ االٌىزش يؾزًّ ثشٔب ٚ ،ٝ ٌفٕ ِٚشاعغ ػٍّيخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌذػُ ا ِٓ ِغالد ٛيٗ ٍّف االوبديّٝ ٌٍطبٌت ِمشساد دساعيخ ٚاٌ ٝ Personal Learning Portfolioاٌّبعغزيش ػٍٝ عزخ ثبالمبفخ اٌ ( ٓ ِيي ٝ خالي ػب ٔبِظ ف ٓ اٌجش ٙبء ِ ٓ ٌٍطبٌت االٔز فقٛي دساعيخ(. 4اٌشعبٌخ ٚيّى University of Bath[ 42ٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ]عبِؼخ ثبص ثب .3.2.7 ثغبِؼخ ثبص ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح Faculty of Engineering and Designرّٕؼ وٍيخ إٌٙذعخ ٚاٌزقّيُ ِمشساد ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ اٌشعبٌخ اٌجؾضيخ ٚيغزغشق 8دسعخ ِبعغزيش فٝ ِغبي اداسح اٌزؾييذ رؾًّ دساعخ فقٛي دساعيخ( وّب يغت ػٍٝ اٌطبٌت اٌؾنٛس ٚاالٔزظبَ 6-3أػٛاَ )اٌجشٔبِظ ِٓ ػبَ ٚٔقف اٌٝ صالس ثبٌغبِؼخ ٌّذح أعجٛع ِشريٓ ػٍٝ ِذاس اٌجشٔبِظ ٚرٌه ٌؾنٛس ِؾبمشاد ٚٚسػ ػًّ، وّب رؼزّذ هشيمخ عزبر ثؾىً رفبػٍٝ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ.اٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ رٛفيش ثيئخ افزشاميخ ٌٍزؼٍُ يزٛافً فيٙب اٌطبٌت ِغ األ انثحث نتائج .4 اٌزؾٍيً إٌٛػٝ ٌٍزغبسة اٌذٌٚيخ ثؼيٕخ اٌجؾش ٔزبئظ .4.1 اٌّزنّٕخ ثؼيٕخ اٌجؾش اٌذٌٚيخ فٝ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌؼّبسحٍزغبسة ٌ ِٓ خالي اٌزؾٍيً إٌٛػٝ فٝ اعزخذاِب ٘ٛ رؾذيذ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ األوضش ، األٚيرغبإالد اٌجؾشصالصخ ِٓ االعبثخ ػٍٝ أِىٓ ويف ٘ٛ ٚاٌضبٌش رؼبسيف ٚؽذٚد ٚامؾخ ألعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ٘ٛ ٚمغ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼّبسٜ ٚاٌضبٔٝ .أِىٓ اٌزغٍت ػٍٝ االٔفقبي اٌّىبٔٝ فٝ رذسيظ اعزذيٛ٘بد اٌزقّيُ ُ ػٓ ثؼذ .4.1.1 رقٕيف اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد ٚفمب العزخذاِٙب ألعبٌيت اٌزؼٍي فٝ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ثؼذ ِٕبلؾخ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚػشك اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌزغبسة اٌؼبٌّيخ أِىٓ رقٕيف اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد اٌّزنّٕخ ثؼيٕخ اٌجؾش ِٓ ؽيش اعزخذاِٙب ، اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼّبسٜ ِغبي ٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد غبٌجيخ اأْ ؽيش يزنؼ ( 2غذٚي )ث وّبألعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ خّغخ ِغّٛػبد ٝ: اٌزؼٍيُ رغزخذَ ِضيغب ِٓ أسثؼخ أعبٌيت ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ رّضً االٔزشٔذ اٌمبعُ اٌّؾزشن فيّب ثيٕٙب ٚ ٘ ٚاٌزؼٍيُ ِٓ االٔزشٔذ.اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو، ٚاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ، ٚاألٌىزشٚٔٝ، ٓ ثؼذ (:2جذول ) ُ ػ رقٕيف اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد ثؼيٕخ اٌجؾش ٚفمب العزخذاِٙب ألعبٌيت اٌزؼٍي اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ اٌّغّٛػبد ُ ثبٌّشاعٍخ - اٌّغّٛػخ األٌٚٝ ٝ عبْ فشٔغيغىٛ. رؼٍي أوبديّيخ اٌؼّبسح ف ُ - اٌّغّٛػخ اٌضبٔيخ ٌىزشٚٔٝارؼٍي - ٝ ُ ِؼزّذ ػٍ االٔزشٔذرؼٍي ُ ِخزٍو - رؼٍي ٌيفٛسٔيب ثيشوٍٝ -وٍيخ اٌؼّبسح فٝ ثٛعطٓ عبِؼخ -عبِؼخ وب ٜ، ِذسعخ اٌؼّبسح -٘بسفبسد ٌيٕٛ عبِؼخ ثبص -عبِؼخ عٕٛة أ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح. ُ - اٌّغّٛػخ اٌضبٌضخ َ االٔغبٔيخ ٚاٌجيئيخ اٌىزشٚٔٝرؼٍي ٍيخ اٌؼٍٛ ٜ، و يغٛس ِ عبِؼخ -عبِؼخ 502 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ اٌّغّٛػبد ٓ االٔزشٔذ - ِ ُ ٌٍؼّبسح رؼٍي ٍيخ ٌٚؼ ْٕذ -وبسديف، و ٌ ِؼخ ؽشق ِؼخ -عب عب عبِؼخ سٚثشد عٛسدْٚ. -٘يشيٛد ٚاد ٝ االٔزشٔذ - اٌّغّٛػخ اٌشاثؼخ ُ ِؼزّذ ػٍ رؼٍي ُ ثبٌّشاعٍخ - رؼٍي ٓ ٚيؼ. -عبِؼخ ارالٔزه اٌذٌٚيخ عبِؼخ عشي ُ ِفزٛػ - اٌّغّٛػخ اٌخبِغخ اٌغبِؼخ اٌّفزٛؽخ ثبٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح. رؼٍي ٜ اػزّبد٘ب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ .4.1.2 رؼشيف أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚفمب ٌّذ ٚامؾب ٙباآْل ثبد زطجيمبد اٌّشرجطخ ث ٌا ٛعيبدٚ ٌٛ ٌزىٕ ٚا الٔزشٔذ ٌ ّؾٜٛس س اٌ فٛي اٌٝ رؼشيفبد ٚلذ ،اٌٚذ أِٓى اٌٛ شيىب ٜ ثِؤ ِيغٛس ؼخ جيئيخ ثغِب ٌٚا ٔيخ َٛ االٔغب ِٙب وٍيخ اٌٍؼ زؼٍيُ ٓػ ثؼذ رغزخذ يت ٌا زا [48]ِؾذدح ألعٌب ِٙب فٝ٘ ٚرُ اعزخذا :ٝ ّب ٍي ٌٚره و ٌ الٔزشٔذ ٙب ِٜذ اعزخذِا ٘زٖ اٌزؼشيفبد ألعبٌيت اٌزؼٍُي ٓػ ثؼذ ػٍٝ ّذ ٚرؼز اٌجؾش أينب ، ُي ااٌلىز - ٌزٍؼ غجخ eLearningشٚٔٝ ا ٜ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٕث ٌز ُ ا ي ٛ أٍعٛة اٌزٍؼ ٚعٛد اخزجبساد % 100:٘ يخ ِىٔب ِغ ا ة ِؼخ ٝف اهبس إٌطبق اٌغغشاٝف ٌٍطٌبت ثؤعٍٛ ّذح ٌٜذ اٌغب ِؼز ّيخ شاوض الٍي ٙبئيخ ّث ٔProctored Exams. % 100-80: ٘ٛ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثٕغجخ Online Learningاٌزؼٍيُ ِٓ االٔزشٔذ - ٚال رٛعذ أيخ ٌمبءاد ٚعٗ ٌٛعٗ ِغ اٌطبٌت عٜٛ اِىبٔيخ ٚعٛد اخزجبساد ٔٙبئيخ ٌٍطبٌت ثّمش اٌغبِؼخ. -30: ٘ٛ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثٕغجخ Blended Learning/ Hybridاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو - يزمٍـ ٚلذ اٌّؾبمشح اٌزمٍيذيخ.ثؾيش % 80 : ٘ٛ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ Web Facilitated Learningاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ - فٝ ػشك ِؾزٛيبد اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ِغ ٚعٛد اٌّؾبمشاد اٌزمٍيذيخ ِغ % 29-1االٔزشٔذ ثٕغجخ ذ الؽك.اِىبٔيخ رغغيً اٌّؾبمشاد ثبٌفيذيٛ ٚػشمٙب ٌٍطالة فٝ ٚل أعبٌيت اٌزغٍت ػٍٝ االٔفقبي اٌّىبٔٝ فٝ رذسيظ ِمشساد اعزذيٛ٘بد اٌزقّيُ .4.1.3 ٝ زؼشف ػٍٝ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ األعبٌيت ٌٍزغٍت ػٍ جؾش أِىٓ ٌا ٌٚيخ ثؼيٕخ ٌا ٌٕٛػٝ ٌٍزغبسة اٌذ زؾٍيً ا ِٓ خالي ٌا ً اٌؼّٛد ٝ رّض ٌز ُ ٚا ٘بد اٌزقّي ٝ رذسيظ ِمشساد اعزذٛي ٝ ف ٝ:االٔفقبي اٌّىبٔ ٝ وّب يٍ ٘ٚ ٜ ّبس ُ اٌّؼ ٜ ٌٍزؼٍي اٌفمش ٌزٛافً اٌزفبػٍٝاثشاِظ ٚبعزخذاَ اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ واالٔزشٔذ ٚ االرقبالد اعزخذاَ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد - Adobe Connect, Voice Thread, Blackboard Collaborateِضً عزبرثيٓ اٌطالة ٚاأل اٌزضإِٝ and Vimeo ٌغٍغبد اٌغيّٕبس ٚٚسػ اٌؼًّ ٚاٌزٝ ِٚٓ خالي اٌجش اٌّجبؽش ثٛاعطخ اٌفيذيٛوٛٔفشٔظ يّىٓ أينب رغغيٍٙب ثبٌفيذيٛ ٚسفؼٙب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٌزىْٛ ِزبؽخ ٌٍطالة هٛاي اٌٛلذ ثؾىً الرضإِٝ ،خِغ رٛفيش اٌؼذيذ ِٓ ِؾزٛيبد اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ِٚقبدس اٌّؼٍِٛبد ٚثخبفخ اٌّىزجخ االٌىزشٚٔي ٚ٘ٛ ِب يغّٝ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ Virtual Learning Environmentرٛفيش ثيئخ رؼٍُ افزشاميخ أينب . Blackboard ٚMoodleِضً Learning Content Managementثؤٔظّخ اداسح اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ ْ افزمبد ِضً ٘زٖ اٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّزمذِخ ٌُ رّضً ػبئمب فٝ رمذيُ ثؼل أٌٚىٓ ِٓ اٌغذيش ثبٌزوش اٌّئعغبد اٌزؼٍيّيخ اٌّؼّبسيخ ثشاِظ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ وّب ٘ٛ اٌؾبي فٝ أوبديّيخ اٌؼّبسح ثغبْ فشأغيغىٛ يذ ِٓ ٌذيٙب اٌؼذرؼزّذ فٝ اٌزٛافً ِغ اٌطالة فمو ػٍٝ اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ثشغُ أْ اٌزٝ ػذد خّغخ دسعبد ِبعغزيش ٚػذد صالصخ دسعبد ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٙٝ رّٕؼاٌجشاِظ االوبديّيخ ؽٙبدح خجشح. 12دسعخ فٕٝ ِؼّبسٜ ٚػذد 2ثىبٌٛسيٛط ٚػذد ٚاٌزٝ رؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ فٝ Blended Learning/ Hybridاعزخذاَ هشيمخ اٌزذسيظ اٌّخزٍو - ٔزظبَ فٝ ثشٔبِظ دساعٝ ِىضف داخً الٌاٌؾنٛس اٌّخفف ٌٍطبٌت اٌٝ اٌىٍيخ ثبالمبفخ اٌٝاٌزذسيظ .أٚ فٝ ػطالد ٔٙبيخ االعجٛع االعزذيٛ ٌّذح أعجٛع ثىً فقً دساعٝ اْ يؾقً اٌطبٌت ػٍٝ ػذد ِٓ اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح اٌخبفخ ثبٌزذسيت اٌؼٍّٝ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح فٝ يّىٓ - اٌؾشوبد ٚاٌّىبرت اٌّؼّبسيخ مّٓ ٔطبلٗ اٌغغشافٝ ؽيش رؾزغت وً ِبئخ عبػخ رذسيت ثٛالغ عبػخ ً اعّبٌٝ ػذد عبػبد اٌزذسيت اٌّؼزّذح ِٓ صٍش اٌٝ سثغ ػذد اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح فٝ اٌجشٔبِظ. ِؼزّذح ٚيق ٛافً ٌٍطبٌت - ِز ٛفيش دػُ فٕٝ جشيذ ر ؼٗ ػٓ هشيك ٌا ٛافًِ ز ٛاعطخ ِشؽذ أوبديّٝ ؽيش يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت ٌا ث ٝ ٔفشٔظ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ، أينب يّىٌٓ ٍطبٌت اٌؾقٛي ػٍ ٛوٛ ٌفيذي زٍيفْٛ ٚأ ػٓ هشيك ا االٌىزشٚٔٝ أٚ ٌا 503 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 ٝ ِؾيطٗ اٌغغشافٝ اٌذػُ اٌفٕ ّذح فٝ ٔطبق ِؼز شاوض ب اٌطبٌت ػٓ هشيك ِٓ خاليِ زٝ يذسط ٙث ِؼخ ٌا ٌذٜ اٌغب ٓ ثؼذ، أينب رٛف ُ ػ ٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ.ياٌزؼٍي ِ ً ٕزذيبد إٌمبػ ِٚغّٛػبد اٌزٛاف ش غشف اٌّؾبدصخ ِٚ اٌّمبالد اٌجؾضيخ ٚاٌؼشٚك اٌزمذيّيخ ٚاػذاد ٚ اػذاد اٌزمبسيشيؼزّذ اٌزمييُ إٌٙبئٝ ٌٍطبٌت ػٍٝ - ػٓ هشيك سفؼٙب ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ أٚ ػٓ هشيك اسعبٌٙب ثبٌجشيذ اٌشعِٛبد ٚاسعبٌٙب ألعزبر اٌّبدح ؽيش Proctored Examثؤعٍٛة ٌٍطبٌتوّب يّىٓ ػمذ اخزجبساد ٔٙبئيخ االٌىزشٚٔٝ أٚ ثبٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ اٌزٝ يذسط فيٙب ػٓ هشيك ِشاوض ِؼزّذح ٌذٜ اٌغبِؼخ يئدٜ اٌطبٌت االخزجبس فٝ ٔطبلٗ اٌغغشافٝ فٝ رؼزس رٌه يخزبس ألشة ِئعغخ رؼٍيّيخ فٝ ٔطبلٗ اٌغغشافٝ ٌززٛافً ِؼٙب اٌغبِؼخ ٚارا اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ .ٌزشريت اعشاءاد االخزجبس ِغ رؾًّ اٌطبٌت رىبٌيف امبفيخ ٔظيش رٌه ٝ ٌٍزغبسة اٌذٌٚيخ ثؼيٕخ اٌجؾش زؾٍيًاٌ .4.2 اٌىّ اٌٛاليبد وً ِٓ رٕزّٝ اٌٝوٍيخ ٚعبِؼخ 14ثشٔبِغب دساعيب ِٛصػخ ِب ثيٓ 61 اٌجؾش ػٍٝ ػيٕخ رؾزًّ األوبديّيخ األِشيىيخ ؽٛاٌٝ ثٍغذ ٔغجخ ػذد اٌجشاِظ ٚلذ وّب روش عبثمب اٌّزؾذح األِشيىيخ ٚاٌٍّّىخ اٌّزؾذح ٌٚمذ رُ عّغ اٌجيبٔبد ٚرجٛيجٙب صُ ادخبٌٙب فٝ اٌجشٔبِظ االؽقبئٝ ،ِٓ اعّبٌٝ اٌجشاِظ األوبديّيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ% 70 SPSS ٚرُ ػًّ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌزؾٍيالد االؽقبئيخ ِضً اٌزٛصيؼبد اٌزىشاسيخ االفذاس اٌزبعغ ػؾش Frequency Distribution ٝٚاالؽقبء اٌٛففDescriptive Statistics ٚعذاٚي اٌزجٛيت اٌّضدٚطCross Tabulation وّب رُ أزبط اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌشعِٛبد اٌزؾٍيٍيخPie Charts ٖ ٚفيّب يٍٝ ػشك ِٛعض ٌٕزبئظ ٘ز ٚفمب ٌٍّزغيشاد اٌزٝ رُ اعزٙذافٙب ثبٌذساعخ فٝ ٘زا اٌجؾش. اٌزؾٍيالد رٛصيغ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ ػٍٝ اٌىٍيبد ٚاٌغبِؼبد .4.2.1 ػٍٝ اٌىٍيبد ٚاٌغبِؼبد ؽيش عبءد أوبديّيخ اٌؼّبسح ثبٌؼيٕخ ( رٛصيغ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ1يٛمؼ ؽىً ) % ِٓ اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ صُ رٍيٙب وً ِٓ وٍيخ 36ثغبْ فشٔغيغىٛ فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ صُ رٍيّٙب وً ِٓ ِذسعخ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٌىً ِّٕٙب % 13اٌؼّبسح فٝ ثٛعطٓ ٚعبِؼخ ٘يشيٛد ٚاد ثٕغجخ رٍيّٙب عبِؼخ أرالٔزب اٌذٌٚيخ ِٚذسعخ ٌىً ِّٕٙب % 7ثغبِؼخ ٘بسفبسد ٚعبِؼخ سٚثشد عشيٓ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ٌىً % 5اٌؼّبسح ٚاٌزؾييذ ثغبِؼخ عشيٓ ٚػ ٚوٍيخ اٌؼٍَٛ االٔغبٔيخ ٚاٌجيئيخ ثغبِؼخ ِيغٛسٜ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ .ِزفبٚرخصُ رٍيُٙ ثبلٝ اٌىٍيبد ٚاٌغبِؼبد ثٕغت ُِٕٙ َ ٚاٌذليك .4.2.2 اٌزخقـ اٌؼب رُ رقٕيف اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ٚفمب ٌضالصخ رخققبد ػبِخ ٘ٝ اٌؼّبسح ٚاٌزخطيو اٌؼّشأٝ ٚػّبسح اٌجيئخ ِٓ اعّبٌٝ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ % 60( فمذ عبء رخقـ اٌؼّبسح فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ 2ٚوّب يزنؼ ِٓ ؽىً ) ٍيٗ وً ِٓ اٌزخطيو اٌؼّشأٝ ٚػّبسح غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ثبٌؼيٕخ ي ٌجشاِظ ٌ% 20اٌجيئخ ٕث ىً ِّٕٙب. وّب أِىٓ رقٕيف ا ( ؽيش عبء اٌزقّيُ اٌجيئٝ فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ 3رخقـ دليك وّب فٝ ؽىً ) 12اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ اٌٝ غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ % 28 غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ % 15ِٓ اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ ثبٌؼيٕخ يٍيٗ اٌؼّبسح ٕث % 13يٍيٗ اداسح اٌّؾشٚػبد ٕث غجخ غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ % 12يٍيٗ االداسح اٌجيئيخ ٕث ُ % 8يٍيٗ اٌزطٛيش اٌؼمبسٜ ٕث فيبٔخ إٌّؾآد ٚاٌزقّي يٍيٗ اداسحٚ غت ِزفبٚرخ7اٌّغزذاَ ثٕغجخ ٚثبعزخذاَ أعٍٛة اٌزىشاس اٌّزغّغ ،% ٌىً ِّٕٙب صُ يٍيّٙب ثبلٝ اٌزخققبد ٕث قف ػذد اٌزخققبد اٌذليمخ Environmental Design اٌقبػذ فبْ ِٛمٛػبد اٌزقّيُ اٌجيئٝ ٔ رّضً ٝ ُ ِغزذاَ + %12 االداسح اٌجيئيخ + %28ٌٍجشاِظ ثبٌؼيٕخ )رقّيُ ثيئ %(.7 رقّي اٌذسعبد األوبديّيخ .4.2.3 ّب ٝف ؽًى ) ّيخ و غخ دسعبد أوبدي ىٓ ؽقش ّخ ٔزجبٖ االلجبي ٌاىجيش ٍػٝ ثشاِظ ( 4ِأ ٌ ال الفذ ِٓ ٌا ٚ وْب غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ اٌّبعغزيش ِخ ٕث ٕخ % 55ؽيش عبءد دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش ٝف ٌاّمذ ِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼي بٌٝ اٌجشا بدح ِٓ اّع ٙب ٙؽ ي ٍر ِمشساد خجشح ٛػخ ِغّ ٛاٌٝ Certificateثبعزيبص غجخ ؽ ٛاٌٝ % 33ٕث غجخ ؽ ط ٕث سٛي ٌجىبٌٛ ب دسعخ ا ٙي ٙب دسعخ % 7ٍر ٍي ر ّبٜس ِؼ غجخ ؽ Associate of Arts in Architectureِغبػذ سٖا اٌٍفغفخ% 3ٛاٌٝ ٕث ٛاٌٝ ُص دسعخ دوٛز غجخ ؽ %.2ٕث 504 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ إٌّٙظ اٌذساعٝ .4.2.4 بداد غبثك أْ ثشاِظ اٌّبعغزيشٚ ٙؽ % 88ؽقٍذ ػٍٝ ؽٛاٌٝ Certificate اٌخجشح وّب ارنؼ ِٓ اٌمغُ ٌا ٕبٚي ٘زا اٌمغُ وْب ِٓ اٌطجيؼٝ أْ اٌجشاِظ ثبٌؼيٕخ ٌٚزٌه ِٓ اعّبٌٝ اٌخبفخ االؽقبئيبد ثؼل اٌّئؽشاد يز ْ ٚلذ ،ىً ِّٕٙبٌ ثزفبفيً إٌّٙظ اٌذساعٝ ٙبء ِٓ ثشٔبِظ اٌّبعغزيش ػبِب الٔز ٌ عو اٌّذح اٌضِٕيخ ثٍغ ِٛز عو ػذد اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ 4ِٚزٛعو ػذد اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ ِمشسا دساعيب ثبالمبفخ 11فقٛي دساعيخ ِٚٛز ؾشٚع رقّيّٝ. ٌٕغجخ اٌٝ ؽٙبدح اٌٝ سعبٌخ ثؾضيخ أٚ فٝ ثؼل األؽيبْ يٕزٙٝ اٌجشٔبِظ ّث اٌخجشحأِب ثب Certificate 2٘ٛ ػبَ ٚاؽذ ِٚزٛعو ػذد اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ اٌجشٔبِظ ِزٛعو اٌّذح اٌضِٕيخ ٌالٔزٙبء ِٓ ْفب رمذيُ اٌجشٔبِظ ٚفٝ ثؼل األؽيبْ يزطٍت ِمشساد دساعيخ 5فقً دساعٝ ِٚزٛعو ػذد اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ً رىْٛ ثبٌىبًِ ِٓ خالي ٜ ؽنٛس ٌّمش اٌغبِؼخ ثأٚال رزطٍت اٌذساعخ ففؾخ( 15-10ِقغشح ) سعبٌخ ثؾضيخ ٝ فبْ اٌذساعخ رىْٛ ثبٌىبًِ ِٓ خالي االٔزشٔذ ( 3ٚوّب يزنؼ ِٓ عذٚي ) االٔزشٔذ. فٝ ثشاِظ اٌّبعغزيش ف رخقـ وً ِٓ اٌؼّشأٝ ثيّٕب يىْٛ األِش ِخزٍف ثؼل اٌؾئ فٝ ثشاِظ اٌّبعغزيش فٝرخقـ اٌزخطيو ّبسح اٌجيئخ ؽيش أْ ؽٛاٌٝ ٚ % 26اٌؼّبسح ٚػ خ ِٓ ثشاِظ ػّبسح اٌجيئخ% 29ِٓ ثشاِظ اٌؼّبسح ْ ثبٌؼٕي وب ٌجب يىْٛ فٝ ِمش ِىضف دساعٝ ثّؼذي أعجٛع ؽنٛس اعزذٛي اٌؾنٛس اٌّخفف ٌّمش اٌغبِؼخ ِزطٍجب فٙٛ غب شح فٝ وً ؽٙش وّب فٝ وٍيخ اٌؼّبسح فٝ ثٛعطٓ وً فقً دساعٝفٝ اٌغبِؼخ أٚ ؽنٛس ػطٍخ ٔٙبيخ األعجٛعِ ٜٛ ٔب ِضً ِذسعخ اٌؼّبسح ثغبِؼخ عٕٛة إٌٔي ّب فٝ وٍيخ أعجٛػيٓ خالي ِذح اٌجشٔبِظ لٍيٍخ يىْٛ ؽنٛس ٚأؽيب و اٌزٝ رزطٍت ؽنٛسا ِخففب ٌّمش اٌغبِؼخ ثبٌؼيٕخ ِغ ِالؽظخ أٔٗ ثشغُ لٍخ اٌجشاِظ إٌٙذعخ ٚاٌزقّيُ ثغبِؼخ ثبص اال أٔٗ ال يّىٓ اغفبٌٙب ؽيش أْ ثشٔبِظ ِبعغزيش اٌؼّبسح فٝ وً ِٓ عبِؼزٝ ثٛعطٓ ٚعٕٛة أٌيٕٜٛ ِؼزّذ ِٓ د وجيش ثيٓ ثشاِظ ِٓ ؽيش اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح فٕٙبن رفبٚٚ .NAAB٘يئخ االػزّبد اٌذٌٚٝ ٌٍجشاِظ اٌّؼّبسيخ ِب ثٓي ب اٌغبِؼبد األِشيىيخ ٚ ٌىٓ ثٛعٗ ػبَ فْب اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ اٌذسعخ يزطٍت 50- 30اٌّبعغزيش اٌٝز رٛف٘ش يخ فٙٝ رمشيجب ِٛؽذح ِٓ ؽيش اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح عبػخ ِؼزّذح ثيّٕب فٝ اٌجشاِظ اٌزٝ رمذِٙب اٌغبِؼبد اٌجشيطٔب ّخ اٌٝ صالصخ أعضاء فيّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت 180 اٌّطٍٛثخ ٌٍؾقٛي ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش ٚ٘ٝ عبػخ ِؼزّذح ِمغ Post Graduate ثبعزيبص ِغّٛػخ ِمشسادخجشح عبػخ ِؼزّذح ٚ يؾقً ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح 60اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ Certificate ًٌّخ اٌجؾضيخ 120صُ ارا أو عبػخ ِؼزّذح يؾقً ػٍٝ دثٍَٛ ػبٌٝ فٝ اٌزخقـ ُص ارا أوًّ اٌشعب ْٛ ثزٌه أوًّ ( اٌزٜ رُ فيٗ اعزخذاَ 4ِٚٓ عذٚي ) عبػخ ِؼزّذحٚ يؾقً ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش. 180فبٔٗ يى ٓ SPSSفٝ ثشٔبِظ Cross Tabulationأعٍٛة اٌزجٛيت اٌّضدٚط ب ثي ِ ٌؼًّ اٌزؾٍيً االؽقبئٝ ٚاٌشثو ٝ اٌزخقـ اٌؼبَ ٌٍجشٔبِظ اٌذساعٝ ٚثيٓ اؽزغبة عبػبد ِؼزّذح ِمبثً اٌخجشح اٌؼٍّيخ يزنؼ أٔٗ فمو ف ٙب % 11رخقـ اٌؼّبسح فْب ؽٛاٌٝ ِٓ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ يزُ اؽزغبة عبػبد ِؼزّذح ِمبًث خجشح ػٍّيخ يىزغج ذد اٌغبػبد اٌّطٍٛثخ اٌطبٌت ِٓ خالي ػٍّٗ فٝ أؽذ اٌّىبرت أٚ اٌؾشوبد اٌّؼّبسيخ ٚرٌه ثؾذ ألقٝ صٍش ػ . ٌٕيً اٌذسعخ وّب فٝ وٍيخ اٌؼّبسح فٝ ثٛعطٓ ٚعبِؼخ أرالٔزب اٌذٌٚيخ ي اٌزجٛيت اٌّضدٚط (:3جذول ) َ عذٚا َ ثبعزخذا ـ اٌؼب ٓ اٌزخق ٓ اٌؾنٛس ٌّمش اٌغبِؼخ ٚثي اٌؼاللخ ثي 1 انحضىر نًقر انجايعح ػذد اٌجشاِظ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ انتخظض انعاو اعّبٌٝ ػّبسح اٌجيئخ رخطيو ػّشاٝٔ ػّبسح اٌؾنٛس اعجٛػيٓ هٛاي ِذح اٌجشٔبِظ 1 0 0 1 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 5.3% 0% 0% 3.0% اٌؾنٛس أعجٛع ٌىً فقً دساعٝ 4 1 0 3 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 15.8% 0% 14.3% 12.1% اٌؾنٛس فٝ ػطٍخ ٔٙبيخ االعجٛع ِشح ؽٙشيب 1 0 0 1 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 5.3% 0% 0% 3.0% ة فٝ ثؼل اٌؾنٛس ِطٍٛ ة فٝ اٌّمشساد ٚغيش ِطٍٛ اٌجؼل اآلخش 1 1 0 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 0% 0% 14.3% 3.0% 1 ٝ ٓ ف ً أؽذ اٌّزغيشيي ٓ ؽيش يّض ٓ ِزغيشيي َ ٌٍّمبسٔخ ثي ٜ رغزخذ ي رٛصيغ رىشاس ٝ عذٚا ي اٌزجٛيت اٌّضدٚط ٘ عذٚا ً اٌؾنٛس ٌّمش اٌغبِؼخ(. ٝ ففٛف اٌغذٚي )ِض ً ف ٝ يّض ـ اٌؼبَ( ٚاٌّزغيش اٌضبٔ ً اٌزخق أػّذح اٌغذٚي )ِض 505 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 انحضىر نًقر انجايعح ػذد اٌجشاِظ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ انتخظض انعاو اعّبٌٝ ػّبسح اٌجيئخ رخطيو ػّشاٝٔ ػّبسح ة 26 5 7 14 ػذد اٌجشاِظ اٌؾنٛس غيش ِطٍٛ % 73.7% 100% 71.4% 78.8% 33 7 7 19 اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 100% 100% 100% 100% ً اٌخجشح اٌؼٍّيخ (:4جذول ) ٓ اؽزغبة عبػبد ِؼزّذح ِمبث َ ٚثي ـ اٌؼب ٓ اٌزخق اٌؼاللخ ثي انتخظض انعاو ػذد اٌجشاِظ فٝ وً رخقـ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ احتضاب صاعاخ يعتًذج يقاتم انخثرج اعّبٌٝ انعًهيح ال يٛعذ يٛعذ 37 33 4 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ػّبسح % 10.8% 89.2% 100% رخطيو ػّشأٝ 12 12 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 0% 100% 100% 12 12 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ػّبسح اٌجيئخ % 0% 100% 100% 61 57 4 اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 6.6% 93.4% 100% ُ ػٓ ثؼذ أعٍٛة .4.2.5 اٌزؼٍي أِىٓ رقٕيف اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ فٝ خّغخ ِغّٛػبد ِٓ ؽيش أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ اٌّغزخذِخ وّب )ػٓ هشيك اٌجشيذ ( ؽيش عبءد اٌّغٛػخ األٌٚٝ اٌزٝ رغزخذَ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ ثبٌّشاعٍخ5٘ٛ ِٛمؼ ثؾىً ) ٙب % 36 ؽٛاٌٝ فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ( ِٓ اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ رٍي اٌّغّٛػخ اٌضبٔيخ اٌزٝ رغزخذَ ِضيظ ِٓ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚاٌزؼٍيُ رٍيٙب اٌّغٛػخ اٌضبٌضخ اٌزٝ رغزخذَ ِضيظ ِٓ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌزؼٍيُ ِٓ االٔزشٔذ % 24اٌّخزٍو ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ رٍيٙب اٌّغّٛػخ اٌشاثؼخ اٌزٝ رغزخذَ ِضيظ ِٓ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚاٌزؼٍيُ % 28ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ 506 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ %، 2ٌّفزٛػ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ٚأخيشا رؤرٝ اٌّغّٛػخ اٌخبِغخ اٌزٝ رغزخذَ اٌزؼٍيُ ا% 10ثبٌّشاعٍخ ٕث ُ اٌّؾزشن أفجؾذ أْ االٔزشٔذ اٌٛامؼِٚٓ ٚؽغش اٌضاٚيخ فٝ عّيغ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ. رّضً اٌمبع اٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّغزخذِخ .4.2.6 ثذءا ِٓ (6ثبٌؼيٕخ وّب يزنؼ فٝ ؽىً ) رىٌٕٛٛعيبد االٔزشٔذ اٌّغزخذِخ فٝ ػٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ رزٕٛع ِٓ اعّبٌٝ اٌجشاِظ ثبٌؼيٕخ صُ ِشٚسا ثبٌّمشساد % 36 ؽٛاٌٝ اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ِذػِٛب ثبٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ثٕغجخ صُ أزٙبءا % 11اٌؼبدٜ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌجشيذ اٌّٛمٛػخ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚأينب ِذػِٛخ ثبٌجشيذ ثٕغجخأٔظّخ اداسح اٌّبدح اٌزؼٍيّيخ ٚٚرمٕيبد اٌّؾبسوخ خ ثبعزخذاَ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد ِزمذِخ ِضً اٌفقٛي االفزشامي ِٚٓ اٌّئوذ أْ رضيذ ٘زٖ إٌغجخ فٝ اٌّغزمجً ٌّب رٛفشٖ ِٓ ثبٌؼيٕخ اٌذساعيخ اٌجشاِظِٓ اعّبٌٝ % 53 ؽٛاٌٝ اِىبٔيبد ٘بئٍخ فٝ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٌٚىٓ اٌالفذ ٌالٔزجبٖ ٘ٛ ٔغجخ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ اٌزٝ الرضاي رؼزّذ ػٍٝ اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ِذػِٛب ثبٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ِّب يذي أْ ٕ٘بن اٌؼذيذ ِٓ وٍيبد اٌؼّبسح فٝ أِشيىب ٚثشيطبٔيب اٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّزمذِخ ٌذيٙب ثؼذ ؽيش أْ عٛق ؽزٝ ثذْٚ رٛافش ثؼذ ثبدسد ثبٌذخٛي فٝ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ يذ ِٓ اٌّئعغبد اٌزؼٍيّيخ رزٕبفظ ٌٍزٛاعذ مّٓ ٘زا سائغخ ِٚشثؾخ الزقبديب ٚاٌؼذ ب عٛليؼزجش اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٍشثو ِب ثيٓ ٌ( اٌزٜ رُ فيٗ اعزخذاَ أعٍٛة اٌزجٛيت اٌّضدٚط 5ِٚٓ عذٚي ) اٌغٛق ٚثخبفخ فٝ اٌّغزمجً. ِٓ% 50اٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّغزخذِخ فٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚثيٓ اٌزخقـ اٌؼبَ ٌٍجشٔبِظ اٌذساعٝ يزنؼ أْ اٌؼّبسح ال يضاي يؼزّذ ػٍٝ اٌجشيذ فٝ رخقـ % 38ػّبسح اٌجيئخ ٚؽٛاٌٝ رخقـ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ فٝ فٝ ثشاِظ رخقـ اٌزخطيو %17ؽٛاٌٝ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ِذػِٛب ثبٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ثيّٕب رٕخفل ٘زٖ إٌغجخ اٌٝ ال يضاي يٍؼت دٚسا فٝ اسعبي األػّبي اٌفٕيخ ٌٍطالة. أعٍٛة اٌّشاعٍخاٌؼّشأٝ ِّب يٛمؼ أْ عيبد اٌّغزخذِخ فٝ ػٍّيخ اٌزذسيظ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚثيٓ اٌزخقـ اٌؼبَ (:5جذول ) اٌؼاللخ ثيٓ اٌزىٌٕٛٛ انتخظض انعاو ػذد اٌجشاِظ فٝ وً رخقـ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ انتكنىنىجياخ انًضتخذيح فى عًهيح انتذريش عن تعذ اعّبٌٝ رمٕيبد ِزمذِخ* ثشيذ اٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚػبدٜ ثشيذ اٌىزشٚٔٝ +االٔزشٔذٚػبدٜ 37 5 14 18 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ػّبسح % 48.6% 37.8% 13.5% 100% 12 1 2 9 ػذد اٌجشاِظ رخطيو ػّشأٝ % 75.0% 16.7% 8.3% 100% 12 1 6 5 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ػّبسح اٌجيئخ % 41.7% 50.0% 8.3% 100% 61 7 22 32 اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 52.5% 36.1% 11.5% 100% .اٌزمٕيبد اٌّزمذِخ ٘ٝ اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ ٚأٔظّخ اٌّؾبسوخ ٚاداسح اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ* أعٍٛة اٌزمييُ 4.2.7 خ ٛاع ِٓ اٌزمييُ ثبٌؼٕي ٔزشٔذ ٚ (7وّب يزنؼ ِٓ ؽىً ) أِىٓ ؽقش صالصخ أٔ األٚي يؼزّذ ثؾًى وبًِ ػٍٝ اال غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ضبٔٝ يؼزّذ ػٍٝ ؽنٛس% 90ٚعبء فٝ اٌّمذِخ ٕث ٌٕٛع ٌا اٌطبٌت اٌٝ ِمش اٌغبِؼخ فٝ ٚلذ ٚا غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ٕٙبئيخ ٕث ٌضبٌش7االخزجبساد اٌ ع ا غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ % ٚإٌٛ ِزبػ فمو فٝ اٌغبِؼبد األِشيىيخ %3ٕث ٛ٘ ٚ 507 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 خ ب اٌؼٕي ٕٙبئيخ فٝ ثؼل اٌزٝ رنّٕٙز ب االخزجبساد اٌ ٚ٘ٛ اربؽخ ِشاوض ِؼزّذح الٍيّيخ ٚدٌٚيخ يئدٜ اٌطبٌت فٙي ِٓ اٌّالؽع ْأ االرغبٖ اٌؼَب ،Proctored Exam اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ِٓ أَِب اٌطالة ٚ ٌخ اٌؼٛائك اٌّىبٔيخ ٘ٛ اصا جشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ٌزغغيً فٝ ٘زٖ ٌا ٌزجٛيت اٌّضدٚط ( 6ِٚٓ عذٚي ) .ٚاٌزٝ رّٕؼُٙ ِٓ ا اٌزٜ رُ فيٗ اعزخذاَ أعٍٛة ا ب ثٓي ٌ ِخ ٍشثوِ ِظ فؤِٓىأٍعٛة اٌزمييُ ٚاٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّغزخذ ٗ ٝف اٌجشا بِزٓي األٌٚٝ ٔأ الؽظزيٓ٘ اعزخالؿِ ٔزشٔذ ِٓ خالياٌذساعيخ اٌزٝ رؼزّذ ػٍٝ اٌزمييُ ثؾىً وبًِ ِٓ اعّبٌٝ 55) اال ْ ثشٔبِظ( 61ثشٔبِغب دساعيب أ ٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ِذػِٛب ثب غجخ اٌزىٌٕٛٛعيبد اٌّغزخذِخ عٛاء ا ٔزشٔذ %(40)ٕث ٌٛٛعيبد اال أٚ رىٕ ٓ ِزمبسثزبْعبءد وفزبّ٘ب %(47)ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ّزمذِخ اٌزٝ عجك اٌؾذيش ػٕٙباٌ ٕبن لٍيً ِ ٚاٌّالؽظخ اٌضبٔيخ أْ٘ ٕيبد االٔزشٔذ اٌّزمذِخ ٌذٜ اٌغبِؼبد ثشٔبِظ دساعٝ( 61ثشاِظ ِٓ اعّبٌٝ 6) اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثشغُ رٛافش رم ً أٚ خبسط اٌغبِؼخاٌزٝ رمذِٙب اال أٔٙب رزطٍت ؽنٛس اٌطبٌت ٌالخزجبس داخ .ً ِشاوض ِؼزّذح داخ ٌٍجشٔبِظ اٌذساعٝ رٛليذ اٌزغغيً .4.2.8 ٌجب ٘ٝ ٔفظ رٛليزبد 8وّب يزنؼ فٝ ؽىً ) جشٔبِظ رىْٛ غب ٕ٘بن ثشاِظ راد رٛليزبد ِؾذدح ٌزغغيً ٌا ) ب ؽٛاٌٝ ٚعبءد ٔغجٙز ِؼخ بٌٝ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ 57اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ اٌؼبديخ ثبٌغب ِظ % ِٓ اّع ٕ٘بن ثشا ثبٌؼيٕخ، ٚ غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ زبؽب هٛاي اٌؼب43َأخشٜ ٕث ٌزغغيً فيٙبِ َ ،% يىْٛ ا زيغيش أِب ٚاٌّالؽع اْ االرغبٖ اٌؼبَ يغيش ٔؾٛ ٌا ٘بد اٌ ٕبسٛي زغغيً ٌُٙ ِغ رٛفيش ػذد ِٓ اٌغي ٓ ّهالة اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚاٌّشٚٔخ فٝ اربؽخ ٌا ٙبء ِ الٔز ؾزٍّخٌ ٝ ِزفبٚد ُ ػٓ ثؼذ اٌجشٔبِظ راد ِذٜ صِٕ ْ ؽيش أْ ِؼظُ هالة اٌزؼٍي ثٛظبئف ٚأػّبي. ِشرجطِْٛٚش عيبد اٌّغزخذِخ فٝ ػٍّيخ اٌزذسيظ ػٓ ثؼذ (:6جذول ) اٌؼاللخ ثيٓ اعشاءاد اٌزمييُ ٚثيٓ اٌزىٌٕٛٛ اجراءاخ انتقييى ػذد اٌجشاِظ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ انتكنىنىجياخ انًضتخذيح فى عًهيح انتذريش عن تعذ رمٕيبد ِزمذِخ* اعّبٌٝ ثشيذ اٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚػبدٜ ثشيذ اٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚػبدٜ +االٔزشٔذ 55 7 22 26 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ثبالٔزشٔذ % 47.3% 40.0% 12.7% 100% ثبالٔزشٔذ+اخزجبساد ٔٙبئيخ ثّشاوض ِؼزّذح خبسط اٌغبِؼخ 2 0 0 2 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 100% 0% 0% 100% ثبالٔزشٔذ+اخزجبساد ثبٌغبِؼخٔٙبئيخ 4 0 0 4 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 100% 0% 0% 100% 61 7 22 32 اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 52.5% 36.1% 11.5% 100% .* اٌزمٕيبد اٌّزمذِخ ٘ٝ اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ ٚأٔظّخ اٌّؾبسوخ ٚاداسح اٌّؾزٜٛ اٌزؼٍيّٝ االػزّبد األوبديّٝ ٌٍجشٔبِظ .4.2.9 ٚثبعزخذاَ أعٍٛة اٌزجٛيت وبْ ِٓ اٌٛامؼ اْ االػزّبد ّيخ ٌٚزٌه االوبديّٝ يخزٍف رجؼب ٌٕٛع اٌذسعخ األوبدي ّب ثغذٚي ) ( ؽيش يزنؼ أْ 7اٌّضدٚط رُ اٌشثو ِب ثيٓ ؽبٌخ االػزّبد األوبديّٝ ٚٔٛع اٌذسعخ األوبديّيخ و ِٓ اعّبٌٝ ثشاِظ % 82ثشاِظ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش رؤرٝ فٝ اٌّمذِخ ِٓ ؽيش االػزّبد األوبديّٝ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ غجخ ب ثشاِظ اٌذوزٛساٖ ٕث ِٚٓ اٌالفذ ٌالٔزجبٖ ػذَ ٚعٛد دسعبد ثىبٌٛسيٛط ِؼزّذح % 50اٌّبعغزيش يٍٙي 508 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ ْ 61 اعّبٌِٝٓ 4ؽيش أْ ػذد٘ب عبثمب رُ اينبؽٗلٍخ ٘زٖ اٌجشاِظ وّب ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ ثشٔبِغب دساعيب ثبٌؼيٕخ فب ح ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ؽزٝ اآلْ.٘زا يٛمؼ ِذٜ فؼٛثخ اربؽخ ثىبٌٛسيٛط اٌؼّبس ثيبْ ؽبٌخ االػزّبد األوبديّٝ رجؼب ٌٕٛع اٌذسعخ األوبديّيخ (:7جذول ) نىع انذرجح األكاديًيح ػذد اٌجشاِظ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ حانح االعتًاد االكاديًى اعّبٌٝ غيش ِؼزّذ ِؼزّذ 2 1 1 ػذد اٌجشاِظ دوزٛساٖ % 50.0% 50.0% 100% 33 6 27 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ِبعغزيش % 81.8% 18.2% 100% ؽٙبدح ثبعزيبص ِغّٛػخ ِمشساد 20 12 8 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 40.0% 60.0% 100% 2 2 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ِغبػذ ِؼّبسٜ % 0% 100% 100% سيٛط 4 4 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ثىبٌٛ % 0% 100% 100% 61 25 36 اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 59.0% 41.0% 100% اٌّزطٍت إٌٙبئٝ ٌٍزخشط ِٓ اٌجشٔبِظ .4.2.10 ثشٔبِظ 2( يزنؼ أْ ثشاِظ اٌّبعغزيش ٚاٌذوزٛساٖ رٕزٙٝ غبٌجب ثشعبٌخ ثؾضيخ ٌىٓ فٝ ػذد 8ِٓ عذٚي ) ثشٔبِظ ِبعغزيش ثبٌؼيٕخ وبْ اٌّزطٍت إٌٙبئٝ ِؾشٚع رقّيّٝ، ٚثبٌٕغجخ ٌذسعخ 33ِبعغزيش ِٓ ثيٓ داسح اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط فبٌّزطٍت إٌٙبئٝ يىْٛ غبٌجب ِؾشٚع رقّيّٝ فيّبػذا ثشٔبِظ ٚاؽذ فٝ رخقـ ا % 60زطٍت ِؾشٚع ثؾضٝ، ٚثبٌٕغجخ ٌؾٙبداد اٌخجشح ثبعزيبص ِغّٛػخ ِمشساد دساعيخ فبْ ياٌّؾشٚػبد ففؾخ(، ِٚٓ اٌٛامؼ أْ اٌّمبالد ٚاٌّؾبسيغ اٌجؾضيخ ٌٗ دٚس أعبعٝ 15-10ِٓ اٌجشاِظ رزطٍت رمذيُ ثؾش ) فٝ ثشاِظ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ٚثخبفخ وّزطٍت ٔٙبئٝ ٌٍزخشط. ٓ ٔٛع اٌذسعخ األوبديّيخ (:8جذول ) ٓ اٌجشٔبِظ ٚثي ٝ ٌٍزخشط ِ ٓ اٌّزطٍت إٌٙبئ اٌؼاللخ ثي نىع انذرجح األكاديًيح ػذد اٌجشاِظ ٚإٌغجخ اٌّئٛيخ انًتطهة اننهائى نهتخرج ين انثرنايج اعّبٌٝ سعبٌخ ثؾضيخ ع ِؾٚش ٝ/ ثؾٝض ّّي رق 15-10ثؾش ) ففؾخ( ال يٛعذ 2 0 0 0 2 ػذد اٌجشاِظ دوزٛساٖ % 100% 0% 0% 0% 100% 33 0 0 2 31 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ِبعغزيش % 93.9% 6.1% 0% 0% 100% ؽٙبدح ثبعزيبص ِغّٛػخ ِمشساد 20 8 12 0 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 0% 0% 60.0% 40.0% 100% ِغبػذ ِؼّبسٜ 2 2 0 0 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 0% 0% 0% 100% 100% سيٛط 4 0 0 4 0 ػذد اٌجشاِظ ثىبٌٛ % 0% 100% 0% 0% 100% 61 10 12 6 33 اعّبٌٝ ػذد اٌجشاِظ % 54.1% 9.8% 19.7% 16.4% 100% 509 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 انخالطح رٕبٚي اٌجؾش اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي اٌؼّبسح ٚاؽىبٌيخ اٌزؾٛي ِٓ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌزمٍيذٜ اٌٝ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ػٍٝ اٌزفبػً اٌّجبؽش ثيٓ اٌطالة ٚاالعبرزح فٝ اعزذيٛ٘بد ٚرٌه ٌخقٛفيخ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼّبسٜ اٌزٜ يؼزّذ اٌزقّيُ، ٌٚزٌه ؽبٚي اٌجؾش دساعخ ٚاعزىؾبف االِىبٔيبد ٚاٌفشؿ اٌّزبؽخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ اٌؼّبسح إٌّٙظ اٌزؾٍيٍٝ ثؾميٗ إٌٛػٝ ٚاٌىّٝ ٌزؾٍيً اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌزغبسة اٌذٌٚيخ ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ فٝ ِغبي ِغزخذِب ً ٌٚمذ رٛفً اٌجؾش ثطجيؼزٗ االعزىؾبفيخ اٌٝ االعبثخ ػٍٝ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌزغبإالد اٌزٝ اٌؼّبسح، رُ رٕبٌٚٙب ثؾى رفقيٍٝ فٝ ٔزبئظ اٌجؾش ٚفيّب ٍِخـ ِٛعض ألُ٘ رٍه إٌزبئظ: فٝ غبٌجيخ اٌغبِؼبد ٚاٌىٍيبد اٌّزنّٕخ ثؼيٕخ اعزخذاِب أِىٓ اٌزٛفً اٌٝ أعبٌيت اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ األوضش - اٌجؾش ؽيش رغزخذَ ِضيغب ِٓ أسثؼخ أعبٌيت ٌٍزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ رّضً االٔزشٔذ اٌمبعُ اٌّؾزشن فيّب ثيٕٙب ٝ: اٌزؼٍيُ األٌىزشٚٔٝ ٘ٚe-Learning ٚاٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ،Web based learning ُٚاٌزؼٍي، .Online Learning،ٚاٌزؼٍيُ ِٓ االٔزشٔذ Blended Learningاٌّخزٍو وّب أِىٓ اٌزٛفً اٌٝ رؼشيفبد ٚؽذٚد ِؾذدح ٌٙزٖ األعبٌيت األسثؼخ رؼزّذ ػٍٝ دسعخ اػزّبد ٘زٖ - ثٕغجخ رقً اٌٝ وؤوضش األعبٌيت اػزّبدا ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ االعبٌيت ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚيؤرٝ اٌزؼٍيُ االٌىزشٚٔٝ صُ يٍيٗ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو ثٕغجخ رزشاٚػ % 100-80ٔزشٔذ ثٕغجخ رزشاٚػ ِب ثيٓ ُ ِٓ االيصُ يٍيٗ اٌزؼٍ% 100 %.30% صُ يٍيٗ اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّؼزّذ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثٕغجخ الرضيذ ػٓ 80-30ِب ثيٓ أِىٓ اٌزٛفً اٌٝ اٌؼذيذ ِٓ األعبٌيت اٌزٝ يّىٓ ثٛاعطزٙب اٌزغٍت ػٍٝ ِؾىٍخ االٔفقبي اٌّىبٔٝ ػٕذ - ِضً اعزخذاَ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد ارقبالد اعزذيٛ٘بد اٌزقّيُ ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذرذسيظ ِمشساد ٚأزشٔذ ِزمذِخ ِضً اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ ٚثشِغيبد اٌّؾبسوخ ٚاٌفيذيٛوٛٔفشٔظ ٚأٔظّخ اداسح اٌّؾزٜٛ ٝ عزبر ٚثيٓ اٌطالة ثؼنُٙ اٌجؼل فاٌزؼٍيّٝ ٚاٌزٝ يّىٓ ِٓ خالٌٙب اٌزٛافً اٌزفبػٍٝ ثيٓ اٌطبٌت ٚاأل اعزخذاَ أعٍٛة اٌزؼٍيُ اٌّخزٍو ؽيش رؼزّذ هشيمخ وزٌه يّىٓ ِؾبوبح وبٍِخ ٌّب يؾذس فٝ اٌٛالغ، ٌىٍيخ ٌالٔزظبَ فٝ ثشٔبِظ اٌٝ ااٌزذسيظ ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ثؾىً أعبعٝ ِغ اٌؾنٛس اٌّخفف ٌٍطبٌت نب يّىٓ عجٛع، أيٚ فٝ ػطالد ٔٙبيخ األأدساعٝ ِىضف داخً االعزذيٛ ٌّذح أعجٛع ثىً فقً دساعٝ رخقيـ صٍش أٚ سثغ اٌغبػبد اٌّؼزّذح فٝ اٌجشٔبِظ ٌٍزذسيت اٌؼٍّٝ ٌٍطبٌت فٝ أؽذ اٌّىبرت أٚ وزٌه يّىٓ رٛفيش اٌذػُ اٌفٕٝ ٌٍطبٌت ػٓ هشيك ِشؽذ اٌؾشوبد اٌّؼّبسيخ فٝ ٔطبق ِؾيطٗ اٌغغشافٝ، مييُ إٌٙبئٝ ٌٍطبٌت ػٍٝ أوبديّٝ يّىٓ ٌٍطبٌت اٌزٛافً ِؼٗ ػٓ هشيك االٔزشٔذ، وّب يّىٓ أْ يؼزّذ اٌز اػذاد اٌزمبسيش ٚاٌّمبالد اٌجؾضيخ ٚاٌؼشٚك اٌزمذيّيخ ٚاٌشعِٛبد اٌزٝ يّىٓ اسعبٌٙب ألعزبر اٌّبدح ػٓ ؽيش يئدٜ اٌطبٌت Proctored Examهشيك االٔزشٔذ وّب يّىٓ ػمذ اخزجبساد ٔٙبئيخ ٌٍطبٌت ثؤعٍٛة ٌذٜ اٌغبِؼخ أٚ اٌىٍيخ.االخزجبس فٝ ٔطبق ِؾيطٗ اٌغغشافٝ فٝ ِشاوض ِؼزّذح ثبٌٕغجخ اٌٝ اٌزخقـ اٌؼبَ ٌٍجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ اٌّزنّٕخ ثؼيٕخ اٌجؾش فمذ عبء رخقـ اٌؼّبسح فٝ - ِٓ اعّبٌٝ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ يٍيٗ وً ِٓ اٌزخطيو اٌؼّشأٝ ٚػّبسح اٌجيئخ % 60اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ رخقـ دليك ؽيش 12ٌىً ِّٕٙب، وّب أِىٓ رقٕيف اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ اٌٝ % 20ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ عبءد ِٛمٛػبد اٌزقّيُ اٌجيئٝ فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ رقً اٌٝ ؽٛاٌٝ ٔقف ػذد اٌزخققبد اٌذليمخ صُ % 13% صُ اداسح اٌّؾشٚػبد ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ 15ٌٍجشاِظ ثبٌؼيٕخ يٍيٙب رخقـ اٌؼّبسح ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ .%8مبسٜ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ اٌزطٛيش اٌؼ % ِٓ 55أِىٓ ؽقش خّغخ دسعبد أوبديّيخ ؽيش عبءد ثشاِظ اٌّبعغزيش فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ - ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ Certificateاعّبٌٝ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ رٍيٙب ؽٙبدح خجشح ثبعزيبص ِغّٛػخ ِمشساد Associate of Arts inغبػذ ِؼّبسٜ % رٍيٙب دسعخ 7ِ% رٍيٙب دسعخ اٌجىبٌٛسيٛط ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ 33 Architecture ٌٝ2صُ دسعخ دوزٛساٖ اٌفٍغفخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ % 3ثٕغجخ ؽٛا .% فقٛي 4ثٍغ ِزٛعو اٌّذح اٌضِٕيخ ٌالٔزٙبء ِٓ ثشٔبِظ اٌّبعغزيش ػبِبْ ِٚزٛعو ػذد اٌفقٛي اٌذساعيخ - ِمشسا دساعيب ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ سعبٌخ ثؾضيخ ٚأ فٝ ثؼل 11دساعيخ ِٚزٛعو ػذد اٌّمشساد اٌذساعيخ ٕبن رفبٚد وجيش ثٓي ثشاِظ غبػبد اٌّؼزّذح فٙ ؾشٚع رقّيّٝ، ِٚٓ ؽيش ٌا ٌجشٔبِظ ّث األؽيبْ يٕزٙٝ ا - 30اٌّبعغزيش اٌزٝ رٛفش٘ب اٌغبِؼبد األِشيىيخ ٌٚىٓ ثٛعٗ ػبَ فبْ اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ اٌذسعخ يزطٍت ِب ثيٓ 510 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ ٝ اٌجشاِظ اٌزٝ رمذِٙب اٌغبِؼبد اٌجشيطبٔيخ فٙٝ رمشيجب ِٛؽذح ِٓ ؽيش اٌغبػبد عبػخ ِؼزّذح ثيّٕب ف 50 ٓ 180اٌّؼزّذح اٌّطٍٛثخ ٌٍؾقٛي ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش ٚ٘ٝ ِمغّخ اٌٝ صالصخ أعضاء فيّى عبػخ ِؼزّذح ّذح ٚيؾقً ػٍٝ ؽٙبدح خجشح ُص ارا أوًّ 60ٌٍطبٌت اٌؾقٛي ػٍٝ ً 120عبػخ ِؼز عبػخ ِؼزّذح يؾق عبػخ ِؼزّذح 180ٝ دثٍَٛ ػبٌٝ فٝ اٌزخقـ صُ ارا أوًّ اٌشعبٌخ اٌجؾضيخ فبٔٗ يىْٛ ثزٌه أوًّ ػٍ ً ػٍٝ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش. ٚيؾق رٕٛػذ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد االٔزشٔذ اٌّغزخذِخ فٝ ػٍّيخ اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ثبٌؼيٕخ ثذءا ِٓ اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ - غجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ٕخ صُ ِشٚسا ثبٌّمشساد اٌّٛمٛػخ ِٓ اعّبٌ% 36ِذػِٛب ثبٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ٕث ٝ اٌجشاِظ ثبٌؼي صُ أزٙبءا ثبعزخذاَ % 11ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ ٚأينب ِذػِٛخ ثبٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٔٝ ٚاٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ ٝ رىٌٕٛٛعيبد ِزمذِخ ِضً اٌفقٛي االفزشاميخ ٚرمٕيبد اٌّؾبسوخ ٚأٔظّخ اداسح اٌّبدح اٌزؼٍيّيخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌ ٛ ٔغجخ اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ اٌزٝ الرضاي رؼزّذ ِٓ اعّبٌٝ% 53 اٌجشاِظ اٌذساعيخ ثبٌؼيٕخ ِٚٓ اٌالفذ ٌالٔزجبٖ ٘ ٕ٘بن اٌؼذيذ ِٓ وٍيبد اٌؼّبسح فٝ أِشيىب ّب يذي أْ ػٍٝ اٌجشيذ االٌىزشٚٝٔ ِذػِٛب ثبٌجشيذ اٌؼبدٜ ِ يب ثبدسد ثبٌذخٛي فٝ ِغبي اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ؽزٝ ثذْٚ رٛافش اٌزىٌٕٛٛعي بد اٌّزمذِخ ٌذيٙب ثؼذ ؽيش ٚثشيطٔب أْ عٛق اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ يؼزجش عٛلب سائغخ ِٚشثؾخ الزقبديب ٚاٌؼذيذ ِٓ اٌّئعغبد اٌزؼٍيّيخ رزٕبفظ ٓ ٘زا اٌغٛق ٚثخبفخ فٝ اٌّغزمجً. ٌٍزٛاعذ مّ ِٓ % 82ثبٌٕغجخ اٌٝ االػزّبد االوبديّٝ فمذ عبءد ثشاِظ دسعخ اٌّبعغزيش فٝ اٌّمذِخ ثٕغجخ ؽٛاٌٝ - ِٓ اعّبٌٝ ثشاِظ اٌذوزٛساٖ ثبٌؼيٕخ % 50عّبٌٝ ثشاِظ اٌّبعغزيش ثبٌؼيٕخ رٍيٙب ثشاِظ اٌذوزٛساٖ ثٕغجخ ا ِٚٓ اٌالفذ ٌالٔزجبٖ ػذَ ٚعٛد دسعبد ثىبٌٛسيٛط ِؼزّذح ثبالمبفخ اٌٝ لٍخ ٘زٖ اٌجشاِظ ؽيش أْ فؼٛثخ اربؽخ ثىبٌٛسيٛط ٘زا يٛمؼ ِذٜ ٚثشٔبِغب دساعيب ثبٌؼيٕخ 61 اعّبٌٝػذد٘ب أسثؼخ ثشاِظ ِٓ اٌؼّبسح ػٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍيُ ػٓ ثؼذ ؽزٝ اآلْ. ِجبؽشح فٝ ِغبي دػُ ٚأخيشا فبْ ٛيش ػٍّيخ رقّيُ ٔزبئظ ٘زا اٌجؾش رقت زط يخ اٌخطو اٌزمٕيخٌ اٌؼٍّيخ اٌزؼٍّي ٍيخ فٝ ِغبي رطٛيش افٝ اٌّئعغبد األ ّغبي ٌٍذساعبد اٌّغزمج ٌّٕب٘ظ اٌذساعيخ وبديّيخ اٌّؼّبسيخ، وّب يفزؼ اٌجؾش اٌ ٓ ثؼذ. ُ ػ ٓ هشيك اٌزؼٍي ْ لبثٍخ ٌٍزذسيظ ػ َ اٌؼّبسح ٌزىٛ اٌزمٍيذيخ فٝ ِشؽٍخ اٌذساعبد اٌؼٍيب ثبلغب اٌّشاعغ أ. أثؾبس ٚ وزت ٚ رمبسيش [1] Abdul majiee d, H.M. (2008) Developing and Evaluating of Interactive E-learn ing Systems for Co mputer and Eng ineering Courses, unpublished Msc. submitted to the Arab ian Academic in Denmark. Retrieved March 24, 2015 from: http://www.ao-academy.org/docs/master_degree_letter_by_ hothyfah_mazin_2308009.doc [2] Ar asteh, B ., Pir ahesh, S., Zakeri, A. and Arasteh, B. (2014) Highly Available and Dependable E-learn ing Services Using Grid System, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 143, 471 – 476. [3] B anday, M.T., Ahme d, M. and Jan, T.R. (2014) Applicat ions of e-Lea rning in engineering education: A case study, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 123, 406 – 413. [4] B ates, A.W.T. (2007) Technology, E-learning and Distance Education , Arabic edition, Obekan Publishers, Riyadh, KSA. [5] Berger, S., Mohr, R., Nösekabel, H. and Schafer, K. J. (2003). Mobile collaboration tool for university education. IEE E WE TICE 2003: Work shop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria. [6] B ouyer, A. and Ar asteh, B. (2014) The Necessity Of Using Cloud Co mputing In Educational System, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 143, 581 – 585. [7] CAP DM (2008) Global On-line Distance Education, Retrieved March 24, 2014 fro m: https://www.capdm.co.uk /mission/global -distance-learning/ [8] Cojoc ariu, V., Lazar, I., Ne deff, V. and Laz ar, G. (2014) SW OT analysis of e-learn ing educational services from the perspective of their benefic iaries, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116, 1999 – 2003. 511 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 [9] Ferrer, E. and Kirschning, I. (2014) A Methodology for the Development of Distance Learn ing Tasks Adaptable to the Student’s Learning Style, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141, 518 – 523. [10] GÖKS U, I. and ATICI, B. (2013) Need For Mobile Lea rning: Technologies and Opportunities, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103, 685 – 694. [11] Gr aham, C.R., W oodfiel d, W . and Harrison, J.B. (2013) A fra mework for institutional adoption and imple mentation of blended learning in higher education, Internet and Higher Education 18, 4–14. [12] Graham, C. R. (2004). Blended lea rning systems: De finition, current trends, and future directions. In Bonk, C. J. & Graha m, C. R. (Eds.). Handbook of blended learning: Global Perspectives, local designs, San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer Publishing. [13] Hanover Research (2011), Trends in Global Distance Learning , Retrieved March 24, 2014 from: http://www.hanoverresearch.com/ [14] Har per, K.C., Che n, K. and Yen, D.C. (2004) Distance learning, virtual c lassrooms, and teaching pedagogy in the Internet environment, Technology in Society 26, 585–598. [15] Kar adeniz, S. (2009) Fle xib le design for the future of distance learn ing, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1, 358–363. [16] Knapper, C. (2006). Lifelong learning means effective and sustainable learning: Reasons, ideas, concrete measures, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Retrieved Ma rch 24, 2015 from: http://www.ciea.ch/documents/s06_ref_k napper_e.pdf [17] Kumar , R. (2005) Research Methodology, A Step -By-Step Guide For Beginners, 2nd ed., SAGE Publications, London. [18] Lonn, S. and Teasley, S.D. (2009) Podcasting in higher education: What are the implications for teaching and learning? Internet and Higher Education 12, 88–92. [19] Moore, J. L. , Dickson-Deane, C. and Galyen, K. (2011) e-Learning, online learning, and distance learning environments: Are they the same? Internet and Higher Education 14, 129–135. [20] Moti wall a, L. F. (2007). Mobile lea rning: A fra me work and evaluation. Computers and Education 49, 581-596. [21] Royal Institute of British Arc hitects (RIB A), Online and distance learning From the RIBA, Retrieved March 24, 2014 from: http://www.architecture.com/files/ribaprofessionalservices/cpd/newonlineanddistancelearning.pdf [22] Schlingensiepen, J. (2014) Innovation In Distance, E- And Blended Learn ing In Educational Mass Production Using Inverted Classroom Model (ICM), Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141, 393 – 398. ة. ِقبدس أٌىزشٚٔيخ [23] Arab Open University, https://www.arabou.edu.k w/index.php [24] Atlantic International University, http://aiu.edu/index.html [25] Boston Architecture College (BAC), http://www.the-bac.edu/education-programs/online-education [26] Cardiff University, Welsh School of Architecture, http://www.cardiff.ac.uk /archi/distantlearning.php [27] Drexel University Online, http://www.drexel.com/ [28] Egyptian E-learning University, http://www.eelu.edu.eg/index.php/home_ar [29] FernUniversität in Hagen, http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/ [30] Hamdan Bin Mohamme d Smart University, http://www.hbmsu.ac.ae/ar [31] Harvard Extension School, Distance Learning , ttp://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses [32] Heriot Watt University, http://www.postgraduate.hw.ac.uk /prog/distance [33] Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), http://www.ignou.ac.in/ [34] Open University of Malaysia, http://www.oum.edu.my/v3/ [35] Online University in Switzerland, https://www.abmswiss.com/arabic/ [36] Open University of UK, http://www.open.ac.uk /postgraduate/qualifications/f65 [37] Robert Jordon University, http://www.rgu.ac.uk / http://www.the-bac.edu/education-programs/online-education http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/distantlearning.php 512 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ [38] San Francisco Institute of Architecture, http://www.sfia.net/distance-learning/ [39] Saudi Electronic University, https://www.seu.edu.sa/sites/ar/Pages/main.aspx [40] Southern Illinois University, School of Architecture, http://architecture.siu.edu/graduate/online-master-of-architecture/omarch-program-description.php [41] Syrian Virtual University, https://www.svuonline.org/SVUIS/index.php [42] University of Bath, Faculty of Engineering and Design, http://www.bath.ac.uk /engineering/distance -learning/icm/ [43] University of California Berkeley Extension, http://extension.berk eley.edu/static/online [44] University of Derby, http://www.derby.ac.uk /online/home-page [45] University of East London (UEL) , http://www.uel.ac.uk [46] University of Greenwich, School of Architecture and Construction, http://www.distancelearning.uk .com/ [47] University of Maryland – University College, http://www.umuc.edu/ [48] University of Missouri, College of Human Environmental Sciences , http://online.missouri.edu/degreeprograms/architecturalstudies [49] University of Phoenix, http://www.phoenix.edu [50] University of Terbuka (Indonesia Open University), http://www.ut.ac.id/en/ انًهحك ّبسيخ :*(1جذول ) ّؼ ظ ٌا ٓ اٌزخققبد ٚأ اٌجشِا ِ ٘ب ٙبئيخٌ خٍٛ خ إٌ ٓ اٌؼٕي ِ ٙب ُٚر اعمبه ٍجؾش ٌيخٌ خ اأٚل ٙب اٌؼٕي ٕز ٝ رنّ ِؼبد اٌز .ٌاغب انتخظظاخ انعًهيح انتخظظاخ اننظريح انجايعح اليبد اٌّزؾذح . 1 عبِؼخ ِيشالٔذ ثبٌٛ [47] األِشيىيخ ّبي ٚفْٕٛ )ػٍُ -رشثيخ -اداسح أػ آداة َٛ عيبعيخ -ربسيخ -ٔفظ غٍيضيخ -ػٍ -ٌغخ ٔا ٛيك -فؾبفخ ُّي عشافيه(. -رغ رق َ فؾيخ ِبد -ػٍٛ عيب ِؼٍٛ رىٌٕٛٛ َ ؽبعت ِبد. -ٚػٍٛ ٓ ِؼٍٛ أِ اليبد اٌّزؾذح 2 ً ثبٌٛ . عبِؼخ دسيىغ [27] األِشيىيخ -اداسح أػّبي -لبْٔٛ -عيبؽخ ٚفٕبدق رشثيخ. شثبء -ؽبعجبد -فْٕٛ ٓ -ٕ٘ذعخ )ٙو أِ ِبد ٕظُ( -ِؼٍٛ ُ -ٕ٘ذعخ ٌا ّي رق شيل -هت -عشافيه خ. -ّر فؾخ ػِب ّزؾذح3 ٍىخ اٌ ّّ ٝ ثبٌ َ ثيئيخ -لبْٔٛ -اداسح أػّبي [44] . عبِؼخ دسث -ػٍٛ عيبؽخ ٚفٕبدق. -رشثيخ ِبد فؾخ -ؽبعجبد ٚرمٕيخ ِؼٍٛ ٔفظ.ٚػٍُ ٜ ثبٌٕٙذ4 عيبؽخ -لبْٔٛ -رشعّخ -ٌغبد -رشثيخ [33] . عبِؼخ أذيشا غبٔذ اداسح -دساعبد رّٕٛيخ -ٚفٕبدق َ اعزّبػيخ -أػّبي ُ -ػٍٛ رؼٍي فؾبفخ ٚاػالَ. -ِغزّش َ -صساػخ ِبد -ػٍٛ -ؽبعجبد ِٚؼٍٛ َ -ِذٔٝ( -ٕ٘ذعخ )ِيىبٔيىب ػٍٛ فْٕٛ. -فؾيخ َٛ عيبعيخ. -رشثيخ -سيبميبد -الزقبد [50] . عبِؼخ أذٚٔيغيب اٌّفزٛؽخ5 ػٍ اليبد اٌّزؾذح 6 . عبِؼخ فٛٔيىظ ثبٌٛ [49] األِشيىيخ -اداسح فؾيخ -رشثيخ -اداسح أػّبي ُ ٔفظ ْ )ٌغخ -ػٍ آداة ٚفٕٛ رغٛيك(. -فؾبفخ -ربسيخ -أغٍيضيخ ِبد. -رّشيل عيب ِؼٍٛ رىٌٕٛٛ َ -رشثيخ ٌٚغبد [34] اٌغبِؼخ اٌّفزٛؽخ ثّبٌيضيب. 7 ُ ػٍٛ اعزّبػيخ )ػٍ َ -دساعبد اعالِيخ -ٔفظ ػٍٛ اداسح أػّبي ِٚؾبعجخ. -عيبعيخ( ِبد ٚ ٚعبئو ِزؼذدح عيب ِؼٍٛ -رىٌٕٛٛ عيب َ ٚاٌزىٌٕٛٛ َ -اٌؼٍٛ رّشيل ٚػٍٛ فؾيخ. ِٛاسد -ِؾبسيغ -اداسح )أػّبي [35] . اٌغبِؼخ اٌّفزٛؽخ ثغٛيغشا8 ِٕؾآد -ِٕؾآد فؾيخ -ثؾشيخ ِبد( -ٔفطيخ عيب ِؼٍٛ عيبؽخ -رىٌٕٛٛ ػٍُ ٔفظ. -ٚفٕبدق ْ االٌّبٔيخ9 ُ ٔفظ -عيبعخ ٚالزقبد -رشثيخ [29] . عبِؼخ فيش -ػٍ ُ -اداسح أػّبي -لبْٔٛ -سيبميبد ٍي رؼ فٍغفخ. -ربسيخ -اٌىزشٚٔٝ وٙشثبء ٚارقبالد. -ؽبعجبد ّبي . اٌغبِؼخ اٌؼشثيخ اٌّفزٛؽخ10 خ. -ٌغبد -رشثيخ -اداسح أػ ؽبعجبد. دساعبد ػِب http://www.sfia.net/distance-learning/ http://www.bath.ac.uk/engineering/distance-learning/icm/ http://www.distancelearning.uk.com/ http://www.phoenix.edu/ 513 JES, Assiut University, Faculty of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2015, pp. 490 – 514 انتخظظاخ انعًهيح انتخظظاخ اننظريح انجايعح ٓ ِؾّذ اٌزويخ . 11 ْ ث عبِؼخ ؽّذا [30] ثذثٝ -دساعبد فؾيخ ٚثيئيخ -اداسح أػّبي ُ اٌىزشٚٔٝ. رؼٍي غٍيضيخ. -رشثيخ -اػالَ -الزقبد -لبْٔٛ [41] . اٌغبِؼخ اٌغٛسيخ االفزشاميخ12 ِبد ٌغخ ٔا ِبريخ. -رمٕيخ ِؼٍٛ ٕ٘ذعخ ِؼٍٛ 13 ُ . اٌغبِؼخ اٌّقشيخ ٌٍزؼٍي [28]االٌىزشٚٔٝ ِبد رشثيخ. -اداسح أػّبي عيب ِؼٍٛ ؽبعجبد ٚرىٌٕٛٛ ٔيخ. 14 ٚ دساعبد ٔظشيخ. -اداسح أػّبي [39] اٌغبِؼخ ٌاغؼٛديخ االٌىزشٚ َ ِبد ػٍٛ ِؼٍٛ َ فؾيخ. -رىٌٕٛٛعيب ؽبعجبدٚ ػٍٛ ِبد ِٓ ِٛالغ اٌغبِؼبد ػٍٝ االٔزشٔذ.اٌّقذس: * رُ ػًّ اٌغذٚي ثٛاعطخ اٌجبؽش ٚلذ رُ اعزخشاط اٌّؼٍٛ 514 ٓ ِؼزٛق ٝ اٌؼّبسح )دسٚط ، ِؾّذ ِؾّٛد ؽغ ٓ ثؼذ ف ُ ػ ٓ اٌزغبسة ِاعزىؾبف اِىبٔيبد ٚفشؿ اٌزؼٍي .......غزفبدح ِ EXPLORE POSSIBILITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION IN ARCHITECTURE (LESSONS FROM INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES) ABSTRACT Rapid evolution of co mmunication and Internet technologies has great impact in the development of distance education methods. Also, increasing demand for higher education and the inability of traditional educational institutions to keep pace with this growing demand has led to increased demand for this type of education. Despite of widespread availability of programs an d degrees introduced and granted through distance education, academic progra ms in the fie ld of architecture is still limited. This is probably because the uniqueness of architectural education, which relies on direct interaction between students and professors at studios of design. Thus, a problem happens when transforming architectural curriculu m fro m trad itional education to distance education. So, this research tries to explore possibilities and opportunities for distance education in architecture. Analytical methods, both qualitative and quantitative were used to analyze several international e xperiences of distance education in the field of architecture. Many questions of research were answered that concerning with stating definitions and clea r boundaries for d iffe rent methods of distance education, figuring out the most appropriate methods for architectural education, shedding light on many of technologies used, describing statistically many of acade mic progra ms, and finding methods of overco ming p roble m of physical separation in teaching courses of design studios. Thus, results of this research support directly process of designing educational technical plans in architectural institutions. Keywords: Distance Learning, eLearning, Architectural Education, Instructional Technology, and Informatics in Architecture. 
work_lz6ffw5gcrbklfawhk3l73ialy	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 398 889 IR 018 069 AUTHOR Littman, Marlyn Kemper TITLE A Managerial Analysis of ATM in Facilitating Distance Education. PUB DATE 96 NOTE 9p.; In: Call of the North, NECC '96. Proceedings of the Annual National Educational Computing Conference (17th, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 11-13, 1996), see IR 018 057. PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PCO1 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Computer Networks; Computer Uses in Education; Costs; Delivery Systems; *Distance Education; Guidelines; Instructional Development; Nontraditional Education; Program Implementation; Technological Advancement; Telecommunications IDENTIFIERS *Asynchronous Transfer Modes; Network Architecture ABSTRACT In this paper, the fundamental characteristics and capabilities of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks in a distance learning environment are examined. Current and projected ATM applications are described, and issues and challenges associated with developing ATM networking solutions for instructional delivery are explored. Other topics include guidelines and strategies facilitating ATM implementation in the educational setting and costs of ATM products. (Author/AEF) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY D. Ingham TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Paper A Managerial Analysis of ATM in Facilitating Distance Education Marlyn Kemper Littman Professor, School of Computer and Information Sciences Nova Southeastern University 3100 SW 9th Avenue Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315 954.475.7025 marlyn@scis.nova.edu Key Words: asynchronous transfer mode, computer networks, distance education, telecommunications, technological planning Abstract In this paper, the fundamental characteristics and capabilities of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks in a distance learning environment are examined. Current and projected ATM applications are described. Issues and challenges associated with developing ATM networking solutions for instructional delivery are explored. Guidelines facilitating ATM implementation in the educational setting for instructional enrichment are presented. Introduction ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a connection-oriented, multiplexing and switching technology that is uniquely suited for the development and implementation of multi-service broadband networks. With its promise of universal connectivity and projected ability to seamlessly link faculty, students, and resource material at diverse locations in high quality educational environments, ATM is viewed as a key enabler for distance learning and networked multimedia and virtual reality applications. Pilot networks such as BAGNet (Bay Area Gigabit Testbed Network) ( http: / /george.lbl.gov /BAGNet.htmll), BEATMAN (Boulder Area ATM Network)(http://www.a.colorado.edu/%7Ebatman/Home.html), and ATDnet (Advanced "Call of the North" 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Technology Demonstration Network) ( http: / /www.atd.net /atdnet.html) are testing ATM operations in facilitating research initiatives that include telelearning and teletraining. Ca1REN (California Research and Education Network) participants including the University of California, San Jose State University, and San Francisco State University are exploring the use of ATM for videoconferences, teleseminars, teleconsultations, medical imaging, remote diagnostics, and statewide delivery of graduate programs in the field of library and information science (http://www.pacbell.com/SuperHi/CalREN/Projects/). Although advances reflected in ATM technology create new opportunities for bringing leading edge applications to the desktop, the campus, and the wide area environment, debate continues in academic circles about whether the time is right to invest in ATM technology. An analysis of my case study research reveals various concerns among those investigating the feasibility of ATM implementation. Potential barriers include costs, functionality, absence of standards, and limitations on ATM's ability to integrate voice with other media. ATM technology is still in its infancy. Data and documentation on the effectiveness of ATM use in the educational domain are limited. Questions that are integral to any consideration of ATM as a networking option for accommodating distance education include the following: What are the fundamental characteristics of ATM? How are institutions currently using ATM? What are some potential applications? What are advantages and limitations associated with ATM implementation? What areas of concern do educators have about ATM deployment? What are major ATM planning guidelines? Is ATM affordable? This presentation addresses these questions, demonstrates the capabilities of ATM in the distance education environment, and presents strategies for ATM deployment. Fundamental Characteristics of ATM ATM is characterized by its high speed transmission efficiency in providing bandwidth- on-demand for multiple types of network traffic, and support for both private and public networks. ATM works at rates of 155-Mbps (OC-3) and 622-Mbps (OC-12) and is projected to reach 10-Gbps (OC-192). Optionally, ATM can also operate at 45-Mbps and lower rates. At the core of ATM technology is a standard fixed sized 53-byte cell consisting of a 5- byte header and a 48-byte payload or information field. Since the cell length is constant and buffer memory size is always known for each cell, ATM-based networks switch information from source to destination very quickly. A multimedia application is made up of time dependent, continuous traffic such as video and audio and time independent traffic such as text. The ATM platform is designed to handle these elements equally well. The terms "ATM," cell switching," and "cell relay" are often used interchangeably. ATM has emerged as the technology of choice for next generation LANs (local area networks), MANs (metropolitan area networks) and WANs (wide area networks), and integrated networked environments. Standards for ATM based integrated broadband networks are defined by the International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunications Sector (ITU-T), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the ATM Forum, an international consortium of vendors, governmental agencies, communications carriers, and end users. ATM can work over such physical media as copper and optical fiber and are being adapted to support wireless networks. National Educational Computing Conference 1996, Minneapolis, MN Applications Distinguished by its projected capability for accommodating full motion video, audio, data, and images on the same network, ATM is designed as a universal transparent communications solution. With its capacity for supporting integrated services and real time-traffic requirements, ATM is expected to revolutionize instructional delivery to remote learners. Operational since August, 1994, the North Carolina Information Highway (NCIH) is the first widescale public implementation of ATM technology (Patterson & Smith, 1994). According to Gary Munn (personal communication, June 8, 1995), Sales Engineering Manager with Fujitsu Network Switching, "the beauty about ATM use in the NCIH is its flexibility." Applications range from teleworkshops for physicians and medical students to virtual museum field trips offered by the North Carolina Museum of History so that students from outlying rural schools can participate in museum activities. In the metropolitan Wilmington area, a hospital serving as a node on the NCIH employs ATM by day for medical imaging and by night for delivery of advanced master's courses in nursing so individuals can upgrade skills and earn credentials on site without driving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peggy Manring (personal communication, June 7, 1995), Head of the Distance Learning Department at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, indicated that videoconferencing is a popular NCIH option for delivering courses in history, psychology, and T'ai Chi to learners throughout the state. Manring noted: "Through handling full motion, real-time video, ATM facilitates the development of a collaborative learning atmosphere that resembles the ambiance found in a traditional classroom." NCIH is also designed to facilitate high speed connection to the Internet, thus allowing students to rapidly access large video and audio objects to further enhance the learning experience (http: / /www.ncih.net /nciinl). NYNet is an ATM testbed in New York State providing high bandwidth connections for such institutions as Cornell University and Columbia University (http: / /www.npac.syr.edu:80 /users /hariri). Projects in progress include development of approaches for incorporating virtual reality (VR) simulations into educational programs for students in kindergarten through 12th grades. In Indiana, Ameritech introduced an ATM based network that will eventually connect approximately 1,700 schools to the Access Indiana Information Network (http//www.ai.org/) (Littman, 1996). This ATM network implementation will allow learners to virtually explore sites such as the zoo and art museum without incurring expense to the schools or disruption to the visited location. In the field of telemedicine, ATM supports the transfer of MRIs and CAT scans between the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center. Neurosurgeons at the University of Virginia's Health Sciences Center use an ATM network configuration to consult with physicians at nearby health care facilities, thereby eliminating the need for patients or their doctors to commute between sites (Littman, 1996). LARG*net (London and Region Global Network), an ATM network linking the University of Western Ontario in Canada to three local teaching hospitals, enables health care training and research (http://www.largnet.uwo.cal). These examples of ATM in action are contributing to interest and enthusiasm in implementing telelearning applications. In a university setting, ATM paves the way for creating a technology mediated multimedia environment that can accommodate individual learning styles, skills, and competencies (Littman, 1995). ATM deployment can lead to telementoring, new instructional methods, teacher training, innovative models for courseware development and curricular delivery, and establishment of virtual classrooms across international boundaries. The learning experience in the classroom "Call of the North" 4 230 can be enhanced by providing access to high resolution images, large quantities of data such as geographic maps, and multimedia resources from virtual electronic libraries. Advantages and Drawbacks Expanded communications requirements and the demand for multimedia applications have contributed to the popularity of ATM technology. ATM provides a seamless integrated environment that optimizes productivity and resource sharing. ATM technology can co-exist with existing networks and does not require replacement of equipment already in place. Designed as a multi-service platform, ATM also supports implementation of such fast packet communications options as frame relay and Switched Multimegabit Data Service (SMDS). An ATM network can be as small as a desktop or large enough to span the globe. ATM is noted for its high speed, reliable performance, and ability to handle delay sensitive and bursty traffic. Expectations are` that ATM Will serve as the foundation for an integrated LAN-MAN-WAN infrastructure by the turn of the century. Despite the promise of ATM, there are barriers to ATM deployment. These include costs for equipment, communications, and operations; expenditures required for making the transition to the new technology; and lack of off-the-shelf availability of services and products. ATM operations, protocols, network topologies, and application requirements are still being defined. The standards are not yet complete. Bill Jones (personal communication, June 8, 1995), network analyst at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), indicated that a critical factor in ATM assessment is clearly understanding technical specifications of the products under consideration. Jones said: "You must determine how products function in terms of your computer communications requirements." Jones pointed out that ATM is a fairly new technology. "Some products won't work on single mode optical fiber while other products won't work at all. In investing in ATM, you must make sure the product is in actual use and not vaporware." ATM switches provide the underlying physical structure for the network configuration. The ability of ATM switches to sustain end-to-end network performance contributes to the importance of this emerging technology. Yet, there can be inconsistencies in the operation and performance of similar switches from different vendors in network installations. Vernon Williams (personal communication, June 14, 1995), lead systems engineer and network architect with communications and network services at VCU, stated: "A serious limitation associated with ATM is the lack of comprehensive standards and cross vendor support. At this point, you are virtually required to use a single vendor to supply all of your ATM equipment in order to achieve full functionality." With its capacity for high speed transmission, ATM appears to be the ideal solution for multimedia applications. However, another drawback of ATM is its currently limited capacity for carrying voice traffic. Nolle (1995) noted that General DataComm (Middlebury, CT) and Newbridge Networks (Herndon, VA) are among ATM vendors trying to correct this limitation. However, standards for voice transmission via ATM switching are not expected to be adopted until 1997. According to Munn (personal communication, June 8, 1995), with ATM's assurance of instant connections, users are under the false impression that ATM technology supporting instructional delivery and videoconferencing will be as easy to use as making a telephone call. Munn observed: "In reality, there is a steep learning curve." 5 National Educational Computing Conference 1996, Minneapolis, MN 231 ATM is in a state of transition. Factors that can contribute to user acceptance include consistency of physical interfaces, acceptance of agreed upon standards, lowered implementation costs, and quality of service guarantees. ATM Deployment Concerns Created to facilitate deployment of broadband communications networks, ATM is making the transition from theory and pilot tests to practical use. Despite ATM's potential for supporting instructional delivery, research, collaboration, and worldwide information exchange, an analysis of the discussions I have had with university leadership indicates that managers are reluctant to implement ATM fully until the technology becomes more mature and affordable. The University of Minnesota Medical School links metropolitan hospitals over an ATM network to provide education to medical residents and deliver distance training to physicians in the field. Will Murray (personal communication, June 14, 1995), senior systems programmer with university networking services at the University of Minnesota, noted: "In terms of campus activities, we have had success in using ATM for pilot projects involving such high bandwidth implementations as 3-D molecular modeling. We will seriously look at ATM for our campus backbone network once the standards are more clearly defined and products are more readily available." Steven Zink (personal communication, June 9, 1995), Associate Vice President for Information Resources and Technology at the University of Nevada, said: "In preparation for ATM, we have wired our campus with optical fiber. Although we plan to implement ATM, we don't want to be on the bleeding edge." Bill Bard (personal communication, September 1, 1995), telecommunications manager at the University of Texas at Austin, noted: "ATM poses technological uncertainties. We are presently using ATM for test purposes to discover if it works." ATM usage also poses important pedagogical questions in relationship to distance education. What are the implications of ATM paradigms for the educational community? Should an ATM enabled virtual university replace a physical campus site? What are the merits and limitations of ATM implemented distance education sessions in comparison to traditional classes? What factors can contribute to effective teaching and learning in an ATM virtual classroom? Can ATM facilitated instruction accommodate diverse student and faculty abilities, motivations, and personalities? What re-orientation will be necessary for faculty who have resisted the use of electronic tools and techniques for either educational or personal reasons? ATM technical issues are complex. The pedagogical questions associated with the educational use of ATM are multifaceted. In planning the migration to ATM, managers must ensure that expectations concerning ATM are realistic, promote understanding of ATM capabilities and applications, and address instructional concerns. Planning Strategies ATM is an emerging technology. The ATM infrastructure is intricate and detailed. How can managers develop ATM networking capabilities? What kinds of strategies can ensure that ATM contributes to effective educational outcomes? Is the cost/benefit relationship associated with ATM implementation strong enough to warrant a commitment of university funding? Does the technology satisfy institutional requirements? Robert H. Evans (personal communication, June 12, 1995), Professor of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the University of Miami Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, is working on a pilot ATM project that involves the use of data from satellites to study ocean phenomena. Evans said: "A knowledgeable user can achieve fairly credible results with ATM, but ATM is clearly not a plug and play "Call of the North" 6 234 Tracking ATM Conclusion References There is considerable excitement about ATM. Advances in this technology are occurring rapidly. Herman Hughes (personal communication, June 10, 1995), Professor of Computer Science at Michigan State University, predicts that an ATM infrastructure will be in place within the next three to five years. The projected full-scale implementation of ATM is generating a multiplicity of products and service providers and claims of hardware, software, and vendor superiority. Jane Anne Hannigan (personal communication, May 20, 1995), Professor Emerita, Columbia University, advised: "Advances in this domain must be monitored so that we can develop reliable ATM solutions without being subjected to vendor pressures." Hannigan recommends creating an annotated file of information or "watching brief" that can be kept online. The Web is a rich source of ATM information. Technological developments are highlighted at such Web sites as http://www.atm.forum.com/. ATM has emerged as an important technology for achieving an integrated networked environment. ATM can support innovative educational applications that reshape how future generations of students and instructors communicate, interact, and discover new knowledge domains. Migration to ATM requires careful planning. Steve Huber (personal communication, March 15, 1995), observed: "The ATM field is changing rapidly. Those involved in the implementation process must be committed to continually modifying their strategies to reflect product and standard improvements without sacrificing the integrity of mission- critical goals and objectives." By supporting reliable high speed, high performance transmission of multimedia applications to the desktop and in the wide area environment, ATM networks can lead to a revolution in teaching, learning, and research. An understanding of the capabilities, advantages, and drawbacks of ATM technology is critical in addressing challenges associated with the design and implementation of ATM networks for the distance education environment. Jeffries, R. (1995, February). Building an ATM campus backbone. Business Communications Review, 25, 27-31. Littman, M. K. (1996). Computer networks as facilitators for learning. In K. E. Vandergrift (Ed.), Ways of knowing: Literature and the intellectual life of children (pp. 137- 184). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow. Littman, M. K. (1995). New educational paradigms through ATM. In T. Sechrest, M. Thomas & N. Estes (Eds.), Leadership for creating educational change. Volume 2 (pp. 689- 691). Austin, TX: University of Texas. McQuillan, J. (1995, April). ATM: year threeA report. Business Communications Review, 25, 10-12. Nolle, T. (1995, June). Voice and ATM: Is anybody talking? Business Communications Review, 25, 43-49. Patterson, J. S. Er Smith, W. I. (1994, November/December). The North Carolina Information Highway. IEEE Network: The Magazine of Computer Communications, 8, 12- 17. 9 National Educational Computing Conference 1996, Minneapolis, MN (9/92) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERO Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) NOTICE REPRODUCTION BASIS IC This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release (Blanket)" form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing all or classes of documents from its source organization and, therefore, does not require a "Specific Document" Release form. This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission to reproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, may be reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Release form (either "Specific Document" or "Blanket"). 
work_m3aogx7udvdjdnizi56xtrcpri	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_m4kvijmqxnaifdm66xteapyvfm	----	doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2006.03.005 ARTICLE IN PRESS Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu Typology of teacher perception toward distance education issues – A study of college information department teachers in Taiwan q Yu-Hui Tao a,*, Chu-Chen Rosa Yeh b a Department of Information Management, National University of Kaohsiung, 700 Kaohsiung University Road, Kaohsiung 811, Taiwan, ROC b Institute of Human Resource Management, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC Received 31 August 2005; received in revised form 21 February 2006; accepted 26 March 2006 Abstract The popularity of distance education has grown rapidly over the last decade in Taiwan’s higher education, yet many fundamental teaching–learning issues are still in debate. While teacher–student interaction is a key success factor in dis- tance education, little work has been done on the teachers. The intent of this research was to clarify teacher’s perceptions on key distance education issues and to develop a discernible typology of different groups of teachers based on their per- ceptions. Because there may be a gulf between teachers and the technology used in distance education, the target of this study was teachers in information related departments in Taiwan’s colleges, who were more familiar with current technol- ogy. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were used to derive the typology. Five higher-level issue constructs emerged from the factor analysis: learning effect, customization, administrative challenges, geographic and resource integration, and instructional design challenges. Four groups of teachers, namely the skeptics, the optimists, the mild-promising group, and the outlier, were identified using cluster analysis of teachers’ perceptions on these five higher-level issue constructs. The profiles of the four groups of teachers were summarized and implications were discussed, which should provide useful insights to the policy makers of higher education on distance education decisions. � 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Distance education; Teacher’s perception; Factor analysis; Cluster analysis 1. Introduction Prompted by the radical changes in telecommunication technology of the last 30 years, distance education has gone through several evolutionary transformations, from text correspondence to programmed instruction with audio/visual aids such as tapes, radio, broadcasting or satellite television, and personal computers, to the 0360-1315/$ - see front matter � 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2006.03.005 q A previous version of this paper was presented at the 7th International Conference of Decision Sciences Institute, Shanghai, China, July 4–8, 2003. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 7 5919220; fax: +886 7 5919328. E-mail addresses: ytao@nuk.edu.tw (Y.-H. Tao), cc.rosayeh@msa.hinet.net (C.-C. Rosa Yeh). mailto:ytao@nuk.edu.tw mailto:cc.rosayeh@msa.hinet.net 2 Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS flourishing development of e-learning on the Internet (Simonson, Sweeney, & Kemis, 1993). Today, the Inter- net and the World-Wide-Web have become the predominant media for distance education, especially in the well-developed countries that offer degrees at bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate levels. (http://www.degree.- net). Despite the debate over the quality of Web-based education (Institute for Higher Education Policy, 1999), more and more higher level education institutions offer credit and non-credit courses via the internet because of increasing educational costs, lifestyle choices by many adult learners, and strong competitive pres- sures (Arenson, 1998; Mcgorry, 2003). With the gaining popularity of e-learning in distance education, many issues remain for practical implemen- tation. The biggest concern has been the question of whether distance education produces the same or even better learning outcomes than the traditional methods (LaBay & Comm, 2003; Miller, 2001; Russell, 1999). Although some studies did show equivalent performance (Dellana, Collins, & West, 2000; LaBay & Comm, 2003; Mehlenbacher, Miller, Covington, & Larsen, 2000), they also implied that online learning was not for everyone. For instance, Mehlenbacher et al. (2000) pointed out that reflective and global learners performed significantly better online than active and sequential learners. Mixed student satisfaction toward the distance education has also been an issue in addition to class performance (Stewart, Waight, Norwood, & Ezell, 2004; Vamosi, Pierce, & Slotkin, 2004). More critically, Frankola (2000) indicated that between 20% and 50% dis- tance learners dropped out of the online classes due to the following seven reasons: students’ lack of time, lack of management oversight, lack of motivation, problems with the technology, lack of student support, individ- ual learning preferences, poorly designed course, and substandard/inexperienced instructors. The issue of high student-dropout rates was highlighted by Xenosa, Pierrakeas, and Pintelas (2002) and Moody (2004) as a glo- bal concern. Teachers played an important role in the success of distance education (Gibson, Tesone, Hodgetts, & Blackwell, 2001; Lin, Young, Chan, & Chen, 2005; Wiesner, 2000), especially those in higher education (Croy, 1998; Haas & Senjo, 2004). Addressing the question raised by Shoemaker (1998) on the leadership of distance education in higher education, Irlbeck and Pucel (2000) identified five common elements requiring leadership, including quality of education, planning, implementation, resources, and support. Teachers and government policies have significant influences on all these five elements. Berge, Muilenburg, and Haneghan (2002) also suggested that teacher issues were the highest ranking barriers to a successful distance education program. Teachers have been reported to have problems with distance education because of the extra work on class- room material conversion (Lee, 2002), difficulty to gauge student learning (Motiwalla & Tello, 2000), and the lack of teacher–student interaction (Arbaugh, 2005; Ausserhofer, 1999; Gibson et al., 2001; Wiesner, 2000). However, as can be seen in the abundant literature on the effect of distance education, the majority of data were drawn from the learners’ perspective instead of the teachers’ (Carr, 2000; Everetts, 1998; Gibson et al., 2001; Hailey, Keith, & Hult, 2001). Although some teachers’ viewpoints could be found in these liter- atures, since the authors were also teachers, we found very little full-scale empirical research done to collect the teacher’s side of the story. Existing literatures on this respect were limited to small-scale qualitative studies (see Broady-Ortmann, 2002; Haas & Senjo, 2004; Lao & Gonzales, 2005) or studies toward a certain artifact (such as Woods, Baker, & Hopper, 2004). Croy (1998) once pointed out that ‘‘it is faculty who bear primary responsibility for the impact of distance technology in higher education, and there is currently a wide gulf between faculty attitude and this technology’’. Blignaut and Trollip (2003) were aware of this lack of teacher studies and had developed a tax- onomy of faculty participation in synchronous learning environments. Howell, Saba, Lindsay, and Williams (2004) presented seven strategies for university administrators and faculty for deploying their own strategic plan to ensure program success. These strategies included: (1) enabling colleges and departments to accept more responsibility for distance education activities; (2) providing faculty more information about the dis- tance education programs and activities; (3) encouraging faculty to incorporate technology into their tradi- tional classrooms; (4) providing strong incentives for faculty to participate in distance education; (5) improving training and instructional support for distance education faculty; (6) building a stronger distance education faculty community; and (7) encouraging more distance education scholarship and research. Unfortunately, these seven strategies were merely general descriptions, and did not offer specific links to applicable groups of teachers with different motivations, perceptions or experiences. There was still a void in the understanding and description of teachers in terms of their overall attitude toward distance education. http://www.degree.net http://www.degree.net Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx 3 ARTICLE IN PRESS We believe this kind of information is important for school leaders in their strategic decision to effectively invest in distance education (Shea, Motiwalla, & Lewis, 2001), to minimize teacher resistance, and to encour- age innovation (Irlbeck & Pucel, 2000). Therefore, the intent of this research was to clarify teacher’s percep- tions on key distance education issues and to develop a discernible typology of different teacher groups based on their perceptions. To reduce possible ‘‘noises’’ caused by unfamiliarity with the technology on the teachers’ part, the target of our study was limited to teachers in information related departments in Taiwan’s higher education institutes. Taiwan’s distance education is briefly introduced below before presenting the research methodology for this study. 2. Distance education in Taiwan Distance education programs could date back to the 19th century. Since then, pioneers in UK and USA have continued to re-invent new generations of distance education (Williams & Nicholas, 2005), and have offered to the world online bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. These well-developed countries set good examples for developing countries such as Taiwan to follow. To set the stage for this study, the infor- mation and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and needs of Taiwan’s distance education were described in this section along with outstanding issues. Taiwan’s government began its own National Information Infrastructure (NII) project in June 1994 after the US government initiated its NII project in 1993 (Chen, 2003). As of February 2005, it was estimated that over 13.8 millions of people go online in Taiwan, which was about 60% of the Taiwan’s 23-million population. In addition, 54% of Taiwan’s households used broadband to access the Internet. In World Economic Forum’s global information technology 2004–2005 report, Taiwan was ranked 15th in the world in terms of network readiness (Schwab, 2005). Because of the high percentage of Internet population, applications such as elec- tronic commerce (EC) and e-government services were popular and common practices in Taiwan (Taiwan Network Information Center, 2005). Taiwan’s e-government was ranked first by Brown University (West, 2005) and 7th by Waseda University (Waseda University of e-Government, 2006). On the EC side, Taiwan’s ability to support and promote digital business and ICT services was ranked 22nd among 65 major economics countries in the 2005 white paper published by Economist Intelligent Unit (2005). These data showed that Taiwan’s ICT infrastructure was very competitive in the world, and should have been more than adequate for distance education. The need for distance education in Taiwan could be seen from its development in three phases. In 1986, National Open University (NOU, http://www.nou.edu.tw), the first higher education institute in Taiwan to offer distance education and continuing education to adults, was established. NOU originally delivered multi- media learning contents via television and radio broadcasting, and started its internet-based classes in 2002. In September 1994, the NII team coordinated the Ministry of Education (MOE) to build an experimental high speed network platform for testing real-time multicast, virtual classroom and curriculum on demand systems in five Taiwan’s national universities. In 1996, real-time multicast distance education was commonly operating in Taiwan’s higher education institutes (Chen, 2003). In 1998, many Taiwan’s universities began to develop Internet-based distance education programs founded on the successful MOE project. Examples of large-scale implementations could be found in National Sun Yat-sen Cyber University (http://cu.nsysu.edu.tw/) and National Taiwan University Online Courses (http://nol.ntu.edu.tw/guest/). In terms of degrees via distance education, NOU has been the only channel offering bachelor degrees and is currently experimenting with the master’s degrees. Since the establishment of NOU, 280 thousand adult stu- dents had participated in NOU programs, however, only 25,000 of them had earned their bachelor degrees. In terms of real-time multicasting, it mainly offered credits for general elective courses across universities. At the same time, online programs provided by individual universities were mainly for non-degree programs or courses-for-credit programs toward a future degree. The MOE in Taiwan had heavily regulated these devel- opments from the start. Taiwan had over 150 higher education institutes to serve the population of 23 mil- lions. The fact that only NOU offered degrees via distance education did not meet the demands of adult learners in Taiwan on distance education. Facing the pressure of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to open Taiwan’s education market, MOE has gradually loosened its tight grip on Taiwan’s higher education in order to achieve global competitiveness. http://www.nou.edu.tw http://cu.nsysu.edu.tw/ http://nol.ntu.edu.tw/guest/ 4 Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS The old regulation by MOE set a limit on the number of credits earned through distance education toward a degree in Taiwan’s higher education institutes; only up to one third of the total graduation requirement were admitted for degree programs (Ministry of Education, 2001). Because of this limitation, many university lead- ers in Taiwan were constrained in their investment and promotion in distance education and thus fell behind their main Asian competitors such as China and South Korea. Recently, MOE has announced a loosening of this regulation from one third of total credits to one half, and to lift the limitation altogether on continuing education programs for K1–K12 teachers, management, and other domains related to Taiwan’s industrial development (Ministry of Education, 2005). This presents a great opportunity as well as challenges for Taiwan’s distance education. Taiwan has a special competitive advantage in language in the greater Chinese-speaking market. Although some well-developed countries such as the US and the UK are expanding their distance education markets to Asia where education value is emphasized traditionally, Taiwan has not seen a great impact thanks to the MOE regulation and the inadequate English proficiency level of local students. The poor English proficiency level had prevented the majority of Taiwanese students from taking imported distance education programs or courses delivered in English. This, however, presents a great opportunity to Taiwan’s distance education pro- viders. They are in the position to fulfill local market demands and potentially the demands of the greater Chinese-speaking communities around the world in distance education. Taiwan’s ICT infrastructure is very competitive in the world, and its ICT services in e-government and EC are prosperous. However, the preparation of higher education institutes for distance education is not quite ready due to a long history of constraining policy by the MOE. With the regulations relaxing, school leaders in higher education institutes are no longer constrained by uncontrollable policy impacts on their leadership (Irlbeck & Pucel, 2000). Consequently, faculty issue becomes the next critical theme in the leadership elements for distance education leaders (Irlbeck & Pucel, 2000). After two decades of lukewarm development and hap- hazard implementation, it is especially important to understand the mindset of these faculties who stand at the front line of the battle to compete on distance education. 3. Methodology Because there was no existing typology of teachers in the distance education literature which had presented very diverse views through the development of distance education, this study took an exploratory approach to generate a typology of teachers on various distance education issues. This was done by designing a survey of current distance education issues to collect data from target teachers, and using statistical tools of factor anal- ysis and cluster analysis to categorize responding teachers on a set of issue dimensions derived from the data. The methodology is described in full detail below. An extensive literature review, which included major research papers or reports from 1997 to 2003, was conducted to uncover issues related to distance education. As a result, two basic issue categories emerged from the review. The first was the concerns of the learning effect produced by distance education, such as its ability to facilitate teaching performance and learning outcome, characteristics which enable customization and indi- vidualization of learning, and its ability to integrate learning resources and environment. The second category was the concerns related to the implementation and school administration of distance education, such as its cost to implement, its ability to affect the competitive situation in the higher education market, and its ability to integrate structure within and among schools. From the literature discussed above, a 30-item questionnaire was generated to collect teachers’ perceptions of various distance education issues as shown in Table 1. Only those unique and important issues with at least two references were adopted as questionnaire items. These questions were measured with a seven-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 (extremely disagree) to 7 (extremely agree). Demographic data of teachers such as education background, training, type of affiliation, age, gender were collected through the same questionnaire, as well as their willingness to accept and to use distance education as an instructional alternative. The ques- tionnaire was pre-tested with four teachers, and was modified according to their feedback. The initial Cron- bach’s a was 0.965 for the 30-item perception survey, which demonstrates a high reliability. The final version of the questionnaire takes about fifteen minutes to complete. Table 1 Questionnaire items and references No. Question description References 1 Distance education is important in crossing over the restraint of geography Owston (1997), Gladieux (2000), Raab et al. (2001) 2 Schools are compelled into distance education due to the educational tendency and learners’ needs Harris (1999), Chassie (2002), Pahl (2003) 3 Distance education makes it easier for schools and teachers in providing learners a personalized learning environment Tien (2000), Wallace and Wallace (2001), Tsai and Tseng (2002) 4 Distance education raises the competitive capacity of the school Jain (1997), Jonhendro et al. (2002) 5 Distance education effectively integrates teaching resources Harun (2001), Geueke and Stausberg (2003) 6 Distance education effectively matches the choices between the schools and the learners Hillesheim (1998), Ubell (2000) 7 Distance education increases the flexibility of schools in making teaching strategies Hillesheim (1998), Welle-Strand and Thung (2003) 8 Distance education produces better learning results than traditional teaching Latchman et al. (1999), Louvieris and Lockwood (2002), Welle-Strand and Tjeldvoll (2002) 9 Distance education provides basic teaching as well as the fun of learning Pison (1997), Jonhendro et al. (2002) 10 Distance education boosts learners’ learning interests Jonhendro et al. (2002), Khalifa and Lam (2002) 11 Distance education rapidly delivers knowledge and information to learners Vaupel and Sommer (1997), Chassie (2002) 12 Distance education lowers learning opportunity cost in the learning Pison (1997), Raab et al. (2001), Ubell (2000) 13 The rise of distance education gradually replaces traditional teaching Owston (1997), Hartnett (1999), Carver et al. (1999) 14 Distance education accelerates the imitation between schools Jerman-Blazic (2000), Thiriet et al. (2002), Raab et al. (2001) 15 Distance education changes the current competition terms of education market Hillesheim (1998), Raab et al. (2001), Welle-Strand and Thung (2003) 16 Distance education promotes the school’s service-oriented culture Hillesheim (1998), Boone and Ganeshan (2001) 17 Distance education tailors for the learner and offers the requested content as well as the information Latchman et al. (1999), Unruh (2000) 18 The value of distance education lies in its capability to integrate technology into teachings Starr (1998), Peterson (2001) 19 Distance education develops mutual understanding between teachers and learners Starr (1998), Jonhendro et al. (2002), Liber et al. (2000) 20 Distance education boosts the teacher’s teaching performance Raab et al. (2001), Blignaut and Trollip (2003) 21 Distance education helps to understand learners’ individual preferences Tan and Teo (1998), Kabassi and Virvou (2004) 22 Distance education helps lower regional competition of schools by extending into global market Hailey et al. (2001), Jonhendro et al. (2002), Raab et al. (2001) 23 Distance education promotes information exchange between schools Scollin and Tello (1999), Raab et al. (2001), Thiriet et al. (2002) 24 Distance education fails to protect intellectual property rights of the knowledge Ubell (2000), Kennedy (2002), Syed (2001) 25 Distance education presents a time-consuming issue in preparing teaching material Croy (1998), Peterson (2001), Pahl (2003) 26 Distance education demands flexible learning contents Syed (2001), Kabassi and Virvou (2004) 27 Distance education environment construction is not easy Fosay (1998), Rogers (2000), Konstantopoulos et al. (2001) 28 Distance education is difficult to mimic face-to-face teaching Latchman et al. (1999), Carr (2000), Shapiro et al. (2002) 29 Distance education presents a difficulty in supervising the class condition Odin (1997), Hazari and Schnorr (1999), Syed (2001) 30 Distance education is a long-term investment strategy Ubell (2000), Raab et al. (2001), Carr (2001) Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx 5 ARTICLE IN PRESS 6 Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS Because of the educational infrastructure in Taiwan, college teachers who were affiliated with information related departments had more opportunities to experience learning technologies and possessed a better under- standing of the impacts of technology on the learning environment. They were also most likely to lead or par- ticipate in distance education projects in their schools. We had selected them as the target population of this investigation. The questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 400 teachers in the information manage- ment or information technology department of 150 universities, institutes of technology and junior colleges listed in the MOE in Taiwan. Segmentation of teachers’ perception of distance education issues was achieved through factor analysis and cluster analysis (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1998). Factor analysis was used to dissect teachers’ overall perception into a few revealing dimensions by extracting the underlying factors from the question items. These dimensions (factors) represented a higher-level construct of teachers’ perception on distance education issues. Factor analysis produced a factor score for each case on each dimension. These standardized scores now rep- resented teachers’ perceptions on the higher-level constructs. Cluster analysis was then performed using these factor scores as clustering variables. Segmentation was then determined using the most appropriate clustering results. 4. Findings The findings are briefly described in the order of teacher profile, factor analysis, and cluster analysis below. 4.1. Teacher profile A total of 80 teachers responded to the survey. After discarding 3 incomplete ones, 77 questionnaires were entered into our analysis, yielding a final response rate of 19.25%. Technically speaking, the case to variable ratio of 3.57:1 (77 cases versus 30 variables) in our study fell below the recommended general rule of thumb of at least 5:1 for an adequate factor analysis as suggested in Hair et al. (1998). However, 3.57:1 was higher than the 2:1 ratio suggested by Cattell (1988), and the 1:1 ratio suggested by Baggaley (1982). Roberts, Gibson, Rainer, and Fields (2001) also supported Cattell’s and Baggaley’s claims with evidences of existing references such as Abdul-Gader and Kozar (1995) and Essex et al. (1998). The descriptive statistics of teacher profile were summarized in Table 2. Briefly speaking, the majority of responding teachers were male, between the age of 31 and 45, and holding a Ph.D. degree. Over 62% of them were trained in information related fields but without formal training in educational methods. More than 75% of teachers served in private universities or colleges while nearly 25% served in public universities or colleges. Eighty percent of respondents said that they accepted the notion of using distance education, while a little more than 85% said that they were willing to try distance education as an alternative teaching method. In gen- eral, characteristics of respondents in terms of gender, age, education level, educational method training, and school affiliation met the overall image of the target teachers in Taiwan with a higher percentage of Ph.D. holding males in their 30s and 40s. From both the technical and analytical view, the representativeness of the respondents was considered ade- quate. However, caution is advised in generalizing the results of this study to all teachers in higher education institutes because the sample was limited to information-related faculty. 4.2. Factor analysis Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test for sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s test for sphericity were used to first examine the suitability of selected variables for the factor analysis (Bryman, 1989). As seen in Table 3, KMO test resulted in a 0.873 value that was greater than the suggested minimum value of 0.5 for adequacy, and Bart- lett’s test also demonstrated a very good sphericity (v2 = 1637.91, df = 437, p < 0.000). These tests indicated that the 30 variables were suitable for the following factor analysis. Factor analysis was used to extract the principal components of teachers’ perception on the 30 distance education issues. Only those extracted factors with eigenvalues bigger than one were selected. In the end, a total of five factors emerged which together explained 69.78% of the total variance. Varimax with Kaiser Table 3 KMO and Bartlett’s test for factor analysis Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy 0.873a Bartlett’s test of sphericity Approx. v2 1637.91 df 437 p-Value 0.000b a >0.5 minimum suggested value. b Level of significance. Table 2 Teacher’s profile Gender: (n = 77) Male 56 (72.7%) Female 21 (27.3%) Age: (n = 77) 625 2 (2.6%) 26–30 12 (15.6%) 31–35 16 (20.8%) 36–40 23 (29.9%) 41–45 18 (23.4%) >45 5 (7.7%) Course training in education: (n = 75) Normal college or university 8 (10.7%) Credits from education courses 5 (6.7%) None 62 (82.6%) Willing to try distance education: (n = 77) Yes 66 (85.7%) No 11 (14.3%) Degree: (n = 77) Ph.D. 53 (68.8%) Master 23 (29.9%) College 1 (1.3%) Major: (n = 77) Information 48 (62.3%) Information related 21 (27.3%) Non-information 8 (10.4%) School affiliation: (n = 77) Private 58 (75.3%) Public 19 (24.7%) Accept the concept of distance education: (n = 77) Yes 62 (80.5%) No 15 (19.5%) Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS Normalization was applied to ensure the extracted factors were distinct from each other. Question items 2, 4, 6, 12, 14, and 18 were dropped from the analysis due to their low factor loadings on every extracted factor. Table 4 shows the result of the factor analysis. Each factor was named to reflect a common higher level con- struct of those questions that loaded on the same factor. Factor one included 9 question items with regard to issues of learning effect, which resulted in a high Cronbach’s alpha of 0.9359. Four question items in relation to the customization issues made up the second factor, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.8177. The third factor included 5 question items concerning administrative challenges of distance education, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.7762. Three questions with respect to the ability of geographic and resource integration constituted the Table 4 Factor analysis results Factor Question number Cronbach’s alpha 1 Learning effect 13, 9, 20, 19, 16, 8, 10, 11, 21 0.9359 2 Customization 26, 27, 17, 22 0.8177 3 Administrative challenges 25, 24, 29, 15, 30 0.7762 4 Geographic and resource integration 1, 3, 5 0.7783 5 Instructional design challenges 28, 23, 7 0.7269 Overall 0.9467 8 Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS fourth factor, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.7783. The fifth factor had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.7269 and was composed of three question items regarding instructional design challenges. Cronbach’s alpha of the overall 24-item questionnaire remained high at 0.9467. 4.3. Cluster analysis K-mean cluster algorithm was then applied to obtain four distinct segments for teachers, which were fur- ther named according to the final cluster center position on each of the five factors identified earlier (see Table 5). As seen in Fig. 1, the four segments for teachers were: (1) cluster one: the skeptics, (2) cluster two: the opti- mists, (3) cluster three: the mild-promising group, and (4) cluster four: the outlier. (1) The skeptics: Teachers in this cluster were not convinced of the learning effect of distance education. Although they did not swing one way or the other on the issues of customization and administrative challenges, they did appear to be a little unsure about the ability of using distance education to integrate Table 5 Final cluster centers Cluster 1 2 3 4 Learning effect �1.34699 0.55038 0.49910 �1.26603 Customization �0.05939 �1.20376 0.08656 2.79220 Administrative challenges 0.06095 �1.97469 0.20506 �1.80373 Geographic and resource integration �0.21837 1.16464 �0.05957 1.58256 Instructional design challenges 0.31234 �0.06815 �0.02309 �4.72857 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 Le ar ni ng ef fe ct Cu sto m iz at io n A dm in . c ha lle ng es In te gr at io n D es ig n ch al le ng es Cluster variables F in al c lu st er c en te rs Skeptics Optimists Mild-promising Outlier Fig. 1. Segmentation of teachers’ perception on distance education issues. Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx 9 ARTICLE IN PRESS learning resources or to break geographic boundaries. They were also aware of the instructional design challenges brought forward by using distance education. Twenty teachers or 26% of total respondents belonged to this segment. They evenly spread across all age groups and between public and private schools. Among them, 80% were male, 50% held a Ph.D. degree and 80% majored in information. How- ever, a great majority (90%) of them had not received any course training in education at all. Although 70% of teachers in this group were willing to try distance education, only 55% of them accepted the concept. (2) The optimists: Though a smaller group, these teachers were stronger believers and supporters of distance education. They disagreed with customization and administration challenges issues, and were impressed with the geographic and resource integration ability of distance education. They were positive on dis- tance education’s learning effect, and did not think much about the instructional design challenges. Five teachers were in this group representing 6% of total respondents. They belonged to the higher age groups of above 36–40, and were affiliated with private schools. Among them, 60% were male. Interestingly, only 20% of them held a Ph.D. degree, and 50% of them had obtained course training in education. In terms of their major, 40% of them were in information and another 40% in information related fields. All teachers in this group accepted the concept and were willing to try distance education. (3) The mild-promising group: This group reflected the majority perception. They mildly agreed with the learning effect of distance education, but did not hold strong opinions on all the other issue dimensions. There were 51 teachers in the segment, representing 66% of the respondents. They fell between the age groups of 31–45, and were affiliated with private schools. Among them, 71% were male, 78% held Ph.D. degrees, but 82% had had no course training in education. Only 10% of teachers in this group did not major in information or related fields. A high 88% of teachers accepted the concept of distance education and a higher 90% were willing to try it. (4) The outlier: There was one teacher who held extremely strong opinions on all issue dimensions and could not be grouped with any other teachers. So this respondent was classified as an outlier. 5. Discussions and implications Three themes worthy of further discussion emerged from our analysis of teachers’ perceptions on distance education issues in Taiwan. The first is a lack of competitive awareness on the teachers’ part regarding the distance education environment. Second, the data showed a high percentage of teachers holding promising views on the development of distance education in Taiwan. Finally, the study revealed a substantial percentage of skeptic teachers whom should not be ignored in the decision and implementation of successful distance edu- cation programs. Discussions and implications were provided below for each theme. 5.1. A lack of competitive awareness The result of the factor analysis produced five higher-level constructs of distance education issues similar to our initial conceptualization from the literature review. The foremost concerns that teachers had in their mind were the ability of distance education to influence learning and teaching outcomes, since that was the most important part of a teacher’s role. Though separated from the learning effect factor, issues of customization and instructional design challenges ultimately led to the quality of distance education, and were indeed two very distinct constructs compared to traditional education. Other factors such as administrative challenges and geographic and resource integration were within our conceptual expectation on the implementation and school administration side. The only surprise was the issues regarding distance education’s ability to affect the competitive situation in the higher education market, which did not converge under the data structure of the responses from this sample. It was possible that teachers just did not care enough about these competitive issues since they were not at the position to make school competitive decisions. This surprise might have been the result of the previous experience of a constrained distance education development under the MOE regulations which had impeded school leaders in Taiwan to clearly see its future and to effectively implement strategies. Under the regulations, many of the investments or actions by school 10 Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS leaders were regarded as unrealistic and were resented by many teachers. With the recent MOE deregulation, school leaders can now better envision the role of distance education in their institutes for adoption decisions and implementation strategies. Very soon, schools will be forced to build appropriate ability of distance edu- cation to promote their competitive position in higher education market, and to consider proper evaluation of the returns or the critical success factors of distance education. We believe that teachers’ lack of awareness on the competitive issues will improve in the near future. 5.2. A high percentage of promising teachers Except for a small group of optimists, it appeared that most teachers were wary of the major issues regard- ing distance education and were unsure how these issues might play out in the future. The largest segment of teachers took a neutral position on all issue dimensions except for the learning effect dimension to which they expressed mild support. Teachers in this group would be the easiest to convert to proponents of distance edu- cation since they had not formed strong opinions one way or the other. The combined percentage of the promising group and the optimists group reached 72% of total respon- dents, which implied that the school leaders had a good chance to rally enough support from teachers once implementation and promotion of distance education started. We believe that the high percentage of promis- ing group was the result of a positive influence from previous experiences of distance education pioneers in countries such as the US and the UK. For these groups who believed in learning effect, we suggest school lead- ers to consider the following strategies offered by Howell et al. (2004) to further enhance their support for dis- tance education: (1) enabling colleges and departments to accept more responsibility for distance education activities, (2) encouraging faculty to incorporate technology into their traditional classrooms, (3) building a stronger distance education faculty community, and (4) encouraging more distance education scholarship and research. 5.3. A substantial percentage of skeptic teachers The fact that more than a quarter of the respondents were skeptics was alarming. These teachers were not sure of the customization and administration challenges brought forth by implementing distance education, nor did they care much about distance education’s ability to integrate resources. Moreover, they questioned distance education’s ability to produce quality education and learning outcomes. School policy makers should be aware that it might take a lot of effort to motivate the skeptics of distance education. More conclusive and positive evidence of the learning effect from distance education was required to win this group over. It was also possible that this group of teachers lacked appropriate training in the design and use of distance education, or that they simply did not acquire any positive experience from participating in a distance education project. Two possible remedies for the skeptics are offered below. 5.3.1. Increasing the percentage of teachers with course training in education Comparing teacher profile items, ‘‘course training in education’’ seemed to mark the most significant dif- ferences between the skeptics, the mild-promising, and the optimists. In our sample, there were only 10% of the skeptics and less than 20% of the mild-promising teachers who had acquired course training in education, while over 50% of the teachers in the optimists group had done so. Unlike K1–K12 teachers in Taiwan, teach- ers in higher education institutes were allowed to teach without basic training in education-related subjects. We believe enhancing teachers’ knowledge and experience in educational theories and practices could be an effective way to influence their attitude toward distance education. Accordingly, increasing the percentage of teachers with course training in education by offering more distance education related courses to teachers and encouraging teachers to take courses in teaching and education might be a direction for school adminis- tration to focus on. 5.3.2. Building dedicated support for teachers lacking experience or knowledge in distance education Teaching resources centers were established in many of Taiwan’s higher education institutes, and were especially emphasized by schools with successful distance education programs. Teaching resources centers Y.-H. Tao, C.-C. Rosa Yeh / Computers & Education xxx (2006) xxx–xxx 11 ARTICLE IN PRESS in many schools played important roles in providing training courses or activities to promote distance edu- cation. As a solution for the skeptics, schools might also dedicate teaching resources centers to the support for teachers lacking distance education experience or related resources. This could be done by providing individual consultation to teachers and encouraging participation in new distance education projects. Howell et al. (2004) offered similar strategies which were applicable in converting the skeptics. These included (1) providing faculty more information about the distance education programs and activities, (2) pro- viding strong incentives for faculty to participate in distance education, and (3) improving training and instructional support for distance education faculty. The taxonomy of faculty participation in synchronous learning environments developed by Blignaut and Trollip (2003) can also be a useful resource for school policy makers. We had little to learn from the one teacher in the outlier group, except that there is bound to be outliers in every issue. The implication of this outlier group is that policy makers better prepare themselves for noises in the process of all decision-making. 6. Conclusion The above discussion and implications should be referenced in light of some limitations of this study. The first research limitation was the case-to-variables ratio of 3.57:1, which was lower than the 5:1 general rule of thumb, although we had found evidences that claimed lower ratios to be acceptable (see Baggaley, 1982; Cat- tell, 1988; Roberts et al., 2001). The second limitation was the generalizability of this study which was limited to Information-related teachers. Because Information-related teachers had historically been one of the key driving forces behind distance education in Taiwan, the results might have represented a more favored view toward distance education among all teachers. In other words, it may take school leaders of higher education institutes additional efforts and time than what the results of this study might have indicated to successfully bring all the teachers on board on the issues of distance education. Due to the recent de-regulation by Taiwan’s MOE, Taiwan’s higher education institutes are facing a new challenge on distance education strategies. A clear understanding of the composition of teachers in these per- ception groups is important for schools’ policy makers to form better directions and decisions when imple- menting distance education. Researchers and developers of distance education technology should also be aware of these different groupings of users. 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Computers and Education, 39, 361–377. http://www.digitaldivide.net/news/view.php?HeadlineID=955 http://www.digitaldivide.net/news/view.php?HeadlineID=955 http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt05int.pdf Typology of teacher perception toward distance education issues - A study of college information department teachers in Taiwan Introduction Distance education in Taiwan Methodology Findings Teacher profile Factor analysis Cluster analysis Discussions and implications A lack of competitive awareness A high percentage of promising teachers A substantial percentage of skeptic teachers Increasing the percentage of teachers with course training in education Building dedicated support for teachers lacking experience or knowledge in distance education Conclusion Acknowledgements References 
work_m5ydbvtwbjhpxa2v65dpowhfau	----	Distance education at university level: opportunities and pitfalls Astronomy for the developing world IAU Special Session no. 5, 2006 J.B. Hearnshaw and P. Martinez, eds. c© 2007 International Astronomical Union doi:10.1017/S1743921307007065 Distance education at university level: opportunities and pitfalls Barrie Jones The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK email: b.w.jones@open.ac.uk Abstract. This paper presents an overview of distance education at university level and some of the associated challenges and pitfalls. Keywords. Astronomy education, distance education 1. Introduction For the purposes of this paper, I shall define distance education as the case where: (1) the student is remote from a “bricks and mortar” institution, a university in this case; and (2) the student studies (mainly) at home and/or in the workplace. From a university a few astronomers can reach many students who otherwise would be unable to study astronomy at university level. Students can live at home, and do not have to travel. This reduces student costs. Distance-learning students can study part-time, enabling them to finance their studies. This also applies to on-campus students. In this paper I shall discuss what is involved in going beyond “bricks and mortar” insti- tutions, namely the prerequisites for students, the importance of high-quality materials (electronic and printed) suitable for the distance learner, the importance of student pac- ing and student support, continuous assessment of students, examinations and feedback from students. Space does not permit me to discuss important issues such as curricula, developing local staff skills in distance education, and specific learning materials/course programmes/degrees. 2. Prerequisites There must be a full specification of what the student should bring to the course. This should encompass previous knowledge, previous skills and previous courses in the institution’s programme. The student must also have received advice about what courses are needed and what achievement levels are required for the target outcome: e.g. Diploma in Astrophysics, BSc in Physics and Astronomy. 3. High-quality materials High-quality materials, suitable for distance learning are essential. These remarks apply equally to electronic and printed media. The requirements are additional to the good writing desirable for any material. To compensate for the isolation of the distance learner the materials must be complete (given the likely inaccessibility of libraries, etc.), the style must be expansive and friendly. There must be a preliminary, self-administered self-test, with advice based on the outcome (e.g. remedial material for any prospective student falling just falling short of what is needed). There should also be embedded self- tests — short stop-and-think questions in the flow, longer end-of-section questions with 237 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 https://www.cambridge.org/core 238 B.W. Jones fully worked answers and comments. Beware of the uncritical use of lectures or outreach material made available over the Internet by some universities. A mix of printed and electronic media is good. The latter is not essential for effective distance learning, but it greatly helps. Electronic media comprise CD-ROMs, DVDs, email, and the Internet. The cost of a computer and modem is high. In developing countries school ICT facilities often have time free of use that could be made available to distance learners. Internet cafés also offer another opportunity for the distance learner to access information. Distance-learning software should minimize the ICT skills required. The goal is to use ICT for astronomy education, not ICT education for astronomy. Avoid requiring specific commercial packages, such as Word, Excel, etc., except at the higher levels, where students are more likely to have access to such tools in their normal home or work environments. 4. Samples of material Active learning must be encouraged. In a text, one useful device is the stop-and-think question, as follows. “. . . Thus, around aphelion the body is moving slowest, and around perihelion it is moving fastest. The difference in these two speeds is larger, the greater the eccentricity. Q What are the speeds at different positions in a circular orbit? In a circular orbit the equal areas correspond to equal length arcs around the circle, so the body moves at a constant speed around its orbit . . . ” Here is some not very helpful material. Suppose that a section has introduced the plan- ets and their order from the Sun. Their orbits have been described as “approximately circular”. Nothing else on orbits has yet appeared in the course. Then the student comes to the following material. “. . . The orbits of the planets are described by Kepler’s laws. There are three. 1 Each planet’s orbit is an ellipse, with the Sun at one of the foci. 2 The radius vector from the Sun to the planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times. 3 P = ka 3 2 where P is the sidereal orbital period of the planet and a is the semi- major axis of its orbit. Question X Using what you know about the Earth’s orbit, calculate the orbital period of an asteroid in an orbit with a semimajor axis of 2.3 AU. . . . (end of section) ——————————– Question X answer: 3.5 years” The teaching here needs to be “repaired” in several ways. Will the student know what an ellipse is? Likewise, focus, radius vector, sidereal orbital period, semi-major axis? https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 https://www.cambridge.org/core Distance education at university level 239 Where’s the diagram of an ellipse? What is k? Also, this is far too terse. Who was Kepler? How did he arrive at his laws? Is there going to be any explanation of these laws based on Newton’s laws? And so on. Furthermore the question “Using what you know about the Earth’s orbit . . . ” assumes that the student knows about and understands the Earth’s orbit. Don’t assume they know anything about the Earth’s orbit. I hope a course prerequisite is simple algebra (or that this has been taught earlier in the course). The terse answer “3.5 years” is not enough for distance-learning students. You need the full working, with particular attention to units. A comment should be added on significant figures. In addition to supportive texts, significant learning in astronomy can be accomplished via observations, without access to telescopes or laboratories, using readily available items, for example, to measure the luminosity of the Sun, with an electric light bulb (and power supply) as the most “advanced” item, or to measure the length of the sidereal day, which requires only a watch. Observational work can also be performed using virtual observatories and robotic telescopes. Regardless of how it is performed, observational work must be integrated with the rest of the course. 5. The importance of student pacing and student support Pacing is required to prevent study-time build-up. Specify the hours needed to reach various stages of learning, with realistic ranges, based on real time, not the “university clock”. Stop-and-think questions, and end-of-section questions not only aid learning, but enable the student to check that the learning outcomes associated with each stage have been reached. Continuous assessment not only provides student grades, but also provides pacing by setting submission deadlines a few times a year: some should be tutor marked assignments (TMAs), others (multiple choice) computer marked assignments (CMAs). Student support is vital. Access to a tutor, via letter, but preferably via telephone or email, plus group meetings (tutorials) in urban areas, is desirable. Likewise, access to other students by similar means is also important, though easier in urban areas. Continuous assessment also provides student support. As well as their grading and pacing functions, TMAs and CMAs should provide teaching, via tutor comments on TMAs, or via automated feedback on CMAs. Electronic submission and feedback could be an option, but not a requirement. 6. The problem of plagiarism Plagiarism is a particular challenge for the assessment of distance-learning assignments. Take steps as follows. Avoid using questions openly available on the internet — at the very least, “version” them. Student self-help groups are to be encouraged, but plagiarism is a danger. Spot-checks on work from different students can be revealing (e.g. the curious case of the spelling mistakes common to two students’ assignments points to “cut-and-paste” plagiarism!). An invigilated written examination will usually reveal if the continuous assessment grades are a fair reflection. 7. Examinations If successful course completion is for professional advancement there needs to be an invigilated examination (which can be submitted electronically). Proof of identity with a photograph needs to be presented to the invigilator. A suitable examination venue and invigilation should be arranged as close to the student/group of students as possible. A https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 https://www.cambridge.org/core 240 B.W. Jones few determined cheats might still defeat the system, but as always, they are ultimately only cheating themselves. 8. Closing the loop - student feedback Any educational system must seek to improve itself. A crucial ingredient is feedback from students. Do not rely passively on feedback, but design a system, perhaps with some enticement, such as reduced fees on future courses. 9. Conclusion Distance education is not an easy option for the student, but it can reach students who otherwise would have no option at all. Barrie Jones https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921307007065 https://www.cambridge.org/core 
work_m7q6jotomnai5loee7d4qicbcu	----	Alleviating the Senses of Isolation and Alienation in the Virtual World: Socialization in Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 ( 2013 ) 332 – 337 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Ferhan Odabaşı doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.09.199 ScienceDirect 3rd World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership (WCLTA-2012) Alleviating the senses of isolation and alienation in the virtual world: Socialization in distance education Yasha SazmandAsfaranjan a *, Farzad Shirzad b, Fatemeh Baradari b, Meysam Salimi a, Mehrdad Salehi a a Graduate School of Management, Management and Science University, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia b International Business School, University Technology Malaysia, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Abstract The magnitude of distance education in today’s pedagogical businesses is irrefutable. Implementation of discussion forums in distance learning has a profound impact on learners’ achievement and it is highly recommended (Rose & Ray, 2011; Shana, 2009). There should be social, teaching, and cognitive presence in an online educational community (Tucker, 2012). On a web-based discussion forum, learners can socialize, make pen pals, receive comments from teachers, and learn in groups in a virtual community. Adaptive and collaborative online discussion forums are already used by multifarious English learning websites; nonetheless, apparently, it is not implemented by English language centers in Malaysia. The study aims to examine English learners’ readiness to use online discussion forums (oral and verbal communication). A dual moderator focus group was used to conduct the study. Whilst some of the questions were arisen from the factors demonstrated in the modified technology acceptance model (TAM) in E-learning (Masrom, 2007), the others were brought by the participants themselves. The discussions were transcribed and the collected data were coded, reduced, and displayed to draw the conclusion. As an outstanding result of the qualitative exploratory research, English learners expressed a strong desire to use web-based discussion forums. Thus, an online discussion board will possibly increase the online participation of English learners. The outcome of this study elaborates on the key success factors in the implementation of E-learning as an online service marketing tool which results in augmentation of the future user numbers, amplification of learner e-loyalty and retention, attracting more potential clients, increase in learner satisfaction level, and profitability of English language centers in Malaysia. Furthermore, implementation of web-based discussion forums might be a contributing factor to ameliorate the predicament of isolation and alienation in addition to meet the English (language) learners’ need for socialization on the Internet. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer review under the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Ferhan Odabaşı Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Ferhan Odabaşı Keywords: Virtual community; e-learning; English language; online marketing. 1. Introduction Online learning communities have become immensely popular in recent years, and it has led to an increasing number of researches in this subject area (Tsai, 2012). In an online learning community which can be formed by implementing a web-based forum on the Internet, English language learners are provided with a platform where learners can communicate and learn from each other apart from what they learn from their teachers. Regarding the fact that the location does not matter on the Internet, everybody, anytime, in any location can use the Internet as a learning tool. On an Internet forum (message board) learners can make pen pals from other countries and communicate with them in English whether it is written language by typing or oral language by recording voices * Yasha SazmandAsfaranjan, E-mail: Yasha.Sazmand@gmail.com, Tel: +6-012-2259994. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 333 Yasha Sazmand Asfaranjan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 ( 2013 ) 332 – 337 on the forums. Languages and cultures in an international environment is recommended as there are lots of advantages that learners can take (Fryer, 2012), online language learning communities can be considered a great place with rich international learning atmosphere. There can be even more forums with specific purposes e.g. grammar forum, vocabulary forum, essay writing forums or there might be forums for free discussion where learners can talk about anything they like to practice their English language. According to the news.netcraft.com’s released results of the conduct web server survey in the July 2012, there are 665,916,461 Web sites on the Internet ("Web Server Survey," 2012). Aside from the dramatic increase in the population of the world (70-80 mil/year) (Sazmand-Asfaranjan & Ziaei-Moayyed, 2012), the number of Internet users is being increased as well as the number of websites. Internet marketers wish to bring traffic to their websites using numerous online marketing strategies. User satisfaction can be considered the best way to bring traffic to a website and make it more popular by positive word of month on the Internet. The question is that how users/ learners can be satisfied. For the last decades, there has been a marked shift from traditional face-to-face teaching to modern teaching methods using high-tech devices such as smart phones, laptops, and tablets. Nowadays, e- learning and mobile learning is becoming more and more popular and pedagogical researchers wish to study to make improvements in the systems. The question is that how learners can be motivated to use the new teaching and learning systems. It is undoubtedly clear that the need for friendship/social needs is a deficiency need and more vital than a need for education/learning which is a growth need (self-actualization) based on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs (Huitt, 2007). Regarding the popularity of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook and Twitter, it is readily predictable that Internet users tend to socialize on the Internet as a virtual community as the SNS are being used more than the other websites. Using alexa.com, it can be noticed that the factor of socialization is in most of top popular websites on the Internet. In recent years, multimedia-based e-learning becomes more popular as text-based e-learning might result in boredom and disengagement in learners (Zhang, Zhao, Zhou, & Nunamaker Jr, 2004). However, there is still something missing in some e-learning systems which is lack of socialization. Human beings need to make friends with each other and socialize; they learn from each other. It was predicted that in the 21st century preparing students to participate in a knowledge-based economy plays a crucial role in education as knowledge will be considered a vital resource for social and economic advance (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). It is also predictable that the number of online students will be increased dramatically as individuals can get more attention from instructors in an online environment, there is much time to think and response online. Online learners are being offered with customized learning services and they can study on their own pace which are the other advantages of online learning. In addition, learning about technology can be considered a byproduct of online learning. A learning community enhances the learners' academic achievements (Dufour & Eaker, 1998; Lenning & Ebbers, 1999) and it improves education for the future (Lenning & Ebbers, 1999) as it reconceptualized the educational practice in classrooms (Bielaczyc & Collins, 1999). A research aimed to re-culture schools to become learning communities (Eaker, DuFour, & Burnette, 2002). Communication on the net promotes learning amongst learners who are challenged by linguistic and cultural considerations (Teikmanis & Armstrong, 2001). There is an increasing number of book on online learning communities (Cashion & Palmieri, 2000; Fontana, 1997; Ground, 2004; Luppicini, 2007) and how it online learning communities can be successful (Harasim, 2002). A virtual community is defined as a group of individuals who have the same interest and communicate online so that they can share their knowledge and learn from each other (Liu & Zhang, 2012). Interaction is vital in online courses and online learnings (Swan, 2002). The effectiveness of online discussion boards was discussed (Levine, 2007) by increasing the number of online communities. There might be learner-learner and/or learner- instructor interaction in online learning environments, however, there should be teaching presence in online learning communities and online classrooms (Jones, 2011). Telephone conversations, web-based conferencing (that might include video conferencing), text-based communication such as online chats and discussion boards can be used as learning tools on the Net. Based on numerous researches, it can be said that a lack social interaction of student and their feelings of isolation negatively influence their academic achievement and it is 334 Yasha Sazmand Asfaranjan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 ( 2013 ) 332 – 337 even evident in distance education (Tsai, 2012). Online marketers desire to make the online users/learners loyal as there are studies that examine the factors influencing loyalty behavior in virtual communities with earning purposes (Lin, 2010). 2. Materials and methods A focus group, a sort of group interview (Kitzinger, 1995), which is a great tool to conduct educational research (Vaughn, Schumm, & Sinagub, 1996) and also a widespread technique in marketing research (Calder, 1977) was used to conduct this exploratory educational marketing study. Analyzing the qualitative data is not straightforward but it is challenging and the process of data analysis can be started when merely some of the data have been gained (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Sekaran & Bougie, 2009). Although analyzing focus group data is challenging (Rabiee, 2004), the data gathered from a focus group can be analyzed the same way the other qualitative data are analyzed (Kitzinger, 1995; Vaughn et al., 1996). The study, as an exploratory research, was conducted to measure the possibility of implementation of web-based discussion forum to promote socialization in e-learning systems in English language learning in Malaysia. It is aimed to scrutinize the English learners’ readiness to use online discussion forums. Regarding the topic of the research and the limitation in terms of time and budget, a group of eight participants was selected and arranged for a one-hour discussion regarding the topic. In this study informants should have been experienced in using e-learning for learning the English language to provide the researchers with adequate and precise information. In addition, the informants should have studied in an English language center in Malaysia. As there was no access to the sample frame probability sampling could not be used. Among non-probability samplings, judgment sampling was chosen to select the participants. Based on judgment sampling design eight participants with two requirements (1- those who have studied English language in a language center in Malaysia 2- those who have experienced learning English using e-learning systems) were selected. The type of focus group was dual moderator in which one moderate ensure that everything in the session was going OK and the other one ensure that all the topics are covered in the discussion. The discussion lasted one hour and there was one facilitator who wrote down the points, ideas, opinions at the session. A focus group consists of 8 participants was conducted to provide a general insight into what online English language learners in Malaysia look for. Participants were selected based on their expertise and experience in using websites as English language learning tools. The discussion session lasted around an hour. Normally, focus group consists of a group of informants (8 to 10) that gather to discuss either an issue or a product which lasts approximately two hours and is led by a moderator (Sekaran & Bougie, 2009). However, in this study, there were two moderators, who were carefully selected based on their expertise in the topic or experience the issue on which information is needed. One moderator made sure that the session was going smooth while the other one made sure that all the topics were covered. Since recording the voices might make bias in the study regarding the fact that participants might not say what they actually want to mention (Sekaran & Bougie, 2009). Thus, there was one facilitator who wrote down the important part of the discussion during the session. In 2009, Sekaran and Bougie uses an original approach to qualitative data analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994) which says that there are three phases namely, data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusions based on two former steps which ease the understanding. First and foremost, the data were selected, coded and categorized in the process of data reduction. Collecting qualitative data provided the researchers with large amount of data which needed to be reduced to avoid confusion. As the second key activity in data analysis, the data were organized and condensed (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Sekaran & Bougie, 2009) in a table. In the last phase of qualitative data analysis, it was attempted to draw conclusions based on the the selected, categorized, coded, and categorized data provided after the last two steps. 335 Yasha Sazmand Asfaranjan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 ( 2013 ) 332 – 337 3. Results and discussion TAM, which stands for the Technology Acceptance Model, is well-known for being commonly used as a framework to explore online users’ technology usage behaviors (Davis, 1989). Davis model of TAM was modified later on to be applicable in E-learning studies (Masrom, 2007). Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness which influence the attitudes of learners to use the e-learning systems (Masrom, 2007) was indirectly discussed in the session. The participants all mentioned the fact that they have found online discussion forums useful. English-test.net was an example that participants mentioned. Five participants mentioned that they have used online forums on English-test.net and expressed strong desire to use the same discussion forums implemented by English language centers in Malaysia. Participants mentioned the websites on the Internet that they used as a virtual community. They were satisfied with the websites with online discussion forums as they could record their voice and get responds in forms of messages ad voices recorded. They have made pen pals and made appointment on Skype, yahoo to practice their speaking online. They received feedback from the teacher of English anytime, anywhere, and quickly. The revealed the fact that the virtual community motivated them to learn and study more and more. The factors that have made online learners demotivated to use the English language websites of the centers are mentioned in the following table. Table 1. Factors that make online language learners demotivated in using e-learning implemented by English language center in Malaysia Factor - Code Example Number Agreed % Agreed Solutions Isolation I cannot make friends/pen pals and practice my English language online by using those language learning websites 7 87.5 % 1. Online Learning Community 2. Web-Based Discussion Forums (which also enables learners to record their voice and listen to the other recorded voices) 3. Online Message Board Alienation On the Net, you do not know who you are talking to and it is tough to make friends online. However, it would be enjoyable to practice your English language with your classmates online 7 87.5 % Boredom E-learning is boring as there is no interaction 8 100 % Loneliness Using the the Internet for language learning makes me feel lonely even if there is a good quality multimedia-based e-learning 6 75 % The helpful results of the focus group discussion which were helpful in this research are summarized and categorized in the table 1. 4. Conclusion and suggestions There is a dramatic increase in the utilization of virtual communities as foreign language learning tools on the Internet, the most recent study already demonstrated (Liu & Zhang, 2012). This study lay stress on how vital the role of socialization is in online learning. Based on the results of the focus group, it is evident that language learners desire to learn from each other more than learning from instructors. They feel they learn more from peers compared to what they learn from language teachers. Regarding the fact that SNS (social networking sites) such as Facebook, Twitters, Friendster, My Space and Linkedin are regarded as the most popular websites on the Internet. It can be readily concluded that people like to socialize with each other make friends and communicate on the Net. Thus, socialization factor can be considered the most vital factor in online learning and it can be fulfilled by implementing web-based discussion forums where learners can socialize with each other. Creating value for customers is important even in virtual communities (Misra, Mukherjee, & Peterson, 2008). Providing a platform where learners can learn in groups, and socialize with each other on the Internet is not only a value 336 Yasha Sazmand Asfaranjan et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 ( 2013 ) 332 – 337 creation activity, but it is also a competitive advantage which differentiates the website with the other English learning websites. Therefore, the factor of socialization in an English learning website can make the website more popular and attract more users/language learners. It can be said that online discussion forums/boards can make learners more satisfied which leads to positive word of mouth on the internet and the result in learner e- loyalty. There will be a higher online satisfaction level that helps the website owners to keep the existing online learner and attract potential online learners which leads to a bigger market share and profitability of English language centers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The result of the study is partially similar to another two study recent study in 2012 which emphasizes the importance of social presence in online learning (Tsai, 2012; Tucker, 2012). It was shown that online learners’ satisfaction is affected by a number of social constructs (Tsai, 2012). 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work_macyvnxonjbgvh6ooaicbiqr7y	----	Ethic dimension and social consequences of distance education applications 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.178 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1229–1232 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com WCES-2010 Ethic dimension and social consequences of distance education applications Ramazan Erturguta *, Serhat Soy ekercib aAir NCO Higher Vocational School, zmir,35410, Turkey bÇanakkale 18 March University, Biga Çanakkale 17200 Turkey Received October 12, 2009; revised December 21, 2009; accepted January 6, 2010 Abstract Although it has a history of approximately 30 years and its application areas increase each passing day, social and ethical dimensions of distance education are still being argued. Over time, it is understood that social side of the applications of distance education which was attempted with great expectations and visions at the beginning are very open to improvement. With the new technologies, distance education is considered in social reality as a very important factor that influences the structure of society in recent years. In addition, “the concept of education ethics” has gained a different meaning through the spread of internet and distance education. The increase in internet crimes is also a potential threat to distance education. Lack of communication and perception of social gap between individuals who receive education and educators who meet in different environment and geographies constitutes a dilemma along with the advantages of technical side of this application. The study is based on the ground of emphasizing on ethical dimension and social results of distance education applications rather than their technical aspect. Keywords: Distance education; ethical; social; dimensions; internet; web based education. 1. Introduction In the information and communication, where success appears faster and failure is punished cruelly, internet revolution and the improvements in web technologies are causing changes at elements of environment where communities of education sector are active (Erturgut, 2008). In other words, communication and education stand out as the most affected areas from technological reforms. (Ekici, 2003). Improvements in technology force current education system for changes and bring out the necessity of different education applications. (A r et al., 2008). Improvements, which are started with the usage of computers and internet in education, have increased the variation and form of learning. (Ünsal, 2004). By presenting the course activities supported with various assistant elements that are appropriate to individual characteristics of the person who don’t have the appropriate time or sources, distance education capture the interest of many institutions (Akman&Güler, 2008). Especially, nowadays when the internet based distant applications are applied to every area with multiple dimension versions, ethical dimension and * Ramazan Erturgut Tel.: +90.232.2511600 E-mail address: erturgut@hotmail.com © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1230 Ramazan Erturgut and Serhat Soyşekerci / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1229–1232 social results of these applications have started to appear in more tangible ways. In this study, some findings and evaluations are presented upon social results and ethical extensions created by distance education applications. 2. Theory of distance education With the plainest expression, distance education can be identified as an education technology where the student and teacher are not in the same environment. (Ayd n, 2005; Fritsch, 2004). According to another wider description, distance education is an education style where the learners are in a different time and place from teachers and the communication between them is realized by published or electronic communication devices. (Erturgut, 2008). Distance education was encoded by UNESCO (1985) as an education which was carried out through posting, radio TV, phone and or newspaper without a face to face relation between teacher and student. Other studies defines the distance education as a method which is performed from a specific headquarters and in digital atmosphere through specifically prepared learning units and environments for communication and interaction between the drafters and operators of education activities apart from traditional teaching, learning methods and students. (Aklan, 1987; Orhan &Akkoyunlu, 1999; Miller, 2001). Distance education was brought to life in relation to improvements in television broadcasting in whole world around 1980’s and gained speed with the developing networks toward the end of 1990’s (Mciseac, 2002). Williams and Pabrock (1999) pointed out that evolutions of distance education had 3 steps. (1999). First step (1860-1960), encoded the period when the published materials, radio communication and video tapes were used. In second step, (1960-1990) bidirectional voice and video communication and computer based education discs created the distance education technology. And third step (From 1990’s to present) have is represented by the period when the hybrid technologies have been started to use, virtual classes have been established and most part of the education have been performed by using the internet technologies. Today, primarily as higher education, most of the curriculum of secondary education and adult education are held by distance education applications. (Ellis, et al., 2009). Distance education and information technologies have changed the general aspect of experimental education. Thanks to information technologies nowadays, laboratories used in traditional education left their places to the virtual laboratories which are available for distant access through internet. (Bayhan & Demirba , 2009). 3. Distance education and ethic According to Socrates, education is a learning process based upon ethics. Scientific meaning of ethical activity for individual is through ethics. As Plato specified; being educated isn’t about arrival, but to continue the way with a different idea (Billington, 1997). Kant, (1980) in his ethical approach, stressed that one element of ethic was state; while the other was education while claiming “we arrange all our actions according to education the way we get (or can’t get) or to law appreciation”. Before, while studies on technical sides such as content preparation, background construction of distance education were more common, lateri studies on organizational, social, psychological and ethical dimensions have gained popularity too. ( bicio lu &Antalyal , 2005). Predictions concerning that internet would harm family culture and create a depression on social ethics are no longer accepted. However, the responsibility of defending the children and teenagers and guiding them to the advantageous information primarily belongs to our administrators and teachers. (Ak n, 2007). In distance education, ethics is not only related to teaching how this environment could be used, but it is also a main part of education applications. Improvement of the distance education quality and removal of violation of rights in distance education via internet is the main problem of the government and its institutions that are in charge of education services rather than external establishments sensitive to this topic. (Erturgut, 2008) The ones who design distance education, which is also called “E-education” nowadays, must take the difference of political, ethical, social structure of the society into consideration (Mar ap, et al., 2009). 4. Social consequences of distance education practices Distance education is the cheapest among other education systems in the case that there is sufficient number of students which can meet the cost of the investment made in accordance with formal education (Elmas, et al., 2008). However, the fact that the difficulties in making a continuous and subjective observation are not the same as they are in face-to-face education urged researchers to seek new approaches (Chen, 2005; Ar c &Çiftci, 2007). This situation Ramazan Erturgut and Serhat Soyşekerci / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1229–1232 1231 shows that the social dimension of student-teacher communication in distance education is still open to improvement. While conditional perceptions of educators on intelligence direct education practices, perceptions of administrators about situations and environmental conditions direct administrative implementations (Erturgut & Soysekerci, 2009). Within this context, they criticize online education practices where all the distance learning- teaching processes are based on computer networks and where the education strategies implemented in face-to-face education are trying to be imitated (Ayd n, 2007). The fact that distance education practices depend on nation scale access facilities and communication technologies constitutes an obstacle in attaining the desired numerical target group in wide usage (Karaa açl , 2008). Another problem that emerges as a result of rapid increase in institutions providing distance education and online education is lesson rights. Some institutions allege that right to teaching belongs to institutions rendering the service and make the implementations in this direction while some other circles state that this right should belong to the educator. Some institutions such as American Federation of Teachers argue that rights of educators are being ignored and practices like these will result in failure with the studies they publish (American Federation of Teachers, 2000). Another issue is incompetency of educated personnel in distance education. In spite of the facilities provided by internet technologies, the importance of qualified man power in attaining the desired consequences reveals the human resource constraint in distance education in institutional terms (Erturgut, 2008). In 21st century not only students but also teachers need to be individuals who learn through open education and distance education and who learn throughout their lives. They are expected to be competent in subjects such as sexual education, peace education, conducting environmental studies, using information and communication technologies (Karacao lu, 2009). Furthermore, according to the researches, administrator behaviors in education institutions are influenced by conditions related to institutional processes and cliché problems of public administration in general as well as approaches in modern education practices (Erturgut, 2009). Hence, continuity of public interest in social dimension of distance education is of importance in terms of success of the practices. 5. Conclusion and Recommendation Distance education enables education applications to be shareable and improvable through internet and web technologies anywhere in the world. The future will be shaped with wide distance education applications that cover the world which was established with such links. While accomplishing this, the ones who apply and manage the distance education should take their responsibilities and should use this environment for the purpose of a better world rather than a chaotic one. In this context, findings about ethical dimension and social results of distance education and relative recommendations are listed below; As well as being able to be an important factor for raising the level of coping with stress of the ones who receive education and for increasing the experiences with computer in the organization which render this service, distance education will also have positive impacts on behaviors of social communication and receiving social support. In distance education; along with the internet environment, students should be ensured to infer from knowledge by being involved in interaction with social environment, and to utilize from first information source rather than ready and objective information sources in accordance with cognitive and social constructivist understanding. (Karaa açl , 2008) Everybody should be able to take place within distance education applications on an equal basis. In case required and sufficient arrangements are not made for the usage of internet technologies which is inevitable in distance education, and it is not controlled with the principles of “education and educator ethics”, it will result in violation of rights for the ones who receive education, and also it will make the sustainability of distance education different and damage the concept of distance education in terms of social aspect. In this process in which we are witnessed to unbelievable number of crimes by using a computer; distance education applications should be kept out of the internet crimes such as pornography and illegal publications and duplication of computer software of which entire content is copyrighted In distance education organizations, organic qualities should be in the foreground rather than the mechanical figures; inter-function team work, free information flow, non-central decisions and low formalization should 1232 Ramazan Erturgut and Serhat Soyşekerci / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1229–1232 dominate. A pure and consistent structure of organization should be established in organizations in which distance education is carried out, and bureaucratic trends should be alienated. Because, bureaucratic structure might pose an obstacle against the development of internet applications which live on innovations. References A r, F.; Gür, H.&Okçu, A. (2007). Development of the attitude scale toward distance learning: reliability and validity, e-Journal of New World Sciences Academy, 3 (2), pp.128-139 Ak n, M. (2007). The effect of utilizing computer and internet technology in terms fulfilling application field informaition, E.U. Erzincan Education Faculty Journal 9(2). Pp. 49-70, Akman, E. & Güler, . (2008). Distance learning studies in biomedical engineering, Gazi University, Journal of Information Technology, 1(2), pp.79-85. pp.47-52. Alkan, C. (1987). Examining of open learning distance education systems as comperable,, Ankara University, Educational Faculty Pub. No 157. American Federation of Teac- hers (2000). A virtual revolution: Trends in the expansion of dis- tance education. 1 May s 2002 tarihinde http://www.aft.org/ higher_ed/downloadable/ VirtualRevolution.pdf in Ayd n, CH, 09. Sept. Ar c , N.&Çiftci, S. (2007). 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Factors of distance education success;, perception , motivation & Interaction: A comperable application Çukurova Üniversity Journal of Social Sciences, 14 (2) pp..325-338 Kant, I. (1980). (trans. By Louis Infield) (Original work 1930) Lectures on Ethics, Hackett Publishing Co. Karaa açl , M. (2008). the requirement of social gains in distance learning supported with nternet technologies, Gazi University, Journal of Information Technology, 1(2), pp. 63-73 Karacao lu, Ö.C. (2009). A research deal ng w th n-class sufficiencies of teachers, Electronic Journal of Social Sciences, 8(.30). pp.062-078 Mar ap, A.;Özsoy, N.;Koçak, Zf.&Selçuk, Y. (2009). Improv ng global human resource and l fe-long learn ng by us ng e -tra n ng systems, http://ab.org.tr/ab07/bildiri/180.doc, 08 Dec.2009 McIsaac, M.S. (2002). The internet Culture and Community Building, Advencing Online Learning In Asia, Hong Kong: The Open University of Hong Kong, pp.16-25. Miller, S. K. (2001). 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work_mbtsm42qjbhkbm2yoaejb7mobq	----	MPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive DISTANCE EDUCATION AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR THE RED SEA NATION ERITREA: A DISCOURSE Rena, Ravinder Department of Business and Economics, Eritrea Institute of Technology, Mai Nefhi, Asmara, The State of Eritrea 2007 Online at http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11139/ MPRA Paper No. 11139, posted 16. October 2008 / 02:35 http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/ http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11139/ Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 1 DISTANCE EDUCATION AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR THE RED SEA NATION, ERITREA: A DISCOURSE By Ravinder Rena∗∗∗∗ Abstract All over the world, distance mode of education is gaining a momentum and becoming more popular than conventional education. It is a system in which schools, universities and other educational agencies offer instruction wholly or partly by mail. Eritrea, a newly independent country in Africa has been facing many challenges particularly in its education sector. It does not have sufficient educational institutions at tertiary level, thus, distance learning which is more cost effective, could be an alternative method of higher education for this country. The distance education programme could promote higher education by providing access to large number of urban people and disadvantaged groups in rural and remote areas including working people, fighters, women and other adults. An attempt has been made in this paper to discuss various issues related to the establishment and development of distance education. It also provides the distance education programmes that so far undertaken in Eritrea and highlights the potential for the distance education in the country. Key words: Distance Education, Eritrea, Potential, Ministry of Education, UNISA ________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION Distance Education (DE) is a generic and buzz term in the recent past. All over the world, it is now evident that distance mode of education is gaining a momentum and becoming more popular than conventional. It is to be noted that the learners in developed countries prefer distance learning to conventional education. The DE is an educational phenomenon that marked a big educational and structural change in a short duration of time than the preceding schools of education (Harry, 1992). It has become a vital issue in education and in strategic planning for regional, national and international development (Keegan, 1996). Since the school education is relatively cheaper than tertiary education, many countries have developed policy frame works for the development of distance education at tertiary level for the fact that it promotes further education to upgrade and update the skills and the knowledge of the contact students. Distance education at the tertiary level could offer leap-frog going certain phases in educational developments. In addition, it creates the possibility of increased access to tertiary education at more cost effective-level (Terry and Juler, 1991; Saint, 1999). Mass education is attained through distance learning because of modern technology where the world is becoming boundary less. Technical developments have greatly contributed for the development of distance ∗ Department of Business and Economics, Eritrea Institute of Technology– Mai Nefhi, Post Box No: 7956, Asmara, Eritrea. Email: ravinder_rena@yahoo.com , drravinderrena@gmail.com Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 2 education (Visser, 1994; Daniel, and Mega, 1996). The modern world has created a new and more effective form of cultural imperialism which gave an added incentive to cultivate distance education capacities (Moore, 1990; Marrs, 1995). Further, distance education is changing with an alarming speed, particularly as educational processes become increasingly globalised in terms of physical reach and scope of courses and programmes of study offered. Different view points on distance education are emerging, reflecting the rapidly evolving nature of this increasingly important educational discipline (Khan, 1993; Wills, 1998). The Encyclopedia of education defines correspondence/distance education as “as system in which schools, universities and other educational agencies offer instruction wholly or partly by mail. The dictionary of education defines it in more specific terms. “It is a method of providing for the systematic exchange between students and instructor, of materials sent by mail for the purpose of instruction in units of subject matter: a set of printed lessons or assignment based on textural materials and / or instructional media with directions for study, exercises, tests, etc., to be used as primary or supplemental aids to learning outside of regular class room environment (cited in Keegan, 1983)”. Distance education, as part of nation’s educational fabric, is being called upon to do more efficiently and more diversely than ever before. The people who learn through distance education these days are increasingly diverse. Nowadays distance education can be anything from mass to “boutique”. (Terry and Juler, 1991). In distance learning students and teachers will find themselves playing different roles better than in traditional education (Denzin, and Lincoln, 1994). More than any other teaching method, distance learning which exercises new mode of delivery, requires a collaborative effort between student and teacher unbounded by traditional limits of time, space and single instructor effort. Distance education as a provision will undoubtedly help the learners to enhance the acquisition of new knowledge and skills to lead a better life. Hence joint work of the government and private sectors is needed to lay a firm ground to the implementation of the correct DE programmes (Holmberg, 1995). 1.1 Literature Review During the 1960s and early 1970s, writers like Otto Peters, Charles Wed Meyer, Borje Holmberg, John Boarth and Michael Moore started publishing in the field of distance education. Although a relatively young discipline, substantial theoretical contributions have been made by various researchers and theorists (Holmberg, 1995). These theoretical contributions in the field of distance education serve merely to introduce us, some of the foundations of our thinking on distance education that we find in the literature. Various writers (Rumble, 1999) describe distance education as an educative process in which a significant proportion of teaching is done by someone who is removed in space or live from the learned. But it should also be pointed out that even the learners too are usually Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 3 dispersed in space or live. Distance education involves the use of a range of media such as print, electronic, written correspondence through assignments, audio and computer based media. The modern electronic technology instructs successfully and delivers lessons without the teachers’ direct presence (Moore, 1990; Harry, 1992). The literature on distance education is not solitary but relational where its concept and its delivery may be interwoven with other literatures. As a matter of fact it is a new educational provision where its act of teaching can take place at the same time as learning delivery or teaching can be separated from learning in terms of time (asynchronous) mode of delivery. It is a form of education characterised by: I) Physical separation from the teacher; ii) An organised instructional programme; iii) Technological media; and iv) Two way communication (Moore and Kearsley, 1996). Terry and Juler (1991) discussed that the ever developing world has hundreds of distance education teaching universities. Each of these universities is born out of specific social need. It is not easy to supply, sustain, improve, plan finance and manage universities with unique characteristics. They experience barriers in one way or the other like: i) Problems and barriers encountered by students; ii) Study limitations within and without the Institutions; iii) Lake of feed back or contact; iv) Lack of supports and services; v) Problem of feeling alienation and isolation; vi) Problem with newer students; vii) Lack of organisation – infrastructure, technology; and viii) Lack of material, competent computer staff to support Internet use. Never the less, a cursory look at the basic literature on the developments and trends of education through out the world reveal that education system of developing countries have made unprecedented progress in recent years. However, in many parts of the world, where the need to learn is big, good and sufficient education feasible is more difficult to find. Keast (1997) has discussed and analyzed that if the programs of implementing distance education become effective, and if institutions are established, in order to: i) Equip the target audiences with knowledge, skills and attitude required from the diverse course they pursue; ii) Empower women so that they can actively participate and contribute in economic, social, and cultural life of the community and the nation; iii) Deploy resources for students attending into who were/are (fighters, disabled, women, adults and what have you) deprived from conventional (traditional) in-campus schools for certain reasons; iv) Provide and upgrade teachers’ professionalism and their career development at work; v) Promote an innovative system of university education, which is both flexible, open in methods and pace of learning; and vi) Play a role in the correct implementation of government policy in education, which ultimately ends at making it to all qualified prospective learners; and vii) Deploy lifelong learning that practices flexibility while encouraging the learner’s experience and choice; where, when, what and how they learn as well as the pace at which they will learn. The term “ distance education” covers the various forms of study at all levels which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 4 lecture rooms on the same promises, but which nevertheless benefit from the planning, guidance and tuition of tutorial organisation (Holmberg, 1995; Keegan, 1996). The family of instructional methods in which reaching behaviours are executed apart from the leaving behaviours, including those that in a continuous situation would be performed in the learners present, so that communication between the teacher and the learner must be facilitated by print, electronic mechanical or other devices (Rumble, Grevile and Oliveria, 1999). Distance teaching / education is a method of impairing knowledge, skills attitudes which rationalised by the application of division of labour and organisational principle as well as by the extensive use of technical media, especially for the purpose of reproducing high quality teaching materials which makes it possible to instruct numbers of students at the same time where ever they live. It is an industrialized form of teaching and learning (Wills, 1995; Keegan, 1996). 1.2 Objectives of the Study The basic question is that, whether the Government of Eritrea (GoE) is able to implement this educational program or not? All efforts that were made in 1996 lasted for just two years and then discontinued. Keeping this backdrop in mind, an attempt is made in this paper to study the status of distance education in Eritrea as an alternative education system to the existing traditional system of education. The insights gained though this study would help the policy makers of education in implementing the distance education in Eritrea. It will also open new vistas for further research in distance education in the country. The following objectives are set for this study: 1] To advocate creation of an environment in which distance education strategies, resource and support systems are taken as standard system for education; 2] To develop and provide training and the necessary information to move distance education from the periphery of education and create a separate educational structure for effective functioning; and 3] To encourage, support and identify opportunities for co-operation in sharing of resources between public and private distance education providers. 1.3 Methodology and Data In order to meet the said objectives, the data was collected from different sources related to distance education both from the public sector and the private sector (Baumgartner and Strong, 1998). Informal discussions made with many concerned people and the stakeholders of this distance programme. The government officials (related to this program), students and staff of the College of Education in Eritrea Institute of Technology (EIT) - Mai Nefhi; Asmara Teacher Training Institute, elementary teachers (who are learning their distance education in Asmara University), Teachers working in some secondary schools (of Zoba Maekel) like Red Sea, Asmara Comprehensive, Barka, Denden, Issak Teweldemedhn and some students and employees are contacted and discussions held with them. All in all 10 directors (including heads), 30 teachers, and 60 students at all levels are contacted and interviews held with them. The data also collected Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 5 from the relevant documents. Besides, researcher also used open ended interview in order to free the interviewee to discuss openly (Kvale, 1996; Merriam, 1998). Further, they were also informed that confidentiality and anonymity would be maintained in this delivery. The respondents trust the researcher and deliver correct information of what they know and do not know about distance education program and its implementation. The study was conducted during the period October 2005 to March 2006. This study predominantly used qualitative approach, which was supplemented by quantitative approach wherever necessary (Merriam, 1998). The methodological strategies employed to address the basic interview questions are semi-structured interviews with staff members of the ministry, EIT-Mai Nefhi, ATTI, secondary school students and employees. The study is mainly conducted in two localities: Asmara City (selected secondary schools mentioned above) and Eritrea Institute of Technology- Mai Nefhi, situated 28 kilometers southwest of Asmara The interviewees were friendly and open to discussions when necessary. As a matter of fact, they were knowledgeable, if not in distance education, working in big government and non-government organizations. The researcher chose these two because it is believed that the concerned persons of those areas give the necessary data, documents and insights to the study. The researcher embarked upon qualitative research paradigm, which is suited to dealing with people’s attitudes and perception about the DE. “The term qualitative research is an umbrella term referring to several research traditions and strategies that share certain commodities. There is an emphasis on process, or how things happen, and a focus on attitudes, beliefs and thoughts how people make sense of their experiences as they interpret their world (Merriam, 1998)”. There were some inconveniences regarding the time constraints with dispersed full time interviewees and time-sensitive communication services. A few of the respondents were not fully aware and knowledgeable about distance education, as it is a new concept. In light of all the data collected from reliable sources and the interviews with persons of high caliber who indulged in all walks of educational spheres were very helpful. Their views and opinions could undoubtedly help distance education program implementers in open and distance institutions. Distance education program is almost a new concept in Eritrea, although, in other countries, it has been practiced for many years. It is with a great hope that this study will make a significant contribution to the existing literature in school government, community and distance education in Eritrea. No matter how education background is diverse, persons whoever maybe and wherever they may live, realises the importance of distance education. Keeping this in mind, the researcher has motivated to conduct a study and write this article. An attempt has been made in this paper to delve into the study of Distance Education Programs in the state of Eritrea. It is therefore, believed the outcome would be useful to the needy and who are ready to further education their through distance education. The researcher justifies its importance for the disadvantaged, disabled Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 6 and persons who are unable to pursue their studies in conventional institutions for some reasons. The alternative to traditional mode of education is believed to be distance learning, which could satisfy the need of modern education through advanced Medias where they are. Since it is a new area of study, there is a room to conduct further research and many studies could possibly aware all learners the limitations and strengths they may encounter as distance learners. In conclusion, the distance education program implementation could undoubtedly add something to the educational development of Eritrea. An attempt has been made in this paper to explore the desired implementation of distance education programmes in Eritrea. The paper also deals with factors leading to the establishment of distance education programmes at tertiary level and open and distance education programmes initiatives in Eritrea. It highlights the experience of distance education programmes for elementary teachers in Eritrea and University of South Africa’s (UNISA) experience of distance education programmes in Eritrea etc. The paper is organized into five sections. The first section dealt with introduction and the second section provides a brief note on the educational background of Eritrea. Section three discusses distance education programmes implemented in the country. Section four delves the future prospects for distance education in Eritrea and also provides the perception of the respondents about the programme. Section five presents the concluding remarks. 2. BACKGROUND OF THE EDUCATION SECTOR The world map vividly shows that Eritrea is strategically located in the Horn of Africa, sharing border with the Sudan to the north and west, Ethiopia to the south, Djibouti to the south east and the Red Sea to the east respectively. It has a population of about 4.5 million. It covers an area of 124,320 sq kms, stretching from 18.22’ to 12.42’ degrees longitude. Eritrea’s coastlines extend about 1,200 kms, flanked by coral reefs and 354 islands, including the important Dahlak Archipelago (Killion, 1998:1.) Eritrea fought for thirty years (1961-1991) to obtain its de facto independence on 24 may 1991 and its official independence on 24 May1993 after a UN supervised referendum in which 98.8% of the people voted in favour of independence (MoE, 1999; Rena, 2005b). Peoples’ instability in the long war for independence and the recent border dispute with Ethiopia has severely affected the economy, political and social development of the country. Eritrea has had different types of educational systems since earliest times. The history of modern Eritrean education can be divided into various periods on the basis of social and political conditions. The objectives of education were in general based on colonial requirements and a policy that put more emphasis on indoctrination and subordination (Taye, 1992:25; Rena, 2005b). Indeed, Eritrea inherited its educational system from a variety of sources and it was reflected only the ideological interests of the colonizing powers of the time. Contrary to the above colonial educational policies, the government of Eritrea believed that education not only as a fundamental human right but also as a vehicle for national development and poverty reduction initiatives (Rena, 2005c ; MoE, 2006). Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 7 It is understood that during the armed struggle, most of the Eritrean youth were engaged in the struggle and thousands were forced to leave for neighbouring countries and else where because of repression by the Ethiopian government. As a result, in the aftermath of independence, there occurred an acute shortage of trained man power in all fields of economic and education spheres. At that time more than 60 per cent employees in Eritrea were Ethiopians who fled back to their homeland (Killion, 1998; Rena, 2004; Rena, 2005b). It is a severe jolt to the whole education system of the country and there are many challenges to overcome. Access to the schools in some remote localities in the six zobas (provinces), a zonal division of the country, are difficult as the new nation inherited heavily damaged infrastructure and badly affected people in education (Moe, 2006). Low learning achievements, handling large classes, lack of qualified teachers, poor facilities in the school are the cause for an unsatisfactory quality of education in the country. To bring a drastic change, the Ministry of Education has introduced educational reforms in 2003 and started to prepare a standardized curriculum for schools (Carrol, 2004). The women participation rate is very low at all levels of schools. Most of the schools in the country have been working in a shift system. To conduct free time (all day) schools is difficult for the government, as it requires adequate number of school buildings. Many people who are living in both urban and rural areas of the country need to learn. Some of the elementary schools in some localities are situated within the vicinity of seven kilometers (Rena, 2005a). To provide education to all and to make further education accessible to those who are interested to continue their studies, learning besides the regular system and provide cost- effective education, the only alternative mode is distance learning. First of all distance education programs, should aim for teachers at all the three levels who must be trained in order to attain or achieve quality education at school level. Then the distance education must aim at acquiring matriculation and degree courses. Taking all these issues into account, the MoE could open distance education and initiate various programs to elevate the major concerns posed to the lack of highly skilled professional and technical man power. To upgrade teachers’ professionalism and work esteem, the government institution in cooperation with various development partners had been sending their staff members to both for short and long-term overseas training programs, in addition to what technical, vocational and managerial education is provided at home. In line with this, the curricula makers and designers in Eritrea always strive to maintain that an efficient education system carefully employed in schools: conventional and distance to serve as an effective means of accelerating and promoting economic, social, scientific and technological progresses (MoE, 2006; Rena, 2006). The ruined infrastructure that Eritrea inherited has been developed considerably under the “Warsay Yikealo Development Campaign” mobilized to ensure the economic Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 8 reconstruction of the war-devastated nation.1 After independence, the government has been trying to practice a policy regarding education that is the ultimate right of every Eritrean. The motto “education for all” means obligatory education from first to seventh grade, and free education up to secondary school. Moreover, the regular students who scored high results in secondary school level could get the chance of joining Asmara University and/or Eritrea Institute of Technology- Mai Nefhi, and other recently established colleges in the country. The remaining mediocre students who scored less result Grade Point Average 1.25 are all enrolled into other vocational schools such as Asmara Commercial College and Pavoni Technical Institute (Rena, 2004; Rena, 2005a). It is to be noted that the educational policy of Eritrea was designed to fulfill and extend educational opportunities to all Eritreans irrespective of their age, sex and geographical location in Eritrea.2 In Eritrea education has become an indispensable catalyst for economic and social developments where all institutions are built to render being: i) Tertiary enrolments of nations will undoubtedly expand rapidly in the year to come; ii) Tertiary education as viewed by some educators in the future will be based less on academic disciplines and more gross–cutting topics or trans-disciplinary issues (Rena, 2005c). Great emphasis is placed on ability to learn independently to communicate effectively with others, to collaborate productively in teams or groups, to be culturally and socially sensitive, to be flexible and to accept social responsibilities (Saint, 1999). 3. DISTANCE EDUCATION IN ERITREA At the beginning, although there were no established schools, but education was carried out under a tree or rocks. With the liberation, the education started spreading fast in different areas. It is to be noted that disabled fighters who were residing in the Port Sudan under the umbrella of Eri-clinic were also receiving education in schools. These disabled had serious injury and were using the Eri-clinic for both treatment rehabilitation center and also some basic education was provided. They were thirsty and later quenched their thirst through distance education learning. Had it not been for their strong yearning, they would not have learned successfully. Most of them started school in the field. No wonder they became literate. Therefore, it is believed that the revolution (freedom struggle) has been the greatest university for Eritreans.3 1 The Warsai-Yikeaalo Development campaign was launched in May 2002, and just after five years, the assessment of what has been accomplished, has been rated commendable, although a lot remains to be done. The Campaign has been focusing its developmental programs on the following major undertakings. These mainly focus on infrastructure renovation and development, agricultural intensification and modernization, raising industrial output, mining schemes, the tourism sector, human resource development etc. 2 See the Provisional Government of Eritrea (October 2, 1991) Department of Education Policy of Education Document, Asmara: the State of Eritrea. 3 In the town of Nackfa, a revolutionary school that was popularly known (Tsabra school) was set up and proivded education and training for many children and fighters in 1970s and 1980s. Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 9 About 75 per cent Eritreans are depending on agriculture and its allied activities, thus these peasants are busy the whole day with their agriculture profession and hence they had no access to school. There was lack of teachers and teaching materials as well. Despite the fact that regular classes were difficult to continue due to various constraints, other alternatives had to come. All these factors facilitated the distance mode of education that emerged as an accepted alternative. The first task of the committee responsible to run distance education in Port Sudan and Suakin was to make a research as to know the level of their academic status and were grouped as follows: i) Foundation course for students from 1 to 7 grade ii) Refresher course for students from 8 to 9 grade iii) O – level course for students from 10 to 12 grade With these grouping, learning was conducted in two centres in Port Sudan and Suakin for many years, which ceased after independence due to some constraints. Distance education is an important means that help distance learners to achieve more educational reform goals as well as to expedite the process of reaching the unreached and improve the quality of education and ultimately stimulate the future educational and economic development of Eritrea. In that context, upgrading teacher education both in a pre-service and in-service context is a priority concern. The staff authorities in the Ministry of Education believed distance education to add more potential to deliver the precious resources of knowledge to some of the most destitute areas and people, while at the same time stimulating the growth of fledging telecom and educational infrastructures in the country (Ministry of Education, UNESCO and the Government of Italy, 1996). The government of Eritrea recognizes the need and importance of improving education system in Eritrea through distance learning that can enable the country to go with modern technological world.4 In line with this, there is a need to accommodate an increasing number of candidates like fighters, disadvantaged adults, women, teachers etc. in distance learning is an issue that will be used to extensively reinforce the formal education system(Rena,2006). Eritrea is willing to share a spectrum of varied experiences relevant to its commitment to attaining its goals. It is to be noted that, there are some programmes are been organized like UNISA, home or independent study in USA, external studies in Australia tele enseignment in France; Fernstudium or Fernunterricht in Germany; education a distance or ensenanza a distance in Spanish speaking countries and tele educanas in Portugal 4 It is observed that the Distance, Education programmes for Elementary Teachers in Eritrea (DEPETE) programme is succeeded to improve elementary teachers work esteem and professionalism. This programme was monitored by the staff authorities in the MoE, Italian government and UNESCO every effort was made to make it successful. However, the programme discontinued before six years due to lack of expertise, lack of experience, logistic, quality materials and student support services collectively etc. For further details see Ministry of Education (1996). Brief Description of DEPETE: Tasks and Achievements, Department of National Pedagogy. Ministry of Education, Asmara, Eritrea. Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 10 which succeeded as the result of their materials, logistics, and human resources potential. It is therefore interesting to see the future distance learning programmes in Eritrea’s institutions taking new initiatives to promote and expand human capital in the country. In line with this, the MoE is ready to resolve the problems mentioned above by supplementing proper distance education programmes in the schools that it aims to establish soon in 2007 (MoE, 2006). Prior to the ODL program, the Asmara University was given the mandate, has set a committee division by the president on October 21, 1991 to study the possibility or feasibility of expanding its current programme to include distance learning programmes. Hence, Asmara University, given the responsibility, where the case of its tertiary education has carefully and exhaustively received distance education offerings from the other countries like UNISA and UK to its own needs. The role of Asmara University in the establishment of distance education at tertiary level to: i) Conduct a feasible study of this project; ii) Secure the necessary budget for projects implementation; and iii) Carefully implement the project (University of Asmara, 2002). In order to extend the present limited service, to all Eritreans as indicated clearly in the educational policy, Asmara University, wants to discharge this responsibility, by opening a distance education tertiary level programme. 3.1 The Open Distance Learning (ODL) program The Open Distance Learning (ODL) program was launched on 29March, 2006, at the Asmara University Main Building. The ODL program, is a collaborative venture between the Ministry of Education and the University of Asmara, and is offered to upgrade the capacity of middle school teachers through-out the six zobas(provinces) in Eritrea. During the launching ceremony, then Minister of Education, Mr. Osman Saleh, said that the Government, realizing that “education is the basis for economic growth, has given priority to education and is actively working on it. He added that the Ministry of Education has been working on capacity building by organizing distance-learning and other forms of training.” Some 590 junior school teachers holding certificates and wanted to upgrade them to diploma level are participating in the ODL program. The teachers are guided by around 150 faculty members from the university, in addition to staff from the Ministry of Education. The training of tutors, who are middle school English and Mathematics teachers from different zobas, was a portion of the preparations ahead of the launching of the Distance Education Diploma Program. The collaborative program is a 3-year diploma course for teachers, and 26 information centers have been set up all over the country. Meanwhile, the University of Asmara, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, offered a week long training of tutors from February 17 to February 23 as part of a preparation for the Open Distance Learning Program. It is reported that the second batch of the open distance learning program Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 11 started in 2007 and targeted the remaining 1,400 certificate holding junior school teachers. Mr. Tedros Sium, Director of Human Resource Development at the Ministry of Education, said that “the rationale and objectives of the establishment of ODL program for middle school teachers is basically related to the ongoing transformation of the overall education system, and also to the government’s plan to transform its education and training system through comprehensive program of human resource development and revised approaches to teaching and learning.” He also pointed out that a plan to establish a Distance Learning Program is one among the major measures taken to alleviate the acute shortage and constraints of qualified teachers at the middle school level. “The Ministry believes that the commencement of open distance learning will play a very useful part in Eritrea’s Education Sector Development Program.” “It is also important to note that a good and effective system of open distance learning depends on the existence of a good system of learner support” he added. 3.2 UNISA experience of distance education programmes in Eritrea South Africa has developed a policy frame work for tertiary distance education which could possibly shape with that of Eritrea’s specific content designed based on its national conditions. The overarching objective was to improve capacity of government Institutions in a sustainable fashion, and this would be done by resolving the major problem posed by the acute shortage of skilled and professional man power. Table: 1 Students of UNISA enrollers Status Number Passed 358 Failed 213 Withdraw 276 Others 42 Total 889 Source: Consultancy Testing Center, University of Asmara - Records It is presented in table-1 that a total of 889 trainees from 34 public sector entities were originally enrolled in 44 areas of specification of the UNISA program. As indicated in the table, the attrition rate was quite high. While 213 (24%) failed another 276 (31%) had to withdraw before completing their respective training modules. The main beneficiaries of the UNISA programmes are/were the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defence who consist of 53 percent of the participants followed by the Ministry of Local Government (University of Asmara, 2004). Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 12 For the UNISA programme to operate effectively investing the creation and functioning of a mentoring system was required. There was initially a high level of enthusiasm among public sector employees (PSEs) to enroll in distance learning with over 2,800 applications received from almost all government Institutions. Following a screening process conducted by Consultancy Training and Testing Centre (CTTC) in Asmara university to determine eligibility about 75 % (BA = 170, MA = 381) of applications were submitted to UNISA, leading to the enrolment in 2002 of total PSEs from 37 government of Eritrea (GOE) Institutions in BA level degree programmes. An additional 50 applications for Master Programmes were processed in 2003. Of the 889 PSEs enrolled in 2002, 364 PSEs passed their training modules and 507 (60%) either failed or withdrew, by the second semester academic year 2002/03 only 404 PSEs with less than 15% were enrolled, of these 273 passed about 125 or 46% failed. The high attrition rate was reportedly due to the following reasons: 1) Students have difficulties in managing their study programmes while also coping with their work pressures and were en-countering logistics and transportation problems. 2) Some-students lacked the discipline to pursue their studies independently. 3) Lack of computer skills and communication problems with instructors and tutors 4) Students felt that tutorials and support systems were inadequate 5) There were delays in dispatching the materials for exams, assignments (materials come on average in three weeks time by courier – South Africa – via Kenya to Eritrea) 6) Students complain that there was less feedback given to them 7) Students were provided with material guides only, other books and references need to be purchased and they faced several inconveniences. 3.3 Eri-British Institute It is a new distance learning institute established in a private sector by an Eritrean and the Edexcel, UK institution, which is closely supervised by the Ministry of Education in country and the British Council Library, Eritrea. This institute provides various courses at undergraduate to postgraduate level programs. It has a very cost-effective study fees comparing to overseas cost for the same programs. So far many distance learners have already enrolled. 3.4 Eri-Tutorial College Besides this, within Eritrea, new distance education institutions are emerging. The school of Modern Consultancy Service launched an “Eri-Tutorial College” to nurture educational opportunities. The modern consultancy service (MCS) has established a local school of distance learning in 2003 in order to help those students who, for whatever reason, find it inconvenient to attend the normal MCS courses. According to the owner of MCS, the distance learning courses are written in his institution in clear and easy ways in English. The manuals are also written to the level of education of the contact learners to pursue their studies successfully. Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 13 i)That some courses are modified and prepared in such a way to acquire Eritrean styles to encourage the contact learners continue their studies. ii)That the college has employed some experienced tutors to help distance learners learn different modules it offers. iii)That the college is established to upgrade learners’ knowledge, skill, professionalism and standard of education, which undoubtedly will make the learners skilled professionally and technically. This by all means will upgrade man-power in the country. Furthermore, the “Eri-Tutorial” College has already helped more than 700 citizens to complete their international correspondence studies and registered 50 local distance learners in the academic year 2005-2006. 4. FUTURE PROSPECT FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMMES 4.1 Why distance education in Eritrea? The curriculum designers and makers while trying to publish quality school books to all grades had the main pre occupation how to increase the number and improve the quality of the learning force against the daunting background of: 1) The acute shortage of teachers after liberation in 1991 to staff the schools 2) The limited capacity of the one teacher training (ATTI) and its subsidiary branch Eritrea Institute Technology (EIT) 3) An enormous increase in elementary school enrolment and there by construction of many new schools. 4) A two years university diploma has for long been a technical requirement for being middle school teachers in the country 5) The reluctance because of cultural or religious reasons of females or members of some ethnic groups to move away from their homes and families for training purposes. 6) The economic and domestic difficulties that prevent many teachers, particularly from remote regions from taking up training away from their localities. 7) The need to educate the disadvantaged irrespective of age, sex and place Whilst spending on educational provision has increased greatly, there are limited budgetary means to cater to the financial costs that a new nation has to face when rebuilding infrastructure expanding medical, and welfare services and advancing economic and business opportunities. It is important to note that, no system of distance education can remain efficient if it remains static. It must be sensitive to trends and changing need in education, and must have the flexibility to modify its programme and practices, and to expand in response to the needs of the community it is serving. Ministry of Education has recognised the above issues and is working on the significance and importance of improving the education system in Eritrea. Its vision is ultimately to attain particularly a quality of education, access and relevance. Distance learning, a new mode of delivery, would undoubtedly promote educational quality and relevance in many ways. As a matter of fact, the need of life long learning to enable workers to upgrade their skills and maintain competitiveness within rapidly evolving economics is becoming a wide Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 14 demand of the existing world, for establishing tertiary education. This is the need and aspiration of learned selves and the staff authorities in the Ministry to help and equip the desired education through distance learning. The tertiary education has to be extended beyond the in campus Institutions to satisfy the education needs of different employees, fighters and women in Eritrea. As wholeheartedly believed by Eritrean scholars, distance education learning will be used extensively to reinforce the formal education system, which is often hampered by deficient quality and lack of capacity to accommodate the ever growing demand for schooling in Eritrea(Rena,2007). The need to accommodate increasing number of candidates in distance learning specially teachers is a burning issue to increase the existing man power and develop Eritrea with adequate infrastructural facilities. The new mode of delivery distance education provides systematic exchange between a student and instructor, of material send by mail for the purpose of instruction in units of subject matter: a set of printed lessons or assignment based on textural materials and/or in structural media with directions for study, exercises, tests, etc. Distance education may be the latest fashion in education but it is here to stay as modern model of teaching and learning phenomenon. Therefore the ministry of education (MOE) in Eritrea plans to building up the Nations educational level potential, using distance education mode of delivery to needy and ready, providing the required certificate, diploma, Bachelor of educational and Master of education and MBA courses where necessary. The ultimate aim of the MOE is to create capable employees having a trained work force by providing a congenial atmosphere of learning and training opportunities they ought to have at all levels of studies (MoE, 2003). It has made a lot of changes to assure the correct implementation of a standard system of education wholly put in practice in schools of different levels. The teachers in return are given successive professional training in work shops, seminars, short and long term refresher courses to upgrade their professionalism and work esteem. Many schools are built equipped with modern mode of teaching learning mechanisms. Meanwhile the government is following required implementation of: i) Significant expansion of integrated, low cost and community based early childhood programmes; ii) Universal access and quality primary education for all to be by 2015 Parallel to reducing male illiteracy to about 10 percent by 2010, achieve female literacy of at least 60 percent; and iii) Expanding ‘life long’ learning to achieve a modern cultural transformation among disadvantaged groups in rural and urban areas through distance education mode of delivery (MoE, 1999; Rena, 2006). The various modern training could be conducted in the existing kindergarten, elementary, middle and secondary, having in mind particularly the disabled, disadvantage rural youths including girls who have been deprived of the formal education and training because of various, social, religious and economic reasons. The scholars in the study propose that teachers’ career development will be achieved through implementation of Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 15 distance education after the back ground viewed above is worked out. The focus is going to be on teaching teachers who could bring change in the education development. Basically, it will target kindergarten teachers, uncertified elementary teachers; elementary teachers who are promoted to middle level’ (MoE, 2003; Rena, 2006). It is aimed that all teachers in all levels will pursue academic and pedagogical courses parallel through distance education lessons in addition to the conventional courses they will attain. Similarly, through distance learning directors, supervisors and even MOE staff who are not teachers are expected to upgrade and improve their leadership and management roles. MBA courses too many be offered to senior MOE staff to make them more aware of and sensitive to changes in the training and education field, as well as the benefit in investing people with high potential to expedite the process of teaching the desired and to improve the quality of education. 4.2 The respondents’ Perception 1) Most of the respondents are not in a position to differentiate the correspondence and DE programs. 2) Many did not have clear idea about the DE and the various programs implemented by the government of Eritrea. 3) Almost all respondents agreed that DE programs are very essential for Eritrea particularly to encourage mass education and coordination of education of all citizens. 4) It is agreed by some respondents that DE is nothing to do with the size of the country and its geographical barriers, if proper transportation and communication system is developed that will lead the success of DE programs. 5) Respondents could differentiate distance/ regular mode of education by way methods of interaction only they are not aware other differences. 6) Most of the respondents are not aware of the programs, which are not being offered by the government of Eritrea, unless the government pays attention about DE programs, the programme will not be successful. 7) The thirty years freedom struggle, border dispute and lack of financial resources etc., are forced the government to concentrate in the provision of food and health of its citizens. 8) All respondents sharply agreed that good tutor should be employed with good salary for the effective conduct of DE programs. 9) Many respondents suggested that effective postal services, e-mail, video/audio, TV, radio newspapers, ICT finance, logistics , distribution of study materials and effective organization of study centres are very essential for the effective implementation of DE programs. 10) Almost all the respondents have suggested that the government should spend huge amount of money on DE programme in the beginning. 11) It is agreed that the community should contribute a lot for the growth and implementation of DE programs. Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 16 12) Almost all the respondents agreed that the negligence of the concerned authority will spoil the whole trend of DE programs. So for the success of the DE programs personnel with sound knowledge skill and expertise and education are required. 13) Though government of Eritrea is concentrating on developing regular system of education, it has to concentrate on DE programs. Developed countries succeeded with this new mode of distance education because the necessary infrastructures to guaranteed fast reasonably priced access to the internet in the place. In the case of developing countries like Eritrea the service providers of the new mode of delivery should take into account the limited access relevant internet cites and adjusts their services carefully. For Eritrea, it is therefore important and helpful to examine the other countries’ experiences with regard to the notion of careful implementation of DE. So in the light of the above conclusions government of Eritrea should spare good deal of amount of money for the development of DE programs at all levels that suit the citizens. It also can encourage the private sector like the MCS who has zeal to establish DE institutions. The interview conducted with the owner of Eri-Tutorial College, MCS. 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS The distance education institutions could promote, socialize or democratize higher education by providing access to large number of urban people and disadvantaged groups in rural and remote areas including working people, fighters, women and other adults in Eritrea who are ready and determined to upgrade their knowledge and/or skills in various fields in the country and thus complement to more formal opportunities. It is to conclude that the borderless education through the internet and other mode of education may bring a revolution access over the next few years in Eritrea through huge changes of technologies like satellites, fibre optic cables and devices like mobile phones and computers in the near future. Distance learning has become a major issue in education and in strategic planning for regional development. It is a possible source for developing the human resources of a small and young country Eritrea. It is to be understood that establishing distance education is simple but complex, time consuming and require substantial resources. Therefore, particular attention should be paid to the structural administrative development and the teaching material preparation. To meet this, Eritrea yet, needs to draft its own approach to the establishment of tertiary distance education programmes and institutions. To do this, it can learn considerably from the world wide experiences of distance education policy making and planning. To understand distance education it is necessary to have a theoretical framework that encompasses the whole area of education. All in all, this new mode of learning showed a boom in the development of education worldwide. It needs to be established and begin to function with the required logistics, quality material, and student support and train man power to assure its feasibility in Eritrea. Therefore, constructive and effective measures have to be taken by the authorities Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 17 in Ministries to enhance economic, social and education development in Eritrea. If Eritrea set up a strong base for distance education, it is a hope that this study may lay a ground to researchers as a guide in conducting the future research. REFERENCES Baumgartner, T.A. and Strong, C.H. (1998). Conducting and Reading Research in Health and Human Performance. Boston: The McGraw – Hill Companies, Inc. Carrol, D. ( February, 2004). Pedagogy and Assessment in the new curriculum. Ministry of Education, Asmara, Eritrea. Daniel, J.S. Mega, (1996). Universities and Knowledge Media, Technology Strategies for Higher Education. London, Kogan Page Ltd. Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (1994). Strategies of inquiry. In Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. (pp.199 – 208). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishers. Harry, K. (1992). Distance Education today and tomorrow. A personal Perspective. Educational Media International, 29(3), 189 – 192. Holmberg. B.( 1995). The Evolution of Character and Practice in Distance Education.10 (2): 47-53, Keast, D.A. (1997). Towards an Effective Model for Implementing Distance Education Programs. American Journal of Distance Education, 11(2), 39 – 55. Keegan, D. (1996).The Foundation of Distance Education. London: Croom Helm. Keegan, D. and Rumble, G. (1982).Distance teaching at University level. In Rumble, G. and Harry, K (ed) Distance teaching Universities. New York: St. Martins press, p.15. Keegan, D. (1983). On Defining Distance Education. In Stewart, D. Keegan, D. and Hoeberg, B.(Eds.) Distance Education. New York: St. Martins press, p.27. Khan, J. (1993). Human Resource Development in the public sector; A Developing Country experience, International Journal of Public Sector Management 61(1), 48 – 58. Killion, T. (1998).Historical Dictionary of Eritrea. Lamhom: Scarecrow Press, Kvale, S. (1996). An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishers. Marrs, L. (1995). An Analysis of Distance Education and Educational Technology. Offices of continuing Education and Information and Telecommunication Services. Bellingham, Washington: Western Washington University. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative Research and Case Study Application in Education. San Fracisco: Jossey – Bass, Inc. Ministry of Education, UNESCO and the Government of Italy (1996). Guidelines for Policy Framework on Open and Distance Education. Asmara: Eritrea. (January 23). Ministry of Education (June 1999). Our People are our future: A frame work for the development of human resources in the education sector. Asmara: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (2003). Eritrea: Basic Education Statistics 2002-2003. Eritrea. Asmara, Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (2006).Tertiary Education in Eritrea: Issues, Policies, and Challenges. 13 (56 and 57) (Part- I and II on 20 and 23 September). Eritrea Profile p2-3. Rena, Ravinder (2007) “Distance Education And Its Potential For The Red Sea Nation, Eritrea – A Discourse”, Canberra (Australia): Australian Journal of Adult Learning, Vol.47, No.3.(November), pp.492-519 (A Quarterly International Journal Published by the University of Canberra). 18 Moore, M.G. (1990). Recent Contribution to the Theory of Distance Education. Open Learning, 5 (3), 10 – 13. Moore, M.G. and Kearsley, G. (1996). Distance Education: A System View. Belmont: California: Wadsworth Publishing. Rena, Ravinder (2004). Educational Development in Eritrea, Asmara: Eritrea Profile 11(12), p.6. Rena, Ravinder (2005a). Gender Disparity in Education – An Eritrean Perspective, USA: Global Child Journal 2(1),43-49. Rena, Ravinder (2005b). Eritrean Education – Retrospect and Prospect, Nairobi (Kenya ): Eastern Africa Journal of Humanities and Sciences,.5(2).1-12. Rena, Ravinder (2005c). Financing of Education in Eritrea – A Case Study on Zoba Maakel, Albany (USA): The African Symposium, 5(3) 113-128. Rena, Ravinder (2006). Education and Human Resource Development in Post- independent Eritrea- An Analysis. Barbados: West Indies, International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 2 (4). Rena, Ravinder(2007). Challenges In Introducing Distance Education Programme In Eritrea – Some Observations And Implications. Turkey: Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education- 8(1). pp.191-205 . tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde25/pdf/article_15.pdf Rumble, Grevile and Joao Oliveria (1999). Vocational Education at a Distance. International Perspectives. London: Kogan Page. Saint, W. (1999). Tertiary Distance Education and Technology in Sub Saharan Africa. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, ADEA working group on higher education. Sweet, R. (1986). Student Drop Out in Distance Education the Foundations of effective Practice. San Francisco, Calilfornia: Jossey – Bass Publishers. Taye, A. (1992). A Historical Survey of state of Education in Eritrea. Asmara: Educational Materials Production and Distribution Agency (EMPDA). Terry, E. and Philip Juler (1991). Research in Distance Education. London: Macmillan. University of Asmara (2002). Prospectus 2002 – 2003. MBY Publishing and printing, Asmara, Eritrea. University of Asmara (2004).Records of the Consultancy and Testing Center University of Asmara. Eritrea. Visser, J. (14 April, 1994). Distance Education for the Nine High – Population Countries. Paris: UNESCO Basic Education Division. Wills, B. (October, 1995). Distance Learning at a Glance. University of Idaho Engineering Outreach, Available at http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/distglan.html accessed on 23 July 2006. Wills, B. (1998). Effective distance education planning: lessons learned. Educational Technology, 38 (1), 57 – 59. www.shaebia.org – selected articles related to the study. * * * * * 
work_mc4xoghozbbv7pkhp5mpjzfmp4	----	Situations of distance education institutions in Turkey Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.390 WCLTA 2010 Situations of distance education institutions in Turkey Çak r, Öa*, O uz, E.b aEducational Science Faculty, Ankara University, Ankara 06590, Turkey bFaculty of Education, Ondokuz May s University, Samsun 55200, Turkey Abstract When present conditions are taken into consideration, the numbers of distance learning institutions are gradually increasing as well as formal education institutions. The numbers of programs which have been used in these institutions have been increasing in both graduate and postgraduate levels of education with a meaningful variety. Especially, universities have been following these programs through the medium of distance learning centers which they have set up within their institution. Furthermore, colleges of further education, educational institutes and some special centers have been established which follow these distance learning programs outside the university. The purpose of this study is to evaluate/to assess the present conditions of distance learning organizations. In this study, the data will be collected and evaluated about the structure of the institutions, how the distance learning programs are carried out (mixed and/or online) and how the evaluation is made (face to face and/or online). The data will be collected via the present web pages of these centers. Thus, the present conditions of these centers which are increasing in numbers day by day and a subject of a quality discussion will be evaluated. Keywords: Distance education, Turkey, © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Distance education aroused with the aim of supplying the needs of formal education because of variety reasons to get up to date by providing facilities to be used effectively in our developing world of today is meeting the requirements in this field by making feel its importance as time goes by. 1.1. Distance Education While the concept of distance education is defined as an educational teaching model which requires specific communication ways carried out via techniques of conception of special course and special teaching methods, * Özlem Çak r, Tel.:+90-312-3633350. E-mail address: ozlemcak@yahoo.com Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 1723 (Moore, Kearsley, 1996), distance education is defined as a training method supplying an opportunity of education to individuals who weren’t able to have a right to study in formal education institutions, because of age, illness, geographical distance or individuals who lost this opportunity by using various materials such as pressed, visual, auditoria, and electronic materials (Demiray, 1999). man (1998) defines “distance education” as an education system where instructors and learners carry out their relations of teaching-learning at different places and different times via communication technologies or via post. Generally, when the definitions of distance education are examined, five specialities of distance education reveal (Keegan, 1996). a) Both instructors and learners stand at different places during learning process, b) Education institution effects both prepared learning materials and supplied supporting services to learners, c) Using technique materials like video, audio, and computer to convey the content of lecture and to assemble learners and instructors, d) That’s learners are able to initiate a dialogue and they are able to benefit from it by providing bilateral communication, e) Individuals maintain teaching (training) individually not as a group due to the fact that it isn’t able to gather learner’s group together through learning process. The conceptual bases of distance education are: 1) to create new resources; 2) to provide unity between occupation and education; 3) to democratize the learning process; 4) to supply lifelong learning training; 5) individualism in education; 6) to benefit from existing training institutions effectively; 7) using technology in education effectively; 8) inclining the needs of individuals, society, and technology; 9) to discourse to the masses; 10) to provide unity of individual and massive education; and 11) it is sequenced that training demand and financial recourses are stabilized (Alkan,1996). Despite the disparities in the sources of richness and contraries in politic regime, all countries have common opinion on fundamental subjects about the world education systems. These items are listed below (H zal, 1983:1): a) fundamental education to all individuals; b) vocational education based on fundamental education; c) lifelong learning to individuals who wants to improve themselves in their jobs and wants to be trained again; d) in all steps of education, taking into consideration geographical, economic, and social conditions of countries, education adopted to the learners’ circumstances and their needs; e) education helping societies to protect their cultural and politic identities; and f) education aiming to materialize all targets economically. According to this common opinion, distance education is suitable for them. In Turkey, where about 1.233.000 people apply for university and 900.000 of them are enrolled to a college program by higher education institution (OSYM), reducing the need of places and instructors so that all individuals would able to go to university is supplied only by combining our limited sources with developing technologies via distance education. 1.2. Development in Turkey Distance Education, at the beginning, primarily in the world, with a letter in Boston newspaper, dated 20th March, 1728 and with an announcement notifying that Steno courses will be given, was found in 1924 in Turkey by John Dewey. In 1933-34, teaching courses via letter was held and Programme of cultivation’s calendar was intended for rural area via radio’s broadcasting (Üç Karde , ahin, Efe & Küçükönder, 2004). Initial application was performed in academic year of 1958-59 by surveying Institution of Banking and Law of Commerce, bound to the Law Faculty in Ankara University. This Institute gave banking courses to individuals who were not in Ankara by using the technique of correspondence course during two-period (Karayalç n, 1959; cited in Duman, 1994). Initial assignment of Ministry of Education concerning to this issue was to found the Correspondence course’s centre, bound to the department of statistics and publication in Technical and Vocational organization in 1960 (Duman, 1994). First enterprise in 1961, in our country began with being found the centre of correspondence course by Ministry of Education and with being carried out this teaching technique. These studies were disseminated by being organized in rank of general management in (Alkan, 1996, p. 21). 1724 Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 Ç , ( ) Institution of formal higher education is another enterprise of distance education. Furthermore, it was found to supply training to learners who graduated from high school in 1975. All equipments and facilities of the centre of correspondence course were conveyed to this institution. Distance education’s programmes that institution of formal higher education carry out; Informal Higher education departments in technical and social sciences, Education Institutes, Islam Institute and distance education’s programme of trade –tourism high school, Education Institutes, Technical High School for girls, and Technical High School for boys are programmes of correspondence course (Hakan, 1998). The fifth and seventh item in the law of high education, counted 2547, published in official journal counted in 17506 and dated on November 6th, 1981, commissioned to universities to grant distance education and then this mission was given to Anadolu University by means of law, counted 41, made in 1982 (Gülbahar, 2009). Informal High School, founded in 1992, granting a certificate of secondary education and Informal Primary School, founded in 1997, granting a certificate of primary education and vocational and technical informal school granting a certificate of electrician installer are informal schools (MONE, 2010). In following years it is seen that not only Anadolu University but also other universities grant distance education. After the base of Internet was formed in 1993 in Turkey, a new dimension has been brought to distance education. Initially education based on Internet began with the leader of Middle East Technical University and the application of education asynchronies based on internet was developed with the aim of expanding the departments of informatics, founded in 1997 (Horzum, 2007). While METU begins to grant distance education on internet by granting certificates with the program IDE-A, nowadays Ankara University, Sakarya University, and Mersin University have background for not only to grant distance education by granting certificates but also to grant university degree in distance. Most of the universities in Turkey gradually grant distance education under an institute or under a vocational high school by founding a centre of distance education. Distance education is defined that units of teaching model, prepared by Alkan privately as printed teaching materials like articles, figures, or pictures was done through letters (printed materials) in the past by means of sending them to the learners at regular intervals, but in the following years by the help of developing technology, it was transformed training via broadcasting that units of teaching prepared specifically for distance education are conveyed to the learners through radio and television. In these days, by the help of internet technology developing swiftly, the concept of e-learning is being used via live (online) broadcast of technologies. Nowadays, distance education is done with both printed materials and via broadcasting. Furthermore, educations that can be given through internet as synchronic and asynchronous have been included to them. Universities grant these applications inclusive of programs they started in respect of their rules of distance education. In this survey, it is stated that current programs of Associate degree, Undergraduate degree, Master, and PhD are carried out in which universities and in which under institute, department, or centre and how these programs are being carried out. 2. The Method Browsing model is used to describe the existing situation in survey (Karasar, 1995). The data used in survey are obtained from web pages of institutions granting distance education. The list of universities granting associate degree and undergraduate degree in distance, is scanned from the choice paper prepared by Institution of choosing students for universities, but it isn’t obtained detailed information in web pages of some universities; so this survey is limited to data obtained from web pages of universities and institutes that can be reached. Besides, informal education program, Anadolu University grant isn’t included in this survey. On the other hand, informal education programs carried out via internet are included in this survey. 3. Findings The structure of higher education has four steps in Turkish education system. These are associate degree, undergraduate degree, Master, and PhD. Undergraduate degree usually takes four years of higher education training. Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 1725 Ç , ( ) Universities in Turkey are bound to Institute of Higher Education (YÖK). The universities must be able to take permission from YÖK in order to open an associated degree or university degree. Quatos, programs, wages, and designating of lecturers are planned by Institute of Higher Education. When the statistics of the institutes of higher education are examined, it is seen that there are 102 public universities, 52 private universities, nine private vocational high school, two universities with special statutes and five military higher education institutions. The number of universities granting distance associate degree is 30. Seven of them are private university, and one of them is a university with a special status and the others are public universities. The number of universities granting higher education is gradually increasing every year. Furthermore, universities carry out certificate programs opened inside of universities are carried out by Vocational Higher School, Centre of Distance Education, The Centre of Implication and Research of Distance Education, Institute of Social Sciences, and Sciences. While programs are being carried out, there are mid-term exams, end of term exams and make up exams. Exams and evaluations are made in terms of (law) items in regulations of distance education in universities. Exams are usually held face to face in particular institutes (Ankara University, The Institute of Distance Education, Çukurova Universtiy, and Adana Vocational High School). In addition, there are universities like Afyon Kocatepe University, Gazi University, Vocational High School in Distance Education, Süleyman Demirel University, and U ak University that make end of term exams face to face and midterm exams through internet. Besides, there are programs supported with effective and online lectures through internet and via broadcasting in the frame of this program. Also, there are student’s books prepared appropriately to the purpose of distance education. Besides, the systems that effective and online courses can be demonstrated through Learning Managing System (LMS) and that learners can communicate with lecturers at regular intervals are able to be constructed (Ankara University). What’s more, there are universities performing the training as three-dimensional education (broadcasting, correspondence course, and face to face/online) like in At l m University. When associated degrees are examined it is seen that there are so many computer programming (n=21) and generally, the capacity of these departments varies from 100 to 150. In addition to this, cost of education decided by YÖK, each university has its own price. Secondly, “Applications of Accounting and Tax” programmes (n=6) follow computer programming and the capacity of this department also varies from 100 to 150. Other Associate degree programs performed via distance education are: Management of Hotel and Tourism, Services of Pharmacy, Banking and Insurance Trade, Management of Bureau and Assistant of Manager, Management of Knowledge, Generation of Electricity and Distribution of Electricity, Management of Real Estate, Foreign Trade, System of Geographical Knowledge, Medical Documentation, and Logistics, Retailing and Management of Store, Management of Health Care Institutions, and Marketing. Individuals graduated from these programs are granted a certificate of an associate degree. Students who are graduated from these departments are given an associated degree diploma and the list of the associated programs given by universities is shown below in Table 1: Table 1. Universities granting associate degree program The name of university Departments of Associate degree Afyon Kocatepe University Computer Programming Knowledge Management Ahmet Yesevi University Computer Programming Anadolu University Banking and Insurance Trade Management of Bureau Assistant of Manager, Foreign Trade Justice High School Production of Electricity and Electricity Distribution Real Estate and Property Management The system of Geographical Knowledge Services of Pharmacy Ankara University Banking and Insurance Trade Computer Programming 1726 Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 Medical Documentation Secretariats Justice High School Management of Hotel and Tourism Atatürk University Computer Programming At l m University Computer Programming Management of Hotel and Tourism Bahçe ehir University Logistics Computer Programming Management of Business Bal kesir University Foreign Trade Technology of Meat Production Technology of Nourishment Management of Business Applications of Accounting and Tax Ship Building Farming of Poultry Marketing Services of Organizations Çukurova University Computer Programming Applications of Accounting and Tax Duzce University Knowledge Management Computer Programming F rat University Computer Programming Gazi University Knowledge Management Computer Programming Management of Business Technologies of Automation and Control Logistics Applications of Accounting and Tax Retailing and Management of Store Istanbul Aydin University Computer Programming Istanbul Bilgi University Management of Hotel and Tourism Istanbul University Banking and Insurance Trade Foreign Trade Karabuk University Computer Programming Technology of Electronic Management of Business Applications of Accounting and Data Karadeniz Techical University Computer programming Management of Business K r kkale University Computer Programming Kocaeli University Management of Business Mehmet Akif University Computer Programming Mersin University Computer Programming Services of Pharmacy Technology of Electronic Communication Technology of Electronic Management of Business Technology of Automation and Control Sakarya University Knowledge Management Computer Programming Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 1727 Technology of Electronic Management of Business Mechatronics Suleyman Demirel University Knowledge Management Computer Programming Management of Bureau and Assistant of Manager Medical Documentation Secretariats Usak University Computer Programming Undergraduate degree programs given by universities are shown below in Table 2: Table 2. Universities granting university degree The name of university Departments of University degree Ahmet Yesevi Üniversitesi Computer Engineering Industry Engineering Management of Computer Systems Anadolu University PreSchool Teaching Management Economy stanbul University Radio, Television and Cinema Finance Business Econometry Labour Economics Turkish Literature Public Relations and Publicity Computer Education and Instruction Technology Karabuk University Industry Engineering Science History English Literature Karadeniz Technical University Computer Education and Instruction Technology Sakarya University Industry Engineering Computer Engineering Finance Human Resource Management Computer Education and Instruction Technology Undergraduate degree programs via distance education granted in universities include: Computer Education and Instruction Technology, Pre-School Teaching, Philosophy, Sociology, and Turkish Literature in Anadolu University; Industry Engineering, Computer Engineering, Human Resource Management, and Department of Teacher of Computer and Technology Teaching in Sakarya University; Radio, Television and Cinema, Marketing, Finance, Business, Econometry, and Management of Computer Systems in Ahmet Yesevi University. The most common of master programs granted via distance education is MBA master program. MBA Master’s program and other master’s programs have been given in the list. Table 3.Universities Granting Master’s Program University Type of Program Department Sakarya University Master Degree History of Republic 1728 Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 Social Science Institute Public Finance Science Institute Information Technology Engineering Management Gazi University Master Degree (without thesis) Information Technology Ahmet Yesevi University Master Degree Computer Engineering Informatics Systems Management Management of Organization Education Administration and Supervision Local Governments Management of Health Institutions Management stanbul University Master Degree Informatics Anadolu University Master Degree (without thesis) Teaching Children with Developmental Disabilities Master Degree E-Accommodation Master Degree MBA stanbul Bilgi University Master Degree MBA Sakarya University Master Degree MBA Bilgi University Master Degree (without thesis) MBA I k University Master Degree MBA Maltepe University Master Degree MBA Beykent University Master Degree MBA Fatih University Master Degree (without thesis) MBA Çukurova University Master Degree (without thesis) MBA Mersin University Master Degree (without thesis) MBA Sakarya University Master Degree (without thesis) MBA Doctorate and Certificate programs given by universities are shown below in Table 4: Table 4.Universities Granting Doctorate and Certificate Programs University Doctorate & Certificate Programs Anadolu University Distance Education Doctorate Program Executive Development Certificate Program. Ankara University Undergraduate Theology Program (ILITAM) Conservation in Museums (ÖKOP) Synchronous Medicine Education (STIP) European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) Program Course on Korean Economics (Synchronously) European Language Passport (ADP-A1) Ataturk University Undergraduate Theology Program (ILITAM) Istanbul University Undergraduate Theology Program (ILITAM) Inonu University Undergraduate Theology Program (ILITAM) Sakarya University Undergraduate Theology Program (ILITAM) Foreign Trade Expert Distance Education Certificate Program Computer Programming Distance Education Certificate Program CAD / CAM Distance Education Certificate Program Management of Engineering Distance Education Certificate Program Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 1729 E-Foreign Trade Distance Education Certificate Program Middle East Technical University Information Technology Distance Education Certificate Program Health Information Systems Gazi University Management of Marketing Now, Anadolu University has a doctorate program and the some universities have lots of certificate programs (as shown in table 4). Besides, there are certificate programs that Institutes of Distance education and some institutes perform in common like cooperation among METU, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Security and Labour, Elkingan Endowment, and Sakarya University. Certificate Programs are given commonly on teaching language, programming of computer, business of computer, foreign trade, and management of business. 4. Results Finally, when it is assessed the situation of the institutions granting distance education, it is seen that their structures are quite different. Varieties programs inside of the institutes of distance education, informal high school (via distance education) or vocational high school are performed. Detailed information about the relation of programs with each other isn’t obtained. Programs’ quotas are almost the same with each other but the wages/or costs are quite different. Also, the ways of the programs are quite different. Exams and assessments, objectives and certificates granted are included on other discussion issues. References Alkan, C. (1987). Open Education “A Comparative Review of Distance Education Systems, Ankara: Ankara University, Faculty of Educational Sciences Publication. No:157. Alkan, C. (1996). The Historical Development of Distance Education, Turkey 1. International Distance Education Symposym, Ankara, (12-15 Kas m 1996). Demiray (1999). Faculty of Open Education Graduates’ Relations with Working Life. Eskisehir. [online: http://www.tojet.net/e-book /AOF_Mezunlari_Calisma_Yasami_iliskileri.pdf, Date:10.07.2010] Duman, A. (1994). One View of Distance Education Applications in Turkey as Regards to Adult Education, Ankara University, Journal of Faculty of Educational Sciences, 285-293, (1994). Hakan, A. (1998).”Solving Problems of Education”:Open Education. Innovations in Education Sciences, Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Elementary Education Completion Degree Program [Online:http://www.aç kö retim.edu.tr/kitap/IOLTP/1266/unite04.pdf, Date:10.07.2010] H zal, A. (1983). Distance Learning Processes and Written Materials. Ankara: Ankara University, Faculty of Educational Sciences Publication. No 122. Horzum, B. (2007). Effect of Transactional Distance on Students’ Achievement, Satisfaction and Self Efficacy in Internet Based Education. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Educational Sciences, Program of Educational Technology. Gülbahar, Y. (2009). E-Learning. Pegem-Akademi Publication. Ankara. http://uek.aof.edu.tr/Lists/Uzaktan%20Eitim%20Programlar/AllItems.aspx http://www.ankuzem.ankara.edu.tr/ http://www.bilgi.aof.edu.tr/ http://buzem.beykent.edu.tr/ http://www2.yesevi.net/ http://www.mersin.edu.tr/fakulte.php?id=43&tip=6 http://muhasebeweb.maltepe.edu.tr/node/3 http://mba.bilgi.edu.tr/ http://www.bahcesehir.edu.tr/sosyalbilimler/basvuru/id/04 http://fusem.fatih.edu.tr/?tezsiz,3827 http://www.ue.atilim.edu.tr/basvuru_bilgileri.htm http://www.ue.gazi.edu.tr/bilisim.html http://yeni.beykent.edu.tr/WebProjects/Web/Main.php http://www.yukseklisans.com.tr man (1998) Distance Education.Changing Publication. Keegan, Desmond. (1996), Foundations of Distance Education, New York: Routledge. MONE, (2010). Distance Education, [Online:http://egitek.meb.gov.tr/KapakLink/ /UzaktanEgitim/UzaktanEgitim.html, Date: 01.07.2010]. 1730 Çakır, Ö and Oğuz, E. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1722–1730 Moore, M.G. & G. Kearsley (1996) Distance Education: a Systems View. Belmont, Ca. Wadsworth Publishing Company. Üçkarde , F., ahin,M., Efe, E. & Küçükönder, H. (2004). Distance Education Based on Information And Communication Technologies. 4. National Animal Science Congress, Oral Program, Poster. [Online: http://4uzbk.sdu.edu.tr/4UZBK/POSTER/BGP/4UZBKP_064.pdf, Date: 01.07.2010]. 
work_me54qzu43ff3fdlhjkn3bgdszq	----	Studies in Higher Education Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2006, pp. 735–752 ISSN 0307-5079 (print)/ISSN 1470-174X (online)/06/060735–18 © 2006 Society for Research into Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/03075070601007963 Instructional dialogue: distance education students’ dialogic behaviour Avner Caspi* and Paul Gorsky Chais Research Center for Instructional Technologies, Open University of Israel Taylor and Francis LtdCSHE_A_200691.sgm10.1080/03075070601007963Studies in Higher Education0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online)Original Article2006Society for Research into Higher Education316000000December 2006AvnerCaspiavnerca@openu.ac.il Instructional systems, both distance education and campus-based, may be viewed in terms of intrap- ersonal and interpersonal instructional dialogues, that mediate and facilitate learning respectively, and instructional resources that enable such dialogues. Resources include self-instruction texts, tutorials, instructor availability, websites and more. This study investigated the dialogic behaviour of 521 Open University of Israel students as they studied undergraduate courses in Exact and Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. Research objectives were to document what dialogue types, medi- ated through which resources, were utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulty while read- ing instructional texts and while working on assignments. Two main findings emerged: (1) initially, most students dealt with both kinds of conceptual difficulty individually, on their own; only when such efforts failed did they turn to interpersonal dialogue; and (2) most students turned to peers for help, not to their instructors. These findings conflict with the assumed importance often ascribed to interpersonal, instructor–student dialogue by some distance education theorists. Introduction This article explores accounts of the process of distance learning by focusing on the instructional dialogues and resources utilized by university students. Modern distance education systems include a diverse array of resources for individual study (intrapersonal dialogue), such as self-instruction texts, tutorials and web-based instructional systems. In addition, there are different resources for interpersonal dialogue, such as telephone, email, face-to-face meetings with peers and instructors, and websites for synchronous and asynchronous interaction. Given this diversity, we investigated students’ study strategies and practices in terms of the kinds of dialogues they engaged in and the resources that enabled these dialogues. To carry out such an analysis, however, a need exists for a broad conceptual framework of distance education systems that recognizes the centrality of instructional dialogue. Such a framework originated as a theory of distance education (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005) and later developed into a unified theory of instruction (Gorsky et al., 2007). * Corresponding author. The Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski Sttreet, P.O.B. 808, Ra’anana, 43107, Israel. Email: avnerca@openu.ac.il 736 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky Empirical support for the theory was found in a series of three preliminary naturalis- tic studies that tracked distance and campus-based students’ dialogic behaviour as they learned physics and chemistry (Gorsky et al., 2004a, b, 2006). Several findings emerged from these studies. First, it was found that all learning activities engaged in by students could be categorized as dialogues enabled by some structural or human resource. Second, a general approach to the use of dialogue was discerned. For all students participating in these studies, intrapersonal dialogue (individual study) was the primary mode. This finding is supported by several other research studies, such as those by Rourke et al. (1999) and Rourke & Anderson (2002). Distance students learned primarily by reading self-instruction texts and by listening at tutorials; university students participating in large, lecture-based courses (in the study cited above, group size was about 150 students per lecture) learned primarily by listening at lectures and tutorials. Even though tutorials were more interactive than lectures, they constituted only 20% of total instruction time. Third, both distance and campus-based students opted for interpersonal dialogue only when assigned problems that they could not solve. Fourth, for all students, the first partner chosen for interpersonal dialogue was a fellow student. Instructor– student dialogues were generally used as a last resort. Fifth, and last, only for campus- based students participating in small introductory-level courses (about 10 registered students) was interpersonal dialogue a significant mode engaged in while learning in the classroom. These findings are, to say the least, not surprising. What we believe important, however, is that these unsurprising and familiar findings may be grounded in theory. The goal of the present research is to validate some of these findings by using a rela- tively large sample population of students and relevant statistical procedures. The research adopted a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978; Cohen & Manion, 1989; Charmaz, 1995; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) that begins with small naturalistic studies, carried out in order to generate models and hypotheses that can then be tested on larger populations using statistics. Taber (2000) wrote that ‘grounded theory may be used to bridge between case studies and large-scale surveys, which enables the strengths of both to be combined in the same research programme’ (p. 470). Specifically, we will investigate how students from various disciplines deal with conceptual difficulty while learning and while working on assignments. This will be done by investigating the kinds of dialogues they engaged in and the resources that enabled them. In order to proceed, a brief review follows of what will be henceforth referred to as the Unified Theory of Instruction or UTI. The unified theory of instruction The theory consists of two propositions based on five underlying assumptions. The propositions are: first, every element in an instructional system is either a dialogue or a resource which supports dialogue, and second, dialogues and learning outcomes are correlated. The assumptions are: Dialogues and resources 737 1. Instruction is a set of purposeful activities directed toward achieving learning. 2. Learning is an individual activity characterized by internal mental processes. 3. Learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue. 4. Learning is facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. 5. Dialogue is enabled by structural and human resources. The differences between intra- and interpersonal dialogues are especially important for the current discussion. Intrapersonal dialogue is defined formally as the interaction between student and subject matter as the student is purposefully trying to learn. Intrapersonal dialogue mediates learning (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005, 2007). When students read books or text from computer screens, listen to lectures or to interpersonal dialogues engaged in by others, use computer simulations or watch educational tele- vision, with the intent to learn, they are said to be engaging in intrapersonal dialogue. The interaction between student and subject matter has generally been assigned a key position in all twentieth-century inquiry into human learning, be it from behav- iourist, cognitivist or constructivist viewpoints. The internal mental processes that presumably occur have been labelled ‘internalizing the consequences of behavior’ (Skinner, 1968), ‘assimilation’ or ‘accommodation’ (Piaget, 1970), ‘accretion’, ‘structuring’ or ‘tuning’ (Rumelhart & Norman, 1978), ‘intra-psychological processes’ (Vygotsky, 1978), ‘internal didactic conversations’ (Holmberg, 1989) and ‘self-instruction’ (Gagne et al., 1992). These internal processes are not relevant to the construct intrapersonal dialogue in the UTI, which records only the variables associ- ated with the student/subject matter interaction (number of occurrences, duration, learning outcomes, etc.), but they are most certainly relevant to learning theory and to learning theorists. Interpersonal dialogue is defined formally as the interaction between instructor and student, or between student and student. It may be face to face or mediated by communications media; if mediated, synchronous or asynchronous (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005, Gorsky et al., 2007). Interpersonal dialogue is defined structurally as a message loop between Instructor–Student–Instructor or Student–Instructor–Student or Student A–Student B–Student A. Students may, of course, engage in dialogues with significant others, such as parents, non-university friends or employers. These human resources are excluded since they are beyond the domain of instructional systems. Interpersonal dialogue has two distinct classes of outputs: subject-matter oriented and non-subject-matter oriented. One or both types may characterize a message. Instructional resources fall into one of two categories: structural or human. Structural resources for intrapersonal dialogues include all instructional materials of any kind specifically and intentionally made available to students: for example, texts or Internet sites. Earlier studies found that three structural resources influence the extent of inter- personal dialogue to a large degree: instructional design (Clark, 1983; Draper et al., 1994; Gorsky et al., 2004b), group size (Chen & Willits, 1998; Caspi et al., 2003), and student and instructor availability (Chen, 2001a, b; Gorsky et al., 2004a, b). The most significant human resource in intrapersonal dialogue is the student. Each individual learner is characterized by a constellation of variables that include his or 738 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky her goals for the course, prior knowledge, motivation, autonomy, intelligence and anxiety, among others. These variables differ for each learner and they determine the extent of intrapersonal dialogue that occurs and its quality (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005). Human resources for interpersonal dialogues are instructors and other students. Instructors’ personality traits and facilitation skills play a critical role in creating and maintaining dialogue with students. Of particular importance is their approach to teaching (Kember, 1997; Prosser et al., 1994), which has been shown to affect students’ involvement in interpersonal dialogue. A teacher-centred, content-oriented approach decreases opportunities for interpersonal dialogue, while a student-centred, learning-oriented approach may increase such opportunities. Methodology Objectives This study tested the models of students’ dialogic behaviour that emerged from the naturalistic studies described. In addition, correlations between some human and structural resources that characterize courses taught at the Open University of Israel (OUI) and students’ dialogic behaviour were sought. This study, which relied on a much larger population (n = 521) than those sampled in the previous naturalistic ones (8≤n≤16), enabled the use of quantitative statistical procedures. Research objectives were to document: (1) what dialogue types, enabled through which structural resources, were specifically utilized by students to overcome a conceptual difficulty encountered while reading texts; (2) what dialogue types, enabled through which resources, were utilized by students while working on a diffi- cult mandatory assignment; (3) what relationships exist between students’ dialogic behaviour and selected structural and human resources common to the different courses; and (4) who is the first partner students turn to when they engage in interpersonal dialogue. Structural resources associated with courses included class size, number of face-to- face tutorials, number of mandatory assignments, the discipline to which the course belongs and the perceived activity of the course website. Human resources included faculty and students. Attributes associated with faculty were coordinator and instruc- tor availability and their approaches to teaching as perceived by students. Attributes associated with students included their reported prior grades, prior acquaintance with other registered students, assessment of course difficulty, motivation to achieve a high grade and self-perceived individuality. Background The Open University of Israel is a distance education university designed to offer academic studies to students throughout Israel. For more than 30 years the university has offered a home study system based on textbooks, tutors and study centres. This year’s enrolment is more than 38,000 students. Dialogues and resources 739 Each course has a coordinator who is responsible for all administrative and academic activities, such as approving deferrals and writing assignments and tests, and instructors who lead tutorials. Tutorials may be ‘regular’, held every two or three weeks, or ‘extended’, held weekly. In addition, instructors and coordinators are available for telephone consultations at specified days and times. The text- instructor system was enriched in 1999 with the introduction of a web-based instructional environment, wherein each course has its own website. Course sites are intended to simplify organizational procedures and to enrich students’ learn- ing opportunities and experiences. Website use is optional and non-mandatory, so that equality among students is preserved. The website does not replace textbooks or face-to-face tutorial sessions, which are the pedagogical foundations of the Open University. It enables asynchronous instructor–student and student–student interactions. Participants A web-based questionnaire was distributed via email to 3512 students whose names appeared on the mailing lists of 11 courses. In total, 521 questionnaires were returned. Two points are noteworthy. First, mailing lists contained the email addresses only of those students who chose to be included. In other words, the sample population for the study is not representative of the entire student body at the OUI, in that it includes only students who have computers and access to the Internet. However, about 70% of the entire OUI student body does have computers and access to the Internet. Second, the 11 courses were selected only as a way to reach partici- pants; that is, students were free to analyze any course they chose, not necessarily the courses from which their names were selected. Mean age was 27.8 (range: 15–62). Men accounted for 48.8% of the participants. Faculty distribution for the reported courses was: 73.1% social sciences, 9.1% natural sciences, 8.2% computer sciences, 7.6% mathematics and 2.0 % humanities. Course size (number of registered students per course) ranged between 7 and 2600. Some 19.1% of the students attended ‘regular’ (up to 7) face-to-face tutorial sessions, while 79.6% attended ‘extended’ (8–15) sessions; 1.4% reported not attending tutorials. These sample distributions closely match the overall distributions for OUI students regarding age, gender, faculty, course size and tutorial type. Questionnaire After marking their gender and age, students selected a course they had already completed or that was now being studied. They were informed that all questions were related only to this specific course. Four questions related to the course’s structural resources: a. How many obligatory exercises were assigned in this course? b. Did you attend regular or extended tutorial sessions or not at all? 740 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky c. Was the course’s website active (i.e. updated at least once a week, or new messages are added to the course discussion group at least twice a week)? d. Approximately how many students attended tutorial sessions? Three questions related to faculty resources: a. Was it possible to call the instructor beyond his or her consulting hours? b. Was it possible to call the course coordinator beyond his or her consulting hours? c. Describe the instructor’s approach to teaching: ● The instructor primarily engages in the transfer of information. ● The instructor primarily meets students’ needs and helps them to become independent learners. Seven questions related to the students themselves: a. Rate your motivation to achieve a high grade as high, moderate or low. b. Rate the course as difficult, moderate or easy. c. What is your current grade point average? d. How did you prefer to learn, alone or with others? e. How did you overcome a specific conceptual difficulty that occurred while read- ing the self-instruction texts? Mark all actions undertaken: ● reread the material ● contact a student from the same course ● contact the instructor ● contact the course coordinator ● enter the course website ● post a question in the course forum ● ask a question at the next tutorial meeting ● give up ● enter any other additional actions taken. f. List the order in which the first four actions were carried out. g. How did you deal with a specific difficulty that occurred while working on a mandatory assignment? Mark all actions undertaken (the list is identical to the one above). h. List the order in which the first four actions were carried out. Construct validity was ascertained by an evaluation made by five course coordinators. Statistical procedures For the first two research questions (how students overcome conceptual difficulty encountered while reading texts and while working on difficult assignments), a two- step procedure was carried out. In step one, correlations between students’ dialogic behaviour and relevant human and structural resources were calculated. Since these variables are nominal, correlations were performed using Cramer’s V procedure. When continuous variables were involved (e.g. the number of students in a tutorial), the eta correlation (η) was used. Dialogues and resources 741 In step two, those resources that correlated significantly with students’ dialogic behaviour were entered into a forward stepwise multinomial logistic regression. The forward stepwise method is suitable for exploratory studies, wherein the contribution of each predictor is not known, either theoretically or empirically. Multinomial logistic regressions are used when dependent variables are nominal. Like linear regressions, logistic regressions can be used to predict the occurrence of a dependent variable given certain independent variables; furthermore, logistic regressions can determine the per cent of variance in the dependent variables seen as a function of the independent ones. The logistic regression estimates the probability that a certain event (a given nominal dependent variable) occurs by transforming a dependent variable into a logit variable (the natural log of the odds for the occurrence or non- occurrence of the dependent variable). Steps one and two were also carried out for predicting the first selected partner for interpersonal dialogue. Results Students’ dialogic behaviour Students’ dialogic behaviour was investigated in two specific cases: first, how they dealt with a specific conceptual difficulty that occurred while reading instructional texts, and second, how they dealt with a specific difficulty that occurred while working on an assignment. Five distinct dialogic behaviour patterns were identified: 1. intrapersonal dialogue only 2. first intrapersonal dialogue then interpersonal dialogue 3. interpersonal dialogue only 4. first interpersonal dialogue then intrapersonal dialogue 5. multidirectional: students who fluctuate between the two dialogue types. Table 1 presents the distribution of the dialogic behaviour patterns as reported by the students. Table 1. Dialogic behaviour patterns (as percentages of total) for dealing with a conceptual difficulty while reading and while solving a very difficult assignment Assignment Intra only (n = 74) Inter only (n = 24) Intra to inter (n = 280) Inter to intra (n = 15) Multi- directional (n = 100) Reading Intra only (n = 85) 10.5 0.8 4.5 0.0 1.4 Inter only (n = 12) 0.0 1.4 0.8 0.0 0.2 Intra to inter (n = 292) 4.1 2.0 43.8 1.4 7.9 Inter to intra (n = 22) 0.2 0.2 1.4 1.4 1.2 Multi-directional (n = 82) 0.2 0.4 6.3 0.2 9.5 Note: Some students left some questions unanswered, therefore the total numbers do not add up to 521. 742 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky In both cases, dealing with conceptual difficulty while reading and while working on an assignment, the majority of students began with intrapersonal dialogue and then switched to interpersonal dialogue (59.2% for ‘reading’ and 56.8% for ‘assignment’). Cramer’s V correlation between reading and assignment was .75 (p < .001) and indicated a consistency of dialogic behaviour in both cases. Correlating students’ dialogic behaviour with human and structural resources Students’ dialogic behaviour for each of the cases (overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading and while working on an assignment) was correlated with the system’s human and structural resources. Table 2 summarizes the findings. The strongest significant correlation found was between a student preference to work alone (‘individuality’) and dialogic behaviour. In order to clarify this correlation, an additional test was carried out. Frequency distributions for each of the two groups (those who cited a preference to work alone and those who did not) were performed. It was found that ‘individualists’ generally exhibited two kinds of dialogic behaviour: Table 2. Cramer’s V correlations of students’ dialogic behaviour and the system’s structural and human resources. Number of respondents range between 421 and 507 (some students left some questions unanswered) Resources ‘Reading’ ‘Assignment’ Structural Academic discipline .14 .12 Number of registered students for the course .31+ .31+ Tutorial type .14** .14** Approx. number of students per tutorial (range: 1–60) .24+ .29+ Number of required assignments (range: 0–20) .23+ .18+ Perceived site activity (90% active, 10% inactive) .05 .14* Human: staff related Instructor availability (62.1% more than required, 37.9% as required) .16* .11 Coordinator availability (42.3% more than required, 57.7% as required) .11 .06 Teaching approach (70.3% content-centred, 29.7% learning-centred) .06 .04 Human: student related Prior acquaintance with other students (38.2% yes, 61.1% no) .14* .23** Motivation for high grade (77.3% high, 18.8% moderate, 3.9% low) .10 .07 Perceived difficulty (57.0% difficult, 36.3% moderate, 6.8% easy) .11* .12* Current grade point average (5.9% less than 70, 37.7% 70–80, 41.4% 80–90, 15.1% more than 90) .07 .09 Individuality (76.1% prefer learning alone, 23.9% prefer learning with others) .36** .29** + eta correlation; the route is the dependent variable; correlations were not significant. * p < .05; ** p < .01. Dialogues and resources 743 intrapersonal only and intrapersonal then interpersonal. Non-individualists also generally exhibited the intrapersonal then interpersonal behaviour, but instead of intrapersonal only, their dialogic behaviour was multidirectional. A second significant correlation found was between students’ prior acquaintance with other students and their choice of dialogic behaviour. That is, students who had a prior acquaintance with other students tended to utilize interpersonal dialogue to a greater extent than did students without any prior acquaintance. Next, in order to examine which factor contributed more to students’ dialogic behaviour, those factors that correlated significantly with students’ dialogic behaviour patterns for overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading texts (tutorial type, prior acquaintance with other students, perceived course difficulty, and individuality) were entered into a multinomial logistic regression. A forward stepwise method was used, with the most common pattern, intrapersonal then interpersonal dialogue, as the reference category. Parameter estimates are presented in Table 3. The same statistical procedure was carried out for those factors that correlated significantly with students’ dialogic behaviour patterns while working on a difficult assignment. Parameter esti- mates for this analysis are presented in Table 4. Two additional dialogic behaviours, interpersonal only and interpersonal then intrapersonal, are not presented in Tables 3 and 4 since both groups had very small samples and their inclusion would bias the odds ratio in a disproportionate way. Two factors, individuality and tutorial type, significantly predicted the probability of the dialogic behaviour for dealing with conceptual difficulty while reading texts. The -2 log likelihood of the model was 224.25; χ2(12) = 88.14; p < .001; Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2 was 0.18. Three factors significantly predicted students’ dialogic behaviour patterns while working on an assignment. These were individuality and tutorial type, as in the previous regression, as well as prior acquaintance. The -2 log likelihood of final model was 249.17; χ2(12) = 79.06; p < .001; Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2 was 0.16. In general, the probability that students used intrapersonal dialogue only (relative to the intra- then interpersonal pattern) increased if students preferred to work alone (individuality). For overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading texts, the Table 3. Multinomial logistic regression coefficients for predicting dialogic behaviour for overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading texts Dialogic behaviour Predictor B Standard error Wald Sig. Odds ratio Intra only Intercept −0.87 1.03 0.70 0.402 [Individuality = alone] 1.27 0.49 6.85 0.009 3.57 [Tutorials = regular] −1.17 0.95 1.53 0.216 0.31 [Tutorials = intensive] −1.68 0.93 3.29 0.070 0.19 Multi-directional Intercept 1.58 1.03 2.33 0.127 [Individuality = alone] −1.58 0.27 35.38 0.000 0.21 [Tutorials = regular] −2.15 1.06 4.12 0.042 0.12 [Tutorials = intensive] −1.72 1.02 2.86 0.091 0.18 744 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky probability decreased if they attended intensive tutorials, and, while working on assignment, this probability decreased if they had a prior acquaintance with other students. Odds ratio within a tier indicates which variables have the most effect for that tier’s category on the dependent variable. Following this rule the largest effect was individuality. In general, the probability that students exhibited multidirectional behaviour (rela- tive to the common intra- then interpersonal pattern) decreased if students preferred to work alone (individuality). This probability also decreased when they tried to overcome conceptual difficulty while reading if they attended regular tutorials. While working on assignment this probability increased if they had a prior acquaintance with other students. The largest effect for overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading was individuality; for solving a difficult assignment, prior acquaintance. Since a large number of students exhibited multidirectional dialogic behaviour patterns, this group was further analysed. Six patterns were identified and these are presented in Table 5. Types 1 and 3 as well as types 2 and 4 were merged because of their similarities. For overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading, classification Types 1 and 3 accounted for 53.5% of the respondents. Types 2 and 4 accounted for 19.8% and Table 4. Multinomial logistic regression coefficients for predicting students’ dialogic behaviour while working on a difficult assignment Dialogic behaviour Predictor B Std. Error Wald Sig. Odds ratio Intrapersonal only Intercept −1.28 0.98 1.70 0.193 [Individuality = alone] 1.28 0.54 5.58 0.018 3.58 [Tutorials = regular] −0.87 0.86 1.01 0.314 0.42 [Tutorials = intensive] −1.09 0.84 1.69 0.194 0.34 [Acquaintance = yes] −0.70 0.32 4.71 0.030 0.50 Multi-directional Intercept −0.06 1.18 0.00 0.958 [Individuality = alone] −1.04 0.26 15.59 0.001 0.35 [Tutorials = regular] −1.62 1.23 1.72 0.190 0.20 [Tutorials = intensive] −0.33 1.17 0.08 0.776 0.72 [Acquaintance = yes] 0.56 0.25 5.09 0.024 1.75 Table 5. Dialogic behaviour within multidirectional patterns Type 1st dialogue 2nd dialogue 3rd dialogue 4th dialogue 1 Intrapersonal Interpersonal Intrapersonal — 2 Interpersonal Intrapersonal Interpersonal — 3 Intrapersonal Interpersonal Interpersonal Intrapersonal 4 Interpersonal Intrapersonal Intrapersonal Interpersonal 5 Intrapersonal Interpersonal Intrapersonal Interpersonal 6 Interpersonal Intrapersonal Interpersonal Intrapersonal Dialogues and resources 745 Type 5 accounted for 26.7%. Similar results were found for working on a difficult assignment. Next, the specific resources utilized by students in Types 1 and 3 were analysed. The initial resource for intrapersonal dialogue for more than 50% of these students was the course textbook. In the subsequent interpersonal dialogue, peers were the resource utilized by more than 50% of the students. In the final intrapersonal dialogue, more than 85% of the students searched the course website. Partners in interpersonal dialogue Students who engaged in interpersonal dialogue could choose from among four potential human resources: peers, staff, a combination of peers and staff (posting a question on the course website forum, or asking a question at tutorials), and seeking help from someone outside the instructional system (non-university friends, parents, employers, etc.) The third option is seen as a combination of peers and staff since it is not clear to whom a question is addressed and not clear as to who actually answers. Table 6 presents the distribution of human resources turned to for overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading and while working on a difficult assignment. Almost half the students turned to peers as their first partner choice for interper- sonal dialogue (47.2% and 53.6% in reading and assignment respectively). An addi- tional large number of students turned first to the peer/staff option (41.7% and 35.8% for ‘reading’ and ‘assignment’ respectively). This category included students who posted questions on the course website and those who asked questions at the next tutorial session. It is noteworthy that, within this group, the majority of students turned to the course website (73.9% in reading and 61.5% in assignment). Cramer’s V correlation between the first partner choice for interpersonal dialogue in ‘reading’ and the first choice in ‘assignment’ was .75 (p < .001). Table 7 presents correlations between each of the structural and human resources and the first partner choice for interpersonal dialogues in ‘reading’ and in ‘assignment’. The strongest significant correlation found was between a student preference to work alone (individuality) and first choice of a partner for interpersonal dialogue. An Table 6. Distributions (as percentages of total) of first partners turned to for overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading and while working on a difficult assignment First human resource for assignment Peers (n = 207) Staff (n = 37) Peers/Staff (n = 138) Others (n = 4) First human resource for reading Peers (n = 182) 44.3 0.8 2.1 0.0 Staff (n = 38) 2.1 5.7 2.1 0.0 Peers/Staff (n = 161) 7.3 2.8 31.6 0.0 Others (n = 5) 0.0 0.3 0.0 1.0 Note: Some students utilized intrapersonal dialogue only, and some others left some question unanswered. 746 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky examination of frequency distributions for each of the two groups (those who cited a preference to work alone and those who did not) revealed that ‘individualists’ gener- ally posted questions on the website or asked questions at the face-to-face tutorials. Non-individualists generally turned to peers. A second significant correlation found was between students’ choice of tutorial type and their first choice of a partner for interpersonal dialogue while overcoming concep- tual difficulty when reading. That is, students who attended regular tutorials tended to post questions on the website or ask questions at the tutorial sessions whereas students who attended intensive tutorials generally turned to peers. Other significant correlations were found between perceived course difficulty and prior acquaintance, on the one hand, and students’ first choice of a partner for inter- personal dialogue while working on a difficult assignment, on the other. Students with prior acquaintances among their peers, while working on difficult assignments, generally turned to peers while students without prior acquaintances generally turned to the website or asked questions at the tutorial sessions. Students who perceived the course as difficult generally turned to peers; students who perceived the courses as easy or moderately difficult tended to post questions on the website. Next, those factors that correlated with students’ choice of partners for interper- sonal dialogue for overcoming conceptual difficulty while reading (tutorial type, prior acquaintance with other students, perceived course difficulty, motivation and Table 7. Cramer’s V correlation between resources and first partner for interpersonal dialogue. Number of respondents ranges between 369 and 421 (some students left some questions unanswered) Resource First target in reading First target in assignment Course (structural resources) Faculty .07 .11 Number of registered students .35 .35 Tutorials type .20** .14* Average reported participants in tutorials .31 .30 Number of required assignments .25 .18 Perceived site activity .11 .13 Staff (human resources for interpersonal dialogues) Instructor’s availability .02 .08 Coordinator’s accessibility .12 .08 Instructor’s approach to teaching .09 .10 Student (human resource for intra- and interpersonal dialogues) Prior acquaintance .14* .17** Motivation .15** .10 Perceived difficulty .13* .17*** Average grade before this course .10 .08 Individuality .32*** .25*** *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Dialogues and resources 747 individuality) were entered into a multinomial logistic regression. The reference category was peers, the most selected resource. Two factors, individuality and tuto- rials, significantly predicted the probability of first partner choice for dealing with conceptual difficulty while reading texts. The -2 log likelihood of the final model was 252.81; χ2(6) = 59.49; p < .001; Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2 was 0.16. Parameter estimates are presented in the Table 8. This statistical procedure was repeated for those factors that correlated with students’ choice of partners for interpersonal dialogue while experiencing difficulty when working on an assignment. Three factors, individuality, perceived difficulty and tutorials, significantly predicted the probability of choosing non-peer partners. The -2 log likelihood of the final model was 148.59; χ2(12)= 61.67; p < .001; Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2 was 0.16. Parameter estimates are presented in Table 9. In general, the probability that students turn to staff (relative to peers) increased if they attended regular tutorials. While trying to overcome conceptual difficulty in reading, this probability also increased if students preferred to work alone (individu- ality) but the largest effect was for the tutorials. The probability that students turn to staff (relative to peers) in order to overcome conceptual difficulty while working on Table 8. Coefficients of the multinomial logistic regression, the selection of first partner for interpersonal dialogue in ‘reading’ is predicted B Standard error Wald Sig. Odds ratio Staff Intercept −2.40 0.36 43.62 0.000 [Tutorials = regular] 1.54 0.42 13.73 0.001 4.67 [Individuality = alone] 0.95 0.40 5.63 0.018 2.58 Peers/staff Intercept −1.43 0.25 32.65 0.000 [Tutorials = regular] 0.95 0.33 8.29 0.004 2.57 [Individuality = alone] 1.66 0.28 36.36 0.000 5.27 Table 9. Coefficients of the multinomial logistic regression, the selection of first partner for interpersonal dialogue in ‘assignment’ is predicted B Standard error Wald Sig. Odds ratio Staff Intercept −2.61 0.40 41.48 0.000 [Difficulty = low] 1.88 0.54 11.96 0.001 6.55 [Difficulty = moderate] 0.21 0.41 0.27 0.603 1.24 [Tutorials = regular]] 0.99 0.44 5.16 0.023 2.70 [Individuality = alone] 0.65 0.43 2.26 0.133 1.92 Peers/staff Intercept −1.69 0.26 40.44 0.000 [Difficulty = low] 0.29 0.53 0.29 0.588 1.34 [Difficulty = moderate] 0.74 0.24 9.65 0.002 2.09 [Tutorials = regular]] 0.89 0.30 8.70 0.003 2.43 [Individuality = alone] 1.11 0.28 16.13 0.001 3.04 748 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky assignments decreased as students perceived the course as difficult, and this was also the largest effect. Generally, the probability that students turn to website or tutorials (relative to peers) increased if students scored high on individuality and if they attended regular tutorials. For overcoming conceptual difficulties while reading, the largest effect was for individuality. For assignments, the probability that students turn to the website resource or ask questions at the tutorials (relative to peers) increased also if students perceived the course as difficult, but individuality had the largest effect. Discussion We documented how students overcame conceptual difficulties that arose while read- ing texts and while working on assignments in terms of dialogue types (intrapersonal or interpersonal), and the order of their occurrence. In addition, relationships were sought between students’ dialogic behaviour and selected instructional resources, both structural and human. Finally, students’ use of interpersonal dialogue was explored, especially the issue of choosing a first partner. All findings made in this larger scale study support and confirm those from the previous small-scale naturalistic studies. In the discussion that ensues, we will raise several tentative explanations for the observed behaviours and point out their implications for both distance and campus-based instructional systems. In both cases, overcoming conceptual difficulties that arose while reading texts and while working on assignments, students exhibited consistent dialogic behaviour; that is, they utilized intrapersonal dialogue first, mainly by rereading the text, and, if this action failed, they turned to interpersonal dialogue, mainly with peers. These findings replicated those cited in all three earlier studies that investigated both campus-based and distance students (Gorsky et al., 2004a, b, 2006). There is a large body of psycho- logical research dealing with cross-situational behavioural consistency, namely, if people behave in the same manner across different situations (see Funder & Colvin, 1991). It is assumed that behavioural consistency reflects an essential attribute of personality. Thus, dialogic behaviour may be seen, at least in part, as a reflection of a student’s personality. The Unified Theory of Instruction distinguishes between structural and human resources. Only one structural resource correlated with students’ dialogic behaviour, namely, the number of face-to-face tutorial sessions. The probability that students engaged in out-of-class interpersonal dialogue decreased if they attended extended face-to-face tutorials. At present, within the constraints of the study, only specula- tions can be raised. Extended tutorials, often about 15 sessions per semester, very often resemble conventional campus-based instruction. Here, students have an alter- native or a supplement to the self-instruction texts. Such sessions, also seen as resources for intrapersonal dialogue, may increase students’ understanding of the material and reduce the need for interpersonal dialogue. Each learner, at any given time, is characterized by a constellation of variables which include, among others, his or her goals for the course, prior knowledge, Dialogues and resources 749 motivation, intelligence and anxiety. These variables determine the extent of dialogue that occurs and, to a large degree, its quality and effectiveness. It was found that two salient student attributes correlated with their dialogic behaviour—an inclination to learn individually and prior acquaintance with peers. About learning individually, Moore (1993) found ‘learner autonomy’ to be a critical determinant of learner behav- iour. He defined autonomy as the extent to which, in the teaching/learning relation- ship, it is the student rather than the instructor who determines the goals, the learning experiences and the evaluation decisions of the learning programme. In the present study, we measured only one part of this broad definition, namely, the extent to which students prefer to learn alone rather than with others. Although more than 75% of the students in the current sample reported such a preference, only about 17% reported learning alone exclusively; that is, they never engaged in interpersonal dialogue for any reason. One possible explanation for this discrepancy may result from a tendency that students may have to glorify a tough, lone-wolf autonomous learning style. That is, students may report this preference even though they do turn to others for help. The correlation between ‘prior acquaintance with peers’ and dialogic behaviour seems straightforward and meaningful: students who know other students speak with them. If so, and if such relationships help students learn, then organizational steps may be taken by both campus-based and distance education universities to help students become acquainted with each other prior to or at the start of a course or programme. Instructors might actively encourage students to participate in study groups, be they face-to-face or virtual. Furthermore, virtual forums, both synchro- nous and asynchronous, should be set up and their use encouraged. Why for many students, were peers the first partner for interpersonal dialogue despite faculty being generally available beyond the formal hours? In the previous studies cited, students reported that peers give them the answers they so much need and want, while instructors generally offer explanations that point toward some answer without giving it. Beyond this surface-level explanation, which has high face validity, several psychological ones appear in the literature. These suggest that indi- viduals under threat (in these cases, students) avoid social comparison with others who are in better shape than they are, namely, teachers (Wills, 1981; Wood et al., 1985; Harlow & Cantor, 1995). Furthermore, Wills (1987) suggests that when people are emotionally shaken, they need both informational and emotional supports. In this case, their support seeking may be temporally patterned, in that they may first seek emotional support to alleviate distress, and then go on to seek support that will help them to surmount the challenges presented by the task (Cantor & Harlow, 1994). Peers may offer both emotional (‘Wow, the assignments are really hard!’) as well as informational support. These explanations will be tested in future research. Whatever the reasons that students turn primarily to peers, this finding illustrates clearly the tension between learning theories that emphasize the importance of social learning (e.g. Bruner, 1966; Rogers, 1969; Vygotsky, 1978; Garrison & Anderson, 2003), on the one hand, and practices engaged in by distance education students, on the other. Theories that emphasize the importance of social learning often assign to interpersonal instructor–student dialogue an importance that may not be realized in 750 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky distance education practice. In other words, it appears that students utilize interper- sonal dialogue primarily for overcoming conceptual difficulty (while reading and while doing assignments), and not for initial information processing. Interestingly, instructors’ approaches to teaching (as perceived by the students) did not correlate with students’ dialogic behaviour. This finding calls into question the assumption that instructors’ approaches to teaching do indeed influence students’ dialogic behaviour. Here, it was found that the role of instructor, in the face-to-face tutorials, was seen more as a lecturer and much less as a learning facilitator. Choosing a teacher-centred approach is a pedagogic decision, not an institutional policy. Thus, although the Open University of Israel relies on self-learning, it seems less plausible that this effect is an artefact of the OUI approach, because both teacher-centred and student-centred approaches could assist students in overcoming difficulties with understanding. Further research is needed to determine the relationship between students’ dialogic behaviour and different approaches to teaching, especially in campus-based systems. The present study revealed an unexpected pattern of dialogic behaviour that was termed ‘multidirectional’. Many students fluctuated between intrapersonal and interpersonal dialogues. Further analysis of this phenomenon revealed a common pattern: most multidirectional behaviours were of the ‘intrapersonal to interper- sonal back to intrapersonal’ type. Specifically, students first reread texts, then turned to peers and finally searched the course website for answers. Although the current study cannot explain why this behaviour occurred, at least two tentative explanations may be raised. First, students returned to intrapersonal dialogue, generally by using website materials, since they were not satisfied with the help received through interpersonal dialogue. Although websites offer (via intrapersonal dialogue) various sources such as previous examinations and assignments, simula- tions and instructional materials, they do not offer specific solutions to the prob- lems at hand. Therefore, although the utilization of this resource for interpersonal dialogue is impressively large, its utilization for intrapersonal dialogue is limited and utilized apparently after the other resources failed. Second, as suggested earlier, after turning to peers for assistance, students may return to intrapersonal dialogue in order to assess the new input; that is, they can test what they learned using the various sources presented over the website. References Bruner, J. (1966) Toward a theory of instruction (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Cantor, N. & Harlow, R. E. (1994) Personality, strategic behavior, and daily life problem-solving, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3, 169–172. Caspi, A., Gorsky, P. & Chajut, E. (2003) The influence of group size on non-mandatory asyn- chronous instructional discussion groups, The Internet and Higher Education, 6(3), 227–240. Charmaz, K. (1995) Grounded theory, in: J. Smith, R. Harre & L. 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(1994) Observing and measuring the performance of educational technology (Glasgow, University of Glasgow Press). Funder, D. C. & Colvin, C. R. (1991) Explorations in behavioural consistency: properties of persons, situations, and behaviours, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(5), 776–794. Gagne, R., Briggs, L. & Wagner, W. (1992) Principles of instructional design (4th edn) (Fort Worth, TX, HBJ College Publishers). Garrison, D. & Anderson, T. (2003) E-learning in the 21st century (London, Routledge). Glaser, B. (1978) Theoretical sensitivity: advances in the methodology of grounded theory (Mill Valley, CA, Sociology Press). Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967) The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research (New York, Aldine de Gruyter). Gorsky, P. & Caspi, A. (2005) Dialogue: a theoretical framework for distance education instructional systems, British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(2), 137–144. Gorsky, P., Caspi, A. & Chajut, E. (2007) Instructional dialogue: toward a unified theory of instructional design, in: R. Zheng & S. Pixy-Ferris (Eds) Online instructional modeling: theories and practice (Hershey, PA, Idea Group, Inc) (in press). Gorsky, P., Caspi, A. & Tuvi-Arad, I. (2004a) Use of instructional dialogue by university students in a distance education chemistry course, Journal of Distance Education, 19(1), 1–19. Gorsky, P., Caspi, A. & Trumper, R. (2004b) Dialogue in a distance education physics course, Open Learning, 19(3), 265–277. Gorsky, P., Caspi, A. & Trumper, R. (2006) Campus-based university students’ use of dialogue, Studies in Higher Education, 31(1), 71–87. Harlow, R. & Cantor, N. (1995) To whom do people turn when things go poorly? Task orientation and functional social contacts, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(2), 329–340. Holmberg, B. (1989) Theory and practice of distance education (London, Routledge). Kember, D. 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(1978) Accretion, tuning and restructuring: three modes of learning, in: J. Cotton & R. Klatzky (Eds) Semantic factors in cognition (Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum). Skinner, B. F. (1968) The technology of teaching (New York, Meredith). 752 A. Caspi and P. Gorsky Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1998) Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage). Taber, K. (2000) Case studies and generalizability: grounded theory and research in science education, International Journal of Science Education, 22, 469–487. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in society (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Wills, T. (1981) Downward comparison principles in social psychology, Psychological Bulletin, 90, 245–271. Wills, T. (1987) Help-seeking as a coping mechanism, in: C. R. Snyder & C. E. Ford (Eds) Coping with negative life events (New York, Plenum). Wood, J., Taylor, S. & Lichtman, R. 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work_mlsaxiritbfgxa2ow54pxbig3u	----	Universal Journal of Management 6(3): 98-103, 2018 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujm.2018.060303 Insights into a Graduate Degree in Industrial Distribution Offered by Distance Education Daniel F. Jennings*, Bharani Nagarathnam, Frederick B. Lawrence Industrial Distribution Program, College of Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States Copyright©2018 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract Wholesale Distribution in the United States is a $6 trillion dollar industry that includes 370,000 businesses that employ 6 million people. With evolving distribution business models, margin pressure, and an aging workforce, distributors are faced with a talent management crisis, especially with hiring, developing and retaining managers and developing a leadership pipeline. Traditionally, distributors promoted for their managerial and leadership positions based on tenure and prior job performance. With an increase in the need for business competitiveness, customer experience, value added services and innovative new solutions, distributors need to develop competency based mid-mangers who can effectively drive change and impact profitability. Keywords Management Development, Leadership, Human Capital, Industrial Distribution 1. Introduction The growth of a distribution organization does not rely solely on the distributor’s geographic reach, physical assets, product selection, or access to capital. It also depends on its human capital. In fact, all organizations require human capital to accomplish their goals. Therefore, the organization’s ability to manage its human capital is a key to its business success. Treating people as capital means recognizing them as an asset rather than as an expense item. While most wholesaler-distributors understand how to leverage financial and physical capital, when it comes to managing people, organizational leaders often find themselves struggling with attracting, developing and retaining key talent, managing and developing employees effectively or measuring the return on their human capital investment. In 1998 many senior managers in industrial distribution firms who served on the Industry Advisory Board of the Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M requested a graduate program for their managerial employees. Many of those managerial employees had come up through the ranks progressing from entry level employee to sales or operations positions before becoming a manager. While these employees had knowledge and experience in the products, services, customers and market, they lacked business acumen, understanding of competitive advantage and profitability (financial analysis) knowledge. These senior managers were also searching for a distribution focused education rather than a generic graduate program such as an MBA. The Industry Advisory Board members also expected that such a program should be flexible and convenient for their managers so that these managers did not have to leave their current job responsibilities. The Industrial Distribution program began the design of a distance learning graduate program focused on distribution in 1999 and received approval in 2001. The program was entitled the Master of Industrial Distribution (MID) and students enrolled as a cohort which is a group of students working together through the same academic curriculum. The first cohort was admitted in 2001. The cohort program was designed for working professionals with a minimum of five years of experience and consisted of three parts: residency week, global distribution course and trip and a capstone project. The program which has been continuously improved over the past fifteen years is a web-based, part-time graduate program and focuses on five areas: (1) using applied case studies, videos, interviews and podcasts, (2) teaching courses that have met the Quality Matters Course [1] design rubric standards (3) having industry executives to co-teach, (4) improving student– to-student and student-to-faculty interaction by using discussion boards to reinforce understanding, and (5) having mobile learning experiences through iPads, eBooks, and apps. Wholesale Distribution in the United States is a $6 trillion dollar industry with 370,000 businesses that employ 6 million people and accounts for about 6% of the 2016 GDP (U.S. Census, 2016 [2]). Also, as depicted in Table 1, Wholesale Distribution is one of the top four sectors of the U.S. economy. Universal Journal of Management 6(3): 98-103, 2018 99 Table 1. Key U.S. Sectors share of 2016 GDP Finance, Insurance, Real Estate 20.6% Manufacturing 11.7% Healthcare 7.4% Wholesale Trade 5.9% Retail Trade 5.8% Construction 4.2% Mining 1.5% Source: National Association of Wholesaler-Distributor 2. Methods and Sample The area of study was the Master of Industrial Distribution (MID) degree offered by the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University in a distance education format [3]. In recent years, research has been conducted to investigate trends in distance education [4]. Interestingly, this research has focused solely on individual distance education courses [5]. Research on distance education degree programs is almost non-existence [6] The MID Program is a 30 hour credit distance education graduate degree and is a 21 month, part- time, lock- step, on line graduate program designed for working professionals. The Program focuses on Supply Chain Management, Logistics, Profitability, and developing a Competitive Advantage of distributors and manufacturers (suppliers) within industrial channels. The MID program involves immersive learning experiences that include a residency on the Texas A & M campus, a global class and trip and a capstone project. The MID Program is designed to dramatically increase the student’s ability to think globally, integrate trends, and acquire knowledge and to act strategically. The courses provide the critical skills and knowledge necessary for both the student and their company that can be immediately applied. Through the Program’s lock-step approach to learning, students interact in a manner which provides new insights to them and broadens their personal and professional experiences. As a result, students can immediately apply the knowledge that has been gained from their MID courses to everyday challenges that are faced by the students in their workplace. Students enrolled in the MID Program represent a diverse group of professional with a wide range of education and work experiences from their particular companies and their geographic locations. All students accepted into the MID program are required to submit certain information. Students have agreed that this information may be utilized to publicize the MID program [7]. Figure 1 describes the enrollment for the 2016 MID Class [8] Figure 1. 2016 MID Enrollment Table 2 presents the Courses and Degree plan for the MID Program by semester [9] Table 2. Courses and Degree Plan First Year Residency Week (One Week in August) Course Name Credit IDIS 611-Current Issues in Industrial Distribution 3 Hours Fall Semester (15 weeks on line) Course Name Credit IDIS 624 - Strategic Relationships for Industrial Distributors 3 Hours IDIS 614- Industrial Distributor Networks 3 Hours Spring Semester (15 weeks on line) Course Name Credit IDIS 644- Industrial Distributor Information and Technology Management 3 Hours IDIS 634- Quality Concepts in Industrial Distribution 3 Hours Second Year Residency Week (One Week in August) Course Name Credit IDIS 621-Industrial Distributor Processes I (Capstone Project) 3 Hours Fall Semester (15 weeks on line) Course Name Credit IDIS 655 - Global Distribution 3 Hours IDIS 664- Distribution Profitability 3 Hours Spring Semester (15 weeks on line) Course Name Credit IDIS 622- Industrial Distributor Processes II (Capstone Project continued) 3 Hours IDIS 674- Industrial Distribution Enterprise 3 Hours In summary, this research has described certain general information about the MID Program, while specifics are related to the 2016 class. That class included 77 students. Information was obtained from all 77 students based on their responses. 100 Insights into a Graduate Degree in Industrial Distribution Offered by Distance Education 3. Industrial Distribution Degree Programs Wholesale distribution is one of the largest sectors of the U.S. Economy. There are about 15 universities in the U.S that offers undergraduate degrees in this area. Only Texas A&M University offers a graduate program in Industrial Distribution. The program is designed as a flexible distance learning program to provide access to working professionals in the industry. The distance learning provides opportunity for distribution professionals from around the US and globe to be able to advance their careers. The MID program also reduces barriers for students who are working professionals by providing comprehensive student services. The Master of Industrial Distribution student services team is dedicated to making the transition back to the classroom as smooth as possible, including those that have a full-time job, family and other studies. The program wants students to focus on their studies they take care of the rest. MID’s dedicated student services team provides the following services:  Course Registration  Textbook & course material delivery  Residency Week logistics including accommodations  Global trip logistics including accommodations & in-country transportation  Capstone project presentation & graduation logistics including accommodations  Technical support for eCampus or Blackboard Learn (the learning management system) courses  Tuition & fees billing checks and reminders  Third party student sponsor payments (i.e. company direct fee payments)  Assistance with Veteran benefits processing  Assistance with international TAMU student services Learning Effectiveness All of the MID classes are designed to be asynchronous to meet the demands of a working professional. Students can login anytime and learn at their own pace during the semester. Student peer learning experience is enhanced through discussion boards and group projects. Cohort model: The MID program only admits students in Fall semester as a cohort and all the students take the same classes and move forward together. The cohort model offers many learning advantages such as sense of community, peer support system, group activities and lifelong networking. Students are grouped into teams of 4 or 5 and remain as a group throughout their program. Many student groups not only actively collaborate on class work, but learn from each other’s business/functional experiences. Experiential Learning: The MID Program enhances learning effectiveness through multiple experiential learning activities. There is a Residency Week each August, the Global Distribution course & trip during the second year and capstone project in the last semester. During Residency week, students are involved in case study problem solving exercises industry leader presentations and group solution development activities. During the global class and trip, the students work on a live project with a global company, visit their operations, interact with their leaders and professionals and develop recommendations for the project. Capstone Project: MID students are required to select a capstone project, likely from their sponsor company and work closely with faculty and the Global Supply Chain Systems Laboratory (GCSL) researchers to deliver a high-value solution that can be immediately implemented. These projects provide invaluable preparation for professional work where students develop a strategy and timetable for work completion. The faculty and GCSL team guide students through the research project process, establishing a timeline and expectations with the firm, suggesting areas to investigate, helping students refine a problem, pointing out relevant resources, imparting relevant technical skills and knowledge, and commenting thoroughly on iterations of work, from initial drafts to the final product. Students will give an initial presentation of their work to the SCSL team and faculty for feedback and improvement suggestions before giving the final presentation. The MID student brings a Return-On-Investment to the firm with new best practices and a problem solving skill set that goes far beyond graduation. Universal Journal of Management 6(3): 98-103, 2018 101 Figure 2. Capstone Project Timeline and Deliverables Quality Matters [10] In 2015, the MID program embarked voluntarily on the Quality Matters Program. The Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric is a set of 8 General Standards and 43 Specific Review Standards used to evaluate the design of online and blended courses. Unique to the Rubric is the concept of alignment. This occurs when critical course components - Learning Objectives (2), Assessment and Measurement (3), Instructional Materials (4), Course Activities and Learner Interaction (5), and Course Technology (6) - work together to ensure students achieve desired learning outcomes. As of May 2017, five of the courses has been through the formal review and has been certified as meeting or exceeding the QM metrics. Two other courses are being prepared to be go through formal review soon. The goal is to certify all ten courses by the end of 2017 and be the first and only graduate program at Texas A&M to be Quality Matters certified. Based on the 15 years of development and improvement, the Master of Industrial Distribution program has been awarded the following two awards. Additionally, the MID program is now the largest distance education program in the College of Engineering.  2016 21st Century Best Practice Distance Learning from the United States Distance Learning Association (USLDA) (USDLA, 2016). [11]  2016 Outstanding Commitment to Excellence and Innovation award from TxDLA (Texas Distance Learning Association) (TxDLA, 2016). [12] Cost Effectiveness: The MID program is similar to an online MBA for professionals geared specifically towards engineers. In Texas, the average cost of a professional MBA program is more than $90,000, while the MID program only costs $48,000 for TX residents and $58,000 for out-of-state students. This cost not only includes tuition and fees, but it includes all books, two on-week residency weeks, an international trip, on-campus project presentations and all costs associated with graduation. The MID Program is also a proud supporter of Veterans. The MID program typically has about 15% of students who are Veterans. The MID Program works with the Veteran Services and Student Business Services at Texas A&M to process their service (G.I Bill and Hazelwood) benefits. The MID program benefits mid-career working professionals to earn a relevant, specialized and cutting-edge education in a flexible cohort on-line environment that greatly enhances their skills and prepares them for managerial and leadership positions. Student Satisfaction: The MID Program is constantly working on improving the learning outcomes and student experiences. The program conducts the following surveys to collect information and uses it to enhance courses, content, experiences and services.  Residency Week experience survey  Individual end-of-semester course surveys  Global trip experience survey  Capstone project survey  Exit interviews 102 Insights into a Graduate Degree in Industrial Distribution Offered by Distance Education The above survey results are reviewed by the program management team. Course surveys are communicated to respective faculty for review and continuous course improvement. Technology: One of the student services request over the past few years is to provide all books electronically since many of the students travel extensively and carrying along heavy books is inconvenient. We have worked over the past year to design, develop and implement a mobile leaning initiative with iPads for all incoming students starting August 2015. The course content includes eBooks, reading materials, videos, audio lectures and experiential learning exercises. The Master of Industrial Distribution courses are accessed through Texas A&M eCampus and its accompanying mobile app. Faculty Satisfaction: The MID faculty has expressed considerable satisfaction in teaching MID courses, interacting with students, serving as their capstone project chairs, interacting with the student’s managers and company leadership. Many faculties have also achieved scholarly publication in working with the MID students. Some faculties have also invited these students and industry professionals to speak in their undergraduate classes. The female MID students are also invited to campus to speak at the Society of Women in Industrial Distribution each semester. Continuous Improvement The MID program continues to improve the design, development and delivery. Some of the steps take include:  Applied content development includes industry focused live case studies, videos, interviews and podcasts.  Teaching enhancement include quality matters certification and the use of industry executives to co-teach classes  Learning experience enhancement includes reflective discussion boards, group projects and peer-group learning.  Content delivery through mobile learning experience with iPad, eBooks and apps. Exit Interviews & Industry Advisory Board The MID Program also conducts a robust exit interview survey with about 90% completion rate. The feedback on program improvement recommendations, perceived learning, value of certain activities is evaluated every year and key themes are identified for improvement. The MID Program also has an active Industry Advisory Board consisting of 10 former student executives to review yearly updates and provide advice / recommendations for improvements. The advisory board meets every year in May and receives periodic updates on the program activities. Learning Outcomes The following are the MID Program learning outcomes/objectives as well as measures in place to measure the learning outcomes. MID Program Outcomes/Objectives 1. In-depth knowledge of industrial distribution 2. Graduates will have successful careers 3. Recognize need and ability of lifelong learning 4. Build an effective international competence 5. Graduates will be competent 6. Effectively function in multi-disciplinary teams 7. Graduates will be able to conduct applied industry research 8. Increase the application pool 9. Increase the diversity of the application pool Measures & Findings 1. Capstone research project 2. Real time case studies in global distribution 3. Exit Survey 4. Data on Applicant Pools 5. Sustainable competitive advantage exam 6. Departmental course outcomes 7. Alumni Survey 8. MID Industry Advisory Board Focus groups 9. Industry Advisory Board Focus groups 4. Conclusions The distribution industry is challenged with talent development and retention. Distributors have an opportunity to hire, develop and retain their managerial talent through the effective use of the focused educational development programs. The Master of Industrial Distribution is one such graduate program designed for such an approach. In conclusion, the design, development and continuous improvement of a graduate program designed for working professionals in the distribution sector helps develop distributors’ talent, operations and profitability. REFERENCES [1] Standards from the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric, 5th Edition. Quality Matters; Retrieved from https://www.qualitymattersorg/sites/default/files/PDFs/Stan dards from the QM Higher Education Rubric pdf Universal Journal of Management 6(3): 98-103, 2018 103 [2] U.S. Census Bureau (2017) Monthly and Annual Wholesale Trade; Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/wholesale.index html [3] Texas A&M Graduate Catalog (2017-18) Master of Industrial Distribution. http://catalog.tamu.edu/engineering/technology, industrial distribution degree [4] A. Bozkurt and S. Sezgin "Trends in Distance Education Research: A Content Analysis of Journals, 2009-2013" (2015) International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 332-334. [5] A. Bozkurt and S. Sezgin "Trends in Distance Education Research: A Content Analysis of Journals, 2009-2013" (2015) International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 336-338. [6] O. Zawacki-Richter and T. Anderson, "Online Distance Education: Towards A Research Agenda" (2016) Open Learning. vol 30, pp 112. [7] MID Student Handbook (2016). Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial distribution, Texas A&M University. [8] See note #7 [9] See note #7 [10] See note 31 [11] United States Distance Learning Association (2016), 2016 USDLA International Awards; Retrieved from https:// www.usdla. org/awards/2016-usdla-internatioal -awards-2/ [12] Texas Distance Learning Association (2016), Outstanding Commitment to Excellence and Innovation in Distance Learning (2016); Retrieved from http://txdla.org/Default.aspx/tabid=141 1. Introduction 2. Methods and Sample 3. Industrial Distribution Degree Programs 4. Conclusions REFERENCES 
work_mvw3nprc2zcwji4gk432elyyna	----	A Genetic-Fuzzy Based Mathematical Model to Evaluate The Distance Education Students’ Academic Performance Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.519 a Informatics Department,Yildiz Technical University,Istanbul,Turkey b Electronics and Communications Engineering Department, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul,Turkey c Informatics Department, Istanbul University, Istanbul,Turkey Abstract Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 410 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 1. Introduction 2. Related Works 411 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 3. Fuzzy Logic and Genetic Algorithm 3.1 Fuzzy Logic 412 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 3.2 Genetic Algorithm 4. Method and Results 413 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 4.1 Classic Fuzzy Model 414 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 4.1.1 Determining Intervals 4.1.2 Determining Membership Functions Membership Function Accuracy (%) 415 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 Membership Function Accuracy (%) 4.2 Genetic-Fuzzy Model 416 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 417 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 5. Conclusion Acknowledgements References 2009 International Conference of Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition International Conference of Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition Education Economics 418 Osman Yıldız et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 409 – 418 Educational Data Mining 2009 2nd International Conference on Educational Technology and Computer Elsevier Fuzzy Sets and Systems Genetic Fuzzy Systems. The 6th European Conference on e-Learning. Strategic Database Marketing. Practical Genetic Algorithms. 21st Annual SAS Malaysia Forum Applied Artificial Intelligence Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'05) Recent advances in mechanics and the related fields JASIST The New Rules of Marketing: How to use one-to-one relationship marketing to be the leader in your industry. Computers & Industrial Engineering 
work_mwpgi2rx3zbj5dh4j5254iy4yy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_n4bfltfe35eyfie5354sihgvq4	----	Microsoft Word - Moore 1989.doc EDITORIAL Three Types of Interaction Michael G. Moore Many of the greatest problems of communicating about concepts, and, therefore, practice in distance education arise from our use of crude hypothetical constructs-terms like distance, independence, and interaction, which are used in very imprecise and general ways, each having acquired a multiplicity of meanings. Most seriously, the same terms are commonly used at both generic and more specific levels. For example, the generic concept "independence" is frequently confused with its species, independence of learners from instructors in space and time and independence of learners to control their means of study. These are further confused with the many subspecies of each type of independence. The same could be said of the concept and term "distance" itself, which is commonly used in the most general sense to describe education characterized by separation between learner and instructor, but by too few users in the more technical and specific meanings as discussed, for example, by Saba (1988), Keegan (1988), Shale (1988), or Moore (1984). Interaction is another important term that carries so many meanings as to be almost useless unless specific submeanings can be defined and generally agreed upon. Progress in this direction was made in a panel discussion convened by the Divisions of Independent Study and Educational Telecommunications of the National University Continuing Education Association at its annual meeting in Salt Lake City on 16 April 1989. Chaired by Shirley Davis of Purdue University, the panel was titled: "Interaction: That perplexing component of distance education." The panel-Arnold Seigal, Ellen Wagner, Nofflet Williams, and myself-debated such questions as: What level of interaction is essential for effective learning? What is good interaction? How can we achieve it? What does real time interaction contribute? Is it worth the cost? For my contribution I suggested that, as a minimum, distance educators need to agree on the distinctions between three types of interaction, which I labelled learner-content interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner-learner interaction. To distinguish among these three types will have benefits conceptually, but will also do much to overcome the misunderstandings between educators who use different media. (For example, see the debate between Pittman [1987] and Duning [1987]). Learner-Content Interaction The first type of interaction is interaction between the learner and the content or subject of study. This is a defining characteristic of education. Without it there cannot be education, since it is the process of intellectually interacting with content that results in changes in the learner's understanding, the learner's perspective, or the cognitive structures of the learner's mind. It is this type of interaction that I believe is at least partly involved in what Holmberg (1986) calls the "internal didactic conversation" when learners "talk to themselves" about the information and ideas they encounter in a text, television program, lecture, or elsewhere. The oldest form of distance teaching that aimed to facilitate interaction with content was the didactic text. In medieval times nearly all texts were aimed at instructing, not merely informing, and certainly not at entertaining. In the nineteenth century the use of print for teaching was advanced by the invention of home study guides that accompanied a text, providing explanations of it and directions for its study. In more recent times learners have interacted with content broadcast on radio and television programs, and with electronic recordings on audiotape, videotape, and computer software. Interactive videodisc is the most advanced form of didactic interaction invented so far. Some learning programs are solely content-interactive in nature. They are one-way communications with a subject expert (sometimes assisted by an instructional designer), intended to help distant learners in their study of the subject. No other professional teaching expertise is provided, and learning is largely self-directed. According to the findings of adult education research, the majority of the adult population undertakes self- directed study (Tough 1971; Penland 1977; Hiemstra 1982). Learner-Instructor Interaction The second type of interaction-regarded as essential by many educators, and as highly desirable by many learners-is interaction between the learner and the expert who prepared the subject material, or some other expert acting as instructor. In this interaction, distance instructors attempt to achieve aims held in common with all other educators. First having planned or been given a curriculum, a program of content to be taught, they seek to stimulate or at least maintain the student's interest in what is to be taught, to motivate the student to learn, to enhance and maintain the learner's interest, including self-direction and self-motivation. Then instructors make presentations-or cause them to be made. These may be presentations of information, demonstrations of skill, or modelling of certain attitudes and values. Next instructors try to organize students' application of what is being learned, either the practice of skills that have been demonstrated, or manipulation of information and ideas that have been presented. Instructors organize evaluation to ascertain if learners are making progress, and to help decide whether to change strategies. Finally, instructors provide counsel, support, and encouragement to each learner, though the extent and nature of this support varies according to educational level of the learners, the teacher's personality and philosophy, and other factors. The frequency and intensity of the teacher's influence on learners when there is learner-teacher interaction is much greater than when there is only learner-content interaction. In preparing instruction for learner-content interaction the educator can design written and recorded material that aims to motivate, make presentations, facilitate application, evaluate, and even provide a degree of student affective support. However, the lack of feedback from individual learner to educator makes these teaching procedures highly generalized, not individual, leaving ultimate responsibility for maintaining motivation, for interacting with the presentation, for analysing the success of application, and for diagnosing the difficulty on the learners themselves, requiring a high degree of learner autonomy. Where interaction between learner and teacher is possible through correspondence or teleconference, the learner comes under the influence of a professional instructor and is able to draw on the experience of the professional to interact with the content in the manner that is most effective for that particular individual learner. The long recognized advantage of correspondence instruction is its individual nature. When the correspondence instructor sits with a set of student papers, there is no class; instead, the instructor enters into a dialogue with each individual, perhaps attending to the motivational aspect with one student and to the explanation of a misunderstanding with another. While the students and their instructor are attending to a common piece of presentation (usually in a set text, but quite likely on audio- or videotape), each student's response to the presentation is different, and so the response to each student is different. To some a misunderstanding is explained, to others elaborations are given, to others simplifications; for one analogies are drawn, for another supplementary readings suggested. The instructor is especially valuable in responding to the learners' application of new knowledge. Whatever self-directed learners can do alone for self-motivation and interaction with content presented, they are vulnerable at the point of application. They do not know enough about the subject to be sure that they are 1) applying it correctly, 2) applying it as intensively or extensively as possible or desirable, or 3) aware of all the potential areas of application. It is for reality testing and feedback that interaction with an instructor is likely to be most valuable. Learner-Learner Interaction It is the third form of interaction, a new dimension of distance education, that will be a challenge to our thinking and practice in the 1990s. This is inter-learner interaction, between one learner and other learners, alone or in group settings, with or without the real-time presence of an instructor. Through the history of education the class or educational group has more often than not been organized for reasons that have nothing to do with learners' needs. At present many classes are organized because the class is the only organizational form known to most teachers and because in the short term-though not usually the long term-it is the cheapest way of delivering the teaching acts of stimulation, presentation, application, evaluation, and student support. However, learner-learner interaction among members of a class or other group is sometimes an extremely valuable resource for learning, and is sometimes even essential. Phillips, Santoro, and Kuehn (1988) describe the importance of interaction among members of an undergraduate class who had to learn skills of group interaction. With the rationale that skilled committee and other group work is essential for functioning in modern society, especially in business, Phillips et al. taught principles of, and trained students in, effective group functioning. This is an example of content that makes group interaction especially valuable. One could study the presentation of principles of group leadership and group membership alone, or in interaction with an instructor. However, at the point of application and evaluation, the availability of a group of fellow learners becomes invaluable for learner and instructor alike. Interestingly, the researchers found they could not effectively facilitate interaction among members of a large undergraduate class in face-to-face classrooms, and turned to distance education techniques, using recorded video and computer interaction to achieve higher performance in group behaviors than they had been able to obtain in live groups. Thus, these educators gave their students the advantage of individual interaction with the instructor by electronic correspondence, and the benefits of peer group interaction by asynchronous e-mail and by synchronous computer "chatting." Apart from teaching interaction itself, when else is inter-learner group interaction between students highly desirable? The answer to this question depends largely on the circumstances of the learners and their age, experience, and level of learner autonomy. For younger learners, the teaching task of stimulation and motivation will be assisted by peer-group interaction, though this is not particularly important for most adult and advanced learners, who tend to be self-motivated. It is most useful for some types of presentations, such as up-to-the-minute reports from experts, and for purposes of application and evaluation. In my audio and interactive video classes, weekly presentations are shared by two or more students and last typically for an hour. This is followed by peer discussion and analysis in small groups and then feedback and further discussion. This process is successful because of the level of self-management that adult graduate students possess, and it not only acknowledges and encourages the development of their expertise but also tests it, and teaches important principles regarding the nature of knowledge and the role of the scholar as a maker of knowledge. Applications A significant characteristic of distance education, and a major contribution to the field of education, has been an awareness of the benefits of division of labor in teaching. With the rapid expansion of telecommunications in American education, the principle of specialization of teaching activity and use of communication medium must be applied to distinguish more deliberately among the three types of interaction described above. Educators need to organize programs to ensure maximum effectiveness of each type of interaction, and ensure they provide the type of interaction that is most suitable for the various teaching tasks of different subject areas, and for learners at different stages of development. The main weakness of many distance education programs is their commitment to only one type of medium. When there is only one medium it is probable that only one kind of interaction is permitted or done well. While correspondence gives superior learner-content interaction and good, though slow, learner-instructor interaction, it gives no learner-learner interaction. The teleconference group is excellent for learner-learner interaction, and for some types of instructor-learner interaction, but is frequently misused for instructor presentations that could be done better by print or recorded media. In the time saved by avoiding such presentations, a teleconference could stimulate and facilitate learner-learner interaction that has been difficult or impossible to achieve in distance education until now. In short, it is vitally important that distance educators in all media do more to plan for all three kinds of interaction, and use the expertise of educators and communication specialists in both traditional media- printed, broadcast, or recorded-and newer teleconference media. References Duning, B. 1987. Independent study in higher education: A captive of legendary resilience. The American Journal of Distance Education 1(1):37-46. Hiemstra, R., ed. 1982. Self-Directed Adult Learning: Some Implications for Practice. Occasional paper. Syracuse, NY: Adult Education Program, School of Education. Holmberg, B. 1986. Growth and Structure of Distance Education. London: Croom-Helm. Keegan, D. 1988. Problems in defining the field of distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 2(2):4-11. Moore, M. G. 1984. Independent study. In Redefining the Discipline of Adult Education, ed. R. D. Boyd and J. W. Apps, 16-31. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Pittman, V. V. 1987. The persistence of print: Correspondence study and the new media. The American Journal of Distance Education 1(1):31-36. Penland, P. R. 1977. Individual Self-planned Learning in America. Pittsburgh: Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. Phillips, G. M., G. M. Santoro, and S. A. Kuehn. 1988. The use of computer-mediated communication in training students in group problem-solving and decision-making techniques. The American Journal of Distance Education 2(1):38-51. Saba, F. 1988. Integrated telecommunications systems and instructional transaction. The American Journal of Distance Education 2(3):17-24. Shale, D. 1988. Toward a reconceptualization of distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 2(3):25-35. Tough, A. 1971. The Adult's Learning Projects: A Fresh Approach to Theory and Practice in Adult Learning. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. 
work_n5rnfgtllvgutm66o3h5asc6ju	----	Evaluating the achievements of computer engineering department of distance education students with data mining methods Procedia Technology 1 ( 2012 ) 262 – 267 2212-0173 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi: 10.1016/j.protcy.2012.02.053 Evaluating the achievements of computer engineering department of distance education students with data mining methods Baha Sena *, Emine Ucarb aKarabük University, BaliklarKayasi Mevkii, Karabük, 78050, TURKEY bMinistry of National Education, Bakanlıklar, Ankara, 06420, TURKEY Abstract Recently, the internet technology has become an indispensable part of life, a very useful application that cannot be earlier have made it possible. One of these is distance learning technologies. Due to limitations of traditional learning-teaching methods in classroom activities and practitioners who intend to conduct training activities in the absence of the possibility of communication and interaction among learners with special education units are prepared and provided a wide range of media center through a certain method of teaching. According to a further recognition of Distance Education, although far away from each other with the student who teaches the same time (synchronous) or different time (asynchronous) communications with a tool as training system established. The aim of this study is to compare the achievements of Computer Engineering Department students in Karabük University according to criteria such as age, gender, type of high school graduation and whether the students studying in distance education or regular education using data mining techniques. Also discussing the differences of the techniques according to the results and to make suggestions for which technique would be more effective. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance Education; Data Mining; Decision Trees; Artificial Neural Network 1. Introduction Rapid developments in information societies has also changed interests and needs of today people while causing continuous changing and developments on lives of individuals and cultural, social and economic structure of societies. Now, people who can reach, use and produce information are needed. Therefore, development of Distance Learning has been well accelerated. Distance Learning has many advantages. The most important of these are considered to be reproducible, distributable and accessible easily. Beside these advantages, integration of computer-aided systems, utilization of multimedia tools and techniques, reaching contents quickly and cost-efficiently over internet, increasing user interaction with help of new Technologies has provided the acceptance of distance learning sometimes as a support to formal education and sometimes as an education technique itself. One of the first studies on data mining applied in education was published in 1995 by Sanjeev and Zytkow. Researchers gathered the knowledge discovery as terms like “P pattern for data in the range R” from university database [1]. Another study on data mining applied in education was published in 2000 by Becker and his friends who are performed for defining and understanding the impact of changes in curriculum on students at a university in Brasil [2]. * Baha Sen. Tel.: +90-370-433-2021; fax: +90-370-433-3290. E-mail address: baha.sen@karabuk.edu.tr. Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 263 Baha Sen and Emine Ucar / Procedia Technology 1 ( 2012 ) 262 – 267 A data mining application in which defining of student characteristics are used for measuring the satisfaction of students at higher education was performed by Luan in 2002 [3]. Maltepe University students identifying characteristics had been clustered using K-means algorithm in 2005 by Erdoğan and Timor. In that study 722 students’ data was used and the relationship between the university entrance exam results and achievements was examined [4]. Vranić and Skoćır was examined how to improve some aspects of educational quality with data mining algorithms and techniques by taking a specific course students as target audience in academic environments [5]. In the second part of this study traditional and distance education concepts were examined. In the third section a data mining application was developed with using data from the Karabük University Computer Engineering Department students. In the conclusion sharing the experiences and findings obtained from this application is intended. 2. Formal and Distance Education Formal education is a regular education that uses programs prepared in accordance with a purpose for the same level of certain age group and individuals at a school building. Formal education includes institutions of preschool, primary, secondary and higher education [6]. Distance education is an education that is realized with educator and students without being in the same place. This feature of distance education provides opportunity of learning for anyone at any age, place, time and speed [7]. The most obvious difference between distance education and classical education is completing their education (primary, secondary and higher education) without going to school, leaving their jobs and leaving their private lives. 3. Methodology Data mining is relatively a new technique to the world of information sciences. Successful implementation of this technique requires a sound methodology built on best practices. In this research study, we followed a popular data mining methodology called Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM), which is a six-step process [8]: Problem description: Involves understanding project goals with business perspective, transforming this information into data mining problem description and making project plan to reach the related goals. Understanding the data: Involves identifying the sources of data, obtaining an initial set of data to assess the information coverage of the data for the problem on hand. Preparing the data: Involves pre-processing, cleaning, and transforming the relevant data into a form that can be used by data mining algorithms. Creating the models: Involves developing a wide range of models using comparable analytical techniques (i.e., selecting the appropriate modeling technique and setting the parameters related to the model to optimal values). Evaluating the models: Involves evaluating and assessing the validity and the utility of the models against each other and against the goals of the study. Using the model: Involves in such activities as deploying the models for use in decision making processes (i.e., making it a part of the decision support system/process). A graphical representation of the methodology used in this study is shown in Figure 1. 264 Baha Sen and Emine Ucar / Procedia Technology 1 ( 2012 ) 262 – 267 Fig.1. A graphical illustration of the methodology employed in this study 3.1. Data In this study 3047 records were used which is taken by Karabük University Computer Engineering Department. Dataset have students' information such as age, gender, type of secondary school graduation, whether the students study in distance education or regular education and their lesson scores. And also dataset has information about the lesson taken by students in vocational lessons or cultural lessons. Table 1. The list of independent variables used in this study Variable Name Data Type Description Gender Text Students’ gender Age Number Students’ age Type of High School Graduation Text Students’ high school type Distance/Regular Education Text Students’ education type Lesson Type Text Type of lessons Scores of students which are studying in Karabük University are represented by the letter system. Score ranges of these letters are shown in Table 2. Table 2. The output variable used in the study Raw-Score Nominal Representation 90-100 A1 80-89 A2 70-79 B1 65-69 B2 60-64 C 0-60 F 3.2. Data Mining Methods In this study, two popular prediction/classification methods are used (and compared to each other): artificial neural networks, and decision trees. These prediction methods are selected because of their superior capability of modeling classification type prediction problems and their popularity in recently published data mining literature. What follows is a brief description of these modeling techniques. Artificial Neural Networks: Artificial neural networks (or NN, in short ) are commonly known as biologically inspired mathematical techniques, capable of modeling extremely complex nonlinear functions [9]. In this study, we used a popular NN architecture called multilayer perceptron (MLP) with back- propagation type supervised-learning algorithm. MLP is capable of producing both classification and regression type prediction models, where the only difference is the output variable being nominal or numeric for classification or regression estimations. MLP is shown to be a strong function approximator for 265 Baha Sen and Emine Ucar / Procedia Technology 1 ( 2012 ) 262 – 267 prediction problems, that is, given the right size and the structure, MLP is shown to be capable of learning highly complex nonlinear relationships between input and output variables [10]. Decision Trees: As the name implies, this technique recursively separates observations in branches to construct a tree for the purpose of achieving the highest possible prediction accuracy. In doing so, different mathematical algorithms (e.g., information gain, Gini index, Chisquare statistics, etc.) are used to identify a variable (from the available variable pool) and the corresponding threshold for that variable to split the pool of observations into two or more subgroups. This step is repeated at each leaf node until the complete tree is constructed. The most popular decision tree algorithms include Quinlan's ID3, C4.5, C5 and Breiman’s CART (Classification and Regression Trees) algorithms. In this study, we choose to use Quinlan’s C5 algorithm, which is an improved version of C4.5 (a very popular decision tree algorithm used by researchers and practitioners since early 1990s) [11, 12, 13]. 4. Results and Conclusions The prediction results of the two modeling methods are presented in Table 3. The results presented in Table 3 are the 10-fold cross validation results. Since the output variable had six nominal values, the confusion matrixes show 6x6 square matrix. In the confusion matrixes the rows represent the actual and the columns represent the predictions. The right most columns show the prediction accuracies for each of the six output variable values. The overall accuracy of each model is presented at the bottom of the right most columns. As the results indicate, all of the classification methods performed reasonably well in predicting the six-value nominal variable. Among the two model types, decision tree algorithms produced the best prediction results with 97.8107% overall accuracy on 10 fold holdout dataset. Decision tree models followed by artificial neural networks with an overall accuracy of 94,3752%. Table 3. Prediction results for classification methods (presented in confusion matrixes) Artificial Neural Network A1 A2 B1 B2 C F Accuracy A1 171 21 0 0 0 0 A2 24 334 15 0 0 0 B1 0 19 536 22 0 0 B2 0 0 16 322 13 0 C 0 0 0 0 519 18 F 0 0 0 0 19 920 Overall 94.3752% Decision Trees A1 A2 B1 B2 C F Accuracy A1 197 10 0 0 0 0 A2 12 353 4 0 0 0 B1 0 8 555 13 0 0 B2 0 0 5 333 2 0 C 0 0 0 0 531 3 F 0 0 0 0 8 935 Overall 97.8107% The students' ages range from 18-38 and the success chart of students based on the age is shown in Figure 2. As show in the graph students' success rate has inverse ratio with students’ age and the success score decreases with increasing age. 266 Baha Sen and Emine Ucar / Procedia Technology 1 ( 2012 ) 262 – 267 Fig. 2. Success graphic based on age Figure 3 shows that the students' success is much better in the distance education or formal education. When we analyzed the graphic we can see that the students' scores between 65-80 are studying in the distance education and the students' scores between 80-100 are studying in the formal education. Also the students’ scores less than 60 are the most in the distance education. Fig. 3. Success graphic based on the type of education Looking at the students’ school type, the students which come from vocational high school are the 5% of total. Therefore, as shown in figure 4 students are more successful in the cultural lessons than the vocational lessons. 267 Baha Sen and Emine Ucar / Procedia Technology 1 ( 2012 ) 262 – 267 Fig. 4. Success graphic based on the type of lesson References 1. A. P. Sanjeev ve J. M, Zytkow. “Discovering Enrollment Knowledge in University Databases,” 1th Conference on KDD (Montreal. 20-21 August 1995), 246. 2. K. Becker, C. Ghedini ve E.L. Terra, “Using KDD to analyze the impact of curriculum revisions in a Brazilian university,” SPIE 14th Annual International Conference (Orlando. April 2000), 412. 3. J. Luan, “Data Mining, Knowledge Management in Higher Education, Potential Applications”, 42nd Associate of Institutional Research International Conference (Toronto,Canada: 2002), 1. 4. Ş.Erdoğan, M. Timor, “A Data Mining Application in a Student Database,” Havacılık ve Uzay Dergisi. Cilt No 2,Sayı 2: 57-64, (July 2005), 57. 5. M.Vranić, D. Pintar, Z.Skoćır, “The Use of Data Mining in Education Environment,” ConTEL 2007 (Zagrep 13-15 June 2007), 243. 6. Internet: Eğitim Sisteminin Genel Yapısı, http://www.meb.gov.tr/Stats/Apk2002/3_2.htm 7. H. E.Koçer, “Web tabanlı uzaktan eğitim”, Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Selçuk Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Konya, 1-100 (2001) 8. C. Shearer, “The CRISP-DM model: The new blueprint for data mining” Journal of DataWarehousing, (2000). 5: 13-22. 9. S. Haykin, Neural Networks and Learning Machines (3rd Ed.). (2008). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 10. K.Hornik,, M.Stinchcombe and H.White, “Universal approximation of an unknown mapping and its derivatives using multilayer feedforward network” Neural Networks, (1990). 3: 359-366. 11. L.Quinlan, C4.5: Programs for machine learning, Morgan Kaufmann, (1993). San Mateo, CA. 12. L. Quinlan, “Induction of decision trees” Machine Learning, (1986). 1: 81–106. 13. L.Breiman, J.H.Friedman, , R.A. Olshenm and C.J.Stone, Classification and regression trees, Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole Advanced Books & Software, (1984). Monterey, CA. 
work_n5yombgyangdjplw2oss4apju4	----	Distance Education Course about Sexuality for Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents Curso de educação a distância sobre sexualidade para residentes em Obstetrícia e Ginecologia Teresa Cristina Souza Barroso Vieira1 Mary Uchiyama Nakamura1 Ivaldo da Silva2 Maria Regina Torloni3 Meireluci Costa Ribeiro1 Eduardo de Souza1 1Departament of Obstetrics, São Paulo Medical School, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 2Departament of Gynecology, São Paulo Medical School, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 3Departament of Internal Medicine, São Paulo Medical School, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet 2017;39:670–675. Address for correspondence Teresa Cristina S. B. Vieira, MD, PhD, Departamento de Obstetrícia, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (EPM/Unifesp), Rua Napoleão de Barros, 875, Vila Clementino, CEP 04124-120, São Paulo (SP), Brasil (e-mail: vieira.barroso@unifesp.br). Keywords ► pregnancy ► sexology ► medical education ► resident training ► distance education ► obstetrics Abstract Purpose To describe the experience of a distance education course on sexual issues during pregnancy and after birth for residents. Methods This prospective educational intervention study was conducted by inves- tigators from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil, between April and September 2014. The participants were 219 physicians (residents from the 1st to the 6th years). The duration of the course was of 24 hours (10 video lectures and online chats). At baseline, the participants answered questions about their training, attitude and experience regarding sexual issues during pregnancy and after birth; before and after the course, they answered questions to assess their knowledge about the topic; at the end of the course, they answered questions on the quality of the course. The Student t-test was used to compare the before and after scores of the knowledge tests; values of p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results A total of 143 residents concluded the course; most were in their 1st (27.2%) or 3rd (29.4%) years of residency. There was a significant increase in the mean scores of the questionnaires that assessed the knowledge of the topic: 4.4 (�1.6) versus 6.0 (�1.3; maximum score: 10), before and after the course respectively (p < 0.0001). Most of the participants (74.1%) declared that the quality of the course as a whole reached their expectations, and 81.1% would recommend the course to a friend. Conclusions The online Sexology course for Obstetrics and Gynecology residents increased their knowledge about the sexual issues during pregnancy and after birth, and fulfilled the participants’ expectations. The experience described here may serve as a model for other sexuality courses targeting similar audiences. received July 18, 2016 accepted June 28, 2017 published online November 27, 2017 DOI https://doi.org/ 10.1055/s-0037-1606273. ISSN 0100-7203. Copyright © 2017 by Thieme Revinter Publicações Ltda, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Original Article THIEME 670 mailto:vieira.barroso@unifesp.br https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1606273 https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1606273 Introduction Sexual health is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being,”1 and one of the goals proposed by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and by the World Association for Sexology (WAS) to promote sexual health is to provide education, training and support to professionals working in sexual health-related fields.2 Dealing with human sexuality requires specific knowl- edge about the different periods of life.3 Pregnancy is a unique moment in the lives of men and women, a period when sexual dysfunction symptoms are very frequent and may affect the couple’s marital relationship and their quality of life in terms of sexual health.4–7 Obstetrics and Gynecology (Ob/Gyn) residents and special- ists frequently report that they lack specific knowledge about sexuality, andthat they feel unprepared todealwith thesexual issues of their obstetrics patients.8–11 On the other hand, pregnant women report they would like to receive more information about sexuality during pregnancy from their healthcare providers during their antenatal care visits.4,12–14 A national survey concluded that medical residents are interested in learning more about sexuality during pregnancy to increase their confidence in managing their patients, and that they would appreciate online modules about the topic, duetotheirlackof timetoattendother types ofcourses.8 There are few publications on programs of sexual medicine for medical undergraduates or those specifically focused on med- ical residents, with some on-site course models.15–18 To the best of our knowledge, there are no previous publications of online course models on sexuality during pregnancy. We developed an online course about sexuality during pregnancy and the postpartum period specifically focused on Ob/Gyn residents, to complement their professional training in this area. The main objective of this study was to describe the experience of this distance training course for Ob/Gyn residents. We hypothesized that this course would increase the knowledge of the participants about sexuality during pregnancy. Methods Study Design This prospective educational intervention study was con- ducted at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo – São Paulo Medical School (UNIFESP-EPM) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, from April to September 2014. Participants Medical doctors enrolled in officially accredited Ob/Gyn residency programs in São Paulo were eligible to participate. Educational Intervention Development of the Online Sexology Course Content The course content was based on the recommendations of the Brazilian Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Febrasgo, in the Portuguese acronym) about “What should be the content for a sexology course for Ob/Gyns?”. The suggested Resumo Objetivos Relatar a experiência de um curso de educação a distância sobre questões sexuais na gestação e puerpério para médicos residentes. Métodos Estudo prospectivo de intervenção educacional, realizado entre abril e setembro de 2014, por investigadores da Universidade Federal de São Paulo. Os participantes foram 219 médicos (R1 a R6). O curso teve carga horária de 24 horas (10 videoaulas e discussões online). No início do curso, os participantes responderam perguntas sobre treinamento, atitude e prática relativas a questões sexuais na gestação; antes e após o curso, responderam perguntas de conhecimento sobre o tema; ao final, preencheram questionário sobre a qualidade do curso. O teste t de Student foi utilizado para comparar os testes de conhecimento, antes e após o curso; valores de p < 0,05 foram considerados estatisticamente significantes. Resultados Um total de 143 residentes concluiu o curso; a maioria estava no 1° (27,2%) ou 3° (29,4%) anos de residência. Houve aumento significativo nas notas médias dos questionários que avaliavam o conhecimento sobre o tema: 4,4 (�1,6) versus 6,0 (�1,3; nota máxima: 10), no início e final do curso, respectivamente (p < 0,0001). A maioria dos participantes (74,1%) declarou que a qualidade geral do curso atingiu suas expectativas, e 81,1% recomendariam o curso a um amigo. Conclusões O curso de Sexologia online para residentes de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia promoveu o aumento do conhecimento sobre questões sexuais no ciclo gravídico puerperal, e atendeu às expectativas dos participantes. Essa experiência pode servir de modelo para outros cursos de sexualidade voltados para esse público. Palavras-chave ► gravidez ► sexologia ► educação médica ► treinamento de residentes ► educação a distância ► obstetrícia Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet Vol. 39 No. 12/2017 Distance Education Course about Sexuality for Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents Barroso et al. 671 content was adapted and divided into 10 classes. Each class consisted of two 50-minute modules, with a different lecturer for each module. The ten specific topics were: anatomy and physiology of the human sexual response; sexual dysfunc- tions, paraphilia and sexual inadequacies; the main psycho- therapy techniques used in sexology; pharmacotherapy in sexology; the treatment of desire dysfunctions; the treatment of orgasm dysfunctions; the treatment of dyspareunia psy- chopathology and vaginism; the impact of male sexual dys- functions on female sexuality; the impact of gynecological surgeries on female sexuality; and ethics in caring for sexual dysfunctions and inadequacies. We contacted the professionals working in the Sexuality Unit of the Department of Gynecology of Universidade Federal de São Paulo – São Paulo Medical School (UNIFESP-EPM), and invited themtogivelecturesonthespecific topicsofthecourse program.Thecontentof the10lectures wasdivided asfollows: 1) Course presentation and content - importance of human sexuality for the Ob/Gyn specialist; 2) History of sexuality/ Anatomy of the sexual response cycle - anatomic changes in pregnancy and after childbirth (pregnancy and childbirth, PC); 3) Physiology of the sexual response - sexual response during pregnancy; 4) Treatment of sexual disorders - treatment of sexual disorders in PC/sexual history taking; 5) Female sexual dysfunctions (FSDs)- FSD symptoms in pregnancy; 6) Male sexual dysfunctions and pregnant woman’s sexuality; 7) Psy- chotherapy - psychotherapy in PC; 8) Pharmacotherapy - pharmacotherapy in PC; 9) Gynecological surgeries andfemale sexuality - gynecological surgeries and female sexuality in PC; 10) Ethical issues/Treatment of FSDs - sexual education groups with pregnant couples. In addition to the topics described before, we created three hypothetical clinical cases for discussion during the last video lecture. In all modules, the participants answered four multiple-choice questions related to the topics/clinical cases presented. These questions were created by the lecturers. At the end of the course, we expected that the participants would be able to: 1) have basic knowledge about the anatomy and physiology of the human sexual response; 2) make a diagnosis and propose a treatment for sexual dysfunctions and inadequacies; 3) identify particularities of the female sexu- ality during pregnancy and the postpartum period; 4) under- stand the impact of male and female sexual dysfunctions on the couple’s quality of life in terms of sexual health; 5) care for couples with sexual problems during pregnancy in an ethical and adequate manner; 6) work with a multi-professional team when caring for patients with sexual symptoms during preg- nancy and the postpartum period; and 7) appreciate the useful- ness of online courses as educational tools. The course project was submitted to the Medical Residency Committees of all hospitals that participated in this study. We also asked these committees to help us disseminate informa- tion about the course to their local Ob/Gyn residents. Development of the Course Platform, Video Lectures and Assessment Tools We hired a professional company experienced in the creation and maintenance of interactive websites to develop one that was specific for our course. The website allowed the partic- ipants to register, give informed consent, watch video lec- tures, participate in chats and have access to four online questionnaires. These questionnaires were created by the investigators to assess: 1) the participants’ sociodemo- graphic characteristics; 2) their previous training, attitude and experience about sexuality in pregnancy and the post- partum period; 3) their general knowledge about the topic at baseline and after the completion of the course; and 4) their general evaluation of course. The professional website company also directed and edited the taping of the video lectures that took place between November 2013 and January 2014, in a conference room at our university. The videos were uploaded to a private YouTube channel. The group of lecturers was composed of teachers or professionals working at UNIFESP/EPMour university in the field of human sexuality, and it included Ob/Gyns, urologists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, psychologists and social work- ers. Each video lasted 50 minutes, and the lecturers were coached about video communication skills, such as looking directly at the camera, avoiding excessive gesticulation, keep- ing good body posture and speaking to the participants as individuals. Two teachers from our Obstetrics Department, who had more than thirty years of experience in the area and were not directly involved with the course, were invited to evaluate the content, language and esthetic quality of the taped lectures using a tool developed for distance education courses by Schons.19 The two teachers also evaluated the relevance of the multiple-choice questions created by the lecturers to be answered by the students after watching the videos, to assess the knowledge they had acquired. Both teachers considered all 10 lectures and all suggested questions adequate. Course Dissemination and Recruitment of Participants We sent information about the online sexology course to the coordinators of five Ob/Gyn residency programs through emails and phone calls, asking them to help us recruit interested participants from their programs. We asked them to explain and emphasize that the course was specifi- cally for Ob/Gyn residents, and that it was free and online. Throughout March 2014, the principal investigator (TCSBV) personally visited the five residency programs and talked to the residents about the course, encouraging them to enroll. On March 1st, 2014, the website of the course became active, and online registrations were opened. The first page of the website had information about the objectives and contents of the course, the basic curriculum of each lecturer (with links to their full curricula at the Lattes database), how to register and how to give online informed consent. The Course After online registration, the participants received an email confirmingtheirsuccessfulenrollment,andwereaskedtocreate an individual login and password that ensured the complete confidentiality of their names and personal information. After this step, the participants received three online questionnaires. The first one (the sociodemographic questionnaire) collected Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet Vol. 39 No. 12/2017 Distance Education Course about Sexuality for Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents Barroso et al.672 data about their year of residency, sex and to which residency program they belonged. The second one was based on a questionnaireusedintheEvaluateProject,whichwasconducted by Abdo et al20 and consisted of eight multiple choice questions about the participants’ training, attitude and experience regard- ing sexual issues during pregnancy and the postpartum period. The third questionnaire was a pre-course test that evaluated the participants’ baseline knowledge about sexuality in pregnancy and the postpartum period. This questionnaire consisted of 36 multiple choice questions based on the questions created by each of the lecturers. The total score for this test was calculated by dividing the number of questions (36) by 10, and the result was multiplied by the number of correct ques- tions. Thetotal score of this test ranged from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating higher knowledge. In order to have access to the video lectures, the partic- ipants had to fill out the three questionnaires. The first lecture became available on April 7th, 2014, and each subsequent lecture was uploaded weekly, every Monday, along with an invitation to participate in a related discussion at the online forum. The principal investigator was available throughout the course to answer online questions posted by the students in the chat forum. Each participant received a weekly email to remind him/her about the next lecture, along with an invitation to participate in the forum. The weekly forum offered a list of additional reading material that could be commented by all. The students were encouraged to send questions, comments and sugges- tions about the video lectures. The principal investigator monitored the forum daily, and answered all questions posted by the students. After the first lecture, in order to have access to the next one, the student had to answer the four multiple choice questions about the topic of the lecture he/she had watched before. Even if the student did not provide the correct answers to these four questions, he/she was allowed to proceed to the next lecture. The last lecture was uploaded on June 6th, 2014. One week later, only 11 residents had completed the course. The principal investigator decided to invite these residents to become tutors and help motivate other residents from their own institutions to complete the course. These residents from each participating institution helped other local resi- dents who might be having difficulties in completing the course. The tutors informed the principal investigator about these contacts with their peers. We maintained this strategy until the end of the course, on September 30th, 2014. At the end of the course, the students were asked to complete another two questionnaires. The “Post-course Test” evaluated their knowledge about sexuality, and consisted of the same 36 questions of the baseline questionnaire, but in a different order. The second questionnaire assessed their satisfaction with the course. This questionnaire was based on the SERVQUAL tool21 adapted for educational services.22 We modified some of the questions of this multi-item scale to assess video education, and produced a questionnaire with 20 questions divided into 5 domains: tangibles (physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materi- als); reliability (performance of the promised service in a reliable and accurate manner); responsiveness (helping stu- dents and providing prompt services); assurance (staff knowledge and courtesy, and their ability to convey trust and confidence); and empathy (caring, individualized atten- tion to participants). We added one last question about the general quality of the course. The possible answers ranged from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating higher level of satisfaction. The overall internal consistency of the question- naire and of each domain was assessed using the Cronbach alpha (α) coefficient. The overall consistency of the ques- tionnaire was high (α = 0.9), as well as the consistency of each domain (tangibles: α ¼ 0.7; reliability: α ¼ 0.9; responsive- ness: α ¼ 0.7; assurance: α ¼ 0.9; and empathy: α ¼ 0.8). At the end of the study, each student received an email thanking him/her for his/her participation, along with a certificate of completion and his/her individual scores in the pre and post-tests, along with the list of correct answers to these tests. The residency coordinators also received an email thanking them for their help, a certificate from UNIFESP-EPM and the course assessment of their own residents. Statistical Aspects The Student t and chi-squared tests were used to analyze the results of the pre- and post-course test scores. Descriptive statistics were used for the participants’ sociodemographic and professional characteristics. We used Cronbach α to evaluate the internal consistency of the course satisfaction questionnaire. A minimum of Cronbach α of 0.7 had to be present to indicate good internal consistency. We used the InStat 3 (Statistical Services Centre, University of Reading, Reading, UK) software for the statistical analyses; values of p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Ethical Aspects The study followed the Brazilian National Health Council resolution number 466/12 on research involving humans. The Ethics Committee of Universidade Federal de São Paulo approved the study project (process 05889712.0.0000.5505). All participating residents gave online informed consent when registering for the course. Results A total of 219 residents enrolled in the course, and 143 (65.3%) completed all activities. The mean age of the participants was 28 (�2.1) years. Most of them (188, 85.8%) were female, and 162 (74.0%) were in the first 3 years of residency (R1, R2 and R3). The mean age of the 143 participants who completed the coursewas 27.9 (�2.1) years; 125(87.4%) of themwerefemale, and 116 (81.1%) were in the first 3 years of their residency. The participants’ sociodemographic data and their base- line knowledge about sexuality were presented in a previous publication.9 Briefly, most of the residents reported that they did not have any sexology classes during their medical graduation (62.5%) or medical residency (52.1%), and the majority (84%) stated that they lacked specific knowledge about sexuality to help them manage their patients. Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet Vol. 39 No. 12/2017 Distance Education Course about Sexuality for Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents Barroso et al. 673 The mean sexuality knowledge scores of the 143 residents who completed the course increased significantly from 4.4 (�1.6) at baseline to 6.0 (�1.3) at the end of the course (maximum grade: 10), (p < 0.0001). Most of the participants (74.1%, 106/143) reported that the course met their expect- ations, and 81.1% (116/143) of them would recommend the course to a friend (►Table 1). Discussion According to the findings from this study, the online course about sexuality for Ob/Gyn residents was effective in increas- ing the participants’ specific knowledge about the topic, and the coursewas assessedby theresidentsasgood. Thehighlevel of participant satisfaction could be due to the multidisciplin- ary team of lecturers, since this has previously been reported by residents in other educational training activities.16 The main reason pointed by the 219 Ob/Gyn residents to enroll in the course was their perceived need to complement their medical education on sexuality, as pointed by 2/3 of the participants. This was also reported by a previous study by our team,10 which involved 154 residents of different specialties (Ob/Gyn, psychiatry and internal medicine) at UNIFESP-EPM. In that study, almost all residents (97%) declared that they would like to participate in educational activities to increase their knowledge in this area.10 These findings suggest that Brazilian residents are acutely aware of their lack of formal training about sexuality during their medical education and residency programs. However, this is not exclusive to Brazil, and has also been reported by international studies.8,17,23 The significant increase in test scores indicates that this distance course contributed to increase the participants’ knowledge about sexuality. Similar results were reported by Yolsal et al16 in a 3-day on-site 20-hour course involving 163 Turkish medical residents of different specialties. The authors also reported significant differences in the mean total scores of knowledge about sexuality before and after the course. They also reported that the residents felt more prepared, motivated and confident to manage sexual issues after the course. Specific knowledge about sexuality is important for obstetricians and gynecologists to make them feel more capable and confident when handling questions on this topic with pregnant couples, thus potentially optimizing the care given to their patients during this period of their lives. According to previous studies, bringing up, asking, informing and providing counseling about sexuality during pregnancy can increase the couple’s quality of life in terms of sexual health.24,25 The limited capacity of Ob/Gyn residents to deal with their patients’ sexual symptoms and their confidence in online education is also common in other countries. American researchers conducted an online survey involving 234 third- and fourth-year medical residents to assess their knowledge and confidence regarding female sexual function and dys- function. The majority of the respondents felt inadequately trained, and reported that they believed that their confi- dence in caring for patients with sexual problems would increase with lectures (97.9%) and online modules (90.6%).8 Online distance courses offer several benefits, such as the possibility of learning according to each individual’s person- al rhythm and time availability, the comfort of being able to watch the video lectures as many times as one wishes, and the time and money saved, since the participant does not have to travel to another location to participate in educa- tional activities.26 This study had several strong points. Firstly, it is the largest Latin American study to investigate the training, attitude and experience of Ob/Gyn residents about sexuality during pregnancy. It is also the first publication about an online sexuality course. However, this study had several limitations. First, we had to create an unplanned “motiva- tional strategy”, with the recruitment of 11 tutors to help increase the number of participants that concluded the course. It is possible that this change in our protocol may have influenced the results of the knowledge acquisition and course satisfaction scores, but we cannot infer the extent of this effect. A second limitation of this study is that, due to its exclusively theoretical nature, this type of course could not address all the practical difficulties that health care profes- sionals face when dealing with sexual problems reported by patients. This would demand a more personalized coaching and practical face to face training with the students. Addi- tionally, we did not assess the post-course knowledge reten- tion and the actual usefulness of the course in improving the participants’ skills and confidence in dealing with sexuality with their patients months after the course. This successful experience can serve as a model to other investigators interested in promoting similar educational interventions on sexuality for medical residents in Brazil and elsewhere. This kind of initiative could help future obstetricians, gynecologists and other professionals improve the care provided to pregnant couples. More research is needed to confirm the findings of the present study about the effectiveness of online educational interventions to increase the knowledge of young physicians about sexuality. Conflicts of Interest Authors declare no conflicts of interest. Table 1 Evaluation of 143 obstetrics and gynecology residents about the quality21 of an online sexuality course Domain Score Tangibles 3.7 � 0.7 Reliability 3.8 � 0.7 Responsiveness 4.0 � 0.6 Assurance 3.9 � 0.7 Empathy 3.9 � 0.6 Note: All values express mean and standard deviation. The total scores range from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating higher quality. The evaluation was based on the SERVQUAL questionnaire.21 Rev Bras Ginecol Obstet Vol. 39 No. 12/2017 Distance Education Course about Sexuality for Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents Barroso et al.674 Acknowledgments We would like to thank all those who collaborated with ideas, suggestions and support for this study, especially Marco Scanavino, Roseli Nomura, Jorge Hosomi, Renato Santana, Luiz Kulay, Anamaria Facina, Marina Padovani and Eliana Spinelli. Wewould also liketothank theprecious collaboration of the lecturers Alessandra Diehl, Carolina Ambrogini, Denise Queiroz Ferreira, Fátima Ferreira Borto- letti, Gil Facina, Jales Clemente, Marcelo Rodrigues Cabrini, Maria Cláudia de Oliveira Lordello, Miriam Zanetti, Roney Cesar Signorini Filho and Tânia das Graças Mauadie Santana. Finally, we would like to thank Marcus Vinicius Castro for his assistance with the statistical analyses. References 1 World Health Organization [Internet]. Sexual health: concept and scope. In: WHO. Developing sexual health programmes: a frame- work for action. Geneva: WHO; 2010 [cited 2017 Jun 24]. p. 3–6. Available from: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/70501/ 1/WHO_RHR_HRP_10.22_eng.pdf 2 Pan American Health Organization. World Health Organization. World Association for Sexology [Internet]. Promotion of sexual health: recommendations for action. Proceedings of a Regional Consultation; 2000 May 19–22; Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala. Washington (DC): Pan American Health Organization; 2000 [cited 2017 Jun 24]. Available from: http://www1.paho.org/hq/dmdo- cuments/2008/PromotionSexualHealth.pdf 3 Basson R. The female sexual response: a different model. J Sex Marital Ther 2000;26(01):51–65 4 Pauleta JR, Pereira NM, Graça LM. Sexuality during pregnancy. J Sex Med 2010;7(1 Pt 1):136–142 5 Johnson CE. Sexual health during pregnancy and the postpartum. J Sex Med 2011;8(05):1267–1284, quiz 1285–1286 6 Ribeiro MC, Nakamura MU, Torloni MR, Scanavino MdeT, Scom- parini FB, Mattar R. Female sexual function of overweight women with gestational diabetes mellitus - a cross-sectional study. PLoS One 2014;9(04):e95094 7 Babazadeh R, Najmabadi KM, Masomi Z. Changes in sexual desire and activity during pregnancy among women in Shahroud, Iran. Int J Gynaecol Obstet 2013;120(01):82–84 8 Pancholy AB, Goldenhar L, Fellner AN, Crisp C, Kleeman S, Pauls R. Resident education and training in female sexuality: results of a national survey. J Sex Med 2011;8(02):361–366 9 Vieira TC, de Souza E, da Silva I, Torloni MR, Ribeiro MC, Nakamura MU. Dealing with female sexuality: training, attitude, and prac- tice of obstetrics and gynecology residents from a developing country. J Sex Med 2015;12(05):1154–1157 10 Vieira TC, de Souza E, Abdo CH, et al. Brazilian residents’ attitude and practice toward sexual health issues in pregnant patients. J Sex Med 2012;9(10):2516–2524 11 Dyer K, das Nair R. Why don’t healthcare professionals talk about sex? A systematic review of recent qualitative studies conducted in the United kingdom. J Sex Med 2013;10(11):2658–2670 12 Fok WY, Chan LY, Yuen PM. Sexual behavior and activity in Chinese pregnant women.ActaObstetGynecolScand2005;84(10):934–938 13 Shojaa M, Jouybari L, Sanagoo A. The sexual activity during pregnancy among a group of Iranian women. Arch Gynecol Obstet 2009;279(03):353–356 14 Trutnovsky G, Haas J, Lang U, Petru E. Women’s perception of sexuality during pregnancy and after birth. Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol 2006;46(04):282–287 15 Rosen R, Kountz D, Post-Zwicker T, Leiblum S, Wiegel M. Sexual communication skills in residency training: the Robert Wood Johnson model. J Sex Med 2006;3(01):37–46 16 Yolsal N, Karabey S, Bulut A, et al. Courses for medical residents and trainers in Turkey for promotion of quality of reproductive health services:a pilot study. Reprod Health Matters 2004;12(24):189–199 17 Parish SJ, Clayton AH. Sexual medicine education: review and commentary. 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work_n6ulze7afndufnqc7gpfcslpdu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_n7zhtbswl5eszhdm2xnqmlykym	----	NEWJGIMfront 36 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT Information retrieval in the context of virtual universities deals with the representation, organization, and access to learning objects. The representation and organization of learning objects should provide the learner with an easy access to the learning objects. In this article, we give an overview of the ONES system, and analyze the relevance of two information retrieval models for virtual universities. We argue that keywords based search (i.e., the Boolean model), though well suited for Web searches, is overly coarse for virtual universities. Instead, the vector model, on which our implemented search engine is also based on, seems to be more appropriate as it provides similarity measure (i.e., the learning object having the best match is presented first). We also compare the performance of four algorithms for computing the similarities (matching). Keywords: algorithms; case study; distance learning; information retrieval; Web-based education Information Retrieval in Virtual Universities Juha Puustjärvi, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Päivi Pöyry, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland INTRODUCTION Today people in all professions are faced with increasing demands. Technology devel- ops in an ever-increasing speed, and the roles of people in work, society, and industry are shift- ing constantly. Keeping up with the pace of change requires continuous education and learn- ing. Traditional campus-universities are trying to answer to this need of lifelong learning by building virtual universities, whilst facing com- petition from the commercial continuing edu- cation providers in the form of e-learning. E-learning can be defined as information technology enabled and supported form of dis- tance learning, in which the traditional restric- tions of classroom learning have disappeared. The main tool of e-learning is a personal com- puter, and the Internet serves as the principal communication and distribution channel. The learners can participate in online Web-based courses and interact with both the peers, in- structors, and the learning materials. E-learning sets new requirements for uni- versities: they have to build global learning in- IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This paper appears in the publication, International Journal Distance Education Technologies, Volume 4, Issue 3 edited by Shi-Kuo Chang and Timothy Shih © 2006, Idea Group Inc. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITJ3292 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 37 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. frastructures, course material has to be in digi- tal form, course material has to be distributed, and learners must have access to various vir- tual universities. As single virtual universities are inde- pendently created, they may provide very het- erogeneous functionalities and user interfaces. Ideally, the learner should be able to access all the virtual universities in a similar way (i.e., the heterogeneity of various virtual universities should not burden the learner). How this goal can be achieved is the main topic of the ONES- project. Consequently, the main functions of the ONES system are to hide the distribution of e-learning portals, and to hide the semantic het- erogeneity (i.e., problems arising from using same words in different meaning and vice versa). In order to achieve these goals, the sys- tem will deploy many new technologies such as “one-stop portals,” Web services, service oriented architecture, RDF-based annotation, ontology editors, and distance measures in searching learning objects. In this article, we will restrict ourselves on the role of searches in the ONES-system. In particular, we will analyze the applicability of different information retrieval technologies. Our main argument is that the technology based on the Boolean model (Yan & Garcia-Molina, 1994), though well suited for searches in the Web, is not suitable for the emerging virtual universi- ties. Instead, for virtual universities we have to develop methods, which allow learners to be more concerned with retrieving information about a subject than with retrieving data, which satisfy a given query. For example, a learner may be interested in courses dealing with ob- ject-oriented programming rather than in the courses where the term “java” or “C++” is stated. When searching for information about a subject (e.g., object oriented programming) the search engine must somehow interpret the metadata of the learning objects and rank them according to a degree of relevance to the learner’s query. The primary goal is to retrieve all the learning objects, which are relevant to a learner’s query while retrieving as few non-rel- evant objects as possible. Unfortunately, char- acterization of the learner’s information need is not a simple task. Furthermore, the difficulty is not only in expressing the information need but also in knowing how the learning objects should be characterized with the help of the metadata descriptions. The rest of this article is organized as follows. First, in the second section we give an overview of the architecture of the ONES-sys- tem. In the third section we characterize virtual universities. In particular, we will give an over- view of the e-learning environment, and specify what the notion of resource-based learning in- corporates. Then, in the fourth section, the role of metadata and ontologies in virtual universi- ties is illustrated. In addition, the usability of the Boolean and the vector model in a virtual university is analyzed. Especially, two interpre- tations of a hierarchical ontology in the context of the vector model, called weighted leaves and multilevel weighting, are introduced. Then, in the fifth section, the performance of four match- ing algorithms based on weighted leaves and multilevel weighting principles is compared. Finally, the sixth section concludes the article by summarizing the feasibility of the proposed ideas. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ONES SYSTEM The name ONES stands for One Stop e- learning Portal. As this name suggests, a sa- lient feature of the system is the aggregation of distance learning information from different learning sources in one portal. The idea of the one-stop portals originated from one-stop shops, and later on it is also adopted in e-gov- ernment applications. All one-stop applications have the same goal: hide the heterogeneity and distribution of local systems. So, from user’s point of view one-stop portal behaves like a centralized system. The four main components of the ONES- system are (see Figure 1): • Aggregation portal (mediator), • Wrappers, • E-learning portals, and • Course providers’ tools. 38 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. The aggregation portal supports the learners in searching the courses that match to their specific needs. It differs from traditional database interfaces in a way that in addition to the traditional database queries it supports fuzzy queries. Fuzzy queries are similarity based, which means that if the similarity between the courses’ profiles and the learner’s query exceeds a certain threshold, they are said to match. A problem is that the current database manage- ment systems do not support fuzzy queries and therefore the ONES-system has to support them. From technological point of view, the aggregation portal is a mediator (Garcia- Molina, Ullman, & Widom, 2000). It supports a virtual view that integrates several learning sources in much the same way as data ware- houses do. However, since the mediator does not store any data, the mechanisms of media- tors and warehouses are rather different. Since the mediator has no data of its own, it must get the relevant data from its sources and use that data to form the answer to the learner’s query. As the data sources (e-learning portals) are in- dependently created it is obvious that they pro- vide heterogeneous interfaces (e.g., they may provide different kind of functionalities or the same functionalities are provided by different operations). In order to hide this heterogeneity there is a wrapper (Garcia-Molina et al., 2000) be- tween the mediator and each e-learning portal. So a wrapper is a software module that extracts data from local e-learning portals. This implies that the wrapper must be able to accept a vari- ety of queries from the mediator and translate any of them to the terms of local eLearning por- tal. The wrapper must also communicate the result to the mediator. An important point is that each wrapper provides equal functionality for the mediator. Ideally, each wrapper provides an interface for requesting the metadata of learning objects (i.e., descriptive information of courses, course packages and programs of- fered by educational institutions, e.g., univer- sities). From a technological point of view, each e-learning portal is a Web service (Vasudevan, 2001). Web services are self-describing modu- lar applications that can be published, located, and invoked across the Web. Once a service is deployed, other applications (e.g., an aggrega- tion portal) can invoke the deployed service. In Le a rn e r Le a rn e r A g g re g a t io n p o rt a l (a m e d ia t o r ) W ra p p e r W ra p p e r e Le a rn in g p o rt a l e Le a rn in g p o rt a l C o u rs e p ro v id e r’s t o o l C o u rs e p ro v id e r’s t o o l C o u rs e p ro v id e r C o u rs e p ro v id e r Figure 1. ONES-architecture Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 39 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. general, a Web service can be anything from a simple request to complicated business pro- cess. A course provider can enter data about a course through the course provider’s tool. The main function of this tool is to provide an inter- face, which facilitates the creation of the metadata attached to learning objects. Basically, this tool is analogous to the tools that support the content providers of electronic newspapers (Yli-Koivisto & Puustjärvi, 2002) in creating metadata items to news articles. The tool may even generate suggestions of the suitable metadata items, after which the author can make the necessary modifications and enter this in- formation to the system. CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRTUAL UNIVERSITIES E-Learning Environment E-learning can be defined as information technology enabled and supported form of dis- tance learning, in which the traditional restric- tions of classroom learning have disappeared (Liu, Chan, Hung, & Lee, 2002). The main tool of e-learning is a personal computer, and the Internet servers as the principal communica- tion and distribution channel. The learners can participate in online Web-based courses and interact with both the peers and instructors and with the learning materials. The teacher- centeredness of traditional learning does not hold for e-learning, where the learning process has become more and more learner centered. The learning process and the resources may be customized according to the individual needs of the learner. At the same time, the role of the teacher becomes that of a facilitator or of a men- tor guiding and supporting the individual pro- cess of learning (Liu et al., 2002). Typical e-learning environments, such as WebCT and Virtual-U, offer the basic elements for delivering e-learning courses: course con- tent delivery tools, synchronous and asynchro- nous discussion forums and conferencing sys- tems, possibilities for quizzes and polling, workspaces for sharing resources, white boards, possibilities for evaluation and grading, log- books, possibilities for submitting assignments, and so forth (Liu et al., 2002). Studying in Virtual Universities In the recent years, the idea of a virtual university has been becoming more and more popular in many countries all over the world. The enormous development in the field of in- formation and communication technologies has enabled the rise of e-learning and virtual learn- ing environments. As a result, the traditional universities have faced a new challenge emerg- ing from the commercial sector of education. There is a growing need for new kind of learn- ing and teaching as the technology advances rapidly and the skills and competencies required in the working life become more demanding and increasingly dynamic. Virtual university has been defined as a space where the students are provided with higher education courses with the help of the newest information and communication tech- nology (Niemi, 2002). The degree of utilizing technology in organizing the studies may vary from pure technology-based studies to face- to-face or mixed studies that are supported by learning technologies. The main channel of communication and delivery of teaching is the Internet (Niemi, 2002; Ryan, Scott, Freeman, & Patel, 2000). Thus, a virtual university can be seen as closely re- lated to e-learning that provides learning op- portunities via the Internet. The difference be- tween these two concepts is the level of stud- ies offered; virtual university is aimed to offer higher education studies while e-learning can be used for all educational levels. A virtual university may be an institution that uses the information and communication technologies for its core activities such as pro- viding learning opportunities, administration, materials development and distribution, deliv- ering teaching and tuition, and providing coun- seling, advising and examinations. On the other hand, a virtual university may also be a virtual organization created through partnerships be- tween traditional universities and other educa- tional institutes. In addition, the traditional cam- 40 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. pus universities may be regarded as virtual uni- versities if they offer learning opportunities via the Internet or combine traditional ways of learning with e-learning (Ryan et al., 2000). Virtual universities are expected to offer opportunities for life-long learning for audi- ences otherwise excluded from university stud- ies. The emerging virtual university can be seen very beneficial especially for the industry, when technology-supported learning can be brought to the workplaces and integrated more closely to work. Moreover, virtual university can en- hance organizational learning and bring com- petitive advantage by continuously develop- ing the skills and knowledge of the employees (Teare, Davies, & Sandelands, 1999). Resource-Based Learning The Internet is able to store and transmit vast amounts of information in different forms and formats. Therefore the Internet is an ideal support for resource-based learning (RBL) that is one of the corner stones of learning and teaching in the virtual university. RBL has been defined a student-centered way of learning that exploits various specially designed learning materials, interactive media and technologies. RBL can be realized as self-study or as interac- tive group learning both in distance and in the face-to-face mode (Ryan et al., 2000). The Internet can be used to enable and support RBL in several ways (Ryan et al., 2000): • Courses can be delivered via the Internet. • Resources can be identified and used. • Internet serves as a communication and conferencing channel. • Learning activities and assessment can be done in the Net. • Collaborative work is enabled. • Student management and support is enabled. In the next section, we focus on the start- ing point of RBL, namely on searching learning resources. INFORMATION RETRIEVAL MODELS Information retrieval in the context of vir- tual universities deals with the representation, organization, and access to learning objects. The representation and organization of learn- ing objects should provide the learner with an easy access to the learning objects. The sys- tem retrieves all the learning objects, which are relevant to learner while retrieving as few non- relevant learning objects as possible In this section, we will analyze the use- fulness of different information retrieval mod- els (Baeza-Yates & Ribeiro-Neto, 1999) for a vir- tual university. The used model determines the way the metadata of the learning objects are given as well as the way the learner’s queries (information needs) are presented. Before ana- lyzing the information retrieval models we char- acterize the role of metadata and ontologies in virtual universities. Metadata and Ontologies In order to transfer data seamlessly and efficiently in the virtual university, there has to be a standard way for both people and comput- ers to communicate all necessary knowledge, with both people and computer systems (Stojanovic, Staab, & Studer, 2001). One pos- sible solution is to use metadata and an ontol- ogy attached to it for describing the learning objects. The term metadata has variable interpre- tations depending upon the circumstances in which it is used. For example, in the context of documents the common forms of metadata in- clude the author(s), the source of publication, the length of document, and so forth. This kind of metadata in commonly called descriptive metadata. For example, the metadata elements of the Dublin Core (Pöyry, Pelto-Aho, & Puustjärvi, 2002) represent descriptive metadata. Educational metadata is needed for im- proving the retrieval of learning objects, for supporting the management of collections of learning objects, and for supporting the deci- sion process of the learners looking for educa- Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 41 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. tional resources. LOM seems to be the most powerful and most widely used metadata stan- dard for educational information systems (Holzinger, Kleinberger, & Müller, 2001; Lamminaho, 2000). More generally, educational metadata can be used by educational institutes and professionals as well as by learners in or- der to describe (e.g., the content, structures, and relationships of the learning objects and to search for educational objects) (Lamminaho, 2000; Stojanovic et al., 2001). Educational metadata may describe any class of educational objects, such as study courses. The pedagogical features of the course, the contents, special target groups, and the technical requirements of the study course can be described with the help of a metadata schema (Lamminaho, 2000). More generally, educational metadata can be used to describe, for example, the content, structures, and rela- tionships of the learning objects (Stojanovic et al. 2001). Educational metadata can be utilized by educational and pedagogical professionals, by the institutions offering education, and by the students searching for education. Well-de- signed and sufficient metadata aid the decision making process of the students and help the educational institutions to provide suitable in- formation about their educational supply (Lamminaho, 2000). Educational metadata is very much semantic metadata, but a thorough metadata schema must include also at least structural metadata in order to be able to de- scribe the learning objects efficiently. The idea of using standardized metadata schemas is being able to develop universally applicable tools dealing with the metadata de- scriptions of the learning objects. In order to create metadata records containing the resource descriptions specific tools are needed for cre- ating the metadata according to the standards (Kassanke, El-Saddik, & Steinacker, 2001). Metadata is also useful when guiding non-ex- perienced users through a large collection of learning resources (Strijker, 2001). Moreover, metadata is seen as value-added information that is used to arrange, describe, track or other- wise enhance the access to the object content. At the moment metadata becoming increasingly important when digital government and e-com- merce are emerging. Metadata enables in- creased accessibility, expanded use of objects, multi-versioning, and system improvement. The granularity of metadata, which refers to the level of details in the description, is an important question when developing a metadata set (Gilliland-Swetland, 2000). A salient feature of descriptive metadata is that it is external to the meaning of the docu- ment, (i.e., it describes the creation of the docu- ment rather than the content of the document). The metadata describing the content of the document is commonly called semantic metadata. For example, the keywords attached to many scientific articles represent semantic metadata (Jokela, 2001). An ontology provides a general vocabu- lary of a certain domain (Fridman & McGuinness, 2001), and it can be defined as “an explicit specification of a conceptualisation” (Gruber, 1993). In essence, an ontology gives the semantics to the metadata. Ontologies are formal, explicit, and shared specifications of some conceptualizations. Formal means that the on- tology should be machine readable, and explicit refers to having defined the types of concepts and the constraints on their use are explicitly defined. Shared refers to the fact that an ontol- ogy must reach a consensus (Fensel, 2001). Ontologies together with metadata enhance efficient access to information by offering pos- sibilities to organize and categorize the content of the information system in question. In this context an ontology is defined as a means to formalize and to specify a common terminology for a defined area of interest (Turpeinen, 2000). In order to standardize semantic metadata specific ontologies are introduced in many dis- ciplines. Typically, such ontologies are hierar- chical taxonomies of terms describing certain topics. For example, the ACM Computing Clas- sification System is a hierarchy (a tree) in which the nodes represent the classes of the tax- onomy. In Figure 2, a subset of that hierarchy is represented. 42 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. The Boolean Model Applying the Boolean model in searches requires that each learning object is augmented by a set of metadata items such as keywords or classification identifiers (e.g., the searches in the CUBER system (Pöyry et al., 2002; Pöyry & Puustjärvi, 2003) are based on the Boolean model). A learner can then query learning ob- jects by Boolean expressions comprising of operands and operations. The operands are the used keywords and the operators are typically “and,” “or,” and “not.” For example, by using ACM Computing Classification system (Fig- ure 2) the keywords attached to a learning ob- ject might be D, H.1, and H.2.2 (corresponding the keywords Software, Models and Principles, and Physical Design). Now, if a learner pre- sents the query “D and (B or H.1)” (i.e., learn- ing objects having the keyword “Software” and at least one of the keywords “Hardware” and “Models and Principles”), then the previous learning object will match that query. The Boolean model is intuitive and clear. Moreover, it can be efficiently implemented even in the case of huge amount of objects. For example, many Web search engines are based on this model. However, using that model in a virtual university gives rise to following draw- backs: • First, the model is based on a binary deci- sion criterion, meaning that each learning object is predicted to be relevant or non- relevant. In reality, it is obvious that the re- sulting learning objects fit more or less to the query (i.e., some kind of grading should be possible). • Second, expressing the requirements of learning objects by a Boolean expression may be difficult. • Third, a typical problem concerning search engines based on the Boolean model is that either the result of the query includes too many or too few learning objects. In the next section, we consider a more advanced model, which avoids many of the drawbacks just described. The Vector Model The vector model differs from the Bool- ean model in that weights can be assigned to each metadata item of a document as well as to the keywords of the query. The idea behind this model is that we can more accurately specify the queries and the contents of the documents (e.g., learning objects). Assuming that the standard metadata items (e.g., the classes in Figure 2) specify a vector space (i.e., each item (keyword) in the S u b je c t H . In fo r m a t io n S y s t e m s D . S o ft w a re B . H a rd w a re H . 1 . M o d e ls a n d P r in c ip le s H . 2 . D a t a b a s e M a n a g e m e n t H . 2 . 2 . P h y s ic a l D e s ig n H . 2 . 1 . Lo g ic a l D e s ig n H . 2 . 3 . La n g u a g e s H . 2 . 4 . S y s t e m s Figure 2. A subset of the ACM Computing Classification System Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 43 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. hierarchy represents a dimension in the vector space), we can represent each document and query as a vector in that vector space. Then we can process the query by computing the dis- tance of the query vector and the document vectors. This kind of computing requires that the sum of the weights of each document and query equals to a predefined constant. For con- venience, the used constant is usually one. As the result of the query the documents are sorted in the order determined by the simi- larity (i.e., the document having the best match with the query is presented first). The number of the documents in the result should be re- stricted by requiring a certain degree of similar- ity. Using the vector model in a virtual uni- versity requires that the course provider as- sign the metadata items and their weights into each learning object. The metadata items to be used are selected from the used domain ontol- ogy. Depending on the used course provider’s interface this can be done in various ways. For example, as in our prototype system, there may be an ontology structure on which the course provider inserts the weights. In Figure 3, the ontology structure of the Figure 2 is augmented by setting weights on the nodes “B.H.2,” and “H.2.2.” Note that the node having no weight means that its weight is actually zero. Hence, the profile of the learning object can be pre- sented by a vector in 9-dimensional vector space as follows: [0 x D, 0 x H, 0.3 x B, 0 x H.1, 0.6 x H.2, 0 x H.2.1, 0.1 x H.2.2, 0 x H.2.3, 0 x H.2.4]. That is, the profile is a point in an orthogonal 9- dimensional vector space. The gain of attaching metadata descrip- tion for learning objects is that we can use math- ematical distance measures in computing learn- ers’ queries. Further, computing the distance requires that the descriptions (vectors) be speci- fied in an orthogonal vector space. In other words, the nodes in the hierarchy that are used in profile vectors must be independent. In prac- tice this means that we have to follow one or the other of the following interpretations: • Multilevel weighting interpretation: The leaves and the nodes of the ontology hier- archy represent independent concepts. • Weighted leaves interpretation: The parent node represents the union of its siblings. In other words, each sibling represents a sub- set of its parent. Yet the siblings represent independent concepts. The intuition behind multilevel weight- ing is that we can express the level of a leaning object (as well of a query) by altering the weights on a node and its siblings. To illustrate this let S u b je c t H . In f o r m a t io n S y s t e m s D . S o ft w a re H . 1 . M o d e ls a n d P rin c ip le s H . 2 . D a t a b a s e M a n a g e m e n t 0 .6 H . 2 . 2 . P h y s ic a l D e s ig n 0 .1 H . 2 . 1 . Lo g ic a l D e s ig n H . 2 . 3 . La n g u a g e s H . 2 . 4 . S y s t e m s B . H a rd w a re 0 .3 Figure 3. A metadata specification of a learning object 44 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. us consider the weighting of the course “Physi- cal design in database management systems.” Now, it is obvious that the weights should be given on the node H.2 (Database management) and its siblings H.2.2 (Physical design) and H.2.4 (Systems). Assuming that approximately half of the course deals with databases in gen- eral and the other part deals with physical de- sign and database management systems, then giving weight 0.4 to H.2 (Database manage- ment), 0.3 to H.2.2 (Physical design) and weight 0.3 to H.2.4 (Systems) could be an appropriate assignment. On the other hand, if the course is very specific then the weight of H.2 could be zero. If we follow the weighted leaves inter- pretation, then in determining the profile of a learning object weights are set only on the leave nodes of the hierarchy. Consequently, the profiles of the learning objects are specified by vectors in an orthogonal vector space, which is determined by the leave nodes of the hierar- chy. To illustrate this approach let us consider the weighting of the course “Physical design in database management systems.” In this case, all the weights are given on the nodes H.2.2 (Physical design) and H.2.4 (Systems) indepen- dently of the level of the course. PROCESSING LEARNER’S QUERIES The learner presents queries in the same way as the content provider determines the weights of the learning object; both these are presented by vectors. Hence the query presents an ideal profile of the learning objects that sat- isfy the learner’s requirements. For example, assuming that the multilevel weighting inter- pretation of the ontology is used, and a learner wants to find basic courses concerning data- base management. In this case the learner will set rather heavy weight on H.2 (database Management) and lighter weights on H.2.1 (Logical Design), H.2.2 (Physical Design) and H.2.3 (Languages). In contrast, if a student is looking more advanced courses on database management then the student will give a lighter weight on H.2 and heavier weights on its sib- lings. As the learners interact with the system by submitting queries it is reasonable to re- quire that the response times should be only a few seconds. We investigated the effects of different matching algorithms and the amount of stored learning objects on response times. The test environment was equipped with Pentium II processor and 192 MB memory. The computers were running the Sun Solaris 5.8 operating system. We implemented and tested four matching algorithms (i.e., algorithms) which compute the distance measures of learning ob- jects and learners’ queries. We next give a short description of the algorithms. The Cosine matching algorithm (Baeza- Yates et al., 1999) calculates the cosine mea- sure between the query (a vector) and the docu- ments profiles. As a matter of fact the algorithm does not compute distance measures but rather approximates distance measures by computing the angles of the query vector and the vectors representing documents, such as the learning objects. The Euclidean matching algorithm (Friedman, Bentley, & Finkel, 1977) calculates the Euclidean distance from the query profile to all learning objects’ profiles. The Manhat- tan distance algorithm (Bentley, Weide, & Yao, 1980) calculates a so called “city block-dis- tance.” The name comes from the fact that this measure in two dimensions tells how many blocks in a city one would have to walk be- tween two points. Our developed Fuzzy matching algo- rithm attempts to achieve more efficient match- ing procedure than the “exact” matching algo- rithms. The improved efficiency is achieved by performing the actual matching on a pre-selected subset of all learning objects. The predefined subset of the documents’ profiles is determined by choosing the three biggest weights from the query and then computing the subset based on these weights. Then only the profiles, the weights of which are within a specified toler- ance interval are selected for the final query processing. Therefore the result set is not guar- anteed to contain all the profiles that are clos- est to the matching profile. However, the close- Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 45 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ness values of the profiles in the actual result set are exact, since they are calculated using the Euclidean measure. The computing time for matching of each algorithm is presented in Table 1. The test was performed for different amount (1000, 5000 and 10 000) of learning objects. Basically, the differ- ences of Euclidean, Cosine and Manhattan al- gorithms were rather small (less than 10%). Fuzzy matching algorithm required least com- puting time (about 20% less than others). How- ever, the test proves that all the algorithms are quick enough in the test environment as the response times are less than 1.2 seconds. If the number of the learning objects or the dimen- sions of the vector space (i.e., the used at- tributes in the profile) increases, then it obvi- ous that the Fuzzy Matching algorithm will be more superior to the other algorithms. In our test environment the vector space comprised of 15 dimensions (i.e., each profile could have at most 15 attributes). In practice, the number of attributes cannot increase significantly as otherwise the determining the weights for learn- ing objects would overly burden the coarse cre- ators. In addition, as the system is developed for universities it is not obvious that number of learning objects can be very huge (e.g., over 10,000). CONCLUSION Virtual university has been defined as a space where the students are provided with higher education courses with the help of the newest information and communication tech- nology (Niemi, 2002). The degree of utilizing technology in organizing the studies may vary from pure technology-based studies to face- to-face or mixed studies that are supported by learning technologies. A virtual university may be an institution that uses the information and communication technologies for its core activities such as pro- viding learning opportunities, administration, materials development and distribution, deliv- ering teaching and tuition, and providing coun- seling, advising and examinations. On the other hand, a virtual university may also be a virtual organization created through partnerships be- tween traditional universities and other educa- tional institutes. In addition, the traditional cam- pus universities may be regarded as virtual uni- versities if they offer learning opportunities via the Internet or combine traditional ways of learning with e-learning (Ryan et al., 2000). E-learning sets new requirements for uni- versities: they have to build global learning in- frastructures, course material has to be offered also in digital form, course material have to be distributed via the Internet and learners must have access to various virtual universities. A problem is that the current virtual university portals provide heterogeneous functionalities, which in turn hampers the learner in accessing various virtual universities. The main goal of the ONES-project is to investigate the ways of integrating various vir- tual universities in a way that such an aggre- gated virtual university would be as easily ac- cessible for a learner as a single virtual univer- sity. Achieving such a goal requires mutual understanding of the used technology and standardized descriptions of the learning ob- M a n ha tt a n C o s ine E uc lid e a n F u z z y 0 .8 0 0 .9 3 1 .0 7 0 .8 3 0 .9 6 1 .1 6 0 .8 3 0 .9 8 1 .2 3 0 .6 1 0 .7 3 0 .8 9 1 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 Table 1. Matching times for the algorithms 46 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. jects. Furthermore, searching from various vir- tual universities requires mutual understand- ing of the information retrieval model to be used. We argue that keywords-based search (i.e., the Boolean model), though well suited for general Web searches, is unsuitable for the vir- tual universities’ purposes. Instead, the vector model (on which our implemented search en- gine is also based on) seems to be more appro- priate as it provides a similarity measure (i.e., the learning object having the best match is presented first. We also introduced two inter- pretations for the hierarchical ontologies, which allow increasing the power of the used metadata descriptions. And finally, we also compare the performance of four algorithms for computing the similarities of the profiles. It turned out that our developed Fuzzy Matching algorithm re- quires less computing time as the other “exact matching” algorithms represented in the litera- ture. REFERENCES Baeza-Yates, R., & Ribeiro-Neto, B. (1999). Mod- ern information retrieval. New York: Addison Wesley. Bentley, J., Weide, B., & Yao, A. (1980). Optimal expected-time algorithms for closest point problem. ACM Transactions on Mathemati- cal Software, 6(4), 563-580. Fensel, D. (2001). Ontologies: Silver bullet for knowledge management and electronic commerce. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Fridman, N. N., & McGuinness, D. L. (2001, March). Ontology development 101: A guide to creating your first ontology (Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory Technical Report KSL-01-05, Stanford Medi- cal Informatics Technical Report SMI-2001- 0880). Friedman, J., Bentley, J., & Finkel, R. (1977). An algorithm for finding best matches in loga- rithmic expected time. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 3(3), 209-226. Garcia-Molina, H., Ullman, J., & Widom, J. (2000). Database system implementation. New Jer- sey: Prentice Hall. Gilliland-Swetland, A. J. (2000). Introduction to metadata, setting the stage. Retrieved De- cember 20, 2004, from http://www.getty.edu/ research/institute/standards/intrometadata/ Gruber, T. R. (1993, March). Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowl- edge sharing. In Padua Workshop on For- mal Ontology (p. 23). Holzinger, A., Kleinberger, T., & Müller, P. (2001). Multimedia learning systems based on IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM). In Pro- ceedings of ED-MEDIA 2001, Tampere, Fin- land. Jokela, S. (2001). Metadata enhanced content management in media companies. In Acta Polytecnica Scandinavica. Mathematics and computing series no. 114. Doctoral the- sis, Helsinki University of Technology. Kassanke, S., El-Saddik, A., & Steinacker, A. (2001). Learning objects metadata and tools in the area of operations research. In Pro- ceedings of ED-MEDIA 2001, Tampere, Fin- land. Lamminaho, V. (2000). Metadata specification: Forms, menus for description of courses and all other objects. CUBER project, Deliver- able D3.1. Liu, J., Chan, S., Hung, A., & Lee, R. (2002). Facilitators and inhibitors of e-learning. In L. C. Jain, R. J. Howlett, N. S. Ichalkaranje, & G. Tonfoni (Eds.), Virtual environments for teaching and learning, Series on inno- vative intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 75-109). World Scientific. Niemi, H. (2002). Empowering learners in the virtual university. In H. Niemi, & P. Ruohotie (Eds.), Theoretical understandings for learning in the virtual university. Univer- sity of Tampere, Research Center for Voca- tional Education and Training. Pöyry, P., Pelto-Aho, K., & Puustjärvi, J. (2002). The role of meta data in the CUBER system. In Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the SAICSIT 2002 (pp. 172-178). Pöyry, P., & Puustjärvi, J. (2003). CUBER: A personalised curriculum builder. In Proceed- ings of the 3rd IEEE International Confer- Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(3), 36-47, July-September 2006 47 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ence on Advanced Learning Technologies, Athens, Greece (pp. 326-327). Ryan, S., Scott, B., Freeman, H., & Patel, D. (2000). The virtual university. The Internet and resource-based learning. London: Kogan Page. Stojanovic, L., Staab, S., & Studer, R. (2001). E- learning based on the Semantic Web. In Pro- ceedings of WebNet2001 — World Confer- ence on the WWW and Internet, Orlando, FL. Strijker, A. (2001). Using metadata for re-using material and providing user support tools. In Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2001, Tampere, Finland. Teare, R., Davies, D., & Sandelands, E. (1999). The virtual university — An action para- digm and process for workplace learning. Cassell. Turpeinen, M. (2000). Customizing news con- tent for individuals and communities. In Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica. Mathematics and computing series no. 103. Doctoral the- sis, Helsinki University of Technology. Vasudevan, V. (2001). A Web service primer. Retrieved December 20, 2004, from http:// www.xml/lpt/a/2001/04/04/Webservices/ indeax.html Yan, T., & Garcia-Molina, H. (1994). Index struc- tures for selective dissemination of informa- tion under the Boolean Model. ACM Trans- actions on Database Systems, 19(2), 332- 364. Yli-Koivisto, J., & Puustjärvi, J. (2002). CoMet: An electronic newspaper prototype. Work- shop on XML in Digital Media. In Proceed- ings of the 8th International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS’2002) (pp. 703-707). J. Puustjärvi obtained his BSc and MSc in computer science in 1985 and 1990, respectively, and his PhD in computer science in 1999, all from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Currently he is a professor of information society technologies at the Technical University of Lappeenranta. He is also a docent of e-business technologies at the Technical University of Helsinki, and a docent of computer science at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include e- learning, e-business, knowledge management, Semantic Web and databases. P. Pöyry obtained her BA (Educ) and MA (Educ) in 2001 and 2002 from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Ms. Pöyry obtained her LicSc (Tech) in 2004 from the Helsinki University of Technology, where she is a doctoral student. Currently she works as a researcher and prepares her PhD thesis at the Helsinki University of Technology in the Software Business and Engineering Institute as a member of the Information Ergonomics Research Group. Her research interests include e-learning, knowledge management, CSCW, and usability research. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 
work_nbezsbkn4nbh7ccwfbmkx44jbq	----	International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-9 Issue-1, May 2020 2357 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120  Abstract: Sentiment Analysis (SA) systems are very common because most people trust it based on the opinions, emotions, attitudes and feelings shared by the users for decision making purposes about the product, service, news analytics etc. Sentiment analysis or opinion mining is used to automatically detect and classify sentiments into positive, negative or neutral opinion on product or service through certain algorithms. The expeditious growth of internet leads to the increase of reviews about product, services, movies, restaurants or vacation destinations and organizations. In order to increase or decrease the market value of the product, spammers may give the fake ratings. Sentiment Analysis system face great difficulties in deploying the algorithms to classify each review as either honest review, posted by the customers after using the products, or spam review, posted by the individual spammer or spammer groups. Another major challenge faced by the sentiment analysis system is that it lacks the accuracy of predicting implicit and explicit features present in the dataset is low, which is the major challenge in opinion mining system. The proposed system deals with text pre-processing which helps in improving the overall performance of the sentiment analysis systems and an effective system is developed to identify the fake reviews present in the dataset. Association Rule Mining along with K-Means clustering is used to achieve higher efficiency in classification of implicit and explicit features. Lexicon method is used for the classification of sentiments into positive and negative polarities. The advantage of proposed system is that, it can identify and remove the fake reviews in the dataset and extraction of both implicit and explicit feature can be identified through Lexicon based Method along with its polarities. Keywords: Association Rule Mining, Fake Reviews, K-Means Clustering, Lexicon Method, Opinion Mining I. INTRODUCTION Sentiment analysis or opinion mining is used to detect the sentiment through positive, negative or neutral opinion about the features of the products or services automatically by relying on certain algorithms. It helps in identifying the emotion of a person from a given piece of text written by them. There will be a huge number of sensitive data in digital formats. Thus, the role of a Sentiment Analysis system is to Revised Manuscript Received on May 21, 2020. Harshini G N, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, Tamilnadu, India, E-mail: harshini0419@mail.com Gobi N, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi, Tamilnadu, India, Email: gobi@drmcet.ac.in Dr.A.Rathinavelu, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Mahalingam college of engineering and technology, Pollachi, Tamilnadu, India, E-mail: starvce@mcet.in. mine the data and extract the user sentiments is considered as an important task focused by many research communities since last decade. Sentiment analysis or sentiment mining or opinion mining is used to mine the information from various sources of data (reviews) and classify those data based upon the sentiment (polarity) such as positive, negative or neutral. Opinion mining is a new discipline which has recently attracted increased attention within fields such as marketing, Recommendation systems and financial market predictions. Sentiment Analysis systems will be used by the customer for buying the new products among the alternatives, however it is also used by the manufacturer to understand the strength and weakness of their products. Manufacturer can also use the SA system to improve their weakness specified by the consumers through reviews. Sentiment classification, feature level identification, opinion summarization are three important classification of sentimental analysis. The three types of opinion mining are document level, sentence level, aspect level. • Document Level: It is used to obtain overall sentiment value for the entire document. • Sentence Level: In sentence level, each sentence of the reviews is processed separately to determine the polarity of the review along with its aspects. • Phrase Level / Aspect Level: The major task in aspect level sentiment analysis is to find the individual features and its opinion. Aspect Level SA system classifies the reviews based upon the opinion orientation of the aspects namely Explicit and Implicit Reviews. If the reviewer talks about the positive, negative or neutral aspects of the products directly then these kinds of reviews are termed as explicit reviews. For example, the course is good and the lab sessions are knowledgeable. The reviewer directly express about the course. In Implicit Review the reviewer may talk about the aspects of the products, indirectly. Example for Implicit Review is, sometimes he went through the concepts too fast for us to grasp. The reviewer here implicitly pointed negative opinion about the instructor. There are two kinds of opinions with respect to comparison among the products namely direct and comparative opinions Direct opinion gives an opinion about the product features. For example, Excellent introduction to 3D printing. Here the reviews directly provide information about the 3D printing course with positive sentiment. Recommendation of Distance Education Colleges to Students based on Alumni Feedback Harshini G N, Gobi N, A. Rathinavelu Recommendation of Distance Education Colleges to Students based on Alumni Feedback 2358 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120 In comparative opinions, the opinion is expressed by comparing one product or service with another product. For example, the concept of accounting analytics is easier to understand than 3D printing. Here, the reviewer compares the two courses and suggested accounting analytics is easier to understand. For providing better ranking among the alternative products with respect to aspects, comparative opinion plays a vital role. II. RELATED STUDY Sentiment Analysis concepts became common when after the year 2000, the user received reviews of the goods they buy through digital format rather than written format. Before the year 2000, the consumer receives nearly a lot of feedback through written format by filling out a feedback form distributed by either the producer or the third party seller. The term “Sentiment Analysis” comes into existence with great impact during the year 2003 by J. Yi e. al (2003). Yet Sentiment Analysis is used specifically to evaluate the target Fig.1.Types of Sentimental Analysis of opinion (attribute / feature) through the word of opinion (polarity or sentiment) shared by individuals on specific topics of interest. The need for Sentiment Analysis is to infer the decision-making process because of the large amount of subjective texts accessible over the internet. To handle this enormous subjective data to recent years, several researchers have introduced different approaches to sentiment analysis with the goal of extracting useful information from the evaluation and then communicating it to the consumer for the purpose of making decisions. Most of the Sentiment Analysis approaches are classified into three levels and they are Document level SA, Sentence level SA, Feature level SA. Document Level Sentiment Analysis is intended to obtain overall sentiment value for the whole text, Turney. P.D. (2002) applied Point Wise Mutual Knowledge to measure an average semantic orientation score of the extracted phases for the description of the orientation of the documents. DLSA's implementation effort requirements are more than two other approaches (Aspect Level SA and Sentence Level SA), because it has to process an entire document at a single trace and evaluate the product polarity based on the individual aspects. Due to the impact of sentence level sentiment analysis, the scale of the document level sentiment analysis is decreasing. Each sentence of the reviews is separately processed during the Sentence Level Sentiment Analysis to assess the review's polarity along with its aspects. It consumes maximum time during its cycle, but the accuracy of the system's prediction is much better than the Document Level Sentiment Analysis. While Sentence Level Sentiment Analysis performs well for the SA system, the researchers primarily aim to discover a reviewer's feeling of reflecting the overall opinion, but not to decide the features, the customer wants to analyze exactly. The key challenge in the analysis of aspect level sentiment is recognizing the individual characteristics and their opinion. The Aspect Level Sentiment Analysis has evolved over the past decade into two major branches, model-based method and the statistical approach. Feature Identification or Extraction, Sentiment Prediction are the two main tasks in Feature based Sentiment Mining. During Feature Identification task, the task is to identify features of the reviewed item and to group synonyms of features. The task of predicting sentiments is to decide whether the feeling about the given aspect (feature) reflects the positive, negative or neutral opinion based on the user's comments. Sentiment Analysis concepts have become popular when the user provided their reviews about the products that they purchase through digital format rather than written format after the year 2000. Before the year 2000, almost many feedbacks are received from the user through written format by filling up a feedback form circulated by either manufacturer or the third-party seller. But Sentiment Analysis are mainly used to determine the opinion target (attribute/feature) and opinion word (polarity or sentiment) expressed by individual about particular topics of interest. Due to large amount of subjective texts available over the internet arise the demand for Sentiment Analysis in order to conclude the decision making process [1]. To handle this vast subjective data during recent years, many researches have proposal various sentiment analysis approaches with an objective of discovering useful information from review and then distribute it to the customer for their decision making purpose. For the sentiment classification, Stanford NLP library is used which classifies the positive and negative percentage of reviews. POS Tagging is done which extracts the nouns and adverbs from the dataset [2]. POS Tagging is used to identify the structure of the word. To identify the spam reviews, Group spam behavior indicators and individual spam behaviour are used as an indicator [3]. Some of the indicators used to identify the group spam reviews are Group time window, Group Deviation, Group Content Similarity and Group Size Features. A novel relational model is proposed which identifies fake opinions in the dataset. Burst pattern detection serves as a fine grained method for capturing intense spamming activity. Spammers aim to strongly influence public opinion and unsuspected users about a particular service or product towards a particular direction, i.e., positive or negative, depending on their end goal [4]. Burst detection has proven to be a valuable resource in spam detection, An efficient K-means with Association Rule Mining algorithm is developed, to classify both implicit and explicit features [5]. It also identifies whether opinion words present has any matching words inside any of the k clusters. If a match found with any of these clusters, then it determines the implicit feature for its corresponding opinion word otherwise it fires International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-9 Issue-1, May 2020 2359 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120 the ARM to predict the implicit feature. By using co-occurrence association rule mining separate rules for both implicit and explicit features are identified. Opinion words and features are extracted from the explicit features. A co-occurrence matrix is useful in finding the frequency of opinion words [6]. To identify fake review in electronic domain, a system is developed which focuses on user centric and review centric features [7]. These centric features are useful in the identification of fake features in the dataset. The behavior features of the spammer is considered to detect the spam reviews [8]. Algorithms are designed to implement the formulas used in finding the spam reviews. To identify the similarity between two reviews the algorithms are used. The algorithm achieves higher efficiency than traditional algorithm.For the cross domain sentiment classification of reviews, a new technique is used which consists of Apriori algorithm [9]. For the identification of explicit features from the dataset, an automated system is developed. Data preprocessing, explicit suggestion extraction and visualization is done [10]. III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The dataset is obtained from [12] kaggle. The dataset consists of input text which expresses the opinions of the students about the courses and teachers. To reduce the size of the dataset, Pre-processing is done, which includes stop word removal, tokenization and parts of speech tagging. From the pre-processed data, Features are extracted using Association Rule Mining. For the sentiment analysis, Lexicon method is used which classifies the sentiments into positive and negative The collected dataset may include irrelevant and fake reviews which is removed by Fake Review Indicators. To identify both implicit and explicit reviews Association Rule Mining with K-Means clustering is used. The overall process of proposed system is shown in figure 2. IV. PROPOSED SYSTEM To eliminate the unnecessary data present in the dataset, Preprocessing is done. Preprocessing phase includes Stopword removal, tokenization and POS tagging. Stopwords includes unwanted text like articles, prepositions present in the review sentences. Figure.2. Architecture of Proposed System Tokenization is a process in which collection of sentences in a dataset are divided into token by removing white space, comma and other symbols etc. As result of Tokenization and Stop Word Removal process, the system has filtered the features which are tokenized into record size chunks like sentences and boundaries are identified for each sentence by marking the special characters or delimiters such as # or % symbols. The documents are parsed using Stanford parser through which system assign Parts-Of-Speech (POS) tags to every token or word present in the filtered sentence. POS tags are useful to identify the grammatical structure of sentences such as noun, verb, adverb and adjective phrase and their relationship as shown in the Table 1. PoS is widely used in the analyzing the sentences for detecting emotion. Some research findings show that adjective serves as a good indicator to detect the features present in the reviews. Table- I: POS Tags with Examples V. ASSOCIATION RULE MINING It is used for mining frequent item sets for Boolean association rules. It can be used for larger item set property and its implementation is an easy method. Apriori is mainly designed to operate on database which contains any transactions between the cross-domain sentiment classifications. The steps involved in the Apriori algorithm are as follows, Recommendation of Distance Education Colleges to Students based on Alumni Feedback 2360 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120 Step 1 : Create a frequency table of all the items that occurs for transactions. Step 2: Find the frequency of the items satisfy the min-support, which is support must be greater than or equal to the threshold. Step 3: Take the first item and pair with all other items based on support value. Step 4: Similarly, find the frequency for second item set based on min-support and first item Set. Step 5: Obtain the string association rules based on the min-confidence value. Step 6: Now count the occurrences of each pair in all the item set. Finally, the meaningful rules are learned and generated by using Apriori algorithm. Classification of Implicit and explicit features by Association Rule Mining is moderate, so in proposed system Association Rule Mining with K-Means Clustering is used for classification of reviews. VI. FAKE REVIEW IDENTIFICATION The use of inappropriate and illegal methods to generate large amounts of fake reviews against their target product in order to enhance or demote product is known as Opinion Spamming. These are known as fake or spam reviews and the author who is writing the fake review is known as fake or spam reviewer or spammer. Spam reviews and spammers main impact are:  Increase in volume of spam may disappoint students.  Students can be deceived in respect to the grade of the college. Sentiment analysis system are trusted by most of the people for making decision about the product, service, news analytics etc. based on the opinions, emotion, attitudes and feelings expressed by the users. The researchers used many metrics to effectively identify spam and merged with a lot of steps and techniques, providing a major solution to the spam analysis problems. A score is calculated by means of various metrics through quantitative measures such as review author and review history score assigned to each review under investigation to distinguish false from genuine reviews. There are three major ways to detect the spam reviews present in the review data and they are as follows:  Spam review detection  Spam reviewer detection  Detection of spammer groups. The proposed work focuses on detecting Spam reviews and the indicators used in identifying spam review are as follows: A. Review Relevancy Rate Reviewers may also post advertisement or link in the reviews which is irrelevant and dispensable. To identify and remove the unwanted reviews Review Relevancy Rate is used. Review Relevance Rate refers to the degree of relevance that exists between the content of the review and the subject of the product. The formula used in finding review relevancy rate is 1))(/)())((()(  sWrWsWerRRR  (1) where W(s) is the set of all segmented words of the product’s topic, and W(r) is the set of all segmented words of a review. B. Content Length One of the useful indicator used to identify the fake reviews is the review content length. If the review content is short, it shows that the reviewer did not consider it seriously. (2) where r. length denotes the length of the review r, and λ is a threshold to judge the effectiveness of the length of the review content. Based on previous studies where there are less than 6 words in an English review, the system should consider these kinds of reviews as a spam review since the reviewer is less serious about the product. C. Review content similarity: One of the most effective strategies to identify the fake in online reviews by analyzing the similarities between reviews by authors. Due to time constraints, spammers prefer to replicate the same written content for multiple products in their reviews, sometimes more advanced spammers, who are actually trying to change the content, seem to use a similar vocabulary each time. As a consequence, examining the content similarities between the reviews of the author will help determine the validity of the reviewer's intentions to create false reviews. Below is a detailed description of the methodology used in this approach for similarity detection of content. Content is represented by using the cosine similarity between review text documents. The system inputs a list of (text) reviews and builds the Word Bag model by collecting from them all specific terms (words). Then for each document, a vector is generated which sets the list of documents into a collection of vectors in a model of vector space. In the vector of a text referred to in Figure 4.4, each expression in the Bag of Word sets is represented with a respective meaning. Term frequency measures how many times a given term j appears in a document i. To treat documents of different sizes, such as two separate reports, the measured frequency is divided by the document's length to standardize. Using the Eq 3, their cosine similarity can be extracted after constructing the vectors describing the analysis text documents, using a Euclidean dot product formula.      lengthr lengthr gthcontentlen .,1 .,0 { International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-9 Issue-1, May 2020 2361 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120 Figure.3. Vector Space Model A very high similarity score suggests suspicious behaviour, and the user who uses the same content several times is considered to be spam. D. Calculating Spam Score: From the combination of several discrete scores related to the review and reputation, reviews overall Spamicity is calculated. The spamicity score can be measured through function S (r) and it calculates the scores derived from the Review level characteristics and features. To determine the presence of spamming activity different techniques are used and their resulting scores can contribute to measure the overall level of spam in a review but not all methods and review functions have the same weight to determine the presence of spamming activity. According to its importance, each score is multiplied by an appropriate weight, as represented in Table II. Table- II: Spamicity Factors Spamicity affecting factors Purpose Weight CS(a) Content similarity 1.5 RRR(r) Review Relevancy Rate 0.25 CL(r) Content Length 0.25 After applying the above weights and score for the various factors, the Review Spamicity S(r) score is calculated by using the equation 4 )(25.0)(25.0)(5.1)( rCLrRRRaCSrS  (4) If a review’s overall spam score exceeds a threshold, then a review is considered to be spam. A manual verification of the various scores and their range of values led the system to consider a threshold of 7. Finally, the review can be considered as spam if its score exceeds a threshold value of 7 and it is represented using Review can be considered as spam or honest = Figure.4. Spam Review Identification VII. ASSOCIATION RULE MINING WITH K-MEANS CLUSTERING Association Rule Mining with K-Means clustering is a clustering technique based on prototypes. It is used to identify characteristics that have no predefined class labels but group characteristics using the similarity measures between them. This positions most similar characteristics in one class, and dissimilar features in another. The aim of clustering is to assign each data point to a cluster based on their Euclidean distance. K-Means is used in sentiment analysis process to group the features into groups based on their high similarity. The clustering is based on three observations which follows: Step 1: Initially it considers similarity of opinion terms that is useful to direct the clustering. Step 2: Identifies the features similar to those in the reviews. It is used for identification of the aspect with same meaning. Step 3: It considers the structure of the feature in the comment. POS Tagging of each word is identified. The algorithm automatically constructs the model based on the inputs given which can cluster a similar class of objects to predict the value of the missing attribute. Initially to create a cluster, a collection of words of opinion are put inside the tuple, where each tuple has a set of words of opinion. K- Means clustering is used to test whether the words of opinion in the sample have any of the words in the clusters that fit. If a match is found, it will evaluate the implicit function of its corresponding opinion word otherwise it will fire the ARM to predict the implied feature. For each tuple a set of association rules are shot, and the mean confidence score for each set of rules is determined. The finally selected words of opinion and the implicit function will be stored for future references in the respective cluster. For the proposed system, the value of K is 4 which yields better results. VIII. LEXICON METHOD The lexicon-based approach includes classification of sentiments into positive and negative words. The approach in classifying the text involves constructing classifiers from classified instances of texts or sentences which are basically a supervised process of classification. Lexicon-based approach dictionaries can be generated manually or automatically, using seed words to expand the list of words Many of the lexicon-based research has centered on the use of adjectives as indicators of the semantic orientation of text. In proposed system predefined dictionary which calculates the semantic score for each word is 7 7{   Honest Spam Recommendation of Distance Education Colleges to Students based on Alumni Feedback 2362 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120 used for the sentiment classification of words. If the score is in positive, it is classified as positive sentence and if the word contains negative score then it is classified as negative Sentence. Lexicon based system are widely used to identify the sentiments sure for each attribute with good accuracy. IX. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The expected results are discussed in this section. The evaluation of the proposed system and the association rule mining with K-means clustering is done by considering the major accuracy measures like error rate, precision, recall and F-Measure. A. Data description: The dataset is obtained from kaggle. The dataset includes the students reviews about the class, course and staff in distance education system. The dataset contains the student's course Id, course name and reviews. The total reviews present in the kaggle is 12,73, 202.After preprocessing and fake reviews removal, the size is reduced to 10,33,731. B. Evaluation Metrics: Several factors are used in identifying accuracy of the proposed system. Though experiments, a comparison is made between the association rule mining algorithm and association rule mining with K-Means clustering. The experimental results show that the proposed system with Association Rule Mining and K-Means clustering performs better in identifying the implicit and explicit features. Table- IIi: Evaluation Matrics Factors Description True Positive Number of correct suggestions which are extracted. False Positive Number of irrelevant suggestions which are extracted. True Negative Number of correct suggestions which are not extracted. False Negative Number of irrelevant suggestions which are not extracted. Precision: Precision is the ratio of number of correctly extracted suggestions to the sum of correctly extracted suggestions and wrongly extracted suggestions. It can be computed as )(Pr FPTPTPecision  (5) Fig.4. Evaluated Precision Recall: Recall is the ratio of number of irrelevant suggestions extracted to the sum of irrelevant suggestions and relevant suggestions. Recall can be computed as )(Re FNTPTPcall  (6) F-Measure: The harmonic mean of precision and recall is known as F-Measure. It is evaluated by using )Re/(Pr)Re*(Pr2 callecisioncallecisionMeasureF  (7) Fig.5.Evaluated Recall The f score of the proposed system has better values and it can be inferred from the figure 5. that the mean of Precision and Recall values are higher. Fig.6. Evaluated F-Measure X. CONCLUSION In this paper, Fake review indicators are used to find and remove the fake reviews present in the dataset. Association Rule Mining with K-Means clustering is used in the identification of Implicit and explicit reviews. The systems performance was evaluated using various measures like Precision, Recall and F-Measure are found to have better values than the previous Association Rule Mining. Lexicon based method is used to identify the sentiment sure against each feature for the better decision making by the new students. REFERENCES 1. Sujata Rani and Parteek Kumar (2017) “A Sentiment Analysis System to Improve Teaching and Learning”, IEEE, vol. 50, issue 5, pp.36-43. 2. Luxchippiriya Balachandran, Abarnah Kirupananda (2017) “Online reviews evaluation system for higher education institution: An aspect based sentiment analysis tool”, International Conference on Software, Knowledge, Information management and applications, pp.1-7. 3. Arun Mukherjee, Bing Liu, Natalie Glance (2012) “Spotting fake review groups in consumer reviews”,21 st International Conference on World Wide Web, pp.191-200. International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-9 Issue-1, May 2020 2363 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication Retrieval Number: F9511038620/2020©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijrte.F9511.059120 4. Ioannis Dematis, Eirini Karapistoli, Athena Vakali (2017) “Fake Review Detection via Exploitation of Spam Indicators and Reviewer Behavior Characteristics”, International conference on current trends in theory and practice of informatics, vol.10706, pp.581-595. 5. Gang Liu, Wray Buntine, Weiping Fu, Yudan Du (2015) “An association rules text mining algorithm fusion with K-Means improvement”, International Conference on Computer Science and Network Technology, pp.781-785. 6. Zhen Hai, Kuiyu Chang, Jung-jae Kim (2011) “Implicit Feature Identification via Co-occurrence Association Rule Mining”, International conference on Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing, vol.6608, pp.393-404. 7. R Barbado, O Araque, CA Iglesias (2019) “A framework for identifying fake review detection in online consumer electronics retailers”, Information Processing & Management, vol.56, issue.4, pp.1234-1244. 8. Neha S. Chowdhary, Anala A. Pandit (2018) “Fake Review Detection using Classification”, International Journal of Computer Applications, vol. 180, issue .50, pp.0975-8887. 9. Xi-bin Jia, Ya Jin, Ning Li, Xing Su, Barry Cardiff, Bir Bhanu, (2018), “Words alignment based on association rules for cross-domain sentiment classification”, Springer (Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering), Vol.19, Issue 2, pp 260–272. 10. Sujata Rani and Parteek Kumar (2017) “A Sentiment Analysis System to Improve Teaching and Learning”, IEEE, vol. 50, issue 5, pp.36 - 43.Jenifer Jothi Mary, S. Santiago Dr. L. Arockiam (2018) “A Methodological Framework to Identify the Students Opinion using Aspect based Sentiment Analysis”, International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology vol.5, issue.02, pp.642-645. 11. Vasileios Kagklis, Anthi Karatrantou, Maria Tantoula, Chris T. Panagiotakopoulos, Vassilios S. Verykios (2015) “A learning analytics methodology for detecting sentiment in student fora: a case study in distance education”, European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, vol. 18, no.2, pp.74-94. 12. Xinyue Wang, Xianguo Zhang, Chengzhi Jiang, Haihang Liu (2018)“Identification of Fake Reviews Using Semantic and Behavioral Feature International Conference on Information Management(IEEE), pp.92-97, DOI:10.1109/INFOMAN.2018.8392816. 13. K. C. Ravi Kumar, D. Teja Santosh, B. Vishnu Vardhan (2017) “Extracting Opinion Targets from Product Reviews using Comprehensive Feature Extraction Model in Opinion Mining”, Indian Journal of Science and Technology, vol .10(21), pp.1-6. 14. Z. Kamisli Ozturk, Z.İ. Erzurum Cicek and Z. Ergul (2017) “Sentiment Analysis: an Application to Anadolu University”, International Conference on Computational and Experimental Science and Engineering, vol.132, issue.03, pp.752-755. 15. Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman and Jeff Rongsheng Lin (2018), Text analytics approach to extract course improvement suggestions from students Feedback”, Springer (Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning) vol.13, issue.6, pp.1-19. AUTHORS PROFILE Harshini G N, PG Scholar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology(MCET), Pollachi. She completed her Bachelor of Engineering from Anna university. She is doing her project in Opinion Mining. Gobi N, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology. He has teaching experience of more than twelve years. His current areas of research are Opinion Mining and Cloud Computing Dr.A. Rathinavelu, Principal, Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology(MCET), obtained his Ph.D. from NIT, Trichy. He completed his Master of Technology in Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia and Bachelor of Engineering at IRTT, Erode. He has 6 years of Industrial experience in Engineering college. He is working in MCET since 1999 in various capacities. He is a Professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering. His research area includes Human Computer Interaction, Web Engineering, Speech Processing and Mobile Application Development. 
work_ncgz34yefzbgng744iqnhi6oo4	----	i D U N E D I N EDINBURGH ◆ LONDON 2017 1 2017 Catalogue (as at January 2017) DUNEDIN ACADEMIC PRESS LTD Hudson House, 8 Albany Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3QB, Scotland Tel: +44(0)131 473 2397 Email: mail@dunedinacademicpress.co.uk Website: www.dunedinacademicpress.co.uk ISBN Prefixes: 978-1-903544-; 978-1-903765-; 978-1-906716-; 978-1-78046- Dunedin Academic Press is an independent publisher of books in the humanities and sciences. The company is a member of the Publishers Association (UK) and of Publishing Scotland. Books are sold subject to our standard terms of sale and supply, copies of which are available on request. Please note that we price in Pounds Sterling in the sterling area and throughout the world except the Euro zone, where we price in Euros, and in North America where we price in US Dollars. 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Lecturers and teachers should email mail@dunedinacademicpress.co.uk with their requests giving title and ISBN of the book(s) they wish to see together with their postal address at their institution with details of the course(s) for which titles are being considered and the number of students per annum taking their course. 2 D U N E D I NRECENT AND FORTHCOMING 2017 PUBLICATIONS NEW GeoBrittanica: Geological landscapes and the British peoples  Mike Leeder and Joy Lawlor GeoBritannica concerns the geological legacy of Britain, an inheritance bequeathed by its bedrock to the peoples who have lived on the island for the eleven millennia since the Ice Ages. The authors explain the geological foundations of the landscape and the raw materials it provides. They show how this geology has been made use of by society and by individuals in creative acts of the imagination. The reader will discover how regional environments and interests have been tackled by geologists in endeavours as diverse as mining, quarrying, architecture, literature and the visual arts. This is a book which puts a modern interpretation of the geological history of Britain into its historic, social and artistic contexts. 978-1-78046-060-4 HB 2016 c.332pp £24.99/€35.00/US$40.00 FEBRUARY Volcanoes of Europe  (Second edition) Dougal Jerram, Alwyn Scarth and Jean-Claude Tanguy This thoroughly revised and updated edition reflects modern research and is now illustrated in colour throughout. It presents the volcanoes of Europe, as they are today and tells how they have shaped our past. The volcanic systems of the Mediterranean basin, the Atlantic, and of mainland Europe are introduced and described in clear prose with a minimum of technical jargon. 978-1-78046-054-3 HB 2016 c.288pp col. illus. £60.00/€72.00/US$80.00 978-1-78046-042-0 PB 2016 c.288pp col. illus. £29.99/€42.00/US$45.00 MAY Terrestrial Conservation Lagerstätten  Edited by Nicholas Fraser & Hans-Dieter Sues Evolutionary biologists have long been concerned by the incompleteness of the fossil record. Although our knowledge of the diversity of life in ‘deep time’ has improved, many lineages of extant animals and plants still have only sparse fossil documentation. Even groups with ‘hard parts’ that render them suitable for fossilization often only have a limited record. Thus, although the fossil record is viewed as critical to the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of life, many biologists question its utility. Fortunately discoveries of occurrences of exceptionally preserved fossils, known as conservation Lagerstätten (Konservat- Lagerstätten), shed much light on the past diversity of life. This volume reviews selected conservation Lagerstätten for terrestrial animals and plants throughout the Phanerozoic worldwide and includes sites in Asia, Europe and North and South America. Each chapter is as comprehensive as possible. The volume is edited by Nicholas C. Fraser of the National Museum of Scotland and Hans-Dieter Sues of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Contents: Introduction to conservation Lagerstätten; 1. Rhynie Chert (Early Devonian, Scotland); 2. East Kirkton (Early Carboniferous, Scotland); 3. Madygen Formation (Middle or Late Triassic, Kyrgyzstan); 4. Solite Quarry (Late Triassic, USA); 5. Daohugou Biota (Late Jurassic, Inner Mongolia); 6. Jehol Group (Early Cretaceous, China); 7. Santana Formation (Early Cretaceous, Brazil); 8. Messel (Eocene, Germany); 9. Amber (Mesozoic-Cenozoic, worldwide) 978-1-78046-014-7 HB 2016 c.450pp col illus. £150.00/€216.00/US$240.00 3 D U N E D I NRECENT AND FORTHCOMING 2017 PUBLICATIONS MAY Child Protection and Disability: Practical challenges for research  Edited by Deborah Fry, Patricia Lannen, Audrey Cameron, Jennifer Vanderminden and Tabitha Casey Protecting Children and Young People series What are the child protection concerns for deaf and disabled children and young people? What are their views about the child protection system? How can we measure if we have made a difference in ending violence against children? These questions and others are at the forefront of policy, practice and research debates internationally. This book explores the ethical, methodological, and practical challenges in conducting child protection research with deaf and disabled children and young people. This edited volume draws upon examples of research and translating research to policy and practice from international leaders in both child protection and disability fields. 978-1-78046-050-5 PB 2017 c.120pp £19.95/€ 29.00/US$32.00 MAY Housing and Housing Management: Balancing the two key contracts  Nigel Sprigings Policy & Practice in Health and Social Care (No. 23) Housing been described as the “wobbly pillar” of the welfare state on account of it never achieving universal coverage as did health and education. This does not diminish its importance for individuals, households, communities and social stability. Adequate and affordable housing provision is one of the key elements of a functioning democracy. Often characterised as the routine undertaking of simple tasks, housing management never established itself as a key profession in the public sector during the twentieth century. The author challenges that characterisation of housing management by arguing that, from its inception, ‘housing management’ involves complex tasks. 978-1-78046-061-1 PB 2017 c.120pp £19.95/€ 29.00/US$32.00 MAY Socialising Transgender: Support in transition  Kate Norman Policy & Practice in Health and Social Care (No. 25) The author seeks to counterbalance the prevailing medicalised approach to statutory support for transgender people which tends to focus on the physical processes of transition rather than on subsequent social role adjustment. The book explores the potential for improved social support to transgender people and also to partners, children and other family members. It concludes by proposing a combination of advocacy and social care support to further the legal and social status of transgender people. 978-1-78046-065-9 PB 2017 c.120pp £19.95/€ 29.00/US$32.00 JUNE Coal Mining in the East Neuk of Fife John McManus Coal-mining provided a crucial driver to industrial development in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland, from medieval times until the late twentieth century. In the early days of the industry, the coals were recovered on the shoreline or from valley slopes, where their excavation was relatively simple. As the easily accessible seams were exhausted it became necessary to dig deeper and thus a need for a detailed understanding of the rocks beneath the surface became essential. John McManus surveys the geology and social history of the mines in the East Neuk and of the people who explored, owned and laboured in the area. Coal-mining in the East Neuk was an industry which began many centuries ago, flourished all too briefly and ultimately declined. 978-1-78046-072-7 HB c.256pp col. illus. £24.99/ €38.00/ US$40.00 4 D U N E D I N JUNE Excursion Guide to the Geomorphology of the Howgill Fells  Adrian Harvey The Howgill Fells in Cumbria, represent one of the most erosionally active landscapes in Britain. The Holocene sequence of hillslope gully erosion, alluvial fan deposition, and stream terrace aggradation and dissection is exceptionally well exhibited by numerous exposed sections through the sedimentary sequences. The modern active gully systems have been monitored for more than thirty years. The results of this long-term study illustrate two fundamental aspects of process geomorphology: first, the importance of coupling, i.e. linkages, within the geomorphic system, and secondly, the significance of magnitude/ frequency relationships. The book is organised in two sections. A series of thematic chapters is followed by chapters dealing with details of recommended field excursions. The first excursion is a car-based excursion around the margins of the Howgills but the other excursions are all hiking excursions into the interior of the Howgills. This is an indispensable field guide for the many earth science students who explore the Howgills on field trips. 978-1-78046-070-3 PB c. 128pp col. illus. £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 JULY The Western Highlands of Scotland  Con Gillen Classic Geology in Europe 9 This guide is for those who wish to understand the interplay between rocks and scenery in a truly classic geology in Europe. Nowhere else in Britain is this link to be more clearly observed. The key localities that make the Scottish Highlands unique are explained in a series of excursions. The book is divided into seven areas, starting from the north coast between Tongue and Cape Wrath, then south towards Scourie, Lochinver, Stoer, Ullapool, Assynt, Gairloch, Torridon, Applecross, Kyle of Lochalsh, Glenelg, Ardnamurchan, Mallaig, Fort William, Glen Roy, Glencoe, Ben Nevis, Glen Nevis and finishing at Oban. Excursions are easily accessible, along footpaths and the coast, with a few more challenging options, including Ben Nevis, Scotland’s highest mountain. 978-1-78046-040-6 PB c.192pp col. illus. £24.99/€35.00/$40.00 JULY Introducing Climate Science  John Mason, Rob Painting and Glenn Tamblyn Introducing Earth and Environmental Sciences series Climate science, more particularly climate change, is a much-debated concept at all levels from governments to the individuals but what is climate? What is the difference between weather and climate? The weather outside today is not the climate; climate is averages over long periods of time. The climate of the Earth is changing and has changed constantly over the billions of years that the planet has existed. In Introducing Climate Science, the authors describe the main components of the climate system: the Atmosphere, the Hydrosphere (oceans), the Lithosphere (land), the Cryosphere (ice) and the Biosphere (life). They demonstrate how climate science is a fusion of many other sciences including thermodynamics, physics, chemistry, oceanography, geology, biology and ecosystem science. They discuss climate time-scales and differentiate between regional and global climates. 978-1-78046-069-7 PB PB 2017 c.160pp col. illus. £9.99/ € 14.95/ US$16.50 THE HOWGILL FELLS Adrian Harvey EXCURSION GUIDE TO THE GEOMORPHOLOGY OF D U N E D I N RECENT AND FORTHCOMING 2017 PUBLICATIONS 5 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES FORTHCOMING FEBRUARY Volcanoes of Europe (Second edition)  Dougal Jerram, Alwyn Scarth and Jean-Claude Tanguy This thoroughly revised and updated edition reflects modern research and is now illustrated in colour throughout. It presents the volcanoes of Europe, as they are today and tells how they have shaped our past. The volcanic systems of the Mediterranean basin, the Atlantic, and of mainland Europe are introduced and described in clear prose with a minimum of technical jargon. 978-1-78046-054-3 HB 2016 c.384pp col. illus. £50.00/€68.00/US$78.00 978-1-78046-042-0 PB 2016 c.384pp col. illus. £24.99/€35.00/US$40.00 FORTHCOMING JUNE Terrestrial Conservation Lagerstätten Edited by Nicholas Fraser & Hans-Dieter Sues Evolutionary biologists have long been concerned by the incompleteness of the fossil record. Although our knowledge of the diversity of life in ‘deep time’ has improved, many lineages of extant animals and plants still have only sparse fossil documentation. Even groups with ‘hard parts’ that render them suitable for fossilization often only have a limited record. Thus, although the fossil record is viewed as critical to the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of life, many biologists question its utility. Fortunately discoveries of occurrences of exceptionally preserved fossils, known as conservation Lagerstätten (Konservat- Lagerstätten), shed much light on the past diversity of life. This volume reviews selected conservation Lagerstätten for terrestrial animals and plants throughout the Phanerozoic worldwide and includes sites in Asia, Europe and North and South America. Each chapter is as comprehensive as possible. The volume is edited by Nicholas C. Fraser of the National Museum of Scotland and Hans-Dieter Sues of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Contents: Introduction to conservation Lagerstätten; 1. Rhynie Chert (Early Devonian, Scotland); 2. East Kirkton (Early Carboniferous, Scotland); 3. Madygen Formation (Middle or Late Triassic, Kyrgyzstan); 4. Solite Quarry (Late Triassic, USA); 5. Daohugou Biota (Late Jurassic, Inner Mongolia); 6. Jehol Group (Early Cretaceous, China); 7. Santana Formation (Early Cretaceous, Brazil); 8. Messel (Eocene, Germany); 9. Amber (Mesozoic-Cenozoic, worldwide) 978-1-78046-014-7 HB 2016 c.450pp col. illus. £150.00/€216.00/US$240.00 FORTHCOMING JUNE Coal Mining in the East Neuk of Fife John McManus Coal-mining provided a crucial driver to industrial development in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland, from medieval times until the late twentieth century. In the early days of the industry, the coals were recovered on the shoreline or from valley slopes, where their excavation was relatively simple. As the easily accessible seams were exhausted it became necessary to dig deeper and thus a need for a detailed understanding of the rocks beneath the surface became essential. John McManus surveys the geology and social history of the mines in the East Neuk and of the people who explored, owned and laboured in the area. Coal-mining in the East Neuk was an industry which began many centuries ago, flourished all too briefly and ultimately declined. 978-1-78046-072-7 HB c.256pp col. illus. £24.99/ €38.00/ US$40.00 FORTHCOMING JUNE Excursion Guide to the Geomorphology of the Howgill Fells  Adrian Harvey The Howgill Fells in Cumbria, represent one of the most erosionally active landscapes in Britain. The Holocene sequence of hillslope gully erosion, alluvial fan deposition, and stream terrace aggradation and dissection is exceptionally well exhibited by numerous exposed sections through the sedimentary sequences. The modern active gully systems have been monitored for more than thirty years. The results of this long-term study illustrate two fundamental aspects of process geomorphology: first, the importance of coupling, i.e. linkages, within the geomorphic system, and secondly, the significance of magnitude/ frequency relationships. The book is organised in two sections. A series of thematic chapters is followed by chapters dealing with details of recommended field excursions. The first excursion is a car-based excursion around the margins of the Howgills but the other excursions are all hiking excursions into the interior of the Howgills. This is an indispensable field guide for the many earth science students who explore the Howgills on field trips. 978-1-78046-070-3 PB c. 128pp col. illus. £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 THE HOWGILL FELLS Adrian Harvey EXCURSION GUIDE TO THE GEOMORPHOLOGY OF D U N E D I N D U N E D I N T he C oalf ields of t he E ast Neuk Jo h n M c M a n u s 6 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES GeoBrittanica: Geological landscapes and the British peoples  Mike Leeder and Joy Lawlor GeoBritannica concerns the geological legacy of Britain, an inheritance bequeathed by its bedrock to the peoples who have lived on the island for the eleven millennia since the Ice Ages. The authors explain the geological foundations of the landscape and the raw materials it provides. They show how this geology has been made use of by society and by individuals in creative acts of the imagination. The reader will discover how regional environments and interests have been tackled by geologists in endeavours as diverse as mining, quarrying, architecture, literature and the visual arts. This is a book which puts a modern interpretation of the geological history of Britain into its historic, social and artistic contexts. 978-1-78046-060-4 HB 2016 c.332pp £24.99/€35.00/US$40.00 The Abyss of Time: A study in geological time and Earth history  Paul Lyle The proposition that geological time is vast, encompassing thousands of millions of years, is relatively recent. It is a concept that remains controversial and unacceptable to many people. Paul Lyle examines how our fascination with time has developed. He considers the passage of time as a series of non-repeatable events, Time’s Arrow, in contrast to time as a series of repeated processes, Time’s Cycle. The author argues for a greater understanding of geological or ‘deep time’ as society becomes more aware of the vulnerability of the Earth’s resources to over-exploitation by an expanding consumer society. This debate and the controversy surrounding global warming emphasises the importance of geological time to the process of economic and political decision-making. ‘…for anyone like me who finds the immensity of geological time (‘deep time’) both fascinating and fundamentally difficult – both emotionally and intellectually – this is a great book.’ Deposits 978-1-78046-039-0 HB 2016 204pp col. illus. £24.99/€35.00/US$36.95 Volcanoes and the Making of Scotland  (Second edition) Brian Upton In this thoroughly revised and updated edition, with fresh text and illustrations, Brian Upton explores Scotland’s volcanoes from the most recent examples to volcanoes of the obscure Precambrian times which left their signature in the ancient rocks of the far north-west. Geographically the book ranges across all of Scotland from Shetland to the Borders. Reflecting current research into Scotland’s geology, the author also speculates as to the climate, geography and ecology of the long- gone landscapes in which the volcanoes of differing ages were created and destroyed. ‘I defy anyone not to be infected by Upton’s enthusiasm. This book should be a constant companion on field trips to Scotland’s rich volcanic heritage.’ Jnl Volc. & Geotherm. Research 978-1-78046-056-7 HB 2015 255pp col. illus. £24.99/€42.00/US$45.00 The Making of Europe: A geological history  Graham Park Graham Park relates how Europe has been assembled through geological time by the accretion of various distinct geological components, some of which have travelled a considerable distance across the globe to reach their present positions. The Making of Europe is a book for all those curious about the origins, variety and geological history of the continent of Europe. Why are there such distinct regions and landscapes, ranging from the wide plains of Northern Europe to the mountains of the South? Although some previous knowledge of geology will be useful, important geological concepts are explained in the Introduction, technical terms are kept to a minimum and a comprehensive glossary is provided in addition to an index. ‘Graham Park is an excellent communicator as well as a very well-travelled and scholarly geologist. Only someone like Graham could write a book like this, much of it from personal knowledge of the geology made by field observations… Today, much of Europe is a geopolitical entity born out of the single piece of crust that we sit on. That has only been the case for the past 20 million years or so. In this book, Graham takes us back to a time when what is now Europe was different pieces of ancient crust. He traces the various orogenies that have shaped and finally brought Europe together… It’s a story about immense tectonic processes that have acted over the past 3 billion years from the fragments of the Archaean through to the products of the Alpine Orogeny. In this overview, Graham takes us through the ‘building blocks’ of Europe that have been assembled to make the landmass we now live on… Such an epic journey only makes sense with a good guide, aided by excellent maps, diagrams and photographs. Graham guides the reader with the minimum of terminology and keeps you focussed on the ‘big picture’ without getting bogged down in the detail.’ Down to Earth 978-1-78046-043-7 HB 2014 171pp col. illus. £50.00/€74.00/$79.99 978-1-78046-023-9 PB 2014 171pp col. illus. £24.99/€36.00/$40.00 SHORT-LISTED FOR THE ASE SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016/17 SH ORTLISTED ASE Science Book of t he Year Award 2016/17 7 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Death of an Ocean ~ A Geological Borders Ballad  Euan Clarkson & Brian Upton ‘This is a splendidly produced book, beautifully illustrated and eloquently written. The plot and the main characters are meticulously developed through the clear and didactic narrative. It focuses the most modern of concepts and investigative techniques on the buried history of one of the bonniest parts of Europe.” European Geologist 978-1-78046-034-5 PB 2013 (first published in HB in2009) 223pp col. illus. £25.00/€40.00/US$45.00 Edinburgh Rock ~ The Geology of Lothian  Euan Clarkson & Brian Upton ‘this is an excellent book; it is authoritative yet entertaining and a thoroughly good read... the authors have taken their description of Edinburgh Rock as a starting point and created a text that is somehow more than the sum of the parts.’ Geological Magazine 978-1-78046-033-8 PB 2013 (first published in HB in 2006) 253pp col. illus. £25.00/€40.00/US$45.00 Geology and landscapes of Scotland (Second Edition)  Con Gillen ‘…the book is a reasonably comprehensive and generally excellent account of Scotland’s geodiversity, explaining and promoting both its rich geology and varied scenery and landforms. It is written for and should appeal to a wide audience and, given my previous ignorance of the modern interpretation of the Hebridean Volcanoes (Chapter 7), is easily readable and enjoyable... His narrative also makes the reader aware of the historical beginnings of the science of geology in the late 18th century with James Hutton, and other later historic figures such as Ben Peach and John Horne. It also shows how Scotland’s geodiversity continues to be at the heart of modern research as it spreads from the detail contained in the basic topics of geology, geomorphology etc. into the modern cross-discipline (environmental) themes relating to climate change, changing sea levels and the low carbon economy. I have no hesitation in recommending a trip to the bookshop for this one…’ The Edinburgh Geologist 978-1-78046-009-3 PB 2013 256pp col. illus. £25.00/€35.00/US$45.00 Vesuvius ~ A biography Alwyn Scarth Vesuvius is one of the most dangerous volcanoes on Earth. Its story is fascinating – not only its rich geological and geographical history, but also the changing social, religious and intellectual impact that the volcano has always had upon the people living around it. Hence, this book is truly a biography of a formidable and richly colourful living entity. 978-1-903544-25-9 HB 2009 352pp b&w illus. £24.95/€35.00 (this edition is not for sale in North America) Introductory Mathematics for Earth Scientists Xin-She Yang ‘The book is self-contained and provides an essential toolkit of basic mathematics...Even though the book has been designed to offer good introduction to nonmathematicians and freshman geoscientists, it can also be used as a quick reference book for refreshing elementary mathematical concepts commonly used in earth sciences by experienced geoscientists.’ The Leading Edge 978-1-906716-00-4 PB 2008 238pp £18.50/€25.00/US$27.00 Mathematical Modelling for Earth Sciences Xin-She Yang ‘In short, the book provides excellent value for money and is a well-crafted introduction to mathematical modelling for earth scientists. Armed with insights obtained from this book, the reader will be well placed for further study of selected topics at the next level of detail.’ Geoscientist 978-1903765-92-0 PB 2008 320pp £26.00/€38.00/US$41.50 8 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Planetary Geology ~ An Introduction  (Second Edition) Claudio Vita-Finzi and Dominic Fortes Planetary Geology provides the student reader and enthusiastic amateur with comprehensive coverage of the solar system viewed through the eyes of Earth scientists. Combining extensive use of imagery, the results of laboratory experiments and theoretical modelling, this comprehensively updated second edition of Planetary Geology presents fresh evidence that, to quote the first edition, planetary geology now embraces conventional geology and vice versa. ‘This is a good introductory textbook for anyone with a solid background in geological sciences to the field of planetary geology. This book is the second edition and the authors have done an excellent job in making all the materials bang up-to-date; they even include information that must have been released just prior to the book going to press. The illustrations and figures are outstanding, and, used in addition to the data tables, make a handy reference for those wanting to quickly extract basic facts (e.g. gravitational acceleration, internal structure) about the planets or other solar system bodies.’ Geological Magazine 978-1-780460-38-3 HB 2014 176pp col. illus. £50.00/€65.00/US$73.95 978-1-780460-15-4 PB 2013 176pp col. illus. £25.00/€42.00/US$45.00 Excursion Guide to the Geology of East Sutherland and Caithness (Second Edition) Edited by Nigel Trewin and Andrew Hurst ‘This is a lovely book, easy to read, but a mine of information, and beautifully produced. So much of the geology is quite different from that in other parts of Europe. If you have never visited this remarkable area, may I advise you that the long journey is well worth while for geology and scenery too. And take this book with you!’ Geological Magazine 978-1-906716-01-1 PB 2009 192pp col. illus. £14.99/€22.00/US$29.00 Scottish Fossils Nigel Trewin ‘… an unashamed celebration of fossils drawing on the rich variety to be found in Scotland… At £30 this is not a cheap book but the plethora of colour illustrations justifies the cost. It is no mean feat to bring together such a collection of top-quality photographs covering Scotland’s fossil record, 104 entries on a ‘one of everything’ basis and most of Trewin’s selection is splendid. Some examples are quite extraordinary… The descriptions accompanying the individual fossil illustrations, and the introduction to each taxonomic grouping, are clear and informative…. Anyone with an interest in Life’s extraordinary exuberance through geological time will love this book – and it is a welcome antidote to the usual granite & gneiss’ view of Scotland’s geology…’ The Edinburgh Geologist 978-178046-019-2 HB 2013 128pp col illus. £30.00/€34.00/US$36.95 Fossils Alive! New Walks in an Old Field Nigel Trewin ‘Trewin has written a book that will very much appeal to the adult reader. He has chosen his favourite Scottish fossil localities, built a picture of each landscape and environment when the fossils were living organisms, and brought us on a fact-filled adventure to prehistoric Scotland. Trewin’s humour feeds the skilful narrative as he takes us on his challenging field excursions.’ Nature Geoscience 978-1903765-88-3 HB 2008 240pp col. illus. £19.95/€29.00/US$31.50 See also Mallorca: The Making of the Landscape by Richard Buswell on p. 26 below. 9 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES The Geology of Ireland (Second Edition) Edited by Charles H. Holland and Ian Sanders ‘Every country needs one: an integrated, detailed and readable account of its geology. For over a quarter of a century, Charles Holland’s book and its forerunners have filled this publishing niche for the island of Ireland... It is impressive to see a new edition published…, particularly as, once again, it is a substantially altered volume. With this new edition, The Geology of Ireland continues as a valuable companion to the stylistically similar “The Geology of …” volumes on Scotland and on England & Wales published by the Geological Society of London.’ Geological Magazine 978-1-903765-71-5 HB 2009 582pp col. illus. £70.00/€90.00/US$99.00 978-1-903765-72-2 PB 2009 582pp col. illus. £35.00/€45.00/US$55.00 Petroleum Geology of Ireland David Naylor & Patrick Shannon Petroleum Geology of Ireland provides a comprehensive review of the petroleum geology of Ireland and its very extensive continental shelf. The authors chart the fifty-year history of petroleum exploration in Ireland, from early drilling onshore to the present frontier exploration in the deep water Atlantic basins. In discussing the regional geological framework the book outlines the evolution of our understanding of basin development in the Irish offshore. The Pre-Permian to Cenozoic stratigraphy of the region is explained in five chapters, each illustrated by palaeogeographic maps that are based both on onshore geology and on the results of offshore drilling. The four major regional groups of basins are then considered and for each there is analysis of basin development and petroleum systems, together with a review of their exploration history, plays and prospects. 978-1-906716-13-4 HB 2010 272pp col. illus. £150.00/€150.00/US$164.00 Glacial Geology and Geomorphology ~ The Landscapes of Ireland A. Marshall McCabe ‘…a landmark contribution to glacial geology… McCabe provides an unparalleled description of Ireland’s glacial geology. In this holistic approach, one learns a great deal about how to reconstruct an ice-sheet’s history that can and should be applied elsewhere. This book is a tour-de-force and will become a benchmark of how to do glacial geology for years to come.” Quaternary Science Reviews 978-1903765-87-6 HB 2008 288pp col. illus. £40.00/€49.00/US$64.00 Sedimentary Structures (Third Edition) John Collinson, Nigel Mountney and David Thompson Sedimentary Structures introduces undergraduate students to depositional and also post-depositional sedimentary processes across a wide range of scales and shows how sedimentary structures can be interpreted in terms of those processes. Sedimentary structures produced by erosion, deposition and post-depositional change are all clearly explained and related to the processes that formed them. Hydrodynamic and aerodynamic controls on the development of sub- aqueous and aeolian bedforms are discussed, as are the styles of deformation to which sediments can be subjected after deposition. 978-1-903544-19-8 PB 2006 302pp b&w illus. £24.95/€36.00/US$39.50 10 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES A Systems Approach to Environmental Management: It’s not easy being Green  Tim O’Higgins with Mohammed Saif Al-Kalbani Human activities increasingly dominate the global environment. Effective environmental management, to use, conserve and maintain natural capital is a major challenge worldwide. Managing the environment involves juggling a complex set of ecological economic and social objectives and priorities which differ nationally locally and regionally. Tim O’Higgins defines and describes a systems approach to environmental management. He explains a framework for analysis of environmental problems as social/ecological systems using fascinating examples from around the globe. This book combines expertise from the fields of ecology, economics and social sciences to provide an invaluable guide to the theory and practice of an ecosystem approach to management. 978-1-78046-026-0 PB 2015 144pp col. illus. £12.99/€22.00/$24.50 978-1-78046-055-0 HB 2015 144pp col. illus. £35.00/€45.00/$48.95 Sustaining Coastal Zone Systems Paul Tett, Audun Sanderg & Anne Mette (Editors) Introduces a ‘systems approach’ to understanding and managing the complex interactions between the natural ecosystems and the human economies and societies in the coastal zone. It draws examples from a successful European research project to show how ‘communicative rationality’ and the construction of models of ‘socio-ecosystems’, can be used to help stakeholders choose between alternative solutions to coastal zone problems 978-1-906716-27-1 PB 2011 189pp col. illus. £17.95/€20.00/US$32.00 D U N E D I N SUSTAINING COASTAL ZONE SYSTEMS Edited by Paul Tett, Audun Sandberg and Anne Mette Minerals of Britain and Ireland Andy Tindle ‘Colour reproduction and image quality are excellent throughout … I have to say the information is of an extremely high quality throughout … every other idea I had for an unusual or rare British mineral that might not be listed in the book was there … some of the sections had a huge amount of new information that I have not seen elsewhere … Considering the enormous scope of this project, Andy Tindle has defied the odds to deliver a masterpiece on British mineralogy that is unlikely to be bettered for another 150 years. Everyone seriously interested in British mineralogy will be delighted with the book and should order a copy immediately!’ MinDat [online] 978-1-903544-22-8 HB 2008 624pp col. illus. £95.00/€138.00/US$150.00 11 D U N E D I NEMERGENCY PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT How to Write an Emergency Plan  David Alexander David Alexander provides, in this book, the assistance needed to write an emergency plan. It is a practical ‘how to’ manual and guide aimed at managers in business, civil protection officers, civil security officials, civil defence commanders, neighbourhood leaders and disaster managers who have been tasked with writing, reviewing or preparing emergency plans for all kinds of emergency, disaster or catastrophe. He takes the reader through the process of writing an emergency plan, step by step, starting with the rationale and context, before moving on through the stages of writing and activating a basic, generic emergency plan and concludes with information on specific kinds of plan, for example, for hospitals and cultural heritage sites. This practical guide also provides a core for postgraduate training in emergency management and has been written in such a way that it is not tied to the legal constraints of any particular jurisdiction. 978-1-78046-12-3 HB 2016 268pp £50.00/€69.00/US$88.00 978-1-78046-13-0 PB 2016 268pp £29.99/€38.00/US$48.00 Principles of Emergency Planning and Management David Alexander David Alexander provides a concise yet comprehensive and systematic primer on how to prepare for a disaster. The book introduces the methods, procedures, protocols and strategies of emergency planning, with an emphasis on situations within industrialized countries. It is designed to be a reference source and manual from which emergency mangers can extract ideas, suggestions and pro-forma methodologies to help them design and implement emergency plans. 978-1-903544-10-5 PB 2002 £24.95/€35.00 (this edition is not for sale in North America) Confronting Catastrophe David Alexander Confronting Catastrophe addresses natural disasters in terms of the issues arising from globalization, technological development and consumer culture. These factors have profoundly altered social and economic values, and international relations have responded to a new balance of forces and ideologies. Beginning by examining the theoretical underpinnings of academic and applied work the author then considers cultural, economic and historical changes in relation to the impact of disasters on human societies. Special attention is given to the effects of new technologies on vulnerability to natural catastrophe and to the difference in impacts between industrialized nations and developing countries. It is argued that, far from being exceptional events, disasters are a normal part of life and a substantial influence on most human cultures. 978-1-903544-01-3 PB 2000 288pp £19.95/€28.50 (this edition is not for sale in North America) 12 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES — INTRODUCING SERIES… INTRODUCING... A series of highly illustrated books intended as a first readers for university students and for adults seeking a concise but scientifically well-grounded introduction to earth and environmental science topics. All the books in the series contain a Glossary of the scientific terms used in the text. FORTHCOMING JULY Introducing Climate Science  John Mason, Rob Painting and Glenn Tamblyn Introducing Earth and Environmental Sciences series Climate science, more particularly climate change, is a much-debated concept at all levels from governments to the individuals but what is climate? What is the difference between weather and climate? The weather outside today is not the climate; climate is averages over long periods of time. The climate of the Earth is changing and has changed constantly over the billions of years that the planet has existed. In Introducing Climate Science, the authors describe the main components of the climate system: the Atmosphere, the Hydrosphere (oceans), the Lithosphere (land), the Cryosphere (ice) and the Biosphere (life). They demonstrate how climate science is a fusion of many other sciences including thermodynamics, physics, chemistry, oceanography, geology, biology and ecosystem science. They discuss climate time-scales and differentiate between regional and global climates. Copiously illustrated and written for those who wish to gain a clear understanding of what the debate is all about, Introducing Climate Science is designed to make the science intelligible to its readers. Technical terms are kept to a minimum and are explained in a glossary. CONTENTS Foreword and acknowledgements. 1. Introduction – What is Climate? HOW CLIMATE WORKS: 2. The Science of Climate Science; 3. Energy balance; 4. Basic atmospheric structure – The Greenhouse Effect; 5. More atmospheric structure; 6. The Oceans – The Dog that wags the Tail; 7. The Land & the Biosphere, Carbon Cycles; 8. The Cryosphere – The Domain of Ice; LESSONS FROM CLIMATES PAST: 9. The Recent Past - Ice Ages for 100’s of 1000’s of Years; 10. The truly deep past. Earth’s heartbeat and how it can falter; Conclusion: What does the past tell us about what is possible now? TODAY AND TOMORROW: 11. Modelling. Tools for understanding and prediction; 12. What is happening now. Climate is changing; 13. The future. What might happen, what will happen. Afterword: Why this matters. The authors, all members of Skeptical Science, each bring a different scientific expertise to this book. John Mason is a geologist, Rob Painting is an environmentalist specialising in ocean sciences and Glenn Tamblyn is an engineer with a deep knowledge of basic thermodynamics and fluid mechanics of climate 978-1-78046-069-7 PB PB 2017 c.160pp col. illus. £9.99/ € 14.95/ US$16.50 13 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES — INTRODUCING SERIES… Introducing Natural Resources  Graham Park In Introducing Natural Resources Graham Park provides a clear and highly illustrated introduction to the science surrounding the Earth’s resources, both renewable and non-renewable, for those whose interest in the topic may have been stimulated by media coverage of declining resources or environmental pollution. 978-1-78046-048-2 PB 2016 117pp col. illus. £14.99/€22.00/US$24.50 Introducing Mineralogy  John Mason In Introducing Mineralogy John Mason considers the essence of mineralogy in a clear and logical manner. The book begins with the basic chemistry of minerals and the way in which the mineral kingdom is classified. It then considers mineral occurrences, both typical, such as the minerals that largely make up common rocks like granite, and atypical, such as concentrations of rare metals in ore-deposits. The ways in which minerals are studied using microscopes and the importance of careful observation and interpretation are discussed and the topics of mineral collecting and related issues are addressed. The final chapters explore the uses of minerals, both industrial and scientific, and take a look at environmental issues associated with mineral extraction and usage. 978-1-78046-028-4 PB 2015 128pp col. illus. £14.99/€22.00/US$24.50 Introducing Sedimentology  Stuart J Jones Introducing Sedimentology explains the key concepts of this core earth science discipline to students and to the interested non-specialist. In a wide-ranging survey of sedimentology, the authors consider sedimentary processes, the types of sedimentary rock, sedimentary structures and the environments, both marine and non-marine, where sedimentation occurs. Sedimentology is a critical element of the fossil record while sedimentary basins provide the structures now exploited for natural resources including oil, gas and coal. 978-1-78046-017-8 PB 2015 96pp col. illus. £14.99/€22.00/US$24.50 Introducing Astronomy: A Guide to the Universe  Iain Nicholson We live on a small planet that revolves round an unexceptional star – the Sun – which is one of the hundred billion stars that populate our galaxy. Of the many billions of galaxies that lie within range of our most powerful telescopes, some are so remote that their light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach us. Iain Nicolson takes the reader on a journey from planet Earth to the boundaries of the observable Universe. He explains the nature of stars, planets and galaxies, what makes them shine and how they are born, evolve and eventually die. He explores the origin of the Universe as a whole and considers whether life may exist on other worlds. 978-1-78046-025-3 PB 2014 176pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 14 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES — INTRODUCING SERIES… Introducing Geology: A Guide to the World of Rocks  Second Edition Graham Park ‘This remains a key resource for both amateur and professional geologists alike, remarkably squeezing virtually all the basics of our subject into some 135 pages with many informative illustrations.’ European Geologist 978-1-906716-21-9 PB 144pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 Introducing Geomorphology: A Guide to Landforms and Processes Adrian Harvey ‘An introduction, not a textbook: “The purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the science of geomorphology. The book is not intended as a textbook; there are many of these” (p. xi). This attractive publication is indeed footnote-free and well-produced in colour. It is, though, definitely slimline rather than lightweight. Authoritative in tone and broad in scope, any undergraduate or ambitious A-level student will learn much from its pages.’ Geography 978-1-906716-32-5 PB 2012 136pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 Introducing Meteorology: A Guide to Weather  Jon Shonk ‘Introducing Meteorology is a most welcome addition to the bookshelves of students, interested amateurs, meteorology educators, and those who simply enjoy a readable, affordable book on the weather. Jon Shonk has created a marvelously succinct and up-to date introduction to weather that serves a variety of audiences and purposes extremely well. I hope this is only the first of many excellent books from this young scientist.’ BAMS (American Meteorological Society) 978-1-78046-002-4 PB 2013 160pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 Introducing Oceanography  David N. Thomas & David C. Bowers ‘I would thoroughly recommend this book to any aspiring oceanographer or serious amateur. This is a very wide and complex subject that has been covered very well indeed and very attractively in such a short volume.’ International Journal of the Society for Underwater Technology 978-1-78046-001-7 PB 2012 160pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 15 D U N E D I NEARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES — INTRODUCING SERIES… Introducing Palaeontology: A Guide to Ancient Life  Patrick Wyse Jackson ‘Introducing Palaeontology is an excellent book, full of attractive diagrams and photographs, coupled with short, waffle-free sections. The combination of short, snappy chapters and interesting scientific concepts create a book that is perfect for anyone new to the science of palaeontology,whether they be an enthusiastic amateur, a prospective student or an undergraduate just starting out in the field.’ Geological Magazine 978-1-906716-15-8 PB 2010 160pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 Introducing the Planets and their Moons  Peter Cattermole The solar system, of which Earth is but a small part is an amazing collection of bodies, ranging in size from the Sun, through the giant planet Jupiter, to specks of dust left over from the primordial nebula from which the system emerged. Excluding the Sun, there are eight major planets, together with several dwarf planets and at least 160 orbiting natural satellites. Peter Cattermole describes the characteristics and geological development of the eight large planetary bodies and their more substantial moons. 978-1-78046-029-1 PB 2014 152pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 Introducing Tectonics, Rock Structures and Mountain Belts  Graham Park ‘The scope of this book is large, but they are all inter-related topics that have at their heart structures at several different scales. He begins with a very useful couple of pages that outline the contents of each chapter. The author expresses the view that an understanding of plate tectonics lies at the centre of an appreciation of smaller structures and the layout reflects this… The book is complemented with a fine glossary that is almost a dictionary – a very nice touch! Do I think this is a good book? I most certainly do.’ Down to Earth 978-1-906716-26-4 PB 2012 144pp col. illus. £14.99/€22.00/US$24.50 Introducing Volcanology: A Guide to Hot Rocks  Dougal Jerram ‘This is the third in a series of earth science books published by Dunedin, the previous two of which (on palaeontology and geology) have been reviewed in this magazine. I said of those books that they were excellent little volumes for the beginner and the amateur, and the current book is no different.Written by the ubiquitous volcano specialist, Dougal Jerram (aka Dr Volcano), who was recently on television in the BBC’s ‘The hottest place on Earth’, a film about an expedition to the lava lake of Erta Ale in Ethiopia… it is a nice little summary of the basics of the science of volcanology. The subject matter inevitably cries out for good illustrations, and the explanatory diagrams and photographs in this guide are extremely good and certainly as good as the previous two volumes. In addition, the writing is easy to understand (there is also a glossary) and fluent. More importantly, the reader cannot be unaffected by the author’s obvious enthusiasm, which comes through on every page.’ Deposits 978-1-906716-22-6 PB 2011 128pp col. illus. £9.99/€14.95/US$16.50 16 D U N E D I NCLASSIC GEOLOGY IN EUROPE (GGE) SERIES A series of concise and authoritative introductory field guides to the exceptional geological areas of Europe. Each book in the series serves as an essential companion to those earth scientists visiting the regions concerned, be they professional geologist, earth sciences student or curious amateur. FORTHCOMING JULY The Western Highlands of Scotland  Con Gillen This guide is for those who wish to understand the interplay between rocks and scenery in a truly classic geology in Europe. Nowhere else in Britain is this link to be more clearly observed. The key localities that make the Scottish Highlands unique are explained in a series of excursions. The book is divided into seven areas, starting from the north coast between Tongue and Cape Wrath, then south towards Scourie, Lochinver, Stoer, Ullapool, Assynt, Gairloch, Torridon, Applecross, Kyle of Lochalsh, Glenelg, Ardnamurchan, Mallaig, Fort William, Glen Roy, Glencoe, Ben Nevis, Glen Nevis and finishing at Oban. Excursions are easily accessible, along footpaths and the coast, with a few more challenging options, including Ben Nevis, Scotland’s highest mountain. (CGE 9) 978-1-78046-040-6 PB c.192pp col. illus. £24.99/€35.00/$40.00 Almeria Adrian Harvey and Anne Mather Almeria exhibits superb structural geology (especially the fault system), a complete Neogene sedimentary sequence (itself rare) involving an enormous range of sedimentary environments, and classic dryland geomorphology. Exposure of the sedimentary sequences is excellent. The area is spectacular and the landform assemblage includes a wide range of erosional and depositional landscapes. Furthermore, the region enables linkages to be made between the several disciplines of geodynamics. GPS coordinates are provided to the locations mentioned in the text. ‘The present book deals with Almeria (a province in SE Spain), which is a classical area for Mediterranean Neogene and Quaternary geology, also because of the interaction between the European and the African plates. The consequent initial compression resulted in the Betic Cordilleras, but during the late Tertiary the compressional regime was replaced by lateral shear, resulting in a basin-and- range terrain. Basins preserve the evaporites related to the so-called Messinian salinity crisis, when the Mediterranean desiccated. And the above aspects are only a few of those that make this region a classic! The book is well illustrated in full colour, with maps, field sketches and abundant photographs. The text is well written and easily readable. It has an extensive index, and for the non- professionals a useful glossary and a time scale.’ Geologos (CGE 12) 978-1-78046-037-6 PB 2015 192pp col.illus. £24.99/€35.00/US$40.00 Iceland (Second edition)  Thor Thordarson and Armann Hoskuldsson For over a decade this concise and authoritative field guide to an exceptional natural laboratory has been an essential companion for all those visiting Iceland to observe the Earth in action. It has been thoroughly revised to reflect the latest events and scientific understanding. This title is now presented with full colour illustration throughout. (CGE 3) 978-1-78046-021-5 PB 2013 192pp col. illus. £24.99/€35.00/US$40.00 17 D U N E D I NCLASSIC GEOLOGY IN EUROPE (GGE) SERIES Italian Volcanoes Chris Kilburn and Bill McGuire A unique guide to volcanic geology and an exciting introduction to how volcanoes work. Twelve detailed itineraries have been specially chosen to highlight the spectrum of volcanic products, their threat to human activity and their importance to understanding how volcanoes behave. (CGE 1) 978-1-903544-04-4 PB 2001 173pp b&w illus. £24.95/€36.00/US$39.50 Auvergne Peter Cattermole Auvergne is endowed with spectacular scenery, highly accessible geology, well preserved volcanic and glacial landforms, and a variety of rock types. (CGE 2) 978-1-903544-05-1 PB 2001 176pp b&w illus. £24.95/€36.00/US$39.50 Leinster Chris Stillman and George Sevastopulo Leinster – in the east and southeast of Ireland – is a land of rocks that spell out the Palaeozoic history of Britain and Ireland. This book explains the geology of Leinster and leads the geological tourist to the more accessible sites and outcrops revealing its history. (CGE 6) 978-1-903544-13-6 PB 2005 200pp b&w illus. £24.95/€36.00/US$39.50 Cyprus Stephen Edwards and team Perhaps nowhere else on Earth does so small an area provide such an excellent illustration of the dynamics of Earth processes through abundant exposures of spectacular and diverse geology. Cyprus is also a hazardous island: modern and ancient settlements have been destroyed or abandoned as a consequence of earthquakes and landslides. (CGE 7) 978-1-903544-15-0 PB 2010 281pp b&w illus. £24.95/€36.00/US$39.50 The Gulf of Corinth Mike Leeder and team The Gulf of Corinth in central Greece is a superb natural laboratory for the study of processes and hazards close to an active plate boundary. The area is a key locality for understanding rift geological processes and is an ideal locale for training because of the excellent exposures afforded by rapid uplift and incision. (CGE 11) 978-1-903544-23-5 PB 2007 175pp b&w illus. £24.95/€36.00/US$39.50 18 D U N E D I NCHILD PROTECTION & PUBLIC HEALTH PROTECTING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE SERIES ISSN 1756-0691 Series Editors: Julie Taylor, University of Edinburgh / NSPCC Child Protection Research Centre; Sharon Vincent, Centre for Health and Social Care improvement, University of Wolverhampton; and John Devaney, School of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast. A major series examining policy issues and practice in the safeguarding and protection of children and young people throughout the UK and elsewhere in the world. Standing orders for new titles and new editions in the series to be sent on publication are accepted. FORTHCOMING MAY Child Protection and Disability: Practical challenges for research  Edited by Deborah Fry, Patricia Lannen, Audrey Cameron, Jennifer Vanderminden and Tabitha Casey Protecting Children and Young People series What are the child protection concerns for deaf and disabled children and young people? What are their views about the child protection system? How can we measure if we have made a difference in ending violence against children? These questions and others are at the forefront of policy, practice and research debates internationally. This book explores the ethical, methodological, and practical challenges in conducting child protection research with deaf and disabled children and young people. This edited volume draws upon examples of research and translating research to policy and practice from international leaders in both child protection and disability fields. 978-1-78046-050-5 PB 2017 c.120pp £19.95/€ 29.00/US$32.00 Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing  Edited by Jane Appleton & Sue Peckover Highlights and examines the vital role of nurses in protecting children from maltreatment. It explores the input of nurses from different disciplines to the work in protecting children and young people. It draws on relevant theoretical, research and policy literature but focuses in particular on the evidence base for the value of their work. While orientated towards the UK practice, the book includes some comparative material to add a wider European perspective. The text includes discussion of specialist public health nursing roles such as health visiting and school nursing, as well as the contribution of those who have more general nursing roles but whose work brings them into contact with children, young people and their families. 978-178046-045-1 PB 2015 c.112pp £19.95/€28.00/US$32.00 Early Intervention: Supporting and strengthening families  Edited by Sharon Vincent Early investment in vulnerable families, both in terms of the timing of early support or at the onset of issues, is more effective and cheaper than specialist support which is offered only once problems become complex. One of the best ways to keep children safe is to develop innovative ways of enhancing the quality of help received by families, to redesign services around children and families’ needs, and to provide an early help through better inter-agency working. This book examines early intervention policy across the UK and promising practice initiatives which have been designed to support vulnerable families. 978-1-78046-036-9 PB 2015 c.112pp £19.95/€28.00/US$32.00 19 D U N E D I NCHILD PROTECTION & PUBLIC HEALTH Trauma Informed Care in the Perinatal Period  Edited by Julia Seng & Julie Taylor This edited collection addresses the issues of intergenerational cycles of childhood maltreatment and psychiatric vulnerability. It provides a resource to facilitate incorporating trauma-informed care and trauma-specific interventions into maternity services with an emphasis on improving outcomes for childbearing women with a childhood maltreatment history. 978-1-78046-053-6 PB 2015 156pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Children as Co-researchers: The need for protection  Caroline Bradbury-Jones Participatory approaches are becoming increasingly popular in research involving children. A growing trend is research by children where researchers engage or employ children as co- researchers or primary researchers. Caroline Bradbury-Jones explores the ethical, methodological, practical and protection issues associated with this participatory approach and provides a range of practical solutions. 978-1-78046-030-7 PB 2014 118pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Child Maltreatment and High Risk Families  Julie Taylor and Anne Lazenbatt The physical abuse of children can involve regular, violent treatment at the hands of parents or carers over a number of years. Its physical effects may last for days and may result in actual physical injury. It is not accidental. Although physical abuse can occur in any family, it is prevalent in particular sectors of society, where families may be vulnerable to a combination of complex risk factors such as domestic abuse, alcohol and drug (mis)use, and mental health issues. The authors provide an increased understanding of risk, analysis, impact, learning and the current landscape of service delivery. 978-1-78046-031-4 PB 2014 150pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES: Preventing Child Deaths – Learning from Review  Sharon Vincent 978-1-78046-011-6 PB 2012 160pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Children and Organised Sport Kate Alexander and Anne Stafford 978-1-906716-24-0 PB 2011 102pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Learning from Child Deaths and Serious Abuse in Scotland Sharon Vincent 978-1-903765-96-8 PB 2009 143pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Child Protection Reform across the UK Edited by Anne Stafford, Sharon Vincent and Nigel Partington 978-1-903765-97-5 PB 2010 110pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 20 D U N E D I NHEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE POLICY & PRACTICE IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE SERIES ISSN 1750-1407 Series Editors: Professor Charlotte Clarke and Dr Charlotte Pearson. Detailed but accessible introduction to policy and practice in key areas of health and social care from a Scottish perspective that is placed in an international, comparative context. Standing orders for new titles and new editions in the series to be sent on publication are accepted. FORTHCOMING MAY Housing and Housing Management: Balancing the two key contracts  Nigel Sprigings Policy & Practice in Health and Social Care (No. 23) Housing been described as the “wobbly pillar” of the welfare state on account of it never achieving universal coverage as did health and education. This does not diminish its importance for individuals, households, communities and social stability. Adequate and affordable housing provision is one of the key elements of a functioning democracy. Often characterised as the routine undertaking of simple tasks, housing management never established itself as a key profession in the public sector during the twentieth century. The author challenges that characterisation of housing management by arguing that, from its inception, ‘housing management’ involves complex tasks. Housing managers engage with some of the most difficult situations, including homelessness, racial harassment, domestic violence and anti-social behaviour. In continually responding to changing emphases in housing and welfare policy, housing management has established itself as a pragmatic and humane profession. However, this characterisation is itself challenged by the systematic erosion of welfare provision and the disciplinary nature of ‘welfare reform’ that requires housing managers to have an ‘enforcement’ role in respect of those people that they have traditionally sought to help. Housing management practice in the social sector has always had a complex role as it negotiates the contracts that exist both between tenants and landlords and the wider contract between the welfare state and its tenant citizens. This role faces new challenges as housing is placed at the heart of both welfare reform and an increasingly disciplinary state. The book will be of particular interest to students of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and to policy makers and housing managers more widely 978-1-78046-061-1 PB 2017 c.120pp £19.95/€ 29.00/US$32.00 FORTHCOMING MAY Socialising Transgender: Support in transition  Kate Norman Policy & Practice in Health and Social Care (No. 25) The author seeks to counterbalance the prevailing medicalised approach to statutory support for transgender people which tends to focus on the physical processes of transition rather than on subsequent social role adjustment. The book explores the potential for improved social support to transgender people and also to partners, children and other family members. It concludes by proposing a combination of advocacy and social care support to further the legal and social status of transgender people. 978-1-78046-065-9 PB 2017 c.120pp £19.95/€ 29.00/US$32.00 21 D U N E D I NHEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE Asset-based Approaches: their rise, role and reality  Fiona Garven, Jennifer McLean and Lisa Pattoni To achieve a fair and just society with positive outcomes for all, there is an imperative to examine both the structural causes of poverty and inequality and the role that public services play in mitigating and reducing their impacts. A ‘deficit approach’ to the provision of public services has evolved in which services are designed to fill gaps and fix problems. An alternative lies in asset-based approaches. These change the relationship between the citizen and the state; between those supported by services and those doing the supporting. In providing a critical overview of the evidence for asset-based approaches, including the background and rationale for the approach; the current policy, political and economic context; and the implications and opportunities for the workforce, this book will be of interest and use to all those seeking change and improvement in the provision of public services. (PPHSC 20) 978-1-78046-052-9 PB 2016 139pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 International Migration: the wellbeing of migrants  Philomena de Lima Migration has been a widely discussed and debated issue in recent years while events in Africa and the Arab world have led to migration to the European Union on an unprecedented scale. Philomena de Lima provides a contemporary understanding of migrants and migration processes and trends. She reviews the trends in international migration and theoretical discourses on making sense of migrant experiences with a particular focus on issues related to the wellbeing of migrants and their access to services, including health and social care services. The book will inform and educate social science students, policy-makers and those wrestling on a practical level with the implications of migration. (PPHSC 21) 978-1-78046-049-9 PB 2016 c.120pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Risk and Resilience: Global learning across the age span  Edited by Charlotte Clarke, Matthias Schwannauer, Julie Taylor, Sarah Ryhnas An edited volume with an international spectrum of contributors that places risk and resilience in health and social care in context. The chapters explore the issues of risk and resilience in health and social care, issues fundamental to some of the most complex decision making required by society, services, practitioners and members of the public. They look at issues of risk and resilience across the age spectrum, from children and young people to older adults. Three underpinning concepts are examined: location of responsibility and risk expertise; human rights and citizenship; agency and independence. (PPHSC 24) 978-1-78046-063-5 PB 2016 c.120pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 22 D U N E D I NHEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE Self-directed Support: Personalisation, choice and control  Charlotte Pearson, Julie Ridley and Susan Hunter There has been a concerted policy drive across social care towards cash based modes of support and strategies to personalise services. Support for this shift was initiated by the disabled peoples’ movement, both in the UK and globally. Policies introducing direct payments in lieu of provided services have been secured gradually as a central plank of the campaign for independent living. The authors examine some of the key themes and debates emerging from the implementation of this policy. These include a look at the evolution of this concept and its development within the wider personalisation agenda, as well as a focus on the new language that is emerging and the changing roles for users, carers, local authorities and service providers. ‘Overall, therefore, this book comes highly recommended both for an academic and (perhaps particularly) for a professional audience. It is important that anybody involved in the development of social care is able both to accept the need for service users to be enabled to exercise increased levels of choice and control, and to understand the extent to which financial shortfalls might inevitably compromise this. The book’s insistence on this point helps to ensure its significance in the literature.’ Critical Social Policy (PPHSC 19) 978-1-78046-024-6 PB 2014 107pp £18.95/€28.00/US$32.00 Social Work with Fathers: Positive Practice  Gary Clapton ‘The book explores topics such as maleness and being able to express a view from a male perspective. Each of chapters dovetails nicely into the one following. At times, case studies are used to exemplify points and throughout, the reader is signposted to key research. The book is a journey that begins with thoughts around finding fathers and ends with practice advice for workers. At just over 100 pages this volume is very accessible and easy to read. The introduction considers the importance of parenting to men and that fathers are important to their children. It promotes the idea of father inclusive practice, suggesting that fathers have been overlooked in the past by professionals.’ Journal of Social Work (PPHSC 18) 978-1-906716-12-7 PB 2013 128pp £18.95/€28.00/US$32.00 Residential Child Care  Graham Connelly and Ian Milligan ‘If you are new to looked-after children’s care or looking for policy directions you will learn how a well-ordered system could be structured. For the more experienced, this book gives many opportunities for reflection on the present and future for English children’s homes.’ Children & Young People Now (PPHSC 17) 978-1-78046-000-0 PB 2013 135pp £18.95/€28.00/US$32.00 ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES: Adoption and Fostering in Scotland Gary Clapton and Pauline Hogan (PPHSC 16) 978-1-906716-35-6 PB 2011 132pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Alcohol Ken Barrie (PPHSC 15) 978-1-906716-31-8 PB 2012 154pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Individual Outcomes: Getting back to what matters Emma Miller (PPHSC 14) 978-1-906716-30-1 PB 2012 132pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Supporting Vulnerable Adults: Citizenship, Capacity, Choice Ailsa Stewart (PPHSC 13) 978-1-906716-12-7 PB 2012 114pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Drugs Richard Hammersley and Phil Dalgarno (PPHSC 12) 978-1-906716-11-0 PB 2013 112pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Death, Dying and Bereavement: Issues for Practice Jacqueline H. Watts (PPHSC 11) 978-1-906716-08-0 PB 2009 134pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Service User and Carer Involvement: Beyond Good Intentions Edited by Mo McPhail (PPHSC 4) 978-1-903765-63-0 PB 2007 96pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 D U N E D I ND U N E D I N D U N E D IN POLICY AND PRACTICE IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 17POLICY AND PRACTICE IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 17 17 RESIDENTIAL CHILD CARE Graham Connelly and Ian Milligan Series Editors: Joyce Cavaye and Alison Petch ISSN: 1750-1407 The series Health and social care is essential to the well-being of every citizen. Administrations wrestle constantly with the balance of need, cost and aspiration as they provide the services that their citizens demand. Important reforms are taking place in Scotland as welfare services are underpinned by concepts of integration, partnership, social justice, independence and choice. Following devolution significant differences in policy and practice in these areas have emerged between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. This series provides an accessible introduction to these topics from a Scottish perspective and contrasts the Scottish approach to that adopted elsewhere. Every volume explores policy, practice and debate in a key area of health and social care. The series is written at a level that will stimulate those wrestling with these themes from a professional perspective as well as providing essential reading for those studying health and social policy. The book About 1,700 Scottish children and young people are in residential care. Several hundred others, including those with significant learning, physical and communication disabilities, receive regular periods of respite care in residential units. Residential child care has been the focus of a considerable amount of government policy-making. There have been changes in the average size and location of residential units, changes in staffing structures and repeated attempts to better train the workforce. Scotland’s government plays a major role, particularly for the most disadvantaged or ‘troubled and troublesome’ children. Scotland does not have a separate juvenile justice ‘detention’ sector and has only a tiny in-patient child and adolescent mental health service. A significant number of Scottish children’s homes remain under local government control, while there has been a decline in voluntary sector provision and growth, from a low base, of private provision. This is the first dedicated study of the Scottish children’s residential care sector with appropriate comparison to parallel provision elsewhere. The result is a text of great interest and utility. Other titles in the Series include: 16. Adoption and Fostering in Scotland 9. Youth Justice 7. Learning Disability and Social Inclusion R E S ID E N T IA L C H IL D C A R E C o n n e lly a n d M illig a n 9 781780 460000 978–1–780460–00–0 23 D U N E D I NEDUCATION School Leadership (Third Edition)  Edited by Jim O’Brien School Leadership summarises current thinking about leadership in schools. School leadership is set in its social context. Is leadership associated with function within a bureaucratically ordered hierarchy, is it widely shared across communities or is it both? The school is considered both as an institution of the state and as an agency of democratic values. Ideas as to who the leaders are and what leadership involves are recast. The authors’ recent experience with Headship preparation and development is discussed and analysed. Set in the Scottish experience this book provides examples of general issues facing many schools and school leaders across the world. This is a thoroughly revised and updated edition of a book that has been a key resource for School Leadership programmes since publication of the first edition in 2003. 978-1-78046-051-2 PB 2016 264pp £24.95/€38.00/$39.95 Professional School Leadership: Dealing with Dilemmas (Second edition)  Daniel Murphy ‘I found this book very interesting and inspiring and the additions to the first edition ensure that the concepts explored have received in-depth treatment, allowing the inclusion of a range of views and literature. School leaders, especially those finding themselves grappling with dilemmas, would find may useful insights here, but my concern relates to an observation made by Murphy himself. School leaders are more often reactive than reflective, due either to their perception or the pressures of their role. To gain the full benefit of the insights offered, they would need to take time to work through and reflect upon the theory and examples discussed in Part A. Used as part of leadership training this book provides rich and thought-provoking material to promote deep reflection within aspiring leaders. The book makes a timely and useful contribution to the profession at a time when schools and school leaders face huge change and challenges.’ Educational Management Administration & Leadership 978-1-78046-018-5 PB 2013 196pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Democratic Citizenship in Schools: Teaching Controversial Issues, Traditions and Accountability Jane Brown, Hamish Ross and Pamela Munn (Eds) In recent years a greater emphasis has been placed on how nation states socialise and prepare the next generation of citizens. This book presents three themes: Democratic Schooling, Teaching Controversial Issues and Accountability. The scholars and school leaders who have contributed to this volume do so from a wide international perspective. 978-1-78046-005-5 PB 2012 176pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Community Education, Learning and Development (Third Edition)  Lyn Tett Community Education, Learning and Development moves behind the policy rhetoric to recognise and explore some of the tensions in current policy trends, particularly the danger of seeing social marginalisation and exclusion as an individual problem rather than a result of structured inequalities. ‘A key resource, highly recommended for students and practitioners alike.’ Studies in the Education of Adults (of the second edition) 978-1-906716-10-3 PB 2010 136pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 24 D U N E D I NEDUCATION POLICY AND PRACTICE IN EDUCATION SERIES (PPE) ISSN 1479-6910 Series Editors: Professor Jim O’Brien and Professor Christine Forde. This series of books on Policy and Practice in Education supports and illuminates the public and professional discussion of education from a Scottish perspective set in the wider context of developments in other countries. Standing orders for new titles and new editions to be sent on publication are accepted. TITLES AVAILABLE: Coaching and Mentoring: Developing Teachers and Leaders Christine Forde & Jim O’Brien (Editors) (PPE 29) 978-1-906716-29-5 PB 2011 119pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Youth Work in Communities and Schools Annette Coburn and David Wallace (PPE 28) 978-1-906716-23-3 PB 2011 127pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 International Education: Educating for a global future Margery McMahon (PPE 26) 978-1-906716-03-5 PB 2010 104pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 Family Learning: Engaging with Parents Jeannie Mackenzie (PPE 25) 978-1-903765-99-9 PB 2009 98pp £19.95/€29.00/US$32.00 25 D U N E D I NSINGING AND VOCAL STUDIES Singing – Personal and performance values in training  Peter T Harrison With a Foreword by Malcolm Martineau ‘Singing is the most passionate form of conscious verbalised communication in the human species. It is therefore appropriate that a book on the singing voice be filled with passion – and this book is. Singing: Personal and performance values in Training is not for the faint hearted or those looking for a middle road. It is not a follow-by-numbers instruction book or a scientifically based explanation of the singing voice. It is a bold and decisive statement in which Peter Harrison puts pen to a deeply personal manifesto – an unashamed call to arms of what he feels should be occurring in the psyche, the mind, the heart and the life of every singing pedagogue. ln every page there is a heartfelt claim about the singing voice: the condition and needs of the singer; the appetites of the listening public that shape the singing landscape; the common science that informs and can mislead, the singing teachers and institutions; or, the meaning of what it is to sing.’ Communicating Voice (British Voice Association) 978-1-78046-006-2 PB 2013 286pp £25.00/€37.00/US$40.00 The Human Nature of the Singing Voice – Exploring a Holistic Basis for Sound Teaching and Learning  Peter T Harrison ‘Harrison manages to successfully combine thought-provoking ideas on how to liberate and enjoy our voice while at the same time offering practical advice for the care and maintenance of the voice...required reading for the singing professional.’ The Singer 978-1-903765-54-8 PB 2006 256pp £22.00/€32.00/US$35.000 The Student Voice – An Introduction to Developing the Singing Voice  Colin Baldy ‘Colin Baldy has been clear and concise and throughout he speaks directly to the reader and provides examples wherever he can. As an introduction, The Student Voice has some useful information and provocative points for further discussion and research particularly for the enquiring student. The section, Repertoire with Purpose, could be useful to novice teachers and, again, thought provoking for the more experienced.’ Newsletter of the British Voice Association 978-1-903765-95-1 PB 2010 156pp £22.00/€32.00/US$35.000 26 D U N E D I NHISTORY Mallorca: The Making of the Landscape Richard Buswell ‘The book is well illustrated and offers a panoply of archival photographs, contemporary images and sketch maps, but draws almost exclusively upon secondary research material. It is of direct interest to the teaching of Iberian geography at undergraduate level. This fascinating and informative book offers valuable insight into an island community that is little known beyond its Catalan and Castilian research roots.’ Geography 978-1-78046-010-9 HB 2013 256pp col. illus. £25.00/€29.95/US$40.00 The Norns in Old Norse Mythology  Karen Bek-Pedersen ‘With The Norns in Old Norse Mythology, Karen Bek-Pedersen offers a very detailed book about nornir as well as other supernatural female figures in Old Norse mythology. It is a high quality piece of research, especially as regards its detailed and accurate close readings of the text sources, which will satisfy both interested beginners and specialised scholars.’ Cosmos 978-1-78046-035-2 PB 2013 (first published in HB in 2011) 240pp £29.99/€42.00/US$45.00 Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to AD 1014  Clare Downham ‘Students of the Viking Age from any discipline need to be fully versed in its historical record. This book ably provides a well- researched and solid account of that record in Britain and Ireland, and should be valued as both a rich source and an interesting read.’ Medieval Archaeology 978-1-906716-06-6 PB 2008 358pp £19.95/€29.00/US$31.500 27 D U N E D I NSCOTTISH GAELIC STUDIES Canan & Cultur/Language and Culture: Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig 8 Wilson McLeod, Anja Gunderloch and Rob Dunbar (Editors) This collection of essays, by some of the foremost scholars of Gaelic and Celtic studies, includes essays on aspects of Gaelic literature, language, material culture, oral tradition and history. The essays are based on papers and conversations held during the fourth Rannachadh na Gàidhlig conference, which took place at Edinburgh in July 2014. 978-1-78046-058-1 PB 2016 c. 356pp col. illus. £29.99/€45.00/US$55.00 By Poetic Authority: The Rhetoric of Panegyric in Gaelic Poetry of Scotland to c.1700 M. Pía Coira ‘This is an indispensable book. It combines into a wide and well-founded survey all that until now had to be laboriously culled from conference proceedings, periodicals and similar publications. Even if only the system of rhetorical codes in the panegyric poetry until 1700 had been presented, this would be a sufficient reason to value this book. However, Coira does not stop here. Against the backdrop of the historical and literary development of Gaelic poetry, the reader obtains a comprehensive picture of Gaelic society, its identity and structure of power, closely bound up with Gaelic literary culture.’ Review translated from Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 978-1-78046-003-1 HB 2012 464pp £45.00/€68.00/US$73.95 Lainnir a’ Bhùirn – The Gleaming Water: Essays on Modern Gaelic Literature Edited byEmma Dymock & Wilson McLeod ‘Lainnir a’ Bhuirn – The Gleaming Water fills a spot within Gaelic literary criticism that has for all too long been left empty. In its commendable attempt to highlight some of the many neglected contemporary aspects of Scottish Gaelic literature this collection is sure to become an inspiration to many Gaelic scholars for years to come.’ Northwords Now 978-1-906716-34-9 PB 2011 221pp £25.00/€36.00/US$39.50 Coimhearsnachd na Gàidhlig an-diugh – Gaelic Communities Today Gillian Munro and Iain Mac an Tàilleir (Editors) Arising from the 4th Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig conference held on Skye in 2006 this is an interdisciplinary collection of essays reviewing the state of Gaelic communities in modern Scotland. The volume covers topics such as language policy, questions of identity, and community and development issues. Contributions in Gaelic have detailed English language synopses. 978-1-903765-85-2 PB 2010 189pp £22.00/€32.00/US$34.50 Canan & Cultur/Language and Culture: Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig 4 Gillian Munro and Richard A. V. Cox (Editors) A volume of proceedings from the fourth Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig conference held on Skye in July 2006. The volume includes papers on Scottish Gaelic history, language, literature and culture from early Christian times to the present. In addition to Scotland there is material relating to Ireland, Scandinavia, England and Canada. 978-1-903765-86-9 PB 2010 218pp £22.00/€32.00/US$34.50 28 D U N E D I NWORLD RELIGIONS UNDERSTANDING FAITH SERIES ISSN 1744-5833 Titles in Understanding Faith are intended as first readers for serious students of comparative religion and as basic source books of essential information about the major world faiths in the 21st century. Understanding Jainism  Lawrence A. Babb Jainism is Buddhism’s often overlooked cousin. As the only surviving examples of ancient India’s non-Vedic religious traditions, the two religions are often grouped together as ‘heterodoxies’, but this is to ignore deep differences between Jain and Buddhist beliefs and practices. Unlike Buddhism, Jainism has hardly spread beyond the Indian subcontinent but unlike Buddhism, Jainism has survived in India where it is a prominent element in the mix of Indian religions today. Although relatively few in numbers, the Jains are a wealthy community and exercise great influence in Indian economic and political life. 978-1-78046-032-1 PB 2015 c.176pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Chinese Religions  Joachim Gentz Chinese religions are often presented as a unity with each tradition possessing features typical of a Chinese religious system. From the 17th century there has been debate in Europe as to whether religion in China exists at all or whether what appear as Chinese religions are atheistic, purely functional, superstitious, cults and rituals. 978-1-903765-77-7 PB 2013 176pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding the Brahma Kumaris Frank Whaling The Brahma Kumaris are a new spiritual tradition. The movement began in 1936 and has over 450,000 adherents world- wide in over 100 countries. In this book Frank Whaling seeks to understand the Brahma Kumaris. As with all spiritual traditions, the Brahma Kumaris are different, bewildering, fascinating in their newness and in their complexity. 978-1-903765-51-7 PB 2012160pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES: Understanding the Baha’i Faith Wendi Momen with Moojan Momen 978-1-903765-50-0 PB 2005 173pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Buddhism  Perry Schmidt-Leukel 978-1-903765-18-0 PB 2006 192pp b&w illus. £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Christianity Gilleasbuig Macmillan 978-1-903765-22-7 PB 2004 122pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Hinduism  Frank Whaling 978-1-903765-36-4 PB 2009 190pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Islam Cafer S Yaran 978-1-903765-30-2 PB 2007 122pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Judaism Jeremy Rosen 978-1-903765-28-9 PB 2003 160pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 Understanding Sikhism  W. Owen Cole 978-1-903765-15-9 PB 2004 182pp £12.50/€18.50/US$19.95 
work_nflat6qisvcfrlnmotx6uygfcq	----	MURDOCH RESEARCH REPOSITORY This is the author’s final version of the work, as accepted for publication following peer review but without the publisher’s layout or pagination. The definitive version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158791970180205 McGill, T.J., Volet, S.E. and Hobbs, V.J. (1997) Studying computer programming externally: Who succeeds? Distance Education, 18 (2). pp. 236-256. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/839/ © 1997 Taylor & Francis It is posted here for your personal use. No further distribution is permitted. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158791970180205 http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/839/ Studying computer programming externally: Who succeeds? T.J. McGill, S.E.Volet and V.J. Hobbs Abstract Learning computer programming is difficult for many students. Distance education students in particular often have problems as the difficulty of the course content is compounded by the problems of isolation from other students and their tutor. This paper reports an investigation of distance education student performance in an introductory computer programming course. The aim of the study was to develop a better understanding of the factors associated with academic success, withdrawal or failure and to attempt to identify students at risk of non-completion. Some implications for teaching computer programming externally are discussed. Introduction The nature of course content has been shown to have an important relationship to other factors impacting on course completion for distance education students (Bernard & Amundsen 1989). In her study of barriers to persistence of distance education students, Garland (1993) stressed the need to consider the nature of the course content. Learning computer programming is difficult for many students (Canas, Bajo & Gonzalvo 1994). Writing a computer program requires a broad range of knowledge and skills ranging from highly specific knowledge of the programming language and skill with the programming environment through more general problem solving strategies and application domain knowledge (Brooks 1990). Students often can become too concerned with learning the syntax (i.e. grammar) of a programming language and consequently may not acquire the more general, transferable conceptual knowledge. Distance education students in particular often have problems as the difficulty of the course content is compounded by the problems of isolation from other students and their tutor. This paper describes an investigation of distance education student performance in an introductory computer programming course and discusses some of the implications. Retention rates A consequence of the problems faced by distance education students is that these students are more likely to withdraw from individual courses and programmes of study than are internal students (Glatter & Weddell 1971; Kaeley1993). Even the Open University, which has the reputation of providing good quality study packages and high levels of student support, has reported that little more than 50 per cent of an undergraduate intake eventually graduate (McIntosh, Woodley & Morrison 1980). Given the nature of learning computer programming, there is reason to believe that students studying externally face an even higher risk of withdrawal than those enrolled in other disciplines. In their investigation of student dropout from distance education courses, Woodley and Parlett (1983) concluded that wastage rates (dropout and failure) were above average for mathematics and technology courses. Similarly, an analysis of the retention rates of students in the introductory course in computer programming offered at Murdoch University suggested that distance education students were twice as likely to withdraw as internal students enrolled in the same course. Few studies, however, have examined the extent to which enrolment in an external course, and completion in that course, are confounded by or interact with other variables. Roberts (1984) found that the time that a distance education student is at greatest risk of dropping out is during their first term, semester or year of study. According to Coldeway (1986), it appears that students who complete one or more courses have a much higher probability of going on to complete their programme of study. There is thus a particular need to identify introductory computing students who are at risk of withdrawal and to provide them with appropriate support at the beginning of their study. Demographic factors Some research on the relationship of demographic factors to academic achievement indicates that in the case of distance education students, variables such as age, sex, location and previous academic experience are generally unrelated to course completion and academic performance (e.g. Coldeway 1986; Kember, Lai, Siaw & Yuen 1992). However, Kaeley (1993) in a study of mathematics achievement of distance education students, found that background variables such as socioeconomic status and previous academic achievement may be more important for distance education students than for internal students. Similarly, Woodley and Parlett (1983) found that in general men were more likely to drop out than women and that very young and very old students were more likely to drop out. They also found that previous educational background had an impact on dropout such that the lower a person's previous educational qualifications the more likely they were to drop out. Through their examination of demographic characteristics they showed that there was some relationship between demographic characteristics and dropout in distance education courses. Overall, these findings suggest that the difficulty of studying externally is magnified for students with some background handicaps or when the nature of the course is particularly demanding, as seems to be the case with introductory computer programming. Research on factors that potentially influence the learning of students enrolled in on campus introductory computer programming courses has provided evidence that while gender and age do not appear to influence achievement (Dalbey & Linn 1985; Volet & Lund 1994; Volet & Styles 1992), background in computing is among the best predictors of performance (Kersteen et al. 1988; Volet & Styles 1992). The relationship of achievement in introductory computer programming courses to general ability (Clarke & Chambers 1989; Dalbey & Linn 1985) and programme of study - i.e. whether they are majoring in computing or in other programmes (Volet & Lund 1994) - also has been highlighted. The relative role of these factors in studying computer programming in distance education is not well documented and needs to be investigated. Contact with tutors and other students A survey conducted at Murdoch University (Aveling, Smith & Wilson 1992) documented the typical problems experienced by distance education students. The most common problems cited were lack of contact with tutors and isolation from other students. Davies and Preece (1990) suggest that lack of fellow students or tutors to provide help in case of need is one of the most important differences between face to face instruction and distance learning. It has been proposed as one of the most important reasons students give for withdrawing (Harrington 1979). The problem of lack of contact is compounded for distance education students studying computing because of the dependence on software and hardware. Just explaining the nature of problems with software and hardware over the telephone is beyond many students in introductory courses. Jennings and Atkinson (1982) claim that course design for computer programming courses is more difficult than for any other discipline because of this dependence on equipment. Davies and Preece (1990) attempted to compensate for lack of contact in an Open University introductory programming course by supplementing tutor contact with a help-line and a series of 16 television shows. Similarly, McGill and Hobbs (1996) provided students with a supplementary video and workbook in an attempt to address some of the problems distance education students face due to lack of contact. MacCallum's (1995) attempt to encourage interaction among external students, using educational technology, was well received by students. Motivational factors The importance of general motivational dispositions on academic achievement is well established in the educational literature. Recent research (Boekaerts 1994; Volet 1997), however, has revealed the greater predictive power of situation-specific cognitive and affective variables in explaining performance in comparison to trait-like motivational variables. The significance of process variables on achievement in distance education - in addition to demographic factors, institutional characteristics and stable individual characteristics - was acknowledged in Tinto's (1975) early model of dropout from higher education and supported by Sweet's (1986) application of Tinto's model in a distance education programme. Kember et al's (1992) more recent model of student progress in distance education also acknowledges the importance of factors other than academic or demographic. Their conceptual framework incorporates the degree to which distance education students are able to integrate their studies with their home life, social activities and work commitments. The significance of external students' personal lives and work constraints on dropout is a recurrent theme in the distance education literature (Peters 1992). Motivational and emotional variables are emphasised throughout the empirical distance education literature. To cite just a few studies, Coldeway (1986) claimed that motivational factors and the actual behaviour of learners after enrolment were more important than demographic factors, and Bernt and Bugbee (1993) suggested that while ability is a more critical factor in achievement among younger students, attitudinal, motivational, and personality factors may contribute more to differences in achievement among the older students who form the majority of distance education students. A comparison of distance education and internal students by Wong (1992) found that distance education students reported a greater interest in the courses they are studying (for their own sakes) and lower extrinsic motivation (interest for the qualifications they offer). They also displayed higher intrinsic motivation, higher incidence of inter-relating ideas and a greater use of deep approaches to learning. Finally, their fear of failure was lower than that of internal students (Wong 1992). Wong suggests that the differences could be due to the different learning environments: full time study by face to face instruction versus teleconference study. However, in a comparative study of internal and distance education students taking the same course, Harper and Kember (1986) found that the approaches to study of distance education students were not qualitatively different from those of students studying face to face. A better understanding of the significance of students' initial cognitive, motivational and volitional appraisals of their study is needed to be able to identify the students at risk of dropping out from their distance education courses. Research suggests that finding the time to complete course requirements can be a major problem for distance education students. Gibson and Graff (1992) found a significant difference in finding enough time to study between students who successfully completed a distance education course and those who did not. This problem is potentially greater for programming courses because of the large investment in time that is typically required for completing the hands-on component of the course (Volet & Lund 1994). Being aware upfront of the time commitment required and being able to accommodate it may be important to success in studying computer programming through distance learning. In conclusion, this brief review of prior research on the determining factors in successful distance education and on predictors of achievement in introductory computer programming suggests that success in studying computer programming externally is affected by a whole range of personal factors - demographic and psychological – as well as contextual factors. Woodley and Parlett's (1983) multivariate model to identify 'high risk' students acknowledges the complexity of personal and motivational factors affecting study at a distance. They claim that at-risk students should be singled out for special attention before and during their studies in order to reduce the high wastage rates in distance education. The crucial issue is to be able to identify early enough who are the students at risk. This can only be achieved through developing a better understanding of the factors associated with academic success, withdrawal or failure. Research questions The present study aimed at providing insight into the specific factors associated with success in studying computer programming externally. Coldeway (1986) provides a number of examples of definitions of success which have been proposed or used in previous studies. These include course marks, completion rate, student satisfaction and follow-up measures such as getting jobs. In the present study, course completion was used as the measure of success because the major problem in introductory programming courses tends to be dropout rather than failure. Students who successfully completed the course were labelled as Completers and those who either withdrew or failed were combined to form a Noncompleters group. Collapsing students who failed with those who withdrew into a single category was also used by Sweet (1986) and by Bernard and Amundsen (1989). This categorisation was considered as appropriate in the present study because of the high proportion of 'unofficial dropouts' in previous years. Unofficial dropouts consist of students, typically in their first year at university, who are struggling with their study and do not withdraw in time to avoid a Fail grade on their academic record. Empirical support for this categorisation was provided by an exploratory discriminant analysis which was unable to differentiate successfully between those who failed and those who withdrew. Two research questions were addressed in this study: 1. How do students who successfully completed a distance education introductory programming course differ from those who did not complete it, in terms of personal characteristics, entering expectations, and initial perceptions of the difficulties involved in completing the course? Based on a review of the literature on student dropout from distance education and on student learning in introductory programming the following hypotheses were generated: i. Completion of the distance education introductory programming course is not related to students' age or gender. ii. Students with prior experience of studying externally are more likely to complete the course than those for whom the course is their first experience of distance education. iii. Students with programming experience and those majoring in computer science are more likely to complete the course than those without experience or who are enrolled in another programme of study. iv. Students with high university entrance scores are more likely to complete the course than students with low scores. v. Students who have relatively realistic estimates of the time required to study in a distance education introductory programming course at the beginning of the semester are more likely to complete that course than those who tend to underestimate that time. vi. Students who are more confident in their ability to complete the course, and those who expect that they will attain a higher level of competence in programming, are more likely to complete it successfully in comparison to those less confident. vii. Students who perceive the course as more relevant to their programme of study, and those who are more interested in the course, are more likely to complete it successfully in comparison to those who do not perceive the course as relevant or those who are less interested. Students' perceptions of the importance of various factors in contributing to their potential success in the course are of interest as well. However, no specific hypotheses were generated regarding students' rating of importance of factors in contributing to their success, as this part of the study was exploratory in nature. The list of factors was inspired by psychological research on the significance of causal attributions of success and failure in academic study (Werner, 1979). It included two internal factors: own ability (uncontrollable) and hard work (controllable); and four external factors: good materials and difficulty of the course (uncontrollable physical factors) and help from tutor and from friends/family (relatively uncontrollable social factors). 2. Can students' completion or non-completion of a distance education introductory programming course be predicted on the basis of students' personal characteristics, entering expectations and initial perceptions of the difficulties involved in completing the course? Method The study was conducted with three consecutive cohorts of university students enrolled in a distance education (external) mode of an introductory computer science course. Three cohorts were used in order to increase the number of students surveyed. The content and organisation of the course was the same for the three cohorts and consistent with the on campus offering. The course taught Pascal as a first programming language. Students taking the course were supplied with a print based study guide and allocated a tutor who could be contacted by telephone to help solve problems the student might have. This approach to teaching computer programming externally is comparable with approaches used in other Australian universities (Jones, 1996). Each student was sent a questionnaire, with an accompanying letter explaining the purpose of the study, in the first week of the semester. The questionnaire contained two sections. The first section requested personal details such as the student's age, sex, programme of study, whether it was their first experience of external study, and the extent of their previous experience with computing. The second section requested information about the students' initial expectations and perceptions of the course and their learning in it. The questions included how many hours they expected to spend studying in the course, how confident they were of their ability to complete the course, and how difficult they thought it would be to study the course externally. They were also asked to rate the importance of a number of factors that might contribute to their success and to rate a number of factors that might affect their ability to complete the course successfully. These factors were rated on a Likert-type scale where 1 was labelled Not Important and 5 was labelled Very Important. Students who failed to return the questionnaire after four weeks were sent a reminder, although by then it was too late to obtain their initial perceptions. Students' results in the course were obtained from university records. Profile of respondents A total of 129 responses to the questionnaire were received giving an overall response rate of 78%. There were missing values, however, on a number of variables. First, data on initial perceptions was unavailable for the 22 students who failed to return the questionnaire within 4 weeks. Second, university entrance scores were not available for 48 students who had entered the university via an alternative entrance test, or who had completed their schooling prior to these scores being provided to universities. The characteristics of the respondents are summarised in table 1. The majority of students were over 30 years of age or over and male. The course under consideration was the first external course for approximately half of the students and approximately two thirds of the students were computer science majors for whom the course was mandatory. Although almost all of the students had some experience with computers only about one third had any previous computer programming experience. TABLE 1 Profile of sample N (%) Age Gender Programme of study Programming experience First external course below 3D 30orover Male Female Computer Science Other Some None Yes No 43 86 88 41 87 42 46 80 67 61 (33.3%) (66.7%) (68.2%) (31.8%) (67.4%) (32.6%) (36.5%) (63.5%) (52.3%) (47.7%) Results This section is structured around the two main research questions and the eight hypotheses, generated as part of the first question. Differences between course Completers and Noncompleters (first research question) Personal characteristics. A series of χ2-tests were conducted to determine whether demographic factors such as age, gender [hypothesis (i)], prior experience of external study [hypothesis (ii)], programming experience, programme of study [hypothesis (iii)], as well as general ability represented by students' university entrance score [hypothesis (iv)], were related to course completion. Table 2 and table 3 show the breakdown of course Completers and Noncompleters by each variable. TABLE 2 Breakdown of course Completers and Noncompleters by several variables N Number of completers (%) Significance Age below30 30 or over Gender Male Female First external course Yes No Programme of study Computer Science Other Programming experience Some None 43 86 88 41 67 61 87 42 46 80 23 (33.3%) 58 (66.7%) 59 (67.0%) 22 (53.7%) 41 (61.2%) 39 (63.9%) 56 (64.4%) 25 (59.5%) 34 (73.9%) 45 (56.3%) n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. p<.05 The first hypothesis, that completion is not related to age or gender, was supported as there were no significant differences in age or gender between Completers and Noncompleters. The second hypothesis was not supported as there were no significant differences between Completers and Noncompleters in whether this course was a student's first experience of external study or not. The third hypothesis was only partially supported with Completers differing significantly from Noncompleters in terms of computer programming experience (χ 2(1) 3.89, p<.05) but not in terms of whether or not they were majoring in computer science. The fourth hypothesis, regarding students' general ability, was supported as Completers had significantly higher university entrance scores than did Noncompleters (351.9 vs 340.1, t(71) 1.92, p.<.05). TABLE 3 Comparison of course Completers and Noncompleters by university entrance score N University entrance score Significance X (sd) Completers Noncompleters 49 32 351.9 340.1 (28.4) (26.0) p<.05 Initial perceptions. A series of t-tests were conducted in order to determine whether initial perceptions and expectations, such as study time estimate [theory, practical work; hypothesis (v)], confidence in ability to complete the course, expected level of achievement in computer programming [hypothesis (vi)], and perceived relevance of the course and interest in the course [hypothesis (vii)], were related to course completion. Table 4 shows the initial perceptions and expectations of Completers and Noncompleters. TABLE 4 Initial perceptions and expectations of Completers and Noncompleters Completers Noncompleters Significance X (sd) X (sd) Estimated hours per week studying theory Estimated hours per week undertaking practical work Confidence in ability to complete the course Expected level of achievement in computer programming Perceived relevance of the course to overall programme of study Interest in the course 5.3 6.0 4.5 4.0 3.0 3.9 (2.9) (2.8) (0.7) (0.7) (1.0) (0.9) 5.6 4.9 4.1 3.7 4.4 4.0 (3.5) (3.6) (0.8) (0.8) (0.9) (0.8) n.s. p<.05 p<.05 p<.05 n.s. n.s. The fifth hypothesis was addressed by examining students' estimates of the time required to study theory and time required to undertake the practical work separately. As expected, Completers' mean estimate of the time required to complete the practical work was significantly different (higher) from Noncompleters (6.0 vs 4.9, t(71) 1.81, p<.05) but this was not the case for the expected time required to study the theory. The sixth hypothesis was supported. Completers' mean rating of confidence in ability to complete the course was significantly different from Noncompleters (4.5 vs 4.1, t(74) 2.42, p<.05). The same results emerged for anticipated level of achievement in computer programming (4.0 vs 3.7, t(80) 1.94, p<.05). The seventh hypothesis was not supported as there were no significant differences between Completers and Noncompleters in ratings of relevance to their programme of study or interest in the course. It was anticipated that Completers would perceive the course as more relevant and more interesting yet this was not found to be the case. The results were unexpected, as Noncompleters gave much higher ratings of relevance than did Completers. Perceived importance of factors in contributing to success in the course. Table 5 shows Completers' and Noncompleters' ratings of the importance of a set of factors in contributing to their success in the course. TABLE 5 Completers' and Noncompleters' perceptions of importance of selected factors in contributing to their success in the course Completers Noncompleters Significance X (sd) X (sd) Internal Own ability Hard work External (physical) Good materials Difficulty of course External (social) Help from tutor Help from friends/family 4.1 4.4 4.4 3.4 . 3.3 2.2 (0.7) (0.8) (0.7) (1.0) (1.0) (1.3) 4.3 4.7 4.6 3.7 3.7 2.7 (0.8) (0.5) (0.8) (0.8) (1.1) (1.3) n.s. p<.05 n.s. n.s. p=.055 marg. p=.064 marg. As can be seen in table 5, Noncompleters' ratings tended to be systematically higher than those of Completers, although not always significantly. The differences between Completers and Noncompleters on the measures of hard work (4.4 vs 4.7, t(104) 2.46, p<0.05), help from tutor (3.3 vs 3.7, t(77) 1.95, p=.055) and help from friends/family (2.2 vs 2.7, t(84) 1.87, p=.O64) agree with Noncompleters' lower ratings of confidence and expected level of achievement (see table 4). Right from the beginning of the course, Noncompleters were concerned about their achievement, anticipated that they would need to work hard to complete the course and that any forms of help could make a difference. The lack of significant difference on the measure of own ability suggests that Noncompleters were not questioning their own capacity to handle the concepts but rather were concerned about the lack of social support available should they require some help. Can students' completion or non-completion of a distance education introductory programming course be predicted? (Second research question.) Logistic regression was used to determine whether information collected from students during the first week of semester could be used to predict whether students would successfully complete the course or not. The SPSS Regression Logistic procedure was used to perform the analyses. A number of logistic regression models were considered, using the variables relating to the hypotheses for the first research question. Interactions were tested for, but none was found to be significant. The model with the best explanatory capability was: Prob (completing) = where: CONFID is confidence in ability to complete the course RELEV is the perceived relevance of the course to the overall programme of study TUTHELP is die perceived importance of help from the tutor ENTRANCE-SCORE is the University entrance score of the student As shown in table 6 this model correctly classified 82.5% of students (Model χ2(4) 33.4, p=0.000). As an aim of the study was to be able to generalise from this sample of students to students studying introductory programming in the future, an attempt was made to validate the predictive capability of the model using a holdout set of data obtained from students taking the course in the following year. As shown in table 7, a 65.5% success rate in prediction was obtained with the holdout sample of 29 students. A Z-test of proportions (Z 1.67, p<.05) showed that the success of prediction obtained with this model was in fact significantly better than chance (51.5% of this group). TABLE 6 Classification of predictions Actual N Predicted Group Membership Per cent correct Noncompleters Completers Noncompleters Completers Overall 25 38 20 6 5 32 80.0% 84.2% 82.5% TABLE 7 Validation of the model using a holdout sample Actual N Predicted Group Membership Per cent correct Noncompleters Completers Noncompleters Completers Overall 12 17 9 7 3 10 75.0% 58.8% 65.5% Discussion Overall, this study found that students who successfully completed a distance education introductory computer programming course could be differentiated from those who did not complete it, at the beginning of their study, and in terms of some demographic characteristics, entering expectations, and initial perceptions of the course. These differences may facilitate identification of students at risk of non-completion so that additional support can be provided. Who succeeds? As anticipated, successful completion of the distance education introductory programming course was not found to be related to students' age or gender. The results of this study support the findings from studies involving internal classes in computer programming (e.g. Dalbey & Linn 1985; Volet & Lund 1994). However, a post-hoc analysis showed that females anticipated that the course would be more difficult than did males (3.74 vs 3.16, t(55) -2.95, p<.01) despite comparable levels of general ability and background in computing. This is consistent with research on male and female attitudes in internal computer programming courses (e.g. Clarke & Chambers 1989). The results of this study also agree with those of Volet and her colleagues (Volet & Lund 1994; Volet & Styles 1992) who found no relationship between age and performance in an internal introductory programming course. However, the present study had a very small number of students under 20 years of age, so this conclusion should be viewed with caution. The hypothesis that students with prior experience of studying externally are more likely to complete the course than those for whom the course is their first experience of distance education was not supported in this study. This could be explained by the fact that many of the students had little experience of external study. One or two semesters of experience in distance education - which may have consisted of only one or two courses since external students can only study part-time - would have provided minimal experience of studying externally. In addition, prior experience does not necessarily mean successful prior experience. It is also possible that studying computer programming is sufficiently different from studying other disciplines that the students' prior experience studying other non-programming courses externally did not prepare them for the difficulty of studying programming. Students with some previous computer programming experience were found to be more likely to complete the course than those without experience. This result is consistent with other studies involving on-campus courses in introductory computer programming (e.g. Kersteen et al. 1988; Volet & Styles 1992). Previous exposure to computer programming can be expected to be even more of an advantage to distance education students as it would grant them insight into the nature of the course, enabling more realistic expectations of the work involved. It is possible that it would also make students less dependent on help from tutors and other students, mitigating the difficulties of distance education. Kember et al (1992) found a relationship between the background characteristics and social and academic integration variables, which in turn relate to progress variables suggesting that the way students adapt to study is influenced by pre-entry characteristics. Previous programming experience may facilitate students' adaptation to the course. The hypothesis that students who are majoring in computer science are more likely to complete the course than those who are not was not supported in this study. This is in contrast to the results of Volet and Lund (1994) who found programme of study to be a significant predictor of introductory programming students' performance. Given that computer programming courses have a reputation for difficulty, and that this difficulty is compounded by external study, it appears likely that students who are not computer science majors enrol in these courses only if they have a strong personal interest in computing or perhaps professional reasons for taking such courses. Further research should investigate further the profile of non-computing majors in computer programming, in particular the extent to which external students may be professionals working part-time in positions which require computer programming knowledge. The immediate need and relevance for such skills would explain their comparable rate of completion with computing majors. Students with high university entrance scores were found to be more likely to complete the course than students with low scores. This is consistent with a number of studies that have shown that students of high general ability perform well in on-campus programming classes, although the relationship between general ability and success at programming is thought to be moderated by learning style (Dalbey & Linn 1985). The hypothesis relating to estimates of time required to study (hypothesis (v)) provided some interesting results. There was no significant difference between those students who successfully completed the course and those who did not with respect to their estimates of the time required to study the theory of the course. The theory component of the course involved an introduction to the syntax of the programming language and a program design methodology. Presumably, students' prior experience of study enabled them to make fairly realistic estimates of the time that would be involved in reading and taking notes from the assigned chapters of the textbook. There was however, a significant difference in the estimates of the time required to undertake the practical component of the course between those who completed the course and those who did not. Those who successfully completed the course made higher initial estimates. Studying computer programming requires a large investment of time spent at the computer actually writing, testing and debugging programs. Students who have not anticipated the potentially large investment in time that can be involved in programming may be unable to make the necessary adjustment in order to be able to complete the course successfully. The fact that external students are often characterised by the fact that they have family or work commitments which prevent them from attending classes on campus rather than by geographical isolation could explain these results. Potential students should be made aware of the need to allocate sizable amounts of time to programming so that they can make a realistic determination of their capacity to undertake a programming course, and make adjustments to their overall study load and/or employment if required. This issue should be addressed in the documentation students receive about studying computer programming externally. Students who were more confident in their ability to complete the course and those who perceived that they would attain a higher level of competence in programming were found to be more likely to complete the course successfully. These results are in line with recent research on the significance of students' situation-specific cognitive and affective appraisals of study on their learning goals and performance (Boekaerts 1994; Volet 1997). In a study of perceptions of barriers to success and of learning styles of distance education students in general, Gibson and Graff (1992) attributed the key differences between students who successfully completed a distance education course and those who did not to perceptions of confidence and competence, and to commitment. In addition, a number of researchers who have investigated students' persistence and achievement in on-campus introductory computing courses have pointed to the importance of motivational factors (e.g. Clarke & Chambers 1989; Kersteen et al. 1988; Volet & Styles 1992). This study extends the research on face to face teaching of programming to the distance education domain. Expressions of lack of confidence and lack of competence by beginning students in computer programming should perhaps be treated as a warning sign that additional support should be provided. The significance of personal interest and perception of relevance to learning processes and achievement has received increased attention in recent years (Schiefele, Krapp & Winteler 1992). In the domain of studying computer programming, Volet and Styles (1992) found that changes in students' perceptions of interest during the first part of an introductory computer science course were associated with changes in the levels of their content-related goals, in that increasing interest was associated with increasingly higher content-related goals and vice versa. The fact that students' goals were a better predictor of performance than entering background in computing or programme of study indicates that interest is an important aspect of study. The lack of difference in the perceptions of interest and relevance between Completers and Noncompleters in the present study may be due to the fact that these variables were measured at the beginning of the semester. The issue of the significance of students' interactions with peers is well established in the educational and psychological literature on small group learning, cooperative goal structures and collaborative learning processes. Lack of contact with peers is particularly critical in the case of distance education. Anecdotal evidence indicates that many students realise that important opportunities for monitoring their understanding and learning progress are missed (Davies & Preece 1990). In this study it was found that Noncompleters anticipated that help from tutors and friends/family would be more important to their success than did Completers, although the difference was only marginally significant. However, no firm conclusions should be drawn from this result as initial perceptions of need for contact and help may not be the best indicators of their actual importance during the course, especially if it is the students' first experience of external study. Can success be predicted? One important issue for providers of distance education courses is to be able to identify students at risk in order to provide early appropriate assistance. This is particularly crucial in the case of external study because of the lack of face to face opportunities to gauge students' progress and provide immediate feedback and appropriate support. While university entrance examinations are expected to provide reliable measures of students' general potential to succeed at university, there is also evidence that such measures are not sufficient to predict students' performance in specific courses of study. Other personal and contextual variables also contribute to explain why some students fail to achieve their potential or alternatively perform better than could be expected on the basis of traditional tests: or example, effort (Volet 1997); computing experience (Clarke & Chambers 1989). In the present study, it was found that, in addition to university entrance score, external students' initial level of confidence in their ability to pass the course and perceived importance of the need to get help from their tutor each contributed significantly to predicting students' completion or non- completion of the introductory programming course. This finding deserves special focus as it draws attention to some of the unique characteristics of studying at a distance, namely the need for students to be self-confident and to a large extent self-reliant. The significance of self-cognitions and self- regulatory learning strategies for successful distance education has been stressed by Vermunt (1994). It is difficult to explain the finding that students' perceptions of the relevance of the course to their programme of study contributed to predicting course completion but in the opposite direction to that anticipated. The possibility was explored that students who had a computing background from high school, and therefore would have been better prepared for the present course, may have found it less relevant because the content was partially familiar. Post-hoc analyses of the possible relationship between students' programming background and perception of relevance showed that this was not the case. This issue needs to be addressed in future research. One purpose of the present study was to investigate whether students' completion or non-completion of a distance education introductory programming course could be predicted on the basis of a range of personal variables, including entering expectations and initial perceptions of the difficulties involved in completing the course. The capacity of the logistic regression model to correctly classify 82.5% of students compares favourably with Sweet (1986) and Gibson and Graff (1992), who were able, using discriminant analysis, to successfully predict success or failure of respectively 77% and 71% of their cases. From an educational point of view it was interesting to note that the prediction errors were primarily in the direction of falsely predicting failure of students who subsequently passed. If these students are at risk of failing it may still be worth identifying them at the start of the semester so that extra support can be provided. Implications of the study This study suggests that it may be possible to identify distance education students who are potentially at risk in their introductory computing course. The small amount of time and effort required to survey introductory computing students could be a valuable investment. Students with no background in computing, a mismatch between time needed and time available for practical work, lack of confidence, or low expectations of achievement could be quickly identified and contacted individually to discuss strategies for mitigating risk factors. These strategies could include rescheduling work or other commitments, more formalised contact arrangements with the tutor, and setting up of support networks with peers having similar concerns. Today there is a rapid increase in distance education through the potential of new technologies such as the World Wide Web, teleconferencing and other communications technology to provide educational resources and learning support. However, the significance of human factors in contributing to an individual's academic achievement should not be underestimated. Studies such as these are valuable in identifying the general and course-specific factors that should be addressed in distance education to ensure that these new technologies are used to maximal advantage. References Aveling, N., Smith, S. & Wilson, C. 1992, 'Meeting the needs of isolated students: Is a technological fix the answer?', in Academia Under Pressure: Theory and Practice for the 21st Century, vol.15, ed. E. Parer, HERDSA, Churchill, Vic. Bernard, R.M. & Amundsen, C.L. 1989, 'Antecedents to dropout in distance education: Does one model fit all?', Journal of Distance Education, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 25-46.Bernt, F.M. & Bugbee, A.C. 1993, ‘Study practices and attitudes related to academic success in a distance learning programme', Distance Education, val. 14, no. 1, pp. 97-112. Boekaerts, M. 1994, ‘Action control: How relevant is it for classroom learning?', in Volition and Personality: Action Versus State Orientation, eds J. Kuhl & J. BecJcman, Hogrefe and Huber Publishers, Bern, pp. 427-35. Brooks, R. 1990, 'Categories of programming knowledge and their application', International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, no. 33, pp. 241-6. Canas, J.J.., Baja, M.T. & Gonzalvo, P. 1994, 'Mental models and computer programming', International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, vol. 40, no. 5, pp. 795-811. Clarke, V.A. & Chambers, S.M. 1989, ‘Gender-based factors in computing enrolments and achievement: Evidence from a study of tertiary studies', Journal of Educational Computing Research, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 409-29. Coldeway, D. 1986, ‘Leamer characteristics and success, in Distance Education in Canada, eds I. Mugridge & D. Kaufman, Croom Helm, London, pp. 81-93. Dalbey, J. & Linn, M. 1985, ‘The demands and requirements of computer programming: A literature review’ Journal of Educational Computing Research, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 253-74. Davies, G. & Preece, 1. 1990, ‘Home computing as an integral part of distance education', Education and Computing, no. 6, pp. 153-9. Garland, M.R. 1993, ‘Student perceptions of the situational, institutional, dispositional and epistemological barriers to persistence', Distance Education, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 181-98. Gibson, C.C. & Graff, A.O. 1992, 'Impact of adults’ preferred learning styles and perception of barriers on completion of external baccalaureate degree programs', Journal of Distance Education, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 39-51. Glatter, R. & Weddell, E.G. 1971, Study by Correspondence, Longman, London. Harper, G. & Kember, D. 1986, 'Approaches to study of distance education students', British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 212-22. Harrington, F. 1979, The Future of Adult Education, Jossey-Bass, London. Jennings, PJ. & Atkinson, RJ. 1982, 'Learning computer programming at a distance', Distance Education, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 157-69. Jones, D. 1996, ‘Computing by distance education: Problems and solutions’, SIGCSE Bulletin, no. 28, pp. 139-46. Kaeley, G. 1993, 'Explaining mathematics achievement of mature internal and external students at the university of Papua New Guinea', Educational Studies in Mathematics, no. 25, pp. 251-60. Kember, D., Lai, T., Siaw, I. & Yuen, K.S. 1992, 'Student progress in distance education: Identification of explanatory constructs', British Journal of Educational Psychology, no. 62, pp. 285-98. Kersteen, Z.A., Linn, M.C., Clancy, M. & Hardyck, C. 1988, 'Previous experience and the learning of computer programming: The computer helps those who help themselves', Journal of Educational Computing Research, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 321-33. MacCallum, J. 1995, Collaborative learning in distance education, paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference, Hobart, Tasmania. McGill, T. & Hobbs, V. 1996, 'A supplementary package for distance education students studying introductory programming', SIGCSE Bulletin, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 73-7. McIntosh, N.E., Woodley, A. & Morrison, V. 1980, 'Student demand and progress at the Open University — the first eight years', Distance Education, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 37-60. Peters, O. 1992, 'Some observations on dropping out in distance education', Distance Education, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 234-69. Roberts, D. 1984, 'Ways and means of reducing early student drop-out rates', Distance Education, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 50-71. Schiefele, U., Krapp, A. & Winteler, A. 1992, 'Interest as a predictor of academic achievement: A review of research', in The Role of Interest in Learning and Development, eds K.A. Renniger, S. Hidi & A. Krapp, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 183-212. Sweet, R. 1986, 'Student dropout in distance education: An application of Tinto's model', Distance Education, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 201-13. Tinto, V. 1975, 'Drop-out from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research', Review of Educational Research, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 89-125. Vermunt, J. 1994, 'Design principles of process-oriented instruction', in Process-oriented Instruction and Learning from Text, eds F.P.C.M. de Jong & B.H.A.M. Van Hout Wolters, VU University Press, Amsterdam, pp. 15-26. Volet, S.E. 1997, 'Cognitive and affective variables in academic learning: The significance of direction and effort in students' goals', Learning and Instruction, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 235-54. Volet, S.E. & Lund, C.P. 1994, 'Metacognitve instruction in introductory computer programming: A better predictor of achievement than traditional factors', Journal of Educational Computing Research, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 297-328. Volet, S.E. & Styles, I.M. 1992, 'Predictors of study management and performance on a first-year computer course: The significance of students' study goals and perceptions', Journal of Educational Computing Research, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 423-49. Weiner, B. 1979, 'A theory of motivation for some classroom experiences', Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 3-25. Wong, S.-L. 1992, 'Approaches to study of distance education students', Research in Distance Education, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 11-17. Woodley, A. & Parlett, M. 1983, 'Student drop-out', Teaching at a Distance, no. 24, pp. 2-23. Cover page author's version Studying computer programming externally draft 
work_njjzvfoc3rfxrplkfgjw5wnb7y	----	10.11648.j.sjams.20160404.16 Science Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 2016; 4(4): 159-167 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/sjams doi: 10.11648/j.sjams.20160404.16 ISSN: 2376-9491 (Print); ISSN: 2376-9513 (Online) The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Ghana Mends-Brew Edwin 1 , Asabere Nana Yaw 2 1 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Accra Polytechnic, Accra, Ghana 2 Department of Computer Science, Accra Polytechnic, Accra, Ghana Email address: emendsbrew@yahoo.com (Mends-Brew E.), nyasabere@apoly.edu.gh (Asabere N. Y.) To cite this article: Mends-Brew Edwin, Asabere Nana Yaw. The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Ghana. Science Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Vol. 4, No. 4, 2016, pp. 159-167. doi: 10.11648/j.sjams.20160404.16 Received: June 24, 2016; Accepted: July 5, 2016; Published: July 28, 2016 Abstract: Distance Education (DE) focuses on the pedagogy, technology, and instructional system designs that seek to deliver education to students who are not physically present "on site" in a traditional classroom or campus. The introduction of new educational technologies has brought in its wake a pedagogical shift in higher education. Emerging technologies especially in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have unleashed new opportunities and frontiers in higher education for a countless number of the populace who otherwise would have had no access to tertiary education. Essentially, the study sought to determine the Effectiveness of Distance Education Programmes in the Ghanaian school system, the contribution DE has made in improving quality and accessibility to higher education in Ghana and the benefits derived from DE as well as providing a platform for improving productivity in both public and private sectors of the economy. The study made use of primary data collected using stratified random sampling procedure. The data was extensively analyzed using graphs and tables as well as chi-square test of goodness-of-fit. The results showed that, DE has improved quality and accessibility to higher education culminating in significant improvement in productivity levels in both public and private sectors of the economy over the last several years. Access to tertiary education, convenience, flexibility and improved knowledge and employee efficiency are the ultimate benefits derived from Distance Education programmes. Empirically, the study also established that Distance Education has been effective in the Higher Education Enterprise in Ghana. Keywords: Distance Education (DE), Effectiveness, Higher Education Practice, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Tertiary Education, Accessibility 1. Introduction According to Honeyman and Miller (1993) [17], Distance Education (DE), or Distance Learning, is a field of education that focuses on the pedagogy, technology, and instructional system designs that aim to deliver education to students who are not physically present "on site" in a traditional classroom or campus. It has also been described as "a process to create and provide access to learning when the source of information and the learners are separated by time and space, or both [17]. In Ghana, the idea of Distance Education (DE) started more than three decades ago [18]. However, it was re- packaged and re-launched in the 1990s. Distance education has evolved since the last century, [29] from very modest beginnings to a more sophisticated and wed based environment. It has had a chequered history which spans over several decades [19]. In its earlier phase, it was best described as correspondence education, [32] because instructors and tutors taught students at a distance, separated by space and or time through the postal mailing platform. With the dawn of the new century, modern technological innovations have gradually modified the practice significantly with impressive outcomes [14]. Additionally, as new modes of interactions are discovered with the unfolding of new technologies, new definitions and interesting trends in Distance Education equally emerge as well. This is supported by Garrison, Randy D. (1997) [10] who argues that; modern technological advancement such as audio-conferencing, videoconferencing, or computer conferencing at scheduled times make instant interactive teaching and learning sessions possible with the separation of the instructor and the learner. The mission of Ghana’s Distance Education programme is 160 Mends-Brew Edwin and Asabere Nana Yaw: The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Ghana to make quality higher education at all levels, more accessible and relevant to meet the learning needs of all Ghanaians in order to enhance their professional competence and improve the quality of their lives. "While distance learning is not likely tocompletely replace delivery of traditional instructions in tertiary institutions, technology- based training programmes are growing rapidly [2]. Emerging technologies, especially in Information and communication Technologies (ICTs) have unleashed new opportunities and frontiers in higher education for countless number of the populace who otherwise would have had no access to education. The massive deployment of information technologies has provided educators with resources that have the potential to reach countless number of students. For example, Internet-based distance learning is currently one of the fastest growing markets in the education enterprise [25]. The expanding use of technology challenges traditional classroom and instructional models of how successful training and learning, should be administered as espoused eloquently by Asabere, N. Y. et al (2012) [1]. According to Wulf, Katie (1996) [35], the advent of the Internet has pushed learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Over the last two decades, virtual learning environments have emerged to supplement the traditional educational system. These involve a set of teaching and learning tools designed to specifically enhance a student’s learning experience by including computers and the Internet in the learning process. Moreover, the rich technology era has led to the emergence of a virtual learning environment that underpins contemporary distance education programmes encompassing but not limited to the deployment of the following; electronic communication using e-mail, internet relay chat, threaded discussions, online support, and links to web resources (special students portals etc). According to Taylor, J. C. (2001) [32], the delivery platform within this environment is driven by information technology. This may range from the use of audio, video, multimedia CD-ROM, to developing websites for courses and placing them on the internet, with links to databases and related sites or course intranet with portals created for consolidating course information from several sources [5]. Additionally, the use of proprietary learning management systems such as the open source Moodle, Blackboard, ANGEL and WebCT now dominate the online learning software market [8]. With these huge investments in education technology, it is expected that virtual learning environment will certainly dominate the traditional classroom. Current trends in higher education show that entire programmes have been placed on the internet [42]. It is thus evident that the transition from the traditional classroom to a mix mode to a complete online programme has significantly gained momentum over the last several years [1]. It is now possible to obtain a degree without ever having to leave the exclusive comfort of one’s precincts. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: The ensuing section presents briefly an overview of the evolution of Distance Education in Ghana. This is followed by a review of empirical literature pertaining to the study. Section 4 essentially deals with the discussion of the methodology employed in conducting the research. Results are subsequently presented and discussed in section 5. The paper ends with drawn conclusions in section 7. 2. The Evolution of Distance Education (DE) in Ghana Ghana has six (6) publicly funded universities, ten (10) polytechnics and about fifty (50) private universities including thirty eight (38) colleges of Education. These institutions have provided the avenue for the training of professionals and other technocrats for both the private and public sectors of the economy. However, these institutions, though quite considerable, are not adequate to sufficiently absorb all high school graduates together with a cross section of the Ghanaian workforce who intend to build on their respective human capacities. For the past years, Ghana’s premier universities have had the unpleasant task of having to turn away a large number of equally qualified applicants every single year as a result of their inability to admit less than a third of these applicants [26]. Thus, making access critical and limited to only a few. Therefore, traditional approaches based on conventional classroom-based teaching and learning will not be capable of meeting the escalating demand for higher education and professional development [32]. It is against this backdrop that some tertiary institutions have sought for both national and international assistance with the evident support of the Ministry of Education (MoE) and implemented Distance Education (DE) Programmes with a huge ICT support base. This is supported by Ghana’s educational policy which emphasizes on the promotion of DE programmes to essentially increase access to education at all levels and ultimately facilitate human capital development [27]. This paper focuses on how effective these programmes have been since their inception and some of the factors that have necessitated and contributed to the introduction and implementation of Distance Education programmes. At the apex of these myriads of problems is the fact that existing structures and facilities provided are limited and are therefore subjected to undue pressure due to competing demands by users. Secondly, the high demand for tertiary education is not adequately matched by existing tertiary institutions in Ghana due to population growth. Coupled with these limited facilities is the rising cost of providing quality education at the tertiary level. According to Asabere, N. Y et al (2012) [1], the Government of Ghana finds it increasingly difficult to fund tertiary education single handedly. It is in recognition of these inadequacies that DE has been adopted as a viable complement to the conventional mode of teaching and learning in fulfillment of the vision that every Ghanaian should have access to education regardless of where they live and irrespective of the mode of delivery. Kwapong (2010) [23], shares the views of Asabere, N. Y et al (2012) [1] that distance education is seen as a solution to the challenges facing conventional education by tackling Science Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 2016; 4(4): 159-167 161 the primary problems of space and infrastructure as well as widen access to tertiary education. Thus, creating an opportunity for work and study, enhance access to participation in education at all levels especially tertiary education, promote equality and equity in education, provide cost-effective and affordable education and eventually, serve as an avenue for financial resource mobilization for these public tertiary institutions among others. 2.1. Distance Education (DE) Practice in Tertiary Institutions 2.1.1. The Institute of Distance Learning (IDL)-KNUST, Kumasi The Institute of Distance Learning (IDL) at the KNUST was initially established as the Faculty of Distance Learning (FDL) in 2005 in response to the demand for tertiary education outstretching the limited resources of Ghana’s Higher Educational Institutions. Since its inception, IDL has been offering both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes to the general public through DE. In fulfilling its avowed goal of making Science and Technology Education accessible to the citizenry of the nation, it has 13 different learning centres established across towns and cities in the various regions of Ghana with a student population of 10,000. The Accra and the Kumasi centres provide the bulk of the institutions share of patronage by students. Currently, the IDL runs 17 undergraduate programmes across the academic spectrum from the various departments of the University in addition to 13 postgraduate programmes. [36]. 2.1.2. Programmes Offered by IDL, KNUST The IDL offers both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Undergraduate programmes, currently being run by the Institute include the following; BSc. Computer Engineering, BSc. Building Technology, BSc. Quantity Surveying & Construction Economics, BSc. Construction Technology & Management, BSc. Actuarial Science, BA Sociology & Social Work, BSc. Electrical and Electronic Engineering, BSc. Telecommunication Engineering and BSc. Computer Science. Additionally, the postgraduate programmes currently run by IDL include but not limited the following: Commonwealth Executive Master of Business Administration (CEMBA), Commonwealth Executive Master of Public Administration (CEMPA), MSc. Industrial Mathematics, MSc. Postharvest Technology (Horticulture) and MSc. Environmental Science. In keeping with its Strategy Plan, PLAN2K18, aimed at providing greater access to Science and Technology Education and Training in order to advance Ghana’s technological development with the working class as its focus, the institution allows for flexibility in class scheduling to make it flexible and convenient for professionals and other workers to access higher education without hindrance. Besides, the online Virtual classroom affords students further flexibility in choosing between online classes. [36]. The Accra Campus is an Ultra-Modern State of the Art Technology driven centre using ICT for its programme outreach. While maintaining its time honoured University traditions, the IDL also serves as the University’s VIRTUAL CAMPUS coordinating its distance and life-long learning programmes across the country. The Accra Campus of KNUST emphasis is on Applied Sciences and Technology Programmes of Study with a focus on Telecommunications Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, Informatics, Computer and Information Technology, Communication Design etc [36]. Increasingly, the IDL continues in its relentless drive to provide greater access to quality tertiary education for the training of needed human capital in the areas of Science and Technology for Ghana’s socio-economic growth and industrial development in fulfillment of its vision. 2.2. Institute of Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE) University of Ghana, Accra The Institute of Continuing and Distance Education (ICDE) is one of the key Institutions through which Ghana’s premier university carries its presence, mission, standards and curricula into Ghanaian cities, towns and communities. The institution offers courses leading to Diploma, Bachelors, M. A., M. Phil., Ph.D., in Adult education; Youth in Development Work; and short courses for community leaders. In recognition of the significant challenges facing education in Ghana with increasing pressure on limited state resources and to ensure relevancy and equitable access for the growing number of students seeking education at the tertiary level, the role of IDCE cannot be over emphasized since it plays a crucial rule in the country’s socio economic development. As technology continues to transform how students are educated, more students resort to Open and Distance Education as the preferred mode of learning [37]. For over 20 years, the IDCE at the University of Ghana has become the vehicle that has conveyed the University of Ghana’s rich traditions of teaching, learning, and research into Ghanaian homes. With expanded vision, the Institute has now transformed itself into a more visible, resource- enhanced, dynamic Institute that is responsive in providing lifelong learning opportunities and distance education to all Ghanaians to meet their diverse learning needs for academic, personal, and professional growth. Its mandate re-affirms the University of Ghana’s resolve to providing wider and flexible educational access to Ghanaians while maintaining their respective jobs and fulfilling family and other obligations [37]. To advance its central mission to become a centre of excellence for the efficient delivery of university-based continuing and distance education to meet the challenges of national development and global competition, the Institute offers courses leading to Diploma, Bachelors (Arts and Social Sciences), M. A., M. Phil., Ph.D. in Adult Education; Youth in Development Work; and short courses for community leaders. Using interdisciplinary, comparative, gender-sensitive, community-based, interactive learning 162 Mends-Brew Edwin and Asabere Nana Yaw: The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Ghana perspectives and technology, the Institute’s highly motivated and committed faculty and staff apply their specializations in all fields of study to illuminate the relevance of higher education for empowering individuals, communities, and nations for development and poverty reduction [38]. As the premier Distance Education body in Ghana, the IDCE at the University of Ghana leverages on its strengths in the following areas: � Research at IDCE covers field studies, evaluation studies, action research and experimental research in all ten (10) regions of Ghana. � IDCE presently has thirteen (13) Learning Centres in Ghana and extends the resources of the University of Ghana to a wider population of Ghanaians in recognition of their ability to learn regardless of age, sex, religion, ethnicity, place and region of residence. � IDCE has well qualified and innovative staff from interdisciplinary backgrounds with the ability to collaborate with several departments and organizations and a track record of delivering continuing and adult education in alternative modes and methods. (IDCE, UG, 2006-2008) [37]: 2.3. College of Distance Education (CODE), University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast The College of Distance Education was initially established by the University of Cape Coast as the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) in 1997. The CODE is an affiliated member of the West African Distance Education Association (WADEA). The CODE, apart from being a subvented sector of the Ministry of Education, maintains active collegial relationship with the sister universities in Ghana and Simon Fraser University of Canada. The Centre was established, primarily, to [39]: � Provide opportunities for people to pursue higher education; train more professional teachers for all levels of Education in the Ghana Education Service (GES). � Train high calibre personnel for national development. � Raise the professional competence of serving teachers and personnel of the Ghana Education Service (GES), as well as accounting and secretarial personnel in civil/public service, commerce and industry through Continuing Education. � Provide opportunities for applicants who, even though qualify for admission, fail to enter the University due to constraints in physical facilities. The main focus of the CODE, currently, is directed at [39]: � Mounting distance education programmes leading to the award of Diploma, Post-Diploma Degree and Master’s Degree. � Mounting all the other viable academic programmes in the University, especially Bachelor of Commerce (B. Com) and Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) on Distance Education Programme. � Using the multi-media mode of delivery for its distance education – print, audiovisuals, radio broadcast; television, internet etc. The CODE has centres in all the regional capitals and some district capitals in the country. It currently has 33 study centres nationwide. These centres form a major component of the administrative structure of the programme. The College is headed by a Director. At the regional centres, there are regional resident tutors. In regions where there are no resident tutors, there are co- coordinators who facilitate the smooth running of the programmes. The main function of these study centres are essentially, to serve as avenues for interaction with staff and students, tutoring and counseling; providing physical facilities such as classrooms, laboratories and libraries for assisting students and organizing lectures; discussion groups, workshops and seminars. In its quest to providing numerous youth with the opportunity to upgrade their skills and competencies in the hospitality industry in Ghana, the CODE recently introduced two new academic programmes into the DE Curricula; these are the three year degree programmes in Tourism Management and the three year diploma in Hospitality Management [39]. The College of Distance Education has a population of about 41,000 students with the bulk of it coming from the southern districts of the country. 2.4. The Institute for Educational Development and Extension (IEDE), University of Education, Winneba (UEW) The Institute for Educational Development and Extension (IEDE) was established in November 1992 as one of the seven academic divisions of the then University College of Education, Winneba (UCEW), now University of Education, Winneba (UEW). The mandate of the university is to produce professional educators to spearhead a national vision of education aimed at redirecting Ghana's effort along the path of rapid economic and social development. It is also the vision of the university to be an internationally reputable institution for teacher education and research. In keeping with its mandate, the Institute aims at training competent professional teachers for all levels of education as well as conducts research, disseminate knowledge and contribute to educational policy and development [40]. The Institute for Educational Development and Extension, IEDE is the extension wing of the University of Education, Winneba, which is responsible for the distance education programmes of the University. It is also responsible for providing opportunities for student teachers to experience holistic and quality school based teaching experiences as well as providing opportunities for continuing professional development of staff of UEW and professionals from other tertiary and non tertiary educational institutions [40]. Incidentally, the founding of the Institute coincided with the decision of the then British Overseas Development Administration (ODA) which is now, the Department for International Development (DFID) to support quality improvement of education in Ghana in accordance with the Education Reform Programme by assisting with the production of better trained teachers for primary, junior Science Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 2016; 4(4): 159-167 163 secondary and senior secondary schools as well as training colleges in a project known as Support for Teacher Education Project (STEP). IEDE became the base for STEP at UCEW. The DFID through its Support for Teacher Education Project (STEP) provided considerable material assistance to IEDE until the project ended in March 1997, thus enabling it to gain a strong foothold in the growth of Distance Education in Ghana: [40] Currently, the Institute has an undergraduate student population of 13,145 representing 56% female and 44% male. Out of this, 1,424 are Diploma students and 11,721 are Post Diploma (2-Year Bachelor degree) students. In addition, there are 243 graduate students. Increasingly, the IEDE continues to expand with the provision of 24 study centres across the country. Coordinators who are appointed at the same level as University lecturers head these Study Centres. Essentially, they liaise directly with IEDE/UEW and are responsible for the general administration of the Study Centres, thus, giving a human face to the DE programme. There are 809 Part-time tutors, who are appointed to support the students through facilitating group tutorial sessions and seminars and individual support through workplace visits and feedback on completed assignments [40]. Programmes offered by the IEDE � 3-year Diploma in Basic Education (Dip. Basic Ed) � 3-year Diploma in Early Childhood Education (Dip. Early Childhood Ed) � 2-year Bachelor of Education in Basic Education (B. Ed.) for Diploma in Basic Education Holders only � 2-year Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood Education (B. Ed.) for Diploma in Early Childhood Education Holders only � 3-year Diploma in Accounting Studies (Dip. Accounting) � 3-year Diploma in Management Studies (Dip. Mgt. Std.) � 2-year Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting Studies (B. BA – Accounting) � 2-year Bachelor of Business Administration in Human Resource Management (B. BA – HRM Additionally, the following graduate programmes are also offered by the IEDE. Master of Education in English, Master of Education in Mathematics, Master of Education in Science, Master of Education in Mentorship, Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Institutions (PGDTLHEI) and Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE): [40] 3. Research Objectives This research focused largely on the four leading publicly funded Universities in Ghana known extensively for their Distance Education programmes, namely; The University of Ghana (UG), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), The University of Cape Coast (UCC) and the University of Education, Winneba (UEW). However, this paper makes specific reference to the University of Cape Coast. The Centre for Continuing Education now College of Distance Education (CODE) was established by the University of Cape Coast in 1997 to provide opportunities predominantly, for teachers and other professionals to pursue higher education in addition totraining high calibre personnel for national development. The question of interest is whether DE in Ghana has been effective since its inception; the contributions it has made towards improving quality and accessibility to Tertiary Education practice in Ghana and the realization of its intended mission; the benefits DE has provided to both students and employers (public and private) over the period; whether the targeted population essentially patronize DE and ultimately whether productivity in both the public and the private sectors of the economy has witnessed significant improvements. Especially with new graduates bringing into the market, enhanced human capital in terms of the competencies developed in the course of their Distance Education programmes. 3.1. Justification The appropriateness of the CODE as the preference for the case study was primarily borne out of its diverse nature of programmes and the hugely successful patronage it has enjoyed over the years characterized by the steady rise in the number of students it admits and subsequently churns out each year. Moreover, the College of Distance Education (CODE) has positioned itself increasingly as a modern and attractive Distance Education prospect, reflected in its nationwide pursuit of a new generation of young recruits and the parity of esteem between DE and conventional face to face campus based programmes. 3.2. Research Hypothesis The research hypothesis is the presence of statistically significant relationship between the effectiveness and the mode of delivery through DE in Ghana’s higher education practice. In other words; Distance Education has not been effective in Higher Education practice in Ghana. It is believed that Distance education has accomplished its intended objectives in the Tertiary Education landscape and its introduction has seen massive improvement in productivity for the private and public sectors of the economy over the last couple of decades. There are multiple indicators, intended to support the argument that Distance Education in Ghana has undeniably been effective since its inception. 4. Methodology The main instrument used in this research work was design questionnaire. The data used for this research was primary data as secondary information was not obtainable on the variables mentioned in the specific objectives of this research. The sampling procedure for selecting the sample for 164 Mends-Brew Edwin and Asabere Nana Yaw: The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Ghana interviewing was stratified random sampling. Stratified random sampling is basically, categorizing a heterogeneous population into homogeneous subgroups called strata and the sample drawn either proportionately or disproportionately from each stratum. This probability sampling procedure was adopted because of the nature and size of the population. The population consisted of 1000 students who are assessing Distance Education from The College of Distance Education (CODE) of the UCC in various programmes across the academic spectrum scattered within the regions at designated locations known as “Study Centres’’ with different characteristics thus enabling this sampling procedure to be conveniently applied. The various programmes form the strata because each student on the DE programme could be assigned to only one programme (stratum). Proportionate stratification was used with sampling fraction of � � � ��� ���� � 0.4 to select the sample size from each stratum. This means that out of the 1000 students � � 1000 400 (� � 400) were desired for this study. This is indicative of the fact that with proportionate stratification, the sample size of each stratum (programme) is proportionate to the population size of the stratum. Thus the same sampling fraction was applicable to each stratum. The data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics such as tables and graph were used to display facts diagrammatically. Inferential statistics chi-square test of goodness-of –fit was used to specifically answer the research Hypothesis [13]. 5. Results and Discussions The results obtained from the interviews are presented in this phase of the research. Table 1. Age Distribution. Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent 15-19 10 2.5 2.5 2.5 20-24 22 5.5 5.5 8.0 25-29 104 26.0 26.0 34.0 30-34 176 44.0 44.0 78.0 35-39 48 12.0 12.0 90.0 40-44 34 8.5 8.5 98.5 45-49 6 1.5 1.5 100.0 Total 400 100.0 100.0 Table 1 illustrates the age category of the students who responded to the questionnaire. The two most dominant age groups were 30-34years (176 out of 400) and 25-29 years (104 out of 400) representing 44.4% and 26.0% respectively. The two age groups that were least represented were 45-49 (6 out of 400) and 15-19 (10 out of 400) constituting 1.5% and 2.5% of the total respondents correspondingly. Table 2. This shows the Sex distribution of the respondents. Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Male 188 47.0 47.0 47.0 Female 212 53.0 53.0 100.0 Total 400 100.0 100.0 From table 2 it was observed that an overwhelming majority of the respondents were females representing 53.0% (212 out of 400) whiles the rest representing 47.0% (188 out of 400) of the total respondents were of the opposite sex. Figure 1 shows the Category of students targeted by DE programmes. Table 3. Distribution of the Target Population for DE. Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Workers 165 82.5 82.5 82.5 Non Workers 35 17.5 17.5 100.0 Total 200 100.0 100.0 Fig. 1. Targeted Population for DE Programmes. From the chart above it is evident that an overwhelming majority of the students (330 out of 400) forming 82% of those who patronize distance education programmes are workers whilst 70 out of 400 representing 18% of the total students who were interviewed are non-workers. Table 4. Contribute to Improving Quality and Accessible Education in Ghana. Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Yes 326 81.5 81.5 81.5 No 74 18.5 18.5 100.0 Total 400 100.0 100.0 Table 4 illustrates the responses based on the contribution DE has made towards improving quality education in Ghana. A significant number of students (326 out of 400) constituting 81.5% of those accessing DE believed that it has made enormous contribution towards improving quality and accessible education in Ghana whilst a minority of the participants (74 out of 400) representing 18.5% maintain the assertion that DE has not made enough contribution towards improving quality and accessibility to education. The benefits DE offers to both students and employers is also one of the focalpoints of this paper. Table 5 shows the responses obtained from the students who took part in the survey. Science Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 2016; 4(4): 159-167 165 Table 5. Benefits Derived From DE Programmes. Benefits Percentage (%) Access to University Education 74.0 Improved Knowledge and Employee Efficiency 55.5 Cost Effectiveness 46.0 Convenience 63.0 Flexibility 56.5 It could be inferred from the table above that access to university education represented (74%), convenience (63%), flexibility (56.5%) and improved knowledge and employee efficiency (55.5%) are the foremost essential benefits DE offers to those who access DE programmes as individuals whilst industry benefits indirectly when the knowledge and skills-set of their employees are improved and significantly enhanced respectively through DE. Figure 2 illustrates the views of the students who took part in the survey on whether productivity in the two sectors of the economy (private and public) has witnessed remarkable improvement with the participation of employees in Distance Education programmes. Fig. 2. A Bar Chart showing Productivity improvement. It is evident from the chart above that an overwhelming number of respondents (304 out of 400) constituting 76.0% affirmed that Distance Education has significantly improved productivity in both public and private sectors of the economy of Ghana whilst the rest of the respondents of the survey (96 out of 400) representing 24.0% believed that productivity has seen no significant improvement with the introduction of Distance Education programmes. The Hypothesis tested was H0: Distance education has not been effective in the Ghana’s Tertiary Education practice against the alternative H1: Distance education has been effective in the Ghana’s Tertiary Education practice. The test was conducted at 5% (α = 0.05) level of significance. The condition under which the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected is when χ 2 cal> χ 2 0.05,1. Table 6. Test Statistics. Has the programme been effective since its inception Chi-Square 52.020 a df 1 From Table 6, χ 2 cal is 52.020 and χ 2 0.05,1 from the tables is 7.879. Since χ 2 cal > χ 2 0.05,1, that is 52.020 > 7.879, H0 is rejected and H1 retained. 6. Findings The findings of this study indicate that, majority of the target population who access DE programmes in Ghana are in the age brackets groups of {30-34} years and {25-29} years as clearly depicted in table 1. It was also observed that persons within the age cohorts of {15-19} years and {45-49} years do not enroll in significant numbers in Distance Education programmes. Effectively, this suggests that individuals in the working class considerably patronize Distance Education programmes. A study by Gibson, 1998; 2003 [12]; Kirkwood et al, 2005 [22] concludes that a substantial proportion of distance learners continue to be working adults aged between twenty five and forty five who have busy established lives and are studying part-time to improve or upgrade their competences, professional skills and knowledge. This further lends credence to the assertion that employees constitute the main target group for the establishment of DE programmes. As evident from the responses and in a study conducted by Thompson, Melody (1998) [33] in North America, it was empirically established that comparatively Distance Education programmes have more female patronage than their male counterparts. Eastmond (1995) [6] also cited a 1992 study which reported that women outnumbered men in New Zealand and Israel on DE programmes. This further supports the argument that, an overwhelming number of females in the working class for reasons mainly attributed to social and family commitments are unable to enroll as students on various campuses to pursue conventional college programmes. According to Von Prümer (2000) [34], traditional gender divisions of labour in most societies continue to make working women the primary care givers of children and relatives. These obligations, often deny them the opportunity to enroll in regular conventional face to face programmes. However, convenient access to DE provides them with a quality alternative. Hence the female dominance in DE programmes. Moreover, DE programmes are aimed at training individuals who are full time employees with busy established schedules and therefore cannot access education directly on campuses of the institutions of their choice. The results obtained from the survey point to the fact that a considerable number of working adults patronize DE, signifying employees and their respective employers have confidence in DE and the objective of training workers through distance learning has been productively accomplished and a success story thus far. Incidentally, one of the objectives of this study was to find out the extent to which Distance Education has contributed towards improving quality and accessible education in Ghana’s higher education setup. The results 166 Mends-Brew Edwin and Asabere Nana Yaw: The Effectiveness of Distance Education in Ghana showed that an overwhelming number of students accessing DE acknowledged that, it has indeed made immense contribution towards the realization of quality and accessible education over the last several years in the country’s tertiary education setup. The extensive work done by Holmberg, B (2005) [14] concludes that DE is constantly being evaluated and has proven to be very effective in helping motivated and hard-working students reach their goals. Evidently, the picture emerging from the study reveals a similar conclusion in consonance with the findings of Phipps and Merisotis (1999) [29]; that the effectiveness of DE over the years cannot be overemphasized and it has undoubtedly fulfilled its avowed mandate of providing quality and accessible education for themajority of the working class. The study also sought to determine the benefits individuals and corporate bodies derive from DE. The outcomes of the study revealed that, among the principal benefits ensuing from DE programmes are Access to University Education, Convenience, Flexibility and Improved knowledge and Employee efficiency. This means, as individuals gain access to convenient and flexible tertiary education whilst on the job, they acquire new knowledge, skills and competencies. Subsequently, this is reflected in improved efficiency and general work output in their respective job schedules by the immediate application of better working skills and competencies acquired in the course of their training. Bruce (1999) [3] writing on opportunities offered by DE comes to a similar conclusion. Additionally, the study revealed that a significant number of the respondents (76%) acknowledged that, DE has in essence improved productivity in both sectors of the economy over the last couple of decades. Malik et al. (2005) [24] opined that DE has the potential to impact all levels of education especially at the tertiary level, where the maximum benefits in terms of economic impact could be remarkably achieved. The major Hypothesis of the study was; DE has not been effective in the Tertiary Education landscape. The study however, shows that DE over the years has been effective in the Higher Education practice since its re-introduction in the 1990s. Table 7. DE Has Improved Productivity In Both Public And Private Sectors. Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Yes 304 76.0 76.0 76.0 No 96 24.0 24.0 100.0 Total 400 100.0 100.0 Table 8. The Effectiveness of Distance Education. Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Yes 302 75.5 75.5 75.5 No 98 24.5 24.5 100.0 Total 400 100.0 100.0 7. Conclusion Distance education has come to stay and will continue to grow in Ghana’s higher education practice. The major reason contributing to this growth is related essentially to the ever- growing need for an educated workforce, combined with financial burden and constraints of established tertiary educational institutions. DE offers life- long learning prospects to working adults with busy established lives and has also contributed significantly in educating a greater percentage of the population. Distance Education has become unarguably an important platform in the education enterprise in Ghana because it is cost effective and efficient. It also allows for independent learning by the female working adult due to their peculiar social and family commitments. Understandably, if Ghana is to cope with the growing need for an educated workforce, distance education will continue to dominate the tertiary education landscape. In conclusion, DE is no longer viewed as a marginal educational activity. Instead, it is regarded as a viable and an effective way of providing new opportunities and frontiers in higher education for countless number of the populace who otherwise would have had no access to tertiary education. Recent developments in ICTs are gradually erasing the lines between traditional and distance learners as more students now have the opportunity to work with emerging interactive technologies. The narrative, empirically supported by other scholars brings to the fore; the indispensable nature of distance education programmesin Ghana’s higher education practice. The effectiveness of the programme is attested by the sheer number of graduates being churned out each year from DE programmes nationwide especially the CODE of the University of Cape Coast. References [1] Asabere, N. Y and Mends-Brew, E (2012) Distance Learning and Electronic Learning (e-Learning): Are they the same? An overview of Some Tertiary institutions In Ghana [2] Barclay, M (2001) Introduction to Business Statistics [3] Bruce, B. (1999). Education online: Learning anywhere, anytime. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 42 (8), 662-665. [4] Collis B. A. (1996). Tele-Learning in a Digital World: The Future of Distance Learning, International Thomson. [5] Dagger, D et al (2007) Service oriented e-learning platforms: from monolithic systems to flexible services, [6] Eastwood, 1995. Outlooks and Opportunities in Blended and Distance Learning [7] Eastwood, K. and Onken, M. "The Efficacy of Distance Learning in Affecting Change". WebNet World Conference 98, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Orlando, November 1998. [8] Falvo, D. A and Johnson, B. F (2007). The Use of Learning ManagementSystems in the United States. Science Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 2016; 4(4): 159-167 167 [9] Garrison, D. R. (1997). Computer conferencing: The post- industrial age of distance education. Open Learning, 12 (2), 3–11. [10] Garrison, D. R. (2009). Implications of online and blended learning for the conceptual development and practice of distance education. The Journal of Distance Education, 23 (2). Retrieved fromhttp://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/471/889. [11] Gerhardt, L. A. (2005) Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, ITHET 2005, 6th International Conference. [12] Gibson, C. C. (1998b). The distance learner’s academic self- concept. In C. C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education: Institutional responses for quality outcomes (pp. 65-76). Madison, WI: Atwood. [13] Gordor, B. K. and Howard, N. K. (2006). Introduction to Statistical Methods. Ghana Mathematics Group, Ghana. [14] Holmberg, B. (2005). The Evolution, Principles and Practices of Distance Education, Bls-Verlagder: Oldenburg. [15] Holmberg, B. 1995. Theory and practice of distance education, 2nd revised edition. London and New York: Routledge. [16] Holmberg, B. 2003. Distance Education in Essence: An overview of theory and practice in the early twenty-first century 2nd ed. [17] Honeyman and Miller (1993). 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(2005). Framework of Collaborative Research and Development on Distance Learning Technology for Asia. Paper presented at the 19th Annual Conference, Association of Asian Open Universities, Jakarta, Indonesia. Retrieved June 9, 2007, from http://www.pandora-asia.org/downloads/05- AAOU_MalBelBag.pdf [25] Moore, M., Kearsley, (2005). Distance Education: a system view. Wadsworth: USA, 3rd Edition. [26] National Council For Tertiary Education (NCTE) Report (2010) [27] National Council for tertiary Education (NCTE), Ghana Report, 2006 [28] Onken, M., & Eastwood, K. (1998). Is it possible to use distance learning to affect change in attitudes? The Third Annual TCC Conference: Online Instruction: Trends and Issues II, Honolulu, Hawaii (on-line), April 1998 On-line: http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcon98/paper/eastwood.html [29] Phipps, R., and Merisotis, J. (1999). What’s the Difference? A review of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance education in Higher Education. The institute for Higher Education policy. [30] Ronald M. W. (2010). Introduction to Business Statistics, South-Western College Publications, 7TH Edition. [31] Tau, Daniel R (2011). Open and Distance Learning Practices in Southern Africa: Collaborative Initiatives. [32] Taylor, James C (2001). Fifth Generation Distance Education: A Sustainable Approach To Development. [33] Thompson, M. M. (1998). Distance learners in higher education. In C. Campbell Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education: Institutional responses for quality outcomes. Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing, pp. 10-18) [34] Von Prümmer, C. (2000). Women and Distance Education: Challenges and opportunities. New York: Routledge. [35] Wulf, Katie (1996) "Training via the Internet: where are we?" Training & Development. [36] IDL, KNUST. (2015) http://www.idl.knust.edu.gh/pages/index. [37] IDCE, UG (2006-2008) http://www.ug.edu.gh/icde/index1.php? [38] IDCE, UG (2013) http://www.ug.edu.gh/icde/index1.php? [39] UCC, (2006-2012) http://www.ucc.edu.gh/code/index1. [40] IEDE, UEW (2012-2015) http://www.uew.edu.gh/iede/index. [41] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_education). [42] http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/PIP- Online-Learning.pdf [43] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium- of-colleges-takes-online-education-to- newlevel.html?_r=2&hp [44] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium- of-colleges-takes-online-education-to- newlevel.html?_r=2&hp [45] http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/stanford- open-course-instructors-spin-profit-company & http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/06/how-could- mitx-change-mit 
work_nmmt7yuw7fcf7ltzgyoa2sjgh4	----	Microsoft Word - fp066-pullen-header.doc To appear in Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference Information Technology in Computer Science Education, Madrid, Spain, June 2008 Distributed Application Launching for High Quality Graphics in Synchronous Distance Education J. Mark Pullen Department of Computer Science George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 +1.703.993.1538 mpullen@netlab.gmu.edu Jim X. Chen Department of Computer Science George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 +1.703.993.1720 jchen@cs.gmu.edu ABSTRACT Previous ITiCSE papers have reported on Network EducationWare (NEW), an open source software system that supports synchronous and asynchronous distance education easily and inexpensively via the Internet. This paper reports on an innovative capability recently added to NEW that enables simultaneous execution of applications on all participating computers in both Windows and Linux systems, and explains how we have used this capability to teach a course in Computer Graphics online. Teaching graphics in this way previously was impossible because transmitting the visual output of graphics programs in real time with good quality is too demanding for normal Internet connections. This problem was solved by using the NEW application launcher to invoke Java classes, provided by the instructor, on all student computers simultaneously. The capability works with modest Internet capacity and also is captured in recorded sessions for asynchronous use. We explain how the NEW capability works and describe its use in online teaching of Computer Graphics. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.1 [Computing Milieux]: Computer Uses in Education – distance learning General Terms Design, Performance, Human Factors Keywords Internet distance education, accessibility, application launching 1. INTRODUCTION A groundswell of demand for online course delivery began in the 1990s and continues to grow [13,15], because the Internet provides great accessibility to students who don’t have a residence near a lecture hall for all of the courses they want to attend. Delivery technology varies but most offerings can be characterized either as asynchronous, where students and instructors normally communicate through a written or recorded medium (most often, webpages), or synchronous, where students receive classes as they are delivered, in real time. Goodwin [5], Pullen [8,9] and Snow et al. [14] have described the cost and time benefits of simultaneous delivery to the classroom and the network, which we call simulteaching. At George Mason University (GMU) we began experimental synchronous online teaching in the mid-1990s [8] and eventually went on to offer a Systems and Networking subset of the Master of Science in Computer Science online [12], using locally integrated multimedia tools in the Network EducationWare (NEW) system described below. One of the continuing frustrations of our program has been the inability to teach subjects online that require high resolution and/or motion graphic display. This would be true even if we were willing to insist that the student have a very high capacity (“broadband”) Internet connection; but we don’t require that because it runs against our goal of accessibility for all students. The very worst case in this regard is teaching Computer Graphics online, since good examples of graphics programming almost inevitably demand both high resolution and considerable motion. The general capability needed for group display of computer graphics is called application sharing and is implemented by exporting the multimedia output of a program as rapidly as possible over the network used for group communication. The ability to export high resolution motion graphics in this way is beyond almost all home Internet connections. The solution we have adopted in application launching (AppLaunch), where the application to be run and its data are propositioned on all computers and invoked simultaneously. The remainder of this paper describes how AppLaunch has been added to NEW and how it was used to teach a Computer Graphics course. Section 2 describes the current production version of NEW; section 3 describes how AppLaunch was added to NEW, and section 4 describes the course. We conclude with a summary and some observations about future use of NEW with AppLaunch. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ITiCSE’08, June 30–July 2, 2008, Madrid, Spain. Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-115-6/08/06...$5.00. To appear in Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference Information Technology in Computer Science Education, Madrid, Spain, June 2008 2. NETWORK EDUCATIONWARE NEW was developed in Pullen’s laboratory [11,14]. It is the third generation of synchronous online education software used in teaching Computer Science at George Mason University (GMU). From the first two, we learned a great deal about what works and what does not work. Based on those lessons, and grounded in the philosophy that synchronous Internet teaching could be much less time-consuming and expensive than the current state of practice allows, we set out to create an open-source suite of software that relies as much as possible on quality software tools created by other parties [7]. The first five years of experience had taught us that the following properties are essential for simulteaching [12]: • Quality support for at least audiographics (voice, slides and real time annotations), using open media standards; video also is desirable, although not essential [10]. • Ability to support audiographic streaming over standard 56 kb/s modem connections to the Internet. • Effective support to teach students simultaneously in the classroom and online. • Audiographics recorded during class and accessible from a server, either by streaming or file download, using the same client suite as live access. • Web-based access and software load/checkout for ease of operation. • Availability on multiple platforms for ubiquitous use (Windows, Linux and Macintosh systems). The NEW system software that we have assembled to meet these requirements is represented in Figure 1 and summarized in the remainder of this section. Executable and source code for all system components is openly available for academic purposes. Figure 1. System organization of NEW components 2.1 Client Software The multimedia interface software in NEW derives from a variety of sources and runs on Windows and Linux-x86 platforms, and on late-model Macintosh platforms running Apple’s Parallels™ with either a Linux or Windows virtual system. The composite user interface for all tools is shown in Figure 2. We consider the Speak Freely Internet Audio software to be the most important component in the NEW system, both because it is essential to the students’ learning experience and also because conveying voice with good quality over the Internet at low data rates presents a big challenge. SF is capable of passing good voice quality over the Internet, using a standard sound interface, and requiring only 20 kilobits per second of network capacity. We have added a graphic interface that provides all needed user functions in one easy-to-use package. The Whiteboard provides the other key element for teaching online: graphics. It will display a precomposed graphic prepared in several open formats: text, HTML, JPEG, and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF); and it will convert LaTeX, OpenOffice, and Microsoft PowerPoint formats to PDF and JPEG automatically. It also will capture a JPEG image of any other window on the machine and export that to the other whiteboards in the group, a crude sort of application sharing that operates at about one frame every ten seconds but is not adequate either in resolution or motion rate. The precomposed graphics and captured images can be annotated during class with lines, rectangles, ellipses, handwriting, and text in any color, a very useful feature for maintaining the attention of the visual learner. The whole image is saved and can be called back during class in addition to being recorded. We prefer to use the whiteboard with a Tablet PC interface so that it becomes a surrogate chalkboard. The optional Video tool is capable of multiple network formats, including standard H.323 conferencing. A typical delivery rate for NEW is two frames of 320 by 240 pixels per second, although rates up to 30 frames per second are possible. While we have found that, for teaching Information Technology, video provides a marginal benefit at relatively high cost, as reported by Pullen [10], we offer it as an option to students who have high quality Internet service. The Master Client encapsulates data from the multicast applications into TCP tunnels to the Live Class server, prioritized according to the importance of each multimedia tool (audio first, whiteboard second, video last). It can support a viable class connection over a 56 kb/s modem, without video. The combination of clients and their network configuration established by the master client is controlled by a configuration file downloaded from the supporting webserver at the beginning of a NEW session. If software updates are indicated, the master client also downloads and installs them. The NEW Floor Control shows the participants in the session, controls access to the virtual classroom “floor,” provides for text questions to the instructor and text chat among the participants, and accepts URLs from the floor holder for browser launch on all participating client systems. It supports a “virtual hand raising” mode for lectures and an “anyone can have the floor” mode for seminars and meetings. NEW Record and Playback Clients control their respective servers. They feature VCR-like button icons and an elapsed time readout. The playback control also is capable of jumping forward and backward to the next slide in the presentation. Recordings require about 5 Megabytes of disk per hour of class. Floor Control and Chat Client Master Client Shared Whiteboard Video Send/Receive Audio Send/Receive Prepared Slides PDF, JPEG etc. Record/Playback Recorded Sessions Record/Playback Control Clients Live Class Server Database Server Software Webserver NEWCM pages network connections User Workstation Software To appear in Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference Information Technology in Computer Science Education, Madrid, Spain, June 2008 Figure 2. NEW user interface with launched Java application 2.2 Server Software The Live Class Server is the core of the NEW system. It implements group communication over the general Internet among a group of participating workstations by accepting a data stream combining transmissions from multicast conferencing tools on the floorholder’s workstation and sending copies to all participants’ workstations. It provides access control using either the system database or an external authentication service. As delivered from our website it will support 20 users on a 1 GHz Linux system; however, it can be configured for up to 50 users on a 3 GHz system. The Record and Playback servers are used to create and play streaming recordings that capture the information sent by NEW clients over the Internet from the instructor’s workstation. Playback is accessed through the same software suite and also can be performed offline by downloading the recording files. Each segment of an online playback can be Web-linked as a URL. Another key aspect of the server is the NEW Course Management Webpages, which provide for effective management of the mass of detail involved in supporting multiple courses. Various pages provide teaching and learning functions, support and course management functions, authentication, and system administration functions. A single portal page provides access to all of these facilities, as described in [11]. Our webpages are hosted on an Apache Webserver that supports the PHP language needed for our webpages and MySQL or any database system supporting the standard Structured Query Language (SQL). Web-based support provides ubiquity and portability. It also makes possible data access over the network that we use to implement the chat room feature. 3. APPLICATION LAUNCHING IN NEW The key to adding AppLaunch in NEW was the recognition that data files too large to be streamed in real time can nevertheless be streamed in background, using unneeded network capacity. In the extreme case the onus for doing this can be placed on the student, by requiring that the files be downloaded before class. However, NEW has a more elegant solution. Figure 3 shows the data flow for NEW AppLaunch. The instructor creates a file APPLOCS.txt defining the applications to be used and where they are to be found within the directory structure of all platforms to be used (i.e. Windows and Linux). We have used AppLaunch almost entirely for Java, however any application that is installed at a known location could be used. Figure 3. Information flow for NEW AppLaunch 3.1 Server Side Operations for AppLaunch The instructor uses the NEWCM webpages to upload the application data (AppData) files to the server. The files are uploaded to a single directory per course. The directory also contains a default APPLOCS.txt for Java and JPEG, which supports the simplest case. As each file is added to the directory, the zipfile representing that directory is updated. This results in a set of zipfiles, one per course, that are available to the NEW Live Class Server. When a student connects for a course that is configured for AppLaunch, the server sends the AppLaunch zipfile name, size, and last modified date to the NEW Master Client. If the client doesn’t have that version, it requests download of the current zipfile for the course. The server streams the zipfile to the client in background, i.e. without interfering with the synchronous data streams for audio, whiteboard, and video. The server also sends download status to the NEW floor control. The NEW Record server runs on the instructor’s computer. It was modified for AppLaunch to add the current AppData zipfile to the end of each recording. The NEW Play server can either run at the server site or on the user’s computer. It was modified for AppLaunch to copy the AppData zipfile out of the recording into the local NEW directory. In this way the recording is played with the data that was in the AppData directory when the recording was made. 3.2 Client Side Operations for AppLaunch The NEW Master Client requests user permission to save the download zipfile. On approval, it stores the zipfile in the NEW directory and date-stamps it with its date or origination so it can be identified later, to avoid unnecessary downloads, and then unzips it into to client’s duplicate of the course directory. Users who have a download in progress are indicated on the floor control user panel so the instructor is aware that AppLaunch will not work for them. When the floorholder (normally the instructor) chooses to launch an application, it is only necessary to click on the Launch App button and select from among the data files in the download in order to launch the application associated with that data. When finished running that application, the Kill App button kills it on all participants’ screens. Since good quality applications run at the same rate, independent of processor clock rate, the application will run on all screens at almost exactly the same time. In the course described below, the data files we used were Java class files; while programmers may consider these to be executable code, they are data for the Java Virtual Machine. To appear in Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference Information Technology in Computer Science Education, Madrid, Spain, June 2008 Figure 2 shows a Java graphic running under the NEW AppLaunch capability. 3.3 Security There is a security issue involved with application launching. The students who participate are in essence giving the instructor permission to run any data that is loaded through the NEW system on software that exists on their computers. This includes Java classes, which are very nearly as powerful as native executable code. However, the same students, when using NEW, already are trusting the NEW software to behave properly on their computers. Thus the additional level of trust required is for the student to have confidence the instructor will not load pernicious data such as misbehaving Java classes or JPEG files crafted with a “virus” to attack the student’s computer. This risk is limited to the instructor and NEW system staff, since only they are able to upload data files. Students, when given floorholder status, are able to launch applications from the AppData directory, but they can’t change its contents except on their own computers. 3.4 Limitation The AppLaunch approach does have one limitation: it is not possible for the floorholder to enter data at run time into the instances of the program that run on distant Internet computers. The two alternatives for this are to either have the online student enter the data or to put a file in the AppData directory that is read by the launched application. For example, a Java program could read a text or other data file in this way. 4. TEACHING COMPUTER GRAPHICS USING APPLICATION LAUNCHING This section reports on a pilot course taught with NEW AppLaunch capability, CS 652 Computer Graphics Fall 2007. 4.1 Course Organization Chen has taught Computer Graphics every semester for over 12 years. His course covers graphics principles and programming in 15 three-hour classes. Topics in the course include graphics hardware, antialiasing, transformations, viewing, illumination, blending, texture mapping, color models, curves, surfaces, scene graph structure, and virtual environments. Over the years, he has adopted several different textbooks [2,3,4,6,16]. Since 2003, the curriculum in the GMU Computer Science Department has adopted Java as the platform for Computer Science major instruction. Chen therefore has adopted use of JOGL (https://jogl.dev.java.net/) as a teaching graphics programming library and Java platform. One of the instruction methods is using interactive graphics examples to explain concepts in 3D graphics itself. Chen has coauthored a new Computer Graphics textbook [3] that includes a complete set of JOGL/Java 3D animation examples embedded in the lecture notes. 4.2 Structure of the Java Class Library The Java class library includes JOGL examples is shown in Figure 4. The first example J1_0_Point that draws a point is extended from the Frame class of the abstract window toolkit in the original Java library. All the other classes are extended from previous classes, inheriting their existing methods. Student homework can be extended from the sample programs as well. This helps students focus on the required problem by omitting other surrounding functions and setup. Homework sample answers are provided after students submit their answers. Figure 4. Structure of the Java class library 4.3 Teaching Experience with AppLaunch Development of NEW AppLaunch and its application to CS 652 was an experimental effort between Pullen’s laboratory (the developers) and Chen (the professor). Chen’s initial use of NEW resulted in frustration because previously 3D animation could only be achieved through importing a window to the whiteboard by converting frames of animation into images and sending the converted images across the network to distant students at a rate of one frame every few seconds. While this might have been very satisfactory for static output, it failed to capture the effect of animation. In effect, animation was not possible when only intermittent frames are displayed. The authors solved this problem together, resulting in a prototype of NEW AppLaunch to support CS 652 in a matter weeks. With AppLaunch, Chen was able to teach by launching Java applications with simple mouse clicks as standalone applications, while the distant students all viewed the same animation. This allowed the powerful approach of teaching by example, i.e. explaining concepts using real-time animation, a technique Chen had developed to deal with teaching the complexity of Computer Graphics. As a result, NEW has another advocate who is interested in exploring distance education. Chen is able to combine teaching by example with the whiteboard’s ability to retrace discussed annotations. This underscores our philosophy of distance education: the lecture is not just for the audience in the classroom, but also for those many distance receivers at home or at work, who are able to participate in class virtually, receiving animation programs that are delivered transparently and invoked Frame J1_0_Point J1_1_Point J1_2_Line J1_3_Triangle J1_4_Line (antialiasing) J1_5_Circle (subdivision) J2_0_2DTransform HW1: A point move in a circle HW2: Bresenham’s algorithm HW3: Polygon Scan-conversion HW4: Antialiasing and clipping HW5: … … … To appear in Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference Information Technology in Computer Science Education, Madrid, Spain, June 2008 when the instructor is ready to use them to support the teaching process. 5. CONCLUSIONS We have reported on a powerful approach to synchronous online education: application launching. By adding this capability to the existing NEW system, we were able to teach a Computer Graphics course online with excellent illustrations of programming techniques that ran in real time on all network participants’ computers under control of the instructor. We also reported on the pilot course taught in this way, which worked very much to our satisfaction and for the first time allowed distance education students to participate in a Computer Graphics course. The experience reported here has increased our confidence that we can continue to expand access to our teaching by employing innovations in online teaching technology. Thus the student who formerly could not afford the time or travel to attend classes will no longer face these limitations. This will allow us to “do well by doing good,” in the sense that we will expand our teaching horizons even as we meet the needs for more students, a worthwhile achievement in these days of declining Computer Science enrollments. 6. REFERENCES [1] Angel, E. Interactive Computer Graphics: A Top-Down Approach with OpenGL, Addison Wesley, 2003. [2] Chen, J. Guide to Graphics Software Tools, Springer Verlag, 2002. [3] Chen, J. and E.Wegman, Foundation of 3D Graphics Programming Using JOGL and Java3D, Springer Verlag, 2006. [4] Foley, J., A van Dam, S. Feiner and J. Hughes, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, Second Edition in C, Addison-Wesley, 1995. [5] Goodwin, C. and Bowman, M., Is the bottom line of online out of line? Calculating the total cost of online courses in Technology Curricula, Proceedings ASEE Annual Conference 2004 (Salt Lake City, UT, June 2004) [6] Hearn, D. and M. Baker, Computer Graphics, C version, 2nd edition, Printice-Hall, 1996. [7] Macedonia, M. and Brutzman, D., Mbone Provides Audio and Video Across the Internet, IEEE Computer 27, 4 (Apr. 1994), 30-36 [8] Pullen, J., Synchronous Distance Education and the Internet, Proceedings Internet Society Annual Conference 1998 (Geneva, Switzerland, July 1998), published online at http://www.isoc.org/inet98/ proceedings/ 4b/4b_1.htm [9] Pullen, J., The Internet lecture: converging teaching and technology, ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Bulletin Vol 32 No 3 (Sep. 2000), 101-104 [10] Pullen, J., Applicability Of Internet video In distance education For engineering, Proceedings IEEE Frontiers in Education 2001 (Reno, NV, October 2001), T2F-14–T2F-19, online at http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu/ fie2001/papers/1242.pdf [11] Pullen, J. and McAndrews, P., A Web portal for open-Source synchronous distance education, IASTED Journal on Advanced Technology for Learning 2,1 (Jan 2005), International Association of Science and technology for Development, Calgary, AB [12] Pullen, J., Scaling up a distance education program in computer science, ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Bulletin 38, 3 (Sep 2006) 33-37 [13] Sloan Consortium, Sizing the Opportunity: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003, online at http://www.sloan-c.org/resources/ overview.asp [14] Snow, C., Pullen, J. and McAndrews, P. (2005), An Open- Source Web-Based System for Synchronous Distance Education, IEEE Transactions on Education 48, 4 (Nov. 2005), 705-712 [15] Wilson, J., After the Fall: Lessons of an Indulgent Era, plenary presentation, Distance Education 2003, University of Wisconsin, unpublished, available online at http://www.jackmwilson.com/ArticlesTalks/eLearning- Wisconsin2003.ppt [16] Woo, M., J. Neider, and T. Davis, OpenGL Programming Guide Version 2.1, Addison Wesley, 2007 
work_nohe3vbrljhm5p7ad7jznsot5q	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_nojcljketjdileqlf3yy3qjxvq	----	08/01/2020 STUDY ENVIRONMENT AND PROCEDURE OF INTERACTION AMONG SCHOLARS IN A DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSE F… https://library.iated.org/view/DEFRANCABARROS2015STU 1/2 ABOUT IATEDABOUT IATED CONFERENCESCONFERENCES PUBLICATIONSPUBLICATIONS IATED IATED TALKSTALKS DIGITAL LIBRARYDIGITAL LIBRARY MAILING LISTMAILING LIST CONTACT USCONTACT US LOGINLOGIN          Upcoming event: • Announcement • Submit your abstract now STUDY ENVIRONMENT AND PROCEDURE OF INTERACTION AMONG SCHOLARS IN A DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSE FOR THE HEALTH AREA J. de França Barros, A. Ribeiro da Silva, H. Maia Peixoto, E. Dornelles Alves Universidade de Brasília (BRAZIL) Introduction: The health science college in the Brasília University (FS/UnB in Portuguese) presents distance education to teach the health area in undergraduate and graduate subjects. Objective: This research defined the study environment and interaction procedures between undergraduate and graduate students from health area in FS/UnB. Metodology: Study of exploratory nature powered by a quantifying approach. Sample of 133 students who answered the data collecting instrument (ICD in Portuguese) in the model of Likert scale of 11 points, from 0 to 10, and analyzed by the software SPSS version 17.0. Results: Scholars reached excellent quality, as long as all the items, in all the groups, showed values above 7. Thus, it was observed that both groups remained in the disciplines and the course for similar reasons. The study environment and interaction procedures were evaluated on the items that may have hindered or facilitated the permanence in the disciplines and rated course. Thus, it was observed that the answers of students, characterized as average, show both the quality of the study environment, as the promoters of interaction procedures. All items in both had mean and median values greater than 7, on a measure where 0 meant "hindered my permanency in the course / discipline" and 10 "not hindered my permanency in the course / discipline." So, some items that can be considered as facilitating aspects for the student's permanence in the course are: computer use in different activities of the course / discipline in my everyday life; the reconcilement of discipline with other study activities and family commitments; the availability of the computer; the financial cost for printing of course materials, computer maintenance and to access the internet; conciliation with professional activities; access to the course on the internet and study of contents with the proposed regularity; the quality of the Internet connection and administrative messages sent; the reading volume on the computer screen; and the use of messages, forum and chat to communicate with tutors and colleagues. Conclusion: Although there are significant statistic differences between means, from students in undergraduate and graduate courses, the effects of were not significant, demonstrating that both groups remained in the subjects and course for similar reasons. The use of this education category is in agreement with the most up-to-date methodologies for educational and communication areas implemented nowadays, constituting as a genuine process of social transformation through education. The results can contribute to diminish students’ evasion. References: [1] Silva, A., P. (2004). Avaliação de uma disciplina semipresencial de graduação ofertada por meio da Internet na Universidade de Brasília. Dissertação de mestrado, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brasil. [2] Peixoto. M. H. (2012). Avaliação de disciplinas semipresenciais de graduação e pós graduação na área de promoção da saúde na Universidade de Brasília. Dissertação de mestrado - Universidade de Brasília. All fields: Paper title: Authors: Keywords: Fulltext search 25 hits per page Sort by relevance Search Clear About this paper Appears in: EDULEARN15 Proceedings (browse) Pages: 8411-8412 (abstract only) Publication year: 2015 ISBN: 978-84-606-8243-1 ISSN: 2340-1117 Conference name: 7th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies Dates: 6-8 July, 2015 Location: Barcelona, Spain Citation download: (BibTeX) (ris) (plaintext) Other publications by the authors: (search) https://iated.org/about https://iated.org/conferences https://iated.org/publications https://iated.org/talks https://library.iated.org/ https://iated.org/mailing https://iated.org/about#contactus https://youtube.com/iatedorg https://facebook.com/iated https://www.linkedin.com/company/iated https://library.iated.org/ https://iated.org/edulearn/ https://iated.org/edulearn/ https://iated.org/edulearn/online_submission https://clarivate.com/products/web-of-science/ https://crossref.org/ https://library.iated.org/authors/J%C3%B4natas_de+Fran%C3%A7a+Barros https://library.iated.org/authors/Andr%C3%A9_Ribeiro+da+Silva https://library.iated.org/authors/Henry_Maia+Peixoto https://library.iated.org/authors/Elioenai_Dornelles+Alves https://library.iated.org/publications/EDULEARN15 https://library.iated.org/?adv_authors=%22J%C3%B4natas+de+Fran%C3%A7a+Barros%22+%22Andr%C3%A9+Ribeiro+da+Silva%22+%22Henry+Maia+Peixoto%22+%22Elioenai+Dornelles+Alves%22+ 08/01/2020 STUDY ENVIRONMENT AND PROCEDURE OF INTERACTION AMONG SCHOLARS IN A DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSE F… https://library.iated.org/view/DEFRANCABARROS2015STU 2/2 [3] SPSS Incorporation. (2006). Statistical Package for the Social Sciences - SPSS, Version 15.0. Chicago: SPSS Incorporation. [4] Zerbini, T. (2007). Avaliação da transferência de treinamento em curso a distância. Tese de doutorado, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília. DF, Brasil. keywords: distance education, higher education, instructional procedures, information and communication technologies. https://library.iated.org/keywords/distance+education https://library.iated.org/keywords/higher+education https://library.iated.org/keywords/instructional+procedures https://library.iated.org/keywords/information+and+communication+technologies 
work_noqvf74obvh2rcflpzxmtuxeuq	----	Media Naturalness Reduction and Compensatory Channel Expansion: A Study of Online and Face-to-Face Sections of the Same Course | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2011040101 Corpus ID: 14288115Media Naturalness Reduction and Compensatory Channel Expansion: A Study of Online and Face-to-Face Sections of the Same Course @article{Kock2011MediaNR, title={Media Naturalness Reduction and Compensatory Channel Expansion: A Study of Online and Face-to-Face Sections of the Same Course}, author={N. Kock and Vanessa Garza}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2011}, volume={9}, pages={1-12} } N. Kock, Vanessa Garza Published 2011 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. This study provides a combined test of the media naturalness and channel expansion theories with a study of communication media perceptions and use outcomes in the context of a college information systems course delivery. Data was collected from undergraduate students at the middle and end of a long semester. Approximately half of the students took the course face-to-face, and the other half online. As predicted, based on media naturalness theory, grades were significantly higher in the face-to… Expand View via Publisher aisel.aisnet.org Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 11 CitationsBackground Citations 3 View All Tables and Topics from this paper table 1 table 2 table 3 table 4 table 5 View All 5 Figures & Tables Theory Information system 11 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency How do medium naturalness and personality traits shape academic achievement and perceived learning? An experimental study of face-to-face and synchronous e-learning Ina Blau, Orli Weiser, Yoram Eshet-Alkalai Psychology 2017 10 PDF View 3 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Public Speaking Anxiety: Comparing Face-to-Face and Web-Based Speeches. Scott Campbell, James Larson Psychology 2013 2 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Notion of Presence in a Telematic Cross-Disciplinary Program for Music, Communication and Technology R. Støckert, Andreas Bergsland, Anna Xambó Sociology 2020 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Girls and Computers - Yes We Can!: A Case Study on Improving Female Computer Confidence and Decreasing Gender Inequity in Computer Science with an Informal, Female Learning Community Misook Heo, L. M. Spradley-Myrick Psychology 2011 3 Save Alert Research Feed Foreign Language Anxiety in Traditional and Distance Learning Foreign Language Classrooms Anastasia Bollinger Psychology 2017 1 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed An evaluation of interactive tabletops in elementary mathematics education A. T. Jackson, Bradley J. Brummel, C. Pollet, David Greer Computer Science 2013 33 Save Alert Research Feed An Empirical Study to Validate the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in Explaining the Intention to Use Technology among Educational Users T. Teo Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2010 24 Save Alert Research Feed Developing the Students' Thinking and Learning Skills in the Instrumental Lesson Rossella Marisi Psychology 2019 1 Save Alert Research Feed Integrating E-Learning 2.0 into Online Courses Steve Chi-Yin Yuen Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2014 6 Save Alert Research Feed Examining E-Learning Programs in Turkish Higher Education System C. Babaoglu, M. Öktem Sociology 2018 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 76 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Media Naturalness and Online Learning: Findings Supporting Both the Significant- and No-Significant-Difference Perspectives N. Kock, J. Verville, Vanessa Garza Computer Science 2007 67 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Computer-Mediated Communication: Task Performance and Satisfaction A. Simon Psychology, Medicine The Journal of social psychology 2006 93 View 1 excerpt, references results Save Alert Research Feed Team adaptation to electronic communication media: evidence of compensatory adaptation in new product development teams N. Kock, G. Lynn, K. Dow, Ali E. Akgün Computer Science Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 2006 44 PDF View 4 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed A Comparison of Student Achievement and Satisfaction in an Online Versus a Traditional Face-to-Face Statistics Class J. Summers, A. Waigandt, T. Whittaker Psychology 2005 308 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Finding a happy medium: explaining the negative effects of electronic communication on social life at work M. Markus Computer Science, Psychology TOIS 1994 347 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Transitioning from Face-to-Face to Online Instruction: How to Increase Presence and Cognitive/Social Interaction in an Online Information Security Risk Assessment Class Cindy S. York, D. Yang, M. Dark Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2007 26 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Media richness or media naturalness? The evolution of our biological communication apparatus and its influence on our behavior toward E-communication tools N. Kock Psychology IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 2005 309 PDF View 7 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication S. Kiesler, J. Siegel, T. McGuire Psychology, Computer Science 1984 2,595 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Testing Media Richness Theory in the New Media: The Effects of Cues, Feedback, and Task Equivocality A. Dennis, Susan T. Kinney Computer Science Inf. Syst. Res. 1998 883 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Role-Based Experiences, Media Perceptions, and Knowledge Transfer Success in Virtual Dyads Bryan K. Hasty, A. Massey, S. Brown Psychology 2006 41 View 3 excerpts, references results and background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... Related Papers Abstract Tables and Topics 11 Citations 76 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_nqcurkz54rfuxeyrq3ezpkf2je	----	jss-158 INTRODUCTION Along with an increase in the number of institutions, the federal universities experienced tremendous growth in enrollment during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Indeed, during that time, enrollment doubled every four to five years. Student enrollment during the decade of the 1990s increased more gradually (Table 1), and approximately doubled over the ten-year period. System-wide, the number of students increased at an average annual rate of about 12 percent. The government-approved annual enrollment growth rates for the federal universities used by the NUC as part of the budgeting parameters are 2.5 percent for the 1st generation universities, 10 percent for the 2nd generation universities and 15 percent for the 3rd generation universities (Hartnett, 2000). But it must be realized that both the Federal government and the Universities could not satisfy the aspiration of Nigerians to acquire university education. The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) could not admit a reasonable percentage of Nigerian qualified prospective candidates to the universities due to the limited space and academic facilities. In other to satisfy the aspiration of these students among other reasons, majority of Nigerian universities decided to establish Satellite Campuses in various parts of the country. Okebukola (2001) noted that the desire of Nigerians to acquire higher education informed the establishment of such centers, but pointed out that the operators were more interested in the economic gains which they hoped to derive rather than the provision of qualitative educations. © Kamla-Raj 2004 J. Soc. Sci., 9(1): 23-27 (2004) Adequate Library Facilities in Nigeria: A Key Contributor to Sustainable Distance Education System L.A. Ogunsola Hezekiah Oluwasanmi Library, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria E-mail: logunsola 2002@yahoo.com KEYWORDS Nigerian library facilities; distance education, Nigerian educational system ABSTRACT The paper identifies the problems associated with the establishment of Satellite Campus by majority of Nigerian Universities. The nation is aware of the decay inflicted on university education by some of the ubiquitous study centers. The paper, therefore, discusses the possibility of achieving higher functional literacy through distance education system and stresses the importance of functional library facilities in the programme. The paper finally suggests ways and means which the government can use to make the distance education system a success. People are worried that the future of the nation is sacrificed on the altar of economic gains being made in these centers rather than the provision of good qualitative education. Akinpelu (1992) observed that in Nigeria, 50%-70% of the people are illiterates, in a nation whose population is estimated at 100 million. This means, in effect, that not less than 60 million of the citizens cannot read or write. Oni (1992) was of the opinion that children are like seeds in the hands of adults, and that it is the kind of fruits they are cultured to bear that they would germinate to bear at adulthood. Ibadan - 9 % Lagos - 7 % Nsukka - 6 % Zaria - 11% Ile-Ife - 6 % Benin - 14% Jos - 7 % Calabar - 24% Kano - 12% Maiduguri - 10% Sokoto - 13% Ilorin - 14% Port Harcourt - 12% U y o - 15% Awka - 1 % Abuja 1990/91-1998/99 - 125% Owerri - 22% Akure - 31% Minna - 32% Bauchi - 17% Yola - 43% Makurdi (1992/93-1998/99) - 3 % Abeokuta (1992/93-1998/99) - 6 % Umudike (1993/94-1998/99) - 223% Source: 1987/88 – Nigerian University System: Past, Present and Future, NUC. Table 1: Average annual enrollment growoth 1989/ 90 - 1998/99 24 L.A. OGUNSOLA In recognition of the educational needs of Nigerians, government was institutionalizing a virile distance education programme to be implemented through the Open University of Nigeria, expected to take off in 2002 (Punch, 2001). It was pointed out that the action becomes necessary because of the bastardization of university eduction in the country by the Satellite Campuses. To meet up with the increasing demands for the acquisition of university education by Nigerians which prompted them to be patronizing such illegal outlets, the Federal Government would ensure the take-off of the National Open University in the country before the end of the year. The Federal Government on Wednesday August 30, 2001 finally wielded the big stick against universities operating Satellite Campuses as it directed them to immediately close shop (Punch, August 30, 2001). And to serve as a deterrent to further patronage of the Satellite Campuses, government, through the National University Commission (NUC) vowed not to recognize Certificates awarded by such institutions. It is the objective of this paper to point out the problems associated with the operation of Satellite Campuses, the need for distance education system through the establishment of National Open University and the need for adequate library facilities in the proposed Open University System and in other parts of the country. The roles which adequate and functioning library facilities are expected to play in the Distance Education System would be emphasized. DISTANCE EDUCATION SYSTEM – WHAT IS IT? It is common knowledge that our educational systems cannot cater for all who are desirous of education at all levels. For one reason or the other not all can afford to do face-to-face learning even of the short-time duration. To fill the gap, distance education can be regarded as the answer. Distance education is a generic term that includes a range of teaching/learning strategies variously referred to as correspondence education or study the world over, as home study or independent study in the United States of America; external studies in Australia, etc. The exact meaning of each of these terms has been a subject of some debate but in line with Rhumble and Harry (1982), distance teaching will refer to the institutional role of providing education at a distance and distance learning to the role of the learner while teaching and learning will constitute the Distance Education System. However, the main aim of all these is that of providing or communicating and acquiring some specific ideas, knowledge, skills, attitude and practice in response to some predetermined needs. All these are done in organized manners outside the formal face-to- face school framework. Distance Education thus caters for those who for one reason or the other cannot attend face-to-face learning. The aims and objectives of Distance Education will be: (a) to brush up and strengthen what is already known; (b) introducing students to the basic concepts and techniques of their chosen fields of study and preparing them to launch into the next stage of education. Both short and long term objectives will include the following:- Distance Learners should be able to: (a) speak and be understood; (b) listen to and understand conversation; (c) read and follow directions; and write his own cheque, keep an account, write a bill or an invoice and so on (Olayemi, 1993). COMPONENTS OF DISTANCE EDUCATION SYSTEM The following are some of the identified components of Distance Education System: (1) Correspondence texts or lectures: These could be in Units, modules or cycles; each of which will teach a part of or a whole topic. (2) Set books for readers: These are to be seen in our context as supplementary to the correspondence texts which must have been fully illustrated and written in simple language. (3) Audio and Video Cassettes: In context, the audio will be more easily accessible if mass produced specifically for literacy for all. Nigeria is yet to be able to take the full benefit of the video cassettes but they should form a part of the course-ware for the 21st century. (4) Television: This too needs to be explored for the 21st century. For now however, a 30 minutes slot on National Network at the national level and an hour or more on the State or local stations in the evening hours 25ADEQUATE LIBRARY FACILITIES IN NIGERIA will go along way in raising the standard of literacy in the country. (5) Radio: It is not an over-statement that many more listen to the radio. Some hours tagged Literacy Hour should be aired by different stations daily. Each community will air lessons/lectures relevant to it (Olayemi, 1993). From the above listed components of distance education system, the roles which functional library system can play in its execution can never be over-emphasized. At all levels, as Kaegbein (1982) has rightly observed, the communications of knowledge play an important role not only via the examples given by other persons, but also through the individual’s own reading. A student exposed to these relevant materials will therefore be in a better position to raise relevant and intelligent questions, and also form his own opinion about what he is taught in the class (Ogunsola, 1996). He may even become an ‘expert’ on a particular topic, perhaps discovering aspects unknown to the teacher. LIBRARIES AND DISTANCE EDUCATION SYSTEM The purpose of education is to pass on society’s cultural values and accumulated body of knowledge to the next generation (children) and to prepare them for meaningful adult life. In particular, the new Nigerian Education System has emphasized creativity, scientific and reflective thinking, inter-ethnic understanding among others and a holistic approach to teaching and learning especially at the tertiary level. If we are to produce children who are self-reliant, and better able to fit into their immediate environment and interact successfully with the world at large we need well developed Distance Education System which is well supported by adequate library facilities like learning resources centers, Media Resource Centres, Instructional Materials Centres and so on. One of the reasons why illiteracy rate is high in Nigeria is because many people relapse into secondary illiteracy for want of adequate and relevant reading materials to sustain and consolidate the reading skills acquired in the classroom or Distance Education System. Without any shadow of doubt, the extent to which children and young people of today will be creative, informed and knowledgeable will be shaped by the boundaries of the contents of the library resources available within their environment. Library resources are those materials made up of books, audio visual softwares, realia, audio visual hardwares and other pedagogical materials used in the teaching and learning processes. Library materials here are synonymous with educational resources, learning resources or media resources. New trends all over the world, Nigeria included, are advocating a multimedia approach to education. A wide variety and plentiful supply of resources are required to encourage independent study so that young people from an early age can learn how to think so that their convictions and views are formed as a result of active mental efforts. A basic book collection whether for the primary, secondary or tertiary level should be rich and varied. It should cover all the subject areas of the school’s curriculum as well as cater for individual interests and extra-curricula pursuits. For Distance Education System to be viable and well executed, the books and related resources should include a wide variety of content for different levels of reading ability, styles and types. All these must be made available in our various public libraries and the Open University Library. The Open University Library should contain books for the fast or slow readers, for the gifted and the retarded. Audio visual or non book materials are becoming increasingly very important in school or public libraries. Their importance as far as Distance Education System is concerned can never be over emphasized. It is the availability of these in large numbers in any library which has given such library its new name of Media Resource Centre. Audio visual resources are not aids as many teachers would have us believe. They are learning media in their rights. Television and Video-Tape Recordings are extremely important in the proper execution of Distance Education System in Nigeria. These are high demand gadgets and may not be within the reach of many prospective students of Distance Education System. But they have become common house-hold appliances especially in urban areas of Nigeria. In fact many homes are mini-resource centers. The television and video can provide a team production approach to learning problems. They can magnify or reduce demonstration or illustrative materials. They can capitalize on immediacy at the same time reach audiences of any size. Television and video accelerate the teaching-learning processes as well 26 L.A. OGUNSOLA as provide for special instruction. They permit the viewing of widely different subjects at any given time. The only limitation in their usage is the irregular power supply in Nigeria. If Distance Education system is to be successful, this problem of erratic electricity supply should be addressed. Audio Recordings are many and varied. They include phonograph records, recorded tapes, cassettes and the like. These resources appeal to the aura senses of both teachers and the students especially in non-face-to-face educational system. They are useful in developing or improving children’s listening skills – an invaluable aspect of teaching – learning process. Audio recordings are cheap and easy to produce. They are easy to use because they can be played and replayed at will. It is also possible to combine audio recordings with slides or filmstrips thus catching the ear and eye at the same time. It must be pointed out that if Distance Education System is to be successfully implemented, the teachers and demonstrators or instructors of this laudable programme must see library staff and library resources as partners in the teaching learning processes. Both teachers and students must make use of library facilities available in their areas. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION It is a known fact that over one million pupils sit for the School Certificate/G.C.E. Ordinary level examinations every year, and that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) can only offer admission to less than 15 percent of candidates seeking university admission. Besides, an estimated 50,000 working adults who were unable to obtain higher education will now utilize the opportunity offered by distance learning programmes to develop themselves on a part-time basis. It must be realized that the desire for more learning is healthy. Modern societies are knowledge-driven. Illiteracy and ignorance have long been identified as enemies of development and global efforts are being directed towards meeting the people’s educational needs so that the benefits of globalization can spread faster. The challenge is, therefore, to maintain set standards without limiting access to learning. The government has repeatedly expressed concern about the poor quality of learning in many university outreach centers. The nation is aware of the decay inflicted on university education by some of the ubiquitous study centers. It is also realized that the Satellite campus system has long been hijacked by charlatans whose motives are mainly pecuniary. What the nation has had on its hand is a situation where many of the satellite campuses dish out sub-standard education to their students. Therefore, the need to enforce quality is not in doubt. While confronting the short-comings of the satellite campuses, the huge demand for university education by Nigerian must not be over-looked. The mushrooming of outreach centers was the logical response of a society whose strong thirst for higher learning has remained unsatisfied for many years. It can then be concluded that the Federal Government’s plan to establish an open university is a positive step. Various modes of instruction which are available to choose from have been suggested in this paper. In a developing country like Nigeria, it may be unrealistic to choose the video cassette and the television for the execution of distant learning programme. The most easily accessible to a wider population is the print called correspondence texts, then the audio cassettes and the radio. The video cassette and the television are yet to become commodities of the common man and are not even easy to carry around like the radio, the printed text and the audio cassettes. Lessons on identified relevant topics are to be written in simple easy to understand sentences using personal pronouns and discussant modes. Each of these lessons is to be clearly and fully illustrated; contain learning cues and built-in feedback system to keep the learner on the study. At the initial stage and without audio cassette accompaniment what we will have may look like picture reading but for the higher illiterate it is functional literacy. The lessons/lectures need not be too long: if they are too long, the learner becomes discouraged; if too short not much may be gained. The radio as has been pointed out reaches a wider audience. There may be an urgent need for communication experts to develop or adapt for the use of literacy for all means of communicating through cellular radio. This uses low-power radio transmitters that are placed at mapped out strategic locations in form of resource center within the community. Such will enable more air hours for transmitting to prospective learners and teach and train using the correspondence materials/texts. Audio cassettes like tapes (cassettes) and players can effectively be used in literacy for all 27ADEQUATE LIBRARY FACILITIES IN NIGERIA through Distance Education System. The government will however have to design and specially produce such tapes and players thus making them available cheaply to the populace. They then constitute a part of the course ware for literacy for all through Distance Education System. The audio cassettes will teach what the correspondence texts contain. If painstakingly and rightly cued and used many learners will become literate through them. Vocation Schools, tutorials, weekend classes or contact sessions are also important as they not only provide psychological satisfaction to the learner that he too attends formal classes but make room for clarifying problems arising from self-study. At each of these contact sessions, a thorough review of the previously studied lessons, practicals would be done. It is certain that if the written lectures, the audio cassettes, the radio programme(s) and the subsequent contact session are useful to the learner, the distance learner will be motivated to stay on the programme and even clamour for more advanced courses. The self-help group, if well organized, may take over the duties of the contact sessions under the guidance of the teacher. By adopting some or all the techniques and technologies just enumerated above, access to education and literacy will be increased and the quality of education will also be improved. However, if care is not taken, fragmentation and lack of coherence may result for courses being taught. It is therefore necessary to ensure that course materials have explicit statements of objectives, are well structured and laid out; illustrated; written in a personalized language i.e. talk to the learner, are error-free and contain not only learning cues but built-in feed-back systems to help the learner check his progress. Also if success is to be achieved, writers of scripts, an efficient monitoring team, immediate feed-back system, ensure that lessons/lectures are motivating to keep the learners on the course, are also points to consider. In essence Distance Education System aimed at literacy for all should ensure the appropriateness of programmes and of distance education techniques and technology to the particular requirements of the community. The programme should be in consonance with identified priorities while helping individuals and groups generally acquire more awareness of and sensitivity to the environment and its problems and begin to think of what they can do to address the problem. The designed programme should be functional. Time is a factor that is very important in Distance Education System. Schedules of writing, editing production and distribution have to be kept. Adequate, detailed and careful planning is critical to the whole teaching/learning arrangement of the Distance Education System if success in literacy is to be substantial. The government must make it mandatory for the organizers and the executors of Distance Education System to deposit copies of correspondence texts, audio cassettes and other teaching and learning materials produced by them to the various libraries available in their environment. This will be useful for Distance Education Students to make reference to any of these materials when there is the need for it. As emphasized by Etuk, (1993) librarians are servants and the major gateways to knowledge. As such, it is recommended that the federal and state governments should encourage the creation of the position of literacy librarians in our public libraries and saddle them with the responsibility of initiating meaningful programmes for those who, as a result of poverty, learning deficiency or physical or mental disability continue to live under the handicap of functional illiteracy. REFERENCES Akinpelu, J.A. 1992. “Education and Mass Literacy, Danger and Opportunities for Nigeria in the 21st Century”. Education Today. Sept.: 41-44. Etuk, Mfon. 1993. “Promotion of literacy awareness by Nigerian University Libraries: Strategies for Success”. Literacy and Reading in Nigeria, 6: 29. Hartnett, Terara. 2000. Financing Trends and Expendi- ture Patterns in Nigerian Federal Universities: an Update. Abuja, NUC, pp.1-2. Kaegbein, P. 1982. “On the Role of Libraries in the Process of Education”. International Library Review. 14: 336. Ogunsola, L.A. 1996. “Reading Habits of Secondary School Students in Ife Central Local Government, Ile-Ife”.Ife Psychologia: An International Journal. 4: 205. Okebukola, Peter. 2001. “Federal Government Orders Closure of Satellite Campuses”. The Punch Thursday, August 30, pp.2. Olayemi, A.E. 1993. “Promoting literacy for all through Distance Education System”. Literacy and Reading in Nigeria, 6: 302. Oni, A. 1992. “Mobilizing Adult Illiterates: A Perspective for a Developing Country”. Education Today, Sept: 38-40. The Punch 2001. “FG Orders Closure of Satellite Campuses”. The Punch, Aug., 30, pp.1-2. Rhumble, G. and K. Harry (eds.). 1982. The Distance Teaching Universities. London, New York: Goom Helm St. Martins. 
work_nqg4i4l4cnao5bht5j6br4gnau	----	[PDF] Integrating Web-based Technology Into Distance Education for Nurses in China: Computer and Internet Access and Attitudes | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1097/00024665-200309000-00015 Corpus ID: 33143389Integrating Web-based Technology Into Distance Education for Nurses in China: Computer and Internet Access and Attitudes @article{Cragg2003IntegratingWT, title={Integrating Web-based Technology Into Distance Education for Nurses in China: Computer and Internet Access and Attitudes}, author={C. E. Cragg and N. Edwards and Zhao Yu-e and S. Xin and Z. Hui}, journal={CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing}, year={2003}, volume={21}, pages={265-274} } C. E. Cragg, N. Edwards, +2 authors Z. Hui Published 2003 Medicine CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing To increase continuing education accessibility, nurses around the world are turning to Web-based instruction. However, for Internet education to be successful, particularly in developing countries, nurses must have access to computers and the Internet as well as positive attitudes toward this form of learning. As part of a distance education project for nurses of the Tianjin Municipality in China, a survey of nurses was conducted to examine their sources of professional knowledge as well as… Expand View on Wolters Kluwer nottingham.ac.uk Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 34 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 3 Background Citations 12 Methods Citations 1 Results Citations 3 View All Topics from this paper Attitude Education, Distance Education, Continuing 34 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Assessing the Quality of a Web-based Learning System for Nurses Chi-Yuan Chen, R. Chang, M. 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Mobley Psychology, Medicine Journal of continuing education in nursing 2011 10 Save Alert Research Feed The relationship between in-service training nurses’ attitudes toward computer in health care and computer anxiety in Turkey H. Kaya, Burçin Işık, G. Bodur Medicine 2014 4 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites results Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 12 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Continuing education for nurses in Tianjin Municipality, the People's Republic of China. N. Edwards, Z. Hui, S. Xin Psychology, Medicine Journal of continuing education in nursing 2001 11 View 4 excerpts Save Alert Research Feed The prospects for using the Internet in collaborative design education with China Alice Lo Choi Yuet Ngor Business 2001 16 Highly Influential View 5 excerpts, references methods and background Save Alert Research Feed International collaborative workshops. A 6-year partnership between Canada and China. N. Edwards, H. Bunn, E. Morales-Mann, P. Papai, B. Davies Political Science, Medicine Nurse educator 2000 6 View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Will evidence-based nursing practice make practice perfect? C. Estabrooks Medicine The Canadian journal of nursing research = Revue canadienne de recherche en sciences infirmieres 1998 266 Save Alert Research Feed Influence of direct computer experience on older adults' attitudes toward computers. G. Jay, S. Willis Psychology, Medicine Journal of gerontology 1992 220 Save Alert Research Feed Assessing computer anxiety: Development and validation of the Computer Anxiety Rating Scale R. Heinssen, C. R. Glass, L. A. Knight Psychology 1987 686 Save Alert Research Feed Development and Validation of the Computer Self-Efficacy Scale C. A. Murphy, Delphine Coover, S. Owen Psychology 1989 450 Save Alert Research Feed CERNET: Starter of China Internet Chin Sch Abroad 2000 Beijing announcement: the promises for new century Chin Sch Abroad. 2001;10:31-34 2003 E - 9 Beijing announcement : the promises for new century Chin Sch Abroad 2001 ... 1 2 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 34 Citations 12 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_nrmyv2klkzee7dup3rhljxebba	----	- 113 - 교육과정평가연구 TheJournalofCurriculum andEvaluation 2015,Vol.18,No.1,pp.113～134 교원 역량 심의 원격연수 교육과정 운 실태 분석1) 김 은 영(동명대학교 초빙교수)* 김 현 진(한국교원대학교 부교수)** ≪ 요 약 ≫ 본 연구에서는 교원연수의 일환으로 재 원격교육연수원에서 운 되고 있는 연수과정의 주제를 교원 역량 신장의 측면에서 분석하 다.이를 하여 54개의 원격교육연수원(공인 원격교육연수원, 교육과학기술연수원,시도교육연수원)에서 2011년 1월부터 2012년 9월까지 운 된 1430개의 원 격연수과정을 수집하여 내용분석을 실시하 다.분석결과 원격연수과정은 ‘자기계발’,‘교수학습실행’, ‘생활지도 상담’과 같은 특정 역량에 치우쳐 개발ㆍ운 되고 있었으며,연수원의 유형에 따라 으로 운 되고 있는 연수과정에 차이가 있음을 확인하 다.이를 토 로 교원의 역량 신장을 한 원격연수과정은 부족하게 운 된 연수주제에 한 개발,학교 의 특성에 맞춘 연수과정의 개발,그 리고 생애주기를 고려한 연수과정이 확 운 될 것을 제안하 다.본 연구는 교원의 원격연수를 담 당하는 체 원격교육연수원의 연수 황을 이해하고,교원 역량 신장을 해 개발의 필요가 있는 연 수과정을 인식하는데 기 자료로 활용될 것이다. 주제어:교원 역량 계발,교사교육,원격연수,원격교육연수원 1)본연구는 김 진 외(2013)‘교원 역량 신장 측면에서의 원격교육연수원 황분석:연수주제를 심으로’ 보고서를 기반으로 수정ㆍ보완한 것임. *제1 자,kim.eunyoung80@gmail.com **교신 자,jinnie@knue.ac.kr 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 114 - Ⅰ. 서론 우리는 흔히 ‘교육의 질은 교사의 질을 능가하지 못한다’라는 말을 사용한다.이는 교육에 있 어 무엇보다도 요한 역할과 책임이 교원에게 있음을 의미하는 것이다.교원은 교사양성기 에 서의 배움에 머물지 않고 지속 인 자기 성찰과 자기계발 그리고 재교육을 통해 교육 문가로 서 성장해 나간다. 직 교원을 상으로 하는 연수는 개인 측면에서는 연수내용을 통한 교원 개인의 역량 신장이면서,국가 측면에서는 우수한 교원의 확보와 유지를 한 재교육의 보편 인 방법으로 볼 수 있다. 통 인 교원연수의 형태인 집합연수는 학교 장의 수업손실을 최 소화하기 하여 주로 수업 이후 혹은 방학 기간을 이용하여 집 으로 운 되기 때문에 산 시설의 부족,연수 참여 시간의 제약,다양한 요구 수렴의 어려움 등의 한계를 지닌다(구원 회,2011;서순식,김성완,2011;안미리 외,2000;이종연,2002;정진구,김자미,김홍래, 2009).이에 비해 정보통신기술을 활용한 원격연수는 시공간의 제약 없이 범 한 주제와 내 용의 연수가 가능하고,연수생의 요구에 신속히 부응하는 교육과정 개발이 가능하며,온라인 학 습공간에서 국의 교원들이 연수를 통한 교류가 가능하다는 등 집합연수의 한계를 극복할 수 있기에 정책 으로 교원의 자격연수나 직무연수에서 원격연수를 활성화하고 있다(교육부ㆍ 한국교육학술정보원,2013).2000년에 21개의 공인원격교육연수원의 인가 지정을 시작으 로 도입된 원격연수는 이제 스마트기술 기기의 확산으로 웹에서 뿐만 아니라 스마트 폰과 스 마트패드에서도 학습할 수 있는 연수콘텐츠가 개발되어 다양한 형태의 원격교육연수에 한 연 수에 한 교원의 수요와 심은 더욱 더 증가할 것으로 상된다. 교원의 지속 인 역량 신장인 본래 취지에 어 나지 않고 증가하는 수요에 부응하기 해서 원격교육연수 콘텐츠의 양 성장뿐만 아니라 연수 교육과정에 한 질 리가 무엇보다 요 하다고 본다. 재 원격교육연수 콘텐츠의 질 리는 원격교육연수지원센터(한국교육학술정 보원)의 연수 콘텐츠 품질인증을 통과한 연수과정만을 교원의 연수실 연수성 평정 상 으로 인정하는 것이다(교육부ㆍ한국교육학술정보원,2013).하지만 개발되는 연수과정의 주제 에 해서는 제한을 두지 않기 때문에 많은 수강인원으로 비용효과를 수 있는 과정이 개발될 수 있으며,이로 인해 특정 교원 역량에 치 되어 개발될 가능성도 있다.따라서 운 되고 있는 원격교원연수의 교육과정이 어떠한 교원의 역량 신장에 기여하고 있는지,그리고 한계는 무엇인 지에 한 체계 인 분석이 필요하다. 본 연구는 재 원격교육연수원에서 운 되고 있는 연수과정의 주제를 교원 역량 신장의 측 면에서 황을 악하고,향후 원격교원연수과정의 개발 운 의 방향에 해 제시하는 것을 연구의 목 으로 하 다.연구목 을 달성하기 한 연구문제는 ‘원격교육연수원 교육과정의 주 제는 교원역량과 련지어 어떻게 운 되고 있는가?이다. 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 115 - Ⅱ. 이론적 배경 1. 교원의 역량 역량(competency)은 “보통의 직무수행자(averageperformer)보다는 우수한 직무수행자 (superiorperformer)들의 특성”(McClelland,1973)으로 정의된다.역량은 실제 직무수행 에서 발 되는 구체 인 행동특성으로 이해할 수 있다.따라서 보통 직무수행자에게는 일반 으 로 역량은 보유하고 있는 능력 이상을 의미하기 때문에,수행의 목표라고 이해될 수 있다. 역량모델(Competencymodel)이란 개인이 수행하는 특정한 직무,직책이나 개인이 속한 조 직의 미션,가치,비 을 반 한 역량들을 한 에 쉽게 볼 수 있도록 묶어놓은 집합체이다(윤여 순,1998).이 역량모델은 직무수행에 부족하거나 필요한 역량을 진단하고 연수나 교육훈련을 통해 계발하기 하여 조직 개인 차원의 교육체계 수립에 활용하거나,연수나 교육훈련을 제공하는 측면에서 새로운 연수의 수요를 악하여 연수내용으로 구성하는데 활용된다.뿐만 아 니라 조직 내 경력개발의 측면에서 직무 조직의 문가로 성장하고자 하는 사람들에게 역량 계발을 한 로드맵을 제시하는 데에도 활용된다(김 진 외,2011).이와 같은 역량모델은 주 로 기업에서 인 자원의 개발이나 리측면에서 논의되어 왔으나,최근에는 학교교육에서도 주 목하고 있다(이 우,홍원표,2012). 변하는 교육환경에 따른 교사의 역할과 직무가 강조되 면서 주로 2000년 후반부터 교원에게 필요한 역량이 무엇인지를 규명하고 이를 개발하기 한 략 로그램 수립이 강조되고 있으며 직 별,교과별,특정 직무별로 요구되는 교원역 량에 한 연구가 이루어지고 있다(김 진,허희옥,김은 ,2013;류지춘,이신동,2014;변 숙 ,2012). 교원양성기 교원정책기 차원에서 교원의 역량을 도출한 표 인 사례로는 교육과학 기술연수원의 역량모델(교육부,2006)과 한국교원 학교의 교실 친화 교사 능력 요소(허병 기 외,2009),그리고 김 진 외(2011)의 교원역량모델을 들 수 있다(<표 1>참조).먼 ,교 육부(2006)의 교육과학기술연수원( , 앙교육연수원)에서는 교원역량을 교사 그리고 교장/ 교감으로 구분하여 ‘기반역량’,‘리더십역량’,‘직무역량’의 세 개의 범주로 구분하고,교사의 포 인 직무역량에 해당되는 7개의 하 역량을 도출하 다.이 역량모델의 특징은 변하는 교육 환경 속에서 수업역량 이상의 포 인 교원역량이 요구된다는 에서 의의가 있다고 하겠다. 하지만 포 인 직무역량은 추상성이 높아서 역량의 의미를 실 하기 어려울 수 있다는 한계를 지닌다.다음으로 한국교원 학교에서는 높은 수 의 교실 수업 문성을 갖춘 교사를 ‘교실 친 화 교사’로 규정하고 ‘교실활동’,‘교직품성’,‘자기개발’의 세 가지 범주 아래 31개의 역량을 도 출하 다(허병기 외,2009).교실친화 교원역량은 교실활동이라는 범주에서 직무역량이 강조 된 이 특징이며,‘수업과 생활지도,학 경 ’의 역량을 제시함으로써 학교 장에 보다 합한 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 116 - 역량을 도출한 에 의의가 있다.하지만 이 역량모델의 경우 비교원의 양성을 목 으로 활용 하고자 개발된 취지여서 직교원의 연수로서 활용하기에는 상세한 역량 정리가 요구된다.한 편,김 진 외(2011)는 교원역량을 “교원 개인과 교직 내 직무수행상황에서 성공 인 성과를 이끌기 해 필요한 지식,기술,태도의 집합체로서 교육 상황과 정책을 반 하며, 찰가능 하고 측정가능하며 계발,개선 가능한 내재 특성”으로 정의하고 10개 역량과 22개의 하 역 량요소,50개의 행동지표로 구성된 역량모델을 도출하 다.이 역량모델은 역량개발이 부분 기 연구로 끝나고 실제 인 활용이 낮다는 측면에서 연수를 통한 역량 개발에 을 두고 연 수로 구성 가능한 기 으로 역량을 도출하 다는 , 장교원의 요구 인식을 반 한 연구방 법으로 장 활용을 극 화하 다는 에서 교원연수를 한 역량으로써 의의가 있다고 하겠다. <표 1>교원역량모델의 국내 사례 비교 원역량모델 범주 역량명 교육과학기술 연수원(2006) 기 반 가치 ㆍ상호신뢰 ㆍ원칙 수 ㆍ윤리의식 신 ㆍ변화주도 ㆍ창의력 ㆍ 로세스 개선 리 더 십 성과 ㆍ공정성 ㆍ비 제시 공유 ㆍ 략 사고 인지 (교장/교감)ㆍ책임감 ㆍ 정 사고 (교사)ㆍ책임감 ㆍ 정 사고 ㆍ자기개발 인 (교장/교감)ㆍ솔선수범 (교사)ㆍ솔선수범 ㆍ배려 ㆍ 조성 직무역량 (교장/교감)ㆍ학생/고객이해 ㆍ장학능력 ㆍ의사결정능력 ㆍ의사소통능력 ㆍ교육계획수립 ㆍ상황 처능력 ㆍ갈등 리능력 (교사) ㆍ교과 문성 ㆍ교수학습능력 ㆍ교육계획수립 ㆍ상담능력 ㆍ의사소통능력 ㆍ학생이해(고객이해)ㆍ학습동기부여 허병기 외(2009) 교실활동 수업 ㆍ교육과정 개발능력 ㆍ교육과정 이해능력 ㆍ수업활동 설계능력 ㆍ수업활동 개능력 ㆍ수업활동 평가능력 ㆍ학습자 이해능력 ㆍ언어 표 능력 ㆍ매체활용능력 ㆍ교수학습자료 제작 활용능력 ㆍ교과서 분석 재구성능력 ㆍ교수학 내용지식(PCK)ㆍ교수학습이론(방법)ㆍ교과내용지식 생활지도 학 경 ㆍ학 리실무능력 ㆍ의사결정능력 ㆍ의사소통능력 ㆍ학생 리능력 ㆍ 외 력능력 ㆍ학생요구 분석능력 ㆍ학생특성이해능력 ㆍ상황이해 처능력 교직품성 ㆍ인간애 ㆍ학습자 정신 ㆍ교육공동체의식 ㆍ교육 감수성 ㆍ학생인권의식 ㆍ교직에 한 헌신 자기개발 ㆍ자기주도 학습능력 ㆍ실행연구능력 ㆍ반성 성찰능력 ㆍ정보 리능력 김 진 외(2011) ㆍ교육과정 이해 재구성 ㆍ교과내용지식 ㆍ수업설계 ㆍ학습자 이해 ㆍ교수매체의 선정과 활용 ㆍ교수학습 실행 ㆍ평가 결과 활용 ㆍ생활지도와 상담 ㆍ학 운 행정 ㆍ자기계발 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 117 - 2. 원격교원연수에 관한 선행 연구 탐색 원격교육은 가르치고 배우는 활동들이 매체를 이용하여 다양한 장소와 시간에서 일어나는 교 육을 의미한다(정인성,나일주,2004).원격교원연수는 교원의 직교육에 용된 원격교육이 며,“정보통신기술을 통한 사이버 공간을 주 학습장으로 하여 교수요원과 연수생(교원,교육 문직공무원,일반인,학생 등)의 상호작용을 통해 콘텐츠를 학습함으로써 학습자 심의 자기 주도 인 학습이 가능한 연수”를 말한다(교육부,2006). 원격교원연수에 한 연구는 원격연수 활성화를 한 교원의 특성 연구(강명희 외,2011;권 성연,박호근,최경애,2008;권택환,신재훈,신재한,2010),원격연수운 에 한 교원의 요 구 만족도에 한 연구(권택환 외,2009;김경화,김재웅,2002;김경 ,정미경,2004; 박은종,2006,2007;서순식,김성완,2011;이종연,2002)등 다양하게 이루어지고 있다. 원격교원연수에 한 교원의 특성과 련된 연구에서는 교사의 배경변인에 따라 원격교육연수 의 요구에 차이가 있음을 밝히고 연수 상자의 교직경력,학교 ,근무지역에 따른 다양하고 문화된 연수과정이 개발되어야 함을 지 하거나(권성연 외,2008;권택환 외,2010),원격교 육연수의 교육성과를 높이기 하여 연수 상자에게 연수 로그램에 한 가치를 충분히 인식 시키거나 흥미유발의 교수설계 략을 용해야 함이 제안되었다(강명희 외,2011).이와 더불 어 교원에게 실질 인 도움을 주는 원격연수 로그램 개발을 하여 교사발달단계에 따른 연수 와 수 별 로그램,연수원별 특색 있는 로그램 운 도 제안되었다(송 용,황혜 ,2005). 원격교육연수원의 교육과정 운 실태 분석 연구(김용,2013;임정훈,임병노,이 ,2008; 정진구 외,2009)도 이루어졌다.임정훈 외(2008)는 시도원격교육연수원, 학부설 원격교육 연수원,민간 원격교육연수원 56개 기 의 운 실태를 운 황,운 상의 문제 으로 분석하 다.이를 통해 다양한 연수콘텐츠의 개발,정부차원의 행ㆍ재정 지원,연수원간의 교류확 를 개선방안으로 제안하 다.정진구 외(2009)는 원격교육연수원의 교육과정에 한 정보제공 과 활성화를 하여 65개 연수원 33개를 선정하여 직무연수,자율연수,기타연수 과정을 분 석하 다.그 결과 원격교육연수원의 낮은 근성과 특정 교과목 편 상이 지 되었으며,교 사역량증진을 하여 교과목의 다양화와 교육과정에 한 지속 인 유지 보수 정부차원의 지 원 확 를 제안하 다.김용(2013)은 원격교육연수 콘텐츠를 품질인증기 에 따라 분석한 결과 를 토 로 평가와 상호작용 부분에서의 질 제고를 제안하 다. 3. 원격교원연수 운영의 국내ㆍ외 현황 외국은 교원의 역량 신장을 한 원격연수는 교육과정과 련된 학습자원 경험을 공유하 는 학습공동체 근을 지향하고 있다.먼 호주는 교사들의 ICT활용수업의 역량 신장을 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 118 - 하여 ‘Pathways forLearning Anywhere Anytime;A Network ForEducators: PLANE)’로젝트를 진행하고 있다.온라인 학습공간인 PLANE에서 교사들은 멀티미디어 자 원과 함께 새로운 교수법(게임기반학습,문제기반 상황학습,교과통합)의 학습 기회를 제공받 는다(DepartmentofEducationEmploymentandWorkplaceRelation,2012).캐나 다는 국가차원에서 교사들이 실천공동체(Communityofpractice)에 참여할 것을 장려한다. 앨버타 주의 경우 교원의 ICT활용 역량을 강화하기 한 ‘SuperNet(AlbertaSuperNet HighSpeedNetwork)’를 추진하여 원격연수 로그램과 온ㆍ오 라인 멘토링,온라인 컨퍼 런싱을 통한 네트워크 형성을 진하고 있다(계보경,김재옥,2012). 랑스는 앙정부와 지방정부가 함께 참여하고 있는데,교사 문성 개발 디지털 개발국(OfficeofTeaching Programs,TeacherProfessionalDevelopmentandDigitalDevelopment)과 정부 교 육정보화 웹사이트인 ‘Educnet’을 통해 정부정책과 교육 로그램을 제공하고 있다(계보경, 김재옥,2012). 우리나라의 원격교원연수는 교육부 장 의 인가ㆍ지정을 받은 원격교육연수원에서만 운 하는 것이 원칙이다.원격교육연수원은 유형에 따라 ‘공인 원격교육연수원(공공기 , 학부 설,민간)’,‘시도 원격교육연수원(교육과학기술연수원,교육정보원,교육과학연구원)’,‘특수분 야 연수기 원격교육연수원’으로 구분된다(교육부ㆍ한국교육학술정보원,2011).먼 ‘공인 원격교육연수원’은 공공기 (단체), 학부설,민간 등의 원격교육연수원이며, 국단 로 교 원을 상으로 원격교원연수를 개설ㆍ운 한다.2000년에 21개이던 공인원격교육연수원은 꾸 히 양 증가를 보이며 재 44개가 교육부 장 의 지정ㆍ인가를 받아 운 이다 (2012년 7월 재).다음으로 ‘시도 원격교육연수원’은 시도 교육청이 교육부장 의 지정을 받아 교육연수원,교육정보원,교육과학연구원 등에서 운 하는 원격교육연수를 의미하며,교 육과학기술연수원의 원격연수도 여기에 포함된다.시도 원격교육연수원은 재 서울특별시 교 육연수원을 비롯한 16개 시도연수원과 지역 교육정보원,교육과학연구원을 포함하여 총 22개 가 운 이다(2012년 7월 재).교육과학기술연수원은 ｢교육과학기술연수원 규칙 제81호｣ 에 의거하여 원격교육을 운 하고 있으며(교육과학기술연수원,2010),2013년에 체 128,000명을 상으로 48개 과정을 무료로 운 되었다(교육과학기술연수원,2013).마지막 으로,‘특수교육분야연수기 원격교육원’은 시도교육감이 지정하여 리하는 특수분야 연수기 이 집합 연수과정의 일부를 원격교육의 방법으로 운 하는 원격연수를 의미하며,심사기 의 미비나 운 리의 어려움에 따라 집합연수에 한정하여 특수분야연수기 을 지정하는 경우 가 부분이다(교육부ㆍ한국교육학술정보원,2011).외국이 학습공동체 근을 통해 지속 인 정보제공 경험 공유를 강조하는 것에 비해 우리나라는 각 연수과정마다 1학 ～4학 까지 배정하고,교원으로 하여 연간 직무연수학 을 이수하도록 하는 방식이 용되고 있 으며 체로 일회성 연수에 그치고 있다. 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 119 - Ⅲ. 연 방법 1. 분석 대상 본 연구는 2011년 1월 1일부터 2012년 9월 30일까지 공인 원격교육연수원,교육과학기술 연수원,그리고 16개 시도교육연수원에서 운 된 원격연수과정을 분석 상으로 삼았다.자료원 은 1)연수운 련문서,2)원격교육연수원의 웹사이트의 연수운 련 정보이다. 먼 연수운 련문서는 원격교육연수원의 형태에 따라 다르게 수집되었다.첫째,공인원격 교육연수원의 연수과정은 44개의 공인 원격교육연수원에서 한국교육학술정보원에 제출한 「2012년도 원격교육연수원 운 평가 보고서」의 연수 운 실 (2011년 1월～2012년 9월) 을 분석하 다(2012년 6월에 인가를 받아 연수운 실 이 없는 2개 기 과,한국교육학술정 보원에 운 보고서를 제출하지 않은 5개 기 의 연수과정은 분석에서 제외되었음).둘째,교육 과학기술연수원의 연수과정은 ｢2011원격교육연수 운 계획(안)｣과 ｢2012교육훈련계획｣문 서를 분석하 다.마지막으로,시도교육연수원의 연수과정은 문서를 수집하지 못하 으며,연수 원의 웹사이트에 등록된 원격연수과정을 분석 상으로 선정하 다. 연수운 련 문서와 함께 해당 원격교육연수원의 웹사이트에 게시된 연수목차와 교과내용을 포함하 다.본 연구는 연수의 주제를 악하는 것을 목 이기 때문에 각 원격교육연수원의 연 수운 목록에서 동일 콘텐츠의 반복 운 ( ,1차,2차)과 각 연수기 이 상호 력으로 단일 연수콘텐츠를 공동 연수과정으로 개설한 연수과정을 모두 단일 연수과정으로 수집하 다.최종 으로 본 연구의 분석 자료로 활용된 연수과정은 37개 공인 원격교육연수원의 1118개 원격연 수과정,교육과학기술연수원의 48개 원격연수과정,16개 시도교육연수원의 264개 연수과정으 로 총 합계 1430개의 원격연수과정이다.<표 2>는 원격교육연수원의 각 유형별로 분석 상이 된 원격연수과정을 보여 다. <표 2>분석 상 원격교육연수원의 연수과정 기 수(개) 원격연수과정(개) 분 원 공인 원격교육 연수원 공공기 5 86 ㆍ2012년도 원격교육연수원 운 평가 보고서 연수 운 실 (2011년 1월~2012년 9월) ㆍ웹사이트의 연수과정 설명(목차,내용) 학부설 15 146 민간 17 886 교육과학기술연수원 1 48 ㆍ2011원격교육연수운 계획(안) ㆍ2012교육훈련계획 ㆍ웹사이트의 연수과정 설명(목차,내용) 시도교육연수원 16 264 ㆍ웹사이트의 연수과정 설명(목차,내용) 합계 54 1430 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 120 - 역량명 정 하 역량 정 1.교육과정 이해 재구성 교육과정의 주요 목표, 내용,특징등에 한이 해 국가교육과정의 범 안에서 창의 으로 재구조화하는 능력 1.1교육과정이해 교육과정의 주요 목표,내용,특징에 한 이해 능력 1.2교육과정 재구성 국가교육과정의 범 내에서 지역수 학교 수 에 따라 교사가 창의 으로 교육과정을 구 성할 수 있는 능력 2.교과내용 지식 학습자가 알아야 할 교 과에 한 문 인 내 용지식 2.1교과내용지식 담당교과 내용에 한 문 인 교과내용지식 2.2교과내용을 분석 재구성 학습자 학습상황에 맞게 교과내용을 분석하 여 순서와 난이도를 재구성하는 능력 3.수업 설계 단 수업 체 교육 내용을 체계 으로 조 직,설계할수있는능력 3.1수업 설계 학습경험을 안내하는 활동 과정을 설계할 수 있는 능력 4.학습자 이해 학습자의 학습 수 일반 특성에 한 이 해능력 4.1학습자 이해 학습자의 교과 선수학습 수 학습자의 일반 특성에 한 이해능력 5.교수매체의 선정과 활용 다양한 교수매체의 특성 을 이해하고 선정,가공 개발하여 수업에 효 과 으로 활용할 수 있 는 능력 5.1교수매체와 자료 의 선정 다양한 교수매체의 특성을 이해하고 효과 인 수업을 한 교수매체와 교수학습자료를 선정하 는 능력 5.2교수매체와 자료 의 개발 학습자의 선수학습수 ,인지수 ,흥미를 고려 하여 효과 인 수업을 한 교수매체와 자료를 가공 개발하는 능력 2. 분석의 틀 분석의 틀은 앞서 언 되었던 김 진 외(2011)의 교원역량모델을 선정하고,하 역량 요소 수 ( :6.1수업분 기 조성)에서 원격교육연수과정의 연수주제에 한 내용분석을 실시하 다.분석의 틀로 김 진 외(2011)를 선정한 이유는 다음과 같다.첫째,본 연구의 목 이 원격 교육연수의 연수주제가 교원의 어떠한 역량을 개발하기 해 운 되었는지를 분석하기 함인 데,이 역량모델은 연수를 통한 역량 계발에 을 두고 연수로 구성 가능한 기 으로서 역량 을 도출하 기 때문이다.둘째,역량모델의 도출과정에서 교원의 수업 수업 외 역량과 련 제도를 분석하고 문가의 의견을 받아 교원역량을 도출한 후, 직교원 2,534명을 상으로 한 설문조사와 문가 검토를 통해 타당성을 검증받았기 때문에 직교원과 문가의 목소리가 반 된 실질 인 역량 모델이라 단하 다.따라서 운 되고 있는 교원연수과정 주제의 내용분 석에 가장 하다고 단하고 본 연구의 분석틀로 선정하 다.<표 3>은 본 연구의 분석틀인 김 진 외(2011)의 역량모델을 보여 다.분석은 하나의 연수명은 원칙 으로 하나의 역량명으 로만 분석하 고,하나의 연수가 하나 이상의 교원 역량과 연계된다면,이 에서 가장 높게 연 계되는 교원 역량으로 분류하 다. <표 3>분석틀로 용된 김 진 외(2011)의 역량모델 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 121 - 역량명 정 하 역량 정 5.3교수매체와 자료 의 활용 효과 인 수업을 해 개발된 교수매체와 자료 를 실제 수업에 히 활용하는 능력 6.교수학습 실행 학습자와 학습상황에 맞 는 교수법 교수 략 을 수립하고,수업활동 에 용하여 학습을 진하는 능력 6.1수업분 기조성 원활한 수업진행을 해 학생들을 히 통제 하여 효율 인 교실상황으로 리하며 학습자의 능동 인 참여를 유도하는 능력 6.2교수 학습 상호 작용 수업진행시 언어 ,비언어 인 형태로 교사와 학습자간 상호작용을 원활히 이끌며,구조 인 서 젠테이션을 활용하여 내용을 효과 으로 달하는 능력 6.3교수방법 용 효과 인 학습을 도모하는 교수법 교수학습 략의 수립 용능력 7.평가 결과 활용 학습목표나 학습내용의 달성정도를 확인하는 평 가방법 평가문항을 개발하고 평가결과를 활 용하는 능력 7.1평가방법 평 가문항 개발 학습자의 성취수 을 확인하기 해 학습자수 과 학습상황에 합한 평가방법 평가문항을 개발하는 능력 7.2평가결과의 해석 과 활용 평가결과를 타당하게 해석하고 이를 다양하게 활용(피드백제공 학부모,학교 계자의의사 결정에 도움을 )하는 능력 8.생활지도와 상담 학생의 원만한 학교생활 을 해 교과지도 역 이외의 다양한 활동 역 (상담 진로지도 포 함)을 리하고 지도하 는데 필요한 능력 8.1생활지도 상 담역량 학생의 특성 청소년 문화를 이해하고 공동체 학교생활에 응할수있는 응문제 발생 된문제상황에 한상담 문제해결을 한지 원능력 8.2진로지도역량 의 다양한 직업을 이해하고 비 을 제시하 여 자신의 진로를 탐색할 수 있도록 안내 지 도하는 능력 9.학 운 ㆍ행정 학 ㆍ학교를 조화롭게 운 리하는 능력 다양한 교육활동을 해 학교 내ㆍ외 계 자들과 지역사회의 원만 한 력을 이끌어내는 능력 9.1교직실무 물리 환경 학생 리까지 학 ㆍ학교 체 의 운 리에 한 실무능력 9.2의사소통 원만한학 ㆍ학교운 을 해 학생,학부모,동 료교사 등 이해 계자들 간의 원활한 소통을 유 도하는 능력 9.3의사결정 학 내당면과제에 한이해를바탕으로최선 의 의사결정을 내리고 문제를 해결하는 능력 9.4 외 력 다양한 교육활동을 기획진행하기 해 학교 내 ㆍ외 계자들과 지역사회의 원만한 력을 이끌 어내는 능력 10.자기계발 교사로서의 문성 소양,교직품성을 지속 으로 계발하기 해 스스로 반성하고 다양한 자기연찬의 기회를 탐색 하여 필요한 지식,기술, 태도를 습득하는 능력 10.1자기계발 학교 장에서 교사의 문 능력을 성찰하여 지속 인 자기연찬의 기회를 통해 필요한 역량 을 개발하는 능력 10.2교직품성 함양 교사가 반 인 교육활동을 수행하는데 요구되 는 올바른가치 ,인간 과 더불어교직인ㆍ 성을 포함하는정신 ,심리 ,정서 태도역량 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 122 - 3. 분석 방법 본 연구에서는 원격교육연수원에서 운 된 연수과정의 연수주제를 분석단 로 하여 내용분석 (contentanalysis)을 실시하 다.내용분석은 메시지의 특성을 체계 이고 객 으로 확인 하여 모종의 추론을 수행하려는 일련의 방법이다(Holsti,1969:Rouke& Anderson,2004 에서 재인용).운 된 연수과정의 연수주제를 분석함으로써 교원의 문성 신장을 해 어떠한 역이 개발ㆍ운 되었고,부족한 역이 무엇인지 악할 수 있기 때문에 내용분석방법이 하다고 단되었다. 연수주제를 알 수 있는 정보로 해당 연수과정의 ‘연수명’,‘연수과정 소개’,‘연수목차’,‘연수목 표’가 있다.연구진은 ‘연수명’과 ‘연수과정 소개’에는 연수생을 보다 많이 유치하기 하여 연수 주제를 확 할 가능성이 있다고 단하여,‘연수목차’ ‘교과내용’까지를 연수주제 분석범 로 하 다.연구진은 해당 원격교육연수원의 사이트를 방문하여 연수주제를 분석하 고,2012년 12월 재 홈페이지에 등록되지 않은 연수과정은 운 평가 보고서 련 문서에 기재된 연 수명으로만 분석하 다.평정을 하여 연구진 2인(교육공학 박사 1인,교육공학 박사과정생 1 인)은 분석틀로 활용된 김 진 외(2011)의 교원역량에 한 이해 평정 유목, 차,지침을 공유하 고,샘 자료로 평정훈련을 실시하 다.이후 실제 자료인 1118개의 연수과정 20%에 해당하는 223개의 연수과정을 무선 표집하여 평정자 간 신뢰도를 분석한 결과 .79의 일치율을 보 다.이는 Capozzoli와 동료들(1999)이 주장하는 우연성을 배제한 높은 일치성의 단 기 이 되는 .75를 넘어 평정 결과가 높은 신뢰도를 가지고 있다고 해석하 다. Ⅳ. 연 결과 1. 공인 원격교육연수원의 원격교육과정 분석 결과 공인 원격교육연수원의 유형에 속하는 공공기 원격교육연수원, 학부설 원격교육연수원, 민간 원격교육연수원에서 2011년 1월부터 2012년 9월까지 가장 많이 운 된 연수과정의 주제 는 ‘자기계발’역량 주제로 나타났으며(48.21%),‘교수학습실행’역량과 ‘생활지도와 상담’역량이 그 뒤를 이었다(21.38%,16.37%). 체 공인 원격교육연수원의 연수과정에서 ‘자기계발’역량 주제가 가장 많은 빈도를 나타낸 것은 <표 4>의 음 부분에서 볼 수 있듯이,민간 원격교육연수 원에서 운 한 연수과정의 수가 886개로 많았기 때문에 체 연수과정의 빈도에 향을 주었다 고 악된다.각 연수원의 형태별로 살펴보면,공공기 은 ‘교수학습실행’역량이 51.16%로 반이상을 차지하 고, 학부설은 ‘자기계발’역량이 38.36%,민간 원격교육연수원은 ‘자기계발’ 역량이 48.21%로 반 가까이 차지하 다. 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 123 - 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 124 - 체의 45.97%에 해당되는 ‘자기계발’역량에 해 자세히 알아보기 해 행동지표인 1)새로 운 이슈탐색 리더십 신장,2)어학 자격증 등 문 능력 계발,3)실행 연구 심의 탐구, 4)수업장학 수업 컨설 능력 계발 의 주제로 분류하여 분석하 다. ‘자기계발’역량과 련된 연수과정은 ‘어학 자격 증 등 문 능력 개발’주제가 331개 로 체 68%를 차지할 정도로 비 이 높았는데,그 에서도 어학에 편 되어 운 되고 있는 것으로 악되었다.어학 련 연수과정은 부분 어로 TOEIC,TOEFL,TEPS등 어학시 험 비과정이 ㆍ ㆍ고 ,혹은 수 별로 구분되어 운 되고 있었다.일본어나 국어 능력 개발과 련된 연수과정도 운 되고 있었지만 기 인 회화 수 에 그쳤고,운 의 수 도 어에 비해 매우 었다.‘자격증취득’과 련된 연수과정은 컴퓨터 련 자격증(워드 로 세서 1 ,컴퓨터활용능력 1 ㆍ2 )등의 수별 자격증 취득과정이 부분이었고,공인한자 능력시험,한국사 능력검정시험,인터넷정보 리사,웃음운동지도교사 등의 자격증 취득을 목 표로 한 연수과정도 운 되고 있었다.이러한 어학 자격증 취득 련 연수과정은 일반인을 상으로 개발한 연수콘텐츠를 교원연수과정으로 운 한 이 다른 연수과정들과의 차이 이 었다.그밖에 ‘새로운 이슈탐색 리더십 신장’과 련된 연수과정은 교육이슈의 경우 6개 과 정이 운 이었으나,1~2차시 정도에서 이슈 자체에 한 탐색 인 내용을 다루는데 그쳤 고,리더십 신장은 개념이해에서부터 변화 리까지 폭 넓게 구성되어 운 되고 있었다.하지 만 교사로서 학생과 학부모와의 계에서의 리더십,직무단계에 따른 리더십이 다르게 요구되 지만 구분되지 않고 동일한 연수과정만이 운 되고 있었다.교육 장의 당면 과제를 해결하기 한 ‘실행연구’와 련된 연수과정은 6개 과정(1%)이 운 되고 있었고,수업장학(동료장학, 자기장학 포함) 수업컨설 을 통한 수업개선과 련된 연수과정은 7개 과정(1%)이 운 되고 있었다. 2. 교육과학기술연수원의 원격연수과정 분석 결과 교육과학기술연수원에서 2011년 1월부터 2012년 9월까지 운 된 원격연수 교육과정은 총 48개 과정이었으며,교원역량으로 범주화하면 공인원격연수원과 마찬가지로 특정 역량에 편 되어 있는 것으로 악된다.연수 상은 <표 5>와 같이 교원,교육 문직,일반직 기능 직,사립 학교 직원, 학기성회 직원 까지를 ‘공통’으로 하여 모든 연수과정이 ‘공통과정’으 로 운 되었다.이는 연수과정의 운 이 교원을 한 교과 수업 련 내용보다는 학교조직 운 련 내용으로 구성되는 결과를 낳았고,다른 원격교육연수원의 연수과정과 조 인 부분이다. 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 125 - 연번 과정명 대상 주 내용 1 2009개정 교육과정 길라잡이 교원 학부모 ∙교육과정 이해,학교 교육과정 편성ㆍ운 ㆍ평가 등 2 학교경 자 리더십 향상 교원 ∙학교경 자의 경 리,성과 리,코칭 등 3 상황별 기 처 능력 공통 ∙ 기 인식과 기 리, 기상황의 단계별 응방법 등 4 합리 인 의사결정 노하우 공통 ∙ 략 의사결정의이해,의사결정의심리 근,문제해결과 의사결정 등 5 효율 인 회의운 기법 공통 ∙회의의 이해와 비,커뮤니 이션,문제상황 처 방안 등 6 략 사고와 실행능력 향상 공통 ∙ 략 목표,실행 략 수립,학교경 략 수립사례 등 7 자기계발을 한 셀 리더십 1 공통 학부모 ∙셀 리더십의 이해,인간행동과 환경,자기인식과 자기동기, 윤리 자기 리 등 8 자기계발을 한 셀 리더십 2 공통 학부모 ∙자기개발 역량, 문성 강화, 인 계 기 등 <표 5>교육과학기술연수원의 원격교육과정의 시 역량 주제를 살펴보면, 부분 ‘자기계발’과 ‘학 운 ㆍ행정’역량과 련된 연수과정이 운 된 것으로 나타났으며(41.6%,31.25%),‘수업설계’와 ‘교수매체 선정 활용’그리고 ‘교수학습 실행’과 ‘평가 결과활용’역량과 련된 연수과정은 운 되지 않았다.공인원격교육연수원과 교육과학기술연수원의 운 황과 비교해 볼 때,‘자기계발’역량과 련된 연수과정이 가장 많이 운 된 것은 공통 이지만(48.21%,41.6%),공인원격연수원은 그 다음으로 ‘교수학습실행’과 ‘생활지도와 상담’역량 련 연수과정을 주로 운 한 반면(21.38%,16,37%),교육과학기술연 수원은 ‘학 운 ㆍ행정’역량 련 연수과정을 주로 운 한 것이 차이 이다(31.25%). 한, 공인원격교육연수원은 김 진 외(2011)의 역량에 해당되는 연수과정을 편차는 있지만 모두 운 한 반면,교육과학기술연수원은 수업과 련된 ‘수업설계,교수매체의 선정과 활용,교수학습 실행’의 역량에 해당되는 연수과정은 운 하지 않았다. 교육과학기술연수원에서 가장 많이 운 된 ‘자기계발’역량과 ‘학 운 ㆍ행정’역량 련 연수 과정을 분석해보면 다음과 같다. 체 분석 상 ‘자기계발’역량 련 연수과정은 체 20개 로 체 비율 41.6%를 차지하 다.세부 주제로는 리더십에 한 연수과정이 8개로 가장 많았 는데,｢교육 장에서 실천하는 경청 리더십｣,｢조직 활성화를 한 조성 향상｣,｢학교 경 자 리더십 향상｣의 과정이 그 이다.｢교육 장에서 실천하는 경청 리더십｣은 학생과의 화 방 법,리더로서의 역할 수행 교육 장에 필요한 리더십의 내용으로 구성되어 있었고,｢조직 활 성화를 한 조성 향상｣은 워크의 의미, 워크 향상 방안,신뢰 동기부여의 내용을 포 함하고 있었다.리더십의 주제의 경우 공인원격교육연수원의 연수과정은 교사와 학생간의 계 에서의 리더십의 내용인 반면,교육과학기술연수원의 연수과정은 주로 조직변화 리능력에 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 126 - 한 내용인 이 차이 이었다. 한,‘자기계발’의 주제에 해당하는 연수과정으로 교육정책홍보를 목표로 하는 연수과정이 3 개 운 된 도 공인원격교육연수원과의 차이 이다.｢모두를 배려하는 교육｣은 사교육 없는 학 교와 종일돌 교실에 한 안내를 주요 내용으로 하고 있었고,｢알기 쉬운 교육,희망을 주는 교육｣은 다문화 탈북 청소년 지원 정책의 안내의 내용이었다. 한 ｢마음을 움직이는 교육과 학기술정책 홍보｣의 과정을 따로 두어 고육 홍보의 요성 수행과정을 다루는 과정도 개설하 다.공인원격교육연수원에서도 국가교육정책과 련된 연수과정을 운 하 지만,1~2차시 정도에서 간략하게 설명한 반면,교육과학기술연수원의 연수과정은 한 과정 체가 교육정책홍 보를 목표를 하 다.이는 교육과학기술연수원이 국가교육정책을 반 한 다양한 원격교육을 통 해 교육 장의 변화를 진하고 학교 교육력 강화를 운 목표로 하는 것(교육과학기술연수원, 2013)과 맥을 같이 한다고 볼 수 있다. 결과 으로 교육과학기술연수원은 교육과학기술부에 운 하는 원격교육연수원인 만큼 운 방 향이 진로교육,다문화 등 교육정책과 연계된 정책연수가 많이 활성화 되어 운 이었고,이 는 공인원격교육연수원의 연수과정과의 차이 을 나타내었다. 한,연수 상이 교원,교육 문 직,일반직 기능직,사립 학교 직원, 학기성회 직원 까지를 ‘공통’으로 하여,운 된 모든 연수과정이 ‘공통’과정이 되면서 이 학 의 교과 수업 련 내용 보다는 포 인 학교조직 운 련 내용으로 운 된 이 공인원격교육연수원의 연수과정과 조 인 부분이다. 3. 시도교육연수원의 원격연수과정 분석 결과 시도교육연수원의 원격연수과정을 교원역량으로 범주화한 결과 타 연수원에 비해 각 교원역 량별로 고르게 운 되었고,연수 상을 등교원, 등교원,교장ㆍ교감,교육 문직 등으로 구 분하여 운 한 과정이 많았다.이는 공인원격교육연수원과 교육과학기술연수원의 연수과정이 ‘ㆍ 등 교원 문직’이나 ‘공통’으로 개발되어 학교 의 특성이나 교직단계별로 특화된 내 용이 반 되지 못한 과 조된다. 분석 내용으로 ‘교수학습실행’역량과 련된 연수과정이 70개(26.52%)로 가장 많았으며, ‘생활지도와 상담’역량과 련된 연수과정이 62개(23.49%),그리고 ‘자기계발’역량과 련된 연수과정이 50개(18.94%)로 그 뒤를 이었다.이외에 ‘학 운 ㆍ행정’역량 련 연수과정이 20 개(7.58%),‘교과내용지식’역량 련 연수과정이 18개(6.82%),‘교수매체 선정 활용’역량 련 연수과정이 16개(6.06%)로 근사한 수치로 운 되고 있었다. 16개 시도 교육연수원의 연수과정은 체 68.95%를 차지하는 ‘교수학습실행,생활지도와 상 담,자기계발’역량의 특징 심으로 분석해보면 다음과 같다. 체 분석 상 ‘교수학습실행’ 역량 련 연수과정은 체 70개로 체 비율 26.52%를 차지하 는데,이는 공인원격연수원 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 127 - 에서도 두 번째로 많이 운 된 역량이지만 주로 ‘교수방법 용’에 편 된 반면,시도 교육연수 원에서는 ‘교수학습 상호작용’도 비 이 높게 운 되었다.‘교수학습 상호작용’과 련된 연수과 정은 수업에서의 교사의 발문과 교사-학생 상호작용의 주제에 을 맞추어 주로 개발된 것을 알 수 있었다.교사의 발문과 련된 과정의 경우 ｢교사의 발문( 등, 등)｣,｢사고력을 키워 주는 수업 발문법( 등)｣,｢창의력 증진을 한 교사의 발문( 등, 등)｣등의 연수과정이 ㆍ 등 학교 으로 나 어 운 되었다.교사-학생 상호작용 역시 ｢수업에서의 교사학생 상호작용 ( 등, 등)｣,｢명품수업을 한 교사학생 상호작용 노하우( 등, 등)｣등의 연수과정으로 학 교 이 분리되어 운 되었다.｢학생과의 소통을 통한 스마트교육( 등, 등)｣과정도 운 되었 는데,의사소통과 련된 내용으로 스마트교육과정을 구성한 이 특색이었다. 다음으로 ‘8.생활지도와 상담’역량 련 연수과정은 체 62개로 체 비율 23.49%를 차지 하 다.하 역량별로 살펴보면 ‘생활지도 상담역량’이 49개 과정(79.03%)이었고,‘진로지 도역량’은 13개 과정(20.97%)이 운 된 것으로 나타났다.‘생활지도 상담역량’과 련된 세 부주제는 크게 인성교육,생활지도,민주시민교육,문제상황 방교육,학생상담,학부모상담, 문상담교사의 문성 향상으로 운 되고 있었다.민주시민성 지도와 련된 연수과정으로 ｢미 래를 여는 민주시민성 지도( 등)｣와 ｢민주시민성지도( 등, 등)｣가 운 되었는데 이는 다른 유형의 연수원에는 운 되지 않는 과정이었다.상담의 경우 ｢학생상담의 첫걸음｣,｢학생정서, 행동특성검사를 한 교사상담실무｣등의 과정이 운 되었고,｢학생상담능력 향상을 한 문상 담교사 역량강화｣와 같이 문상담교사를 한 연수과정이 분리되어 운 되고 있는 것도 시도교 육연수원의 특징이었다. 마지막으로 ‘자기계발’역량 련 연수과정은 체 50개로 체 비율 18.94%를 차지하 다. 앞서 분석한 공인원격연수원과 교육과학기술연수원의 연수과정이 ‘자기계발’역량에 40% 이상 편 되어 운 된 것에 비해 시도연수원은 비교 낮은 연수과정 황을 보 다.‘자기계발’역량 과 련된 세부주제로는 리더십 련 연수과정이 7개 운 되었는데,｢학교경 자 리더십과정｣, ｢학교 경 의 리더십과 목표 리 지원｣과 같은 교장ㆍ교감ㆍ 문직을 상으로 하는 리더십과 정과,｢교사리더십 기본｣과 같이 일반교사를 상으로 하는 리더십과정으로 나 어 운 되었다. 수업장학 수업컨설 과 련하여서도 ｢효과 인 자율장학 운 지원 역량강화｣와 같이 교장 ㆍ교감ㆍ 문직을 상으로 하여 수업개선을 한 지원측면에서 운 된 연수과정과,｢수업분석 의 실제｣,｢수업컨설 과 수업디자인｣과 같이 일반교사를 상으로 하는 연수과정으로 구분하여 운 하 다.한 ‘교직품성 함양’과 련된 연수과정은 ｢사이버 청렴교육( 등, 등)｣,｢공직가치｣ 등의 공직자로서의 윤리의식 함양을 한 과정이 운 되었고,｢명품수업을 한 교사의 태도( 등, 등)｣등 교사로서의 교직인성과 련된 과정도 운 되었다.사회공헌 활동과 련된 연수 과정도 운 되었는데,｢공직자의 사회공헌활동｣,｢알기쉬운 공직자 사회공헌 활동｣등은 다른 연수원에는 운 되지 않은 연수과정이었다. 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 128 - Ⅴ. 결론 및 논의 본 연구는 2011년 1월부터 2012년 9월까지 운 된 공인 원격교육연수원(공공기 , 학부 설,민간),교육과학기술연수원,그리고 16개 시도교육연수원의 원격연수과정의 주제를 교원역 량모델의 틀로 범주화하여 내용을 분석하여 향후 원격교원연수의 운 방향 정립에 시사 을 주 고자 실시되었다.교원 원격연수의 운 실태의 분석결과를 종합하고,향후 원격교원연수의 교 육과정과 운 방향에 해 제언하고자 한다. 첫째,각 원격교육연수원에서 운 된 교원 원격연수과정은 ‘자기계발’과 ‘교수학습실행’,‘생활 지도 상담’의 교원역량 일부에 집 되어 운 된 은 공통 이었으나,하 역량과 련된 연 수과정은 각 연수원마다 연수 상 혹은 연수주제에서 차이를 보 다.연수원 유형별로 집 으 로 련된 역량의 순 는 차이가 있지만 공인원격교육연수원의 경우 ‘자기계발>교수학습실행>생 활지도와 상담’역량 순으로 체의 85.96%를 차지하 으며,교육과학기술연수원은 ‘자기계발> 학 운 ㆍ행정’역량 련 연수과정이 체 72.85%를 차지하 다. 한 시도교육연수원은 ‘교 수학습실행>생활지도 상담>자기계발’이 체 68.95%를 차지하 다.이는 선행연구들의 결 과(정진구 외,2009)에서 지 된 특정 교과목 편 상이 여 히 나타나고 있음을 나타낸다. 원격교육연수원 별로 역량과 련지어 운 된 연수과정의 차이는 다음과 같다.먼 ,‘자기계발’ 역량과 련된 연수과정은 공인 원격교육연수원의 경우 어학능력 개발에 집 되어 운 된 반면, 교육과학기술연수원과 시도교육연수원은 리더십 개발이 주를 이루었다. 한 리더십 개발의 경 우 공인원격교육연수원은 주로 일선교사를 상으로 하여 교사-학생 계에서의 리더십을 주로 다루는 반면,교육과학기술연수원과 시도교육연수원은 학교 리자인 교장ㆍ교감ㆍ 문직을 상으로 한 리 지원 측면에서의 리더십의 내용을 주로 다룬 것이 차이 이다.다음으로 ‘교 수학습실행’은 세 가지 유형의 원격교육연수원 모두 ‘교수방법 용’과 련된 연수과정이 많이 운 되었다.공인원격교육연수원은 ‘교수방법 용’의 경우 수업방법,수업 략,교수학습이론과 같이 세부내용이 구분이 될 정도로 다양하게 연수과정이 운 되고 있었지만,‘수업분 기 조성’ 과 ‘교수학습 상호작용’은 각 연수과정의 한 두 차시의 내용에 포함되어 운 된 반면,시도 교육 연수원은 ‘교수학습 상호작용’과 ‘수업분 기 조성’역량과 련된 연수과정을 26개로 독립하여 운 하는 차이를 보 다.마지막으로 ‘생활지도와 상담’역량 련 연수과정은 최근 학교폭력이 사회문제로 두되고,생활지도에 한 실천 문성이 강조되면서 세 유형의 원격교육연수 원 모두에서 많이 운 되었다.하지만 공인원격교육연수원은 자기주도학습지도사, 문상담교 사 양성과정과 같은 자격과정이 주를 이루고 있었던 반면,교육과학기술연수원과 시도교육연 수원은 자격과정보다는 연수를 통해 학 에서 용할 수 있는 실질 인 내용으로 구성된 이 차이 이다. 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 129 - 둘째,연수 상의 운 에 있어 공인 원격교육연수원과 교육과학기술연수원은 연수과정의 상을 ‘ㆍ 등교원 교육 문직’혹은 ‘공통’으로 운 한 반면,시도교육연수원만이 ‘등교원’, ‘등교원’,‘ㆍ 등교원’,‘교장ㆍ교감ㆍ교육 문직’으로 특화하여 연수과정을 개설,운 함으 로써 연수를 받는 교사의 학교 교직단계에 따라 좀 더 문성을 신장시킬 수 있도록 한 이 차이 이었다.이는 권성연 외(2008)와 송 용과 황혜 (2005)의 연구에서 연수 상자의 특성에 따른 다양화ㆍ 문화된 연수과정 운 에 한 교원의 요구에 비추어 봤을 때 시도교육연 수원의 연수운 은 정 으로 단할 수 있다. 본 연구결과를 바탕으로 향후 원격교원연수를 한 연수과정을 개발에 방향을 제시하고자 한다. 첫째,분석된 연수과정을 참고로 하여 부족하게 운 된 연수주제에 한 개발ㆍ운 이 필요하 다.2011년 1월부터 2012년 9월까지 운 된 연수과정들은 주로 ‘자기계발’,‘교수학습실행’, ‘생활지도 상담’역량 심인 반면,수업 비에 해당되는 ‘교육과정 이해 재구성’과 ‘교과내 용지식’,‘수업설계’,‘평가방법 문항개발’과 같은 역량은 상 으로 운 되지 않았다. 등교 사의 경우 교과내용에 한 문지식을 교과서 내ㆍ외 으로 폭넓게 악하는 능력인 ‘교과내용 지식’의 역량이 요하다고 볼 수 있으므로 해당 교과의 문성 신장을 한 과정이 필요하다. 둘째,공인원격연수원의 경우 ‘자기계발’역량과 련된 어학시험 련 연수과정보다는 학 운 이나 수업에 용할 수 있는 연수과정 개발에 이 되어야 한다.어학능력 향상 자격증 취득 등의 문 능력을 향상시키는 것은 바람직하나 교원연수의 비율이 불균형을 이루고 있 다.따라서 연수를 통해 계발된 어학능력을 학교 장에 어떻게 용할 수 있는지 학교 별로 구 분되고 어수업에서의 활용사례가 포함된 연수과정이 개발될 수 있다. 셋째,연수 상을 등교원, 등교원과 같이 특정 학교 에 맞춘 연수과정이 확 개발ㆍ운 되어야 한다.연수과정을 운 할 때 ‘연수 상’이 구분되어 있었지만 공인원격교육연수원과 교 육과학기술연수원 모두 학교 이나 직 에 계없이 ‘공통’과정으로 많이 개설되었다.이러한 결 과는 연수생의 학교 에 맞지 않은 연수내용은 불필요한 정보일 수 있으며,원격교육연수의 도 탈락율을 높일 수 있기에 주의해야 한다. 넷째,교원의 생애주기를 고려한 연수과정이 확 개발ㆍ운 되어야 한다.많은 연수과정들이 입직,입직 후 3년,그리고 견교사와 같은 직 이나 경력에 따른 특화된 연수과정보다는 단일 과정으로 운 되고 있었다.이는 연수내용에서 제공되는 수업사례 방법이 입직 교사에게는 도움이 될 수 있지만,경력이 많은 교사에게는 오히려 연수의 방해요소가 될 수 있다.따라서 교사의 발달단계에 맞춘 특화된 연수과정이 다양하게 제공되어야 한다. 다섯째,교육 정책이나 최신 교육동향을 연계된 시의성 있는 연수과정이 확 ㆍ운 되어야 한 다.교육정책은 정책에 한 교사의 올바른 이해가 선행되어야만 정책의 장 안착이 가능하다. 를 들어,창의인성 교육,자유학기제,5세 리과정,융합인재교육(STEAM)과 같은 교육정 책은 연수를 통한 기본 으로 이해를 토 로 하여 다양한 사례 심의 실천 원격교육연수과정 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 130 - 이 바람직 할 것이다.교육과학기술연수원에서 교육정책과 련해서 운 한 비율이 높았는데, 다문화와 탈북청소년 지원정책의 내용을 담은 ｢희망을 주는 학교교육｣과 같은 과정도 다른 원격 교육연수원에서도 확 하여 교원에게 정보를 제공되는 것이 바람직하다. 마지막으로,공인원격연수원,교육과학기술연수원,시도 교육연수원에서 운 하고 있는 연수 과정에 한 통합된 정보제공이 필요하다.본 연구의 분석원으로 활용된 연수과정을 보면,공인 원격교육연수원 연수과정 1118개,교육과학기술연수원 연수과정 48개,시도 교육연수원 원격 연수과정 264개로 총 1430개 과정이 운 된 것을 알 수 있었다.많은 연수과정 에서 교사가 자신에게 필요한 연수가 무엇인지 선택하는 것은 쉽지 않다.2009년부터 한국교육학술정보원에 서 교사가 보다 쉽게 원격연수과정에 근할 수 있는 통합 인 정보제공체제 ‘교원연수정보서비 스(TeacherTrainingInformationService:TTIS)를 운 이므로(교육부ㆍ한국교육학술 정보원,2011),이를 활성화하는 것도 방안이 될 수 있다. 본 연구는 교원원격연수를 담당하는 체 원격교육연수원의 연수과정 황을 악하고,교원 의 역량신장을 해 개발의 필요가 있는 연수과정과 개발방향을 제안하 다.이는 변화하는 교 육 장에서 교원의 역량 증진을 한 연수 운 방향 정립에 기 자료로써 활용될 것을 기 한 다.그럼에도 불구하고 본 연구를 수행하는데 따른 제한 을 바탕으로 후속연구를 제언하고자 한다.첫째,본 연구는 원격교원연수 교육과정 운 실태를 분석하기 해 김 진 외(2011)의 교원역량모델을 활용하여 분석하 다.이 역량모델은 교원연수를 통해 계발가능한 역량들의 집 합체이지만,원격연수만을 목 으로 개발된 교원역량모델이 아니라는 에서 본 연구의 분석결 과는 근본 인 한계를 지닌다.따라서 후속으로 원격교원연수를 통해 계발 가능한 교원역량을 도출하고,이를 분석틀로 하여 내용분석을 실시하는 연구가 필요하다.둘째,본 연구는 원격교 원연수의 교육과정 운 에 련된 문서와 웹사이트 내용을 분석원으로 하 지만,분석결과와 함 께 실제 연수운 담당자의 의견을 포함하는 연구방법을 용하지 않았다.이를 보완하는 후속 연구가 이루어진다면,연수운 담당자를 상으로 특정 역량에 련된 주제들이 주로 운 된 이유와 그 지 않은 이유를 알아보고 통합 으로 개선방향을 도출하는 것이 필요하다.마지막으 로,이 연구결과를 토 로 연수 상자인 교원에게 구체 인 교육요구를 분석할 필요가 있다.연 수 상자에게 역량 신장을 해 어떠한 연수가 필요한지에 한 요구를 악하고 연구결과를 반 한다면 보다 실질 이며 수요자 심의 연수과정의 개발과 운 에 도움이 될 것으로 보인다. 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 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Capozzoli,M.,McSweeney,L.,& Shinha,D.(1999).Beyondkappa:Areview ofinterater agreementmeasures.TheCanadianJournalofStatistics,27(1),3-23. Rourke,L.,& Anderson,T.(2004).Validityinquantitativecontentanalysis.Educational TechnologyResearch& Development,52(1),5-18. DepartmentofEducationEmploymentandWorkplaceRelation(2012).AnnualReport2012- 13.Retrievedfromhttps://docs.employment.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/deewr_annual _report_2012-13.pdf 원 역량 중심 원격연수 과정 실태 분석 - 133 - McClelland,D.C.(1973).Testingforcompetenceratherthanforintelligence.American Psychologist,28(1),1-14. ㆍ논문 수 :2015-01-08/수정본 수 :2015-02-05/게재승인 :2015-02-23 과정평가연 제18 제1호 (2015) - 134 - ABSTRACT AnalysisofCurrentStatusofDistanceEducationalCoursesfor TeachersRelatedtoCompetencyDevelopment Eun-YoungKim (VisitingProfessor,TongmyongUniversity) Hyeon-JinKim (AssociateProfessor,KoreaNationalUniversityofEducation) Thepurposeofthisstudyistoanalyzethetrainingcoursesoperatedbydistance educationaltraininginstitutesforverifyingwhichteachercompetencyisdevelopedthrough thecourses.Thesubjectsofthestudyweredistancetrainingcoursesingovernment-authorized distanceeducationaltraininginstitutes;NationalTrainingInstituteofEducation,Scienceand Technology;andcityandprovinceeducationaltraininginstitutes,operatedform January 2011toSeptember2012.Contentanalysiswasconductedbasedontheteachercompetency modelasananalyzingframework. Asaresult,themajorityofthecurrentdistanceeducationalcoursesforteachersfocused onparticularcompetenciessuchas‘self-cultivation’,‘teachingandlearningimplementation’, and‘lifeadviceandcounseling’.Thethemesofcoursestendstodependthetypeofthe traininginstitutes.Therefore,itisneededtodeveloptrainingcoursestopromoteallteacher competenciesinbalance.Futhermore,trainingcoursesshouldbetailoredinaccordancewith teachers’schoollevelandcareerladder. KeyWords:Competencydevelopmentofteacher,Teachertraining,Distancetraining, Distanceeducationaltraininginstitutes 
work_ns2jrmpj7rb2hcpllczv5oaeqa	----	jtzf071.tmp Distance Education Via Television: Some Reflections After Four Years Jim Kendrick* Four years of televising a university course for delivery to an audience of agricultural producers provides some reflections on the feasibility of combining traditional classroom instruction with in-depth extension educational programs. There are a sizable number of active agricultural producers who are eager to study academic topics in greater depth than could be obtained in traditional workshops or seminars. It seems possible to overcome many obstacles that earlier suggested distance education via television was not feasible from an administrative, budgetary or client acceptance point of wew, The results seem worth the effort, with the providing institution benefiting from increased national recognition. Key Words: distance education, extension education, off-campus education, television For the past eight semesters, I have offered one of my agricultural marketing classes to students outside the classroom via live television. This class, Agricultural Markeling & Entrepreneurship, thus serves two audiences -- traditional campus students and non-traditional students. The majority of these off-campus students take the class to become more proficient in applying advanced marketing techniques in their businesses or professions. Most of these off-campus students are actively engaged in farm or ranch production. A minority are active in related fields such as agricultural banking, elevator management, or employed in various USDA agencies. Some of the off-campus students are enrolled in Community Colleges, or other educational institutions, A few of the off-campus students who are not enrolled in educational institutions take the course for academic credit, primarily, I believe, for self discipline. A typical semester would have about 100 students in the Lincoln, Nebraska classroom and about 500 watching on television -- located primarily in the Plains, Midwest, or the Southeast. What follows are some of my observations, reflections and tentative conclusions on combining extension education and traditional classroom instruction. The television students seem to be highly motivated and willing to spend considerable time in intensive study of a tightly focused topic -- in this case, marketing techmques that reduce price risk. During my 30 odd years at Nebraska, I have conducted numerous off-campus extension programs and workshops. Unfortunately, a two-hour program on marketing techniques after an open bar and a steak dinner leaves the audience, and the instructor, less than fully satisfied. Compared to the attendees at those workshops, the television students seem to have a larger fraction of women, seem younger, have more years of college education, manage larger operations, and are more willing to alter their management practices. I was surprised at the tenacity the off- campus students have for obtaining a comprehensive *Jim Kendrick is a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska ./ ,@ and Applied Econ. 27 (l), July, 1995: 101-103 Copyright 1993 Southern Agricultural Economics Association 102 Kendtvck: Distance Educa(lon Via Television: Some Reflections A/7er Four Years understanding of the material. It is not unusual for one-fifth of this semester’s off-campus students to be students of a previous semester’s class. When visiting with these repeaters, I am told they need to feel very comfortable with the advanced marketing techniques before fundamentally altering traditional marketing practices. More than once I have been told, “For your on-campus students, a mistake lowers their grade, for us a mistake could impact our financial viability,” Reflections: It’s a fun group to work with. The questions and thoughts they bring to the classroom enhance the learning experience of the on-campus students, keep me abreast of rapidly changing marketing conditions across the nation, plus offering opportunities for stimulating conversations and gratis meals when traveling. Combining extension and traditional teaching duties into a single activity can create administrative and turf problems. Some, perhaps most, institutions have separate extension and teaching administrators. Each administrator, of course, is held accountable for programs and budgets in their area. In turn, each administrator requests similar accountability for those staff and faculty that have some fraction of their appointment assigned to them. Administrators may have problems when trying to account, budget, evaluate or suggest changes to an activity that is not purely teaching or extension. When a traditional on-campus class is also delivered to an off-campus audience, a fundamental question is raised, i.e., “Whose program is it -- teaching or extension? Worse yet, when a teaching-extension program of one state is also delivered to other states, the loyalty of the clientele to a single institution may be diluted -- which can add a spatial dimension to the problems of administrators. Reflections: Four years ago, administrative problems associated with a combined teaching- extension program occupied a noticeable fraction of my time, as well as the executive producer’s time. Now there is a growing awareness, sometimes reluctant y, that education is education and that modem technology permits education from diverse geographical sources to be readily available to clientele. In short, there is a growing realization that it’s now a global economy with global informational sources. I leave to others what implications this has for geographical areas of specialization and the obvious corollary that a single educational institution might not need to be all things to all people. Often overlooked is the technical and subject-matter support team required for a distance educational effort, In my case, a talented technical team lets me focus on lectures rather than worry about the myriad of technical details involved with a live broadcast on satellite and local cable, plus taping copies for library use and national mail distribution. I find that off-campus students are o~en reluctant to ask questions (via an 800 telephone number) during class, yet want to verifi their comprehension of the material before application to their situation. I have doubled the number of my Teaching Assistants (TAs) to accommodate this need. Each semester the TAs spend many hours visiting with students (again via an 800 number) from across the nation -- otlen learning as much in the process as the callers learn from them. It is surprising to some that both my television director and TAs are undergraduate students. I find these students to be highly motivated in making the operation a success, and 1 am mindful that the experience will be duly noted by others when reading their Vikis. Reflections: First-time television instructors often act as if they are the most important member of the production team. A smoother production results if each team member is given noticeable credit for their efforts. Another bit of advice to those contemplating distance education -- triple the class preparation time. Even after teaching agricultural marketing for over 30 years, I still find it takes a solid three hours preparation for each hour in a TV class setting. The costs of delivering a distance educational program are formidable. For my marketing class, budgets (in-kind or out-of pocket) must cover: an executive producer; video and audio engineers; a television director; 45 hours of satellite time; tape duplication and mailing; promotional efforts; 800 telephone charges; and wages for the TAs. J. Agr. and Applied Econ., July, 1995 For the first two semesters, the out-of- pocket expenses were underwritten by AG*SAT, the 30-some state consortium for distance education. Ensuing semesters saw a reduction in AG*SAT support until all production costs have been borne by IANR for the past two years. Even atler consolidation of some technical and TA duties, the out-of-pocket expenses are typically around $17,000 per semester. We have tried to cover these costs by $10 surcharges on the textbooks, requesting off- campus students to contribute $100 per viewing site’, charging $400 for a semester’s worth of tapes for those who request them, and recovery of tuition for those off-campus students earning academic credit for the course. In truth, we have never “broken-even.” Last semester’s (Fall 1994) deficit grew to around $2,000, which was reluctantly covered by IANR administrators. While it might seem solely self- serving, I have argued these deficits might be covered in part by the enhanced national reputation of lANR. 1 have also argued that lANR might attract additional students because of the televised class, and there is some evidence this has taken place. Understandably, in times of increasing budget stress, these arguments are becoming less persuasive. This semester (Spring 1995) we are trying something different. Extensive surveys indicate that perhaps one-half of our off-campus students frequently tape the class (broadcast at 9:00 a.m. CT) for later viewing. This semester we will continue to provide live feeds to local cable networks since they carry the program gratis as a public service on their community educational channel. For other viewers (which is most of the agricultural producers) we will tape the class and weekly mail the Monday, Wednesday and Friday lectures. For $450 they get the tapes, the textbook, 800 access to the TAs, and copies of the exams Endnotes 103 during the week they were given to the on-campus students. In addition, there will be three two-hour live broadcasts during the evening devoted entirely to answering their questions. As of January 1, 1995, about $17,000 has been collected in these advanced registrations. Our plan is to make money this semester, repay our debt to IANR administrators, and use any surplus to fund an extensive promotion of a live satellite broadcast of the class during the fall semester of 1995. With extensive promotion it is hoped there will be sufficient participants to cover the full cost of a live national broadcast. Reflections: Financing distance educational efforts is expensive. Cost recovery is difficult and requires new thinking when distance education is directed primarily to a traditional extension audience. Given the current political environment, I believe many agricultural producers understand that “user fees” are necessary if they are to continue receiving intensive off-campus educational programs. Tentative conclusions: For the instructor, distance education is exciting, a broadening experience, but very time consuming. Distance education raises fundamental questions concerning traditional roles and territorial boundaries of extension and teaching programs. Distance education might hasten further specialization of educational institutions. Distance education is expensive and, especially for traditional extension clientele, requires a rethinking of funding sources. Finally, I am convinced there is a growing segment of agricultural producers that have been frustrated by the lack of intensive off-campus educational offerings from land-grant institutions. In some cases, these producers can be serviced through ,distance educational programs which, in turn, may result in increased political support by this clientele for the providing institution. 1. The signal from the satellite is unscrambled. We estimate payment from about only one-fourth of the viewers. Scrambling of educational television signals seems impracticable from a technical point of view. 
work_nsdti5wmiffkpkfxvivqzvqkci	----	0a93bf63-9b31-4673-8937-838a69c8efe9.pdf American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 7 The provision of Learner Support Services in Open and Distance Education: A case Study of Botswana Open University (BOU), Botswana Author’s Details: (1)Lindiwe Monyamane-Botswana Open University (2)Bogosi Monyamane-Limkokwing University of Creative Technology Abstract The purpose of the study was to investigate the provision of learner support services in open and distance education by Botswana Open University. From the 970 learner population in BOU, Francistown Campus; 388 learner respondents (40%) were selected through stratified random sampling to participate in the study. The strata were grouped based on gender, age, education level and programmes of study in order for the various sub-groups to be represented during sampling. A close-ended questionnaire was used as the data collection instrument. The findings of the study revealed that 54% of learner respondents were satisfied with learner support services provided by Botswana Open University. However, 28% of the learners revealed that the standard of the university learner support services needed to be improved while 18% of them highlighted that both distance learners and tutors needed intensive training on distance education, online learning forums and digital educational technologies. The study recommended that the learner support services provided by higher education providers should be inclusive and supportive at all levels. Keywords: Provision; Learner Support Services; Distance and Open Learning; Inclusive; Educational Technologies Introduction The universities around the globe are faced with the responsibilities of addressing the various needs of students through the use of educational technologies to promote the provision open and flexible distance learning (Zuhairi, 2019). The growth in technology challenges the higher education institutions to address the ever- changing needs of the world of work by ensuring that learners have access to flexible quality education (Zuhairi, 2019). Therefore, the new methods and technologies have been using distance and combined learning to increase the roles of open universities in order to increase learner involvement in higher education (Latchem & Jung, 2010). As a result, open and distance education as pointed out by Mapolisa (2012) is perceived as the most efficient means used to improve access and the provision of flexibility in education for continuous professional development and lifelong learning. Learner support services in Open and Distance learning (ODL) have been a crucial subject to address the existence of ODL systems (Simpson, 2013). On the other hand, recent research highlights the significance of both educational and non-educational learner support services and the role of educational technologies to make possible the development of more flexible, interactive and adapt ive learning environments that necessitate innovative ways of offering ODL programmes and learner support services (Sánchez-Elvira & Simpson, 2018). In ODL, the provision of learner support services has been the critical matter of significance to distance education providers for the past years (Brindley & Paul, 2008). The reviewed literature indicates that researchers have been working towards comprehending the learning experiences of the distance learners, the challenges they encounter during the learning process, and the factors that motivate their determination and academic achievement (Simpson, 2002). Hence, the development of learner support services in ODL continues to transform, therefore presenting opportunities for new ideas in education. As such, new forms of teaching and learning are devised to support student centred learning central to ODL (Brindley & Paul, 2008). Even though some distance learning providers lack sufficient budgetary allocations to promote learner support services for ODL, Simpson’s (2002) research highlighted that it is considered lawful, and very essential for ODL providers to financially support distance education practices at all levels. As a result, the implementation of the new strategies, research, theories and assessment methods is imperative in measuring the levels of efficiency and the effectiveness of ODL delivery (Mills, 2003). http://www.abrj.org/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 8 Usun (2004) described learner support services as the provisions or resources that learners can access and use in order for them to engage in the learning process. However, Bates (1995) observed that in distance education, support deals with a collection of human and non-human resources geared towards guiding and facilitating all the learning activities. In a study conducted by Bates (1995), it was established that the resources mostly used for ODL programmes among others included; library facilities, the internet usage, ICT infrastructure as well as the various educational media, software programs and online platforms. The study found that the most crucial mode of learner support during the learning process is the tutor, who through guidance and direction helps learners to progress in their studies and be able to fully manage their learning process (Bates, 1995). Statement of the problem Despite that open and distance education has become common in Botswana and is implemented by many tertiary institutions, some learners who have enrolled for distance education in Botswana Open University take long to complete their studies. This might be an indication that there are underlying factors that affect the delivery of ODL programmes by Botswana Open University. Therefore, the learner support provided by the university might not be sufficient and suitable to the various needs of learners in order to motivate them towards accomplishing their studies. Ouma and Nkuyubwatsi (2019) indicated that the crucial challenge which is faced by distance education around the globe is inadequate learner support for the continually growing number of student enrolments in open and distance universities. Moreover, research shows that Botswana, like other developing countries, experiences some challenges in ODL support services (Gatsha, 2010; Ouma & Nkuyubwatsi, 2019). These challenges as indicated by Chokoe (2015) range from infrastructural and financial restrictions, to human resources and quality improvement setbacks. Further research analysis by Mapolisa (2012) revealed the challenges of organising satisfactory face-to- face classes, insufficient guidance and counselling, ineffective action research supervision, students’ lack of ICT skills, inadequate library support, insufficient support from the university management, and restricted distance learners’ representation in their leadership and governance (Mapolisa, 2012). The use of technology has transformed distance learning even further as ODL learner support services have become more complicated (Gujjar, Chaudhry & Chaudhry, 2009). The introduction of online classes with both synchronous and asynchronous communication, online registration and e-library services, e- mail support, discussion forums, as well as interactive web-based counselling are amongst the developments which make distance learning more complicated (Chokoe, 2015). Research Objectives 1. To investigate the roles of learner support services in Open and Distance Learning. 2. To explore the challenges faced by local tertiary universities when providing learner support services in Open and Distance Learning. 3. To examine the distance learners’ perceptions of learner support services Open and Distance Learning in Botswana. Research Questions 1. What roles do the learner support services play in Open and Distance Learning? 2. Which challenges are faced by universities when providing learner support services in Open and Distance Learning? 3. What are the distance learners’ perceptions of learner support services in Open and Distance Learning in Botswana? Literature Review http://www.abrj.org/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 9 The roles of learner support services in open and distance learning Learner support is the most essential aspect of any Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system. It revolves around a variety of educational and other related activities (Mills, 2003). It is therefore vital for the support services not only to be reactive to the needs of distance learners but rather, they ought to be readily available and accessible. As a result, the supervision of the support services need to be a regular and continuing exercise, which could bring continuous development through support services innovations (Brindley, 1995). Research highlights that learner support services encompasses the methods that are used by ODL institutions to assist the distance learners to study (Simpson, 2003). In a conventional system, classroom contact, team interactions and library facilities are the mechanisms used to study. However, in the ODL structure, educational technologies including: multimedia, print, audio, video, radio, television, tele- conferencing and video-conferencing, digital study material packages, face-to-face counselling and tutorials, continuous assessment and hands-on-experience among others, form part of learner support services (Zuhairi, 2019). Tait (2000) documented three major purposes of learner support in ODL, “cognitive”, “affective” and “systemic”, all of which are key to distance learners’ achievement. Cognitive support in particular, as indicated by Tait (2000) makes learning achievable through the provision of specially designed study materials and learning resources for individual students. These resources provide learners with a supportive environment that creates a continual two-way communication between learners and the institution (Tait, 2000). The librarians in open and distance universities and colleges as stated by Lee (2003) go beyond ensuring that distance learners have access to information. They make sure that learners are able to retrieve information through the internet by helping them to be both information literate and technologically competent (Lee, 2003). On the other hand, the advisors, either educational or psychological counsellors, help distance learners to gain the relevant skills and expertise needed to engage in self-evaluation, plan, make proper decisions, and study efficiently. This, as cited in Aluko and Hendrikz (2012) and supported by Potter (1998) assists learners to defeat the challenges they might encounter during their academic and career processes. The reviewed literature stresses that distance learners need to be connected to several learner support services such as; interactive tutorials, workshops, tele or video-conferencing, interactive and specially designed materials, discussion forums and tutor marked assignments for them to study effectively (Lee, 2003). This interaction allows distance learners to receive some feedback from the main type of resource; the tutor who acts as a facilitator, linking learners to the institution and other resources, and providing sufficient support to empower learners in exercising control over their learning experience (Sache & Mark, 2000). The challenges faced by universities when providing learner support services in Open and Distance Learning Ouma and Nkuyubwatsi (2019) argued that the need for learner support services in open and distance education emanates from the concept that distance learning is commonly provided through information technology where learners are mostly physically separated from other learners and their tutors. According to Douce (2018) distance learners commonly study independently. This therefore means that, they have various needs that are beyond the existing learner support in the conventional education settings (Douce, 2018). Despite all the support provided to learners, distance learning presents some challenges to the academic livelihood of a distance learner (Aluko & Hendrikz, 2012). For that reason, researchers and distance practitioners have long advocated for the provision of enhanced and appropriate learner support services in order to improve teaching and learning in ODL (Somayajulu & Ramkrishna, 2014). Research has revealed that the poor national socio-economic infrastructure is a major challenge that limits the provision of quality learner support services in most of the developing countries’ open and distance learning institutions (Ouma, 2003). In Uganda, the economic level in providing electricity and communication networks, including the use of computers, internet and e-learning, is still inadequate. Basaza, Milman and Wright (2010) argued that the inadequacy of some funds to distance education programmes by some universities makes it http://www.abrj.org/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 10 difficult to effectively cater for all the learning needs of distance learners and this compromises how learner support services are provided. Besides, the insufficient funds restrict tutor training, workshops and seminars which if conducted, would assist in ensuring that all learner needs are catered for (Basaza, et al., 2010). In addition, there is limited use of Information and Communication Technology such as live broadcasts and video conferencing in Uganda, Botswana and other developing countries in Africa to support open and distance education (Kaberia, 2012). Moreover, research indicates that though servicing costs may be low, investment and fixed costs on ICTs are high, hence the need for a strong financial resource base of which is not the case in many countries (Rumble, 2001). Likewise, a study by Lim, Fadzil, and Mansor (2011) on mobile messaging via SMS at the University of Malaysia realised that in Africa, efforts to use text messages were significant at some universities in Uganda and South Africa. However, in a recent related study in Uganda; conducted by Mayende, Muyinda, Isabwe, Walimbwa and Siminyu (2014), it was indicated that the limited usage of mobile phones, devices that didn’t support internet connectivity and low ICT literacy amongst learners were some of the limiting factors in ODL. The challenge of poor internet connectivity is a bigger burden on students from rural areas as compared to their urban counterparts (Basaza et al., 2010). In some developing countries, Botswana inclusive, the internet facility is available at the universities and in urban public internet cafes. Hence, not easily accessible to many in-service teachers who stay and work in rural villages (Busulwa & Bbuye, 2018). In order to enhance learner support services, a dependable communication method is required for effective delivery. Basaza et al. (2010) cited the lack of satisfactory expertise and knowledge in distance education by both the academic and support staff in many universities around the globe. A research conducted in India by Kaberia (2012) established that the lack of supportive skills by the tutor trainers negatively contributed to the low quality of the trainees and promoted frustrations in delivery and learning. Busulwa and Bbuye (2018) suggested that since many sub-Saharan countries have insufficient staff training and exposure to distance education, there is need to overhaul in order to improve the efficiency of learner support services. In addition, Basaza et al. (2012) highlighted that there is a poor reading culture in many African countries which limits the efficacy of learner support services. Distance learners’ perceptions of learner support services in open and distance learning Distance learners have varied perceptions on learner support services provided by open and distance education or institutions. According to Messo (2014), these different perceptions have influenced the learners’ attitudes towards accepting ODL education systems of different countries, including; Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Corry (2008) found that distance learners are less dependent on tutors which somehow affect their progress in learning. As highlighted in a study conducted by Corry (2008), distance learners perceived learner support services provided inadequate and stressed that they required direct interaction with other learners and tutors throughout the instructional process for effective learning. In a study by Kilato (1997) as quoted by Gatsha (2010) distance learners pointed out that learning at a distance through the use of specially designed materials and videos was the most challenging mode of learning to them. The learners stated that sometimes they fail to understand the materials provided and this affected their studies and the overall academic performance. However, a study by Messo (2014) revealed that distance learners enjoyed a high degree of autonomy when using learner support services provided to them. Furthermore, as Messo (2014) stated, distance learners mentioned that the autonomy they are exposed to enables them to choose what to study, when to study, and how to use the study forums, videos and the study materials provided through learner support services efficiently. Komba (2009) found that 71.2% of distance learners reported easy access to network resources and technical support during their studies while 28.8% highlighted that access to quality study materials was inadequate and unsatisfactory. In addition, 81% of respondents revealed that cell-phones were the most effective mode of communication which made their learning easier as distance learners. http://www.abrj.org/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 11 The study conducted by Messo (2008), established that 63.8% of distance learners were likely to recommend others to join ODL programmes because of the high quality support services provided in Tanzania. However, 34.2% pointed out that they were somewhat likely to do so. When Suzanne and Larry (1999) analysed distance students’ perceptions of instruction and instructional methods impact in terms of students’ satisfaction with delivery in Pennsylvania State University, they found that learners were satisfied with the instructional methods used during instruction. The participants also indicated that the use of phones, emails, tutor-marked assignments and email support were useful as they encouraged a two-way communication making distance learning enjoyable (Suzanne & Larry, 1999). A study by Gatsha (2010) highlighted that learners who schooled in the then Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning (BOCODOL) were satisfied with the learner support services provided by the college. The findings of the study showed that male learners were more satisfied with group and weekend tutorials, radio programmes and motivational letters than their female counterparts. According to Gatsha (2010) the availability of the part-time tutors further determined the learners’ satisfaction levels. Therefore, in case the part-time tutors missed weekend tutorials, learners’ satisfaction levels decreased. This then clearly showed that distance learners perceived the presence of tutors beneficial to their studies and success. Research Methodology The study used the quantitative research approach in which a close-ended questionnaire with 38 items was employed to investigate the provision of learner support services in Botswana Open University, Francistown Campus. The use of the questionnaire allowed the Researcher to include as many respondents as possible and allowed for the collection of standardized data from the distance learners, making generalizability possible. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined by cronbach alpha estimates after trial testing and all the variables had an internal consistency index above .80. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select the participants of the study. From the 970 targeted population, a 40% sample comprising 388 distance learner respondents formed part of the study. However, 279 participants were females while 109 were male respondents. Out of the 388 distributed questionnaires, only 333 (85.8%) were completed and returned to the researcher. Discussion of research findings The study has shown that while some learners in Botswana Open University are satisfied with the provision of learner support services, others perceive them inadequate for all their needs as distance learners. The 54% of learner respondents were found to be satisfied with learner support services provided by Botswana Open University, 28% of the learners said that the standard of the University learner support services needed to be improved while 18% of them highlighted that both distance learners and tutors needed intensive training on distance education and online learning platforms. Moreover, the study found that 57% of distance learners were satisfied with tutor-marked assignments and performance feedback, e-library services and tutorials. However, 43% of the respondents indicated that the weekend tutorials and e-library services were not of much benefit to them. With regard to the assignments, they highlighted that the tutors’ comments were sometimes not easy to understand, thus complicating their comprehension even further. Nevertheless, the findings by Gatsha (2010) pointed out that weekend tutorials provide distance learners with the opportunity to interact with other learners and tutors thereby sharing some ideas and resolutions to the challenges met during the learning period. As a result, tutorials are significant for distance learners because they are likely to help them address all the questions that emerged when studying alone. If tutorials are not adequately provided, Ansari (2002) stated that learners might drop out of the institution when they fail to learn or gain knowledge from the provided study materials. While 44.6% of Botswana Open University, Francistown region learners showed that induction workshops were not that helpful, 55.4% learners indicated that they benefited a lot during induction as they had the opportunity to socialise with both other learners and the facilitators themselves. Learners also highlighted that inductions enabled them adjust to the new ways of learning and also understand what the institution http://www.abrj.org/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 12 expected of them. To support the findings of the study, Hughes (2004) indicated that induction workshops are significant for distance learners as they promote collaboration among learners, and this could influence their dedication towards completing their studies. The results of this study further revealed that 58% of the respondents were content with the use of video conferencing and specially designed materials provided by Botswana Open University. However, 42% of the respondents indicated that though the support services of video conferencing and study materials were of much benefit to their learning, limited ICT skills, power cuts and internet connectivity limitations rendered the services not as effective as they are supposed to be. According to Amey (2000), many distance learners are likely to fail if not provided with adequate learner support services which promote self-directed learning. Learner support services aid the linkages and collaborations between students and the university at large (Amey, 200). Therefore, for effective learning to occur in ODL learners should be provided with the relevant support services and the learning resources fostered towards the provision of quality education academic excellence. Summary of findings Botswana Open University needs to improve the provision of learner support services because some learners perceive the support services inadequate in their learning experience. While 54% of learners were satisfied with learner support services that are currently provided, 28% of them were of the opinion that the support services were not sufficient and didn’t address their individual needs. On the other hand, 18% pointed out that the tutors and learners had limited knowledge about distance education. Limited ICT skills, power cuts and internet connectivity were identified as some of the challenges which continue to hamper the effective delivery of ODL programmes and learner support services. It is therefore pertinent for Botswana Open University to provide distance learners with improved, varied and adequate learner support services so as to make learning progressive and effective towards academic achievement. Moreover, both learners and tutors need to be provided with planned and relevant training on distance education in order to enhance the quality of education provided by the institution. Conclusions Despite that some learners are satisfied with the learner support services provided by Botswana Open University, some learners perceive the support services given insufficient for the needs of different learners. Therefore, there is need for the learner support services to be varied so that they meet the needs of all learners. Regular planned trainings, workshops and seminars on ODL should be conducted so that all students; old and new, as well as the tutors and facilitators are empowered on the effective use of ODL teaching and learning resources for quality improvement. The universities that offer distance education should fully support ODL through the provision of relevant resources and financial support for the effective implementation of the ODL curriculum. Recommendations Based on the findings of this research, the study recommends that: - Botswana Open University should make use of deliberate and planned student satisfaction surveys to find out about students’ perceptions on learner support services. - The university should constantly measure the quality of the various learner support services offered instead of learner satisfaction level. - The university should identify learners’ various learning needs so that they are provided with the right support services as per the available resources. Future Research http://www.abrj.org/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 13 There is need to conduct research in future based on the following topics: - An investigation on the relationship between learner support services and learner performance in Open and Distance learning. - An exploration of how learner support services influence the commitment of distance learners. - The perceptions of lecturers on learner support services provided by Open and Distance Learning. References i. Abawi, K. (2017). Data Collection methods: Questionnaire & Interview, Geneva Workshop. ii. Akhtar, I. (2016). Research Design: Research in Social Science: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 68-84. iii. Aluko, R., & Hendrikz, J. (2012). The use of Technology in an ODL Programme: The Journey over the Past Decade. Retrieved from: uir.unisa.za. iv. Amey, F. (2000). Assessment of perceptions of learners and tutors about tutorial provision before BOCODOL. 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(2008).The Role of Learner Support in Institutional Transformation -A Case Study in the Making, 1 -12. xi. Busulwa, H. S., & Bbuye, J. (2018).Attitudes and coping practices of using mobile phones for teaching and learning in a Uganda secondary school. Open Learning: the Journal of Open, Distance and e- Learning, 33(1), 34-45. xii. Chokoe, M. 2015. Students’ and Tutors’ Perceptions of Feedback on Academic Essays in an Open and Distance Learning Context. Open Praxis, 7(1), 39-56. xiii. Corry, M. (2008). Quality in Distance Learning. Distance Learning, 5(1), 88-91. xiv. Douce, C. (2018). Report on the European Distance Education Network (EDEN) Conference, 13-16 June 2017, Jonkoping, Sweden. Open Learning. The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 33(1), 63-69. xv. Gatsha, G. (2010), Learning Support: Perceptions and experiences of remote learners from marginalised communities in Botswana. University of Pretoria, PhD Thesis. xvi. Gujjar, A. A., Chaudhry, B. N., Chaudhry, A. H. (2009). A Comparative Study of Student Support Services of Allama Iqbal Open University and the Open University of Sri Lanka. Educational Research and Reviews, 4(7), 354-364. xvii. Howell, K. E. (2013). Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology. London: Sage Publications. xviii. Hughes, J. A. (2004). Supporting the Online learner. In T. Anderson & F. Ellioumi (Eds), Theory and Practice Online Learning, 367-384. Canada. Athabasca University. xix. Kaberia, J. (2012). Reading culture in Kenya: A situation to worry about? Retrieved from http://www.goethe. de/ins/ke/nai/kul/mag/bib/les/en9885106.htm xx. Kamau, W. (2012).The effectiveness of learner support services to distance learners in a primary education diploma: A case study in Botswana, University of Pretoria, Unpublished Journal. http://www.abrj.org/ http://www.goethe/ American Based Research Journal Vol-9-Issue-8 Aug-2020 ISSN (2304-7151) http://www.abrj.org Page 14 xxi. Latchem, C. & Jung, I. (2010), Distance and Blended Learning in Asia, Routledge, New York, NY. xxii. Lee, J. (2003). Status of Learner Support in Distance Education: Emerging Issues and Directions for Future Research: Asia Pacific Education Review, 4(2), 181-188. xxiii. Lim, T., Fadzil, M., & Mansor, N. (2011). Mobile learning via SMS at Open university Malaysia: Equitable, effective, and sustainable. International Review of Researching Open and Distance Learning, 12(2), 122-137. xxiv. Mapolisa, T. (2012). Provision of research support services to ODL learners by tutors: A focus on the Zimbabwe Open University’s Bachelor of education (Educational management) research students’ supervision experiences. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE, 13(2), 58-68. xxv. Mayende, G., Muyinda, P. B., Isabwe, G. M. N., Walimbwa, M., & Siminyu, S. (2014). Facebook mediated interaction and learning in distance learning at Makerere University. International Conference e-learning, Lisbon, Portugal, July 15-19. xxvi. Messias, I., Morgado, L., & Barbas, M. (2015), “Students’ engagement in distance learning: creating a scenario with LMS and social network aggregation”, paper presented to 2015 International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE), Setubal, 25-27. xxvii. Messo, I. N. (2014). Students’ perceptions on the quality of Open and Distance Learning programmes in Tanzania, Huria Journal, 18(1), 119-134. xxviii. Mills, R. (2003). The centrality of learner support in open and distance learning. In A. Tait, & R. Mills, (Eds.), Rethinking learner support in distance education, London: Routledge Falmer, 102- 113. xxix. Mitchel, A. (1996). Assessing the validity and reliability of questionnaires - An empirical example. Journal of Applied Management Studies, 5(2), 199-207. xxx. Ouma, R., & Nkuyubwatsi, B. (2019). 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work_ntii45sshrgdjbsy5uv36s6eau	----	Distance Education, Vol. 27, No. 2, August 2006, pp. 187–196 ISSN 0158-7919 (print); 1475-0198 (online)/06/020187–10 © 2006 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI 10.1080/01587910600789522 Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for Online Learning Marcus D. Childressa* and Ray Braswellb aEmporia State University, USA; bAuburn University Montgomery, USA Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_178900.sgm10.1080/01587910600789522Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2006Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.272000000August 2006MarcusChildressmarcus.childress@emporia.edu This article addresses the use of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) to foster communication and interaction and to facilitate cooperative learning in an online course. The authors delineate the definition and history of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), and describe current uses of MMORPGs in education, including their experiences with construct- ing and using the MMORPG Second Life. In addition, the authors detail with practical examples the process of using MMORPGs to support cooperative learning activities, and explore future uses and research questions for using MMORPGs in education and training. Introduction Picture for a moment, a café reminiscent of Starbucks™ in which patrons sit and mingle, while enjoying their favorite coffee beverage. One patron chooses to relax in a brown leather chair, sipping a venti mocha latte. While munching on a chocolate chip cookie, another patron plays checkers with a friend and discusses current technology trends. In yet another part of the café, smiling and laughing patrons debate about the topic of the day, which was posted on the barista’s slate menu board. In a somewhat opinionated manner, the barista joins in the conversations, asking questions which make the patrons feel rather uncomfortable. Does this sound like a typical day at the local café? Yes, it could be. However, in this case, it was a description of a cooperative learning activity in Second Life, a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). In our scenario, the patrons (students in this case) are in a virtual café which looks remarkably like their nearby (or not-so-nearby) * Corresponding author. Department of Instructional Design and Technology, Box 4037 Visser Hall, The Teachers College, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801, USA. Email: marcus.childress@emporia.edu 188 M. D. Childress and R. Braswell Starbucks™. The discussions in the café surround a course topic which was posted by the barista (instructor in this case). The instructor circulates through the café guiding the discussions, asking probing questions, and yes—keeping the students on-task. Online courses are becoming ubiquitous at many universities. The ability to complete entire degrees without actually being present on a college campus is becoming popular with adult students. The ability to attend classes while eliminat- ing long commutes or taking classes at a time more convenient to the student is creating an entirely new genre of student: one neither the instructor nor the other students in the class ever meets in person. Many online classes use chat rooms, email, or electronic mailing lists (listservs) in an attempt to create interaction between the students in the class and faculty. Far too often, the lack of immediacy with email and listservs may tend to limit the student responses to other students’ and instructor’s comments. Chat rooms may improve the immediacy of interaction between students, and students are becoming more comfortable with the concept of “talking” by typing to others online. Some students prefer, and thrive in, an online environment (as opposed to a face-to-face class) as it allows them time to more completely formulate their thoughts as they respond to the class discussion. Virtual online worlds provide an additional level of personality that is missing from the typical chat room environment. In an attempt to address these issues of communication and interaction, the authors constructed a virtual office space in the massively multiplayer online role- playing game (MMORPG), Second Life. This article will: (a) define and explain the history of MMOGs, (b) describe current uses of MMORPGs in education, (c) detail the process of using MMORPGs for cooperative learning activities, and (d) explore future uses and research questions for MMORPGs in education and training. Although only in their infancy, online virtual worlds such as Second Life and other MMORPGs have the potential to provide new ways of learning by giving both instructors and learners the opportunity to interact with one another and their learn- ing environment; ways that until now were not possible in on online setting. MMOGs—Definition, History, and Key Concepts MMOGs evolved out of multi-user dungeons (MUDs). A MUD is a multiplayer computer game that typically combines text instant message chat rooms and role- playing games. Typically, players read descriptions of their environment, objects, events, and characters in a virtual world. Users interact with other players and their surrounding by typing text commands. Many MUDs involve a fantasy world populated by mythical beings. In order to complete quests or adventures, users must complete tasks, while exploring the virtual world. The increase in computer processing speed, graphic capabilities, and broadband Internet access eventually led to the development of real-time, graphic-intensive MMOGs. According to Steinkuehler (2004, p. 2): Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are highly graphical 2- or 3-D videoga- mes played online, allowing individuals, through their self-created digital characters or “avatars,” to interact not only with the gaming software (the designed environment of the Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games 189 game and the computer-controlled characters within it) but with other players’ avatars as well. These virtual worlds are persistent social and material worlds, loosely structured by open-ended (fantasy) narratives, where players are largely free to do as they please— slay ogres, siege castles, barter goods in town, or shake the fruit out of trees. With the addition of highly customizable/detailed avatars, objects, and actions, some MMOGs have now evolved into MMORPGs. Second Life, the MMORPG used for this project, is one such portal into an online virtual world. Second Life, an online virtual world, is a 3D space totally created and evolved by its users. Within this space, and with creation tools, users can construct a virtual, customized, digital representation of themselves (avatars). Users can develop land and even build virtual establishments and businesses, as well as earn microcurrency (Linden dollars) that can be “spent” in the Second Life environment (and can also be exchanged on the World Wide Web for US dollars). The real-time simulated environment provides the opportunity for collaboration with other users and interaction with objects in the Second Life virtual world. Second Life and other MMORPGs provide educators with opportunities to develop learning activities which closely replicate real-world learning experiences previously available only through face-to-face interaction. Simulations of practically any real-world scenario, from running a virtual business to maintaining a virtual church, are made possible through the use of MMORPGs. Settings such as these, anchored in highly collaborative real-world experiences, provide learners with many meaningful and enriching learning experiences. In addition, MMORPG virtual envi- ronments provide instructors with an opportunity to design highly social cooperative learning activities that can be conducted with relative ease and efficiency. Campus: Second Life Second Life provides a special program (i.e., Campus: Second Life) for educators to use in their classes (currently higher education only). Campus: Second Life gives educators and their students the opportunity to experience the “simulation and creativity tools available within a large, heavily populated digital world” (Linden, 2005a, ¶4). Professors and instructors wishing to use the Campus: Second Life program are required to submit a proposal outlining educational goals and plans and how Second Life will compliment those plans. Additionally, plans for research leading to publication are requested. In fall 2005, there were 10 university courses in the Campus: Second Life program. Course titles included Art in Virtual Worlds, Digital Collaboration in Architecture, Introduction to International Business, Foundations of Instructional Technology, Urban Planning in the Gaming World, Human Computer Interface, Designing Digital Communi- ties, Introduction to Sociological Perspectives in Education, Multiplayer Game Design, and Exploring Health Applications in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Environments (MMORPEs) (Linden, 2005b, ¶3). MMORPGs have attracted the attention of other educators and researchers. For example, Aaron Delwiche, assistant professor at Trinity University teaches his 190 M. D. Childress and R. Braswell Games for the Web course in Second Life’s virtual world. Students are able to use, and experiment with, the many object creation tools made available in Second Life. In addition, Delwiche provides opportunities for guest lecturers in the virtual world (Foster, 2005). Yet another interesting application of Second Life can be found in the work of Antonacci and Modaress (2005). At the University of Kansas Medical Center, Antonacci and Modaress have created a Second Life medical clinic in which medical students can practice patient encounter strategies. During their role-playing, each student assumes the role of a doctor, nurse, patient, or patient’s spouse. Students experience patient encounters from their different roles, discuss, and reflect upon their experiences. Highly collaborative learning opportunities anchored in real-world experiences, such as those described above, provide a foundation for many new and exciting models of teaching and ways of learning. Role-playing scenarios which were once only possible in a face-to-face environment may now be conducted in an online virtual world. Integrating Second Life into an Online Graduate Course Through the Campus: Second Life program, Second Life was integrated into an online graduate-level Foundations of Instructional Technology course in a mid-sized Midwestern university. The course is part of an entirely online Master of Science degree program in Instructional Design and Technology. An integral part of the degree is the Foundations of Instructional Technology course, which serves as an introduction to the field, its history, underpinning theories and philosophies, and its trends and issues. Currently, the course uses the Blackboard™ learning manage- ment system (LMS) for the delivery of content (primarily online text-based lectures), submission of assignments, and communication between students and the instructor. Although students in the course commonly indicate that they feel a strong sense of belonging and community with the other students and the instructor, it was the instructor’s belief that an MMORPG such as Second Life would foster an increased sense of community among the students, as well as provide better commu- nication between the instructor and the students. The principle behind MMORPGs such as Second Life, may be demonstrated through an understanding that, at any given time, thousands of participants may be online and interacting at the same time (the massively multiplayer capabilities) and the participants are engaged in a 3D online representation of actual locations (the virtual world). This virtual world has been, and is still presently, in the process of being designed, constructed, and modified by those involved in Second Life. Objects in Second Life may be very detailed, due both to the design capabilities of the program and the ability to include photorealistic textures on objects. Partici- pants in Second Life may choose to interact with many existing objects and also have the capability to create and manipulate their own objects. Participants may also buy/sell/trade/acquire objects, ranging from books to food to houses. Some objects in Second Life have physical properties. For example, users may bounce on Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games 191 a trampoline, watch actual video on a virtual television, or ride a virtual jet-ski on a virtual lake. The purpose of this project was to engage online students in an environment that would allow them to become more involved with not only the instructor, but each other as well. An online class that uses a chat room as part of the class instruction tends to resemble a group of people sitting around a table in a classroom. The students read and respond to the conversation in real time as it occurs. Other than the occasional use of emoticons such as ;) (wink) or other generally accepted instant messaging abbreviations such as <LOL> (laughing out loud) or <ROFL> (rolling on the floor laughing), there is little, if any visual feedback that alerts the students to the tenor of the discussion. The use of Second Life adds a visual feedback element that serves to enhance the interaction between the participants. Students can observe the actions of other students, watch how others interact with the various elements found in the virtual world, and introduce a visual element of proximity which is not available in a typical online classroom (the ability to chat with another person is affected by virtual distance—one can only see the conversation if one is within range of the person talking). Students can effortlessly break into smaller groups, simply by moving away from one another. Students were pre-registered as Second Life users. As users in Second Life are generally allowed to choose their own username, this pre-registration allowed the instructors to keep track of the students registered in the class. One feature of Second Life is the use of teleportals to quickly move from one location in Second Life to another. However, one participant may offer to transport another participant to their Second Life location. As new participants enter the Second Life environment a long “virtual” distance from the designated office location, it was decided that once the students entered the Second Life environment, they would message the instructor to be transported to the office building location. Once transported, a user can then set a location as a landmark, or, in the case with the students, as a home location (which would allow them to enter the Second Life environment at the office location). Once at the office, students were given an orientation to the Second Life environment and presented with tasks which emulated skills they would need while in the Second Life world (such as moving and creating objects, flying, and interacting with the instructor/other participants). Students were also allowed to explore the three-story office building, which was designed to provide a large number of online experiences (such as accessing Web sites outside of Second Life, opening and reading online books, and leaving messages for the instructors). First Floor The first floor of the three-story virtual office building included a lounge area, with a couch (on which avatars could sit and converse with each other), a coffee table, and decoration accessories such as a tropical fish aquarium. The first floor deck included a library with both course-related and leisure readings. The entrance of the first floor 192 M. D. Childress and R. Braswell contained URL globes that, when touched (mouse-clicked) by the avatar, provided access to relevant Web sites on the user’s computer. Second Floor The second floor (accessible by stairs, flying, or teleporting) faculty office consisted of a couch, coffee table, faculty desk and chairs, and various decoration accessories. During virtual office hours, students could sit across from the instructor’s desk and chat (via text), just as they might chat verbally, in real life. Should the instructor be out of the office, students could leave a text message by simply clicking on a message globe. From the second floor deck, students could watch streaming videos on a 20 ft. × 10 ft. high definition television containing both instructional content and entertainment content such as movie trailers, music videos, and vintage animated cartoons. Third Floor The third floor (rooftop) allowed larger groups of students to gather in a more relaxed setting. The open-air rooftop was outfitted with a popcorn machine, Coca-Cola™ vending machine, and a launching chair. Students could converse, enjoy a box of popcorn and a Coke™, and ultimately (for fun) sit in a launching chair which would launch the avatar several hundred feet into the air, releasing the avatar for a freefall (parachutes are available for purchase at several locations in the Second Life grid). Built on a 1-acre snow sim (snow simulation), the office building provides a place for both students and instructors to gather, hold real-time discussions, conduct group meetings, and have one-on-one meetings. From student comments and feedback, it appears that the goal of accomplishing a closer-knit class sense of community among class members was accomplished. The next step for this project will be to integrate more instructional tools and materials into the virtual environ- ment, such as multimedia content, class activities, and cooperative learning experi- ences. Providing such a highly social and collaborative environment will foster greater opportunities for real-world learning experiences, cooperative learning, and group activities; experiences and activities that have never before been possible in an online environment. Using MMORPGs for Cooperative Learning The highly social attributes of MMORPGs make them rich environments for coop- erative learning-based activities. Bonk and Reynolds (1997) suggest several critical thinking and cooperative learning techniques for the Web. Bonk and Reynolds’ coop- erative learning techniques for the Web can be easily extended to MMORPGs. These techniques can be categorized into partner activities and group activities (see Table 1). To illustrate the adaptation of cooperative learning to MMORPGs, this section of the article will give several examples using partner activities and group activities in Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games 193 Second Life. In the interest of brevity, one example of partner activities and three examples of group activities will be given. Partner Activities Think/pair/share. One example of a partner activity, Think/pair/share (Gunter, Estes, & Schwab, 1999) is easily accomplished in a MMORPG environment. The teacher poses a thought-provoking question to the entire class via email, Web site, or LMD. Students are encouraged to individually think about the question, with the goal of reaching a reasonable answer/solution. At a predetermined time, each student meets in-world (real time) with a partner to discuss (keyboard chat) his/her solution and to reach a consensus with the partner. In the final step of the Think/pair/share activity, the students meet in the virtual classroom location to share their answers with the entire class (with a virtual PowerPoint presentation, if needed). Supplemental documents, images, and Web sites are plainly shared to support discussions. Group Activities Round robin/round table. Another cooperative learning technique, Round robin/ round table, is easily facilitated in a virtual world (Kagan, 1994). In this brainstorm- ing activity, the class is divided into small groups with one student appointed as the recorder. A thought-provoking question is asked, giving students time to think, indi- vidually. Each group then assembles in a different room of the virtual building (or any location in the virtual world, for that matter) for sharing of answers and discus- sion. The recorder copies and pastes the answers of the individual group members into the Second Life text tool, for sharing and review at a later time. The recorded responses are housed in the classroom library. Jigsaw. Through cooperative learning techniques such as group investigation, higher-order thinking skills such as analysis and evaluation can be achieved. After planning, researching, and dividing assignments, group members synthesize and Table 1. Cooperative learning techniques for the Web (and MMORPGs) Partner activities Group activities Think/pair/share Electronic café Share/check Round robin/round table Work/review/discuss Jigsaw Peer review/edit Discussion group Partner conference Structured controversy Peer interview Panel discussion Tell and retell Debate 194 M. D. Childress and R. Braswell summarize their findings and share them with the entire class. The jigsaw technique is a common group investigation method. Imagine for a moment how a jigsaw activ- ity on geography might take place. Students are assembled in the virtual classroom, where they are given a geography assignment. The students are assigned to groups of four, with each person in the group being assigned to a different geography topic as location, landforms, bodies of water, and climate. Students with like topics meet together and gain expertise by mouse-clicking on URL globes. These globes direct the students’ Web browsers to information-packed Web sites, preselected by the instructor. After the topic exploration, students return to their original groups and share their newly gained expertise. The previous activities illustrate how essentially any face-to-face cooperative learning activity can be adapted to a MMORPG environment. The reader is encour- aged to explore other ways in which the remaining partner/group activities (and other activities not listed) can be used in MMORPGs. As they become easier to use and more realistic, MMORPGs may one day become the preferred platform for cooperative learning activities. The Future of MMORPGs in Online Learning As computer processing speed, bandwidth, and innovations increase, MMORPGs will most likely continue to become more sophisticated, offering increased interactiv- ity and realism. The use of pedagogical agents, artificial intelligence, and customiza- tion will increase ways that MMORPGs can be integrated into education, training, and performance support systems (Bonk & Dennen, 2005). As MMORPGs are inte- grated, more attention will need to be given to teaching and learning issues such as higher-level thinking skills, problem-solving, identity, and social affiliation. Not only will the use of MMORPGs offer many pedagogical options for educators, but it will also provide exciting opportunities for researchers. Bonk and Dennen (2005) list 15 issues which may require further exploration and research when using MMOGs (and MMORPGs) in education and training (see Table 2). Conclusion Improvements in MMORPGs will lead to increased realism and interactivity, blur- ring the line between the face-to-face learning environment and the online virtual learning environment. Combined with this increased realism and interactivity will also be innovative teaching models and new ways of learning. These innovative models will most likely address critical thinking and problem-solving, and will be based upon real-world, highly social learning experiences. Advances in artificial intelligence may well promote the integration of pedagogical agents (learning agents) into the teaching/learning models; agents that will customize materials for each learner, based upon the learner’s own individual needs. Currently, Second Life’s educators’ electronic mailing list (educators@lists.linden- lab.com) provides an ongoing exchange of new ways that Second Life and other Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games 195 virtual environments can support education. Educators regularly share their experi- ences, successes, failures, and new teaching strategies on the list. With these numerous teaching, learning, and research opportunities at hand, it appears that educators and researchers will have a plethora of directions in which to drive their fields. Use of MMORPGs in education and training is in its formative years. Inno- vations and improvements in MMORPGs will likely be a catalyst for new ways of learning and new models of teaching. The limits to these exciting teaching/learning advances will ultimately be up to the technology and the creativity of the educators using it. Notes on Contributors Marcus D. Childress is Associate Professor and Chair of the Instructional Design and Technology Department in The Teachers College, Emporia State University, USA, where he directs an online graduate degree program in Instructional Design & Technology. Ray Braswell is Professor of Educational Technology in the School of Education, Auburn University Montgomery, USA. References Antonacci, D., & Modaress, N. (2005). Second Life: The educational possibilities of a massively multi- player virtual world. Retrieved May 31, 2005, from http://www2.kumc.edu/netlearning/ SLEDUCAUSESW2005/SLPresentationOutline.htm Bonk, C., & Dennen, V. (2005). Massive multiplayer online gaming: A research framework for military training and education (Technical Report No. 2005-1). Washington, DC: US Department of Defense (DUSD/R): Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative. Retrieved October 1, 2005, from http://mypage.iu.edu/∼cjbonk/GameReport_Bonk_final.pdf Bonk, C., & Reynolds, T. (1997). Learner-centered Web instruction for higher-order thinking, teamwork, and apprenticeship. In B. H. Khan (Ed.), Web-based instruction (pp. 167–178). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Table 2. Potential research issues for MMOGs (and MMORPGs) Performance and decision-making style Bandwidth constraints and differences Learning from mistakes Impact of addiction to MMOGs Role assignment Learning style and game selection Sense of community and group longevity or persistence Cognitive tools and MMOG performance and dialogue Game-based motivation The apprenticeship process in MMOGs Collaboration and virtual teaming Problem-solving processes and types of knowledge facilitated by MMOGs Game authenticity and constructivism Decision-making, leadership, and interpersonal conflict in MMOGs Social skills and friendship development 196 M. D. Childress and R. Braswell Foster, A. (2005, September 30). The avatars of research. The Chronicle of Higher Education, A35. Retrieved October 14, 2005, from http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i06/06a03501.htm Gunter, M. A., Estes, T. H., & Schwab, J. H. (1999). Instruction: A models approach (3rd ed., pp. 279–280). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Kagan, S. (1994). Cooperative learning. San Juan Capistrano, CA: Kagan Cooperative Learning. Linden, P. (2005a, October 12). Campus: Second Life frequently asked questions. Retrieved October 13, 2005, from http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Campus%3A+Second+Life+ FAQ Linden, P. (2005b, October 12). New residents in Second Life this fall—Campus: Second Life program continues! Retrieved October 13, 2005, from http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t= 60133 Steinkuehler, C. (2004). Learning in massively multiplayer online games. Retrieved October 1, 2005, from http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/documents/SteinkuehlerICLS2004.pdf 
work_nuuycm5hjncqrcdgdkhafc5lva	----	Comparison of the Proficiency Level of the Course Materials (Animations, Videos, Simulations, E-books) Used in Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.150 ScienceDirect WCLTA 2013 Comparison of the Proficiency Level of the Course Materials (Animations, Videos, Simulations, E-Books) Used In Distance Education Hakan KÖR a*, Hamit AKSOY b, Hasan ERBAY c a Hitit University, Sungurlu Vocational School, Department of Computer Technology, 19300 Çorum, TURKEY b Hitit University, Sungurlu Vocational School, Department of Computer Technology, 19300 Çorum, TURKEY c Kırıkkale University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computer Engineering, 71451 Kırıkkale, TURKEY Abstract Activities in the field of distance education have shown a significant improvement in the world and Turkey in parallel with the technology. Activities in this field started through newspapers and letters and they were improved by using printed material, radio, television and internet. Recently, as well as the use of computer and internet have become widespread in the world, web- based distance education systems have been used more than the other teaching tools. In Turkey, departments of distance education attached to the Council of Higher Education were opened in large number and they are still continued to be opened. In this paper, in terms of quality and interactivity it is aimed to evaluate the course materials used by the institutions of distance education. Through the surveys applied to the institutions of distance education determined by choosing from the different regions of Turkey, it was aimed to find out the faults and defects of the course materials in terms of quality and interactivity. By sharing the obtained outputs with related institutions, formation of more efficient distance learning materials will be possible. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013. Keywords: Distance Education, E-learning, Teaching Materials; 1. Introduction Distance education is defined as a simultaneous or no simultaneous learning process in which individuals have the opportunity for learning independent from time and place, and in which various methods and techniques are used in learning activities. * Corresponding author: Hakan Kör Tel.: +0-90-364-3116000 E-mail address: hakankor@hitit.edu.tr © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.150&domain=pdf 855 Hakan Kor et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 In the first years when distance education method was used, letters, newspapers and printed materials were used as a learning tool. Widespread use of computers and advancements in information technologies have significantly developed the methods and techniques used in distance education. Recently, web-based e-learning systems and virtual class teaching have been used commonly as well as radio, television and video conference used in distance education (KÖR, 2013). Advancements in technology enabled transfer of course books used in printed version to digital settings. The printed materials used in distance education were transferred to digital settings (BOZKURT, 2013). Despite long distance between the learning and teaching groups, the learning groups have the opportunity to learn in virtual classes similar to traditional classroom setting through computers with Internet connection. Parallel to developments in information technologies, video conference, animation, interactive materials, simulation, and web- based learning systems have been started to be used. Turkey was also influenced by the fast developments in distance education in the world and several distance education departments were opened in universities. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the level of use of information technologies in course materials used during distance education process in universities in Turkey. 1.1. Printed Materials Upon the launch of use of movable-type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, spread of free thought, development of scientific research and reforms have gained impetus (McLuhan, 2001). This ensured spread of information by conveying the printed materials to people in far distances. Use of printed materials is considered to be the start of distance education through letter and newspaper. 1.2. E-book The concept of e-book ensued when a printed book was transferred into computer setting. The first e-book was formed under the Gutenberg Project carried out by Michael Hart in 1971 and the first e-book was the “American Declaration of Independence” (Lebert, 2009), which hence laid the basis of public electronic library. With the use of web browser in November 1993, Gutenberg Project was opened to access on Internet and many printed materials became accessible as e-books. In 2000s, the launch of Acrobat eBook Reader has ensured a rapid increase in the use of e-book in PDF format. In addition to technological developments in recent years, with the developments in coding languages which enable interactive and substantial content to be integrated into e-books, e- books have renewed themselves and the concept of e-book has updated itself during this development process (archive.org, 2013). 1.3. Video conference Video conference system is an excellent example of human-computer interface which accommodates conversations and discussions on various issues (Jonathan and others, 1997). In other words, video conferences are settings where audio; image and data are shared among a person or persons in different places through technological means. Video conference is used in distance education and various business sectors in many countries. 1.4. Virtual Classroom Education All activities which are carried out in virtual classroom settings, in which traditional education activities are performed as online on Internet and an interaction is ensured between the teacher and learner are called virtual classroom education (Gülbahar, 2009). In other words, virtual classrooms are settings where the learner group communicate the teacher and teaching materials through technology (Kurbel, 2001). In Figure 1 can be seen a database course carried out through a paid virtual classroom software. The students should be informed about the course time by the teacher in advance. During the scheduled time period, students 856 Hakan Kor et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 Figure 1. Virtual Classroom Setting Having the username and password for access to virtual education can attend the course. During the course carried out as virtual classroom education, the teacher is able to project the screen image to all students and give a more interactive and visual course using audio, video, animation or simulation settings. During the course, if the teacher lets, students can ask permission to speak by pressing the button ‘ask to speak’ and, when permitted, the voice and screen image of the student can be shared with other students. In virtual classroom settings, the level of communication between teacher and learner has been improved by inclusion of elements improving interaction such as audio and video share, chat, screen share, file and presentation share, white board application and quiz. In addition to the most commonly used and prepaid Adobe Connect program in virtual classroom education, multi-conversation applications developed by improving web technologies are offered free of charge. Web based and free any meeting and a google product “hang” are examples of these applications. Free applications provide opportunity for simultaneous multi-conversation and screen share. 1.5. Animation and Simulation Animation is defined as creating several stable images which show an object in motion and playing these images consecutively quickly so that it makes us think that the object really moves (Elliot, and Miller, 1999). Animations, showing an object in motion to create the image of a very stable and quick succession of images by moving the object moves us to think really defines the form of providing (Elliot and Miller, 1999). Animation in computer is described as making visual effects by using graphic and audio devices (Dolye, 2001). In other words, animation can be defined as animation of experiments and activities, which cost a lot in real classroom settings, by graphic and audio devices in computer. By use of animation, students access more information in a very short period of time, abstract subjects are made more tangible, and the learning concentration of students is improved (Çalışkan, 2002 and Demirci, 2003). 1.6. Interactive Software The first e-books in text file format were turned into a format with a richer content with text, image, screen and hypertext structure. The developments gained impetus thanks to tablet computers, smart phones and e-book readers, which have recently become widespread, and e-books have become more common (Bozkurt and Bozkaya, 2013). 2. Method The sample of this research consists of distance education centres in 25 different universities uniformly chosen in 857 Hakan Kor et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 7 regions in Turkey. The participants were asked to voluntarily answer the questionnaire about the use of materials in distance education. The obtained data were analysed with the SPSS data analysis package program and the results are given as tables in the findings section below. 3. Findings The data obtained from the participants are given in tables. In the tables, the LMS usage of the universities in Turkey, the mostly preferred distance education materials and the levels of materials use are given in percentages. Table 1. The percentages of the universities use of LMS Questions about the distance education learning management software’s (LMS) and material preparation Yes Percentage No Percentage Do you use learning management software’s (LMS) during the learning process in distance learning centre? 23 92 2 8 Do the distance learning centre students follow the courses through LMS? 22 88 3 12 Do you have a team for preparing course materials in distance learning centre? 19 76 6 24 When the table 1 is analysed, it is seen that %92 of the universities use LMS, %88 of them follow the courses through LMS and %76 of the universities that participate in the survey have the employee in charge of preparing the distance education course materials. Table 2. The Kinds of LMSs that are used in universities The LMSs that are used in distance learning. Paid Software’ s Percenta ge Open Source Software ’s Percenta ge Tot al Which software’s do you often prefer in the process of preparing the materials for distance education courses? 22 88 3 12 25 According to the table 2, the great majority of the universities in Turkey with %88 use paid software’s in the process of preparing the materials for distance education courses. Table 3. The Material Types that are used in distance education Material Types Institution Number Percentage (%) Which materials below are used in the distance education courses? Text Document 20 80 PDF Documents 24 96 Video 23 92 Animation 16 64 Sound Files 19 76 858 Hakan Kor et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 Interactive Practices 17 68 Simulation 0 0 In table three, when the material types that are used in the distance education are analysed, it is seen that the majority of materials that are used consists of PDF documents with a percentage of %96, however it is also seen that the least used materials are animation with %64, interactive practices with %68 and simulations are never used. Table 4. Materials that are wanted to be used in distance education Material types Institution Number Percentage Mark the material types that are not used in distance education courses now but that you would like to be used in the future. Video 1 4 Animation 5 20 Simulation 13 52 Interactive Practices 20 40 Materials that are compatible with mobile devices 19 76 Virtual Class Practices 7 28 Teaching Management Systems Software’s 2 8 In table 4 the materials that are not used by the universities now but the materials that are wanted to be used by the universities are seen. According to table 4 it is seen that the course materials which are mostly wanted to be used are the materials that are compatible with the mobile devices. Simulations with %52 percentage and interactive practices with %40 percentage are the most wanted materials to be used. Table 5. The number of Materials -Video, Animation and Sound Files- that are used in distance education Questions about the use of materials 0 (N ) % 1-5 (N ) % 6-10 (N) % 11- 15 (N) % 16 + (N) % How many videos on average are used in distance education courses? 5 20 10 40 3 12 6 2 4 1 4 How many materials including animation on average are used in distance education courses? 5 20 14 56 3 12 1 4 2 8 How many sound files are used on average in distance education courses? 4 16 13 52 3 12 3 1 2 2 8 When the table 5 is analysed, the rates of three different materials that are used in distance education courses are seen. When the number of videos used in the course is analysed, it is remarkable that no video material is used with %20 percentage, the greatest percentage with %40 ten universities use video materials in the range of 1-5. When the animation numbers for a course are analysed, it is seen that the percentage of the universities that do not use any materials including animation is %20, and it is also seen that14 universities use materials including animation in the range of 1-5 with the greatest percentage of %56. Finally when the use of sound files is analysed it is seen that %16 of the universities do not use any materials including sound files, and 14 universities use sound files in the range of 1-5 with the greatest percentage of %56. 859 Hakan Kor et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 Table 6. The Number of Interactive Material and Simulation that are used in a course in distance education Questions about the use of materials 0 (N) % 1 (N) % 2 (N) % 3 (N) % 4+ (N) % How many interactive materials are there in the distance education course on average? 8 32 7 28 4 16 1 4 5 20 How many simulation practices are there in distance education courses on average? 17 68 5 20 2 8 1 4 0 0 When the table 6 is analysed, the use of two different materials in distance education courses is seen. When the numbers of interactive materials for a course are analysed, it is seen that no interactive material is used with % 32 percentages and only one interactive material is used with % 28 percentages. When the number of simulation practices that are used in the process of a course preparation is analysed it is seen that no simulation material is used with % 68 percentages and five universities use one material that includes simulations and this is the %20 of the total. Table 7. The Providing of Distance Education Materials How are the materials that are used in the distance education courses provided? N Percentage (%) They are provided from the outside of the institution. 6 24 They are composed by the university academicians. 19 76 TOTAL 25 100 When the table 7 is analysed it is seen that the great majority %76 of the universities that actively provide distance education provide the education materials from the outside of the institution. 4. Results and Suggestions When the findings are analysed, it is seen that most of the universities that provide distance education have the LMS and at the same time students in most of the universities follow the courses through the LMSs and these show that universities give importance to LMSs. A great majority of the universities that participate in the study have their own private team to prepare the distance education materials. With the help of these private teams, many universities prepare distance education course materials within their institution and bring them into the use of students. Most of the programmes that are used in the process of course preparation are paid software’s and it shows that distance education centres give great budgets to material preparation. The materials that are used in the distance education centres usually consist of PDF files and videos. It is seen that animation, simulation and interactive practices are less frequently used in the process of course material preparation. This shows that while preparing the course materials the material preparation teams in universities prefer the material types that are easier and faster to prepare just like PDF, videos and text files. In order to be understood the courses easier and better by the students, it is suggested to use the materials which are visual-rich. It is believed that interactive and visual materials make the courses more pleasant and increase students’ motivations. Many universities do not use animation, simulation and interactive practices. It is suggested to put the material preparation teams into in service training in order to make improvements in these areas. Another thing that the universities think to be lacking in their institutions is the contents that are compatible with mobile devices. Almost all the students have smart phones or tablets so the development of the contents that are compatible with the mobile devises has greater importance. Distance education centres’ purchasing of software’s and materials from outside sources causes great costs for 860 Hakan Kor et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 141 ( 2014 ) 854 – 860 universities. It is offered as a suggestion to develop software for national course material preparation to the council of higher education which the universities are attached to. References Bozkurt, A., & Bozkaya, M. (2013). Etkileşimli e-kitap: Dünü, bugünü ve yarını. Akademik Bilişim 2013. 23-25 Ocak, Akdeniz Üniversitesi, Antalya. Bozkurt, A., (2013). Açık ve Uzaktan Öğrenmeye Yönelik Etkileşimli E-kitap Değerlendirme Kriterlerinin Belirlenmesi, Yüksek Lisans Tezi., Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskişehir. Çalışkan, Sabahattin. “Uzaktan Eğitim Web Sitelerinde Animasyon Kullanımı,” AÖF’ün 20. Yılı Nedeniyle Uluslararası Katılımlı Açık/Uzaktan Eğitim Sempozyumu. Anadolu Üniversitesi, 23-25 Mayıs 2002, Eskişehir, Türkiye. Demirci, N. (2003). Bilgisayarla Etkili Öğretme Stratejileri ve Fizik Öğretimi, Ankara, Nobel Yayıncılık. Doyle, A. (2001). Web Animation Technology&Learning, Sep. Vol.22 Issue 2, and p.30. Elliot, S & Miller, P (1999), 3D Studio Max 2, Sistem Yayıncılık Mat.San. ve Tic. A.Ş., İstanbul,S.44. Gülbahar, Y. (2009), E-öğrenme, Ankara, Pegem Akademi Yayıncılık. Jonathan K. Kies, Robert C. Williges (1997), Beverly H. Williges, Pages 979-1002, Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (Second Edition). KÖR, H. (2013), Uzaktan Eğitim ve Örgün Eğitimin Çok Yönlü - Çapraz Karşılaştırılması: Kırıkkale Üniversitesi ve Hitit Üniversitesi Örneği, Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Kırıkkale Üniversitesi, Kırıkkale. Kurbel, K. (2001), “Virtuality on the Students' and on the Teachers' sides: A Multimedia and Internet based International Master Program; ICEF Berlin GmbH”, Proceedings on the 7th International Conference on Technology Supported Learning and Training – Online Educa; Berlin, Almanya. Lebert M. (2009), “A Short History of E-Books”, NEF, University of Toronto. Mcluhan. M. (2001), Gutenberg Galaksisi Tipografik İnsanın Oluşumu. İstanbul, Yapı Kredi Yayınları. http://web.archive.org/web/20071014010805/http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/history-of-pdf-openness/ (2013) 
work_o2th2ke67ba7bmnrazxdoorm3y	----	Microsoft Word - 18es030015(1)  Abstract—One of the major objectives of the Nigeria national policy on education is the provision of equal educational opportunities to all citizens at different levels of education. With regards to higher education, an aspect of the policy encourages distance learning to be organized and delivered by tertiary institutions in Nigeria. This study therefore, determines how much of the Government resources are committed, how the resources are utilized and what alternative sources of funding are available for this system of education. This study investigated the trends in recurrent costs between 2004/2005 and 2013/2014 at University of Ibadan Distance Learning Centre (DLC). A descriptive survey research design was employed for the study. Questionnaire was the research instrument used for the collection of data. The population of the study was 280 current distance learning education students, 70 academic staff and 50 administrative staff. Only 354 questionnaires were correctly filled and returned. Data collected were analyzed and coded using the frequencies, ratio, average and percentages were used to answer all the research questions. The study revealed that staff salaries and allowances of academic and non-academic staff represent the most important variable that influences the cost of education. About 55% of resources were allocated to this sector alone. The study also indicates that costs rise every year with increase in enrolment representing a situation of diseconomies of scale. This study recommends that Universities who operates distance learning program should strive to explore other internally generated revenue option to boost their revenue. University of Ibadan, being the premier university in Nigeria, should be given foreign aid and home support, both financially and materially, to enable the institute to run a formidable distance education program that would measure up in planning and implementation with those of developed nation. Keywords—Open education, distance education, University of Ibadan, cost of education, Nigeria. I. INTRODUCTION HE provision of quality education to millions of people has been one of the struggles facing developing countries like Nigeria. This is because education has been regarded as the bedrock to social, cultural and economic development for a nation. Both the Federal and State Government emphasize the role of education as an agent of development. They therefore, see it as instrument for national consciousness, unity and development. The Federal Government has submitted that education is no more a private venture enterprises. It is a viable and tremendous Government venture that has witnessed a progressive evolution of complete and dynamic intervention and dynamic support. The government therefore, adopted it as an instrument of excellence for effective national Babatunde K. Oladele is PhD student in the Institute of Education, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (phone: 08055264698, e-mail: oladelebatunde@gmail.com). development. According to the Nigerian National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, NEEDS [1], all citizens are entitled to education. Yet, it is obvious that the spaces available in institutions of learning in Nigeria are inadequate to meet the demand for placements of prospective students. The concern for an educational framework in Nigeria that can take care of the large number of prospective candidates in relation to the three vectors of access, quality and cost has given the Nigeria government the interest to revitalize distance education so as to serve as a catalyst for the turnaround of education in Nigeria. Thus, education is widely interpreted by economists as a process through which "human capital" is developed. Both the student and the state are employing resources to produce an investment, which has a very long gestation period. Distance learning has reemerged in this era of fiscal control as a cost effective artifice for reinventing the pedagogic structure of higher education. That is to say, that the driving force behind today's distance learning programs is an economic rationale designed to facilitate the corporate downsizing dogma that now influences academia. Regardless of the economic motivation, one should also recognize that based on historic applications, the distance learning program provides opportunities to advance the benefits of higher education to prospective people who are dislocated by time and place. Hence, demand for education outstrip available resources, because of population pressure combined with policies resulting in the liberalization of access is undoubtedly the principal factors burdening our education system. Open education is an aspect of distance education. In other words, open education is essentially a distance education, but distance education may not be open. According to [9], the term open and distance learning represent approaches that focus on opening access to education and training provision, freeing learners from the constraints of time and place and offering flexible learning opportunities to individuals and groups of learners. Reference [8] states that distance education offers an alternative means of access to education for full-time or part-time workers and other private learners in an out-of-school education context. This will allow for enhancement of opportunities that support education for all (EFA) and lifelong learning, and also give avenues for the benefit of flexible and qualitative education for all categories of learning outcomes. According to [6], open distance education has provided nations with opportunities for addressing the need for skills training and education in a cost effective and sustainable way. Economics of Open and Distance Education in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria Babatunde Kasim Oladele T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:12, No:3, 2018 405International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(3) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 2, N o: 3, 2 01 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 08 75 3 http://waset.org/publication/Economics-of-Open-and-Distance-Education-in-the-University-of-Ibadan,-Nigeria/10008753 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 Similarly, there are a lot of financial benefits from the organization of distance learning program for university. Many of the promises of distance learning are financial in nature [11]. Cost analysis is concerned with establishing cost functions which attempt to relate cost to some measure of output. In educational systems, student numbers are usual measures of output, but other measures (e.g., graduate, students’ credit hours, courses) are sometime used. Most universities all over the world are faced with the challenge of inadequate space, which in turn inhibits greater access to educational opportunities, yet appropriation revenue for higher education is on the decline [12]. This situation, they observed, led universities to pay more attention to distance learning programs, which is a major development in the 21st century in both the developed and developing world. The available universities are grossly insufficient per population and on the basis of qualified applicants; only about 10% of those qualified are admitted. Many stakeholders in the education sector are interested in the open and distance education scheme because it allows greater access to educational opportunities. Thus, it is therefore keeping with the stated objectives of the National Policy on education [1], which detailed the goal of distance education as follows: a. Provide access to quality education and equality in educational opportunities for those who otherwise would have been denied. b. Meet special needs of employers by monitoring special certificate programs for their employees within and outside their work place. c. Encourage internationalization of knowledge learnt especially in tertiary education curricula. d. Ameliorate the effects of internal and external brain drain in tertiary institutions by utilizing Nigeria experts as teachers regardless of their locations or place of work. e. Acquire an objective view of the local and external stakeholders. In order to accomplish these goals, it was stated that the Education Ministry in Nigeria shall also establish a distance education advisory body to advice government on distance education and liaise with the existing educational regulatory bodies and institutions offering distance education. It will also connect with the media establishment and encourage the efforts of government and other non-governmental organizations with provision of quality distance education, and to encourage participation in distance education programs at all levels of education and strengthen the capacity of existing institutions providing distance education [2]. Running distance learning in Nigeria has its many challenges, which range from technology deficit and low computer literacy, to general poor attitudes towards the mode of delivery. According to [7], student mode of learning, computer adoption, student support center and government, and the site or center facilitators’ alertness to proffer immediate solutions to problems as soon as they are noticed, will help learners overcome their fear of isolation and reduce the probability of dropping out [10]. A comprehensive history of distance education in Nigeria can be traced to the emergence of correspondence education which serves as a means of preparing candidates for the General Certificate in Education. This then serves as a prerequisite for candidacy for the General Certificate in Education, and London Matriculation Examination. This practice was described by [5], with University of London being termed as the first Open University in the world and because of this, more students around the world were admitted, but principally those within the British Empire and its domains were considered when the parents were looking for tutorial support to supplement the bare syllabuses received on registration wherever they lived. Reference [3] argued that Nigerians were also quick at utilizing this opportunity. Similarly, [8] also reported that some Nigerians in 1887, enrolled for the first time in the University of London Matriculation Examination as external students studying through correspondence, enjoying many formalities with the educational institution. Reference [3] also mentioned that in 1925 several Nigerians, among them Eyo-Ifa and H.O Davis passed the London Matriculation Examination. Later, E.O. Ajayi, J.S. Ogunlesi and Alvan Ikoku obtained a University of London degree in Philosophy in 1927, 1929 and 1933, respectively. Access to educational opportunities at a distance contributed immensely to individual’s productivity, which they subsequently demonstrated in their teaching methodology at St. Andrews Teachers College, Oyo [13]. Despite of the establishment of the University College of Ibadan in 1948, many of the pioneer teaching staff of the university pursued their higher degrees through this distance learning program, with the combination of work and higher degree program [14]. The University of Ibadan also inaugurated its distance education program in 1988 in an attempt to meet the needs of the ever increasing number of applicants for a university education. The University of Ibadan Distance Learning Center (DLC) adopts Degree by Examination Model pioneered by the University of London as her faculties participating in the distance learning program are given the roles of defining the knowledge to be mastered by the learners and certifying the student’s performance through constant assessment and evaluation. Students are provided with course modules as supplements to not less than six weeks of teaching-learning interaction before students sit for examination in proctored locations within the University of Ibadan campus walls. II. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Distance learning has become an alternative means of education globally. In a country of continental dimensions such as Nigeria, distance educations has emerged as a mediated form of institution, and possess all the qualities to become a major noteworthy vehicle in overcoming the serious challenges faced by Nigerian society. These difficulties had culminated into the shape of education and economy, in which schooling and poor professional experience matter more than ever, is the most urgent. Education is the most important single factor for national-economic growth. The Nigeria World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:12, No:3, 2018 406International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(3) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 2, N o: 3, 2 01 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 08 75 3 http://waset.org/publication/Economics-of-Open-and-Distance-Education-in-the-University-of-Ibadan,-Nigeria/10008753 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 national objective may not be attained if the schooling process inputs, which include funds, students, buildings and teachers, are not well managed. Funds are required by those various distance education centers for teaching and learning to take place. Most of these distance and open learning centers are owned by the institutions and are expected to provide most of all the funds. Also, when the sources of funds and relative importance are known, it is still imperative to both decision makers and the education authorities to know the expenditure on each recipient. It is therefore the aim of this work to find out how much of our resources are used for maintaining open distance education in Nigeria in general, and at the University of Ibadan Distance Learning Center (UIDLC) in particular, as well as the constitutions of these costs. III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1. What are the sources of financing the UIDC 2. What are the proportions of cost that constitutes expenditures in the UIDLC? 3. What is the unit/average cost per? (a) Student (b) Academic staff (c) Non-academic staff 4. Is there adequate learning material for students? IV. METHODOLOGY The study adopted the descriptive survey research design with a target population of total population of 400 respondents consisting of 280 current distance learning education students, 70 academic staff and 50 administrative staff. Only 354 questionnaires were correctly filled and returned. A researcher designed instruments titled Distance Learning Student Questionnaire (DLSQ), Distance Learning Teaching Staff Questionnaire (DLTSQ), Distance Learning Non-Teaching Staff Questionnaire (DLNTSQ) and an inventory form on Social Cost of UIDLC designed by the researcher were used in the study. The student questionnaire and the staff questionnaire have three sections each with items on background information data, private cost and availability of physical facilities. Section C of the student questionnaire consisted of 15 item instrument structured on a four-point rating scale of Very Adequate (VA) - 4, Adequate (A) - 3, Hardly Adequate (HA) - 2 and Never Adequate (NA) -1 The instrument was face validated by two experts from the Department of Educational Management of the Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, Ibadan. Their comments and criticism shaped the focus of the study and the instrument was validated through a pilot test with the Cronbach’s alpha statistic and yielded r = 0.764. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation for the research questions. V. RESULTS The results are presented according to the research questions that guided the study. Table I presents the responses on application of the inventory form providing the sources of finance for the center. Table II presents the responses on inventory form for the percentage of expenditures which constitute the money incurred for the management of UIDLC. Table III presents the responses to the questionnaire administered on students and staff for the collection of information on cost of education and availability of physical facilities. A. Research Question 1: What Are the Sources of Financing UIDLC? TABLE I SOURCES OF FINANCE S/N Items 1 Tuition fees 2 Acceptance fees 3 Sales of course materials 4 Sales of application form 5 Examination fees 6 Professional practice fees 7 Project and teaching practice supervision levy 8 Income from training 9 Returns on investment income 10 Miscellaneous Discussion Table I illustrates the financing of recurrent expenditure of the center for the period under study. It was discovered that available funds for the financing of the DLC ranges between N47 million and N350 million. It is also clear that the major source of finance is through the internal sources comprising of the tuition fees, sales of application forms, sales of course materials, student’s examination fees and other student’s school fees items. However, it shows that the government is not contributing much into the finance of the centre. Reference [4] states that the sources of finance open to education are multifarious. In all, there are five possible avenues of funding educational institution namely, government grants (subvention), fees, and donations by voluntary agencies/organization/communities/individuals, loans and revenue generating projects. B. Research Question 2: What Are the Percentages of Cost that Constitutes Expenditures in the DLC? The data presented on Tables II and III show that the amount spent on Non-academic staff salaries and allowances has the greatest percentages of the recurrent costs with the most significant part of the items that constitute the total social costs of the Centre. This recurrent expenditure is incurred in the provision of teaching and administrative services, in addition to the purchase of other educational goods such as teaching materials, laboratory equipment and other things essential for the smooth running of the DLC. An important observation from the study of these tables depicts Non- teaching staff salaries and allowances as constituting the bulk of the expenditure. This trend of salaries taking the larger percentage of recurrent cost has been the same over the years risen from one percentage to another. Apart from the expenditure on Non-teaching staff salaries and allowances, the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:12, No:3, 2018 407International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(3) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 2, N o: 3, 2 01 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 08 75 3 http://waset.org/publication/Economics-of-Open-and-Distance-Education-in-the-University-of-Ibadan,-Nigeria/10008753 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 tables show an upward trend on the expenditure pattern of various items. TABLE II PROPORTION OF EXPENSES OF SOCIAL COSTS OF UIDLC FROM 2004/2005 TO 2008/2009 SESSION S/N Item of Costs 2004/2005 Percentage of Funds Incurred 2005/2006 Percentage of Funds Incurred 2006/2007 Percentage of Funds Incurred 2007/2008 Percentage of Funds Incurred 2008/2009 Percentage of Funds Incurred 1 Academic staff honorarium 1.14 3.14 7.11 5.78 2.07 2 Non- academic staff salaries 45.83 28.93 13.12 10.26 13.43 3 Students service 9.76 7.19 15.11 6.34 18.48 4 Job Printing and stationary 6.22 4.69 3.41 1.68 1.85 5 Office and General 2.51 1.57 1.11 0.32 0.24 6 Utilities e.g. PHCN bill -- 0.74 1.25 0.08 0.17 7 General expenses 2.57 0.89 0.92 0.14 0.19 8 Vehicle Running Expenses 0.67 1.15 3.06 0.21 3,65 9 Entertainment 2.44 2.94 2.24 0.53 0.64 10 Course Material Production 5.77 0.41 3.56 1.85 1.87 11 Teaching Practice 3.52 4.96 3.96 1.03 0.97 12 Advertisement and Publication 3.13 2.53 2.79 0.99 3.28 13 Examination and Invigilation 8.58 9.54 4.12 7.96 5.29 14 Traveling and Transport 3.74 1.16 14.17 4.27 18.69 15 Other Academic Expenses 2.16 18.86 22.35 7.17 12.20 16 Other Expenditure 1.96 1.24 11.73 49.37 15.01 Recurrent Costs Subtotal 100 100 100 100 100 17 Building and Construction -- - 46.01 48.78 74.96 18 Maintenance of Building Premise 72 45.02 37.42 15.85 1.12 19 Furniture and Fittings 28 54.98 16.57 35.37 23.92 Capital Costs Subtotal 100 100 100 100 100 TABLE III SOCIAL COSTS OF UIDLC FOR 2009/2010 TO 2013/2014 SESSIONS S/N Item of Costs 2009/2010 Proportion of Funds Incurred 2010/2011 Proportion of Funds Incurred 2011/2012 Proportion of Funds Incurred 2012/2013 Proportion of Funds Incurred 2013/2014 Proportion of Funds Incurred 1 Academic staff honorarium 2.15 3.24 8.12 5.51 1.07 2 Non- academic staff salaries 46.81 28.91 26.12 40.26 13.43 3 Students service 9.76 7.19 14.21 6.34 18.48 4 Job Printing and stationary 6.22 4.69 3.41 1.68 1.75 5 Office and General 2.37 1.57 1.64 0.32 0.34 6 Utilities e.g. PHCN bill 1.58 0.78 1.25 0.08 0.17 7 General Expenses 1.52 0.91 0.93 0.17 0.23 8 Vehicle Running Expenses 0.56 0.95 2.96 0.61 2.93 9 Entertainment 2.22 2.94 2.24 0.53 0.64 10 Course Material Production 4.70 0.42 3.33 1.33 1.89 11 Teaching Practice 2.51 3.92 3.86 1.08 0.98 12 Advertisement and Publication 3.19 2.53 2.67 0.74 3.11 13 Examination and Invigilation 7.59 8.55 5.10 8.54 6.12 14 Traveling and Transport 4.70 3.16 0.17 4.27 18.66 15 Other Academic Expenses 2.16 28.86 12.35 9.17 14.20 16 Other Expenditure 1.96 1.24 11.73 19.37 15.01 Recurrent Costs Subtotal 100 100 100 100 100 17 Building and Construction 12 22 41.01 42.70 55.10 18 Maintenance of Building Premise 50 46.05 32.42 25 33 19 Furniture and Fittings 38 31.95 10.5 32.30 11.90 Capital Costs Subtotal 100 100 100 100 100 C. Research Question 3: What Is the Unit/Average Cost per? (a) Student (b) Academic staff (c) Non- academic staff. The results presented in Table IV regarding cost per student shows that the unit/average cost for a student on the average for 10 years is N100,007.38. Recurrent expenditures of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:12, No:3, 2018 408International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(3) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 2, N o: 3, 2 01 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 08 75 3 http://waset.org/publication/Economics-of-Open-and-Distance-Education-in-the-University-of-Ibadan,-Nigeria/10008753 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 UIDLC ranges between N25, 695,610.37 and N542,234,233.11 depending on the costs of item on expenditure for each academic session. TABLE IV UNIT COST PER STUDENT OF UIDLC FROM 2004/2005 TO 2013/2014 ACADEMIC SESSIONS Sessions Recurrent Expenditure Amount (N) Student Enrolment Unit/Average cost Per Student (N) 2004/2005 25,695,610.37 345 74,480.03 2005/2006 41,663,357.92 398 104,681.80 2006/2007 145,234,560.20 609 238,480.39 2007/2008 200,252,588.73 1008 198,663.28 2008/2009 251,092,046.20 1227 204,638.99 2009/2010 350,695,004.21 1857 188,850.30 2010/2011 373,601,555.56 2322 160,896.45 2011/2012 466,442,233.22 4234 110,165.86 2012/2013 440,556,434.00 5423 81,238.51 2013/2014 542,234,233.11 6443 84,158.58 Total 2,386,776.125.00 23866 100,007.38 From Table IV the unit cost for the 10 years were N74,480.03 for 2004/2005 session, N104,681.80 for 2005/06, N238,480.39 for 2006/07, N198,663.28 for 2007/08, N204,638.99 for 2008/09, N188,850.30 for 2009/2010, N160,896.45 for 2010/2011, N110,165.86 for 2011/2012, N81,238.51 for 2012/2013 and N84,158.58 the for 2013/2014 session. These unit costs were calculated dividing the recurrent expenditure (cost) by the number of students. The numbers of students vary with expenditure items in some cases. This is particularly so in higher educational institutions, where in the provision of goods and services, some are allocated to a specific group and some are for the benefit of the total student population. Reference [9] revealed in a research report that the cost of an average student of distance education is more expensive than that of the traditional setting. Also, the centre spends money on the salaries and allowances of the central administration staff and other supporting units for the general benefit of all students. Generally, unit in unit costs means the total number of learners enrolled in a course in a particular year. Unit cost of education means costs per unit i.e. per students, per graduate, per credit, etc. They are calculated per year. TABLE V UNIT/AVERAGE COST PER ACADEMIC STAFF AND NON ACADEMIC STAFF OF UIDLC FOR 2013/2014 SESSION Staff Salary and Allowances Amount (N) Number of staff Unit/Average Cost Amount(N) Academic Staff 14,522,764.56 96 151,278.80 Non Academic Staff 15,761,324.18 105 150,107.84 Total 30,284,088.74 201 150,667.11 The total expenditure on salary allowances of staff both academic and non-academic in UIDLC, as indicated in the table above, shows that it ranged between N14,522,764.56 and N15,761,324.18, with an average unit cost of N150,667.11. The study reveals that the salaries of academic and non- academic staff shows that the unit cost per academic staff for the session is N151,278.80, which is greater than the unit cost per non-academic staff of N150,107.84 with a difference of N1,170.96. The academic staff salary accounted for 47.95% and non-academic staff salary accounted for 52.04% of the total recurrent incurred by the DLC. This cost per staff member revealed that the recurrent expenses incurred for staff are very significant and must be put into consideration in the budget of the center. D. Research Question 4: Are There Adequate Learning Materials for Students? TABLE VI ADEQUACY OF LEARNING MATERIALS Learning Material Positive Response % Negative Response % I. Textbooks 154 (61.11) 98 (38.89) II. Modules (Course books) 117 (46.43) 135 (53.57) III. Journals 63 (25) (75) 189 (75) IV. Self learning Materials 71 (28.17) (61.83) 181 (71.83) V. Magazine 56 (22.22) 196 (77.78) VI. Stationary 63 (25) 189 (75) VII. Audio – Visual Materials 66 (26.19) 186 (73.81) VIII. Video- tapes 50 (19.84) 202 (80.64) IX. Radio program series 53 (21.03) 199 (78.97) X Television program series 58 (23.02) 194 (76.98) XI. Power point 49 (19.44) 203 (80.56) XII. projectors 46 (18.25) 206 (81.75) XIII. Internet facilities 66 (26.19) 186 (73.81) XIV. Electronic board 77 (30.56) 175 (69.44) XV. Computer assisted learning 73 (28.97) 179 (71.03) XVI Materials e.g. CDs 60 (33.81) 192 (76.19) XVII. Lecture rooms 69 (23.78) 183 (72.62) XVIII Library 80 (31.75) 172 (68.25) XIX Rest periods 93 (36.90) 159 (63.10) XX Lecture theatre 24 (9.52) 228 (90.42) Table VI shows that out of 20 learning materials listed, only textbooks were fairly adequate in the DLC. This is based on 61.11% of positive responses, while other learning materials scored below 50% positive response. This implies inadequacy of learning material in the DLC. This study has revealed that operating an educational centre such as the UIDLC requires sufficient and increasing levels of capital to be successful. The trend in costs over the time shown by the study brings the researcher to conclusion that the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:12, No:3, 2018 409International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(3) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 2, N o: 3, 2 01 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 08 75 3 http://waset.org/publication/Economics-of-Open-and-Distance-Education-in-the-University-of-Ibadan,-Nigeria/10008753 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 recurrent costs of education will continue to rise since the cost of labor, materials and equipment keep rising. The teaching resources, both material and non-material, need to be made available and constantly updated; more so, adequate funds should be allocated to educational institutions operating distance learning programs. Also, the management of any system of education requires an adequate knowledge of planning, estimate expenditure and distribution of resources. The outcome of this finding is grounded in the desire of the Federal Government of Nigeria to improve the quantity and quality of providing access to basic and tertiary education for Nigerians. The National Policy on Education [2] detailed the goal of distance education to “Provide access to quality education and equally in educational opportunities for those who otherwise would have been denied”. VI. RECOMMENDATION Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made: 1. The universities that operate a distance learning centre should strive to explore other internally generated revenue options to boost their income. 2. The Federal government is advised to make adequate provision for the smooth running of distance education program that takes care of learner’s needs in the annual budget of distance learning centers and institutions. 3. Institutions that include distance education in their curriculum should consider cost-benefit effectiveness and enough funds should be provided to create an administrative unit responsible for student welfare. 4. Student tuition fees should be subsidized to enable students from underprivileged backgrounds or self- sponsoring students to meet with the financial implications that relate to tuition and course materials. 5. Presently in Nigeria, the mode of instructing distance learners is basically through printing. Instructional modules should be adequately reviewed and sufficiently provided on time for learners in their categories at affordable costs so that they may have materials to interact with before they are invited for their annual interactive session. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author deeply appreciates the Management of the Distance Learning Centre, University of Ibadan for the support. REFERENCES [1] Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN) National Economic Empowerment and Development, 2004. [2] Federal Republic on Nigeria, National policy in education (4th edition). Lagos: NERDC Press 2, 2004. [3] R. A. Aderinoye, “Alternative to teacher training” in H.Perraton (Ed).Cost Effectiveness in Teacher Training. Paris-UNESCO Aderinoye, R and Ojokheta, K 2003. Open and Distance Education as a mechanism for Sustainable Development. Reflections on the Nigeria Experience. International Review of Research in Open and Distance learning, 2001. [4] J. B. Ajayi, Public Financing of Education in Nigeria. Ife Journal of Educational Studies, 2001.4(1): 86-90. [5] R. Bell and M. Tight, “Open Universities: A British Tradition? Society for Research into Higher Education. Birmingham,” UK: Open University Press, 1999. [6] F. O. Egbokhare, “An Address by the Director of the Distance Learning Centre on the Occasion of the Stakeholder’s Consultative Forum, at the Conference Centre” on the 5th of April,2006. [7] P. Navarro and J. Schoemaker, “Performance and Perceptions of Distance Learners in Cyberspace. The American Journal of Distance Education”, 2000. 14(2), 15-35. [8] M. Omolewa, “Directory of Distance Education Institutions in Africa”. (Ed). Abuja: UNESCO, 2000. [9] United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Education Digest: Comparing education statistics across the world, 2000. [10] N. B. Pityana, “Open distance learning in Africa: Access, quality, success”, 2004. Retrieved from www.unisa.ac.za/contents/about/principle/odl_africa.pdf. [11] Jomo Kenya and N. O. Oddilla ”Investigate Factors Affecting the Performance of Students on Distance Learning Mode’ Journal of Information Engineering and Applications ISSN 224-5782(ISSN 2225- 0566 online print. Vol.3 No 10, 2013. [12] A. L. Oboegbulem “Application of Knowledge and Learning Management by Principal in the Administration of Secondary Schools in Enugu State, Nigeria. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences. ISSN222-1719 (paper) ISS2222-2863(online). Vol. 3 No.16 2013. [13] M. O. Yusuf “Problems and Prospects of Open and Distance Education in Nigeria” Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education.ISSN 1302- 648 Vol 7 No 1.2005 [14] T. N. Ambe-Uva “National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN): A Historical Perspective and Challemges. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education- TOJDE.ISSN 1302-6488, Vol. 8 No 1 Article 6.2007. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:12, No:3, 2018 410International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 12(3) 2018 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 2, N o: 3, 2 01 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 00 08 75 3 http://waset.org/publication/Economics-of-Open-and-Distance-Education-in-the-University-of-Ibadan,-Nigeria/10008753 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10008753 
work_o3ivok4u2vgnjnax5aqkjelpiu	----	Provided by the author(s) and University College Dublin Library in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title Nurses' Experiences of Distance Education Programmes Authors(s) Hyde, Abbey; Murray, Maurice Publication date 2005-01 Publication information Journal of Advanced Nursing, 49 (1): 87-95 Publisher Blackwell (Wiley) Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4102 Publisher's statement The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com Publisher's version (DOI) 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2004.03267.x Downloaded 2021-04-06T01:41:35Z The UCD community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters! (@ucd_oa) © Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?via=ucd_oa&text=DOI%3A10.1111%2Fj.1365-2648.2004.03267.x&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhdl.handle.net%2F10197%2F4102 1 This is the pre-proof version. The definitive version is publidhed as: Hyde, A, Murray, M, (2005) Nurses' experiences of distance education programmes. Journal of Advanced Nursing , 49 (1):87-95. Contact: abbey.hyde@ucd.ie NURSES’ EXPERIENCES OF DISTANCE EDUCATION PROGRAMMES ABSTRACT Background: While distance education has many advantages in terms of the flexibility, autonomy and freedom that it affords to learners, the literature reports that students undertaking distance education programmes can also experience feelings of being disconnected and isolated in the educational experience. Aims: This paper reports a study exploring the experiences of nurses in undertaking distance education programmes. Design/Methods: A convenience sample of 15 participants was selected, and data were collected using in-depth interviews. Data were analysed using a qualitative design that drew most heavily on the methodological procedures of grounded theory. Findings: Habermas’ theory of communicative action was found to be relevant to the interpretation of data and four categories were constructed to explain participants’ experiences in relation to distance education, namely; lifeworld lamented; lifeworld experienced; lifeworld ceded; and learning within a bounded system. These categories reflect the manner in which participants experienced the lifeworld component (the interactive and subjective dimensions) and the system component (objective and 2 outcome orientated dimensions) of the educational realm. While data indicated diversity in how the boundedness of the programmes was experienced, overall such standardised, instrumental courses were reported on favourably by participants within the limitations of their own personal circumstances. Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study we conclude that DE as a means of disseminating nursing knowledge should be strengthened. The challenge for nurse educators is to develop DE programmes that minimise their limitations and maximise their potential. Key words: Nurse education; Critical thinking; Grounded theory; Republic of Ireland; Distance education; Habermas. 3 SUMMARY What is already known about this topic  Flexibility, autonomy and freedom in pursuing personal learning goals are seen as the main advantages of distance education  Students undertaking distance education programmes tend to experience feelings of disconnection and isolation.  Distance education for nurses is a growing enterprise in many countries, and increasing numbers of nurses are availing themselves of it. What this paper adds  Educational lifeworld experiences may be less relevant as a person ages.  The limited educational lifeworld of distance education has implications for the development of critical thinking.  The content of nursing programmes, with an emphasis on a reflexive type of learning, may have the capacity to offset the some of disadvantages of learning within a relatively constrained and bounded DE programme. 4 INTRODUCTION Distance education (DE) for nurses is a growing enterprise in many countries, and many nursing and non-nursing organisations have reported the need for flexible and innovative delivery methods in education (An Bord Altranais 1997, World Health Organisation 1999, Government of Ireland 2000). In this paper, the experiences of nurses in undertaking DE programmes will be explored. Since the analysis draws on critical theory, the concept of DE for nurses will be linked to the notion of modernity (changes in society that have arisen with industrialisation over the past 200 years) in the course of the paper. BACKGROUND The potential for the use of distance education within nursing and midwifery was first highlighted in the United Kingdom in a major national survey carried out by Rodgers et al (1989), who concluded that distance education materials had the potential to link theory to practice, to develop the clinical role of the nurse, and to help link service and education. Clark (1994) notes that, looking back over the 1980s, there was awareness in the United Kingdom that flexible approaches to education were beginning to percolate through nursing and midwifery education and through higher education generally. In Ireland, the National Distance Education Center began to offer nursing degrees through distance education in the 1990s (Oscail 1999). There are various styles of DE, ranging from the industrial model self-study course package with limited teacher-student interaction to the fully interactive audio and 5 video conferencing of the virtual classroom. Jarvis (1998: 157) defines distance education as: Those forms of education in which organised learning opportunities are usually provided through a technical media to learners who normally study individually, and removed from the teacher in both time and space. Distance learning is not usually mediated through a group, and it may have to be sustained in a relationship in which the teacher and learner never meet (Robinson 1989). However, the inclusion of different technologies in DE can offer some choice of learning medium (Clark & Robinson 1994). Revolutionary technological advances in telecommunications, computers, the internet and audio systems make it feasible to deliver such programmes (Leasure et al. 2000). However, critics of DE suggest that these give excessive control to course designers and too little opportunity for the student to challenge the ‘facts’ presented in study materials (Coulter 1989). Educational endeavours with a heavy reliance on educational technology have been accused of adopting a controlling, scientific/behavioural model of education that focuses almost entirely on instrumental knowledge (Koetting 1983 cited in Nichols 1989). Clearly, the possibility of students feeling disconnected and isolated is a very real one, and empirical evidence in nursing education research suggests that for many students this is indeed a feature of DE (Ryan et al. 1999, Carnwell 1998, Price 2000, Leasure et al. 2000). However, research on nurses pursuing DE programmes also indicates 6 that they have the advantage of providing flexibility, autonomy and freedom in pursuing personal learning goals (Carnwell, 1998, Rogerson and Harden 1999). Over the past decade, with the rapid development of technologically-mediated learning, there has been a proliferation of DE programmes for nurses (Field 2002; Carr & Farley 2003; Alexander et al. 2003). Distance education and modernity Theoretical accounts of DE have tended to link it to modernity and the way in which industrial capitalism effected the separation of producers and consumers, and prompted a relationship mediated by technology (Keegan et al. 1985, Robinson 1989). In pre-industrial society, home and workplace were often merged and children were educated within the family (Jones 1994). The advent of industrialisation and compulsory schooling for children altered this social arrangement, and education became part of the public realm, split off from the domestic or private one. Drawing on the public/private dichotomy, Keegan et al. (1985) equate DE with the privatisation of the learner, that is, the dislocation of the learner in time and space from the public realm. Dislocation of the producer and consumer is a key feature of DE, and is characteristic of industrial systems (Robinson 1989). In data presented later in this paper, the notion of DE as a feature of late modernity is further developed drawing on the writings of Jürgen Habermas, whose work is considered briefly here before moving on to explore the data. Habermas and the problems of late capitalism 7 Habermas (1984, 1987) observed a growing sense of goal, success and outcome- oriented culture in late capitalist societies, at the expense of equality-oriented interactive discourses. His theorisation is conceptualised in relation to two societal perspectives: the system and the lifeworld. The system represents the component of society associated with technical-scientific rationality, and is mediated by power and economic concerns. The system requires efficiency and strategic rationality in its operations (Habermas 1984). Within the system, the objectives of actors are self- serving insofar as the aim is to maximise the individual pursuit of utility or economic profit (Andersen 2000: 332). Habermas developed the notion of lifeworld from the work of Edmund Husserl, and the writings of Alfred Schutz (Habermas 1984). For Habermas, the 'lifeworld' refers to the 'symbolic space' where meaning, solidarity and personal identity are communicated verbally. It is characterised by reflexive discourse, human rights and relationships, and aims at consensus through dialogue (Habermas 1984). It encompasses the background understandings and assumption shared within a culture that mediate everyday interactions (Habermas 1987). The system is associated with purposive-rational action, an instrumental kind of action in which the social actor determines the most effective means to an end in an objective and detached way (Weber 1968). The lifeworld is developed through a kind of rationality underpinned by negotiation and understanding, or what Habermas (1987) calls communicative action (Habermas 1987). 8 Although Habermas (1984) acknowledged the need for purposive-rational action, he was concerned with the expansion of technological and scientific expertise at the expense of rules of conduct based on ethical considerations. This he referred to as the colonisation of the lifeworld, in which the system, with its purposive rationality, intrudes into the lifeworld, moderating its communicative potential. Habermas (1987) contended that the colonisation of the lifeworld could be arrested by human action in the form of resistance by value-oriented social movements. The educational domain: system and lifeworld Habermas’ dualism of system and lifeworld may be very useful conceptual tools in considering the concept of education, and in particular DE. The system may loosely be conceptualised as that aspect of education removed from a personal and social context in which the overriding objective is to achieve the goals of the formal curriculum, transmitted in a top-down fashion, with the expertise of the educational provider relatively unchallenged. Dialogue between the provider and recipient of the education is at a minimum, and the scope for exchange of ideas in a two-way process is limited. A successful outcome at examinations is the aspiration, with little emphasis on the personal and social context of the educational process. The educational lifeworld, on the other hand, may be perceived as the realm in which verbal discourses and dialogues oriented to mutual understanding are articulated. The goals of this lifeworld go beyond the need for purely academic success, and involve discursive dialogue where subjective involvement for the purposes of human development is valued. THE STUDY 9 Aim The aim of the study was to examine nurses' experiences in undertaking DE programmes. Methodology In order to explore nurses' experiences in undertaking DE programmes, a qualitative methodology was deemed preferable. Qualitative research is concerned with exploring the meaning of experience and behaviour in context, in its full complexity and was considered the most appropriate strategy for examining interactive and subjective aspects of experience. Participants A purposive sample of fifteen participants took part in the study. The inclusion criteria were that potential participants must have completed a course at diploma level or higher by DE at a third level (higher education) institution within the previous five years. One participant had completed a diploma programme, 9 had done bachelor's degrees, and five had completed Masters degrees by DE. All participants were recruited from within the Republic of Ireland. The first 5 were accessed through the Director of Nursing at a hospital where it was known that some nurses had completed courses through DE. The remaining 10 participants were accessed by placing notices on the staff notice boards of 4 health care institutions, inviting suitable candidates to participate. The notice outlined the aims of the study, and those interested were invited to telephone or e-mail the researcher. Thirteen of the 15 participants were female. Participants ages ranged from 26 to 54 years. Data collection 10 Data were collected by semi-structured in-depth interviews in 2002-3. All interviews took place at a private location either at the hospital where the participant worked, or at another location deemed suitable by the participant. They ranged in length from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 35 minutes, the average being 1 hour and 10 minutes and were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A general topic guide was used, starting with broad questions such as, 'Tell me about what studying at a distance was like for you?' At each successive interview, questions became more focused on the basis of evolving theoretical insights and, in grounded theory style, were 'guided by successively evolving interpretations’ (Strauss, 1987:10). Ethical considerations Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Ethics Committee at each of the health care institutions where participants were currently employed. Informed consent was obtained, and privacy and anonymity were guaranteed. Provision was made that should the process of recounting their experiences create distress for participants, a debriefing would occur after the interviews. However, this was unnecessary as all participants appeared very relaxed during the interviews. Data analysis Data were analysed concurrently with the interviews using a process resembling grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss 1967, Strauss 1987, Glaser 1992). The central techniques of grounded theory used were the constant comparative method, openness 11 to evolving theoretical insights, and theoretical sampling where questions used are generated from previous data. The relevance of Habermas' work to the data did not emerge until the analysis stage of the study was well underway, and theoretical insights that emerged through an engagement with data gleaned in early interviews were tested out in later ones. While some writers consider grounded theory as 'inductive theory' because of Glaser and Strauss's attack on speculative theory ungrounded in data in their earlier work, The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Strauss (1987) perceives this as a mistake. Rather, he asserts, developing theory from data involves three aspects of inquiry - induction, deduction, and verification. Induction is concerned with actions that generate a hypothesis - insights, hunches, and questions from previous experience with similar phenomena or from theoretical sensitivity through knowledge of technical literature. These are transformed into provisional and conditional hypotheses. Deduction refers to deriving implications from hypotheses so that they may be verified. Finally, verification concerns the procedures for qualifying or refuting the hypothesis (Strauss 1987). In this study, all three aspects of inquiry were employed in order to arrive at an explanation that ultimately draws heavily on the work of Habermas. The move from substantive to formal theory, where a series of interrelated concepts developed in one substantive area may be used to conceptually analyse other areas, is a strong feature in the work of Glaser and Strauss (1967). FINDINGS 12 Registered nurses’ experiences of distances education programmes were conceptualised within four categories: lifeworld lamented; lifeworld experienced; lifeworld ceded; and learning within a bounded system. These categories comprise the most dominant ideas to emerge. Lifeworld lamented Eleven of the 15 participants reported that they lamented the limited degree of educational lifeworld in which they could engage. The virtual absence of fellow students, and the related lack of support and interpersonal camaraderie, created a sense of isolation: I think that is one of the missing links really. For me all through my training in nursing and through further education, I have always been involved in groups… I would have travelled a distance to meet up with people even once a week… that I maybe could bounce things off . . . Yes, definitely, one of the difficulties is being on your own really (Participant 2) I suppose you can feel very isolated, where my experience in [attendance programme] we were very much part of the team, everyone worked together. (Participant 4) Nine participants also referred to the fact that they missed the human contact with course tutors, and the quality of direct dialogue over and above text-based 13 communications. In the following example, the participant refers to the absence of two-way communication in the kind of text-based assignment feedback that she received: Although it was good to get written feedback, there is something cold and sterile about . . . hearing how bad your essay is from written feedback. . . It was almost like one-way communication. . . . there was something a bit eh, cold or something about things just being written. (Participant 7). The example below suggests a hierarchy in terms of human contact, with direct human contact most favoured by the participant, followed by auditory human contact, with text-based communication considered to be the least satisfactory: I have e-mail … but I don’t feel it is as effective as human contact even by telephone. It does not replace it but I do agree you need to have access to it. (Participant 2) Among those who regretted a limited lifeworld, three indicated that they attempted to overcome their sense of isolation by creating a version of an educational lifeworld in an informal way within their own social realm: . . . we had a study group in the hospital with a few people doing a MSc in nursing. We do meet and we do try and work together, sometimes to give out and chat but at least it is support and you discuss the grades and that together . . . (Participant 4) 14 Now and then, I meet up with a girl who did the same course as me – a year ahead of me, and now that’s been great. . . We’d talk about things on the programme, giving out mostly [laughs], ah no. (Participant 11) Lifeworld experienced Although 11 participants really felt the impact of a restricted lifeworld on their educational experience, as demonstrated in the first category, there were reports that when the lifeworld was experienced, it was generally very gratifying. Nine participants generally expressed considerable levels of satisfaction with tutor interactions: I had great tutors. OK, I didn’t like the idea of contacting busy people, and you didn’t know if you were interrupting them… I always felt that it was worth contacting them because I felt encouraged after (Participant 13) They (tutors) were very supportive really. I always felt that there was good quality contact. There was a sort of friendliness there – you know on my level. I didn’t feel intimidated. (Participant 6) The data suggest that the style of communication was far from disconnected, functional and detached, but rather was personalised, engaging and affectively mediated. The examples below suggest that students had the freedom to actively select tutors who they were most compatible with their ‘natural attitude’: 15 I found them [tutors] 100% helpful… if you found you were not getting on with them or you found they were no support you were allowed to change. (Participant 3) We were actually told that you could ask for someone else if there was a problem with a tutor, which I think was great. As it happened, I didn’t need to (Participant 12) While the support from tutors was found to be generally good, it was nonetheless mediated by a range of possible technologies. This suggests that technologies might actually facilitate rather than undermine value-based interpersonal communications: You were given a contact number that you could telephone at any time and leave a message, you were given their mobile number, e-mail address or you could fax them and they would fax straight away . . . (Participant 3). The DE courses undertaken by some participants did have a limited number of tutorials, which also facilitated lifeworld experiences: I found the tutorials a great support, they actually made the course real, you actually meet other people who were doing the course and that was similar to the network that we were had in college. (Participant 4) Although all students were assigned personal tutors and, as indicated above, the nature of the relationship with these for many students was usually very satisfactory, 16 this was not always the case. There is some suggestion in the following extract that the mode of communication (telephone), and the openness of time schedules within DE contributed to the problem: I felt I was annoying them when I rang them. I always felt that I rang them at the wrong time… I felt they were supportive but at the same time they would say sorry you feel like that. I did not feel that they came up with any solution to my problem … In fairness, they tell you to ring them as much as possible … maybe it’s just me . . .I got to the stage where I felt I should know this and they probably feel I haven’t got a clue. (Participant 2) Lifeworld ceded Although there appears to be a general assumption that a rounded, interactive educational system is superior to a functional, outcome-oriented one, not all participants bemoaned a limited lifeworld. While 11 participants missed aspects of an educational lifeworld, almost one third (n=4) of these simultaneously identified positive dimensions to being largely released from it. Four more participants stated that they did not miss the lifeworld experience at all: I didn’t miss the class work at all, because I find a lot of the time in class is wasted by other people perhaps bringing in their grievances from work into class, it wastes a lot of time … I actually went to one tutorial in … I found I preferred to be studying on my own and if I wanted support, I had the tutor at the other end of the telephone (Participant 1) 17 I know people go on about how it’s becoming a faceless society, but really, e-mail is brilliant. It’s fast and … the person can open and answer it in a time that suits them… you don’t feel you are wasting people’s time (Participant 9) I actually used to drive for nearly 3 hours on a part-time course every week, and you’d get there and, OK, there were good lectures, but to be honest, it wasn’t worth the drive… Well I think you would get more done just concentrating on the reading materials and getting on with the coursework (Participant 14) There is a suggestion in the extracts below that engagement with aspects of the educational lifeworld may be more important at specific stages in a person’s life compared to other stages: I think if I was younger, if you were a real typical student I mean that is ideal at the time and I would not like to be isolated at that stage. I feel having done general training and other different courses and diplomas, you are more educated your self and you're more disciplined, you know the score, you know the scene of what is going on. (Participant 3) 18 When I left school, I would have loved to go to college… I have missed out on that anyway. I’m settled with responsibilities so taking part in College life – it was too late for me (Participant 15) There was a sense among some that they were satisfied to relinquish the educational lifeworld because of the time demands from other dimensions of the lifeworld: I was glad that I could just get on with it. It’s not that I didn’t want contact with others while I was doing the course, it was just that there are so many demands. Work, and I have three kids … my mother had a stroke and needed a lot of care (Participant 9) I sort of felt that I did the course for myself. Attending and being in touch with others like a normal course would be have been wonderful, but it would’ve been a luxury for me … If I had done it the other way, it would really have affected the family routine, our holidays, and I’d never expect that (Participant 10). Learning within a bounded system All participants elaborated on the nature of the DE programmes that they had completed (the system component), describing these predominantly as circumscribed, bounded programmes with lectures and reading material provided. This contrasts with attendance programmes, where students are required to attend and listen to lectures, make their own notes from these, and search for and photocopy or electronically 19 download reading material. The standardised input received in DE courses, where all students received standardised technologically-mediated materials, generally appealed to students because it was an efficient and efficacious way of achieving ends in a limited time: The course content and course design is excellent, they send you all the reading materials, they send you articles, you don’t have to do that much searching… You do have to do a bit of research but everything is there, you read your articles and you get discussion documents. You're nearly spoon-fed. (Participant 4) The course content basically consisted of two folders one which was the course material and the second was the handouts and all the relevant research relating to what ever topic you were studying. (Participant 3) Although generally regarded in a positive way (by 12 of the 15 participants), there were some mixed feelings about the boundedness of the programmes, with one student suggesting that additional reading was not encouraged, and another believing that there was a sufficient amount of course material supplied: The course design was excellent and the course content was brilliant…but it didn’t allow for expansion… when they send you the course work and the course books, you had to use those because it said with reference to course books. You were not encouraged to do wider reading. (Participant 5) 20 I can’t complain about the quality …and I do get extra stuff… they do give you a lot of off prints as well. They also give you a reference list but they also give you the actual articles you can read as well. It’s more than enough. (Participant 2) In spite of being a bounded system, some participants reported that the course content facilitated development of their critical thinking skills: I have to say that thinking for yourself was stressed, and the stuff really got me to see things differently (Participant 15) I have to admit that I was surprised at how I began to think differently about things. There was a lot of academic bullshit in the course but also some really good readings that gave me a whole new perspective on things. I found that very satisfying (Participant 6) Overall, the data suggests that learning within a bounded system was reported favourably by participants. DISCUSSION The study findings broadly concur with those of existing studies, in which students were found to experience isolation while undertaking a distance learning course (Cragg 1994a, 1994b, Ryan et al. 1999, Carnwell 1998, Price 2000, Leasure et al. 2000). However, our data indicated that participants' lifeworld experiences of DE, 21 albeit very limited, were generally very positive. Although critics of DE have pointed to the limited scope for learning offered by ‘packaged’ programmes (Coulter 1989, Keegan et al. 1985), our participants generally expressed satisfaction with quasi- circumscribed standardised courses. Moreover, some who expressed a sense of seclusion from the full experience college life at the same time valued the time and space that a restricted educational lifeworld freed up for alternative experiences. These alternative experiences comprised both system and lifeworld dimensions, and included paid employment, childcare, elder care, and leisure time. What this suggests is that educational lifeworld experiences may be less relevant as one ages, as broader life experiences infiltrate the 'symbolic space' where meaning, solidarity and personal identity are expressed. Thus, although participants valued the autonomy and flexibility of DE, the implications of individualised learning need to be considered. Although some considered that their programmes encouraged critical thinking, the scope for dialogue and debate about the nature of the knowledge being presented was clearly curtailed. Weldon (1995: 13) notes the diversity in meaning of the word ‘critical thinking’ in educational circles. He suggests that its meaning in contemporary educational discourse relates to processes of validating arguments, and that this pseudo critical stance serves to sustain the legitimacy of an unjust economic social and political system. A really critically-informed education ought to facilitate understanding of ‘how ideological systems and social structures hinder and impede the fullest development of humankind’s collective potential to be self-reflexive and self- determining human actors' (Weldon 1995: 14). Within the isolation of a DE 22 programme, the scope for collective critical learning is potentially diminished by the lack of interactive learning, and participation in discourses. Collective action to challenge domination becomes highly difficult to achieve. However, it must be acknowledged that an outcome orientation, rather than an aspiration of enlightenment, may be a feature of higher education more generally. In addition, individual needs and goals of learning must be considered. Individual students may arrive at programmes with particular goals and orientations - some open to raising their consciousness for political transformation, others to improve their practice, and others still simply to succeed at examinations - irrespective of whether the programme is delivered through DE. Notwithstanding these individual needs and orientations, DE programmes are more deficient in opportunities for verbal communication, which is the central element to the transformational capacity of humans identified by Habermas (1984, 1987). Drawing on Habermas to explore the limitations of self-directed adult education Collins (1995:91) proposes that: The notion that the human capacity for speech signifies an innate potentiality for making practical decisions around reasonably presented arguments, free of coercion, provides a hopeful scenario for an emancipatory practice of adult education Much criticism of DE relates to specific reified, commodified programmes that rely on multiple choice questionnaires as a means assessment (Collins 1995). These are 23 rooted in a highly instrumental rationality and include pre-packaged learning formats (Collins 1995). Theorists such as Brookfield (1993) have defended the emancipatory potential of self- directed learning, and propose that it has an empowering potential. Delanty (1999) contends that the information age holds the promise of providing a discursive space to promote human autonomy and democracy. In the absence of an analysis of the content of the programmes undertaken by participants in our study, it is impossible to establish to what extent such programmes were experienced as enlightening, empowering, or consciousness-raising. Evidence suggests that subjects like sociology are taught in some nursing curricula, albeit in a conservative manner (Cooke 1993, Mulholland 1997). However, while the motivations of nursing elites to centralise caring and communication as dimensions of educational programmes have been associated with a self-serving striving towards professionalism and the development of nursing as a separate discipline (Witz 1992), post-registration nursing programmes in particular tend to value notions of holistic, human-oriented knowledge forms of a value-rational kind over knowledge forms mediated by purposive-rationality. Reflective practice (orientated towards consciousness-raising) and interpersonal issues (with a value-rational orientation) are topics that tend to be included in nursing curricula. On the one hand, it may be argued that the advent of DE has enabled large numbers of people to become enlightened, empowered and liberated. On the other hand, it may be viewed in terms of ‘learning for earning’ (Cunningham 1992:99), with an outcome 24 orientation towards advancing economic achievements and personal gain. In this sense, DE might be constructed as the archetype of lifeworld colonisation within the educational sphere. Alternatively, it might be perceived to have emancipatory potential at a societal rather than individual level. For this to occur, the content of the programmes would appear to be very important, because consciousness-raising would rely almost entirely on students being inspired to act on the basis of their engagement with the substantive content of the programme. Further empirical research is required to explore the nature of students' engagement with DE programmes in terms of their transformative potential. Limitations This study is limited by the relatively small sample size. In addition, there are many different styles of DE being delivered at various institutions, and our study is limited because it did not evaluate the various styles against one another. CONCLUSION Nursing leaders are challenged to find the most effective ways of disseminating nursing knowledge to as wide a body of nurses as possible, in order to ensure the highest standard of nursing practice. DE is one means of doing this. A better understanding of DE and how it is received by those pursuing it is important to enable it to become strengthened and to enable nurses to make choices about the various educational options available to them. Our data suggest that DE was a largely 25 favourable strategy for undertaking nursing programmes for mature students with a range of competing demands on their time. The challenge for nurse educators is to continue to work towards developing DE programmes that minimise drawbacks and maximise their potential. As technology becomes more sophisticated, new possibilities are opened up to make DE appealing to potential students, with the possibility of a wider dissemination of nursing knowledge. References Alexander, J.N. Polyakova-Norwood, V., Johnston, L.W., Christensen, P., Loquist, R.S. (2003) Collaborative development and evaluation of an online nursing course. Distance Education, 24 (1), 41-54. An Bord Altranais. (1997) Continuing Professional Education for Nurses in Ireland: A framework. An Bord Altranais, Dublin. Andersen H. (2000) Jürgen Habermas. In Classical and Modern Social Theory. Heine Andersen and Lars Bo Kaspersen (eds), Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Brookfield, S. 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(1993) Boundary work in the nursing curriculum: the case of sociology, Journal of Advanced Nursing 18, 1990-1998. Coulter, D. (1989) Women in distance education: towards a feminist perspective. In Canadian Society for Studies in Education, Post-Secondary Distance Education in Canada. Policies, Practices and Priorities, Athabasca University, 11-22. 27 Cragg, C. E. (1994a) Distance learning through computer conferences, Nurse Educator 9(2), 8-9. Cragg, C. E. (1994b) Nurses experiences of a post RN course by computer-mediated conferencing: friendly users. Computers in Nursing 12(5), 221-226. Cunningham, P.M. (1992) From Freire to feminism: the North American experience with critical pedagogy. Adult Education Quarterly 42 (3), 180-91. Delanty, G. (1999) Social Theory in a Changing World: Conceptions of Modernity. Blackwell: Polity Press. Field, T. (2002) Internet-based education for enrolled nurses: could it be E-ffective? The Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, 19 (4). 33-37. 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work_o5pvia2buvgwjn4ho7mav7ovnm	----	A Distance Education Simulated Electronics Laboratory 1 Session 3630 A "Distance Education" Simulated Electronics Laboratory Wils L. Cooley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering West Virginia University INTRODUCTION The State of West Virginia has a tradition of making it possible for citizens to commute easily to higher education from wherever they may happen to live in the state. This educational commitment means that the State College and University System supports many small institutions in remote parts of the state. It is becoming clear that the state can no longer afford to maintain the present system, especially when the demand for more and more specialized higher education is increasing in the rural areas. If we are to meet our mandate in a cost-effective manner, new ways must be found to deliver engineering classes to widely scattered students at home or at facilities which do not have engineering laboratory equipment. It is in this context that the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has attempted to develop a quality electronics laboratory experience for place-bound and equipment-poor students. THE PRESENT COURSE STRUCTURE The presently required traditional laboratory is entitled "Digital Electronics Laboratory." The catalog description is "Design, fabrication, and measurement of digital electronic circuits. Use of discrete devices, integrated logic, display devices, and timer circuits. Study of A/D and D/A circuits and interfaces." The laboratory normally meets once per week for a semester. It is designed to accompany a 3-credit lecture course covering p-n diode-based, BJT-based, and MOSFET-based logic gate implementations, along with registers, counters, converters, memory, and microprocessors. Particular attention is paid to the relation between internal device characteristics and terminal behavior of IC's. The course is taught to second-semester sophomore students. THE DEMAND FOR CHANGE Both the content and the timing of this laboratory and the accompanying lecture course are unusual within either an electrical or a computer engineering curriculum. Thus, many students who would contemplate transferring to WVU beginning with their junior year find that they are deficient, since the courses are difficult to find. In fact, they are taught nowhere else in the state of West Virginia. None of the other instructional sites in the state felt that they had enough students to justify offering the courses themselves. The department was therefore asked early on if the courses could be delivered by distance learning to students at other sites in West Virginia who planned to transfer to WVU. P a g e 2 .1 3 .1 2 In Spring 1996 the lecture and laboratory were delivered to one remote site. This was done by video taping the classroom lectures of the campus-based course. Tapes were sent to the remote location several times a week, along with a complete set of class notes generated by a student in the class. The home-based instructor provided homework assignments and exams and quizzes by mail as well. A mechanical engineering instructor at the remote site coordinated the receipt and use of materials and administered the quizzes and exams. The laboratory was carried out by mailing the written exercise assignments to the remote instructor who made a laboratory room available to the students and assisted them as best she could in doing the exercises and design problems. Twice the home-based laboratory instructor (who was also the lecturer) traveled to the remote site for an afternoon of working with the remote students, and twice they traveled as a group along with the remote site instructor to the WVU campus to work in the laboratory. While the students who participated in the peripatetic class and laboratory did as well as other students in the courses (received comparable grades), we did not believe that they had gained a level of laboratory experience comparable to the home-based students because equipment was limited at the remote site and the remote-site instructor could not provide much on-the-spot instruction in the laboratory. It is for this reason that we considered using the internet to deliver a laboratory experience which would not be limited by laboratory equipment availability or on-site instructor availability. DEVELOPMENT DETAILS During the Fall 1996 semester neither the lecture class nor the laboratory were scheduled to be offered. However, the department chair was approached by nearly a dozen students who wanted either the class or the laboratory or both. Given the desire to develop an internet-based laboratory and the unexpected demand for the laboratory from home-based students, the decision was made to develop the laboratory while offering it to home-based students only. Because several students needed the accompanying lecture class as well, the "distance learning" version of the lecture course using the video-taped lectures was offered also. The students who had expressed an interest were contacted and presented with an explanation of what would be offered, and warned that difficulties were likely to occur as new techniques were being developed and tried. Three students chose to participate in both the laboratory and lecture, and one student chose only the laboratory. Of the four students who participated in the developmental laboratory, three were doing so because they were "out of sequence" in their progression toward a degree because of illness or failing a course. The fourth worked full time locally and had been unable to schedule the laboratory. The first three were also taking the video-taped class, the fourth had already had it the semester before (in fact, he was the designated "note taker" who produced the class notes to be sent to the remote-site students). He was also a "non- traditional" student. P a g e 2 .1 3 .2 3 Three of the four taking the laboratory considered themselves to be very computer literate (one owns a computer business and a second is employed as a programmer); the fourth had a computer and considered herself to be moderately literate. All said that they were looking forward to the experience. SEMESTER ACTIVITIES The students purchased Electronics Workbench®, which was delivered the second week of the semester. Their first assignment was to install the software and carry out several simple exercises to become familiar with the software and its capabilities. Soon I was informed by one of the students that she was unable to load Electronics Workbench onto her computer. I never heard from her again. The assignment included sending an EWB file to me. Two students were unable to attach the file to an e_mail message. The third did so, but I was unable to decode it (the students all were using PC compatible computers, whereas I use a Mac). I eventually got files from two students by having them deliver a floppy disc to me. The third student stopped responding about this time and sometime later I found she had dropped the laboratory from her schedule. The second laboratory assignment was also to be done by each student independently. It was communicated to them via e_mail and required only an e_mail response to send a few key results rather than to send an EWB file. One student came to my office and asked to sit with me while he showed me what he was doing with EWB and some of the problems he was having. I received results from two students which indicated that they had been successful in completing this laboratory exercise. Both submitted their results late, however. The third lab assignment was much more involved. The exercise itself was available on a web page that had been created for the course. Besides that, I sent an EWB file attached to the message which contained some "black boxes" that the students were to determine the electrical characteristics of in the laboratory. Only one student was able to read the file I sent. Another finally brought a disc to my office which I copied the file to. I had no response from the other two. Once again I had office visits from one of the students who wanted to sit together with me to show me what he was doing and ask questions about the results. For the fourth lab assignment I asked the two remaining students to use each other's black box results to design simple circuits. I made them responsible for working together to determine where mistakes had been made and to correct them. This assignment was a disaster! I did not receive the results on the due date nor even a week late. We wasted about two weeks while I cajoled them to work together to complete this assignment, but they never did so. I finally gave up and moved on to another assignment. The fifth assignment was once again an individual assignment. This time I was able to encode the file one way for one student and another way for the second student so that they could read them. One student did not finish by the end of the semester. The second student had questions, but rather than sending me an EWB file he chose to post the circuit Pa g e 2 .1 3 .3 4 that he had questions about to his personal web page. I viewed it there and discussed it with him via e_mail. He completed this assignment. SUMMARY OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE Of the four students who began, as far as I know one was unable to ever load EWB into her computer. A second student fell by the wayside early, apparently because of a combination of unwillingness to meet the challenge of learning the material and frustration with trying to learn to send files electronically. A third student who started out quite strong and intensely interested in the laboratory slacked off at the end. He told me later that he did so because he was having great difficulty with another course he had to pass. The fourth student struggled at the beginning, and I thought I would lose him, but then he became interested in the material and came on very strong at the end. I believe he would have done considerably more work had I made more individual assignments. STUDENT FEEDBACK I interviewed at length the two students who finished the laboratory. Their feedback was frank, and often quite helpful. Many of their complaints were expected based on the kinds of difficulties we had. Some of their responses which I found interesting are: • "I wanted to see and touch the transistors, gates and other circuit elements that I was working with. We should have at least one full day of 'hands-on' work." • "The instructor should be an expert on using the circuit simulation software as well as communication and file transfer techniques." • "Don't make me work with a partner. I want to show what I can do alone." • "The instructor gave us too much flexibility by saying initially that we could work on assignments as long as we wanted until we got them correct. We should have had an assignment due each week with no extensions." • "Don't build an assignment upon the results of a previous assignment." • "The instructor should provide detailed feedback on what the student did right and wrong. Setting up situations where the student can observe whether or not the design worked without giving help about why things don't work is too frustrating." • "The simulation software should be available on the local network, and there should be a consultant available who can help with problems. • "The Electronics Workbench software is very easy to use. I now use mine at work to help me design. The instructor of the lecture class should incorporate it to illustrate concepts he is trying to explain." • "The instructor should INSIST that the students set aside regular times to work on this material." • "I would not take another class like this unless I was certain that it was very structured and well coordinated." P a g e 2 .1 3 .4 5 LESSONS LEARNED I found the entire experience to be difficult and not very satisfying, both from a personal standpoint and because of the high attrition and lack of productivity. I concluded based on my experiences and lengthy feedback interviews: 1. I did not allocate enough time to be able to fully meet the demands of the course. Since I had many exercises drafted, I believed that my time would be spent creating new exercises, assigning exercises, and checking the student's results. Instead, we spent a great deal of time dealing with software incompatibilities and bugs. This was apparently exacerbated by my using a Mac and the students using PCs, as well as their having a different e_mail program from the one I was using. 2. Meaningful technical discussions did not occur except in face-to-face meetings. This seemed to be due to a combination of difficulty in sending circuit files and the fact that the class was asynchronous -- the students worked at different times from each other and at times different from when I was available. The delays which resulted made interaction and collaboration difficult. 3. The students (and I) should have set aside specific times to work on the class, and have the discipline to do so. Without the structure imposed by the formally scheduled meeting times it is too easy to let things slide. I should have also had regular due dates for work to be submitted. I now think that having a detailed structure of requirements is a must. 4. Most sophomore students cannot be expected to work challenging laboratory design exercises without some real-time instructor interaction. They seem to need immediate feedback about how they are doing, as well as leading questions to help them solve their problems. Students asked to work as teams must also be able to "chat" some way in real time. 5. My students do not know how to work effectively at a distance, especially in a loosely structured environment. Apparently, it requires certain social skills to interact personally, other skills to interact by telephone, and still other skills to be productive by "letter," for that is certainly what e_mail amounts to. Specifically, they lack the skills to "compose" questions so that they can get maximum benefit from each asynchronous transmission. FUTURE PLANS Despite my frustration, I believe I can succeed and I do plan to continue to develop internet-based laboratory exercises, since I believe that it is imperative for us to find an effective way of providing this kind of experience at a distance. I will be working more on laboratories during Spring 1997. Changes I plan to make in my approach are: • I am not going to ask students to work together closely on assignments. Since I am not prepared to put a great deal of effort into facilitating collaboration among students who P a g e 2 .1 3 .5 6 are not skilled at such tasks, I will leave the job of developing student collaborative skills to other times and other places. • I am going to impose a strict schedule of work. I will have many small assignments due often. I may even require that the students engage in a synchronous "chat" sessions with me once or twice weekly so that I can tell if they are working and how well they are learning. • I will provide some sort of face-to-face interaction for the students. If conditions prohibit me from meeting them personally, I will arrange to have an upper level student or some other knowledgeable person help them with the technical details of sending and receiving files and using Electronics Workbench. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Partial funding for the development of this laboratory was provided through a WVU faculty instructional technology award program. The taped lectures I used were recorded by Dr. Robert L. McConnell. He assisted me in devising ways to challenge and evaluate the laboratory students. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY WILS L. COOLEY received degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has 29 years experience at CMU and West Virginia University, plus one semester at University of Hertfordshire in the UK. He has taught engineering design at various levels for most of those years, and was sponsored by NSF to develop sophomore design materials. Dr. Cooley is a Fellow of IEEE and a Registered Professional Engineer. P a g e 2 .1 3 .6 
work_o6wajkrqpnfmzmxqcyjppgqqoq	----	mlab_91_117.72_78.tp Journal of the Medical Library Association, 2003, Volume 91, Issue 1, Pages 72-78. ISSN: (Print: 1536-5050) (Electronic: 0025-7338) Link to journal homepage. Link to article on publisher website. © 2003 Medical Library Association. Cost analysis and student survey results of library support for distance education By Ruey L. Rodman This paper describes the costs associated with providing library support for a series of distance-education courses at The Ohio State University (OSU). These courses are designed as a pilot program offered by the OSU Office of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Costs to the library are analyzed for document delivery, electronic reserves, reference services, and librarian activities. Also included are the results of a student evaluation survey. The students are full-time working professionals who cannot attend regularly scheduled classes on campus. Conclusions extrapolate costs for each course, student, and service. INTRODUCTION In January 2001, the Ohio State University (OSU) Prior Health Sciences Library (PHSL) began planning to participate in a pilot program of a series of distance-education courses offered by the OSU Office of Geriatrics and Gerontology (OGG). The courses were titled ‘‘The Series in Applied Gerontology Education (S.A.G.E.)’’ and were offered March through November 2001. These classes were designed as a special nine-credit-hour program intended to provide continuing education and training in the field of aging. The students were full-time working professionals who could not attend regularly scheduled classes on campus. OSU uses WebCT, a course authoring software, to organize class materials on the Web. Students have access twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to readings, calendars, syllabi, discussion groups or chat, email, and other Internet resources. Creating a ‘‘library’’ presence in WebCT, so library resources would be readily available when students are logged in to their Web courses, is the service goal of this project. The research goal of the study is an attempt to assign a per-course cost or a per-student cost for library support of the S.A.G.E. program. Abels, Kantor, and Saracevic state, Libraries are moving from being print-centered to electronic-centered; from collecting to accessing; and from serving primarily in-house users to serving both in-house and remote users. Information managers face many difficult decisions regarding which electronic sources to make available, which services to offer that support the use of electronic sources, how to differentiate among user groups to be served, and how to charge for access to these sources and services. [1] As stated above, this study on library costs for distance education should support fiscal decisions for costing virtual library access for all students, researchers, faculty members, clinicians, or staff members, no matter where they are located. http://www.mlanet.org/publications/jmla/index.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC141190/ PROGRAM OVERVIEW The S.A.G.E. series was developed collaboratively by the OGG, The School of Public Health, and the Office of Continuing Education. The classes offered were ‘‘Introduction to Applied Gerontology’’ (Health Services Management & Policy 693), ‘‘Case Studies in Applied Gerontology—The Team Approach’’ (Allied Medicine 791), and ‘‘Issues and Trends in Aging’’ (Health Services Management & Policy 693). A program manager in the OGG coordinated the efforts of three teaching faculty, a librarian, and the WebCT software support manager. The S.A.G.E. program manager also served as the ‘‘problem’’ contact person for issues concerning library services or the WebCT program. OSU is located in the central part of the State of Ohio. The OGG received approximately 100 applications and accepted twenty students into the program. Of these students, fifteen lived in the central Ohio area; two near Cincinnati, Ohio; two in Cleveland, Ohio; and one in central Pennsylvania. Tuition was paid directly to the OGG. Because these students were not part of a regular registration process, special arrangements were made for an OSU email account to access the campus network, and a library patron record was created for using library services. A daylong orientation session was held the weekend before the first day of class. All participants, including the librarian, attended this session, except the student from Pennsylvania who received orientation materials and additional instructions via email. The orientation program was designed to meet the following objectives: (1) introduce the students to each other to facilitate group work, (2) introduce the students to their professors (the only time they would meet), (3) review computer skills needed to use WebCT, and (4) provide library services instruction. The librarian’s role was focused on the following areas: (1) to inform instructors of virtual library resources and services, (2) to create a library services and resources page on the Web to be linked from the WebCT course, and (3) to instruct the students in using online library services and evaluating Websites found through Internet searching. Along with these goals, the librarian also had responsibility for planning, communicating, implementing, and tracking identified resources within the library for cost analysis. According to Caspers, ‘‘When distance education services are initiated, the full range of library services available for on campus students in the same discipline must be identified and used as the baseline for planning’’ [2]. To that end, reference (using a Web form), document delivery, and course reserves were identified as the core services to be provided. It was decided that interlibrary loan of materials would not be provided as a core service. Instead, students were advised that if they needed to consult a basic reference text they should go to the closest library. Implementing reference services required a brief demonstration at the regular monthly librarians meeting to discuss the S.A.G.E. program, demonstrate WebCT, and inform the librarians that the students had been instructed to ask questions or seek help via the Ask A Health Sciences Librarian Web form.* There was no way to predict if activity for this library service would increase. Email questions were automatically filed in a completed questions folder. Tracking the number of requests required a review of the completed questions file. Document delivery to the computer desktop was the second core service included as critical support for distance education. A document delivery request Web page was created. Participating students were instructed to search the library catalog and ascertain whether the required material was available at OSU or would be considered an interlibrary loan. In consultation with the head of circulation and the head of document delivery, it was decided on- campus requests would be processed by circulation services evening and weekend staff. Requests necessitating an interlibrary loan would be processed by document delivery staff. Students then received an email message containing the Web address for the requested article. The third service to be added was electronic reserves. At the PHSL, faculty may submit course readings for scanning into the reserve system for Web access via the OSU library network. Instructions for use of this system were included in the orientation session. Time spent by the librarian developing library services was also tracked. The librarian was solely responsible for developing library support for this program. These activities included participating in meetings with faculty and students, planning and participating in the orientation session, developing the library services Web page, coordinating library staff activities, and finally setting up and removing program materials from the WebCT Website. Staff training was minimal because core service routines were well established at the PHSL. Results of these core services were analyzed to establish costs associated with this project. A S.A.G.E. evaluation was sent to all participating students at the end of the series of courses. It included questions on instruction, the WebCT experience, and library services. The library was allowed five questions and one space for overall comments. The responses are summarized for this study. Costs are important in establishing fees, but identifying what is most valued by users should also be factored into any decision. Therefore, the student responses are very important for future decisions on direction and participation. LITERATURE SURVEY Accurate costs of library services are essential for decision making in resource allocation for library services. In preparation for costing library distance-education services, the author reviewed methods on cost analysis for libraries. The Library Costing Model (LCM), as described by Hayes, was developed to assist libraries in handling some of the problems involved in assessing costs. It is also suggested that this model needs to be brought up-to-date to accommodate electronic resources [3]. Cost-benefit analysis was also reviewed as a possible methodology. According to Svenningsen, cost-benefit analysis attempts to decide whether the result justifies the expense [4]. The author is not attempting to weight the results of the services but only to ascertain the unit of cost for each service. Wynne, Brophy, and Butters report on an extensive costing model of reference services for a project at the University of Central Lancashire that included costs associated with hardware and software, telecommunications, specialist services, postage, fax transmission, file transfer, and staff time [5]. Because operations and services used in the S.A.G.E. program were already established at the PHSL, most of the costs associated with the Lancashire project were not applicable to this study. Rather, functional cost analysis, as described by Abels, Kantor, and Saracevic, was seen as the method to adopt for this research. To determine the average unit cost of library and information services using functional cost analysis, all functions of a service must be determined. The total cost is then divided by the number of times the services were used during a given period of time [6]. Table 1 Library support for distance education: activity chart totals for March 31 to December 7, 2001 Much published literature exists on distance or virtual course offerings in library, education, and social behavior journals. Distance education as a concept has been used for approximately 100 years. As Rockenbach and Almagno state, ‘‘Delivering instructional materials over a distance began as early as the turn of the century with the U.S. postal system. This was followed by courses deliverable through radio around 1910, television (1960s), video (1980s) and CD-ROM (1990s)’’ [7]. The Web is the next viable educational delivery option to be investigated and used. Before the advent of the Web, all students, whether distant or not, had to go to the library for research and information. Now, it can be said that users no longer have to go to the library for their resources. The Web has and is revolutionizing the way users access information. A number of papers in the library literature describe different information support initiatives for distant students or users. The problem in organizing this literature is that descriptive terminology associated with the various initiatives is not used consistently. Is this new role for libraries defined as remote, outreach, distance, extension, nontraditional, virtual, distributed, or off-campus services [8–14]? Of note is a resource on the Web that provides ‘‘an information source for librarians interested in the many issues of library support for distance learners’’ [15]. METHODOLOGY Cost analysis for the purposes of this study is defined as the method used to determine dollar amounts for a defined library service. To establish the cost of each unit of service, a list of the component parts of the service along with the processing or development time, hourly wage of responsible staff, and volume of service needs to be tracked. The detailed information for each identified activity is listed in Table 1. The costing of each activity can be represented by abstract mathematical formulas. The cost of each activity can be represented by CA or cost of activity A, which in this case equals the staff wage. The volume can be represented by the assigned activity letter in parenthesis or (A). Therefore, the following notation CA = CA (A) is derived to represent the cost analysis for each activity. If each activity is assigned a letter, the following notation arrives at a total average cost. CABC = CA(A) + CB(B) + CC(C) Table 2 Library support for distance education: final costs Total cost can then be divided by the total number of students for an average per-student cost. Also, because there were three courses, an average per-course cost can be established by dividing by three. The above calculations represent variable costs of the services. To most accurately describe the total cost of services, fixed costs per activity should also be included as part of the overall analysis. This step can be represented by the following: CA = C f A ixed + CA(A) Due to the fact that equipment, software programs, building services, network, overhead charges, and so on were already in place prior to the pilot program implementation, fixed costs are not factored into the final analysis. The results of this study only report the variable costs associated with identified library services. The following discussion outlines the results for each identified core activity for all three courses over nine months. Cost of a single item is also provided. Final cost results are rounded up to the nearest hundred. These results are summarized in Table 2. LIBRARY SERVICES RESULTS Librarian activities Librarian activities include coordinating library services for the S.A.G.E. program within and outside the PHSL. The activities are analyzed as costs per hour, and each activity has a volume of one. The total cost for librarian support to develop all library services is $1,335.84 or $66.79 per student or $445.28 per course. Reference services Reference service is an activity that is shared by eight librarians at different billable rates with an accepted ‘‘standard or average’’ time of fifteen minutes per question. In-depth questions are referred to another reference service. Three questions were received from students participating in the S.A.G.E. program. Based on an average hourly rate of eight librarians, the total cost for reference services equaled $21.14 or $1.06 per student or $7.05 per course. Document delivery As described in the project overview, this service was divided into interlibrary loan (ILL) requests and on-campus requests. ILL requests require more time to process because of additional steps to identify a library that owns the text and to order the article. An average salary was used for the billable rate as multiple library staff were assigned to these activities. There were two requests requiring ILL processing and thirty-five requests for on-campus materials. No article costs were associated with any document requests, because staff borrowed from reciprocal partner libraries. Also, no copyright costs were incurred to report, because staff had not borrowed more than five articles from either ILL journal title. The total cost for document delivery was $281.98 or $14.10 per student or $93.99 per course. Electronic reserves Articles for electronic reserves were delivered by each instructor prior to the first day of class to allow library staff enough time to scan in the material and build the actual course record in the reserve system. Multiple staff were responsible for these activities, so the billable rate was an average of their combined hourly rates. The total cost for electronic reserves totaled $237.28 or $11.86 per student or $79.09 per course. Summary Final calculations resulted in total variable costs for all services of $1,876.24. Based on twenty participants, this would equal a $93.81 average library fee for each enrolled student and an average total of $625.41 for each of the three courses. A final calculation based on a total of thirty different activities yielded an average cost of $187.44 for library support of this pilot project. STUDENT EVALUATION RESULTS As part of the pilot program, the course faculty and librarian compiled an evaluation of the courses and services provided. The survey/evaluation of the program was emailed to the twenty students during the final week of the program. It contained six questions concerning library services that are summarized below. 1. Question 1: If you had problems using library services, please describe them in one or two sentences (9 students answered). ■ Five students reported that due to varying computer speeds and set-ups, some students experienced difficulty in downloading articles. It was unclear whether this issue pertained to electronic reserves or document delivery. ■ Three students reported that they were daunted or intimidated by the range and scope of library services or did not understand how to use the provided services. ■ One student noted an ability to gain access to two provided resources: the American Psychological Association Style Guide and Net.Tutor (interactive lessons on using the Internet effectively). 2. Question 2: Please list your top three library services (10 students answered, some partial answers, described in Table 3). 3. Question 3: Did the Library ‘‘button’’ within the WebCT course software make a difference in finding information you needed? (Figure 1). 4. Question: 4: Did you think the initial hands-on orientation session helped you know about and use library services during the classes? (Figure 2) 5. Question 5: Indicate library services you used during the S.A.G.E. series, check all that apply (ASU represents a Website on geriatrics and gerontology research by Arizona State University) (Figure 3). 6. Question 6: Please list overall comments about library services (10 students responded). ■ Five students responded with comments ranging from ‘‘please continue this service’’ through ‘‘excellent/invaluable’’ and ‘‘amazingly helpful.’’ ■ Four students responded that the services made research easier because they did not have to go to the library. ■ One student responded that librarians and staff were very helpful, especially with searching. It was not clear which service was used. The responses represented 45% to 50% of the students enrolled in the S.A.G.E. courses. Some of the responses were incomplete but in general indicated that library services were well received and appreciated. All students reported various access problems. The most-valued library service was electronic reserves. More than half the students responded that library services in the WebCT course did make a difference. Half the students did find the hands-on orientation session helpful. Question five indicated that all of the resources identified as core services for this project were used by at least one student. Table 3 Most valued library services student evaluation results Figure 1 Value of library WebCT page responses* CONCLUSIONS As an initial pilot program in library support for distance education, the S.A.G.E. project proved to be of value for the participants. The students received an organized approach to library services that enhanced their research and information retrieval skills. The teaching faculty became more aware of library technology and services. The librarian learned about costs associated with library support for remote users. The daylong orientation program, although interesting, proved, in this author’s opinion, to be the weakest activity of the project. The students were immersed in so much information and training that retention of skills and knowledge was difficult. Some students reported this problem in the evaluation. For future programs, it is recommended that online orientation materials and instruction be provided. Users can then take the necessary time to learn about library services and, if questions arise, may email the library for assistance. According to Buehler et al., ‘‘The ability to ‘push’ information out to online library users is essential, as is updating software systems that effectively serve the patron at a distance’’ [16]. This statement sums up the two main issues that affect library support for distance education: services and technology. As curricula expand and grow for remote users, so will the demands on library services. Libraries will have two primary user groups, local and remote. The demands for both groups are different. Besides constant equipment upgrades, use of technology may also divide into two distinct approaches. Library staff will have increasing continuing-education needs to support and assist different user groups. This was a small pilot project that could be managed using current staffing and equipment. If the project had been for fifty courses and 2,000 students, the results would not have been as successful. Using document delivery services as an example, one can extrapolate that if twenty students requested thirty-five documents, 2,000 students might request 3,500 documents. The unique course requirements and the varying knowledge levels of each student cannot be predicted. Any significant increase in activity could not be managed using current staffing and equipment resources. The trend toward virtual library information access will no doubt continue. Finding additional resources or the reallocation of current funds and staff must be planned. Librarians must decide how to manage the demands necessary to support local as well as remote users. Deans, directors, and administrators need to be aware of the costs to libraries as schools and colleges add programs or implement new technologies for students. Fiscal support for libraries should match fiscal support for curricula and technologies. Figure 2. Value of orientation session responses* Figure 3. Responses for value of library services used* * The Ask a Health Sciences Librarian Question Form may be viewed at http://bones.med.ohio- state.edu/ref/refdeskform.html. REFERENCES 1. ABELS EG, KANTOR PB, SARACEVIC T. Studying the cost and value of library and information services: applying functional cost analysis to the library in transition. J Am Soc Inf Sci 1996 Mar;47(3):217-27. 2. CASPERS JS. Outreach to distance learners: when the distance education instructor sends students to the library where do they go? Ref Libr 1999;67/68:299-311. 3. HAYES RM. Cost of electronic reference resources and LCM: the library costing model. J Am Soc Inf Sci 1996 Mar; 47(3):228-34. 4. SVENNINGSEN K. An evaluation model for electronic resources utilizing cost analysis. The Bottom Line: Managing Library Resources 1998;11(1):18–23. 5. WYNN PM, BROPHY P, BUTTERS G. An examination of the costs and benefits of an experimental extension of academic library services to remote users. New Rev Acad Libr 1997;3: 25-37. 6. ABELS, op. cit, 220. 7. ROCKENBACH B, ALMAGNO S. Distance education: some of the unasked and unanswered questions. Int Inf Libr Rev 2000 Sep/Dec;32(3/4):453-62. 8. CASPERS, op. cit., 299. 9. LOGUE S, PREECE B. Library services to support remote students. Resource Sharing & Information Networks 1999; 14(1):41-50. 10. COOPER JL. A model for library support of distance education in the USA. Interlend Doc Supply 2000;28(3):123-31. 11. FURNISS KA, KARIEL D. Library catalogs, the World Wide Web, and serving the off-campus user: boon or bust? In: Eighth Off-Campus Library Services Conference Proceedings. Mount Pleasant, MI: Central Michigan University, 1998: 155-8. 12. CASADO M. Delivering library services to remote students. Computer in Libraries 2001 Apr;21(4):32-8. 13. FRISBY AJ, JONES SS. The initiation of distance learning at Thomas Jefferson University: the library as integral partner. Med Ref Serv Q 2000 Fall;19(3):19-37. 14. SEDAM RE, MARSHALL J. Course-specific Web pages evolution of an extended campus library instruction service. In: Eighth Off-Campus Library Services Conference Proceedings. Mount Pleasant, MI: Central Michigan University, 1998: 251-8. 15. SLOAN B. Library support for distance learning. [Web document]. [cited 1 Mar 2001]. <http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/ ~b-sloan/libdist.htm>. 16. BUEHLER M, DOPP E, HUGHES KA, THOMPSON J. It takes a library to support distance learners. Inter Ref Serv Q 2001; 5(3):5-24. http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/ref/refdeskform.html http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/ref/refdeskform.html http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~b-sloan/libdist.htm 
work_objiqmhsknajdddwr6runnth7m	----	Research Article Moodle: Teaching Strategies in Distance Education in Oral Medicine Rubens Cardozo de Castro Junior,1 Tuana Caruso Medeiros,1 Heitor Marques Honório,2 Eduardo Sant’Ana,1 and Paulo Sérgio da Silva Santos1 1Department of Oral Biology and Stomatology, Bauru School of Dentistry, Bauru, SP, Brazil 2Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Orthodontics and Public Health, Bauru School of Dentistry, Bauru, SP, Brazil Correspondence should be addressed to Paulo Sérgio da Silva Santos; paulosss@usp.br Received 21 December 2016; Revised 21 March 2017; Accepted 1 June 2017; Published 5 July 2017 Academic Editor: Izzet Yavuz Copyright © 2017 Rubens Cardozo de Castro Junior et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. The current model of education has been suffering changes, undergoing renovations, and seeking using and enjoying increasingly technological resources, as, for example, the Learning Management System (LMS). One of the most used LMS platforms is the Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle). This article proposes to demonstrate how Moodle platform was introduced in the subject of Stomatology through a clear and objective methodology. Study Design. In six months, 49 undergraduate students enrolled in stomatology subject accessed Moodle platform 2067 times and performed 02 evaluation exams at Discipline of Stomatology. Statistical analysis was performed by paired t-test (comparison between number of access times before the first evaluation and number of access times before the second evaluation), Wilcoxon test (student’s grade on the first and second evaluation), and Pearson correlation test (correlation between the number of access times before the first evaluation and the first grade, correlation between the number of access times before the second evaluation and the second grade, and correlation between the variation of the number of access times and the variation of the student’s grade). Results and Conclusion. The digital platform Moodle was associated with better grade for those students who access it for more times (𝑝 < 0,001) and was able to supply the needs of the students and help them to obtain information about the subject during the entire semester (6 months). 1. Introduction Web-based virtual learning environments (VLEs) are a set of teaching and learning tools designed to enhance a student’s learning experience by including computers and the Internet in the learning process and are used in many medical schools [1, 2]. The current model of education has been suffering changes, undergoing renovations, and increasingly harnessing the benefits of technological resources, as, for example, the Learning Management System (LMS). One of the most used LMS platforms is the Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle) [3]. This virtual environment aims to enhance the learning experience through virtual lessons, scientific articles texts, questions and answers, quizzes, and class lessons [3]. The access at the moment of processing information allows stakeholders to have greater flexibility to study (syn- chronic model). It is in this context the virtual learning envi- ronments (VLE) come up. New educational opportunities were offered where teaching conditions, both those devel- oped at a distance and those carried out in classroom teach- ing, ensured and amplified the actions of this type of educa- tional practice [3, 4]. Currently, Moodle has been increasingly improved and it is possible constantly update and apply functions that meet a wide range of users; in addition, there is the possibility of applying different teaching practices [3, 4]. Undergraduate students in dentistry have shown difficul- ties in learning stomatology due to various pathologies that affect the stomatognathic system; some of these have clinical, Hindawi Education Research International Volume 2017, Article ID 4279141, 4 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/4279141 https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/4279141 2 Education Research International radiographic, and histological very similar appearances, which confuses the student [5]. Also considering that the students’ current needs are changing with respect to the past [6, 7], the Internet can act as a powerful tool in improving the teaching and learning process in stomatology for dental courses; it relates to many of the difficult points mentioned above because it motivates the student to study, considering their possible limitations [6–8] This occurs because the Internet relieves the learning of the time factor, as, contrary to the classroom, when working on the computer, the student has the time that he or she deems necessary to see and review topics until he or she has reached the desired learning level [8, 9]. Thus, it was found that there is no provision of websites and tutorials specific to the teaching of stomatology in Portuguese. It was in this context that the Moodle platform was imple- mented on the Department of Stomatology, Bauru School of Dentistry, University of São Paulo [3, 4, 10]. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate Moodle’s effectiveness in students’ learning of stomatology content for undergraduate dental students of a Brazilian university. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Study Design. The 2 study factors of this work were the statistical content assimilation by dental academics in stomatology which was evaluated by the grades in the first and second test and number of access times on Moodle in two stages and the final average with the total number of access times to the Moodle of a graduating class. T1: 49 students who did Test 1. T2: 49 students who did Test 2. Moodle T1: 2017 Moodle access times before Test 1. Moodle T2: 757 Moodle access times before Test 2. 2.2. Development of Educational Material. For this research development, we created an educational material with an Internet interface. This educational material consisted of a proposed offer to the target audience of an online source for queries in stomatology. The visual identity creation and interface design for the web, programming of the site in Flash, domain registration, hosting, infrastructure setup (dynamic language, database, email, and FTP – File Transport Protocol), publishing content system development, and technical support were all executed by a development company for web pages. Professor of the Stomatology department created the following topics and the teaching assistants postgraduate stu- dents performed a digital material (videos, PowerPoint pre- sentations, and summaries) using cases from the own depart- ment. The topics were Stomatology Introduction, Medical History, Vital Signs, Physical Examination, Salivary Gland Semiology, Lymph nodes Palpation, Temporomandibular Joint and Chewing Muscles Examination, Tooth Injuries, Tongue Diseases, and Oral Cavity Lesions. The content was added to the course website piece by piece. 2.3. Digital Platform. In order to make use of a virtual room, the students must be properly enrolled in the subject of the Department of Stomatology, Bauru School of Dentistry, University of São Paulo (FOB-USP). Through the Intranet (Moodle platform), they access the lesson held in the class- room and get educational materials to study outside of class time and it is also possible to exercise through questionnaires and quizzes as well as performed exams on exams proposed by the professors of the Department of Stomatology. Each access was then registered, and, through the Uni- versity Server, at the end of each semester, professors could count the number of access times performed by each student and, thus, ascertain whether there was a correlation between the highest number of access times on the Moodle platform and the better academic performance, measured by their tests grade. 2.4. Learning Evaluation. The assessment of learning was done through the evaluations regularly applied during the course of the discipline to evaluate the frequency of access to the Moodle platform of the students. There were the- oretical and practical classes and seminars. The practices are divided into radiographic interpretation classes of digital and analog images focused on the craniofacial anatomy. The mucosal diseases practices will be held on computers with the clinical department or atlas collection images. Clinical practice sessions will be held with clinical examinations of patients, biopsies, radiographic techniques with emphasis on panoramic radiographs, and other complementary exams. Theoretical tests and theoretical-practical, descriptive or in the form of tests, where students exercise their diagnostic capability based on clinical history and patient’s clinical picture, were designed on multimedia. During the current semester, each student performed 2 theoretical tests (weight 8, 80% of rating) and 1 seminar clinical case (weight 2, 20% of rating). These theoretical tests include essay questions and multiple-choice questions, in addition to practical activities that are exercises applied after certain lectures. After the end of the semester, each student received an arithmetic mean for their 2 theoretical tests and also for clinical practical activities and received a calculated final weighted mean, which considered the weight of each evaluation type. The evaluation method was through tests and presenta- tion of clinical cases seminar during the semester. The value of the grades ranges from 0 (zero for lowest score) and 10 (ten for highest score), assigning the final mark of all tests with an average of 5. 2.5. Statistical Analysis. The data were analyzed by processing on the statistical program (SigmaPlot 12.0), applying nor- mality test (Shapiro-Wilk), paired t-test, or Wilcoxon and Pearson correlation test. Significance level was set at 5%. 3. Results In six months, 49 students enrolled in stomatology subject accessed Moodle platform 2067 times at Bauru School of Dentistry, University of São Paulo. Education Research International 3 Moodle T1 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 2,0 4,0 6,0 8,00,0 12,010,0 Grades A cc es s t im es Figure 1: Scatter plot showing the amount of hits in relation to the marks obtained in the first test. It may be noticed that the more accessible the digital teaching platform, the greater the marks obtained by the students. Before the first exam, students accessed Moodle 2017 times and they accessed 752 times for the second test. The comparison between the groups showed normality and homogeneity of variances for the analysis among acces- sions (before 1st Test and before 2nd Test), but did not show normal distribution of data on notes (1st and 2nd Tests). Thus, the paired t-test showed statistically significant differences (𝑝 < 0.05) between the access number before the first test and before the second test,𝑝< 0,001. Just as the number of access times, there was also a significant decrease (𝑝 < 0.05) between students’ grades in first test (with median 8.000, first quartile 7.400, and third quartile 8.700) and in the second test (with median 7.400, first quartile 6.600, and third quartile 7.750) (Wilcoxon Test). The Pearson correlation coefficient showed a moderate correlation to the correlation analysis between the number of access times before the first test and the grade of the first test (𝑝= 0,003 e 𝑟 = 0,40), as well as number of access times before the second test and grade of the second test (𝑝= 0,039 e 𝑟 = 0,29). As the test scores declined and the number of access times also declined, the correlation was made between the decrease in the number of access times with decreasing students notes. The Pearson correlation coefficient showed a statistically significant correlation (𝑝= 0.0747 and 𝑟 = 0.610). The average grade of the whole class generated a result of 7.9 for the first exam. In the second test, students obtained an average score 7.1. At the end of semester they had an average total of 7.6 scores, the minimum average to go to the next period being a score of 5.0 (Figures 1 and 2). It is possible to observe that students who obtained grades between 9.1 and 10 accessed 610 times, with average access by student 76,25 from a total of 8 undergraduates. The students who obtained grades between 8.0 and 9.0 accessed 1003 times, with average access by student 40,12 from a total of 25 learners. It is also possible to realize that students who obtained grades between 4.0 and 6.0 accessed 212 times, with average access by student 35,33 from a total of 6 academics. 2,0 4,0 6,0 8,00,0 10,0 Grades A cc es s t im es 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Moodle T2 Figure 2: Scatter plot showing the amount of hits in relation to the marks obtained in the second test. It can be observed that students who access less a digital teaching platform had a direct influence on their grades. 4. Discussion The education in dental schools needs to evolve to meet the health needs of the population. With this purpose, preparing students to develop a modern dentistry and with high performance in the area requires a rethinking in teaching and research methodology [11]. Our study was the first to analyze statistically the capacity of Moodle platform at the Dentistry graduation in Stomatol- ogy Department of São Paulo University. It was observed that access to Moodle platform was associated with improvement of knowledge and higher scores by students (𝑝 < 0.05) as well as in the Khoo study (2014), when he observed that students of postgraduate degree in pathology, when using the Moodle platform, were able to expand interactive learning experience beyond the classroom setting and to integrate multidisciplinary aspects in the learning of pathology [12]. Digital platform Moodle was able to supply the needs of the students in this study and help them to obtain information about the subject during the entire semester, corroborating with the study conducted by the Dalian Medical University, where 385 dental school students were randomly recruited to complete a questionnaire about the computerized teaching methods and all questionnaires were analyzed. A large por- tion said the use of computerized methods in teaching is a useful addition to the studies where it can be concluded that computerized teaching methods have the potential to help dentistry undergraduate students [13]. Although our study did not evaluate the importance of digital methods in oral medicine teaching, we can affirm that the virtual platform provides a great material and a supplement for students as an adequate form of study. The association between regular classes and with a virtual learning environment through Moodle has demonstrated the feasibility to improvements in student performance in stoma- tology being able to overextend to foreign students of isolated regions where the technology is under development [13]. The development of this study evaluated quantitatively and statistically the direct impact of Moodle in teaching and learning process of the undergraduate students of Bauru 4 Education Research International School of Dentistry, a pioneer in this type of analysis in the field of stomatology and oral medicine, since the search of the current literature was not possible to find textual references. The digital platform Moodle was associated with better grade for those students who access it for more times and was able to supply the needs of the students and help them to obtain information about the oral medicine. The Moodle allows students to study the content before it is administered in the classroom setting, increasing the yield in practical activities, as well as the weighted mean of the course. To this end, the Moodle material must be dynamic and interactive in order to encourage students to study content that tends not to initially arouse their interest. Conflicts of Interest No competing financial interests exist. Acknowledgments The authors of this study would like to thank CAPES (Coor- denação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nı́vel Superior) for their financial support of this study and Janáına Gomes Maciel, Patricia Kerges Bueno, and Laura Bernardo, the monitors that inserted and collected platform data. References [1] J. Cook, “The role of virtual learning environments,” LTSN Bioscience Bulletin, 2002. [2] F. Lau and J. Bates, “A review of e-learning practices for under- graduate medical education,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 71–87, 2004. [3] M. C. Garbin, S. F. do Amaral, C. O. Mendes, E. Ogasawara, and J. M. Rocha, “Adaptation of the moodle for application in distance education course at the state university of campinas,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 46, pp. 2514–2518, 2012. [4] M. Ketterl, R. Mertens, and O. Vornberger, “Bringing Web 2.0 to web lectures,” Interactive Technology and Smart Education, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 82–96, 2009. [5] X. J. Qin, J. Kong, L. Lu, Z. F. Lu, and X. K. Wang, “Application of problem-based learning in a large class in stomatology course,” Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, vol. 68, no. 4, pp. 739– 743, 2010. [6] M. M. A. E. Tantawi, “Factors affecting postgraduate dental students’ performance in a biostatistics and research design course,” Journal of Dental Education, vol. 73, no. 5, pp. 614–623, 2009. [7] M. M. A. El Tantawi, “Evaluation of a blog used in a dental terminology course for first-year dental students,” Journal of Dental Education, vol. 72, no. 6, pp. 725–735, 2008. [8] R. J. Murphy, S. A. Gray, S. R. Straja, and M. C. Bogert, “Student learning preferences and teaching implications,” Journal of dental education, vol. 68, no. 8, pp. 859–866, 2004. [9] N. S. Ali, K. Hodson-Carlton, and M. Ryan, “Students’ per- ceptions of online learning: implications for teaching.,” Nurse educator, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 111–115, 2004. [10] I. M. Inuwa, M. Al Rawahy, V. Taranikanti, and O. Habbal, “Anatomy “steeplechase” online: Necessity sometimes is the catalyst for innovation,” Anatomical Sciences Education, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 115–118, 2011. [11] S. A. Kawas, K. S. Fakhruddin, and B. U. Rehman, “A com- parative study of oral health attitudes and behavior between dental and medical students: the impact of dental education in United Arab Emirates,” Journal of International Dental and Medical Research, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 6–10, 2010. [12] U. S. Khoo, “Innovative use of technologies to enhance the teaching of pathology,” Pathology, vol. 46, p. S31, 2014. [13] C. Shi, L. Wang, X. Li et al., “Virtual classroom helps medical education for both Chinese and foreign students,” European Journal of Dental Education, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 217–221, 2015. 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work_ol7cfdfzm5dnncm46br24rwqk4	----	ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology Vol. 18, No. 3, November 2010, 193–205 ISSN 0968-7769 print/ISSN 1741-1629 online © 2010 Association for Learning Technology DOI: 10.1080/09687769.2010.529109 http://www.informaworld.com Enhancing online distance education in small rural US schools: a hybrid, learner-centred model Claire de la Varre*, Julie Keane and Matthew J. Irvin University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA Taylor and FrancisCALT_A_529109.sgm (Received 9 February 2010; final version received 30 September 2010) 10.1080/09687769.2010.529109ALT-J Research in Learning Technology0968-7769 (print)/1741-1629 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis183000000November 2010Ms Clairede la Varreclaire_delavarre@unc.edu Online distance education (ODE) has become pervasive and can potentially transform pedagogical practices across primary, secondary and university-based educational systems. ODE is considered a flexible option for non-traditional students such as adult learners and home-schoolers, and a convenient way to deliver remedial courses. ODE is also a feasible and attractive option for rural schools, which educate 29% of all K–12 students in the United States, and often struggle to provide advanced courses and attract highly qualified teachers. This paper presents qualitative data from both cohorts of a two-year, randomised, controlled research study of online distance learners in US rural high schools. Course providers in K–12 environments often rely on the teacher-facilitator model, which assigns a local staff member in the role of on-site facilitator to operate equipment, distribute instructional materials, and answer questions. In order to address issues of isolation and interaction, and to attend to the local context, our study aimed to develop a learner-centred model of social support at the local, small-school level that emphasises communication and interaction. This expanded role links the local classroom environment more closely with the online environment. The responsibilities for ensuring student success are distributed between online instructor and facilitator: a form of hybrid learning. Keywords: online distance education; rural; K–12 Introduction Online distance education (ODE) is widely acknowledged to have the potential to deliver an individualised, learner-focused educational experience that facilitates the communicative and collaborative skills needed by the twenty-first-century workforce for lifelong and independent learning (Hathaway 2009; Papastergiou 2006; Rumble 2001). The uptake of ODE in US high schools is increasing rapidly and the majority of states now have their own virtual schools (Barbour and Reeves 2009; Hannum and McCombs 2008). ODE is considered a flexible option for non-traditional learners such as adults and home-schooled students, and a convenient way to deliver remedial courses. ODE is also a feasible and attractive option for rural schools, which educate 29% of all K–12 (primary and secondary) students in the United States, yet often struggle to provide advanced courses and attract highly qualified teachers (Simonson, Schlosser, and Hanson 1999; Simonson et al. 2006). *Corresponding author. Email: claire_delavarre@unc.edu 194 C. de la Varre et al. While a large body of research has shown no significant difference in learning outcomes when comparing ODE with traditional face-to-face classes, online students frequently report feelings of isolation and ODE has attrition rates sometimes greater than 50% (Carr 2000; Parker 1999; Roblyer 2006; Simpson 2004; Zweig 2003). In addition to these concerns, the adoption of computer-based technologies in education has outpaced the ability of researchers to provide empirical and theory-based support for the efficacy of such technologies (Cavanaugh et al. 2004; Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001; Slough and Mueller 2006). As a result, theories applied to ODE tend to come either from classroom-based educational research, research into online media in the field of communications, or sociological literature (Hiltz et al. 2000). In addition, the bulk of ODE research has been conducted on samples of post-secondary learners, so evidence to support positive outcomes and thus the use of specific technologies or strategies in ODE is currently minimal or lacking, particularly in K–12 populations (Barbour 2007; Cavanaugh et al. 2004). This paper presents qualitative data from a two-year, randomised, controlled research study of online distance learners in US rural high schools. Course providers in K–12 environments often rely on the teacher-facilitator model, which assigns a local staff member in the role of on-site facilitator to operate equipment, distribute instructional materials, and answer questions. The standard training for facilitators, often known as mentors, typically includes technical training, and suggestions for helping students keep track of assignments and monitoring progress (Michigan Department of Education 2002). For populations of rural students in small schools, we hypothesised that this level of support was insufficient to address issues of isolation and attend to the local context. Our study aimed to develop a learner-centred model of social support at the local, small school level that emphasised communication and interaction in addition to the basic duties expected of a facilitator. This expanded teacher-facilitator model offers an enhanced role for the on-site facilitator that includes frequent communication with online instructors, contact with local school staff and parents when necessary, encour- aging students to interact with their online peers, and creating a positive classroom climate. Our model allows facilitators to offer support tailored to the unique needs of their particular community of learners, something that is difficult for a remote online instructor who may have over 100 online students spread over multiple course sections. This expanded role links the local classroom environment more closely with the online environment, and the responsibilities for ensuring student success are distributed between online instructor and facilitator. Students are enrolled in a course delivered completely online, yet also meet and interact face-to-face in their local class- rooms every day with their facilitator. The course thus becomes a form of hybrid (blended) learning, which is frequently seen as an effective way of harnessing and integrating the best features of Internet-based and face-to-face teaching and learning (Garrison and Kanuka 2004). This expanded teacher-facilitator model is intended to be sustainable in rural environments and replicable to other contexts where ODE is implemented. Given the expanded use of on-site facilitators to support students in online courses, it was necessary to fully understand whether our model more effectively addressed issues of student isolation and dropout compared with the standard facilitator training. Analysis of quantitative data from the first cohort revealed significant differences between intervention and control groups in terms of student retention, with control group schools dropping out at a much greater rate (44%) than the intervention group ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology 195 schools (11%) (de la Varre et al. 2009; Hannum et al. 2008). Data from the second cohort were less conclusive, which we hypothesised was due in part to teacher expe- rience, and to smaller initial numbers of students per teacher. The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide a more detailed picture of facilitators’ classroom practices that the quantitative findings alone cannot address. Qualitative data, from facilitator interviews and teacher debriefing meetings, was intended to help us understand whether there were differences between intervention and control facilitator practices in the classroom and whether those could be connected to our learner- centred facilitator training model. Literature review The twenty-first century has seen exponential growth in online education in the United States, with almost all public colleges and universities now offering online courses, and over 700,000 K–12 students being served through virtual schools in the 2005/06 school year (Picciano and Seaman 2007; Tucker 2007). As a result, institutions have updated their computing infrastructures and incorporated emerging technologies to accommodate online courses and students. This often necessitates profound changes in administrative, financial, and delivery models, requiring new forms of training for teachers, and different modes of assessment and evaluation (Tucker 2007). The major- ity of states now have their own virtual high schools (Barbour and Reeves 2009; Hannum and McCombs 2008), many of which can be considered a new kind of insti- tution, a combination of ‘entrepreneurship and technology’ (Tucker 2007). In a survey of online teachers, 74% said that their experiences in teaching online changed their teaching practices both online and in traditional classroom settings (Tucker 2007). Online learning has the potential to be transformative on many levels (Garrison and Kanuka 2004). This includes opening up access to a broader and more diverse range of students than has traditionally attended college campuses, and offering a feasible alternative to rural schools that often struggle to fund and attract highly- qualified teachers and offer advanced courses (Hobbs 2004). There are additional benefits for rural communities. ODE could potentially broaden educational and career opportunities for high school students, and rural schools better prepare their students for post-secondary education where digital literacy is essential. Such students, once professionally qualified, are more likely to return to rural areas to live and work (Collins 1999; Easterbrook et al. 1999). Thus investment in ODE at the high school level ultimately could have transformative effects on rural communities, many of which are currently experiencing population decline. Online learning can be particularly effective at the point where it intersects with face-to-face classroom learning. Hybrid (blended) learning, currently being used by 63% of US school districts (Allen and Seaman 2006), combines the benefits of asynchronous discus- sion, such as time for reflection and the ability to edit comments before posting, with the immediacy of classroom-based learning experiences and in-person opportunities for community-building (Garrison and Kanuka 2004). Referring to higher education settings, Garrison and Kanuka (2004) believe that in online and hybrid courses it is vital to assess both the outcomes (e.g. satisfaction, dropout, and academic achieve- ment) and the learning process. It seems appropriate to apply this statement to K–12 environments too. Student isolation, attributed to a lack of personal interaction and support, and frustration caused by the absence of non-verbal cues, is a significant factor in the high 196 C. de la Varre et al. dropout rates commonly reported in ODE studies (Carr 2000; Diaz 2002; Moore and Kearsley 1996; Picciano 2002; Roblyer 2006). Students who are geographically separated may feel disconnected and ODE courses are often characterised by a lack of teacher immediacy—a psychological closeness between teacher and student (Arbaugh 2001; Rourke et al. 1999). The ‘distance’ in ODE can be problematic for any student, but is particularly so for rural students (Hobbs 2004). Rural students are accustomed to being educated in learning environments with high levels of intimacy and teacher immediacy, and typically feel a strong sense of belonging and connectedness both to school and community (de la Varre et al. 2009; Hedlund 1993). In spite of having adequate academic and technological abilities, the adjustment to the demands of ODE may be greater for rural students than for their urban or suburban counterparts (Hannum et al. 2009). Online learners in rural high schools have their own unique needs due to a combination of individual characteristics, the characteris- tics of their rural community, and local environmental factors (de la Varre et al. 2009). Research in ODE rarely examines the local context in which the learning happens (Dingle et al. 2000) nor does it typically consider that learning, and the social interac- tions that affect students’ experiences of the course, often occur outside the online environment (de la Varre et al. 2009). The presence of a local facilitator, who acts as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the online instructor, is thought to enhance learning (Hannum and McCombs 2008). Little research has specifically examined the impact of the facil- itator role on outcomes; however, Singh and Dika (2003) found that a combination of academic and social support from adults was important for positive outcomes in terms of educational aspirations, academic effort expended, and academic self-concept. The intervention All facilitators in the study were given basic, Web-based training before the start of the course. This included instruction in how to use Blackboard, how to contact the dedicated help desk, how to access grades, how to help their students log in, and tips to give students about online etiquette, good Internet citizenship, and how to avoid plagiarism. Facilitators were to keep the online instructor abreast of student issues and any unexpected local events. The facilitators in the intervention group were given scenario-based training in applying learner-centred classroom practices to motivate and encourage their students, and develop a supportive classroom climate. This included supporting their students in their online interactions with other remote students and the online instructor as well as in their interactions with peers in the physical environment. These practices were based on the set of 14 learner-centred psychological principles (LCPs) developed by the American Psychological Association (1997), which were intended to guide educa- tional reform at all levels. The evidence on the effectiveness of these learner-centred principles in classrooms has been widely documented (McCombs and Miller 2007). LCPs indicate that learning is social in nature and that social interactions are a key element in learning. LCPs also outline other factors critical for learning, focusing on four research-validated domains: cognitive and metacognitive, motivational and affec- tive, developmental and social, and individual differences. In recently applying this theoretical framework to ODE, McCombs and Vakili (2005) suggest that interper- sonal connections foster success in both face-to-face and online learning environ- ments. Creating an environment that supports both the online and offline interaction is seen as a vital contributor to success: “focusing on building collaboration and ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology 197 group interaction may be more important than focusing on individual participation” (Simonson et al. 2006, 83). The intervention training module involved a substantial discussion component in which intervention facilitators interacted with their peers across the country via online discussion forums on a variety of topics. The scenario-based training was intended to foster the development of an online community of facilitators to whom the individuals in the intervention group could turn for advice and support in their facilitator role. Methods The interview data upon which this paper is based come from a study funded by the US Department of Education. In order to compare our expanded model of facilitator support with the standard facilitator training usually provided by online courses, a randomised, controlled, cluster study was designed with two cohorts (2007/08 and 2008/09) comprising over 700 students from 93 rural schools geographically dispersed across the United States. Each school was required to appoint an on-site facilitator to be present when the students took the class each day. See Appendix 1 for full details of the study design. Data collection All facilitators were interviewed by telephone at the end of the academic year. Inter- vention facilitators were also interviewed at the mid-year point. Part of the mid-year interview involved structured feedback from an online survey administered only to intervention facilitators and their students that enabled comparison of perceptions of facilitators’ learner-centred practices in the classroom (see de la Varre et al. 2009; Hannum et al. 2008). Additionally, online instructors were debriefed at the end of each year, when they discussed their perceptions of how well each facilitator had performed in terms of communication and responsiveness. These interviews were conducted in order to understand the relationship between the intervention and actual facilitator practices within the classroom throughout the year. Data analysis We transcribed the facilitator interviews and teacher debriefing meetings, and devel- oped a coding scheme using the most common themes that emerged from the data. Each main theme could be further divided into a number of sub-categories. Interview transcripts were imported into qualitative data analysis software (MAXQDA 2007) and coded, allowing us to further explore these categories and their interrelationships. The themes that emerged from the data were then tied back to the conceptual frame- work of the study that incorporated LCPs, as well as best practices that have been substantiated by research in distance learning courses over the past decade (Berge 1995). We applied the same coding scheme across both intervention and control facilitators to compare interview responses across these themes. This enabled us not only to compare their overall experiences in the course, but also to gain a better under- standing of how facilitator training that incorporated LCPs might affect facilitator practices and student support. To contextualise the comments provided by facilitators during interviews, we also incorporate qualitative findings from the year-end debrief- ing meetings with the online instructors. 198 C. de la Varre et al. Results Based on our analyses, the main themes that emerged from coding the transcripts of facilitator interviews were: expectations and role definition, strategies used in the classroom, online training, communication, perceptions of student experiences, and long-term benefits for students. Expectations and role definition For the facilitators in the control group, training-related feedback pointed to a lack of clarity about their role and the standard training materials did not seem to offer enough guidance. One facilitator commented: “I wanted more clarification about what the goals were for the course and knowing better what my role as facilitator should be …what is appropriate, and how and when should I help the students”. Facilitators in the control group often made suggestions about what they thought a facilitator should do, such as: “it might have been good to read along with the class, but I didn’t want to contaminate the experiment by altering the class environment” or “ideally I would see the facilitator role as being a bit like a teaching assistant in college courses”. Unfortunately the perceived lack of clarity over role might have interfered with the control group facilitators’ natural instincts in the classroom. One control facilitator described an incident where students had issues with a particular examination: “they were really stumped and when I tried to talk with them I realized that I was crossing the line into teaching and so I backed away from these kinds of conversations entirely”. Another, who was an English teacher, was wary of helping with content- related questions although this frustrated the students: “I was unsure of what line I was crossing”. Although role ambiguity did not appear to be an issue with the intervention facil- itators, there were some comments regarding expectations. At least one intervention facilitator noted that a training scenario helped to clarify the facilitator role for her and that she was planning to adopt some of the strategies modelled: “I saw one or two of my students becoming discouraged when they didn’t do better on the quiz. I’m begin- ning to see my role as cheerleader and encourager”. For some intervention facilitators, particularly those with an English teaching background, “the hardest part of the facilitator role was not being the teacher”. One facilitator even wondered “how the other facilitators coped, especially those not from an English background”. The online instructors had their own opinions about facilita- tors who were also English teachers: You’d think that English teachers would make better facilitators because they can help them with the assignments … but at the same time if they don’t see the merit in the assignment they are going to tell the kids “if I was teaching this assignment then this is how I would do it …” Strategies used in the classroom Regardless of the fact that the facilitator is a non-teaching role, some facilitators did read the novels along with their students, initiated conversations about the course content, and arranged review sessions that were scheduled outside class time. Although not part of the expanded teacher-facilitator model, this teaching component brings the overall course environment closer to a traditional definition of blended ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology 199 learning for those classes where it occurred. However, the model should be easy to implement in rural school settings, so any available and committed staff member with a bachelor’s degree should be able to take on the role. It is unrealistic to expect that the facilitator should be a teacher, particularly in rural schools where staff members often perform multiple roles, and when a primary benefit of ODE for rural schools is that it provides access to courses and teachers that otherwise would be unavailable. All intervention facilitators encouraged students not to take mistakes too seriously and to see them as part of the distance learning process and the majority helped students see the value of learning as its own goal. One intervention facilitator said that she “kept telling the students that they were learning more than they thought”, while another “tried to impress upon them that bailing out when things get rough is not an option once you get to college”. Most intervention facilitators reported telling students that they consider themselves to be learners too: “I tried to impress upon the kids that this was a partnership, it makes them work harder if they know that”. Almost all inter- vention facilitators made themselves available for students to talk to, and saw their role as supporting and encouraging their students in various ways. Most also met with students to go over online learning problems or assignments they got wrong or led class discussions when students experienced difficulty. In several of the intervention schools, the facilitators were actively engaged in the students’ learning process, arranging for students to spend time with the English teacher on staff, and to speak to the school counsellor or even the principal, when necessary. Online training The intervention group facilitators had a lot to say about their scenario-based train- ing and participated in online discussion at 10 times the rate of their control group peers. A number of them liked the scenarios because they raised issues that were mirrored in the classroom during the year. They not only gave intervention facilita- tors ideas about how they should behave and interact with their students, but about what behaviours to expect from their students: “The scenarios were exactly what my kids were going through – it gave me a good range of ideas to try with my students”. Several intervention facilitators referred to the usefulness of specific scenarios in helping them manage situations in their own classrooms, particularly issues around student fears, course rigor, the online format, organisation, time management and peer interactions. Communication between peers One of the scenarios modelled ways to encourage students to interact with their peers, both in the local environment and online. While none of the control facilitators mentioned peer-to-peer communication, a number of intervention facilitators said they actively encouraged their students to talk to peers; for example, “Why don’t you come up with solutions then brainstorm with each other?” Some talked about the benefits of peer-to-peer discussion: I think it is great when my students ask each other for advice. They are learning better how to work with one another and pull ideas together, as well as be willing to listen to other points of view, which will be a good tool when doing any group work, such as the university classroom they will encounter in the future. 200 C. de la Varre et al. Another intervention facilitator noted that her students were enjoying the new perspectives they gained through interacting with their online peers, and that “this was their favorite part of this course”. Communication between facilitators and instructors Overall, facilitators in both the intervention and control groups talked frequently about their relationship with the online instructor. A couple of the intervention group facil- itators also mentioned the importance of keeping the online instructor abreast of local situations: “An important part of my role was to act as a go-between – making sure the online instructors were aware of what was happening locally”. Online instructors noted that their ‘best’ facilitators were those with whom they communicated frequently and developed a personal relationship, and those who also encouraged their students to contact the instructor when they needed help: “Most of the people that ended up emailing me on a regular basis ended up being good facilitators. Those that didn’t email me at all didn’t necessarily do something wrong, they are just not as good”. She added: “One would send me pictures every time one of her cows had a calf …”. Student communication with the online instructor Teachers believed that the students were asking fewer questions online than they would have in a face-to-face situation. One facilitator offered a possible explanation for this: “They didn’t ask as many questions as they would have in a face-to-face situation because didn’t expect a quick response”. Although the online instructors responded within a 24-hour period, differences in time zones and local schedules meant that course interactions were almost always asynchronous. Some facilitators encouraged their students to contact the online instructor directly when they needed help or had questions; but for students who needed an answer immediately, the questions would sometimes go unasked. One intervention facilitator negotiated with her school to allow the students to download and install Skype (www.skype.com) to communicate with the teacher. If that had been part of the communication from the start, she felt that the beginning of the year would have been much easier. In particular, it helped to “know the teacher was human”: My kids got a headset with microphone. With a few clicks, they were able to carry on a verbal conversation! The first boy to talk to her said afterwards, “She’s nice!” It brings a whole new feeling to the class to actually realize the instructor is a real person, not just some sadistic slave-driving dragon. Student experiences Facilitators in both the control and intervention groups reported overwhelmingly that the main challenges facing students taking the online College Board Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) class (http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/ about.html) were the rigour of the course and grading, the online format, the lack of face-to-face communication, and the lack of immediate feedback from the online instructor. Many facilitators echoed the following comment: The students had a difficult time initially with the format. They did not like the lack of immediate feedback from the teacher that they are used to in a face to face class. It took them a while to get used to the online environment. ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology 201 Several facilitators noted that their students had no idea before the class started about the volume or rigor of the work: the “AP level was frustrating initially – of course they did not realize how much work it was”. Several facilitators commented on the combination of AP rigour and online format: “with the first unit, the adjustment to the online format had their heads spin- ning” and “they had never had experience with AP and they were overwhelmed and wanted the social aspect of the traditional face to face course”. These were particularly difficult experiences for many students because, in most cases, they were the highest- achieving students in their school. The lack of face-to-face interaction was difficult for many students to overcome, and communication from a distance required different strategies. According to one facilitator: “Students who might speak up in class when they have a question don’t always email questions when they think of them as it requires more effort to do so”. Several facilitators believed this was particularly true for students in small rural schools, for example: Students are used to the intimate, small rural setting – have grown up in that place, kindergarten is only one building away from high school and everything is very familiar. It was hard for them to adjust to the online setting and they were frustrated with not being able to ask questions and get an immediate response. Long-term benefits Facilitators in both the intervention and control groups were aware that those students who persisted in the course benefited in a number of ways; however, while all facili- tators recognised personal growth in students, only the intervention facilitators mentioned that they actively discussed the longer-term benefits with their students. As one control facilitator noted: this was a great experience for the child that stuck it out: in terms of organization skills, ability to converse about literature; I have seen amazing growth. This girl is now confi- dent about heading to college, and I wish the other students could have stuck it out too. At another control school, the facilitator said “For a couple of my kids this class was perfect – they are creative, reflective, inward looking students, and I saw a lot of personal growth over the course of the year in all the students”. A third control facil- itator stated that this course helped to prepare college-bound students who would be facing a very different learning environment at university: “I really felt that this course prepared these students for the next level – all of them are going on to college, two of them with full scholarships”. One intervention facilitator believed that “the course completers show a lot more confidence and think about life more”. A number of others commented on personal growth and said they saw students taking increased responsi- bility for work as the year progressed, “It was hard work, but worth it – they definitely feel more prepared and glad they stuck with it”. Several of the intervention facilitators mentioned proactively discussing the current and future benefits of this course with their students: I keep reminding them what they are getting out of this and what knowledge they will go to college with. Just being involved in this educational process, being exposed to the readings, the discussions, communicating with others … they are learning a lot. 202 C. de la Varre et al. Discussion Berge (1995) states that, in online learning models, four components typically make up the online instructor role: pedagogical, social, organisational and technical. In our course, using the expanded teacher-facilitator model, these components are distributed between the online instructor and the on-site facilitator. The instructor is responsible for teaching the course and following the curriculum, while the social, organisational and technical components are the joint responsibility of the instructor and the facilita- tor, who communicate regularly. In this study, the online instructor included opportu- nities for social interaction within the course, primarily through asynchronous discussion forums, while the facilitator provided local support. The instructor estab- lished a timetable and schedule of assignments while the onsite facilitator assisted students in learning time management and self-regulation skills. The instructor covered basic technical skills for the students, while the facilitator was available to help with technical questions in the local classroom. These mutual responsibilities created a truly hybrid learning environment. The extent to which the onsite facilitators took responsibility for the social, organisational and technical areas of the course depended on their own personal characteristics, echoing a similar finding by Kirby and Driscoll (1997). These characteristics included learner-centredness, professional training, assignment to the intervention or control group, their perception of the facilitator role, and the needs and characteristics of their students. All facilitators reported that students were frustrated and overwhelmed, particu- larly at the beginning of the course. However, intervention facilitators seemed to have a greater variety of strategies to employ in the situations that occurred over the academic year, and found the scenarios they had encountered during training to be relevant and realistic. This may explain why they felt more comfortable in their role and better able to anticipate students’ needs. Conversely, control facilitators were less clear about their role and sometimes expressed nervousness about stepping outside perceived boundaries. Facilitators in this study were all staff in small rural schools and most knew their students very well. Some who were teachers had also taught these students previously or currently. The emphasis on LCPs in the training encouraged the intervention group to build on these close, pre-existing relationships and to provide students with individ- ualised, timely, local support for online learning. Overall, intervention facilitators held a broad view of the value of online learning and recognised the importance of exposing these students to rigorous coursework. One intervention facilitator summarised the experience of her class: Attempting difficult challenges will raise awareness of what it takes to achieve goals. Even if you don’t get that top grade, you might learn valuable lessons in organization, dedication, and work ethics. This can lead to higher self-esteem and the willingness to persevere through difficult situations again. Conclusion The students and facilitators in this study had access to an online, academically- advanced course that would not otherwise have been available. Intervention facilita- tors learned new strategies to offer learner-centred support to their rural online students as they engaged with rigorous content and interacted with their virtual peers. Online teachers felt that the best facilitators were ones with whom they had a good, ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology 203 working relationship, who were consistently responsive in their interactions with the teacher, and engaged with and interested in their students. Facilitators in general saw this course as an important step in preparing students for post-secondary education. While technology in education has promised transformational change, it has often come up short in its potential to impact large institutions of learning (Cuban 2001; Tyack and Cuban 2004). However, the near-ubiquitous implementation of online learning, particularly as hybrid classes, requires these same institutions to update infrastructure and enable pedagogical shifts to support learners (Tucker 2007). Both of these steps were taken in this study. In their meta-analysis, Cavanaugh et al. (2004) included a caveat: “The temptation may be to attempt to apply or adapt findings from studies of K–12 classroom learning or adult distance learning, but K–12 distance education is fundamentally unique”. We would add that rural K–12 distance education is fundamentally unique. Our expanded teacher-facilitator model incorporates the context of the local schools and communities, builds on the traits that often character- ise rural school environments, and links the virtual course to the educational setting in which the student is physically embedded. By doing so, our model increases the leverage for ODE to transform education for rural high school students. Acknowledgements This work was supported by a Research and Development Center grant (R305A04056) from the Institute of Education Sciences to the National Research Center on Rural Education Support. References Allen, E., and J. Seaman. 2006. Making the grade: Online education in the United States, 2006. Needham, MA: The Sloan Consortium. American Psychological Association. 1997. Learner-centered psychological principles: A framework for school reform and redesign. http://www.apa.org/ed/cpse/LCPP.pdf. Arbaugh, J.B. 2001. How instructor immediacy behaviors affect student satisfaction and learning in web-based courses, Business Communication Quarterly 64, no. 4: 42. Barbour, M.K. 2007. Principles of effective web-based content for secondary school students: Teacher and developer perspectives. Journal of Distance Education 21, no. 3: 93–114. Barbour, M.K., and T.C. Reeves. 2009. The reality of virtual schools: A review of the literature. Computers & Education 52: 402–16. Berge, Z.L. 1995. Facilitating computer conferencing: Recommendations from the field. Educational Technology 35, no. 1: 22–30. Carr, S. 2000. As distance education comes of age, the challenge is keeping the students. Chronicle of Higher Education 47, no. 8: A39–41. Cavanaugh, C., K. Gillian, J. Kromney, M. Hess, and R. Blomeyer. 2004. The effects of distance education on K–12 student outcomes: A meta-analysis. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Collins, T. 1999. Attracting and retaining teachers in rural areas. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 438152). Cuban, L. 2001. Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. de la Varre, C., J. Keane, M.J. Irvin, and W. Hannum. 2009. Social support for online learning. In Handbook of research on socio-technical design and social networking systems, ed. B. Whitworth and A. de Moor, 574–87. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Diaz, D.P. 2002. Online drop rates revisited. The Technology Source May/June. http://tech- nologysource.org/article/online_drop_rates_revisited/. Dingle, J., L. Napp, W. Gooch, and A. Kelly. 2000. Today’s fad or tomorrow’s future? http:// horizon.unc.edu/projects/issues/papers/Dingle.html. 204 C. de la Varre et al. Easterbrook, M., M. Godwin, R. Wilson, G. Hodgetts, G. Brown, R. Pong, and E. Najgebauer. 1999. Rural background and clinical rural rotations during medical training: Effect on practice location. Canadian Medical Association Journal 160: 1159–63. Garrison, D.R., T. Anderson, and W. Archer. 2001. Critical thinking, cognitive presence and computer conferencing in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 15, no. 1: 7–23. Garrison, D., and H. Kanuka. 2004. Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. Internet and Higher Education 7: 95–105. Hannum, W.H., and B.L. McCombs. 2008. Enhancing distance learning for today’s youth with learner-centered principles. Educational Technology 48, no. 3: 11–21. Hannum, W.H., M.J. Irvin, P-W. Lei, and T.W. Farmer. 2008. Effectiveness of using learner- centered principles on student retention in distance education courses in rural schools. Distance Education 29: 211–29. Hannum, W.H., M.J. Irvin, J.B. Banks, and T.W. Farmer. 2009. Distance education use in rural schools. Journal of Research in Rural Education 24, no. 3: 1–15. Hathaway, D.M. 2009. Assessing quality dimensions and elements of online learning enacted in a higher education setting. PhD diss., George Mason University. Hedlund, D. 1993. Listening to rural adolescents: Views on the rural community and the importance of adult interactions. Journal of Research in Rural Education 9, no. 3: 150–9. Hiltz, S.R., N. Coppola, N. Rotter, M. Turoff, and R. Benbunan-Fich. 2000. Measuring the importance of collaborative learning for the effectiveness of ALN: A multi-measure, multi-method approach. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 4, no. 2: 103–25. Hobbs, V. 2004. The promise and the power of online learning in rural education. Arlington, VA: Rural School and Community Trust. Kirby, E., and M. Driscoll. 1997. Facilitator and student roles and performance in a high school online education course. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, March, in Chicago, IL. MAXQDA. 2007. Software for qualitative data analysis, 1989–2010. VERBI software. Consult. Sozialforschung GmbH, Berlin-Marburg-Amöneburg, Germany. McCombs, B.L. and L. Miller. 2007. Learner-centered classroom practices and assessments: Maximizing student motivation, learning and achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. McCombs, B. L., and D. Vakili. 2005. A learner-centered framework for e-learning. Teachers College Record 107: 1582–600. Michigan Department of Education. 2002. Guidance on virtual learning – Educational alterna- tives. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/virtual02_2002_18549_7.pdf. Moore, M.G., and G. Kearsley. 1996. Distance education: A systems view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Papastergiou, M. 2006. Course management systems as tools for the creation of online learning environments: Evaluation from a social constructivist perspective and implica- tions for their design. International Journal on E-Learning 5, no. 4: 593–622. Parker, A. 1999. A study of variables that predict dropout from distance education. International Journal of Educational Technology 1, no. 2: 1–10. Picciano, A.G. 2002. Beyond student perceptions: Issues of interaction, presence, and performance in an online course. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 6, no. 1: 21–40. Picciano, A.G., and J. Seaman. 2007. K–12 online learning: A survey of US school district administrators. Needham, MA: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Roblyer, M.D. 2006. Virtually successful: Defeating the dropout problem through online school programs. Phi Delta Kappan 88: 31–6. Rourke, L., Anderson, T., Garrison, D.R., and Archer, W. 1999. Assessing social presence in asynchronous text-based computer conferencing. The Journal of Distance Education 14, no. 2: 50–71. Rumble, G. 2001. Re-inventing distance education: 1971–2001. International Journal of Lifelong Education 20, nos 1/2: 31–43. Simonson, M., C. Schlosser, and D. Hanson. 1999. Theory and online education: A new discussion. American Journal of Distance Education 13: 60–75. ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology 205 Simonson, M., S. Smaldino, M. Albright, and S. Zvacek. 2006. Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of online education. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Simpson, O. 2004. The impact on retention of interventions to support distance learning. Open Learning 19, no. 1: 79–96. Singh, K., and S. Dika. 2003. The educational effects of rural adolescents’ social networks. Journal of Research in Rural Education 18, no. 2: 114–28. Slough, N., and C. Mueller. 2006. Exploring the effects of instructor feedback methods in asynchronous discussion forums. Paper presenetd at the AIB-SE(USA) 2006 Annual Meeting, Clearwater Beach, FL. Tyack, D., and L. Cuban. 2004. Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Excerpts from a conversation at the Askwith education forum, Harvard School of Education, HGSE News. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/utopia03012004.html. Tucker, B. 2007. Laboratories of reform: Virtual high schools and innovation in public education. Education Sector Reports June. http://www.educationsector.org. Zweig, J.M. 2003. Vulnerable youth: Identifying their need for alternative educational settings. Washington DC: Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410828 _vulnerable_youth.pdf. Appendix 1. Description of study design In each cohort of the Enhancing Rural Online Learning study, students took a year-long online class in Advanced Placement (AP) English Composition and Literature. The AP course was offered through LearnNC, a North Carolina-based organisation that developed the teacher- facilitator model employed in the study. The course was delivered through Blackboard, a commonly-used, off-the-shelf content management system. Schools were required to have a minimum of four students to be eligible for inclusion in the study. Participating schools were randomly assigned to either the intervention group or control group, with the intervention group being exposed to an enhanced learner-centred approach. Once schools were assigned, sections of the online course, with 20–25 students per section, were created to include up to four schools. Each course section formed a discrete, virtual classroom and each of the five online instructors taught several sections. A pre-test modelled on an AP English examination was administered to students before they started the online course. The results from the pre-test showed no differences in the scores or abilities of the students across groups. Schools within each treatment group were randomly distributed across instructors, with instructors blind to the assignment of schools. To prevent contamination, each section consisted of either all-control students or all-intervention students and peer-to-peer interactions were limited to those peers in the same section. While students were assigned a specific class period each day where they collectively complete that day’s assignments, the class was asyn- chronous because schools within any given section were on different schedules and often in different time zones. The online instructor had to respond to students within a 24-hour period. 
work_olglzop6ffdz7oolqqmhqjft4i	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. 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As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_onit5qgpeza7fiix3lka3g2zvu	----	Adoption of Web 2.0 tools in distance education Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 818–823 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com World Conference on Educational Sciences 2009 Adoption of Web 2.0 tools in distance education Yasemin Koçak Usluela*, Sacide Güzin Mazmana aHacettepe University, Faculty of Education Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Beytepe/Ankara, 06800 Turkey Received October 22, 2008; revised December 25, 2008; accepted January 06, 2009 Abstract This study has two purposes. First is to explain possible educational utilization of Web 2.0 tools, namely blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networks, from the point of importance of interaction for distance education. The second purpose of this study is to investigate adoption process of Web 2.0 tools in distance education by defining theories and models which have different construct that effect this process. Because the nature and structure of both distance education and Web 2.0 include multifaceted and dynamic variables, the limitation of utilization from only single diffusion, adoption or acceptance model or theory is underlined and it is proposed to handle a holistic view or using different models and theories suitable for research variables. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Diffusion; innovation; acceptance; distance education; Web 2.0 1. Introduction In distance education which is which is the basis of different learning forms as e-learning, web based learning, online learning and virtual learning, providing interaction has always been an important issue. In many researches, significance of interaction has been underlined and necessity of different interaction forms (student-teacher, student-student, student-content etc.) has been revealed by different technologies for quality of learning, satisfaction of students, eliminating isolation feeling and effective learning outcomes (Daunt, 1999; Brady, 2004; Su et al., 2005). Technology plays a key role especially for promoting interaction, delivering education and providing communication between individuals. Keegan (2006) explained that distance learning systems use technology to separate learner from the teacher and learning group while maintaining the integrity of education process and attempting to replace the interpersonal communication and the inter subjectivity which is the essence of education transaction between teachers and taught by a personal form of communication mediated by technology. Interaction in distance education is not limited to audio and video, or solely to teacher-student interactions, it must also represents the connectivity, the students’ feel with the distance teacher, aides, peers etc., otherwise without interaction students become autonomous, isolated and procrastinates and drops out (Sherry, 1996). As a matter of fact, emerging technologies and changing pedagogies bring out the necessity for more effective two way communication, promoting interaction and collaborative working, sharing and flexible participation. 1877-0428 © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.146 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Yasemin Koçak Usluel et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 818–823 819 E-mail address: kocak@hacettepe.edu.tr 2. Web 2.0 Tools in Distance Education The first used technologies, radio, tv, one way video conferences, e-mail, discussion forums etc, provided a communication between users, however, they were lack of effective interaction and collaboration. Users were passive consumers of content with these tools as many of them have been called Web 1.0. To fulfill the shortages of Web 1.0 and to provide more effective interaction and collaboration, investigation for the ways of using blogs effectively, wikis, podcasts and social network in education has been started. The main characteristic of these tools called Web 2.0, is users’ active participation in the content of creation process. In studies of learning and teaching, as well as efficacious evolution of technology, importance of active participation, critical thinking, social presence, collaborative learning and two way communications are also underlined for quality learning (Beldarrin, 2006). However, necessity of collaborative technology that leads the student toward achieving desired learning outcomes, requirement for flexible models that allow designers to begin at any given point in the process and purpose of technology using in the instructional design framework show that emerging technologies have an impact on new models of teaching and new ways of learning in distance education (Beldarrain, 2006). It is suggested that by the interactive technologies and medias which are provided by Web 2.0, support these pedagogic approaches (Ferdig, 2007). The most common tools of Web 2.0 including blog, wiki, podcast and social network are discussed. Blog: Blogs are also called online diaries which enable users, without requirement of any technical skill, to create, publish and organize their own web pages that contain dated content, entries, comments, discussion etc. in chronological order (Alexander, 2006; Castenade, 2007). People can publish information which they collect from various resources and establish relation between them in blogs. Additionally RSS and the possibility to post comments make blogs also a collaborative and social-interactive software application (Petter et al., 2005). As blogs are very easy and flexible tool for using, they are being utilized in various fields with various purposes. Especially, since blogs have various educational advantages, number of researches and studies in educational usage of blogs increased. It is suggested that blogs enhance writing skills, facilitate reflecting themselves, encourage critical thinking with collaborative learning, and provide feedback and active learning (Seitzinger, 2006). Blogs are well suited to serve as online personal journals because they enable students sharing files and resources and publishing blogs on the Internet and students has the possibility of writing for reader beyond classmates (Godwin, 2003). In addition, blogs can be used as e-portfolios that keep records of personal development process, reflections and achievement (Lu, 2007). Wiki: According to Leuf and Cunningham, creators of the original wiki concept, “a wiki is a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web pages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information- a database where each page is easily edited by any user with a form-capable Web browser client” (Schwartz et al., 2004). Users can visit wiki, read and add content to wiki or update and organize content (text, image, video, link…) or structure of wiki (Augar et al., 2004). As wikis are free open source software, no one authorizes the creation of wiki pages and everyone is automatically authorized to write, edit and publish (Fountain, 2005). As blogs, wikis are also attracted attention in educational field for their advantages and usability, and studies about using wikis in education have increased. Wikis are considered to be effective tools for learning and teaching as they facilitate collaborative learning, provide collaborative writing, support project based learning, promote creativity, encourage critical searching, support inquiry based and social constructivist learning (Cress&Kimmerle, 2008; Guzdial et al., 2001 and Yukawa, 2006). Schwartz et al. (2004) has listed selection criteria of wikis for educational uses under 6 heading; cost, complexity, control, clarity, common technical framework, features. Some of other educational usage of wikis are also suggested as classroom websites, easy course administration and timetabling, easy online updating content, online dictionary, student feedback and self assessment, bibliographically organized class or group projects, virtual classes for online collaboration, creating frequently asked questions (FAQ) for classroom or students (Konieczny, 2007; Lamb, 2004; Zeinstejer, 2008). 820 Yasemin Koçak Usluel et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 818–823 Podcast: The term of podcast is constituted of words of iPod (portable digital audio player form apple) and broadcasting and they are basically digital audio programs that can be subscribed to and downloaded by users via RSS and listened to on either a variety of digital audio services or desktop computer (Petter et al., 2005). With on- demand nature and portability features, podcast allows users to catch up on audio content while completing other tasks without having to sit at a computer. They also have some limitations as being linear and one way, which is why they need to be integrated with blogs, online simulations and other more interactive channels (Kaplan- Leiserson, 2005). Especially as podcasting is being used with mobile devices, it can be viewed as another variant of mobile learning. Because of the time and cost resources are limitations for mobile learning, podcasting can be an alternative (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2005). Although podcasting is not a synchronous activity, it provides students information that will help them feel connected to learning community and this may be even pedagogically appropriate in some courses to allow students to create their own podcasts for the rest of the class members (Beldarrin, 2006). Social Networks: Social networks are software that support collaboration, knowledge sharing, interaction and communication of users from different places who come together with a common interest, need or goal (Pettenati & Ranier, 2006; Brandtzæg & Heim, 2007). Social networks are also known as range of applications that augments group interactions and shared spaces for collaboration, social connections, and aggregates information exchanges in a web-based environment (Bartlett-Bragg, 2006). Social networks can also be viewed as pedagogical tools that stem from their affordances of information discovery and sharing, attracting and supporting networks of people and facilitating connections between them, engaging users in informal learning and creative, expressive forms of behavior and identity seeking, while developing a range of digital illiteracies (Lee& McLoughlin, 2008). 3. Models and Theories about Adoption of Web 2.0 Tools in Distance Education As it is expected that potential advantages of Web 2.0 technologies for distance education should facilitate the adoption process of these tools; diffusion, adoption and acceptance of innovations are dynamic and multi-faceted. Ajjan and Hartshorne (2008) argued that Web 2.0 tools are a new trend of internet technologies which have many characteristics that support teaching and learning and there have been many studies about technology usage in education though, majority of them are limited to delivery of content and teaching course subject. Although They underlined that it is important to explore student and faculty awareness and use of Web 2.0 technologies, there have been limited studies about it. While investigating diffusion of Web 2.0 technologies in distance education, many different dimensions such as student, teacher, media, technology access, cost, efficacy of users, resources, social dimension etc., must be taken into consideration. Therefore, examining adoption of Web 2.0 in distance education with only one diffusion, adoption or acceptance theory and model can be inadequate. There have been different models and theories about diffusion, acceptance and adoption of an innovation. While some of them are grounded in social physiological context and focused on internal decision processes at individual level (Ajzen, 1991; Davis, 1989; Fishbein&Ajzen, 1975), others focused on features of innovation and focused on diffusion of new among users in a system (Moore&Benbasat, 1991; Rogers, 2003). When studying in Web 2.0 technologies and distance education context, it is necessary to consider individual decision processes and features of innovation both. So it can be suggested that investigating Web 2.0 adoption in distance education within a holistic view in the framework of Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Rogers, 2003), Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein&Ajzen, 1975), Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), Technology Acceptance Model I and II (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh and Davis, 2000) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003) would bring out more in depth and comprehensive approach. Diffusion of Innovation Theory: This theory analyzes the how an innovation diffuses in a social system. Rogers (2003) defined diffusion as “in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system”. This theory is based on four main components that are innovation, communication channel, time and social system. Rogers explained that time is involved in diffusion at three point; 1) innovation Yasemin Koçak Usluel et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 818–823 821 decision process (knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation), 2) innovativeness of an individual (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards) and 3) an innovator’s rate of adoption in a system. He also suggested that five characteristics of an innovation, namely relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability, influence rate of adoption of an innovation. Moore and Benbasat(1991) expanded the number of innovation characteristic to seven; three of them are directly adopted from Rogers (relative advantage, compatibility and trialability) and further four included ease of use, image, visibility and result demonstrability. Technology Acceptance Model I and II: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) basically adopted from Theory of Reasoned Action by Davis (1989) to predict acceptance and future usage of innovation. “Ease of use” and “usefulness” are determined as major factors which influence acceptance or rejection of an innovation by individuals in TAM. Davis suggested that if individuals believe that using an innovation could be effortless, this will lead to perception of ease of use and also if individuals believe that innovation helps them to increase their performance, and this will lead to perception of usefulness. According to TAM people it is more likely to use an innovation as they perceive easy and useful. Venkatesh and Davis (2000) proposed Technology Acceptance Model II (TAM II) with the aim of extending TAM to provide a detailed account of the key forces underlying judgments of perceived by including additional key determinants of perceived usefulness and usage intention constructs. External variables that effect perceived usefulness are divided into two groups as social influence processes and cognitive instrumental processes in TAM II. Constructs that spanning social influence processes are determined as subjective norm, voluntariness, and image and constructs that spanning cognitive instrumental processes are determined as job relevance, output quality, result demonstrability and perceived ease of use(Venkatesh ve Davis, 2000). Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior: Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) are grounded in social physiological context. TRA proposes that behavior of adopting an innovation is influenced directly by intention and intention is determined by attitude and subjective norms (Ajzen&Fishben, 1975). TPB is basically adopted from TRA by inclusion of a third determinant of intention as perceives behavioral control (Ajzen, 1991). The main reason for the inclusion of this construct is to underline that individuals do not have volitional control for their all behaviors and sometimes behaviors can be performed involuntary. Unified Theory of Acceptance and Usage Theory (UTAUT): To integrate the fragmented theory and research on individual acceptance of information technology, Venkatesh et al. (2003) set out a unified theoretical model that captures the essential elements of eight previously established models. While setting UTAUT 8 models namely, Diffusion of Innovation, Theory of Reasoned Action, Theory of Planned Action, Technology Acceptance Model, Combined TAM and TPB, Motivational Model, Social Cognitive Theory, Model of PC Utilization, after reviewing all constructs in the models, 7 constructs (effort expectancy, performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, attitude, self efficacy and anxiety) were found significant direct determinants of intention or usage in one or more of the individual models, but when theorizing UTAUT only four of these constructs (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions) taken into model. However the other 3 constructs, attitude, self efficacy and anxiety, were not found significantly influential. Beside the direct constructs, age, gender, experience and voluntariness of use were determined as significant moderators considered to be influential on main constructs. Finally, as result of the experimental studies, UTAUT was found for being able to be accounted for 70 percent of the variance in usage intention—a substantial improvement over any of the original eight models and their extensions (Venkatesh et. al, 2003). 4. Conclusion Because of continuous globalization of information, learning independent from time and place, cost, need for life long learning, effectiveness etc., distance education and other forms of education (web based learning, e-learning, online learning etc.) are being considered for utilization in different fields and levels of education. Providing interaction between students, teacher, content etc. has been a major factor since beginning of distance education and 822 Yasemin Koçak Usluel et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 818–823 developments in technology that provides interaction, has brought out necessity of continuous support for process. As Web 2.0 technologies support interaction process, many advantages of them have also been a response for questions about adoption of these technologies in distance education. On the other hand, one of the most important ways of obtaining effective outcomes with these technologies, is individuals’ acceptance and usage of technology in system and there has been many studies in the framework of different models and theories in this field(vaan Raaij and Schepers, 2008). While some of these studies were conducted quantitatively, others were performed qualitatively (A kar & Usluel, 2002; To et al., 2008). It can be suggested that different dimensions of adoption process would be explained by the problem of the research together with the effects of method used. Of course, it is well known that all dimensions of a question cannot be handled with only one single research. But the need for more comprehensive and in depth studies about adoption of innovations is also clear Therefore, it can be suggested that utilization from various and different theories and research methods will strengthen the studies in this field. While investigating adoption of these tools in distance education, researches for a holistic view by utilizing various theories and models like Venkatesh et al. (2003) may be needed. Further researches could establish a new model by selecting appropriate constructs from previous models and theories and could examine the adoption of Web 2.0 tools in distance education, by considering both technological characteristics of technology and factors in distance education as students, teacher etc. Additionally, except from previous constructs, external new constructs can be included into this model. References Ajjan, H., & Hartshorne, R. (2008). Investigating faculty decisions to adopt Web 2.0 technologies: Theory and empirical tests. 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work_opbli56cerfg3gazom3hrowhnm	----	Reilly, K. P., and K. M. Gulliver. 1992. Interstate authorization of dis- tance higher education via telecommunications: The developing national consensus in policy and practice. The American Journal of Distance Education 6(2):3-16. International Computer Conferencing for Professional Development: The Bangkok Project Michael G. Moore Terry Anderson and Robin Mason Abstract The Bangkok Project, which recently linked educational computer net- works world wide, was a successful application of the new international electronic mail and computer conferencing networks to support profession- al development and reflection by members of the distance education community. This article discusses the Project's rationale and operational details. The authors conclude that this medium offers an exceptionally cost- and learning-effective means of providing inservice support to distance educators on a global scale. Cervero (1990) has argued that the "reflective practitioner" does not need pre-formatted content materials as much as an opportunity to share and develop professional reflection within a community of peers. This sharing of experience and expertise is especially important for distance educators given the rapid expansion of distance education and the impact of information technologies on the production, organization, and deliv- ery of distance education programming. Professionals within the distance education community are few in number and spread across the globe. In order to meet the information- sharing, networking, and knowledge-dissemination needs of its members, the International Council for Distance Education (ICDE) sponsors a face-to-face conference approximately every three years. At these gatherings members of the community carry on formal and infor- mal discussions and develop personal networks. Unfortunately, like all face-to-face encounters, this conference is restricted to those who can travel to a particular site at a particular time. Could the electronic net- works be used as a vehicle for a complementary conference that would span barriers of time and distance, be affordable, and yet still provide the intellectual and social stimulation to develop and educate our communi- ty of distance education professionals? This was the question answered by the Bangkok Project. 4 5 I Organizing the Project network users. Porters then remailed or posted the messages to their own networks. Porters were also responsible for monitoring their networks for responses that could be "ported" back to the main Calgary mail list for distribution across the full Bangkok Project. Again, porters were empowered to select only those messages that they believed were of interest and relevance to the many thousands of readers on the full pro- ject network. The contribution of these human "filters" ensured that the widely dis- tributed interactions were legible, relevant, and reflective of a minimal level of network etiquette. Some porters developed sophisticated relays to automate this process. The results were very encouraging; unlike many widely distributed network mail discussions, the Bangkok Project was characterized by an almost complete absence of irrelevant or mis- mailed items. Linkage to the Face-to-Face Conference. The ICDE conference serves as a focal point for interaction within the distance education com- munity. The Bangkok Project was designed to build upon and enhance the face-to-face interaction at the 1992 Conference through integration with the meeting in Bangkok; topic areas were chosen to complement themes of this face-to-face conference. The Bangkok Project began four weeks before the XVI World Conference and ended two weeks after its completion. The electronic conference was designed to provide an intro- duction to issues that could be further explored in the face-to-face sessions and as a forum for reflection and comment once face-to-face delegates returned home. The Bangkok Project also attempted to share the excitement and the social and intellectual stimulation of the World Conference with the vast majority of distance educators who could not afford the time or expense of traveling to Bangkok. The Project worked to establish a site in Bangkok so that delegates could experience this type of interactive, electronic communication; could review items and interactions during the weeks preceding the con- ference; and could interact with the larger community of electronic participants during the conference. Unfortunately, the computer confer- ence site in Bangkok was never established due to logistical and communications problems. Despite the offer from Softwords Research International of a CoSy computer conference system and the offer by IBM Thailand of micro computers to be used as terminals in Bangkok, the conference organizers were not able to provide the necessary net- work connection, space, or human resources needed to support the site. Ironically, less then seven days after the decision by the conference The Bangkok Project was an experimental project designed to link distance educators using all of the world's electronic networks. The Project developed and tested five prototype features: 1) support of at least two levels of interaction-local, community-specific interaction and general, network-wide interaction; 2) the use of "porters" to manage the interactions; 3) linkage to the face-to-face international conference; 4) a seminar format with separate session topics, each with a "host" and a "first speaker"; and 5) the use of the networks exclusively for organi- zation and promotion. Spanning the Networks. The Bangkok Project used the distribution function of the Internet, a collection of over 1,3 I 3,000 networked com- puters in fifty-five countries around the globe (Network Information Systems Centre 1993). Despite the immense size of Internet and its rapid growth rate (nearly 2000 host computers added daily), there are many hundreds of additional networks and stand-alone systems that are not directly connected to the Internet, but that have capacity for linkage through various Gateways (e.g., Bitnet, Fido Net, KI2 Net). Global con- nectivity across these networks is hampered because many users are restricted in their technical capacity or knowledge of networking to the particular mail or conferencing system to which they normally subscribe. To alleviate this problem the Bangkok Project attempted to provide access to all members of the international community without requiring them to leave their familiar local computer system or to obtain additional passwords or access to new computer systems. We wanted the process of bringing the Bangkok Conference to the user to be as transparent as possible. In order to accomplish this linking of networks, a central mail distri- bution list was established at the University of Calgary in Canada. All conference messages were posted to this central list, from which they were fed to approximately twenty-five different networks or mail discus- sion lists for further distribution (see Appendix C for a list of participating networks and lists). Managing the Interaction. The recipients of the main conference post- ings were volunteer "porters," the "unsung heros of the network nation" (Netweaver 1991). The porters' task was to copy electronic messages from one system to another in order to expand the number of recipients. They were given the power to edit messages to ensure that interaction that was "ported" across was relevant and of potential use to their 6 7 organizers to cancel on-site support, the first Thailand connection to the Internet was announced. This site could have provided the necessary electronic connectivity to support the project. Because of this logistical failure, the capacity to integrate face-to-face and computer conferencing was not tested in this project. The develop- ment of "real time" interaction capacity on the international networks opens the possibility for synchronous as well as asynchronous communi- cations between delegates attending conferences face-to-face and those in different areas of the globe. Technologically supported communica- tion may never completely replace face-to-face contacts for either formal education or professional development. However, our experiences as distance educators have shown that meaningful interaction and learning can and does occur outside of the confines of time and space. Conference Format single college or university. On the smaller systems, interactions could stimulate local reactions or special group communication parallel to interactions with the larger discussion topic. This dual level of interac- tion allowed those interested in a particular item of discussion or from a particular geographical area to carryon a side conversation of specific interest to these members. In face-to-face format, of course, such side conversations would be disruptive and generally perceived as reflecting very poor form. The porters were able to filter these secondary conversa- tions and carry back to the main discussion any conclusions, insights, or questions from the first speaker or other participants. Although this sec- ond-level discussion was supported during the Bangkok Project, many networks reported few interactions at this level. Perhaps a prohibition against such side conversations might have been inferred from the semi- nar metaphor, thus inhibiting such interchanges. The Networks as Orf?anizational Tools. The Bangkok Project was organized exclusively through interaction on the various electronic net- works. An organizational conference was established early in the project at the University of Calgary. The authors of this article served as Network Coordinator and First Speaker Coordinator, respectively. The organizational group consisted of these two coordinators, approximately thirty-five porters, and another group of twenty interested supporters. All promotion, recruitment of facilitators, and conference administration was done on the networks. The project concluded with a two-week eval- uation conference in which organizers shared their suggestions for improving future conferences. The direct costs to the participants and to the organizers of the Bangkok Project were extremely low, even taking into account the hid- den and infrastructure costs of using the international networks and the contributions in time and personal energy provided by the many volun- teers and their respective employers. The Bangkok Project received no funding from any sources and charged no fees to participants, yet the out-of-pocket expenses to the organizers were less than $100.00! This cost compares favorably to the thousands of dollars that participation in international face-to-face conferences costs each participant. A final benefit of using electronic conferencing for administration of this type of project is the resulting electronic record or log of all interac- tions between the organizers. This record provides an invaluable archive that can guide future network organizers and researchers. The transcripts of the organizational conference as well as the transcripts of all six \~ Sorensen (1992) points out the necessity to use concepts and termi- nology from familiar domains as metaphors to understand and use new communications systems. The Bangkok Project used the metaphor of the small group presentation common in face-to-face conferences. The pro- ject was divided into six separate topics. Each topic was discussed for approximately two weeks, and two topics were presented simultaneous- ly. One topic extended throughout the seven weeks of the project to test the value of longer-running conferences. A volunteer host was assigned to each topic. The host introduced the first speaker, provided occasional summary comments, and helped stim- ulate or restrain the interaction as necessary. Six internationally known experts in distance education were invited to serve as first speakers (see Appendix A for first speaker names and for titles of the six topics). The procedural guidelines provided to the first speakers were purposely vague to allow development of particular styles of interaction within each topic. Each first speaker submitted opening remarks consisting of three to five screens of text that described emerging issues and ideas relevant to the session topic. One first speaker also submitted a longer, journal-type article to stimulate discussion. Support for Multi-Level Interaction. The twenty-five participating networks or distribution lists (see Appendix C) had markedly different interests and geographic mandates. Some (e.g., Usenet-Alt. Education.Bangkok.) were distributed to approximately 50,000 comput- er systems around the globe, others to stand-alone systems within a 8 9 I would like to respond to Kathy Kothman's post about portering on TENET, the relatively new state-wide network for public school edu- cators and students in Texas. I was one of the lurkers through most of the conference. Kathy did a wonderful job of moving the material onto a newsgroup on TENET ! was more than just a little excited to find the conference. Michael Moore's wonderful first speaker discus- sion was stunning. And I was hooked. I lurked because I didn't have the knowledge base, and I was completely ignorant of CMC as prac- ticed ! believe that this has been as stimulating and engrossing as my first long foray into a University library. (D. Perkins, Organization of the Bangkok Project Conference) Another participant reported that she took printouts of the strategic planning conference to a management meeting at her institution because the issues addressed were relevant to the discussion there. Excerpts from several messages were read out by one participant giving a keynote address at a conference in the United Kingdom. Several courses on dis- tance education and electronic communications used the conferences as part of the course material and, in some cases, students contributed queries and points of view. It is impossible to quantify or measure the level of extended conference participation. However, these examples suggest that the interactions on line are but the tip of an iceberg: many additional levels can be found below the surface. Curiously, the overall rate of messages to the Bangkok Project reflect- ed the optimum comfort level: approximately three or four per day. This rate seems to be a comfortable one for most people in coping with the physical messages, engaging intellectually with the material, and feeling that they are not being psychologically overwhelmed. A technical prob- lem that sent hundreds of repeated messages all around the system occurred at the end of the first week. Fortunately, these error messages were delivered only to the porters, who were able to filter them out before they were distributed to end users. This potentially catastrophic error showed by contrast how appropriate the sustained level of messag- ing was to all concerned. The unpredictability of messaging created a certain amount of anticipation beforehand: "Well, here we go. I feel like someone standing on the top of a mountain and shouting, without know- ing if anyone is listening!" (Tony Bates, Strategic Planning in Distance Education Conference). Another first speaker said he was preparing him- self for anything between zero and one thousand messages. In actuality he received fifty messages over a two week period, probably a comfort- able level of activity. Perhaps conferencing is, to some extent, a self-regulating mechanism in which people collectively match the contri- butions to the tolerance level. For many contributors, the conference messages appeared as personal mail-they did not log on to a host system or a local confereneing sub- system to read the discussions in a conference. Few inputs were received from those who did access the discussions from conferencing systems such as UseNet Newsgroups and Fido Net Echos. Mail messages are undoubtedly more attention-demanding than conferences that the user has to make a special effort to access each time. topics are available free of charge through file transfer programs avail- able on the Internet (see Appendix B). Content of the Bangkok Project Conferences The technical success of this experiment, given its complexity and innovative nature, is ample justification for issuing a report on which others can build in subsequent applications. However, a network is only as good as the content that it carries. What was the value of the Bangkok discussions? This analysis will discuss the nature and quality of the interactions in the conferences and conclude with lessons learned from the entire experiment. Use of'the Conf'crences. There was considerable variation in the development of the six conferences. These differences were partially due to the order in which they occurred; for example, the last conference suf- fered from a lack of impetus both because it was last and because it came after a break during the actual meeting in Bangkok. However, other conferences suffered similar problems, the reasons for which are not as obvious. Appendix B lists the number of messages for all conferences: 242 (not counting those used for conference organization) over a seven-week period. However, the quantity of messages in no way reflects the number of people who read and were stimulated by the discussions. This diffi- culty in estimating extended use is always a problem with computer conferences, but especially with the Bangkok Project, for which the potential audience was vast. Examples of the extended use of the discus- sions were provided by feedback messages such as the following: 10 11 Contributors to the Conference little time for reflection. Often readers were presented with comments, questions, and rebuttals seconds after reading the original posting. Although highly stimulating, this rapid information flow can induce a "read on" as opposed to "think on" mode of reception, which can be inhibiting to those who prefer reflective learning situations. The relation- ship between these hypothesized factors and participation in global electronic discussions warrants a great deal of further investigation. Although about ten participants contributed messages to several con- ferences, most people contributed only one or two messages to one particular discussion. The actual number of contributors to the six con- ferences is also somewhat difficult to determine. Many messages were not signed, some participants used someone else's ID to send their mes- sages, some headers did not contain names, and some messages were signed by several people. Nevertheless, it is apparent that messages came from various participants in at least twenty states of the United States, from five different sites in Canada, from several parts of Australia and the United Kingdom, and from New Zealand, Norway, and Venezuela. Although the distribution was global, the active participation should perhaps be described as international, since there rarely was par- ticipation by those in Third World countries. A number of reasons could be hypothesized for the lack of participa- tion from Third World distance educators. First, potential participants in Third World countries are more likely to have limited access to local hardware and international connectivity. Educational programming, at all levels and using all delivery modes, is done under severe economic constraints, and professional development activities and equipment for staff are but two of many competing needs. Second, although the Internet is a global network, the majority of host sites (71 %) are located in the United States. This imbalance is likely to continue for some time, in spite of the fact that percentage growth rates of Internet sites are high- er in other countries than in the United States (Network Information Systems Centre 1993). Third, the use of a single language for interaction presents problems for those not comfortable with that language; they may be reluctant to expose themselves, through their writing, to a large, international audience. The use of porters as translators and editors could alleviate this problem, but adds complexity and time delays to the inter- action process. Fourth, the seminar style of presentation, with world-renowned experts as first speakers, probably inhibited novice users and inexperi- enced distance educators. There may also be a cultural component to this inhibition; some cultures discourage active questioning/debate and emphasize respect and listening (as opposed to discussion) with teachers and elders. Finally, participation in a fast-moving, technologically medi- ated environment may be influenced by both cultural and individual learning style factors. The two-week format of each discussion gave Nature of the Interactions Despite the number of "one-off' contributors (those who made only one contribution), there was a remarkable degree of interaction in the various conferences. Contributors responded to specific issues raised by previous participants. After the initial introductory messages from the first speakers to outline areas for discussion, there were no monologues or long harangues by people promoting their personal viewpoints or biases. The interactions were dialogues-sometimes between partici- pants and the first speaker, sometimes between various participants. Perhaps the most sustained and stimulating discussion centered on the value of interaction in distance education. Various perspectives on this issue were given by half-a-dozen participants, and the first speaker con- tinued to refine and focus the inputs. In this and other discussions, reference was made to the relevant literature, to experience and applica- tions, and to particular research. These were academic debates, not free-for-alls in which people made uncontrolled, personal comments. Given the heterogeneous nature of the participants, this positive outcome of the discussions-worthwhile, electronic dialogue on an international scale-is remarkable. One of the factors that undoubtedly contributed to the disciplined nature of the interactions was the formal structure within which the con- ferences were set. First speakers were introduced and time frames for each discussion were given at the outset and adhered to, just as in a face- to-face conference. Participants were reminded by the hosts of conferencing etiquette: keeping messages short, relevant, and unambigu- ous. The whole project was elegantly managed from Calgary with informative and friendly messages that kept the whole experiment mov- ing forward smoothly. Altogether, these measures created a strong sense of a sociable, but structured, environment. The goal of sustained, academic debate was not uniformly met. All of the first speakers tried to cover too many issues, given the short time and 12 13 Ii the tangential nature of computer conferencing. One or, at most, two issues would have been appropriate for the time frame. Most discussions were caught in side issues, although the lively debate in Moore's confer- ence on distance education theory did focus well on the nature of educational theory. The conference on databases never engaged in the central issues put forth in the stimulating opening messages by the first speaker. The conference on strategic planning got off to an excellent start in the first week, but lost its focus in the second week when the first speaker was interrupted by the technical problem referred to earlier and could no longer access the conference. The research conference was a microcosm of the whole: it comprised substantive discussion about dis- tance education research, simultaneous comments about various side issues, and some continuation of issues from the earlier two conferences. The conference on the use of computer-mediated communications (CMC) in developing countries, which ran the length of the whole pro- ject, provides a useful contrast to the two-week conferences. The original aim was to exploit the global nature of the experiment by encouraging participants to list all known applications of CMC in devel- oping countries. This exercise proved to be a total failure, yet, over the seven-week period, the participants eventually discovered what they did want to discuss: impediments to the use of computer conferencing in all parts of the world. Some interactive discussion finally occurred toward the end of the period. This conference would not have worked in a two- week timespan, yet it was more dispersed and unfocused than were the two-week conferences. How to focus discussions is an important issue. Opening messages with many wonderfully stimulating questions seemed to overwhelm con- tributors and produce discussions on side issues. However, as these six examples show, it would be difficult to draw definitive rules about what works and what does not, except with hindsight. In the context of this experiment, three weeks per discussion might have worked better; each conference needed some "start-up" time and there were varying delays in relaying messages between the originators' home systems, the Calgary distribution link, and other sites or networks. However, the seven-weeks time frame could not have been extended without consider- able loss of momentum. Conclusions We have learned a number of lessons from this project, and yet are left with a number of unanswered questions. We can see that projects of this sort need an effective conference structure; a tight focus to each dis- cussion; human, rather than automated, filters; and a dynamic and committed group to promote and manage it. Questions still needing answers include Should subsequent projects use the same networking procedures? Should online discussions be based on the face-to-face conference? Should several parallel discussions run concurrently? How can online discussion be promoted more widely to encourage increased participation? The project showed that electronic networking can provide cost-effec- tive, yet meaningful, interactions among distance education professionals. The list of participants showed that current access to or awareness of the technology is generally limited to distance educators in the more technologically developed countries. The growth of electronic communications in all countries will continue to expand accessibility and the potential for truly global networking. The Bangkok Project experimented with structures and organizational systems that used the power of new technologies as well as the expertise of the professional distance education community. Some aspects of this technology and its application can and will be improved in subsequent projects. Distance educators have an obligation to be in the forefront of the development of this technology. As proponents for increased educational access and quality, we cannot afford to ignore the application of these powerful new global communications technologies to both our needs as reflective prac- titioners and to the needs of learners in general. The field of distance education is developing in many diverse direc- tions. The application of interactive communications technologies can significantly increase the quantity and quality of debate, information exchange, and personal networking that distinguishes our professional organizations. The Bangkok Project, which has demonstrated that the tools for cost-effective, professional development programming already exist, presents a dual challenge: first, development of programming that meets the needs of our distance education community, and second, tech- nological development that ensures that all members of our global community have access to this medium. 14 15 Topic Name Items Length (Bytes) File Name Introduction and Overview 4 21273 introduction Computer Mediated Communications 61 107387 cmc.trans Database Use in Distance Education 26 41979 database. trans Strategic Planning in Distance Education 41 85621 planning. trans Research Issues 50 99221 research. trans Student Support 10 31134 support. trans Theory and Philosophy 50 224176 theory. trans Organization of the Bangkok Project 121 265904 organization. trans References Appendix B. Transcript Files Documenting the Bangkok Project Cervero, R. 1990. A model of professionals as learners. In Visions for the Future of Continuing Professional Education, eds. R. Cervero and J. Azzaretto, 161-82. Athens, GA: University of Georgia. Carlson, L. 1991. Netweaver. (Newsletter of the Electronic Networking Association. ) Network Information Systems Centre. 1993. SRI International Internet Domain Survey. January. Sorensen, E. K. 1992. Metaphors and the design of human interface. In Collaborative Learning Through Computer Conferencing, ed. A. Kaye, 189-200. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1. Applications of Electronic Communication for Distance Education in the Third World Dr. Robin Mason, Lecturer, Open University of the United Kingdom Appendix A. Discussion Topics and First Speakers 3. Strategic Planning and Policy for Distance Education Dr. Tony Bates, Director of Research, Open Learning Agency of British Columbia These files are available for anonymous ftp from the ftp site at the University of Calgary. Site Name: FTP.ACS.UCALGARY.CA Directory: jpubjprivate ~roup _info/icdej To access: ftp to the above site; log in as "anonymous"; use your EMAIL address as the password; cd to the above directory and get the file(s) of interest. For more detailed FTP instructions consult any intro- ductory text covering Internet services. 2. Emerging Theories and Philosophy of Distance Education Dr. Michael G. Moore, Director, The American Center for the Study of Distance Education Appendix C. Participating Networks and Lists 6. Distance Education and Student Support Dr. David Sew art, President, International Council for Distance Education AEDNET AGSAT Capital Area Researchers in EdTech Distance Education Online Symposium EduTel FidoNet Echos EDUCATOR, High_ED GLOSAS-L IUNK Interpersonal Computer and Technology List Kl2 Net, UseNet K12 KIDSNET, COSNDISC 4. Emerging Issues in Distance Education Research Dr. Gene Rubin, Editor, Research in Distance Education, Athabasca University 5. Databases and Documentation for Distance Education Mr. Laury Melton, International Centre for Distance Learning 16 17 Lancaster University, NIX NISS Bulletin Board Nursing-I, ETNet. Newedu-l NYSERnet Open University of UK ShareNet Sigtel-l TENET Unibase Educators Network University of Alberta University of Calgary U senet - Alt.Education.Bangkok Venezuelan Academic Network VETMED, VETLIB Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the porters, hosts, and first speakers, and the comput- er services staff at many sites, especially the University of Calgary site. Without the considerable efforts of these volunteers this project would not have succeeded. The authors also would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Ken Borland, past editor of DEOSNEWS and DEOS-L and currently Assistant Professor of Adult and Continuing Education at Dallas Baptist University, to our discussion of barriers to partic- ipation by Third World distance educators. 18 Attitudes of Higher Education Faculty Toward Distance Education: A National Survey Tom Clark Abstract Although distance education is growing in importance in the United States, little research has focused on the attitudes of American college and univer- sity teachers toward college-level distance education and toward the use of specific media in distance education provision. The attitudes of both partic- ipating and nonparticipating faculty toward distance education need further examination, since teaching innovations cannot succeed without their sup- port. This study examines the receptivity to college-credit distance education of faculty members in two- and four-year higher education insti- tutions. The research questions focused on general receptivity to distance education, the relationship between professional characteristics and attitude toward distance education, the connection between previous distance edu- cation experiences/ familiarity and receptivity, and on attitudes toward different distance education media and methods. Introduction Recent evaluation studies of distance education projects and activities have included surveys of the attitudes of participating faculty (cf. Burnham 1988; Dillon 1989; Spondor 1990). Studies of the attitudes of f~culty toward distance education include a national survey of graduate lIbrary and information science faculty (Barron 1991), a comparative study of faculty attitudes toward distance instruction in land grant uni- versities (Bankirer 1987), a study of faculty attitudes toward satellite-based instruction at member institutions of the League for Innovation in Community Colleges (Bunting 1989), and a comparative study of attitudes toward distance education held by instructors with pre- vious distance education experience and instructors with no previous experience (Stinehart 1987). Like earlier studies of nontraditional and external degree programs that reported either negative attitudes on the part of nonparticipating fac- ulty (Stetson 1979; Patton 1975; Medsker and Associates 1975), or more L 19 ~ page 1 Titles Michael G. Moore Terry Anderson and Robin Mason Abstract page 2 Titles Organizing the Project page 3 Titles Conference Format \~ page 4 Titles Content of the Bangkok Project Conferences 10 11 page 5 Titles Contributors to the Conference Nature of the Interactions 12 13 Ii page 6 Titles Conclusions 14 15 page 7 Titles References Appendix B. Transcript Files Documenting the Bangkok Project Appendix A. Discussion Topics and First Speakers 3. Strategic Planning and Policy for Distance Education 2. Emerging Theories and Philosophy of Distance Education Appendix C. Participating Networks and Lists 6. Distance Education and Student Support AEDNET 4. Emerging Issues in Distance Education Research 16 17 Tables Table 1 page 8 Titles Acknowledgements 18 Tom Clark Abstract Introduction 19 
work_oqwltwdzlvgwhohmbqnxog2auq	----	CogPresAJDE Final.pdf Garrison 121200 5/4/04 1 Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education D. Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson, and Walter Archer Abstract This article describes a practical approach to judging the nature and quality of critical discourse in a computer conference. A model of a critical community of inquiry frames the research. A core concept in defining a community of inquiry is cognitive presence. In turn, the practical inquiry model operationalizes cognitive presence for the purpose of developing a tool to assess critical discourse and reflection. Encouraging empirical findings related to an attempt to create an efficient and reliable instrument to assess the nature and quality of critical discourse and thinking in a text- based educational context are presented. Finally, it is suggested that cognitive presence (i.e., critical, practical inquiry) can be created and supported in a computer conference environment with appropriate teaching and social presence. Introduction The adoption of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in higher education has far outpaced our understanding of how this medium should best be used to promote higher-order learning. Many scholars are now trying to remedy this deficiency in our understanding by studying interactions, perceptions, and outputs of participants engaged in the use of CMC for educational purposes. A major challenge facing educators using CMC is the creation of a critical community of inquiry—the hallmark of higher education—within a virtual text-based environment. A community of inquiry is an extremely valuable, if not essential, context for higher-order learning. Such a community involves (re)constructing experience and knowledge through the critical analysis of Garrison 121200 5/4/04 2 subject matter, questioning, and the challenging of assumptions (Dewey 1959; Lipman 1991). This is consistent with the premise that an educational learning experience is both collaborative and reflective. Our research group has, therefore, focused on developing the means to assess the nature and quality of critical, reflective discourse that takes place within a text-based educational environment. Theoretical Context The conceptual framework for this study is described in a previous paper (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000). This framework for a community of inquiry consists of three overlapping core elements and is intended to be applied to improving the practice of computer conferencing in higher education. Here, we focus on the genesis and manifestation of the cognitive presence concept. Cognitive presence is defined within the framework of a community of inquiry, but is grounded in the critical thinking literature and is operationalized by the practical inquiry model described below. Critical thinking and practical inquiry. The ultimate value of a tool to assess cognitive presence depends on the use of the model of critical thinking (i.e., practical inquiry) and its ability to reflect educational practice. It is important to recognize that cognitive presence focuses on higher- order thinking processes as opposed to specific individual learning outcomes. This research is an exploration of the nature and quality of cognitive presence, as defined and assessed by the phases (i.e., process) of a generalized model of critical thinking: practical inquiry. Critical thinking is both a process and an outcome. As an outcome, it is best understood from an individual perspective—that is, the acquisition of deep and meaningful understanding as well as content-specific critical inquiry abilities, skills, and dispositions. Judging the quality of critical thinking as an outcome within a specific educational context is the responsibility of a teacher as the pedagogical and content expert. As a product, critical thinking is, perhaps, best judged Garrison 121200 5/4/04 3 through individual educational assignments. The difficulty of assessing critical thinking as a product is that it is a complex and (only indirectly) accessible cognitive process. However, and most relevant here, from a process perspective it is assumed that acquiring critical thinking skills would be greatly assisted by an understanding of the process. Moreover, it is assumed that facilitating the process of higher-order learning online could be assisted through the use of a tool to assess critical discourse and reflection. More specifically, the critical thinking perspective employed here is comprehensive and includes creativity, problem solving, intuition, and insight (Garrison and Archer 2000). From this view, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) constructed a parsimonious practical inquiry model that was deemed of particular value in studying the formal educational context It is this model that guides the methodology of this research on assessing cognitive presence (i.e., critical inquiry) in an online, computer conference environment. Practical inquiry is grounded in experience but includes imagination and reflection leading back to experience and practice (Dewey 1933). This recognition of the shared and private worlds of the learner is a crucial concept in understanding the creation and support of cognitive presence for educational purposes. The first dimension of the model (see Figure 1) reflects this continuum between action and deliberation. The second dimension represents the transition between the concrete and abstract worlds. This is the perception-conception dimension. These are the cognitive processes that associate facts and ideas. The practical inquiry model defines four phases essential to describe and understand cognitive presence in an educational context. Although developed independently, these phases are not dissimilar to the basic structure of inquiry suggested by Duffy, Dueber, and Hawley (1998) in their article on critical thinking and the design of online conferencing systems. (Insert Figure 1 about here) Garrison 121200 5/4/04 4 The phases of the practical inquiry model are the idealized logical sequence of the process of critical inquiry and, therefore, must not be seen as immutable. • The first phase (lower quadrant) of the model reflects the initiation phase of critical inquiry and is considered the triggering event. Here an issue, dilemma, or problem that emerges from experience is identified or recognized. In an educational context, the teacher often explicitly communicates learning challenges or tasks that become triggering events. However, in a more democratic and nonhierarchical application of computer conferencing, any group member may purposively or indirectly add a triggering event to the discourse. A critical role of the teacher (actualizing teacher presence) is to initiate, shape, and, in some cases, discard potentially distracting triggering events so that the focus remains on the attainment of intended educational outcomes. • The second phase of the process is exploration. In this phase, participants shift between the private, reflective world of the individual and the social exploration of ideas. Early in this phase, students are required to perceive or grasp the nature of the problem, and then move to a fuller exploration of relevant information. This exploration takes place in a community of inquiry by iteratively moving between the private and shared worlds—that is, between critical reflection and discourse. At the end of this phase, students begin to be selective with regard to what is relevant to the issue or problem. This is a divergent phase characterized by brainstorming, questioning, and exchange of information. • The third phase, integration, is characterized by constructing meaning from the ideas generated in the exploratory phase. During the transition from the exploratory phase, students will begin to assess the applicability of ideas in terms of how well they connect and describe the issue or event under consideration. Again, students move repeatedly between reflection and discourse. This phase is the most difficult to detect from a teaching or research perspective. Evidence of the integration of ideas and the construction of meaning must be inferred from communication within the community of Garrison 121200 5/4/04 5 inquiry. This phase requires active teaching presence to diagnose misconceptions, to provide probing questions, comments, and additional information in an effort to ensure continuing cognitive development, and to model the critical thinking process. Often students will be more comfortable remaining in a continuous exploration mode; therefore, teaching presence is essential in moving the process to more-advanced stages of critical thinking and cognitive development. • The fourth phase is a resolution of the dilemma or problem by means of direct or vicarious action. In most noneducational settings, this means implementing the proposed solution or testing the hypothesis by means of practical application. In an educational context, however, the concept is somewhat more difficult. It usually entails a vicarious test using thought experiments and consensus building within the community of inquiry. As will be noted subsequently, progression to the fourth phase requires clear expectations and opportunities to apply newly created knowledge. Educationally, the end of this phase may require moving on to a new problem with the assumption that students have acquired useful knowledge. In a less-contrived situation, the results of the application phase lead to further problems and new triggering events, thus causing the process to start over. At this point, there may be an intuitive leap apparently shortcutting the logical inquiry cycle. This process of apparent skipping of phases or making conceptual leaps introduces the concepts of intuition and insight covered in more depth elsewhere (Garrison and Archer 2000). In summary, the practical inquiry model reflects the critical thinking process and the means to create cognitive presence. The genesis and context of cognitive presence is more fully explained in Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) but, suffice it to say here, it is operationalized through the practical inquiry process. Cognitive presence is defined as the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000). In other words, cognitive presence reflects Garrison 121200 5/4/04 6 higher-order knowledge acquisition and application and is most associated with the literature and research related to critical thinking. Assessing Cognitive Presence Cognitive presence (manifested through the practical inquiry process) has the potential to assess the quality of critical inquiry in terms of providing a means to assess the systematic progression of thinking over time. Our focus is on the process of critical thinking within a group dynamic as reflected by the perspective of a community of inquiry. While assessing critical thinking as both process and product is important educationally, it is the process of critical thinking that is of particular importance in terms of asynchronous text-based communications technology, such as computer conferencing. Assessing critical thinking also raises an issue germane to assessment of the quality of the process. Duffy, Dueber, and Hawley (1998) argue that critical thinking research must move beyond assessment of structure to assessment of quality. They suggest that evaluators of critical thinking in a CMC context look for absolute characteristics such as accuracy, significance, logic, depth, completeness, and adequacy—as if these factors have absolute meaning outside the context in which they evolve. We reject this notion as being too circumscribed by algorithmic notions of cognitive development. Rather, we look for more heuristic models of assessment in which the process is judged by participants, especially teachers. One of the characteristics of the community of inquiry (Lipman 1991) is that members question one another, demand reasons for beliefs, and point out consequences of each other’s ideas—thus creating a self-judging community when adequate levels of social, cognitive, and teacher presence are evident. Further, we concur with Wells' (1999) observation that “discourse is a means, not an end in itself, and verbal information is valued not for the correctness of the way in which it is formulated, but for its use as a means towards the achievement of some larger purposes” (231). In any educational context, this “larger purpose” can be ethereal and difficult to empirically assess. In a Garrison 121200 5/4/04 7 CMC context, the task is even more difficult due to the lean set of clues contingent upon the transcript of the written text available to the teacher, participants, and educational researchers. It is the practical inquiry model to assess and guide dialogic writing for the purpose of creating cognitive presence in a community of inquiry. The first task is to generate and validate indices, for purposes of research and teaching, corresponding to each of the phases of the practical inquiry model. Assessing and finding evidence of cognitive presence (via the practical inquiry model) within the transcripts of text-based dialogue produced during formal CMC courses present many methodological challenges. Most fundamental is the problem of assessing individual thought processes, and even results of group inquiry, through the traces of the process that are made visible and public in the transcript. The process is inevitably inductive and prone to error due to the subjective assessment of the observer. The transcript is valuable in that it provides an accurate record of nearly all the dialogue and interaction that took place. Unlike face-to-face discourse, in CMC there is no body language or paralinguistic communication used by participants to enhance their communication flow, and therefore no need to record and analyze such nonlinguistic communication. However, the use of this asynchronous medium leaves large amounts of “nonclass” time in which the ideas presented are recreated and explored individually and socially with colleagues and friends. Secondly, observers view only that subset of cognitive presence that the participants choose to make visible in the conference. There may be a variety of technical, access, or deeper social, psychological, and educational inhibitors to participation in the conference, which means that the transcript of the conference is a significantly less-than-complete record of the learning that has taken place within the community of inquiry. Much work needs to be done, using triangulated measures supplemental to the conference transcript, to ensure that the individual and group cognition is more accurately revealed by the investigators' interpretation of the transcript. Methodology. The method used to assess cognitive presence is content analysis, which Borg and Gall (1989) define as “a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (357). The first step in this research group's Garrison 121200 5/4/04 8 use of this procedure was to develop a set of categories into which segments of messages were coded. As described previously, Garrison’s model of critical thinking and practical inquiry provided the substance for our categories (Garrison and Archer 2000). The procedure meant developing a set of descriptors, indicators, and examples for each of the four categories or phases of practical inquiry. The next step was to develop a systematic procedure for assigning data (segments of the transcripts) to categories. We began by listing the sociocognitive processes that uniquely characterize each of the phases of critical thinking. For instance, “sense of puzzlement” is a sociocognitive process characteristic of the “triggering event” phase. However, these processes, which are somewhat latent, do not facilitate objective and reliable identification by coders. Therefore, we studied several transcripts to determine how these latent processes manifest themselves in the data. This resulted in a list of symptoms, or “indicators,” of each of the sociocognitive processes. Indicators are concrete examples of how the sociocognitive processes of each phase manifest themselves in asynchronous, text-based computer conferencing. For example, “asking questions” is a manifest indicator of the latent sociocognitive process “sense of puzzlement.” Once this list was complete, we found that some indicators were repeated across multiple categories. “Asking questions,” for example, is indicative of both “triggering events” and “exploration,” depending on the attitude of the statement. Thus, as an additional aid to categorization, we developed a list of “descriptors” that reflect the general attitude of the phases. (Insert Figure 2 about here) The descriptors of the four phases are “evocative,” “inquisitive,” “tentative,” and “committed” (see Figure 2). Descriptors are adjectives that characterize the process that is occurring in the particular phase. For example, the first category (triggering event) is a problem- posing event and, therefore, is considered evocative and inductive by nature in terms of conceptualizing a problem or issue. The second category (exploration) is a search for relevant Garrison 121200 5/4/04 9 information and, therefore, reflects an inquisitive and divergent process in the search for ideas to help make sense of a problem or issue. The third category (integration) represents the construction of a possible solution and, therefore, is a tentative conversion or connecting of relevant ideas capable of providing insight into the dilemma. Finally, the fourth category (resolution) is the process of critically assessing the concepts and, therefore, represents a commitment to a solution and deductively testing its validity. Together, the descriptors, indicators, and sociocognitive processes provide sufficient information to facilitate reliable categorization by coders. The guidelines for each of the categories are presented in Tables 1 through 4. (Insert Tables 1 through 4 about here) An important step in assigning data to categories is determining the unit of analysis (Henri 1991). After experimenting with several types of units, we found that a message-level unit, corresponding to what one participant posted into one thread of the conference on one occasion, was the most appropriate for our goals. Messages are clearly demarcated in the transcript; therefore, multiple coders can reliably identify when a coding decision is required. The use of smaller, submessage level units, as implemented by some researchers, can make the procedure burdensome because a number of these units require a decision by each coder. Furthermore, if these units cannot be reliably identified—as is often the case with even such apparently obvious units as the sentence—another factor is introduced that reduces the reliability and, hence, validity of the study. The message as unit is also attractive because the length and content of the message is decided upon by its author, rather than by coders. Finally, a complete message provides coders with sufficient information to infer underlying cognitive processes. Submessage level units may be introduced in future confirmatory studies if increased precision is warranted. A full discussion of this issue is found in Rourke et al. (in press). However, a unit of this length may contain contradictory categorization cues or evidence of multiple phases of cognitive presence. Therefore, we have developed two heuristics for coders: code Garrison 121200 5/4/04 10 down (i.e., to the earlier phase), if it is not clear which phase is reflected; and code up (i.e., to the later phase), if clear evidence of multiple phases is present. We justify this procedure by noting that higher levels of critical thinking, such as integration and resolution, borrow characteristics and process from previous phases. Three one-week exchanges from two computer conference courses were compiled to test the efficacy of the tool. The first transcript was taken from a graduate-level course in workplace learning. This thirteen-week course was divided into weeklong, self-contained discussions that focused on one or two issues. Fourteen people participated in this discussion, including the instructor, two student moderators selected from the group, and eleven other students. The discussion was led by the student moderators, whose functions included stimulating discussion, adding pedagogical comment, and weaving and summarizing the discussion. The instructor passively monitored the interaction, becoming active only to close the discussion by summarizing the students’ messages with reinforcement and expert advice. A total of fifty-one messages were posted during the conference week. The second and third weeklong transcripts (weeks one and nine) were taken from a graduate-level course in health promotions. This thirteen-week course was led by an instructor who actively guided the discussions with questions and expert advice. In the second transcript, the instructor and six students exchanged twenty messages. In the third transcript, the instructor and four students exchanged twenty-four messages. Two graduate students coded the transcript selections. One of the coders was involved in the refinement of the tool. The second coder was hired specifically for this coding task. The principal investigators discussed the coding protocol with the coders, who then coded the first transcript selection. The coders were encouraged to refine the protocol as they coded. Their results were evaluated for interrater reliability and modifications were made to the coding scheme based on suggestions from the coders. The second transcript was then coded. Again, results were evaluated for interrater reliability and modifications made to the scheme. Finally, the third transcript was coded according to the revised scheme. Garrison 121200 5/4/04 11 Results. The coding decisions of the two coders were evaluated for interrater reliability using Holsti’s (1969) coefficient of reliability (CR) and Cohen’s (1969) kappa (k). CR is a percent-agreement measure in which the number of agreements between the first coder and the second coder are divided by the total number of coding decisions. Cohen’s kappa is a chance- corrected measure of interrater reliability (Capozzoli, McSweeney, and Sinha 1999). In calculating kappa, reliability is reported after accounting for the possibility of chance agreement between coders. In our five-category coding scheme, this is a significant concern. Our results for each of the three transcripts were CR = .45, .65, and .84; and k = .35, .49 and .74. Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (1998) indicate that content studies generally report chance-corrected reliability figures in the .80 to .90 range. However, they note that this criterion applies primarily to categories and coding systems that have been used extensively. They add that “research that is breaking new ground with concepts that are rich in analytical value may go forward with reliability levels somewhat below that range” (131). After three training sessions, our interrater reliability reached a high of k = .74. Content analysis is a difficult process under the best of circumstances. It is challenging to ask coders to determine, based on manifest transcript evidence, which of four latent critical-thinking phases a student is operating in. It has been argued that interrater reliability is invariably low in these types of studies because of the “latent projective” nature of what is, in essence, an internal cognitive process (Potter and Levine-Donnerstein 1999). This challenge was compounded by the methodological weakness of a small sample size. That is, we coded only ninety-five messages from groups of thirteen, six, and four students. As noted, the first two transcripts were used to refine the coding scheme. The focus then turned to the third transcript coded with the coding schema refined with benefit of insights gained from the previous training. Coding results for the third transcript are presented in Table 5. These data represent a general indication of the relative frequency of each of the categories. The first coder’s decisions are read horizontally; the second coder’s decisions are read vertically. Numbers Garrison 121200 5/4/04 12 on the diagonal indicate agreement between the coders. Numbers off the diagonal indicate disagreement. (Insert Table 5 about here) In Table 5, the column labeled trigger indicates that coder 2 categorized two messages as triggering events: one of which coder 1 categorized as trigger, the other as explore. The column labeled explore indicates that coder 2 categorized ten messages as exploration; of these ten, coder 1 categorized eight as explore, one as integrate, and one as other. Numbers on the diagonal indicate agreement between the coders. The column labeled integrate indicates that coder 2 categorized three messages as integration; of these three, coder 1 categorized one as explore and two as integrate. The column labeled resolution indicates that coder 2 and coder 1 both coded the same single message as resolution. Coding discrepancies occurred in each of the categories; however, the main source of discrepancies in each round of coding was between exploration and integration. Discussion To summarize, it was found that the first phase of practical inquiry, trigger, had 8% of the responses (see Figure 3). This would seem to be reasonable, considering the problem or issue is very likely to be well framed by the teacher in an educational context. The second phase, exploration, had the highest frequency (42%) of coded responses in the transcripts. This is also not surprising, and it is consistent with previous research. That phase is a brainstorming phase whereby people feel free to share their insights and contribute relevant information. Perhaps because of the democratic nature of the medium and the way it is used, most of the conversation in a computer conference is of a sharing and comparing nature (Kanuka and Anderson 1998). However, the frequency of the responses dropped rapidly in the integration (13%) and resolution (4%) phases. (Insert Figure 3 about here) Garrison 121200 5/4/04 13 The issue worthy of special consideration is why the frequency of responses for integration, and especially resolution, were so few. Certainly integration would seem to be more challenging than exploration for most learners. Integration requires time for reflection to synthesize information. It also may be more risky to offer tentative solutions or hypotheses in that their ideas may be rejected. While this may seem reasonable, the virtual absence of responses associated with resolution is harder to explain. Several factors may explain why so little attention was focused on resolution. The first set of possibilities is associated with the instructional design and facilitation. That is, it may have not been a goal of the lesson that week, or the content did not lend itself well to advanced inquiry (e.g., an introductory course). However, there may have been deficiencies in the facilitation in terms of guiding and shaping the discourse toward higher-order cognitive activities, such as the testing of ideas and resolution. The second explanation for the lack of resolution responses could be that the medium (i.e., computer conferencing) does not support this kind of activity. Application or testing of ideas is difficult in a face-to-face educational context given its vicarious, and even contrived, aspects. Perhaps this is even more challenging in an asynchronous text-based communication environment. Finally, it could be that the practical inquiry model was not appropriate for framing the type of educational experience reflected in the transcripts of the computer conference analyzed here. The model is based upon the work of John Dewey and, therefore, has a pragmatic focus to it (Garrison and Archer 2000)—that is, it considers education to be based on lived experiences, and learning in an educational context is to be applied to real-life situations. However, other critical-thinking models are based on abstract logical thinking processes, such as deductive thinking and analysis of arguments, with little consideration of critical discourse (Garrison and Archer 2000). The practical inquiry model corresponds to the educational beliefs and the nature of desired learning outcomes valued by the present researchers. The model is not inconsistent with that revealed by Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997). We believe such a model and approach to education is more Garrison 121200 5/4/04 14 appropriate where applied knowledge is valued—particularly adult, continuing, and higher education. In any case, for a computer conference to serve as an educational environment, it must be more than undirected, unreflective, random exchanges and dumps of opinions. Higher-order learning requires systematic and sustained critical discourse where dissonance and problems are resolved through exploration, integration, and testing. The guide (i.e., practical inquiry model) must be the full cycle of the critical-thinking process, which includes interactions between the public shared world and the private reflective world. The complexity and challenge of facilitating this educational process in an asynchronous text-based environment necessitates skilled facilitation. Collaborative learning in an educational sense is more than a mindless free-for-all. Interaction must be coordinated and synergistic. This requires an understanding of the medium of communication, the process of higher-order learning, and the critical role of teaching presence in attaining higher- order learning outcomes. Conclusion The goal of this research was to create an efficient and reliable electronic assessment tool that could expeditiously provide important teaching and learning information with regard to the nature and quality of the critical-thinking process (i.e., cognitive presence) as reflected in a computer-conference transcript. It is concluded that the findings are encouraging, and that this tool is worth further investigation. We anticipate this could be a valuable tool for researchers or teachers to use to assess and confirm the nature of the discourse appropriate for their desired learning outcomes. We remain challenged by the difficulty of measuring latent variables (especially those described as latent projective) and by the need to develop tools that effectively deal with large numbers of messages generated during longer-term computer conferencing courses. However, we also think that the process of evaluating transcripts using analysis frameworks, such as that Garrison 121200 5/4/04 15 presented here, offer invaluable insights into the nature of learning and teaching in this increasingly popular educational medium. This article has proposed a practical inquiry model with descriptors, indicators, and examples that could serve as a framework for future research in a quest to better understand the cognitive nature of the teaching and learning transaction in an asynchronous text-based conferencing environment. In this quest, much systematic and empirical research is required. The research reported here is merely a map of the territory intended to provide direction for future research focusing on the facilitation of higher-order learning. Our intent is to continue to focus our research on facilitation issues, with the assumption that higher-order learning can be developed in a computer-conference environment with appropriate teacher presence (design, facilitation, and assessment). We believe such an approach is capable of refining the concept and model presented here to the point where it can be a reliable and useful instructional tool for realizing higher-order educational outcomes. References Borg, W., and M. Gall. 1989. The methods and tools of observational research. In Educational research: An introduction (5th ed). eds. W. Borg and M. Gall, 473–530. London: Longman. Capozzoli, M., McSweeney, L., and Sinha, D. 1999. Beyond kappa: A review of interrater agreement measures. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 27 (1): 3–23. Cohen, J. 1960. A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement 20 (1): 37–46. Dewey, J. 1933. How we think. Boston: Heath. Dewey, J. 1959. My pedagogic creed. In Dewey on education. ed. J. Dewey, 19–32. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. (Original work published 1897.) Duffy, T. M., B. Dueber, and C. L. Hawley. 1998. Critical thinking in a distributed environment: A pedagogical base for the design of conferencing systems. In Electronic collaborators: Learner- centered technologies for literacy, apprenticeship, and discourse. eds. C. J. Bonk and K. S. King, 51–78. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Garrison, D. R., T. Anderson, and W. Archer. 2000. Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education 2 (2–3): 1–19. Garrison, D. R., and W. Archer. 2000. A transactional perspective on teaching and learning: A framework for adult and higher education. Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Garrison 121200 5/4/04 16 Gunawardena, C., C. Lowe, and T. Anderson. 1997. Analysis of a global online debate and the development of an interaction analysis model for examining the social construction of knowledge in computer conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research 17 (4): 397–431. Henri, F. 1991. Computer conferencing and content analysis. In Collaborative learning through computer conferencing: The Najaden papers. ed. A. Kaye, 117–36. London: Springer-Verlag. Holsti, O. 1969. Content analysis for the social sciences and humanities. Don Mills, ON: Addison- Wesley. Kanuka, H., and T. Anderson. 1998. Online social interchange, discord, and knowledge construction. Journal of Distance Education 13 (1): 57–75. Lipman, M. 1991. Thinking in education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Potter, W., and D. Levine-Donnerstein. 1999. Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis. Journal of Applied Communication Research 27: 258–84. Riffe, D., S. Lacy, and F. Fico. 1998. Analyzing media messages: Using quantitative content analysis in research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Rourke, L., T. Anderson, D. R. Garrison, and W. Archer. In press. Methodological issues in analyzing text-based computer conferencing transcripts. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Wells, G. 1999. Dialogic Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrison 121200 5/4/04 17 Table 1. Triggering Events Descriptor Indicators Sociocognitive processes Evocative Recognizing the problem Presenting background information that culminates in a question Sense of puzzlement Asking questions Messages that take discussion in new direction Example: It has been argued that the only way to deliver effective distance education is through a systems approach. However, this approach is rarely used. Why do you think that is? Garrison 121200 5/4/04 18 Table 2. Exploration Descriptor Indicators Sociocognitive processes Inquisitive Divergence—within the online community Unsubstantiated contradiction of previous ideas Divergence—within a single message Many different ideas/themes presented in one message Information exchange Personal narratives/descriptions/facts (not used as evidence to support a conclusion) Suggestions for consideration Author explicitly characterizes message as exploration—e.g., “Does that seem about right?” or “Am I way off the mark?” Brainstorming Adds to established points but does not systematically defend/justify/develop addition Leaps to conclusions Offers unsupported opinions Example: One reason I think it is seldom used is that it is too complicated to get cooperation. Another may be the mind-sets of those in charge to change practices. Garrison 121200 5/4/04 19 Table 3. Integration Descriptor Indicators Sociocognitive processes Tentative Convergence—among group members Reference to previous message followed by substantiated agreement, e.g., “I agree because…” Building on, adding to others’ ideas Convergence—within a single message Justified, developed, defensible, yet tentative hypotheses Connecting ideas, synthesis Integrating information from various sources—textbook, articles, personal experience Creating solutions Explicit characterization of message as a solution by participant Example: We also had trouble getting cooperation. Often the use of new tools requires new organizational structures. We addressed these issues when we implemented a systems approach, and I think that’s why we were successful. Garrison 121200 5/4/04 20 Table 4. Resolution Descriptor Indicators Processes Committed Vicarious application to real world None Testing solutions Coded Defending solutions Example: A good test of this solution would be to … and then assess how … Garrison 121200 5/4/04 21 Table 5. Coding Results for Third Transcript Coder 2 Trigger Explore Integrate Resolution Other* Total Trigger 1 1 Explore 1 8 1 10 Integrate 1 2 3 Resolution 1 1 Coder 1 Other 1 8 9 Total 2 10 3 1 8 24 Note: CR = 83.33%, k = .74 * messages that were coded as “not cognitive presence” Garrison 121200 5/4/04 22 Figure 1. Practical Inquiry Model Adapted from Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000), The Internet and Higher Education 2 (2–3), 1–19. Garrison 121200 5/4/04 23 Figure 2. Cognitive Presence Descriptors Garrison 121200 5/4/04 24 integration 13% resolution 4% other 33% trigger 8% exploration 42% Figure 3. Relative Frequencies for Cognitive Presence Categories 
work_orp5vjtr6ndd3nmc5qs6va5riy	----	Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning Volume 3, Number 2. ISSN: 1492-3831 October - 2002 Research Notes – Vol. 3, No. 2 Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher- Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education Om Kumar Harsh University of South Australia Sadiq Sohail, M. King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia Abstract This paper provides readers with an observation of an adult distance education programme, which took place in Malaysia. These observations are presented in terms of: study mode, course design, and interaction between three distinct student groups, and their teachers. Other factors that influence adult distance learning melded with traditional classroom settings were also observed. These factors included the demographics of distance learning students, type and nature of student- to-student and teacher-to-student interaction, students’ employment, prior employment, and the subject studied. Our observation suggest that appropriate distance education design, coupled with hybrid opportunities for interaction among students engaged in distance and traditional on- campus modalities, optimise the learning experience of students engaged in both types of learning. Our observations also indicate that factors such as Web-based course design, students’ previous technical competencies and employment history, must also be taken into consideration, when designing and delivering distance education programmes of study. The authors conclude from their observations that further research is needed in terms of proper distance education course design that address environmental factors such as students’ employment history, previous educational experiences, and comfort levels using information and communications technology. Keywords: adult distance education; distance learning; Web; Web communication; Web course design; teacher-student interaction Introduction Distance education, a pedagogical process that involves imparting knowledge beyond the traditional borders of students’ physical attendance in a classroom, has been in existence for centuries. Recent advancements in Internet and communication technology have fuelled the growth of flexible course design and online delivery, giving new impetus to advance distance learning pedagogy. Because of rapid expansions in the global marketplace and the emergence of knowledge based economies, educational institutions around the world are striving to satisfy ever-increasing demand for higher education. However, many publicly funded institutions are Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 2 facing severe budget cuts from governments. Faced with funding shortfalls, many educational institutions are looking to new markets and adopting a more market-orientated approach to offset their operational costs. As a result, many institutions are exploring new markets in distant locations to complement their traditional local “markets.” Higher education has now become an arena where universities from around the world compete with each other for “customers.” One such means to expand markets is through the provision of distance learning via the use of new information and Internet technologies (Altbach, 1998). A growing number of studies in this area of distance education have researched issues such as the transfer of education and knowledge via distance education modalities from one country to another; and increasingly on how distance education as a concept is being merged with elements of open learning, and multi media delivery (Cookson, Donaldson, and Allan, 1990; Edwards, R., 1997; Jones, O’Shea, and Scanlon,1987). While distance learning itself is not a new pedagogical concept, in recent years there has been an explosion in the mechanisms and tools available for its implementation and support. Distance learning providers are faced with the often tough choices of sending their staff to the learner, shipping increasing quantities of study and research materials, and investing heavily in audio and video broadcast technologies to support students learning at a distance. In spite of tremendous upfront capital expenditures, broadcast capabilities have now revolutionized the scope and capability of distance learning programmes, creating favourable conditions that ease or remove time and space barriers previously faced by students. For some educational institutions, distance learning has become successfully integrated into their everyday learning environment, using new information technologies supported by the World Wide Web and telecommunication infrastructures. Recent advancements in computer networking technologies have extend distance learning’s scope and capabilities. Computer-based instruction programmes are continuously being upgraded, reused, and revised, allowing students more freedom to learn at a distance at a time and pace that are often convenient to them. With tremendous advancements in network access worldwide and progress in communication and information technologies generally, distance-learning programmes are becoming a viable means of offering educational opportunities to students. To support distance education students, more instructor-to-student and student-to-student interaction – similar to that found in traditional classroom instruction – is being incorporated into online programme materials (Sukumar et al., 2001). A wider availability of protocols, such as the hypertext environment of the World Wide Web and the network capabilities of video and audio-conferencing, has also increased the application and pedagogical effectiveness of distance-based learning. Combined with lower costs and increasing penetration of personal computers in such everyday life venues as public kiosks, places of work, and the home, distance learning is now poised for explosive growth worldwide. In the past, adult learning was traditionally restricted to ad-hoc training or education confined to reaching a pre-determined learning outcome, such acquiring a specific skill or competency related to employment. In spite of the growth of technologies that offers increased support for effective distance learning, ad hoc training and education remains the most common application in many countries such as China, where the number of adult distance education learners is estimated to be between two and four million people (Zhang, 2001). Other such examples include the Open University in UK, and extensive programmes in countries such as Norway to South Africa (Wilkes and Burnham, 1991). However, because the majority of adult education initiatives were traditionally designed to teach specific skills and competencies related to work, students and faculty still tend to perceive distance education as “partial training,” – and a poor cousin of “on- campus” education. Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 3 Adult education is a substantial field of pedagogical study that spans basic skills upgrading, to vocational training that targets specific adult populations and age groups. Moreover, adult education caters to students who often work full- or part-time and have family obligations. Liveright and Haygood (1969) defined adult education as: “a process whereby persons who no longer attend school on a regular full-time basis . . . undertake sequential and organized activities with the conscious intention of bringing about changes in information, knowledge, understanding, or skill, appreciation and attitudes; or for the purpose of identifying or solving personal or community problems.” It is our experience, that adults with diverse interests and differentiated backgrounds such as programme developers, teachers, advisors, administrators, educational administrators, frequently undertake educational upgrading using the distance mode. Similarly, business, industry, community agencies, health care organizations, continuing and professional education, often look to adult education modalities to train and upgrade their workforce. Tools Available for Distance Education The 1990s witnessed an explosion in communication and information technology development, followed by waves of information dissemination. Microwave and satellite technologies have significantly allowed the increase the number of television sets around the world, with broadcast signals reaching farther and to more locations, and delivering content at ever decreasing costs. New educational markets previously either non-existent or severely constrained by time and space, are now emerging. As a result, in the past 20 years there has been a significant increase in television-based learning initiatives that “should be more than a passive transmission of academic information” (Cartwright, 1994). The emergence of two-way communication between learners and their instructors has been a large factor driving the growth of distance education. Video conferencing and two-way video communication technology enables instructors and students to see each other while engaging in classroom studies, a mode considered by many distance educators that greatly enhances adults’ distance learning experience. This type of “full presence” learning system is becoming the minimum standard required for distance education programmes (Fuge, 1995). Successful distance education programmes tend to incorporate synchronous and asynchronous interaction among the students, creating conditions that help many intellectual leaps to occur (Sherry, 1996). Videoconferencing technology allows interaction not simply between the learner and the instructor, but also among the learners themselves. In the near future, fibre optic cable networks that increase bandwidth will greatly enhance the overall quality and “richness” of communication and information received by students, helping them to learn more effectively in the distance education mode. Economic barriers previously associated with higher education both in terms of tuition paid and travel costs have been lowered to such an extent that many students who were previously denied access to education, now have access. For example, students often share the cost of video and Internet connections used, lowering costs related to distance education even further (Zhang, 2001). Virtual reality is the next breakthrough expected in distance education. Increases in bandwidth allow for greater quantities of digital information to flow across fibre-optic cable and satellite networks, enabling “virtual reality” to evolve into a tool used in mainstream distance learning. Combining virtual reality technology with artificial intelligence will, in turn, enable the creation of a “virtual classroom lecture,” further enhancing the experience of students engaged in distance learning. Fulton, (1992) cites five fundamentals necessary for an effective distance education programme: Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 4 1. Contact between the student and the instructor 2. Active learning through writing out answers 3. Timely feedback to the instructor on students’ comprehension” 4. Timely feedback to students on work done 5. Opportunity for students to make revisions and learn from their mistakes However, we believe much has changed since Fulton’s 1992 study. Taking into consideration our current perspective of distance education in Malaysia, we would like to add a few more points Fulton’s model: 1. Merging interaction between younger distance education students and older adult distance education students 2. Weekly instructor/student meetings 3. Facilitation of interaction between on-campus students and adult distance education students, when and where it makes sense Some Concerns Surrounding Adult Learning Memory • Memory in adult students fades when faced with meaningless learning, learning that involves reassessment of old knowledge and rote memorization (Merriam et al., 1991). With age and increased levels of responsibility, adult learners’ memories often become fragmented. • Adult’s short-term memory capacity is limited to about five to nine bits of new information at one time (Cruikshank et al., 1995). New information stored in short-term memory erodes with the passage of time. However, when the memory is overloaded, “chunking” information together that into categories enables adult learners to increase their short-term memory capacity (Dixon et al., 1994). • Young and middle-aged learners, as a general rule, are more self-confident and tend to be goal oriented. Research shows that young and middle-aged learners are often able to memorize facts more easily than older adults. Adults in the middle years (age 35 to 45) have been found to be more responsible, a finding that is in accordance with our present experiment. As older adult students tend to be passive and less flexible (Cross, 1981), reintegration into educational settings must be emphasized. To maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses for the entire group, earning groups will ideally be composed of students of various ages. In light of previous research, we have developed a course called “Designing Websites” that contain small manageable learning modules. We will discuss in this article how this course design for adults works, and how it facilitates “memorizing” and “learning” for a specific group during student/student or teacher/student(s) interactions. Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 5 Motivation Houle (1961) separated the motivations of learners into three general typologies: 1. Goal-oriented learners who use education as a means to an ends 2. Activity-oriented learners who participate for the sake of the social interaction 3. Learning-oriented learners who seek knowledge for knowledge’s sake Continuing education delivered at a distance via new and emerging information and communication technologies, is no longer a novelty but a necessity for working adults. Motivation, therefore, must not only stem from students’ necessity to learn, but also from “within.” This means conditions must be created whereby students become more eager to learn. Mental eagerness and imagination are directly related to the outcomes of the learning process itself. While learning processes can be created, actual learning outcomes cannot. Thus, student motivation plays a central role in achieving any given educational outcome. With student motivation in mind, we developed a course in which the organization of weekly meetings with students and instructors was fully explored. Our question in designing this course was: How do we motivate our students engaged in distance activities to learn how to learn? Website Nomenclature When designing websites, it is important that students understand website nomenclature. As well, understanding how Internet websites integrate and work together as a “web” is also an important issue (Pool et al., 1997). In designing our course on “Website Design,” we were aware that “navigational integration” could possibly create confusion for our adult education students learning at a distance. We thus designed our course with a particular focus on website navigational integration. Recognizing that many students may not be comfortable with such an intensive level of navigational integration, we offered students basic instruction on how to “visit” a corresponding site, if and when the need arose. Objective of the Study Students in Malaysia come from different ethnic, cultural, and educational backgrounds. Students engaged in our course ranged in age from their early twenties to late forties. . Each student also brought to the course their own previous skill levels and expectations. For instance, we found that mature students’ expectations varied greatly from those of their younger counterparts, in that they desired and expected to derive immediate benefit from their education. We also observed that mature students tend to prefer to study in areas related to their work, profession, or existing skills. Similarly, the older students’ worldview tends to be more practical and hence, they expect to utilize their time for more focused, pre-defined, goal oriented work. Given this scenario, we designed a distance education course that encouraged them to learn. We hope sharing our experiences will create strategies for future research that will help advance adult distance education programming. Our Experiences For our course design, we randomly selected fifteen students. The first group of five students were traditional classroom students; the second group of five students were distance education students, age 20-22 years; the third group of five students were adult distance education students, aged 35 to 45 years. Our aim was to identify positive and negative factors that influenced Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 6 learning-outcomes among a diverse range of students engaged in distance and traditional on- campus studies. All three groups were assigned the same project named, “Designing Websites.” This topic was chosen because it was thought to be popular and of general interest to all students. Our only entrance requirement for this course was that students in all three groups attend a face- to-face introductory class. Because this course was the first exposure for some of the students to the technology used and adult learning in general, we felt it necessary to organise a face-to-face introductory class in which all three groups were briefed on housekeeping issues such as the course syllabus, textbook used, teacher’s consulting hours and procedures. We also discussed the first project in length and distributed to each student group a handout containing relevant course information such as project completion dates, procedures, minimum technical requirements, and an overview of course study units, etc. Students were also given a handout containing step-by-step instructions on how to surf the web, set-up and access their email account, submit assignments via email, and download software. Lastly, students were also provided a list of resource websites, many of which contained lists of frequently asked questions related to the course. Students from all three groups were then assigned user names and passwords to access the course website where the course materials were made available. Throughout this face-to-face class, students were repeatedly encouraged to contact a member of the teaching team or visit a study lab in the event that they encountered any real or perceived problems. We determined that our introduction session was of sufficient complexity balanced with simplicity, that most students could readily understand what was required of them without too much problem. To start the project and to facilitate interaction students and their instructors, we created email lists for the separate groups. This tactic also ensured that all members within a group share information with other members of their group. All course materials required for this project (i.e., lectures, tutorials, programming tools, etc.) were posted on the course website, which were housed on a local server. Students accessed the class website via user names and password assigned during the introductory class. Given the limited scope of our course material, we determined that students needed to hyperlink several corresponding websites to fully understand the concepts behind taught in the course. Late version Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Visual Basic script version software required for completion of this project was also posted on the class website for students to download and use. A complete set of project guidelines, procedures guide, and minimum guidelines for the final website project, was also posted. During the first two weeks of the course, students from the three groups were taught the basics of HTML and Visual Basic scripts in two traditional face-to-face classes taught on-campus. However, distance education students (group 2, and group 3) engaged only in face-to-face instruction once per week, for a total of two full days of face-to-face instruction for the duration of the course. In sum, distance learners attended two face-to-face classes, as compared to traditional students who attended classes every day for the duration of the three-month course. During the two days spent with students (group 2, and group 3) who would complete the rest of their studies in the distance mode, several more handouts were given outlining the basics of HTML and Visual Basic scripts, etc. Open class discussion also occurred in these two face-to- face sessions, where students were encouraged to form bonds and share their concerns and ideas. Observations We observed that students from all three groups submitted their projects on time. Moreover, all three groups completed their projects to a minimally acceptable standard. But when delving into a more detailed comparison, there were marked differences between the three student groups. Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 7 While the traditional classroom students (group 1) performed extremely well on all projects, group two (distance education, aged 20-22) average grades were15 percent lower than group one; and group three students’ (distance education, aged 35-45) performance was 18 per cent lower than the first group. When comparing the three groups using group 1(on-campus) as the benchmark, we observed that many distance education students said they felt less confident because they lacked access to a physical classroom. Another interesting observation was that the older distance education students in group 3 (aged 35 to 45), tended to feel more confident about their studies than the younger distance learners in group 2, (age 20 to 22). We also observed that both student groups, 2 and 3, studying online tended to display more responsible behaviour toward their distance education peers. Not surprisingly, initiative also appears to play a role in achieving online learning success. In one instance, one student (group 2) did not own computer at home; however this student managed to complete their project by working with another student. Moreover, this same student produced the best work and was awarded the highest grade. Student-Student Interaction through Communication Based on our observations, we believe that a combination of face-to-face and online communication with the students was important for learner success. In our experience, a combination of in-class and online modalities tended to enhance students’ confidence and overall learning experience. Student-student interaction not only enhanced confidence levels, it also facilitated the exchange of ideas among students, which is a necessary process of learning. Because individual students had dissimilar perspectives and approached problems from different angles, as a whole, they learned in a more broad and comprehensive manner. Instructor-Student Communication In distance education, communication by instructors was primarily conducted through email and on occasion, by telephone. In our course, when a student posed a question, our response to that question was sent to all three groups. All student-to-student questions were also made available to instructors, so we could share relevant questions with other groups when and where we felt it was appropriate. Our objective in doing such, was to build a learning environment that was, in many respects, similar to that of a physical classroom. Completion and Outcome of Project After the projects were completed and graded, we invited feedback from all three student groups. Our objective was to explore the consequences of our integrated study approach, which we hoped would leverage their learning. We observed the following: 1. Most students tended to like project work, which could be segmented, so that they could fit it more with personal schedules and not loose marks. Distance education students in group 2 (age 20-22), tended to prefer small, more structured learning modules, whereas distance learners in group 3 (age 35 to 45) tended to prefer even smaller learning modules. 2. Many students, including those studying in the distance mode, preferred to tape record in-class lectures on audiocassettes, believing that this would help them to follow instructions more closely. Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 8 3. Distance education students previously exposed to information technology (i.e., working with computer at their places of work) were more confident in the use of technology than their peers studying in the distance mode. Distance Versus On-Campus Education: Our experience There were some similarities worth noting between distance students age 20 to 22 years (group 2), and adult distance education students age 35 to 45 years (group 3). For students in both groups who were employed in job scenarios related to the course taken, the main concern was how to organize time efficiently and effectively. For students in both groups who were not employed in a job related to the course, concerns focused on “lack of confidence issues,” particularly during at the beginning of the course when “everything was so new.” Both distance education groups reported that their confidence levels rose as they began participating in the student-to-student and tutor-to-student email consultative processes. Another point of similarity between both distance groups was that they generally felt confident enough about what they learned, and displayed high levels of confidence when speaking knowledgably about the subject in course presentations. Although students were encouraged to interact with peers within their group, we discovered that one adult distance education student (group 3), was in constant touch with a traditional on- campus student (group 1). Both students benefited greatly from this cross-modality exchange, as they were able to help each other “learn how to learn.” When questioned the adult distance education student (group 3) said she gained more confidence in that the concepts taught became more tangible, whereas the classroom student (group 1) felt that the small, segmented distance learning modules designed were easier to understand. We observed that distance education students more readily linked their daily job and other activities to their education. This may stem from their tendency to adopt a more practical approach to learning, but we feel it also may be evidence of factors stemming from limited time and memory. This observation can be compared to in-class students, a group that generally more closely adhered to the concepts taught by the teacher. Adult Distance Education and Wearable Computing While it is important for many working adults to update their skills and knowledge via distance education, despite its flexibility, this mode still restricts students’ movement as they are often tied to their desk at home or at work. In this context, the age of “wearable computers” such as coming generations of even smaller laptops, web/cellular telephones, etc., are worth discussing. Using such highly portable micro-technology will release people from their desks, and increase their mobility and flexibility in terms of accessing and using of online learning resources whenever and wherever. Students will have total control concerning the time and place that learning will take place. Increased bandwidth, advances in satellite technology, and the use of artificial intelligence will one day greatly enhance the anywhere, anytime learning experience of distance learners. Conclusion To examine the possibility of designing appropriate learning environments that facilitate interaction between distance education students and students engaged in traditional classroom studies, we conclude from our observations that more research is necessary. Two-way interactions between distance and classroom students can greatly enhance the anywhere, anytime learning experience of distance learners. Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 9 From our perspective, the most important outcome of this experience is that we now know how to use our resources more effectively and efficiently – i.e., design of future online training, development of Web-related material, and methods and tactics to facilitate the flow and exchange of appropriate views between and among students and the instructors engaged in different modes of study. Based on our experience in Malaysia, we recommend building bridges between distance and traditional classroom education and conducting weekly meetings to help distance adult education students to learn how to learn. References Altbach, P. (1998). Comparative Higher Education Knowledge: The university and development. London: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Cartwright, G. P. (1994). Distance learning: A different time, a different place. Change 26(4) 30 – 32. Cookson, P., Donaldson, J., and Allan, B. (1990). Our education services go to market. Australia Now 14(1) 25 – 27. Cross, P. (1981). Adults as Learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cruikshank, D. R., Bainer, D. L., and Metcalf, K. K. (1995). The Act of Teaching. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Dixon, N. M. (1994). The Organizational Learning Cycle: How we can learn collectively. London: McGraw-Hill. Edwards, R. (1997). Changing Places: Flexibility, lifelong learning, and a learning society. New York: Routledge. Fuge, J. A. (1995). State Distance-learning Networks: More than meets the eye - The Iowa Communications Network: A bad deal for everyone. Rural Telecommunications 14(1) 13 – 16. Fulton, J. R. (1992). Microcomputers in distance education: applications for extension. Journal of Extension 30(2). Retrieved August 21, 2002 from: http://www.joe.org/joe/1992summer/a6.html Houle, C. O. (1961). The Inquiring Mind. Madison, WI.: University of Wisconsin Press. Jones, A., O’Shea, T., and Scanlon, E. (1987). The Computer Revolution in Education: New technologies in distance education teaching. New York: St. Martins Press. Liveright, A. A and Haygood, N. (1969). The Exeter Paper. University of Chicago: Center for the study of liberal education for adults. Merriam, S. B., and Caffarella, R. S. (1991). Learning in Adulthood. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pool, J. M., Scanlon T., Schroeder W., Snyder C, and DeAngelo T., (1997). Web Site Usability. North Andover, MA.: User Interface Engineering. http://www.joe.org/joe/1992summer/a6.html Harsh & Sohail – Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education 10 Sherry, L. (1996). Issues in Distance Learning. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications 1(4) 337 – 365. Sukumar, Parasuraman, S., and Sohail, Sadiq, M, (2001), Impact of Multimedia on Training, Distance and Continuing Education.’ International Conference on Millennium Dawn in Training and Continuing Education. 24-26 April 2001. University of Bahrain Conference Proceedings, 207 – 213. Wilkes, C. W., and Burnham, B. R. (1991). Adult Learner Motivations and Electronics Distance Education. The American Journal of Distance Education 5(1), 43 – 50. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning October - 2002 Research Notes – Vol. 3, No. 2 Role of Delivery, Course Design and Teacher-Student Interaction: Observations of adult distance education and Traditional on-campus education Abstract Introduction Tools Available for Distance Education Some Concerns Surrounding Adult Learning 
work_ospr24w2jvfsffm2pfij36fum4	----	aj680365.qxp INTRODUCTION The United States has too few pharmacists.1-3 For example, in its latest pharmacist employment survey, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation found 5,499 vacant chain pharmacy positions as of January 2003.2 The State of Florida is experiencing sim- ilar pharmacist shortages. The population growth rate in Florida is among the highest in the nation, especially among older persons. These older persons are among the most likely to seek medical care, have prescriptions dis- pensed, and need high quality pharmacy services. Second, the annual number of pharmacy graduates from Florida’s colleges of pharmacy per million persons was below the national average from 1990 to 1999 (17 per million versus 28 per million).4 The pharmacist shortage has been blamed for an upturn in dispensing errors and patient deaths.5 The shortage has been cited as the reason for pharmacists having less time to counsel patients; fewer pharmacy school faculty members,1 and the escalation in pharma- cist salaries.3 In response to this public health crisis, there has been a relative explosion in the number of pharmacy schools in the past decade.6 However, starting a new pharmacy school or college is costly. The high cost of starting new pharmacy schools and the difficul- ties in finding qualified new faculty members have spurred exploration of other options for training pharma- cists. For example, existing schools and colleges have increased their on-campus class sizes or, when there are space or resource constraints, they have used other means of increasing their class size, such as distance education programs. Recently, with the requisite advances in technology in place, several colleges and schools of pharmacy have started distance programs. These programs include both synchronous (eg, Nova Southeastern University, Texas Tech University) and asynchronous (eg, University of Florida) curricular delivery methods. Some programs are primarily distance-based (eg, Creighton) with students coming to campus 1 or 2 weeks per year, versus hybrid programs (eg, University of Florida, Nova Southeastern University) where students regularly come to a local cam- pus for routine interactions with faculty members and peers. In this fashion, a quality program can be offered to a larger number of students through a hybrid approach of combining educational technology with smaller numbers of faculty and staff members at the distance sites. Reliance on distance education programs has raised legit- American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 1 RESEARCH ARTICLES A Preliminary Report on the Academic Performance of Pharmacy Students in a Distance Education Program L. Douglas Ried, PhD, and Michael McKenzie, PhD College of Pharmacy, University of Florida Submitted September 5, 2003; accepted December 17, 2003; published July 29, 2004. Objectives. Specific objectives were to (1) compare the academic performance of students attending the founding versus distance campuses of one college of pharmacy and (2) investigate whether the campus attended was associated with first professional year academic performance. Methods. Data regarding students’ academic performance in specific courses and fall semester and cumulative first-professional-year grade point averages (GPAs) were retrieved. Campus attended, prepharmacy science and math GPA, pharmacy college admissions test (PCAT) composite score, high- est prepharmacy academic degree, age, and gender were used to predict academic performance. Results. Campus attended did not predict fall semester GPA (p = 0.44) or cumulative GPA (p = 0.95). Significant predictors were prepharmacy science and math GPA, PCAT composite score, and highest prepharmacy academic degree. Conclusions. After the first academic year, students on the founding campus and distance campuses performed equally well after considering their prepharmacy academic preparation. Keywords: distance education, academic performance, distance learning, doctor of pharmacy, educational technology, pharmacist shortage, assessment Corresponding Author: L. Douglas Ried, PhD. Address: Pharmacy Health Care Administration, P.O. Box 100496, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610-0496. Tel: 352- 273-6259. Fax: 352-273-6270. E-mail: ried@cop.ufl.edu. imate questions about the impact on the quality of educa- tion6 and leaves the profession with significant concerns about the quality of distance education programs. While distance education programs have been evaluated in other disciplines,7-9 they have not been carefully examined in pharmacy education, especially asynchronous-hybrid delivery programs. For the most part, published articles and meeting abstracts (the majority) are descriptions of the implementation and operation of entry-level or non- traditional distance education programs, without accom- panying program evaluation.10-14 Evaluative studies of pharmacy-based distance education programs have been directed at individual courses15-17 or continuing education or certificate program courses.18 In order to better meet the demand for pharmacists in the state, the University of Florida College of Pharmacy opened 3 campuses at a distance from the founding cam- pus in Gainesville, Fla, in September 2002. The new campuses were located in Jacksonville, Orlando, and St. Petersburg, Fla. The college chose this option for a vari- ety of reasons, including the lack of space to enlarge the Gainesville-based enrollment and to meet the College’s strategic plan of improving its cultural diversity and access to a pharmacy education for persons with geo- graphic limitations. With the doubling of the size of the entry-level class, the College faculty has entered into a continuous quality assessment program to monitor the academic progress of students in both the on-campus and distance education programs. The specific objectives of this report were to (1) compare the academic performance, as measured by first-year grade point average, of students registered at the Gainesville and distance campuses, and (2) investi- gate whether the assignment to Gainesville or a distance campus was associated with first-professional-year aca- demic performance. A Brief Description of the Asynchronous, Hybrid Distance Education Program Pharmacy students attending the distance education campuses in Jacksonville, Orlando, and St. Petersburg, Fla, view the lectures by Gainesville-based faculty by videostreaming technology via the Internet. Lectures are videotaped and can be viewed at students’ computers within 2 to 3 hours of their presentation on the founding campus. After viewing the lectures presented at a dis- tance, students are required to come to a local campus site on a regular basis (ie, 3 or 4 times per week). While at the local campus, students are required to participate in discussion sessions, case studies, review sessions, quizzes and examinations directed by faculty facilitators based at the local campus. Course activities and require- ments are the same for students attending the founding campus in Gainesville and those at the distance campus- es to enhance curricular comparability. Examinations are given at the same time across the 4 campus sites. Each campus has an on-site full-time director, coordinator of student affairs, and senior secretary who supervise the academic program, faculty advisement, extracurricular activities, pharmacy student organizations, service proj- ects, and social gatherings. The local directors work with Gainesville-based course coordinators months prior to the semester to insure that the schedule of class meetings and examinations runs smoothly. Local, part-time facul- ty facilitators assist Gainesville-based course coordina- tors with implementing the active-learning sessions and examinations at each campus. During the course of the semester, Gainesville-based course coordinators travel to the distance campuses and participate in live examina- tion reviews, question-and-answer sessions, and discus- sion sessions, in addition to using distance technologies to conduct these activities. This strategy of routinely using both live and distance interactions allows local and Gainesville-based faculty members to monitor distance- education students’ progress on the course content and to gauge the information that was most difficult for them. Hence, the faculty members are able to subsequently focus on the more difficult material. METHODS Predictor Variables: Campus Assignment The primary goal of this report was to compare the first-year academic performance of students attending the Gainesville campus versus those at the distance cam- puses. Students were assigned to campus using the fol- lowing procedure. After a student was admitted, the col- lege’s Admissions Committee assigned students to their first or second preference for a campus site. The Admissions Committee reviewed individual students’ circumstances and preferences before making the cam- pus assignments. Students could petition the Admissions Committee to re-evaluate the assignment if they present- ed additional or clarifying information. Assignments were not done on a random basis or by academic criteria. For the most part, students assigned to their second pref- erence indicated Gainesville as their first preference. Students assigned to their second preference were given the choice to attend one of the distance campuses after the Gainesville class was filled to provide them the opportunity to attend pharmacy school. Even so, most of the students at the distance campuses were assigned to one of those campuses because it was their first choice; St. Petersburg (64%); Orlando (62%), and; Jacksonville American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 2 (55%). Data regarding individual students’ campus assignment was obtained from the College’s Office of Student Affairs. The Office of Student Affairs monitors which campus each student attends. Campus-specific section numbers are assigned to each course and were used to verify campus assignment. Students were classified either as attending one of the 3 distance campuses (0) or the Gainesville campus (1). Predictor Variables: Student Characteristics and Preadmission Criteria Factors associated with academic performance in the first-year curriculum include prepharmacy grade point average (GPA),19 including science and math grade point average (SMGPA),20-21 scores on the Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT),19,21 attain- ment of a prior degree,21,22 and age. Students’ pre-phar- macy SMGPA, maximum composite score on the PCAT, age, and gender (female = 0; male = 1) were retrieved from a database maintained by the Office of Student Affairs. The Office of Student Affairs routinely collects these data as part of the College’s admission process. If a student submitted more than one PCAT for admission, the highest composite score was used. A student’s attainment of a previous academic degree was catego- rized as either none or associate of arts (0), or bachelor of science or higher (1). Academic Performance Outcomes Data on students’ first-year academic performance was collected from 2 primary sources. First, course-spe- cific data were obtained directly from academic course coordinators for each class at the end of the fall 2002 semester. Second, students’ cumulative fall semester GPA and cumulative first-professional-year GPA were obtained from the University’s Office of the Registrar. Students’ GPAs were obtained using a unique identifier and were linked with other student-specific preadmis- sion, sociodemographic, and campus-assignment infor- mation using the identifier. Statistical Analysis The bivariate associations between gender, prior academic degree, and campus assignment were exam- ined using Pearson’s chi-square test. Since the academic outcomes of the courses taken during the fall semester were expected to be conceptually similar, mean differ- ences in course-specific academic performance were compared using multiple analysis of variance (MANO- VA). MANOVA was first used as an omnibus test to evaluate the significance of multiple correlated out- comes.23 Post hoc comparisons were conducted and cor- rected for multiplicity of tests (Bonferonni). In addition to examining these prepharmacy admis- sion criteria separately, prediction of first-year academic performance was examined using multivariate models. The joint influence of the preadmission and student char- acteristics on the prediction of first academic year per- formance was evaluated using multiple regression. SPSS Version 10.0.0524 was used to conduct the statistical analyses. The independent effect of campus assignment upon students’ fall semester and first-academic-year per- formance was evaluated using hierarchical multiple regression techniques. If the change in explained vari- ance (R2) was statistically significant, then addition of the campus assignment measure added significantly to the prediction of fall and cumulative GPA. The a priori level of statistical significance was alpha = 0.05. The study was approved by the Health Sciences Institutional Review Board of the University of Florida. RESULTS Description of the Entering Class of 2002 Nearly 65% of the class was female. Females and males were evenly distributed across the Gainesville and distance campuses (Table 1). The average age for the Class of 2002 was 24.7 years (SD=5.8 years). On aver- age, students attending the distance campuses were near- ly 3 years older than students attending the Gainesville campus. The classes’ average SMGPA was 3.27 American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 3 Table 1. Comparison of Gainesville Campus and Distance Campuses on Sociodemographic Characteristics and Prepharmacy Admission Criteria Gainesville Distance Campuses Statistic p value Female Gender 64.8% 63.9% χ2 = 0.30 0.87 Age, y (SD) 23.2 (4.85) 26.0 (6.26) t = 4.02 0.001 Prepharmacy SMGPA* (SD) 3.42 (0.34) 3.13 (0.40) t = 6.41 0.001 Maximum PCAT Composite 88.2 (10.2) 79.7 (15.4) t = 5.33 0.001 BS degree or higher 25.0% 31.9% χ2 = 1.60 0.21 *Science and Math Grade Point Average SD=standard deviation (SD=0.40) and the average maximum PCAT score was 83.7 (SD=13.9). Students attending the Gainesville cam- pus scored significantly higher on both of these admis- sion criteria. The average preadmission SMGPA was 3.42 for the Gainesville campus and 3.13 for the distance campuses (t = 6.41, p < 0.001), and the average PCAT was 88.2 for the Gainesville campus and 79.7 for the dis- tance campuses (t = 5.33, p < 0.001). Finally, nearly 29% of entering students had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree before entering the College (28.7%). The propor- tion obtaining a bachelor’s degree was similar among students attending the Gainesville (25%) and distance campuses (nearly 32%). Comparison of Academic Performance Two indicators of academic performance were selected for this study. First, since fall semester was the first semester of the College’s program and the students’ first semester in the College, we compared the perform- ance of students at the Gainesville campus with that of students at the distance campuses. Second, students’ fall semester and cumulative first academic year GPA were examined. Students’ spring semester GPA is not individ- ually reported because of the high correlation between the fall semester GPA and the cumulative GPA (r = 0.95). Academic Performance: Individual Fall Semester Classes At the end of the fall 2002 semester, course per- formance indicators were higher for students attending the Gainesville campus, although not all of the differ- ences were statistically significant (Table 2). The aver- age percentage for Pharmacy Systems and Resources and the total number of points for Physiological Basis of Disease, Dosage Forms, and Fundamentals of Medicinal Chemistry were statistically different and remained sig- nificant when the Bonferroni correction for multiple tests was applied. In the Physiological Basis of Disease class, the Gainesville campus students averaged 34 points (4.2%) higher. In the Dosage Forms and Fundamentals of Chemistry courses, the differences were 14 points (2.7%) and 6 points (3.0%) for the students at the Gainesville campus and the distant campuses, respec- tively. Finally, in the Pharmacy Systems and Resources course, the difference between the Gainesville and dis- tant campuses was 2%. However, not all of the scores were statistically significantly different. The class aver- age in the biochemistry course was 74.3% for the stu- dents in Gainesville and 74.0% for the distance campus students (p = 0.24). Academic Performance: Fall Semester and Cumulative grade Point Average The average GPA for students on the Gainesville campus was higher compared with that of students at the distance campuses for both the fall-semester and for the cumulative GPA at the end of the first academic year (Table 3). The average fall semester GPA for students attending the Gainesville campus was 3.01, compared with an average GPA of 2.77 for students attending one of the distance campuses. The average cumulative GPA at the end of the first academic year was 3.18 for the Gainesville campus students and 3.00 for the distance campus students. Predictors of Academic Performance The next step was to evaluate the impact of signifi- cant GPA predictors, other than campus assignment, by evaluating the relationship between preadmission and sociodemographic variables and GPA. First, the average age of students attending one of the distance campuses American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 4 Table 2. Academic Performance Comparison Between Gainesville (N=126) and Distance Campus Students (N=143) for Individual Classes and Fall Semester Grade Point Average Course Gainesville Mean (SD) Distance Campuses Mean (SD) p value† Biochemistry (%) 74.3 (8.2) 74.0 (10.0) 0.24 Physiological Basis of Disease (points) 623 (60) 589 (74) < 0.001 Dosage Forms 1 (points) 364 (32) 350 (32) < 0.001 Fundamentals Med Chemistry (points) 169 (19) 163 (22) 0.04 Pharmacy Systems and Resources (%) 93.1 (3.4) 91.1 (5.0) < 0.001 * Wilks' Lambda = 0.83, F(6,262) = 10.8, p < 0.001, Eta squared = 0.17 † Bonferroni pairwise comparisons with adjustment for multiple comparisons Biochemistry Adjusted R-square = 0.00 Physiological Basis of Disease Adjusted R-square = 0.06 Dosage Forms 1 Adjusted R-square = 0.05 Fundamentals of Medicinal Chemistry Adjusted R-square = 0.01 Pharmacy Systems and Resources Adjusted R-square = 0.05 was higher when compared with the average age of the Gainesville students. The correlations between students’ ages and their fall semester and cumulative GPA were - 0.09 (p = 0.16) and –0.02 (p = 0.71), respectively. Fall semester and cumulative GPAs for females and males were not significantly different (Table 3). Next, the association between GPA and students’ prepharmacy SMGPA and maximum PCAT was exam- ined. Both were associated with students’ performance dur- ing their first academic year in the College. The Pearson correlations between students’ SMGPA and their fall semester and cumulative GPA were 0.44 (p < 0.001) and 0.42 (p < 0.001), respectively. The Pearson correlations between student’s maximum PCAT and their fall semester GPA (r = 0.30, p < 0.001) and their cumulative GPA at the end of the first academic year (r = 0.24, p < 0.001) also were significant. Hence, SMGPA and PCAT were both cor- related with campus assignment and GPA. Finally, the association between students’ prior aca- demic experience and their GPA for the first semester was calculated. Students with a bachelor’s degree or higher had significantly higher fall semester and cumu- lative GPAs compared with their colleagues with an associate of arts degree or no prior academic degree (Table 3). Given the joint association of the sociodemo- graphic and preadmission academic performance with both campus assignment and academic performance, the independent influence of each predictor was examined next. Multivariate Predictors of Academic Performance Given these significant bivariate differences in first- academic-year performance between the Gainesville and distance campuses, it was important to evaluate the fac- tors that (1) had the most impact on the GPA, and (2) independently predicted GPA after controlling for the other significant preadmission predictors. Whether the student was a distance education student or a Gainesville campus student did not significantly influence the pre- diction of the fall semester (standardized coefficient β = -0.05) or cumulative GPA (β = -0.01) (Table 4). Although the unadjusted course-specific indicators and the GPA indicators of academic performance are lower on average for the distance campus students, the Gainesville campus and distance campus students per- formed equally well after controlling for age, prior aca- demic degree at entry, prepharmacy SMGPA, and PCAT scores (Table 4). When the other factors were controlled, the predictor most associated with GPA was the students’ prepharma- cy SMGPA. For example, the magnitude of the stan- dardized regression coefficient for SMGPA was more than twice the magnitude of that for the highest academ- ic degree at entry in the prediction of fall semester (β = 0.43 versus 0.21) and cumulative first academic year performance (β = 0.41 versus 0.19). Students with at least a bachelor of science degree at admission per- formed significantly better than students with an AA or no prior degree. Students’ highest academic degree at entry into the College was a better predictor of GPA than their maximum PCAT score, although the standardized regression coefficients were similar in magnitude. When the variable designating the campus attended was added to the model, after the sociodemographic and preadmission academic performance variables, prediction of neither fall semester GPA (R2 change = 0.01, p = 0.44) nor cumulative GPA (R2 change = 0.00, p = 0.95) was improved. After adjusting for students’ age, SMGPA, maximum PCAT composite, and highest academic degree earned, the average adjusted GPA for the Gainesville and distance campuses was 2.86 versus 2.92 for the fall semes- ter (F(5,264) = 0.61, p = 0.44), and 3.08 versus 3.08 for the cumulative GPA (F(5,257) = 0.00, p = 0.96), respectively. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 5 Table 3. Association Sociodemographic, Admission Criteria, and Campus Attendance With Fall Semester and First-year Cumulative GPA Predictor Fall Semester p Value Cumulative GPA, Mean (SD) p Value Campus Gainesville 3.02 (0.55) 3.18 (0.49) Distance 2.77 (0.74) 0.004 3.00 (0.56) 0.005 Gender Male 2.88 (0.65) 0.77 3.09 (0.50) 0.96 Female 2.90 (0.68) 3.09 (0.54) Degree AA or less 2.81 (0.67) 0.002 3.03 (0.54) 0.009 BS or higher 3.09 (0.62) 3.22 (0.51) AA = associate of arts; BS = bachelor of science DISCUSSION The specific objectives of this report were to (1) com- pare the academic performance, as measured by individual course performance and first-year grade point average, of students registered at the Gainesville and distance campus- es and (2) investigate whether campus assignment, either to the Gainesville campus or to one of the distance cam- puses, was associated with academic performance during the first professional year. First, there were statistically sig- nificant differences in individual course performance and fall semester and cumulative GPA measures between the Gainesville campus students and distance campus students. Students assigned to the Gainesville campus scored higher in 4 of the 5 fall semester didactic classes. Even so, the “practical” significance of the statistical difference is an issue that warrants further attention. For example, the dif- ference in average score between the Gainesville and dis- tance campus students was statistically significant for the Pharmacy Systems and Resources course; however, the difference was only 2% (average grades of 93% and 91%, respectively). A similar situation was found in the Fundamentals of Medicinal Chemistry course, for which the average grade was 84.5% for the Gainesville campus students and 81.5% for the distance campus students. An important question for future investigation and assessment is whether these differences (ie, 2% or 3%) in foundation- al didactic courses are later associated with similar differ- ences in experiential and performance-based courses, or whether the differences are too small to translate into meas- urable differences in practice-related courses. The second objective of this report was to investigate whether the campus attended by the student was a signif- icant factor in their first academic year performance. The association between first year GPA and campus assign- ment was confounded with students’ prior academic per- formance and preadmission qualifications. Students’ prepharmacy preparation, as measured by the proxy vari- ables of SMGPA, PCAT, and prior academic degree, was the best predictor of first academic year performance, not the campus attended. After controlling for their prephar- macy preparation, the variable representing whether the student attended the Gainesville campus or one of the dis- tance campuses did not improve prediction of their first academic year performance. From the College’s perspec- tive, the most desirable explanation for this lack of sig- nificant difference was that the hybrid distance education strategy and its implementation was successful and, stu- dents with similar academic talents at a distance campus performed equally to students assigned to the Gainesville campus. The College’s distance program was conceived and implemented in less than a year. Consequently, the lower SMGPA and PCAT scores for students attending the distance campuses were due to a smaller number of applicants to those campuses the first year compared with the size of the Gainesville applicant pool. In addition, more students admitted to one of the distance campuses declined their admission invitations during the summer (ie, Gainesville had been their only choice). Also, stu- dents assigned to one of the distance campuses as a sec- ond preference moved to Gainesville when a position American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 6 Table 4. Regression of pre-pharmacy SMGPA, PCAT Composite, and Campus Attended Prediction of Fall Semester and First Academic Year Cumulative College of Pharmacy Grade Point Average Fall Semester Cumulative GPA Predictor Standard Coefficient p value Standard Coefficient p value Standard Coefficient p value Standard Coefficient p value Age -0.12 0.03 -0.13 0.02 -0.06 0.25 -0.07 0.26 Pre-pharmacy SMGPA 0.42 < 0.001 0.43 < 0.001 0.41 <0.001 0.41 < 0.001 Degree at entry 0.22 < 0.001 0.21 < 0.001 0.19 0.001 0.19 0.001 PCAT Composite 0.17 0.002 0.18 0.001 0.12 0.04 0.12 0.04 Distance Campus NA NA -0.05 0.44 NA NA -0.01 0.94 Total adjusted R2 0.27 0.27 0.22 0.22 F-ratio p value 21.12 p < 0.001 26.29 p <0.001 15.63 p < 0.001 19.62 p < 0.001 R2 Change NA 0.01 NA .00 F value of change p value of change NA 0.60 0.44 NA 0.01 0.95 became available before classes started in August. Consequently, most of the students added to the distance campuses were from the alternate or waiting list. As a result, beginning with the entering pharmacy class in 2003, procedures were implemented to maintain academ- ic parity among students admitted to the 4 campuses. The findings from this report also confirm the findings regarding the association between prepharmacy prepara- tion and prediction of first-academic-year performance.19- 22 Students’ prepharmacy preparation, as measured by SMGPA, PCAT, and prior academic degrees, accounted for nearly all of the prediction of first-year performance. This finding has significant implications for the assessment and implementation of this College’s distance education peda- gogy and future strategies for campus assignment. Based on these findings, some might argue that it would be desir- able to distribute students with these important preadmis- sion qualifications equally among all of the campuses to provide an optimal academic experience. However, whether equal distribution of students according to their prepharmacy admission criteria is needed to provide a quality educational experience for distance students is still an open question to colleges and schools of pharmacy with multiple campuses. Before accrediting agencies make rec- ommendations regarding this issue, measures of a quality educational experience other than GPA need to be devel- oped, agreed upon, measured, and evaluated. Appropriate complementary indicators of a quality education might include such things as professionalism, scores on national licensure examinations, and retention rates. Even then, the costs and benefits associated with such a policy need to be investigated. These issues needs to be investigated more in depth in the long term because of natural year-to-year vari- ation in the applicant pool. We also believe that the lower prepharmacy SMGPA and PCAT scores of students at the distance campuses that occurred during the first year may be of lesser concern in upcoming years. As the College has time to recruit, demon- strate workability and feasibility of the program, and interest more students in the metropolitan areas where the distance campuses are located to apply to our program, we are confi- dent that the qualified applicant pool will enlarge and the dis- parity in preadmission criteria between campuses found in the first year of the program will become less pronounced. Supporting this notion, students assigned to the distance campuses for the 2003 academic year have higher SMGPA and PCAT scores compared with students in the first class and their SMGPA and PCAT scores are comparable to stu- dents admitted to the Gainesville campus (Table 5). Somewhat to our surprise, there was a negative asso- ciation between age and fall semester GPA. One plausible explanation is that the older students have more responsi- bilities, such as families, children, and employment. Consequently, they may have more activities competing for their limited time and it took them longer to adapt to the rigors of the college’s program. Another plausible explanation is that a larger percentage of younger stu- dents entered the College directly after completing their prepharmacy education. Conversely, a longer time may have elapsed for older students between completion of the prepharmacy requirements and entry into pharmacy school, so these older students may have needed a longer period of time to develop effective study habits and to adjust to the substantial life changes needed to be suc- cessful in the College. Consequently, the younger stu- dents adapted more quickly than the older students during the fall semester. This explanation is plausible given the general increase in GPAs among students in the distance campus group in the spring semester and the lack of asso- ciation between age and cumulative first year GPA. Certain limitations of this report should be consid- ered when interpreting these findings. This report is an important first step in an ongoing program of assessment and evaluation, and it reports findings regarding one aspect of academic performance, namely first-year GPA. This report represents a systematic evaluation of neither the College’s performance-based curricular activities nor its experiential program activities. The College has one performance-based class in the curriculum in the first academic year. This practicum course requires students to participate in health screenings and shadowing of sen- ior pharmacy students in the local community. This class is graded as “pass/fail” and was not included in the reported GPAs. However, in recognition of the impor- tance of skills-based assessment in the development of a professional pharmacist, the College’s assessment team will actively monitor the outcomes of the students’ prac- tice-based training in their advanced practicum and advanced pharmacy practice experiences, in addition to other indicators of a quality pharmacy education, includ- ing professionalism, graduation rates, and scores on national licensure examinations. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 7 Table 5. Science and Math Grade Point Average (SMGPA) and Maximum Composite Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) Score for Students Entering Fall 2003 Campus Assignment SMGPA PCAT Students Gainesville 3.46 89 147 Jacksonville 3.50 84 48 Orlando 3.47 87 52 St. Petersburg 3.54 87 59 Overall 3.48 87 306 Second, this report does not confirm nor refute the effectiveness of the College’s hybrid, asynchronous dis- tance program. This report is an observation of the first year of an innovative educational program. Students were not randomized to campus, hence, limitations of nonexper- imental studies, such as preexisting differences, measured and unmeasured, might have contributed to the findings. CONCLUSIONS As part of a continuous quality assurance and assess- ment program, the University of Florida College of Pharmacy has monitored and compared the academic progress of students in Gainesville and on the distance campuses since the entry of the first class of students in the College’s entry-level doctor of pharmacy distance education program. After the first academic year, the College’s hybrid, asynchronous program for delivering the curriculum to students at a distance appears to be successful. Students on the Gainesville campus and those on the distance campuses performed equally well after taking into consideration their academic prepara- tion before entering the college of pharmacy. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author(s) would like to acknowledge the assis- tance of Ms. Lynn Fowler in obtaining the data used in this report. The authors would also like to acknowledge the assistance of William H. Riffee, PhD, Dean of the College of Pharmacy, and Sven Normann, PharmD, Assistant Dean for Continuing, Distance and Executive Education. The ideas expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and in no way are intended to repre- sent the official position of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy. This paper was presented at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, July 2003, Minneapolis, Minn. REFERENCES 1. Health Resources Service Administration. Bureau of Health Professions. Report to Congress: The pharmacist workforce: A study of the supply and demand for pharmacists. Washington, DC. 2000. 2. National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Demand for pharma- cists continues to grow while nearly 5,500 vacancies remain. NACDS news releases. 1 July 2003. Available at: http://www.nacds.org/ wmspage.cfm?parm1=3208. Accessed 9/2/2003. 3. Robbins T. Online Newshour: Covering the Pharmacy. February 2, 2001. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/ jan-june01/pharmacies.html. Accessed 8/22/2003. 4. Cooksey JA, Walton SM, Stankewicz T, Knapp KK. Pharmacy school graduates by state and region: 1990-1999. J Am Pharm Assoc. 2003;43:463-9. 5. Hendren J. Worked to Death: Pharmacist shortage leads to fatal error. Available at: http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/ dailynews/pharmacyerrors000214.html. Accessed 8/23/2003. 6. DiPiro JT. Viewpoints: Is the quality of pharmacy education keeping up with pharmacy school expansion? Am J Pharm Educ. 2003; 67(2):Article 48. 7. Jedlicka JS, Brown SW, Bunch AE, Jaffe LE. A comparison of distance education instructional methods in occupational therapy. J Allied Health. 2002;31:247-51. 8. Bearden EB, Robinson K, Deis MH. A statistical analysis of den- tal hygiene students' grades in online and on-campus courses and performance on the National Board Dental Hygiene Exams. J Dent Hygienists. 2002;76:213-17. 9. Curran VR, et al. Web-based continuing medical education. (II): Evaluation study of computer-mediated continuing medical educa- tion. J Cont Educ Health Professionals. 2000;20:106-19. 10. Fisher VS. Distance learning drug information preceptorship in a nontraditional Doctor of Pharmacy degree program. ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting. 2001; 36(Dec), NTP-6. 11. Grillo JA, Stolte SK, Lews J, Robinson ET. Integration of Web- based computer aided instruction into a nontraditional Doctor of Pharmacy. J Pharm Pract. 2000;13:382-91. 12. Normann SA, Markowsky SJ. Virtual classroom: Obtaining a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from a remote location. ASHP Midyear Clincal Meeting. 35:2000; NTP-22. 13. Stolte SK, Scheer SB, Robinson ET. The reliability of non-cog- nitive admission measures in predicting non-traditional Doctor of Pharmacy student performance outcomes. Am J Pharm Educ. 2003; 67(1):Article 18. 14. Ward CT. Establishing a distance learning site for a traditional Doctor of Pharmacy program. Am J Pharm Educ. 2003; 67(1):Article 20. 15. Blakely SA, Hixon-Wallace JA, Marquess J, Johnson D, Brooks P, Smith SL. Maximizing distance learning in a traditionally hands on course: physical assessment (PA) in a nontraditional PharmD program. Am J Pharm Educ. 2000; 64(supplement):160. 16. MacLaughlin E, Supernaw RB, Howard KA. Impact of dis- tance-learning technology on student performance. Am J Pharm Educ. 2002; 66(Supplement):33. 17. Mobley WC. Adaptation of a hypertext pharmaceutics course for videoconference-based long distance pharmacy education program. Am J Pharm Educ. 2002; 66(2):140-3. 18. Patterson BD. Distance education in a rural state: Assessing change in pharmacy practice as a result of a pharmaceutical care certificate. Am J Pharm Educ. 1999; 63(1):56-63. 19. Kelley KA, Secnik K, Boye ME. An evaluation of the Pharmacy College Admission Test as a tool for pharmacy college admission committees. Am J Pharm Educ. 2001;65:225-30. 20. Cox FM, Teat DW. Predictors of academic performance in a doctor of pharmacy training program. J Pharm Teach. 1991;2:45-57. 21. Thomas MC, Draugalis JR. Utility of the Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT): Implications for admissions committees. Am J Pharm Educ. 2001; 66(1):47-51. 22. Chisholm MA, Cobb HH, Kotzan JA. Significant factors for predicting academic success of first-year pharmacy students. Am J Pharm Educ. 1995; 59:364-70. 23. Biskin BH. Multivariate analysis in experimental leisure research. J Leisure Res. 1983; 15:344-58. 24. SPSS. SPSS for Windows. Release 10.0.5 (27 November 1999), Standard Version. Chicago, Ill. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (3) Article 65. 8 
work_ossh5qsbxbgi7bb5rr662yj3te	----	Learners’ opinions toward structuring a graduate program in distance education Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1017–1022 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com World Conference on Educational Sciences 2009 Learners’ opinions toward structuring a graduate program in distance education E.Pınar Uça Güne * Anadolu University, Eskisehir, 26470, Turkey Received October 23, 2008; revised December 10, 2008; accepted January 02, 2009 Abstract Increase in education needs, technologic developments and subsequently the opportunities for applying these technologies in education accelerated the prevalence of distance education. Besides, the need for qualified staff in distance education field also increases. Training learners to be experts, which have the necessary knowledge and the skills for distance education field, will be possible through founding the graduate programs in the field. In structuring such a program, individuals which take place in graduate programs in distance education field as learners are one of the groups that can be consulted. Problem Statement: How are the learners’ opinions toward structuring a graduate program in distance education? The Purpose of the Study: The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the learners’ opinions toward structuring a graduate program in distance education. Method: This is a qualitative study; interviews were conducted with learners which have been attending a graduate program in distance education field. The scope, management, characteristics and implementation dimensions in the case of structuring such a program in the future were considered in the interviews. Consequently, learners’ opinions about the courses and the contents that should be given, changing decisions related to courses, coordination among the stakeholders, future plans, properties and the quality of education, applications that can be used were analyzed. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance education; graduate program. 1. Introduction Increase in education needs, technologic developments and subsequently the opportunities for applying these technologies in education accelerated the prevalence of distance education. In particular, Turkey has a young population and education needs can be met with the help of distance education. As a matter of fact, today, nearly half of the students in higher education in Turkey are distance learners. Day by day more universities in Turkey present programs using distance education method. In parallel with these developments, the need for qualified staff in distance education field also increases. Training learners to be experts, which have the necessary knowledge and the skills for distance education field, will be possible through opening graduate programs in the field. Then, there * E.Pınar Uça Güne . Tel.: +0-222-335-0580/ 2572. E-mail address: epuca@anadolu.edu.tr. 1877-0428 © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.182 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1018 E.Pınar Uça Güneş / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1017–1022 occurs another question: how to structure this kind of programs. Program stakeholders’ opinions will be valuable in structuring such a program, and in this phase, individuals which take place in graduate programs in distance education field as learners are one of the groups that can be consulted. 2. Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to discuss how to establish the scope, management, characteristics and implementation of the program based on the learners’ perspectives. 3. Definitions Characteristics: The properties and quality of the education. Implementation: The approaches, learner-instructor interaction, learning environments, assessment methods. Management: Activities such as adding or removing courses, changing or updating the content of the courses, organizing, providing coordination, planning for future. Opinions: The participants’ perspectives, expectations and experiences toward structuring a graduate program in distance education. Scope: The courses and the contents of courses. 4. Importance The expectations in accordance with the findings of this study are • to guide in the case of enterprises to establish new graduate programs in distance education field; • to make the management, scope, characteristics and implementation arrangements when structuring programs; • to provide high quality education for learners; • to satisfy the learners’ expectations; • to maintain the learners’ high level motivations; • to find out the problems related to structuring programs and provide sound solutions for the people to solve these problems; and • to guide the current and future experts in graduate programs in distance education. 5. Method 5.1. Research Design This is a qualitative case study. The individual interview technique was used to obtain the participants’ perspectives, expectations and experiences in an optimum way toward structuring a graduate program in distance education. 5.2. Research Questions The research questions given below are scrutinized in this study: To structure a graduate program in distance education, 1. how should the courses and the contents of courses be designed? 2. how should the changing decisions related to courses be made? 3. how should the coordination be among the stakeholders? 4. what should be the future plans? 5. how should the properties and quality of the education be? 6. should there be applications which are different from traditional face-to-face education? What kind of? E.Pınar Uça Güneş / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1017–1022 1019 The first question is related to the scope dimension; second, third and fourth ones are related to the management dimension, the fifth one is related to characteristics dimension and the last one is related to implementation dimension of a program. 5.3. Participants The purposeful sampling technique was used to find the participants. There were 10 volunteer participants (6 women and 4 men) in this study. The participants were the graduate students at the distance education in Turkey. 5.4. Data collection The data were collected by the semi-structured and open-ended individual interviews. Each participant was interviewed once. The researcher interviewed with 8 of the participants face-to-face whereas she interviewed with 2 of them by utilizing MSN messenger software due to the time and place restrictions. The face-to-face interviews were audio-recorded whereas the MSN conversations were logged by the computer with the permission of the participants. 5.5. Data analysis First, each interview was transcribed. Content analysis method was used in order to examine the data in depth, to reveal concepts and relations, to explain and interpret them after arrangement within the framework of themes (Yıldırım, & im ek, 2006). The following analysis plan was developed. 1. Coding 1.1. Separation of the data into meaningful segments 1.2. Derivation of the codes 1.3. Reviewing the data and the codes together 1.4. Making necessary modifications in codes 2. Thematic coding 2.1. Determining the relations between the codes 2.2. Identifying the themes based on the determined relations and the research questions of the study 2.3. Reviewing the data, codes and themes together 2.4. Taking a field expert’s review of the codes and themes 2.5. Making necessary modifications and arrangements in the themes and codes. 3. Arranging data 3.1. Arranging the data according to the themes and codes. 6. Findings and Discussion Courses and Contents The participants’ opinions about how the courses and the contents should be can be evaluated from three angles: determining factors, subjects, and implementation. Determining Factors Developments, requirements and opinions are the determining factors. The learners expressed developments in information and communication technology, new learning environments, new understandings of learning, state-of- the-art publications should be considered when structuring courses and contents. Subjects Courses in research methods and design of online learning were stated as imperative. Education, communication and technology dimensions of distance education and the necessity for courses and contents including these dimensions were emphasized. In addition to courses from education and communication fields, there should be courses from other fields including theories (e.g. organization theories). Courses related to introducing distance education field, field studies and applications in Turkey, field terminology should take place. Most of the learners 1020 E.Pınar Uça Güneş / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1017–1022 agreed that beside the theoretical courses, there should be practical courses, or even maybe one single project-based practice course that learners use technology and develop learning environments. A learner suggested there can be courses correspond to branching. Also, there was a suggestion for a quality-based course. Implementation One of the learners was more concerned with the arrangement of the courses and the structure of the contents. He told that the order of the courses is important and the contents should be concretized because learners would mostly have different backgrounds. Changing Decisions Related to Courses It can be said that there were five main categories about changing decisions: opinions, requirements, developments, interactions and evaluation results. Opinions The data analysis showed that opinions should be considered to make changing decisions related to courses. Learners, instructors, society, delivery institution, other colleges and private sector are the groups to contact. Requirements Requirements of management, learners, private sector and other colleges should shape the changing decisions. Developments Developments in technology, research methods, and employment trends should be in consideration. Interactions The learners stressed the necessary interaction when making decisions related to courses. Face-to-face meetings, learner-management collaboration, instructor-management collaboration and a committee consisting of management and instructors related to this field- giving or not giving courses- were alternatives. Evaluation Results Problems met and actual end-of-period learning outcomes should be evaluated. Coordination among Stakeholders Stakeholders can refer to learners, instructors, field experts, institutional management and private sector. According to the data analysis, coordination was discussed in two points of view. Learners mentioned sort of coordination and subjects to coordinate on. Sort of Coordination Sort of coordination changed according to learners. Although some of them mentioned only particular coordination among learner-management or instructor-instructor or learner-instructor about particular subjects, most of them expressed an overall coordination among instructors, learners, management and even maybe experts from private sectors periodically. While most of the learners emphasized the meetings done face-to-face, one of them stated an online platform can be used. Subjects to Coordinate on Subjects to coordinate on can be listed as following: any change about the program; new technologies, new applications, other colleges’ applications; plans for next learning periods; determining the course contents; discussing the problems, good and bad experiences in order to redevelop the program; making plans considering learner needs; how distance education could be applied; solving the problems met in courses; preparing exams; making projects with private sector; sharing knowledge among learners upon their areas of expertise; sharing experiences; application suggestions; exchange of ideas among learners; establishing a committee for meeting the distance education expert demand of all sectors from one organization. Future Plans Future plans in graduate programs in distance education field changed specifically in a wide range, still, they can be collected in four main themes: course design, support services, improvement of distance education field, needs of individuals and society. Course Design Four of the learners saw the existence of at least one distance course as a necessity. One of them expressed all courses should be online and in open course format, so as to facilitate learning process for learners having geographical handicaps. Other learners had different reasons for demanding online courses. One of them thought it was necessary in order to catch contemporary, another one mentioned it was necessary because the program aims to train distance education experts, and being a distance education expert implies having experience as learners in online environments. One of the learners told she had a dream of a graduate program in distance education field that E.Pınar Uça Güneş / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1017–1022 1021 contains purely online and taught-in-English courses, therefore course exchanges and collaborations with other colleges could be possible in an international level. The learners stated that interactive learning environments should be selected for delivering courses and Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, etc.) can be utilized to accomplish this. There was also a suggestion for Web 2.0 courses and Web 2.0 projects done by the participation of learners and instructors, in future plans. In addition, virtual 3-D environments, games and applications of artificial intelligence were seen as issues to be surely considered. Support Services There should be support services to help learners using different learning environments and instructors play an important role in this situation. Improvement of Distance Education Field Some of the future plans that learners mentioned were related to improvement of the field. According to learners; considering there would be an increase in the demand for distance education experts in the future, the number of learners and instructors should be raised. Studies for applying distance education in different fields like engineering and medical science should be done. Structuring the program according to the developments in information and communication technologies should be the vision of the program. Gaining instant feedback about the problems that learners meet in learning process and evaluating them would contribute to future plans. Learners’ needs, learners’ profiles, learners’ opinions could shape the future plans. Branching should be provided. There should be a master program without thesis for who wants to study projects predominantly. Needs of Individuals and Society One of the learners expressed new generations should be examined in terms of their behavior styles, learning styles, interests, motivation styles, and trends and then decide what to do, because they would be the learners of tomorrow. Needs of individuals and society should be considered in future plans. Properties and Quality of Education Learners’ opinions about the properties and quality of the education can be classified into six categories: accreditation, considering learning experiences, preparatory for work, technology-supported, learning design, support-services. Accreditation Learners indicate that quality of the courses and contents should be in universal level, and so collaboration with other universities could be possible. Variety of learners should be provided. Some of them had a point of view as the learner satisfaction is the indicator of quality and therefore learners’ evaluations are important. One of them stated that if the learners’ needs are met and the learners are satisfied with the efficiency and the effectiveness of the program, it can be said that the program is of good quality. Another one said if learners are comfortable with the program -if they communicate with the instructors whenever they want, if they can study the subjects they want, if they are supported and not frustrated in learning process- then there is quality. Considering Learning Experiences Learners in graduate programs in distance education field are various with different backgrounds. One of the learners touched this point and talked about the necessity of theoretical courses to balance the learners’ background. Preparatory for Work Learners will design learning environments, distance education systems in their working lives, therefore the education should provide practicing. Institution should be equipped well in terms of software and hardware for this. Besides being able to use evolving technologies, learners should be trained to develop critical thinking skills, competence with the interaction of education, communication and technology in distance education systems. Technology-supported Education should be technology-supported in order to increase the quality level. Learning Design Learners’ profiles and goals about working in private sector or making an academic career can be considered in design phase and when determining learners’ requirements. Fundamentals of learning and communication sciences should take place. Again, learners mentioned that program should be in blended or distance format. Contents and implementation should make learners be active, question and research. Support-services Academic, technical and learner support-services should be provided. 1022 E.Pınar Uça Güneş / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1017–1022 Applications in Implementation of the Program According to the data analysis, learners agreed there should be different applications from traditional face-to-face education. The data implied network-based learning applications. Network-based Learning Learners emphasized interaction and communication dimension and suggested network-based learning applications. There were suggestions for online or blended, interactive, flexible, learner-centered, constructivist, interdisciplinary, project-based, supporting individual learning, productive, practical, multimedia-supported environments. Web 2.0 technologies, e-learning and mobile learning, IPTV, IP phone, podcasting and screen casting applications, virtual reality, games, simulations… etc. were mentioned to be evaluated to use. 7. Conclusion and Suggestions To meet the individuals’ education needs using distance education becomes prevalent. Besides higher education, private sector organizations prefer in-service training with distance education method. Online certificate programs provide flexible learning. Along with the developments in technology, educational applications develop and distance education improves. Nevertheless, the need for distance education experts and training efforts to train them become important. Graduate programs can be developed to meet this demand. Then the problem is how to structure the program. Experienced learners’ opinions can be useful and the findings of this study leads to following conclusions. The courses and the contents should be shaped according to technological and theoretical developments. Distance education is a broad, interdisciplinary field, and learners have different backgrounds and different goals for future so structure of the courses and contents should get on with these. It is right to make changing decisions related to courses according to the developments, requirements and evaluation results, in a collaborative way with stakeholders. Coordination is an important point affecting other components in structuring. Periodic meetings concerning anything about the program will be useful as well as meetings for specific purposes. Participants can be determined according to order of the day. Face-to-face or online meetings can be designed due to conditions. Again, future plans should reflect the new technologies in designing learning environments. Learners’ expectations show that they want to have the similar challenges and opportunities with distance learners, so distance courses using various technologies and environments can be designed and delivered in open course format. Support- services should be developed. Future generations and needs should be taken into consideration. Quality is another important point. Accreditation studies, redeveloping the program according to experiences, training learners for work; using new technologies, developing support-services will provide a high quality. Today, people learn in a more interactive, constructivist, collaborative way just as network-based learning applications were emphasized by learners. This kind of programs should follow the technology and provide learners the most up-to-date learning environments and applications. References Yıldırım, A., and im ek, H. (October, 2006). Sosyal bilimlerde nitel ara tırma yöntemleri. Ankara: Seçkin. 
work_otcxsn7govbarggv2whrtsaks4	----	INFORMACIONES EL «INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION» (ICDE) Y SU «XIV WORLD CONFERENCE ON DISTANCE EDUCATION» Ricardo Marín Ibáñez Profesor Emérito UNED. España Un grupo de pioneros que trabajaban en instituciones de enseñanza por correspondencia, en 1938 se congregaban en Victoria (Canadá) y crea­ ron el «International Council for Corrcspondcncc Education». puesto que el sistema por correspondencia era el más ampliamente usado entonces. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el ICDE tuvo una expansión constante. En 1982, la XII Conferencia de Vancouvcr (Canadá) reunió a más de 400 delegados y se acordó cambiar el nombre, que en adelante se desig­ naría como «International Council for Distance Education». Vamos a transcribir los objetivos del ICDE. que figuran en el apartado II de su Constitución, porque es el mejor indicador de las líneas de trabajo que viene desarrollando: a) Promover el conocimiento y mejorar la educación a distancia en el mundo. b) Gestionar y promover la investigación e información de la edu­ cación a distancia. c) Fomentar la asociación y el buen entendimiento entre los edu­ cadores a distancia de todo el mundo. d) Intercambiar publicaciones, material didáctico y otras informa­ ciones referentes al desarrollo y la organización de la educación a distancia. e) Celebrar conferencias, programas de demostración y sesiones de 71 formación destinados a sus miembros, y otros interesados, de to­ dos los países. f t Publicar las actas de las Conferencias del Consejo. g) Llevar a cabo otras actividades que sean convenientes para pro­ mover los objetivos anteriores. h ) Ayudar al desarrollo y fortalecimiento de las asociaciones regio­ nales y nacionales; estimular la cooperación entre estas asociacio­ nes y el Consejo internacional, y colaborar en los programas para la mejora de la educación y de la profesión. En 1985, el ICDE tenía inscritos 115 miembros institucionales y 540 individuales pertenecientes a 52 países. El evento más importante de los que realiza el Consejo son las Con­ ferencias, donde profesionales de todo el mundo tienen una excepcional oportunidad de conocerse personalmente, intercambiar sus experiencias, discutir sus problemas y evaluar sus resultados. El escenario de la «XIV Conferencia Mundial de Educación a Distan­ cia» fue el campus Blindern de la Universidad de Oslo, y se desarrolló del 9 al 16 de agosto de 1988. Varios hechos se conjugaron para dar especial relevancia a la Confe­ rencia. Coincidía con el 5U aniversario de la fundación del ICDE. El go­ bierno noruego le concedió un apoyo inusual. A la sesión inaugural asistió el rey Olav V. Como subrayó la Ministra de Iglesia y Educación en el discurso de la sesión inaugural «muchos representantes de gobiernos nacionales y de organizaciones internacionales están presentes en esta Conferencia Mun­ dial... UNESCO. UNDP, La Organización de Estados Americanos, El Secretariado de la Commonwealth» y aún habría que añadir otras como la Asociación Europea de Universidades a Distancia. Los delegados fue­ ron más de 7(X) venidos de más de medio centenar de países. La presencia más numerosa fue lógicamente la de Noruega, con 2U3 delegados. Si se añade la de otros países escandinavos: Suecia 44, Finlandia 19 y Dinamarca 10. más los inscritos a ultima hora, la cifra rondaría los 300. lo que implica más del 40 por cien. El otro bloque numeroso es el de los países angloparlantes: Estados Unidos 59, Gran Bretaña 46, Canadá 42, Australia 41. Nueva Zelanda 5 e Irlanda 1, que totalizaban unos dos­ cientos, lo que implica aproximadamente un 30 %. Los países de habla española sumaron una cifra modesta, 20. pero que implicaba el tercer lugar por razones idiomáticas. El trabajo se estructuró en sesiones paralelas. Se podía elegir entre las Conferencias dadas en el Auditorio 1. donde se ofrecía una visión pano­ rámica del tema, y los Seminarios —entre 6 y 9— que se desarrollaban simultáneamente. Los conferenciantes eran personalidades relevantes, con larga experiencia y publicaciones en este campo y venían de todas las 72 áreas geográficas. En ios Seminarios, normalmente, se exponían tres co­ municaciones, por lo común ceñidos a experiencias concretas, en 10 mi­ nutos cada una, y durante 45 minutos se discutían por los asistentes. Las conferencias solemnes se ajustaron a lo programado y se dieron 12, una correspondiente a cada uno de los temas del Congreso. Los se­ minarios son un buen barómetro para detectar los intereses y preocupa­ ciones, las tendencias y las corrientes al alza. En las 13 sesiones paralelas se desarrollaron 88 seminarios, con 253 exposiciones, en algunas de las cuales intervinieron dos y hasta tres oradores. Exponemos los temas de las doce secciones del Congreso, en orden decreciente, según los seminarios que se dedicaron al tema de cada una. Resulta difícil cuantificar las aportaciones a cada sección, pues en las co­ municaciones con frecuencia se contempla más de un tema, por su mutua imbricación, y algunas aportaciones no cabían en el marco previsto de las doce secciones. No se trata pues de un recuento estadístico exacto, para el que no hay lugar. Sólo intentamos ver. de un modo global, el interés suscitado por cada tema, el sentido de las aportaciones, y en ocasiones la nacionalidad de los comunicantes. 1. La tecnología de las comunicaciones, con 20 comunicaciones, se llevó la parte del Icón en las aportaciones espontáneas a la Conferencia. La conferencia sobre «La tecnología de las comunicaciones», la dio Yos- hiya Abe, del Japón, que trazó una panorámica bastante completa a nivel mundial, si bien las experiencias españolas e hispanoamericanas no fueron consideradas. Por otra parte, la amplitud del tema obligaba a una drástica selección. En los Seminarios se presentaban experiencias, por lo común nacio­ nales, y de concretas instituciones. En algún caso eran propuestas de cara al futuro. Todos los medios fueron estudiados, con una ligera mayor in­ cidencia del computador, sobre el que presentaron una decena de trabajos y el satélite con nueve. La radio, la televisión y el video interactivo, con­ taron con cinco estudios y la telcconferencia con tres. Casi todo eran des­ cripciones de experiencias en curso, escasa o nulamente evaluadas. Las auténticas investigaciones era raro encontrarlas. 2. La investigación suscitó numerosas colaboraciones, que comple­ taron once seminarios. La enseñanza a distancia, especialmente la de nivel superior ha estado enlazada con la investigación. El impacto de la ense­ ñanza presencial se constata inmediatamente; el profesor con un juego calculado de preguntas puede conocer no sólo el interés de la clase, sino lo que es más importante, el avance en el aprendizaje. Pero en la enseñanza a distancia, la retroalimcntación del sistema es tardía, y se necesita una investigación permanente para evaluar los resultados. Todas las universi­ dades a distancia, desde su nacimiento, han tenido un departamento de 73 investigación. Canadá y Estados Unidos han hecho mayores aportaciones a la Conferencia, pero ademas una docena de países presentaron contri­ buciones interesantes. La temática es en lo fundamental similar en todas las latitudes: la mayor parte se centra en los estudiantes: sus motivaciones, su perfil sociológico, sus comportamientos; los graduados; los que abandonan, sus causas y estrategias para reducir su impacto. Es común la comparación de la en­ señanza tradicional y a distancia y la evaluación de los alumnos. Del pro­ fesorado se estudian sus actitudes y las tutorías. Hay sólo un trabajo sobre coste-efectividad, a pesar de la urgencia e interés del tema. Los trabajos experimentales, con grupos de control son pocos, la mayor parte son descriptivos y emplean cuestionarios y entrevistas. En general se concluye que la enseñanza a distancia da resultados equivalentes a la presencial. 3. La educación a distancia como factor de desarrollo nacional, fue contemplada en 10 Seminarios, pues cubre a una población que de otro modo estaría ausente de la «insolación escolar». Recibió las aportaciones de muchos países, casi la totalidad en vías de desarrollo. Lo cual es lógico, pues para ellos es la manera de expandir la educación a donde las aulas no alcanzan, o mejorar la calidad de la enseñanza impartida en estas, o responder a demandas de tipo económico-sanitario, estrechamente vin­ culadas con el desarrollo. 4. Cinco seminarios estudiaron el concepto de educación a distancia, que atrajo el interés de los investigadores de Australia (4 trabajos), y de Estados Unidos (4 trabajos). Hay aportaciones importantes de Alemania Federal. Canadá, España. India y Venezuela. Ante la realidad variopinta y cambiante, los teóricos se esfuerzan en recoger sus matices y lógicamente traducen más directamente las experiencias en las que están implicados. He aquí alguno de los rasgos más insistentemente subrayados: La educa­ ción a distancia responde a los principios de: igualdad de oportunidades, educación permanente, y al derecho de todos a la educación. Es un apren­ dizaje independiente, «en casa», como prefieren designar los americanos, individual en cuanto que permite llevar un ritmo personal. Es un modelo abierto, sin restricción alguna de lugar y descentralizado. Para establecer la comunicación con el alumno distante se recurre a un sistema multimedia que recoge toda la tecnología de las comunicaciones, desde la radio y la televisión, a los videodiscos, computadores y satélites, aunque el material impreso sigue llevándose la mayor y mejor parte en estas enseñanzas. Sin embargo, se registra una progresiva convergencia de las enseñanzas pre­ sencial y a distancia, en cuanto que éstas no pueden prescindir de activi­ dades presenciales como las tutorías y las evaluaciones finales, mientras que la enseñanza tradicional recurre cada vez más a las nuevas tecnologías 74 y a la integración del trabajo independiente, e incluso fuera del campus, con la tradicional relación cara a cara profesor-alumno. En general se subraya que es una educación innovadora. 5. Diseño y creación de cursos. La mayor parte del tiempo la dedica el alumno a trabajar con materiales impresos que son la fuente de infor­ mación principal y casi siempre exclusiva a la que se ciñen los exámenes. El resto de las fuentes que envían mensajes al alumno son importantes pero tienen un carácter complementario, respecto a los materiales impre­ sos. Se estudiaron las condiciones de un buen material impreso, que debe cumplir todas las funciones del profesor en el aula (motiva, informa, aclara y evalúa permanentemente para evitar pasos baldíos en el aprendizaje). La conjugación de múltiples especialistas es imprescindible para elaborar un texto: Expertos de las materias correspondientes —por lo común va­ rios— , de psicopcdagogía, del diseño, de los materiales complementarios necesarios (audiocassette...). Además, son complejos los procesos de im­ presión y distribución, generalmente trabajando con plazos urgentes. Po­ ner un buen texto en manos del alumno a su debido tiempo es una tarea comprometida. El material de enseñanza debe ser evaluado antes de lan­ zarse al mercado, y posteriormente hay que estudiar su real impacto en el alumno. Se presentaron en los seminarios experiencias y reflexiones an­ glosajonas. (E E .U U .. Canadá. Reino Unido), países de gran tradición en este campo, pero también de instituciones recientes como las de Taiwan. la Universidad del Pacífico Sur (islas Fidji), Hong Kong y Venezuela. Con frecuencia, más que de análisis de la realidad, se trataba de líneas de trabajo deseables de cara al futuro. 6. Apoyo y orientación al estudiante (3 seminarios). El problema ca­ pital del estudiante a distancia es su aislamiento. Para que le lleguen pun­ tualmente los mensajes, crearle un ambiente estimulante, y resolver sus problemas, se organizan servicios específicos. En realidad, en esta cuestión están implicadas todas las de la enseñanza a distancia. El tema que destacó en el seminario, es el de «tutoría y orientación», pieza clave, que introduce el contacto personal individualizado y aún presencial, como elemento corrector de la lejanía. 7. La organización de las enseñanzas a distancia es más compleja que las tradicionales. Los alumnos distantes crean menos problemas de aulas, horarios y hasta de profesorado, pero en cambio exigen mayores servicios donde hay que integrar los multimedia, la elaboración y envío de materia­ les. el recurso a especialistas externos e internos, los Centros Asociados y de Estudio, y en definitiva, un sistema de complicada organización para 75 que los mensajes lleguen al alumno dondequiera que se encuentre y la conexión de éste con los Centros del sistema sea rápida y si es posible de inmediata bidireccionalidad. A pesar de todo, sólo se organizaron tres seminarios. Entre los Trabajos, destaca el interés por el control de la calidad de las comunicaciones. 8. El tema de la mujer en la educación a distancia, tuvo menos re­ percusión de la esperada (2 seminarios). En el panel que sustituyó a la conferencia, se subrayó la menor participación de la mujer en las ense­ ñanzas a distancia. Pero la situación es variada. En las universidades de Canadá e Israel, son clara mayoría y en otras son prácticamente la mitad. Los casos de patente minoría se dan en la Fernuniversitát alemana. Sri Lanka y España. No es fácil sacar conclusiones generalizadas, de ahí que se centrasen en motivos puntuales como la orientación, la atención a las mujeres campesinas, o nuevos modelos de la mujer árabe. 9. Sorprende que la cuestión de la economía sólo tuviera dos trabajos con los que se organizó un seminario, y éste reducido a temas concretos como la radio y el computador, aunque en otros seminarios hay datos y reflexiones que hacen referencia a la economía. Rumble, en la conferencia referente al tema, hizo un cuidadoso estudio de las economías de escala, típicas de las enseñanzas a distancia. Es necesario contar con un mínimo de alumnado para montar un programa o usar un medio tecnológico. Las situaciones, los medios y las fuentes de financiación son tan variados —mu­ chos tienen carácter estatal— que resulta difícil establecer conclusiones, pero en general es mucho más económica la enseñanza a distancia que la tradicional. 10. Es una sorpresa el escaso interés que ha merecido la Educación Permanente (1 seminario), porque desde su origen la mayor parte de la población cursa programas de educación permanente. Sólo se organizó un seminario con tres trabajos que también podían habcrscjncluido en «otros temas»: como el teléfono, la educación especial, o los museos, aunque ciertamente no pocas comunicaciones de otros seminarios tienen un claro acento de educación permanente. 11. Transferencia de créditos (1 seminario). La posibilidad de que los créditos académicos, ganados en una institución, puedan ser reconocidos por otras, tiene un gran interés en las enseñanzas a distancia, por el hecho de llegar a una población dispersa en amplias áreas geográficas, más allá de límites administrativos y de fronteras, y que normalmente desea con­ tinuar estudios también en otras instituciones. Las conexiones intcrnacio- 76 nales se multiplican, y esto obliga al reconocimiento de los estudios cursados por los alumnos en las instituciones enlazadas mediante conve­ nios. Sin embargo, en esta cuestión, estamos más con propuestas, ideas e ideales que con auténticos logros, pues éstos son todavía muy reducidos. 12. Temas variados. Había comunicaciones que no cabían en el marco de las doce secciones del Congreso, y se incluyeron en los seminarios con otros títulos, uno de ellos es el de «temas diversos», que prueban hasta qué punto la enseñanza a distancia se ha aplicado a los más distintos ám­ bitos. Siete seminarios con veinte comunicaciones son una prueba de la diversidad temática; a título de ejemplo citamos algunos: la enseñanza del inglés por medio de canciones, contar cuentos, tocar el violín, la danza, educación de padres, literatura escocesa, o mejorar la calidad de la ense­ ñanza básica. Sería difícil encontrar un campo en el que no se hayan apli­ cado con éxito, o al menos puedan aplicarse, los métodos a distancia. 12.1. Seminarios dedicados a la industria y al comercio. Hubo varios seminarios dedicados a la educación a distancia en empresas públicas y privadas de los países escandinavos (Noruega 3, Suecia 1 y Finlandia 1). Se presentaron los casos de los servicios postales, periodismo, hostelería, ejército y del comercio e industria, tanto para directivos como empleados. Desde el ámbito europeo se dedicó un seminario a proyectos vinculados con la Comunidad Económica: el COMETT y el SATURN, programas multinacionales, dedicados a la formación industrial y empresarial. 12.2. Universidades. Gran parte de los representantes y de las co­ municaciones —la mayoría— pertenecían a universidades a distancia. És­ tas son. si no la parte mayoritaria de las enseñanzas a distancia, sí la más dinámica. Se dedicaron seminarios respectivamente a Holanda, con tres comunicaciones; Hong Kong con cuatro y el Opcn Learning Institute de la British Columbia (Canadá), con cinco. Nos limitamos a recoger una lista de Centros de enseñanza de nivel superior, que sólo tienen alumnos a distancia, pues las Universidades pre­ senciales que tienen también alumnos a distancia, se cuentan por millares. Citemos sólo algunas: Franciu 18, República Democrática Alemana 20. USA 70, India 133, China 311 y Rusia 800. Ofrecemos, junto al nombre de la institución, un número aproximado de alumnos y entre paréntesis el año de su creación. — University of South Africa, 60.000 (1947). — Distance Tcaching Institutes (URSS). 582.000 (1958). — Open University británica, 108.000 (1969). — Empire State Collegc. New York. 5.000 (1971). — The University of South Pacific (Islas Fidji) (1971). 77 L — Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (España). 113.000 (1972). — Athabasca University (Canadá). 6.(XX) (1972). — TéléUniversité, Quebec (Canadá) 8.000 (1972). — Everyman's University (Israel). 10.(XX) (1973). — Fernuniversitat (Alemania occidental). 35.000 (1974). — Open University Allam lqbal (Pakistán). 65.000 (1974). — Central China TV University. 700.000 (1977). — Universidad Nacional Abierta (Venezuela), 20.000 (1977). — Universidad Estatal a Distancia (Costa Rica). 7.000 (1977). — O pen Learning ln stitu te , British Colum bia (C an ad á). 11.000 (1978). — Open University Sukholhai Thammathirat (Thailandia). 200.000 (1978). — lnstitute of Distance Education (Sri Lanka), 13.000 (1980). — University of the Air (Japón). 10.(XX) (1981). — Open University (Holanda), 15.000 (1981). — Open College of the University of East Asia (Hong Kong), 1.000 (1981). — Andhra Pradesh Open University (India). 6.500 (1982). — Korea Correspondence University. 250.(XX) (1982). — Indira Gandhi National Open University (India), 3.(XX) (1985). — National Open University (Taiwan). 21.000 (1986). Se puede comprobar lo reciente y el vigor expansivo de la enseñanza superior a distancia. La conjugación de un sistema tecnológico multimedia con momentos tutoriales presenciales, la capacidad para llegar hasta los más remotos rincones e impartir enseñanzas a un alumnado disperso, la facilidad para hacer compatible las ocupaciones profesionales, familiares y sociales con el estudio y la flexibilidad de un sistema educativo que permite que cada cual siga su propio ritmo de aprendizaje, hace que la educación a distancia pueda responder, más que las enseñanzas presenciales, a los principios de: igualdad de oportunidades, educación para todos y educación permanente, que se han convertido en ideales irrcnunciablcs del mundo contemporá­ neo. Por ello, se reiteró a lo largo del Seminario que la educación u dis­ tancia es la educación del futuro. 78 
work_otuxupbtgzanjezex762indtoe	----	BBX;01nov00 Open Learning, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2000 Costs and Effectiveness of Online Courses in Distance Education KWOK-CHI NG The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ABSTRACT This paper discusses cost-effectiveness as it applies to education, focusing particularly on the delivery of online courses in open and distance learning. The general concept of cost-effectiveness is discussed, and issues concerning the costs and effectiveness associated with using online technology in distance education are then addressed. Finally, a pilot project on an online course at the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) is used as an illustrative example. The key features of the pilot project relating to costs and effectiveness are outlined, and ways to improve its cost-effectiveness in implementing its second stage are suggested. Cost-effectiveness in Education ’Cost-effectiveness’ is a concept borrowed from the lexicon of economics, which is concerned with comparing different ways of achieving the same objective such that the most cost-effective choice will be the least costly of the alternatives being compared (Thomas & Martin, 1996). There has been an increasing concern about cost-effectiveness in the choice of educational media in education since the late 1960s. The sizeable investment in projects such as the Instructional Television systems in the Ivory Coast, Brazil, etc., led funding agencies such as the World Bank, UNESCO and USAID to raise questions about the relative cost-ef� ciency and cost-effectiveness of educational technologies (e.g. Eicher et al., 1982, cited in Rumble, 1999). In the 1970s and 1980s, similar questions began to be asked about the investment in distance teaching at university/tertiary level. Consideration of cost-effectiveness is critical at the level of overall resource allocation within an institution, as it is obviously important to ensure that the limited resources are spent effectively. Jones (1989) suggests that any education system which seeks to make a meaningful measurement of cost-effectiveness must: · describe the nature of the business in an objective way and establish a clear de� nition of the product; · determine the extent to which one is able to achieve the product aim, i.e. quantify the output of the production process; and ISSN 0268-0513 print; ISSN 1469-9958 online/00/030301–08 Ó 2000 The Open University 302 K. Ng · establish the cost of the operation so that one can make some sort of measurement of the cost-effectiveness of the process by relating the extent of product success to the cost of achieving it. Unfortunately, each of these stages has its practical and conceptual dif� culties. First, deciding which outcomes should be assessed for effectiveness involves value judgement and often exposes con� icts of values. Moreover, in education, the outcome of the learning process is not quanti� ably measurable in most cases, while there is also no single objective criterion to use in measuring or comparing perform- ance. Therefore, it is dif� cult to estimate the relationship between inputs and outputs and judge the effect of particular expenditure. Finally, to establish the cost of the operation can be a complex task as it involves the identi� cation of all hidden and non-� nancial costs, as well as distinguishing between start-up and recurrent operating costs (Knight, 1993, p. 182). The above arguments show that it is a complex process to apply the concept of cost-effectiveness in practice in educational contexts. The next section elaborates this point by focusing on the use of online technologies in distance education. Costs and Effectiveness of Using Online Technology in Distance Education Distance education is now in its third phase of development, based on advances in computing and telecommunications (European Commission, 1996). The key characteristic of a distance education system in this generation is ‘a combination of electronic access to multimedia materials held on CD-ROMs and in tele-libraries, computer conferencing, and the electronic interchange of assignments between tutors and students’ (Rumble, 1997, p. 117). The delivery of online courses in distance education is in line with such a movement. Online Costs The cost structures of online learning systems are different from those of traditional distance education systems. It is essential to understand the costs involved in an online course system before considering its cost-effectiveness, but the literature on this topic has been limited. Some papers focus on the costs of a particular technol- ogy, such as computer-mediated communication (CMC), in a particular setting; others discuss how the costs of CMC could be affected by various factors. Rumble (1989) undertook a study of the costs of using computer-mediated communication for a reasonably large group of students in a course, DT200: An Introduction to Information Technology, offered by the Open University of the United Kingdom (UKOU). The calculation of the costs of CMC operating within the framework of DT200 was broken down into the following categories. · Development and � xed production costs, which included the human capital, the development of course materials, the initial costs for software licences and capital equipment, and the costs of space for staff and equipment. · Distribution costs, which included the costs of storage and despatch of course materials, and the recurrent costs for software licences. Cost-effectiveness of Online Courses 303 · Reception and delivery costs, which included teaching costs and costs incurred by the student, e.g. the network and central computer costs, the purchase of micro- computers and modems for loan to students, the tuition costs, etc. Of course, the speci� c costs for the DT200 system may not transfer to other systems because local costs will differ and the particular arrangements made at the UKOU would not be adopted in other institutions. Another factor is that the ownership of PCs is more commonplace nowadays. Assuming student ownership of a PC, the overall cost would have looked very different. Nevertheless, Rumble’s (1989) study provides an indication of the costs that could be incurred in setting up an online learning system, which can be used as a basis for analysing the cost-effec- tiveness of using online technologies. Wells (1992) reviewed the literature on CMC and suggested that the costs of implementing a CMC course might be affected by the following factors: · the type of implementation; · who pays for which costs; and · whether a computer infrastructure is in place. Wells’s analysis provides a useful framework for considering the factors involved in presenting a CMC course. Cost-effectiveness of Online Technologies Again, the literature on this topic is very limited and focuses mainly on comparing the relative cost-effectiveness of a particular technology—for example, CMC—with the provision of more conventional classroom-based instruction. Phelps et al. (1991) compared the costs and effectiveness of a conventional residential classroom and a CMC learning environment for two US Army Reserve courses (‘Leadership’ and ‘Engineering’). In this study, course completion data, test scores, and students’ self-ratings of their levels of knowledge before and after the courses, were used as indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional methods. Evidence showed that both formats were equally effective in facilitating learning, but the CMC ‘classroom’ cost less than resident instruction in the long term. In summary, given the narrow scope of studies such as those by Rumble (1989), Wells (1992), and Phelps et al. (1991), the potential cost-effectiveness of using online technologies in distance education is still uncertain. These studies also show that the concepts of cost and effectiveness are in practice complicated. The selection of criteria to de� ne the effectiveness of a programme, and decisions about the allocation of costs in a programme, re� ect value judgements and could be arbitrary. For example, in the study of Phelps et al. (1991), the effectiveness of the CMC course might vary if different criteria were used. Also, in Rumble’s case (1989), the overall cost to the institution would have looked very different had equipment not been supplied to students. Therefore, both the costs and effectiveness of a pro- 304 K. Ng gramme may vary as a function of the selection of assessment criteria and the type of implementation. The Pilot Online Course Project in OUHK The OUHK pilot online course project considered here illustrates the importance and complexity of considering cost-effectiveness in practice, and suggests ways to improve the cost-effectiveness of the project in its next stage. Background of the Project The Open University of Hong Kong (formerly the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong) is the only distance learning university in Hong Kong. As a provider of distance education, OUHK is very interested in the use of information and educa- tional technology to support learning activities. In the past two years, some elements of network- or Web-based instruction (WBI) have been incorporated in several courses at the OUHK (Yuen et al., 1998). For the April 1999 presentation, the OUHK launched a pilot project to promote a new online course delivery system—the Online Learning Environment (OLE). A Web course development tool—WebCT—was selected as a uni� ed platform for delivery. The aims of the pilot project were to test WebCT in the OUHK environ- ment and to prepare for a larger scale implementation of WBI in OUHK courses. Its objectives were to consider: · the requirements of and provision for students registering for online courses, including requirements for PCs and for the provision of online facilities by the University; · the requirements of tutors responsible for the online courses, e.g. tutors’ compen- sation and training; and · the workload implications for course coordinators involved in the online course. Nine courses—two business courses, two computing courses, three education courses and two social science courses—joined the pilot. Key Features of the Project Some of the main features relating to the costs of implementation of the pilot project are: · The type of implementation. The online course is not a replacement for the traditional mode of course delivery. Printed course materials are provided along with online course materials, and students can also gain support from face-to-face tutorials and telephone tuition. There are three categories of online courses in the pilot. The mandatory category requires students to access the course materials, the multimedia programmes in CD-ROMs, and the remote database, through the OLE, and to be involved in online conferencing activities. In the optional Cost-effectiveness of Online Courses 305 category, students are allowed to select either the online or traditional mode of the course at the start of the semester. However, those who choose the online mode are required to use the relevant electronic materials, and to be involved in online discussion activities as for those in the mandatory mode. Finally, for the enhancement category, a limited online facility is provided to all students taking the course. However, its inclusion is for enhancement purposes only, and there is no requirement for students’ involvement in the OLE. Not surprisingly, the two computing courses included in the project were offered in the mandatory mode. The other courses were delivered either in the optional or enhancement mode. · Who pays for which costs? Students and tutors are expected to have computers that meet University speci� cations, and modems. The University has provided Inter- net access to tutors, while students are required to have their own. There is no extra payment to tutors for undertaking the tasks in online courses as they have already been paid for face-to-face tutorial sessions, and there was uncertainty about the impact of the online elements on tutors’ workload. · Infrastructure and other support. The network infrastructure has been developed at the OUHK, and the Information Technology Unit (ITU) provides technical support. The development and production of the online courses involved full-time academic staff—for example, individual course coordinators, and editorial, design, educational technology and other staff of the Educational Technology and Pub- lishing Unit (ETPU). The ETPU was also responsible for providing training to internal staff and tutors, and for producing a training manual and video. Discussion and Suggestions The above features have signi� cant implications for the cost and effectiveness of implementing the pilot online course project. First, it should be noted that setting clear and appropriate objectives is an essential step in evaluating the effectiveness of a project. The objectives of the pilot have mainly been administrative considerations, such as the requirement for equipment, the provision of the online facilities for different modes of delivery, and the workload of staff. They have not focused in detail on the educational purposes of providing online courses and new technologies, an aspect of the project which should be further elaborated and clearly stated in the second stage in order to evaluate whether the expected outcomes are achieved. The cost of online courses is affected by how they are implemented: as an enhancement, or as the primary teaching medium. The latter is considerably more expensive as the cost may involve the conversion of traditional correspondence materials and designing online learning activities such as electronic conferences. However, in order to judge the cost-effectiveness of an online course, the pedagog- ical purposes of different modes of delivery need to be taken into account. For example, in the mandatory mode, interaction among students can be promoted through online discussion. In contrast, the online facilities in the enhancement mode are for enrichment purposes only, and students need not become involved in it. It 306 K. Ng is, therefore, impossible to judge the relative cost-effectiveness of different modes of online course as their pedagogical purposes vary. On the other hand, the students targeted are likely to be different. For instance, students on computing courses are better able to cope with the mandatory online mode, but this does not necessarily imply that students in other disciplines would not bene� t from it. Therefore, the pedagogical purposes of the different categories of online course, and the needs of students involved in them, should be further considered in the next stage. It is impossible to estimate which alternative is the most cost-effective choice unless this is done. It is also important not to mix the concepts of ef� ciency and cost-effectiveness. As noted by Atkinson (1983; cited in Thomas, 1990, p. 50), ‘it is possible for a programme to be ef� cient but not cost effective if the outputs which are actually produced do not contribute to the programme objectives; that is it may be ef� cient at doing the wrong things’. In the pilot, students were not given any support in terms of access to computer facilities and the Internet. While the institution can save money by shifting the costs to students, this also raises questions about affordability and access. The literature indicates that the cost of supplying students with equipment is actually minor compared to the costs of course development or operations and support (Phelps et al., 1991). The provision of a pool of computers and modems on loan to students can be considered in the next stage of implementation. Tutor payment is another important issue. While the institution can again save money by not paying the tutors for undertaking the online tasks, this makes it virtually impossible to manage effectively tutors’ involvement in online tutoring. In Rumble’s study(1989), tutors were paid an allowance in addition to their normal fees, in recognition of the expenses which they incurred in respect of line charges and computer consumables. In fact, tutor involvement could be a critical factor affecting students’ participation. It is likely that students’ desire to participate in the OLE is heavily in� uenced by whether a tutor is joining in, so payment for tutors for undertaking the tasks in the OLE should be given serious reconsideration. Another alternative is to use the CMC to replace face-to-face tutorials and telephone tuition completely to reduce the costs. Finally, the potential cost for the implementation of the project on a large scale must be carefully analysed. Human capital and the costs of conversion are expenses that can easily be underestimated. As indicated by Rumble (1989), there is huge human capital involved in the development and production of a CMC system, which must not be overlooked. The pilot project has addressed the workload implications for academic staff only. However, the introduction of online courses requires the acquisition of considerable additional manpower including editorial, design, educational technology, administrative and other staff. These staff costs need to be taken into account for the cost-estimation for the next stage of implemen- tation. It should also be noted that the introduction of online courses will require a fundamental rethinking of all the course components, and the fullest exploitation of the potential of online courses for distance education might entail the conversion and redesign of course materials (Phelps et al., 1991; Rumble, 1989). To ensure that Cost-effectiveness of Online Courses 307 the online course project can be implemented in a cost-effective manner, this cost should not be underestimated. Conclusions Much attention is currently focused on the potential offered by the new computing and communications technologies for enriching and extending the provision of distance education, and perhaps for reducing costs (European Commission, 1996). However, many current applications of these technologies in distance and open learning are essentially experimental, and in many cases their operational cost- effectiveness is still uncertain. The implementation of an online course project in the OUHK illustrates the complex nature of applying the concepts of cost and effectiveness in practice. Various factors need to be taken into account to ensure that the project is imple- mented in a cost-effective manner—especially concerning the educational effects which are being sought, and whether the application of online technologies helps or hinders their achievement. Mr Kwok-chi Ng, School of Education and Languages, The Open University of Hong Kong, 30 Shepherd Street, Homantin, Hong Kong. E-mail: kcng@ouhk.edu.hk References EICHER, J.-C., HAWKRIDGE, D., MCANANY, E., MARIET, F. & ORIVEL, F. (1982) The Economics of New Educational Media. Volume 3: Cost and effectiveness overview and synthesis (Paris, The UNESCO Press). EUROPEAN COMMISSION (1996) The Potential Cost-effectiveness of Tertiary Open and Distance Learning (Luxembourg, Of� ce for Publications of the European Communities). JONES, D. (1989) A practical unit cost approach to budgeting and accountability in colleges, in: R. LEVACIC (Ed.) Financial Management in Education (Buckingham, Open University Press). KNIGHT, B. (1993) Financial Management for Schools: The Thinking Manager’s Guide (Oxford, Heinemann Educational Publishers). PHELPS, R. H., WELLS, R. A., ASHWORTH, R. L. & HAHN, H. A. (1991) Effectiveness and costs of distance education using computer-mediated communication, American Journal of Distance Education, 5(3), pp. 7–19. RUMBLE, G. (1989) Online costs: interactivity at a price, in: R. MASON & A. KAYE (Eds) Mind-weave: Communication, Computers and Distance Education (Oxford, Pergamon Press). RUMBLE, G. (1997) The Costs and Economics of Open and Distance Learning (London, Kogan Page). RUMBLE, G. (1999) Cost analysis of distance learning, Performance Improvement Quarterly, 12(2), pp. 122–137. THOMAS, H. (1990) Education Costs and Performance, A Cost-effectiveness Analysis (London, Cassell). THOMAS, H. & MARTIN, J. (1996) Managing Resources for School Improvement (London, Rout- ledge). WELLS, R. (1992) Computer-mediated Communication for Distance Education: An International Review of Design, Teaching, and Institutional Issues, Research Monographs No. 6, The American Centre for the Study of Distance Education, The Pennsylvania State University. 308 K. Ng YUEN, K. S., CHUNG, S. L., MAK, J. & CHOW, L. (1998) ‘Provision of an effective electronic learning environment for distance students in Hong Kong?’ Conference Proceedings: 15th IFIP World Computer Congress ‘The Global Information Society on the Way to the Next Millennium’ in Vienna and Budapest (31 August–4 September 1998), Organized by the Austrian Computer Society (OCG) and the John V. Neumann Computer Society, (NJSzT), on behalf of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). 
work_owy3lvvet5d6hclfisi7qfpg3u	----	Leveraging learning technologies for collaborative writing in an online pharmacotherapy course This article was downloaded by: [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities], [Amy L. Pittenger] On: 30 April 2012, At: 06:18 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Distance Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 Leveraging learning technologies for collaborative writing in an online pharmacotherapy course Amy L. Pittenger a & Becky Olson-Kellogg b a University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, Minneapolis, MN, USA b Program in Physical Therapy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Available online: 30 Apr 2012 To cite this article: Amy L. Pittenger & Becky Olson-Kellogg (2012): Leveraging learning technologies for collaborative writing in an online pharmacotherapy course, Distance Education, 33:1, 61-80 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.667960 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.667960 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Leveraging learning technologies for collaborative writing in an online pharmacotherapy course Amy L. Pittengera* and Becky Olson-Kelloggb aUniversity of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, Minneapolis, MN, USA; bProgram in Physical Therapy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA (Received 16 July 2011; !nal version received 15 December 2011) The purpose of this project was to evaluate the development and delivery of a hypertext case scenario document to be used as the capstone assessment tool for doctoral-level physical therapy students. The integration of Web-based collaborative tools (PBworks™ and Google Sites™) allowed students in this all-online course to apply their pharmacotherapy knowledge in a physical ther- apy patient scenario, while working with colleagues to determine the best route of patient care. Students developed digital writing skills imperative to a patient-centered, collaborative health-care !eld, and practiced evidence-based patient care. The !ndings demonstrate that the implementation of collaborative digital writing with a hypertext document case scenario assessment as the primary assessment tool in this online pharmacotherapy course delivered to doctoral-level physical therapy students is a feasible and effective educational strategy. Keywords: collaborative digital writing; authentic assessment; health profes- sional; whole-task Introduction Most educational programs state that competence in some !eld is the primary educa- tional objective. However, what does it mean to be competent? Most de!nitions combine the use of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to solve problems within a particular !eld (Baartman, Bastiaens, Kirschner, & van der Vleuten, 2007). Van Mer- riënboer (2007) de!ned competence as the effective combination of declarative, pro- cedural, and conditional knowledge, automated routines for solving familiar problems fast and with few errors, metacognitive knowledge to monitor and regulate task-related activities, and the acknowledgement of expertise by the speci!c profes- sional community. Competence, therefore, is also socially constructed, context spe- ci!c, and durable; a person maintains competence in a !eld, even as tools or working methods change. The metacognitive portion of competence in this de!nition is described as “re"ective expertise” (van Merriënboer, 2007, p. 74); self-awareness is important for achieving competence and maintaining it. In short, competence is an integration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes and also acknowledgment of expertise by one’s peers. *Corresponding author. Email: alp@umn.edu Distance Education Vol. 33, No. 1, May 2012, 61–80 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online ! 2012 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.667960 http://www.tandfonline.com D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 If the primary educational goal of educational programs is to graduate students who can competently address complex problems, how does this in"uence instruc- tional strategies? Merrill (2002) identi!ed !ve !rst principles of instruction: Learning is facilitated when: learners are engaged in solving real-world problems, existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge, new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner, new knowledge is applied by the learner, and new knowl- edge is integrated into the learner’s world. (p. 44–45) All programs and educational contexts seek to create learning environments that allow learners to apply the content in a personal and authentic way, stimulating greater interest and expanding learning in ways unanticipated by the instructor. Learning, then, requires authentic problems that are complex and ill-de!ned. Real- world settings present complex and ill-de!ned problems whereby the solution is beyond the abilities of any one learner; collaboration with peers is necessary to cre- ate the best solution. Thus, learners are required to actively engage in problem solv- ing with each other, struggle with the many possible solutions, build on prior knowledge, and incorporate and build new understanding (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Theoretical framework Authentic educational strategies to develop clinical competency It is not possible to include all related content into the formal curriculum. There- fore, students must be able to transfer learning from situations encountered within the formal curriculum to real-life scenarios for which they have had no formal exposure. Many educators argue that whole-task, authentic, collaborative educa- tional experiences are required for meaningful learning, which makes transfer possi- ble (Doering & Veletsianos, 2008; Keller, 2008; Merrill, 2002; van Merriënboer, 2007). This educational position requires a post-structuralism, social constructivist philosophy (Weedon, 1997); the instructor must hold that learning is social and that meaning is constructed by the learner (Wang, 2008). Implementation of whole-task and social interaction as learning strategies requires a social constructivist episte- mology; one has to accept that learning is constructed and that there is not one “T”ruth or one “R”eality that is handed down from teacher to student; this philo- sophical view also holds that meaningful learning does not occur in isolation (Amhag & Jakobsson, 2009; Cole, 2009; Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Jonassen, 2000; Kramarae, 2007; Paulus, 2005). By incorporating social interaction into the design of the learning environment, the constructivist philosophy becomes that of social constructivism, which differs from cognitive constructivism on the essential component of collaborative learning (Wang, 2008), and incorporates the socially constructed concept of competence. Using learning technologies to provide scaffolding The idea that learning requires grappling with authentic problems with ill-de!ned solutions is also consistent with cognitive complexity theory, which argues that both cognition and affect domains must be engaged (Tennyson & Breuer, 2002), and motivational design theory (Keller, 1987, 2008), which argues that educational 62 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 problems must have personal relevance to attract and hold learners’ attention. However, ill-de!ned, authentic tasks are often too complicated for developing clinicians. As Merrill (2002) emphasized, students may not have the prior knowl- edge necessary to engage in an authentic, complex task. Merrill also emphasized the importance of supporting students with educational scaffolding. The provision of student support through demonstration, feedback, and necessary resources ensures that students will not become frustrated and give up; this also builds learner con!dence that successful completion is possible and worthwhile (Keller, 1987, 2008). Merrill also argued that learners must have the opportunity to “go public” with knowledge as a means to socially construct competence, through demonstra- tion and defense of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The argument that students must apply, practice, and struggle with the material in a way that is purposeful, situated, and collaborative has support in many theorists’ works, such as Vygotsky, Dewey, Bruner, Whitehead, Duffy, Jonassen, Lave and Wenger, Wertheimer, and others (as cited in Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Hull & Saxon, 2009; Jonassen, 2000; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Lund, 2008). Most importantly, these theoretical frameworks support the overall implementation of collaborative, complex learning experiences (coupled with necessary learner scaffolding) that engage learner cogni- tive and affective domains to facilitate meaningful learning and knowledge transfer. Language and writing as strategies for learning Many have argued in favor of the social nature of learning (Gee, 2005; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Lewis & Ketter, 2004). Many, too, have argued for the role of lan- guage and writing in learning (Alverman, O’Brien, & Dillon, 1996; Bean, 2001; Berninger & Winn, 2006; Hull & Saxon, 2009; Sosnoski, 1999). The combining of learning, language, and social interaction has been de!ned as “sociogenesis—that we come to knowledge by taking part in collective activities that evolve over time, and where language and material artifacts function as collective structural resources” (Lund, 2008, p. 36). As students join a profession, they not only adopt the knowledge of the group, but also take on ways of thinking, acting, and commu- nicating; they take on the identity of someone in that profession. This is what Gee (2005) described as “D”iscourse (p. 7) and is also consistent with the socially con- structed de!nition of competence: the assertion that competence is not only a matter of skill, but also acknowledgment from colleagues. If competency is the educational goal, then competency is not only demonstrated through knowledge acquisition, application, and integration, but also demonstrated through “D”iscourse. One way for students to demonstrate that they are thinking, acting, and communicating like a member of a professional !eld is to ask them to collabora- tively create written communications appropriate for different audiences, namely, for the students in this project, patients, and other members of the health-care team. According to a sociocultural view, learning is both a social and collaborative process, where meaning is co-constructed and co-authored (Amhag & Jakobsson, 2009). Language is central to this social construction of meaning. As Weedon (1997) explained, language is “the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed” (p. 21). Providing students with a platform to collabora- tively grapple with constructing audience-appropriate written communications requires students to engage with, and at the same time, identify with, the “D”iscourse of the profession. This strategy also requires students to demonstrate Distance Education 63 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 the application of the course content in a way that traditional, individual exams do not. Learning technologies provide a mechanism through which the necessary scaffolding can be provided, so that learning experiences can be complex, authentic, and collaborative, and thereby motivating and meaningful. Leveraging learning technologies for collaborative writing in an all-online course This redesign project used collaborative writing as a teaching strategy to model effective professional communication and as an assessment component to demon- strate content mastery. Bean (2001) eloquently described the connection between writing and learning: “When we make students struggle with their writing, we are making them struggle with thought itself” (p. xiii). Writing has traditionally been a solitary activity, and one that has been dif!cult to scaffold in a timely manner, yet many have demonstrated the educational affordances of co-writing as a central ped- agogical strategy (Trentin, 2009). Digital writing allows for the incorporation of an authentic communication component into a course and provides timely scaffolding in a logistically manageable way. For example, wikis can be used for creating col- laborative writing and hypertext documents for showcasing !nal communication products (Landow, 2006; Lund, 2008). Combining collaborative learning and writ- ing communication using digital writing is one potential strategy to develop com- petency in health professional students. Writing challenges students to master content and discourse by collaboratively constructing meaning, while practicing being a health-care provider; what Gee (2003) referred to as projected identity. Here was an opportunity for using learning technology to purposely meet an edu- cational need. Use of collaborative learning experiences are also important for health professionals, such as the physical therapy students speci!c to this project, who will deliver care in a collaborative team once in practice; students, then, bene!t from learning to negotiate strategies for effective communications prior to entry into the professional setting. In a review of the literature, Rourke and Kanuka (2009) reported that measures of student learning in online collaborative environments remain an unexplored area of research, and that educators rely on student perception of learning and application of potentially invalid student assessment strategies. They concluded that there does not appear to be consistent, deep, or meaningful learning within online communities of inquiry. In addition to implementing authentic learning experiences, an authentic assessment strategy was used, which many have argued is essential for effective and engaged learning (Jonassen, 2000; Merrill, 2002). In this course redesign, whole-task, competency-based learning (4C/ID instructional design model) utilizing collaborative learning and !rst principles of instruction strategies was integrated within a pharmacotherapy course to doctoral- level physical therapy students. In this instructional design model, the C refers to the four components of learning tasks, supportive information, just-in-time information, and part-task practice. The advantage of this model is that it allows instructors and designers to create learning experiences that are complex and authentic because of the supportive design features of scaffolding, practice opportunities, and procedural information (van Merriënboer, 2007). See Table 1 for additional description of how the four components of the 4C/ID model were de!ned in the course design. 64 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 Context of the study Phar 6800: Rehabilitation Pharmacotherapy is a doctoral-level course for students enrolled in a physical therapy program at a large Midwestern university, starting the second year of a continuous three-year program. The required pharmacotherapy course for these students has always been offered by the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy in a distance format, traditionally with online lectures, study guides, and practice cases with the !nal grade determined by an average score from four multiple-choice exams. In the redesigned offering, students were divided into small groups of !ve stu- dents at the beginning of the summer semester; typically, 50 students enroll for the course each summer semester, creating 10 groups of 5 students. Groups were assigned unique, complex patient case scenarios (involving approximately 18 medi- cations), containing six major pharmacotherapy issues (cardiovascular, infectious disease, central nervous system/pain, endocrine, gastrointestinal, respiratory), corre- lating with each of the content sections of the course. Please see Figures 1–3 for screen shot examples of a case scenario, medication list, and referring physician and medical chart information. (The images are of actors, not real patients or physi- cians. Medical scenario is !ctitious and any reference or similarity to actual persons is purely coincidental and unintentional.) To ensure the cases were as authentic as possible to the physical therapy practice setting, the cases were collaboratively developed between the College of Pharmacy and the Program in Physical Therapy; two PhD candidates from the physical therapy program, already licensed in physical therapy, wrote the physical evaluation components of the cases, using physical ther- apy speci!c language and format. These candidates also provided detailed feedback to students as they completed the steps of the case assignment and served as the two independent raters for the !nal project. Groups were required to identify the signi!cant pharmacotherapy issues present within the case and develop their responses in a PBworks™ (http://pbworks.com/) course wiki. Please see Table 2 for an example of the table students were required to complete within the wiki and Google Sites (http://www.sites.google.com) environments. Groups were asked to collaboratively create physical therapy treatment plans within a pharmacotherapy context—that is, choose and justify therapy regimens based on the pharmacotherapy risks speci!c to the case scenario—using the ICF (International Classi!cation of Functioning, Disability and Health) model (Steiner et al., 2002). The work-in-progress was accomplished within the wiki site. For their !nal project, groups submitted in Google Sites a hypertext document demonstrating evidence-based recommendations (recommendations were linked to supporting evi- dence within the Google Sites !nal case solution) appropriate for three levels of audience: the patient, referring physician, and physical therapy colleagues. The three levels of audience build from Fairclough’s explanation of how language !gures into Table 1. 4C/ID model and corresponding redesigned course features. 4C/ID model Course feature Whole-task Very complicated patient case Scaffolding Case divided up into steps Online lectures and materials Additional practice opportunities Smaller cases, with solutions provided Procedural information Daily feedback/opportunity to use instructional team Distance Education 65 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 http://pbworks.com/ http://www.sites.google.com Figure 2. Screen shot of medication list example. Patient scenario is !ctitious and any similarity to an actual person or persons is purely coincidental and unintentional. Figure 1. Screen shot of patient case scenario example. The image is of an actor, not a real patient. Patient scenario is !ctitious and any similarity to an actual person or persons is purely coincidental and unintentional. 66 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 social practice (2004); namely, “ways of acting, ways of representing, and ways of being” (p. 228). Not only were students using language to act discursively and represent the practice of physical therapy, but also they used language as a way of self-identifying as a physical therapist (Fairclough, 2004; Gee, 2003). Students were required to provide hyperlinks to evidence appropriate for each respective audience within their recommendations. Final collaborative hypertext projects were also made available to faculty within the physical therapy program, providing students with the additional public component of competency development (Merrill, 2002), as well as an opportunity to begin to develop professional “D”iscourses not only within their groups and class, but also within their practicing professional commu- nity (Gee, 2005). Purpose of the study The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of hypertext document case scenario assessment for use as the primary assessment tool in this online pharmaco- therapy course delivered to doctoral-level physical therapy students. Speci!cally, the questions we sought to answer were: Figure 3. Screen shot of referring physician and medical chart information example. The image is of an actor, not a real physician. Medical referral scenario is !ctitious and any similarity to an actual person or persons is purely coincidental and unintentional. Table 2. Column headings of pharmacy table completed by students in part 1 of the course. Condition medication is treating Brand name Generic name Two agents in the same class Basic mechanism of action Common side effects How this treatment impacts PT Distance Education 67 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 (1) To what extent does collaborative writing within a wiki effectively facilitate learning? (2) Is it feasible to use a completed hypertext document to demonstrate content mastery and health professional competency? (3) How does working within a group, addressing interprofessional audiences as well as a patient audience, impact professional identity development? Methods and materials Data collected This study included what Patton (2002) referred to as a “triangulation of data sources and analytical perspectives to increase the accuracy and credibility of !nd- ing” (p. 93). Multiple sources of quantitative and qualitative data were collected for the purposes of increasing breadth and depth of understanding of the research ques- tions posed (Creswell, 2009, 2010; Patton, 2002). Entrance survey and course evaluation The entrance survey and course evaluation were developed using the guidelines described by Gaddis (1998) and Dillman, Tortora, and Bowker (1998). Following the initial survey development, a health-care professional student took the two sur- veys using the “think aloud” approach (Collins, 2003), where an investigator sat with a student as she took the survey and she described what she thought the sur- vey was asking her, what she was thinking as she responded, and any dif!culties she was having completing the survey. Based on these comments, the survey was revised. The survey was then piloted with !ve students not involved in the study, resulting in further, minor modi!cations of the survey. At the beginning of the semester, students were invited to complete the consent form and survey via a hypertext link sent in an email, which also assured the anonymity of responses, and were sent one reminder noti!cation to complete the survey one week follow- ing the original invitation. The course evaluation was delivered similarly and also made available as a link from the course site. Responses for the consent form, survey, and evaluations were all collected using SurveyMonkey™ (http://www.sur- veymonkey.com). The entrance survey contained 10 questions, 8 of which were open-ended. The course evaluation contained 32 questions, 18 of which were close-ended questions required by the university. The remaining 14 questions on the course evaluation were added to speci!cally address the redesign of the course. Of these, 12 were open-ended or contained an open-ended !eld for addi- tional comments from students. Focus group sessions The focus group questions were developed using the guidelines described by Krueger and Casey (2009). For the faculty and student focus group sessions, questions were developed to gather feedback related to the three primary research goals: was this redesign effective, was it feasible, and did it impact professional identity development? Although questions were developed, a semi- structured question methodology was used to allow for further examination of feedback not anticipated by the investigators. Sessions were scheduled for 90 68 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 http://www.surveymonkey.com http://www.surveymonkey.com minutes, recorded with a digital audio recorder, and occurred approximately two weeks following the end of the course; full transcripts of sessions were created. Both quantitative and qualitative data sources were collected to evaluate the course redesign. Please see Table 3 for a listing of data type and source. Analysis strategy Quantitative data analysis involved the generation and interpretation of descriptive aggregate data of student scores on assignments and overall course scores in rela- tion to student performance for past course offerings when more traditional peda- gogical strategies were used. Inter-rater reliability of the grading rubric was assessed by calculating kappa value (PASW 18). Qualitative data analysis involved content analysis of both the student re"ection assignments and focus group sessions using the classic analysis strategy (Krueger & Casey, 2009), a constant comparison-like approach to reveal what participants said within their groups and allow for the evaluation of the quality and effectiveness of hypertext documents, another measure of content mastery and professional compe- tency development (Paulus, 2006). Within themes, student and physical therapy fac- ulty comments were independently reviewed by the two investigators and compared for internal consistency. Using the comparative analysis methodology described by Glaser and Strauss (1967), the focus group data were analyzed for emerging categories and themes. To obtain a mixture of female and male participants, a purposeful sampling of students from all 10 small groups was targeted. From the analysis of these data sources, the success of the process of students creating hypertext documents as an educational strategy, as well as the feasibility of demonstrating content mastery through a hypertext document, was determined. Evi- dence of transformation in both student and group identity, related to professional identity and power identity, was also evaluated. The primary research questions were evaluated using three data sources. Course scores on individual components of the project development and within- group peer review were used to evaluate the process of collaborative writing. Hypertext document quality, determined by averaging two independent rater scores (a rubric was developed and used), was used to evaluate content mastery and professional competency development. Content analysis was used to identify themes within the student re"ection assignments and focus group sessions (Krue- ger & Casey, 2009). Table 3. Data types and sources. Data type Data source Quantitative Student-ranked entrance survey and course evaluation responses Final project scores Grade distribution Qualitative Open-ended responses on entrance survey and course evaluation Student re"ection papers Student focus group session Faculty focus group session Distance Education 69 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 Findings Quantitative data Entrance survey: background information and attitudes Of the 50 students enrolled in the 2009 summer semester offering, 76% (38 stu- dents) completed the entrance survey. Student background attitudes and experiences with online learning and collaborative projects were primarily positive. Attitude towards working as a group. Students were primarily “accepting” of work- ing in a group: 87% of students (32) responded as such; 16% of students (6) were “very excited.” Despite being generally accepting of working collaboratively in this course, students voiced a number of consistent concerns through open-ended feed- back from the entrance survey. Many students were concerned about unequal contri- butions of work by group members, their grade being impacted by the lack of work of others, poor communication within groups, and individuals in the group taking over and not allowing for cooperative learning to take place. Experience with online learning. Eighty-one percent of students (31) described pre- vious experience with online learning as “mostly positive”; 14% (6) “mostly nega- tive”; 3% (1) “very positive”; and 3% (1) “very negative.” Con!dence about course being a meaningful learning experience. Overall, 70% of students (26) were con!dent this learning experience would be meaningful; 16% (5) were “very con!dent”; and 16% (6) were “not con!dent.” Students’ concerns about taking a pharmacotherapy course online varied, but many students were concerned about the technical elements of the course and the ability to successfully complete while at a distance from the instructional team. Course evaluation: effectiveness and feasibility Of the 50 students enrolled in the 2009 offering, 64% (32) completed the course evaluation. Students generally thought the course redesign was a successful model for learning and that the course helped to emphasize the importance of pharmaco- therapy to the practice of physical therapy, but many commented that the dif!culty level of learning pharmacotherapy in this manner was greater than if a more tradi- tional pedagogical strategy had been used. Redesign is successful model for learning. Of the students who completed the course evaluation, 81% (26) felt they learned the amount expected or more than expected. Furthermore, 25% (8) felt the pace of the course was too fast, while 75% (24) felt it was just right. With reference to workload, 53% (17) felt the workload was just right, while 4% (15) felt it was too much. Overall, 81% (26) felt the struc- ture of the course was satisfactory, good, or very good. Pharmacotherapy content in physical therapy practice emphasis. The course strate- gically emphasized the importance of pharmacotherapy content for physical therapy practice. Of the respondents, 72% (23) commented that the material is either impor- tant or very important to their future practice. Final project quality and inter-rater reliability of grading rubric. Inter-rater reliabil- ity of the !nal project grading rubric was assessed by calculating a kappa value. Kappa value for the two raters was 0.196, indicating poor agreement of scores using the rubric for the two independent raters (please see Table 4 for rater scores for all 10 groups). The !nal project score for all 10 groups was determined by aver- aging the two raters’ scores. Final project scores were 82–98% and the overall !nal 70 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 grade distribution for the class was 48 As, 1 A!, and 1 B!. This grade distribution is consistent with grade distributions in past offerings when a more traditional peda- gogical model was used. Qualitative data Student re"ection assignments: professional identity development All student re"ection assignments were !rst reviewed by two independent reviewers for emerging themes; after several passes over the responses, four emerging themes were identi!ed and used for coding. Theme 1: evidence of collaborative learning. Consistent with the ranking and com- ments from the entrance survey, students commented on their initial reluctance with the collaborative format of this course, but described how working in a group was a valuable experience that enhanced and expanded their learning by allowing them to address an authentically complex patient scenario that they could not have suc- cessfully completed on their own: I was very hesitant going into this class with having to work with four other group members to complete this course case study. However, once we started the ongoing project together, I developed a whole new attitude about the “group work.” I soon found it a relief to be able to collaborate with others and bounce ideas off one another throughout the course. I think I would have been completely over my head if having to work on that intense of a case study [sic] on my own. Working collaboratively in a group can be both frustrating and rewarding and I feel that this semester was a little bit of both. It was frustrating at times when other group members are not participating equally and contributing less to the project. Also in group projects some people like to plan ahead, whereas others would rather procrasti- nate and wait until the last minute. This was one of the largest dif!culties I think our group encountered during the project. However, it was also a learning experience because each group member brought a different perspective and new ideas to the case study that I wouldn’t have thought of just by myself. In the end, this project has been rewarding because all together in a group we have accomplished a large project that we have worked really hard on. Collaboratively working with others in the group helped because we were able to bounce treatment ideas off of each other to best treat this individual. We all have different experiences in the past and we can bring different things to the table when Table 4. Two independent rater scores for !nal hypertext document; total possible score is 30. Group Rater 1 Rater 2 1 28 27 2 29 23 3 30 29 4 28 25 5 29 30 6 28 30 7 28 27 8 26 28 9 24 25 10 24 25 Distance Education 71 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 treating a patient. What I think may help this patient may not be the best option and if I can use my colleagues to [provide] more suggestions I will have a better knowl- edge base to best treat my patient. This will be utilized in the future to ensure I am always striving to achieve the [best] treatment plan available for my patient. This experience taught me a great deal about communicating with others in the health-care !eld and even about communicating with individuals in a group. I have never committed myself to a project of this magnitude in a group setting and therefore had a lot of learning to do in that regard. It became very clear that simply splitting up the project and going our separate ways would not suf!ce, and I got a real apprecia- tion for the amount and quality of work that can be accomplished when a group of people gets together and bounces ideas off of one another. The group setting made me much more comfortable giving constructive feedback and critically analyzing the thoughts and ideas of other people. The feedback provided by the pharmacy and phys- ical therapy instructors paved the way for a lot of my understanding about proper communication within the health-care !eld. Many of the suggestions for improvement never even crossed my mind when creating the original draft, and I quickly learned the precision and attention-to-detail required to effectively communicate, especially when it concerns individuals with varying levels of education and understanding and requires that our thoughts and motivations be portrayed in writing. I never thought it would be so dif!cult. Theme 2: how writing impacted learning. Students stated the writing component was both helpful and dif!cult. The requirement to put their intended communication with the three audiences into text, as well as explain rationale for treatment deci- sions in writing, proved to be more challenging than students anticipated, but stu- dents acknowledged the extra struggle to put thoughts into writing was worthwhile and positively impacted their learning: Putting our ideas into writing for this project helped me think more critically about how I would actually choose to speak to each of the three audiences. We often role- play how we would speak to a patient, but so far this was our !rst experience in school where we critically thought about how we would talk to our physical therapy colleagues and the referring physician. Writing everything out also provided a unique challenge. At times it was dif!cult to detail on paper what you had in your head. I do think it was of value because being able to specify what you want to be done in writing makes you a better communicator so I did think that this was a valuable piece of this project. It was challenging to write to the different audiences. I de!nitely needed the practice in writing down my thoughts in an effective manner. I think it was a good learning experience to have to change the way we approached each different audience and made me really understand what I was talking about. By actually writing out explicitly what we were going to say to each different person made me think in a way that I was not used to. It forced me to take a step back and really think about each sentence and how that would impact the person reading the information. I am glad we had to write out our treatment plan and apply the context in words. It is easy to think about what you would do to treat a patient and that your therapy plan will "ow consistently and will make sense to their condition and not confuse the patient. When you have to write things down and make sure they "ow and all make sense together you realize things may not all be useful for a patient. It is easy to come 72 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 up with ideas, but sometimes too many ideas are thought of and therapy becomes overwhelming for the patient and the therapist. Theme 3: authentic assessment fostered professional identity. A primary objective of the redesign of this course was to provide students with a learning environment and experience that allowed for authentic application of pharmacotherapy content to the physical therapy practice setting. Students stated that the complexity of the learning format allowed them to take on the role of physical therapist in addressing the entire patient, both in designing physical therapy recommendations within a pharmacotherapy context, but also communicating with multiple audiences as the physical therapist. This instructional strategy seems to have allowed students the opportunity to apply the pharmacotherapy content in a meaningful and authentic way: I felt as though through this whole process I learned a lot about physical therapy inter- ventions and communications with other [disciplines]. I understood the fact that we would communicate differently with a patient than with others in the medical !eld but I was unaware our communication would vary so much between a physical therapist and a medical doctor. My future identity as a physical therapist will be impacted by this course because I really was taught how to critically think about a patient’s case and take a holistic approach to their treatment. We had to apply evidence for any treat- ment decisions utilized and we had to think about how other aspects of the patient’s case my affect their treatment. This I will utilize when I am a practicing physical ther- apist. I will make sure I have an evidence-based practice and that I am looking at vari- ous things the patient presents with, such as pharmacological agents, vitals, lab values, as well as the usual subjective items the patient identi!es. I also learned, at least partly, the process necessary to develop an entire plan of care with a holistic approach centered around speci!c patient needs and circumstances. It’s clear that in some form, every patient presents differently, and therefore every plan of care must be constructed with that in mind. I always knew that I would be an advocate for my patients, but I never really realized that the intimate contact that physical therapists have with patients relative to other health-care professionals could be used to affect so many things concerning patient care, especially when it comes to educating and informing them about all aspects of the medical care they are receiving. Negative feedback via course evaluation and student re"ection assignment Unfortunately, not all students had a positive experience with the course redesign. Five students (all within the same small group) submitted very angry and negative student re"ection statements and also provided very negative responses in the course evaluation (these are surmised to be the same students, since identical state- ments were included in both places). The comments from these students are some- what dif!cult to use, from a constructive standpoint, since they mostly include statements such as: This is the worst class I’ve ever taken. I did not learn one thing from this class. I HATED THIS CLASS!!!!!! Distance Education 73 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 This one group (5 students out of an enrolment of 50) represented 10% of the course. The goal is for all learners to have a positive and meaningful learning expe- rience and trying to avoid such a negative experience is an ongoing issue being explored by the instructional development team. Focus group sessions Students Students who participated in the focus group session provided similar information to the course evaluation and student re"ection assignments. One new issue that emerged from the focus group session was the student desire for exams. Students stated that even though the pharmacotherapy information was readily available to them on the course Web site, they did not engage with it as much as they would have wanted, simply because they were busy and they knew it would not be assessed by an exam. Without the consequence of a lower score on an exam, they did not have the motivation to spend time with the content, even though they fully recognized the relevance and importance to their future practice. The case scenario was so complex that they did use the course content, but not as extensively as they wanted or that they anticipated they should for future practice. Another recommendation from the student focus group session was that the wiki be removed, and that all the collaborative writing occurs within the Google Sites page itself. Students felt it was cumbersome to have to move between the two sites and found that collaborative writing was possible within the Google Sites page. Faculty The focus group with the faculty primarily centered on whether or not students had demonstrated mastery of the content through this alternative assessment strat- egy and if the faculty felt it had been a successful course redesign. Overwhelm- ingly, the faculty agreed that this course design was a success. Faculty felt, after reviewing the students’ work in the Google Sites space, that students demon- strated both pharmacotherapy knowledge and, more importantly, how that knowl- edge impacted physical therapy decisions. A focus of the physical therapy program is the use of evidence-based medicine. Students were required in this project to support all recommendations with evidence. Faculty noted that this pur- poseful focus on and use of documentation was an important addition to their overall curricular focus. The requirement to explicitly cite medical evidence for both pharmacotherapy and physical therapy aspects of the patient’s care also expanded student knowledge of and ability to use reputable information outside of the physical-therapy-related medical literature, a skill development opportunity that the faculty felt was not available in other areas of the existing curriculum. At the time of these focus group sessions, the faculty could not comment on the long-term effects of students participating in this unique educational experience, since the sessions occurred prior to the start of the next semester session. How- ever, they were very pleased with the application of pharmacotherapy within a physical therapy practice scenario and were overall very happy with the evidence- based decision-making process students demonstrated within their Google Sites !nal projects. 74 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 When asked about the recommendation from the student focus group session for exams, the faculty supported the idea. After much discussion, the !nal recommen- dation from the faculty was to add required, individual multiple-choice exams to the current case scenario course format. To accommodate the additional course requirements, the faculty recommended limiting the audience communication focus only to the patient. Despite the bene!ts of having students practice communicating to multiple audiences, the faculty felt that the most valuable audience was the patient and the most appropriate audience given the student point of progression through the program when taking this course. Revisions and implementation in subsequent offering Based on this evidence, the following revisions were made to the course design for the 2010 summer semester offering. Five quizzes were added, although the course content remained the same, with the exception of a few updates related to therapies. The quizzes were multiple choice and administered online with a severe time restriction. Feedback from students regarding the quizzes and the course format in general was positive and the changes remained in the course for the 2011 offering. Students were asked to practice only communicating to the patient, although the examples that were provided in the !rst offering of how to adjust communica- tion to other audiences were still provided in the course materials. The recommen- dation to eliminate the wiki site and just use the Google Sites tool for both collaborative writing and the presentation of the !nal project was also implemented for this offering. Grant money to employ physical therapy PhD students for physical therapy speci!c feedback was no longer available for the 2010 offering. As an alterna- tive source of physical therapy assistance with the course, students enrolled in the 2009 offering were asked to act as teaching assistants on a volunteer basis. The familiarity of these students with the course design and the level of feed- back helpful to them when they were enrolled in the course made them ideal candidates to provide the physical therapy guidance and perspective for the 2010 offering. The grading rubric was still used for overall !nal project score for the 2010 offering, but the course director determined the !nal score. Students were provided with the option to formally request that the course director reconsider their !nal scores if there were areas the group felt were unfairly scored, but none of the group during the semester made this request. Among the original goals for the course redesign was the incorporation of dif- ferent audiences into the communication practice elements. Concern was expressed that limiting the audience to only the patient would signi!cantly diminish the learn- ing experience. Despite this change, students enrolled in the 2010 offering stated that they considered the course to be an interprofessional experience; they felt they were learning with, from, and about other professions through this course. An inter- professional aspect was never a formal consideration of this course redesign, but in retrospect, feedback from students made it apparent that they do receive information about pharmacy and the pharmacist’s role on the health-care team, as well as some experience considering the referring physician role, although these individuals are !ctional and simulated. Distance Education 75 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 Implications: feasibility, effectiveness, professional identity development Collaborative learning and whole-task educational design was implemented in an online pharmacotherapy course delivered to doctoral-level physical therapy students. The main competency objective for students in this course was to be able to iden- tify patient and pharmacologic situations that required adjustments to the physical therapy strategies they were implementing in care settings and communicate the rec- ommendations to three levels of audience: patient, referring physician, and fellow physical therapy colleagues. Feasibility This redesign of a distance education pharmacotherapy course is a feasible educational strategy. Although the !rst offering of this strategy had grant support allowing for PhD physical therapy student assistance, the subsequent offerings were successfully implemented without this instructional support. Through the use of third-year physical therapy students providing more advanced peer review of student work in the Google Sites pages on a volunteer basis, in conjunction with the pharmacist course director review, a cost-effective way of incorporating a physical therapy validation of the application of pharmacotherapy concepts was implemented; learning technologies allowed this easy access and quick turnaround for advanced peer feedback. The Web-based collaborative tools also allowed for longitudinal learning with more advanced students revisiting the application of this content from the role of expert peer. From the perspective of course director work- load, this was also a feasible option. Teaching through the use of online resources and Web-based collaborative tools required signi!cant up-front development time, but update and revision of the learning materials and Google Sites structure have required only minimal instructor attention prior to each subsequent offering. The Web-based collaborative tools allowed the course director to interact with the students in a time-sensitive and frequent manner, but in a manageable way. Effectiveness This redesign of a completely online course was also effective at accomplishing the primary learning goals. Students demonstrated in the !nal projects that they were able to recognize and address medication-related issues speci!c to physical therapy strate- gies. Student collaboration was evident in the history tabs and through the student re"ections. A majority of students reported that this redesign provided a dif!cult, but meaningful, educational experience, and one that stretched their physical therapy knowledge and required them to apply it to an authentic physical therapy context, rather than simply memorizing mechanisms of action. Leveraging learning technolo- gies allowed for the collaborative environment, which allowed students to learn from each other as well, from the peer review of other patient scenarios in addition to working within their individual groups, further expanding the learning possible. Professional identity development Students were required to assume the role of the physical therapist through this educational experience and communicate to various audiences through that voice, rather than the voice of a physical therapy student taking a pharmacy course. 76 A. L. Pittenger and B. Olson-Kellogg D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 Through the use of digital collaborative writing, students also developed professional identities and competencies as they practiced “ways of acting, ways of representing, and ways of being” (Fairclough, 2004, p. 228). Students stated overwhelmingly that they, for the !rst time in their curriculum, had to address the patient as a whole per- son, not a system requiring attention, and with the authority of a practicing physical therapist. Students reported that this was a powerful identity shift and they were happy to have been able to do it in a collaborative way, noting that individually they would have been overwhelmed and this course provided an opportunity to practice this assumed role in a safe, simulated, and supported environment. Traditional classroom pedagogical strategies and assessment methods, such as lecture-based resources and multiple-choice exams administered face-to-face or online, have been used over the past !ve years to demonstrate mastery of the con- tent of this course. Students successfully completed the course by achieving passing scores on the exams, which focused on pharmacology mechanism. However, these pedagogical and assessment tools were not authentic learning or assessment strate- gies, as students in this professional role will not administer medication, nor in most cases, provide pharmacotherapy recommendations. Because physical therapists gen- erally spend an extended period of time with patients, they play an integral role in encouraging patient adherence, recognizing adverse events, adjusting physical ther- apy regimens to accommodate drug therapy and patient speci!c characteristics, as well as providing a communication bridge between the patient, referring physician, and fellow physical therapists. Therefore, instead of assessing students’ abilities to memorize pharmacology information, assessment of physical therapy students’ abili- ties to effectively communicate evidence-based strategies that incorporate pharmaco- therapy concepts with the patient, attending physician, and physical therapist audiences serves as a much stronger educational tool, mirroring future practice. Physical therapy students must not only practice identifying issues and making the appropriate clinical judgments, but also communicating these ideas and supportive reasoning. Without effective communication and collaboration skills and the ability to adjust messages to various audiences, quality health care is not delivered. Limitations Although this course redesign has successfully created a learning experience that allowed students to apply pharmacotherapy content to a speci!c practice experience, how overall physical therapy competency was impacted is currently unknown, nor is there evidence that students approached subsequent courses in new ways. As in previ- ous face-to-face and traditional educational approaches, students adequately achieved the learning outcomes of the course, but the role successfully meeting educational goals played in creating more clinically competent and adaptable practitioners remains unknown. Proactively building extensions from this experimental approach to evaluate the overall impact of integrating content and application after the three implementa- tions of this redesign was a missed opportunity, but the redesign strategy needed to be tested before connections to performance outcomes could be measured. Future research Evaluating the impact of this course strategy and use of learning technologies beyond the individual course is an area of current research exploration. Speci!cally, Distance Education 77 D ow nl oa de d by [U ni ve rs ity o f M in ne so ta L ib ra ri es , T w in C iti es ], [A m y L . P itt en ge r] a t 0 6: 18 3 0 A pr il 20 12 ways of threading additional pharmacotherapy application opportunities throughout the physical therapy curriculum and measuring clinical performance while at prac- tice sites is currently underway; the impact of using authentic application opportuni- ties early and throughout the curriculum on practice performance, something that is of interest to educators in all areas of focus, is being measured. The grading rubric used in this course proved to have too much subjectivity, resulting in poor inter-rater reliability. Despite the lack of consistency between potential graders, the rubric has continued to be used by the course director as the sole !nal project grader. Developing a grading rubric with a high inter-rater reliabil- ity would allow grading to be shared among others, minimizing the grading work- load associated with this course. Conclusion Evaluation of the process of collaboratively creating hypertext documents for multi- ple audiences, as well as the end product of a hypertext document as a demonstra- tion of content mastery, served to further develop this tool for future offerings and other courses offered using a distance education format. In this example, learning technologies allowed a more learner-centered educational strategy and authentic means to acquire content knowledge and assess student mastery. Application and evaluation of these Web-based collaborative tools contributed to evidence-based writing strategies implemented in the classroom as a means for students to demon- strate mastery of content and effective communication skills, imperative to the health-care profession. The !ndings demonstrate that the implementation of collaborative digital writing with a hypertext document case scenario assessment as the primary assessment tool in this online pharmacotherapy course delivered to doctoral-level physical therapy students is a feasible and effective educational strat- egy. The description of this course redesign process, grounded in educational theory and guided by instructional design principles, can hopefully aid educators who wish to use learning technologies to create distance education environments and experiences that are meaningful and authentic. Acknowledgements This study was supported by an Interdisciplinary Studies of Writing grant from the Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota. The authors acknowledge the expert editing assistance of Amy LimBybliw, MA, in preparing this manuscript. Notes on contributors Amy L. Pittenger is the Director of Interprofessional Education and assistant professor of pharmaceutical care and health systems in the College of Pharmacy, University of Minnesota, USA. Becky Olson-Kellogg is the residency director of the Geriatric Clinical Residency Program in Physical Therapy and an assistant professor of physical therapy in the School of Medicine, University of Minnesota, USA. References Alverman, D. E., O’Brien, D. G., & Dillon, D. R. (1996). Conversations: On writing qualita- tive research. Reading Research Quarterly, 31, 114–120. Retrieved from http://www. jstor.org/stable/748242?origin=JSTOR-pdf 78 A. L. Pittenger and B. 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work_oxhisq6najamfhsrse7nkynylu	----	Engineering Attractiveness in the European Educational Environment: Can Distance Education Approaches Make a Difference? education sciences Article Engineering Attractiveness in the European Educational Environment: Can Distance Education Approaches Make a Difference? Konstantinos Katzis 1,* ID , Christos Dimopoulos 1, Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris 2 and Ilona-Elefteryja Lasica 2 ID 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, European University Cyprus, Nicosia 1516, Cyprus; C.Dimopoulos@euc.ac.cy 2 Department of Education Sciences, European University Cyprus, Nicosia 1516, Cyprus; M.Mavrotheris@euc.ac.cy (M.M.-M.); I.Lasica@research.euc.ac.cy (I.-E.L.) * Correspondence: K.Katzis@euc.ac.cy; Tel.: +357-22-713296 Received: 30 October 2017; Accepted: 15 January 2018; Published: 18 January 2018 Abstract: The recent phenomenon of worldwide declining enrolments in engineering-related degrees has led to the gradual decrease in the number of engineering graduates. This decrease occurs at a time of increasing demand in the labour market for highly qualified engineers, who are necessary for the implementation of fundamental societal functions. This paper initially presents a survey of practices, which are currently employed by academic institutions in Europe in order to increase the attractiveness of their engineering studies. It then provides a detailed analysis of the benefits and proliferation of distance education to increase attractiveness of engineering studies based on a set of interviews. Results of this study, highlight a lack of a distance-learning dimension in the implementation of engineering studies in the European Area and discusses in detail ways in which distance learning can be utilised in engineering studies for the benefit of increasing their attractiveness. It has also been noted that institutions employing distance learning as part of their engineering studies, see this as highly beneficial for their students but also for the academic institution itself with some reservations in terms of the pedagogical adequacy of materials and instructional approaches used in distance education courses. Keywords: engineering attractiveness; distance education; remote laboratories; virtual reality; augmented reality; mixed reality 1. Introduction Recent studies [1–6] have revealed a worldwide declining interest in the enrolment of students in educational degrees related to technical disciplines. As a result, many universities have been forced to reduce the number of engineering programmes offered both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. The declining numbers of engineers is posing a threat towards the healthy growth of the European economy and the speedy exodus from the economic recession. Taking as an example the structure of the UK’s economic output [7]: the value added in agriculture accounts for about 1% of the GDP, for industry 21% and for services 79%. Harrison [8] showed that there is good econometric evidence in the UK, that the demand for graduate engineers exceeds supply, and that the economy needs more graduate engineers for both engineering and non-engineering jobs. This is reflected in the sizeable wage premium for people holding engineering degrees, which has been consistently increasing for the last 20 years. Most of the industrialised economies within Europe such as Germany, Italy, France, and UK, are expected to find a long-term sustainable solution to this without any further delay. In the short-term, many employers are recruiting experienced professionals from the international Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16; doi:10.3390/educsci8010016 www.mdpi.com/journal/education http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education http://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1470-2105 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6842-9901 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/educsci8010016 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 2 of 21 labour market, but in many cases, there are visa restrictions which make the recruitment process very complicated and time consuming. Moreover, although the recruitment of foreign-trained engineers might address the lack of qualified people in the short term, it might aggravate the problem in the long term, turning it into a societal issue. The impact on the economy will be direct, as a large percentage of the local population will be unable to contribute in the industrial sector. To trace the root of the problem, one must look back into the educational system that is currently followed in Europe and identify possible causes. This paper focuses on examining the extent to which European higher education institutions offering engineering studies effectively utilise their capacity to provide distance-based education, which is one of the main pillars of attractiveness worldwide [9]. Specifically, the paper initially presents an empirical study which aimed to identify current practices employed by universities across Europe in order to increase the attractiveness of their engineering programmes. It then provides a detailed analysis of a number of interviews that were carried out to examine how distance learning practices apply in engineering. The article then discusses how attractiveness could be enhanced through the incorporation of the distance-learning dimension in the implementation of engineering studies, while it presents possible issues associated with it. The rest of the paper is organised as follows: Section 2 highlights the problem of declining interest in engineering studies and briefly discusses the concept of distance-based education and its potential for increasing the attractiveness of engineering studies. Section 3 presents the survey-based methodology obtained for identifying practices that European universities currently employ in order to increase the attractiveness of their engineering studies. Section 3 also presents the methodology followed to conduct a series of interviews from academics involved in distance education in engineering. Section 4 then gives a brief overview of the survey and interview responses and provides a detailed analysis of the results. Section 5 provides an in-depth discussion on distance-based education’s potential use in engineering studies. Furthermore, it outlines the current research projects related to distance education in engineering with emphasis given on remote laboratories. Finally, the paper provides the conclusions of this study and discusses future directions of research. 2. Literature Review 2.1. Declining Interest in Engineering Studies The number of engineering graduates at the bachelor level in Europe and internationally has been falling, prompting warnings about serious shortage of skilled engineers [1–6]. As a result, societies lack of qualified engineers, especially nowadays when the local industry and economy faces continuous challenges due to globalisation, offshore outsourcing, competitiveness in innovation and technical expertise. To address these challenges, there is an increased demand for more highly qualified engineering graduates. This has led to a series of questions that academia and industry must answer, including the following: What should be done to increase attractiveness of engineering studies, and promote their awareness to potential students of engineering degrees? How can institutions identify the right sort of students for a degree in engineering, ensuring that only those who really want to become engineers are enrolled, and thus decreasing the number of dropout students? As pointed out by Johnson and Jones [3], there are many factors that contributed to this decline—including the difficulty of the curriculum, the attractiveness of alternate paths to good technical jobs, and the lack of attractiveness of projected employment paths for engineering graduates. Furthermore, this could be also attributed to the inappropriate career advising sometimes provided in high schools [9]. Table 1 sums up the main reasons that young students are put off from choosing a career in engineering and science related disciplines. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 3 of 21 Table 1. Reasons for not wanting to study Engineering. Reason Description 1 Curriculum is Difficult Engineering curriculum can be long and difficult, requiring a strong educational background from secondary school years. Engineering curricula typically involve intense courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. [3]. 2 Curriculum is Expensive When compared to other degrees (law, economics, finance, marketing, etc.), engineering degrees are much more expensive. 3 Weekly timetable too busy Compared to other undergraduate degrees, engineering has a quite busy schedule that makes it demanding and intense. It also makes it difficult for self-funded students to work and study at the same time. 4 The curriculum is densely packed and inflexible Engineering degrees require a high number of credit hours, thus increasing the cost and making the degree less flexible for students who wish to broaden their experiences through an internship [3]. 5 Other paths to good jobs are less demanding Despite the steady increase in wage premium for people holding engineering degrees, the job market has worsened for young workers in science and engineering fields relative to some other high-level occupations [3]. 6 Engineers treated as commodities by employers Engineers are likely to be laid off when the company is financially underperforming: in some cases, senior engineers are replaced with young graduates with sharper technical skills at a much lower cost, while in other cases their function is offshored. 7 Traditional entry level jobs are being offshored Many entry-level jobs are outsourced to offshore locations where good technical talent is available at much lower cost. As a result, there are fewer jobs available for bachelor’s level engineering graduates, and lower salary offers [3]. 8 Impact of Media Often media provide a negative publicity to the profession through articles on offshoring of technical jobs, and instability in the engineering profession [3]. 9 Lack of Diversity in the student population This applies mostly to women and minority students whose numbers are low because of cultural and stereotype issues [3]. 10 Bad career advice School counsellors in some countries might not have the capacity and the eligibility to give enough details and stir the interest of the students to follow an engineering discipline [9]. Recent results from a study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicate that the field of social sciences, business and law attracts most students entering tertiary education [10]. More specifically, on average, almost one-third (32%) of new tertiary students across OECD countries enrol in social sciences programmes, whereas only 15% of new tertiary students enrol in engineering, manufacturing and construction, which is the second most popular field at the bachelor’s level. The general outcome of this study shows that the social sciences are the most popular field of study in every OECD country except Finland and Korea, where engineering, manufacturing and construction are top choices, selected by one in four students. The decreasing number of engineers is somehow eased because there are still sufficient rewards in some areas in Europe and US for qualified immigrants to come especially from developing countries [11]. This has become even more obvious during the last few years. The German government, for example, has launched a recruitment campaign to get thousands to come from India to address its shortage of engineers and other scientists [12]. From the literature presented above, it is clear that there is a global anxiety in regards to the shortage of future engineers. The existence of the declining trend has led researchers around the globe to further investigate the matter and suggest potential methodologies, tools and frameworks which can potentially increase the attractiveness of engineering studies, and promote their awareness to potential students of engineering degrees. These suggestions have focused mainly Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 4 of 21 on academic-industry cooperation [5–7], gender and personality issues [8,9,13,14], national-level educational environments [11], and academic-industry cooperation [5]. However, although various aspects of the problem have been addressed, a study on the concept of attractiveness of engineering studies as it relates to distance-based education has not been conducted yet [15]. 2.2. Distance Learning in Engineering Education Distance education is very broad and encompasses several methods of delivery (e.g., regular mail, radio, television, Internet). It is not new, either in general education or in the field of engineering, but has its roots in correspondence courses, which can be traced back to late nineteenth century. The advent of the Internet had a profound impact on distance education, which went through a process of transformation and adaptation to emerge as a new method of e-learning, depending heavily on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Distance education now encompasses a variety of technologies, which support both synchronous and asynchronous communication. Although distance education is a useful framework for engineering studies, it can represent a large variety of pedagogical perspectives. The conventional approach is to provide training and support mainly through a well-designed and predefined course package. The consequence of such an approach is that distance education could potentially be very authoritarian, with pre-packaged course material that could present only a particular perspective. The expansion, however, in the modes of communication enabled by recent advances in ICT technologies, has revolutionised distance education, and is driving the development of learner-led rather than package-led forms of distance education. The appearance of a variety of new tools and technologies fostering computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) [15], is leading to the development of new forms of online learning environments, in accord with socio-constructivist views of learning [16]. To understand how these environments operate, one must turn back at the early stages of distance education. Back then, Holmberg used the following definition to describe distance education: “ . . . the various forms of study at all levels which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in lecture rooms or on the same premises, but which, nevertheless, benefit from the planning, guidance and tuition of a tutorial organisation” [17]. Keegan provided a more detailed definition identifying the main characteristics of distance education [18]. First identifying characteristic of distance education is the physical separation between teachers and learners. Second characteristic is the capacity of the educational institution in delivering such programmes. Institutions offering distance education degrees must carefully attend to programme planning, preparation and delivery of the course content, and provision of support for learners. Third characteristic is the technology and infrastructure involved to enable distance learning by connecting the teacher and the learner. Fourth characteristic is the provision of two-way communication for the students to enable constructive dialogue with their instructor. Finally, the fifth characteristic points out the fact that, due to the absence of a learning group of participants in distance education programmes, learners in such settings are generally taught individually rather than in groups. In recent years, due to the rapid advances in ICT, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of distance education worldwide as educational institutions at all levels are becoming increasingly involved in distance education initiatives [19]. Online course delivery has become common in a wide variety of disciplines, including engineering. As part of the effort to attract a larger number of competent students in engineering studies and to sustain these numbers, several Universities have resorted to introducing distance education engineering studies mostly at a postgraduate level. In general, distance education is widely used in many countries worldwide. Engineering studies via distance education tend to be offered by a significant number of universities, with their students being remotely located. The expansion of distance education engineering studies is likely to continue in forthcoming years, given the expanding access to the Internet and the greater emphasis given to lifelong learning. Although the five basic characteristics of distance education outlined by Keegan [18] are widely used/referenced by the distance education research community, they cannot be considered adequate Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 5 of 21 when addressing some of the basic aspects of engineering education in the 21st century. For example, one aspect missing from Keegan’s definition [18] is stating the significance for students performing hands-on remote laboratories when adopting the concept of distance education in engineering studies. Also, missing from the definition is the need for close communication and collaboration among learners, which is a vital aspect of engineering education. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy [20], there are six levels for classifying humans’ cognitive process. These are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Nightingale, Carew and Fung present these six levels from the domain of engineering [21]. More specifically, they first define knowledge as memorisation of facts, definitions, recall of methods and procedures. Second, they define comprehension as the ability to convey knowledge in alternative ways that enable the student to compare, describe explain, discuss or classify. Third, they define application as the step where students apply and transfer knowledge to different contexts and use abstract ideas in real situations. Forth, they define analysis as the ability to break down complex problems into parts, solve each part and determine connections between parts. Fifth, they define synthesis as the ability to assemble parts in order to create a new whole, to integrate application knowledge with other skills, and to solve open-ended problems. Finally, the sixth step is defined as the ability to evaluate or judge design, solution to problem and presentation. Designing engineering online courses integrating all the aforementioned steps into an online platform can be a challenging task. As stated in [22], online engineering education requires that the quality of online courses must be comparable to or better than the traditional classroom. Also, the courses must be available when needed and accessible from anywhere, by a number of learners. Furthermore, topics across the broad spectrum of engineering disciplines should be available. Recent advances in ICT technologies have generated significant interest across the research community, underlining the potential of laboratory-based learning through traditional classrooms or within an e-learning and/or a blended learning context [11,23,24]. There are also some studies that not only emphasise the importance of technology, but also examine the techniques for capturing, modelling and automating the on-campus laboratory tutors’ knowledge [23]. Modern highly technological educational approaches such as remoteness (remote labs), virtuality (virtual labs) and recently immersion (augmented reality labs) [24], can greatly impact the traditional methods of teaching and in the case of the traditional hands-on labs alleviate drawbacks such as high costs, limited availability, maintenance, etc. Selecting out the right educational tools for delivering the curriculum, can address some of the reasons for not wanting to study engineering listed in Table 1. For example, setting up such remote laboratories featuring mixed reality technologies, can improve the use and reuse of the laboratories allowing more students to benefit from a more flexible timetable of study (Table 1—Point 3), as well as significantly reduce the running costs for the educational organisations (Table 1—Point 2) that maintain these laboratories. In addition, the online system can dynamically assess the educational level of the student and provide individualisation and differentiation of instruction (Table 1—Points 1 and 4). It is clear that technologically advanced laboratories can offer numerous benefits to both students and educational institutions but most importantly, this might be a crucial element for increasing attractiveness in the engineering discipline [25]. 3. Methodology The study reported here has been conducted in two stages. The first stage was a survey on Engineering Attractiveness to identify and disseminate the good practices employed by Universities. The study was carried out within the context of the Academic Network of European and Global Engineering Education (EUGENE), a Network funded by the European Union with the aim of improving the impact of European Engineering Education on competitiveness, innovation and socio-economic growth in a global context. The second stage, was carried out in the form of interviews, focusing on the distance learning implementation in Engineering Education. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 6 of 21 3.1. Study on Attractiveness A line of activities was formulated within the project that examined the concept of attractiveness of engineering studies within the European educational area. One of the main objectives of these activities was to identify and disseminate the good practices employed by universities in order to attract students to engineering disciplines and degrees. A pan-European survey-based research methodology was designed and implemented for this purpose. In particular, the methodology that was followed involved the development and administration of a questionnaire, aiming to capture information on the policies and/or activities employed by academic institutions currently offering engineering degrees within the European educational area, in order to attract students to their engineering degrees. While the use of individual attractiveness practices in the implementation of engineering studies has been extensively discussed and evaluated, this study was the first survey of the practices actually employed by academic institutions for this purpose that has been reported in the literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge. A model for investigating attractiveness in engineering education, illustrated in Figure 1 was developed, so as to guide the construction of the questionnaire. This model depicts all stages of engineering education, the studies leading to them, the career paths of engineering students, and the respective feedback paths leading back to engineering studies. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 6 of 21 information on the policies and/or activities employed by academic institutions currently offering engineering degrees within the European educational area, in order to attract students to their engineering degrees. While the use of individual attractiveness practices in the implementation of engineering studies has been extensively discussed and evaluated, this study was the first survey of the practices actually employed by academic institutions for this purpose that has been reported in the literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge. A model for investigating attractiveness in engineering education, illustrated in Figure 1 was developed, so as to guide the construction of the questionnaire. This model depicts all stages of engineering education, the studies leading to them, the career paths of engineering students, and the respective feedback paths leading back to engineering studies. Figure 1. Model for investigating attractiveness in engineering education employed in the study. The questionnaire distinguished between two categories of attractiveness: attractiveness- oriented activities (i.e., specific, purpose-based actions taken in order to increase the attractiveness of engineering studies), and attractiveness-oriented policies (i.e., strategic directions followed in order to increase the attractiveness of engineering studies). The questionnaire specifically inquired academic institutions on the target group, main objectives, means of implementation, source of funding, and qualitative/quantitative results of the activity’s/policy’s implementation. The questionnaire was submitted electronically to all academic institutions (n = 76) in the EUGENE network. A total number of twenty (n = 20) academic institutions across Europe offering engineering degrees completed and returned the questionnaire providing relevant information regarding the implementation of attractiveness activities/policies. Once all information was collected, a percentage analysis was conducted for each of the categories included in the questionnaire. Qualitative data, collected through the inclusion of several open-ended questions within the survey, were also analysed using qualitative means of analysis. 3.2. Distance Learning in Engineering Education At the second stage of the study, five participants among those completing the questionnaire, originating from five different Higher Education (HE) institutions in four EU countries (Cyprus, Portugal, Serbia, Spain) volunteered to be interviewed. These academics were first asked whether they think their institution does take advantage of the benefits and proliferation of distance education to increase attractiveness of engineering studies. They responded positively, indicating that many of their undergraduate and/or post-graduate engineering study programmes are taught entirely at- distance or, at least, using a blended learning approach through use of the Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. Figure 1. Model for investigating attractiveness in engineering education employed in the study. The questionnaire distinguished between two categories of attractiveness: attractiveness-oriented activities (i.e., specific, purpose-based actions taken in order to increase the attractiveness of engineering studies), and attractiveness-oriented policies (i.e., strategic directions followed in order to increase the attractiveness of engineering studies). The questionnaire specifically inquired academic institutions on the target group, main objectives, means of implementation, source of funding, and qualitative/quantitative results of the activity’s/policy’s implementation. The questionnaire was submitted electronically to all academic institutions (n = 76) in the EUGENE network. A total number of twenty (n = 20) academic institutions across Europe offering engineering degrees completed and returned the questionnaire providing relevant information regarding the implementation of attractiveness activities/policies. Once all information was collected, a percentage analysis was conducted for each of the categories included in the questionnaire. Qualitative data, collected through the inclusion of several open-ended questions within the survey, were also analysed using qualitative means of analysis. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 7 of 21 3.2. Distance Learning in Engineering Education At the second stage of the study, five participants among those completing the questionnaire, originating from five different Higher Education (HE) institutions in four EU countries (Cyprus, Portugal, Serbia, Spain) volunteered to be interviewed. These academics were first asked whether they think their institution does take advantage of the benefits and proliferation of distance education to increase attractiveness of engineering studies. They responded positively, indicating that many of their undergraduate and/or post-graduate engineering study programmes are taught entirely at-distance or, at least, using a blended learning approach through use of the Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. In the following section, a short overview of the survey results is provided as they relate to distance-based education. More details regarding the study and its outcomes can be found in [19]. Furthermore, a brief analysis of the interviews is also provided. 4. Results 4.1. Basic Attractiveness Activities The results related to the attractiveness activities implemented by academic institutions in order to increase the attractiveness of their studies are presented in Table 2. The analysis of these results (Table 2) reveals that academic institutions in Europe are mainly concentrating on increasing the attractiveness link between secondary school studies and engineering studies. Traditional advertising tools, such as TV, radio, and World Wide Web advertising, as well as face-to-face communication are employed for this purpose in the majority of cases (more than 90% of responses). Table 2. Type of activity employed for attracting students to Engineering studies. Activity Percentage Traditional advertising (newspapers, magazines, radio programmes, television) 93.33% Secondary school/Elementary school visits 93.33% University career oriented talks 33.33% Public career oriented talks 40.00% Other 26.67% A closer examination of the survey results for this question revealed a wealth of activities employed by academic institutions in order to increase the attractiveness link between secondary school studies and engineering studies. In particular, academic institutions extensively seek to initiate face-to-face communication with secondary school stakeholders through a variety of either campus-based or remote activities: 4.1.1. Campus-Based Activities 1. Information sessions organised in the University for prospective students; 2. Information sessions organised in the University for parents; 3. Information sessions organised in the University for mathematics and science teachers; 4. Open days organised in the University for the general public; 5. Guided visits to the University premises for prospective students; 6. ‘Test-driving’ activities (controlled participation of prospective students in University studies, in the form of conducting experiments). 4.1.2. Remote Activities 1. Presentation of Bachelor degrees in secondary school premises; 2. Participation in University road shows. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 8 of 21 Although the bulk of the activities concerns secondary students, there are also some initiatives targeting younger learners, such as children’s university activities organised in the university for elementary school students. Despite the wealth of activities employed by academic institutions in order to increase the attractiveness link between secondary school studies and engineering studies, none of these institutions carried out activities where distance-based learning was explicitly targeted as the main attractiveness element for the implementation of engineering studies. 4.2. Basic Attractiveness Policies The results of the survey identified a small but still considerable number of institutions (15%), which follow policies that explicitly target the long-term increase of the attractiveness of engineering studies. In particular, the policies reported were the following: 1. Implementation of Quality Assurance (QA) techniques; 2. Incorporation of research knowledge and experimentation in teaching; 3. Investment on the development of state-of-the-art laboratories; 4. Focus on guaranteeing job placement for university graduates; 5. Active promotion and support of student welfare; 6. Acquisition of accreditation for degrees; 7. Implementation of the EFQM Excellence Model. As with the case of attractiveness activities, no institution explicitly sought to utilise/implement policies related to the offering of distance-based engineering studies in order to increase their attractiveness. As an example, it is interesting to note that while many academic institutions invest heavily on the development of state-of-the-art physical laboratories, the development and use of virtual/remote laboratories was not reported as a significant policy towards increasing the attractiveness of engineering studies. 4.3. Funding Sources of Attractiveness Practices Table 3 presents the survey results related to the funding sources employed by academic institutions for the practical implementation of their attractiveness activities/policies. These results indicate that the overwhelming majority of academic institutions use internal funding sources for the implementation of the corresponding activities/policies. Table 3. Source of funding for attractiveness activities/policies. Source of Funding Percentage Internal funding (University—Engineering School) 93.33% External funding (Industry, benevolent) 33.33% Government Support (Including military support) 46.66% However, a significant percentage of institutions also utilise external funding resources, namely the government (46.6% of institutions) and the industrial sector (33.3% of institutions). This fact indicates that there is a general societal interest in increasing the attractiveness of engineering studies, possibly triggered by the worldwide lack of qualified engineers, as explained in the introductory section of this paper. 4.4. Funding Sources of Attractiveness Practices The activities/policies described in the previous subsections can be used to target various engineering studies stakeholders. The survey inquired academic institutions about the stakeholders Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 9 of 21 who are explicitly targeted through attractiveness activities/policies. The results of this part of the survey are presented in Table 4. As expected, the majority of the attractiveness efforts are concentrated on secondary school students, who constitute the main target group of the relevant/policies activities. However, it is important to note that a significant percentage of institutions actively target students of elementary schools, aiming to promote the engineering discipline from a very young age. This focus on primary school children stems from the fact that the early years of schooling are especially important for children’s academic development [19]. As the research suggests, students’ identity is formed in the elementary grades, and predicts their attitudes and achievement in mathematics and science in later years [26]. Moreover, it is evident that due to the organic relationship that young learners now possess with the use of IT technologies, they will be much friendlier to the idea of implementing distance-based engineering studies in the near future. Table 4. Target groups of attractiveness activities/policies. Target Groups Percentage Elementary School Students 26.67 Secondary School Students 93.33 Undergraduate Students 46.67 Postgraduate Students 6.67 PhD Students 0.0 Mature Students (People who wish to change their working discipline) 13.33 Parents 53.33 Secondary School Teachers 46.67 Teachers/Instructors 66.67 4.5. Quality Objectives of Attractiveness Activities/Policies The survey also inquired institutions on the quality objectives of their attractiveness activities/policies. The results of this part of the survey are summarised in Table 5. Table 5. Quality objectives of attractiveness activities/policies. Activity/Policy Objective Percentage Show that the engineering discipline is fun 46.67 Show that an engineering career is financially attractive 40.00 Show that the engineering discipline is useful for society 60.00 Show that engineering is a creative discipline 86.67 Show that the engineering discipline has global relevance 53.33 Show that engineering is a problem-solving discipline 80.00 Show that engineering is about collaboration & teamwork 20.00 Show that engineering is not only mathematics and physics 6.67 Show that engineering is integrated with ICT 6.67 Show that engineering demand is increasing 6.67 Results of Table 5 indicate that a significant percentage of attractiveness efforts aim to showcase the creative and problem-solving dimensions of the engineering discipline. This is not an unexpected result since, as already discussed in previous sections, attractiveness efforts are mainly directed towards the younger generations of people, who, in principle, are more interested in the ‘excitement’ generated by a discipline rather than its future career implications. Still, a significant percentage of efforts aim to underline the financial attractiveness of the engineering career, especially in relation to the implementation of postgraduate and continuous education studies. It is interesting to note though, that very few of the attractiveness efforts aim to depict the ‘interdisciplinarity’ of the engineering profession, even if this is only confined to the closely-related Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 10 of 21 field of ICT. This is a surprising finding, since ‘interdisciplinarity’ of subjects is considered to be a significant future research and teaching direction on a globalised level. The expected rise in the use of distance-based educational tools will undoubtedly strengthen the ‘interdisciplinarity’ dimension of engineering studies and therefore considerably increase their attractiveness. 4.6. Interviews on Distance Education in Engineering Five participants, originating from five different HE institutions in four EU countries (Cyprus, Portugal, Serbia, Spain) volunteered to be interviewed. These academics were first asked whether they think their institution does take advantage of the benefits and proliferation of distance education to increase attractiveness of engineering studies. They responded positively, indicating that many of their undergraduate and/or post-graduate engineering study programmes are taught entirely at-distance or, at least, using a blended learning approach through use of the Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. Nonetheless, only one noted that their engineering programmes develop and utilise “remote experiments in engineering laboratories for distance experimenting”. Interviewees indicated the percentage of undergraduate courses offered at-distance in their engineering programmes. They gave percentages ranging between 5–70%, noting that some of these courses were electives, while others were core, compulsory engineering courses. They also all stated that some of their online courses were lab-based. Participants were also prompted to indicate what they consider as the main benefits of teaching engineering courses at-distance. They referred to the flexibility and convenience associated with distance education, which makes it possible for students to determine their own place, pace, and time of study: “Students have the opportunity to study at a time and a place that suits them”. The promotion of communication and collaboration among students was also an aspect considered as an important strength of distance education: “Students can consult teachers and their peers over online communication channels”. They also argued that the distance education option has important benefits not only for students, but also for the academic institution itself: “Saves space and energy for the university”; “Attracts students living outside our region”; “Makes better use of equipment”. At the same time, respondents identified a number of challenges in teaching engineering courses at-distance. Their biggest concern was the “pedagogical adequacy of materials and instructional approaches” used in distance education courses. In particular, they considered the “realisation of lab-based classes” to be a very difficult endeavour. The sole participant whose institution uses virtual laboratories also stated the need to “improve the sense of real experimentation for the students taking remote experiments”. Interviewees pointed out a number of measures taken at their institution to ensure that their online engineering programmes are of comparable, or even superior, quality to those offered face-to-face: “We try to follow up-to-date guidelines from specialists in distance education. We also use feedback from students, and we compare their grades with conventional classes”; “We use remotely controlled laboratory exercises”; “We try to raise awareness of the faculty to the specific difficulties of the at-distance model”; “We regularly administer questionnaires that are used to measure the quality of our courses, and we carefully analyse their results.” When asked whether the engineering courses offered online in their university provide similar opportunities for interaction and collaboration between students and instructors and among students to those offered face-to-face, four of the interviewees agreed, stating that their distance education students “can use various online communication channels such forums, videoconferencing, skype, and e-mail to communicate with their teachers and peers”. However, one of the participants pointed out that to promote and sustain communication and collaboration among students enrolled in courses taught entirely online, instructors ought to make participation in discussion forums and other collaborative activities a compulsory element of the course. This does not seem to be an issue in blended courses Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 11 of 21 since, as the interviewees mentioned, students “still have face-to-face interactions with instructors and between themselves”. Interviewees’ responses suggest that their engineering programmes have still not been impacted by recent technological developments outside the education sector, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Only one respondent noted that they are “in the process of introducing VR and AR in some online courses beside the courses in Computer animation study program where they are already in use”. The rest stated that there are currently no efforts at their institution to introduce VR/AR in engineering programmes, although “these technologies are used by some instructors, more for research purposes”. Only two of the respondents stated that their institution has empirical data on the impact of distance education on engineering students’ motivation and learning. One of them noted that they “have conducted some research among students concerning their motivation”, and the other one that they have also “published some papers on that topic”. Interviewees were finally prompted as to whether they considered distance education courses to be equivalent to or better than on-campus courses. One interviewee disagreed, considering them to be of lower quality compared to face-to-face courses, and noting that their institution faces a higher attrition among students taking online engineering programmes. This person argued that instructors teaching online should do more “to attract students with more interesting materials, activities, foster their communication and collaborative work”. The rest of the respondents considered online courses to be of equivalent quality, pointing out, however that “this is subject to the preparedness and readiness of teachers, the quality of the course material, and the level and competence of students in e-learning”. They stated that at their institution “the dropout rate is observed not to be related to the at-distance model”, and that the typical feedback received by engineering students enrolled in online courses “in general is very positive”. Moreover, they stressed that the academic performance of students enrolled in Distance Learning Courses is “equally good” to that of students enrolled in similar courses offered face-to-face. The results from our survey and interview based methodology depicted that the academic institutions in the European educational area mainly utilise traditional forms of advertising and target predominantly secondary school students through internally-funded attractiveness activities/policies. However, a range of innovative attractiveness activities/policies are starting to emerge from these institutions, in an attempt to increase the efficiency of the attractiveness efforts. In terms of distance education in higher education, it is evident that many of undergraduate and/or post-graduate engineering study programmes are taught entirely at-distance or, at least, using a blended learning approach through use of the Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. Furthermore, it was indicated that institutions offering distance education in engineering, do take advantage of the benefits and proliferation of distance education to increase attractiveness of engineering studies. At the same time, they have some reservations in regards to the way the material is being delivered along with the effectiveness of the instructor. It has also been deduced from the interviews, that there seems to be little effort in incorporating new technologies such as VR/AR/MR in delivering distant courses. We next provide some recommendations as to how institutions could enhance these efforts by focusing on the potential of distance education. We first present tools that could be employed in distance learning engineering education, and then outline some ongoing or recently completed research projects related to distance education in engineering with emphasis given on remote laboratories. 5. Distance Learning in Engineering Education Currently, the majority of online engineering degrees are available at the postgraduate level. One possible explanation is because undergraduate engineering degrees involve a great deal of laboratories that are too complicated or too expensive to run online. Another reason is because young undergraduate learners tend to prefer on-campus studies, unlike more mature adults who are more likely to study at a distance. Nevertheless, the quest for establishing fully online engineering Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 12 of 21 degrees continues, with many academic institutions being involved in research and development of remote laboratories. 5.1. Tools Employed in Distance Learning Education in Engineering Distance education relies heavily on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Offering online courses or even degrees requires a variety of technologies, which support both synchronous and asynchronous communication. Figure 2 illustrates some of the basic areas that must be addressed using ICT tools. These tools can be part of a general Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle, or they can be offered as independent tools possibly linked with the LMS employed for delivering the courses. Their functions can be briefly described as follows:Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 12 of 21 Figure 2. Engineering Distance Education Tools. Presentation Tools: Synchronous presentation tools are tools that deliver the teaching material through audiovisual tools. Through these tools, the instructor can deliver the teaching material/notes while there is a bi-directional interaction between the instructor and the students or just between the students currently online. Asynchronous presentation tools usually provide access to recorded presentations from synchronous presentation sessions as well as typical PowerPoint presentation files. Tools such as Blackboard Collaborate, Webex, Skype and many others, offer the option to record synchronous presentation sessions and make them available for those unable to attend the “live” class at the time of its delivery. Communication tools: Synchronous communication tools involve tools that support real-time discussion, either audio-visual or just text-based. Such tools are sometimes integrated with presentation tools and can be used in parallel to the presentation. In asynchronous communication, the exchange of messages does not happen in real time but at different time instances. Examples include the messaging system that any LMS features, emails etc. To put into perspective, what is required for engineering degrees to be made available online, a set of tools have been identified and presented below. Evaluation tools: Although many of the online courses require students to undertake face-to- face examinations, students are still required to submit their assignments, projects etc. online. Synchronous evaluation tools require students to perform a test at a particular time using a particular tool (multiple choice exam, audio-visual online experiments, etc.). Using asynchronous evaluation tools, students can submit their work at any time (before the set deadline). Course evaluation can be done through various means, including simple homework, group-projects, multiple-choice questionnaires, all submitted electronically. Laboratory tools: Engineering distance education, especially at an undergraduate level, requires that students have regular hands-on laboratory experience. Some experiments can be conducted using virtual tools, while others require tools that control real equipment in real time. Experiments related to disciplines such as electrical and electronic engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and many other engineering degrees, dictate that engineering students must be able to remotely carry out these experiments. Failure to do so increases the risk of making distance learning engineering degrees inferior to the conventional ones. Examples of real time experiments using real or virtual equipment enhancing their operation with Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are currently an active area of research. An overview of the state-of-the-art in the field of Laboratory- based education can be found in [24] where the paper presents various technologies available in the area of Augmented Reality (AR) and the trend in education towards the use of different types of labs in the field of STEM. As it arises from [27], there is an obvious trend in STEM education towards the Figure 2. Engineering Distance Education Tools. Presentation Tools: Synchronous presentation tools are tools that deliver the teaching material through audiovisual tools. Through these tools, the instructor can deliver the teaching material/notes while there is a bi-directional interaction between the instructor and the students or just between the students currently online. Asynchronous presentation tools usually provide access to recorded presentations from synchronous presentation sessions as well as typical PowerPoint presentation files. Tools such as Blackboard Collaborate, Webex, Skype and many others, offer the option to record synchronous presentation sessions and make them available for those unable to attend the “live” class at the time of its delivery. Communication tools: Synchronous communication tools involve tools that support real-time discussion, either audio-visual or just text-based. Such tools are sometimes integrated with presentation tools and can be used in parallel to the presentation. In asynchronous communication, the exchange of messages does not happen in real time but at different time instances. Examples include the messaging system that any LMS features, emails etc. To put into perspective, what is required for engineering degrees to be made available online, a set of tools have been identified and presented below. Evaluation tools: Although many of the online courses require students to undertake face-to-face examinations, students are still required to submit their assignments, projects etc. online. Synchronous evaluation tools require students to perform a test at a particular time using a particular tool (multiple choice exam, audio-visual online experiments, etc.). Using asynchronous evaluation tools, students can submit their work at any time (before the set deadline). Course evaluation Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 13 of 21 can be done through various means, including simple homework, group-projects, multiple-choice questionnaires, all submitted electronically. Laboratory tools: Engineering distance education, especially at an undergraduate level, requires that students have regular hands-on laboratory experience. Some experiments can be conducted using virtual tools, while others require tools that control real equipment in real time. Experiments related to disciplines such as electrical and electronic engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and many other engineering degrees, dictate that engineering students must be able to remotely carry out these experiments. Failure to do so increases the risk of making distance learning engineering degrees inferior to the conventional ones. Examples of real time experiments using real or virtual equipment enhancing their operation with Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are currently an active area of research. An overview of the state-of-the-art in the field of Laboratory-based education can be found in [24] where the paper presents various technologies available in the area of Augmented Reality (AR) and the trend in education towards the use of different types of labs in the field of STEM. As it arises from [27], there is an obvious trend in STEM education towards the use of different types of remote laboratories. This trend creates the need for systematic research in order to answer the critical research questions that emerge, as mentioned in the previous sections. Modern educators, irrespective of the level of education they are involved in, seek ways of providing the most effective, reliable and convenient tools and services for distance learning solutions. Some of the most widely used tools, listed by Steinberg [28], can be associated with delivering online material for engineering degrees. These are listed in Table 6. Table 6. Distance Learning Tools. Tools Description 1 Adobe Connect 1 Offers immersive online meeting experiences from small group collaboration to large-scale webinars. Features digital meetings with various associated tools, an all-in-one webinar solution for marketers and a complete digital learning solution for trainers. 2 Blackboard 2 Another educational tool consisted of various platforms (e.g., blackboard learn, collaborate, connect, mobile, analytics), which provide a virtual learning environment, featuring real time online collaboration environment that everyone can engage into a discussion. 3 Canvas 3 A freely available learning management system that offers open, online courses taught by educators everywhere. Teachers, students, and institutions worldwide can use canvas to connect and chart their own course for personal growth, professional development, and academic inquiry. 4 Coursera 4 An online portal used for hosting courses from universities around the world that gives students the chance to “attend” classes they would otherwise not have access to. 5 Dessci 5 Combines a set of products for scientific and technical communication. Some of their available products are MathType, MathFlow, and MathPlayer software which are used by scientists, engineers, educators and publishing professionals, for authoring and publishing mathematical notation in print and online documents, and for building web pages with interactive math content. 6 edX 6 One of the leading sites for accessing massive open online courses. Offers classes from various prestigious institutions, as well as material from an expanding list of partners. 7 ePals 7 Another tool for enabling teachers to use the free ePals Global Classroom and create real world, culturally- enriching learning experiences for their students. For example, a class studying Chinese can connect with a class studying English in China, or the classes can work together on a special project, thus allowing classroom matching. Also allows teachers to create their own projects or join another class’ existing ones. 8 FaceTime 8 Employed by Apple users to make video calls between apple devices. Among the simplest and most widely-available ways to connect via voice and video with others online (provided they are using apple products). 9 Google Plus Hangouts 9 A solution available from Google for connecting people via voice and video as well as chat, letting teachers, students and third-party experts to easily videoconference in groups. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 14 of 21 Table 6. Cont. Tools Description 10 Fathom Dynamic Data Software 10 Enables users to freely and creatively explore ideas in mathematics, statistics, and science. Can be employed to relate studies to real-world examples and use the results to visualise and understand the concepts. 11 Tinkerplots 11 A project funded by the National Science Foundation which led to the creation of a software tool and accompanying curriculum materials for teaching data analysis and statistics. The software offers a construction set rather than a menu of ready-made graph types, and helps orient students and teachers to the inquiry-driven nature of data analysis. Although originally targeting middle school children, it has also been widely used in high school and college level classrooms. 12 iTunes U courses 12 Enable teachers to give each class a customised learning experience, through the creation and management of their own courses. Students can access it all from the iTunes U app without setting foot in a formal classroom. 13 Schoology 13 Allows teachers to manage their classroom, engage their students, find resources, and connect to other teachers anytime, anywhere. Schoology features mechanisms with emphasis on the monitoring and education of students. This gives an additional tool to teachers by helping them analyse and better educate kids based on usage and activity. 14 Skype 14 One of the most widely used tools for making voice or video calls as well as chatting, file exchange etc. Free and compatible with most available operating systems whether these are computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. 15 Udacity 15 Another major player in the massive open online courses as it offers accessible, affordable, interactive online courses that seek to empower their students to advance not just their education but also their careers in technology. Courses, providing the most relevant and cutting-edge tech education that bridges the gap between academia and the needs of the 21st century workforce, are developed and offered in collaboration with leaders in the tech industry. All Udacity courses provide free access to the course materials, but in some of the courses users are given the option of paying a fee to enroll for the full course experience, gaining special access to projects, code-review and feedback, a personal Coach, and verified certificates. 16 YouTube 16 Is effectively a library of videos, some of which are educational. There are numerous examples of leading schools and academic institutions posting material online through YouTube. Notes: 1 http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html; 2 http://www.blackboard.com; 3 http://www. instructure.com/; 4 https://www.coursera.org/; 5 https://www.dessci.com; 6 https://www.edx.org/; 7 http:// www.epals.com/; 8 http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/; 9 http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/; 10 http://concord.org/fathom-dynamic-data-software; 11 http://www.srri.umass.edu/tinkerplots-project. 12 http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/; 13 https://www.schoology.com/; 14 http://www.skype.com/; 15 https://www.udacity.com/; 16 http://www.youtube.com/. All these online educational platforms, communication tools, LMS, etc. can be used to deliver educational material. Some of them might target students at secondary education, some in higher education and some are general platforms that can be used by anyone. The main objective they all share is to deliver effective online education that can be practical, inspiring, easy to use and, above all, effective in knowledge transfer and creation. For the engineering discipline however, although being useful, these tools might not be sufficient. Engineering education combines science and mathematics based—subjects. These are traditionally hard to teach online because of the need for laboratories and equation manipulation [29]. For this to be addressed, there are two approaches. One is by employing virtual hands-on laboratories and the other by employing expensive laboratory equipment maintained at one location, accessed by all remotely. A more cost-effective solution is to carry out the laboratory sessions through summer programmes [30]. As a first approach, this can be used as a basic model for delivering engineering degrees online. Nevertheless, the overarching aim of distance learning is to enable students to attend a fully online degree without having to physically attend the class or the laboratory. The following section describes recent worldwide efforts in offering real time hands on experience on real equipment. http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html http://www.blackboard.com http://www.instructure.com/ http://www.instructure.com/ https://www.coursera.org/ https://www.dessci.com https://www.edx.org/ http://www.epals.com/ http://www.epals.com/ http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/ http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/ http://concord.org/fathom-dynamic-data-software http://www.srri.umass.edu/tinkerplots-project http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ https://www.schoology.com/ http://www.skype.com/ https://www.udacity.com/ http://www.youtube.com/ Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 15 of 21 5.2. Distance Education in Engineering: Current Projects Universities around the globe have been gradually replacing their conventional courses with online courses. The ninth annual survey of online education [31] states that the 10 per cent growth rate for online enrolments far exceeds the 2 per cent growth in the overall higher education student population. Nonetheless, offering online courses in engineering can be technically challenging. As stated by Fallon [32] in his paper “Survey of Existing Remote Laboratories used to Conduct Laboratory Exercises for Distance Learning Courses”, several of the online courses (mostly in engineering/science) have a laboratory component that requires the use of hardware and/or software, posing technical problems or even licensing problems when operated remotely. If the laboratory component is purely software based, then minimum constraints are expected, except perhaps in the case where centralised applications or license servers are used. Engineering laboratories intended for distance learning are primarily hardware-based, with access to the laboratory equipment being either physical or virtual. As stated by Fallon [32], access to such laboratories can be realised through a specialised lab kit, a Virtual Private Network (VPN), or the creation of strategically located remote learning centres. Each approach is employed depending on the type of the laboratory that will be designed, and is associated with particular technical challenges and costs. Müller and Erbe [33] differentiate engineering laboratories between hands-on and virtual (simulated), local and distributed, and mono-user or multi-user environments and present the idea of a remote laboratory as a laboratory that enables students to access physical laboratories or workbenches from distance sites by using a suitable communication infrastructure. Some institutions that offer online courses and programmes, have chosen to avoid remote laboratories altogether perhaps because costs are too high or the number of students enrolled in these courses does not justify the deployment of such laboratories. Other institutions have invested time and money to develop such laboratories. Table 7 presents various projects around the world that are related to remote laboratories. Some are designed for students in higher education and some in secondary education. Despite of context, the design and implementation of such laboratories is always interesting and sometimes inspiring when developing a new laboratory for a new course. Table 7 lists a number of remote laboratory implementations identifying the technical issues towards the specific implementation of an architecture to fulfil the educational requirements of each experiment. The format, the equipment used and the complexity of the lab delivered is dictated by the curriculum. In some cases, hardware equipment must be setup and remotely accessed—which means that there is an added technical complexity and cost to the remote laboratory. In these cases, the remote labs are not as well integrated as the ones that are mostly software based. Furthermore, cost restrictions affect the integration between the modules (hardware control mechanisms and LMS) and limit the capacity in terms of user access—thus posing usage restrictions of the remote laboratories. Security is also an issue that needs to be considered in cases where sensitive and expensive equipment is being used, but most importantly the LMS needs to safely keep the records of the students and their results. Table 7 indicates that there is a great variety of equipment, mechanisms and methodology employed targeting different pools of students. It also suggests that there is no optimal architecture and it is important that each laboratory exercise is implemented in such a way that the learning outcomes are fully addressed. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 16 of 21 Table 7. Distance Learning Projects and Technologies Employed. Project Name Institution/Location Scientific Field Technology Used Description 1 UTS remote laboratories—the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) laboratory, and the water level laboratory Faculty of Engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney Mechanical Engineering PLC rigs/electro-pneumatic cylinders, iSightTM firewire webcam, RSLogix programming environment These laboratories are designed for mechanical and mechatronic engineering students, and have been used in the teaching of subjects such as “Advanced Manufacturing”, “Dynamics and Control” and “Mechatronics 2” [34]. 2 Heat Transfer Remote Laboratory Georgia Institute of Technology, Savannah, USA Mechanical Engineering LabVIEW®, Armfield® HT10XC Computer Controlled Heat Transfer station, an Armfield® HT15 Extended Surface Heat Exchanger An experiment was created to obtain experimental data and analyse the ability of Remote Labs to be integrated with current coursework. Surveys results indicated that the perceptions a student carries about the effectiveness of Remote Laboratories improves after they perform the experiment [35]. 3 Remote operations of High Angular Resolution Astronomy centre Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA Astronomy Linux-based workstations, archival server interfaced to the main control computers of the array via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the Internet The telescope array is located atop Mount Wilson, California northeast of Los Angeles. Through this collaboration, the telescope was possible to be remotely controlled from the Arrington Remote Operations Centre (AROC), located on the campus of GSU in Atlanta, Georgia. This has enabled faculty and students to remotely operate the array from Atlanta and has led to a significant reduction in travel costs of the people involved. This project evolved into four more remote operations facilities established in France, Australia and the US [32]. 4 Laboratory in the Department of Telecommunications and Signal Processing Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden Electrical Engineering National Instruments (NI) PXI-1000B 8-slot #U PXI, (PXI-8176), four plug-in boards, two function generators (PXI-5411 and PXI-5401), an oscilloscope (PXI-5112), a digital I/O board (PXI-6508), server system running LabVIEW A remotely operated laboratory accessed from around the world for delivering exercises for courses in electrical engineering. The remote laboratory is implemented using a ‘remotely controlled switch matrix with five nodes, ten branches, and 40 components, two function generators, a digital multi-meter, and an oscilloscope’ [36]. 5 Remote Laboratories for the SPSU campus Southern Polytechnic State University (SPSU) and Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), USA Engineering Technology Lab Kits accessed through Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the Internet SPSU and TCSG have been working together towards enabling students to complete laboratory exercises at facilities that are remote to the SPSU campus [32]. 6 Canadian Remote Sciences Laboratories Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) and Athabasca University, Canada Engineering Technology Remote laboratories designed were based on the control of analytical instruments in real-time via an Internet connection. Students perform real-time analysis using equipment, methods, and skills that are common to modern analytical laboratories (or sophisticated teaching laboratories). Examples of experiments developed are Chromatography and Spectroscopy [37]. 7 ECU virtual laboratory East Carolina University, USA Computer Science/Engineering Virtualisation software VMware workstation, Linux and Windows Servers A virtual laboratory environment consisting of virtual machines, which communicate with one another over a virtual network. Students are able to run these machines “remotely” on their own computers at home [34]. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 17 of 21 Table 7. Cont. Project Name Institution/Location Scientific Field Technology Used Description 8 NeReLa (Building a Network of Remote Labs for strengthening university secondary vocational schools collaboration) Europe (Eight Serbian partners and five European institutions took part in this project) Electronic, Electrical, Mechatronic and Computer Engineering Varying from Nexys 2 FPGA platform and Xilinx ISE Design Suite, to CompactRIO, CeyeClon platform, raspberry pie and thermocouple sensors A European Funded project (Tempus) completed in 2016. The wider objective of this project was to increase attractiveness of engineering education through innovative teaching methods, as well as through strengthening of university and secondary vocational schools’ collaboration. Some of the specific objectives listed in NeReLa [38] were to build a cross-universities network of remote engineering laboratories in order to enhance engineering education at Serbian Higher Education institutions and to strengthen university-secondary vocational schools collaboration through secondary vocational school teacher training in using resources of The Library of Remote Experiments (LiReX). Furthermore, NeReLa aimed to bring remote engineering experiments into secondary vocational school classrooms in order to promote engineering education attractiveness to prospective engineering students. 9 Go-Lab Project (Global Online Science Labs for Inquiry Learning at School) Secondary Education/Europe Science—Secondary Education Remote and virtual science labs, inquiry learning applications, and Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs) together with an authoring tool for teachers to create own ILSs. It was completed in 2016, focused on secondary education, aimed to open up remote science laboratories, their data archives, and virtual models (“online labs”) for large-scale use in education. Go-Lab [39] enables science inquiry-based learning that promotes acquisition of deep conceptual domain knowledge and inquiry skills and directs students to careers in science. 10 PEARL (Practical Experimentation by Accessible Remote Learning) Europe Science and Electronic and Manufacturing Engineering Education Motorised Optical Spectrometer, Computer Vision Experiment Rig, Apache based web server, video cameras, Goepel digital I/O board, function generator board, multimeter board, two-channel 100 MHz oscilloscope An EU funded project completed in 2003 that aimed at enabling students in conducting live experiments over the web providing high quality learning experiences in science and engineering education by bringing the teaching laboratory to the students, giving flexibility in terms of time, location and special needs [40]. 11 EL-STEM (Enlivened Laboratories within STEM Education) Secondary Education/Europe STEM Secondary Education AR environment, Unity Programming Tools An Erasmus+ funded project that has started in October 2017 and it aims to develop a new approach, inspired by the emerging technologies of AR (Augmented Reality) and MR (Mixed Reality) with Remote and/or Local Laboratories, for encouraging 12-18 year-old students’ STEM engagement. In particular, EL-STEM’s main objectives are to (a) attract students who currently might not be interested in STEM related studies/careers and enhance the interest of those who have already chosen this field of studies/careers, (b) improve students’ performance in courses related to STEM [41]. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 18 of 21 6. Discussion and Conclusions This paper has explored the potential of distance education approaches as a means of tackling the well-documented trend in recent years of declining interest in the pursuit of engineering studies and careers. Specifically, the article first presented the current situation in relation to European universities’ efforts to increase the attractiveness of their engineering programmes, as this emerged through the conduct of a survey study. It then analysed a number of interviews on how distance education can be used in engineering in order to provide an alternative to conventional education using advanced ICT technologies. Based on the study findings, it then offered some suggestions as to how these efforts could be enhanced through the incorporation of the distance learning component as an alternative to conventional education. The results of the survey study highlighted the lack of a distance-learning dimension in the implementation of engineering studies in the European Area. Although the number of students enrolled in online engineering courses/degrees steadily increases every year, academic institutions continue to focus their advertising efforts on attracting students to their traditional, face-to-face programmes. None of the institutions participating in our study carried out activities where distance-based learning was explicitly targeted as the main attractiveness element for the implementation of engineering studies although some of them have been using distance based education to deliver their engineering courses. Undoubtedly, to remain competitive and to increase their attractiveness, academic institutions offering engineering degrees ought to take advantage of the undisputed benefits and proliferation of distance education along with the new trends in remote laboratories, VR, AR and MR. At the same time, however, they should take measures to ensure that their online engineering programmes are of comparable, or even superior, quality to those offered face-to-face. The existing literature indicates not only advantages, but also challenges regarding distance education, and variable effectiveness of distance education programmes [42]. While most of the conducted studies show that students taking online courses have similar achievement and satisfaction levels compared to students in traditional, face-to-face classrooms [43,44], there is growing evidence of many web-based distance learning courses failing to meet the expectations raised. This has been suggested in the interview based study presented in Section 4. For example, while it is well-documented in statistics education research that the incorporation of discussion and active learning in the classroom can help learners to think and reason about statistical concepts, bringing these important learning approaches to an online course has proved very challenging [45,46]. Early attempts at Internet-based instruction assumed that setting up an attractive website with interesting online and multimedia applications, was adequate for learning to take place. It is now recognised that the level of success of a distance learning course is determined by multiple factors, such as underlying theory, technologies, teaching strategies, and support for learners. Elements in the design of a web-based course such as the content and structure of the course, the presentation of the online materials, and the amount of interaction between instructors and learners as well as among learners are important factors affecting students’ learning and attitudes [47]. Another important criterion for the level of success of network-based engineering training is the extent to which instruction allows learners to tackle realistic problems related to their field of study, or their daily life [48]. In addition to the general issues and considerations regarding distance education, the training of engineers at a distance poses special challenges that also ought to be taken into account when designing an online engineering programme. Although there are numerous support platforms to develop online courses, very few of them were designed specifically to carry out remote experiments in a real laboratory using real and not virtual equipment e.g., [38]. There have been various attempts from various academic institutions to design remote laboratories for educational purposes, and some examples of these initiatives have been presented in this paper. The main challenge is to offer hands-on experience to students by physically accessing laboratories or workbenches from distance sites, enhancing their user experience with new technologies such as Augmented or Mixed reality Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 16 19 of 21 supported by a suitable communication infrastructure. This model can be considered successful, if the industry accepts the graduates from the distance education programmes in the same way they do for the conventional ones—considering them equally qualified for the job. There have been substantial efforts towards the development of such technologies, but there is still a long way to go for engineering degrees to be successfully offered online in their entirety. 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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v6i3.260 http://www.nerela.kg.ac.rs http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/105919_en.html https://www.researchgate.net/project/Enlivened-Laboratories-within-STEM-Education-EL-STEM-Motivating-EU-students-to-choosing-STEM-studies-careers-and-improving-their-performance-in-courses-related-to-STEM-education https://www.researchgate.net/project/Enlivened-Laboratories-within-STEM-Education-EL-STEM-Motivating-EU-students-to-choosing-STEM-studies-careers-and-improving-their-performance-in-courses-related-to-STEM-education https://www.researchgate.net/project/Enlivened-Laboratories-within-STEM-Education-EL-STEM-Motivating-EU-students-to-choosing-STEM-studies-careers-and-improving-their-performance-in-courses-related-to-STEM-education http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/00346543076001093 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/stc.1645 http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/rusc.v9i1.1275 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2006.11910591 http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Introduction Literature Review Declining Interest in Engineering Studies Distance Learning in Engineering Education Methodology Study on Attractiveness Distance Learning in Engineering Education Results Basic Attractiveness Activities Campus-Based Activities Remote Activities Basic Attractiveness Policies Funding Sources of Attractiveness Practices Funding Sources of Attractiveness Practices Quality Objectives of Attractiveness Activities/Policies Interviews on Distance Education in Engineering Distance Learning in Engineering Education Tools Employed in Distance Learning Education in Engineering Distance Education in Engineering: Current Projects Discussion and Conclusions References 
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work_oyu7pqbuendzdb4635p32otuxe	----	Undergraduate performance in a domestic animal laboratory taught via distance education. | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.2527/jas.2010-3114 Corpus ID: 39462988Undergraduate performance in a domestic animal laboratory taught via distance education. @article{Bing2011UndergraduatePI, title={Undergraduate performance in a domestic animal laboratory taught via distance education.}, author={J. Bing and S. Pratt-Phillips and L-A Gillen and C. E. Farin}, journal={Journal of animal science}, year={2011}, volume={89 1}, pages={ 297-301 } } J. Bing, S. Pratt-Phillips, +1 author C. E. Farin Published 2011 Medicine Journal of animal science The objective of this study was to determine if laboratory modules of an undergraduate animal anatomy course offered in distance education (DistEd) format were as effective as face-to-face (F2F) format in helping students learn. Students (n = 159) completed an anatomy pretest as well as a presurvey to assess prior DistEd experience. Alternating each week, laboratory topics were presented either as F2F or as virtual DistEd laboratories. Two laboratory examinations were administered and included… Expand View on PubMed animalsciencepublications.org Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 6 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Background Citations 1 Results Citations 1 View All Figures, Tables, and Topics from this paper table 1 figure 1 Animals, Laboratory Parasitic Diseases, Animal Anatomic structures 6 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Animal sciences undergraduate education since the ASAS centennial: a national survey and scoping review M. Erickson, S. Ranathunga, M. Wattiaux Medicine, Political Science Translational animal science 2020 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Best Practices for Teaching Equine Reproduction in an Online Learning Environment: A Delphi Study Tara Smesny, Kimberly A. Bellah Psychology 2012 1 Highly Influenced PDF View 3 excerpts, cites background and results Save Alert Research Feed Piloted Online Training Module to Teach On-Site Safety in Engineering Frank Ta, A. Valentine, S. Male, G. Hassan Computer Science 2019 PDF Save Alert Research Feed IVET, an Interactive Veterinary Education Tool. Pau Xiberta, I. Boada Computer Science, Medicine Journal of animal science 2019 2 Save Alert Research Feed Genome-wide association study for birth weight in Nellore cattle points to previously described orthologous genes affecting human and bovine height Y. T. Utsunomiya, A. S. do Carmo, +13 authors J. Garcia Biology, Medicine BMC Genetics 2012 106 Save Alert Research Feed Undergraduate Student Learning Gains and Satisfaction in Online and In‐Person Animal Science Courses A. E. Neu, Marshall D Stern, K. Martinson Computer Science 2017 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-9 OF 9 REFERENCES Instructional multimedia programs for self-directed learning in undergraduate and postgraduate training in orthodontics. M. Aly, G. Willems, C. Carels, J. Elen Medicine European journal of dental education : official journal of the Association for Dental Education in Europe 2003 37 Highly Influential View 3 excerpts, references background and results Save Alert Research Feed Instructional multimedia program versus standard lecture: a comparison of two methods for teaching the undergraduate orthodontic curriculum. M. Aly, J. Elen, G. Willems Computer Science, Medicine European journal of dental education : official journal of the Association for Dental Education in Europe 2004 73 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed An electronic instructor for gross anatomy dissection. E. Josephson, L.J. Moore Medicine Journal of veterinary medical education 2006 10 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Evaluation of a Computer-Assisted Instructional Component in a College-Level Nutrition Course L. Carew, V. Chamberlain, F. Alster Psychology 1997 18 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Impact of distance independent education H. Besser, M. Bonn Sociology 1996 26 View 2 excerpts, references methods and background Save Alert Research Feed Use of Internet-based resources to support an introductory animal and poultry science course. D. Barnes, J. Sims, W. Jamison Medicine Journal of animal science 1999 12 View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Why dissection videos should not replace cadaver prosections in the gross veterinary anatomy curriculum: results from a comparative study. C. Theoret, É. Carmel, S. Bernier Medicine Journal of veterinary medical education 2007 23 View 3 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed A Virtual Laboratory for Undergraduate Instruction in Domestic Animal Reproductive Physiology: Help or Hindrance? J. Grizzle, A. Saxton, Phillip Snow, C. Edmonds Psychology 2008 3 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Online Instruction: Student Satisfaction, Kudos, and Pet Peeves C. E. Walker, E. Kelly Psychology 2007 41 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Related Papers Abstract Figures, Tables, and Topics 6 Citations 9 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_p327h63narc6zbputgibnzr74a	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_pbrojmcs25gktcu5z2jofxgbuu	----	ed265637.tif.pdf DOCUMENT RESUME ED 265 637 EA 018 126 AUTHOR Knapper, Christopher TITLE Lifelong Learning and Distance Education. PUB DATE Aug 85 NOTE 11p.; Paper presented at the World Conference of the International Council for Distance Education (13th, Melbourne, Australia, August 1985). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) -- Viewpoints (120) EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. Adult Students; Continuing Education; *Distance Education; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Independent Study; *Lifelong Learning; Nontraditional Education; Student College Relationship ABSTRACT Distance education programs often try to prove their legitimacy by using methods and materials as similar as possible to those used in traditional, classroom-based, lecture-oriented courses. Since off-campus students must exhibit a certain level of independence and self-guidance to succeed, it might he more reasonable to tailor educational experiences to exploit the possibilities of independent study, including the individual life situations in which students find themselves. This focus on independence and personal experience is also characteristic of Edgar Faure's concept of lifelong learning, which encourages learning from informal as well as formal sources, learning guided by learners, and concern with real-world experiences and problems. Some aspects of the lifelong learning model that are not typically included in distance education programs are: (1) using formative assessment of student progress, (2) tailoring learning strategies to individual situations, and (3) using real-world criteria in evaluations. It appears possible and desirable for distance education programs to incorporate sueessfully many more of the characteristics of lifelong learning than has typically been the case, but evidence from the field suggests that strong pressures exist in favor of using conventional educational approaches. (PGD) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by. EDRS are the best that can be mace from the original document. **********--************************************************************ I Iv LIFELONG LEARNING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION* Christopher Knapper University of Waterloo, Canada UN. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI Thus document has be reproduced as received from the person or oron:tation originating it. 0 Minor changss have been mode to improve reproduction QUality. Points of view or opinions stated in this doc moot do nor necessanly represent official NIE position or POItCY. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." LIFELONG LEARNING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION* Christopher Knapper University of Waterloo, Canada The Place of Distance Learning in Higher Education The roots of university-level distance education go back many years, but the perception still remains in many quarters that distance courses offer at most a type of "back-door" learning or are a second-best substitute for on-campus instruction. In universities with both traditional on-campus courses and distance programmes, the latter often have to struggle for legitimacy and a recognition that standards are equivalent to those of regular offerings.. As a defence against criticism, distance educators often strive to replicate face-to-face instruction as closely as possible, for example by insisting on a common syllabus and examination, basing distance 'darning materials on the content of on-campus lectures, using a standard textbook, and perhaps having the same individual teach both versions of the course. For example, in the University of Waterloo's correspondence programme, instruction is paced throughout the term as it would he for on-campus students, a set of audio cassettes is intended to serve the function of live lectures, course notes provide what might be written on the blackboard or issued to on-campus students as handouts, assignments consist of traditional essays and term papers, textbooks are used in the same way in both types of course, and correspondence courses have compulsory final examinations. A somewhat similar approach to meet a comparable concern is reported by Duignan and Teather (in press) with respect to University of New England. There is no doubt that a great boost for the credibility of university-level distance education has been provided by the creation of the British Open University and its achievements over the past 15 years. Here too there were initial concerns about educational standards, and it is interesting that one partial response was to imbue the new institution with many of the trappings of an established British university, such as degree convocations, a traditional departmental structure and academic titles, and even a student newspaper. At the same time the approach to course development and delivery pioneered by the OU represented a significant innovation for British higher education. In my own work as Teaching Resource Person at the University of Waterloo I have a professional concern with the improvement of teaching and learning throughout the University, and not simply in Waterloo's large correspondence programme. Because I am not sanguine about the effectiveness of many teaching methods used in traditional higher education, I do not simply take for granted the desirability of simulating these approaches when designing distance education courses. Rather, I would argue that distance instruction should be judged not primarily in comparison to "mainstream" university teaching, simply because the latter has existed (and often remained unchanged) for very many years, but should set its own educational goals and strive to realise these *Paper presented at the 13th World Conference of the International Council for Distance Education, Melbourne, Australia, August 1985. 3 as fully as possible, using whatever pedagogical approaches and delivery methods are most effective. It is true of course that certain instructional options are not feasible -- or very difficult -- in distance teaching. But it may be possible to "make a virtue out of necessity" by capitalizing on the special qualities of distance students and the rather unique learning situation in which they are placed. This might mean, for example, exploiting students' greater maturity, life experience and motivation. By being thrown back on their own resources they can be encouraged to become self- directed, autonomous learners capable of guiding their own studies throughout life and able to call upon a wide variety of learning resources that stretch well beyond the facilities of the institution delivering the instruction. Even for on-campus students who have the benefit of regular class meetings (lectures, tutorials, etc.) it is known that the bulk of their learning takes place outside the classroom and in the absence of an instructor. (Ramsden and Entwistle, 1983, have provided a recent overview of research on the way students study.) In this sense the situation of the distance learner might be regarded as an extreme case of traditional classroom learning. To push the point even further, it might be that instead of striving to replicate the conditions of the classroom for the remote student: we should Lnstead be trying to instill in traditional students the independent study approaches that distance learners are forced to adopt from necessity. Lifelong Learning: A New Catchword for Continuing Education This argument rests of course on the underlying assumption that a major goal of education is to produce students who can guide their own learning. This is a basic precept of "lifelong learning" -- a term that has been used with increasing frequency in relation to both continuing education and distance instruction. At first sight the idea inherent in lifelong learning is disarmingly simple, presumably referring to the faily obvious notion that people begin learning from the moment they enter the world (actually shortly after conception) and continue to do so throughout their lives. However, as a slogan, lifelong learning seems to havct an appeal both for educators and students alike, and it has been employed widely in promotional material for otherwise traditional continuing education and distance programmes across North America. Used in this way (which a cynic might say is a means of changing the label without changing the product), lifelong education might be no more than a means for promoting lifelong schooling, offered through university extension programmes or correspondence courses, and attracting new populations of students in an era of levelling or declining enrollments and increasing fiscal constraints. Faure's Concept of Lifelong Learning The concept of lifelong learning received considerable worldwide attention with the publication of Edgar Faure's book, Learning to Be, in 1972. Subsequently UNESCO adopted lifelong learning as a 4 guiding principle for educational reform and has actively promoted the concept through a large-scale programme of research, publications, and policy guidelines. Faure and his associates conceptualized a system of learning which would be: - available throughout an individual's lifetime; would respond to each person's needs to cope with the demands of contemporary society; would involve learners in guiding and directing their own learning; and would encourage learning from a variety of sources, both formal (for example schools) and non-formal (for example in the workplace or from colleagues). In other words the message underlying Learning to Be could be summarised by saying that learning should be "from life, for life, and throughout life". Faure advanced a number of reasons for the importance of lifelong learning as opposed to other educational approaches. The underlying philosophical assumptions of the concept included a desire to democratize education (as opposed to encouraging what was seen as the "authoritarianism" of the school and reliance solely on "experts" to provide instruction), the desire to provide equality of opportunity in education (in contrast to what was seen as an "elitist" model guiding much contemporary schooling), and a will to improve the quality of life for people of all nations and in all circumstances (the idea of education as a means of self-actualization). In addition to these philosophical reasons, Faure also offered the pragmatic rationale fog encouraging lifelong learning that it would enable individuals to cope with a world of increasingly rapid and dramatic change -- change not only in the workplace but in society at large and even in social relations (e.g. family structure). This brief summary of Faure's ideas should make it clear that his conception of lifelong learning and-lifelong education cannot be regarded as simply a restatement of principles of adult education, recurrent education, or even continuing education. Of course these educational approaches are not incompatible with the ideas of lifelong learning: indeed, they can be embraced within the philosophy of lifelong education developed by Faure. He would argue, however, that lifelong learning is a much broader concept than continuing, recurrent, adult, or distance education. It encompasses the whole life of the individual, and not just the adult years, is not restricted to formal educational establishments, such as schools and universities, nor to any specific types of media or delivery systems. Lifelong Learning: Implications for Distance Education By broadening educational opportunities and reaching new populations of learners distance education appears to fulfil at least some of the criteria for lifelong learning spelled out by Faure and his colleagues. Knapper and Cropley (1985) have discussed the principles of lifelong learning in relation to the 5 organizational systems and teaching methods used in contemporary colleges and universities, and have developed a list of relevant criteria derived from the work of Faure and a number of other seminal writers on lifelong education. Although Knapper and Cropley's main -focus is not on distance education, they do discuss distance learning programmes as one mechanism for helping promote learning throughout life, and it is interesting to examine their comprehensive set of criteria against some of the major components inherent in distance teaching. The authors distinguish between 2dagogical criteria that relate to aspects of teaching and learning, and criteria that focus on organizational systems within higher education institutions, thus affecting the way instruction is offered and learning takes place. Table 1 lists the pedagogical criteria, while Table 2 represents the organizational criteria. TABLE 1: Pedagogical Criteria for Lifelong Education Students plan their own learning Students evaluate their own learning There is a stress on formative assessment methods Active learning methods are emphasized Learning takes place in both formal and informal settings Learning takes place from peers Material from different subject areas and disciplines is integrated . Learning strategies are tailored to the student's situation, the nature of the task, and the instructional objectives Learning focusses on real-world problems The process of learning is stressed at least as much as instructional content In each case it is possible to examine items onthe list (individual criteria) and consider to what extent they are fulfilled by different educational approaches, including distance learning. For example, if the attributes listed in Table 1 are considered in relation to traditional on-campus university teaching (which involves paced instruction, teaching by the largely didactic lecture method, and assessment by means of a formal final examination), then it is clear that few of the criteria for lifelong learning are fulfilled. In other words, traditional teaching approaches in universities do not involve students in the process cf planning instruction, evaluating learning from peers, integrating material from different subject areas, and so on. Turning to Table 2, traditional higher education is not especially flexible in course content and organization, rarely gives credit for life experience, only occasionally encourages links with outside work settings, hardly ever employs non- professional teachers, and so on. Clearly this is an oversimplification, and many examples could be cited of exceptions to this generalization in some institutions or with 6 particular instructional approaches and organizational systems that range from project-based teaching to work-study programmes. Knapper and Cropley provide an extensive review of such innovations, but conclude that the instructional methods and means of organization in much of higher education is incompatible with the principles of lifelong learning. TABLE 2: Organizational Criteria for Lifelong Education Participation by a broad cross-section of the po?ulation Integration of general and vocationally-oriented education Flexibility in the content and organization of instruction Credit for prior learning experiences in both formal and non-formal settings Close links between education and the world of work Use of non-professional teachers and resource people where appropriate Emphasis on self-instruction Provision of help with learning and study skills An interesting question -- and one not considered in any detail in Knapper and Cropley's book is to what extent distance education might fulfil the criteria listed in the two tables above. On the whole, a good deal of distance teaching fares a little better than traditional on-campus instruction in this respect. There are some obvious areas where distance methods appear to be superior, and a number of other al.eas where there is considerable potential for the encouragement of lifelong learning. Looking first at Table 1, in most distance education programmes students are involved to a considerable degree in planning their own,learning, and this applies especially in non-paced programmes. Equally, in some distance courses students may be allowed to evaluate their own learning, although the results of such evaluation are rarely used as part of the official grade or credit for the course. It is fair to say that most distance programmes encourage active learning, at least in the sense that students must take responsibility for their own learning to progress through the course -- they cannot sit passively at the back of the lecture hall. Similarly, in some institutions distance learners do have the opportunity to engage in peer learning (for example by means of regional study groups or teleconferencing); there are some notable instances of distance courses that succeed in integrating material from different subject areas; and some distance courses even attempt to encourage learning in both formal and informal settings -- for example by involving students in projects within their own communities. On the other hand, there are very few examples of formative assessment in distance courses, of tailoring learning strategies to the particular situation in which students find themselves, or of student self-evaluation a?ainst real-world 7 criteria. It may be also true that because of the difficulty of involving distance students in discussions or workshops, there is a temptation to downplay the processes of learning and unduly stress mastery of content, which can be transmitted more easily using non-interactive media such as print. In the case of Table 2, once again distance education does not by any means fulfil all the organizational criteria for lifelong learning, but does rather better than traditional teaching approaches in higher education. For example, it is clear that most special-purpose distance education institutions encourage a much broader range of individuals to participate in their programmes than conventional universities, and the same is often true for distance programmes within traditional establishments. Furthermore, distance courses, be definition, encourage much more self-instruction than regular university programmes. Some distance institutions allow credit for life experience, but this is by no means the norm. Flexibility in course content and organization is, by the nature of distance teaching, difficult to achieve, although a number of universities (for example Athabasca) have introduced self-paced courses that at least partly meet this crite':ion. On the other han1, few distance programmes have achieved links with outside work settings, virtually none employ non-professional teachers to supplement their instruction (except perhaps as regional tutors), and help with learning skills and other counselling needs of students is notoriously difficult to provide in a distance mode. Conclusions The foregoing brief discussion introduced some criteria for promoting effective lifelong learning in universities and examined the way in which distance education does -- or might fulfil these requirements. In terms of the principles set forward by Faure, Knapper and Cropley, and others, distance instruction has two enormous advantages over much of traditional higher education. In the first place it has the potential .for_ substantially broadening access to higher learning and he-nCe frfosteringgreater equality of educational opportunity; in the second place it places a major emphasis on self-instruction, active study methods, and students' taking responsibility for their own learning. In the case of the other listed criteria, surprisingly few are impossible to achieve by distance education, and the remainder, while frequently neglected in existing distance programmes, have been achieved in at least some instances, and could in theory be incorporated into a great many more. The writers on lifelong learning mentioned here are not the only advocates of having as a major goal for distance programmes the encouragement of student autonomy in learning. For example, this is a point of view strongly espoused by Holmberg (1985), who even rejects pacing in distance education because it places constraints upon the extent to which students may direct their own learning. At the same time, by no means all distance educators espouse the goal of promoting independent, autonomous learning, and even those who do may not succeed in achieving this goal in practice. Indeed, there may well be a "pull" in university distance 8 education programmes towards replicating conventional models of instruction. This seems especially likely in dual-mode universities whose major activity is on-campus teaching in traditional programmes. The example of Waterloo's correspondence programme has already been described in some detail above. While the approach used at Waterloo appears to be very popular with students,and course completion rates are high, it begs the question of whether the methods employed best serve the needs of students from a lifelong learning perspective. Interestingly, this dilemma is not confined to dual-mode institutions. For example, Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada, was established specifically to develop and teach distance courses, and its programmes incorporate professional course design, a team approach to course development, freedom for students to proceed entirely at their own pace, and use of a variety of instructional strategies and support services aimed at promoting learner independence. According to Rubin (1985), however, over the past ten years Athabasca has seen increasing pressure to retreat from its innovative methods of instructional development and adopt more conventional means of course preparation, organization, and delivery. These pressures are brought not only by faculty -- who have generally received their own higher education in traditional universities, and may haye limited knowledge of educational theory or teaching methods. Another source of resistance to change away from passive, teacher-centred educational approaches comes from students themselves. They may be fearful of taking more responsibility for their own learning, and have an overly respectful view of the wisdom of the authority of the expert (teacher), based upon their own prior experience as students. This will be especially likely for those who have little formal learning experience, or whose previous education took place many years ago. Many students may also be resistant to more active learning approaches, simply because they involve more work and less convenience than studying a fixed body of information from a textbook or audioCapesand preparing for examinations that place major emphasis on memory for fadtual content (as opposed to acquisition of more nebulous, but perhaps more generalizable problem-solving or decision-making skills). This may explain the reluctance of a great many students in the Waterloo correspondence programme to involve themselves in campus visits or optional teleconferences. Similar findings with respect to the Athabasca programme have been reported by Rubin (1985). Such sources of resistance imply that it will not be easy to turn distance education towards philosophies and methods that might encourage lifelong learning in the sense meant by Faure. At the same time, there are several factors working in favour of such an idea. As mentioned above, many distance learners are more mature, have a broader range of life, work and even educational experience. They are in a unique position to forge links between their employment, their everyday lives, and what they learn via distance education, are generally highly motivated and, by definition, placed in a situation where they must take responsibility for guiding their own studies with only minimal help from an educational institution. Indeed, most distance 9 students are already successful lifelong learners: it is simply that they may not recognize the fact. They may actually devalue their achievements in non-formal learning settings such as the workplace, neighbourhood, or home, and mistakenly believe that the only worthwhile instruction is delivered via an educational institution. Other positive factors for effecting change relate_ to the qualities of distance educators themselves. _Despite some of the pessimistic comments made above, distance education can boast of practitioners who display dedication to their work, understanding of basic learning principles, and openness to alternative teaching approaches. In fact there have already been some considerable achievements in meeting some of the criteria spelled out by Knapper and Cropley. If distance educators accept that lifelong learning, student autonomy, and acquiring the skills to "learn how to learn" are primary goals, then they will have to go further and build upon what has already been accomplished. This may mean, among other things, an increasing concern with helping students acquire effective study skills -- and this does not simply mean skills that will serve for traditional teaching, such as rote memorization. Greater use must be made of independent learning activities, such as projects that encourage learners to exploit resources in their own community, place of work, and so on. And faculty will have to adopt roles as resource providers and facilitators, rather than serving primarily as transmitters of information or founts of expertise. This impl:;es special training for distance teachers, especially those in dual-mode institutions where the differences between distance media and on- campus instruction are often not fully appreciated. Finally, more efforts will be required to establish learning networks and to use non-teachers as sources of advice and expertise -- for example librarians, fellow students, workmates, and others in the community with special knowledge. It is argued here that distance education already goes further towards promoting lifelong learning than does much traditional university instruction. However, the mere existence of distance education courses -L and hence new opportunities for remote learners -- does not guarantee that what is learned will be worthwhile, even though students may succeed in fulfilling formal course requirements. If distance education merely replicates traditional instruction using new delivery media, then this will probably do little to foster student autonomy or help them acquire the necessary skills to guide their own learning throughout the rest of their lives and in a variety of life situations. Rather, it is important to build on learners' inherent capacities for independent study, and not simply use distance programmes to provide a lacklustre substitute for traditional, and often moribund, classroom teaching. References Duignan, P. A., & Teather, D. C. B. (in press). Distance education at postgraduate level: Teaching educational administration externally at the University of New England. Distance Education. 10 Entwistle, N., & Ramsden, P. (1983). Understanding student learning. London: Croom Helm. Holmberg. B. (1985). Status and trends of distance education. Lund: Lector. Knapper, C. K., & Cropley, A. J. (1985). Lifelong learning and-7 higher education. London: Croom Helm. Rubin, E. D. (1985, June). The changing role of instructional development services in the distance education institution. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Ottawa. 11 
work_pbv7iszkdfhdpbwoi3bcqfj23a	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_peppdjvqmze2xokgnwnuyofqxe	----	10 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 Professional profile of the distance education expert Perfil profesional del experto en educación a distancia RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika†* & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Centro de Investigación en Arquitectura y Diseño ID 1st Author: Erika, Rivera-Gutiérrez / ORC ID: 0000-0001-6966-2721, Researcher ID Thomson: AAJ-7948-2020, SNI CONACYT ID: 247442 ID 1st Coauthor: Alejandro, Higuera-Zimbrón / ORC ID: 0000-0002-7851-753, Researcher ID Thomson: AAJ-7550-2020, SNI CONACYT: 226412 DOI: 10.35429/JHRT.2020.17.6.10.19 Received February 5, 2020; Accepted June 28, 2020 Abstract The purpose studio is to present a referential framework focused on defining what is the professional profile of distance education expert, a specialist in higher education. For this, a qualitative- descriptive methodology will be used, based on literature scientific review, as well as empirical studies. To achieve, first the perspective of the field in the current labor market will be described. Second, the most common activities will be defined. Third, an interview process will be presented to fill the position. Fourth, the prospective of the field of work will be determined. Finally, the final considerations of this document will be outlined. Competences, Distance Education, Professional Profile Resumen El propósito del estudio es presentar un marco referencial centrado en definir cuál es el perfil laboral para un profesional de la educación a distancia, especialista en la educación superior. Por tanto, se utilizará una metodología cualitativa-descriptiva, a partir de la revisión de la literatura científica, así como de estudios empíricos. Para lograrlo, primero, se describirá la perspectiva del campo en el mercado laboral actual. Segundo, se definirán las actividades más comunes. Tercero, se presentará un proceso de entrevista para ocupar el cargo. Cuarto, se determinará la prospectiva del campo de trabajo. Por último, se esbozarán las consideraciones finales. Competencias, Educación a Distancia, Perfil Professional Citation: RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020. 6-17: 10-19. * Author Correspondence (mariluea@uttlaxcala.edu.mx) † Researcher contributing as first author. ©ECORFAN-Spain www.ecorfan.org/spain 11 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020 ISSN: 2444-4979 ECORFAN® Todos los derechos reservados Introduction Currently there are several titles that are used within the workplace to refer to the instructional technology and design specialist (IDT), such as instructional designer, technologist, strategic and learning consultant, virtual environment specialist, instructional developer, education specialist, developer media, trainer, instructional systems specialist, to name a few. However, there are differences in the description of responsibilities in the workplace, which depend on the field in which they focus, educational, industry, business, consulting or militia. However, variations do not only exist in the jobs sought, but also in the expectations of the organizations for which they will work. Hence, RTD should be seen as an emerging professional (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2015), focused on leading education and training organizations in improving teaching and learning through the applications of educational technology. Therefore, the purpose of this document is to present a referential framework focused on defining what is the job profile for a distance education professional, a specialist in higher education. For this, a qualitative- descriptive methodology will be used, based on the review of the scientific literature, as well as empirical studies. To achieve this, first, the perspective of the field in the current labor market will be described. Second, the most common activities will be defined. Third, an interview process will be presented to fill the position. Fourth, the prospective of the field of work will be determined. Finally, the final considerations will be outlined. Development Perspective of the Current Labor Market of the Field RTDs are currently contracted by business, industry, and higher education organizations. However, each RTD position has different responsibilities and expectations. In addition to strengths and weaknesses depending on their preparation and experience. Therefore, to be able to speak from the perspective of the current labor market of the field, it is necessary to define the professional profile (PP) regardless of the context in which it works. On the one hand, Coll and Moreneo (2008), as well as Vargas (1996) refer to the PP, as the set of competences where the individual has the ability to put their knowledge, skills, experiences and personal characteristics into full use. in a certain position. On the other hand, the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (IBSTPI) (2012) developed a set of internationally recognized competences for RTDs. These focus on: (a) professional foundations; (b) planning and analysis; (c) design and development; and (d) implementation and management. Therefore, professional development for RTDs establishes the application of research and theory to the discipline, as well as updating and improving knowledge, skills and attitudes regarding the instructional design process and its field of application. Furthermore, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (EGTC) defines IDT as a learning facilitator, which improves performance through the creation, application and administration of technological processes and resources (as cited in Januszewski & Molenda, 2008 ). Consequently, the instructional technology and design specialist is a professional who has the ability to facilitate and improve the educational process through theory, planning, analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation, and management, supported by instructional methods, materials, and technological resources. That said, to address the perspective of the labor market of a RTD in higher education, it is necessary to consider what Valente and Varela (as cited in Sánchez-Olavarría, 2014) point out, who need to assess the quality of an individual's professional profile Three aspects must be considered: (a) professional training, (b) professional performance, and (c) labor market demand. These have become indicators that show how higher education institutions (HEIs) respond to the dynamic demands of the labor market (Sánchez-Olavarría, 2014). On the one hand, the quality in the training of an RTD professional does not only rest on the theoretical and technical aspects, but also on the pedagogical framework under which technology is inserted and used didactically. 12 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020 ISSN: 2444-4979 ECORFAN® Todos los derechos reservados In this sense, the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes that one has about the media will become determining factors for their integration in the training process. Hence, Cabero (2006) points out that various factors must be taken into account in this training such as: (a) presentation of content; (b) synchronous and asynchronous communication tools; (c) teaching-learning strategies; and (d) use of technological materials. Furthermore, Navarro (as cited in García, 2014) states that the IDT should focus on the use of Web 2.0, as a means and resource for carrying out these activities, taking into account virtual learning spaces for education, blogs, wikis, podcasts, e-books, virtual classrooms, among others. Therefore, the quality of RTD training must take into account all these aspects that enable knowledge, interaction, communication and information mediated by technological contexts. On the other hand, the professional profile in job performance refers to the competencies (behaviors, abilities and knowledge) that people are expected to demonstrate that they are successful in their profession (Diaz-Barriga, 1999). In this sense, the Association for Talent Development (ATD) (Rothwell & Kanazas, 2012), carried out a study by designing and implementing a mixed method, with the purpose of determining the key actions in the successful performance of the IDT. To do this, 26 RTD employers were interviewed, in addition to 1,381 professionals linked to the field. Where the actions that are commonly performed were pointed out: (a) Conduct the needs assessment (76%). (b) Design study plans, programs and problem solving (80%). (c) Identify appropriate learning approaches (82%). (d) Collaborate with the productive sectors (76%). (e) Design instructional materials (80%). (f) Develop instructional materials (74%). (g) Apply learning theories (68%). (h) Evaluate the learning design (72%). (i) Analyze, select and integrate technological resources (51%). As can be seen in the study, all the tasks are important for the participants, even when analyzing, selecting and integrating technological resources obtained the lowest percentage. While the most prevalent action focuses on the design and needs of the learner. Activities that are directly linked to the current practice of the RTD expert in higher education, focused on the search for various job profiles (Campbell, Schwier & Kenny, 2009), for example: instructional designer, teaching designer, project manager, consultant Educational, Instructional Development Consultant, Education Program Designer, Learning Consultant, Education Analyst, Educational Technology Manager, Learning Management Systems Preparation Coordinator, Curriculum Developer, Instructional Facilitator, Program Manager, Technology Specialist educational, technology coordinator, educational technology specialist, media developer, course designer, course developer, educational researchers, instructor, among others. Indeed, there is a diverse field of work in which RTD professionals can participate. With regard to the RTD labor market demand analysis, it provides an in-depth understanding of the employment situation of higher education professionals linked to the field of information technology and telecommunications (ICT). On the one hand, in Mexico during the first four months of this year, only 295,000 people work within the ICT area, of which only 3.7% are in jobs within upper and upper secondary education (STPS-INEGI, 2020). On the other hand, a study on the employment situation of professionals in the information technology sector in Spain (CCII, 2015) is taken as a reference, considering that similar studies with scientific validity are not yet available in Mexico. The results show that the level of employment of RTD graduates and professionals is very high. Where, the higher their academic training, the higher their level of employment. However, there are employment opportunities in the medium term, in basic, middle and higher education. Likewise, the results show an unmet demand for RTD professionals, derived from a lack of skills in both a second language and behavioral skills. 13 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020 ISSN: 2444-4979 ECORFAN® Todos los derechos reservados In short, the perspective of the labor market of a RTD in higher education is considered in three aspects. On the one hand, his professional training, focused on having the necessary skills that allow him in the educational process, plan, analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate and manage, through the application of instructional methods, materials and technological resources. Aspects that are complemented by what Cariaga (2020) points out when he mentions that the “set of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to promote student learning in an increasingly technological world must also be considered, emphasizing the need to adapt the educational context to the world posed by technologies ”(p. 7). Likewise, a clear description of the professional profile for their job performance in the selected educational field. On the other hand, the supply of the labor market that considers their competences, placing them appropriately in the scope of performance in question. Responsibilities of an IDT Within the work environment in which an RTD is carried out, a series of functions are established that derive from their professional competences and the context in which they are found. In this sense, it is relevant to mention that the EGTC (as cited in Yeaman, Eastmond & Napper, 2008) proposes 16 professional RTD skills focused on: (1) Identifying projects for instructional development. (2) Develop evaluations of procedures and instruments; as well as the interpretation of results. (3) Create plans for evaluating the entry skills and attitudes of learners and instructors. (4) Analyze work structures, activities and content. (5) Establish learning objectives. (6) Analyze the conditions and characteristics of the instructional environment, identifying the resources of the institution. (7) Select sequential processes to guarantee learning. (8) Determine instructional strategies. (9) Establish a sequence of learning activities, according to the context. (10) Evaluate, adapt or, if appropriate, propose the acquisition of instructional resources (means), as well as the production of instructional materials. (11) Plan, conduct, and evaluate instructional and training processes. (12) Design courses, training programs, and workshops for managing educational systems. (13) Plan and monitor instructional development projects. (14) Carry out effective communication (visual, oral and written). (15) Leadership to work as a team. (16) Promote the dissemination and adoption of instructional development processes. In this sense, Seels (as cited in Vargas, 1996) considers that to describe the responsibilities of an RTD, the design, development, use, administration and evaluation must be considered; taking into account that they are the areas of competence of RTD professionals. In design, focused on determining learning aspects. Development, focused on changes in the instructional media. The use, in the use of processes and resources to learn. Administration, in controlling technology and instructional design through planning, coordination, and supervision. The evaluation, focused on projects, programs and products. Vargas (1996) points out that through these five domains, both knowledge and application are integrated to solve problems. (Theory and Practice) of an RTD Professional. From the above, it is evident that the responsibilities of a RTD in higher education will depend on the actions of their professional competences (Saettler, 1990, as cited in Januszewski, 2001), as well as on the impact they have with respect to the process teaching learning. 14 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020 ISSN: 2444-4979 ECORFAN® Todos los derechos reservados To exemplify the above, the organization manual of the UAEM's Continuous and Distance Education Directorate (2011) will be taken as a reference. To do this, some of the functions that are linked to a professional in RTD will be described. On the one hand, the distance education coordinator must: (a) coordinate the planning, organization, supervision and evaluation of distance education (EaD); (b) supervise the design and preparation of teaching materials; and (c) promote the training of material designers. The content manager must: (a) manage and supervise the creation of projects, programs and courses in distance or mixed modalities; (b) establish guidelines and procedures for planning, instrumentation and evaluation of educational programs or courses in any modality; (c) define guidelines and processes for the design of educational materials; (d) establish methodologies for the training of consultants, material designers, instructors and tutors in any modality. The pedagogical manager must: (a) develop pedagogically the proposals and practices of the teaching-learning processes built by the teachers and the content manager; (b) work collaboratively with the content manager; (c) monitor and evaluate compliance with the pedagogical structure of the educational proposals of the coordination. The manager of the learning unit must: prepare didactic resources mediated by ICT, in accordance and relation to what has been developed by the content manager and the pedagogical manager. Therefore, the importance of the responsibilities inherent to the position of an RTD is clarified, based on the competencies that in higher education should be considered as an expert in this area. Interview Process to fill the position In all organizations, protocols are followed for the recruitment and selection of personnel, with the objective of making the administration of human resources efficient. Through the application of techniques and instruments that facilitate the hiring of personnel with a professional profile and based on the legal requirements established by it. Higher education institutions are no exception. In this sense, for the recruitment and selection of a professional in RTD, the procedure established by Chiavenato (2000) is taken as a reference. It should be noted that in the recruitment stage, candidates potentially trained to fill a vacant position are identified and interested (Peña, 1993). Job descriptions provide the basic information about the roles and responsibilities that each job includes. Therefore, Chiavenato (2000) mentions that there are two types of recruitment: (a) internal, the organization tries to fill the vacancy by relocating employees, it does not consider external bodies; (b) external, it is assisted by means of communication abroad. After recruitment, the selection process continues, which is not an end in itself, but a means for the institution to effectively achieve its objectives (Chiavenato, 2000). Where, the only competitive advantage that can differentiate her from another is her human talent, which is achieved through an efficient selection process (PS). Therefore, the staff selection and recruitment process begins the moment a vacancy arises for a current or new position for an IDT professional. So the PS for an IDT contemplates a series of phases: 1. Establish requirements. It refers to detecting and analyzing the needs for hiring an IDT in the higher education institution. 2. Define the job profile. It focuses on the job description for the IDT. 3. Recruitment. It focuses on establishing the type of recruitment and the means for recruiting candidates. 4. Interviews. A formal and deep conversation is carried out that allows evaluating the suitability of the applicant, based on the previously defined job description. Two interviews are carried out. One led by the human resources area and the other by the immediate future boss. It is in this phase, where the candidate must be able to highlight those competences that they possess and that are useful for the position offered. The main idea is that you can focus on developing personal marketing during the selection process, selling yourself correctly. 5. Tests. Knowledge or skills, psychological and personality tests will be applied. 15 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020 ISSN: 2444-4979 ECORFAN® Todos los derechos reservados 6. Preparation of reports. All information is carefully reviewed and compared to the job description. The selection results are evaluated with indicators established by the institution. Likewise, the candidates' reports are prepared and who will occupy the position is defined. 7. Final interview. Two interviews are carried out with the selected person, one directed by the human resources area and the other by the immediate future boss. For all of the above, the provision of human resources (recruitment and selection of personnel) (Chiavenato, 2000) in higher education institutions should be a process that is adaptable and flexible to the needs of the position. It must also be participatory, where the people directly related to the vacancy being promoted collaborate in the suitable selection of the professional RTD profile to occupy the respective position. Prospect of the Labor Camp In order to address the prospective of the field of work of professionals in RTD, it is necessary to define the term prospective. In this sense, etymologically prospective comes from the word prospectus, which means looking forward, that is, it allows us to visualize the future and act in the present (Rivera & Malaver, 2010). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (as cited in Colocho, 2017) refers to it as “the set of systematic attempts to observe the future of science, technology, economy and society in the long term with the purpose of identifying emerging technologies that are likely to produce the greatest economic or social benefits ” (p. 2). Likewise, Luke Georghiou (as cited in Hartmann, 2011), describes it as "a systematic means of evaluating scientific and technological developments that could have a strong impact on industrial competitiveness, wealth creation and quality of life" ( p. 335). Consequently, foresight not only aims to know in advance the future of science, technology, economy and society, to identify the impact of new technologies on society, but to design and build it in a collective and participatory way. In turn, the predominance of knowledge- based economies is demanding that higher education institutions in Mexico expand their coverage to train a greater number of competent professionals, technicians, scientists, and humanists. However, access to higher education at different levels (undergraduate and graduate) is still limited. It should be noted that educational coverage refers to the percentage of students, who according to their age must be enrolled in an educational level (UAEM, 2019). Today, the coverage of higher education in Mexico is 35.8% of the population between 19 and 23 years, that is, only 34 out of every 100 young people of college age can do so (SNIE-SEP, 2019). While the average in Latin America and the Caribbean is 42.8% and in OECD countries it is 71.4% (INEE, 2015). However, the coverage goal proposed in the National Development Plan 2019-2024 in Mexico, establishes among its objectives, to ensure greater coverage, inclusion and educational equity in higher education, for a fairer society, reaching 50% in the year 2024. Consequently, coverage should be increased in order for more young people to complete their university studies. In particular, in the state of Mexico, educational coverage is not far from the national situation. The population between 19 and 23 years old, for the 2019-2020 school year was 1,493,271 young people. Where, the enrollment was 441 311, with a coverage of only 29.6%. It should be noted that the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) has an enrollment of 55,489 young people, with coverage of 6.9%. Based on these figures, it becomes evident that educational coverage in the state of Mexico is only 34% (UAEM, 2020). That is why, to increase educational coverage, human, economic, technological resources, infrastructure and equipment will be needed, but primarily agreements between the actors involved and the improvement of teaching- learning processes in HEIs. This will allow planning of the educational offer and the closing of gaps at this educational level. For all of the above, the prospective of the professional field of RTD in higher education focuses on areas of opportunity that derive from the insufficient coverage that occurs at this educational level: (a) distance academic programs; (b) digital teacher training; and (c) development of technological material and resources. 16 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. Journal of Human Resources Training. 2020 ISSN: 2444-4979 ECORFAN® Todos los derechos reservados Distance academic programs (PAD). The scope of performance of the IDT will be in the planning, design, development, implementation and evaluation of quality PADs. Including equipment, infrastructure and technology for the operation of the PADs. Teacher training (CD). The IDT professional will have the opportunity to train and update the teaching staff, as facilitator in the planning, design, development, implementation and evaluation of the programs of the learning units. As well as, in the creation of learning communities in its different modalities, allowing the development of a solid teaching staff, which participates in consultancies, tutorials and digital design, acquiring the skills for the production of digital materials. Materials and technological resources (MRT). The IDT will be able to focus on the design and development of audiovisual and multimedia materials in support of PADs. In addition to being a manager for the implementation of technology in classrooms and in virtual learning environments (EVA) or learning management systems (SGA). Definitely, for higher education institutions to operate their PADs, they must contemplate a digitized administration. Therefore, it is necessary that technology constitutes the element through which all the processes included in digital systems are developed. Where, the IDT professional participates as manager, leader, guide and facilitator in the operation of institutional substantive and adjective functions. As well as in its ability to “guide and guide the constructivist mental activity of its students, to whom it must provide pedagogical help through the different media of communication and interaction, in accordance with the discipline that is going to teach ”(Cifuentes-Medina, González-Pulido, & González-Pulido, 2020, p. 9). In addition, the distance study modality will allow expanding the opportunities offered by higher level education to more and more applicants. In particular, those who, due to their residence or work occupation, find it difficult to travel to educational institutions, in addition to allocating certain hours a day to attend classes. Conclusions The purpose of this study focused on exposing a referential framework that would allow defining the job profile for a distance education professional, a specialist in higher education. Therefore, after having defined the job profile of a RTD in higher education, it was possible to delineate the perspective of its labor market through a series of indicators that are considered to assess the educational quality of HEIs. Likewise, the process for the provision of an RTD human resource was described, which does not differ from the standards that are handled by the human resources departments of any organization. Each of the aspects contemplated in the document made it possible to visualize the prospective of the field of the IDT professional, from the point of view of educational coverage in HEIs, as pointed out by Rivera & Malaver (2010), to look ahead. Therefore, the job profile of a professional in RTD, specialist in higher education is very broad. However, it is emphasized that the RTD must be constantly updated, in such a way that it has the competences that are demanded of it in a given position, as well as acting ethically in the work environment. From a global vision linked to social problems, where everything is visualized as a system (Senge, 2016). In other words, establish a network of relationships that allow you to understand, understand and study these relationships to identify the essential variables required in the job profile for a distance education professional, a specialist in higher education. Without leaving aside, that the contributions to the field of Instructional Technology and Distance Education are in their hands and it is they who should strengthen the discipline through research and their professional work. His future is encouraging considering that his field of work is fertile ground to promote the benefits of distance education at the higher level. 17 Article Journal of Human Resources Training June 2020 Vol. 6 No.17 10-19 RIVERA-GUTIÉRREZ, Erika & HIGUERA-ZIMBRÓN, Alejandro. Professional profile of the distance education expert. 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work_ph6ncpafoja5hhiy7ef2d2qksy	----	Log analyzer programs for distance education systems Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1208–1213 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.308 WCLTA 2010 Log analyzer programs for distance education systems hsan Güne a *, Muammer Akçayb, Gökhan Deniz Dinçera aAnadolu University, Eskisehir, 26470, Turkey b Dumlup nar University, Kütahya, 43100, Turkey Abstract Distance education is mostly performed through the internet nowadays. The number of students using the internet services is increasing and parallel to this, the amount of data regarding the usage of services on the internet is increasing. According to the results of data analysis, some information can be acquired. This statistical information can be useful for determining the profiles of students, which is important for decision makers to improve the online learning system. There are several software programs used for data processing and analyzing. In this study these programs are explored and compared in terms of some features. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Web log; log analysis; distance education; user profile; 1. Introduction The Web, which was introduced not more than twenty years ago, is now the environment in which people of different cultures, languages and all ages carry out their daily digital lives in. Web users are encircled by a network, infrastructure of devices, and applications at all hands regardless of time, location or reason (Jansen, Sping & Taksa 2008). Nowadays, internet is becoming the most important media for collecting, sharing and distributing information. Web-based applications and environments for social networking, search engines, electronic commerce, distance education, news broadcasts, etc., are becoming common practice and widespread (Zaiane&Luo 2001). Mostly distance education is a web based technology and it is used for presenting online course. Online learning environments have been improving rapidly. Web-based learning environments , such as Virtual-U, Web-CT, sakai and moodle generally include course content delivery tools, synchronous and asynchronous conferencing systems, quiz modules, eportfolio, virtual workspaces for sharing resources, white boards, grade reporting systems, logbooks, assignment submission components, etc. E-Learning portals serve for many users. Therefore, in order to design a e-Learning portal, one should bear in mind that each learner may have different learning style. For this reason, different kinds of learning components are needed to be used. These components not only be the component which the user can study on his own such as e- book, e-audio book, e-video, e-exercise program, e-test etc. but also be the components which gives user * hsan GÜNE . Tel.: +90-222-335-0580/2426. E-mail address: ihsang@anadolu.edu.tr. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ I · hsan Güneş et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1208–1213 1209 opportunity to make online team works (Mutlu, Kip & Kayaba , 2008). Although more than one type of technology are used to improve these learning components, they are not enough to satisfy learners standalone. Using these components all together provides varying styles of the learner (Moore & Kearsley, 2005). Web servers can be defined as web use-based course delivery systems, as in web-based application or any web site, in order to provide line in to resources and applications. Each request sent to a Web server is kept in an access log which mainly registers the origin of the request, the resource requested and a time stamp. The request may be for a web page containing an article from a course chapter, the answer to an on-line exam question, or a participation in an on-line conference discussion. The web log supply a raw trace of the learners’ excursion and activities on the site. The learning system can be enhanced by using them in order to process these long entries and extract valuable patterns. Many web log analysis tools are available. Most of these tools, such as Nihuo, AWStats, Analog, Webalizer, and Sawmill Analytics, etc., provide statistical analysis of web log data (Zaiane 2001). In the next sections we describe log file type, log analysis, and we compare some log analyzer programs. 2. Log file type The data about the learners visiting e-Learning portal e.g the learning components they use and how much time they spend with them, can be saved in log files of HTTP servers. HTTP servers which enable web files to be presented (IIS, Apache ect.) can save action of web site visitors as log files. Figure 1 shows W3c log file field and Figure 2 explain these fields. Figure 1. W3c log file fields Figure 2. Log file fields details It is not necessary to keep all the fields indicated above in the web server. Which field to choose is depend on the user. 1210 I · hsan Güneş et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1208–1213 3. Log analysis It will be helpful to use log analysis tool to aggregate the data and find meaningful patterns when web log data is collected. Several commercial log analysis tools are prevalent that enable you to analyze usage and feedback routinely. The issues that users have with both the product and the help system will be brought out with analysis of web logs. it can be identified the problematic areas for your students by Analyzing data. You can see the figure of your content and realize which part is satisfying for your students and which one is not by examining this data (Raiken 2005). Web usage mining, is a process by which user browsing and access patterns can be discovered automatically from Web servers. Organizations with distance education sites collect large volume of data. These are the data which were automatically generated by Web servers and collected in server access logs. Referrer logs serve as sources for user information. They are the sources that contain information about the referring pages for each page reference, and user registration or survey data gathered via CGI scripts. With the help of analyzing such data organizations can determine, cross studying patterns across subjects, effectiveness of a web site and structure the thinking styles of learners. It can also provide information about restructuring a Web site to create a more effective Web site presence, and shed light on more effective management of collaborative study group communication and Web server infrastructure (Park et al., 2000). Usage statistics of the learners on web system with the aim of learning is not enough to reach the information provided by web mining algorithm. However, they can be seen as a starting point to evaluate e-Learning system. As mentioned above, usage statistics can be kept by using web log analysis tools. By means of these tools you can record data. For instance; ‘during “T” period, for “P” page, “N” quantity clicking in existence” 4. Log analyzer programs The lines in the log files may be seem as purposeless at first glance. However they can be made meaningful by Log Analyzer Programs. These programs can analyze each registered line. By doing so, they can prepare a report with visual richness by means of graphics. Webalizer Program in Figure 3 indicates the frequency of daily access to the e-Learning portal in August, 2010. Figure 3. 2010 statistics of the visits for august –– Webalizer Figure 4. 2010 - statistics of the visits for august – Awstats I · hsan Güneş et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1208–1213 1211 Figure 5. Comparison Table of Log Analyzer Tools In the same way, daily counts for the access to the portal is indicated by AWStats Program in the Figure 4. Comparison between AWStats and other famous statistics tools can be seen in the Figure 5 (analyzers Comparisons, 2010). Due to GPL (General Public License) (GNU General Public License, 2010), programs such as Webalizer, Awstats and Analog Log Analyzer can be supplied free. Also Nihuo is a program that can be purchased commercially like Sawmill. It includes properties similar to other Log Analyzers (Nihuo Web Log Analyzer Features, 2010). It is used mainly Nihuo to analyze the e-Learning portal in our institution. Nihuo can generate information report the data mentioned below as graphics. Figure 7 shows hourly hits in a day. Figure 6. Nihuo Tools Properties Figure 7. Range of visits considering the hours of the day – Nihuo 1212 I · hsan Güneş et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1208–1213 Web applications are developed very fast recently so the amount of logs or user access data saved in servers has increased. For instance, our e-Learning servers produce logs reaches to terabyte by a month. The reason is that we receive many hits in a month. Standard log analyze programs are slow to meet analysis requirements anymore. MapReduce (Dean & Gehawamat, 2004), working upon Hadoop (White, 2009) distributed parallel system, is another application we use to accelerate log analyzing procedure. Hadoop which was developed by apache is a java- based and open source software. MapReduce application on Hadoop frameworks mainly used to process a great deal of data. Many companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Yahoo and Facebook use hadoop to do so. First Google used MapReduce programming model for web log analyzing and page ordering. Then Yahoo has started to Hadoop platform for open source as MapReduce programming model for cloud. Amazon uses the Hadoop platform with same purpose. Also Facebook analyze log data for social web service by using Hadoop platform. Via these analyzes facebook construct the millions of users’ profiles (Lee, Kang & Son, 2010). In this work it is analyzed user access files of our e-Learning portals used in distance education the files include information about student ID numbers, the lessons they log in and access time. At first, it is needed to build up a cluster structure, because Hadoop is a frame work which work with cluster structure. We set a basic framework consist of one master and 3 client in our application. In our studies we use computers with xeon core 2 duo CPU and 2GB ram. We installed Ubuntu 10.4 for operating system and Hadoop 0.20.2 version for Hadoop working environment. You need to install Java 6.0 for Hadoop to work. Computers with cluster structure connected to network environment with 100mbit/bps ethernet interface. Figure 8. Functional components of a cluster Figure 9. Log files The process in the MapReduce is as follows: data in the log files of master computers were allocated to the cluster computers and so data are manipulated in parallel with each other. Each cluster computer rotates results to master computer. Master computer gathers these results and create an analyze output file. As shown in Figure 9 access history information is comprised access log file and user login information file. As shown in below sample application on MapReduce, it is used nearly 800 MB user login information file. In this application hits were calculated for every course. Thus, students' interest in lessons can be seen. Output file is shown in Figure 10. MapReduce with the application of various analysis done on a large log files. Hadoop cluster analysis of the structure of the processing time can be shortened by increasing the number of machine. Figure 10. Output file I · hsan Güneş et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 1208–1213 1213 5. Conclusion Log analysis programs give statistical information about the users. For instance, information about the pages in which visitors log in and out, and information about the duration of use of those pages were obtained. This has implications for education. When the visit statistics of the e-learning pages that include various components are obtained, the components preferred by the learners and what learning style is preferred by the learners can be identified. Log analyzer programs thanks to IP numbers stored in the log file, it is possible to learn in which city the visitor connect to portal. Investigating the information leads the relation between geographical position and learning style to be assigned. Log Analyzers can analyze the spiders’ data and search engines, which leave a trace like a visitor. The key word which connected search engine to the page can be found. Then most frequently used key words can be seen in the reports of the Log analyzers. Technical properties of the computer used to access the page (such as operating system, Internet browser, screen resolution etc.) can be obtained. This information is needed to be considered by instructional designers and software developer while preparing an e-Learning portal. Errors turn back from HTTP servers can be reported by log analyzer. By this means, the pages to which visitors fail to connect can be detected and the problem will be solved. Log analyzer programs generate some statistical information but if we need more detailed statistical information we should use data mining or web mining algorithms and programs. References Analyzers Comparisons. (2010, 05 10). General format. Retrieved from sourceforge: http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_compare.html. Dean, J., Ghemawat, S. (2004). MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters. In Proc. of the 6th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, San Francisco CA. GNU General Public License. (2010, 09 10). General format. Retrieved from GNU: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.htm Jansen, B.., Spink, A. and Taksa, I. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of Research on Web Log Analysis. pp. 506-522., USA, Pensylvania, Hershey: Idea Group Inc (IGI Global). Lee, Y., Kang W. and Son H. (2010). An Internet Traffic Analysis Method with MapReduce. 1st IFIP/IEEE Workshop on Cloud Management , Osaka. Mutlu, M.E., Kip, B. ve Kayaba , ., “e-Sertifika Programlar nda Kat l mc lar n Ö renme Ortam Tercihleri", Future-Learning 2. Uluslararas Gelecek çin Ö renme Alan nda Yenilikler Konferans 2008: e-Ö renme, stanbul, 27-29 Mart 2008. Nihuo Web Log Analyzer Features. (2010, 01 10). General format. Retrieved from Nihuo: http://www.nihuo.com/web-log-analyzer-features.html Park, C. S., Bae, S. M., & Ha, H. S. (2000). Web Mining for distance education. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 716. Raiken, N. (2005). Analyzing web-based help usage data to improve products, Professional Development/STC-Related Sessions. White, T. (2009) . Hadoop: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly Media, Yahoo! Press. Zaiane, O.R., and Luo, J. (2001). Towards Evaluating Learners’ Behaviour in a Web-Based Distance Learning Environment. Proc. International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies ICALT’01. Zaiane, O.R. (2001). Web Usage Mining for a Better Web-Based Learning Environment. Proceedings of Conference on Advanced Technology for Education (CATE’01). Banff, Alberta. 
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work_pm7crh3id5a6jatqi7kt3y3b5i	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 441 430 IR 057 701 AUTHOR Durbin, Roger TITLE Connecting Art Images and Bibliographic Data: Creating a Tool for Distance Education through Collaboration. PUB DATE 1999-08-00 NOTE 6p.; In: IFLA Council and General Conference. Conference Programme and Proceedings (65th, Bangkok, Thailand, August 20-28, 1999); see IR 057 674. AVAILABLE FROM For full text: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/007-112e.htm. PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Access to Information; *Bibliographic Records; Cooperative Programs; *Databases; Distance Education; Higher Education; Library Catalogs; *Museums; *Visual Arts; *World Wide Web IDENTIFIERS Ameritech; *Art Museums; *Image Databases; OhioLINK; University of Akron OH; Web Sites ABSTRACT This paper describes a project that is a joint effort sponsored by the Ameritech company involving the Akron Art Museum (Ohio), the University of Akron (its libraries, New Media Center, and education faculty), and the state-wide library and multimedia consortium, OhioLink. The project combines the machine-readable cataloging of the museum's library with the creation of a World Wide Web site that includes images of the museum's permanent art collection. The purpose of the grant was to find the necessary software to connect bibliographic information with image data in both the library's catalog, which it shares with the university, and the Web-based database. Once completed, parts of this art/library Web product can be refashioned into an important and accessible educational tool for use within the museum itself, out in the greater metropolitan area, and wherever Internet-based Web resources can reach. (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Connecting Art Images and Bibliogr...nference Programme and Proceedings http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/007-112e.htm 1 of 5 IFLANET Conference Proceedings Search Contacts international Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Annual Conference 65th IFLA Council and General Conference Bangkok, Thailand, August 20 - August 28, 1999 Code Number: 007-112-E Division Number: II Professional Group: Art Libraries Joint Meeting with: - Meeting Number: 112 Simultaneous Interpretation: No PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY A.L. Van Wesermael TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 Connecting Art Images and Bibliographic Data: Creating a Tool for Distance Education through Collaboration Roger Durbin Associate Dean and Head, Collection Management The University of Akron Libraries E-mail: rdurbin@uakron.edu Abstract U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) CI This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI oo_F:o.pn or policy. Collaboration and cooperation with other agencies is about the only way a small non profit art museum and its library can hope to create and disseminate its collections through a web-based program, and to use the product for off-site education in the surrounding community. Creating a web site and database is a difficult process, considering the number of constituencies involved B the art library itself the Museum staff, curators, and administration; plus, the other collaborators and sponsors. Keeping the page up to date is another factor. At some point, the partners disappear, while the ongoing work that must be done (without all the expertise required to set up the thing in the first place) is still there. Such issues go to the point of whether all the effort is worth it. Planning is crucial. This paper describes and focuses on one such project. The project is a joint effort sponsored by the Ameritech company through a sizable grant, and involves the Akron Art Museum, The University of Akron (its Libraries, New Media Center, and education faculty), and the state-wide library and multimedia consortium, OhioLink. The project combines the machine-readable cataloguing of the museum's library with the creation of a web-site that includes images of the museum's permanent art collection. The purpose of the grant was to find the necessary software to connect bibliographic information with image data in both the library's catalogue (which it shares with the university) and the web-based database. Once completed, parts of this art/library web product can be refashioned into an important and accessible educational tool for use within the museum itself out in the greater metropolitan area, and wherever Internet-based web resources can reach. BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 1/5/00 3:03 PM Connecting Art Images and Bibliogr...nference Programme and Proceedings http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/007-112e.htm 2 of 5 Paper Background: In 1997, The University of Akron's University Libraries (in Akron, Ohio, USA) established a formal cooperative relationship with the Akron Art Museum to help organize and automate the Museum library. The University Libraries have agreed to catalogue currently received materials. The University Libraries provide (for free) the labor for all ordering, check-in, payment, cataloguing, binding, and physical processing, while the Museum pays only actual costs to vendors and other suppliers. For its part, the Museum is to be responsible for out-of-pocket expenses to OCLC for use of its bibliographic utility system. The Art Museum has been established as a virtual branch within the University Libraries' catalogue in return for providing copies of articles through interlibrary lending. The Museum allows faculty and students use of its book materials on site. Duplication of serial holdings in both institutions has been cut, so that each library has an expanded selection of periodicals. Membership in library consortia, specifically OCLC, Ohionet, and OhioLink, has been attained for the Museum. Museum employees have full use of the University Libraries' collections and services, and the statewide resources available through OhioLink. The two libraries have agreed on cooperative purchases of library materials in order to supplement areas of academic and research interest in both institutions. Internship programs for University students, and shared art and bibliographic materials exhibits have been developed. The Project: During this same time period, the University's and the Museum's libraries were investigating other ways to help develop the Museum's library service program. One project had to do with the retrospective conversion of the Museum's card catalogue. Further, since the Museum library was connected via the University's server as a virtual branch of the University Libraries, there was an opportunity for important connections between web pages. The University Libraries' online catalogue is available through a web pack interface. That generated interest in developing a Museum library-oriented web page, with significant connections between its art holdings and the bibliographic records of holdings associated with them. An extension of this idea involved links to the larger collection represented by the University's holdings. An opportunity for monetary resources in the amount of $150,000 (the maximum allowed) surfaced through the generosity of a telecommunications company, Ameritech. The grant had a two-year cycle for completion, from initial conception and conversion of files to testing and evaluating the educational component that will be described later in this paper. The proposal, called the Ameritech ArtSmart Project, had the following goals: To provide for online public access for the first time to all resources in the Museum's library, and to integrate bibliographic records into the University's extensive holdings. This project included the retrospective conversion of the Museum's library catalogue of 6,000 titles over a nine-month period. It also involved the cataloguing of a small backlog of materials, a serials file, a few audio-visual materials, and 3,000 exhibition catalogues. Over one-third of the money allotted by the grant was earmarked for this purpose. The institutions believed that there was a more significant investment to be had in converting the collection's records at this stage, so that other aspects of the grant would be possible, either within the time frame and financial resources of the grant, or afterward. 3 1/5/00 3:03 PM Connecting Art Images and Bibliogr...nference Programme and Proceedings http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/007-1 I 2 e . htm 3 of 5 To provide for ongoing access to the Museum's permanent collection. Although the intention is ultimately to mount images of all 3,000 works of art in the Museum's permanent collection, both institutions decided to choose 200 of the most important works for the initial imaging phase. The smaller number was more economically feasible and made sense in terms of the two-year grant period. Both of these things suggested that fewer samples would be better than trying to accomplish too much in one project. As part of an earlier Museum project, 100 images had already been created. Fortunately, these images had been composed well within the standard guidelines being espoused by OhioLink and the University's New Media Center. Individual artists were contacted for permission to use the images, when required. Thus, the real test of this project was to find ways to make appropriate links between images, web sites, and bibliographic information in both libraries. Most of the effort would constitute development costs for creating the software to accomplish this goal. To make possible meaningful access to the collection for as many people as possible. The Museum Documentation Association reports that "one-third of the inquiries received by museums do not relate directly to the individual objects." Most people, it seems, "seek explanations, background and further information." So, the relationship between works and information about them is meaningful. For the project, the Museum gathered biographical and bibliographical information about the artists and their works. The information was scripted onto the web page, with hyperlinks made between key terms and bibliographic entries to records in the electronic catalogue shared by the two institutions. The University Libraries agreed to purchase any books that were cited in the bio-bibliographies but not already in the collections in order to ensure a complete finished product. Links were also made out of additional entries in the library catalogue to the web site entries, so that the user could approach topics and projects either way. This idea alone represented the uniqueness of the project, that is, the tie between text data, images, and bibliographic records. Other instructional web sites generally resemble library pathfinders, in that they incorporate text organized into subject arrangements with bibliographic entries for related works. Sites range from those offering prepared text with links to images of works, to searches by broad subject category that reach across the holdings of the museum. In some cases, there is metadata type cataloguing that describes the work, but there are no connections to bibliographic records representing the holdings of any library. In museum sites, information is quite often organized ahead of time around an exhibition, an artist, or an artistic medium, and thus allows for little choice on the part of a researcher for what additional items may be recovered. In the Akron site, a potential library or museum user could view an image of, say, an Ansel Adams photograph. With it would be information about Adams as artist, photography as medium, or the subject of the photograph, each with appropriate links to books and other materials held in the libraries related to either the broad topic or the specific photograph. If journal articles were appropriate, they would be scanned into the University Libraries' electronic reserve system and linked to the Museum's web site entry. Going the other way, a library user may be doing research on Ansel Adams through the library's catalogue. As part of the search, the person would run across entries on photography, and would see an entry for the scanned image found in the Museum's collection, probably under his name and under the subject category. At that point, the person could find the additional bio-bibliographic information, along with the image, at the Museum's site that may 4 1/5/00 3:03 PM Connecting Art Images and Bibliogr...nference Programme and Proceedings http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/007-112e.htm be of value. In short, this process is an extension of the "related works" concept in library catalogues. A by-product of this process, and part of the reason for entering into the cooperative arrangement, would be to get the person to visit the Museum as part of the research adventure. Lectures that are given before performing arts events (like those for operas where a knowledgeable critic prepares the audience for the unfamiliar work and genre he is about to see), speak to the idea that people respond to and like what they know and understand. The arts educator, therefore, aids by getting people to know about the arts, and thereby inculcates a desire to gravitate to the arts. Software that would support this educational idea altered as the plan for the project got underway. Ohio Link, the statewide consortium, was becoming heavily interested in imaging and other media efforts. The University Libraries and the Museum Library sent a proposal requesting that Ohio Link provide appropriate software for describing and otherwise cataloguing key information (metadata) about the works that the institutions would be storing. The descriptive information was mapped from disc records that were prepared by the Museum and that were to be housed at the University's site. In sum, images are stored in Ohio Link, bibliographic records are in the library's catalogue, and biographical and other bibliographic information is available on both the University's and the Museum's web site. Additionally, metadata catalogue information is funneled through Ohio Link into a separate datafile housed in the University. These databases, some of which were new, required an interface common to the Museum's site and the Libraries' online catalogue that would display the images and associated bibliographic information. A subcontract was awarded to a graphic design firm to work out ways to call for information from all five "places" and merge them in meaningful ways for employees, educators, or lay users. Navigation includes search and browse capabilities and free movement between the Museum site and The University of Akron's Library catalogue. Interactive tools were developed to allow interaction for both visitors to the Museum site and the staff at the Museum. It was especially important that the means of mapping the various sources of information be easily and readily capable of being updated so that, as other images and text are added, the means of locating them are integrated into the original product. The idea was to have software that would serve for future growth and the meager financial resources of the institutions. There is great flexibility in that an educator or researcher can combine search results in a variety of ways for their educative purposes. This range of freedom gives a strong academic quality to the product. In fact, it fits (and has helped to define) the idea behind the OhioLink multimedia database design, by which anyone searching for information can combine the results for his own pedagogical purposes. To inform the community, and especially educators, about the works of art through new access mechanisms and orient them to their use. Museum staff people are working with an outside arts educational technology consultant to develop text for three sample instructional units that can be used by teachers and families. Museum educators visit schools in the area regularly. Through this effort, they will be able to connect to the site through electronic links in the schools (perhaps through the network of electronic classrooms established by the University in various geographic sites within 50 miles in any direction from the city center). In essence, the site will become a kind of traveling slide show that can be easily adapted depending on where the educator is at the moment, and for the kind of course being presented. Additionally, the secondary resources available for information about them comes in a variety 4 of 5 1/5/00 3:03 PM Connecting Art Images and Bibliogr...nference Programme and Proceedings http ://www. ifla. org/IV/ifla65/papers/007- 112 e .htm of languages, each of which can be selected (and potentially added to) by educators and researchers around the world. Educational web site seemingly are substantive elements in the globalization of education. Conclusion: The integration of the Museum's catalogue and web site with those of both The University of Akron and OhioLink provides for a kind of visibility that the art institution could otherwise not achieve on its own. Museums represent one of the most frequently used resources on the Internet. This Museum's presence will be enhanced because of the bibliographic connections inherent within it and because of the strong link to the educational components being developed for it by the project. The University gets a wonderful kind of laboratory resource for its students by association with a nearby art museum. Because of the collaboration with the Museum, students have the opportunity to see works of art and learn about them in their biographical, historical, social, psychological and political contexts. This makes the works relevant in ways they had not been before. Latest Revision:Revision: May 27, 1999 Copyright © 1995-1999 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions www.ifla.org 5 of 5 1/5/00 3:03 PM U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) National Library of Education (NLE) Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) NOTICE REPRODUCTION BASIS ERIC This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release (Blanket) form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing all or classes of documents from its source organization and, therefore, does not require a "Specific Document" Release form. This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission to reproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, may be reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Release form (either "Specific Document" or "Blanket"). EFF-089 (9/97) 
work_psdptxniubee7hjol372cuizyi	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_q3rdj3n5pzgcnmpf6bun6uonm4	----	Z:\Pagination\TandFLaTeX\US\HAJD\21(4)\ApplicationFiles\i259389.dvi THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 21(4), 215–231 Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Scan Rate: A New Metric for the Analysis of Reading Behaviors in Asynchronous Computer Conferencing Environments Jim Hewitt, Clare Brett, and Vanessa Peters Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto This article introduces a new computer conferencing metric called Scan Rate, which is a measure of students’ and instructors’ online reading speed. The term “scan” refers to the practice of either skimming through a message at an unusually rapid pace or reading a message partially and then stopping before the end is reached. It is proposed that the Scan Rate metric offers a useful way of monitoring how thoroughly students attend to the messages they read. Four analyses illustrate the utility of the metric. These reveal that (1) scan rates increase with message size, (2) students are more likely to scan the messages of their peers than messages written by their instructor, (3) students engage in scanning practices more frequently than instructors, and (4) scan rates are partially a function of class size and class configuration. One of the key educational advantages of computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) environments is that students have access to ideas and information provided by their peers (Hammond 1999). Through CMC, learners can tap into the collective knowledge of the class. Yet we know little about how extensively students read and process online messages written by their instructor and classmates. Our lack of knowledge in this area is fundamen- tally tied to an absence of useful metrics for gauging reading behaviors. Unless we resort to sophisticated technologies such as eye-tracking devices, it is difficult to know how closely students attend to the notes (messages) they open on their screens. Consequently, researchers and instructors often Correspondence should be sent to Jim Hewitt, Associate Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street, West Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1V6 Canada. E-mail: jhewitt@oise.utoronto.ca 215 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS have a poor sense of online reading practices and the depth and extent to which students process CMC messages. In this article, we introduce a new measure of online reading called the Scan Rate metric and demonstrate how it can be used to analyze reading behaviors. The Scan Rate metric was designed to measure the degree to which students appear to be scanning notes (i.e., only superficially examining the notes that they open). Higher scan rates indicate that students are engaged in faster, more superficial reading practices, and lower scan rates suggest that more in-depth reading is taking place. It is proposed that scan rates may be useful for examining the effect of different instructional strategies and collaborative structures on student reading behaviors in online courses. A sudden increase in scan rate values may signal a problem that could have a detrimental effect on student learning. Thus, the Scan Rate metric may have value both as a research tool and as a practical tool for instructors. Background A review of the computer conferencing literature reveals a variety of researcher strategies for quantifying online activity. Some of the more commonly used measures include note counts (e.g., Davie 1988; Hiltz 1988, 1994; Guzdial 1997; Hammond 1999; Vrasidas and McIsaac 1999), mean note length (e.g., Ross 1996), counts of replies over time (e.g., Ahern, Peck, and Laycock 1992; Davie 1988; Hiltz 1994), and thread sizes (e.g., Hewitt 2003, 2005; Kear 2001). Researchers have also attempted to measure reading behaviors by counting the number of messages that students open on the screen (e.g., Coates and Humphreys 2000; Guzdial 1997). However, the latter measure is problematic. As Coates and Humphreys (2000) explain, “Careful reading of all the posts in a thread and skimming through 50 posts in five minutes are � � � indis- tinguishable” (10). Consequently, the number of notes opened may be a highly inaccurate and misleading measure of reading activity. More precise indicators are required. Recent research conducted by Peters (2005) suggests that student note reading practices are complex and are influenced by a wide variety of factors such as personal interest, the length of individual messages, and the number of messages that must be read within a given time period. The latter factor appears to be particularly important. Peters describes how many students report feeling rushed and overwhelmed in their online sessions. When students were asked in a questionnaire 216 SCAN RATE to describe their greatest sources of frustration while reading, “Volume of Messages” was the most commonly cited item. These findings were supported by follow-up interviews. As one student commented, “[reading notes] just takes forever � � � I feel like it takes twice as long to participate without the same level of enjoyment [relative to face-to-face courses]” (Peters 2005, 38). Despite personal perceptions of a heavy reading load, 68.4% of the learners in Peters’s (2005) study reported that they typically read between 81% and 100% of the notes contributed each week to their online courses. However, they also acknowledged that they didn’t always read these notes carefully. If a note was long (five hundred words or more), many students (64.9%) admitted that they were less likely to read the note to the end. These findings are consistent with other research that suggests skimming is a common strategy for coping with workload demands (Atack 2003; Land 2004). Some online participants scan for content that interests them while ignoring other messages (Bodzin and Park 2002). This suggests that although students may open most of the notes in a computer conferencing environment, they do not necessarily read each one in detail and are more likely to skim through the long notes. There appear to be two diametrically opposed schools of thought regarding terms like “scanning” and “skimming.” The first school of thought views these words as high-level reading comprehension strategies (Hanson-Smith 2003). For example, Murray (2003) views skimming as a useful strategy that one might employ when trying to obtain an overview of a large body of text, whereas scanning is an effective means of locating specific content. From Murray’s perspective, skimming and scanning are operations that lead to desirable learning outcomes. Some research has suggested that up to 30% of a skilled reader’s activity can be described as skimming (Masson 1982). In a similar vein, Hoey (1991) suggests that sentence-by-sentence reading of text is typically reserved for more complex, in-depth reading tasks and does not (and should not) charac- terize all online reading. Some researchers have even developed supports for skimming texts online, such as tools that intelligently extract summary sentences relevant to a particular topic (Chi et al. 2005). A second school of thought regards online skimming and scanning as coping strategies brought on by an unremitting barrage of text messages. For example, Land (2004) describes the experience of reading online text as follows: The potentially “saturated” online reader skipping and clicking down the endless garden of forking paths encountering ever accumulating 217 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS sources of information, skimming the surface of many different texts and probably not engaging in the reading of substantial blocks of texts. (537) From this perspective, skimming and scanning presumably lead to shallow, superficial learning. Regardless of how skimming and scanning are interpreted, it is clear from the research to date that these processes need to be better understood. In this article, the term “scanning” is used to refer to reading practices that are unlikely to result in deep comprehension, such as reading online text quickly or reading only part of a note. A high incidence of scanning may or may not be desirable, depending on the situation and the goals of the learner. Because we are devising a purely quantitative metric, and because the reading process is not directly observable, we do not make any claims or assumptions about the cognitive processes in which students are actually engaged. Our objective, in this case, is simply to measure levels of scanning. The Scan Rate metric was developed for this purpose. The Scan Rate Metric Research suggests that there are differences between reading text on a Cathode Ray Tube monitor (CRT) and reading text on paper (O’Hara and Sellen 1997). Early studies found that reading from a CRT monitor is 10% to 40% less efficient than reading from paper in terms of reading speed (e.g., Kruk and Muter 1984; Kurniawan and Zaphiris 2001; Mills and Weldon 1986; Muter et al. 1982). Proofreading accuracy (Gould and Grischkowsky 1984; Wright and Lickorish 1983) and comprehension (Muter et al. 1982) may also be adversely affected. These differences have been attributed to a combination of factors, such as screen resolution, spacing, size of characters, and methods of text advancement (Muter and Maurutto 1991), although the precise contribution of each factor remains unclear. However, many of these studies were conducted in the 1980s, when the quality of monitors was poorer. Improvements in screen technology are reducing these differences (Muter and Maurutto 1991). For example, Nielsen (1998) claims that with screen resolutions of three hundred dots per square inch, reading rates online can be equivalent to those of the printed page. To establish a modern-day baseline for online reading speeds, we asked twenty-two University of Toronto graduate students to read a set of online 218 SCAN RATE messages. Each of the participants was already experienced with online class discussions. The students were given the following instructions: Read each note in the discussion completely. Read quickly, but read for understanding and comprehension. Don’t skim. Once you’ve reached the end of a note, don’t re-read it. Just read it once. Read all the notes continuously, one after the other. Don’t “rest” between notes. Don’t worry if you consider yourself to be a slow reader, a fast reader, or if English is your second language. We’re trying to collect a wide range of reading speeds. All messages were stored in Web Knowledge Forum, the computer- conferencing environment that is used for distance education courses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. A student’s reading speed for a particular note was calculated by dividing the number of words in the note by the time that a note was visible on the learner’s screen. For example, if a note was visible for sixty seconds and the note contained 240 words, the reading speed was 4 words per second (wps). An average reading speed was then calculated for each student. The mean reading speed for the baseline trial was 3.97 wps and the minimum and maximum speeds were 1.79 and 6.39 wps, respectively. These findings are comparable to those previously recorded for university students in other studies. In particular, three experiments by Muter and Maurutto (1991) found that the average reading speed of postsecondary students on a high-resolution monitor was 199–250 words per minute (or 3.3–4.2 wps). Muter and Maurutto also discovered that text compre- hension began to suffer when reading speeds reached 501 words per minute (or 8.4 wps). Given our baseline measures and the results of previous research, we operationally defined the term scanning as “a reading speed equal to, or in excess of, 8.0 words per second.” For example, if a student’s reading speed for a particular message is 10 wps, it is highly probable that the student skimmed over the note quickly, read only part of the note, or failed to read the note at all. Admittedly, 8.0 wps is a somewhat conservative boundary point because the negative relation between reading speed and comprehension exists on a continuum, and there is undoubtedly consid- erable variation across students. For many individuals, comprehension may begin to suffer at 6 wps, or even lower speeds. The value of 8.0 wps was chosen because it represents a speed at which we can say, with some certainty, that most students are scanning. It does not allow us to 219 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS make claims about the exact amount of scanning taking place, but it can be used to establish benchmarks of scanning activity and then determine how scanning practices vary under different conditions. A Scan Rate is calculated by determining the percentage of time that a particular student spends scanning online text. For example, if a student opened one hundred notes and scanned (i.e., has a reading speed of 8+ wps) twenty-eight of those notes, the scan rate is 28%. In cases where a student opened the same note on multiple occasions, only the maximum reading time was included in the calculations. For example, if a student spent forty seconds reading Note #123 on Day 1, and then opened Note #123 again on Day 2 for five seconds, the student’s reading time for Note #123 is considered to be forty seconds. It is also recognized that some reads may be accidental; a student may open a note only to realize that she has already read it. By counting only the maximum reading time in the results, we arguably gain a more accurate sense of how closely online participants are reading each individual note. From a computational point of view, one of the advantages of the Scan Rate metric is that it finesses a problematic phenomenon in the dataset: the existence of unusually high reading speeds. High reading speeds are usually recorded when a student glances at a message and then closes it immediately. In fact, speeds in excess of 100 wps are not uncommon when large notes are viewed for only a few seconds. Because of this phenomenon, it is not possible to use a “mean reading speed” calculation to study the scanning tendencies of a student or a group, because high values disproportionately inflate the mean. To circumvent this limitation, our Scan Rate metric simply calculates the percentage of time that reading speeds exceed 8 wps. This approach is more statistically reliable and allows the exploration of conditions that give rise to higher and lower amounts of scanning. When calculating scan rates, it is important to remember that the time a note is visible on the screen is not necessarily equal to the time that a student actually spends reading it. However, we can say, with some certainty, that “true” scan rates must be equal to or greater than the rates we calculate. For example, if a student’s reading speed for a particular note is 20 wps (e.g., a one-hundred-word note is visible on a student’s screen for only five seconds), then it would be virtually impossible for the student to have read the note in depth, because it was not on the screen long enough for it be examined thoroughly. Therefore, fast reading speeds are highly indicative of scanning behaviors. Slow reading speeds, on the other hand, are not necessarily indicative of in-depth reading. For 220 SCAN RATE example, another student could have the same one-hundred-word note visible on his or her screen for fifty seconds (yielding an effective reading speed of 2 wps) but spend only several seconds actually looking at the note. Thus, the scan rates produced by this metric will always be an underestimate of the true scan rate. However, the Scan Rate metric does allow us to determine a lower bound on the amount of scanning and to study changes in scanning behaviors over time, or between different groups of people, or under different conditions. Scan Rate Questions To illustrate the utility of the Scan Rate metric, we show how the metric can help answer the following research questions about student and instructor reading practices: 1. Is there a relationship between students’ tendency to scan notes and the size of the notes they read? 2. Do students scan the instructor’s notes more or less frequently than they scan the notes of their peers? 3. To what degree do instructors scan notes? Do they scan notes at the same rate as students? 4. What is the difference in student scan rates for courses that use whole-class discussions and those in which students have discus- sions in small groups? Data Source In general, it is difficult to analyze the reading practices of students in computer-conferencing courses. Reading is an internal process and is therefore not easily studied. In addition, there exists a natural variation in reading habits among students, and a wide range of course-related factors—such as class size, course content, the instructor’s instructions, and assignment structures—can also affect reading behaviors. Because of this variation, a large number of courses must be analyzed to detect broad trends in student scanning practices. Accordingly, a set of thirty-seven online courses was selected for this study. All courses were offered by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto between 2003 and 2005. Fourteen different instructors taught the courses, all of which took place in a Web-based, asynchronous threaded discourse environment called Web 221 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS Knowledge Forum. Each course was a “pure” distance education course in the sense that students did not meet face-to-face as a class, and all of the coursework took place online. Class sizes ranged from five to twenty-one students. Of the thirty-seven courses, twenty-five were whole- class discussion courses in which the entire class worked in a common discussion area each week. In five of the thirty-seven courses, student discussions took place entirely in small groups. The remaining seven courses used a mixture of whole-class and small-group discussions. Scan rates were computed for every student in each class. Only notes that were read exclusively online were included in the data analysis. The conferencing system software kept track of those occasions where notes were grouped together in a single list for printing purposes. Notes printed and then read off-line were necessarily excluded. Question 1: Typical Course Scan Rates Is there a relationship between students’ tendency to scan notes and the size of notes they read? Table 1 displays the reading speeds of different size notes by students in the thirty-seven courses. For example, the fifth line of Table 1 shows that across the thirty-seven courses, there were a total of 22,289 occasions in which a student read a note that contained between 100 and 124 words. In 43.4% of these cases, students read these notes at a reading speed of 4 wps or slower. In 23.8% of these cases, students had a reading speed of 4 to 6 wps. In 12.5% of these cases, students had a reading speed of 6 to 8 wps. In 20.4% of the cases, students scanned notes at a rate of 8 wps or faster. This latter figure (20.4%) is the scan rate for notes that contain 100–124 words. The data in Table 1 show that as the size of notes increases, so does the scan rate. When notes contain 475 or more words, students are scanning approximately 50% of the time. Figure 1 illustrates the relation between note size and scan rates for all note sizes between 0 and 624 words. It is evident that students are much more likely to scan longer notes than shorter notes. Thus, the longer the note, the less likely it is that students will read it thoroughly. Question 2: Scanning Student and Instructor Notes Do students scan the instructor’s notes more or less frequently than they scan the notes of their peers? 222 Table 1. Reading Speeds Grouped by Note Size (Scan Rates Are Displayed in Boldface) Note Size 8 wps or Faster (Scan Rate) 6 to 8 wps 4 to 6 wps 4 wps or Slower Total Reads 0–24 35 (0.2%) 85 (0.5%) 648 (3.8%) 16,465 (95.5%) 17,233 25–49 926 (3.6%) 1,107 (4.3%) 4,177 (16.3%) 19,374 (75.7%) 25,584 50–74 2,384 (9.5%) 2,175 (8.7%) 5,575 (22.2%) 14,980 (59.6%) 25,114 75–99 3,673 (14.9%) 2,757 (11.2%) 5,852 (23.8%) 12,343 (50.1%) 24,625 100–124 4,538 (20.4%) 2,779 (12.5%) 5,315 (23.8%) 9,657 (43.4%) 22,289 125–149 4,686 (24.8%) 2,441 (12.9%) 4,476 (23.7%) 7,258 (38.5%) 18,861 150–174 4,540 (27.0%) 2,192 (13.1%) 3,870 (23.1%) 6,183 (36.8%) 16,785 175–199 4,142 (32.5%) 1,891 (13.9%) 3,095 (22.7%) 4,523 (33.1%) 13,651 200–224 3,642 (32.5%) 1,486 (13.3%) 2,483 (22.1%) 3,603 (32.1%) 11,214 225–249 3,249 (35.4%) 1,162 (12.7%) 1,928 (21.0%) 2,835 (30.9%) 9,174 250–274 2,856 (36.8%) 969 (12.5%) 1,577 (20.3%) 2,354 (30.4%) 7,756 275–299 2,462 (39.7%) 758 (12.2%) 1,219 (19.7%) 1,758 (28.4%) 6,197 300–324 2,063 (39.0%) 743 (14.0%) 969 (18.3%) 1,521 (28.7%) 5,296 325–349 1,869 (41.6%) 561 (12.5%) 818 (18.2%) 1,240 (27.6%) 4,488 350–374 1,681 (42.8%) 443 (11.3%) 722 (18.4%) 1,084 (27.6%) 3,930 375–399 1,255 (44.1%) 331 (11.6%) 509 (17.9%) 750 (26.4%) 2,845 400–424 1,226 (45.4%) 317 (11.7%) 441 (16.3%) 719 (26.6%) 2,703 425–449 1,101 (47.8%) 247 (10.7%) 356 (15.5%) 599 (26.0%) 2,303 450–474 969 (46.7%) 236 (11.4%) 314 (15.1%) 556 (26.8%) 2,075 475–499 969 (51.1%) 197 (10.4%) 284 (15.0%) 447 (23.6%) 1,897 500–524 748 (49.3%) 171 (11.3%) 233 (15.3%) 366 (24.1%) 1,518 525–549 619 (48.4%) 159 (12.4%) 205 (16.0%) 296 (23.1%) 1,279 550–574 599 (52.1%) 140 (12.2%) 156 (13.6%) 254 (22.1%) 1,149 575–599 464 (54.0%) 76 (8.8%) 127 (14.8%) 192 (22.4%) 859 600–624 467 (51.9%) 91 (10.1%) 130 (14.4%) 212 (23.6%) 900223 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS Figure 1. Scan Rates (8 wps or Faster) by Note Size. Figure 2 illustrates two sets of scan rates. The upper line represents the percentage of scanning that occurs when students read their peers’ notes. The lower line represents the percentage of scanning that takes place when students read notes written by their instructor. The graph suggests that students are less likely to scan their instructors’ notes than those of their peers. Paired t-tests were used to compare the mean scan rates at each note size interval. Highly significant differences (t > = 3.7, p < .001) were found at all intervals except for notes in the 575–599 word range (t = 2.278, d.f. = 101, p < .05), which was significant at the .05 level. Question 3: Instructor Scanning Practices To what degree do instructors scan notes? Do they scan notes at the same rate as students? Figure 3 illustrates the tendency of both students (upper line) and instructors (lower line) to scan notes when reading. Instructors appeared to scan students’ notes less frequently. In other words, instructors seemed to read students’ notes more carefully and thoroughly than students did. Independent sample t-tests were conducted to determine whether instructor scan rates differed significantly from student scan rates. 224 SCAN RATE Figure 2. A Comparison of Student Scanning Rates When Reading Notes Written by Peers (Solid Line) and Notes Written by Instructors (Broken Line). Figure 3. A Comparison of Student Scan Rates (Solid Line) and Instructor Scan Rates (Broken Line). 225 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS Because there was high variability in scan rates within individual note ranges, the ranges were combined into two categories: one for notes containing 300 words or more and one for notes containing fewer than 300 words. In the large-note condition (≥ 300 words), the differences between instructor scan rates (n = 36) and student scan rates (n = 516) were highly significant (t = 3.29, d.f. = 550, p < .001). A similar test conducted on smaller notes (<300 words) also found significant differ- ences (t = 2.459, d.f. = 553, p < .05) between the scan rates of instructors (n = 37) and the scan rates of students (n = 518). Students had consistently higher scan rates, and the differences were more pronounced with larger notes. Question 4: Scanning Practices in Groups of Different Sizes What is the difference in student scan rates between courses that use whole-class discussions and courses in which students have discussions in small groups? To determine whether a relation exists between scanning and group size, the courses were divided into three groups: • A large-class condition consisting of the ten largest classes (containing fifteen–nineteen students) where students engaged only in whole-class discussions; • A small-class condition consisting of the ten smallest classes (containing five–ten students), which were also engaged only in whole-class discussions; and • A small-group condition consisting of five classes (containing fifteen–twenty-one students) in which students were divided into small groups of three to six students for discussions. Figure 4 displays the scan rates of the large-class condition (solid line), small-class condition (dashed line), and small-group condition (dotted line). Overall, the large-class condition appears to have the highest scan rate. An independent samples t-test of notes containing 300 or more words found significant differences (t = 2.022; d.f. = 245, p < .05) between the scan rates of students in large classes (n = 169) and small classes (n = 78). The scan rates of students in large classes (n = 169) were also significantly different (t = 2.362; d.f. = 263, p < .05) than the scan rates of students in the small-group condition (n = 96). However, there were no significant 226 SCAN RATE Figure 4. A Comparison of Large-Class Scan Rates (Solid Line), Small- Class Scan Rates (Dashed Line), and Small-Group Scan Rates (Dotted Line). differences between students in the small-class condition and the small- group condition. An independent samples t-test of notes containing fewer than 300 words found no significant differences between the three conditions. However, the differences in scan rates between students in large classes (n = 169) and students in the small-group condition (n = 96) is weakly significant (t = 1.943, d.f. = 263, p = .053). If the assumption of equal variances between conditions is relaxed, the differences become statisti- cally significant (t = 2.129, d.f. = 250.157, p < .05). In general, the large-class condition had significantly higher scan rates than both the small-class condition and the small-group condition when note sizes were large and may have higher scan rates than the small-group condition for shorter notes as well. These findings may be explained by differences in workload. Students in the large-class condition had more notes to read than students in the small-class condition because of the greater number of online participants. Students in the small-group condition could confine their interactions to a limited number of group- mates, causing their reading load to be relatively light. It is hypothesized 227 HEWITT, BRETT, PETERS that students in the large-class condition responded to their higher reading load by scanning more frequently. Summary of Analyses The analyses suggest a number of factors are related to online contrib- utors’ tendencies to scan notes. These factors include note size, the status of the person doing the scanning (instructor or student), the status of the person whose note is being scanned (instructor or student), and the size and configuration of the class. Students appear to do more scanning in large classes than they do in small classes or in classes that are divided into small groups. Conclusions The preceding analyses present some sample research applications of the Scan Rate metric. It is proposed that the Scan Rate metric may be an even more powerful research tool if used in conjunction with qualitative measures of normative reading practices. It is important to emphasize that scanning is not intrinsically problematic and may be more appropriate in some classroom situations than others. For example, in situations that call for a directed search for specific information, scanning may be an appropriate strategy. It is argued that scanning may become a concern in situations in which it is used as a survival strategy to meet perceived course demands. In this regard, it may be valuable for instructors to have access to tools that provide them with scan rates to alert them to situations in which students may be experiencing elevated levels of anxiety or a sense of information overload. In the past, researchers have called for more sophisticated tools for measuring online interactive processes (Anderson and Garrison 1995; Jeong 2003). It is proposed that the Scan Rate metric may be a helpful tool for researchers and instructors interested in exploring another dimension of student reading behaviors. Further research into the norms of online scan rates needs to be established before researchers can identify the point at which scanning starts to interfere with effective learning. More research also needs to be conducted to determine the validity and reliability of the Scan Rate metric. However, it is encouraging that the scanning rates observed in this article’s analyses are consistent with prior research (e.g., Peters 2005; Peters and Hewitt 2005) and they are also consistent with our 228 SCAN RATE intuitions of how we would expect scan rates to change—such as larger classes having higher scan rates due to an increased information load. Acknowledgments This research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We thank Jud Burtis for his extensive help with data extraction. We also thank Ashifa Jiwani for her valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this article. References Ahern, T., K. Peck, and M. Laycock. 1992. 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Applying text comprehension and active reading principles to adaptive hyperbooks. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 840–845. Boston: Cognitive Science Society. Muter, P., S. A. Latremouille, W. C. Treurniet, and P. Beam. 1982. Extended reading of continuous text on television screens. Human Factors 24:501–508. Muter, P., and P. Maurutto. 1991. Reading and skimming from computer screens and books: The paperless office revisited? Behavior & Infor- mation Technology 10 (4): 257–266. Nielsen, J. 1998. Electronic books—A bad idea. Available online at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980726.html O’Hara, K., and A. Sellen. 1997. A comparison of reading paper and on-line documents. In Proceedings of CHI97, 335–342. Atlanta: ACM Press. Peters, V. 2005. Towards an understanding of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing environments. M.A. diss., University of Toronto, Toronto. Peters, V., and J. Hewitt, J. 2005. 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work_q3vwtvgz6fhildokgmbb4wrtky	----	doi:10.1016/j.jada.2004.05.002 TITLE: UTILIZING PARENTAL FEEDBACK FOR SUMMER LUNCH PROGRAM NEEDS AUTHOR(S): C.L. Schneider, PhD, RD; C. Maldonado; M.R. Nale; California State University, Fresno LEARNING OUTCOME: To identify customer needs when establishing summer school lunch programs. TEXT: School lunch is often the only nutritious meal children receive. When children are not in school, the risk of hunger and poor nutrition increases. Parents are responsible for non-school day meals, thus they are a customer for summer lunch programs. This research explored parents’ needs for their children in a California county where summer lunch was seldom offered. Four elementary schools, eligible for free school lunch, participated. Of the 3100 surveys sent home with children, 18% (n�555) responded. The majority of parents communicated in Spanish (54%). Many siblings were also eligible for free lunch (n�993). The majority were interested in summer lunch (74%). Most children (89%) stayed home during the summer. Slightly less than half (47%) indicated children would miss a lunch meal. Parents described a typical home lunch. Only 20% included milk and only 15% included a fruit/vegetable. Provision of protein foods varied: 36% of the lunch menus included a high fat protein and 12% included a lower fat protein. However, 52% of the menus did not include a protein source. The greatest concern parents had about a summer lunch program was adult supervision and/or transportation to a lunch site. The majority of parents preferred a lunch site at their children’s school (54%) or at a neighborhood park/community center (34%). The data suggests incorporating feedback assists in projecting potential strengths and challenges when planning and promoting a summer lunch program. Research data was used to assist with community strategic planning. FUNDING DISCLOSURE: Madera County Community Action Agency TITLE: POST-SECONDARY STUDENTS ENJOY AND NEED DISTANCE EDUCATION NUTRITION COURSE AUTHOR(S): Benson, W.; Temple, N.; Kemp, W. LEARNING OUTCOME: To determine student satisfaction of an undergraduate nutrition course and why students enroll in a distance education course. TEXT: Objective: Nutrition 331(N331) is an undergraduate course offered by a government funded distance education (DE) university. Ongoing student evaluations are submitted by less than 5% of students, suggesting biased feedback. An evaluation was undertaken to assess satisfaction with content and reasons for taking N331. Methods: Students receiving credit for N331 (n�379) were telephoned to participate in a mailed survey. The survey included 5- point Likert-scale questions determining satisfaction with course and content and ranking reasons for choosing DE course. Responses were anonymous and returned in a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Results: Response rate was 57.1% (N�176). N331 students are predominantly nursing students (61.7%) and female (93.7%). There is a wide age range with 59.5% of students over age 25 years. Main reasons for choosing N331 are work commitments (39.4%); course was recommended (36.0%); no nutrition course available(34.2%), prefer DE (32.6%), and family (29.7%). Students (92.6%) are interested in course concepts and this is higher in students over 25 years. Most students agree exams are fair assessment of the course materials (73.6%). The amount of course material is appropriate with only 20.6% indicating there is too much material and 1.2% indicating there is too little material. Conclusions: N331 meets needs of students with commitments that preclude them from taking a traditional university-based course or who cannot schedule nutrition at their home university. Feedback from students confirms high interest in course concepts. Most agree that the amount of material is appropriate and exams are a fair assessment. FUNDING DISCLOSURE: FUNDING WAS OBTAINED FROM THE ACADEMIC RESEARCH FUND OF ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY TITLE: CUSTOMERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF FOOD SERVICES IN AN OREGON COMMUNITY HOSPITAL AUTHOR(S): C.L. Schneider, PhD, RD, California State University, Fresno; M.M. Cluskey, PhD, RD, Oregon State University LEARNING OUTCOME: To demonstrate the benefits of addressing customers’ perceptions of quality service. TEXT: There are many customers to satisfy in today’s hospital foodservice. Satisfaction with services impacts the patients’ hospital experience. Additionally, a diversity of retail customers and employees appraise satisfaction with foodservice. This research explored customers’ perceptions of foodservice, determined service dimensions, and compared pre-post training intervention ratings. Interviews (n�45) were conducted resulting in an instrument with common attributes for patients, visitors, and employees. Customers were randomly selected and surveyed (n�210). Four service dimensions: quality food (��0.82), food safety (��0.86), dining environment (��0.76), and quality service (��0.82) were found to correlate with satisfaction outcomes. Quality food was the strongest predictor of food satisfaction (r�0.80) and drove the customers’ positive rating of the foodservice department’s image (r�0.94) and in recommending food to others (r�0.79). The quality food dimension was determined to include food temperature, food value, and visible effort to serve good food (R2�0.61, F�84.8, p�.001). A pre-post survey (n�40; n�45) was conducted following customer service training. This training intervention incorporated key findings from feedback related to the service dimensions. Significant improvement in customers’ rating of staff effort and responding to meal related problems were found. Ratings for quality service and the foodservice department’s image increased in the post survey. The data suggests that determining customer service dimensions and training supervisors to utilize customers’ feedback can directly influence satisfaction of service. FUNDING DISCLOSURE: Research was partially funded by the Ruth Tartar Award, Oregon State University TITLE: IMPROVEMENTS IN PATIENT CARE FOLLOWING IMPLEMENTATION OF MEDICAL NUTRITION THERAPY ORDER WRITING POLICY FOR REGISTERED DIETITIANS AUTHOR(S): D.L. Matossian, RD, CNSD, CDE; N.C. Perry, MS, RD; Mission Hospital, St. Joseph Health System, CA LEARNING OUTCOME: Identify effectiveness of an order writing program for registered dietitians in an acute care setting. TEXT: The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of an order writing policy for registered dietitians approved in June 2003 for a 285-bed acute care hospital. At least 167 orders were written on approximately 110 patients over a three-month period (September 2003 through December 2003). The criteria for selection of subjects were based on the nutrition assessment policy. Deaths were excluded. The Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) orders were categorized as follows: Labs, liquid oral supplements, vitamin/mineral therapy, enteral nutrition verbal orders, clarification of diets, allowing food from home, dysphagia diet initiation, calorimetry, height and/or weight and a miscellaneous category. Expected outcomes for these orders included, an improved pre-albumin level, increase in percentage of meal/supplement consumed, skin integrity improved, 80% of target calories achieved, weight stable or improved, blood sugar level improved. Outcome was defined as data that would help the dietitian to assess, treat, monitor or improve patient care. Outcomes included an overall 93% improvement in pre-albumin levels, 75-100% improvement in meal/supplement consumed, 83% improvement in skin integrity and an 80-93% assurance that target calories from enteral or parenteral nutrition was at least 80% of target. Limits to study were small sample size and patients being discharged prior to re-evaluation. This study shows a positive trend towards improvement in patient nutritional response following a MNT order writing policy. FUNDING DISCLOSURE: Not applicable. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3 ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Journal of THE AMERICAN DIETETIC ASSOCIATION / A-9 POST-SECONDARY STUDENTS ENJOY AND NEED DISTANCE EDUCATION NUTRITION COURSE 
work_q3z4yxmfxzaonhtuhrnrc2j4vq	----	Satisfaction Analysis of Experiential Learning-Based Popular Science Education | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2015040106 Corpus ID: 25722404Satisfaction Analysis of Experiential Learning-Based Popular Science Education @article{Dzan2015SatisfactionAO, title={Satisfaction Analysis of Experiential Learning-Based Popular Science Education}, author={Wei-Yuan Dzan and Huei-Yin Tsai and Shi-Jer Lou and R. Shih}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2015}, volume={13}, pages={93-109} } Wei-Yuan Dzan, Huei-Yin Tsai, +1 author R. Shih Published 2015 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. This study employed Kolb's experiential learning model-specific experiences, observations of reflections, abstract conceptualization, and experiment-action in activities to serve as the theoretical basis for popular science education planning. It designed the six activity themes of "Knowledge of the Ocean, Easy to Know, See the Large from the Small, Challenge of Vessel Knowledge, Do It Yourself, and Small Book", with the National Science and Technology Museum NSTM as the research site. A… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 1 Citations View All Topics from this paper Conceptualization (information science) Experience Hands-on computing Amiga Reflections One Citation Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Exploring the pre-service early childhood teachers’ reflections on lesson plan and practices through journal writing: Focusing on science education for young children Soyoung Sung, HyangBoon Shim Psychology 2015 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-5 OF 5 REFERENCES Assessing Experiential Learning Styles: A Methodological Reconstruction and Validation of the Kolb Learning Style Inventory C. Manolis, David J. Burns, Rashmi H. Assudani, Ravi Chinta Psychology 2013 153 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Are there cultural differences in learning style S. Joy, D. Kolb Psychology 2009 389 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle to improve student learning in virtual computer laboratories A. Konak, T. Clark, M. Nasereddin Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2014 107 Save Alert Research Feed John Dewey's Experience and Education: Lessons for Museums Ted Ansbacher Sociology 1998 57 Save Alert Research Feed Gender differences in usage, satisfaction, self-efficacy and performance of blogging Eric Zhi-Feng Liu, Yu-Fang Chang Psychology, Computer Science Br. J. Educ. Technol. 2010 37 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Related Papers Abstract Topics 1 Citations 5 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_q7m7l2ovhffdbaxlgtqvoyvj4i	----	Research on distance education image correction based on digital image processing technology RESEARCH Open Access Research on distance education image correction based on digital image processing technology Ling Ma Abstract Distance education is generally developed through live broadcast or video playback. Because of the influence of various factors in the process of distance education, the pixel characteristics in the original educational resource image will change. Based on this, this study is based on digital image processing technology to correct the distance education image. In addition, this study uses the layered processing model to decompose each color channel and then process the image brightness channel, which effectively reduces the computational overhead while ensuring the fusion effect. Finally, combined with comparative experimental research, the performance analysis of the algorithm is carried out. Research shows that the algorithm of this study has good performance in image correction and can provide theoretical reference for subsequent related research. Keywords: Digital image, Image processing, Remote, Network education, Image correction 1 Introduction In distance education, image resources are an important part of distance learning resources. Image is an import- ant form of conveying teaching information and carrying educational content. In the teaching process, a variety of media information integrating text, graphics/images, audio and even video technologies can stimulate the learner’s interest in learning and improve the quality of teaching. In distance education, the greatest advantage of images is their figurativeness. Many of the contents of teaching will appear “dry” and boring if they are only expressed in words, and the expression will become very “rich and colorful” with images. In the so-called a pic- ture wins thousands of words, image teaching is condu- cive to fully activate the classroom learning atmosphere and inject vitality into teaching [1]. In network distance education, due to various factors, remote network edu- cation will be limited by different specifications in the image transmission process, resulting in a large amount of noise in the image, which causes a large amount of noise in the image, causes the pixel features in the ori- ginal educational resource image to change, makes the color of the distance education resource image visually error, and leads to distortion of the image setting. The above situation will make students’ attention divergence, less interest in learning, and lack of positive learning motivation [2]. If the image cannot be set reasonably and the image noise is reduced, the image information trans- mitted in the distance education will be inaccurate, and the image will lose the meaning of the demonstration, which will make the students unable to understand the deep meaning of the image information description and reduce the teaching effect and quality [3]. Only by filtering the noise signal in the image to ensure that the image stor- age valuable information is accurately displayed can it play an important role in network distance learning. Therefore, this study uses image processing technology to achieve distance education image correction. In many applications such as remote sensing, medical imaging, security, computer vision, multi-camera video and panoramic image, correcting nonlinear distortion caused by optical lens has always been a hot research topic [3]. The distortion correction of the image can be generally started from two aspects, optical design correc- tion and digital image processing correction. The use of optical and mechanical structures for lens correction has many limitations in terms of design difficulty, Correspondence: cqmaling2009@163.com School of Information Engineering, Chongqing Industry Polytechnic College, Chongqing 401120, China EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13640-019-0416-9 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1186/s13640-019-0416-9&domain=pdf mailto:cqmaling2009@163.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ manufacturing, and lens size and cost. Therefore, correc- tion using digital image processing has become the mainstream of society. The use of digital image process- ing technology to achieve image correction of the cam- era is usually divided into two steps, camera calibration and image correction [4]. Establishing the geometric model of camera imaging and determining the parameters of the camera model are the main content of camera calibration in computer vision, and it is also the primary task of image correc- tion. The internal and external parameters of the camera determine the mapping relationship between the 3D scene and the corresponding 2D image. The process of restoring and determining the parameters inside and outside the camera is called camera calibration. The in- ternal optical and geometric characteristics of the cam- era determine the camera’s internal parameters, such as camera focal length, distortion factor, and image center. However, the camera’s external parameters represent the three-dimensional position and orientation information of the world coordinate system and camera coordinate system [5]. Since the end of the nineteenth century, camera calibration and lens correction have been the re- search hotspots in academia. The development of this research hotspot has formed a very perfect theoretical basis, and many algorithms have been proposed to im- prove the calibration results from accuracy and speed [6]. In 1966, B. Hallert first used the least squares method to process the observation data obtained in camera cali- bration, thus obtaining high-precision results in field measurements [7]. Abdal. Aziz and Karara proposed the direct linear transformation (DLT) camera calibration method in the early 1970s. From the perspective of photogrammetry, the relationship between camera im- ages and 3D world was deeply studied, and a linear model was established. The linear model is easy to cal- culate and fast, but it is difficult to fully represent the nonlinear distortion characteristics of the camera [8]. In the mid-1980s, R.Tsai proposed a RAC-based calibration method and established a classic Tsai camera model. The core of the method is to solve the linear parameters by using the linear model and then iteratively solve the nonlinear parameters according to the radial uniform constraints. The distortion model based on RAC method reduces the complexity of parameter solving, and the calibration process is fast and accurate [9]. Later, J. Weng improved Tsai’s distortion model, which made it compatible with distorted lenses [10]. ZhengYou Zhang proposed a flexible plane calibration method to simplify the process of camera calibration while obtaining high-precision calibration results. The method takes three or more images based on black and white checkerboard templates of different angles and postures, extracts the corner coordinates of the chess- board in the image, and substitutes the established cam- era model equations to obtain the internal and external parameters and distortion coefficients of the camera. Later, camera calibration methods based on circular templates, hexagonal lattice patterns, etc., were devel- oped [11]. With the development of computer automation tech- nology since the twentieth century, a new type of active vision camera calibration method and camera self-cali- bration method have been formed. The active visual cali- bration method based on camera two orthogonal motion proposed by Hu Zhanyi et al. is easier to implement and can solve all five internal parameters of the camera com- pared with the three orthogonal motion method pro- posed by Ma Weide. Traditional calibration methods and active visual calibration are inseparable from special scenes or camera-related motion information. In order to meet the needs of camera calibration under the un- known motion of any scene, the self-calibration of the camera is proposed. It can be roughly divided into self-calibration method based on Kruppa equation and self-calibration method based on absolute quadric sur- face and infinity plane [12]. Through the above analysis, we can see that the current digital image technology is less used in network education image correction. Therefore, this study ana- lyzes the image problems in remote network education and combines the digital image processing technology to analyze the remote network image correction and, on this basis, draws an effective strategy. 2 Research methods When the color in the image is rich and evenly distrib- uted, the gray world method can be used to obtain an ideal correction result. However, for some specific scenes, such as the existence of a large area of a single color in the image, the premise of the gray world method assumption is no longer satisfied, and the cor- rected image will produce a significant color deviation. The richer the image color, the more accurate the color reproduction during calibration. According to the defin- ition of entropy, image entropy can be used to measure the richness of image color. The richer the image color, the larger the image entropy; conversely, the less the color in the image, the smaller the image entropy. Applying the physical meaning of image entropy to the algorithm, firstly, the image is evenly segmented, the en- tropy values of different sub-blocks are different, and the weights are assigned according to the sub-block entropy value, thereby reducing the influence of a single-color block. Based on the image entropy theory, the gray world algorithm is improved, and the application range of the algorithm is expanded. First, the histogram Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 2 of 9 equalization processing is performed on the R, G, and B channels of the image to improve the overall contrast. After the equalization process, the color cast of the color cast image has been weakened and the image contrast is deepened [13]. When the image is chunked, the choice of partition size is important. Considering the distribution of the pixel level, the image is divided into sub-blocks Tij(1 ≤ i ≤ m, 1 ≤ j ≤ n)of 16 × 16 size, which are divided into n × m image blocks, and the block mode is as shown in Fig. 1. The three-channel image entropy of the image sub-blocks R, G, and B is calculated by using Eq. (1), which are denoted as HRij , H G ij , and H B ij , and the mean value is taken as the image entropy of the image block [14]: Eij ¼ HRij þ HGij þ HBij � � =3 ð1Þ The larger the entropy value of the image block and the richer the color of the image block, the more accurate the color reduction during correction, and the image obtained when the gray world method is used for correction is also the expected image. Therefore, in order to reduce the in- fluence of a single-color block on image correction, a color-rich image block is given a higher weight level, and a color-only image block is given a lower weight level. The concept of image entropy is used to measure the color richness of sub-blocks, and weights are assigned according to their size. The larger the entropy value of the image block, the larger the weight of the allocation; conversely, the smaller the entropy value of the image block, the smaller the weight assigned to it. Therefore, after calculat- ing the image entropy of all sub-blocks, the sub-block weight value is calculated by normalizing the image en- tropy, and the calculation formula is [15]: Wij ¼ EijPm i¼1 Pn j¼1Eij ð2Þ Among them, Wij is the corresponding weight of any image block Tij(1 ≤ i ≤ m, 1 ≤ j ≤ n), and Eij is the image en- tropy of the sub-block. The average values of the three channels R, G, and B of each image block are counted and recorded as Rij, Gij, and Bij. According to the weight value of the sub-block entropy value, the mean R, G, and B channel values [16] of the whole image are calculated: EW R ¼ Xm i¼1 Xn j¼1Wij � Rij EW G ¼ Xm i¼1 Xn j¼1Wij � Gij E WB ¼ Xm i¼1 Xn j¼1W ij � B 8 >>< >>: ð3Þ After obtaining the weighted mean value of the en- tropy values of the R, G, and B channels, the average value of the three-channel entropy is taken as the aver- age gray value of the image, namely: Gray ¼ EW R þ EW G þ E W B � � =3 ð4Þ The Von Kries diagonal model is applied to update the R, G, and B components of each pixel in the image, and corrects the entire image, and adjusts the corrected pixels to a displayable range [0, 255]. R0 ¼ R � RGain→R � RGain < 255 255→R � RGain > 255 � � R0 ¼ G � GGain→G � GGain < 255 255→G � GGain > 255 � � R0 ¼ B � BGain→B � BGain < 255 255→B � BGain > 255 � � 8 >>>>>>< >>>>>>: ð5Þ For imaging devices such as cameras, there is a large difference between the colors of images acquired under different lighting conditions. In the normal color temperature environment, the acquired image has no color cast, which is basically consistent with human vis- ual perception. However, when the color temperature is high, the image is blue overall, and when the color temperature is low, the image is yellowish overall. Figure 2 shows the imaging of the same scene at differ- ent color temperatures, and it can be seen that there is a significant difference between the two. When white balance correction is performed on images acquired under different lighting conditions, if the image is always corrected with a uniform coefficient, it is impos- sible to obtain a better correction result under various conditions. Therefore, before correcting the image, it is necessary to first detect the color cast of the image to de- termine whether there is color cast. If it is a color cast image, its type needs to be determined. After knowing the specific color cast of the image, the image can be Fig. 1 Image block mode Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 3 of 9 processed with different coefficients in a targeted manner. According to this idea, an automatic white balance algo- rithm based on image color cast detection is proposed. When measuring the degree of deviation between two colors, for the commonly used RGB color space, the dif- ference between the two colors calculated does not cor- rectly represent the true difference between the two colors that people actually perceive. According to the study of color space theory, the CIE Lab color space is close to the perception characteristics of the human vis- ual system, and the distance between the colors calcu- lated by the space is in line with people’s actual perception. Therefore, the CIE Lab color space is used to examine the color cast of the image. The color cast of the image is related to the chromati- city distribution characteristics and the chromaticity mean of the image. When there is a color cast in the image, the two-dimensional histogram distribution on the ab chro- maticity coordinate plane is concentrated, which is basic- ally a single peak. At the same time, the larger the chromaticity mean, the larger the color deviation. In con- trast, if the two-dimensional histogram distribution is more scattered and there are obvious multi-peaks, the color cast is weakened. Therefore, the concept of equiva- lent circle is introduced, and the ratio of image mean chromaticity to chromaticity center distance is used to measure the degree of color shift of the image. The color cast factor K is defined as the ratio of the average chroma- ticity D of the image to the center distance C of the chro- maticity. The calculation method is as shown in Eq. (6). The average chromaticity D and the chromatic center dis- tance C are as shown in Eqs. (7, 8), respectively. K ¼ D C ð6Þ D ¼ ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi d2a þ d2b q ; da ¼ PM i¼1 PN j¼1a MN ; db ¼ PM i¼1 PN j¼1b MN ð7Þ C ¼ ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi C2a þ C2b q ; Ca ¼ P maxa a¼mina a−daj j MN ; Cb ¼ P maxb a¼minb b−dbj j MN P bð Þ ð8Þ Among them, M and N are the width and height of the image, respectively, in units of pixels. P(a) and P(b) are the corresponding histograms of the positions a and b, respectively. On the ab chromaticity plane, the center coordinate of the equivalent circle is (da, db), the radius is C, and the distance from the center of the equivalent circle to the origin of the central axis of the ab chroma- ticity plane (a = 0, b = 0) is D. Within a certain range of the equivalent circle, the image is considered to have no color shift. If it exceeds the range, it is considered to have a color shift, and the farther the deviation is, the larger the color deviation is. The threshold of the color cast factor is Kfold. If K > Kfold, the image is considered to have a color cast. Otherwise, it is considered to be color- less. Generally, Kfold is taken as 1. When the picture has a color cast, the image color cast is judged by the specific position of the equivalent circle on the ab chromaticity plane. The color cast grade is di- vided into reddish, bluish, greenish, and yellowish. When da ≥ 0, − da ≤ db ≤ k1da, the picture is reddish. When da < 0, da ≤ db ≤ k2da, the picture is greenish. When db < 0, |da| < 0, |da| < |db|, the picture is bluish. In other cases, the picture is yellowish. The schematic diagram of the color cast is shown in Fig. 3. By evaluating and analyzing mul- tiple images, k1 is taken as 2 and k2 is − 2. Through the color cast detection, it has been possible to determine the color cast of the image. Therefore, in the white balance correction, different correction coeffi- cients can be used to correct the image according to the specific color cast. In the correction, the image is first histogram equalized. In the RGB color space, the R, G, and B channels are respectively histogram equalized to obtain the equalized image, and the image color cast is initially weakened. The image is then converted from the RGB color space to the YCbCr color space, and the data (YHisp,CrHisp, CbHisp) after the histogram (a) (b) Fig. 2 a, b Color cast image at different color temperatures Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 4 of 9 equalization of the image is obtained. All pixel points from which Eq. (9) is satisfied are found. Y Hist ≥210 −3≤CrHisp; CbHisp ≤ þ 3 � ð9Þ In the pixel point satisfying the Formula (9), the highest luminance pixel point ðY brightHist ; Cr bright Hist ; Cb bright Hist Þ is found by the maximum value YHist and the value closest to zero CrHisp, CbHisp, and the average value ðY avgHist; Cr avg Hist; Cb avg HistÞ satisfying all the pixel points of the Eq. (9) is calculated. Then, all the pixels satisfying the Eq. (10) are found from the histogram-equalized data of the image. Y L ≤Y Hist ≤Y H CrL ≤CrHist ≤CrH CbL ≤CbHist ≤CbH 8 < : ð10Þ Among them, YL and YHY are respectively the mini- mum and maximum values selected between YH and Y avg Hist; CrL and CrH are respectively the minimum and maximum values selected between Cr bright Hist and Cr avg Hist , and CbL and CbH are the same. For pure white points (255, 255, 255), the correspond- ing YCbCr value is (255, 0, 0). Therefore, the larger the Y value, the closer the CbCr value is to the pixel point of 0, that is, the closer it is to the white point. The white point in the image is initially selected by the conditional limitation of Eq. (9). Equation (10) further severely se- lects the conditions for the white point and removes some of the pixel points from the white point just se- lected, and the remaining pixels are the white spots that satisfy the condition. From the equalized image data (YHist, CrHist, CbHist), the pixel points satisfying the corre- sponding position of the formula (3.14) are selected as the reference white pixels, and the average value (Rw, Gw, Bw) of the reference white pixels is calculated. The color cast is judged on the image. If it is consid- ered that there is no color shift, no processing is performed on the image; if it is judged that there is color shift, the corresponding scale factor is obtained accord- ing to the color cast level. The Von Kries transformation is also applied to correct the original data of the image, and the R, G, and B components of the image are up- dated. So far, the automatic white balance algorithm based on image color cast detection is completed. R0 ¼ R � RGain→ � RGain < 255 255→R � RGain > 255 � � G0 ¼ G � RGain→ � GGain < 255 255→G � GGain > 255 � � B0 ¼ B � BGain→B � BGain < 255 255→B � BGain > 255 � � ð11Þ This study chooses the median filter method for image denoising. The previous median filter is a commonly used arrangement and summary method, which can ef- fectively filter impulse noise and has high application value. However, in the process of system application, the details of the courseware image will be blurred, and the density of the pulse noise will increase. The filtering per- formance of this method shows a significant downward trend, which seriously hinders the application of multi- media systems in distance education. Therefore, we propose an improved median filtering method to further optimize the original algorithm to ensure the integrity of the course image details, and to solve the contradiction between the traditional algorithm cannot effectively deal with the filtering performance and image detail integrity. The improved median filtering algorithm can not only filter the noise factors in the courseware image, but also ensure the integrity of the courseware image details, which is the first choice for the system. The past median filter operates on the pixel points of the image by the same operation method, which causes the value of the real signal point to change, and the image has a fuzzy problem, so it is not suitable for the system application of this paper. If the true pixel signal (a) (b) (c) Fig. 3 a–c Image denoising results show Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 5 of 9 point and the signal point contaminated by noise are ac- curately distinguished, the misoperation of the true pixel signal point can be avoided, and the clarity of the courseware image can be improved. Using the improved switch median filtering method, the pixel of the course- ware image can be accurately judged to avoid misopera- tion of the true pixel signal point. For a pixel of a suspected color image, there is a strong correlation be- tween adjacent points, and the brightness value of a point in the image is close to the brightness value of the adjacent point. The pixel points of the isolated point of the pixel and the image portion of the edge portion are generally considered to be noise points. Therefore, in a courseware image, if there is a large difference between the value of a certain pixel point and its neighborhood value, the correlation between the pixel point and the neighborhood is low, and the point is considered to be a noise point, which needs to be performed filter process- ing. If the point value is close to the neighbor value, it is the true signal point. The extreme median filtering algorithm evaluates noise, which has a strong processing power for large im- pulse noise. However, some thin lines in the color courseware image and the narrower edge details are also significantly different from the pixel values of the adja- cent areas. At this time, the extreme median filtering al- gorithm will misjudge such pixel points into noise points, and accurate filtering of image noise points can- not be achieved. Since the traditional median filtering algorithm has certain limitations, it needs to be optimized. Therefore, an improved median filtering algorithm based on me- dian filtering theory is proposed. The improved method uses a method of summarizing between partitions to take a pixel point to be analyzed as a center point ((2N+ 1) × (2N + 1)) square range. The range is set as a win- dow, and pixels in the window range can be arranged ac- cording to the brightness level, and the arranged pixel values are divided into 2N + 1 small ranges. The mean of 2N + 1 pixel values in the middle small range is used to describe the new pixel brightness at the center point. Unlike the conventional method, this method reduces and eliminates the high-frequency components of the Fourier region, and the high-frequency components are different from the pixel values of the luminance of the image edges. Therefore, the improved filtering algorithm can remove high frequency components in the image and ensure the flatness of the image. In the process of window image position transformation, the improved median filtering algorithm can maximize the smoothness of the image and improve the integrity of the image de- tails. The specific process is as follows: (1) In the courseware image, the (2N + 1) × (2N + 1) fil- ter window is set to fuse the center of the filter window and a pixel in the image center. (2) The brightness values of different pixels in the filtering window are col- lected. (3) The ascending order is used to sort the lumi- nance values and divide them into 2N + 1 number of segments, ensuring that each cell contains 2N + 1 num- ber of pixel luminance values. (4) 2N + 1 number of pixel luminance values are collected between the central cells, and then, the average value of the pixel luminance values is obtained. (5) The obtained mean value is used to up- date the pixel value of the corresponding window center area. (6) Processes (3)–(5) are cycled until the corre- sponding analysis and operation are completed for all pixels. The output pixel of the improved median filtering algorithm has a strong correlation with the 2N + 1 num- ber of pixel brightness value mean of the central seg- ment of the adjacent range image. According to the correlation between the data points in the window, the damage data can be corrected, the noise points are fil- tered, the sharpness of the image is improved, and the integrity of the image details is ensured. 3 Results In order to verify the effectiveness of the image correction algorithm in this study, we investigated the image correc- tion effects of Gaussian image processing, neural network image correction, and this algorithm through experimen- tal research. In the actual research, the distance education video picture collection is taken as the research object, and the original image is shown in Fig. 4. First, the image gradation processing results are com- pared, and the results obtained are shown in Fig. 5. Among them, Fig. 5a is a processing result of a Gaussian image, Fig. 5b is a processing result of a gamma of a god network image, and Fig. 5c is a processing result of the processing method of the present study. Edge recognition is performed on the image, and the results obtained are shown in Fig. 6. Among them, Fig. 6a is a processing result of a Gaussian image, Fig. 6b is a processing result of a gamma of a god network image, Fig. 4 Original image Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 6 of 9 and Fig. 6c is a processing result of the processing method of the present study. The correction effect of the image is compared, and the obtained result is shown in Fig. 7. Among them, Fig. 7a is a processing result of a Gaussian image, Fig. 7b is a processing result of a gamma of a god network image, and Fig. 7c is a processing result of the process- ing method of the present study. 4 Discussion and analysis The Gaussian image algorithm effectively combines the details of different levels through the multi-resolution decomposition method, so it has a good expressive power for the contrast and saturation of the image, and its color performance is closer to the actual scene. How- ever, the algorithm is not particularly complete for de- tails that are particularly bright or dim, such as the lack of sharpness in Fig. 5a and the clarity of Fig. 7a after image correction. At the same time, due to the pyramid decomposition, its computational overhead is relatively large. The algorithm of the neural network is simple and easy to implement. For the image with small dynamic range change in Fig. 4, the overall processing effect is not bad. However, when the dynamic range of the image changes greatly, the composite image has obvious color degradation, and the color transition is unnatural. For example, there is a defect in the gradation processing effect shown in Fig. 5b, a relatively significant noise interference in the Fig. 6b recognition, and an image en- hancement in Fig. 7b, and there are still some unclari- ties. The color degradation of the image of the method is obvious, and the local boundary is clearly visible, so that the image has a visual feeling similar to that of the oil painting, and at this time, it deviates from the actual perception of the human eye. At the same time, its effect on detail processing is also unsatisfactory, and the over- all image feels rather vague and unclear. The improved algorithm of this research uses the lay- ered processing model to decompose the color channels and then process the image brightness channel. The method effectively reduces the computational overhead while ensuring the fusion effect and avoids the color mi- gration phenomenon caused by ignoring the intrinsic re- lationship between the color channels in the RGB space. Comparing the correction results of each algorithm, it can be seen that the synthesized image effect is signifi- cantly better than the Gaussian algorithm result and the neural network processing result. By observing the grad- ation processing effect of Fig. 5c, the edge recognition result of Fig. 6c, and the image correction of Fig. 7c, it can be seen that the improved algorithm is very clear on the details, and the subtle parts of each area of different brightness are better expressed. At the same time, the resulting images are more in line with the actual percep- tion of the human eye and are more similar to the real Fig. 5 a–c Comparison of image grayscale processing results Fig. 6 a–c Comparison of image edge recognition results Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 7 of 9 scene. The results were examined using an improved image quality assessment method by referring to Section Results. The image saturation S, the information entropy H and the standard deviation SD are calculated in the HSI color space, and the comprehensive evaluation fac- tor based on the three factors is used as the final evalu- ation index, and the result image output by each algorithm is analyzed. Overall, the information entropy and standard deviation of the Mertens algorithm are relatively large, that is, the image content and dynamic range expansion are excellent, and the details and defin- ition are complete. Gaussian image processing results have a relatively large saturation, which is an advantage in image color processing, but the processing of detail and definition is slightly inferior. The overall perform- ance of the neural network is average, but its advantage is that it is easy to calculate. In summary, the improved algorithm yielded better output. Firstly, compared with Gaussian image process- ing algorithm, the algorithm improves the results of each evaluation factor and effectively draws on the low com- plexity processing idea of the algorithm. It has advan- tages in detail content extraction and dynamic range expansion, which is obviously superior to other algo- rithms. When using the comprehensive evaluation factor to examine the image quality, the research shows that the output of the improved algorithm is significantly bet- ter than the Gaussian image processing and neural net- work image processing, and the results in many aspects are slightly better. Although the improvement is not big with respect to the neural network, the improved algo- rithm achieves better fusion results while spending less computational overhead, and effectively expands the dy- namic range of the image. 5 Conclusion This study analyzes the image problems in remote net- work education and analyzes the remote network image correction with digital image processing technology. Based on this, an effective strategy is obtained. The study uses image entropy to measure the richness of image color. Firstly, the image is evenly divided. Since there are differences in the entropy values of different sub-blocks, the weights are assigned according to the sub-block entropy values, thereby reducing the influence of a single-color block. For imaging devices such as cam- eras, there is a large difference between the colors of im- ages acquired under different lighting conditions. In the normal color temperature environment, the acquired image has no color cast, which is basically consistent with human visual perception. The color cast is judged on the image. If it is considered that there is no color shift, no processing is performed on the image; if it is judged that there is color shift, the corresponding scale factor is obtained according to the color cast level. The research proposes an improved median filtering method, which further optimizes the original algorithm and en- sures the integrity of the courseware image details, and solves the contradiction between the traditional algo- rithm and the image detail integrity. Finally, the effect- iveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by experiments. It is compared with Gaussian image pro- cessing algorithm and neural network image processing algorithm, and the performance superiority of the pro- posed algorithm is obtained. Acknowledgements The authors thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions. Funding Not applicable. Availability of data and materials Please contact author for data requests. Author’s contributions All authors take part in the discussion of the work described in this paper. The author read and approved the final manuscript. Competing interests The author declares that she has no competing interests. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Fig. 7 Comparison of image correction results Ma EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (2019) 2019:18 Page 8 of 9 Received: 27 October 2018 Accepted: 7 January 2019 References 1. Y. Xu, J.T. Dong, Z.Q. Wang, Fuzzy based distance correction algorithm for digital image interpolation. Appl. Mech. Mater. 513-517(513–517), 1549– 1554 (2014) 2. G. Cao, C.Y. Zhang, Y. 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work_qaezcsrhorfv5feuzmllngatia	----	CORE EXTERNAL REQUEST 111111111111111 II COR-10047483 QUSQ CSIRO -- World Wide Web -- 2004- Current, delayed 180 days International journal of distance education technologies Ariel email: ariel@usq.edu.au Ariel IP: 139.86.208.56 ILL email: libdds@us Library Australia ATTN: PHONE: FJl.X: E-Mfl.IL: 07 4631 2462 07 4631 2920 COR Core TITLE: VOLUME/ISSUE/PAGES: DATE: AUTHOR OF ARTICLE: TITLE OF ARTICLE: ISSN: MJl.X COST: COPYRI GHT COMP. : SHELF Mfl.RK: DELIVERY: REPLY: Copy SUBMITTED: 2010-03-15 10:19:41 PRINTED: 2010-03-15 11:59:23 REQUEST NO. : COR-10047483 SENT VIA: ISO EXPIRY DATE: 2010-03-24 EXTERNAL NO. : 279123 Journal INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION TECHNOLOGIES 5 (3) 8-23 2007 Clark, Damien and Baillie-de Byl, Penny ENHANCING THE IMS QTI TO BETTER SUPPORT COMPUTER ASSISTED Mfl.RKING 1539-3100 $20.00 Fair Dealing - S49 Online access. Available for document delivery. Restrictions apply. E-mail attachment: libdds@usq.edu.au Mail: This document contains 16 pages. You will be invoiced for $13.20. This is NOT an invoice. .•... . IGTPUBLISHING .. ' ". . ItJ3,737,_ /(iff' . 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240,"USA. ' . - '. Tel: 717/533~8845;Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.igi-ptib.com . ,: .. ; .. ', . '",J' . ' • • ' . "..". ' .•• ' .... ', • :rhis paper appears in the publication, International Journ;ll.of Distance Educiluon Techuologies, Volume 5, -' '.' Issue 3 edited' by Shi-Kuo' Chang ant! Tiinothy K. Shih © 2007, iC:I Global . . ' .. : '.1 Enhancing the IMS QTI to .Better Support Computer Assisted Marking Damien Clark, Central Queensland University, Australia Penny Baillie-de Byl, University of Southern Queensland, Australia ABSTRACT .:"; Computer aided assessment is a common approach used by educational institutions. The ben- efits range into the design of teaching, learning, and instructional materials. While some such systems implementfully automated markingfor multiple choice questions andfill-in-the-blanks, they are insufficient when human critiquing is required. Current systems developed in isolation have little regard to scalability and interoperability between courses, computer platforms, and learning management systems. The IMS Global Learning Consortium:SO open specifications for interoperable learning technology lack fonctionality to make it useful for computer assisted marking. This article presents an enhanced set of these standards to address the issue. Keywords: assessment; computer aided assessment; computer assisted marking; distance education; educational technology; internet-based technology; interoperable learning technology; rubrics; technological innovations; xml INTRODUCTION Computer aided assessment (CAA), one of the recent trends in education technology, has . become common-place in educational institu- tions as part of delivering course materials, particularly ,for large classes. This has been driven by many factors, such as: The need to reduce educational staff work- loads (Dalziel, 2000; Jacobsen & Kremer, 2000; Jefferies, Constable et aI., 2000; Pain & Heron, 2003; Peat, Franklin et aI., 2001); A push formoretimely feedbackto students (Dalziel, 2001; Jefferies, Constable eta1., 2000; Merat & Chung, 1997; Sheard & Carbone, 2000; Woit & Mason, 2000); Reduction in educational material de- velopmentand delivelY costs (Jefferies, Constable et al., 2000; Muldner & Currie, 1999); and, Copyright © 2007, 1Gl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of 1Gl Global is prohibited. . ~ .... ,'.,' < ....... " .. I I Journal of Distance Education Technologi¢s, 5(3), 8"23, July-September20()7 ~ • ... TI~e proliferation of oniine education sessment types and can oftenrequire,significarit. (Wh~te, 2000). ··time to develop the model solution. In addition,·';' Internet~basedtechl1ologies inCAAcan be bi'oadly categorised into the following system types: online. quiz systems, fully automated . marking, and semiautomatedlcomputer assisted .. marking systertis:The most common fortnof CAA,online quizzes, typically consist ofmul~ 'iiple choiCeqiIestions (MCQ) (11v):8,2000); as they can be automatically marked. Yet, there is much conjecture onthe effectiveness ofMCQs, particularly in the assessment of Bloom 's higher learning outcomes (1956) such as analysis, syn- thesis, and evaluation (Davies, 200 1). This limits' th~ scope by which a student's abilities can be assessed. Short response and essay type ques- tions are commonly used to assess the higher order skills of Bloom's taxonomy., Still, these types of assessments are time consuming to mark manually (Davies, 2001; White, 2000). A more ambitious approach to CAA involves the use of fully-automated marking systems. These can be defined as systems that can mark electronically submitted assignments such as essays (Palmer, Williams et aI., 2002) via online assignment submission management (OASM) (Benford, Burke et aI., 1994; Dar- byshire, 2000; Gayo, Gil et aI., 2003; Huizinga, 2001; Jones & Behrens, 2003; Jones & Jamie- son, 1997; Mason & Woit, 1999; Roantree & Keyes, 1998; Thomas, 2000; Trivedi, Kar et aI., 2003), and automatically generate a final grade for the assignment with little to no interaction with a human marker. The obvious benefit to this approach is the ability to assess some higher order thinking as per Bloom's Taxonomy (1956) in a compfetely automated manner, thus improving marking turn-around times for large classes. Fully automated systems inelude . MEAGER, which is designed to automatically mark Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (Hill, 2003), automatic essay marking systems, such as those evaluated by Palmer, Williams et aI. (2002),and English and Siviter's system (2000) designed to assess student hypertext mark~up language (HTML) Web pages, to name a few. Unfortu- nately,this approach is not suitable for all as~ most of the automated functionality examines students' solutions against model solutions. This,:. may lead t6 issues l'elating to marking quality' when it is impossible for the assessment creator ,to identi1}r all possible solutions. ' .. The last approach is the use of semiauto- mated or computer assisted marking (CAM). This is a compromise between online quiz and fully automated systems. CAM assists with the reduction of poor marker consistency and· the quantity and quality of feedback in mark~ ing team situations. By using CAM, many of the laborious and repetitive tasks associated with marking can be automated (Baillie~de, By I, 2004), resulting in more timely retllius to students. CAM describes systems that have some components of the marking process au- tomated, but ,still require at least some human interpretation and analysis to assign grades. For example, CAM systems have been devel- oped to support the routine tasks associated with marking programming assignments, like compilation and testing of student submitted programs (Jackson, 2000; Joy & Luck, 1998). Although allocation of a final grade is the sole responsibility of the marker, this determination 'can be achieved faster, with greater accuracy and consistency, by relying on the results of automated tests (Joy & Luck, 1998). In cases where hUman interpretation and analysis occurs; this is referred to as manual marking. One example of CAM is implemented in the Classmate system. It is designed to assist in automating many of the typical laborious. tasks associated with marking, such as reh'ieval and presentation of submissions, feedback and grade storage, application oflate penalties, and student returns (Baillie-de By], 2004). Other contributions in this area inelu.de an MS-Word' Integrated CAM Template (price & Petre, 1997), development of a CAM p'rototype based on research into how markers rate programming assignments (Preston & Shackleford, 1999),and·, Markin, a commercial CAM product by Creative Technology (Creative-Technology, 2005). Copyright © 2007, IGl Global, Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns \\~thout written pennission of IGI Global is prohibited. i: ,I ",I I I .. 10 .Journal of DistanceEducationTechnologies, 5(3); 8~23; July-September 2007 . . ,.On.eofthe :major problenls with. current .. suppcirtJor human intervention arid critiquing.' . CAM systel'nsisthatmuch'ofthe work is be-" Its' architecture ensures it remains backward' ,'''" . ing Ulldertaken by independent or small groups compatible with the existing QTI specification. . •...... . •. of researchers ·who.·m·e developing systems to . ThiseriSUl:eS existing QTIXMLdocwnents can··.·· . ,: . serVice the rntrticularneeds of their courses and be validated against QTlCAM. Furthermore; institutions, v,iithoutregard fOl" intel'operability.. .' the QTICAM specification allows a mixture of .' TheIMS globalleamingconsortiUl1l elMS, automatic and manually marked items within; . 200S} are addressing this problem tJ;rrough the' ·.·thesame assessment The QTICAM provides production of open specificatioilsfor interoper-. improvements to both the ASl binding andRR •. 'a:blelearning technology, ,and have. developed . biudingas outlined in the following sections'. a well adopted specification (IMS, 2004). The. A more complete description for the IMS QTI IMS qu~stion& testinteroperability (QTI) spec- ASI (IMS, 2002a), and the IMS QTI RR (lMS, . ification provides an interoperable standard for . 2002b) can be accessed from the IMS Web site describing questions and tests using extensible (http://www.imsglobal.org). mark~up language1 (XML) (IMS, 2000). The QTl specification is broken down into mUltiple subspecifications. Two of significance to the research herein are the assessment, 'sections cmditems (ASI) and the results reporting (RR) bindings. The ASI binding is used to describe the materials presented to the student, such as which questions, called items, form part of an assessment, how they are marked, how scores are aggregated, and so forth. The RR binding is responsible for describing students' results following completion of the marking process. A major focus of the design for the QTI to date has been to support the interoperability of online quiz systems. These systems are typi- cally fully automated and require little hUl1lan intervention. Thus, the QTI lacks specific func- tionality for online systems providing student assessment that relies heavily on human inter- . ventionand critiquing. By enhancing the IMS QTl specification to better support CAM, tools can become interoperable, such that assessment materials can be exchanged between CAM systems in the same way as quiz question banks 'can between online quiz systems. The research· ,. presented in this paper introduces the QTICAM specification. addressing the shortcomings of the IMS QTI in support of-CAM. ·QTI COMPUTER ASSISTED MARKING SPECIFICATION The QTI Computer Assisted Marking (QTI- CAM) specmcation has been designed as an extension to the lMS QTI to address the lack of ..... Mark Increments The QTI provides scoring variables to track the marks' associated with an assessment questiOli These scoring variables can be aggregated in various ways to derive a total score. for the students' work. For example, the XML: <decvar varname="SCORE" vartype="lnteger" minvalue="O" maxvalue="10"> declares a variable with <decvar>2 called SCORE to store a result. In this case, the result is re- stricted to a whole nUl1lber (decimal) between and inclusive of the values 0 and 10. This current format, while dictating sonie bOUl1daries for a marker, does not restrict the marker from using their own part~markil1g scheme between the minimum and maximUl1l values. The QTICAM provides the increment attribute to address this issue. For example, if .the previous result should only be marked in increments of2, the XML would be: <decvar varname="SCORE" . . vartype="lnteger" minvalue="O" maxvalue="10" increment="2"> This enhancement provides two advantag·es. , Firstly, it improves the consistency in marl<s within a marking team, ensuring the markers Copyright © 2007, ~GI GlobaL Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of 1GI Global is prOhibited. , ,Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(3), 8"23, July"September 2007, 11 " adhere to the scbringcriteria,'and secondly, it "provides clearer 'instructions to an electronic "marking ,tool as to what values it.can allow as ' " legal scores fora particular question: '. . : ... : t. <manualscorer> ... :r ...... . , <name~Damien Clark</name> <gi;Jneric.:.Jdentifier> ' . ' ". <identifier'sfririg>clarkd'</identifier string> </gener'j'cjdentifief> ' ,-, ", </manuciiscorer> . :: .. 'Manual Marker Rubrics , ,.; . ~ '. , ;.: ;'. -IiI' addition to expressing the response'process-' The, <manualscorer> element content re- o 'irig:of ail item in machine'temls, the QTICAM 'usestheexisting <name>, <generic.:.Jdentifi~r>, ,', also supports response'processing for human and <identifier':'string> elements of the Qn RR ' ", interpretation'viaa matkingrubric., The <in-specification, which are currently used to de~ terpretitar>3 element structure £i·om the QTI' scribe the student. If an iteril has notyetb~en, " ASlhas been reused to describe such'marking "marked;therewill beno <manualscorer> element rubrics within the QTICAMASI. For each <in~ structure, or its contents will be empty. terpretvar> element, there is a matching scoring CUlTently, the QTICAM does not support variable. The scoring variable is llsed to track the recording of multiple markers. Such an the performance of the student against its rubric instance might occur in a peerrevision process within the <interpretvar:> element. There are no where several markers are assigned the task of: facilities for recording rubrics within the QTI providing a score forthe same item. The authors RRforthemarker. Therefore, an <interpretscore> recognise the need for this feature and expect element has been included in the QTICAM RR to implement it in future revisions. binding. This is demonstrated in Listing 1, along with its scoring variable SCORE. The contents ofthe<interpretscore> element structure are derived from the <interpretvar> ele- ment oftheASI binding. The varname attribute defines the scoring variable SCORE with which the <interpretscore> rubric is associated. This is illustrated at the bottom of Listing 1 using the <score>4 element, highlighted In,bold. The example is a marking rubric for an IT-related short response question. Students are asked to briefly compare flat and hierarchical dii"ec- tory structures provided by network opera~ing systems. Recording the Marker Typically, the·QTI is used to describe objective tests that will be marked by computer. With manual marking, it is necessary to record the identity of the marker for quality control. The allocation of student assessments among, a group of markers can vary. For example, as- sessments can be allocated by student or by individual questions. The QTlCAM therefore requires the ability to record the marker of each individual item. Thus, using QTICAM RR XML achieves this: Recording Marker Feedback and Marks The QTI RR binding provides support for the <feedback_displayed> element structure which , identifies feedback already displayed to the' student, as a result of automated marking. This feedback is fixed and prescribed in the ASI XML when the item is conceived. This further illustrates the focus of the QTI on automated marking systems. It is not possible for the item author to foresee all potential errors made by , students, and therefore it is necessary to provide support for feedback not prescribed within the item definition (QTIASI). To support this func- tion, QTICAM includes the <manualfeedback> container element. All feedback and marks are stored within this structure, as demonstrated in Listing 2. Within <manualfeedback> are <scorefeed- back> elements. Each <scorefeedback> can con- tain a feedback cOlinnent «comment», a mark «score_value» or both. Each <scorefeedback> is associated one-to-one with a scoring variable, through the varn'ame attribute. This providesan importlinkage. It allows a comment or mark ' to be associated with a specific rubric «inter- pretstore> ). Fmihermore, each <scorefeedback> Copyright © 2007, lGl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of lGI Global is prohibited. ,"' .... ". """ :',' ., .•.. ..•. ; .• "'1:' "\: i ) ". . ~ .. · '12:.Journal of Distance.EduGatibn Technologies, 5(3); 8-23, .July-September.2007 . Listingl. ManuahnarkerRubric (QTICAM RR) .:, . . :. •. :." \ . ···<interpretscOre.varnarne="SCORE"> <materiallabel="&o/.ution"> . <matemte~t>·. :.; . A hierarchical directory structure is considerE;!d superior.for enterprise networking ... ' . </matemtext> <matbreakl> .' '.' <niatemtext>·> .' .. >,. A flat direCtory structure is slower and less efficient thana hierarchical direCtory structure, </matemtext> . <matbreak/> <matemtext> It is much.harder to find things in a flat directory structure than in a . hierarchical directory structure. </matemtext> </material> <material> <maUext> One mark is allocated for each point above that the student has in their answer. </maUext> </material> <linterpretscore> <outcomes> <score varname="SCORE"> <score_value>O</score_value> <scorejncrement>1</score_increment> <score_rnin>O</score_min> <score _max>3</score _max> </score> </outcomes> . (' is also uniquely identified within the scope of the item through the ident attribute. The ability to uniquely identify each comment or mark is described in the following section .. paper-based submission, providing comments and marks in proximity of the passages being addressed. This is achieved in the QTICAM, . as illustrated in Listing 3. The solution provided by the student Linking Feedback and Marks to already stored within the QTI RR <response_: · the Student Response value> element is copied verbathn into the 'Feedback on student assessment is an imp or- <tagged response> element. Next, passages . . . tant element of the learning process (Da~ziel, .. of the student's response are tagged with the, · 2001).Anovel approach to improving feedback <tagresponse> element. Recall from Listing 2 . presentation in CAM systems was investigated each <scorefeedback> element had an ident at- by Mason, Woitet aL (1999) where feedback tribute. Listing 3 shows the linkage of this ident is provided in-ccintext·ofthestudents' submis- . attribute with the <tag response> element's ident sian, rather than summarised at the end. This is attribute. This linkage is how a comment or equivalent to the way a marker would assess a Copyright © 2007, 1Gl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of 1GI Global is prohibited. ,.: .': '" ..... 1' .• " .. ' . Journa.i of Distance Education Technologies, 5(3), 8-23, July-September 2007. 13 . . mark isassociated'in-contextwith the student's ',' response. Therefore, the comment:,. , One ciutput line transmits the data and the other transmits the complement of the signal --,',' .,' . from Listing 2 is associated with the student passage while RS-422a has two data. output lines. ' ' from Listing 3. This <tagged response> feedback can be presented to the student in various ways. For example, ifpresented in a Web-browser, the ma~ terial within a <tag response> element could be a hyperlink to a popup window which displays the comment or m ark. Alternately, amouseover javascript event could present the comment or mark when the student places their mouse over the <tag response> area. If the feedback is to be printed, the comments or marks could be placed at the start or end of the underlined <tag response> material. How the material is presented is 1;lP to the iniplementer. The QTI- CAM ensures comments or marks are provided in-context ofthe student's solution. Recording Question Content Presented to the Student The QTI RR binding does not include support for recording the question material that was presented to the student in completion of an item. To support the manual marking process; it is advantageous for the marker to see exactly what was presented to the student. This provides complete context for the student's solution. Furthermore, it is also necessary where pa- rameterised questions are implemented (Clark, 2004). The QTICAM RR binding provides the <material::..presented> .element. This element should contain all the material that was pre- sented to the student when they attempted the question, in HTML format. An example of the <materiat_presented> elenient looks like: , <material..:.presented> <![CDATA[ "'., '. '<p>lnyour own words briefly compare' flat and hierarchical directory structures' provided by NOS. </p> ' ',' , ll> </material_presented> Useofa CQATN node is recommended to quote all HTML elements within the <ma- teriatpresented> element as illustrated. Thi~ , '. material can be presented to the marker when marking the students' solutions. ' Recording a Model Solution for an Item The QTI RR binding provides support for recording the solution to an item through the , <correct_response> element. This element is de- signed tojdentify a selectable choice or amodel answer. Unfortunately, this element provides for only a textual value with no fonnatting. To improve readability for the manual marker, the <solutionmaterial> element is provided in the QTICAM RR binding. The <solutionmaterial> element is illustrated in Listing 4. The <solutionmaterial> element incorporates the <material>6 elementused throughout the QTI specification to provide basic formatting ofma~ terial for presentation. This allows the question author to provide a model solution to an item with basic formatting. The solution shown in Listing 4 is for a C programming item. QTICAM Implementation The design of the QTICAM is implementation independent, meaning it does not constrain or dictate how a CAM tool shouldbeimplemented. It provides the supporting datamodel ofhow m~ terial from a testing system should be exchanged for marking. Therefore, an implementation of , QTICAM could be written in various hmguages. : such as Java, Perl, 01' C++. Furthermore, a CAM, tool could be implemented as an online 01' off- lineapplication.Forexample, an online marking , . toolwbuldmaintainaconnection withanetwork server aIi.dexchange QTICAMXMLas required during marking. In an off-line environment, the marking tool would download large batches of Copyright © 2007, 1GI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of 1GI Global is prohibited. . I .... :. I I .·14 . Journal of Distance Education:Technologies; 5(3),.8"23, July"September 2007 - Listing2. Recording markerfeedback and marks (QTICAM RR) --- _ <manualfeedback> _ <scorefeedback varname="SCORE" ident="1 "> <score.:... value>O. 5</score_ value>· </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback varname="SCORE" ident="2"> <score...;value>O.5</score_value> " </scorefeedback:> . <scorefe~dba6k varname="SCORE'" ident="3;'> <score~v·aILie>O.5</score_value;· . </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback'varname="SCORE" ident="4"> <score_value>1 </score_value> </scorefeedback> ~scorefeedback varname="SCORE" ident="5"> <score_ value>O. 5</score_ value> </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback varname="SCORE" ident="6"> <comment> Orie output line transmits the qata and the otlier transmits the complement of the . signal. </comment> <score_value>O.5</score_value> </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback ident="7"> <comment> Refer to the model solution for other factors you have not considered. </comment> . . . </scorefeedback> </manualfeedback> . Listing 3. In-context feedback of a student:SO response (QTlCAM RR) <taggedresponses> . <!--The taggedres'ponse is the same as response_value (below) except tagresponse elements tag parts of it. These will be highlighted in some way when presented back to the candidate, and the feedback assigned will be shown (perhaps through mouseover or in another window)--> <taggedresponse ident_ref="CommQ2"><tagresponse ident="1">RS-232 has a slow data rate of 19.6 kbps.</tagresponse>. . _ <tag response ident="2">lt is <;llso only capable qf distances up to i 5. metres. <I tag response> . - - . <tagresponse ident="3">RS-422a is capable of much faster transfers.</tagresponse> <tagresponseident="4">RS~232 is unbalanced, while RS-422a is balanced.</ tag response> . <tagresponse ident="5">RS-232 has one signal wire</tagresponse>, <tag response ident="6">while RS-422a has two data output lines.</tagresponse> <tag response ident="7"1>· .- </taggedresponse> </taggedrespons'es> Copyright © 2007, IGl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without writteu pennission of 1Gl Global is prohibited. :.,'." ",. ; ----------_ .. _------------------------------------------------- i I Journal of Distance Education Technologies; 5(3), 8-23, July-September 200715 Listing 4. Record ofth'e,niodel solution for an item (QTICAMRR binding) <solutionmaterial> <material label="solution">' , ' <mattext texttype="textlhtml" xml:space="preserve"><I[CDATA[ <pre> void replaceAII(char *aString, char *c1, char c2) { , char *ptr; ptr"; aString; while{*ptr 1= '\0') { } } if (*ptr = c1) *ptr = *c2; </pre> ll></mattext> </material> </solutionmaterial> QTICAM XML assessments. This could then be taken off-line during the marking process. Off-line inlplementation is ofpalticular benefit to those with poor bandwidth such as analogue modem users, or for those with a roaming lap- top. Alternately, a hybrid approach could be implemented where the marking tool supports both online,and off-line operation. The following section introduces the computer assisted marking prototype (CAMP), which demonstrates the use of the QTICAM specification. CAMP: PROTOTYPE MARKING TOOL To demonstrate the QTICAM specification at , work, the CAMP system has 'been developed. CAMP is aCAM tool implemented in Java. It is currently a prototype and not'yet optimised for', complete usability. However, it demonstrates the features oftheQTICAM specification. CAMP makes use of the XML document object model (DOM) application' programming interface (API)? to manipulate the QTICAM RR XML containing the material that is to be marked. It can load multiple RR XML files, which it stores in memory. As an item is marked, the changes are kept in memory. Once the marker clicks the save button, moves onto another item, or otherwise closes the application down, the changes in memory are written to their respec- tive XML file. The CAMP tool supports the following functions: The ability to open multiple QTICAM RR XMLdocuments and display ahierarchical tree structure, which smnmarises all items broken down into sections and student as- sessments. For each item loaded, it displays: the material presented . to the stu- denf; the student's submission/s; an optional model soiutiori; all the marking rubrics; the student score for the item; the student score for the assessment; and Copyright © 2007, 1GI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonus without written pennission of 1GI Global is prohibited, , 16' Jour(lal of Distance Education Technolbgies, ,5(3), 8-23, July-September 2007 the. student and marker's ~ames. The abilityforthe marker to tag passages of th~ ~tudent's solution and attachieedback with a comment or mark. The modification of the comments ;md "iriarks by click~lg oii'an existing tagged passage. The deletion of existing comments and inarks by clicking on an existing tagged passage. The saving of changes back to the XML file during the marking process. The flagging of an item as marked when marking is complete. Automatic aggregation of marks is sup- pOlied, totaling scoring variables for rubrics and item, section and assessment scores. Figme 1 illustrates the process of assigning feedback to a student's solution using CAMP. This figure highlights the functionality provided by the QTICAM: (a) the assessment question; (b) the marking rubric; ( c) the student's assessable answer where the marker has high- lighted the passage more manageable for feed- back, before clicking the Add Feedback button to present the feedback dialog (d). The dialog allows the marker to assign only a legitimate mark (0 .5) within the bounds for the item and a comment: Each part is mo;-e manageable than the whole. Placing the mouse over the tagged passage more managable in (c ) will display (e ),a popup window showing the recorded feedback for that passage; and (f) The total score of the item and Fred Smith's assessment score before the 0.5 mark was assigned. To elaborate futher; Figure 1 l?h6w8 that' the marker has highlighted the passage more 'managable from the student's solution. To open the dialog box shown in Figure l(d),the , marker clicks the Add Feedback button. This , dialog allows the marker to select the rubric to wbich their comment ormark is associated; On selecting the required rubric, the marker can only enter a mark that meets the constraints of the rubric. For example, the marker cannot assign a mark that would push the total for the ", rubric beyond its upper or lower limits defined in the QTICAM. Inthis case, the rubric score',' has been' specified with: <decvar varname="SCORE" vartype="Decimal" minvalue="O" maxvalue="3" increment="O.5"> It restricts the assigned mark to values' between 0 and 3 with increments of 0.5. This improves consistency in the marking andmakes it quicker for the marker to select a mark. The , dialog also contains a list of comments (Feed- back HistOlJI) made previously by this marker for the same item answered by other students. This helps with consistency in feedback and' efficiency 'In allowing the marker to reuse comments. On selecting a comment from the drop down list, it is placed in the Feedback text area at the bottom of the dialog. The marker can choose to customise the comment if they wish. Alternately, the marker can create a new comment by typing directly into this empty text area. On feedback completion, the associated passage from the student's solution (originally highlighted by the marker) appears underlined to indicate it has feedback associated with it, and the QTICAM RR XML for this item has changed, as illustrated in Listing 5. The code presented in bold illustrates the changes made to the XML file once a marker has provided feedback using CAMP. , When item marking is complete, the Completed tick box at the bottom of Figure 1 is selected. By forcing the marker to make the conscious decision to flag an item as complete, , this ensures items are not overlooked, when for example, a marker moves fi'om one item' to another comparing different students' SOhb tions. When an item is flagged as ullll1arked; it is represented in QTICAM RR XML as:' ' Copyright © 2007, 1Gl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written pennission of 1Gl Global is prohibited, · . Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(3), 8-23, July-September 2007 . 17 FigureL CAMP: Selecting passage for feedback VVhy was th6 OSIReferenceMod~' develope4? VVhy are the layers of the OSlo so important? . (a) The OSI Model was developed to provide op en interc onnection between hetero genious systems. It divides the task of network communication into separate components .. This makes t!J:e Copyright © 2007, 1GI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGl Global is prohibited. ~. , :, '" '::.: .. ' I I 'j 18. ,Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(3), 8-23, July-September 2007 . ListingS.: QTICAM RR XML: Changes io XML after addingfeedback ...• ~. J • ,:<tagg~~responses>.·.· " .,' ,....,. . '.' .. . <taggedresponse idenCref="CommQ1">The OSI Model was developed to provide open.in- terconnection between. heterogeneous systems. <t<3gresponse ident="1 ">It divides the task of . network c.ommunicatiol! in'to separateC(lmponents. </tagresponse> This makes the commu- nicationprocess <tagresponse ident="2">more managable</tagresponse>. <tagresponse ident="3">lt also allows different functions to be implemented by separate entities and yet still remai~,interoperqble,</tagresp(j,nse>. <tag response ident~i"4"j>' </taggedresponse> '. . </taggedresponses> . <manualfeedback> <scorefeedback ident="1" varname="SCORE"> <score_value>O.5</score_value> . </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback ident="3" varname="SCORE"> <score_value>O.5</score_value> </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback ident="4" varname="SCORE"> <comment>Other points to consider include that each layer is independent and that each part is more manageable than the whole. The layers are also distinct functions. Good effort. </ comment> </scorefeedback> <scorefeedback ident="2" varname="SCORE"> . <comment>Each part is more manageable than the whole.</comment> <score_value>O.5</score_value> . </scorefeedback> </manualfeedback> <manualscoring> <status> <status_value>Unmarked</status_value> </status> </manualscoring> When a tick is placed in the Completed tick box, the XML is chi;lnged to: <manualscoring> <status> <status_val ue>Marked</status _val ue> </status> </manualstoring> The markernavigati on windo~, as illustrat- . edinFigure2(a),shows that question CommQ1 .. of Section Part A has now been marked. This window gives a hierarchical view of all student assessments that have been loaded into memory. Once aI1 entire branch of the hi- erarchy has been completely marked, its parent branch will also be flagged as marked. This is demonstrated in Figure 2(b). When sectionP art B is marked, tlus will flag the entire assessment Sample Multi-discipline assignment for Fred Smith as marked, in the same manner. This allows the luarker to see at a glance what remains to be marked from llieir allocation of student assessment. CONCLUSION QTlCAMis an' enhancement of the IMS QTI specification aIld provides support for interoper- able computer assisted marking. Its functional~ ityhas been illustrated via llie demonstration of CAMP. Features ofllie QTlCAM include: support for limiting mark increments, inclusion of human readable marking rubrics, ability to record the marker for each marked item, Copyright © 2007, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonus without written penuission of IGI Global is prohibited. , .~. ~'." . '. '. Journal6fDistance EdiJcation Technologies,. 5(3), 8-23, July-September 20071.9 Figure 2. CAMP:. Navigation window flagging marked items. 'Fred Smith (q91234567): Sample Multi-discipliJ:1e assignment ? Id PartA:Communic ' iO'n shorULong Answer Questions i- F [J16ommQ1i(frl?~{ ; ./. D CommQ2 ': D CommQ3 D CommQ4 ! l. •. D CommQ5 (a) i 'l' Ll Part B: C Programming I··· D progQ6 . DProgQ7 D ProgQS Fred Smith (q91234567): Sample Multi~discipline assignment .' q5 P~rtA: Communication ShorULong AnSWerQUestion~ j •• D CommQ1 (marked) . D CommQ2 (marked) , D CommQ3 (marked) (b) i~· D CommQ4 (marked) ~. L5 E rtC:~~~5g:~~~~ind~]~ DProgQ6 DProgQ7 D ProgQS Copyright © 2007, 1Gl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of 1Gl Global is prohibited. .",,' ", '.'" ", < .. ,. '20 . Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(3),8-23, July-September 2007 .. . 'recording manual marker feedback includmg comments and marks, linking marker feedback :to passages of the students' solutions,record- . ·/,iiig the l11atedal jJreserifed.tOtlie' studelit in th~" . ' ',results repolt, and the ability to recordfolTIlatted :' niod'el solutions for iteills. One of the main benefits for markers in the use of CAM software is increased productivity, through automation of repetitive mechanical: tasks (Joy & Luck, 1998). Such benefits include:', automatic collation of marks atthe item, section;' and assessment levels, and the ability to easily , reuse feedback conmlents by selecting from a ' list. Another major benefit to CAM software is improved quality. For exampl~, typically a marker will, after completion of marking, add, the marks assigned and record the total on a, marking sheet. This manual process introduces, a high risk of error duringthe addition and tran - ., scription of the marks. Through CAM, marks cail be coilated and recorded automatically, eliminating this quality issue. Other benefits to CAM include: Improved marking consistency: providing constraints on scoring variables ensures the markers assign marks consistently within the scope of the marking rubric Manual handling of results is eliminated: results from student assessments can be automatically uploaded into aLMS reduc- mg staff workload and errors • . Improved marking feedback: permitting the marker to' associate feedback with passages of the student's solution allows the student to interpret the feedback in the context of their own work (M!lson, Woit et aI., 1999) Potential to automate correction of mark- ing errors across large assessment collec- tions The QTI CAM specifi cation cUlTently adds essential SUppOlt to the QTI for computer as- sistedmarking. Future development will see the inclusion of advanced featUl'es that will: , Autoniate late submission penalty applica- tion , Share feedback between multiplenlark- ers ,", , Classify l11arkers 'comments for· .later , . analysis' Automate marking moderation With the adoption of an interoperable CAM specification such as QTICAM, interoperable CAM applications can be a reality. REFERENCES Baillie-de Byl, P. (2004). An online assistant for remote, distributed critiquing of electronically subm itted assessment. Educational Technology and Society, 7(1), 29-4l. ,Benford, S.D., Burke, E~ K., FoxIey, E., Higgins, C.A. (1994).Acourseware systemforthe assessment and administration of computer programming courses in higher education. Complex Learning in Computer Environments (CLCE'94) , Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational ob- jectives handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: Longman, Green, & Co. Clark,D.(2004).EnhancingtheIMSQ&TIspecifica- tion by adding support for dynamically generat- ed parameterised quizzes (p. 230). Toowoomba, University of South em Queensland: Department of Mathematics and Computing. Creative-Technology (2005, January 16). Program features. Retrieved March 8,2007, from http:// www.cict.co.uklsoftware/markinlindex.htrn. Dalziel, 1. (2000). Integrating CAA with textbooks and question banks: Options for enhanc-, ing learning. Computer Aided Assessment (CAA2000), Leicestershire, UK. Dalziel, 1. (2001). Enhancing Web-based learning with CAA: Pedagogical and technical consider- ations. Computer A idedAssessment (CAA200 1), Leicestershire, UK. Darbyshire, P. (2000). Distributed web-based as- . signment management. In A. Aggarwal (Ed.), Web based learning and teaching technologies: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 198-215). Idea, Group. Copyright © 2007, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonus witllont written pennission of IGI Global is prohibited. --------------_._---------------- I ) . ,:/' Jburnal 6fDistance Education Technologies, 5(3), 8-23, July-September 2007. 21 Dav.ies, P. (200l). Computei'aide<;l ass.esSI1)ent must be more tLlan.multiple-choice tests for it to be . ",academically credibre?CQmput~r Aided.Assess- ";li~ilt (CM20QI), Leicestershire, uk, ' " , English, J., & Siviter, P. (2000). Experiencewithan .. , autoinaticaIIyassessedcourse. In Proceedings o/the Coriference on liltegrating Techno(ogy ,'into Computer ,Science Education (ITiCSE) , ,(pp: 168~ 171 ).Helsinki, Finland. Gayo, J.E.L., Moniles, J:M.G., Femandex; A.MA, Sagastegui, H.C. (2003). A generio e-leaming mUltiparadigm programming language system: IDEFIX project. Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 391-395). Reno, NY: ACM Press. ' HilI, T.G. (2003). MEAGER: Microsoft Excel au- tomated grader. The Journal of Computing in Sniall Colleges, 18(6), 151-164. Huizinga, D. (2001). Identifying topics for instfuc~ tional improvement through on-line tracking of programming assessment. In Proceedings of the Conference on Integrating Tecll11010gy into Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) (pp. 129-132). Canterbury; UK. TMS. (2000).IMS question & test interoperability specification: A review. IMS Global Learning Consortium. Retrieved March 8, 2007, from http://v.'Ww.imsproject.org/question/whitepa- per.pdf IMS. (2002a). IMS 'question & test interoperability: AS] XML binding specification. IMS Global Learning Consortium. Retrieved March 8, 2007; from http://www.imsproject.org . IMS. (2002b). IMS question & test interoperability: Results reporting XML binding speoification. IMS Global Learning Consortium. Retrieved March 8, 2007, from http://www.imsproject. org IMS. (2004). Directory of products and organisations supporting IMS specifications. IMS GlobaL Retrieved March 8, 2007, from http://www. imsglobal.org/directldirectory.cfrn [MS .. (2005). IMS Global Learning Consortium. Retrieved March 8, 2007, from http://www. imsglobaI.org Jackson, D. (2000). A semi-automated approach to online assessment. In Proceedings of the ,COIijerence' on. Integrating TeclmologY;into Compute}' Science Education (ITiCSE) (pp.,. , 164-16~):llelsinki"FiIlland. . . ."., Jacobsen, M::, & Kreriler, R: (2000). Online testing' : :: and gradirigusing WebCTin computer science~ In Prdceedings of the World Conference on the WWW and Internet (pp. 263-268). Jefferies, P., Constable, 1., et al. (2000): Computer " aictedassessment using WebCT. Computer AidedAssessment (CAA2000), Leicestershire, UK. Jones, D., & Behrens, S. (2003). OnliIw assiglm1ent management: An evolution ary tale. InProceed~ ings of the Hawaiilnternational Conference 011 System Sciences, Waikoloa Village. '. Jones, D., & Jamieson, B. (1997). Three generations of online assignment management. In Proceed- ings of the Australian Society for Computersr'n Learning in Tertimy Education Conference (pp. 317-323). Perth, Australia. Joy, M., & Luck, M. (1998). Effective electronic marking for on-line assessment. InProceedings of the Co}?ference on Integrating Techno! ogy into Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) (pp. 134-138). Dublin,Ireland. Mason, D.v., & Woit, D.M. (1999). Providing mark-up and feedback to students with online marking. SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 3-6). New Orleans, LA. Mason, D.V., Woit, D., Abdullah, A., Barakat, Ho., Pires, C., D'Souza, M. (1999). Web-based evaluation :for the convenience of s.tudents, markers, and faculty. In Proceedings of the NorthAmerican Web Conference, Fredericton, Canada., Merat, F.L., & Chung, D. (1997). World Wide Web approach to teaching microprocessors. ill Pro-' ceedings of the Frontiers in Education Corifer- ' , ·'ence (pp.838-841). Stipes Publishing. Mu1dner, M., & Currie, D. (1999). Techniques to implement high speed', scalable. dynamic' ' on-line systems. In Proceedings of the World Conference on the WWW and Internet (pp. . 782-787);. Pain, D., & Heron, J.L. (2003). WebCT and online assessment: The bestthingsince SOAP? Journal Copyright © 2007, IGI Global. Copying or distributing ill print or electronic fonlls without written pem1ission of IGI Global is prohibited, ' :': 22 ,'Jou~nal bf Distance Education Technologies, 5(3), 8-23, July-September 2007 " 'of International Forum of Educational Teclmol- ' ogy & Sociel)1, 6(2),62-71. : J;'ah~er; .r.; Williart1s, Ji., Dreiler,H: (2002). Auto- , rnated essay grading system applied to a'first " , year uiliversity subject. In/orming Science, 1222-1229. ' " peat,M., Franklin, S., & Lewis, A. (2001). A ~evie~ ofthe useof online self-assessment modflles to ' ' enharice stude11t, learning outcomes: Are they worth the effOliofproduction. InProceedillgs of the ASCILlTE2001 (pp. 137-140). Melbourne, Australia. Preston, .r., & Shackleford, R. (1999). Improving online assessment: An investigation of existing marking methodologies. In Proceedings of the Conference on Integrating Technology into Computer Science Education (lTiCSE) (pp. 29-32). Crocow,Poland. ' , Price, B., &PetTe, M. (1997). Teachingprognimming through paperless assignments: An empirical evaluation of instructor feedback. In Proceed- ings of the Conference on Integrating Technol- ogy into Computer Science Education (lTiCSE) (pp. 94-99). Uppsala, Sweden. Roantree, M., & Keyes, T.E. (1998). Automated collection of coursework using the Web. In Proceedings of the Conference on Integrating Technology into Computer Science Education (JTiCSE) (pp. 206-208). Dublin, Ireland. Sheard, 1, & Carbone,A (2000). Providing support for self-managed learning? In Proceedings of the World COiiferelice on the WWWandInternet 2000 (pp.,482-488). Thomas, P. (2000). Reducing the distance in dis- tance education. Computer Aided Assessment (CAA2000), Leicestershire, UK. Trivedi, A., Kar, D.C., Patterns on-McNeill, H. (2003 ).Automatic assignment management and peer evaluation . .The Journal ofComp!/ting in Small Colleges, 1,8(4),30-37. White, I (2000). Online testing: The dog sat on my , keyboard. In Proceedings of the International, , :CQnference on Technology in Collegiate Mathe, eniatics, Atlanta, GA. ", Woit, D., & Mason, D. (2000). Enhancing student learning through online quizzes. SIGCSE. ' Technical Symposium on Computer Science, Education (pp. 367-371). Austin, TX. ' ENDNOTES Readers not familiar with XML are directed to read thefoIIowing online resources: http://www. xml.com, http://xml.coverpages.org/xml.html, http://www.w3.org/XMLI, http://www.xmJ. org. The ;decv~r> element is used within the QTIASI specification for declaring a scoring variable. It allows the question author to define attributes for ascoringvariable such as minimum,maximum, and default values. The <interpretvar> element describes how to inter- pret the meaning of scores assigned to scoring variables. <score> is used within the QTI RR binding to record the score achieved by a student as defined by the <decvar> element ofthe QTI ASI. A CDATA node is a quoting mechanism within XML syntax to allow the special meaning of other XML characters to ~e escaped as part of 'an XML document. The <material> element provides a container ob- ject for any content to be displayed. It allows various data types such as plain or emphasised , text, images; audio, videos, or applets. The XML DOM API is a standard platfoml independent, progranuning interface for ma-' nipulating the content of XML documents in computer memory. Copyright ©'2007, IGl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of IGI Global is prohibited. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--~~------ ..... Journal of Distance'Education Technologies, 5(3),8-23, July-September 2007 . 23 . Damien Clark coinmenced his academic research career in 2003 developing a parameter(sation enhance~ . . ment.to the1MS QTI; resulting.inan honours equivalent thesis. Clark~' paper published in this editionqf . JDET is hisjirst for an inte1'l7ational journill., He. c.ompleted a baohelor's degree in computer science fi'ol11 ... Cei1tra1. Q~;eel1$lai1d Universit)" Austr.alia in 1995. He also h;lds a masier s degree in computer science . fi'omtjleU!1i1i~rsi6) a/Southern Queensland, Australia. During his careel;' he worked as d: UNIX systems administrator 'before tcdcii1g dposition as lecturel: bf"Ceiitl~al QueenslCl11d Univel'siiy in 2002. He teaches' system ~dniinistration, computernell'.'Ol-kiTig, andirifo;·matiori·secllrity.· . . .' , . .... '., . . , Penny Baillie-de BYI has been resecl1-ching in tlie ai-eo of online assessment management systems, ai·tificial intelliieilc~ ~~d 'computer games programming since 1995. She has written d number of international' corzjerence.'papers,journalpapers, book chapters and two books in these areas. During her careel; DI~ Baillie-de Byl has consulted as a computerprogrammel; computer games designel; website engineer,and artificial intelligence designer.. DI: Baillie-de Byl curi-ently works as.a senior lecturer ill computer graph- ics and computer games programming and manages a games research and development laboratory at the . University of Southern Queensland. Australia. Copyright © 2007, IGl Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic fonns without written pennission of IGl Global is prohibited. i .. ,r .1 i 1 
work_qaynjyuw2jatbmh25zhbflhllm	----	v2p407-414-91.doc Journal of Information Technology Education Volume 2, 2003 Editor: Linda Knight All Aboard: The Industrial Technology Department Head’s View of Time-on-Task by Distance Education Faculty Stanley L. Lightner University of Nebraska at Kearney Kearney, NE, USA W.C. Johnson Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS, USA lightnersl@unk.edu wcj2@ra.msstate.edu Executive Summary Many prior studies have addressed student and faculty attitudes toward Distance Education. This study adds to the body of knowledge by considering the administrator’s view within the context of Industrial Technology departments. The attitudes of department heads need to be explored since department heads make budgetary and time allocation decisions that affect the entire departmental regimen, and thus have a direct effect on the success of Distance Education efforts. Distance education as a delivery mode is gaining widespread use in Industrial Technology. Many pro- fessionals are encouraged to embrace the new methodology while at the same time, issues such as physical setting, time -on-task, ownership of intellectual property, preparation time, faculty productivity, and traditional vs. nontraditional contact hours have not been conclusively resolved by administrators. The attitudes of Industrial Technology Department Heads are at the vanguard of bringing clarity, conti- nuity and a smooth transition to distance education. Industrial Technology faculty and students will find this article useful in creating a shared vision and development of a sanguine relationship within the In- dustrial Technology family. Major points include: 1) description of the attitude of Industrial Technology department heads toward distance education; 2) changes portended by the attitudes of department heads; 3) promotion and tenure issues; 4) commitment of resources; 5) expectations and professionalism; and 6) paradigm shifts. Overall, department heads seem to view distance education as valuable as traditional time-and-place- bound education. However, there appears to be a sizeable minority who question the value of distance education. This is most apparent in questions dealing with the cost of distance education, the value of student projects completed via distance education, and the amount of time faculty must spend on the computer. Over one-third of the department heads studied do not think that there should be any differ- ence in the productivity measures used for traditional and distance education faculty. Given the amount of time necessary to develop distance education courses, this does not bode well for junior faculty work- ing toward promotion and tenure while teaching via distance. Therefore, the movement of Industrial Technol- ogy faculty into distance education needs to be carefully planned, and methodically introduced to ensure professionalism through proper considera- tion of time, compensation, resource allocation, faculty evaluation, and promotion/tenure issues. The attitudes of department heads are of great value in ensuring the proper mesh of expecta- tions, professional responsibility, allocation of Material published as part of this journal, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the publisher of the Journal of Informa- tion Technology Education. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or dis- tributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Editor@JITE.org to request redistribu- tion permission. Industrial Technology Department Head’s View 408 resources, scheduling, and securing institutional commitment. Introduction Higher education institutions are escalating their efforts to meet the growing demand for expanded edu- cational opportunities. More and more students are demanding course delivery schemes that are not time and place specific. The emergence of distance education as a course delivery mode is quite evident in our culture. Distance education advocates argue that its rapid expansion is part of the technological revo- lution on campuses, and institutions that are not “with the program” will be left behind. Others see dis- tance education as a cornucopia for survival in times of low enrollment and budget restraints. Higher education administrators enthusiastically herald the technological revolution that is sweeping American campuses. Department chairs put pressure on faculty to use technology in their teaching, and to participate in distance education. Concomitantly, little thought is given to such issues as re- search/publishing demands, teaching load, promotion/tenure, or time -on-task (Higher Education Re- search Institute, 1999). Rockwell, Schaeur, Fritz, and Marx (1999) identified five obstacles to teaching from a distance (1) time requirements, (2) time taken from research, (3) training requirements, (4) de- veloping effective technology skills, (5) assistance with on-line course design and delivery. At the heart of the above obstacles lie considerations that form the lifeblood of survival in academia − time for re- search and publishing. The prudent faculty member would be wise to focus on the components of the academic regimen that ensures inclusion and longevity in the system. Teaching, research and service form the trilogy of credible activity that generally guides promotion and tenure in American academia. The most vulnerable to abuse are the junior faculty who must, in addition to showing yearly progress, make the mselves available for additional assignments, thus diminishing their ability to do “scholarly” work. Current research directing higher education toward practical solutions to the distance education mindset seems, at the moment, limited. Ehrmann (1997) suggested that current research has failed to ask the right questions when comparing traditional teaching to distance education. He further proposes that until a full accounting is made of the innumerable and complex variables linked to distance education, decisions will continue to be flawed. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (2000) identified four complex variables that must be addressed in quality distance education programs (1) encouragement to use technical assistance in course development, (2) assistance in transition from traditional to distance learning, (3) available support, and (4) assistance and training. Deciding to embrace distance education may bring accolades from department chairs; however, it is also important to note the paradigm shift when getting the job done is actually considered. Hanna (1999) suggested that the technologies of distance education have changed, but attitudes remain the same. Recent distance education literature has both recommended and described the kinds of paradigm changes needed for the successful implementation of distance education (Hanna, 1999; Higher Educa- tion Research Institute, 1999; Institute for Higher Education Policy, 2002; McKenzie, 2000). Schifter (2000) went further to identify two critical parts of the distance education infrastructure that seem con- travening, at first glance, but make prefect sense upon closer examination  the art of teaching, on the part of the teacher, and the art of learning, on the part of the student. The art of teaching involves both motivation to change and efficacy. There is less motivation for change among senior-level faculty than junior-level faculty, (Rockwell, Schauer, Fritz, and Mark, 2000). Senior- level faculty is more inclined to use their traditional style of teaching than to embrace newer ones. They generally feel uncomfortable with the new technology. Thusly, they are reluctant to accept assignments as distance learning instruc- tors. This reluctance can inevitably lead to the denial of distance participants to the more experienced senior-level faculty. According to Rahman (2001), when senior-level faculty opt out of the distance edu- cation option, departmental leaders allow the denial of an invaluable asset to students. Students who par- ticipate in distance education classes tend to be independent critical thinkers who desire an open and Lightner & Johnson 409 challenging learning environment. They want to take ownership of their learning and actively partici- pate. As Stake and Hoffman (2001) put it, these are the attributes senior-level faculties indicate they want in prospective students. To address the needs and concerns of this group of students, Hurst (2001) identified four things that must change: (1) mentoring, (2) office hours (3) testing, and (4) evaluation. These changes foretell the need to closely examine the monastery of the traditional place-bound aca- demic environment. Faculty motivation to participate in distance education was studied by Betts (1998). The findings of his study indicated that while administrators believe extrinsic motivation (credit toward Promotion and Tenure, merit pay) was a major factor in choosing to teach by distance learning; faculty indicated intrin- sic factors (intellectual challenge) as major motivators. From another perspective, Passmore (2000) re- viewed distance education literature, covering a decade, and found that senior-level faculty te nded to be intrinsically motivated while junior-level faculty tended to be extrinsically motivated. This research cor- roborates what Betts found two years earlier, and seems to indicate that junior level faculty are more ac- cepting of new modes of teaching, but must also pay attention to promotion and tenure concerns. At the same time, senior-level faculty has already achieved success in academia and is possibly inclined to ad- here to their tried and proven practices. In many cases, this does not include the embrace of distance education. Kassop (2003) presents an enthusiastic perspective of the quality benefits of senior-level fac- ulty’s participation in distance education. After reviewing the attitudes of faculty in the New Jersey Community College Consortium, he surmised the mechanics of moving from a face-to-face mode to an online mode actually energized many of the instructors. Perhaps there is a subtle message for the aca- demic administrator who wants to get more faculty involved in distance education. An energized faculty would, possibly, be more accepting of the larger time commitment, and virtual physical arrangements (neither traditional instructor-led classrooms nor traditional office hours). Perhaps the administrator’s ability to energize faculty, more than attention to extrinsic motivators is to the greater good. The mindset of the department chair plays a major role in faculty self-reporting, and general feeling of success. If the addition of distance education classes is seen as “just another routine scheduling task” a serious error in professional judgment has occurred. The entire equation for the amount of time commit- ted to the task of successfully launching distance education programs needs to change. McKenzie (2000) indicated that more time is spent in preparation for distance courses than for traditional courses. Addi- tionally, distance faculty interacted with students from 13 to 15 hours more per week than teachers in traditional programs. Finding the proper balance of competent faculty, significant rewards and proper time -on-task, while keeping an eye toward promotion and tenure issues should provide fodder for much further research. The part played by the attitudes of department heads toward distance education needs to be explored since they make budgetary and time allocation decisions that affect the entire departmental regimen. As industrial technology departments attempt to meet the growing demands for distance education courses, the attitudes of department heads needs to be assessed and potential barriers identified. Study Design The purpose of this study was to ascertain the attitudes of industrial technology department heads to- ward time -on-task by distance education faculty. Within the context of this study, Distance Education was defined as course work delivered via the Internet or by interactive video. The information gathered by this study was designed to be used to better utilize time, personnel, learning strategies, and promote teacher efficacy. The National Association of Industrial Technology (NAIT) supplied a list of all Deans, Chairs, and Heads in the 2002 Baccalaureate Directory and their e-mail addresses, if available. There were 293 names in the list of which 37 did not have an e-mail address. All of the remaining 256 administrators on Industrial Technology Department Head’s View 410 the list were e-mailed, of which 38 e-mails were returned as undeliverable. An additional nine individu- als replied to the e-mail but indicated they were no longer an administrator, or lacked the information necessary to give a reasoned response to the survey. Thus, there remained a population of 209 for the survey. Total number of respondents was 46 out of 209 for a 22% response rate. Survey Results The overwhelming majority, or 37 of 46 (80.4%) of those responding to the survey, were departme ntal heads or chairs. The other respondents included two Coordinators of Graduate Studies, or 4.3%; one Asso- ciate Dean, or 2.2%; one Director of External Pro- grams, or 2.2%; two Program Coordinators, or 4.3%; one Associate Professor, or 2.2%; one person who in- dicated “other”; and one individual who did not iden- tify his or her position, or 2.2%. (See Table 1.) The participants were also polled as to their level of experience with education. They were asked: “What experience(s) do you have with distance education?” with the following possible answers and directed to “check all that apply.” Twenty-one people indicated they had taught courses by distance education. Dis- tance Education instructors had been supervised by 28 of the respondents. Twelve of the respondents had taken courses designed to prepare them to teach by distance education and 16 had taken courses delivered by distance education. (See Table 2.) In an attempt to exert as little influence on the re- sponses as possible, the survey’s open-ended question was asked at the beginning of the survey rather than the end of the survey. The respondents were asked: “What has had the greatest influence on the formation of your attitude toward time -on-task in distance educa- tion?” There were twenty-seven answers to this ques- tion, of which 20 could be placed in four categories. Six of those responding felt the need for more or the lack of enough preparation time had the greatest infl u- ence on their attitude toward time -on-task in distance education. The ability to reach students, who typi- cally would be unable to participate in higher education, or similar statements, was cited by eight people as having the greatest influence on their attitude toward time -on-task in distance education. Three indi- viduals referred to equipment concerns, as did three others who voiced reservations about their lack of experience in distance education as having the greatest influence on their attitude toward time -on-task in distance education. Not all respondents answered all the questions, thus some have less than a total of 46 responses. The number of respondents for each question is indicated at the end of the question. The responses are indi- cated after each possible answer by number of responses and the percentage these responses represent for each answer. The mean and standard deviation (S) for each question is also indicated with strongly agree assigned a value of five, agree a value of four, undecided a value of three, disagree a value of two, and strongly disagree a value of one. (See Table 3.) Title Number (Percentage) Department Head/Chair 37(80.4%) Coordinator of Graduate Studies 2(4.3%) Associate Dean 1(2.2%) Director of External Programs 1(2.2%) Program Coordinator 2(4.3%) Associate Professor 1(2.2%) Other 1(2.2%) Not identified 1(2.2%) Table 1: Responses by Position Taught via distance 21 Supervised those who Taught via distance 28 Prepared to teach via Distance 12 Taken courses via dis- tance 16 Table 2: Responses by Experiences with Distance Education Lightner & Johnson 411 Table 3: Results Re- sponses Strongly Agree Agree Unde - cided Disagree Strongly Disagree Standard Devi ation Mean 1. Instruction by distance education is just as valuable as in -classroom instru ction. 45 11 (24.4%) 15 (33.3%) 6 (13.3%) 12 (26.7%) 1 (2.2%) 1.1989 3.511 2. The professional standards adhered to by distance education instructors are as high as those of in-classroom fa culty. 44 15 (34%) 13 (29.5%) 11 (25%) 4 (9.1%) 1 (2.3%) 1.077 3.841 3. The units of credit for distance educ ation courses shou ld be the same as for other Indus- trial Technology courses taught in the clas s- room. 46 21 (45.7%) 19 (41.3%) 2 (4.3%) 4 (8.7%) 0 (0.0%) 0.899 4.239 4. The cost of providing distance education courses is justified with respect to the value of the education students receive. 46 6 (13.6%) 19 (43.2%) 8 (19.0%) 13 (29.5%) 0 (0.0%) 1.043 3.391 5. Projects in distance education courses are just as thorough and relevant as projects in ca m- pus-based laboratory courses. 42 3 (7.1%) 16 (38.0%) 8 (19.0%) 13 (31.0%) 2 (4.8%) 1.086 3.119 6. All things considered, office hours required for distance education faculty should be the same as for in -classroom faculty. 41 8 (18.6%) 12 (27.9%) 4 (9.3%) 15 (34.9%) 2 (4.7%) 1.275 3.220 7. Distance education faculty’s productivity should be calculated by the same measures as is that for other faculty me mbers. 44 5 (11.4%) 11 (25.0%) 7 (15.9%) 15 (34.1%) 6 (13.6%) 1.268 2.864 8. Distance education faculty spends too much time using computers and not enough time doing other work. 44 5 (10.9%) 11 (23.9%) 7 (15.2%) 15 (34.1%) 6 (13%) 1.268 2.863 9. Computer use is a vital part of distance edu- cation. 44 29 (65.9%) 15 (34.1%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0.479 4.659 10. Distance education, as a delivery system is very unstru ctured. 44 3 (6.8%) 5 (11.4%) 3 (6.8%) 21 (47.7%) 12 (27.3%) 1.179 2.227 11. It is more important for faculty to be physi- cally present and available to students than meet with them at mutually convenient times in cyberspace. 43 6 (14.0%) 4 (9.3%) 12 (27.9%) 18 (41.9%) 3 (7.0%) 1.160 2.814 12. Time -on-task for distance education fa culty is quantifiable. 43 4 (9.3%) 24 (55.8%) 7 (16.3%) 6 (14.0%) 2 (4.7%) 1.009 3.511 13. Because of the time spent developing materi- als, distance education faculty need flexible schedules, and broad time management lati- tude. 45 10 (22.2%) 24 (53.3%) 7 (15.6%) 3 (6.7%) 1 (2.2%) 0.919 3.867 14. Because they are not in the traditional teach- ing setting, distance education fa culty should be given more departmental assignments. 44 4 (9.1%) 2 (4.5%) 2 (4.5%) 28 (63.6%) 8 (18.2%) 1.097 2.227 15. Distance education faculty does not work in a challenging environment, and thus lose profi- ciency over time. 44 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 6 (13.6%) 25 (56.8%) 13 (29.5%) 0.645 1.841 16. Distance education is just a pas sing fad. 44 2 (4.5%) 3 (6.8%) 3 (6.8%) 22 (50.0%) 14 (31.8%) 1.045 2.023 17. Time -on-task is relevant as a management tool in distance education courses. 42 4 (9.5%) 23 (54.8%) 11 (26.2%) 3 (7.1%) 1 (2.4%) 0.854 3.619 18. Distance education faculty have just as much student contact hours as other fa culty. 45 7 (15.6%) 18 (40.0%) 8 (17.8%) 10 (22.2%) 2 (4.4%) 1.136 3.400 19. Time -on-task needs to be redefined in light of telecommunication and distance education. 41 5 (12.2%) 19 (46.3%) 15 (36.6%) 2 (4.9%) 0 (0.0%) 0.762 3.659 20. Lazy students are more likely to take distance education courses. 44 1 (2.3%) 2 (4.5%) 11 (25.0%) 20 (45.5%) 10 (22.7%) 0.922 2.182 Discussion of Results Overall the department heads seem to view distance education as valuable as traditional time and place bound education. However, some of the answers indicate there is a sizeable minority of department heads who question the value of distance education. This is indicated by the roughly 30%, or more, of the respondents to questions 4, 5, and 8 who indicated the cost of distance education is too high, the stu- dent projects are not as relevant, and the faculty spend too much time using computers. Question 8 could Industrial Technology Department Head’s View 412 also be interpreted as indicating the department heads do not see using the computer as “real work”, but more like playing a video game. Additionally, it could possibly indicate a lack of knowledge of technol- ogy, or a lack of exposure to teacher educators at both the graduate and undergraduate level who did not use technology in their teaching (Bosh & Cardinale, 1993; Glenn, 1993; Rodrigues, 1997). Motamedi (2000), in studying teacher education graduates from Mississippi State University, found that pre-service teachers who were taught by teacher educators who integrated technology into their teaching were more likely to be more comfortable with, and use technology when they became teachers. Carrying this logic one step further, we can generally surmise that teachers who become department heads would generally display similar behavior, and view distance education and its attending technologies as invaluable in the educational setting of the 21s t century. Question 9, having the lowest Standard Deviation, seems to indicate a general agreement by the partici- pating department heads in this study on the universality of the computer in the distance education de- livery method. Additional clustering around the Mean possibly shows general acceptance of distance education as a course delivery method, and an interest in maintaining program quality. While this seems to be true, some department heads seem cognitively aligned with paradigms of traditional face-to-face- teaching methods in industrial technology programs, which could adversely effect the evaluations of those teaching via distance. Of particular note is the striking difference of opinions generated by question 7, regarding the calcula- tion of faculty productivity. Over one-third of the department heads do not think there should be any dif- ference in the productivity measures used for traditional faculty and distance education faculty. Given the amount of time necessary to develop distance education courses, this does not bode well for junior faculty working toward promotion and tenure and teaching via distance. In striking contrast to this atti- tude, are the answers to questions 12, 17 and 19. It seems the overwhelming majority of department heads believe time -on-task for distance faculty is quantifiable, is relevant as a management tool, and needs to be redefined for distance faculty. It would be interesting to see the results of a study that meas- ured the difference in promotion and tenure rates for junior faculty who teach by distance and those who are in a more traditional setting. The respondents to the survey appear to indicate: • Synchronous and asynchronous contacts are as important as physical presence among faculty and students. • Time management is a critical area in distance education instruction. • Scheduling of classes and departmental assignments must be taken into consideration for dis- tance education faculty. • Paradigms that support promotion/tenure of distance education faculty are needed. • Time-on-task is a critical consideration in the departmental regimen. Conclusion The primary purpose of this study was to ascertain the attitudes of Industrial Technology department heads toward time -on-task by distance education faculty. Due to the small number of responses, findings of this research may not be generalized to the general population. Nonetheless, this study provides in- sights into department head thinking and may serve as a research prototype for further review of issues associated with distance education as a course delivery mode. Respondents in this study appear to value synchronous and asynchronous contacts as much as face-to- face contact between teacher and student. This notion is given buoyancy in that the literature indicates Lightner & Johnson 413 that the typical distance education student is an independent learner who enjoys the challenge of finding solutions to problems, and appreciates the art of stimulating inquiry. While time management is viewed by the findings of this research as critical to successful implementa- tion of distance education, it is interesting to note that because of the promotion and tenure issue, junior- level faculty have more pressure on them than their senior-level counterparts. Perception is another as- pect of time -on-task that, while sometimes subtle, sets the stage for other events in the departmental regimen. Passmore’s (2000) review of ten years of distance education research found that academic ad- ministrators think distance education faculty, junior-level or senior-level, tend to be motivated by extrin- sic factors, concomitantly, faculty indicated intrinsic factors as motivators. Critical dialog between ad- ministrators and faculty could help to create a common definition of expectations. Distance education has ushered in a need for new ways of thinking about the physical dynamics of the education workplace. New ways of thinking about traditional office hours, class schedules, student con- tact hours, and scholarly activities are possibly needed in order to morph into formats that more clearly value the individual and epitomizes quality to cohorts and to the casual observer. References Barone, C. A. (2001). Condition for transformation infrastructure is not the issue. Educause Review, 36 (3), 41-47. Betts, K. S. (1998). Factors influencing faculty participation in distance education in post-secondary education in the United States; An institutional study (Doctoral Dissertation, the George Washington University) Dissertation Abstracts Interna- tional: UMI. Bosh, K. A. & Cardinale, L. (1993). Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of computer use during a field experience. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 10 (1), 23-27. Chizmar, D. & Williams, D. B. (2001). What do faculty want? Educause. 24 (1), 24. Ehrmann, S. (1997). Asking the right questions: What does research tell us about technology and higher learning? In Engines of inquiry: A practical guide for using technology to teach American culture. Retrieved August 24, 2002, from http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/guide/ehrmann.html Glenn, A. D. (1993). Teacher education: One dean’s perspective and forecast on the state of technology and teacher prep. Electronic Learning, 12 (5), 18-19. Hanna, D. E. (1999). Higher education in area of digital competition: Choices and challenges. Madison, WI: Atwood Pub- lishing. Higher Education Research Institute. (1999, September). Faculty survey. Retrieved August 24, 2002, from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/press_faculty.htm Hurst, F. (2001) Administrators and faculty resist culture, values, and traditions germane to higher education (The death of distance learning). Educause Quarterly, 24 (3), 59. Institute for Higher Education Policy. (2000, August). Quality on the line: Benchmarks for success in internet-based distance education. Washington, DC. Retrieved March 29, 2002, from http://www.nea.org/he/abouthe/quality .pdf Kassop, M. (2003). Ten ways online education matches, or surpasses, face-to-face learning. The Technology Source. Re- trieved June 3, 2003 from http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1059 McKenzie, B. K. (2000, Fall). Needs, concerns and practices of online instructors. Online Journal of Distance Education Administration, 3 (1). State University of West Georgia, Distance Education Center. Retrieved April 3, 2003 from http://www.westga.edu/`distance/ojdla/fall33/mckenzie33.html Motamedi, V. (2000). Preparation in the use of technology among teacher education majors at Mississippi State Unive rsity (Doctoral Dissertation, Mississippi State University) Dissertation Abstracts International: UMI. Passmore, D. (2000). Impediments to adoption of web-based course delivery among university faculty. ALN Magazine, 4 (2). Retrieved May 15, 2003, from http://www.aln.org/publications/magazine/v4n2/passmore.asp Rahman, M. (2001). Faculty recruitment strategies for online programs. The Online Journal of Distance of Distance Learning Administration. IV (IV). Retrieved May, 5, 2003, from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter44/rahman44.html Industrial Technology Department Head’s View 414 Rockwell, K., Schaeur, J., Fritz, S. M. & Marx, D. B. (1999, Winter). Incentives and obstacles influencing higher education faculty and administrators to teach via distance. Online Journal of Distance Education Learning Administration, 2 (4). Accessed September 29, 2002, from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/rockwell24.html Rodrigues, W. E. (1997). Raising the bar, lowering the barriers. Vital Speeches of the Day. 63 (2), 375-379. Schifter C. (2000). Faculty participation in asynchronous learning networks: A case study of motivating and inhibiting fac- tors. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5 (2). Accessed May 15, 2003, from http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v4n1/v4n1_schifter.asp Stakes, J., & Hoffman, F. (2001). Changes in student social attitudes, activism, and personal confidence in higher education: The role of women’s studies. American Research Journal, 38 (2), 411-436. Biographies Dr. Stan Lightner is an assistant professor in the largest NAIT accredited Industrial Distribution program, located at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. More information is available at their web site at http://www.unk.edu/acad/itec/idhome.html His background includes indus- trial experience in the processing of materials via machining, welding, assem- bly, forging, and casting. Dr. Lightner earned his bachelor and master’s de- grees from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and his doctorate from Oklahoma State University. His primary research interest is in the improvement of industrial technology curriculum. Dr. W. C. Johnson is an associate professor in the Instructional Systems, Leadership and Workforce Development department at Mississippi State Uni- versity. He received the B. S. degree in industrial arts from Alcorn State Uni- versity, the M. S. degree in industrial education from Indiana State University, and the Ed.D. in industrial education/vocational administration from The Uni- versity of Minnesota. He currently teaches instructional technology and voca- tional licensure and certification courses through the interactive video/ dis- tance education format. His main research interests are distance education and administration and supervision of vocational and technical education. He has recently published in The Journal of Industrial Technology, and The Ameri- can Technical Education Association Journal. 
work_qchscrt6evbgrm2waewokklspq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_qf3ilk4subeavp7jum7rwoiiky	----	Deciding which technology is the best for distance education: Issues in media/technology comparisons studies Procedia Computer Science 00 (2009) 000–000 Procedia Computer Science www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia WCIT 2010 Deciding which technology is the best for distance education: Issues in media/technology comparisons studies Ilker Yengina , Adem Karahocab , Dilek Karahocab, Hüseyin Uzunboyluc aUniversity of Nebraska Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA b Bahcesehir University, Ciragan 34353 Besiktas, Istanbul,Turkey cDepartment of Computer Education and Instructional Technologies, Near East University, Lefkosa 98010, Northern Cyprus Abstract Distance education decision makers; who will be shaping the future of distance education; should understand the role of different technologies and their unique attributes closely. In order to achieve this task accurately, they also need to know the superiorities of different technologies to each other. Media comparison studies have been conducted to see these superiorities and to help deciding “which technology is better?” In some studies researchers make some fundamental errors and flaws in media comparison studies for distance learning. Hence, there is a need to determine these issues in order to make decision process work better. In this review study, issues on media comparison studies in distance education discussed with theoretical backgrounds. Also in this study, reader could find what kind of flaws can occur in media comparisons studies and what cause to these flaws as well as some suggestions to avoid these flaws. In this study, five of the most significant errors scholars have made in writing and discussing distance education research in technology/media comparisons studies are determined. This study aims to help distance education policy makers, distance education researchers and instructors by making them aware of these issues in comparison studies. Hence, they could make a more accurate decision when implementing distance learning solutions in their institutions. "Keywords: Distance education, media comparison;" 1. Introduction Distance teaching decision makers, educational researchers who are determining the future of the distance education should focus on the capabilities of new coming technology and media. They also should focus on the interaction with the media to understand what specific unique attributes of these technologies and media brings and which kind of benefits – outcomes they will have on learning. In order to understand new coming technology and media, distance education researchers so often run media comparison studies. They mainly ask research questions such as “Which media or technology is better for learning?" or “What media or technology type is superior to traditional learning?” or “Is a new media or technology is really working better than others?” Or “which media type has superiority to others or if one new media (and related technologies) type shows more benefits than the others?” In many articles researchers; who are discussing the media; try to answer these questions. They want to if a specific media type works properly and if this media have some significant learning outcomes over the students learning. In many media comparisons studies, researchers conduct analysis by comparing a specific new media type to another media type or by comparing one media type Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia 1877-0509 c⃝ 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2011.01.020 c⃝ 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Guest Editor. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.01.020 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 with traditional learning situations (mainly classroom learning). When answering these questions there are several research studies that could cause misleading results and interpretations because of the poor research design and/or over simplifying the variables in the research settings. Therefore there is a need to determine these kinds of issues in order to help decision makers to be aware and help them to make better selections when implementing new distance learning technologies. In this article, reader could find what kind of flaws can occur in media comparisons studies and what cause to these flaws as well as some suggestions to avoid these flaws. These issues on media comparison studies in distance education discussed with looking to some theoretical backgrounds. Also some ongoing debates on these issues were covered by looking to the each side and all the view points are discussed to give the readers an overall picture. The five of the most significant errors scholars have made in writing and discussing distance education research in technology/media comparisons studies are discussed in this article within sub-titles labeled as “Following Misleading Initiators”, “Is it necessary (or logical) to conduct technology/media comparisons studies: Clark vs. Kozma”, “Reporting media attributes”, “Reporting the teaching methods”, “Flaws in Research Methodologies and in Interpreting Results”. 2. Following Misleading Initiators In media comparison studies, it seems the main concern of the researchers is to show that one media is better than the other (in most cases the new technology is better than the old one) because they seem they have some worries to prove that the new technology is better. In the first place these worries come from political ideologies than comes from the commercial ideologies. When we look for the history of media comparisons research, we could understand WHY there are studies try to find out new technology is better than the old technologies or the traditional methods. These concerns can clearly be seen if we looked the main stakeholders in the research studies in the past. According to Joy and Garcia [1] “in the United States prior to World War II this kind of research designs were started to conduct and the film and radio were the focus of many comparison studies; after that times the trend were rend shifted in the 1980s as researchers and educational software developers became interested in establishing cause-and effect relationships between computer and non-computer delivery modes “. If one thinks about those studies were conducted because of the initiatives of some specific stakeholders and he/she also may think that those studies initiated their hypothesis purposefully to find out one specific result:” The new media or technology works better or at least equal to the old ones”. This determination could cause one to ask several critical questions like “If those initial researches did ask correct questions to find out real results?” and “If those initial researches did successfully lead the upcoming studies correctly or in vice versa did the following studies just jump in blindly and repeat the same procedures that can cause some mistakes or misleading interpretation?” So shortly, the following researches may have the same errors in their results or they could look for a biased direction in these studies. 3. Is it necessary (or logical) to conduct technology/media comparisons studies: Clark vs. Kozma In many articles, Clark [15, 11, 10, and 2] indicates that media have no influence on learning so it is a problem to make any kind of comparisons between media types. For example , there are many of studies [12] trying to compare the media types and try to show benefits of one of the media type but if one follows the logic of Clark it is a miss- leading research activity to compare media benefits because there is no media benefits over learning. According to Clark [2] there were many studies showing that there is no learning benefits because of just media itself. The studies argued that the media have various economical advantages and accomplishments into the learning but there are no pure learning benefits for the users just by using the media instead of other methods or other media types. Also he explains his claim to strong his arguments in his following words: “Examples of media attributes are the capacity of television and movies to "zoom" into detail or to "unwrap" three-dimensional objects into two dimensions. The problem with the media attribute argument is that there is strong evidence that many very different media attributes Accomplish the same learning goal (for example, there are a variety of equally effective Ways to highlight details other than zooming). In every attempt to replicate the published Media attribute studies a number of very different media attributes served the same or similar cognitive functions. “ From his words it is very clear to understand that the media is not a magicful formula to improve learning just I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 1389 Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 because media attributes. The benefits comes from instructional methods and strategies that can be accomplished by using one of a specific media attribute and this attribute can be substituted with some other old or new type of media attribute which have similar functions. Therefore it can be advocated that in a research study, there is no logic to compare different media attributes and media types with each other because you can get the same results if you use the same instructional methods. On the other hand, Kozma defines media as a technology that can be defined in mechanical and electronic attributes which indicates the functions of media and in some cases the shape and other physical characteristics of the media [3]. In Kozma’s view media attributes have some direct effect on learning because the cognitive processes are affected by those attributes. He claims that some learners benefit from these attributes because their cognitive learning benefit from the support of these. For example, some learners can learn better from TV because of the representation of information is reach coded ; on the other hand some learner don’t need these representations of TV they could learn just from audio and text representations such as reading a book. Kozma describes that situations because of the learners’ mental models are different and they have a different strategy for construction and structuring the information. According to Kozma’s theoretical framework, learning is an active and constructive process where the control of the cognitive resources belongs to learners themselves In this view point learners should interact and integrate within the external environment (which is the media or the technology itself) to create knowledge. Kozma explains this mentality as follows: “Consequently, the process is sensitive to characteristics of the external environment, such as the availability of specific information at a given moment, the duration of that availability, the way the information is structured, and the ease with which it can be searched.” Eventually, if someone follows the Kozma’s viewpoints it could be advocated that there is differences between media types because of media’s itself and media attributes. From Kozma’s stand point it can be said that there is a distinction between media and media attributes because learning process is integrated accordingly. So that leads a point that different media types could be beneficial to different cognitive functions and those different functions can also work differently for different learner types. If this idea accepted, the logic of making media comparisons are clearly valid because there should be comparisons studies to find out which media attributes affects which cognitive learning process for different learner characteristics. As a clear result, if someone follows Kozma then there should be many media comparison studies. As a result , Clark and Kozma claim counter ideas and the debate between them (and their followers) put a researcher in a position to decide his/her direction in comparisons study. In the Clark side, it is not meaningful to make any media comparison studies because media is not influencing learning, a study can only compare the extended benefits such as cost or time, delivery efficiencies etc.By contrast with Clark, Kozma has an argument that media has some affects on learning and that’s why researchers surely need to make lots of media comparisons studies. Also here a clarification should be made to understand those two views. Clark is not totally refusing the comparison studies but he warns that the components of learning and the components of the media should be investigated separately however Kozma takes those components as a whole. In our point of view there should be media comparisons studies because at least we need to determine the affects of attributes of new media on learning directly or indirectly so we find Clark position is much stronger because we think media itself is not sufficient to affect learning so extended benefits are much more important to research. We agree with Clark about usage of technology or new media is not sufficient enough to improve learning. Usage of technology and new media in the learning is a very critical issue. Most of the teachers think their teaching would be better if they use technology or new media in their lectures. Using technology/media without any conscious thinking will be no useful for the students. As the Clark suggests, firstly a teacher should decide his/her strategy. She should know what to use in what reason and where to use. For example, before implementing any technology or the media type in their lecture students’ needs must be known first. After that, course objectives must be determined. Than the contents structure must be determined by matching several user needs to the objectives. After that, teacher should select proper instructional methods and relevant media according to user needs, objectives and content structure. In this manner, when structuring courses the media type selection becomes important. In distance education aspect, there is also need of d delivering content to wide range of distance groups. In most cases, these needs are met by hypertext or hypermedia systems [4]. 1390 I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 Khan’s [5] explains usage of hypermedia in education as: “The World Wide Web is the latest embodiment of hypertext, hypermedia environments, Allowing the practical implementation and use of hypertext environments to graduate from the Relatively small stand-alone systems, previously developed with tools such as HyperCard or Tool Book, too much larger and universally available systems of structured information.” In distance learning area, it is important to understand hypermedia technology (or media) and see if there are any direct benefits over learning. Again it seems that Clark claims is strong about media comparisons researches. For example, studies [6] showed that selecting of hypermedia system can have no additional value if we use hypermedia just as a replacement of paper based tasks. Hypermedia and its properties were investigated according to learner comprehension, effects and individual differences. This study concludes that the usefulness of the hypermedia is limited in different learning tasks. Clearly this study [6] showed that if we use a technology as an exact replacement of an old one such as paper or other electronic media the new technology has a little or no effect in the student improvement. Also this leads us to think that Clark is right about the media comparisons studies. On the other hand we found some points of Kozma useful such as being aware of attributes of different media types. For example, the usage of technology in education varies from students’ levels and ages, teachers and their teaching styles structure of content, environment, availability. Usage of computerized methods to increase learning in different ways than the older technology or traditional methods can have some extended benefits. For example, in other review paper, [7] CAI was questioned by relating the previous researches of Clark where he declares there is no great advantage of any mediums including CAI and the CAI is just a vehicle to deliver instructional message. The usage of CAI showed significant improvements on the students’ success as the previous studies showed. Kullik’s model suggests that CAI in special education has a largest effect size. CAl in elementary education also has significant differences. Another significant results determination comes from Kulliks’ study [8] where effect of computer usage in the school mathematics and science programs has been examined. According to reviews, Kullik indicates that the integrated learning system has a students’ score improvement from the 50th to the 65th percentile in mathematic lessons. Also Kullik’s reviews indicate the computer tutorials in science. In this area he declares the tutorial systems could raise student achievement from the 50th to the 72nd percentile. Additionally, Lio [9] resulted that (69%) of the studies in the meta analysis showed that effect size were positive for the Hypermedia Instruction. As a result , as long as CAI materials design to improve learning in careful consideration of pedagogy including usage of quality objectives, individual feedbacks in learning sequences, motivation and active participation they can have a positive effect on learning. CAl has no greater benefit if the materials are the same. On the other hand CAI has advantage when a quality instruction delivered by computers using well designed CAI materials. Also there are other advantages of computers such as time savings, cost, realistic problems with interactive materials, immediate feedback and self-evaluation. Also as Clark [10] mentioned the technology is only a medium to deliver the message .If we can improve the message quality within the technology than the technology would benefit for us. For example, we can give information in more flexible ways information providing good quality learning activities which also leads motivation. Also tailoring instruction according to specific user needs can be possible using immediate personalized feedback systems [22]. All of those studies shows that Kozma is right because hypermedia or CAI have some benefits over the other methods but in this point they seems they are there with extended benefits of media which make Clark to stand on more strong position [23]. 4. Reporting media attributes Additional to debates between Clack and Kozma, there are some other problems in media comparisons studies such as reporting media attributes. In many studies, it is neglected to define the list of specification. In many researches, it has been assumed that the compared media type is totally different than the others and it is approached as a one whole instead of combinations of parts. However, as described in this paper, all media types are consists of some components and those components have different attributes. That case brings the need of examining each attribute separately instead of looking them as a whole structure because each of the components and attributes may have different affect on the different cognitive functions and different learning process. In research design, a better approach should be to thinking the media (also technology) as a whole which consists I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 1391 Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 of components and investigate the specific attributes of those components separately to find out detailed results for different cognitive functions? In other words, we should not deal with media as lacking of system or structure characteristic. Researchers can construct hypothesis to find out the effect of each component and attributes (characteristic) of media on learning so whole and partial usefulness could be understood. Those characteristic can be tested separately as research variables. Those tested units variables also could be tested for their relations or as functions in the system. In this aspect using taxonomy of media attributes could be useful for research purposes [13]. In the real world, learning can also occurs within an environment where many of the technology/media integrated each other. In the research articles about distance learning, most of the times, they investigate the benefits, outcomes and effects of a specific type of technology/media and compare one of these with the traditional classroom learning. In the distance education area, there are many technologies that can be used for multiple purposes and that can be converted to solve problems in very different learning situations or that can be applied to gain some learning benefits. An arrangement of different technologies together in a mixed model to address several learning problems or met several learning outcomes, are getting more and more common practice in the distance education area. For example, in a Second Life simulation [21] there is a combination of interactive simulation and web based online system to create an opportunity to make a collaborative learning environment for students. These kind of mixed model technologies can create a great potential for the students to students, students to teacher and teacher to teacher interaction and they can also reach very different unique way of learning structures [21]. It is not easy to investigate all of the possibilities in a research study which treats mixed technologies just as a single module or unit. For example, we cannot compare Second Life with traditional face to face learning by just telling that second life is a single unit simulation or it is single unit web based learning media. Actually Second Life is a combination of all of these technologies and media types so if we took it as a single one there could be misleading results and interpretation. Some of the research article makes those single unit comparisons for these mixed media types so that could lead some serious problems. There must be more studies available to provide more specific grounds with large sample size and solid research design background to investigate the effect of mixed technology/media. 5. Reporting the teaching methods Another problem in the media comparison studies is about reporting the teaching methods applied in research. In many cases, the instructional methods are thought as merged into the media and technology and this creates a great amount of confusion to interpret the results. In many research studies, technology or the media were treated purely as the teaching methodology rather than considering technology/media as tools for delivery for teaching [15]. In these cases, it is very hard to define whether technology/media had been benefited on the learning or the use of teaching methodologies benefited. It seems impossible to identify which made a difference when there is a conclusion claiming that students achieved better. For example, in a report of SRB’s Educational Technology Cooperative [14] they advocate that benefits of online learning and they show a case study for Louisiana Virtual School in 2002-2003. According to that report, “… this study certified teachers delivered the instruction online. They served as mentors and models to teachers in classrooms who were not certified in secondary math but who collaborated with the online teachers to guide and support the students”. In the results, they interpret the results in a way that usages of online media delivery have some benefits. However this is impossible to determine which of the component of the system worked. Is it the technology/media? Or is it the teaching methodology? When someone read this case carefully he/she can clearly see that in treatment group (online learners) there is a structured organized contents given by certified teachers other hand there is a control group ( learners in a traditional classroom setting) which are delivering instruction from uncertified teachers. There is a clear distinction that online learner group was threatened with a better teaching method than the others. Also teaching methodologies such as student centered learning vs. teacher centered learning , problem based learning vs. rote learning , constructivist learning vs. rote –learning etc.; could have a greater impact on the learning results and so many comparisons studies neglect to describe which of those methodologies applied in research groups. For example, in a research study comparing traditional classroom learning with online learning could provide more student centered learning and problem based activities in online learning group and less of these in the traditional learning group. As long as two groups are not receiving equal treatment conditions it is impossible 1392 I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 to differentiate if the technology/media has any influence. In contrast to that example, it is also possible to probate less student centered learning and problem based activities in online learning group and more of those activities in the traditional classroom group. As a result it could be concluded that it is possible to use different technology/media to meet the requirements of same teaching methodology. It is hard to say that one technology/media is better than other as long as the teaching methodology is not exactly same in both cases. However ; at least; we could say that some technology/media types has some side effects such as supporting mass delivery , cost efficiency, visualization, interactive elements, audio- visual functions etc. 6. Flaws in Research Methodologies and Interpreting Results In the media comparison researches, the variables tested for the outcomes are generally are achievement of the students, students attitudes and students satisfaction over the treatment. In many cases, treatment is the new media or the technology such as distance education (recently online learning). Basically a comparison study for the distance education typically compares the achievement of students on traditional learning environments to the achievement of students who are enrolled in a distance learning program (online learning). According to the Phipps and Merisotis [16] there are lots of flaws in the researches which trying to determine the effectiveness of the distance learning. In their report, they indicated the several research issues such as: • Much of the research does not control for extraneous variables and therefore cannot show cause and effect. • Most of the studies do not use randomly selected subjects. • The validity and reliability of the instruments used to measure student outcomes and attitudes are questionable. • Many studies do not adequately control for the feelings and attitudes of the students and faculty—what the educational research refers to as “reactive effects.” As Phipps and Merisotis indicate above, in many distance education researches, there is a problem to determine if the students’ achievements are correctly measured. This serious problem also voiced by Lockee and Burton [17] as follows: “ Many studies related to distance learning use teacher-made achievement tests that may, or may not, have reliabilities or validities established. Perhaps worse than using a test that produces erroneous scores or scores that are unrelated to the content … “ In distance education studies the problem of the evaluation of the students achievements can affect the overall course of the research and these kinds of flaws in the measurements may cause to misleading results and interpretations. In the media comparison researches, there could be some problems occurring when interpreting the results. Many of the comparison studies justify the results as “no significant difference” in their findings [19].In statistical means if the result is no significant is means that researchers fail to reject o the null hypothesis which is the treatment outcome that a researcher is trying to prove [18]. In other words this means that the researchers can not show that the proposed independent variable have no effect on outcome or dependent variables. Also” no significant difference “does not mean that the treatment is not important or not meaningful. Sometimes researchers [16, 20] conclude that ” no significant difference” means the treatment is not working or treatment is at least as effective as the other methods for treatment. In comparison studies some researchers use” no significant difference” as a finding which shows treatment effect is as good as traditional classroom teaching. In other words , research findings are interpreted as the outcomes and benefits online learning is at least equal to face to face classroom learning if there is a statistical result of ” no significant difference” . After that misleading interpretation many research studies conclude that he usage of new technologies is as good as the traditional learning environments but they are not better than traditional learning. This kind of conclusion is totally wrong in terms of statistics. More serious problems may occur in these kinds of conclusions because many studies open discussions after their conclusions. They advocate to purchase of new technologies, change in the educational systems and training of more faculties to adapt new systems. Just because resulting in a misleading reading in the findings could cause policy makers to act in a wrong direction and spent resources of the institutions. As a result there could be places for the flaws in the media comparison studies’ methodologies and findings. Therefore readers of those kinds of studies should be careful about the conclusions of these studies and may need I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 1393 Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 the double check these parts. In fact, these kinds of errors should be corrected before publishing any research articles. Journal editors and review boards should correct these kinds of problems before they publish anything. Conclusion In this review study authors investigated most common flaws in media comparison studies. The five of the most significant errors in technology/media comparisons studies are determined. In conclusion decision makers should think carefully and decide critically when they read reports of research studies that asserting one media type is better than the other. They should be aware of the flaws in some of these studies so they could have a more accurate to the point action when implementing distance learning solutions. References [1] Joy,H.,Garcia,E. Measuring Learning Effectiveness: A New Look at No-Significant-Difference Findings.4, (2000). [2] Clarck,E.R. Media Will Never Influence Learning. ETR&D. Vol. 42. No.2. (1994). 21-29. [3] Kozma, Robert B. Learning with Media Review of Educational Research61: ( 1991).179-211. [4] Selepeng-Tau,O. "Application of Computer-Based Hypermedia in Distance Education Course Design, Using Elaboration Theory as a Framework," Advanced Learning Technologies, International Workshop, International Workshop on Advanced Learning Technologies. (2000). [5] Khan, B. Web-based instruction. Educational Technology Publications Inc. (1997). [6] Dillon,A., & R., Gabbard.. Hypermedia as an Educational Technology:A Review of the Quantitative Research Literature on Learner Comprehension, Control, and Style. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 68, No.3, (1998) 322-,349. [7] Flinn,C.M.,Gravatt,B. The Efficacy of Computer Assisted Instruction (Cal): Ameta-Analysis. J. Educational Computing Research. Vol. 12(3) ( 1995) 219-242. [8] Kullik,J. National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. (2002). [9] Lio,C. Effects of Hypermedia Versus Traditional Instruction on Students'Achievement: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Research on Computing in Education.V (30) , (1998) 4. [10]Clark,E.R..Media and Method. ETR&D. Vol. 42. No.3. (1994) 7-10 . [11] Clark,E.R. “Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media,” Review of Educational Research, 53 (4), (1983) 445–459. [12] Cheong , L,K. Research on Educational Media: Half a Century of Doing Things Right Rather Than the Right Thing . Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Volume 10, (1989). 10 – 18. [13] Clark,E.R..Constructing a taxonomy of media attributes for research purposes. Educational Technology Research and Development. 23, (1975) 2. [14] SREB’s Educational Technology Cooperative. Overcoming Doubts About Online Learning. .(2009).Rerieved June 2010 from www.sreb.org [15] Clark, R. E. Evaluating distance education: Strategies and cautions. QuarterlyReview of Distance Education, 1, (2000). 3–16. [16] Phipps, R., & Merisotis, J. What's the difference? A review of contemporary research on the effectiveness of distance learning in higher education. Washington, DC: The Institute for Higher Education Policy. (1999). Retreived August 2010 from :http://www.ihep.org/assets/files/publications/s-z/WhatDifference.pdf [17] Lockee,B., Burton,K. & Cross, H. No Comparison: Distance Education Finds a New Use for 'No Significant Difference. ETR&D, Vol. 47, No. 3, (1999) 33.42. [18] Gravetter,J.& Wallnau,L. Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Wadsworth Publishing. (2008). [19] Conger,B. If There Is No Significant Difference, Why Should We Care? The Journal of Educators Online, 2, (2005). 2. [20] Oblinger,D. & B.L.,Hawkins The Myth about No Significant Difference. Educause. (2006). [21] Ritzema, T. and B. Harris "The use of Second Life for distance education." J. Comput. Small Coll. 23(6) (2008).110-116. [22] Tezer, M., & Bicen, H. (2009). The Preparations University Teachers Towards E-Education Systems. Cypriot Journal Of Educational Sciences, 3(1). Retrieved November 15, 2010, from http://www.world-education- center.org/index.php/cjes/article/view/21 1394 I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 Ilker Yengin/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2010) 000–000 [23] Kurt, M. (2009). Postmodern Education: Critical and Border Pedagogies. Cypriot Journal Of Educational Sciences, 1(2). Retrieved November 15, 2010, from http://www.world-education- center.org/index.php/cjes/article/view/11 I. Yengin et al. / Procedia Computer Science 3 (2011) 1388–1395 1395 
work_qftnatierfdtrcloep57yea7bq	----	06 AS 17-2-23 Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust., 2000, 17, 133–140 © Astronomical Society of Australia 2000 10.1071/AS00023 1323-3580/00/020133$05.00 Cosmology on the Internet: Distance Education for the Gifted and Talented David H. McKinnon 1 and C. J. Patrick Nolan 2 1 School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, NSW 2795, Australia dmckinnon@csu.edu.au 2 Massey University College of Education, Palmerston North, New Zealand P.Nolan@massey.ac.nz Received 1999 October 1, accepted 2000 April 28 Abstract: In 1994, the New South Wales Board of Studies, Australia, introduced three high level Distinction Courses for gifted and talented students: Comparative Literature, Cosmology, and Phil- osophy. All are offered by distance education but the cosmology course employs an interactive design model and an extensive communication system that differentiates it from the other two. This paper explains the model and the way it is used in practice to organise, sequence and deliver the course. A discussion addresses ways in which the model might be used to design a wider range of courses in science for gifted and talented students. Keywords: astronomy education—cosmology education 1 Introduction In 1992, the New South Wales Board of Studies, Aus- tralia, estimated that between 2,500 and 5,000 highly gifted and talented students were enrolled in final year (Grade 12) Higher School Certificate (HSC) courses at any one time. In that year, the Board introduced reforms (NSW Board of Studies 1993) permitting such students to sit the HSC final examinations in one or more sub- jects earlier than Grade 12. Even then, it acknowledged that schools were not well placed to address the needs of these students. Typically, the students still enrolled in many more than the mandatory minimum number of subjects to qualify for a Higher School Certificate and a University Tertiary Entrance Rank score. Indeed, some continued to take up to twice the number of required subjects to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. In 1993 the Board of Studies, in partnership with Charles Sturt University and the University of New England, decided to develop and deliver, using conven- tional distance education methods, nine high-level distinction courses. These would be especially tailored to meet the needs of gifted and talented students, providing them with the kind and level of intellectual challenge that they appear unable to get through regular school programs. The first three courses, Comparative Literature, Cosmology and Philosophy, were offered for the first time in 1994, with the expectation that the remaining six would follow soon after. This has not happened and with the reforms to the Higher School Certificate promulgated in 1998, the three existing Distinction Courses will be offered for the last time in the year 2000. It is expected that alternative arrange- ments will be made with all universities in NSW for gifted and talented students across the state to access first year courses either by distance education or con- ventionally. It remains to be seen what these alternative arrangements will be. While all three existing courses have been delivered by distance education, the Cosmology Course is mark- edly different from the other two. It employs an interactive design model incorporating a comprehensive communication system ranging from conventional mail to an especially designed Internet web site. Practical experience over five years has demonstrated how the model and its delivery system may have wider applica- tion than the Cosmology Course in which they were developed and trialed. It is to be hoped that the uni- versities will take note of the model presented in this paper as they enter into negotiations with the Board of Studies for the delivery of courses to the gifted and tal- ented students in our high schools. This paper explains the model and the way it has been used in practice to organise, sequence and deliver the Cosmology Distinction Course to highly gifted and talented senior secondary school students is explained. The students are widely separated from each other and the course provider, Charles Sturt University, with many living in remote places throughout the state of New South Wales. The paper is organised in sections cover- ing: the content, structure and educational philosophy of the Cosmology Distinction Course; the interactive design model, its elements and the relationships between them; application of the model to deliver the course; and, implications and suggestions for the education of highly gifted and talented students in the future. 2 The Cosmology Distinction Course Students learn and explore core concepts and ideas selected from the contemporary cosmology literature augmented by material from history, sociology and mathematics as well as physics and astronomy. Read- ings from two texts are supplemented by readings from such journals as Astronomy , The Astrophysical Journal , Nature , New Scientist , Scientific American and Sky & https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core 134 D. H. McKinnon & C. J. P. Nolan Telescope . Each year an Update booklet is produced containing the latest research findings from the literature that relate to topics covered later in the course. These materials are distributed to students in the conventional distance education form—paper. The pile of readings in nine modules, an update booklet and an information booklet often creates concern for the students. Nonethe- less, few withdraw in the early stages. Students’ learning is assessed through completion of three written assignments (30%), two examinations (40%) and a self-chosen major project (30%). The pro- ject, written as a report typically between 7,000 and 12,000 words on a topic chosen by the student, is com- pleted and submitted before formal HSC examinations begin. This approach contrasts with typical HSC procedures where 50% of the mark is based on a final examination and the other 50% on school assessment. The primary aim of the course is to provide students with a highly challenging and motivating educational program that can be delivered to them wherever they live in New South Wales (NSW Board of Studies 1995). The educational philosophy of the course is that all scientific knowledge is contestable. In Cosmology, explanations of the universe and its origin evolve in response to the ever increasing volume of observational data that constantly challenges existing assumptions and theories. This stands in contrast with a view, common in schools, that science is an immutable body of know- ledge that students must absorb and reproduce for the purposes of assessment and evaluation in the Higher School Certificate. During the course, students experience the contest- ability of knowledge first hand during residential schools (an element of the design model described below) when they listen to, and interact with, leading Australian and international astronomers and cosmolo- gists who work at the cutting edge of research. The learning and understanding begun here continues in conversations, conducted using electronic communica- tion tools, with the astronomers and cosmologists, with peers and with the course coordinator. Since its commencement in 1994, approximately 120 students have participated in the Cosmology Distinction Course. Almost equal numbers of female and male students have undertaken the course and they have been drawn equally from public and private sector schools in both city and country, widely distributed across the state of New South Wales. The last two years have seen a swing in favour of public sector students participating in the course (e.g. in 1999 a ratio of 20:12). Students completing the Cosmology course have subsequently enrolled in university degree courses ranging across engineering, medicine and science and some have gained entry directly to second year levels. 3 Interactive Design Model of the Course The Interactive Design Model of the course is presented in Figure 1. It comprises three key design elements, Figure 1—Model of the mixed-mode delivery system (McKinnon & Nolan 1999). https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core Cosmology on the Internet 135 print-based study modules, residential schools and sig- nificant others, and a communication system for linking the students with the elements and with each other. The modules organise and sequence the objectives, content and assessment tasks into manageable units of study. Residential schools bring all of the students together to meet and interact with each other, engage in experiential learning at world class observatories and learn from, and interact with, leading researchers. Significant others include the course coordinator, research astronomers and cosmologists who provide students with the support and guidance they may require. During the course they interact with the students in varying capacities as facili- tators of learning, mentors, critical friends, interpreters and discussants. In the Model, the communication system connects the students in varying ways with each of the three design elements located at the vertices of the triangle. The specific means of communication range across such traditional tools as postal mail and telephone to the more modern tools of facsimile, electronic mail, list-servers and the Internet. They are the means by which the course coordinator, the students and other key persons associated with the course distribute and receive materials, interactively address and resolve issues, prob- lems and concerns, share good ideas and communicate their latest discoveries. While in the early stage of the course, the use of postal mail, telephone and facsimile predominate, the students rapidly acquire the skills needed to make extensive use of the more sophisticated digital forms. The location of students at the centre of the Model and also at the centre of the communication system represented by the shaded circle signifies the student- centred nature of the course. Interaction between the design elements creates the environment for students to learn effectively throughout the course. The thin double- headed arrows signify inter-dependency among the design elements and the dynamic and mutually sup- portive interaction between them. The thicker arrows indicate that the students interact with each of these elements, but that the locus of control rests with them, i.e. when they are studying the course materials, par- ticipating actively in residential school activities, communicating with others, initiating, designing and completing a project, and perhaps developing new ideas. 3.1 Interaction between Design Elements and Communication System The communication system in action mediates all stu- dent interactions with the three design elements of the Model. It provides them with the means to study not only the contents of the course but also to access a much wider range of research information and ideas, and significant others with whom to explore and discuss them. It does this in three main ways through use of: (i) the Internet and a web site * especially designed for the course to access the latest research information in both astronomy and cosmology; (ii) electronic mail to com- municate personally with peers, the course coordinator and significant others around the state of New South Wales and the world; and (iii) list servers to engage in debates with their peers, and others, in an open forum on topics of interest in astronomy and cosmology. Figure 2 is a cumulative frequency chart of students’ communications during 1998 on the two electronic forums (ListServe) that were set up for them. The data set for this figure are taken from interactions up to and immediately prior to the second residential school in June. In total, 32 students commenced the course in February but by April, five had decided that the work- load was too great and had withdrawn. The social dimension of communicating online with their peers outnumbers the interactions related to serious cos- mology topics by about 4 to 1. Maintenance of the social relations created during the first residential school is a high priority to the students. Rather than present extensive analyses of the inter- actions amongst students on the electronic forums, an attempt to capture students’ increasing mastery of the communication tools as they progress through the course has been made in Figure 3. As this happens, demands made of them by the residential schools, the c o u r s e c o n t e n t a n d t h e p r o j e c t n e c e s s i t a t e b o t h qualitative and quantitative shifts (i.e. discontinuities in the line graph) in the way they use different com- munication tools to engage with and master the course content. The discontinuities divide the course into four p h a s e s w h i c h c o r r e s p o n d w i t h c h a n g i n g s t u d e n t orientations to the course and its contents; namely, an administrative focus in Phase I, a social interaction focus in Phase II, a content focus in Phase III, and a * http://hsc.csu.edu.au/cosmology/. The site went live in June 1996. It supports students’ research and provides them with access to additional up- to-date research information on a wide range of Astronomy and Cosmology topics not contained in the individual modules. Figure 2—Cumulative frequency of interactions on the two electronic forums. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core 136 D. H. McKinnon & C. J. P. Nolan focus on the project in Phase IV. Towards the end of Phase IV, students become involved with the production and presentation of their project, the final assessment item for the course. Consequently, there is less need for the same level of electronic communication. Events and activities in the first residential school and the need to conceptualise a project during the second residential school trigger the first and third discontinuities while the massive increase in intellectual demand made of students in Module 4—Space and Time—triggers the second discontinuity. 3.2 Communication and Role of Course Modules During Phase I, postal mail, fax and telephone provide students with all of the course materials and answers to any questions about the organisation of the course and the first residential school. During this phase, students s t u d y M o d u l e s 1 a n d 2 w h i c h : ( i ) c o v e r a l l t h e astronomy needed to understand the more complex cosmological concepts and models addressed in later modules, and (ii) provide basic understandings which underpin the learning experiences of the first residential school. During Phase II, students study Module 3—The development of cosmological ideas. Their use of electronic mail, while extensive, is restricted to social interactions with their peers and the course coordinator. In this way, relationships formed at the residential school are consolidated and developed. During Phase III, Modules 4 to 7 challenge students to broaden and deepen their understanding. They study General Relativity, the Structure of Space–Time, the E x p a n s i o n o f t h e U n i v e r s e a n d t h e U s e o f K e y Observations (e.g. the cosmic microwave background radiation) to evaluate contemporary models of our Universe. To cope with the challenge and the massive increase in intellectual demand it makes of them, they now use electronic mail (the second discontinuity) to ask key questions and raise issues and problems that they seek to resolve with the course coordinator. In response, the course coordinator sometimes communicates, or links the students, with significant others in the wider scientific community to find answers and to clarify research findings related to the questions. In addition, students learn how to use the Cosmology Internet Web Site to locate sources of information relevant to their study, or to find resources or materials pertinent to their questions and emerging interests. During Phase IV students settle on a topic for the major project. This phase follows the second residential school during which students prepare for the project by discussing possible topics with peers, the course coordinator and visiting research astronomers. Prior to commencing the project, students complete the remain- ing two modules. Following the residential school, Module 8 develops students’ understanding of the accepted cosmological model, the Big Bang. Import- antly, Module 9 arrests any tendency to apply closure by challenging students to evaluate alternative cosmo- logical models and ways they might be tested using new kinds of observational data. Concurrent with their study of these modules, students settle on a topic and employ all the tools of the communication system (the third discontinuity) to obtain resources and the assistance and support necessary to manage the self-directed learning and inquiry more focussed and demanding than all their previous study in this course. In this phase, students expand their expertise in using the communication sys- tem as they: (1) use electronic mail and the Cosmology List Server to discuss and finalise project topics with their peers and the course coordinator; Figure 3—Quantity, quality and type of communication (McKinnon & Nolan 1999). https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core Cosmology on the Internet 137 (2) use the Cosmology Web Site and the wider Inter- net extensively to search for, and find, material directly relevant to their project topic; (3) employ the Cosmology List Server to exchange information about, and inform their peers of, the potentially useful Internet sites they have found; (4) access and use other list servers to initiate con- versations with, and seek information from, others who share an interest in cosmology; and (5) use electronic mail to establish contact with some of the research astronomers they have already met, and initiate contact with others located though their use of list servers and the Internet. 3.3 Communication and Role of Residential Schools The first residential school is a study tour of five major astronomical observatories in the central west and north- western regions of New South Wales. The second is a seminar weekend held in Sydney. In both, students e n g a g e w i t h t h e c o u r s e c o n t e n t a n d l e a r n a b o u t astronomy and cosmology through lectures and conver- sations with leading research astronomers who explain their work and its significance. Held very early in the school year, the first begins at Siding Spring Mountain, site of two observatories and Australia’s largest optical telescopes, the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope, the 48 inch Schmidt tele- scope and the 2.3 metre New Technology Telescope. Extended tours enable the students to study the structure and design of each kind of telescope. They sit alongside astronomers who explain how they are using the instruments to collect data, process the data using powerful computers, and use the results to evaluate competing astronomical theories, e.g. theories about the distance scale and age of the Universe. While students are not permitted to use the main telescopes, they are allowed to use and control a 24 inch telescope during extended observation sessions to study and photograph astronomical objects of particular interest while guided by a resident professional astronomer. At the nearby 22 metre radio telescope (MOPRA), students learn how the instrument on its own can be used to examine the struc- ture of our galaxy by studying clouds of gas and dust. They learn that the same telescope, when linked with other instruments as part of the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), permits radio astronomers to observe the centres of other galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away where it is thought that black holes exist. At Narrabri, extended tours of the Australia Tele- scope Compact Array and the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer enable students to understand how astronomers use these instruments to probe the detailed structure of astronomical phenomena in both the radio and visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. At Parkes, 300 kilometres to the south, the resident astronomer is the students’ interpreter and guide. The astronomer explains how Australia’s largest radio telescope can be used to collect information on many projects: for example, receiving radio signals from the Galileo probe in orbit around Jupiter; the SETI project which searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence; and, as part of the ATNF probe of the structure of our Universe, by collecting data on the spatial distribution of galaxies. The second residential school, held mid-year, is a two day workshop when the substantive content of the course is consolidated. Four visiting astronomers run seminars on the latest developments in Cosmology. The main purpose of the residential school, however, is for the students to choose a topic for their major project that is worth 30% of their Higher School Certificate mark in the subject. The course coordinator helps students with this task, helps the students to link up with significant others upon whom they might call for help and guid- ance, and suggests sources of information pertinent to their topic. In these settings, the students who are normally isolates in their own schools, meet and interact closely with their intellectual peers and the course coordinator. Through this they develop personable relationships that lead to ongoing communication through the electronic networks when they return to home and school. During the meetings, leading researchers and others model key scientific attitudes and processes such as how to obtain, and be critical of, observational data. The students learn how to exercise scepticism when presented with models and theories commonly taught as ‘immutable truths’ in school science. 3.4 Communication and Role of Significant Others As indicated earlier, the ‘significant others’ of the Cos- mology course are key people who can and do provide students with the support, guidance and critique they require to develop their cosmological knowledge and understanding. The course coordinator is the person of key significance for the students because of his or her overview of the course, experience in Astronomy and Cosmology, ability to provide direct and immediate support on a personal basis and ability to assist students to make contact with other key individuals. The fol- lowing three vignettes illustrate the importance of the role that others play and the sense in which they become significant to the students, supporting them in their pur- suit of knowledge. Vignette 1: Why is pppp , pppp ? In Module 4 on Space and Time, a 16 year-old male student wanted to know “... how circles ‘know’ that p is the ratio between the circumference and the diameter? Is it a function of space–time? Is it just because it is?” he asked. Whereas the response of his mathematics teacher closed the dis- cussion with a ‘yes’ to the third question, a series of electronic mail interactions involving the course coord- inator, an astronomer and the student began to reveal to the student, and to his mentors, a far greater cosmo- logical significance to his question. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core 138 D. H. McKinnon & C. J. P. Nolan In response to suggestions made on electronic mail, the student calculated p as if he were a two-dimensional being living on the surface of a sphere, e.g. the Earth. He did this for larger and larger circles drawn on the Earth’s surface by calculating the ratio of circumferences to their diameters. Thus, for a circle drawn at the equator with its centre at the North Pole, the diameter is equal to half the circumference of the Earth and p is exactly 2! That is, the student was able to demonstrate that p varied between its commonly accepted value and zero, i.e. at the South Pole. He next used his finding to conduct a ‘thought experiment’ in which he showed that for a circle of fixed diameter, the value of p varied depending on the size of the sphere on which it was drawn. He abstracted this finding to four-dimensional space–time and suggested how the curvature of our Universe could be measured by examining how p varies as larger and larger circles are ‘drawn’ within it, i.e. circles that are significant fractions of the ‘size’ of the Universe. He concluded that: if the value of p decreases the Universe is closed and unbounded; if p remains constant then our Universe is infinite and ‘flat’; if p increases then our Universe is open and unbounded. In this case, while the communications were fre- quent, sometimes lengthy and intensive over a three week period, they were conducted exclusively using electronic mail and involved only two significant others, the course coordinator and a research astronomer with a particular interest in the course. Vignette 2: Lyman- aaaa forests are not green! Material in Module 6— Further key observations — stimulated a 17 year-old male student to investigate further the ways in which observations of very distant quasars and spectral analysis of their light (the Lyman- a forest) can be used to understand the distribution of matter in the Universe, the relative abundance of dif- ferent elements, and the constraints that this relative abundance places both on the age of the Universe and the structure of space–time. The investigation resulted in the production of a 19,000 word report rated by four university lecturers as being almost equivalent to an undergraduate honours thesis (and could have been with the inclusion of a small section which reduced actual raw data to produce a Lyman- a spectrum). The report w a s t h e m e a n s b y w h i c h t h i s s t u d e n t a c q u i r e d sophisticated knowledge and understanding of complex observational techniques. In it, he demonstrated his ability to interpret the observations currently being made by researchers at the leading edge of observational astronomy. The quality of the project was enhanced through the use of the Internet and electronic mail that the student employed over a three month period. He communicated with two research astronomers located at the University of Sydney and at NASA in the USA, neither of whom he has ever met in person. They suggested useful lines of inquiry, made helpful criticisms, supplied recent research data and research articles, and provided a great deal of encouragement. Vignette 3: Weighing a galaxy. One 16 year-old female student joined the course because she wanted to be an observational astronomer. After an observation session conducted by the manager of the Anglo- Australian Observatory during the first residential school, this student said that ‘[I]t would be really neat to do a practical project.’ She was encouraged by the course coordinator and by astronomers at the residential school to pursue her desire to work on such a project and they suggested that perhaps she might join an existing research program. Over the next four months, the student made numerous inquiries by electronic mail to check on the progress being made. Enquiries made on her behalf elicited a response from the director of the Mount Stromlo and Siding Springs Observatory who arranged for her to meet, and work with, a female astronomer visiting Australia from Italy to search for ‘dark matter’ in spiral galaxies visible in the southern hemisphere. Through electronic mail communication, the visiting astronomer and the student conceptualised a project that a high school student could complete involving obser- vations to obtain spectra of spiral galaxies using the 2.3 metre New Technology Telescope. The outcome of the observations, and the collaboration that made them pos- sible, was a project containing a detailed mathematical reduction of the observational data to produce a particu- lar graph of the rotational velocity against the distance from the centre of one spiral galaxy. The student cal- culated that only about 10% of the matter in the galaxy was actually visible. The other 90%, commonly referred to as ‘dark matter’, was at very large distances from the centre which made the galaxy behave as if it was more like a rotating sheet of card rather than a loosely bound collection of 100,000 million stars. The project was based on a six day field trip to the Mount Stromlo and Sidings Springs Observatory where the visiting astronomer acted as a significant other in the ways described above, thereby ensuring that the student understood the mathematics required, and could carry out the relevant calculations correctly. The resulting project was awarded a high distinction by the exam- ination committee. The experienced and neophyte astronomers remain in regular communication to this day using electronic mail from their respective homes in Australia and Italy. Now a scholarship winning univer- sity student, she is in contact with several radio and optical astronomers both personally and by electronic mail. They encourage and support her to realise her goals in astronomy. 4 Discussion The achievements reported in the three vignettes are indicative of the kind of learning engaged in by the majority of students in the course. They reflect such student attributes as commitment to succeed, imagin- https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core Cosmology on the Internet 139 ation, creativity and intellectual virtuosity, to name a few. The nature of cosmology itself calls all the attrib- utes into play to engage student interest. Arguably, it is the design model of the course and its delivery system that created the conditions capable of sustaining the kinds of high level inquiry that appeal to gifted and talented students. Their interest and attention is sus- tained over a relatively long period of time in a course they elect, rather than are required, to take. While each element of the Model contributes to the maintenance of student interest, sustained student use of the communi- cation system appears to be the key factor. Communication is a pervasive feature of all effective learning environments. In such environments, even the most independent learners, sooner or later, need to communicate with others. In distance education, a communication system comprising various electronic media can create learning environments very similar to classrooms where learners and teachers are in direct and immediate communication with each other, and where they can readily obtain the stimulation and support they m a y n e e d . I n d e l i v e r i n g t h e C o s m o l o g y c o u r s e , explicitly incorporating the communication system into the program design enabled students to exercise control over and manage their learning, gain the support they required and achieve results that were personally satisfying. Students report that the communications aspect is what really makes the difference for them between a normal HSC course and the quality of the learning they experience in the Cosmology Distinction Course. Key factors and elements include: (i) the personal contact and communication with individuals in Australia and around the world who are committed and passionate about cosmology and learning in general; (ii) the ability to meet and interact with peers who they otherwise might not ever get to know; and (iii) the validation of best ideas, discoveries and intuitions from others who actually understand what a student may be thinking and wanting to do, and who take both seriously. In the form of distance education based on the Model, the concept of ‘learning community’ largely replaces the concept of ‘teacher’. In the learning com- munity of the Cosmology course, with the participants connected electronically, the students play roles prin- cipally as learners while significant others, e.g. the course coordinator and astronomers, play the roles referred to earlier in the paper as facilitators of learning, mentors, critical friends, interpreters and discussants. The provision of an Internet web site devoted to supporting the students’ own research in Cosmology continues to develop. New sites appear almost on a weekly basis. Students now post their findings of important and relevant web sites to the Cosmology site for others to peruse. While the final projects presented in previous years were of a generally high quality, the projects produced through use of the Internet stand out as excellent. The Internet provided these students with resources that kept them up to date with the latest developments. New discoveries arising from the developments are exciting and the excitement is infectious. Access to the Internet and the Cosmology Web Site communicated this excitement and helped the s t u d e n t s t o m a i n t a i n h i g h l e v e l s o f i n t e r e s t a n d motivation. If use of the interactive design model created an environment conducive to high level learning and achievement in the Cosmology Course then there appears to be no reason why, in principle, it cannot be applied more widely to develop and deliver other courses and programs for gifted and talented students. In the present case, the students happened to be working at the HSC level. Meeting the needs of these students may deserve priority at a point when they are on the verge of university study. It is equally important to consider ways the Model might be used to develop courses suitable for both a wider and younger range of gifted and talented students. It is important to note, in passing, that changed pol- itical circumstances and recommendations made in a recent review of the Higher School Certificate (McGaw 1997) will result in the discontinuation of Distinction Courses per se and the other six courses referred to at the outset will not now be developed. The Government will initiate, however, joint discussions involving the Board of Studies, school education authorities and uni- versities to negotiate curriculum, delivery, and credit transfer arrangements, and in the meantime retain the existing courses until the proposed new arrangements with universities are established (NSW Government 1997). It is now planned that Distinction Course will end in the year 2000. Negotiations with universities are slow to start. Little time remains if they are to offer access under the new Higher School Certificate umbrella in the year 2001. The curriculum at this level needs to be negotiated to the benefit of our brightest students so that their potential can be developed and that they are not dis- advantaged. The underlying message is that schools and universities must increasingly consider ways by which communication and information technologies might be employed either to enhance, and perhaps replace, existing delivery methods in the interests of continually improving secondary school education for the gifted and talented, and in time perhaps even the broad range of students. To the extent that the Interactive Design Model has demonstrated its value, then it suggests a strategy for delivering high quality education by the schools of the future. References McGaw, B. 1997, Shaping their future: Recommendations for reform of the Higher School Certificate. Department of Training and Education Coordination, New South Wales McKinnon, D. H., & Nolan, C. J. P. 1999, Distance education for the gifted and talented: An interactive design model. The Roeper Review , 21, 320-5 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core 140 D. H. McKinnon & C. J. P. Nolan NSW Board of Studies 1993, HSC Pathways Implementation Guidelines (North Sydney: Board of Studies NSW) N S W B o a r d o f S t u d i e s 1 9 9 5 , H i g h e r S c h o o l C e r t i f i c a t e Distinction Courses: An information book (North Sydney: Board of Studies NSW) NSW Government 1997, Securing their future: The NSW Government’s reforms to the Higher School Certificate (Sydney: NSW Government Printer) https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 01:41:50, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/10.1071/AS00133 https://www.cambridge.org/core 
work_qhfdonkzdzfwjjmdn7g2uaklhu	----	Microsoft Word - Amin Eisazadeh.doc Abstract—This paper reports the findings of a research conducted to evaluate the ownership and usage of technology devices within Distance Education students’ according to their age. This research involved 45 Distance Education students from USM Universiti Sains Malaysia (DEUSM) as its respondents. Data was collected through questionnaire that had been developed by the researchers based on some literature review. The data was analyzed to find out the frequencies of respondents agreements towards ownership of technology devices and the use of technology devices. The findings shows that all respondents own mobile phone and majority of them reveal that they use mobile on regular basis. The student in the age 30-39 has the heist ownership of the technology devices. Keywords—technology devices, mobile phone, distance learners, techno readiness Index, Age I. INTRODUCTION ISTANCE Learning Readiness was defined as the degree to which an individual or institution is prepared, willing and has the capacity to participate in the digital world of education [1].The history of data collection on assistive technology devices in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) reflects the long – standing interest in the topic in the health care and disability communities. Assistive technology consists of devices and other solutions that assist people. The rapidly evolving technological developments have affected the nature of mobile phone and TV, as the TV is no longer a set of pushed schedule of programs; instead, viewers select channels at his or her own discretion. The mobile phone has transcended from a simple technological object into functioning “Swiss army knife” of media devices supplying different technological functions for specific phone –based capabilities, ranging from internet access, MP3 Player, SMS, camera, video to email, all of which fuels the consumers’ A.A. Andaleeb is with the School of Distance Education post doctoral fellow, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden 11800 Pinang. Malaysia (e-mail: andaleeb09@gmail.com) Rozhan M. Idrus, Ph.D Professor of Open and Distance Learning &Technology Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia http://www.rozhanidrusprof.com(email:rozhanmidrus@gmail.com) Issham Ismail Coordinator / Prinsipal Researcher mobile Learning School of Distance Education Universiti Sains Malaysia USM 11800, Penang, Malaysia (email: issham@usm.my) A. K. Mokaram is with the School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden 11800 Pinang. Malaysia (e-mail: mokaramalaly@gmail.com). demand for immediacy and connectivity. This has been further encouraged by Web2.0 led mobile phone usage ,i.e. accessing blogs downloading UGC [2].this has led to the advancement of ubiquitous social paradigm, which includes the developmental stages of wireless applications support , such as RFID, IP TV and Wipro The diversification and ubiquity of mobile TV phone services are being adapted to cater to the consumer’s needs and their ever changing media consuming habits Consequently, diversification fuels personalization as the market becomes more sophisticated, seeking greater interactivity. The emerging innovative services to consumer offer personalized and time shifted content of high value [3],[4]. Currently, distance learning has grown into a higher education industry and has become one of the main pathways to global education [5]. Alexander and Blight [6] stated that “the combination of information technologies and telecommunications has meant that world events are no longer localized, but spread around the world within a split second via technologies…For those with access to these technologies, the global village has arrived” (p. 20). Allen and Presnal [7] asserted that technology is used in education because it could improve access to education. It reduces cost/increase efficiency, improves quality, provides “on demand” or “just in time” learning, and allows a learner centered approach. If information and communication technologies are used effectively, Sachs [8] stated that they could help create a trained, educated and healthy workforce capable of building a vibrant and successful economy. The value of a network increases as its number of users grows. By participating in the global information network, developing nations not only add value to the rest of the world, but also benefit from the ability to use the network to communicate and trade with all other users. For this reason, he proposes that it becomes ever more important for the developing world to get ready for the networked world. Their participation in the networked world could provide new ways for developing countries to improve their economic, social, and political wellbeing. The bridges.org [9] document stated that “E-readiness assessments are a valuable tool with which to gain more informed, region-specific understanding and to develop an action plan” (p.4).A challenge for cross-cultural assessment is to construction inventory suited to the local needs while retaining the standards of validity and reliability expected of established assessment instruments [10].Readiness is not merely to be ready to get involved in a distance learning Technology Readiness Index (TRI) among USM Distance Education Students According to Age A.A.Andaleeb, Rozhan.M.Idrus, Issham Ismail, and A.K. Mokaram D World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:3, 2010 229International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(3) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 3, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 27 71 http://waset.org/publication/Technology-Readiness-Index-(TRI)-among-USM-Distance-Education-Students-According-to-Age/12771 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 venture, but also about the expectations of the institutions for the distance learning projects. Readiness assessment could give information about skills, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis), and special needs [11]. If information and communication technologies are used effectively, Sachs [8] stated that they could help create a trained, educated and healthy workforce capable of building a vibrant and successful economy. The value of a network increases as its number of users grows. By participating in the global information network, developing nations not only add value to the rest of the world, but also benefit from the ability to use the network to communicate and trade with all other users. For this reason, he proposes that it becomes ever more important for the developing world to get ready for the networked world. Their participation in the networked world could provide new ways for developing countries to improve their economic, social, and political wellbeing. In a study conducted by the Masie Center [12] with U.S. participants, it was found that the amount of support project participants received actually increased their willingness to begin the technology-delivered portions. The level to which participants felt they were supported was one of the primary indicators regarding their participation in e-learning. Also research indicates that an instructor’s motivating style is an important educational construct [13] ,[14] because it affects students’ developmental and academic outcomes [15],[16] ,[17]. Carrasco, Fuentes-Berain, and Martínez [11] stated: Society in Latin America is an allegory of duality. Although high-end consumers are in the minority, their demographics are more encouraging (they are younger and have larger families) than their peers in developed countries. Whereas moderately low- income and very low-income urban citizens, 88 percent of whom are literate, are poor by international standards, but they are also hungry for unconventional ways of becoming networked ready . II. METHOD A total of 190 questionnaires were distributed to School of Distance Education University Sains Malaysia (USM) student (DEUSM) from, Management programme, Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences ranging in age from 20 to above 50. The ethnic make-up consisted of Malays (57.1%), Chinese (25.7%) and Indian (10.5%) and 6.7% claimed they were indigenous. All of them affirmed that they have or owned mobile phones. The data was collected using simple random sample through secondary data based on the online databases and past researcher’s studies. The questionnaires were administered by distance education lecturers in this school and were completed by the students during new student’s registration day. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Once the data was collected, the data was coded and analyzed using descriptive statistic to determine the percentage of the respondents towards the priority in using the technology devices. As seen in Table (1)The results show that 57.8% of the respondents owned normal/desktop computer,84.4% Laptop computer, 100% Mobile Phone,40% MP3 player / MP4 player, 82.2% TV, 84.4% Radio, 60.0% Digital camera 6.7% Video game console (e.g. PlayStation, Xbox, …),4.4% Handheld gaming device (E.g. Nintendo, PSP). The results show that the entire respondent owned mobile. Students benefit from the innovative ways that we can utilize technology the educational transaction processes. The mobile phone holds the only distinction of a media or tool has become part of the student. Provided the battery is sufficiently charged [18] Among numerous choices mobile technology provides for education, instant messaging is one of the most widely spread applications. Some educational experiments have been carried out in this area. SMS were sent to students to inform of their schedule, changes in it, examination dates, places, marks, etc. [19] or were used to guide, prompt and support the students in learning [20]. A survey in Norway also showed that students considered SMS as a proper tool for spreading information about lectures, schedule, etc. [21] The findings were generally positive. However, most of the implemented messaging systems were not directly for learning, but for managing learning activities. TABLE I THE OWNERSHIP OF TECHNOLOGY DEVICES Device Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Desktop computer 26 57.8 57.8 57.8 Laptop computer 38 84.4 84.4 84.4 Mobile Phone 45 100.0 100.0 100.0 MP3 / MP4 player 18 40.0 40.0 40.0 TV 37 82.2 82.2 82.2 Radio 38 84.4 84.4 84.4 Digital camera 27 60.0 60.0 60.0 Video game 3 6.7 6.7 6.7 Handheld gaming device 2 4.4 4.4 4.4 The data in Figure (1) shows that all the respondent Higher property for Mobile Phone , Radio and Laptop computer, TV, Digital camera, Desktop’ computer , MP3 player / MP4 player and the lowest property for Handheld gaming device (E.g. Nintendo, PSP...)and Video game console (e.g. PlayStation, Xbox, …) World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:3, 2010 230International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(3) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 3, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 27 71 http://waset.org/publication/Technology-Readiness-Index-(TRI)-among-USM-Distance-Education-Students-According-to-Age/12771 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 Fig. 1 The ownership of technology devices As seen in Table (2) the results show that the respondents from the age (20-29) owned 23.1% normal Desktop31.6% Laptop37.8% Mobile 38.9% Mp3 40.5% TV36.8% Radio 33.3% Camera and no one of them had Handheld gaming device. the respondents from the age( 30-39) owned 46.2% normal Desktop 44.7% Laptop 42.2%Mobile 38.9%Mp3 40.5% TV 42.1% Radio 44.4% Camera 66.7% Handheld gaming device. The age (40-49) owned 26.9%normal Desktop 21.1% Laptop 17.8%Mobile 22.2% Mp3 18.9%TV 18.4% Radio 18.4% Camera and 33.3% Handheld gaming device. The age of (50-above) owned3.8% normal Desktop 2.6%Laptop 2.2%Mobile 2.6%Radio and no one of them had Mp3, TV, Camera or Handheld gaming device. TABLE II THE OWNERSHIP OF TECHNOLOGY DEVICES Age 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-above Desktop 23.1% 46.2% 26.9% 3.8% Laptop 31.6% 44.7% 21.1% 2.6% Mobile 37.8% 42.2% 17.8% 2.2% Mp3 38.9% 38.9% 22.2% .0% TV 40.5% 40.5% 18.9% .0% Radio 36.8% 42.1% 18.4% 2.6 Camera 33.3% 44.4% 18.4% .0% Handheld gaming device .0% 66.7% 33.3% .0% The results show that the most of the respondent in age from (30-39) owned the heist amount of the technology devices. and the respondent in age from (50- above) owned the lowest amount of the technology devices .The technology readiness index (TRI) is a framework that relates to technology in general. The traits differ among people and therefore their beliefs about various aspects of technology differ. The relative strength of each trait indicates a person’s openness to technology. TRI thus reflects a set of beliefs about technology but is not an indicator of a person’s competence in using it. Fig. 2 The ownership of technology devices a according to the respondent age The data in Figure (2) shows that the respondent higher property for technology devices was in the stage (30-39) in the stage (20-29), then the stage (40-49) and the lowest in the stage of (50- above) the respondent didn’t have any of MP3 / MP4 player ,TV, Camera and Handheld gaming device (E.g. Nintendo, PSP...). Following traditional Internet communication, mobile communication is recently emerging in the field of education. Compared with computer mediated communication, the high penetration rate of mobile devices and high popularity among the youth [22] lend mobile communication superior advantages when approaching young students. IV. CONCLUSION There is an increase use of wireless technologies in education all over the world. In fact, wireless technologies such as laptop computers, palmtop computers and mobile phones are revolutionizing education and transforming the traditional classroom-based learning and teaching into anytime and anywhere education. Following traditional Internet communication, mobile communication is recently emerging in the field of education. Compared with computer mediated communication, the high penetration rate of mobile devices and high popularity among the youth. lend mobile communication superior advantages when approaching young students. When the media are used to augment rather than substitute face-to-face communication, lean media can be more desired, since they reduce socio-emotional cues and thus reduce pressure upon people. People can express themselves with less inhibition, and act more like themselves. It is found World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:3, 2010 231International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(3) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 3, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 27 71 http://waset.org/publication/Technology-Readiness-Index-(TRI)-among-USM-Distance-Education-Students-According-to-Age/12771 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 that media low in richness with an asynchronous nature reduce pressure for people to response immediately and need to ingratiate [23]. This global now looks like small village before and to reach any where you need to own the object to be where ever you want to be especially when you have the strength and money. REFERENCES [1] Schlosser, L. A., & Simonson, M. (2002). Distance education: Definition and glossary of terms. Bloomington, IN: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. [2] Enter and Idate (2008), “Mobile 2008: markets & trends and facts & figures”, A report sponsored by IT Deusto, available at:www.enter.ie.edu/enter/cms/en/informe/432/1(accessedApril1 1). [3] European Commission (2007), “Mobile television: the EU switches on”, European Commission, Information Society and Media, 16March. [4] Priporas, C. and Mylona, I. (2008), “Mobile services: potentiality of short message service as new business communication tool in attracting consumers”, International Journal of Mobile Communications, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 456-66. [5] Steyn, P. (2001). Higher education through open and distance learning. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1(2), 1-7. [6] Alexander.s.d.Blight.(1996).Technology in international Education. University of technology, IND Education, Australia. [7] Allen, M., & Presnal, G. (2000). Critical factors required to successfully implement distance learning programs in small states. In Proceedings of the University of West Indies Small States Conference. Ocho Ríos, Jamaica, 101-105. [8] Sachs,J.D.(2003). Readiness for the networked world: A guide for developing countries. Center for International Development at Harvard University Retrieved. July.16, 2004, from http://www.readinessguide.org [9] Bridges.org. (2001). Comparison of E-readiness assessment models. Retrieved July 16, 2004, from http://www.bridges.org/ereadiness/compariso n.html. [10] Cheung, F. M. (1996). Development of the Chinese personality assessment inventory. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 27(2), 181- 199. [11] Carrasco, L. C., Fuentes-Berain, R., & Martínez, R. (2003). Networked readiness: Latin America’s last train, 102-115 (Chapter VII). Retrieved July 16, 2004, from http://www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_ reports/Reports/GITR_ 2002_2003/Latin_America.pdf. [12] Masie, E. (2002, January). The trainer of the future. e-learning. 3(1), 50. Retrieved January 17, 2002, from: http://www.elearningmag.com/elearning/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=671 4 [13] Deci, E. L., Nezlek, J., & Sheinman, L. (1981). Characteristics of the rewarder and intrinsic motivation of the rewardee. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 1–10. [14] Ryan, R. M., & Grolnick, W. S. (1986). Origin and pawns in the classroom: Self-report and projective assessments of individual differences in children's perceptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 550-558. [15] Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (1987). When free-choice behavior is not intrinsically motivated: Experiments on internally controlling regulation. Unpublished manuscript, Rochester, NY, University of Rochester. 173 [16] Deci, E. L., Vallerand, R. J., Pelletier, L. G., & Ryan, R. M. (1991). Motivation and education: The self-determination perspective. The Educational Psychologist, 26, 325-346. [17] Reeve, J. (1996). Motivating others: Nurturing inner motivational resources. Boston: Allyn &Bacon. [18] Rozhan. M. Idrus &Issham Ismail.(2008).using sms mobile technology for m-learning for physics distance learners at the Universiti Sains Malaysia.Malaysian. Journal of Educational Technology.8 (1),33-41. [19] Stone, A., & Briggs, J. (2002). ITZ GD 2 TXT – How to use SMS effectively in M-learning. In The European workshop on mobile and contextual learning, Birmingham, UK [20] Garner, I., Francis, J., & Wales, K. (2002). An evaluation of the implementation of a short messaging system (SMS) to support undergraduate students. In The European workshop on mobile and contexual leaning, Birmingham, UK. [21] Divitini, M., Hargalokken, O. K., & Norevid, P. (2002). Improving communication through mobile technologies: which possibilities? In The IEEE international workshop on wireless and mobile technologies in education (WMTE’02). [22] International Telecommunication Union. (2002). ITU Internet Report 2002: Internet for a Mobile Generation, available from:<http://www.itu.int/ors/spu/publications/mobileinternet [23] Connell, J., Mendelsohn, G., Robins, R., & Canny, J. (2001). Effects of communication medium on interpersonal perceptions. In 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work, Boulder, Colorado, USA. A.A. Andaleeb is with the School of Distance Education post doctoral fellow, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden 11800 Pinang. Malaysia (e-mail: andaleeb09@gmail.com) Rozhan M. Idrus Ph.D Professor of Open and Distance Learning &Technology Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia http://www.rozhanidrusprof.com(e-mail:rozhanmidrus@gmail.com) Issham Ismail Coordinator / Prinsipal Researcher mobile Learning School of Distance Education Universiti Sains Malaysia USM 11800, Penang, Malaysia (email: issham@usm.my) A. K. Mokaram is with the School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden 11800 Pinang. Malaysia (e-mail: mokaramalaly@gmail.com). World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:3, 2010 232International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(3) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 3, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 27 71 http://waset.org/publication/Technology-Readiness-Index-(TRI)-among-USM-Distance-Education-Students-According-to-Age/12771 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/12771 
work_qkptcbnk2vf4bpzhxgdisontsa	----	beau90.PDF Beaudoin, M. (1990). The instructor's changing role in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 4(2). The Instructor’s Changing Role in Distance Education Michael Beaudoin The emergence of increasingly student-centered learning activities in the 1970s, facilitated by new instructional technology introduced in the 1980s, is contributing to a dramatic evolution in faculty roles, and raises fundamental questions within the professoriat about how it will contrib- ute to the teaching-learning process in the 1990s and beyond. In particular, the likelihood of sig- nificant increases in distance learning enrollments within the next decade will have a profound impact on faculty members’ instructional roles. Distance education revolves around a learner-centered system with teaching activity focused on facilitating learning. The teacher augments prepared study materials by providing explana- tions, references, and reinforcements for the student. Independent study stresses learning, rather than teaching, and is based on the principle that the key to learning is what students do, not what teachers do. It is a highly personalized process that converts newly acquired information into new insights and ideas. The institution’s function, and the task of its instructional personnel, is to facilitate and enhance that process - despite the distance - to achieve optimum learning out- comes. Rather that transmit information in person, many faculty will have to make the adjustment to monitoring and evaluating the work of geographically distant learners. Those faculty accustomed to more conventional teaching modes will have to acquire new skills to assume expanded roles not only to teach distance learners, but also to organize instructional resources suitable in content and format for independent study. A course previously designed as an intimate round-table semi- nar involving a dozen students known to the faculty member will have to be reconfigured for use by perhaps several hundred students who may never meet the instructor or one another, although all will be exposed to the same course material and will complete the same assignments and tests through the use of distance media. Further, faculty engaged in distance education must be adept at facilitating students’ learning through particular attention to process, unlike classroom-based teachers whose traditional role is largely confined to selecting and sharing content. This represents a major shift from the European model of the teacher as the exclusive source of information to being one of several resources available to learners who become more active participants in the process. This is a difficult and threatening situation for teachers, most of whom are themselves products of classroom-bound education and whose professional identities are linked to the traditional image of the teacher at the front of the classroom and at the center of the process. The teaching function is not becoming obsolete, but the role is being transformed dramati- cally. In addition to being adept at both content and process, faculty must recognize the role of instructional technology as a learning resource. The teacher is increasingly an intermediary be- tween students and available resources. Teachers must know something about the potential of technology to facilitate learning and to enhance their own effectiveness. They must come to rec- ognize how technological applications can create greater access to education by overcoming time and distance problems, and how it provides for diverse learning needs because it has the capacity to deliver material in many different formats. Information technologies can assume many of the roles that instructional staff have traditio n- ally played, thus freeing them for new roles in assisting students. But faculty often do not under- stand partnership roles they can play when allied with technology in the teaching-learning proc- ess. Indeed, many simply conclude that technology has usurped their function as educators. Fac- ulty need assistance in order to understand and adapt to new roles; if they resist, the technology probably will not be used effectively and learning goals will be compromised. Despite significant progress in the use and suitability of technology for educational purposes - computers are more user friendly and more compatible; there is more available software and in- creased access, etc. - technology still remains complex, especially when media are combined (e.g., visual, text, audio, data). Significant difficulties remain, particularly for those new to these modes of instruction, in effectively integrating the latest technologies with pedagogy and curric- ula. Most educational administrators have no sense of the implications of, or possibilities for us- ing technology to teach, and the majority of faculty remain resistant to, or ignorant of, the com- puter as an instructional tool (McNeil 1988). Conversely, some faculty become overly dependent on technology. For example, some typically overuse tape or broadcast video, or do not know how to meld such resources with their own materials in a planned, purposeful way that supports their learning objectives. The medium too often assumes a causality of its own, supplanting the teacher and resulting in technology-bound activity that is debilitating to both teaching and learning. The task of the distance instructor or mentor is much more than merely grading students’ submitted material. Ideally, the instructional process involves: • Diagnosing the student’s readiness to learn, • Monitoring student progress toward objectives sought, • Recognizing and discovering a student’s learning difficulties, • Stimulating and challenging students to further efforts, • Evaluating the quality of a student’s learning, and • Assigning a grade to estimate learning outcomes (MacKenzie, Christensen and Rigby 1968, 137). Because the distance factor minimizes dialogue between teacher and learner and imposes a relatively high degree of structure in order that learning goals be met, it is alleged by critics of independent study that distance education fosters dependence rather than develops critical thinking and self-directed learning as claimed by its proponents. Some argue that the chief skill acquired by the distance student is the ability to provide perfunctory answers based on readily apparent information contained in the course material. One view contends distance education is rigidly prescriptive and creates dependency; another argues that it promotes autonomy and en- courages self-directed approaches to learning. There are many prevalent myths that haunt distance educators and serve to call their credibility and effectiveness into question: distance learning is too impersonal, there is minimal need for faculty, and there is an absence of quality control, to name a few. In fact, despite the distance factor, off-campus students are much more likely to develop a productive one-to-one relationship with a teacher than is the average student attending campus-based classes. Students studying in- dependently, but receiving periodic contact from support staff as well as detailed evaluations and feedback from instructors supervising their work, are far more likely to feel a bond with their institution than is the student commuting to a campus one or two evenings a week, sitting anonymously in a classroom of 40 or 50 students where interaction with the teacher is limited despite their physical proximity to one another. Although independent study is subjected to a good deal of criticism within the academic com- munity, the auto-didactic mode of learning is typically the most common means adults utilize for acquiring information. Given proper resources (e.g., effective instructional guides, appropriate texts, adequate faculty communication, and strong support services), independent study is actu- ally a comfortable mode of learning for most adults who have been long absent from any formal educational situation. Facilitators of self-directed learning must understand their role at the outset of the process and make it clear to learners. Self-directed learning does not mean that learners have complete con- trol over the choice of content, methods, purposes, and criteria. If this were so, the educator would play no meaningful role in the educational equation, becoming only of marginal value in learners’ efforts. Instructional personnel must interact in a transactional manner if a genuine teaching-learning process is to be present. Because the concept of self-directed learning implies empowerment of learners through lessened dependency on teacher direction, skeptics assume this mode of teaching is less time consuming than the traditional lecture-discussion format. However, instructional tasks associated with self-directed learning are generally more time con- suming than working with standardized curricula and learning formats. Adult educators who readily subscribe to the aim of increasing learners’ self-direction will be most effective in contributing to that goal if they ease participants into self-directed modes of study, rather than presuming that this capability already exists. Students may have only vague notions of what self-directed study means and of their own capacity for working within such a format. Learners are in varying stages of cognitive and psychological readiness for self-directed learning activities and, while for some the format seems familiar and comfortable, for others the prospect of studying in this way is intimidating. If given to them prematurely to become immure independent will likely serve as an impediment rather than as a stimulus for their learning (Brookfield 1988, 30). To provide the critical elements of dialogue and direction essential to support and sustain the distance learning process, most educational institutions that sponsor independent study programs utilize some combination of full- and part-time faculty, although few distance education pro- grams employ full-time instructors exclusively engaged in supervising off-campus learning ac- tivities. Many programs also employ appropriately credentialed practitioners who may have little previous teaching experience. Although the acceptability of utilizing practicing professionals as distance learning mentors is increasingly recognized, the credibility of such programs still rests upon involvement of “regular” faculty, even if only in limited capacities and in small numbers. It is unlikely that independent study programs will be able, for the most part, to recruit more than a few faculty who have previous experience teaching within a distance learning context. Accordingly, it becomes necessary to provide orientation and training to enable new instructors to become acclimated to the unique requirements of distance teaching. Attempts to provide fac- ulty with assistance or advice designed to acquaint them with program procedures and student needs may be resisted by some faculty who will interpret such efforts as telling them how to teach. But, it is essential that expectations be made clear from the outset, lest faculty assume whatever previous experience they may have had with adult learners will carry them through this new assignment when, in fact, their new instructional roles may require drastically different ac- tivities and approaches. Administrators seeking resources for the establishment of a distance learning program must take pains to cultivate the support and interest of faculty. Many educators are familiar with the concept of independent study, but may be unfamiliar with how it actually works. They may be especially skeptical about how distance learning approaches can be properly arranged in such a way as to create an academically sound, degree-granting program. Indeed, the idea of anyone actually acquiring a baccalaureate degree through off-campus study is outrageous to many tradi- tional educators. A common refrain is: “Well, those new techniques may work in some other dis- ciplines, but they certainly won’t in mine.” Various studies conducted for the purpose of ascertaining faculty receptivity toward external degree programs have determined most respondents were either apathetic or hostile toward such non-traditional programs. Participating faculty tended to be positive, while skepticism tended to increase with lack of experience with such programs, especially among tenured faculty. Even among those who were inclined to support off-campus study, the majority still had reservations about correspondence courses and other independent study approaches (Johnson 1981, 229). Such alternative delivery systems are generally misconstrued as guises to make college-level work easier for adults. Among specific approaches to consider in attracting faculty and increasing their effectiveness as distance educators are: 1. Involving faculty in program planning and curriculum development: Their input can be en- couraged through meetings, committee work, and contact with teaching colleagues, adminis- trators, and others who plan, manage, and evaluate new program initiatives. 2. Training faculty to work effectively with adult learners: There is little, if any, orientation provided in mentoring techniques for supporting distance students or in the psychology of adult learning. Exposure to recent literature in the distance learning field can also be helpful. 3. Developing more adequate support systems and a more equitable salary structure for faculty. Instructional and operational costs are generally lower for distance education units, yet their faculty receive less; their unique role and contribution must be recognized and rewarded. What Do Faculty Do? The question is frequently asked, “Just what do faculty teaching at a distance do?” The teacher’s or tutor’s role depends on how a distance learning unit decides to define this particular function. Among the decisions to be made with respect to instructional personnel are (1) should they be employed full- or part-time, (2) are they to be centrally or regionally based, (3) are they to be contracted on a long-term basis or paid for each course on a “piece-work” basis, (4) what is the appropriate teacher-student ratio, (5) will faculty have a counseling role or will they provide instruction only? (Kaye and Rumble 1981, 151). Typically, duties of faculty supervising and evaluating independent study work include the following activities: 1. Grading, after evaluating all student materials, preferably within three to five working days after receipt of students’ work; 2. Maintaining regularly scheduled office hours once or twice weekly to initiate, receive, and return messages to and from students; 3. Collecting incoming assignments and returning corrected assignments. at least on a once-a- week basis; 4. Advising program staff of any problems requiring follow-up action; 5. Maintaining current course materials (i.e., syllabi, videotapes, exams) and updating course content as appropriate; 6. Preparing suitable supplementary materials to accompany course text(s) and other learning resources; 7. Developing alternative syllabi and examinations as needed. The phenomenon of syllabism is an ever-present threat to the success of independent study outcomes. Syllabism is the tendency for students to work in a “syllabus bound” manner; i.e., to focus study only on what is prescribed in the syllabus rather than pursuing new ideas. Isolated learners working with printed instructional materials are particularly vulnerable to this approach to studying as they may feel obligated to follow the prescribed content and format without any deviation. The Outcome may be a series of assignments that satisfy course requirements, but which have resulted in very little actual learning. Students may be tempted to be only superfi- cially involved in the ideas and issues of a course, or they may become so dependent on its con- tent as to develop a rigid and mindless compliance to what is presented. Students thus develop perfunctory answers to questions based solely on self-contained knowledge of the material, in which case the teacher is simply paid to check that the rules of the exercise are adequately fo l- lowed. Despite the distance, students should see the teacher’s comments as a dialogue rather than a di- rective. This exchange between student and tutor should reflect not only how the student comes to adjust his or her views in light of the tutor’s comments, but also arrives at clearer reasons for keeping his or her own views (Harrison 1974, 4). When real learning takes place, a tension is felt between the learner and the source of new information - a dynamic that demands an engagement between student and stimulus, which is at the very crux of the learning process. Effective instructional materials assist the distance learner, having reflected on acquired knowledge, to proceed independently to the next stage. If independent study resources do not develop in participants the capacity to carry on self-directed learning, then this particular method of study has failed to meet the basic goal of producing a truly educated person able to function effectively in his or her respective environment (Kaye and Rumble 1981, 57). Changing Faculty Attitudes What can be done to aid faculty in modifying conventional teaching behaviors and acquiring the skills necessary to become effective distance educators? First, the transition to alternative de- livery systems must be aimed at securing a commitment from all levels, especially top admini- stration, to overcome resource limitations, remove structural constraints, and combat attitudinal barriers. Second, in-service programs must offer convincing, no-nonsense and on-going training that deals with how to teach at a distance, not merely how to manipulate new instructional tech- nology. Specific content areas might include: methods to establish and maintain effective communica- tion between teacher and students and increasing interaction among students; strategies for en- couraging individual and group motivation to learn at a distance; planning and managing orga n- izational details, and developing an awareness of the time demands of distance delivered courses; techniques for adding visual components to audio courses; how to access information from vari- ous sources, e.g., external data bases, library resource systems; training in desk-top publishing, spreadsheets, data bases, and word processing (Office of Technology Assessment 1989, 95). Other approaches (noted from the growing number of in-service programs offered in the United States) that can reduce faculty resistance and enhance receptivity toward distance educa- tion technology, materials, and methods are (1) permitting faculty to take computers home, al- lowing them to test the functionality of pre-packaged products and to develop facility in produc- ing their own courseware, thus developing a sense of ownership in both process and product; (2) exposing faculty, who are accustomed to working alone, to collaborative teaching arrangements, including team teaching with some combination of master teachers, student teachers, paraprofes- sionals, and others who can serve as classroom facilitators; (3) involving faculty, as their exper- tise increases, in previewing, purchasing, and evaluating materials appropriate to the instruc- tional technology available to them; (4) engaging them in pilot projects to test alternative deliv- ery systems; (5) exposing them to case studies of successful distance education activities; (6) en- couraging faculty to attend state, regional, and national distance education conferences and fa- miliarize them with the increasing number of new journals specializing in distance education; and (7) establishing an academic computing services team or advisory board across departmental lines to keep information and training current. In addition to on-going training opportunities for distance educators, adequate support services must be in place to sustain faculty motivation and satisfaction. This is especially critical for computer-assisted programs. These services include information about updated hardware and software, technical assistance, maintenance and repair of equipment, communication with ve n- dors, acquisition and cataloging of materials, demonstrating new hardware and software, and es- tablishing standards and procedures (McNeil 1990, 13). Ultimately, it is the opportunity for meaningful involvement, professional development, and institutional support that are the key factors in promoting faculty receptivity and significant con- tributions to distance education programs. A national system of teacher training emphasizing distance education should be considered, and mandatory training in distance education theory and practice should be instituted as a condition of employment for new and continuing faculty. The myth that there is a minimal need for strong faculty in such programs must be dispelled. It is precisely in the design and delivery of these new learning modes where the participation of com- petent and committed faculty, whether full-time or part-time, is most critical. As a profession, distance education has not been clearly defined and established. Educators are not likely to consciously plan a career as teachers or administrators within distance learning pro- grams. Additional job opportunities are essential if this is to become a recognized field with ex- pertise that is valued and accomplishments that are rewarded. Distance educators must also es- tablish linkages with corporate, political, social, and educational sectors and increase awareness of the philosophy, methods, and efficacy of distance learning and its suitability for diverse seg- ments of the adult population. Thousands of adults worldwide have already been served through distance education for many decades. But there are countless others who could also benefit from such efforts, and it is the further growth and systematic development of credible distance education programs that will best meet the need. This goal can be achieved only if distance educators are strengthened through a more distinct identity within higher education, and if faculty and staff now engaged in this im- portant work arc able to establish principles of good practice through increased collaboration, advocacy, and articulation of their past accomplishments, present roles, and future goals. References Brookfield, 5. 1988. Conceptual methodological practical ambiguities in self-directed learning. In Self-Directed Learning: Application and Theory, ed. H. Long, 11-37. Athens, GA: Univer- sity of Georgia. Harrison, B. 1974. The teaching-learning relationship in correspondence tuition. Teaching at a Distance 1(November):2-8. Johnson, L. 1981. Analyzing Faculty Receptivity to an Innovation. The Role of Faculty in Maintaining Quality. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Kaye, A., and G. Rumble. 1981. Distance Teaching for Higher and Adult Education. London: Croom Helm. MacKenzie, 0., E. L. Christensen, and P. H. Rigby. 1968. Correspondence Education in the United States. New York: McGraw Hill. McNeil, D. R. 1988. “Status of Technology in Higher Education: A Reassessment.” Paper pre- sented at Second Annual Conference on Interactive Technology and Communications at Uni- versity of Maine, Augusta, Maine. McNeil, D. R. 1990. Wiring the Ivory Tower: A Round Table on Technology in Higher Educa- tion. Washington DC: Academy for Educational Development. Office of Technology Assessment. 1989. Linking for Learning: A New Course for Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 
work_qlvagmhdwfch3hepylhuhgothi	----	MancaDelfino_DistanceEducation.doc 1 Learners’ representation of their affective domain through figurative language in a web-based learning environment Stefania Manca, Manuela Delfino Institute for Educational Technology, Italian National Research Council, Via de Marini 6, 16149, Genoa, Italy Abstract This study investigated how the participants of an online learning course employed figurative language to express their emotions and feelings during the learning experience. Textual analysis was carried out in the social and metacognitive discussion areas as those mainly related to the expression of the social dimension. Its aim was to analyse the distribution of figurative language across the course, to understand if figurative language elicited creation of new figurative language and to classify recurring types of conceptual categories. Results show that figurative language use increased in occurrence with crucial social events; it did not necessarily encourage the production of further figurative language ; and it allowed participants to represent their affective domain and to conceptualize the learning environment in an original manner. Introduction The social, relational and affective dynamics of learning are receiving more and more attention in the study of learning processes. Cognitive, affective and emotional processes seem to be closely related: this kind of co-origination is borne out within the context of neurosciences (Damas io, 1994; LeDoux, 1996), Artificial Intelligence (Picard, 1997; Dautenhahn et al., 2002; 2 Trappl et al., 2003), cognitive psychology (Forgas, 2000; Frijda et al., 2000), and education (Gardner, 1983; Goleman, 1995). This common origin has also been acknowledged also in the field of web-based learning. A well-established social dimension appears to be the prerequisite for collaborative learning and group-based working, especially within those approaches that are more sensitive to the socio- constructivist provisions (e.g. Garrison & Anderson, 2003). Learning always implies a social dialogical process where individuals are mutually engaged in the construction and sharing of new knowledge (Vygotskij, 1978). Pedagogical approaches based on these assumptions combine the advantages of a learning strategy that promotes deeper level learning, critical thinking, and shared understanding, with those related to the development of social and communication skills (Garrison et al., 1999). Learning experiences on the Internet is commonly characterized by written and asynchronous communication (Feenberg, 1989 ; Lapadat, 2002). In asynchronous learning environments the educational and psychological dimensions are strictly linked to the dialogues that participants construct. The written discourse also influences the socio-affective dimension of learning. Hence it is especially important to investigate how computer-mediated communication (CMC) may convey specific social affordances (i.e., the possible uses of the language that rely both on technology features and on the cultural context where the related actions take place; see Kreijns et al., 2002). There are a number of ways in which textual indicators are able to manifest social presence and express representation of learners’ affective domain (see Rourke et al., 1999; Stacey, 2002; Fay, 2003; Swan & Shih, 2005; Jeong, 2006). However, except for a very few studies (De Simone et al., 2001), the role that metaphors and figurative language in facilitating the 3 expression of emotions and the affective domain in web-based learning environments has not been investigated that well. This paper reports an explorative study about the use of figurative language by the participants in a web-based course. The use of figurative language in this web-based course emerged spontaneously. It was not solicited nor predicted by the designers and tutors. As a matter of fact, after the end of the course, the authors noticed that both tutors and students had produced a significant amount of figurative langua ge in their written discourse. The concept of “figurative language ” in this study refers to the iconic use of language aimed at expressing a non literal meaning: not just metaphors, but also other figures of speech such as hyperboles, idioms, understatement, similes, etc. (Roberts & Kreuz, 1994). Linguistic creativity is what distinguishes writing in CMC settings from written language in other kinds of communicative contexts (Crystal, 2001). For this reason, the aim of the study was to examine only those uses of figurative language that are acknowledged as original. This means that stereotyped and abused metaphors (e.g., those that express feelings in the form of “feeling down” or those belonging to the Internet such as “netsurfing”, “navigating the environment”, etc.) were neglected. Examples of creative uses of figurative language made by participants are: “In this brand-new activity, I feel a bit like a little turtle going slowly, slowly, ” or “To me, this course was the discovery of a New World ”. All of them were used by participants to communicate their learning experience, to give voice to their emotions, perceptions and feelings, and to describe from a personal perspective the online learning context. This study is a follow up of a previous research project that was based on quantitative analysis conducted to investigate the relationship between figurative language and the structure of the communication threads, and the distribution of figurative language during the length of the 4 course (Delfino & Manca, in press). The current study extends that research with further qualitative analysis to see what kind of images learners created to express their feelings and emotions towards both, other participants and the learning context in correspondence with crucial and significant events of the course. A brief summary of figurative language distribution across time and across threads follows. Theoretical Background The Social Dimension in Online Learning Early approaches in the study of CMC noted that the lack of no n- verbal cues (e.g. facial expression, posture, gesture, proximity) would limit the richness and scope of communication in such settings (Short et al., 1976; Rice, 1993). CMC was thought to be an impoverished means of communication giving little chance to gather important information about the context, the commonly shared rules of conduct and their influence on communication – all of which foster uninhibited speech and flaming (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). Lacking non-verbal indicators, CMC was seen to be characterized by a very low level of social presence and it was thought that this feature could invalidate the learning purposes. More recent studies have shown that with written communication alone, typically used in chat and e- mail, it is possible to stimulate social and affective presence, provided that interlocutors are allowed to manage their time freely (Parks & Floyd, 1996; Walther, 1996; Jacobson, 1999). Users compensate for the limitations of written discourse with linguistic inventions and adaptations (e.g., emoticons, typographical marks and other textual features, including the use of capital letters, ellipses, exclamation marks, as well as typing errors), in order 5 to express with appropriate orthographical strategies the aspects of non- verbal communication (Murphy & Collins, 1997; Crystal, 2001 ). In this way, a higher degree of familiarity and intimacy in content, style, structures, and timing of the exchanged postings would not only be a linguistic adaptation able to incorporate colloquial and info rmal registers, but it could also strike a balance between the features of the medium and an acceptable level of immediacy (Danchak et al., 2001). As a matter of fact, written communication is able to convey specific and unique socio-emotional affordances (Kreijns et al. , 2002). In the context of distance learning, social presence has been recently defined as “the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as ‘real’ people (i.e., their full personality), through the medium of communication being used” (Garrison et al., 1999, p. 94). Social presence seems to support cognitive objectives as it encourages and supports meaningful critical thinking processes in a community of learners. Affective objectives that result in appealing, engaging, and rewarding group interactions may lead to an increase in socio-academic and institutional integration and results (Rourke et al., 1999). Social presence has also been investigated as a predictor of satisfaction and perceived learning (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Richardson & Swan, 2003) and as an indicator of success and quality of the learning experience (Stacey, 2002; Shin, 2003; Swan & Shih, 2005). All these studies focus on the fundamental intertwining of cognitive and affective elements of learning processes (see also Jones & Issroff, 2005). Other studies have focussed on the relationship between the role of the tutor/instructor and affective and cognitive learning outcomes in the online classroom (Anderson et al., 2001; Baker, 2004) and on the relationship between social presence and perception of online privacy with regard to feeling at ease in an online learning environment (Tu, 2002). 6 Most of these studies have used different combinations of survey instruments (i.e. scale- graduated questionnaires) and analyses of students’ online interaction with qualitative and quantitative methods (for a survey of instruments, see van Baren & IJsselsteijn, 2004). Only a few have so far investigated the expression of social presence through content analysis. Rourke et al. (1999), for instance, identified 12 indicators of social presence belonging to three categories (affective, interactive and cohesive), based on previous research and on an analysis of online communication transcripts. In more recent times researchers and practitioners have begun to extensively study the role of emotions in online learning. These studies make use of a number of indicators: the effect of stress (Allan & Lawless, 2003), the emotions involved when starting an online course (Conrad, 2002), student distress in a web-based course (Hara & Kling, 2000), and feelings of alienation and low sense of community (Rovai & Wighting, 2005). O’Regan (2003) reports how some emotions (fear/anxiety, shame/embarrassment, enthusiasm/excitement and pride) seem to inhibit or enhance the teaching/learning process in an online environment. MacFadden et al. (2005) propose a constructivist model of web-based education emphasizing the use of emotion in e- learning, based on the belief that emotional emphasis may facilitate constructivist learning goals. Figurative Language and the Construction of Experience The literature on metaphorical and figurative language has a long, controversial and ongoing tradition. Aristotle himself points out at least two different features of metaphors: on one side he gives an explicit definition and explains how a metaphor functions (Poetics), on the other he underlines the cognitive function of metaphors in knowledge processes (Rhetoric). Since then, the linguistic structures and the related syntactic processes (Lausberg, 1998), the pragmatic value 7 (Grice, 1967; Searle, 1979; Weinrich, 1976), the psychological and cognitive role (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990; Blasko, 1999; Gibbs & Steen, 1999), the philosophical evidence (Ricoeur, 1975), as well as the links between metaphors and argumentation (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958), have become the basis of the study and interpretation of figurative language. In cognitive science, metaphoric language has a central role in everyday discourse and seems to shape the ways in which we think, creating a bridge from abstract domains to perceptual experience (Katz et al., 1998). As Lakoff and Johnson state (2003), “metaphors may create realities for us, especially soc ial realities. A metaphor may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent. In this sense metaphors can be self-fulfilling prophecies” (p. 156). From this perspective, figurative language helps to understand a new domain of experience in terms of what is already familiar. According to Ricoeur (1975), it is the rhetorical process by which discourse unleashes the power that certain fictions have to redescribe reality or to build a new one. At the same time, the use of figurative language has a central role in establishing a climate of closer intimacy between speakers. The power of imagery facilitates the sharing of personal experience and creates involvement, communicating meanings and emotions (Tannen, 1989, 1992). The affective and emotional functions of metaphors have been closely investigated in a number of studies. Emotion concepts emerge as social-cognitive constructions based on metaphors (Kövecses, 2002). Ortony and Fainsilber (1989) underline concrete vividness as the main characteristic of metaphor and figurative language in the expression of emotions. According to them, an important function of metaphorical language is to express what is difficult 8 to express with literal language alone. Their results also indicate that intense emotions lead to a greater use of metaphor than mild emotions in the description of feelings but not in the description of actions associated with emotions. Other authors (Gibbs et al., 2002) state that figurative language is special because it concerns emotional communication, which accurately reflects something about people’s ordinary conceptualizations of their complex emotional experience. In addition, it is a special communicative tool because it can create and increase the sense of closeness and intimacy between speaker and listener, allowing people to speak about their own emotions without being touched directly in a more intimate manner. For this reason it seems that people would be more likely to use metaphors and metaphorical comparisons to describe their subjective experience of emotion than to describe the actions they took in response to the emotional experience (Fussell & Moss, 1998). Method Context and Participants The context of this research was a ten-week course delivered at a distance via a computer conferencing system, held by the Institute for Educational Technology of the Italian National Research Council (ITD-CNR) during the 2002-2003 academic year, on the topic of educational technology (Delfino & Persico, in press). The course was offered to fifty-seven student teachers of the local Post-graduate School for Secondary School teachers (SSIS) and was managed by seven tutors. Ten teacher training supervisors (TTS) also took part in the course. 9 Instructional activities were carried out in small groups and organised in a number of phases. This included reflection upon the main learning theories; analysis and comparison between educational software and discussion on its integration in the school setting; and develop ment of a project for the implementation of educational technology in a specific educational context. One of the course aims was to encourage collaborative learning processes and the development of a community of learners (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994; Dillenbourg, 1999; Conrad, 2005). The use of some familiarization facilities (a Café area) and a metacognitive reflection area was especially promoted for socialization and reflection purposes. The course was delivered entirely online through a CMC platform (Centrinity FirstClass®), with the exception of three face-to-face meetings (at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the course), aimed at identifying and discussing problems, as well as reviewing the ongoing activities. Fifty- five students out of the 57 enrolled in the course posted message s in the course, as did six of the 7 tutors and five of 10 TTS. Students were organised into different streams according to their graduate degrees and the subjects they intended to teach: arts and foreign languages (N=25), scientific (N=24) and special education (N=6). Their mean age was 32.43 (SD=6.01) and 48 of them were female. For 92.31% of the participants this course was the ir first online education experience. Purpose The purpose of our overall research was to provide answers to the following questions: 1) did figurative language occur accidentally across the course or did it especially emerge in conjunction with some course events?; 2) did the adoption of figurative language encourage 10 further use by peers and tutors?; 3) are instances of figurative language classifiable according to some set of recurring types of conceptual categories? An inductive and iterative content-based analysis was conducted on a longitudinal basis in the discussion areas devoted to socialization and metacognitive reflection purposes because they are mainly related to the expression of self-disclosure and of the social dimension of learners. The results of this qualitative analysis were firstly subjected to quantitative and statistical analysis to verify the hypotheses in research questions 1 and 2; then, they were subjected to further qualitative treatment in relation to question 3. Procedure The uses of figurative language had to be original and living (Ricoeur, 1975), in the sense that it had some power to strike the reader as novel, strange, unpredictable and related to the creation of new meanings and aspects of reality. As a consequence, all the expressions that had lost their metaphorical import through frequent use, and could no longer invite creative interpretation, were not taken into account. Following the computer- mediated discourse analysis approach (Herring, 2004) that proposes classification of text features into categories and indicators (Rourke et al., 1999; Job-Sluder & Barab, 2004), the unit of analysis chosen in this study was the single posting, since it was recognized as the smallest meaningful, independent and exhaustive datum for analysis (Henri, 1992; Chi, 1997). Given that a single posting could host more than a single figurative language instance (occurrence), segments of postings were also considered. At this stage, two coders worked independently of each other and applied the same coding procedure to the same set of units of analysis. The coders had to indicate (1) if the posting 11 contained original uses of figurative language and if so (2) how many occurrences were present. Acceptable levels of inter-rater reliability were achieved (Capozzoli et al., 1999; Krippendorff, 2004). Percent agreement was 0.97, Krippendorff’s alpha and Cohen’s kappa were both 0.84. Next all the occurrences were classified according to two emerging and alternative categories, Feelings and Context, which were further analyzed according to the categories of Disguise/Orientation and Embodiment/Animation. At this stage the process of codification was repeated on the new corpus of figurative occurrences. Reliable outcomes were again obtained (percent agreement was 0.90, Krippendorff’s alpha and Cohen’s kappa were both 0.89) and disagreements were resolved through discussion. The set of categories emerged The qualitative analysis process resulted in a classification scheme with the following main categories: Feelings and Context . The former is related to the expression of participants’ emotions, moods, and affectivity. As a matter of fact, participants frequently used figurative language to express how they felt in specific moments of the learning experience, both in terms of self- representation and attribution of affective properties to the others. From further inductive and iterative analysis, different kinds of iconic images to represent this affective and perceptive domain emerged. Participants provided themselves and others with a corporeal identity, using images of animals, objects or human qualities (Disguise) and with the sense of movement in the immateriality of CMC environments (Orientation). Depending on the learning speed and the rhythm they experienced, they talked about their travel in the new world 12 of the course through representations of navigators and explorers, means of transport, animals, etc. Sometimes the topic of their discourse was the journey itself and the various kinds of actions associated to find one’s way around the virtual space. The category of Context is referred to the several iconic representations used to depict the components of the course context in which participants were immersed. In this case figurative language was used to give a soul to inanimate objects (Animation), such as the computer; or to give a body to immaterial entities (Embodiment), such as the CMC environment or the course topics. The CMC environment was represented through images of expanding cities in which it was easy to get lost or through which people really appear as they are; the computer as a playful and teasing contraption endowed with life; or the communication environment as a dancehall after the party. Outcomes The total number of postings analysed was 843: 651 were posted by students (M=11.84, SD=13.17), 177 b y the tutors (M=29.50, SD=30.36) and 15 by the TTS (M=3.00, SD=3.08). 86 out of 843 postings (10.20%) contained original uses of figurative language and they were produced by about half of the participants: 28 students produced 69 postings with original figurative language (M=2.46, SD=2.78) whereas 3 tutors wrote 17 postings (M=5.67, SD=5.03). The number of figurative language occurrences was 103, each posting contained not more than three occurrences. The a verage was of 1.19 per posting (SD=0.47). 13 The number of Feelings and Context units of meaning coded were respectively N=57 and N=46. Table 1 shows the distribution of occurrences relative to Feelings and Context, together with a specification of the different types of figures. [Insert Table 1 here] Figurative language distribution across time and across threads In order to examine the temporal distribution of written material containing figurative language, postings were analysed and then compared according to the property “containing or not containing figurative language”. Data revealed a constant trend of postings without figurative language with the occurrence of figurative language postings marked by the presence of three positive peaks. The positive peaks correspond to weeks 2, 6 and 10, and the negative one to week 5 (Fig. 1). Statistical analysis showed a variation in the use of figurative language in the presence of crucial events (for details, see Delfino & Manca, in press). [Insert Figure 1 here] The first positive peak is in coincidence with the period soon after the first face-to-face meeting, during which students were encouraged to express and manifest their feelings about the novelty of the learning experience. The negative peak is related to a particular and very delicate moment, when there was an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty due to some rather unclear tasks assigned by tutors, and participants felt tired because of the heavy workload. This negative 14 atmosphere did not emerge from written discussion: the group seemed to have chosen to be silent to show disappointment (see Conrad, 2002). The need to emphasize this kind of negative emotive involvement with silence seems in line with results of other studies that underline the presence of a transition period at the midpoint of the collaborative activity, showing a decline of task-oriented communications, motivation and positive mood (Michinov & Michinov, 2007). It was only in the second face-to- face meeting where students were able to express their negative feelings and therefore able to resolve most of their problems. The second positive peak is associated with the follow-up to this meeting, when the criticism expressed by students continued online during week 6. Finally, the third positive peak is located just before the final meeting, when students were again encouraged to share their feelings and impressions about the whole course experience. In order to find meaningful relationships between expression of emotions and self- reflection and their position in the threaded discourse, patterns of distribution of figurative language across postings and their organization in threads were analyzed. Regarding position, postings were classified according to three typologies: first posting of the thread (i.e., the beginning of a thread or chain of postings ); reply (if posted as a reply within a thread), and unthreaded posting (if it was not contained within a thread). The two distributions were not significantly different, both containing proportiona lly the same structure of posting typologies. Table 2 shows the distribution of patterns of postings with and without figurative language, per posting typology. [Insert Table 2 here] 15 In analyzing the structure of the threads to identify different types of structure and their nature in terms of replies (i.e. containing figurative language or not), it emerged that the average length of threads (i.e. the number of replies) whose first posting contained figurative language wasn’t significantly different from the length of threads whose first posting was without figurative language. The ratio between the overall number of postings and the number of figurative language postings wasn’t significantly different either. In brief, our statistical analysis demonstrates that figurative language postings were equally distributed in the two kinds of threads and that there was no real evidence that figurative language expressed in the first posting of the thread encouraged the production of further figurative language (for details, see Delfino & Manca, in press). Descriptive analysis Statistical data seem to uphold our hypothesis that figurative language was a very important linguistic resource used to express participants’ feelings, both in positive (e.g., appreciation, sense of relief, enthusiasm, etc.) and negative terms (e.g., frustration, anger, discouragement, etc.), and the ir conceptualization of the learning context in coincidence with social crucial events. The variety of concepts and images expressed by the students in order to describe themselves and their learning experience has been ascribed to the categories of Feelings and Context. In the following, illustrations of figurative language occurrences are provided in accordance with these two categories. Excerpts from the postings exchanged during the weeks that have been labelled as crucial (i.e., the second, the sixth and the tenth week of the course) are reported chronologically. S tudents’ names have been altered to preserve their anonymity. 16 Categories of Feelings: Disguise /Orientation At the beginning of the course participants were encouraged by the tutors’ to express their impressions around the ir learning experience. An enthusiastic participant offers an intimate image, and shares with other participants a look at the evening calm of her family: I really like these online courses. The day is ending (I feel just Marzullo [he is a popular Italian late-night TV presenter; author’s note]) and as the silence of the night returns, while kids are sleeping and husb ands are reading, the miracle occurs: the sissino [it is slang word for the “SSIS student”] gathers her thoughts and discovers that she is still capable of reflecting! She doesn’t keep it to herself but emails it to her meta-reflection group like a modern homing pigeon!!! (Chiara - student, Week 2) During the second week of the course participants made special use of the semantic field of navigation to express feelings related to the new learning environment. In this way a little boat became a vehicle to represent an itinerary and to explain feelings towards the learning experience, revealing some anxiety about the road ahead as there have already been some hitches: Up to now my little boat has got by without too many hitches… (Evelina - student , Week 2) The sea, a metaphor that was frequently used to depict the CMC environment, is seen in very different ways by the participants-sailors. Figurative language facilitates the act of confiding a negative experience: Yesterday I’d have been happy to jump into a virtual lifeboat; I felt a bit like a castaway. (Corrado - student, Week 2) 17 In the middle of the course – around the sixth week - images of small boats, castaways and sailing ships are replaced by those of rhythm and speed. One participant explains her feeling of slowness in this way: I’m going slowly, uphill, but like an old FIAT 500 [It is a very small Italian car famous for toughness and reliability]. I’m determined, I go one step at a time, always trying to learn something new and astonishing. I’ve managed to overcome part of my hostility towards technology… ( Irene - student , Week 6) Triggered by the postin g and in order to reduce the anxiety metaphorically revealed by the student, the tutor’s response picks up the image, cautions against the weaknesses of the small car and encourages the student to go forward, promising a beautiful view at the end of the climb: I think it’s important to understand people’s feelings about discovering in order to organize learning time and make sure that the little 500s (or those who think they’re one) get to the top and enjoy the view! (Matilde - tutor, Week 6) The course experience was not always an easy one. One of the most widespread difficulties was the need to manage the large amount of postings sent by participants every day. With the irony and levity that usually characterizes the end of a demanding experience, in the last week one student writes: Have you become online course addicts too? I’ve got to the point where I need my daily dose of “red flags” [the unread pos tings in FirstClass], or almost… (Camilla - student, Week 10) The results of the engagement required that students had some positive effects: one of them expressed her way of seeing the communication areas full of postings as an expanding city: In these we eks, it is as if we had been populating an empty and deserted city, which now is throbbing with life and traffic! (Simona - student, Week 10) 18 The profound emotional and social involvement is well summed up by one message sent privately to one of the tutors when the course was over. Just after a visit to the course environment, one student explains through figurative language an experience of great intensity: I felt like I was in a dance hall, or a club after the party was over: cans everywhere, empty bottle s everywhere, scraps, shreds, writings...... some items of clothing as well, showing us how life in there had been lived in every way, to the very end… (Antonio - student, private communication, when the course was over) Categories of Context: Embodiment/Animation In the CMC environment the computer is the medium through which communication among people occurs. However transparent it may be, some students were aware of its presence and understood its importance in order to guarantee their participation to the course. They were concerned to be let down from the chance to work with others and to communicate. In the first weeks of the course one student advises another to ignore the computer presence as a propitiatory gesture: You are CRAZY! Don’t you know that these contraptions have eyes, ears and a tongue? Don’t you know that they love playing tricks and being the centre of attention? Of course I’m joking (I’ve been contaminated by the PC!). (Letizia - student , Week 2) This invitation is caught by another learner, who declares that the difficulties with computers begin one year after their purchase: I know perfectly well that these contraptions have a soul, a depraved soul. Their dark side is revealed when they become one year old. A blessing is needed! (Elis abetta - student, Week 2) 19 Tutor reply follows up the thread. She admits her failure to influence computers’ souls, but tries to play the situation down, recurring to irony, fatalism, and a bit of non-sense: Sorry: I’m not able to give blessings. The only thing I can do is try ing to read the coffee grounds, to see whether there is an accomplishing mouse winking at you! (Matilde - student, Week 2) The course subject, as well as some postings about synchronous and asynchronous communication, is the object of a comparison and a single posting might be a symbol of hope. In this way a student expresses her sense of relief: I’m very grateful to Giovanna for her last posting. In this world full of anxiety, a reassuring posting is like dew in the desert. Thank you. (Anna - student, Week 2) In the middle of the course – around the sixth week – images of messages as “life bearers” refer to the entire course, looking back on how it has been lived and understood: Maybe in the beginning we saw this course almost as an oasis where we could relax a while. Then we realised that it was a serious matter and should be treated as such. (Serena - student, Week 6 ) The instructional method adopted required a great deal of participation and involvement, both in terms of collaborative activities and strict deadlines. Here is one of the final evaluations made at the end of the course: Are we in the army? of course not… but we’ve had a good dose of training too, haven’t we? (Giorgia - student, Week 10) One of the things people were most enthusiastic about turned out to be synchronous communication, be it scheduled or on the spur -of-the-moment. One student ’s final assessment was: 20 Well, in my opinion the chat has been a powerful way to manifest social presence, a sort of glue between people, as well as another window through which to look at each other and try to recognize each other. (Elisa - student, Week 10) While investigating the phenomenon more closely, the many facets that make chat a high quality experience came to light: The duels, the expulsions, the waiting: these make the chat real and alive too…The pace of events that can be quick or slow and drawn -out, the dialogues or the more or less in tune polyphonic choirs, the excess of monologues: what kind of emotions are passed, perceived, guessed at, shared or hidden? What kind of empathy are we able to create with the Other/others? (Bianca - tutor, Week 10) Discussion and implications for practitioners About half of all the learners in the course expressed themselves affectively and socially, and represented their perceptions of the learning context, through the use of figurative language. Most of them, in this being their first experience of online learning, had to face several new problems, including learning to communicate by written discourse in an asynchronous manner, familiarizing themselves with communication technologies, and collaborat ing within a group setting. By acting as other people, or taking on the role of animals, fictional characters, vehicles and so on, the participants explained their inner emotions. For some of them it might have been difficult to explicitly acknowledge their anxiety about the course, but they reduced this problem by changing their perspective (for instance, writing that they were in need of a lifeboat, since 21 they felt quite shipwrecked). Such disclosure was possible with the reduced degree of epistemic commitment granted by figurative language. Participants’ dressing-up, verbally creating new forms of self-presentation, was also associated with the de finition of places. The students that inhabit the virtual world implicitly create a place and refer to it as a more or less defined background. In other words, they activate scenarios and frames that enrich and complete the missing information (for example, the participant that describes himself as a sailor easily activates a marine environment, as the image of a car easily brings to mind a street). According to Dixon and Durrheim (2000), “it is through language that places themselves are imaginatively constituted in ways that carry implications for ‘who we are’ (or ‘who we can claim to be’)” (p. 32). Students of our course demonstrated the validity of this statement: at the beginning of the course their figurative language occurrences, although original and living, were still tied down to stereotypes. During the intervening weeks, they moved from recurrent and topical images (e.g., the sea in the first weeks), to more personal and elaborate ones (e.g., hills, expanding city, dance hall, etc.), thus contributing to individually conceive and socially share their in-progress experience. What is valuable in accommodating students’ need for expressing affective domain is the role played by face-to- face meetings and by the tutors. The opportunity to meet face-to-face and the frequent private chat sessions in small groups helped to sustain the community, by helping participants to face problems and, together with their tutors, find possible solutions. This appeared particularly true in the middle of the course, when disagreements were solved through discussion: the second face-to-face meeting encouraged students to interrupt their silence and write again, thus increasing their sense of togetherness (Conrad, 2005). 22 Tutors’ support and encouragement also took various forms of linguistic empathy. They spontaneously seized the moment and replied to students’ postings, picking up the same images and relating to them by the acceptance of their emotional status expressed by means of figurative language. Considerations related to these factors ha ve profound implications for practitioners and researchers in the field. Our suggestion is that the use of figurative language (in the forms of metaphors, analogies, etc.) should be taken as a textual indicator of social presence in web-based learning environments together with other indicators already suggested by other authors (Rourke at al., 1999). The use of figurative language could be adopted during the design and conduct of online learning courses, as a stimulus to manifest and share those personal emotions and feelings that are always deeply rooted in any new learning experience. The few examples provided by the literature (De Simone et al., 2001) seem to support the idea that the adoption of metaphors by tutors, for instance, can foster students’ sense of belonging to a larger community and provide a framework for role assignment, identity, and responsibility. Along with other facilitation measures, tutors/instructors would be able to use a further feature of aiming at encouraging interaction based on figurative language. It would serve as a stimulus to facilitate the intertwining of the social dimension with learning processes. Conclusions and future directions The growth of distance education is rapidly changing how and when adults choose to engage in a learning experience. This shift of perspective is gradually changing our view of the social nature of learning processes too. The latter are deeply intertwined with the affective, emotional and 23 relational factors that usually eme rge in a community of learners (Garrison et al., 1999; Swan & Shih, 2005; Conrad, 2005). In such contexts the process of learning is mostly interrelated with the process of sharing practices and knowledge with that of constructing a common and shared identity (Wenger, 1998). Results of this study reveal that figurative language may be a creative way through which people construct and reconstruct what Novak (1991) named “the liquid architecture of cyberspace”, by giving it some substance and concreteness. Figurative language can allow participants to represent their affective domain - their emotions and feelings – and to conceptualize the main learning components o n the web. Participants in this study used figurative language both to give themselves and othe r participants shape and body (Giese, 1998; Alzola Romero, 2003), disguising their corporeity and making it move in different settings, as well as to give body and soul to objects. In other words, use of figurative language was made with the effect of changing the shared ontological status of people and objects. The analysis of metaphors and figurative language also has profound implications in understanding learning processes. Roschelle (1996) suggests that “traditional aspects of the analysis of individual conceptual change have been reinterpreted as simultaneously cognitive and social” (p. 243). From this perspective, convergent conceptual change is only possible starting from “figurative, ambiguous, and imprecise language” (p. 212). One of the future directions could be to investigate how fruitful contamination between the social and cognitive spheres may occur through the analysis of figurative language production. The conceptual and experiential transaction between the two domains could be facilitated by figurative language, which could assure new metaphorical mappings between different contexts of meaning. An interesting line of 24 research might be to find suitable ways to investigate how the process of giving mental processes some level of concreteness is facilitated by the use of figurative language . Acknowledgements This study was conducted within the educational technology course for SSIS Liguria, according to a contract between SSIS and ITD-CNR. The study also benefited from funds for the following research projects: “New ICT for Lifelong Learning and Networking in the Italian Socioeconomic System”. Thanks are due to Donatella Persico and Luigi Sarti (co-designers and tutors of the course). 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The set of categories identified to analyze figurative language occurrences and their occurrences. 34 Postings without FL Postings with FL Posting typology N N First posting of a thread (n=144) 124 20 Reply (n=557) 508 49 - Replies in threads whose first posting did not contain FL 433 38 - Replies in threads whose first posting contained FL 75 11 Unthreaded posting (n=142) 125 17 Table 2. Pattern distributions between postings with and without figurative language per posting typology. 35 96 95 94 56 90 86 78 92 70 18 5 7 2 18 4 8 10 14 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 Postings without figurative language Postings with figurative language Figure 1. Time distribution of postings with and without figurative language across the te n weeks. 
work_qp754abjmzdxvoki7viuv22rgi	----	The author discusses how technology’s impact on learning and pedagogy—distance learning—presents new chal- lenges to the institutional researcher. The Impact of Distance Education on Institutional Research Trudy Bers Why is distance education the focus of an article in a New Directions issue devoted to technology and institutional research? Why, anyway, should institutional researchers pay attention to distance education? The answer is simple: distance education is radically changing higher education. An explosion is taking place in the number of distance education deliv- ery agents and students enrolled in courses. Dolence (1998) notes the fol- lowing statistics: • Forty of the fifty states have adopted virtual university strategies. • More than sixteen thousand courses are indexed on the World Wide Web. • There are already over one million on-line learners. • More than 350 companies produce courseware. • More than one thousand corporations sponsor corporate universities. • Commercial learning centers are proliferating and successful. Dolence’s examples reflect distance education delivered primarily via tech- nology in an asynchronous format, clearly the arena in which the most dra- matic, exponential growth is occurring. However, distance education actually takes many forms, including old-fashioned correspondence courses; courses delivered via audiotapes or videotapes; interactive television courses requir- ing real-time, location-specific participation; and on-line courses delivered asynchronously through the Web. The newer forms of distance education simply could not exist were it not for technology. Distance education is related to other changes occurring in higher edu- cation as well, such as movements toward competency-based education, NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH, no. 103, Fall 1999 © Jossey-Bass Publishers 61 4 62 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH credit for alternative learning experiences, and credentialing through indus- try or corporate mechanisms rather than through formal college degrees. Distance education facilitates and complements these other changes, deliv- ering learning opportunities in nontraditional ways in nontraditional set- tings, often to nontraditional students. I am convinced that distance education will have profound effects on the roles, necessary skills, relationships, and ways of doing business for institutional researchers. In this chapter, I explore what these effects may be. Specifically, I describe ways in which distance education is beginning to influence the current and emerging environment for conducting research about institutions, assessment, and strategic planning. Challenges brought forth by distance education are identified throughout. Next, I present results of a brief survey of institutional researchers in two- and four-year colleges regarding the ways in which they are responding to research demands driven by distance education. I conclude with some broad-based issues raised by distance education and some suggestions for how institutional researchers might address this new educational reality. Change Technology is an agent of change, both directly as it affects the ways in which people do their work and indirectly as it influences relationships and expectations. As Bolman and Deal (1991) note, change affects many aspects of an organization, including roles, necessary skills, power relationships, and existing agreements and pacts. Though distance education is not nec- essarily based on technology—consider old-fashioned correspondence courses, for example—the reality is that the explosion of distance education is due primarily to technology: interactive television courses, on-line courses delivered asynchronously via the Web, and courses available on CD- ROM. Such courses are dramatically affecting the organization, availability, traditional roles, nature of educational providers, delivery systems, and even the definition of what constitutes a “course.” Taken one step further, dis- tance education will inevitably change the way we think about higher edu- cation, because traditional definitions will apply only to a shrinking segment of the industry. Though not directly caused by distance education, other changes emerging in higher education are often linked with it. Such changes include competency-based education, credit for alternative learning experiences, and credentialing through industry or corporate mechanisms rather than through formal college degrees. For simplicity, I include these related changes under the umbrella of “distance education.” To illustrate the importance of these changes, consider two candidates for a job to maintain and support an Oracle database at your institution. One has just earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science; he has little work experience, though he claims to be familiar with Oracle databases. The other has passed the Oracle Certified Database Administrator test and has 63THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH two years of work experience in an environment similar to yours; she has the equivalent of only one year of undergraduate work. Which person is more likely to be hired? (For a brief description of the Certified Oracle Data- base Administrator certification program and test, see Couchman, 1998. Other software companies, including Microsoft and Novell, have similar programs. These certification programs do not require formal study for indi- viduals seeking certification; instead they focus on demonstrated compe- tencies.) Though it seems self-evident that distance education will affect insti- tutional research, the extent to which the research community or key deci- sion makers have thought about these effects is unclear. In 1997, the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC)1 convened a panel of experts to explore the impact of technology on data systems. Though not charged to look at distance education per se, many pan- elists’ comments and the papers written afterward tended to define technol- ogy operationally as “distance education.” Because so much reporting of student enrollments, student outcomes, institutional characteristics, and revenues and expenses is in the domain of institution research offices and also because distance education is virtually a creature of technology, the issues identified by the panelists illustrate ways in which technology affects institutional research. Cartwright (1998) identified six major, albeit overlapping, themes that emerged from the NPEC panel. 1. Growth in distance and technology-based education render tradi- tional definitions of student, faculty load, cost, and other measures either meaningless or misleading. 2. Unbundling of educational services, such as curriculum develop- ment, course delivery, advising, and assessment, along with changing pat- terns of student attendance (multiple institutions, stop-in/stop-out), make it difficult to evaluate outcomes. A shift to learner-centered rather than insti- tutionally centered data will further affect the utility and appropriateness of institutional research. 3. Faculty roles, including the definitions of workload and contact hours, are changing rapidly, but metrics for calculating and reporting these have not kept pace with these changes. Even more to the point, policies and practices associated with contracts, compensation, evaluation, and tenure have rarely been adapted or made sufficiently flexible to accommodate emerging faculty roles. Though not examined specifically by the NPEC panel, it should be noted that faculty involvement in activities such as advis- ing is likely to change. For example, will advisers be expected to help stu- dents choose courses from a number of distance education providers to ensure that the courses are not duplicative and, in combination, satisfy degree requirements or otherwise meet students’ objectives? 4. Student participation patterns, such as attendance at multiple insti- tutions simultaneously, taking courses through nontraditional education providers (for example, proprietary schools and corporate-based training 64 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH sites), multiple transfers, and time away from school make it difficult to track students or to assess their educational outcomes. It is even difficult to report such basic indicators as completion or transfer. 5. New instructional delivery models will make it more difficult to evaluate student progress through postsecondary education and to assess their learning gains—cognitive or achievement measures attributable to enrollment in college courses. Competency-based measures are likely to grow in acceptability and feasibility, supplanting more traditional measures of seat time and credits earned. These new models relate as well to chang- ing patterns of teaching and learning. There is growing emphasis on learner- centered instruction and lifelong learning for continual skill upgrading, professional development, and personal enrichment. Students taking courses for these reasons are less likely to want formal college credits than individuals seeking actual degrees. 6. The final theme of the panel was impact on Interdisciplinary Post- secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) financial reporting: whether and to what extent IPEDS can accommodate and accurately portray revenue streams and expenditures associated with distance education. In the next sections, I have chosen to focus on the impact of distance education in three primary areas germane to institutional researchers and often assigned wholly or in part to their offices: research about institutions, assessment, and strategic planning. Impact of Distance Education on Research About Institutions Institutional research often depends on data and information that are defined, entered, designed, and reported by a variety of other offices in the college or university, as well as by external organizations such as state gov- erning or coordinating boards or other educational institutions. Distance education is putting new pressures on these critical aspects of research and adding complexities to them. Failure to make appropriate adjustments and to accommodate distance education issues in existing data definitions, com- pilations, management, and exchanges will seriously erode the validity, com- prehensiveness, and utility of many institutional research projects. Data Definitions and Calculating Variables. A major impact of dis- tance education is that it forces the reconceptualization of data definitions and calculations for many variables that are part and parcel of routine reports and analyses conducted by institutional researchers. To illustrate, think of three “standard” measures: faculty load, student population, and credit hours. Faculty Load. Faculty teaching distance education courses may no longer have the sole responsibility for creating instructional materials, deliv- ering lectures, organizing and facilitating learning activities, and evaluating student performance. Individuals with specific skills, such as developing 65THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH courseware, might be assigned that role, while other faculty members might provide the courseware content. External certification examinations pre- pared by industry representatives or testing agencies could well supplant traditional instructor-developed-and-graded examinations. Several years ago, Armajani, Heydinger, and Hutchinson (1994) pro- posed a new model for higher education. The “Educational Enterprise” par- adigm they conceived unbundles educational services and contracts to provide them through four separate organizations, each of which special- izes in a particular area: teaching, facilities, learning resources, and learn- ing technology. Faculty would be part of the teaching organizations, which would provide instruction under contract to the Educational Enterprise. The Educational Enterprise paradigm is not operational, though aspects of the University of Phoenix, Synergistics, and other agencies that package courses for delivery by instructors hired to implement the delivery but not to design and develop course contents come close. Nevertheless, the concept proposed by Armajani and his colleagues is intriguing for this chap- ter. The enterprise would foster new definitions of faculty roles by enabling faculty members to concentrate on the instructional services each was most interested in providing. The market-driven character of the enterprise means that either the market would sustain faculty members teaching in traditional ways or they would no longer have jobs. The entrepreneurial nature would also promote redefining faculty roles to improve cost effi- ciencies as well as quality of deliverables. The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) has put forth the proposition that faculty are assets to an insti- tution and that the nature and expectations for what these assets should be providing are changing ( Jones, 1999). Jones suggests that the primary role of faculty is to deliver instruction. This delivery is distinguished by five activities that could be undertaken by different individuals who are respon- sible for designing the course or curriculum: • Designing the course or curriculum • Developing the course or curriculum through selection of materials and similar activities • Delivering instruction through class meetings that cover previously selected material • Mediating the learning process by helping students understand material • Assessing individual student learning Under the NCHEMS model, one could assign roles to different individuals, with the combination of their work incorporated into a single course. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Guernsey, 1998) pro- vides another illustration of how faculty roles are changing. It describes the emergence of a new career track, that of “instructional designer.” Former faculty members or individuals who had initially sought full-time teaching 66 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH positions appear to be filling these positions, taking either primary or key support roles for preparing instructional materials that in the past faculty members were expected to produce by themselves. A key attribute of instructional designers is their expertise in both academic computing and college teaching. This development is both practical and threatening. It is a natural extension and elevation of work done by audiovisual and academic tech- nology support staff. Instructional designers provide valuable services for faculty who may feel overwhelmed by the demands of keeping up with their disciplines and becoming technologically savvy. At the same time, the more the work traditionally vested in faculty is outsourced, even to employees of the same institution, the less faculty might be perceived as pivotal to the institution, at least in terms of teaching. This has profound implications as well for faculty reward systems and criteria for tenure and promotion, par- ticularly in institutions that give substantial weight to teaching. Student Population. Distance education affects another variable typi- cally used in institutional research, student population. No longer do courses begin and end during specific weeks of a semester. Rather, students may enroll continuously, often at more than one institution, so the course load of a single individual could vary by the week. Determining even the number of students enrolled at a single institution becomes problematic, unless the calculation is done at the end rather than near the beginning of an agreed-on period so as to include enrollments from courses that began at any point during the designated period. This trend has led to some discussion about adding an annual undu- plicated count of students to the IPEDS survey in addition to, or some might suggest in lieu of, the fall headcount now collected. No decisions have been made about this; such a change could certainly affect how and when insti- tutions capture and tabulate data. Even if IPEDS continues to collect fall headcounts only, others interested in the number of students served by insti- tutions will undoubtedly want to know the total number of individuals who take courses over the year. This change also has implications for schools with more transient or cyclical enrollments—for example, those with a sig- nificant number of individuals who enroll in winter, spring, or summer but are not included in the fall headcounts. Institutions themselves may bene- fit from having more complete counts of students, particularly if they want to report total number of individuals served. Credit Hours. A final example of a commonly used variable requiring reconceptualization because of distance education is the credit hour, the currency on which college degrees are based, in that earning a degree depends solely on obtaining a specific number of credits in designated courses at a specified grade level. Implications of rethinking credit hours are challenging, complex, and intersect with other changes taking place in post- secondary education. A fuller discussion of some of the issues and implica- tions is presented later in this chapter. 67THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH Sharing Data and Data Exchanges. Another area in which distance education affects institutional research derives from student mobility and enrollment in multiple institutions. This pattern has actually existed for years; Adelman (1998) found, for example, that 54 percent of students from the high school class of 1982 who had attended a four-year college by the age of thirty had actually enrolled in more than one school. The growth of distance education and the establishment of remote sites by colleges and universities are likely to swell the number of students who take courses from multiple institutions. A growing challenge will be to determine who these students are and how to count them, as well as how much duplication or overlap of services there might be as students avail themselves of assis- tance at more than one institution. The institutional researcher who wants to portray his or her own insti- tution can continue to rely on institutional databases. But to gain a greater understanding of what is really happening to students, it is essential to look beyond a single college or university, perhaps even beyond a single state’s higher education system. For example, we can look at retention or com- pletion within an institution, but from a national perspective and for a richer understanding of what is happening to people, it would be more informative to take a systems approach to retention and completion. What if an institution were to document that 20 percent of its freshmen left but transferred successfully and earned bachelor’s degrees elsewhere? Would that not be an indicator of success for both the institution and those stu- dents? Such an approach demands both student-centered data collection and interpretation and a perspective extending beyond a single college or university. The pressure to share data about students is already great; legislative and public tolerance for accepting answers such as “we don’t know” when colleges are asked about the number of students who graduate or who trans- fer has been nearly exhausted. A 1995 survey conducted by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) revealed that thirty-two states had comprehensive databases at the state level, including both two-year and four-year public institutions. An additional nine states had some level of statewide or significant systemwide databases (Russell, 1995). Independent institutions are more resistant to sharing, but their ability to hold out is likely to erode as legislators call for an accounting of the extent to which distance education, which so far carries a far greater expense than is usually realized, is really leading to greater productivity and efficiency. Most interpretations of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) continue to shield independent institutions from being required to share or exchange unit record data. Although there is resistance to sharing, there is also competitive pressure to deliver services students and other stakeholders expect and demand. In their quest to understand the full extent and impact of distance education, private institutions will feel ever- growing obligations to share data. 68 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH Revamping Databases and Transcripts. Ewell (1998) suggests both to facilitate transfer and to represent students’ learning outcomes more com- prehensively, transcripts and databases will have to be remodeled. The stu- dent rather than the institution will need to become the principal unit of analysis, and learning experiences beyond traditional credit courses will need to be included. The key point is that as distance education evolves and related changes such as competency-based verification of learning expand, confusion about what constitutes a “credit” will grow. Student mobility across institutions will further exacerbate the confusion unless institutions are willing to accept transfer credits earned through nontraditional means at another college or university. Currently, transcripts focus on courses taken, credits earned, and degrees awarded. Most transcripts provide detail only for courses taken at the institution issuing the transcript, so that a full history of a students’ post- secondary education requires examining transcripts from all institutions attended. Courses are equated to traditional semester or quarter credit hours. Contact hours are the commonly used metric for determining the num- ber of credits associated with each course and ultimately the earning of a degree. For example, fifteen to sixteen hours of lecture usually translate into one semester credit. However, most distance learning, particularly when delivered asynchronously, is self-paced, not tied to a given number of min- utes or hours in class. When distance education courses are, in content, nature of assignments, and expected student outcomes, structured to be comparable to traditional on-campus courses, the number of credits attached to the distance education course is rarely in question. Packer (1998) has proposed the creation of “career transcripts,” which combine features of academic transcripts and résumés. A career transcript will incorporate records of college courses and degrees, competencies doc- umented through vehicles such as industry or corporate certification processes, and educational or workplace experiences and honors that indi- cate achievement or demonstrated abilities. The career transcript recognizes and emphasizes lifelong learning and the expansion of education across space and time. For institutional researchers, replacing traditional transcripts with career transcripts will require dramatic revisions in conceptualizing and then calculating measures of student progress and institutional effective- ness. Who will lead efforts to create career transcripts or similar records is unclear. This may be an area where entrepreneurs both inside and outside the academy take the lead—for example, education administrators who see career transcripts as vehicles for generating fees for services and initiating novel ancillary services for students, or external businesspeople knowl- edgeable about formal colleges and universities but operating outside them who see this as a business opportunity. 69THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH The Relevance of Indicators of Quality. Although accrediting and accountability agencies of all sorts now stress outcomes more than inputs as indicators of quality, input variables are still used in a variety of national surveys and institutional promotions to illustrate the quality of a college. A recent special report prepared by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (1999) notes that distance education has the potential for undermining these traditional indicators of quality. Books in the library, faculty-to- student ratios, and other input measures, which continue to be used as indi- cators of quality, are quite irrelevant in the context of distance education. The Separation of Policy and Practice for Distance Education from IR. The design and implementation of distance education programs, courses, and services may be handled at institutions by individuals who are not accustomed to thinking about data collection and reporting. Typically, these people are unaware of nuances or issues for research and reporting. Thus it is important for institutional researchers to be closely linked with the individuals making both policy-level and operational decisions about distance education. Determining whether this is taking place is problem- atic, however, since it appears that many institutions are pushing to imple- ment at least some distance education to meet governing board or other external funding incentives. Institutions no doubt feel pressures to be “on the cutting edge” without having the time or foresight to think through the implications of their actions. Conversations I have had with administrators at other institutions about subjects such as the contractual implications of distance education and handling services for distance education students suggest that many issues are addressed only when actual questions or prob- lems arise. Impact of Distance Education on Assessment Distance education fosters a number of challenges regarding the assessment of student learning outcomes, a central component of accreditation self- studies, accountability reports, performance funding systems, and other mandates for reporting and accountability. Because assessment is often a responsibility of the institutional research office, which may act, for exam- ple, as assessment coordinator or faculty consultant, it is important for insti- tutional researchers to be aware of these challenges and strategies for addressing them. Modes of Delivery. Ewell (1998) has noted three changes in the teaching- learning environment induced by distance education, each of which affects the assessment of student learning outcomes. The first change is pressures resulting from dispersed modes of instructional delivery; these in turn increase the difficulty of aligning instruction with originally established learning goals and maintaining standards. Moreover, distance education may affect learning in ways that are not yet understood or measured. 70 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH The second change results from pressures created by increasingly asyn- chronous delivery modes. Because students progress at different paces, mon- itoring and measuring their progress must be detached from traditional time-based practices and data systems built on units of time such as contact hours and semesters. Though perhaps not directly germane to institutional researchers, asynchronous delivery and decoupling courses from usual met- rics such as meeting hours or weeks in a semester raise questions about fac- ulty office hours, when best to provide advising, and how long a student should be considered to be “enrolled” in a course and eligible for the insti- tution’s support services even if apparently making no progress toward com- pletion. The third change suggested by Ewell is pressures arising from multi- institutional modes of instruction delivery. Student mobility across institu- tions, complicated by their earning competency-based certifications through nontraditional means, raises real questions about the extent to which a sin- gle institution can assess learning outcomes achieved at that college or even keep track of “credits” and “competency verifications” acquired elsewhere. Related to this is the issue of college transcripts. As noted, the medium of exchange for transfer, the earned credit recorded on institutionally based transcripts, is no longer applicable in a distance education setting. The typ- ical college transcript records grades and credits earned at the institution and the total of credits transferred to that institution from elsewhere or awarded through alternative means such as proficiency credit or portfolio analysis. Institutional transcripts might not, however, list the specific courses or course equivalencies of transfer or alternative credits and are even less likely to include information about noncredit learning experiences or external certifications. Unfortunately, this is the major resource used by institutional researchers to assess student progress and to calculate accepted, if not appropriate, indicators of institutional effectiveness such as gradua- tion and transfer rates. Academic Integrity. Distance education poses other assessment chal- lenges as well. Many faculty remain skeptical about whether students in dis- tance education classes are actually doing the work they submit. Though concerns about academic integrity are not a monopoly of distance educa- tion, they take on new dimensions in environments where instructors might never meet their students face to face, see examples of their handwriting, or hear their voices. In addition, faculty do not have the capability of giv- ing in-person, real-time assignments that provide benchmarks about stu- dents’ knowledge and abilities against which to measure out-of-class work and thereby to verify that the work really was done by the student. Works in Progress. Time and permanency are another set of assess- ment issues. Web-based assessment submissions such as papers or projects, whether for course, programmatic, or institution-level assessment, can be modified continually by students. Unless the person collecting materials prints or saves the work at a specific point in time, it is never clear when 71THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH the material is “final.” This is analogous to the challenge of doing research on live rather than frozen databases. The former may be more current, but continual changes in the database make it virtually impossible to conduct research because one cannot return to the data source with confidence that it is the same each time. Style Versus Substance. Another issue related to assessment is dis- entangling presentation from substance. McLean (1999) notes that skills and creativity are unevenly distributed in classes. Recall that students who take courses via the Web and who submit their papers via the Web have all the stylistic resources of the Web at their disposal. Some students are much more capable or interested than others in accessing these resources to enhance their Web-based assignments, using features such as background color and images, links, animation, and audio. This can be confusing and potentially misleading to the evaluator, who may inadvertently confuse style with content. Complex linkages can pull the evaluator off track and make the flow of the “paper” difficult to follow. The use of nonstandard colors for links can also be problematic. McLean (1999) asserts that “when evaluating dozens of assignment products, the evaluator may come to depend upon the link colors as an indication of visited links (red means we have seen this one) and disoriented if the student elects to reverse the colors (so red means not visited).” But having visited a link, denoted through color, is not the same thing as reading, critiquing, and using information from that site in completing one’s assignment. This is really no different from a student padding a bibliography, claiming to have consulted more references than he or she has, but evaluators will have to train themselves not to be seduced by color cues that come on Web-based assignments. Reconceptualizing the Student Experience. Yet another assessment issue is reconceptualizing the student experience and then creating and administering assessment tools that are meaningful and appropriate to that experience. For example, it is normal to think of residential students as attending real-time, real-location courses, even if we acknowledge that some may supplement traditional classes with distance education classes. But there is a more dramatic pattern that can emerge: students living on cam- pus because they want to be away from home and have the experience of campus life but taking all of their classes through distance education, never going to a classroom or interacting face to face with teachers or fellow stu- dents. How do we assess the experience and learning outcomes of these stu- dents? This scenario, suggested by Dan House, director of institutional research at Northern Illinois University, is but one illustration of the kinds of behavioral changes and attendance patterns that are likely to emerge as distance education becomes more ubiquitous and as students discover and create whole new ways to “attend” college. Assessment of Learning in Traditional Classroom Settings. One of the unexpected consequences of distance education on assessment may be 72 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH the challenge it poses for improved assessment of traditionally delivered edu- cation. Despite nearly a decade of accrediting agency demands for assessment and numerous state agency accountability mandates, institutions are still struggling with assessment. Skepticism about whether students learn through distance education and the need for distance education to “prove itself” may be prompting more thorough research about student learning outcomes in distance education than in traditional courses. But if a key criterion for demonstrating the value of distance education is that its students perform as well or better than on-campus students, then assessment of student out- comes in those on-campus courses and programs has to occur as well. A book by Thomas L. Russel (1999), The No Significant Difference Phenomenon, and a related Web site (teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference) review over three hundred studies on the effectiveness of all types of distance sys- tems. Russell concluded that there is no significant difference in learning out- comes when face-to-face and distance learning options are compared for the same populations.2 Some of the most interesting work about assessment and distance edu- cation is taking place in the competency-based curriculum at Western Gov- ernor’s University (WGU), a virtual university. The competency-based credential delivered through WGU is premised on these fundamental assumptions: competencies are skills or knowledge identified by profes- sionals in a particular field as being essential for mastery of that field; one can demonstrate competencies by completing assessments; and assessments take varied forms, including paper-and-pencil or computer-based tests or practical demonstrations of skills (Dolence, 1998). Instead of complet- ing a set of courses to earn a degree or certificate, WGU students in the competency-based curriculum must demonstrate they have acquired a spe- cific set of competencies. It may be that one of the most far-reaching effects of WGU will be advancing a national conversation about competency-based education and credentialing, regardless of setting. Impact of Distance Education on Strategic Planning A third major area in which distance education will affect institutional research is strategic planning. From a broad perspective, institutions may want to examine whether their use of distance education is truly promoting new ways of teaching and learning and of reengineering the institution. A narrower view would be to examine distance education as a new delivery mechanism premised on existing concepts of instruction (Privateer, 1999). The former is more frightening because it calls into question decades, if not centuries, of academic traditions. Therein lies the real challenge to strategic planning posed by distance education. Regardless of which approach is taken, there are some key linkages that ought to be made, but rarely seem now to exist, between strategic planning and distance education. Indeed, it appears that in most institutions, plan- 73THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH ning for distance education is taking place as a separate process from more comprehensive or traditional planning. Strategic Planning for Educational Delivery in an Integrated Sys- tem. In most institutions, IR offices direct and manage or at least lend pri- mary support to strategic planning efforts. Traditional strategic planning relies heavily on environmental scanning to detect external trends likely to have an impact on the institution, on competitive analyses to assess what other postsecondary institutions compete for and offer to the same pool of students, and on the identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats affecting the institution. Enrollment management, which is both strategic and tactical, will also be affected by distance education as oppor- tunities for students to enroll in multiple institutions simultaneously or sequentially expand and as students opt to take certain courses through dis- tance education from an institution other than their “primary” one. In a recent Education Commission of the States policy paper, Mingle and Ruppert (1998) pose five issues regarding which states will have to play a leadership role. The issues exist at the institutional level as well and pro- vide a framework for guiding strategic discussions about distance education and technology. The issues are state (or institutional) goals and priorities, statewide (or institutional) networks, new organizational structures, cost effectiveness, and financing and investment strategies. Rapid Change. There are other factors to consider with respect to strategic planning. One of the most compelling is that changes are occur- ring so rapidly that it is difficult to project or imagine the future beyond two or three years. Thus time horizons for strategic planning need to be adjusted, and flexibility has to be a key element in both strategic planning processes and in plans themselves. Growth of Alternative Providers. Another factor is the exponential growth in the number and variety of agents delivering postsecondary edu- cation and training, described earlier in this chapter. Identifying, under- standing, and addressing “the competition” is growing more complicated, unpredictable, and frustrating. The environment in which a single institu- tion or system operates is no longer constrained by geography, time, national borders, or definitions of entities that have the capability and authority to develop, deliver, and certify learning. Assessing the Consequences of Entering or Not Entering the Dis- tance Education Market. Institutions must decide whether and to what extent they will offer distance education and what the consequences might be if they choose not to. For example, will a college or university that does not offer any distance education be perceived as old-fashioned, unrespon- sive to customer demand, resistant to technology? How can distance edu- cation be effectively and efficiently integrated with other programs and services and be consistent with the institution’s mission? Can the institu- tion afford distance education? And how can the effectiveness and efficiency of its integration be measured? 74 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH Costs. Issues of cost are among the most important factors that need to be considered in strategic planning. Distance education has implications not just for resource use and allocations but for opportunity costs associ- ated with investments in distance education. There are numerous generic and anecdotal assertions that technology will be a cost-effective approach to expanding the delivery of and access to education, enabling schools to do more with less. Privateer (1999) states: The literal presence of computers on campus, together with a decade-old call to “do more for less,” factor heavily in the growing tendency of federal offi- cials, governors, legislators, governing boards, and college and university administrators to envision instructional technologies as a panacea able to maintain the status quo while dramatically cutting delivery costs. The allure is certainly powerful: lower overall operating and administrative costs, more automated and time-independent instruction, less yet more “productive” instructors, greater course availability and offerings, and access to lower cost resource materials all translate into savings [p. 66]. Berge and Schrum (1998) suggest that a first step in assessing costs is to take an inventory of existing resources, including hardware, software, dis- tance delivery technologies, and technical and faculty support staff, as well as to identify technology-enhanced projects already functioning. Armed with baseline data, financial analyses can then be made. Berge and Schrum assert that “technology-enhanced courses usually cost more to produce and deliver than traditional courses. . . . Once the analyses are made, the dis- tance education program needs to be compared to other resource allocation opportunities that are presented to . . . the broader institutional decision- making structure for assessment and decisions on whether to move forward with the program and resource commitments” (p. 5). Jewett (1999) has developed a simulation model, BRIDGE, designed to compare the costs of what they term “distributed instruction” (television or asynchronous network courses) versus traditional lecture or laboratory instruction. The model uses one hundred parameters, which can be modi- fied by users to reflect their own situations or to engage in “what if” sce- narios. Case studies testing the model provide findings about costs and benefits associated with various types of instructional delivery methods. Yet another cost-related impact of distance education may result from students’ choosing to take selected courses elsewhere. Although this has always been an option, the availability of distance education courses that a student can take from one college while enrolled primarily at or without even leaving another increases the potential for this to occur. Consider the fact that many institutions derive a disproportionate amount of their revenue from a small number of high-enrollment, low-cost general education and ser- vice courses offered at the lower division. What budget consequences will there be if students choose to take these courses through distance education from other providers, attracted by course attributes such as nationally known 75THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH faculty, the entertainment value of instructional materials that capitalize on multimedia productions, and the desire to escape large lecture courses? Integrating Planning Across Programs. Another effect of distance education on strategic planning is the need to integrate planning for dis- tance education with planning for all academic programs. Organizationally, it is possible for distance education to be lodged in a separate department or college, much as continuing education is often separated from credit and degree programs. However, such segregation can exacerbate what some observers perceive as competition between traditional and distance educa- tion for resources and for students and promote the view that distance edu- cation is somehow not as legitimate or central to the institution as campus-based courses. It is possible to conceive of a separate institutional research office for distance learning as well. Already some institutions have quite separate offices to conduct enrollment management studies and research assessing student learning outcomes. Fragmenting institutional research responsibil- ities across several offices that may not be in close contact can further com- plicate not just strategic planning but also the institution’s decision-making processes and potential overlap, duplication, or wasting of resources. Real Experiences, Challenges, and Possible Next Steps The literature about distance education and its impact on institutional research or on data and information more generally is largely speculative, looking toward what should be happening or what might occur in the future. To glean a sense of what is really happening now, I conducted an informal survey of institutional researchers in my state, asking colleagues from both two-year and four-year institutions to respond to open-ended questions about how their institutions defined distance education, what impact distance education has had on their offices so far, and what they anticipate the future impact might be. Their responses provide some impor- tant glimpses into the “real world” of institutional research and its expecta- tions regarding distance education. My colleagues indicated that, at least in Illinois, the impact of distance education on institutional research is largely anticipatory. Most schools do not even have an agreed-on, operational definition of distance education. Only a handful of people have been involved in policy discussions, assess- ments, or considerations of data definitions and databases that can capture data and information about distance education. Some are beginning to track students, though not everyone has even coded courses to permit identify- ing students enrolled in distance education classes. Several respondents said they treat distance education students no differently from other students. I asked about changes expected to occur, realistically, in the collection and reporting of data about students engaged in distance education over the next three to four years. Some of my respondents anticipated that more data about distance education students will be needed, but most either did not 76 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH answer this question or said they don’t expect distance education students to be differentiated from other students. Conclusion and Next Steps It appears that the impact of distance education on institutional researchers and their offices has not been meaningful in most institutions—yet. This generalization grows from a variety of indicators, including the informal sur- vey I conducted, a review of the literature, conversations with individuals who are experts in distance education, and assertions of NPEC panelists. Speculations abound. The NPEC panel, for example, posed a number of questions and challenges (U.S. Department of Education, 1998). Though the panel used the term technology, it really dealt with distance education and technology-mediated instruction in the broadest sense. According to the panelists, these are the broad-based issues that will need to be addressed, many of which have been discussed in this chapter: • Current surveys—for example, modifications in institutional and longi- tudinal surveys that will be required to capture changes in student behav- ior and participation • New relationships between learners and providers—for example, defini- tions of program completers, new sponsors of learning, undermining the relevance of many traditional indicators of quality • Using the student as the unit of analyses—for example, how we define students, how “completion” is determined, and how we can link students across multiple institutions, learning modes, and agencies that collect student-related data • Student assessment in a technology-based environment If we follow a more dramatic and extensive line of thinking, challenges will be even greater. Distance education could prompt the reexamination and possibly the reconceptualization of the ways in which instruction and the academic enterprise are perceived, organized, staffed, managed, physi- cally located, funded, marketed, and evaluated. Given this, what should institutional researchers do to prepare them- selves and to be proactive in meeting research and data challenges of dis- tance education? • Think in new ways about what constitutes courses, credits, degrees, learn- ing experiences, students, faculty, and institutions. • Find and share concrete examples of what is actually being done in insti- tutions that have some track record of distance education (this is not easy, since the literature is still replete with descriptions or speculations but contains few detail-oriented case studies or examples of problem solving). • Look for opportunities to link with offices making policy and implemen- tation decisions about distance education and the support systems under- 77THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION ON INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH pinning not just distance education but also institutional databases, degree monitoring programs, and assessment of learning outcomes. • Avoid being seduced by skepticism or the attitude that distance educa- tion is “just a phase” that will pass, leaving the traditional organization, structure, and delivery of higher education intact. • Above all, look for opportunities to build bridges and create new part- nerships and working arrangements. In the language of technology, enhance connectivity within and among institutions, because the most dramatic impact of technology and distance education is likely to be breaking down barriers—among postsecondary institutions; among roles of faculty and staff; among colleges and universities on the one hand and corporate or other education services providers on the other; among on- campus and off-campus courses; and among credit-earning and non- credit or experiential learning. The landscape of what constitutes credible, viable, accessible, and valued learning options has become vastly more complex. It is more complicated for students and for insti- tutions to understand, to make sensible decisions about, and to act within. Given institutions’ inherent levels of self-interest, the natural desire for self-preservation, and the decades during which institutions focused on data and information about what occurred on the premises but not in other learning environments, it is simply too early to predict what the real impact of distance education will be on institutional research. What is not too early to predict is that there will be an impact. Notes 1. NPEC was created in 1994, when Congress authorized the National Center for Edu- cation Statistics to create a cooperative with a mission “to identify and communicate ongoing and merging issues germane to postsecondary education and to promote the quality, comparability, and utility of postsecondary data and information that support policy development, implementation, and evaluation.” NPEC comprises individuals rep- resenting all levels of postsecondary education, as well as statewide governing and coor- dinating agencies, federal government agencies, and national associations. 2. I am indebted to Nofflet Williams, former associate dean for distance learning at the University of Kentucky, for suggesting to me that distance education may well be the agent provocateur in the assessment arena, finally forcing traditionalists to take assess- ment seriously. References Adelman, C. “What Proportion of College Students Earn a Degree?” AAHE Bulletin, 1998, 51 (2), 7–9. Armajani, B., Heydinger, R., and Hutchinson, P. A Model for the Reinvented Higher Edu- cation System: State Policy and College Learning. Denver: State Higher Education Exec- utive Officers and Education Commission of the States, 1994. Berge, Z. L., and Schrum, L. “Linking Strategic Planning with Program Implementation for Distance Education.” CAUSE/EFFECT, 1998, 21 (3), 31–38. 78 HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH Bolman, L. G., and Deal, T. E. Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991. Cartwright, G. P. “Technology Implications for Data Systems.” Change, July–August 1998, pp. 48–50. Couchman, J. “Becoming a Certified Oracle DBA.” Oracle Magazine, November–December 1998, pp. 125–130. Dolence, M. G. “Dawn of the Learning Age.” Paper presented at the Thirty-Second Annual National Conference of the Council for Resource Development, Washington, D.C., Dec. 3, 1998. Ewell, P. T. “Assessing Student Progress and Learning Gains.” In U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Technology and Its Ramifications for Data Systems: Report of the Policy Panel on Technology. Publication no. NCES 98- 279. Washington, D.C.: National Postsecondary Education Cooperative, 1998. Guernsey, L. “A New Career Track Combines Teaching and Academic Computing.” Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 11, 1998, pp. A35–A37. Institute for Higher Education Policy. “Distance Learning in Higher Education.” CHEA Chronicle, 1999, 2(1), 1–8. Jewett, F. “Benefits and Costs of Mediated Instruction Summary.” [www.calstate.edu /special_projects/mediated_instr/summary.html]. Jan. 25, 1999. Jones, D. “Managing Faculty Assets to Accommodate New Realities.” NCHEMS News, Feb. 1999, pp. 2–5. McLean, R. S. “Assessing Course Assignments Submitted as Web Pages.” [www.oise .utoronto.ca/~rmclean]. Jan. 13, 1999. Mingle, J. R., and Ruppert, S. S. Technology Planning: State and System Issues. Denver: Education Commission of the States, 1998. Packer, A. H. “A Community Human Resource Network.” Unpublished paper, Institute for Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University, July 23, 1998. Privateer, P. M. “Academic Technology and the Future of Higher Education: Strategic Paths Taken and Not Taken.” Journal of Higher Education, 1999, 70 (1), 60–79. Russell, A. B. “Advances in Statewide Higher Education Data Systems.” Unpublished paper available through State Higher Education Executive Officers, Oct. 1995. Russell, T. L. The No Significant Difference Phenomenon. Raleigh: Office of Instructional Telecommunications, North Carolina State University, 1999. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Technology and Its Ramifications for Data Systems: Report of the Policy Panel on Technology. Publication no. NCES 98-279. Washington, D.C.: National Postsecondary Education Cooperative, 1998. TRUDY BERS is senior director of research, curriculum, and planning at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois. She has been chairperson of the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative and president of the Association of Institutional Research. She can be reached at tbers@oakton.edu. 
work_qpu5wsiafvbjvb2qvsu6pcgcpa	----	Evolution of distance education in Iran 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.147 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1043–1047 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com WCES-2010 Evolution of distance education in Iran Tabatabaie Minoua * aAssistant professor- Payam Noor University-Iran Received October 9, 2009; revised December 18, 2009; accepted January 6, 2010 Abstract Ministry of higher education of Iran in 1988 with establishing Payam Noor University tried to use distance education methods and other new methods to bring some basic changes in the concepts of traditional education and remove some of the deficiencies of the traditional education systems. Currently, the mass of young people who want to obtain an academic degree and the lack of enough educational space in different levels in the country, created the exceptional circumstances to move towards distance education and e-learning in Iran. By using these recent methods, we can increase productivity training, flexibility in time and place, and many other advantages such as creation hundreds of virtual classes and establishing fair educational opportunities for many people of our society. Recent research starts by comparing distance education programs in international and national level to identify the steps required to transform the program into an e-learning system. Our evaluation method is a qualitative approach. It describe background and evolution of distance education, express e-learning and its goals and present the necessities of e-learning as a new method of distance education in universities of Iran. It describes the challenges of e-learning in Iran and presents the strategies to strengthen e-learning in this country. Keywords: University; distance education; E-learning; student; Payam Noor University 1. Introduction Currently, the technology-based learning using computers and different web sites, virtual university, virtual class that extend global Internet network development possible way for the emergence of new training methods. In this conditions because of needs to extend skills and knowledge-based information technology-the traditional methods of educational system is not efficacy (Haghani2003). As a result, universities must use the virtual world in and distance education, to obtain the modern and efficient methods to achieve education. Such systems use the facilities of virtual world can increase productivity, flexibility in time and place, and many other advantages. Ministry of higher Education of Iran as a responsible of higher education has a serious attention to distance education in the last two decades. This ministry with establishing the Payam Noor University based on training using Open University and remote students, changed in traditional concepts of education. Axis of changes was elimination of time, place and limitations of traditional systems of educational resources. This to some extent due to change methods and approaches in education in Iran. But these changes did not fit with the continuity of world conditions. *Tabatabaie Minou. Tel: 98-0334-2639991; Fax: 98-0334-2639991 E-mail address: dmtabatabaie@yahoo.com © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1044 Tabatabaie Minou / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1043–1047 2. Method In this research we use a qualitative approach to explore how the distance education system of Iran has evolved. Recent research investigated by a comparative approach, the historical background of distance education in Iran and the world. It is a descriptive study which is consisting of the goals, benefits, challenges and the necessity of e- learning in this country. Our main purpose is to present the necessities of e-learning as a new method of distance education in universities of Iran. 3. Comparative distance education background Distance education is an educational method in which there is not a direct contact between professors and students (Doolatabadi, 2003) was introduced in Europe and America and then in the rest of the world including Iran. By comparing the existing distance education systems with Iranian system we can identify the challenges of e-learning educational system in Iran. 3. 1. In the world Historically entry way of thinking distance education or online education back to Open University in the mid- twentieth century in England (http://en.wikipedia.org). According to this plan, applicants with television programs and training obtained the university degrees. Also, with inventing the program of " University Without walls " and similar programs in United States (in 1960's) and starting educational workshops within this country (http://www.digitalschool.net), greater practical steps were taken in this field. Considering the wide and public access to computer in 1970's decade, the" modem bulletin board" accepted for the first time. In early 1980's by one of the founders of the Virtual University in the United States the "online units" of university was invented. In 1988 the first software as a "Digital-Professor" was suggested and used in America. Since then, many developments in Virtual University have created; including the 1995 American universities created the changes in the system and strengthened the possibility of expanding e-learning around the world. Actually, creating hundreds of sites with the ability to provide training on the internet world cover different subjects and each country try to strengthen its distance education system by similar and different methods. For example, at present, some countries such as India consider the elements and strategies of e-book collection development and access which must be adopted by academic libraries, especially for distance education facilities (Tripathi, and Jeevan, 2008,pp104-114). Some others countries such as Germany have created legislations for distance education. In this country, distance learning courses can be divided into two groups: those which come under the Distance Education protection law and are regulated by the National Central Authority for Distance Education and those which are regulated by the state in other ways (www.fernuni-hagen). In this regard, each country has its challenges to distance education. For example, in China, education is expensive and higher education utilizing digital technology is even more expensive (Potter Geoff, 2003). According to a statistical estimate, there are millions of people around the world use e-learning educational in prestigious universities (Fotoorehchi, 2006). Today, distance education has a widespread application all around the world, for the individuals, expecting different conditions and expectations as an option for education (Özdemir Topalo lu and Topalo lu, 2009). 3.2. In the Iran Distance education in our country except a short experienced of free University before the revolution and Payam Noor University based on methods of using telecommunication has not a long history. Payam Noor University in 88's for the first time used the distance education system seriously and raised non face to face classes (http://pnu.ir/Portal/?p=14). At the end of 1991's decades the virtual education project was placed on the agenda of Tehran University and its virtual site of e-learning launched nine courses for students at the beginning of year and explicated it at the same academic year for others. In the same year, the Ministry of higher education announced the the first virtual university would be founded under the license of Ministry as a non-profit institution and provide Tabatabaie Minou / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1043–1047 1045 educational services. Following this, some universities announced that entered the electronic education in their training programs and placed it in their present courses and some form of their single-courses. After little action in universities of using E-learning method, the Ministry of Education as a largest educational part of the country, begun the activities in this field and actually a number of the private Institutes benefit the E-learning method. Reviews of the recent background shows that Payam Noor University is the first state university which has the serious activities in distance education. Our study shows that, at the present, the popularity of distance education and e-learning has grown rapidly over the last decade in Iran higher education, yet many fundamental teaching–learning issues are still in debate. 4. Goals of distance education and E-Learning in Iran The most important objective of distance education is making it possible to access the knowledge that is needed with a small amount of money and without time and space limitations for those who is a part of society that need special education by means of distance education which is a system in web-based learning ((Özdemir Topalo lu and Topalo lu, 2009). Also the most important goal of E-learning in Iran is providing for everyone the ability or capacity to learn in long and short-term the expected contents. E-Learning in Iran has educational, cultural, social, research, economic and scientific goals. Each kind of these goals is influenced by education (http://www.p30lords.com).In comparison with India and China it seems that we have the same objectives but we have not special legislation for distance education system such Germany. 5. Challenges of e-learning educational system in Iran The comparative study shows that despite the many positive aspects of e-learning some believe the new training methods based on computer and Internet create the problems for training and even for social life of people. Excessive dependence on technology and physical problems of long-term working with computers and other weakness that result of low mobility are among the disadvantages that raise critics for E-learning in all of the countries. In our country, some problems in reaching the E-Learning are described as below: First- lack of appropriate telecommunications infrastructure: In fact, without virtually communications infrastructure, weakness of Internet networks and small e-learning systems we are even not at the average type. Second – existence of lessons mnemonic with long text: Most of our education system course is based on text type and retain long while we need for e-learning short contents with higher understanding of subject. So the educational system in these two cases is not compatible with each other and creates the problems for both teachers and students. While teacher–student interaction is a key success factor in distance education, it seems that little work has been done on the teachers. The same problem exist in distance education of some countries such Taiwan (Tao and Rosa Yeh, 2008, pp23-36). . Third - avoid student from social life: New training methods, although facilities and provide more resources for students to be without the group, but because of avoiding social life create some problems. In fact, when a student use computer to establish communication through virtual ways, hence, the social relationship is not fully established. This issue can be adverse psychological effects on mind and spirit of him. Lack of "face to face communication" is one of the disadvantages in distance education; of course, this fault is resolved to a large extent with technology advances. Avoid the mass educational media is one of the disadvantages discussed for E-learning that with development of video conference and mass education and group training methods based on web this problem can largely resolved. . 6. Recommendations and initiatives As a result of this study, the recommendations are provided to improve distance education and e-learning in Iran as below: The first initiative for the challenges of e-learning system is to solve the basic problem of internet connection in Iran. Virtual University needs effectively to internet connection. Thus for starting e-learning the average communication infrastructure in the country is required. Low speed and relatively high cost of Internet reduces desired use of 1046 Tabatabaie Minou / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1043–1047 internet in the classes and online and video and audio conferences. Therefore, increase of the speed of connection through fibre-optic service, particularly for students outside of Iran is required. In addition to increased speed, the security of Iranian web services against hackers must also be a lot to be solved. The experiences of the United States and some western countries confirm this solution (www.learninghouse.com). China can be a good example for us. In this country, delivery of academic courses via advanced high tech system (Advanced Distance Learning or ADL) is a major objective in its distance education programme (Potter Geoff, 2003, The second initiative in this type of education is obtaining new methods of management and training computer experts. In this field special educational planning for the courses of practical units or Web sessions must be developed. The need for qualified staff in distance education field who knows the skills for distance education field is necessary. In China the distance education students study together in groups and the tutors are available to answer questions and guide study (Potter Geoff, 2003). . Third initiative - that the transition to e-learning and widespread changes in social relations is not necessarily considered as a major problem. But it should be regarded as an opportunity to resolve "dependency" on economic and technical and..... Existence of thousands of Iranian in advanced centres in the field of IT created an exceptional position has provided for the first time the possibility of mutation position and the transfer of advanced knowledge, experience and information and communication technology for our country. The fourth initiative – In major policies we must be in position that the foundation of virtual is a opportunity for introducing universities of Iran and Iranian culture and language in the world and the virtual universities as economic units because of the political and cultural position of Iran can attract foreign currency and reduce our costs for higher education in comparison with the traditional method in the country. 7. Conclusion Electronic education among the information technology tools, have a special position in our country. However, except for activities of Payam Noor University, there is a little attention to this issue and distance education. Currently, in international level, using of modern communications technology, created a global community learning centres that not only different staff, but students and even professors in different disciplines can familiar with each other and will be able them to use their scientific and educational abilities in common, without limitation in time and place. It is clear that distance learning is different from regular learning in the classroom. One of the main factors which influence the effectiveness of the learning process is the interaction that exists between the teacher and the student. If a few years ago, video and audio technologies like video recorder technology was considered as a new technology of education, today, by using computer and Internet there is a better learning opportunity even in indoor conditions. The conditions of Iran in field of education are an exceptional situation and moving toward electronic trainings is obligatory. Existence of Mass youth who wants university degrees and lack of space for different educational levels has caused many problems. Note, that we should instead spend huge amounts to build universities in the country, with very less amount can create hundreds of virtual classes and fairly educational opportunities for many people. Experiences of other countries indicates that the next major jump in university education is a combination method of teacher training and circuit training, including technology based on education and simultaneously Internet, education by educational CD, video and satellite that our universities in this field and for having a clear future must be leader. References Doolatabadi, F. (2003), "Overview of the Education category in the age of communication and familiarity with the principles and expectations of an efficient e-learning system", Abstracts Articles, Tehran. Jalali, Ali Akbar (2003), "Learning, change the face of education in the world", abstract, E-Learning Conference Articles, Tehran Haghani, Nader, (2003), "c-learning, e-learning, o-learning", Abstracts Articles, Tehran, articles Abstract E-Learning Conference, Tehran Sepasi, Maryam (2003), what we know about Virtual University?, Hamshahri journal, Number 3217, Sheikhi, Mohammad Bagher (2002), "Virtual University", Moddat Review, Tehran; Fotoorehchi, Mohammad Mehdi, From distance education to virtual university, Tuesday 29 March 2006 Karimzadeghan Moghaddam David (2003), "General Report of E-Learning Conference", Article Abstract, Tehran; Özdemir Topalo lu Ay egül, & Topalo lu Murat, (2009) Distance education applications in concept acquisition for disabled individuals/ special education for handicapped), Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 1008-1011, Tabatabaie Minou / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1043–1047 1047 Potter Geoff, (2003), Distance Education in China, A Comparison of Chinese and Western. Distance Education Initiatives: Educational. Goals and Instructional Practices. Distance learning and the internet conference 2003. Singapore. Special Report, the quality of education in virtual computer world, the first number, the first year; Tadbir Journal (2007); Roundtable as "e-Learning; strategic necessity" and the challenges facing e-Learning, Tadbir Journal, No. 187, Tao Yu-Hu & Rosa Yeh Chu-Chen, (2008), Typology of teacher perception toward distance education issues – A study of college information department teachers in Taiwan Computers & Education, Volume 50, Issue 1 , Pages 23-36, Tripathi Manorama & Jeevan V.K.J, (2008), E-book Subscription in a Distance Education Institution: A Case of Indira Gandhi National Open University, India, Volume 34, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 104-114. http://www.digitalschool.net/edu/DL_history_mJeffries.html http://www.iranu.com http://pnu.ir/Portal/?p=14 http://www.p30lords.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33227 http://www.webometrics.info http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki http://www.mojnews.com/news_full_story.asp?nId=197481 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_University http://www.learninghouse.com/resource-center/instructor-education/knowledge-arises-from-need http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ZIFF/v2-ch43a.htm 
work_qr5f72biwbh7ldfbk7rsiz4nf4	----	Page 1 of 2 © 2015, International Textile and Apparel Association, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ITAA Proceedings, #72 – www.itaaonline.org 2015 Proceedings Santa Fe, New Mexico Does an Online Professional Master’s Program Meet Student Expectations? Linda Manikowske, North Dakota State University, USA Nancy Lyons, South Dakota State University, USA Melody LeHew, Kansas State University, USA Shubhapriya Bennur, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA Keywords: merchandising, graduate education, online education Background: Online education is especially relevant to those who have a bachelor’s degree, are employed in a retail career, and seek further training in the form of an advanced degree. Merchandising is a fast-paced, dynamic sector of the retail industry, requiring professionals to continually update their skills to stay competitive in the job market. New technologies and learner profiles have contributed to rapid growth in online education at the university level. It has become increasingly important for faculty to assess such student learning (Liu, 2012). Problem: Professionals today are seeking continued education beyond the Bachelor’s degree but are unable to pause their careers in order to get the advanced degree. Programs are being developed. Are these programs able to accommodate the expectations of this non-traditional student population? Purpose: Great-Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (GP-IDEA) has been a pioneer in offering fully-online graduate programs in high demand professional fields. The Alliance fosters collaborative development of high quality programs (Sanders, 2011; www.gpidea.org). The purpose of this case study was to investigate student perceptions and experiences of an on-line professional master’s program. Research objectives involved evaluation of student satisfaction with the following dimensions: program quality, program structure and content, student/instructor interactions, benefits of the program, applicability of the program in students’ professional life, and overall expectations of the program. Methods: The GP-IDEA Merchandising Master’s program serves as a relevant case. This program was designed to target professionals employed in many of the career paths available in the merchandising field. Program development began in 2002 and was launched in 2005; 42 professionals have completed the program. Qualitative methods were used to examine the impact of this graduate program on the lives and careers of these individuals. A semi-structured interview guide was developed with open-ended questions, including: 1) What was your primary motivation for pursuing a graduate degree in merchandising? 2) What did you expect to be the key benefits of receiving the degree? 3) What did you see as strengths of this on-line program? 4) Did completion of the degree allow you to realize your expectations? 5) What has been the impact on your professional life from receiving this degree? All graduates of the program were sent an e-mail invitation to participate. Twenty-one agreed and were interviewed over the telephone by the same interviewer, representing a 50% response rate. Interviews were recorded, Page 2 of 2 © 2015, International Textile and Apparel Association, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ITAA Proceedings, #72 – www.itaaonline.org 2015 Proceedings Santa Fe, New Mexico transcribed, and entered into the qualitative analysis software program NVivo10. Data from the interviews was disassembled and organized into themes that came out of the answers to each question. A deductive approach to the coding considered the six dimensions that were identified in the research objectives. Later an inductive approach allowed the data to guide the emergence of additional concepts and themes (Yin, 2011). Findings: The following themes emerged from the qualitative analysis:  Program quality – unique, relevant to the work world, well-prepared and knowledgeable faculty with varied and distinct teaching styles.  Benefits of the program - accommodations made for full-time working students; enhanced job opportunities; salary increases; professional and personal development.  Applicability to professional life – gaining a better understanding of the broad scope of a merchandising career; preparing for success in a global industry.  Expectations of the program - knowledge development about the retail merchandising industry; learning to put theory into practice; flexible scheduling.  Relationships between students - learning from classmates, creating friendships.  Program diversity – invaluable exposure to instructors and students from different institutions, work situations, and geographic areas. Conclusions and Implications: The qualitative study revealed an overall positive perception of online education, as experienced by graduates of the GP-IDEA Merchandising Program. Respondents indicated their academic experiences in a distance education graduate program represented a positive investment in both their professional and personal development. Most indicated that completing an online master’s degree positively impacted their career advancement. One graduate stated -“This was one of the best things I have ever done.” Graduates of the case program revealed a positive response to working with faculty from multiple institutions and indicated their expectations regarding quality and benefits were generally met. This suggests that online students may be well served through collaborative online curriculum, which would reduce the burden on any one institution. In the current university environment where faculty are asked to do more and more with fewer resources, a multi- institution approach to meet growing demand for online education may be a way to provide benefit to non-traditional professional student without over-burdening faculty resources. References: Liu, O. (2012). Student evaluation of instruction: In the new paradigm of distance education. Research in Higher Education, 53(4), 471-486. doi:10.1007/s11162-011-9236-1 Great Plains IDEA. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.gpidea.org. Yin, R. (2011). Qualitative Research from Start to Finish. New York: Guilford. Sanders, G. (2011). The Great Plains IDEA gerontology program: An online, interinstitutional graduate degree, Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, 32(3), 233-244. http://www.gpidea.org/ 
work_qvpjgj5izvfidm3avye5jqfmti	----	Learning analytics in massive open online courses as a tool for predicting learner performance http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A. Tatiana Bystrova Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy, Pro- fessor at Ural Institute for the Humani- ties, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin. Email: tatiana.bystrova@urfu.ru Viola Larionova Candidate of Sciences in Mathematical Physics, Associate Professor, Deputy Provost, Head of an academic depart- ment, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal Universi- ty named after the first President of Rus- sia B. N. Yeltsin. Email: v.a.larionova@ urfu.ru Evgueny Sinitsyn Doctor of Sciences in Mathematical Physics, Professor, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin. Email: e.v.sinitcyn@urfu.ru. Alexander Tolmachev Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin. Email: avtolmachev@urfu.ru Address: 19 Mira St, 620002 Ekaterin- burg, Russian Federation. Abstract. Learning analytics in MOOCs can be used to predict learner perfor- mance, which is critical as higher edu- cation is moving towards adaptive learn- ing. Interdisciplinary methods used in the article allow for interpreting empir- ical qualitative data on performance in specific types of course assignments to predict learner performance and im- prove the quality of MOOCs. Learning analytics results make it possible to take the most from the data regarding the ways learners engage with information and their level of skills at entry. The arti- cle presents the results of applying the proposed learning analytics algorithm to analyze learner performance in specific MOOCs developed by Ural Federal Uni- versity and offered through the National Open Education Platform. Keywords: massive open online cours- es, learning analytics, empirical evi- dence, online learning, assessment tools, checkpoint assignments, academ- ic performance monitoring. DOI: 10.17323/1814-9545-2018-4-139-166 Due to the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) that have swept the global education market [Semenova, Vilkova, Shcheglova 2018], online learning technologies have become wide- spread not only in informal education but in higher education and con- tinuing professional development as well over the past decade [Eu- Received in September 2018 This study was support- ed by financial assis- tance provided under the Resolution of the Government of the Rus- sian Federation No. 211, Contract No. 02. A03.21.0006 . Translated from Russian by I. Zhuchkova. http://vo.hse.ru/en/ https://vo.hse.ru/en/by_authors/228111726.html https://vo.hse.ru/en/by_authors/228111781.html https://vo.hse.ru/en/by_authors/228111849.html https://vo.hse.ru/en/by_authors/228111959.html mailto:tatiana.bystrova@urfu.ru mailto:v.a.larionova@urfu.ru mailto:v.a.larionova@urfu.ru mailto:e.v.sinitcyn@urfu.ru mailto:avtolmachev%40urfu.ru?subject= Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning ropean Association of Distance Teaching Universities 2018; Netology Group 2017]. Use of MOOCs in education programs [Roshchina, Ro- shchin, Rudakov 2018] has allowed universities and vocational schools to expand their educational choice options and create conditions for virtual mobility among students [Sancho, de Vries 2013], enhancing access to education and reducing college costs [Larionova, Tretyak- ov 2016]. In resorting to MOOCs, universities face the problem of se- lecting high-quality courses as well as the need to measure the effec- tiveness of online learning. The strategies for selecting online courses and the methods of assessing their effectiveness must be analyzed comprehensively in order to come up with well-defined decision-mak- ing criteria. Learning analytics in MOOCs is one of the key tools to im- prove education quality [O’Farrell 2017]. Not only does learning an- alytics data allow for monitoring learner performance and analyzing learner engagement but it also provides objective information on the effectiveness of online learning methods and techniques applied. MOOC platforms offer diverse online courses [Hollands, Tirthali 2014]. The quality of MOOCs as a selection criterion is determined by how effective they are in achieving educational goals. In accordance with the experts’ definition [Zagvyazinsky, Zakirova 2008; Samokhin et al. 2018], education effectiveness is understood as “the extent to which education outcomes are consistent to established goals”, not just as an equivalent of economic efficiency defined as the ratio of actual education outcomes to the resources invested [Vishnyakova 1999]. The reliability of online learning effectiveness measurements depends on the adequacy of assessment tools and their consistence with the course performance requirements. Unlike with the conven- tional learning system, where the teacher provides a subjective face- to-face assessment of the student’s knowledge and skills, MOOCs which imply exclusively distant interactions normally suggest that edu- cation outcomes are assessed using automated tests or peer reviews. Assessment objectivity requires fulfillment of the following conditions, which constitute the underlying principles of classical test theory and item response theory (IRT) [Crocker, Algina 2010]. • MOOC objectives must be formulated based on specific learning outcomes [Nekhaev 2016]; • Learning outcomes must be measurable; • Assessment tools must be valid, reliable and sensitive to different levels of learner progress; • Assessment results must be trustworthy and representative [Shmelev 2013]. The existing psychometric methods allow for assessing the quality of tests using the mathematical models and analytical procedures which are applied to analyze answers to specific test items [Mayorov 2002; Zvonnikov, Chelyshkova 2012]. The information theory-based algo- https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance rithm of assessing the informational value and quality of MOOC as- sessment tools proposed in this article expands the range of psycho- metric instruments and can be used to complement the conventional measures of test validity. The social need for studying the effectiveness of digital technolo- gy in education has to do with the acute problem of organizing edu- cation in the information society with its high rates of technology turn- over and lifelong accumulation of statistics on this type of learning. Reasons for low lifelong learning development rates may include, in particular, defects in the existing online courses and low motivation of students, who mostly belong to the so-called Generation Z, charac- terized by dependence on technology, impatience, drive for participa- tion [Freitas, Morgan, Gibson 2015] and the habit of using the Inter- net to find information [Gryaznova, Mukovozov 2016; Guo, Kim, Rubin 2014; Tyler-Smith 2006]. Conventional teaching techniques prove to be low-effective for this cohort, so the need to modernize the learn- ing process comes to the fore. Apart from being socially relevant, research on the effectiveness of using online technology in education also has a pedagogical aspect. The content in online learning is still based on conservative mass ed- ucation programs, and no allowance is made for the new education- al paradigm [Jansen, Schuwer 2015; Kop, Fournier, Mak 2011]. Advo- cates of the traditional approach treat MOOC content as a series of video lectures and standard reading modules, although it has been about twenty years since education began to be understood not only as access to information but as the acquisition of specific practical skills as well [Lundvall, Borrás 1997; Nonaka, Takeuchi 2011]. As a re- sult, MOOC statistics usually demonstrate a radical decrease in learn- ing engagement and a gap between what learners expect and what MOOC providers have to offer [Brown, Lally 2017; Castano Muñoz et al. 2016]. A comparative study of the effectiveness of different online technologies will provide an opportunity to reduce that gap. Effectiveness of online learning is crucial for a modern learner, too. In the information age, people want their learning trajectories to be AI-personalized to suit their personal needs and abilities. MOOCs pro- vide ample opportunity for customized education and lifelong learning [Deev, Glotova, Krevskiy 2015], in particular because they are adapt- able to students’ individual needs and characteristics. The technological implications of this study are predetermined by the format of exclusively distance learning courses, which im- plies documentation of learning outcomes as a “learner footprint” in the digital learning environment. This allows for monitoring individual learning trajectories, identifying cause-effect relationships between learner engagement and learning outcomes, exploring possible rea- sons for failure, and predicting ultimate progress based on average student performance. In addition, learning analytics is one of the few objective indicators of MOOC quality and is actively used to improve it. http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning The central hypothesis of this study is that learning analytics can be used to obtain objective information on the effectiveness of online learning and predict the academic performance of different types of learners. The study aims at developing learning analytics algorithms in order to evaluate the quality of MOOC assessment tools, analyze patterns of learner performance, and predict the probability of suc- cess/failure using the statistics on MOOCs provided by Ural Feder- al University and available through the National Open Education Plat- form. Achieving this goal involves the following objectives: (i) analyze the quality of MOOC assessment tools based on empirical evidence; (ii) estimate and compare functions of learner performance distribu- tion for all midterm and final tests; (iii) clusterize learners by their per- formance and analyze their progress in dynamics; (iv) construct a probability model of changes in performance among different types of learners throughout the course. The study also seeks to identify factors that have negative effects on student performance in MOOCs. Research findings will help develop recommendations for course de- velopers, in order to enhance teaching methods in online learning and improve the quality of assessment tools, as well as for MOOC tutors and engineers. A massive open online course is understood here as an openly ac- cessible, structured, theoretically substantiated, goal-oriented set of educational materials, assessment tools and other distance learning resources. An online course determines the teaching methods, pro- gress checkpoints and tools for assessing learners’ knowledge and skills. Student-teacher and student-student communication is pro- vided using digital learning environment services. The well-elaborat- ed pedagogical design of an online course ensures achievement of the learning outcomes, provided that entrants possess the required knowledge and skills and sufficient motivation for learning. A MOOC can be taken by anyone regardless of age, location, ed- ucational background and financial opportunities. Most MOOCs are asynchronous, i. e. knowledge is transferred from teacher to student with a time lag. This allows MOOC learners to customize their learn- ing schedules with due regard to their individual preferences and abili- ties and choose their own pace in accessing course materials and do- ing assignments. Self-paced courses are not bound to specific dates and are offered in the “on-demand” format, which means they can be accessed at any time which is convenient for the learner. To ensure a consistent pace and improve self-regulation among students, most courses set deadlines for application, webinars and tests, including final exams. To obtain a certificate of completion, a MOOC learner must com- plete name verification and take an online proctored final exam. Cer- tificates are issued to learners who meet the course passing threshold 1. Theoretical aspects of online learning effectiveness 1.1. Characteristics of learning with MOOCs https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance (specified in course overview) and pass the final exam. Final exams with online proctoring are usually taken for a fee. University students may earn credits for MOOCs in their major or minor by submitting a certificate of MOOC completion. Credit transfer procedures are reg- ulated locally by educational institutions. In contrast to digital teaching and learning packages as a series of syllabus-related teaching materials and assessment tools, important features of MOOCs include organization of the learning process and consistent monitoring of learner performance. In this regard, every MOOC is a set of unique teaching techniques. Their effectiveness is measured not so much by content quality as by teaching methods ap- plied in the digital learning environment and by the quality of assess- ment tools allowing adequate measurement of learner progress. Predictors of effective online learning include: • Methodologically substantiated presentation of digital content in consistence with the learning cycle [Kolb 1985]; • Use of interactive learning technology; • Monitoring of learning outcomes and detection of bugs and errors throughout the course; • Organization of learners’ interaction; • Learner support and motivation strategies; • Use of active online teaching methods; • Collection and statistical analysis of learner feedback; • Prompt changes and updates, when necessary [Jasnani 2013]. MOOC design is thus a complex pedagogical challenge that requires a high level of professional expertise, teaching experience, method- ological and information technology skills. The key to designing an ef- fective online course is the use of interactive technology based on ac- tive teaching strategies in the online format [Lisitsyna, Lyamin 2014]. As we can see, the use of a digital learning environment services allows for regulating the learning process distantly and running online courses without direct teacher-student interaction. Course mainte- nance is thus restricted to keeping the content up to date throughout and after the course as well as providing student counseling servic- es. As maintenance is ensured with regard to original course content and teaching methods, it does not require the direct participation of the course designer just as it rarely requires in-depth knowledge of the subject matter from counselors. Therefore, the teacher’s main func- tion consists in creating an online course, while the learning process may be controlled by tutors who provide methodological and organ- izational support to students, advise them on the choice of MOOCs and credit transfer opportunities, and help them build personalized learning trajectories, creating the conditions for successful perfor- mance in midterm and final checkpoint assignments. 1.2. Factors of online learning effectiveness http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning As compared to traditional education, where teachers get feedback from students only in face-to-face interactions, online learning leaves a digital footprint, with all learner accomplishments and activities dur- ing the course being recorded in the digital learning environment. Analysis of such data — learning analytics — allows for monitoring learning consistency, student progress and assignment performance. Learning analytics is based on analyzing big data on learning be- haviors in MOOCs [Usha Keshavamurthy, Guruprasad 2014]. It can provide a lot of information on the causes of learner success and fail- ure and allows for predicting future learning behaviors. Findings are used to fine-tune learning contexts, support students and adapt them to new environments [O’Farrell 2017]. The core objectives of learning analytics are as follows: • Measure, collect and present data on user behavior; • Analyze student performance throughout the course; • Analyze behavioral patterns using big data; • Establish cause-effect relationships between performance indica- tors and learning activities; • Detect errors and methodological issues in MOOCs; • Develop recommendations for course content revision; • Predict student success or failure. Learning analytics includes diverse methods, from descriptive sta- tistics to data mining. Additional sources of information, along with streaming data on user behavior fetched from MOOC platforms, may include administrative databases of educational institutions, surveys of learners and instructors, pre-test results, etc. The global leaders in learning analytics include the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, the National Research Center for Distance Education and Technolog- ical Advancements at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ed- Plus at Arizona State University. Research at Arizona State University is currently focused on find- ing efficient adaptive learning tools using big data on MOOC learn- er behaviors. By identifying behavioral patterns at the early stages of learning and classifying students based on their learning activities, re- searchers examine the factors that have a positive impact on student performance and use them to predict course completion (e. g. [Shar- key, Ansari 2014]). The algorithms described below are applied, among other things, to analyze the informational value and quality of MOOC assignments, which must differentiate between learners by level of performance as well as ensure and reflect their consistent progress. Another equal- ly important objective consists in predicting checkpoint performance among students at different stages of their progress which is meas- 1.3. Use of learning analytics to support learners 2. Research methods https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance ured by average student performance. Such a prediction will allow for adapting learners with different performance levels to course require- ments by additional counseling, personalized assignments, etc. From the standpoint of the first objective, assignments that are ei- ther passed or failed by the great majority of learners should be recog- nized as equally ineffective, as they provide instructors with no infor- mation on course progress or the performance of individual students. Informational value of assignments in terms of how well they are able to differentiate learners by their performance is assessed using standard information theory methods. If the distribution of checkpoint test grades (measured in scores) is labelled as (x), the fact that an in- dividual learner has obtained a specific score will be loaded with the following number of information bits [Korn, Korn1973]: I = −∫ 100 0 φ(x) ⋅ log 2 (φ(x)) ⋅ dx, bit In practical calculations, the range of scores is divided into ten-point discrete intervals, and the integral is transformed into a sum of integral elements for such intervals. For convenience, this value will be com- pared to the maximum amount of information to which uniform dis- tribution φ 1 (x) = 1/n corresponds, where n is the number of intervals: I max = log 2 (n) = 3.22 In this case, the informational value of a checkpoint assignment will be described by measure inf = 100 I I max rounded to the nearest whole number. Statistical characteristics of individual learner performance in a series of checkpoint assignments must be analyzed to determine course progress and predict course completion. Our previous study [Larionova et al. 2018] examined changes throughout the course in the statistical distributions of scores among categories of learn- ers identified based on their average performance in earlier periods (A students, B students, etc.). To solve the problem of reflecting learner progress with the use of assessment tools, we will introduce three learner categories based on learner progress: • Non-performers, who failed the assignment, i. e. scored under 40 (“Failure”); • Average performers, whose scores are ranged between 40 and 60 (“Pass”); and • Constant performers, who scored 60 or higher (“Success”). (1) (2) http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning There can be more categories, but three is enough to fully describe the level of learner progress and ensure that results are illustrative. While taking a course and the checkpoint assignments within it, MOOC learners migrate from one category to another. If such tran- sitions are traced for every student, the probability of cross-catego- ry transition for each checkpoint can be estimated. Accuracy of es- timates depends on the number of learners in the sample: the larger the sample, the more accurate the probability of transition. Such es- timates will allow for making inferences on how checkpoints reflect learner progress as well as predicting performance in checkpoint as- signments among learners of different categories. Predictions like that require the accumulation of information on transition probabilities and the processing of large volumes of data on performance in the check- point assignments. Let us label as |i> and |j> learner status before and after a check- point, respectively (status being understood as belonging to catego- ry i before the assignment and j after it; i, j = 1, 2, 3). Suppose each cross-category transition corresponds to operator T i j , which is de- fined as follows: T i j ⋅ |i> = |j> Operator T i j is the operator of transition i → j, transition probability be- ing determined by the matrix P̂ = P 1 1 P 1 2 P 1 3 P 21 P 22 P 23 P 31 P 32 P 33 Matrix P̂ is asymmetric, its entries satisfying the condition: ∑ 3 j = 1 P i j = 1 The number of learners in every category, at probabilities (4), can be estimated using the model proposed by Astratova et al. (2017), which allows for determining the probability that categories 1, 2, 3 will contain X 1 , X 2 , X 3 members, respectively, at the moment of time t — P(X 1 , X 2 , X 3 | t). The equation for P(X 1 , X 2 , X 3 | t) is written as follows: ∂P(X1, X2, X3 | t) ∂t = P(X 1 , X 2 , X 3 | t) ⋅ {(1 – z) ⋅ ∑ 3 j = 1 P i i – ∑ 3 j = 1 X i} + + z ⋅ ∑ 3 i = 1 (X i + 1) ⋅ P(…, X i + 1 , … | t ) + (1 – z) ⋅ ∑ 3 j = 1, i ≠ j Pi j ⋅ (Xi + 1) × × P(…, X i + 1 , … | t} In this equation, z is the probability of learner withdrawal per unit of time. Hereinafter, z will be considered equal to zero (for this purpose, (3) (4) (5) (6) https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance students who withdrew should be excluded from analysis at the pre- liminary stage). Equation (6) can be solved in a general fashion, but for most types of problems, analysis of means and covariances will suffice: X i = <X i > = ∫ 100 0 X i ⋅ P(X 1 , X 2 , X 3 | t) ⋅ dX i , σ IJ = (X i – <X i >) ⋅ (X j – <X j >) = ∫ 100 0 X i ⋅ X j ⋅ P(X 1 , X 2 , X 3 | t) ⋅ dX i ⋅ dX j – <X i > ⋅<X j >. It can be shown that the following conditions are satisfied: X i ~ N, σ IJ ~ √N N is the total number of learners in a MOOC. Therefore, where N → ∞, variation coefficients tend to be zero: C V (i j) ~ 1 √N → 0, which illustrates the law of large numbers. This way, if the number of learners N is high enough, their distribution among categories is hard- ly a coincidence and the size of category approaches <X i >, where: <X 1 > + <X 2 > + <X 3 > = N The equation for X i is written as follows: ∂Xl ∂t = ∑ 3 k = 1 [P~kl ⋅ Xk – P~l k ⋅ Xl], where P ~ kl = 0 for k = l P ~ kl = P kl defined (4) for k ≠ l Transition matrix (4) can be linked to a problem of random walks on a directed graph whose vertices correspond to categories i = 1, 2, 3 and where the probabilities of cross-vertex transition are determined by (4) [Leskovec, Rajaraman, Ullman 2016]. Transition probabilities (4) determine unambiguously the influ- ence of checkpoints on the distribution of learners among perfor- mance categories and may be indirect indicators of assignment quality. However, using matrix (4) directly is inconvenient, first of all because of the abundance of parameters (9 transition probabilities) and their intricate, however unambiguous, relationship with the com- prehensible conventional characteristics of academic performance. For this reason, the role of an illustrative parameter will be assigned (7) (8) (9) (10) http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning to vector α→x = {X1, X2, X3}, which determines the steady-state distribu- tion of learners among performance categories j  =  1, 2,  3. This vec- tor can be treated as a steady-state solution of equation (9), corre- sponding to continuous case (∂Xl∂t   = 0), or as a limiting distribution that results after multiple transitions of the form α→x(n) = P̂ ⋅ α → x(n – 1) on a graph relative to matrix (4) [Astratova et al. 2017], provided that n → ∞. This limiting case corresponds to a hypothetical situation where the checkpoint assignment is taken a number of times by categories of learners with statistically equivalent characteristics of academic performance. It is easy to show that α→x(n → ∞) = P̂  ⋅  α → x satisfies the equation [Ibid.]: α→x = P̂ ⋅ α → x Hence, α→x is an eigenvector of P̂ (4) with eigenvalue 1. Using (5), (10), it can be shown that α→x in (11) corresponds to steady-state solution (9) for ∂Xl ∂t  = 0. A formula analogous to (11) can also be used with known matrix P̂ (4) to predict checkpoint performance. Suppose that α→x(0) is a vec- tor describing the distribution of learners among performance cate- gories before the checkpoint and α→x(1) after the checkpoint; then, in compliance with the theory of Markov processes [Maksimov 2001], these two vectors are related by the following formula: α→x (1) = P̂ ⋅ α → x (0) where P̂ is a matrix of the form (4) corresponding to the checkpoint analyzed. A case study illustrating how the algorithm described above can be applied involves analysis of data on the online course Engineering Me- chanics offered by Ural Federal University and available through the National Open Education Platform1. The course includes the following assessment tools (checkpoint assignments): • theory tests (T); • home assignments (HA); • project assignments (PA); • the final test (FT). In the source database, each checkpoint assignment was assessed on a 100-point scale, and each of them was assigned weight coefficient 1 https://openedu.ru/course/urfu/ENGM/ (11) (12) 3. Application and discussion https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf https://openedu.ru/course/urfu/ENGM/ http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance k p , p = 1, …, 4. Weight coefficients 0 ≤ k p ≤ 1 and scores 0 ≤ В j (C) ≤ 100 obtained by learners in each checkpoint, where C  = T, HA, PA, FT, were used to calculate the following indicators: • Average student current performance Avg = k 1 1 16 ∑ 16 j = 1 B(T )j + k1 118 ∑18j = 1 B(HA)j + k1 15 ∑5j = 1 B(PA)j . • Final course grade Grade = Avg + k 4 B(FT). • In accordance with course design, coefficients k p took on values: k 1 = 0.16; k 2 = 0.34; k 3 = 0.1; k 4 = 0.4. Therefore, maximum Avg value is 60. To facilitate comparison of results in different checkpoints to this value for every learner with identifier i, the maximum Avg value was translated to a 100-point scale using the formula Avg j (100) = 100 ⋅ Avgi Max{Avg i |i = 1, …, N} . where N is the total number of learners in the MOOC. Each checkpoint can be assigned the following characteristics: – Average checkpoint grade; – Task solvability coefficient: k i = ci N , where сi is the number of learners who solved the task and N is the total number of learners in the MOOC; • Checkpoint assignment grade probability density function (a more complex characteristic). The latter can be used to assess the informational value of check- point (2). Let us analyze Test 1 as an example. The grade distribution func- tion is displayed in Figure 1. Normal distribution is shown in the same figure for comparison. Even when no special criteria are used, it can be seen that deviations in actual distribution of scores for Test 1 from normal distribution are significant and cannot be explained by random processes. The load of information contained in the fact “learner was awarded a specific number of scores for Test 1”, calculated using for- mula (1), is I=1.47 bits. Formula (2) is used to calculate the informational value of all “test”-type checkpoints. The results are presented in Figure 2. In particular, Figure 2 makes it clear that Tests 2, 14 and 15 have the highest informational value, which means that they are effective in differentiating learners by the level of progress. Meanwhile, Tests 3, 6 and 16 are the least informative: they are probably too easy, as the great majority of learners perform them successfully. Table 1 com- pares the highest and lowest informational values of the tests with oth- er checkpoint characteristics. (13) (14) (15) http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning Figure . Grade Probability Density for Average Student Current Performance, Final Test and Grade. 20 40 60 80 100 Grade Final test Aaverage student current perfi rmance 60 40 20 0 % Table . Informational Value of Checkpoints # Checkpoint Inf, formula (2) 1 Average student performance (Avg) 93 2 Final test 84 3 Grade 94 Figure . Probability Distribution Function for Grades Obtained for Test 1 φ1(x). Figure . Informational Value of Tests Calculated Using Formula (2). 0 20 40 60 80 100 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Test #10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Normal disrtibution Actual DF Test 1x 60 40 20 0 80 60 40 20 0 % Table . Characteristics of the Most and the Least Informative Tests Test # Informative Value inf (2) Average Grade Solvability Coeffi cient Test 6 25 96.3 0.993 Test 16 26 95.8 0.985 Test 2 75 80.2 0.898 Test 14 85 68.5 0.797 Test 15 71 72.4 0.869 Relative difference between the highest value and the lowest one (Max – Min)/Min, % 240 40.5 24.6 https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance The difference in informational value between the most and the least informative tests, calculated using formula (2), is essentially higher than the relevant differences in such characteristics as aver- age grade and solvability coefficient. Therefore, informational value is the most convenient tool for comparing checkpoint assignments and their quality. Of all the types of checkpoints, the following is of the most interest: • Average student current performance (Avg); • the Final test (FT); • Grade, i. e. integral estimate of course completion which includes Avg and FT. Grade probability densities for these types of checkpoints are shown in Figure 3. All the three checkpoints in Figure 3 have a rather broad range of grades, i. e. each of them is a good differentiator of learners. Data on the informational value inf of relevant checkpoints, calculated using formula (2), is given in Table 2. As we can see, such integral checkpoints as Avg and Grade, which reflect learner progress throughout the course, have a high informa- Figure . Grade Probability Density for Average Student Current Performance, Final Test and Grade. 20 40 60 80 100 Grade Final test Aaverage student current perfi rmance 60 40 20 0 % Table . Informational Value of Checkpoints # Checkpoint Inf, formula (2) 1 Average student performance (Avg) 93 2 Final test 84 3 Grade 94 http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning Figure . Oriented Graph for Transitions among Performance Categories Generated by the “Final Test” Checkpoint. Numbers correspond to transition probabilities (16). S U C C E S S P A S SF A I L U R E 0.320 0.106 0.218 0.098 0.480 0.308 0.586 0.200 0.684 tional value, which is not always true for individual checkpoint assign- ments (see Table 1). The informational value of the final test is some- what lower but still pretty high. Next, a series of checkpoints corresponding to different types of assignments (T, HA, PA, FT) are analyzed instead of individual check- points. The state after the first checkpoint in a set is taken as the input state here. It thus becomes possible to analyze all the sets of check- points independently; besides, it solves the problem of no entrance testing in most MOOCs (information on entrants’ skills is usually una- vailable). The results are shown in Table 3. Analysis results can be pre- sented even more concisely if factor inf (2) is used. In this case, it re- flects the informational value of post-checkpoint learner distribution. Assessment tools of the types “test” and “project assignment” in fact split learners into constant performers and non-performers, the inter- mediate category of average performers being virtually indistinguisha- ble. This data indicates, in particular, the low informational value of the respective types of checkpoints, which is illustrated by the last row in Ta- ble 2. Indeed, learners either fail or obtain high grades in these check- point assignments. Perhaps, the assignments are too easy or results are assessed as pass/fail, which is especially typical of project assignments. Of course, there can be other reasons for the stratification observed. An- yway, the analysis performed obviously provides course designers with useful information to measure the quality of assessment tools. Data on average student performance (Avg) can be used when tak- ing the final test as input state |i>. In this case, transitions among per- formance categories as a result of the final test will be calculated: Avg(i) → FT(j) (i and j are performance categories here). The resulting pairs {ij} for post-FT transitions among performance categories yield the follow- ing matrix: P̂ = 0.320 0.586 0.218 0.200 0.106 0.098 0.480 0.308 0.684 (16) Table 3. Steady-State Distribution of Learners among Performance Categories and its Informational Value (i) for Different Checkpoints Proportion of Category in the Sample Test HA PA FT x1 (non-performers) 0.336 0.436 0.658 0.296 x2 (average performers) 0.002 0.087 0 0.129 x3 (constant performers) 0.662 0.477 0.342 0.575 inf (informational value) 59 84 58 86 https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance Transition probabilities can be presented as a directed graph, as shown in Figure 4. As can be seen from Figure 4, transitions from “Success” to “Suc- cess” and from “Pass” to “Failure” are the most probable ones. The probability of transition from “Failure” to “Success” is also surprisingly high. However, researchers at Arizona State University have also ob- served this personality type in students, referring to them as “kanga- roos” ([Johnson 2018]). Let’s suppose that learners are distributed uniformly among per- formance categories just before the final test: x 1 = x 2 = x 3 = 1 3 , According to estimated transition probabilities (16), the predicted distribution of learners after the final test in compliance with (12) will be the following: x 1 = 0.375; x 2 = 0.135; x 3 = 0.491. If the predicted distribution is unacceptable for instructors (e. g. an increase of the non-performer category as compared to the current state is predict- ed in the case analyzed), they can take some provisional measures to support students and increase overall performance. Let us now compare efficiency of this learning analytics algo- rithm for different online courses. Since every analyzed MOOC has its own structure of checkpoints, it makes sense to compare transi- tions Avg(i) → FT(j) (i, j are categories “Failure”, “Pass”, “Success”), as data on average student performance and the final test is available in any course. The findings are presented in Table 4. The predicted proportion of constant performers in Descriptive Geometry and Technical Drawing is the lowest, while that of the “Fail- ure” category is, vice versa, the highest among the courses analyz- Figure . Oriented Graph for Transitions among Performance Categories Generated by the “Final Test” Checkpoint. Numbers correspond to transition probabilities (16). S U C C E S S P A S SF A I L U R E 0.320 0.106 0.218 0.098 0.480 0.308 0.586 0.200 0.684 http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow. 2018. No 4. P. 139–166 F O L L O W I N G T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E " E S TA R S 2 0 1 7 " Studies of e-Learning ed. The final test will be the most informative assessment tool in this course. Probabilities of transition Avg(i)  → FT(j) among performance cat- egories in Descriptive Geometry and Technical Drawing are given in Table 52. The probability of transition from “Pass” to any other category is extremely low, while that of transition from “Failure” to “Success” (the “kangaroo” personality type) is rather high (0.35). The “Success” cat- egory tends towards stratification at the FT checkpoint: students clas- sified under this category based on their average performance either pass into the “Failure” category (with a probability of 0.38) or, more likely (0.54), retain their positions among constant performers. The “kangaroo” personality type manifests itself more in Construc- tion Materials Engineering (probability of relevant transitions being equal to 0.47), whereas the probability of transition from “Success” to “Failure” after the final test is low here (0.15). Most students in the “Success” category remain high performers with a probability of 0.83. The probability of transition from “Success” to “Pass” is the lowest for this course (Table 6). 2 The matrix presents probabilities of transition from categories correspond- ing to columns to those corresponding to rows (the sum of elements in each column thus being 1). Table 4. Predicted Steady-State Distribution of Learners among Performance Categories for Transitions Avg → FT in Different MOOCs. x1 (Failure) x2 (Pass) x3 (Success) inf (informatio- nal value) Engineering Mechanics 0.296 0.129 0.575 86 Construction Materials Engineering 0.197 0.105 0.698 73 Descriptive Geometry and Technical Drawing 0.48 0.149 0.371 91 Table 5. Probabilities of Transition among Performance Categories Avg → FT in the Descriptive Geometry and Technical Drawing MOOC. Descriptive Geometry and Technical Drawing Failure Pass Success Failure 0.40 0.98 0.38 Pass 0.25 0.00 0.08 Success 0.35 0.02 0.54 https://vo.hse.ru/data/2018/12/12/1144863782/08%20Bystrova.pdf http://vo.hse.ru/en/ Bystrova T., Larionova V., Sinitsyn E., Tolmachev A Learning Analytics in Massive Open Online Courses as a Tool for Predicting Learner Performance The Engineering Mechanics MOOC was analyzed earlier in this ar- ticle (see Figure 4). It differs significantly from the other two MOOCs in transition probabilities Avg(i) → FT(j) and provides the most adequate distribution of final course grades, which indicates sufficient reliabil- ity of the assessment system in this online course, a high level of in- structor support, and theoretically substantiated course content that contributes to learner progress. Online learning is a new educational paradigm generated by recent sociocultural processes, communicational ones in the first place. It implies better feedback for learners, which shapes personalized learning trajectories and ultimately promotes lifelong learning. Edu- cation has moved from monologue to dialogue, making the student an active participant in learning. The method of predicting MOOC per- formance proposed in this article will allow for providing learners with better feedback and more personalized learning trajectories; it could become an integral part of online learning over time. The results of learning analytics research show that: — Analysis of the informational value of assessment tools based on the method described herein may provide course developers with useful information on the quality of checkpoint assignments in addi- tion to traditional psychometric analysis; — Monitoring of learners’ checkpoint performance trajectories and the probabilities of learner transition among performance cate- gories estimated based on the monitoring data can be used to assess post-checkpoint redistribution of learners, which provides additional information to assess the quality of assessment tools; — Knowing the probabilities of learner transition among perfor- mance categories, instructors can predict the final distribution and take necessary measures to enhance their teaching efforts. Astratova G., Sinicin E., Toporkova E., Frishberg L., Karabanova I. (2017) Mech- anism of Information Model Development for Company Brand Assessment within Marketing Strategy. 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work_qvuusdkxqvafhpxbzb5flo6e3y	----	The role of emotional intelligence in predicting students’ academic achievement in distance education system 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.165 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1158–1163 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com WCES-2010 The role of emotional intelligence in predicting students' academic achievement in distance education system Adel Zahed-Babelana *, Mahdi Moenikiab aUniversity of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Daneshgah street, Ardabil, Iran bPayame Noor University, Ardabil, Iran Received October 29, 2009; revised December 7, 2009; accepted January 15, 2010 Abstract This study investigated the role of emotional intelligence and it's components to predict academic achievement of Payame Noor University. The Statistical population involved all of the Ardabil Payame Noor University students (N = 7000) in 2008-9 academic year. From these, 328 students are selected as sample via multistage sampling. Based on the nature of subject and research questions, correlation method was thought to best serve the purpose of the present study. To collect the data, Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory and academic mean score of student were used. Reliability of this instrument is calculated as =0.93 using Cronbach's alpha in Iranian society. For data analysis, multiple regression in enter model were used. The Results showed that emotional intelligence and its dimensions predict students' academic achievement statistically significant. From among the components of emotional intelligence, the shares of interpersonal (social awareness and interpersonal relationship), General Mood (self-motivation), and Intrapersonal (self-awareness and self-expression) were -0.368, 0.220, and 0.163, respectively. Keywords: Emotional intelligence; academic achievement; distance education. 1. Introduction Innovative delivery technologies have expanded the traditional classroom setting to distance or online learning, but whether the characteristics of students who are successful in the traditional classroom setting transfer to success in distance classes is unknown. Online education has experienced astronomical growth since the 1990s (Gallagher, 2002; Perreault, 2004,). Open and distance learning is defined by the Commonwealth of Learning as a way of providing learning opportunities that is characterized by the separation of teacher and learner in time or place, or both time and place; learning that is certified in some way by an institution or agency; the use of a variety of media, including print and electronic; two-way communication that allows learners and tutors to interact; the possibility of occasional face-to- face meetings; and a specialized division of labour in the production and delivery of courses (Holmberg, 2009). * Adel Zahed-Babelan. Tel.: +989141519818; fax: +98-0451-5510811 E-mail address: Email: zahed@uma.ac.ir © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Adel Zahed-Babelan and Mahdi Moenikia / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1158–1163 1159 Teachers and parents always have been concerned about student’s academic success and social adaptation both in and out of the classroom. Only recently, however, have researchers realized that a person’s emotional life has an impact on these important outcomes (Marquez, Martin, Brackett, 2006). Learning is as much a function of a person’s emotional response to a learning environment as it is to the instructional method or classroom (Flood, 2003). The success of distance students especially in online model, however, has been primarily investigated in terms of student ease with computer technology or satisfaction with the program rather than intrinsic characteristics such as self-directedness, self-motivation, emotional self-regulation, or persistence (Gallagher, 2002). Moreover, emotional characteristics that have been linked to distance success include persistent effort, internal locus of control, and self-efficacy (Albritton, 2003; Holcomb, King, & Brown, 2004; Kemp, 2002; Parker, 2003). Learning theory views intellectual intelligence and emotion as polar opposites (O’Regan, 2003, Imel, 2003) despite the fact that “…effective learning is much more a function of the emotional response to a learning environment than the techniques and structures on which it is based” (Flood, 2003). People differ in their emotional responses to situations. Adult learners in particular have a need to be emotionally comfortable with the learning situation for learning to take place (Draves, 2000). Certain emotional competencies are necessary for learning to take place: Individuals must control negative emotions like fear, anxiety, and frustration so that positive emotions like enthusiasm and a sense of accomplishment can increase (O’Regan, 2003). Attending to emotions in the classroom enables both student and instructor to manage feelings and provides useful methods to address difficulties that could deter success (Gates, 2000). Bar-On (2006) defines emotional intelligence as being concerned with effectively understanding oneself and others, relating well to people, and adapting to and coping with the immediate surroundings to be more successful in dealing with environmental demands (Bar-On, 1997). Bar-On posits that EI develops over time and that it can be improved through training, programming, and therapy (Bar-On, 2006) Bar-On hypothesizes that those individuals with higher than average Esq.’s are in general more successful in meeting environmental demands and pressures. He also notes that a deficiency in EI can mean a lack of success and the existence of emotional problems. Problems in coping with one’s environment are thought, by Bar-On, to be especially common among those individuals lacking in the subscales of reality testing, problem solving, stress tolerance, and impulse control. In general, Bar-On considers emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence to contribute equally to a person’s general intelligence, which then offers an indication of one’s potential to succeed in life. However, doubts have been expressed about this model in the research literature (in particular about the validity of self-report as an index of emotional intelligence) and in scientific settings, it is being replaced by the trait EI model discussed below (Kluemper, 2008). The component of emotional intelligence based on Bar-On’s (2004) framework summarized as follow: Intrapersonal (self-awareness and self-expression) Self-Regard: To accurately perceive, understand and accept oneself Emotional Self-Awareness: To be aware of and understand one’s emotions Assertiveness: To effectively and constructively express one’s emotions and oneself Independence: To be self-reliant and free of emotional dependency on others Self-Actualization: To strive to achieve personal goals and actualize one’s potential Interpersonal (social awareness and interpersonal relationship) Empathy: To be aware of and understand how others feel Social Responsibility: To identify with one’s social group and cooperate with others Interpersonal Relationship: To establish mutually satisfying relationships and relate well with others Stress Management (emotional management and regulation) Stress Tolerance: To effectively and constructively manage emotions Impulse Control: To effectively and constructively control emotions 1160 Adel Zahed-Babelan and Mahdi Moenikia / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1158–1163 Adaptability (change management) Reality-Testing: To objectively validate one’s feelings and thinking with external reality Flexibility: To adapt and adjust one’s feelings and thinking to new situations Problem-Solving: To effectively solve problems of a personal and interpersonal nature General Mood (self-motivation) Optimism: To be positive and look at the brighter side of life Happiness: To feel content with oneself, others and life in general Evidence for associations between EI ability and both social and academic achievement have been cited in a number of recent books and review articles (Brackett, Lopes, Ivcevic, Mayer, & Salovey, 2004; Brackett & Salovey, 2006; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004). Williford (2000) found that there is relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. Marquez, Martin, and Brackett (2006) indicated that there is relationship between EI and academic achievement in a sample of students in Spain. And according to finding of Berenson, Boyles, Weaver, (2008), EI was the primary predictor of academic success in distance and online courses. As mentioned above that psychologists argue people who have emotional intelligence skills are more successful than the high IQ folks, who do not have emotional intelligence, and therefore high IQ may not be a good measure for future life success especially academic successful. Despite its contributions to success in other venues, there has been little investigation into the construct of EI as a predictor for success in the online environment. As distance education continues to play a greater role in higher education, the challenge is to explore the possible relationship between online learning and EI (Imel, 2003). This study investigated the role of emotional intelligence and it's components to predict academic achievement of distance learning students. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The Statistical population involved all of the Ardabil Payam-e-Noor University students (N = 7000) in 2008-9 academic year. From these, 328 students are selected as sample by using Cochran's formula and multistage sampling. 2.2. Materials The instrument of this research is a Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory which includes 90 questions in 5 categories. The categories are Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Stress Management, Adaptability, and General Mood Scale. Each question was designed based on a 5-point Likhert scale scoring from 5 to 1 (completely agree = 5 to completely disagree = 1). This questionnaire was standardized to be used in Iran; its content validity was reported to be acceptable and its reliability was 0.93 by Cronbach's alpha (Samuei, 2003; Namdar, Sahebihagh, Ebrahimi, & Rahmani, 2008) and mean score of student were used for accessing of academic achievement. 2.3. Procedure Based on the nature of subject and research questions, correlation method was thought to best serve the purpose of the present study. The questionnaire was distributed among participants and gathered data was analyzed by using multiple regression in enter model. Adel Zahed-Babelan and Mahdi Moenikia / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1158–1163 1161 3. Results Table 1: correlation coefficient, mean and standard diviation 1 2 3 4 5 Mean Std. Deviation Intrapersonal 1 105.53 (3.52) 12.06 Interpersonal .321** 1 69.73 (3.87) 10.50 Stress Management .496** -.101* 1 37.59 (3.13) 6.64 Adaptability .687** .317** .538** 1 60.90 (3.38) 7.19 General Mood .709** .563** .353** .591** 1 43.06 (3.59) 6.20 ( ) mean is based on 5 * p< .05 ** p < .01 Results from Table 1, show that there is a positive and significant correlation between components of emotional intelligence, but there is a negative and significant correlation between Interpersonal and stress management. Figure 1. Profile of students’ mean score in component of EQ. As Figure 1, showed that based on 5 values, the highest mean score of component of emotional intelligence belongs to interpersonal (3.87) and the least mean score of those belongs to stress management (3.13). In order to determine the influential components of emotional intelligence in predicting the academic achievement, taking the advantages of the enter method, multiple regression analysis was used. Table 2: predicting the academic achievement on the base of emotional intelligence ANOVA Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression 89.90 5 17.98 7.19 .000 Residual 805.03 322 2.50 1 Total 894.93 327 Coefficients a Unstandardized Coefficients StandardizedCoefficientsModel B Std. Error Beta t Sig. (Constant) 14.74 .908 16.24 .000 Intrapersonal .02 .011 .163 2.02 .044 1 Interpersonal -.06 .012 -.368 -4.64 .000 3.59 3.25 3.87 3.13 3.38 2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 4.1 Intrapersonal Interpersonal Stress Management Adaptability General Mood 1162 Adel Zahed-Babelan and Mahdi Moenikia / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1158–1163 Stress Management .01 .017 .020 .31 .756 Adaptability -.02 .018 -.071 -.92 .359 General Mood .06 .025 .022 2.34 .020 a. Dependent Variable: Academic achievement Note. R=0.317, R Square = 0.10, R Adj= 0.086 As it can be seen from the results of table 2, adjusted R is .086 and F = 7.19 is significant (p < .001). So, dimensions of emotional intelligence may predict academic achievement. From among the components of emotional intelligence, the shares of interpersonal, General Mood, and Intrapersonal were -.368, .220, and .163, respectively in predicting of academic achievement were significant. 4. Discusstion As students increasingly opt for distance learning classes, it becomes more important for administrators to predict levels of potential academic success. Affective domains such as interpersonal skills, interpersonal skills, stress management, adaptability, and general mode are slowly melding into distance learning instructional designs. Psychological characteristics are seen as necessary characteristics of successful students for the achievement of distance education programs and for the continuity of students to the programs. So this study examined the relations between emotional intelligence and academic achievement in distance education. The results support the incremental validity of EI and provide positive indications of the importance of EI in distance learning students’ academic achievement. In other words, emotional intelligence is predicator of academic success in distance learning environments. These results are in compliance with the findings of (Brackett, & et. al, 2004; Brackett, & Salovey, 2006; Mayer, & et. al, 2004; Williford, 2000). Also this result is in harmony with findings of Marquez, and et. al (2006), Berenson, et. Al (2008) and Imel (2003) that indicated there is relationship between EI and academic achievement The other finding indicated that intrapersonal and general mode were positive predictor and interpersonal was negative predictor of academic achievement while stress management and adaptability weren’t predictor of academic achievement significantly. Characteristics of distance learning can help explain of these findings. 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work_qws5ttt54vg25bn7r3gztrau6m	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_qyvzl35a45c5tjlcptcsxmdt34	----	Distance Education for Dutch Citizens Detained Abroad: A Mixed-Methods Case Study of the Foundation ‘Education behind Foreign Bars’ education sciences Article Distance Education for Dutch Citizens Detained Abroad: A Mixed-Methods Case Study of the Foundation ‘Education behind Foreign Bars’ Dorien Brosens 1,* , Silke Marynissen 1 , Frans Lemmers 2 and Flore Croux 1,3 ���������� ������� Citation: Brosens, D.; Marynissen, S.; Lemmers, F.; Croux, F. Distance Education for Dutch Citizens Detained Abroad: A Mixed-Methods Case Study of the Foundation ‘Education behind Foreign Bars’. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/educsci11020041 Received: 18 December 2020 Accepted: 20 January 2021 Published: 23 January 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Educational Sciences, ‘PArticipation and Learning in Detention’ (PALD) Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; Silke.Stefan.Marynissen@vub.be (S.M.); flore.croux@vub.be (F.C.) 2 Voluntary Director of the Foundation Education behind Foreign Bars, Postbus 9005, 6070AA Swalmen, The Netherlands; lemmers.frans@gmail.com 3 Department of Special Needs Education, Ghent University, H. Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium * Correspondence: dorien.brosens@vub.be Abstract: Foreign national prisoners have less educational opportunities than national prisoners. Therefore, the Dutch foundation ‘Education behind Foreign Bars’ (Eabt) provides distance education to Dutch nationals detained abroad. A mixed-methods case study is carried out to gain insight into the perspective of professionals and volunteers who are involved with Eabt and of the students taking a course from Eabt. This study consists of individual interviews with volunteers and professionals and pre- and post-surveys among students. The qualitative results show that following a course from Eabt happens in three steps: (1) Informing, (2) applying for the course, and (3) starting with the course, doing homework, and being assessed. During the course, students receive motivational and content-related support from the Netherlands and, depending on the local prison context, also from the detaining country. The professionals and volunteers identify various success factors and challenges of Eabt. The quantitative results demonstrate that students are primarily motivated to participate by their wish to acquire knowledge and skills and to prepare for life after detention. The students are satisfied about the support received and they seem to have more confidence in the future due to the course. Overall, Eabt is highly valued by both students, professionals, and volunteers. Keywords: foreign national prisoners; distance education; mixed-methods case study; education behind foreign bars 1. Introduction As Behan [1] (p. 20) states “education within prisons is as old as the institution itself”. Prison education is a type of adult education and encompasses formal learning, non-formal learning, and informal learning programs [2]. It thus covers a wide range of educational activities such as academic education, literacy education, vocational training, arts, and cultural developments [3], distance learning [4], language courses [5], etc. In their general theory of prison education, Szifris et al. [6] distinguish three types of outcomes for students that follow education during their time of incarceration. First, being engaged in education can serve as a hook for change. Prisoners can be subjected to different ways of thinking and presented alternative choices they can make in their life. Following education during their time of incarceration can transform individuals and lead to the development of new identities. A second outcome is that education can be a means for gaining skills and qualifications prisoners can use after their release from prison, for instance on the labor market [6,7]. Although it can be expected that vocational training programs are more adapted than traditional academic programs to prepare prisoners for the labor market, the meta-analysis of Davis et al. [8] demonstrates that both programs are effective at realizing this. In connection herewith, the rapid evidence assessment of Ellison et al. [9] has shown Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11020041 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education https://www.mdpi.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4321-5450 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8819-4230 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3950-1246 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11020041 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11020041 https://creativecommons.org/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11020041 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/2/41?type=check_update&version=1 Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 2 of 20 that participating in academic education and vocational training programs seems to reduce the likelihood of recidivism and increase the changes of obtaining employment after release from prison. The last outcome of prison education Szifris et al. [6] identified is that the environment in which prison education takes place acts as a safe space. Under the right circumstances and with appropriate staff, it can lead to the development of pro-social identities. These identities focus on growth and developments, rather than on survival. Access to education is a human right, which is stipulated by both the European Convention on Human Rights [10] and the United Nations International Covenant on Eco- nomic, Social, and Cultural Rights [11]. For the prison population, there are several legal instruments dealing with their right to education, such as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners [12], the Recommendations on Education in Prison [13], and the revised European Prison Rules of 2020 [14]. In addition, the Coun- cil of Europe also formulated a specific recommendation for foreign national prisoners stipulating that the educational needs of foreign nationals should be considered [15]. Despite their equal rights, foreign nationals are confronted with less educational opportunities than national prisoners [16–18], which goes against the international and European regulations [16]. Mainly the language barrier prevents foreign nationals to participate in prison education. Often a good understanding of the national language of the detaining country is required [19,20], through which they cannot meet the test or selection criteria to participate [21]. In addition, foreign national prisoners that want to participate in prison education are hindered by waiting lists, a lack of information about the educational offer in a language they understand, a lack of available places, or getting no answer on their request to participate [18]. Recent research into the barriers prison professionals experience in providing education to foreign national prisoners has demonstrated that educational materials for foreign nationals are limited or even not available. Besides, this study found that financial resources to provide an educational offer to this population are lacking [17]. Providing prison education to foreign nationals is often not considered as a priority by policy makers [22]. Consequently, prisons organize a smaller educational offer for foreign national than for national prisoners. If foreign national prisoners have access to prison education, courses to learn the national language of the detaining country are most often provided [17]. These courses facilitate the communication [23] and help to understand information provided in prison [24]. However, learning the national language is not always relevant for those prisoners who will leave the detaining country [25]. For this group, distance education from their home country could be valuable, but nowadays such learning opportunities are limited [17]. To respond to this need, the Dutch foundation ‘Educatie achter buitenlandse tralies’ (Education behind Foreign Bars; further abbreviated as Eabt) provides distance educa- tion to Dutch nationals detained abroad. They offer courses to citizens with the Dutch nationality and those who have a residence permit for the Netherlands. In 2018, there were approximately 2000 Dutch nationals behind foreign bars worldwide. Most of them were detained in France, Germany, Spain, or the United Kingdom [26]. The educational offer of Eabt can be divided into four categories: (1) Preparatory vocational education, (2) higher education courses, (3) Dutch language courses, and (4) foreign language courses. The language courses are developed by Eabt, while for the preparatory vocational trainings and higher education courses Eabt collaborates with other distance education providers (e.g., National Business Academy or Open University). All courses lead to a certificate. The language courses are rewarded with a certificate that is offered by Eabt, while the prepara- tory vocational trainings and higher education courses lead to qualifications of the other distance education providers. The duration of the courses varies from person to person, and from detention situation to detention situation. The background of the prisoners and their study skills differ greatly from each other, which affects their speed of studying. Some prisoners have little or no prior education and study experiences, while others do. The study conditions vary from studying in a classroom, alone in a cell, to studying in a cell in the presence of their cellmates. This also influences the study conditions and thus the Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 3 of 20 speed of studying. In the free society, a study duration of 4 to 12 months is assumed. In detention, this varies from 4 months to 2.5 years. To the best of our knowledge, Eabt is the only foundation in the world that provides distance education to nationals detained abroad. Given the uniqueness of this case, a mixed-methods case study was set up to gain insight into the perspective of volunteers and professionals who support the courses via Eabt, and the detained students abroad (further abbreviated as students) participating in such courses. The following research questions are addressed: Qualitative part—professionals and volunteers: • RQ1: How do volunteers and professionals experience the progress of a course from Eabt, from application to completion? • RQ2: How do professionals and volunteers perceive the future of Eabt, and what are the success factors and challenges in this regard? Quantitative part—students: • RQ3: How are the students motivated to participate in a course from Eabt? • RQ4: What are the results and effects for the students of participating in a course provided by Eabt? In the context of this study, formulating hypotheses is seen as unnecessary. The study has an exploratory character and describes a cross-section of reality, including experiences and situations tied to distance education opportunities for foreign national prisoners that are provided by their home country. This specific context does not require formulating any hypotheses. 2. Materials and Methods This paper utilized a mixed-methods case study design consisting of: (1) Individual interviews with volunteers and professionals involved in the working of Eabt, and (2) pre- and post-surveys among students. Prior to the data collection, ethical permission was obtained from the Ethics Commission in Human Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) (Ref. ECHW_163). 2.1. Part 1: Individual Interviews with Volunteers and Professionals To get insight into the perspectives of professionals and volunteers involved in the working of Eabt, 17 individual interviews were conducted between December 2018 and March 2019. The aim was to reach a diverse group of participants (e.g., visiting volunteers, teachers, after-care workers, employees of the Foreign Liaison Office of the Dutch Probation Service, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Consular Affairs). Potential participants received an e-mail with information about the study from the director of Eabt. In this way, the participants were informed that they would be invited for an interview. Subsequently, the researchers contacted the respondents to agree on an exact time and manner of conduct- ing the interview (i.e., face-to-face, telephone, or Skype). Twelve participants were working in the Netherlands and 5 in the detaining countries. Ten interviews were conducted by telephone, 5 face-to-face, and 2 via Skype. The interview schedule consisted of 5 parts: (1) Background information; (2) their role in relation to Eabt; (3) the process of following distance courses; (4) the results and added value of following distance courses for the students, prisons and society; and (5) the strengths and challenges of Eabt. This paper focuses on parts 3 and 5. Prior to the individual interviews, the participants were given information about the study and asked to sign the informed consent. The interviews were recorded and lasted between 23 and 95 min. Afterwards, the interviews were transcribed verbatim. Inductive (i.e., data-driven) thematic analysis was performed following the six steps described by Braun and Clarke [27]: (1) familiarization with the data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 4 of 20 writing the final results. The analytical software program MAXQDA has been used. The authors elaborately discussed and agreed upon the codes and steps in the analysis. 2.2. Part 2: Pre- and Post-Surveys Among Students 2.2.1. Participants and Procedures The process that students underwent while attending a course from Eabt was moni- tored by means of a pre- and post-survey. These surveys were available in Dutch. Figure 1 presents an overview of the number of students that were sent the surveys, and how many surveys were returned. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 4 of 20 between 23 and 95 minutes. Afterwards, the interviews were transcribed verbatim. Induc- tive (i.e., data-driven) thematic analysis was performed following the six steps described by Braun and Clarke [27]: (1) familiarization with the data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) writ- ing the final results. The analytical software program MAXQDA has been used. The au- thors elaborately discussed and agreed upon the codes and steps in the analysis. 2.2. Part 2: Pre- and Post-Surveys Among Students 2.2.1. Participants and Procedures The process that students underwent while attending a course from Eabt was moni- tored by means of a pre- and post-survey. These surveys were available in Dutch. Figure 1 presents an overview of the number of students that were sent the surveys, and how many surveys were returned. Figure 1. Number of respondents and response rate of the pre- and post-surveys. All 96 students that applied for a course between July and December 2018 were asked to fill in the pre-survey, which was send by post. A postage-free envelope was added so that the students would not incur any costs in returning the completed surveys. A re- minder was sent to the students to fill in the pre-survey 2 to 3 months later. A volunteer of Eabt and the researchers kept an overview of the contacted prisoners in an Excel file. Once the researchers received a completed pre-survey, it was added to the Excel file. Between June and August 2019, 7 to 10 months after sending the pre-surveys, the students who filled in the pre-survey were sent a post-survey. In addition, the post-survey was sent by post and accompanied by a postage-free envelope. In the end, 60 students completed the pre-survey (response rate of 62.5%) and 31 the post-survey (response rate of 51.7%). There was a drop-out between completing the pre- and post-survey due to, for instance, releases from prison, transfers to other prisons, and loss of contact. In the pre-survey, 55 students provided information about the course they followed; 73.9% of the students (N = 41) followed a preparatory vocational education. Courses that were commonly followed were for instance sailing license, social hygiene for a job in the Figure 1. Number of respondents and response rate of the pre- and post-surveys. All 96 students that applied for a course between July and December 2018 were asked to fill in the pre-survey, which was send by post. A postage-free envelope was added so that the students would not incur any costs in returning the completed surveys. A reminder was sent to the students to fill in the pre-survey 2 to 3 months later. A volunteer of Eabt and the researchers kept an overview of the contacted prisoners in an Excel file. Once the researchers received a completed pre-survey, it was added to the Excel file. Between June and August 2019, 7 to 10 months after sending the pre-surveys, the students who filled in the pre-survey were sent a post-survey. In addition, the post-survey was sent by post and accompanied by a postage-free envelope. In the end, 60 students completed the pre-survey (response rate of 62.5%) and 31 the post-survey (response rate of 51.7%). There was a drop-out between completing the pre- and post-survey due to, for instance, releases from prison, transfers to other prisons, and loss of contact. In the pre-survey, 55 students provided information about the course they followed; 73.9% of the students (N = 41) followed a preparatory vocational education. Courses that were commonly followed were for instance sailing license, social hygiene for a job in the catering sector, social psychology, and fitness trainer. Furthermore, 21.7% of the students (N = 12) followed a foreign language course. Spanish was the most popular language, but French, German, and Russian were also followed. The minority of the students followed a Dutch language course (3.6%—N = 2). At the moment of the data collection, none of the students followed higher education. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 5 of 20 The average age of the students was 40.3 years (range: 17–66). 95% had a Dutch nation- ality. The others had a residence permit for the Netherlands. There was a greater diversity in the country of birth. Students were mainly born in the Netherlands (68.3%—N = 41) or Surinam (11.7%—N = 7). If we look at the educational level the students had before they started a course from Eabt, more than 1 in 3 students (34.6%, N = 18) had obtained an educational level, which corresponds with level 4 of the European Qualification Framework [EFQ]. 25% (N = 13) did not have a diploma. Almost 1 out of 5 (19.2%, N = 10) of the students obtained level 1 of the EFQ. Furthermore, only 1 student obtained level 5 (1.9%), and no one had a bachelor (level 6), master (level 7), or PhD degree (level 8). The majority of the students (71.9%, N = 41) will return to the Netherlands voluntarily after their detention. Fourteen percent (N = 8) will be forced to return to the Netherlands and 5.3% (N = 3) will remain in the detaining country. Finally, 8.8% (N = 5) chose the other option and filled in, for example, "if possible, I will go back to the Netherlands", or a certain country. Someone also filled in "the Netherlands", but with this person it was unclear whether this would be voluntary or forced. 2.2.2. Variables In the pre-survey, the students were shown 20 possible motives for following a course. Each respondent was asked to indicate which motives applied to their own situation, using a 4-point Likert Scale (1 = not important at all; 4 = very important). The items were taken from a survey developed for the European FORINER project about distance education for foreign national prisoners [28], which was based on previous research [29,30]. Afterwards, the motives were grouped into five different categories, based on the literature on motives to participation in prison education [28,30]: To acquire knowledge and skills, to prepare for life upon release, reasons unique to the prison context, distance course from the home country, and social motives. In the post-survey, the students’ satisfaction with the support they received was measured. Respondents got 10 statements from which they had to indicate on a 5-point Likert scale to what extent they (dis)agreed (1 = totally disagree; 5 = totally agree). The statements were largely based on the FORINER project [28], supplemented by items based on conversations with members of Eabt. To measure the students’ assertiveness, digital skills, and language skills, we presented the respondents 17 statements from the SIT-instrument (Social Inclusion after Transfer) [31]. These statements were included in both the pre-survey (T0) and post-survey (T1). The students could indicate on a 10-point Likert scale how well the statements suited them (1 = does not fit me at all; 10 = fits me at all). Afterwards, three scales were constructed: (1) Assertiveness (5 items—cronbach’s α T0 = 0.871; cronbach’s α T1 = 0.903); (2) digital skills (3 items—cronbach’s α T0 = 0.928; cronbach’s α T1 = 0.948), and (3) language skills (9 items—cronbach’s α T0 = 0.844; cronbach’s α T1 = 0.811). Lastly, the post-survey contained 11 statements about how the students look at their chances of reintegration into society, which were mainly based on research conducted in the framework of the European FORINER project [28]. The students were asked to assess the statements on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree; 5 = totally agree). Afterwards, they were split up into 4 categories: General perspective on reintegration, job opportunities after release from prison, development of social skills, and country after release from prison. 2.2.3. Methods of Analysis The quantitative data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25. First, descriptive statistical analyses were performed to report the frequency of the students’ motives, satis- faction with the support, and perception on reintegration. Second, to measure the changes in students’ individual scores on assertiveness, digital skills, and language skills, change variables were constructed. These variables were calculated as the scores of the post-tests minus the scores of the pre-tests. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 6 of 20 3. Results 3.1. Qualitative Findings 3.1.1. Progress of the Courses from Eabt: From Application to Completion The interviews with professionals and volunteers demonstrated that the provision of distance courses from Eabt went through three steps: (1) Informing students, (2) applying for a course, and (3) starting the course, doing homework, and being assessed. Step 1: Informing Students The first step consisted of informing potential students about the educational offer of Eabt. The stories from the respondents revealed that written information sources were mostly used. When Dutch nationals were arrested abroad and registered at the Foreign Office for Consular Assistance, they received an information package. According to several respondents, this information package included, among other things, a brochure with information about the offer of Eabt. This was experienced as positive by several respondents. For instance, one said: Prisoners are given a great deal of information at the beginning [of detention]. Once they have been arrested, they do not yet know what awaits them. So, it is a good idea to mention it again in a brochure (R9, The Netherlands). Some respondents considered the fact that this brochure was only available in Dutch as a drawback. An eligibility requirement for following a course was that students must have the Dutch nationality or a residence permit for the Netherlands, but not all of them do speak Dutch. Due to this language barrier, it might be that potential foreign-speaking students were not informed about the offer of Eabt, although they also offer Dutch language courses. A potential solution formulated by the respondents was translating the brochure in other languages, such as English or French. Besides, some respondents mentioned that the students could get informed about the educational offer of Eabt by means of oral sources of information, such as visiting volunteers of the Foreign Liaison Office of the Dutch Probation Service, employees of the local prison, or the Dutch embassy or consulate. This was considered important by several respondents, as face-to-face contact motivates more that an information brochure. Especially for prisoners who do not understand Dutch, as the brochure is only available in Dutch. In the words of a respondent: ’Personal contact is always very powerful’ (R7, Netherlands). However, respondents mentioned that providing oral information to po- tential students was not always possible in the detaining country since Eabt depends on visiting volunteers. Not all countries have visiting volunteers. If there are volunteers, but they drop out, the dissemination of information cannot always be guaranteed, as one respondent stated: ’It is not easy to visit prisoners all over the world with the number of volunteers that Eabt has. So that is practically impractical’ (R7, The Netherlands). Step 2: Students Apply for a Course The respondents indicated that when students were interested in following a course from Eabt, they could inform the study program counsellor in the local prison or an employee of the Foreign Liaison Office of the Dutch Probation Service. These actors in turn pass on the information to Eabt. The students are then sent an application form and an introductory package. The purpose of this is providing information about the requested course, to estimate the language level of the potential students, to gauge their motivation, to check whether the requested course is in line with their previous education, to check which materials are allowed in the local prison, and to determine how long the students still have to stay in prison: When they sign up [to follow a course] [...], they are given a small language test and a questionnaire in which they have to indicate how motivated they are. Then an assessment is made as to whether it is feasible to link the [educational] wish to reality and then permission is given. I do not know exactly how this works. Then a teacher is linked to the person who is going to check the homework (R14, The Netherlands). Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 7 of 20 Step 3: Students start the course, do homework, and are assessed After a successful application, Eabt sends a trial lesson to the students, which consists of an assignment of their reading comprehension and a first homework task to assess the student’s level. If the trial lesson is evaluated positive, students receive the full course package. If Eabt feels that the student’s language and—sometimes—calculation level is insufficient, a course in Dutch is first recommended or another course is sought that they feel is more appropriate. Suggesting an alternative course was considered as very positive by the respondents. In this way, Eabt tries to provide students with a course targeted at his/her educational level. According to several respondents, this trial lesson is a way to lower the chances of ordering and delivering courses that are not adapted to the student’s Dutch language skills and/or educational level. Although the trial lesson is done in a written manner, a respondent mentioned that an interview could be an added value to gauge the intrinsic motivation of the students, which could possibly lead to a course that is more in line with the student’s needs. When students have been given permission to start a distance course, a teacher from the Netherlands is assigned and the full course package is sent by post. Eabt relies on the help of local partners for the import of the course packages. Several respondents mentioned that there are often difficulties in getting a course package into prison by post. Prison staff is often suspicious of a package in a foreign language. In such situations, the visiting volunteers of the Foreign Liaison Office of the Dutch Probation Service or employees of the Dutch embassies and consulates are used to deliver the course packages. However, this is also not always possible. A respondent gave the example of a Spanish prison where visiting volunteers were not allowed to get the course packages into prison. Therefore, Eabt was creative in finding a solution and currently the course packages are delivered with the help of a prison chaplain. In addition, in other countries, the delivery of course packages sometimes required some creativity: In England, the regime is sometimes very strict. They are not even allowed to receive parcels, but they can receive letters. Yes, then I remove a parcel and send it in a couple of letters, then it fits in an envelope and then it is allowed to come in [laughs]. [ . . . ] But with a book that’s almost impossible (R6, The Netherlands). The course packages the students receive include pre-franked envelopes through which they can send their homework assignments to the Netherlands free of charge. This was experienced as important by all respondents as they believed that many students would otherwise not start or complete a course, if they had to pay for it themselves. In addition, the respondents mentioned that the students must study independently, do homework assignments, and send them to the Netherlands. Eabt offers the students the opportunity to study at their own pace. This was valued by the respondents as this pace may vary between students: There are, of course, prisoners who have no work or no lessons in prison, yes, they have a lot of free time. So some prisoners shoot like a spear through such a course [laughs]. They finish in a few weeks, for example, because they have a lot of time. Others who do have a job or have other [activities], they have a cleaning job or do sports every day, they do all kinds of things, they have less time available to follow that course and it takes them a bit longer (R8, The Netherlands). However, several respondents pointed out that distance education is not feasible for every prisoner: Well, it is often the case that they [prisoners] are going to study alone for the first time, and that is also extremely difficult because distance education is a very difficult type of education. That takes a lot of work, there is no fixed time to go to school, there is no teacher to motivate you and explain. No, you must do everything on your own. It requires self-discipline, but still, for many [prisoners] it is the first time they get a certificate for something, and that is very special (R1, The Netherlands). Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 8 of 20 In addition, several respondents indicated that the study facilities were very different in prisons across the world. For instance, it varies from one prison to another on how many prisoners are in one cell or what infrastructure is available for studying. The respondents argued that in some prisons there was only the possibility to study in a cell, while other prisons have classrooms where students can go and ask questions to a teacher. During the interviews, the respondents indicated that it would be an added value if a teacher would be available in the local prison to guide and support students in the self-study process, but in practice this was often not the available. Several respondents reported that the students receive a certificate after the successful completion of certain courses. For most courses, it is sufficient to complete the homework assignment for each part of the course and pass. After students have successfully completed a course, Eabt provides the students with a certificate. For many courses (e.g., from the National Business Academy or Open University), an exam must be taken. According to the respondents, Eabt takes several efforts to organize this exam during detention abroad, which often requires creativity. For instance, several respondents mentioned that the exam can be organized under supervision in the local prison or at the Dutch embassy or consulate in the detaining country. The exams of the National Business Academy are normally completed on a computer. If this is not possible, a visiting volunteer can be appointed to print out the questions and take them to the prison. The respondents indicated that when it is not practically feasible to organize the exam during detention, the students will still be able to take the exam in the Netherlands after their release. However, it is possible that the students are transferred or released during their course, which was considered as a breaking point by the respondents. In principle, the students can continue the course upon transfer or release. It is the students’ responsibility to report a transfer or release to Eabt. The respondents regretted that, even though the information brochure states that this is the responsibility of the students themselves, in most cases it does not happen. Then, Eabt tries to obtain information about the students’ place of residence through partners such as the Foreign Liaison Office of the Dutch Probation Service or the Dutch embassies and consulates. On top of that, the respondents mentioned that teaching materials are often lost during a transfer to another prison. Students do not always have a choice about what they can take with them. Often only limited luggage is provided or, as one respondent stated: ’Sometimes a package is simply not taken along during a transfer’ (R8, The Netherlands). According to some respondents it was possible to send course packages after the transfer. Nevertheless, in many cases, the cost of receiving the package later is very high or the students must hope that there will still be room available for the package at the next prisoner transport. In principle, even in the event of prison release, the students can still complete the course. However, respondents pointed out that when prisoners are released, they have other things on their mind, such as looking for a place to stay or work. Therefore, the students often fail to complete it. In addition, one respondent mentioned that sometimes the students do not receive their course package until the day of release. In such cases, the course package was withheld by prison staff who did not trust the content of the package and therefore placed it with the prisoner’s personal belongings. Support for Students During Their Course Throughout the interviews, it became clear that the students could receive support from (1) the Netherlands and (2) actors in the detaining country. In both cases, motivational and content-related support was provided, although according to the respondents they were interpreted differently. First, the interviews showed that the support that was provided by Eabt and the teach- ers in the Netherlands was considered as structural support. The respondents indicated that motivational support was offered to the students, that consisted of feedback and tips on the homework assignments by the teacher and Eabt. The teachers not only corrected the assignments, but also provided feedback on how the students can (better) process Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 9 of 20 the subject matter: ‘I also add something to motivate them, I do that as well. I do try to motivate them a bit ’watch out, look at this, look at that...’ that’s very important. We all do that’ (R12, The Netherlands). For each homework that is corrected by the teacher in the Netherlands, Eabt also sends a letter to the students with, for instance, motivating and evaluating remarks, answers to questions asked by the students or current grades. In addition, the respondents mentioned that Eabt provided motivational support by sending postcards at key moments (e.g., when a course has been sent or when someone has obtained a certificate). These postcards were also sent at special events, such as Christmas or their birthday. In this way, Eabt tried to encourage the students. One respondent indicated that many students appreciated this as this is often the only post they receive. Concerning the content-related support that was provided to the students from the Netherlands, the respondents cited that the students often have no or only limited access to the internet or books from a library. Therefore, Eabt sometimes provided extra teaching materials (e.g., dictionary or a handbook) to meet their needs. This was considered as helpful by the respondents, because in this way, Eabt considered the situation in which the students live. In addition, another respondent indicated that Eabt is creative in its search for educational providers. Sometimes the students ask for a course that is not included in Eabt’s educational offer. When this is the case, Eabt searched for a provider who is willing/able to offer that course. The most important condition is that the course is available on paper, as in most prisons across the world, students have no or only limited access to the internet. Next to the support offered from the Netherlands, the respondents indicated that the students could also receive support in the detaining country of visiting volunteers, local student counsellors, teachers, or fellow prisoners. Furthermore, in this case, both motivational support and content-related support were possible. The respondents cited that these types of support were not structural, but rather depended on the local prison context. Firstly, the respondents indicated that the students may receive motivational support from various actors such as visiting volunteers who show interest in the course, fellow prisoners who encourage students to persevere, and, if local student counsellors and teachers were present, they could also motivate students to start or complete a course. Secondly, in the detaining country, also content-related support could be provided. The respondents indicated that visiting volunteers sometimes provided content-related support, for example, by going through a homework assignment with the students or by clarifying questions. Besides, the respondents mentioned that when a student counsellor or a teacher was present in the local prison, they could follow up the students’ learning. However, the respondents noted that not all students could rely on local student counsellors or visiting volunteers. Finally, some respondents stated that fellow prisoners could provide content-related support to students that were following a course from Eabt by helping each other to practice a language. Another respondent indicated that it also happened that students lent their Eabt-course to fellow prisoners, which happened most often with language courses. 3.1.2. Future Perspectives Success Factors The question ‘what are for you the success factors of Eabt?’ prompted respondents to think about what was currently going well. Throughout the interviews, four success factors could be deduced. First, many respondents considered Eabt as an example organization, through which they were unanimous about the importance of Eabt’s continued existence. Nevertheless, the respondents indicated that starting up a similar organization in another country would not be easy. Mainly the fact that they worked with volunteers made them unique and was considered as a strength. Especially because these volunteers were very passionate for the cause. As illustrated by a respondent: Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 10 of 20 The drive they [volunteers of Eabt] have, it is all run by people who are volunteers and therefore have a high level of commitment. There is also a greater desire to make things work [ . . . ] So I think they will go further than if they were just civil servants, who are like ’I only walk the normal way’. This involvement brings creativity and finding solutions (R14, The Netherlands). Secondly, it was stated that over the past 15 years, Eabt has built up an extensive network of partners in the Netherlands and abroad. They have a clear overview of which partner they can/must address at which time. The respondents mentioned that such a network is very important for registering students, delivering course packages, sending homework assignments, etc. In other words, this network is crucial to make the operation of Eabt possible. The free and wide range of courses at different educational levels was also seen as a success factor. Consequently, there is an educational offer for all students that meets his/her needs (e.g., vocational training courses, courses at primary school level or language courses). Finally, also the way in which the homework support was done and how the students were supported during the course were seen as a success factor by the respondents, as taking distance education might be a very challenging experience. For more information see ‘Support for students during their course’. Challenges Next to the success factors, the respondents highlighted four challenges related to the working of Eabt. Despite these challenges, Eabt was perceived as a powerful organization that can inspire other countries and organizations to facilitate distance education for their nationals detained abroad. The fact that Eabt works with volunteers was experienced by most respondents as a strength. However, several respondents pointed to the fact that this could also be a threat to Eabt’s continuity. In particular, because of the average age of Eabt’s board members and volunteers (i.e., most of them are aged 65 and over). According to the respondents, follow-up is necessary, such as looking for younger volunteers or letting Eabt ’merge’ into a governmental organization (e.g., Foreign Liaison Office of the Dutch Probation Service or Humanitas). A second bottleneck experienced regarding the continuity of Eabt is its dependence on subsidies, as one respondent pointed out: Well, that is very simple, dependence on subsidies. [...] If there are other people at the helm in the Netherlands and cuts have to be made, then I do not know either. Then I think yes, you are dependent on that (R12, The Netherlands). A third challenge that was expressed by several respondents is the dependency on the post for getting in contact with the students. The respondents mainly experienced difficul- ties with the import of course packages in certain prisons/countries and the long waiting times associated with correspondence by post. Postal communication was perceived by all respondents as a very time-consuming process that can have negative effects on the motivation of the students. In addition, several respondents experienced that sometimes parcels get lost or end up at the wrong addresses. Lastly, the imbalance between the emerging digitalization in society and the lack of opportunities for digitalization within prisons was underlined. However, despite this imbalance, several respondents saw digital opportunities for the operation of Eabt. The respondents dreamed that students’ homework could be scanned and sent by email, which would reduce the waiting times for sending by post. Furthermore, the respondents wished that contact moments could be organized via Skype between the students and teachers, so the students would be able to ask questions directly. This would also benefit the study motivation of the students and would provide an opportunity for the students to receive direct content-related feedback and support. In addition, the respondents indicated that Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 11 of 20 complete courses could be offered digitally. However, many respondents were aware that this is not an easy task for Eabt as they depend on the digital evolutions in the local prisons. 3.2. Quantitative Findings 3.2.1. Motives of Students to Follow a Course from Eabt In the pre-survey, the students were asked to indicate which motives for following a course applied to their own situation (see Table 1). They were mainly motivated to acquire knowledge and skills. The majority wanted to spend time in prison by doing something sensible or useful (96.6%; N = 56), or to learn about an interesting or important subject (86.4%; N = 51). The third most important motive belongs to the category ‘to prepare for life upon release’: To find work more easily after release (83.1%; N = 49), followed by being able to follow other courses more easily after release from prison (76.3%; N = 45). A third category is ‘reasons specific to the prison context’. The most decisive motive in this category is making time in prison easier by taking a course (76.8%; N = 43). The fourth category concerns ‘distance learning from home’ and contains only one motive, namely because the course comes from the Netherlands. This was a motive for 65.5% (N = 38). Finally, in terms of the latter category ’social motives’, just over half of the respondents studied to be able to help their families better (54.2%; N = 32). The other social motives were less common. Table 1. Motives of students for following a course via Education behind Foreign Bars (Eabt). Motives (Very) Important (%) N To acquire knowledge and skills To spend time doing something sensible and useful 96.6 56 To learn about an interesting or relevant subject 86.4 51 To satisfy my desires to learn 71.2 42 To prepare for life upon release To make it easier to get a job after release from prison 83.1 49 So that the course can be a bridge to more courses after release 76.3 45 To be better able to cope with life after release 70.7 41 To improve my self-esteem 66.7 38 To make it easier to avoid committing crimes after release 56.9 33 It increases my chance of release 56.7 34 Reasons unique to the prison context To make serving time easier 76.8 43 To feel like a regular person instead of a prisoner during studying 58.6 34 To make it easier to get a job in prison 36.2 21 Because it is better than working in prison 10.5 6 Distance course of the home country Because the course comes from the Netherlands 65.5 38 Social motives To help my family better 54.2 32 In this way, I would like to reconcile with my family, friends. . . 31 18 To increase my chances on employment in prison in order to send money to my family members 31 18 Because also friend/fellow prisoners are learning 21.7 13 Because I was encouraged by others 17.2 10 To be part of a group within prison 10.5 6 3.2.2. Results and Effects for Students Participating in a Course from Eabt Satisfaction of Students with the Support Received Throughout the course, students could receive support from the Netherlands (by Eabt and teachers) and from the prison in which they were staying (by prison officers and Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 12 of 20 fellow prisoners). In the post-survey, students’ satisfaction with these types of support was questioned. Table 2 shows that in general, students were more satisfied with the support they received from the Netherlands compared to the support they received from the local prison. In terms of the support from Eabt, the students were satisfied with the way homework was sent to their teacher in the Netherlands (87.1%; N = 27), but also with the way homework was sent to prison (77.4%; N = 24). Almost 76% of the students (N = 22) indicated that they had received the course material in full. In terms of the support from the teacher in the Netherlands, 77.4% (N = 24) were satisfied with the feedback they received from their teacher and 66.7% (N = 20) thought that their teacher had knowledge of the subject of the course. However, only less than half of the students (N = 15) indicated that they could make contact with their teacher when they needed help. Table 2. Satisfaction of students with the support received. Satisfaction with the Support (Totally) Agree (%) N Satisfaction with the support from Eabt I am satisfied with the way the homework was sent to my teacher in the Netherlands 87.1 27 I am satisfied with the way the homework was sent to prison 77.4 24 I have received all my course material in full (e.g., CD-ROMs, books) 75.9 22 Satisfaction with the support from the teacher in the Netherlands I am satisfied with the feedback (the answers) of my teacher from the Netherlands 77.4 24 My teacher in the Netherlands has knowledge of the subject of my course 66.7 20 I was able to get in touch with my teacher in the Netherlands when I needed help 48.4 15 Satisfaction with the support from the local prison My fellow prisoners approved of me taking classes 58.6 17 Prison officers encouraged me to finish the course 30 9 I could ask questions about the course to my fellow prisoners 20 6 I could ask questions about the course to the prison officers 9.7 3 Also, the students’ satisfaction with the support they received in the prison where they were staying was surveyed. Almost 60% (N = 17) felt that their fellow prisoners approved that they followed this course. Thirty percent (N = 9) indicated that prison officers encouraged them to complete the course. The students were less able to ask questions about the course in the local prison. Twenty percent (N = 6) indicated that they could ask questions to fellow prisoners and 9.7% (N = 3) to prison officers. Assertiveness, Digital Skills and Language Skills The pre- (T0) and post-survey (T1) measured the students’ assertiveness, digital, and language skills (N = 30). Table 3 presents the percentage of the students that experienced an increase as well as a decrease in these skills. Fifty percent experienced an increase in their language skills, 46.7% in assertiveness, and 37.9% in digital skills. The mean of change varies from 1.69 (digital skills) to 0.44 (language skills). A somewhat smaller number of students experienced a decrease of these skills. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 13 of 20 Table 3. Change in assertiveness, digital skills, and language skills (N = 30). Skills Increase Decrease Mean T0 Mean T1 Mean of Change % of Population Mean T0 Mean T1 Mean of Change % of Population Assertiveness 7.33 7.97 0.64 46.7 8.30 7.43 −0.87 40 Digital skills 7.00 8.69 1.69 37.9 8.29 6.96 −1.33 31 Language skills 7.75 8.19 0.44 50 8.61 8.13 −0.48 39.3 Students’ Perspective on Reintegration Table 4 demonstrates that 66.7% of the students (N = 20) expected to have a better life after release from prison as a result of the course. The chances of easier avoiding committing crimes (39.3%; N = 11) and increasing the chances of release (20%; N = 6) were estimated to be less high. 60% (N = 18) expected to find work more easily and also to find a better or nicer job after release from prison due to the course. The students also felt that the course has contributed to the development of their social skills. Sixty percent (N = 18) indicated that the course allows them to control themselves better, 53.4% (N = 16) that they can better manage their daily living activities, and 50% (N = 15) that the course will improve their relationship with family and friends. In addition, 33.4% (N = 10) stated that the course has taught them to behave better in a group. Finally, more than half of the students (55.1%; N = 16) wanted to return to the Netherlands because of the course, while only a small minority (10%; N = 3) expected that the course gives them more chances to stay in the detaining country. Table 4. Perspective of the students on reintegration. Reintegration (Totally) Agree (%) N General perspective on reintegration Due to this course, I will have a better life after release from prison 66.7 20 Due to this course, it will be easier to avoid committing crimes 39.3 11 Following the course has increased my chance for release 20 6 Job opportunities after release from prison Due to this course, it will be easier to find a job after release from prison 60 18 Due to this course, I will be able to find a better and more pleasant job after release from prison 60 18 Development of social skills Due to this course, I can control myself more 60 18 Due to this course, I can better arrange my daily living activities (household, bills, raising children, etc.) 53.4 16 Due to this course, my relationship with family and friends will be improved 50 15 The course has taught me how to behave well in a group 33.4 1 Country after release from prison Due to this course, I felt like returning to the Netherlands 55.1 16 Due to this course, I have more chances to stay in the country where I am now 10 3 4. Discussion Since distance education opportunities for foreign national prisoners provided by their home country are scarce [17], this mixed-methods case study aimed to gain insight into the unique operation of Eabt by investigating professionals, volunteers and students involved. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 14 of 20 4.1. Professionals and Volunteers’ Perspectives on the Progress of the Course and the Future of Eabt The qualitative part of this study demonstrates that a course from Eabt progress via three steps: (1) Informing students, (2) signing up for the course, and (3) starting the course, doing homework, and being assessed. The students are mainly informed by means of written information. Previous research has shown that foreign national prisoners are confronted with language issues [28], which makes informing them about the available activities difficult [25]. Therefore, it is important to make information available in a language they understand [18]. For this reason, Eabt could focus more on the written announcement of the educational offer in languages as English or French for those students who do not master Dutch. The importance of oral information from visiting volunteers, employees of the local prisons, or the Dutch embassies and consulates is also underlined in this study. By actively involving all these actors in informing students, offering distance education to their citizens detained abroad becomes a shared responsibility [28]. After being informed, students may decide to enroll for a course from Eabt. After successfully completing a self-assessment test, students will be sent the course. The im- portance of assessing prisoners’ needs and existing skills before the start of the course is underlined by other academics, as otherwise the risk exists that prisoners are considered as a homogenous group that does not differ regarding age, educational background, profi- ciency of basic skills, personal interest, etc. [32]. The importance of an assessment at the start also came to the fore during the FORINER project, since without an assessment of the student’s level, courses can be too difficult/too easy in practice. During the FORINER project, 15 pilot projects throughout Europe were set up with the aim of offering distance education to foreign national prisoners provided by their home country [28]. The Con- federation of European Probation [24] and the Council of Europe [15] also state that it is essential that students follow courses that are adapted to their level. Next, student start the course, do homework, and are evaluated. The students follow the course at their own pace and make several homework assignments, which they send to the Netherlands to be corrected. Much of the communication between Eabt and the students takes place by post (e.g., in terms of sending the course, sending in homework assignments, or giving feedback). Although technology developments outside prison walls have changed the way in which distance learning materials are prepared, shared, and utilized, prisons have not followed these evolutions. As a result, a gap exists between the learning experience of the students in and outside prison [33]. For instance, many educational providers from outside prison walls increasingly use ICT to communicate with their students and to submit tasks [34], but this is often impossible in the context of distance education for prisoners. Although some improvements have been made during the past years, nowadays most prisoners still have no direct access to the internet [33]. This study does not only provide insight into how professionals and volunteers look at the progress of the courses of Eabt, but also into the types of support that are provided to the students. An important comment of the respondents is that distance education is not evident for every prisoner as it requires a lot of self-discipline. Previous research on (online) distance learning outside prison has emphasized that students need to have a high level of autonomy as they should be able to plan their study, set up goals, and self-evaluate [35]. Therefore, proving support to the learners is essential [36]. Throughout the interviews, it emerges that learner support is offered from the Netherlands and in the detaining country. The support from the Netherlands is structural, which means that all students receive it. The teachers motivate students through their feedback and tips on homework assignments and Eabt by sending postcards at key moments (e.g., course package sent or certificate obtained) and with special events (e.g., public holidays or birthdays). Content-related support is also provided as Eabt sends extra teaching materials (e.g., dictionaries or handbooks) and looks for the right educational provider if a student asks for a course that is not in their standard educational offer. Support in the detaining country is more likely to depend on the local situation. Examples of motivational support include visiting volunteers, fellow Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 15 of 20 prisoners, or teachers encouraging students, while content-related support is more about going over homework assignments or follow-up of the course. As in the FORINER project, we consider all types of support to be valuable and essential, both at the start of a course and during the study process [28]. The extent to which students could rely on support can possibly linked to the division Pike and Adams [37] make between ‘learning prisons’ and ‘working prison’. On the one hand, a ‘learning prison’ implies an environment in which prisoners believe they can learn independently and personally grow. Where distance learning is, for instance, integrated into the educational program so students can access the learning materials, computers, printers, etc. This links with the idea of Szifris et al. [6] that the environment of an educational department can serve as a safe place within the prison environment. A ‘working prison’ on the other hand entails an environment in which students do not get the space, time, and technology they need to learn independently [37]. In terms of how professionals and volunteers perceive the future of Eabt, this study demonstrates that the respondents have a great deal of appreciation for Eabt. During the interviews, several success factors emerged which they believe Eabt should continue to focus on in the future. The fact that Eabt works with volunteers is considered to be a success as these volunteers are enormously driven and very passionate. However, this was also regarded as a threat to Eabt’s continuity because of the average age of Eabt’s board members and volunteers. The broad network with partners in the Netherlands and worldwide is also considered as a success factor. This is necessary to make Eabt’s work possible. In addition, the wide range of free courses and homework support have also been identified as success factors. Finally, this study highlights the challenge of digitalization for Eabt. In most countries, prisoners do not have access to a computer with an internet connection. The discussion on whether secure and limited internet access should be possible in prisons has been going on for a long time [38]. Eabt would benefit by operating (partly) via the internet, but to achieve this, Eabt is dependent on situations in the local prisons. Using ICT with regard to distance education is a huge challenge for foreign national prisoners but is important as it could strengthen the communication between the students/professionals in the local prison and the educational provider from the home country [14]. 4.2. Students’ Motivation, Results and Effects of Participating in a Distance Course Our study highlights that students are mainly motivated to take a distance course from Eabt because they want to acquire knowledge and skills. Previous studies on other types of prison education have identified gaining skills and qualifications as an important outcome [6,7]. The wish to acquire knowledge and skills reflects an intrinsic motivation, which occurs when individuals participate in education because they enjoy the learning activity itself [39]. Additionally, motivations for preparing for life after detention seem to be important. Manger et al. consider this an extrinsic motivation as the outcome lies outside the course itself [39]. What is specific for our study population, is the fact that they are also motivated to follow a course as this is provided by their home country. The importance of these different categories of motivations is in line with previous research which has been conducted in the framework of the European FORINER project. Corresponding with research carried out among the general prison population in Belgium [40] and Norway [30], we can assume that the students involved in our study are aware of the future and the hope of a better life after detention, which motivates them to follow distance education. Concerning their perspective on reintegration, the students seem to have confidence in the future. They expect to have a better life after release from prison as a result of participating in the course. In addition, they seem to have gained more confidence in the possibility of finding a good, nice, or better job after their release. This finding is contrary to previous research among foreign national prisoners that found that they are often pessimistic about their job prospects after prison [24]. The difference between the study of Westhreim and Manger [24] and our study is that in our study the students follow courses from their home country, mainly preparatory vocational training courses. This might be a reason why the students are more positive about the applicability of what they Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 16 of 20 have learned after release. By offering distance courses, Eabt considers the recommendation of the Council of Europe on foreign national prisoners. This recommendation states that it is important to work towards qualifications that are recognized and can be continued in the country where people are going to reside after release from prison [15]. For many of their courses, Eabt works together with other distance education providers, through which students can obtain recognized certificates. In case the course is not finalized during time of incarceration, students can continue their study after release from prison. Besides, our study reveals that the students are most satisfied with the way homework is sent from the prison to their teacher in the Netherlands and vice versa, and with the feedback they receive from their teacher. This finding aligns well with research from the FORINER project [28]. The Confederation of European Probation points to the importance of providing support and encouragement to foreign national prisoners that are following distance education from their homeland. This is important given the stressful situation in which they find themselves and the difficult prison conditions in which they must follow distance education [41]. Since it is impossible for the students to rely on the support of teachers in the Netherlands at any time of the day, local prisons could also involve peer mentors to support the students while following distance education. Previous research already demonstrated that peer education is effective in enhancing health, hygiene awareness, and first aid knowledge among the prison population [42,43]. It could be valuable to see if peers can also play a role in supporting distance education, potentially in motivating fellow prisoners to complete assignments and asking how the course is going. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that following a course from Eabt might affect how the students experience their assertiveness, digital skills, and language skills. This is in line with previous research that focused on adult and continuing education for vulnerable adults [44]. 4.3. Study Limitations and Avenues for Future Research While this exploratory case study provides a unique insight into the operation of Eabt, which is the only foundation in the world that provides distance education to nationals detained abroad, this study is subject to four limitations. A first limitation concerns the limited number of students in the pre- (n = 60) and post-surveys (n = 31). Therefore, the findings of the research must be interpreted carefully. Only students that applied for a course from Eabt between July and December 2018 were invited to participate. A possibility to enlarge the number of respondents would be to extend the time of the quantitative data collection. This would also enable to perform more advanced analyses, such as multivariate analyses. Despite foreign nationals’ equal rights to prison education, they have less educational opportunities than national prisoners [16–18]. Additional measures should be taken by prison authorities to give foreign national prisoners the same access as national prisoners [6], such as distance education from their home country. This case study and research from the FORINER project [28] show that distance learning from the home country is perceived positively. The FORINER project even led to the development of a European model to provide distance education for foreign national prisoners [45]. However, up until today, little efforts are taken by prison authorities to provide distance education to foreign national prisoners. Further research is needed to find out why no action is taken and what is needed to make distance education for foreign national prisoners a common practice in Europe. Furthermore, in case more foreign national prisoners across Europe or the world could have access to distance education, a larger-scaled research project can be set up. Second, in this study the perspectives of the students are only included by means of the pre- and post-survey. Qualitative follow-up research could provide more in-depth insight into, for instance, the students’ satisfactions with the course, the support they receive while following a course, the influence of the local prison environment on their study, and to which extent they feel that the educational offer of Eabt can contribute to their future professional plans. It could also be investigated to what extent the outcomes Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 17 of 20 that are included in the general theory on prison education [6] are experienced by distance education students. These outcomes include education as a hook for change, gaining skills and qualifications, and the extent to which the educational prison environment serves as a safe place. Although several efforts were undertaken, only two students could be interviewed. Due to this low number, it was decided to not include their insights into this manuscript. Third, although face-to-face interviewing is the most accepted norm [46], in this study, many professionals and volunteers were interviewed by means of telephone or skype due to practical accessibility. Telephone interviews are often associated with a loss of non-verbal and contextual data. However, they also can offer the participants the opportunity to share more sensitive information and to feel more at ease [47]. Fourth, the study did not focus on the relationship between following a distance course of Eabt and recidivism rates and employment outcomes. As several reviews have demonstrated the potential of prison education in reducing the likelihood of recidivism and increasing the chances of obtaining employment after release from prison [6,8], it might be valuable to study if these outcomes also relate to distance education. 5. Conclusions Although foreign national prisoners have equal rights on prison education, in practice, their educational needs are rarely met due to organizational and structural barriers. The Dutch foundation ‘Educatie achter buitenlandse tralies’ (Education behind Foreign Bars – or Eabt) offers a solution to this problem by providing distance education to their nationals detained abroad. This exploratory mixed-methods case study provides insights into the working of this unique organization. It also presents several contributions to the literature on prison education as currently distance education for foreign national prisoners is an under-researched type of prison education. This study reveals that foreign national prisoners are mainly motivated to take a distance course from their home country to acquire knowledge and skills, and to prepare for life after detention. What is specific for our study population, is the fact that they are also motivated to follow a course as this is provided by their home country. A second contribution to the literature is that supporting the distance learners seems to be essential as this type of prison education is not feasible for every prisoner. Support can be offered by their home country, but also by the local prison. This underlines the importance of the local prison education environment in supporting and motivating prisoners to follow a distance education course from their home country. The study also has important practical implications for countries or organizations that would like to set up distance education for their nationals detained abroad. Among other things, it is important to set up an extensive network of partners all over the world, to fur- ther develop the digital learning opportunities in prison, and to provide both motivational and content-related support to the students. Finally, the study suggests several avenues for future research. As up until now little efforts are taken by prison authorities to provide distance education to foreign national prisoners, further research is needed to find out why no action is taken and what is needed to make distance education for foreign national prisoners a common practice in Europe. Secondly, the quantitative data collection can also be extended to enlarge the number of respondents and to be able to execute more advanced quantitative analyses. Thirdly, qualitative research with students could be conducted to gain insight into their satisfaction with the course, the support they received, the influence the local prison context has on their study, and to what extent the course contributes to their future professional plans. Moreover, the relationship between following a distance course of Eabt and recidivism rates and employment outcomes could be a valuable path for future research. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 41 18 of 20 Author Contributions: Conceptualization, D.B., F.L., and F.C.; methodology, D.B.; formal analysis, D.B.; investigation, D.B. and F.C.; resources, F.L.; data curation, D.B. and F.C.; writing—original draft preparation, D.B., S.M., F.L., and F.C.; writing—review and editing, D.B., S.M., F.L., and F.C.; project administration, D.B.; supervision, D.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: This research received no external funding. Institutional Review Board Statement: The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Ethics Committee in Human Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) (Ref. ECHW_163, approved at 29th of October 2018). Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study. Data Availability Statement: The data presented here are available from the authors on request. Acknowledgments: This paper is based on the Dutch research report “Educatie achter buitenlandse tralies: Evaluatieonderzoek” [48]. We would like to thank the students, professionals and volunteers for participating in this study and the staff of Eabt to facilitate and support the practical organization of the study. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1. Behan, C. Learning to escape: Prison education, rehabilitation and the potential for transformation. J. Prison Educ. Reentry 2014, 1, 20–31. [CrossRef] 2. Fajonyomi, A. Strategic learning ideologies in prison education programs. Int. J. Lifelong Educ. 2019, 38, 124–126. [CrossRef] 3. Cleere, G. Prison Education and Desistance; Routledge: Oxon, UK, 2021. 4. Moreira, J.A.; Monteiro, A.; Machado, A. Adult higher education in a Portuguese prison. Eur. J. Res. Educ. Learn. Adults 2017, 8, 37–53. [CrossRef] 5. Hawley, J.; Murphy, I.; Souto-Otero, M. 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Sci. 2021, 11, 41 20 of 20 45. Van Acker, I.; Durkovics, B.; Donckers, L.; Rammelaere, M.; Vanhouce, A.-S.; Smith, A. FORINER Model and Recommendations. Providing Distance Education for Foreign National Prisoners in Their Native Language; VOCVO: Mechelen, Belgium, 2017. Available online: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hixAvZ0zzudFRsMmRQZFVpcGVkbkF5bDR2ZHFRQVdjVno4/view (accessed on 17 December 2020). 46. Ward, K.; Gott, M.; Hoare, K. Participants’ views of telephone interviews within a grounded theory study. J. Adv. Nurs. 2015, 71, 2775–2785. [CrossRef] [PubMed] 47. Novick, G. Is there a bias against telephone interviews in qualitative research? Res. Nurs. Health 2008, 31, 391–398. [CrossRef] [PubMed] 48. Brosens, D.; De Vos, L.; Croux, F. Educatie Achter Buitenlandse Tralies: Evaluatieonderzoek. 2020. Available online: https: //pald.research.vub.be/en/publications (accessed on 16 December 2020). https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hixAvZ0zzudFRsMmRQZFVpcGVkbkF5bDR2ZHFRQVdjVno4/view http://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12748 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26256835 http://doi.org/10.1002/nur.20259 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18203128 https://pald.research.vub.be/en/publications https://pald.research.vub.be/en/publications Introduction Materials and Methods Part 1: Individual Interviews with Volunteers and Professionals Part 2: Pre- and Post-Surveys Among Students Participants and Procedures Variables Methods of Analysis Results Qualitative Findings Progress of the Courses from Eabt: From Application to Completion Future Perspectives Quantitative Findings Motives of Students to Follow a Course from Eabt Results and Effects for Students Participating in a Course from Eabt Discussion Professionals and Volunteers’ Perspectives on the Progress of the Course and the Future of Eabt Students’ Motivation, Results and Effects of Participating in a Distance Course Study Limitations and Avenues for Future Research Conclusions References 
work_r3rcmyae5bfo7lansaifzolgp4	----	[PDF] Student and faculty issues in distance education occupational safety and health graduate programs. | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1016/S0022-4375(02)00024-5 Corpus ID: 45501842Student and faculty issues in distance education occupational safety and health graduate programs. @article{Fender2002StudentAF, title={Student and faculty issues in distance education occupational safety and health graduate programs.}, author={David L. Fender}, journal={Journal of safety research}, year={2002}, volume={33 2}, pages={ 175-93 } } David L. Fender Published 2002 Medicine Journal of safety research PROBLEM There is increasing interest in delivering degree programs without requiring students to attend traditional classroom-based classes. There are many differences between classroom and distance courses that must be addressed to have effective distance programs. METHOD Occupational safety and health faculty and occupational safety and health professionals were surveyed to determine the need for graduate occupational safety and health programs, delivered by means of distance education, and… Expand View on PubMed hhs.iup.edu Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 12 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 2 Background Citations 5 Results Citations 2 View All Tables and Topics from this paper table 1 table 2 table 3 table 4 table 5 table 6 table 7 table 8 table 9 View All 9 Figures & Tables Pedagogy Impacted tooth Education, Distance 12 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Occupational Health and Safety post-graduation courses in Europe: A general overview P. Arezes, P. Swuste Engineering 2012 27 Save Alert Research Feed The Effects of a Case-Based Learning Approach on the Achievement and Attitudes of Students towards an Occupational Health and Safety Course in Turkey A. Geçer, A. E. Amac, F. Aras 2013 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Development and delivery of occupational health and safety management program through open and flexible distance learning S. Hamid, Norlia Goolamally, M. Fadzil Engineering 2013 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Academic Counselling for Graduate Research Students with Distance Learning L. Maunganidze, T. Sodi, P. Mudhovozi, E. Mberi, J. Mutasa Psychology 2010 2 View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Occupational safety and health in China: junior college students' knowledge from a large cross-sectional survey in Jiangsu Province. Shuqing Xu, L. Wang, +5 authors Baoli Zhu Psychology, Medicine Journal of public health policy 2020 Save Alert Research Feed Typology of college student perception on institutional e-learning issues - An extension study of a teacher's typology in Taiwan Y. Tao Sociology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2008 27 Highly Influenced View 12 excerpts, cites background and results Save Alert Research Feed Evaluation of Impact of Safety Training Programme in Indian Construction Industry - Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach Prasad Engineering 2014 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Effectiveness of Home-Study Driver Education Compared to Classroom Instruction: The Impact on Student Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes G. Davis, Maria Contreras-Sweet, Steven Gourley Psychology 2003 3 View 3 excerpts, cites results and background Save Alert Research Feed Faculty Comfort Levels with Simulation A. L. Jones, M. Hegge Psychology 2007 24 Save Alert Research Feed An investigation of safety training, safety climate and safety outcomes : A longitudinal study in a Malaysian manufacturing plant Siti Fatimah Bahari Engineering 2011 4 Highly Influenced View 4 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 22 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Incentives and Obstacles Influencing Higher Education Faculty and Administrators to Teach Via Distance S. Rockwell, Jolene Schauer, S. Fritz, D. Marx Psychology 1999 218 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Students Perceptions of Distance Learning, Online Learning and the Traditional Classroom J. O'Malley, Harrison McCraw Computer Science 1999 240 PDF View 2 excerpts, references results and background Save Alert Research Feed Effectiveness of an Internet-Based Graduate Engineering Management Course R. M. Evans, S. Murray, M. Daily, R. H. Hall Psychology 2000 24 Save Alert Research Feed Perspectives on an Internet-Based Synchronous Distance Learning Experience Christopher B. Williamson, J. Bernhard, K. Chamberlin Psychology 2000 27 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Online Professional Education: A Case Study of an MBA Program Through Its Transition to an Online Model L. Schrum, A. Benson Engineering, Sociology 2000 37 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Deterrents to participation in web‐based continuing professional education Kathy J. Perdue, T. Valentine Political Science, Business 1999 25 View 1 excerpt, references results Save Alert Research Feed Distance Education: On Focus and Future C. C. Gibson Sociology 1992 19 Highly Influential View 6 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Barriers to distance education: A factor‐analytic study L. Muilenburg, Z. Berge Psychology 2001 248 PDF View 1 excerpt, references results Save Alert Research Feed Learners as Knowledge Workers—Some Implications* A. Broberg Psychology 2001 7 Save Alert Research Feed Internet Teaching By Style: Profiling the On-line Professor Dorothy Fuller, R. Norby, K. Pearce, Sharon Strand Psychology, Computer Science J. Educ. Technol. Soc. 2000 46 PDF Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Tables and Topics 12 Citations 22 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_r56w7ygyejefvnhgjxsff7d3m4	----	Microsoft Word - 32 Studying the Attitude of Prospective Teachers - Abdul MALIK.docx Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.31703/gssr.2018(III-IV).32 p-ISSN 2520-0348, e-ISSN 2616-793X DOI: 10.31703/gssr.2018(III-IV).32 Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) Page: 472 – 485 The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Muhammad Abdul Malik* Irshad Hussain† This study evaluated the attitude of prospective teachers towards “guidance and counseling services” in distance education. The survey method was used for data collection from 730 B.Ed. learners of the AIOU by using questionnaires on a five-point rating (Likert) scale. The results indicated that the majority of the prospective teachers (80.24%) appeared to be satisfied with information services and the channels of providing such services by AIOU. More than half of the respondents (57.81%, 57.59%, and 57.81%) appeared were unsatisfied with the provision of tutors’ information, guidance by their tutors on writing assignments, and tutorial meetings (respectively). Overall, more than half of the respondents’ appeared with their positive perception about “guidance and counseling services”. The study recommended tutors’ training on how to tutor in distance education; how-to guide and facilitate distance learners in writing good assignments. Key Words: Prospective Teachers, Guidance and Counseling Services, Tutor, Student Counselor, Distance Education r Introduction Provision of “guidance and counseling” in distance education seems to be useful for learners in realizing their study needs, overcoming assignment issues, loneliness and finally getting through examinations. In teacher education programs guidance and counseling become more significant as future teachers are trained who need more care and more attention for equipping them with pedagogical skills, professional ethics, and moral values along with pro-social behaviors. However, it is a challenging task to provide “guidance and counseling” services to the prospective teachers at a distance rather it seems to be a passionate and skillful *PhD Scholar, Preston University Kohat, Islamabad Campus, Islamabad, Pakistan. Email: mabdulmalik69@gmail.com †Department of Education, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan. Abstract The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 473 activity for the tutors and academicians at an Open University –AIOU. Proper provision of appropriate “guidance and counseling services” appears to be useful for distance learners in exploring the self, learning social values and professional ethics, getting better opportunities of employment, enhancing professional efficiency, developing and maintaining professional relationships, accepting diversity and challenges to become future leaders of the younger generation. Therefore, one may say that “guidance and counseling services” are catalyzing agents in distance education which facilitate learners to continue their studies till successful completion. Munchel (2015) acknowledged the need for “guidance and counseling services” in distance education to help them continue their studies. According to Hussain (2013) distance, learners need “guidance and counseling services” at different stages and levels for their success. Initially, they need guidance before becoming distance learners formally i.e. they need information on and/ or about different programs and/ or courses of their interest or to which they can be enrolled. They need information about the advertisement, admission process, fee and fee structure, scholarships, and more importantly the process of study in distance education, examination, and certification. Similarly, after becoming distance learners formally, they need guidance on “how to study the self-instructional materials”, how to prepare assignments, how to get greater marks in the assignments, how and when to contact their tutors, how to participate in tutorials, how to prepare for the examinations, how to overcome study problems, how to overcome personal problems and maintain the sense of belongingness by eliminating the sense of loneliness, how to get feedback on the work and how to maintain the pace of study. Provision of the right type of “guidance and counseling services” at the right time to the right learners’ develops self- motivation and self-regulation among distance learners and leads them to secure higher grades in their studies. In other situations, they would become not or less motivated and feeling isolated to lead them to secure lower grades and in some cases quitting the program or courses unsuccessfully (Safdar, 2007; Rashid, 2001). Even so, distance learners need “guidance and counseling services” when they successfully graduate at a certain level. At this stage they need guidance on how to get the cumulative transcript and degree, what are further academic opportunities, what is the scope of his/her credentials and where s/he can get employment etc. therefore, “guidance and counseling services” appear to be part and parcel of an academic journey of a distance learner. As distance learners are adults (Hussain, 2005) they need “specialized guidance and counseling” (Hussain, 2013) and therefore, they, “placed the greatest importance on student support services related to getting started with their studies” (Möwes, 2005, p. i) particularly guidance and counseling in distance education. Burns (2011) preferred learners’ centered instructional design in distance education along with proper “guidance and counseling” provision and suggested high quality professional online and/ or televised learners’ support services in the new era. Muhammad Abdul Malik and Irshad Hussain 474 Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) Bibi and Khan (2018) suggested the present “guidance and counseling services” model of the Allama Iqbal Open University be updated and strengthened according to the needs of the learners by redesigning it. They concluded that “the areas where Pakistan is lacking when it comes to guidance systems are an absence of vital acknowledgment of direction and centralized approach, lack of matching skill gaps with learning opportunities, poor communication, lack of professional development, absence of knowledge of the newest trends and tools and lack of self- review and planning. It suggests that the goals and approaches catering towards student wellbeing need to be considered when revamping and upgrading guidance systems to improve the current quality of such services at the AIOU and throughout Pakistan”. Indira Gandhi National Open University (2009) found “guidance and counseling services” as important components of instructional process in distance education mode; whereas Baugh (2018) and Panja & De (2015) emphasized on the importance of these services generally in education system and teacher education programs for the nourishment of mental capacities of the younger generation. Proper provision of “guidance and counseling services” to the students makes them capable of exhibiting acceptable behaviors in different life situations (Tuchili & Ndhlovu, 2017). These services as personal contacts between tutors and students appeared to be useful interventions for eliminating the dropout at IGNOU (Farhat, 2014; Duggal, 2016). Ojo & Olakulahin (2006) found affirmative perception and opinion about ODL in Nigeria including guidance and counseling services by asserting that “The counseling needs of learners are better met in ODL than in the conventional higher education” (p.7). Onyilofor (2013) suggested, “repositioning guidance and counseling and curriculum innovation in higher education” (p. 153) in Nigeria. A study conducted by Mansha (2001) on “guidance and counseling services” provided by AIOU at M.Ed. level affirmed the significance of such services furthering their education and minimizing the dropout rate in distance education. However, an overwhelming majority of learners were of the view that tutors were not properly trained in providing “guidance and counseling services” and also these were provided during the tutorials. Similarly, Raza (2003) compared students' support services provided by AIOU and UKOU at M.A Education and M. Ed. level. The study revealed that the learners had less access to guidance services at AIOU; whereas the counselors at UKOU appeared to be caring and supportive to the learners with efficient management of “guidance and counseling services”. Even so, the study of Chaudhary, Gujjar, and Chaudhary (2009) compared learners’ support services of the Open University of Sri-Lanka and Allama Iqbal Open University. The study found counseling services, tutorial services, media support services, and library services to be of the same level at both the universities. But the provision of general services, regional office services, The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 475 and overall services appeared to be better at the Open University of Sri-Lanka than its counterpart i.e. AIOU. Akhter and Munshi (2016) analyzed tutorials support services in distance education for prospective teachers (B.Ed. learners) in Pakistan and found that the respondents appeared to be keen on attending tutorials but these were less effective in helping prospective teachers especially those who were living in rural areas. They suggested an online tutorial to supplement face-to-face tutorial meetings. Malik and Rashid (2015) examined the role of “guidance and counseling services” for prospective teachers (B.Ed. learners) at AIOU. The study affirmed that leaners need guidance and counseling for admission. Students’ advisory cell and regional offices are responsible for providing such services to potential distance learners. They further asserted that “Telephonic guidance and internet counseling are available in the university and special care is taken to resolve the students’ problems by Student Advisory Cell. Tutors bring relief from stress to students from poor concentration. In the selection of courses, during depression and anxiety but pre and post-admission guidance and counseling services are inappropriate and the ethical values are not maintained during guidance and counseling to students” (p.276). Objectives of the Study This study focused on (a) evaluating the “attitude of prospective teachers towards guidance and counseling services” in distance education; (b) examining the opinion of prospective teachers towards the role of tutors in proving guidance and counseling services; (c) Opinion of prospective teachers about their problems in getting benefits of the “guidance and counseling services” at AIOU. Research Methodology It was a descriptive study and the survey method was used for data collection. Population and Sampling This study was delimited to the Islamabad and Rawalpindi regions. The learners of B.Ed. program of the Allama Iqbal Open University comprised the population of this study. There were 14,950 prospective teachers enrolled in B. Ed. Program in spring and autumn semesters 2013 at Islamabad & Rawalpindi regions. A sample of five percent (5%) of the total population which consisted of 748 prospective teachers was taken through a random sampling technique. Muhammad Abdul Malik and Irshad Hussain 476 Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) Research Tool Development and Data Collection A questionnaire on a five-point rating (Likert) scale was developed after a literature review to elicit the opinion of the prospective teachers about “guidance and counseling service” at AIOU. To validate the questionnaire of the study, the experts’ opinion was taken. The questionnaire was improved by adding and correcting some statements according to experts’ suggestions. The improved questionnaire was piloted on thirty-five (35) prospective teachers. The tool was finalized in light of the results of the pilot testing. The reliability coefficient of the tool was measured to be 0.76. The finalized questionnaire was administered on 748 prospective teachers (B.Ed. learners) during their workshops after getting permission from the respective Regional Directors and workshop coordinators. The respondents have explained the objectives of the study and the process of filling in the questionnaire. The researcher observed all research ethics of “social science research”. A total of 730 (out of 748) respondents completed the questionnaire in all respects. When the process of data collection was over, the researcher entered the data into MS Excel program according to scale values of the tool i.e. SA 5; A 4; UNC 3; DA 2 and SDA 1. The information collected through questionnaire were tabulated and analyze, by using descriptive statistics i.e. percentage because of the nature of the study. The results of the data analysis are given in the following section in tabular form. Results of the Study The results of the study are given below in tabular form for the understanding of the situation. Table 1. The opinion of Prospective Teachers about the Information Services Statement Level of agreement SA A UNC DA SDA f % f % f % f % f % Information Services Regional Office 372 51.96 292 40 10 1.32 32 3.38 24 3.29 Information about the program 364 49.86 292 40 11 1.51 52 7.12 11 1.51 Advertisement 136 18.63 472 64.66 38 5.21 52 7.12 32 4.38 Prospectus 265 36.30 301 41.23 72 9.86 87 11.92 5 0.68 The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 477 Web- information 134 18.36 317 43.42 46 6.30 214 29.32 19 2.60 Payment of fee 73 10 369 50.55 57 7.81 187 25.62 44 6.02 guidance on admission process 345 47.26 361 49.45 2 0.27 16 2.19 6 0.82 Overall Average 241 .29 33.20 343 .43 47.04 33 .7 1 4.61 91.43 12.38 20.1 4 2.76 N*=730 The table 1indicates opinion of the prospective teachers (B.Ed. learners) about information services of the AIOU provided to the potential learners. The data demonstrated that 91.96% of the respondents’ i.e. prospective teachers were of the view that they obtained their required information about admission process from the regional office; 89.86% affirmed that they were provided proper information about their program of study by the regional office of AIOU. Similarly, 83.29% of the prospective teachers acknowledged that advertisement of the AIOU provided them required information; whereas, 77.53% received this information from the prospectus. Even so, in the age of information technology, 61.78% of the respondents used AIOU website and social media for getting their required information about admission and programs of studies. However, 60.55% of the respondents thought that they needed information regarding fee, the process of fee payment process which they were provided by the AIOU regional office, and prospectus. Likewise, an overwhelming majority of the respondents asserted that they needed guidance on how to get admission in AIOU which is different from the traditional intuitions of teacher education. Overall, 80.24% of the prospective teachers were of the view that information services are properly provided to the potential learners through different means listed above. Table 2. Perception of Prospective Teachers about General Guidance and Counseling Services Statement Level of agreement SA A UNC DA SDA f % f % f % f % f % General “guidance and counseling services” Receiving study material 196 26.85 367 50.27 33 4.52 79 10.82 55 7.53 Tutors’ information 95 13.01 172 23.56 41 5.62 266 36.44 156 21.37 Muhammad Abdul Malik and Irshad Hussain 478 Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) Help by the Students’ Advisory Cell 482 66.3 204 27.95 21 2.88 16 2.19 7 0.96 Guidance on assignments 76 10.41 234 32.05 58 7.95 240 32.88 122 16.71 Guidance by academicians 294 40.27 316 43.29 28 3.84 56 7.67 36 4.93 Tutorial meetings 95 13.01 172 23.56 41 5.62 266 36.44 156 21.37 Overall Average 176 .86 24.26 209 .29 28.67 31 .7 1 4.35 131.86 18.06 76. 00 10.41 N*=730 Table 2 demonstrates the perception of prospective teachers about general “guidance and counseling services” at AIOU. According to the table 77.32% of the respondents i.e. B.Ed. learners thought that university dispatched study materials timely and they received the same within the due time of assignments’ submission. They (94.25% of the prospective teachers) appreciated the role of students’ advisory cells in facilitating them by addressing their queries properly. Similarly, 83.56% of the respondents appeared to have their positive perception about the AIOU academicians in providing then proper help and facilitation in academic/ study matters for which they contacted them. However, more than half of the respondents i.e. 57.81%, 57.59%, and 57.81% appeared to be unsatisfied with the provision of tutors’ information, guidance by their tutors on how to write assignments, and tutorials meetings respectively. These areas need special attention of the university administration to address properly. Tutors should be provided training on how to tutor in distance education, how-to guide, and facilitate distance learners in writing good assignments. Overall, more than half (52.93%) of the respondents’ i.e. prospective teachers appeared with their positive perception of prospective teachers about general “guidance and counseling services”. Table 3. The attitude of Prospective Teachers about the role of Tutors in Providing Guidance and Counseling Services Statement Level of agreement SA A UNC DA SDA f % f % f % f % f % Tutors provide “guidance counseling” on The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 479 How to study 297 40.68 289 39.59 37 5.07 84 11.51 23 3.15 How to prepare the assignments 71 9.71 203 27.81 87 11.92 256 35.07 113 15.48 How to improve assignments 62 8.49 254 34.79 63 8.63 221 30.27 130 17.81 How to prepare for the examination 44 6.03 395 54.11 27 3.70 189 25.89 75 10.27 How to overcome study problems 19 2.66 214 29.32 46 6.30 134 18.36 317 43.42 Examination related problems 248 33.97 97 13.29 35 4.79 311 42.60 39 5.34 Loneliness problems 95 13.01 172 23.56 41 5.62 266 36.44 156 21.37 Overall Average 119 .43 16.36 232 .00 31.78 48 .0 0 6.58 208.71 28.59 121 .86 16.69 N*=730 Table 3 reflects the attitude of prospective teachers about the role of tutors in providing “guidance and counseling services”. The table shows that 80.27% and 60.14% of the prospective teachers (B.Ed. learners) were of the view that their tutors guided them on “how to study the instructional material” provided by the AIOU and also they instructed them how to prepare for the examination respectively. However, they (5.55%, 48.08%, and 61.78%) needed proper guidance on how to prepare the assignments, how to improve assignments, and how to overcome study problems respectively. An equally distributed opinion was obtained by the respondents i.e. 47.26% and 47.94% on tutors’ guidance on solving examination related problems. Whereas, 57.81% of the prospective teachers were of the view that their tutors scarcely provided them guidance and counseling on their loneliness issues. Overall less than half i.e. 48.14% of the respondents appeared to be positive regarding the role of their tutors in providing “guidance and counseling services” properly. Muhammad Abdul Malik and Irshad Hussain 480 Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) Table 4. The opinion of Prospective Teachers about Provision of Guidance and Counseling at AIOU Statement Level of agreement SA A UNC DA SDA f % f % f % f % f % The provision of “guidance and counseling” at AIOU Helps the learners to enhance their academic performance 372 50.96 292 40.0 10 1.37 32 4.38 24 3.29 Provides solution to learners’ problems 246 33.70 306 41.92 14 1.92 94 12.88 70 9.59 Helps in overcoming academic deficiencies 112 15.34 326 44.66 19 2.60 209 28.63 64 8.77 Promotes good working relations between tutors and learners 265 36.30 301 41.23 72 9.86 87 11.92 5 0.68 Helps in correct choice of courses 144 19.73 268 36.71 73 10.0 186 25.48 59 8.08 help students in becoming self- regulated 71 9.71 203 27.81 87 11.92 256 35.07 11 3 15.4 8 help students in becoming self- motivated 14 1.92 69 9.45 112 15.3 4 393 53.84 14 2 19.4 5 Is offered through trained staff 73 10.0 369 50.55 57 7.81 187 25.62 44 6.03 Overall Average 162.13 22.21 266 .75 36.54 55 .5 0 7.60 180.50 24.73 65 .1 3 8.92 N*=730 Table 4 demonstrates the Opinion of prospective teachers about the provision of guidance and counseling at AIOU. The data shows that 90.96% of the respondents i.e. B.Ed. learners believed that the provision of guidance and counseling at AIOU facilitates the learners to enhance their academic performance; 75.62% and 60% The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 481 regarded it necessary for providing solutions to their study problems and in overcoming their academic deficiencies respectively. Similarly, 77.53% and 56.44% were of the opinion that provision of guidance and counseling at AIOU promotes their good working relationships with their tutors and also helps them in their correct choice of courses respectively. Even so, 60.55% of the respondents acknowledged that guidance and counseling staff at the students’ advisory cell is trained. However, 50.55% and 73.78% of the prospective teachers wished guidance and counseling to help them in becoming self-regulated and self- motivated respectively. Overall, 58.75% of the prospective teachers acknowledged the provision of guidance and counseling at AIOU. Table 5. The opinion of Prospective Teachers about their Problems in Getting Benefits of the Guidance and Counseling services at AIOU Statement Level of agreement SA A UNC DA SDA f % f % f % f % f % Problems of prospective teachers in getting benefits of the “guidance and counseling services” at AIOU Regional office is away 297 40.68 289 39.59 23 3.15 84 11.51 37 5.07 Students counselor at regional office is less-cooperative 44 6.03 395 54.11 27 3.70 189 25.89 95 10.27 Face problems in getting sufficient information about courses and programs 134 18.36 317 43.42 46 6.30 214 29.32 19 2.60 Problems in contacting tutors 364 49.86 292 40.0 11 1.51 52 7.12 11 1.51 Tutors don’t provide comments on assignments 248 33.97 311 42.60 39 5.34 97 13.29 35 4.79 Guidance and counseling are NOT provided satisfactorily during tutorials 172 23.56 367 50.27 33 4.52 52 7.12 106 14.52 Face postal problems 197 26.99 349 47.81 35 4.79 76 10.41 73 10.0 Muhammad Abdul Malik and Irshad Hussain 482 Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) Overall Average 208 .00 28.49 331. 43 45.40 30 .5 7 4.19 109.14 14.95 53. 71 6.97 N*=730 Table 5 reflects the opinion of prospective teachers about their problems in getting benefits from the “guidance and counseling services” at AIOU. According to the table, 80.27% and 60.14% of the respondents that the regional office is away from where they live and the students’ counselor at the regional office is less- cooperative respectively. Similarly, 61.78% and 89.86% of the prospective teachers faced problems in getting sufficient information about courses and programs and also faced problems in contacting tutors respectively. Even so, 76.57% and 73.83% of the B.Ed. learners at AIOU affirmed that they face problems in improving their assignments as their tutors don’t provide comments on their assignments, and also they face problems in managing self-study issues as guidance and counseling are NOT provided satisfactorily during the tutorials respectively. Likewise, 74.80% of the prospective teachers recorded their postal problems. Overall, 73.89% of the prospective teachers recorded their problems in getting the proper benefits of the “guidance and counseling services” at AIOU. Findings and Conclusions Keeping in view the results of the study, the following is concluded 1. The majority of the prospective teachers (80.24%) appeared to be satisfied with information services and the channels of providing such services by AIOU. 2. More than half of the respondents i.e. 57.81%, 57.59%, and 57.81% appeared to be unsatisfied with the provision of tutors’ information, guidance by their tutors on how to write assignments and tutorial meetings. These areas need special attention of the university administration to address properly. Tutors should be provided training on how to tutor in distance education, how-to guide and facilitate distance learners in writing good assignments. In overall, more than half of the respondents’ i.e. prospective teachers appeared with their positive perception of prospective teachers about general guidance and counseling services 3. The prospective teachers wished guidance and counseling to help them in becoming self-regulated and self-motivated respectively. Overall, they acknowledged the provision of guidance and counseling at AIOU. 4. The B.Ed. learners at AIOU affirmed that they face problems in improving their assignments as their tutors don’t provide comments on their assignments, and also they face problems in managing self-study issues as The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 483 “guidance and counseling” are NOT provided satisfactorily during the tutorials respectively. They also recorded their postal problems. In overall, the prospective teachers recorded their problems in getting proper benefits of the “guidance and counseling services” at AIOU 5. The prospective teachers (B.Ed. learners) were of the view that their tutors guided them on how to study the instructional material provided by the AIOU and also they instructed them how to prepare for the examination respectively. However, the majority of them needed proper guidance on how to prepare the assignments, how to improve assignments, and how to overcome study problems respectively. An equally distributed opinion was obtained by the respondents i.e. 47.26% and 47.94% on tutors’ guidance on solving examination related problems. Whereas, 57.81% of the prospective teachers were of the view that their tutors scarcely provided them “guidance and counseling” on their loneliness issues. Overall less than half i.e. 48.14% of the respondents appeared to be positive regarding the role of their tutors in providing “guidance and counseling services” properly. Recommendations 1. Tutors should be provided with proper training and retraining on how to prepare assignments. How to provide comments on the assignments and how to improve the quality of the assignments to get better marks. 2. AIOU should provide pre and post-admission guidance and counseling services to its learners. 3. AIOU should arrange proper tutorial meetings for solving the problems in study difficulties. Tutors should observe punctuality in the tutorial meeting so that learners can ask questions related to their problems. 4. The AIOU should arrange proper training of counselors regarding “guidance and counseling”. Muhammad Abdul Malik and Irshad Hussain 484 Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) References Akhter, N., & Munshi, P. (2016). Analysis of face to face tutorials of distance learners for prospective teachers in Pakistan. The Sindh University Journal of Education, (45)1, 233- 254. Baugh, A. (2018 March). The importance of guidance and counseling in present education system: Role of the teacher. International Journal of Advanced Educational Research, 3(2), No. 384-386. Burns, M. (2011). Distance Education for Teacher Training: Modes, Models, and Methods. Washington, DC. Education Development Center, Inc. Bibi, N., & Khan, W. (2018). A Survey of Quality of Guidance Services at Allama Iqbal Open University. Pakistan Journal of Distance and Online Learning, IV (1), 171-181. Chaudhary, A.A., Gujjar, B.N., & Chaudhary, A.H. (2009). A Comparative Study of Student Support Services of Allama Iqbal Open University and the Open University of Sri Lanka. Educational Research and Review, 4 (7), 354-364. Farhat, G. (2014). A Study of Learner’s Attitude towards Personal Contact Programme in Distance Education. PARIPEX - Indian Journal of Research, 3(2), 74-76. Hussain, I. (2013). A study of learners’ reflection on pedagogical skills of distance education tutors. International Journal of Instruction; 6(1), 123-138. Hussain, I. (2005). A study of emerging technologies and their impact on teaching learning process. An unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Islamabad, AIOU. Indira Gandhi National Open University (2009). Learner Preference for Modes of Counseling – A Study. IGNOU, India, Delhi, National Centre for Innovations in Distance Education. Malik, M. A., & Rashid, M. I. (2015). Role of guidance and counseling at B.Ed. level in Allama Iqbal Open University. The Sindh University Journal of Education, 44( )2, 265-298. The Attitude of Prospective Teachers towards Guidance and Counseling Services in Distance Education of Pakistan Vol. III, No. IV (Fall 2018) 485 Möwes, D. L. (2005). An evaluation of student support services in open and distance learning at the University of Namibia. An unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Stellenbosch. Munchel, B. F. (2015). Exploratory Study of Counseling Professionals’ Attitudes toward Distance Clinical Supervision. An unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida, University of Florida. Graduate Theses and Dissertations.http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5997 Ojo, D. O., & Olakulahin, F. K. (2006). Attitudes and Perceptions of Students to Open and Distance Learning in Nigeria. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1), 1-10. Onyilofor, F. N. C. (2013). Repositioning Guidance and Counseling and Curriculum Innovation in Higher Education in Nigeria. Journal of International Education Research – Second Quarter, 9(2), 153-164. Panja, S. K., & DE, K. K. (2015). Attitude towards Career Guidance and Counseling Among Higher Secondary School Teachers under Present Scenario in West Bengal. Indian Journal of Applied Research, 5(12), 357-362. Rashid, M. (2001). Guidance and Counseling in Distance Education, Islamabad: Allama Iqbal Open University. Rashid, M. (2010). Distance Education Concept and Methods, Islamabad: Preston University Press. Safdar, M. (2007). Feasibility Study of Guidance and Counseling Provision at the Regional Offices of AIOU, Islamabad: Allama Iqbal Open University. Tuchili, A. M. & Ndhlovu, D. (2017). Behavior Modification through Guidance and Counseling among Students in Selected Public Universities in Zambia: Is it Possible? International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education (IJHSSE), 4(6), 88-90. http://dx.doi.org/10.20431/2349-0381.0406011. 
work_rasmmy2j4fcppbaowwz4medd6q	----	Distance Education in Geographic Information Science: Symposium and an Informal Survey DAWN J. WRIGHT* & DAVID DIBIASE** *Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, USA, **Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, USA Editorial Introduction The US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2002) defines distance education as “education or training courses delivered to remote (off-campus) location(s) via audio, video (live or prerecorded), or computer technologies, including both synchronous and asynchronous instruction” (NCES, 2000, p. 2). This definition excludes correspondence courses, by which colleges, universities and commercial enterprises have delivered educational opportunities via postal services to distant learners in many parts of the world for a century or more. While such a definition may seem too exclusive, it does highlight the technological innovations that, combined with unprecedented economic challenges faced by higher education institutions, have led to rapid growth in distance education over the past decade. Educators are not of one mind about distance education, of course. Some celebrate the potential to expand access to higher education to lifelong learners not well served by traditional place-bound courses (e.g. Kellogg Commission, 1999). Others foresee revolutionary impact not only in expanding access to higher education but also in reforming it, by leveraging computers and networks potentially to create a new, more active more student-centered pedagogy (e.g. Benyon et al., 1997; Browning & Williams, 1997). Still others view distance education as evidence of a regressive trend toward the automation of higher education and the commercialization of the academy (e.g. Gober, 1998; Noble, 1998). While a recent study has found that equivalent learning activities can be equally effective for both online and face-to-face courses (Neuhauser, 2002), ISSN 0309-8265 Print/1466-1845 Online/05/0100091-10 q 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/03098260500030397 Correspondence address: Dawn J. Wright, Department of Geosciences, 104 Wilkinson Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-5506, USA. Email: dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Vol. 29, No. 1, 91–100, March 2005 there remains concern that distance education will never be able to fully engage the student in active, inquiry-based learning, or in the process of original, independent research (e.g. Hanson, 2001). Hopes and fears notwithstanding, distance education appears to be here to stay. The potential benefits, costs and risks of distance education are certainly not lost on the geographic information science (GIScience) community. As the demand for training in geographic information system (GIS) software, as well as in GIScience education (the fundamental science behind GIS) grows, so too does the demand for effective modes of instructional delivery to students, regardless of time, place, or, in some cases, educational background. The community is already well aware of the challenges faced by GIScience educators in the classroom. The technological orientation of the subject, the head-spinning rate at which that technology is evolving, the need for collaboration—not only for creative innovation in the classroom but merely to keep up—and the realization that many institutions of higher education are not yet equipped to support these instructional requirements in classroom settings, all conspire to confound the efforts of even the most conscientious educators (Kemp et al., 1999; Wright, 1999). But what about teaching GIScience at a distance? Both generic and domain-specific challenges confront GIScience educators who plan to conduct classes involving geographically dispersed students. Whether it is conceived of as geographic information systems or science, the chief domain-specific challenge follows from the centrality of information technology in the domain. Although, as Unwin et al. (1990, p. 463) point out, “an introductory syllabus for GIS . . . is most certainly not contingent on student access to a large, proprietary GIS” (emphasis in the original), most educators, we believe, would agree that students deserve access to authentic GIS software in advanced courses at least. As is well known to readers of this Symposium, several vendors provide relatively inexpensive educational licenses of desktop software. Enterprise software, however, is typically not discounted for educational purposes, at least not at prices individual students can afford. Universities can provide remote students with secure access to enterprise versions of proprietary GIS software through ‘terminal services’ applications like Citrix Systems’ Secure Access Manager, but such solutions are expensive. Even more challenging are Internet map server applications, which require providing students with administrative access to a Web server. Few universities are likely to be comfortable with the security issues raised by such access. Thus, ironically, it is particularly difficult for Web-based educational programs to offer technically challenging classes in Web GIS! Ultimately, however, we believe that issues generic to the practice of distance teaching and learning are more challenging than the particular technical challenges posed by the geographic information technologies. Geographic information systems and science dictate no particular pedagogy. For instance, a GIScience class may be based largely on readings and discussions and not involve GIS technology at all. The challenge of fostering active learning and a supportive learning community is, we think, fundamentally no different than for other fields. Collaboration and group work are very hard to accomplish satisfactorily when learners are spread across many different time zones, especially when the learners are adult professionals with commitments to family, career and community. But this is true regardless of the subject domain. Of the ‘five pillars’ of quality distance learning (Lorenzo & Moore, 2002)—learning effectiveness, cost effectiveness, access, student satisfaction and faculty satisfaction—only access 92 (and technical support of that access if software difficulties are encountered) is affected specifically by the nature of the field. There is growing evidence that distance education does indeed hold great potential to deliver a rigorous GIScience education. One need only to look to the longstanding successes of the Open University in the UK or the International UniGIS Consortium (http://www.unigis.org/), through which courses are offered from institutions in Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the USA. Existing programs in GIScience may vary significantly. For example, at the University of Maine, lectures in some GIScience courses may be viewed either in real time at the student’s desktop via one-way web streaming or at any time later from a web video archive. Students must begin activities in the courses at the beginning of the term while on-campus students are taking the exact same course. Courses are offered for university credit. In contrast, Penn State’s online Certificate Program in GIS (http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/pub/gis/index.shtml), is semi-asyn- chronous in that there is a schedule of weekly deliverables but students can work anytime they wish during the week, and they need not enroll at exactly the same time as on-campus students. One course is available for independent study credit all year round. And courses are offered for continuing education credit, not university credit. Courses at both Maine and Penn State are instructor-led, and/or cohort-based, whereas the Virtual Campus of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI; http://campus.esri.com) is largely an asynchronous, non-instructor-led learning environment in which students work independently. An Informal Survey As a backdrop to this symposium, the editors attempted an informal survey to uncover the diversity of existing programmes in GIScience. This survey was an activity of the Distance Education Working Group within the Education Committee of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), a consortium of 61 US research universities from 37 states whose mission is to serve as the academic voice of US geographic information science in both research and education (http://www.ucgis.org). It does this in part by training and educating students in GIScience in order to advance the discipline and to meet new employment demands. The survey was posted on the web and advertised broadly to the international GIScience community via various email listservs (the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education listserv of ,90 members, the Association of American Geographers GIS Specialty Group listserv of ,1000 members, the ESRI Higher Education Special Interest Group listserv of ,1500 members, and the Urban Regional Information System Association listserv), an announcement in the trade journal Geospatial Solutions, and a call to the member institutions of the UCGIS, including their corporate, government, international and professional organization affiliates (,500 individuals). The survey instrument was available from August 2002 until responses trailed off approximately 6 months later. Questions in the survey included the following (and may still be viewed on the web at http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/disted/survey.html): . Institution type (public/private doctoral, public/private master of science or arts, baccalaureate, etc., according to the Carnegie classification of institutions of 93 higher education in North America). As our survey was an activity of the US- based UCGIS, and aligned with the most recent and relevant surveys by the US NCES (NCES, 2002), its nomenclature was based on the US academic system. We appreciate the efforts of our international colleagues in filling it out despite the lack of a direct correspondence to their university system. Typical areas of confusion, as noted by N. Todd based on experiences within the international UniGIS network (N. Todd, personal communication, 2002), may include use of the terms ‘undergraduate’ (and within that ‘freshman’, ‘sophomore’, ‘junior’, ‘senior’), ‘graduate’ and ‘postgraduate’; differing credit schemes (e.g. ‘credits’ versus ‘hours of study’ versus other levels of achievement); ‘university credit’ versus ‘continuing education’ credit; and ‘GI Systems’ versus ‘GI Science’ versus ‘GeoInformatics’ versus ‘Geomatics’. Future editions of a survey by the UCGIS or other entities should be sensitive to these differences and seek compromises in terminology wherever possible; . Department or unit of the respondent; . Length of time distance education courses have been offered, and in what form (asynchronous or synchronous)? . Titles, topics, enrolments, level, college/university and/or continuing education credit of course offered; . Course instructor (e.g. tenure-track, tenured, adjunct faculty, or graduate student); . Study body (undergraduate, graduate, and/or adult professionals); . Satisfaction of instructor and student relative to similar classroom courses; . Degree, certificate or minor offered or planned in the future, and if so, URL; Our survey will be greatly supplemented by final results of a similar, ongoing survey by Onsrud at the University of Maine, who is trying to find out what GIScience courses are offered at the graduate level only (see http://www.spatial.maine.edu/, onsrud/ PubCommonsOfGISci/DistEdGradCourses.htm), and the more formal work of Berdusco (2004), who has undertaken an extensive survey of diploma, certificate and degree programmes in GIScience around the world (as part of an MSc thesis at Manchester Metropolitan University). His survey also includes a count of which programmes include distance education course(s) (see preliminary results at http://www.institute.redlands.edu/ users/kemp/Berdusco.htm). It is interesting to note, however, having just received the Berdusco data, that faculty on the same campuses apparently responded differently to the two surveys due to a lack of knowledge about what was happening elsewhere on their campus. For instance, a faculty member in one department on a campus indicated on our UCGIS survey that GIScience distance education courses were not offered at his/her university, while a faculty member from another department on the same campus responded to Berdusco that his/her unit did in fact offer a GIScience distance education course. This is definitely a source of error to be noted, but at least the lines of communication are being opened (see also Berdusco et al., (2000) and the GeoCommunity site at http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/education/distance_edu for information on and web links to distance education offerings in GIScience at institutions around the world). In addition, Corrin, a graduate student in the UniGIS programme at Simon Fraser University in Canada, conducted a thorough examination, via surveys, of the opinions of both instructors and students as to what constitutes an effective online course in GIScience (D. Corrin, personal communication, September 2003). 94 As to our informal UCGIS survey, it revealed the following (see also Table 1): . 87 institutions responded, 79 from the US (including 51 of the 61 academic members of the UCGIS at that time) and 8 from outside the US (including the Open University, UniGIS and Curtin University of Technology). Berdusco’s survey received responses from an additional 35 institutions, representing mostly smaller universities and community colleges in the USA, and a much broader sampling of international institutions. The 87 from our UCGIS survey included 69 public doctoral institutions, 7 private doctoral, 4 public master of science or arts, 1 private master science or arts, 4 baccalaureate (undergraduate), and 3 community colleges. Of these, 28 indicated that they are offering distance education courses in some area of GIScience. Twenty of the institutions are offering degrees or certificates in GIScience or GISystems, but most of these are not exclusively online except for Curtin University, UniGIS, Birkbeck-University of London (GISciOnline) and the University of Idaho (as reported by the respondents at the time of the survey); . Of the remaining 59 who are not offering distance education courses in GIScience at this time, the survey did not require a response from them as to why this is so. However, a few indicated the following reasons: (1) budget problems within their university and/or their state precluded them from developing distance education courses or programmes; (2) an examination of the online education market indicated that the return on investment was not going to be as large as anticipated; Table 1. Numerical summary of results from informal survey conducted by authors on behalf of the UCGIS No. of respondents 87 79 from US (51 of 61 or 84% of UCGIS campuses) 8 from outside US (including UniGIS, Curtin, Open University) No. of respondents (institution type) 69 public doctoral (78%) 7 private doctoral (8%) 4 public master of science or arts (5%) 1 private master of science or arts (1%) 4 baccalaureate (undergraduate) (5%) 3 community college (3%) Not offering courses 59 of 87 institutions (68%) Offering courses 28 of 87 institutions (32%) 27 or 96% offering courses asynchronously 20 or 71% offering certificates or degrees in GISci (only 4 are completely online) courses at 20 in existence for 3 years or less Student satisfaction 19 of 28 responded on this question (68%) 13 ¼ equivalent to classroom experience (68%) 4 ¼ more than classroom (21%) 2 ¼ less than classroom (11%) Instructor satisfaction 22 of 28 responded on this question (79%) 12 ¼ equivalent to classroom experience (54%) 5 ¼ more than classroom (23%) 5 ¼ less than classroom (23%) Typical enrolment 10 – 40 per course per year (university credit to undergrad, grad, adult) Ferris State at ,95 in a single course for university credit Penn State at 50 – 200 for continuing education credit only 4 of 28 institutions teach only to undergraduates 95 (3) the realization that without existing infrastructure, the development of GIScience distance education courses could be quite expensive, particularly with regard to providing content, as well as providing ‘customer service’ to students (e.g. answering both administrative and course content questions via phone or email, help with obtaining course materials, registration, transferring of credits, etc.); or (4) distance education courses in GIScience are already being offered by neighbouring institutions which their students may easily take and have credit transferred to the ‘home’ institution. However, 14 of these 59 are considering the future development of GIScience distance education courses. Of particular note is the Institute for Advanced Education in Geospatial Sciences at the University of Mississippi (http://geoworkforce.olemiss.edu/), which is currently developing several online courses as part of a completely web-based curriculum in remote sensing and other geospatial technologies (up to 50 courses to be developed within a period of 5 years; L. Usery, personal communication, September 2002); . Of the 28, all but one are offering their courses in asynchronous mode, and the vast majority have offered their courses for only 1 – 3 years. Longstanding programmes in existence for 5 years or more include the Curtin University in Australia, Birkbeck-University of London, the Open University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford, all in the UK, the University of Salzburg, Austria, and certificate programmes in the US at Ferris State and the University of Southern California; . Of the 28, courses are most frequently offered by departments of geography and earth science. Other offerings include those in construction sciences, surveying engineering, computer and mathematical sciences, urban studies and planning, and Lakota studies. . Enrolments are typically 10 – 40 per course per year for university credit only, except for programmes such as the Penn State World Campus (in which 50 to 200 students enrol per course per year) for continuing education credit, and Ferris State (95 enrolled in a single course) for university credit; . The vast majority of courses are taught by tenured professors to combinations of undergraduate, graduate and adult students. Only four respondents (from Ferris State, Southwest Texas State, the Oregon Institute of Technology, and the Open University) indicated that they taught their GIScience education courses only to undergraduates. . Student satisfaction compared with classroom courses was virtually equivalent (13 responses), with four responses indicating more, and only two responses indicating lesser satisfaction. We have no data on the details of what specifically was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. This was left up to respondents to elaborate on in the open comment boxes within our survey. One respondent did comment that he is planning exit interviews for future editions of his GIScience courses, particularly for those who do not complete it. The inclusion of data from such interviews, as well as general attrition rates for GIScience distance education courses, would be desirable for future studies. . Instructor satisfaction as compared with classroom experiences was slightly more mixed, with 12 indicating the same level of satisfaction, five indicating more, and five indicating less. The raw data and comment file from the UCGIS survey may be downloaded from http://dusk. geo.orst.edu/disted/disted_survey.zip. 96 An initial generalization that can be drawn from the survey results is that GIScience programmes, particularly in the US, are still hitting their stride, and still in early phases of development as evidenced by the majority of courses being offered by one or two ‘champions’ of GIScience on their campus. It remains to be seen how truly widespread distance education in GIScience will become (i.e. face-to-face versions of courses are not in danger of being replaced). There may be the perception of increased workload for GIScience distance education courses so that this mode of teaching is better left to the more senior faculty, perhaps paralleling the advice that junior faculty receive, whether accurate or not, to publish in well-established print journals first, rather than the newer journals that are solely electronic (see reference in next section below to DiBiase and Rademacher in this issue). And although many individual courses are offered completely online, most GIScience degree programmes worldwide are not offered exclusively at a distance. When ‘the stakes are raised’ from an individual course to an entire certificate or degree programme, there are issues of cost (for GIScience software and perhaps hardware), technical troubleshooting, widespread and effective support and assessment of collaborative learning, and the access associated with teaching more advanced GIS techniques and software (e.g. command-line functions in the enterprise Workstation ArcINFO versus the more readily available desktop ArcView). Indeed access, particularly access to software, may be the challenge most unique to GIScience distance education. However, if access is a potential barrier, it does not appear to be insurmountable, as evidenced by the level of student and instructor satisfaction revealed in the survey (where provision of access to students is a critical part of satisfaction on both sides: Sener, 2003; Sener & Humbert, 2003; Thompson, 2003). This result does relate to other recent studies of student satisfaction in other disciplines, where there is a great deal of satisfaction with courses, levels of interaction and learning community involvement, (e.g. Shea et al., 2003; Vignare, 2003) but, as student expectations continue to rise, additional studies will be needed on issues such as the efficiency of online student services, the value of automated interactivity, blended learning and multiple models of learning (Sener & Humbert, 2003; Vignare, 2003). More than many other distance education courses, GIScience requires students to use significant amounts of relatively sophisticated technology (e.g. GIS, cartography, and remote sensing software, geospatial data sets and imagery, and perhaps even GPS receivers in the field), as well as geospatial data sets and imagery (e.g. Purves et al., 2005). Even with access, student success may be varied depending on whether they gain access in a campus computer lab that is staffed with technical support personnel (who may or may not be savvy in geospatial software), or if they are completely on their own at home trying to install and run the software or deal with the data sets on their home computer. The survey results actually bring to bear some interesting questions, as well, such as how many courses focus on more than one technology, and what the implications of this are for all five pillars of distance education quality: learning effectiveness, cost effectiveness, access, student satisfaction and faculty satisfaction. Most responses to the survey pertained to distance learning focuses mainly on GIS software. There are few studies that examine more than one technology, or the synergistic effects of certain technologies in addressing specific education outcomes and student groups (e.g. Institute for Higher Education Policy, 1999). Perhaps research in GIScience distance education should be devoted to the interaction of multiple technologies (such as the interaction between GIS, remote sensing/image processing, location-based services and other mobile 97 technologies). This may perhaps be unreasonable to expect on a broad scale given the current cost of GPS and other mobile technological hardware for large numbers of student, but perhaps not in 5 – 10 years’ time. The survey also does not reveal enough about technologies used to deliver content and faculty satisfaction with such, i.e. how many courses used interactive graphics and technologies such as streaming video and virtual reality, as opposed to static web pages or PowerPoint files? As the majority of institutions surveyed did not offer GIScience distance education courses at the time, another implication is that distance education materials continue to be costly to produce, as they are in other disciplines. What may be perhaps unique to GIScience is that these materials often include geospatial data sets, some of which may be proprietary or obtainable only on a single licence that will not transfer to other parties (e.g. the costs and licensing that Geographic Data Technology enforces for the use of its street network and address data products that are used in many GIScience college-level labs throughout the US). Given that materials are indeed costly to produce and that not all institutions can afford to follow MIT’s lead in making all of their materials free (e.g. Heterick & Twigg, 2001), GIScience will not escape the general tension between recouping costs and sharing education resources and intellectual property. The Symposium There is an abundance of GIScience courses being offered, begging the question of what issues in distance education are specific to teaching GIScience. Or do all distance education offerings have the same challenges, regardless of subject? We have argued above that if there is an issue specific to GIScience it would be access (particularly at the advanced levels with regard to software, technical support and supporting data and hardware). The articles in this symposium explore what some others may. For instance, certainly an important issue for all disciplines is that of faculty workload (e.g. DiBiase, 2000). For many, distance education courses are tacked on to an already heavy classroom- teaching load. However, the study of DiBiase and Rademacher (2005), in which detailed records were kept of time spent teaching asynchronous GIScience courses via the web, found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom about faculty workloads in asynchronous education, regardless of subject, the online courses in GIScience required less instructor effort per student than a comparable classroom course. Harris (this issue) addresses the important topic of assessment and examination within a distance education GIScience course. What, if any, is the role of the traditional examination in the world of computer- based, asynchronous distance education, and again, what issues, if any, are unique to GIScience? Onsrud (this issue) focuses on graduate programme offerings in GIScience with a particular emphasis on the benefits of web streaming the class sessions of existing courses. On many university campuses there remains a dearth of excellent GIScience courses at the graduate level. Onsrud discusses how this may be remedied in part when students are allowed to take distance education courses across the globe for credit at their own universities. He addresses the legal implications of such arrangements, as well as various technical, financial and pedagogic issues. Johnson and Boyd (this issue) bring to bear the perspective of the GIS software vendor in distance education, in which they discuss approaches and lessons learned through the ESRI Virtual Campus and issues of hardware and software cost and access, and technical troubleshooting. Indeed there is 98 much potential for fostering important cooperative links in distance education with GIS software vendors that may complement or support university efforts. The UCGIS’s original interest in distance education was motivated in part by concern about the quality of teaching and learning transacted asynchronously and at a distance within the US. In addition, however, interest sprang from the hope that distance education may extend access to learners (especially adult professionals) who are not well served by traditional place-bound, synchronous offerings in GIScience. We expect that many readers of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education are likely to share these concerns, at least in so far as they relate to the broader span of geographic inquiry. We hope that this JGHE Symposium addresses these concerns by illuminating the practices and reflections of experienced distance educators. Certainly no final conclusions can be drawn from these articles as to the potential of distance modalities to enrich GIScience education. At the very least, however, we do hope that the insights shared by these practitioners will lead to continued discussion of the best practices in distance learning that lead to fulfilling experiences for teachers and learners alike. Acknowledgements Thanks to Co-Editor Martin Haigh for inviting this symposium and to the contributors for their insightful articles. The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee of a previous version of this manuscript for suggesting the survey, and the current referees for careful and thoughtful reviews that greatly improved the manuscript. Remaining weaknesses are the authors’ sole responsibility. Karen Kemp is thanked for helpful discussions and insights, and the authors are grateful to Brian Berdusco and Doug Corrin for keeping them apprised of their thesis research concerning online GIS offerings. And, finally they would like to thank the attendees of a session on distance education and GIScience at the 2001 UCGIS Summer Assembly in Buffalo, New York (http://dusk.geo. orst.edu/disted/ucgis2001_de.pdf) for very interesting discussions, including panellists Art Getis of San Diego State University, Ann Johnson of ESRI and Lyna Wiggins of Rutgers University. References Benyon, D., Stone, D. & Woodroffe, M. 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Moore (Eds) Elements of Quality Online Education: Practice and Direction, Volume 4, Sloan-C Series pp. 119 – 136 (Needham, MA: Sloan Center for OnLine Education). Sener, J. & Humbert, J. (2003) Student satisfaction with online learning: an expanding universe, in: J. Bourne & J. C. Moore (Eds) Elements of Quality Online Education: Practice and Direction, Volume 4, Sloan-C Series, pp. 245 – 260 (Needham, MA: Sloan Center for OnLine Education). Shea, P. J., Fredericksen, E. E., Pickett, A. M. & Pelz, W. E. (2003) Preliminary investigation of ‘teaching presence’ in the SUNY Learning Network, in: J. Bourne & J. C. Moore (Eds) Elements of Quality Online Education: Practice and Direction, Volume 4, Sloan-C Series, pp. 279 – 290 (Needham, MA: Sloan Center for OnLine Education). Thompson, M. M. (2003) Faculty satisfaction in the online teaching-learning environment, in: J. Bourne & J. C. 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work_rfjfrryzpve2fk5kzwydujshiq	----	Enhancing an Online Distance Education Course with Video Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 463 – 467 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser Ankara University, Turkey doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.091 2nd World Conference on Educational Technology Researches – WCETR2012 Enhancing an online distance education course with video Levent Bayram a * aMiddle East Technical University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey Abstract The study analyzes students’ perceptions of an online distance education course enhanced with video. It presents a case carried out with students who were enrolled to the course in 2011 summer. In this study, data were gathered from the students at the end of the course via perception questionnaire. The questionnaire includes items about the content and quality of the learning environment, the motivation of students and the problems the students face. The data show that students have positive attitudes towards enhancing online distance education with video. This study can contribute to the future research studies related with video based training and online distance education. Moreover, the results of the study can contribute to the design and development of online courses enhanced with video. Keywords: Online ; 1. Introduction Video has been used in educational settings for several years by means of videotapes. However, the use of digital video is not very common in schools and training institutions. Furthermore, the literature shows not much information about the implementation of online video. Therefore, this study was designed to identify the issues concerned with the deployment of online digital video technology in an online course. The current study developed online video broadcasts for an online distance education course, and the perceptions of the students who were using this online environment, were investigated. This study is significant since the results can help to identify the perceptions and the needs of the students who are inexperienced with online distance education training environments and to design online distance education courses utilizing video. 1.1. Using video in education With emerging technologies, such as digital video and editing, more powerful CPUs and increased network bandwidths with ADSL, we have now new instructional possibilities and multiple ways to present video. Video, with graphic and text-based support can capture the complexity of classroom interactions enabling students to view the real teaching and learning strategies utilized by the teacher. Video allows a group of students to share a common experience and review, perhaps over several sessions, important or critical teaching strategies missed in earlier *Corresponding Author: “Levent BAYRAM (*)” . Tel.: +90-312-210-3345 E-mail address: leventb@metu.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser Ankara University, Turkey http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 464 Levent Bayram / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 463 – 467 viewings. As Barron and Goldman (1994) suggest, “from our own experience in using integrated media with pre- service teachers, and from similar research and development efforts at other institutions, we are encouraged about the use and potential of such materials in preparing teachers for the challenges of the classroom” (pp. 104–105). According to Cannings & Talley (2002), the Internet and multimedia, including the non-linear integration of video, audio, text, and graphics can provide a rich environment for case studies which promote the construction of knowledge about integrating technology into the curriculum in a learning community of peers and faculty facilitators. With developments in web delivery, this environment can be accessed anytime and anywhere in a convenient and cost-effective way. The web also provides a new medium for delivering video to learners with the ability to transmit text, graphics, sound, short video clips, and hypertext. In addition, the web provides three significant capabilities for the delivery of case studies: (a) the ability to simulate real-world complexities, (b) the ability to use multiple media in case presentations, and (c) the ability to use hypertext navigation features. Richardson and Kile (1999) provide a good general definition of video cases for learning: “Video cases are multimedia presentations of classroom actions and analyses that include moving pictures . . . of classroom action.” In addition to the videos, video cases may include written or videotaped analyses; interpretations and/or explanations of the classroom action by the teachers, students, principals, parents, and/or others such as experts in the field; and other materials such as the teachers’ instructional plans (p. 122). Fisher (2000) reported that technologies had the greatest impact on the pre-service teachers prior to the program. As teacher educators, we know that tools, no matter how powerful their educational potential, don’t directly help students to learn. What is important is how we use tools to assist teaching and learning. Video cases can capture the complexity of the classroom context and provide a very efficient way to expose the viewer to the authenticity of the classroom. Students have the opportunity to replay videos to gather ideas, to learn teaching methods, to observe classroom interactions they might have missed otherwise and to see important features that may require more than one review (Perry & Talley, 2001). 2. Methodology The purpose of this descriptive study was to identify the perceptions of students enrolled to an online distance education course about video enhanced online learning environment and to be able to understand the components needed for an on-line video based training environment. The research approach is a single case study, investigating the students’ perceptions about an online video enhanced training environment for an online distance education course. The main research question in this study is “What were the perceptions of the students who used the online video enhanced training environment?” Since education is identified as a social context, the online training environment was designed to a medium for learning to occur. Real-life situations were used when examples are needed, as suggested by Leflore (2000). 2.1. Participants The subjects of this study were students of the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Engineering at a state university who were enrolled to the Foundations of Distance Education course. The students were from different disciplines of the Faculty of Education and Faculty of Engineering. 2.2. Data collection To be able to answer the research question, a Likert-type Online Video Enhanced Training Questionnaire was implemented. The questionnaire has items on students’ demographic information and students’ perceptions of video usage in a distance education course in terms of their comprehension of course content, their motivation, quality of video casts and technical aspects of video casts. The 5-point Likert scale consisted of 24 items (6 negative and 18 positive items) and negative items were coded inversely. At the end of semester, the questionnaire was announced 465 Levent Bayram / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 463 – 467 on the course website and the students were asked to submit their comments within a week. The students were also informed that their participation in the questionnaire was voluntary. The goal of the questionnaire was to understand the students’ perceptions toward online video enhanced distance education. 3. Results 3.1. Descriptive results There were 86 participants in the study, 30 of them were female and 56 were male. Table 1. Descriptive statistics - Gender Gender n % Female 30 34,9 Male 56 65,1 Total 86 100,0 The majority of the participants were 3rd year students from various departments of Faculty of Education and Faculty of Engineering. There were twenty nine 4th year students, nineteen 2nd year students and only two 1st year students. Table 2. Descriptive statistics - Grade Grade n % First year 2 2,3 Second year 19 22,1 Third year 36 41,9 Fourth year 29 33,7 Total 86 100,0 55.8% of the participants indicated that they did not take any online course before. There were 19 participants who reported only one online course beforehand and 12 of the participants had taken two online courses. 4 of the participants were enrolled to three online courses whereas 3 participants had registered to four or more online courses in their academic life. Table 3. Descriptive statistics – Number of online courses taken before Number of online courses taken n % 0 48 55,8 1 19 22,1 2 12 14,0 3 4 4,7 4 or more 3 3,5 Total 86 100,0 3.2. Results of Questionnaire This questionnaire has items on students’ demographic information and students’ perceptions of video usage in a distance education course in terms of students’ comprehension of course content, motivation of students, quality of video casts and technical aspects of video casts. The overall reliability of the questionnaire was found to be 0.79, which is a permitted value for educational research. The internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach α) of the first factor consisting of 7 items and labeled as “Quality of content” was 0.84. The internal consistency coefficient of the second factor which consisted of 7 items and labeled as “Participant motivation” was 0.74. The third factor consisting of 6 items and labeled as “Comprehension of content” had an internal consistency of 0.72. The last factor consisted of 4 items and titled as “Technical aspects” had an internal consistency coefficient of 0.71. 466 Levent Bayram / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 463 – 467 3.2.1. Perceptions about Quality of Content: There were 7 items in Online Video Enhanced Training Questionnaire to understand the students’ perceptions about the quality of the content. The overall mean is 3.56 which mean slight agreement with the statements about the quality of content in the video enhanced distance education. With a mean score of 3.53, the participants agreed that the information was presented effectively in the video segments. 43 of the students agreed with this item and 9 participants strongly agreed about the item. The majority of the students (69 participants) agreed and strongly agreed that it was easy to access the online videos. 14 of the students strongly agreed and 35 of them agreed with the videos being entertaining. 52 of the students reported that they would use online video to be able to teach more effectively. With a mean score of 2.36, the participants showed disagreement of the inefficiency of the online video. The majority of the students (68 participants) agreed and strongly agreed that they liked having control over the instructional flow. 24 of the students strongly agreed and agreed with the online video enhanced training being challenging. 3.2.2. Perceptions about Participant Motivation: There were 7 items in Online Video Enhanced Training Questionnaire to understand motivation of students. The overall mean is 3.52 which mean slight agreement with the statements about the motivation. 54 of 86 students indicated that the video enhanced training helped them to stay focused during the instruction. The mean score of 3.63 indicates an agreement to the item that using online video would better prepare the students for profession. For the item asking students’ preference to ask the instructor questions after watching the online video, 42 of the students indicated agreement. 58 of the students agreed that they were more engaged in the course with the online video. One of the highest mean scores of the questionnaire is 3.79 and the item is recommending courses utilizing online video enhanced training to others. 63 of the participants (18 strongly agreed and 45 agreed) agreed with this item. 32 of the students reported that the online video took more time than worth. The mean score of 3.69 indicates an agreement to the item that the online video added reality to the course. 3.2.3. Perceptions about Comprehension of Content: There were 6 items in Online Video Enhanced Training Questionnaire to understand the perceptions of students about the comprehension of the content. The overall mean is 3.49 which mean slight agreement with the statements about the comprehension of content in the video enhanced training. 43 of 86 students indicated that they learned more using the video enhanced training method with respect to traditional method. 46 of the students agreed with the item stating that the online video enhanced education allowed deeper understanding of the course content. The majority of the students (48 participants) agreed and strongly agreed that the online video allowed more retention from the course. 42 participants agreed that they learned a lot from the video segments. 48 of the students (39 agreed and 9 strongly agreed) indicated that they learned more effectively by using online video. With a mean of 3.65, the majority of the students (55 participants) agreed and strongly agreed that the online video helped them understand better. 3.2.4. Perceptions about Technical Aspects: There were 4 items in Online Video Enhanced Training Questionnaire to understand the perceptions of students in terms of technical aspects. The overall mean is 3.45 which mean slight agreement with the statements about the technical aspects of video enhanced training. 51 of the participants were pleased with the video quality of the video segments. (13 participants strongly agreed and 38 participants agreed) For the audio quality of the video, 52 of the participants were contended. 37 of the students reported that they encountered technical problems when watching the online video. The second highest mean score of the questionnaire (3.86) indicates an agreement to the item that it was convenient to fast forward/rewind the video to a specific part of video. 467 Levent Bayram / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 463 – 467 4. Conclusion Looking at the results of the questionnaire, we can say that using online video in an online distance education course fulfilled the needs of the students. In terms of video and audio quality, the students found the used standards acceptable. Helping to understand related content better was the most common answer for this research question. Participants in the study thought that video could provide some benefits; additionally 54% of them emphasized that the content of video segments is very important. Participants also indicated that effective video segments depend on some factors, such as technology used for production and delivery of video. Since multimedia material (video, audio, etc.) are presented in an online video enhanced training environment, the learner might find this more enjoyable than working in a classroom setting or working with books. Another conclusion of the study is that; participants generally reported that online video enhanced training can be used with different instructional aims. 64.59% of the participants reported that the main reason to use online video is providing motivation to students. They also indicated that their preference of watching online video in a course is dependent on the content of video, the technology the video is offered, the attitudes toward the course, and personal preference. This study is an example of online video enhanced training in a distance education course. Practitioners, who are instructional designers or teacher educators who want to use online video in training environments could utilize the findings of the current study. The results of this study supported the view that taking an online video enhanced course affects students’ attitudes positively toward video enhanced training (Mitra and Steffensmeier, 2000). From the learners’ side, using online video can be helpful, for instance, since the students are familiar with working with computers, learning may be more effective. Design of online video enhanced learning environments requires a constant collaborative effort. There should be a team with the following members: a researcher or a designer, a subject matter expert, technical experts of both Internet technologies and video technologies, and at the top of them, there should be an administrator who maintains the relationship between the groups of people. References Barron, L., & Goldman, E. (1994). Integrating technology with teacher preparation. In B. Means (Ed.), Technology and education reform (pp. 81- 110). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bransford, J. D., & Brown, A. L. Cocking, R. R., Donovan, M. S., & Pellegrino, J. W., (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (Expanded ed.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Cannings, T. R., & Talley, S. (2002). Multimedia and online video case studies for preservice teacher preparation. Education and Information Technologies, 7(4), 359–367. Fisher, D.L. (2000). A model of the relationship between computer laboratory environment and student outcomes in university courses. Learning Environments Research, 3(1), 51-66. Leflore, D. (2000). Theory supporting design guidelines for web-based instruction, In B. Abbey (Ed.), Instructional and cognitive impacts of web-based education (pp. 102–117). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Mitra, A., & Steffensmeier, T. (2000). Changes in student attitudes and student computer use in a computer-enriched environment. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 32(3), 417-433. Perry G. & Talley S. (2001). “Online video case studies and teacher education: A new tool for pre-service teacher education”. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 17(4), (pp.6-31) Richardson, V., & Kile, R. S. (1999). Learning from videocases. In M. A. Lundeberg, B. B. Levin & H. L. Harrington (Eds.), Who Learns What from Cases and How? The Research Base for Teaching and Learning with Cases (pp. 121–136). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 
work_rgak7vaipjhxvmulwzgbf35yoi	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_rhdiqzz7t5f4fp46cwh7lsgcny	----	BIOMIND Portal for Developing 21st Century Skills and Overcoming Students' Misconception in Biology Subject | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2016100105 Corpus ID: 37781888BIOMIND Portal for Developing 21st Century Skills and Overcoming Students' Misconception in Biology Subject @article{Vebrianto2016BIOMINDPF, title={BIOMIND Portal for Developing 21st Century Skills and Overcoming Students' Misconception in Biology Subject}, author={Rian Vebrianto and R. U. Rery and K. Osman}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2016}, volume={14}, pages={55-67} } Rian Vebrianto, R. U. Rery, K. Osman Published 2016 Computer Science, Biology Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. This research was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of BIOMIND portal in enhancing students' 21st century skills and overcoming their misconceptions in Biology subject. 118 Indonesian high school students were involved in this quasi-experimental study. The experimental group underwent learning experiences using BIOMIND portal whereas the control group experienced conventional learning approaches. The effectiveness of the BIOMIND portal was measured based on the students' 21st century… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 4 CitationsBackground Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Experiment Portal 4 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Study of strengthening 21st-century skills in prospective science teacher based on gender Rian Vebrianto, R. C. Rus, M. Jannah, Zelly Putriani, Alaniyah Syafaren Psychology 2020 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed The Moderating Effect of Prior Knowledge on Higher Order Thinking Skills in the Interactive Multimedia Learning Environment Norsaliza Sabu Psychology 2020 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Effectiveness of analytical thinking–based module to improve students’ learning outcomes using concept map Puput Putri Kus Sundari, S. Widoretno, Ashadi Computer Science 2020 Save Alert Research Feed Development of Teaching Material of Final Assignment Subject Based on PBL Using ICT Radeswandri, Afiq Budiawan, Rian Vebrianto Computer Science 2019 1 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 32 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency 21st century inventive thinking skills among primary students in Malaysia and Brunei M. Abdullah, K. Osman Psychology 2010 20 Save Alert Research Feed The effect of multiple media instruction in improving students' science process skill and achievement Rian Vebrianto, K. Osman Computer Science 2011 33 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Zoology Students' Experiences of Collaborative Enquiry in Problem-based Learning T. Harland Psychology 2002 51 Save Alert Research Feed DEVELOPING POSITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH Yustina, K. Osman, T. S. M. Meerah Psychology 2011 10 View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed The effects of computer-assisted material on students' cognitive levels, misconceptions and attitudes towards science S. Çepni, E. Tas, Sacit Köse Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2006 175 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Development and validation of the Malaysian 21st century skills instrument (M-21CSI) for science students K. Osman, T. Soh, N. M. Arsad Psychology 2010 20 Save Alert Research Feed The using of computer for elimination of misconceptions about photosynthesis M. Guéné, Oktay Güne, Meral Hoplan Psychology 2011 9 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Race to the Future: Integrating 21st Century Skills into Science Instruction E. Durán, D. Yaussy, Leslie Yaussy 2011 8 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Development and application of a two‐tier diagnostic test measuring college biology students' understanding of diffusion and osmosis after a course of instruction A. Odom, L. Barrow Psychology 1995 239 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Setting new learning targets for the 21st century science education in Malaysia K. Osman, N. Marimuthu Engineering 2010 27 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 ... 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work_rixue7jdnnesnbagpwutiwrski	----	garrison85.PDF Garrison, G. R. (1985). Three Generations of Technological Innovation in Distance Education. Distance Education, 6(2), 235-241. Three generations of technological innovations in distance education D.R. Garrison Technology and distance education are inextricably linked. This link is evident considering the “use of technical media” is one of the essential characteristics of distance education (Keegan, 1983). This is not surprising, however, since two other essential characteristics suggested by Keegan (1983) are the “separation of teacher and student” and the “provision of two- way communication”. In fact, given this non-contiguity and the need for teacher-student interaction, it is a virtual tautology to say that media are essential in distance education. The essential nature of mediated communication to distance education emphasizes the need to understand the impact that new technologies have had on distance education delivery methods. Holmberg (1982) has suggested that attempts to create a taxonomy of media in distance education have been in vain. The fact is that few schemes ordering media in distance education have gone beyond a simple listing of media and their attributes. Perhaps what is required is an analysis of media conducted from the perspective of key concepts in distance education. The focus should be on distance education and which technological innovations have caused significant shifts in the assumptions and concepts of distance delivery. By identifying shifts in the conceptualization and delivery of distance education perhaps a structural simplicity and clarity regarding its technological development may be realized. It will be argued that the development of distance education can be structured into three generations of technological innovation - correspondence, telecommunications, and computers. The technological innovations and resulting paradigm shifts in the delivery of distance education will be analyzed through the concepts of interaction and independence. p. 235 These concepts in turn will Provide the dimensions for a typology of media consistent with the suggested generational shifts in distance education delivery. Such structures and typologies could assist distance educators to better understand the essential characteristics of distance education and the selection of media for delivery. THREE GENERATIONS It is important at the outset to explain the use of the term, generation, in describing the development of distance education technology. Generation is used to suggest the building upon previous capabilities. The development of the generations of distance education represents, in systems terminology, a hierarchical structure with an increasing differentiation of technological capacity for integrating unique delivery systems. In other words, new media can be combined with older media to provide a greater range of choice for the design of effective distance education delivery systems. Correspondence Generation. The first technology of distance education was realized by combining the printed word and the postal system as a medium of two-way communication. Correspondence education represents a significant shift from face-to-face interaction in the delivery of traditional instruction. Although newspaper references to correspondence lessons date back over 250 years, the first advertisement of correspondence education documenting two way instructional activity dates back to 1833 (Bååth, 1985). Correspondence education is still likely the most prevalent form of distance education today. Correspondence studies provide educational opportunities to vast numbers of people by providing the freedom to choose when and where to study. In addition, this form of mass instruction can be very cost effective. On the down-side, however, two-way communication between the teacher and student is dependent upon the mail and therefore the response rate is potentially slow and ponderous. A slow rate of interaction places added burdens upon the correspondence student. It necessitates the student having a strong desire to complete the course successfully. Considering these disadvantages, it is not surprising that distance education was quick to adopt other means of increasing the rate of interaction between the teacher and student. Telecommunications Generation. The term, telecommunications, refers to the “use of wire, radio, optical or other electromagnetic channels to transmit or receive signals for voice, video, aid data communications” (Olgren & Parker, 1983: 330). In short, telecommunications refers to the electronic transmission of communica- p.236 tions over a distance. The use of telecommunications in distance education includes the telephone and teleconferencing (audio, video and computer). The use of the telephone by a teacher for instructional purposes is perhaps the most personalized use of telecommunications in distance education. However, telephone-mediated interaction between the teacher and student as a prime method of distance delivery carries with it two concerns. Although telephone tutorials with the teacher are very desirable, they violate a distance education characteristic in that they can “be used by great numbers of students” and are a form of mass communication (Holmberg, 1985: 2). More importantly, however, a one-on-one telephone lesson by the teacher is just not very practical. The time constraint placed upon the teacher does not make this a viable method of distance delivery. Another form of telephone tutorial is the use of tutorcounsellors to direct and assist the student in place of the teacher. They can be contacted by phone to assist in academic and personal concerns on an individual and regular basis. This is a very common and effective use of telephone interaction in distance education. The use of telecommunications to facilitate two-way voice communications among three or more individuals at a distance characterizes audio teleconferencing. Although audio teleconferencing dates back to the thirties (Olgren & Parker, 1983), it has only been since the late sixties that serious efforts were made to use this technology in distance education. The use of audio teleconferencing marked a significant innovation in the delivery of distance education. With the introduction of teleconferencing technology, the agonizingly slow interaction of correspondence study was overcome dramatically. It did not necessarily mean, however, that the carefully prepared print materials would be redundant. Audio teleconferencing built upon the foundation of correspondence study by enhancing the quality of the interactive process among students and teacher. The ability of the student to receive immediate feedback from the teacher as well as fellow students without a corresponding loss of independence is a significant development in distance education. Although teleconferencing is often organized in local centres which can provide added interaction and support from other students it also means some travel to “class”. It must also be realized that opportunities for interaction using audio teleconferencing are usually possible only during scheduled times and therefore are discontinuous. Increasing the frequency of these teacher/student interactions can be, as has been mentioned, accomplished by using one- on-one telephone tutorials. Another method of avoiding the difficulties of contacting a busy instructor directly is with the use of computer teleconferencing. With the proper hardware, electronic mail can be sent and received at the conven- p.237 ience of both the student and instructor. The rate of response may be delayed somewhat but the interaction is far more regular. A third form of teleconferencing is realized by combining two-way audio and video media. The resulting system, video teleconferencing, has not received wide use in distance education due to the cost and various problems linking multiple locations (Olgren & Parker, 1983). One relatively cost effective system is to use one-way video and two-way audio, although this is not considered a fully interactive video teleconference. The advantages of video teleconferencing are obviously the visual component which may be necessary for many courses. Video conferencing can enhance the quality of the interaction but the question is whether it is significant enough to justify the costs. It should also be noted that, due to the special equipment required, it would likely mean fewer locations and considerable travel on the part of the student. Given the limited gain in quality of interaction and the loss in independence, it would seem that considerable justification is required for its use. One way audiographics such as slow-scan television and electronic blackboards can be combined with audio teleconferencing in a much more economical system compared with fully interactive video teleconferencing. Computer generation. Dramatic new possibilities are open to distance education through the capabilities of computer assisted learning (CAL). After 25 years of research it has been concluded that CAL can be a more efficient or effective means of instructional delivery than traditional face-to-face instruction; in addition, we “have just scratched the surface of what can be accomplished with computers in education” (Kearsley, Hunter & Seidel, 1983: 90). Significant progress has also been made in the area of “intelligent” CAL courseware that can simulate a patient and understanding teacher in a very sophisticated manner. At the same time, the use of CAL in distance education is still only at the experimental stage. Only in the last few years have serious efforts been made to implement this technology. With this technology, getting the mix of interaction and independence right may not necessitate combining more of one at the expense of the other. In fact, it is possible to maximize both interaction and independence in the delivery of education at a distance. Through microcomputer-supported CAL it is possible for a student at a distance to maintain virtually complete independence and yet experience quality two-way interaction characterized by learning diagnostics and feedback. Consideration of CAL's Potential in distance education requires going beyond the restrictive view that interaction is mediated person to person communication. Under this definition, activities such as CAL are not p.238 considered interactive. Distance educators must appreciate that interaction in CAL “is not with the computer so much as through the computer” (Jones, 1984: 50). It must also be realized that CAL is designed with great care, usually by a highly- qualified design team. Communication is mediated in ways similar to that of an author through print media but with the tremendous added advantage of the students being given immediate feedback regarding their active responses to the lesson. Intelligent CAL has powerful diagnostic and feedback capabilities rivalling those of a master teacher. Store and Armstrong (1980: 150) provide a broad definition of feedback as “that process of communication which provides information on how well a task has been performed or an objective has been achieved”. This type of feedback is well within the capabilities of good CAL courseware. Five characteristics of good feedback are immediacy, regularity, explanation, conciseness and clarity (Store & Armstrong, 1981). It is clear that these characteristics of good feedback could be provided by CAL effectively and efficiently in many distance education situations. Further, these characteristics represent the essentials of quality interaction with regards to the acquisition of knowledge. Therefore it must be concluded that CAL is capable of effective two-way communication in the delivery of education at a distance. It would appear, given the apparent capabilities of computers in delivering distance education, that considerable research into the implementation of these systems in distance education is needed. In a discussion of micro-computers, (Daniel (1983: 395) states that “Distance education has scarcely begun to plan for the opportunities and threats that the development of these stand-alone domestic systems present. If we are to understand and take the opportunity that computer-based education is offering, we must broaden our perspective of communication in distance education. Ancillary media. Before leaving this discussion of technological innovation in distance education it is important to state why other media are not considered to have significantly altered the delivery of distance education. The main reason is the non-interactiveness of media such as radio and television broadcasts, audio and video cassettes, laser videodiscs, and audiographics. For this reason, these media are viewed as being in a separate category, since they are incapable of providing two-way communication. Considering the essential nature of two-way communication to distance education, broadcast media cannot be seen to have radically changed the technology of distance delivery. This is also true of other devices such as audio cassettes, video cassettes, and laser videodiscs. Notwithstanding p.239 this, however, when a device such, as the laser videodisc is married to a micro-computer an extremely powerful technology is created. The extensive audio and video storage and random access capabilities of laser videodiscs controlled by a micro- computer can provide a fully-interactive quality learning technology. Computer stored and controlled explanations and questions can be combined with audio, photographs, and moving pictures on the videodisc. Such technologies demonstrate the exciting prospects for distance education as we enter the computer generation of distance delivery. Figure 1 is an attempt to order various distance education media within the context of interaction and independence. Although this can only be considered a general approximation, the inter-relationship of various media along the dimensions of interaction and independence can be determined. The extreme positions from the origin (low interaction/low independence) that correspondence, teleconferencing, and CAL occupy argues for the significant shirts in the technological development of distance education presented in this paper. Summary. After establishing the premise that media plays an essential role in distance education, the development of this field was analyzed from the perspective of technological innovation. It was suggested that paradigmatic shifts have occurred in distance education particularly with regards to the p.240 concepts of interaction and independence. The first and seminal conceptual shift in the delivery of instruction occurred when it was realized that educational interaction need not be face-to-face but could be mediated via correspondence. Although there are serious disadvantages in terms of the response rate, it does offer freedom as to when and where to study. With the advent of telecommunications it was seen that person-to-person interaction could be mediated electronically. The marginal loss in independence inherent in telecommunications use was easily offset by the great advantage of immediate feedback; however, it should be noted that the amount or regularity of interaction is often not sufficient or in the control of the learner. Finally, we are currently experiencing a conceptual shift with regards to the simulated structured interaction of computer-based instruction. With this technology we gain a new perspective in that feedback can be immediate and regular without, theoretically, any serious loss of independence. Resulting from this analysis was the proposition that the development of distance education could be viewed in terms of three generations of technology - correspondence, telecommunications, and computer. A secondary outcome was an ordering of distance education media based upon the concepts of interaction and independence. It is hoped that this analysis and the resulting typologies will provide some assistance in understanding the important characteristics of distance education media. References. Baath, J.(1985) A note on the origin of distance education. ICDE - Bulletin, 1. 61-62. Daniel, J. (1983) Worldwide trends in distance education: New technologies for interaction. In Parker, L. & Olgren, C. (eds.) Teleconferencing and electronic communications 11.- Applications, technologies, and human factors (pp.392-396). Madison: University of Wisconsin-Extension. Holmberg, K (1982) Recent research into distance education. ERIC Document 235 781, 1-108. Holrnberg, B, (1985) Status and Trends of distance education. Lund, Sweden: Hector Publishing. Jones, R. (1984) The CAI dilemma. In Tobin, J. & Sharon, D. (eds.) New technologies in education in Canada: Issues and concerns (pp.49-56). Toronto: TV Ontario. Kearsley, G., Hunter, B., & Seidel, R. (1983) Two decades of computer based instruction projects: What have we learned? T.H.E. Journal, 10(3),90-94. Keegan, D. (1983) On defining distance education. In Sewart, D., Keegan, D, & Holmberg, B. (eds.) Distance education: International perspectives (pp.6- 1 8).London: Croom Helm. Olgren, C., & Parker, L. (1983 ). Teleconferencing technology and applications. Dedham, MA: Artech House Inc. Store, R., & Armstrong, J. (1981) Personalizing feedback between teacher and Student in the context of a particular model of distance teaching. British Journal of Educational Technology, 12(2), 140-157. p. 241 
work_rk34buuubnaa3lsralj2sjxobq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_rl6gmpaiqbc3rhsuc3meq3oiii	----	jrh_335_LR UC Davis UC Davis Previously Published Works Title Pediatric obesity management in rural clinics in California and the role of telehealth in distance education. Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qq4f1s9 Journal The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association, 27(3) ISSN 0890-765X Authors Shaikh, Ulfat Nettiksimmons, Jasmine Romano, Patrick Publication Date 2011 DOI 10.1111/j.1748-0361.2010.00335.x Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qq4f1s9 https://escholarship.org http://www.cdlib.org/ O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E Pediatric Obesity Management in Rural Clinics in California and the Role of Telehealth in Distance Education Ulfat Shaikh, MD, MPH, MS;1 Jasmine Nettiksimmons, MA;2 & Patrick Romano, MD, MPH3 1 Department of Pediatrics, University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, California 2 Department of Epidemiology, University of California, Davis, California 3 Department of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, California Preliminary data from this study were presented at the 2008 AcademyHealth Annual Child Health Services Research Meeting, Washington, DC. The authors thank Dr. Daniel Tancredi for guidance with statistical analysis and Hassan Baxi for assistance with data management. Ulfat Shaikh’s work on this study was supported by career development awards from the University of California Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center (UL1 RR024146, National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (K08HS18567). For further information, contact: Ulfat Shaikh, MD, MPH, MS, Department of Pediatrics, University of California Davis School of Medicine, 2516 Stockton Blvd., Room 335, Sacramento, CA 95817; e-mail ushaikh@ucdavis.edu. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-0361.2010.00335.x Abstract Objective: To determine health care provider needs related to pediatric obe- sity management in rural California and to explore strategies to improve care through telehealth. Methods: Cross-sectional survey of health care providers who treated children and adolescents at 41 rural clinics with existing telehealth connectivity. Results: Most of the 135 respondents were family physicians at designated rural health clinics serving low-income families. Respondents had practiced in rural areas for an average of 10 years. Most providers rated their self-efficacy in managing pediatric obesity as 2 or 3 on a 5-point scale. The barriers most frequently reported by health care providers were lack of local weight man- agement programs, lack of patient motivation, and lack of family involvement in treatment. Providers reported that the resources they would find most help- ful were readily accessible patient education materials, strategies to link pa- tients with community treatment programs and training in brief, focused coun- seling skills. Three-quarters of providers already used telehealth for distance learning. Providers reported very high interest in participating in continuing education on pediatric obesity delivered by telehealth, specifically Internet communication with specialists, web-based education, and interactive video case-conferencing. Conclusions: Rural health care providers face several barriers related to pe- diatric obesity management. Targeted interventions provided via telehealth to rural health care providers may enhance the care of obese children and adoles- cents. The results of this study provide directions and priorities for the design of appropriate interventions. Key words obesity, pediatric, rural, telehealth, telemedicine. The prevalence of obesity has doubled among children aged 2 to 5 years, and it has tripled among children aged 6-11 years, over the past 30 years.1 Obesity is now con- sidered a public health “epidemic” in the United States affecting 17% of children, with an additional 15% of children qualifying as overweight.2 Childhood obesity has been identified as a risk factor for the development of multiple health problems, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, obstructive sleep apnea, anxiety, depression,3-8 and adult obesity and its complications.9,10 Childhood obesity is a particularly chal- lenging problem in rural areas. Parents of obese rural chil- dren report that lack of local weight loss resources, lack of exercise facilities, and lack of access to healthy foods are barriers to weight loss.11 Rural residents have lower access to pediatric and specialty care, greater travel time to health care providers, less availability of health insur- ance, lower likelihood of exercising, and higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes compared to their ur- ban counterparts.12-15 The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association 1 Pediatric Obesity and Rural Clinics Shaikh, Nettiksimmons and Romano Since approximately 90% of children have a source of ongoing health care, clinicians have recurring opportu- nities to contribute to the management of pediatric obe- sity.12,13 However, unique challenges faced by rural clin- icians include professional isolation, reduced access to medical information and continuing education, and lim- ited communication with subspecialists and ancillary sup- port services.16,17 Telehealth is defined as the use of elec- tronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and health care professional education, and public health.18 Telehealth has been successfully used in dermatology, psychiatry, pulmonary medicine, obesity, and cardiol- ogy,19-23 and it has reduced the cost of health care and time related to travel.24-26 Few studies have assessed ru- ral health care providers’ challenges related to pediatric obesity and their interest in telehealth applications to address these challenges. Our goals were to determine: (1) self-efficacy and perceived effectiveness of health care providers in rural California in managing child and adolescent obesity; (2) perceived barriers in the treatment of overweight rural children and adolescents; (3) clinical resources that may enhance the effectiveness of obesity management in ru- ral areas; and (4) potential strategies to improve obe- sity management and rural health care provider train- ing through telehealth. In addition, we assessed whether there were differences in attitudes, barriers, and need for clinical resources based on professional group, years of practice, and duration of practice in rural settings. The Chronic Care Model offers a framework to iden- tify factors influencing the management of pediatric obe- sity and guided the design of the questionnaire used in our study.27 The model has been used to improve the quality of disease management for other chronic illnesses in a variety of settings and populations. The 6 key areas identified within the Chronic Care Model are: (1) self- management support, (2) decision support, (3) delivery system design, (4) clinical information system, (5) orga- nization of the health care system, and (6) community resources. Methods Study Population and Design We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive survey of health care providers in rural California. A 3-page ques- tionnaire was developed to assess health care providers’ perceived effectiveness with respect to the treatment of pediatric obesity, challenges and solutions to providing care in rural areas, and the potential utility of telehealth in addressing these challenges. Health care providers (physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants) working in rural clinics in California who provided health care to individuals younger than 18 years were eligible to be included in the study. A mailing list of rural clinics in California with existing telehealth connectivity with the University of California (UC) Davis Center for Health and Technology was obtained (N = 78). Listed contact per- sons at each clinic site were contacted by telephone to obtain information on whether the clinic provided health care to children (N = 41). We also acquired information on which health care providers at each clinic provided health care to children. A total of 156 health care providers at 41 rural clin- ics in California with telehealth connectivity were eli- gible for this study. Copies of the survey questionnaire were mailed with a postage-paid return envelope to the contact person at each clinic in May 2007. The accom- panying cover letter requested that the questionnaires be distributed to all eligible providers, collected after com- pletion, and mailed back in the enclosed envelope. The survey packet was resent to contact persons at all clinics with nonresponding health care providers 2 more times, 4 and 8 weeks after the first mailing. The study protocol was approved by the University of California (UC) Davis Medical Center Institutional Review Board. Measures The same questionnaire was sent to all professional groups. The development of the questionnaire was in- formed by a review of the literature, discussions with clinicians who work with obese children, and obesity ex- perts. The questionnaire was pilot-tested for face validity by 6 health care providers including 3 family physicians and 1 nurse practitioner practicing in rural California, as well as 2 pediatricians practicing in urban academic med- ical centers in California who are experts in pediatric obe- sity. Input from these health care providers was used to refine the survey instrument. Human subjects research approval was obtained from the UC Davis Institutional Review Board. Perceived effectiveness of treatment was assessed on a 5-point scale (1 = highly ineffective, 5 = highly effective). Twelve potential barriers to treatment that emerged through the pilot-testing process were listed, and providers were asked how often each posed a barrier to treatment using a 5-point scale (never, occasionally, sometimes, often, or always). To assess the helpfulness of clinical resources for treating obese children, respon- dents were asked to rate 7 potential resources using a 4-point scale (definitely unhelpful, possibly unhelpful, possibly helpful, or definitely helpful). The survey also included 3 questions on preferred continuing medical 2 The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association Shaikh, Nettiksimmons and Romano Pediatric Obesity and Rural Clinics education methods using telehealth technologies. Re- spondents were also asked questions about their type of practice and demographic characteristics. Data Analysis Data analysis was performed using STATA 10 and R 2.10.0.28,29 We used univariate and multivariate linear models to investigate differences in perceived effective- ness, self-efficacy, barriers, and interest in telehealth related to the following health care provider character- istics: professional group, age, years in practice, years in rural practice, estimated percentage of patients with low income, and use of electronic medical records. All multi- variate models included professional group, years in prac- tice, estimated percentage of patients with low income, and use of electronic medical records. Coefficients for continuous outcomes (namely years in practice, years in rural practice, and percentage of low-income patients in practice) represent the change in outcome for each ad- ditional unit increase in the predictor variable. We used logistic regression to investigate differences in current use of telehealth technology. Results A total of 135 health care providers at 39 rural clinics re- turned questionnaires following all 3 mailings (response rate 86.5%). Practice Setting Approximately 90% of health care providers worked at designated Rural Health Clinics or Federally Qualified Health Centers in rural areas.30 Health care providers es- timated that 71% of the children and adolescents they cared for lived in low-income families. Health Care Provider Demographics The average age of health care providers was 46.7 years (range 27-78, SD = 10.4); 58% were female and 78% were white (Table 1). Providers had been in clinical prac- tice for an average of 13 years (SD = 10.4) since com- pleting their medical training. They had spent a mean of 10 years in clinical practice in a rural area (SD = 8.7). More than half of all providers were physicians, 24% were nurse practitioners, and 22% were physician assis- tants. Most responding health care providers (78%) re- ported that they specialized in family practice. The next most commonly reported specialty was pediatrics (17%). Table 1 Characteristics of Responding Health Care Providers Characteristics Respondents (N = 135) Gender, n (%) Male 56 (41.5) Female 79 (58.5) Age groups, n (%) <35 y 21 (15.7) 35-44 y 39 (29.1) 45-54 y 42 (31.3) 55-64 y 27 (20.2) ≥65 y 5 (3.7) Race & ethnicity, n (%) White 105 (78) Asian 15 (11) Black/African American 3 (2) Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 1 (0.7) Native American/Alaskan Native 1 (0.7) Other 8 (6) Hispanic (12) Profession, n (%) Physician 73 (54.1) Nurse practitioner 32 (23.7) Physician assistant 30 (22.2) Specialty, n (%) Pediatrics 24 (17.8) Family medicine 105 (77.8) Other 6 (4.4) Years in clinical practice <5 33 (24.4) 5-10 33 (24.4) >10 69 (51.1) Years in rural practice <5 41 (30.4) 5-10 42 (31.1) >10 52 (38.5) Practice utilizes electronic health records, n (%) Yes 31 (23.0) No 102 (75.6) Self-Perceived Effectiveness and Self-Efficacy When respondents were asked to rate their beliefs on the effectiveness of health care providers in treating pedi- atric obesity on a 5-point scale (1 = lowest, 5 = highest), 49% rated this effectiveness as 3 and 32% ranked it as 4. When asked about their own self-efficacy in treating pe- diatric obesity on a similar 5-point scale, most providers (62%) rated their self-efficacy as 3 and 51% rated their self-efficacy as 2. Beliefs about effectiveness of treatment and provider self-efficacy were not related to the num- ber of years in clinical practice, number of years in rural practice, health care provider type, specialty, percentage of patients who were low income, use of electronic med- ical records, or health care provider age in univariate and multivariate analyses. The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association 3 Pediatric Obesity and Rural Clinics Shaikh, Nettiksimmons and Romano Table 2 Barriers to the Management of Pediatric Obesity in Rural Clinics Average Score Often/Always Barrier (1-5 Scale) a Barrier Lack of local weight management program 3.87 74% Lack of patient motivation 3.84 78% Lack of parent involvement 3.81 77% Lack of access to psychologists 3.36 55% Lack of ready access to educational materials 3.36 54% Lack of reimbursement 3.30 55% Lack of time 3.28 49% Lack of access to dieticians 3.26 52% Lack of community resources 3.00 38% Provider’s lack of counseling skills 2.78 23% Provider’s lack of knowledge 2.75 23% Provider’s fear of precipitating eating disorders 1.91 9% Barriers The barriers most frequently reported by health care providers were lack of local weight management pro- grams, lack of patient motivation, and lack of family in- volvement in treatment (Table 2). Other barriers included lack of access to psychologists and dieticians, lack of read- ily available educational materials, and lack of third-party reimbursement for pediatric obesity management. Health care providers who had greater clinical experi- ence in rural areas perceived the lack of parental involve- ment as less of a barrier to obesity treatment. Specifically, the average score decreased by 0.02 units per year of practicing in rural areas (effect = −0.02 units per year in rural practice; 95% CI, −0.03 to −0.01; P = .019). Treat- ing a higher proportion of low-income patients was cor- related with providers perceiving parental involvement as a greater barrier to the management of pediatric obe- sity (effect = 0.1 per 10% increase in the percentage of low-income patients; 95% CI, 0.04 to 0.2; P = .017). A higher proportion of low-income patients was also asso- ciated with providers perceiving poor reimbursement as a greater barrier to the management of pediatric obesity (effect = 0.1 per 10% increase in the percentage of low- income patients; 95% CI, 0.001 to 0.2; multivariate P = .051). Older health care providers as well as those who had been in clinical practice longer were less concerned about precipitating eating disorders during obesity treat- ment compared to younger providers or those with less clinical experience (years in practice: effect = −0.02 per year; 95% CI, −0.04 to −0.002; P = .014). Family physicians perceived lack of knowledge and skills as more of a barrier to effectively treating pedi- atric obesity than did pediatricians (family physician vs Table 3 Resources Helpful in the Management of Pediatric Obesity in Rural Clinics Average Possibly/ Chosen as Score Definitely Most Resource (1-5 scale) Helpful Helpful Resource Patient educational materials 3.66 97% 24% Patients’ access to treatment programs 3.57 93% 24% Provider training in counseling 3.49 94% 18% Improving clinic systems 3.39 90% 7% Office staff training in assessment 3.36 90% 4% Web-based inventory of local resources 3.36 90% 5% Clinical algorithms 3.34 93% 13% pediatrician contrast in mean barrier score = 0.63; 95% CI, 0.16 to 0.11; P = .01) or physician assistants (fam- ily physician vs physician assistant contrast = 0.43; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.85; P = .043). There were no significant differences in barriers reported by nurse practitioners, pe- diatricians, and physician assistants. Compared to fam- ily physicians, nurse practitioners saw the lack of access to dieticians as more of a barrier to managing pediatric obesity (nurse practitioner vs family physician score con- trast = 0.68; 95% CI, 0.06 to 1.3; P = .032). However, nurse practitioners considered time less of a barrier to managing pediatric obesity compared with family physi- cians (nurse practitioner vs family physician score con- trast = −0.56; 95% CI, −1.07 to −0.05; P = .032). Helpful Resources Providers reported that the resources they would find most helpful were readily accessible patient education materials, strategies to link patients with community treatment programs and training in brief, focused coun- seling skills (Table 3). Other resources noted as being of help in the management of pediatric obesity were strate- gies to improve clinic systems, training for office staff, and access to an inventory of local resources. Family physicians felt that office staff training and im- provement of clinic systems would be more helpful in en- hancing obesity management than did pediatricians (of- fice staff training: effect = 0.54; 95% CI, 0.12 to 0.96; P = .012; clinic systems: effect = 0.49; 95% CI, 0.08 to 0.90; P = .019). Family physicians were also more interested in training in counseling skills than pediatricians (fam- ily physician vs pediatrician score contrast = 0.42; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.79; P = .027). Providers who treated a high 4 The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association Shaikh, Nettiksimmons and Romano Pediatric Obesity and Rural Clinics Table 4 Rural Health Providers’ Interest in Telehealth Providers Reporting Average Score High/Very (1-5 Scale) High Interest Specialist consultation 3.84 65% Web-based education 3.76 61% Internet-based case conferencing 3.61 57% percentage of low-income patients considered strategies to link patients with community programs more helpful than did providers with lower proportions of low-income patients (effect = 0.01 per percentage point estimated low income; 95% CI, 0.004 to 0.02; P = .021). Interest in Telehealth Technologies Health care providers were provided with a standard definition of telehealth in the questionnaire.18 Of the providers surveyed, 73% reported using telehealth for distance learning. Of these providers, 74% reported em- ploying telehealth to enhance patient care, 73% to keep up-to-date on advances in medicine, 63% to fulfill con- tinuing medical education credits, 54% to reduce costs related to attending medical conferences, and 53% to re- duce travel time to medical conferences. Older providers and those who had been in clinical practice longer were more likely to have used telehealth to reduce time and expenses associated with attending conferences (years in practice: P = .011 and P = .023, log OR = 0.064 and 0.054 per year in practice, OR for 10-year increase = 1.90 and 1.72). Providers with electronic record systems in their clinics were more likely to use telehealth to obtain continuing medical education credits than those who did not use electronic health records (P = .043, OR = 3.74). However, approximately 80% of providers had not at- tended education or training programs on pediatric obe- sity within the past 2 years, either in person or using tele- health technologies. Providers were asked to report on their interest in par- ticipating in various forms of educational programs on pediatric obesity delivered by telehealth. More than half of the providers surveyed indicated that they had high or very high interest in conferencing with subspecial- ists over the Internet, taking part in web-based educa- tion, and participating in live Internet case-conferencing (Table 4). Interest in participating in educational pro- grams on pediatric obesity delivered by telehealth was not significantly associated with the number of years in clini- cal practice, number of years in rural practice, or whether the clinic utilized electronic health records. Interest in participating in interactive video case-conferencing was significantly higher among nurse practitioners than among family physicians (nurse practitioner vs family physician score contrast = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.19 to 1.31; P = .01). Discussion Our goal was to assess rural health care providers’ self- efficacy and perceived effectiveness with respect to the treatment of pediatric obesity, challenges and solutions to providing care in rural areas, and the potential utility of telehealth in addressing these challenges. Health care providers who responded to this survey were, in general, not very confident in their own ability to treat obesity in children but believed that obesity treatment in chil- dren can be effective. Several barriers, such as lack of lo- cal weight management programs, low patient motiva- tion, and inadequate family involvement, may interfere with treatment efforts. Overall, providers expressed high interest in participating in additional training employing telehealth technologies. Multiple challenges related to the care of obese chil- dren and adolescents currently exist in rural primary care. Continuing education for rural health care providers is additionally a challenge given their geographic iso- lation. However, telehealth technologies provide an opportunity to overcome this barrier. Resources that can potentially be delivered using existing telehealth technologies include: (1) access to weight management programs, dieticians, and psychologists31; (2) distance ed- ucation in pediatric obesity treatment, motivational inter- viewing, brief-focused counseling, and strategies to max- imize third-party reimbursement; (3) clinician and office staff training and support in office systems improvement; (4) access to web-based patient educational materials; (5) access to a web-based directory of local and regional re- sources that support healthy weight management; and (6) access to web-based clinical algorithms to guide treatment. Surveys of health care providers in urban areas show similar results.32 Poor reimbursement for time-intensive visits for obesity treatment exists even in specialized obe- sity referral clinics, regardless of the severity of obesity.33 A national needs assessment, which did not specifically examine geographic location, demonstrated that the 2 most frequent barriers to obesity treatment reported by clinicians were lack of parent involvement and lack of pa- tient motivation.34 Clinicians’ self-reported confidence in their ability to help motivate patients to change behaviors has been reported as a barrier in other studies.35 Many health care providers have not been trained in motiva- tional interviewing and other counseling techniques to enhance adherence to behavioral change.36 Motivational The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association 5 Pediatric Obesity and Rural Clinics Shaikh, Nettiksimmons and Romano interviewing and brief negotiation have been adapted for use in busy and time-limited clinical visits, and gaining proficiency in these techniques may be an effective ap- proach in rural health care settings.37-39 Strengths of our study are the high response rate as well as the fact that we included a variety of health care professionals involved in the delivery of care in rural Cal- ifornia (family physicians, pediatricians, nurse practition- ers, and physician assistants). Although we have identi- fied important issues related to the delivery of health care for pediatric obesity in rural underserved areas, our study relied primarily on self-report and did not include direct measures of health care provider knowledge or clinical practice. Additionally, it is possible that responding health care providers may have had greater interest in the man- agement of pediatric obesity than nonrespondents. Although our survey provides valuable data to plan tar- geted interventions in California, similar surveys of ru- ral clinics in other states would help determine whether health care providers in other geographic locations face the same challenges to pediatric obesity management. Once targeted interventions have been designed, further research on the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of such interventions to enhance obesity care in rural ar- eas needs to be conducted. Since our study relied primar- ily on self-report, other measures of health care provider knowledge or clinical outcomes may provide further in- formation regarding challenges to obesity management in rural areas. Information obtained from this study will guide the development of tailored interventions delivered by tele- health to rural health care providers to enhance the clin- ical care of obese children and adolescents. For example, nurse practitioners may be a suitable target group for in- terventions using Internet case-conferencing, given their high interest in this medium of communication and lower reported time constraints. For rural clinics to provide effective care for chronic diseases such as obesity, it is additionally necessary to put into place efficient practice systems that facilitate implementation of clinical recom- mendations. Implications Our study indicates that rural health care providers face several barriers in treating pediatric obesity, including lack of access to weight management programs, lack of patient motivation and family involvement, lack of ac- cess to educational materials, poor reimbursement, and lack of time. Clinician and office staff training and support in office systems improvement was identified as another area of need. Health care providers expressed interest in distance education delivered using telehealth technolo- gies to help overcome these barriers, specifically, video- conferencing with subspecialists, web-based education, and live Internet case-conferencing. Our findings high- light the need for increased educational opportunities to rural health care providers related to the management of pediatric obesity, specifically using delivery methods that overcome travel time, expense and geographic isolation. Follow-up studies to evaluate the effectiveness of strate- gies to improve the management of obese children and adolescents in rural areas are needed. References 1. Institute of Medicine, Koplan JP, Liverman CT, Kraak VI, eds. Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2005. 2. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Lamb MM, Flegal KM. Prevalence of high body mass index in US children and adolescents, 2007–2008. JAMA. 2010;303(3):242- 249. 3. Gortmaker SL, Must A, Perrin JM. Social and economic consequences of overweight in adolescence and young adulthood. N Engl J Med. 1993;329:1008-1012. 4. Dietz WH. Childhood weight affects adult morbidity and mortality. J Nutr. 1998;128:411S-414S. 5. Must A, Strauss RS. Risks and consequences of childhood and adolescent obesity. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1999;23(Suppl 2):S2-S11. 6. Wang G, Dietz WH. Economic burden of obesity in youths aged 6 to 17 years: 1979–1999. Pediatrics. 2002;109:e81. 7. Goodman E, Whitaker RC. A prospective study of the role of depression in the development and persistence of adolescent obesity. Pediatrics. 2002;109:497-504. 8. Reilly JJ, Methven E, McDowell ZC, et al. Health consequences of obesity. Arch Dis Child. 2003;88(9):748-752. 9. Freedman DS, Khan LK, Serdula MK, Dietz WH, Srinivasan SR, Bersenson GS. The relation of childhood BMI to adult adiposity: the Bogalusa heart study. Pediatrics. 2005;115(1):22-27. 10. Guo SS, Wu W, Chumlea WC, Roche AF. Predicting overweight and obesity in adulthood from body mass index values in childhood and adolescence. Am J Clin Nutr. 2002;76(3):653-658. 11. Davis AM, James RL, Curtis MR, Felts SM, Daley CM. Pediatric obesity attitudes, services, and information among rural parents: a qualitative study. Obesity 2008;16(9):2133-2140. 12. US Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy people 2010. Available at: http://www.healthypeople. gov/Default.htm. Accessed March 23, 2010. 13. US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The Health and Well-Being of Children in Rural Areas: A Portrait of the Nation. Rockville, MD; 2005. 6 The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association Shaikh, Nettiksimmons and Romano Pediatric Obesity and Rural Clinics 14. Levey L, Curry J, Levey S. Rural-urban differences in access to Iowa child health services. J Rural Health. 1988;4(2):59-72. 15. Saywell R, Zollinger T, Schafer M, Schmit T, Ladd JK. Children with special health care needs program: urban/rural comparisons. J Rural Health. 1993;9(4):314-325. 16. Anderson EA, Bergeron D, Crouse BJ. Recruitment of family physicians in rural practice. Minn Med. 1994;77:29-32. 17. Conte SJ, Imershein AW, Magill MK. Rural community and physician perspectives on resource factors affecting physician retention. J Rural Health. 1992;8:185-196. 18. US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration. Telehealth. Available at: http://www.hrsa.gov/telehealth&period;/ Accessed January 23, 2007. 19. High WA, Houston MS, Calobrisi SD, Drage LA, McEvoy MT. Assessment of the accuracy of low-cost store and forward teledermatology consultation. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2000;42:776-783. 20. Callahan EJ, Hilty DM, Nesbitt TS. Patient satisfaction with telemedicine consultation in primary care: comparison of ratings of medical and mental health applications. Telemed J. 1998;4(4):363-369. 21. Pacht ER, Turner JW, Gailiun M. Effectiveness of telemedicine in the outpatient pulmonary clinic. Telemed J. 1998;4:287-292. 22. Tsagaris MJ, Papavassiliou MV, Chatzipantazi PD. The contribution of telemedicine to cardiology. J Telemed Telecare. 1997;3(suppl):63-64. 23. Shaikh U, Cole SL, Marcin JP, Nesbitt TS. Clinical management and patient outcomes among children and adolescents receiving telemedicine consultations for obesity. Telemed J E Health. 2008;14(5):434-440. 24. Kumar S, Tay-Kearney M, Chaves F, Constable I, Yogesan K. Remote ophthalmology services: cost comparison of telemedicine and alternative service delivery options. J Telemed Telecare. 2006;12(1):19-22. 25. Samii A, Ryan-Dykes P, Tsukuda R, Zink C, Franks R, Nichol W. Telemedicine for delivery of health care in Parkinson’s disease. J Telemed Telecare. 2006;12(1):16-18. 26. Malasanos T, Burlingame J, Youngblade L, Patel B, Muir A. Improved access to subspecialist diabetes care by telemedicine: cost savings and care measures in the first two years of the FITE diabetes project. J Telemed Telecare. 2005;11(suppl 1):74-76. 27. Wagner EH. Chronic disease management: what will it take to improve care for chronic illness? Effective Clinical Practice. 1998;1(1):2-4. 28. StataCorp. Stata Statistical Software: Release 9. College Station, TX: StataCorp LP; 2005. 29. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing [computer program]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing; 2009. 30. US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration. Comparison of the rural health clinic and federally qualified health center programs; 2006. Available at: http://www. ask.hrsa.gov/downloads/fqhc-rhccomparison.pdf. Accessed January 15, 2010. 31. Shaikh U, Cole SL, Marcin JP, Nesbitt TS. Clinical management and patient outcomes among children and adolescents receiving telemedicine consultations for obesity. Telemed J E Health. 2008;14(5):434-440. 32. Spivack JG, Swietlik M, Alessandrini E, Faith MS. Primary care providers’ knowledge, practices, and perceived barriers to the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity. Obesity. 2010;18(7):1341-1347. 33. Tershakovec AM, Watson MH, Wenner Jr WJ, Marx AL. Insurance reimbursement for the treatment of obesity in children. J Pediatr. 1999;134:573-578. 34. Story MT, Neumark-Stzainer DR, Sherwood NE, et al. Management of child and adolescent obesity: attitudes, barriers, skills, and training needs among health care professionals. Pediatrics. 2002;110(1 Pt 2):210- 214. 35. Kushner RF. Barriers to providing nutrition counseling by physicians: a survey of primary care practitioners. Prev Med. 1995;24:546-552. 36. World Health Organization. Obesity: Preventing and Managing the Global Epidemic, Report of a WHO Consultation on Obesity. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization;1997. 37. Miller WR, Rollnick S. Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People to Change Addictive Behavior. New York, NY: Guilford Press; 1991. 38. Berg-Smith SM, Stevens VJ, Brown KM, et al. A brief motivational intervention to improve dietary adherence in adolescents. Health Educ Res Theory Pract. 1999;14:399-410. 39. Glascoe FP, Oberklaid F, Dworkin PH, Trimm F. Brief approaches to educating patients and parents in primary care. Pediatrics. 1998;101(6):E10. The Journal of Rural Health 00 (2010) 1–7 c© 2010 National Rural Health Association 7 
work_rmqkxfnfergjligpcoescucna4	----	Using Emotional Intelligence in Training Crisis Managers: The Pandora Approach | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2013040104 Corpus ID: 43515194Using Emotional Intelligence in Training Crisis Managers: The Pandora Approach @article{MacKinnon2013UsingEI, title={Using Emotional Intelligence in Training Crisis Managers: The Pandora Approach}, author={L. MacKinnon and L. Bacon and Gabriella Cortellessa and A. Cesta}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2013}, volume={11}, pages={66-95} } L. MacKinnon, L. Bacon, +1 author A. Cesta Published 2013 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Multi-agency crisis management represents one of the most complex of real-world situations, requiring rapid negotiation and decision-making under extreme pressure. However, the training offered to strategic planners, called Gold Commanders, does not place them under any such pressure. It takes the form of paper-based, table-top exercises, or expensive, real-world, limited-scope simulations. The Pandora project has developed a rich multimedia training environment for Gold Commanders, based on a… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 11 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Background Citations 5 Methods Citations 3 View All Topics from this paper Timeline Logic programming Simulation 11 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Supporting Real-Time Decision-Making Under Stress in an Online Training Environment L. Bacon, L. MacKinnon, David Kananda Engineering, Computer Science IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje 2017 4 PDF View 3 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Real-time decision support in online training environments L. Bacon, L. MacKinnon, David Kananda Engineering 2015 2 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Emotional Intelligence-A Key to Manage Crisis : A Study among Correctional Officers of West Bengal , India M. Sarkar, A. Ray 2018 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Personalized crisis management training on a tablet Paris Mavromoustakos Blom, S. Bakkes, P. Spronck Computer Science FDG 2018 6 Highly Influenced PDF View 4 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Design of an Immersive Online Crisis Preparation Learning Environment L. Bacon, L. MacKinnon, A. Filippoupolitis, David Kananda Engineering, Computer Science ISCRAM 2016 1 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites methods Save Alert Research Feed Developing a Public Online Learning Environment for Crisis Awareness, Preparation, and Response L. Bacon, L. MacKinnon, A. Filippoupolitis, David Kananda Political Science, Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Syst. Crisis Response Manag. 2017 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Emotions in Twitter communication and stock prices of firms: the impact of Covid-19 pandemic Suparna Dhar, I. Bose Medicine DECISION 2021 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed A FRAMEWORK FOR SUPPORT ON GENERATION OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE ADAPTATIVE MOOC USING TECHNIQUES OF CONTEXT ADAPTATION José Barbosa Dias Júnior, Alexandre Cardoso, Edgard Afonso Lamounier Júnior, C. Kirner Computer Science BIOINFORMATICS 2014 2014 Save Alert Research Feed Serious Games: An Attractive Approach to Improve Awareness S. Sorace, Elisabeth Quercia, +4 authors L. MacKinnon Business 2018 6 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites methods Save Alert Research Feed Developing a Framework for Automated Scenario-Based e-Learning Design L. MacKinnon, L. Bacon 2018 PDF View 3 excerpts, cites background and methods Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 63 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Modeling Users of Crisis Training Environments by Integrating Psychological and Physiological Data Gabriella Cortellessa, R. D'Amico, +4 authors A. Cesta Computer Science, Psychology IEA/AIE 2011 14 Save Alert Research Feed ALT-C 2011 Proceedings Papers: 0151 The Development of a Rich Multimedia Training Environment for Crisis Management: Using Emotional Affect to Enhance Learning. L. Bacon, G. Windall, L. MacKinnon Psychology, Computer Science 2011 20 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Integrating Cross-Cultural Decision Making Skills into Military Training W. Johnson, LeeEllen Friedland Computer Science 2010 9 Save Alert Research Feed Modeling self-efficacy in intelligent tutoring systems: An inductive approach S. McQuiggan, B. Mott, James C. Lester Computer Science User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 2007 160 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Affect Detection: An Interdisciplinary Review of Models, Methods, and Their Applications R. Calvo, S. D'Mello Psychology, Computer Science IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 2010 1,262 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Toward computers that recognize and respond to user emotion Rosalind W. Picard Psychology, Computer Science IBM Syst. J. 2000 261 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Measuring the Efficacy of Leaders to Assess Information and Make Decisions in a Crisis: The C-LEAD Scale C. Hadley, T. Pittinsky, S. A. Sommer, Weichun Zhu Psychology, Political Science 2011 45 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Decision making under stress: scanning of alternatives under controllable and uncontrollable threats. G. Keinan Medicine Journal of personality and social psychology 1987 454 Save Alert Research Feed Identifying and assessing tacit knowledge: understanding the practical intelligence of military leaders J. Hedlund, G. B. Forsythe, Joseph A. Horvath, W. Williams, Scott A. Snook, R. Sternberg Psychology 2003 160 Save Alert Research Feed Primal leadership : realizing the power of emotional intelligence D. Goleman, R. Boyatzis, A. Mckee Psychology 2002 996 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 11 Citations 63 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_rrqmtxc2bvekxbinaorp6ph3z4	----	CDIE610289 357..381 Students’ experience of synchronous learning in distributed environments Anissa R. Stewarta*, Danielle B. Harlowa and Kim DeBaccob aGevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA; bInstructional Development, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA (Received 22 March 2011; final version received 26 June 2011) This article reports on a two-year ethnographic study of learners participating in multi-site, graduate-level education classes. Classes sometimes met face-to-face in the same physical location; at other times part of the class met physically elsewhere. Yet all were linked through the virtual space. Ethnographic analysis of four data types explored how the instructor and students were able to interact through videoconferencing technologies. Most of the interaction occurred between the local and distance learners by way of cultural guides, local students assigned to host a distance learner through Google Video chat. The distance learners were able to receive real-time attention from the instructor and were able to share differing perspectives that contributed to increased satisfaction in the course. These interactions allowed for a dynamic collaborative effort among a diverse set of actors in the field of education. Keywords: distance learning; synchronous interaction; videoconferencing; eth- nography Introduction Innovative technologies offer new solutions to pressing problems in higher educa- tion. For example, higher education institutions are concerned with how to best pre- pare students for the twenty-first century workplace, how to attract more students, especially those from underrepresented populations, and also how to provide oppor- tunities for collaboration among educational leaders and experts (US Department of Education, 2010). Online technologies offer students the flexibility to take courses at centers of higher education without consideration for the physical location of the institutions. This ability to take courses wherever and whenever one likes is, in part, responsible for the growing popularity of online courses. In the Fall of 2008, over 4.6 million (25% of all higher education students in the United States) enrolled in at least one online course, up 19% from those enrolled in online courses in 2007 (Allen & Seaman, 2009). However, as Garrison and Vaughan (2008) assert, students still want significant face-to-face interaction, but ‘not as an extra tagged onto the normal workload.’ They want interaction that is ‘purposeful and meaningful’ (p. 187, emphasis added) and ‘online learning cannot easily replace the advantages and the need of learners to connect verbally in real time and in contiguous space’ *Corresponding author. Email: aframe@education.ucsb.edu Distance EducationAquatic Insects Vol. 32, No. 3, November 2011, 357–381 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online � 2011 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2011.610289 http://www.tandfonline.com (p. 163). Furthermore, interactive dialogue may be a crucial component of distance education environments (Moore, 1989, 1990), but only 31% of US institutions offering any distance education courses in 2006–2007 reported using synchronous Internet-based technologies and only 23% reported using two-way interactive video (Parsad & Lewis, 2008). In other words, only one-third of US institutions offering distance education courses reported using simultaneous computer-based instruction and even fewer used two-way video and audio. Based on these statistics, higher education providers are challenged to create a new classroom environment that retains what is good about face-to-face interaction and incorporates online access to information and participation, allowing for flexi- ble student learning experiences. Faculty and researchers at a university on Cali- fornia’s central coast are experimenting with the possibilities afforded by bringing offsite students and collaborators into the classroom through videoconferencing technologies, and thereby enhancing the higher education opportunities for both distance and local learners. Using computers and the Internet, faculty and students are interacting, dialoguing, and collaborating with one another while remaining physically distanced from one another. This technology-supported context was originally designed to create learning opportunities for graduate students who could not be on campus every week – opportunities that would be comparable to the experiences of local students. The format developed, called Synchronous Learning in Distributed Environments (SLIDE), was built on the assumption that productive learning occurs through conversations among students and faculty who create knowledge together, in real time, without physically being together in the same place. In fact, in the courses described in this article, students and faculty often interacted while being physically separated by a distance of over 500 miles (800 kilometres). Purpose of study This article describes a particular technology-supported instructional format and reports initial findings from a two-year ethnographic study of the experiences of learners participating in multi-site, graduate-level education classes in that format. In these classes, students and the instructor met in real time every week, sometimes face-to-face in the same physical location (a classroom), and at other times with some of the class in the physical classroom and some of the class elsewhere, yet all linked through the virtual space. Additional dialogue was possible through online discussion forums outside of the regular classroom meetings. During initial analysis, we identified the benefits and challenges of the SLIDE format by examining multi- ple courses that used variations of the format. Intrigued by these initial findings, we conducted additional analysis on one course, a qualitative research methodology class. In this latter analysis, we examined the patterns of interaction among the par- ticipants at the times when some were physically present and others participated through videoconferencing and online chat. Combining opportunities for online learning and face-to-face interaction has been referred to by different terms, including blended learning and hybrid learning. Here, we seek to raise conceptual, theoretical, and practical concerns about what is meant by online learning and what counts as a blended or hybrid learning environ- ment. Further, we assess whether using a model such as the one described in this article can allow for collaborative, intellectual exchanges of knowledge. 358 A.R. Stewart et al. Literature review Given our interest in the nature of interaction in a synchronous, local-remote computer-mediated classroom, we first turned to the literature for evidence of the benefits of synchronous interaction. In addition, we looked at research on higher education classrooms that integrated videoconferencing technologies, since the synchronous interaction among the distance learners, local learners, and instructor was made possible through these technologies. The courses in this study were unique in that both distance learners and local learners engaged in classroom interactions in real time, as opposed to studies that discuss real-time interaction among students and the instructor in distance learning courses. Thus, we find it important to look specifically at the literature that articulates reasons why facilitat- ing discussion and interaction is important for students who are participating as distance learners. Defining and valuing interaction Moore (1989) distinguishes between three types of student interaction in distance education: (1) student-student interaction, (2) student-teacher interaction, and (3) student-content interaction. Bernard et al. (2009) cite Moore and explain that both student-teacher and student-student interaction can be synchronous, as in videocon- ferencing and chatting, or asynchronous, through correspondence, email, and dis- cussion boards. Furthermore, face-to-face interaction can occur between students and instructors or among students in some distance education classes when the learning environment allows for both synchronous and asynchronous participation. The term blended refers to such learning environments that support both synchro- nous and asynchronous interactions (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008). Much research has been conducted on the benefits of synchronous learning in distance education courses. Berge (1999) argues that interaction among students and between the students and the instructor is essential for success in higher education. Muilenburg and Berge (2001) claim that these types of interactions are necessary for course satisfaction; and Münzer (2003) explains that, as social beings, students need interaction with others for motivational reasons. Other researchers claim that synchronous interaction can enable more efficient and effective communication, because students are able to listen to each others’ voices, conversational tones, and emotional expression (Park & Bonk, 2007a), correct misconceptions (Finkelstein, 2006; Park & Bonk, 2007b), engage spontaneously (Beuschel, Gaiser, & Draheim, 2003; Fish, Kraut, & Chalfonte, 1990), get more personal and real-time attention (Finkelstein, 2006; Münzer, 2003), share differing perspectives (Bober & Dennen, 2001; Bowden & Marton, 1998; Mason, 1994), and develop a sense of community (Duemer et al., 2002). In addition, students in some blended learning classes are also able to gain access to a wider audience of participants from different age groups and employed in a variety of professions (Park & Bonk, 2007a). Drawing on research that details the benefits of synchronous learning opportuni- ties, Anderson (2003) presents an updated theoretical rationale for interaction, and references Daniel and Marquis (1979), who claim that a goal of distance educators should be to create a balance between independent study and interactive learning activities. Anderson concludes that educators are unlikely to find a ‘perfect mix’ that meets the needs of all learners (p. 1). Nevertheless, Daniel and Marquis and Anderson value interaction as a key component in the education process. Drawing Distance Education 359 on his own observations and polling of higher education students, Anderson devel- ops an equivalency theorem, which states that: Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student-teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience (p. 4). Based on this theorem, Anderson (2003) draws subsequent conclusions about the value of interaction. He claims that student-teacher interaction currently has the highest-perceived value among many higher education students. He also asserts that student-student interaction is critical for learning environments based on constructiv- ist principles and for building collaboration skills. Anderson further argues that audio and videoconferencing may inhibit interaction to an extent due to the natural distance imposed by the technology. Videoconferencing in higher education Using videoconferencing in educational settings is not new; yet today’s uses of web-conferencing and laptop videoconferencing technologies represent far greater opportunities for education than taking satellite courses or streaming lectures through the Internet. As audio and videoconferencing technologies continue to develop and access becomes prevalent, the use of videoconferencing at all levels of education is also increasing. Videoconferencing technologies often are used to enrich the distance learning experiences for students. Greenberg (2004) asserts that videoconferencing technology can be used to effectively deliver quality education to a dispersed student population. Many scholars also claim that using videocon- ferencing technologies for instruction is equally effective as delivery modes in more traditional classroom instruction (Irele, 1999; Sumner & Hostetler, 2002; Twigg, 2001). However, in order for videoconferencing technologies to be effec- tive, they must provide opportunities for students to directly interact with the learning materials and with one another (Greenberg, 2004; Twigg, 2001). Further- more, Heath and Holznagel (2002) discuss how videoconferencing can promote interaction. They explain how, through videoconferencing, students may be able to interact synchronously and work in groups to examine and discuss interpretations of the content of the course. Similarly, Burke, Lundin, and Daunt (1997) examine the benefits of using videoconferencing, claiming that it can improve one’s access to other students and the instructors, and enhance the quality of experience in understanding the subject matter discussed in the class. Using videoconferencing in the classroom can overcome the challenges of communication between teacher and students and among students, and in doing do so, foster collaboration to enhance the experiences of learning communities (Martin, 2005). In addition, vid- eoconferencing can improve students’ and teachers’ access to each other, which is essential for learner-centered interactions (Smyth, 2005). Furthermore, Smyth (2005) explains that videoconferencing can support interaction with peers or experts working in the field, increase flexibility of learning situations, engage remote students more ‘fully, intellectually and emotionally,’ and provide a sense of inclusiveness for those with disabilities or limiting geographical circumstances (pp. 11–12). 360 A.R. Stewart et al. Indeed, according to Bates and Picard (2005), geographic circumstances pose no real limitation on participation in discussions, if students are able to use videocon- ferencing technologies to participate in a discussion at the same time, even though they may be located in different places. They argue, however, that the instructor must make accommodation for this type of participation and not assume that peda- gogical practices used in traditional classrooms will be successful in this new envi- ronment. Also, when students and the instructors communicate through videoconferencing, they are better able to interact in an affective manner, because they are able to read body language and engage in dynamic discussions in the moment, rather than waiting for others to post or respond (Mason & Rennie, 2008). Garrison and Vaughan (2008) point out that the ‘blending of classroom and online learning offers a rich and full array of communication options that range from spon- taneous, free flowing verbal exchanges to reflective, well-defined written exchanges’ (p. 163). It is widely acknowledged that videoconferencing technologies in the classroom can benefit students and instructors who otherwise would not be able to interact synchronously. However, what is often missing from the research literature is a the- oretically-guided and empirically-grounded study of practice, or ‘what students and teachers are actually doing with technology in often complex circumstances and how they may be adapting it in unforeseen ways to their own educational practices and priorities’ (Friesen, 2009, p. 9, emphasis added). Lou, Bernard, and Abrami (2006) explain that until now, two-way video has been used mainly to support instructor-directed lecture presentation. However, they contend that future research might examine how synchronous video, such as desktop and portable videoconfer- encing, may be used to support student-student interactions, such as group projects, and student-instructor interactions, such as advising on projects and providing inter- active feedback. The distributed synchronous classroom experience that is reported in this article provided a unique opportunity to explore these kinds of socio- educational interactions using methods aimed at identifying and understanding social practices in context. Theoretical and methodological framework We conceptualize the members of a class (whether local, distance, or blended) as a culture. Guided by this understanding, we explored how distance learners partici- pated in graduate education classes often through videoconferencing technologies. Three bodies of research inform this view of classrooms: learning as social practice, classrooms as cultures, and ethnography. Below, we describe each of these areas. Learning as a social practice According to Lave and Wenger (1991), the theory of social practice emphasizes the ‘relational interdependency of agent and world, activity, meaning, cognition, learn- ing, and knowing’ (p. 50). Also, the theory emphasizes the inherently socially nego- tiated character of meaning and claims that ‘learning, thinking, and knowing are relations among people in activity, in, with, and arising from the socially and cultur- ally structured world’ (p. 51). Wenger (1998) adds to this by explaining that a social theory of learning must integrate aspects necessary to characterize social participation as a process of Distance Education 361 learning and of knowing. For him, these include meaning – a way of talking about our (changing) ability – individually and collectively; practice – a way of talking about the shared historical and social resources, frameworks and perspectives; community – a way of talking about the social configurations; and identity – a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in the context of our communities. In everyday situations, people co-par- ticipate in activities, to some extent, gaining access to different modes of behavior, and thus developing certain skills. As they move between contexts, they integrate into new participation frameworks, structuring new communities of practice. These communities of practice evolve as participants both absorb and are being absorbed into the ‘culture of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 95). Classrooms as cultures According to Agar (2006), culture ‘is the ethnographic product, the result that is the translation that links the LC1 [native languaculture] and the LC2 [languaculture of the studied group]’ (p. 2). Languaculture is defined by the intertwined nature of language and culture (Agar, 1994). Throughout this study, we looked at how stu- dents who attended the various classes talked about and referenced certain cultural activities; we then viewed videos to examine cultural patterns and themes identified by those students who were more familiar with the culture of blended learning environments versus those who were outsiders, or who were attending such a course for the first time. By identifying a ‘rich point’(Agar, 1994, p. 256), or depar- ture from an outsider’s expectation, we sought patterns across people and events in order to make sense of what was happening in the classroom where certain students participated as distance learners during certain classroom meetings. A rich point, or discrepancy, occurs when the teacher and/or students do not share the frame of ref- erence for what is occurring in the lesson or classroom environment. Ethnography During the research process we gathered and analyzed artifacts through an ethno- graphic frame. Considerable research provides guidance on how to study classroom interaction ethnographically. The role of an educational ethnographer is to identify the patterned ways of perceiving, believing, and acting that members of a social group develop within and across events of everyday life (Agar, 1994; Anderson- Levitt, 2006; Heath & Street, 2008; Walford, 2008). Green, Dixon, and Zaharlick (2003) explain that in order to conduct an ethnographic study, ‘questions are gener- ated and identified across time and events in response to data collection and analy- sis conducted at different points in the study, with different actors in different places (environments)’ (p. 71).The levels of collection and analysis can only be defined in the local setting (in situ). In addition, the ethnographer participates and observes as a way to understand what counts as evidence of (for example) activity, events, or practice. As participant observers (Spradley, 1980), we engaged in various activities to record interaction, people, and the physical aspects of the situations from several points of view. We created ethnographic records, made descriptive observations, and analyzed our data collection at different stages of the process. We found that analyzing survey data and participating in the classes were insufficient to make 362 A.R. Stewart et al. grounded claims about what was really happening in the classes. Thus, using an ethnographic framework to study the SLIDE enabled us to examine the students and instructors in their everyday settings, with particular attention to the classroom as cul- tures in the making. We were able to determine how people were making meaning of their participation, interaction, and even understandings of the classroom. Viewed this way, ethnography is conducted through a recursive, iterative, and abductive research process (Green, Skukauskaite, & Baker, in press). That is, as eth- nographers, we progressed through cycles of modifications to questions and analysis of various data (iterative) and sometimes the cycles were applied within the data collection (recursive) process. Using an abductive logic we examined the unknown without pretense or a priori assumptions about the phenomena under study, but rather generated questions, hypotheses, and in the case of this study, a means of exploring what counted as interaction between the professor and the distance learn- ers and among the students in the discourse analysis course (Agar, 2004; Green et al., in press). Through this process we developed a logic of inquiry (see Figure 1) that guided the types of questions we asked, the ways in which we analyzed data, and how we discussed what was happening within the complexities of the class- room environment. Initiating Questions: Have students attending the courses participated in hybrid/blended courses before? If so, how were the courses different? What types of technology enable learning in this way? Representing Data: Surveys and Field notes from Courses Analyzing Events: Code students survey responses, both scale and open-ended responsesand code field notes, looking for patterns and reoccurring themes. Initiating Questions: What do students need to know and do in order to be successful in a class where some students participate at a distance? What does interaction in one of these classes look like? Representing Data: Field notes and Video records from DA Course Analyzing Events: Map events of video records to identify “rich points.” Transcribe dialogue surrounding those “rich points.” Overarching Question: How do we create learning opportunities for graduate students in courses that integrate local and distance learners through a combination of face-to-face and video-based meetings? Note: This figure is similar to the ones used in Green et al. (2003, p. 202) representing the overlapping developing stages of data collection and analysis over an ethnographic study. Initiating Questions: What are the benefits and challenges associated with taking a course where some students participate at a distance? How does taking a course where some students participate at a distance affect students’ participation and learning? Representing Data: Surveys and Field notes from Courses and Interviews from DA Course Analyzing Events: Code students survey responses, both scale and open-ended response, code field notes and interviews, looking for patterns and reoccurring themes. Figure 1. Logic of inquiry: Analytic process. Distance Education 363 Study design Study context Although this article focuses mainly on analysis of one class, Education (ED) Course 8, research on a number of classes over the two academic years informed this study (see Table 1). All courses were part of a doctoral program in educa- tion. Although each course used videoconferencing to enable interactions between the local and distance learners, each was designed differently, had different num- bers of students, and utilized different technologies. Table 1 documents the con- text for each of the courses that were part of the larger study. For example, ED Courses 1, 2, 4, and 5 took place in a small videoconferencing room with one large boardroom-style table and the distance learners interacted through a high definition videoconferencing unit. In ED Course 3, the distance learners partici- pated through laptop technologies, Elluminate Live and Vidyo projected onto the screen at the front of the classroom. The videoconferencing room worked well for the classes in the Fall and Winter 2008, but it was because all distance learn- ers were sharing the same physical space when attending the class virtually. That is, only two points were connected: the classroom at the university (where the instructor and the majority of the students were located) and one external site (where all of the distance students were located). In ED Courses 6 and 7, we tested Elluminate Live and Vidyo, Google Video, and Skype to connect students across distances. Moreover, the focus of this study was a discourse analysis class, ED Course 8, which included 14 local learners and four distance learners – two of whom had been distance learners in earlier courses: one newly-accepted into the program, and who was connecting from home due to illness. Participants in ED Course 8 met weekly for two hours and 50 minutes for 9 weeks of a 10-week quarter. The class met asynchronously through the computer management system one week, because a national holiday fell on that particular class day. We therefore had access to nine days’ worth of video and analyzed over 25 hours of video records. This discourse analysis course was a seminar that examined the nature of discourse, and issues in transcribing and analyzing talk, and considered how such analyses apply to the study of life in classrooms and other educational settings. As part of the class, stu- dents constructed an approach to the study of classrooms as discourse worlds through which teaching and learning are accomplished. They were expected to ana- lyze segments of classroom discourse. Considering the usability and cost of the programs tested in earlier courses, we elected to use freely available technologies (Google Video and Skype) to facilitate the four distance learners’ access to ED Course 8. Participants Our study involves participants that were both distance learners and local learners. Two of the distance learners began the program in the Fall of 2008 and had partici- pated in 11 courses implementing the SLIDE format, offered over six academic quarters at the time of this study. An additional distance learner joined the program in the Fall of 2009 and consented to be part of the study over the next three quarters. A fourth student temporarily participated at a distance in certain classes due to illness. Table 2 provides a list representing the members of the classroom 364 A.R. Stewart et al. T ab le 1 . E x am in ed co u rs es ap p ly in g th e S L ID E fo rm at . F al l 2 0 0 8 W in te r 2 0 0 8 F al l 2 0 0 9 W in te r 2 0 0 9 E D C o u rs e 1 E D C o u rs e 2 E D C o u rs e 3 E D C o u rs e 4 E D C o u rs e 5 E D C o u rs e 6 E D C o u rs e 7 E D C o u rs e 8 C o u rs e R es ea rc h M et h o d o lo g y in E d u ca ti o n T ec h n o lo g y an d L ea rn in g A d v an ce d L ea rn in g S ci en ce s in E d u ca ti o n C la ss ro o m s as C u lt u re s S em in ar in C u rr ic u lu m an d L it er ac y In tr o d u ct o ry S ta ti st ic s In tr o . T o Q u al it at iv e R es ea rc h M et h o d s D is co u rs e A n al y si s in E d u ca ti o n al S et ti n g s T ec h n o lo g y H ig h - d efi n it io n v id eo - co n fe re n ci n g u n it H ig h - d efi n it io n v id eo - co n fe re n ci n g u n it L ap to p E ll u m in at e L iv e V id y o H ig h - d efi n it io n v id eo - co n fe re n ci n g u n it H ig h - d efi n it io n v id eo - co n fe re n ci n g u n it L ap to p G o o g le V id eo S k y p e L ap to p G o o g le V id eo S k y p e L ap to p G o o g le V id eo S k y p e S tu d en ts 1 3 in cl as s 4 in cl as s 1 8 in cl as s 1 7 in cl as s 1 3 in cl as s 1 9 in cl as s 1 9 in cl as s 1 4 in cl as s 4 at a d is ta n ce 2 at a d is ta n ce 2 at a d is ta n ce 2 at a d is ta n ce 2 at a d is ta n ce 1 at a d is ta n ce 1 at a d is ta n ce 4 at a d is ta n ce N o te : C o u rs es ar e n u m b er ed fo r q u ic k re fe re n ce . A ls o , d is ta n ce le ar n er s p ar ti ci p at ed in co u rs es 1 , 2 , 4 , 5 th ro u g h h ig h -d efi n it io n v id eo -c o n fe re n ci n g te ch n o lo g ie s in a ro o m eq u ip p ed fo r th is p ar ti cu la r fu n ct io n ; w h er ea s d is ta n ce le ar n er s p ar ti ci p at ed in co u rs es 3 , 6 , 7 , an d 8 th ro u g h la p to p te ch n o lo g ie s. Distance Education 365 environments and their characteristics, including a pseudonym, type of learner, and profession. We chose pseudonyms that started with the letter D to represent those who often participated at a distance, pseudonyms that started with the letter L for local learners, and pseudonyms that started with the letter C for local learners who also served as cultural guides, local learners who hosted the distance learners on their individual laptops. The role of the cultural guides ultimately was to facilitate interactions among the distance learners, local learners, and the instructor of the course, a role that will be discussed in more detail in the findings from this study. Other students attended the class, but interactions among the students listed in Table 2 were most significant for analysis in this paper. Furthermore, one author of this paper was Cassandra [pseudonym], a graduate student who was a partici- pant-observer in the courses and a cultural guide in the discourse analysis class. Also, it is important to note that in this discourse analysis course, most of the local students were new to the SLIDE model and were unfamiliar with the previ- ous data collection and had not attended a class with distance learners who were part of this study. Data collection and analysis During this two-year ethnographic process, systematic and conscious decisions were made to modify our research design and reformulate our questions in order to develop an understanding of what was relevant and effective to the context, not what we assumed was relevant in the initial stages of the study. In Figure 1, drawn from the work of Green et al. (2003, p. 202), we illustrate how our logic of inquiry developed through the research process. This logic of inquiry essen- tially progressed over three stages of data collection and analysis, with each stage informing what artifacts were collected and how they were analyzed. In the first exploratory stage, our work was guided by an overarching question that we hoped to answer during the study: ‘How do we create learning opportunities for graduate students in courses that integrate local and distance learners through a combina- tion of face-to-face and video-based meetings?’ This question also gave us a framework for generating questions we thought students could best answer using survey data. Table 2. Characteristics of participants in study (ED Course 8). Pseudonym Type of participant Profession Dan Distance learner Technology Community college system Denise Distance learner Technology Statewide initiatives Darren Distance learner Administration Community college system Dirk Distance learner (temporarily) Graduate student Laura Local learner Graduate student Cassandra Cultural guide Local learner Teacher education instructor Christine Cultural guide Local learner Teaching assistant Cora Cultural guide Videographer Teaching assistant Note: All participants listed in this table were graduate students, but some had full- or part-time jobs as indicated in the Profession column. 366 A.R. Stewart et al. During the first year that the learners were in the program (see first set of initiat- ing questions in Figure 1), we surveyed students in three different classes (see Table 1, ED courses 3, 4, and 5) about their knowledge of teaching and learning technologies in the classroom, their previous enrollment in an online and/or blended course, and their experience as distance learners in the classroom in terms of how it affected their learning. For the purposes of this survey and for our study, we define blended learning as ‘thoughtful integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences’ (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004, p. 96). The courses considered here were termed blended because students participated in both face-to-face sessions (some through videoconferencing and some physically) and in asynchronous online discussion sessions. In this first phase of analysis, we coded the open-ended responses to the surveys and looked for trends, by focusing on students’ descriptions of technology, class- room participation, interaction, and collaboration. The survey data indicated that students in ED courses 3, 4, and 5 had differing points of view about what was occurring in the classroom, including (a) who was and was not able to participate fully in the class, (b) whether the technology was disruptive to the learning environ- ment or whether it actually could be used as a learning tool to promote digital liter- acies, and (c) how the format worked or did not work for their particular learning styles and/or perspectives on education. Answers to the survey questions led us to a second stage of data collection and analysis (see second set of initiating questions in Figure 1).We developed a new set of initiating questions concerning the benefits and challenges of attending class in this way for both the distance and local learn- ers. We wanted to know if students had taken a blended or distance learning course before and if so, how it might be different or the same as those they currently were attending. We also wanted to know whether the learners participating at a distance impacted what local students learned and how they participated in the class. In the second phase, we surveyed students in ED Course 8 with the same ques- tions used in phase one, but then selectively interviewed five students (three local learners and two distance learners) to acquire more detailed responses concerning their classroom experiences in these courses. We asked students to describe their experiences in the class and how they were similar or different to those in other classes without distance learners. We asked the distance learners the same question, but framed this in terms of how their experiences changed across the different clas- ses from whence they participated at a distance. Then, based on their responses, we asked them to clarify or further expand on responses that mentioned how the tech- nology may or may not have disrupted their learning and/or whether they were able to successfully collaborate with students who participated at a distance. We tran- scribed all of these interviews and coded them according to the same scheme as we did the survey responses. In the third phase of analysis, we reframed the research questions and conducted a more focused look at the actions of both the local and distance learners in one particular classroom context (see the third set of initiating questions in Figure 1 and ED Course 8 description in Table 1). The ultimate purpose of this study became evident as we progressed through the stages of analysis – to make visible the cul- tural practices and experiences of both the distance and local learners in order to identify how social interaction occurred during the class sessions. Initially, we mapped the classroom events to represent the flow of conduct among members of Distance Education 367 the class. An ethnographic event is conceptualized as a bounded set of activities about a common theme on a given day that results from participants’ interaction (Bloome & Bailey, 1992; Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, 1992). By constructing event maps of the classroom activity, we explored different analytical concepts (actions, activities, interactional spaces) in order to approach and under- stand what participants construct as a group, as they interacted during class time. The different concepts were identified through analyzing video data and transcripts of video data. Moreover, during each day of class, events were analytically identi- fied by observing how time was spent, who was able to interact, with whom, for what purposes, when, where, under what conditions and with what outcomes (Bloome & Bailey, 1992; Castanheira, Crawford, Dixon, & Green, 2001; Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, 1992). Study findings In the following section, we provide examples of survey responses that led to shifts in our research process and then detail findings from the video analysis, using seg- ments of interview and video transcripts and field notes as additional evidence to explain the complexities of what was occurring in the classroom. Survey responses Over the two years, we surveyed students in four of the courses operating under the SLIDE format: ED courses 3, 4, 5, and 8. A total of 72 students were enrolled in those courses, but many of the students enrolled in one of the courses, were actually enrolled in the other course as well. So in fact, 46 different students were enrolled in the four courses. Of the 46 students who received the electronic survey, 27 students responded –a 59% return rate. Of the 13 questions on the survey, responses to six of the questions informed the research conducted on ED Course 8, the discourse analy- sis course. Questions that became irrelevant to our study asked students about their computer skills, familiarity with technology for teaching and learning, and prior experience with taking a blended learning or distance education courses. Three of the other six survey questions are presented in Table 3. These three questions required more open-ended responses, based on students’ answers to questions 1 and 3. As illustrated in Table 3 and 74% of the students stated that having distance learners in the course did not affect their participation, while 26% of the students who responded to the survey felt that the distance learners affected their participa- tion in some ways. Those seven students who responded that the distance learners did affect their participation cited lack of interaction as evidence of this. For exam- ple, one student answered, ‘It was harder to feel connected with them and carry on a two way conversation. I felt like the local learners or distance learners would often unintentionally interrupt each other.’ Another student responded, ‘Made it more challenging in some ways –our current technology doesn’t provide the ‘being in the same room’ experience.’ Based on responses to the first question in Table 3, we found it interesting that about half of the students thought that reading the non- verbal cues from the distance learners was the same as reading the nonverbal cues from the local learners. This potentially was because the distance learners were pro- jected on the screens in three out of the four classes for local learners to see. ED Course 8 was the only class where the distance learners came in through laptop vid- eoconferencing technologies. 368 A.R. Stewart et al. The third survey question presented in Table 3 asked students, ‘Did you learn [as much/as/more than/less than/not sure] from students participating at a distance compared to ones physically in class?’ As presented in Table 3 and 60% of the stu- dents felt that they learned as much as or more from the distance learners, while 25% felt that they learned less, and 15% were not sure. The students who answered ‘as much as’ or ‘more than’ to that question, cited the value of the distance learn- ers’ expertise and the knowledge they often shared with the local students in the class. One local student stated: I learned a lot from the distance learners, but I think that was primarily because of the expertise and knowledge they brought with them. Another student explained: I feel like I learned a lot from the distance learners, who had valuable things to add to our discussions. In particular, they are technology experts, and gave a lot of their expertise during the technology session we had in the videoconferencing center. Dan and Denise, the main distance learners to participate in the distributed envi- ronments as part of this study and who were the focus of these survey responses, are technology experts who help make state policy decisions. In addition, Dan works directly with higher education administration on issues of technology and vir- tual classes at the community college level. Those students who responded that they learned ‘less’ from the distance learners than they did from the local learners embodied criticisms of how effective the inte- grated learning environment was from the standpoint of participation and social interaction. According to one student: I had very little interaction with them [the distance learners]. They spoke and they lis- tened. People in the class spoke and listened. However, there wasn’t the same conver- sation as there was with students in the class. I did not feel that the interaction with Table 3. Local learners’ responses to survey questions. Item Responses 1. Did having distance learners in the course affect your participation? Yes No N % N % 7 26 20 74 2. Rate your ability to read nonverbal cues of distance learners. Was it the same or harder? Same Harder N % N % 13 48 14 52 3. Response to ‘Did you learn as much as, more, less, (not sure) from students participating at a distance compared to ones physically in class?’ As much as More Less Not sure N % N % N % N % 8 30 8 30 7 25 4 15 Note: A total of 27 students answered these questions. Three out of the five survey questions are pre- sented in this table. The other two questions required more detailed responses based on answers to questions 1 and 3. Distance Education 369 the distance students was the same as with the other students in the class. One reason for this could be that there is not really opportunity for spontaneous discussion like you have in a live class. In a live class, you have casual conversations with peers as you’re on break or even with your neighbor during the class that contributes to the rapport building and colle- gial relationships. I did not have that with the distance students.Along the same lines, another student spoke about classroom conversation, but also mentioned the issue of nonverbal cues: I feel, in this case, that I learned less from the student participating at a distance than compared to other students in class. I was able to more easily see non-verbal cues from students in the classroom than students at a distance. It was easier to understand and interpret classroom conversations and exchanges with people who were located in the classroom. The final open-ended question on the survey asked about the local learners’ overall opinions concerning the benefits and/or distractions of taking a course with distance learners. Many of the face-to-face learners stated that the benefits of having distance learners included allowing more points of view to enter into the class dis- cussions. For example, one local learner responded, ‘It added more voices to our conversation,’ while another stated, ‘They [the distance learners] were more vocal than a lot of the local learners and I appreciated their differing points of view.’ Some also learned about the uses of technology in these classrooms, particularly about what technologies were available for networking through chat and videocon- ferencing on your laptop. In contrast, many in the class expressed concern that tech- nology was a distraction at the beginning of the class, especially when technologies were being tested; some also complained that they did not have enough interaction with distance learners. After analyzing these survey responses and others, we sought a greater understanding of the classroom dynamic by analyzing video records from classroom interaction where at different times up to four students participated syn- chronously in up to two different distributed environments. Video analysis From the video analysis we found that on most occasions the distance learners were present in the classroom, either physically or through videoconferencing technolo- gies on the laptop. During one class period, however, one of the distance learners was unable to participate due to a scheduling conflict that she could not control, and during another class period, one of the distance learners was unable to partici- pate in class because of illness. Table 4 illustrates when and how the distance learn- ers were able to participate in the class. Evidence of interaction between the students participating from a distance and the instructor is discussed in the transcript below (Table 5). This interaction appears in the transcript because the camera, as positioned on a tripod at the back of the room, was unable to capture this interaction in the moment-to-moment unfolding of the class. The transcript from Table 5 indicates how the technology allowed for interaction among the students and between the students and the instructor. Line 15 sets the context, stating that the local and distance students were engaged in a discussion, 370 A.R. Stewart et al. T ab le 4 . T y p e o f p ar ti ci p at io n b y d is ta n ce le ar n er s o v er th e 1 0 w ee k s o f cl as s. T y p e o f p ar ti ci p at io n D ay 1 D ay 2 D ay 3 D ay 4 D ay 5 D ay 6 D ay 7 D ay 8 D ay 9 D ay 1 0 P h y si ca ll y in cl as sr o o m D an D ar re n D an D en is e D ar re n D an D en is e D ar re n D ir k In d is tr ib u te d en v ir o n m en ts D en is e D ir k D an D en is e D ar re n D ir k A ll ⁄ D an D ar re n D ir k In st ru ct o r⁄ D an D en is e D ar re n D ir k D an D en is e D ar re n D ir k D an D en is e D ar re n D ir k D an D en is e D ar re n D ir k ⁄ N o te : O n D ay 3 , al l cl as s m em b er s p ar ti ci p at ed at a d is ta n ce an d as y n ch ro n o u sl y th ro u g h th e d is cu ss io n fo ru m o n th e co u rs e m an ag em en t sy st em b ec au se it w as a n at io n al h o li d ay . A ls o , o n D ay 4 th e in st ru ct o r w as h o m e si ck an d ch o se to co m e in as d is ta n ce p ar ti ci p an t. Distance Education 371 but the instructor was aware of ‘where’ they were (line eight), meaning physically where the laptop was that was hosting them. The instructor initiated interaction with them and continued to talk to them about their project through the external speaker. Furthermore, Dan noted that over time, the instructor developed an ‘interesting maturity’ (line 27) in how she initiated interaction with the distance learners partici- pating in her courses. Beyond the more casual interaction as described in Table 5, we found additional examples of interaction between the instructor and the distance learners from observing the video records and transcribing the moment-to-moment interaction as it occurred (see Table 6). One type of interaction, made visible when the instructor called on the distance students, concerns how they took turns introducing them- selves to the guest participants. After the local learners introduced themselves, the instructor announced to the guest fellows (line 67) that three additional students were participating in the class, though they may not have been visible to them in the physical space. The instructor spent a significant amount of time on the first day of class introducing the students who would often be participating from distrib- uted environments and explained the nature of the research project, so that the stu- dents who were physically in the class would be aware of the integrated learning context. But, for guests not familiar with this classroom culture, it was necessary for the instructor to expose their presence before calling upon them to introduce themselves. The instructor also interacted with the distance learners by calling upon their expertise as revealed in the dialogue on Day 7. On this day a guest speaker was sharing her research with the class. Toward the end of her presentation, she asked a Table 5. Excerpt from interview with distance learners. Name Dialogue from transcript Dan 8 Because she [the instructor] knows where we are 9 and she will come over and address us at appropriate times 10 um 11 so that I feel a very strong connection with [the professor] and the rest of the class 12 when she does that 13 And it is not like you have to do it all the time 14 but you know 15 when we are having a class discussion about our project 16 she’ll come over 17 and pick up the speaker and look at the monitor 18 and uh Denise 19 Did you notice that yesterday 20 She picked up the speaker thing 21 and she was sitting there talking with us with the speaker thing in her hand 22 I thought it was Dan 23 It was great Denise 24 It was totally funny Dan 25 Yeah 26 but it was really an interesting change 27 and it’s an interesting maturity in how we are working together Note: This transcript was taken from an interview with Dan and Denise and represents a description of an episode that occurred in the classroom. 372 A.R. Stewart et al. question to the group. The instructor intervened to ask for Dan and Denise’s responses to the question (line 78), specifically looking for evidence from their pro- fessional experiences (line 79). Furthermore, the students participating in distributed environments were able to initiate interaction with the instructor through a cultural guide, or student host, that is, facilitating this participation through Google Video chat, also on Day 7. The stu- dents, Cassandra (line 68) and Christine, (lines 86–90) are those cultural guides. On Day 7, as represented in the last columns of Table 4, Christine raised her hand to indicate that there was a question about the final project (line 123). It is not her question, but rather a question coming from two of the distance learners who hap- pened to be in the same physical space on that day. She was aware that Dan and Denise had a question, because they had signaled to her through the chat feature of the videoconferencing technology that they wanted to share what they had learned from analyzing video for their particular project (lines 124–127). In this situation, Table 6. Excerpts from class transcripts across different days. Pseudonym Dialogue from transcript Day 2 I 67 We have 3 other people here [guest fellows] Cassandra 68 Can you hear us Denise 69 Yeah I 70 Ah you are very clear today Denise 71 Good 72 We’ll hope the words are clear too 73 Not just the sound [students laughing] I 74 Nice distinction Denise 75 I’m [Denise] 76 I’m a 2nd year student in the MA/PhD program 77 in technology in teaching and learning Day 7 I 78 Let me ask [Dan] and [Denise] 79 You are working in virtual environments 80 Are people considering any of these questions 81 in the stuff you are reading and seeing and developing Denise 82 There used to be an assumption when you said online education 83 It was a fixed model Dan 84 Asynchronous yeah Denise 85 But that’s changed a lot over the last few years with all the development of new technologies [. . .] Christine 123 [Raising hand] 124 I have a comment from [Dan] and [Denise] 125 ‘The video itself acts as a artifact 126 the tools that let us analyze the video 127 emphasizing the tools for me.’ I 128 Are you interacting with 129 [Dan] and [Denise] aren’t you really interacting with somebody that built it 130 So that when something goes wrong you think 131 you were really stupid for building it that way Denise [Laughing] 132 We would never say that Dan 133 You lie! Note: ‘I’ represents the instructor and the other names are pseudonyms given to the participants. See Table 1 for a description. Distance Education 373 Christine read their response from the screen, rather than having them speak directly to the class. Aside from finding evidence of defined patterns of interaction in the classroom, we also found a major discrepancy between how one distance and one local learner characterized the interaction between the different groups of students in the dis- course analysis course (see Table 7). These different points of view represent a ‘rich point’ (Agar, 1994, p. 256), a point where cultural patterns, practices, and knowl- edge become visible (Baker & Green, 2007), thus providing a basis for developing Table 7. Excerpts from separate interviews with Dan and Laura. Dan (distance learner) Laura (local learner) 28 I would probably look at this and say you know 49 One of the big things is the casual conversations that get taken up with the classmates in a live situation29 because I can interact remotely after hours 30 after class 31 in some of these classroom projects 50 and you don’t really have that rapport building32 then I have the opportunity to interact in different 33 and sometimes very profoundly good ways with other students 51 I could whisper something to you in class 52 or say 34 because the distance connections in some strange way 53 I read that 54 or what the heck is being said here 35 facilitate the breakdown of the normal social borders 55 or 56 I can have those conversations when we walk to the coffee cart at break time36 that would make it more difficult to develop those working relationships quickly 57 and you just don’t have that with the distance learners 37 In a strange way 38 you are willing to chat online 58 and for me 39 or over the phone 59 it kind of segregates them 40 in a way that you might not be comfortable in a f2f classroom 60 I didn’t feel like they were 61 I think if you have a hybrid course like that 41 where you are trying to figure out who you can talk to 62 and you have some that are not there 63 you have to make an effort to discuss 42 and who you can’t 64 to include them in a different way 43 because the system actually sets it up to be democratic [and later in the interview] 65 I don’t foresee myself developing a relationship with someone who I actually haven’t met 44 It sort of resets everything to a democracy 45 where everyone starts out at the same place 66 face-to-face 46 and you may speak 47 or someone may certainly speak more quickly 48 but it kind of changes the dynamics of that in a positive way Note: Although these excerpts are represented side by side, they were drawn from separate interviews. Having the transcripts posted next to each other allows for a contrastive look across the perspectives. 374 A.R. Stewart et al. new insights into the impact of bringing students together from distributed environ- ments as we analyze classroom life recorded on video. Dan clearly benefited from this medium. It enabled him to participate in the class, and he had to worry less about the social concerns of who may or may not engage him in dialogue about the class (lines 35, 41–42). He already had three team members for the final project, those students who also are participating at a dis- tance. Also, when the team interacts and collaborates on the project outside of class, they do so through conference calls, videoconferencing technologies, chats, and Google Docs (lines 29–31 and in additional interview transcripts). Since the group is small and because of the collaborative nature of the project, the students must ‘talk’ (line 41) to interact in order to work through the video analysis project for the class. Dan sees this model as ‘democratic’ in that it allows each participant to interact equally (line 44). On the other hand, Laura presented what she considered a privileged view of being in the classroom physically. She wanted all the members of the class to be equally accessible, so that she may strike up casual conversations she sees as neces- sary for rapport building (lines 49–57). She seemed to feel that without the face- to-face interactions in the same physical space, some students were segregated (line 59). And, Laura does not plan to engage with the distance learners (lines 65–66), as that would take a different kind of effort (line 63). This discrepancy represents the need for further examination of the types of interaction that videoconferencing enables and how students’ roles and relationships support or constrain that interaction. Discussion Due to the design of this synchronous learning environment, professionals were able to participate in classes they would not otherwise have access to because of their intense schedules and of being employed in a city over 500 miles from the university. Videoconferencing allowed the distance learners to have the experience of a face-to-face engagement, without them having to be in class physically. Conse- quently, participation in this context meant that the distance learners were able to have a presence in the classroom. They were able to see and hear as peer class- mates because, as one distance learner indicated, ‘the technology allows us to be visible, but not more visible. We want to be equally visible, but not intrusive.’ This quote hints at earlier courses in which the students met in either a videoconferenc- ing room or a more traditional classroom, where the distance learners were pro- jected on a screen as larger-than-life participants that were sometimes seen as a distraction (see Table 1). Ongoing conversations among many different participants made the study of this SLIDE project possible. Through these conversations and through different layers of analysis, we found that students can be more than just students. For example, Cas- sandra and Christine, local learners in the classroom, also served as cultural guides, who hosted and facilitated the distance learners’ participation and interaction through their laptops. Using videoconferencing technologies in the classroom allowed students coming in from a distance access to learning that most closely resembles face-to-face teach- ing, but the instructor has to make pedagogical decisions to accommodate this type of participation (Bates & Picard, 2005). In the case of the discourse analysis class, Distance Education 375 the teaching assistant posted all classroom materials on the computer management system and constantly updated the site. She also set up a discussion forum so that students were able to continue conversations after class adjourned and were able to asynchronously collaborate with other group members on the class project. Also, the instructor consciously involved the distance learners in the dialogue by calling on them to share their professional experiences, responses to the readings, and pro- gress on the project. In addition, we found that the videoconferencing did promote interaction between the instructor and the students in the distributed environments (Heath & Holznagel, 2002; Smyth, 2005). Students who participated at a distance were able to interact with those physically in the classroom, but the interaction occurred mostly between the distance learner and the cultural guide hosting the student through the laptop. In other words, through analysis of the video records we found no evidence of the distance learners speaking directly to other local learners (who were not cultural guides) or of local learners speaking directly to the distance learn- ers. Therefore, there was little evidence of ‘spontaneous, free flowing verbal exchanges’ (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008, p. 163).This happened, most likely, for two reasons. First of all, most of the students in the discourse analysis course were new to the SLIDE model. The only students who were familiar with how the distance learners participated in class were those chosen to be the cultural guides. Secondly, evidence of interaction between the distance and local learners in the classroom environment was limited because the instructor allowed the distance learners to work together as a group; therefore all interaction and collaboration on the project occurred in another virtual environment, one that was not filmed. From the inter- view with the distance learners, we found that their group met often by conference call technologies and collaborated through Google Docs. Although we have no video record of this interaction, we were able to extract evidence from the interview with Dan that such interaction did take place through ‘working relationships’ with others in the class (see Table 5). The distance learners also were able to get personal and real time attention (Münzer, 2003) when they discussed the progress they were making on their project and they were able to share differing perspectives (Bober & Dennen, 2001; Bowden & Marton, 1998; Mason, 1994) when they discussed the assumptions about technol- ogy models in relation to what questions educators were asking in the research (see Table 6). Nevertheless, as Anderson (2003) claims, instructors can never get the ‘perfect’ mix, because some local learners have differing perspectives about what counts as education and how interaction should unfold in a classroom (see Table 7). Thus, communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) developed as a result of interactions among the various actors. Through this social participa- tion, the students, both local and distance, along with the instructor, constructed meanings or ways of talking about learning through virtual environments (see Table 6, Day 7) and practices or ways of interacting with each other through the video-conferencing technologies (Wenger, 1998). In addition, students and the instructor formed new identities through interaction and co-construction of ideas (for example, see Table 7 for Dan’s explanation). However, not all local students shared in this transformation. Laura was absorbed in a social configuration that developed among local learners in the classroom, but because she lacked a personal history with the distance learners and did not have continuous interaction with them when they physically attended class, she remained outside the community of 376 A.R. Stewart et al. practice, which included the distance learners, the cultural guides, the instructor, and some of the local learners who previously had attended class in the SLIDE for- mat. Nevertheless, both students and the instructor often spoke of the videoconfer- encing technologies as ‘good enough’ and that the interaction did enable a rich learning experience for the distance learners and many of the local learners (Green- berg, 2004). Arguably, one limitation of this study may lie in the fact that the instructor of the ED Course 8 class had previously taught and worked with the distance learners. Since the instructor knew the students through prior classroom experiences and because she knew what they hoped to accomplish in this course, but also through attending the graduate education program, the instructor knew when to include them in the conversations and what kinds of questions to ask, thereby enhancing their learning opportunities. Another limitation to this study arose out of the fact that we analyzed video from only one class in which students participated in distributed environments, so much of our data represents findings for that specific context. Yet by supplementing this video data with survey responses, field notes, and interview sources, this study yielded a rich collection of data. Thus, through an iterative, recursive, and abductive logic of inquiry (Agar, 1994; Green et al., 2003; Castanheira et al., 2001), we were able to induce these findings from the wealth of data collected during different phases of this ethnographically-framed study. By simply reporting findings from the survey and interview data, we would have had very little depth of information. Of course, we would have been able to report dif- fering opinions about whether local learners were able to interact with the distance learners and whether local learners felt that they were able to learn as much from the students participating from a distance compared to the ones physically in class. However, by using students’ survey and interview responses to inform analysis of video from a course operating under the SLIDE format, we were able to determine what opportunities for interaction were afforded the distance learners and under what conditions they were able to engage with the instructor and local learners in the class. These insights gained from this type of research are missing from the current studies on the benefits of synchronous learning and videoconferencing in distance education. Concluding remarks What is unique about the context described in this study is that during the first quarter of classes, in the Fall of 2008, the distance learners attended a technology seminar (ED Course 2 in Table 1), with a group of four local learners who shared common interests, participating mostly through web conferencing technologies. Ulti- mately, this course provided an intimate environment where we were able to share ideas about the benefits and challenges of attending class through videoconferencing technologies and built this research project around those discussions. Consequently, the interactions shared among the local and distance learners and the professors from the different courses allowed for a dynamic collaborative effort among a diverse set of actors in the field of education – graduate students, educators, researchers, and policy professionals. In this sense, these interactions provided a truly blended learning experience. As we see it, as long as discussion about the blended learning is confined to the class- room experience, and more specifically to claims about classroom experience, there Distance Education 377 will be a limited number of stakeholders and a limited appreciation of the potential positive outcomes of blended learning opportunities. What this part of the study shows is that when groups such as the ones described in this study are able to meet together weekly, regardless of where they are located physically, to construct new ideas and new ways of understanding synchronously, it enhances not only the edu- cational experience, but also the professional experience. In other words, it is not just that blended learning environments provide a better, more enhanced learning experience for the students attending class, but also that they allow those in the public sector to maximize their professional experiences by engaging in discussions about the technologies they are trying to promote. SLIDE represents a sort of give- and-take model: professionals contribute knowledge and ideas of what is going on in their field of expertise, and educators and researchers give back to the commu- nity by providing the theory and practice connections that transfer to their everyday professional interactions and the language to have more productive conversations around those intersections. As someone who works directly with policy makers to advocate more innovative and creative models for teaching with technology, one distance learner describes her need for the interaction in this way: I didn’t have a language to use to describe why it [a particular innovative model] was powerful learning or why they should invest in it, so I came back to school to develop a language that could fit better with certain audiences in this new way of working in education. And, it has been an education both [of] the content of what I am learning in the class and then the real experiences of drinking my own cool-aid by participating in a hybrid mode. I have come to realize that we’re, all of us in this class, actually pioneers in the future approaches to teaching and learning and there is a lot to learn. This study suggests that SLIDE can offer learning opportunities for graduate stu- dents that combine the advantages of interaction and face-to-face learning and the advantages of video-based distance-learning meetings. Its findings contribute to a greater understanding of how to effectively integrate distance learners into class- rooms where interacting synchronously is key to enhancing one’s learning experi- ence. As we continue our study, it will yield more information on how SLIDE can be designed to help enhance learning for both the distance and the local learners, further detailing what supports and constrains this technologically-enabled model and how roles and relationships among learners are constructed to support a com- mon learning space. In particular, we plan to analyze the video records further and collect other ethnographic artifacts to determine what accounts for the discrepancy in how interaction was characterized by one distance learner, Dan, and one local learner, Laura, in order to make visible the roles and relationships among learners that were constructed to support a common learning space. In addition, we plan to record other courses where students come in at a distance at different points in the quarter to contrast how interaction and the roles and relationships constructed in those contexts may be different. We believe that opportunities to engage in synchro- nous distributed learning environments of the kind described in this paper will enable increasing and more diverse groups of students to gain access to higher edu- cation, and specifically graduate education, in the future. Acknowledgements Thank you to Stephanie Couch and Douglas Cremer for their time and contributions to the study. 378 A.R. Stewart et al. Notes on contributors Anissa Stewart coordinates the Performance Assessment for California Teachers and is an instructor of technology and curriculum design and instruction for the Teacher Education Program at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California. She studies how instructors integrate various technologies into the design and implementation of higher education courses. Danielle Harlow is an assistant professor of science education at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California. 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Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/ldc08/sites/www.open.ac.uk.ldc08/files/ Learningasasocialsystem.pdf Distance Education 381 http://www.ajde.com/index.htm http://jolt.merlot.org/index.html http://jolt.merlot.org/index.html http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010 http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010 http://www.open.ac.uk/ldc08/sites/www.open.ac.uk.ldc08/files/Learningasasocialsystem.pdf http://www.open.ac.uk/ldc08/sites/www.open.ac.uk.ldc08/files/Learningasasocialsystem.pdf Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. 
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As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_rx5u7tmswvevtgab7epc2pckau	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_rzkkyliq7ngexcydn4beg7e27q	----	Ekonomija teorija i praksa 2017-03.pdf E K O N O M I J A TEORIJA I PRAKSA G o d i n a X • b r o j 3 s t r. 1 – 1 5 PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU Nina Đurica1 Dragan Soleša2 Sažetak: Revolucionaran razvoj interneta i informaciono-komunikacione tehnologije doveo je do promena u mnogim aspektima života, a samim tim i obrazovanje dobija novu dimenziju. Važna evolucija u obrazovnom sistemu predstavlja uvođenje i razvoj studijskih programa na daljinu, kako u razvije- nim tako i u nerazvijenim zemljama sveta. Obrazovanje na daljinu predstavlja sistem obrazovanja koji se zasniva na korišćenju savremenih informacionih i komunikacionih tehnologija. Cilj ovog istraživanja jeste da se ispitaju stavovi studenata o percipiranoj korisnosti i organizaciji nastavnog procesa obrazova- nja na daljinu, kao i obrazovnoj platformi Moodle. U analizi dobijenih poda- taka korišćene su sledeće metode: t-test, deskriptivna statistika i faktorska anali- za. Danas je opstanak visokoobrazovnih institucija moguć jedino obezbeđenjem kvalitetnog obrazovanja i razvojem atraktivnih studijskih programa prilagođe- nih zahtevima tržišta, koje diktira promene u svim aspektima života. Ključne reči: informaciono-komunikaciona tehnologija / obrazovanje na daljinu / visokoobrazovne institucije / Moodle platforma. 1 Beogradska poslovna škola –Visoka škola strukovnih studija, Kraljice Marije 73, Beograd, Srbija, e-mail: nina.djurica@bbs.edu.rs 2 Univerzitet Privredna akademija, Fakultet za ekonomiju i inženjerski menadžment, Cvećarska 2, Novi Sad, Srbija, e-mail: dragan.solesa@�mek.edu.rs UDK: 316.65-057.875:37.018.43 Datum prijema rada: 07.08.2017. Datum korekcije rada: 21.08.2017. Datum prihvatanja rada: 24.08.2017. O R I G I N A L A N N A U Č N I R A D 2 Nina Đurica UVOD Visokoobrazovne institucije su uvidele značaj razvoja cenjenih i ozbiljnih nastav- nih planova i programa obrazovanja na daljinu, koje svake godine upisuju stotine miliona studenata širom sveta. Obrazovanje na daljinu podrazumeva sistem ob- razovanja gde su nastavnici i studenti �zički udaljeni, a taj problem se rešava ko- rišćenjem interneta i savremenih tehnologija. Prema Turban, McLean, Wetherbe (2003) učenje na daljinu se sprovodi alatima ili tehnologijama za prevazilaženje ograničenja učenja u isto vreme ili na istom mestu (str. 148). Simonson, Schlos- ser i Orellana (2011) de�nišu obrazovanje na daljinu kao formalno obrazovanje, institucionalno zasnovano, gde se odvaja grupa za učenje i gde se interaktivni te- lekomunikacioni sistemi koriste za povezivanje učenika, resursa i instruktora (str. 126). Učenje na daljinu se odnosi na sistem obrazovanja, koji ima za cilj pružanje obrazovanja studentima korišćenjem savremenih informacionih i komunikacionih tehnologija, umesto da redovno pohađaju kurseve u tradicionalnim učionicama (Bourdeau & Bates, 1996, str. 268; Bernard, Rubalcava & St-Pierre, 2000, str. 262). Smatra se da obrazovanje na daljinu postoji već više od sto godina i vezuje se za pojavu dopisnih škola, koje su se zasnivale na slanju materijala i knjiga putem pošte (Pokorni, 2009, str. 139). Ako želimo preciznije utvrditi početak ovog vida obra- zovanja prihvatićemo 1858. godinu, kada je Londonski univerzitet svojom odlu- kom da dozvoli polaganje ispita bez prethodnog posećivanja predavanja utemeljio prvi zvanični oblik učenja na daljinu u vidu dopisnih kurseva (Zenović i Bagarić, 2014, str. 379). Danas je obrazovanje na daljinu razvijen sistem obrazovanja, za- hvaljući informacionoj i komunikacionoj tehnologiji, koji pruža brojne prednosti studentima u odnosu na tradicionalan način studiranja. Obrazovanje preko interneta, kao vid školovanja van uobičajenih institucija, u kome su profesori i studenti razdvojeni �zički i vremenski, javlja se kao osnov za promene u tradicionalnom modelu univerziteta i za kreiranje nove obrazovne pa- radigme – virtuelnog univerziteta. (Pantović, Dinić i Starčević, 2002, str. 341). Zahvaljujući obrazovanju na daljinu, studenti imaju mogućnost izbora studijskih programa prestižnih visokoobrazovnih institucija, koje su van mesta i države sta- novanja, bez potrebe putovanja u mesto održavanja studija. Samim tim, studiranje na daljinu je znatno ekonomičnije, jer se smanjuju troškovi stanovanja i putovanja. Studenti se profesionalno i nezavisno usavršavaju; vlastitim tempom, na mestu i u vremenu koje sami odaberu. Na raspolaganju im je veliki broj predmeta koje nude različite institucije i nastavnici-pojedinci; studenti prolaze kroz materijal za učenje onom brzinom i onoliko puta koliko žele (Soleša i Obrić, 2005, str. 387). 3PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU Postoji nekoliko faktora koji su važni u situacijama učenja na daljinu: visok nivo motivacije studenata, jaka radna etika i snažne mere za podršku studentima obično rezultiraju uspehom kod osoba koje uče na daljinu (Turban, McLean i Wetherbe, 2003, str. 150). Uz pomoć interneta, kao globalne računarske mreže, i informaci- ono-komunikacione tehnologije, danas mogu da studiraju studenti koji zbog neke vrste invaliditeta, zaposlenosti, geografske udaljenosti ili vremenskog ograničenja nisu mogli da studiraju na tradicionalan način. Takođe, ovo je veoma važno za studente iz siromašnih zemalja, kojima je sad pružena mogućnost upisivanja savre- menih nastavnih programa u razvijenim zemljama. Načini komuniciranja učesnika u procesu elektronskog obrazovanja su (Radenko- vić i Despotović, 2005, str. 338): • Elektronska pošta – najjednostavniji oblik asinhrone interakcije. Najčešće se koristi kao dodatak uz druge oblike komunikacije. • Liste elektroske pošte (e-mail list, list server) koriste se za slanje poruka elek- tronskom poštom celoj grupi studenata, odnosno većem broju korisnika kod hitnih poruka. • Mrežne novosti predstavljaju oblik diskusionih grupa koje se temelje na odre- đenim interesnim grupama (tehnička, društveno-politička, stručna, naučna i sl.) unutar kojih se šalju i čitaju novosti. • Forumi su diskusione grupe na vebu. Poslednjih godina su postali najpopu- larniji oblik multimedijalnih komuniciranja korisnika sistema za obrazovanje na daljinu. • Čet je sinhrona komunikacija bazirana na tekstualnim porukama preko in- terneta ili intraneta. • Elektronska tabla se koristi u svrhu kombinovanja teksta i vizuelnih elemena- ta u komunikaciji. Omogućava da učesnici dele "gra�čku tablu" u okviru koje mogu istovremeno pisati, crtati, stavljati slike, gra�kone, skice i sl. • Telekonferencija se koristi za sastanke, održavanje nastave na daljinu i stručno konsultovanje između više učesnika na zajedničkom projektu. Klasično i savremeno obrazovanje je podržano informacionim tehnologijama u je- dinstven sistem %eksibilnog obrazovanja (Soleša i Obrić, 2005, str. 387). Kada se učenje na daljinu kombinuje sa zahtevima �zičkog prisustva studenata, tada se na- ziva hibridno učenje ili blended learning (Bailey, Ifenthaler, Gosper, Kretzschmar 4 Nina Đurica & Ware, 2015, str. 170). Blended learning ili %eksibilno obrazovanje je svojevrsna kombinacija prednosti tradicionalnog oblika obrazovanja i obrazovanja na dalji- nu. Osnovne prednosti %eksibilnog obrazovanja u odnosu na klasično obrazovanje su (Soleša i Obrić, 2005, str. 387): • veća e�kasnost, • povećanje kapaciteta obrazovnih institucija, • obrazovanje koje se lako može prilagoditi potrebama obrazovanja uz rad, • manji troškovi obrazovnog procesa, • ravnomernija distribucija obrazovanja kroz dostupnost novih obrazovnih programa, vanobrazovnih i ekonomskih centara, • mogućnost različitim institucijama da imaju pristup inostranim obrazovnim resursima – veći kvalitet stečenih znanja. Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environmental) je open-source sistem za upravljanje procesom učenja, koji koriste univerziteti, škole i individualni instruktori radi unapređivanja nastave pomoću veb tehnologija (Ra- denković i Despotović, 2005, str. 339). Web e-learning platforme omogućavaju nastavnicima laganu organizaciju, objavljivanje, upravljanje i implementaciju edu- kativnog materijala (Soleša i Obrić, 2005, str. 392). Moodle je revolucionirao proces učenja (Hui Hsu, 2012, str. 45). Danas se koristi u 236 zemalja i pruža mogućnost instaliranja na više od sto jezika. Na raspolaganju je i verzija na srpskom jeziku, i ćirilična, i latinična. Od svih so'verskih sistema, u Srbiji je Moodle najprihvaćenija platforma od strane visokoobrazovnih institucija. Visokoobrazovne institucije koje koriste Moodle u Srbiji su (izvor: http://mood- le.org/sites/index.php?country=RS#M, 2. 4. 2017): • Univerzitet Privredna akademija; • Fakultet organizacionih nauka, Mašinski fakultet, Farmaceutski fakultet, Pravni fakultet, Medicinski fakultet, Rudarsko-geološki fakultet, Građevin- ski fakultet, Saobraćajni fakultet, Filološki fakultet (Univerzitet u Beogradu); • Prirodno-matematički fakultet, Fakultet tehničkih nauka (Univerzitet u No- vom Sadu); 5PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU • Elektronski fakultet, Medicinski fakultet (Univerzitet u Nišu); • Medicinski fakultet (Univerzitet u Prištini); • Fakultet tehničkih nauka u Čačku (Univerzitet u Kragujevcu); • Državni univerzitet i Internacionalni univerzitet u Novom Pazaru; • Računarski fakultet (Univerzitet Union); • Univerzitet Singidunum; • Alfa BK univerzitet; • Univerzitet Džon Nezbit; • Visoka škola strukovnih studija za informacione i komunikacione tehnolo- gije; • Visoka škola elektrotehnike i računarstva strukovnih studija; • Visoka hemijsko-tehnološka škola strukovnih studija, Kruševac; • Visoka poslovno-tehnička skola strukovnih studija, Užice. METODOLOGIJA ISTRAŽIVANJA U svetu postoji veliko interesovanje za studiranje na daljinu, dok u Srbiji ovaj oblik obrazovanja još uvek nije zastupljen u većoj meri. Brojni su razlozi zbog čega se u našoj zemlji u širem obimu ne primenjuje: nedostatak znanja i veštine studenata, nedostatak adekvatnog so'vera i tehnološke osnove, nedostupnost adekvatne li- terature, zabrinutost u pogledu ekvivalentnosti tradicionalnom učenju, nepovere- nje profesora i studenata u pogledu kvaliteta nastave, neinformisanost studenata o konceptu obrazovanja na daljinu. 6 Nina Đurica Tabela 1. Osnovne karakteristike studenata i njihovi odgovori na pitanja istraživanja (u %) Promenljiva Kategorija Frekvence Procenat Srednja vrednost St. devijacija Pol Muški 63 29.9 Ženski 148 70.1 Prosečna ocena   7.97 0.85 Studijski program Marketing i trgovina 68 32.2 Finansije, računovodstvo i bankarstvo 108 51.2 Menadžment 35 16.6 Da li ste upoznati sa suštinom i mogućnostima koje pruža obrazovanje na daljinu? Da, u potpunosti 39 18.5 Nedovoljno 113 53.6 Ne, uopšte 59 28.0 Da li ste upoznati koje visokoobrazovne institucije u Srbiji realizuju obrazovanje na daljinu? Da 23 10.9 Delimično 68 32.2 Ne 120 56.9 Da li ste imate iskustvo u korišćenju Moodle so'vera? Da 29 13.7 Ne 182 86.3 Da li smatrate da fakultet koji studirate treba da uvede mogućnost studiranja na daljinu? Da 117 55.5 Ne 23 10.9 Nisam siguran 71 33.6 Za potrebe ovog rada sprovedena je anketa na Beogradskoj poslovnoj školi – Viso- koj školi strukovnih studija. Osnovni instrument istraživanja je strukturirani upit- nik, koji se sastoji iz dva dela. Prvi deo upitnika se odnosi na kontrolne varijable (polnu strukturu studenata, prosečnu ocenu, studijski program, činjenicu da li su upoznati sa suštinom i mo- gućnostima obrazovanja na daljinu, koje visokoobrazovne institucije realizuju ob- razovanje na daljinu, iskustvo u korišćenju Moodle so'vera, mogućnost uvođenja studiranja na daljinu na fakultetu). Drugi deo upitnika se sastoji od 15 pitanja, koja su formulisana tako da se prime- nom Likertove skale ispituju stavovi studenata o percipiranoj korisnosti i organiza- ciji nastavnog procesa obrazovanja na daljinu, kao i obrazovnoj platformi Moodle. Moodle predstavlja jedan od od najpopularnijih i najčešće korišćenih platformi za izradu onlajn obrazovnih kurseva. Anketirano je 211 studenta sa prve godine osnovnih studija tri studijska programa (Marketing i trgovina, Finansije, računo- vodstvo i bankarstvo i Menadžment) u maju 2017. godine. 7PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU Od 211 studenata zadržanih u analizi, 29.9% njih su bili muškarci, a znatno veći procenat žena, i to 70.1%. Prosečna ocena anketiranih studenata je 7.97, a stan- dardna devijacija iznosi 0.85. Većina ispitanih studenata su nedovoljno upoznati sa suštinom i mogućnostima koje pruža obrazovanje na daljinu, i to 53,6%. Samo 18,5% studenata u potpunosti su upoznati sa konceptom obrazovanja na daljinu. Izuzetno mali procenat studenata (10.9%) je upoznat sa informacijama koje vi- sokoobrazovne institucije u Srbiji realizuju obrazovanje na daljinu. Samo 23 stu- denta su naveli sledeće fakultete: Fakultet za ekonomiju i inženjerski menadžment (Univerzitet Privredna akademija), Fakultet organizacionih nauka (Univerzitet u Beogradu), Fakultet sporta i �zičkog vaspitanja (Univerzitet u Nišu), Univerzitet Džon Nezbit i Univerzitet Union. Međutim, više od polovine ispitanih studenata (55,5%) smatra da Beogradska poslovna škola – Visoka škola strukovnih studija treba da uvede mogućnost studiranja na daljinu, zbog %eksibilnosti i prilagođe- nosti obrazovanja osobama koje nisu u mogućnosti da studiraju na tradicionalan način. REZULTATI ISTRAŽIVANJA I DISKUSIJA REZULTATA U radu je stavljen akcenat na ispitivanju stavova studenata o percipiranoj kori- snosti i organizaciji nastavnog procesa obrazovanja na daljinu, kao i obrazovnoj platformi otvorenog koda Moodle, koja ima veliki značaj u integraciji obrazovnih institucija u Srbiji i svetu. Takođe, cilj rada je da se ispituje faktori koji su uticali da odluku studenata da studiraju na tradicionalan način, a ne za studiranje na daljinu, kao motivacija i zainteresovanost studenata na uvođenje studijskih programa na daljinu. 8 Nina Đurica Tabela 2. Rezultati faktorske analize i analize pouzdanosti Stavke (items) Cronbach’s alpha F1 F2 F3 0.783 0.770 0.829 Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost provere znanja na raznovrsne načine, praćenjem i vrednovanjem svih aktivnosti studenata 0.793     Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava da elektronski pratite predavanja na udaljenim lokacijama i u bilo koje vreme 0.620     Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava da svim potrebnim nastavnim materijalima pristupate bez obzira gde se nalazite 0.615     Učenje na daljinu podstiče studente da samostalno istražuju najaktuelnije informacije u skladu sa sopstvenim interesovanjima 0.563     Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava interakciju sa studentima i profesorima sa drugih fakulteta, čime se razmenjuju znanja, informacije i iskustva 0.515     Studiranje na daljinu je �nansijski isplativije od tradicionalnog studiranja jer nema potrebe za preseljenjem, putovanjima i drugim troškovima   0.669 Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava dostupnost šire ponude studijskih programa, kako obrazovnih institucija u zemlji tako i u inostranstvu   0.668 Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost studiranja zaposlenim osobama, osobama sa trajnim ili privremenim �zičkim problemima, invaliditetom ili bolestima, a koje nisu u mogućnosti da studiraju na tradicionalan način   0.607 Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava efektivnije usklađivanje poslovnih, privatnih i obaveza fakultetu   0.530 Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost učenja u slobodno vreme i rad prema sopstvenom tempu   0.525 Studiranje na daljinu zahteva od studenata posedovanje discipline i radnih navika za izvršenje svih obaveza   0.498 Moodle platforma je pouzdan alat sa mnoštvom različitih tipova aktivnosti   -0.819 Moodle platforma omogućava jednostavan i brz pristup materijalima   -0.774 Moodle platforma unapređuje komunikaciju između studenata i profesora   -0.706 Moodle platforma povećava %eksibilnost studiranja na daljinu   -0.674 Za određivanje dimenzionalnosti podataka korišćena je faktorska analiza. Priklad- nost podataka za ovaj tip analize je ispitana pomoću Kajzer-Mejer-Olkinovog po- kazatelja koji je iznosio 0.827, što premašuje preporučenu vrednost od 0.7, kao i pomoću Bartletovog testa sferičnosti koji je pokazao statističku značajnost. Ovi rezultati su ukazali na faktorabilnost korelacione matrice. Faktori su ekstrahovani metodom glavnih komponenti, a njihova rotacija je izvršena varimax metodom. 9PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU Broj dimenzija, latentnih faktora, određen je na osnovu scree dijagrama (slika 1) kao i na osnovu eigen vrednosti koje su veće od 1 (Kajzerov kriterijum). Ekstraho- vani faktori objašnjavaju 32.3%, 13.6% i 8.9% varijanse. Slika 1. Scree dijagram Vrednosti za Cronbach’s alpha pokazuju da sve tri skale imaju unutrašnju sagla- snost, jer su sve tri vrednosti za Cronbach’s alpha veće od 0.7 (0.783, 0.770, 0.829), što se smatra dovoljno velikim i govori da su stavke koje čine svaku dimenziju me- đusobno povezane. 10 Nina Đurica Tabela 3. Deskriptivna statistika stavki povezanih sa tri dobijena faktora (n=211) Stavka Srednja vrednost Medijana Std. devijacija F1 / Percipirana korisnost Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava dostupnost šire ponude studijskih programa, kako obrazovnih institucija u zemlji tako i u inostranstvu. 3.02 3.00 1.05 Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost učenja u slobodno vreme i rad prema sopstvenom tempu. 3.52 4.00 1.04 Studiranje na daljinu zahteva od studenata posedovanje discipline i radnih navika za izvršenje svih obaveza. 3.51 4.00 1.09 Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava efektivnije usklađivanje poslovnih, privatnih i obaveza na fakultetu. 3.41 3.00 1.05 Studiranje na daljinu je �nansijski isplativije od tradicionalnog studiranja jer nema potrebe za preseljenjem, putovanjima i drugim troškovima. 3.34 3.00 0.97 Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost studiranja zaposlenim osobama, osobama sa trajnim ili privremenim invaliditetom ili bolestima, a koje nisu u mogućnosti da studiraju na tradicionalan način. 3.37 3.00 0.98 F2 / Organizacija nastave Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava da svim potrebnim nastavnim materijalima pristupate bez obzira gde se nalazite. 3.52 4.00 0.96 Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava da elektronski pratite predavanja na udaljenim lokacijama, u bilo koje vreme. 3.77 4.00 1.07 Učenje na daljinu podstiče studente da samostalno istražuju najaktuelnije informacije u skladu sa sopstvenim interesovanjima. 3.69 4.00 1.00 Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava interakciju sa studentima i profesorima sa drugih fakulteta, čime se razmenjuju znanja, informacije i iskustva. 3.32 3.00 1.04 Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost provere znanja na raznovrsne načine, praćenjem i vrednovanjem svih aktivnosti studenata. 3.73 4.00 1.04 F3/ Obrazovna platforma Moodle Moodle platforma omogućava jednostavan i brz pristup materijalima. 3.17 3.00 0.90 Moodle platforma je pouzdan alat sa mnoštvom različitih tipova aktivnosti. 3.23 3.00 0.80 Moodle platforma povećava %eksibilnost studiranja na daljinu. 3.18 3.00 0.78 Moodle platforma unapređuje komunikaciju između studenata i profesora. 3.23 3.00 0.87 Drugi deo anketnog upitnika su pitanja predviđena za ispitivanje stavova stude- nata o percipiranoj korisnosti obrazovanja na daljinu, organizaciji nastave i i obra- zovnoj platformi Moodle. Tabela 3. predstavlja izračunate deskripitivne statističke dimenzije za drugi deo anketnog upitnika. Što se tiče faktora Percipirana korisnost, najveći značaj studenti daju stavci Obra- zovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost učenja u slobodno vreme i rad prema sopstve- 11PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU nom tempu (M=3.52, SD=1.04) i Studiranje na daljinu zahteva od studenata po- sedovanje discipline i radnih navika za izvršenje svih obaveza (M=3.51, SD=0.66). Rezultati pokazuju da glavne korisnosti obrazovanja na daljinu studenti vide u sa- mostalnoj organizaciji učenja i slobodnog vremena. Za faktor Organizacija nastave najveću srednju vrednost ima stavka Obrazovanje na daljinu omogućava da elektronski pratite predavanja na udaljenim lokacijama i u bilo koje vreme (M=3.77, SD=1.07) i Obrazovanje na daljinu pruža mogućnost provere znanja na raznovrsne načine praćenjem i vrednovanjem svih aktivnosti studenata (M=3.73, SD=1.04). Rezultati nam pokazuju da je studentima izuzetno važna %eksibilnost koju pruža studiranje na daljinu. Studenti mogu elektronski da prate predavanja, pristupaju nastavnim materijalima sa bilo koje lokacije, da sami organizuju vreme i trajanje učenja i brzinu savladavanja nastavnih jedinica. Što se tiče stavki u vezi sa Obrazovnom platformom Moodle, najviši rezultati su pokazani za stavku Moodle platforma je pouzdan alat sa mnoštvom različitih tipo- va aktivnosti (M=3.23, SD=0.80) i Moodle platforma unapređuje komunikaciju između studenata i profesora (M=3.23, SD=0.87). Tabela 4. Zbog čega ste se odlučili na tradicionalan način studiranja, a ne za studiranje na daljinu? Stavke Broj ispitanika Procenat zasnovan na odgovorima Procenat zasnovan na ispitanicima Nisam našao/la adekvatan program obrazovanja na daljinu za oblast koja me interesuje. 46 15.2 22.4 Zabrinut sam u pogledu kvaliteta nastave u odnosu na tradicionalnu nastavu. 29 9.6 14.1 Zabrinutost u pogledu ekvivalentnosti (jednakih rezultata) učenja na daljinu u odnosu na tradicionalno učenje. 19 6.3 9.3 Nemam adekvatnu tehnološku osnovu za studiranje na daljinu. 16 5.3 7.8 Ne znam da li se u Srbiji vrednuju diplome stečene studiranjem na daljinu jednako kao i diplome stečene na tradicionalan način studiranja. 33 10.9 16.1 Mislim da nemam radne navike i disciplinu za samostalno usmeravanje učenja. 28 9.2 13.7 Društveni odnosi sa nastavnicima i kolegama tokom studiranja su važni za učenje i formiranje ličnosti. 45 14.9 22.0 Smatram da je usvajanje gradiva e�kasnije ukoliko u toku studiranja koristi komunicikacija licem u lice. 87 28.7 42.4 Ukupno 303 100.0 147.8 12 Nina Đurica U tabeli br. 4 prikazani su rezultati pitanja Zbog čega ste se odlučili na tradiciona- lan način studiranja, a ne za studiranja na daljinu? Na ovo pitanje, od 211 ispitanih studenata, odgovorilo je 205 (97.2%). Studenti su imali mogućnost davanja više odgovora, tako da su u tabeli prikazani procenti: procenat zasnovan na odgovori- ma i procenat zasnovan na ispitanicima. Ovih 205 ispitanika je označilo 303 od- govora. Tradicionalan način studiranja izabralo je 46 (22.4 %) ispitanika jer kao važan as- pekt smatraju nedostatak adekvatnog programa obrazovanja na daljinu za oblast koja ih interesuje, a to je 15.2% svih odgovora, dok 45 ispitanika (22.0%) smatra da su društveni odnosi sa nastavnicima i kolegama tokom studiranja izuzetno važni za učenje i formiranje ličnosti. Najviše ispitanih studenata (42.4%) smatra da je za usvajanje gradiva znatno e�kasnije ukoliko se u toku studiranja koristi komunika- cija licem u lice, i to je 28.7% svih odgovora. Tabela 5. Rezultati ispitivanja uticaja pola na faktore dobijene istraživanjem Faktori Pol n Srednja vrednost St. devijacija df t p F1- Organizacija nastave Muški 51 -0.118 0.938 171 -1,00 0,318 Ženski 122 0.049 1.025 F2- Percipirana korisnost Muški 51 0.232 0.915 171 1,99* 0,048 Ženski 122 -0.097 1.022 F3 – Obrazovna platforma Moodle Muški 51 0.176 1.077 171 1,50 0,136 Ženski 122 -0.073 0.961 aZnačajnost na nivou od 5% (p<0,05), b Značajnost na nivou od 1% (p<0,01), nz razlika nije značajna U tabeli 5. prikazane su srednja vrednost i standardna devijacija za svaku dimenzi- ju prema polu ispitanika, a značajnost razlika ovih ocena ispitana je t-testom (ana- liza varijanse –ANOVA). Analiza varijanse je pokazala da postoji značajna razlika u stavovima studenata muškog i ženskog pola kod dimenzije Percipirana korisnost obrazovanja na daljinu, kao i da ne postoji statistički značajna razlika u percepciji studenata Organizacije nastave i Obrazovne platforme Moodle. 13PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU ZAKLJUČAK U uslovima brzih tehnoloških promena, naš obrazovni sistem mora da osigura pove- ćane obrazovne mogućnosti bez povećanja materijalnih sredstava (Soleša, 2006, str. 193). Učenje na daljinu se u poslednje vreme, kao savremeni oblik obrazovanja, sve više širi kako u svetu tako i u Republici Srbiji (Soleša, 2006, str. 190). Rezultati poka- zuju da više od polovine ispitanih studenata (55.5%) smatra da Beogradska poslovna škola treba da uvede nove obrazovne mogućnosti, kao što su studijski programi na daljinu. Digitalni izvori informacija pružaju pružaju učenje zasnovano na iskustvi- ma, koja su pogodna za nove generacije (Soleša i Grijak, 2006, str. 691). Studenti kao osnovnu prednost tradicionalnog načina studiranja vide u komuni- kaciji licem u lice sa profesorima, što smatraju e�kasnom prilikom usvajanja gradi- va u toku studiranja. Međutim, postojanje veba je promenilo prirodu obrazovnog procesa, a savremena mrežna tehnologija je unapredila sposobnost komunikacije ljudi širom sveta i postala neophodan edukativni alat (Soleša, Rajsman & Juričić, 2014, str. 1403). Internet, kao globalna računarska mreža je znatno doprineo razvoju obrazovanja na daljinu i smanjio obim klasične edukativne komunikacije, koja se ostvaruje uz po- moć klasičnih komunikacionih medija ili uz direktne kontakte nastavnika i studenta. Uvođenje savremene informaciono-komunikacione tehnologije i multimedijalnih komunikacija predstavlja prioritet visokoobrazovnih institucija širom sveta. THE PERCEPTIONS AND ATTITUDES OF STUDENTS TO DISTANCE EDUCATION Djurica Nina Solesa Dragan Abstract: !e revolutionary development of the Internet and information and communication technolog y have led to changes in many aspects of life including education, which has obtained a new dimension. An important evolutionary aspect in the educational system is the introduction and development of distance learning study programs in both developed and developing countries. Distance learning is a system of education which is based on the use of modern information and communication technolog y. !e aim of this research is to examine students’ attitudes to the perceived usefulness and organization of the distance learning education process and to the educational platform called Moodle. In the analysis 14 Djurica Nina of the obtained data, the following methods were used: t-test, descriptive statis- tics and factor analysis. Nowadays, the survival of higher education institutions is possible only with the provision of high-quality education and development of attractive study programs created in accordance with market demands, which triggers changes in all aspects of life. Keywords: information and communication technolog y, distance learning, higher education institutions, Moodle platform LITERATURA 1. Bailey, M., Ifenthaler, D., Gosper, M., Kretzschmar, M. & Ware, C. (2015). [e changing importance of factors in%uencing students’ choice of study mode. Technolog y, Knowledge and Learning, 20(2), 169–184 2. Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P. A., Fiset, M. & Huang, B. (2004). How does distance educa- tion compare with classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 74, 379–439 3. Bourdeau, J. & Bates, A. (1996). Instructional design for distance learning. Journal of Science Education and Technolog y, 5(4), 267–283 4. Hui Hsu, H. (2012). [e Acceptance of Moodle: An Empirical Study Based on UTAUT. SciRes, (3), 44–46 5. Pantović, V., Dinić, S., Starčević, D. (2002). Savremeno poslovanje i internet tehnologija – Uvod u digitalnu ekonomiju, Beograd, Energoprojekt – InGraf 6. Pokorni, S. (2009). Obrazovanje na daljinu. Vojnotehnički glasnik, (2), 138– 146 7. Radenković, B., Despotović, M. (2005). Integracija sistema za upravljanje procesom učenja i poslovnog informacionog sistema. XXIII Simpozijum o novim tehnologijama u poštanskom i telekomunikacionom saobraćaju – PosTel 2005 (335–342), Beograd, Saobraćajni fakultet 8. Simonson, M., Schlosser, C. & Orellana, A. (2011). Distance education re- search: a review of the literature. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23(2-3), 124–142 9. Soleša, D. (2006). Misija i organizacijski postulati E-learning centra Učitelj- skog fakulteta u Somboru. Informatologia, 39(3), 189–193 10. Soleša, D., Grijak, Đ. (2006). Digitalna generacija i realnost u obrazovanju. Proceedings of the 31st Annual ATEE (Association for Teacher Education in Europe) Conference (689–695), Portorož, National School for Leadership in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana. 15PERCEPCIJA I STAVOVI STUDENATA PREMA OBRAZOVANJU NA DALJINU 11. Soleša, D. i Obrić, M. (2005). E-learning platforma Učiteljskog fakulteta u Somboru. Pedagogija, 60, (3) 12. Soleša, D., Rajsman, M. & Juričić, V. (2014). Web 2.0 as a potential for de- velopment of young people. Tehnički vjesnik, 21(6), 1403–1409 13. Turban, E., McLean, E. & Wetherbe, J. (2003). Informaciona tehnologija za menadžment. Beograd, Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva 14. Zenović, I., Bagarić, I. (2014). Trendovi u otvorenom učenju na daljinu u svetu i kod nas. Međunarodna naučna konferencija Univerziteta Singidunum – Sinteza 2014 (379–384), Beograd, Univerzitet Singidunum 
work_s3se2rvlyzhfpnicridxinbkcu	----	Empirical Investigation into Motives for Choosing Web-based Distance Learning Programs | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2016070105 Corpus ID: 44755002Empirical Investigation into Motives for Choosing Web-based Distance Learning Programs @article{Alkhattabi2016EmpiricalII, title={Empirical Investigation into Motives for Choosing Web-based Distance Learning Programs}, author={M. Alkhattabi}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2016}, volume={14}, pages={76-90} } M. Alkhattabi Published 2016 Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Today, in association with rapid social and economic changes, there is an increasing level of demand for distance and online learning programs. This study will focus on identifying the main motivational factors for choosing a web-based distance-learning program. Moreover, it will investigate how these factors relate to age, gender, marital status and parenthood. The results are based on a questionnaire, which was conducted amongst students enrolled in the distance-learning programs provided by… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 1 CitationsBackground Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Online machine learning Web application One Citation Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Can Mobile Learning Technology Close the Gap Caused by Gender Segregation in the Saudi Educational Institutions Talal Alasmari Sociology 2020 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 29 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Motives for lifelong learners to choose web-based courses R. Mahieu, Simon Wolming Psychology 2013 13 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Is Choice Important in Distance Learning? A Study of Student Motives for Taking Internet-Based Courses at the High School and Community College Levels M. D. Roblyer Psychology 1999 200 Save Alert Research Feed Acceptance of Internet-based learning medium: the role of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation M. Lee, Christy M. K. Cheung, Zhaohui Chen Psychology, Computer Science Inf. Manag. 2005 901 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Student barriers to online learning: A factor analytic study L. Muilenburg, Z. Berge Psychology 2005 601 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Motivation to Study in Higher Education: A Comparison between Germany and Great Britain S. Loeber, Helen E. Higson Sociology 2009 12 PDF Save Alert Research Feed An empirical examination of factors affecting college students' proactive stickiness with a web-based English learning environment Y. Chen Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Hum. Behav. 2014 43 Save Alert Research Feed Motivation and Satisfaction in Internet-Supported Learning Environments: A Review Teklu Abate Bekele Psychology, Computer Science J. Educ. Technol. Soc. 2010 117 PDF View 1 excerpt Save Alert Research Feed Going the Distance With Online Education Jorge Larreamendy-Joerns, G. Leinhardt Sociology 2006 501 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Motivation of computer based learning across adulthood Eline A. E. Leen, F. R. Lang Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Hum. Behav. 2013 21 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Shift Happens: Online Education as a New Paradigm in Learning L. Harasim Psychology 2000 577 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 1 Citations 29 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_s3zsyxix2vclpchx3kojvllsm4	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_s6bhosi2brgm3n33q4obf7y7qm	----	jonassen95.PDF Constructivism and Computer-Mediated Communication in Distance Education David Jonassen, Mark Davidson, Mauri Collins, John Campbell, and Brenda Bannan Haag Abstract The fields of learning theory and instructional design are in the midst of a scientific revolution in which their objectivist philosophical foundations are being replaced by a constructivist epistemology. This article describes the assumptions of a constructivist epistemology, contrasts them with objectivist assumptions, and then describes instructional systems that can support constructive learning at a distance Limitations of Distance Learning Technologies In an effort to supplement or replace live face-to-face instruction, technologicany mediated distance learning has more often than not merely replicated the ineffective methods that limit learning in face-to-face classrooms (Turoff 1995). Too often, potentially interactive technologies are used to present one-way lectures to students in remote locations. However, we believe that the most valuable activity in a classroom of any kind is the opportunity for students to work and interact together and to build and become part of a community of scholars and practitioners (Selfe and Eilola 1989; Bates 1990; Seaton 1993; Nalley 1995). A good learning experience is one in which a student can "master new knowledge and skills, criticany examine assumptions and beliefs, and engage in an invigorating, collaborative quest for wisdom and personal, holistic development" (Eastmond and Ziegahn 1995, 59). Technology used in distance education should facilitate these "good learning experiences" in an "extended classroom model" rather than broadcast teacher-centered lectures and demonstrations (Burge and Roberts 1993). A significant impediment to this goal is the fact that many teachers and instructional designers come to distance education from traditional backgrounds, bringing with them assumptions about teaching and learning that are not theory-based and do not translate well to technologicany mediated instruction (Schieman, Taere, and McLaren 1992). 7 Our purpose here is to promote well-designed, mediated instruction that moves the teacher from podium to sideline, from leader to coach, from purveyor of knowledge to facilitator of personal meaning making (Romiszowski and de Haas 1989; Beaudoin 1990; Gunawardena 1992; Burge and Roberts 1993). Our belief is that technology can be used to create communities of learners and practitioners and can facilitate the interactions and activities necessary for solving real-world problems (Burge and Roberts 1993). Our focus in this paper is to show how constructivism can help us reconceptualize distance education by using the new technologies to significantly alter how we conduct distance education (Morrison and Lauzon 1992). Constructivist principles provide a set of guiding principles to help designers and teachers create learner-centered, collaborative environments that support reflective and experiential processes. Students and instructors can then build meaning, understanding, and relevant practice together and go far beyond the mere movement of information from instructors' minds to students' notebooks. The Recent Evolution in Learning and Instructional Design Theory For the past two decades, the field of instructional design has attempted to accommodate the many changes implied by a paradigm shift from behavioral to cognitive psychology. That process was begun by Winn (1975), who sought to convey a more organismic view of the learner as one who interacts with the environment and acquires knowledge, skills, and competence from it, rather than a reactive view of the learner as one who is controlled by instruction. Winn promoted the use of cognitive instructional strategies, less reductionistic forms of analysis, and a more holistic approach to learner interactions as a means for achieving that view (Winn 1990). Cognitive models and processes of instructional design have emphasized mental constructs such as information processing (Champagne, Klopfer, and Gunstone 1982; Wildman and Burton 1981); schemata, knowledge structures, and other knowledge states (DiVesta and Rieber 1987); and learning strategies (Jonassen 1985). All of these models have emphasized the role of mental processing in learning. Until recently, cognitive psychology was the emergent paradigm of learning. However, the field of cognitive psychology, especially in the sub-domain of artificial intelligence, is now embroned in another scientific revolution. The dominant paradigm in cognitive psychology, the 8 symbolic reasoning paradigm, focuses on describing the ways that learners process information and on the resulting knowledge states. Symbolic reasoning theorists assume that what is represented in the mind is a reflection of what exists in the real world. Symbolic reasoning relies on abstract formalisms, such as rules, for describing these knowledge states and the practice that produces them (Anderson 1983). That is, reasoning can be conceived of in terms of a replicable set of processes that can be represented symbolically. All of these assumptions infer an orderly process of knowledge acquisition that can be affected by the conditions of learning, just as the behaviorists believe. The symbolic reasoning paradigm is currently being challenged by situated learning models (Clancy 1991; Derry 1992). Cognitive psychology has modeled thinking in terms of abstract, symbolic reasoning processes. Situated learning theory, however, emphasizes the role of context in learning and questions whether learning is an individualistic or social phenomenon. The symbolic reasoning paradigm seeks generalizable and abstract models of learning to describe how individuals think. Symbolic theorists believe that various forms of expert reasoning can be modeled and mapped onto learners' thinking patterns. That mapping process can be controlled by instructional conditions. The situated learning paradigm, on the other hand, argues that most learning is context-dependent. What is learned (the meaning that is constructed by the learner) is indexed by the experience surrounding the learning, which assigns meaning to what is learned. As a result, what is learned in the process of solving real-world problems is much richer and better understood because of this indexing. Because classroom lectures provide little of this richness, few connections are made. Situated learning and social construction theorists also believe that learning is necessarily a social, dialogical process in which communities of practitioners socially negotiate the meaning of phenomena. That is, learning is conversation, and the thinking and intelligence of a community of performers or learners is distributed throughout the group. Knowledge and intelligence is not the privilege of an individual, but rather is shared by the community of practice. The assumptions of the symbolic reasoning and situated learning positions are contrasted in Table 1. The revolution in learning theory and instructional design has transcended the behaviorism-cognitivism dialectic and entered a new era of theorizing. The symbolic reasoning paradigm does not accommodate the dynamic nature of learning, emergent properties of thinking, plausible 9 rather than exact reasoning, learning situated in context, and the indeterminism that always seems to subjugate our expectations ahout learning outcomes. These issues are philosophical as well as psychological. On a philosophical level, the symbolic reasoning-situated learning dialectic is discussed in terms of objectivist and constructivist epistemologies (Jonassen 1991; Duffy and Jonassen 1992). The dominant and traditional objectivist paradigm (which provides the foundation for symbolic reasoning) assumes that the world is structured, that structure can be modeled and mapped onto the learner, and that the goal of the learner is to "mirror" reality as interpreted by the instructor. Knowledge is 10 external to the knower and so can be transferred (communicated) from one person to another. The learner´s role is to remember and reproduce the knowledge that is transmitted by the teacher or professor. These assumptions are most often manifested in what Schank and Jolla (1991) call the "sponge method" of instruction. In the sponge method, the teacher imparts knowledge to the learners, who absorb it. During the assessment phase, the knowledge that learners should have acquired from the teacher is "wrung out" of thern. The quality of learning is considered a function of how well the Student can reproduce the thinking of the instructor. Constructivism (which provides the psychological/philosophical foundation for situated learning) begins with a different set of assumptions about learning. Constructivists believe that our personal world is constructed in our minds and that these personal constructions define our personal realities. The mind is the instrument of thinking which interprets events, objects, and perspectives rather than seeking to remember and comprehend an objective knowledge. The mind filters input from the world in the process of making those interpretations. The important epistemological assumption of constructivism is that knowledge is a function of how the individual creates meaning from his or her experiences; it is not a function of what someone else says is true. Each of us conceives of external reality somewhat differently, based upon our unique set of experiences with the world and our beliefs about them. Constructivist educators strive to create environments where learners "are required to examine thinking and learning processes; collect, record, and analyze data; formulate and test hypotheses; reflect on previous understandings; and construct their own meaning" (Crotty 1994, 31). The constructivist sense of "active" learning is not listening and then mirroring the correct view of reality, but rather participating in and interacting with the surrounding environment in order to create a personal view of the world. Constructivists engage the learners so that the knowledge they construct is not inert, but rather usable in new and different situations. The purpose of this revolution in learning theory is not so much to predict learning outcomes from instructional interventions as "to discover and to describe formally the meanings that human beings create out of their encounters with the world, and then to propose hypotheses about what meaning-making processes were implicated" (Bruner 1990, 2). Meaning making, according to constructivists, is the goal of learning processes; it requires articulation and reflection on what we know. The 11 processes of articulation and reflection involve both internal negotiation and social negotiation (Figure 1). We debate, wrestle, and argue with ourselves over what is correct, and then we negotiate with each other over the correct meaning of ideas or events. Observe the development of any political decision for an example of these processes. Meaning is the understanding that we derive from these processes; it is a reflective form of knowledge(Norman 1993). The application of that meaning in real-world practice is what Norman (1993) refers to as experiential knowledge. Both experiential and reflective knowledge emerge from our interactions with the world, and both are required for performing most real-world tasks. Therefore, an important emphasis of constructivist beliefs about learning is the need for embedding learning in real-world situations in which learners function as a part of a community of practitioners helping to solve real-world problems (Lave and Wenger 1991). Implications of Constructivism for Learning and Instruction Before discussing the ways in which constructivist assumptions about learning imply a new approach to instruction, We must first acknowledge a bias: Constructivist instruction is an oxymoron. Learning, we believe, can be best facilitated through the design and implementation of 12 constructivist tools and learning environments that foster personal meaning-making and discourse among communities of learners (socially negotiating meaning) rather than by instructional interventions that control the sequence and content of instruction and that seek to map a particular model of thinking onto the learners. An important inference of this belief is that the role of the designer shifts from creating prescriptive learning situations to developing environments that engage learners and require them to construct the knowledge that is most meaningful to them. The principles by which those learning environments may be built focus on four general system attributes: context, construction, collaboration, and conversation. Constructivist environments engage learners in knowledge construction through collaborative activities that embed learning in a meaningful context and through reflection on what has been learned through conversation with other learners. Context includes features of the "real world" setting in which the task to be learned might naturally be accomplished. These features, which are replicated as faithfully as possible in the learning environment, may include the physical, organizational, cultural, social, political, and power issues related to the application of the knowledge being learned. Attention to context, a central tenant of constructivist learning theories such as situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeships, prevents learning environments from being "sterilized" into predetermined instructional sequences (Brown, Collins, and Duguid 1989). Construction of knowledge is the result of an active process of articulation and reflection within a context. The knowledge that is created is a product of the mind and results from the individual's experiences with and interpretations of the context (Jonassen 1991). Those experiences can be encountered in learning environments as well as in the real world, Learning environments are constructivist only if they allow individuals or groups of individuals to make their own meaning for what they experience rather than requiring them to "learn" the teacher's interpretation of that experience or content. Collaboration among learners or performers occurs throughout the learning process.Collaboration aids in developing, testing, and evaluating different beliefs and hypotheses within learning contexts. Through the process of articulating covert processes and strategies, learners are able to build new and modify existing knowledge structures. Collaboration, as we will later discuss, is the focus of constructivist, distance learning activities (Seaton 1993). 13 Conversation is entailed by collaboration. Individuals and groups must negotiate plans for solving situated problems before initiating those plans. This planning involves reflecting on what is known, what needs to be known, the viability of various plans, and their potential effectiveness. Conversation is an essential part of the rneaning-making process because knowledge, for most of us, is language mediated. How can these beliefs be implemented in distance learning settings? Earlier, we indicated that too many distance learning initiatives use technology to deliver instruction in traditional, objectivist ways. How can learning technologies be used to facilitate internal negotiation, social negotiation, exploration, and self-assessment, in distance learning settings? In the next section of the paper, we will describe briefly a number of options. Constructivism at a Distance Distance education is defined by Moore (1990, xv) as "all arrangements for providing instruction through print or electronic communications media to persons engaged in planned learning in a place or time different from that of the instructor or instructors." Much of the literature on distance education, as represented by this definition, has placed an emphasis on the logistics of instructional delivery and technologies (Keegan 1983). Too often the result is merely transmission of the instructor's image to remote cities; less often instruction is supported by limited, two-way, interactive communication between the instructor and remotely located students. Research in this area has just begun to consider the interaction of personal and situational variables involving the learner, learner behaviors, and the environment (see, for example, Burge and Roberts 1993; Gibson 1990). Increasing recognition of the potential of computer-mediated communications, computer-supported collaborative work, computer learning environments, and computer-based cognitive tools has encouraged innovative approaches to the design of distance learning. New technologies have contributed to a movement away from the duplication of traditional instructional methods, both in the classroom and at a distance (Turoff 1995), toward a more resource-based approach to instruction that no longer emphasizes the teacher as the main source of knowledge (Smith and Kelly 1987; Beaudoin 1990; Gunawardena 1992). This perspective within distance education aligns itself with the principles of constructivism (Crotty 1994; Garrison 1993). Although a few authors have 14 promoted constructivist approaches to distance education, none has recornmended any specific strategies for accomplishing that goal. In this article we offer a number of recommendations for employing distance education technologies to support constructive learning. A constructivist approach to knowledge construction and learning, we believe, can be well supported in distance education settings through a variety of technologies. Technology- supported environments -computer-mediated communication, computer-supported collaborative work, case-based learning environments, and computer-based cognitive tools, for example- can offer the field of distance education alternative approaches to facilitating learning (see Figure 2). These constructivist environments and tools can replace the deterministic, teacher-controlled model of distance instruction with contextualized work environments, thinking tools, and conversation media that support the knowledge construction process in different settings. Although an exhaustive review is beyond the scope of this article, we will provide a brief description of these environments. 15 Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies Computer-mediated communication (CMC) refers to the use of networks of computers to facilitate interaction between spatially separated learners; these technologies include electronic mail, computer conferencing, and on-line databases. The most prominent applications of CMC -computer conferencing and electronic mail- support sophisticated synchronous (real-time) or asynchronous (delayed) group communication. The power of computer conferencing and electronic mail as constructivist learning tools and environments lies in their capabilities to support conversation and collaboration. Dyads or groups can work together to solve problems, argue about interpretations, negotiate meaning, or engage in other educational activities including coaching, modeling, and .scaffolding of performance. While conferencing, the learner is electronically engaged in discussion and interaction with peers and experts in a process of social negotiation. Knowledge construction occurs when students explore issues, take positions, discuss those positions in an argumentative format, and reflect on and re-evaluate their positions. As a result of contact with new or different perspectives, these activities may contribute to a higher level of learning through cognitive restructuring or conflict resolution, leading to new ways of understanding the material (Harasim 1990). Sharing knowledge through an electronic medium also aids the overt exchange of naturally covert processes and strategies with other on-line learners in order to solve collective or individual problems. These exchanges can be viewed by all learners and contribute to the formation of a collaborative mental model in a specific subject area. In comparison with a traditional classroom, where the teacher contributes up to 80% of the verbal exchange (Dunkin and Biddle 1974; McDonald and Elias 1976), on-line computer conferencing shows instructor contributions of only 10-15% of the message volume (Harasim 1987; Winkelmans 1988). This type of interaction pattern exemplifies the constructivist design model of reciprocal teaching through the use of written rather than verbal dialogue. Reciprocal teaching was originally designed as a procedure for teaching poor readers to approach text as successful readers do (Palincsar, Ransom, and Derber 1989). This method is easily adaptable to the on-line environment through the fundamental principle of systematically alternating control between teacher and students. Allowing learners to generate questions, summarize content, clarify points, and predict upcoming events is also 16 applicable to other educational tasks. When performed online, these activities can facilitate the discussion of various structural relationships within the subject matter. Social negotiation of the structure of ideas represented in the written content may also induce knowledge construction. Electronic mail, news groups, and computer conferencing support the development of discourse communities, groups of individuals who share and discuss common interests and goals. Over 2000 NetNews groups support discussion of topics as diverse as baseball, poetry, model railroading, Star Trek memorabilia, abortion, gun control, and religion. When focused on learning utcomes and scaffolded by different discourse structures, these discourse communities can become more purposive "communities of learners and thinkers" (Brown and Campione 1990) or "knowledge building communities" focusing on problems and depth of understanding, decentralized control, and a broader knowledge community (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1993/1994). Accessing remote, on-line databases may also facilitate the construction of knowledge. Thousands of news networks, hundreds of commercial databases, and thousands of bulletin boards support self-directed exploration of information. Retrieved information can be used to support positions in computer conferencing discussions, for collaboration on a particular topic, or for satisfying personal curiosity. Knowledge construction is fostered through the intentional searching process and through linking information to the learner's own schema. Merely locating information in a database does not necessarily lead to learning. Critical to the knowledge construction process is the articulation of a meaningful purpose for learning; it is the intentional, goal-oriented behavior of the learner while performing the database search that facilitates and strengthens connections between elements of information and that results in higher-order thinking and meaningful learning. Computer-Supported Collaborative Work Cornputer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) combines communications and computer technologies to support various activities in groups of varying size, permanence, and structure (Olson, Olson, and Kraut 1992). CSCW tools help groups structure work through group decision support systems, project management tools, electronic conferencing systems, and shared editors. CSCW technologies can support groups across a distributed environment. For example, collaborative problem solving in corporations can be supported by the IBIS hypertext 17 environment (Conklin and Begeman 1987), which provides an argument structure including issue, position, and argument nodes. Users add their comments about the problem under discussion, producing a logical discourse that usually results in an effective and acceptable solution. These environments help collaborative groups construct a common understanding of the problem being solved and negotiate the most appropriate solution to that problem. Construction and negotiation are the hallmarks of constructive learning. Research laboratories involved in CSCW are exploring the use of video transmissions to support informal communication in the workplace (Heath and Luff 1992). This type of technology has interesting ramifications for distance education, as well. Two-way real-time video transmission of information implies a new definition of real-world context. Although video-mediated, constructivist learning environments could potentially include the actual environment or a close facsimile with which the learner could remotely interact. These collaborative problem-solving situations enhance knowledge construction through the addition of visual information and remote interaction with other learners. The video transmission of authentic, realistic contexts adds a significant dimension to anchored instruction and situated learning environments (see, for example, Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt 1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1993a, and 1993b). Computer-supported intentional learning environments (CSILEs) are another distance education technology that can assist learners in knowledge construction. CSILEs are educational knowledge media systems that allow different types of information (text, drawings, graphs, timelines, etc.) to be entered into a common database where they are available for retrieval, review, and contribution (Scardamalia et al. 1989), CSILEs, which can be implemented both locally and at a distance, promote intentional control over learning by providing an environment that requires students to plan, monitor, set goals, and solve problems. CSILEs require learners to reflect on their personal knowledge, state learning intentions, and publish ideas to a communal database, thus producing cumulative, progressive results for the group (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1993/1994). CSILEs promote knowledge construction through the procedural facilitation process and the building of a collective database that provides the procedural facilitation process and the building of a collective database that provides open access to the learning context, facts, and information needed for solving specific problems. Procedural facilitation also provides a scaffolding effect by providing learners with temporary support 18 processes until they are prepared for more complex strategies and information. Making knowledge construction activities overt contributes to this process through internal negotiation and deliberate actions such as goal setting, identifying and solving problems of understanding, and connecting old and new knowledge (Scardamalia et al. 1989). Situated, Case-Based Learning Environments Constructivist correspondence instruction may be delivered in self-contained, computer-delivered, case-based learning environments. Rather than conveying the single interpretation of- the instructor in a workbook, these environments provide rich, contextualized problem-solving activities that learners can experience individually or in groups. Available on disks or CD-ROMs, lessons can be used remotely by learners on their personal computers. Traditionally, correspondence Courses -in distance education have involved paper-based independent study materials for courses delivered through the mail system. More recently, correspondence instruction has included electronically delivered "presentation-type" computer-assisted instruction (CAI) with limited interactive capabilities (Maurer and Makedon 1991). Designed according to conventional objectivist notions, this type of CAI is prevalent ill distance education and in the classroom (Santoro 1995). However, hypermedia-based learning environments designed within a constructivist framework may better foster knowledge construction than the oversimplified reductionistic delivery of information provided by traditional CAI. We next describe some examples of this type of environment. Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, and Coulson (1992) advocate the design of hypertext environments that reflect the cognitive characteristics necessary for knowledge construction. The central tenet of cognitive flexibility theory is improvement of learners' understanding and their transfer of information through exposure to the same material, at different times, in rearranged contexts, for different purposes (Spiro et al. 1992). Especially well suited for ill-structured domains involving complex concepts and examples, cognitive flexibility theory in hypermedia environments promotes the production of flexible knowledge representations in learners. Numerous other models can be used for structuring case-based learning environments. Among the most prominent is "anchored instruction," which bases instruction ill appealing and realistic events or problems, 19 This model requires complex problem solving wherein students must define the problem, identify resources, set priorities, and explore alternative solutions. In other words, they must use the same skills and abilities required during realistic, outside-the-classroom problem-solving and decision-making activities as opposed to working the simplified, compartmentalized, and decontextualized problems common in traditional classrooms (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt 1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1993a, and 1993b). Anchored instruction typically uses a video-based presentation format because of the dramatic power of the medium with its multiple modalities and realistic imagery, and because of its omnipresence in our culture. A problem is introduced in a video presentation that uses actors and a narrative format for interest. Solving the problem requires a generative learning format in which students must identify pertinent information and select among multiple solution paths. Cognitive Tools for Knowledge Representation and Construction Cognitive tools also known as Mindtools (Jonassen in press), engage and facilitate cognitive processing, hence the term "cognitive tools" (Kommers, Jonassen, and Mayes 1992). Cognitive tools are both mental and computational devices that Support, guide, and extend the thinking processes of their users (Derry 1990). They are knowledge-construction and facilitation tools that can be applied to a variety of subject- matter domains. Students cannot use these tools without thinking deeply about the content that they are studying; if they choose to use these tools, they will facilitate their own learning and meaning-making processes. cognitive tools include (but are not necessarily limited to) databases, spreadsheets, semantic networks, expert systems, computer conferencing, multimedia/hypermedia construction, computer programming, and microworld learning environments. Cognitive tools are computer applications that require students to interpret and organize personal knowledge - processes critical to the knowledge construction process - in order to use them. Using computers as cognitive tools represents learning with technology by entering into an intellectual partnership with the computer (Salomon, Perkins, and Globerson 1991). Learning with cognitive tools depends "on the mindful engagement of learners in the tasks afforded by these tools": students work with computer technology, instead of being controlled by it. For distance learning, cognitive tools are powerful because they can support the thinking engaged by any of the other kinds of environments 20 in a distributed manner. The products of these tools call be shared in collaborative work environments or through computer conferencing. They are general-purpose thinking tools that can be used individually or ill groups to foster knowledge representation and construction. To summarize, designing and implementing constructivist learning environments for distance education are complex and novel functions in an educational community accustomed to replicating traditional modes of instruction. Probably the most important issue in designing constructivist environments is authenticity, the extent to which the environment faithfully reflects the ordinary practices of the culture (Brown, Collins, and Duguid 1989). According to Wiggins (1993), both distance and local learning environments should have the following characteristics: • be centered on engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance in which Students must construct knowledge for effective performance • include tasks that are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of real-world problems faced by citizens, consumers, or professionals in the field , • provide access for the student to resources commonly available to those engaged in analogous real-life problems or activities • present problems requiring a repertoire of knowledge, Judgment in determining appropriate application of knowledge, and skills in prioritizing problem classification and solution phases Tasks also should be supported by deliberate collaboration and conversation among the community of participants. All of these attributes are grounded in answers to the question "What do professionals in the real world get paid to do?" Few, if any, are paid to memorize information and take examinations. Conclusions Constructivism can provide theoretical bases for unique and exciting distance learning environments. These environments should emerge from authentic tasks, engage the learners in meaningful, problem -based thinking, and require negotiation of meaning and reflection oil what has been learned. Computer-mediated communication (especially computer conferencing), computer-supported intentional learning environments, and computer-supported collaborative work environments all support 21 constructive learning. Distance learning will be more effective when it takes place in stimulating learning environments designed oil constructivist principles. It is important to note that constructive learning will be appropriately implemented only if students are evaluated, as well as instructed, constructively; such evaluation will require assessment methods that reflect the constructivist methods embedded in the learning environments. Constructivist evaluation is the topic of another paper. References Anderson, J. R. 1983. The Architecture of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bates, A. W. 1990. Interactivity as a criterion for media selection in distance education. Paper presented at The Asian Association of Open Universities 1990 Annual Conference, Universitats Terbuka. ERIC Document Reproduction Service, ED 329 245. Beaudoin, M. 1990. The instructor's changing role in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 4 (2):21-29. Brown, A. L., and J. C. Campione. 1990. Communities of learning and thinking, or a context by any other name. Contributions to Human Development 21:10-126 Brown, J. S., A. 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work_s7jtuwbw2nd4hoosce4cr7kzsm	----	[PDF] Learning styles and preferences for live and distance education: an example of a specialisation course in epidemiology | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1186/1472-6920-13-93 Corpus ID: 17175926Learning styles and preferences for live and distance education: an example of a specialisation course in epidemiology @article{Groenwold2013LearningSA, title={Learning styles and preferences for live and distance education: an example of a specialisation course in epidemiology}, author={R. Groenwold and M. Knol}, journal={BMC Medical Education}, year={2013}, volume={13}, pages={93 - 93} } R. Groenwold, M. Knol Published 2013 Medicine BMC Medical Education BackgroundDistance learning through the internet is increasingly popular in higher education. However, it is unknown how participants in epidemiology courses value live vs. distance education.MethodsAll participants of a 5-day specialisation course in epidemiology were asked to keep a diary on the number of hours they spent on course activities (both live and distance education). Attendance was not compulsory during the course and participants were therefore also asked for the reasons to attend… Expand View on Springer bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 15 CitationsBackground Citations 7 Methods Citations 1 View All Tables and Topics from this paper table 1 table 2 Learning Disorders Epidemiology Education, Distance Lectures 15 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Distance learning in antimicrobial stewardship: innovation in medical education Michel Laks, C. Guerra, J. Miraglia, E. Medeiros Medicine, Psychology BMC medical education 2019 8 Save Alert Research Feed Identifying and Comparing Learning Styles Preferences among Medical Undergraduates Students at College of Medicine Aljouf University Marwa Naggar Psychology 2016 4 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Graduate distance education in nursing: assessment under students’ perspective Vera Lucia de Souza Alves, Elena Bohomol, I. C. Cunha 2015 1 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed What Are We Looking for in Computer-Based Learning Interventions in Medical Education? A Systematic Review T. Taveira-Gomes, Patrícia Ferreira, Isabel Taveira-Gomes, M. Severo, M. Ferreira Psychology, Medicine Journal of medical Internet research 2016 41 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The potential value of the interaction between learner and learning material in a web-based setting towards the acquisition of medical knowledge T. T. Gomes Psychology 2016 1 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Combined Application of Study Design and Case-based Learning Comprehensive Model in Epidemiology Teaching Xiuquan Shi, Yanna Zhou, H. Wang, T. Wang, Chan Nie, Shangpeng Shi Mathematics 2017 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed A comparison of sonography and radiography student scores in a cadaver anatomy class before and after the implementation of synchronous distance education J. Bagley, K. Randall, M. Anderson Medicine Ultrasound 2015 3 Save Alert Research Feed Where in the World Is My Librarian? Creating Cross-Campus Collaborations to Seamlessly Connect with Students When Librarians, Students, and Faculty Are in Different Locations E. Johns, C. Price, Antoinette Ungaretti Sociology 2019 1 View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Formation of Lifelong Learning Competences in the Process of Professional Training of Future Lawyers U. Koruts, V. Petkov, Ehor S. Nazymko, T. Denysova, U. Oliinyk Psychology 2020 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Open Knowledge Diffusion Tools: FOSS, OER, OT, MOOC and the Role of the Library in Mitigating the Social Inertia of Constrained Learning Environments T. Watkins, Feng-Ru Sheu Computer Science 2016 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 10 REFERENCES An e-learning reproductive health module to support improved student learning and interaction: a prospective interventional study at a medical school in Egypt R. Abdelhai, Sahar Yassin, M. F. Ahmad, U. Fors Medicine, Computer Science BMC medical education 2012 25 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Self-assessed learning style correlates to use of supplemental learning materials in an online course management system C. Halbert, R. Kriebel, Robert G Cuzzolino, P. Coughlin, Kerin L Fresa-Dillon Medicine Medical teacher 2011 21 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Does individual learning styles influence the choice to use a web-based ECG learning programme in a blended learning setting? Mikael Nilsson, J. Östergren, +4 authors G. Bolinder Psychology, Medicine BMC medical education 2012 27 View 1 excerpt, references results Save Alert Research Feed Internet-based medical education: a realist review of what works, for whom and in what circumstances G. Wong, T. Greenhalgh, R. Pawson Psychology, Medicine BMC medical education 2010 333 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed A Comparison of Online versus On-site Training in Health Research Methodology: A Randomized Study R. Aggarwal, N. Gupte, +10 authors R. Bollinger Medicine BMC medical education 2011 46 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Live lecture versus video podcast in undergraduate medical education: A randomised controlled trial B. 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Lash Medicine 1986 2,431 Save Alert Research Feed Related Papers Abstract Tables and Topics 15 Citations 10 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_s7okkzsirrdotcthm4znp3fezi	----	Reasons for student dropout in an online course in a rural K–12 setting Reasons for student dropout in an online course in a rural K–12 setting Claire de la Varrea*, Matthew J. Irvinb, Adam W. Jordana, Wallace H. Hannuma, and Thomas W. Farmerc aSchool of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA; bCollege of Education, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA; cSchool of Education, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA (Received 2 April 2014; final version received 15 July 2014) Rural schools in the USA use online courses to overcome problems such as attracting and retaining teachers, geographic isolation, low student enrollment, and financial constraints. This paper reports on the reasons that 39% of rural high school students who enrolled in an online Advanced Placement course sub- sequently dropped the course. Students who dropped the course were asked to provide an email statement detailing their reasons for doing so. On-site facilita- tors—local staff members situated in the small rural schools where students were enrolled—also provided reasons whenever one of their students dropped the course. Results indicate that the reasons given by students and on-site facilitators for dropping the course often agreed, and tended to fall within the following five categories: scheduling and time constraints, academic rigor and motivation, tech- nology problems, problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy, and parental influences. Keywords: distance education; dropout; facilitators; K–12; rural schools Over the past decade K–12 schools in the USA and Canada have experienced expo- nential growth in the use of online distance education (Barbour & Reeves, 2009; Clark, 2008; Glass & Welner, 2011; Hannum & McCombs, 2008; Watson & Ryan, 2007). Indeed, online learning is “the fastest growing alternative to traditional K–12 education in the United States” (Glass & Welner, 2011, p. 3). US rural schools use online courses to surmount a variety of difficulties including the ability to attract and retain teachers, geographic isolation, small numbers of students, and financial constraints (Barbour, 2007a; Barley & Brigham, 2008; Beeson & Strange, 2000; Hobbs, 2004; Monk, 2007). Though rural schools use online courses to provide students with a comprehen- sive curriculum and advanced courses (Hannum, Irvin, Banks, & Farmer, 2009), online learning can also have more far-reaching effects. Specifically, online learning may prevent rural districts from having to close or consolidate schools (Hobbs, 2004; Jimerson, 2006; Schafft, Alter, & Bridger, 2006; Seal & Harmon, 1995). As rural schools are often the major source of employment and the center of social activity for communities, keeping rural schools open can be vital to students and *Corresponding author. Email: claire_delavarre@unc.edu © 2014 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. Distance Education, 2014 Vol. 35, No. 3, 324–344, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.955259 mailto:claire_delavarre@unc.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.955259 their families (D’Amico, Matthes, Sankar, Merchant, & Zurita, 1996; Jennings, Swidler, & Koliba, 2005; Lyson, 2002; Schafft et al., 2006). Little research on online learning in the USA has focused on rural K–12 schools, despite the fact that rural schools make up one-third of all schools in the USA and educate approximately 12 million children (Aud et al., 2013). This is noteworthy in several respects. Rural districts in the USA utilize distance education more than urban and suburban schools. Setzer and Lewis (2005) reported that 46% of rural dis- tricts have students taking distance education—twice that of urban districts (23%) and substantially more than in suburban districts (28%). In addition, 85% of rural schools classified as small and low income, according to the Rural Education Achievement Program, indicate that they are currently using or have previously used distance education, and that most frequently this is in the form of asynchronous online courses and to provide students advanced or enrichment courses (Hannum et al., 2009). Meta-analyses have demonstrated no significant difference in academic outcomes between K–12 students taking a course online vs. in a traditional face-to-face setting (Cavanaugh, Gillan, Kromrey, Hess, & Blomeyer, 2004; Smith, Clark, & Blomeyer, 2005; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006). Some caution that while these modes of instruc- tion are broadly comparable, such studies generally fail to adequately examine the variability between online and face-to-face settings (Bernard et al., 2004, p. 408). Others have criticized these studies for only considering short-term standardized test performance and mostly focusing on math and reading (Glass & Welner, 2011). To us, however, there is an even more disconcerting aspect to online learning apparent in the literature: high levels of dropout in online courses have been noted in several studies (Carr, 2000; Dupin-Bryant, 2004; Glass & Welner, 2011; Osborn, 2001; Wojciechowski & Palmer, 2005). Some estimates suggest that dropout in online courses may be 10%–20% higher than traditional face-to-face settings (Carr, 2000; Stover, 2005; Wojciechowski & Palmer, 2005). Other figures indicate that as many as 50% to 60% of online students may drop out (Morris, Wu, & Finnegan, 2005; Oblender, 2002; Roblyer, 2006). These figures are imprecise because of the lack of a common definition for dropout, discrepancies in calculating dropout rates, disproportionate enrollment of vulnerable students, and a lack of relevant K–12 research. However, numerous researchers con- cur that there is ample reason to be concerned and a need to understand dropout in online courses (Barbour & Mulcahy, 2006; Glass & Welner, 2011; Nash, 2005; Roblyer, 2006; Stover, 2005). Despite the ongoing expansion in the enrollment of K–12 students in online courses, most of the research on dropout in online learning has involved students in postsecondary educational settings. Yet, the reasons adults drop out may differ from those of high school students, who have different goals (Barbour & Reeves, 2009; DiPietro, Ferdig, Black, & Preston, 2008). Accordingly, the overarching purpose of this study is to identify factors poten- tially involved in dropout from an advanced online course among students in rural US high schools. Review of the literature Previous research has examined various factors that may be involved in students’ dropout from online courses. The review of the literature that follows is organized Distance Education 325 around the main individuals involved in a model used by many providers of K–12 online learning in the USA and Canada: the teacher–facilitator model. In the tea- cher–facilitator model, students take online courses at their local school, or some- times at home, while the online instructor who is largely responsible for delivering the course content and instruction is situated at a remote location. In addition, a local on-site adult serves as a facilitator. The role of the facilitator is to troubleshoot com- puter and software problems, distribute instructional materials, answer questions, and communicate with the online instructor (de la Varre, Keane, & Irvin, 2010). Facilitators are given technical training for their role as well as recommendations for monitoring student progress. In addition, facilitators may be required to communi- cate with parents, and address issues such as plagiarism, cheating, and missing assignments, and often go beyond their prescribed roles when helping students (Barbour & Mulcahy, 2009; Harms, Niederhauser, Davis, Roblyer, & Gilbert, 2006; U.S. Department of Education, 2007). In this study, we were interested in factors related to the role of the online tea- cher, on-site facilitator, and students themselves, and how these may influence or contribute to dropout from an online course. In part, this stems from the fact that in the teacher–facilitator model, students are situated in a blended learning environment (de la Varre et al., 2011). Though the content and instruction are delivered online by the instructor, the on-site facilitator is largely responsible for setting the local cli- mate, and this influences students’ overall online experience. Thus, the online instructor, on-site facilitator, and students comprise the key factors to be considered in order to more fully understand the complexity of students’ experiences and learn- ing in online courses (Stacey & Gerbic, 2008). Role of online instructors Online teachers have an essential role in helping prevent student attrition and isola- tion by creating a comfortable online learning environment where students can build community and establish trust. Coppola, Hiltz, and Rotter (2004) suggested that online teachers establish their presence in the course immediately, behaving in con- sistent and predictable ways, responding to students’ messages and questions with enthusiasm, and expressing positive course expectations. Likewise, Davis and col- leagues (Davis & Roblyer, 2005; Davis et al., 2007) have noted that there is a need for effective interaction with and support for students in online courses, which requires particular skills and experiences from instructors. Other designers and researchers of online learning have also espoused the importance of interactivity and communication (e.g., Barbour, 2007b; Gilbert & Moore, 1998; Hobbs, 2004; Susman, 1998). Consistent with these recommendations, Abdous and Yen (2010) reported that student–instructor interaction determines student satisfaction and learn- ing outcomes. Several studies have also found that frequent contact and prompt responses from online teachers are vital to learning (e.g., Choy, McNickle, & Clayton, 2002; Roach & Lemasters, 2006) and student satisfaction (Arbaugh, 2000, 2001; Hara & Kling, 1999; Thurmond, Wambach, Connors, & Frey, 2002). Role of on-site facilitators Providers of K–12 online courses often rely on the teacher–facilitator model to address issues of student dropout, isolation, and lack of support. It is difficult for 326 C. de la Varre et al. online teachers to have a personal relationship with every student in an online course because often they have multiple course sections and may have 75–100 stu- dents or more. As on-site facilitators work with small groups of familiar students and interact with them regularly, facilitators support students on many levels (Hannum & McCombs, 2008). Accordingly, several researchers have found that facilitators are vital to students’ success (Barbour & Mulcahy, 2008; Roblyer, Freeman, Stabler, & Schneidmiller, 2007) or noted that facilitators have a key role in reducing dropout (Charania et al., 2008; Roblyer, 2003). A major aspect of stu- dents’ online experiences that facilitators provide is setting the climate for learning through encouraging, acknowledging, and reinforcing student contributions (de la Varre et al., 2011). Role and experiences of students Numerous variables related to the students themselves are likely involved in students dropping out from online courses (Dupin-Bryant, 2004). For one, students’ previous experience and comfort with computers and online courses are important (Lim, 2001; Osborn, 2001). Researchers found that various indices of technology adeptness predicted course completion, as does students’ academic background, for example, prior achievement or class rank (Dupin-Bryant, 2004; Lim, 2001; Morris et al., 2005; Osborn, 2001). As online courses continue largely to target and benefit more self-directed and advanced students, good study skills and habits are essential as well (Barbour & Reeves, 2009). Consistent with this, Wang and Newlin (2000) showed that several measures of study habits were strongly correlated with grades in an online course. In more directly related results, Oblender (2002) found that although the students in one virtual high school were bright, capable, and mature, some did not have the time-management skills and self-discipline needed to succeed in online courses, and consequently dropped out. Of the factors discussed in this section, students in small and low-income rural schools are reportedly well prepared in their computer skills, less so in their academic background, and least prepared in their study skills (Irvin, Hannum, de la Varre, Farmer, & Keane, 2011). Though few studies of online learning have examined students’ motivation and self-efficacy, sev- eral researchers have also recognized the importance of these factors to students’ success in online courses (Artino, 2008; Chen & Jang, 2010; Cocea & Weibelzahl, 2006; Gibson, 1996; Keller, 1999; Lin, Lin, & Laffey, 2008). Students’ experiences in online courses also likely contribute to dropout. Levy (2007) demonstrated that student satisfaction with the course is a predictor of stu- dent persistence. Online courses are prone to a lack of teacher immediacy, or the psychological closeness that is conveyed in traditional classrooms through nonverbal signals such as smiling, eye contact, relaxed body posture, and verbal signals such as praise, use of humor, and tone of voice (Arbaugh, 2001; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999). Shea (2006) found that online students perceived a “stronger sense of learning community” (p. 41) when exposed to teachers who dis- played more immediacy behaviors. This psychological or transactional distance between students and teachers in online courses largely stems from the physical separation that prevents online teachers from attending to these factors (Moore, 1993; Moore & Kearsley, 1996). As a result, students often feel more isolated in online courses, and this may be a central factor in the high rates of dropout (Rovai, 2000, 2002). Rural students are also used to small classes and close relationships Distance Education 327 with teachers, and thus may find online courses more challenging than their urban or suburban counterparts (Irvin, Hannum, Farmer, de la Varre, & Keane, 2009). Limitations of existing literature Several limitations of the existing literature on dropout in online courses are evident. First, few studies have examined students’ own reported reasons for dropping out. Rather, research has often used quantitative measures and methods to determine which variables relate to or predict dropout. Though this type of work is useful, it may fail to elucidate some reasons for students’ dropout that were not specifically asked about or included as a measure. Second, little research has also included the corresponding reasons for dropout reported by key adults, such as on-site facilita- tors, and examined whether those are similar to or different from the reasons that students report. Such information is important for not only for providing corroborat- ing evidence but also to determine whether students and key adults have different views on the factors involved in dropout. As previously noted, most research of online learning has involved college students or adult learners rather than K–12 stu- dents (Cavanaugh et al., 2004; Rice, 2006), and even less work with rural schools has been undertaken (Barbour, 2007b; Rice, 2006). Therefore, rural K–12 students and schools that use online learning have largely been ignored in previous studies. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in our view, most research on dropout in online courses has focused on the students themselves rather than also considering other important factors within the context of this blended learning setting, such as online teachers and on-site facilitators. Yet, the onus to prevent dropout lies not only with online institutions and course providers, but with teachers, on-site facilitators, and others who are cognizant of the need for both proactive and reactive communi- cation with students (Simpson, 2004). Understanding the reasons K–12 students choose to drop out of distance education courses may potentially provide useful information to increase persistence, and also move us toward a better understanding of the distance education phenomenon overall. Purpose and context of the current study The overarching purpose of this study is to identify factors that may be involved in dropout from an advanced online course among rural US high school students. Toward that end, we examine the reasons that rural high school students themselves gave for dropping out of the course. We also examine the corresponding reasons provided by each student’s on-site facilitator. The following specific research ques- tions guide the study: � What are the reasons that rural high school students may drop out of an advanced online course? � Do the reasons that rural high school students may drop out of an advanced online course involve students, online teachers, on-site facilitators, and/or others? � Are the reasons given by students for dropping out similar to or different from on-site facilitators’ reported reasons for student dropout? � Can the factors involved in dropping out be addressed by students, online teachers, on-site facilitators, or others in order to prevent or reduce dropout? 328 C. de la Varre et al. The data were collected as part of a cluster randomized controlled study designed to develop and examine the impact of a program to train on-site facilitators to better support rural students taking an advanced online course. The study involved two cohorts of students and facilitators: the first cohort participated during the academic year one, and the second cohort participated during the academic year two. Across both years, approximately 720 high school students from 93 rural schools geographi- cally distributed in 29 states across the USA took a year-long Advanced Placement (AP) English Literature and Composition course online. The gender ratio was 77% females to 23% males. Ethnically, the student participants were 91% white, 2.4% Hispanic, and less than 2% each black, Asian, and American Indian. The course was delivered entirely online via Blackboard™, a widely used course management sys- tem. Students were situated in a classroom of typically 4–10 students, in a small rural school, and each school was monitored by a local facilitator with administra- tive and supervisory duties but no teaching responsibilities. Students across four rural schools were combined to form a single virtual course section taught by one online teacher, and there were 20 sections altogether. Overall, approximately 39% of the students dropped out of the course. Of those who dropped out more than two- thirds (68.8%) did so within the first four weeks. Methods Each student who dropped the course was asked to provide an email statement regarding the reasons for dropping the course. The student’s on-site facilitator was also asked to provide a similar email statement. These statements were imported as text files into MAXQDA—software for content analysis and management of textual data—and were coded and categorized by two coders. Content analysis is “any qual- itative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings” (Patton, 2002, p. 453). As a methodology, content analysis involves a systematic search for patterns within textual data (Krippendorf, 2004), and is interpretive in that the goal is to uncover and categorize patterns in the text (Schrire, 2006). Our aim was to look for themes and categories in the dropout statements from students and facilitators with the intent of summarizing the data. Our approach was inductive, and involved read- ing through the entire data-set several times, using two coders. As themes were iden- tified, the data were coded, and after several rounds of reading and coder discussion no new themes emerged. The themes identified are listed in the Results section. As nearly all the dropout statements were short and simple, the level of agreement between coders was almost 100%, and we did not feel that a chance-corrected mea- sure of inter-coder reliability was necessary. Results Reasons given by students and facilitators for dropping the course were usually in agreement with each other, although there were times when the reasons students and facilitators gave for the student dropping out of the online course disagreed. Reasons generally fell within the following categories that are discussed further below: scheduling and time constraints, academic rigor of class and motivation, technology problems, problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy, and Distance Education 329 parental influences. In addition, some students dropped out of the online course because of a combination of factors. Scheduling and time constraints Several reasons fell within the category of scheduling and time constraints. These ranged from having too short a class period, unwillingness or inability to make the time commitment needed to succeed in the class, perceptions that the workload was excessive, conflict with other classes, conflict with an employment schedule, or con- flict with extracurricular activities. Examples of student comments in this category include: � I would not have been able to juggle the online course, my family, and work all at the same time. I would not have been able to find time to sit down and do the assignments with all my other work from my other classes. � I’m involved in volleyball, the school play, and I work two jobs outside of school. Therefore I only had one class period to get all the in class work and out of class homework done. This was basically impossible. � Between work, cheerleading, my other classes, this class, and my boyfriend, I couldn’t find the time. � Many of my fellow classmates hate the class! They say that it’s too much to do in our 40- minute classes. I can understand that because all the college clas- ses I take at the local college are an hour and a half. � My English class period isn’t long enough to complete each assignment, and it gets frustrating trying to get caught up during the day when I have nine other classes, three of which are also AP. I also have basketball until 8:30 pm, giving me no time at home to get my English done, or anything else for that matter. � My schedule has become so hectic that I really didn’t have any other choice. I have 10 classes a day. My first class starts at 6:00 am and I get out of school at 4:00 pm then I go home and do my jobs and whatever my mom needs me to do and at 6:00 pm I go back to the school for basketball practice … every day. Facilitators’ also commented on their students’ busy schedules, and on their pri- orities: � Her family has a farm and she said it was very hard to do her chores, play soc- cer, and do the AP work. She seemed to think the work was rather difficult and time consuming. Academic rigor of class and motivation Many students who dropped out complained of the demanding schedule, fast pace, or amount of homework required in the course, as well as feeling overwhelmed, intimidated, or underprepared for the rigor of an AP-level class. Motivation was also a factor often embedded in the following comments and connected to the rigor of the online course: 330 C. de la Varre et al. � I was up until after midnight every night trying to finish my homework. � I am definitely not a strong reader, and my homework was taking at least an hour and a half a night. � The reason I dropped the AP class is because it was hard. I didn’t want to read again until I am in college. � The grading was very harsh. I am a straight A student, and my instructor thought I would be happy just passing. Facilitator comments echoed these concerns: � He doesn’t like to do much work, and he found another English class to take with less work. � The students didn’t want to do the readings and the daily work. This class was more demanding and they “wanted an easier senior year.” They were very capable of doing the class work but didn’t want to. � Our school culture just didn’t prepare them for the rigors of this type of course. Our students weren’t prepared, which is a problem from our end. � I do not believe that either boy had a good understanding of what to expect from the online course to begin with. They were just completely overwhelmed from the moment that they logged into Blackboard and read the teacher’s introduction. � When I handed out the first two books, she sighed loudly and said, “Ugh, I want to have fun my senior year.” She keeps saying she wants to be a writer, but she refuses to read. � When her animal was sick for a few days, she missed a week of school. � He does not seem bothered by missing assignments or points on his journal and does not have the internal drive to take a course at this level. He’s also a sophomore in high school, still very young and immature. � Sadly, when the decision came to read Invisible Man or play Rock Band, Rock Band won. � His tendency is to slide by, doing work at the last minute (if at all) because he is smart enough to do well with very little effort. This course did not provide enough accountability and structure for him despite my best efforts. � Her future plans are to marry following graduation, so she does not think she needs AP. Technology problems Several students had issues relating to technology such as being confused by the content management system that delivered the course, or the online directions. Facil- itators reported: � Glitches such as tests not being turned on in time for class, which should have been a non-issue, became an issue because they added to the sense of frustra- tion and disconnect. � The website had constant problems; I could not get my assignments many times or the website would freeze. Distance Education 331 � The course organization relies on a lot of information organized through multiple windows and documents; to get oriented on assignments several different windows must be accessed. This lead to a lot of confusion for the first few days for all of us. It just shook their confidence from the start. � Neither boy was completely comfortable with technology, and the intensity of the first day’s information was truly shocking to them. Problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy The online format of the course was challenging for a number of students. Some dis- liked the lack of teacher presence or immediate feedback. In this course, teachers aimed to respond to students’ questions within a 24-h period; however, there were several complaints from students about the timeliness of feedback, the medium and grading: � I do not enjoy the online class because we cannot talk face to face. I learn bet- ter by listening and taking notes rather than reading, which is the only method of learning with an online class. I feel I am “talking” to a computer screen. I also do not enjoy writing in the discussion boards to my classmates who are sitting right beside me, when I could just turn and talk to them about whatever questions I have. � It is hard to critique and learn from your work if you have forgotten what the assignment was about by the time that you get the graded paper back. � I think it is much easier for a teacher to be there in the classroom with you rather than in another state. � I feel it was not interactive enough. I need someone to explain to me and show examples and make sure I understand it. Maybe if there was a live chat during the class to check into and ask questions and get answers right away it might be more successful. � I absolutely hate not having a real person explain things to me. Facilitators’ comments echoed these sentiments: � Feedback has been inexcusably slow, in our opinion, and probably more importantly, incredibly sparse. Both students have expressed a frustration about what they are learning in the course and whether they will be well pre- pared for the AP exam. Neither felt the discussions generated on the boards were of much value, and both expressed the desire to hear from the instructor at some point. � We are small, and even our most difficult classes are presented in a very personal and non-threatening way. This class was impersonal and very difficult. � The main reason these students dropped was the way that the instructor com- municated with them. I don’t want to make this a personal attack, but they just didn’t have a good connection with her at all. Because her grading is necessar- ily very meticulous, it is very important for her to develop a strong positive connection with the students. That just didn’t happen. 332 C. de la Varre et al. � It took over a school day for a reply to be sent to us concerning questions with assignments. Therefore, we would get the help right before, or even after, the assignment was to be sent. Parental influence One recurring theme was parental influence on their child’s decision to drop the course. In some instances parents were concerned about the effect of lower class grades on grade point average (GPA) or valedictorian status. Facilitators reported that some parents placed priority on extracurricular activities rather than on educa- tion. Parents also expressed concerns about the course rigor, and even moral objec- tions to content: � A few parents complained that their child is working on this course at home and spending all of their free time on this course. I think this is a good thing, but for some reason the parents don’t. � The adults quickly move in to defend their child and don’t allow them to struggle and learn. If they stick with it throughout the year, chances are they will pass and do well on the exam in the spring, but it is hard to convince kids (and parents) to do that. � The student’s parents feel the extracurricular activities are more important than this class. � The mother felt that the content of the book was not acceptable for her child to be reading. She understood that this was a college-level class and book, but felt that the book went against their family’s values. This is a hard one to argue with as I cannot question the morals and values of our students’ fami- lies. This discussion continued with the other parents, and it was decided as a group that they were going to discontinue the course. � His family feel his life experiences that he is participating in outside of school are just as beneficial. I tried to get him caught up and worked with our coun- selor but he has made his mind up and his parents agree with his decision. Combination of factors Perhaps one of the more important findings in our view is that many of the com- ments received from students clearly indicate that students’ challenges were multi- factorial. In fact, the majority of reasons for dropping out involved multiple factors. The following examples illustrate this: � I understand that this class is supposed to be challenging, but I was just not prepared to take it on. Also this experience helped me realize that I prefer to have a physical teacher in front of me rather than a computerized course. I don’t think this learning style was for me. I also found myself confused when trying to find out when things were due and where to find assignments because everything was scattered around. I did not understand the method of date that was used. � There are several reasons why I dropped the course. I do not feel that the Internet classroom is the best way for me to learn as a student. I feel more Distance Education 333 comfortable in a classroom with a teacher giving me directions every day where I can ask a question and get an immediate response. Grades were not returned in a timely fashion, and therefore we could not get an accurate picture of how we were doing. Directions were not always given as clearly as they could have been. Since the teacher wasn’t right there with us, we couldn’t get answers as quickly as we may have needed. The class itself caused me stress because I was left wondering about so many things that the teacher did not have time to answer. � Firstly, I do not feel up to the workload/level of difficulty in the course work. In normal English classes I have always excelled, but I am apparently just not ready for the higher level of academics the course requires. Also, it is very hard for me to keep up with assignments via the convoluted technology of Blackboard. I always feel as if I’m missing something. The impersonal feel of Blackboard likewise attributes to my inability to forge a personal connection to the instructor and other classmates. I am not very adept with non-verbal face-to-face communication, and it shows in the Blackboard environment. And while a personal connection and live discussion may not be the only ways to learn English, they are the best ways for me. Problems with the technology or the online medium sometimes led to confusion and lower confidence or motivation, while individual traits or characteristics, for exam- ple, being a poor reader, may have been barriers to student success. In at least one instance, an additional reason that a number of students dropped out was because their school did not follow the design and format of the online course: � I knew it would be a challenge; however, I did not think it would be as com- plicated as it was. Due to scheduling conflicts at my school, all of the students would have access to the computer lab at different times. This made solving technical problems extremely difficult. Also, we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss our readings, homework, or even frustrations with anyone else. My reason for dropping the class was not how the program was set up, or run, it was because of scheduling conflicts and the class not being carried out in the way that it was meant to be. However, even in this situation students tended to give more than one reason for dropping out: � I signed up for AP English knowing it was an online course. I did not know that we would not have a class period to do this. I think that was our school’s fault. Every student had to go in during a separate study hall and do their assignments. I could not discuss any of the assignments with them. I also did not like that fact that my teacher lives in [another state]. If I had a question I couldn’t simply just ask her, I had to email her, which could take a whole day for a response. Comments by facilitators also often referenced multiple reasons for dropout: � Difficulty navigating the website (Blackboard) and frustration with the differences between it and other distance learning formats he had previously 334 C. de la Varre et al. experienced. He preferred a more anonymous and self-paced type of distance learning. � Neither girl was ready for an AP class or an advanced online class: both had difficulty keeping pace with the course schedule, both had difficulty working in such an independent manner while wrestling with such difficult material. � She always takes a long time on her tests because she wants to do her best. She is also a student who likes to ask a great deal of questions about assign- ments to make sure she understands the assignment. She likes immediate feed- back so she can get started on it. An online course doesn’t fit her learning style. � This course has been an eye opener and a great challenge. The biggest concern they had at the beginning was that the course would count against their GPA. So, we allowed them to take the course as pass or fail. Now, I believe it’s just the time commitment that is an issue. Disagreement between facilitator and student reasons for dropping out In most cases, the reasons for dropping out reported by students and their facilitators were similar. However, occasionally the reasons for dropping out given by facilitator and student did not match. When facilitators believed that students were unmoti- vated or immature, unsurprisingly students would provide different reasons for drop- ping out. For example, one facilitator stated that, “they quit because they have a little ‘lazy streak’ in them. I don’t think they would admit this to you.” In another facilitator’s opinion, “determining why teenagers do anything is not easy.” Several students who claimed to be dropping the course due to conflicting class schedules were, according to the facilitators, actually worried about their GPAs. Other students reported that they did not like the online format or lack of immediate feedback while their facilitator said they were dropping the course due to over-scheduling. It is pos- sible that both perspectives were valid, as in many instances students dropped out for a combination of factors. It is also possible that in some cases facilitators were not necessarily aware of students’ reasons for dropping the course. However, as one facilitator opined, “I think lack of confidence, willingness to take risks, and fear of failure were probably at the heart of all the excuses.” Discussion The first two research questions that guided the study concerned the reasons that rural high school students dropped out of an advanced online course and whether those reasons involved students, online teachers, on-site facilitators, and/or others. Several of the reasons that rural high school students reported for dropping out of the online course were largely due to factors related to themselves and their experiences (e.g., time constraints, and motivation). However, some of the reasons that students dropped out of the online course also involved others (e.g., online teacher immediacy and parental influence). Specifically, the reasons that students dropped out of the online course included scheduling and time constraints, academic rigor of class and motivation, problems with technology, problems with online medium and teacher immediacy, and parental influences. In our view, the most notable finding was that most of the reasons for dropping out involved multiple factors. That is, not only were several factors related to dropping out identified in the study overall but students typically reported that their reason for dropping out entailed multiple factors. Distance Education 335 Dropping out due to scheduling and time constraints was consistent with previ- ous findings and contentions that time-management and study skills are important for online learning (Barbour & Reeves, 2009; Oblender, 2002; Wang & Newlin, 2000) and that rural youth are less prepared in their study skills (Irvin, Meece, Byun, Farmer, & Hutchins, 2011). Dropping out because of the academic rigor of the class was consistent with research indicating that previous achievement is related to course completion (Dupin-Bryant, 2004; Lim, 2001; Morris et al., 2005; Osborn, 2001) and that rural youth may be less prepared in their academic background than their computer skills (Irvin et al., 2011). The related issue of motivation also reflects research supporting and views highlighting the importance of students’ motivation in online courses (Artino, 2008; Cavanaugh, 2007; Chen & Jang, 2010; Huett, Kalinowski, Moller, & Huett, 2008; Keller, 1999; Roblyer, Davis, Mills, Marshall, & Pape, 2008; Roblyer & Marshall, 2002) as well as others’ perspective that moti- vation may be particularly salient for rural students (D’Amico et al., 1996; Irvin et al., 2009). The problems with the online medium and lack of teacher immediacy underscore the importance of the interactivity between online teachers and students that has been noted by many researchers (Abdous & Yen, 2010; Arbaugh, 2001; Davis & Roblyer, 2005; Gilbert & Moore, 1998; Hara & Kling, 1999; Hobbs, 2004; Roach & Lemasters, 2006; Susman, 1998; Thurmond et al., 2002). The third research question guiding this study focused on whether students’ rea- sons for dropping out were similar to or different from the reasons on-site facilitators reported for the student dropping out. In general, dropout reasons given by students and facilitators referenced similar themes. When a student’s reasons for dropping out were different than the reasons given by that student’s facilitator, it is possible that the difference was simply a matter of perspective. For example, a student per- ceived to be lazy or immature by the facilitator, may have stated that they dropped the course because they wanted to enjoy their senior year rather than have a demanding workload or schedule. The fourth research question focused on whether the factors involved were ones that students, online teachers, on-site facilitators, and/or others could address in order to reduce dropout. Results indicate that most of the factors purportedly involved in students dropping out from the advanced online course were malleable. Potential factors on which to focus in dropout prevention programs included sched- uling and time constraints, academic rigor and pace of class, students, motivation, technology problems, and problems with the online medium and teacher immediacy. Furthermore, each of these factors could be addressed by students, online teachers, on-site facilitators, and/or others (e.g., parents and course providers). However, it is likely that dropout prevention efforts which utilize all of these individuals will be more successful as it may create a system of support. Implications The finding that each student reported that his/her own reason for dropping out of the online course usually involved multiple factors has rather broad implications. Therefore, these implications are discussed first. Specifically, as students reportedly drop out because of multiple factors then course providers, online instructors, on-site facilitators, and students should be cognizant of and, when feasible, attend to those multiple factors. If several factors are operant but some of these factors are ignored, then it is likely that a student may still drop out of an online course. Efforts to stem 336 C. de la Varre et al. dropout may also need to be more targeted and individualized because the specific set of multiple factors involved for a particular student is likely to vary. Our findings indicate that important steps should occur to prepare and advise stu- dents and their families before an online course begins. Students could participate in an orientation that provides an introduction to and an overview of the demands, expectations, background, and prerequisites needed for online courses, including homework requirements and online grading practices. Rural students often have close, long-term relationships with their teachers who know their students, and often students’ families, very well, (Burney & Cross, 2006; de la Varre, Keane, Irvin, & Hannum, 2009; Herzog & Pittman, 1995). Teachers are therefore well positioned to advise their students about whether to enroll for an online course based on preferred instructional approaches and student characteristics like the ability to self-regulate and manage their time, level of motivation, and extracurricular obligations. Course providers could also assess students’ strengths and weaknesses as learners through pretests. Such advising or counseling prior to the course beginning could potentially ameliorate dropout because of problems with scheduling and time constraints, the online format, academic rigor of the course, and motivation. As noted earlier, students in small rural schools may have to enrol in advanced online courses in order to access particular classes (Hannum et al., 2009). Therefore, schools offering such courses should be prepared to provide additional local support to their online learners. For those who do participate in online courses, helping stu- dents with effective time-management skills and maintaining motivation may be beneficial (D’Amico et al., 1996; Haughey & Muirhead, 1999; Irvin et al., 2009; Land, Nwadei, Stufflebeam, & Olaka, 2003; Parker, 1999). Schools themselves should ensure that students enrolled in online courses are adequately provided with a suitable learning environment—a quiet classroom with a dedicated computer and class period (not a spot at the back of the library or classroom while another class is being taught). In addition, students should have realistic expectations for student–teacher engagement and responsiveness. It is improbable that an online instructor could have a personal relationship with every student in an online course when they often teach multiple course sections with as many as 100 students or more (Hannum & McCombs, 2008). So online instructors are less likely to be familiar with their stu- dents and unable to provide the level of individualized support, interactivity, and the “family-like atmosphere” to which rural students may be accustomed (Burney & Cross, 2006; Irvin et al., 2009). Instructors should, however, be aware of the specific challenges of teaching online learners in rural settings. A systemic attempt to address multiple dropout factors for online students at the local school level should also include parent education, so that parents have the information necessary to more fully understand the nature and requirements of the online course. This information should include access to the reading list or curricu- lum content, to prevent dropout due to issues such as conflict with parental or family values, as at least one of our schools experienced. Suggestions for ways for parents to support their child during enrollment in online courses may also be beneficial, as well as awareness of the time demands such courses may require of their child beyond the school environment, and watching for signs of stress and being over- whelmed. Finally, facilitators should be adequately trained in how to support students, made aware of the demands of online courses, and proactive in offering motivation Distance Education 337 and study strategies to help students cope with the rigors of advanced online course- work. Facilitators should be present during the class if possible, or at least readily accessible and on hand to troubleshoot technology if needed. Strengths and limitations This study had several strengths but also some limitations that should be considered. A key strength was the use of qualitative data. Specifically, students’ self-reported reasons for dropping out allowed for the identification of reasons that may be obscured in quantitative studies because quantitative studies typically measure a nar- row set of constructs with less depth. The use of qualitative data and reporting stu- dents’ perceptions were strengths in identifying the finding that multiple factors were likely involved in dropout from online courses; an important point in our view. That is, each individual student’s reasons for dropping out typically contained multi- ple factors and reflected several of the themes that emerged in the data. However, the use of a qualitative approach was also a limitation in some respects. For one, causality could not be definitively determined with a qualitative approach. Thus, rea- sons that students claimed led them to drop out may not have been the actual cause. In addition, students’ self-reported reasons for dropping out may be prone to social desirability, and other factors may also have biased their perceptions. Little previous research on dropout from online courses has involved K–12 stu- dents attending rural schools. Thus, the sample and setting are strengths of this study. The use of qualitative data is also an appropriate initial step toward increasing our understanding of dropout in this setting and among online learners in rural schools. Nonetheless, the rural US setting means that the findings from this study may also have limited generalizability, as results may be specific to this population and context only. Also, because the online course was a single subject and used an asynchronous delivery format, our results may not generalize to different subjects and delivery formats. The inclusion and comparison of the on-site facilitators’ reasons for dropout with students’ own reasons for dropout was an additional strength of this study. Though facilitator reports are also subject to the same limitations outlined in regard to stu- dent reports, as facilitators’ reasons were largely similar to students the facilitator data provided some corroborating evidence. This congruence was also important as it indicated that students and facilitators have similar views of the factors involved in dropout. Thus, our results support the position of other researchers of the central- ity of on-site facilitators in reducing dropout in online courses, because our findings indicated that on-site facilitators may be aware of relevant factors (Barbour & Mulcahy, 2008; Charania et al., 2008; Hannum & McCombs, 2008; Irvin et al., 2009; Roblyer, 2003; Roblyer et al., 2007). Conclusion Cavanaugh et al. (2004) included a caveat in their meta-analysis that “K–12 distance education is fundamentally unique” (p. 77). In the words of one student in our study who dropped out, “I am getting the impression that you do not fully understand the complications and differing schedules of a high school junior. It is not at all the same as being a freshman in college.” Our study begins to address these points by clarifying some of the factors involved in dropping out of advanced online courses 338 C. de la Varre et al. among youth in rural US high schools. Future research may build upon our study by more directly investigating and testing whether these factors are distinct from those involved in dropping out from online courses in other samples (e.g., youth in urban high schools, other countries, and college students). The use of quantitative studies and experimental or strong quasi-experimental designs may also help provide more large-scale corroboration of our findings as well as robust tests of whether the impli- cations derived from such results are in fact part of causal processes. Acknowledgements This study was supported by grant R305A04056 from the Institute of Education Sciences: United States Department of Education. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not represent the granting agency. Notes on contributors Claire de la Varre received her PhD in Education (Educational Psychology) from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her research interests include e-learning, distance education, social presence, online communication, and the formation of virtual communities. Matthew J. Irvin is an assistant professor of Educational Psychology and Research at the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on the learning and development of youth from rural areas and youth with disabilities. Specific interests include online learning, motiva- tion, social-emotional development, and resilience. Adam W. Jordan is an assistant professor of early Childhood/Special Education at The University of North Georgia located in Dahlonega, GA. His research areas include rural edu- cation, alternative schooling, and teacher rationale development. 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Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/ 344 C. de la Varre et al. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1603_4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1603_4 http://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/advanced/index.html http://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/advanced/index.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.92.1.137 http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/ Abstract Review of the literature Role of online instructors Role of on-site facilitators Role and experiences of students Limitations of existing literature Purpose and context of the current study Methods Results Scheduling and time constraints Academic rigor of class and motivation Technology problems Problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy Parental influence Combination of factors Disagreement between facilitator and student reasons for dropping out Discussion Implications Strengths and limitations Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes on con�trib�u�tors References 
work_satd7gzaojbw3kixfm7lvvuiky	----	Microsoft Word - final.doc An Adaptive Course Generation Framework Frederick W.B. Li1, Rynson W.H. Lau2, and Parthiban Dharmendran1 1 School of Engineering and Computing Sciences, Durham University, United Kingdom 2 Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ABSTRACT: Existing adaptive e-learning methods are supported by student (user) profiling for capturing student characteristics, and course structuring for organizing learning materials according to topics and levels of difficulties. Adaptive courses are then generated by extracting materials from the course structure to match the criteria specified in the student profiles. In addition, to handle advanced student characteristics, such as learning styles, course material annotation and programming-based decision rules are typically used. However, these additives demand certain programming skills from an instructor to proceed with course construction; they may also require building multiple course structures to handle practical pedagogical needs, which may be complicated to develop and maintain. In this paper, we propose a framework based on the concept space and the concept filters to support adaptive course generation where comprehensive student characteristics are considered. The concept space is a data structure for modeling student and course characteristics, while the concept filters are modifiers to determine how the course should be delivered. They offer a simple and unified way for modeling and processing a variety of student learning needs as well as different factors that affect course material relevance. Because of the “building block” nature of the concept nodes and the concept filters, the proposed framework is extensible. More importantly, our framework does not require instructors to equip with any programming skills when they construct adaptive e-learning course. Keywords: User profiling, student profiles, course profiles, resource profiles, adaptive e-Learning. INTRODUCTION e-Learning is a technology supported learning approach, where the students’ learning activities are assisted with communication and multimedia technologies (Li et al., 2008). This provides students with virtually unlimited access to knowledge and improves their learning through multi-modality materials. In addition, learning may also be adapted to individual paces, allowing students to learn at any time and place to match their own needs. On top of this, student (user) profiling can be added to capture student characteristics, such as learning preferences, background knowledge and learning progress, to help generate tailored learning materials and support adaptive e-learning. Early work, such as InterBook (Brusilovsky et al., 1998), utilizes a hierarchical structure to organize course materials according to the topics and levels of difficulties, and uses student profiles as matching criteria to extract tailored learning materials from the course structure to produce adaptive e-learning courses. Recent work (Wu et al., 2001, De Bra et al., 2003, Stash et al., 2004) resorts the adaptive course generation to course material annotation and programming-based decision rules. They facilitate the generation of adaptive courses for students with different learning styles, such as example-oriented or activity-oriented learners (Honey et al., 1992) by selecting appropriate type of course materials and presenting them in a desired sequence. However, such methods demand more technical skills from an instructor for constructing adaptive courses. In addition, it is not straight-forward to apply such methods to handle certain practical pedagogical needs, such as constructing a course for students with very different academic backgrounds, balancing learning workload across course aspects when accommodating student learning preferences, and dynamically adjusting the depth of a course topic for delivery based on its popularity or other factors. To allow ordinary instructors constructing adaptive courses, which account a variety of pedagogical needs, without acquiring prior programming knowledge or relying on technical assistance, we have developed a framework based on the concept space and the concept filters. The concept space is a data structure for modeling student and course characteristics, while the concept filters are modifiers to determine how the course should be disseminated. Based on them, we also provide a unified three- tier profiling mechanism, which comprises student, course and resource profiles, to facilitate the adaptive course generation. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a survey of related work. Section 3 presents the proposed framework. Section 4 evaluates the proposed framework through a number of experiments. Finally, Section 5 briefly concludes the work presented in this paper. RELATED WORK A learning process is driven by “what to learn”, i.e., the scope of learning, and “how to learn”, i.e., how a student approaches such learning scope. Adaptive e-learning addresses these two questions by offering students with tailored learning materials. Existing work on adaptive e-learning tackles this problem by applying student profiles on well organized courseware. More specifically, a student profile captures the learning preferences, background knowledge/experiences and learning progress of the student. It forms the basis for filtering a pool of course materials to pick out relevant ones. For instance, InterBook (Brusilovsky et al., 1998) organizes course materials in a hierarchical structure along with indices according to the topics and level of difficulties. (Middleton et al., 1998) improves the discovery of relevant course materials by knowledge classification based on ontology and collaborative choices made by a group of users. The ontology (Studer et al., 1998) formulates the grouping and the relation among concepts. It is commonly applied to organize course materials and to form the metric for determining the user required materials. Another example can be found in (Dolog et al., 2004). The utilization of collaborative information (Balabanović et al., 1997) can enhance the accuracy of the retrieved course materials, as it complements the incompleteness or impreciseness of individual user profiles. (Freyne et al., 2007) has exploited user browsing and searching patterns to give more precise modeling on collaborative information. All of the above methods focus on addressing the “what to learn” problem. The “how to learn” problem is also crucial to adaptive e-learning. Student learning styles (Felder et al., 1988) in terms of psychological features, such as sequential, global, active and reflective, are considered as a key to address this problem. Ways to acquire and understand student learning styles have been proposed by (Schiaffino et al., 2008). The implication of learning style is that a student may need to perform different tasks or follow a different sequence and abstraction level of learning materials in order to understand a piece of concept. (Papanikolaou et al., 2003) applies learning styles to allow students to learn a concept through different interaction styles, such as theory-oriented, exercise-oriented or activity-oriented. MOT+AHA! (Stash et al., 2004) supports more types of learning styles by course material annotation and programming-based decision rules. This is undeniably more powerful. However, it demands more technical skills from an instructor or relies on technical assistance for constructing adaptive courses, which is practically unfavorable. In addition, it is not straight-forward to apply such a method to handle complicated but practical pedagogical needs, such as constructing a course for students with very different academic backgrounds, balancing learning workload across course aspects when student learning preferences are accounted, and adjusting the depth of a course topic for delivery based on the dynamic nature of course material relevance and the reference material exploration. Note that the relevance of course materials depends not only on the needs of individual students or an entire cohort, but also on some dynamic factors such as popularity, maturity, stability, features and innovativeness of the course materials (Yue et al., 2004). On the other hand, students usually learn independently in an e-learning environment and use Web searching as a popular means for problem solving and information exploration. The main concern here is the students’ ability to identify relevant reference materials. Undeniably, PageRank (Page et al., 1998), which examines the entire link structure of the Web to determine the importance of each Web page, is the most popular technique to this searching problem. (Qiu et al., 2006) extends PageRank by generating topic specific rankings of Web pages and allows matching such rankings against user profiles to obtain tailored search results. This partially addresses the reference material exploration problem in adaptive e-learning. However, we note that both the student learning style and the relevance of course materials due to external factors (Yue et al., 2004) play crucial roles in determining the suitability of reference materials, but they have not been properly addressed. OUR FRAMEWORK Our research on adaptive e-learning leads to a very interesting finding. Existing work supports adaptive e-learning mainly through student-profiling, which requires a dedicated course material structure. However, we note that the definitions of many important parameters that support adaptive e-learning, such as different aspects of learning styles, cohort (or group) learning preferences and course content related factors, are not set in the student profiles; they should be defined together with individual courses. Hence, we have developed a framework based on the concept space and the concept filters. The concept space is a data structure for modeling student and course characteristics, while the concept filters are modifiers to determine how the course should be disseminated. Based on them, we also provide a unified three-tier profiling mechanism, which comprises student, course and resource profiles, to facilitate the adaptive course generation. Concept Space A concept space K is defined as a confined set of knowledge. As shown in Figure 1, it is modelled as a collection of concept nodes nk . Each nk represents a small piece of knowledge and is uniquely identified with an index n. It is modelled as a multi- dimensional space, where each dimension is referred to as an aspect of the knowledge that nk represents. The aspects can be defined based on ontology or the expertise of a course designer. For example, a concept node “content management and layout design” may constitute a number of aspects: “content management system (CMS)”, “layout design applications” and “CSS programming”, etc.. Each aspect of a concept node attaches two indicators, an aspect weight and a level of abstraction, which are defined with a scale between 0 and 1. The aspect weight indicates the importance / relevance of an aspect, while the level of abstraction describes how detailed the corresponding learning materials of an aspect should be released. In addition, aspect groups can be set up to group related aspects. We have defined three aspect groups in our current implementation, namely the interaction style group, content style group and the polysemy group, which handle the learning activities, learning approaches and the multiple meanings of a concept, respectively. We allow a course designer to define a course using concept spaces rather than through constructing a complicated ontology hierarchy. This significantly simplifies the process of creating adaptive e-learning courses, making it possible for general instructors to create these courses without technical assistance. Pre‐condition (Kpre) Core (Kcore) Advanced (Kadv) … … … Filter 1 (f1) : {(r1,1, d1,1), (r1,2, d1,2), …, (r1,i, d1,j), …} Filter 2 (f2) : {(r2,1, d2,1), (r2,2, d2,2), …, (r2,i, d2,j), …} … Filter i (fi) : {(ri,1, di,1), (ri,2, di,2), …, (ri,i, di,j), …} … Concept Spaces: Concept Filters: Concept Node: … Figure 1: The unified profile structure. Concept Filters Concept node filtering is a mechanism to shape a concept space to fulfil learning needs from different students. A concept filter comprises filters at different concept node levels, i.e., concept, aspect group and aspect levels. All types of filters are formulated in the same way as a list of (ri, di)-pairs, where ri and di are the weight for adjusting the importance and the abstraction level, respectively, of an element at a concept node level and both of them are defined with a scale between 0 and 1. A (0, 0)-pair means that the corresponding element should be ignored. While the weight indicates the importance of each element at a concept node level, the abstraction level indicates the degree of detail of the course material associated with the element to be presented to the student. In our implementation, we use concept filters to formulate individual / collaborative learning preferences, the learning / content / interaction styles and the external factors. However, the concept filters are not limited to these usages. Any learning needs that require presenting learning materials with a preferred order or abstraction level may also be modelled using concept filters. The idea of the concept filter is an important feature of our framework. It provides course designers a very handy tool for developing adaptive e-learning courses that take into account comprehensive student characteristics. Here, we discuss the construction of the concept filters. We do not attempt to illustrate the filter construction for all possible student characteristics. Instead, by discussing the filters used in our experiments, we lay out their design considerations, which set a reference for course designers to design other filters. Content Styles: They describe how the learning materials may be stylized to fit a student’s background so that the student may understand the course better. For example, a student without a computer science background may prefer to learn Web site construction using a non-programming approach. This requirement may not be well addressed by simply using ontology to extract the non-programming based learning materials, as this student may still need to learn some relevant programming concepts in order to meet the learning outcome requirements. Hence, we need to disseminate not only the non-programming based materials but also some essential programming based materials. With our framework, we setup content style filters using aspect group level filters, where each (ri, di)-pair in a filter is set to adjust the importance and the abstraction level of an aspect group. In addition, instead of using separate filters to process each concept node, we may setup a combined filter to process the aspect groups of all concept nodes in a course as a whole. For instance, suppose that we have a course with 3 concept nodes, where each concept node comprises 2 aspect groups. To handle students that may learn better if the course focuses more on the first aspect group of each concept node, the content style filter may be set in this form: {(1, L1), (1, S1), (1, L2), (0, 0), (1, L3), (1, S3)}, where Li represents a large value and Si represents a small one. For example, the first two (ri, di)-pairs show that the first and the second aspect groups of concept node 1 need to be disseminated in a high and low details, respectively. The (0, 0)-pair in the filter shows the second aspect group of concept node 2 needs not to be disseminated. Learning Styles: They describe how students may change the order and level of detail of the subject topics in learning a course. For instance, students with the global learning style can understand a course easier by studying some high level concepts to get an overview of the course first before going into the details. Students with the sequential learning style need to finish a topic before they can begin another one. To set the global learning style filters, we may initially assign small values to all level-of- abstraction items to extract a high level abstraction of course materials from each concept node. Such filters can be setup using aspect level filters to allow a precise control on the dissemination of individual aspects of each concept node. After a student has finished this learning stage, it will be marked in the student profile as a part of the prior knowledge. The learning goal will also be revised by taking out this prior knowledge. We then apply another global filter with larger values in the level-of- abstraction items to deliver students with more course details. This filtering and student profile updating processes are repeated until all relevant course contents have been delivered. Three-Tier Profiling As shown Figure 2, the three-tier profiling mechanism comprises student, course and resource profiles. A student profile stores the student background and the on-going learning scope. It also maintains records on how the student approaches a course. This student profile is course specific. The on-going learning scope is updated at each learning stage of a student to reflect his/her learning progress. A course profile helps maintain the course structure according to major subject topics and provides information on how students may learn the course with respect to a variety of learning, content and interaction styles. A resource profile models learning resources (Lehmann et al., 2008) authored by both the instructor and the peer students, where the instructor offers the course specific assumptions or pre-conditions while the students develop course related preferences based on their learning experiences. This resource profile offers informal help to support student learning of a particular course or across the whole discipline. Student Profile On‐going Learning  Scope Prior Knowledge Learning Preference Course Profile Course Content Pre‐requisites Cohort Learning  Preference External Factors Resource Profile Cohort Learning  Preference Course Pre‐condition  and Assumption External Factors Course Students External Content Style Learning Style Interaction Style Content Style Learning Style Interaction Style Learning  Scope Selection   Criteria Pre‐condition  (Kpre) Core (Kcore) Advanced (Kadv) Filter 1 (f1) Filter 2 (f2) … Filter i (fi) … Concept Spaces: Concept Filters: Unified ProfileThree‐Tier Profiling Student Authored  Learning Resource Figure 2: Conceptual model of the three-tier profiling mechanism. Unified Profile Structure Although the information maintained in the three types of profiles are significantly different, we note that the information within each profile can be categorized into learning scope and selection criteria for defining “what to learn” and the ways to determine it. Hence, we use a concept space structure and a concept filter set to formulate these two types of information, and let them form a unified profile structure, as shown in Figure 1. The unified profile structure is composed of three concept spaces, the pre-condition preK , core coreK and advanced advK concept spaces, plus a concept filter set F . Each of the concept spaces is modeled as a collection of concept nodes, which will be discussed in next sub-section. preK defines the prior requirements before tailor-made learning content can be determined, while coreK and advK define the core and the advanced learning contents. The concept filter set F is used to modify a concept space through adjusting the importance and the level of abstraction of each concept node inside the concept space. To form a student profile with this unified profile structure, preK defines the prior knowledge or experiences of a student, while coreK and advK give the core and advanced learning scopes of the student in a course context. These learning scopes are updated at each learning stage to reflect the student’s learning progress. The actual concept filter set F of these styles, which is used to generate adaptive courses, is stored in the course profile. It includes filters to handle the course specific learning preferences and a variety of learning, content and interaction styles. Note that the learning characteristics of a student can be captured through analyzing how the student deals with different learning activities (Schiaffino et al., 2008). To form a course profile with the unified profile structure, preK defines the pre- requisite or the entrance requirement of the course, while coreK and advK define the core and advanced learning scopes of the course. The concept filter set F includes filters to handle learning styles (Felder et al., 1988), content styles and interaction styles (Papanikolaou et al., 2003), which define how the course content can be matched with these styles. In addition, to allow an instructor to take into account meaningful student opinions for course design enhancement, the course profile also includes filters to describe the collaborative learning preferences of previous students. Finally, it also comprises filters to define the importance or relevance of each piece of course content against the external factors (Yue et al., 2004), such as popularity and maturity of the course materials. In contrast to the traditional learning environment, students in an e-learning environment may engage in learning more independently. The resource profile is designed to support such a need. It stores two types of information. First, it includes course specific assumptions or pre-conditions set by an instructor, which comprise definitions of the course or discipline specific terminologies and the relationship among them. As an example, we may define the course related synonym and the polysemy in a resource profile. Second, the resource profile also includes student authored learning resources (Lehmann et al., 2008) from peer students. These two types of information are formulated into concept nodes in the way that preK defines the set of concepts for exclusion, while coreK and advK give the core and the advanced concept definitions and relationships. The concept filter set F here includes filters to take care of the cohort learning preferences and the external factors that affect the concept relevance of the course. The difference between a course profile and a resource profile is that a course profile is set by the instructor for modelling the relation among major subject topics, while a resource profile allows both the instructor and peer students to collaboratively develop learning resources in terms of the course or discipline specific terminologies to aid independent learning. Pedagogically, a course profile formally defines how the instructor teaches a course, while a resource profile offers informal help to support student learning of a particular course or across the whole discipline. With the resource profile in place, when a student performs a Web search for reference materials, the query may be refined by the resource profile to help obtain better fit results, which match the context of the course or the whole discipline. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND EVALUATIONS We have conducted a number of experiments to demonstrate the generation of adaptive course notes to different students based on their characteristics. The experiments were conducted on the “Web Technologies” course offered to 25 students. The course design as shown in Table 1 is set by the course instructor. It lays out the definitions of the core and advanced concept nodes, the aspect groups and the aspects of each concept node, and the weight and the level of abstraction of each aspect. Note that the aspect groups are set up based on the programming and the non-programming types of content styles to indicate the approach that a course aspect will be disseminated to students. Table 1: The course design of the Web technology course. The students taken the course had a bachelor degree in either computer science (CS students) or other discipline (non-CS students). Their profiles are shown in Tables 2 and 3. The profiles store the students’ course relevant prior knowledge, learning styles that indicate their intrinsic and psychological features, and learning preferences that indicate their favorite topics of the course. The prior knowledge of each student on a course aspect is described with a scale between 0 (no knowledge) and 1 (complete knowledge). In addition, a student scored 0.6 or above on the prior knowledge of a course aspect means that the student has already gained an “above average” knowledge level on this course aspect; otherwise, he/she is considered as not having sufficient knowledge. To apply the students’ prior knowledge, a student was exempted from studying the core part of course aspect(s) if he/she had already obtained an above average knowledge level. For example, students S19 and S25 were exempted from studying the core part of Webpage Basics [HTML] (A2.1), but still needed to take the advanced part of it. To show what adaptive courses are produced for different students, we present and discuss the results here in groups based on the similarity of student characteristics. Non-CS Students with Experience in MS Access Database (Group A) As shown in Table 2, students S1, S2, S8, S13, S15 and S18 are non-CS students with above average knowledge in MS Access Database (A3.1). To let these students feel comfortable in learning such a technology-based course while freeing them from spending time to study the introductory materials of MS Access Database, the course was tailor-made to these students by considering their prior-knowledge and intrinsic characteristics. Prior-Knowledge and Content Style: The changes in course dissemination are shown in Figure 3. There are three bars associating with each course aspect to show the level of abstraction (LOA) to be delivered for that course aspect when a different student characteristic is applied. The first bar of each aspect indicates the deliverable LOA of that aspect as prescribed in the course design (Ref. Table 2). The second and the third bars show the changes in the aspect’s LOA after the students’ prior- knowledge and content style have been applied, respectively. Note that each bar comprises two parts. The darker part represents the core part of the course aspect, while the lighter one represents the advanced part of the course aspect. This convention is also applied to Figures 5, 7 and 9. Table 2: Profiles of the non-CS students. Table 3: Profiles of the CS students. When comparing the second bar of each course aspect against the first one, we note that the core part of A3.1, i.e., MS Access Database, was removed. This indicates that the students were exempted from studying MS Access Database as a result of their prior-knowledge. When comparing the third bar of each course aspect against the second one, we note that the LOAs of the programming based aspects, i.e., A1.3 and A2.3, are significantly reduced. (Note that A3.1 could not be further reduced, as its core part was already trimmed out based on the students’ prior-knowledge.) Such change is caused by applying the non-programming content style filters at the aspect group level of the course. These filters are shown as follows: Non-Programming Core Filter: {(1, 1), (1, 0.4), (1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1), (1, 0.2)} Non-Programming Advanced Filter: {(1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1), (0, 0)} where the (ri, di)-pairs in the two filters are used to adjust the LOAs of the aspect groups AG1.1, AG1.2, AG2.1, AG2.2, AG3.1, AG3.2. Applying such content style lets the students focus more on the non-programming based materials while still study the essential parts of the programming based materials to fulfill the course learning outcome requirement. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Concept Node 1 Concept Node 3Concept Node 2 Figure 3: Changes in course dissemination based on prior-knowledge and content style (Group A). Learning Style: Figure 4 shows the course dissemination after the learning styles have been applied. The course materials are delivered in batches (learning stages) by a prescribed sequence, which is illustrated by following the charts from left to right. As shown in Figure 4(a), to serve students with the global learning style, i.e., S1, S8, S13, S15 and S18, each aspect was divided into parts (which are delimited by the black lines in each bar) by applying the global learning style filters. In each learning stage, one part was picked from each course aspect and put together as a whole for dissemination. For the global learning filters, five aspect level filters were in place and applied one at a time in each learning stage in the following order: Global Learning Core Filter 1: {(1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5)} Global Learning Core Filter 2: {(1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1)} Global Learning Advanced Filter 1: {(1, 0.4), (1, 0.4), (1, 0.4), (1, 0.4), (1, 0.3), (1, 1), (1, 0.4), (1, 1)} Global Learning Advanced Filter 2: {(1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0.5), (1, 0), (1, 0.5), (0, 0)} Global Learning Advanced Filter 3: {(1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 0), (1, 1), (0, 0)} The advanced parts of the course aspects were divided into more parts than the core ones, as the advanced parts of the materials are much difficult to learn. In contrast, to serve students with the sequential learning style, i.e., S2, only one course aspect was delivered in each learning stage. Figure 4(b) shows the order of dissemination. For the sequential learning filters, eight aspect level filters were in place and applied one at a time in each learning stage. Each of the filters is set by having a (1, 1)-pair for the disseminating aspect and a (0, 0)-pair for all other aspects. Since the designed aspect dissemination sequence in our experiment was: A2.1, A1.3, A2.2, A1.1, A2.3, A3.2, A1.2, the first filter was set to: Sequential Learning Filter 1: {(0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (1, 1), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0)} where each of the filters was applied to both the core and the advanced parts of each course aspect. Note that the above global and sequential learning filters are also used for the rest of the experiments. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 Level of Abstraction A s p e c ts Order of Dissemination (a) Global learning style (S1, S8, S13, S15, S18) 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A2.1 A1.3 A2.2 A1.1 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 A1.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Order of Dissemination (b) Sequential learning style (S2) Figure 4: Course dissemination after applying learning styles (Group A). CS Students (Group B) As shown in Table 3, students S19 to S25 are CS students. They have above average knowledge in both CSS Programming (A1.3) and Ruby on Rails (A2.3) before taking the Web Technologies course. The course was tailor-made to allow these students to exempt from studying the core parts of these course aspects. It is shown in Figure 5 by comparing the second bars of A1.3 and A2.3 against the first ones. By considering the students’ background, the course was adjusted to allow the students to learn more programming based materials. This is achieved by applying the programming content style filters at the aspect group level of the course: Programming Core Filter: {(1, 0.2), (1, 1), (1, 0.2), (1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1)} Programming Advanced Filter: {(1, 0.6), (1, 1), (1, 0.6), (1, 1), (1, 0.2), (1, 1)} 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Concept node 1 Concept node 3Concept node 2 Figure 5: Changes in course dissemination based on prior-knowledge and content style (Group B). The result of the filtering process is illustrated by the third bar of each course aspect. It shows that the LOAs of the non-programming based materials are reduced significantly. Figures 6(a) and 6(b) show the changes in course dissemination after applying the global learning filters and the sequential learning filters, respectively. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 Level of Abstraction A s p e c ts Order of Dissemination (a) Global learning style (S23, S24) 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A2.1 A1.3 A2.2 A1.1 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 A1.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Order of Dissemination (b) Sequential learning style (S19, S20, S21, S22) Figure 6: Course dissemination after applying learning styles (Group B). Non-CS Students with Experience in Layout Design Application (Group C) Students S7, S10 and S11 are non-CS students with above average knowledge in Layout Design Application (A1.2) before taking the Web Technologies course. In addition, student S7 had the sequential learning style, while S10 and S11 did not have any specific learning style. We show the changes in course dissemination in Figures 7 and 8. The experimental results are similar to those in Section 5.1, except that the removal of the core part of the course aspect A3.1 is now replaced by removing the core part of the course aspect A1.2, due to the difference in students’ prior-knowledge. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Concept node 1 Concept node 3Concept node 2 Figure 7: Changes in course dissemination based on prior-knowledge and content style (Group C). 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A2.1 A1.3 A2.2 A1.1 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 A1.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Order of Dissemination Figure 8: Course dissemination after applying the sequential learning style (S7) (Group C). Other Non-CS Students (Group D) The rest of the non-CS students had no knowledge in any course aspects. Hence, by comparing the second bars of all course aspects against the first ones as shown in Figure 9, no change was made to the course design after applying students’ prior- knowledge. However, after applying the non-programming content style filters, the change in course dissemination was similar to that in Section 5.1, where the LOAs of the programming based course materials were significantly reduced. The tailor-made course dissemination for these students is shown in Figure 10. Interestingly, only students with the sequential learning style and none with the global learning style were in this student group. We believe that this was because these students had never studied any computer related subjects before. Thus, they could not study multiple topics together at the same time. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A1.1 A1.2 A1.3 A2.1 A2.2 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Concept node 1 Concept node 3Concept node 2 Figure 9: Changes in course dissemination based on prior-knowledge and content style (Group D). 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 A2.1 A1.3 A2.2 A1.1 A2.3 A3.1 A3.2 A1.2 L e v e l o f A b s tr a c ti o n Aspects Order of Dissemination Figure 10: Course dissemination after applying the sequential learning style (S3, S4, S5, S6, S16) (Group D). Learning Preferences During our experiments, there were students indicated that they preferred to learn more on certain course aspects, including A1.1, A2.2 and A2.3. Such learning preferences are shown in Tables 2 and 3. To cope with this kind of request, learning preference filters were set up as shown in Table 4. In fact, learning preference filter design is not straightforward and it largely relies on the experience of the course instructor. Here, we show the rationale for the filter settings together with some experimental results. Regarding the learning preference of course aspect A1.1, i.e., Content Management Systems, as it is a non- programming aspect, which should be part of the learning scope of non-CS students, the filter should be designed to process requests from CS students, who are only assigned to study the core part of A1.1. As shown in Table 4, the preference extraction filter is set to add the advanced part of A1.1 for CS students to study, while the course adjustment filter removes some LOAs from the advanced part of A3.2, which is relatively less important by judging its aspect weight from the course design (Ref. Table 1). As a result, the learning preference of A1.1 from non-CS students, S7 and S10, needed not be processed. To process the learning preference of A1.1 from student S19 (a CS student), the LOAs of the advanced part of A1.1 and A3.2 became 0.4 and 0.1, respectively. Course Aspect Preference Extraction Filter Course Adjustment Filter A1.1 Adv.: {(1, 1), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0)} Adv.: {(0, 0), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 0.5)} A2.2 Adv.: {(0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (1, 1), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0)} Adv.: {(1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 0.5)} A2.3 Core: {(0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (0, 0), (1, 0.5), (0, 0), (0, 0)} Adv.: {(1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1), (1, 1), (1, 1), (0, 0), (1, 1), (1, 1)} Table 4: Learning preference filters The design of the learning preference filters for A2.2 follows quite closely to that of A1.1, as they are of similar nature. Hence, they are also designed to let a CS student study the advanced part of A2.2 while removing some LOAs from the advanced part of A3.2. As student S24 made such a learning preference, the LOAs of the advanced part of A2.2 and A3.2 for S24 became 0.6 and 0.1, respectively. The learning preference filters for A2.3 serve the need for non-CS students, who are not required to study this course aspect according to the content style. Hence, the filters are designed to allow these students to study certain details of the core part of A2.3 by scarifying the advanced part of the Layout Design Application (A1.2). As a result, the LOA of the core part of A2.3 for student S2 and S9 became 0.3, while the LOA of the advanced part of A1.2 for these two students became 0. In contrast, although student S25 also made this learning preference, this filter did not apply to this student as A2.3 was part of the learning scope. Discussions The above results depict the generation of adaptive courses to different types of students. They form a showcase to indicate the intuitiveness, entirety and extensibility of our framework. Here, we discuss these features in detail as follows: Intuitiveness: Our framework offers a handy way for instructors to develop supports for processing different student characteristics. For instance, to support content styles, we use aspect groups to annotate programming and non-programming oriented materials in the course design, followed by setting up appropriate concept filters to define how these types of course materials are disseminated. Likewise, we may also handle interaction styles (Papanikolaou et al., 2003), including theory- oriented, exercise-oriented or activity-oriented learning, in a similar way by defining corresponding aspect groups and concept filters. In contrast, existing methods, such as AES-CS (Triantafillou et al., 2002), InterBook (Brusilovsky et al., 1998), iWeaver (Wolf, 2003) and MOT+AHA! (Stash et al., 2004), adopt the adaptive hypermedia concept (Brusilovsky, 2001) to arrange course materials as a hierarchy of hyperlinked documents, followed by applying adaptive annotation to label the supported learning style(s) to individual pieces of course materials. For course dissemination, either adaptive navigation and/or direct guidance are used to present selected views of course materials and/or provide suggestions on course material navigation, respectively. In addition, as in MOT+AHA! (Stash et al., 2004), conditional logics may be added to define rules for selecting course materials against the student learning styles and govern the presentation sequences of the course materials. However, this implicitly requires an instructor to have some programming concepts before he/she may be able to construct a course, or alternatively to seek help from a technical assistant. Both are practically unfavorable. Entirety: Another important feature of our framework is entirety, which is twofold: the vertical and the horizontal perspectives. In the vertical perspective, our framework offers concept nodes, aspect groups and concept filters. They allow an instructor to process student characteristics comprehensively as a whole to produce better adaptive courses. In particular, our experiments have revealed the processing of students’ prior-knowledge, learning styles, content styles and learning preferences along with the results. In the horizontal perspective, our framework allows an instructor to construct a course using concept nodes and to apply concept filters to “shape” the course. This idea is particular important, as the concept filter helps the instructor customize the course by considering all the course aspects as a whole. For instance, when handling the learning preferences in our experiments, we did not only take the learning preferences into account to amend the relevant course aspects, we also adjusted other course aspects to balance the learning workload of the students. To our knowledge, this feature has not been addressed in existing adaptive e- learning systems. Extensibility: One of the design goals of our framework is to allow an instructor to construct learning materials incrementally and to extend an e-learning course to support different student characteristics. The rationale for us to provide the extensibility feature to our framework is that it is hard for an instructor to get everything in place before offering an adaptive e-learning course, as this may incur a high initial course development time, which may not be practical. In addition, we believe that after getting some on-going teaching experiences and student feedbacks, the ways for processing different student characteristics, such as learning styles, may need to be revised to improve the dissemination of the course materials. Due to the “building block” nature of the concept node and the concept filters, it is easy for an instructor to construct new concept filters to support further learning needs. This is particularly in line with the on-going researches in supporting adaptive e-learning by learning styles (Brown et al., 2009). In contrast, the support of extensibility is either limited or complicated in existing adaptive learning e-learning systems. For example, AES-CS (Triantafillou et al., 2002), InterBook (Brusilovsky et al., 1998), iWeaver (Wolf, 2003) and MANIC (Stern et al., 2000) provide no mechanism to support extensibility. Although MOT+AHA! (Stash et al., 2004) comprises conditional logics that may offer such a feature, as discussed earlier; it is rather difficult for a typical instructor to extend such a system by himself/herself. CONCLUSION In this paper, we have proposed a framework based on the concept space and the concept filters. Based on them, we also provide a unified three-tier profiling mechanism, which comprises student, course and resource profiles, to facilitate the adaptive course generation. Our framework uses concept nodes to model course content instead of relying on the construction of complicated ontology hierarchies. The advantage of the concept node idea is that it is much simpler for general instructors to construct their courses. In addition, the framework has an extensible nature, as the concept node structure, aspects and aspect groups, and concept filters can be treated as building blocks and tools to model further learning needs. Hence, they can form the foundation for developing variety of adaptive e-learning systems. As a future work, we are now investigating the appropriate visual-based user interface design for instructors to construct and manipulate the concept nodes and the concept filters. Our objective is to allow instructors to focus more on the pedagogic issues when designing the concept nodes and the concept filters during the development of an adaptive e-learning course. For example, the instructor may focus on how a course should be disseminated, rather than on defining the numbers in the concept filters. REFERENCES Balabanović, M., & Shoham, Y. (1997). Fab: Content-Based, Collaborative Recommendation. Communications of the ACM, 40(3), 66-72. Brown, E., Brailsford, T., Fisher, T., & Moore, A. (2009). Evaluating Learning Style Personalization in Adaptive Systems: Quantitative Methods and Approaches, IEEE Trans. on Learning Technologies, 2(1), 10-22. Brusilovsky, P., Eklund, J., & Schwarz, E. (1998). Web-Based Education for All: A Tool for Development Adaptive Courseware. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1-7), 291-300. Brusilovsky, P. (2001). Adaptive Hypermedia, User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction, 11, 87- 110. De Bra, P., Aerts, A., Berden, B., de Lange, B., Rousseau, B., Santic, T., Smits, D., & Stash, N. (2003). AHA! The Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture. Proc. Hypertext and Hypermedia, 81-84. Dolog, P., Henze, N., Nejdl, W., & Sintek, M. (2004). Personalization in Distributed e-Learning Environments. Proc. World Wide Web Alt., 170-179. Felder, R., & Silverman, L. (1988). Learning and Teaching Styles. Journal of Engineering Education, 78(7), 674–681. Freyne, J., Farzan, R., Brusilovsky, P., Smyth, B., & Coyle, M. (2007). Collecting Community Wisdom: Integrating Social Search & Social Navigation. Proc. Intelligent User Interfaces, 52-61. Honey, P., & Mumford A. (1992). The Manual of Learning Styles. Peter Honey Publications. Lehmann, L., Hildebrandt, T., Rensing, C., & Steinmetz, R. (2008). Capture, Management, and Utilization of Lifecycle Information for Learning Resources, IEEE Trans. on Learning Technologies, 1(1), 75-87. Li, Q., Lau, R., Shih, T., & Li, F. (2008). Technology Supports for Distributed and Collaborative Learning over the Internet. ACM Trans. on Internet Technology, 8(2), Article No. 5. Middleton, S., Shadbolt, N., & de Roure, D. (2004). Ontological User Profiling in Recommender Systems. ACM Trans.on Information Systems, 22(1), 54-88. Page, L., Brin, S., Motwani, R., & Winograd, T. (1998). The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web, Technical report, Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project. Papanikolaou, K., Grigoriadou, M., Kornilakis, H., & Magoulas, G. (2003). Personalizing the Interaction in a Web-based Educational Hypermedia System: the case of INSPIRE, User Modeling and User- Adapted Interaction, 13(3), 213-267. Qiu, F., & Cho, J. (2006). Automatic Identification of User Interest for Personalized Search, Proc. World Wide Web, 727-736. Schiaffino, S., Garcia, P., & Amandi, A. (2008) eTeacher: Providing Personalized Assistance to E- Learning Students, Computers & Education, 51(4), 1744-1754. Stash, N., Cristea, A., & De Bra, P. (2004). Authoring of Learning Styles in Adaptive Hypermedia: Problems and Solutions. Proc. World Wide Web Alt., 114-123. Stern, M., & Woolf, B. (2000). Adaptive Content in an Online Lecture System, Proc. Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems, pp. 227-238. Studer, R., Benjamins, V. & Fensel, D. (1998). Knowledge Engineering: Principles and Methods. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 25(1-2), 161-197. Triantafillou, E., Pomportsis, A., & Georgiadou, E. (2002). AES-CS: Adaptive Educational System based on Cognitive Styles, Proc. Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-based Systems, 10-20. Wolf, C. (2003). iWeaver: Towards ‘Learning Style’-based e-Learning in Computer Science Education, Proc. Australasian Computing Education Conference on Computing Education, 273-279. Wu, H., de Kort, E., & De Bra, P. (2001). Design Issues for General-Purpose Adaptive Hypermedia Systems. Proc. Hypertext and Hypermedia, 141-150. Yue, K., & Ding, W. (2004). Design and Evolution of an Undergraduate Course on Web Application Development. Proc. SIGCSE Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, 22-26. 
work_scahl2h2k5fvhclx6gwfitfu3e	----	DSpace DSpace niet meer beschikbaar Wegens de overgang naar het nieuwe onderzoeksinformatiesysteem PURE is DSpace niet meer beschikbaar. Er wordt op dit moment hard gewerkt aan het valideren van de onderzoeksoutput in PURE. Na validatie wordt de researchoutput getoond via https://research.ou.nl Let op, niet alle onderzoeksoutput zal worden getoond in PURE, dit is mede afhankelijk van het beleid binnen de verschillende faculteiten. Heeft u vragen, dan kunt u een e-mail sturen naar het PURE support team pure-support@ou.nl t.a.v. Katrine Bengtsson, Pure-co&oumlrdinator. 
work_sfpng7vhxneehetfrqfmb6ydly	----	ISC: A New Scientometrics System for Evaluating Research 5International Journal of Information Science and Management Vol. 12, No. 1, 2014, 65-76 Information Literacy in Distance Education Universities in Iran: a Case Study of Payame Noor University Hadi Sharif Moghaddam Payame Noor University, Iran sh_mogadam@pnu.ac.ir Ensieh Malekian Fard Payame Noor University, Iran nc.malekian@gmail.com Abstract Teaching information literacy needs to become a core activity at academic libraries in distance education universities. Innovative programs have been developed to promote information literacy to ensure students success as lifelong learners. This study has been done to evaluate information literacy of students of humanities in Payame Noor University of Mashhad. The research population subjects are M.A. students in the humanities departments of Payame Noor University of Mashhad, from whom 188 were selected randomly based on Krejcie and Morgan table. Data collecting tool is a questionnaire, which has been provided according to Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. The results revealed that there is a significant difference between the female students’ information literacy with average score (t= -10.45, df= 159, p< 0.0005), the male students’ information literacy with average score (t= 4.71, df= 27, p< 0.0005), and all students’ information literacy with average score (t= -11.42, df= 187, p< 0.0005). The questionnaire average score (26) is more than students’ score, although the information literacy level in female and male students had no significant difference (t= -0.520, df=186, p=0.604). There is a significant difference in information literacy of students with different majors (f (12, 175) = 2.803, p= 0.002).Developing information literacy skills is essential for academic members and other educational staff to be able to fully engage and exploit library resources in distance education system. Distance education programs are complex and costly to implement, which suggests that they are a valuable asset for universities and therefore should be adequately managed and protected. Libraries must sufficiently promote services available to distance students and provide adequate service hours. In order to provide effective support to distance learners, librarians and educators need to be creative and find unique solutions. Keywords: information literacy, information literacy standards, distance education students, Payame Noor University Information Literacy in Distance Education Universities in Iran: a Case Study of … I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 66 Introduction Unfortunately, some of the students do not possess the information literacy skills necessary for success in the 21st century. Information literacy education should become a core activity at academic libraries in distance education. Innovative programs have been developed to promote information literacy to ensure student success as lifelong learners. Members of the university community are committed to enhance the information literacy skills of their student .They can recognize variety of factors and “illiteracies” that can best promote information literacy. While in the past, for a class research assignment, one required to visit a library, today students can do much of their necessary research online, from their own home in an environment in which they are at ease. As access to information becomes easier and less expensive, the skills and competencies relating to the selection and efficient use of information become more crucial. The ability to find, assess and use information effectively is now widely recognized as an essential competence for effective participation in contemporary society (Corrall, 2008). Information Literacy The concept "information literacy" has been defined in numerous ways by authors in the field, but it generally includes the following knowledge and skills: • Knowledge of information resources in one’s subject • Ability to construct effective search strategies • Ability to critically appraise information sources • Ability to use information sources appropriately, cite and create references (Secker, 2004). Information literacy has deep roots in library sciences (Roth, 1999), where librarians have long been concerned with teaching library instructions (Wang & Artero, 2005). With these roots, information literacy training programs traditionally focus on teaching the skills required to utilize library resources, (Kimsey & Cameron, 2005) the critical need for information literacy. Information literates, have learned techniques and skills for utilizing the wide range of information tools, as well as primary sources in molding information-solutions to their problems (Van de Vord, 2010). Information Literacy Standards In 1998 the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) established a Task Force on Information Literacy Competency Standards and charged it to develop competency standards in this area for higher education. In 2000 the group published its Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education 1 . The full text of the standards is available on their website with a number of case studies of how the standards are being used. Hadi Sharif Moghaddam / Ensieh Malekian Fard I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 67 The ACRL recognized the central role of information literacy for developing lifelong learners. Five broad standards were established, each with performance indicators and specific outcomes. These standards are as follows: 1. The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed. 2. The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently. 3. The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system. 4. The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. 5. The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally. The standards provide a framework for assessing the amount of information if a literate individual (Secker, 2004). Distance Education When developing services for any group of people, it is important to be familiar with the characteristics and requirements of that group in order to effectively meet their needs. As Whitehurst and Willis (2009) explain: Students who participate in distance education are typically older, non-traditional students with unique characteristics who need special services provided by their university library in order to obtain an education equal to the on-campus students. Except to say that they are often more diverse than on-campus students, the characteristics of distance learners at any given institution is often not well documented, and as such we must rely on overall broad trends to try to develop an understanding of these students (Newton, 2007). Owing to the restrictions of jobs and family, many of distance students are unable to return to school full time or relocate to attend an educational institution. Fortunately, technological evolution has also made it easier to provide education to learners in remote eras. As much as distance students may be eager to participate in furthering their education, job and family pressures may compete for their time and attention. Research into working distance students has identified common complaints about high stress levels and students find it difficult to make time to manage all of their responsibilities. In addition, the task of finding and evaluating information can be particularly challenging for these students who are returning to studies after being in the workforce for some time. This requires libraries to rethink the way they serve patrons to ensure that students are able to access library resources Information Literacy in Distance Education Universities in Iran: a Case Study of … I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 68 regardless of their physical location. Thus, many distance students choose distance education precisely for its flexibility and as such, supportive services should offer the same degree of flexibility as much as possible. (Nicholson & Eva, 2011). Purpose Purpose of this study is portraying the information literacy of students of humanities studying in Payame Noor University of Mashhad, using distance education. Research Questions 1. What is the information literacy status of male and female students of humanities in Payame Noor University of Mashhad based on their majors? 2. Is there any significant difference in information literacy level between male and female students? 3. Is there any significant difference in information literacy level between male and female students considering the standards? Methodology The statistical population of the present research is M.A. students of humanities in Payame Noor University of Mashhad, from whom 188 students were selected randomly based on Krejcie and Morgan table. About 85.1 percent of the selected students were female compared to 14.9 percent of the students who are male out of 188 total participants. The current participants were from different majors, including library and information sciences (8 percent), Education (10.6 percent), Law (8.5 percent), Tourism (3.7 percent), Social Sciences (8 percent), Geography (5.3 percent), Economics (3.7 percent), Persian Literature (6.4 percent), Accounting (6.9 percent), Business Management (10.1 percent), Physical Education (12.2 percent), Psychology (10.6 percent), and Theology (5.9 percent) Data collection tool was a questionnaire, provided by Davarpanah, Siamak and Qasemi (2008) based on Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, in order to measure students’ information literacy. The questionnaire was also validated again in a study entitle: "Construction and Validation of a Scale for the Assessment of Undergraduate Student’s Information Literacy" by Siamak and Davarpanah (2009). In order to simplify the questionnaire and meet the needs of distance education students, some un- necessary questions were deleted from the questionnaire. Thus a questionnaire including 36 related questions was provided. From the total questions, 8 of them were related to standard no.1, 11 questions to standard no.2, 7 questions to standard no. 3, 5 questions standard no.4, and 5 questions to standard no.5. To finalize the questionnaire, it was sent to some university professors and related Hadi Sharif Moghaddam / Ensieh Malekian Fard I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 69 specialists, and then the questionnaire was corrected based on their proposals. The final questionnaire was validated through the Cronbach's alpha, which was estimated 82%. Therefore, the provided questionnaire was distributed among Payame Noor University students for the present study. The data were analyzed, using SPSS software. In order to summarize and describe data, Central Indexes and Descriptive Statistics such as mean and standard differences were used. Sample statistical tests, comparing two independent averages, and one-way variance analysis were used in order to respond the research questions. The sample statistical test was used to examine information literacy of the study cases. Male and female average grades were compared using the comparative two-independent-average test, and the difference signification of variances was examined in each of the cases. One-way variance analysis test was also used to compare students’ information literacy in different majors. Findings As mentioned earlier, average statistics and standard difference were used to describe the analysis of the data. Table 1 depicts the data analysis in descriptive level. Table 1 Research Variances Descriptive Indexes Statistical Indexes variances No. Average Standard variance Information literacy 188 19.2660 8.08137 Standard 1 188 2.4096 1.69848 Standard 2 188 6.0000 2.91777 Standard 3 188 4.6383 2.36214 Standard 4 188 4.3883 2.53600 Standard 5 188 1.8670 1.10825 In order to examine the information literacy of male and female students of Humanities in Mashhad Payame Noor University, sample statistical tests were used. It should be mentioned that examining the default input was carried out first, which is presented as following: Interval data default: The information of the information literacy variance has interval scale. Data distribution normality default: Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to assure the distribution normality of the data, whose results demonstrated that the gained data have a normal distribution for information literacy variance in subjects: (Z = -0/919, P = 0/358). Data distribution normality default is also considered. Sample statistical test defaults were also considered which is viable. The results of the test are presented in Table 2: Information Literacy in Distance Education Universities in Iran: a Case Study of … I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 70 Table2 Students’ Information Literacy and Questionnaire Average Score Comparison Sex No. Average Variance Standard score T Free degree Signific- ance level Female 160 19.1375 8.30586 26 -10.451 159 .000 Male 28 20.0000 6.73850 26 -4.712 27 .000 Total 188 19.2660 8.08137 26 -11.425 187 .000 As it is shown above, there is a significant difference between female students’ information literacy and questionnaire average score (t= -10.45, df= 159, p< 0.0005). The male students’ information literacy and questionnaire average score (t= 4.71, df= 27, p< 0.0005), and all students’ information literacy and questionnaire average score (t= -11.42, df= 187, p< 0.0005) in a way that the questionnaire average score (26) is more than students’ score. Two-average-comparison test was used to compare the information literacy in male and female students. Two-average-comparison test defaults were also examined. As mentioned earlier, Kolmogorov–Smirnov test demonstrated the normal distribution of information literacy variance in the data resulted from the subjects. Moreover, Levene's test was also used to examine the default, which was the homogeneity of information literacy variances. The results indicated that P was equal to 0.104, which also proves the homogeneity of information literacy variances. Therefore, the comparison of two independent averages is viable. The results of this experiment, which demonstrates the male and female students’ information literacy average score, is presented in table3. Table3 Male and Female Students’ Information Literacy Comparison Sex Average Standard variance T df Significance level Female 19.1375 8.30586 -.520 186 .604 Male 20.0000 6.73850 According to the above table, which is the result of two-independent-average test, the information literacy level in female and male students has no significant difference, (t= -0.520, df=186, p=0.604) . Two-independent-average test was also used to compare male and female students’ information literacy. In this stage, before running the test, the defaults of two-independent- average test were compared first. Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was also used to confirm data distribution normally, and the results indicated that the data from subjects were distributed Hadi Sharif Moghaddam / Ensieh Malekian Fard I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 71 normally among first standard records of (Z= -0.038 and P= 0.969), second standard records of (Z= -0.645 and P= 0.519), third standard records of (Z= -0.334 and P= 0.738), fourth standard records of (Z= -0.288 and P= 0.773), and fifth standard records of (Z= -1.936 and P= 0.053). Hence, data normality distribution was considered. Variance homogeneity of information literacy defaults was examined, using Levene's test. According to the results, p is equal to 0.991 for the first standard record, 0.248 for the second standard record, 0.071 for the third standard record, 0.059 for the fourth standard record, and 0.113 for the fifth standard record, all of which prove the Variance homogeneity of information literacy defaults; therefore, two-independent average test is viable. The results of this test, which show male and female students’ information literacy average score, are presented in Table 4. Table 4 Male and Female Students’ Information Literacy Records Comparison Default Sex Average Standard variance T df Significant level Standard 1 Female 2.4000 1.70165 -.184 186 .854 Male 2.4643 1.71015 Standard 2 Female 5.9625 2.87012 -.420 186 .675 Male 6.2143 3.22441 Standard 3 Female 4.6313 2.42010 -.098 186 .922 Male 4.6786 2.03767 Standard 4 Female 4.3875 2.62064 -.010 186 .992 Male 4.3929 2.02465 Standard 5 Female 1.8125 1.13928 -1.619 186 .107 Male 2.1786 .86297 According to the above table, which presents the comparison of two independent averages, it can be concluded that there is no significant difference between male and female students’ information literacy records. In order to compare students’ information literacy with different majors, one-way variance analysis test was used. The results of one-way variance analysis test, which compares the subjects’ information literacy average scores based on their majors, are presented in table5. Information Literacy in Distance Education Universities in Iran: a Case Study of … I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 72 Table5 Subjects’ Information Literacy Comparison with Regard to Their Majors Variance sources Radicals’ sum Freedom scale Radicals’ average F Significance level Inter-group 1968.682 12 164.057 2.803 .002 Intra-group 10244.020 175 58.537 Total 12212.702 187 According to the above table, which is the result of a one-way variance analysis test, it is concluded that there is a significant difference in the amount of information literacy in students with different majors statistically (f (12, 175) = 2.803, p= 0.002). In order to have a more precise comparison of students’ information literacy with different majors, Tukey's range test was used. The results of this test indicated that there was a significant different between students who were studying library and information sciences and those who were studying physical education and education, in terms of information literacy in such a way that library and information sciences students are more literate in comparison to those studying physical education and education. One-way variance analysis test was also used to compare students’ information literacy with different majors. The results of the one-way variance analysis test, which compares the average scores of students’ information literacy with regard to their majors, are presented in Table 6. Table 6 Subjects’ Information Literacy Comparison with Regard to Their Majors Variance sources Radicals’ sum Freedom scale Radicals’ average F Significance level Inter-group 112.469 12 9.372 3.841 .000 Standard 1 Intra-group 426.994 175 2.440 Total 539.463 187 Inter-group 196.505 12 16.375 2.054 .022 Standard 2 Intra-group 1395.495 175 7.974 Total 1592.000 187 Inter-group 175.607 12 14.634 2.951 .001 Standard 3 Intra-group 867.797 175 4.959 Total 1043.404 187 Inter-group 90.185 12 7.515 1.182 .299 Standard 4 Intra-group 1112.470 175 6.357 Total 1202.654 187 Inter-group 42.665 12 3.555 3.327 .000 Standard 5 Intra-group 187.010 175 1.069 Total 229.676 187 Hadi Sharif Moghaddam / Ensieh Malekian Fard I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 73 According to the above table, which depicts the results of one-way analysis variance test, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference in students’ information literacy first standard record statistically, while their majors are different (f (12, 175) = 3.841, p= 0.000). In order to have a more precise comparison of students’ information literacy, first standard record with different majors, Tukey's range test was used. The results of this test indicated that there was a significant difference between the students whose major was Library and Information Sciences and those whose majors were law, Accounting, and Theology in terms of information literacy first standard level, in such a way that this amount was more noticeable in Library and Information Sciences students compared to Law, Accounting, and Theology students. Information literacy first standard record is significantly higher for Social Sciences students compared to Accounting and Theology students. Moreover, there is a significant difference between Economics students and Theology students in terms of information literacy first standard level, in such a way that this amount is considerably higher in Economics students compared to Theology students. In addition, the data above depict the statistically significant difference between information literacy second record in students with different majors (f (12, 175) = 2.054, p= 0.022). In order to compare information literacy second standard level more precisely in students with different majors, Tukey's range test was used. The results of this test are indicative of the fact that there is a significant difference between Library and Information Sciences students and Physical Education students in terms of information literacy second standard level in such a way that this level is noticeably higher in Library and Information Sciences students compared to Physical Education students. According to Table 6, it can be concluded that, statistically there is a significant difference between the third information literacy standard level in students studying difference courses (f (12, 175) = 2.951, p= 0.001). In order to compare third information literacy standard level more precisely in students with different majors, Tukey's range test was used. The results of this test are indicative of the fact that the information literacy standard level is significant in Tourism students compared to Physical Education students. Moreover, the data above also demonstrate that there is not a significant difference statistically in fourth information literacy standard level (f (12, 175)=1.182, p= 0.299).On the other hand, according to Table 6, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference statistically in fifth information literacy standard in students studying different majors (f (12, 175)=3.327, p=0.000). Tukey's range test was used to compare the fifth information literacy standard level more precisely. The results demonstrated that there is a significant difference between the Library and Information Sciences students and Physical Education students, in terms of fifth information literacy standard level, in such a way that this amount is more in Library and Information Sciences students compared to Physical Education students. There is also a Information Literacy in Distance Education Universities in Iran: a Case Study of … I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 74 significant difference in Persian Literature students and Physical Education students, in terms of fifth information literacy standard level, in such a way that this amount is considerably more in Persian Literature students compared to Physical Education students. Conclusion Information literacy is an essential skill both for a successful academic career and for a professional in the information age (Nicholson & Eva, 2011). In other words, the skills associated with information literacy are widely recognized both inside and outside the universities as essential. It is difficult to imagine what developments the future will bring, nevertheless the library profession will need to embrace these changes and move with the times to meet the needs of users. Not only does this mean librarians need to work with new groups of people, but they need to be clear about the unique and highly relevant skills that they can offer. Librarians need to consider the motivations of their users and make information literacy both timely and relevant to learners. Developing information literacy skills, is essential for academic and other supportive staff to be able to fully engage and exploit library resources in distance education system. Engaging with academic staff to develop their own skills also makes them more likely to see the value of building these skills into their courses for students (Secker, 2004). While the role of the librarian was once associated with providing access to information, in the information age, Librarians now have an important role to play in assisting patrons with sorting through and evaluating vast quantities of information that exist well beyond the physical boundaries of the library. Academic librarians have an important role to play in ensuring that post-secondary students develop the level of information literacy required to be successful in their academic careers and beyond. The description of the role of the librarian in information literacy is constantly evolving. There is mounting evidence to support the notion that librarians need to be more closely integrated into the teaching and learning process (Nicholson & Eva, 2011). Distance education programs are complex and costly to implement, which suggests that they are a valuable asset for universities, and therefore should be adequately managed and protected (Fernández-Molina, Muriel, Vives-Gracia, Riera, & Martín, 2011). Libraries must sufficiently promote the services available to distance students, and provide adequate service hours. Unfortunately, many librarians report a lack of time and adequate channels through which to provide the level of support to distance students that they would like to make available (Newton, 2007). In order to provide effective support to distance learners, librarians and educators need to be creative and find unique solutions (Nicholson & Eva, 2011). Hadi Sharif Moghaddam / Ensieh Malekian Fard I J I S M , Vol. 12, No. 1 January / June 2014 75 Endnote 1. Association of College and Research Libraries. (2000) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Chicago: American Library Association. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/standards.pdf References Corrall, Sh. (2008). Information literacy strategy development in higher education: An exploratory study. International Journal of Information Management, 28 (1), 26–37. Retrieved from www.elsevier.com/ Davarpanah, M. R., Siamak, M., & Qasemi, A. (2008).Information literacy assessment of students. Tehran: Dabizesh. Fernández-Molina, J., Carlos Muriel, E., Vives-Gracia, J., Riera, P., & Martín, O. (2011). Copyright and e-learning: professors' level of knowledge about the new Spanish law. Aslib Proceedings, 63 (4), 340 – 353. Retrieved from www.emeraldinsight.com/ Kimsey, M. B. & Cameron, S. L. (2005). Teaching and assessing information literacy in a geography program. Journal of Geography, 104 (1), 17−23. Retrieved from http://www. ncge.org/publications/journal/ Newton, R. (2007). Developing information literate off-campus learners: pedagogical issues and current practice. Libri, 57 (3), 140-164. Retrieved from http://www.librijournal. org/pdf/ Nicholson, H., & Eva, N. (2011). Information literacy instruction for satellite university students. Reference Services Review, 39(3), 497 – 513.Retrieved from www.emeraldinsight.com/ Roth, L. (1999). Educating the cut-and-paste generation. Library Journal, 124 (18), 42−44. Secker, J. (2004). Electronic resources in the virtual learning environment: A guide for librarians. Retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/4884/ Siamak, M., & Davarpanah, M. (2009). Construction and validation of a scale for the assessment of undergraduate student’s information literacy. Library and Information Science, 12 (1), 119-147. Van de Vord, R. (2010). Distance students and online research: Promoting information literacy through media literacy. Internet and Higher Education, 13 (3), 170–175. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2010.03.001 Wang, Y., & Artero, M. (2005). Caught in the web: University student use of web resources.Educational Media International, 42 (1), 71−82. Whitehurst, A. P., & Willis, C. N. (2009). Building collaborative reference and instructional services for distance education student.Southeastern Librarian, 57(1), 20-27. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/4884/ 
work_sgqn7kvzczbbjhxvvamg5lwlau	----	Enjoyment and Not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Copyright (c), 2019 Michael R Brubacher, Fortunate T Silinda Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 21:41 International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Enjoyment and Not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Michael R Brubacher et Fortunate T Silinda Volume 20, numéro 3, juillet 2019 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1062527ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i4.4325 Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Athabasca University Press (AU Press) ISSN 1492-3831 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Brubacher, M. & Silinda, F. (2019). Enjoyment and Not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(3). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i4.4325 Résumé de l'article Dropout rates of distance education students is a serious problem for many distance education institutions as well as their students. A psychological factor that is related to dropout is the academic persistence of students, or their intent to finish their degrees. One factor that could predict academic persistence, which is often used to identify and help at-risk students, is the academic competencies of students. However, another factor that could predict persistence is the intrinsic motivation of students, or whether they enjoy their academic work and find it interesting. In the present study, 350 distance education undergraduates in South Africa completed a survey that measured their persistence, perceived academic competence, and intrinsic motivation. The survey also measured experienced workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress. Results show that intrinsic motivation was a significant predictor of persistence while competence was not. Further, help-seeking attitudes and general stress had indirect effects on persistence through intrinsic motivation. The study highlights the need for educators to be aware of the intrinsic motivation of distance education students, and the factors that could impact it, in order to increase the academic persistence of students. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/irrodl/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1062527ar https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i4.4325 https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/irrodl/2019-v20-n3-irrodl04799/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/irrodl/ International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Volume 20, Number 3 July – 2019 Enjoyment and Not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Michael R. Brubacher and Fortunate T. Silinda University of Johannesburg, University of South Africa Abstract Dropout rates of distance education students is a serious problem for many distance education institutions as well as their students. A psychological factor that is related to dropout is the academic persistence of students, or their intent to finish their degrees. One factor that could predict academic persistence, which is often used to identify and help at-risk students, is the academic competencies of students. However, another factor that could predict persistence is the intrinsic motivation of students, or whether they enjoy their academic work and find it interesting. In the present study, 350 distance education undergraduates in South Africa completed a survey that measured their persistence, perceived academic competence, and intrinsic motivation. The survey also measured experienced workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress. Results show that intrinsic motivation was a significant predictor of persistence while competence was not. Further, help-seeking attitudes and general stress had indirect effects on persistence through intrinsic motivation. The study highlights the need for educators to be aware of the intrinsic motivation of distance education students, and the factors that could impact it, in order to increase the academic persistence of students. Keywords: distance education, dropout, academic persistence, intrinsic motivation, competence Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 166 Introduction Distance education has been described as a modern way of providing education that can serve a more diverse and traditionally underrepresented population of students (e.g., Thistoll & Yates, 2016). At the same time, dropout rates among distance education institutions can be problematically high (de Hart & Venter, 2013; Simpson, 2013). One factor that contributes to dropout is whether students want to persist with their degrees and the academic tasks that are involved (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1980). Academic persistence can be affected by a number of factors. One factor found to predict academic persistence, in research with non-distance education students, is the perceived competence that students have regarding their own academic skills (Hardre & Reeve, 2003; Lavigne, Vallerand, & Miquelon, 2007). Perceived competence refers to the view of oneself as being efficacious in meeting the challenges of the academic environment, completing and keeping up to date with readings and assignments, and being satisfied with one’s academic performance (Hardre & Reeve, 2003). In addition, overt measures of competence such as grades and GPA have also been found to predict persistence, as well as dropout, for both distance and non-distance education students (Aragon & Johnson, 2008; Harrell & Bower 2011; Millea, Wills, Elder, & Molina, 2018; Simon, Aulls, Dedic, Hubbard, & Hall, 2015). As such, it is understandable why educators and school counselors often focus on monitoring grades in order to identify at-risk students, and on skill development as a way of helping at-risk students stay enrolled and to complete their degrees (Simpson, 2008). Another factor that can predict academic persistence, however, is whether students are intrinsically motivated to continue with their studies. Intrinsic motivation has been defined as a desire to engage in a task because it is inherently enjoyable or interesting, and it has been identified as an important predictor of academic outcomes for both distance and non-distance education students (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Pilkington, 2018; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Prior research has found a correlation between intrinsic motivation and academic persistence for high school students and non-distance education college students (Lerdpornkulrat, Koul, & Poondej, 2018; Vallerand, Fortier, & Guay, 1997). Whether intrinsic motivation predicts persistence for distance education undergraduate students, however, has not been investigated. The main purpose of the present study was to assess how perceived competence and intrinsic motivation would each predict persistence when included in the same model (see Figure 1). A number of studies with non-distance education students have been conducted that included both of these factors or similar constructs. For example, studies involving high school students found that both perceived competence and intrinsic motivation predicted academic persistence (Hardre & Reeve, 2003; Lavigne et al., 2007). In addition, a study with non-distance education junior college students found that positive emotions in class (e.g., enjoyment, happiness) and GPA both predicted academic persistence when included in the same model (Simon et al., 2015). Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 167 Figure 1. Proposed model. However, this line of research has not been conducted with distance education undergraduate students, and there is a frequent reliance on competence assessment to identify at-risk students in distance education programs (Simpson, 2008). It was therefore important to conduct a study with distance education students in order to test the relationship between intrinsic motivation and academic persistence, while also including student views of their academic competence. The present study not only tested if intrinsic motivation and perceived competence predicted persistence, but it also investigated academic workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress to see how these factors might predict intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and academic persistence. Workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress may be particularly relevant to distance education students for a variety of reasons. For example, distance education students may be returning to school and may have additional life responsibilities (Jaggars, 2014; Thistoll & Yates, 2016). They may therefore find the additional academic workload and their general stress to be problematic and to have a negative impact on their intrinsic motivation and their perceived abilities to complete academic work. Moreover, they might experience difficulties in accessing help from fellow students and university staff, which could likewise affect their motivation and competence. It has also been found that students who enroll in distance education programs often do so because of the convenience and flexibility it offers in terms of balancing academic studies with employment and family responsibilities (Hart, 2012; Jaggars, 2014). However, prior research has also found that a commonly reported reason for dropping out of distance education programs is that the academic workload, in the end, was too great (Aragon & Johnson, 2008; Willging & Johnson, 2009). These studies not only focused on dropout but also used qualitative designs and analyses. A quantitative test of whether workload is related Intrinsic motivation Academic persistence Workload Help-seeking attitudes General stress Perceived competence Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 168 to the motivation, competence, and persistence of currently enrolled distance education students has not been conducted. Help-seeking attitudes could also be a relevant factor in predicting the intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and academic persistence of distance education students. Receiving assistance from peers, tutors, and faculty have been found to improve the skills and competencies of non-distance education students (Mayet, 2016; McGhie & du Preez, 2015; Thomas & Thomas, 2018). In studies with distance education students, it has been found that students who sought help also performed better academically (Taplin, Yum, Jegede, Fan, & Chan, 2001), that mentoring may improve retention (Boyle, Kwon, Ross, & Simpson, 2010), and that helpful feedback from instructors can improve academic persistence (Hart, 2012). However, not all students seek help. For example, some students may see help seeking as a reflection of inadequacy, as a threat to self-esteem, or as something to be socially concerned about (Ryan & Pintrich, 1997). The present study looked at the help-seeking attitudes of students and tested whether they were related to motivation, competence, and persistence. Finally, the general stress of students was also included in the present study. As previously mentioned, distance education students can sometimes be in the position of needing to balance employment, family, and academic studies (Hart, 2012; Jaggars, 2014) yet may lack the opportunity to talk with fellow students in similar situations due to the nature of distance education. Specific sources of stress reported by distance education students have not only included jobs and family relationships, along with school related stressors, but also finances, health, and overall time pressures (Kampfe et al., 2006; Silinda & Brubacher, 2016). As such, the general stress that is experienced by distance education students might be related to their intrinsic motivation regarding their academic studies, as well as to their perceived competence, and finally to their academic persistence. These relationships have not been tested previously for distance education undergraduate students. The present study used a cross-sectional survey design and was conducted with distance education undergraduates in South Africa. The data was analyzed using structural equation modelling. Workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress served as the independent variables. Intrinsic motivation and perceived competence were mediating variables. Academic persistence was the outcome variable. Method Participants and Procedure Undergraduate students at a distance education university in South Africa participated in the study voluntarily. The study was online, and 388 students read an online description of the study. Of those who read the description, 350 completed the survey and formed the sample. The sample was 53% female. The racial distribution was 58% Black, 28% White, 8% Coloured, and 6% Indian (applying racial categories currently used in South Africa). For the university as a whole, the student population was 65% female, and 72% Black, 15% White, 6% Coloured, and 7% Indian. Therefore, compared to the student population, the Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 169 sample was proportionally low for females and Black students (University of South Africa, 2016). However, females and Black students still formed the majority of the sample. The sample ranged in age from 22-years-old to 70-years-old (M = 33.08, SD = 8.32). Regarding faculty, the distribution was 31% Economics and Management Sciences, 25% Human Sciences, 19% Law, 13% Science, Engineering and Technology, 6% Accounting, 4% Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, and 2% Education. At the time of data collection, 14% were in their first year of enrolment, 13% in their second, 18% in their third, 16% in their fourth, 30% in their fifth, 7% in their sixth, and 2% in their seventh. Ethics approval for the study was granted by a university institutional review board. Data collection occurred during the middle of the second semester of the academic year. Materials Academic persistence. The academic persistence of students was measured with the following three items: “I intend to continue studying in my field,” “I intend to get a Bachelor’s degree in my field of study,” and “I am sure that I would like to continue with my education in my current field of study.” The items were based on work by Toker (2010). Responses were provided on a 5-point scale that ranged from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .79. Intrinsic motivation. The intrinsic motivation and enjoyment that students had for their studies was measured with three items. The items were “I really enjoy studying at university,” “I am enjoying my academic work,” and “I really feel I am wasting my time in university” (reversed scored). The items were taken from a study by Muller and Louw (2004). Responses were provided on a 5-point scale that ranged from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .70. Perceived academic competence. Perceived competence was measured with the following three items: “I am satisfied with the level at which I am performing academically,” “I have been keeping up to date with my academic work,” and “I prepare for my assignments regularly.” The items were based on performance questions from the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ) developed by Baker and Siryk (1984). Responses were measured with a 5-point scale that ranged from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .70. Workload. The amount of academic work, as experienced by the students, was measured using three items. The items were “The volume of work in my studies is too high,” “Too much is expected of me from my courses,” and “The academic work that is assigned is too difficult.” The items were drawn from Muller and Louw (2004). Responses were given using a 5-point scale that ranged from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .69. Help-seeking attitudes. The attitudes of students about asking for help were measured using four items. The items were “Getting help in my academic work would be an admission of my own lack of ability,” “I would rather fail on my own than succeed in university because I got help,” “I would feel uneasy about what people would think if they found out I needed help in order to succeed,” and “If I needed tutoring, I would prefer that my professors not find out.” The items were taken from a study by Karabenick and Knapp (1991). Responses were provided on a 5-point scale that ranged from “strongly disagree” to Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 170 “strongly agree.” All items were reversed scored so that higher scores indicated an openness toward seeking help. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .78. General stress. The stress of students was measured using the following four items: “In the last month, how often have you felt stressed?” “In the last month, how often have you felt that things were not going your way?” “In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things?” (reversed scored) and “In the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that happened that were out of your control?” The items were taken from the Perceived Stress Scale by Cohen, Kamarck, and Mermelstein (1983). Responses were given on a 5-point scale with the following labels: “never,” “rarely,” “sometimes,” “often,” and “very often.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .76. Results All variables were first tested for univariate normality in order to determine if parametric statistical analyses could be used. To check for normality, skewness and kurtosis were assessed. For each variable, the skewness and kurtosis were both between -2 and 2, which indicated that each variable was normally distributed (Field, 2009). The purpose of the present study was to assess how intrinsic motivation and perceived academic competence predicted academic persistence. Further, the study also looked at how workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress predicted intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, as well as persistence. Therefore, in order to test these relationships, structural equation modelling was used with workload, help- seeking, and stress as independent variables, intrinsic motivation and perceived competence as mediator variables, and academic persistence as the outcome variable (see Figure 2; see Table 1 for descriptive statistics and for Pearson product-moment correlations). Table 1 Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Variable M (SD) 1 2 3 4 5 1. Persistence 4.43 (.64) 2. Motivation 4.25 (.63) .37* 3. Competence 3.66 (.82) .23* .54* 4. Workload 2.79 (.81) -.08 -.27* -.23* 5. Help seeking 4.05 (.76) .16* .16* .11* -.09 6. Stress 3.05 (.77) -.12* -.27* -.33* .30* -.05 Note. * p < .05. Maximum likelihood estimation was used along with a bias-corrected bootstrapping procedure (1000 bootstrap samples). Bootstrapping is a resampling method that uses a study’s sample to create a sampling distribution from which standard errors and confidence intervals are created (Kline, 2005). The software package that was used was Amos 25. The analysis showed that the proposed model (which included the measurement model, or scale items, along with the path model) had adequate fit with the data, χ2(175) = Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 171 411.81, p < .001, CFI = .90, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .09 (see Figure 2). The measurement part of the model is not presented in the Figure 2 in order to improve the clarity of the figure. However, all of the unstandardized path coefficients between the scale items and their constructs were significant, ps < .001, and greater than .60. Figure 2. Structural equation model. Solid lines represent significant paths, p < .05. Path coefficients are unstandardized. For clarity, the measurement model is not presented. R2 = explained variance. * p < .05. Intrinsic motivation was a significant predictor of academic persistence while perceived confidence was not a significant predictor. Although competence was significantly correlated with persistence (see Table 1), when including intrinsic motivation, and the three independent variables, it did not account for any unique variance in the persistence of students. The workload that students experienced was a negative predictor of intrinsic motivation, indicating that as workload increased, intrinsic motivation decreased. Workload also had a negative indirect effect on persistence, via motivation, but the total effect that workload had on persistence was nonsignificant (see Table 2). The bivariate correlation between workload and persistence was also nonsignificant (see Table 1). These results indicate that while an increase in experienced workload was related to a decrease in motivation, it did not have an overall effect on academic persistence. R2 = .16* R2 = .18* .04 -.03 .24 .03 .01 R2 = .28* -.36 -.07 .13 .18 -.23 -.14 Intrinsic motivation Academic persistence Workload Help-seeking attitudes General stress Perceived competence Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 172 Table 2 Indirect and Total Effects on Persistence Variable Indirect effects of variable on persistence via motivation/competence Total effect Motivation Competence Workload -.03* .00 .00 Help seeking .03* .00 .07* Stress -.05* .01 -.03* Note. Effects are unstandardized. * p < .05. Help-seeking attitudes were positively related to intrinsic motivation. They also had a significant and positive indirect effect on academic persistence via motivation as well as a positive total effect on persistence. The results indicate that a constructive orientation toward help seeking was positively related to being intrinsically motivated to engage with one’s studies and to the intention of finishing one’s degree. Help-seeking attitudes were also a positive predictor of perceived competence. However, help-seeking attitudes did not have a significant indirect effect on persistence via perceived competence. Finally, the general stress that students experienced was a negative predictor of their intrinsic motivation. General stress also had a significant and negative indirect effect on their persistence, via motivation, as well as a significant and negative total effect on persistence. General stress was also a negative predictor of perceived competence, but it did not have a significant indirect effect on persistence via perceived competence. Discussion Dropout is a common problem for many distance education institutions (Simpson, 2013). Further, it has been found that academic persistence contributes to whether students decide to drop out of their programs (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1980). It is therefore important to investigate factors that are related to the persistence of distance education undergraduate students. One factor that is often monitored in order to identify students that may be at risk of dropping out is academic competence (Simpson, 2008). However, when it comes to predicting a student’s persistence, and their intent to finish their degree, intrinsic motivation and whether students are enjoying their studies might be a stronger predictor. The present study included intrinsic motivation and perceived competence in the same model as predictors of persistence and found that intrinsic motivation was a significant predictor while perceived competence was not. In contrast, prior studies that also included intrinsic motivation and competence as predictors of persistence found that both factors were significant predictors of academic persistence (Hardre & Reeve, 2003; Lavigne et al., 2007; Simon et al., 2015). However, these prior studies were conducted with high school and junior college students. The different outcome from the present study may have been due to the Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 173 fact that the participants were distance education students. Compared to high school and non-distance education undergraduate students, distance education students are more likely to be returning to academics, they tend to have other aspects of life competing for their time and attention in terms of employment and family, and they tend to go through their degrees being more isolated from fellow students and from university staff (Jaggars, 2014; Thistoll & Yates, 2016). Considering these characteristics of distance education students, it is therefore possible that their intrinsic motivation, and the direct enjoyment they experience with their studies, plays a greater role in predicting their intentions and desires to graduate than their views regarding their academic competencies. Considering the finding that intrinsic motivation was the stronger predictor of persistence, distance education institutions should therefore give more attention to this factor. Such attention could include periodically assessing the intrinsic motivation of students (e.g., whether they are enjoying the topics being covered in their courses and/or what they think of the assigned readings). Educators or counselors could then follow-up with students who report low levels of intrinsic motivation and discuss with them factors that can impact motivation along with potential interventions. The present study also investigated how academic workload, help-seeking attitudes, and general stress predicted intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and academic persistence. In prior research with distance education students that used qualitative designs, it was found that the academic workload experienced by students was one reason why students dropped out of their programs (Aragon & Johnson, 2008; Willging & Johnson, 2009). However, in the present study, it was found that while workload was a negative predictor of intrinsic motivation, workload did not have a significant total effect on persistence. Therefore, while qualitative studies indicate that the workload experienced by some students is still an issue that influences whether they drop out of their programs, the results from the present study indicate that workload is not related to persistence of distance education students in general. Help-seeking attitudes were positively related to intrinsic motivation. They also had a positive indirect effect on academic persistence, via motivation, and a positive total effect on persistence. The help-seeking attitudes variable was a measure of whether students had a positive and open attitude toward asking for help and whether they believed that doing so was not something to be socially concerned about. The results indicate that students whose help-seeking attitudes were more positive also enjoyed their academic studies more and were more intent on finishing their degrees. Help-seeking attitudes were also a positive predictor of perceived competence, indicating that an open and affirmative view toward help seeking was positively related to students’ view of their academic abilities. The positive relationship between help-seeking attitudes and competence is consistent with a prior study, on fifth grade students, that found low-achieving students were more likely to avoid help seeking than high-achieving students (Ryan, Hicks, & Midgley, 1997). In the present study, help-seeking attitudes had positive relationships with intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and academic persistence. These relationships suggest that distance education students should be encouraged to ask for help and encouraged to understand that doing so does not mean that their abilities are inadequate. A variety of resources and avenues for requesting assistance such as peer networks or tutors (McGhie & du Preez, 2015) could also be offered in order to fit with student preferences and to enhance their comfort with requesting help. Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 174 Finally, the general stress that students reported was a negative predictor of intrinsic motivation as well as perceived competence. It also had a negative indirect effect on academic persistence via intrinsic motivation. Not only can distance education students experience stress from their academic responsibilities but also from a variety of other sources including employment, relationships, health, and finances (Hart, 2012; Jaggars, 2014; Kampfe et al., 2006; Silinda, 2018; Silinda & Brubacher, 2016). The present study found that the general stress experienced by distance education students could have a number of detrimental effects on their readiness to engage with academic tasks. Methods to help distance education students to manage their stress, including stress from outside of academics, could improve their intrinsic motivation and subsequently their desire to persist with their degrees. Efforts to help students with their general stress could be combined with efforts to improve their help-seeking attitudes, both of which had indirect effects on academic persistence through intrinsic motivation. Limitations and Future Research Notwithstanding the study’s contributions to understanding the academic persistence of distance education students, the study also has several limitations. Firstly, the study is a cross-sectional survey and therefore conclusions regarding any cause-and-effect relationships between variables cannot be made. Secondly, all the variables were measured using a self-report method. Self-report relies on the perceptions that participants have regarding the variables under investigation, and may therefore deviate from other, external, methods of measurement. Such deviations may be particularly relevant to the experienced workload and perceived competence variables. However, the results still make a contribution by showing that workload, as experienced by students, was not related to their academic persistence. Likewise, their own views regarding their academic abilities were not related to their academic persistence when their intrinsic motivation was included in the model. Thirdly, the study took a somewhat exploratory approach in that specific hypotheses were not developed for all of the potential relationships. As such, additional studies are needed in order to support, or refute, the present findings. Future studies should also include alternative ways of measuring the constructs. For example, while academic persistence was measured in the study at hand by simply asking students if they intended to continue with their studies, other methods of measuring persistence (e.g. asking family members or associates of students to rate whether the student seems enthusiastic or lukewarm about completing their degree) could be used. Additional studies should also be done at other universities and in other countries, as the workload that students experience could vary across universities. In addition, other facets that affect distance education students including family responsibilities, help-seeking attitudes, and manifestations of stress, could vary across cultures. Finally, the study did not include many other factors that could also be related to intrinsic motivation and academic persistence. For example, while the study included the help-seeking attitudes of students, it did not measure whether students actually requested help nor how satisfied they were when assistance was offered. It is even possible that when students first seek help, they may experience a temporary decrease in their perceived competence. Conclusion In conclusion, dropout rates of distance education students are a concern for many distance education institutions, as well as the students who spend money and time on pursuing degrees but then drop out Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 175 before completing them. Understanding the factors that are related to student intentions to finish is therefore important. The present study found that the intrinsic motivation of distance education students is particularly relevant to their academic persistence. While interactions with students may be more difficult at distance education institutions, having an awareness of their intrinsic motivation, and the enjoyment and interest they have regarding their studies could be beneficial in reducing the dropout rate for distance education students. Enjoyment and not Competence Predicts Academic Persistence for Distance Education Students Brubacher and Silinda 176 References Aragon, S. R., & Johnson, E. S. (2008). Factors influencing completion and noncompletion of community college online courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(3), 146-158. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923640802239962 Baker, R. W., & Siryk, B. (1984). Measuring adjustment to college. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 31(2), 179-189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.31.2.179 Boyle, F., Kwon, J., Ross, C., & Simpson, O. (2010). Student-student mentoring for retention and engagement in distance education. 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Distance learning postgraduate student stress while writing a dissertation or thesis. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education, 32(1), 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/958 Simon, R. A., Aulls, M. W., Dedic, H., Hubbard, K., & Hall, N. C. (2015). Exploring student persistence in STEM programs: A motivational model. Canadian Journal of Education, 38(1), 1-27. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/canajeducrevucan.38.1.09.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_content s Simpson, O. (2008). Motivating learners in open and distance learning: Do we need a new theory of leaner support? Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance, and e-Learning, 23(3), 159-170. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680510802419979 Simpson, O. (2013). Student retention in distance education: Are we failing our students? Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance, and e-Learning, 28(2), 105-119. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2013.847363 Taplin, M., Yum, J. C. K., Jegede, O., Fan, R. Y. K., & Chan, M. S. C. (2001). Help-seeking strategies used by high-achievement and low-achievement distance education students. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education, 16(1), 56-69. Retrieved from http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/173 Thistoll, T., & Yates, A. (2016). Improving course completions in distance education: An institutional case study. Distance Education, 37(2), 180-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2016.1184398 Thomas, N. G., & Thomas, A. L. (2018). Helping struggling students: The impact of three instructional interventions on college students’ exam scores and exam-skipping behavior. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 17(1), 6-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475725717724337 Toker, Y. (2010). Non-ability correlates of the science-math trait complex: Searching for personality characteristics and revisiting vocational interests (Doctoral dissertation). 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work_sjg34vu6hfdfrdqpaat5cii6bu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_sjgxjowunnfp3kaogaefj56bxy	----	Network Interaction in Distance Education: Analysis of Russian Experience Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 152 ( 2014 ) 1124 – 1127 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the ERPA Congress 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.286 ScienceDirect ERPA 2014 Network interaction in distance education: Analysis of Russian experience Galina Mozhaevaa* aTomsk State University, Lenina av., Tomsk, 634050, Russia Abstract In this report the results of analysis of the experience of networking Russian educational institutions, their willingness and ability to networking with national and international partners and offer a promising model of development of networking universities are presented. The experience of the association “Siberian open university” in organization of network interaction is defined as the most effective. The model of the network distributed structure of professional skill improvement of the scientific and pedagogical personnel created on basis of leading higher schools of Russia is described. E-learning and distance technologies are considered as the factors promoting development of network interaction. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the ERPA Congress 2014. Keywords:e-learning; network interaction; distance technologies; educational programs;association “Siberian open university”. 1. Introduction In the conditions of globalization the development of network interaction of educational institutions is a leading tendency in the formation of a new paradigm of education. The process of Russia integration into international educational environment becomes obvious and inevitable. It brings up to date the problem of establishment of the system of higher schools network interaction providing information and consulting mutual aid of universities for encouraging their participation in integration processes within the education field. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +7-913-822-8218; fax: +7-3822-252-9579. E-mail address:mozhaeva@ido.tsu.ru © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the ERPA Congress 2014. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.286&domain=pdf 1125 Galina Mozhaeva / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 152 ( 2014 ) 1124 – 1127 Favorable conditions for development of such interaction are created by rapid development of electronic education and virtual mobility(Ruiz Corbella, Marta, & Garcia Aretio, Lorenzo, 2010). The possibilities of modern information technologies allow to realize the concepts of a network and network interaction as bases of the scientific-educational environment, which provides the equal rights and possibilities of members of a network: establishments of science and education, teachers and students. Under network interaction in this case we understand the interaction of autonomous subjects, which have a voluntary nature of participation in solving the general task, availability of materials of joint activity to all subjects of a network, existence of necessary technical support (possibility of use of networks of telecommunication in an interactive mode). As the basic properties of network interaction we recognize the uniform interaction environment, multitude of interdisciplinary communications, nonlinear mode of interaction, and an open form of information exchange with the environment. The drawback in network interaction development is caused by variety of problems and fast change of external operating conditions of networks, possibility of solving problems with various effectiveness, mixture of network interaction variants which take place in development of problems of inter-regional and inter-university interaction, project approach to elaboration of co-programs, inside-university interaction of groups and project teams. Leading higher education institutions of Russia actively develop strategies of cooperation with domestic and world partners. 2. Method In this paper we present the results of analysis of the experience of networking of Russian educational institutions, their readiness and ability to networking with national and international partners and offer a promising model of development of networking universities. Analysis is built on the studying of the experience of organization of network structures by Russian universities, the experience of realization of educational programs through network interaction and use of information and telecommunication technologies, the experience of organization of distributed learning in the universities of Russia, experience of organization of network interaction of Russian universities, aimed at the development of academic mobility. The study includes data collection, data processing using scientific methods and comparative analysis of the results. The study analyzed the experience of Russian educational institutions and consortia on the basis of a comparative analysis of the materials posted on the Internet, publications in the Russian press, Russian conference materials. The study was conducted according to the following criteria: the presence of the network structure, the duration of its existence and activity, the presence of joint educational programs, the experience of the implementation of joint educational programs. Objects of research became more than 10 different associations of universities, which position themselves as network structures. Among them there are: the Association of Russian classical universities, Association for Engineering Education of Russia, International Association of Continuing Education, the Association "Siberian Open University" and others. 3. Results Interesting experience of organization of network interaction is associated with the integration of Russia into the international educational space and formation of the organizational structure that coordinates the development of higher vocational education in the context of the main directions of the Bologna Declaration. On the solution of this problem was aimed the project "Networking interaction of universities in the main areas of the Bologna process on the basis of information and communication technologies", which was implemented in 2005. In the framework of this project was conducted the research of existing and well-functioning in European countries information networks in the sphere of science and education, was developed a list of technical requirements to ensure compatibility of the Russian system with the European analogs and was suggested the model of network interaction of Russian 1126 Galina Mozhaeva / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 152 ( 2014 ) 1124 – 1127 universities in the main areas of the Bologna process. Joint educational activity was not provided by this project and so the mechanisms of the organization of such activity were not worked in the framework of this project. As another example of the organization of a network interaction between universities should be noted the concept and experience of creating a network of intermunicipal methodological centers of the Academy of National Economy. United organizational structure of the system has distributed nature. The support tools are the training system of highly qualified pedagogical staff of training centers, unified information-technological, technical and communication infrastructure of the system, unified training complex. However, this network structure is designed for implementation of one educational program, the success of which confirms the effectiveness of the network activity. TheanalysisoftheRussianexperienceinorganizingnetworkingstructuresandimplementationofjointeducationalprogra msshowsthatthe most active network interaction is carried out in the framework of various consortia and associations. The most effective mechanisms for networking interaction are developed by participants of the association "Siberian Open University", which unites more than 40 educational and research institutions in Russia and Kazakhstan (Practice of National research Tomsk State University, 2010). Unlike other networks, the association "Siberian Open University" not only declares the principles of network interaction, but has working models and real experience of the implementation of network education programs. With activity of association is connected the creation in 2002 of the model of educational institution of open type (interregional university complexes), which with preservation of specifics of the educational environment of each higher education institution allows to integrate the scientific-pedagogical potential and information-educational resources for improvement of the quality of education.Such experience exists in other countries, for example, in the UK (Reid, G.M., & Dennis, R.M., 2001). The essence of the model consisted in the organization of joint programs by higher education institutions, participating in the association, on the basis of which are created the branch of association and branches of other higher education institutions of consortium. It was thus supposed that higher education institutions enter into the contractual relations with association, which through her branch coordinates training programs of all universities – participants of association, combining the general courses for various universities and specialties, selecting teachers from various higher education institutions, participating in this activity. As a result of such activity higher education institutions could involve teachers of the highest qualification, and the students, participating in experiment, could have an opportunity to be trained at the best teachers in any of the agreed higher education institutions. But the Russian legislation did not allow to realize this model. The establishment of inter-regional university complexes was confronted by the problem of absence of legislative base for network interaction and joint activity on basis of distance education as well as by apprehension of some higher schools to have strong competitors in the partners of the association in their region. The absence of law regulating the status, principles and technologies of e- learning made the task more complicated. New stage in the organization of joint educational programs of the association started in 2008-2013. The higher education institutions of association at the initiative of National Research Tomsk State University developed the model of the network distributed structure of professional development of university teachers, based on application of distance technologies and containing basic elements of the unified educational environment: infrastructure of the resource centers and education establishments; system of access to educational resources, support and managements of educational process, monitoring of quality of education; set of joint programs; organizational, technological and staffing providing. Network partnerships, formed within model, contribute to the creation of unified supporting infrastructure (the resource centers, the centers of collective using, etc.), the creation of unified services (career guidance, recruitment of students, unified library, etc.) and the creation of network educational programs (student's exchanges, applied bachelor degree, joint postgraduate study, internships). The developed model of network interaction is realized in the centralized and decentralized forms. "Centralized" form assumes the development of an educational program by one higher education institution in which realization teachers of other higher education institutions can be involved. The universities can sign the contract about the cooperation, one of which conditions will be the assistance to development of network forms of interaction. 1127 Galina Mozhaeva / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 152 ( 2014 ) 1124 – 1127 The "decentralized" form is based on joint development and implementation of programs by two or more universities: the program is approved by each institution and is implemented on the agreement about joint activity. Student is free to choose which modules to study and in what university. Having studied a certain number of the modules, student can address in any higher education institution, realizing the program, with a request to pass total certification and to receive the document about professional development. This option is possible, if the program is joint (it is approved by each higher education institution and it is carried out on the basis of the contract about joint activity). In this case any of participants of such network can become responsible for an educational program for the period of its realization, including a set of educational groups. At such approach a network participant can become any university that has the capacity and desire to participate in the development and implementation of joint educational programs. Both options (centralized and decentralized) of network interaction are successfully tested on 38 network programs and are realized in 27 higher education institutions of Russia. According to these programs in 5 years more than 1500 specialists from 89 Russian higher education institutions (43 regions of Russia from 8 federal districts) were trained. It allows to speak about creation of really operating system of the interuniversity interaction, providing an effective information exchange and joint activity in scales of all country. In TSU is created the resource center, which coordinates the activity of participants of network structure, organizes new network projects and supports information system of network interaction. The stored knowledge of “Siberian open university” association testifies the efficiency of the co-programs organization on basis of network interaction that results in progress of virtual academic mobility, expansion of common educational environment, and upgrade of distance technologies. 4. Discussion and conclusion Our results show that accumulated in Russian universities experience demonstrates the effectiveness of joint programs on the base of network interaction, which leads to the expansion of virtual academic mobility, development of unified educational space and improvement of distance technologies. But the awareness of education institutions of mass introduction of e-learning was insufficient, and the development of network interaction was hampered by isolation of higher schools, absence of conditions for electronic educational environment operation and scanty level of attainment of staves. The higher schools interaction in the field of e-learning demands an umbrella approach to normative documents, electronic training resources, as well as decision of various personnel, organizational, technical, technological, financial problems. However, the question of budgetary funds distribution in realization of network educational programs is left open. The strict adherence to international standards in the field of e-learning and information resources is an important item. The work results on the development of the network distributed structure of higher schools interaction are of importance for creation of open network of the backbone Russian universities providing mass distribution of best practice and innovative results in higher vocational education system. There are good prospects of the sustainable development of network interaction experience at all educational levels, introduction of results of innovative educational programs, application of new educational technologies and development of in-Russian mobility of students and teachers. 5. References Ruiz Corbella, Marta, & Garcia Aretio, Lorenzo (2010).Virtual mobility in higher education ?chance or utopy?Revistaespanola de pedagogia,Volume: 68, 243-259. Practice of National research Tomsk State University in innovative projects realization “Network interaction is the key factor of generation of the innovative environment of education, science and business” (2010). Available athttp://univer.ntf.ru/DswMedia/keystgu.pdf Reid, G.M., & Dennis, R.M. (2001).Virtual University Research Initiative (VURI) on mobilityConference: 54-th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC 2001). ATLANTIC CITY, NJ Date: OCT 07-11, 2001, Pages: 2572-2573. 
work_skxhtwllebbuxgwi7no6gsqytu	----	Microsoft Word - E.Shahamatnia.doc Building Virtual Reality Environments for Distance Education on the Web: A Case Study in Medical Education Kosmas Dimitropoulos, Athanasios Manitsaris and Ioannis Mavridis Abstract—The paper presents an investigation into the role of virtual reality and web technologies in the field of distance education. Within this frame, special emphasis is given on the building of web-based virtual learning environments so as to successfully fulfill their educational objectives. In particular, basic pedagogical methods are studied, focusing mainly on the efficient preparation, approach and presentation of learning content, and specific designing rules are presented considering the hypermedia, virtual and educational nature of this kind of applications. The paper also aims to highlight the educational benefits arising from the use of virtual reality technology in medicine and study the emerging area of web-based medical simulations. Finally, an innovative virtual reality environment for distance education in medicine is demonstrated. The proposed environment reproduces conditions of the real learning process and enhances learning through a real-time interactive simulator. Keywords—Distance education, medicine, virtual reality, web. I. INTRODUCTION he potential of virtual reality technology has introduced a new dimension in the field of distance education. In contrast with the conventional two-dimensional presentation of educational material, virtual reality technology allows the visualization of data in three dimensions and provides interactive functionalities that reinforce the feeling of immersion into a computer-generated virtual world. According to many researchers and educational practitioners this alternative form of education facilitates learning due to the ability of human brain to perceive better and assimilate easier a 3D computer-graphics representation than a simple text [1]. It is also widely recognized that VR technology engages students’ attention and turns education into an entertaining procedure contributing thereby to the active participation of students in learning process. Manuscript received May 30, 2007. K. Dimitropoulos is with the Macedonia University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Egnatia 156, GR-54006,; Phone: +30 (2310) 891-898; Fax: +30 (2310) 891-290; e-mail: dimitrop@iti.gr. A. Manitsaris is with the Macedonia University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Egnatia 156, GR-54006,; Phone: +30 (2310) 891-898; Fax: +30 (2310) 891- 290; e-mail: manits@uom.gr. I. Mavridis is with the Macedonia University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Egnatia 156, GR-54006,; Phone: +30 (2310) 891-868; Fax: +30 (2310) 891- 290; e-mail: mavridis@uom.gr. One of the most beneficial uses of VR technology is the development of virtual reality environments on the Web. This capability provides a novel framework for distance learning and life-long education shifting the centre of education from physical classroom to network [2]. Hence, students can approach knowledge from any place, even from their own home, having as much time as they really need to study the educational material adapting so the learning process to their personal needs [3]. However, in order to support and enhance learning through Web-based virtual environments, specific pedagogical methods should be applied and well-defined rules should be followed. The paper investigates this area and aims to clarify these issues providing some basic rules that should be considered in the stage of designing and building of these applications. Basic pedagogical methods such as behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and collaborative learning are studied focusing mainly on the efficient preparation, approach and presentation of learning content to fulfill its educational objectives. The designing rules presented in this paper are classified in three categories according to the triple nature of these applications: hypermedia, virtual and educational nature. Each of these categories contains a number of requirements that should be taken into account by a designer to ensure the usability and effectiveness of the final application. In medicine, VR technology has already affected various areas. Surgical procedures, medical therapy, preventive medicine, patient education, medical education and training, skill enhancement and rehabilitation, visualization of massive medical databases and architectural design for health care facilities are some of the areas virtual reality has been successfully applied to [4]. Especially in the field of medical education, virtual reality has already shown great potential. Students can better understand physiological principals, study basic anatomy or perceive the interrelationship of different anatomical structures. This fact is of great importance in medical education especially in cases that teaching of anatomy is not feasible by any other means. Nevertheless, the majority of medical simulations used for the training of new doctors require dedicated, powerful and sometimes expensive graphical workstations [5]. Therefore, these applications still constitute a privilege of a limited number of universities, research institutes and hospitals. Recent advances, however, in VR and Web technologies can change this situation allowing the development of web-based medical simulations, which are T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 645International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 cost-effective and characterized by free-accessibility. One of the primary objectives of this paper is to study the emerging area of Web-based medical simulations and highlight their main advantages. Finally, the paper demonstrates a novel virtual reality environment developed for distance education in medicine through Web. The proposed application reproduces conditions of the real learning process in a physical educational environment (e.g. classroom, laboratory, etc) and enhances learning through a real-time interactive simulator for the study of a specific pathological condition (the simulation represents the cellular structure of human liver and simulates a pathological condition resulting in a disease known as Jaundice). Considering the pedagogical methods and the rules described at the beginning of the paper the proposed distance learning system presents the educational material either in three dimensions (VRML models) or traditionally in two dimensions (texts, pictures, videos etc). The user-student can navigate into virtual worlds and interact with virtual objects (e.g. boards) in order to discover new knowledge. The proposed application is a complementary system to the education of medical students and provides collaborative distance learning, with time and place independence. The use of virtual reality enables the visualization of the educational material with a unique and innovative manner, which is attractive, efficient and pleasant to students, while the incorporation of the medical simulation in the proposed system provides to students an alternative way of learning beyond the traditional teaching methods. II. PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH Web-based virtual learning environments play a multilateral educational role providing not only a platform for the presentation of educational material, but also a communication means among the members of a learning community. These capabilities allow the creation of a virtual classroom, i.e. a virtual learning environment in which educators and learners are able to perform classroom-like tasks [6]. To ensure the educational effectiveness of the learning environment, appropriate pedagogical methods should be considered, especially in the designing phase of the system. The mostly applied pedagogical methods used for this purpose are outlined below. A. Behaviourism Behaviourism theory faces human mind as a black box and considers that a response to a stimulus can be quantitatively observed, ignoring totally the effect of thought processes occurring in mind [7]. In essence, the behaviourism school focuses on measurable and observable facts excluding ideas, emotions and processes performed in mind. Atkins has studied the effect of behaviourism theory on web-based distance education defining basic rules regarding the structure of educational content. Specifically, course designer should divide learning content into small conceptual units and instructional steps, define sequences of instructions using either conditional or unconditional branches and enhance learning providing repetition loops in critical points so as to route students back in certain sections depending on their performance on diagnostic tests [8]. In general, a designing approach with respect to behaviourism theory considers a student as a passive recipient and thus a well-structured learning material is required to facilitate the acquisition of a new behaviour through rehearsal and correction [9]. B. Cognitivism In contrast with behaviourism, cognitivism theory focuses on human mind processes, such as thought, memory etc. The primary objective of cognitivism is to discover, identify and model the mental process performed in student’s mind during the learning process [10]. Hence, in a cognitive approach, student’s mind is not considered as a passive black box, but as a complex device, which receives information from the environment, processes this information and stores the outcome to a short-term or a long-term memory. A permanent storage requires careful organization of data and correlation of new information with existing knowledge so that information to be shifted from short-term to long-term memory. The designer of an online learning environment should focus on the stimulation of students’ senses. This can be achieved by following a designing approach, which engage students’ attention on important information and encourage searching of knowledge. Designers should also organize information in such a way that students are able to connect new information with existing conceptual models in some meaningful way [11]. Hence, information should be connected with experiences from real life so that students can easily understand and assimilate the provided knowledge. In any case, however, flood of information should be avoided, since it inevitably leads to a conceptual saturation, which implies that information is not stored into the long-term memory. The effectiveness of cognitivism theory in online learning process is widely recognized. A cognitive design of a web- based virtual learning environment should be based on the previous knowledge of learner, while the acquisition of new knowledge requires an active mental process from the part of the learner. C. Constructivism Constructivism theory moves one step further than cognitivism considering that knowledge is constructed by learners themselves based on their personal experiences. Thus, learners acquire an active role within the learning process, since they not only absorb information, but also connect it with previously assimilated knowledge, constructing so their own interpretation [12]. Therefore, in constructivism learners are not just passive recipients of external stimulus, but they are also able to search, choose, adapt and finally interpret information according to their conceptual background. To this end, the designing of an online learning environment according to constructivist school focuses on the active participation of students in learning process. Prerequisite for the fulfillment of this objective is the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 646International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 interaction of learners with the educational material in order to discover or create new knowledge. Web-based simulations constitute a typical case of such interactive learning applications, in which each action of learner within virtual environment is interpreted in new knowledge. On the other hand, the communication among members of a learning process is of great importance in constructivism, since it allows the exchange of experiences and ideas resulting in a better interpretation of the available information. One of the main benefits of constructivism theory is that it considers learners as the centre of learning process. Consequently, the constructivist approach implies that learners will learn more with a teacher than from a teacher [10], [13] and that they will learn more with a virtual learning environment than from a virtual learning environment. D. Collaborative Learning Collaboration between learners and teachers is a common request of various pedagogical methods (e.g. constructivism). In online education, the concept of collaborative learning is considered essential for the performance of classroom-like tasks and a prerequisite for the creation of a virtual classroom. The term collaborative learning refers to an instruction method, in which students at various performance levels work together in small groups towards a common educational goal [14]. In contrast with previous pedagogical approaches, in which learners are considered to be isolated, collaborative learning introduces the concept of ‘group’. In groups, learners are able to cooperate, exchange ideas and share experiences in order to acquire knowledge on specific thematic areas. Current Web technologies are considered suitable for the development of collaborative learning environments due to their interactive functionalities. Collaboration can be achieved in two ways, either synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous communication involves the participation of both students and teacher at the same time e.g. teleconference, while in asynchronous communication, which is more common, there is a complete time flexibility. That is, teachers and students do not need to participate in learning process at the same time (e-mail is the most common type of asynchronous communication). The key benefit of collaborative learning is that increases interest among learners and promotes critical thinking. Its role in distance education on the Web is essential allowing students to work together in groups searching for solutions in common problems. Its application in web-based virtual environments opens up new possibilities in distance education, creating conditions, which approach these of learning process in a real classroom. III. DESIGNING REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS A web-based virtual learning environment (the term hypermedia virtual learning environment can be alternatively used) is not just a conventional website used for disseminating educational content or a web page containing 3D graphics. It is a combination of virtual reality and web technologies centralized on the fulfillment of specific educational objectives. For the effectiveness of the final application, specific designing rules should be followed to ensure its usability, i.e. an efficient, understandable and pleasant communication between user and system [15]. In this paper the designing rules presented are classified in three categories according to the triple nature of these applications: hypermedia, virtual and educational nature (Fig. 1). Virtual Nature Hypermedia Nature Fig. 1 The triple nature of Web-based virtual learning environments A. Hypermedia Requirements Web constitutes both a presentation platform for a learning content and a communication means among the members of a virtual classroom. Therefore, the hypermedia nature of a learning environment should be considered, first and foremost, by the designer of the application. In [16] a comprehensive study is presented regarding the designing of a hypermedia application. Based on this study, the usability of a hypermedia learning application can be achieved by applying the following requirements: Webpage loading speed: The loading speed is considered as one of the most critical usability factors of a web application and it heavily depends on the network and the total size of a webpage. Local search engines: Search engines are considered necessary in websites containing a large number of web pages. Navigation support: A web application should be designed in such a way, so that users have a complete view of the overall structure of the application i.e. users should always know their accurate location in the site as well as their possible transition options. This kind of problems can be effectively addressed by the use of site maps, which provide the required navigation information to the users of a web application. Web-based Virtual Learning Environment Educational Nature World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 647International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 Simple User Interface: The user interface should be simple emphasizing on the educational material rather than containing features aiming to impress users. Small size of pages: All significant information and possible options are preferable to be visible in just one screen. Simple address and title: The website address and title should be simple, brief, comprehensive and fully represents the educational content. Uniform designing: A uniform design should be followed in all pages of a hypermedia application. Content update: The maintenance of a hypermedia application is of great importance for the fulfillment of its educational objectives. Thus, the educational content should be periodically updated by the administrator of the application according to the requirements of the educational process. Appropriate terminology: The instructional designer should use appropriate terminology, which is familiar and fully understandable by the learners. Finally, apart from the aforementioned requirements, a virtual learning environment with regards to its hypermedia nature is a designed information space, which integrates heterogeneous technologies and provides interactive functionalities allowing the communication (synchronous or asynchronous) among the learners and teachers of a learning community [17]. B. Virtual Reality Requirements Virtual reality technology has been recently introduced in the field of education and thus there are no explicit rules for the designing of a learning environment containing 3D computer graphics. Nevertheless, the designing of these applications should fulfill some basic usability criteria characterizing common virtual reality environments. In a simplified methodology the designing of a virtual world can be divided in four basic steps [18]: the geometry and appearance of virtual models, their import to the virtual reality toolkit, the modeling of their behaviour and finally the virtual environment visualization in a virtual reality facility. Another approach is presented by Kaur [19], which proposes a methodology of five steps: i) requirements specification, ii) gathering of reference material from real world objects, iii) structuring the graphical model and dividing it between designers, iv) building objects and positioning them in the virtual environment, v) enhancing the environment with texture, lighting, sound and interaction and optimizing the environment. Extensive researches on the usability of a virtual reality environment have shown that the efficiency of the final application heavily depends on three main features [20]: Navigation: Navigation is one of the most important usability factors of a virtual environment. This feature allows users to move within the virtual world and explore it in order to find out new knowledge. In the designing phase of an application, special care is needed to the elimination of users’ disorientation problems. To this end, the use of signs, marks or maps is required for the correct guidance of users within the virtual world, ensuring so an easy approach to the educational material. Moreover, the designing of the navigation system should be user-friendly so that non- familiar users to be able to manipulate it easily. Interaction: Beyond a simple observation of the visualized learning content, virtual reality technology, due to its interactive functionalities, moves one step further allowing the manipulation of the educational data. Therefore, a virtual learning environment should support a natural way of interaction, which mimics as close as possible the real world, contributing so to the easy and fast familiarization and adaptation of users to the virtual environment. Finally, the interactive points should be clear and supported by suitable signs inciting users to interact with the virtual environment. Presence: The third factor, concerning the concept of presence in a virtual world, deals in essence with the realism level. The realism can be enhanced by the use of textures, sounds, lights and complex models providing users with a feeling of presence in a virtual world. In any case, however, the main objective of a virtual learning environment is the active participation of students in the learning process. The interactive features supported by a virtual environment allow the modification of the virtual world and thus the creation of new knowledge. This principle is also applied to simulation applications, whose contribution in medical education is studied in section IV. C. Educational Requirements An educational software is not an electronic book aiming to substitute the teaching in a real classroom, but a complementary educational tool whose goal is to help and enrich the real learning process. Coordinated actions have been recently performed by institution and organizations aiming to set designing specifications for educational software. Approaching web-based virtual learning environments as an educational software for distance education, a series of specifications should be considered by the designer of the application [21]: The educational application should be usable both as a complementary tool in a school/university classroom and as a stand-alone distance learning application. It should also encourage the active participation of students in the learning process. Emphasis should be given to the exploratory nature of the proposed educational activities. The learning environment should engage student’s attention and promote a deep study of the learning content. The educational material should be as diachronic as possible. The application should focus on issues relating to learning disabilities. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 648International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 Apart from the acquisition of knowledge, the learning environment should allow the development of specific skills. Processing, modeling and simulation are major features of an educational system. The application should combine instructive goals from different disciplines. Taking advantage of the recent advances in computer technologies, the system should promote the communication among learners. The designer should ensure the extendibility and reusability of the application. This will facilitate the update of the application and reduce the cost of a future extension. As it is clear from the above, the designing of a web-based virtual learning environment is a challenging task, which requires the use of various technologies (web, virtual reality, multimedia etc) centralized on the fulfillment of high educational requirements. The aforementioned specifications aim to facilitate the designer to ensure the usability and efficiency of the final application. However, an efficient designing requires also a comprehensive analysis of both the user requirements and the technological possibilities with regards to the available network bandwidth and the required computational power. In the following sections, the role of virtual reality and web technologies in distance education in medicine is investigated and an innovative web-based virtual learning environment is presented. IV. VR IN MEDICINE Recent advances in computer and virtual reality technologies offer great potential to the development of advanced medical simulations, which provide a visually realistic modeling of organs’ anatomy and behaviour as well as means of interaction with the user in real time. One of their beneficial uses is the training of new doctors allowing practice without danger to patient and without limits on the number of times that each student can practice. Medical simulations provide also a training environment for study and practice on a variety of pathologies even on rare or unusual cases without the need of a patient with a specific disease. Furthermore, they allow actions that are not possible in real life e.g. navigation through the anatomy or use of unreal tools etc and they can be used as effective and reliable tools for the evaluation of students’ performance. To this end, medical simulations are considered nowadays as an integral part of the education and training of medical students. Especially in the training of new surgeons, a large number of simulations are used as valuable educational tools. The existing surgical simulations can be broadly classified in three categories [22]: needle-based simulations, minimally invasive surgery simulations and open surgery simulations. The first category concerns the manipulation of small medical instruments such as needles, guide-wires and catheters e.g. the Immersion CathSim Vascular Access Simulator [23]. The second category, Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS), involves the insertion of instruments into the human body from small incisions as in cases of laparoscopic and endoscopic operations e.g. the LASSO project [24]. Finally, the third category comprises of open surgery simulations [25][26], in which large incisions in the human body are required. Nevertheless, the development of a medical simulation is a challenging task involving realistic modeling of human organs, interaction in real time and modeling of the physical behaviour of medical models e.g. deformable modeling. Therefore, the majority of medical simulations used for the training of medical students require dedicated, powerful and sometimes expensive graphical workstations. Thus, the knowledge extracted by the use of medical simulations constitutes a privilege of a limited number of universities, research institutes and hospitals. This fact, however, raises questions about the dissemination of this knowledge, especially to universities that are not equipped with medical simulations, as well as the possibility of an educational institution to obtain an adequate number of simulators in order to cover its educational needs. The advent of the World Wide Web and its broad use opens new possibilities to the training of medical students providing a solution to the aforementioned problems. Its combination with virtual reality technology allows the development of Web-based medical simulations, which are cost-effective and provide free accessibility to all students. This means that medical students are able to use the simulations from any place, even from their own home, needing just a conventional PC. These virtual learning environments are considered suitable for distance learning in medicine providing significant advantages [5]: Free accessibility and low-cost A large number of users can use the simulator at the same time. Limited software requirements (only a simple VRML browser is required without any other special software) Web-based simulations can run from any place in the world. Students can safely practice many times on specific procedures before performing them on a real patient. In case of powerful computations, users can share the power of a remote server However, there is still a question whether the development of web-based simulations with sufficient realism and speed to enable real time interactions is possible. Within WebSET (Web-based Standard Educational Tools) project [27], medical simulations were developed for neurosurgery, lumbar puncture and laparoscopy procedures showing that World Wide Web can provide an effective virtual environment within which training can be enhanced by 3D simulation and interaction. In this paper, a novel virtual reality environment developed for distance education in medicine through Web is World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 649International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 demonstrated. The proposed application is not just a Web- based medical simulation for the training of medical students, but an integrated virtual learning environment aiming to fulfill multiple educational objectives. The prototype application is presented in the following section. V. THE PROTOTYPE SYSTEM As it is clear from the previous section, the use of virtual reality in medicine is mainly focused on the development of medical simulations aiming to help students to perceive physiological principals or anatomical structures, acquire skills and study specific pathological conditions. However, medical education constitutes a multilateral process, which requires, apart from the use of simulations, the communication among students and professors, the use of appropriate notes and medical images as well as the attendance at lectures or even at surgical operations performed by experienced surgeons. Therefore, distance education in medicine needs complex learning applications ensuring the fulfillment of the aforementioned requirements. In this paper, we propose an integrated virtual learning environment for distance education in medicine through web, which reproduces conditions of a real learning process and enhances learning through a real- time interactive simulator. Specifically, the objectives of the proposed learning environment are the following: Provision of learning content: Medical education requires medical images of high resolution as well as the use of microscopes from the learners themselves. To fulfill this requirement the system provides a wide range of medical images taken with a microscope. Furthermore, it contains relative educational content from the real learning process at the university. Attendance at virtual lectures: The role of a professor in a real learning process as well as the teaching of courses through lectures at the university can not be substituted by notes. Advices or experiences transferred from professors to students are considered a critical part of a learning process. Virtual reality and multimedia technologies can reproduce a real lecture transferring students to a virtual classroom, where videos are projected on virtual screens. This technology can also be used for the reproduction of documentaries, conference talks, lectures from other universities and so on. Cooperation among the members of the application: The communication among the members of a learning process is a prerequisite for the creation of conditions developed in a real classroom. Collaborative learning is achieved through asynchronous communication (e- mails), which provide a complete space and time independence among professors and students. Support of simulations: One of the main objectives of the application is to provide a support platform for web-based medical simulations accompanied by relative educational content. The medical simulation that is currently supported by the application is the simulation of Hepatic Cells. Connection to external data sources: A critical issue in education is the easy access of students to a wide range of scientific sources. The proposed application takes advantage of the benefits arising from the use of web to connect students to external e-libraries allowing so the searching of further information related with the educational content of the application. The designing of a web-based virtual learning environment requires a combination of heterogeneous technologies considering various pedagogical methods and designing requirements as presented in Sections II and III respectively. The proposed system is essentially a hypermedia application and thus it is a collection of HTML pages, which constitute the base of the application. Due to its hypermedia nature, the application is approachable via web and allows asynchronous communication and connections to external e-libraries. A common prototype was followed for the designing of all HTML pages, as shown in Fig. 2, while the VRML worlds are embedded and presented always at the centre of the HTML pages. Fig. 2 For the designing of HTML pages a common prototype was used. VRML worlds are always presented at the centre of pages. The virtual environment consists of a set of virtual worlds, each of which performs a different educational role. The use of 3D graphics in the learning application aims to create an attractive environment, in which students can perceive and assimilate easier the educational material. Hence, the fundamental goal is to engage students’ attention to critical information, which is transferred from the short term to the long term memory according to the cognitivism theory. Moreover, all virtual worlds have been designed and developed in such a way in order to encourage searching of knowledge and incorporate constructivist features, which contribute to the active participation of students and the acquisition of knowledge through their interaction with the virtual worlds. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 650International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 (a) (b) Fig. 3 (a) The virtual classroom and (b) the interactive board. (a) (b) Fig. 4 (a)The virtual laboratory and (b) the interactive screen. The architectural structure of the virtual environment is divided in two parts: the physical learning environment and the simulation of the application. The physical learning environment consists of a number of virtual worlds that reproduce conditions of the real learning process in a physical educational environment, while the primary goal of the medical simulation is to enhance learning. Students visit each virtual world searching for knowledge and they participate in different learning processes. The designing of the virtual worlds is focused on three main features: navigation, interaction and presence. In particular, special care was given to the development of a user friendly navigation system, which allows even non-familiar users to easily navigate within the virtual worlds (the navigation system is always visible at the bottom of each virtual world). On the other hand, for the easy access of students to the educational material and the avoidance of users’ disorientation problems, special signs, voice messages, navigation maps, as well as functions allowing the direct transition of users to predefined positions were used. Furthermore, multiple interactive functionalities are supported both by the physical learning environment (e.g. interactive boards) and the simulation of the application (e.g. deformation of hepatic cells, change of the cell’s transparency etc). Finally, the feeling of presence in the virtual worlds was supported by the use of textures, lights, sounds and detailed 3D modeling in order to enhance the realism of the virtual environment. Specifically, the virtual environment consists of the following virtual worlds: Entrance: The role of the entrance (Fig. 2) is mainly to enhance the feeling of presence within the virtual environment and transfer students to a familiar place, which is a part of previous knowledge and makes them able to perceive easier the interface of the system. The entrance is the first virtual world of the application and it leads students to the three other educational rooms: classroom, lab and library. Classroom: The virtual classroom plays a significant role in the learning process reproducing conditions developed in a real university classroom. Students participate in the learning process, in which they have direct access to the educational material (images and text) through their interaction with a virtual board. Specifically, as shown in Fig. 3, the virtual board is divided in five parts. The bottom of the board allows students to choose the course (e.g. Histology- Embryology I) and its left part contains the chapters of each course. The educational material is presented at the centre (images) and the right part (text) of the board, while special buttons on the upper part allows the browsing of the educational content. Laboratory: The lab of the application plays a dual role. Primarily, its role is to allow students to attend virtual lectures. This can be achieved through a virtual World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 651International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 screen (Fig. 4), which reproduces videos from real lectures. The video is assigned as a texture on the virtual screen, while students can handle it (start, stop) using buttons located on the upper part of the screen. The second role of the virtual lab is to connect the physical learning environment with the simulation of the application. Specifically, students interact with the virtual microscopes, which are active objects of the virtual world and transfer students to the simulation of hepatic cells. Library: The virtual library provides connections with external data sources. Specifically, students are able to navigate within the virtual world of the library searching for knowledge and interact with virtual objects (books, signs etc), which connects to external information sources (e.g. e-libraries) containing relative educational content (Fig.5). Fig. 5 The virtual library. Simulation: The simulator is a real-time interactive application, which allows the study of a specific pathological condition and the cellular structure of human liver (Fig.6). The simulation represents in 3D space a characteristic portion of the cellular structure of liver and the deformation of hepatic cells resulting in the flow of bile in the blood. The modeling of all models was performed under the guidance and supervision of expert doctors. The simulation provides multiple interactive functionalities, such as navigation in 3D space, deformation of cells or change of their transparency. Thus, students actively participate in the learning process acquiring knowledge through their interaction with the virtual models. The proposed application has been designed and developed for the distance education of medical students, however, it can be also used as a valuable complementary tool in a real university classroom. Especially, the use of the Web-based simulation in a real learning process can assist students to perceive easier the cellular structure of human liver as well as to study the development of a pathological condition resulting in jaundice. Fig. 6 The simulation of hepatic cells VI. CONCLUSION In this paper we presented a study on the designing and building of virtual reality environments for distance education on the Web. The mostly applied pedagogical methods such as behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and collaborative learning were studied and specific designing requirements were analysed based on the triple nature of web-base virtual learning environments. Finally, a study on virtual reality and web technologies in medical education as well as an innovative virtual learning environment for medical students were presented. The proposed application takes advantage of the recent advances on Web and virtual reality technologies in order to reproduce conditions of a real learning process and enhance learning through a real-time interactive simulator providing significant advantages to the distance education of medical students. In the future, the application can be extended to support a wide range of medical simulations and relative educational material providing so a more integrated educational role. REFERENCES [1] C. Eslinger, “Education”, The Encyclopedia of Virtual Environments [Online], 1993. Available: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/scivw/EVE/ [2] P.A. Federico, “Hypermedia environments and adaptive instructions”, Computer in Human Behavior, 1999, Vol. 15, pp. 653-692. [3] A. Manitsaris, T. Kargidis and K. Barbatsis, “Design and development of a dynamic hypermedia educational system”, Journal of Information Technology Impact, 2001, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 105-116. [4] National Institute of Standards and Technology, Virtual Environments for Health Care, 1995. [5] K. Brodlie, N. El-Khalili, and Y. Li, “Using Web-based computer graphics to teach surgery”, Graphics and Visualization Education Workshop, 1999, pp.141-146. [6] M. Grigoriadou and K.A. Papanikolaou, “Learning environments on the Web: The pedagogical role of the educational material”, Themes in Education, 2000, vol.1, no.2, pp. 145-161. [7] F. Modritscher, “eLearning theories in practice: A comparison of three methods”, Journal of Universal Science and Technology of Learning, 2006, pp.3-18. [8] M.J. Atkins, “Theories of learning and multimedia applications: An overview”, Research Papers in Education, 1993, vol. 8, no. 2, pp.251- 271. [9] C. Tuckey, “ Uses of new technology in higher education - Guiding principles”, ICBL Reports, 1992, Institute for Computer Based Learning, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 652International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 [10] O. Conlan, “The multi-model, metadata driven approach to personalized eLearning services”, Phd Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Dublin. [11] Learning Environments, [Online], Available: http://www.geocities.com/learningenvironments/learningenvironments.h tml [12] D.W. Cheek, “Thinking constructively about science”, Technology and Society Education, 1992, State University of New York Press. [13] T. Newby, “Instructional technology for teaching and learning: designing instruction, integrating computers and using media”, Prentice-Hall International, 1996. [14] A.A. Gokhale, “Collaborative learning enhances critical thinking”, Journal of Technology Education, 1995, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 22-30. [15] J. Nielsen, Usability Engineering, 1993, San Diego, Academic Press. [16] N. Avouris, Introduction in the Human-Computer Communication, Diavlos, Athens, 2000. [17] P. Dillenbourg, “Virtual Learning Environment”. In Proceedings of EUN Conference 2000: Learning in the New Millenium: Building New Education Strategies for Schools, Workshop on Virtual Learning Environments, 2000. [18] J.P.M. Masso and P.G. Lopez, “Model-based design and new user interfaces: current practices and opportunities”, Proceedings of the First International Workshop on the Design Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems, 2003, pp. 245-257. [19] K. Kaur, “Designing virtual environments for usability”, Phd Thesis, 1998, Centre for HCI Design, City University, London. [20] K. Barbatsis, “Development of a distance learning system using multimedia and virtual reality technologies”, PhD Thesis, 2002 University of Macedonia. [21] Computer Technology Institute, “Development of a multimedia learning software for the secondary education” EPEAK, Action 1.1.b, Odyssey, Patra, 1998. [22] A. Liu, F. Tendick, K. Cleary and C. Kaufmann, “A survey of surgical simulation: applications, technology and education”, Presence, 2003, vol. 12, no 6. [23] M. Ursino, P.D.J.L. Tasti, B.H. Nguyen, R. Cunningham and G.L. Merril, “CathSimTM: An intravascular catheterization simulator on a PC”, Medicine Meets Virtual Reality. Convergence of Physical and Informational Technologies: Options for a New Era in Healthcare, 1999, pp. 360-366. [24] G. Szekely, C. Brechbuhler, J. Dual, R. Enzler, J. Hug, R. Hutter, N. Ironmonger, M. Kauer, V. Meier, P. Niederer, A. Rhomberg, P. Schmid, G. Schweitzer, M. Thaler, V. Vuskovic, G. Troster, U. Haller and M. Bajka, “Virtual Reality-Based Simulation of Endoscopic Surgery”, Presence, 2000, vol. 9, no 3, pp. 310-333. [25] R. V. O’Toole, R. R. Polayter and T. M. Krummel, “Measuring and developing suturing technique with a virtual reality surgical simulator”, J Am Coll Surg, 1999, vol. 189, pp. 114-127. [26] P.M.F. Nielsen, I.J. Le Grice, B.H. Smaill and P.J. Hunter, “Mathematical model of geometry and fibrous structure of the heart”, Am. J. Physiol, 1991, pp. H1365-H1378. [27] El-Khalili, N., Brodlie, K., Kessel, D. “WebSTer: A Web-based surgical training system”, Medicine Meets Virtual Reality, 2000, pp.69-75 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 653International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /3 77 5 http://waset.org/publication/Building-Virtual-Reality-Environments-for-Distance-Education-on-the-Web:-A-Case-Study-in-Medical-Education/3775 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/3775 
work_smts254jejaltn3sc3ievpyhbi	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_sqdycyddcvet3an7wj3n4d6spq	----	How Students Fail to Self-regulate Their Online Learning Experience How Students Fail to Self-regulate Their Online Learning Experience Maxime Pedrotti1(&) and Nicolae Nistor2,3 1 Leibniz Supercomputing Centre of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Garching n. Munich, Germany maxime.pedrotti@lrz.de 2 Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität München, Munich, Germany 3 Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, USA Abstract. Given the rising popularity of online-based learning scenarios such as MOOCs, flipped classrooms and regular lecture recordings, students face new challenges compared to traditional classroom settings. This paper explores the role of self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies in online learning environments – specifically when working with online lecture recordings – and how university students apply SRL strategies to reach their learning goals. To this end, a series of thirteen problem-centered interviews was conducted with undergraduate students of the learning sciences at a major German university. The findings reveal a dramatically suboptimal use of SRL strategies, leading us to the conclusion that interventions such as basic time management and general planning strategy training may have to be implemented more firmly in undergraduate education, in order to enhance university students’ future learning experience. Keywords: Learning strategies � Self-regulated learning � Online learning � Problem-centered interviews � Higher education 1 Introduction Given the rising popularity of online-based learning scenarios such as MOOCs, flipped classrooms and regular lecture recordings, students face new challenges compared to traditional classroom settings. While higher education in general is marked by a higher level of self-regulation – most lectures do not require or register attendance by students, online-based classroom settings take this to a whole new level. Traditional face-to-face classes have fixed, mostly regularly recurring session times, during which attendance is required at least for learners to be able to receive the contents taught in class. In blended or purely online-based learning scenarios, however, learning materials are usually placed somewhere accessible online, ready to be used on demand with limited time constraints (the only fixed dates being final or intermediate exams or exercise returns). The “when” and “where” of students’ accessing and working on the contents is left up to the students themselves, which significantly raises © The Author(s) 2019 M. Scheffel et al. (Eds.): EC-TEL 2019, LNCS 11722, pp. 377–385, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_28 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2299-3755 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9956-1670 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_28&amp;domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_28&amp;domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_28&amp;domain=pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_28 the level of self-regulation required to successfully reach the learning goals set by instructors (and students, albeit to themselves) for the respective course program [1]. As recent research has shown [2], learning strategies can have positive impact on students’ academic achievement, however, there are individual differences, and some strategies (e.g. help-seeking, elaboration) may rely on the learner’s prior knowledge and experience, as well as their prior application of strategies known to them. This paper explores the role of self-regulation learning (SRL) strategies [3] employed by students in higher education while using an online learning environment providing online lecture recordings. The aim of this work is to gain insight into how students actually regulate their online learning experience, in order to derivate possible peda- gogic interventions to enhance students’ learning experience and to assist them in a more strategic application of useful learning strategies. The remainder of this paper is divided into three main sections: First, a brief overview of the theoretical background and existing work on SRL strategies in online learning environment is given. Second, the interview study’s design and methodology are presented, together with main findings from the data analysis. Finally, the results are discussed, providing an outlook on future research opportunities. 2 SRL Strategies in Online Learning Environments Self-regulated learning is understood as “an individual’s deliberate and strategic planning, enactment, reflection, and adaptation when engaged in any task in which learning occurs” [3]. Thus, it encompasses active processes students undertake to advance their learning [4]. SRL theory has a strong foundation in self-determination theory [5] and social cognitive theory [6, 7]. A recent investigation of SRL strategies and their influence on goal achievement in MOOCs observed goal-setting and strategic planning to have a particularly positive influence on course goal achievement, while the other four strategies analyzed (self- evaluation, task strategy, elaboration, and help-seeking) appeared to provide limited to no support for learners [8]. Surprisingly, help-seeking appeared to have a negative impact on course goal achievement, on closer look, however, this effect proved to be particularly pronounced in learners with less SRL skills, particularly students, while learners with higher educational degrees and more developed SRL skills could profit from relying on others for assistance. In contrast, in a meta-analysis of recent studies on SRL strategies and their influ- ence on academic achievement in online learning environments [2] peer learning was found to have the strongest positive effect on academic achievement, followed by time management and effort regulation. However, the 95% confidence interval for peer learning was extremely wide with a range from high effect down to slight negative effect on learners’ achievement, which suggests additional factors may moderate the positive influence peer assistance can have on learners’ success. The other eight SRL strategies included in this meta-analysis (metacognition, time management, effort regulation, peer learning, elaboration, rehearsal, help seeking, and critical thinking) were less effective, with elaboration being nearly completely ineffective, and rehearsal showing a slight negative effect. 378 M. Pedrotti and N. Nistor These findings were at least partially reproduced in a recent comparison of online and blended learning environments concerning use and effects of SRL strategies on academic achievement [9]: The findings show time management and effort regulation strategies to be the only significant positive influences on academic success of online learners, while blended learners appear to profit from more strategies such as elabo- ration and metacognition techniques, as well as critical thinking. To summarize, recent research shows a positive influence of SRL strategies on students’ academic achievement. Especially organizational strategies such as goal setting, time management, effort regulation and strategic planning appear to influence the learning experience in a positive way. The positive effect of peer-assisted learning appears to be quite volatile and likely depends on external moderating factors. For researchers and university instructors, one of the main open questions is how they can adapt their curricula and create a learning environment encouraging and scaffolding students’ effective use of SRL strategies in order for them to achieve academic success. The following study aims to provide insight into the current state of university students’ SRL behavior by investigating how they apply which strategies in their online learning. 3 Interview Study 3.1 Design and Methodology To gain a more detailed and qualitative view of students’ motivational backgrounds and use of SRL strategies in the context of online lecture videos, a series of guided, problem-centered interviews [10, 11] was conducted with thirteen undergraduate stu- dents at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany (LMU Munich). This particular method of data gathering has the advantage of being open enough to allow for possibly new revelations from interview subjects’ responses, while still following a thematic guideline which focuses the contents of the interview on a certain subject, in this case the interviewee’s learning strategies while using online lecture videos from a web site provided by their university. The central tool for problem-centered interviews is the interview guide, which is supposed to guide the interview conversation, presenting the interviewer with a fall- back mechanism in case the open conversation becomes stalled or runs the risk of going off-topic. The guide for this study was prepared by participants of an advanced seminar in the learning sciences as part of their course assignment. The contents of the interviews were to be focused on students’ learning strategies in the context of their use of online lecture videos. The main structuring points were thus: personal learning goals (long and short term), overall planning strategy, task-related planning and regulation strategy, time management, elaboration techniques, self- evaluation strategies, and peer learning and academic help-seeking. These strategies are combined derivates of SRL strategies found to be present in higher education contexts according to previous research [8, 9]. Interview subjects (N = 13) were enrolled in undergraduate study programs in the learning sciences or teacher education and had to be at least in their second year of How Students Fail to Self-regulate 379 studies, to ensure at least basic experience in self-regulated learning in general and the online learning environment mentioned below. Subjects were recruited and interviewed by the same aforementioned seminar participants in advanced learning sciences. Each interview session lasted between 30 and 60 min. The interviews were recorded digitally using personal recording devices and subsequently transcribed and anonymized. These transcripts were then analyzed using MAXQDA 2018 for Mac for coding and result aggregation. 3.2 The Learning Environment At LMU Munich, several undergraduate lectures in the educational sciences and in teacher education programs are regularly recorded and made available online for stu- dents to work with – either as a replacement for classroom attendance during lecture times, or as supplementary material, e.g. to review certain subjects during exam preparations [12]. Apart from providing a general service to students, in some cases instructors make a full lecture course available exclusively online, e.g. when they are on sabbatical and still want to or are required to offer the course, and sometimes instructors use pre-recorded video sessions to experiment with modern teaching con- cepts such as flipped classrooms. These online video lectures are made available via a public web site of the uni- versity, with some lectures being openly accessible, some restricted to students of the university or certain departments, according to instructors’ wishes. Online lecture recordings usually include audio and video from the instructor and synchronized presentation slides. Students who log into the site with their university credentials have access to some more functionality, namely a personalized viewing history and book- marks for their recently accessed lectures, as well as a more interactive user interface with an enhanced video player, allowing them to add time- and location-sensitive annotations to the online presentation slides, either for their private use, or as means of interaction amongst themselves and with instructors. 3.3 Main Findings This section presents the key results found by analyzing the anonymized interview transcripts. Goal Setting. In terms of goal-setting and overall motivation, most subjects speak about wanting to graduate successfully overall, only two students state they aim for high marks as well. Having a bachelor’s degree is understood as a requirement for later success on the job market, and high marks are perceived as enhancing factor for job success, guaranteeing higher job positions and/or higher wages. Aside from the longer- term goals, passing the exams and graduating within the prescribed time seems to be a prevailing sentiment – the latter most pronounced in those interview subjects with previous educational experience, be it from an earlier apprenticeship or an earlier university degree. Strategic Planning. About half of the interview subjects do not strategically plan and distribute their learning activities during the course of a semester, focusing their main 380 M. Pedrotti and N. Nistor effort on immediate exam preparations, usually near the end of the semester. Those students who do apply strategic planning to their learning experience create study plans – mostly weekly, some per semester – and try to stick to them. Only one student reports regularly working with study groups. Task Strategy & Effort Regulation. With respect to short term planning, only very few students report actually planning their learning task and setting up their learning environments. Actions are usually limited to choosing a place to work – the choice apparently being only between the university library and home – making sure the environment is relatively quiet and putting the phone out of immediate reach. For two students, this last point does not appear to be strong either, as one states they watch lectures while doing housework, and another admits playing video games on their phone while having the lecture video running on their laptop. Time Management. Two students report watching the online lectures in (self-)pre- defined blocks of 30–45 min, two students usually watch the full 90 min of a regular lecture session, with breaks between sessions. The other students either do not reserve explicit time frames for watching the online videos, or they have no fixed schedule, watching the recordings when it suits them or when the exam date sets limits to procrastination. Elaboration & Rehearsal. Almost all interview subjects rely on personal notes, which are usually consulted at a later time, e.g. before the next lecture session, but more frequently during immediate exam preparation. The actual implementation of this strategy varies between individuals, as some take initial notes with the presentation slides as base material before viewing the online video, adding more context to these notes during video playback, while others take notes during their watching the lecture recording, either with and/or on printed or digital presentation slides or on a separate notepad. One student reported not taking notes at all, relying solely on the video recording. Self-evaluation. Self-evaluation strategies are only mentioned in few interview sub- jects’ responses, and usually they consist of testing their knowledge against exam questions from earlier years. Peer Learning & Help Seeking. Only four interview subjects talk about relying on peers to assist their learning experience. One student participates in regular study group sessions at the university library (mentioned above), the other three falling back to peer support mainly on specific topics or to check if they missed important parts during their solitary study sessions. Academic help seeking (i.e. turning to instructors or mentors at university) was not mentioned during any of the interviews and did not appear to be a viable option for the students. How Students Fail to Self-regulate 381 4 Conclusion 4.1 Discussion The findings presented in the previous section paint a mixed picture of university students’ knowledge and use of SRL strategies to achieve academic success. The strategies employed most fall into the rehearsal and elaboration category, as well as time management. The latter might seem positive at first glance, since previous research shows time management to be a key supporting strategy for academic success in online learning contexts [2, 9]. However, more than half of the subjects focus most of their time and effort on reviewing video recordings and their notes during their acute exam preparation. Focusing cognitive energy on elaboration and rehearsal may seem like an appropriate strategy to reach the goal of passing the next exam, however, these strategies have been shown to have no significant influence on academic success [2, 8]. Considering a regular semester at LMU Munich consists of 13–15 weeks of regular classes, followed by what is commonly called the “exam phase” of 2–4 weeks where most lecture exams take place, and the lecture-free time, which is usually reserved for writing term papers, internships to gain job experience, and vacation time, the usually allocated period of time of 2–6 weeks of immediate exam preparation seems rather short for long-term academic success. In contrast, students’ stated goals in general appear to be mostly long-term, i.e. looking to graduate or at least pass all the exams in a timely fashion. While these long-term goals may help keep the overall focus on their studies, the lack of smaller, more short-term learning goals may explain the pattern described by most of the interviewed students, i.e. focusing time and energy on the time frame shortly before the exam at the end of semester. Another striking observation is the very limited or non-existent level of task-related strategy combined with little effort regulation regarding students’ personal learning space and environment. Though effort regulation is a key effective SRL strategy with respect to academic success [2, 9], little effort is put into actually using this strategy for a more effective learning experience. It is highly doubtful that the behavioral mani- festation displayed in this study’s interviews can yield long-term positive results, especially in cases such as the two students deciding not only to not exclude possible distractions from their work space, but rather decide to undertake additional, external activities, e.g. doing housework or playing games on their phones – most notably since off-task multi-tasking has been shown to be detrimental to learners’ success [13]. The lack of reliance on peer support or academic help via instructors or mentors at university may be surprising, but is actually in line with cited research, e.g. Broadbent’s study comparing blended and online learners’ SRL strategies [9]. As posited by Broadbent, students may not necessarily know all possible forms of peer learning, which may lead to the underrepresentation observed here as well. If students do not view non-obvious forms of peer assistance as such, they will not readily report this type of SRL strategy in an open question interview. Other factors at play may be individual differences such as previous learning experience, and low-barrier support for help seeking – be it from peers or instructors. Kizilcec et al. [8] note course participants with higher educational background are less likely to seek help and attribute this to their 382 M. Pedrotti and N. Nistor higher degree of self-regulation and stronger confidence in their own capabilities, while students were more likely to seek help, but often did not act on this, at least not observably in course forums or chat rooms. 4.2 Implications for Research and Educational Practice Despite the obvious limitations of a qualitative interview analysis with respect to reliability and external validity, this study provides additional insight into university students’ use of and experience in SRL strategies. The limited and suboptimal use of SRL strategies even by students of the learning sciences who are not new to higher educational contexts (both in theory through their course programs as well as in practice by being in their second or higher year of studies at university) leads to questions about the underlying reasons for students’ problems in dealing with online learning requiring high SRL skills, and how instructors can provide a scaffolding environment for students to acquire and use the necessary skills to successfully reach the goals set by curricula and themselves. From a research perspective, more in-depth analyses are needed in order to present instructors with detailed teaching interventions they can implement to enhance their students’ learning experience. Broadbent [9] suggests the use of measuring tools more specialized to online learning environments such as the Online Self-regulated Learning Questionnaire (OSLQ) [14] or the Online Help Seeking Questionnaire (OHSQ) [15] for quantitative analysis, which might deliver more accurate data on help seeking and peer learning behavior in online learning contexts. One major implication for future research is the need to pursue a mixed-method approach, combining self-reported with objective data from more than one source, e.g. by adding the online learning system’s log, artifacts from user forums in online learning environments, etc. [2, 3, 16]. Following the results of this study alone, a few recommendations can be made for instructors to start from. To counter the lack of effective time management and effort regulation strategies, specific training courses may be needed. These should probably be implemented and offered at an early stage in study programs, preferably during the first two semesters, in order to lay the foundation for successful transference into advanced studies. Such courses might be led by advanced students of the same subject, providing peer support, coaching younger students on how to effectively integrate SRL strategies when working with online lecture videos. Ideally, such an arrangement could also be leveraged to create a sense of community [17], leading to the building and integration of online communities of practice [18]. University students today seem to fail at effectively self-regulating their online learning experience. They may pass exams and graduate with bachelor’s and higher degrees, but questions may be raised as to whether they are actually gaining the knowledge they should be able to reach, and how instructors can improve this situation by providing more scaffolds in learning environments in general. 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Educ. 59, 774–784 (2012) Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appro- priate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. How Students Fail to Self-regulate 385 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ How Students Fail to Self-regulate Their Online Learning Experience Abstract 1 Introduction 2 SRL Strategies in Online Learning Environments 3 Interview Study 3.1 Design and Methodology 3.2 The Learning Environment 3.3 Main Findings 4 Conclusion 4.1 Discussion 4.2 Implications for Research and Educational Practice References 
work_sqlpjnimgfcuvpdhrsag2zeoqy	----	Distance Education Vol. 31, No. 2, August 2010, 193–209 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online © 2010 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2010.502555 http://www.informaworld.com Using mobile phones to promote lifelong learning among rural women in Southern India K. Balasubramaniana*, P. Thamizolib, Abdurrahman Umara, and Asha Kanwara aCommonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada; bConsultant, Commonwealth of Learning, Chennai, India Taylor and FrancisCDIE_A_502555.sgm (Received 17 April 2010; final version received 24 May 2010) 10.1080/01587919.2010.502555Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis3120000002010KodhandaramanBalasubramaniankbala@col.org This article is an attempt to study the role of mobile phones in the non-formal and informal context among rural women from resource poor communities. In particular, it focuses on the women’s control over the mobile phone as a learning tool through the domestication of technologies. The distance learning, gender dimensions, and use of technologies have been analysed vis-à-vis the concept of social capital. The article demonstrates that the transition from powerlessness to empowerment is possible in non-formal learning settings and low-cost technologies offer means to accelerate this process in the context of social capital. Keywords: lifelong learning; gender; mobile phone; domestication Background The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has developed a framework for Lifelong Learning (L3) for Farmers, on the premise that open and distance learning (ODL) and information and communication technology (ICT) can add value to the developmental process by reaching the unreached and facilitating self-directed learning among farm- ers, landless labourers, and various marginalized sections of the rural communities. COL believes that such learning should take place in the context of the entire social and economic value chain of rural society (Alluri, Balasubramanian, & Kamaraj, 2008). The L3 framework is integrated with livelihood strategies, micro-entrepreneurship, and bank credit. The assumption is that when stakeholders in the primary sector are facilitated in understanding the learning process around a specific area relating to their livelihoods, they will enhance the learning in the other areas thereby becoming lifelong learners. Such learning will take place, not only from a vertical flow of knowledge – from knowledge institutions to the community, but also from the horizontal transfer of knowledge – the passing on of knowledge within the community. COL has initiated ICT-based L3 in various Commonwealth countries, with one such project in Southern India. This project has been undertaken with a non- governmental organization called Vidiyal (Vidiyal means dawn in Tamil), which has a federation of 239 women’s Self-Help Groups (SHGs), called VIDIVELLI, that had identified activities around goat and sheep enterprise. COL, VIDIVELLI, and Vidiyal believed that if the women were extended credit to start up small enterprises in goat and sheep rearing, formal training and the resultant self-directed *Corresponding author. Email: kbala@col.org 194 K. Balasubramanian et al. learning would enable these women to run viable enterprises and repay the credit. Such an approach would in the long run encourage the banking sector to support L3 as a business strategy. VIDIVELLI helped to select 320 women who had expressed an interest in goat rearing. Through a series of Participatory Rural Appraisals (PRAs), Vidiyal conducted a learning needs analysis among the participating women. Vidiyal trained 320 women in conducting a value-chain analysis and in developing business propos- als for goat-rearing enterprises. The women contacted a public-sector commercial bank and obtained information on the procedures for developing a credit and busi- ness proposal. Vidiyal developed multimedia materials in local languages on how to conduct business feasibility studies and credit plans, and trained the women to carry out these processes. They also trained the women in negotiating with various stake- holders. It took nearly a year for the women to conduct the market feasibility studies and to develop the business and credit proposals. Each of the women developed a business proposal to obtain credit to buy nine female goats, one buck, and one mobile phone. The purpose of the mobile phone was to enhance lifelong learning opportunities. The bank agreed to the proposal of the SHGs and approved an amount of Rs. 12 million (nearly US$270,000) for the programme. The credit and the legal ownership of the assets are in the names of the participating women. The management and marketing decisions are taken jointly through the monthly SHG meetings. Vidiyal then entered into an agreement with IKSL-Airtel Group, one of the biggest mobile service providers in Southern India, to send audio messages and voicemails to the 300 women through mobile phones. In consultation with VIDIVELLI, Vidiyal created nearly 500 audio messages of about 60 seconds each on topics such as buying goats, feed management, disease and health management, and marketing management. Every day three to five messages were sent to participants in the programme through the mobile phones. Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI developed these materials in consultation with the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (TANUVAS). The materials and suggestions given by TANUVAS were integrated with indigenous knowledge and contextualized to suit the local culture and local dialects. The participating members were trained in developing multimedia materials using digital photography and PowerPoint. The materials thus produced were evaluated by VIDIVELLI and then channelled through the mobile phones. The other video-based multimedia materials are shown during monthly SHG meetings and are being telecast through local satellite channels that are run by the SHGs. Vidiyal also encouraged the women to discuss the enterprise issues with one another using mobile phones. Once a week the women met at the SHG meetings and shared their experiences. The horizontal and vertical transfer of knowledge was expected to encourage self-directed learning among the members. Self-directed learning is an important antecedent for lifelong learning. COL and Vidiyal believe that in addition to vertical flows of information, the horizontal transfer of knowledge is an essential dimension of such learning. Through a systematic hori- zontal transfer of knowledge, the initiative has focused on evolving a social learning capital. As Bruegel (2005) points out: Social capital develops from collective experience and on that basis can be transforma- tive, realising forms of collective agency. Just as physical capital is transformed and Distance Education 195 financial capital is accumulated as it is utilised, so social capital can be characterised as a process in which alternative values and goals may be developed and the power to effect change may be accumulated, depending on the wider context and circum- stances. (p. 5) Hence, in the initiative, structural conditions were created to facilitate the horizon- tal transfer of knowledge through mobile phones. Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI negotiated with the mobile service agency, who agreed to reduce the cost of calling among the 300 participants. Using the broad principles of quality learning conversation (Baker, 2006), COL and Vidiyal trained the participating women in effective conversation through mobile phones. Educational technology and gender The closeness of the relationship between the digital divide and the gender divide has been well established by previous studies (International Labour Organization, 2001; Kennedy, Wellman, & Klement, 2003; Liff & Shepherd, 2004). The digital revolution, which has undoubtedly influenced educational technology, has not broken gender barriers. Nelson and Watson (1995) found significant gender differences in relation to access and performance outcomes and that the disparity became evident even in preschools. Bryson and De Castell (1996) traced the gender inequity in new technologies in the formal education system in Canada and argued that: Women live, paradoxically, in a state of intimate connection with technologies of re/ production and yet are represented as perennially inadequate-groping towards and never reaching competence – technophobic and Luddite. (p. 121) Similar gender stereotyping has restricted the access of women to ICT in many devel- oping countries, including India (Gurumurthy, 2004). Yet as Rakow and Navarro (1993) pointed out: There is nothing inherent in the technology that requires women and men to use it differently. It is gender ideology, operating within a particular political and economic context, that leads to women and men living different lives and using technology differently. (p. 155) However, most of the gender–educational technology discourses are too computer-centric. The emerging technologies such as mobile phones have received limited attention particularly in the context of non-formal distance learning. Numerous studies have highlighted the gender bias of telephone technology (see, for example, Fischer, 1992; Marvin, 1988). Quoting the studies of Frissen (1995) and Rakow and Navarro (1993), Omari and Ribak (2008) have described the transition in the perception of phones and mobile phones from the elitist, male, business-oriented medium of communications to adoption by women using it in a ‘creative way to carry out their geographically complicated responsibilities of home, family members and paid labor’ (p. 152). They argue that although the mobile phone tends to blur the institutional boundaries between the home and work, giving women the flexibility to exist in both domains, it also leads to reinforcement of women’s traditional role and subordinate social status. The report of a mobile phone manufacturer puts forward a view that women tend to use their mobile phones as instruments of expression and 196 K. Balasubramanian et al. sociability, in contrast to men for whom mobile phones symbolize their social and occupational status (Plant, 2003). However, such conclusions have been derived from studies conducted in developed countries. In the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the developmental role of mobile phones vis-à-vis gender is attracting attention. The Grameen Phone (2005) among others in Bangladesh has focused specifically on targeting women. Omari and Ribak (2008) studied the use of mobile phones by teenage Palestinian girls and concluded that the mobile phone as ‘a cultural objective acquires its meaning through the biographies of its users’ (p. 163). The prevailing social relationships and practices are constantly challenged by various stakeholders, and mobile phones may be playing a role in this regard. Silverstone, Hirsch, and Morley (1992) proposed the Domestication of Technol- ogy Framework as one way of understanding the technology–gender relationship since it has a systematic approach to analysing the social shaping of technology. The framework comprises four elements: appropriation refers to being able to access and own resources; objectification reflects the use of resources within the household econ- omy; incorporation is the manner in which the objects and resources are integrated and have an impact on the power relations within the household; and conversion is the relationship between the household and the broader society. Silverstone et al. argue that the conversion represents the ‘boundary across which artefacts and meanings, texts and technologies, pass as the household defines and claims for itself and its members a status in the neighbourhood work and peer groups in the wider society’ (p. 22). Appropriation has attracted most attention in relating gender to ICT. An under- standing of other elements such as objectification, incorporation, and conversion could help in a broader understanding of the gender–technology relationship. In neighbouring West Bengal, India, Tenhunen (2008) has made the following interesting observation regarding gender issues in the use of mobile phones: Men have purchased all the mobile phones in the village, and all the shops with public phones belong to men. However, in many houses women are in charge of delivering news and operating the phone, because their husbands need to be on the road to purchase stocks or sell products. The phones are used collectively by the entire family and even the neighbourhood. (pp. 525–526) Tenhunen’s observation indicates that while appropriation is still in men’s hands, women have started playing major roles in objectification and intensification, even though their role may be more of supporting men’s occupations. Communication, networking, and information sharing are seen as the essential functions of mobile phones and the gender dimensions have been perceived vis-à-vis these functions. Limited attempts have been made to conceptualize the mobile phone as an educational (or learning) technology. In this study, the role of the mobile phone as a learning technology and its gender relationships are analysed vis-à-vis the analyt- ical framework of the domestication of technology outlined above. Most studies on how learning takes place are based on men’s experiences in academic institutions. There are very few studies available on how and if women learn differently and whether learning takes place differently in non-formal environments. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) in their longitudinal study of Amer- ican women in formal and non-formal contexts have identified five categories of women’s perspectives of knowing. These are: Distance Education 197 (1) Silence, when women see themselves as both mindless and voiceless and rely on external authority for knowledge (2) Received knowledge when women believe they are capable of receiving knowledge from external authorities (3) Subjective knowledge, a perspective from which women conceive knowledge intuitively and subjectively (4) Procedural knowledge in which women invest in learning and follow objective procedures for obtaining knowledge (5) Constructed knowledge under which women view themselves as creators of knowl- edge using both subjective and objective strategies. (Belenky et al., 1986, p. 15) Although these are neither exhaustive nor sequential categories, they may help to establish a hypothetical frame within which women in developing as well as devel- oped countries overcome silence and come to voice. Purpose of the study This study focuses on a group of illiterate and semi-literate women in Southern India who are challenging (latently as well as manifestly) the existing social relations through mobilization and learning. It attempts to understand the relationship between social context and the use of mobile phones as tools for lifelong learning vis-à-vis the gender dimension. The study was based on the premise that the digital divide in terms of gender should be perceived beyond the issues of simple access to ICT. The objective has been to delineate the gender dimension in the use of the mobile phone as a learning tool among the women involved in the goat-rearing enterprise. Target group A survey was conducted among a sample 73 women randomly selected from the 320 who participated in the project. Methodology The study adopted a two-pronged approach – quantitative analysis using a structured survey and qualitative analysis using social–anthropological tools. A questionnaire was designed in consultation with VIDIVELLI. The questionnaire focused on primary data (such as education, occupation, caste, age, economic condi- tions, family size, and infrastructure facilities), experience and usage patterns of mobile phones, and opinions about mobile phones as learning tools. After pilot testing and refining the questionnaire, it was administered to the sample by the staff of Vidiyal. The data were analysed with simple statistical tools (frequency tables and averages). For qualitative analysis, the study used anthropological tools and participatory rural appraisal techniques such as focus group discussions, participatory observa- tion, and structured interviews. Since the anthropological tools use a process- oriented approach, a combination of the tools would normally be adopted for trian- gulation and cross-checking. Thus, the observations of the focus group discussions are cross-checked through participatory observation and structured interviews and vice versa. 198 K. Balasubramanian et al. These approaches helped to transit the women from mere respondents of a statis- tical survey to participants in evolving a development theme. The theme and the conclusion of the studies were shared with the participating women. Vidiyal ascribes to the participatory process as an ethical framework for development. In a meeting with the members of VIDIVELLI and the ‘respondents,’ permission was sought for using the quotes of the respondents in this article. Since some of the quotes challenged the male members of the family as well as the community, the women were asked whether such public statements would lead to conflicts within families and the community. The women referred to Peria Jakkamal (2009), an illiterate woman member of VIDIVELLI, who presented her views, and openly discussed the commu- nity’s attitude towards the issues of women at the 17th Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers. They argued that through various forums they have started challenging the oppressive practices without affecting the family and community ties. Results Socio-economic backgrounds of respondents Table 1 shows the social demographic characteristics of the respondents. These are similar to what one would find in many South Asian countries. A substantial propor- tion of respondents were young adults, and half were below the age of 40. Most of the respondents were from families with four to six members. The majority did not have school education. A large number were agricultural labourers. More than 97% of the Lifelong Learners have been declared as in households below the ‘poverty line’ by the government. Thus, the participants are generally from similar class backgrounds. However, there are variations in terms of caste, age, educational status of the participant, and the educational status of the participant’s family. According to Table 2 around 38% of the respondents do not have any family member with middle or above middle school education, while around 37% of the respondents’ families have few adult members with middle school education. It is also interesting to note that, among respondents with formal education, around 30% of them do not know how to read or write. Most of the households have around 11 to 15 goats (Table 3). In spite of the poverty of the households, the strong presence of ICT is evident from the fact that more than 97% of the households have television and around 80% of the households have television with satellite cable connections (Table 4). This phenomenon is gener- ally seen in Southern India, where private and government channels have a strong presence. On the other hand, use of radio and landline telephones is minimal. Appropriation In Silverstone et al.’s Domestication of Technology Framework (1992), appropriation refers to access, ownership, and possession of technology. Initially the participating women preferred multimedia materials for learning. One of the SHGs, which runs a satellite cable television channel in a village, telecast the multimedia learning materials on its satellite cable channel. Most of the women, as poor labourers, felt that attending classes or watching multimedia materials restricted their movement for employment, occupation, and household chores. They asked Distance Education 199 Table 1. Socio-demographic status of respondents (N = 73). % of respondents Education No school education 58.9 Primary school 21.9 Middle school 15.1 Secondary school 4.1 Age (years) ≤20 1.4 21–30 34.2 31–40 50.7 41–50 9.6 Occupation Agricultural labourer 89.0 Marginal labourer 8.2 Medium farmer 1.4 Other 1.4 Family size ≤3 16.4 4–6 65.8 7–10 17.8 Caste statusa Most backward castes 41 Schedules tribe 58 Forward caste 1.0 Economic statusa ‘Below Poverty Line’ Status 97.3 ‘Above Poverty Line’ Status 2.7 aCategories as per the guidelines of Government of India (2007). Table 2. Socio-demographic status of respondents’ households (N = 73). % of respondents Type of house Thatched 6.9 Partially concrete 63.0 Fully concrete 30.1 Adult members above middle school level None 38.5 <25% 36.9 >25% 24.6 200 K. Balasubramanian et al. Vidiyal and COL to look into the possibility of using the mobile phone as a business and learning tool. The mobile phone would not only help in the learning process but would also support the goat-rearing enterprise in terms of animal management and marketing management. However, Vidiyal cautioned the SHGs that mobile phones could be usurped by other family members, since women have limited control over ownership. However, VIDIVELLI and the SHGs argued that since the mobile phones would be purchased by them with bank credit, they would maintain control and ownership. According to the survey, around 59% of the respondents did not have any prior experience in using a landline phone. Similarly, around 36% of the respondents had not previously used a mobile phone (Table 5). Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI conducted a training programme on the mobile phone. The mobile phone dealers and mobile service companies were invited to the meetings during which the SHG members negotiated the terms, prices, and service mechanisms. VIDIVELLI made the final decision of the mobile phone and the mobile service company. Through formal functions, these mobile phones were distributed to the women, since VIDIVELLI felt that such functions would help to reinforce the owner- ship of the instrument at the household level. The transition of the instrument from the shop to the household is an important aspect of appropriation. The survey shows that a substantial number of women involved in L3 kept the phone in their custody (Table 6). In a few cases, the gendered hierarchy encourages the men to take control of the mobile, particularly when the males do not own a mobile phone. During the monthly meetings of the SHGs, the possession of mobile phones is discussed and strategies are laid out to reinforce Table 3. Goats in the household. Number of goats % of respondents 1–10 6.8 11–15 63.0 16–20 19.2 ≥21 11.0 Table 4. Communication technologies in the household. Technology % of respondents Landline telephones 4.1 Radio/transistor 9.6 Television 97.3 Satellite cable connections 80.8 Table 5. Respondents’ prior experience in using phones. Type of phone % of respondents Landline phones 58.9 Mobile phones 35.6 Distance Education 201 the ownership. The spouses are also the major users of the phone (Table 7). Yadu- lamma gleefully announced in one of the SHG meetings that her husband and other male members in her house seek her permission before using the phone. Most of the women in the initiative have opted for pre-paid mobile services and these services have been registered in their names. Objectification In Silverstone et al.’s Domestication of Technology Framework (1992), objectifica- tion refers to the object and its use in the household economy. All the women who participated in the survey declared that they regularly took the goats for grazing and most of them (90.4%) carried their mobile phones with them (see Table 8). In the domestic context most of the respondents’ families supported the learning objectives of the woman. If family members hear the voicemail or audio messages, they immediately share the information with the woman and help them to learn the content. Likewise, the woman shares the content on goat rearing with her husband and with other members of the family. This process benefits the entire family to learn new things and expand the knowledge base on goat rearing. According to Jakkamal (2009), ‘Whether I am in the kitchen or managing the graz- ing goats in the pasture land, I am able to listen to the messages which are very useful.’ In many parts of rural and urban India, women involved in (for example) agriculture or trade carry a small drawstring purse or pouch called surukku pai, in Tamil. Women Table 6. Possession of mobile phone (N = 73). Person keeping the mobile phone most of the time % of respondents Self 75.4 Husband 16.4 Son 6.8 No answer 1.4 Table 7. Major user of the mobile phone (N = 73). Major user of the phone in the house % of respondents Husband 78.1 Son 6.8 Others 4.1 Nobody else 11.0 Table 8. Percentage of respondents carrying the mobile phone while grazing goats (N = 73). Response % of respondents Yes 90.4 No 8.2 No answer 1.4 202 K. Balasubramanian et al. carry items such as coins and betel leaves in the purse and it is generally tucked in the waist of the traditional attire, sari. Surukku pai is generally associated with women. In this context it is a gendered object. Jakkamal carries her mobile phone in her surukku pai. The study found that large numbers of the learners carry their mobile phones in their surukku pai, along with coins and betel leaves. A strong symbolic meaning is displayed through surukku pai, reinforcing possession of the new object vis-à-vis the spatial arrangement of the household. Although a few women have bought modern leather pouches, most of the participating women believe that surukku pai gives a better indication of their ownership over the phones. Incorporation In Silverstone et al.’s Domestication of Technology Framework (1992), incorporation refers to the way in which objects are used in a temporal context. Learning materials were prepared within the broad principles of ODL vis-à-vis the learning needs of the group. No examinations or certificates are required to participate in the learning course, although VIDIVELLI reviews the learning processes. The content in the form of audio messages or voicemails are sent to the participating women regularly. Three to five messages are sent every day. Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI also conduct face-to-face training programmes on using the mobile phones. Since most of the women are illiterate or semi-literate, they were given practice in operating the phone. They were further advised to seek the help of others within their family. Spouses seem to be the primary source of help. Daughters (most of them are children or teens) are the next primary source, while Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI are considered secondary sources of help (Table 9). Women preferred to get messages in the mornings while going to work or doing household chores. They go up to five kilometres away from the village to graze their animals and receive the voicemails while tending the goats. Whatever stays in their minds (nejil neirpathai eluthuvom seivom) is recorded in their diaries. The literate and semi-literate women seek the help of spouses and children to write the notes. These notes are discussed during the monthly SHG meetings. Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI initi- ated this practice since it was felt that recalling, recording, and discussing would help to internalize the learning process. All respondents fully agreed with the view that mobile phone-based training is useful and easier as compared to face-to-face training (Table 10). When they were asked to respond to the statement that mobile phone-based training is better than face- to-face training, some women did not agree. However, nearly 82% of the respondents Table 9. Support received in interacting with mobile phones (N = 73). Who helps in using mobile phones Primary helper Secondary helper Husband 42.6 0 Sons 6.8 1.4 Daughters 27.4 15.1 Other members in the family 6.8 9.6 Non-governmental organizations 8.2 31.5 Nobody 6.8 41.0 No answer 1.4 1.4 Distance Education 203 fully agreed that mobile-based training is better than face-to-face training. During the interviews, women pointed out that attending training programmes involves substan- tial financial, economic, and social opportunity costs for them. Some lose their labour wages. They have to seek the support of other family members or neighbours in managing the household chores. In contrast they are able to receive regular lessons through mobile phones whether they are in the kitchen or in the field managing the animals. Periathha, one of the leaders of the SHGs, said that as most of them did not attend schools in their youth, the concept of the classroom is intimidating. They are not in a position to stay in the same place, physically and mentally, listening to lectures and discussions. She said that fear of the teacher still lurks in the corner of their minds. Most of the respondents had listened to more than six audio messages and voice- mails in the week prior to the survey (Table 11). Most of the respondents felt that they were able to use the salient points of the messages in managing the goats. According to Vidiyal, this was due to the participatory learning need analysis, which helped to identify the relevant themes. Incorporation is a matter of integrating the new technology into routines of daily living; it is characterized by struggles over and negotiations with the technology (Christensen, 2002). Yadulamma narrated the following incident (citations from the village women in this article have been translated into English from Tamil by the researchers, as best as possible): I do not allow my husband to touch the mobile phone. One day while going for grazing, I found that the phone was not working. Since I was going for grazing I requested my husband to take the mobile phone to Vidiyal’s office where an engineer comes every Monday to attend the complaints about the handsets from SHG members. The engineer repaired my phone and gave it to my husband. When my husband brought it back, I found the phone was still not working. I opened the phone and found that the tongue is missing. I shouted at my husband for missing the tongue and rushed back to Vidiyal’s Table 10. Opinion of the value of the mobile phone as a learning tool (N = 73). Opinion of mobile phone-based learning FA SA DNA CD NR Useful 100 1.4 0 0 0 Easier 100 0 0 0 0 Better than face-to-face training 82.2 1.4 16.4 0 0 FA = fully agree; SA = somewhat agree; DNA = do not agree; CD = completely disagree; NR = no response. Table 11. Number of audio messages and voicemails received in the week up to the survey (N = 73). Number of messages per respondent % of respondents 0 1.4 1–3 9.6 4–5 39.7 6 or more 47.9 No response 1.4 204 K. Balasubramanian et al. office. With the staff of the VIDIYAL, I searched and found the tongue. Later I told my husband that I would never depend on him for repairing the mobile phone. In speaking of the ‘tongue,’ Yadulamma was referring to the SIM card. When Vidiyal staff told her that it is called a ‘SIM card,’ she said that it is like a tongue to the mobile phone, without which the phone cannot speak. Although phones are shared among members of the family, the women are faced with the constant task of constructing and sustaining an identity within the home, not only in terms of appropriation, but also in terms of objectifying and incorporating the instrument as a learning tool rather than as a mere communication tool. Conversion In Silverstone et al.’s Domestication of Technology Framework (1992), conversion refers to the way in which the object is used as currency. Sudha, a middle-school dropout, said: In my family and neighbourhood, some men do not know how to use a mobile phone. They see me using the phone, listening to voicemails and talking to other SHG members. They exclaim saying that these women who used to sit in the corner of the house and gossip, are now behaving like government officers, talking on mobile phones. While some are sarcastic, there are others who appreciate our transition. Mobile phones have become a symbolic representation of our transition from dependency on males to self- dependency. According to VIDIVELLI, mobile phones have produced a breakthrough in linking women with information sources. Mobile phones are enhancing the flow of commu- nication, especially with relatives and friends in other villages. Some of the women have learned to send cost-free SMSs through mobiles. With the help of family members, they have assigned particular ringtones to particular callers. Mobile phones help to share information about the availability of goats for marketing with the members of SHGs in other villages. The women contact the local middlemen in the same or other villages who can facilitate goat marketing, and the merchants who buy goats. They also contact the butchers and agents of weekly markets in the nearby towns. They share information about the market for goats. The agents bring vehicles to the village and transport the goats to the weekly market. This helps the women to identify better market options and to sell for the best prices. The use of the mobile phone has resulted in reduction of transportation and other opportunity costs. The women felt that effective and crisp conversational ability is required since the price they pay for a call depends on the time taken in conversation. A substantial number of the respondents had been using the phones to call others to discuss goat rearing (primary calls). As shown by the responses given in Table 13, respondents frequently called SHG members in the village and family members (Table 12 and 13). These calls were made to discuss and ascertain the validity of the lessons and information passed through the audio and voicemail messages. In contrast, the number of respondents receiving calls from others on goat rearing is limited. Only around 38% of the respondents have been receiving calls. There was general agreement among the women that their social network had become more intensive with the arrival of the mobile phone. In addition to goat Distance Education 205 rearing, they have been receiving lessons in governance and fundamental legal rights. When any of the villagers is taken to the police station, the family members have started approaching the SHG members to discuss their legal rights. According to VIDIVELLI, the enhanced ability to negotiate with various stakeholders has added a new dimension to the personality of the participating women. Discussion about voicemail and audio messages is a regular agenda item in the monthly SHG meetings. The mobile owners share the information received with the non-mobile owners. These meetings provide the women an opportunity to discuss the messages received, clarify their doubts, and fix the information in the existing knowledge system. According to Vidiyal such a process of enquiry and introspec- tion is essential for providing the confidence to the learners to convert the messages into actions for better goat rearing. The diaries in which the women record the voicemail and audio messages received are brought to the monthly meetings for discussion. Sometimes women learners are unable to comprehend the message heard. The facilitation of horizontal learning in the SHG meetings helps to clarify their doubts and enhances understanding. Mobile phones are used for other purposes, such as discussing matters not connected with business or learning. During one of the interviews, discussions centred around gossiping through phones. Immediately the women challenged the fact that men also spend time gossiping about politics, recreation, etc. Sudha said: Table 12. Calls on goat rearing made and received on mobile phone (N = 73). % of respondents Number of calls Calls made Calls received 0 35.6 61.7 1–3 21.9 10.9 4–6 12.3 2.7 7 or more 28.8 23.3 No answer 1.4 1.4 Table 13. Person or institutions to whom calls made or received (N = 73). % of respondents Calls made Calls received Primary Secondary Primary Secondary Immediate family members 12.3 1.4 6.8 0 Neighbours 1.4 1.4 1.4 0 Relatives 0 19.1 1.4 4.1 SHG members in the village 38.4 5.5 20.4 4.1 SHG members in other villages 6.8 17.8 4.1 5.5 Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI 2.7 13.7 1.4 10.9 Extension officers, doctors, and others 1.4 4.1 1.4 2.7 None 35.6 35.6 61.7 71.3 No answer 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 206 K. Balasubramanian et al. We are not rich people to spend hours talking through the phone. Every minute of conversation is a cost to us. While conversations among the 320 participants is subsi- dized by the mobile company, we have to pay full charges for conversing with others. Also, our telephone bills are discussed in the monthly SHG meetings and assessments are made on Quality Learning Conversations. Hence we are always careful in using the phone. At the beginning of the initiative, the male staff of Vidiyal recorded the audio and voicemail messages. During VIDIVELLI’s meeting the women participants argued that the voices of the participating women should be used in the messages. Some of the participating women were trained and their messages are being recorded in their own voices. Similarly, women felt that there should be quizzes and a feedback system for reviewing and evaluating their performances. Based on their suggestions, COL and the University of British Columbia have developed a learning management system using audio messages and voicemails. The mobile service company is providing Vidiyal and VIDIVELLI with a master SIM card through which they will be able to upload the messages directly to their system. Discussion and conclusion Two aspects are evident from the above analysis: self-directed learning and gender dimensions. The community came together, defined the learning goals based on individual needs, identified the resources and strategies for learning, and are in the process of evaluating the outcomes. The blending of vertical and horizontal transfer of knowl- edge helped individual learners to learn in their own time and at their own pace. The latent as well as the manifest challenges to the gender stereotypes posed by the women’s group while domesticating the mobile phones reflect the critical perceptions evolving among the women in the group. The SHG movement of VIDIVELLI facilitated by Vidiyal operates beyond the conventional framework of microfinance. Creating livelihoods through micro- enterprise, developing institutional structures for emphasizing legal rights, and enhanc- ing the ability to negotiate with various stakeholders, are some of the important agendas being pursued by the SHGs. Thus, there are latent as well as manifest challenges to the existing social relations. However, it is beyond the purview of the present study to make an assessment whether such challenges are altering the present social relations. The study shows that the SHG movement, micro-enterprises, and lifelong learning represent challenges for the existing social relationships. Management decisions of the assets and resources are discussed in the SHG meetings and thereby the realm of the decision-making in the household economy is moving beyond the household. Clearly, this empowerment results from women’s participation in learning and in ownership of assets. It is clear that given the appropriate opportunities, even the most marginalized women can learn effectively. Yet they learn differently. The women of VIDIVELLI are in the stages of development of procedural knowl- edge and development of constructed knowledge. However, the transition from silence to development of constructed knowledge has been influenced by the strong cognitive social capital developed through the learning and sharing processes. ODL has helped with the development of procedural knowledge and has led to a stage where development of constructed knowledge is becoming possible. It is important to point out that all of these stages of learning cannot be attained without access to some Distance Education 207 basic resources, and in this case these resources have been provided via mobile phones. Mobile phones have been introduced as both learning tools and as tools for business. The domestication of technology, with elements of appropriation, objectifi- cation, incorporation, and conversion, has taken place in the context of cognitive social capital and social learning capital. The appropriation of the mobile phone in the context of bank credit and lifelong learning has helped to create an identity for the phone as a learning and business tool. Using mobile phones while managing animals, listening to audio messages and voicemails and recording messages for discussion and peer review, sharing the messages in the neighbourhood, workplaces, and SGH meet- ings, discussing the various aspects of goat rearing, all these have strengthened the objectification, intensification, and conversion processes. The participants’ constant interaction with the mobile phone company has helped to introduce them to new tech- nologies and familiarize them with procedures such as uploading the messages through master SIM cards. Their feedback has encouraged COL and the University of British Columbia to develop a learning management system for mobile phones. Thus the participants have not only been influenced by technology, but are also playing a role in shaping the technology. VIDIVELLI women represent a cognitive social capital that emerges from trust and norms generated from cognitive and interactive processes. It is further reinforced by reciprocity, collective identity, shared beliefs, and recognitions that contribute mutu- ally beneficial collective action. Continuous interactions, dialogues, and debates char- acterize this process. Thus it acts as a collective agency in addressing common issues. Lifelong learning was integrated as a component of this social capital and the domestication of mobile technology as an instrument of learning and information sharing took place within the framework of this collective agency. While clearly the mobile phone was ‘given shape and meaning by being grafted onto existing rules and expectations about the structure of social relations’ (Omari & Ribak, 2008, p. 163), it was instrumental in building cognitive social capital. The absence of such collective agencies could be one reason for the digital and gender divides in the use of educational technology in formal education. This study demonstrates that the transition from silence to voice, from powerless- ness to empowerment is possible in non-formal learning contexts, just as it is in formal contexts, and that technology offers a means to accelerate this process if the use of technology is placed in an appropriate social context. Acknowledgements We are grateful for support of this project by Sir John Daniel, President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning, Mr Kamaraj and his team in Vidiyal, and the women members of VIDIVELLI. Notes on contributors K. Balasubramanian is an education specialist at the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), work- ing in the area of agriculture and livelihood. He is focusing on the Lifelong Learning for Farmers initiative in various Commonwealth countries. P. Thamizoli is an anthropologist working as a consultant for various development agencies, such as COL and CIDA. He is facilitating the Lifelong Learning for Farmers initiative of COL 208 K. Balasubramanian et al. in India. He has more than 15 years’ experience in applied anthropology, participatory development, and microfinance. Abdurrahman Umar is the education specialist–teacher education at COL, Vancouver, Canada. He was the Director of Academic Services at the National Teachers’ Institute, Kaduna, Nigeria, from 2001 to 2008. His research interests include open and distance learning, teacher education, and OERs for English language teaching. Asha Kanwar is Vice-President of COL. 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Retrieved from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118514949/ Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. 
work_src3t37q7feezoms5g6kgbsrtq	----	Microsoft Word - 13. Slavko Pokorni.doc 138 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 OBRAZOVANJE NA DALJINU Dr Slavko Pokorni, dipl. inž. Visoka škola strukovnih studija za informacione tehnologije, Zemun Rezime: U radu su analizirani pojam, prednosti, uslovi za uvođenje, rezul- tati istraživanja o potrebi uvođenja, kao i osnovne karakteristike organi- zacije sistema obrazovanja na daljinu. Dat je i primer njegove primene u Beogradskoj akademiji računarskih nauka. Ključne reči: obrazovanje na daljinu, učenje na daljinu, visoko obrazo- vanje. DISTANCE EDUCATION Summary: The definition, advantages, conditions for implementation and re- sults of the research of necessity of implementation are analysed as well as the basic characteristics of the organization of distance educa- tion systems. The example of an implementation in the Belgrade Aca- demy of Computer Sciences is given as well. Key words: distance education, distance learning, higher education. Uvod Razvoju obrazovanja na daljinu (engl. distance education) u sve- tu se poklanja značajna pažnja [1, 5]. Veliki broj svetski priznatih vi- sokoškolskih ustanova u svom programu studija ima ovaj oblik obra- zovanja. Prema podacima Američke asocijacije za učenje na daljinu (The United States Distance Learning Association, USDLA), za 2003. godinu, na nekoj formi distance learninga bilo je oko 3 000 000 studenata. Neke od najznačajnijih institucija koje ga primenjuju u svom radu su u SAD: National Technological University, Vestern Go- vernors University, University of Phoenix, California Distant Lerning Program, Columbia Network for Engineering Education; u Evropi: The International Council for Open and Distance Education – Oslo, United Kingdom Open University, Virtual University Enterprises, Uni- versity for Industry, itd. 139 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 U Evropi su značajne inicijative razvoja „distance learninga“, realizovane preko „European Distance Education Network“ (EDEN)1 [6] i „European Asso- ciation of Distance Education Teaching Universities“. Open University iz Veli- ke Britanije usvojio je standarde za obrazovanje na daljinu po čijem uzoru su organizovane obrazovne institucije u Španiji, Nemačkoj, Holandiji i Portugaliji. Evropska komisija u svojim dokumentima (e-learning Action Plan 2004–2006) snažno podržava razvoj učenja na daljinu, odnosno e-obrazovanja u svim dr- žavama članicama EU. Mnogi programski dokumenti, kao što su eEurope+, eEurope 2005, Information Society itd. i rezolucija Evropskog Saveta daju ob- razovanju na daljinu značajan prioritet u daljem razvoju obrazovanja u EU. Obrazovanje na daljinu uvedeno je, uvodi se ili se planira njegovo uvođenje i za pripadnike Vojske (videti u [12]). Šta je obrazovanje na daljinu? Obrazovanje na daljinu nije novina. Nastalo je sa pojavom dopisnih škola, koje su se zasnivale na materijalima i knjigama koji su se slali pu- tem pošte, a danas se sprovodi putem savremenih tehnologija (slanje e- maila, dostavljanje CD-a, on line komunikacija, itd.), kako se, naravno, i polažu ispiti. Prema tome, obrazovanje, odnosno učenje na daljinu, po- stoji više od 100 godina,2 ali je sa pojavom interneta dobilo novu dimenzi- ju, pa ga mnogi, od tada, smatraju novim fenomenom. Faktički je prime- njivo na svim nivoima obrazovanja, od osnovnog, preko srednjeg i viso- kog do različitih oblika obrazovanja i usavršavanja u toku radnog veka na radnom mestu i van njega (obrazovanje tokom čitavog života). Definicije obrazovanja na daljinu nisu jedinstvene i tokom vremena su se menjale, često u zavisnosti od razvoja tehnologije kojom su realizova- ne, ali i da bi se obuhvatila i nauka o nastavi na daljinu (distance teaching), i njen krajnji rezultat, učenje na daljinu (distance learning), posebno u obla- sti visokog obrazovanja, gde se obrazovanje na daljinu i pojavilo. Obrazovanje na daljinu (distance education), u časopisu The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, definisano je kao institucionalno zasnovano for- malno obrazovanje, gde su grupe koje uče odvojene i gde se koriste sistemi za interaktivnu komunikaciju za povezivanje nastavnika, onih koji uče, i resursa. 1 Članovi EDEN-a iz Srbije su: E-learning Network, Link group (koji je osnivač Beogradske akademije računarskih nauka) i Ekonomski fakultet iz Subotice. E-Learning Network formirala je beogradska kancelarija WUS Austria u okviru eLearning Pro- gram-a, a dobrovoljno je udruženje koje koristi virtualne platforme za razmenu ideja, informaci- ja, i priprema razne skupove. Do sada je formiran eLearning Task Force koji se sastoji od pre- dstavnika svih univerziteta, a koji je izradio i usvojio skup preporuka za razvoj elektronskog obrazovanja. Krajnji cilj je formiranje univerzitetskog centra za elektronsko obrazovanje, koji treba da bude osnova za promociju i razvoj elektronskog obrazovanja na univerzitetima u Srbiji i Crnoj Gori (videti na. http://www.eln-online.org/about). 2 Zanimljivi podaci o istorijatu obrazovanja mogu se videti na sajtu http://www.it-akademi- ja.com/ITAkademija-Vremeplov-obrazovanja 140 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 Američka asocijacija za učenje na daljinu (The United States Distan- ce Learning Association) [7] definiše pojam učenja na daljinu kao „stica- nje znanja i veština putem indirektnih informacija i uputstava, primenom različitih tehnologija i ostalih formi učenja na daljinu“. Jedna od jednostavnih i prihvaćenih definicija obrazovanja na daljinu je „strukturirano učenje koje se obavlja bez fizičkog prisustva nastavni- ka“, usvojena 1989. godine na konferenciji u Los Alamosu [8]. Pojava novih tehnologija, posebno interneta, ne samo što je dala no- vi zamah obrazovanju na daljinu već su se pojavili i novi termini: elektron- sko učenje (e-learning), online learning, i web zasnovana obuka (web-ba- sed training). Iako je American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) definisalo e-learning kao isporuku sadržaja preko interneta, intra- neta-extraneta, audio i videotraka, satelita, interaktivne TV, i CD-ROM-a, danas se najčešće podrazumeva samo internet. Sredinom devedesetih godina nastao je i novi termin – savremeno distribuirano učenje (advanced distributed learning). Prema tome, učenje na daljinu je sistem i proces povezivanja polaznika sa distribuiranim obrazovnim resursima. Bez obzira na različitost definicija, sa praktičnog stanovišta, distance learning, kao minimum podrazumeva [8]: – fizičku udaljenost između studenta i nastavnika – najočigledniji ele- ment; – organizaciju koja obezbeđuje sadržaje – za razliku od samoučenja, – nastavni program – učenje mora imati cilj i, prema tome, strukturu, – vrednovanje (ocenjivanje) učenja – što se podrazumeva za svako učenje. Iako je ovde, kao zahtev, izostavljena, interakcija je poželjna za do- bro učenje na daljinu. Kada je reč o učenju3 i obrazovanju, moglo bi se reći da se učenje na daljinu odnosi na bilo koju formu učenja gde su onaj koji uči i nastav- nik razdvojeni, a obrazovanje na daljinu odnosi se na aktivnosti formalnih obrazovnih institucija, uključujući sve nivoe obrazovanja, kao i obrazova- nje tokom čitavog života. Savremene tehnologije pružaju raznolike mogućnosti pri izboru sred- stava za realizaciju učenja na daljinu. Radi postizanja optimalnih rezulta- ta, mediji (sredstva) za učenje na daljinu treba da budu odabrani, imajući u vidu da učenje na daljinu može da se odvija kao [8]: – sinhrono (živa – u realnom vremenu, dvosmerna, usmena i/ili vizu- elna komunikacija između studenta i nastavnika) i asinhrono (komunika- cija nije u realnom vremenu), i 3 Učenje je proces sticanja znanja ili veština putem studiranja, iskustva ili nastave. 141 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 – simetrično (tok informacija je podjednak u oba smera između na- stavnika i studenta), i asimetrično (učenje ili komunikacija, kada tok infor- macija ide prevashodno u jednom smeru). U Srbiji je obrazovanje na daljinu u začetku. O uvođenju učenja na daljinu razmišlja se i u našoj okolini, na primer u BiH.4 Prednosti obrazovanja i učenja na daljinu Neke od prednosti koje studentima pruža obrazovanje na daljinu su [9]: – mogućnost da se studira van mesta prebivališta, pa i granica drža- ve, a da ne mora da se boravi u mestu obrazovne ustanove, – smanjenje troškova stanarine i ostalih troškova vezanih za boravak u mestu održavanja studija (obaveza studenta je samo da dođe na ispit), – mogućnost da student radi za vreme studiranja nezavisno od me- sta održavanja studija, – prevazilaženje nemogućnosti da posećuje tradicionalnu nastavu zbog trajnih ili privremenih fizičkih problema, invalidnosti ili bolesti, – samoorganizovanje vremena za učenje (visoka motivacija, planira- nje vremena i sposobnost za analizu i sintezu sadržaja koji se uči) i dr. Obrazovanje na daljinu u odnosu na klasičan način obrazovanja po- kazuje sledeće prednosti [9]: – omogućuje obrazovanje u toku životnog veka (lifelong learning) i profesionalno usavršavanje, – uči se nezavisno, na mestu i u vremenu koje se samostalno odabere, – mesto učenja može se odabrati – zavisi od medija koji se koristi za distribuiranje materijala za učenje (uči se na poslu, kod kuće...), – uči se vlastitim tempom – kroz materijal za učenje prolazi se onom brzinom i onoliko puta koliko se želi, – mogućnost izbora željenih kurseva/programa pronalaze, iako ih ne nude obrazovne ili poslovne institucije u mestu u kojem se živi ili radi, – učestvovanje u najkvalitetnijim ili najprestižnijim programima – mo- že se „pohadjati“ kurseve na kvalitetnim institucijama ili koje drže poznati stručnjaci bez promene mesta boravka, – izbor svog načina učenja – aktivno ili pasivno učenje, sa različitim nivoima interakcije: „klasični“ pisani materijal uz vođenje vlastitih beleški, 4 Kantonalna edukacijska mreža u Sarajevu predviđa projekat daljeg razvoja softvera za si- stem učenja na daljinu i za e-Learning koji je razvio Univerzitetski teleinformacioni centar (UTIC) i implementirao na nivou Univerziteta. Osnovni cilj Univerzitetskog centra za razvoj da- ljinskog obrazovanja na Univerzitetu u Sarajevu je koordinirano uvođenje procesa daljinskog obrazovanja, kao modernog oblika obrazovanja, na sve fakultete Univerziteta u Sarajevu, te pružanje usluga kontinuiranog obrazovanja (life-long education) za širu društvenu zajednicu. UNIC je naučno-organizaciona jedinica Univerziteta u Sarajevu za unapređenje naučno-istraži- vačkog rada, putem kojeg se objedinjavaju i uvezuju računarski resursi članica Univerziteta u Sarajevu u jedinstvenu računarsko-komunikacionu strukturu (videti na: http://www.utic.net.ba). 142 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 interaktivne simulacije, diskusija sa ostalim učenicima (e-mail, telekonf- erencije, ...), multimedije – grafika, animacije, zvuka ..., – praktičan rad sa različitim tehnologijama, čime se stiču ne samo informacije o onome što se uči, nego i dodatna znanja i veštine o korišć- enju različitih tehnologija, omogućuju polazniku da postigne i zadrži nivo „pismenosti za 21. vek“, – samostalno učenje i interakcija – i nastavnici uče od polaznika koji samostalno traže izvore informacija. Rezultati istraživanja u vezi sa obrazovanjem na daljinu Za potrebe razvoja ustanove visokog obrazovanja sa klasičnim obra- zovanjem i obrazovanjem na daljinu, LINK Group je obavio istraživanja radi dobijanja podataka o potencijalnim studentima kojima bi odgovarao ovakav oblik studiranja [1]. Istraživanja su sprovedena na uzorku od oko 300 ispitanika u različi- tim sredinama Srbije i Crne Gore, radi utvrđivanja karakteristika ciljne grupe koja je zainteresovana za trogodišnje studije u oblasti informacio- nih tehnologija. Struktura anketiranih je sledeća: 87% srednjoškolci, 13% studenti; 29% zaposleni, 71% nezaposleni; 40% do 20 godina starosti, 47% od 20 do 30 godina, 13% preko 30 godina. Interesantan je podatak da od ukupnog broja anketiranih 93% poseduje računar, 50% koristi internet svakodnevno, a 42% nekoliko puta sedmično. Samo 13% anketiranih informisano je o mogućnosti učenja putem interneta. U tabeli 1. prikazani su samo konačni rezultati izjašnjavanja anketiranih o najpoželjnijem obliku studiranja. Očigledno je da postoji značajan interes za obrazovanjem na daljinu ili njegovim kombinovanjem sa klasičnim pristupom. Tabela 1 Poželjan način studiranja Oblik obrazovanja Ispitanici Tradicionalne studije bez elemenata učenja na daljinu 13% Program udaljenog učenja 48% Kombinovani program 39% Sistem obrazovanja na daljinu U Beogradskoj akademiji računarskih nauka (BARN) uspostavljen je si- stem obrazovanja na daljinu, podržan odgovarajućom softverskom platfor- mom (Distance Learning System, DLS), (slika 1). To je prva i jedina domaća platforma za učenje na daljinu, multimedijalna i interaktivna. Izgrađena je po 143 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 uzoru na vodeće svetske e-learning platforme. Pažljivo su analizirani i imple- mentirani svi aspekti učenja na daljinu, koji sa trendom razvoja informacionih i komunikacionih tehnologija gotovo svakodnevno dobijaju novu formu, pre svega u vidu novih multimedijalnih i interaktivnih elemenata i sadržaja. Implementirani su svi elementi neophodni za potpunu simulaciju na- stavnog procesa u bilo kom okruženju, koje krajnji korisnik izabere. Plaf- torma je browser based i ne zahteva korišćenje i instalaciju dodatnih i do- punskih softverskih rešenja. Elementi platforme učenja na daljinu Glavni elementi softverske platforme Distance Learning System (DLS) su [10]: – sistem kreiranja kursa (nastavnog predmeta), – sistem za pripremu kursa (nastavnog predmeta) – vodjenja kroz kurs, – sistem testiranja, – sistem praćenja napredovanja korisnika, – sistem praćenja statusa korisnika. Slika 1 – Distance Learning System, prozor koji koristi nastavnik za detaljan prikaz stanja dodeljenih i realizovanih predmeta, modula, testova, seminarskih i drugih radova Podsistemi softverske platforme Distance Learning System su: – podsistem za evidenciju korisnika, – podsistem za kreiranje i upravljanje kursevima (nastavnim pred- metima), 144 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 – podsistem za kreiranje materijala za učenje, – univerzalni podsistem prikaza materijala, – podsistem za testiranje, – podsistem bodovanja, – podsistem praćenja korišćenja, – podsistem organizacije kurseva (nastavnih predmeta), – podsistem komunikacije i obaveštavanja, – hijerarhija pristupa, – podsistem kvaliteta, – stablo i baza znanja (pojmovnik, FAQ, Search). Bez detaljnijeg opisivanja elemenata sistema i podsistema, samo primera radi, spomenućemo da je potpuno podržana izrada sadržaja za nastavne predmete (kurseve). Predmeti se dele na module (nastavne ce- line), moduli na nastavne jedinice (teme), a nastavne jedinice na nastav- ne elemente. Nastavni elementi predstavljaju osnovni element nastavnog sadržaja. U DLS-u postoje sledeći tipovi elemenata: sadržaj nastavne je- dinice, audio, multimedija, test napredovanja, vežbanja, zadaci, literatura, materijali, web lokacije, prevod, prezentacija, primeri. Pri pripremi uvođenja ovakvog načina obrazovanja vodilo se računa o preporukama i iskustvima vodećih svetskih institucija i organizacija koje propisuju određene standarde i sisteme za obezbeđenje kvaliteta pri iz- vođenju nastave na daljinu. Ti standardi odnose se i na identifikaciju i upravljanje procesima [2] i elementima kvaliteta u obrazovnoj instituciji. Polazeći od već uspostavljenih standarda, trendova u izvođenju obrazovanja na daljinu, tehnološkog razvoja informacionih tehnologija, a posebno od znanja i veština potrebnih budućim studentima, BARN se opredelio za primenu nekoliko različitih oblika edukacije i njihovu kombi- naciju u izvođenju: – učenje preko interneta, – učenje u internetu, – edukativni softveri za samostalno učenje, – multimedijalna predavanja i vežbe na CD-u, – obrazovni računarski softver za vežbanje, – obrazovni računarski softver tipa „baze znanja“, – dijagnostički obrazovni računarski softver za utvrđivanje znanja i izgradnju veština (Testing Learning Software), – multimedijalni softveri za učenje stranih jezika, – elektronske knjige. Kombinovanje pojedinih rešenja izvodi se u zavisnosti od zahteva koje određeni nastavni predmet, odnosno kurs, zavisno od specifičnosti izvođenja, postavlja pred nastavnika, odnosno studenta. Studenti slobodno biraju oblik obrazovanja koji nudi BARN: obrazo- vanje na daljinu (distance learning, DL) ili klasičan način obrazovanja. 145 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 Slika 2 – Organizacija nastave na Beogradskoj akademiji računarskih nauka Sistem organizovanja kombinovane varijante obrazovanja predstavljen je na slici 2, na kojoj se vidi da je sistem organizacije izvođenja nastave na BARN- u adekvatno povezan i sa „klasičnim obrazovanjem“ i „obrazovanjem na daljinu“ u jedinstvenu celinu. Odnos upravnog i nastavnog osoblja je istovetan i za stu- dente koji studiraju putem redovnog pohađanja nastave i distance learninga. Osnovna pravila studiranja na daljinu Studenti iz programa studija na daljinu u pogledu svojih prava i obave- za u potpunosti su izjednačeni sa ostalim studentima i ostvaruju svoja prava i obaveze prema Statutu Beogradske akademije računarskih nauka [3]. Za studente na studiju „obrazovanje na daljinu“ obezbeđeni su sle- deći sadržaji: – studenti dobijaju materijale i softvere neophodne za savladavanje nastavnog plana i programa (uračunati u cenu studija), – ne pohađaju klasičnu nastavu, – koriste sve raspoložive materijale za učenje na internetu, – imaju dodatno organizovane časove konsultacija u sedištu ustano- ve i preko Interneta. 146 V O JN O T E H N IČ K I G LA S N IK 2 / 09 Zaključak Razvoj obrazovanja, odnosno učenja na daljinu, u svetu je dostigao značajan nivo sa velikim brojem korisnika. Veliki broj svetski priznatih vi- sokoškolskih ustanova u svom programu studija nudi i primenjuje ovaj savremeni model obrazovanja, u civilnom i vojnom sektoru. Rezultati sprovedenih istraživanja pokazuju da i kod nas postoji inte- res i potreba za organizovanjem obrazovanja na daljinu ili njegovim kom- binovanjem sa klasičnim oblikom obrazovanja. Pored svršenih srednjoškolaca, veliko interesovanje pokazuju i stu- denti, te mladi privatni preduzetnici. Jedan od osnovnih zahteva koje obrazovanje na daljinu postavlja pred korisnike jeste poznavanje rada na računaru i korišćenje interneta. Učenje na daljinu je izazov i sredstvo za poboljšanje i unapređenje obra- zovnih procesa, kao i jedan od temelja za nove i bolje načine upravljanja zna- njem. Intenzivno uvođenje informacionih tehnologija u obrazovne procese postao je prioritet modernih visokoobrazovnih institucija širom sveta. Literatura [1] Distance Learning – učenje na daljinu, studija, LINK Group, Beograd, 2005. [2] Pokorni, S., Process approach to quality management in education, Academic and Applied Research in Military Science (AARMS), Miklos Zrinyi Na- tional Defense University, Budapest, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2004, pp 625–631 [3] Sajt Beogradske akademije računarskih nauka na adresi: www.barn. edu.yu, posećen 22. 08. 2007. [4] Distance Learning System, uputstvo za korišćenje, LINK Group, Beograd. [5] Kuleto, V., Stefanović, M., Radić, G., Pokorni, S., Obrazovanje na daljinu u Beogradskoj akademiji računarskih nauka, 10. međunarodna konferencija – upravljanje kvalitetom i pouzdanošću ICDQM- 2007, Zbornik radova, pp 813–818, Beograd, 13–14. juna 2007. [6] European Distance Education Network, Members List, http://www.eden- online. org/eden. php, posećen 23. 08. 2007. [7] USDLA Distance Learning Definition, http://www.usdla. org/, posećen 23. 08. 2007. [8] Holden T. J., Westfall J.-P. P., An Instructional Media Selection Guide for Distance Learning, United States Distance Learning Association, 2006. [9] http://www.it-akademija. com/ITAkademija-Prednosti-učenja-na-daljinu, posećen 22. 08. 2007. [10] http://www.it-akademija. com/ITAkademija-Elementi-DL-sistema, posećen 22. 08. 2007. [11] Kuleto, V., Stefanović, M., Radić, G., Pokorni, S., Softver za izradu testova za proveru znanja i učenje, 10. međunarodna konferencija – upravljanje kvalitetom i pou- zdanošću ICDQM- 2007, Zbornik radova, pp 819–824, Beograd, 13–14. juna 2007. [12] The Army Correspondence Course Program, The Army Institute for Professi- onal Development, http://www.atsc. army.mil/accp/aipdnew.asp, posećen 23. 08. 2007. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJDFFile false /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize 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work_sw3z5ks7h5e3datpqgqxtkacui	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_sx74qn6xorgjhphj7kzpjkjywy	----	Impact of distance education on academic performance in a pharmaceutical care course RESEARCH ARTICLE Impact of distance education on academic performance in a pharmaceutical care course Agnes Nogueira Gossenheimer 1*, Tamires Bem1, Mára Lucia Fernandes Carneiro2, Mauro Silveira de Castro 1 1 Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, School of Pharmacy, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 2 Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Institute of Psychology of the, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil * ag.far@hotmail.com Abstract The objective of this study was to compare the performance of pharmacy students from a Pharmaceutical Care course, taught in both distance education (DE) and campus-based for- mats using active methodologies. For two semesters, students (n = 82) taking the course studied half the subject in the distance education format and half in person. Questionnaires were applied at the beginning of the semester aimed to outline the demographic profile of the students. Their grade in the course was evaluated to determine their performance. The Module 1 (Information on Medication) average on the campus-based was 7.1225 and on DE was 7.5519, (p = 0.117). The Module 2 (Pharmaceutical Services) average on the campus- based was 7.1595 and on distance education was 7.7025, (p = 0.027*). There was a differ- ence in learning outcomes in the Pharmaceutical Care Course between face-to-face and distant education. Therefore, the student performance was better in the distance education module, indicating distance education can be satisfactorily used in Pharmacy Programs. Introduction In light of the recent use of virtual modes in health education, few studies that researched whether distance classes show differences in academic performance in relation to the campus- based format, for the same course and conditions were found [1]. The advantages of teaching by way of distance classes are often readily apparent, particu- larly with regard to student access and availability, but there are some drawbacks. Students cannot develop the socialization and interpersonal skills that normally accompany traditional learning methods. For pharmacy students, the daily interaction with faculty and peers to aid in the development of professionalism can also be lost. Although there was no difference in stu- dent outcomes between distance and presential classes for a variety of higher education pro- grams, there is little data describing [2–5] the effects of technology in the pharmacy curricula [6–7]. In 2010, Harrison et al. determined that there were 20 schools with courses using distance education in the USA, including 16 campuses running in parallel, resulting in separate student groups for all four years of the PharmD program. Of these 16 schools, 12 delivered content PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 1 / 11 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Gossenheimer AN, Bem T, Carneiro MLF, de Castro MS (2017) Impact of distance education on academic performance in a pharmaceutical care course. PLoS ONE 12(4): e0175117. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 Editor: Paula B. Andrade, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Farmácia, PORTUGAL Received: August 18, 2016 Accepted: March 11, 2017 Published: April 6, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Gossenheimer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: Funded by CAPES -Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nı́vel Superior - http://www.capes.gov.br/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0175117&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-04-06 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0175117&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-04-06 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0175117&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-04-06 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0175117&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-04-06 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0175117&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-04-06 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0175117&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2017-04-06 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://www.capes.gov.br/ synchronously, 1 school delivered content asynchronously, and 3 schools delivered content in a hybrid of both synchronous and asynchronous formats [8]. This continuous and substantial growth illustrates the importance of understanding the potential impact on academic perfor- mance of the students’ experience in distance education. Some studies show that distance edu- cation had a positive impact, like Creighton University, where distance students performed better than students on campus. The authors concluded that distance students were not hin- dered by the delivery method [9]. On the other hand, Reid and colleagues showed the delivery method of a course does not correlate with academic performance when they compared the academic data of PharmD students at the traditional campus versus distance campuses of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy [10]. Research has identified that cognitive factors such as learning experiences, academic perfor- mance and distance class formats are comparable to those observed for campus-based classes; [11–13] however, the perception and satisfaction levels of distance education professors and students has not shown the same consistence [14, 15]. Factors such as accessibility to materials, interaction between students and professors, time management and expense may all influence the opinions of distance education participants [16]. The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) has a policy of evaluating its courses. Possible formats for courses are campus-based, distance and blended (a combination of cam- pus-based and distance), with a maximum of 20% of a given course taught using the distance format. The current evaluation method aims to determine how the student is doing in the dif- ferent learning formats. All courses at the university are evaluated each semester by the stu- dents. As a result of these available new approaches the Undergraduate Committee of the School of Pharmacy agreed to develop an additional evaluation to verify the effects of the changes made. This initiative was part of the institutional quality control program. The Pharmaceutical Care II course became part of the undergraduate studies program at the School of Pharmacy at UFRGS—Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul—in 2008, and is currently taught in a mixed format that includes DE in its teaching program. In this respect, the debate on evaluating Pharmaceutical Care courses [17], an innovative field in the pharmaceutical program [18], is a significant one, as is assessing the implementa- tion of formats such as DE and active teaching methodologies in the School of Pharmacy [19]. Mesquita et. al. evaluated the performance of students before and after the pharmaceutical care course. They mentioned a study limitation: since the active learning approach was not compared to a traditional teaching methodology, it cannot be determined whether the former is the superior approach for the teaching of pharmaceutical care. The aim was to compare the performance of pharmacy students in the course taught using distance and campus-based classes. Materials and methods Description of the pharmaceutical care II course Content in the pharmaceutical care II course is taught using both the campus-based and dis- tance education formats. A portion of the content was offered in the distance learning format and the remainder as face-to-face (campus-based) classes, comprising two separate learning modules. This modular content was taught in both formats and with the same learning objectives. The Table 1 presents classes held in the course and how each activity was offered in distance or face-to-face modalities. The distance modality took place in the Moodle platform, where didactic materials and learning objects were posted, as well as the activities were accom- plishmed. It was also offered in each class the possibility of solving doubts via asynchronous Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 2 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 forum. The face-to-face modality was held in the classroom or in a computer lab, as needed. The face-to-face classes also had the teaching materials available on the Moodle platform. Both in the distance and in the classroom, written texts and scientific articles were made available by teachers, helping the students to complement their studies. Table 1. Comparison of the topics covered in the discipline of pharmaceutical care II, in the distance and face-to-face modalities. CONTENTS OF THE CLASS DISTANCE EDUCATION FACE-TO-FACE‘EDUCATION Lesson 1—Module 1. Presentation. Presentation of the course: objectives, contents, form of evaluation. How to use moodle platform features. How to be a virtual student. Presentation of the course: objectives, contents, form of evaluation. Lesson 2—Module 1: Information and rational use of medicines. Virtual visit to the Medicines Information Center; Individual led study posted on the Moodle platform. Medication Information Center Discussion Forum. Face-to-face visit to the Medication Information Center; Individual directed study and face-to-face discussion. Lesson 3—Module 1: Passive and Active Information on Medications. Search tutorial on drug information sites asynchronously assisted. Exercise presented in the form of games about drug information sources. Web site search tutorial, presented in a computer lab, with exercises on the topic. Lesson 4—Module 1: Sources of Medication Information. Asynchronous recorded lesson on book presentation and tutorial on the MICROMEDEX database. Exercise on information search. Classes about books and presentation of the MICROMEDEX database. Exercise on information search. Lesson 5—Module 1: Primary sources. Asynchronous recorded classroom on Structures of scientific articles and Introduction to critical reading. Critical Analysis Exercise of article posted on the platform. Lecture on Structures of scientific articles and Introduction to critical reading. Critical Analysis Exercise of an article made, delivered and presented in class. Lesson 1- Module 2: Pharmaceutical Care in the World and DRC 44. Recorded asynchronous class on concepts and context of pharmaceutical attention and Brazilian legislation on the subject. Exercise on legislation applied to professional practice. Reminder about virtual student. Lecture on concepts and context of pharmaceutical care and Brazilian legislation on the subject. Exercise on legislation applied to professional practice. Lesson 2- Module 2: Dispensing Reading text about Dispensing medications. Videos Analysis of dispensing simulations and posting of evaluations in the Moodle platform. Beginning of the development of a drug dispensing roadmap, using the knowledge obtained in module 1. Lecture on dispensing medications. Projection of videos of simulations of dispensation with evaluation exercise. Beginning of the development of a drug dispensing roadmap, using the knowledge obtained in module 1. Lesson 3—Module 2: Treatment adherence Reading of book chapter and articles on the topic. Development of a conceptual map to be posted on the moodle platform. Expositive-dialogue session on adherence to treatment. Discussion on the topic with the preparation of a script about the problems of adherence to treatment. Lesson 4—Module 2: Medication Errors Court of the Jury synchronous on the platform Moodle, using the discussion forum, on a case of medication error. Court of the Jury on a case of medication error. Lesson 5—Module 2: Distribution System of Medicines in Hospitals and Blood Pressure Measurement Video asynchronous lecture about the distribution system of medicines in hospitals and on the measurement of blood pressure. Lecture about the distribution system of medicines in hospitals and practical demonstration on the measurement of blood pressure. Lesson 6- Module 2: Pharmaceutical Guidance Text, video-oriented pharmaceutical guidance, audio simulation. Exercise of registration of attendance and posting in the platform. Submission of the final version of the drug dispensing roadmap that will be simulated in the skills assessment. Lecture about orientation, presentation of simulation of attendance and exercise of registration of attendance. Submission of the final version of the drug dispensing roadmap that will be simulated in the skills assessment. Lesson 7—Module 2: Gymkhana Gymkhana content review asynchronously via Moodle. Gymkhana review of classroom content. Lesson 8—Module 2: service simulation. Presential assessment of skills in patient care: simulation of individually recorded care. Presential assessment of skills in patient care: simulation of individually recorded care. Lesson 9—Module 2: patient care simulation. Presential assessment of skills in patient care: simulation of individually recorded care. Presential assessment of skills in patient care: simulation of individually recorded care. Lesson 10—General Test. Knowledge test on the contents of the 2 modules. Knowledge test on the contents of the 2 modules. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t001 Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 3 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t001 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 The first module deals with Drug Information, addressing types of information and search strategies related to drugs, with students analyzing medical prescriptions to be used in simu- lated care in the second module. The second module addresses methods of caring for patients, including dispensing medication and pharmacist counseling, as well as factors that interfere in outcomes, such as medication errors and adherence to pharmacological treatment. The present study used course data relating to students and assessments of the course for 2012 first and second semesters. In the 2012 first semester, the drug information module was face-to-face and second module was DE. In the 2012 second semester it was the opposite. Thus, all students enrolled in the course had a module in each modality, face-to-face and distance. Regardless of the setting, participants were taught the same classes and content, by the same professors and with identical assessment objectives. The only difference between the two groups was the learning format (distance or campus-based). For students in the classroom mode the Moodle platform was used as a repository of the classes and the same didactic mate- rials available to the students of the distance modality. In this way, there are no disparities in the process of consulting the teaching materials. Participants filled out knowledge and performance evaluations during the semester, which included the following content: Module 1: Exercise assessing the ability to compile information medication plus participation in classes; Module 2: Introducing basic theory for dispensing medication and pharmaceutical counseling; evaluating videos depicting dispensing procedures and pharmaceutical counseling; trial by jury, where students are divided into groups representing the defense, prosecution and jury and use their technical knowledge to analyze an actual case involving medication error reported in the media; simulations of dispensing medications; scavenger hunts using knowledge gained in the course and participation in classes; The evaluation of module I was composed by the evaluation of exercises developed in each class and an individual assignment on evaluation of a prescription, handed out at the end of the Module. On the other hand, the evaluation of module II was composed by the average score of Gymkhana, Jury’s Court and Simulation of attendance (an activity recorded face-to- face at the end of the module, developing communication skills). In addition to the notes per module, at the end of the semester the students carried out the same face-to-face test, with written questions, to evaluate the content learned. The evaluation included closed and open questions and was based on the resolution of clinical cases, encom- passing the contents of the two modules. All evaluations were corrected in duplicates, by the teacher of the discipline and by the teaching trainee, without blindness. When there was dis- agreement, the consensus was sought and the basis of the evaluation was discussed. Sample Because this study is an institutional control of quality of the introduction of the new modality —DE—in the curriculum, the sample was composed of students enrolled in the 4 th phase of the undergraduate pharmacy program at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in 2012 first (n = 40) and second (n = 42) semesters, who were taking the Pharmaceutical Care II course. The 40 students who enrolled in the Pharmacy Major the first semester of 2012 and the 42 students enrolled in the second semester of 2012 attended the course, being Module I in the distance modality and Module 2 in the face-to-face modality. Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 4 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 Instruments The instruments used in this quality control study consisted of an assessment questionnaire, applied at the beginning of the semester to identify student profiles and preferences. The ques- tionnaires were structured based on items found in comparative studies regarding the DE and campus-based formats, researched beforehand in a review published studies. Student profile The survey applied at the beginning of the course aimed to outline the demographic profile of the students and their level of digital inclusion, while considering baseline variables. These var- iables may be related to student perception about DE and campus-based formats, as well as their performance. Academic performance assessment In order to compare the academic performance of students in distance or campus-based activi- ties, the grade for each module was analyzed using both modes and the final result for the course. The grades ranged from 0 to 10, with 7 being the approval minimum mark. Statistical analysis and ethical aspects Data were analyzed using version 17.0 version of SPSS software. The student’s t-test, paired t- test, ANOVA, Mann Whitney U and Pearson’s correlation were applied for statistical compar- isons in questionnaire 1, when appropriate. The Wilcoxon test was used to analyze the differences between the DE and campus-based formats for the different aspects investigated in blocks 1 and 2 of questionnaire 2. Data with ordinal variables was analyzed using the non-parametric Mann Whitney U test (to compare class assessments between the two semesters, addressed by questions in block 4 of question- naire 2). The study was approved by Graduation Committee of Undergraduate Pharmacy Program at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, as part of course evaluation. The consent was verbal, since it was part of the evaluation of the discipline, as explained to the students in the first day of class. The Ethics Committee of the University, when consulted, stated that because it is the evaluation of the course, it would not be necessary to sign a written consent form. The graduation committee approved this procedure, after consultation with the ethics committee. Results Student profile In the 2012 first semester forty students were enrolled in the course, with forty-two registered for 2012 second semester. Seventy-four students answered the questionnaire, because four of those enrolled withdrew from the course and four were not present during the application. The profile of students from the 2012 year is shown in Table 2. The questionnaire also eval- uated the students’ level of digital knowledge, with no differences between groups, with 23% who already had attended distance classes. (See Table 2). Student performance Student performance was assessed using the scores for each module and the final examination grade, comparing classes for the two formats by means of overall exam averages. The objective was to determine if there were significant differences in the performance of students between Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 5 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 Table 2. Profile of students from the pharmaceutical care II course, in semesters 01 and 02 of 2012. Variables N % Students Enrolled (respondents) First semester 40 (36) 48,78 (37,22) Second semester 42 (38) 51,21 (46,34) Gender Female 66 89,29 Male 8 10,71 Age Average (years) 23.9 (19–31) How do you prefer to work? Groups 16 22,5 Double 38 53,5 Individual 17 24 Pharmacy area you want to specialize (open question) Industrial Pharmacy 14 20,6 Clinical analysis 12 17,6 Research 4 5,9 Hospital pharmacy 4 5,9 Teaching 4 5,9 Cosmetology 4 5,9 Criminal Expertise 3 4,4 Do not know 16 23,5 Others 6 10,3 Satisfaction with the Pharmacy course Completely Dissatisfied 0 0 Somewhat Satisfied 11 15.1 Satisfied 52 71.2 Very Satisfied 7 9.6 Completely Satisfied 3 4.1 Advantages of distance education Comfort, no need to leave home 25 39,7 Ease and speed in performing tasks 9 14,3 Time flexibility 8 12,7 Tools contribute to learning 7 11,1 Others 14 22,2 Disadvantages of distance education Lack of contact between students 15 34,1 Difficulty of solving doubts 10 22,7 Incomplete understanding, does not capture as much 6 13,6 There are no disadvantages 4 9,1 Others 9 20,5 Have you used the MOODLE platform yet? Yes 74 100 How often do you check emails? Every day 73 98,6 Once a week 1 1,4 Where from do you access internet? From home 68 93,2 (Continued ) Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 6 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 formats. As demonstrated in Table 3, there were no significant differences between the course modules. A comparison of the average performance from semester to semester according to the learning format used produced the data shown in Table 4. For module 1, which addressed Drug Information, there were no significant differences between the two formats, although the grade achieved for distance mode was higher than the campus-based format. In Module II, regarding the pharmaceutical services, there was a significant difference, and the average of the students was higher in the distance modality, being 7.7025. Discussion Findings regarding student performance when learning via distance or campus-based classes using active methodologies may be influenced by several factors [20]. Most students reported they were satisfied with the Pharmacy Program and that their expectations were consistent, in part, with that discussed in the course. However, most areas of expertise that students intended to follow were different from those addressed in the course, with a quarter of students still undecided. Studies should be developed to evaluate if motivation for a professional area or indecision can influence student performance. With respect to the level of digital inclusion, students displayed significant affinity, checking their emails daily and capable of accessing the platform from home with the knowledge to complete the tasks set. These data are in line with the generation to which they belong, where digital inclusion forms a substantial part of their daily routine. Known as Generation Y, these Table 2. (Continued ) Variables N % From work 2 2,7 From university 1 1,4 From several places 2 2,7 Have you taken an DE course before? Yes 23 31.1 No 51 68.9 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t002 Table 3. Average student’s grade in the modules of the discipline of pharmaceutical care II. Módulo I/ Module I Módulo II/Module II Total Average grade 7,3288 7,4416 7,5364 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t003 Table 4. Comparison of average grades for modules I and II of the pharmaceutical care II course. N Average P 1 . Performance in Module 1 (campus-based) 40 7.1225 0.117 (distance) 37 7.5519 Performance in Module 2 (distance) 40 7.7025 0.027* (campus-based) 37 7.1595 1 The t-test (*p<0.05) was used to compare average grades for modules I and II in each semester https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t004 Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 7 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t002 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t003 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.t004 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 individuals were born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s and have been graduating and entering the work market in recent years, marking the beginning of a new form of influence on society. They are characterized as individuals adept at multi-tasking; seeking recognition for what they do and often requesting feedback on their work; aiming at establishing informal relationships, valuing flexibility and convenience; adopting individual behaviors, stimulated by technological ease and with a broader spectrum of relationships, aided by social networks [21]. These aspects are reflected in the advantages attributed to DE expressed at the beginning of the course, but contrast against the loss of some elements of the in-person (campus-based) communication process. The point most highlighted as an advantage of DE using the Internet was that of conve- nience, allowing students to study without leaving home. The item most commonly cited as a disadvantage of DE was the lack of contact between students and the difficulty in resolving queries. This point may have arisen because student’s previous experiences with DE prior to beginning the Pharmaceutical Care course caused them to associate the virtual environment with content that does not value interaction or tutoring that allows queries to be resolved online. The fact that students thought there was less support and interaction in DE is due not only to course formats, but also to the profile of students who are not used to taking DE classes with this type of interaction. Research by Fainholc refers to mediators as human and non-human communication pro- posals that allow a person, group or organization to either completely or partially perform the functions of support, assistance and negotiation using different support systems [22]. As such, it is by focusing on these mediating points, both when preparing professors and tutors and improving the activities used, that the course should be continually improved, with the goal of making DE a closer reflection of reality and full with social and cultural meaning. Halaban [23] also discusses interaction in distance education, analyzing reconfiguration of habits and depleting of interactions in present-daily life of contemporary societies. This phe- nomenon is based on the expansion of digital networks and the use of technology by individu- als, and can be used to explain the fact that students have listed the lack of interaction the greatest disadvantage of distance education, since social interactions are also reduced. Another key point identified by Fainholc are mediations, which involve cultural critical reflection on the multiple heterogeneity and temporality of mediations as a primordial space or bond recre- ating personal or group meanings within a globally interconnected world. In the present study, mediations occurred synchronously and asynchronously mediate by the computer via the Internet, such dialogues taking place in course discussion forums [22]. Of course, these mediations are consistent with how students interact with their classmates in the University setting and in society. As such, the lack of interaction cited by the students themselves likely reflects how they interact with the world. As pointed out by Guadagnin [24], one of the challenges of distance education at the peda- gogical level is to create a spirit of community, as the intensification of the interaction between people who have affinities of interests tends to foster the dissemination and generation of knowledge in the virtual community. According to Fainholc, it is important to redesign, reflect, rethink and revise the communication process mediated by digital means in order to involve, recognize and integrate the focal point with new forms [22]. It is precisely this rein- vention that presents a challenge, since the novel is new both for those who create and those who learn. Carnevale [25] found that students in distance learning seek out many characteris- tics of face-to-face mode, including interaction with the teacher, with colleagues and the com- munity environment created in the classroom. Students receiving their pharmacy education via distance education pathway scored higher compared with students receiving their pharmacy education via the traditional face-to-face Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 8 / 11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 pathway. This indicates that distance classes are receiving at least an equivalent curricular experience compared to that received by face-to-face. Our data indicate that learning occurred; that students were able to demonstrate competency of the abilities. The explanation for that performance be higher in the distance education may be related to the fact that students have more support material in distance education, has more autonomy to manage their study time and to conduct a preliminary study to class. On the other hand, it is evident that in the distance classes the student is obliged to participate more effectively, since the moodle platform allows to verify if the student has accessed the contents, how many times he has done it and if he has actually accomplished the tasks assigned. Carr [26] found that students enrolled in a psychol- ogy course performed better in distance education, but were less satisfied with this modality. In Carr’s [26] reaserch, distance learning students had a grade average 5% higher than face-to- face students, but with less satisfaction. Distance education presented advantages over face-to-face, as students had a higher perfor- mance, but this result was only statistically significant in module 2. The fact that students learned more or similarly allows on to state that this type of modality is effective and can be used satisfactorily in pharmaceutical education. It is important to point out that both in the distance and face-to-face modality, the students had the same content, the same form of evalu- ation and the same opportunity to revise the contents, since even in the face-to-face modality the equal right to consult the didactic material was ensured. One factor that may explain the best performance in the distance mode is the greater obligation to pay attention to the con- tents. It is impossible to verify whether the student in the classroom is paying attention to the contents, even in some active learning tasks. It can also be related that the advantages of distance education pointed out by students, as regarded to convenience and the possibility of studying at the most appropriate time, may also have been a factor that influenced academic performance. Conclusions The use of campus-based or distance modes, applying active methodologies, showed differ- ences with respect to the acceptance of students in the Pharmaceutical Care II Course. Student performance was better in DE modules, which may be related to the requirement for greater participation during the semester. Supporting information S1 Questionnaire. Questionnaire 1. (DOCX) S2 Questionnaire. Questionnaire 2. (DOC) Acknowledgments We would like to thank CAPES for funding the project. Author Contributions Conceptualization: ANG MSC MLFC. Formal analysis: ANG. Funding acquisition: MSC. Distance education and pharmacy PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 April 6, 2017 9 / 11 http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchSingleRepresentation.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.s001 http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchSingleRepresentation.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117.s002 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175117 Investigation: ANG MSC TB. Methodology: ANG MSC MLFC. Project administration: ANG. Supervision: MSC. Visualization: ANG. Writing – original draft: ANG. Writing – review & editing: ANG MSC MLFC. References 1. 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Navarro P, Shoemaker J. The power of cyberlearning: an empirical test. J Comput Higher Educ. 1999; 11. 6. Wade WE, Cobb HH III, Spruill WJ, Chisholm MA. Assessment of student performance in an advanced pharmacokinetics course taught by three methods of instructional delivery. Am J Pharm Educ. 1999; 63: 82–85. 7. Chisholm MA, Miller AW, Spruill WJ, Cobb HH, Reinhart BO, Terry AV, et al. Influence of interactive vid- eoconferencing on the performance of pharmacy students and instructors. Am J Pharm Educ. 2000; 64: 152–158. 8. Harrison LC, Congdon HB, DiPiro JT. The status of US multi-campus colleges and schools of phar- macy. Am J Pharm Educ. 2010; 74(7) 9. Lenz TL, Monaghan MS, Wilson AF, Tilleman JA, Jones RM, Hayes MM. Using performance-based assessments to evaluate parity between a campus and distance education pathway. Am J Pharm Educ. 2006; 70(4): Article 90. PMID: 17136209 10. Ried LD, McKenzie M. 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work_sxbmki7olzgt3pl2gguv7it7y4	----	Emotional Design Tutoring System Based on Multimodal Affective Computing Techniques | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2018010106 Corpus ID: 4936537Emotional Design Tutoring System Based on Multimodal Affective Computing Techniques @article{Wang2018EmotionalDT, title={Emotional Design Tutoring System Based on Multimodal Affective Computing Techniques}, author={Cheng-Hung Wang and H. Lin}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2018}, volume={16}, pages={103-117} } Cheng-Hung Wang, H. Lin Published 2018 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Inatraditionalclass,theroleoftheteacheristoteachandthatofthestudentsistolearn.However, theconstantandrapidtechnologicaladvancementshavetransformededucationinnumerousways. Forinstance,inadditiontotraditional,facetofaceteaching,E-learningisnowpossible.Nevertheless, facetofaceteachingisunavailableindistanceeducation,preventingtheteacherfromunderstanding thestudent’slearningemotionsandstates;hence,asystemcanbeadoptedto… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 4 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Background Citations 3 Methods Citations 2 View All Topics from this paper Affective computing Multimodal interaction 4 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency The Transition From Intelligent to Affective Tutoring System: A Review and Open Issues Muhammad Asif Hasan, Nurul Fazmidar Mohd. Noor, Siti Soraya Abdul Rahman, M. M. Rahman Psychology, Computer Science IEEE Access 2020 PDF View 3 excerpts, cites background and methods Save Alert Research Feed Dynamic mapping of design elements and affective responses: a machine learning based method for affective design Zhi Li, Z. Tian, J. Wang, W. Wang, G. Huang Computer Science 2018 14 Highly Influenced View 4 excerpts, cites background and methods Save Alert Research Feed Emotional computing based on cross-modal fusion and edge network data incentive L. Ma, Feng Ju, J. Wan, Xiaoyan Shen Computer Science Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 2019 1 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Learning Better Representations for Audio-Visual Emotion Recognition with Common Information Fei Ma, W. Zhang, Yang Li, Shao-Lun Huang, Lin Zhang Computer Science 2020 1 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 27 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Agent based affective tutoring systems: A pilot study Xia Mao, Zheng Li Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2010 68 Save Alert Research Feed The Design and Evaluation of an Affective Tutoring System Kuo-Chun Hsu, K. Lin, I-Long Lin, Jin-Wei Lin Computer Science 2014 5 Save Alert Research Feed Employing Textual and Facial Emotion Recognition to Design an Affective Tutoring System. H. Lin, Cheng-Hung Wang, Ching-Ju Chao, Ming-Kuan Chien Computer Science 2012 14 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Affective Tutoring System M. B. Ammar, M. Neji, A. Alimi, G. Gouardères Computer Science Expert Syst. 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Comput. 2012 10 Save Alert Research Feed The Dimensions, Antecedents, and Consequences of Emotional Labor J. Morris, D. C. Feldman Psychology 1996 1,871 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 4 Citations 27 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_t62tygcbdbfxhkta2b6jk6buca	----	Supporting open educational practices through open textbooks Delft University of Technology Supporting open educational practices through open textbooks Pitt, Rebecca; Jordan, Katy; de los Arcos, Beatriz; Farrow, Robert; Weller, Martin DOI 10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 Publication date 2020 Document Version Final published version Published in Distance Education Citation (APA) Pitt, R., Jordan, K., de los Arcos, B., Farrow, R., & Weller, M. (2020). Supporting open educational practices through open textbooks. Distance Education, 41(2), 303-318. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 Important note To cite this publication, please use the final published version (if applicable). Please check the document version above. 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For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to a maximum of 10. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdie20 Distance Education ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 Supporting open educational practices through open textbooks Rebecca (Beck) Pitt , Katy Jordan , Beatriz de los Arcos , Robert Farrow & Martin Weller To cite this article: Rebecca (Beck) Pitt , Katy Jordan , Beatriz de los Arcos , Robert Farrow & Martin Weller (2020) Supporting open educational practices through open textbooks, Distance Education, 41:2, 303-318, DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 25 May 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 565 View related articles View Crossmark data https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdie20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cdie20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cdie20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-05-25 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-05-25 ARTICLE Supporting open educational practices through open textbooks Rebecca (Beck) Pitt a, Katy Jordan b, Beatriz de los Arcos c, Robert Farrow, a and Martin Weller a aInstitute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom; bFaculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; cExtension School, Education and Student Affairs, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands ABSTRACT There has been little research into the impact of textbook costs on higher education in the United Kingdom. To better understand textbook use patterns and the issues faced by UK students and educators the UK Open Textbooks Project (2017–2018, http://uko pentextbooks.org/)) conducted quantitative survey research with United Kingdom educators in September 2018. This article reports on the findings of this survey, which focussed on awareness of open educational resources; textbook use and rationale; awareness and use of open textbooks; and open licensing. Results reveal fertile ground for open textbook adoption with potential to support a wide range of open educational practices. The findings indicate strategies for supporting pedagogical innovation and student access through the mainstream adoption of open textbooks. ARTICLE HISTORY Received final version received KEYWORDS open educational resources (OER); open textbooks; open educational practices (OEP); higher education; United Kingdom; open pedagogy Introduction Open textbooks have dominated the mainstreaming of open educational resources (OER) in North America (Pitt, 2015). The Hewlett Foundation–funded United Kingdom Open Textbooks Project (2017–2018) (UKOTB, http://ukopentextbooks.org/) had two aims: firstly, and primarily, to evaluate in the UK context two highly successful and contrasting approaches to raising awareness and encouraging the adoption of open textbooks; sec- ondly, to investigate awareness and use of (open) textbooks within UK higher educa- tion (HE). Survey results provide much needed insights into current UK educator experiences and their awareness of textbooks and open licensing. This article presents and contextualizes these results within existing research (see also Rolfe & Pitt, 2019; Farrow et al., in press; and the main report on the project, which includes provisional findings from this survey, Pitt et al., 2019). By examining the survey findings through the lens of open educational practices (OEP), the findings contribute to the emerging field of UK-specific research on OER and OEP and provide recommendations for increasing the visibility of open approaches. CONTACT Rebecca (Beck) Pitt Beck.Pitt@open.ac.uk DISTANCE EDUCATION 2020, VOL. 41, NO. 2, 303–318 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1783-3338 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0910-0078 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5853-5268 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7625-8396 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8339-146X http://ukopentextbooks.org/ http://ukopentextbooks.org/ http://ukopentextbooks.org/ http://www.tandfonline.com https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2020.1757411&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-06-09 OER and OEP UKOTB utilized the Hewlett Foundation definition of OER: OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re- purposing by others. (Hewlett Foundation, n.d.) The term open textbook refers to a particular type of OER. A textbook is “a book that contains detailed information about a subject for people who are studying that subject” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). An open version of a textbook has an open license which (minimally) enables the book to be shared without restriction or seeking additional permissions. The license may also allow for the content to be modified or used commer- cially, enabling the textbook to be better adapted for specific contexts (Wiley, 2014). As Cronin (2017) and Cronin and MacLaren (2018) observed, definitions of open education (and OER) have constantly developed to accurately capture what is meant by open within particular contexts. Within this endeavor, there has also been the relatively recent emergence of the term OEP, which emphasizes open types of practice (Cronin & MacLaren, 2018, p. 128). Broadly speaking, the current literature offers two approaches to defining OEP (see also Cronin, 2017). The first is based around Wiley’s (2014) 5Rs (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute), which Wiley (2013, 2017) argued enable the possibility of OEP. In other words, the characteristics of OER (as defined by the 5Rs) are a precondition of OEP. To cite Wiley: “open pedagogy is that set of teaching and learning practices only possible in the context of the free access and 4R [now 5R] permissions characteristic of open educational resources” (Wiley, 2013, 2017). More recently, Wiley and Hilton (2018, p. 135) have developed the term OER-enabled pedagogy “in many ways a combination of openness as characterized by the 5Rs and Papert’s (1991) notion of constructivism.” The more narrowly focussed term OER-enabled pedagogy complements “expansive definitions of OEP” (Cronin & MacLaren, 2018, p. 128) while providing clear parameters for OER and/or OEP impact research, supported by tools such as the COUP (cost, outcomes, usage and perceptions) framework (Open Education Group, n.d.). The second, broader definition of OEP recognizes the creation and use of OER but does not exclude activities or resources that are not directly linked to or derived from OER. This inclusive definition comprises any activities that could broadly be described as open (Beetham et al., 2012; Hegarty, 2015; Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2016). Nascimbeni and Burgos (2016) observed that, while definitions like Wiley’s (2013) imply a linear progres- sion from using OER to developing OEP, there are many attitudes or activities that can be described as open and that do not involve openly licensed materials. For example, Lalonde (2017) described open sharing on the Web by students without the use of open licenses, which fulfils all but one—the open licensed asset—aspect of OER- enabled pedagogy criteria set out by Wiley and Hilton (2018). Discussions of OEP similarly indicate that certain values or attitudes are potentially important. Hegarty (2015, p. 3) noted: “Immersion in using and creating OER requires a significant change in practice and the development of specific attributes, such as open- ness, connectedness, trust, and innovation.” While incentivization and support at an institu- tional level might encourage the use of OER and/or OEP and contribute toward this 304 R. PITT ET AL. transformation, there could be other factors that influence receptiveness to open such as attitude or disposition (Jhangiani et al., 2016). However, research into the attitude or disposition of OER and/or OEP adopters remains limited. The North American context There has been an increase in North American educators and students engaging with OER as a result of legislation and advocacy to promote the use of open textbooks. In the United States of America (USA) groups such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) have coordinated actions nationally and at state level. USA educator use and awareness of OER rose steadily over between 2014 and 2018. The “Babson Report” (which regularly surveys US HE educators) reported in 2018 that 46% of a sample of 4000 respondents had varying degrees of awareness of OER compared with 34% for the 2013–2014 period (Seaman & Seaman, 2018, pp. 7–8). Federal support for open textbooks was achieved in 2018 when $5 million funding was allocated for the development of open textbooks by individual institutions (Allen, 2018). The uptake of open textbooks has been supported by arguments for increased access to resources, increased participation, and the cost of textbooks. In early 2019, total student debt in USA stood at $1.5 trillion (Cilluffo, 2019) with students graduating in 2018 owing $29,200 on average (The Institute for College Access and Success, 2019). It is these levels of debt, coupled with the contribution of high textbook costs, which impact directly on student choice of course, behavior, and attainment (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, n.d.). Open textbooks have proved a particularly effective introduction to OER as educators can easily swap proprietary textbooks for an open alternative, particularly as in the USA college and university educators typically develop courses based around specific text- books. Increases in open textbook use has been supported by the provision of materials aligned with the scope and sequence of a whole course such as OpenStax (https:// openstax.org) and membership initiatives such as the Open Textbook Library (https:// open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/). There has simultaneously been a concerted effort to increase the amount of peer-reviewed research on OER impact. In North America, initiatives such the Open Education Group’s OER Research Fellowships scheme developed the COUP framework to support the production of OER impact research (Open Education Group, n.d.). Their fellowship scheme and support for individual researchers has resulted in “a rapid rise in research related to OER efficacy and perceptions with more published studies in the past 3 years than the previous fifteen” (Hilton, 2019). In Canada, the province-wide British Columbia Open Textbook project is supporting educators to create a range of open textbooks in core subjects (BCcampus, n.d.), while eCampusOntario is funding the development of curriculum-aligned open textbooks in the province (eCampusOntario, n.d.). Jhangiani and Jhangiani (2017) were the first to report on Canadian student experiences of open textbooks, and there is a growing body of open textbook impact research in the Canadian context (e.g., see Hendricks et al., 2017; Jhangiani et al., 2018; Jhangiani et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2018). DISTANCE EDUCATION 305 https://openstax.org https://openstax.org https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ Open textbooks in the UK There is also a growing number of open textbook initiatives and research outside of the USA. For instance, in South Africa, Jimes et al. (2013) and Pitt and Beckett (2014) explored the use of Siyavula open textbooks (https://www.siyavula.com/). The Digital Open Textbooks for Development project (http://www.dot4d.uct.ac.za/about-32) aims to increase the amount of research on open textbook use in South Africa. However, aware- ness and use of open textbooks are typically low outside North America, including the UK. Course reading lists are a staple of study in UK HE (Stokes & Martin, 2008). Consequently, in relation to OER and open textbooks, the swapping of proprietary resources for open versions is less applicable in the UK context, and nuanced arguments for ease of use are needed (Pitt et al., 2019). There are a range of financial pressures on UK students, including tuition fees and rising accommodation costs (Packham & Hall, 2019). UK tuition fees were introduced in 1998 and capped at £1000 (Wikipedia, n.d.) but have risen steadily to be capped at £9250 for the 2019–2020 academic year (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, 2020). While the UK has different fee and funding mechanisms in place across the four regions (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) (see Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, 2020), graduates from English universities have been described by the Institute of Fiscal Studies as “having the highest student debts in the developed world” (Belfield et al., 2017). A House of Commons Library Briefing Paper noted that 2012 graduates owed an average of £36,000 (Bolton, 2019, p. 3), the change in policy in 2015 has resulted in graduates having “average debts of £50,000” with low income students hit hardest (Belfield et al., 2017). In the UK, reports on the cost of materials such as textbooks are limited and do not distinguish between discipline (see Kernohan & Rolfe, 2017). Students are dissatisfied with the cost of course materials and the hidden participation costs of university study, which include the cost of materials for their studies (Office for Students, 2018). Of the 1652 students surveyed by CourseSmart and NUS in 2012, 81% “felt that universities should be offering textbooks free, as part of their fees” (NUS, 2012). In a minority of institutions, student dissatisfaction has resulted in a change of approach. At The University of Essex, for example, potential students are advised that “core textbooks are always provided free of charge to our students, included within the course fees” (University of Essex, 2016). Rolfe (2018) surveyed two cohorts of science students (N = 69) at De Montfort University and University of the West of England. This survey focussed on students’ experiences of textbooks, finding that respondents at various stages of study spend an average of £187.30 on materials per year. Of particular note is Rolfe’s finding that “high textbook prices influence student behaviour . . . Similar observations have been reported in the US with students not purchasing required texts or altering their choice of classes (modules) (Senack, 2014)” (Rolfe, 2018, p.11). Given the significant parallels with the North American context regarding cost and publisher practices, Rolfe’s study also reveals student concerns with more UK-specific practices, highlighting the need for course read- ing lists to be clearer on “what was meant by recommended/core and essential reading, and what was expected of [students]” (Rolfe, 2018, p. 11). Similar concerns were raised by Stokes and Martin (2008, especially p. 21), who surveyed the limited research into the role of such lists at different stages of study. 306 R. PITT ET AL. https://www.siyavula.com/ http://www.dot4d.uct.ac.za/about-32 There is currently very little available research on educator or student perceptions of OER or open textbooks within the UK context (Pitt et al., 2019; Rolfe, 2018). OER impact research conducted by major initiatives such as the UK-based OER Hub (http://oerhub.net) had a largely North American focus during its initial phases. Initiatives such as JISC and the Higher Education Academy’s UKOER program focussed on supporting and understanding OER use and OEP and a range of outputs including case studies, tools, and reports (see, e.g., JISC, n.d; McGill et al., 2013) rather than promotion, or research into the impact, of specific types of OER. Impact research on such cases is sparse: there are currently no efficacy studies, and research into UK educator levels of OER awareness similarly remains limited (see, e.g., the survey of Scottish educators by de los Arcos et al., 2016). However, despite pedagogical differences and the difference in maturity of the OER landscapes under discussion, UK educators have reported similar concerns regarding OER to those described by USA educators (e.g., visibility/findability of OER and quality) (de los Arcos et al., 2016; de los Arcos et al., 2014; Seaman & Seaman, 2017). Methods The UKOTB survey was divided into two sections and comprised 25 questions. The first part of the survey focussed on demographic questions such as location, age, employment sector (e.g., further education or HE), and employment status with an additional set of questions focussed on respondent teaching practices and experiences. Data points included role, years of experience, discipline, and instructional preferences. The second half of the survey focussed on textbook use and rationale. Textbook users were asked about how they recommend resources: formats; the way decisions about student resources are made; expectations regarding student use and purchase of books; and the factors that influence the inclusion of textbooks in teaching. All respondents, whether current textbook users or not, were asked about their awareness of open licensing, OER, and open textbooks. The final survey question asked respondents to share any experiences or thoughts regarding textbook use. The UKOTB survey drew on a number of questions from Seaman and Seaman (2017, 2018), including those on instructional preferences (e.g., print or digital, use of own or others’ material, style of delivery), teaching status and years of experience, age, licensing, and OER awareness. Modified versions of questions on respondent involvement in textbook selection and the types of course taught by respondents were also included. A number of questions were also drawn from Rolfe’s (2018) survey of UK students at two English universities. Over 4000 UK educators were invited via email to participate during September 2018. The survey was open for 3 weeks and was facilitated by a commercial company. To increase the number of responses, the survey was incentivized, and participants could opt to be entered into a prize draw for £100. Results Demographics and teaching experience A total of 96 UK academics from a range of disciplines completed the survey during September 2018. The majority of respondents self-reported as being based in England DISTANCE EDUCATION 307 http://oerhub.net (n = 81) and worked full-time in the HE context (n = 84 and n = 90 respectively). Current reported teaching roles were largely split across three groups, with respondents who were teachers, tutors, or instructors (31.3%, n = 30), module leads with teaching (26%, n = 25) and course or program leaders (26%, n = 25). Respondents came from three main age groups, with equal representation of the 35–44, 45–54, and 55+ age groups (32.3%, 33.3%, and 28.1% respectively). Of the sample, 57.3% (n = 55) had more than 16 years of teaching experience, with 44.8% (n = 43) of the survey’s total respondents reporting more than 20 years’ experience in educational settings. Figure 1 shows the demographic profile of the sample. Respondents came from a diverse range of disciplines with more than 50% of the sample from the biological, mathematical and physical sciences (26%, n = 25) or huma- nities, language-based studies and archaeology (25%, n = 24). A multiple-choice question regarding types of teaching undertaken in the current academic year revealed that most respondents (78.1%, n = 75) had taught only face-to-face during that period. The remain- ing respondents, while also teaching online and/or blended/hybrid courses, also taught face-to-face courses. Responses to a set of three sliding scale questions drawn from Seaman and Seaman (2017) revealed that respondents had a strong preference for developing and designing their own courses and resources for teaching in comparison to making use of third-party content. There was an evenly balanced distribution of responses to a scale that asked respondents whether they preferred to teach via lectures or a more active “facilitated exploration of content” with students actively engaging with subject material. The final Figure 1. Demographic profile of the sample. All figures are shown as percentages. 308 R. PITT ET AL. sliding scale question examined what kinds of media types, if any, participants preferred using in their teaching. Overall responses were fairly balanced between preference for print and preference for digital. However, a slight preference toward digital materials was observed. Use of textbooks Of the respondents, 81.9% (n = 77) reported using textbooks in whole or part in their teaching. Out of these 77 textbook users, 72 responded to a series of follow-up questions which examined textbooks use in more depth. The following results relate to this subsample. A total of 61.1% (n = 44) of educators utilizing textbooks in their teaching recom- mended one or more key textbooks with additional readings. A total of 27.8% (n = 20) of respondents advised that they “recommend one or more core textbooks for essential reading,” while the remainder of respondents using textbooks reported either providing a reading list with no indication of priority of resources listed (9.7%, n = 7) or not giving much thought to what books are recommended (1.4%, n = 1). Half of the educators (n = 36) in this subsample recommended a mix of print and online resources to their students, with a third (32%, n = 23) recommending textbooks in print format. A total of 16.7% (n = 12) recommended mainly digital and downloadable resources, with one respondent (1.4%) advising they recommended mainly non- downloadable digital resources to students. Just over half of the respondents (52.8%, n = 38) had no expectation that students would purchase course materials. A total of 25% (n = 18) of educators assumed that learners would buy one book, with the remaining 22.2% (n = 16) expecting that students would purchase more than two books for a course. Respondents reported a high degree of autonomy in their choice of materials, with 72.2% (n = 52) of respondents being solely responsible for choosing resources used in their teaching. A total of 20.8% of respondents are involved in or lead collective decision- making regarding textbooks (13.9%, n = 10 and 6.9%, n = 9 respectively). A minority of respondents (6.9%) reported having no or a noncritical role in the choice of materials. Textbooks are integrated into teaching to varying degrees. While a minority of respon- dents base course content around specific textbooks (5.6%, n = 4) or make use of all the ancillary materials (1.4%, n = 1), just over 85% of respondents either flag resources as appropriate during their teaching or produce module reading lists which students should consult (31.9%, n = 23 and 54.2%, n = 39 respectively). Free-text comments received for this question reinforced the sense of diverse use and expectations. Participants were presented with a five-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree and a set of possible factors which might influence the materials they selected for use in their teaching (see Figure 2). Availability of resources in an institution’s library was by far the most important factor with 83.3% (n = 60) of our textbook user subsample reporting they strongly agreed or agreed with this statement. Of particular note is that 56.9% (n = 41) of all respondents strongly agreed that the library stocking the book was important to making a decision about whether to use it. Ensuring that materials are accessible in different formats was also an important consideration with nearly 70% (n = 53) of respondents strongly agreeing or agreeing with this influencing their selection, DISTANCE EDUCATION 309 followed by a textbook offering “comprehensive content and learning activities” (69.4%, n = 50). Cost to students was also an important consideration although a small number of respondents did advise that cost was not a consideration when choosing materials for teaching. Familiarity with authors and publishers was considered important for respon- dents, as well as recommendations by colleagues. Finally, textbook users were asked to rank agreement with a series of more general statements regarding textbook use or perceptions of their use (see Figure 3). A total of 90.1% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that course material recommendations were made at the start of term (n = 25 and n = 39, respectively). A total of 79.2% of educators strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that textbooks “are an important part of course and programme development discussions” (n = 22 and n = 35 respectively). Textbooks were also viewed as an important function outside of the virtual or face-to-face classroom with their role as “supplement[ing]” learning confirmed. Awareness of open Respondents were asked about awareness of different “licensing mechanisms.” A total of 57.3% of respondents advised that they were very aware or aware of Creative Commons (CC) licensing, with 27% (n = 24) being very aware and 30.3% (n = 27) aware. In contrast, 20.2% (n = 18) of educators advised they were unaware of CC, while around 5% of respondents reported either no awareness of copyright (4.5%, n = 4) or of public domain licensing (5.6%, n = 5). The majority of responses reported familiarity with CC, although in response to a subsequent question 42.7% (n = 38) of respondents advised they were “not aware of OER,” with a further 40.5% (n = 36) reporting limited awareness of OER. Figure 2. Responses to survey question 18: Which of the following would influence your selection of textbooks to use in your teaching? 310 R. PITT ET AL. Open textbook awareness and use were low. The percentage of respondents who were very aware or aware of open textbooks and their use was around 12% (3.4%, n = 3 and 9%, n = 8 respectively). A total of 47.2% (n = 42) of respondents had no awareness of open textbooks, with the remainder having minimal levels of awareness about their potential use. While the vast majority (82%, n = 73) of respondents reported using no open textbooks in their teaching, a tenth (10.1%, n = 9) of respondents expressed uncertainty about whether they were already using open textbooks in their teaching. Of the 8% (n = 7) of respondents who reported using open textbooks for their teaching, there were varying levels of understanding of CC licensing. Of note is that two respon- dents advised they had no knowledge of OER. As might be expected, all respondents in this subsample reported awareness or strong awareness of open textbooks. Finally, respondents were presented with a series of statements (see Figure 4) about open textbooks. Nearly 80% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the statement “I would consider using Open Textbooks in the future” (31.5%, n = 28 and 48.3%, n = 43 respectively). There was an awareness of cost and debt for students, with over 74.4% of respondents strongly agreeing or agreeing that students should have access to low-cost or no-cost open textbooks (34%, n = 30 and 44.3%, n = 39 respectively). However, a more mixed picture emerges in relation to textbooks and the impact on student debt, with 52.8% of respondents strongly agreeing or agreeing that providing students with text- books would not impact much on their debt (20.2%, n = 18 and 32.6%, n = 29 respec- tively). Significantly, a third of respondents (33.7%, n = 30) were unsure about the impact of textbook costs. A number of factors to encourage the use of OER and open textbooks were identified. Visibility of resources was key to respondents, with 67.3% advising that they “would use open textbooks if they were easy to find for [their] subject” (20.2%, n = 18 strongly agreed and 47.2%, n = 42 agreed). Although not explicitly listed, it was of note that 7 out of the 24 Figure 3. Responses to survey question 19. Please indicate your reaction to the following statements about textbooks generally. DISTANCE EDUCATION 311 respondents who provided substantive responses (e.g., excluding “no” or similar responses) to the open question at the end of the survey (Q25) regarded the quality of a resource to be critical. Half of the respondents were keen to be involved in the production of open textbooks as part of a “subject community” (12.5%, n = 11 strongly agreed and 37.5%, n = 33 agreed); and 44.9% of respondents indicated that the opportunity to revise material was important to their teaching (11.2%, n = 10 strongly agreed and 33.7%, n = 30 agreed). While 65.2% of educators disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement of having no interest in using open textbooks in the future (39.3%, n = 35 and 25.8%, n = 23 respectively) a not insignificant minority of respondents (16.9%) advised that they had no interest in using open textbooks (6.7%, n = 6 strongly agreed and 10.1%, n = 9 agreed). Although the reasons for this are largely unknown, reviewing Q25 reveals that where participants did leave a comment, those who agreed or strongly agreed with this statement were more concerned with other factors, for example, “academic excellence” and more general “low student engagement with textbooks” than with reasons typically used to support the use of open textbooks (e.g., cost and the ability to reversion content). This may indicate further investigation is needed to generate relevant and compelling arguments to support the use of OER. Support from educator institutions was also a factor for over 45% of respondents (12.4%, n = 11 strongly agreed and 34.8%, n = 31 agreed) although a significant number (41.6%, n = 37) neither agreed nor disagreed that institutional support would influence their decision to use open textbooks. Discussion This sample group was comprised of experienced educators, with over 80% of the sample reporting more than 10 years’ teaching experience. There was a very strong preference for developing one’s “own curriculum” and autonomy for course design, and 70% of the sample reporting they were “solely responsible” for the choice of books they used. In Figure 4. Responses to survey question 24: Thinking about Open Textbooks, please indicate how you feel about the following statements. 312 R. PITT ET AL. terms of OEP and OER, the high level of autonomy among UK HE educators seems to have critical potential as an enabler. As Nascimbeni and Burgos (2016) noted, there has been long-term recognition of the role of the individual educator as being central and key to open practice. How best to raise awareness of and support educators in their use of OER and/or OEP is likely to require a multifaceted approach, however, particularly as the perceived importance of institutional support for such endeavors varied among respon- dents. The importance of “local champions” within institutions could potentially provide one approach (Nascimbeni et al., 2018, p. 511). As the subsample of educators who have little or no responsibility for resource choice is small, further research is required to examine whether length of teaching experience or working patterns are factors (although there appears to be no relation to full- or part-time status, it does appear that most of these respondents had fewer than 15 years’ teaching experience). Moreover, whether staff are employed on permanent contracts is an impor- tant factor in relation to autonomy. In the USA, community colleges are often dependent on short-term contracted staff who lack this autonomy since teaching materials are selected by colleagues on permanent contracts (see, e.g., Iuzzini et al., 2017). Across UK HE, there are growing levels of casualisation and “atypical contracts” (Higher Education Policy Institute, 2019). It therefore seems pertinent to examine the impact structural changes are having on practitioner autonomy. Few of the educators surveyed choose to base their courses around specific textbooks. Where participants commented on how they recommended reading, responses varied. Several respondents highlighted that while textbooks were useful early on, it was anticipated that students would consult a wider range of reading as they progressed through their studies. A total of 79.2% of textbooks users strongly agreed or agreed with the claim that textbooks were “an important part of course and programme development discussions.” Similarly, many respondents anticipated that students would consult textbooks as part of their learning. It is of note that respondents using textbooks in their teaching appear to provide clear guidance for the priority of reading materials; a total of 88.9% recommend core textbooks either as essential reading or as core material with additional readings. The range of textbooks that can be highlighted by reading lists and, arguably, educator awareness of cost and availability of resources in the library (the latter being a key factor for the majority of respondents) may be the reason why there is a fairly even split between those who have no expectation that students will purchase any materials and those who expect students to buy at least one book. In contrast to the NUS and CourseSmart survey in 2012, where the majority of student respondents reported using Internet-enabled devices for study, around a third of our respondents reported recommending only print textbooks. However, 50% of educators mainly recommend both print and online materials to their students. Although this study reveals low levels of OER awareness similar to those in previous UK HE studies (e.g., de los Arcos et al., 2016), there remains potential for open textbooks. Lack of familiarity with OER and open textbooks appear not to be a barrier to future use in this sample. As seen in other UK surveys (e.g. de los Arcos et al., 2016) and within the US context (Seaman & Seaman, 2017), similar levels of disconnect between recognition of CC licensing and OER have been observed. However, whether a CC licensed resource is an OER may depend on license type. For example, NoDerivatives-licensed resources do not DISTANCE EDUCATION 313 enable remix or revision and are therefore not classified as OER (see Green, 2014)—a key aspect of the 5Rs which are often used to characterize OER (Wiley, 2014). Recommendations The survey findings highlight key areas on which to focus efforts. The high level of interest in co-authoring material with others working in the same or similar disciplines may provide one gateway to engaging educators with OEP and OER. It also potentially highlights the fore- grounding of remix in introductory discussions (Pitt et al., 2019), particularly if this sample’s autonomy with regard to resource choice is representative. Visibility of resources and com- ments regarding quality support research findings in both the UK and USA contexts regard- ing the importance of these factors when choosing OER (e.g., Seaman & Seaman, 2017). The importance of these factors to survey respondents also indicates the need to clarify what role open textbooks could play. Sufficient local information (e.g., around funding and quality) is required alongside more established advice (such as where to find OER). Access and accessibility were highlighted as important to educators, both in terms of a resource being available in the library and/or in relation to cost or format. Familiarity with a resource or recommendations from others were also important for this sample. These factors indicate potential tipping points for mainstreaming use of OER and/or open text- books and are broadly similar to those noted in other contexts (see Seaman & Seaman, 2017, 2018). A total of 83.3% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that course material being available in the library (and therefore accessible to students) was an important consideration. This arguably highlights the important role of librarians and subject specia- lists in selecting relevant stock and working with faculty to ensure materials are available. Finally, with a third of respondents seemingly unsure about whether the provision of textbooks would reduce student debt, more research is needed to help evidence any claims made regarding cost savings. Respondents were keen to reduce student debt. Two respondents advised that their institution was already providing textbooks to their students, while another noted: This is a great initiative! Student poverty is a great concern for me. To have something like this in place means they can focus a little more on their learning, rather than having to worry about how to feed themselves, pay rent AND buy books. Thank you!!! Conclusion This article has presented the results of a survey with UK HE educators on the existing and potential use of open textbooks. Findings indicate several strategies to facilitate the use and adoption of such resources for pedagogical innovation. The adoption of open text- books is enabling and supporting a wide range of OEP; the results presented here provide endorsement for the use of open textbooks as a vector for innovation. Engaging with individual educators and providing a multifaceted approach to sup- porting engagement with OER and/or OEP are key to innovating practice around curri- culum provision and delivery. Further research and a deeper understanding of both the student and educator experience and certain aspects of the UK education system are required, but there is much potential for open textbooks in UK HE and further education. 314 R. PITT ET AL. Raising awareness remains critical to OER-enabled pedagogy (Wiley & Hilton (2018) and OEP. This can be approached through focussing discussion on factors that are considered important by UK educators (such as the visibility of open materials). Open textbook initiatives in Europe should reflect differences between education systems, such as the degree to which educator curriculum choices are autonomous. Acknowledgments The authors of this work would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Hewlett Foundation for funding the UK Open Textbook Project. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was declared by the authors. Funding This work was supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 2017-5780. Notes on contributors Rebecca (Beck) Pitt is a research fellow in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University (UK). She is a member of the OER Hub, which works collaboratively to investigate the impact of open education. Her research interests include open textbooks, informal learning, and widening participation. Katy Jordan is a research associate with the EdTech Hub, based at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Her research interests broadly focus on the impact of the Internet and digital technologies on education, with specific interests in social media, educational technology, and open education. Beatriz de los Arcos holds a PhD in education (The Open University, UK). She is a learning developer for open, online, and blended courses, and open education process manager at the Extension School in Delft Technical University (The Netherlands). Robert Farrow is a research fellow in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University (UK) and has led and contributed to research projects in open education, accessibility, mobile learning, and digital scholarship. He has research interests in evidence; decision-making and policy formation; ethics; and ideology in educational technology. Martin Weller is director of the OER Hub and GO-GN network. Weller chaired The Open University’s first major online e-learning course in 1999, which attracted 15,000 students. He is the author of the openly licensed The Battle for Open (2014) and 25 Years of Ed Tech (2020). ORCID Rebecca (Beck) Pitt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1783-3338 Katy Jordan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0910-0078 Beatriz de los Arcos http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5853-5268 Robert Farrow http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7625-8396 Martin Weller http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8339-146X DISTANCE EDUCATION 315 References Allen, N. (2018, March 20). 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PITT ET AL. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.427 https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.4.892 https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.4.892 https://sparcopen.org/our-work/affordable-college-textbook-act/ https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2017.pdf https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2017.pdf https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/freeingthetextbook2018.pdf https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/freeingthetextbook2018.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070801915874 https://www.ucas.com/finance/undergraduate-tuition-fees-and-student-loans https://online.essex.ac.uk/blog/630-per-student-the-cost-of-paper-textbooks/ https://online.essex.ac.uk/blog/630-per-student-the-cost-of-paper-textbooks/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_tuition_fees_in_the_United_Kingdom https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975 https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221 https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4921 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601 Abstract Introduction OER and OEP The North American context Open textbooks in the UK Methods Results Demographics and teaching experience Use of textbooks Awareness of open Discussion Recommendations Conclusion Acknowledgments Disclosure statement Funding Notes on contributors ORCID References 
work_taept2io3vaqdfpd3zgjzxbrnq	----	The Role of Animated Agents in Web-based Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 1016 – 1022 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser Ankara University, Turkey doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.189 2nd World Conference on Educational Technology Researches – WCETR2012 The role of animated agents in web-based distance education Esra Ergül a *, Mustafa Koç b a Erzincan University, College of Education, Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Erzincan 24030, Turkey b Suleyman Demirel University, College of Education, Departmant of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Isparta 32260, Turkey Abstract The purpose of this literature review is to determine the roles of animated agents in web-based distance education. The review was organized according to such themes as the structure and creation of animated agents, their cognitive and affective benefits, the importance of facial appearance and reality of animated agents in web-based distance learning and communication, and online animated agents. The instructional roles of animated agents were explored through a variety of experimental studies. The findings revealed that animated agents could take instructional roles such as a teacher, a mentor, a coach or an assistant in learning environments. Besides, multidisciplinary instructional environments enriched with animated agents could significantly contribute to the related literature in terms of the pedagogical outcomes they supply. The initiatives on the related context could be useful in order to fill the gap in Turkey. Therefore, it is suggested that animated agents should be integrated into web-based learning environments via considering the pedagogical elements in future studies. Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser. Keywords: Animated agents, web-based learning, distance education; 1. Introduction With its roots being traced back to ancient times, distance education is a system that enables new concepts to be developed over time. Diversified interaction is the primary factor in the emergence of new concepts. Distance education allocates importance to interaction, thus establishing several distance education environments. Physical participation is not enough on its own to enable students to experience active learning. In contrast, mental participation is considerably more important than physical presence in a learning environment. Interactive applications are the best way of ensuring the use of mental processes and development of cognitive activities (Mayer, 2001). A basic level of interaction might prove to be insufficient to realize new learning in cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. Therefore, interaction should not be confined to clicking a simple button or menu selection on the Internet but should include much more different activities (Liu, 2001). Although there are some nuances in distance education materials on the Internet, they generally fall under the following headings: “web-based learning”, “web-based education”, “e-learning”, “internet-based education”. Enabling students, teachers, and instructional materials to converge on Tim Berners Lee’s WWW network, web- * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90-446-224-0089 (1301) E-mail address: eergul@erzincan.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser Ankara University, Turkey http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1017 Esra Ergül and Mustafa Koç / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 1016 – 1022 based learning is the type of learning that takes place on electronic environments that provide people in different places with the opportunity to share such elements as texts, data, graphics and animations (Khan, 2001). In accordance with the importance of interaction in distance learning, multimedia learning provides a general framework for distance education. Multimedia learning enables learning to take place through the use of instructional materials that will enrich the learning environment and concretize learning in accordance with the course and subject matter (Altınışık & Orhan, 2002, p.42). Multimedia learning is an effective learning tool by which both visual and auditory information are presented (Mayer, 2009). The more interaction exists between students and instructional materials, the more effectively multimedia learning is used in the development of web- based distance education environments. As an instructional tool, animated agents are characters similar to the ones found in our daily lives and facilitate the learning process (Johnson et al., 1998). Animated agents might make learners think that online educational materials are less difficult (Andre et al., 1998). Educational software with animated agents presents a multimedia learning in which learners can acquire information not only in a visual but also in an auditory manner. Such software can be conveyed to students in such storage devices as CDs or DVDs. In addition, they can be integrated into web- based distance education environments. The present paper is a review of literature on the role, efficacy and uses of animated agents integrated into web-based distance education environments and a presentation of implications. 2. Methodology A review of literature was conducted on the roles of animated agents that are used in web-based distance education environments. The sources reviewed included online databases which Suleyman Demirel University had a subscription to (ERIC, ScienceDirect, Ebscohost, Wiley, etc.), online journalists of educational technologies and other sources included on Google. The keywords used during the search were combinations of “animated agents” with web-based learning, web-based training, distance education and distance learning. The sources had been published between 1986 and 2007. The parts of the publications that were especially reviewed were their abstracts, methodologies and conclusions. The data that were regarded suitable for inclusion in this study were organized under five headings, namely the nature of animated agents, the generation of animated agents in web-based distance education, cognitive and affective advantages of animated agents in web-based distance education, the importance of facial expressions of animated agents and reality in web-based distance education and communication, and online animated agents. In this way, it was possible to access to the roles of animated agents in web-based distance education. 3. Findings 3.1. The nature of animated agents A graphical representation of characters, animated agents are often computer interfaces used to provide a more customized interaction between human beings and computers (Morton and Jack, 2005). These agents might assume the role of an information presenter (Noma & Badler, 1997; Badler et al., 2000; Ishizuka et al., 2000), a desktop assistant, a personal assistant , a teaching guide, a mentor, a counselor and a virtual reality assistant (Dehn & Van Mulken, 2000). An example of animated agents used as an information presenter would be the system of animated agents called Vaxholm, which was developed at a Center of Speaking Technology. The system was used to introduce tourists to the boat traffic of Stockholm islands (Granström & House, 2005). Furthermore, animated agents can be used as sales representatives (Andre et al., 2000; Baldes et al, 2002; Morton & Jack, 2005; Bickmore et al., 2000; Cassell et al., 2002; Kitamura et al., 2002) or real estate agents (Cassell et al., 1999; Granström & House, 2006). As an instructional tool, animated agents are characters similar to the ones found in our daily lives and facilitate the learning process (Johnson et al., 1998). There are differences in the way animated agents are used in teaching. For instance, Johnson and Shaw used a two-dimensional animated agent in medicine training in 1997, when computer technologies were not as developed as today. Similarly, Johnson et al. used a three-dimensional animated agent on a virtual environment designed for training students of engineering (Morton & Jack, 2005). 1018 Esra Ergül and Mustafa Koç / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 1016 – 1022 Naturally, a sufficient level of interaction will not be available in two-dimensional agents seeing that there is not a harmony between their static movements and voices. Considering the speed at which computers and web technologies are advanced, it is inevitable that most of the animated agents will be three dimensional. There might be differences in the forms of these three-dimensional animated agents. For example, some animated agents are scenario-based. It is usual to observe the use of such animated agents especially in language teaching. Morton and Jack (2005) used the SPEEL system (Spoken Electronic Language Learning), which had been developed to provide computer-assisted language education. The system includes three forms of scenarios, namely observational, one-to-one and interactive. With this software, those students who can move to the interactive scenario after passing through the first two stages are provided with a learning environment that resembles “second life”. What makes the system different from others is that students are able to get involved in communication, gain courage and have communicative experiences that are similar to the ones in their daily lives as well as the kind of communication found in all learning environments with animated agents. 3.2. The generation of animated agents in web-based distance education Animated agents should be generated with a consideration into the interaction between human beings and computers, and pedagogic elements. An animated pedagogical agent is an animated character that lives in computer- based learning environments and helps students by guiding or instructing them (Choi & Clark, 2006). The most commonly used type is web-based trainers animated through the Flash Player. However, their positive influences on learning might be limited, for such trainers cannot go beyond a one-way communication. Nevertheless, certain organization styles in web courses have shifted from old frameworks to user-controlled hyper environments. Therefore, approaches that require increased harmony and communication and satisfy customized learning needs and characteristics make learning processes easier while courses are developed (Song et al., 2004). Web-based distance education environments with animated agents are representatives of such an approach. Presenting the advantages of face-to-face interaction and virtual learning, these representatives are one of the new products of today’s technology. Animated agents can be generated through certain three-dimensional designing programs. These agents may or may not be human-like. Research shows that human-like animated agents are more influential in attracting users’ attention and enabling them to focus on active tasks than those that are not human-like (Dehn & VanMulken, 2000). There are organizations that provide online services for the generation of animated agents. The websites of these organizations include optional animated agents that can be integrated into any e-learning environment. Some of them are Media Semantics Character Building© (http://www.mediasemantics.com/Product.htm), Cantoche (http://www.cantoche.com) and OddCast (http://www.oddcast.com/home/) (Reategui et al.). It can be concluded from the software included on these websites that there is a harmony between the words of animated agents and their tongue movements. This factor is especially important to the education provided for the hearing-impaired. 3.3. Cognitive and affective advantages of animated agents According to Bandura (1986), perceived self-efficacy is a driving force behind motivation. The reason for this is that self-efficacy (one’s confidence in his/her ability to do something) is one of the internal audit mechanisms that help one exhibit a particular behavior, or focus on learning. The higher one’s self-efficacy is, the higher his/her tendency to exhibit a behavior is. One of the greatest advantages of animated pedagogical agents is that they can motivate and entertain students at a higher level than any other learning environments and that they can encourage them to make efforts to understand the learning material (Choi & Clark, 2006.). In this way, instead of avoiding getting involved into the learning environment, students will be able to consider their teaching agents as a friend and go through the stages of data processing in a problem-free and efficient manner by actively participating in the learning process. In addition to self-efficacy and motivation, animated agents are associated with another concept in the literature: “the Persona Effect”. The Persona effect is the positive impact of animated agents on students’ learning experiences (Kim et al., 2007; Lester et al., 1997; Moreno, Mayer, Spires & Lester, 2001; Choi & Clark, 2006). However, it 1019 Esra Ergül and Mustafa Koç / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 1016 – 1022 should be noted that this emotional connection between animated agents and students does not necessarily lead to a direct effect on learning outputs. In other words, entertaining and positive communication between agents and students does not necessarily prove that learners learn better (Lester et al., 1997). In fact, Choi and Clark (2006) investigated whether simulated agents as a media tool facilitated learning or not. Their study was based on the conflicting views of Clark and Kozma. The results supported the views of the latter. It was concluded that the role of simulated agents in teaching subordinate clauses in English was not more effective when compared to other multimedia instruments. During the study, 74 ESL (English as a Second Learner) students were taught subordinate clauses in English in two different learning environments, one with simulated agents and the other with electronic arrows with voice. It was observed that simulated agents were not more effective in cognitive and affective ways. Furthermore, it was discovered that learning performance did not require the use of an ornamental or expensive learning instrument, and that such instruments were not more interesting or motivating. Similarly, Van Mulken, Andre and Muller (1998) reported the same interesting result. Based on animated agents and text-object animation, the study found that animated agents, contrary to expectations, were not more efficient in enabling adults to recall information. However, Moreno, Mayer and Lester (2000) conducted a series of studies on the social roles (like pictures, sound and speaking styles) of animated agents in learners’ motivation and performance. They discovered that animated agents had a positive influence on students’ motivation and information recall levels. Their justification was not the pure images of agents but the fact that agents were auditory stimuli. The study concluded that students were more successful in storing information in their minds and got higher scores when the animated agent used a speaking style similar to conversation when compared to monologues. The authors described the effect as “the dialogue effect”. 3.4. The importance of facial expressions of animated agents and reality in web-based distance education and communication The literature on e-learning environments, including studies on the acceptance of educational software, is getting more and more intensive (Russell, 1999). Animated agents, enabling students of distance education to learn things, need to have certain characteristics. As an autonomous agent, animated agents need to exhibit dynamic responses during their dialogues with users (Mahmood & Ferneley, 2006). There are currently significant studies on instilling such communicative behaviors and characteristics as emotions, personalities, gestures and facial expressions into animated agents. According to a study conducted by House et al. in 2001, eyebrows and heads of animated agents can move in a way that will serve as independent clues. Therefore, it is important that there syllables must synchronize with visual movements (House et al., 2001). The authors carried out another study in 2006 as an extension of the one in 2001. In this study, they focused on visual components that must be taken into account while animated agents are generated for language teaching. It is essential to specify how their eyes, eyebrows or heads should move to express surprise, unhappiness or anger. The reason for this is that an efficient use of these expressions may make language teaching easier. The study emphasized that agents should exhibit communicative behaviors in a realistic way. In their study on male students, Baylor and Kim (2004) found that those students who were taught through animated agents with a realistic appearance (i.e. similar to human beings) learned better than those who were taught through animated agents with an unrealistic appearance (i.e. similar to cartoon characters). However, there was not a similar discrepancy between groups of female students. Baylor (2005) discovered that female students had a higher tendency to choose iconic agents than male students. Similarly, Gulz and Haake (2005) studied the preferences of students concerning the reality of pedagogical agents. They observed that female students first chose iconic agents, then intermediately realistic agents and finally highly realistic agents. Nevertheless, this was not the case for male students. On the other hand, Moreno et al. (2001) concluded that students’ learning accomplishments did not significantly differ depending on whether they used highly realistic or hardly realistic agents. Based on all these findings, it can be argued that highly-realistic agents are not always an essential component of learning (Clark and Mayer, 2003). 1020 Esra Ergül and Mustafa Koç / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 1016 – 1022 3.5. Online animated agents One of the earliest studies on animated agents with which students can be in constant communication was conducted by Shaw, Johnson and Ganeshan in 1999. In the study, Shaw et al. mentioned the characteristics, skills and online effects of the pedagogical agent they had developed at USC: Adele (Agents for Distance Education-Light Education). Adele was designed for the students of Medicine at USC School of Medicine for two courses, namely Clinical Diagnosis and Emergency Trauma Care. Serving as either a single-user individual learning tutor or multi- user cooperative learning tutor Adele enables students to do practice in a clinical environment to diagnose typical cases. In accordance with instructional objectives, Adele shows students in what ways a case should be studied and guides them through emphasis or clues towards the correct steps. It also provides contextual evaluation to test whether students have understood or not. Since Adele is one of the earliest examples of animated agents, it includes two-dimensional structured animated agents. However, it has been discovered that it is as good as 3D animated agents at user acceptance and motivation, for the details of its voice, facial expressions and posture have been successfully structured. Despite having limited interaction with users, Adele attracts students’ attention and motivates them thanks to its appearance as a real human being (doctor). PPP Persona is another animated agent that provides online instructions. The agent guides students through web- based learning materials. (Andre, Rist & Muller, 1999). It shows suitable ways of developing online learning materials and satisfies learner needs. Like Adele, PPP Persona has behaviors that are made up of the bitmaps of an agent in different postures. CAPA, an animated agent, is an example of an animated agent that is used as an educational interface agent in a web-based course. Educational interface agents generally serve as page summarizers that help make courses less boring. Sabot et al. (2005) emphasized that CAPA interface agent, unlike real instructors, make students comfortable and help them avoid such negative anxieties as shyness or nervousness during the learning process. In their study, Salim et al. (2007) focused on the elements that require the generation of animated agents in web- based learning environments. They studied the requirements within the context of Input-Process-Output (IPO) and reached some conclusions about the considerations for designing pedagogical agents. Developed for the study, a questionnaire was submitted to a total of 100 primary school science teachers. The questionnaire asked the participants what the suitable roles an agent had to perform (tutor, coach, presenter or guide) were and what kind of qualities agents had to have in order to be more realistic and motivating in their interaction with students. Nearly all the participants (98%) provided complete answers to the questions. According to the results, the authors evaluated the students’ problems and the roles of agents within the context of Input, the behaviors of the characters within the context of Process, and advantages of animated agents within the context of Output. Afterwards, they tested the correlation among these three contexts. They concluded that the three contexts were dependent on each other. In other words, the roles and behaviors of animated agents had an influence on their advantages. All the requirements they had revealed were presented in a table under two headings, namely fundamental requirements and supplementary requirements. The authors investigated the pedagogical elements within the context of IPO in relation to each other, which enables us to observe the positive pedagogical effects of animated agents in a clear way. 4. Discussion and conclusion It is generally accepted that two of the most important considerations in generating animated agents used in web- based learning are an evaluation of pedagogical elements and the age of a learner. Another factor in the effects of animated agents is whether they are realistic or not. In other words, their efficiency in language teaching is enhanced when they are like human beings, when their facial expressions (blinking, frowning, etc.) are in harmony with their speech and when their speech synchronizes with their tongue movements. Contemporary educational systems enable the teaching process to be integrated into technology. Some scenario- based language teaching systems with animated agents present themselves as a teaching material that increases students’ active participation in the learning environment. Some studies on the correlation between perceived self- efficacy, which is described as “the persona effect”, and animated agents found that they are not correlated with each other. 1021 Esra Ergül and Mustafa Koç / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 83 ( 2013 ) 1016 – 1022 It can be observed that animated agents in web-based distance education are used in a number of areas from science to medicine and from verbal lessons to psychomotor trainings. They also target a wide range of age groups. Nevertheless, a review of literature suggests that animated agents used in web-based education in Turkey only serve as educational interfaces. Thus, it is recommended that special emphasis should be put on and support should be provided for projects aiming to increase the interaction between students and animated agents. RReferences Altınışık, S., Orhan, F. (2002). Sosyal bilgiler dersinde çoklu ortamın öğrencilerin akademik başarıları ve derse karşı tutumları üzerindeki etkisi [The effect of multimedia on students’ academic achievement and attitude toward social studies]. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 23, 41-49. André, E., Rist, T., & Muller, J. (1998). Integrating reactive and scripted behaviors in life-like presentation agents. In K.P. Sycara and M. Wooldridge (Eds.), The Second Int’l Conf. on Autonomous Agents ( pp. 261-268). New York. André, E., Rist, T., & Muller. J. (1999). 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work_tdjocn554rcf5hj3psjqxp4wtq	----	Microsoft Word - ENGLISH - Vol10-Num6 - First Pages.doc Final Comparison Study of Teaching Blended In-Class Courses vs. Teaching Distance Education Courses By Dr. Susan J. Martin Political Science Department, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705, USA 1. ABSTRACT This paper will share with the members of the conference the findings from the final study. This study contains five semesters of analyzed data which compares the retention of students, final grades for students, grades for five specific tasks that were given in blended in-class courses and in the totally online courses, and a comparison of data by GPA, gender, and by class level. All courses were American Politics PLSC 111. Each semester one or two American Politics courses were conducted in the classroom and one American Politics distance education course was conducted totally online. Each time the courses were given, it was during the same semester and by the same professor who is the researcher. Keywords: Distance education, online courses, blended courses, in-class courses, students’ retention, grade point average (GPA), gender, and class. 2. INTRODUCTION Online learning has become popular over the last 30 years because of the hardware and software advances and the broad acceptance and usage of computers by the global population. Universities with distance education courses have increased enrollments and revenues because of non-traditional students and students from all over the world who find totally online courses fit their lifestyle. Since geography no longer determines the selection of courses students have to choose from, students are free to take a totally online course that satisfies their program and transfer it back to their main university. But still the question is asked, is distance education giving students a quality education and is the education comparable to the traditional in-class course? 3. LITERATURE REVIEW The technological revolution which supports new methods of learning has many supporters and opponents. The supporters of distance education cite that traditional learning in the classroom has never been proven to be the most effective method of transmitting information or imparting knowledge to students, it may be inconsistent, inflexible, does not recognize the technology skills that people have today, and does not meet the needs of students with different backgrounds and experiences [1]. While opponents suggest that distance education courses have security issues, lack positive evaluations of teaching effectiveness, and lacks appropriate communication to and from the students and the professor. The evaluation continuum of teaching and learning effectiveness of distance education courses span from negative to no significant difference between traditional in- class teaching and distance education teaching to extremely positive outcomes. Katrina Meyers in her article “Quality in Distance Education” cites a tremendous amount of studies which have come to the conclusion that “student achievement between web-based versus in-person delivery models….comparing the two types of delivery methods leads to a conclusion of no significant difference in student achievement. However, several of these studies found differences in completion or student satisfaction, although final grades or exam scores were often the same, or nearly the same, between the two types of courses compared [2].” The reality is that a dramatic change has taken place in the expectation of people who are seeking an education. New technologies, e.g., computers, internet, cell phones, I pods, Google, etc. that have penetrated the lives of people are accepted and expected to be a part of educational instruction. Allen and Seaman in their article “Online Nation” completed a comprehensive evaluation of the growth of totally online learning over the last five years. In their report they state the following:  “Over 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2007 term; a 12 percent increase over the number reported the previous year.  The 12.9 percent growth rate for online enrollment far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.  Over twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007 [3].” At Oxford Brookes University in the Theology and Religion Department, they have been offering a BA for Distance Learning which is very creative. They have simplified their application process and have allowed students to enroll during any time of the year which broke the semester barrier for students. Also, the university created a flexible module and payment system that allows for the students to pace themselves throughout the course [4]. The program has been successful for seventeen years. Other reasons for higher education’s support of distance education are given by Thomas Kriger. Kriger in his study, “A Virtual Revolution: Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education” states that “College administrators and public officials cite a number of reasons for the expansion of distance education: projected enrollment growth, shrinking public funding for higher education, student demand and the need to improve access for non-traditional students. Academic supporters, including faculty teaching DE courses, are attracted to the challenge of providing quality education in a new medium. While all these motivations are legitimate, there is also clearly another motivation and that SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 201240 ISSN: 1690-4524 is the perceived potential for profit. Numerous projections coming from both government agencies and business analysts suggest that the potential market for distance education can be measured in the billions of dollars [5].” Technologies which promote new methods of learning have always been changing the teaching methods in societies. Change is the variable that can be depended on to be present. The higher education institutions that have embraced the use of technology in learning have realized through the mass communication changes that many additional groups of people may have access to higher education. You may compare this to societies in developing countries that never used a land telephone that have embraced cell phones. The non-traditional student now has new opportunities to pursue an education on their terms. The same reality that has changed the way libraries conduct business has been the reality of higher education institutions that have embraced distance education in many variations. Life changes! New technologies have changed the way we live, communicate, work and learn. The challenge is to create totally online courses that are secure, give an excellent learning experience to students, and give access to those people that have been traditionally neglected by the education establishment. 4. METHODOLOGY Data for this study was collected from five semesters, fall 2007, spring 2008, fall 2008, fall 2009, and spring 2010 for comparison of the retention of students by examining students that dropped or withdrew from the courses, Final grades which includes all grades from tests, all grades from assignments, grades from research completed on central questions for each chapter, grades for arguments/debates, grades for a position paper, and grades for bonus assignments that were assigned to the in-class blended and the totally online American Politics courses being taught during the same semesters and for the same length of time. The specific assignments were assigned to both the in-class students using a blended method or hybrid method of learning and to totally on-line or distance education students. The final case study involved 225 undergraduate students in an in-class environment with hybrid or blended courses and 208 undergraduate students in totally on-line courses which was a total of 433 students. The results from all the tasks were recorded and analyzed. Pearson’s Chi-Square statistical tests were used to determine if there was a significant difference between the tasks’ outcomes from the blended in-class courses and the totally online courses. The final study contains an additional analysis of data that relates to GPA, gender, and the class level of the students. Also, the final study analyzed the data to determine if a particular task or tasks have better outcomes in a blended in- class course or in the totally online course. The goal of the final study was to determine if the results from the first, second, third, fourth and fifth studies were consistent and valid. Please note that a Pearson’s Chi Square Test score > p = .05 denotes no significant difference between in-class blended courses and totally online courses. A Pearson’s Chi Square Test score < p = .05 denotes a significant difference. The Pearson’s Chi Square Test score is not an accurate test for counts under 5. Also, students that register for a course and choose to drop the course before engaging in an activity in the course do so for personal reasons which are unknown to the professor. 5. FINDINGS FROM THE FINAL STUDY Retention: Data from all five semesters was used to determine if there was a significant difference between withdrawals and drops by students in the blended in-class courses compared to students in the totally online courses. After 73 dropped students were taken out of the 433 total numbers of students, 189 students were enrolled in the blended in-class courses and 171 students were enrolled in the totally online courses. Twenty students withdrew during the five semesters from the blended in-class courses which was 10.6% of the 189 students and 26 students withdrew from the totally online courses which was 15.2 % of the 171 students. The Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores (p = .190) denoted that there were no significant difference of withdrawals between the two methods of teaching. After 46 withdrawal students were taken out of the 433 total numbers of students, 205 students were enrolled in the blended in-class courses and 182 students were enrolled in the totally online courses. Thirty-six students registered for the blended in-class courses dropped the course before making any entries in the course and were 17.6% of the 205 students. Thirty-seven students registered for the totally online courses dropped the course before making any entries in the course and were 20.3% of the 182 students. The Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .487) denoted that there was no significant difference between the two different methods of teaching. The comparison of the blended in-class courses and the totally online courses for retention of students did not show any significant difference. When Gender was used to analyze the data after the 46 withdrawals were removed from the data, 387 students remained. Out of 119 male students in the blended in-class courses 18 or 15.1% of the males dropped the course and out of 90 male students in the totally online courses15 males or 16.7% of the males dropped the course. Out of 86 females in the blended in-class courses 18 females or 20.9% of the females dropped the course and out of the 92 females in the totally online courses 22 females or 23.9% of the females dropped the course. Also, when both withdrawals (the Pearson’s Chi Square Test score p = .765 for males and p = .128 for females) and drops (the Pearson’s Chi Square Test score p = .762 for males and p = .634 for females) were analyzed by Gender the Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores denoted that there was no significant difference between the number of males or the number of females withdrawing or dropping the blended in-class courses or the totally online courses. When Class level was analyzed by comparing freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors who withdrew or dropped the course from the blended in-class courses or the totally online courses no significant differences between Class levels was noted between the two methods of teaching. When GPA was analyzed to compare the differences between students’ outcomes from blended in-class courses SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 2012 41ISSN: 1690-4524 to students’ outcomes from totally online courses for drops, no GPA categories denoted a significant difference. When withdrawals were analyzed by GPA, 1.01 – 2.00 category was the only GPA category that had a Pearson Chi Square test score (p = .010) that denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching. Only 1 student or 6.7% out of 15 students in the blended in-class courses withdrew compared to 11 students or 45.8% out of 24 students in the totally online courses withdrew from the course that were in the1.01 – 2.00 category. Final Grades: The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .001) denoted that there was a significant difference between the Final grades outcomes of the blended in-class courses compared to the Final grades outcomes of the totally online courses. Final grades outcomes were much higher for the blended in-class courses. The blended in-class courses had 79.3% of the students fall within the A/B/C category and 20.7% in the D/F category. The totally online courses had 62.8% of the students fall within the A/B/C category and 37.2% in the D/F category. Over 16 percent more of the students in the blended in-class courses scores fell into the A/B/C category than the totally online students. The fall 2007 grades for the totally online course were the lowest grades for any group of students that I have taught over the last seven years. Only 45% of students from the fall 2007 totally online course completed a 10 point Position Paper (10 points out of 100 points for the total grade) and none completed a 5 point bonus extra credit assignment. Final grades which included only spring 2008 and fall 2008 data shows the enigma of the fall 2007 Position Paper data. The Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .822) for the two semesters (spring 2008 and fall 2008) without the fall 2007 data denoted no significant difference between the Final grades category for the blended in-class courses compared to the totally online courses. When the Gender data was analyzed for Final grades, it was noted that in the blended in-class courses 86.8% of females and 74.3 % of males fell into A/B/C category. Females in the blended in-class courses had 12.5% more students with higher Final grades than the males. Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .099) denoted no significant difference for males in the Final grades outcome between the two methods of teaching but females Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .001) denoted a significant difference for females between the two methods of teaching. In the totally online course 62.7% males and 62.9 % of females fell into A/B/C category. There was a significant difference (p = .001) between the two methods of teaching for females but no significant difference for males. Almost 14% more of the females from the blended in-class courses had higher Final grades than the females in the totally online courses. When Final grades was analyzed by Class level only the freshmen category had a Pearson Chi Square test score (.002) that denoted a significant difference in the outcomes of freshmen in the blended in-class courses and the totally online courses. Eighty percent of the freshmen in the blended in- class courses fell in the A/B/C category while only 54.1% of the totally online students fell into the A/B/C category. When GPA was analyzed to compare the differences between students’ outcomes from blended in-class courses to students’ outcomes from totally online courses for Final grades, the following Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores were noted: freshmen and transfer students p = .096, .01 – 1.0 GPA students p = .310, 1.01 – 2.0 GPA category students p = .310, 2.01 – 3.0 GPA students p = .002, 3.01 - 4.0 GPA category students p = .241. Only 2.01 – 3.0 GPA showed a significant difference with 33% more students from the blended in-class courses falling into the A/B/C category than the totally online students. Final Grades Summary: Over 16% more students in the blended in-class courses scored in the A/B/C Final grades category than students from the totally online students. Overall, females scored 14% more in the A/B/C Final grades category than males. Blended in-class students with lower GPA had higher Final grades than lower GPA students in the totally online courses. Freshmen from the blended in-class courses had 25% more students in the A/B/C Final grades category than freshmen in the totally online courses. Tests Grades: Tests are worth 40 points out of 100 possible points for the course. There were 106 students or 73.1% of the 145 students in the totally online courses that were in the 26 – 40 point’s category. While 105 students or 62.1% of the 169 students from the blended in-class courses were in the 26 – 40 point’s category. The students in the blended in-class courses had the advantage of the chapter material being totally reviewed, Chapter Questions discussed and reviewed, and a test review in the class before the tests were taken but collectively scored lower than the totally online students. The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .039) determined that there was a significant difference for the Tests grades between the two methods of teaching. Eleven percent more students from the totally online course fell into the 26 – 40 point’s category for Tests grades than the blended in-class students. When Gender was used to analyze the data from the blended in-class courses 72.1% of females and 55.4% of males fell into 26 – 40 point’s category. Females in the blended in- class courses had 16.7% more students with higher Test grades than males. The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .001) denoted a significant difference for between the two methods of teaching for males. The Pearson’s Test score (p = .530) denoted no significant difference for the females between the two methods of teaching. Also, in the totally online courses 67.1% females and 78.7 % of males fell into 26 – 40 point’s category. Males from the totally online courses had 23.3% more students with higher Test grades in the 26 – 40 point’s category than males in the blended in- class courses. When Tests grades were analyzed by Class there was no significant difference between the two methods of teaching. When GPA was analyzed to compare the differences between students’ outcomes from blended in-class courses to students’ outcomes from totally online courses for Test grades, the following Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores were SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 201242 ISSN: 1690-4524 noted: freshmen and transfer students p = .566, .01 – 1.0 GPA students p = .921, 1.01 – 2.0 GPA category students p =.901, 2.01 – 3.0 GPA students p = .874, 3.01 - 4.0 GPA category students p = .057. There was no significant difference between the two methods of teaching for Test grades in any of the GPA categories. Tests Grades Summary: By 11% more totally online students scored in the 26 – 40 point’s category in tests than in- class blended students. By 23.3% more totally online males scored higher in the 26 – 40 point’s category than males in the blended in-class courses. Blended in-class females had 16.7% more students in the 26 – 40 point’s category in Tests grades than males in the blended in-class courses. Male students in the totally online courses had 23.3% more students in the 26 – 40 point’s category than females in the totally online courses. Answers to the Central Questions for each Chapter: The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .000) determined that there was a significant difference for the Chapter Question grades between the two methods of teaching during the five semesters. The blended in-class courses had 87 students out of 169 students or 51.5% of the students in the 7 - 10 point’s category and 104 students out of 145 students or 71.7% of the students in the totally online courses fell in the 7 - 10 point’s category. Over 20% more students from the totally online courses fell in the 7 - 10 point’s category for the grades from the Chapter Questions. When Chapter Central Questions grades were analyzed by Gender, the blended in-class courses had 42.6% of the males and 64.7% of the females in the 7 – 10 point’s category. And in the totally online courses 66.7% of the males and 77.1% of the females fell into the 7 – 10 point’s category. The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score for the blended in-class course compared to the totally online courses was p = .002 for males and was p = .107 for females. Male students had 24.1% more male students from the totally online courses falling in the 7 – 10 point’s category than in the blended in-class courses. Female students had 12.4% more female students from the totally online courses falling in the 7 – 10 point’s category than in the blended in-class courses. It appears that Chapter Central Questions are a better assignment for the totally online courses. When Class was analyzed for the Chapter Central Questions grades variable, the Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .037) for sophomores and (p = .021) for juniors denoted a significant difference in the comparison of the two methods of teaching. Twenty - four percent more sophomores in the totally online courses scored in the 7- 10 point’s category than sophomores in the blended in-class courses. And 27% more juniors in the totally online courses scored in the 7 - 10 point’s category. When GPA was analyzed to compare the differences between students’ outcomes from blended in-class courses to students’ outcomes from totally online courses for Chapter Central Questions grades, the following Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores were noted: freshmen and transfer students p = .145, .01 – 1.0 GPA students p = .310, 1.01 – 2.0 GPA category students p =.863, 2.01 – 3.0 GPA students p = .096, 3.01 - 4.0 GPA category students p = .004. Only 3.01 - 4.0 GPA showed a significant difference with over 23% more students from the totally online courses falling in the 7 – 10 point’s category. Chapter Questions Summary: The totally online course students had 20% more students than the blended in-class courses in the 7- 10 point’s category. Totally online males and females scored higher in the Chapter Questions grades than the in-class blended students. GPA 3.01 – 4.0 had over 23% more students from the totally online courses falling in the 7 – 10 point’s category than students with the same GPA in the blended in-class courses. Sophomores and juniors had higher scores from the online courses than students in the blended in-class courses. Chapter questions outcomes were higher in the totally online courses than in the blended in-class courses. Grades for Arguments/Debates: Arguments/ Debates are usually one of the highlights in blended in-class courses. Students in the blended in-class courses prepare weeks in advance for a debate. Students in the totally online courses write a pro opinion, con opinion, and give their position/opinion on an argument which demonstrates that they have critically thought about the issue. Students (150 out of 169) in the blended in-class courses had 88.8% of the students in the 7-15 point’s category while students (109 out of 145) in the totally online courses had 75.2% in the 7-15 point’s category. The Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .002) determined that there was a significant difference for the Arguments/Debates grades between the two methods of teaching during the five semesters. Thirteen percent more students from the blended in-class courses were in the 7-15 point’s category than the totally online students. When Gender was used to analyze the data, out of 68 females, 63 students or 92.6% fell into the 7-15 point’s category in the blended in-class courses. And out of 101 males, 87 students or 86.1% fell into the 7-15 point’s category in the blended in-class courses. Out of 70 females, 52 students or 74.3% fell into the 7-15 point’s category in the totally online courses. Out of 75 males, 57 or 76% fell into the 7-15 point’s category in the totally online courses. The blended in-class courses outcomes for males when compared to totally online courses showed no significant difference (p = .085) between the two methods of teaching. Females with a Pearson’s Chi-Square test score (p = .004) denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching. Females from the blended in-class courses had over 18.3% more students in the 7-15 point’s category than the females in the totally online courses. When Arguments/Debates grades were analyzed by Class, the Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .009) denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching for freshmen. Out of 94 freshman students in the blended in-class courses, 82 or 87.2% fell in the 7 – 15 point’s category while out of 37 students in the totally online courses 25 freshmen students or 67.6% fell in the 7 – 15 point’s category which is almost a 20% difference. When GPA was analyzed to compare the differences between students’ outcomes from blended in-class courses to students’ outcomes from totally online courses for the Arguments/Debates grades, the following Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores were noted: freshmen and transfer SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 2012 43ISSN: 1690-4524 category students p = .128 .01 – 1.0 GPA category students p = .735, 1.01 – 2.0 GPA category students p =.070, 2.01 – 3.0 GPA category students p = .010, 3.01 - 4.0 GPA category students p = .083. Only the 2.01 – 3.0 GPA category students denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching with 24% more students from the blended in-class courses falling into the 7-15 point’s category. Arguments/Debates Grades Summary: Thirteen percent more students from the blended in-class courses were in the 7- 15 point’s category than the totally online students. Females from the blended in-class courses had over 18.3% more students in the 7-15 point’s category than the females in the totally online courses. Freshmen from the blended in-class courses had 20% more students in the 7- 15 point’s category than the freshmen in the totally online courses. Students with GPA’s of .01 – 1.0 and 2.01 – 3.0 did poorly in both method of teaching. Only the 2.01 – 3.0 GPA category students denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching with 24% more students from the blended in-class courses falling into the 7-15 point’s category. Grades for the Position Paper: During the fall 2007 semester, two students in the blended courses did not complete the position paper. While ten students in the totally online courses did not complete the position paper which cost the ten students in the totally online course 10 points or 10 percent off their grade. The Position Paper grades dramatically influenced the Final grades. I have been teaching totally online courses for seven years and fall 2007 semester was the only time that 45% of students in a course did not complete an assignment. It appeared that at least six students to nine students did not make a genuine effort to complete the class assignments in the totally online course. The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .000) denoted that there was a significant difference for the outcome for the Position Paper grades between the two methods of teaching during the fall, 2007 semester. The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .000) determined that there was a significant difference for the Position Paper grades between the two methods of teaching during the five semesters. The blended in-class courses had 156 students out of 169 students or 92.3% of the students in the 7 – 10 point’s category and 100 students out of 145 students or 69% of the students in the totally online courses fell in the 7 – 10 point’s category. Over 23% more students from the blended in-class fell in the 7 – 10 point’s category for the grades from the Position Paper. The fall 2007 totally online students greatly influenced the Chi-Square Test score p = .007). When the fall 2007 Position Paper data was removed from the data, the Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .176) denoted no significant difference for the two semesters in 2008. When Gender data was analyzed, 94.1% of females and 91.1% of males in the blended in- class courses fell in the 7 – 10 point’s category for the Position Paper grades while 70% of females and 68% of males in the totally online course fell into the 7 – 10 point’s category. There was a significant difference between the two methods of teaching for females and males which a Pearson’s Chi-Square test score (p = .000) denoted. Both females and males from the blended in-class courses had 20% more students in the 7 – 10 point’s category. When Class was analyzed for the Position Paper grades, the following Pearson’s Chi-Square Test scores were noted: freshmen (p = .000), sophomores (p = .021), juniors (p = .006), and seniors (p = .125). All Class levels but the seniors’ Pearson’s Chi-Square Test scores denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching. When GPA data was analyzed for Position Paper grades, the following Pearson’s Chi Square Test scores were noted: freshmen and transfer students’ p = .000, .01 – 1.0 GPA category students’ p = .004, 1.01 – 2.0 GPA category students’ p =.182, 2.01 – 3.0 GPA category students’ p = .002, 3.01 - 4.0 GPA category students’ p = .032. Freshmen and transfer students category had over 32% more students from the blended in-class courses falling in the in the 7– 10 point’s category than the totally online courses. All categories but 1.01 – 2.0 denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching. Position Paper Summary: One task not completed during one semester can dramatically throw off the findings of a study. Because only 45% of the totally online students from the fall 2007 semester completed the task of the 10 points position paper, the final grade outcomes and the position paper grade outcomes showed a significant difference between the two methods of teaching. All students but seniors showed a significant difference between the two methods of teaching. Both females and males from the blended in-class courses had 20% more students in the 7 – 10 point’s category. Freshmen and transfer students category had over 32% more students from the blended in- class courses falling in the in the 7– 10 point’s category than the totally online courses. The Position Paper Assignment outcomes denoted that this assignment is a better assignment for in-class courses. Grade for Bonus Assignment which was Optional: Over 67% of students in the blended in-class course took the opportunity to gain bonus points while only 21.4% students in the totally online course took advantage of the bonus opportunity. The Pearson’s Chi-Square Test score (p = .000) determined that there was a significant difference for the Bonus grades between the two methods of teaching during the five semesters. When the Gender variable was used to analyze the two teaching methods, the Pearson’s Chi Square Test score (p = .000 males and p = .000 females) denoted a significant difference for males and females in the blended in-class courses when compared to the totally online courses. Both Genders in the totally online courses did not take advantage of the bonus opportunity. Both females (76.5%) and males (61.4%) fell into the Yes Bonus category in the blended in- class courses compared to females (21.4%) and males (21.3%) falling into the Yes Bonus category in the totally online courses. When Class levels were analyzed, the Pearson’s Chi-Square Test scores denoted a significant difference between the two methods of teaching for every class level. Students from all GPA categories had higher grades for the Bonus Grades that were in the blended in-class courses. SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 201244 ISSN: 1690-4524 Bonus Summary: Over 45% more students from the blended in-class courses took advantage of the bonus opportunity compared to the totally online students. And over 48% more students from the 3.01 – 4.0 GPA took advantage of the bonus opportunity. The bonus assignment is a better task for in-class students. 6. CONCLUSION There was no significant difference in the Retention of students between the two methods of teaching. When all five semesters are compared the students in the blended in–class courses scored much higher for certain tasks. The Position Paper task scored 23% more blended in-class students in the 7 – 10 point’s category, Debate/Argument task scored 13% more blended in-class students in the 7 – 15 point’s category, and the Bonus task scored 45% more from the blended in- class students than the totally online students. Since the blended in-class students scored much higher in the above tasks, the Final grades outcome had 16% more blended in- class students in the A/B/C category than the totally online students. The totally online students scored 11% more students in the 26-40 point’s category for Tests grades than the in-class blended students. And totally online courses had 20% more students in the 26-40 point’s category for Chapter Questions grades than in the in-class students. ITEM Pearson Chi-Square Asymp. Significance Retention p = .190 withdrawal p = .487 dropped No Significant difference Final Grade p = .001 Significant difference (In-class 16% more in A/B/C category) Tests p = .039 Significant difference (Totally online 11% more in 26 - 40 point’s category) Chapter Questions p = .000 Significant difference (Totally online 20% more in 7 - 10 point’s category) Position Paper p = .000 Significant difference (In-class 23% more in 7 -10 point’s category) Arguments/Debates p = .002 Significant difference (In-class 13% more in 7 – 15 point’s category) Bonus p = .000 Significant difference (In-class 46% more in Bonus category) Table 1: American Politics Pearson’s Chi-Square Differences All Semesters Ho No difference between the blended in-class and totally online courses. > p = .05 denotes no difference between in-class blended and totally online courses < p = .05 denotes a significant difference When the fall 2007 semester data was taken out of the study and only spring and fall 2008 data was analyzed some interesting facts surfaced. The totally online students showed no significant difference for Retention (p = .556) or for Final grades (p = .822) or for the Position Paper grades (p = .176) or for Arguments/Debates grades (p = .083) when compared to the blended in-class students. There was a significant difference between the two methods of teaching for Bonus grades (p = .012) with the blended in-class having 45% more students in the Bonus category than the totally online students. There also was a significant difference in the Tests grades category (p = .014) and Chapter Questions grades category (p = .052) that favored the totally online students. Totally online students had 21.8% more students in the 26 – 40 point’s category for Tests grades and 17.1% more students in the 7 – 10 point’s category than the blended in-class students. An important manifestation from the spring and fall 2008 data was the realization that some tasks/assignments are more successful in the blended in-class course and some are more successful in the totally online courses. Bonus assignments, Position Paper assignments, and Debates/Arguments assignments had higher student outcomes in the blended in-class courses than the totally online students. Test assignments and Chapter Questions assignments had higher student outcomes in the totally online courses compare to the students blended in-class courses. There was no significant difference for Retention between the blended in-class courses and the totally online courses. And Gender analysis showed no significant difference for Retention. Female students in the blended in-class courses had 18.7% more students in the A/B/C category for Final grades than male students. Male students scored higher in the Tests grades in the totally online courses. Generally students entering the courses with lower grade point averages did better in the blended in-class courses and had higher Final grades than students in totally online courses. Freshmen by 25% and lower GPA students do better in the in-class blended course environment overall. Students with higher grade point averages scored the same in both methods of teaching. But there were some indications that students with higher grade point averages did some tasks better in the blended in-class courses. 7. REFERENCES [1] J.R. Young, “Hybrid” Teaching Seeks to End the Divide Between Traditional and Online Instruction, Chronicle of Higher Education, 48 (28), A 33, 2002. [2] K.A. Meyer, “Quality in Distance Education Quality in Distance Education: Focus On Online Learning”, ASHE- ERIC Higher Education Report, Volume 29, Number 4, 2007. [3] I.E. Allen and J. Seaman, “Online Nation, Five Years of Growth in Online Learning”, Babson Survey Research Group, Sloan Consortium, Needham, MA 02492-1200, SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 2012 45ISSN: 1690-4524 2007. [4] A. Le Cornu, H. Cameron, E. Catling, T. Cosgrove, and E. Langford, “Managing Distance Learning in a Face-to- Face Culture”, Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching, Volume 1, Issue 4, 2006. [5] T.J. Kriger, “A Virtual Revolution: Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education”, USDLA Journal, Volume 15: No 11, November, 2001. SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 10 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 201246 ISSN: 1690-4524 
work_tdsc7hhdjbf47lgadd7o7ljlcq	----	Z:\Pagination\TandF-LaTeX\US\HAJD\21(3)\ApplicationFiles\i234059.dvi THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 21(3), 117–132 Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies Jorge Gaytan University of West Georgia Beryl C. McEwen North Carolina A&T State University The purpose of this study was to better understand the instruc- tional and assessment strategies that are most effective in the online learning environment. Faculty and students identified several strategies for maintaining instructional quality in the online environment, including the importance of using a variety of instruc- tional methods to appeal to various learning styles and building an interactive and cohesive learning environment that includes group work. Online assessment strategies include having a wide variety of clearly explained assignments on a regular basis and providing meaningful and timely feedback to students regarding the quality of their work. Effective assessment techniques include projects, portfolios, self-assessments, peer evaluations, and weekly assign- ments with immediate feedback. The role of meaningful feedback cannot be overemphasized. Much has been written about teaching and learning online. The Illinois Online Network (2005, 1) noted that “effective online instruction depends on learning experiences appropriately designed and facilitated by knowledgeable educators.” They recommended the use of a variety of instructional strategies including learning contracts, discussions, lectures, self-directed learning, mentorships, small group work, projects, collab- orative learning, case studies, and forums. Each strategy is clearly explained in the paper. They noted that online learning can employ any of the strategies discussed here. Much of the power of learning via the Internet lies in its capacity Correspondence should be sent to Dr. Jorge Gaytan, Associate Professor and Director of Business Education, Richards College of Business, Adamson Hall # 205-B, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA 30118. E-mail: jgaytan@westga.edu 117 GAYTAN AND McEWEN to support multiple modes of communication including any combi- nation of student-student, student-faculty, faculty-student, faculty- faculty, student-others, others-students, etc. Taking into account the varied learning styles of learners and providing opportunities for self-directed and collaborative learning, educators can facilitate powerful, effective courses geared to achieve specific learning goals and outcomes using the vast resources and capacities of online learning. (Illinois Online Network 2005, 6) According to the Online Learning Center (2003) at the University of Houston–Victoria, effective online instruction involves translating the unique benefits of face-to-face interaction to online activities. The center encourages professors teaching online to get students to be actively involved in their learning by designing activities that promote student interactions and build a sense of community among students and faculty. Perhaps the most comprehensive review of literature related to online learning was conducted by Tallent-Runnels et al. (2006). The review was divided into four major topics: course environment, learners’ outcomes, learners’ characteristics, and institutional and administrative factors. Online course assessment is an important issue to consider in online teaching and learning. Managing student assignments, providing feedback to students, and assessing students’ learning are all key factors. � � � While the online format presents some challenges to instructors, it also may encourage the development of new learning and teaching techniques. (Tallent-Runnels et al. 2006, 103) Using effective assessment techniques is an essential part of effective teaching and learning in the electronic environment. As educational institutions are increasingly held accountable for student learning (Association of American Colleges and Universities 2004; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education 2003), assessment repre- sents an important way to respond to such accountability. However, student assessment conducted solely for accountability reasons does not necessarily lead to learning. Educators must establish the purpose of assessment, the criteria being measured, and the intended outcomes before meaningful assessment methods can be achieved (Gaytan 2002). The main purposes of assessment are to monitor student learning, improve academic programs, and enhance teaching and learning (Corcoran, Dershimer, and Tichenor 2004; Stiggins and Chappuis 2005). 118 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES In the relatively new arena of e-learning, the assessment challenges are even greater. Finding effective techniques to assess student learning in online courses has received increased attention but has not yet been thoroughly addressed (Robles and Braathen 2002). Some argue that effective online assessment techniques should be based on the character- istics of outstanding traditional teaching and learning such as challenging students to think, providing a reason to want to step into the classroom, displaying a willingness to give extra help and encouragement, and giving varied and meaningful assignments (Marshall 2003). However, online assessment also requires a more ongoing, systematic approach than that used with traditional instruction (Robles and Braathen 2002). In addition, as the assessment methods must match the level of desired competencies, online assessment requires educators to modify their methods of instruction to make them more innovative than traditional instruction (Liang and Creasy 2004) because it changes human inter- action, communication, learning, and assessment methods (Robles and Braathen 2002). As a result, several researchers have found significant challenges when assessing student learning in online courses (Liang and Creasy 2004). Other researchers have reported benefits for educators and adminis- trators when testing in the online environment (Farmer 2005; Liang and Creasy 2004). Specifically, several researchers (Bartlett, Reynolds, and Alexander 2000; Farmer 2005) have found the following benefits: (a) grades can be entered into the electronic grade book immediately, (b) students have faster access to results, (c) assessment fosters a student- centered learning environment, and (d) it allows for measuring learning more accurately. Effective online assessment techniques include the (a) development of realistic scenarios for learning, (b) alignment of learning objectives with realistic scenarios, (c) use of software as soon as possible, (d) availability of online mentors, and (e) delivery of on-site, instructor-based training responsive to individual student learning differences (Boyle et al. 2003). More research related to online teaching and learning is needed to identify effective online instructional and assessment techniques. Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study was to better understand the instructional and assessment strategies that are most effective in the online learning 119 GAYTAN AND McEWEN environment. To address this purpose, answers were sought to the following five research questions: 1. What are the characteristics of faculty and students engaged in online learning? 2. How is instructional quality maintained in online courses? 3. What strategies are usually used to assess learning in online courses? 4. What types of online assessments are perceived as being effective by students and by faculty? 5. To what extent do e-learners consider the Internet to be an effective instructional environment or merely a convenience? Method The descriptive research method was used for this study, which sought to investigate the perceptions held by students and faculty regarding online instructional and assessment techniques. Data were solicited from individuals using a questionnaire survey instrument (Gay, Mills, and Airasian 2006). Online surveys, administered through the Blackboard and WebCT course management systems, were used to gather data. Population The population of the study included all faculty teaching online courses, and students enrolled in those courses, at two southern state universities, during the fall 2004 semester. The population included 85 faculty and 1,963 students, with response rates of 34% (29 of 85) for faculty and 17% (332 of 1963) for students. Survey Instruments Two instruments were used for data collection: the faculty survey and the student survey. The survey completed by faculty requested demographic data information; responses to a five-point Likert scale: 1 (strongly agree), 2 (agree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (disagree), and 5 (strongly disagree); as well as open-ended questions. The Likert scale measured the perceptions held by faculty members teaching online courses regarding the way instructional quality is maintained and the assessment strategies considered effective for online instruction. 120 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES The student survey was similar to the faculty survey, measuring student perceptions of the Internet as an effective instructional environment and the assessment strategies considered most effective. Both survey instru- ments were developed by the researchers using current literature. Respon- dents to both survey instruments were given a unique code (e.g., student number in WebCt and Blackboard) to avoid problems related to having one respondent complete the survey several times. A pilot test of each instrument was conducted prior to the full-scale administration of the survey. The results revealed an internal consistency of .86 for the faculty survey and .89 for the student survey (Cronbach 1951). According to Nunnally (1978), internal consistencies greater than .7 are acceptable for research instruments. Data Analysis Descriptive statistics (frequencies and relative frequencies) were used to summarize both faculty and student responses and to measure their overall perceptions of online courses, including instructional quality and effectiveness of online assessments. Findings and Discussion The results of the faculty and student surveys are presented in relation to the five research questions. Question 1: Characteristics of Respondents As shown in Table 1, 62% of faculty respondents teaching online are female, 76% are at least fifty years of age, and 72% are white. Thirty-eight percent are associate professors, 28% are assistant professors, and 17% are lecturers/instructors. Thirty-eight percent are already tenured. Sixty-nine percent have over five years of teaching experience and 75% have taught online courses for at least three years. The number of courses taught each year range from one to eight. Ninety-three percent of faculty respondents use either Blackboard or WebCT as their course-management system. Table 2 shows that 73% of student respondents are females, 60% are white and 35% African American, 55% are undergraduates, 42% are education majors, and 22% are business majors. Student respondents classified themselves as full-time students (56%) and full-time employees (57%). Eighty-two percent are taking online courses toward completion of a degree, and 39% were enrolled in their first online course. 121 GAYTAN AND McEWEN Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Faculty Respondents Demographic Category Characteristic Percentage Gender Female 62 Male 38 Age 50–59 52 60 and over 24 30–39 14 40–49 10 Ethnicity White, non-Hispanic 72 African American 24 Multiracial 4 Academic rank Associate professor 38 Assistant professor 28 Lecturer/Instructor 17 Other 14 Professor 3 Tenured No 62 Yes 38 Years of experience More than 15 38 teaching in higher education 0–5 31 6–10 28 11–15 3 Years of experience 3–4 48 teaching online 5–6 24 Less than 1 year 14 1–2 11 More than 6 3 Number of online courses 1 course 28 taught each year 4 courses 21 5 courses 21 7 courses 14 2 courses 7 8 courses 7 Online platform used WebCt 48 Blackboard 45 Learning Space 7 Question 2: Strategies for Maintaining Online Instructional Quality Table 3 lists the instructional strategies that faculty and student respon- dents agreed are being used in their courses. The top six identified by the faculty are as follows: requiring continual, immediate, and detailed 122 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES Table 2. Demographic Characteristics of Student Respondents Demographic Category Characteristic Percentage Gender Female 73 Male 27 Ethnicity White, non-Hispanic 60 African American 35 Multiracial 3 Hispanic 2 Classification Graduate 42 Junior 20 Sophomore 14 Senior 13 Freshman 8 Certification 3 School/College Education 42 Business 22 Technology 13 Liberal Arts/Arts and Sciences 11 Employment status Full time 57 Part time 27 Unemployed 16 Student status Full time 56 Part time 44 Age 18–22 33 23–27 13 33–37 13 28–32 12 43–44 12 38–42 8 Over 52 5 48–52 4 Access to online courses Home computer 83 Office computer 7 University lab 6 Other 3 Library 1 Are your online courses Yes 82 part of a degree? No 18 This is my first online course No 61 Yes 39 (Continued) 123 GAYTAN AND McEWEN Table 2. (Continued) Demographic Category Characteristic Percentage Number of online courses 1 55 taking this semester 2 28 3 9 4 4 5 or more 2 Number of online courses 0 39 completed so far 1 24 2 15 3 9 5 or more 7 4 6 Table 3. Elements of Quality Instruction in Online Courses Strongly Agree or Agree (%) Quality Indicators Faculty (N = 29) Students (N = 332) Continual, immediate, and detailed feedback is required regarding student understanding of course materials 86 57 Online courses are at least as rigorous as the conventional courses 83 80 E-mail is used appropriately to aid in the instructional process 76 83 A variety of instructional strategies (e.g., visual, audio, kinesthetic) are being used to address various learning styles of students 72 42 A good rapport and collaboration with students is established 72 67 Thought-provoking questions are used in threaded discussions 62 54 All members of a group must participate in chat room discussions 52 36 Various technologies are used to foster a high quality interaction (e.g., desktop video- conferencing, Web-based resources, online chats, asynchronous discussion boards) 52 45 Chat room interaction is analyzed to determine issues that require attention 48 26 The online learning environment is filled with dynamic interaction 45 52 Chat room interaction is analyzed to determine group cohesiveness 38 37 124 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES feedback regarding student understanding of course materials (86%); making online courses at least as rigorous as conventional courses (83%); using e-mail appropriately to aid in the instructional process (76%); using a variety of instructional strategies to address students’ learning styles (72%); establishing a good rapport and collaboration with students (72%); and using thought-provoking questions in threaded discussions (62%). The top five identified by students are as follows: e-mail is used appro- priately to aid in the instructional process (83%); online courses are at least as rigorous as the conventional courses (80%); the instructor has established a good rapport with the students (67%); thought-provoking questions/issues are used in threaded discussions (53%); and the online environment is filled with dynamic interaction (52%). These findings support the views of Beer, Slack, and Armitt (2005) as well as Robles and Braathen (2002), who urged online instructors to become proficient in group work dynamics and in engaging their students in both synchronous and asynchronous communication. These findings are also consistent with Bocchi, Eastman, and Swift (2004), whose research found that increased interaction resulted in increased learning as reflected by test performance, grades, and student satisfaction. Question 3: Online Assessment Strategies Table 4 shows the assessment techniques that faculty and students agreed were used in their online courses. More than 75% of the faculty respondents agreed that a wide variety of clearly explained assignments are regularly required (93%); student work is evaluated to determine if learning outcomes are being met (93%); continual, immediate, and detailed feedback is required regarding student perceptions of the course (83%); and e-mail is evaluated to ensure student understanding of assign- ments (76%). More than 50% of the students agreed that instructors evaluate work to determine if learning outcomes are being met (73%); a wide variety of clearly explained assignments are regularly required (69%); instructors provide feedback on discussion board assignments (69%); instructors engage in self-assessments to determine if learning outcomes are being met (59%); a rubric is used to determine if major assignments are completed effectively (58%); and a variety of assessment techniques are used, including portfolios, projects, and simulations (56%). These findings support those of Russell, Elton, Swinglehurst, and Greenhalgh (2006), who underscored the importance of continuous 125 GAYTAN AND McEWEN Table 4. Assessment Strategies for Online Courses Strongly Agree or Agree (%) Assessment Strategies Faculty (N = 29) Students (N = 332) A wide variety of clearly explained assignments are required on a regular basis 93 69 Student work is evaluated to determine if learning outcomes are being met 93 73 Continual, immediate, and detailed feedback is required regarding student perceptions of the course 83 56 A rubric is used to determine if learning outcomes are being met 66 58 Self-assessments are being used to determine if learning outcomes are being met 66 59 Threaded discussions are used appropriately to ensure understanding of assignments 59 70 A variety of assessment techniques are used (e.g., electronic portfolios) 48 43 Self-tests are reviewed to ensure student understanding of course content 38 21 Students obtain immediate feedback through required peer assessment 28 29 Assignments are made out of student chat room discussions 17 21 Self-tests are required to provide students with immediate and honest feedback on learning and achievement 17 49 A rubric is used to assess the quality of interaction (e.g., analyze depth of postings) 17 43 assessment because it allows instructors to become familiar with students’ work and to ensure student understanding, and those of Wilson (2004), who cautioned that frequency of assessments does not automatically lead to learning effectiveness. That is, assessments must be carefully and systematically planned to require students to demonstrate that learning has occurred by completing a specific piece of work at various stages in the course and be given meaningful feedback. Faculty and student survey respondents agreed that a variety of meaningful assessment activities are regularly completed in their online courses. Fifty-eight percent of student respondents and 66% of faculty respon- dents reported that a rubric is used to determine if assignments are 126 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES completed effectively. The use of rubrics in effective assessments is supported by Christopher, Thomas, and Tallent-Runnels (2004) and MacKinnon (2002), who argued that rubrics must be carefully prepared to assess learning and promote critical thinking. Table 4 also shows that 56% of student respondents and 48% of faculty respondents reported that a variety of assessment techniques are used, including electronic student portfolios, projects, and simulations. The use of several techniques to assess student learning in online courses is highly recommended (Christopher, Thomas, and Tallent-Runnels 2004; Robles and Braathen 2002). Only 21% of student respondents and 38% of faculty respondents agreed that self-tests are reviewed by instructors to ensure that students understand the content before formal tests are given. Furthermore, 49% of student respondents and 17% of faculty respondents agreed that self-tests provide immediate and honest feedback related to learning and achievement. However, the literature supports the use of these assessments. Robles and Braathen (2002) noted that the use of online, ungraded student self-tests has proven to be an effective assessment tool because these tests provide the students with immediate and honest feedback regarding their own learning and achievement. Although Table 4 further shows that only 29% of student respondents and 28% of faculty respondents agreed that immediate feedback was provided through required peer assessment, researchers such as Christopher, Thomas, and Tallent-Runnels (2004) argued that peer assessment is highly recom- mended as students receive immediate feedback from their classmates. Question 4: Effective Assessments Faculty teaching online courses were asked to respond to an open- ended question about the types of assessments that they found to be most effective. Twenty-one percent listed projects, rubrics (21%), portfolios (10%), and self-assessment (7%). They also listed peer evalu- ation (21%), threaded discussions, online chats, timed quizzes (21%), and portfolios (7%). Flexibility (24%), immediate feedback (21%), and reflective thinking (10%) were listed as advantages of online assessments. Students, responding to a similar open-ended question, listed self- assessments and practice tests (19%), threaded discussions (10%), weekly assignments with immediate feedback (7%), the use of rubrics (7%), and the use of portfolios/projects (7%) as effective assessments. Student respondents offered the following suggestions for improving assessment in online courses: provide meaningful and timely feedback (16%) and use of a variety of assessment techniques (7%). 127 GAYTAN AND McEWEN Question 5: The Internet: Effective Instructional Environment or Merely a Convenience? Student participants were asked to state the reasons for having enrolled in an online course. Table 5 shows that responses include distance from campus (37%), working full time (26%), irregular work schedule (14%), preference for online learning (8%), and the only way the course was delivered (4%). Ten percent indicated “Other,” which included family commitments and the convenience that online learning offers. Respon- dents were asked to rate their online experience, taking the convenience factor out of the picture, and rated the online experience as excellent (18%), good (17%), and very good (11%). Perhaps the remaining 54% tolerated the online experience because of its convenience. Conclusions The following conclusions are drawn from the findings of this study: 1. Online courses are being taught by more females than males and most are regular faculty members (tenured or tenure track), white, and at least fifty years of age. They are well-experienced faculty members, with nearly two-thirds having more than five years of teaching experience and having taught online for at least three years. 2. Considerably more females are enrolling in online courses than males, with slightly more white than others. There are more under- graduates than graduate students or special students (e.g., those completing teacher certification programs), and there are more education majors than others. Regular college students represent approximately one-third of the online students, and some are Table 5. Reasons for Enrolling in Online Courses Reasons Percentages (N = 332) Distance from campus 37 Works full time 26 Irregular work schedule/convenient 14 Other 10 Prefers online learning 8 Only way it was offered 4 128 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES enrolling in online courses though they have no home computer (approximately 17%). Most online students are taking online courses to complete a degree. 3. Strategies for maintaining online instructional quality, as perceived by both faculty and student respondents, include maintaining open communication with students, ensuring that online courses are as rigorous as their traditional counterparts, using a variety of instructional methods to appeal to students’ varied learning styles, requiring students to interact with the instructor and with each other to foster group cohesiveness, and using group work to help students build a strong learning community. 4. Effective online assessments should include a wide variety of clearly explained assignments on a regular basis. Feedback is also a critical component on online assessment. It must be meaningful, timely, and should be supported by a well-designed rubric when possible. The assessment value of e-mail messages, chat room conversations, and discussion board postings should not be ignored as they provide opportunities for the instructor to learn whether the students understand the instruction and are correctly interpreting the assessments. 5. Effective assessment techniques, as perceived by faculty and student respondents, include projects, portfolios, self-assessments, peer evaluations, weekly assignments with immediate feedback, timed tests and quizzes, and asynchronous type of communication using the discussion board. The use of rubrics to aid the assess- ments and to provide meaningful and quick feedback is valued by instructors and students alike. 6. Respondents mainly enrolled in online courses because of conve- nience factors such as distance from campus, the need to continue working full time while studying, and irregular work schedules. Though students choose online instruction primarily because of convenience, 46% think it is excellent, good, or very good and plan to continue to take online courses. Recommendations and Implications The following recommendations are made, based upon the findings and conclusions of this study: 1. Faculty teaching online courses and those planning to do so should carefully review the literature on learning style preferences and 129 GAYTAN AND McEWEN become comfortable with a variety of teaching strategies that are applicable to the courses they teach and to the e-learning environment. It will be helpful to regularly use the chat room and the discussion board features of most course management systems to help build interaction and group cohesiveness in the online environment. Group work should continue to be used, aided by electronic meeting rooms that support both synchronous and asynchronous communication. 2. A variety of online assessments should be used in each course. These might include reviewing students’ writing in chat rooms, e-mail messages, and on discussion boards. They should also include exams, quizzes, projects, portfolios, self-tests, peer assess- ments, and weekly review questions. Every effort should be made to ensure a high level of interaction between students and faculty and among students. 3. Regardless of which assessment techniques are used, it is most important to use a wide variety to provide meaningful and timely feedback. Time and effort should be directed to the development of effective rubrics that will support the assessment activities. Before assignments are posted, they should be carefully checked for clarity, ensuring that students have the details they need to properly interpret them. All major assignments should be accom- panied by the grading rubric. 4. As long as students continue to need to balance work, family, and school demands, they will continue to value online learning. Instructors are challenged to develop vibrant learning commu- nities in their online courses, to provide students with a variety of instructional and assessment strategies to meet their varied learning styles, and to make meaningful and timely feedback an important element of their courses. Online learning and assessment should be viewed as a system for educating students and evaluating student academic achievement. Becoming knowledgeable about online learning and assessment is crucial at a time when there is an increased demand for accountability, growth, and excellence in educational institutions. Online instruction and assessment must balance the requirements of technology, delivery, pedagogy, learning styles, and learning outcomes. Perhaps the discussion presented here will assist business educators and other faculty and admin- istrators in the selection of instructional and assessment techniques that properly address the needs of online learners. 130 EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES Future Research Future research studies should be designed to explore more innovative, efficient, and effective instructional and assessment techniques for the online environment. References Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2004. Our students’ best work: A framework for accountability worthy of our mission. Peer Review 7 (1): 25–28. Bartlett, J. E., II, K. A. Reynolds, and M. W. Alexander. 2000. A tool for online learning. Journal of Online Learning 11 (3–4): 22–24. Beer, M., F. Slack, and G. Armitt. 2005. Collaboration and teamwork: Immersion and presence in an online learning environment. Infor- mation Systems Frontiers 7 (1): 27–37. Bocchi, J., J. K. Eastman, and C. O. Swift. 2004. Retaining the online learner: Profile of students in an online MBA program and implications for teaching them. Journal of Education for Business 79 (4): 245–253. Boyle, S. L. T., K. Kolosh, J. L’Allier, and J. Lambrecht. 2003. Thompson NETg’s blended-learning model: The next generation of corporate and school-based learning. The Delta Pi Epsilon 45 (3): 145–161. Christopher, M. M., J. A. Thomas, and M. K. Tallent-Runnels. 2004. Raising the bar: Encouraging high level thinking in online discussion forums. Roeper Review 26 (3): 166–171. Corcoran, C. A., E. L. Dershimer, and M. S. Tichenor. 2004. A teacher’s guide to alternative assessment: Taking the first steps. The Clearing House 77 (5): 213–216. Cronbach, L. J. 1951. Coefficient alpha and internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 297–334. Farmer, L. S. J. 2005. Using technology to facilitate assessment of library education. Teacher Librarian 32 (3): 12–15. Gay, L. R., G. Mills, and P. Airasian, eds. 2006. Educational research. Competencies for analysis and applications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Gaytan, J. 2002. Meaningful alternative student assessment: Innovative approaches. Georgia Business Education Association Journal 20 (1): 19–22. Illinois Online Network. 2005. Instructional strategies for online courses. Illinois Online Network and the Board of Trustees of the University 131 GAYTAN AND McEWEN of Illinois. Available online at http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/ tutorials/pedagogy/instructionalstrategies.asp Liang, X., and K. Creasy. 2004. Classroom assessment in Web- based instructional environment: Instructors’ experience. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 9 (7). Available online at http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=9& n=7 MacKinnon, G. R. 2002. Practical advice for first time online instructors: A qualitative study. Journal of Instructional Delivery Systems 16 (1): 21–25. Marshall, M. 2003. Approaches of outstanding teachers. Available online at http://www.marvinmarshall.com/articles/promotinglearning/ outstandingteachers.htm National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. 2003. Assessing education candidate performance: A look at changing practices. Washington, DC: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. Nunnally, J. C. 1978. Psychometric theory. New York: McGraw-Hill. Online Learning Center. 2003. Instructional strategies: Elements of instructional design. University of Houston–Victoria. Available online at http://www.uhv.edu/webct/faculty/design/strategies.htm Robles, M., and S. Braathen. 2002. Online assessment techniques. The Delta Pi Epsilon Journal 44 (1): 39–49. Russell, J., L. Elton, D. Swinglehurst, and T. Greenhalgh. 2006. Using the online environment in assessment for learning: A case-study of a Web-based course in primary care. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 31 (4): 465–478. Stiggins, R., and J. Chappuis. 2005. Using student-involved classroom assessment to close achievement gaps. Theory Into Practice 44 (1): 11–18. Tallent-Runnels, M. K., J. A. Thomas, W. Y. Lan, S. Cooper, T. C. Ahern, S. M. Shaw, and X. Liu. 2006. Teaching courses online: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research 76 (1): 93–135. Wilson, H. W. (2004). Continuous assessment: Guaranteed learning? Distance Education Report 8 (12): 6. 132 
work_tehg3iat4vgbnbtgoexogacmt4	----	AJDE1904.vp Validating an Approach to Examining Cognitive Engagement Within Online Groups Peter K. Oriogun Department of Computing, Communications Technology and Mathematics London Metropolitan University Andrew Ravenscroft and John Cook Learning Technology Research Institute London Metropolitan University Tools for measuring cognitive engagement within online groups have been concerned only with measuring an individual participant’s cogni- tive engagement, without any concern for measuring cognitive en- gagement within groups. There remains a serious need for a scheme that measures cognitive engagement of groups and the validation of such a scheme against existing methods. The SQUAD (coding catego- ries that are being measured, a semistructured approach for scaffold- ing online groups’ engagement) approach to computer-mediated com- munication (CMC) discourse invites students within their respective groups to post messages based on five given categories: (a) suggestion, (b) question, (c) unclassified, (d) answer, and (e) delivery. In this arti- cle, the authors validated the SQUAD approach at the message level with an established framework called the practical inquiry model for assessing cognitive presence of CMC discourse. They adopted the alignments suggested by one of the developers of the Transcript Anal- ysis Tool at sentence level to assess students’ cognitive engagement within online groups in three case studies presented in this article. The authors argue that the cognitive presence attributed to the SQUAD ap- proach has been empirically validated with respect to cognitive en- gagement within groups online. 197 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 19(4), 197–214 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Correspondence should be sent to Peter K. Oriogun, London Metropolitan University, Department of Computing, Communications Technology and Mathematics, Learning Tech- nology Research Institute, 2-16 Eden Grove, London N7 8EA, England. E-mail: p.oriogun@londonmet.ac.uk The three case studies illustrate the authors’ approach to negotiating and reconciling problem-solving task requirements for software engi- neering online. The three groups of students made effective use of all the message categories for cognitive engagement within groups online. It has been suggested that the process of collaborative learning that occurs while learners interact to create a collective solution to a given task or prob- lem is a form of cognitive benefit (Johnson and Johnson 1996). In such situa- tions, learners may be encouraged to foster positive social interdependences, such as helping each other within the group to realize their potential through continuous and sustained feedback. Consequently, a collaborative, prob- lem-based learning process can help create an atmosphere where learners are able to reflect on their own progress made within the group and in the context of a collective dedicated to completing a given task. Such a group communi- cation medium can provide learners with the opportunity to exchange ideas related to one another and receive feedback from their peers. One way of engaging learners in online collaborative learning is to cre- ate an environment in which knowledge emerges and is shared. The onus is therefore on the tutor/instructor to (1) create an environment in which knowledge emerges and is shared through the collaborative work within a group of students and (2) facilitate sharing of information and knowledge among members of a learning team instead of controlling the delivery and pace of course content. The SQUAD (suggestion/question/unclassified/an- swer/delivery) approach (Oriogun 2003b, 2005) to online discourse adopts a problem-based learning approach (Barrows 1996; Bridges 1992; Oriogun, French, and Haynes 2002) and allows groups of learners to inter- act for the purpose of creating a collective solution to a given task or prob- lem and provides a way of measuring students’ online learning levels of en- gagement (Oriogun 2003b) by • creating the atmosphere that will motivate students to learn in a group setting online (where students are able to trigger a discussion within their respective groups); • promoting group interactions and participation over the problem to be solved by the group online (where students can explore various possi- bilities within the group by actively contributing to the group); • helping learners to build up a knowledge base of relevant facts about the problem to be solved online (where students can begin to integrate their ideas to influence others within their group); 198 COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT ONLINE • allowing the newly acquired knowledge to be shared by the group on- line with the aim of solving the given problem collaboratively and col- lectively (where students can resolve issues relating to the assigned work to be completed collectively); and • delivering various artifacts leading to a solution or a number of solu- tions to the problem to be solved online (where students can both inte- grate and resolve aspects of the problem to be solved collectively). Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s (2001) definition and use of trigger, exploration, integration, and resolution is in line with the SQUAD ap- proach usage of these same terms. This is why we have opted to validate the SQUAD with Garrison et al.’s (2001) framework. An examination of the existing literature to date has revealed that there are no tools for measuring the cognitive elements of groups of people working on a particular task or problem online, such as a group’s coursework for a module or course. There are tools available for investigat- ing cognitive elements of individuals working online (Fahy 2002; Garri- son, Anderson, and Archer 2001; Hara, Bonk, and Angeli 2000; Henri 1992; Oriogun 2003a; Oriogun and Cook 2003). In this article, we adopt the theoretical framework of two recently developed tools, commonly used for analyzing students’ cognitive elements online (Fahy 2002; Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000, 2001) at the individual level to validate at the group level the cognitive engagement of groups of students working within the SQUAD approach. We adopted Fahy’s (2002) suggested three different alignments of the Transcript Analysis Tool (TAT) categories with Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s (2001) model as a framework to realize the cognitive presence in the SQUAD approach (Oriogun 2003b, 2005). We used three case studies from three groups of master’s computing students who used the SQUAD environment (software tool supporting this new approach) to negotiate and reconcile software requirements online during the two semesters of the 2003–2004 academic year at London Metropolitan University. Each of the three case studies covered a period of twelve consecutive weeks. The first group of students posted a total of 725 messages, the sec- ond group posted 143 messages, and the third group posted 171 messages. The unit of transcript analysis for the SQUAD approach was at message level. By message level we mean a unit of online transcript analysis that is objectively identifiable; unlike other units of online transcript analysis, the message-level unit allows multiple coders to agree consistently on the total number of cases. It also produces a manageable set of cases. If the cognitive 199 ORIOGUN, RAVENSCROFT, COOK presence realized in this article for the SQUAD approach is accepted, using Fahy’s (2002) alignments within Garrison et al.’s (2001) framework to- gether with the case studies we present in support of our argument, we have provided a way of empirically validating Oriogun’s (2003b) SQUAD ap- proach with respect to cognitive engagement within online groups. Cognitive Presence in Fahy et al.’s (2000) Transcripts Analysis Tool A number of researchers have developed analytical tools for measuring online transcripts. Fahy et al. (2000) used the TAT based on Zhu’s (1996) ear- lier work, which operates at a sentence level of analysis for the comparison of the frequencies and proportions of five categories or sentence types in a par- ticular data set. Fahy et al.’s five coding categories are shown in Figure 1. When Fahy (2002) examined the cognitive presence model, he realized that the categories of the TAT might be capable of being aligned with the phases in Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s (2001) model, with the resulting alignments reflecting different assumptions about the linguistic and social behavior associated with the model’s phases. From three such alignments an analysis was produced, allowing a comparison of both the analytic processes involved and the resulting richness of the insights provided. In aligning the TAT with the phases of the cognitive presence model, interpretation was re- quired. Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001, 14) found that elements fit multiple categories; three different alignments of the TAT categories with the model were produced, based on different assumptions about what interactive behavior is apparent in the four phases of cognition (Fahy 2002). Transcript Analysis Tool alignments with the phases of the model are shown in Table 1; also, the equivalent mapping of the SQUAD is shown in Table 3. These align- ments are the basis of this article. Cognitive Indicators in Oriogun’s (2003b) Squad Approach to CMC Discourse The SQUAD approach (Oriogun 2003b) to computer-mediated commu- nication (CMC) discourse provides a means through which statistics com- piled from students’ online discourse can be used to generate objective esti- mations of their degree of learning engagement. The cognitive indicators of the SQUAD approach are based on Henri’s (1992) cognitive indicators. The cognitive descriptors adapted from Hara, Bonk, and Angeli (2000) are shown in Table 2. 200 COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT ONLINE Mapping the TAT Categories to the Squad Categories Our use of mapping in this article refers to the tools being equivalent for measurement purposes. The following section explains how we have mapped the SQUAD within Fahy’s (2002) TAT alignments to realize our SQUAD alignments to Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s (2001) framework. The TAT category 1A includes vertical questions, which assumes a “correct” answer exists and that the question can be answered if the appro- priate individual is asked or the right source contacted. The TAT category 201 ORIOGUN, RAVENSCROFT, COOK Figure 1. Fahy et al.’s (2000) Transcript Analysis Tool Coding Categories Reprinted by permission of the Alberta Journal of Educational Research, from Patrick J. Fahy, Gail Crawford, Mohamed Ally, Peter Cookson, Verna Keller, and Frank Prosser, “The Development and Testing of a Tool for Analysis of Computer Mediated Conferencing Transcripts,” Alberta Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2000, pp. 85–88. 1B comprises horizontal questions—there may not be one right answer; others are invited to help provide a plausible or alternative answer or to help shed light on the question (Fahy 2002). The SQUAD category Q is a form of words addressed to a person to elicit information or evoke a response. An example of a question within the SQUAD framework is when students seek clarification from the tutor or other students in order to make appropriate decisions relating to the group coursework (Oriogun 2003b). We can, therefore, comfortably infer that the horizontal and vertical questions from the TAT model equate to the definition offered for category Q within the SQUAD framework. The TAT category 2A includes non-referential statements, which con- tain little self-revelation and usually do not invite response or dialogue; the main intention is to impart facts or information. The speaker may take a matter-of-fact, a didactic, or even a pedantic stance, providing information or correction to an audience that he or she appears to assume is uninformed or in error, but curious and untested or otherwise open to information or correction. This type of statement may contain implicit values or beliefs, but usually these are inferred and are not as explicit as they are in TAT type 3 reflections (Fahy 2002). The SQUAD category U is normally not in the list of categories of messages stipulated by the instigator of the task at hand. This tends to happen at the start of the online postings. Students may be un- sure of what the message is supposed to convey. In most cases, it falls within one of the four classified categories (Oriogun 2003b). It is, there- fore, reasonable to infer that the U category within the SQUAD framework has a direct mapping with the 2A category within the TAT model. The TAT category 2B referential statements comprises direct answers to questions or comments that refer to specific preceding statements (Fahy 2002). The SQUAD category A is a reply, either spoken or written, as to a question, request, letter, or article. Students are expected to respond to this 202 COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT ONLINE Table 1. Alignments of Cognitive Presence (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000, 2001) Model With the Transcript Analysis Tool Categories (Fahy 2002) Alignment Triggers Exploration Integration Resolution 1 1A, 1B 2A, 4 2B, 5A, 5B 3 2 1A, 1B, 2B 2A 4, 5A, 5B 3 3 1A, 1B, 2B 2A, 4 3 5A, 5B From “Assessing Critical Thinking Processes in a Computer Conference,” by P. J. Fahy, 2002. Used by permission. 203 Table 2. The SQUAD Approach: Cognitive Indicators Coding Categories Descriptors (Oriogun 2003b) Message Category Description Example Cognitive Indicators S Suggestion The process whereby the mere presentation of an idea to a receptive individual leads to the acceptance of the idea. Students engage with other students within their coursework groups by offering advice, a viewpoint, or an alternative viewpoint to a current one. Elementary classification In-depth classification Inferencing Judgment Application of strategies Q Question A form of word address to a person to elicit information or evoke a response. Students may seek clarification from the tutor or other students to make appropriate decisions relating to the group coursework. Elementary classification In-depth classification U Unclassified Not in the list of categories of messages stipulated by the instigator of the task at hand. This tends to happen at the start of the online postings. Students may be unsure of what the message is supposed to convey. In most cases, it falls within one of the four classified categories. Elementary classification A Answer Reply, either spoken or written, as to a question, request, letter, or article. Students are expected to respond to this type of message with a range of possible solutions/ alternatives. Elementary classification In-depth classification Inferencing Judgment D Delivery The act of distribution of goods, mail, and so on. Students are expected to produce a piece of software at the end of the semester. They all have to participate in delivering aspects of the artifacts making up the software. Elementary classification In-depth classification Inferencing Judgment Application of strategies Reprinted by permission from “Towards Understanding Online Learning Levels of Engage- ment Using the SQUAD Approach to CMC Discourse,” by P. K. Oriogun, Australian Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2003, pp. 371–387. Available online at http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet19/oriogun.html type of message with a range of possible solutions/alternatives. Also, the SQUAD category S is the process whereby the mere presentation of an idea to a receptive individual leads to the acceptance of the idea, and students engage with other students within their coursework groups by offering ad- vice, a viewpoint, or an alternative viewpoint to a current one (Oriogun 2003b). It is reasonable to accept that the SQUAD categories A and S equate to the TAT category 2B. The TAT category 3, reflections, shows the speaker expressing thoughts, judgments, opinion, or information that are personal and are usually guarded or private. The speaker may also reveal personal values, beliefs, doubts, convictions, and ideas acknowledged as personal. The lis- tener/reader receives both information about some aspect of the world (in the form of opinions) and insights into the speaker. Listeners are assumed to be interested in and empathic toward these personal revelations and are expected to respond with understanding and acceptance. The speaker im- plicitly welcomes questions (even personal ones), as well as self-revela- tions in turn, and other supportive responses (Fahy 2002). The SQUAD cat- egory S described earlier is focused on what the group has to deliver for their group coursework and does not necessarily deal with significant per- sonal revelation with reference to the TAT definition. However, an individ- ual’s personal thoughts on the group’s coursework deliverables is part of what is dealt with here. The SQUAD S category also encourages what is described within the TAT model category 4, scaffolding/engaging. Students are expected to ini- tiate, continue, or acknowledge interpersonal interaction, and/or “warm” and personalize the discussion. They do this by agreeing with, thanking, or otherwise recognizing someone else and encouraging or recognizing the helpfulness, ideas and comments, capabilities, and experience of others. The SQUAD category D is the act of distribution of goods, mail, and other items. This is where students are expected to produce a piece of software at the end of the semester. They all have to participate in delivering aspects of the artifacts making up the software (Oriogun 2003b). At this point, stu- dents may show their appreciation to part of the group coursework deliver- able by responding with comments with real substantive meaning (phatic communion, elevator/weather talk, salutation/greetings, and closings/sig- natures), and devices such as obvious rhetorical questions and emoticons (Fahy 2002). The TAT category 5A and 5B deals with quotations/citations. This re- lates to quotations or fairly direct paraphrases of sources and citations or attributions of quotations or paraphrases. Within the SQUAD framework, 204 COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT ONLINE category S deals with quotations/citations in exactly the same way as in the TAT model. Table 3 shows our proposed alignments of cognitive presence (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000, 2001) in Oriogun’s (2003b) SQUAD approach by adopting the TAT model (Fahy 2002) cod- ing categories based on the TAT mapping articulated earlier. Please note that the SQUAD alignments with TAT are such that, for each alignment, it is possible to have more than one of the categories of SQUAD within the four phases of the practical inquiry model we are considering for this article. Table 3 is our proposed alignment of the cognitive presence (Gar- rison, Anderson, and Archer 2000, 2001) model with the SQUAD frame- work by adopting Fahy’s (2002) TAT model coding template. Method A second version of a tool supporting the SQUAD approach has now been developed: SQUAD v 2.0 (Oriogun and Ramsay 2005). In this article, we report on a pilot study that was conducted to investigate the application of the TAT alignment to the SQUAD approach with the practical inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2001) models. The purpose of this under- taking was to develop a framework capable of describing group-level cog- nitive engagement. The first study corpus used was the transcript of two groups of software engineering students in a master’s program in comput- ing in the first semester of 2004–2005. By the end of the study, in week 12, the first group had posted a total of 725 messages, and the second group had posted a total of 143 messages. The second study corpus consisted of five part-time evening master’s computing students. During the second semes- ter of 2004–2005, they posted a total of 171 messages during the first twelve weeks of the study. The three case studies over the year and their contributions to SQUAD message categories are shown in Table 4. A total of 1,039 messages were posted throughout the academic year. Table 5 205 ORIOGUN, RAVENSCROFT, COOK Table 3. Proposed Alignment of Cognitive Presence (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000, 2001) in Oriogun’s SQUAD Approach by Adopting the Transcript Analysis Tool Model (Fahy 2002) Coding Categories Alignment Triggers Exploration Integration Resolution 1 Q U, S A, S S, D 2 Q, A U S, D S, D 3 Q, A U, S S, D S Note: SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. shows the results of applying the TAT alignment to the SQUAD approach with the phases of the practical inquiry model for Case Study 1; Table 6 shows the results of the same for Case Study 2. Since the recommendation of his TAT alignments (Fahy 2002), Fahy (2005) has published detailed results in a study consisting of 462 postings, comprising 3,126 sentences containing approximately 54,000 words, gen- erated by a group of thirteen students and an instructor/moderator, engaged in a thirteen-week distance education graduate credit course delivered to- tally at a distance. We have seized the opportunity to compare Fahy’s (2005) findings with our TAT alignment of Oriogun’s (2003b) SQUAD ap- proach as described earlier (see Table 3) using the two methods for assess- ing critical thinking in CMC transcript (Fahy 2005). Table 7 shows our Case Study 1, with students from Group 1. These students posted a total of 725 messages over a period of twelve weeks using the SQUAD approach. Table 8 shows the results for our Case Study 2, Group 2, posting a total of 143 messages over the twelve weeks of the study. Table 9 shows the results for our Case Study 3, Group 3, posting a total of 171 messages over the first twelve weeks of the second semester in 2004–2005. 206 COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT ONLINE Table 4. Total Number of SQUAD Postings by Master’s Computing Students (2004–2005 Academic Semesters) Case Study S Q U A D Total 1 132 105 243 157 88 725 2 21 14 66 10 32 143 3 55 18 27 26 45 171 Note: SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. Table 5. Case Study 1 Results Applying Transcript Analysis Tool Alignment to the SQUAD Approach Using the Practical Inquiry Model Phases of Practical Inquiry Model SQUAD No. 1 SQUAD No. 2 SQUAD No. 3 Triggers 14.5 36.1 36.1 Exploration 51.7 33.5 51.7 Integration 39.9 30.3 30.3 Resolution 30.3 30.3 18.2 Note: All table values are percentages. SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. Discussion When we compare phases of the practical inquiry model with Fahy’s (2005) practical inquiry/TAT results and our three case studies’ SQUAD TAT alignments (see Tables 7, 8, and 9), we observe more favorable results. Because the SQUAD is a semistructured approach to CMC discourse at the message level, it helps to scaffold students’ online learning. There is no need to perform an interrater reliability measure with the SQUAD ap- proach, as the students had to use one of the SQUAD message categories. In our first case study, with a total of 725 message postings, the SQUAD results applying TAT alignments SQUAD No. 2 shows that the group’s over- all average contribution to each phase was 32.6% (the average of percentages in Table 7, column 6). This is indeed an ideal result, on the basis that this par- ticular group of students made effective use of all the message categories. In our second case study, with a total of 143 message postings, the SQUAD results applying the TAT alignments SQUAD No. 2 shows that the group’s overall average contribution to each phase was 34.3% (the average of percentages in Table 8, column 6). In our third case study, with a total of 171 message postings, the SQUAD results applying TAT alignments SQUAD No. 1 shows that the group’s overall average contribution to each phase was 41.1% (the average of per- centages in Table 9, column 5). Overall, Case Study 3 implies that this group of students contributed, on average, 40.6% postings to each of the phases of the practical inquiry model (the average of percentages in Table 9, columns 5–7). This is indeed a much better result than the results from the first semester of 2004–2005. One of the reasons the groups of students in our three studies (a total of thirteen in the three groups) made effective use of the SQUAD categories at the message level is that, out of the total marks awarded to the group 207 ORIOGUN, RAVENSCROFT, COOK Table 6. Case Study 2 Results Applying Transcript Analysis Tool Alignment to SQUAD Approach Using the Practical Inquiry Model Phases of Practical Inquiry Model SQUAD No. 1 SQUAD No. 2 SQUAD No. 3 Triggers 9.8 16.8 16.8 Exploration 60.8 46.2 60.8 Integration 21.7 37.1 37.1 Resolution 37.1 37.1 14.7 Note: All table values are percentages. SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. 208 Table 7. Comparison of Phases of the Practical Inquiry Model With the Present Fahy (2005) Practical Inquiry/TAT Results and Case Study 1 TAT Alignments Phases of the Practical Inquiry Model Practical Inquiry Model Results, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) Initial Pilot Practical Inquiry Model Results, Fahy (2005) Present Study TAT Results, Fahy (2005) SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 1 SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 2 SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 3 Triggers 12.5 9.4 6.4 14.5 36.1 36.1 Exploration 62.5 74.2 76.4 51.7 33.5 51.7 Integration 18.8 14.6 14.7 39.9 30.3 30.3 Resolution 6.3 1.8 2.5 30.3 30.3 18.2 Note: All table values are percentages. TAT = Transcript Analysis Tool; SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. 209 Table 8. Comparison of Phases of the Practical Inquiry Model With the Present Fahy (2005) Practical Inquiry/TAT Results and Case Study 2 TAT Alignments Phases of the Practical Inquiry Model Practical Inquiry Model Results, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) Initial Pilot Practical Inquiry Model Results, Fahy (2005) Present Study TAT Results, Fahy (2005) SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 1 SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 2 SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 3 Triggers 12.5 9.4 6.4 9.8 16.8 16.8 Exploration 62.5 74.2 76.4 60.8 46.2 60.8 Integration 18.8 14.6 14.7 21.7 37.1 37.1 Resolution 6.3 1.8 2.5 37.1 37.1 14.7 Note: All table values are percentages. TAT = Transcript Analysis Tool; SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. 210 Table 9. Comparison of Phases of the Practical Inquiry Model With the Present Fahy (2005) Practical Inquiry/TAT Results and Case Study 3 TAT Alignments Phases of the Practical Inquiry Model Practical Inquiry Model Results, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) Initial Pilot Practical Inquiry Model Results, Fahy (2005) Present Study TAT Results, Fahy (2005) SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 1 SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 2 SQUAD Results Applying TAT Alignments SQUAD No. 3 Triggers 12.5 9.4 6.4 10.5 25.7 25.7 Exploration 62.5 74.2 76.4 47.9 15.8 47.9 Integration 18.8 14.6 14.7 47.4 58.5 58.5 Resolution 6.3 1.8 2.5 58.5 58.5 32.2 Note: All table values are percentages. TAT = Transcript Analysis Tool; SQUAD = Suggestion, Question, Unclassified, Answer, Delivery. coursework for collaborating and negotiating software requirements dur- ing the semester, 7.5% of the marks were for using the SQUAD approach (extrinsic motivation). In fact, at the end of the semester the students re- ported that if no marks had been attached to adopting the SQUAD ap- proach, they would most probably have used other forms of communica- tion, including publicly available online collaborative systems. Results from a quantitative analysis of the 1,039 total message postings showed that the three groups contributed an average of 32.6% (Case Study 1), 34.3% (Case Study 2) and 41.1% (Case Study 3) of their postings to each phase of the practical inquiry model. On the basis of these and related findings, we conclude that the three groups of students made effective use of all the message categories for cognitive engagement within online groups. Conclusion The results from the initial pilot of the practical inquiry model of Gar- rison, Anderson, and Archer’s (2001) study, the practical inquiry results from Fahy’s (2005) study, and SQUAD results applying TAT alignments all showed that exploration was clearly the most common type of posting (see Tables 7, 8, and 9). The TAT result and the initial practical inquiry model results showed that the next most common type of posting was in- tegration. This is where the SQUAD approach proved to have shown much better results, in that if one looks at the average posting within each of the phases of the practical inquiry model one sees that, on aver- age, each group contributed approximately the same number of postings to each of the categories. The main reason for this could be that both the critical inquiry model and the SQUAD TAT alignments use the message as a unit of measurement. Furthermore, the SQUAD approach does not require an interrater reliability measure as it is a semistructured method for scaffolding students’ learning. Although we do not have similar concern in this study regarding the category of “other” within the practical inquiry model, this category warrants further investigation. It is worth noting that, in Fahy’s (2002) suggested TAT alignments, multiple message categories were not per- mitted (e.g., in the case of TAT No. 1, the sum total of all the categories is 100% under triggers, exploration, integration, and resolution; see Ta- ble 1). However, because of the cognitive indicators governing the SQUAD framework, multiple message categories are permitted (e.g., in the case of SQUAD No. 1, message category S appeared under explora- 211 ORIOGUN, RAVENSCROFT, COOK tion, integration, and resolution; see Table 3). Perhaps Fahy’s (2002) alignments are too restrictive at sentence level. Further testing of the practical inquiry model is required to ascertain its robustness and valid- ity. There is a real need to develop Garrison et al.’s (2001) framework, especially empirically testing it in relation to actual transcripts of online communications. We believe that through the theorizing and empirical work described herein, we have substantially supported our argument that the cognitive presence realized in this article for the SQUAD approach, using Fahy’s (2002) three alignment within Garrison et al.’s (2001) framework to- gether with our three case studies using master’s computing students at London Metropolitan University, is a way of empirically validating the cognitive engagement of the SQUAD approach to CMC discourse within groups. References Barrows, H. 1996. Problem-based learning in medicine and beyond: A brief overview. In Bringing problem-based learning to higher educa- tion: Theory and practice, ed. L. Wilkerson and W. Gijselaers, 3–11. 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work_thykcuwgv5hk7hxoyboft5gani	----	Enhancing Quality in Online Learning: Scaffolding Planning and Design Through Proactive Evaluation Distance Education, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2002 Enhancing Quality in Online Learning: Scaffolding Planning and Design Through Proactive Evaluation Rod Sims Learning Services, Deakin University, Australia Graeme Dobbs & Tim Hand Resource Design & Development Services, OTEN DET, Australia ABSTRACT A major issue confronting educators is the extent to which they wish to conform to so-called paradigm shifts in teaching and learning. In the contemporary world of tertiary education these shifts embrace both pedagogy (from instructivist to constructivist) and technology (from classroom to online). As teachers and learners are faced with the potential of these new learning environments, the extent to which learning outcomes are achieved remains a high priority and subject to a wide range of evaluation strategies. Conventionally, evaluation has been positioned at the end of the instructional development cycle, to assess � rst whether or not the creative effort achieved the original product goals and second whether or not the desired learning outcomes were realized. In the context of online teaching and learning environments, however, the level of understanding teachers, learners and developers have of the medium can impact the ultimate effectiveness of the product. This paper articulates an additional dimension to post-development evaluation processes in proposing proactive evaluation, a framework that identi� es critical online learning factors and in� uences that will better inform the planning, design and development of learning resources. This notion of proactive evaluation advocates resource development being undertaken where all planning activities are assessed against the evaluation criteria that would normally be applied during formative assessment. By performing these evaluation checks proactively, online learning resources will, in principle, work � rst time as all relevant factors and issues will have been considered and resolved. More importantly, for those participants who are new to online environments, proactive evaluation will perform a scaffolding and professional development role by enhancing online teaching or learning competencies. Introduction While many practitioners are familiar with the issues and processes associated with the production of online teaching and learning environments, institutions are frequently demanding their im- plementation without necessarily having staff competent in all aspects of online pedagogy. We also still have much to learn about online learning environments, as research studies have demonstrated them to have both positive and negative impacts in terms of effectiveness and achievement of outcomes (Franklin, Peat, Lewis & Sims, 2001). It is therefore critical that ISSN 0158-791 9 print; 1475-0198 online/02/020135-1 4 Ó 2002 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/0158791 0220000 09169 136 R. Sims et al. online development projects implement quality control processes to ensure that learners are able to participate in effective collaborative discourse. These quality control measures result from adherence to proven materials or instructional development processes, accreditation of technical standards and the evaluation and assessment of the learning environment (see Gore, Bond & Steven, 2000). Evaluation strategies within the educational domain, particularly for distance and online education, are well established and it is important to contextualize their role to accurately position the proactive evaluation framework. In education, the most common forms of quality assessment through evaluation are the formative and summative techniques, which are typically conducted towards the end of the development and delivery process, respectively (Morrison, Ross & Kemp, 2001; Smith & Ragan, 1999). However, other forms of evaluation also contribute to the overall quality process. Eastmond (1994) differentiates the evaluation of programs (for example the success of a pre-service teacher program), projects (assessing the success of activities) and materials (the merit or worth of content items). Using a different schema, Simonson, Smaldino, Abright and Zvacek (2000) refer to � ve components of the evaluation process—accountability (Did the project planners achieve their goals?), effectiveness (Were outcomes achieved?), impact (Did the program make a difference?), organizational context (How did the organization affect the project?) and unanticipated consequences (What happened that was not expected?). Both of these approaches extend the work of Woodley and Kirkwood (1986) who identi� ed evaluation elements relating to project activities, ef� ciency, learning outcomes, programs and policy. While these variations on evaluation tend to conform to the process where data is collected post facto to provide evaluation outcomes, other models include evaluation in the planning and design stage. For example, Albrecht and Bardsley (1994, p. 82) discuss this phase as focusing on “outcomes including student learning, revenue streams, and impact on educational re- sources … the evaluation should drive the planning group back through the process to achieve those outcomes most valued.” Evaluation therefore can take on various forms and be activated during different stages of the overall development process. Where, then, does Proactive Evaluation � t? Owen and Rogers (1999) use the concept of proactive evaluation to refer to activities such as needs assessment, research reviews and identi� cation of exemplary practice, which appear analogous to the instructional problems phase of the instructional design process (Morrison et al., 2001). Within this paper, however, proactive evaluation (which was coined independently from that of Owen & Rogers, 1999) describes a different aspect of the instructional development process. Eastmond (1994, p. 101) cites Scriven (1980) as differenti- ating evaluation as follows: “when the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative.” Continuing with this analogy, proactive evaluation is about participants in the design process developing a shared understanding of the ingredients and the recipes to ensure that the “soup” is appropriate for online consumption. Proactive Evaluation Therefore, as an extension to established forms of evaluation, and to provide speci� c support (scaffolding) for the planning and creation of online materials, this paper argues for proactive evaluation to be integrated into this phase of the production process. Through the proactive Enhancing Quality in Online Learning 137 evaluation framework, the production team will focus on the criteria by which the environ- ments and resources might normally be evaluated, thereby ensuring that all factors associated with a successful evaluation are addressed during the planning phase. This process will also pre-empt the possibility of critical, negative formative and summative evaluation. Using proactive evaluation, therefore, environments created by inexperienced people will be more likely to achieve their educational and learning goals as this online pedagogy is integral to all facets of the design, development and implementation process as recommended by Sims (1997). Additionally, the underlying principles assume that the environment for which the develop- ment is being undertaken is not a traditional instructional setting, but an online collaborative place in which the familiar classroom relationships between teacher, learner and content are extended to enable learner-centred activities and participatory partnerships. By supporting proactive evaluation, planning and design activities will not only ensure that all aspects of creating online learning activities and environments are addressed, but that subsequent formative and summative evaluation will be more directed and meaningful. Proactive evalu- ation also focuses the decision-making process on the complex interaction between disci- plinary content, learning outcomes and online, computer-based learning environments. Better understanding and addressing these relationships will consistently produce more effective teaching and learning resources, and the following classi� cation of factors and associated in� uences describes the framework for proactive evaluation in detail. Strategic Intent One of the � rst questions we always ask our clients is “Why are you attempting to place these resources or activities into an online context?”. If they are unable to provide an explicit answer, then we argue that the strategic intent or rationale for the product has not been de� ned adequately. Without a clear understanding of the purpose of the product and the stakeholders who have an investment and/or interest in its outcomes, the chances of success are reduced. Within the tertiary education environment speci� cally, these stakeholders include the adminis- tration, the faculty, the development group and most importantly the students. Without full commitment to the concept from all stakeholders, even with the best intentions, effectiveness in terms of learning outcomes being achieved may not be realized. The critical issue therefore is the extent to which the online component(s) being considered will add value to the teaching and learning process. For example, if an institution decides to “go online” without allocating suf� cient funds to recreate materials so that they will be consistent with learner–computer communication, then the decision could prove extremely costly with few, if any, positive educational outcomes. Indeed, anecdotal feedback is suggest- ing a rebellion against online materials; for example, where they are perceived by faculties as an economic solution to government cutbacks and workload increases. In other cases, where “online” has been introduced to reduce class contact time, student anger has resulted with resentment for being short changed, not to mention issues of quality. Once the strategic intent has been de� ned, members of the design and development team will have a foundation on which to base the various elements of an online learning environment, the � rst of which is content. 138 R. Sims et al. TABLE 1(a). Options affecting online content Static , . Dynamic Predetermined Teacher Learner Captured dialogue and presented contributed contributed (interactivity) Constructed Content de� ned Content de� ned Content de� ned Through Content de� ned and prescribed by and prescribed, and prescribed, collaborative through research the teacher, and but additions or but learner endeavours, by participants does not change modi� cations additions and content material and subsequent during the made by teacher contributions is added to the interpretation and delivery cycle if and when enhance the overall resource construction required resource base base for the program Content Many online projects have focused on the conversion of existing paper-based resources into their digital equivalent, with a proliferation of unit outlines and study guides in either HTML or PDF formats being made available for student access. We take the position that this is not online learning, and if portrayed as such is a misrepresentation of the capabilities and bene� ts of the technology. While such materials may be accessible through the Internet and therefore “online,” until there is an appropriate mix of motivation and engagement it does not equate to “online learning” (Malone & Lepper, 1987; Sims, 2000). We believe that online learning must therefore be conceptualized as an environment that integrates collaboration, communication and engaging content with speci� c group and independent learning activities and tasks. If content materials and learning activities are to be placed online, then signi� cant levels of thought must be placed on the very nature of the medium and the underlying implications for teaching and learning. As represented by the content options identi� ed in Table 1(a), the online environment caters for a range of content formats: from predetermined static elements to the dynamic state where content is sourced, repurposed, constructed and enabled by and for all participants in the learning process. Between these two extremes are the more common exemplars for delivery of course content in terms of resource material being contributed to by both the teacher and the learner. For the teacher new to online learning, maximum exploitation of the online environment means having to reassess the overall approach to the content, how it should be presented or accessed and the relationship between teacher and learner in that process. In addition, the options for unit or course content should be considered in terms of the interaction with the major design issues and their impact on the learning community. As elaborated in Table 1(b), these issues have a signi� cant impact on the presentation of the content and subject matter in the broader learning process. Implicit in this framework is the Enhancing Quality in Online Learning 139 TABLE 1(b). Online content—major components Component Issues Structure If adopting strategies that enable the dynamic construction of organization and knowledge, traditional forms of information presentation may have information to be modi� ed Matches goals and The extent to which program goals and objectives are prede� ned outcomes may be affected by strategies that enable the learner to use knowledge construction techniques Contextual and/or With a dispersed cohort of learners, content must be considered in situated terms of the context in which the learner is situated rather than that of the teacher’s particular experience Information Recognition of the learners’ ability to contribute to the knowledge accuracy, integrity base presents questions as to accuracy and integrity—from whose and totality perspective are these characteristics of the content to be measured and assessed? Accessibility A function of the technology (adaptable for handicapped users, uses appropriate plugins and bandwidth) but also includes accessibility in terms of appropriate language use (terminology, right level and even right language) Extensibility of Is the discipline base so rigid that no options for new content are content considered possible, or can new alternatives be considered for collaboratively constructing and extending the knowledge base? Quality of To what extent can traditional norms for quality of presentation expression be maintained if a more dynamic approach to content is (language, considered appropriate, and what impact might this have on grammar, image roles in the development process? resolution) assumption that content can no longer be seen as being “owned” by the teacher or discipline, but rather as an information base that can be perceived and worked with in many different ways. An illustration of the interplay between content creation and design parameters can be seen when an online environment enables learner creation of content. While the information itself may be linked directly to the discipline, the environment enabling it to be created dynamically may con� ict with accepted organizational or design standards. In developing online content the critical element of the process is to recognize this possibility and to be able to justify why speci� c decisions have been taken. Having established the ways in which content must be understood within the online context, the second factor in the proactive evaluation framework relates to the context or design into which that content will be deployed. 140 R. Sims et al. TABLE 2(a). Options affecting online learning design I ¬ Pedagogy ® C Learning outcome Resources Individual teachers and These options link learning The ways in which media learners have different strategy to outcome and elements are used and the philosophies on the most affect each component extent to which they are appropriate ways that of learning design: accessible will in� uence knowledge is gained and problem solving; declarative the individual components learning acquired. As knowledge; concept learning; of learning design online environments principle learning; procedural can be perceived as learning; cognitive strategies; supporting the attitude & motivation and constructivist paradigm, psychomotor (Smith & Ragan, adopting rigid instructivist 1999) strategies may degrade the overall effectiveness of the encounters experienced by the learners Learning Design The term learning design is used to emphasize the learner-centred environments that online resources can provide. Taking this stance is particularly important because it forces designers to conceptualize the development process from the learner’s perspective rather than that of the content or the teacher. However, this does not preclude developers from adopting an instructivist (I) or presentational strategy compared to a constructivist (C) or generative approach, but does require careful thinking about the learner and the options provided for interacting with the content and their learning partners. As shown in Table 2(a), the design of resources will be in� uenced by the pedagogy, outcome and resources considered appropriate for the task. Within the context of the design process, the team should be able to articulate the underlying pedagogy of the product, the different types of learning being addressed and the ways that media resources will be used to enhance the learning environment. When considered in terms of the speci� c issues that are critical to the overall design task shown in Table 2(b), the complexity of addressing educational and technological elements of the process is further emphasized. Embarking on the design and development of resources for online environments requires new layers of thinking to be added to the well-established principles of course development. Understanding how the content and learning design will impact on the ultimate success of the environments being developed is only part of the overall framework. For teachers and learners encountering the online medium for the � rst time, these concepts must also be linked with the ways that the participants interact with the actual environment, which is the focus of the following two factors. Enhancing Quality in Online Learning 141 TABLE 2(b). Online learning design—major components Component Issues Prior experience Online learning is a new environment, and learners must have the requisite skills to work effectively within this paradigm Approaches to Does the provision of a range of media elements provide learners learning with the resources necessary to meet their approach to learning, and what impact will this set of options have on the overall development effort? Learning The extent to which the environment is designed as a digital environment page or a virtual world will impact on the overall development effort (see Interface Design) Pathways/sequencing The strategies for online learning can establish prede� ned pathways or enable students to explore and discover different facets of the content. Managing these options to minimize information overload becomes critical Outcomes In providing an online environment, are the stakeholders providing for a range of outcomes or are they consistent with prede� ned objectives? Assessment Closely linked to outcomes, are new forms of assessment being considered for the online environment, such as collaborative understanding and concept formation? Level of learning What impact might governmental standards have on the design—and do those standards in� uence or constrain the preferred modes of delivery within the online context? Interface Design The interface between learner and computer is one of the most neglected aspects of online learning, and when coupled with our limited understanding of the complexities of the interactive process (see Sims, 2000), extensive development has to be undertaken to achieve successful and ongoing communication between the learner and the environment. As detailed in Table 3(a), the options available for online productions can range from the non-contextual through to the theatrical, where the learner can be portrayed as an active player in the overall learning process rather than a passive observer (Laurel, 1991; Sims, 2000). Our position is that designers must spend more effort ensuring that learners are integrated into a narrative sequence of the learning process, rather than a familiar solution which sees content being presented in a glamorous and dynamic format but without necessarily achieving engagement with the content through the interface. Overall, the conceptualization of the interface must consider the strategies employed to position the learner within the illusion created by the virtual learning environment; the way in 142 R. Sims et al. TABLE 3(a). In� uences affecting interface design Non-contextual , . Contextual , . Narrative , . Theatrical Interaction Navigation Information design design Input/output design Aesthetics What procedures Have the various How clear are Does moving How does the have been interactivity the options for between “look and feel” employed to options been entering and resources affect contribute to or ensure maximum catered for and accessing continuity of detract from the communication of communicated to content and delivery or communication information? the learner? responses? context? experience? which representations, metaphors, icons are employed to support communication; how design decisions affect connectedness and interference within the learner–computer interface and the extent to which animations and sound effects impact on cognitive load and degradation of learning (Sweller, 1988). The major issues for Interface Design are identi� ed in Table 3(b) and are linked explicitly to the elements of Learning Design, one area that is often neglected by developers new to the creation of online resources. To maximize the online learning experience it is not suf� cient to apply rigorous educational design to content materials, as the means by which that content (resource, activity, conference, reading) is presented to the learner will impact on its overall effectiveness. The factor closely associated with interface design relates to the different ways in which TABLE 3(b). Online interface design—major components Component Issues User comfort— Has appropriate usability testing determined the extent to which connectedness users are able to work with the resources and make the necessary connections between content elements? User control In what ways are users able to control the learning process and link User centred the activities to their own learning requirements? Supports content Has the interface been conceptualized to be consistent with the structure content structure while maintaining acceptable standards? Supports learning Has the interface been designed to be consistent with the particular design approach paradigm employed for the course? Alignment of What strategies have been employed to ensure the mental model of mental models the design group has been effectively communicated to the learner? Customization vs. In what ways can the learner structure the environment to meet their individualization own individual learner needs or preferences? Enhancing Quality in Online Learning 143 TABLE 4. Elements of interactivity Interactivity Motor Cognitive Collaborative Learner–learner The exchange of ideas, resources and information between learners enrolled in a course of study Learner–teacher The exchange of ideas, resources and information between learners and teachers participating in a course of study Learner–content The means by which learners access and make meaning out of Web-enabled content Learner–interface The means by which learners access learning environments and the extent to which they are successful in its navigation Teacher–content The way teachers create and interact with content—see Table 1(a) Teacher–teacher The support provided for community of teachers Content–content To what extent are “intelligent agents” being employed to search and update content materials teachers and learners will communicate with each other and the course resources, a process involving interaction and interactivity. Interactivity Interactivity is about successful communication and, in the context of online learning environments, one of the most crucial success factors. As a component of the human–computer relationship or encounter (Anderson & Garrison, 1998; Hedberg & Sims, 2002; Sims, 2000, 2001), interactivity can include passive presentation, navigation, undirected exploration, directed involvement and speci� c manipulation. The extent to which these constructs of interactivity impact on the continuity of communication between learner and interface, content, other learners or other teachers is critical to the overall effectiveness of the experience and is inextricably linked to the factors and in� uences associated with content, learner design and interface design. Interactivity is not simply a function of computer-based transactions, but a fundamental success factor for teaching and learning, especially when implemented in an online context. In most cases, regardless of any virtual community that exists, the learner will be working independently and therefore the effectiveness of those communications (interactions) will ultimately determine the effectiveness and ef� ciency of the learning environment. As shown in Table 4, elements of interactivity can encompass both human–computer activity and human–human communication. Through the creative process, developers must consider those aspects of both the design and interface that might enhance or impede the success of the different, but often simultaneous, interactions. The ability of the learner to “inhabit” the interactive world presented to them is naturally critical to its success as a learning environment. The way in which the motor (navigational and control interactions), cognitive (engaging and thinking aspects of the interactions) and collaborative (computer-mediated 144 R. Sims et al. TABLE 5. Elements of assessment Assessment Teacher-directed Peer-directed Student-directed Assignments To what extent do assessment items conform to “old standards” and what workload impact does this have on the teacher? Examinations Are examinations required, such as for professional accreditation, or are other performance indicators suf� cient? Project work What options are available for assessment through projects, and which of the participants is responsible for de� ning completion? Work placement Can performance in the workplace ful� l the learning objectives? Authentication Is there concern about the integrity of assessment submissions, or are there other formats that might preclude this operation? interactions with other course participants) elements of an interaction coalesce with the task being undertaken will contribute to the successful engagement of the learner with the activity. To cover all aspects of the teaching and learning environment it is also necessary to focus on the means by which the learning will be assessed, and the extent to which assessment strategies will be created to cater speci� cally for the dynamics of online communities (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). Assessment Much discussion takes place in educational institutions about how best to deploy multiple- choice or short-answer questions in online environments, and what form of authentication should be installed to verify the electronic submission of assignments or completion of remote examinations. However, these strategies seem to contradict those contemporary approaches to learning that advocate active participation by learner and teacher and enable self-assessment and re� ection (Morgan & O’Reilly, 1999). The challenge for planners and designers, therefore, is to determine how they can use online techniques for assessment strategies and at the same time not replicate those strategies designed for the face-to-face environment. As shown in Table 5, assessment can be teacher, peer or student directed and within that context the way in which assessment items are presented becomes critical. The “peer-directed” option provides means for groups to determine and assess the learning outputs whereas the “student-directed” option provides for individuals to de� ne and pursue speci� c learning outcomes. In addition, assessment may also focus on new environments in which the performance data are collected, such as real-world workplace environments. As was identi� ed in the introduction, online teaching and learning environments have particular characteristics that affect both the teacher and the learner. While the discussion to date has focused on the elements of proactive evaluation that impact on support or scaffolding for the teacher, it is also critical that similar consideration is given to the support required for learners who are working collaboratively and online for the � rst time. While many learners new to universities will have excellent computer skills, it is their adaptation to the demands Enhancing Quality in Online Learning 145 TABLE 6. Elements of student support Student support On-campus Mixed-mode Off-campus Auxiliary information How effective are the communities? Communities of Are they encouraged through collaborative activity or learners discouraged due to independent � exibility? Institutional support What expectations do you have for your students? Features Personalization How do you plan to nurture students into the collaborative world of online learning? Security What support personnel and resources have been identi� ed to ensure that students will feel integral to the learning environment? of online learning—independence, collaboration, peer work—that will have signi� cant impact on its success. Student Support Providing appropriate support for the learner cohort is even more critical in the online environment because in many instances they will be working independently in their preferred environment. Even though this environment may include collaborative work, the learner’s only medium of communication is the computer, and therefore support becomes critical to ensure their mental model is consistent with that of the other stakeholders in the process. In addition to the typical help systems, announcements and guides, recent research (Sims, 2000) has suggested that more explicit support is required to bring the learner into the online environ- ment, especially by eliminating assumptions that learners will know what to do and why they are doing it. The environments and issues that impact support are articulated in Table 6. The remaining factors of the proactive evaluation framework focus on organizational elements and the formative and summative evaluation strategies themselves. Utility of Content Within Australia, new digital copyright legislation and the proliferation of digital resources have provided incentives to focus on the international standards for online learning environ- ments. A crucial component of any development exercise, therefore, is to examine the extent to which content can be used in multiple environments (within and outside the product being developed), the means stakeholders might have to customize the materials and the interoper- ability between other learning objects in the wider curriculum. Complicating these factors is the increase in legislative and compliancy conditions; at the time of writing, ensuring online resources do not breach copyright and are accessible for learners with disabilities are part of the quality control process. These aspects are shown in Table 7, with the assumption that compliance achieved by ensuring a robust technological infrastructure underpins the learning environment. 146 R. Sims et al. TABLE 7. Elements of content utility Compliance Copyright Accessibility Infrastructure Multiple use What bene� ts would accrue from a Digital Object Management Customizability System (DOMS)? Interoperability Are the learning objects compliant with international standards? TABLE 8. Factors affecting outcomes Outcomes Program maintenance Quality audit Teacher performance Learning Very simply, did we get it right? Satisfaction What needs to be done to make it better? Results Knowing the parameters that will be used to validate both quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the learning experience will be critical to its ongoing success Outcomes vs. To what extent will the learners continue in the program and objectives develop a sense of lifelong learning? One of the complexities of online development and evaluation is that issues and factors such as accessibility impact on a wide range of environmental and operational elements of online learning. For example, while legislative or policy requirements might insist on online facilities being accessible to people with disabilities, the guidelines will also impact on the look and feel of the interface and ultimately in the communication between learner and people and objects within the learning environment. Outcomes The � nal factor of the proactive evaluation framework is an assessment of the extent to which outcomes have been successfully achieved. For example, measures of learning associated with both intra-curricula and extra-curricula activities; the level of learner satisfaction with the overall experience; the completion rates and the extent to which pass rates and grades are consistent with alternative delivery options. Overall, the design effort needs to include items to enable a comparative analysis of student outcomes in relation to the overall development parameters, as shown in Table 8. Conclusion The capacity of computer-based technology to display combinations of media elements and respond meaningfully to user actions and manipulations has been established for many years. However, the power and capability of the computer to support the learning process is often lost in a maze of marketing publicity and technical gadgetry. Unfortunately, without the requisite Enhancing Quality in Online Learning 147 skills, it has become all too easy to create Web-based materials without understanding the underlying principles of online, interactive, engaging learning. Rather than creating effective learning environments, many development initiatives have proved to be ineffective, with learning activities a confused labyrinth of information, links, collaboration, discussions and navigation. Using the concept of proactive evaluation, a strategy to enable scaffolding and support for teachers and learners new to online environments, the factors and in� uences integral to this framework are considered critical to effective online learning. By focusing on the planning and design phases of the development cycle, proactive evaluation addresses the critical issues associated with the creation of learning resources and environments for delivery in an online context to ensure they will have a greater chance of achieving educational outcomes, with both teachers and learners gaining signi� cant value from their online experiences. Given the extent of this framework, and the importance of understanding the many factors and layers of in� uence that affect the development of effective online resources, perhaps the critical factor is whether online developers and practitioners require a credential to practise. Indeed, the costs of implementation and the risks of failure may well make this an imperative! Acknowledgements Special thanks to Terry Anderson, Peter George, Mike Orey, Daniel Surrey, Karen Handley and Ann Speed of the ITFORUM online community whose feedback and comments during August and September 2001 contributed to the development of this paper. REFERENCES Albrecht, R., & Bardsley, G. (1994). Strategic planning and academic planning for distance education. In B. Willis (Ed.), Distance education: Strategies and tools. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Anderson, T., & Garrison, D. R. (1998). New roles for learners at a distance. In C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learning in higher education: Institutional responses for quality outcomes. Madison, WI: Atwood. Eastmond, N. (1994). Assessing needs, developing instruction, and evaluating results in distance education. In B. Willis (Ed.), Distance education: Strategies and tools. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Franklin, S., Peat, M., Lewis, A., & Sims, R. (2001). Technology at the cutting edge: A large scale evaluation of the effectiveness of educational resources. In C. Montgomerie & J. Viteli (Eds.), Proceedings of Ed-Media 2001. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications. Tampere, Finland, June 25–30, 2001; Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Gore, C., Bond, C., & Steven, V. (2000). Organisational self-assessment: Measuring educa- tional quality in two paradigms. Quality Assurance in Education, 8(2), 76–84. Hedberg, J., & Sims, R. (2002). Speculations on design team interactions. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 12(2/3), 189–204. Laurel, B. (1991). Computers as theatre. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 148 R. Sims et al. Malone, T. W., & Lepper, M. R. (1987). Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning. In R. E. Snow & M. J. Farr (Eds.), Aptitude, learning, and instruction, III: Conative and affective process analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Morgan, C., & O’Reilly, M. (1999). Assessing open and distance learners. London: Kogan Page. Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2001). Designing effective instruction. New York: John Wiley. Owen, J. M., & Rogers, P. J. (1999). Program evaluation: Forms and approache s (2nd ed.). St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace: Effective strategies for the online classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Scriven, M. (1980). Evaluation thesaurus (2nd ed.). Inverness, CA: Edgepress. Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Abright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2000). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Sims, R. (1997). Interactive learning as an “emerging” technology: A reassessment of interactive and instructional design strategies. Australian Journal of Educational Technol- ogy, 13(1), 68–84. Sims, R. (2000). Learners as actors: Strategies for computer-enhanced learning encounters. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. Sims, R. (2001). The online learning alchemist: Preventing gold turning into lead. In C. Montgomerie & J. Viteli (Eds.), Proceedings of Ed-Media 2001. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications. Tampere, Finland, 25–30 June, 2001; Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Smith, P. L., & Ragan, T. J. (1999). Instructional design. New York: John Wiley. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12, 257–285. Woodley, A., & Kirkwood, A. (1986). Evaluation in distance learning. Paper 10. Resources in Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 304 122). Correspondence. Rod Sims, Director, Teaching & Learning Support Unit, Learning Services, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia. E-mail: rsims@deakin.edu.au Rod Sims is Director of the Teaching & Learning Support Unit with the responsibility to provide educational design, professional development and learning management support to the university community. His research is focused on the learner-computer interface, instructional design and online pedagogy. Graeme Dobbs is Assistant Director OTEN-DE and Manager of Vocational Resources Development, including the Multimedia Unit. He is nationally recognised as an expert in instructional methodologies utilising leading-edge technologies. Tim Hand is Principal Education Of� cer at the Open Training Education Network (OTEN) in Sydney, the largest provider of distance education in Australia. His current research focus is in sustainable production initiatives for the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. 
work_tjiighwe6ba7llupekqbhamoge	----	IRMJ01mcmanus 46 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT Web-based learning enables more students to have access to the distance-learning environment, and provides students and teachers with unprecedented flexibility and convenience. However, the early experience of using this new learning means in China exposes a few problems. Among others, teachers accustomed to traditional teaching methods often find it difficult to put their courses online, and some students, especially the adult students, find themselves overloaded with too much information. In this paper, we present an open framework to solve these two problems. This framework allows students to interact with an automated question answering system to get their answers. It enables teachers to analyze students’ learning patterns and organize the web-based contents efficiently. The framework is intelligent due to the data mining and case-based reasoning features, and user-friendly because of its personalized services to both teachers and students. Data Mining and Case-Based Reasoning for Distance Learning Ruimin Shen, Peng Han and Fan Yang, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China Qiang Yang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China Joshua Zhexue Huang, University of Hong Kong, China INTRODUCTION As distance learning becomes one of the hotspots in network research and ap- plications, many web-based education sys- tems have been established. Two good ex- amples are Virtual-U (Groeneboer, Stockley & Calvert, 1997) and Web-CT (http:// www.webct.com). To cover the entire spectrum of the learning process, these sys- tems have implemented a number of fun- damental components such as synchronous and asynchronous teaching systems, course-content delivery tools, polling and quiz modules, virtual workspaces for shar- ing resources, whiteboards, grade report- ing systems, and assignment submission components. These research and commer- cial e-learning systems enable large groups of dispersed individuals to interact, collabo- rate and study on the Web. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ������� INFORMATION SCIENCE PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the journal, International Journal of Distance Education Technology, edited by Qing Li and Weijia Jia. Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Publishing. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 47 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. As distance learning becomes popu- lar, new demands for more advanced fea- tures increase. For example, to satisfy the requirements of multimedia-based courses, teachers need to spend a lot of time learn- ing course-creation tools. This proves dif- ficult for the senior teachers who are ac- customed to the traditional ways of teach- ing. Another issue is that both the number of students using the web-based learning environment and the flow of e-learning ma- terials grow very fast. This creates a prob- lem of information overload for both stu- dents and teachers. Demands for person- alized services increase. We note that the existing web-based systems often do not provide sufficient support on such aspects as giving personalized services to each in- dividual student, and helping them find their desired courses for study and answers to their questions. This problem has a great impact on the quality of network-based education and has contributed largely to the students’ drop rate. In this paper, we present an intelli- gent distance-learning environment, which is developed and used at the Network Edu- cation College of Shanghai Jiao Tong Uni- versity. The motivation of our work is to build a new distance learning system that enables students to conduct online studies easily according to their own educational backgrounds, study habits and paces. We are particularly interested in providing so- lutions to the information overload problem and personalized service. In short, our ef- forts are dedicated to make teachers feel that “everything is easy” and make students feel that “everything is available” and “ev- eryone is different.” Our system is being used by thousands of adult students regu- larly in Shanghai, China. In the following, we present the framework with an empha- sis on the issues of providing answers to students’ questions, and making personal- ized recommendations to students. We dis- cuss data mining and case-based reason- ing techniques to solve these problems. To support this framework in which smart and personalized distance learning is realized, we employ the tools of data min- ing and case-based reasoning. Data min- ing allows us to study the user patterns and behaviors that are buried in massive data that we track, and case-based reasoning allows us to configure our question-an- swering system so that it allows the user to pose questions to a virtual teacher interac- tively. In this paper, we will explain both the functionalities and the algorithms be- hind these features. OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The system is composed of a real- time classroom, an EOD (Education on Demand) course centre, a CBIR (Content Based Indexing and Retrieval) search in- terface, a learning assistance center and a data analysis center. During a class ses- sion, all the data the lecturer and students need, including video, audio, handwriting materials and screen operations, are trans- mitted simultaneously to each student’s desktop. In the meantime, all interactions are recorded and public materials are pub- lished on the Web. After the class session, students who were unable to take the class can view the same content on the Web as that shown at the class. The CBIR search interface enables the students to find their desired materials conveniently and quickly. The learning assistance center consists of an assignment subsystem, an examination subsystem and an answer-machine sub- system that helps students to complete as- signments and exams on the Web, and an- swers their questions automatically. All the 48 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. didactical and user access data are col- lected in log files and analyzed by the data analysis center. The system can provide personalized service to the students according to the analysis results. The details of these com- ponents are discussed in the following sec- tions. The “Everything Is Easy” Teaching Environment Although multimedia tools have been built to help teachers create online courseware, some teachers still prefer to use blackboards. Especially, teachers teach- ing mathematics and chemistry feel it diffi- Input the Index keyword Teacher’s Video PPT Tutorial Matching Page Figure 1: System Overview Figure 2. Framework of the Data Analysis Centre Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 49 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. cult to write complex symbols and formu- las on computer screens. To make “every- thing easy” for these teachers, we have developed an intelligent board transfer sys- tem. The teachers can write anything on a computerized whiteboard and the content is transferred simultaneously to the stu- dents’ desktops and integrated with the teachers’ video and audio teaching materi- als. The students can write notes on the teachers’ handwriting window. The com- bined information is stored on the network so the students can review it anytime later. We called such content personalized notes. The teachers can also load their pre-pre- pared PowerPoint and Word documents into the transfer system, and then both the teachers and students can navigate these documents synchronously. Using this sub- system, the teacher can focus on the teach- ing content instead of formats. All the useful data from a class ses- sion are stored and published on the Web. The students missing the class session can teach themselves anytime after the class. We also convert these contents to CDs for the students who are unable to view the active online lessons due to limited band- widths. With such an environment the teach- ers and students can always find a time to communicate that suits their work and pref- erence. This conforms to our philosophy of “everything is easy.” The “Everything Is Available” Assistance Tool A distance-learning environment of- ten contains too many materials for stu- dents to choose from. It is important to pro- vide a tool for students to find the right ma- terials they need. A lot of work has been done in the past on this aspect. However, many efforts have been placed on stan- dardizing the courseware with a unified data specification such as XML so that they can be indexed on the Web. We believe that it is even more important to design an inter- face for a student to decide whether the knowledge he is searching for is inside the courseware and locate it. For example, if a student wants to review “The First Law of Thermodynamics,” he can input the phrase through a textbox or microphone, and then the computer can locate the relevant ma- terials in the courseware automatically through an answer machine system and a speech recognition system. In our system, we use a Content- Based Information Retrieval technology to implement this function. As we described above, the courseware includes such in- formation as the teacher’s video, audio and tutorials. We consider the audio and tuto- rial information to be the most important materials and index them. The students can see both the teacher’s video and the di- dactical materials such as the PowerPoint slides, as shown in Figure 1. They can also hear the teacher’s voice. In addition, the system can support the courseware on- demand with the index keyword input. Because the number of students is large, usually 10 times or more than a con- ventional teaching class, a lot of teaching tasks have to be supported by the com- puter. Let’s take Q&A (Question and An- swer) System as an example. If there are 200 students online and each student asks only one question, then it will take a teacher several hours to answer all these questions. From our experience, many questions--al- though expressed differently--have the same or similar meanings. The solution to this problem is to share the answers among the students and let a computer recognize similar questions and answer them auto- matically. If the computer cannot find an answer, it transfers the question to a 50 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. teacher. After the teacher answers the question, the answer is added to the Q&A database and shared among students. Therefore, as the Q&A database accumu- lates questions and answers, the hit rate grows over time. There are already some existing question-answering systems in use. In com- parison, our system emphasizes efficiency rather than comprehension of the language. We have observed that only a limited num- ber of questions are asked in each course and the questions are usually very simple. Thus, we adopt an improved keywords matching algorithm to find the answer. Af- ter a period of accumulation, the hit rate of our Q&A system has risen to 90% and the corresponding time to answer each ques- tion is reduced to two seconds. We first discuss the structure of our answer machine system in detail. The ques- tions and answers are obtained through a standard Web interface. The students us- ing the system will leave behind many ques- tions and potential answers. Over time, these questions and answers will accumu- late in a log file. The log file can then be used for training an indexing structure for the question-to-answer association. This process continues whenever the system is in use, making the answer machine system a closed-loop system. We will adopt the lifetime learning paradigm of Zang and Yang (2001) for acquiring indexical knowledge about cases in a case-based reasoning paradigm. In this paradigm, the answers are cases to be stored in a case base. The questions provide keywords that trigger the cases and rank them according to how well they can provide an answer for the ques- tions. An important issue then is how to provide ranking for the keyword-to-answer association. We call this the index-learn- ing problem. The structure of a case base can be conceptualized as a two-layer structure, where the feature-values form one layer and the cases another. The feature-value layer is connected to the case layer through a set of weights to be maintained. We now extend the original two-layer structure of a case base into a three-layer structure, tak- ing the two-layer architecture as a special case. In the case layer, we extract the an- swers from each case, and put them onto a third layer. This makes it possible for dif- ferent questions to share a solution, and for a question to have access to alternative answers. An important motivation for this separation of a structure of a case is to reduce the redundancy in the case base. Given N questions and M solutions, a case base of size MN * is now reduced to one with size MN + . This approach eases the scale-up question and helps make the case base maintenance problem easier, since when the need arises, each question and answer need be revised only once. In or- der to make this change possible, we intro- duce a second set of weights, which will be attached to the connections between cases and their possible solutions. This sec- ond set of weights represents how impor- tant an answer is to a particular question if this answer is a potential candidate. The weights correspond to a mapping function between the input questions and the final answers. Different questions may in fact correspond to the same answer. When many students ask questions, over time this mapping can be learned by a rel- evance feedback algorithm. We adopt the relevance-feedback learning algorithm pro- posed by Zhang and Yang (2001) for our case-based reasoning system, where the weights are incrementally updated based on whether a particular case provides a right answer or not for an input question. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 51 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. In order to validate the system, we have to gather more data from the students. The data should not only reflect what ques- tions the students asked, as in the search engine query logs, but also how they rank the returned results. Given these question- answer log files, we can apply the above learning algorithm and keep the question to answer mapping always current (Zhang & Yang, 2001; Yang & Wu, 2001). The “Everyone Is Different” Personalized Service In a traditional education system, the course content is static and the teacher’s assignments given to different students are the same. In reality, students have differ- ent backgrounds and the knowledge struc- ture is dynamic. Given such diversity, how do we analyze students’ learning behav- iors, characteristics and knowledge struc- tures? Furthermore, how do we send the feedback of learning states to teachers? In addition, how do we visualize the analysis results to teachers and students intelligibly? In order to answer these questions, we pro- pose a subsystem, the Data Analysis Cen- tre, which includes an analysis tool to sup- port the student study behavior analysis. Figure 2 gives the framework of the sub- system. In this subsystem, the resource data- base is composed of two kinds of data: the log files with specification of W3C and the attribute tables in the sub-function database. The data-preprocessing module will deal with the original data to clean them up. The first task is to transfer the log files into da- tabase files with DTS (Data Transforma- tion Services) tools. The second task is to create the corresponding tables of User_ID and IP. The transformation also solves the problem of the one-to-many relation be- tween students’ User_ID and IP attributes. The third task is to calculate the click-time and browse-span of one URL, which is very important to mine the data structure of stu- dents. The last task is to create new tables and views for further analyses. The preprocessing creates clean data. Since we organize data sources according to knowledge points and build relation tables of sources and knowledge points, we can assess the knowledge points from two as- pects: the general information, to calculate the Interest Measure and the Mastery Measure of each chapter-point and knowl- edge-point based on the statistical data; and the personalized information, to assign the Interest Measure and the Mastery Mea- sure to each student. We use three techniques to discover knowledge and rules. The first technique Figure 3: Visualization of the Analysis Results Knowledge Point 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Interest Measur 1 0.5 Knowledge-group/chapter Knowledge-group 52 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. is to use a classification algorithm to clas- sify students into different classes based on their learning actions. Based on the clas- sification, the teacher can organize differ- ent course contents and assign homework in different difficulty levels to each class. The second is to find association rules of different knowledge-points, the support and confidence values. The third is to organize and map the knowledge points using a con- cept map algorithm. Using a visualization module, we can visualize all the analysis results in different forms. Figure 3 shows the “interestingness” measure of knowledge points, based on the visit frequency of a certain chapter in a course, or the number of questions posted on the answer machine. It also shows the students’ mastery measure of a given sub- ject, determined by the students’ feedback whether they find the material satisfactory or not. The teacher can provide more sci- entific explanations online about a particu- lar knowledge point with a high interest- ingness measure. He can also choose the low mastery measure knowledge point to teach in detail and supply more reference materials to the students. Figure 3 on the previous page shows the multidimensional association of knowl- edge points. The ellipses represent knowl- edge point groups, such as chapters. The circle represents a knowledge point. We can see not only the relationship between the knowledge points in the groups but also the relationship between the knowledge points in different groups. Such informa- tion can direct the teacher to re-organize the knowledge points more effectively. Furthermore, we can also represent a knowledge-point map which can show the relationship between the knowledge points and provide hints for the students as to what the prerequisite knowledge points are before the current knowledge point. In our tests, the Data Analysis Cen- ter can find some interesting rules and cre- ate useful graphs of the knowledge point structure. These results enable the teacher to adjust the didactical progress and en- able students to learn more personally. Once we obtain the knowledge points, we now consider how to utilize the Web log data accumulated by the Web servers to derive interesting and useful association rules on the interesting knowledge points. Figure 4: Learning and Submitting Questions Answer Center Raise Question Submit Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 53 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Given a Web log, the first step is to clean the raw data. We filter out documents that are not requested directly by users. These are image requests in the log that are re- trieved automatically after accessing re- quests to a document containing links to these files. Their existence will not help us to do the comparison among all the differ- ent methods. We consider Web log data as a sequence of distinct Web pages, where subsequences, such as user sessions, can be observed by unusually long gaps be- tween consecutive requests. For example, assume that the Web log consists of the following user visit sequence: (A (by user 1), B (by user 2), C (by user 2), D (by user 3), E (by user 1)) (we use “(…)” to denote a sequence of Web accesses in this pa- per). This sequence can be divided into user sessions according to IP address: Ses- sion 1 (by user 1): (A, E); Session 2 (by user 2): (B, C); Session 3 (by user 3): (D), where each user session corresponds to a user IP address. In deciding on the bound- ary of the sessions, we studied the time interval distribution of successive accesses by all users and used a constant large gap in time interval as indicators of a new ses- sion. To capture the sequential and time- limited nature of prediction, we define two windows. The first one is called anteced- ent window, which holds all visited pages within a given number of user requests and up to a current instant in time. A second window, called the consequent window, holds all future visited pages within a num- ber of user requests from the current time instance. In subsequent discussions, we will refer to the antecedent window as W1, and the consequent window as W2. Intu- itively, a certain pattern of Web pages al- ready occurring in an antecedent window could be used to determine which docu- ments are going to occur in the consequent window. The moving windows define a table in which data mining can occur. Each row of the table corresponds to the URLs cap- tured by each pair of moving windows. The number of columns in the table corresponds to the sizes of the moving windows. This table will be referred to as the Log Table, which represents all sessions in the Web log. Table 1 shows an example of such a table corresponding to the sequence (A, B, C, A, C, D, G), where the size of W1 is three and the size of W2 is two. In this table, under W1, A1, A2 and A3 denote the locations of the last three objects re- quested in the antecedent window, and P1 and P2 are the two objects in the conse- quent window. We now discuss how to extract se- quential association rules of the form LHS →RHS from the session table. Here LHS refers to the left-hand-side of a rule, whereas RHS the right-hand-side of a rule. The association rules have been a main subject of study in data mining (Agrawal & Srikant, 1994; Han & Fu, 1995; Skrikant & Agrawal, 1995, 1996; Chee, Han & Wang, 2001; Yang, Zhang & Li, 2001). Our different methods below will extract rules based on different criteria for selecting the LHS. In this work, we restrict the RHS in the following way. Let {U1, U2, …Un} be the candidate URL for the RHS that can be predicted based on the same LHS. Table 1: A Portion of the Log Table Extracted by a Moving Window Pair of Size [2, 2] W1 W2 A1 A2 A3 P1 P2 A B C A C B C A C D C A C D G 54 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. courses. For example, our rules can in- form the teachers “Students who find Chapter 3 useful also find Chapter 5 use- ful.” Knowledge like this will allow the teachers to organize the two chapters to- gether on the Web structure. It will also allow teachers to recommend to students new chapters to read based on their cur- rent reading. Similarly, the same associa- tions can be used to help organize the ma- terial better or form better student study groups. For example, a rule such as “Stu- dents who attend Wednesday classes of- ten have difficulty with Calculus I” enables the teacher to improve the Calculus I ma- terial better online, or organize the students in that class to work together with students from other classes. We also plan to use different user information and log data to perform collaborative filtering analysis and provide recommendations (Breeze, Heckerman & Kadie, 1998) using Pearson Correlation. The above-discussed framework as- sumes that the knowledge points are given beforehand. However, these knowledge points can be discovered from the Web logs as well. Pitkow and Pirolli (1999) provide a longest subsequence mining method for extracting user profiles. Su et al. (2002) provide an interesting method for cluster- ing based on the Web logs alone. In our study, we plan to combine both the content information and the user behavior informa- tion from the Web logs to derive the clus- ters. The method that we propose to use is called clustering. Due to space limitation, we will not go into detail on this subject. A DISTANCE-LEARNING CASE STUDY When a student connects to our NEC (Network Education College) homepage We build a rule LHS→Uk where the pair {LHS, Uk} occurs most frequently in the rows of the table among all Uis in the set {U1, U2, …Un}. Ties are broken arbitrarily. This is the rule with the highest support among all LHS→Ui rules. The first rule representation we con- sider is called the subset rules. These rules are the same as the traditional association rules which simply ignore the order and adjacency between accesses. Thus, when the association rule mining methods, such as the Aprioi method (Han & Fu, 1995; Skrikant & Agrawal, 1995, 1996), are ap- plied to the log table, we obtain the subset rules. The second rule representation is called the subsequence rules, which takes into account the order information in the sessions. A subsequence within the ante- cedent window is formed by a series of URLs that appear in the same sequential order as they were accessed in the Web log data set. However, they do not have to occur right next to each other, nor are they required to end with the antecedent win- dow. When this type of rule is extracted from the log tables, the left hand side of the rule will include the order information. For each rule of the form LHS→RHS, we define the support and confidence as follows: (1) (2) In the equations above, the function count(Table) returns the number of rows in the log table, and (3) From these rules, we can obtain in- teresting association relations between )( ),( sup Tablecount RHSLHScount = � )sup( ),sup( LHS RHSLHS conf = � )( )( )sup( Tablecount LHScount LHS = � Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 55 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. (http://www.nec.sjtu.edu.cn), he can select which chapter or section to study. Our sys- tem provides multimedia study materials for students, including video, audio, images and text documents. The learning resources are well organized for study convenience. Dur- ing a student’s learning session, he may have a question to ask. Our system provides a functional button in every study page to help the student link to the Answer Ma- chine at any time. When the student clicks the “Answer Center” button, he can see the Ask Question page. In this window, he can input the question in natural language and submit it as shown in Figure 4. After receiving this initial query, the system shows a list of similar questions to the student. The student can choose the most similar one to see the answer. If all listed questions are not relevant, the stu- dent can submit the question to a teacher (see Figure 5). Beyond these functions, the Answer Center also provides other services, such as the Hot Spot of Lesson, the Hot Spot of Chapter, and Search Answer and so on. For example, the Hot Spot of Chap- ter can provide the hotspots discussions of every chapter. The hotspots discussion can help students find out what questions other students have asked and what the correct answers are. The user can see the distribution of questions of a chapter or section in the se- lected time-span. The results can be shown in graphs, pie charts, histograms and so on. The user can choose different forms he Figure 5: Answering the Questions in Answer Centre Figure 6: Framework of the Data Analysis Centre 56 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. likes and look into details by clicking each part of the diagram (see Figure 6). In addition, the relation of knowledge points can be shown in 2D or 3D graphs. According to the precedence and subse- quence of a knowledge point, the system can recommend the imperative knowledge to learn or to prepare. CASE-BASED REASONING FOR PERSONALIZED INTERACTION In order to interact with the students such that the students will feel like they are talking to a virtual teacher, we employ the technology of case-based reasoning in order to reuse the previous questions and answers. Case-based reasoning (Yang & Wu, 2001; Kolodner, 1993; Leake, 1996) is a technique to reuse past problem solv- ing experiences to solve future problems. The basic idea is based on analogy, whereby similar problems are found and their solu- tions are retrieved and adapted for solving the new problem. The effectiveness of a CBR system critically depends on the speed and quality of the case base retrieval pro- cess. If the retrieved cases are not accu- rate or the retrieval performance is too low, then a CBR system cannot function as ex- pected. If too many seemingly similar so- lutions are retrieved, as in the case of some Web browsers where thousands of items are returned, a CBR system cannot pro- vide its users with much assistance either. In using a CBR system, we must first accumulate a set of cases. The cases in our domain are the questions and their cor- responding answers that students and teachers have used in the past. These ques- tions and answers give what we call ques- tion-answer pairs. Each question can be further divided into a number of important keywords using methods in information re- trieval. The keywords correspond to fea- tures or attributes in a machine learning system. These features are linked to their answers through a weighted link, where the weights encompass much of the domain knowledge in teaching the course. These weights can be learned or trained using the previously obtained questions and answers. Given the input feature-value pairs, the first layer features are considered set with their values. For example, a keyword may be used by a student in describing a problem. In this case, that keyword will get a value of one. If a keyword does not appear in a question, it obtains a value of zero. A similarity function will then be used to calculate based on the following formula. The similarity function we use is the TF- IDF formula used in information retrieval. The documents in this domain correspond to the questions that the system has an- swers for from previous problem-solving sessions. The TF-IDF scores are then calculated by comparing the similarity be- tween the input question and all stored ques- tions. The top-n most similar questions are chosen, and their answers are provided as potential answers for the student. If the system cannot find a similar question with answers, then it always gives the student the choice of contacting the teacher directly. Then, the system will sim- ply route the question to the most qualified teacher in its knowledge base. The rout- ing module is another interesting case of using data mining, where the capabilities of teachers are modeled and updated as more questions are answered for the students. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK In this paper, we have presented an Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 57 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. open, adaptive framework to organize the course material. The heart of the intelli- gent system lies in a smart front-end sys- tem we call Answer Machine, and an in- telligent back-end system using Web log association analysis and clustering analy- sis. In the future, we plan to offer more tests on the system’s performance using the data we accumulate through real teach- ing sessions. Such validation will allow us to select the best intelligent teaching meth- ods for an open virtual teaching environ- ment. REFERENCES Agrawal, R. and Srikant, R. (1994). Fast algorithms for mining association rules. In Proceedings of VLDB’94, Santiago, Chile, 487-499. Breeze, J., Heckerman, D. and Kadie, C. (1998). : Empirical analysis of predictive algorithms for collaborative fil- tering. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Conference on Uncertainty in AI, Madi- son, WI. Chee, S., Han, J. and Wang, K. (2001). RecTree: An Efficient Collabora- tive Filtering Method. Proceedings of the DaWaK 2001, 141-151. Ganti, V., Gehrke, J. and Ramakrishnan, R. (1999). Mining very large databases. Computer, 32(8), 38-45. Groeneboer, C., Stockley, D. and Calvert, T. (1997). Virtual-U: A collabo- rative model for online learning environ- ments. Proceedings of the Second In- ternational Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Han, J. and Fu, Y. (1995). Discov- ery of multiple-level association rules from large databases. Proceedings of VLDB’95, Zürich, Switzerland, 420-431. Li, I.T., Yang, Q. and Wang, K. (2001). Classification Pruning for Web-re- quest Prediction. Poster Proceedings of the 10th World Wide Web Conference (WWW10), Hong Kong, China. Kolodner, J..(1993). Case-Based Reasoning. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc. Leake, D.B. (1996).. Case-based Reasoning - Experiences, Lessons and Future Directions. Boston, MA: AAAI Press/The MIT Press. Pitkow, J. and Pirolli, P. (1999). Min- ing Longest Repeating Subsequences to Predict WWW Surfing. Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Confer- ence. Srikant, R. and Agrawal, R. (1995). Mining generalized association rules. Pro- ceedings of VLDB’95, Zürich, Switzer- land , 407-419. Srikant, R. and Agrawal, R. (1996). Mining quantitative association rules in large relational tables. In: Proceedings of SIGMOD’96, Montreal, Canada, 1-12. Su, Z., Yang, Q., Zhang, H.J., Xu, X., Hu, Y. and Ma, S. (2002). Correla- tion-based Web-Document Clustering for Web Interface Design. International Journal of Knowledge and Information Systems., 4, 141-167. WebCT: Available online at: http:// www.webct.com. Yang, Q., Zhang, H. and Li, I.T. (2001). Mining Web Logs for Prediction Models in WWW Caching and Prefetching. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM Inter- national Conference on Knowledge Dis- covery and Data Mining (KDD’01), San Francisco, 473-478. Yang, Q. and Wu, J. (2001). En- hancing the Effectiveness of Interactive Case-Based Reasoning with Clustering and Decision Forests. Applied Intelligence Journal, 14(1), 49-64. Zhang, Z. and Yang, Q. (2001). Fea- 58 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 46-58, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ture Weight Maintenance in Case Bases Using Introspective Learning. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 16, 95- 116. Ruimin Shen: received the BS and MS degree in Computer Science from Qing Hua University, Beijing, China, in 1991.The Professor and PhD supervisor of Depart- ment of Computer Science and Engineering£¬Shanghai Jiaotong University, in 1998. His research interests include Network Information Process, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Multimedia Network Cooperation, Content Based Index, E-Learning and Wireless Network Education Technology. Peng Han received the BS from Institute of Communication Engineering, Nanjing, China, in 1998, the MS degree in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, 2001. He is now a PhD student in Computer Science and Technology of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include Content Based Index and Retrieval, Information Re- trieval, and Data Management. Fan Yang: received the BS from Institute of Communication Engineering, Nanjing, China, in 1998, the MS degree in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, 2001. She is now a PhD student in Computer Science and Technology of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China. Her research interests include Data Mining, Web Mining, Case Based Reasoning, and Collaborative Filtering. Qiang Yang is an associate professor at Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China. His specialty is AI planning, case based reasoning and data mining. He obtained his PHD from University of Maryland in 1989, and had been a faculty member at University of Waterloo and Simon Fraser University in Canada since 1989. He is an IEEE and AAAI Member. Joshua Zhexue Huang is the Assistant Director of the E-Business Technology In- stitute of the University of Hong Kong. His research interests are data mining, text classification, data warehousing, business intelligence and CRM. Before joining ETI in early 2000, he worked three years at MIP Australia as a senior consultant to help Australia companies to implement business intelligence solutions. Before MIP he was a research scientist at the Mathematics and Information Sciences Division of The Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CISRO), Australia. He received his PhD degree from The Royal Institute of Tech- nology in Sweden. 
work_tm4uizjtnnapdc5kd4h3drzf3i	----	Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(4): 1129-1139, 2019 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2019.070425 A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education Berrin Özkanal Faculty of Open Education, Anadolu University, Turkey Copyright©2019 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate whether open and distance education institutions, which are known as mega universities, utilize information and communication technologies in education and reflect the brand promises online, and to determine which brand values (functional and emotional) they use in communication. This study on online brand communication in open and distance education institutions is a descriptive study to determine the current situation. The research data were collected from the qualitative measurement tools by the content analysis method. The scope of the research consists of the websites open and distance education institutions which are called mega universities, with over 100,000 students. The web site of thirteen universities, which were selected by means of meaningful sampling among these universities, were examined with content analysis method within the scope of the research and the collected data were then evaluated by fuzzy logic and clustering analysis methods. As a result, the universities that are examined reflect the online brand promise through different websites with different scores on the variables that make up the functional and emotional values and there are differences in reflecting the brand promises among the universities, and emotional values are more important than functional values. Keywords Brand Promise, Functional Values, Emotional Values and Open and Distance Education 1. Introduction The rapid spread of information because of the development of information and communication and increasing international competition as a consequence of globalization has entailed the reshaping of the required profile of people nowadays and caused to be used different methods in education. These new teaching methods include different teaching approaches such as lifelong learning, distance education, e- learning and take part in the center of learning strategies of European Union and UNESCO [1]. Open and distance education came up for different needs to increase the higher education facilities, to give the opportunity of education to adults, to enhance professional development, to perform innovations and to ensure the economical use of resources for political, economic and educational reasons firstly [2]. As for today, the structure of open and distance education has undergone a paradigm shift depending upon the reasons such as; the development of information and communication technologies flexibility, technological infrastructure, program variety, innovative teaching approaches [3]. With the said developments, the conditions of competition experienced in the field of education emphasize the necessity of strategically good management of the higher education institutions, which provide both formal and distance education institutions, in order to provide quality service at national and international scale, and the necessity of certain standards of university education, especially that distance education has a strategic importance [4]. In this intense competition environment, universities can make a difference with the various services, approaches and strategies they have developed especially for their target groups and they are able to be one step ahead of their competitors. Branding, which is one of the approaches that can make a difference for institutions, plays an important and necessary role in the differentiations of universities today [5, 6]. With the developments in information and communication technologies, the concept of branding has changed and the concept of online branding has come up and has made a significant contribution to the branding of higher education institutions [7, 8]. Web sites are seen as an integral part of brand communication, both visually and in content, for universities that use different tools and methods from Web sites to social media to create brand value [9] and it is emphasized that it is important to evaluate the specific characteristics of university websites [10]. In the area of distance education, branding is as important or even more important as formal education institutions. This is due to the fact that distance education is 1130 A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education based on information and communication technologies nowadays and students are in different places and times. In this sense, branding, as well as providing competitive advantage to distance education institutions, is an important pillar of corporate communication. Therefore, online branding provides both competitive advantage for open and distance education institutions and maintains its importance as an important approach in attracting target groups to the organization. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether open and distance education institutions, which are known as mega universities, utilize information and communication technologies in education and reflect the brand promises online, and to determine which brand values (functional and emotional) they use in communication. The following questions are sought to answer: Is there a difference among universities in communicating brand promises through the websites of open and distance learning institutions? What are the values that open and distance education universities use while delivering their brand promises through their websites? 1.1. Branding in Formal and Distance Higher Education Institutions One of the most frequently used definitions for the brand is Kotler and Gertner [11] and the brand definition of the American Marketing Association [12]. Both definitions are defined as the name, symbol, design or various combinations of the products that the brand offers to the people who sell the products for the purpose of identifying these products and distinguishing them from their other counterparts in the market. With the increasing number of studies on the brand, the definitions related to the brand have also become different and the definitions that reveal the psychological impact of the brand on the consumer have started to take place in the literature. One of these definitions by Kotler and Gertner [11] states that the brand differentiates the products from each other and promises a value to the consumer and directs the behaviors by revealing the beliefs and feelings of the consumers. Thus, it is stated that the brand accelerates the information processing and learning process of the consumer and provides a shortcut and a promise of value to the decision of purchase given to the consumer. Some researchers conducting studies in the field of branding provide insight into the fact that brand definitions are based on emotional and rational factors [13, 14]. While some brands address the rational aspects of consumers, some brands address the emotional aspects of the consumer's such as familiarity or sense of belonging. Balmer and Gray [15] have used the term mark brand promise as a result of the idea of a brand's total commitment to clients' physical and emotional benefits. de Chernatony [16] refers to the brand as a set of functional and emotional values that promise a unique and pleasant experience Bennett and Ali-Choudhury [17] researchers on branding in higher education, have defined branding in higher education as an element that shows the current capacity of the students who demonstrate the different aspects of the organization, while creating confidence in the capabilities of the higher education point and increasing the interest of successful students towards this organization. For this reason, branding efforts of higher education institutions require communication efforts towards internal and external stakeholders (potential students, parents, employers, etc.). However, in studies on branding in higher education; Stamp [18] discusses the reasons for branding, which are on the agenda of higher education institutions in the UK, Sevier [19] universities with a good brand will attract more quality students, Chapleo [20] elements of a successful university brand and Schee [21] discuss the issues of creating brand dependence on students as a customer In line with these studies, branding activities and developed models in different areas have been applied to universities with some changes [20]. Bennett and Ali-Choudhury [22] highlight the three main content available in a university brand. These; the sum of the promises offered to the outside world regarding the benefits of the brand is an aesthetic naming and external communication types (symbolic and external representation) defining a set of distinctive features and brands that define the natural nature and reality of the brand. It is argued that universities should consistently link all of the promises promised in communication to the actual characteristics and capabilities of an institution Capleo et all [23] emphasizes the importance of developing the 'brand promise' of universities before communicating with the target audiences and it is stated that 'brand promise' should be elaborated first. The brand promise is seen as the main theme of the 'brand experience' and it is stated that the brand promise consists of three values, functional, emotional and social values [24]. Keller [25] states that functional values consist of brand essence, product characteristics, benefits and attitudes, and emotional values consist of 'people and relationships'. Chapleo et all [23] state that 'functional' values are the basic condition for managing universities' quality and innovation, and 'emotional' values have empathy characteristics that brands present to their target audiences, and that the combination of these characteristics together form the brand personality traits of the university. They therefore agree that a university brand must communicate both 'cognitive' and 'emotional' extends. It is important that distance education institutions, like the institutions providing formal education, can create brand personality traits with their functional and emotional values. Although these values are similar to the values in the formal education institutions, (especially the distance between the students' being in different times and places, Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(4): 1129-1139, 2019 1131 and the lack of sense of belonging etc.) can vary. The environment of a formal higher education institution is defined as a community of support services, including the learning environment, library, information technology, course, accessibility and specialist faculty and staff [22]. But, in higher education institutions, which provide distance education, this consists of environmental support services. In today's environment, especially student support through web sites; Information support and personal data are carried out in two ways [26]. Information on the Web (student-related regulations, student status, faculty entry, history, teaching environment and methods etc.) provides information on a wide range of topics. Personal data support refers to the need for students to access and update their personal information in the institution data. The learning environment of a higher education is a conglomerate of support services including the library, information technology, tutoring, financial aid, as well as accessible, caring, and expert faculty and staff [22]. The biggest disadvantage of distance education which is different from formal education is distance and loneliness. Students' connection with the institution, to get information, to establish a relationship with faculty members and to develop community membership identities, in other words, problems such as feeling sense of belonging are important and basic problems [27]. Adaptation and support from the environment within and outside the institution means good education and new students. For this reason, the support services provided by the internet tools (web sites, social media environments etc.) reveal the necessity of the use of emotional values as well as functional values in the creation of brand promise by the distance education institutions. 1.2. Online Branding Online branding is 'the use of online channels to support brands that are the sum of the features of a product, service or organization perceived and experienced by users, customers or other stakeholders' [28]. In terms of marking, it is important that activities in online environments support the consumer-oriented brand value [29, 10]. Consumers are now living their brand experience with Internet tools and environments and matching this experience with the brand value they perceive. Increasing interest in branding on the Internet is also an issue to be emphasized in higher education. Simmons [10] defines the new Internet brand strategies as 'e-branding' that can help them create differences by interacting with customers Rowley [7] demonstrates the need to create an online brand, and the elements that contribute to this experience are referred to as 'relationship'. One of the first online higher education branding studies in the field of online branding in higher education is the research carried out to determine which brand personality the institutions offer in 2006. In this study, brand personality was measured by examining the websites of 12 South African Business Schools using the Brand Personality Scale developed by Aaker (1997) [30]. The South African study was followed by the comparison of Swedish universities with online brand personalities. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that some higher education institutions have open brand personalities [31]. Research by Carrillo et al [32] addresses how Spanish universities conduct brand communication through their websites and discusses success and failures in online communication and is defined as the means by which websites communicate with internal and external audiences that allow organizations to achieve greater competitiveness. Palacio, Meneses & Perez [33] in their research on the role of Web sites in branding of universities in online branding, have suggested that institutions with a strong distinctive image will be in a better position in the future. Simmons [10] states that Web sites are important both as visual and content in brand communication. Therefore, it is considered important that Web sites should play a specific role in the branding of universities and that they offer brand promises through universities' Web sites [23]. 1.3. Factors Creating Brand Value in Distance Education Universities are not limited to reflect the values of the brand, just like education and research. Universities should reflect to their target groups new functional values such as innovation and international projection with traditional values such as teaching, research or management [23]. Based on these values, it is important to base on emotional values as well. The university environment and social responsibility are the emotional factors put forward by Chapleo et all [23] and constitutes a base to provide a competitive advantage to create an online brand. Priority areas emerged by determining European Higher Education Area priorities for higher education institutions over the next decade include the social dimension of the process, equal access, employability, lifelong learning, student-centered learning and the task of teaching of higher education institutions, innovation in education and research, international openness, mobility, data collection, multidimensional transparency tools and financing of higher education [34]. Therefore, higher education institutions should be able to use these values to create online brands. These values are pointed out as Research, Teaching, Management, International Projection, Innovation and Social Responsibility according to UNESCO (2008) Higher Education Institutions Report and [1, 23]. In addition to these basic variables, the values of the Leuven Declaration [34] and the employability mentioned in Capleo et all [23] and the environment of the university environment (support services) which form the environment of open and distance education institutions 1132 A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education titles have been added to these values. These basic values that constitute the variables of the study; Management, Research, Teaching, International Projection, Innovation, Social Responsibility, Employability and University Environment (Support Services) are explained below [34, 23]. Management: It is stated as one of the important and necessary values for communication. This value, together with higher education competitive conditions "entrepreneurial university 'concept has brought to the fore. Cooperation with universities and industry to come together to do the 'entrepreneurial university' is referred to as the birth of the system [35]. Robertson [36] summarizes the characteristics of the entrepreneurial university as follows; the strong leadership that develops the entrepreneurial capacities of all university actors, the strong links with external stakeholders, the increase of university-industry collaborations, the application of innovative learning techniques that lead to entrepreneurial action, the effective flow of information between institutions and the multidisciplinary approaches to education reflecting the solution-oriented and real-world experience for world problems. The statements related to these values can be found on the web pages of the universities and studied under these headings; the clarification of activity reports and strategic plans, mission, vision and values, entrepreneurial university features (technology transfer, academic initiative, by-product creation, entrepreneurial activities) and the existence of flexible management structures of university management (national, local, institutional, faculty and unit level). Research: It is an important factor that research for universities should be publicly available and that the results of the research are freely accessible to everyone [37]. According to UNESCO's World Education Conferences report [1] higher education institutions are seen as centers of research, teaching and intellectual discussions. However, it is stated that the 'research' variable may affect the perception of the image of a higher education institution [38]. The criteria such as access to research on the Web sites of universities, the existence of research values on the Web sites, and the availability of books, articles, research reports, patents and access to distance education are covered under this heading. Teaching: This variable is strongly associated with teaching quality. It is recommended that the institutions investigated emphasize such attributes, developing mechanisms to ensure quality of the teaching offered with a well-developed education programme, up-to-date content in line with the labour market, and a continuing search not only for the qualification and training of tutors and staff, but also for the management of their actions when they are in contact with students [39]. The topics related to the 'Teaching' variable in the Web sites of universities; standard or different curriculums (existence of special programs and interdisciplinary programs), teaching environments (basic teaching environments of open and distance education; books, television programs, e-learning environments, academic counseling services, live lessons etc.) the presence of activities [39] and the existence of values on the web sites and the application of different models with web-based and online methods (MOOCS, etc.) are the properties emphasized under the heading of teaching. International Projection: Internationalization includes the policies and practices undertaken by academic systems and institutions—and even individuals—to cope with the global academic environment. The motivations for internationalization include commercial advantage, knowledge and language acquisition, enhancing the curriculum with international content, and many others [40]. Internationalization efforts of universities contribute to global brand [41]. This value has been evaluated on Web sites as; international business opportunities, international studies and mission declarations internationally, international institutional researches, international accreditation and collaborations. Innovation: Developments in the field of innovation policies since the 1980s have led to the establishment of closer relations between the university and industry, unlike the previous periods. Issues related to technological, educational and management innovation constitute the vital qualities of the university. Kjaersdam (2001) argues that university innovation is a key value directly linked to management, research and teaching, which should be reported in the brand promise. Technological and innovation policies, research finance and commercialization of scientific development are the features required for the differentiation of universities [42]. The main criteria for this variable are; technological innovation, educational innovation, management innovation that should be expressed in their mission and vision statements, in short, whether there is the image of innovation or not. Social Responsibility: Social responsibility is a characteristic feature of the university. Universities are expected to be able to share their achievements by continuously interacting with the local, regional and national community. This is due to the concept of a public service, as well as social responsibility in the context of the globalization of the local and regional move [23]. UNESCO [1] states that social responsibility is not only related to higher education institutions, but also to research and teaching principles and strategies, as well as the development of inclusion policies to respond to the learning needs of young and marginalized and vulnerable youth and adults. In this context, higher education institutions should promote ethical values and attitudes that strengthen their responsibilities to the community and their sensitivity to local, national and global realities among students. Equal access of every individual to the facilities of the university, the fulfillment of the social duties of the Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(4): 1129-1139, 2019 1133 universities and social responsibility campaigns are the criteria that are considered in this variable. University Support Services: Support services in distance education include different support services offered by universities to students. The biggest disadvantage of the open and distance education system for students is that they cannot feel belonging to the institution they study. The duty of support services is to provide the information which is available at any time by the opportunities of information and communication technologies by minimizing the feeling of being away from the campus which is one of the biggest problems of open and distance education students, to gain them the sense of belonging, to adopt them to culture of institution. In addition to this, it is aimed to create a healthy and effective communication among themselves and the institution by means of news and discussion groups and social media environments to be formed on the Internet. Student support to be provided through the Internet and its tools in open and distance education institutions is carried out in two ways; information support and personal data [26]. Information counseling enables students to learn about a wide range of subjects such as student regulations, student status, entrance to the faculty, teaching environment and methods by fronting to corporate Web sites. In the institutions providing education by open and distance education system, the basic support services are evaluated as: Student communities, library, technological support, academic support, administrative support and etc. Employability: Graduation prospects are post-graduation job and career prospects, which includes the perception of employability or practical usefulness of the education and the perception of future social and economic status gained [43]. This seems to indicate that students are very much sensitive and influenced by the expectations and beliefs regarding the experiences of the academic life, as well as how easily it will be to find a job after finishing the course. Other important issue that deserves a detailed attention is that the communication, job opportunities and course constructs, all have almost the same influence on image. From a practical standpoint, this means that universities' managers should pay attention to all factors instead of investing a great deal of resources and efforts just on one dimension [38]. Decisions taken in the Bologna Process on Employment are to strengthen employability in line with the needs of Europe, to combine innovative skills and competencies of graduates with current knowledge that can meet the needs of society and the business world [44]. In this direction, the criteria for the web sites for this value; are the following: The Alumni Association, career services, career office and career research programs and links with employers. 2. Method This study on online brand communication in open and distance education institutions is a descriptive study to determine the current situation. The research data were collected from the qualitative measurement tools by the content analysis method. The scope of the research consists of the websites of open and distance institutions, which are called mega universities, with over 100,000 students [45]. The web site of thirteen universities, which were selected by means of meaningful sampling among these universities, were examined with content analysis method within the scope of the research and the collected data were then evaluated by fuzzy logic and clustering analysis methods. Table 1. Open and Distance Education Institutions Country Institution Establishment China Open University of China 1979 France France National Centre for Distance Education 1986 India Indira Gandhi National Open Uni 1985 Indonesia Universitas Terbuka 1984 Bangladesh Open University 1992 Korea Korean National Open Uni 1982 South Africa University of South Africa 1945 Spain Universidad Nacional de Education 1972 Turkey Anadolu University 1982 England Open University 1969 Canada Athabasca University 1970 Pakistan Allama Iqbal Open Uni 1974 Iran Payame Noor University 1987 Thailand Sukhothai Thammatrirat 1978 2.1. Data Collection and Procedures Content analysis is a technique that provides an objective, systematic or quantitative examination of the observed content of any communication [46]. Content analysis is a method that does not alter or interfere with the phenomenon being investigated and it is stated that Web sites are open to content analysis among other forms of communication [47] and that content analysis is the most important feature to be able to present healthy data is objectivity [48]. The website of the thirteen universities identified in the content analysis section of the study included eight different variables; social responsibility, university support services and employability. These criteria are as follows; The existence of information about each variable; it is stated that information is required to communicate a brand through the website, but the content must be integrated into the design [49]. Content in different languages: In order to develop the brands of universities in a competitive environment, the website content should be translated into different languages [50, 51-52]. 1134 A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education Strengthening the messages with statistical and visual audiovisual images; the proper use of tables, graphics and visualization techniques on websites, and the understanding of quantitative information as part of web design [53]. The location of the message for each variable; site design is one of the important factors affecting customer satisfaction and it is necessary for a brand [54, 53]. Adaptation of information for each variable to different stakeholders: individual preference information is included on the website to provide direct content to each shareholder [55]. Five units of analysis for eight variables in the websites examined and seventeen expressions related to these units with values of 1 to 5; 5 was coded as 'very good', 4 'good', 3 'medium', 2 'bad' and 1 'very bad'. The variables examined in the study were rated 1 to 5 and 5 were coded as 'very good', 4 'good', 3 'medium', 2 'bad' and 1 'very bad'. Encodings were realized between June 15 and July 15, 2018 by 3 different knowledgeable people in the field. In the content analysis, Miles & Huberman [56] developed a formula using the concept of reliability between coders, based on the consensus between the coders in the content analysis. In this study, this rate was found to be 92%. Table 2. Clusters and distance values relating to universities examined within the scope of the research Iteraton Change in Cluster Centers 1 2 3 4 1 .816 1.146 .000 1.470 2 .000 .000 .000 .000 2.2. Data Analysis In this study, fuzzy logic and clustering analysis methods were used to analyze the data collected by content analysis method. Fuzzy logic is a method in response to the false-correct propositions of classical logic forms three or more propositions [57]. The basic idea is that a proposition may be 'true', 'false', 'very true', 'very false', 'very, very false' etc.. Main features of fuzzy logic; can be put in order as having the correct degrees of accuracy that expressed verbally as 'true', 'very true', 'more or less true', having inference rules which are not definitely valid but approximate, having a degree of each concept, having each logical system blurred, the interpretation of information by the flexibility or equivalence of variables of fuzzy constraints [58]. The analysis of the variables (functional and emotional values) in the web sites of open and distance education institutions, studied with content analysis, were carried out by Fuzz Interference System (FIS), FIS is a calculation system based on fuzzy cluster theory, fuzzy if-so rules and fuzzy logic concepts and it is defined as the method of matching an input space to output space [59]. The data obtained in the study were analysed at the help of fuzzy editor in Matlab. In forming membership clustership in fuzzy editor, the functional and emotional values obtained via content analysis method of web sites universities were determined as input and brand promising as output. The fuzzy clusters were formed by assigning these two inputs at five membership functions as “very bad”, “bad”, “medium”, “good” and “very good” and the outputs on brand promising of these variables as “non”, “little”, medium”, “high”, “very high”. In order to form rulebase from these fuzzy clusters 5 x 5 = 25 rule was written since there are two input and in each input there are five degrees. Then the expressions in the rule table for brand promising were graded as (5 = very high), (4 = high), (3 = medium), (2 = little) and (1= poor) and these calculations were carried out via Matlab. In order to determine whether the universities examined within the scope of the research can be grouped according to the way they transmit their brand promises via internet, clustering analysis is used from multivariate statistical methods. In the analysis, k-mean (k-medias) technique was used from non-hierarchical clustering methods. Clustering analysis is a method used for grouping and presenting summative information to the researcher, taking into account the basic characteristics of individuals or objects [60]. Unlike other multivariate statistical methods, clustering analysis accepts the distance values of variables rather than normality, linearity and homogeneity assumptions [61]. The method used in the clustering analysis is the k-mean (k-medias) technique which is proven to be suitable for the grouping elements. This technique demonstrates the process of assigning each unit to the nearest cluster with k [62] and dividing the units into k clusters; the units are assigned to the closest cluster in terms of value, the distance is usually determined by using Euclidean distance, then the units are calculated by finding the new value of the cluster and finally by the repetition stages until no assignment is made [63]. In this study, Squared Euclidean Distance Method measurement was used to calculate the distance. This method is a kind of distance measurement depicting similarities or dissimilarities in calculating the distance between variables. Since the data in this study were obtained from binary observations and this method was most commonly and most effectively used to measure the similarity between two objects [64], Squared Euclidean Distance was used. 3. Findings Table 1 shows the number of repetitions and indicates that the program consists of 4 clusters in 2 repetitions. According to these data, the universities examined within the scope of the research are divided into four groups. The first group of universities (.816), the second group of universities (1.146), the third group of universities (.000) and the fourth group of universities (1.470) have the Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(4): 1129-1139, 2019 1135 distance points. In line with these data, it can be said that first cluster is farther than the third cluster. Table 3. Results of clustering analysis according to coding points given to web site content of universities examined within the scope of the research Universities Cluster Distance Open University 1 .816 Athabasca University 1 .577 University of South Africa 1 1.000 Korea National Open University 4 1.470 Open University of China 4 .980 Indira Gandhi National Open University 4 2.040 Anadolu University 4 1.470 Universidad Nacional de Educacion 4 1.327 Bangladesh Open University 2 1.346 Sukhothai Thammatrirat Open University 2 .901 Universitas Terbuka 2 1.146 France National Centre for Distance Education 2 1.346 Iran Payame Noor University 3 .000 Table 3, which is owned by the surveyed clusters of universities, and shows the distance from each other in accordance with the scores received by the university. According to the table; in the research, four clusters were obtained as a result of the analysis made on variables of functional (research, teaching, management, innovation, international projection) and emotional values (social responsibility, university support services and employability). The number of elements of the first cluster is three. These; Open University (England), Athabasca University (Canada) and the University of South Africa (South Africa) open and distance education universities. The number of the universities in the second cluster is four. Universities in this group; Sukhothai Thammatrirat Open Uni (Thailand), Universitas Terbuka (Indonesia), Bangladesh Open University (Bangladesh) and France National Center for Distance Education (France). The only university in the third cluster is Iran Payame Noor University (Iran). The fourth cluster consists of five universities. These; The Open University of China (China), Korea National Open University (Korea), Universidad Nacional de Educacion (Spain), Anadolu University (Turkey) and Indira Gandhi National Open University (India). Table 4 shows the means of the functional and emotional values in the clusters and the mean of the online brand promise as a result. Accordingly, it is seen that the first cluster has the best mean and the third cluster has the weakest mean. As shown in the table, the emotional values of the universities in the first cluster (mean 4.89 points) are slightly higher than the functional values (mean 4.80 points) and the online brand promises (mean 5.00 points) of these universities can be said to be 'very good'. Looking at the universities in the fourth cluster, functional values (mean 3.64 points) and emotional values (mean 3.66 points) are almost equal. It can be said that the online brand promises of the universities in this cluster reflect a 'good' rating with a mean of 3.80 points. On the other hand, the functional values are (mean 3.00 and 1.80 points) and emotional values are (mean 2.66 and 1.67 points) of the universities in the second and third cluster and it can be seen that the universities in these two clusters reflect the functional values are better than their emotional values. According to these data; it can be said that the brand promise of the universities in the second cluster (mean 2.75 points) is 'moderate' and the brand promise (mean 1.00 points) of the university in the third cluster is 'weak'. Table 4. Functional and emotional values with brand promise points of the web sites of the universities researched in the study Values 1 2 3 4 Functional Values 4.80 3.00 1.80 3.64 Emotional Values 4.89 2,66 1.67 3.66 Brand Promise 5.00 2.75 1.00 3.80 Table 5. University websites cluster mean ratings for variables researched in this study Variables Cluster 1 2 3 4 Teaching 5.00 4.00 1.00 3.80 Research 4.67 3.50 2.00 3.40 Management 5.00 2.75 2.00 3.40 International Projection 5.00 1.75 2.00 3.80 Innovation 4.33 3.00 2.00 3.80 Social Responsibility 4.67 2.25 2.00 3.80 Support Services 5.00 3.25 2.00 4.00 Employability 5.00 2.50 1.00 3.20 Brand Promises 5.00 2.75 1.00 3.80 Table 5 shows the variables that make up the emotional and functional values in the universities studied and the resulting online brand promise. According to the table, İt is seen that the mean value of 'teaching', 'research', 'management' and 'international projection' variables at the universities in the first cluster is the highest with 5.00 points and the mean of 'innovation' variable is the lowest with 4.33 points. When the variables constituting the emotional values of the universities in the first cluster are examined, the mean of 'university environment' and 'employment' variables is the highest with 5.00 points, while the mean of 'social responsibility' is slightly lower with 4.67 points. From the functional values of the universities in the fourth cluster, the mean of 'teaching', 'international projection' and 'innovation' variables is high with 3.80 points, while the mean of 'research' and 'management' variables is slightly lower with 3.40 points. 1136 A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education When the mean values of universities in this cluster are examined, it is seen that 'university environment' and 'social responsibility' variables are higher with 4.00 and 3.80 points, and 'employment' variable is lower with 3.20 points. In line with this data, it can be said that universities in this cluster reflect almost both emotional and functional values equally on their web sites with different variables. The highest mean in the second cluster belong to functional values of 'teaching', 'research' and 'innovation' variables with 4.00, 3.50 and 3.00 points while the lowest mean belongs to 'international projection' variable with 1.75 points. International projection information and language acquisition, the enrichment of the course programs with international content, and the international level of university engagement issues [40] and universities are contributing to the internationalization efforts of internationalization efforts [41]. The low level of 'international projection' on the websites of the universities in this cluster may be indicative of the fact that websites are not in different languages, act with more local elements and do not use international programs, research and collaborations. The universities in this cluster have a mean of 3.25 and 2.50 points in emotional values which is higher, and 2.25 mean in the social responsibility variables which is lower. In the third cluster, It is seen that the 'teaching' variable from functional values in the single university is lower with an mean of 1.00 points, 'research', 'management', 'international projection' and 'innovation' variables are slightly higher with an mean score of 2.00, while in emotional values' employment the variable 'social responsibility' and 'university environment' are slightly higher than the mean score of 2.00. From this data, it can be said that the best reflected value among functional values (excluding the third set) is 'teaching'. This is due to the fact that teaching for universities is a basic function and that this basic function is used by open and distance learning universities as an important variable in conveying the promise of online brand. 'University support services', which constitute the emotional values, are the best mean score in all four clusters. This variable, which is considered as university environment in formal education, is considered as 'university support services' variable in open and distance education universities and the reason why this variable has high scores in four university groups is thought to be due to the nature of open and distance education. This is because the fundamental difference of universities that provide open and distance education is that learners need to have more support from support services due to their presence in different places and times and because of their low belongings. Table 6. Distances of university web sites by clusters in the scope of research Cluster 1 2 3 4 1 6.323 9.730 3.709 2 6.323 4.451 3.142 3 9.730 4.451 6.177 4 3.709 3.142 6.177 Table 6 shows the distances between the final cluster centers. According to this, we can say that the two closest clusters are 1 and 4, and the most remote clusters are 1 and 3. In line with this data, it can be said that there is no significant difference between the universities in the first and fourth clusters in transferring the online brand promise, while there are significant differences between the universities in the first cluster and the university in the third cluster. According to these data, it can be said that the Open University (England), Athabasca University (Canada) and the University of South Africa (South Africa) are the universities that have the strongest brand promise of open and distance education universities while Iran Payame Noor University, which is the single one in the third cluster, has weak on line brand promise. Table 7. ANOVA results of variables related to university websites in the scope of research Cluster Error F Sig. Mean Square df Mean Square df Teaching 4.041 3 .089 9 45.462 .000 Research 2.07 3 .541 9 3.828 .051 Management 3.76 3 .217 9 17.355 .000 International Projec. 7.073 3 .172 9 41.069 .000 Innovation 1.921 3 .163 9 11.790 .002 Social Responsibility 4.287 3 .246 9 17.405 .000 Support Services 2.981 3 .083 9 35.769 .000 Employability 5.503 3 .422 9 13.032 .001 Brand Promises 5.227 3 .172 9 30.350 .000 Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(4): 1129-1139, 2019 1137 With ANOVA results whether the variables differ in terms of clusters are examined. In clustering analysis, by making this difference, the difference (distance) between the clusters is made maximum. According to ANOVA analysis in Table 7, variables, except research variable, differ according to clusters (p <0.05). 4. Discussion and Conclusions The results of this study, which is conducted to determine whether open and distance education institutions that benefit from information and communication technologies in education reflect their brand promises online and to determine which values (functional and emotional) they use in making online brand promise through the websites of these universities are as follows: For the purposes of the research, the first question is that the universities that provide open and distance education reflect their brand promises through their websites. The universities that are examined reflect the online brand promise through different websites with different scores on the variables that make up the functional and emotional values and there are differences in reflecting the brand promises among the universities. The second question to be sought within the scope of the research is what universities (functional and emotional) use when reflecting online brand promises through the websites of open and distance education universities. According to the results of the study; The open and distance education institutions in the first cluster reflect the online brand promise at the 'very good' level and do so by transmitting emotional values a little more than functional values. Looking at the establishment years of the universities in this cluster (table 2), these three universities in the field of open and distance education are the first established and leading universities, only in the field of open and distance education to provide services and therefore obtained in this field it can be concluded that the experience also succeeds in reflecting the online brand promise of universities. It can be said that the universities in the fourth cluster (table 4) reflect their online brand promises with both functional and emotional values almost equally and 'good'. The universities in this cluster are universities that offer education in both single and dual modes, and it can be seen from the years of foundation (chart 1) that these universities are universities that have served in the field of open and distance education since 1980s. The universities in the second and third clusters are universities that reflect their online brand promises in 'medium' and 'weak' levels. It can be said that universities in this cluster have highlighted functional values more than emotional values in reflecting online brand promise (Table 4). As a result of the study, an important finding about the second cluster is the weakness of the 'international projection' variable from the functional values (table 5). Some of the reasons why universities in this cluster reflect their brand promises on a 'medium level' may be due to the fact that websites are not in different languages, act more by local elements, and do not use international programs, research and collaborations sufficiently. The finding that the universities in these two clusters use functional values (traditional values) in reflecting the brand promise such as formal education universities are consistent with the results of the study conducted by Capleo et all [23] in British universities. However, there may be more reflections of the emotional values expected from the universities that provide open and distance education. Because open and distance education is different from formal education, it is a system in which students are in different places and time, offer flexible learning opportunities to individuals and require two-way communication. Therefore, in the system, it is inevitable that the applications for various support services will be developed to improve the sense of belonging and loneliness of the students and to develop the sense of belonging. The reason for the high value of the 'university support services' variable from emotional values in the universities examined (Table 5) is that can be the use of the opportunities provided by information and communication technologies in the universities that provide open and distance education, being able to bring down the feeling of being away from the campus to the lowest level which is one of the biggest problems of open and distance education, bringing in the sense of belonging to the students and developing students' communication facilities with the institution. On the other hand, the fact that the variables 'social responsibility' and 'employment' have low points (table 5) reveal that these variables should be given as much importance as 'university support services' in open and distance education institutions. It is seen important to perform practices that increase employment, provide social responsibility and integrate with society in open and distance education institutions. The recommendations presented in the light of the results of this research conducted in order to reflect the online brand promise in open and distance education universities are as follows: Today, increasing competition in the field of education, especially the open and distance education institutions to maintain their existence and distinguishing from the other institutions reveals the importance of brand and brand communication concepts once again. To create online brand promise in open and distance education for reasons arising from the basic philosophy of open and distance education (distance, belonging, being at different time and place, etc.), to attract students to the system, to keep existing students in the system and to reintroduce them in the system it is recommended that emotional values (social responsibility, support services and employability)to be used as much as or even much more than functional values in creating an online brand promise. However, in the future researches, in reflecting online brand promise in open and 1138 A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education distance learning institutions in order to research both functional and emotional values on online brand promise's variables in detail apart from content analysis, it is recommended to be realised qualitative and qualitative methods for all stakeholders of the institutions. 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work_tjk57iuuejcxfauq34ijddylde	----	kemp ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY PERSISTENCE OF ADULT LEARNERS IN DISTANCE EDUCATION BY WENDY KEMP A thesis submitted to the Athabasca University Governing Council in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Athabasca, Alberta April, 2001 iii iii ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis was to examine the relationship between persistence in distance education and resilience, life events, and external commitments. Previous studies in persistence in distance education have largely examined withdrawal and identified family, job and life circumstances as major reasons why students dropout or fail to complete courses. Recent literature has described resilience as a quality that characterizes individuals who, though exposed to significant stress and adversity in their lives, do not succumb to the educational and life failures predicted for them. Although resilience has not, to date, been extensively examined in distance education, it was believed to be a major factor affecting persistence and dropout behavior in distance education. The sample consisted of 121 randomly selected undergraduate students, between the age of 30 to 45, who were registered in their first undergraduate course at Athabasca University and who returned the previously mailed questionnaire packets. Data relating to gender and course completion was obtained from student records. Scores from the Resiliency Attitudes Scale (RAS), the Life Events Inventory (LEI), and one questionnaire relating to external commitments completed the data set. Analyses of variance and discriminant analysis revealed that four of the resiliency skills (relationships, general resilience, initiative, insight), and five of the resiliency sub-skills (attaching, persistence, valuing, recruiting, generating) were significantly correlated with persistence. No significant correlation was found for life events, gender, or previous experience with distance courses. Of the six external commitments included in the discriminant analysis, only work commitments was significantly correlated with persistence iv iv (p = 0.0247). This study correctly classified 66% of the students as persisters or non- persisters in their Athabasca University distance course. v v ACKNOWLEGEMENTS My deepest thanks are extended to the members of my thesis committee: To my thesis advisor, Dr. Susan Moisey, for her brilliant mind, and her advocacy of me throughout my master’s program—from her, I have gained a deeper understanding of the adult student and the nature of distance learning; To Dr. Patrick Fahy for his consistent and positive support and to Dr. Peter Cookson for showing interest in my work and facilitating my research. I am also indebted to Mr. Rick Powell who generously offered expert support and use of resources. For institutional support, I thank Athabasca University Governing Council for the Athabasca University Graduate Student Research Grant, which helped to support this thesis, and Athabasca University for administrative support. And finally, to my mother, Phyllis Zutz, who is unswerving in her loving support, encouragement, inspiration, and prayers. vi vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION 1 Problem Context 2 Purpose of the Study 5 Research Questions 7 Definitions 7 Assumptions 11 Limitations 12 CHAPTER II – REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 14 Resilience 15 Patterns of Resilience 18 Adversity (Risk) and Protective Mechanisms 22 Resiliency and Self- Efficacy 25 Self- Efficacy and Academic Settings 26 Resilience and Education 29 Adult Learning 30 Distance Education and Self- Efficacy 32 Persistence 33 Relevance of Resilience to Persistence for Distance Educators 40 Summary 41 CHAPTER III – METHODOLOGY 45 Research Design 45 vii vii Independent Variables 46 Dependent Variable 48 Participants 48 Instruments 48 Procedure 52 CHAPTER IV – RESULTS 54 Study Participants 54 Gender 55 Previous Experience in Distance Courses 55 Analysis of Course Completion Data 56 Discriminant Analysis 57 Gender and Previous Distance Education Experience 59 External Commitments 59 Life Events 60 Resiliency Attitudes Scale 61 Final Discriminant Function 62 Discussion 64 Generalizability of the Results 67 CHAPTER V – CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 68 Introduction 68 Review of Research Results 69 Implications and Recommendations for Distance Education Practice 71 Implications for Further Research 75 viii viii REFERENCES 77 APPENDIX A – Letter of Introduction 98 APPENDIX B – Resiliency Attitudes Scales 100 APPENDIX C – Life Events Inventory 104 APPENDIX D – Questionnaire 107 ix ix LIST OF TABLES Page 1. Individual Protective Processes 24 2. Adaptive Protective Mechanisms 25 3. Characteristics of Instructional Practices Promoting Protective Mechanisms 41 4. Number of Subjects Who Had Taken and Completed Previous Distance Courses 55 5. Previous Distance Course Completions by Course Completion/Non-Completion 57 6. Analysis of Variance for External Commitments 60 7. Analysis of Variance for Resiliency Attitudes Scale 61 8. Pooled Within Groups Correlations Between Discriminating Variables and Canonical Discriminant functions 63 9. Number of Predicted Group Membership 64 x x LIST OF FIGURES Page 1. Factors Affecting Persistence in Distance Education 43 2. Resiliency Attitudes Subscales and Skills Subscales 50 3. Factors Predicting Persistence in Distance Education 66 1 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Tinto (1993) stated that adult learner “departure [or drop out] is a highly idiosyncratic event, one that can be fully understood only by referring to the understandings and experiences of each and every person who departs” (p.37). From a life span development perspective, adult learners have to contend with competing family, job, community, and school responsibilities (Chickering & Resissner, 1993). However, Reichmann-Hruska (1989) asserted that adult learners compensate for these competing responsibilities as people learn to be more resilient. The literature on resilience explores individual variables of people who have successfully dealt with major stress or who have adapted to change. Researchers have divided these characteristics into four patterns—dispositional, relational, situational, and philosophical (Polk, 1997). Individuals who show high levels of “resilient” characteristics may behave in such a way that they adjust more easily than others to life events and external commitments. This study investigated the relationship between persistence in distance education and life events, external commitments, and resiliency in a diverse population of undergraduate students. The following questions were explored: (a) How do life events and external commitments influence undergraduate student persistence in distance courses? and (b) How does resilience affect undergraduate student persistence in distance courses? The significance of this study to the field of adult and distance education is that it included the life events, external commitments, and strategies for succeeding from the adult 2 2 ‘clients’ of undergraduate distance courses. This study was an opportunity to increase our understanding of the skills of those who have found a way to succeed, and is a contribution to the field of distance education as it attempted to identify personal characteristics and coping skills, operationally defined as resilience, which are required of distance learners to persist in higher education. Sustained and continued research efforts in resilience are necessary to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of educational success “despite the odds.” Research grounded in adult developmental theory will help to shed light upon this phenomenon. Problem Context A major emphasis of many adult and distance education program research efforts has been on failure, involving studies of why people fail or drop out of adult learning experiences (Tinto, 1993). In any educational program, adults are largely voluntary participants, but the student role is just one of many roles and responsibilities competing for their time and attention. In fact, personal reasons such as family problems, lack of child-care, and job demands are often cited as the cause of withdrawal. For example, in a study of 100 female adult students, Hagedorn (1993) found that life events such as family issues and being married increased the probability of drop out by 83 percent. Life events such as changes in occupation, conflicts in relationships with family and peers, health problems, financial difficulties, and lack of support are common occurrences in the lives of adult learners, and are factors that often interfere with their educational success (Kerka, 1999). The adult distance learner may be affected by a variety of internal and external factors that account for the continuance/discontinuance in their studies. Kennedy and Powell (1976) and Brindley (1987) stated that life circumstances combine with other factors (e.g., 3 3 independence, organizational abilities, and social support) as predictors of persistence or withdrawal. Powell, Conway, and Ross (1994) reported that life circumstances interact with predisposing characteristics (e.g., educational preparation, socioeconomic and demographic status, and motivational and perseverance attributes) to influence persistence. According to the literature from a human development, life-stage perspective, personal characteristics such as motivation, self-efficacy, personality, attitude, and maturation combine with life circumstances and transitions as predictors of dropout in distance education (Tennant & Pogson, 1995). Transitions occur throughout life, from school entry, to adolescence and detachment from parents, to significant life events such as childbearing (Merriam & Yang, 1996). Transitions also include unexpected or externally controlled events such as natural disaster, unemployment, relocation, family disruption, or poverty. These events require increased ability to cope in order to maintain positive adjustment. Resiliency may be particularly important during times of transition, when stresses tend to accumulate (Werner & Smith, 1992). Resiliency has its roots in psychological and human development theory. The term has been used traditionally to describe the individual’s ability to manage or cope with significant adversity or stress in ways that are not only effective, but may result in increased ability to respond to future adversity. Numerous studies have examined resiliency among populations exposed to stresses such as war, poverty, chronic illness, and parental mental illness (e.g., Rutter, 1966, 1977, 1986, 1987; Wagnild & Young, 1990; Werner, 1989). Through these and other studies (e.g., Werner & Smith, 1982, 1992; Wolin & Wolin, 1993), the characteristics of resilient individuals have been identified (Polk, 1997). 4 4 Resiliency is viewed by some to consist of a balance between stress and adversity on the one hand, and the ability to cope and availability of support on the other (Werner & Smith, 1992). Two fundamental concepts are associated with resiliency: risk and protective factors. Risk involves experiencing a number of stressful life events (e.g., moving to a new location, experiencing a transition such as retirement, death of a loved one, divorce) or a single traumatic event (e.g., sexual assault, witnessing a parent’s death) (Werner & Smith, 1992). Protective factors might be defined as the skills, personality factors, and environmental supports that contribute to resiliency. These protective factors provide a buffer as well as a reservoir of resources to deal effectively with stress. Resiliency appears to be not only a characteristic or state, but also a process of coping, becoming evident only when it is in use (Flach, 1988). Resiliency is also dynamic, in that successful coping in one situation strengthens the individual’s competency to deal with adversity in the future. The development of coping skills is a valued asset in distance learners. Beliefs in self- efficacy and personal competence he lp determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will prove in the face of adverse situations—the higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience (Pajares & Miller, 1994). People with high levels of resilience heighten their efforts in the face of adversity, and more easily recover their confidence after failure or setbacks. Resilience skills that foster and support individual learner strengths and abilities include, but are not limited to, internal locus of control, positive self-regard, and a sense of humor (Benard, 1991). Cross (1981) suggested that innate abilities and coping mechanisms originate from within the individual and attributed these skills to individual life circumstances and dispositional variables within the person such as 5 5 attitude, values, beliefs, opinions, and personality. These skills and competencies develop in adult learners over time and are a product of the educational resilient person (Walberg, 1997). Walberg (1997) elaborated on the concept of educational resilience noting that the attributes of social competence, good problem-solving and communication skills, independence, and a sense of purpose are essential indicators of the resilient learner. These attributes result in a learner with high self- efficacy and educational aspirations, and a feeling of being internally controlled. While much has been written about distance learner persistence, the role that resilience plays in persistence has not been investigated. What needs to be explored is the degree to which resilience in learners enables them to survive disruptions in their lives allowing them to persist in their distance education studies. Thus the stud y of resilience in adult learners may provide distance educators with a profile of individual learner strengths, and assist in developing strategies to help learners transform their adversities into accomplishments. Purpose of the Study An adult student’s decision to interrupt or discontinue enrollment is most often based on demands related to family or work (Bean, 1989). Such demands are central to an adult learner’s life as evidenced by Pappas and Loring (1987) who noted, “Even when extensively engaged in education, adults see themselves first in occupational and/or family roles” (p. 142). Tenant and Pogson (1995) asserted that the ability to persist in adult education is predicated upon the learner’s capacity to move positively through life span events. Flach (1988) suggested that adults employ personal resilient coping skills during life transitions to discover a new strength at times of stress. Although institutions of higher education support 6 6 an array of continuous enrollment encouragement and institutional efforts, little evidence exists as to the resilience capacities that adults employ in negotiating life roles while persisting in their education. The purpose of this study was to investigate how resilience, life events, and external commitments influence, or fail to influence, persistence. Sheets (1992) suggested that future descriptive studies of persistence should focus on personal and situational factors that go beyond the traditional questions of gender, age, and educational background as predictors of success. While acknowledging gender, age, and educational background as contributing factors for predicting success, Kember (1995) recognized the integration between students and their environment representing work, home, and social obligations. Psychological and social factors also influence persistence. Kember, Murphy, Siaw, and Yuen (1991) found that student self-confidence, self-efficacy, and coping skills combine with social factors to influence persistence. Students who elicited support from frie nds, family, and employers were more successful in integrating academic and environmental responsibilities and were more likely to persist than those who did not receive such support. Tinto (1993) proposed that two dimensions of commitment, namely institutional and goal commitment, directly influence persistence or departure behavior. Institutional commitment represents the degree to which an individual is motivated to graduate from a specific college or university. Goal commitment, or educational goal commitment, represents the degree to which the individual is committed or motivated to earn a university degree in general. Tinto (1993) suggested that further research into persistence “empirically document the scope and varying character of the persistence process” (p. 241), particularly studies that examine the influence of personal factors on adult persistence including commitments to 7 7 family, work, and community, especially as they affect older students who have dependent families. Research Questions This study, which focused particularly on the situational experiences of adult students in a large university enrolled in their first distance delivered undergraduate course, was intended to respond to calls in the literature for a new understanding about the nature of the distance education experience. In addition to examining the influence of personal resiliency on persistence in distance education courses, situational (e.g., life events, external commitments) aspects of resiliency and persistence in undergraduate education were also explored. Theoretically, if students with higher levels of resiliency adapt better to life events and external commitments, it was expected that a relationship existed between personal resiliency and persistence. Students with more characteristics of resiliency or higher levels of resiliency were expected to persist in distance education courses than their less resilient counterparts. The following research questions were posed for this study: 1. How do life events and external commitments influence undergraduate student persistence in distance courses? 2. How does resilience affect undergraduate student persistence in distance courses? Definitions Wolin and Wolin (1993) defined resilience as the capacity to rise above adversity by developing internal and external coping skills which expand and ripen into lasting strengths. Resilience is operationized as scores on the Resiliency Attitudes Scale (RAS) which 8 8 measures the degree of protective mechanisms in the process of negotiating risk situations (Rutter, 1990). Protective mechanisms are described as the ability to use internal and external resources successfully in resolving stage-salient developmental issues. Protective factors are mechanisms that moderate a person’s reaction to stressful situations or chronic adversity in order to produce a more successful outcome than would normally be present (Werner, 1995). These mechanisms are defined as the presence of one or more of the seven resiliency skills: insight, independence, relationship, initiative, creativity and humor, morality, and general resiliency (Biscoe & Harris, 1994). ?? Insight is the mental habit of asking searching questions and giving honest answers. Insight is conceptualized as reading signals from other people, identifying the source of the problem and trying to figure out how things work for self and others. It is operationalized as scores on the insight subscale of the RAS. The insight subscale is a measure of the following sub-skills: sensing, knowing, understanding. ?? Independence is the right to safe boundaries between oneself and significant others. Independence is conceptualized as the ability for emotional distancing and knowing when to separate from bad relationships. It is operationalized as scores on the independence subscale of the RAS. The independence subscale is a measure of the following subs- skills: separating, distancing. ?? Relationships are the ability to develop and maintain intimate and fulfilling ties to other people. Relationships are conceptualized as the perceived ability to select healthy partners, to start new relationships, and to maintain health relationships. It is 9 9 operationalized as scores on the relationships subscale of the RAS. The relationships subscale is a measure of the following sub-skills: recruiting, attaching. ?? Initiative is the determination to master oneself and one’s environment. Initiative is conceptualized as the ability for creative problem solving, enjoyment of figuring out how things work, and generating constructive activities. It is operationalized as scores on the initiative subscale of the RAS. The initiative subscale is a measure of the following sub- skills: problem solving, generating. ?? Creativity and humor include safe harbors of the imagination where one can take refuge and rearrange the details of one’s life to one’s own pleasing. Creativity and humor are conceptualized as the capacity for creativity and divergent thinking, being able to use creativity to forget pain, using creativity to express emotions, using humor to reduce tension or to make a bad situation better. It is operationalized as scores on the creativity and humor subscale of the RAS. The creativity and humor subscale is a measure of the following sub-skills: creative thinking, creating to express feelings, humor. ?? Morality is the ability to know what is right and wrong and being willing to stand up for those beliefs. Morality is conceptualized as knowing what is right and wrong, and being willing to take risks for those beliefs, and finding joy in helping other people. It is operationalized as scores on the morality subscale of the RAS. The morality subscale is a measure of the following sub-skills: valuing, helping others. ?? General resiliency is the ability to persist at working through difficulties and is conceptualized as the belief that one can make the most of bad situation and the belief that one can make things better. It is operationalized as scores on the general resiliency 10 10 subscale of the RAS. The general resiliency subscale is a measure of the following sub- skills: persistence, ability to get by. Risk situations in the adult are defined as stage-salient events that increase the likelihood of a negative developmental outcome (Werner & Smith, 1992) and involve the presence of one or more the following risk factors: (a) interpersonal separations; (b) bereavement; (c) childbirth; (d) social stress, arguments and discord; (e) loss of self-esteem or blows to the self-esteem and failures; (f) job changes, unemployment, or other financial problems; (g) retirement; and (h) change in marital status. Life-events are defined as noteworthy occurrences whose advent is either indicative of or requiring a significant change in the on- going life pattern of the individual (Hultsch & Deutsch, 1981). These events can cause periods of disruption that occur at transition points in normal growth and development, and can result in changed relationships, responsibilities, and roles. Life events are operationalized as scores on the Life Events Inventory (LEI). External commitments are defined as external [to the university experience] life demands that limit the person’s ability to meet the demands of university life (Napoli & Wortman, 1995), and include the following: family (nuclear and extended), personal relationships, work, home, community, and finances. Influencing factors that may affect student performance relate mainly to constraints set by student activities with regard to the pressures of work and family life as well as to the way that students organize their studies and integrate course requirements with other competing and continuing commitments (Tinto, 1987). Persistence is a synonym for student progress and refers to behavior whereby students continue to make progress through a course or degree program by remaining continuously 11 11 enrolled (Kember, 1995). In this study persistence was defined as successful course completion (Gibson, 1990) in an undergraduate distance course at Athabasca University. It is operationalized as course completion/non-completion according to individual course contract dates. Completers were operationally defined as students who completed their course and received an academic passing grade. Non-completers were operationally defined as those students who a) were non-starters—that is they did not commence work on their course; b) withdrew from their course; or c) received an academic failing grade (Bajtelsmit, 1988). Assumptions of the Study The decision to persist or drop out of a program of study is highly complex and often involves the interplay of institutional and student factors. These factors are also apparently enduring in nature (Tinto, 1987, 1993). It was assumed that the subjects elected to participate in an undergraduate course at Athabasca University for a variety of reasons (e.g., employment, personal fulfillment, financial, accessibility, and/or prior learning experience in a distance education program) (Willis, 1993). It was assumed that the subjects of this study had experienced and successfully negotiated risk situations relating to life transitions, such as birth of a child, death of a loved one, marriage difficulties, divorce, unemployment, or career changes. Rutter (1984) stated that “we have all experienced risks and stressful life events, and we all require protective mechanisms at some times and in some situations more than others throughout our life span” (p.32). Given the dynamic nature of resiliency, adults move in and out of resiliency. This is the nature of human development (Rutter, 1984). If, as Werner and Smith (1992) and Rutter (1984) assert, the development of resiliency is a long-term developmental process and the 12 12 human organism is a self- righting mechanism, protective processes are clearly those that promote successful, healthy development throughout the life span. An assumption was made that the students who responded in this study accurately reported perceptions regarding life events, external commitments, and resiliency skills. Limitations of the Study The study has several limitations. As with all correlational studies, causality is inferred, but cannot be demonstrated. In addition, selection bias (Cook & Campbell, 1979) may have influenced the results. In this correlational study, participation was voluntary and it is possible that the sample differed from the Athabasca Unive rsity undergraduate population in its intent to persist or graduate, resulting in selection bias. The generalizability of the findings to other institutions is also questionable. Because this study relied upon subject self- report, the complexity of human nature and accuracy of self- report leads to measurement problems, and therefore may not be generalizable to another sample of undergraduate distance education students. This study looked only at students registered in their first undergraduate distance cour se at a large university, and was a sample of convenience. Therefore results may not be generalizable to other distance education institutions. Research on resilience has been limited to health prevention and promotion, employee assistance programs, and fostering resilience in grade school (kindergarten to grade twelve). Generalizability to adult learners in distance education must be viewed with caution. Summary Participation and persistence in education and those factors that contribute to their occurrence continue to interest practitioners and researchers alike. As Powell, Conway, and Ross (1990) so aptly note, “The question of why some students successfully study through 13 13 distance education and others do not is becoming increasingly important as distance education moves from a marginal to an integral role in the provision of post-secondary education” (p. 5). A major emphasis of much research in adult and distance education has been on failure, involving studies that explore why people fail or drop out of courses or programs (Tinto, 1993). Therefore a look at “what works” is clearly needed. This study, which focused particularly on the situational experiences of adult undergraduate students in a large distance education university, was intended to respond to calls in the literature for a new understanding about the nature of undergraduate persistence. To increase understanding of the variables associated with persistence and non-persistence, this study investigated the relationship between persistence in und ergraduate distance education and resilience, life events, and external commitments. In addition to examining the influence of personal resiliency on persistence in undergraduate distance courses, situational (e.g., life events, external commitments) aspects of resiliency and persistence in undergraduate education were investigated. It is expected that the results of this study of persistence in adult learners will provide distance educators with a profile of individual learner strengths and assistance in developing strategies to help distance learners transform their adversities into accomplishments. 14 14 CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE The focus of this chapter is a review of the literature on (a) resilience, with its related constructs of risk and protective factors; (b) risk and resilience in education; (c) adult learning; and (d) the contribution made by the self-efficacy component of Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory to the study of resilience as a determinant for persistence in distance education. A significant amount of research has occurred in the area of risk, protective factors, and resilience as it relates to children from “at risk” environments. Low socioeconomic status, being a member of a minority status, chronic illness, affective disorders in parents, and poor school achievement are among the many risk factors associated with negative outcomes in children. However, the unexpected positive outcomes of some children in the face of adversity led researchers to investigate the phenomenon of “protective factors” and “resilience” (Masten & O’Connor, 1989: Rutter, 1987; Werner & Smith, 1992). Much research has focused on the personal characteristics of identified “resilient” children, most of it dealing with “at risk” children who failed to develop psychopathologies as would be predicted by the presence of multiple risk factors. In addition, there are a few longitudinal studies involving adults. Most notably, Felsman and Valliant (1987), Long and Valliant (1987), and Valliant (1993) found inner-city junior high school males were at risk to reproduce their underclass status; Moen, Dempster-Mclain, and Williams (1989) found that social support contributed to resilience in a cohort of senior women; and Beardslee (1989) reported the value of relationships as central to resilience in civil rights workers. 15 15 Resilience Resilience is the ability to absorb high levels of disruptive change while displaying minimal dysfunctional behavior (Werner, 1995). Although resilient people face no less of a challenge than others when they confront change, they tend to regain their equilibrium faster, maintain a higher level of productivity, to be physically and emotionally healthier, and generally rebound from the demands of change even stronger than before (Rutter, 1990). Flach (1988) suggested that human beings experience disruptions and the need for reintegration throughout the life span and this cycle is repeated and activated, not only by extraordinary stresses, but also by moving from one stage to the next in the natural course of the human life cycle. Coping with stress and disruptive changes is part of living, but how one meets those experiences and gets on with his or her life is the basis of the resilience framework (Flach, 1988). Although it is difficult to identify the roots of interest in resilience, three fields of research have played crucial roles in identifying resilient characteristics. First, the consistency of the findings of marked variations in outcomes in the quantitative research with high-risk populations (Rutter, 1966, 1987) forced investigators to appreciate how many children seemed to escape relatively unscathed from adversity. Second, research into temperament following the pioneering lead of Thomas, Birch, Chess, Hertzig, and Korn (1963) provided empirical evidence that children’s qualities did indeed influence their variable responses to a variety of stress situations (Rutter, 1977). Third, Adolf Meyer (1957) had long argued for the developmental importance of the ways in which people met key life changes and transitions. His psychobiological approach placed emphasis on the importance of person-environment interactions at these key turning points in people’s lives (Rutter, 16 16 1986). Similarly, Murphy’s studies of coping and mastery (Murphy, 1962; Murphy & Moriarity, 1976) drew attention to the importance of variations in the ways people deal with threat and challenge. According to these studies, resilience was not just a matter of constitutional strength or weakness; it was also a reflection of an ability to negotiate risk situations. In the context of negotiating risk, it was found that some individuals utilize a set of protective mechanisms (Garmezy, 1985; Masten & Garmezy, 1985) to manage and maintain high self-esteem and self-efficacy in spite of facing the same adversities that lead other people to give up and lose hope. More specifically, personality features such as high self- esteem and an internal locus of control, as well as environmental resources such as secure, stable, affectionate relationships, and the perception of social support have been found to ameliorate the effects of stress (Garmezy, 1993; Rutter, 1987; Werner, 1989, 1993). The greater the number of stressful life events, the more protective factors needed to counter balance the total exposure to risk to ensure a positive outcome (Rutter, 1985; Werner, 1989). Accordingly, a protective mechanism is one in which protective factors attenuate the effects of risk on outcomes (Rutter, 1990). The terms protective factors, risk factors, and competence were used by Garmezy (1993), Rutter, (1987), and Werner and Smith (1992) to describe the characteristics of children as they responded positively or negatively to stressors in their lives. This pivotal work in risk and protective factors focused on the phenomenon of perceived “invulnerability” in children despite risk factors. The stressors or “risk factors” most likely to cause vulnerability include the following: low socioeconomic status; large family size; single parent head of household ; minority race status; mental illness of mother; foster home 17 17 placement; paternal criminality; and chronic illness, with poverty cited as the leading stressor (Fine, 1991; Flach, 1989; Garmezy, 1991; Garmezy, 1993; Masten, 1994; Rutter, 1985; and Rutter, 1987). The very same life circumstances that are identified as a cause of failure for one person may be used to explain the success for another when resilience is taken into account. Cohler (1987) explained this phenomenon below. Little is known of the manner in which persons create a narrative that renders adversity coherent in terms of experienced life events, or of the manner in which presently constructed meanings of life changes may be altered in order to maintain a sense of personal integration. For some persons, at particular points in the life course, the fact of such misfortunes as poverty or the untimely death of a parent during early childhood is used as an explanation for the failure to realize personal goals; for other persons, this misfortune becomes the impetus for increased effort in order to attain these goals (Cohler, 1987, p. 365). Clinical studies of resilience in adults have involved populations of mostly men. A longitudinal study of 456 Boston inner-city junior high school students (Felsman & Valliant, 1987; Long & Valliant, 1987; Valliant, 1993) involved male students who were considered at high risk to reproduce their underclass status. The youth in the study were followed from early adolescence to late middle age when it was determined that “the chaos, unemployment, and extreme poverty of the most disadvantaged subjects had not affected the capacity of the majority of them to obtain jobs, maintain them and be promoted. Indeed, equal ratings for social class and psychological well-being . . . suggest unexpected resilience” (Long & Valliant, 1989, p. 210). 18 18 Studies of resilience in adult women include a qualitative study of older women who had experienced a major loss such as the death of a spouse (Moen, Dempster-McClain, & Williams, 1989). The study identified underlying themes of self- reliance, equanimity, existential aloneness, perseverance and meaningfulness as characteristics of resilience. All respondents were Caucasian and successful adjustment was determined by social involvement in a senior center. In another extensive investigation, a 30- year panel study of 427 wives and mothers from upstate New York used event history techniques to investigate the effect of multiple roles on the longevity of the women (Moen, Dempster-McClain, & Williams, 1989). Longevity was found to be promoted by the social integration of the women as measured by the number of roles occupied, with membership in voluntary organizations being the most conducive to long life. This study assumed definitions associated with competence and psychological wellness that are rooted in middle class cultural expectations of women. In yet another study, an in-depth life- history approach was used with male and female civil rights workers, childhood cancer survivors, and adolescents whose parents suffered from affective disorders explored the role of self- understanding in resilient individuals (Beardslee, 1989). Respondents from all three groups stressed the value of relationships as central to being able to overcome the adversity in their lives. Among the civil rights workers, shared commitment to the movement and a political or religious belief system was also reported to be an important part of their resilience. Patterns of Resilience In a literature review, Polk (1997) identified four patterns of resilience, specifically, (a) the dispositional pattern, (b) the relational pattern, (c) the situational pattern, and (d) the 19 19 philosophical pattern. These four constructs manifest a larger underlying pattern of resilience, each contributing both individually and synergistically to a personal web of support for each individual that ameliorate or buffer that person’s response to risk factors or stressful events. The dispositional pattern refers to the pattern of physical and ego-related psychosocial attributes that contribute to the manifestation of resilience. Psychosocial attributes are characteristics reflective of personal competence and a sense of self, while physical attributes are the constitutional and genetic factors that enter into the development of resilience. These physical factors include intelligence, health, and temperament. Resilient individuals are characteristically intelligent, scoring higher on scholastic aptitude and educational achievement tests than non-resilient persons (Brown & Rhodes, 1991; Werner, 1986). Additionally, resilient people generally have a history of good health, attractive physical appearance, and athletic competence (Brown & Rhodes, 1991; Heinzer, 1995; Wagnild & Young, 1990; Werner & Smith, 1982). Finally, characteristics of temperament that elicit positive attention from primary caretakers are also indicative of resilience (Werner, 1986, 1990). The ego-related psychosocial factors indicative of resilience include a sense of mastery (Wagnild & Young, 1993), an awareness of global self- worth (Heinzer, 1995), and positive self-esteem (Beardslee & Podorefsky, 1988; Brown & Rhodes, 1991; Heinzer, 1995; Losel & Bliesener, 1990; Wagnild & Young, 1993; Werner, 1986, 1990). In addition, a sense of self-confidence (Robson, 1991; Wagnild & Young, 1990), belief in self-efficacy (Fine & Schwebel, 1991; Losel & Bliesener, 1990), and autonomy and self-reliance (Gjerde, Block, & Block, 1986; Poulson, 1993; Werner, 1982) characterize 20 20 resilience. An individual’s dispositional pattern contributes to an overall pattern of resilience when it reflects these physical and psychosocial characteristics. The relational pattern refers to the characteristics of roles and relationships that influence resilience. This pattern includes both intrinsic and extrinsic aspects defined as the placement of value on both close confiding relationships as well as on a broader social network. Intrinsic aspects include turning to another person to have sense made of an experience or to derive comfort (Beardslee & Podorefsky, 1988), having skill in identifying and relating to positive role models (Werner, 1982), and having a willingness to seek out a confidante (Beardslee, 1989; Rabkin, Remien, & Katoff, 1993). In addition, the intrinsic nature of relationships is reflected in a deep commitment to relationships and the development of personal intimacy (Beardslee, 1981, 1983). The relational pattern also reflects extrinsic social interests. Resilience is manifested in having multiple interests and hobbies (Beardslee & Podorefsky, 1988; Werner, 1982) as well as a commitment to education, employment, and social activities (Beardslee & Podorefsky, 1988; Heinzer, 1995; Rabikin, Remien, & Katoff, 1993; Werner, 1990). Resilience is also evident in a willingness to seek community support (Higgins, 1994) and positive social interactions with family, friends, and others (Heinzer, 1995). This characteristic pattern of an individual’s roles and relationships contributes to an overall composite pattern of resilience. The third contributing pattern is labeled situational. This pattern discloses resilience as a characteristic approach to situations or stressors and is manifested in cognitive appraisal skills, problem-solving ability, and attributes that indicate a capacity for action in facing a situation. The situational pattern includes the ability to make a realistic assessment of one’s 21 21 capacity to act and of the expectations or consequences of that action (Beardslee & Podorefsky, 1988). It also includes the ability to be aware of what can and cannot be accomplished and the capacity to specify more limited goals (Beardslee, 1989; Werner, 1982), to perceive changes in the world (Beardslee, 1983), to use active problem-oriented coping (Losel & Bliesener, 1990), and to reflect on new situations (Garmezy, 1991). Flexibility, perseverance, and resourcefulness all contribute to this aspect of the pattern of resilience (Kadner, 1989; Rabkin, Remien, & Katoff, 1993; Wagnild & Young, 1990), as does having an internal locus of control (Beardslee & Podorefsky, 1988; Wagnild & Young, 1990; Werner, 1990). Finally, the situational pattern also is manifested by novelty seeking (Block & Block, 1980), curiosity (Wagnild & Young, 1990), an exploring nature (Gjerde, Block, & Block, 1986), and creativity (Higgins, 1994). The fourth construct synthesized from the literature as characteristic of resilience is the philosophical pattern (Polk, 1997). This pattern is manifested by personal beliefs. The belief that self-knowledge is valuable and that reflection about oneself and events is beneficial contribute to this pattern (Beardslee, 1989; Higgins, 1994). There is also a conviction that good times lie ahead (Rabkin, Remien, & Katoff, 1993), and a belief in finding positive meanings in experiences (Higgins, 1994). Additionally, a belief that lives are worthwhile and meaningful and a conviction in the value of one’s contributions are inherent in the manifestation of this pattern (Heinzer, 1995; Rabkin, Remien, & Katoff, 1993; Wagnild & Young, 1990). There is a realization that life has a purpose, that each person’s life path is unique, and that it is important to maintain a balanced perspective of one’s life (Wagnild & Young, 1990). 22 22 Adversity (Risk) and Protective Mechanisms Rutter (1987) viewed resilience not as a fixed attribute, but as vulnerabilities or protective mechanisms that modify the individual’s response to risk situations and operate at turning points during his or her life (Garmezy, 1991; Rutter, 1987). Rutter illustrated this point clearly: Protection does not reside in the psychological chemistry of the moment but in the ways in which people deal with life changes and in what they do about their stressful or disadvantageous circumstances. Particular attention needs to be paid to the mechanisms operating at key turning points in people’s lives when a risk trajectory may be redirected onto a more adaptive path (Rutter, 1987, p. 329). Resilience arises out of a belief in one’s own self-efficacy, the ability to deal with change, and a repertoire of social problem-solving skills (Rutter, 1987). Michael Rutter investigated the children of people diagnosed as mentally ill on the Isle of Wight and in inner city London. Following 125 children over a 10-year span, he discovered that many of the children of people with mental illness failed to develop psychopathologies. Rutter began to study the quality that he believed protected these children from their parent’s disease. He determined that resilience was not just a matter of personal strength or weakness; it included taking action to address a stressful situation. Rutter stated that protective factors “inoculate” or “steel” children against negative outcomes. Even more important, resilience may transform or make stronger the lives of those who are resilient (Kaufman, Cook, Arny, Jones, & Pittinsky, 1994). The presence of resilient behavior may be in response to adversity in the form of maintenance or normal development despite the adversity, or a promoter of growth beyond 23 23 the present level of functioning. Further, resilience may be promoted not necessarily because of adversity, but, indeed, may be developed in anticipation of inevitable adversities (Kaufman et al., 1994). Adversity is not limited to man- made disasters (e.g., war, famine, poverty), or to natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, or droughts. Adversity may occur in everyday life in the form of divorce, abandonment, physical abuse, substance abuse, illness, death, or significant change in home, job, or education. The presence of protective mechanisms moderates a person’s reaction to stressful situations to produce resilient traits for successful adaptation (Werner & Smith, 1992). The traits necessary for resilient adaptation to change or adversity are listed in Tables 1 and 2 (Richardson, Neiger, Jensen, & Kumpfer, 1990). The learning that occurs from the life experience generally draws upon the individual’s creative or systematic problem solving abilities. Life events, which force an addition or deletion of a component of the worldview, stimulate coping and reintegrating responses, and leave a person more skilled (Werner, 1989). Resiliency skills build upon the foundation of protective factors and these learned skills may be used for subsequent life events of a similar nature. Bond and Wagner (1988) found that the individual protective factors (Table 1) could offset risk factors and enhance other protective factors (Table 2). In a more general sense, research on resilient individuals has found social competence (Carter & McGoldrick, 1988; Reiss, 1981; Werner & Smith, 1992), problem-solving skills (Anthony & Cohler, 1987; Rutter, 1990), an internal locus of control (Garmezy, 1991; Werner & Smith, 1992), and a sense of purpose and future (Bernard, 1991) to be particularly important protective attributes. Bernard (1991) has further identified caring and support, high expectations, and participation and involvement as important protective factors within the school and learning domains. 24 24 Table 1. Individual Protective Processes 1. Pursuit of a cause or purpose in life 2. Positive self-esteem 3. Good decision making skills 4. Belief in a higher force 5. Internal locus of control 6. Self-confidence 7. Good sense of humor 8. Personal strengths and skills 9. Value/behavioral congruence (behaving in accordance with one’s belief) 10. Self mastery 11. Independence of spirit 12. Psychological hardiness (control, commitment, and challenge) 13. Empowerment 14. Ability to be a friend 15. Positive futuristic vision 16. Independence of spirit/autonomous Note. From “The resiliency model,” by G.E. Richardson, B.L. Neiger, S. Jensen, and K.L. Kumpfer, 1990, Health Education, 21(6), 33-39. 25 25 Table 2. Adaptive Protective Mechanisms 1. Build upon protective skills listed in Table 1 but reflecting reintegrating functions 2. Good social problem solving skills 3. Ability to delay gratification 4. Resilient self-efficacy 5. Creative problem solving skills 6. Task oriented 7. Flexibility 8. Good reintegrating capacity (ability to bounce back from adversity) 9. Ability to do personal introspection and determine personal resources for coping 10. Self- motivation 11. Strong capacity for learning Note. From “The resiliency model,” by G.E. Richardson, B.L. Neiger, S. Jensen, and K.L. Kumpfer, 1990, Health Education, 21(6), 33-39. Resilience and Self- Efficacy Measures for resilience, locus of control, hardiness (Funk, 1992; Kobasa, 1982), and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1989) have been used in research to predict success, achievement, and competence of people in organizations and businesses. These measures would fit within 26 26 the category of adult resilience as they place the responsibility for success within the individual. The mark of an efficacious person is to persevere in spite of obstacles and setbacks—the “efficacy” and perseverance despite the odds comes from a belief that one is capable of successfully completing tasks or executing courses of action to deal with the situation (Bandura, 1989). Efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will prove to be in the face of adverse situations—the higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience (Pajares & Miller, 1994). In Social Foundations of Thought and Action, Albert Bandura (1986) wrote that individuals possess a self-system that enables them to exercise a measure of control over their thoughts, feelings, and actions. This self-system houses one’s cognitive and affective structures and includes the abilities to symbolize, learn from others, plan alternative strategies, regulate one’s own behavior, and engage in self-reflection. Self-referent thought mediates between knowledge and action, and through self-reflection individuals evaluate their own experiences and thought processes. Bandura (1986) considered self-reflection the most unique human capability, for through this form of self-referent thought, people evaluate and alter their own thinking and behavior. These self-evaluations include perceptions of self- efficacy, that is, “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” (Bandura, 1997, p. 2). Self- Efficacy and Academic Settings In academic settings, self-efficacy research has focused primarily on two major areas. One area has explored the link between efficacy beliefs and college major and career choices, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics. Hackett (1985), Hackett and Betz 27 27 (1989), and Pajares and Miller (1994, 1995b) have reported that the mathematics self- efficacy of college undergraduates is more predictive of their mathematics interest and choice of math-related courses and majors than either their prior math achievement or math outcome expectations, and that male undergraduates report higher mathematics self- efficacy than do female undergraduates. This line of inquiry has important implications for vocational counseling given that findings have provided insights into the career development of young men and women and can be used to develop career intervention strategies. Studies in the second area have investigated the relationships among efficacy beliefs, related psychological constructs, and academic motivation and achievement. Self- efficacy has been prominent in studies that have explored its relationship with attributions (Bandura, 1991; Bandura & Jourden, 1991; Larson, Piersel, Imao, & Allen, 1990), goal setting, modeling problem solving, reward contingencies, self-regulation, social comparisons, strategy training, teaching and teacher education (Ashton & Webb, 1986), anxiety and self- concept (Pajares & Miller, 1994, 1995a), and varied academic performances. Researchers have reported that self-efficacy beliefs are correlated with other self-beliefs, motivation constructs, and academic choices, changes, and achievement, although effect sizes and relationships greatly depend on the manner in which self-efficacy and criterial tasks are operationalized and assessed. Findings also support Bandura’s (1986) assertion that efficacy beliefs mediate the effect of skills or other self-beliefs on subsequent performance by influencing effort, persistence, and perseverance. Collins (1982) identified children of low, middle, and high mathematics ability who had, within each ability level, either high or low mathematics self- efficacy. After instruction, the children were given new problems to solve and an opportunity 28 28 to rework those they missed. Collins reported that ability was related to performance but, that, regardless of ability level, children with high self-efficacy completed more problems correctly and reworked more of the ones they missed. Bouffard-Bouchard, Parent, and Larivee (1991) found that students with high self-efficacy engaged in more effective self- regulatory strategies at each level of ability. Self-efficacy also enhances students’ memory performance by enhancing persistence (Berry, 1987). In studies of college students who pursue science and engineering courses, high self-efficacy has been demonstrated to influence the academic persistence necessary to maintain high academic achievement (Lent et al., 1984, 1986). Zimmerman and his associates have been instrumental in tracing the relationships among self-efficacy perceptions, self-efficacy for self- regulation, academic self- regulatory processes, and academic achievement (Risemberg & Zimmerman, 1992; Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994). Zimmerman, Bandura, and Martinez-Pons (1992) used path analysis to demonstrate that academic self-efficacy mediated the influence of self-efficacy for self- regulated learning on academic achievement. Academic self-efficacy influenced achievement directly (beta = .21) as well as indirectly by raising students’ grade goals (beta = .36). Other research has found that self-efficacy is related to self-regulated learning variables. Findings in this area suggest that students who believe they are capable of performing academic tasks use more cognitive and metacognitive strategies and persist longer than those who do not (Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). Pintrich and De Groot (1990) reported a strong positive correlation between global academic self-efficacy and both cognitive strategy use and self-regulation through use of metacognitive strategies. In addition, academic self-efficacy was highly correlated with academic performances such as 29 29 semester and final year grades, in-class seatwork and homework, exams and quizzes, and essays and reports. Perceived importance of academic achievement was associated with the outcome variables, but was not a significant predictor. Pintrich and De Groot concluded that self-efficacy played a mediational or “facilitative” role in relation to cognitive engagement, that improving self-efficacy might lead to increased use of cognitive strategies and thereby higher performance, and that “students need to have both the ‘will’ and the ‘skill’ to be successful in classrooms” (p. 38). Resilience and Education The concepts of risk factors, protective factors, and resilience have surfaced in the literature of education and schools in the last decade. The educational literature follows a similar pattern as the clinical work by focusing on identifying and describing “at risk” students (McMillan & Reed, 1993; Peng, 1994), then identifying “protective factors” and interventions (Donmoyer & Kos, 1993; Freiberg, 1993; Lugg & Boyd, 1993), and finally using the concept of resilience to explain success (Gross et al., 1992; Renchler, 1993; Taylor, 1994; Wang & Gordon, 1994). The work on risk and resilience in education has focused on children and youth. In addition to the protective factor of a relationship with a caring competent adult, other protective factors for children and adolescents include sex education programs, involvement in extra-curricular activities such as creative arts and sports, as well as affiliations and church activities (Baxley, 1993; Braddock, 1991; Farrell, 1994; Garibaldi, 1991; Scott-Jones, 1991). While the studies of at-risk, low- income adolescents and children offer a starting point for understanding the experience of adults in higher education, studies on resilience in 30 30 learning environments for adults are rare. Therefore, a review of the literature on adult learning is helpful in order to understand the theories that guide this new field of thought. Adult Learning The literature on adult learning attempts to differentiate between teaching and learning environments and strategies for children and adults. Malcolm Knowles who gave us the term “andragogy,” which he defined as “the art and science of helping adults learn” (Knowles, 1980, p. 43) made a significant contribution in the description of educative environments which were humane and respectful of adults and grounded in democratic philosophy (Knowles, 1980, 1984). Another prominent theory of adult learning is Cross’ (1991) Chain of Response model which is based on the understanding of the characteristics of adult learners, and the developmental stages of adulthood. Mezirow (1980) and Friere (1970) offer a focus on inner meaning and the transformative aspects of learning. The ability for critical reflection and perspective transformation are seen to be especially suited to adult learning. Merriam and Caffarella (1991), in their review of adult learning theories, suggest that there are at least four components of adult learning which can be extracted from the current theories: 1. self-direction or autonomy as a characteristic or goal of adult learning; 2. breadth and depth of life experiences as content or triggers to learning; 3. reflection or self-conscious monitoring of changes taking place; and 4. action or some other expression that learning has taken place. Adult education is conceived as a reciprocal, lifelong process wherein learners continually acquire, use, and reshape theoretical knowledge and coping skills in order to survive and thrive in changing environments (Kerka, 1999). A touchstone of effective 31 31 learning is that students are in charge of their own learning; essentially, they direct their own learning processes. In a discussion of indicators of engaged, effective learning, Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski, and Rasmussen (1995) described the characteristics of students who are responsible for their own learning. One characteristic is a student’s ability to shape and manage change, in other words, to be self-directed. Covey (1989) recognized the importance of self-directedness, which he called “proactivity,” by including it as one of the habits characterizing highly-effective individuals: “It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen” (p. 71). Self-directed learning focuses on the process by which adults take control of their own learning, in particular, how they set their own learning goals, locate appropriate resources, decide on which learning methods to use, and evaluate their progress (Brookfield, 1995). Pressley (1987) emphasized that self- confidence and a feeling of being in control are important roles in learning. Students perform at higher levels if they have confidence in themselves and that personal efficacy is a matter of internal locus of control. Students with more internal locus of control attribute their success to their own abilities and not to luck or chance, as do persons with an external locus of control (Thomas, 1980). When students realize that their thoughts control their actions (i.e., their locus of control is internal), they can positively affect their own beliefs, motivations, and academic performance (McCombs, 1991). Locus of control is a personality construct referring to an individual’s perception of the locus of events as determined internally by his/her own behavior versus fate, luck, or 32 32 external circumstances. McCombs (1991) suggested that what underlies the internal locus of control is the concept of “self as agent.” This means that our thoughts control our actions, and that when we realize this executive function of thinking we can positively affect our beliefs, motivation, and academic performance. “The self as agent can consciously or unconsciously direct, select, and regulate the use of all knowledge structures and intellectual processes in support of personal goals, intentions, and choices” (p. 6). McCombs asserted that “the degree to which one chooses to be self-determining is a function of one’s realization of the source of agency and personal control” (p. 7). Distance Education and Self- Efficacy Distance education literature abounds with terms such as self-efficacy, locus of control, self-directedness, striving, persistence, and motivation (Bergevin, 1967; Caffarella & Barnett, 1994; Holt, 1976; Garrison, 1992; Janne, 1972; Knowles, 1975; Lindeman, 1984; and Tough, 1971) to describe the attributes of the adult learner. Garrison (1992) suggested that distance education learners clearly need efficacy beliefs in their abilities to control their level of educational attainment, to set high yet realistic goals, and to persevere in the face of difficulty. However, resilience in learning is based on life’s meaning which resides in the things people strive for, the goals they set for themselves, and their wants, needs, desires, and wishes (Wang & Gordon, 1994). Bandura (1995) suggested that adult learners require cognitive and self- regulatory competencies to fulfill complex occupational roles and to manage the demands of contemporary life, placing a premium on self-directed learning to equip students to educate themselves throughout their lifetime. In distance education, learners must adapt to self- directed learning by practicing wise time management, reaching out for peer support, and 33 33 interaction with the instructor (Naidu, 1994). All this must be managed to benefit from increased learner control with perhaps the most important part being reducing anxiety while managing self-regulation (Wagner, 1994). According to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy is mediated by a person’s beliefs or expectations about his/her capacity to accomplish certain tasks successfully or demonstrate certain behaviors (Betz & Hackett, 1997). Bandura (1997) postulated that these expectations determine whether or not a certain behavior or performance will be attempted, the amount of effort the individual will contribute to the behavior, and how long the behavior will be sustained when obstacles are encountered. Bandura (1995) stated that the willingness to tackle the challenges or stressors in distance education requires some degree of resilient self- efficacy, and suggested that some setbacks and difficulties in human pursuits serve a useful purpose in teaching that success usually requires sustained effort. After people become convinced that they have what it takes to succeed, they persevere in the face of adversity and quickly rebound from setbacks. Persistence Studies investigating retention and attrition of students in community colleges have typically examined student demographics in order to discover the typology of students who are likely to remain in school and those at risk of dropping out. Many studies in this area attempted to discover and pinpoint the characteristics of persisters and non-persisters. Older students were found to have higher course completion rates (Rekkedal, 1983) as well as higher degree comp letion rates in undergraduate programs (Langenbach & Korhonen, 1988). While both gender and marital status have been found to be insignificant in persistence studies (Langenbach & Korhonen, 1988; Langenbach & Korhonen, 1986, as cited in 34 34 Coggins, 1988; Coggins, 1988), other researchers found that students who had prior experience with nontraditional education were more likely to persist than those with exclusively conventional experience (Rekkedal, 1983; Langenbach Korhonen, 1988; Coldeway & Spencer, 1980, as cited in Coldeway, 1986). In any program of studies, adults are largely voluntary participants, but the student role is just one of many roles and responsibilities competing for their time and attention. Personal reasons such as family problems, lack of childcare, and job demands are often cited as the cause of withdrawal (Tracy-Mumford et al., 1994). Eagle (1981) surveyed 282 dropout students from a community college to determine the reasons for withdrawal. One-third of all responses related to the cost of college, the need for money, or a job; 26.9 % of the students cited personal, family, health, marriage, and maternity reasons. Maples and Owings (1982) surveyed 210 students who withdrew from on-campus programs at a community college. They reported that 26.5% of the respondents chose “other” as their reason for withdrawing (e.g., moving, transferring to another school, and medical reasons), while 2l.6% indicated “personal/family problems,” and 14.8% cited “change in work hours.” Conklin (1991) surveyed 350 non-returning students from a community college. Reasons cited for leaving the college included work schedule conflicts (34.6%), desired coursework completed (18.7%), lifestyle changes or personal problems (25%), and financial difficulties (18%). One of the major reasons identified for adult students who dropout of courses has been conflict between their studies and other commitments in their working or family lives (Cullen, 1994). In more recent studies, Thompson (1997) surveyed 258 adult learners enrolled in an external four- year Bachelor of Education Program. Seventy-five percent of students who withdrew from their courses indicated that work had an adverse affect on 35 35 academic progress, while 45% of this group reported family obligations as a reason fo r course withdrawal. Similarly, Chan (1999) surveyed 712 adult students studying part time at an open university in Hong Kong. Non-completers (defined as low achievers) rated work commitments as having a significant impact upon their studies. In semi-struc tured interviews following this survey, Chan reported six instances where non-completers rated the impact of these commitments higher than did completers: working overtime, doing shift work, traveling outside Hong Kong, engaging in social activities, having a significant change of responsibility at work, and changing job or working conditions. While students cited family and life events as reasons for course non-completion, there were no significant differences between groups (Chan, 1999). One cause of early withdrawal is a gap between learner expectations and reality. Adult learners may get frustrated early by lack of progress, or if they are not given enough information before enrollment to know when to expect change and what they must do to achieve it (Dirkx & Jha, 1994). Non-completers are motivated enough to enroll in educational programs and many clearly value education (Quigley, 1995), but negative past experiences of school may be too strong. Malicky and Norman (1994) also concluded that dropout is related to past school and home experiences, but they stressed that participation is multifaceted. Often, educational and practical concerns work together to effect the decision to stay or to leave (Perin & Greenberg 1994). Tinto’s (1975) model, most often applied to higher education, proposed that retention is related to how well students are socially and academically integrated into the institution. Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) proposed a multivariate model of student retention in post secondary institutions to explain student departure from college prior to graduation. His 36 36 model included a comprehensive set of demographic, cognitive, psychosocial, and institutional factors. The model proposed that both student characteristics and interactions with the social and academic environments of the institution were the principal determinants of educational goals and institutional commitment. These characteristics and interactions account for the decision to persist or withdraw from college. Working backwards, Tinto (1993) proposed that two dimensions of commitment, namely institutional commitment and goal commitment, directly influenced persistence or departure behavior. Institutional commitment represents the degree to which an individual is motivated to graduate from a specific college or university. Goal commitment, or educational goal commitment, represents the degree to which the individual is committed, or motivated, to earn a college or university degree. In turn, institutional and goal commitments are directly influenced by external commitments or demands and psychosocial characteristics. Psychosocial factors, rather than directly impacting performance outcomes such as persistence, mediate the antecedents to these outcomes. For example, self-esteem, although not directly related to persistence, had a direct impact on three key constructs within Tinto’s model, namely academic integration, social integration, and institutional commitment (Munro, 1981). Also, need for affiliation had a direct impact on social integration, and achievement need, a measure of the degree of effort and quality of effort an individual expends to surmount obstacles, was directly to academic integration, social integration, and goal commitment (Pascarella & Chapman, 1983a, 1983b). This model, however, does not include psychological variables such as self-esteem and behavioral consequences of dropout behavior. Rather, the emphasis is put on the ability of students to integrate the academic environment into their other commitments. 37 37 Psychological factors may affect adjustment to university- level studies. In their review of the literature, Baker and Siryk (1989) reported that several measures of psychological maladjustment (e.g., anxiety, depression, loneliness, social avoidance, and psychological distress) interfered with adjustment and attachment to college. Conversely, measures of positive psychological health (e.g., self-esteem, psychological independence, psychological well-being, positive affect, and positive self-concept) have been positively related to adjustment and attachment to college (Baker & Siryk, 1989). Since the earlier work by Sarason, Johnson, and Seigel (1978), it has been recognized that life demands/life stress is negatively related to grade point average. Carter (1982) reported that family responsibilities were among the five most prevalent of 60 reasons for the attrition of older and part-time students. Berkove (1976) observed, for older female students who were married and had at least one child living at home, a significantly higher attrition rate in comparison to students with no family responsibility. Brainard (1973), Martin (1974), and Hunter and Sheldon (1984) reported family pressure and obligations as major reasons for withdrawal among community college students. In a study of non-college external experiences, Metzner (1984) found that a global measure of [outside] stress was significantly related to attrition for students attending an urban commuter university. It is unlikely that life stress has a direct impact on grade point average. That is, having high life demands does not mean that a student has low academic aptitude. Rather, it is more likely that life demands influence a third factor or set of factors (e.g., a student’s ability to allocate sufficient time to stud y) that directly impacts upon academic performance (Napoli & Wortman, 1995). Indeed, life demands and events inventories such as the Life Events Inventories (Sarason et al., 1989), the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes & Rahe, 38 38 1967), and the Hassles Scale (Lazarus, Cohen, Folkman, Kanner, & Schaefer, 1980) have been found to be negatively related to adjustment and commitment measures (Baker & Siryk, 1989). These findings support the view that external life demands interfere with the ability to integrate and commit to college. Environmental factors have also been shown to enhance integration and persistence. Recently, Tinto (1993) incorporated social-support theory into his model by describing the positive effects of social support on adjustment to college. Tinto’s (1993) acknowledgement of this additional factor is based on the work of House (1981), McCarthy, Pretty, and Catano (1990), Pearson (1990), and Jacobi (1991), who reported that individual, supportive relationships prevent and reduce the harmful effects of stress, and enhance individuals’ ability to cope effectively with stress in specific social settings. Just as obtaining social support from an individual can enhance persistence, so too can obtaining support from social networks. Bean and Metzner (1985) reported positive relationships between parental support and peer relationships on persistence decisions for a national sample of traditional age (18 to 24 years) full-time students, traditional age part-time students, and older part-time students. Hays and Oxley (1986) examined social support by assessing the network density and frequency of network interactions on adapting to college. They observed a positive impact for establishing new acquaintances on adapting to college. In addition, there is evidence that the establishment of supportive personal relationships with faculty, peers, and other significant persons helps students cope better with the demands of college (Flemming, 1985; Ostrow, Paul, Dark, & Berhman, 1986). Pugliese (1994) investigated the constructs of loneliness, communication apprehension, communication competence, and locus of control as psychological predictors 39 39 of persistence. In a telephone survey of 306 students in a community college, Pugliese found that while none of the variables were significant predictors of withdrawal, the concept of external attribution was a promising variable to be examined in further research. Expanding Tinto’s model of disengagement, Bean and Metzner (1988) identified environmental variables (e.g., family responsibilities, work) to explain dropout in older, non-traditional college students. Bean and Metzner (1988) found non-persisters had greater work demands (e.g., the number of hours/week in off- campus employment) than persisters. Mulligan and Hennessy (1990) reported greater external demands (e.g., outside employment, family responsibility, and financial demands) among non-persisting older college students. Environmental variables may push students out of school by putting too much pressure on their time and resources. Kennedy and Powell (1976, as cited in Cookson, 1990) analyzed detailed case-study information on 684 students who had withdrawn entirely, 291 who had partially withdrawn, and 236 students who were “at risk” to withdraw. Applying a human development, life-stage perspective, Kennedy and Powell conceptualized personal characteristics and life circumstances that led to dropout as follows: Personal characteristics that tend to change slowly include motivation, stage of adult development, educational background, personality, aptitude and educational self- concept. Life circumstances that may change rapidly include changes in occupation, relationship with family and peer group, health, finance, and support from the distance education institution (Kennedy & Powell, 1976, as cited in Cookson, 1990, p.24). 40 40 They went on to discuss how life circumstances and personal characteristics interact to explain dropout: The individual part-time student has a difficult time in maintaining an equilibrium within his life, pressures arising from his job, from his domestic situation, from his academic work and also from possible variations in his own personality. If one or more pressures increase unduly, the equilibrium is upset and the student may become “at risk” (p.62), … and the stronger the [personal] characteristics of a student the more unlikely an increase in pressure will upset his equilibrium (p. 70). Relevance of Resilience to Persistence for Distance Educators Distance educators must be prepared to address the wide range of needs unique to distance learners. Distance learners must demonstrate the following: (a) assume responsibility for their own learning; (b) become active in asking questions and obtaining help; (c) be respectful of the flexibility required by other students; (d) be able to clarify their own learning goals; (e) manage multiple roles in life; (f) develop a system of support in learning for others where to learn more; and (g) be prepared to deal with technical difficulties in the two-way flow of information (Jonassen, Davidson, Collins, Campbell, & Haag, 1995; Kerka, 1999). Laube (1992) suggested that distance educators must support student motivation, and promote learning pleasure and effectiveness by understanding the nature of the adult learner. Knowledge of the resilient nature of the adult learner assists educators in promoting the development of appropriate protective mechanisms that enhance the learner’s capacity to negotiate effectively with the learning experience (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1990). These factors are presented in Table 3. Knowing the factors that help students persist in distance 41 41 education courses is most valuable to the educator, who then can approach at-risk students directly and offer specific information and encouragement that can help them succeed. Kahl and Cropley (1986) suggested that educators need to develop teaching and learning approaches which help students to master their difficulties, rather than accepting the difficulties as a limiting factor in distance learning settings. Caffarella and Barnett (1994) suggested that educators employ learning techniques that capture the positive feelings that adults have about themselves as learners, as well as acknowledge and work with their negative perceptions. Table 3 Characteristics of Instructional Practices Promoting Protective Mechanisms Instructor Participation In: Student Participation In: 1. Maximized learning time 1. Setting goals 2. High expectations of student achievement 2. Making learning decisions 3. Opportunity to respond 3. Engaging in cooperative learning 4. High degree of course engagement Note. From “Toward a knowledge base for school learning,” by M.C. Wang, G.D. Haertel, and H.J. Walberg, 1993, Review of Educational Research, 63(3), 249-294. Summary A number of theoretical models of persistence and dropout have emerged to provide explanation and prediction of those phenomena. The one point of agreement is the 42 42 multivariate nature of persistence. Variables posited include those related to the individual student (such as background or predisposing characteristics), the student’s individual circumstances (for example, life changes), and organizational or institutional commitment. The prime concern, the criterion variable, is the persistence behavior of the student learning at a distance, defined as course completion or degree completion. While much research exists in the area of dropout and persistence, studies have generally focused on a single variable or a limited combination of variables. Persistence in distance education is a complex phenomenon influenced by a multitude of variables. As students move through their life span, they encounter a number of life events or stressors, and assume a variety of roles, one of which is that of the learner. There are individual variations in people’s responses to stress and adversity; some individuals cope successfully, while others react negatively. Those who cope are able to overcome their vulnerability, or their risk, because of protective mechanisms operating at key turning points in their lives that help them be resilient. Recently, the concept of resilience has appeared in the literature to explain factors or circumstances that provide support and protection for adults who overcome adversity, survive stress, and rise above disadvantaged situations. These studies identify four distinct patterns of resilient characteristics required of individuals to succeed despite the odds. The concept of resilience can be applied to help re-define research on persistence to address positive, rather than negative factors. A life-span developmental perspective provides a mechanism to assess a student’s potential for persistence. By examining the interaction among three main elements, (a) life events, (b) external commitments, and (c) resilience, the life-span developmental perspective offers a unique understanding of persistent students in 43 43 distance education. As shown in Figure 1, risk factors and protective mechanisms interact to influence persistence. Figure 1. Factors affecting persistence in distance education. While much has been written about risk factors and predictors of dropout, little is known about the protective processes and mechanisms in distance education that reduce risk for dropout and foster persistence. Knowing the resilient characteristics of distance learners may help to predict which students will persist in their studies. Knowledge of the factors that Risk Factors ?? Life Events ?? External Commitments Interaction Protective Factors Resiliency Skills ?? Insight ?? Independence ?? Relationships ?? Initiative ?? Creativity & Humor ?? Morality ?? General Resilience Persistence 44 44 help students persist in distance education courses is valuable to educators, who can then approach at-risk students directly and offer specific information, encouragement, and interventions to help them succeed. 45 45 CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY This chapter begins with a description of the design of the study, and then provides a description of the subjects involved in this study, an overview of the instruments used to collect data, and a detailed description of the procedure utilized in collecting the data. Research Design A correlational design was used in this study with data collected from two psychometric tests and one questionnaire. Correlational research refers to studies in which the purpose is to discover relationships between variables. The correlational method permits the researcher to analyze the rela tionships among a large number of variables in a single study. Self-report measures were obtained from two psychometric tests and one questionnaire administered to students registered in their first undergraduate course at Athabasca University as of April 1, 2000. In this study, a survey method was used to assess three predictors of persistence: resilience, life events, and external commitments. This study used the survey method of data collection for a number of reasons. Surveys are easy to administer, are simple to score and code, and are less expensive than telephone or face-to- face interviews (Lockhart 1984). Mail surveys are a powerful, effective, and efficient alternative to their more expensive relatives—the telephone survey and the personal interview. Also, studies have shown that people provide more honest answers to mail surveys than they do to other interviewing methods—due to anonymity and confidentiality of responses—and mail surveys may increase the credibility of the answers (Baumgartner & Heberlein, 1984). However, because surveys are just a ‘snapshot’ of 46 46 behavior at one time and place, one must be careful about assuming they are valid in different contexts. One of the problems with surveys is uncertainty about the response rate. Saltzman (1993) reports a wide variation in response rates for mail surveys. The range is from under 1% for randomly selected samples of consumers to over 50% when incentives are used with a qualified sample. Administering the survey using a familiar means of communication usually produce higher response rates (Dillman, 1978). As students at Athabasca University communicate with their instructors and the University using a variety of communication technologies including postal mail, a mail survey was considered appropriate. Response rates of 25% to 30% are common in undergraduate populations at Athabasca University (R. Powell, personal communication, March 15, 2000). To investigate the relationship between the dependent and independent variables, scores from the Resiliency Attitudes Scale (RAS), the Life Events Inventory (LEI), and a questionnaire on external commitments were used to form the independent variables. The questionnaire was composed of six items relating to external commitments measured using a five-point Likert scale. Data from student records relating to course completion/non- completion were used to form the dependent variable, persistence. Independent Variables 1. Life-events are defined as noteworthy occurrences whose advent is either indicative of, or requires a significant change in, the on- going life pattern of the individual (Hultsch & Deutsch, 1981). As Hultsch and Deutsch (1981) noted, the stress or crisis of the life events does not reside within the event or within the individual, but arises from an interaction between the individual and the situation. In this study, life events were 47 47 operationalized as scores on the Life Events Inventory, as measured by the number of life events experienced in adulthood (since the age of 18 years). Subjects were asked to total the number of life events they had experienced from a list provided and enter the total in a space on the questionnaire. 2. External commitments are factors that define the resources that facilitate, and the deficits that interfere with, the individual’s adaptation to the demands of an event. These resources and deficits set the limits of the adaptation process—they are the tools with which the individual has to work. Many variables function as mediators of life events including home, finances, work, family, personal relationships, and community (Palmore et al., 1979). In this study, external commitment was operationalized as scores on a 6-item questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. Subjects were asked to assess the effects of the following six types of external commitments on their time and energy: family (nuclear and extended); work; home; personal relationships; community; finances. For each question, students identified a response ranging from one to five, which reflected the level of commitment in these areas. Scores were totaled for each of the six questions, yielding a total score for external commitments. 3. Resilience includes psychosocial adaptation processes that are defined as those behaviors in which people engage when they are confronted with a life event or external commitment, and includes coping strategies, strategies for managing academic demands, and protective processes for negotiating risk and adversity. In this study, resilience was operationalized as scores on the Resiliency Attitudes Scale. 48 48 Dependent Variable Persistence is a synonym for student progress and refers to behavior whereby students continue to make progress through a course or degree program by remaining continuously enrolled (Kember, 1995). In this study, persistence was defined as successful course completion (Gibson, 1990) of the student’s first undergraduate course at Athabasca University. It was operationalized as course completion/non-completion according to individual course contract dates. Completers were operationally defined as students who completed their course and received an academic passing grade. Non-completers were operationally defined as those students who a) were non-starters—that is they did not commence work on their course; b) withdrew from their course; or c) received an academic failing grade (Bajtelsmit, 1988). Participants In January 2000, there were approximately 10,000 registrations in an undergraduate distance course at Athabasca University. Students were considered to be first-time distance students if they met the following criteria: (a) they were registered in one undergraduate distance course as of April 1, 2000; and (b) this was the first undergraduate distance course in which they had been enrolled at Athabasca University. To control for the intrinsic variable of age, only students who were between the ages of 30 to 45 were included in this study. Following approval by the Ethics Review Sub-Committee, a random sample of 460 students was obtained from Athabasca University student records. Instruments The Resiliency Attitudes Scale. The Resiliency Attitudes Scale (RAS) (Appendix B) was developed by Biscoe and Harris (1994) to assess resilience as defined by Wolin and 49 49 Wolin (1993). The RAS is a 72-item psychometric test designed to tap attitudes that would reflect each of the seven components of resilience identified by Wolin and Wolin (1993): insight, independence, relationships, initiative, creativity, humor, and morality. An additional subscale was added to assess general resiliency, which Biscoe and Harris (1994) defined as persistence at working through difficulties and the belief that one can survive and make things better. As illustrated in Figure 2, these resiliency subscales were further divided into “Skill Subscales” made up of questions that tap the basic resiliency skills within each resiliency. To reduce response bias, approximately half of the questions were written so that high resiliency would be indicated if the person agreed with the question and half the questions were reverse coded so that if the person disagreed with the question it would indicate high resiliency. The Resiliency Attitudes Scale (RAS) is designed to be administered in a self-report format and requires approximately 15 minutes to complete. Students were asked to rate each of the 72 statements using a five-point Likert scale that best described how they felt about each statement. 50 50 Figure 2. Resiliency attitudes subscales and skills subscales. The RAS has demonstrated reliability and internal consistency in repeated clinical treatment settings (Biscoe & Harris, 1994). According to Wolin and Wolin (1993), seven of the eight of the resiliency scales were significantly correlated with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), (r = –0.48, p < .05,) and with the Rosenberg Self- Esteem (SE) Scale (r = 0.50, p < .001); 10 of the 16 resiliency subscales were negatively correlated with The Adult Damage Scale (r = –0.49, p < .01); and six of the resiliency scales were negatively correlated with the Childhood Damage Scale (r = –0.32, p < .01). Life Events Inventory. The Life Events Inventory (Sarason, Johnson, & Seigel, 1978) is a 62- item inventory measuring the presence of life changes, and requires approximately five minutes to complete. The Life Events Inventory (LEI) is a self-report measure that ?? Insight ?? Sensing ?? Knowing ?? Understanding ?? Independence ?? Separating ?? Distancing ?? Relationships ?? Recruiting ?? Attaching ?? Initiative ?? Problem solving ?? Generating ?? Creativity and Humor ?? Creative thinking ?? Creating to express feelings ?? Humor ?? Morality ?? Valuing ?? Helping others ?? General Resilience ?? Persistence ?? Ability to get by 51 51 allows respondents to indicate events that they have experienced during their adult lives (age 18 years and older). Designed for all respondents, the LEI contains a list of specific events that subjects ha ve experienced in their adult lives and a list of life changes that are common to individuals in a wide variety of situations. The LEI items were chosen to represent life changes frequently experienced by individuals in the general population and that potentially might exert a significant impact on the lives of persons experiencing them. The LEI is suitable for an adult population. Text readability is quantified as follows: Flesch Reading Ease = 76.5; Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 5.2. Internal consistency is reported. Split-half reliability using Spearman Brown formula is 0.83. Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha = 0.81 (Sarason et al., 1978). Checklists of life events usually separate the events themselves from the individual’s perception of that event. In addition, checklists have been criticized because they do not ensure that all study participants share a common standard for interpreting the judgement words within the scales (e.g., serious illness) nor can it be assumed that events on the list are independent (e.g., divorce may be associated with financial difficulties) (Monroe & Roberts, 1990). Questionnaire. The Questionnaire (Appendix D), which was developed by the researcher, is designed to be administered in a self-report format, and requires approximately five minutes to complete. The questionnaire has three parts. Part 1 asked students to indicate if this was their first experience with distance education. The second part asked students to list the number of life events from the Life Events Inventory. The third part of the questionnaire asked students to estimate how often they need to spend time and energy on the following commitments: family (including nuclear and extended family), home, work, 52 52 personal relationships, community, and financial. Students were asked to assess each of the six external commitments using a five-point Likert scale. Procedure Following approval by the Human Subjects Sub-Committee, a random sample of 460 undergraduate students, who were between the ages of 30 to 45 and registered in their first undergraduate course at Athabasca University, was obtained from Athabasca University student records. Students who participated were asked to complete the Resiliency Attitudes Scale (Appendix B), the Life Events Inventory (Appendix C), and a questionnaire (Appendix D) all included in a questionnaire packet. Questionnaire packets were individually coded, and these codes were matched to student mailing labels to track individual course completion dates. Students were mailed the questionnaire packet, which also included the Letter of Introduction and a postage-paid return envelope. Upon receiving the questionnaire packet, subjects were asked to first read the Letter of Introduction (Appendix A). The Letter of Introduction discussed the confidentiality of subjects and their unprejudiced right to participation/non-participation. The completed packet was returned to the University via postal mail in a postage-paid, return envelope. If the packet had not been received within four weeks of the mail-out, a post-card was sent. Informed consent. Subjects were sent a questionnaire packet which included a Letter of Introduction (Appendix A) describing the confidentiality of the research and the students’ right to participate/non-participate. Included in the Letter of Introduction was a description of the nature of the research, an overview of the questions in the packet, instructions for completing the questionnaire packet, and instruments/questionnaire (Appendices B, C, D). 53 53 Students were asked to first read the Letter of Introduction before proceeding to complete the questionnaire. The Letter of Introduction advised students that participation or lack of participation was voluntary, and that their agreement to participate would in no way influence their progress in their program. Students were asked to mail the completed form via the postage-paid return envelope to the University. Privacy and confidentiality. Students were advised that their identities would be removed from the questionnaire packets (by the researcher) prior to data analysis. The remaining packet would be assigned a code number to protect the students’ privacy. Furthermore, students were advised that no information, which might reveal an individual student’s identity, would be used in the research results. Students were also advised that their responses would be kept strictly confidential and would not be shared with the instructors or with any administrator of Athabasca University. Following scoring and data analysis, the researcher shredded all copies of the packets. Duration of the Study A student at Athabasca University has six months to complete a three- or four-credit course, and 12 months to complete a six-credit course. Students can work at their own pace and complete courses as quickly as they like. The questionnaire packets were mailed on April 25, 2000 to students who had enrolled in their first undergraduate course as of April 1, 2000. On February 5, 2001, data were gathered from student records to determine whether or not students had completed the course in which they were enrolled. 54 54 CHAPTER 1V RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This chapter begins with a review of the purpose of the study and a description and examination of the participants involved in the study. Course completion data are then presented. Next, the chapter presents the findings of the discriminant analysis used to determine the influence of gender and previous distance education experience as well as life commitments, life events, and resiliency skills on student persistence. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the results of the data analysis, and tables and figures are presented. Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between persistence in undergraduate-level distance courses and resilience, life events, and external commitments. The following research questions were explored: 1. How do life events and external commitments influence undergraduate student persistence in distance courses? 2. How does resilience affect undergraduate student persistence in distance courses? Study Participants A total of 121 first-time Athabasca University students were involved in this study. Students were considered to be first-time distance students if they met the following criteria: (1) they were registered in an undergraduate distance course as of April 1, 2000; and (2) this was the first undergraduate distance course in which they had enrolled at Athabasca University. To control for the intrinsic variable of age, only students between the ages of 30 to 45 were included in this study. 55 55 Based on these criteria, a random sample of 460 students was drawn from student records. A questionnaire packet was mailed to these students on April 25, 2000. Of the 460 students, 124 completed and returned the questionnaire packet. One spoiled packet and two incomplete packets were discarded. The resulting 121 completed packets yielded a response rate of 26.9%. This response rate is considered acceptable for mailed surveys (Fox, Crask, & Kim, 1988), and therefore no follow-up notification via post- card was employed. Gender. Of the 121 students responding to the questionnaire, 30 (24.8 %) were from male respondents, and 91 (75.2 %) were from female respondents. There were somewhat more female respondents, proportionally, in the sample in comparison to the general undergraduate student population. Reported student demographics at Athabasca University indicate that 62.9% of undergraduate students are female (Athabasca University, 2000). Previous experience in distance courses. Approximately half of the respondents (n = 61) had previously taken a distance course at a university or college other than Athabasca University. Of this group, 55 students (91.7 %) had completed that course (see Table 4). Table 4 Number of Subjects Who Had Taken and Completed Previous Distance Courses Gender Previous Distance Completed Previous Distance Course Course Male (n=30) (n=14) (n=13) Female (n=91) (n=47) (n=42) Total (n=121) Total (n=61) Total (n=55) 56 56 Analysis of Course Completion Data All respondents were registered in a 3- or 4-credit course, with the exception of four students who were registered in a six-credit course. A student at Athabasca University has six months to complete a three- or four-credit course, and 12 months to complete a six-credit course. As of February 2, 2001, 57 students (47%) had successfully completed the Athabasca University course in which they were enrolled, and 64 students had not. Of this latter group of non-completers, (a) 38 did not commence work on their course, (b) 19 withdrew from their course, and (c) 7 received an academic failing grade. None of the students enrolled in a six-credit course completed their course; three did not commence work on their course and one withdrew from the course. Of the 64 students in the non-completer group, 14 (22%) were male and 50 (78%) were female. More than half of the students in the non-completer group (53%) had previously taken a distance course. Of the 57 students who successfully completed their Athabasca University course, 16 were male and 41 were female (28% and 72%, respectively). Of the students completing their course, 26 (45%) had previously taken a distance course (see Table 5). 57 57 Table 5 Previous Distance Course Completion by Course Completion/Non-completion Male Female Male Female No Previous Distance Course 9 22 8 22 Previous Distance Course (incomplete) 7 (6) 19 (17) 6 (6) 28 (25) Total 16 41 14 50 Note. Numbers in parentheses represent the number of students who completed a previous distance course. Discriminant Analysis Data were analyzed using the multivariate technique, discriminant analysis, to determine which variable or combinations of variables could be considered predic tors of persistence in undergraduate distance courses. Discriminant analysis is a technique used to build a predictive model of group membership based on observed characteristics of each case. Discriminant analysis is a classification method which measures the importance of factors determining membership within a category. Unlike other acceptable techniques (e.g., multiple regression), discriminant analysis analyzes the interactions among a number of “predictor” variables to arrive at a single composite score that allows prediction of outcomes on a case-by-case basis. The technique is similar to regression analysis; however, discriminant analysis helps to differentiate between or to predict group membership, while regression analysis predicts a certain level of a result. Finally, the information provided by the discriminant functions can be used to classify future samples of individuals. Discriminant Completers Non-completers 58 58 analysis also permits both continuous and dichotomous variables to be used as discriminating variables (Gilbert, 1968). A stepwise discriminant analysis was performed to assess prediction of membership in Group 1 (completers) and Group 2 (non-completers). A stepwise analysis, as opposed to the simultaneous entry of all discriminating variables, was used because of the large number of variables selected for analysis. Stepwise discriminant analysis was performed by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS ©, Version 4). In the first step, this procedure selects the variable with the highest predictive value and then calculates p- values which describe the additional predictive power for each of the remaining variables. The variable that provides the highest amount of additional information for the model is added to the list of predictors. The procedure is continued until none of the remaining variables adds significantly to the model as defined by the list of selected predictors. Subsequently, a discriminant function was computed using the selected predictors. Stepwise selection of variables to enter into the equation was made on the basis of minimizing the overall Wilke’s Lambda (U statistic). While other stepwise procedures are available, Tabachnick and Fidell (1983) recommend that in the absence of contrary reasons, Wilke’s Lambda is the procedure of choice. Since no a priori prediction concerning the relative importance of the 34 variables to be included in the analysis was made, the stepwise procedure was used not only to reduce the number of discriminating variables, but also to provide the best linear combination of variables that were included in the analysis. Only those variables that made a significant 59 59 contribution to the discriminant function were permitted entry, based on a simple F-to-enter criteria. Variables with the highest F-ratios were entered first. The analysis began with the calculation of means and frequencies for 34 variables, and analyses of variance were conducted to determine if significant differences existed between the completion and non-completion groups in terms of these variables. The variables studied are listed below: ?? Gender (1 variable); ?? Taken a previous distance education course (1 variable); ?? Completed a previous distance education course (1 variable); ?? External Commitments (6 variables); ?? Life Events Inventory (1 variable); ?? Resiliency Attitudes Scale (24 variables); The results of the initial analysis are presented and discussed below. Gender and previous distance education experience. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed no significant difference between groups for students who had previously taken a distance course (p = 0.41), or for students who had previously completed a distance course (p = 0.73). These results are contrary to previous research (e.g., Coldeway & Spencer, 1980; Langenbach & Korhonen, 1988; Rekkedal, 1983), which suggests that previous distance education experience may be associated with persistence and reduced likelihood of dropout. No significant difference was found between groups for gender (p=0.43), a finding that is consistent with previous research findings. External commitments. Analysis of variance for the six external commitment variables was conducted to determine if differences existed between the completion and non- 60 60 completion groups. As depicted in Table 6, no significant difference between groups was found for five of the six external commitments, the exception being work commitments. Table 6 Analysis of Variance for External Commitments Source Means SD dF F Family 4.42 1.2733 1 0.6073 Personal 3.76 1.2716 1 0.3655 Home 4.46 0.8567 1 0.4489 Work 4.38 1.2998 1 0.0247* Community 1.88 1.2462 1 0.6342 Financial 2.64 1.1892 1 0.5821 * p = 0.05—0.01. These findings are in large part inconsistent with other research (e.g., Conklin, 1991; Eagle, 1981; Maples & Owings, 1982; Powell et al., 1990) which suggests that external commitments are negatively related to persistence. However, there was a significant difference between groups for work commitments (p = 0.0247). This result supports previous research that work commitments are highly significant as a negative predictor of persistence. Life events. Life events did not appear to play a role in determining whether or not students completed their courses. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for life events revealed no significant difference between groups (mean = 24.4463, SD =10.6367, dF = 1, F = 0.1610; p = 0.6889). This finding is in contrast to other research (e.g., Cookson, 1989; Kennedy & Powell, 1976) which suggests that life events are highly correlated with dropout. However, 61 61 this finding is consistent with more recent research which suggests that life events themselves are not strong predictors of persistence (Chan, 1999; Thompson, 1997). Resiliency attitudes scale. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant differences between groups for four of the resiliency skills (relationships, general resilience, initiative, insight), and five of the resiliency sub skills (attaching, persistence, valuing, recruiting, generating) (see Table 7). Table 7 Analysis of Variance for Resiliency Attitudes Scale Source Means SD dF F Insight 36.2727 3.8951 1 3.0669* Sensing 15.1074 2.314 1 1.1927 Knowing 9.719 2.4248 1 0.8146 Understanding 11.5207 1.7355 1 0.5904 Independence 37.5868 4.9907 1 0.939 Separating 15.3306 2.9718 1 2.0139 Distancing 22.3223 3.303 1 0.0171 Relationships 34.8843 4.7313 1 8.6932*** Recruiting 20.124 3.1667 1 3.3731* Attaching 14.7603 2.6881 1 9.1558*** Initiative 40.2893 4.8179 1 3.646* Problem solving 20.3306 2.6944 1 2.0451 Generating 19.9587 3.0517 1 3.0692* Creativity and Humor 38.4959 5.8349 1 0.2577 Creative thinking 16.5455 2.6181 1 0.0462 Creating to express feelings 10.3719 2.6671 1 0.8123 Humor 11.6116 2.5082 1 0.0182 62 62 Morality 45.7769 4.62 1 2.5766 Valuing 29.9669 3.7663 1 4.9229** Helping others 15.8099 1.7144 1 0.3011 General Resiliency 40.1074 4.8898 1 4.0266** Persistence 20.7025 2.6592 1 6.7584*** Ability to get by 19.2479 3.2844 1 1.7517 Total Resiliency 273.7107 26.4287 1 2.2256 *p 0.1—0.05 **p 0.05—0.01 ***p < 0.01 These findings are not surprising in light of the research on self-efficacy and academic motivation (Bandura, 1988, 1991,1995; Bandura & Jourden, 1991; Betz & Hacket, 1997; Pajares & Miller, 1994, 1995b; Pappas & Loring, 1985). As Pajares and Miller (1994) so aptly noted, beliefs in self-efficacy and personal competence help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will prove in the face of adverse situations. The higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience. Final Discriminant Function As noted earlier, stepwise discriminant analysis selects the variable with the highest predictive value and then calculates p- values which describe the additional predictive power for each of the remaining variables. The variable that provides the highest amount of additional information for the model is added to the list of predictors until none of the remaining variable s adds significantly to the model. 63 63 Only those variables that made a significant contribution to the discriminant function were permitted entry, based on a simple F-to-enter criteria. Variables with the highest F- ratios were entered first. Based on these criteria, the following variables were found to make no significant contribution to the discriminant function: gender; previous distance education experience; life events; family, personal, home, community, and financial commitments, and three of the resiliency skills and 11 of the resiliency sub skills. Ten variables were included in the final discriminant function (Chi square=20.814; dF=9; p=0.0135). The pooled within-groups correlations between discriminating variables and canonical discriminant functions are shown in Table 8. One variable, relationships, failed the tolerance test for within groups and thus was discarded. Table 8 Pooled Within- groups Correlations Between Discriminating Variables and Cononical Discriminant Functions Variable Function 1 Attachment 0.62125 Persistence 0.53376 Work Commitments –0.46692 Valuing 0.45555 Resilience 0.41199 Initiative 0.39204 Recruiting 0.37708 Generating 0.35970 Insight 0.35956 64 64 The canonical discriminant function coefficients, shown in Table 8, suggest that the primary variables responsible for discriminating between students who completed their courses and those who did not complete were attaching, persistence, work commitments, valuing, general resilience, initiative, recruiting, generating, and insight. Overall, based on the discriminant function, 66.12% of the students were classified correctly. Table 9 provides a summary of the classification results. Table 9 Number of Predicted Group Membership Cases Actual Group Group 1 Group 2 (n) (n) (n) Completers 57 38 (66.70%) 19 (33.30%) Non-completers 64 22 (34.40%) 42 (65.60%) Percent of “Grouped” Cases correctly classified: 66.12% Discussion The variables included in the discriminant model can be used to construct a profile of potentially successful and “at risk” Athabasca University (AU) students. There appear to be five major criteria differentiating successful and unsuccessful AU students (see Figure 3). Students with high levels on nine measures of resilience were more likely to succeed in their undergraduate studies. Successful course completers tended to score higher in the following areas: 65 65 ?? in the ability to recruit and select healthy partners and in the ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships; ?? in the ability for knowing what is right and wrong and being willing to take risks for those beliefs, and for asking searching questions and giving honest answers; ?? on three skills relating to persistence; that is, the ability to make things better, persistence at working through difficulties, the confidence to make the most of bad situations and a belief that one can make things rights; and the ability to generate constructive activities. Also, as mentioned earlier, students who scored lower on their work commitments were more likely to complete their first course. Interestingly, previous distance education experience and success in previous distance education were not significant predictive factors. This finding suggests that previous distance education experience may not be as accurate a measure of preparedness for distance education study as many would argue. Certainly previous experience with distance education and success in courses are related, but other measures, not associated with previous educational background, were found to be better predictors. Similarly, external commitments (i.e., family, personal, home, community, and financial) did not enter the model as significant predictive factors. While other research supports these external commitments as negative predictors of persistence, this study found that work commitments were more predictive than other external commitments. This result is consistent with more recent research findings (Chan, 1999; Thompson, 1997). Further study is required to substantiate these findings. Drawing on the research of Kohn (1969, as cited in Cookson, 1986) certain conditions of people’s work (e.g., type of supervision, the degree of 66 66 routine tasks, and complexity of required skills) influence the pattern of participatio n in learning activities. Further research may help to elucidate whether or not job conditions influence work commitments as a predictor of persistence. Figure 3. Factors predicting persistence in distance education. Risk Factors ?? Life Events ?? External Commitments ?? Family ?? Personal ?? Home ?? Work (p = 0.05—0.01) ?? Financial ?? Community Protective Factors Resiliency Skills ?? Insight (p=0.1— 0.05) ?? Independence ?? Relationships (p< 0.01) ?? Recruiting (p = 0.01 —0.05) ?? Attaching (p < 0.01) ?? Initiative (p = 0.1 —0 .05) ?? Creativity & Humor ?? Morality ?? Valuing (p= 0.05— 0.01) ?? General Resilience (p= 0.05— 0.01) ?? Persistence (p < 0.01) Interaction Persistence 67 67 Generalizability of the Results The set of factors that predict student success and persistence among Athabasca University students may not necessarily apply to other populations of distance learning students in other institutions. The conceptual framework of factors predicting persistence in distance education as presented in Figure 1 and Figure 3 would lead one to expect the relative predictive power of resilient skills to vary according to institutional factors and life changes unique to other populations. For example, student populations with different socio- demographic characteristics may be differentially subject to such disruptive changes in life circumstances (e.g., divorce and unemployment). The research on resilience and its inclusion in the field of adult distance education is relatively new. Further research is needed to verify the above findings. 68 68 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Introduction Researchers have long sought fruitful models or paradigms for explaining and predicting drop out and completions in distance education. Bernard & Amundsen (1989), in a study testing Tinto’s (1975) model of drop out from higher education, concluded that different course related- factors in distance study may exert a relatively more potent influence relative to the major elements of academic and social integration in Tinto’s model. Similarly, Bajtelsmit’s (1988) discussion of the relevance of Tinto’s model for explaining drop-out from distance study proposed another model that placed more emphasis on external factors, such as job and family commitments, and student support measures, which he argued was more relevant for distance education. Numerous studies have produced theories and models that shed light on the best predictors of continued enrollment and/or drop out (Bean, 1989; Bean & Metzner, 1985; Brainard, 1973; Tinto, 1975). Other research has tested and/or extended these theories (Carter, 1982; Coggins, 1988; Conklin, 1991; Hagedorn, 1993; Kember al. 1991; Kennedy & Powell, 1976). Several reliable predictors of student persistence or attrition emanate from this body of research. Adult persistence involves a host of factors including demands of the workplace, family responsibilities, community involvement, financial constraints, and academic failures (Bean, 1989; Conklin, 1991; Eagle, 1981; Tinto, 1993). Little is known about how adult students’ behavior is influenced by resiliency skills that promote continuous enrollment. This study explored this unknown and produced evidence about the influence of resiliency skills that promote persistence in adult distance learners. This study sought to 69 69 expand the understanding of adult distance learner persistence behaviors by examining how resiliency skills, external commitments, and life events influence adult persistence. This study contributes to the field of inquiry relating to adult distant learner persistence by providing insight into the resiliency skills employed by persisting adult students at Athabasca University. The field is broadened to include better predictors of adult student persistence. Additionally, this study adds to the understanding of the application and limitations that prominent theories of persistence have in relationship to distant learner populations. Finally, the results provide practical utility by offering an assessment guide for distance education institutions to respond more effectively to the needs of adults. The study helps adult students, faculty, and administrators better understand persistence and dropout in undergraduate distance education. Review of Research Results Previous experience in a distance education course, successful or otherwise, was not found to be a predictor of persistence in an Athabasca University course. As noted earlier, these results are in contrast to other research (e.g., Coldeway & Spencer, 1980; Langenbach & Korhonen, 1988; Rekkedal, 1983), which suggests that previous experience with distance education may be associated with persistence and reduced likelihood of dropout. Gender was also found not to be a predictor of success, a finding which is consistent with previous research. For the most part, external commitments—in the form of personal, family, home, financial, and community commitments—were not found to be significant predictors of persistence (or lack of persistence) in distance education. In other words, students with high levels of commitments in these areas were no more or less likely to complete their Athabasca 70 70 University course successfully, in comparison to students with lower le vels of commitments in these areas. These findings are in large part inconsistent with other research (e.g., Conklin, 1991; Eagle, 1981; Maples & Owings, 1982; Powell et al., 1990) which suggests that external commitments are negatively correlated to persistence. However, work commitment was found to be a highly significant predictor (p=0.05— 0.01). This result supports previous research that work commitments are highly significant as a negative predictor of persistence. Life events were not found to be a factor predicting persistence in distance education. While this finding is in contrast to other research (e.g., Cookson, 1989; Kennedy & Powell, 1976) which suggests that life events are highly correlated with dropout, this finding is consistent with more recent research which suggests that life events themselves are not strong predictors of persistence (Chan, 1999; Thompson, 1997). The best predictors of persistence were four of the resiliency skills and five of the resiliency sub-skills: insight (p = 0.1—0.05), relationships (p < 0.01), recruiting (p = 0.01— 0.05), attaching (p < 0.01), initiative (p = 0.1—0 .05), valuing (p= 0.05—0.01), general resilience (p = 0.05—0.01), and persistence (p < 0.01). These findings are not surprising in light of the research on self-efficacy and academic motivation (e.g., Bandura, 1988, 1991,1995; Bandura & Jourden, 1991; Betz & Hacket, 1997; Pajares & Miller, 1994, 1995b; Pappas & Loring, 1985). Based on these significant predictors, the final discriminant function classified two out of three students correctly in terms of the successful completion of their first Athabasca University course. 71 71 Implications and Recommendations for Distance Education Practice This study contributes to the field of inquiry relating to persistence in adult distance learning by providing insight into the resilience skills employed by adult students who successfully completed their first course at Athabasca University. The field is broadened to include better predictors of adult student persistence. Additionally, this study adds to the understanding of the application and limitations that prominent theories of persistence have in relationship to distant learner populations. Finally, the results provide practical utility by offering an assessment guide for distance education institutions to respond more effectively to the needs of adults. The study may help adult students, faculty, and administrators better understand persistence and dropout in undergraduate distance education. Identifying the levels of resiliency skills in undergraduate students represents an alternative way of approaching retention and attrition. Intervention strategies in which educators may engage include academic support services that can be offered to develop and build resiliency skills. Resiliency building experiences that focus on five themes set forth by Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1995) include: competency, belonging, usefulness, potency, and optimism. These experiences build on Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory. According to social cognitive theory, the events over which personal influence is exercised vary. Depending on what is being managed, it may entail regulation of one’s own motivation, thought processes, affective states and actions, or changing environmental conditions. Self- efficacy beliefs are sensitive to these contextual factors. Effective communication is a key component in the five resiliency building experiences. 1. Competency—feeling successful. The principal component of academic motivation is grounded in the assumption that the beliefs that students create, develop, and hold to be 72 72 true about themselves are vital forces in their success or failure. In other words, people will exercise self-direction and control towards achieving goals and objectives to which they are committed. Educators can promote educational resilience by supporting and encouraging students’ decision- making and by encouraging students to master new experiences, believe in their own efficacy, and take responsibility for their own learning. Proactive interventions involve the student in a shared responsibility for problem identification. For example, a student may demonstrate difficulty with specific course content. The educator may determine that the student does not feel engaged with the ma terial and is struggling with the decision to dropout. The educator might then suggest to the student to include some remedial course work to support the student’s learning of the material. This ‘just- in-time’ remediation helps students understand why they need the skill (or content material) and they learn in small bites. Additionally the educator may suggest that the student take a different, more engaging course (without academic or monetary penalty). Encouraging students to register in courses that build on previous academic strengths or on other life accomplishments supports engagement and course success can be quickly realized. 2. Belonging—feeling valued. Sustained, open relationships between the educator and the student can reduce stress and provide positive supports. Educators not only provide institutional support for academic content and skills, but also serve as confidantes and positive role models for students. They can help students develop the values and attitudes needed to persevere in their stud ies and achieve a high level of academic performance. Communication that conveys dignity and respect sends a message that “educators trust that students are doing the best they can,” and enable students to feel heard and to be more 73 73 receptive to other ideas. This develops a sense of shared responsibility for the learning experience. For example, students look to their professors for something more than just provision of new knowledge. They not only ask the more generic questions like, "Why is my answer wrong on this test?," but how their professors feel about things in general and what advice they can offer to make students’ dreams more attainable, decisions more solid, and lives more productive. When students feel that the instructor knows them personally and has an interest in their future success, students have a strong connection and affiliation with their educational institution. 3. Usefulness—feeling needed. Resiliency can be cultivated through a student’s meaningful connection with another person. Fostering coordination and connections facilitates cooperative learning, peer helping, and cross-age mentoring. Networking with peers builds a sense of community among students. Providing students with meaningful opportunities to contribute to their educational community helps them feel responsible and significant. Educators can provide clear boundaries for supporting positive student role modeling while fostering a caring and encouraging learning environment. For example, students might indicate that they feel disconnected from others in the course or that they need to have additional contact with other students or their instructor. Yet other students might state a need for small group discussions or group project work. Similarly, an instructor may have identified certain students who have expressed a wish to be part of a mentoring program. Connecting these students supports the needs of both groups where the instructor can then act as a facilitator in the shared responsibility for the learning experience. 74 74 4. Potency—feeling empowered. Resilience theorists (e.g., Bernard, 1996; Masten, 1994) describe potency as providing safe, intellectually challenging environments. Educators need to recognize that students have inborn drives for caring and connectedness; for respect, challenge, and structure; and for meaningful involvement, belonging, and power. When these needs are acknowledged, strength and capacity for transformation and change emerges more easily. Educators need to be aware of the significant contributions they make to provide a positive shield to help students withstand the multiple vicissitudes that they can expect of undergraduate education. Fostering student empowerment involves creative and energetic activities involving conflict resolution techniques that include honesty and responsibility, while ensuring that student integrity is upheld. One of the ways that educators can support student empowerment is to assist the student to set attainable goals and encourage them to involve others (e.g., family, friends, co- workers, other students) in their academic or career choices. Educators can also encourage students to “challenge their best” by providing stimulating and rewarding course experiences, assignments, and projects. Helping students to “paint a bigger picture” by incorporating their learning experiences into career choices or academic aspirations also fosters empowerment. 5. Optimism—feeling encouraged and hopeful. High expectations of students convey a belief in their capabilities. Also, by demonstrating an understanding of how personal attitudes influence beliefs, moods, and behavior, students can learn how to step outside the influence of negative beliefs about their abilities or fear of failure. High expectations encourage student engagement, promote a greater understanding of the educational process, and communicate a working partnership that is based on mutual trust and respect. This conveys empathy for the pressures under which the student is currently working, a willingness to listen, and a 75 75 commitment to identifying approaches, resources, and evaluation techniques for building a supportive learning environment. For example, when students are treated as stakeholders in their own education, they are more likely to be an active participant in the educationa l process. Providing opportunities for significant independent projects culminating in a research or academic paper, thesis, conference presentation, or even a publication demonstrates the educator’s high expectations. Students work harder when they know that their work is noticed and when they learn how well they are doing. Another area of primary concern to students are grading systems as this is an area where students can be perceived as active builders of their own grades rather than passive recipients of the instructor’s feedback. Implications for Further Research The final discriminant function correctly classified 66% of the students in terms of the successful completion of their first Athabasca University course. A substantial amount of the variance between students who successfully completed their course and those who did not was explained by resiliency skills and work commitments. However, the explanatory value of these predictors, though significant, does not account for all of the variance, thus indicating that resiliency skills and work commitments are not, in effect, predestination. Further refinement of tools to assess external commitments may yield more precise results. Future researchers investigating resilience as a predictor of persistence may want to consider utilizing pre-survey contact prior to a postal mailed survey packet to increase student response rates. One might also wish to employ an e- mailed survey or an on- line survey to improve the response rate of participants. 76 76 While this study is a promising start for looking at persistence, further research could employ a longitudinal method where a cohort of students is followed over the duration of a program of study, and even through to career employment. The encouraging predictive ability of this study opens the way for research at two levels. At the first level, knowledge of students’ resiliency skills (and by extension their “risk quotient”) allows distance educators to target interventions to those most in need. Understanding the conditions under which resiliency skills will generalize to differing activities in academic contexts offers valuable possibilities for intervention and instructional strategies that may help students build both competence and the necessary accompanying self-perceptions of competence. At the second level, lack of resiliency, not lack of capability or skill, may in part be responsible for avoidance of certain courses and careers. If so, efforts to identify and alter these inaccurate judgments, in addition to continued skill improvement, should prove beneficial. Future studies should aim to discover the extent of this phenomenon across academic areas and levels. 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My purpose for the research is to examine the influence of resilience, life events, and external commitments on persistence in adult distance learners who have registered in their first distance education course at Athabasca University. Your participation is entirely voluntary. Your participation or lack thereof will in no way affect your course grades. Furthermore, your responses will be kept strictly confidential and will not be shared with your instructors, or with any administrator of Athabasca University. I would very much appreciate your help in completing three questionnaires. 1. The first questionnaire is called the Resiliency Attitude Scale. It asks you to respond to a set of statements that reflect your personal views about a variety of situations common in adult life. You will be asked to use a five-point scale in responding to the 72 statements. This questionnaire will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. 2. The second questionnaire asks you to total the number of life events (e.g., job changes, loss of a loved one) you have experie nced in your adult life (since the age of 99 99 18 years). Note: I am only interested the total number of life events, and NOT the events themselves. This questionnaire will take approximately 5 minutes to complete 3. Finally, you will be asked to answer questions relating to: (1) your previous experience with distance education; and (2) the extent of external commitments (outside of university studies) in your life. You will be asked to use a five-point rating scale when responding to the questions about external commitments. It will take approximately 5 minutes to answer these questions. The confidentiality of your participation is assured. Your name will never appear in any results. Only the researcher and the researcher’s supervisor will see your responses. It is anticipated that the results of this research project will be published in Athabasca University’s Library in the spring of 2001. Thank you for your participation in this study. Wendy Kemp Athabasca University, Master of Distance Education Program 100 100 APPENDIX B Resiliency Attitudes Scale Note: From “RAS Resiliency attitudes scale,” by B. Biscoe and B. Harris, 1994, Eagle Ridge Institute, Inc. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Copyright 1994 by Belinda Biscoe, and Betty Harris, Eagle Ridge Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Adapted with permission. Instructions I am interested in how you view yourself. Please be as honest as possible when rating each of the statements below. There are no right or wrong answers. In the blank to the left of each statement below, write in the number that best describes how you feel about that statement. Please read each item carefully and rate how strongly you agree or disagree with it, using the following scale: 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly Agree 101 101 Resiliency Attitudes Scales Your RAS 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Undecided; 4=Agree; Answer Code 5=Strongly Agree 1 I usually can’t predict what other people will do. 4 I try to notice signals from other people that spell trouble. 5 It doesn’t do any good to try and figure out why things happen. 8 I have a hard time telling what someone new is like until I get to know the person well. 2 I avoid accepting responsibility for other people’s problems. 3 When others think badly of me, there’s probably a good reason for it. 6 Often I find myself taking responsibility for other people’s Problems. 7 I am willing to ask myself tough questions and answer them honestly. 9 I can fix hurts from my past that could keep me from letting people get close to me. 10 I try to figure out why people act the way they do. 11 I will often stay with someone, even though I know that person is bad for me. 13 If you care about someone, you should try to do what the person wants, even if it seems unreasonable. 15 I am able to recognize when I’m in a bad relationship and end it. 19 If I love someone, I can put up with that person hurting me. 12 I am able to step back from troubled family members and see myself as OK. 14 I can’t help acting like a child around my parents. 16 I can stay calm around troubled people because I understand why they act the way they do. 17 I realize that I can’t change other people; they have to change for Themselves. 18 It’s hard for me to stay calm when someone I care about is being Unreasonable. 20 I often find myself around people who aren’t well adjusted. 102 102 Resiliency Attitudes Scale (page 2) Your RAS 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Undecided; 4=Agree; Answer Code 5=Strongly Agree 22 I am good at sizing up people. 23 I try to figure out why a relationship was not healthy and avoid Repeating it. 24 I am good at starting relationships with other people. 25 I can’t do anything about whether people like me or not. 27 I’m shy around people I don’t know. 28 I can’t really tell if a relationship is going to be good until I try it. 21 There are few people who I can really count on. 26 It’s hard for me to believe that I’ll ever find a good relationship. 29 I am good a keeping relationships going. 30 I am able to love others and be loved by them. 31 It’s beyond me how most things work. 32 I often talk myself through a problem. 33 I can learn from the past and use that information to make the future better. 35 I often get really frustrated when dealing with problems and can’t figure out what to do. 37 I don’t like to try to find out how things work. 34 I have hobbies or other activities that I take seriously. 36 I am successful in taking care of my physical and emotional needs. 38 There are few things that I am good at doing. 39 I do enough to get by, but not much more. 40 I enjoy getting involved in constructive activities. 42 I don’t think that I’m creative. 43 I’m good at finding new ways to look at things. 46 Using my imagination doesn’t help to solve problems. 50 Most problems have only one solution. 41 Sometimes I forget my problems when I’m pursuing creative activities 44 One way I express my feelings is through my art work, dance, music, or writing. 103 103 Resiliency Attitudes Scale (page 3) Your RAS 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Undecided; 4=Agree; Answer Code 5=Strongly Agree 45 The positive feelings I get from creating, help make up for the pain of my past. 47 It’s hard for me to see the humor in a bad situation. 48 One has to take life seriously to get by. 49 I am good at using humor to reduce tension between myself and others. 51 I find it easy to choose between right and wrong. 52 It’s a dog eat dog world where one has to do what it takes to get by. 53 I can’t help repeating the mistakes that my parents made. 56 I don’t always do what I know is right. 57 I stand up to people when I see them being dishonest, petty, or cruel. 58 I am willing to take risks for the sake of doing what I think is right. 59 Sometimes I feel like I’m just drifting along with no purpose in life. 60 I almost always stand up for underdogs. 54 I like to help other people. 55 There’s no way I could make a difference in other people’s lives. 61 I like to help others even if they are not willing to help themselves. 62 I am involved in activities that will make people’s lives better. 63 No matter what happens, if I keep trying I’ll get through it. 64 There are things that I can do to make my life better. 65 Sometimes it’s hard, but I don’t let things keep me down. 66 Even if bad things, I can deal with them. 68 No matter how hard I try, I can’t make things right. 67 It’s not the hand you are dealt, but how you play it. 69 I am willing to go with any approach that will work, 70 I’m good at making the most of a bad situation. 71 When life gives me lemons, I make lemonade. 72 Failure is something you learn from rather than feel guilty about. 104 104 APPENDIX C Life Events Inventory The Life Events Inventory (LEI) is a 62-item, self-report psychometric test developed to assess the number of events frequently experienced by individuals in the general population. The events listed in LEI refer to life changes that are common to individuals in a wide variety of situations. It is an established fact that certain life events can result in major changes in a person’s life. Death of a family member or loved one, marriage, relationship issues, changes in circumstances and conditions of employment, illness or injury are examples of major life events. Instructions Listed below are a number of events that sometimes bring about cha nge in the lives of those that experience them and which necessitate readjustment. Be sure to include all of the events that apply to you as you have experienced them. 1. We are interested only in the Total number of life events that you have experienced. 2. On a separate sheet of paper, please total those events that you have experienced in your adult life (since the age of 18 years). 3. Proceed to the questionnaire immediately following the Life Events Inventory. 4. Place the total number of life events from your adult life in the space provided and then REMOVE the Life Events Inventory from your questionnaire packet. 105 105 Life Events Inventory Life Events Inventory 1 Death of a spouse, lover, etc. 2 Divorce or separation. 3 Change in closeness with spouse, lover, partner. 4 Reconciled with partner, lover. 5 Experienced regular conflict with present spouse, lover, etc. 6 Had in- law troubles. 7 Experienced infidelity. 8 Problems with former spouse, lover, partner. 9 Reconciled with former spouse, lover, partner. 10 Became engaged. 11 Gotten married or began live- in relationship. 12 Partner’s or your work interfered with your family life. 13 You or partner fired at work. 14 Major change in conditions of work. 15 Self or partner retired from work. 16 Gained new, live- in, family member. 17 Pregnancy. 18 Had a child. 19 Miscarried, aborted, stillbirth. 20 Child or family member left home. 21 Changed residence. 22 Began menopause. 23 Other mid- life changes. 24 Long-term illness or injury. 25 Major change in health or behavior or family or friend. 26 Long-term illness, injury, or disability of household member. 27 Death of family member or close friend. 28 Change in marital status of your children or parents. 29 Major personal achievement. 30 Major decision regarding your immediate future. 31 Change in your personal habits, lifestyle, dress, hobbies. 32 Change in your political beliefs. 33 Change in your religious beliefs. 106 106 Life Events Inventory Continued 34 Loss or damage to personal property. 36 Vacation. 37 Trip, not a vacation. 38 Christmas/Thanksgiving, or other major holiday. 39 Change in family get-togethers. 40 Made a new friend. 41 Broken up with a friend due to conflict. 42 Lost friend any other reason, death, moving. 43 Major change in finance. 44 New purchase, car, etc. 45 New mortgage, loan. 46 Mortgage or loan foreclosure. 47 Credit rating difficulties. 48 Violent crime victim. 49 Physical abuse by partner, etc. 50 Emotional abuse. 51 Injured in car accident. 52 Involved in injury claim or lawsuit. 53 Involved in natural disaster. 54 Jailed due to legal trouble. 55 Change in childcare. 56 Parenting conflicts. 57 Conflicts with children. 58 Single parenting. 59 Custody battles. 60 Child abuse issues. 61 Learning disabled child. 62 Emotionally fragile child. Note: From “Assessing the impact of life changes: Development of the life events inventory,” by I.G. Sarason, J.H. Johnson, and J.M. Siegel, (1978). Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46(5), 932-946. Copyright 1978 American Psychological Association, Inc. Note: The Life Events Inventory is provided ONLY for your reference. Please DO NOT return the Life Events Inventory with your package. 107 107 APPENDIX D Questionnaire There are 3 parts in this section. ?? Part #1 asks you to indicate if this is your first experience with a distance education course. ?? Part # 2 requires you to refer back to the Life Events Inventory. In the space provided, enter only the total number of life events that you have experienced in your adult life. ?? Part # 3 has six questions related to external commitments. For each question, you are asked to place an X in the space next to the response that best describes how often you need to spend time and energy to meet each commitment. Part # 1. Distance Education Courses. Have you ever taken another distance education course (other than your current course through Athabasca University) through another university or college? Yes No If you answered YES to the above question, do you complete that course? Yes No Part # 2. Life Events 1. Please indicate the total number out of 62 life events (from the Life Events Inventory above) that you have experienced in your adult life (age 18 years and older). Number of Life Events * Please remember to remove the Life Events Inventory from your packet before mailing the completed questionnaire. 108 108 Part # 3. External Commitments External commitments are those demands in a person’s life that require time and energy. For example, it might be your commitment to coach the neighborhood baseball team, a promise to fix grandmother’s water faucets, a new beau, or heavy debts on your credit cards. There are 6 questions in this part of the questionnaire. For each of the questions below, please estimate how often you need to spend time and energy meeting the external commitments described in the question. 1. How often do you need to spend time and energy to fulfill family commitments? (These commitments relate to spouse (including common-law), partner, children (including adult children), in- laws (including common- law), parents, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and cousins). 1. Monthly or more 2. Every two weeks 3. Weekly 4. Twice a week 5. Daily 2. How often do you need to spend time and energy to fulfill personal relationship commitments? (These commitments relate to persons outside of your family with whom you have a special relationship, e.g., boyfriend/girlfriend, fiancée, roommates, neighbors, friends, co-workers, and associates). 1. Monthly or more 2. Every two weeks 3. Weekly 4. Twice a week 5. Daily 3. How often do you need to spend time and energy to fulfill home commitments? (These commitments relate to maintaining a home such as laundry, cleaning, groceries, general repairs and upkeep; snow shoveling, gardening, lawn mowing, painting, etc.). 1. Monthly or more 2. Every two weeks 3. Weekly 4. Twice a week 5. Daily 109 109 4. How often do you need to spend time and energy to fulfill work commitments? (These commitments relate to employment inside or outside of the home including full- time, part-time, casual, wage, contract or self-employment) 1. Monthly or more 2. Every two weeks 3. Weekly 4. Twice a week 5. Daily 5. How often do you need to spend time and energy to fulfill community commitments? (These commitments relate to neighborhood programs, boards, commissions, organizations, or associations). 1. Monthly or more 2. Every two weeks 3. Weekly 4. Twice a week 5. Daily 6. How often do you need to spend time and energy to fulfill financial commitments? (These commitments relate to income, bills, mortgage, rent, credit cards, loans, etc.). 1. Monthly or more 2. Every two weeks 3. Weekly 4. Twice a week 5. Daily Thank you for participating in this research project. Please remember to REMOVE the Life Events Inventory from your packet before returning your completed questionnaire in the postage paid, return envelope provided for you. 
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work_tn7ijmukhvgqfgrxm6mgsczfwy	----	Microsoft Word - Kirsi_et_al_CR.doc Interactive Visualization Tools to Improve Learning and Teaching in Online Learning Environments Kirsi Kuosa1, Damiano Distante2, Anne Tervakari1, Luigi Cerulo3, Alejandro Fernandez4, Juho Koro1, Meri Kailanto1 1Tampere University of Technology, Tampere (Finland) 2Unitelma Sapienza University, Rome (Italy) 3University of Sannio, Benevento (Italy) 4LIFIA, CIC/FI, National University of La Plata, La Plata (Argentina) {kirsi.kuosa, anne.tervakari, juho.koro, meri.kailanto}@tut.fi damiano.distante@unitelma.it lcerulo@unisannio.it alejandro.fernandez@lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar ABSTRACT This paper presents two interactive visualization tools for learning management systems (LMS) in order to improve learning and teaching in online courses. The first tool was developed at the Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory (IISLab) at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT). The tool is used to analyse students’ activity from automatically recorded user log data and to build interactive visualizations. They provide valuable insights into the learning process and participation of students in a course offered to teachers and students. The second tool was developed at the Unitelma Sapienza University. It extends navigation and search functionalities in the discussion forum of an LMS with a topic-driven paradigm. The tool analyses forum con- tent and automatically identifies discussion topics. It then enhances the original forum with a topic-driven navigation structure and an interactive search graph. Both tools have been devel- oped as plug-ins for the Moodle LMS, but their analysis processes and techniques can be adopted into any LMS. Keywords: e-learning, learning analytics, information retrieval, data mining, information visuali- zation, visualization tools. INTRODUCTION As online learning spreads and becomes pervasive, the need for tools that monitor students’ par- ticipation in online courses and measure knowledge and skills development has greatly in- creased. Most learning management systems (LMS) and Web-based solutions that are adopted to offer online courses are able to record rich amounts of information about students’ activity, such as communication, collaboration, and participation in online courses. Many LMSs also offer re- ports and even simple graphs about each student's (elementary) actions. However, these reports are poor indicators of students’ activity and participation if they are considered singly (Soller, 2 2001). Exploiting the log data of LMSs in order to understand the activity in an e-learning envi- ronment, how to improve student learning processes, and how to support the process of teaching requires tools and strategies that help to select the right information in a timely fashion and pre- sent it at the right location in a correct, clear and effective way (Tufte, 2001; Tervakari et al., 2014). To achieve this goal, at IISLab1 was developed a visual analytics instrument called the TUT LA tool. The implementation of the tool was for TUT Circle2, an e-learning environment that is built using the Drupal3 content management system (Silius et al., 2011; Tervakari et al., 2013). In this paper, we present the basic principles of an extended version of this tool, which was re- implemented as a plug-in for the widely adopted Moodle4 LMS. Discussion forums are one of the main means of asynchronous communication used in e- learning environments. They are available in all LMSs. Forums are used in online courses to fa- cilitate the learning and teaching processes, such as supporting student-to-teacher interaction, student collaboration, group work and cooperative learning. Discussions held in a forum within a certain period are a potentially useful source of information for any student that subsequently accesses the forum online. However, the success of a forum as an information source and means of communication is determined by the richness of its content. Moreover, its content (discussions and messages) can be navigated and searched. While the first property depends on user participa- tion and use of the medium, the second depends on the navigation structure and the search fea- tures provided by the forum. To support the discovery and retrieval of relevant information in discussion forums in the e- learning environment of distance-learning through the Unitelma Sapienza University, we defined a data analysis process that exploits information retrieval techniques. It employs topic models (Blei, 2011) and formal concept analysis (Ganter and Wille, 1999) to identify the topics dis- cussed in a given forum and to provide topic-driven searches and navigation (Cerulo and Dis- tante, 2013)(Distante et al., 2014). In this paper, we briefly describe these processes and describe the implementations of the plug-ins for the Moodle LMS. They provide interactive visualizations that help both students and teachers find the information they need and monitor students’ learning and actions in the learning environment. RELATED WORK Recently, on-line education systems have become widespread tools adopted by both historical and newly founded educational institutions. E-learning and e-teaching are new contexts for edu- cation through which large amounts of information are generated and available to users world- wide. A large portion of the available information takes the form of free text without the struc- ture required for automated knowledge retrieval. Learning analytics provides valuable support for teachers and students to understand learning habits and to obtain rich information about learning and teaching processes. Learning analytics is 1 http://www.tut.fi/en/about-tut/departments/mathematics/research/iislab/index.htm (last accessed on 1 October 2014). 2 TUT Circle is a social media-enhanced learning environment developed by the IISLab of the Tampere University of Technolo- gy. TUT Circle promotes students’ networking, collaboration and communications in small groups by allowing them to send private messages, chat, create, contribute to and comment on content, exchange opinions, share resources and create communities for different needs. Students can also control the visibility of their information and allow access to the information either for the members of their small group or for all students. www.tut.fi/piiri 3 www.drupal.org 4 www.moodle.org 3 commonly used to measure, collect, analyse and report user data about learners in order to un- derstand and optimize learning, learning environments and teaching (Siemens and Long, 2011). For example, Carr (2012) reported that a great number of open online courses monitor every us- er’s action, such as pausing a video, increasing feedback speed, responding to quiz questions, revising assignments and participating in forums. The data are then used to analyse student be- haviour and test how people learn. Hence, the teacher can tailor the learning environment to fit each student’s learning style and needs. The lack of quality in collected tracking data represents a major challenge to ensure its effec- tive utilization. Moreover, large amounts of data can be difficult to analyze, interpret and under- stand because processing data requires complex cognitive processes. However, if the data are packed and presented in a correct, clear and effective manner, users can process an incredible amount. When the data presented are complex to perceive and process, adequate visual presenta- tions are mandatory (Berg, 2012). Appropriate visualizations can help to process information, such as by increasing memory and the number of available processing resources, reducing the number of searches for information, enhancing the recognition of patterns, enabling perceptual inference operations and using perceptual attention mechanisms for monitoring (Ware, 2012). A good visualization helps the users understand the data, confirms what the users already know, and provides insights into the data. However, to be understood, the context of the data used should be familiar and interesting to the users. Historically, data mining has been used to extract knowledge from free text (Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto, 1999). Knowledge extractions from e-learning systems, particularly from user generated data, was introduced in (Castro, Vellido, Nebot and Mugica, 2007b; Hanna, 2004). Tang and McCalla (2005) investigated patterns of system usage in teachers and students’ learn- ing behaviour. Data clustering was suggested to promote group-based collaborative learning and to diagnose students incrementally (Castro et al., 2007a). Information retrieval techniques consider that texts are represented by a vector of terms that are usually weighted by their occurrence in documents. The availability of different media (e.g., image, video, audio etc.) has recently demanded more sophisticated information retrieval tech- niques that are capable of treating new kinds of information (Goodrum, 2000; Foote, 1999; Beel et al., 2009). E-learning forums are usually represented as text. Hence, traditional information retrieval techniques are usually adopted to search for relevant information. Association-rules mining has been widely adopted in e-learning, specifically in recommendation systems (Za ́ıane, 2002; Yang et al., 2010), learning material organization (Tsai et al., 2001), student learning as- sessments (Romero et al., 2005), course adaptation to the student’s behaviour (Hogo, 2010) and evaluation of educational Websites (dos Santos Machado and Becker, 2003). The development of cooperative learning and knowledge sharing inside student groups predominates in recent re- search trends (Jakobsone et al., 2012). In particular, Web technologies take advantage of the op- portunities raised by mixing the social and the semantic Web (Ghenname et al., 2012). Dicheva and Dichev (2006) investigated concept maps and their use of navigation in educational contexts. They proposes a framework and a set of tools for the development of ontology-aware reposito- ries of learning materials. The idea is similar to our topic-driven navigation structure. In our ap- proach, topics are extracted from free text semi-automatically by leveraging information retrieval techniques which are then validated by the user, whereas concepts have to be manually defined by the authors of the learning materials (Dicheva and Dichev, 2006). THE PROPOSED INTERACTIVE VISUALIZATION TOOLS 18 words are by default linked with the AND operator, and the system retrieves a list of all posts containing the keywords used in the search. The second approach was used the TDForum Moodle plug-in. While performing the tasks, we collected the number of items inspected and the time needed to achieve the information search goal. In the Moodle full-text search, the number of inspected items was computed by counting the number of posts examined before finding the expected posts. In the topic-driven navigation approach, the number of inspected items was the sum of two quantities: the number of links fol- lowed to reach the closest topic in the Discussion Topics View of the TDForum plug-in and the number of posts examined before finding the correct posts. The findings showed that in general the number of items inspected using the full-text search was on average higher than the number of items inspected using TDForum. Moreover, the time necessary to obtain the correct answer was on average less in the TDForum. The reason is that in the full-text search more time was spent in choosing the correct search keywords. These results confirmed that the TDForum tool facilitates and improves information searches in the discussion forums on a Moodle platform. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH The interactive learning data visualizations provided by the TUT LA tool can offer concrete and practical support for students in their learning activities in online courses. They can help students to monitor and evaluate their performance processes and learning outcomes in order to make strategic adjustments to improve, which could bring real benefits to students. Especially on mas- sive open online courses (MOOCs) that require students to be responsible for their learning, self- regulation and other learning skills. Teachers of online courses can also benefit from visualizations in many ways. For example, the visual analytic tools, such as the TUT LA tool, could help teachers to make decisions regard- ing pedagogical strategies, instructional guidance, actions and interventions that may be used to support student participation and activity. In order to support teachers in obtaining increased practical value by using the visual analytics tool, the controls used to specify data and manipulate views need further development. Visual analytics could also be used to retrieve valuable infor- mation about how students use the course platform, how they study subtopics and how they use learning materials and other resources, such as how much time students spend in watching a vid- eo or reading a chapter of the learning material, in which order students study the learning mate- rials offered, and which parts of the assignments students have completed. This kind of infor- mation can help teachers to evaluate students’ learning performance and monitor their progress during courses. In MOOCs with thousands of students, the TUT LA tool could offer valuable practical support for teachers, such as identifying students at risk of failing or dropping out. The information can also be used to identify topics that students skip and learning materials that they do not use, which may help the teacher to improve the instructional design of the course Effective search and navigation capabilities associated with discussion forums in online cours- es are decisive in making forums a useful information source for students, as well as an addition- al means of communication. Moreover, according to earlier research, students prefer tools and information that can provide them with practical support in analysing and examining textual in- formation, such as messages on discussion forums, in order to discover new information (Silius et al., 2013; Tervakari et al. 2014). 19 In this paper, we presented two tools for use with Moodle LMS: a tool for learning analytics and a tool for enhancing content searches and navigation in a forum. Both tools were designed to support students and teachers in e-learning environments. IISLab at TUT in Finland, Unitelma Sapienza University in Italy, and the University of La Plata in Argentina have started a collaborative research that aims to extend and evaluate the use- fulness of their visual analytics tools and forum enhancement approach by means of a set of con- trolled experiments replicated in different classrooms. We expect the measured advantages to be twofold: i) information is retrieved in less time, and ii) contents stored in on-line forums are managed and tracked in a more effective manner. REFERENCES Baeza-Yates, R. A. and Ribeiro-Neto, B. (1999). Modern Information Retrieval. Addison- Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, USA. Beel, J., Gipp, B., Stiller, J. (2009). Information Retrieval On Mind Maps - What Could It Be Good For?. 5th International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applica- tions and Worksharing (CollaborateCom'09). Washington, DC: IEEE. Berg, M. (2012). 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work_tnalkkzgafcjjjvupmzbopxzyi	----	DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN ACCOUNTING I TO ACCOUNTING III IN A BACHELOR OF ACCOUNTING SCIENCE DEGREE – A DISTANCE EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE 1 FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TOWARD STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN A DISTANCE EDUCATION ACCOUNTING DEGREE Mrs K Papageorgiou* Department: Accounting, University: University of Pretoria (MCom student), Pretoria, South Africa Dr Abdel K Halabi Federation University Australia Gipsplad Campus, Australia *Corresponding author: papagk@unisa.ac.za Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank the University of South Africa for permission to use student data as well as the financial assistance provided in order to assist in completion of the research paper. ABSTRACT Purpose The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of five determinates of performance in students (N = 677) who completed three years of financial accounting to obtain a Bachelor of Accounting Science (BCompt) degree by distance education through the University of South Africa. Design/methodology/approach Regression analysis is used on three yearly measures of performance with five independent variables (age, gender, prior accounting knowledge, mathematics background and academic aptitude). Findings Results show that mathematics background and academic aptitude are both significantly associated with mailto:papagk@unisa.ac.za 2 student performance, throughout the financial accounting subjects. Prior accounting knowledge is also important in the first year of study but not thereafter. Practical implications The results of this study have important implications for instructors, students and career advisers, particularly as research linking various factors with performance in accounting subjects over the length of a degree is limited. Research limitations/implications Prior research has found that other factors may influence student performance, and future studies which include these variables will add to these findings. Originality/value The current study considers the determinants of student performance over three financial accounting years (rather than one year or one subject) and from a distance education perspective. As distance education becomes a more important delivery method of study in the future, these results have important implications. Keywords: accounting; student performance; age; gender; prior accounting knowledge; academic aptitude; mathematics background. 1. Introduction While prior research has examined many determinants of student performance in accounting subjects (see for example, Baldwin and Howe, 1982; Doran, Bouillon and Smith, 1991; Eskew and Faley, 1988; Farley and Ramsay, 1988; Gul and Fong, 1993; Rohde and Kavanagh, 1996; Halabi, 2009), research has continually been prompted due to different and contradictory findings. An examination of studies into the determinates of student performance shows most of the existing studies involve face-to-face teaching, with performance being only examined in one or two accounting subjects. This study differs from previous 3 research as its objective is to examine the effect of a number of important variables on student performance in financial accounting modules across three years of a Bachelor of Accounting Science (BCompt) degree offered through distance education. Albrecht and Sack (2000) noted that as distance education becomes a more popular and efficient educational delivery system, research into these programs becomes very important, particularly in developing the channel of prospective chartered accountants (Olivier and Bulman, 2009). The variables examined in this study include age, gender, prior accounting knowledge, mathematics background and academic aptitude. The effect of these variables are analysed in relation to performance in eight financial accounting modules across a three year distance education degree. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 reviews the prior research and the development of the research question. Section 3 summarises the research methodology. The results are presented in Section 4 and the findings discussed. Finally, Section 5 discusses the implications, the limitations and suggestions for future research. 2. Literature review A primary aim of tertiary teaching is to encourage and facilitate student learning (Laurillard, 1993). While “learning” can also encompass an affective or psychomotor sort, it is the cognitive change and development that is the central aim of most instruction (Wild and Quinn, 1998). Once learning has occurred it is most common to have this evaluated through some assessment performance (Michlistsch and Sidle, 2002). In the general education literature, it has been found that there are many determinates of student performance (Laurillard, 1993). Educational research into which factors effect performance have shown results that are mixed and inconsistent. The inconsistent findings have prompted on-going research in different settings and contexts. Previous accounting research has also noted that many different factors 4 could affect performance, however the literature does not always agree on how individual factors or indeed what set of factors influence performance (D‟Souza and Maheshwari, 2010). In order to contribute to the accounting education literature and knowledge, the present study examines five commonly used variables and their effect on performance. Unlike prior research however, these factors will be assessed over three years of financial accounting study and in a distance education setting. The variables selected were based on a number of factors including the conflicting prior research; their relevance to this particular study and positive theories which seek to explain and predict, rather than prescribe a particular approach (Deegan and Unerman, 2011). The five variables include age, gender, prior accounting knowledge, mathematics background and academic aptitude. 2.1 Age General educational literature has noted that the impact that the variable age (a proxy for maturity) has on student performance has been inconclusive (Duff, 2004; Guney, 2009). In accounting, Bartlett, Peel and Pendlebury (1993) found that on average older students achieved lower grades in all examinations but significantly so in respect of their third year subjects. Similarly Koh and Koh (1999) found that younger students performed significantly better than older students in an accounting degree, whilst Müller, Prinsloo and Du Plessis (2007) found a similar result for performance in the first year of study. In contrast, Lane and Porch (2002) noted that older students performed better in accounting. These prior findings show that accounting research related to the determinant of age are mixed. Koh and Koh (1999) suggest that no definite theory exists to explain the directional effect of age on performance and thus reasons to corroborate findings vary. For example as students mature, they realize that completing their studies can be linked to financial success and as a result are more focussed. Guney (2009) suggests that, as students grow older, they become more disciplined and as a result achieve better marks. Bartlett et al. (1993) propose that students‟ maturity equip them to deal with initial understanding but disadvantage them in the long run as they have to adapt to the routine of study and examination. 5 2.2 Gender Accounting gender studies, have also found inconsistent performance results. Doran et al. (1991) reported that, on average, males had significantly higher examination scores than females in Accounting Principles I. Koh and Koh (1999) found that males performed significantly better than females throughout an accountancy degree programme. Gammie, Paver, Gammie and Duncan (2003) however, found that females outperformed their male counterparts in the first year accounting subject but no gender differences were found thereafter. Other studies reported that after controlling for „academic ability‟ there was no evidence of gender differences in examination performance (Buckless, Lipe and Ravenscroft, 1991; Keef and Roush, 1997). Both McDowall and Jackling (2006) and Halabi, Essop, Joosub, Padia, Vawda and Yasseen (2010), when examining computer-based learning materials, found that gender did not affect performance, while Guney (2009) could not find a meaningful relationship between gender and performance. The effect of gender on student performance remains inconclusive. This could be due to a number of factors, including institutional settings and research methodologies, or different learning strategies (De Lange and Mavondo, 2004). 2.3 Prior accounting knowledge Cognitive entry behaviours, more commonly known as prior knowledge, are “those prerequisite types of knowledge, skills, and competencies which are essential to the learning of a particular new task or set of tasks” (Bloom, 1976, p.32). Early studies on prior knowledge, found that students who had followed an accounting course in high school performed no better than students who did not follow such a course (Baldwin and Howe, 1982) which was later confirmed by Byrne and Flood (2008). Most studies however have noted that prior accounting knowledge is a significant predictor of student performance, particularly in the first year of study (see Eskew and Faley, 1988; Farley and Ramsay, 1988; Gul and Fong, 1993; Rohde and Kavanagh, 1996; Rankin, Silvester, Vallely and Wyatt, 2003; Alcock, Cockcroft and Finn, 6 2008; Cheung and Wong, 2011). While students who studied accounting at high school performed significantly better, Eskew and Faley (1988) and Gul and Fong (1993) noted that over time, prior accounting knowledge did not appear to benefit students (see also Bartlett et al., 1993 and Doran et al., 1991). Keef (1992) sought to determine whether extra years of prior accounting study held any benefit to students, and found the results to be insignificant. From these prior studies the influence of prior accounting knowledge on student performance is inconclusive. Reasons for the differences in results can be ascribed to a number of factors including research design, institutional settings and methods used (Eskew and Faley, 1988). For example, Baldwin and Howe (1982) indicated that they did not differentiate the amount of high school accounting taken by the student which in turn could have had an impact on the results reported. 2.4 Mathematics background In accounting education, the influence of secondary mathematics as a determinant of student performance has also led to conflicting conclusions. Bartlett et al. (1993), found mathematics to be insignificantly linked to student performance. In contrast, Eskew and Faley (1988) and Gul and Fong (1993) reported that prior knowledge in mathematics was a significant predictor of student performance for introductory accounting students. Additionally, Wong and Chia (1996) found a significant relationship between students with a higher degree of proficiency in mathematics and performance in first year accounting (see also Yunker, Yunker and Krull, 2009) and throughout the accounting degree programme (Koh and Koh, 1999). 2.5 Academic Aptitude Academic aptitude (also known as „prior academic performance/achievement‟, „academic ability‟, or „previous performance‟) has been found to be an important determinant of performance (Byrne and Flood, 2008; Doran et al., 1991; Eskew and Faley, 1988; Koh and Koh, 1999). Standardised measures such as SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test), ACT (American College Test) and GPA (Grade Point Average) scores 7 have been used to measure academic performance (Koh and Koh, 1999). Mohrweis (2010) highlighted academic aptitude as a significant predictor of student performance. Guney (2009) found a positive relationship between previous academic success and student performance. Eskew and Faley (1988) and Doran et al. (1991) found that measures of academic performance and aptitude were the most important determinants of examination performance in Accounting Principles I and II, and academic performance overall (see Koh and Koh, 1999). Byrne and Flood (2008) confirmed „prior academic achievement‟ was the most important variable in explaining first year academic performance of accounting students. In contrast to the above however Bartlett et al. (1993) found that „academic ability‟ did not have a significant impact on university examination performance, but explained that one of the reasons for this finding could be due to the low variation in the A-level scores of the sample group used. 2.6 Significance of the present study In summary, prior accounting based research has shown that the five variables selected for this study have been inclusive as to their predictive value on performance. The variables discussed have been primarily limited to a single accounting course or a combination of one or two accounting courses (Koh and Koh, 1999). Extending the research from the first module through to the final module of an accounting degree would further provide important information and clarify prior research and the distance education nature of the way in which accounting subjects have been taught has not been previously examined. 2.7 The current setting The curriculum for the BCompt degree at the University of South Africa comprises of 34 modules of which eight are financial accounting, spread over three years or levels. For the purposes of this study, student performance at each level will be used. Reference to student performance in the first two modules will be referred to as Accounting I; the second two modules as Accounting II; and performance in the final four modules as Accounting III. 8 2.8 Research questions and hypotheses The research questions stated in null form are as follows: H1: Age has no significant effect on performance in Accounting I, II or III. H2: Gender has no significant effect on performance in Accounting I, II or III. H3: Prior accounting knowledge has no significant effect on performance in Accounting I, II or III. H4: Mathematics background has no significant effect on performance in Accounting I, II or III. H5: Academic aptitude has no significant effect on performance in Accounting I, II or III. 3. Research Methodology 3.1 Data This study was based on N = 677 students from the University of South Africa who completed all eight financial accounting modules in the BCompt degree in 2011. Data obtained (via the ethical clearance committee) contained the following information: student‟s personal details, including date of birth and gender; student‟s academic record indicative of marks obtained for all modules completed to obtain the degree; student‟s academic record indicating the date each module was passed; and final year of schooling (Grade 12) results. 3.2 Model, variable definition and measurement The regression model can be specified as: ACCOUNTING Ii = β0 + β1AGEi + β2GENDERi + β3PRIOR ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGEi + β4MATHEMATICS BACKGROUNDi + β5ACADEMIC APTITUDEi + ei ACCOUNTING IIi = β0 + β1AGEi + β2GENDERi + β3PRIOR ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGEi + β4MATHEMATICS BACKGROUNDi + β5ACADEMIC APTITUDEi + ei 9 ACCOUNTING IIIi = β0 + β1AGEi + β2GENDERi + β3PRIOR ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGEi + β4MATHEMATICS BACKGROUNDi + β5ACADEMIC APTITUDEi + ei Where: i = data for the ith student ei = a random error term The definition and measurement of each variable is summarised in Table 1. Table 2 specifically refers to Academic aptitude and Mathematics background variables. Table 1. Measurement of dependent and independent variables Variable name Definition/measurement Dependent variable: Student performance Accounting I Accounting II Accounting III Average mark obtained for the two financial accounting modules at level one Average mark obtained for the two accounting modules at level two Average mark obtained for the four accounting modules at level three Independent variables: Age Gender Prior accounting knowledge Mathematics background Academic aptitude Age of the student on completion of the final module in Accounting I, II and III respectively 1 = female 0 = male 1 = accounting taken as a subject in Grade 12 0 = no accounting taken as a subject in Grade 12 Achievement level (1–7) 1 APS (admission point score) 2 1 The achievement level (see Table 2) obtained for mathematics in the final year of schooling (Grade 12) is used to measure mathematics background. 2 The APS score is calculated using the NSC achievement levels table (see Table 2). When standardised, the maximum APS that can be obtained is a score of 42 points. Table 2. National Senior Certificate achievement levels Achievement Achievement level Marks 7 Outstanding achievement 80–100% 6 Meritorious achievement 70–79% 5 Substantial achievement 60–69% 4 Adequate achievement 50–59% 3 Moderate achievement 40–49% 2 Elementary achievement 30–39% 1 Not achieved 0–29% Source: University of Pretoria (2012), “General admission requirements”, available at: http://web.up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=15182&subid=15182 (accessed 10 August 2012). http://web.up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=15182&subid=15182 10 Table 3. Descriptive statistics Variable* N Mean Standard deviation Minimum Maximum Frequency (%) Student performance 1 : Accounting I 677 68.83 11.022 50 98 Accounting II 677 60.20 8.2181 50 94 Accounting III 677 56.60 5.677 50 80 Average performance 2 677 61.88 6.906 50 88 Age 3 : Accounting I 677 21.77 4.216 17 45 Accounting II 677 23.53 4.455 19 46 Accounting III 677 26.31 5.102 20 48 Average age 4 677 23.87 4.473 19 46 Academic aptitude 5 677 30.14 6.612 12 42 Mathematics background 6 677 4.36 1.715 1 7 Gender 7 : 677 Female 384 (56.7%) Male 293 (43.3%) Prior accounting knowledge 8 : 677 Accounting in Grade 12 549 (81.1%) No accounting in Grade 12 128 (18.9%) * Higher variable values represent better student performance, academic aptitude and mathematics background. 1 Student performance is measured by the student‟s average mark obtained in Accounting I, II and III respectively. 2 Average student performance is measured as the average mark obtained by the student in Accounting I, II and III. 3 Age is measured as the students‟ age at the point that the student completed the final module in Accounting I, II and III respectively. 4 Average age of the student is calculated as the average age of the student during the period taken to complete Accounting I, II and III. 11 5 Academic aptitude is measured as the student‟s admission point score (APS) on completing the final year of schooling (Grade 12). The APS score is calculated using the NSC achievement levels table (see Table 2). The maximum APS that can be obtained is a score of 42 points. 6 Mathematics background is measured as the achievement level (1–7, see Table 2) obtained by the student in the final year of schooling (Grade 12) for mathematics. 7 Gender is coded as “1” for female students and “0” for male students. 8 Prior accounting knowledge is coded as “1” for students who had accounting as a subject in the final year of schooling (Grade 12) and “0” for students who did not have accounting as a subject in the final year of schooling (Grade 12). 4. Results and discussion 4.1 Descriptive statistics Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of the dependent and independent variables. Table 3 shows the mean students‟ performance 1 (dependent variable) decreases as students progress into the degree. In Accounting I the mean student performance was 68.83 (std. dev. = 11.022), Accounting II, 60.20 (std. dev. = 8.2181) and Accounting III, 56.60 (std. dev. = 5.677). The mean over the three years is 61.88 (std. dev. = 6.906). The mean age of students completing Accounting I, II and III is 21.77 (std. dev. = 4.216), 23.53 (std. dev. = 4.455) and 26.31 (std. dev. = 5.102) respectively, while the average age is 23.87 (std. dev. = 4.473). The mean for academic aptitude when completing Grade 12 is 30.14 (std. dev. = 6.612) and the mean mathematics score (range = 1 to 7) is 4.36 (std. dev. = 1.715). In terms of gender, 384 (56.7%) were female and 293 (43.3%) male, while N = 549 (81.1%) had studied accounting in their final year of schooling. 4.2 Regression analysis Multiple regression analysis was used to evaluate how well the five independent variables predict performance. Table 4 shows that there is a significant relationship between the dependent variable (student performance) and the five independent variables. Accordingly, the model used is significant with a good 1 The study only includes successful students, thus, the minimum performance percentage obtained is 50%. 12 Table 4. Regression analysis results Panel A: Performance in Accounting I Beta Standardised coefficients Beta t-statistic p-value VIF Constant 39.953 12.181 .000 H1: Age .158 .060 1.646 .100 1.239 H2: Gender -.500 -.022 -.672 .502 1.032 H3: Prior accounting knowledge 3.977 .141 3.908 .000 * 1.205 H4: Mathematics background 1.138 .177 3.411 .001 * 2.480 H5: Academic aptitude .582 .349 6.593 .000 * 2.584 Model F = 49.957 (p-value =.000 ); R-square = .271; adjusted R-square = .266 Panel B: Performance in Accounting II Beta Standardised coefficients Beta t-statistic p-value VIF Constant 49.269 17.933 .000 H1: Age -.003 -.002 -.042 .966 1.249 H2: Gender .413 .025 .685 .494 1.034 H3: Prior accounting knowledge .501 .024 .613 .540 1.181 H4: Mathematics background 1.220 .254 4.515 .000 * 2.475 H5: Academic aptitude .168 .135 2.331 .020 ** 2.609 Model F = 21.572 (p-value =.000 ); R-square = .138; adjusted R-square = .132 Panel C: Performance in Accounting III Beta Standardised coefficients Beta t-statistic p-value VIF Constant 55.311 27.810 .000 H1: Age -.165 -.148 -3.573 .000* 1.322 H2: Gender -.160 -.014 -.380 .704 1.036 H3: Prior accounting knowledge -.574 -.040 -1.014 .311 1.178 H4: Mathematics background .542 .164 2.891 .004 * 2.472 H5: Academic aptitude .127 .148 2.508 .012 ** 2.670 Model F = 20.050 (p-value =.000 ); R-square = .130; adjusted R-square = .123 * Significant at the 0.01 level ** Significant at the 0.05 level To detect any multicollinearity issues, the variance inflation factor (VIF) is calculated. A common rule is that if the VIF is greater than five (5), multicollinearity is severe (Studenmund, 2001). 13 fit, and the R-square compares favourably with prior studies (see Koh and Koh, 1999). To detect any multicollinearity issues, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was calculated. A common rule of thumb is that if the VIF is greater than five (5), multicollinearity is severe (Studenmund, 2001, p.258). As can be seen from Table 4, no multicollinearity issues exist. An additional regression was run which excluded the effect of mathematics background from academic aptitude. The results (untabulated) remained unchanged. 4.3 Testing Hypothesis H1: age Table 4 shows that age is not statistically significant in Accounting I and II, yet it is in Accounting III. Thus, the null hypothesis (H1), namely age has no significant effect on student performance in Accounting I, II and III, can be partially rejected. The negative coefficients in Accounting II and III indicate that younger students perform better, and significantly so in Accounting III. A reason for this finding could be, for example, it can be assumed that students entering the BCompt degree are generally younger, therefore more motivated to pass their examinations as they may have less commitments (for example, time, work, family, financial) and consequently can focus more on their studies. H2: gender Table 4 also illustrates that gender is not significantly associated with student performance in Accounting I, II or III. Thus, the null hypothesis (H2), namely gender has no significant effect on student performance in Accounting I, II or III, cannot be rejected. The negative coefficient for Accounting I and III indicates that male students perform better than females but not significantly so; however, in Accounting II, the opposite applies. Koh and Koh (1999) proposed that for a more systematic study, student gender should not be identifiable from the examination answer scripts. This suggestion was addressed in the current study as a student number identifies students at Unisa resulting in examiners not knowing their gender. The 14 indifferent gender results could be indicative that gender no longer plays a role in success due to equal opportunities available to both genders in the modern world. H3: prior accounting knowledge Prior accounting knowledge is statistically significant in Accounting I but not so in Accounting II, and III (see Table 4). Thus, for Accounting I, the null hypothesis (H3), namely prior accounting knowledge has no significant effect on performance can be rejected. The positive coefficient for Accounting I indicates that students with prior accounting knowledge perform better than students without such knowledge. Reasons for these results can be ascribed to a number of factors such as research design, institutional settings and methods used. The results showing that prior accounting knowledge is only significantly associated with student performance in Accounting I (the student‟s first year of study) in the BCompt degree may be that prior accounting knowledge gives those who have such knowledge an early advantage, however as the work becomes more integrated in the second and third year of studies, such prior knowledge is not enough to get them through the subject at the more advanced level. H4: mathematics background Table 4 confirms that mathematics background is statistically significant in Accounting I, II, and III. Thus, the null hypothesis, namely mathematics background has no significant effect on student performance in Accounting I, II or III, can be rejected. At all three levels, students with a stronger mathematics background perform better. These findings confirm the expectation that a strong mathematical background will have a positive effect on student performance in the accounting subject. A reason to substantiate this finding could be that as mathematics is a subject that requires a high level of logic and skill, accordingly a student who obtained a higher grade in mathematics will have an advantage over the student with a lower grade. 15 H5: academic aptitude The null hypothesis academic aptitude has no significant effect on student performance in Accounting I, II or III can be rejected as academic aptitude is statistically significant in Accounting I, II and Accounting III (see Table 4). The positive coefficient indicates that students with better academic aptitude scores perform better than students with lower scores. The findings show that academic aptitude is a strong predictor of performance and an important determinant of student performance. As indicated by prior literature, academic aptitude can be measured in various ways; however, regardless of the measure used academic aptitude is a strong indicator of success. The standardised betas (see Table 4), further indicate that academic aptitude is the most important determinant of student performance in Accounting I followed by mathematics background; while in Accounting II and III mathematics background is the strongest determinant. 5. Implications, limitations and conclusion Factors influencing performance in accounting have been extensively researched over the past few decades. The effect that such factors have on performance in a distance education environment, over the duration of a course, and in a South African context are however limited, which prompted the motivation for the current study. The results show that of the five variables tested, mathematics background and academic aptitude are the two most important determinants of performance in Accounting I, II and III. The findings thus confirm that a strong mathematical background will have a positive effect on performance (see Koh and Koh, 1999; Eskew and Faley, 1988; Gul and Fong, 1993; Wong and Chia, 1996). Similar to prior literature (Byrne and Flood, 2008; Duff, 2004; Guney, 2009; Koh and Koh, 1999; Mohrweis, 2010), these findings also show 16 that academic aptitude is a strong predictor of performance. The present study also clarified the issue with respect to prior accounting knowledge, with results showing this factor is only significantly associated with performance in Accounting I and that such knowledge does not appear to benefit students over time (Eskew and Faley, 1988; Farley and Ramsay, 1988; Gul and Fong, 1993; Rohde and Kavanagh, 1996; Alcock et al., 2008). In relation to age, this study finds this factor to be pertinent to younger students performing significantly better in later years, which reinforces the findings of Bartlett et al. (1993), Koh and Koh (1999) and Müller et al. (2007). Finally, similar to studies by McDowall and Jackling (2006), Guney (2009) and Halabi et al. (2010), this study found no meaningful relationship between gender and performance. The results showing the significance of academic aptitude, has important implications for educators and policy makers. Admission to the BCompt degree through Unisa has traditionally not been assessed using an admission point system. The implication and recommendation of this research is that Unisa examine the possibility of applying admission requirements to their BCompt degrees. The introduction of a minimum admission point system should increase student success and, as a result, throughput rates. The findings also emphasise the importance of mathematics as a pre-requisite for admission to an accounting degree. An implication here is that student counsellors and student advisers, at the high school level in particular, should highlight this finding when advising prospective students who would like to pursue a career in accounting. A good mathematical knowledge developed at school will likely advantage students throughout their university accounting studies. Prior accounting knowledge was found to be significantly associated with student performance in the first year of study but not thereafter. An implication is that this can also assist counsellors when advising students of career choices that prior accounting knowledge does not necessarily equip them to pass all the 17 accounting modules in an accounting degree. This could possibly widen the pool of prospective students taking accounting at university – that you don‟t need to complete accounting at high school to be successful overall. Additionally the findings show that educators should caution students in accounting degree programs beyond the first year, that having studied accounting as a subject in their final year of school does not guarantee that they will succeed in second- and third-year university accounting. Finally, the findings also have implications for professional bodies. Accounting degrees are usually the starting point for students who want to qualify as chartered accountants and it is important that professional bodies be aware of the results that show that academic aptitude and mathematics background are strong indicators of success. As professional bodies are continuously involved in ensuring universities adhere to a high standards of training, a recommendation would be to introduce a minimum admission point system for admission to a distance education accounting degree. This could increase the quality and throughput of students who eventually qualify as chartered accountants. While statistical significance has been found in many of the variables tested, there are a number of limitations that should be borne in mind. These limitations however can be used to address further research. While the present study tested five variables, prior research has found that numerous other factors such as learning styles, student perceptions, motivation, home language, and schooling may influence student performance (Lane and Porch, 2002; Guney, 2009). Due to fact that this study was designed to rely only on institutionally available data, these factors were not included in this study. Including these or perhaps other factors in future studies will add to findings pertaining to determinants of student performance. Byrne and Flood (2008) also noted that, if a greater understanding of academic performance is to be achieved, future research should aim to combine background variables (for example study effort, part-time work commitments and family circumstances) with others. Additionally Arquero, Hassall, Joyce 18 and Donoso (2007) state “Accounting is about measuring and communicating” and emphasize the importance of communication apprehension. Extending the current study to include communication skills will contribute to the current literature. Finally, only students at one university were included in this study; thus, the generalisability of the results to other institutions therefore may be limited, and future research could be extended to other distance education institution providers in South Africa and internationally. References Albrecht, W.S. and Sack, R.J. 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(1976), Human Characteristics and School Learning, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Buckless, F.A., Lipe, M.G. and Ravenscroft, S.P. (1991), “Do gender effects on accounting course performance persist after controlling for general academic aptitude?”, Issues in Accounting Education, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 248-261. Byrne, M. and Flood, B. (2008), “Examining the relationships among background variables and academic performance of first year accounting students at an Irish university”, Journal of Accounting Education, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 202-212. Cheung, C.K. and Wong, K.W. (2011), “The effect of previous subject knowledge on student performance in the subject of principles of accounts in the Hong Kong advanced-level examination: a case study”, The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 195-199. Deegan, C. and Unerman, J. (2011), Financial Accounting Theory, McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY. De Lange, P. and Mavondo, F. (2004), “Gender and motivational differences in approaches to learning by a cohort of open learning students”, Accounting Education, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 431-448. 19 Doran, B.M., Bouillon, M.L. and Smith, C.G. (1991), “Determinants of student performance in accounting principles I and II”, Issues in Accounting Education, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 74-84. Duff, A. (2004), “Understanding academic performance and progression of first-year accounting and business economics undergraduates: the role of approaches to learning and prior academic achievement”, Accounting Education, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 409-430. D‟Souza, K.A. and Maheshwari, S.K. (2010), “Factors influencing student performance in the introductory management science course”, Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 99-119. Eskew, R.K. and Faley, R.H. (1988), “Some determinants of student performance in the first college-level financial accounting course”, The Accounting Review, Vol. 63 No. 1, pp. 137-147. Farley, A.A. and Ramsay, A.L. (1988), “Student performance in first year tertiary accounting courses and its relationship to secondary accounting education”, Accounting and Finance, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 29-44. Gammie, E., Paver, B., Gammie, B. and Duncan, F. (2003), “Gender differences in accounting education: an undergraduate exploration”, Accounting Education, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 177-196. Gul, F.A. and Fong, S.C.C. (1993), “Predicting success for introductory accounting students: some further Hong Kong evidence”, Accounting Education, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 33-42. Guney, Y. (2009), “Exogenous and endogenous factors influencing students‟ performance in undergraduate accounting modules”, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 51-73. Halabi, A. (2009), “Empirical evidence examining the academic performance of students in the first two accounting subjects”, Asian Review of Accounting, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 77-88. 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(1993), Rethinking University Teaching - A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology, Routledge, London. McDowall, T. and Jackling, B. (2006), “The impact of computer-assisted learning on academic grades: an assessment of students‟ perceptions”, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 377-389. Michlistsch, J. and Sidle, M. (2002) “Assessing student learning outcomes: a comparative study of techniques used in business school disciplines”, Journal of Education for Business, Vol. 77 No.3, pp.125– 130. Mohrweis, L.C. (2010), “The omitted variable in accounting education research: the non-traditional student”, American Journal of Business Education, Vol. 3 No. 11, pp. 1-6. Müller, H., Prinsloo, P. and Du Plessis, A. (2007), “Validating the profile of a successful first year accounting student”, Meditari Accountancy Research, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 19-33. Olivier, M. and Bulman, F. 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work_tqzzp6pxbfbftidkdyfuajrhnq	----	Studies in Higher Education Vol. 32, No. 1, February 2007, pp. 1–20 ISSN 0307-5079 (print)/ISSN 1470-174X (online)/07/010001–20 © 2007 Society for Research into Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/03075070601004366 Face-to-face versus online tutoring support in distance education Linda Price*, John T. E. Richardson and Anne Jelfs The Open University, UK Taylor and Francis LtdCSHE_A_200332.sgm10.1080/03075070601004366Studies in Higher Education0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online)Original Article2007Society for Research into Higher Education321000000February 2007LindaPriceL.Price@open.ac.uk The experiences of students taking the same course by distance learning were compared when tuto- rial support was provided conventionally (using limited face-to-face sessions with some contact by telephone and email) or online (using a combination of computer-mediated conferencing and email). Study 1 was a quantitative survey using an adapted version of the Course Experience Questionnaire and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory. Study 2 was another quantitative survey using the Academic Engagement Form. Study 3 was an interview-based examination of the students’ conceptions of tutoring and tuition. In all three studies, the students receiving online tuition reported poorer experiences than those receiving face-to-face tuition. Study 3 showed that tutoring was seen not only as an academic activity but also as a highly valued pastoral activity. To make online tuition successful both tutors and students need training in how to communicate online in the absence of paralinguistic cues. Introduction There is an increasing use of information technology in higher education (Alexander et al., 1998). On the one hand, there is a move from paper-based to electronic mate- rials; on the other hand, there is a move from face-to-face support to online support (see ‘Working towards e-quality’, 2002). In campus-based programmes, both kinds of development may be happening simultaneously, and so it is difficult to disentangle their respective consequences for the students’ experience. In distance education, there is often a clearer separation between the central design and production of instructional materials and the provision of tutorial support at a local level, and so it becomes feasible to evaluate the impact of technological innovations on each aspect of the curriculum in a quasi-experimental manner. The Open University was founded in 1969 to offer degree programmes by distance learning across the United Kingdom. It accepts all applicants over the * Corresponding author. Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. Email: l.price@open.ac.uk 2 L. Price et al. normal minimum age of 18 without imposing formal entrance requirements, subject only to limitations of numbers on specific courses. Originally, nearly all of its courses were delivered by specially prepared correspondence materials, combined with tele- vision and radio broadcasts, video and audio recordings, tutorial support at a local level and (in some cases) week-long residential schools. In more recent years, however, the University has made increasing use of computer-based support, partic- ularly CD-ROMs, dedicated websites and conferencing links. In the present investigation, we compared the experiences of students taking the same course by distance education when tutoring support was delivered either conventionally (using limited face-to-face sessions with some contact by telephone and email) or online (using a combination of computer-mediated conferencing and email). Participation in tutorials is not compulsory and is regarded as supplementary rather than prescribed. Most of the tuition is student-driven through contact that they initiate via telephone or email. There may only be eight face-to-face tutorials, and online tutorial support is at a commensurable level (in both cases, students are addi- tionally encouraged to initiate contact with one another). Since the aims, content and assessment demands were held constant, we were able to evaluate the impact of online tutoring support on the students’ experience. In Study 1, we carried out a quantitative survey to compare students receiving face- to-face and online tuition with regard to their perceptions of the academic quality of their courses (as monitored by an adapted version of the Course Experience Questionnaire), and with regard to their approaches to studying (as monitored by the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory). In Study 2, we carried out another quantitative survey to compare the students with regard to their academic engage- ment with the course (as monitored by the Academic Engagement Form). Finally, in Study 3, we carried out an interview-based investigation to examine the students’ conceptions of tuition and tutoring when these were delivered either conventionally or online. Study 1 Method The course chosen for study was U213, ‘International development: challenges for a world in transition’. This is a multidisciplinary course at an intermediate undergrad- uate level, and runs from February to October. It is worth 60 credit accumulation transfer (CAT) points in the UK, and hence equates to 50% of one year’s full-time study. It is assessed by six tutor-marked assignments and an unseen final examination taken at a regional assessment centre. In 2002, the course was offered with conven- tional tutorial support, consisting of face-to-face tutorials with telephone and email support, or online support provided by email and computer conferencing. Students were free to choose either version of the course (for instance, because they preferred a particular mode of tuition, or because their personal circumstances made it difficult for them to attend face-to-face tutorials). A postal survey was distributed to all 52 Face-to-face versus online tutoring 3 students who had completed the course with online tutorial support, and also to a random sample of 102 students who had completed the course with face-to-face tuto- rial support (the remaining 400 students received a separate survey carried out for internal quality-assurance purposes). The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) was devised by Ramsden (1991) as a measure of the academic quality of degree programmes. Since 1993, an adapted version of the CEQ has been administered to all students graduating from Australian universities. An extended version of the CEQ was evaluated as a research instrument by Wilson et al. (1997), and was found to be psychometrically robust. Lawless and Richardson (2002) adapted this version of the CEQ for students who were taking courses by distance learning. This yielded an instrument containing 36 statements in seven subscales, and respondents indicate their level of agreement with each state- ment on a scale from 1 to 5. The defining items (i.e. those that showed the highest loadings) on the seven subscales are shown in Table 1. The Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI) was developed by Entwistle et al. (2000). It consists of 52 statements in 13 subscales that measure different aspects of studying. Once again, respondents indicate their level of agree- ment with each statement on a scale from 1 to 5. A deep approach is defined by four subscales: seeking meaning, relating ideas, use of evidence, and interest in ideas. A strategic approach is defined by five subscales: organised studying, time manage- ment, alertness to assessment demands, achieving, and monitoring effectiveness. A surface approach is defined by four subscales: lack of purpose, unrelated memorising, syllabus-boundness, and fear of failure. Table 1. Defining items of the seven subscales in Lawless and Richardson’s (2002) version of the CEQ Subscale Defining item Appropriate Assessment Assessment on OU [Open University] courses seems to be more to do with testing what you’ve memorised than with testing what you’ve understood.* Appropriate Workload The sheer volume of work to be got through in OU courses means that you can’t comprehend it all thoroughly.* Clear Goals and Standards On [course], it is always easy to know the standard of work that is expected of you. Generic Skills As a result of taking OU courses, I feel more confident about tackling unfamiliar problems. Good Materials The teaching materials for OU courses are extremely good at explaining things. Good Tutoring Tutors make a real effort to understand the difficulties that students may be having with their work. Student Choice The students on OU courses are given a lot of choice in the work they have to do. Note: items indicated with asterisks are coded in reverse. 4 L. Price et al. The CEQ and the RASI were combined in a questionnaire. The students were asked to think about their course as a whole rather than about individual units, topics or tutors. When considering their relations with tutors, they were asked to ‘think about tutorial contacts of all kinds: e.g. face-to-face, phone calls, email or computer conferencing’. The survey was distributed after the final examination for the course, and a reminder was sent two weeks later. Results Completed copies of the questionnaire were received from 99 students, representing a response rate of 64%. This would be considered to be good for a postal survey (Kidder, 1981, pp. 150–151; Babbie, 1990, p. 182). Of these 99 students, 66 had received face-to-face tuition, and 33 had received online tuition; the respective response rates were 65% and 64%, which were not significantly different from each other (X2 = 0.02; d.f. = 1; p = .88). Of the 99 students, 41 were male and 58 were female. The proportion of female respondents was somewhat greater on the online version of the course (70%) than on the face-to-face version of the course (53%), but the difference was not statistically significant (X2 = 2.52; d.f. = 1; p = .11). The respondents’ ages ranged from 22 to 69, with a mean of 40.6 years. The students taking the online version of the course had a mean age (40.7 years) that was very simi- lar to that of the students taking the face-to-face version (40.5 years). CEQ scores The scores on each subscale of the CEQ are obtained by averaging the responses to the items in question, and an overall measure of perceived quality is obtained by aver- aging the scores on the seven subscales. There is a 37th item concerned with students’ general satisfaction. Table 2 shows the mean scores obtained by students taking the two versions of the course. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that the difference between the two groups in their scores on the seven scales approached statistical significance (F = 1.85; d.f. = 7, 91; p = .09). However, univariate analyses showed that this was associated with a significant difference only on the good tutoring scale (F = 7.97; d.f. = 1, 97; p = .01). There was also no difference between the two groups in their overall percep- tions of quality (F = 1.07; d.f. = 1, 97; p = .31), or in their general satisfaction with the course (F = 0.00; d.f. = 1, 97; p = .95). Table 2 shows that the students who received online tuition gave lower scores on the good tutoring subscale than those who received face-to-face tuition. The size of the relevant difference equated to 0.59 of a standard deviation, which would be regarded as being at least a moderate effect (Cohen, 1969, pp. 22–24). The differences on the remaining subscales, on their overall perceptions of quality and on their general satisfaction were small and non-significant. The good tutoring scale is composed of nine items, and it is possible that the pattern of scores obtained by students taking the two different versions of the course was determined by differences on just one or two of these items. Table 3 shows that Face-to-face versus online tutoring 5 Table 2. Study 1: mean scores on the Course Experience Questionnaire Face-to-face tuition Online tuition Subscale M SD M SD Effect sizea Appropriate Assessment 3.93 0.85 3.84 0.80 0.10 Appropriate Workload 2.20 0.93 2.18 1.00 0.02 Clear Goals and Standards 3.11 0.87 2.84 0.96 0.29 Generic Skills 3.37 0.84 3.24 0.84 0.16 Good Materials 3.64 0.93 3.60 0.88 0.04 Good Tutoring 3.62 0.77 3.13 0.92 0.59* Student Choice 3.10 0.73 3.27 0.71 −0.24 Overall Perceived Quality 3.28 0.54 3.16 0.62 0.22 General Satisfaction 3.77 1.16 3.76 1.32 0.01 aStandardised mean difference. According to Cohen (1969, pp. 22–24), a standardised mean difference of 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8 constitute ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ effects, respectively. *p < .05 (two-tailed test). Table 3. Study 1: mean scores obtained on items constituting the Good Tutoring scale Face-to-face tuition Online tuition Items that yielded significant differences Tutors make a real effort to understand the difficulties that U213 students may be having with their work. 3.88 3.09 Tutors on U213 normally give helpful feedback on how well you are doing. 4.14 3.61 I have often discussed with my tutors how I was going to learn in U213. 2.27 1.67 Tutors on U213 show no interest in what students have to say.a 1.73 2.21 Tutors on U213 make clear right from the start what they expect from students. 3.14 2.55 Items that did not yield significant differences Tutors on U213 motivate the students to do their best work. 3.74 3.39 Tutors on U213 often give the impression that they have nothing to learn from students.a 2.26 2.67 Tutors on U213 give a lot of time to commenting on students’ work. 3.55 3.09 On U213, feedback on students’ work is usually only provided in the form of marks or grades.a 2.12 2.36 Note. The scores in this table reflect the level of agreement with each item on a scale from 5 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Mean scores greater than 3 indicate broad agreement, whereas mean scores less than 3 indicate broad disagreement. aThese items have a negative meaning, and students’ responses to these items are reversed before calculating the total score on the Good Tutoring scale. 6 L. Price et al. statistically significant differences arose on five of the nine items. In each case, students who received face-to-face tuition gave more positive responses than those who received online tuition. Indeed, the same pattern is evident even on the items that did not yield a statistically significant difference. RASI scores The scores on each scale and subscale of the RASI are obtained by summing the responses to the relevant items. Table 4 shows the mean scores obtained by students taking the two versions of the course. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that the difference between the two groups in their scores on the 13 subscales was not statistically significant (F = 0.59; d.f. = 13, 85; p = .86), and univariate analyses revealed no significant differences on any of the 13 subscales. Another multivariate analysis of variance showed that the difference between the two groups in their scores on the three main scales was not statistically significant (F = 0.03; d.f. = 3, 95; p = .99), and once again univariate anal- yses revealed no significant differences on any of the three scales. All of the differences were small in Cohen’s (1969) terms. Table 4. Study 1: mean scores on the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory Face-to-face tuition Online tuition Subscale M SD M SD Effect sizea Deep Approach Seeking Meaning 16.15 2.37 16.03 2.72 0.05 Relating Ideas 15.29 2.69 15.18 2.62 0.03 Use of Evidence 16.48 2.25 16.09 2.32 0.17 Interest in Ideas 16.21 2.89 17.12 2.47 −0.33 Total 64.14 8.12 64.42 7.62 −0.04 Strategic Approach Organised Studying 12.15 3.35 12.33 3.44 −0.05 Time Management 14.30 4.07 14.12 3.45 0.05 Alertness to Assessment Demands 13.68 3.06 13.64 2.91 0.02 Achieving 15.89 2.61 16.06 2.56 −0.06 Monitoring Effectiveness 16.56 2.46 16.94 2.18 −0.16 Total 72.59 11.74 73.09 10.62 −0.04 Surface Approach Lack of Purpose 7.15 3.48 6.36 3.00 0.24 Unrelated Memorising 10.30 2.92 10.48 2.48 −0.07 Syllabus-Boundness 11.64 3.81 11.67 3.36 −0.01 Fear of Failure 13.62 3.88 13.61 4.26 0.00 Total 42.71 9.56 42.12 9.05 0.06 aStandardised mean difference. Face-to-face versus online tutoring 7 Coursework and examination marks The students were assessed by coursework and an unseen examination. Both the coursework marks and the examination marks were significantly correlated with their scores on perceived quality (r = +0.40 and +0.29, respectively) and their ratings of general satisfaction (r = +0.33 and +0.25). They were also significantly (and nega- tively) correlated with their scores on surface approach (r = −0.34 and −0.31), but not with their scores on deep approach (r = +0.15 and +0.12) or strategic approach (r = +0.10 and +0.10). In other words, the assessment regime tended to discourage a surface approach, but it did not encourage deep and strategic approaches. The students who received face-to-face tuition obtained a mean coursework mark of 70.95, whereas those who received online tuition obtained a mean coursework mark of 64.30, a difference of 6.65. The students who received face-to-face tuition obtained a mean examination mark of 62.06, whereas those who received online tuition obtained a mean examination mark of 55.12, a difference of 6.94. The former difference was statistically significant (F = 4.44; d.f. = 1, 97; p = .04), but the latter difference was not (F = 2.71; d.f. = 1, 97; p = .10). This was not because the difference was smaller for the examination marks than for the coursework marks, but because the examination marks were subject to greater variability than the coursework marks. Discussion This study has compared students taking two versions of the same distance-learning course. In one version, support was provided through face-to-face tutorials, with tele- phone and email support; in the other, support was provided by electronic mail and computer conferencing. The profile of scores on the CEQ and the RASI was virtually identical in students taking the two versions of the course except in one respect: the students who received online support obtained lower scores on the good tutoring scale of the CEQ. The size of the difference was significant in both statistical and practical terms. The difference was more pronounced on some of the items constituting the good tutoring scale than on others, but there was a consistent pattern for students who received online support to rate their tutors less favourably across all of the items. One possibility is that the tutors who provided online support were less competent or less well trained than the tutors who provided face-to-face support. Staff in higher education need specific advice and training on how to use electronic facilities to provide tutorial support. Even staff who are very experienced in face-to-face tuition can encounter problems when working online (Kitto & Higgins, 2003). In the present case, however, the course team had gone to considerable lengths to identify experi- enced tutors for the online version of the course (two tutors were already experienced in online tutoring), and to provide them with appropriate training and support in their role. On the face of it, then, it is unlikely that the results are due to characteristics of the tutors. An alternative idea is that the results are due to characteristics of the students who opted for the online version of the course. This could not, of course, be controlled in 8 L. Price et al. an experimental sense, and so the students who opted for the two versions of the course may have been different on a variety of background variables. They were simi- lar in both age and gender, and in previous work students who opt for online tuition have been found to be similar to those who opt for face-to-face tuition in their broad attitudes to studying (Carswell et al., 2000). Nevertheless, the pattern of marks obtained suggests that the students who received online tuition were academically weaker on average than the students who received face-to-face tuition. It is possible that the online students needed more guidance and support than they actually received. Again, there are anecdotal accounts of the problems encountered by students in attempting to access online tutorial support (Hara & Kling, 2000). Yet another possibility is that tutoring provided by face-to-face tutorials with telephone and email support is more effective in helping students to understand the materials. Nevertheless, there was no sign of any difference between the two groups in their scores on the other scales of the CEQ, or in their ratings of their overall satisfaction with the course. This is of theoretical interest, because it suggests that variations in the mode of tutorial support do not affect students’ perceptions of other aspects of academic quality. It is also of methodological interest, because it confirms that the individual scales of the CEQ are measuring distinct aspects of teaching quality. Moreover, there was no sign of any difference between the two groups in their scores on the various scales and subscales of the RASI. This implies that approaches to studying in distance education need not be influenced by whether tutorial support is delivered face-to-face or online. Study 2 In studies of campus-based higher education, researchers have used the term ‘engage- ment’ to refer to ‘the quality of effort students themselves devote to educationally purposeful activities that contribute directly to desired outcomes’ (Hu & Kuh, 2002, p. 555). It is generally agreed that involvement in both the academic domain and the social domain is important for student engagement (Nora, 1993; Milem & Berger, 1997). Kember (1989, 1995) proposed that, in the context of distance education, ‘academic integration’ should encompass the different facets of course delivery, while ‘social integration’ depended on the extent to which students were able to reconcile the demands of their courses with their ongoing commitments in their work, their families and their social lives. Foster et al. (1999) constructed the Academic Engagement Form (AEF), which is a questionnaire containing 114 items designed to assess the affective and behavioural aspects of engagement in campus-based higher education. Richardson et al. (2004) selected 36 items from the AEF as being particularly relevant for students in distance education. An analysis of responses given by 239 students with hearing loss and 166 students with no form of disability yielded the 12 subscales shown in Table 5. This version of the AEF was administered to the next cohort of students taking the course described earlier, and we also included the good tutoring subscale of the CEQ in an attempt to replicate the findings of Study 1. Face-to-face versus online tutoring 9 Method In 2003, the course was again offered with face-to-face tutorials or with online support provided by electronic mail and computer conferencing. A postal survey was distributed to all of the 478 students who were available for sampling. The question- naire consisted of the nine items constituting the good tutoring subscale from the CEQ and 35 of the 36 items in the version of the AEF used by Richardson et al. (2004) (one of the items in the communication subscale was accidentally omitted, and hence only results from the 11 remaining subscales will be reported). In respond- ing to the AEF, students were asked to say how often each item had been true for them in their experience of studying with the Open University, using the AEF’s original 6-point scale from 1 for ‘never’ to 6 for ‘always’. Results Completed copies of the questionnaire were received from 209 students, representing a response rate of 44%, which would be considered adequate for a postal survey (Kidder, 1981, pp. 150–151; Babbie, 1990, p. 182). Of these 209 students, 175 had received face-to-face tuition, and 34 had received online tuition; the respective response rates were 46% and 36%, which were not significantly different from each other (X2 = 3.03; d.f. = 1; p = .08). Of the 209 respondents, 98 were male and 111 were female. Once again, the proportion of female respondents was somewhat greater Table 5. Defining items of the subscales in the Academic Engagement Form Subscale Defining item Role of Peers Affiliation with Peers The people on my course(s) are like a family. Institutional Affiliation I’m proud to be an Open University student. Learning from Other Students I learn most from other OU [Open University] students. Participation in Tutorials I participate in tutorial discussions. Role of Self Learning from Materials I learn most from the course materials. Motivation to Learn I care about learning new things. Self-confidence I can do well in my course(s) if I want to. Student Autonomy I can come up with my own solutions to problems. Role of Tutors Communication I wish I could communicate more with other OU students.a Relations with Tutors Tutors and students on OU courses respect each other. Student Control Tutors on OU courses let students decide things for themselves. Tutor Pace Tutors don’t go on to new things before they know that we understand the old ones. aScored in reverse. 10 L. Price et al. on the online version of the course (56%) than on the face-to-face version of the course (53%), but the difference was not statistically significant (X2 = 0.13; d.f. = 1; p = .72). The respondents’ ages ranged from 22 to 75, with a mean of 42.6 years. On this occasion, the students who were taking the online version of the course tended to be slightly younger (mean age = 38.9 years) than the students who were taking the face-to-face version (mean age = 43.3 years) (t = 2.02; d.f. = 207; p = .05). On examination of the completed questionnaires, 64 (or 30.6%) of the respondents had failed to provide a response to one or more of the items, and so these students had to be dropped from our analyses. This left 120 students who had received face- to-face tuition and 25 students who had received online tuition. Table 6 shows the mean scores obtained by the two groups on the subscales of the questionnaire. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that the difference between the two groups in their scores on the 12 subscales (including the good tutoring scale) was statistically significant (F = 2.88; d.f. = 12, 132; p = .001). Univariate analyses showed that this was associated with significance differences on participation in tutorials, relations with tutors, tutor pace and good tutoring. Table 6 shows that the students who received online tuition produced much lower scores on all these subscales than those who received face-to-face tuition. These effects would be regarded as medium or large on Cohen’s (1969, pp. 22–24) criteria. The differences on the remaining scales were all small and non-significant. Table 6. Study 2: mean scores on the Academic Engagement Form and on Good Tutoring Face-to-face tuition Online tuition Subscale M SD M SD Effect sizea Role of Peers Affiliation with Peers 2.48 0.83 2.50 1.01 −0.02 Institutional Affiliation 4.08 0.75 3.98 0.88 +0.12 Learning from Other Students 2.12 0.95 2.22 0.93 −0.11 Participation in Tutorials 3.62 1.03 2.92 0.95 +0.70* Role of Self Learning from Materials 4.45 0.56 4.50 0.43 −0.10 Motivation to Learn 4.74 0.36 4.58 0.49 +0.39 Self-confidence 3.98 0.70 4.08 0.73 −0.14 Student Autonomy 3.89 0.61 3.91 0.60 −0.03 Role of Tutors Relations with Tutors 4.06 0.56 3.59 0.62 +0.82* Student Control 3.88 0.63 3.77 0.86 +0.15 Tutor Pace 3.28 0.84 2.72 0.75 +0.69* Good Tutoring 3.76 0.70 3.33 0.89 +0.55* aStandardised mean difference. *p < .05 (two-tailed test). Face-to-face versus online tutoring 11 Further univariate analyses showed that the two groups were significantly different in terms of their scores on seven of the 35 items in the AEF. These items are shown in Table 7; in each case the students who received online tuition produced lower scores than those who received face-to-face tuition. Table 8 similarly shows the mean scores obtained by the two groups of students on the nine items in the good tutoring scale. Statistically significant differences arose on four of the nine items; in each case, students who received face-to-face tuition gave more positive responses than those who received online tuition. Again, the same pattern is evident even on the items that did not yield a statistically significant difference. Discussion Like Study 1, this study compared students taking two versions of the same distance- learning course. In one version, support was provided by means of face-to-face tuto- rials; in the other, support was provided online. The findings regarding the good tutoring subscale of the CEQ replicated those of Study 1: the students who received online support obtained lower scores than the students who received face-to-face support. The two studies are thus consistent in showing that online tutoring is perceived to be of lower quality than conventional tutoring. The students who received online support also obtained lower scores on the AEF than the students who received face-to-face support. Significant differences arose on the subscales concerned with relations with tutors and tutor pace, and also on the subscale concerned with participation in tutorials, which students seem to regard as a function of tutoring (see Table 5). Consistent with the results from the CEQ, vari- ations in the mode of tutorial support affected students’ experiences of tutoring but did not affect other aspects of their experience. Table 7. Study 2: items yielding significant differences in the Academic Engagement Form Face-to-face tuition Online tuition Participation in Tutorials I participate in tutorials when new material is being discussed. 3.33 2.48 I participate in tutorial discussions. 3.55 2.48 Relations with Tutors Tutors on OU courses treat students fairly. 4.59 4.04 Tutors on OU courses make it clear what they expect of students. 3.92 3.52 Tutors and students on OU courses understand each other. 3.56 3.20 Tutors and students on OU courses respect each other. 4.18 3.60 Tutor Pace Tutors on OU courses make sure that they don’t teach faster than we can learn. 3.52 2.68 Note. The scores in this table reflect how often the relevant statement has been true for the respondents on a scale from 6 (‘always’) to 1 (‘never’). 12 L. Price et al. Study 3 Studies 1 and 2 have shown that students taking the same course perceive online tuto- rial support less favourably than face-to-face tutorial support. This may well have to do with the extent to which the students’ experience of online or face-to-face tutoring conforms or fails to conform to their own conceptions of tutoring and tuition. We therefore decided to explore this issue by conducting interviews with a sample of students who had returned completed copies of the questionnaire used in Study 2. Since the participants were studying on a part-time basis, had many competing commitments and were located at a geographical distance, the interviews were carried out by electronic mail. This provides an environment where participants can comfort- ably reflect and exchange their views (Mann & Stewart, 2000), offering the researcher a rich source of qualitative data (Kivits, 2005). It is particularly useful in situations where sensitive issues are being explored and where confidentiality is paramount (McAuliffe, 2003). The use of email enabled the interviews to be structured in an ‘epis- tolary’ manner (Debenham, 2001), so as to build up rapport and encourage disclosure. Method A random sample of 140 students drawn from the 209 who returned the questionnaire in Study 2 were contacted by email and invited to participate in follow-up interviews; Table 8. Study 2: mean scores obtained on items constituting the Good Tutoring scale Face-to-face tuition Online tuition Items that yielded significant differences Tutors on U213 motivate the students to do their best work. 4.18 3.20 Tutors make a real effort to understand the difficulties that U213 students may be having with their work. 3.98 3.38 Tutors on U213 normally give helpful feedback on how well you are doing. 4.20 3.64 Tutors on U213 make clear right from the start what they expect from students. 3.63 2.88 Items that did not yield significant differences Tutors on U213 often give the impression that they have nothing to learn from students.a 2.20 2.44 Tutors on U213 give a lot of time to commenting on students’ work. 3.81 3.64 On U213, feedback on students’ work is usually only provided in the form of marks or grades.a 2.18 2.28 I have often discussed with my tutors how I was going to learn in U213. 2.18 1.88 Tutors on U213 show no interest in what students have to say.a 1.77 1.88 Note. The scores in this table reflect the level of agreement with each item on a scale from 5 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Mean scores greater than 3 indicate broad agreement, whereas mean scores less than 3 indicate broad disagreement. aThese items have a negative meaning, and students’ responses to these items are reversed before calculating the total score on the Good Tutoring scale. Face-to-face versus online tutoring 13 40 students responded but only 19 completed the entire interview schedule. They comprised six women and two men who had received face-to-face tuition and ten women and one man who had received online tuition. At the initial contact, the purpose of the research was explained, and the students were asked just two or three questions to begin the email exchange. The protocol for the interviews is shown in Table 9. This was used as a general guide, but at each stage the questioning continued until both parties had reached a common understanding. Results We initially adopted a phenomenographic approach to the analysis of these data (see Marton, 1994), but this has been criticised on both conceptual and methodological grounds (Ashworth & Lucas, 1998; Richardson, 1999), and for neglecting gender issues (Hazel et al., 1997—this consideration is relevant, given the preponderance of female students on the course). A phenomenographic approach also assumes that different conceptions of a phenomenon must constitute a logical hierarchy, but this outcome was not evident from our preliminary results. The approach known as ‘grounded theory’ (see Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1994) avoids such assumptions. We therefore employed this approach to address two broad issues. First, what were the students’ conceptions of tutoring and did they view tutoring and tuition differently? Second, what was their experience of the tutorial support that they received on the course? Most students made a clear distinction between tuition and tutoring. Tuition was the teaching of a syllabus of knowledge where instructional designers had the greatest influence on the nature of tutor–student interactions. It was conceived as a more objective, impersonal activity intended to meet the needs of a group, and involving interpretation and assessment of a subject. In contrast, tutoring was conceived as a Table 9. Protocol for epistolary interviews Question Purpose What does tutoring mean to you? What is tuition—is there any difference? To establish students’ general conceptions of tutoring and if they differed from tuition. What kinds of things do you expect to happen in tutoring? To establish the range of activities that students might conceive of as tutoring. How would you prefer these activities to be provided? (prompt: email, face-to-face, online conferencing, telephone). To establish students’ preferences for what mode activities should take and why that might be. What do you expect your tutor to do? To establish students’ conceptions of the role of tutors. What do you expect to do? To establish whether students perceive themselves as being active or passive learners in tuition. Tell me about your experiences of the tutoring on this course? To establish the variation of experience of tutoring on this course. 14 L. Price et al. more subjective and personal activity that was intended to meet the needs of individ- uals, where the students themselves had the greatest influence on the nature of tutor– student interactions. It was pastoral and interactive, involving supporting, counselling and mentoring students aimed at helping them grasp the big picture. The email exchanges were analysed in more detail to examine students’ accounts of their beliefs about tutoring and tutorial support. We identified five distinct conceptions that are summarised in Table 10. These are similar to the four conceptions of tutoring found by Ashwin (2005) in his study of Oxford tutorials, but they include a fifth conception where students viewed tutoring as enabling them to become an expert in the relevant domain and thus to act as professionals. At this level of analysis the five conceptions could be construed as a developmental hierarchy reflecting increasingly sophisticated views about the academic nature of tutoring. Nevertheless, on further analysis other conceptions became apparent that were neither hierarchical in organisation nor specifically academic in nature. These relate to the nature of the student’s interactions with the tutor and with other students, and they are summarised in Table 11. This evidence suggests that the nature of the inter- actions among the members of a tutorial group is as important an aspect of tutorial Table 10. Students’ conceptions of tutoring Conception Explanation Tutoring where the tutor explains materials the student doesn’t understand. Explaining concepts to the student in a different way; providing greater understanding, providing different examples applied to other scenarios, advice and guidance. Making tutorials relevant to the course material by ‘teaching’ the course material. Tutoring where the tutor enables the student to see things as the tutor sees them. Someone who is there to explain their perception and interpretation of the materials. Someone who enables the student to see things as the tutor sees them. Tutoring where the tutor helps the student to see the bigger picture by building a wider context of the discipline. Putting the course in a global context, complement the course by learning from media items. Student contributes their ideas and exchanges those with the tutor and other students, chance to get things wrong as well as right. Tutoring where the students have a meaningful experience and where students and tutors collaborate to form a new understanding. A learning experience that is meaningful in the context of the real world—broad and encompassing—with peers and other students as collaborators in the learning experience. Building on constructive thinking and learning together, engaging in academic discussions, coming to a new perspective or viewpoint. Tutoring that enables the student to speak and think like a professional in the domain. Enabling the student to express themselves as professionals in the domain, where they know the vocabulary of the domain and how to use it. The student knowing how to construct arguments and engage in academic discussions. Face-to-face versus online tutoring 15 support as purely academic considerations about what tutoring is per se. In particular, personal support seems to be a key component of tutoring for students. One student commented: [The tutor should] be personally supportive—this is CRUCIAL for many students, on a level with academic ability, as because of the OU [Open University] ethos many people are new to studying and need confidence and support. What kind of support are you talking about? … Can you say anything more about this? Even if the OU put in place other areas of support (e.g. student groups, counselling services, online conference rooms) the academic and the personal will always be inextrica- bly linked, and the main responsibility will inevitably fall on the tutor, particularly where students are new to study or returning after a long interval. The scale of course materials and the complexity of some issues may lead to a crisis in confidence, and tutors need not only to understand the course materials but also understand students. Some of this is just down to personality, but enlightened institutions would probably invest in other forms of interpersonal training for their tutors (I don’t know whether the OU do this). (Male student, face-to-face tuition) Table 11. Students’ conceptions of the nature of the interactions in tutoring Conception Explanation Pastoral care The tutor offers support and encouragement, and provides the student with confidence. The tutor develops a personal relationship with the student where the student can talk freely. S/he listens to personal difficulties and provides support when difficult circumstances in the student’s private life affect studies. The communication, between the tutor and the student, should be comfortable. The feedback between the tutor and the student should be personalised. Tutor enthusiasm for the subject The tutor is positive about the subject using facial and hand expressions to demonstrate their enthusiasm. Tutors use an enthusiastic tone of voice—this can even be detected on emails. They should provide animation and warmth to the subject. Providing leadership Tutors should lead the way forward and act as a guide. Provide constructive feedback The tutor’s feedback must be of a developmental nature—i.e. tutors should provide constructive feedback by presenting conceptual or overarching criticisms as opposed to nit-picking. Prompt feedback on TMAs [tutor-marked assignments] is essential. Learner autonomy Tutors should enable the student to have some say in the tutorial content. Tutors should not be authority figures—students don’t want an authoritarian tutor. Initiate group learning/peer group support, initiating collaborative learning Tutors should enable students to feel part of a group and share in a collective experience. They should encourage personal interaction with other students, setting up study groups (that ‘meet’ for years), working in groups, being part of a study group, and should enable students to feel part of a community. 16 L. Price et al. The analysis of the students’ accounts of their experiences of tutorial support pointed to a number of issues, particularly in online contexts. Many students stressed the importance of face-to-face contact: Online in general does not have the same feeling of personal focus/friendliness that email or telephone, or especially face-to-face can have. (Female student, online tuition) In my opinion there is no real substitute for face-to-face contact—and in between times, telephone conversation. For me, the personal and immediate feedback and interaction are important. I’m not adverse to any (or all) of the listed means of communication being used, but not as a substitute for personal contact. (Male student, online tuition) I found the tutor very supportive and when I was really battling invited me to come and see her or meet her somewhere and just talk. I stopped feeling like just another ID number. (Female student, face-to-face tuition) The students who had received online tuition were more likely to report negative experiences of tuition than those who had received face-to-face tuition, which confirms the findings of Studies 1 and 2. We asked the chair of the course team for his views on the factors that might contribute to variations in the students’ experi- ences. His view was that this was a combination of poor technical ability and unreli- ability on the part of a particular tutor (a student who had received online tuition reported feeling abandoned by a tutor who proved to be permanently elusive). However, any practical problems would be exacerbated in a medium where the nuances of paralinguistic communication (e.g. intonation, emphasis and non-verbal cues) were missing. A student’s experience in a face-to-face context would probably be less frustrating as the physical presence of the tutor could compensate for any misunderstandings. Further analysis of the students’ perceptions of tutoring revealed that the students had chosen to tell us what they had expected as well as what they had received. The accounts that are summarised in Table 12 combine those aspects that both groups of students reported to be important in tutoring, whether or not these had actually occurred. For instance, some of the students who received online tuition via confer- encing had expected tutorials to start and finish at specific times; this reflects their prior experience of face-to-face tutoring, but it negates the value of an asynchronous and collaborative online learning environment. Again, the students’ conceptions were neither hierarchical in organisation nor particularly academic in nature: they focused on the nature and organisation of the interactions among the tutorial group and how these interactions contributed to the experience of distance education. Discussion This qualitative investigation has shown that Open University students exhibit a number of different conceptions of tutoring. These conceptions lead them to have particular expectations about tutoring, and these in turn affect how they evaluate their subsequent experiences of tutoring. Conceptions of tutoring were similar in students who had received face-to-face tutoring and in those who had received online tutoring. Face-to-face versus online tutoring 17 This is not surprising, since most students will have acquired those conceptions through the experience of face-to-face tutoring in other Open University courses or in programmes at other institutions. However, they may have acquired conceptions and expectations that are inappropriate to online tutoring. Previous phenomenographic investigations of topics other than tutoring have yielded sets of conceptions that are claimed to represent a logical and developmental Table 12. Students’ perceptions of tutoring Subcategory Definition Overall conception: Group Bonding Friendship Tutoring support needs to facilitate the formation of friendships with other students. These friendships, whether academic or otherwise, are important for sustaining students throughout their studies. The tutor’s role is to facilitate the formation of these friendships. Interaction with others Tutoring support needs to facilitate students’ interactions with other students on the course. The tutor’s role in this is seen as a facilitator who enables purposeful interactions. Non-verbal communication The use of non-verbal communication is an important factor in interpreting the tutor’s comments and contributions about learning and how they are viewed by others. Additional support needs to be provided where this is missing to help interpret communications. Overall conception: Interaction with tutor Personalised feedback The tutor’s feedback/comments (usually assignment related) to students needs to be personalised and specific to their requirements. Motivation The tutor is an important catalyst in sustaining student enthusiasm in a distance education course and needs to inspire the students to help them continue in their courses. Matched learning and teaching approaches The tutor’s style of teaching should match with the student’s approach to learning. Mismatches in these approaches caused poorer perceptions of the quality of the experience. Learner autonomy The tutor should provide an environment where students have some autonomy in tutoring. Tutors should not drive the ‘teaching’ with no input from students. Students want to participate in deciding what kinds of things would be addressed in tutoring sessions. Overall conception: Convenience Travel Travel time involved in attendance at tutorials should either be minimised or avoided. This has an impact on tutorial attendance and was a reason why some students opted for online tutoring. Prompt replies Tutors should respond promptly to student queries and to marking assignments. The speed with which queries and assignments are returned to affects the perceptions of the quality of tutoring support. Set tutorial times Tutorials should happen at set times (even for online tutoring sessions). 18 L. Price et al. hierarchy. These conceptions are purely cognitive abstractions divorced from a personal context or history. In contrast, our investigation identified conceptions of tutoring with both cognitive and affective components: our students were concerned not only with achieving intellectual goals but also with satisfying their emotional needs. It may be noted that 16 of the 19 students were women, as were both inter- viewers. Hazel et al. (1997) argued that women’s voices had been lost from phenom- enographic research, and emotions may be intrinsic to women’s conceptions of any phenomenon. Equally, it may be that male participants are less willing to disclose emotional concerns or that male researchers are less willing to heed such concerns if they are disclosed. Conclusion Studies 1 and 2 employed the CEQ, the RASI and the AEF to compare students’ experiences of face-to-face and online tuition in distance education. The aims, content and assessment demands of the course were held constant, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that there was no difference in the students’ approaches to studying according to the RASI. Nevertheless, the students who received online tuition produced poorer ratings of the quality of tutorial support on the CEQ and the AEF. This was confirmed by the use of epistolary interviews in Study 3. More gener- ally, the data suggested that tutoring was viewed not only as an academic activity but also as a pastoral responsibility that developed and supported students during their course. Naturally, we need to conclude with the customary acknowledgement of the need for further research. One consideration is that a tutor’s role may be crucial in a multi- disciplinary course where the students have to grasp concepts, methods and theories drawn from two or more disciplines. The tutors’ expertise is unlikely to match the particular mix of disciplines represented in such a course, and so they may be perceived as being less competent in areas with which they are less familiar. In a course that bridges technology and the social sciences, students and tutors with a background in one field may have conceptions and expectations that differ from those held by students and tutors with a background in the other field. An issue that needs to be addressed is the nature and organisation of the interac- tions that occur in tutorial groups. This is especially important in the case of online contexts, which are severely impoverished from a communication perspective. Both tutors and students need to be trained to compensate for the lack of paralinguistic information through explicit verbal cues. Moreover, many students come to online tuition with inappropriate expectations that undermine their opportunity to exploit fully the advantages of working in an asynchronous and collaborative learning envi- ronment. The present findings suggest that students would benefit from prior super- vised experience of an online tutoring environment. A related issue is that of tutors’ conceptions of tutoring and how they approach their role in an online environment. Some students certainly felt that there were prob- lems with the interactions that they had with their tutors. In many institutions, staff Face-to-face versus online tutoring 19 development activities focus on the technical aspects of online tuition rather than its communicative or pedagogical aspects. There need to be training opportunities concerning effective online communication and how students make sense of interac- tions in the absence of non-verbal, paralinguistic cues. In short, our results suggest that there is much work to be done in helping students and tutors to understand the nature of online communication and how to achieve effective online interaction before online tuition can be deemed to be as effective as face-to-face tuition. Acknowledgements The intellectual rights and publication copyright in the Course Experience Question- naire rest with Professor Paul Ramsden, the Graduate Careers Council of Australia and the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. We are grateful to Professor Noel Entwistle for permission to make use of the RASI. We are also grateful to the staff of the Open University’s Survey Office for identifying the samples of students, preparing and distributing the questionnaires, and process- ing the responses. References Alexander, S., McKenzie, J. & Geissinger, H. 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work_tsriwlikmffz3ceehwz4hbyn7a	----	The Missing Borders_ Pedagogical Reflections from Distance Education The Missing Borders: Pedagogical Reflections from Distance Education Shihkuan Hsu National Taiwan University Bertram C. Bruce University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Published (1999) in Teaching Education, 10(1), 47-54. Abstract Advanced technology brings excitement and promise to the area of distance education, but it also generates questions in what it means to be teaching and learning in media-rich environments. This paper addresses the issue by contrasting distance education and face-to-face education. The students and teachers struggle with distance education because they do not realize that the face-to-face methods of instruction, especially the lecture format, do not match the distance education methods and media. The supporting elements of traditional classroom instruction and management are not present, which creates an environment that looks like traditional instruction but most of the teacher- student methods of communication are hindered. Using the concept of "borders," the authors reinterpret the existing problems with previously ignored or hidden factors. Examples are drawn from a case study of distance learning courses. The concluding section of the paper offers suggestions for improving existing practice by recognizing the long-standing tradition of face-to-face education and mutual interaction of machine and people. Distance education produces a different teaching-learning setting than face-to-face instruction and many teachers and students find it difficult to accommodate this form of interaction. Traditional teaching techniques do not work in distance education settings because although it looks like a regular classroom environment, the method of communication changes the dynamics of interaction. In the following vignette, a student was struggling to get the instructor's attention. Because the instructor was not physically present in front of him, he experienced difficulty in communicating. Tom leans forward towards the microphone 10 inches in front of him. He is waiting patiently for the conversation between the teacher and another student at the other site to end so that he can ask the question that occurred to him over 10 minutes ago. It seems to him that if he misses the next moment, he feels he may not get another chance to get the class's attention back to the topic of his question. The instructor cannot see his raised hand, nor the puzzled look on his face. (Field note, multiple-site teleconferencing classroom) Tom was a student in a university-level teleconferencing classroom. He was attempting to ask a question using a real-time audioconferencing system as he normally would in a traditional, face-to-face classroom. In an effort to bring his question to the instructor's attention, Tom may not know why those ingrained classroom actions he learned in childhood have suddenly become problematic. Is the technology, the instructor, or the student to be blamed for Tom's unexpected and troubled classroom interaction? Although advanced technology brings excitement and promises to the area of distance education, it also generates questions and doubts. Tom's example is not atypical. Distance education studies have found students' satisfaction as a perplexing phenomenon. In a review of adult students' learning in distance education (Moore, Thompson, Quigley, Clark & Goff, 1990), ten out of eleven empirical studies examining student's achievement found that the distance students performed as well, if not better, than students in comparative, traditional face-to-face classes. The study of their satisfaction and attitudinal aspects, however, had mixed findings. Distance students frequently reported a sense of isolation and an urge of wanting to see the instructor. Historically, there has been a high dropout rate in distance education programs (Garrison, 1989), and distance learning has been perceived as a "tough" learning situation (Thompson, 1989). For decades there has been a debate on the level of independence required of the students (Guligemino, 1977; Long & Agyekum, 1988) in order to sustain the harsh learning environment of mediated instruction where students receive little or no support from the instructor (Thompson, 1989). The advance of technology has brought hope to resolve the problems of communication barriers. With the rapid improvement of speed and capacity of computers, instantaneous feedback of multiple channels from the instructor is now possible. For example, video components have been added to the systems that connect students and teachers hundreds and thousands of miles apart. Students previously craving interaction with the instructor now have the opportunity to see the instructor's live image on a screen and their questions can be captured by a voice-activated video camera. With all the support of up-to-date technology, one might assume that teachers and students now have the freedom to communicate all they want and truly enjoy their distance learning experiences. However, studies of different modes of instruction have found that video conferencing is worse than audio-only teleconferencing classes in terms of students' satisfaction (Dillon, Walsh, Weintraub & Katz, 1992). The resemblance to face-to-face communication did not ease the anxiety that people had from the disconnection with the instructor. The Strange World of Distance Education There seems to be something wrong with distance environment. People do not seem quite able to do the things they would normally do in a regular face-to-face situation. In the example of Tom, above, he was struggling, but not sure with what. There was awkwardness in what he was trying to accomplish. In a qualitative study (Hsu, 1997) conducted with three distance education courses, similar situations were observed over and over again. In one of the cases, Dr. S, who had been exposed to the distance environment for the first time, found it frustrating when trying to learn what was going on with the students. I cannot see and hear what is going on with them. Sometimes I asked them for questions, but there was only silence. I do not know how to put it. It's just like there is this anemic group interaction instead of a robust interaction. Students are contributing twenty-five percent of what they could contribute to the class. They did all right on the exams. I feel like a technician doing a particular job like fixing a radio. If I turn it on, and it works, then I've done it right. It was not uncommon that people found themselves operating in the darkness in a somewhat strange world. In another instance, Dr. S was using a whiteboard on the computer. Instead of writing and lecturing at the same time as she would with a classroom blackboard, Dr. S found that the real-time transmission of data kept interrupting her writing and made her give up on writing on the board entirely and use prepared presentation material instead. In another case, the students had an open microphone in front of them, but they found it difficult to answer the teacher's question because they did not have a protocol for the order of answering. Many cues such as a gesture or an eye contact that signaled the other students' readiness to talk were missing. Those who wanted to answer, therefore, had to wait, or guess when and how to address their answers or comments. A simple task in a face-to-face setting such as voicing opinions thus broke in the distance environment and becomes difficult to accomplish. Being familiar with face-to-face classroom settings, we take many things for granted. We follow the explicit and implicit rules of daily classroom practice without having to think about it. When teachers and students migrate to a distance setting, however, basic practices are altered. The difficulty that teachers and students have experienced in the cases above presents an issue that cannot be examined in terms of the technology or human factors separately, but by considering both at the same time (Bruce, 1997). To understand the strangeness of distance education experiences, it maybe helpful to pause for a moment from looking at the practical concerns and turning to a theoretical discussion. The concept of "border" may provide some insights into why the world of distance education is a strange one for those who are used to face-to-face situations. The Concept of Borders John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's (1993) study on software design introduces the concept of borders. According to them, a "border" is a "genre," a set of essential elements of the cultural context developed through practice by a community of users. In the use of technology, a community of users constructs its border elements. One of the problems for people who encounter technology is the failure to recognize this array of peripheral elements that surround the technology being used. Brown and Duguid delineate the role of these supporting elements with respect to technology design and use: Use of shared artifacts is critically supported by latent "border" resources lying beyond what is usually recognized as the canonical artifact. Designers and users intuitively develop these unnoticed resources over time as artifacts are integrated into ongoing practice and stable conventions or "genres" grow up around them. (p. 3) The metaphor of borders draws our attention to the elements that have been conventionally ignored and therefore not discussed. These border elements are usually developed over a long period of time and grow out of practice. In the interpretation of technology, these integrated parts are not perceived as part of the technology, but they strongly influence its use. Brown and Duguid emphasize the influence of the peripheral parts, the border elements, to the central artifact. Technologies, like texts, can be interpreted differently with different borders: A phrase such as "This is a hijack" can reasonably occur in a number of genres?in, for instance, a hijack note, a book about hijacking, or a child's game. Pilots, FBI agents, juries, book readers, or other players in a game need some clues to know which they are dealing with. Clearly, when the phrase occurs in a book on a beach, its conditions of interpretation are quite different from when it occurs in a note in the right hand of someone who might carry a pistol in the left. The different borders set up different expectations. Brown and Duguid also demonstrate how the border elements play a role in technological transfer. In the case of encyclopedia, for example, the accuracy and the authority of the information contained is signaled by the hefty hard cover of the volume that is expensive for publishers to reproduce. When encyclopedias are produced electronically, on the World Wide Web, for instance, the digital forms no longer carry the same weight as the hard covers. Subsequently, the readers may be confused over the seriousness the words carry given the ease of change. The border concept has implications for education. Formal education has been practiced in traditional face-to-face settings for decades. Together, teachers and students have developed numerous borders that support current practice in face-to-face setting. In distance situations, many of the border elements that have been developed in the face-to-face learning community may be altered or missing entirely, thereby creating problems in establishing the proper framework of expectations for conducting teaching and learning. In light of the concept of borders, it is possible to interpret Tom's struggle in the scenario cited at the beginning of this paper. Asking a question in a class, as it reveals, is not a simple matter of speaking out loud the ideas. It involves hand-raising, which signals the student's readiness to ask a question, a pause in the instructor's lecture to allow time for an interruption, and the instructor's acknowledgment representing willingness to take the question. There are other "border" elements, such as the topic being discussed at the moment, and other students' reactions to the questions. Taking all that into consideration, question-asking is indeed a complex act. At the moment a question is asked, numerous decisions have been consciously and unconsciously made. Although these integrated elements of question-asking are normally carried out smoothly in a face-to-face setting, they are interrupted in a situation in which the teacher and students do not meet in person. Because previously face-to-face experiences are crucial to the interpretation of experiences in distance learning, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at some of the premises that underlie the practices of face-to-face instruction. Reflecting on Face-To-Face Experiences The problem situations that occur in distance learning classes have revealed factors integral to classroom activities. One of these factors is that instructors and students bring to the distance learning classrooms assumptions about communication based on face-to-face situations. The dominant mode of current face-to-face practices is teacher- centered and lecture-centered class. The supporting elements of traditional classroom instruction and management are not present, which creates an environment that looks like traditional instruction but most of the teacher-student methods of communication are hindered. The instances of Tom and Dr. S cited above are good examples. As the borders literature indicates, the formation of border elements occurs in the development of a user community. The integration of the border elements and activities develops over time. Classroom communication practices developed and fostered in face-to-face instructional settings must be reconstructed for the distance learning environments. The failure of this reconstruction exposes them and provides an opportunity for critical examination. The Role of Technology. In face-to-face settings, machines such as televisions or overhead projectors are often used as supplement lectures. The machines themselves are used more like tools and are independent of the teacher/student relationship. In a distance setting, however, the situation is different; the technology is a part of the communication process. The audio equipment becomes a part of the act of speaking, as illustrated by the role of the microphone in the process of asking questions. Other supporting communication cues or border elements of face-to-face settings, such as nodding heads and agreeing gestures, do not function as expected. Awkwardness and inconvenience are therefore associated with the use of the technology. When it is noticed at all, the technology is interpreted as interfering (Hsu, 1997). In the case of Dr. S, the interference of the technology was unexpected. The computer display screen was designed to simulate a blackboard for teachers to write on or a television screen to present information. Writing, however, is much different with the computer than with the blackboard. There are time lapses between writing strokes with the computer such that continuous writing on the screen becomes almost impossible. Especially when lecturing and writing at the same time, writing with the electronic pen becomes uncomfortable. Dr. S was so uncomfortable she decided to drop the idea of writing with the pen. Although she practiced with the pen before the course started, the actual use of it in class was more intimidating than she expected. Lecturing with writing was the primary means Dr. S used to conduct her classes, but she had to give it up in this class and change to do something else. Technology, in this case, was clearly not an independent tool that merely supplemented classroom practice; it was an essential defining part of the classroom interaction. The Role of Teacher and Students. In teacher-student communicative interactions in a face-to-face classroom, the teacher's role is often dominant. Teachers are the central source for disseminating information, the creators of classroom rules and activities, and the authorities for assessment. Students, on the other hand, are often placed in a passive position of receiving instructions, following them, and receiving evaluations. As in the familiar IRE pattern (Mehan, 1979). The traditional context of the face-to-face classroom reinforces and supports the instructor's centrality and authority. Often, the room arrangement in a face-to-face class setting preserves and encourages the role of the instructor as the central authoritative figure. Other aspects of traditional teaching-learning practices such as the curriculum, pedagogical theory, and class management procedures, echo this "teacher as authority" tradition. Gillard (1993) presented a succinct illustration of this face-to-face tradition and the power unbalance it symbolizes: Contiguous (face-to-face) education in its most typical form...may be seen...through the binaries centre/periphery, one/many, high/low; and in any other of the elements of power which issue from a politics of education which keep students in their place, rather than setting out to empower them. (p. 184) Furthermore, Gillard points out that the spatial arrangement creates not only physical separation of the teacher and the students, but the sentiment that sets them apart in their power relationships: The typical structure of the lecture theater from the centre of which the lecturer's gaze can engage with that of any student is similar in design and intention to the Benthamite Panopticon discussed by Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1979), a prison designed in such a way that the warders at the centre of a wheel-like structure can look down any of the spokes to see what any prisoner is doing at any time. All the prisoners are visible to their guards all of the time. The structure of this environment produces not only unequal power relationships but a magisterial style of teaching as well. (p.184) A distance learning class situation does not support this tradition. A computer or projection screen replaces the position where the teacher ordinarily sits or stands. What the students can look at during the class becomes optional. In a traditional face-to-face class, the teacher can see some of what is going on with the students. The teacher has the right and the responsibility to look for students' reactions, to acknowledge or ignore reactions, and to set forth the appropriate pace and style accordingly. For class interaction, teachers are expected to take the initiative. Students, in this environment, wait to be seen or for an appropriate time to speak. When they have difficulty in doing so, they expect that the instructor can pick up their frustration and anger. While in a face-to-face situation their facial expressions and body language might be noticed by the instructor, in a distance class, their distress can easily go unnoticed. Unless students make deliberate efforts to express themselves, their negative feelings can accumulate and aggregate. The format of lecturing is also subject to scrutiny when it comes to distance education. Although the lecture format is well-supported by a face-to-face setting, and has been the main means for most classroom interaction, it is not well-suited to a class situation where small groups of students are scattered across multiple locations. Even when the quality of the audio and video communication channels improves so that the students hear and see the lecture better, straight talking by the instructor for the entire class is not the only mode of instruction that can be done with a multimedia delivery system. The dominance of the lecture format, and therefore the potential of imparting knowledge from the instructor to the students, has to be challenged when education moves from face-to-face to a technology-rich distance mode. Complying with the authority of the teacher, students carry out their daily class activities, often with repeated interactions with the teacher. For example, when a student encounters difficulty in understanding the material a teacher is presenting, he or she would want to clarify the content by raising hands and asking a question. If the problem is not resolved, the student would probably want to pursue further by talking in private after the class. As easy as this sounds, those activities do not work at a distance. For students who are accustomed to study for a class using those strategies, they often encounter difficulties in a distance setting, and perceive technology as a barrier to their daily schooling. In the case of Tom, the channels he could normally expect to have in a regular face-to-face class to interact with the instructor may not be available, such as going back to the topic during the class, or talking to the teacher after class. Students with experiences similar to Tom's could be disappointed and frustrated at first, but some of them soon shift their source of help from the teacher to the fellow students. In a distance course, the opportunity and intensity of peer interaction can thus be enhanced. The shifted concentration from teacher-student interaction to student-student interaction has been observed over and over again in distance situations across the technology. Perhaps because it is not an expected classroom practice, however, the strengthened relationship among peers, has typically developed unplanned. The closeness between students also brings our attention to other previously ignored factors in education settings. The seating in the classroom, for example, appears trivial but is of great importance in distance classes. At the beginning of a class, students may pick a seat at random, or casually sit with familiar faces. In a face-to-face class where students do not have much interaction during the class, except during small group activities, where they sit may not matter that much. In distance classrooms, however, it significantly determines whose notes one refers to and whose perspectives one adopts. During the class, when students have to seek immediate help from others, the person in the next chair is the one they turn to. In the case of Tom, had he sat by the side of someone knowledgeable and willing to help, he would be have been much more successful in gaining help rather than relying on the chance of getting the attention from a remote instructor. As a consequence, the student sitting in the next chair has a great impact on one's learning. He or she is the helper, the critic, and the opinion shaper. As Hsu (1997) observed, students in each site allied their opinions with the neighboring students. They shared similar attitudes and behavior towards the course, the technology, and the instructor. Revisiting the "Hardness" in Distance Education Distance learners frequently encounter harshness during class that leads to view that distance education is a "hard" situation for teaching and learning. It is true that students often have problems in the process of communication and interaction, but hardness in distance education may be a relative term. Frustrations, anxiety, and disappointment are not all that uncommon in distance classes. Had students in Hsu's (1997) study filled out a questionnaire during the course, they would probably have reported as "low satisfaction," as many others have found. Although some students blamed the technology, other people, or themselves for this dissatisfaction, researchers have not been able to clearly delineate the actual cause of their dissatisfaction. Following the comments above, one plausible interpretation is that people have to break the old and familiar in distance education. They have developed many skills and strategies that are suitable to face-to-face settings, but may not work in the new settings. Being challenged or even threatened, they can feel uncomfortable. Feeling uncomfortable may in turn encourage students to work harder on their own, or to find help from others. The discomfort is transformed into incentives that help the students discover new ways of evaluating their long-held beliefs. From missing the border elements of communication to forming new concepts and strategies to survive at a distance, teachers and students in the three distance classes studied by Hsu (1997) sought different ways to realize their goals in class. Some were successful and some were not so successful. For many of the participants, the distance learning experiences may appear to be full of frustration and dissatisfaction, but at the end may have educational value by highlighting new ways of doing things. Whether they were making deliberate choice or not, many of them had gradually become aware of the new situation and developed ways to deal with it. The three courses revealed positive sides of the seemingly negative distance education experiences. These suggest ways to respond to the phenomena of missing borders in distance education, or even education in general. ___________________________ Insert Table 1 about here ___________________________ Conclusion and Implications The three distance education courses reveal the interactions occurring at a distance and the role the technology plays. Distance technology has created a different environment from face-to-face situations, but the differences cannot be seen by examining only the end-product of learning. Paying attention to the communicative and learning processes on the other hand, provides insights into how the underlying assumptions operate in distance class interaction. The difficulty and problems that people have encountered at a distance afford an excellent opportunity to look beyond what we can do as teacher and students. In fact, an examination of distance education provides challenges to both traditional face-to-face educational practices and assumptions. It leads us to question the authoritative role of the teacher and sole reliance on whole-class instructional delivery methods. Rather than limit ourselves to one mode of teaching and learning, we can expand our horizon to a broader array of interactional approaches; rather than one instructional strategy, distance education suggests a newer and enlarged view about what teaching and learning can be. Distance education is thus not a replacement for face-to-face education. The role of technology has changed distance education and challenge our views about education in general. Newer technologies provide new opportunities for distance education, but to use the technology more effectively, we need a greater understanding of the process of teaching and learning. References Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. (1994). Borderline Issues: Social and material aspects of design. Human-Computer Interaction, 9(1), 3-36. Bruce, B. C. (1997). Literacy technologies: What stance should we take? Journal of Literacy Research, 29 (2), 289-309. Dillon, C. L., Walsh, S. M., Weintraub, R., & Katz, E. (1992). The comparative learning benefit of one-way and two-way videoconferencing for distance education applications. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning (pp. 40-44). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, Center for Distance Teaching and Learning. Garrison, D. R. (1989). Understanding distance education: A framework for the future. New York: Routledge. Gillard, G. (1993). Deconstructing contiguity. In T. Evans & D. Nation (Eds.),. Reforming open and distance education (pp. 182-195). New York: St. Martin's Press. Guglielmino, L. M. (1977/78). Development of the self-directed learning readiness scale. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Georgia, 1977). Dissertation Abstracts International, 38, 6467A. Hsu, S. (1997). Connecting at a distance: The impact of technology on teaching and learning experiences in distance education. Ph. D. Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Long, H. B., & Agyekum, S. (1988). Self-directed learning readiness: Assessment and validation. In H. B. Long and Associates, Self-directed learning: Application and theory (pp. 253-266). Athens, GA: University of Georgia, Adult Education Department. Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons: Social organization in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moore, M. G., Thompson, M. M., Quigley, B. A., Clark, G. C, & Goff, G. G. (1990). The effect of distance learning: A summary of literature. American Center for the Study of Distance Education Research Monograph, 2. Thompson, G. (1989). Provision of student support in distance education: Do you know what they need? In R. Sweet (Ed.), Post-secondary distance education in Canada: Policies, practices and priorities. Athabasca University and Canadian Society for Studies in Education. Table 1 The Missing Border: Elements and Suggestions for Changes The missing border elements Suggestions for instructors Suggestions for students Visual cues between teacher and student More explicit communication about intention and philosophy. Using multiple channels to communicate with the students. Less reliance on instructor as authority to give orders. Exchanges between students Encourage site-based activities that utilize the naturally occurring interaction of students. Learning to use small group activities, and utilize resources other than the instructor. Technical features that enable smooth writing on the screen Give up the blackboard metaphor as presentation tools. Consider media-rich instructional material that is not limited to text nor linear approach. The same as for the instructor. Technical and social elements for note-taking: Time, tools, and emotions Provide handouts. Utilize activities other than traditional lecture/note- taking format. Use alternative evaluation methods that require less rote learning. Use various learning strategies. Timing and protocols for help-seeking from the instructor Establish multiple channels for teacher-student and student-student help. Assume an active role in finding the help needed from various sources. Negotiate with the instructor to establish the help system. 
work_tusxhjhjbzfblfbhnh5fsyaife	----	06-2-Woodley ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   225   THE INTERNET IS FOREVER: YOUTHFUL INDISCRETIONS AND ILL-CONCEIVED PRANKS REVEAL THE NEED FOR EFFECTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES IN ACADEMIA Carolyn Woodley Victoria University Australia Michel Silvestri Centre for Clinical Education Karolinska Institutet Sweden Abstract Students' imprudent social media use threatens employability and undermines emerging professional identities. Professional bodies have developed social media guidelines as a part of professional codes of conduct. Most professions acknowledge that benefits of social media must be balanced against its potential to negatively affect workers’ professional lives and the public trust in some professions. This paper considers examples of students’ social media use from healthcare and other tertiary programmes in Australia and Sweden. The discussion concludes that universities must confront social media challenges as part of the educational experience for the development of a responsible and professional ethical digital citizenry. Background Social media was barely on the radar of most businesses and enterprises five years ago. Today, however, social media ranks in the top five risks for business (Griffin, 2012) especially regarding brand and reputation. Business, educators and students have lauded the benefits of social media. While universities have been described as “increasing hubs of digital activity; much commendable, some reprehensible” (Wankel & Wankel, 2012, p. 1), the pitfalls of social media do not attract sufficient discussion nor does the topic of social media and professional risk attract considered attention in the university curriculum. Social media “is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0…that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011, p. 61). Social media is characterized by the creation and distribution of content through web-based social networks with high levels of interactivity to create, comment on and disseminate online content. Social media includes text, image and multimedia forms presented in a variety of formats such as blogs, microblogs, image sharing sites and social networking sites. A common feature of social media is the capacity of sites to disseminate user-generated content, often of a personal nature, via web- based or mobile applications (Davis, Deil-Amen, Rios-Aguilar & González Canché, 2012, p.1). Introduction Students in universities around the world are associated with on-campus traditions of raucous behaviour from drinking and partying to possibly libelous student publications. Social media allows campus-based behaviour – from puerile pranks to more serious misdemeanors – to ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   226   reach an audience well beyond campus boundaries and to become very public, reasonably permanent and searchable over a person’s lifetime. This paper examines the extent to which student social media behaviour has the potential to negatively impact on the professions they are hoping to enter. Might student online behaviour create reputational risk for professions? While much discussion around risk of social media focuses on what people post about others and possible breaches of confidentiality, privacy or common decency, this discussion primarily considers the impacts of students’ own social media behaviour on professions and the societal bodies associated with them. The consideration has been spurred by instances of students of recognizable disciplines behaving badly online in ways that explicitly link them, even as novices, to particular professions. So what are the professional problems that social media can exacerbate? Social media has seen ‘mass personal publishing’ (BITS, 2011) with the potential to reach millions of readers in a very short time. The potential of social media to have negative effects on the lives of individuals has been fairly well documented – often via the medium of social media. For years, there has been regular reporting of people who have been variously sacked, harassed, shamed or notoriously catapulted to fame because of behaviour that has been captured, discussed or disseminated via social media. Universities seem to be grappling not only with how to use social media for teaching, learning, marketing and communicating while minimizing risk, but they are also grappling with the extent to which they can influence student off-campus behaviour when it surfaces online. Boundaries of public/private, on-/off- campus and personal/professional are increasingly blurred by what is often called the changing norms of the blogosphere. Studies that have contributed to exploring “acceptable and unacceptable behavior online” (Hooper & Kalidas, 2012, p. 265) indicate that young people might have a clear idea of what is unacceptable behaviour online but are not as clear as what is acceptable. Professional and Legal Context The potential for user-generated content to breach legal, ethical and social codes has lead to professional bodies around the world creating guidelines, codes and recommendations on the use of social media for their members. Some commentators have observed the changing norms of behaviour online with Spar (2001) likening cyberspace to the Wild West: “not a lot of rules or marshals in town” (Spar as cited in Wankel & Wankel, 2012, p.1). While the realm of social media seems unregulated, this is simply not true: the same laws apply online as they do in real life. Different laws do apply in different jurisdictions, and Stewart (2013) has countless examples of the same law being differently applied in the same country due to differing interpretations. But the consequences of online transgressions are certainly real for the people, who have been fined, fired, rendered unemployable or professionally discredited. It is important to stress that, while technology seems to be ahead of the law in respect of social media, technological newness “does not compel new laws, but it does mean existing laws need to be applied” (Short, 2012). Just as is the case with legislation, professional codes of ethics apply to any medium - including social media. However, many groups have perceived an urgent need to explicitly and specifically address the issue of ethics and codes of professional practice online. While it is true that social media behaviour is covered by legislation and guidelines and policies already in place in most institutions, there is a real need to explicitly link new forms of social media and existing polices and guidelines (Lenartz as cited in Wankel & Wankel, 2012). Most universities have Student Charters, Codes of Conduct, Information Technology Policies or specific Social Media Policies that cover social media use. Policies alone, however, are not sufficient. ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   227   Many reports, guidelines and policies stress that public perception of professions could be negatively or positively affected by social media, and that relationships between particular professionals and members of the public could be negatively or positively affected by social media. Many professions stress the need for all professionals to understand “the ethical and professional implications of online social networking” (International Bar Association, 2012, p.10). The Swedish Society of Medicine’s Advice to Doctors in the Use of Social Media (2012) has specific and general advice: all posts on the Internet should be considered public; there is no anonymity on the Internet; and, once posted, information is always there. Both the Australian and British Medical Associations have developed social media guidelines that explicitly cover medical students and target junior doctors. In the legal profession, the Law Institute of Victoria (LIV) (2012) has published Guidelines on the Ethical Use of Social Media. The guidelines do not have the force of law, and lawyers must comply with the Professional Conduct and Practice Rules 2005 and the Legal Profession Act 2004. The guidelines, then, serve as a reminder that “the informal nature of…social media” (LIV, 2012) exacerbates the potential for lawyers to bring the law into disrepute. Social media’s potential to bring professions into disrepute is something that health professions have been quick to mitigate with social media advice. The Nursing and Midwifery Board (2010), the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (2012), the Royal College of Nursing (2011) and the Chiropractic Board of Australia (2012) all provide guidance about social media. Sweden’s internet connectivity is the envy of many nations: “Sweden has the top ranking in the UN ICT development index as well as the World Economic Forum’s Network Readiness Index” (Swedish Institute, 2012). An estimated “97 per cent of people aged 12 - 44 use the internet on a regular basis” (Swedish Institute, 2012). Online, Swedes are protected by strong privacy legislation. The European Union Directive 95/46/EG (EU, 1995) concerning personal data and the right to privacy is implemented at a national level. Sweden’s Data Inspection Board is clear that, under the Personal Data Act 1998, businesses and government agencies are seen as “data controllers” and are legally responsible for data on their official social media sites (Zeldin, 2010). Two examples from Sweden show that, despite tough legislation protecting people’s privacy, social media seems to disinhibit users. In one case, a nurse was disciplined for posting photographs of a surgical procedure on Facebook (AP, 2008). More recently, the city of Gothenburg was in the news when an anonymous Instagram account posted 200 photographs of girls and boys aged 13 - 14 including their names and alleged sexual activity. A riot ensued. Cyberspace and the real world collided. Defamation, privacy and confidentiality are covered by law and so, legally, people are limited about what they can say about others. Or, as in the cases above, people might be punished if they transgress existing laws. In addition to people having information, images or opinions posted about them by others, there is the different and increasing problem of “people... exposing personal information about themselves” (Solove, 2007, p. 2) with little sense of the risks involved. There is general agreement that people have a right to represent themselves. In the past this has been balanced by accepted ideas of privacy and a sense that individuals are allowed to act in ways that do not require public disclosure or accountability (Etzioni as cited in Solve, 2007, p. 71). Traditional ideas of privacy are challenged by new norms of information sharing. The word oversharing has entered our vocabulary and, naturally, the topic of oversharing has its own Twitter hash tag: #oversharing. Oversharing at University and the Role of Universities The behaviour of students online has attracted much attention from schools and universities, governments and potential employers. Students’ online behaviours are diverse and range ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   228   from positive projects including social activism and peer support (Woodley & Meredith, 2012), other “academically purposeful activities” (Davis et al., 2012, p. 9), knowledge exchange and building cultural capital (Ryan, Magro, & Sharp, 2011) to less worthy uses of online technologies such as software piracy and other copyright-infringing activity (Liang, 2007), selling and buying essays (Coughlan, 2008), discovering ways to cheat plagiarism software (Fearn, 2011) and bullying (Solove, 2007). Beyond the most basic peril associated with social media usage by students – that of simply being in front of a computer for lengthy periods with associations of time-wasting, anti-social behaviour or simply being distracted from study (Junco, 2011), far more serious but rarely addressed concerns about student behaviour online include privacy, oversharing and changing norms of behaviour (Solove, 2007): “Students are certainly aware that the information they post is ‘public’; however, all may not recognize the full extent and possible consequence of this display” (Davis et al., 2012, p. 18). Rudman and Steenkamp’s research (2012) documents examples of inappropriate disclosure of information by students. They note that respondents to their survey were aware of the risks of inappropriate behaviour online but only “implemented safeguards in a haphazard manner” (p. 400) to mitigate those risks. Social Media and the Work Place Web 2.0 applications have “created particular hazards for public views of particular professions” (Greysen, Kind, & Chretien, 2010, p. 1227). Teachers, lawyers and medical professionals have been featured in a number of high profile cases that have seen people fired, fined and otherwise sanctioned for unprofessional online behaviour. In Australia, some workplaces have sought to ban staff using social media during work time or commenting on their place of employment. Attempts to stifle social media usage reveal anxiety about social media’s potential negative impact on business. Abusive, sexist and racist comments about co-workers are the main problems at work but planking1 (ABC, 2011), inappropriate photos that breach patient confidentiality (Associated Press, 2008) or even just too much information about one’s ‘private’ life have featured in cases where social media and industrial relations collide. These cases show both a remarkable lack of awareness of the risks of social media or stunning lapses of judgement. Such cases show why Facebook, with the expressed mission of making the world more open and connected has been likened to “a stupidity X-ray” (McKinney, 2011). Social Media and the Professions Globally, professions are policing the behaviour of individuals who are deemed to bring the profession into disrepute through social media. Breaches of patient or client confidentiality and breaches of privacy provide concrete examples of professionals breaking professional codes or even laws. But there are also more nebulous online behaviours that, multiplied, amplified and decontextualised by various peregrinations through the internet, could have damaging consequences – not for the individual who can be seen as somehow misguided, foolish and an aberration within their profession – but for the whole profession. Some professions have urged their members to consider their personal reputations before posting anything online in a professional take on the ‘Think Before You Post’ campaigns that have operated in North America, Australia and England as part of a broader cybersmart agenda. However, professional bodies are concerned to expand that concern for an individual’s reputation to examine how hundreds of posts linked to particular professionals might reflect on the entire profession: ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   229   Thus, the concept of ‘think globally, act locally’ applies to [professional] behavior online in the same way it applies to human behavior in relation to the environment; each individual [professional] should develop a greater consciousness of the potential impact of their online actions for the entire profession. (Greysen et al., 2010, p. 1227) Professions seem particularly concerned by a blurring of public and professional lives that is amplified by social media and especially aggravated by the architecture of social media platforms which collapse separate social groups that, in real life, might never interact (Solove, 2007). Users need to understand that social media has a multi-audience nature but that most platforms operate in a way that “serves all audiences together” (Hooper & Kalidas, 2012, p. 266). Even if users understand that different audiences require different behaviours, the architecture conflates activity to one audience. The blurring of personal and professional identities in social media creates hazards for professionals and students. Many universities are working through these unprecedented challenges. The professions, too, are working out how to use social media to share their knowledge, advocate for their clients or patients and better inform the public about the services, programs and information available. For example, a recent social media campaign in the UK was designed to educate the public about the appropriate use of the Emergency Department of Hospitals. General comments from participants who worked in hospitals were fine but some tweets were “hazardous” in that they described “Patients with chest pains and internal bleeding...real emergencies” (McCartney, 2013). Some tweets ridiculed patients for panicking and misusing the Emergency Department. Given the public nature of the tweets from identifiable hospitals, patients could conceivably identify themselves. Professionals have always discussed clients or patients with other professionals – seeking collegial advice and using colleagues as a sounding board. When such conversations happen online, it is simply not possible to ensure confidentiality (Chretien, Farnan, Greysen & Kind, 2011). In the US, the American Medical Association (AMA) suggests that doctors should separate professional and personal content online and “recognize that actions online and content posted may negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, may have consequences for their medical careers (particularly for physicians-in-training and medical students), and can undermine public trust in the medical profession” (AMA, 2011, p. 6). A blog post in Australia on Nurse Uncut (managed by New South Wales Nurses and Midwives Association) shows the tension between the advocacy potential of social media and its capacity to threaten public trust in the nursing profession. Consider the themes of the blog post “A Disability Nurse Speaks Out.” Might these comments create uncertainty in the public about the levels of care they receive?   Disability nurses are... often stressed…We are so short staffed we rely on casual nurses to take up the vacancies…We have huge potential for medication errors due to the number of medications disability clients require. I know most of the hundreds of clients in this centre… The MO [Medical Officer] was asking me about their conditions, but because I hadn’t worked with these clients for several months, I had to find an AiN [Assistant in Nursing] who had. There are no other RNs [Registered Nurses] on unit. There was no EEN [Endorsed Enrolled Nurse] on unit. We were lucky today; a regular AiN was on duty to supply the information (New South Wales Nursing & Midwifery Association, 2012). ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   230   This blog highlights an issue of professionalism: professionals must be able to critique their profession with a view to improving it, but might some online behaviours threaten the public’s faith and trust in the profession? Methodology The case studies under review provide three examples of tertiary students using social media – a personal blog, YouTube and Facebook. They are cases that the authors have experienced first-hand and that galvanized the need for more explicit policies in the authors’ respective educational settings. That examples of similarly problematic behaviour could be found in different discipline areas, in different institutions and in different countries not only gestures to the global nature of some challenges created by social media but also highlights that educational institutions and legislation need to focus on teaching students the principles of professional behaviour irrespective of technology or the geographic location. The blog, YouTube and Facebook examples show how student use of social media could involve reputational risk for students, the university and the professions for which students are studying. The cases studies are examined for offensive content that links students to discipline areas, professional practice, actual workplaces and particular universities. The cases are considered within the legal contexts of Sweden and Australia in relation to freedom of speech, privacy and harassment. The first two examples demonstrate how blogs and videos may be used by students in ways that could offend the public and possibly cause a negative impact on the public trust in health care and health professionals. The third case is a more generic example of social media use that shows how publicly visible student- administered Facebook sites might adversely impact the reputations of individual students and a university. While the sites of the case studies are currently active, the URLS have not been provided because, although students may be oblivious to or uncaring of the reputational risks their behaviours pose to their own long-term employability, their respective institutions and their professions, the authors are not. Case Study One: A Nursing Student’s Blog A nursing student has a personal blog in which she describes her daily life. Her studies at a named institution are sometimes described starting from 2009. The blog site, which was created and published on a platform hosted by a daily journal in Sweden, is still online (March 2013). Many of the student’s blog posts contain aspects of her nursing courses and include text and photos of classes that were probably taken with a mobile phone. Several blog posts touch upon an occasion where the student performed independent exercises in the Clinical Training Centre (CTC) of the University Hospital. Due to the number of students, the nature of the exercises and the expected levels of students’ skills, lecturer supervision was infrequent. The student’s blog site shows activity from the CTC that includes her and fellow students during training. One blog post captures aspects of training in intimate patient hygiene. While these exercises were performed on mannequins or anatomical models, the student in question has published photographs that focus on anatomy in a way that clearly intends to sexualize and/or ridicule the situation. These activities were undertaken in 2009. Comments have been posted below the blog. Many blog posts are quite innocent and may even be seen as pedagogical or informative but a couple of blog posts have a somewhat erotic character with inappropriate language commenting on the photos of students handling artificial genitalia. A comment to one of the blog posts, signed by “clinical supervisor,” recommends the removal of offensive blog posts, adding that this behaviour is not appropriate for a nurse and that respect for patients must be shown in clinical exercises as in hospital. The posts have clearly not been removed. ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   231   Case Study Two: Student Doctors on YouTube A number of students in a Medical Doctors Programme in Sweden produced a film in the hospital where they were training. The film seems almost professionally produced and was uploaded to YouTube in 2011. Due to reactions from the hospital and the programme’s management, the film was removed from YouTube for a short period but is now available. The filmmakers apologise for the time the video was unavailable and express the hope that the film will now be available forever. Judging from comments, the video seems to be popular with some viewers who are possibly peers. The film is in some respects a darkly comic response to rumors of bullying amongst medical students. As new trainee doctors arrive at the hospital, old hands greet them by beating them up, stealing their things and treating them with contempt. A training montage follows – and we see the student doctors hardening up, getting fit and punching lockers in a rigorous and funny training regime. Even so, the film contains hyper violent scenes within the hospital environment. Authentic hospital logos are seen on uniforms and actual name badges from the hospital are used. When the trainee doctors exact revenge, it is particularly violent – guns, knives and even a police steel expandable baton feature in attacks that are shocking despite the amateur status of the filmmakers. More worrying is that some scenes may be seen as promoting racism. Case Study Three: Students Stalking on Facebook Most Australian universities are associated with unofficial Facebook sites that follow the “stalker space” model. Stalker space Facebook sites appropriate university logos but are not official university Facebook sites. These spaces differ considerably depending on the administrator of the site and the university’s approach to social media. The “stalker space” associated with one Australian university currently looks tame enough with posts about events, warnings of parking inspectors and occasional personal comments about people hogging photocopiers, bad teaching or someone’s lack of staircase etiquette. It has over 5,000 Likes and one recent post welcomes two new named administrators who have “taken up the sceptres of spam-banishment and the crowns of crowd control” (ANU Stalkerspace, 2011). This site takes moderation seriously. While most student-led Facebook sites seem to be judiciously administered, when they are not, the results are extremely negative for students and institutions. One “stalker space” Facebook site, while covering the usual memes, events, selling books and volunteering opportunities, also regularly sees a small core of anti-social behaviour from a handful of students that could be regarded as libelous, menacing, discriminatory or even criminal. Both students and staff have been described and named in offensive ways. In one exchange, a student in the library was threatened online with physical violence and another student volunteered to film the threatened attack. In another exchange, a male student described in detail what he would like to do to a female student. When another male student offered the opinion that these postings were offensive and constituted a crime under Victoria’s Crimes Act 1958, several other students then threatened him for interfering. The main offender in this exchange is a student who has a Facebook site with no privacy settings in use, names himself as a student of the university and names his areas of discipline expertise. His language is aggressive and offensive. His comments about females are sexual, anatomical and sexist. Suggestions from other students that he modify his behaviour are met with further aggression. Discussion In all three cases, students are clearly linked to identifiable educational institutions. Student names are sometimes clearly evident. The identities of educational institutions are reinforced by identifiable images, dialogue and text. All cases provide examples of online behaviour that raises legal and ethical issues in relation to other students by photographing them (in the ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   232   blog), threatening them (in the video) and offensively depicting or threatening them (on Facebook). The language of many of the Facebook posts would generally be considered offensive. The photograph of the nursing student on her blog – with pierced tongue extended, hands and long blue nails posed in a ‘devil’s salute’ – is fine for a personal blog but the juxtaposition of this image alongside images of clinical learning renders it unprofessional. So might this user-generated content damage the public perception of tertiary students, of particular institutions or even affect the public’s trust in the professions? None of the blog posts in the case of the blogging nursing student shows any patients. Nonetheless, a basic principle of teaching in the health professions is that clinical training is regarded as a fully clinical environment with the same rules as hospital wards as it serves to develop a sense of professionalism in students. The recent case of a Swedish nurse (AP, 2008) who was disciplined for taking photographs during surgery renders the idea of personal blogs from a health professional’s work place foolhardy. Such behaviour is likely to diminish trust between patients and health professionals. Patients must have trust in a professional, confidential service that does not judge them, sexualize them or ridicule them (McCartney, 2013). Blogs from or about the workplace risk both professionalism and confidentiality. The case of the YouTube video involves a group of students whose ideas of what is culturally and professionally appropriate are clearly at odds with hospital management, some hospital employees and perhaps the wider public. Some employees reacted forcefully to the footage, urging the hospital management to have it removed from the Internet. Is this example just a matter of different tastes in humour or are there more serious issues at stake? Certainly, in Australia, students would need management approval before filming in a hospital, they might be charged with trademark infringements for their use of hospital name badges, and they could possibly be disciplined under a Student Charter that requires students to “Respect all University staff, property and facilities” and treat “other students with respect” (Victoria University, 2011, p. 4). However, such a draconian response to the video might be heavy- handed. Appealing to students’ self-interest, their long-term employability might be more effective along with an appeal to their emerging sense of professionalism. In Australia, stalker spaces have arisen in the shadow of official university online presences. The term stalker space itself has its origins in the MySpace platform and makes reference to online spaces that contain confidential information and photos of nudity or compromising behaviour. Contemporary university stalker spaces are typically Facebook groups, run by named, identifiable students. The extent to which a university can control activity on a stalk space is interesting: an aggressive attempt at control would create a social media backlash but ignoring some behaviour might amount to negligence. Australian universities stalker space Facebook sites have been depicted as sinister; note one site’s motto: ''Stalk, prey, love'' (Buchanan, 2011). It is clear that universities have a duty of care to both its students and staff that may not even be aware that they are being named, defamed or threatened in this space. Bad behaviour online is sometimes explained by environmental features of cyberspace; in particular, the assumed anonymity that participants feel can give rise to a sense that there are “no consequences or accountability” (Ritter as cited in Wankel & Wankel, 2012, p. 29) for online comments. However, in our case studies, anonymity is not a feature: that is, students are in the public domain and they are identifiable by their name, photo/image as well as other identifying information such as their course and institution. The stalker space example supports Ritter’s (2012) observations about real world gendered behaviours: “Men are more ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   233   likely to act in an aggressive, argumentative, and power-oriented manner online” (p. 28). Bravado and hypersexuality evident in the Facebook posts show the extent to which the university has done nothing to protect women or promote anti-discriminatory culture. Left unmanaged, such a site “sets the stage of the creation of an environment that allows and encourages prejudice, discrimination, and harassment” (Ritter, 2012, p. 29). Could such behaviour persist in students’ professional lives? Will it lessen their chances of becoming professionals?   Rightly or wrongly, recruiters are increasingly using social media to vet applicants: as “a quasi-public forum in which what you say attaches very strongly to your identity” (Madrigal, 2011), it is reasonable to consider social media sites as part of the recruitment process. Students need to take their current digital selves seriously for the sake of their future careers: they need to know that as well as companies scrutinising applicants' social media presence in a general check-up on the Internet during the recruitment process, some employers also demand social media passwords at interview. Conclusion: Digital Citizens Regular examples of employees being fired due to social media activity have not deterred some students who remain oblivious or uncaring as to the personal and professional dangers of exhibitionist, offensive or even illegal online behaviour. Educational institutions need to adopt a combination of approaches to address the changing norms of the blogosphere and guide students to act in ways that are professional, collegial and respectful. While universities may be congratulating themselves on their various forays into social media, concerns about “cyberbullying, personal branding, unplugging and balancing the personal with the professional” (Ramspott, 2013) suggest that digital identity development must become central to the university curriculum. It is not sufficient to mention privacy settings during orientation activities or to react when inappropriate behaviour comes to light. Nor is it sufficient to offer electives in digital citizenry or extra-curricular sessions on ‘personal branding’ to enhance employability. Where possible, curriculum in areas such as law, medicine, nursing and teaching should use professional codes of conduct and social media guidelines as the basis for teaching and fostering digital identity development. Universities in the UK seem to be offering resources, professional development sessions and advice to students about managing their online reputations. The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) says that “teaching methods [must] evolve and adapt to provide students with the skills of digital and social media” (Gill, 2012) that are specific to their intended professions. While UCLan’s course "Brand You" assists with identity management online, universities have a broader responsibility to ensure that students have the skills to succeed in the digital world. Responsible digital citizenry needs more than extra-curricular programmes or electives. It requires structured integration into the curriculum: “Institutions should be teaching students about the importance of context in online communications, the fluidity of privacy, awareness of nuance, and the power of community-building through social media” (Stoller, 2012). Solove (2007) and others (Australian University Cyber bullying Research Alliance (AUCRA), 2010) have noted that offensive, criminal and dangerous online behaviour requires legal, technological and educative solutions. Business organizations, professional bodies (International Bar Association (IBA), 2012) and universities need students and would-be professionals to undertake training to ensure that they understand the legal and policy context in which they operate, what is and what is not appropriate behaviour online as well as basic cyber safety strategies. Social media highlights the need for a different set of knowledge and skills in the employability debate. Students need to understand ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   234   the legal context of the online environment; courses must embed Web 2.0 media literacy skills. University courses need to take more responsibility in facilitating citizen 2.0 competencies (Alam & McLoughlin, 2010) but universities need to develop these competencies within an explicit legal and policy context. As various commentators have noted, the new norms of the blogosphere are currently being negotiated. During the transition, students need guidance. Note 1. The fad of planking – lying flat like a plank of wood, taking photographs and videos of oneself in unlikely or dangerous locations and then uploading those images online – has led to one death in Australia and sackings and investigations of people planking in the workplace. In the UK, seven doctors and nurses were suspended for planking on duty. 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(2011). 6 scientific reasons social networks are bad for society. [Blog post] www.cracked.com/blog/6-scientific-reasons-social-networks-are-bad-society/   New South Wales Nursing & Midwifery Association. (2012). A disability nurse speaks out. Nurse Uncut. www.nurseuncut.com.au/a-disability-nurse-speaks-out/ ICICTE 2013 Proceedings 2013   236   Nursing & Midwifery Board of Australia. (2010). Social media information sheet. Ramspott, B. (2013). 2013: The year of digital identity development in higher education. CASE. [Blog post] http://blog.case.org/2013/01/2013-the-year-of-digital-identity- development-in-higher-education.html#.UQXv8h03uSo Royal College of Nursing (2011). RCNA social media guidelines for nurses. Retrieved from www.rcna.org.au/WCM/Images/RCNA_website/Files%20for%20upload%20and%20lin k/rcna_social_media_guidelines_for_nurses.pdf Rudman, R. & Steenkamp, L. (2012). Changing behaviour: Web2.0 usage and security practices of online users. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education, pp. 392-402. Retrieved from www.icicte.org/Proceedings2012/Papers/10-2-Rudman.pdf Ryan, S. D., Magro, M. J., & Sharp, J. H. (2011). Innovations in practice exploring educational & cultural adaptation through social networking sites. Journal of information technology education, 10, pp. 1-16. Retrieved from www.jite.org/documents/Vol10/JITEv10IIPp001-016Ryan883.pdf Savill, R. (2009). Hospital staff suspended over Facebook ‘lying down game’ pictures. Telegraph. 9 September. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6162292/Hospital- staff-suspended-over-Facebook-lying-down-game-pictures.html Short, M. (2012). Play nice in social media sandpit. The Age. Retrieved from www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-andculture/play-nice-in-social-media-sandpit- 20120907-25jwt.html Solove, D. (2007). The future of reputation: Gossip, rumor, and privacy on the Internet. New Haven: Yale University Press. Spar, D. (2001). Ruling the waves. New York, NY: Harcourt. Stewart, D. R. (2013). Social media and the law: A guidebook for communication students and professionals. Routledge: New York. Stoller, E. (2012). Digital Identity Development. [Blog post]. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from www.insidehighered.com/blogs/student-affairs-and-technology/digital-identity- development#ixzz2JEsoEKbp Swedish Institute (2011). Society: Openness & transparency: Vital parts of Swedish democracy. Retrieved from  www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Society/Government- politics/Facts/Openness/ Swedish Society of Medicine (2012). Advice to doctors in the use of social media. Retrieved from  www.sls.se/global/etik/R%c3%a5d%20till%20l%c3%a4kare_ socialamedier_ webbversion.pdf   Victoria University. (2011). Student Charter. http://wcf.vu.edu.au/GovernancePolicy/PDF/POS080801000.PDF Wankel, L.A., & Wankel, C. (2012). Misbehavior online in higher education. Bingley, Bradford, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Woodley, C., & Meredith, C. (2012). Supporting student transition through social media. American Journal of Distance Education. 26(2), 86-95. Zeldin, W. (2010). Sweden: Data Inspection Board Statement on social media sites. Retrieved from www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp3_l205402129_text Author Details Carolyn Woodley Carolyn.Woodley@vu.edu.au Michel Silvestri Michel.Silvestri@ki.se 
work_tvo77im6irh6zdhxltlfuriday	----	EDITING METHOD FOR THE BULLETIN OF THE TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 11 (60) No. 1 - 2018 DISTANCE EDUCATION AND NEW TEACHING TOOLS A-D. H. KHLEBUS1 E. VRASMAS2 Abstract: This report presents findings of a review of the current research on distance education and new teaching tools. As technology has evolved, the methods used to deliver the curriculum have evolved as well. Many higher education institutions are offering distance learning, mostly for economic reasons. This paper will be focused on exploring the benefits and weaknesses of distance learning, as well as exploring the new available tools and methods used in distance learning, available through the new technologies. Key words: distance learning, teaching tools, technology and education. 1. Introduction The pedagogical theory of distance learning starts from the attempts to define distance education. Historically, distance education meant correspondence study, but current concepts tend to be closer to methods of transmitting audio, video, and (more often than not) opportunities through the Internet. As technology has evolved, the methods used to deliver the curriculum have evolved as well. Many higher education institutions are offering distance learning, mostly for economic reasons (Merisotis & Phipps, 1999). Boettcher (1996) notes that if students would not spend as much time on campus there would be significant cost savings on both the construction of new facilities and the maintenance of the current ones. He also observes that there would be savings if employees did not have to leave their jobs to attend school, thereby minimizing travel expenses (Boettcher, 1996). According to recent literature (Bozkurt et al, 2015), 90% of two-year and four-year public institutions of higher education offer distance education. This percentage is even more striking given that just five years earlier Lucas (1998) reported that about one-half of all higher education institutes offered distance education. Both of these studies support the contention that distance education with in higher education is not a passing trend; rather it is an increasingly popular delivery format that warrants as much scholarly attention as it can get. 1 University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Bucharest, Romania, hassanredha33@yahoo.com. 2 University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Bucharest, Romania, ecaterinavr@yahoo.com. mailto:hassanredha33@yahoo.com mailto:ecaterinavr@yahoo.com Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series VII • Vol. 11 (60) No. 1 - 2018 26 Distance education is also a broad approach characterized by a high degree of variation, such as the types of media or technology used (print, radio, computer); the nature of the learning (workshop, seminar, degree program, supplement to traditional classroom, levels of support); institutional settings; topics addressed; and levels of interactivity support (face-to-face, online, blended, none) (Scanlon, McAndrew, & O'Shea, 2015). This paper will focus upon distance education and the new teaching tools available through the use of new technologies. 2. Distance Learning A very good definition of the operational value of distance education is given by the Education and Training Council: “Distance learning involves enrolment and study at one training institution that provides the didactic materials prepared in a sequential and logical order for the students to study on their own. At the end of each stage, the student sends by fax, mail, or computer to the qualified instructors, the product of his work for correction, ranking and tutorial orientation on the issues of the subject. The corrected tasks are given back to the student, this exchange assuring a student-teacher relationship.” (DEAC, 2015, pp. 3-4). It is highly characterised, as being part of a constructivist approach, by the control of learning by the student, rather than the instructor which is more a facilitator providing a learning experience (Jonassen, 1995), it implies a separation of teacher and learner in space and/or time and it emphasises communication between student and teacher, mediated by different types of technology (Keegan, 1986; Garrison & Shale, 1987). The main countries exporting Internet training services are the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. In the United States, achievements are numerous and diversified. It can be said that distance training grows in a vertiginous way. An original feature is the strong involvement of economic agents investing in distance learning. At the university level, Virtual University Campus, VUC (Virtual University Campus) is the most important portal of Internet education. This university has produced over 500 quality courses at a low price. Besides, there are dozens of virtual universities offering a variety of on-line courses. In Australia, the Australian National Flexible Education and Training Program is a five year strategic plan for which millions of euros a year are allocated, plus the contributions of the various provinces that have their own funding in this area. Of all students enrolled in Australian universities, 14% receive distance education. The accreditation and qualification of these educational edifices are established by a national body. In New Zealand, the government has set up an e-learning pilot committee. This committee, composed of nine experts, endorses the actions of developing and coordinating distance learning. A-D. H. KHLEBUS et al.: Distance Education and new Teaching Tools 27 New Zealand's educational services exports are estimated between 380 and 560 million euros per year. Quality assurance is indispensable for receiving government funds through a national agreement. In Canada, education, including e-learning, is a provincial competence. Most of the ten provinces and three territories have identified e-learning as a priority. A recent study shows that 57% of the 134 Canadian colleges and universities offer on-line courses (between 1 and 340 classes per unit), that is, a total of 3,000 courses. In Japan, Parliament passed an organic law on training in a networking society thanks to advanced telecommunications technologies, which entered into force on January 6, 2001. In the last decades, the electronic communication in the educational environment has become a constant of the last decades. The communication model has created an alternative learning support which marks a transfer of competences from an unidirectional, exclusivist learning model to a multidirectional model of educational communication, in the context of which the teachers has become the facilitator of the learning process for the students and the students has become more involved, no longer being just a passive observer (Al-Dulaimi & Vrasmas, 2017). The new technologies have put a greater emphasis on the needs and choices of the individual benefiting from the education, it has changed the entire educational system, the teaching methods, and the tools, offering greater opportunities for students and for teachers as well to develop professionally, to acquire new competences which have a great importance in our contemporary informational society. Despite the fact that technology is an integral part of distance education, distance learning programs also focus on the instructional needs of the students, rather than on the technology itself. It is essential to consider their ages, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, interests and experiences, educational levels, and familiarity with distance education methods and delivery systems (Schamber, 1988). Successful distance education systems involve interactivity between teacher and students and also between students and the learning environment Millbank (1994). Researchers have found that the most appreciated strengths of the distance learning education is flexibility, convenience, given by the fact that they do not have to physically be in a classroom in order to work on their project. Group work is also considered to be improved since students can communicate with teachers at any time via electronic mail or chat rooms, being able to get in contact anywhere, anytime, not limited by a space- time work frame (Song et al., 2004). According to Conrad and Donaldson (2004), students in an online learning environment can develop much easier critical thinking skills and well as reflection skills since the collaborative activities in online learning environments involve idea sharing which triggers a deeper processing of content. Weaknesses reported in the literature include difficulty with communication caused by delayed responses and unfamiliarity with classmates, also a sense of lack of community (Vonderwell & Turner, 2003). Among the encountered weakness there was also a lack of connection with faculty and other learners, stating that this reduced sense of connection had a negative impact on their overall class experience. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series VII • Vol. 11 (60) No. 1 - 2018 28 3. New Teaching Tools Distance education is highly linked to the mode of delivery (Britain & Liber, 2004). Because of the rapid evolution of delivery modes, distance education researchers (Britain & Liber, 2004; Taylor, 1995) often speak of “generations” of distance education models, such as print, multimedia, and Web-based delivery systems. Technology has always been used in education, starting from carving figures on rock walls to technological devices, such as laptops, mobile phones, electronic blackboards, e-books and many others. The importance of technology in education has remained constant in spite of the changes of the materials and the evolution of technology, so it would be interesting to understand how the educational tools and techniques have evolved. In 1870, technology started to advance, developing the Magic Lantern- a primitive version of a slide projector that projected images printed on glass plates, and the overhead projector, a more modern version, appeared in 1930. Around 1890 the chalkboard emerged, followed by the pencil in 1900 and the ballpoint pen in 1940. In the 1920s the radio emerged, and on-air classes became a much-known trend, followed by videotapes in 1951, creating a new method of instruction. The photocopier and the handheld calculator entered the educational environment in 1959, respectively 1972, allowing quick mathematical calculation. Although the first computers were developed in 1930, they entered the educational environment in the ‘80s. The number of students in college in 1930 was around 1 million, but by 2012 had grown to a record 21.6 million, therefore teachers needed and developed new methods of instruction and testing, and students were looking for new ways to communicate, study, and learn. In 1990, the Hyper Text Markup Language, or HTML, was developed and the National Science Foundation (NSF) removed restrictions on the commercial use of the Internet in 1993. This was a very important development, since it represents the foundations of distance learning and online learning platforms. The first Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) was released by Apple Computer in 1993, and in 2009, in the US, 97% of classrooms had one or more computers, and 93% of classroom computers had Internet access (http://elearninginfographics.com). Instructors stated that 40% of students used computers often in their educational methods, in addition to interactive whiteboards and digital cameras (http://elearninginfographics.com). The term “teaching aid” was first used by Van der Stoep and his colleagues (1973) to summarize instructional and learning aids, and they represent materials or tools that the teacher uses in presenting a lesson, or which they generally use in different lessons in order to deliver the information to the students: chalkboard, PowerPoint presentation, syllabus, etc. The “learning aids” are the materials or tools used by students, in order to assimilate and understand information: notebooks, manuals, books, laptops, internet, etc. Researchers have suggested that technology can enhance learning, since technology can improve some skills of the students, such as communication skills, by using word processing programs and communicating via e-mail, or organizational skills and the A-D. H. KHLEBUS et al.: Distance Education and new Teaching Tools 29 capacity to better understand science concepts by using modelling software (such as Matlab), database programs, animations, graphs, spreadsheet programs or by using design and multimedia tools such as presentation software, editing software for digital images and videos (Honey & Spielvogel, 2005; Johnston, 2000; Means, 2001). According to recent literature, the use of technology has a positive impact on students’ academic results (Anderson, 2016; Gulek & Demirtas, 2005). Stratham and Torell (1999) concluded that, when integrated appropriately, the introduction of technology in the education program resulted into an interactive relationship based on feedback between the teachers and students and showed enhanced skills of problem solving and inquiry, therefore higher engagement of the students in the educational program, which led to lower dropout rates. There are two groups of available technology which are highly used at the moment in distance learning and these are divided into two groups: synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous technology is based on online delivery where all the participants are "present" at the same time and are organised by a timetable, whereas asynchronous technology is a type of online delivery where participants access course materials on their own schedule. Synchronous technologies are Web based VoIP, Telephone, Videoconferencing, Web Conferencing and asynchronous technologies are for example an Audiocassette, E-mail, Message Board Forums, Voice Mail/fax, and Videocassette/DVD Systems. There is also a framework for instructors/teachers called Learning Content Management Systems which can be used for both Synchronous and Asynchronous learning. Among the modern teaching tools available there are also podcasts, interactive tables and eBooks (Selwyn & Stirling, 2016). Smart Boards are also a modern technological teaching aid which is rapidly being integrated into classrooms around the world and are essentially enhanced whiteboards that are used in conjunction with projectors and laptops, allowing access to a wide variety of computer-based multi-media content on the board in front of the class. Podcasts are a series of digital media files, usually digital, audio, or video, that is made available for download via web. They are useful as teaching aids because via internet it allows instant access to resourceful materials and it can even make lessens available online for the students, making the learning process easier since the students can re- listens to important information that they make have skipped or not understood during the class (Bates, 2015). An eBook is a form of publishing in a digital medium and since reading is the basic component of most educational activities, it is necessary to reach all students, especially special need students and distance learning classes (webopedia.com). It is considered the biggest change in the editing field, since Gutenberg, and it was introduced on the market as a digital document accessible on a computer in 1998. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series VII • Vol. 11 (60) No. 1 - 2018 30 Digital or electronic text offers options such as Text-to-Speech that provide users additional modalities for receiving the information, such as allowing readers to interact with the text by taking notes, marking, highlighting, searching, and even interacting with associated dictionaries. By using e-books as tools, instructors can expand the accessibility and ease of use both for themselves and their students. 4. Conclusions It appears that distance education has many benefits: students in an online learning environment can develop much easier critical thinking skills and well as reflection skills since the collaborative activities in online learning environments involve idea sharing which triggers a deeper processing of content. There are also weaknesses, such as difficulty with communication caused by delayed responses and unfamiliarity with classmates, also a sense of lack of community, a lack of connection with faculty and other learners, stating that this reduced sense of connection had a negative impact on their overall class experience. Also, in many countries, distance-learning systems have proved that they can provide quality education and training to a large number of students at lower costs that traditional education and in the long term it is considered that e-learning will be more cost-effective due to the fact that it can replace high labour costs with low-cost technology (Bates, 2005, pp.33-41). The teaching tools appear to have innovated and once with them teaching has also taken an innovative transformation, given these changes it is important for teachers to learn to change with the times since these changes will ultimately benefit the students and the education system. References AL-Dulaimi, K. H., & Vrasmas, E. (2017). E-books as modern teaching aids. Journal of Educational Sciences and Psychology, 7(1B), 111-116. Anderson, T. (2016). Theories for learning with emerging technologies. In G. Veletsianos (Ed)., Emergence and innovation in digital learning: Foundations and applications (pp. 35-50). Edmonton: Athabasca University Press. Bates, A. T. (2005). Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education. London: Routledge. Bates, A. T. (2015). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from https://teachonline.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/teaching-in-a-digital-age_2016.pdf Boettcher, J. (1996). Distance learning: Looking into the crystal ball. Retrieved from http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/jvb_cause.html Bozkurt, A., Akgun-Ozbek, E., Yilmazel, S., Erdogdu, E., Ucar, H., Guler, E., ... & Dincer, G. D. (2015). Trends in distance education research: A content analysis of journals 2009- A-D. H. KHLEBUS et al.: Distance Education and new Teaching Tools 31 2013. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(1), 330-363. Britain, S., & Liber, O. (2004). A framework for pedagogical evaluation of virtual learning environments. Commonwealth of Learning. Retrieved from http://ubir.bolton.ac.uk/ 301/1/iec_reports-2.pdf Garrison, D. R., & Shale, D. (1987). Mapping the boundaries of distance education: Problems in defining the Journal of Distance field. The American Education, 1(1), 7-13. Gulek, J. C., & Demirtas, H. (2005). Learning with technology: The impact of laptop use on student achievement. The Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment, 3(2), 4-38. Honey, M. M., & Spielvogel, R. (2005). Critical issue: Using technology to improve student achievement. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489521.pdf Johnston, M. (2000). Using technology to enhance new models of teaching and Learning. Arlington, VA: Educational Research Service. Jonassen, D. H. (1995). Supporting communities of learners with technology: A vision for integrating technology in learning in schools. Educational Technology, 35(4), 60–62. Keegan, D. (1986). The foundations of distance education (2nd edition). London: Routledge. Lucas, R. (1998). An ecology of distance learning. Syllabus, 11(10), 14–16. Means, B. (2001). Technology use in tomorrow's schools. Educational Leadership, 58(4), 57-61. Merisotis, J. P., & Phipps, R. A. (1999). What’s the difference? Outcomes of distance education versus traditional classroom-based learning. Change, 31(3), 12-17. Millbank, G. (1994). Writing multimedia training with integrated simulation. Paper presented at the Writers' Retreat on Interactive Technology and Equipment. Vancouver, BC: The University of British Columbia Continuing Studies. Scanlon, E., McAndrew, P., & O'Shea, T. (2015). Designing for educational technology to enhance the experience of learners in distance education: How open educational resources, learning design and MOOCs are influencing learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1(6), 1-9. Schamber, L. (1988). Delivery systems for distance education. Retrieved from https://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9210/distance.htm Selwyn, N., & Stirling, E. (2016). Social media and education… Now the dust has settled. Learning, Media and Technology, 41(1), 1-5. Song, L., Singleton, E. S., Hill, J. R., & Koh, M. H. (2004). Improving online learning: Student perceptions of useful and challenging characteristics. Internet and Higher Education, 7(1), 59-70. Stratham, D. S., & Torell, C. R. (1999). Computers in the classroom: The impact of technology on student learning. LLS. Spotlight on Student Success, No. 206. Retrieved from https://sccs-pd.wikispaces.com/file/view/ A+digest+of+research+from+the+Laboratory+for+Student+Success.pdf https://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9210/distance.htm https://sccs-pd.wikispaces.com/file/view/%20A+digest+of+research+from+the+Laboratory+for+Student+Success.pdf https://sccs-pd.wikispaces.com/file/view/%20A+digest+of+research+from+the+Laboratory+for+Student+Success.pdf Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series VII • Vol. 11 (60) No. 1 - 2018 32 Taylor, J. C. (1995). Distance education technologies: The fourth generation. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 11(2), 1–7. Van der Stoep, F. et al. (1973). Die lesstruktuur [Structure of the lesson]. Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill. Vonderwell, S., & Turner, S. (2005). Active learning and preservice teachers' experiencein an online course: A case study. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 13(1), 65-84. http://www.deac.org/ http://elearninginfographics.com Other information may be obtained from the address: hassanredha33@yahoo.com mailto:hassanredha33@yahoo.com 
work_tvrxzlgdkneirfg7w76nsx4cri	----	1e.xps World Journal of Management and Behavioral Studies 1 (2): 36-43, 2013 ISSN 2306-840X © IDOSI Publications, 2013 DOI: 10.5829/idosi.wjmbs.2013.1.2.1201 Corresponding Author: Mupa Paul, Quality Assurance Co-Ordinator, Zimbabwe Open University, Masvingo Region, P.O. Box: 1210, Masvingo. Fax: 039264993. 36 Unmasking the Role of Collaboration and Partnerships in Open and Distance Learning Systems Kurasha Primrose, Mupa Paul and Chiome Chrispen Zimbabwe Open University Abstract: Central to successful organisations is a powerful sense of collaboration and partnerships. The study sought to unmask the role of collaboration and partnerships in Open and Distance Learning. It was prompted by noticeable challenges that ODL systems are facing in providing quality service to the customers. The study was qualitative by nature and employed the descriptive survey design. Open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used as the main data gathering instruments. A purposive sample comprising of lecturers, stakeholders and students was made. The major findings of the study were that collaboration and partnerships play a major role in resource mobilization, capacity building, relationship building, training and development of staff, opportunity to engage in attachments in companies, improvement of educational quality, provision of suitable curricula and meeting various stakeholder demands, among others. The major recommendation is that ODL institutions should collaborate and partner with various stakeholders like business people, companies, governments, alumni and other universities. Key words: Collaboration Partnerships Open and Distance Learning systems INTRIDUCTION Partnerships are promoted in the belief that Most ODL institutions collaborate with one another significant social benefits through joint action [4]. In through COL in developing and sharing their academic addition to tackling pressing global issues, the case for programmes. Almost all institutions have links with partnerships argues that bringing together unique and regional and international associations and organisations complementary resources can benefit the various [1]. Collaboration plays a pivotal role in tackling pressing participants in the collaboration. social and environmental issues. Partnerships between For effective collaboration, a strong network system organisations are becoming one of the most visible is required. A network… is a group of organisations aspects of any organisation’s social responsibility agenda working together to solve problems or issues of mutual [2]. concern that are too large for any one organisation to Collaborative partnerships are important for ODL handle on its own [5]. The idea of networks suggests that providers in that they reduce the cost of introducing new organisations working together in a collaborative effort technologies and also improve the quality of developing would be more effective in enhancing organisational programmes. By forming appropriate partnerships with capacity and improving student learning than individual other ODL institutions, ODL institutions can secure organisations working on their own [6, 7]. external content experts and teaching support. [8] drew on research into professional learning Partnerships with professional organisations may help communities to define ‘Networked Learning Communities’ create quality programmes, recruit students and build in terms of knowledge transfer, professional learning and capacity for ODL practices. Finding creative ways to their position between central and local educational share resources and expertise will be the key issue in structures: forming partnerships with other organisations. These Networked Learning Communities are purposefully relationships engage the partners on an ongoing basis led social entities that are characterized by a commitment and are often strongly project-oriented [3]. to quality, rigour and a focus on outcomes. cooperative relationships provide the potential to achieve World J. Manage. & Behav. Stud., 1 (2): 36-43, 2013 37 They promote the dissemination of good practice, Attributes of partnership are: enhance the professional development of teachers, support capacity building in schools, mediate between Trust in partners centralised and decentralised structures and assist in Respect for partners the process of re-structuring and re-culturing Joint working educational organisational systems [9]. Teamwork Network structures are probably the most popular Eliminating boundaries way of distinguishing networks from other organisational Being an ally forms. [10] use a ‘fisherman’s net’ metaphor to describe the structure of a network of individuals. A fisherman’s Conceptual Framework: Collaboration has been defined net is based on threads which are knotted together. In a as interactions between organisations [13]. [14] refine this network of individuals the ‘threads’ that link people description further noting how interactions vary in their together and represent the ‘soft’ part of the network scope and depth. The scope of interactions can vary from structure, are the relationships, communications and trust narrow to broad and this reffects the number of partners that links people. The ‘knots’ provide the ‘harder’ part of involved in the collaboration, the more partners the the structure and are the activities that bring people in the broader the interaction. The depth of interaction ranges network together, meeting and events. The metaphor from deep interactions whereby a large number of people stresses the interaction of these two sorts of structures from the collaborating organisations interact to shallow because it is this interaction that gives the ‘net’ attains its interactions which describe limited interactions. These structural strength. The leaders of organisational limited interactions frequently only involve the managers networks therefore have to ensure that they develop both of each organisation. types of structures to hold people in the network and [15] note that to achieve collaborative success, allow them to work the net effectively. communication is a key factor. However often there is lack Organisational networks also require structures that of time for more informal communication and this limits the interact with and between, the internal structures that integration of staff working on a shared initiative [16]. organise what happens within individual organisations. Thus time needs to be set aside for informal networking These structures, such as network conferences, before the collaboration starts in earnest [17]. cross-organisational meetings and intervisitations provide The attributes of collaboration include that ‘two or the means to develop the ‘soft’ aspects of the network more individuals must be involved in a joint venture, structure that bring people together, the professional typically one of an intellectual nature in which relationships, while at the same time creating the ‘hard’ participants willingly participate in planning and decision structures, the knots which provide the opportunity for making’ [18]. It is further argued that individuals consider joint working and effective collaboration. themselves to be members of a team working towards a Our argument is, in common with research on common goal, sharing their expertise and responsibility communities of practice [11] and professional learning for the outcome. Fundamentally, the relationship between communities [12], that effective collaborative learning collaborators is non-hierarchical and shared power is occurs when four key processes are in place and are based on knowledge and expertise, rather than role or title effectively intermeshed both vertically and horizontally [19]. within and between organisations and institutions: The defining attributes of collaboration can therefore Leadership Co-ordination and administration Intellectual and co-operative endeavor Joint learning and practice development Knowledge and expertise more important than role or Knowledge and practice transfer title A partnership is a shared commitment, where all Teamworking partners have a right and an obligation to participate and Participation in planning and decision making will be affected equally by the benefits and disadvantages Non-hierarchical relationship arising from the partnership. Sharing of expertise be summarized as follows: Joint venture World J. Manage. & Behav. Stud., 1 (2): 36-43, 2013 38 Willingness to work together towards an agreed Encounter: Some ad hoc inter-agency contact, but lowly purpose connected networks, divergent organizational goals and Trust and respect in collaborators perceived rivalry and stereotyping. Highly connected network Low expectation of reciprocation Communication: Joint working, but marginal to The involvement of the public is central to working of information as it applies to users whose needs cross collaboratively [20]. The public gives the institutions boundaries, some joint training, a nominated person is support. This could be moral support, financial support, responsible for liaison, expectation of reciprocation. social support and good word of mouth. One of the most widely recognised types of Collaboration: Joint working is central to mainstream collaboration is partnerships [21]. Partnerships can be activities. Trust and respect in partners means that they defined as a pooling or sharing of resources among two are willing to participate in formal, structured joint working or more stakeholders to solve a problem or create an including joint assessments, planning, service delivery opportunity that neither can address individually [22]. and commissioning. There is a highly connected network In this way partnerships when operating effectively, and low expectation of reciprocation. can provide a synergy whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its parts [23]. [24] indicate that when this Integration: No longer see their separate identify as occurs each partner gains from the additional resources, significant and may be willing to consider creation of sharing ideas, knowledge and finance that the other unitary organisation [32]. partners bring, which is argued add value for each participating member. It requires that all parties believe Theoretical Framework: Systems Theory by Peter that through working together they can achieve Senge: Senge championed the systems framework. A something greater than if they work alone. systems framework refers to a set of interrelated and However it should be noted that the formation of interdependent parts arranged in a manner that produces public partnerships and inter-agency working have a unified whole [33]. It is a discipline for seeing the whole. particular terms of reference in that partnerships are Senge emphasizes system dynamics paradigm. In this created from the outside, generally the product of central concept he argues that things are interconnected in government initiatives and this in itself can create confiict complex patterns that can be captured into a model [25]. without loss of relevance. Systemic thinking is the Power relations play a key role in building conceptual cornerstone of Peter Senge’s approach. partnerships for their needs to be a balance of power Systems theory’s ability to comprehend and address the between organisations so that all are seen as having an whole and examine the interrelationship between the parts important role [26]. However it is argued that partnerships provides for Peter Senge, both the incentive and the are infrequently made of equals and the stronger party means to integrate the disciplines. Three things need can prosper at the expense of the weaker partner. In public noting here. First, systems theory looks to connections private partnerships (PPP) the role of each partner is and to the whole. In this respect it allows people to look based on public sector organisation acting as the beyond the immediate context and to appreciate the purchaser, the client and the private sector partner impact of their actions upon others. To this extent it holds adopting the role of the supplier [27]. Furthermore [28] the possibility of achieving a more holistic understanding. state that the person who is “perceived” to hold the purse Second, while the building blocks of systems theory are strings can be “perceived” to hold the power. Without a relatively simple, they can build into a rather more clear social anchor partnerships are more likely to be sophisticated model than are current in many subject to the buffeting that any change in structure, organisations. Senge argues that one of the key problems policy and personnel may bring [29, 30]. Therefore there with much that is written about and done in the name of needs to be a shared need and will for the partnership to management, is that rather simplistic frameworks are survive [31]. applied to what are complex systems. When we add these Characteristics of Collaboration on the parts, to begin to see the whole and to appreciate Isolation: Absence of joint activity with no organisation as a dynamic process. Thus, the argument communication at all between agencies. runs, a better appreciation of systems will lead to more organizational goals. Frequent interactions and sharing two points together it is possible to move beyond a focus World J. Manage. & Behav. Stud., 1 (2): 36-43, 2013 39 appropriate action. Third, system thinking, according to Instrumentation: The open-ended questionnaire and Senge, allows us to realize the significance of feedback semi-structured interview were used as the main data mechanisms in organisations. Systems thinking is a gathering instruments. framework for seeing interrelationships and repeated events rather than things. It is seeing patterns of change Open-Ended Questionnaire: It is argued that rather than static snapeshots. It embodies the idea that questionnaires and surveys can be used to gather either the interrelationships among parts relative to a common quantitative or qualitative data [40]. purpose of a system are what is important. He concludes Open ended questionnaires gave respondents an that the system’s viewpoint is generally oriented towards opportunity to elaborate on issues asked. Open-ended the long-term view. That is why delays and feedback questions provide a response format that gives loops are so important. In the short term, you can often respondents the freedom to provide answers which they ignore them; they are inconsequential. They only come care to make. The researcher then has to make sense of all back to haunt you in the long run [34]. The systems the responses given, construct appropriate categories and theory considers many different perspectives such as then code the categories so that the data can be analysed. quality assurance considerations. Quality factors such as Open-ended questions are the most important questions reliability, availability, expandability, testability, among on the survey by offering important and unpredictable others, are considered. This framework was seen as a insights into human behaviour [41]. It is suggested that relevant aspect for coming up with collaborations and open-ended questions allow for more detailed expression partnerships in ODL systems. of respondents’ views [42]; [43] and that qualitative MATERIALS AND METHODS aggregated statistical data. This research was grounded in the qualitative Semi-Structured Interview: [44] say that the semi- paradigm. The use of a qualitative approach to research structured interview has the advantage of being studies relies on the data production methods that are reasonably objective “while still permitting a more fiexible and sensitive to the social context that such data thorough understanding of the respondent’s is derived from, without losing any of the standardization opinions and reasons behind them would be or structure and on data analysis methods that possible using the mailed questionnaire.” They further presuppose the understanding of the complexity that is argue that the semi-structured interview is generally entailed onto the details [35]. most appropriate for interview studies in education. Research Design: The research employed the descriptive depth and often permits gathering valuable data that survey design. It is argued in educational research that could not be successfully obtained by any other descriptive survey is a method of research that describes approach [45]. what we see over and beyond [36]. [46] state that in the semi-structured interview the Thus the researchers chose this method as it allowed researcher introduces the topic and thereafter guides the respondents to say exactly what they conceived of as the discussion by asking specific questions. [47] say that role of collaboration and partnerships in ODL programmes although an interview guide is employed this type of [37]. interview gives the interviewer considerable latitude to Sampling Procedure: Purposive sampling was employed shape the content of the interview. to select information-rich cases to participate in the study. A purposive sample comprising of lecturers, stakeholders Procedure: The questionnaires were distributed to the and students was made. [38] argues that “the logic and sampled lecturers at the beginning of weekend school power of purposeful sampling lies in selecting information tutorials and were collected at the end of the sessions. - rich cases for study in-depth”. This study focused on This was done in order to give respondents enough time respondents who had knowledge and lived experiences of to answer the questions in full. Permission to administer higher education to include universities colleges and who the questionnaire was sought from the responsible were willing to take part in the investigation [39]. authorities. information on the respondents is far more helpful than It provides a desirable combination of objectivity and pursue a range of topics and offer the subject a chance to World J. Manage. & Behav. Stud., 1 (2): 36-43, 2013 40 Data Analysis: Data was analyzed using qualitative Training and Development of Staff: Respondents felt that content analysis. To ensure accurate interpretations and collaborations and partnerships help ODL institutions to analyses, the researchers examined responses from the train and develop staff in various fields. They had this to open ended questionnaire to come up with the main say: themes. Overriding themes were generated. Content was analysed following the research questions. The upcoming ODL institutions need basic training RESULTS monitoring and evaluation, ODL pedagogy, module Resource Mobilization: Respondents were of the view Tutors and all the staff need this kind of training. that collaborations and partnerships help in mobilization of resources in ODL institutions. The ‘‘win-win’’ potential Opportunity to Engage in Attachments in Companies: of partnership draws extensively on effciency arguments - It was noted in this research that collaborations and maintaining that organisations working in partnership can partnerships carry many benefits for ODL systems. In line access broader networks, combine complimentary with these findings, literature points to benefits as well. resources and expertise and share good practice in order Benefits for collaborations include: to accomplish specific tasks. These synergistic benefits constitute what [48] terms ‘‘collaborative advantage’’, or Obtaining a competitive advantage; what [49] call ‘‘partnership alchemy’’, outcomes not Building trust in communities; possible if organisations work independently. Managing external perceptions by enhancing public Capacity Building: ODL organisations look to business Increasing attractiveness to prospective employees; organisations to provide money, goods, services or and expertise towards meeting organisation needs that might Improving stakeholder relations [51, 52]. otherwise go unfunded. For all of the respondents in this study, a prime reason for working with business partners For most organisations, the need to access funds and is to access resources. In addition to monetary resources, technical resources can be a strong driver for engaging ODL organisations wish to tap into a range of business collaboratively with business organisations [53]. This is capabilities, including access to business networks, the case with ODL institutions which need to tap and technology and expertise. This is evidenced by one practice ICT in companies. respondent who had this to say: It’s the added value stuff we get, the leveraging we quality improvement, respondents had this to say: get rather than the monetary amount. It’s their staff supporting us on an annual events, it’s the fact that we This whole thing hinges on quality improvement. get the support of their agencies, they can swing deals, Benchmarks and standards are set and these meet so for a small organisation like us it’s the contacts that international demands. In any case, institutions that put they have that we can use and that’s of value and that’s themselves in a glass ceiling and fail to collaborate limit what you get out of a partnership. their chances of accreditation on comparative basis. Relationship Building: Partnerships with several Organisations may also view partnerships as ways to organisations might be interpreted as ways for become more important institutional actors [54] or to institutions to build strategic relationships with key influence social change [55]. Organisations need wide stakeholders such as government, customers and the support to accomplish their advocacy goals and deliver public at large and position themselves as good service quality services to clients. Partnering with various providers [50] of university education. Developing organisations has the potential for organisations to partnership relationships with other organisations is seen influence leaders’ thinking on social issues, garner wide as one response to meet pressures from internal and political support and obtain greater visibility for their external stakeholders. programmes [56, 57]. in Quality Assurance systems, course development, writing, administration of examinations and the like. reputation; Improvement of Educational Quality: On the issue of World J. Manage. & Behav. Stud., 1 (2): 36-43, 2013 41 Provision of Suitable Curricula: It is ideal that ODL REFERENCES institutions provide relevant curricula to students. Respondents highlighted that through collaborations and 1. Jung, I., 2005. 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work_tzvv4yzzfjhahmu77uk6kwkfaa	----	() 1 eWorkbook: a Computer Aided Assessment System Gennaro Costagliola, Filomena Ferrucci, Vittorio Fuccella, Rocco Oliveto Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università di Salerno Via Ponte Don Melillo, I-84084 Fisciano (SA) {gcostagliola, fferrucci, vfuccella, roliveto}@unisa.it Abstract Computer Aided Assessment (CAA) tools are more and more widely adopted in academic environ- ments mixed to other assessment means. In this paper, we present a CAA Web application, named eWorkbook, which can be used for evaluating learner’s knowledge by creating (the tutor) and taking (the learner) on-line tests based on multiple choice, multiple response and true/false question types. Its use is suitable within the academic environment in a blended learning approach, by providing tu- tors with an additional assessment tool, and learners with a distance self-assessment means. In the paper, the main characteristics of the tool are presented together with a rationale behind them and an outline of the architectural design of the system. 1 Introduction In blended learning the electronic means are mixed with the traditional didactics, in order to train and to assess the learners. Learning Management Systems (LMS), enhanced with collaborative envi- ronment support, and Computer Aided Assessment (CAA) tools are more and more widely adopted in the academy. At the University of Salerno some systems and platforms have been tested to sup- port blended learning. Even if some good existing systems with LMS capabilities, like OpenUSS (OpenUSS, 2005), Chef (Chef, 2005), and Sakai (Sakai, 2005) have been used, none of the tested tools for assessment satisfied all of our needs: we needed an advanced assessment tool which could have helped the lecturers to speed up the onerous task of assessing a huge mass of learners and could have been easily integrated with the LMS systems already in use in our department. A state of the art analysis undertaken at our department, which involved several lecturers and stu- dents, allowed us to identify the following important requirements for an effective environment for developing and using assessment tests: • High reusability of the authored content. • Didactics organized in courses and classes. • Flexible access control system to the tests. • Quality tracking for the authored content. • Rich reporting section. A project for a comprehensive Web-based assessment system, named eWorkbook, was then started. The system can be used for evaluating a learner’s knowledge by creating (the tutor) and taking (the learner) on-line tests based on multiple choice, multiple response and true/false question types. Even though eWorkbook allows the creation of on-line tests for both assessment and self- assessment, it was planned above all for summative purposes. The questions are kept in a hierarchi- cal database, that is, it is tree-structured, in the same way as the file system of an operating system. In such a structure, the files can be thought of as questions, whether the directories can be thought of as macroareas, which are containers of questions usually dealing with the same subject. A macroarea can still contain other macroareas. The tutors are free to organize the tree as they wish, e.g. keeping the questions of the same course in a macroarea and further splitting it according to the 2 chapters they cover. Every item (a macroarea or a question) has an owner, which is the tutor that au- thored it. The tutors can choose whether to share their questions or not, assigning a value to the permissions associated to each item. Permissions are for reading, writing and using the items. Some other information about the questions is present in the database, such as: difficulty, quality, lan- guage, keywords, number of times the question was selected for a test and expected time for a learner to answer. The tests are composed of one or more sections. This structure facilitates the selection of the ques- tions from the database, but it is still useful for the assessment, where it can be important to estab- lish if one section is more important then another to determine the final grade for the test. There are two kinds of sections: static and dynamic. The difference between them is in the way they allow question selection. For both the static and the dynamic sections, a macroarea in the question database must be speci- fied. For a static section, the questions are chosen directly from the sub-tree located by the specified macroarea. For a dynamic section, some selection parameters must be further specified, leaving the system to choose the questions randomly across the sub-tree located by the specified macroarea whenever a learner takes a test. Didactics are organized into courses and classes: the tutors responsible for a course, manage its class and choose the tests that must be taken by the learners of that class. There are two different lists of tests within the course interface: the valuable and the self assessment test lists. Each test in the former list is used to determine the learner’s evaluation, while the latter list is just a guide for the learner to self train and assess. Prerequisites and a maximum number of attempts can be defined only for the tests in the valuable list. Different assessment strategies can be bound to a test, when it is selected for the insertion in the valuable or self-assessment list of a course. The choice of an assessment strategy affects the way in which some parameters concur to determine the grade of the test. The parameters are the following: the weight of a question in the test, the number of distractors for a question (only for multiple choice and true/false), the weight of the distractors (only for multiple response), bonus and penalty factors. An assessment strategy is a configuration, that is, an assignment of values for the parame- ters above. Some configurations are preloaded in the system and are referred to as predefined as- sessment strategies. Other configurations can be defined by the tutors and saved in his/her reserved area. We will refer to them as customized assessment strategies. A complete history of learners’ performance on tests of the valuable list is available to the tutor and to the learners themselves. Each record in the history contains the date and the time when the learner has joined a test, the amount of time needed to finish the test and some information about assessment (test score and state). The detail of the answers to each question can be seen as well and can be viewed in a printer-friendly format. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 the main features of the systems are de- scribed in detail. Section 3 is devoted to outlining the architecture of eWorkbook. An example of system use can be found in Section 4. In Section 5, a comparison is made with some interesting sys- tems related to ours. Some final remarks and a description of future work conclude the paper. 2 The Main Features of eWorkbook In the following subsections we will outline the main characteristics of the eWorkbook system. It is worth noting that eWorkbook was intended to be used by a large number of users, so it has a typical LMS didactics organization, based on courses and classes. A course is a place in which the tutors can publish tests and the learners can take them. Learners can only view the tests published in the courses in which they are members. The tutor manages the class and can accept or deny learners’ affiliation requests and expel a learner from the course. 3 2.1 Question Management An important matter for CAA, and more generally for e-learning, in order to accelerate the teaching and the assessment processes, is the reusability of the authored content. The on-line material needs a huge initial effort to be created, while it can be easily modified and reused later on. Therefore it is very important that existing material can be easily found, modified and selected by a tutor who wants to use it for a lesson or a test. There are two main ways to boost the reuse of learning mate- rial: 1. Good organization of material kept in an e-learning platform or CAA system. 2. Interoperability among systems and platforms, to share and exchange material. Our system was designed to have a well organized question database to facilitate the tutor in the question management, share and reuse: the question database of eWorkbook has a hierarchical structure, similar to the directory tree of an operating system. Each item in our database is a disci- plinary macroarea (internal node) or a question (leaf). The membership of a question to a given macroarea is determined by its subject: each macroarea is a container of questions that holds items dealing with a specific subject. It can be further split in other sub-macroareas, which hold questions belonging to a more specific matter. The question types allowed are multiple choice, multiple re- sponse and true/false. The tutor can choose if a question should be used for assessment only, for self-assessment only or for both of them. An effort for the interoperability has been made supporting the IMS Question & Test Interoperabil- ity specification (IMS QTI, 2005): our system can import and export information regarding ques- tions and tests through this widely known and adopted XML-based format. 2.1.1 Permissions Author’s right protection is an important matter too. An e-learning system should offer the tutor the choice to share his own material or not. In eWorkbook, the owner (the tutor who authored the ques- tion) and a permission set are associated to each item. The owner establishes the values for each field of the permission set. A permission is a Boolean value that indicates whether other users be- yond the owner can perform the action associated to that permission. For a macroarea, the value for the following permissions must be set: • ReadPermission: the permission to read the property and the contents of this macroarea. • WritePermission: the permission to overwrite the property and manage this macroarea (add a sub-item to it, delete it). • UsePermission: the permission to select a question from this macroarea for a test. For a question, the permissions are the following: • ReadPermission: the permission to read the question. • WritePermission: the permission to delete and overwrite the question. • UsePermission: the permission to select this question for a test presentation. Its default value is the value of UsePermission of the macroarea which this question belongs to. It’s worth noting that permissions are a good way to protect author’s right and to avoid that the ma- terial owned by a tutor is modified or used without his/her consensus. Other systems only give the possibility to share or not all of the tutor’s questions. A permission based system gives more flexi- bility to the system, allowing different grades of item sharing. 2.1.2 Question Metadata Each question in the database has a metadata set associated to it. Some of the parameters are de- cided by the tutor when he/she instantiate the metadata and they can be updated later, others are in- ferred by the system during its use. Inferred metadata are updated whenever a learner submits a test. Metadata are used in question selection in a way that will be clear in the sequel. The following is a list of the metadata fields: • Language: the human language in which the question is expressed. 4 • Keywords: a set of keywords that describe the content of the question. • Use: the aims the question is for. It can be self-assessment, valuable or both. • TestOccurrence: an inferred field, that is increased by one whenever this question is sched- uled for a test . • AverageAnswerTime: an inferred field. It can be used on our system because it is able to track the time spent by the learner on each question. • Difficulty: this field has both an inferred and a tutor chosen value. It’s a value between 0 and 1 that expresses a measure of the difficulty of the question, intended as the proportion of learners who get the question correct. The tutor can guess this value at the question creation time and can update it during the question’s lifecycle. The system calculates the inferred value with a simple formula. • Quality: this field is an inferred one. Its value is a measure of how well this question dis- criminates between learners. A good question should give full mark to good learners and penalize bad ones. Starting from this information, a great deal of criteria can be adopted. A solution is proposed in (Lira et al., 1990): it identifies a good question as the one which the better 20% of learners answers well and the worse 20% of learners answers incorrectly. We adopted a common solution applied in Item Analysis, calculating quality as the Pearson cor- relation between the score achieved on the question and the total score achieved on the test in which the question was scheduled. Its value is given by the following formula: 1 )( 1 )( 1 ))(( 22 − − − − − −− = ∑∑ ∑ n yy n xx n yyxx r where the following rules are valid: o -1 ≤ r ≤ 1, o x is the series of the results got on the question, o y is the series of results got on the whole test. 2.1.3 Question Quality Improvement Through Question Lifecycle In CAA systems it is important that the quality of the questions is kept high, so that the tutor can as- sess learners properly, using unambiguous questions that really distinguish between good learners and bad ones. eWorkbook adopts the statistical indexes (Difficulty and Quality, seen in the previous chapter) from Item Analysis to get information about the effectiveness of the questions. The improvement of the quality of the question requires the use of a process which allows the tutor to analyze the entire lifecycle of a question, including all its previous versions and the learners’ an- swers to them. Our question database has a Version Control System that allows tutors to change some data of the questions, e.g. text, distractors or metadata, still keeping the previous versions of the question: the upgrade of a question does not imply the erasing of the previous version. This could be an important feature for reasons bound to the history of learner’s responses to the question too: the question could already have been used in some tests before the upgrade, and the system has to remember which version of the question the learner answered. However, the Version Control System is important for reasons related to the quality of the questions: thanks to the tracking of the question lifecycle the tutor has feedback on the variation of statistical indexes over time. In this way, the tutor can modulate the difficulty of the question and make sure that the changes he/she made to it (maybe eliminating misspellings and ambiguities), affected positively the quality of the question. Other information, useful to establish the effectiveness of a question, is available: the tutor can easily inspect how many times it was selected to be presented in a test, the number and the per- centage of correct, incorrect and not answered responses and the average time needed to get the re- sponse. 5 In the light of the previous arguments, we can argue that the definition and the use of questions from the hierarchical repository for more than one session of tests, combined with the version con- trol system, allows the tutors to have a wide choice of high quality questions to select for their online tests. 2.2 Test Management A test is composed of sections. eWorkbook has two ways of selecting the questions to be presented in a test: through a static creation-time choice or a dynamic run-time one. In the first case, the tutor has to choose the questions directly during the creation of the test; in the latter case, she/he has only to specify some selection parameters, letting the system choose randomly the questions across the chosen macroareas whenever a learner takes a test. Therefore, we have two kinds of sections: a static section is an explicit selection of the questions to present performed at test creation time, while a dynamic section is a set of rules that perform a se- lection on the entire database. For a dynamic section, there are three kinds of selection rules: 1. Definition of a path in the tree. The path must start with a ‘/’ character, which identifies the root of the tree. This rule limits the selection only to the questions of the subtree specified by the path. A flag can be set, that further selects only the question at the first level in the sub- tree, without using subfolders. 2. Definition of some keywords. This rule limits the selection only to the questions that match the input keywords. Some logical connectors, in a search engine style can be used. By de- fault, the questions which contain even one of the input keywords are selected. No relevance rate is associated to the results. 3. Definition of some assertions on metadata fields. They are of the following form: <meta- data_field> <connector> <value>. As an example, for a section, we can choose to use only those questions that have difficulty > 0.5. The same three rules are also used to statically select the questions for a fixed section through a wizard in the Web-based interface. The tutors can choose to use just one of them to select the ques- tions, or to combine them to refine or to enlarge the selection. The tutors can also choose whether to use only their material or even the one shared by the other tutors. These rules allowed us to overcome problems related to question selection: different tests for each learner can be generated still getting an objective assessment through the selection of ranges for the difficulty and the average answer time. The discrimination was decided not to be used for question selection assertions, in order to avoid the neglecting of low quality questions. Our policy was to en- courage the tutor to review low quality questions, in order to correct their anomalies and increase their quality. 2.3 Test Presentation Two different lists of tests are presented to the learner within the course interface: the valuable and the self assessment test lists. Each test in the former list is used to determine the learner’s evaluation and is characterized by an access control specified by a prerequisite expression and a maximum number of attempts. The latter list is just a guide for the learner to self train and assess: each test in it has not got any access restriction and does not affect the learner evaluation. Each test presented in a course is bound to some test execution options. These options allow the tutor to customize the test with further information which could not be available or decided at the test creation time, so we choose not to hard-code them in the test. Test execution options include the following information: • IP Limitation: an option through which the tutor can authorize or deny access to some cli- ents, according to their IP. A selection of authorized IP lists must be chosen. This option can be particularly useful for official exams, whose tests are required to be taken only by the 6 learners that physically present in a laboratory. An IP list can be defined and selected for all the PCs of that laboratory. Wildcards and IP ranges can help to define IP lists. • Assessment: a list of options that specify the numeric scale for the mark, the threshold to pass the test and the marking strategy. Details about marking strategies can be found in sec- tion 2.4. • Shuffle: this Boolean option can be checked if the tutor wants to randomize the sequence of the questions, to make it more difficult for the learners to cheat. • Access Control: this section of options is valid only for valuable tests. The tutor can choose the maximum number of attempts allowed for the test and the prerequisites for accessing it. Prerequisites establish, through a simple even powerful expression, the learner’s right to ac- cess the test. If not fulfilled, prerequisites can deny learner’s access to the test. Prerequisites for a test are based on the learner results on the previous tests in the valuable test list. The language supported for the expression is aicc_script; a string expressed in such a language has a Boolean value and it is composed of the following elements: o Identifiers: nouns that univocally identify a test in the valuable list. o Constants: values that define the state of a test (passed, completed, browsed, failed, not attempted, incomplete). o Logic, equality and inequality operators. o A special syntax to define a set and to specify at least n elements from a set. As an example: the expression test1 & 2*{test2, test3, test4} is true if the state of test1 is passed or completed and at least two among test2, test3 e test4 are passed or completed. A simple visual interface helps the tutor to define the prerequisites string without knowing aicc_script language. There is also an aicc_script-to-natural lan- guage translator to help the learner to better understand the prerequisites for a test. A better and more complete explanation of aicc_script can be found in [ADL]. An instance of test execution options is a configuration, that can be saved with a name and recalled in a second time, whenever a new test must be added. 2.4 Assessment Strategies eWorkbook provides a wide choice of predefined assessment strategies and the possibility to define a new customized assessment strategy. An assessment strategy is a set of choices of the values to give to some parameters taken into account during the test assessment process. The predefined strategies, are preloaded in the system and cannot be changed. They are at the disposal of all of the tutors. The customized strategies can be defined by a tutor, and they remain visible only in his re- served area. All the strategies calculate the final mark on the test summing the results achieved in the single questions. The maximum mark which can be obtained on a single question depends on the weight of the question. A weight is assigned by the tutor to each section of questions in a test and the weight of a question is easily calculated dividing the weight of the section by the number of questions in it. The customizable parameters are the following: • Weighting: this parameter, if set, enables the weighted assessment for a test, that is, the maximum mark got on the question depends on its weight. If a tutor wants a section to be more important than the others, he/she has to give a higher weight to it during the test au- thoring, and he/she has to choose an assessment strategy with the weighting parameter on. If this parameter is not set, all the questions equally contribute to get the mark on the whole test. • BonusOnCorrect: this parameter, if set, allows the tutor to specify a positive real factor (bo- nus) by which the mark obtained on the correctly answered questions during the assessment process must be multiplied. • PenaltyOnIncorrect: this parameter, if set, allows the tutor to specify a negative real factor (penalty) by which the weight of the incorrectly answered questions during the assessment 7 process must be multiplied. If not set, the mark obtained on the questions answered incor- rectly is zero. It is possible to choose a fair penalty, which gives to the questions answered incorrectly a mark of –(1/NC-1), where NC is the number of choices for a question. The use of the fair penalty should set to zero the mean mark for a question guessed by a learner who does not know the right answer to it. • PenaltyOnNotAnswered: this parameter, if set, allows the tutor to specify a negative real fac- tor (penalty) by which the weight of the unanswered questions during the assessment proc- ess must be multiplied. If not set, the mark obtained on the unanswered questions is zero. The following table summarizes the values given to the parameters above for each predefined strat- egy. Strategy Name Weighted BonusOnCorrect PenaltyOnIncorrect PenaltyOnNotAnswered NumberCorrect NO NO NO NO WeightedNumberCorrect YES NO NO NO GuessingPenalty NO NO YES (1) NO WeightedGuessingPenalty YES NO YES (1) NO GuessingFairPenalty NO NO Fair NO WeightedGuessingFairPenalty YES NO Fair NO The names of the strategies have been taken from (IMS ASI, 2004). As we can see, for each strat- egy, there is a weighted version. None of the predefined strategies adopts bonuses on correct or penalty on not answered questions. NumberCorrect is a ‘plain’ strategy: none of the parameters is set. Its name is due to the way in which it calculates the mark on the whole test: just summing the number of corrected answers (and scaling the result to 30 or 100). GuessingPenalty and its weighted version WeightedGuessingPenalty use 1 as factor for the PenaltyOnIncorrect parameter. This means that they subtract the entire weight of the incorrectly answered questions from the final mark on the test. GuessingFairPenalty and its weighted version WeightedGuessingFairPenalty, use the fair pen- alty, explained before. 2.5 History Tracking A complete history of a learner’s performances on valuable test list is available to the tutor and to the learner himself. The tutor can view the results achieved by all the learners in his/her classes, while the learner view is restricted only to his/her results. Each record in the history contains the date and the time when the learner joined a test, the amount of time needed to finish the test and in- formation about assessment (test score and state). To consult the history, a search engine style form must be filled. The fields of the form allow the seeker to select a course, a learner and a test whose instances must be shown. Further advanced pa- rameters, which allow to narrow the research, are: the state (terminated, not terminated) and the re- sult (passed, not passed) of the test, a date range during which the test was taken, and the number of results per page. Each instance present in the result pages, has a link to a pdf file that contains a printable version of the test with all the learner’s answers. A unique pdf file for all the instances is available as well. In such a way, all the tests can be saved or printed in one operation. 3 eWorkbook Architecture As shown in Figure 1, eWorkbook has a layered architecture. The Jakarta Struts Framework [Struts] has been used to support the Model 2 design paradigm, a variation of the classic Model View Controller (MVC) approach. Struts provides its own Controller component and integrates with other technologies to provide the Model and the View. In our design choice, Struts works with 8 Java Server Pages (JSP, 2005), for the View, while it interacts with Hibernate (Hibernate, 2005), a powerful framework for object/relational persistence and query service for Java, for the Model. The application is fully accessible with a Web Browser. Navigation is facilitated across the simple interfaces based on menus and navigation bars. User data inserting is done through HTML forms and some form data integrity checks are performed using Javascript code, to alleviate the server side processes. A big effort was made to limit the use of client-side scripts only to the standard EcmaS- cript language (ECMAScript, 2005). No browser plug-in installations are needed. It is worth noting that the system has been tested on recent versions of the most common browsers (i.e., Internet Ex- plorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox and Opera). Figure 1 - Architecture of eWorkbook The Web Browser interacts with the Struts Servlet that processes the request and dispatches it to the Action Class, responsible for serving it, according to the predefined configuration. It is worth noting that the Struts Servlet uses the JSP pages to implement the user interfaces. The Action Classes in- teract with the modules of the Business Layer, responsible for the logic of the application. The Business Layer accesses to the Data Layer, implemented through a Relational Data Base Manage- ment System (RDBMS), to persist the data across the functionalities provided by Hibernate frame- work. 3.1 Controller Layer This layer has many duties, among which are: getting client inputs, dispatching the request to the appropriate component and managing the view to return as a response to the client. Obviously, the Controller layer can have many other duties, but those mentioned above are the main ones. In our application, following the Struts architecture, the main component of the Controller layer is the Struts Servlet, which represents the centralized control point of the Web application. In particu- lar, the Struts Servlet processes each client request and delegates the management of the request to a helper class, that is able to execute the operation related to the required action. In Struts, the helper 9 class is implemented by an Action Class, that can be considered as a bridge between a client-side action and an operation of the business logic of the application. When the Action Class terminates its task, it returns the control to the Struts Servlet that performs a forward action to the appropriate JSP page, according to the predefined configuration. To reduce the effort to maintain and customize the application, we chose to limit the use of the JAVA code in the JSP pages, using as an alternative the Struts taglibs. In this way the Web design- ers are able to work on the page layouts without shouldering the programming aspects. Finally, thanks to the use of the Struts framework, eWorkbook has the complete support for the internation- alization of the Web-based interface. Even if, in its earlier releases, it only came with the English and Italian versions, the translation is quite an easy duty: to add a new language version all that our system needs is the translation of some phrases in a .properties (plain text) file. The Web pages are returned to Web browsers in the language specified in the header of the request. 3.2 Business Layer This layer contains the business logic of the application. In any medium-sized or big-sized Web ap- plication, it is very important to separate the presentation from the business logic, so that the appli- cation is not closely bound to a specific type of presentation. Adopting this trick, the effort to change the look & feel of eWorkbook is limited to the development of a new user interface (JSP pages), without affecting the implementation of the other components of the architecture. As mentioned before, every Action Class of the Controller Layer is able to execute an operation of the business logic of the application. To this aim, the Action Classes interact with four different subsystem of the Business Layer (see Figure 1). These subsystems are: 1. User Management Subsystem (UMS): this subsystem is responsible for user management. In particular, it provides insert, update and delete facilities. 2. Question Management Subsystem (QMS): this subsystem manages the question database of eWorkbook and controls access to it. It is composed of two modules: a. Question Database Manager: this module allows the management of the hierarchical structure of the question database. Each internal node in it is a disciplinary macroarea, while each leaf is a question. This module allows the insertion, update and deletion of a macroarea and/or a question from the database. b. Access Permission Manager: this module controls access to the question database. For each node of the question tree it is necessary to specify the owner (i.e., the tutor who authored the macroarea or the question) and a permission set. The owner estab- lishes the value for each field of the permission set. 3. Test Management Subsystem (TMS): this subsystem manages the test repository of eWork- book. To achieve this, we have divided this subsystem into four modules: a. Authoring Manager: this module permits to create a new test, defining the questions that compose the test and the test execution options. The Authoring Manager also al- lows the publishing of an existing test in one or more courses; b. Assessment Manager: this module performs the test evaluation and manages the as- sessment strategies; c. Execution Manager: this module manages the test execution. To aim this, the Execu- tion Manager gets a test instance from the Authoring Manager and performs the nec- essary operation to present it to the user. At the end of the test execution this module passes the control to the Assessment Manager to valuate the test; d. History Manager: this module manages the history of a learner’s performance and a test’s execution. 4. Course Management Subsystem: this subsystem manages the courses. In particular, it allows the insertion, update and deletion of a course. It is worth noting that all the subsystems described above access to one or more business objects to manipulate information that is stored in the database. The Hibernate framework is used to manage 10 those business objects that accede to the data layer across an appropriate mapping. The target of this mapping is to transform a relational database (stored in the data layer) in a light OO database; in this way it is possible to manage the data exploiting the advantages provided by the OO paradigm. 3.3 Data Layer This layer contains the information stored in a RDBMS. It is worth noting that eWorkbook is not closely bound to a specific RDBMS, but supports much of the most popular RDBMS (i.e., MySQL (MySQL, 2005), Firebird (Firebird, 2005), etc). All that eWorkbook needs, to be used with a dif- ferent RDBMS, is the modification of the connection URL in the Hibernate configuration file: the creation and initialization of the DB is an automatic process. 4 An Example: The English Knowledge Test eWorkbook was installed on the Web Server of the Faculty and successfully tested for the latest sessions of the English Knowledge Test, which is mandatory in our university. In our faculty, the system was used to replace the traditional oral exam with an on-line structured test, more suitable for assessing a huge mass of students. The test is aimed at evaluating learners’ reading comprehension. The syllabus of the exam is com- posed of twenty passages taken from the textbooks of some ordinary exams. On the day of the exam each learner takes a randomly chosen passage on which his/her test is based. The time to complete the test is fifteen minutes, during which the student has to answer twelve questions. A sixty-seat laboratory is available for the exams, an adequate number of users to test the system in a typical academic usage scenario. 4.1 Question and Test Authoring In eWorkbook, the tutors can edit the question database through a simple visual Web based inter- face. This is quite similar to the my computer browser program which allows an operating system user to edit the file system structure. As shown in Figure 2, the interface is split in two views: one on the left, which shows the question database tree, and one on the right, which shows in an HTML form the attributes of the selected item, so that they can be easily changed. Every sub-tree on the left view can be expanded or collapsed using the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ image controls close to the macroarea icon. A set of buttons, shown in a proper toolbar, allows the tutor to execute various tasks on the items. Each user views only the macroareas on which he has the UsePermission set to true. If an ac- tion is not allowed, the corresponding button is shown greyed. 11 Figure 2 - A Screenshot of the Question Database Structure The publication of a question in the database can be done through a wizard interface provided by our system. The wizard consists of a sequence of screens where the tutor must insert the question, the distractors to the question, the metadata and some assessment information. The publication of a question bank is possible too: it is done by importing the question definition, from a text file or an XML text expressed in an IMS QTI (IMS QTI, 2005) conformant format. A new macroarea, named English Test, was added to the root of the tree. A new course with the same name was activated as well. In the macroarea English Test twenty (one for each passage) sub- macroareas were added. In each of them, several questions were added. All the permissions for the new added macroareas and questions were left. A new test was created for each passage. Every test is composed of three sections of five questions each. The difficulty is increasing over them: an easy section containing four multiple choice ques- tions with difficulty between 0 and 0.5; a medium one containing four multiple choice questions with difficulty between 0.2 and 0.8; a difficult one containing four multiple response questions with difficulty between 0.3 and 1. All the tests were added to the valuable list of the English Test course, limiting the execution of the tests only to the computers with an IP address in the range of the labo- ratory in which the exam takes place. The same test list was also published in the self-assessment section. To encourage the students to get trained, a small part of the questions used for the exam were also used for the self-assessment tests. A screenshot summarizing the test’s feature is shown in figure 3. 12 Figure 3 - A screenshot of the Test Details 4.2 Assessment Policy and Test Results The WeightedNumberCorrect assessment strategy has been chosen to evaluate the tests: to the easy, medium and difficult sections have been given, respectively, 25%, 35% and 40% of the total score. The score has been calculated in a /30 scale, with 18 as a passing threshold. So doing, we consider a student as worthy to get the exam if he/she gets all of the easy and the medium questions and just one of the difficult ones. Figure 4 - A Screenshot of the Test Execution 13 Figure 5 - The Test Pdf Format All the students interested in taking the exam are asked to obtain an account on the system some days before the exam itself. Once the learner takes a test, a timer starts to measure the time he/she spends on that attempt. If he/she hasn’t already done it before, he/she must deliver the test as the timer expires. Even the time spent on each question is recorded. Once the test is delivered, a table summarizing test results is shown. Two screenshots of the test execution and some pages of the test pdf format are shown, respectively, in Figure 4 and Figure 5. At the moment, several exam sessions have been done. The mean pass rate is between 60% and 70% of the students. Some items with poor discrimination have been modified through the sessions. We finally got good discrimination on most of the questions. 5 Related Work Several different assessment tools and applications to support blended learning have been analyzed, starting from the most common Web-based e-learning platforms such as WebCT 4.1 Campus Edi- tion (WebCT, 2005), Blackboard 6 (Blackboard, 2005), Click2Learn Aspen 2.0 (Aspen, 2005), EduSystem (EduSystem, 2005), and The Learning Manager 3.2 (The Learning Manager, 2005). The analysis has been carried out both by exercising the systems and by studying literature surveys and benchmark analyses (EduTools, 2005). Special emphasis has been placed on evaluating the existing systems with respect to the requirements identified in the previous section. In the CAA literature we can find two main categories of assessment systems: those which auto- matically generate questions from the lecture material, and those which make use of a pre-populated question database from which questions are chosen randomly. The first kind of systems, often re- quires the prior creation of a knowledge structure, like a concept graph or an ontology, as for the system described in (McAlpine, 2005). Other systems of this type (Mitkov, 2003) use Natural Lan- guage Parsing to extract information from a text and generate the questions. Using these techniques, 14 it is hard to bet on the good quality or readability of the generated questions. Such drawbacks often relegate the use of this kind of systems only to experimental purposes. The systems which involve the tutor in the task of creating a set of questions to be stored in a data- base, prove to be more reliable and consequently are used more for official exams, in order to ob- tain an objective assessment. Those systems, such as the ones described in (Li & Sambasivam, 2003) and in (Lister & Jerram, 2001), sometimes use an XML test configuration file to define some rules for the question selection. In question database based systems, the challenge is to give a good organization to the database, to avoid question replication, and to use a good question selection pro- cedure in order to assess learners’ skills on the desired subjects. Some systems, like Claroline (Cla- roline, 2005) just use a plain container to keep questions. In Moodle (Moodle, 2005) and (Capuano et al., 2003), the question database is partitioned in sets, often called categories or macroareas, in order to have a per-subject organization of the questions. In (McGough et al., 2001) and (Gusev & Armenski, 2002) a hierarchically structured organization of the database is exploited. In (McGough et al., 2001), a tree is associated to a lesson and each of its branches is used for assessing learners on a part of the lesson. A leaf in this tree is a set of questions. In (Gusev & Armenski, 2002) a more complete but complex system is described, where questions are classified exploiting similarities among them. Only a few systems adopt some kinds of author’s right protection. Claroline and Moodle let the tu- tor choose whether to make his/her questions visible to other tutors or not. Few systems among the analyzed ones have some forms of quality control of the questions. An in- teresting feature is the opportunity to judge a question or a test analyzing the learners’ responses to it. Starting from this information, many criteria can be adopted. In particular, Hicks (Hicks, 2002), reporting his experience with a large class at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, identifies a good question as the one to which the better 20% of learners answers well and the worse 20% of learners answers incorrectly. In (Lira et al., 1990) the degree of difficulty of a test is calculated us- ing the maximum possible (max) and minimum possible (min) score and the average score (avg) of the class according to the following formula: ((avg – min) / (max – avg)) * 100. eWorkbook has a complete tracking system to judge the quality of a question: every time a signifi- cant change is made to a question, a new version of it is generated. For each version of the question, all the history of the learner’s answers is kept. From a statistical analysis, explained in detail in sec- tion 3.1.4, we can guess the quality of the question and its improvement over time. The attempt to judge difficulty and quality of question items is not a new subject. Two main theories are notewor- thy: Item Analysis and Item Response Theory (Hambleton & Swaminathan, 1985). Unfortunately, it is quite uncommon to find an assessment system that uses one of the effectively. Some explanations and a comparison between them can be found in (Fan, 1998). As for question selection from a large database to compose tests, two algorithms were analyzed: the proposals of (Sun, 2000) and (Hwang et al., 2006).The former is aimed at constructing tests with similar difficulties. The difficulty is calculated using Item Response Theory model. The latter takes into account other parameters too, such as discrimination degree, length of the test time, number of test items and specified distribution of concept weights. Most of the analyzed systems are complete LMS. The assessment tool is an integral part of them. eWorkbook was thought to be used by the large number of users of our university, so we gave to the didactics an organization in courses and classes, to support multiple channels in which to publish the tests. As for a means for sequencing and control access to the tests, none of the tools analyzed has a flexi- ble system. The system described in (Li & Sambasivam., 2003) permits the learner to sit an exam many times, until a minimum acceptable score is achieved. In (McGough et al., 2001) the questions are grouped into sets, and the strategy to pass a set, and consequently access to the next, is to give the correct response to 3 answers in a row for that set. 15 6 Conclusions and Future Work In the paper, we have presented eWorkbook, a system for the creation and deployment of assess- ment and self-assessment tests. The proposed system can significantly accelerate the assessment process, thanks to the reusability of the authored content. We achieved reusability allowing the tu- tors to share their questions with other tutors and adopting a hierarchical subject-based question da- tabase. Such an organization makes it easier to find, modify and select the questions for the tests. The system is even able to interoperate with other CAA systems that support IMS QTI specification. The chance to mix fixed banks of questions with randomly chosen question sections, gives the tutor the chance to get the right compromise between an objective assessment and the sureness to include a wide coverage of subjects. Author’s rights are protected through the use of separate permissions for reading, writing and using the questions. The use of eWorkbook can help tutors in keep high the quality of the assessment, thanks to the Ver- sion Control System. This system tells the tutor if the changes he/she make to the questions posi- tively affect the quality of the question. Other feedback information on questions are available too. Our effort to make the application portable and usable makes it especially suitable for the academic use for which it was conceived, even though it is still a good choice in different environments. The wide choice of assessment strategies and the possibility to extend that choice with new user-defined strategies, help the tutor to tailor the test evaluation to the competency and skill level of the class. The learner can self-assess and fully reap the benefits of blended learning. The definition of access rules, like prerequisites and attempt limitation, compels the learner to follow the right learning path. The report section is rich with information and fit out of charts and tables. The tutor can have a complete and deep control over the performance of the class and the learners even on a single macroarea, and over the effectiveness of the authored resources. The system has been used for the English knowledge test by the students and the teachers of our faculty. The testing has shown that teachers, also with very little technical skills, can easily use eWorkbook to create assessment tests thus fully taking advantage of blended learning. Nevertheless, a more accurate evaluation of the effectiveness of the approach is foreseen for the current academic year. Moreover, future work will be devoted to test the scalability of the system with a larger num- ber of simultaneously on-line users. Other interesting developments are planned as future work. Al- though multiple choice, multiple response and true/false are the most common and widely adopted question types, and they are enough to arrange structured online tests, we are working in order to support other types of questions (e.g. fill-in, matching, performance, sequencing, likert, numeric) and questions based on external tools, like those proposed in (Hicks, 2002). Other efforts will be spent to introduce multimedia elements, like images, video and sound, and rich text capabilities in the rendering of the questions. Finally, case studies to consider pedagogical implications of eWork- book will also be carried out. eWorkbook is distributed under GNU GPL license: its source codes are completely available to the community and can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/eworkbook. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed, constructive, and thoughtful comments that helped us to improve the presentation of the results in this paper. References ADL (2001). The SCORM Content Aggregation Model, Version 1.2. Advanced Distributed Learn- ing Initiative, http://www.adlnet.gov Aspen (2005), Click2Learn Aspen, http://home.click2learn.com/en/aspen/index.asp Blackboard (2005), http://www.blackboard.com 16 Capuano, N., Gaeta, M., Micarelli, A., Sangineto, E. (2003). An intelligent web teacher system for learning personalisation and Semantic Web compatibility. Proceedings of the Eleventh In- ternational PEG Conference, St Petersburg, Russia Chef (2005), CHEF: CompreHensive collaborativE Framework. http://chefproject.org Claroline (2005), http://www.claroline.net Dublin Core (2005), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, http://dublincore.org ECMAScript (2005), Standard ECMA-262, ECMAScript Language Specification, http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Ecma-262.pdf EduSystem (2005), http://www.mtsystem.hu/edusystem/en EduTools (2005), http://www.edutools.info/course/index.jsp Fan, X. (1998). Item Response Theory and Classical Test Theory: An Empirical Comparison of Their Item/Person Statistics. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58 (3), pp. 357- 381. Firebird (2005), http://firebird.sourceforge.net/ Gusev, M., Armenski, G. (2002). onLine Learning and eTesting. In Proceedings of 24th Interna- tional Conference on Information Technology Interfaces, Cavtat, Croatia, pp. 147-152 Hambleton, R.K., Swaminathan, H. (1985). Item Response Theory - Principles and Applications. Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Netherlands Hibernate (2005), http://www.hibernate.org Hicks C. (2002). Delivery And Assessment Issues Involved in Very Large Group Teaching. In Pro- ceedings of IEE 2nd Annual Symposium on Engineering Education Professional Engineer- ing Scenarios, London, UK, pp. 21/1-21/4 Hwang, G.J., Lin, B.M.T., Lin T.L. (2006). An effective approach for test-sheet composition with large-scale item banks, Computers & Education, Vol. 46 (2), pp. 122-139 IMS ASI (2004), IMS Global Learning Consortium, IMS Question & Test Interoperability: ASI Outcomes processing, Final Specification Version 1.2, http://www.imsglobal.org/question/index.html IMS QTI (2005), IMS Global Learning Consortium: IMS Question & Test Interoperability: IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification, http://www.imsglobal.org/question/index.html JSP (2005), JavaServer Pages Technology, http://java.sun.com/products/jsp Li, T., Sambasivam, S.E. (2003). Question Difficulty Assessment in Intelligent Tutor Systems for Computer Architecture. Information Systems Education Journal, Vol. 1 (51) Lira, P., Bronfman M., Eyzaguirre J. (1990). Multitest II - A Program for the Generation, Correc- tion and Analysis of Multiple Choice Tests. IEEE Transactions on Education, Vol. 33 (4), pp. 320-325 Lister, R., Jerram, P. (2001). Design for web-based on-demand multiple choice exams using XML. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, pp. 383-384 McAlpine, M. (2005). Principles of Assessment. CAA Centre, University of Luton, http://www.caacentre.ac.uk/dldocs/Bluepaper1.pdf 17 McGough, J., Mortensen, J., Johnson, J., Fadali, S. (2001). A Web-based Testing System with Dy- namic Question Generation. In Proceedings of 31st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Reno, NV, USA, pp. S3C - 23-8 vol. 3 Mitkov R. (2003). Computer-Aided Generation of Multiple-Choice Tests. Proceedings of the HLT- NAACL 2003 Workshop on Building Educational Applications Using Natural Language Processing, pp. 17 - 22 Moodle (2005), http://www.claroline.net MySql (2005), http://www.mysql.com OpenUSS (2005), http://www.openuss.org Proctiæ, J., Bojiæ, D., Tartalja, I. (2001) test: Tools for Evaluation of Learners' Tests - A Develop- ment Experience. In Proceedings of 31st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Reno, NV, USA, pp. F3A - 6-F3A-12 vol. 2 Sakai (2005), Sakai Project, http://www.sakaiproject.org Struts (2005), The Apache Struts Web Application Framework, http://struts.apache.org Sun, K. T.. (2000). An effective Item Selection Method for Educational Measurement. In Proceed- ings of International Workshop on Advanced Learning Technologies, Palmerston North, New Zealand, pp.105 - 106 The Learning Manager (2005), http://thelearningmanager.com WebCT (2005), http://www.webct.com 
work_u2avlub63vh6fe4mkc2pyzwane	----	Learning Patterns as Criterion for Forming Work Groups in 3D Simulation Learning Environments | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2016100103 Corpus ID: 31198210Learning Patterns as Criterion for Forming Work Groups in 3D Simulation Learning Environments @article{CelaRanilla2016LearningPA, title={Learning Patterns as Criterion for Forming Work Groups in 3D Simulation Learning Environments}, author={J. Cela-Ranilla and L. M. Mol{\'i}as and M. G. Cervera}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2016}, volume={14}, pages={27-40} } J. Cela-Ranilla, L. M. Molías, M. G. Cervera Published 2016 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. This study analyzes the relationship between the use of learning patterns as a grouping criterion to develop learning activities in the 3D simulation environment at University. Participants included 72 Spanish students from the Education and Marketing disciplines. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests were conducted. The process was analyzed by means of teamwork measurements and the product was analyzed by assessing the final group performance. Results showed that learning patterns… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 1 Citations View All Topics from this paper Simulation One Citation Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Expansion of Technology Utilization Through Tourism 4.0 in Slovenia J. Urbančič, Vesna Kuralt, +5 authors T. Ilijas Business 2020 2 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 28 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Forming groups to foster collaborative learning in large enrolment courses G. Lawrie, K. Matthews, L. Gahan Engineering 2010 6 Save Alert Research Feed Examining the effects of learning motivation and of course design in an instructional simulation game Y. Chang, H. Peng, H. C. Chao Computer Science Interact. Learn. Environ. 2010 66 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The impact of learning styles on student grouping for collaborative learning: a case study Enrique Alfonseca, R. Carro, E. Martín, A. Ortigosa, Pedro Paredes Computer Science User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 2006 207 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Learning teamwork skills in university programming courses P. Sancho, R. Fuentes-Fernández, Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2009 99 Save Alert Research Feed Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams B. Oakley, R. Felder, R. Brent, I. Elhajj Engineering 2004 624 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Teamwork: effectively teaching an employability skill Linda Riebe, Dean Roepen, B. Santarelli, G. Marchioro Engineering 2010 74 Save Alert Research Feed What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments? B. Dalgarno, M. Lee Computer Science, Psychology Br. J. Educ. Technol. 2010 967 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Application of Learning Styles in Both Individual and Collaborative Learning Pedro Paredes, P. Rodriguez Computer Science 2006 14 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Grouped Out? Undergraduates' Default Strategies for Participating in Multiple Small Groups D. Gillespie, Diane F Sally Elizabeth Rosamond, D. Thomas Psychology 2006 33 Save Alert Research Feed Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching S. Warburton Computer Science Br. J. Educ. Technol. 2009 638 PDF Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 1 Citations 28 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_u3cxbc6raje43beigouahmu3ui	----	Microsoft Word - Fruin 070912 JS     1 Struggles and Solutions for Streaming Video in the Online Classroom Christine Fruin University of Florida Abstract: The upcoming round of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 anticircumvention provision and the questions raised by the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the against University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for its streaming video practices illustrate the problematic state of the law concerning the digitization and streaming of video content by educators. This article reviews the current status of legislation and litigation and offers possible solutions for streaming video while librarians and educators await official instruction. When Congress enacted the United States Copyright Act in 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. 2010), CDs, DVDs, MP3s and the Internet were not part of the education marketplace. The rise of and demand for digital formats and distance learning has forced courts and the legislature to attempt to interpret, amend, and apply the law in contexts that were not originally considered by the Act’s drafters. As a result, many questions have emerged for 2    faculty and for the librarians assisting them on the use of copyrighted materials, particularly film, in the distance learning classroom. One of the legislative attempts to amend the Copyright Act to reflect content created and published using new technologies was the enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (Pub. L. No. 105‐304, 112 Stat. 2860 Oct. 28, 1998). The Copyright Office recently issued a Notice of Inquiry (76 Fed. Reg. 60398 Sept. 29, 2011) seeking comments relevant to its upcoming rulemaking proceeding on the DMCA provision prohibiting circumvention of technological protection measures (TPM), such as Content Scrambling System (CSS) found on most DVDs (Copyright Act of 1976, § 1201). The Copyright Office, pursuant to the DMCA’s language, promulgates exemptions to the anti‐ circumvention provision every three years (Copyright Act of 1976, §1201(a)(1)(C)).1 During the 2006 rulemaking proceeding, the Copyright Office granted an exemption for the creation of film clips by film and media studies professors (37 C.F.R. C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(1)).2 In 2010, this exemption was expanded to all college and university instructors and to film and media studies students (United States Library of Congress, Copyright Office 2010). This exemption is of particular importance to faculty teaching online as well as to faculty teaching in on‐ground or blended courses (Band 2011).3 This exemption, along with application of the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act or Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Act, allows online educators to utilize film as a pedagogical tool in their digital classrooms. However, the statutory disparity between what is permitted in the face‐to‐face teaching environment under the Copyright Act’s public performance provision (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(1)) and what is permitted in the online classroom under the TEACH Act (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)) still pervades, 3    leaving faculty who can screen an entire documentary film or other motion picture in the physical classroom but not in the distance classroom in a frustrating position. Similarly, librarians assisting distance education faculty in not only understanding the Copyright Act’s bias against them but also in locating and affording suitable alternatives are often placed in a similar spot of frustration—and potentially in a spot of legal liability if too much content is digitized and streamed to online classrooms. OVERVIEW OF THE STATUTORY SITUATION Although copyright law grants authors and creators certain exclusive rights with respect to how they may reuse their creative works, there are certain exceptions expressed in the Copyright Act that permit educators and others to reuse a copyrighted work without first seeking the author’s permission. An exception expressly made available to educators is the codified right to perform or display a copyrighted work, such as a film or a still image, in a physical or face‐to‐face teaching environment (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(1)). The TEACH Act amended the existing distance education provision, expanding the range of works that could be used, but with several cumbersome and burdensome prerequisites, for the performance and display of copyrighted works to distance learners. To invoke this exemption, the institution, the information technology office, and the instructor must each comply with several statutory requirements (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)). An institution may invoke the TEACH Act if it is an accredited, nonprofit educational institution and if it has complied with the TEACH Act’s requirements of having a visible copyright policy and providing informational materials to its faculty, students, and staff 4    about copyright law (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(D)). The institution’s information technology office or other appropriate service unit must install and maintain a system that controls access to copyrighted materials by enrolled students and that prevents unauthorized access to digital materials stored on the institution’s servers (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(D)(ii)). Instructors in an online course also have a set of responsibilities under the TEACH Act. In addition to being familiar with the type and quantity of work allowed by the TEACH Act, instructors also have the duty to solely make the decision to use the transmitted materials and to ensure that the materials selected are lawfully made, serve educational purposes and are not for entertainment or any other purpose. Further, the materials that are selected for transmission to the students in an online course should be essential to achieving the pedagogical goals of the course. Materials chosen should not be supplementary but should be an important part of the course’s curriculum (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(A), (B)). The TEACH Act stands as an important development in online education (Crews 2010); however, it also poses a substantial burden upon an online instructor in return for its limited benefits. The statutory requirement that the performance or display occur as part of “systematic mediated instructional activities” (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(A)) fails to take into account the asynchronous learning that frequently occurs in distance education. This requirement is targeted toward preventing distribution of distance learning materials that are either specifically marketed for student use outside the classroom or that are traditionally reproduced for this purpose. It also informs educators that the display or performance must not be supplemental or additional material. That is, online educators must ask themselves is the work displayed in the online classroom the 5    same work that would be shown (although in lesser quantity) and discussed in a face to face teaching environment, or is the convenience of digital transmission being taken advantage of? The general consensus is that online instructors relying upon the TEACH Act should only display digital copies of materials that are consistent with what would be presented in the physical classroom (Allner 2005; Dames 2005; Lipinski 2003). Materials digitally transmitted should not be supplementary or otherwise extraneous to what is needed to achieve the goals of the particular class session. Additional advice that has grown from the discussion over mediated instructional activity relates to the time during which the digital material is available and accessible by students. Instructors are advised to make materials available for only that period of time necessary to achieve the learning objectives for the class session for which materials are assigned. For librarians and information technologists, the struggle becomes determining and coordinating how long to allow a digital film clip to be available and whose responsibility is it to disconnect or remove access once that time has passed (Schroeder and Williamsen 2011). The greatest burden lies in the definition of how much of an audiovisual work may be transmitted digitally. The quantity of the work that may be digitally copied or streamed is greatly reduced under the TEACH Act as compared to what is permitted in the physical classroom. Under the TEACH Act only a reasonable or limited portion of any audiovisual work may be performed or displayed in a distance learning situation. Therefore, while an instructor may be able to show an entire film in the physical classroom, he or she may only be able to digitize a single scene for an online class. This limitation has forced librarians and other academic service units to adopt arbitrary guidelines, much as has occurred in the areas of interlibrary loans and electronic reserves, often limiting instructors to a 6    predetermined percentage or number of minutes of a film that may be digitized and streamed (Carter 2008). Given the burdens imposed by the TEACH Act, online educators may wish to avail themselves of another exception—fair use. Fair use applies to the limited use and reproduction, without permission, of all copyrighted works. In order to invoke fair use, the use or reproduction must be for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, research, or education (Copyright Act of 1976, § 107). To qualify for the fair use exception, four statutory factors must be balanced and result must weigh in favor of such use. The four factors of fair use can be best summarized as follows: first, what is the purpose and character of the use; second, what is the nature of the copyrighted work; third, how much of the work is used and does this portion represent the “heart of the work”; and fourth, what effect does the use of the copyrighted work have on the market and value of the work. Consideration of all of the fair use factors is required; however, all four factors do not have to weigh equally in favor of the proposed use. A fair use analysis is fact driven, and each unique set of facts regarding a proposed use leads to its own reasoned conclusion. Reasonable individuals may come to different conclusions concerning the same set of facts, but the operative word is "reasonable" (Pressman 2008). When analyzing each factor, there are several inquiries one can make. When examining the purpose and character of the use, consider whether the use is for educational or commercial purposes. Recently, courts have indicated that if the use is significantly transformative, that is, the use of the work is a completely new, unexpected, or unintended way, and not merely a substitution or superseding use, this factor may weigh in favor of a finding of fair use (see, inter alia, Campbell v. Acuff‐Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 1994; 7    Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc., 109 F.3d 1394 9th Cir. 1997; Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 448 F.3d 605 2nd Cir. 2006; A.V. v. iParadigms, LLC, 562 F.3d 630 4th Cir. 2009). An example of this in the online learning context may be the screening of a Hollywood blockbuster film to depict how an individual struggles with his sense of morality, as opposed to showing the film for its original purpose of entertainment or technical display of special effects. Thus, if a work is reproduced only in a quantity necessary for the stated purpose and where that purpose is not the one originally intended by its author, then that reproduction and use will be considered transformative for the purpose of fair use analysis (Heymann 2008). When considering the nature of the work, analyze whether the content is technical or fact based, or is it more artistic and creative? Facts or common technical knowledge are ordinarily not subject to copyright protection while more artistic or creative expressions are generally afforded greater copyright protection. When looking at the quantity of a copyrighted work used, a smaller amount ordinarily will weigh more in favor of fair use than using the whole work. However, even a smaller portion can be infringing if it qualifies as the “heart of the work” (Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539 1985). Finally, in conducting a fair use analysis, one must consider the effect of the use upon the market for the copyrighted work. This factor has garnered increased attention in recent cases interpreting the Copyright Act, with courts giving scrutiny to noncommercial and nontransformative uses that have the potential for substantial harm, as may be the case where the use or reproduction is solely for the purpose of cost savings for student or for institution by not paying the customary price (Campbell v. Acuff‐Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569, 591; Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 557. See also Religious Tech. Ctr. v. Netcom On‐Line Communications 8    Servs., Inc., 923 F. Supp. 1231, 1244 N.D. Cal. 1995). The market effect inquiry should also look at whether there is a ready market for the original work that would be impeded by the use (Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, 508 F.3d 1146 9th Cir. 2007. See also American Geophysical Union v. Texaco Inc., 60 F.3d 913, 918 2d Cir. 1995). LEGAL LIABILITY FOR STREAMING? Invocation of the TEACH Act or fair use may not permit an online instructor to show a film in an online class the same as he or she would in the physical classroom without the possibility of incurring individual or institutional liability. In December 2010, the Association for Information and Media Equipment (AIME) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the University of California system and the chancellor of the University of California Los Angeles campus (UCLA).4 The complaint contends that UCLA infringed upon the copyrights of Ambrose Video, one of the institutional members of AIME, by allegedly copying, digitizing, and streaming full‐length Ambrose Video DVD content via a password‐ protected on‐demand technology delivery system. Specifically, the complaint alleged that UCLA digitized a DVD series of BBC Shakespearean productions and streamed them more than 130 times to students and faculty. Ambrose Video, like many film distribution companies, provides by license, which is assented to upon purchase of its DVD products, that digitization and streaming of DVD content is prohibited.5 Under the terms of use, a separate license for streaming must be purchased. Ambrose Video and most other film distribution companies offer, as part of their services, streaming video on‐demand from their own servers or by license from an institution’s own servers. AIME contended in its 9    complaint that the actions of UCLA not only violated the license (hence, a breach of contract) but also, by digitizing and streaming Ambrose’s DVDs, it unfairly preempted this emerging market for streaming video services and, as a result, great harm will be sustained by the educational video business. UCLA’s stance was that its actions fell within the exemptions of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. First, UCLA claimed that the streaming of full‐length DVD content constituted a public display under § 110(1). Second, the university claimed that the TEACH Act exemption at § 110(2) applied. Finally, UCLA resorted, as a fallback position, to the fair use exemption at § 107. In its complaint, AIME addressed each of these assertions of exemption. AIME contended that the streaming of content was not a public display because the attendant requirement of “face to face” teaching was not present. Rather, students and faculty could access the streamed content on‐demand, at any time and at any place, and not necessarily simultaneously. The TEACH Act exemption did not apply, according to AIME, because the Ambrose Video DVDs are separately marketed as available for mediated instructional activities through its on‐demand streaming service. The TEACH Act expressly excludes from its exemptions those works explicitly produced and sold for distance learning. The TEACH Act also limits its application to performances of “reasonable and limited” portions of works that are neither nondramatic literary nor musical works (Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)). The phrase “limited and reasonable” is a difficult objective standard to apply, and there is little guidance in the legislative history for interpreting what quantity of a fictional or dramatic work would qualify as “limited and reasonable.” The legislative history suggests that determining what amount is permissible should take into account the nature of the market for that type of work and the 10    instructional purposes of the performance (S.Rept. 107‐31, 107th Cong., 1st Sess. 7‐8 (2001)). Rarely would the performance of an entire film constitute a “reasonable and limited” demonstration unless it could be demonstrated that the film’s entire viewing was exceedingly relevant toward achieving an educational goal (Nimmer and Nimmer 2006). In this case, entire DVDs were streamed. Finally, the result of a balancing of the four factors of fair use likely would not extend protection to the actions of UCLA, argued AIME, because the quantity of the films streamed and the purported harm to the market for streamed educational videos weighed against fair use (Compl., Association for Information Media and Equipment et al v. Regents of the University of California et al. at 20). In October 2011 the trial court granted UCLA’s motion to dismiss (Or. on Mot. to Dismiss, Association for Information Media and Equipment et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al., C.D. Cal. Oct. 3, 2011).6 The court held that AIME was not a holder of the copyrights at issue and thus lacked standing to bring the action. Additionally, the court determined that the UCLA Board of Regents and other university officials were immune, under the 11th Amendment, from suit in their official capacities. The remainder of the ruling on the motion to dismiss concerned more substantive issues; although by no means was there any legally determinative interpretation of fair use or other elements of copyright law. The trial court held, although without much discussion or justification in the existing body of law, that the copying of the DVD onto the UCLA server for streaming was that kind of “incidental copying” permitted by fair use. That is, in order to make use of its license to publicly perform the film, UCLA had to place the content onto its network. As stated previously, ordinarily the streaming of a film is treated as a separate license from the one to publicly perform a film. In fact, some public performance licenses (whether it be a 11    separate document included with the DVD purchase or a click through on the online shopping cart when purchasing a DVD) expressly exclude streaming for remote access or distance learning. Further, if the viewing of the streamed copy is done by a student in the privacy of his or her own residence or dorm room and not by a class in a group setting, is this really a “public” performance? Without clear direction from the trial court, faculty and librarians should be cautious in relying upon the trial court’s interpretation of public performance and instead turn to the language of the terms of use accompanying the DVD or any attendant license agreement. AIME took advantage of the trial court’s grant of a limited opportunity to refile the lawsuit (Sec. Amend. Compl., Association for Information Media and Equipment et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al., C.D. Cal. Oct. 24, 2011).7 The second complaint, interestingly, did little to cure the associational standing and sovereign immunity issues in the first complaint and only asserted minor additional claims regarding violation of the license terms. Pending outcome of this action or any further instruction by way of DMCA rulemaking or other legislative amendment, online educators should be mindful of what is clearly allowed under the law and make use of alternative digital video solutions detailed below. SUGGESTIONS AND SOLUTIONS FOR STREAMING VIDEO When deciding to incorporate streaming video into an online course, there are several factors an instructor should be advised to consider. Many educational publishers produce and market video content specifically for online education. The TEACH Act 12    expressly prohibits use of such specially marketed content in any manner without permission. Further, many film production and distribution companies now include terms of use or licenses with their DVDs. Oftentimes there is language contained therein specifically prohibiting the streaming of any quantity of the film to an online course. Thus, even if streaming of a film would be allowable under the TEACH Act or under fair use, by purchasing a DVD, the purchaser is agreeing to whatever terms of use or license accompany the DVD and those terms must be complied with. According to Halpern et al. (2011) “The results in Vernor, Blizzard, and UMG suggest that license restrictions on transfer and use of software are likely to be more prevalent and powerful. The decision also could affect conduct in the secondary markets for all copyrighted works, not just secondhand software. It’s not difficult to imagine software style licensing terms being attached to other kinds of works. Indeed, many copyright owners who distribute their works electronically already use technological measures to restrict transfer and use by anyone other than the original purchaser, and these measures may be backed by license agreements that also limit transfer and use, and explicitly state that the purchaser does not own the copy of the purchased work. Vernor may bolster such agreements and weaken markets for resale of secondhand copies of all types of copyrighted works, particularly those distributed electronically, whether software, music, movies, or books.” (10) Another common issue that arises for online educators utilizing video content in their courses is the unavailability of a digital version of a work. Many important video 13    works are available solely in VHS or other analog format. Under the TEACH Act, it is permissible to digitize an analog work where no digital copy is available or where the only available digital copy is technologically protected, subject to the DMCA’s prohibitions against circumvention (Copyright Act of 1976, § 112(f)). Under the Copyright Act’s exemption for libraries, unavailability can be shown when no digital format has been produced or when the only digital copy is unreasonably difficult or expensive for the institution to acquire (Copyright Act of 1976, § 108(c)(1)). Presumably, unavailability may be similarly demonstrated under the TEACH Act. Given the limitations expressly under the TEACH Act and potentially under fair use, when considering the quantity of a dramatic work that may be transmitted to an online course, instructors may want to consider one of many low‐cost or free options for streamed video content. Several online retailers offer video streaming for rent or purchase at a very low cost. Librarians can assist faculty in locating what titles are available through which services so that faculty could advise students ahead of time that access to certain services is a course requirement. With a basic Netflix account, which most students likely have, thousands of films, including foreign and documentary works, can be viewed on a variety of electronic devices. The terms of the Netflix user agreement would not permit the sharing of an instructor’s or a student’s own Netflix user account details with other students or showing a streamed film in a physical classroom, and similarly, libraries are advised not to procure an account for use by faculty or students. Amazon and iTunes also offer inexpensive rental of streamed video content that students could avail themselves of in meeting the requirements of a course. 14    There are also many websites providing legal and no‐cost quality streamed video content. For example, the television network PBS offers many of its programs, including Independent Lens, FRONTLINE, and Nature, for free viewing online. The other major television networks also regularly stream recent episodes of their programs on their websites. Additionally, there are several aggregator websites that link to free and legal streaming versions of documentary films. Folkstreams provides a growing collection of documentary films about folk culture in the United States. SnagFilms, a site dedicated to its self‐coined term filmanthropy, offers a broad and growing collection of documentary films, including many that are both well known and award winning. The site’s operators encourage sharing of and commenting on films as a means of promoting social and cultural discourse. A final site of note is hosted by the journal Nature. Nature’s streaming video archive (http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/) provides free access to well‐ made, informative, and educational videos that feature summaries of research as detailed by the scientists who conducted the work. Libraries, if budgets permit, have the opportunity to subscribe to streaming video databases. Alexander Street Press offers numerous, subject‐based collections featuring programs from well‐known cable networks and programs, including the History Channel and A&E Biography, as well as selections from respected film distribution companies such as California Newsreel. The advantages of these databases are the ease of linking to content from within course‐management sites, the ability to create custom clips, and the availability of closed‐captioning and transcripts. Librarians should also check content in traditional article databases. For example, EBSCO, in its Business Source Complete 15    database, provides more than fifty videos of seminars hosted at the Harvard Business School (see http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/business‐source‐complete). If the free streaming sites, commercial services, or library subscription databases fail to provide access to needed content, the final option is licensing. One of the challenges with licensing is determining who the licensor is. If the film in question is produced or distributed by a major Hollywood studio, Swank Films’ Digital Campus Service (2011) is the primary resource for licensing and streaming. For other films, there are several major distributors of documentary film, including Films for the Humanities, New Day Films, California Newsreel, and Bullfrog Films. Smaller film distribution companies may also offer streaming licenses. The options available differ from one company to the next. Licensing is typically for a fixed period of time, such as a single semester or a period of years. Licensing fees may be dependent upon the size of the campus enrollment or the number of students enrolled in the course that will be viewing the streamed film. Access to the streamed film also differs. Some companies host the streamed content and provide the institution with an IP authenticated portal. Other companies require that the institution own the physical DVD and merely grant the institution the right to make a digital copy and stream it from its own server. The organization National Media Market hosts an annual conference for media distributors and librarians. National Media Market (2011) also maintains an excellent chart detailing for almost every film distributor the digital rights that are available, including availability of free previews, duration of license, and content delivery options. CONCLUSION 16    The confusion created by the application of the current Copyright Act and the DMCA and TEACH Act amendments to distance education as well as the uncertain legal liability for educational institutions digitizing and streaming films have stymied online educators and the librarians providing support. While the current legal framework offers grounds for showing small portions of films digitally, online educators are disadvantaged in not being able to make use of full‐length films the same as their physical classroom counterparts. Until there is judicial or legislative clarification regarding the digitization and streaming of films, librarians should counsel faculty to instruct their students to avail themselves of the various free, low‐cost, or subscription‐based services or investigate the possibility of licensing streaming content. NOTES 1 See also The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998: U.S. Copyright Office Summary, December 1998 (http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf) for an explanation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its amendments to the Copyright Act. 2 See also Statement of the Librarian of Congress Relating to Section 1201 Rulemaking, November 22, 2006 (http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/2006_statement.html). 3 In the response to the call for comment, Jonathan Band, counsel for the Library Copyright Alliance, compiled a number of excellent real‐word examples from teaching faculty and academic librarians utilizing digital film clips. 17    4 Compl., Association for Information Media and Equipment et al v. Regents of the University of California et al., http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district‐ courts/california/cacdce/2:2010cv09378/489296/1/ (C.D. Cal Dec. 7, 2010). 5 Id. at 4‐5, 11. 6 See http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district‐ courts/california/cacdce/2:2010cv09378/489296/34/ 7 See http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district‐ courts/california/cacdce/2:2010cv09378/489296/38/ REFERENCES 37 C.F.R. C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(1). 76 Fed. Reg. 60398 Sept. 29, 2011. A.V. v. iParadigms, LLC, 562 F.3d 630 4th Cir. 2009. Allner, I. 2005. Copyright and the delivery of library services to distance learners. Internet Reference Services Quarterly 9 (3): 179–192. Band, J. 2011. Exemption to the prohibition of circumvention of copyright protection for access control technologies. Communication to Library of Congress Copyright Office, November 29. Available online at http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc lca_1201comments_29nov11.pdf Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 448 F.3d 605 2nd Cir. 2006. Campbell v. Acuff‐Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 1994. 18    Campbell v. Acuff‐Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569, 591. Carter, H. 2008. Why the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act matters to librarians. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve 18 (1): 49–56. Compl., Association for Information Media and Equipment et al v. Regents of the University of California et al. at 20. Copyright Act of 1976, § 107. Copyright Act of 1976, § 108(c)(1). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(1). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(A), (B). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(A). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(D). Copyright Act of 1976, § 110(2)(D)(ii). Copyright Act of 1976, § 112(f). Copyright Act of 1976, § 1201. Copyright Act of 1976, §1201(a)(1)(C). Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. 2010. Crews, K. D. 2010. Copyright law and distance education: Overview of the TEACH Act. New York: Columbia University. Available online at http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/files/2010/08/teach‐act‐summary‐by‐ kenneth‐crews.pdf 19    Dames, K. M. 2005. Copyright clearances: Navigating the TEACH Act. Online 29 (2): 25–29. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc., 109 F.3d 1394 9th Cir. 1997. Halpern, M. et al. 2011. Vernor v. Autodesk: Software and the first sale doctrine under copyright law. Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal 23 (3): 7–10. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539 1985. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 557. Heymann, L. 2008. Everything is transformative: Fair use and reader response. Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 31 (Summer): 445. Lipinski, T. 2003. The climate of distance education in the 21st century: Understanding and surviving the changes brought by the TEACH (Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization) Act of 2002. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 29 (6): 362–74. National Media Market. 2011. Digital rights available from National Media Market exhibitors. Available online at http://www.nmm.net/storage/resources/DigitalRightsMaster.pdf Nimmer, M., and D. Nimmer. 2006. Nimmer on copyright, § 8.15[C][2][a]. Or. on Mot. to Dismiss, Association for Information Media and Equipment et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al., C.D. Cal. Oct. 3, 2011. Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, 508 F.3d 1146 9th Cir. 2007. See also American Geophysical Union v. Texaco Inc., 60 F.3d 913, 918 2d Cir. 1995. Pressman, R. 2008. Fair use: Law, ethics and librarians. Journal of Library Administration 47 (3): 89–110. Pub. L. No. 105‐304, 112 Stat. 2860 Oct. 28, 1998. 20    Religious Tech. Ctr. v. Netcom On‐Line Communications Servs., Inc., 923 F. Supp. 1231, 1244 N.D. Cal. 1995. S.Rept. 107‐31, 107th Cong., 1st Sess. 7‐8 (2001). Schroeder, R., and J. Williamsen. 2011. Streaming video: The collaborative convergence of technical services, collection development, and information technology in the academic library. Collection Management 36 (2): 89–106. Sec. Amend. Compl., Association for Information Media and Equipment et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al., C.D. Cal. Oct. 24, 2011. Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. 2011. Digital campus – Films for academic support. Available online at http://www.swank.com/digitalCampus/index.html United States Library of Congress, Copyright Office. 2010. Statement of the Librarian of Congress Relating to Section 1201 Rulemaking, July 26. Available online at http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian‐of‐Congress‐1201‐ Statement.html 
work_u6fbn7afsvahpcgzlmdqkagcou	----	A community of inquiry-based framework for civic education at Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdie20 Download by: [Made Yudhi Setiani] Date: 12 May 2016, At: 19:08 Distance Education ISSN: 0158-7919 (Print) 1475-0198 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 A community of inquiry-based framework for civic education at Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia Made Yudhi Setiani & Allan M. MacKinnon To cite this article: Made Yudhi Setiani & Allan M. MacKinnon (2015) A community of inquiry- based framework for civic education at Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia, Distance Education, 36:3, 351-363, DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 Published online: 07 Oct 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 152 View related articles View Crossmark data http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdie20 http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdie20 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cdie20&page=instructions http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=cdie20&page=instructions http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2015-10-07 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2015-10-07 A community of inquiry-based framework for civic education at Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia Made Yudhi Setiania and Allan M. MacKinnonb* aGovernment Science Study Program, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Terbuka, Tangerang Selatan, Banten, Indonesia; bFaculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada (Received 25 January 2015; final version received 6 August 2015) This study focused on the civic education course at Universitas Terbuka (UT). Its purpose was to design a new approach for the online tutorial for the course by analyzing the literature related to online and distance education and investi- gating participant feedback on the current offering of the course and tutorial, which is a compulsory course in all programs at UT. The study draws from the community of inquiry framework, which promotes a social constructivist approach as well as teaching about democracy by example. This model is intended to create meaningful learning experiences for students in a reformulated civic education course, in which they would learn to think critically through interacting with classmates, experiencing collaborative learning, and supporting fellow students in learning activities and processes. In this model, learning is seen as occurring within the community through the interaction of social pres- ence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence where, students are able to develop civic competences, namely civic knowledge, civic skills, and civic dis- positions, as well as experience a democratic interaction that forms the core of civic interactions in a democratic society. Keywords: civic competence; civic education; community of inquiry; democracy; online learning; social constructivism Introduction Civic education is a compulsory course from primary to post-secondary schools in Indonesia. Civic education courses have been taught in all levels of schooling in Indonesia for decades. However, there have been indications from students that civic education courses are uninteresting and that students have not really been engaged with these courses (Zuriah, 2011). This could be caused by the teachers’ approach in delivering the course, which usually draws heavily from a transmission model, or what Freire (2000) referred to as a “banking method.” In this method, students only receive and store the information from the teachers. They might not have opportuni- ties for, or are afraid to ask for, a discussion with teachers. Thus, students lack motivation to learn. *Corresponding author. Email: amackinn@sfu.ca An earlier version of this article was presented at the 28th Annual Conference of Asian Association of Open Universities, Hong Kong, SAR, China, 28–31 October 2014. © 2015 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. Distance Education, 2015 Vol. 36, No. 3, 351–363, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 mailto:amackinn@sfu.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.1081740 The goals of civic education are to create citizens with civic competences, namely civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Teaching civic education requires specific teaching strategies and perspectives on learning. Print and Smith (2000) reported that considerable research demonstrates that traditional expository strategies are frequently ineffective in teaching civic education (e.g., Dynneson, 1992; Patrick & Hoge, 1991; Sears, 1994) and argued that in order to achieve a democratic, civil society, teachers require an array of pedagogical strategies that address civic education in a constructive manner. This study examined the civic education course at Indonesia Open University or Universitas Terbuka (UT). UT is a state university and the only higher education institution in Indonesia that teaches almost entirely using a distance education for- mat, with printed materials as the primary learning resources. In addition to printed learning materials, UT also provides learning supports in the form of tutorials, either face-to-face or online. The online civic education tutorial at UT primarily emphasizes civic knowledge. We believed that the pedagogical approach of the online civic education tutorial needed to be refined in order to support the development of civic skills and civic dispositions. This study set out to assess the current tutorial and review the research literature to inform the development of a new online civic education tutorial for the course. The current practice of the existing online civic education tutorial at UT was analyzed based on interviews with students, tutors, and administrators who were involved in the tutorial. The proposed redesign of the course draws from the community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) and social constructivism, to offer a model of teaching about democracy that would also address and develop civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The idea, as it has unfolded in our review of the literature regarding best practices, is to create a virtual world in the online environment that represents the students’ development of civic knowledge, civic identity, voice, and agency. Therefore, the tutorial is to mirror the interaction between citizens comprising societies in the democratic world, such as learning how to interact with fellow citizens with tolerance and respect. With this model as a pedagogical approach in the civic education course, UT students would, in principle, have a meaningful educational experience of democratic engagement. The nature and role of civic education in Indonesia Indonesia is a fairly young democratic country with diverse cultures, ethnicities, races, and religions that represent a plurality of ways of life, views, opinions, and practices. With these differences, social conflict will easily occur if there is a lack of tolerance and respect in community relationships. People in Indonesia must be able to accept the differences among themselves to maintain a harmonious society. Toler- ance, respect, and willingness to learn from each other are the values on which democratic nations thrive. These are the values that schools must teach and practice (Gerzon, 1997), and this provides both the practical context and a compelling rationale for reforming the civic education course at UT. There are two common perceptions of democracy that are mutually interdepen- dent: one is democracy as a form of government; the other is democracy as a phi- losophy for and the basis of a way of living. Print, Ornstrom, and Skovgaard Nielsen (2002) stated that democracy as a form of government is characterized by free and fair elections, division and separation of powers, the rule of law, human 352 M.Y. Setiani and A.M. MacKinnon D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 rights, freedom of speech, and so on. Meanwhile, democracy as a way of living is concerned with willingness to compromise, show tolerance, a willingness to listen to and be influenced by arguments, maintaining a civil society, acceptance of other atti- tudes and opinions, trust, and so forth. Essentially, this perspective is based upon those values that allow a democracy to function effectively and engage citizens. Those two perceptions support each other. Without a legal and institutional framework a democratic lifestyle cannot effectively exist, and the converse is also true. For an effective education for democratic citizenship, the two perceptions are considered necessary and important. Successful democracies are mostly based on the values of democratic lifestyle, and democratic teaching tries to develop those values while, in the process, modeling democratic ideals and ways of being (Print et al., 2002). Educational settings like schools offer a natural environment for learning about democracy. In such educational settings learners should be respected for their abili- ties and given opportunities to develop their potential, requiring an open atmosphere of trust and mutual respect in teaching and learning processes. Teaching about democracy entails sharing power in the classroom (Mattern, 1997), offering students real choices about course content and processes. According to Mattern (1997), democratic education is necessary because it better enables the development of democratic skills and dispositions. If students engage routinely in educational prac- tices that allow them to be passive, they internalize these traits and accept them as normal. Alternatively, teaching critical intelligence, creative problem-solving skills, and adopting a critical stance toward social norms requires educational practices that develop these traits in the classroom. Democratic theory might be more readily learned and understood by practicing democracy within a program of studies (Hahn, 1998; Soder, 1996). The goal of civic education is for every citizen to be a good citizen, a citizen who has intelligence—intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual—has a sense of pride and responsibility, and is able to participate in the life of society and country, in order to grow a sense of nationality and patriotism (Wahab & Sapriya, 2011). Educating people to be good citizens who have good character and who are responsible, active, and dedicated to humanity, their country, and their fellow human beings is one of the fundamental goals of a nation. The development and progress of a nation depends on the quality of its citizens. To fulfill this civic responsibility, many countries have civic education programs to educate their young as well as adult citizens. Cogan (1998) described civic education as “the contribution of education to the development of those characteristics of being a citizen” (p. 13). From country to country, the practice of civic education varies, with most countries not treating it as a separate school subject. Civic education mostly has been locally contextualized and taught as an element of subjects such as geography, history, social studies, and moral and religious values (Kalidjernih, 2005). For Indonesia, civic education is treated as a separate school subject, and it is a compulsory subject in all levels of schooling. The character of civic education in Indonesia’s schools is based on the Indonesia State’s ideology and constitution—Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. Pancasila is the foundation of the state of Indonesia, that consist of five principles, namely, belief in the one true God, just and civilized humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy guided by the wisdom of representative deliberation, and social justice Distance Education 353 D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 for all Indonesians. The civic education curriculum at the university level is oriented toward democracy, human rights, rule of law, and civil society. This curriculum was designed to improve students’ understanding of and commitment to these issues and as such, improve the quality of their participation in Indonesia’s democracy and enhance their civic knowledge, skills and disposition (Jackson & Bahrissalim, 2007). Moreover, the basic competencies of civic education at the university level are for students to become professionals (in all fields) who have a sense of nation- hood and love of the country; who are democratic and civilized; who become citi- zens who have a sense of disciplined agency and who actively participate in building a peaceful life based on the value system of Pancasila (see Mikhael, Sihotang, Sutrisno, Soegito, & Heru, 2011). Online civic education at Universitas Terbuka At UT, the civic education course is a core course required for all students from all faculties. In addition to using the printed material as the primary learning resource, the civic education course is supported by an online tutorial to assist students in developing a deeper understanding of the course materials. The number of students who register for the course is usually large, about 3000 students, even though they are divided into several online tutorial classes, each consisting of about 200 stu- dents. The current online tutorial uses a Moodle platform as its learning manage- ment system (LMS) and runs for 8 weeks. The tutorial includes initiations, dis- cussions, and assignments. Initiations provide a course overview and the required learning materials for the modules. Discussion topics provide students with activities to master the content of the course. Meanwhile, assignments are provided to evaluate students’ mastery of the material at weeks 3, 5 and 7 (Andriani, 2013). The online civic education course is ideal for developing the democratic ide- als of tolerance and respect as behaviors that can be learned, practiced, and expected of participants in the discussion forums. Developing a respectful sense of community within the online civic education course would require tutors to model good civic dispositions and students to become aware that, through prac- tice, they are learning to model good civic dispositions themselves, through their interactions with one another. Yet, there are many challenges that would need to be taken into consideration to bring this model to life at UT. In our research, we are seeking to develop an ideal notion of what we would like to see in the online civic education, adult learners, and online pedagogies, together with an appropriate pedagogical approach. Research methodology This study was largely based on the review of the literature, supported by an analy- sis of primary data collected from interviews with seven UT students who have taken the online civic education tutorial, and six tutors of the civic education course. Students were interviewed in focus groups, and the tutors were interviewed in indi- vidual interviews. The interviews with students and tutors were designed to gather information about their experiences and opinions on the existing practice of the online civic education tutorial at UT. The data gathered from the interviews serve to 354 M.Y. Setiani and A.M. MacKinnon D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 complement the analysis of the literature review and illustrate certain parts of the arguments for using the community of inquiry framework in the design of the online civic education tutorial at UT. Interviews with students, tutors and administrators revealed that, while participants understood the purpose of civic education and expressed no disagreement with the idea of having a compulsory course from primary to post-secondary education, many felt that the course could be improved (Setiani, 2014). Students reported being bored with the expository style of the course, its repetitive content and out-of-date case studies that had little if any relevance to their daily lives: [Civic education] should change the [teaching] method. Do not teach it like in high school, only memorizing laws. I think the lecturers and module developers should be more up to date on current affairs so that the course is not boring. [If] it is just like in junior or senior high school, just theory, then what is it for? (Personal conversation with student#1) In some cases, participants felt the civic education course lacked meaning and depth due to a heavy reliance on factual information in order to bring about a form of indoctrination in nationalistic ideologies and policies. For the existing online tutorial activities, students found the tutorial was uninter- esting because the discussions were monotonous (Setiani, 2014). Students said that there was a lack of interaction in the discussions among students, and a lack of attention and response to the discussions from the tutors: To be honest I was reluctant in joining the online civic education tutorial, because it was monotonous. It was just an individual discussion. (Personal conversation with stu- dent#2) In my experience, the discussion was not immediately responded to [by the tutor]. I asked a question and it was not answered for more than a week, so it was pointless [to ask questions again]. (Personal conversation with student#3) As mentioned earlier, civic education pedagogy is supposed to emphasize knowl- edge, skills and dispositions, and it is hoped that these aspects also have been cov- ered in the civic education course at UT. However, it seemed that this ideal has not been fully realized yet. Some tutors admitted that most of the civic education mod- ules at UT were only focused on obtaining civic knowledge. It was not easy for tutors to detect and measure civic skills and attitudes in a distance education setting. What could be assessed more readily was students’ knowledge of content and skills required as well as attitudes: So far the demand from civic education has advanced up to the stage of action. [How- ever] we are only able to assess students on their knowledge of the content and skills required as well as their dispositions. (Personal conversation with tutor#4) The civic education course was compulsory for all UT students. Therefore, there was a large number of students who participated in the tutorial. For this reason, tutors had concerns about time management with a large number of students in one class (Setiani, 2014): Our strategy was that we had to check [the online tutorial’s website] every day. It was indeed overwhelming. The challenge was how we could manage so it could be effi- cient and students did not feel neglected. (Personal conversation with tutor#2) Distance Education 355 D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 The community of inquiry framework Based on these findings and our review of the literature, a community of inquiry is proposed as providing a suitable framework for a new revised online civic education course at UT. The community of inquiry framework proposed for the civic education course resonates with a social constructivist view where learning is seen to occur through social, cognitive, and teaching presence. Social presence refers to “the ability of participants to identify with the group or course of study, communicate purposefully in a trusting environment and develop personal and affective relationships progressively by way of projecting their individ- ual personality” (Garrison, 2011, p. 34). Social presence affords the academic setting for open communication, a sense of belonging to the group and its academic goals. It also supports an environment for learners to express themselves freely and openly, which contributes directly to group cohesion. Cognitive presence is “the extent to which learners are able to construct and con- firm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry” (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001, pp. 10–11). This comprises four phases of critical inquiry, namely the triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution. The triggering event is the initiation phase of critical inquiry. In this phase, an issue, dilemma, or problem that emerges from the experience is identified or recognized. The second phase is exploration. This phase is characterized by brain- storming, questioning and exchanging information. The third phase is integration. This phase is characterized by constructing meaning from the ideas generated in the exploratory phase. And the fourth phase is a resolution of the dilemma or problem by means of direct action. Teaching presence refers to “the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes” (Garrison et al., 2001, p. 5). As course designers, it is essential for teachers to plan for the structure, process of interaction, and evalua- tion. Facilitating discourse among students and tutors is critical to "maintaining interest, motivation and engagement of students in effective learning" (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001, p. 7). As facilitators in online learning, teachers encourage participation of students by modeling, commenting on posts, identifying areas of agreement and disagreement, keeping the discourse focused on learning outcomes, and trying to draw in less active students. A community of inquiry-based framework Civic education should comprise the development of civic dispositions, along with civic knowledge and skills. Civic dispositions include private and public traits of character that are possessed by citizens in a democratic society. These traits include respect for other individuals, willingness to listen, negotiate, and compromise, to develop tolerance, civility and critical mindedness (Branson, 1998). These disposi- tions can also be introduced and practiced in the online environment of the civic education course. First, the tutors play a valuable role in modeling civic dispositions, guiding students in developing civic virtues and dispositions. Steutel and Spiecker (2004, p. 536) asserted that modeling is understood as a kind of Aristotelian habituation, which is learning by doing virtuous things frequently and consistently under the guidance or authority of a tutor. Civic skills emphasize civility through 356 M.Y. Setiani and A.M. MacKinnon D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 collaborative, reflective, and respectful engagement leading to the development of tolerance and understanding of diverse perspectives. Tolerance is defined by Moore and Walker (2011) as: [An] acceptance of and respect for people with different values, beliefs and cultural backgrounds than one’s own accompanied by a willingness to allow others to maintain and express their values, beliefs and culture. A person practicing tolerance will show empathy for others and a diminished response to their differences. (p. 51) Tolerance requires respect and recognition (Jackson & Bahrissalim, 2007). Respect refers to being patient with differences, appreciating differences, and appreciating being different (Raihani, 2011). In education, Peters (1966) described the meaning of respect as the “awareness one has that each man [sic] has his own aspirations, his own viewpoint on the world; that each man takes pride in his achievements, however idiosyncratic they may be” (p. 34). This would imply that students are taught to listen to what others have to say, to accept personal differences, to be considerate and not to ignore others’ needs (Sanderse, 2013). Tolerance is an important virtue in a multicultural society (Comte-Sponville, 2001; Willems, Denessen, Hermans, & Vermeer, 2012). The process of modeling civic dispositions in the online civic education course begins with tutors model- ing tolerance and respect for students as they facilitate the discussion activities. They greet the students, express appreciation for their ideas, and show respect for their opinions, whether or not they agree with them. If they disagree and want to challenge students on their ideas and practice, they do so in a respectful manner, being mindfully aware of their own emotional reactions. Tutors who model respect will always appreciate each individual student. The students can also show their respect of their fellow students by using polite language when responding to other students’ comments, referring to names when responding, acknowledging other students’ ideas, expressing appreciation, while being critically respectful. In the online civic education tutorial students will have different backgrounds, social and economic status, and represent differ- ent cultures and religions. Therefore, when they collaborate and engage in discus- sion, it is essential that they have tolerance for each other, especially if they have different opinions or points of view about the topics being discussed. The students may have different opinions, and they may be passionate about those opinions, but they may also need to find compromise and solutions without conflict. To produce that kind of environment the tutors and the students would need to have some kind of assurance before the tutorial begins, an understand- ing that they will contribute to creating a class environment that enables everyone to express their voice openly and safely. Such interaction is expected in a democratic society. There will likely be times when disagreement and emotions are strongly held. We should learn to recognize these as opportunities for growth in civic knowl- edge, skills, and dispositions rather than as disruptions to the democratic/civic processes. So rather than trying to squelch or suppress these emotions and occurrences, tutors would be encouraged and trained to work with students in negotiating and mediating understandings that would develop the civic climate in the tutorial. These are the foundations upon which our proposed new model for civic education at UT is based, the critical attributes of which are further explored in the remainder of this paper. Distance Education 357 D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 Social presence Students in a distance learning program may experience isolation and alienation from the institution because of their physical separation from instructors and other students (Garrison et al., 2001; Morgan & Tam, 1999; Rovai, 2007). Development of feelings of social presence can assist, reduce or eliminate these outcomes (Rovai, 2007). Research evidence suggested that social presence among members of a learn- ing community increased discourse, facilitated critical thinking carried on by the community of learners, strengthened a sense of community, promoted learner satis- faction, facilitated collaborative learning, and contributed to the success of the learning experience (Garrison & Anderson, 2003; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997). In regard to creating a community within the class and implementing the model, we suggest that it is necessary for students in the online civic education tutorial to be divided into several groups per class. Each group should consist of 10 to 15 stu- dents; thus, each class would have about 20 to 30 groups. Dividing students into smaller groups in online discussions is important for supporting critical and reflec- tive thinking skills. Research findings showed that there is a significant positive correlation between group size and the frequency of “higher level knowledge occur- rences” (Hew & Cheung, 2012). This research result suggests that groups of about 10 students is an optimum size for discussion groups that achieve higher levels of discourse and deeper level learning (Hew & Cheung, 2012). Nonnecke and Preece (2000) also suggested that larger group size may diminish the need for any given group member to contribute and could invoke unnecessary demands on the students (Schellens & Valcke, 2006) as they would need to deal with large quantities of postings. The syllabus for the tutorial should be prepared in a way that it encourages the establishment of social presence in the first week of the online tutorial activities. Tutors should welcome students to the tutorial and post an introductory message that includes a personalized mini-biography-introduction, a plan of the tutorial activities during the 8-week period, information about the learning outcomes of the course, and encouragement for the students to collaborate in the discussion activities. Rovai (2007) also suggested instructors need to access the discussion forums every day, not only to keep up with the conversations, but to indicate to participants that their postings are being read and to stimulate in-depth reflective discussions and hold students responsible for their thinking. Cognitive presence In the discussion forums of the online civic education tutorial, the students are expected to have active discussions in which they can collaboratively construct understanding based on their experiences and their background. This collaborative construction of knowledge applies to the development of civic knowledge, civic skills, and civic dispositions. In the sections that follow, the underlying assumption is that the tutorial and its activities are based on this comprehensive, constructivist approach in which knowledge, skills, and dispositions are developed through curricular and pedagogical approaches that allow for such development. The activities in the online civic education course would begin with initiations. Usually, initiations in the online civic education tutorial at UT consist of the reading materials. The materials could be taken from the summaries of the modules of the 358 M.Y. Setiani and A.M. MacKinnon D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 civic education course and from other sources, such as journals, books or the Internet. The reading materials in the online civic education tutorial basically pro- vide the students additional sources to assist them with comprehending the materials of the course. Students can upload reading materials and videos as well, so the tutor can invite students to share materials that relate to topics of the week. The discussion forum in the civic education tutorial should be a place where stu- dents have interactions with their tutor and fellow students. In this forum, students are expected to have active, meaningful discussions with other students. Some stu- dents commented in the interview that the case studies provided in the tutorial were out of date; thus, they were not interested in being involved in the discussions. To have an active discussion, tutors need to provide interesting topics that invite the students’ own opinions and justifications. Interesting cases for discussion are likely to connect to current events in society, or which reflect real-life problems the students are likely to have some experience or connection with (Chan, 2010). Most of the UT students are working adults. According to the work of Knowles, Holton, and Swanson (2011), adult learners are more interested in learning when the learning materials are relevant to their experiences and their lives. Furthermore, adult learners prefer cases that are presented in realistic and contemporary life contexts (Knowles et al., 2011). Developing contemporary case studies in the online civic education tutorial would not only engage students, but help them become aware of current situations and conditions in the nation, drawing their attention more effectively in the tutorial and inviting their involvement in the discussion forums. As students share their thoughts and experiences with others in the forum, they also develop critical think- ing by discussing the cases from their own perspectives and offering sometimes alternative solutions to the problems. But Indonesian students are not used to think- ing critically about civic issues, nor are they familiar with courses that ask them to do anything but memorize information and practice skills, least of all speak against the current organization, as was evident in our investigation of students and tutors’ attitudes and understandings about the current online experience in the course. Cognitive presence is “the extent to which learners are able to construct and con- firm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry” (Garrison et al., 2001, pp. 10–11). This model consists of four phases of practical inquiry: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution. A triggering event in an online discussion is a well-thought-out topic or case that would ensure full engagement from the students and tutor (Garrison, 2011). The case study or topic of the discussion should speak to an issue or concept being stud- ied in that week. The tutors are responsible for initiating this phase; however, the students could also provide the issues and problems as they relate to their experi- ences. Direct personal experience is crucial to empowerment (Herman, 1996). According to Garrison (2011), students should be involved in assessing the state of knowledge, generating unintended but constructive ideas and taking active roles in the learning experiences. Tutors should share control with students over the discus- sion topics so that students can “own their learning” and actively participate in the discussions. It is important for tutors and students in the online tutorial to incorpo- rate their own discussion questions and avoid questions that can be answered sim- plistically in one or two words, or have one right answer as a way of stimulating critical thinking (Hosler & Arend, 2013). Distance Education 359 D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 The triggering event needs to invite curiosity, elicit interest and encourage different perspectives. Good questions derived from relevant content can trigger thoughtful investigations. For instance, the questions could begin with queries such as, “Why do you think such and such is?” or “What are the consequences?” (Hosler & Arend, 2013). Bender (2003) suggested that instructors should create questions that support the students in making comparisons, highlighting contrasts, or making predications, such as, “What do you think will happen if …?” (p. 153). After the topic or case study is established each week, the next step is explo- ration. This involves investigating the issue or problem and searching for relevant information and possible explanations (Garrison, 2011). This activity would be done collaboratively in each tutorial group, with students searching information, sharing and exploring ideas, soliciting relevant perspectives or experiences and eliciting comments from various sources. The integration phase involves constructing a meaningful solution or exploration (Garrison, 2011) in which students integrate information and ideas, offer agreement or disagreement, build on each other’s ideas, and provide a rationale and justification for a solution. Students are thus engaged in a critical discourse that will shape their understanding (Garrison, 2011). The fourth phase is the resolution of the problem. The culture and dialogue of the classroom should encourage students not only to examine problems from differ- ent perspectives, but to relate questions to their own values and sensibilities of social justice, equality, respect and consideration, to be open to and considerate of other people, and to be able to express a different opinion if needed. Students should be able to practice communicating and working cooperatively with other students in discussion forums in a critical fashion. Teaching presence Garrison (2011) reported that it was not easy to design and organize an online learn- ing course of studies, but more demanding than face-to-face teaching. Teachers may provide links to sites that may provide additional material that is relevant to the sub- ject. The role of teaching also can be assumed by students vis-à-vis their engage- ment in online discussions, which can also be seen as the sharing of power among students and tutors. Giving students the opportunity to be a peer facilitator would help the tutors better manage the discussions. Students in each group of the online tutorial could be asked to take turns as peer moderators at weekly discussions. Other students in the group could also have an opportunity to take an active role in the learning process and voice their opinions in the discussions. With this arrangement, teachers and learners have important, complementary responsibilities; they both are part of the process of learning (Garrison, 2011). Conclusion We have argued that civic education should include not only civic knowledge, but also civic skills and civic dispositions, that it is important to provide a comprehen- sive approach to the development of citizenship, and that this can be done, we think, in an online tutorial. The community of inquiry framework and a democratic peda- gogy would be expected to develop civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions in more effective ways. The notion of the model in the civic education course ought to 360 M.Y. Setiani and A.M. MacKinnon D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 allow tutors to model the civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions, while encouraging students to engage in the course. This model for the online tutorial would liberate, empower and help students to find their voice in their learning and civic dispositions. We also argued that such a rekindling of the online tutorial would be especially desirable in the developing of democracy in Indonesia, with its multitudinous and diverse population, and its multiplicity of languages, cultures and religious affilia- tions. Any opportunity for people to learn about the experiences, needs and aspira- tions of others comprising their nation and brotherhood should be welcomed and supported. Moving this agenda forward will involve many challenges, not the least of which is the dominant teacher-centered approach to education prevalent within institutions of learning throughout the Indonesian society and the passivity this promotes among students and tutors alike. This is an important consideration for any design to reform educational practices in Indonesia, just as it would be in any society. One of the considerations for the implementation, and equally challenging to the reformulation of the tutorial generally, will be how to engage the tutors and representative students in putting these ideas into practice, so as to encourage people to engage in the initiative. In our empirical research, we found good reason to redesign the civic education course at UT. In our literature review and analysis we found a promising set of ideas and a model for developing a pedagogy and type of online experience in the civic education tutorial at UT that is consistent with the goals and teachings of the civic education course and imminently beneficial to the nation. The next logical step in our quest is to implement this new and revised model of civic education and evaluate its impacts on learning and teaching outcomes at UT. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Notes on contributors Made Yudhi Setiani is a lecturer in the Government Science Study Program, at Universitas Terbuka. One of her main responsibilities is conducting online tutorial for several courses in her Study Program. Her research interests include political participation, political education, and distance education. Allan M. MacKinnon is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. 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Retrieved from http://jurnal.upi.edu/penelitian-pendidikan Distance Education 363 D ow nl oa de d by [ M ad e Y ud hi S et ia ni ] at 1 9: 08 1 2 M ay 2 01 6 http://www.cis.uoguelph.ca/%7Enonnecke/research/demographics.pdf http://www.cis.uoguelph.ca/%7Enonnecke/research/demographics.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-3435.00102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03026150 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1477878510394806 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2006.10.001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2012.690727 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-1315(06)00021-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00933104.1994.10505714 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00933104.1994.10505714 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-8249.2004.00403.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-8249.2004.00403.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2011.615827 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2011.615827 http://jurnal.upi.edu/penelitian-pendidikan Abstract Introduction The nature and role of civic education in Indonesia Online civic education at Universitas Terbuka Research methodology The community of inquiry framework A community of inquiry-based framework Social presence Cognitive presence Teaching presence Conclusion Disclosure statement Notes on con�trib�u�tors References 
work_u7emrnqzxrejlcss4mfybq7vfu	----	CDIE610293 421..439 Transforming online teaching practice: critical analysis of the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers Evrim Barana*, Ana-Paula Correiab and Ann Thompsonb aDepartment of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; bCurriculum and Instruction, Iowa State University, Ames, USA (Received 6 May 2011; final version received 17 June 2011) Understanding what is lacking in the online teaching literature is critical to help- ing researchers and practitioners develop programs and support mechanisms for online teachers in higher education. This review formulates a critique of the standards- and competency-driven vision of online teaching from the perspective of transformative learning theory, in order to offer an alternative exploration of the professional development of online teachers as adult learners. The results indicate that while research about online teacher roles and competencies guides the development of teacher preparation and training programs, it lacks in terms of addressing the issues of empowerment of online teachers, promoting critical reflection, and integrating technology into pedagogical inquiry. An alternative perspective is suggested that considers teachers as adult learners who continu- ously transform their meaning of structures related to online teaching through a continuous process of critical reflection and action. Keywords: online teaching; transformative learning theory; online teacher roles; competencies Introduction The Internet has become a common medium for interaction, communication, and collaboration within which learners and teachers engage in ‘unique and irreplace- able learning opportunities’ (Burbules & Callister, 2000, p. 277). Increases in the number of online programs and course offerings are changing the role of the teach- ers and the nature of teaching, with more and more faculty and support staff required for online teaching (Bennett & Lockyer, 2004). Teachers, who are at the center of this increasing demand and pressure to teach online, are being challenged to rethink their underlying assumptions about teaching and learning, and the roles they take as educators (Wiesenberg & Stacey, 2008). This growing interest in online education challenges higher education institutions as well to rethink their cultural, academic, organizational, and pedagogical structures in adapting to a new culture of teaching and learning (Howell, Saba, Lindsay, & Williams, 2004). Current approaches to online teaching research The experiences of early adopters have created a discourse around online educa- tion focusing on the definition of online teacher roles and competencies (Bennett *Corresponding author. Email: evrimb@gmail.com Distance EducationAquatic Insects Vol. 32, No. 3, November 2011, 421–439 ISSN 0158-7919 print/ISSN 1475-0198 online � 2011 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2011.610293 http://www.tandfonline.com & Lockyer, 2004; Lee & Tsai, 2010; Major, 2010; Natriello, 2005). The notion that teaching online requires the development of new skills and sets of pedagogies has led researchers to study the roles that online instructors take in online educa- tion environments (see Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001; Berge & Collins, 2000; Goodyear, Salmon, Spector, Steeples, & Tickner, 2001; Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner, & Duffy, 2001; Guasch, Alvarez, & Espasa, 2010; Salmon, 2004). While educators and organizations around the world are becoming more involved in online learning, the growth in faculty involvement and acceptance has been modest, accompanied with limited change in online pedagogies (Natriello, 2005). Given the expanding interest and demand for online learning, coupled with the results of studies showing that higher levels of learning are not easily achieved in online courses, there is an imperative to advance our understanding of how to facilitate effec- tive online learning activities (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006, p. 121). Researchers have identified several reasons for the persistent limited understand- ing in nurturing higher-order thinking in the online classroom. One of the critical reasons is the tendency of carrying traditional educational practices into the online environment (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006). Teachers often rely on traditional pedagogi- cal approaches that they develop in emulation of professors they consider to be effective teachers. Furthermore, these approaches are formed over the years of developing expertise in the face-to-face classrooms, and mostly without teaching preparation (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006). Having little (if any) prior experience in teaching online, teachers tend to transfer traditional approaches to the online class- room, and perpetuate approaches that have been proven to be ineffective in the face-to-face classroom. Teaching online, therefore, creates tensions by ‘introducing a new activity into existing institutions with established roles’ (Natriello, 2005, p. 1890). Studies of online teacher roles and competencies are important as they pro- vide information about how online teachers might be trained and supported, as well as factors that might affect the design of online learning environments. Often the roles and competencies suggested for online teaching have had limited impact on the professional development programs that address teachers’ needs, individual dispositions, external social demands, and capabilities within their unique teaching contexts. Moreover, despite the growth in online learning in higher education, the literature on online education lacks a critical look at the existing research on teachers’ roles and competencies with respect to online teaching. Purpose of the study This review of the literature on online teaching sought to synthesize and critically examine the literature on roles and competencies for online teachers. Various terms are used in the literature on online teaching to describe online teacher roles, for example, online teacher, e-moderator, online tutor, facilitator, or online instructor. In this review, online teacher is defined as a faculty member who teaches online; online teaching is defined as teaching that is conducted mostly online; and face-to-face teaching is defined as teaching that is conducted 422 E. Baran et al. in a physical classroom. Moreover, courses taught completely online are referred to as online courses and those taught face-to-face or in a blended mode involving face-to-face and online methods are called traditional courses (Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006). Methodology This critical analysis of literature on online teacher roles and competencies began as a broad search for research on online teaching. After the identification of key arti- cles and related frameworks, the search was narrowed down to the topics of online teacher roles and competencies. The transformation of the search topic into the search language was an ongoing effort to find the key terms in the field in order to locate the desired literature. The articles included in this review comprise both qualitative and quantitative studies. They were located through a search of online databases, including Educa- tional Resources Information Center (ERIC), Academic Search Elite, and Google Scholar; the tables of contents of key journals, such as British Journal of Educa- tional Technology, Journal of Distance Education, Distance Education, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, The Internet and Higher Education, Computers and Education, Teachers College Record, The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, Quarterly Review of Distance Education and the American Journal of Distance Education; and bibliographies of relevant articles. To locate the review studies, the Review of Educational Research journal was examined, focusing on the reviews of online teaching published since 2000. The Distance Education Hub (DEHub, http://www.dehub.edu.au/) was also used to locate research on online teaching. DEHub serves as an online database of research on distance education and contains research articles and other resources on distance education drawn from the Australian Education Index and a variety of international organizations and pub- lishers. In addition to searching online databases and journals, three other sources were used for the search: printed books, references of the key articles, and articles by key researchers in the field. Due to the insufficient level of consistency or agree- ment on the terminology used in the online teaching literature, the references of the related publications were extensively used. Keywords included online teaching, online teacher roles, online teacher competencies, higher education, and online learning. This critical review covers articles published in the last 20 years, starting with the current research and going back to the 1990s when research on online teaching, teacher effectiveness, and teaching with technology was gaining momentum with the dissemination of online learning in higher education institutions. Empirical research articles and articles on conceptual and theoretical frameworks were included. The review resulted in 11 key articles on online teacher roles and compe- tencies in higher education: Anderson et al. (2001); Aydin (2005); Bawane and Spector (2009); Berge (2009); Coppola, Hiltz, and Rotter (2002); Darabi, Sikorski, and Harvey (2006); Goodyear et al. (2001); Guasch et al. (2010); Salmon (2004); Varvel (2007); and Williams (2003). Because there is limited research that critically analyzes competency- or role-based online teaching, several studies from the teacher education field were included in order to frame the critique in the online teaching context. Distance Education 423 http://www.dehub.edu.au/ Literature analysis and synthesis The literature analysis and synthesis followed three phases. First, the articles were selected for analysis and then reviewed in terms of the purpose, context, methodology, and results. This process focused on identifying, listing, and organizing the concepts and themes used by researchers of each study while relating them to one another (Major, 2010). Themes of context, identified roles and competencies, faculty involvement, methods for identification, meth- ods for testing, and implications for research and practice were identified. Second, in an attempt to synthesize, the themes identified from each single study were compared and contrasted using the constant comparison approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Using this method, competencies suggested within each role were compared with existing roles and competencies in other studies. The categories that emerged from this comparison included pedagogical, facilitator, instructional designer, social, managerial, and technical roles. The third phase of the analysis consisted of formulating a critique of the standards- and competency-driven view of online teaching from the perspective of transformative learning theory. Data interpretation: a theoretical frame The transformative learning theory provided a rich framework with which to ana- lyze the teachers’ learning processes while teaching online. Since being proposed by Mezirow in 1991, transformative learning theory has evolved ‘into a comprehen- sive and complex description of how learners construct, validate, and reformulate the meaning of their experience’ (Cranton, 1994, p. 22). Mezirow (2000) explains transformational learning as follows: Transformational learning is a way of problem solving by defining a problem or by redefining or reframing the problem. We often become critically reflective of our assumptions or those of others and arrive at a transformative insight, but we need to justify our new perspective through discourse. (p. 20) Three constructs were explored in Mezirow’s (1991) theory: centrality of experi- ence, critical reflection, and rational discourse (Taylor, 1998). The learner’s experi- ence, being socially constructed or deconstructed, is central to transformative learning. It is through critical self-reflection that the learner questions ‘the integrity of assumptions and beliefs based on prior experience’ and this act of reflection ‘is most essential for the transforming of our meaning structures – a perspective trans- formation’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 16). Critical reflection is carried out in the medium of rational discourse ‘where experience is reflected upon and assumptions and beliefs are questioned, and where meaning schemes and meaning structures are ultimately transformed’ (Taylor, 1998, pp. 17–18). At the core of transformative learning is the empowerment of the individual (Evans & Nation, 1993). The ‘definition of empowerment involves three major ideas: the notion of choice, of control of one’s life, and of emancipation from ways of thinking which for the particular individual have limited both choice and control’ (p. 91). It is through transformative learning that the learner is empowered by being a ‘mature and autonomous person’ (p. 91). 424 E. Baran et al. Mezirow (1991) identified transformative learning as the very core of adult edu- cation, aiming at helping ‘the individual become a more autonomous thinker by learning to negotiate his or her own values, meanings, and purpose rather than uncritically acting on those of others’ (p. 11). Central to the transformative learning process is ‘helping learners to critically reflect on, appropriately validate, and effectively act on their (and others’) beliefs, interpretations, values, feelings, and ways of thinking’ (Mezirow, 2000, p. 26). With the vast adoption of emerging technologies in everyday life at an increas- ingly participatory and social level, it has become inevitable for teachers to re- examine their beliefs and assumptions towards the new culture of learning and teaching, and related ethical practices. This, without any doubt, leads to constant challenges in teacher beliefs, judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and expecta- tions (Coppola et al., 2002; Lee & Tsai, 2010). Therefore, a transformative learn- ing frame can enable us to view teachers as adult learners who transform the meaning of structures related to teaching online through an ‘ongoing process of critical reflection, discourse, and acting on one’s beliefs’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 19). Yet the literature on online teaching is limited in terms of analyzing how ‘reflective online teacher-practitioners will work from a deep knowledge base (which relates to both their expertise in the discipline per se and their knowledge of what is known about online learning) and make their discoveries public and peer reviewed’ (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006, p. 122). This review therefore offers a unique examination of the research on online teaching, identifying what is lacking and suggesting an alternative frame for promoting online teachers’ transformative learn- ing experiences. The use of transformative learning theory in the context of online teaching is grounded in three fundamental premises: (a) viewing online teachers as active adult learners, (b) recognizing that transformative learning occurs though critical reflec- tion, and (c) considering that transformation happens as teachers conduct pedagogi- cal inquiry with technology. This critical analysis included searching for evidence of the existence or lack of these premises in the literature on online teacher roles and competencies. Current literature on online teacher roles and competencies The literature seems to be in agreement that online teaching is different from face-to-face teaching and that, as such, it requires the development of its own pedagogies (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006; Laat, Lally, Lipponen, & Simons, 2007; Natriello, 2005). While the traditional roles of teachers can be transferred to the online environment, the affordances and limitations of the new learning setting require teachers to adapt to new roles for creating effective and meaningful learn- ing experiences (Coppola et al., 2002; McShane, 2004). Over the years, numerous online teacher roles have been mentioned in the literature using different terms and descriptions (Anderson et al., 2001; Berge & Collins, 2000; Coppola et al., 2002; Goodyear et al., 2001; Graham et al., 2001; Guasch et al., 2010; Salmon, 2004). Researchers have created taxonomies and models specifying the roles that online teachers need to perform while teaching online. Although the studies addressing these roles show variety in context and definition of an online teacher, commonalities can be found in the roles that teachers assume as they teach online. Distance Education 425 Roles of online teachers One of the early models describing the teacher’s role in a virtual environment is the instructor’s roles model, which identified teachers’ functions under four differ- ent categories: pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical (Berge, 1995). The roles were defined within the online discussion context, in which the pedagogical role meant facilitating the learning in discussions; the social role meant encourag- ing and promoting working together; the managerial role meant organizing and designing the logistics of the discussions; and the technical role meant providing a transparent technology environment to the learners (Berge, 2009; Berge & Col- lins, 2000). These roles were suggested at a time when teachers were just mov- ing to online environments, where the main activities were designed around online discussions. However, due to the rise of virtual worlds and other learning environments, Berge (2009) called for a change in the roles that would focus more on ‘informal, collaborative, reflective learning, with user-generated content’ (p. 412). Online learning, by nature, changes the way teaching responsibilities are per- formed. Building on previous research, Anderson et al. (2001) suggested three cate- gories for online teachers’ roles to ensure teaching presence: instructional design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction. Teaching presence is defined as ‘the design, facilitation, and direct instruction of cognitive and social pro- cesses for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worth- while learning outcomes’ (Anderson et al., 2001, p. 5). Research has found that teaching presence is a significant predictor of students’ perceptions of learning, sat- isfaction, and sense of community (Gorsky & Blau, 2009; LaPointe & Gunawardena, 2004; Russo & Benson, 2005). Although teaching presence is con- sidered to be what the teacher does to create a community of inquiry with social and cognitive presence, all participants within the online learning environment can also contribute to teaching presence by sharing the facilitation responsibilities (Baran & Correia, 2009). While the aforementioned researchers looked at the teacher roles performed mainly in online discussion forums, Coppola et al. (2002) focused on the changing pedagogical roles of virtual professors in asynchronous learning environments: cognitive, affective, and managerial. In the cognitive role, teachers engage in dee- per-level cognitive activities related to information storage, thinking, and mental processes. In the affective role, they need to find different tools to express emotions and develop intimate relationships with students. Finally, as part of their managerial role, they structure and plan the course in detail with increasing attention on moni- toring their students. In an effort to define online teaching roles and competencies, a group of researchers and practitioners described the main roles of online teachers: process facilitator, advisor/counselor, assessor, researcher, content facilitator, technologist, designer, and manager/administrator (Goodyear et al., 2001). Adopting these roles and looking at the perceptions of online mentors, Aydin (2005) identified additional roles, such as content expert, instructional designer, and materials producer. More recent research (e.g., Bawane & Spector, 2009) clarified the following online tea- cher roles emerging from the literature: professional, pedagogical, social, evaluator, administrator, technologist, advisor/counselor, and researcher. The results of Bawane and Spector’s study indicated that the pedagogical role was the highestranked role, 426 E. Baran et al. followed by professional, evaluator, social facilitator, technologist, advisor, adminis- trator, and researcher roles. Competencies for online teachers The prioritization of the roles and competencies of online teachers varies in the lit- erature depending upon the context where online teaching takes place. For instance, technology-related competencies (Egan & Akdere, 2005), communication competen- cies (Williams, 2003), and assessment-related competencies (Aydin, 2005) can be considered more important than others depending on the context and culture within the online teaching environments. While teachers may be the sole performers of online teaching roles, the teaching roles are often carried out by a number of actors (Guasch et al., 2010). For instance, the United Kingdom’s Open University framed a collaborative model in distance education in which several individuals perform the roles (Salmon, 2004). E-moderator was one of the critical roles in supporting and encouraging interaction and communication for knowledge and skill development in the interactive and col- laborative online environments (Salmon, 2004). Although Salmon’s e-moderator concept stresses the importance of the facilitation role that online teachers under- take, it is limited in scope with respect to the diverse online teaching contexts where the online teacher takes the main responsibility for developing and maintain- ing an online learning environment and taking on different roles (Bennett & Lock- yer, 2004). Table 1 presents a summary of key research on online teacher roles and compe- tencies, the purpose of each article, and the method used to identify and validate the competencies and roles at different levels. Common roles identified in the literature The online teacher roles identified in the literature comprised pedagogical, facilitator, instructional designer, social, managerial, and technical roles. These roles overlapped in terms of their functions and tasks. Some researchers categorized teaching-related tasks, such as designing and implementing instructional strategies, developing learning resources, and facilitating and sustaining students’ participation and motivation under the pedagogical role on a more general level (Bawane & Spector, 2009). Others separated these tasks and proposed a role for each task, for example, process facilitator for providing prompts and responses to guide students’ learning (Bennett & Lockyer, 2004), instructional designer for designing instruc- tional materials and strategies, and managerial role for carrying out the tasks of course management. Table 2 presents online teacher roles as suggested in the literature. Although the table was adapted from Bawane and Spector’s (2009) study on the prioritization of online instructor roles, additional roles were included from other studies focusing on teachers’ roles in online learning environments (e.g., Anderson et al., 2001; Berge, 2009; Coppola et al., 2002). Instructional design is often considered an important role for online teachers. This role is concerned with planning, organizing, and structuring the course compo- nents (Anderson et al., 2001), designing learning tasks (Goodyear et al., 2001), and designing interactive technologies and teaching strategies/models (Williams, 2003). Distance Education 427 Furthermore, it consists of the tasks of maintaining and organizing learning, and making sure that learning goals are achieved (Guasch et al., 2010). The managerial role comprises carrying out the pedagogical tasks related with course management (Berge, 2009; Coppola et al., 2002). It consists of tasks such as course planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (Coppola et al., 2002). Man- agement also includes teachers carrying out planned actions, managing communica- tion channels, and supervising the virtual learning process (Guasch et al., 2010). This role is also used with the administration role in order to describe the functions of managing the course and establishing rules and regulations, and involves such issues as student registration, recordkeeping, and security (Aydin, 2005; Bawane & Spector, 2009). The social role is one of most emphasized roles and it refers to teachers’ func- tions related to building and improving student-teacher relationships in a virtual Table 1. Summary of the existing literature studies on online teacher roles and competencies. Studies Purpose Method Guasch et al. (2010) Developed teachers’ competencies for virtual environments in higher education Reviewing the literature and teacher training actions Bawane & Spector (2009) Prioritized and identified online instructor roles to develop training and curricula for online teachers Validating the literature and identifying competencies with experts in teacher education Varvel (2007) Developed an online instructor competency list geared to the needs of a particular program Developed an online instructor competency list for a particular program Berge (1995); Berge (2009) Listing the roles and functions of the online instructor in computer conferencing (CC) Conceptual paper revisited in 2009 Darabi et al. (2006) Identified and validated instructor competencies required for teaching at a distance with advanced communication technology. Reviewing the literature and validating with experienced practitioners in academia, industry, and the military Aydin (2005) Identified roles, competencies, and resources for online teaching in Turkey Surveying online mentors in a large open university Salmon (2004) Defined e-moderator competencies Analyzing the content of the reflections conference and focus group interviews, etc. Williams (2003) Identified roles and role-specific competencies Validating the literature and identifying competencies with the experts in teacher education using the Delphi technique Coppola et al. (2002) Captured role changes enacted by online instructors Capturing roles enacted by the online instructors through interviews Anderson et al. (2001) Developing the conceptual framework to understand, measure and improve the function of ‘teaching presence’ within a computer conference environment Investigating computer conferences used for educational purposes Goodyear et al. (2001) Described main roles that online teachers perform Using a panel of distance education experts to determine the roles and competencies 428 E. Baran et al. learning environment (Guasch et al., 2010). Due to the complexity of the many tasks of online teachers at the cognitive and managerial levels, teachers can ‘no longer rely upon sensory and expressive skills to establish and maintain relation- ships with students’ (Major, 2010, p. 2184). Therefore, taking on the affective or social role becomes very important in nurturing social relationships, expressing energy and humor, and establishing an expressive connection with the students (Coppola et al., 2002). The online environment changes the fundamental nature of the interaction between the teacher, student, and content, requiring a re-examination of the roles teachers take in enhancing students’ learning. Because online students are expected to take greater control of their learning process and be more active in stimulating their peers’ learning, facilitation of online learning emerges as an important role in guiding these student-centered approaches. Moreover, as the hierarchy in the online environment is flattened with more distributed power and control (Schrum & Hong, 2002), teachers are expected to adopt more facilitative approaches in creating lear- ner-centered online classrooms (Salmon, 2004; Smith, 2005). While there is still a strong focus on the responsibilities of teachers in online courses, the teacher moves from being at the center of the interaction or the source of information to the ‘guide on the side,’ which implies that teachers design, organize, and schedule the activi- ties and learners assume greater responsibility for their learning by coordinating and regulating their learning activities (Anderson et al., 2001; Berge, 2009). In an online learning environment, teachers are not the sole performers on the online teaching stage. They share the roles and responsibilities with other actors, such as instructional designers, program coordinators, and graphic designers. The roles required for online teaching may be delegated to a number of specialized pro- fessionals and teams, for example, instructional support personnel, instructional designers, teaching assistants, technology experts, media developers, online program Table 2. Roles associated with online teaching (adapted from Bawane & Spector, 2009, p. 389). Studies Roles Guasch et al. (2010) Design/planning, social, instructive, technological, management Bawane & Spector (2009) Professional, pedagogical, social, evaluator, administrator, technologist, advisor/counselor, researcher Berge (1995); Berge (2009) Pedagogical, social, managerial, technical Varvel (2007) Administrative, personal, technological, instructional design, pedagogical, assessment, social roles Aydin (2005) Content expert, process facilitator, instructional designer, advisor/ counselor, technologist, assessor, material producer, administrator Williams (2003) Administrative manager, instructor/facilitator, instructional designer, trainer, leader/change agent, technology expert, graphic designer, media publisher/editor, technician, support staff, librarian, evaluation specialist, site facilitator/proctor Coppola et al. (2002) Cognitive, affective, managerial Anderson et al. (2001) Instructional design, facilitating discourse, direct instruction Goodyear et al. (2001) Process facilitator, advisor/counselor, assessor, researcher, content facilitator, technologist, designer, manager/administrator Distance Education 429 coordinators, and even other faculty (Howell et al., 2004; Miller, 2001; Paulson, 2002). Online teachers often collaborate with other key actors to a much greater extent than their face-to-face counterparts in order to receive support and help dur- ing the planning, design, and delivery of online courses (Bennett & Lockyer, 2004). The literature suggests that the proposed roles and competencies of online teach- ers are useful in curriculum, training, professional development of online teachers (Bawane & Spector, 2009; Williams, 2003), and staff selection for online teaching (Williams, 2003). Emerging issues in online teaching research If a distinct pedagogy of online learning is to emerge, the role of online teachers in the online environment needs to be explored. As shown above, the literature describes a variety of roles and competencies for online teachers. These competen- cies are described as knowledge- or performance-based with the terms competent and exemplary used to emphasize the exhibition of competencies at different levels (Varvel, 2007). Online teachers ‘are required to possess a diverse set of competen- cies and their extent of utilization relies on the context or role they are required to perform and also the kind of resources and support available’ (Bawane & Spector, 2009, p. 387). While the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers recognizes the importance of context in the performance of these functions, it is limited in terms of sharing strategies for transforming teacher practices for online teaching and helping them understand and adapt to the new teaching environment. ‘The adult education literature has recently addressed professional development and teacher education as adult learning’ (King, 2002, p. 286). Moreover, transformative learning has been suggested as a critical basis for faculty development (Cranton, 1994; King, 2002). However, the literature on online teacher roles and competencies is lacking in adequate discussion of online teachers’ transformational learning, particularly in terms of strategies for facilitating their transformation as they move from face-to- face teaching to online teaching. Reviewing the literature on online teacher roles and competencies with these premises, this study identified three dimensions that are lacking in the current approaches and that need further exploration: (a) empowering online teachers, (b) promoting critical reflection, and (c) integrating technology into pedagogical inquiry. The dimensions of online teachers’ transformational learning are shown in Figure 1. Empowering online teachers Many studies on defining online teacher roles and competencies follow a ‘technical view of teaching,’ which ‘tends to focus on the primacy of knowledge and value transmission rather than a broader sense of education’ (Rennert-Ariev, 2008, p. 113). This functionalist type of orientation in competency-based teacher educa- tion approaches has been criticized, with concerns questioning the assertion that the roles are assumed to be taken by the individuals without resistance, rejection, and re-creation (Rennert-Ariev, 2008). Often, these functionalist views ‘downplay the importance of teacher agency in defining and shaping the terms of their experience’ (Rennert-Ariev, 2008, p. 113). Similarly, the literature on online teacher roles and 430 E. Baran et al. competencies has limited mention of the value of the interaction between the per- spectives of individual teachers and the values of the online teacher professional development and support programs. The role of the teacher in the creation of the content and values of such a program is also lacking in the current literature. ‘Transformative learning contributes to empowerment as a process of being one’s own mature and autonomous person’ (Evans & Nation, 1993, p. 91). It is through critical reflection that teachers can be empowered as autonomous and self- directed professionals who constantly engage in a dialogue about solving complex problems, making decisions, reflecting in action, and collaborating with other key actors. Teachers should not be expected to simply accept the competencies and roles suggested by an authority; instead, they must reflect on their roles as they become aware and critical of their own assumptions towards online learning and teaching. The roles and competencies are generally developed by a group of experts identified as knowledgeable about distance education and educational technologies (Bawane & Spector, 2009; Goodyear et al., 2001; Williams, 2003). However, research has been limited in terms of bringing teachers’ voices into this process; thus creating the potential for teachers’ regression into passive roles. Moreover, studies aimed at collecting data from teachers generally used surveys in order to validate and priori- tize already established roles and competencies (e.g., Aydin, 2005). Such studies need to be driven by the intention to focus on teachers not as passive learners and performers of established roles and competencies, but as participants, expressing potentially varying degrees of conformity with and resistance to the roles of online teaching. The notion of emphasizing standards-driven, technical, one-size-fits-all online teaching approaches is insufficient for addressing the complex educational needs of each unique online teaching context. The concept of empowerment is rarely brought to the forefront in the context of online teacher education and professional development. Research needs to explore strategies for facilitating the empowerment of online teachers. Empowerment may enable teachers to teach innovatively and explore ways to promote empowerment of online students. Moreover, since teacher learning is not static, but instead a continu- ous process, ways of empowering teachers as learners during their online teaching experiences need to be examined. Figure 1. The dimensions of online teachers’ transformational learning. Distance Education 431 Promoting critical reflection Transformative learning ‘involves transforming frames of reference through crucial reflection on assumptions, validating contested beliefs through discourse, taking action on one’s reflective insight, and critically assessing it’ (Mezirow, 1997, p. 11). It is through such critical reflection that personal empowerment is realized by chal- lenging assumptions rather than accepting them as they are. Reflection is a key factor for improving a teacher’s practice. Schön (1983) asserts that engaging in the process of continuous learning is an essential feature of professional practice: Both ordinary people and professional practitioners often think about what they are doing, sometimes even while doing it. Simulated by surprise, they turn thought back on action and on the knowing which is implicit in action. They may ask themselves, for example, “What features do I notice when I recognize this thing? What are the criteria by which I make this judgment? What procedures am I enact- ing when I perform this skill? How am I framing the problem that I try to solve?” (p. 50) It is through reflection in action that practitioners can bring to the surface the tacit understandings that build on the specialized and repetitive practice and deal with the ‘situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict’ (Schön, 1983, p. 50). Schön (1988) also talks about ‘reflection on action’ as a retro- spective practice. Reflection in action (during the experience) and reflection on action (after the experience) have become two essential elements of professional training and development in different disciplines. Also of importance to online edu- cation is teachers’ ability to perform critical reflection, which can be defined as ‘the process by which adults identify the assumptions governing their actions, locate the historical and cultural origins of the assumptions, question the meaning of the assumptions, and develop alternative ways of acting’ (Stein, 2000, p. 3). Critical reflection ‘merges critical inquiry, the conscious consideration of the ethical implica- tions and consequences of teaching practice, with self-reflection, deep examination of personal beliefs, and assumptions about human potential and learning’ (Larrivee, 2000, p. 293). One of the threats to the growth of a distinct online pedagogy is the limited focus on reflection. Once teachers internalize the routines of online teaching, the roles they are expected to take and the methods they are to use, their ability to cope with that is guaranteed and with it the need to grow as an online teacher fades. The result is replication of the same class material and content each time it is taught, without the adoption of new methods and technologies into the learning context. While the roles are suggested to teachers with the functions performed as specific outputs (Bawane & Spector, 2009; Howell et al., 2004), they do not guide teachers for ‘pedagogical problem solving and discovery’ through critical reflection in online teaching (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006, p. 122). Online learning environments have the capability of enabling the exploration and discovery of new pedagogical approaches, such as encouraging participatory, inquiry-based social learning practices (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006). Therefore, the focus of online teacher preparation and development programs needs to be geared towards encouraging online teachers’ critical reflective practices, through which they engage in transformative learning practices with their students. 432 E. Baran et al. Integrating technology into pedagogical inquiry Another problem related to the existing literature is treating technology as a sepa- rate entity, such as the role of technologist in Goodyear et al.’s (2001) study, tech- nological role in Berge’s (1995) study, and technical skills in using the features of the software in Salmon’s (2004) study. However, Koehler, Mishra, and Yahya (2007) argue that ‘technology cannot be treated as a knowledge base unrelated and separate from knowledge about teaching tasks and contexts – it is not only about what technology can do, but also, and perhaps more importantly, what technology can do for them as teachers’ (p. 742). As a result, researchers, particularly in the area of technology integration, argue for a more integrated and multidimensional teacher knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). The literature on online teacher roles and competencies puts limited emphasis on how pedagogical inquiry plays a role within a certain discipline (e.g., English lit- erature, anthropology, design). ‘The questions that academics from sociology ask about student learning and teaching will be different from those posed by engineers, as will be the methods they use to seek answers to their questions’ (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006, p. 113). Therefore, we need to consider how students learn and develop in different disciplines and how teachers can encourage these learning experiences with online technologies. Online teachers need to go beyond mere com- petence in the online technologies, and engage in pedagogical inquiry in which they consider the complex relationships between technologies, pedagogies, and the con- tent in their online teaching context (Koehler & Mishra, 2005). It is through the integration of technology into the pedagogical inquiry that teachers can go through a transformative process of examining the pedagogical potential of online technolo- gies and constructing online learning experiences within their content areas. Concluding remarks This review aimed to use transformative learning theory as a lens for critical analy- sis of the literature on the roles of online teachers, and specifically the role- and competency-driven approach to defining these roles. This analysis shows that there is diversity in the meanings of the terms roles and competencies of online teachers. Commonly identified roles are managerial, instructional designer, pedagogical, tech- nical, facilitator, and social roles. For each role, several competencies have been suggested depending on the context in which the online teaching is being performed (Bawane & Spector, 2009). Although this line of analysis has suggested the use of these roles and competencies for the development of teacher preparation and train- ing programs, it lacks in terms of addressing the issues of empowerment of online teachers, promoting critical reflection, and integrating technology into pedagogical inquiry. Moreover, while competency-based teacher education has been criticized in the teacher education literature both at the pre-service and in-service levels (Téllez, 2007), the literature on online teaching has remained silent on the critical analysis of the use of competency-based teacher education models in online teacher education. As a result of the critique by teacher educators of the competency-driven approaches, the teacher education literature has moved on to different models, such as reflective teacher education, constructive teacher education, and alternative certi- fication (Téllez, 2007). Distance Education 433 Like the accountability movement, CBTE [competency-based teacher education] did not require significant increases in state education budgets, held the promise of sys- tematic changes, was focused on results – instead of the messy and confusing pro- cesses nested within most educational reforms – and, finally, seemed capable of paying off quickly. (Téllez, 2007, p. 548). Today’s competency- and standards-driven efforts in online education have a similarly attractive quality, yet embody the same limitations. Furthermore, earlier works on online education were grounded in the motivation of systematization and industrialization of educational processes via technology. This techno-centric approach, still dominant in many forms of today’s online education, resulted in the replication of traditional approaches in the online environments and created one- size-fits-all preparation and support programs for online teachers. Different from these functionalist and technical perspectives towards teacher knowledge and practice, transformative learning theory holds promise for providing a perspective on considering teachers as adult learners who continuously transform their understanding of structures related to online teaching through an ongoing pro- cess of critical reflection and action (Taylor, 1998). According to Mezirow (1991), transformative learning: involves an enhanced level of awareness of the context of one’s beliefs and feelings, a critique of their assumptions and particularly premises, an assessment of alternative perspectives, a decision to negate of old perspective in favor of a new one or to make a synthesis of old and new, an ability to take action based upon the new perspective, and a desire to fit the new perspective into the broader context of one’s life (p. 161). We need to consider online teachers, especially in higher education, as reflective practitioners who make their own decisions about preferred goals and practices of online teaching and construct ‘a working knowledge, which favors personal experi- ence but also includes theory, research, values, and beliefs, and is used to critically analyze and continually improve teaching’ (Valli, 1992, p. xv). Encouraging online teachers to consider alternative viewpoints and frames of references thus needs to be the focus of the online teacher preparation and professional development programs. ‘Teaching involves many complex and somewhat ill-structured activities; as a consequence, establishing reliable and relevant performance measures for teaching competence is difficult’ (Spector, 2007, p. 6). Similarly, the teacher’s role in the online environment is dynamic and multidimensional, requiring a more integrated look as teachers work through pedagogical problem solving within their disciplines and use various online technologies. Approaches to online teacher preparation and support, therefore, need to regress from the technology-focused programs, which treat technology as a separate entity to be learned and an isolated role to be performed. What is needed is the creation of transformative learning experiences for online teachers who would ‘engage in pedagogical problem-solving and discovery about online teaching’ within their disciplines (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006, p. 122). ‘Online learning can enable and inspire instructors to acquire radically new and different understandings of pedagogy, as well as transform practices entrenched in university traditions that are less effective in promoting higher-order learning’ (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006, p. 125). This critical review has been an attempt to address the limitations and issues in the current literature and propose an alternative 434 E. Baran et al. view towards the development of competencies for teaching online. If the purpose of online learning is to promote students’ higher-level learning as well as to develop their critical and creative thinking skills, teachers need to be empowered and encouraged to be active adult learners themselves as they act with critical power in their world, and to take charge of their own learning. Directions for future research The dimensions of online teachers’ transformational learning – empowering online teachers, promoting critical reflection, and integrating technology into pedagogical inquiry – should be explored further to support and sustain online teacher transfor- mation and professional development. As it is critical to gain access to the perspec- tives of teachers in examining the transformation, data can be gathered using such methods as participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and reflective journals. Moreover, action or participatory research methods can be used to involve online teachers in such research processes as they investigate their own transformation and reflect upon their practices, perspectives, and assumptions. While studies about online teacher experiences represent important exploratory research, future research should also focus on how collective transformation occurs within organizations and communities. It should also investigate the varied ways in which teachers, communities, and organizations transform through online learning initiatives, and the roles that different actors take in the creation of content, values, and practices during this transformation. Implications for practice As teachers move from traditional to online classrooms, they face constant chal- lenges of finding their teacher-self. While there is the tendency for online teachers to lean to their traditional teaching practices as reference points, the affordances and limitations of online environments will pose new challenges for them as they try to operate within their existing sets of beliefs and practices. Programs preparing fac- ulty to teach online need to encourage them to critically reflect upon their past experiences, assumptions, and beliefs towards learning and teaching, question them, and transform their perspectives by engaging in critical reflection, pedagogical inquiry and problem-solving. Through this process, teachers need to be provided with a collaborative working environment where their needs are listened to and solutions are suggested according to the variables in their teaching contexts, such as their level of technology use, schedules, student profiles, and their teaching methods in the face-to-face classrooms. Support programs need to consider teachers as active agents during this process. Instead of building courses for them, a collaborative culture around course design and development needs to be provided and supported. Technology staff and instructional designers should constantly engage in a dialogue about solving prob- lems and making decisions regarding the design and teaching processes of online courses. Collaborate with online teachers and listen to their voices as they trans- form and create their online teacher personas. Online teachers often feel uncertain, uneasy, and unprepared for the challenges of teaching online, and also lacking in the tools and conditions that they use to establish their expertise and teacher persona in the traditional classrooms (Major, Distance Education 435 2010). Support and development programs are critical in helping teachers engage in the process of pedagogical inquiry and problem solving as they reflect upon the interactions between content, online technologies, and pedagogical methods within their unique teaching contexts. While learning about new online technologies is important, online teachers need opportunities where they can explore ways to trans- form their existing pedagogies to the online environment, thinking about the limita- tions and affordances of the online technologies for their pedagogical purposes. Online teachers should be encouraged to pursue pedagogical inquiry and creativity. Online educational environments have the potential for enabling the exploration and discovery of new pedagogical approaches, such as encouraging participatory, inquiry-based and social learning practices (Kreber & Kanuka, 2006). This notion of de-centering of the teacher in the online classroom poses new challenges for online teachers. Online teachers need to be guided in finding ways to support their learners’ independence and autonomy in the online environment. Attempts should be made to engage teachers in learner-centered teaching approaches. It is critical to prepare and support teachers for online teaching so that they know what to expect and how to establish their online teacher persona through online pedagogies, and also develop positive attitudes towards online teaching. By incorporating collaborative work groups, community building, and group discus- sions into professional development programs, and sustaining their continuity, teach- ers will have an opportunity to participate in communities of practice and transform their teaching by socially constructing their knowledge and practices (King, 2002). Online teachers should be encouraged to promote community building around online teaching. Notes on contributors Evrim Baran is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Her research focuses on online learning and teaching, technology and teacher education, and social media in education. Ana-Paula Correia is an associate professor in curriculum and instructional technology at Iowa State University, USA. Her major research interests are collaborative learning, online learning and teaching, and curriculum development in instructional design and technology. 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work_ua5m2mwohbhthj6puoff5liadm	----	A Design and Implementation of SIP-Based Distance Education System Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 2123 – 2127 1877-7058 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2011.08.397 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Procedia Engineering Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia A Design and Implementation of SIP-Based Distance Education System Yujiao Wang , Haiyun Lin* Department of Physical Science and Technology, Kunming University, Kunming,, China Abstract The basic content of the session initiation protocol and its protocol's characteristic are analyzed in the paper, combining the model of distance education system, a distance education system based on SIP protocol is proposed, and then introduces a model of system and gives a brief description of each component of the model, A detailed explanation about the implementation of each model is given. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [CEIS 2011] Key words: SIP ; SIP Server; Class management system; Class control system 1. Introduction Distance education is an educational form, in which, multiple media will be adopted for the systematic teaching and intercommunication between students and teachers, as well as between students and educational institutions. It is an education form for transmitting course contents to students at one or more than one places outside the campus. As for modern distance education, audios, videos (live or recorded), and real-time or non-real-time computer technology will be used to transmit courseware to locations off the campus . Modern distance education is a new educational mode appeared with the development of modern information technology. The rapid advancement of computer technology, multimedia technology, communication technology, especially the Internet technology has endowed distance education with a qualitative leap, making it become an educational form based on high and new technologies. Distance education will not be restricted by geographical factors. Teaching based on distance education can be launched among teachers and students at the same time, while in different pleases. Moreover, teaching contents, teaching methods, and teaching objects of distance education are highly opened. Such open education system has provided a good condition for the life-long education and life-long learning in this age of knowledge economy. At present, appeals requesting for a balanced development of educational resources are becoming stronger and stronger. Moreover, demands for distance education are increasing as well. In order to real-timely, conveniently and reliably transmit high quality education resources onto * * Corresponding author. Tel.: 13987180067. E-mail address:tjwyj817@163.com. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 2124 Yujiao Wang and Haiyun Lin / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 2123 – 2127Yujiao Wang et al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 2 the far-ends, we’ll need to establish a complete and stable distance education system. This is of great importance for both education administration authorities and end-users. 2. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) 2.1 Natures of the SIP Call Control Technology SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) was put forward and studied by IETF, and was an application layer controlling protocol for conducting multimedia communication over IP network. SIP was used to create, modify and terminate sessions participated by one or more than attendances. Such sessions can be Internet multimedia meeting, IP telephone, distance education, as well as telemedicine. In other words, all interactive multimedia communication activities participated by two or more parties on the Internet can be regarded as multimedia sessions [1]. Members who are participating in the sessions can communicate via multi-cast method, single-cast method, or the method by combining the two ways together. SIP would create, control and terminate sessions through request messages (from client to server); obtain the processing result of its requests through response messages (from server to client). SIP messages are comprised by three parts: initial row (request/response), SIP head and message body. SIP would identify users’ addresses with URL address, which can be users’ name @ host address, email name @ website address, telephone number @ PSTN gateway address, etc. SIP URL can be easily associated with users’ e-mail address or other contact information. According to concrete operation, address and protocol feature, request-line and header field will define the property of call. The message body is independent from SIP, and is enabled to include any kinds of contents. SIP has totally formulated six kinds of signaling: INVITE, ACK, CANCEL, OPTIONS, BYE, and REGISTER. INVITE and ACK are designed for creating call sessions to complete the three-way handshake, or to modify the property of the created sessions. BYE is designed to terminate sessions. OPTIONS is used for querying the performance of server. CANCEL is applied to terminate the already- sent but not-finished request sessions. REGISTER is designed for users to register their locations, and other information up to the registration server. Five types of response state: 1xx: Information; 2xx: Correct; 3xx: Redirection; 4xx: Client Error; 5xx: Server Error. SIP message header can be classified into four types: universal header, request header, response header, and entity header. The most frequently used header fields include: From, To, Call-ID, CSEQ, Via, Contact, etc. These fields are employed to identify various related parameters in sessions. The optional entity header mainly adopted the complete text form and the SDP session description, and is mainly applied to state the communication ability of the two parties in the session . 2.2 Communication Function and Architecture of SIP When creating or terminating a multimedia communication session, SIP mainly provides functions in the following aspects: • User Location: to figure out the client system for communication; • User Availability: to figure out whether the called party is willing to start the communication; • User Capability: to figure out media type and media parameters used in the session; • Session Creation: to create the session between the call party and the called party; • Session Management: including transferring and terminating a session, modifying session parameters, as well as corresponding invoking operations. 2125Yujiao Wang and Haiyun Lin / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 2123 – 2127Yujiao Wang et al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 3 SIP-based system is actually a system between users and servers, in which, defined network elements include: user agent, SIP proxy server, redirect server, and SIP register server [2]. • User Agent (UA) is the client network element in SIP system. In accordance with their behaviors in sessions, they can also be named as User Agent Client (UAC) and User Agent Server (UAS). The former is designed to initiate a call request, while the latter is applied to response to the call request. • Proxy Sever is an intermediate network element, which is the client, as well as the server. A proxy server can process onto the next SIP server act on behalf of the users of the previous server. It may also send out call request on behalf of the final destination users. Besides, a proxy server can also distribute requests to other several SIP servers. • Redirect Server is designed for planning the SIP call patch, redirecting users to other SIP servers, and enabling users to take other servers as the next hop to the final destination, as well as to release the request. • Register Server is design for accepting the logging-in of UAS, so as to record users’ current location information. 3. SIP-based Modern Distance Education System 3.1. General System Frame The system has adopted the client-server mode, while the sever has employed the centerlization and distribution combined hierarchy structure, for the benefit of centralized control and management [3]. The system mainly was mainly realized through four fucntional entities, including SIP server (comprised by SIP Register Server, SIP Proxy Sever, and SIP Redirect Server), classroom management syste, classroom control system and SIP classroom terminal, see Fig 1. Fig 1, General System Frame of SIP Distance Education System 3.2 Classroom Management System Classroom management system is the soul of the entire SIP distance education system, which provides management interface in the form of web pages. This module enables administrators to create, modify and delete classrooms. Besides, it may also generate an independent classroom management agent in 2126 Yujiao Wang and Haiyun Lin / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 2123 – 2127Yujiao Wang et al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 4 accordance with administrator’s configurations, so that this classroom management agent can be invited to join in the classroom, as well as to administrate the classroom. Classroom management system can be used to administrate more than on classroom control servers. At the meantime, it also plays a role as the classroom strategy server. In practical usage, classroom management system will provide SIP classroom terminals with dynamic information of the classroom through the classroom web server and in the form of web. Before a teacher starts a class, classroom control server will send related information concerning the class to possible attendances through SIP messages, and in accordance with orders from the classroom management system. Classroom management system is mainly achieved by three functional modules, including classroom management server, classroom web server and classroom management agent. Classroom management agent is an intermediary for realizing communication between Focus and classroom management server. It major function is to realize the interaction between classroom management server and Focus, as well as between classroom management system and classroom control system. The interaction between classroom attendances and classroom management server has adopted the Browser/Server mode, i.e. to access the classroom web server through a browser. When classroom web server has received the request from classroom attendances, web-based classroom management and class information query will then be achieved. 3.3 Classroom Control System Classroom control system is the main body of the entire SIP distance education system. All signaling control will be completed by classroom control system. When a class is under progress, the classroom control system would acquire management parameters from the classroom management server to accept and respond to the requests from clients, as well as to control operations related with the media server. Classroom control system is mainly comprised by three functional modules, including Focus, SIP Stack and Transport Layer . Classroom control system is to be oriented by SIP signaling, and it is an advanced application of SIP user agent, as well as a kernel and essential component in the entire distance education system. It is design to intensively process the signaling interactions among multiple points in the classroom, as well as to control over the progress of class. With service provided by SIP protocol stack, it can realize the SIP signaling communication among SIP classroom terminals. Drawing support from Focus, it can control media server in receiving and redirecting multimedia streams. Through the transport layer, it can receive and redirect SIP messages and multimedia data streams. Besides, it also supports UDP multi-cast and single-cast. One classroom control server can only be used to administrate one classroom. Therefore, classrooms will be identified with unique SIP URLs in SIP servers. As SIP does not support classroom management and control in itself, we’ll need a classroom control protocol to administrate and control classrooms. Classroom management protocol is comprised by a series of classroom control messages. Classroom control messages comply with SIP message form, such as REGISTER, INVITE, BYE, ACK, MESSAGE, NOTIFY, SUBSCRIBE, REFER; Provisional Response (1XX), Final Response (2XX, 3XX, 4XX, 5XX, 6XX). Here, SIP message is the major classroom control message, and has basically realized classroom control functions. In distance education, teachers would ask students to speak, so as to realize an interaction between students and teachers. This is a relatively typical classroom control message. In the following, we have listed the message body for realizing the aforementioned functions [4]. The SIP message body of Teacher: Wangyujiao’s requesting Student: Linhaiyun to speak: REFER sip: Wangyujiao @10.203.2.203 SIP/2.0 Via:SIP/2.0/UDP 10.203.2.203:5060; branch=a7eK6cGc743821ba224cba From: sip: Wangyujiao@10.203.2.203 2127Yujiao Wang and Haiyun Lin / Procedia Engineering 15 (2011) 2123 – 2127Yujiao Wang et al/ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000–000 5 To: sip: Linhaiyun@10.203.2.202 CSEQ: 1 REFER Call-ID:4725e31d5ea8cb7c1978c@10.203.2.203 Refer-To:sip:Conf-ID@10.203.2.203 When Student: Linhaiyun has received the request from Teacher: Wangyujiao, he/she will then send INVITE message to the Classroom Control Server FOCUS, requesting to join in the classroom speech (Linhaiyun FOCUS): INVITE sip:Conf-ID@10.203.2.203 Via:SIP/2.0/UDP 10.203.2.202:5060; branch=a8eK3cG5e842a46de From: sip: Linhaiyun @10.203.2.202 To:sip:Conf-ID@10.203.2.203 CSEQ: 1 INVITE Call-ID:2cfea2bd76890a597c839@10.203.2.203 Referred-By: sip: Wangyujiao@10.203.2.202 3.4 SIP Server SIP server mainly provides functions in SIP terminal registration, session management, establishing SIP-based communication mechanism for the entire system, and assisting the education controller to create and maintain SIP sessions between teachers and students in the classroom. SIP server is comprised by three functional entities, including SIP register server, SIP proxy server and SIP redirect server, as is see Fig 1.SIP register server is designed to register users’ address; SIP proxy server is used to route and redirect SIP messages; SIP redirect server is in responsible for feeding back proxy address information of target SIP users. 4. Conclusion With the fast development of multimedia technology and network communication technology, SIP is bound to become the most important multimedia session control protocol in the next generation network. With simple, flexible, extensible, and realizable features, SIP protocol can easily meet the demands of multimedia session in modern distance education, setting interactions between learners and teachers free from spatial restrictions. The technology can greatly improve learners’ efficiency, providing new opportunities for the development of distance education in China. Acknowledgements The paper is supported by Scientific Research Foundation of Kunming University (2010WL01). References [1] J.Rosenberg, H.Schulzrinne. SIP:Session Initiation Protocol . RFC 3261. 2002. [2] J.Rosenberg. A Framework for Conferencing With The Session Initialization Protocol . RFC4353. 2006. [3] Qingheng Zeng, Xuegong Bian, Ruimin Hu, Jianbo Xu, Lin Du.The Model of SIP Based Video Conference System. Journal of Computer Engineering and Applications,2004, p.148-152. [4] Youbo Zhang, Huanqiang Zhang, Limin Sun. Design & Implementation of SIP-based Video Conference System. Journal of Computer Engineering , 2005, p.167-169. 
work_ua5m7hadefg4zn3cvfjv52n2cq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_ubjapvlyibf7rncn3rl2j2uliu	----	Distance education applications in concept acquisition for disabled individuals/ special education for handicapped Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1008–1011 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com E-mail address: aysegultopaloglu@trakya.edu.tr World Conference on Educational Sciences 2009 Distance education applications in concept acquisition for disabled individuals/ special education for handicapped Ay egül Özdemir Topalo lua, *Murat Topalo lub aProgram of Child Development, Trakya University Kesan Vocational College,Kesan-EDIRNE 22800, TURKEY bTechnical Programs, Trakya University Kesan Vocational College, Kesan-EDIRNE 22800, TURKEY Received October 23, 2008; revised December 17, 2008; accepted January 04, 2009 Abstract Distance education has become developing and becoming widespread application all around the world, for the individuals, expecting different conditions and expectations as an option for education. Reaching the speed of sharing and cycle of knowledge is the objective of the basis of all education technologies presented until today. That is because of the fact that distance education is providing education to large mass with a quite flexible approach for individuals who are in different conditions in the form of that they can benefit from. The most important and conspicuous objective of distance education is making it possible to access the knowledge that is needed with a small amount of money and without time and space limitations for those who is a part of society that need special education by means of distance education which is a system in web-based learning. It is revealed that; especially because of the problems in understanding and interpretation of themselves and their environments due to their disabilities; people, with mental disabilities, deaf and having difficulties in learning, can be successful and benefit from education technologies in distance education by individually or in a group while during the process of concept acquisition. The main objective of this study is; presenting the opinions and researches about the subject by drawing attention to distance education applications in concept acquisition for special education for handicapped. This is a descriptive study which is consisting of literature review, and comments. Keywords: Distance education; concept acquisition; special education for handicapped. 1. Introduction One of the main conditions of being in a modern world is; providing equal standards in education for the individuals who are bigger than the underestimated quantities in society and preparing them better conditions in life from the beginning of their early childhood. According to the findings of Ministry of Education in 2007-2008; most of the individuals, need special education, is consisting of firstly, deaf, and mental or orthopedically handicapped people. According to Celik (2007); for these people prior to their pre-school period, if they learn concepts and skills as a precondition attribute for preparation to elementary education; they can learn the basic academic skills that they get during elementary education period easily with their developer peers. Children when they start to primary school 1877-0428 © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.180 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Ayşegül Özdemir Topaloğlu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1008–1011 1009 they are learning the basic concept such as colour, size, quantity, shape, quality, ground direction and act, they also consolidate these features by experience in and outside the classroom. These basic concepts, required by primary education, can be gained by deaf, mental and etc. handicapped individuals by means of pre-school education programs (Varol, 1992). Yet, handicapped people cannot learn the basic concepts as a result of their experiences, with their developer peers in the level of normal skill and knowledge. This situation motivates families and special education teachers to investigate different methods, to search and struggle about providing these children to be least affected. Distance education application is ranked among the salient applications in the point of time, space and showing flexibility, especially for the people affected by disability. It can be said that; this is because of the fact that; distance education is providing an education opportunity with a flexible approach to large mass and this education is in the style of handicapped individuals can benefit. The conspicuous objective of distance education making it possible to access the knowledge that is needed with a small amount of money and without time and space limitations for those who is a part of society that need special education by means of distance education which is a system in web-based learning. What is Concept? Concept is defined as, in general, having a meaning in human mind and representing common traits of different phenomenon and subjects that can change into verse form, in another word; it is a whole shoot of related stimulus which leads to react (Ekergil, 2000). According to Celik (2007); concepts are defined as a set of stimulus which cause common reaction in individuals, is used for grouping the similar object, human being, event, idea, and processes. 1.1. How do handicapped children learn concepts? Before children learn all of the features of concepts, they learn to recognize the objects and phenomenon that they confront, to match objects with similar features and to distinguish them from other objects. According to Sarı (2007); concept acquisition starts from the beginning of individuals’ lives and continue lifelong. Learnt concepts increase and become complicated as growing up. Especially the limitation in disabled children’s lifes, the complexity in concept acquisition is definitively appeared. While normal children are learning concepts with their families and without studying systematically, it is difficult for handicapped children to learn concepts without studying systemically in daily life. Among the reasons of this difficulty; the families of the disabled children are helping them more than they need, and doing things instead of children although they can have the ability to do, or the families give away to despair, denying the situation at the same time they are not helping their children by ignoring their disabilities. For this reason; disabled children should be taught the concepts systemically in a special prepared atmosphere distinctively (Varol, 1992). In recent years, internet has affected deeply the education models and programs; as a result it makes distance education in an indispensable position without time and place limitations (Topalo lu et. al, 2008). Distance education applications are representing an irrevocable opportunity for the families, whose education has been abandoned because of the liabilities about family and works, hence for the children of these families. For this reason; distance education is fairly preferred because of representing several different education opportunities and it’s flexibility in terms of time, space for the disabled individuals with the guidance of their families (Chyung, Winiecki & Fenner, 1998). Within the concept of education; we come across with the applications of interactive TV or web-based education and technology based distance education as an alternative for the mental disabled individuals’ families and the special education teachers, teaching in the countryside ( Spooner, Spooner, Algozzine & Jordan, 1998; Ludlow, 1995). 1010 Ayşegül Özdemir Topaloğlu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1008–1011 3. Results Nowadays; the technologies, which has become a part of our lives, should not only be a habit of consuming, but also it should be in an endeavour of serving to people. For this reason; the technological developments that are chosen by individuals, should serve for the use of humans. Especially, by the development of internet, the society should benefit from the challenge of presenting information. With this opportunity; the society must be in the level of different technological developments. In order to do our works and solve our problems, we should not only pay attention of technological developments, but also we should use information technologies in our daily lives. Whatever field it is, we need to use the technology. And the families should provide their children to have the opportunity of using these technologies (Okur, 2006). If we take into account of opportunities in education, distance education is a must of current technologies in terms of; teaching on time to people, without time and space limitations, the increase in teaching environmental resources and the decrease of differences between computerized environment and traditional environment and the speed of information retrieval. We are living in a technological society that we can access to information by using the internet, computer, and printing. There are some ways for the families, individuals who need special education, and educators to join in information societies. These ways are the materials such as computers, communication printed materials (Bryant & Bryant, 2003). Internet technologies are performing to gather and inform the families, teachers and individuals, who need special education. After this process; family education appears as a research resource on web-based family education for students and teachers (Male, 2003). The shortage in using the informatics technologies in the field of special education is attracting the attention. The duty of informatics experts and special education experts is benefitting from the technological developments that are felt in every part of our lives. When it is mentioned about the use of technology in education it is meant that; the families of the individuals that need special education, the special education experts and the education of mentioned individuals. As long as the technology is coming into our lives; individuals should benefit from provided opportunities and the teachers should use these technologies in education (Okur, 2006). In special education, virtual environment can be used for individuals who need special education. Within this scope; web sites on several subjects, web portals, and course contents can be provided to be used in or outside the classroom. If we look at the similar studies; moodle.trakya.edu.tr (e-learning for mental handicapped), engelimizyok.com (web portal for the families of individuals who need special education) ozelegitimuygulama.com (web portal for the families of disabled individuals), webct.anadolu.edu.tr (web-based learning for the fathers of mental disabled children) are some examples of web-based education. It is expressed that; technology based education is lightening the family’s responsibilities. In a general perspective; parents who want to contribute to their children’s education can have the opportunity of getting new ideas with their child by the help of technology without time and space limitations. Web- based education opportunities provide more effective and permanent learning at the same time it has an important potential in the process of learning. For the normal individuals; reducing the complexity of environment knowing the objects, planning and implementing the events learning the concepts in the way of providing to increase the speed of learning and thinking is very important at the same time; concept acquisition is important as well for the individuals, who need special education in a vital way. Permanent and efficient concept education is provided for the individuals who need special education to consolidate and humour them into social life by the help of technology. In this context; one of the resources of benefitting from technological opportunities with the help of computer based distance education. References Bryant, D.P. &Bryant B.R., (2003). Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities. Pearson Education. USA: Boston. Chyung, Y., Winiecki, D.I., & Fenner, J.A. (1998). "A Case Study: Increase Enrolment by Reducing Dropout Rates in Adult Distance Education." Distance Learning '98. Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, Madison, WI, 97–101. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 422848). Çelik, S. (2007). Zihinsel Yetersizlik Gösteren Çocuklara Kavram Ö retiminde Do rudan Ö retim ve E zamanlı pucuyla Ö retimin Etkililik ve Verimliliklerin Kar ıla tırılması.Master Thesis. Eski ehir: Anadolu University –Institute of Educational Sciences Ekergil, . (2000). Zihin Engelli Çocuklara Zıtlık Kavramlarını Ö retmede Do al Dille Uygulanan Do rudan Ö retim Yönteminin Etkilili i.Master Thesis. Eski ehir:Anadolu Universityi- Institute of Educational Sciences Ludlow, B. L. (1995). “Distance Education Applications in Rural Special Education, Where We’ve been and Where We’re Going.” Rural Special Education Quarterly. Ayşegül Özdemir Topaloğlu et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1008–1011 1011 Male, M., (2003) Technology for Inclusion Meeting The Special Needs Of All Students. Pearson Education. USA: Boston. Okur, M.R. (2006). We Portal in Special Education. Eski ehir: Anadolu University- Institute of Educational Sciences Sarı Taymaz, O. (2007). Engellilerde Kavram Ö retimi. Okul Öncesi E itimde Güncel Konular. Edt: Oktay A., Unutkan Polat Ö., stanbul: Morpa Yayınları. Spooner, F., Spooner, M., Algozzine, B. & Jordan, L. (1998). “Distance Education and Special Education and Special Education; Promises, Practises, and Potential Pitfalls. Teacher Education and Special Education. Topalo lu, A., Uçar, E., Topalo lu, M., Demiröz, E. (2008). E itilebilir Zihin Engelli Çocukların Uzaktan E itimi ve Uzaktan E itim Uygulamalarının Kar ıla tırılması. 18. Unusual Special Education Congress. Konya: Selçuk University Education Faculty.13-15 November 2008. Varol, N. (1992). Zihin Engelli Çocuklara Kırmızı, Sarı, Büyük, Daire, Üçgen, Uzun, Bir Tane, ki Tane ve Kalın Kavramlarının Kazandırılmasında Açık Anlatım Yöntemiyle Sunulan Bireyselle tirilmi Kavram Ö retim Materyalinin Etkili i. Eski ehir: Anadolu University Press No: 637. 
work_udsj4wgwtnehbjj2jxigh7tqcu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_ufbzrfnvtnfnvg2g3tmebnc2k4	----	aj680495.qxp INTRODUCTION The growth in distance education in the past 10 years is unprecedented and even institutions of higher education that would never have entered the distance education arena are now rethinking that decision. According to the 2002 report from the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), of the 5,635 institutions accredit- ed throughout 17 regions, 1,979 offered some form of dis- tance education.1 One of the greatest challenges presented by distance learning is assuring that the quality of the edu- cation received is not compromised. The accreditation process helps institutions define quality and provides benchmarks for a well-designed learning environment. The challenge to the accrediting agencies is that distance education is shifting the focus of accreditation to such areas as computer-mediated classrooms, instruction sepa- rated by time and distance, and the availability of online student support services, while expecting quality to con- tinue.2 The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of accreditation and the various levels of accreditation that can impact institutions of higher education, specifically as related to distance education. The intent of this manuscript is not to suggest that accreditation represents the only means by which quality in higher education can be achieved, but to provide a primer on the different accred- iting organizations and how they can provide practical and accessible information on how to benchmark successful educational practices and the benefits that can be derived through the accreditation process. Accreditation Overview Accreditation can be considered as an assurance of quality. According to Eaton (2002) the purposes of accreditation are to assure quality, provide access to fed- eral funds, allow for ease of transfer of courses and pro- grams among institutions of higher education, and to facilitate employee confidence in the institution.2(p1) The recognition of accrediting agencies is done by 2 groups, the United States Department of Education (USDOE; http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml) and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA; www.chea.org). The means by which an accrediting agency is reviewed for quality is through a process called “recognition” by one or both of these groups. In order to determine whether an accrediting agency is “recognized” one need only visit either site and view a list of recog- nized accrediting agencies. Accreditation is a voluntary process for institutions of higher education. Although accreditation is not required, the term “voluntary” can be misleading. For example, there are good programs that are not accredit- ed, but the lack of accreditation may limit their access to financial aid resources, or in the case of a school of phar- macy, prohibit a graduate from being able to take the national licensure examination (NABPLEX). Some specifics and values of accreditation beyond the general definition provided earlier are: 1. Verifying that an institution or program meets established standards; 2. Assisting prospective students in identifying acceptable institutions; 3. Assisting institutions in determining the accept- ability of transfer credits; 4. Helping to identify institutions and programs for American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (4) Article 95. 1 SPECIAL ARTICLES Accreditation of Distance Education Programs: A Primer Evan T. Robinson, PhD School of Pharmacy, University of Charleston Submitted October 21, 2003; accepted January 8, 2004; published October 15, 2004. Distance education within higher education has its share of challenges and considerations. The growth in distance education in the past 10 years is unprecedented, and somehow, the subsequent changes to the pedagogical model need to be considered. Irrespective of the various reasons for providing distance education, an institution should first address the single most important consideration, the provision of a quality educational experience. This article represents an overview of accreditation, the various types of accrediting associations (regional, national, specialized), and specific issues regarding how accred- itation relates to the quality of distance education offerings. Keywords: distance education, accreditation Corresponding Author: Evan T. Robinson, PhD. Address: Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Charleston School of Pharmacy, 2300 MacCorkle Ave. S.E., Charleston, WV 25304. Tel: 304-357-4860. E-mail: evanrobinson@ucwv.edu. the investment of public and private funds; 5. Protecting an institution against harmful internal and external pressure; 6. Creating goals for self-improvement of weaker programs and stimulating a general raising of standards among educational institutions; 7. Involving the faculty and staff comprehensively in institutional evaluation and planning; 8. Establishing criteria for professional certifica- tion and licensure and for upgrading courses offering such preparation; 9. Providing one of several considerations used as a basis for determining eligibility for Federal assistance.3 Within the list, points 3 (transfer credits) and 9 (Federal assistance) present very tangible reasons why accreditation, albeit voluntary, should be sought. Types of Accrediting Agencies There are different types of accrediting agencies and each considers the accreditation of distance education pro- grams differently. Within this section the different types of accreditation will be identified, as well as how each relates to distance education accreditation. The different types of accreditation are not mutually exclusive. For example, an institution may be regionally accredited as well as have 3 programs subject to specialized accreditation. Regional Accreditation There are 6 regional accrediting agencies that evalu- ate and accredit the institution as a whole, but do not accredit its individual colleges and programs. An institu- tion that achieves regional accreditation has demonstrat- ed that each of its programs has met a level of quality that reflects upon the quality of the entire institution. Within each region the association may organize its accrediting commissions separately, so it is possible for variations in this list to occur (eg, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges separates the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education from the Commission on Technical and Career Institutions, while another region might merge these 2 entities into one group). The 6 regional accrediting agencies and their Web sites are: • Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA), www.css-msa.org; • New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), www.neasc.org; • North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA-HLC), www.ncahigherlearning- commission.org; • Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges (NASC), www.nwccu.org; • Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), www.sacs.org; • Western association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), www.wascweb.org; In an effort to develop a common frame of reference regarding online or distance education offerings, the region- al accrediting organizations collaborated to develop the “Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs,” a document originally drafted by the Western Cooperative for Education Telecommunications (http://www.wcet.info/). The “Best Practices” was devel- oped not only to give the regional accreditation organiza- tions some degree of standardization but also to provide interested colleges and universities with guidelines on how to measure the quality of distance education offerings. The 5 topic areas within the “Best Practices” paper are: • Institutional Context and Commitment • Curriculum and Instruction • Faculty Support • Student Support • Evaluation and Assessment Each topic is followed by specific concerns regard- ing quality distance education offerings, which are in turn followed by several protocols or questions that should help an institution understand its preparedness for implementing distance education initiatives.4 For exam- ple, within the section on “Student Support,” the follow- ing statement is found: “The institution has a commit- ment – administrative, financial, and technical – to con- tinuation of the program for a period sufficient to enable all admitted students to complete a degree or certificate in a publicized timeframe.”4 These “Best Practices,” in conjunction with “Statement of Commitment by the Regional Accrediting Commissions for the Evaluation of Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs,” represent a significant step by the regional accrediting commissions towards the standardiza- tion of the accreditation of distance education offerings. The “Statement of Commitment” is a second joint document developed collaboratively to express the regional accredit- ing organizations commitment to supporting good practices in distance education. However, these documents represent a starting point and, as was explained within the “Best Practices” document, it is a work in progress, given the speed with which change occurs in the distance education arena. The challenge that yet remains is the degree to which these working documents over time yield clear, definitive evaluation guidelines and a consistent set of standards, not only for distance education, but also for onsite electronical- ly mediated classes where onsite students are still learning virtually. In addition to these 2 documents, the different American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (4) Article 95. 2 regions also have materials that relate to the provision of distance education offerings as well, so each regional Web site should be checked periodically. The creation of distance education programs should be carefully considered. A substandard distance-educa- tion offering would adversely impact the accreditation of the entire institution, so distance education initiatives should be appropriately discussed at all levels before any commitment is made. The parity between onsite and off- site programs must be clearly stated and defined with respect to all aspects of the education process, from aca- demics to support services and educational resources such as library holdings. Significant programmatic changes could possibly be construed as “substantive changes” and trigger a request for more information or an automatic site visit. This is of course dependent upon the region in which the institution is located, so for clar- ification it is always best to contact your regional accred- iting association office. National Accreditation National accreditation usually focuses on an entire institution that has a narrowly focused mission or delivery model rather than on institutions with a large variety of different programs. An example of an institution with a narrowly focused mission would be a college focusing on religion, while an example of an institution with a nar- rowly focused delivery model would be an institution whose programs are taught only online. According to the CHEA Web site there are currently 6 recognized national accrediting agencies within the United States and they are: • Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges (AABC) • Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC)* • Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) • Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools (AARTS) • Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) • Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools Accreditation Commission) (TRACS).5 The national accrediting agency that is the most rele- vant for the purposes of this paper is the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). This agency has its roots in the earliest methods of distance education, beginning with correspondence courses, and has adapted to the changes in educational delivery. DETC historically has accredited institutions whose delivery method is pre- dominantly online. A change to that, however, has been that DETC has begun to work with programs that are more residential in nature, in which case the accreditation conferred focuses upon the program that best fits its accreditation standards. This change is due to the increas- ing number of colleges and universities that offer both residential and distance-education offerings. DETC accreditation, which is voluntary, can be seen as institutional improvement in that it has more speci- ficity with respect to distance education offerings than either regional or specialized accrediting organizations. Institutions are not motivated to seek out DETC accred- itation for monetary reasons, since DETC accreditation does not make an institution eligible for federal financial aid. The guidelines and standards proposed by DETC represent sound practices that would benefit colleges or universities seeking to provide distance education. All of the guidelines and information for DETC, as well as a list of accredited institutions, are available from their Web site (www.detc.org). Some examples of the materi- als available via the Web site include Benefits of DETC Accreditation; DETC Accreditation Overview 2002; DETC Business Standards, May 2003; and Preparing an Effective Self-Evaluation Report.6 Specialized Accreditation Specialized accrediting agencies evaluate individual- ized programs within an institution, such as law, medicine, pharmacy, and business, which may or may not have received regional accreditation for the entire institution. One example specific to pharmacy regarding the need for specialized accreditation is that in order to sit for the national licensure examination (NAPLEX), graduates must have attended a school of pharmacy accredited by the Accreditation Council on Pharmacy Education (ACPE). The list of specialized accrediting agencies is too large to print within this publication. To see a list, please visit the Web site of either the United States Department of Education (http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml) or the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (www.chea.org). As previously mentioned, these different types of accreditation are not mutually exclusive. They do, howev- er, have some differences relating to how they evaluate the quality of distance education offerings. For example, one difference between a specialized accreditation agency and a regional agency is the use of competency standards or outcomes by specialized accrediting agencies. These agencies evaluate programs that are focused on a relative- ly narrow window of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Results from a recent study by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation indicate that few spe- cialized accrediting organizations are changing their standards to specifically address distance education, but American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (4) Article 95. 3 instead are adding language indicating that the standards must be met regardless of the “...type of instructional methodology used.”7 This is an interesting finding in that there are many individuals who believe distance educa- tion is a pedagogical alternative and nothing more. This being said, ensuring that the motivating reason for an institution seeking to enter the distance education arena is consistent with the institution’s mission and philoso- phy and that adequate resources are provided to support the venture is important. The specialized accrediting body for colleges and schools of pharmacy, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), also maintains the posi- tion that distance education is a pedagogical alternative. When used to deliver 25% or more of the entry-level cur- riculum, distance education is simultaneously viewed as a “substantive change” that may require additional mon- itoring. [Personal communication. American Council on Pharmaceutical Education, October 21, 2003.] Consultation via calls to and from the ACPE office and additional monitoring through focused site visits is a common practice that is not exclusive to distance learn- ing and may be necessary during changes in leadership, increases in student enrollment, and changes in faculty composition and size at a college or school. Although the anxiety produced by additional scrutiny from one’s spe- cialized accrediting agency is rarely welcome, the ulti- mate intent of that attention is to document the state of a program relative to accreditation standards, point out areas of strength and weakness, and provide guidance to help assure overall program quality. Specialized accrediting agencies are also attempting to improve their own ability to evaluate the quality of programs using distance learning by reviewing and revising their standards. Many agencies are searching for outcome-based measures, as defined by the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for success within a given discipline, on which to make more objective accrediting decisions. Accreditation organizations are recognized by the Department of Education (DOE), which requires accrediting agencies to revise their standards on a regu- lar basis. In fact, ACPE is currently requesting comments to update its standards and guidelines. For more infor- mation on the request for comments, please visit the ACPE Web site (www.acpe-accredit.org) or contact the office by telephone to speak with a staff member. Although formal standards revision occurs for a specific period of time, constructive comments and criticism are always considered. For example, recent experiences from a school undergoing focused monitoring have been used to improve ACPE’s process for reviewing programs using distance education. The assurance of quality in a dynamic educational environment while being respon- sive to a variety of views on the value of distance learn- ing is a difficult but not insurmountable task for special- ized accrediting agencies. Only time, experience, and good feedback regarding what has worked and what has not worked will determine the impact distance learning will have on the quality of professional education. Indicators of Quality for Distance Education Programs Accreditation is the assurance of quality. Given that, there should be some aspects within institutions of high- er education that should be considered when developing a quality distance education offering. The following list, compiled from a variety of sources (one being the “Best Practices”), briefly presents institutional considerations when developing distance education offerings. • Institutional Mission and Intent: Is the mission of the institution consistent with its intent to pro- vide educational programming at a distance? Why is the institution interested in distance edu- cation programs? • Institutional Support: Is the institution commit- ted to allocating resources to a distance educa- tion initiative and is that commitment in terms of personnel, finances, etc? • Curriculum and Instruction: Does the institution have the appropriate courses matched with the appropriate outcomes, how is it ensuring that outcomes are being met, is the technology being appropriately used, etc? • Faculty Support: Is the institution providing resources that help develop the faculty to pro- vide online instruction and has it given appropri- ate consideration to the issues of faculty load, content ownership, copyright, intellectual prop- erty, etc? • Student Support: Does the institution provide dis- tance learners with access to advisors, facilities, learning resources, counseling, and accommoda- tion of students with learning disabilities, etc? • Assessment and Evaluation: How is the pro- gram’s effectiveness begin evaluated, are the outcomes being reviewed for clarity, what is being done to compare learner performance to intended learning outcome, etc? The list of quality indicators provided above is intended to provide an overview of the topics that should be consid- ered. For more detailed information, the reader should see the “Best Practices” statement, “Quality On the Line: Benchmarks for Success in Internet-Based Distance American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (4) Article 95. 4 Education,” prepared by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, “Accreditation and Assuring Quality in Distance Learning,” CHEA Monograph Series 2002, Number 1, and “Specialized Accreditation and Assuring Quality in Distance Learning, CHEA Monograph Series 2002, Number 2. Both are available via the CHEA website at www.chea.org. Also, as previously recommended, contact other programs deliv- ering good distance education programs to seek their guid- ance as well as the accrediting agencies. Recommendations The following list of recommendations is a starting point, nothing more, when considering the issues of dis- tance education accreditation. • Review the “Statement of Commitment by the Regional Accrediting Commissions for the Evaluation of Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs” and “Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs.” • Visit the Web sites and contact your regional accrediting agency to get additional information. Some agencies have additional information on distance education accreditation and the extra guidance may well be helpful. • View the various accrediting agencies as resources, not as adversaries. All too often individuals do not call the agencies for fear of identifying a problem at their institution – get over the fear. • Contact successful programs and seek their guid- ance. There is too much experience out there for anyone to blindly venture into distance educa- tion. • Whether your institution is considering national accreditation or not from the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), visit their Web site for some information. The information DETC provides can assist an institution in eval- uating and improving the quality of distance education offerings. • Be careful of unrecognized accreditation agen- cies. Just like there are diploma mills, there are now accreditation mills, so be careful if approached by a group offering accreditation. CONCLUSIONS Institutions looking to enter the distance education arena must understand what constitutes quality and what is necessary for success before ever offering the first online course. Given the number of programs providing quality distance education offerings and the materials available via the regional, national, and specialized accrediting organi- zations, no institution program should take an uninformed step without first understanding the challenges that lie before them. Finally, be prepared for change and debate as more institutions move online and the accreditation of dis- tance education programs continues to evolve. REFERENCES 1. Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Accreditation and Assuring Quality in Distance Learning: CHEA Monograph Series 2002, Number 1. Washington, DC: Council for Higher Education Accreditation; 2002: 3-4. 2. Eaton JS. Maintaining the Delicate Balance: Distance Learning, Higher Education Accreditation, and the Politics of Self-Regulation. Washington, DC: American Council on Education; 2002:5. 3. Financial Aid for Post-Secondary Students. Accreditation in the United States. United States Department of Education. Available at http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/accreditation_pg2.html. Accessed September 29, 2003. 4. Regional Accrediting Agency Documents on Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs. Western Cooperative for Education Telecommunications (WCET). Available at http://www. wcet.info/resources/accreditation/. Accessed September 29, 2003. 5. Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). Available at http://www.chea.org/Directories/national.asp. Accessed September 19, 2003. 6. Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). Available at: http://www.detc.org/ Accessed September 29, 2003. 7. Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Specialized Accreditation and Assuring Quality in Distance Learning: CHEA Monograph Series 2002, Number 2. Washington, DC: Council for Higher Education Accreditation; 2002: 3. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2004; 68 (4) Article 95. 5 
work_uflqeh7zdvd4disvraww2wizxa	----	Code Number : 129-140-E Division Number : VIII. Professional Group : Regional Section: Asia and Oceania Joint Meeting with : - Meeting Number : 140. Simultaneous Interpretation : No Distance Education in Library and Information Science in Asia and the Pacific Region Chutima Sacchanand 64th IFLA General Conference August 16 - August 21, 1998 162 163 Distance Education in Library and Information Science in Asia and the Pacific Region Chutima Sacchanand Abstract This article identifies the distance education needs of information professionals in the region and lists various institutions that offer distance education courses in library and information science in Asia and the Pacific region along with perspectives, media and methods, instructional systems, resources and services. I n t r o d u c t i o n Distance education has gained popularity all over the world as a means of extending continuing education to all people, particularly professionals. It has been analyzed as a single product of the era of industrialization (Peters 1989: 3) and it has benefited from the rapid advances in electronic telecommunications in the 1980's and early 1990's. New communication technologies enable learning to take place beyond the classroom. Numbers of colleges, universities and institutions offer courses via the distance education system. As a result, someone pursuing a degree or trying to keep pace with new developments in their profession can often study the required courses without needing to enroll in a c o n v e n t i o n a l c a m p u s - b a s e d c o u r s e . Th e ne e d f or d is t an c e e du c a tio n f o r inf or m a ti on pr o fe s si on als Information professionals have actually been involved in distance education since 1888, when Melvil Dewey called on the library school at Albany to develop correspondence courses for librarians in small and special libraries. Since then schools have permitted the enrollment of part-time students, scheduled evening and weekend classes, summer courses, and intensive sessions, and offered courses away from the home campus and other alternati ve s to a "traditional" classroom education (Barron 1991: 41). 164 In this important development of the information age, emphasis is on the need for further education, continuing education and lifelong education for the information professionals and those who have already been in the workforce. Distance learning is the most useful and cost-effective means of enhancing or updating information and library skills and qualifications (Stoker 1995: 3). One of distance education's strengths is its ability to integrate diverse skills and professional backgrounds (Markowitz 1990: 49). The growth of college and university level distance education in recent years has been striking with regard to both the number of students undertaking study at a distance and the numbers of institutions providing distance education in library and information science. The electronic age provides challenges for information professionals. As libraries and information centers focus on managing electronic records and virtual libraries, distance e d u c a t i o n p r o v i d e s v a r i o u s o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r i n f o r m a t i o n p r o f e s s i o n a l s : 1. It provides opportunities to acquire or update skills and knowledge in areas i n c r e a s i n g l y i n d e m a n d . 2. It enhances already acquired professional qualification. Individual subjects may be taken as continuing education courses, without the need to meet formal entry r e q u i r e m e n t s . 3. It increases access to education and meets the needs of learners who are a l r e a d y i n t h e w o r k f o r c e . 4. It emphasizes freedom from classroom limitations in location and time. Distance education is flexible with variable times and locations, whether at work or at h o m e . T i m e t o l e a r n i s e x p a n d e d t o f i t i n d i v i d u a l n e e d s . 5. It offers a chance to information professionals and people who live and work in remote areas and have no way of improving and continuing their education. 6. It creates opportunities for people with families and work commitments who a r e u n a b l e t o f u r t h e r t h e i r s t u d i e s a t c o n v e n t i o n a l u n i v e r s i t i e s . Distance education in library and information science: A survey In 1989, the British Library Research and Development Department published its British Library Research Paper 50 entitled "Distance Education in Library and Information 165 Studies: a Survey" made by J A Haythornthwaite and F C P White (1989). One hundred and eighty-eight library schools and institutions in the English-speaking world were contacted, of which eighty-two responded, a rate of just over forty-three percent. It is shown that the range of courses offered through distance education is extremely wide from a thirteen-week course in "statistics for librarians," to full degree courses at all levels, including a doctorate. This survey has produced an annotated listing of relevant packages currently offered, or shortly to be offered. Some interesting and important points have emerged from the survey which are discussed, e.g., concern about the financial viability of distance education, anxiety about the isolation of distance learners and teachers. In certain areas of study, practical difficulties loom large; the use of sophisticated equipment requires "hands-on" experience which is very expensive to provide for distance-learners. In spite of these reservations, the interest demonstrated by many respondents indicates a wide-spread desire for knowledge of what can be achieved in this important and d e v e l o p i n g a r e a o f e d u c a t i o n a l p r a c t i c e . Countries and institutions in Asia and the Pacific Region offering library a n d i n f o r m a t i o n s c i e n c e d i s t a n c e e d u c a t i o n The National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME), Japan, in collaboration with United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made "A Survey of Distance Education in Asia and the Pacific" (Revised Edition 1994). From this latest survey, the following information regarding library and information science via d i s t a n c e e d u c a t i o n w a s c o m p i l e d : 1. Library and information science via distance education is provided in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific, region namely: Australia, Republic of China, Republic o f I n d i a , J a p a n , N e w Z e a l a n d , P a p u a N e w G u i n e a a n d T h a i l a n d . 2. Various levels are offered: including diploma, graduate diploma, post g r a d u a t e d i p l o m a , a s s o c i a t e a n d b a c h e l o r d e g r e e s . Besides, in 1998, the author makes a small survey by accessing the International Centre for Distance Learning (ICDL) database, reviewing related literature in the field and 166 sending questionnaires to the leading information educators in some countries in which information is not provided. Information was analyzed and it was founded as follows: 1. Distance education in library and information science is provided by thirty one institutions in nine countries in Asia and the Pacific region. (See Appendix) 2. Various levels of courses are offered leading to certificate, diploma, bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree programs. Many short courses are also provided. S o m e e x a m p l e s a r e : •••• Australia: Charles Sturt University awards Diploma in Library and Information Science, Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Science), Master of Applied Science (Library and Information Management), Graduate Diploma of Applied Science (Library and Information Management), Ph.D.(Information Science). Victorian TAFE Off-Campus Network, Department of Technical and Further Education awards A s s oc i a t e D i pl om a o f A p pl i e d S c i e nc e ( Li b ra r y a nd In form a t i on St ud i e s) . •••• Fiji: University of the South Pacific awards Diploma in Library/ I n f o r m a t i o n S t u d i e s . •••• India: Indira Gandhi National Open University awards Master in Library and Information Science; Kakatiya University awards Bachelor of Library and I n f o r m a t i o n S c i e n c e a n d C e r t i f i c a t e i n L i b r a r y a n d I n f o r m a t i o n S c i e n c e . •••• New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington awards Master of L i b r a r y a n d I n f o r m a t i o n S t u d i e s . •••• Pakistan: Allama Iqbal Open University awards Bachelor of Arts ( L i b r a r y a n d I n f o r m a t i o n S c i e n c e ) . •••• Thailand: Ramkamhaeng University awards Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Science) and Master of Arts (Library and Information Science). Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University awards Diploma in Information Science and Bachelor of Arts (Information Science). Various individual courses in the information science program are also offered to the general public through the continuing education p r o j e c t l e a d i n g t o t h e C e r t i f i c a t e o f A c h i e v e m e n t . 167 T e a c h i n g m e d i a The most dominant teaching media for distance education in library and information science used by institutions in Asia and the Pacific region is print media, which comprises of study materials and textbooks. Radio and television broadcast, face-to-face tutoring, practical work, home lab kits and residential schooling are dominant. Others are audio- cassettes, video-cassettes, computer-assisted instruction, telephone tutoring, tutorial via mailing, counseling via mailing, counseling by telephone, counseling via other media. tutorial via audio-teleconferencing, compact-disc, tutorial via video teleconferencing. There is growing use of interactive telecommunication media especially video conferencing and computer communication. The Internet is being introduced more widely a n d r a p i d l y . The teaching media are usually produced by full-time and part-time academics on the course team basis for material development. Radio and television broadcast, audio- cassettes and video-cassettes are produced by academic staff working with the Educational P r o d u c t i o n C e n t e r . I n s t r u c t i o n a l s y s t e m The instructional system is mostly print-based. Students study from printed materials mailed to them, listen to radio programs and audio tapes, watch television programs and video programs and engage in interactive communication such as teleconferencing. In some subjects, they have to carry out practical/ laboratory work, attend a series of required face-to-face tutorial sessions, and counseling of varying duration, according to the n u m b e r s o f u n i t s t a k e n . Evaluation is made in different forms: continuous assessment, written assignments for submission, practical work, attendance of regular workshops, and written final examinations which are conducted at various study centers around the country. 168 R e s o u r c e s a n d s e r v i c e s The most dominant resources are library resources, local study centers, regional centers and resource centers, special study centers and cooperating government and private institutions. This provides numerous contact points for students and allows full use of l e a r n i n g r e s o u r c e s t o e n r i c h d i s t a n c e e d u c a t i o n . Student support services are helpful in solving the academic and non-academic problems of distance education students. Services to distance learners generally include tutorials, library services, computer services, educational and vocational counseling services, and p r o f e s s i o n a l p r a c t i c a l e x p e r i e n c e . P r o s p e c t s a n d t r e n d s Distance education came to the attention of the experts from 11 countries in the consultative meeting and workshop on "Planning Human Resource Development for Information Societies" at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) Thailand between 3-7 March 1997. This meeting and workshop was convened as a planning exercise to develop strategies for improving the education and training of information professionals in the Asia/Pacific region. This meeting was jointly organized by Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University and UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand, and supported by the M i n i s t r y o f E d u c a t i on , S c i e n c e , S p o r t s & C u l t u r e , G o ve r n m e n t o f J a p a n. At the Meeting, the members agreed on a regional program with one of its specific o b j e c t i v e b e i n g : To enhance the provision of distance learning for information professionals and workers taking into consideration the special needs of rural libraries by: a) expanding the STOU survey and publishing the results on the World Wide Web, b) providing training in the development of distance learning programs, c) developing distance learning packages on specific topics to meet high priority training needs (STOU and UNESCO 1997: 15). To implement the distance program, at the Meeting, it was agreed that STOU be approached to help with the survey on institutions in the region which offer library and 169 information science through distance education, providing training to the library and information schools in the Region on how to develop distance education programs; collecting, developing and disseminating information and packages on distance education programs for information professionals and workers (STOU and UNESCO 1997: 17). Distance education in library and information science in Asia and the Pacific region grows larger. Its importance and standards are accepted. There is a good prospect and trend that there will be more countries and more institutions offering library and information science distance education, Various integrated multimedia will be used to provide academic instruction. However, printed materials will still be the basic instructional media in Asia and the Pacific region for the coming years. This is because of the economic situation being a major problem. Information and technological infrastructure are also basic p r o b l e m s . S u m m a r y Distance education is now recognized throughout the world as a viable alternative to campus-based education and remains competent in today's digital era and knowledge society. Distance education in library and information science, which started in 1988, has grown rapidly to a wider audience in Asia and the Pacific region. The number of countries and institutions offering library and information science distance education has increased and various levels of degree programs and short courses are offered. It expands the reach of the classroom by using various technologies to deliver university resources and services to off-campus sites, and by transmitting courses into the workplace, thus enabling informational professionals to view class lectures in the comfort of their homes and offices. Library and information science distance education comes as an integral part for information professionals of not only "Education for All" but also "Education for T o m o r r o w . " 170 Bibliography Barron, Daniel D. "Distance Education in North American Library and Information Science Education: Applications of Technology and Commitment." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47 (November 1996): 805- 8 1 0 . Barron, Daniel D. "The Library and Information Science Distance Education Consortium: The Profession's Virtual Classroom." Wilson Library Bulletin (October 1 9 9 1 ) : 4 1 - 4 3 . Garrison, D. Randy and Shale, Doug, eds. Education at a Distance:From Issues to P r a c t i c e . M a l a b a r , F l o r i d a : R o b e r t E . K r i e g e r P u b . C o . , 1 9 9 0 . Ha yt hornt hwa it e , J .A. a nd Whi t e , FCP. Di st anc e Educ ati on in Library and Information Studies: a Survey. "British Library Research Paper 50." West Yorkshire: British Library Research and Development Department, 1989. "ICDL Institutions and Courses Database." 1998 (Online). Available http://www- i c d l . o p e n . a c . u k Markowitz, Harold. Distance Education: Staff Handbook. "The Guide Series." Urbana-Champaign : University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1990. National Institute of Multimedia Education. Distance Education in Asia and the Pacific. "Report on Multimedia Education 66E." Revised Edition. Chiba: NIME, 1994. The Open Learning Directory 1997. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997. Perry, W. Open University. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1976. Peters, O."The Tieberg has not Milked: Further Reflections on the Concept of Industrialization and Distance Teaching." Open Learning 6 (1989): 3-8. P e t e r s o n ' s D i s t a n c e L e a r n i n g 1 9 9 7 . P r i n c e t o n , N . J . : P e t e r s o n ' s , c 1 9 9 6 . "Programmes at Open University included in the ICDL Database." 1998 (Online). Available: http://www-icdl.open.ac.uk/icdl/export/europe/unitedki/openuniv/ p r o g / i n d e x . h t m Stoker, David. "Editorial: Information and Library Studies at a Distance." Journal of L i b r a r i a n s h i p a n d I n f o r m a t i o n S c i e n c e 2 7 ( M a r c h 1 9 9 5 ) : 3 - 5 . 171 STOU (Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University) and UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand. Report of the Consultative Meeting and Workshop: Planning Human R e sourc e s De v e l opme nt f or Inf orm at i on So c i e t i e s. Ba ngko k, 199 7 (Supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports & Culture. G o v e r n m e n t o f J a p a n ) . 172 Appendix Names of institutions in Asia and Pacific offering courses in library and information science via distance education A u s t r a l i a C h a r l e s S t u r t U n i v e r s i t y C u r t i n U n i v e r s i t y o f T e c h n o l o g y E d i t h C o w a n U n i v e r s i t y M o n a s h U n i v e r s i t y O p e n T r a i n i n g S e r v i c e s T h e Q u e e n s l a n d U n i v e r s i t y T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f N e w S o u t h W a l e s U n i v e r s i t y o f S o u t h A u s t r a l i a U n i v e r s i t y o f C e n t r a l Q u e e n s l a n d Victorian TAFE Off Campus Network. Department of Technical and Further E d u c a t i o n C h i n a , R e p u b l i c o f H o n g K o n g B a p t i s t C o l l e g e C e n t r a l R a d i o a n d T e l e v i s i o n U n i v e r s i t y U n i v e r s i t y o f H o n g K o n g F i j i U n i v e r s i t y o f t h e S o u t h P a c i f i c I n d i a , R e p u b l i c o f A n n a m a l a i U n i v e r s i t y B i r l a I n s t i t u t e o f T e c h n o l o g y a n d S c i e n c e D r . B . R . A m b e d k a r O p e n U n i v e r s i t y I n d i r a G a n d h i N a t i o n a l O p e n U n i v e r s i t y K a k a t i y a U n i v e r s i t y K o t a O p e n U n i v e r s i t y M a d u r a i K a m a r a j U n i v e r s i t y N a l a n d a O p e n U n i v e r s i t y 173 U n i v e r s i t y o f C a l i c u t U n i v e r s i t y o f M a d r a s J a p a n B u k k y o U n i v e r s i t y K i n k i U n i v e r s i t y N e w Z e a l a n d M a s s e y U n i v e r s i t y V i c t o r i a U n i v e r s i t y o f W e l l i n g t o n P a k i s t a n A l l a m a l q b a l O p e n U n i v e r s i t y P a p u a N e w G u i n e a U n i v e r s i t y o f P a p u a N e w G u i n e a T h a i l a n d R a m k a m h a e n g U n i v e r s i t y S u k h o t h a i T h a m m a t h i r a t O p e n U n i v e r s i t y ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ 
work_ugjjokcxujarfndxqihpkog2pu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_uh5uld3horhcdjzllj7osonlwm	----	С. В. Запечников 46 С. В. Запечников ОПЫТ ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ ДИСТАНЦИОННЫХ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНЫХ ТЕХНОЛОГИЙ ПРИ ОБУЧЕНИИ КРИПТОЛОГИИ Введение По определению [1], дистанционное обучение – взаимодействие учителя и учащихся между собой на расстоянии, отражающее все присущие учебному процессу компоненты (цели, содержание, методы, организационные формы, средства обучения) и реализуемое специфичными средствами интернет-технологий или другими средствами, предусматривающими интерактивность. Всестороннее развитие технологий дистанционного обучения – одна из общемировых тенденций, которая находит широкую поддержку со стороны практически всех университетов, занимающих высокие места в мировых рейтингах: Times Higher Education (THE), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, Шанхайском рейтинге и др. Не обошла стороной эта тенденция и преподавание дисциплин в сфере информационной безопасности и криптологии. Однако широкое внедрение дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии, которое мы наблюдаем сегодня, не только обусловлено «стихийными» общемировыми тенденциями, но и подготовлено рядом объективных условий, рассматриваемых ниже. 1. Особенности преподавания криптологии в современных условиях За последние два десятилетия заметно расширилась проблемная область криптологии, возник целый ряд новых областей ее применения и соответствующий им новый научно-методический аппарат. Одновременно наблюдается стабилизация (или даже некоторое ослабление) интереса ученых и практиков к определенным классическим разделам криптологии или относительно новым разделам, до того динамично развивавшимся. Такие бурные изменения обусловлены, с одной стороны, стремительным развитием ИТ и возрастающими потребностями общества в обеспечении безопасности при их реализации, а с другой стороны, новыми научными открытиями в криптологии и смежных областях прикладной математики. Перед университетами, ведущими преподавание криптологических дисциплин, возникла задача адекватного отражения в учебных программах и преподавательской практике неординарных изменений, происходящих в сфере компьютерных наук в целом и криптологии в частности. В последние годы во всем мире наблюдается неуклонный и стремительный рост числа научных публикаций в области криптологии. Наглядным свидетельством этому служит статистика публикаций (рис. 1) в электронном архиве препринтов Международной ассоциации криптологических исследований IACR [2]. Кроме того, нельзя не учитывать тот факт, что с появлением поисковых сервисов в сети Интернет (Google, Yahoo!, «Яндекс» и др.), электронных энциклопедий (Wikipedia), архивов электронных публикаций и препринтов (CiteSeer, IEEEx- plore, eprint.iacr.org и др.) принципиально изменились возможности поиска научно-технической информации. Как показывает практика, эти сервисы активно используются и студентами, и преподавателями, поэтому можно быть уверенными в том, что в абсолютном большинстве случаев и преподаватель, и учащийся предпочтет найти интересующий его термин, статью, книгу или описание алгоритма, протокола, метода и т. д. именно при помощи поискового сервиса. В условиях такого «информационного взрыва» принципиально меняется роль преподавателя. В прошлом он был чуть ли не единственным доступным учащемуся авторитетным источником знаний. Сейчас он скорее превращается в некоторый «фильтр», который должен избавить учащегося от огромного потока лишних, малозначительных или откровенно недостоверных сведений, донося до учащегося лишь высококачественные и системно организованные знания. Задача преподавателя Опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии 47 в этих условиях – так организовать учебный процесс, чтобы максимально повысить эффективность усвоения знаний и приобретения необходимых компетенций учащимися. Рис. 1. Статистика публикаций в электронном архиве IACR 2. Два сценария применения дистанционных образовательных технологий Поскольку сама криптология в современных условиях давно уже стала частью информатики (computer science), роль ИТ в обучении криптологическим дисциплинам двойственна: они являются одновременно и предметом изучения, и инструментом организации учебного процесса. Среди таких инструментальных средств ведущее место принадлежит дистанционным образовательным технологиям. Дистанционные образовательные технологии за последние годы достаточно четко поделились на два сектора: - технологии, ориентированные на массовое, «поточное» обучение; - технологии, ориентированные на индивидуальное, «камерное» обучение. Технологии первого типа в англоязычных источниках принято называть MOOC – massive open online course, что в переводе означает буквально «массовые открытые онлайн-курсы». Это готовые образовательные продукты, включающие в себя как средства обучения, так и информационные ресурсы, доступные в режиме онлайн потенциально неограниченному числу участников через веб-интерфейс. В дополнение к традиционным курсам участникам таких систем обучения могут быть доступны новые виды образовательных ресурсов: видеоролики, интерактивные наборы задач и заданий по программированию, а также форумы пользователей, позволяющие составить своеобразное сообщество студентов, профессоров и преподавателей, задействованных в учебном процессе [3]. Идея MOOC наиболее полно реализуется в сетях дистанционного образования (СДО), доступных через веб-порталы, на которых собраны большие тематические подборки учебных курсов по различных предметным областям. В таблице 1 приведены характеристики наиболее известных и популярных СДО. СДО отличаются высоким качеством предоставляемых образовательных ресурсов и показывают существенный рост количества доступных учебных курсов. Число слушателей наиболее успешных курсов измеряется десятками и сотнями тысяч человек по всему миру. Так, например, в сети Coursera рекорд принадлежит курсу «Искусственный интеллект», на который по всему миру записалось свыше 180 000 человек одновременно. Как правило, будучи однажды «поставлены на поток», в дальнейшем такие курсы периодически повторяются. Ориентация на столь многочисленную аудиторию определяет характерные черты MOOC: - отсутствие обратной связи слушателей с преподавателем в режиме онлайн во время проведения занятий (ведущая форма занятий – видеолекции); 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 8 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3 Количество статей, зарегистрированных в электронном архиве IACR С. В. Запечников 48 - автоматизация проверки выполнения домашних заданий и долгосрочных проектов: контроль знаний проводится либо путем выбора правильных ответов на поставленные задачи и вопросы, либо путем заполнения интерактивных форм с автоматической проверкой форматов и значений введенных величин, либо путем взаимной проверки и рецензирования выполненных работ обучающимися. Таблица 1. Наиболее известные сети дистанционного образования, представленные в Интернете № п/п Адрес в сети Интернет Учредители Кол-во доступных курсов Стоимость обучения, выдача документа о завершении обучения По состоянию на ноябрь 2012 г. По состоянию на декабрь 2013 г. 1 Coursera www.coursera.org Ун-ты Стэнфорд, Принстон, Беркли, Питтсбург, Иллинойс, Торонто, Огайо, Джорджия, Вирджиния 207 553 Бесплатно, по окончании некоторых курсов выдаются сертификаты 2 edX www.edx.org Ун-ты Гарвард, Массачусетс, Беркли, с 2013 г. – Ун-т Техаса 9 110 Ресурсы – бесплатно, сертификаты – пока бесплатно, в будущем станут платными 3 UM Global Academy umga.miami.edu Ун-т Майами Middle school – 39, High school – 91 Middle school – 39, High school – 73 Стоимость регистрации $70 для доступа ко всем ресурсам и курсам 4 Udacity www.udacity.com Частная компания 18 33 Бесплатно 5 MIT Open Coursware ocw.mit.edu Массачусетский технологический институт 2100 2150 Ресурсы – бесплатно, сертификаты не выдаются За редким исключением, рабочий язык всех курсов – английский. Практически во всех СДО, перечисленных в таблице 1, представлены курсы по криптологическим дисциплинам: примерами являются курсы “Cryptography I” и “Cryptography II”, которые проводит профессор Стэнфордского университета Dan Boneh в сети Coursera, курс “Computer Security”, проводимый совместно Стэнфордским университетом и Калифорнийским университетом в Беркли (США) в той же сети, курс “Applied Cryptography”, который проводит профессор Университета Вирджинии (США) David Evans, несколько курсов по сетевой безопасности и криптографии (как общего характера, так и специализированных) Массачусетского технологического института (США) Опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии 49 в сети MIT Open Courseware. В совокупности представленные в СДО курсы охватывают все ступени обучения: от undergraduate до postgraduate, то есть от бакалавриата до аспирантуры. По мнению автора статьи, очевидные достоинства образовательных курсов, представленных в сетях дистанционного образования: их высокое качество и минимальные затраты на обучение – позволяют рекомендовать их для самообразования как профессорско-преподавательскому составу российских вузов, так и студентам, обучающимся по программам магистратуры и специалитета. Однако технологии, ориентированные на массовое обучение, не исчерпываются СДО. Как уже отмечалось, в их основе лежат веб-технологии. Поэтому создание многофункциональных веб-сайтов, помогающих поддерживать учебный процесс и организовывать различные формы взаимодействия между преподавателями и учащимися, также способно принести немало пользы. Технологии второго типа по существу представляют собой разные виды телеконференций с одним или несколькими ведущими и небольшим числом участников, активно включенных в процесс взаимодействия с ведущими. За ними в последнее время закрепилось специальное название «вебинары», являющееся калькой английского слова “webinar”, полученного соединением слов “web” и “seminar”, то есть семинар, проводимый с использованием веб-технологий (онлайн-семинар, веб-конференция). Действительно, всем участникам телеконференции необходимо либо установить на своих компьютерах специальное программное обеспечение, либо использовать специальные веб- сервисы, предоставляемые провайдерами в сети Интернет. Пожалуй, самыми известными примерами являются сервисы Cisco WebEx, Citrix Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting. Вместе с тем число провайдеров веб-конференций (как зарубежных, так и российских) увеличивается с каждым днем. Как показывает практика, веб-конференции хорошо подходят для проведения лекционных и семинарских занятий по самым различным дисциплинам, в частности, по широкому спектру дисциплин в сфере информационных технологий. В настоящее время многие российские вузы и учебные центры также реализуют учебные курсы по направлению «Информационная безопасность» в форме веб-конференций. 3. Авторский опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий, ориентированных на массовое обучение Автором настоящей статьи в 2013 г. создан и администрируется сайт поддержки учебного процесса по криптологическим дисциплинам, доступный по адресу: http://cryptowiki.net. Сайт используется в качестве справочно-информационного ресурса для специалистов в области криптографии и для выполнения всех видов домашних заданий и самостоятельной работы студентов при изучении дисциплин «Криптографические протоколы и стандарты», «Криптография в банковском деле». На этом же сайте размещены материалы для самостоятельной работы студентов, описание правил ведения рейтинговой системы учета успеваемости студентов, видеозаписи вебинаров, ранее проведенных автором. Сайт функционирует на базе коммерчески доступного хостинга на платформе Windows, на котором установлена свободно распространяемая система управления контентом («движок») MediaWiki версии BitNami. Интерфейс системы подобен хорошо известному абсолютному большинству пользователей интерфейсу «Википедии» (рис. 2). Центральное место на сайте занимает справочно-информационная система, названная «Энциклопедией теоретической и прикладной криптографии». Это создаваемый совместными усилиями преподавателя и студентов обширный информационный ресурс, включающий в себя все виды контента, доступные для размещения на сайте: текстовые и графические материалы, видеоролики, демонстрационные программы, математические выражения, листинги фрагментов программ и др. Справочно-информационная система состоит из более чем 55 содержательных разделов, каждый из которых посвящен одному из крупных направлений современной С. В. Запечников 50 криптографии, объединенных в две части: «Основы криптографии (Криптографические примитивы)» и «Приложения криптографии (Криптографические протоколы)». Контент всех разделов дублируется на русском и английском языках. Выполнение заданий, взаимное их рецензирование студентами и комментирование преподавателями на страницах сайта создает открытую и прозрачную для всех участников учебного процесса среду, способствует повышению публичности результатов работы студентов и объективности оценки их работы преподавателем. Помимо «Энциклопедии…», на сайте реализована и традиционная для сайтов учебно- методического характера функциональность: информационные материалы, «доска объявлений», дополнительные материалы к лекционным занятиям и пр. Хотелось бы указать еще на одну модель применения ИТ в обучении криптологическим дисциплинам, обладающую, как представляется, большими потенциальными возможностями. Ни для кого не секрет, что в отечественной высшей школе весьма сильна традиция «теоретизации» (иногда излишней) значительного числа преподаваемых в вузе дисциплин, что в прошлом обуславливалось, прежде всего, ярко выраженной направленностью на массовую подготовку научно-педагогических кадров высшей квалификации. Однако в связи с произошедшими за последние два десятилетия переменами в экономической и социальной жизни нашей страны существенно возрос спрос на освоение студентами практических приемов работы с самыми современными аппаратно-программными средствами, приобретение опыта практической работы по специальности. Лабораторная база многих учебных заведений, да и уровень их финансирования, оказались не готовы к выполнению этих требований. Вместе с тем во всем мире заметно расширяется применение ПО с открытым исходным кодом (open source software). Условия лицензионных соглашений на такое ПО в подавляющем большинстве случаев разрешают либо полностью свободное его использование для любых целей, либо по крайней мере свободное использование в некоммерческих и образовательных проектах. Отслеживание появления в сети Интернет свободно распространяемого ПО, обладающего большим потенциалом применения при обучении криптологии, и его освоение (в частности, постановка новых лабораторных работ и заданий на производственную практику) позволяют заметно усилить практическую направленность модернизируемых курсов криптологии. Характерными примерами такого ПО могут служить библиотеки криптографических алгоритмов Crypto++, PyCrypto, средство прототипирования криптографических конструкций Charm и многие другие образцы ПО с открытым исходным кодом. Рис. 2. Главная страница сайта cryptowiki.net Опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии 51 4. Авторский опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий, ориентированных на индивидуальное обучение Дистанционные образовательные технологии, ориентированные на индивидуальное обучение, хорошо подходят для организации как краткосрочных, так и длительных образовательных курсов в тех случаях, когда по каким-либо причинам невозможно регулярное очное общение между преподавателем и учащимися, например, при проведении курсов повышения квалификации и профессиональной переподготовки. В таблице 2 приведена разработанная автором программа из нескольких блоков криптологических дисциплин, которая является составной частью 540-часовой программы курсов профессиональной переподготовки по направлению 090900 – «Информационная безопасность». Всю теоретическую (лекционно-семинарскую) часть этих курсов удалось реализовать, применяя упомянутые выше дистанционные образовательные технологии. И только лабораторные модули обучения реализовывались в очной форме: единый блок лабораторных занятий проводился по окончании теоретического обучения. Таблица 2. Извлечение из программы курса профессиональной переподготовки: блоки криптологических дисциплин День занятий, количество часов Виды занятий (Л – лекция, С – семинар, ПЗ – практические занятия), темы занятий Модуль «Основы информационной безопасности и криптографической защиты информации» Дистанционное обучение (вебинары) 1-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Основы криптографии. Классическая криптография. Л: Основы криптографии. Классическая криптография. Л: Симметричные криптосистемы: блочные и поточные шифры, режимы шифрования, криптографические генераторы, практические аспекты применения шифров. Л: Симметричные криптосистемы: блочные и поточные шифры, режимы шифрования, криптографические генераторы, практические аспекты применения шифров. 2-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Асимметричные криптосистемы: открытое распределение ключей, протокол Диффи – Хеллмана, схемы открытого шифрования, электронная цифровая подпись. Л: Асимметричные криптосистемы: открытое распределение ключей, протокол Диффи – Хеллмана, схемы открытого шифрования, электронная цифровая подпись. Л: Криптографические хэш-функции и их применение. Л: Управление ключами: основы управления ключами, регламентация работы с ключевыми носителями, организационное обеспечение систем криптографической защиты информации. С. В. Запечников 52 3-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Ключевые системы симметричных и асимметричных криптосистем, концепция инфраструктуры открытых ключей (PKI). Л: Криптографические протоколы: основные понятия и определения, важнейшие типы криптографических протоколов, примеры. Способы, средства и протоколы криптографической защиты информации, передаваемой по каналам связи. Л: Криптографические протоколы: основные понятия и определения, важнейшие типы криптографических протоколов, примеры. Способы, средства и протоколы криптографической защиты информации, передаваемой по каналам связи. С: Стандартизация методов и средств криптографической защиты информации (международные и отечественные стандарты). Модуль «Криптографические методы защиты информации» Дистанционное обучение (вебинары) 1-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Исторический экскурс по классической криптографии: с древнейших времен до начала XX в. С: Выводы из классической криптографии: типы шифров, базовые математические понятия. Л: Криптография первой половины XX в.: электромеханические шифровальные машины и их устройство. Л: Теория Шеннона и ее значение для развития современной криптографии во второй половине XX в. 2-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Случайные и псевдослучайные генераторы. Критерии качества криптографических генераторов. Л: Конструкции криптографических генераторов случайных и псевдослучайных двоичных последовательностей. Л: Определение поточного шифра. Требования к стойкости поточного шифра. Л: Конструкции поточных шифров. Примеры. Применение поточных шифров. 3-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Определение блочного шифра. Требования к стойкости блочного шифра. Л: Конструкции блочных шифров: шифры, основанные на петле Фейстеля, примеры. Л: Конструкции блочных шифров: шифры, основанные на петле Фейстеля (DES, ГОСТ 28147-89 и др.), их стойкость. Криптоанализ блочных шифров. Л: Конструкции блочных шифров: шифры, основанные на алгебраических операциях (на примере AES), и их стойкость. 4-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Симметричные схемы шифрования. Стойкость симметричных схем шифрования. Л: Симметричные схемы аутентификации сообщений на основе блочных шифров. Л: Криптографические хэш-функции (бесключевые). С: Сравнительная оценка симметричных криптографических алгоритмов. Опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии 53 5-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Симметричные схемы аутентификации сообщений на основе криптографических хэш-функций. Л: Схемы аутентичного шифрования. Л: Симметричные криптосхемы с расширенными свойствами и с дополнительной функциональностью. Л: Управление ключами симметричных криптосистем. 6-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Вычислительно сложные задачи, используемые в асимметричной криптографии. Однонаправленные функции. Л: Генерация параметров и ключей асимметричных криптосхем. Л: Открытое распределение ключей. Протокол Диффи – Хеллмана. Л: Арифметические алгоритмы, используемые в асимметричной криптографии. 7-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Определение схемы открытого шифрования. Стойкость схем открытого шифрования. Л: Схемы открытого шифрования на основе однонаправленной функции с потайной дверью (схемы RSA, Рабина и др.). Л: Схемы открытого шифрования на основе дискретного логарифмирования (схема Эль-Гамаля и др.). С: Сравнительная оценка симметричных шифров и схем открытого шифрования. 8-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Определение схемы цифровой подписи. Стойкость схем цифровой подписи. Л: Схемы цифровой подписи на основе задачи RSA. Л: Схемы цифровой подписи на основе задачи дискретного логарифмирования. С: Сравнительная оценка симметричных и асимметричных методов аутентификации сообщений. 9-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Математические основы криптографии на эллиптических кривых. Л: Асимметричные криптосхемы на основе математического аппарата эллиптических кривых. Л: Асимметричные криптосхемы на основе математического аппарата билинейных спариваний. Перспективы эллиптической криптографии. С: Практические аспекты обеспечения стойкости СКЗИ. Характерные ошибки, допускаемые при реализации. 10-й день (4 акад. часа) С: Регулирование разработки и применения СКЗИ в России. С: Структура криптосистем. Составление «карты», показывающей взаимосвязь основных разделов традиционной и современной криптографии. Очное обучение (лабораторные занятия) 1-й день (9 акад. часов) ПЗ: Стандартные сетевые утилиты. Сетевой сканер Nmap. Анализатор трафика tcpdump. ПЗ: Межсетевое экранирование в ОС Linux. Трансляция сетевых адресов. ПЗ: Удаленное управление и туннелирование по протоколу SSH. Шифрованные файловые системы. ПЗ: Система аутентификации, учета и аудита в ОС Linux. С. В. Запечников 54 2-й день (9 акад. часов) ПЗ: Перемешивающие свойства криптографических преобразований. Симметричные криптосистемы. ПЗ: Методы криптоанализа. Асимметричные криптосистемы. Модуль «Безопасность открытых информационных систем» Дистанционное обучение (вебинары) 1-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Основы конструирования криптографических протоколов. Л: Базовые конструкции протоколов аутентификации. Аутентификация по паролю. Аутентификация «запрос – ответ». Л: Доказательства с нулевым разглашением знания. Протоколы аутентификации, основанные на доказательствах с нулевым разглашением знания. С: Сферы практического применения криптографических протоколов. 2-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Базовые конструкции протоколов распределения ключей. Основные понятия и определения. Свойства протоколов распределения ключей. Л: Протоколы распределения ключей, основанные на симметричных криптографических методах. Л: Протоколы распределения ключей, основанные на симметричных криптографических методах. Л: Протоколы удаленной аутентификации и механизмы единого входа в систему (single sign-on). Протокол Kerberos. 3-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Защищенная электронная почта. Спецификация PGP. Л: Протоколы обеспечения безопасности сервиса мгновенного обмена сообщений. Протокол Off-the-Record Messaging v3 (OTR). Л: Криптографические протоколы в анонимных сетях. Протоколы сети TOR. Л: Криптографическая защита систем кооперативного обмена данными (пиринговых сетей). 4-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Криптографические протоколы для образования защищенных каналов передачи данных. Способы и средства установления защищенных соединений. Л: Спецификация SSH. Л: Спецификация SSL/TLS. Л: Анализ стойкости протоколов SSL/TLS. Уязвимости к атакам, классификация атак. 5-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Спецификация IPSec. Л: Анализ стойкости протоколов IPSec. Уязвимость к атакам, классификация атак. Л: Спецификации для беспроводных сетей: WEP, WPA, WPA2, WiMax, LTE: криптографическое ядро протоколов, стойкость и уязвимости, сравнительный анализ. С: Обеспечение сетевой безопасности криптографическими методами: сравнительный анализ криптографических методов, средств и протоколов. Опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии 55 6-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Схемы разделения секрета. Пороговые криптосхемы. Пороговая криптография. Примеры практического применения пороговых схем. Л: Обеспечение информационной безопасности распределенных вычислений криптографическими методами. «Задача о византийских генералах». Протокол «византийского соглашения». Л: Протоколы обеспечения безопасности доступа к базам данных и облачным хранилищам данных. Атрибутный контроль доступа к шифрованным данным. Л: Квантовая криптография. Постквантовая криптография. За пределами постквантовой криптографии. Актуальные направления и нерешенные проблемы криптографии (краткий обзор). 7-й день (4 акад. часа) Л+ПЗ: Библиотеки разработчика СКЗИ, инструментальные средства создания прототипов СКЗИ (краткий обзор). Аппаратные средства поддержки криптографических механизмов. «Экскурсия» по сайтам, полезным для разработчика алгоритмов и программного кода СКЗИ. С: Стойкость и уязвимости средств криптографической защиты информации. Криптостойкость и стойкость СКЗИ. Анализ типичных ошибок при реализации. Очное обучение (лабораторные занятия) 1-й день (8 акад. часов) ПЗ: Комплексы ФПСУ-IP. Общие сведения о комплексе, аппаратные и программные средства. Инсталляция программного обеспечения комплекса. (4 часа) ПЗ: Управление администраторами. Управление начальной загрузкой. Организация работы ключевой системы. Настройка сетевых адаптеров. Установка дополнений и новых версий. Режимы отображения при запущенном комплексе. (4 часа) 2-й день (8 акад. часов) ПЗ: Комплексы ФПСУ-IP. Эксплуатация комплекса. Настройка портов. Групповые политики. (4 часа) ПЗ: Удаленный администратор – установка, конфигурирование, администрирование. (4 часа) 3-й день (8 акад. часов) ПЗ: Взаимодействие комплекса с сетевым оборудованием. Комплексы ФПСУ-IP/ Клиент. Центр Генерации Ключей Клиентов. Устройство VPN-key. (4 часа) ПЗ: Инсталляция и настройка клиента локально и на комплексе. Взаимодействие со стандартными межсетевыми экранами (Kerio WinRoute firewall, MS ISA Cli- ent). (4 часа) Модуль «Информационная безопасность автоматизированных банковских систем» Дистанционное обучение (вебинары) 1-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Криптография в банковском деле: отечественный опыт. Основные направления применения криптографии в АБС. «Финансовая криптография». Нормативно- правовые и нормативно-технические основы криптографической защиты информации в организациях банковской системы РФ. Л: Требования стандартов Банка России по обеспечению информационной безопасности в организациях банковской системы РФ криптографическими средствами. Л: Формы безналичных расчетов в РФ и в международной практике. Унифицированные форматы электронных банковских сообщений в РФ и их защита криптографическими методами. С. В. Запечников 56 Л: Унифицированные форматы электронных банковских сообщений в системе международного финансового обмена SWIFT и их защита криптографическими методами. 2-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Системы межбанковских расчетов: обеспечение информационной безопасности. Криптографическая защита систем дистанционного банковского обслуживания (ДБО). Л: Криптографическая защита систем розничных платежей, в том числе систем «мгновенных» платежей. Л: Системы онлайн-платежей в Интернете, «электронные кошельки», «электронные деньги», их криптографическая защита. Л: Система «криптовалюты» BitCoin, дискуссия о ее безопасности и перспективах. 3-й день (8 акад. часов) Л: Пластиковые карты и криптографические особенности их применения в банковском деле. Стандарты ISO/IEC. Л: Системы платежей по банковским картам: обеспечение информационной безопасности. Спецификация SET. Спецификация 3D-Secure. Л+ПЗ: Комплекс методов и средств криптографической защиты информации в современных защищенных информационных технологиях (ПЗ на основе электронного справочно-энциклопедического пособия) (начало). 4-й день (4 акад. часа) Л+ПЗ: Комплекс методов и средств криптографической защиты информации в современных защищенных информационных технологиях (ПЗ на основе электронного справочно-энциклопедического пособия) (окончание). Очное обучение (лабораторные занятия) 1-й день (8 акад. часов) ПЗ: Криптографические средства для шифрования данных на дисках. Защищенный документооборот. (4 часа) ПЗ: Развертывание MS Certificate Authority. Аутентификация с помощью сертификатов. (4 часа) 2-й день (8 акад. часов) ПЗ: Аутентификация. Цели и задачи. Типы, методы аутентификации и их особенности. Использование технологии аутентификации для корпоративных сетей. Анализ существующих угроз безопасности относительно процедуры аутентификации. Идентификаторы Rutoken. Назначение. Технические характеристики. Архитектура Rutoken. ПЗ: Двухфакторная идентификация. Использование технологии двухфакторной идентификации на базе идентификаторов Rutoken RF. Архитектура Rutoken. Аппаратная платформа, комплекс программного обеспечения Rutoken. ПЗ: Установка и администрирование идентификатора. Утилита обслуживания Ruto- ken. Утилита администрирования Rutoken. Браузер сертификатов. Централизованная интеграция идентификатора Rutoken в домен Active Directory. Использование групповых политик в процессе интеграции и централизованного управления. ПЗ: Использование идентификаторов Rutoken для безопасного хранения цифровых сертификатов и закрытых ключей ЭЦП и шифрования. Интеграция идентификатора Rutoken в качестве защищенного хранилища сертификатов Опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии 57 с Microsoft Certificate Services. Реализация защищенной электронной почты с использованием идентификатора Rutoken. Интеграция идентификатора Rutoken с продуктами компании «КриптоПро». Построение защищенного документооборота, соответствующего российским стандартам. ПЗ: Криптографические средства для шифрования данных на дисках. Защищенный документооборот. Опыт реализации этой программы наглядно демонстрирует весь потенциал дистанционных образовательных технологий. В данном случае удалось реализовать полный курс криптологии: от введения в предмет для начинающих до расширенного уровня знаний, умений и навыков, достаточного для владения приемами разработки программного и аппаратного обеспечения новых СКЗИ. Как показывает опыт, проведение занятий в форме веб-конференций не только является вполне адекватной заменой традиционным лекциям «у доски», но и существенно повышает интенсивность подачи материала слушателям и, тем самым, эффективность учебного процесса в целом. Заключение Подводя итоги обсуждению опыта применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии, отметим следующее. 1. Анализ существующих дистанционных образовательных технологий и личный опыт автора по их применению при обучении криптологии свидетельствуют о том, что дистанционные образовательные технологии позволяют существенным образом модернизировать формы проведения всех видов учебных занятий: лекционных, семинарских, лабораторных. Основным позитивным эффектом при этом является повышение эффективности основного учебного процесса, а также повышение удобства взаимодействия преподавателей и учащихся при выполнении домашних заданий, курсовых проектов, решении организационных вопросов и освоении факультативных разделов дисциплин. 2. Две ярко выраженные современные тенденции развития дистанционных образовательных технологий – сети дистанционного образования (а также примыкающие к ним многофункциональные веб-ресурсы, рассчитанные на более узкую аудиторию) и веб-конференции (вебинары). Сети дистанционного образования являются наиболее ярким проявлением складывающегося глобального образовательного пространства и глобальной конкуренции ведущих мировых университетов в сфере образовательных процессов. Веб-конференции – наиболее эффективная форма организации занятий для небольших групп учащихся. Дистанционные образовательные технологии, реализующие оба подхода, в равной мере применимы при обучении криптологическим дисциплинам. 3. Приобретенный опыт применения дистанционных образовательных технологий при обучении криптологии может быть распространен на другие специальные дисциплины, преподаваемые студентам, слушателям курсов повышения квалификации и курсов переподготовки, обучающимся по направлению «Информационная безопасность», а также на управление процессом выполнения студентами учебно- и научно-исследовательских работ, практик, выпускных квалификационных работ. СПИСОК ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ: 1. «Термины и определения дистанционного обучения» [Электронный ресурс] / Лаборатория дистанционного обучения Российской академии образования. URL: http://distant.ioso.ru/do/termin.htm (дата обращения: 13.12.2013). 2. Cryptology ePrint Archive [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://eprint.iacr.org (дата обращения 13.12.2013). 3. Waldrop M. Massive Open Online Courses, aka MOOCs, Transform Higher Education and Science. Scientific American. April 2013. URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=massive-open-online-courses-transform-higher-education-and-science (дата обращения: 14.12.2013). 
work_uihssulgrfbszhtdtk6l5ttqnu	----	Asian Libraries 7,10 274 Library networks for distance education A case study of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand Chutima Sacchanand Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Nonthaburi, Thailand Introduction Distance education has had a significant impact, and its importance is being realised by educators and policy makers all over the world because of its usefulness and potential in providing greater access to higher education. The distance education approach is an innovative and flexible system that provides equal opportunities and a second chance for people who may have be en deprived of earlier educational opportunities. Today distance education places emphasis not only on the printed medium but also on the multimedia approach which has become a cornerstone of the distance education system. Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) was founded on 5 September 1978, as the 11th state university and the largest distance education university in Thailand; it has a current enrolment of 268,865 students. Its unique teaching method enables working people to improve their quality of life and upgrade their qualifications through academic courses that do not conflict with their work schedules. The University offers Certificate, Bachelor and Master’s degree programmes. In the 1996 academic year 12,971 students successfully completed their studies to become STOU’s 14th g roup of graduates. STOU is internationally recognised and has received numerous awards including the 1995 COL-ICDE Award of Excellence from the Commonwealth of Lear ning and the Inter national Council for Distance Education, and the 1992 Asian Management Award in Development Management from the Asian Institute of Management. Library and educational media services STOU provides library and educational media services at central, regional and provincial levels. This is a valuable aspect of providing services to students and is unique to STOU. The Office of Documentation and Information provides central library and educational media services for faculty members, university personnel and students. This office is also responsible for the acquisition of books and other educational materials in accordance with the needs of the University’s local and Asian Libraries, Vol. 7 No. 10, 1998, pp. 274-279. © MCB University Press, 1017-6748 Library networks for distance education 275 provincial branch libraries and the area resource centres. The Office of Documentation and Information caters to the needs and requirements of faculty members, course teams, course writers, editors, media technologists and personnel involved in course production and development. To standardise computerised library operations and networking, organisation and acquisition are conducted at the central libraries. At the regional level STOU has established area resource centres and graduate educational resource centres to provide library and educational media services. The first Area Resource Centre was opened in 1993, and by the end of 1998 there will be centres in the following locations across the entire country: Lampang, Sukhothai and Nakhon Sawan in the north; Udon Thani and Ubon Ratchathani in the northeast; Nakhon Noyok, Phetchaburi and Chanthaburi in the central region; Nakhorn Srithammarat and Yala in the south. The area resource centres are responsible for offering a wide variety of educational and information services to STOU students as well as services and activities that help improve the quality of life of the Thai people. Area resource centres serve as local STOU branch offices that provide library and information services, and educational media through modern communication technologies. The graduate educational resource centres were established in 1993 in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to provide various services, particularly reference services to STOU graduate students to aid them in their academic research. The graduate educational resource centres are located across the country, with four in the following National Library branches: Rajamungkhalapisak Library in Chanthaburi Province (central region), Rajamungkhalapisak Library in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province (also central region), Rajamungkhalapisak Library in Chiang Mai Province (north) and King Rama IX Honorary Library in Nakhon Ratchasima Province (northeast). Other centres are located in the Tinasulanonda Library at Mahawachirawut School in Songkhla and in Nakhon Srithammarat (both in the south), and the Suan Lumpini Public Library in Bangkok. At the provincial level 80 “STOU cor ners” were established in every provincial public library throughout the country, including the following four provincial public libraries in Bangkok: Suan Lumpini Public Library, Soi Phra Nang Public Library, Phasi Chareon Public Library and Bangkhaen Public Library. STOU corners were established as repositories and service centres for educational media acquired and prepared by the Office of Documentation and Information to serve the needs of STOU students and the general public. Library networks With the establishment of open universities all over the world, a large segment of the population is pursuing academic studies through the distance education system. Distance education institutions need library and information services as much as their counterparts, the conventional universities. Libraries must focus on fulfilling the needs and requirements of independent learners by Asian Libraries 7,10 276 exploring modern information technologies and developing library networks. It is only through cooperation that efficient and effective information services can be realised. Library networks are a form of cooperation aimed at providing better services for the benefit of users. Most of the distance teaching universities operate through a three-tier system consisting of the main university, regional centres and study centres. STOU has joined and formed various national and international library networks to promote distance education. STOULINET STOU offers library and information services through the STOU library network (STOULINET), which is linked to the STOU computer network (STOULINET) and other national and international networks. The Office of Documentation and Information provides various library and information services and has developed seven database reference systems including the thesis abstract database, science and technology database, distance education database, printing technology database, telecommu- database on Their Majesties King Rama VII and Queen Rambhai Barni. The STOU automated library system VTLS was introduced in 1991 to facilitate, expand and provide more convenient and improved services and information access to users. VTLS offers a range of integrated features which can interface in the Thai language, including an online public access cataloguing system. THAILINET The STOU automated library system VTLS is linked to STOUNET and the wider national network Thai Academic Library Network (THAILINET) and other international networks. THAILINET is a forum for exchanging resources between libraries and national and international institutions of higher learning. Through computers and telecommunications, this network helps to develop the potential and increase the efficiency of the libraries of government universities and institutes of higher learning. As Thailand’s main academic library network, THAILINET has the following objectives: (1) to computerise university libraries and automate library systems in order to develop the full potential and efficiency of library services; (2) to develop networks through computers and telecommunications that will enhance information services and maximise the potential of human and material resources; (3) to link central and provincial university library networks into an effective system that is able to link with other national and international library networks; Library networks for distance education 277 (4) to develop human and library resources, information technologies, and to serve users’ needs. THAILINET comprises two networks: the Thai Academic Library Network (Metropolitan) – THAILINET (M) and the Provincial University Library Network – PULINET. THAILINET (M) has a membership of 12 state university libraries in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area and the Office of the Permanent Secretary of University Affairs: Chulalongkorn University, Kasetsart University, King Mongkut Institute of Technology Chaokhun Tahar n Lad Krabang, King Mongkut Institute of Technology North Bangkok, King Mongkut Institute of Technology Thonburi, Mahidol University, National Institute of Development Administration, Office of the Permanent Secretary of University Affairs, Ramkhamhaeng University, Silpakorn University, Thapra Palace Campus, Srinakharinwirot University, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University and Thammasat University. Through support from the Bureau of Budget, the project was launched in 1995 and is coordinated by the Office of the Permanent Secretary. PULINET has a membership of 11 regional state university libraries throughout the country: Chiang Mai University, Maejo University, Naresuan University, Khon Kaen University, Mahasarakam University, Ubon Ratchathani University, Suranaree University of Technology, Silpakorn University, Burapha University, University of the South, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai and Pattani campuses. PULINET began operating in 1993 with the main objective of providing access to the member libraries. Initially Chiang Mai University Library played a leading role in coordinating the network; subsequently each university member alternated every two years as leader of the network. At present university libraries use the same standard MARC format for cataloguing and are at the stage of creating their own databases. It is expected that by the year 2000 all automated university libraries in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area and in the provinces will be linked, thus achieving their objective to develop the full potential and efficiency of Thai library and information services. THAISARN THAISARN (Thai social, scientific, academic and research network) or THAISARN-Inter net was established in 1992. The main objective of the network is to promote and support academic work, research and development. THAISARN is linked to computer systems of many universities and government institutions including STOU. Through THAISARN members can access the Internet, the most extensive information network in the world. STOU users can access the Inter net through NECTEC (national electronics and computer technology) as the gateway, and access information from major university libraries, information centres and research institutes around the world including the Library of Congress, Harvard University, University of California at Los Angeles, OCLC and other Internet members. Asian Libraries 7,10 278 Discussion In the era of globalisation people are more likely to be affected by international events. Distance education is a promising and innovative area of education which has something to offer people at all levels of society. The role of the library in distance education is evolving. Normally students in distance learning institutions cannot be provided with the same library services that are available at institutions with on-campus facilities. However, STOU’s automated library will provide and create a new information infrastructure that will give students universal access to all recorded knowledge that was previously only available at traditional libraries through printed materials. Because our students are not on campus, the use of information technology holds great potential to meet the challenge of bridging the gap between the library and the students at home or in the workplace. The challenge is to find technology for our students that is both universally accessible and relatively inexpensive. The introduction of the online public access catalogue (OPAC) provides librarians with the greatest opportunity to bridge the gap between the library and student users. OPAC can be accessed by students from area resource centres and graduate educational resource centres. This will eventually provide distance learners with even more independence. Complementing these trends are advances in communication technology which will facilitate access to library materials, resources and services. The student will be able to prepare his/her own bibliography; check whether specific titles are available in the library or simply scan the subject catalogue to gain some idea of the library’s holdings. Wherever cooperative networking exists and compatible systems are in place, students will be able to access other library catalogues as well. The challenge for librarians will be to educate students about these new technologies. They will also need to provide sufficient bibliographic instruction to enable students to use the technology in their local communities to locate references and information not only in the central library but in all other university libraries linked to the network. Libraries are trying to meet the growing needs and demands of students in remote areas through a variety of services. One solution to provide efficient education services to distance students is to develop library networks. STOU recognises the importance of collaboration with other institutions through joint library networks: STOULINET, THAILINET and THAISARN-Internet. Even in remote areas students can get better access to library and information services through quick and easy communication systems. Even if such access cannot be made available to all students, its availability through regional offices and cooperating institutions would be a step closer to reaching the students on their own ground. Library services play an important role in servicing the distance education needs of not only STOU students, professors and instr uctors, but also other universities, the academic community and the general public. Library networks for distance education 279 References Chulalongkorn University Academic Resource Centre (1996), “THAILINER-M Phase II”. Jagannathan, N. (1996), “Library and information services for distance learners”, Resource Sharing and Information Networks, Vol. 11 No. 1/2, pp. 159-70. Rodriguez, H.F. (1996), “The role of the library in distance education”, Microcomputers for Information Management, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 21-30. Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (1996), 18th Anniversary of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University Press, Nonthaburi. About the author Chutima Sacchanand is Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, where she is also Vice-President for Operations and Director of the Office of Documentation and Information. She is currently President of the Thai Library Association. Address: Department of Library and Information Science, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangpood, Pakkred, Nonthaburi 11120, Thailand. 
work_uik7i47sqzawxptfzc53g32fu4	----	Investigating preservice computer teachers’ attitudes towards distance education 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.158 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 324–328 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com WCLTA 2010 Investigating preservice computer teachers’ attitudes towards distance education Alper im eka, Tuba skendero lua *, Metin skendero lua aKaradeniz Technical University, Fatih Faculty of Education,Trabzon, 61335, Turkey Abstract This study aims to investigate attitudes towards distance education of junior and senior students at Computer Education and Instructional Technologies according to gender, grade level, and participation to distance education course. The sample is 56 students who had lesson related with distance education previously. Data collection tools included student information form and The Scale of attitudes towards distance education. In data analysis, descriptive statistics were performed. Attitudes towards distance education scores were significantly unrelated with gender and grade level (p>0.05). On the other hand, students’ previous participation to a distance learning course significantly affect their attitudes scores related to distance education (p<0.05). © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Distance education attitude; 1. Introduction Advances in technology are making an impact on content, learning strategies, and instructional traditions. Wide area networking and the Internet can be combined to enable communication through email, discussion threads, chat rooms, whiteboards, and audio and video conferencing. The use of information and Internet technologies as teaching and learning tools is now rapidly expanding into education. Distance education is one of the most popular learning environments in the information age. Thus, distance education efforts and experiments currently receive enormous attention across the globe. Distance education, as defined by the all educators in this field, is a process in which a distance exists between the person who deliver the instruction and the person of reception. It consists of distance teaching and distance learning. Due to time and other restrictions of life, distance education has become the most popular way for those who are getting their instructions and increasing their knowledge in their area of interest. Also, distance education has enabled people to share information and make teaching and learning processes possible with no time and distance limitations (Dabaj and Ba ak, 2008). 1.1. Review of the related researches on students’ attitudes toward distance education * Tuba skendero lu. Tel.: +9-0505-661-16-45; fax: +9-0462-248-73-44 E-mail address: tiskenderoglu@ktu.edu.tr. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Alper Şimşek et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 324–328 325 Özdemir et al. (2009) presented a relationship between preservice teachers’ information literacy skills and their attitudes towards distance education. In their study they administered two questionnaires to 235 preservice teachers enrolled in the department of primary school teaching, the department of science teaching and the department of Turkish language teaching in order to examine their attitudes and their literacy skills. They found no significant relationship between participants’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance learning. Ate & Altun (2008) investigated attitudes towards distance learning of junior and senior students at Computer Education and Instructional Technologies according to gender, grade level, participation in distance learning course, experience in using computer, perceived computer competency and learning styles. In their study they utilized demographics form, Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory, The Scale of ATDL as data collection tools. They observed that ATDL scores were significantly unrelated with gender and grade level. Other factors that were significantly affect ATDL, previous participation to any distance learning course, experience in using computers and perceived computer competency were found. One another research investigated on students’ attitudes and motivations toward online learning. Findings showed that students’ attitudes toward online learning was more positive (Knowles & Kerkman, 2007). Ilter et al., (2005) explored students’ perceptions and attitudes towards distance education based on their gender, school types attended, age and access to educational technology such as computer and internet. During the research period a questionnaire was administered to 50 students. The result of the research indicated that students might show positive beliefs towards distance education if appropriate equipment and atmosphere were provided. A survey which was conducted 61 individual barrier items implemented to students through internet by Muilenburg & Berge (2005). The purpose of the study was determining the underlying constructs that comprise student barriers to online learning. Administrative issues, social interaction, academic skills, technical skills, learner motivation, time and support for studies, cost and access to the internet, and technical problems were identified as important barrier factors. They reported in research that these barrier factors included: gender, age, ethnicity, type of learning institution, online learning skills, effectiveness of learning online, online learning enjoyment, prejudicial treatment in traditional classes and the number of online courses completed. Keller & Cernerud, (2002) examined students’ perceptions of e-learning taking students at Fönköpink University in Sweden. 150 students were attended to questionnaire that was included closed and open ended questions. Male students, students with previous knowledge of computers and students with positive attitudes to new technologies were all less positive to e-learning on campus than other students summarized from results. Also findings showed that strategy of implementing e- learning system at the university was more important in influencing students’ perceptions than the background variables. According to McIsaac & Gunawardena (1996), distance education delivers education to students who are not physically present at the site of education delivery. They also claimed that interaction between students and teachers increases in distance education. Moreover, most distance education courses rely on technologies which are either already in place or are being considered for their cost-effectiveness. Distance learning programs have played an increasingly important role in the achievement of universities’ goals in recent years, and the trend seems likely to continue (Dewald, Crane, Booth, & Levine, 2000). Arbaugh & Duray (2002) found that students who had more experience in distance education were tend to be more satisfied with learning over the internet. Personal attitudes are a major factor to affect individual usage of information technology. In other words, understanding users’ attitudes toward distance learning facilitates the creation of appropriate distance learning applications for teaching and learning. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between different factors in terms of class, gender and attending to one of distance education activity and computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education. Determining students’ attitude towards distance education represents an important stage in predicting the adoption of certain behavior. For this aim the main problem is “How computer preservice teachers’ attitudes are change towards distance education related with different factors?” is main problem of this research and sub-problems are: 1. What are the students’ attitudes towards distance education? 2. Is gender effect significantly of computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education? 3. Is grade level effect significantly of computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education? 326 Alper Şimşek et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 324–328 4. Is students’ previous participation to a distance education activity effect significantly of computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education? 2. Methodology The survey method was used in the present study, which refers to the explanation of events or facts that took place at any time in any group of participants or study sample, to explore computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education related with different factors. The present study was conducted using a sample of computer preservice teachers attending the Fatih Faculty of Education in Karadeniz Technical University. The sample consists of 56 computer preservice teachers enrolled in Fatih Faculty of Education, Computer and Instructional Technologies Department in Fall 2009. Since having an information about distance education and WEB based educational technologies was determined as precondition for students, sample (n=56) of the study was conducted from third and fourth grade. Sample which was determined through purposed sampling methodology was given in Table 1 with gender and grade properties. Table 1. Research Sample with Gender and Grade Properties Gender Grade Female Male Total f % f % f % 3 12 63,2 16 43,2 28 50 4 7 36,8 21 56,8 28 50 Total 19 33,9 37 66,1 56 100 Students information form: This form consists of 3 questions: Gender, grade level and attending to one of distance education activity before current research. Distance education attitude scale: The Distance Education Attitude Scale is a 5 point Likert-type scales (from 1 which means “strongly disagree” to 5 which means “strongly agree”) composed of 35 items. To determine reliability coefficient scale was administered to 456 students. Ate and Alptun (2008) reported that confidency the scale consisted of one factors and the Cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient of 0,8976. For attitude scale Maximum score is 175 and minimum score is 35. Data that gathered from research instruments was transferred to Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 13.0. Descriptive analysis techniques (frequency and percentage distribution) were used for identify to students’ gender, grade level and attending to distance education activity situation. For the purpose of the determine students’ attitudes towards distance education related with different factors t-Test was used. 3. Findings 3.1.What are the students’ attitudes towards distance education? Table 2. Scores that participants’ attitudes towards distance education N Ranj Min Max X Median SS UEYT 56 73 80 153 114,5 116,5 14,19 As seen in Table 2, preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education was in the medium range (X =114,5). Thus, it can be said that the average attitude score of the computer preservice teacher is going to be “hesitant” regarding distance education. As seen in Figure 1 if average attitude score of the computer preservice teacher was assessed by five range scale, score is going to be 3,27. Alper Şimşek et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 324–328 327 im ek, skendero lu, skendero lu / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2010) 000–000 Figure 1. Average of total attitude score 3.2.Is gender effect significantly of computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education? Table 3. Score of computer preservice teachers related with gender Gender N X SS SD t p Female 19 113,8 13,1 54 0,226 0,822 Male 37 114,7 14,9 As seen in Table 3, computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education scores were significantly unrelated with gender (p>0,05). 3.3.Is grade level effect significantly of computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education? Table 4. Score of computer preservice teachers related with grade Grade N X SS SD t p Third 28 110,9 11,5 54 -1,91 0,06 Fourth 28 118,0 15,9 As seen in Table 4, computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education scores were significantly unrelated with grade (p>0,05). 3.4.Is students’ previous participation to distance education activity effect significantly of computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education? Table 5. Previous participation to distance education activity related with grade level Previous Participation to Distance Education Activity Grade Yes No Total f % f % f % 3 21 37,4 7 12,5 28 50 4 19 33,9 9 16,1 28 50 Total 40 71,4 16 28,6 56 100 As seen in Table 5, %71,4 of participants attended to distance education activity previously but %28,6 didn’t. %37,4 of participants who were attended to distance education activity previously are in third grade, likewise %33,9 participants are in fourth grade. Table 6 shows relation between participants’ previous participation to distance education activity and attitude towards distance education. Table 6. Results of computer preservice teachers’ attitude related with previous participation to distance education Attending DE N X SS SD t p Yes 40 117,4 11,5 54 2,58 0,012 No 16 107,1 15,9 As seen in Table 6, computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education scores were significantly related with previous participation to distance education (p<0,05). 328 Alper Şimşek et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 9 (2010) 324–328 4. Conclusion Students' attitudes toward distance education be close to the unstable level as the results of the study conducted by Ate and Alptun (2008) showed that their participants had a approximately unstable level attitude towards distance education. In the present study, computer preservice teachers’ unstable attitudes towards distance education can be explained by the fact that they believe in the efficiency of face-to-face education and they have inadequate information about distance education or they have inadequate activity with distance education. Contrary to research that was conducted Ilter et al. (2005) and Richardson (2006) findings of the study indicate that there is no significant relationship between preservice teachers’ gender and their attitudes towards distance education. Likewise there is no significant relationship between computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education with grade level. This finding as similar as that was reported at Ate & Alptun (2008). Since %37,4 of participants who were attended to distance education activity previously are in third grade, likewise %33,9 participants are in fourth grade their experience with distance education is similar. So this statement could occur from this similarity. Computer preservice teachers’ attitudes towards distance education scores were significantly related with previous participation to distance education (p<0,05) as stated in Richardson (2006), Ivers et al. (2005). This study surveyed students in computer and instructional technology department’s only. In addition, students surveyed were at one department and these results can’t be generalized to students at other departments. For future research it would be interesting to find out students’ attitudes towards distance education who are taking a course on “educational administration and inspection” master program through distance education in Distance Education Center of Karadeniz Technical University. It would also be interesting to investigate the relationships between preservice computer students’ attitudes and distance education learners’ attitudes who are taking a course on “educational administration and inspection” master program. References Arbaugh, J. B. & Duray, R. (2002). Technological and structural characteristics, student learning and satisfaction with Web-based courses: An exploratory study of two online MBA programs. Management and Learning, 33(3), 331–347. Ate , A. & Altun, E. (2008). Investigating Preservice Computers’ Attitudes Towards Distance Learning Regarding Various Variables. Journal of Faculty of Gazi Education, 3(2008), 125-145. Dabaj, F. & Ba ak, H. (2008). The Role of Gender and Age on Students’ Perceptions towards Online Education Case Study: Sakarya University, Vocational High School. World Academiy of Science, Engineering and Technology. Retrived from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/44/01/ad.pdf. 16.12.2009. Dewald, N., Crane, A., S., Booth, A., & Levine C. (2000). Information Literacy at a Distance: Instructional Design Issues. Retrived from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PdfDownloadURL&_uoikey=B6W50-3YN939G 6&_tockey=%23toc%236556%232000%23999739998%23165633% 23FLA%23&_orig=search&_acct=C000040818&_version=1&_userid=736460&md5=8c26f6b1f1405d7ffabeb3e85c230854. 16.12.2009. Ilter, B. G., Aksu, M. B. & Y lmaz, N. (2005). Students’ views of distance education provision of one university. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 6(4), article:12. Keller C. & Cernerud L. (2002) Student's Perceptions of e-Learning in University Education Journal of Educational Media 27(1-2), 55-67. Knowles, E. & Kerkman, D. (2007). An Investigation of Students Attitude and Motivation toward Online Learning. Retrived from http://www.insightjournal.net/ Volume2/An %20Investigation%20of%20Students%27%20Attitude%20and%20Motivation %20toward %20Online%20Learning.pdf. McIsaac, M. S. & Gunawardena, C.N. (1996). Distance education. In D.H. Jonassen (Ed), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology: a project of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. 403-437. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Retrieved from http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/dechapter/ . 16.12. 2009 Muilenburg, L. Y. & Berge, Z. L. (2005). Students Barriers to Online Learning: A factor analytic study. Distance Learning, 26 (1), 29-48. Özdemir, S. M., Akba , O. & Çak r, R. (2009). A study on the relationship between preservice teachers’ information literacy skills and their attitudes towards distance education. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1(2009), 1648-1652. Richardson, J. T. E. (2006). Motives, attitudes and approaches to studying in distance education. Higher Education, 54:385-416. 
work_upjlcrosofd6nie2sf6pqk4kgi	----	v7-1-1_Rev     The Prospects and Challenges of Open Learning and Distance Education in Malawi Andrew Chimpololo Abstract—Open and distance learning is a fairly new concept in Malawi. The major public provider, the Malawi College of Distance Education, rolled out its activities only about 40 years ago. Over the years, the demand for distance education has tremendously increased. The present government has displayed positive political will to uplift ODL as outlined in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy as well as the National Education Sector Plan. A growing national interest in education coupled with political stability and a booming ICT industry also raise hope for success. However, a fragile economy with a GNI per capita of -US$ 200 over the last decade, poor public funding, erratic power supply and lack of expertise put strain on efforts towards the promotion of ODL initiatives. Despite the challenges, the nation appears determined to go flat out and explore all possible avenues that could revolutionise education access and equity through ODL. Keywords—challenges, distance education, Malawi, open learning, prospects. List of abbreviations CDSS Community Day Secondary School COL Commonwealth of Learning DEC Distance Education Centre MCC Malawi Correspondence College MCDE Malawi College of Distance Education MGDS Malawi Growth and Development Strategy NESP National Education Sector Plan ODL Open and Distance Learning OL and DE Open Learning and Distance Education Author is with University of Malawi. e-mail: achimpololo@poly.ac.mw I. INTRODUCTION LTHOUGH the terms open learning and distance education (OL and DE) have been around for quite a long time, scholars continue to differ in their definitions. The idea of open learning was founded on the work of two scholars Célestin Freinet (1896 – 1966) and Maria Montessori (1870 – 1952) who proposed the need for self-determined, independent and interest-guided learning in education [1]. Widdowson defines open learning as a flexible approach to education and training designed to make it more accessible, effective and responsive to individual needs [2]. This definition places considerable responsibility on the learner and relies, in the main, on well produced course materials. To Greenberg, the concept of distance education encompasses “any planned teaching/learning experience that uses a wide spectrum of technologies to reach learners at a distance and encourages learner interaction and certification of learning” [3]. Open learning and distance education vary distinctively in their approaches of study. Whereas open learning allows learners flexibility and choice over what, when, at what pace, where, and how they learn, distance education is principally characterised by separation of geographic distance and time. Thus, open learning could be offered on campus or at a distance, and distance education could be open or closed. In spite of the differences in definition, the concepts of open learning and distance education share a common aspect in that they both provide alternative paths to the traditional mode of learning. In OL and DE, educationists use novel methods of imparting knowledge such as the internet and e-mail, message- board forums, telephone, CD-Roms, print materials, video cassettes and video-conferencing in addition to ‘popular’ classroom-based instruction. Among other major attributes, OL and DE provides the learners a greater sense of autonomy and responsibility for learning since it espouses the twin values of flexibility and accessibility, has multiple modes of knowledge dissemination, employs a multi-modal assessment system and usually involves mediated or technology-based education. Some modern schools of thought fuse the concepts of OL and DE to coin the idea of open and distance learning (ODL). This paper will adopt this term to refer to OL and DE or either of them because most alternative education programmes in Malawi are built on the combination of both methodologies. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL), for one, observes that A World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:6, 2010 618International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(6) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 6, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 15 97 http://waset.org/publication/The-Prospects-and-Challenges-of-Open-Learning-and-Distance-Education-in-Malawi/11597 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597     most definitions of open and distance learning differ due to their varying focus on factors such as separation of teacher and student, institutional accreditation, mixed-media courseware, possibility of face-to-face meeting for tutorials, two-way communication, and use of industrialized processes. The International Council for Open and Distance Education defines open educational practices as practices which support the production, use and reuse of high quality open educational resources through institutional policies, which promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path [4]. Nowadays, ODL is seen as a viable means of widening and broadening access to education. Most nations in the developing world, Africa in particular, are aligning themselves towards its adoption across all levels of the education spectrum. Apart from increasing the opportunities on education access, other benefits of ODL include emerging market opportunities and opportunity to adapt to technology and environments. Distance education fuels the public's need for lifelong learning in education by providing access to learners not in the primary school age group, and at the same time allows educational institutions to adopt distance education as a means to adapt to the rapid changes in technology being used in education today. II. HISTORY OF OL AND DE IN MALAWI The emergence of ODL can be traced back to the 18th century. However, records indicate that modern distance education has been practiced around the 1840s when Isaac Pitman taught short hand in Britain through correspondence [5]. In his article on open schooling, Siaciwena mentions that open schools were introduced in Canada in 1919 and in New Zealand a bit later in 1922[6]. Open schooling, another related concept, refers to the use of alternative and usually less resource-based approaches which characterise distance education methods and open learning in the delivery of basic education and training. Valentine notes that the notion of distance learning is dynamic [7]. As technology changes, so does the definition of distance learning. While early scholars defined distance learning on the basis of the correspondence mode of studying, modern ones take into account technological breakthroughs such as internet radio, web-based VoIP and video conferencing which allow distance learning to occur in real time. With regard to this, Desmond Keegan observes that distance education and training result from the technological separation of teacher and learner which frees the student from the necessity of traveling to “a fixed place, at a fixed time, to meet a fixed person, in order to be trained” [cited in 7]. In Malawi, open and distance learning is relatively new. The Malawi government initiated efforts towards the introduction of ODL in 1965 when it established the Malawi Correspondence College (MCC). MCC was mandated to provide education by distance as one way of increasing access to secondary school education. Secondary education in Malawi runs from Form 1 up to Form 4 at which time students sit for the Malawi School Certificate Examinations in readiness for tertiary education. The college worked in partnership with the Schools Broadcasting Unit, an arm of the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation which was responsible for the promotion of basic education activities through radio. Later in 1972, the unit was incorporated to the college to make the Malawi College of Distance Education (MCDE). The merge resulted in MCDE gaining capacity to start producing radio programmes which complemented printed correspondence materials. When it first launched its operations in 1965, the MCDE started with an enrolment of 1,425 students and 25 members of staff. Over the decades, the college registered tremendous growth with student numbers rising to 150, 000 against 130 employees and 2,500 teacher-supervisors [8]. The number of distance education centres also rose to 520 while night secondary schools increased to 44. In 1998, distance education centres were upgraded to community day secondary schools in response to high demand for formal secondary school education. There are currently a total of 575 CDSSs in Malawi with 99, 172 students enrolling in 2008 (latest statistics), representing 67 % of the total students enrolled in government-run schools. Furthermore, the number of open schools – formerly known as night secondary schools – has risen to 44. There were 6,939 students in open schools in 2008, making up about 3% of the total secondary school population. Recently, the Mzuzu University in the northern region intensified efforts towards the introduction of open and distance learning in its teacher education programmes. The project, started in 2006, is being carried out in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and the COL. In a bid to reduce the teacher-pupil ratio in secondary schools, the Domasi College of Education started a distance education teacher training programme in 1999 that runs parallel to a conventional one. The programme has doubled the annual teacher output at the college. The University of Malawi has also joined the cause with Chancellor College introducing a postgraduate programme – Masters in Business Administration – in 2008. The university’s Continuing Education Centre has also unrolled plans to offer some of its diploma programmes through ODL at least by 2011. III. PROSPECTS FOR ODL Many opportunities exist in Malawi for the development of open and distance education. First and foremost, ODL has formally thrived in Malawi for over four decades now. Most educational institutions especially at the secondary and tertiary levels have either already practiced or are intending to World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:6, 2010 619International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(6) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 6, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 15 97 http://waset.org/publication/The-Prospects-and-Challenges-of-Open-Learning-and-Distance-Education-in-Malawi/11597 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597     introduce some form of ODL in their courses. Section 2 has provided some notable initiatives that have been carried out to date. With respect to this background, I now present the major factors that need further exploration in the quest for success in ODL in no particular order. A. Hunger for education Malawians, for some reason, have an insatiable hunger for education. The increase in enrolment numbers for ODL over the past four decades is one indication of the public’s interest for literacy. Despite being poor, Malawi is one of the few countries in Southern Africa with high gross enrolment rates for primary education, standing at 119 % in 2008. Similarly, the country has been experiencing high demand for secondary school education to the extent that government was forced upgrade distance education centres to community secondary school as one way of formalizing secondary education. In the meantime, there is also public outrage on the number of eligible students being left out of the two public universities due to limited available space. The problem has been further compounded by the recent re-introduction of the quota system of student selection which the Malawi government argues will ensure equitable access to university education among the nation’s 28 districts. On the other hand, a segment of the population believes the system does comply with the tenets of meritorious selection and will only unfairly disadvantage deserving students. B. Conducive political environment Recent developments have indicated political interest for the promotion of education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The current government, under the leadership of Dr Bingu wa Mutharika now serving his second five-year term of office from May 2009, has always emphasized the improvement of education as a means for socio-economic development and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Education is mentioned both in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) and Vision 2020 as a priority amongst priorities [9]. In walking the talk, the government increased public funding to the education sector in the 2009/10 budget to K24.5 billion, representing a 27% increase from the previous financial year’s budget. Additionally, there has been recruitment of 2713 and 1333 additional teachers for primary and secondary schools respectively between 2007 and 2008. Government has also formulated the National Education Sector Plan (NESP), a blueprint for the development of the education sector from 2008 – 2017, which recognizes education as a catalyst for socio-economic growth and an instrument for empowering the poor and voiceless [10]. The NESP sets out the strengthening of complementary basic education modalities for learners including Interactive Radio Instructions, complementary basic education and open and distance education as one its main strategic objectives. C. Booming ICT technologies The global revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure has not left Malawi behind. Over the past few years, Malawi has experienced a number of developments in the ICT field which could benefit open and distance education. Radio stations such as FM 101, MIJ FM and Zodiak Broadcasting Station have increased their capacity and are now able to broadcast their programmes country-wide giving ODL institutions many options for reaching out to students. Television Malawi has also improved its picture and broadened its coverage to many parts of the country. Another big milestone has just been achieved in the area of internet. Malawi’s sole ground telephone operator, the Malawi telecommunications Limited (MTL), late last year launched its fibre optic cable which has connected Malawi to the outside world through the World Wide Web at speeds never conceived before. The cable transcends the banana-shaped country from South to the North providing rural parts a rare opportunity to link themselves to the information super highway. Parallel to this has been the blossoming of internet cafes in the four cities which cater for ICT services to the general public. Mobile phone operators have also increased their coverage across the country while at the same time improving the quality of their services. Cheap handsets have also flooded the market to ensure low-income earners get a chance to stay connected. Apart from normal calling, text messaging has proved to be a cost-effective way of student-tutor communication in ODL. Tele-conferencing technology has also reached Malawi with the first equipment being installed at Chancellor College. ODL institutions would therefore be able to use this technology to broadcast lectures to students in distance parts of the country in real time. This would allow students to interact with their tutors as well fellow students and participate in crucial class debates. D. Rural electrification Related to the issue of ICT development is the aspect of electrification. The Malawi government is also carrying out a rural electrification programme as part of the MGDS. Being a developing country, only a fraction of households is connected to the national electricity grid. However, a number of rural trading centres have already benefited from this programme and more are on the line. The programme also includes empowerment of rural masses on the use of solar energy. Once through, the electrification will therefore enable students in the rural areas of the country to use electrical ICT resources such as audio cassettes, video tapes, computers and electric radios in their homes. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:6, 2010 620International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(6) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 6, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 15 97 http://waset.org/publication/The-Prospects-and-Challenges-of-Open-Learning-and-Distance-Education-in-Malawi/11597 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597     The coming of electricity is also assisting distance education students in rural areas to study at night. Students are now able to go to work during day and sacrifice part of their night time for academic work. There is a high likelihood that enrolment numbers in distance education could go up in rural areas with the electrification. E. Improved road infrastructure The state of roads in Malawi is not up to date. However, there has been tremendous improvement in the roads sector over the past decade after an increase in public funding. Nowadays, it is possible to access almost every part of the country by road. ODL institutions can take advantage of this development to open satellite centres in strategic parts of the country where print and electric study materials could be accessed by students. Furthermore, tutors could be travelling to these centres for short face-to-face sessions with the students. The improved road infrastructure has also resulted in efficient postal services. The numbers of days for postal mail to reach any destination within Malawi has been reduced to an average four days. F. Peace and stability Malawi has remained peaceful and stable since her independence in 1964 albeit being a poor nation. Unlike other countries in Southern Africa such as Mozambique, Angola, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo which have experienced wars and ethnic conflicts, Malawi continue to enjoy a good reputation in internal and foreign relations. Similarly, the rate of crime is comparatively low in the Southern Africa Development Community region. The existing peaceful atmosphere is conducive to the promotion of open schooling. Open schooling in Malawi is offered through evening courses, night secondary schools and the adult literacy programme which provides late-afternoon tuition. Increased enrolment in these modes of study could complement government efforts in broadening access to education as spelled out in the MGDS and NESP. IV. CHALLENGES FACING ODL The promotion of ODL in Malawi does not go without challenges. Pitfalls have existed since 1965 when distance education was first instituted. This section presents some of the major challenges facing ODL. A. Poor national economy With a Gross Net Index per capita of less than US$ 200 over the past decade, Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world. The incidence of poverty is so severe that over 50 percent of the population is classified as poor. The state of the economy remains low despite the current government’s fiscal efforts that have managed to raise the GDP from -4.1 in 2001 to 2.2 in 2007 and reduce inflation from 27.5 in 2001 to 7.2 in 2007. In an effort to increase enrolment for basic education and lessen the financial burden on poor families given the state of the economy, the government introduced free primary education in 1994. The move was successful and resulted in a 60 % increase for primary school enrolment. However, there was a simultaneous decline in the quality of education and completion rates came down to 41.5 %. The secondary and higher education levels are not spared the problem. A majority of parents struggle to raise tuition and other related fees for their children which are relatively higher at the two levels. The current economic status of Malawi therefore poses a challenge to the promotion of ODL. Very few people have the potential to meet the demands of ODL such as the purchase of print study materials, purchase of ICT resources like mobile phone handsets and data storage appliances, payment of internet services and payment of tuition and examination fees. Ojo observes that the cost of distance education could be less but in reality it remains out of the reach of the average African due to high incidence of poverty on the continent [11]. B. Inadequate financial allocation towards ODL Whereas the Malawi government strives to improve the quality of education in the country through increased public funding, the area of ODL remains critically under-funded. The education budget does not give a priority to ODL although the NESP (2008 – 2017) lists ODL as a strategic instrument for widening access and ensuring equity in education. In the 2009/10 national budget, the main public ODL provider (the MCDE) was allotted K63 million representing a meagre 0.3 % of the total education sector allocation. Financial problems continue to cripple ODL initiatives in Malawi. Currently, the country lack capacity in physical infrastructure to house distance education centres which offer secondary school instruction. The centres also face enormous challenges pertaining to distance education study materials, curriculum guides, science equipment and face-to-face supervision which is hampered by inadequate staffing levels. The higher education sector faces similar problems due to budget cuts from government. For the past five or so years, the University of Malawi has been receiving less than what it had budgeted for and this has had serious implications on its strategic activities which include the introduction of ODL. C. Insufficient libraries The lack of financial clout in Malawi’s ODL initiatives has also impinged upon the availability of library resources. Although initial plans on DECs included establishment of libraries within them, none do exist in the 44 centres spread World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:6, 2010 621International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(6) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 6, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 15 97 http://waset.org/publication/The-Prospects-and-Challenges-of-Open-Learning-and-Distance-Education-in-Malawi/11597 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597     across the country. In fact, the Malawi National Library has only 12 service centres in the 28 districts while the British Council has only one located in the capital city Lilongwe. The 13 service points are far short of the country’s requirement for ODL. Furthermore, the service centres do not have adequate book resources to satisfy demand. Most of them are under-resourced and possess a large of quantity of old and out-dated editions. These problems are worsened by high levels of theft and vandalism and insufficient public funding. D. Unreliable electricity supply The success of ODL in Malawi could also be impeded by erratic power supply. Black-outs are the order of the day and more-often-than-not do happen at night during which time most distance education students gear up for study. Towards the end last year, for example, intermitted power cuts were so frequent that presidential intervention was sought in the quest to find a lasting solution to the problem. Low power supply has been identified as one of the main constraints to the country’s socio-economic development, forcing the government to initiate energy reforms necessary for the increased generation of power supply. Alternative sources like solar energy and renewable energy technologies could mitigate the problem but their current usage rates are by far short of the national requirement. Renewable energy sources only make up about 0.2 % of the total energy supply. Some of the major obstacles to alternative sources relate to the exorbitant cost of purchasing solar panels and other materials, lack of technical support and lack of incentives to encourage alternative energy use. Statistics indicate that only about 25 % of households in the urban sector and about 1 % of rural households have electricity supply. The overall rate of electrification is estimated at 7 %. With the current state of affairs, it would be extremely difficult for ODL students to either study at night or use their ICT appliances during the day. Audio-tapes, radio and television broadcasts, the internet, mobile phones and computers all need electricity in one way or the other to operate. Similarly, the rural electrification programme will only succeed with a corresponding power generation increase into the national grid. The recent commencement of ODL initiatives by higher education institutions means a further increase in the demand for electricity. E. Lack of ODL expertise Although ODL has been around in Malawi for over four decades now, there are very few trained personnel in the field. Laymaman reports that most the DEC supervisors in Malawi lack training and skills on the principles of ODL [8]. Among other problems, the supervisors fail to understand their role, provide improper student support and develop sub-standard curriculum materials. At the higher education level, the situation is not different. Few academicians have pursued ODL as their career. Most of them are learning the principles of ODL on-the-job or through seminars and workshops. There is hope, however, that up- coming professionals would be inspired by an envisaged student demand to choose ODL as their area of specialization. V. CONCLUSION The future for ODL looks bright in Malawi as the nation braces itself to overcome any perceived hurdles that stand in the way towards the broadening of education access through alternative pathways of study. The government of Malawi has shown its willingness to achieve the strategic objectives of the NESP which takes into account the provision of formal education to school-going youths who fail to secure places at conventional secondary schools and adults who would like to take a second chance after missing formal education during their youth. However, the government is not spared the predicament of trying to uproot abject poverty amongst its citizens through increased funding and attention on equally- important areas such as food security, health, transport and infrastructure and trade while at the same time promoting education which it recognizes as a tool for socio-economic development. On the other hand, low economic standing, insufficient budget provisions, erratic power supply and limited library resources pose a great threat to ODL efforts in Malawi. Although ODL is widely viewed as a cost-effective method of providing education to the less-privileged, it comes with its own associated costs. Distance education students still need to fulfill financial obligations in form of tuition and examination fees, internet service fees, airtime credit, study material costs and other unforeseen expenses. REFERENCES [1] R. De Cassia Veiga Marriot & L. P. Torres, Handbook of research on e- learning methodologies for language acquisition. Pennsylvania: Information Science Reference, 2008.  [2] K. Widdowson, “Open learning: An alternative approach to the delivering of training,” in Open Learning and New Technology: Conference proceedings, R. Atkinson and C. McBeath, Eds. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology WA Chapter, pp. 347– 355.  [3] G. Greenberg, “Distance education technologies: Best practices for K1 – 12 settings,” IEEE Technologies and Society Magazine (Winter), vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 36–40, 1998.  [4] International Council for Distance Education (2010). “Definition of open educational practices”. Available: http://www.icde.org/en/resources/open_educational_quality_inititiative/ definition_of_open_educational_practices/.   [5] M. G. Moore & G. Kearsley, Distance education: A systems view, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wardsworth, 2005.   [6] R. Siaciwena, “Open schooling: Issues and challenges,” presented at the Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, Round Table Session on Sectoral Development Issues, Brunei Darussalam, Vancouver, Canada, March 1 – 5, 1999.  [7] D. Valentine. (2002). Distance Learning: Promises, Problems, and Possibilities. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. 5(3). World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:6, 2010 622International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(6) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 6, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 15 97 http://waset.org/publication/The-Prospects-and-Challenges-of-Open-Learning-and-Distance-Education-in-Malawi/11597 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597     Available http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall53/valentine53.html.  [8] C. F. Laymaman, “Malawi College of Distance Education to move to resource-based open learning,” presented at the Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, Brunei Darussalam, Vancouver, Canada, March 1 – 5, 1999.  [9] Malawi Government, Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (2006 – 2011). Lilongwe: Malawi Government, 2006.  [10] Ministry of Education, Science and technology, National Education Sector Plan (2008 – 2017), A statement. Lilongwe: Malawi Government, 2008.  [11] B. A. Ojo, “E-learning and the global divide: The challenges facing distance education in Africa,” Turkish Journal of Distance education, vol. 30, no 3, pp. 6 –79, 2009.    World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:4, No:6, 2010 623International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 4(6) 2010 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :4 , N o: 6, 2 01 0 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 15 97 http://waset.org/publication/The-Prospects-and-Challenges-of-Open-Learning-and-Distance-Education-in-Malawi/11597 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/11597 
work_ur2jd433izep3jqefjaymciyhy	----	jss-153 INTRODUCTION One of the major objectives of the Nigerian National policy on Education (2004) is the provision of equal educational opportunities to all citizens at different levels of education. With regard to high education, an aspect of the policy encourages distance learning (education)- education that may be received outside the university environment to be organized and delivered by tertiary institutions in Nigeria. While distance education has been in existence for at least 100 years, the medium has changed from pencil and paper correspondence courses to real – time Internet courses. But regardless of the medium, distance courses have common characteristics and, likewise, have similar problems. This literature review examines the different types of distance education and its significance as a learning method. Student demographics are presented and their relevance to distance learning barriers established. For instance, between 1982 and 1997, both the number of universities offering distance learning and undergraduate distance learning programmes have increased. In 1982, only two universities offered distance-learning programmes. In 1997, the number was eight. The number of undergraduate programmes by distance learning rose from 11 to 27 while for the Master’s Degree © Kamla-Raj 2010 J Soc Sci, 23(1): 45-52 (2010) Management of Distance Education in the Development of Nigeria’s Education E. D. Nakpodia Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria Telephone: 08033862036, E-mail: edwardnakpodia@yahoo.com KEYWORDS Reaching Out Adult Learner. Independent Learning. Off-Campus. Technological Method. Tertiary Schools. Nigeria ABSTRACT This paper examined the need of distant education in Nigeria. As a result of the social expectations of our contemporary society, there is need for education. Distance learning is an excellent method of reaching the adult learner. Because of the competing priorities of work, home, and school, adult learners desire a high degree of flexibility. The structure of distance learning gives adults the greatest possible control over the time, place and pace of education system to be expanded. The usual tradition of face-to-face education is not enough to cater for educational needs of all Nigerians. This calls for distance education to enable those who are not privileged for the face type of education to be educated. In spite of the challenges facing the advancement of distance education in Nigeria, the purposes, as well as its barrier and importance of distance education demands a strong valence (support) from the society. programme, the number rose from zero to 11. As would be expected, the number of students enroll- ed in these two programmes rose astronomically over the same period, for the undergraduates it rose from 1,760 in 1980 to 27,690 in 1997. The present study focused on undergraduate pro- gramme of distance learning programmes. It is quite conceivable that these quantitative increas- es have taken their toll on the quality of the programmes the affected universities offer to the students (Abdullahi 1997). The argument for this observation is closely linked with the fact that in the last two decades or so, the human and material resources of Nigerian universities have shown considerable decline in quality, quantity and variety at a time students enrolments, number of academic programmes offered to students, etc have increased in leaps and bounds, both for on- campus academic programmes and out-reach programmes offered outside the campuses. For instance, the numbers of university professors in the different disciplines who have left the university system in Nigeria due to retirement, brain, deaths, etc. have continued to increase from 273 professors in 1982 to 1993 professors in 1995. Similar losses of non-professorial academic staff members have also been reported. (Aduka 1997). In addition, facilities for teaching, learning, research and development have not kept pace with the increased demands arising from large 46 E. D. NAKPODIA enrolment numbers, public service functions and university consultancy services. Some universities, fully aware of these short- comings, went along to start new distance learning programme at satellite/extension centres. Initially, the introduction of such programmes was seen as one way universities could maximize the use of human and material facilities already in existence at another location, and by doing so, the nation was getting full value for its human and mineral facilities that would have otherwise been idle. While this argument may be theore- tically sound, there is no empirical evidence to support its veracity. (Abdullahi 1997). Evidence on the ground need to be documented to ascertain whether this is actually so. In other words, there is need to find out how adequate and satisfactory the facilities are in terms of the number and quality of staff, quality and size of buildings including class-rooms, laboratories and workshops; library facilities, instructional support service such as photocopy and secretarial centres, staff/student ratio, and so on. Furthermore, there are concerns expressed by some educators that the qualities of teaching as well as that of students admitted into the distance learning programmes are poor. An important foundation of distance educa- tion suggests that successful teaching can take place even though teacher and learner are physically separated during the learning process. While this separation can occur in several ways depending on the nature of course content a delivery medium, this paper will not differentiate between non-traditional, electronically mediated and traditional course work. Electronic mediated courses use telephone lines, cables, satellite and micro wave networks to transmit voice, video and data. Most distance education programmes employ a combination of audio visual media to facilitate learning. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TREND OF TERTIARY DISTANCE EDUCATION As a view of their aims and objectives illustrates, all first generation universities in Nigeria (University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), University of Nigeria Nsukka, and the University of Lagos (UNILAG)) were required to attend to the tertiary education needs of the population, especially within their respective ‘catchments’ areas. Since the Nigerian population was, and still is, mainly rural and agricultural, extension courses were to provide farmers new skills to introduce them new methods. ABU and the University of Ibadan were early providers of such extension services (early to mid 1960s). However, the clientele of the University of Lagos was urban, and extension courses there were geared towards the attainment of university and professional courses. (Nwagu 2001).That University’s Distance Learning Institute is an outgrowth of earlier programmes supported variously and at different time by the International Extension College in London, the Ford Foun- dation, UNESCO, and other donors. Current-ly and as a part the university’s entrepreneurial thrust, distance education courses contribute significantly to UNILAG’s resources. At ABU, the need to upgrade teachers’ qualifications and skills became a prime objective since, by the late 1960s and early 1970s; it was obvious that the North part of Nigeria was lagging far behind the rest of Nigeria in this area. Thus, Abu’s Institute of Education introduced the Teacher In-service Education Programme (TISEP) to raise the quantity and quality of teachers in Northern Nigeria. At the end of TISEP studies, candidates sat for Grade III or Grade II Teachers Certificate. Later, when the National Council of Education ruled the National Certificate of Education (NCE) to be the minimum quali- fication for teaching at primary level, the Institute started the NCE by correspondence programme. When in 1974, the Head of State (Yakubu Gowon) announced Government’s intention to introduce Universal Primary Education by 1976, it was clear that there was insufficient time to produce the estimated number of teachers to cope with demands of the programme. Distance education was considered the best means of supply the required number of teachers. Simul- taneously, in the early 1970s to mid 1980s, dis- tance education was gaining currency interna- tionally as a viable strategy for delivering large- scale educational opportunity. In many countries, especially developing ones, it was seen as a panacea to the challenge of providing educa-tion at affordable costs. In Nigeria, this led to the establishment of the National Teachers Institute (NTI). The NTI was the first institute specially esta- blished by Federal Government to provide distance education courses designed to upgrade under-qualified and unqualified teachers. In line with the minimum qualification directive 47MANAGEMENT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA’S EDUCATION mentioned above, NTI also introduced the NCE by distance learning in 1990 (Adaku 1997). Another historical step in Nigerian distance education was the initiative of the civilian government of Shehu Shagari to establish an open University, which was to be based in Abuja. However, for various reasons and considerations, the scheme was scrapped by the following military regime, headed by General Buhari. His Government favoured a dual-mode set-up at the University of Abuja. The Centre for Distance Learning and Continuing Education (CDLCE) was mandated to provide a distance education component for every course that the University of Abuja would provide. However, it was not possible to meet this mandate (Murtagh 2001) It is pertinent to state here that, despite enthusiasm for distance education in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions, some uncertainties remain about the type, scope, and nature of distance education provision in Nigeria. The respective roles of Government, the NUC and of individual universities remain unresolved. We feel that the success of any programme will, largely, depend on how the various experiences of institutions are shared, modified and integrated. Purpose of Distance Education In preparing to enter the next century, edu- cators of adults face the challenge of serving a student population and society that is increas- ingly diverse. Moving into the next century, the adult student population is expected to be the fastest growing segment of higher education and, in fact, older students will constitute the majority. Marrs (1995), in his work, An Analysis of Distant Education and Educational Technology, says that most of higher education will take place off – campus through technological methods of delivery. Distance education is a fact of life for most universities and an increasing number of community colleges, knowing the intrinsic problems and overcoming them will be critical to successful implementation of distance programs on a larger scale in the future. In distance learning, students and teachers will find themselves playing different roles than is the norm in traditional education. The teacher is no longer the sole source of knowledge but instead becomes a facilitator to support student learning, while the student actively participates in what and how knowledge is imparted. More than any other teaching method, distance learning requires a collaborative effort between student and teacher, unbounded by the traditional limits of time, space, and single – instructor effort. A great benefit among the Nigerian University system is the wealth of experience that has clearly build up amongst the primary providers of distance education programmes. This wealth of experience provides an excellent platform for development and delivery of new programmes because the lessons learned can assist in determining what paths are suitable and what pitfalls should be avoided. Thus, the purposes of distance education are simply: 1. Institutions see potential for distance education to extend their ability to make educational impact on their communities by expanding their reach and scale of operations. 2. They also regard distance education programmes as strategies to absorb the large numbers of students who cannot currently be placed in face –to-face programmes, as well as some of those currently using facilities on central campuses (because of high levels of demand, Universities in Nigeria are all typically enrolling more students than the physical facilities available can cope with). Institution see distance education as a means of providing education to working students. They also see it as an opportunity to generate income. Management of Distance Education Management of distance education progra- mme generally appeared to be functioning relatively. The “distance aspect of distance learning takes away much of the social interactions that would be present in traditional learning environments. Every institution running such programme demonstrate evidence of having developed systems to administer students on distance education programme usually independently of mainstream students record- keeping systems. In all cases, these systems have been developed into some form of electronic database. There is also much evidence of systems to allow students to register locally for programme, even where they are required to visit a central campus to receive face-to-face support. Further, some distance providers have come up with innovative strategies for overcoming weakness 48 E. D. NAKPODIA in the national postal services creating their own network of materials distribution to get course materials to learners (Carlson 1995). All providers do however, express concern that student record-keeping systems are predominantly reliant on database developed by people who are no longer at the institution and that expertise to adapt and further develop in these systems do no exist on campus. Importantly, these systems have, more often than not, yet been ‘put through their paces’. So to speak this is because most programmes have not yet gone to scale, thus not requiring the systems to deal with large volumes of students enrolling on programme nationally. As all assessment is usually managed through face-to-face contact, there has not been any requirement to track the progress of student assignment centrally on any significant scale. Likewise, because in most instances, programmes tend to run tutorial sessions from a single, central campus, these administrative systems have not yet had to cope with the complexity of managing a decentralized tutorial support network. The only systems that have had to deal with these kinds of complexities are those of NIT. All of these points suggest that, if significant expansion of distance education delivery is to be possible within the Nigerian University System, investments in building robust administrative systems for distance education, and skills to run these systems, will be a priority. Fortunately, the administrative base that does exist provides a platform off which to build such capacity. Infact, distance learning is student-centered learning; thus knowing the characteristics and demographics of the distance learners helps us understand the potential barriers to leaning. Although students’ characteristics and needs may not guarantee success in a distance educa- tion course or program, it is easy to defend these factors as contributing to success. Additionally, knowledge about student characteristics and motivators help us understand who is likely to participate in distance education and, conversely, why others choose not to participate. Student motivation has a powerful affect on attrition and completion rates, regardless of institutional setting. Motivators for adult distance students are often different from those of traditional students. Knowles (1980), in explaining the advantages of knowing the learner, believes that learner behavior is influenced by a combination of the learner’s needs plus the learner’s situation and personal characteristics. Knowing these personal characteristics is an important aspect of planning distance learning courseware and strategies. More importantly, knowing the participants can help drive program planning and policy formation, factors that are important to participation and success in distance learning. Knox’s (1977) developmental-stage orienta- tion of adult life stresses the importance of understanding an individual’s contextual situa- tion, that is, he believes their family, work, and community roles; physical condition; perso- nality; and earning interests all affect the adult’s ability and willingness to participate in adult education. Further complicating the issue, dete- rrence to participation is exasperated by a pros- pective student’s perception of the magnitude of his problems. In other words, “deterrents” is a multidimensional concept. No single factor appears to cause nonparticipation; however, individual student characteristics and life circumstances appear to have the greatest impact on participation (Kerka 1986). Characteristic of Distance Education A noble feature of distance education pro- vision in the university system is that individual provider tend predominantly still to operate in isolation from one another. In some respects, this is not surprising. After all, they are competitions. However, there are some areas where individually providers are clearly struggling to establish effective distance education delivery infras- tructure, most notably in the areas of material production distribution of resources and estab- lishment and maintenance of decentralized tutorial networks (Carlson 1995). One believes distance education would benefit from greater co-ordina- tion and sharing of resources amongst providers and that this could be managed in such a way as not to remove competition where it makes sense. It is pleasing to note that discussion about such co-operation have already begun between the university of Abuja and NTI. Barriers in Distance Learning There are various barriers affecting distant learning in Nigeria and in other places in the world such as: lack of staff training in course develop- ment and technology, lack of support for distance 49MANAGEMENT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA’S EDUCATION learning in general and inadequate faculty selection for distance learning courses. Some- times the coursework for traditional and distance students is the same. Often it is not. There can be a lot of up front effort in designing distance learning material. This can impose a burden on teachers who already have material for traditional classrooms. Computers, video equipment, com- munications software, and the like, present challenges and frustrations. Faculty must know how to the use these technologies if they are to teach distance courses. Training students and staff, particularly in troubleshooting problems, is imperative to success in technical distance learning (Galusha 2009). Perhaps the biggest problem for distance programs is the lack of support by the faculty. The endorsement by department faculty is viewed as a critical instructional element in any distance education program. More than any other participant, faculty roles must change the most in administering distance learning programs. This can be difficult adjustment for some teachers. They must change teaching styles to that of a mentor, tutor, and facilitator. They must meet the needs of distance students without face-to-face contact. Since the majority of distance learners are adults, teachers may need to change their teaching style. This may be challenging for teachers who are used to teaching with 18 to 22- year-olds. Faculty is responsible for changing their course content to accommodate diverse student needs and expectations (Meacham 1989). So long as college faculty feels there is a burden associated the distance education program currently in place, there will be little support for expanding distance education opportunities. There are a number of reasons for this lack of support. Teachers may lack the basic skills or hardware to fully participate in distance education. The advent of computers, telecommunications, and the World Wide Web provides an unprecedented opportunity for faculty and students to learn in a cooperative environment. It is interesting to note, however, that students respond to this changing environment more adeptly than teachers do. At California State University, for example, more than 50% of the student body own home computers while less than 50% of the faculty (Syllabus Magazine 1996). Obtaining proper equipment and training is critical in teacher acceptance of distance learning. Another problem perceived by faculty is the threat to tenure and human resource staffing. Depending on the school and the academic department, courses taught as part of a distance program may not always count toward tenure considerations, thus causing a disincentive for participation by some non-tenured faculty (Oaks 1996). Additionally, if one professor can serve thousands of students there will obviously be fewer professors and fewer departments and faculties. Schools must not underestimate this resistance and should be very aware of the possibility of overburdening faculty and staff. Teachers also have problems respecting the academics of distance courses. One way of enhancing commitment is by forcing distance courses through the same approval process as on- campus courses. In 1994, Chou wrote, “By going through the same stringent approval process as on-campus courses, the acceptance...among college faculty is enhanced”. The final barrier is the teacher’s acceptance of distance learning programs. Teachers with enthusiasm for this non- traditional coursework are best suited to teach them. One way to mitigate these potentially serious problems is by selecting teachers who are relatively senior people, good teachers, like the idea of distance learning and want to participate in it. Interest and motivation are not success factors reserved only for the student. Challenges of Distance Education Distance education has faced numerous challenges in implementation during its decades history. First, distance education provision constitutes a very small component of higher education provision within the federal education system. Second, the two dual-mode institutions at Lagos and Abuja seems encumbered by existing rules and traditions. Third, it appears that the main motivation for offering the variants of distance education described above is financial. Under such conditions, the quality and revaluation of distance education course materials and practices tend to stay static or decline over time (Aghenta 1993). Problems and barriers encountered by the student fall into several distinct categories; costs and motivators, feedback and teacher contact, student support and services, alienation and isolation, lack of experience, and training. More so than traditional students, distance 50 E. D. NAKPODIA learners are more likely to have insecurities about learning (Knapper 1988). These insecurities are founded in personal and school related issues such as financial costs of study, disruption of family life, perceived irrelevance of their studies and lack of support from employers. These pressures often result in higher dropout rates than among traditional students (Sweet 1986). A second area of concern for the distance student is the perceived lack of feedback or contact with the teacher. Because there is not daily or weekly face to face contact with teachers, students may have trouble in self-evaluation. Keegan (1986) believes that the separation of student and teacher imposed by distance removes a vital “link” of communication between these two parties. The link must be restored through overt institutional efforts so that the teaching- learning transaction may be “reintegrated” (Keegan 1986, p. 120). Citing Tinto (1975), Keegan hypothesized that students who did not receive adequate reintegration measures such as elec- tronic or telephone communication, would be less likely to experience complete academic and social integration into institutional life. Consequently, such students would be more likely to drop out (Sheets 1992). These barriers can be mitigated through technological methods such as e-mail. Computer conferencing and electronic mail can be inte- grated into the delivery of the course to provide the missing interactivity. Because both are essentially asynchronous, they continue to leave the student in charge of setting his or her own work times — a critical success factor for the distance student. It is important that the student receive prompt feedback in any institutional setting, particularly in distance learning where the learner is impaired by the lack of casual contact with the teacher and other students. This is especially important for those students who live outside metropolitan areas. They may not have access to reliable telecommunications, computers, and postal mail. The frustrations resulting from problems with communication between student and academic institution are factors of which distance education planners should be well aware (Wood 1996). A third area of concern for distance students is the lack of support and services such as providing tutors, academic planners and sche- dulers, and technical assistance. The isolation that results from the distance learning process can complicate the learning process for adult students. Support for distance learners should not be overlooked when planning distance programs. Students need tutors and academic planners to help them complete courses on time and to act as a support system when stress becomes a problem. Planners from Washington State University (WSU) note that “student services are a significant part of the budgeted costs of the program.” They also believe that “success in attracting, serving, and retaining students will hinge more on excellent student support services than on any technology issues.” (Oaks 1996). Technology costs and consi- derations can be a source of budgeting problems; however, student support for distance learners should take precedence. A fourth problem area is the feelings of alienation and isolation reported by distance students. Students of all kinds want to be part of a larger school community, and simply a member of a “correspondence” course. For many traditional students, this is an important part of their social lives. Another problem encountered by students is the lack of student training, particularly in refe- rence to technical issues. Many adult students are not well versed in the uses of technology such as computers and the Internet. Using electronic medium in distance learning can inadvertently exclude students who lack computer or writing skills. These skills are required if computer technology is used. Students will typically be offered volumes of electronic-based information. Using this information will be a problem for some non-technical students. They must be taught how to manage, not only their study time, but the materials presented as well. If students are undertaking distance learning courses that require knowledge of computers, then the students must be taught, at a minimum, the fundamentals of operating the system of choice of the distance-taught course. If distance learning is to be successful, technical barriers must be made a non-issue. Overcoming the Challenges Distance educators readily identified problems in provision of telecommunications, electricity, and postal services as impediment to their work. Problems with delivery of national infrastructure continue to affect delivery of distance education, 51MANAGEMENT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA’S EDUCATION but this problem is not necessarily debilitating. Better co-ordination of institutional efforts to overcome these problems would be likely to lead to significantly savings over time, and ensure that distance education delivery was not unduly affected by national infrastructural limitation. Distance education via simultaneous two-way audio-visual interaction systems such as video teleconferencing, brings an additional set of issues to be considered by the instructor and effective models for this delivery system need to be identified (Sweet 1986). Some students, particularly those without home computers with modems could have difficulty communicating with the university or teacher. Lack of adequate hardware and the subsequent cost barrier of obtaining equipment could place undue hardship on some remote students. However, implementing other commu- nications systems (phone, mail, etc.) could help overcome this barrier. Learning institutions must develop distance learning course material or pay a hefty price to order materials from distributors. For some institutions, the investment in production technology may be worth the cost; however, a significant investment is necessary for production facilities, equipment, and personnel to produce videotapes. Using the Internet instead can overcome some of this problem but it poses additional difficulties in insuring all students have adequate access to the Internet. The Internet is proving to be an effective delivery medium that enables communication of knowledge at the student’s convenience. It has the potential, in fact, to change the nature of distance learning. But it is not without problems. Some fear the existing world wide tele-commu- nications network is ill-equipped to handle the rapid expansion of the Internet. Relying solely on the Internet for courseware and commu- nications transmission is risky. In addition, using the Internet can degrade of the quality of interac- tions between and among staff and students. Due to the perceived anonymity provided by the Inter- net, abusive behavior could become a problem; however, these problems can be mediated with proper care and regulation. The newest of the technological challenges lies in complying with government regulations. Course content may need to be limited based on the requirements in the decency section of the 1996 Telecommunications Act (Oaks 1996). This section describes material deemed suitable for the Internet. Some courses, such as Anthropology or Human Sexuality, may not be appropriate for the Internet. Distance learning institutions must be aware of, and plan for, regulatory issues if the Internet is used for conveying course content. Certainly not all distance courses use the Internet. Other technologies present ergonomical problems. For distance programs that implement video teleconferencing techniques, the physical environment and equipment set up is important. Because a classroom is often a noisy place, sensitive microphone equipment and non-sound absorbing rooms can seriously diminish the sound quality. Likewise, inadequate lighting and improper camera placement can diminish the video quality. Some experimentation may be needed to solve these ergonomic problems. On the whole it may be evaluated from the present study that although distance learning is not new, it has not received respect in the academic community because of the number and seriousness of problems presented here. The dramatic growth of the adult learner population is making distance learning an increasingly popular choice of learning techniques. Further study of student demographics and motivators will help target the adult learner population and will help institutions develop course materials and techniques appropriately. Close scrutiny of the intrinsic problems in distance education will help overcome problems encountered by students and faculty. Understanding and mitigating technology problems are important, especially with the rapid expansion of technology. Further research into course development techniques will help learning institutions understand which methods work best in the distance learning classroom. CONCLUSION Ever since, Nigeria has always been convinced that education is a tool for empowering his people and the best legacy any nation can bequeath to its citizenry. The Universal Declaration of Human right (1948) stipulates the right of every citizen to education. This may not be possible only via our traditional face-to-face education. Distance education has to be encouraged, financed and promoted. REFERENCES Abdullahi J 1997. Strategic Manpower Development in 52 E. D. NAKPODIA Nigeria: New Challenges and Direction. Education and Society, 17(3): 3-5. Adaku S 1997. Steaming Brain Drain in Nigeria’s Ivory Tower. Educational Research Review, 6(1): 5-6. Aghenta JA 1993. Principals and Practices of Educational Planning: Focus on the Developing Countries. Benin-City: NSEP. Carlson F 1995. Higher Education in Nigeria. Onitsha, Nigeria: Salsic and Sons Publishing Co. Chou P 1994. Guide to Managing a Telecourse/Distance Learning Program. Suisun, California: Learning Resources Association. Col International 2001. Building Capacity to Deliver Distance Education in Nigeria Federal University System: Report Prepared for the World Bank. Galusha JM 2009. Barriers to Learning in Distant Education, The Infrastruction Network. University of Southern Mississippi. Kerka S 1986. Deterrents to Participation in Adult Education, ERIC Digest No. 59, ED275889 86, http:/ /www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed275889. html (Retrieved 17th March,2008). Knapper C 1988. Lifelong Learning and Distance Education. American Journal of Distance Education, 2(1): 63-72. Knox A 1977. Adult Learning and Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Marrs L 1995. An Analysis of Distance Education and Educational Technology. Offices of Continuing Education and Information and Telecommunication Services. Bellingham, Washington: Western Washington University. Meacham D, Evans D 1989. Distance Education: The Design of Study Materials. Open Learning Institute, Charles Stuart University, Murtagh T Teresa 2001. Distance Education for Basic Education in the E-9 Countries , UNESCO: Knowledge Enterprise, Inc. Nwagu NA 2001. Current Issues in Educational Management in Nigeria, Benin: NAEAP. Oaks M 1996. Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, Washington: State University, http://www.wiche.edu/telecom/techWASU.html (Retrieved 23rd March, 2008). Wagga Wagga. 1973. Towards a theory of independent learning and teaching. Journal of Higher Education, 44: 661-679. Wood H 1996. Designing Study Materials for Distance Students”, HTTP://www.csu.edu.au/division/oli/oli-rd/ occpap17/design.htm. (Retrieved 23rd March, 2008). 
work_ul6bwlwavjgibosfeibkkw5iz4	----	<302DC5EBC0CFB0FA20C6F2C8AD2D3228C7D52920BFCF2E687770> 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 275 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구* 27)김현아(열린 사이버대학교 상담심리학과) 국문요약 본 연구에서는 새터민의 사이버 학습 경험을 질적 분석하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 사이 버학습경험이 있는 새터민 10명을 대상으로 심층면담을 통한 질적 연구를 진행하였다. 연구대상자 표집방법은 눈덩이 표집으로, 자료 분석은 3명의 분석자에 의한 내러티브 분 석으로 진행되었다. 연구 참여자들의 심층면담을 통한 자료를 근거로 새터민 사이버학습 경험을 분석한 결과 9개 범주, 27개 하위영역, 90개 개념이 도출되었다. 9개의 범주는 남한사회에서 배움의 의미, 낯선 남한의 교육체계, 새터민의 학습에 대한 대인관계 특성, 새터민 사이버대학생으로서의 고충, 새터민 사이버대학생을 위한 고려사항, 새터민의 학 습스타일, 새터민이 경험하는 학업에 대한 동기유발, 새터민의 학습에 대한 지지체계, 새 터민 사이버학습의 기대효과이다. 본 연구결과를 중심으로 논의 후 연구의의와 추후 연 구를 제안하였다. 주제어: 새터민, 성인교육, 사이버학습 경험, 내러티브분석 * 본 연구는 2008년도 서울대학교 통일학 연구비 지원에 의해 수행된 논문임. 276 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) Ⅰ. 서론 1. 연구의 필요성 현재 새터민 2007년 2월 기준 남한에 거주하고 있는 새터민은 1만 113명 으로 1만 명을 넘어섰고, 2009년 3월까지 총 1만 5,836명이 국내에 입국, 그중 여성의 입국비율이 2002년을 기점으로 남성을 추월하여 2008년도 에는 약 78％를 차지하고 있다. 이들의 북한시절 직업은 노동자와 무직인 경우(88％)이며, 학력별로는 고등중졸이 70％이고 전문대졸이상은 16％ 에 해당된다.1) 이 중 2009년 10월 현재 사이버대학 재학 새터민은 119명 으로, 2006년 1학기 31명에 비해 최근 3년 간 꾸준히 증가하고 있는 추세 이다.2) 한편, 북한의 교육권은 학습이 기회균등을 원칙으로 의무교육제 를 채택하고 있으나 경제사정 악화로 의무교육제는 거의 붕괴상태에 빠 졌으며, 교육에 대한 당적 통제, 학습활동의 자유권과 교육에 대한 학습 기회의 보장권 침해로 교육에 있어서 인권보장은 매우 열악한 상황이 다.3) 남북한은 체제 및 교육 형태에 있어서 매우 상이하며, 두 국가체제 가 하나의 체제로 통합될 때 생겨나게 되는 교육적인 문제는 매우 복잡 한 양상을 띄게 될 것이다. 하지만 지금까지 새터민 교육에 대한 연구는 대부분 학령기 청소년을 위주로 이루어져 왔고,4) 성인의 정규교육과정 1) 북한이탈주민 현황, ꡔ통일부ꡕ (온라인), 2009년 3월; <www.unikorea.go.kr> 2) 통일부 내부자료. 3) 김평선, “북한의 인권보장의 실태에 관한 연구” (경성대학교 석사학위 논문, 2007). 4) 강희석, “새터민 고등학생의 사회적 지지체계와 학교적응에 관한 연구” (성공 회대학교 석사학위 논문, 2007) ; 조 아·전우택, “북한출신 대학생의 대학생 활 적응에 대한 질적 연구”, ꡔ상담 및 심리치료ꡕ, 제16권 1호 (2004), pp. 167~ 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 277 으로서 사이버교육 경험에 대한 연구는 없었다. 사이버 교육은 1990년대 중반 이후 인터넷의 확산과 함께 우리나라의 기업과 대학을 중심으로 기업의 성과 향상과 고등교육의 질적 향상을 위 해 활발하게 도입되어 왔다. 2001년부터는 사이버대학이 설립되어 운 되고 있고, 2009년 11월 현재 17개 고등교육법 상의 사이버대학교와 2개 의 평생교육법상의 사이버대학교가 있을 정도로 매우 빠른 속도로 성인 교육의 큰 부분을 차지하고 있다. 최근에는 각종 초·중·고등학교, 교원 연수기간, 직업훈련기관, 평생교육기관에 이어 유아교육기관에 이르기 까지 그 적용범위를 해마다 확대해가고 있다5). 특히 지속적인 학습을 통 한 자기계발을 위해 평생교육과 재교육에 대한 중요성이 점차 증가되고 있고, 사이버교육은 이를 효과적, 효율적으로 지원할 수 있는 구체적인 실천적 학습형태라는 점에서 사회적인 관심을 끌고 있다.6) 이－러닝(e-learning)은 칸(Khan)에 의하면 ‘시·공간을 초월한 교수－ 학습 환경을 제공하는 동시에 사용자간 상호작용이 가능하므로 지식정 보화 사회에서 학습자 중심의 교육을 가능하게 하는 체계’로 정의되며, 흔히 교육공학에서는 ‘정보통신기술을 이용하여 학습자 스스로 학습목 표와 방법을 주도하는 교육훈련방법’ 정도로 쓰이고 있고 또한 ‘정보통신 기술을 이용하여 학습자 스스로를 기반환경으로 하여 디지털화된 학습 콘텐츠를 학습자의 인지구조로 재구조화하는 일련의 학습활동’으로 사 용하기도 한다. 이－러닝(e-learning)은 상호작용적 학습 환경, 멀티미디 어 자료를 활용한 다양한 학습경험의 제공, 열린 학습체계, 온라인 검색 186 ; 최경자, “새터민 학생의 학습 적응력 신장을 위한 교육과정 탐색” (단국대 학교 박사학위 논문, 2008). 5) 편집부 저, ꡔ전자상거래백서 2000ꡕ (서울: 산업자원부 한국전자거래협회, 2000). 6) 유평준, “원격대학원 온라인수업의 학습참여도, 학업성취도 및 학습만족도에 미치는 학습자관련 변인”, ꡔ교육정보방송연구ꡕ, 제9권 4호 (2003), pp. 229~267. 278 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 활동, 다양한 전문가적 관점들의 제공, 편리한 사용 환경, 용이한 온라인 지원체제, 실제적인 문제해결 환경과 협동 사회 환경의 제공, 비용면에 서의 높은 효과, 면 대면 학습방식과 비교했을 때 시간과 공간의 제약이 적고 반복수강이 가능한 특징을 가지고 있다.7) 사이버학습에 있어서 학습자 특성은 학업수행에 많은 향을 끼칠 수 있다. 온라인 학습공동체에서 학습자의 개인과제와 협력과제 수행 경험, 팀 내 구성원으로서의 역할 경험, 학습자의 지식수준이 학업수행에 향 을 끼친다.8) 특히 강의에 대한 호감도는 학업달성에 대한 의지와 관련되 며 학습에 대한 낮은 호감도는 학업달성에 대한 의지결여로 학업을 피하 게 되고 자신이 배울 능력이나 전략, 기술 등에 능력이 부족하다고 느낀 다.9) 그 밖에도 사전지식 및 학습자원 등 촉진환경이 충분할수록 새로 학습해야 할 정보의 지각, 선택, 기억, 저장, 인출이 쉬워지고, 자기효능 감과 학습동기가 높아지므로, 학습에 대한 인지적 몰입이 촉진되고 학습 결과에 향을 끼치게 된다.10) 이러한 특성에서 볼 때, 새터민들의 학습 자 특성이 어떠한 지 그리고 이들의 학습자 특성이 학습상황에서 어떻게 작용하는 지 살펴볼 필요가 있겠다. 또한 교수자 특성이나 학습내용, 학업에 대한 촉진요소 등도 효율적인 사이버학습에 향을 끼칠 수 있다. 사이버교육의 특성상 교수자와 학습 7) 정혜진, “사이버 대학의 e-learning 환경이 학습자의 학업성취감과 강좌 몰입에 미치는 향: 4년제 대학 사이버 강의 수강생을 중심으로” (경희대학교 석사학 위논문, 2009), pp. 14~16. 8) Dixon, J. K., “A Collaborative Model for the Use of Technology by Preservice and Inservice Mathematics Teachers in Their Teaching Practices”, Center For Teaching Learning Mathematics, vol. 22, no. 22~23 (2000), pp. 100~110. 9) Printrich, P. R. & Schnuk, D. H., Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications (NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1996). 10) 권성호, “웹기반 가상교육에서 협력적 상호작용촉진을 위한 학습자 지원전략 개발”, ꡔ교육공학연구ꡕ, 제17권 3호 (2001), pp 29~51. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 279 자는 물리적으로 분리되어 있으므로 교수자는 단순한 지식의 제공자가 아닌 촉진자이며 학습의 안내자로서 교수자의 학업수행에 대한 격려와 촉진, 안내 등이 가장 핵심적인 활동으로 평가되고 있다.11) 이때 적절한 강의스타일의 정도가 긍정적인 학습 분위기를 조성함으로써 학습동기를 높이고 학업성취에 향을 미칠 수 있다.12) 원격교육의 중도탈락자를 대 상으로 인터뷰한 결과, 학습내용 자체가 학습자의 일과 직접적인 관련이 없고, 원론적이라서 흥미가 떨어진다고 하 다.13) 사이버학습에서는 학 습을 통해서 습득한 지식, 이해력 향상 및 인터넷 기술 등을 실제 교육에 효과적으로 적용하고 목표를 향한 의식적 활동 및 행동적인 학습을 통하 여 학습에 대한 기대효과가 놓아질 수 있다.14) 새터민들이 사이버 공동 체 공간 내에서 교수자 등과 어떻게 상호작용을 하고 있고, 어떤 학업에 대한 선호도를 지니며, 학습에 있어서 어떤 기대를 가지고 있는가를 파 악해보는 것은 남북한 통일 이후 성인교육 통합에 있어서 중요한 시사점 을 줄 수 있을 것이다. 새터민들이 남한에서 입국하여 겪게 되는 교육경험은 외국의 이주난 민의 학습경험에서 이론적 토대를 찾아볼 수 있다. 외국의 이주난민들은 개인적, 문화적 어려움과 더불어 학교 환경이 달라짐으로 인해 이중적인 어려움을 겪는다.15) 이주난민 학생들은 학업성적의 평가기준의 차이에 11) Moore, M. & Kearslery, G., Distance Education: A Systems View (Belmont: Wads worth Pub. 1996). 12) Fulford, C. P. & Zhang, S., “Perceptions of interaction: The critical predictor in distance education”, The American Journal of Distance Education, vol. 7, no. 3 (1993), pp. 8~21. 13) 정인성·최성희, “온라인 열린 원격교육의 효과 요인 분석”, ꡔ교육학연구ꡕ, 제 37권 1호 (1999), pp. 369~388. 14) 강인원·최지호·이성근, “사이버대학의 e-Learning 서비스에서 신뢰 차원이 학 교충성도에 미치는 향”, ꡔ경 학연구ꡕ, 제34권 4호 (2005), pp. 1143~1164. 15) Bemak, F., Chung, R. C-Y., “Counseling and psychotherapy with refugees”. In P. 280 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 서 오는 적응의 문제와 스트레스가 더 해진다.16) 교육평가의 도구 자체 가 그 나라의 문화에 맞게끔 만들어져 있고, 교육기회의 불평등 문제도 있다. 이러한 문제는 교사의 질, 교사의 편견, 의욕 없는 교사, 교수매체 의 부족, 과대한 학급인원, 난민에게 적합하지 않는 표준화된 교육과정, 본국의 평가도구에 대한 문화적 편견 등이 포함된다.17) 학급규제의 기준 과 학교에서의 행동의 차이가 더해지면서 과외 시간에도 이주난민 신입 생들을 쉽게 접할 수가 없게 되고, 학업에 대한 기대감과 개인적 성장이 생활방식 및 세계관에 적합하지 않을 수도 있다. 많은 이주난민 학생들 은 그들 스스로가 학업성공의 가치를 문화적 동화, 건강, 사회적 연계망, 문화적응, 기쁨, 즐거움, 흥미와 같은 질적인 측정에 두기 보다는 성적순 위, 시험점수, 자기수행, 학급순위, 능력별 학급편성, 승부와 같은 경쟁적 성공에 두고 있는 것으로 나타났다.18) 미국 한인 이민 1세대 36명과 심 층면담 한 결과, 자녀교육, 직업개발을 위한 교육기회 등의 정보를 얻고 싶으나, 그들이 부딪히는 언어장벽은 이용 가능한 정보원의 범위를 제한 하며, 이민자의 사회적 고립과 주류사회로부터의 고립을 가속화시키는 것으로 드러났다.19) 그 밖의 다른 이주민에 관련된 연구20)에서도 소수민 B. Pedersen, J. G. Draguns, W. J. Lonner, & J. E. Trimble (Eds.), Counseling across culture (5th ed., pp. 209~232). Thousand Oak, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2002. 16) Bemak, F., Chung, R. C-Y., “Working with children and families from recent immigrant groups” (2nd ed., pp. 84~101). In P. Pedersen & J. Carey (Eds.), Multi-cultural counseling in schools. Needham Heights (MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2003), pp. 41~42. 17) Dana, R. H. “Psychological assessment in the diagnosis and treatment of ethnic group members”. In J. A. Aponte & J. Wohl(Eds.), Psychological intervention and cultural diversity (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000), pp. 59~74. 18) Herzberg, M., “Having arrived: Dimensions of educational success in a transitional newcomer school”, Anthropology & Educational Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4 (1998), pp. 391~418. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 281 족 주변의 도움보다는 혼자서 해결하는 방법과 같이 매우 소극적으로 대 처하는 것으로 나타났고, 가족, 친구, 이웃 등의 비공식적인 정보원에 대 한 의존성에는 경제적 빈곤, 문화적 차이, 소외감, 인종차별, 소극성 등 의 다양한 원인이 존재하 다. 새터민의 정보 빈곤 유발요인에는 공급자 중심의 정보지원 체계, 정보 지원 기관 간 협력 네트워크의 미비, 정보인프라의 부족과 같은 환경적 요인과 언어소통 능력의 부족, 정보기술 활용능력의 부족, 정보인식 수 준과 교육수준의 한계, 정착생활의 태도와 자세의 한계 등이 있다. 한편 새터민의 인터넷 이용에 대한 한국정보화진흥원(KADO)의 실태조사를 살펴보면 음악/라디오듣기/ 화보기, 신문/잡지/뉴스보기 다음으로 업무 및 학업관련 정보검색인 것으로 나타났다.21) 이는 새터민들이 남한에서 입국하여 처음 학습하게 되는 컴퓨터 사용이나 이들이 지니는 경제적 빈 곤에 비해 상당한 비중을 업무 및 학업관련 등의 긍정적인 목적으로 활 용하고 있음을 시사해준다고 볼 수 있다. 기존의 정보격차 해소 정책이 지나치게 공급자 중심적 방식(top-down approach)이었다는 점을 비판하 면서, 정보소외계층의 사회적 조건과 문화적 가치에 대한 평가와 이해를 바탕으로 한 방식(bottom-up approach)이 필요하다고 주장하 다.22) 따 19) Roh, Jin-Ja, An investigation of the perceived information needs, information- seeking behaviors, and the use of community public libraries among first-generation adult Korean immigrants living in the Dallas, Texas, area. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Texas Woman’s University, 2002). 20) 이재환·윤유라, “외국인노동자 H의 삶과 정보 빈곤”, ꡔ한국비블리아학회지ꡕ, 제16권 1호 (2005), pp. 181~202 ; Fisher, K. E., “Information behavior of migrant Hispanic farm workers and their families in the Pacific Northwest”, Information Research, vol. 10, no. 1 (2004). 21) 조용완, “북한이탈주민의 정보행태와 정보 빈곤에 관한 연구―부산지역 거주자 를 중심으로” (부산대학교 박사학위 논문, 2006). 22) 강상현·강홍렬·김은미·차남경, ꡔ정보격차에 대한 사회경제적 함의ꡕ (서울: 282 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 라서 새터민과 같은 정보소외계층의 사이버학습 경험을 이해한다면 이 들의 남한사회에서 보다 적극적으로 정보를 활용하고 소통할 수 있는 지 지체계를 확보할 수 있을 것이다. 사이버교육은 지식정보 사회에서 일부계층에 의해 이루어졌던 지식과 정보의 독점화에서 벗어나 누구나 쉽게 지식과 정보를 접할 수 있게 하 며, 지식과 정보의 다양한 생산과 이에 따른 창의력의 발휘 기회를 많이 제공할 수 있고23) 여성의 자존감 향상, 정서적 지지와 정보를 획득하고 지식을 적용하도록 한다.24) 따라서 사이버 공간이라는 네트워크와 자원 을 통해 공식적인 정보 활용 능력을 기르고, 다양한 배경의 남한사람들 과 교류하게 됨으로써 문화적 수용력과 사회적 관계망을 회복할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다. 또한 북한시절 및 탈북과정에서 배움의 시기를 놓친 새터민들이 평생교육 차원에서 자신의 역량을 강화하고, 직장경험이 있 는 새터민들이 학위취득을 통해 경력관리를 해 나간다면 새터민들의 인 적자원개발에 있어서도 중요한 의미를 지닐 수 있을 것으로 기대된다. 새터민들의 보다 효과적인 사이버학습을 하기 위해서는 사이버대학교 경험이 있는 새터민들의 사이버학습 경험들을 생생하게 들어보고 효과 적인 이－러닝(e-learing) 학습방법을 개발하고 지원체계 서비스체계를 마련한 필요성이 있다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 남한으로의 이주 및 정착 과정에서 사이버학습 경험을 한 새터민을 대상으로 이러한 경험을 어떻 게 의미화 하여 활용하고 있는지 그들 자신의 수요자 중심 관점에서 파 악해보고자 한다. 이를 통해 ‘사이버대학교’라는 공간으로 진로를 선택한 정보통신정책연구원, 2002), pp. 1~163. 23) 최성우, “미래사회와 정보화 교육”, ꡔ서울교육ꡕ, 제15권 9호 (2000). 24) 김수아, “사이버 공간에서의 “힘 돋우기 실천(empowerment)” 가능성에 대한 연 구: 온라인 여성 커뮤니티를 중심으로” (서울대학교 박사학위 논문, 2006), pp. 18~23. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 283 새터민들의 학습경험의 사례들을 이들의 관점에서 심층적으로 분석하 고, 학습만족도와 성공적인 학업수행에 향을 미치는 요인들을 탐색하 여 바람직한 이－러닝(e-learning) 방식을 모색해보고자 한다. 이러한 연 구목적을 달성하기 위해 다음과 같은 연구문제를 설정하 다. 연구문제 1. 새터민 사이버학습 경험자들이 경험 한 내용은 무엇인가? Ⅱ. 연구방법 1. 연구 참여자 연구대상자는 새터민 사이버 학습 경험이 있는 새터민 10명이다. S사 이버대학교 2명, K사이버대학교 1명, K디지털대학교 1명, K디지털대학 2 명, O사이버대학교 4명이었다. 이들 중 사이버대학교 졸업자는 2명이었 고, 나머지는 8명은 모두 재학생으로서 각각 2년 4명, 3년 3명, 4년 1명이 었다. 이들의 전공은 사회복지학, 경 학, 세무회계, 평생교육, 중국어문 화, 디지털 컨텐츠이다. 남한 거주 기간은 3년~8년으로 평균 5년이며, 성 별은 남 2명, 여 8명, 평균연령은 41세이다. 북한에서의 최종학력은 고등 중졸 2명, 전문학교졸 2명, 대학중퇴 2명, 대학교졸 4명이고, 졸업 후 남 한에서 대학원을 다니고 있는 새터민은 2명이다. 2. 자료 수집 이들의 표집방법은 비확률 표집 중 눈덩이 표집(snowball sampling)을 사용하 다. 1차적으로는 연구자와 평소 라포 형성이 되어 있는 새터민 에게 직접 연락을 하 고, 대상자가 면담 후 눈덩이 표집 방식으로 사이 284 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 버대학교에 재학 중인 새터민을 추천하도록 하거나 사이버대학교 교수 중 새터민 재학생을 추천하도록 하 다. 이러한 표집방식은 희귀한 표본 을 쉽게 확보할 수 있다는 것과 표집에 따른 비용을 절감할 수 있다는 장점이 있지만, 연구자와 개인적인 관계가 있는 새터민과 그들이 추천하 는 대상을 중심으로 조사하 다는 제한점이 있다. 본 연구에서는 새터민의 사이버교육 대상자들이 대부분 성인학습자라 는 점을 중요하게 고려하여 성인학습자 관점에 기초한 학습자들이 사이 버 학습에 대해 가지고 있는 의견, 태도 및 만족도가 반 될 수 있는 방 식을 도출해내고자 한다. 질문지는 “사이버대학교를 선택하게 된 동기가 무엇입니까?”, “사이버 학습은 당신에게 어떤 의미를 줍니까?”, “주로 어 떻게 수업에 참여하고 있습니까?”, “선호하는 교수의 수업스타일은 무엇 입니까?”, “학습에 효과가 있었던 학습방법은?”, “강의 과정 부여되는 과 제에 대해서는 어떻게 해결합니까?”, “수업시간 중 학습을 이해하는 데 어려움은 무엇입니까?” 등 반 구조화 된 형태로 자유롭게 이야기하도록 구성하 다. 면담은 박사학위를 소지한 상담교수와 새터민 대안학교 교사로 새터민 상담 및 교육경험 5년 이상인 자가 실시하 다. 심층면담은 2009년 6월 초에서 2009년 8월까지 약 3개월에 걸쳐 실시되었다. 면담장소는 연구자 의 연구실, 대상자의 독립된 사무실, 비교적 소음이 적고 칸막이가 설치 된 커피숍에서 진행되었다. 면담은 일대일로 진행되었으며, 소요시간은 70분에서 120분 정도 다. 면담을 진행하기 전에 다시 한 번 더 연구 목 적과 절차에 대해 설명한 후, 동의서에 서명을 받았다. 면담은 반 구조화 된 형태로 진행되었으며, 부가적인 질문을 통해 구체적인 답변을 하도록 하 고, 더 이상의 내용이 없다는 판단이 들었을 때 다음 질문을 하면서 면담을 진행하 다. 면담 내용은 소형녹음기로 녹음되었고, 면담 후 연 구 참여자들에게 감사의 표시로 소정의 상품권을 주었다. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 285 3. 자료분석 본 연구는 새터민의 남한사회 사이버학습 경험을 분석하기 위해 질적 연구방법들 중 내러티브 분석을 사용하 다. 내러티브분석을 선정한 이 유는 면담이나 문헌연구에서 제공된 삶의 이야기로부터 자료를 수집하 여 분석하는 연구방법으로, 개인의 경험뿐 아니라 문화적 환경에 의해 구성된 실재(reality)를 중요시하기25) 때문이다. 내러티브분석을 위해서 질적 연구 경험이 있는 상담심리학 박사 2명 과 임상심리 박사과정 1명이, 전 분석 과정에 참석하 다. 본 연구에서 는 녹음된 내용을 중심으로 녹취록을 작성하 고, 전사분량은 A4 용지로 220장 정도 다. 심층 면담 한 내용을 정리한 녹취록과 분석방법을 공동 연구자에게 전해주고, 6회 총 70시간에 걸쳐 만나 분석단계별로 각자 분 석한 내용을 이야기 하고 충분한 토의를 거쳐 정리하는 방법으로 진행되 었다. 정리한 내용을 공동연구자들의 메일로 발송하여 확인과 수정을 두 차례에 걸쳐 실시 한 후, 최종적으로 확정하 다. Ⅲ. 결과 심층면담을 통한 자료를 근거로 새터민의 한국에서의 사이버학습 경 험에 대해 질적 분석한 결과, 9범주, 27하위 역, 90개념을 도출하 다. 연구 분석결과는 표 1에 제시하고, 각각의 구체적 범주와 개념 등에 대 해 설명하 다. 25) Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. Narrative research: Reading, analysis, and interpretation (Thousand Oaks Calif: SAGE Pub., 1998). 286 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) <표 1> 새터민의 사이버학습 경험 분석 개념 사례 하위 영역 범주 남한사회 적응에 필요한 기초 지식 필요 7/10 남한사회 적응에 필요한 학습 남한사회에서 배움의 의미 남한사회 적응의 필수요건으로서 컴퓨터 4/10 개인의 노력이 인정받는 남한사회에 대한 만족 3/10 새터민이 인식한 남한사회꿈과 목표추구로서의 남한의 학업 4/10 지속적인 자기계발이 필요한 남한사회 2/10 남북한의 지식격차 2/10 남북한 교육문화 차이 낯선 남한의 교육체계 남북한의 교과목 차이 5/10 틀에 박힌 북한의 암기식 교육 5/10 다양하고 자율적인 남한의 사이버학습 3/10 낯선 사이버학습 방식 5/10 남북한 학습방식 차이 남북한 학습평가방식의 차이 4/10 객관식 평가의 수월함 6/10 언어이해의 어려움 6/10 언어소통의 어려움 어이해의 어려움 4/10 외래어이해의 어려움 5/10 단어 학습 보조 장치의 필요 7/10 새터민을 이해하는 교수에 대한 믿음 과 의지 3/10 교수와의 관계 새터민의 학습에 대한 대인관계 특성 교수와의 직접적인 교류선호 6/10 학습동기로서의 교수의 지지와 격려 6/10 남한동료와의 동등한 경쟁심 추구 3/10 교우관계동료인정에서 얻은 기쁨 4/10 함께 하고자 하는 새터민 동료의식 5/10 남한지인에게 도움요청 4/10 도움요청 태도 도움요청에 대한 미안함 3/10 새터민 선배를 통한 도움추구 2/10 사이버 공간에서의 적극적인 학습도 움 추구 2/10 정보습득을 위한 인터넷 검색 활용 3/10 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 287 게시판의 적극적 활용 4/10 학습교류 형태 무지노출에 대한 걱정 6/10 공개적인 사이버교류 기피 3/10 댓글을 통한 인정과 지지경험 4/10 새터민의 학업중단에 대한 우려 3/10 새터민의 이미지 고려 새터민 사이버대학생으로 서의 고충 자기관리가 중요한 사이버학습 4/10 새터민 정체성 밝히기 5/10 남한의 레포트 수준 타진해보기 4/10 학업스트레스 레포트 작성의 어려움 5/10 시험부담 2/10 전공에 대한 기초지식 부족 4/10 초기 학습적응의 어려움 6/10 나이로 인한 학습부담 4/10 학업의 장애요소학업과 직장병행의 어려움 5/10 자녀양육으로 인한 학업부담 2/10 대학생활 안내의 필요성 5/10 새터민을 위한 배려 요구 새터민 사이버대학생을 위한 고려사항 새터민 특화교육 희망 3/10 새터민에 대한 학교의 관심 요구 3/10 경제적 안정 우선 5/10 효과적인 사이버학습을 위한 선행조건 사이버학습 기초로서의 컴퓨터 활용 능력 5/10 사이버학습 동기로서 학업열의 5/10 사전학습으로서의 남한생활 경험 4/10 배움을 목적으로 한 순수한 학업충고 4/10 실제 사례중심의 이해용이 3/10 선호하는 사이버 강의형태 새터민의 학업 스타일 이해하기 쉽게 설명해주는 교수방식 선호 3/10 칠판강의 선호 7/10 동 상 강의 선호 2/10 반복학습 추구 5/10 선호하는 학습형태 남북한 비교설명을 통한 이해 5/10 실재적인 강의내용 집중 3/10 288 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 시각적인 자료를 통한 기억 3/10 효과적인 학습방식 지식습득을 위한 메모활용 3/10 체계적인 학습습관 3/10 학습에 대한 철저한 사전준비 7/10 학업지속에 대한 강한 의지 8/10 학습의 촉진요소 새터민이 경험하는 학업에 대한 동기유발 나이를 뛰어넘는 배움에 대한 도전 3/10 부단한 학습노력 8/10 북한시절 우수한 학업성적 3/10 학업에 대한 성공 경험 남한에서의 우수한 학업경험 5/10 학업성취로 인한 기쁨 3/10 새터민 동료모임의 필요성 2/10 오프모임에 대한 견해 새터민의 학습에 대한 지지체계 오프모임의 필요성 4/10 새터민 편견으로 인한 오프모임 참석 의 어려움 2/10 타인경계로 인한 오프모임 참석의 어 려움 2/10 현실적 제약으로 인한 오프모임 참석 의 어려움 7/10 학습동반자로서의 가족 5/10 학습에 대한 가족의 역할학습에 대한 가족의 지지 8/10 멘토의 필요성 4/10 힘이 되어주는 멘토적극적인 새터민 멘토 활동 5/10 가족 내의 학습모델링 효과 5/10 사이버 학습에 대한 전이 새터민 사이버학습 의 기대효과 가족에게 사이버 학습 권유 3/10 새터민 동료에게 사이버학습 권유 5/10 반복강의의 이점 4/10 사이버대학의 이점 사이버학습에 대한 정부의 정착지원 제도 혜택 5/10 시공간을 뛰어넘는 학습 가능 4/10 학업과 직장병행의 용이함 5/10 혼자서 하는 것이 편리한 사이버 학습 3/10 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 289 통일 이후 사명감 4/10 새터민 역할의 중 요성북한문화 안내자로서의 역할 2/10 남한생활 적응에 도움이 된 교양지식 2/10 학습의 부수적 효 과 대학생으로서의 자긍심 6/10 새터민 동료의 부러움 2/10 앎으로 인한 대인관계 자신감 2/10 1. 남한사회에서의 배움의 의미 1) 남한사회 적응에 필요한 학습 새터민들은 남한사회생활을 경험하면서 적응을 위해서는 배움을 통해 알아야 한다고 점을 강조한다. 남한사람들은 당연히 알고 있고 설명이 필요 없는 기초지식마저도 새터민들에게는 생소하고, 이러한 기초지식 을 습득하기 위해 지속적인 추가학습이 필요하다고 말한다. 사례 5는 특 히 정보화 시대인 한국사회에서 살아남기 위해서는 컴퓨터를 능숙하게 다를 줄 아는 것이 남한사회 적응의 필수요건이라고 말한다. 컴퓨터 활 용능력은 남한사회에 필요한 기초 정보를 습득할 수 있는 통로로 작용하 고 있음을 알 수 있다. 남한사회 적응에 필요한 기초 지식 필요. 한국에서 누구나 다 아는 예를 들게 되면 문화나 역사나 그런 거 할 때 일반적으로 다 아는 얘기를... 한국 사람들은 고종이 누군지 알지만 저희는 고종이 누군지 모르잖아요. 그렇다 고 대학 선생님이 역사 강의할 때 고종 황제가 이렇다가 얘기는 하잖아요 그 냥. 구태여 고종 황제가 누구라고 설명을 안 하시잖아요. 한국 사람들 누구 라도 다 아는 건데. 저희는 모르거든요. 실례로 들면 그런 것들. 당연히 모르 지요. 저쪽 역사가 조금씩 틀리니까. (사례10) 남한사회 적응의 필수요건으로서 컴퓨터. 그러니까 첫째로는 컴퓨터를 우 290 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 선 능숙하게 다뤄야 하구요, 정보화 시대니까, 그리고 한국은 인터넷 모르면 안 되잖아요. 모르면 인터넷에서 알아보면 되는데 그게 아마 새터민들이 잘 안 되는 거 같애요. (사례5) 2) 새터민이 인식한 남한사회 일하면 일한대로 배우면 배운 대로 인정해주는 남한사회 분위기는 북 한사회에서 경험해보지 못했던 점이며, 따라서 새터민들에게 개인의 노 력이 인정받는 남한사회가 만족스럽다고 말한다. 남한사회에서 배운다 는 것은 경제적 안정이 주는 안주한 삶이 아니라 보다 의미 있는 삶을 살아가기 위한 꿈과 목표 추구의 수단이라고 강조한다. 또한 부단히 계 속해서 자기 계발을 해야 하는 남한사회가 처음부터 적응하기 쉬운 것은 아니었다고 토로하고 있다. 개인이 노력이 인정받는 남한사회에 대한 만족. 여기서는 제가 마음만 먹 으면 머리 깨져도 하면 되지만..북한에서는 그렇지 않았어요. 여기서는 일하 면 일 하는 대로 대우해주고, 배우면 배우는 대로 대우해 주잖아요. 참 좋은 세상이예요. 법 없이도 살 수 있을 것 같아요. (사례2) 지속적인 자기계발이 필요한 남한사회. 분명 그거예요! 저는..분명! 저는 그래. 뜻이 멀어진 애들한테 그래요. 야~생각해봐라. 너네 여기 와서 하루 밥 먹고 이러고..남한 땅에 와서 밥이나 먹고 그러자고..처음에는 아무 생각 없이 왔을 수도 있겠지만. 일단 와보니까. 그저 와서 무의미하게 훌 난 보내 고 싶지 않다고... (사례3) 2. 낯선 남한의 교육체계 1) 남북한 교육문화 차이 남북한의 사회구조적 차이로 인해 새터민들은 남북한 지식 격차를 실 감하게 하 다. 특히 사례 10은 남한사회가 마치 “현대판 타임머신”을 타 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 291 고 온 듯 하고, 자신들의 교육수준은 백지상태와 같다고 표현하고 있다. 새터민들은 남북한 지식격차로 인해 강의를 들을 때에도 역시 어려운 문 제에 부딪힌다고 말한다. 남한의 교육환경에서 겪고 있는 어려움은 남북 한 교과목 차이로 인하여 생소한 교과목들이 많고, 북한에서 유사한 과 목을 이수한 경험이 있다하더라도 서로 다른 교육내용으로 배웠기 때문 에 수업내용을 이해하기가 쉽지 않다고 한다. 남북한의 지식격차. 그 다음에는 뭐 우리하고 뭐라고 할까, 사회구조 자체 가 너무 틀리잖아요. 이 자체가 30~40년 뒤떨어져 있다가 갑자기 뭐 현대판 타임머신으로 왔으니까. 저희는 아무 것도 모르는 상태나 같잖아요. 백지장 인데. 그러니까 교수님들이 그냥 한국 사람들하고 강의할 때는 다 알 것 이 라고 하는 걸 우리가 모르는 때가 많거든요. (사례10) 남북한의 교과목 차이. 그리고 사회주의 경제는 우리 안다지만 여기서 보 면은 제가 했던 건 경 이니까 자본주의 경제원론이라든가 이런 거는 전혀 모르잖아요. 그렇다 해서 물론 그 과목이 있긴 하지만, 보면 그 과목 하나 들 어가지고 다 이해한다는 건 말이 안 되잖아요. (사례7) 새터민들이 경험하 던 북한은 틀에 박힌 암기식 교육을 통해 학습을 하 던 사회 다. 이러한 북한의 틀에 박힌 암기식 교육방식에 대해 사 례 7은 자기생각이 아닌 “짜여진 대본을 주고 외워서 쓰는” 방식이라고 표현하고 있다. 무조건 암송한 것을 그대로 외워서 써야하는 북한의 주 입식 교육에 익숙한 새터민들은, 남한의 사이버학습에 대해 토론하고 싶 을 때 토론하고 자유로운 교육방식이라 스스로 선택하게 되는 것이라고 말한다. 주관식이 많은 데, 그건 어디까지나 딱 짜여진 대본을 주는 거죠. 고거를 외워서 쓰는 거죠 그거는 자기 생각이 아니고 자기 창의가 아니에요. (사례7) 292 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 2) 남북한 학습방식 차이 자신의 창의력을 발휘해서 뭔가를 만들어내고 생각하는 것에 익숙하 지 않은 새터민들에게 사이버 공간 자체가 낯설고 게시판 활용, 질문, 쪽 지, 레포트, 팀 프로젝트와 같은 사이버 교육 방식이 낯설기만 하 다. 또한 단답형, 객관식, 토론 등과 같은 다양한 남한 학습평가방식에서 새 터민 학습자들은 매우 혼란스러워함을 느낄 수 있었다. 하지만 사례6에 서 보는 바와 같이, 토씨하나 틀리지 않고 외워야 하는 북한의 교육에 비 해 경험이 풍부한 새터민 성인에게 남한의 객관식 평가는 비교적 수월하 다고 말한다. 객관식 평가의 수월성. 그런 건 여기가 좀 쉽다고 해야 할까. 왜냐면 객관 식이니까 주관식 같은 것은 머릿속에 있는 걸 해야하니까 바쁘니까(: 힘드니 까). 객관식은 사람이 외운 것도 뭘 하나 툭 튕겨주면 생각나는 게 있으니까 그러잖아요. 객관식은 그런 것인데 그런 건 좋더라구요. 객관식으로 시험을 보는 게 좋아요. (사례6) 3) 언어소통의 어려움 언어이해의 어려움. 새터민들은 한 민족이지만 남북한의 한글문화는 맞춤법에서부터 숨은 뜻에 이르기까지 차이점이 있고 이로 인해 남한의 언어를 이해하는 데 어려움이 크다고 말한다. 학습상황에서 흔히 쓰고 있는 레포트, 중간고사, 기말고사나 엠티, 멘토 등의 한자어, 외래어식 표현의 언어소통에 장벽을 느끼고 있음을 알 수 있었다. 지금은 조금 낫지..아직도..많이..한글의 문화, 뜻풀이 보면 우리하고 틀린 게 많아요. 헛갈릴 때가 많아요. 그런 거는 우리는 이런 거 없는 건데.. 우리 는 이런 뜻으로 배웠는데 왜 이렇게 하지..안깐 힘으로 썼는데, 안간 힘으로 쓴대요. 같은 나라 우리 한 민족 말인데..뜻풀이가 우리하고 틀리구나..대표 적으로 그렇지....여러 면에서 많이 틀리니까.. (사례4) 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 293 영어이해의 어려움. 새터민들은 학습상황에서 모르는 어가 나올 때 마다 당황스럽다고 하며 한글말로 따로 적어서 익히기도 하지만, 사이버 학습에서 보다 효율적으로 활용할 수 있는 사전이나 검색창과 같은 단어 학습 보조 장치가 특별히 요구된다고 말한다. 말을 모르니까 컴퓨터에 들어붙어서 그 말을 또 찾고. 그런 식으로 공부 하기 시작했어요. 그래서 그런 것을 따로 창에 찾아볼 수 있게 해주면 좋겠 다 싶었어요. (사례2) 3. 새터민의 학습에 대한 대인관계 특성 1) 교수와의 관계 새터민 성인 학습자에게 교수의 역할을 매우 중요하게 작용하 다. 낯 선 사이버학습 환경에서 새터민들은 자신을 이해하고 지지하는 교수자 에게 강한 신뢰감을 보 다. 특히 교수자의 피드백에서 보여주는 지지와 격려는 사례 4에서 나타나는 바와 같이 새터민들의 학습동기를 유발하 고 학업에 대한 흥미를 고취시켜주고 있다. 학습동기로서의 교수의 지지와 격려. 쪽지 답 글이 왔는데.. 처음 글자가 ‘**학우님 레포트 쓰느라 고생 많이 했습니다. 원래 이쁜 데 더 어떻게 이쁘 게 봐줍니까 잘 쓰셨습니다’ 하고 왔는 데.. 기분이 너무 좋았어요. 이쁘지도 않는데 이쁘다 하는 게 좋고..글도 내가 볼 때는 많이 허접하고, 빈 구석이 많은데..그 모자란 것을 첫 평가를 그렇게 해주니까. 사람이라는 게 칭찬이 란 게 좋은 거 같아요. 내가 못해서 누군가 나를 잘 한다 잘 하면요. 아..싫어 도 그 의무감이 있어서..열심히 하면..아..어렴풋이 알게 되더라구요. 아..열 심히 하게 되더라구요. (사례4) 교수와의 직접적인 교류 선호. 새터민들은 학교의 직원이나 학습동료 보다는 교수가 직접 멘토를 연결해주거나 대학생활에 대한 안내를 해주 294 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 는 등 다양한 교수역할을 희망하고 있었다. 또한 수업에 어려움이 있거 나 의문사항이 있을 때 사이버 공간 속에서 교수에게 적극적으로 문의하 고 도움을 요청하 고, 나아가서 교수와 직접적인 면담이나 전화 요청 등의 교수와의 직접적인 교류를 선호하 다. 아 그러니까 내가 교수님 내가 고민이 이렇다는 거 너무나도 무식하다보 니까 정말 고대로 퀴즈 모르는 거 다 썼어요. 이런 과정으로 2학년 1학기까 지 올라와서 지금 기말고사 시험을 받자니까 정말 나로써 이 문제가 또 이렇 게 막혀서 이렇게 질문을 드리는데 교수님 웃어주지 말고 알려달라고 그 교 수님이라는 게 너무나도 내 잘난 글을 내 짧게 쓴 게 한 한 페이지 좀 넘게 쓴 거 같아요. 근데 그걸 지루하게 보지 않고 다 읽고서 내 인테 회답해 가지 고서 예~내인데다가 힘을 주고 시험을 다시 재시험 친 게 있어요. 그래서 다 시 재시험을 쳐가지고 서리 내 정말 성적이 올라갔어요. 내 정말 그렇게 공 부 했어요 내 교수님 한테예~~ (사례8) 2) 교우관계 새터민들은 남한 학습 동료에 대해서 인정받고 싶은 대상이면서 동등 한 경쟁을 추구하려고 하며, 새터민들 동료학습자에 대해서는 강한 동료 의식을 보인다. 새터민이라고 불쌍하다 동정하고 봐주는 것보다는 남한 사람과 동등한 대우를 해주기를 원하 고, 남한에 온 이상 한국 사람과 의 동등한 경쟁을 통해서만이 성공할 수 있다고 말한다. 새터민들은 남 한의 학습 동료들이 자신들의 과제를 참고하거나 인정해줄 때, 커다란 기쁨을 느끼고, 힘이 된다고 하 다. 또한 배움에 대한 의지가 있는 새터 민들끼리 정서적인 교류뿐 아니라 지속적인 학업이나 정보를 교류하는 등 함께 하고자 하는 새터민 동료의식이 강하게 작용하고 있는 듯하다. 남한동료와의 동등한 경쟁추구. 대단한 거는 아니고, 살아남자니까, 열심 히 해온 거지요. 내가 살아남자니까. 근데 이자 저는 그렇기 때문에 탈북자 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 295 들보고 그럽니다. 어느 탈북자가 잘 됐다고 하면 그 사람을 기준으로 하지 말아라. 그 사람보다 더 나은, 한국사람, 잘된 사람을 기준으로 잡아라. 니 라이벌로 잡고 그 카고 따라가기 위해서 해라. (사례9) 동료인정에서 얻은 기쁨. 2차 3차 에서는 나하고 같이 들어간 새터민 아이 하고 우리도 할 수 있다 한번 해보자 하고.....우리 같은 팀에 들어갔어요. 같 은 팀에 넣어 달라 해가지고..그래서 우리가 2차, 3차에서 우리가 자료를 찾 아가지고 올렸는데.. 이상한 거 있지요. 그 중에서 2/3는 내 자료가 다 올랐 어요. 우리 팀에서 올리는 자료에도..너무 좋은 거 있죠. 누가 말한 건지 다 른 사람도 다 알거잖아요. 네.. 그러니까 너무 뿌듯하고..사람들이 인사 올 때 마다 너무 그런 거 있죠. 아! 나도 할 수 있구나..용기가 생기고..사람들이 댓글을 올려가지고 힘을 주니까..기분이 좋았고..제일 좋았던 거는 팀 프로 젝트가 그랬던 거 같아요. (사례1) 함께 하고자 하는 새터민 동료의식. 같이 배우는 사람들끼리 정도 들고.. 해서.. 지금도 같이 다니던 사람들끼리 자주 연락합니다. 그 사람들 중에서 몇 명이서 **에서 같이 공부하기도 하고...다 같은 학원에 다녔던 사람들이 다시 공부하고 그랬습니다. (사례2) 3) 도움요청 태도 새터민들은 학습상황에서 물어 볼 내용이 너무 많고 일일이 도움을 요 청하는 것이 미안하다고 하 다. 남한사람들이라면 기본적으로 알 수 있 는 내용들도 새터민들에게는 질문거리가 되고 잦은 질문으로 도움을 요 청하는 것이 상대방 특히 남한사람들에게 피해를 끼친다는 생각을 지니 고 있었다. 주변에 아는 사람이 없는 경우, 도움요청에 대한 미안함을 극 복하기 위한 방법으로 인터넷 검색을 많이 활용하고 있었다. 소극적으로 도움을 요청하는 새터민들에게 인터넷 검색에 대한 의존이 훨씬 더 두드 러진 듯하다. 더 나아가서 간접적인 사이버매체보다는 직접적인 대면관 계에서 도움을 요청하기도 하 는데, 사이버학습 경험이 있는 새터민 선 배나 평소 친분이 있는 남한지인에게 도움을 요청하는 등 주로 비공식적 296 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 인 정보원에 의존하 다. 일부 새터민들은 토론에서 남한의 학습동료들 이 어떻게 글을 올리고 생각을 하고 있나 관찰하면서 배우기도 하고, 자 신이 직접 토론에 참여하거나 교수에게 조언을 구하고 정보를 수집하며 학생간의 상호의견을 주고 받는 등의 적극적으로 사이버 학습교류를 보 다. 도움요청에 대한 미안함. 그런데 같이 앉아서 공부하는데, 대고 물어 보는 게 미안하더라고요. 자꾸 질문하자니까. (사례9) 정보습득을 위한 인터넷 검색 활용. 그런데 주변에 아는 사람도 별로 없 고.. 그러니까 모르는 거 저희가 알 수 있는 길은 인터넷 밖에 없거든요.. 한 마디로 말해서 무슨 한국에서 흔히 쓰는 유행어도 저희한테는 생소하거든 요. 그런 것도 그냥, 그저 뭐 저는 기본 네이버를 많이 사용하는데, 검색창에 다 치면 바로바로 말이, 답이 나오거든요. 모를 것도 인터넷 하나만 있으면 뭐 누가 가르쳐 주지 않아도 다 알겠더라고요. 지금은... (사례10) 새터민 선배를 통한 도움추구. 그런 것도 제가 **라고 사이버대학교 5년 전에 졸업한 새터민 분 통해서, 그 분이 입학시켜주고 수강신청도 다 해줬어 요. (중략) 이 학교에서도 새터민 선배분들이 6~7명 되니까..그분들한테 물어 서 하면 됩니다. (사례2) 남한지인에게 도움요청. 그리고 인맥이 턱없이 부족하잖아요, 검색으로도 안 되고 해서 제가 성당을 좀 다녔어요. 같은 나이의 분들 모여서 뭐하면 제 가 자문을 구하니까 그분들이 잘 가르쳐 주시더라구요. (사례5) 사이버 공간에서의 적극적인 학습도움 추구. 그게 안 된다면 사이버상으 로도 동아리, 토론물 많이 올리고 서로 의견을 나누고 정보수집하고 교수님 들한테도 조언을 구하고 그렇게 했거든요. (사례5) 4) 학습교류 형태 많은 새터민들은 남한사회에서 모르는 것이 너무 많고, 모를 때마다 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 297 자주 질문을 하는 것이 자신들의 무지를 밝히는 것이라는 우려가 된다고 말한다. 이러한 무지노출에 대한 걱정은 새터민 신분에 대한 공개적인 노출이 되는 것을 꺼리게 만들고, 따라서 공개적인 사이버 교류를 기피 하게 만들기도 한다. 하지만 댓글을 통한 인정과 지지경험을 한 새터민 들은 게시판을 통해서 자신들의 학습의 어려움이나 지금까지의 삶을 노 출 하는 등의 적극적인 교류를 하는 모습도 보여주었다. 무지노출에 대한 걱정. 모르는 말도 너무 많고 하니까 그 선생님한테도 한 두번 물어 보기가 쉽지 자꾸 물어보면 이 무식한 걸 자주 물어보면 부담 스러울 것 같아서 그래서 선생님한테 컴퓨터로 하다가 왔다고 하니까 그다 음엔 이 선생님도 막 웃는단 말입니다. 너무나도 모르니 우습지 그래서 내가 너무나도 안타깝지..(중략). 어떤 교수님은 정말 난 저래 새터민이라고 그래 서 무식하다고 밝히니까 너무 모르니까 진짜 선생님도 허물없이 나 이렇게 무식하다고 웃지 말고 내가 이해 할 수 있게끔 도와달라고 간절하게 글을 쓰 기도 하면... (사례8) 공개적인 사이버교류 기피. 제가 교수님들한테 메일을 보낸 거예요. 제가 무슨 과 몇 번 누굽니다. 쪽지는 괜찮잖아요. 공개하는 건 싫고. (사례5) 게시판의 적극적 활용. 그거는 게시판에 글 올리면 나 이렇게 썼는데.. 그 냥 그 결말을 쓰다나니까 내 생활 이렇게 쓰다나니까..어렵지 않게 썼는데.. 처음에는 많이 실망도 하고..솔직히 짜증이 없지 않아 있었다고..쓰다나니 내 지나간 생활이 과거불안이 막....갑자기 과거가 주마등처럼 스쳐지나가니 까 우리는 또 그런 표현풀이 방식을 배우니까 그거를 살짝 표현해 적다나 니.. (사례4) 댓글을 통한 인정과 지지경험. 이번에 **과목 같은 거는 중요하다 싶어 가 지고..공부하게 되는 거예요. 그래서 한번은 이 과목 너무 좋다고 **글을 한 번 올렸어요. 솔직히 처음에는 사이버로 공부한다는 것이 긴가민가했어요. 등록을 해서 듣고는 있지만 이왕 배웠으니 알아야 되는 거고 해서..댓글을 298 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 올려보는데..**쪽에 부지런히 제가 댓글을 올리는 것은 너무 좋은 거 있지요. 나이가 있지만 지금 공부하는 거 축하한다고..거기에 교수님이랑 같이 공부 하는 사람들이 댓글 달아줬어요. ‘내가 뜨거운 것 같다.’ 근데 그게 정말 기분 좋은 거 있지요. 칭찬받은 거 같고, 아이처럼 기분 좋아지더라구요. 나를 알 아주는 것 같고..나를 이렇게 봐주는데, 당연히 잘 해야 돼 이런 마음이 생기 는 거 있죠. (사례1) 4. 새터민 사이버대학생으로서의 고충 1) 새터민 이미지 고려 새터민 사이버대학생으로서 새터민 이미지를 중요하게 고려하고 있는 듯하다. 많은 학생들은 새터민이라는 정체성을 보다 적극적으로 활용하 기도 하 다. 새터민이라는 정체성을 드러내는 것을 통해서 자신들의 학 업에 대한 포부나 적극적인 학습 도움요청을 하고 남한의 지지체계를 확 보해나간다. 또한 새터민에 대한 편견을 지니고 있는 학습동료들에게 새 터민이라는 신분을 알리고 상호 교류를 통해 남한사회의 편견을 해소시 켜나가는 역할을 하기도 한다. 사이버학습은 자기주도적인 학습으로 스 스로 자신을 관리할 수 있는 능력이 중요하다는 것을 경험하게 되었다고 말하며, 자칫 잘못 하면 중도탈락 할 수 있는 한계가 있음을 경고하면서 새터민들이 학업중단은 곧 새터민의 이미지와 결부된다고 말한다. 새터민 정체성 밝히기. 이제처럼 자기소개서에 새터민이라고 올렸어요. 저는 새터민입니다. 그런데 남한사회에 와보니까 정말 발전된 사회를 볼 때, 내가 좀 뒤떨어지는구나! 그리고 저는 여성이기 때문에 내 자리 그런 거를 생각해서라도 조금 더 열심히 살고 싶다고..그래서 공부하기로 마음 먹었다 고..좀 부족한 것도 많지만 앞으로 공부하다 보면 많은 힘든 일이 있으리라 고 생각되나 희망이 있으리라고 생각한다. 많이 부탁드린다 하고..썼지요. 그랬더니 교수님들도 오..정말 옳습니다. 수고했다고. 하지요. 저는 아예 그 렇게 공개했어요. (사례1) 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 299 자기관리가 중요한 사이버학습. 자기가 자기 스스로를 통제하지 못 하면 은 이거 안 다니는 것보다 못하고 오히려 스트레스만 받거든요. 그런 면에서 는 아마 일반 대학 다니는 사람보다 사이버대학 다니는 사람들은 심리적 부 담이 더 할 거예요. 아마. 의지도 더 필요하고. 자기 통제안하면 그냥 강의 안 받아도 돼요. 그냥 체크만 해도. 대학은 무조건 가야되잖아요. 그러니까 가니까 어차피 들어야 되고, 진도는 나가니까 그만큼 자기도 모르게 자기 지 식이 그만큼 늘잖아요. (사례10) 새터민의 학업중단에 대한 우려. 그러니까 뭐 다 다녔으면 좋겠어요. 다 사이버대학을.. 될 수 있으면 많은 사람들이 다녀가지고, 또 다니면 끝까지 다니면 좋겠고... 왜냐면 자꾸 중간에 다니다가 안 다니면은 다른 사람들한 테도 안 좋거든요. 이미지만 나빠지고... 괜한 제도다 이렇게 하면... 전 끝까 지 졸업되니까 괜찮은데 다른 사람들은 피해보지 말아야 되잖아요. (사례10) 2) 학업스트레스 초기 학습적응의 어려움. 새터민 사이버대학생들은 사이버 학습 환경 에 익숙하지 않아 레포트 시기를 놓치거나 시험을 치르는 방식을 알지 못하여 초기 학습적응의 어려움이 있다고 한다. 사례 8은 특히 새터민 사이버대학생으로서 레포트, 멘토, 중간고사, 기말고사와 같은 남한의 학습 관련 용어들을 이해하기가 힘들어 입학 후 1, 2학기는 학습적응이 매우 어려웠다고 말한다. 말을 이해를 못하니까~ 여기 교수님들이 쪽지를 해서 글을 보내는 것을 이해를 못 했어요. 그 다음에 중간고사요 기말고사요 그 말조차도 이해를 못 했어요. 기술하는 것이 뭐고 레포트는 뭐고 북한말로는 기술하라는 것이라 는 것이 뭐라고 하는 것인가? 리포트 보러 뭐라고 하는 것인가? 이제사 내가 하나하나 그런걸 알자고 적어주니까 배우는 과정이 이제사 알아요. 2학년 2 학기 되니까 이제사 그 말뜻을 이해해요. 그것을 이해를 못하니까 1학년 2학 기 때 그 시험을 완전히 선생님 알다시피 학년을 올라갈까 말까 하는 정도의 성적이 나왔어요. (사례8) 300 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 특히 자신의 생각을 기술하는 레포트 작성에 대한 부담이 가장 크다고 느끼고 있었고, 이를 해결하기 위해 남한의 레포트란 어떤 형식으로 작 성이 되고 어느 수준인지를 타진해보는 모색 과정을 탐색하기도 한다. 전공에 대한 기초지식이 부족한 것으로 인한 학업부담이 있고, 이로 인 해 시험에 대한 부담이 스트레스로 작용하고 있음을 알 수 있다. 레포트 작성의 어려움. 그래서 나는 리포터 작성할 줄도 잘 몰라서 그 리 포터가 어떤 식인지 잘 몰라서 북한말로 해서 어떤 주제가 돼서 어떤 구절을 축소해야 되는지 이걸.. (사례8) 남한의 레포트 수준 타진해보기. 처음에는 이해가 되어서 이렇게 하면 되 겠는데 싶다가도 그렇게 못하겠더라구요. 그래서 가만히 눈치 보고 안하다 가 나와 짝이 된 사람한테 그냥 전달했어요. **전자에 대해서 연구하는 거 했 거든요. 그랬더니 그래요 그래요 하다가는 레포트 제출하고 난 다음에 한번 찾아뵐께요. 하고 나는 **전자에서 일한 적도 있고 해서 그냥 경험을 적었다 했더니 내가 쓴 걸 보더니 잘 썼네 하더라구요. 내가 안한 거는 그 누구도 모르잖아요. 내 짝만 알고...그런데 막 어이 없이 제출하면 기가 딱 막혀 할 까봐 어느 정도인가 하고 타진해본다고... 제출을 못했고, 그런데 제출한 거 를 보니까 아! 나도 할 수 있는 거구나 싶더라구요. (사례1) 시험부담. 이제까지 아직까지는 시험 칠 때는 이 스트레스 받아서 뭉퉁 그래지고 밤12시 1시까지 악을 쓰고 공부했어요. (사례8) 전공에 대한 기초지식 부족. 그런데 중국어는 기초가 조금 있었으니까..중 국어 실습 이런 거는 다른 거예요. 토라든가 중국의 문화 이런 거 하는 건 데..경제..내가 뭐 그런데 관심도 없고..중국에서 언어만 배웠지 다른 거는 모르잖아요. 그것만..D를 맞았어. D 맞았어..방**교수님 과목.. (사례4) 3) 학업의 장애요소 성인학습자로서 나이에 대한 학습 부담과 학업과 직장생활병행의 어 려움, 자녀양육에 대한 부담이 학업의 장애요소로 부각되었다. 새터민들 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 301 은 배우는 것 자체가 기쁨이지만, 조금 더 젊은 나이에 남한에 와서 배움 의 경험을 할 수 있었더라면 하는 아쉬움을 가지고 있기도 하고 나이로 인해 학업을 지속하는 것이 부담이 된다고 말한다. 또한 자녀양육이나 남한의 직장생활과 동시에 학업을 병행하다보니, 밤늦게까지 일하고 공 부하려니 시간을 내어 강의를 듣기도 빠듯하고 학업내용을 따라가기도 힘들다고 말하고 있다. 5. 새터민 사이버대학생을 위한 고려사항 1) 새터민을 위한 배려 요구 남한의 대학문화가 낯설은 새터민 사이버대학생들은 새터민들이 사이 버 학습을 이해하고 활용할 수 있는 별도의 대학생활 오리엔테이션이 필 요하다고 말한다. 이들에게는 엠티, 멘토 등의 낯선 대학생활 용어나 시 험방식, 레포트 작성방식, 사이버 학습에 필요한 사이버 공간의 이해를 포함한 사전교육이 절실함을 느낄 수 있었고, 일부 새터민들은 사이버대 학생활에 기초되는 교양교과목이 필요하다고 한다. 특히 사례3은 무엇 보다도 새터민에 대한 학교의 작은 관심과 지지와 격려의 말 한마디가 중요하다고 말한다. 배움을 통해서 성장하고자 하는 새터민들에게 학교 가 보내주는 따스한 관심은 이들에게 학업을 지속시키고 남한사회의 한 구성원이라는 소속감을 주는 데 힘이 되는 듯하다. 대학생활 안내의 필요성. 그런데 그런 모임을 가는데 아이들이가 엠티라 는 게 뭐이고 멘토라는 게 뭐이고 그런 술어가 다 써져가 나오는데 그런데 어떤 아이들은 그런 술어를 써도 이해를 못해요. 그러니까 다시 우리 북한 사람들에게 이해를 한사람에게 번역을 해서 말해 달란 말입니다. (사례8) 새터민 특화교육 희망. 새터민들이 아주 기초적인, 초보적인 걸 모르잖아 302 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 요. 거기에 대해서 새터민에 대한 특별과목을 만들어서. (사례5) 새터민에 대한 학교의 관심요구. 저기서는(: 북한에서는) 하겠으면 말고 하겠으면 말고 하지 말고..그랬어요. 일반적으로 이런 편견 가질 수 있어요. 너네는 공부 아무리 해도 써먹을 때도 없고. 너네 좋아서 공부할 테면 하고 말려면 말고 무관심 하면 솔직히 용기 냈다가도 에휴! 내가 이거 해서 뭐하 랴..써먹을 수 없어도 공부하면 어디든지 써먹을 수 있다는 한 마디가 중요 하거든요. 우리들만의 도움이라는 게 크게 보다도 한 학기 한번 정도래도.. 그렇게.. 했으면 좋겠고.. (사례3) 2) 효과적인 사이버학습을 위한 선행조건 경제적 안정이 우선. 많은 새터민들은 남한에서의 생활이 안정될 때 학습에 전념할 수 있다고 한다. 남한생활 정착에 어려움을 느끼면서도 학업을 병행해가며 자신들의 꿈과 목표를 추구해나가고자 하는 새터민 들에게 경제적 불안정은 학업을 포기하게도 만든다고 한다. 불안정한 직 업을 가지고 있거나 재북 및 재중 가족 부양을 함께 해야 하는 새터민들 의 경우 경제적인 활동과 학업지속 간의 갈등을 유발하게 할 것이고, 이 들이 지속적으로 학업에 몰두하기 위해서는 현실적인 생활의 안정이 되 어져야만 한다. 새터민들이 그런 사람이 참 많아요. 저처럼 이런 꿈을 가진 사람들이 많 을 거예요. 근데 샘도 아시다시피 여기 정착을 하기가 쉽지 않잖아요. 우선 생활이 안 되면 포기하는 경향이 있어요. 내가 하고 싶어도 생활이 안 되면 생활이 안 되면.. (사례5) 사이버학습 기초로서의 컴퓨터 활용능력. 새터민들은 컴퓨터에 대한 기본적인 파악도 되지 않은 상태에서 사이버학습을 하기란 참으로 힘들 다고 말한다. 이에 사이버대학 입학 전에 직업훈련이나, 개인 학원, 복지 관 프로그램 등에서 워드프로세서, 엑셀, 컴퓨터 활용능력과 같은 컴퓨 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 303 터 관련 교육을 이수하는 경우가 많았다. 사전 컴퓨터 교육을 통해 컴퓨 터에 관련된 기본적인 개념을 익히고 컴퓨터를 활용할 수 있을 때 비로 소 사이버학습의 기초가 갖추어지는 듯하다. 사이버라는 말도 모르고 그것 자체를 모르고 들어도 못보고 이해도 내가 할 수 없더란 말입니다. 그럼 어떻게 하는 것인가 하니 컴퓨터 앞에서 하는 거란 말입니다. 그래서 나는 컴퓨터도 알아야하고 나는 컴퓨터도 모르고 그 럼 컴퓨터도 할 줄 알아야 하고. 그럼 어떻게 내가 시작하겠나 했는데 그래 서 제일먼저 컴퓨터 개념을 알자 하니까 우리 선생님들이 복지관에서 컴퓨 터 교육 시키는 게 있어요. (사례8) 사전학습으로서의 남한생활 경험의 중요성. 새터민들은 남한입국과 동시에 학업을 시작하는 것보다는 남한생활을 어느 정도 하고 난 다음에 학습에 들어갔을 대 훨씬 더 따라 하기가 쉽다고 한다. 사례 7은, 특히 남한생활 경험이 남한의 언어를 잘 이해하고 소통하게 만들고 문화나 사 회생활의 안정감을 주게 하며, 남한에서 경험한 직장생활이나 일생생활 경험에서 어떤 지식이 필요한지에 대해서도 더 명확한 학업동기로 작용 하고 있는 듯하다. 그렇다고 그분들 위해서 따로 뭐 이케 할 수는 없잖아요. 그쵸 제가 볼 때 는 그거는 좀 어디까지나 본인들이 어느 만큼 이해하고 들어올까 처음에 제 가 봤을 때는 바로 와서 그런데 뛰어들기 보다는 1, 2년 정도 이사회에 적응 하고 그래도 말귀도 대충, 아무리 같은 언어를 쓴다고 해도 못 알아들을 말 도 많이 있잖아요. 그래서 한 1, 2년 정도는 여기 적응된 다음에 해야만 나한 테도 어느 정도 살이 되는 거지 전혀 모르고 시간 때우기만 해서는 그리고 그런 거는 서로 정 바쁘면 알아봐서 전화해서 좀 해주세요. 뭐 이런 식으로 가니까 자기 공부는 아니죠. (사례7) 사이버학습 동기로서 학업열의. 새터민들은 사이버학습은 스스로 하 304 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 는 공부이기 때문에 더욱더 학업에 대한 포부와 열의가 중요하다고 말한 다. 특히 사례 10은 자격증 취득이나 학위 취득의 목적보다는 자신들이 왜 사이버대학을 가려고 하는 지, 어떤 배움을 목적으로 진학을 하 는 지 배움에 대한 순수한 학업충고를 하고 있다. 북한에서 온 아이들 지금 온라인 대학 같은 거 다니자면 일반대학 다니는 애들은 이렇게 낮게 보는 아이들도 있지요. 그렇지만 나이 들어서 사이버대 학 다니려면 정말 열의가 많아야 되고, 그런 사람들은 막..힘을 북돋아주고 싶어요. (사례1) 배움을 목적으로 한 순수한 학업충고. 일단은 사이버대학 가는 목적을 알 아야 될 것 같아요. 그렇잖아요. 대학이 하도 많은데 왜 딱 사이버 대학이냐. 그거 목적을 자기가 알고 가야죠. 남들 다 사이버대학 다니니까 나도 사이버 대학 다니야 되겠다, 이게 아니고. (사례10) 6. 새터민의 학업스타일 1) 선호하는 사이버강의 형태 새터민들의 학업스타일은 성인학습자로서 실제 사례중심의 설명방식 이나 어려운 말보다는 알아듣기 쉬운 말로 천천히 설명해주는 교수방식 이 가장 이해하기 쉽다고 하 다. 또한 사이버학습 형태 중에는 칠판강 의나 동 상 강의와 같이 정적인 강의보다는 교수자의 움직임이 있거나 시각적인 학습내용이 집중이 잘 되고, 보다 더 잘 기억이 된다고 하 다. 오랜 기간 주의집중 하기가 힘들고 남한의 학습언어 이해가 어려운 새터 민 성인학습자들에게 시각적 자료제시는 장기기억에 보다 효과적인 학 습매체인 듯 인상을 받았다. 실제 사례중심의 이해용이. 저희는 원래 자기 어대로 설명하면 아무 귀 에도 안 들어 오거든요. 그걸 쉽게 설명해주게 되면 들어오거든요. 돈을 예 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 305 를 들어서 10만 원을 넣었는데 내가 내일 10만 원을 뽑을 거다, 그래도 그 하 루 이자를 쳐 준다 여기서는. 이렇게 설명해주면 귀에 쏙 들어오거든요. 아, 일반 은행에서 하는 건 그런 게 없는데. 그렇고 뭐. 예를 들게 되면 CMA RP 라고 하게 되면 그걸 설명해주는 걸 알아서 쉽게 설명해주는 교수님이 있어 요. 그런 게 고객 돈 가지고 임시로 굴리다가 아무 때나 환매해서 뭐 이렇게 이렇게 설명해주게 되면 저희도 귀에 쏙쏙 들어오게 되죠. (사례10) 이해하기 쉽게 설명해주는 교수방식 선호. 근데 그게 남한이라고 다 그렇 게 그런 거는 아니잖아요 원래 북한에 있을 때 명강의면 유식한 말 쓰는 게 명강의라 했는데 여기는 같은 표현도 어떤 사람은 그런 걸 안 쓰고 알아듣기 쉽게 표현하는 분들 있어요. 특히 이거는 더 하죠. 교수님들이 강의하실 때 는 특별히 그런 것을 유의하셔야하는데 이건 저의 입장이고요 ** 교수님 같 은 분은 알아듣기가 쉬워요. (사례6) 칠판강의 선호. 그런 방식으로 볼 때, 교수가 칠판에 강의를 하면서 설명 을 겸해서 할 때 그때가 가장 편해요. 그리고 이해도 잘 되요. 그리고 민사법 같은 거는 앉아서 그냥 말만 하다나니 막 열심히 하지 않으면, 성적이 좀 떨 어지더라구요. 근데 칠판에 적으면서 할 때는 의례히 집중이 되고, 이해도 잘 되고. 그런데 민사법이나 행정법 할 때는 그냥 딱 의자에 앉아서 하니까 강의가 조금 딱딱하면서 잠이 와요. 그런데 칠판에 적을 때는 왠만해서는 잠 이 안와요. (사례1) 동영상 강의 선호. 아~설명방법이요 ... 동 상 같은 거 있죠. 설명하다가 동 상으로 참고하라고 어떤 교수님의 경우 동 상을 띄워놓는데 그렇게 되 게 되면 인식이 빨리 될 수 있죠. 동 상으로 교재내용에 맞게 동 상을 하 면 인식이 이해가 오래가요. (사례6) 2) 선호하는 학습형태 새터민들은 학습을 할 때, 이해가 쉽게 되지 않아 계속해서 반복해서 보고 듣는 학습활동을 추구하 고, 실생활에 도움이 되고 자신이 하는 일과 관련된 실재적인 강의에 보다 더 강한 호기심을 가지고 수업에 집 306 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 중하 다. 또한 사례 9에서 나타나는 바와 같이, “남한의 자활은 북한의 당일꾼들의 개별교양”과 같이 남한의 전공 용어의 개념을 이해할 때 북 한에서 경험했던 내용과 관련시켜 남북한 비교설명을 통한 이해방식이 훨씬 더 이해하기 편하다고 말한다. 반복학습 추구. 나는 예....이제 상보고 하는 공부를 다른 분들은 한 서 너 시간만 듣게 되면 이해하게 되는데 나는 불이해해서 내 절로 또다시 또 듣고 서리 계~속 반복 길가다가도 이어폰 꽂구서리 듣고 또 듣고 이렇게 하 게 되면 고저 내가 요 말이 요렇구나, 하게 되는걸 다가오게끔. (사례8) 실재적인 강의내용 집중. 대체로 그런 강의가 재밌고. 그리고 또 현실하고 많이 착된 강의가 또 강의자체도 재밌고. 호기심도 많이 가고. (사례10) 남북한 비교설명을 통한 이해. 이제처럼 여기서 자활센터다, 자활센터다 하면 북한에서 낙오자를 교양하는 기거든요. 근데 거기다가 북한에서는 낙 오자 교양 이렇게는 못하잖아요. 그렇게는 못 쓰잖아요. 그러니까 북한에서 개별교양이라고 말을 이렇게 바꿉니다. 당일꾼들의 개별교양, 이렇게 해놓으 면 자활이랑 이기 딱 맞아떨어집니다. (사례9) 3) 효과적인 학습방식 새터민들에게 효과적인 학습방식으로 활용되는 학습기술은 시각적인 요점 정리나 시각적인 자료, 메모를 활용해서 보는 방식 등을 통해 기억 하 다. 사례 4는 이러한 학습방식에 대해서 “귀에는 안 들어와도 계속 훑어보면 머리에 저장 된다”고 표현한다. 낯선 학업 방식과 생소한 교과 목, 언어소통의 어려움으로 인해 학업부담을 많이 느끼고 있는 새터민들 에게 시각적으로 기억하는 것이 훨씬 더 쉽게 지식을 습득하게 하는 듯 하다. 학습에 임하는 사전 준비행동으로는 미리 학습내용을 프린터 해서 훑어보고 사전준비를 철저하게 하 고, 일부 새터민들은 체계적으로 학 습을 하는 습관을 가지고 있기도 했다. 조금 더 배우겠다는 굳은 의지가 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 307 새터민들에게 보다 철저한 사전 준비와 체계적인 학습습관을 가져오게 하는 듯하다. 시각적인 자료를 통한 기억. 자꾸.. 훑어보라. 훑어보면 눈에 들어오고, 귀 는 안들 어와도 머리에 저장되거든요. 내가 10문제 봤다면 1문제는 되요. 100 문제 보면 10문제는 된다는 거예요. 그래도 그게 상당한 지식이고 쌓이는 거 잖아요. (사례4) 지식습득을 위한 메모활용. 일단 메모지를 준비하고.. 메모지를..그다음에 는 전화기도 옆에다 딱 켜놓고.. 모르는 거 있으면 물어볼라고..일단 메모지 지요. 메모지고..강의 다 들은 다음에는 프린트할 종이를..저는 이면지를 쓰 거든요. 애가 쓴 종이랑 나머지는 다 모아서..프린터를 해놓고..그걸 다 준비 해놓고..모르는 거 있으면 메모해놓고..그걸 또 물어보고.. (사례3). 체계적인 학습습관. 예전부터 기초가 있었으면..처음으로 하다보니까..자 꾸 읽어요. 어떤 교수님들은 중요한 거란 거를 동그란 거로 표시한 거 있어 요. 아..이게 이런 의미구나! 하는구나. 차례표 있잖아요. 목차도 도움이 되 더라구요. 목차에 있는 거 ―년부터 ―년까지 사회보장제도 언제부터 시작 되었고..딱 체계를 써 가지고.. (사례4) 학습에 대한 철저한 사전준비. 저는 전에 공부한 거, 그리고 오늘 공부할 거 프린터 해가지고..강의하기 전에 딱 뽑아놓아요. 그래서 메모도 하고..그 러지요. (사례1) 7. 학습에 대한 동기유발 1) 학습의 촉진요소 학업지속에 대한 강한 의지. 새터민들은 힘들어서 중간에 학업을 포기 하고 싶은 마음이 생기다가도 학업을 지속할 수 있는 동기는 무엇보다도 꼭 공부를 해야 한다는 강한 의지가 있기 때문인 듯하다. 그래서 이들은 308 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) “힘들어도 이걸 어떻게 이겨나갈까 생각하지. 그만두어야겠다는 생각 자 체가 들지 않는다”고 표현한다. 그만두고 싶다기 보다도 힘들다는 생각을 하는데 근데 그만두어야겠다는 생각은 다른 분들은 모르겠는데 저는 그런 생각이 안 들어요. 저는 꼭 해야 한다는 생각이 있기 때문에 그만두어야겠다는 생각은 안들어요. 힘들어도 이걸 어떻게 이겨나갈까 생각했지 그만두어야겠다는 생각자체도 안하죠. 그 건 저 생각이고 다른 분들 모 하다가 정신건강 에이 걷어치우자 같은 생각도 있겠조. 저 같은 경우는 해야 된다는 그런 생각 밖에 겉어 치우자 이런 생각 은 안 들었어요. (사례6) 나이를 뛰어넘는 배움에 대한 도전. 새터민들은 늦은 나이에 남한의 학습을 배워야한다는 학습 부담이 있음에도 불구하고, 나이에 연연해하 지 않고 늦은 나이에도 할 수 있다는 배움에 대해 도전하려는 모습을 보 이기도 한다. 특히, 자신들보다 나이가 많은 남한의 학습동료들을 보면 서 자극을 받기도 하고, 나이로 인한 학업 스트레스를 받지 않기 위해서 자신을 낮추고 서두르지 않으려는 태도를 보이기도 한다. 정말 나도 할 수 있겠구나! 그런 힘이 좀 생기고 그리고 나를 어떻게 여기 는가 하면 내 나이 또래에 앉히는데 50살 60살짜리도 하는데 내이 40살인데 50살 저만한 나이 보다는 하겠구나. 이렇게 항상 이런 마음을 가져야지 아니 면 내 빨리 급하게 하게 되면 너무 스트레스 받아서 못할 거 같아요. 그래서 내 자신을 막 낮추며 그저 이렇게 요기서부터 시작해요. (사례8) 부단한 학습노력. 새터민들은 남한사람들이 공부하는 분량의 몇 배는 더 해야 한다는 각오로 학습에 임하 다. 따라서 밤잠을 자지 않고 학습 에 임하거나, 직장에서 짬 시간이 날 때마다 시간과 장소를 가리지 않고 부단히 학습하려는 의지를 보 다. 사례 4는 공부에만 매진하다보니 어 디를 가더라도 학습한 내용이 머리 속에 떠오르고, 공부에 집중을 하다 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 309 보니 그 세계밖에 떠오르지 않는다고 표현한다. 사람이 있잖아요. 자꾸..공부하면..아! 뭐라고 그러더라? 한국말로 뭐라고 하던데..내 공부하다보니, 화장실 가도, 중국어 글이 자꾸 머리 속에 떠오르 는 거예요. 정신과 갔을 때 뭐라고 하던데..아무튼 병종이지만 나쁜 거는 아 니고 좋은 건데..어쨌든 공부에다 자기가 집중하니까 그 세계밖에 떠오르지 않는다..이번에는 아! 중국어 중간고사 하면..내가 하는 거는 자꾸 봐야 돼.. 자꾸 화장실 가서도 보고, 누워서도 보고..누웠다가도 자꾸 책이 생각나가지 고..교재를 가져와가지고 아..그랬지.. (사례4) 2) 학업에 대한 성공경험 북한이나 남한에서 학업에 대한 성공경험을 한 새터민들은 학업에 대 한 동기유발이 훨씬 더 강하 다. 특히 사례10은 “혼이 빠진 것처럼 밤을 새워서 학업에 몰입하다 보면 쾌락 같은 걸 느낀다”라고 표현하는 것처 럼 새터민들에게서 학업성취를 통한 기쁨을 느낄 수 있었다. 성공적인 학업경험은 새터민들에게 분명 성취감을 유발하며, 부단한 자기계발과 배움에 대한 순수열정을 가지게 하는 원동력이 되는 듯하다. 북한시절 우수한 학업성적. 그때 공부하는 방법이 쓰이겠지요. 북한에서 학교 다닐 때 1, 2등을 놓쳐 본 적이 없어요. (사례1) 남한에서의 우수한 학업경험. 처음 학기는 6과목, 계절 학기는 100점 받았 구요. 이번 학기는 8과목 신청했어요. 과 수석 해서. (사례4) 학업성취로 인한 기쁨. 사람이 성취감이라는 게 있잖아요. 쾌락 같은 거 느끼는 거. 예를 들면 내가 이런 내가 배운 **을 가지고 학교에서 배운 것처 럼 이렇게 ** 만들고 있잖아요. 막 이런 거 하고 나면은 밤 샐 때가 있거든요. 그런 거 하게 되면. 근데 사람이 자기 좋아하는 거는 밤새요. 싫은 거는 뭐 하라고 해도 한 시간도 못하는데. 이런 **작업 같은 거 막 찍은 거 놓고서는 편집할 때는 사람이 거기에 혼이 빠졌다고 할까요? 세 시간, 네 시간 그저 밤 310 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 새벽 세 시, 네 시까지 하거든요. 뭐 그렇게 하다 보면은 그런데서 뭐 쾌락 같은 걸 느끼죠. (사례10) 8. 새터민의 학습에 대한 지지체계 1) 오프모임에 대한 견해 새터민들은 사이버 환경이 아닌 오프라인 상에서 직접 만날 필요성이 있다고 보고, 오프모임을 통해 정보교류도 하고 학업에 대해 느끼는 망 막한 심정을 함께 나누면서 학업의 고충에서 소외되지 않으려고 한다. 특히 자신들과 비슷하게 사이버 학습을 하고 있는 새터민들과 공부를 하 면서 겪었던 경험을 함께 나누고 싶어 하 다. 이렇듯 새터민들에게 오 프모임은 학습에 대한 지지체계로 작용하고 있는 듯하나 마음을 쉽게 열 기 힘든 이들에게 새터민에 대한 편견과 시간을 낼 수 없을 만큼 빠듯한 남한생활은 오프모임에 참석하지 못하게 만드는 제약이 되고 있다. 새터민 동료모임의 필요성. 솔직히 처음 입학을 해서 첫 학기에 우리 사 람들을 위해서 뭔가를 하신다면은 글쎄 그거를 사람마다 틀리니까 학교에서 한번 모임 같은 거 할 때 그래도 그나마 거기 선후배들이 같은 사람들 안에 서도 선후배가 있잖아요. 그런 분들이 한번 모여서 이제 자기가 공부하면서 겪었던 이런 얘기 경험담 그런 게 한번 있으면 좀 낫지 않을까 그런 생각이 들고. (사례7) 오프모임의 필요성. 오프라인 모임에 가서 한번쯤 얘기도 하고 그게 제일 중요한 거 같애요. 왜냐면 정보가 없으면 그냥 도중에 뭔지 모르니까 막막하 니까 다 포기를 해버리시더라고요. (사례7) 새터민 편견으로 인한 오프모임 참석의 어려움. 글쎄요. 그러니까 저희가 먼저 마음을 열고 가서, 막 교수님이랑 친하고 이래야 하는데, 저희는 진짜 로 사귀고 싶거든요. 사실은. 사실은 한국 사람들하고 막 친해지고 싶고, 막 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 311 이런데 저희가 먼저 다가가질 못하겠어요. 솔직한 말로. 왜냐면은 저희도 일 하면서 많이 느끼거든요. 저희 모욕 받는거. 저희 말하면 앞에서 막 사람 면 전에다 놓고 흉내 내요. 식당에서. 그때 보면 저희 얼마나 우습게 보면 그렇 게 보겠냐. 다 그렇지는 않겠지만 어쨌든 저희를 보면 불쌍하다고 보니까. 동정을 하든, 약시 보든. 그러니까 그런 모임에 가도 어차피 그런 일을 당할 건데... 그러니까 될수록 저도 피하지요. (사례10) 타인경계로 인한 오프모임 참석의 어려움. 그냥 강의와 관련된 것만 들어 보고 별로 뭐 그런 것도 없어요. 성격 때문이겠죠 뭐. 성격도 그렇게 뭐 남하 고 막 이렇게 사귀는 성격도 아니고, 그리고 저 같은 사람들이 공통점이 있 거든요. 북한에서 온 사람들이 대인기피증 같은 거 있어요. 있지요. 마음을 쉽게 열지 않고, 남하고 자꾸 섞이려고 하지 않고. 한국 사람들 보면 대체로 뭐 남하고 잘 섞이고, 동아리도 잘 참가하고. 저는 별로 그런데 가면 우습게 볼 것 같고... (사례10) 현실적 제약으로 인한 오프모임 참석의 어려움. 아 내가 참 여기서 생활 하기 힘든 건 시간 내기 힘들더라고요. 동호회모임이 있어도 모임이 내 시간 을 맞추는 게 아니잖아요. 또 내같은 직업을 가진 사람이 있을 거고... 그거 맞춘다는 게 힘들어요. 북한보다 더 힘들어요. 북한은 일률적으로 하기 때문 에 북한은 시간조정이 쉽죠. 여기는 다양하고 거리도 멀고... 어렵다 그렇지 만 동호회모임도 문화니까. (사례6) 2) 학습에 대한 가족의 역할 지지체계가 미약한 새터민들에게 가족은 힘든 학습을 지속시키게 하 는 강력한 지지체계가 되고 있었다. 자식, 배우자, 형제자매들은 이들이 학습을 하고 있다는 것을 좋아하고 매우 뿌듯하게 여기며, 사례 3이 “이 남한사회에 와서 진짜 살자고 하는 구나!”라고 표현하는 바와 같이 남한 사람들과 뒤지지 않으려고 최선을 다해서 생활하는 모습을 보여주기 때 문이라고 말한다. 새터민의 학습에 대한 가족의 지지는 때로는 가족들끼 리 서로 학습의 동반자가 되어 함께 공부하기도 하고, 공부한 경험을 서 312 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 로 나누어 가지기도 한다. 학습동반자로서의 가족. 야.. 어머니 나도 이런 나이에 어머니 나이에 공 부 할까요? 그러지요. 그러면 제가 젊었을 때 많이 공부해라 그리고 어떨 때는 강의 나오는 걸 보고, 강의가 아이들도 흥미 있어서 같이 들어요. (사례8) 학습에 대한 가족의 지지. 일단, 자기 마음이 좋겠지요. 엄마가 공부하니 까..이 사회에 와서 그저 진짜 살자고 하는구나! 그러니까 그런 게 있잖아요. 우리 식구가 남보다 그게 그래도 뒤지지 말아야 된다. 일단은 공부 하는 것 만으로도... 우리 애도 참 좋아해요. (사례3) 3) 힘이 되어주는 멘토 새터민들은 학습자로서 강의를 들으면서 학습에 대한 도움이 필요할 때마다 편하게 물어볼 수 있고, 자신들의 학업의 어려움을 보완해 줄 수 있는 친구 같은 멘토가 필요하다고 말한다. 이들에게 멘토는 망막한 사 이버학습에 있어서 마음 편히 물어볼 수 있는 든든한 의지가 되고 있는 듯하다. 또한 새터민으로서 효과적인 남한의 학습방법이나 학업에 대한 포부, 학업의 위기극복 방법 등을 새터민 동료에게 적극적으로 알려주는 새터민 멘토 활동을 기꺼이 하고자 하 다. 멘토의 필요성. 그러니까 보완적인 그런 멘토가 정말로 중요한 거 같아 요..그렇게만 해준다면 정말 남한사람들 못지않게 할 수 있는 친구들이 정말 많아요. 일단 시작을 하면 잘 하잖아요, 시작이 어려워서 그렇지. 그걸 잘 해 줄 수 있는 그런 사람이 참 필요한 거 같아요. (사례5) 적극적인 새터민 멘토 활동. 그때 나는 자신 있게 말한단 말이예요. 내가 이렇게 걸어온 길을. 그래서 선생님이가 한번 나가서 발표해 보라 그러더라 고요. 최**씨가 이렇게 우리 얘들인데다 이게 일할게 도중에 판단하고 이 길 을 나가야 하는데 이런 욕심이 없는데 그래 니 나가서 발표해라 그래서 내 나가서 한번 발표를 하기도 했단 말이예요. 이거 성공하자면 나도 이런 단계 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 313 를 다 거쳤다는 거 이런 고비를 넘겨야 만이 나중에 자격고시 졸업해서 당당 히 자격이 3개에서 4개는 나온다는 거 내 소관 틀이 없이 있는 그대로 이야기 해주니까 그저 아이들이란 게 자기는 너무 무식해서 그런지 남들과 대화를 말로 못하겠다는 거예요. 그럴 때는 쪽지를 백번이라도 써서 해라고. (사례8) 9. 새터민 사이버학습의 기대효과 1) 사이버학습에 대한 전이 가족 내의 학습모델링 효과. 사례 1에서 나타나는 바와 같이, 새터민 학습자는 가족 내의 모델링이 되어 다른 가족들도 함께 자연스럽게 공부 하는 모습을 따라하거나, 새터민 학습자처럼 되고자 하는 학업에 대한 의지를 보인다고 말한다. 더군다나 학령기의 자녀를 둔 성인 학습자의 경우는 부모님의 공부하는 모습 자체가 자녀에게 귀감이 되어 자녀양육 에도 매우 큰 도움이 되는 것으로 보인다. **이가 하루는 뭘 유심히 보고 있는 거예요. 제가 들어오면 딱 덮어버리 고..그래서 다른 짓 하는가 해서 그게 뭔데? 하고 봤더니 글쎄 내 책을..그래 서 너 이 책을 왜 보니? 하니까 어머니 공부하는 게 뭔지 궁금해서 그랬다 고..그러면서 엄마 책 나중에 자기한테 주면 안돼? 이래요. 기가 막혀 했더 니..엄마 공부하는 거 자기도 나중에 자격증 따겠대요. 나한테도 가르쳐 줘 하면서...내 공부를 자기도 나중에 하겠다고 하고…(중략) 저녁에는 내가 책 을 보다가 잠들거든요. 그런데 옆에서 제 따라 해요. 자기도 옆에다 책을 갔 다 놓고 안보더라도 흉내 내요. 책 보고 그러다가 자고. (사례1) 가족에게 사이버학습 권유. 사이버학습의 효과와 이점에 대해서 체험 을 한 새터민들은 가장 먼저 자신들의 가족에게 사이버 학습을 할 것을 권유하고, 이를 통해 서로가 학습에 대해 경험한 것을 서로 도와주거나 상의하는 모습이었다. 314 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 와이프도 딱 그렇게 해주니까 공부하는 시간 활용하기 참 좋더라 해가지 고 지금 똑같이 하고 있어요. (사례6) 새터민 동료에게 사이버학습 권유. 새터민들은 마음만 먹으면 얼마든 지 배울 수 있고, 경제적인 부담이 없는 사이버학습을 새터민들 동료에게 알리고, 적극적으로 학습을 권유하기도 한다. 새터민 동료들이 권하는 사이버학습은 무엇보다 새터민들에게 강한 신뢰감을 주고 있는 듯하다. 주위 사람들은 좋아하고 또 제가 많이 추천을 해요. 제 추천으로 들어간 친구들도 한 둘 셋은 되는데 지금 나왔는지도 모르겠어요. 한 친구는 다니 고. 한 친구는 이번에 입학하겠다고 자기도 하더라고요. 자기는 그런 게 있 은 줄 몰랐다. 이번에 새로 나온 친구도 하나 소개해줬더니 자기는 2월 달에 입학하겠다고 하더라고요. (사례10) 2) 사이버대학의 이점 사이버학습은 새터민들에게 특히 많은 이점이 있어 보인다. 학업과 직 장을 병행할 수 있으며, 학교에 직접 가지 않아도 되고 특별히 남한사람 들과 대인관계에 신경을 쓰지 않고 혼자서 학습에만 전념할 수 있다고 한다. 또한 이해가 가지 않는 부분은 얼마든지 반복해서 들을 수 있으며, 시간에 구애받지 않고 자유로운 시간에 공부할 수 있으며, 이동하면서도 들을 수 있는 사이버학습이 매우 도움이 된다고 말한다. 특히 평생학습 을 할 수 있도록 무료로 교육지원을 해주는 정부의 정착지원 제도는 경 제적인 부담 때문에 공부를 더 이상 할 수 없었던 새터민들에게 남한이 주는 학습에 대한 기회이며, 더 이상 요구할 것이 없다고 할 정도로 고마 워한다는 것이 느껴졌다. 반복강의의 이점. 근까... 이제처럼 오프라인으로 가서 공부하면 그 시간 이 끝나면 질문을 못해. 물어볼 수가 없어. 그러나 사이버는 내가 듣고 이해 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 315 못되는 것 다시 들어. 반복. 이게 더 이득입니다. 이게 공부에 더 도움이 돼 요. (사례9) 사이버학습에 대한 정부의 정착지원제도 혜택. 뭐 사이버는 공부는 무료 로 하는 거고..그거 하나만 해도 제일 조건인데...그게 풀리잖아요. 사이버대 학교에 바랄 게 없어요. (중략) 우리 사람들한테는 진짜 제일 큰 조건이 경제 적인 것 같아요. 그걸 한쪽으로 하면서 공부를 하려고 하니까..그러니까 요 구 조건이라는 게 뭐 더 있을래야 없지요. (사례3) 시공간을 뛰어넘는 학습가능. 어떤 점이 불편하지 않는가 하면, 우선 시간 에 구애되지 않고 사이버대학이니까. 내가 자유로운 시간에 할 수 있고, 잠 을 안 자고도 들을 수 있잖아요. 새벽 한 시고 두 시고, 사이버 아니고 오프 라인이면 그렇게 못 그러잖아요. 사이버는 그게 진짜 너무 좋아요. (사례3) 학업과 직장병행의 용이함. 기본 사이버 대학은 일하면서 배울 수 있다는 장점이 있거든요. 일하면서 배울 수 있는 장점을 가지고 있고. (사례10) 혼자서 하는 것이 편리한 사이버학습. 모든 게 서툴잖아요. 서투니까 아, 이 컴퓨터는 나만 잘 하면 되겠구나, 저처럼 그런 생각 가지고 갔다나요. 일 반대학 같은 거 있잖아요. 그 친구가 얘기를 하는데 거기서는 사람 대하는 것도 어성버성하고, 그러니까 여기서는 나만 잘하면 된다. (사례5) 3) 새터민 역할의 중요성 사이버학습에서 나타나는 새터민 역할을 매우 중요하다. 특히 통일에 대한 준비과정으로서 새터민들의 역할에 대한 강한 신념을 지니고 있었 다. 새터민들은 자신들이 학습을 통해 익힌 남한의 지식과 가치를 통일 이후 북한주민에게 알리고 활용할 수 있도록 도움을 주고자 하는 사명감 이 강하 다. 또한 이들은 게시판이나 토론방과 같은 사이버 공간에서 자신들이 경험한 북한의 문화를 알리고 설명하는 북한문화 안내자 역할 을 하고 있었다. 새터민들은 사이버 공간을 통해 통일 이후 남북한 문화 316 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 연계인의 역할을 실험하고 있는 듯한 인상을 주었다. 통일이후 사명감. 북한에 있는 사람들은 봉사하는 의미를 모르고, 말이 민 주주의지 봉건사회보다 못한 사회니까..아무래도 우리 같은 사람들이 나중 에 통일되면 인터넷, 컴퓨터 같은 것을 활용해서 세계 과학이다 뭐 이런 것 도 알려주고 싶고...자원봉사란 것도 어떤 것인지 알려주고 싶고 해서..자본 주의라는 것도 어떤 것인지 알려주고 싶고 해서..우리가 참 통일이 되면 어 떻게 보면 할 일이 많은 것 같습니다. (사례2) 북한문화 안내자로서의 역할. 저는요. 게시판에 들어가서 교수의 질문을 딱 보면, 청소년들의 옷차림 문제, 이런게 딱 뜨면 북한을 갖다 딱 집어넣습 니다. 생각해보세요. 그쪽 분야, 어쨌든 저는 그런 그게 토론방에 들어가서 다 북한을 설명해 줍니다. 남한 대 북한, 이렇게 설명해 주거든요. (사례9) 4) 학습의 부수적 효과 새터민 성인들은 대학생이라는 것 자체에서 오는 자긍심이 있고, 새터 민 동료들의 부러움을 사기도 하며, 이러한 자긍심이 대인관계에도 향 을 끼친다고 한다. 또한 새터민들은 사이버학습을 통해 성인으로서 남한 생활 적응에 도움이 되는 기초 교양관련 지식을 습득하고 있다. 일상적 인 생활용어에서부터 예절, 재테크와 같은 경제 상식에 이르기까지 사이 버학습을 통해 익힌 다양한 교양관련 기초 지식은 사례 7에서 나타나는 바와 같이, “내색조차 못하고 지나쳐야했던 몰랐던 부분을 배워서 알게 되면서 업이 되고 얘기하면서 자신감이 생긴다”라고 말한다. 새터민에게 있어서 사이버학습의 결과는 대학생이라는 자부심과 동료 새터민들의 부러움, 남한생활 적응에 도움 되는 지식의 습득, 대인관계 자신감과 같 은 보다 큰 부수적 학습 결과를 가져온다. 남한생활 적응에 도움이 된 교양 지식. 그렇죠. 그분들도 생활적으로 인식 이 된 거니까 하지만 우리 같은 사람들은 모르니까 정의를 알고프거든요. 그 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 317 래야 정확한 인식이 들어온단 말예요. 에티켓을 설명을 못 하는거예요. 근데 내가 여기 이번에 에티켓을 배우면서 동서양의 예절에서 에티켓이 나오는 거 예요. 여기서는 정확하게 정의를 때려준단 말예요. 에티켓이라는 말이 프랑 스... 어원부터 배우니까 에티켓도 외래어인데 그걸 안단 말이예요. (사례6) 대학생으로서의 자긍심. 그 뭐 실제 대학생이라는 자부심이 생기죠. 다른 사람 일반대화 할 때도 배우지 않은 것 보다 대학에 배우고 있다고 하면 자 기 우월감이 가지게 돼죠. (사례6) 새터민 동료의 부러움. 내 북한에서 사람들은 그 모임장소 가게 되면 내 이제 온지 1년밖에 안됐는데 내 지금 이 사이버 2학년 2학기 들어섰다고 하 니까 모두 놀라하지요. 야 우리 5년짜리도 그렇게 못하는데 너는 어떻게 그 렇게 지름길을 빨리 알려줬냐.. (사례8) 앎으로 인한 대인관계 자신감. 음...글쎄 어찌됐든 뭔가를 배웠으니까 제 가 좀 더 사람들하고 얘기하는데도 자신감 같은 것도 있었겠죠. 왜냐면 여기 는 어떤 경우에는 이제 얘기하다보면 용어 같은 것들 그냥 알아듣지도 못하 면서 모르는 것처럼 하면 좀 내색안고 모르면서 지나치는 경우도 있을 거고. 근데 이제 그런 부분에서 내가 몰랐던 부분에서 그 부분을 배웠으니까 업이 됐겠죠. 얘기하면서도 자신감 같은 것도 있었을 꺼고 어차피 또 우리 사람들 한테 배워주는 입장에서도 뭔가 내가 알았으니깐 그들 한데도 설명도 좀 했 을 꺼고 에. (사례7) Ⅳ. 논의 본 연구는 새터민의 사이버학습 경험에 대해 10명의 새터민을 대상으 로 심층면담을 통해 살펴보고자 하 다. 새터민의 사이버학습 경험의 이 야기 분석 결과를 중심으로 연구문제와 관련하여 연구결과를 논의하고 자 한다. 318 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 새터민 사이버학습 경험을 분석한 결과 9개 범주가 도출되었다. 첫째, 남한사회에서 배움의 의미이다. 새터민들은 남한사회 적응에 필요한 기 초지식과 컴퓨터 활용능력이 필수요건이라고 보았다. 이러한 특성은 남 한의 방송통신고등학교 성인 학생들의 학습에 대한 동기가 주로 고등학 교 학력취득을 통한 상급학교 진학과 계속적인 학습의욕을 고취하는 것 과26)는 다른 연구결과이다. 남한의 일반성인과는 달리 새터민들은 남한 사회 적응의 어려움을 해소하는 방안으로서 사이버 학습을 선택하는 것 으로 보인다. 한편 개인의 노력이 인정받을 수 있는 남한사회에 대해 만 족스러움을 느끼면서, 남한에서 배운다는 것의 의미는 지속적인 자기계 발이 필요한 남한사회에서 필수요소이고, 꿈과 목표를 추구할 수 있는 도구라고 인식하 다. 이러한 결과는 교육의 기회를 균등하게 주지 않는 북한의 교육실태27)와는 달리, 지속적인 학습을 통해 자기계발이 가능한 남한의 평생 교육적 사이버학습의 효과28)인 듯하다. 본 연구결과를 통해 새터민에게 사이버학습은 배움을 통한 자기계발을 할 수 있으면서도, 남 한의 다양한 상식과 지식을 습득하여 남한의 사회문화를 빠른 시일 내에 습득할 수 있도록 도와주고 있음이 입증되었다. 둘째, 낯선 남한의 교육체계이다. 새터민들은 남북한 교육문화와 학습 방식의 차이, 언어소통의 어려움으로 인해 남한의 교육체계를 이해하는 데 어려움을 느꼈다. 특히 남북한 교과목이나 학습평가 방식의 차이점으 로 인해 학습의 어려움을 겪었고, 틀에 박힌 북한의 암기식에 비해 남한 의 사이버학습은 낯설지만 자유롭고 다양하다는 생각을 가지고 있었다. 26) 최상근·김규태, “방송통신고등학교 성인학습자의 생활과 문화 특성 분석”, ꡔ평 생교육학연구ꡕ, 제10권 1호 (2004), pp. 101~136. 27) 김평선, “북한의 인권보장의 실태에 관한 연구” (경성대학교 석사학위 논문, 2007). 28) 유평준, “원격대학원 온라인수업의 학습참여도, 학업성취도 및 학습만족도에 미치는 학습자관련 변인”, ꡔ교육정보방송연구ꡕ, 제9권 4호 (2003), pp. 229~267. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 319 이러한 연구결과는 외국의 이주난민이 학습상황에서 문화적 어려움과 더 불어 학교의 교육환경이 다름으로 인해 이중적인 어려움을 겪는다는 연 구결과29)나, 북한출신 대학생들이 대학에 들어와서 낯선 대학체계와 내 용, 남한사회에 대한 이해부족으로 당혹감과 혼란스러움을 느끼고 특히 어 및 남북한 학습 방법의 차이로 인해 어려움을 느낀다는 연구결과30) 와도 유사하 다. 특히 학업평가방식에 대한 차이는 이주난민의 학업성 적의 평가기준의 차이에서 오는 적응의 문제와 스트레스를 가중시킨다 는 연구결과31)와는 달리, 본 연구결과에서 새터민들은 사이버학습의 학 업평가 방식 중 객관식 평가에 대한 수월함을 강조한다. 이는 북한의 암 기식 교육에 비해 비교적 쉽게 다양한 정보를 스스로 찾아보고 경험을 유 추하고 생각해볼 수 있는 객관식 평가가 새터민 성인의 사이버학습에 대 한 흥미를 유발하고 있는 것으로 해석된다. 한편 새터민 청소년들은 교 육내용의 차이에서 오는 이해 부족뿐 아니라 교사의 설명과 암기 풍토에 익숙하여 남한의 자율적인 교수방법의 차이에서 오는 어려움이 크다는 연 구결과32))와는 차이점을 보인다. 본 연구결과에서 새롭게 발견된 점은 새터민들의 남한의 자율적 학습에 대한 만족도인데, 새터민 성인 학습자 의 경우, 청소년과는 달리 자기주도적인 학습형태를 띠며 따라서 자율적 29) Bemak, F., Chung, R. C-Y., “Counseling and psychotherapy with refugees”. In P. B. Pedersen, J. G. Draguns, W. J. Lonner, & J. E. Trimble (Eds.), Counseling across culture, (5th ed., pp. 209~232). (Thousand Oak, CA: Sage, 2002). 30) 이혜경, “북한이탈주민 대학생의 학교생활에 관한 체험연구” (이화여자대학교 석사학위논문, 2003). 31) Bemak, F., Chung, R. C-Y., “Working with children and families from recent immigrant groups” (2nd ed., pp. 84~101). In P. Pedersen & J. Carey (Eds.), Multi-cultural counseling in schools. Needham Heights, (MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2003), pp. 41~42. 32) 최경자. “새터민 학생의 학습 적응력 신장을 위한 교육과정 탐색” (단국대학교 박사학위 논문, 2008), pp. 34~35. 320 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 이고 다양한 남한의 학습형태를 선호하고 있는 것으로 해석된다. 또한 새터민들은 남북한은 같은 민족임에도 불구하고 남북한 언어의 차이, 어나 외래어식 표현 때문에 남한의 학습체계를 더욱 낯설게 느끼고 있었 다. 이러한 결과는 언어장벽이 이용가능한 정보원의 범위를 제한하며, 이 민자의 사회적 고립을 가속화시킨다는 결과33)나, 새터민의 정보 빈곤 유 발요인이 언어소통 능력의 부족도 있다는 연구결과34)와 유사하 다. 한 편 새터민들은 언어장벽으로 인한 학습에 어려움을 해소하는 방안으로 서 제시한, 단어검색창과 같은 ‘단어학습보조 장치’를 적극적으로 검토한 다면, 문화적 배경이 다른 외국인이나 이주민을 위한 효율적인 사이버 학습지원체계로 활용될 수 있을 것이다. 셋째, 새터민의 학습에 대한 대인관계 특성이다. 구체적으로 교수와의 관계, 교우관계, 사이버공간에서의 학습교류형태, 도움요청 태도의 특성 을 보 다. 교수와의 관계에서는 교수와의 직접적인 교류를 선호하고, 자 신들을 이해해주는 교수에 대한 적극적인 믿음과 의지를 표시하 고, 교 수의 지지와 격려가 학습에 대한 동기부여로 작용하 다. 이러한 연구결 과는 학습에 있어서 교수자 역할의 중요성을 강조하는 선행연구 결과35) 새터민 고등학생이 부모가 자식을 믿어주듯이 학생을 믿어주는 교사로부 터 끊임없는 자극과 격려를 받은 경험이 있다는 연구결과36)와 일치하 33) Roh, Jin-Ja. An investigation of the perceived information needs, information- seeking behaviors, and the use of community public libraries among first-generation adult Korean immigrants living in the Dallas, Texas, area (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Texas Woman’s University, 2002). 34) 조용완. “북한이탈주민의 정보행태와 정보 빈곤에 관한 연구―부산지역 거주 자를 중심으로” (부산대학교 박사학위 논문, 2006). 35) Coleman, J., Equality of Educational Opportunity (Salem, New Hampshire: Ayer co. 1988). 36) 강희석, “새터민 고등학생의 사회적 지지체계와 학교적응에 관한 연구” (성공 회대학교 석사학위 논문, 2007), pp. 85~86. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 321 다. 사이버학습상황에서 새터민의 동료관계는 남한 동료들로부터 인정을 받았을 때 학업에 대한 기쁨을 느꼈으며, 남한동료들과의 동등한 경쟁을 추구하 고, 새터민 동료와 함께 하려는 동료의식이 강하 다. 본 연구 결과는 정규학교 새터민 청소년들이 새터민에 대한 온정적이고 시혜적인 태도에 대해 거부감을 준다는 연구결과37)와는 차이점을 보 는데, 사이 버학습 상황에서 새터민들은 남한동료와 동등하게 경쟁하여 인정받고자 하는 특성이 나타났고, 학업에 어려움을 느끼는 새터민 동료들을 지지하 고 함께 배우고자 하는 동료의식이 강하게 나타났다. 새터민들은 학습상 황에서 물어 볼 내용이 너무 많고 일일이 도움을 요청하는 것이 미안하 다고 하 다. 잦은 질문으로 도움을 요청하는 것이 상대방 특히 남한사람 들에게는 피해를 끼친다고 생각을 지니고 있었다. 이러한 연구결과는 아 프리카 출신의 유학생이나38) 한국의 중국 및 일본 유학생들이39) 도움요 청에 대한 미안함으로 인해 소극적으로 문제를 해결한다는 기존 연구와 일치한다. 하지만 기존의 선행연구결과들이 소극적인 도움요청에 그치는 반면, 본 연구결과에서 새롭게 발견된 점은 새터민들은 사이버학습 상황 에서 간접적인 소통방식이지만 보다 안정적인 인터넷 검색을 통해 스스 로 문제를 해결하려고 하는 태도를 보이고 있다는 점이다. 사이버 공간 에서의 학습교류형태는 무지노출에 대한 걱정을 강하게 하 고, 무지노 출에 대한 걱정은 새터민 신분에 대한 공개적인 노출을 꺼리게 만들기도 37) 이수정·김현아·원재연·윤상석, “북한이탈청소년종합대책연구Ⅲ: 정규학교 재학 북한이탈청소년들의 진로탐색에 대한 질적 연구” (한국청소년정책연구 원, 2008), p. 164. 38) Constantine, M. G., Kindaichi, M., Okazaki, S., Gainor, K. A., & Baden, A. L., “A qualitative investigation of the cultural adjustment experience of Asian international college women”, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, vol. 11 (2005), pp. 162~175. 39) 김 경, “중국·일본 유학생의 한국 대학생활 적응을 위한 요구 분석”, ꡔ상담학 연구ꡕ, 제10권 1호 (2009), pp. 535~559. 322 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 하 으나, 일부 새터민들은 댓글을 통한 인정과 지지경험으로 게시판을 적극적으로 활용하여 자신들의 학습의 어려움이나 자신들의 삶을 노출 하는 등의 적극성을 보이기도 한다. 이러한 연구결과는 새터민 학생들은 학업수준이 너무 낮아서 창피를 당할까봐 못하고 있으므로 교사가 먼저 다가가는 관심과 노력이 필요하다는 연구결과40)와 일부 유사하다. 하지 만, 본 연구결과에서 나타난 새터민들의 사이버 학습교류 형태는 학습 초기 적응과정에서는 무지노출이나 신분공개의 부담감을 지니고 있어 교 수와의 관계에 보다 의존적이지만, 댓글을 통해 학습동료들로부터 인정 과 지지경험을 한 새터민들은 적극적으로 상호작용을 하고 있었다. 이는 사이버 공간에서의 흥미, 몰입, 동기요인이 공동체 구성원과의 활발한 상호작용을 통해 친 감을 느끼는 집단유대감, 구성원 간의 관계에서 자 신을 표현하고 자신의 역할에 대해 긍정적인 느낌을 갖게 되는 집단존중 감, 집단 향력, 소속된 공동체 내부 구성원과의 동질성을 느끼고 공유 된 활동을 하려고 함으로써,41) 사이버학습을 하고 있는 새터민들은 사이 버 공간의 순기능을 적극적으로 활용하고 있음을 알 수 있다. 넷째, 새터민 사이버대학생으로서의 고충이다. 새터민들은 나이와 자 녀양육, 직장병행으로 인한 학업부담이 학업의 장애요소가 되기도 하고, 사이버 학습 환경 이해와 언어소통, 전공에 대한 기초 지식의 부족으로 인해 초기 학습적응의 어려움과 같은 학업스트레스를 경험하고 있었고, 특히 레포트 작성에 대한 부담이 컸다. 이러한 연구결과는 대학생활의 어 려움으로 학업과 정보습득 능력의 한계 경험, 인간관계의 어려움, 타인의 도움을 청하는 것의 어려움, 심리적인 어려움, 학업과 경제적 활동을 병 40) 한상훈, “새터민 학생 적응 실태분석을 통한 문제점 및 적응교육 활성화 방안” (서울특별시교육연구정보원 제27회 교육연구논문, 2005). 41) 황상연, “사이버공간에서의 학습활동 행태 및 학습자 특성 연구” (한국교육학 술정보원, 2005), pp. 90~91. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 323 행해야하는 어려움, 미래와 취업에 대한 걱정, 자기만의 정체감 형성의 어려움을 경험한다는 연구결과42)와 유사하 고, 새터민 학생의 학습 부 적응은 기초학습능력 저조로 인한 이유가 가장 크다는 연구결과43)와 유 사하다. 하지만 본 연구결과가 기존의 선행연구와 달리 특이한 점은 사 이버대학으로 진학을 한 새터민들이 대부분 나이, 자녀양육, 직장병행과 같은 학업장애 요소가 있음에도 불구하고 배움에 대한 열의가 높고, 각자 의 분야에서 전문성을 확보하고자 노력하는 지식층으로서 새터민 사이버 대학생으로서 새터민 이미지를 중요하게 고려하 다. 이들은 사이버공간 에서 새터민 정체성을 밝히고, 사이버학습은 무엇보다도 자기 스스로 학 습에 대한 관리를 해야 한다고 강조하며, 따라서 자칫 잘못하면 학업을 중단하게 되는 한계가 있음을 우려하 다. 새터민이라는 정체성을 드러 내는 것을 통해서 자신들의 학업에 대한 포부나 적극적인 학습 도움요청 을 하고 새터민에 대한 편견을 해소하며, 남한의 지지체계를 확보해나가 고 있었다. 정규학교 새터민 청소년들이 문화자본 부족에 대한 대처전략 으로 인터넷을 활용하고 탈북자 정체성을 드러내는 것을 통해 대학생활 에서의 또래관계를 형성하고 이들로부터 다양한 지지체계를 확보한다는 연구결과44)와 유사하다. 하지만 새터민 청소년들이 또래관계나 지지체계 확보를 위해 정체성 드러내기를 하는 것과는 달리, 본 연구결과에서 나 타난 결과에 따르면 새터민 성인들의 경우 입학원서에서부터 새터민으 로서의 남다른 학업포부를 공개함으로써 교수에게 보다 적극적인 학습도 움을 요청하고 있었으며, 학습동료와의 관계에 있어서도 오프모임에 참 42) 조 아·전우택, “북한출신 대학생의 대학생활 적응에 대한 질적 연구”, ꡔ상담 및 심리치료ꡕ, 제16권 1호 (2004), pp. 167~186. 43) 김미숙, “북한이탈학생의 학교적응 실태 분석연구” (서울: 한국교육개발원, 2004). 44) 이수정 외, “북한이탈청소년종합대책연구Ⅲ: 정규학교 재학 북한이탈청소년들 의 진로탐색에 대한 질적 연구”. 324 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 석하게 될 경우 보다 적극적으로 참여하고, 새터민에 대한 편견해소를 위 해 적극적으로 대처를 하고 있었다. 다섯째, 새터민 사이버대학생을 위한 고려사항이다. 남한의 대학문화 가 낯선 새터민 사이버대학생들은 대학생활에 대한 안내와 새터민을 위 한 맞춤식 특별 교과목 개설, 새터민에 대한 학교의 관심을 요구하 다. 이러한 연구결과는 대학에 재학 중인 새터민을 위해 대학 입학 전 대학 생활 관련 오리엔테이션과 관련된 예비대학 프로그램이나 학습지원 워 크숍이 필요하다는 연구결과45)와도 일치한다. 본 연구결과를 토대로 효 율적인 새터민 사이버학습을 위해, 초기 학습적응을 위한 학교의 집중적 인 관심이 필요할 것으로 보여진다. 새터민들이 경험하는 교육 간극을 줄이기 위한 구체적인 방안으로 남한의 학업체계(예: 학점체계, 수강신청 방법, 시험방식, 중간고사, 기말고사)에 대한 이해, 남한의 사이버학습에 필요한 기초 교육 용어(예: 레포트, 퀴즈, 멘토, 엠티, 팀 프로젝트), 대학 생활 소개(예: 수업장애 해결방법, 오프모임, 동아리 활용, 스터디)를 포 함한 동 상 ｢사이버대학 생활안내서｣의 개발이나, 이를 위한 입학 초기 사전 모임이 필요할 것이다. 그 밖에도 ｢대학에서의 글쓰기｣ ｢사이버 공 간의 이해｣, ｢컴퓨터 활용 기초｣ 등이 신·편입학생 필수 교양과목으로 인정될 수 있는 방안을 모색해볼 수 있을 것이다. 또한 효과적인 사이버 학습을 위해서는 경제적 안정이 우선이고, 사이버 학습의 기초로서 컴퓨 터 활용능력을 기르는 것과 사전 학습으로서 남한생활 경험이 중요하며, 사이버학습의 동기로서 가장 중요한 것은 학업에 대한 열의라고 한다. 이러한 연구결과는 성인학습에 있어서 자신들의 요구와 능력, 자기 주도 적이 되기 위해서 그들의 경험을 사용하는 것, 학습 준비도를 확인하는 것, 유소년 시절부터 사춘기까지 꾸준히 증가한 학습주변 삶의 문제들과 45) 위의 글. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 325 청춘기 동안 급격히 증가한 것을 체계화하는 것이라는 선행연구결과46)와 일치한다. 이러한 기존 연구와는 달리 새터민에게는 학비에 대한 정부의 지원체계가 있음에도 불구하고, 경제적 안정이 우선되어야 한다는 점이 며, 남한생활 경험을 통해 배움의 필요성도 절실해지고 그때의 경험이 중요한 지식 습득의 원천이 되고 있는 듯하다. 새터민들은 직업훈련과 같은 다른 평생교육 시스템처럼 지원 수당금을 목적으로 학업을 하는 것 이 아니기 때문에, 사이버학습은 더욱이 배움에 대한 순수한 목적이 있 고 학업에 대한 열의가 뚜렷할 때 가능한 것이라고 충고하는 것도 잊지 않고 있다. 여섯째, 새터민의 학업 스타일이다. 선호하는 강의형태는 실제 사례 중심의 설명방식이나 이해하기 쉽게 천천히 설명해주는 방식과 칠판강의 및 동 상과 같은 시각적이면서도 동적인 사이버 강의형태를 선호하 다. 낯선 교과목과 학업방식 차이, 남북한 언어가 달라 의사소통이 안 되 는 문제로 인해 학업부담이 심한 새터민들에게 효과적인 학습기술은 시 각적으로 기억하는 방식이었고, 학습이해를 위한 노력으로 학습에 대한 철저한 사전준비와 체계적인 학습 습관을 활용하고 있었다. 이러한 결과 는 교수자의 강의 스타일이 사이버대학 학습자의 몰입과 학업성취도에 향을 끼친다는 연구결과47)와 일치하 고, 교사가 새터민 학생 수준을 파악하여 쉬운 언어로 천천히 말했을 때 학습이해가 잘 된다는 연구결 과48)와도 일치한다. 선호하는 학습형태는 반복학습과 실제적인 강의 내 46) Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A., Adult Learner (5th) (Houston, Texas: Gulf Pub, 1998) ; 김 천, “성인학습자로서 방송통신고등학교 학습자 특 성 분석” (중앙대학교 석사학위 논문, 2009), pp. 22~25. 47) 정혜진, “사이버 대학의 e-learning 환경이 학습자의 학업성취감과 강좌 몰입에 미치는 향: 4년제 대학 사이버 강의 수강생을 중심으로” (경희대학교 석사학 위논문, 2009), pp. 51~52. 48) 김선혜, “북한이탈 청소년을 위한 대안학교 운 방안” (서울교육대학교 석사학 326 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 용 집중, 남북한 비교설명을 통해 이해하는 방식이었다. 이러한 연구결 과는 새터민의 언어실태 조사결과,49) 새터민들은 실제 생활과 직접 연결 될 수 있는 자료들, 즉 동 상 자료나 드라마, 담화 내용들의 실제적 교 재나 수업방법이 필요하다는 연구50)나 학습내용이 학습자의 일과 관련 이 없을 때 중도탈락하기 쉽다는 연구결과51)와 유사하다. 학업스타일은 북한의 교육방법인 깨우쳐주는 교수법과 원문 통달식 교육방법에 익숙 한 결과로 보인다. 깨우쳐주는 교수법이 이야기, 담화의 형식으로 설명을 잘 하는 방식이며, 또한 원문 전체를 암기하여 기억하는 방법으로 혁명 역사, 당 정책, 국어과목에서 많이 사용되는52) 원문 통달식 교수방식에 익숙하기 때문으로 보인다. 본 연구결과에서 알 수 있는 바와 같이, 이－ 러닝(e-learning) 방식 중 웹 강의나 음성강의보다는 동 상이나 칠판강의 를 선호하 고, 새롭게 발견된 점은 남북한 비교설명을 통한 이해방식이 다. 이러한 결과는 스스로 컴퓨터 기능을 조절해서 자기 주도적으로 학습 하는 웹 강의 방식보다는 북한시절 주된 학습방식이었던 칠판강의에 대 한 익숙함이 작용하고 있는 듯하다. 북한시절 학습경험을 남한의 새로운 학습내용과 비교하며 학습하는 교육경험 자료를 기록한다면, 통일 이후 교육통합에 주요한 자료가 될 수 있을 것이다. 일곱 번째, 새터민이 경험하는 학업에 대한 동기유발이다. 학업지속에 대한 강한 의지와 나이를 뛰어넘는 배움에 대한 도전, 부단한 학습노력 위논문, 2005). 49) 문금현, “새터민 언어실태 조사연구” (서울: 국립 국어원, 2006). 50) 최경자, “새터민 학생의 학습 적응력 신장을 위한 교육과정 탐색” (단국대학교 박사학위 논문, 2008), pp. 34~35. 51) 정인성·최성희, “온라인 열린 원격교육의 효과 요인 분석”, ꡔ교육학연구ꡕ, 제 37권 1호 (1999), pp. 369~388. 52) 한만길·현주·김창환·오기성, “북한이탈주민의 남한 교육 적응 연구” (서울: 한국교육개발원, 1999). 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 327 은 새터민들이 학업을 하는데 촉진요소로 작용하 고, 이 과정에서 남북 한 교육체계에서 학업적으로 성공했던 경험이 크게 동기부여가 되고 있 었다. 성인학습자가 학습활동에 참여하는 것은 교육적 성취에 대한 개인 의 평가와 교육에 대한 태도와 같은 심리적 요인과 성인들이 일생을 통 해 직면하게 되는 사건, 변화나 정보요인과 같은 환경적 요인과 상호 관련 되며 교육 참여에 향을 준다는 연구결과53)와 일치한다. 학습태도는 집 중과 노력을 의미하며, 노력은 학교나 가정에서의 학습량을 의미한다.54) 또한 사이버 강의 학습자가 감정적으로 몰입했을 경우 학습에 적극성을 보이며 학업에 대한 만족도와 사이버 대학의 지속적인 참여를 끌어낼 수 있다는 연구결과55)와도 일치하 다. 무엇보다도 학업을 병행하기 어려 운 여건 속에서도 학업을 지속하겠다는 강한 의지와 부단한 학습노력이 학업에 대한 강한 동기유발을 하고 있는 듯하다. 여덟 번째, 새터민의 학습에 대한 지지 체계이다. 새터민들은 효과적 인 사이버학습을 위해서 새터민 동료모임이나 오프모임이 필요하다고 인 식하고 있으나 새터민에 대한 편견, 타인경계의 성향, 시간을 내기 힘든 현실적 제약으로 인해 오프모임을 참석하기 힘들다고 한다. 오프모임에 대한 견해에서 나타난 연구결과는 새터민 학생들의 수업참여도가 낮은 이유가 말투가 달라서 잘 나타나지 않으려는 이유와 학습 수준이 많이 부족해서 학습을 포기하기 때문56)이라는 연구결과와 일치하 다. 또한 53) 한상훈, “성인학습자의 교육 참여 동기와 자기 주도적 학습의 관계”, ꡔ평생교육 학연구ꡕ, 제9권 3호 (2003), pp. 225~246. 54) 이해명, “교육과정과 학습지도의 기본원리” (서울: 교육과학사, 1998). 55) 정혜진, “사이버 대학의 e-learning 환경이 학습자의 학업성취감과 강좌 몰입에 미치는 향: 4년제 대학 사이버 강의 수강생을 중심으로” (경희대학교 석사학 위논문, 2009), p. 51. 56) 최경자, “새터민 학생의 학습 적응력 신장을 위한 교육과정 탐색” (단국대학교 박사학위 논문, 2008), p. 149. 328 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 남한의 학습동료 지지체계가 미약한 새터민들에게 가족은 든든한 지지 역할을 해주었고, 학습동반자로서 함께 학습경험을 공유하기도 한다. 새 터민들은 자신들의 학업의 어려움을 보완해 줄 수 있는 멘토가 절실하다 고 하며, 비공식적으로 자신들이 직접 새터민 동료들에게 멘토가 되어주 기도 하 다. 새터민 학습에 있어서 멘토링 제도를 강조하는 선행연구결 과57)와 일치하 다. 새터민들은 현실적 제약으로 인해 오프모임에 정기 적으로 참석하기는 어렵지만, 새터민의 효율적인 사이버학습체계를 위 해 같은 전공의 남한 멘토나 새터민 동료 멘토가 제도적으로 지원체계를 갖추어질 필요성이 있겠다. 아홉 번째, 새터민 사이버학습의 기대효과이다. 새터민 사이버학습의 가장 큰 효과는 가족 내의 학습모델링 효과와 가족 및 새터민 동료에게 학습을 권유하는 사이버학습의 전이현상이다. 본 연구결과에서 볼 때, 새터민들에게 사이버학습 경험은 가족 뿐 아니라 동료 새터민들에게 보 다 적극적이고 긍정적으로 생활하는 모범적인 역할 모델링으로 자리매 김하고 있었다. 그 밖에도 정부의 무료 학습지원제도, 혼자서 학습이 가 능한 점, 반복강의, 시·공간을 뛰어넘는 열린 학습, 학업과 직장생활 병 행이 가능한 사이버 대학의 이점이다. 이러한 연구결과는 보편적 대중으 로 존중받아야할 소외된 집단들에게, 정보 접근의 평등성과 민주성이라 는 디지털 공동체의 특징이 매우 유용하게 작동될 수 있다는 연구결과58) 와 유사하다. 특히, 경제적 안정이 우선인 새터민들은 정부의 교육지원 제도를 매우 만족스러워하 다. 그리고 새터민들은 사이버학습의 활용 에 대한 기대로 통일 이후 사명감과 북한문화 안내자의 역할을 병행하고 57) 이수정 외, “북한이탈청소년종합대책연구Ⅲ: 정규학교 재학 북한이탈청소년들 진로탐색에 대한 질적 연구”. 58) 박기범, “공동체적 관점에서 본 다문화교육의 과제: 다문화교육 사이트 분석을 중심으로”, ꡔ사회과교육ꡕ, 제48권 1호 (2009), p. 115. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 329 있었다. 이는 체험적 다문화 평생교육의 원리와 상이한 문화 집단 간 자 유로운 교류교육의 필요성을 강조한 호혜적 평생교육의 원리59)에 비추 어볼 때, 사이버학습에 있어서 새터민의 역할을 더욱더 큰 의미가 있다. 모르테인(Mortein)과 스마트(Smart)는 성인학습자의 참여 동기로서 사회 적 관계, 외부적 기대, 사회적 복지, 전문성 향상, 도피, 자극이라고 보았 으며, 직업과 관련하여 유용한 지식과 학위, 직무관련 기술을 습득하여 과업수행 및 지위향상, 경쟁력을 제고하는 전문성 향상과60) 유사한 결과 이다. 그밖에도 남한생활에 적응이 되는 교양지식, 대학생으로서의 자긍 심, 새터민 동료의 부러움, 앎으로 인한 대인관계 자신감 증진이라는 학 업의 부수적 효과도 가져오고 있었다. 사이버학습은 여성의 자존감 향상, 정서적 지지와 정보를 획득하고 지식을 적용하도록 한다는 연구결과61)와 일치하 다. 더 나아가서 새터민들에게 사이버대학에서의 학습은 대학 생이라는 자부심과 주위의 부러움, 남한사회에 필요한 교양과 지식을 알 아감으로써 대인관계에 대한 자신감이 증진되는 여러 가지 긍정적 부수 적 효과가 검증되었다. 본 연구는 사이버학습 경험이 있는 5개 사이버대학교의 서울·경기 지 역 새터민 성인 10명을 대상으로 하 기 때문에 지방 거주나 새터민 청 소년 사이버 학습자에게 일반화하는 데는 한계점이 있다. 그럼에도 불구 하고, 본 연구의 기여점은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 사이버 공간을 활용한 통 59) 배 주, “다문화 평생교육의 정립을 위한 체험적－호혜적 운 원리 탐색”, Interdisciplinary Journal of Adult & Continuing Education, vol. 12, no. 2 (2009), pp. 61~87. 60) 김 천, “성인학습자로서 방송통신고등학교 학습자 특성 분석” (중앙대학교 석 사학위 논문, 2009), pp. 24~25. 61) 김수아, “사이버 공간에서의 “힘 돋우기 실천(empowerment)” 가능성에 대한 연 구: 온라인 여성 커뮤니티를 중심으로” (서울대학교 박사학위 논문, 2006), pp. 18~23. 330 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 일교육 및 남북문화 통합의 기초자료를 제시함으로써 남북 통합 이－러 닝(e-learning) 운 방식에 활용할 수 있을 것이다. 둘째, 새터민들이 남한 사회에서 평생교육 기회를 통한 자기계발과 성장을 할 수 있는 효율적인 이－러닝(e-learning) 운 방식을 제공할 수 있을 것이다. 셋째, 주류 문화 에 통합되고 자기계발에 성공한 역할모델로서 이들의 경험을 토대로 새 터민·다문화 사이버교육 준전문가 인력양성에 활용할 수 있을 것이다. 넷째, 새터민의 직업훈련이나 기타 사회적응교육에 대한 사이버교육의 통합적 접근(집합교육－방문교육－온라인교육)의 기초자료로 활용할 수 있을 것이다. 특히, 지역사회 새터민 정착지원기관에서의 온라인 교육 활용방안에 응용할 수 있을 것이다. 다섯째, 외국인 근로자, 결혼이민자 등의 다문화 교육의 온라인 교육방식에 활용할 수 있을 것이다. 여섯째, 사이버대학교의 소수 민족을 위한 특별프로그램 등의 운 지침으로 활 용될 수 있을 것이다. 특히, 새터민과 같은 소수 민족을 위한 사이버 학 습 방법 및 평가 기준을 마련할 수 있을 것이다. 추후 연구를 위한 제언을 다음과 같이 하고자 한다. 첫째, 성별이나 발 달단계(청소년기, 중년기, 중장년기)에 따른 사이버학습 경험의 의미를 파악해볼 필요가 있겠다. 둘째, 사이버대학교 졸업생이 졸업 이후 남한 의 노동시장에 어떻게 기여되고 있는지에 대한 연구를 살펴볼 필요가 있 겠다. 셋째, 새터민의 진로탐색 과정에 사이버학습이 어떻게 작용하고 있는 지에 대한 연구가 필요하겠다. 넷째, 사이버대학교에 진학한 경험 이 있으나 중도에 탈락한 새터민들의 중도탈락 요인이 무엇인지 밝혀볼 필요가 있겠다. ▒ 접수: 2009년 11월 10일 / 수정: 2009년 11월 16일 / 게재확정: 2009년 11월 23일 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 331 【참고문헌】 강상현·강홍렬·김은미·차남경. “정보격차에 대한 사회경제적 함의”. 서울: 정보 통신정책연구원, 2002. pp. 1~163. 강인원·최지호·이성근. “사이버대학의 e-Learning 서비스에서 신뢰 차원이 학교 충성도에 미치는 향”. ꡔ경 학연구ꡕ, 제34권 4호 (2005). pp. 1143~1164. 강희석. “새터민 고등학생의 사회적 지지체계와 학교적응에 관한 연구”. 성공회대 학교 석사학위 논문, 2007. pp. 85~86. 권성호. “웹기반 가상교육에서 협력적 상호작용촉진을 위한 학습자 지원전략 개 발”. ꡔ교육공학연구ꡕ, 제17권 3호 (2001), pp. 29~51. 김미숙. “북한이탈학생의 학교적응 실태 분석연구”. 서울: 한국교육개발원, 2004. 김선혜. “북한이탈 청소년을 위한 대안학교 운 방안”. 서울교육대학교 석사학위 논문, 2005. 김수아. “사이버 공간에서의 “힘 돋우기 실천(empowerment)” 가능성에 대한 연구: 온라인 여성 커뮤니티를 중심으로”. 서울대학교 박사학위 논문, 2006. pp. 18~23. 김 경. “중국·일본 유학생의 한국 대학생활 적응을 위한 요구 분석”. ꡔ상담학 연 구ꡕ, 제10권 1호 (2009), pp. 535~559. 김 천. “성인학습자로서 방송통신고등학교 학습자 특성 분석”. 중앙대학교 석사 학위 논문, 2009. pp. 22~25. 김평선. “북한의 인권보장의 실태에 관한 연구”. 경성대학교 석사학위 논문, 2007. 문금현. “새터민 언어실태 조사연구”. 서울: 국립 국어원, 2006. 박기범. “공동체적 관점에서 본 다문화교육의 과제: 다문화교육 사이트 분석을 중 심으로”. ꡔ사회과교육ꡕ, 제48권 1호 (2009), pp. 45~55. 배 주. “다문화 평생교육의 정립을 위한 체험적－호혜적 운 원리 탐색”. Interdisciplinary Journal of Adult & Continuing Education, vol. 12, no. 2 (2009), pp. 61~87. 오난희. “북한이탈아동·청소년의 남한사회적응에 관한 사례연구”. 가톨릭대학교 석사학위논문, 2003. 유평준. “원격대학원 온라인수업의 학습참여도, 학업성취도 및 학습만족도에 미치 는 학습자관련 변인”. ꡔ교육정보방송연구ꡕ, 제9권 4호 (2003), pp. 229~267. 332 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 이수정·김현아·원재연·윤상석. “북한이탈청소년종합대책연구Ⅲ: 정규학교 재 학 북한이탈청소년들의 진로탐색에 대한 질적 연구”. 한국청소년정책연 구원, 2008. p. 164. 이재환·윤유라. “외국인노동자 H의 삶과 정보 빈곤”. ꡔ한국비블리아학회지ꡕ, 제16권 1호 (2005), pp. 181~202. 이해명. “교육과정과 학습지도의 기본원리”. 서울: 교육과학사, 1998. 이혜경. “북한이탈주민 대학생의 학교생활에 관한 체험연구”. 이화여자대학교 석 사학위논문, 2003. 정인성·최성희. “온라인 열린 원격교육의 효과 요인 분석”. ꡔ교육학연구ꡕ, 제37권 1호 (1999). pp 369~388. 정혜진. “사이버 대학의 e-learning 환경이 학습자의 학업성취감과 강좌 몰입에 미 치는 향: 4년제 대학 사이버 강의 수강생을 중심으로”. 경희대학교 석사 학위논문, 2009. pp. 51~52. 조 아·전우택. “북한출신 대학생의 대학생활 적응에 대한 질적 연구”. ꡔ상담 및 심리치료ꡕ, 제16권 1호 (2004), pp. 167~186. 조용완. “북한이탈주민의 정보행태와 정보 빈곤에 관한 연구―부산지역 거주자를 중심으로”. 부산대학교 박사학위 논문, 2006. 최경자. “새터민 학생의 학습 적응력 신장을 위한 교육과정 탐색”. 단국대학교 박 사학위 논문, 2008. pp. 34~35. 최상근·김규태. “방송통신고등학교 성인학습자의 생활과 문화 특성 분석”. ꡔ평생 교육학연구ꡕ, 제10권 1호 (2004), pp. 101~136. 최성우. “미래사회와 정보화 교육”. ꡔ서울교육ꡕ, 제15권 9호 (2000). 통일연구원. “북한이해”. 서울: 통일교육원, 2004, pp. 191~192. 편집부 저. ꡔ전자상거래백서 2000ꡕ. 서울: 산업자원부 한국전자거래협회, 2000. 한만길·현주·김창환·오기성. “북한이탈주민의 남한 교육 적응 연구”. 서울: 한 국교육개발원, 1999. 한상훈. “새터민 학생 적응 실태분석을 통한 문제점 및 적응교육 활성화 방안”. 서 울특별시교육연구정보원 제27회 교육연구논문, 2005. 한상훈. “성인학습자의 교육 참여 동기와 자기 주도적 학습의 관계”. ꡔ평생교육학 연구ꡕ, 제9권 3호 (2003), pp. 225~246. 황상연. “사이버공간에서의 학습활동 행태 및 학습자 특성 연구”. 한국교육학술정 보원, 2005. pp. 90~91. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 333 Bemak, F., Chung, R. C-Y. Working with children and families from recent immigrant groups(2nd ed., pp. 84~101). In P. Pedersen & J. Carey (Eds.), Multi-cultural counseling in schools. Needham Heights. MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2003. pp. 41~42. ―――. Counseling and psychotherapy with refugees. In P. B. Pedersen, J. G. Draguns, W. J. Lonner, & J. E. Trimble (Eds.), Counseling across culture, (5th ed., pp. 209~232). Thousand Oak, CA: Sage, 2002. Coleman, J. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Salem, New Hampshire: Ayer co., 1988. Constantine, M. G., Kindaichi, M., Okazaki, S., Gainor, K. A., & Baden, A. L. “A qualitative investigation of the cultural adjustment experience of Asian international college women”. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. vol. 11 (2005), pp. 162~175. Dana, R. H. Psychological assessment in the diagnosis and treatment of ethnic group members. In J. A. Aponte & J. Wohl (Eds.), Psychological intervention and cultural diversity (pp. 59~74). 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Thousand Oaks Calif: SAGE Pub. 1998. Moore, M. & Kearslery, G. Distance Education: A Systems View. Belmont: Wads worth Pub, 1996. 334 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) Printrich, P. R. & Schnuk, D. H. Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications. NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996. Roh, Jin-Ja. An investigation of the perceived information needs, information-seeking behaviors, and the use of community public libraries among first-generation adult Korean immigrants living in the Dallas, Texas, area. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Texas Woman’s University, 2002. 새터민의 남한 사이버학습 경험에 대한 질적 연구 ❙ 335 Abstract A Qualitative Study on the North Korean defector’s e-learning Experience in South Korea Kim, Hyun-ah(Department of Counseling Psychology, Open Cyber University) Purpose: In this paper, North Korean defector experience in e-learning is studied. Based on qualitative research, the main method of research is the in-depth interview. Method: The subjects of the interview are 10 North Korean defectors. For data analysis, which is proposed by narrative analysis, has been used. Results: There were 90 concepts, 27 subcategories and 9 categories extracted from the results of the analysis. Those 9 categories are as follows: North Korean defectors’ meaning on learning in South Korea, North Korean defector’s a strange experience about educational system in South Korean, North Korean defector’s interpersonal relationship in e-learning environment, difficulty of North Korean cyber university student, condition precedents for improving the effect of North Korean defectors’ e-learning, North Korean cyber university student’s requirement, study style that North Korean defectors’ preferring, North Korean defector’s learning motivation, North Korean defector’s social support system in learning environment, the effect of expectation in North Korean defector’s e-learning. Keywords: North Korean defectors, e-learing experience, adult education, narrative analysis 336 ❙ 통일과 평화(2호·2009) 김현아 경북대학교 교육학과에서 상담심리 박사학위를 받고, 현재 열린 사이버 대학교 상담심리 학과 교수로 재직 중이다. 주요논문 및 저서로는 ꡔ새터민의 적응유연성 척도 개발ꡕ, ꡔ새터 민의 상담에 대한 요구도와 도움요청 장애요인ꡕ, ꡔ새터민의 가족상담 모형 개발ꡕ, ꡔ남북문 화 간 통합을 위한 새터민 조력자의 교육모형 개발ꡕ, ꡔ북한이탈청소년 종합대책연구Ⅲ: 북 한이탈청소년의 진로탐색에 대한 질적 연구ꡕ, ꡔ이주난민의 정신건강과 상담ꡕ 등이 있다. 
work_utxqlwa5wbhlnkrkb5d3tanktq	----	International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 63 Distance Education for all Ages in Romania Elena-Maria Emandi Lecturer PhD, Faculty of History and Geography Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Romania maria.emandi@gmail.com Received 09.06.2017; Accepted 02.07. 2017 Abstract Both society as a whole and each of its members have to be prepared for the changes caused by continuous evolvement of knowledge. Alongside with the traditional forms of education, distance education represents the chance people of all ages have to learn in order to have a better chance to adapt to the ever-changing society. Keywords: adult education; long-life education; Romania, contemporary society; 1.Introduction – Schooling and the Romanian Background The experience of learning, either formally or informally, is meant to change something, no matter the age, context or initial aim. Our contemporary society is in a permanent and accelerate change – that of workplace nature modification. People in Romania, as everywhere, live in a fluid environment, with a hectic rhythm of renewing, which sometimes may be felt as hostile. If not very long time ago (before December 1989 revolution) a person had a job for all their life, at present, workplaces change on average every five years, with dramatic modifications. Under such circumstances, the aid is supposed to come from the educational system, which, in its turn, is expected to adapt. Only fifty years ago, the education received in schools could be enough for the rest of a person’s lifetime. However, now the situation has changed. Both society and the modern individual have to glide from the level-centered education to continuous education, which has to prepare people for society. This society can be viewed as one of continuous change of knowledge. The mistakes in the approach of the modern education system can lead to consequences difficult to predict, even on short term, but after all, this is the challenge of the present. The institutions which offer education should therefore design new methods to promote students with abilities such as capacity of cooperation and dialogue, flexibility in maintaining the equilibrium; in other words, to International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 64 prepare the individual for a new lifestyle and for long life learning. There are the new information technologies that come to help education. Distance education is an attempt to offer people of all ages the chance to learn in the moment, place and rhythm that best satisfy their personal needs with a view to provide them the chance of better adapting to society. (Eşi, 2014, 33-42). This does not mean that traditional forms of education are no longer trustworthy, especially for the first years of education, when the teacher is so much needed. Distance education may seem the right answer to adult education. Technology can help by eliminating time, space, accommodation costs etc. constraints. There are both advantages and disadvantages in distance learning, as beside the open access offered to everyone by this type of learning, students sometimes lack the possibility of socializing and gaining from emotional involvement. Indeed, student interaction is one of the directions in which distance education will exceed its limits. At the level of interaction, an important role is played by the tutor, who acts as a professional mediator in the process of education. The results of the research in the countries with tradition in correspondence learning show that distance education is as effective as day courses provided the educational planning is proper. For example, The Institute for Higher Education Policy initiated a study on the effectiveness of distance education, which wanted to be an analysis of what research in the field say and what it doesn’t. (http://www.ihep.org) The study suggests that many of the essential questions about the way in which distance education is done received no answer. Thus, a whole range of questions arise and can be generalized to distance education elsewhere in the world: are there difficulties in Romanian distance education? Which are the aims and the also which are the advantages of adult education? What is specific to the Romanian tutor as compared to the international acceptation of the term? Throughout the present paper these questions will be given an answer taking into consideration the Romanian distance education, highlighting the role played by the tutor, the professional mediator whose mission is of extreme importance. The efforts of providing good quality education for adults are in line with the aims presented by UNESCO referring to the need of continuing education both for young and adult people: “adults continuing learning must be developed and diversified and integrated into the national education system and strategies for reducing poverty.” (Hoppers) On the other hand, the European Commission put emphasis on the concept of lifelong learning, as a modality to fulfill the goal of making the EU “the most competitive and dynamic, knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.” (European Commission) It is the European Commission that clarifies the concept of lifelong learning, by defining the types of activities it involves: “All learning activity undertaken throughout life with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competences within a personal, civic, social and / or employment related perspective.” (European Commission) Proposing a type of undiscriminating learning, distance education situates the learner in a privileged position, “as a self- activated maker of meaning, an active agent of his own learning process. He is not one whom things International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 65 merely happen; he is the one who, by his own volition, causes things to happen. Learning is seen as the result of his own self-initiated interaction with the world.” (European Commission) 2.Distance Education for both Young and Adult People The concept of learning for life, which represented for a long time a major aim of the educational systems all over the world, has become redundant in the context of the huge transformations in society due to technological and economic changes. If thirty years ago, long life education could be viewed as an option for an age with more free time, nowadays it has become a necessity. The education offer has become diversified in accordance with the consumers’ demand. Thus, distance education can be viewed as a new orientation towards the consumer of the institutions providing such opportunities. Credit accumulation, organization of courses in modules – they are all parts of the same structural transformation of education system in Romania and elsewhere. Although not directly connected to the idea of distance education, yet of vital importance for the future of education in keeping with the principle of long-life learning, we must mention one of the most important legislative measures undertaken in Romania: the Law of Education 1/ 2011. It aligns the Romanian educational system within the European view on lifelong learning as a facilitator of the emergence of the knowledge economy, (Popescu, 2014, 49) proposing an incentivizing system, given the Romanians’ lower standard of living in comparison to that of the other Europeans’. This law advances the concept of “account for continuous education”, by means of which the Romanian state will give each baby at birth the sum of 500 euros in equivalent to support the right of lifelong learning. Parents have the possibility to participate to this account and redirect 2% of the tax paid every year on salary income. This account will be opened at State Treasury, it will bear an interest rate, and the child will be able to have access to it after graduation of the compulsory education. (Popescu, 2016, 69) Such a measure is meant to make individuals benefit from opportunities of continuing learning and not be limited to the initial education only. This example proves that there are similarities and differences among the European different states, largely due to geographical, historical, economic or political reasons. Nevertheless, the main tenet remains that of adult or post- compulsory learning, although the former communist states view it as a means of improving their economic development, while the western European states whose economies are already strong, consider it is as a way to maintain the stability of their market economies and to solve the emerging problems of skills shortage. 2.1 Distance Education in Romania - A Diachronic Perspective Viewed in diachrony, one can distinguish several stages in the development of distance education at the international level: the first one is represented by the correspondence education (the first course of this type is recorded in England and it dates as far back as the year 1840). It was addressed especially to the adults who didn’t manage to complete their pre-university or university studies. Letter writing with a view to teach the others can be said to be as old as the art of writing itself. Thus, it has been suggested that the epistles in the New Testament may be considered an example of distance education. (Holmberg, 2008, 13) Starting with 1920 there appear radio educational programmes, addressed especially to university studies. In 1939 in France appeared the national center for distance education, which provides correspondence courses today as well. The second International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 66 generation is represented by television education and by the industrial model and developed against a context dominated by the behaviorist trend in education. The third generation is represented by the interactive distance education. (Eşi, 2014, 73-83) The computer assisted education was the basis of the new type of intelligent tutorial systems, which offer the possibility of a dynamic generation of exercises, which adapt the difficulty level in accordance with the student’s performance, and which also include the analysis of the student’s behavior interpretation. Within this category we include the distance education, characterized by interactive educational technologies, convergence of distance and classroom learning, and also by the competition among the distance education providers at the worldwide level. Romanian education can be said to have strong roots as far as the tradition of long-life learning is concerned. It dates as far back as the year 1920, (Bădina et.al., 1970, 34-36) when the model of social pedagogy was applied and which targeted different categories of students, such as women, young persons, people from the rural areas, members of some disadvantaged categories etc. It is true that at present one can hardly find traces of this tradition or of the system which was effectual in those years or even in the years before the 1989 revolution. The concept of “continuous education”, borrowed from the French literature not only into the vocabulary but also into the law system, had been the guiding principle as far as adult education is concerned until the quite recent idea of lifelong learning. It is true that there has always been a need for unconventional learning and out of this need there might have emerged new types of learning opportunities. At the international level, starting with the nineteenth century, people who didn’t have a solid educational background tried to educate themselves either for personal development needs of for practical purposes, needs that prepared the conditions for the creation of distance education institutions. It is an acknowledged fact that there has always been a desire to benefit from educational activities other than those implied by the formal educational system. This doesn’t mean that one lessens its value and its importance as a vital element in the development of the Romanian society. Thus, in 1921, after the first university in Salt Lake City got the license for education through radio, the first opinions regarding the new pedagogic methods offered by educational radio appeared in Romania as well. It was then that Dimitrie Gusti, as president of the Romanian Broadcasting Society, suggested organizing conferences through radio starting with 1930. They were intended for lower and upper school and proved to be effective within the area of informal education and training. A conclusive remark regarding the function of social pedagogy within the Romanian educational system comes from Bădina et al, who remarked the fact that it appeared as a reaction to the limits of the school education, thus emphasizing the necessity to prepare the young generation with the aim of their active and creative integration in the entire social life. This is just another proof that there has always been a need for educational programmes and systems, other than the formal educational system. (Esi, 2010) Thus, one can easily see the signs of the need for lifelong learning, known as continuous education in Romanian version, given the fact that it is natural for International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 67 each part of the world to have its own characteristics of the educational system, generated by a wide variety of factors, such as geographical, historical, politic, economical, technological one, etc. The information technological innovations allow the reduction of the distance in time, thus introducing an interactive dimension, which was reduced or even absent in the 1920s. The education at a distance, facilitated by technology, represents an attempt to make real a form of verbal exchange meant to be a dialogue, not just a mere conversation, given the distinction made by some experts in communication (such as that evoked by Guy Lochard and Henry Boyer, who distinguish between conversation and dialogue in terms of evoking themes versus stating and putting themes together). (Lochards & Boyer, 1998, 110) 2.2 Nowadays Distance Learning – Main Objectives; Advantages and Barriers It is natural for the degree in which the concepts involved by the lifelong learning education policy as formulated by the European Commission to differ in their application in national policies. In Romania, in general, such concepts are associated especially with “adult or post-compulsory learning.” (Popescu, 63) The Romanian educational system has been in continuous structural reform since the 1989 Revolution, aiming to improve its efficiency so that the country will undergo a faster development through “the development of its human capital for the knowledge society to be achieved in the future.” (Ibidem) The European Commission’s plan for e-learning takes into consideration the idea of “thinking tomorrow’s education”, with a view to future objectives of education and training. The advantages of learning at a distance in nowadays society imply factors such as flexibility, multi-modality of learning resources and also timely distribution. Tutors’ assistance helps facilitating learning, their task being that of content providers, motivators and mentors as well. (Eşi, 2014, 89-94) Unlike other educational systems which place the student centrally, the distance education positions the student in an equidistant relationship with its other components (expert, educational resources), thus suggesting the equal importance of the other components. If in the past such a type of education meant learning through correspondence, nowadays distance is “covered” by materials (either printed or in electronic form) and also by the contact with the tutor. Taking into consideration the two-way relationship between education and the quality of life, one has to mention the importance of continuing education for labour productivity growth. Experts consider that the investment in human capital involves growth at al levels, as ”education is the slowest, yet most powerful driver of growth.” (Aceleanu, 2012) Therefore, one can speak of the major importance of lifelong learning at the individual level (labour market integration, work efficiency) but also at the organizational, even national level (prepared individuals area long-term investment of society). In spite of the generous advantage offered by distance education, there are present-day barriers in implementing it in Romania, such as negative attitudes (that may result from a reduced level of interaction between students and tutor and the lack of assistance services for the distance students, International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 68 the level of involvement or quality of the distance students (Jeder, 2013), the fear of losing autonomy, inadequate support offered to tutors for planning or redesigning the courses, potential negative effects as far as professional promotion etc.), technical problems (lack of industrial standards for equipments and software, the rapid technological change which means extra money spent on upgrading the systems, difficulties in the communication through e- conferences), institutional inflexible procedures and so on (Eşi, 2014, 131-138). The strategies of overcoming such difficulties involve initial research with a view to acquiring new technology, preliminary discussions with the distance education providers, visits to the institutions which offer such systems, the evaluation of the internal infrastructure, of the hardware and software requirements and of the providers’ offer of services, as well as interviews with experts in such systems of distance education. (Eşi, 2015, 7-12) Therefore, the local and national policies include the development of the regional and national telecommunication network, efforts for coherent and permissive educational methods, adoption of standards for effective distance education, and, last but not least, the creation of a consortium for software and specific programs. Currently, in Romania, the limited space in institutions, as well as the difficulties encountered by the students as far as the need of lifelong learning is concerned, have led to a situation in which the traditional education institutions take into consideration the alternative offered by the distance education. The arguments for a distance education system in Romania are: the administrative structures of the conventional educational systems do not correspond to the development and management of the distance systems, the requirements of the distance students can be better fulfilled if the institution is dedicated exclusively to distance learning, the pedagogy of distance education differs from that of the traditional education, etc. However, there is also a mixture of the two types of educational systems, which means that within the conventional learning institutions there are departments for distance education. The arguments for this bimodal educational system are: (Istrate, 2000, 21) the courses and the additional sources of information can be used both by the day and the distance students, the self-education materials encourage the independent learning of both categories of students, students can choose one or the other system, the distance students benefit from the tradition and the reputation of the institution and they obey its standards, the teaching staff are thus encouraged to practice as interactive methods of education as possible. Conclusions - Distance Education: the Response to the Permanent Education Needs It is true that the importance of learning, of education in general, has been stressed since ancient times, but nowadays, with technology advancement and its implications, the need to update knowledge and abilities is necessary more than ever. We must be aware that “the world of teaching has dramatically changed and as the world is changing rapidly and is becoming smaller, faster and more competitive, approaching education through non-formal activities is a reasonable attitude” (Emandi, 2015, 152) and that either done through non-formal, informal or formal learning, through in-service learning systems or through educational and vocational guiding, lifelong education is a priority for action in nowadays Romanian society, as proved by the legal documents. In Socrate’s terms, ”education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”, therefore the concept, although emerged under a new name as far back as the 1960s, is not new. It was more clearly International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro) Volume 4 / Issue 8/ 2017 69 articulated, and thus brought to the fore, through the documents produced by the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which spoke out of the education as no longer limited to a particular age, as an attitude and dimension of life. In other words, the continuous acquiring of knowledge and skills all over an individual’s life can be viewed as the most appropriate type of education for ”the knowledge economy.” (Popescu) As emphasized in this paper, there has always been education, either in its classical form or in other ways, but it is only recently that Romanian authorities included the principle of lifelong learning in legal documents, stressing its importance in the domain of education, permanent training and employment. Of no less importance is the recognition of the non-formal and informal education, of the educational and vocational guiding and counselling throughout life and of in-service learning systems. Specialists consider that for the progress of the Romanian educational system, it still needs the ”design of a strategy for its development that will contain a vision of its long-term objectives and plan for long-term and medium-termn actions necessary for their achievement.”(Ibidem) As emphasized by the majority of the approaches, distance education is but an open learning perspective that responds to the need of permanent adult education. Its effectiveness relies on the academic characteristics of the courses provided, on the interactivity and the quality of communication among students and between each student and the tutor. Therefore, tutors have a great responsibility, in that they need to offer academic support (and for this they must have an extensive understanding of the subject they teach); they also are to provide non-academic support, nurturing collaboration, building an atmosphere of partnership and understanding. This twofold mission is the basis of success for the students who also work and have a family / social life that doesn’t allow them to attend day courses. In this way we are in line with researchers (Lentel, Cowan) who placed emphasis on the fact that “important though all the services offered in distance education are, however splendid the printed texts, and however smooth the organizational system, and however refined the quality measurement tools, it is the relationship between the tutor ad the learner that determines success or failure.” (Denis and al). References 1. Aceleanu, M. I. (2012). The role of lifelong learning in the growth of employment and labour efficiency. 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work_uuovx7s3hzggro3zx7jkdswtxe	----	NFPF_2003.PDF When performance is the product: problems in the analysis of on-line distance education1 David Hamilton, Ethel Dahlgren, Agneta Hult, Bertil Roos & Tor Söderström Pedagogiska institutionen Umeå university S-901-87 Umeå Sweden. ABSTRACT This is a background paper about frozen ideologies in education. It arises from two projects in the field of ICT and instructional design. One project is in the area of folkbildning (liberal adult education), the other is in the area of online assessment. Two specific ideas generate the substance of the paper: (a) that means can be separated from ends (or processes from products); and (b) that learning is merely a process of knowledge acquisition. The contrary positions, also discussed, are that processes can also be ends, and that learning can also be a side-effect of doing. Using ideas from economic history, theories of practice, systems theory, theories of knowledge acquisition, constructivism and discourse analysis, this paper summarises how two frozen ideologies have been defrosted and repackaged in an analyses of on-line conversation. KEY TERMS: knowledge, elearning, adult education, distance education, constructivism, assessment, dialogue 1 Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Nordisk Förening for Pedagogisk Forskning (NFPF) conference, Copenhagen, March 2003. The ideas in this paper have been generated in conjunction with two projects: (1) Liberal Adult Education at a distance – a discussion milieu for learning (director: Ethel.Dahlgren@pedag.umu.se) funded by the Swedish Council for Adult Education (Folkbildningsrådet), with support of the LearnIT initiative of the Knowledge and Competence Foundation (KK-Stiftelsen) and Umeå university; and (2) Internetbased Assessment (coordinator: David.Hamilton@pedag.umu.se) co-funded by the European Commission, the Swedish Agency for Distance Education (DISTUM) and Umeå university. Obviously, before launching the Educational Media Task Force, responsible…[European Commission] bodies had not opted for an unambiguous new educational philosophy. Educational technology participates in the cultural context and is as much a part of the learning problems to be identified as it is of the solutions to be implemented. (Bélisle, Rawlings, & van Seventer, 2001, pp. 16 & 25) "The Act is TRUTH. Nothing that was ever recorded is truth. Nothing that was ever said is truth. Only the ACT." This is the best definition that I am aware of for performance art. (Jack Bowman, retrieved 19th November 2002 from http://www.bright.net/~dapoets/performa.htm ) We began preparing this paper in December 2002. The deadline for proposals had past; Christmas was approaching; and the outside temperature in Umeå was below freezing. December, therefore, is a good time to defrost the domestic freezer and repack its contents. This paper serves a analogous purpose. It unpacks educational ideas that, following the Swedish historian of ideas, Sven-Erik Liedman, we characterise as 'frozen' educational ideologies. A frozen ideology unconsciously influences those who work in universities, through the way that groundrules are established, judgments are made, teaching is enacted and research is organised. (Liedman, 1997, p. 216, our translation) Two specific ideologies provide the focus for this paper. First,. that means can be separated from ends (or processes from products); and secondly, that learning is merely a process of knowledge acquisition. The contrary positions, also discussed, are that processes can also be ends and that learning can also be a ‘side-effect of doing' ( Lindström, quoted in Linderoth, 2002, p. 253). The need to unpack these various positions has arisen in two projects in the field of ICT and instructional design. One project is in the area of folkbildning (liberal adult education), the other is in the area of online assessment. Both of these projects share an interest in learning and, in particular, the relationship between learning and on-line conversation. The folkbildning project focuses on the transformation of conversation as it goes on-line; while the assessment project is concerned with the development of on-line conversation as a form of instructional feedback. Further information on these projects can be found, respectively, at http://www.pedag.umu.se/forskning/projekt/ and www.onlineassessment.nu . Both projects, however, have a common problem. If conversations are an exchange of meaning, how can they be regarded as outcomes, products or, in Bringlish (Brussels-English), as 'deliverables'? In posing this problem, we follow Crook & Light (2002). On-line conversation, they suggest, is an 'activity in context'. It is a performance that ‘radically re- mediates’ earlier, face-to-face practices. Such ‘human activity', therefore, cannot be 'decoupled from the artefacts, technologies, symbol systems, institutional structures, and other cultural paraphernalia within which it is constituted (p. 156, emphasis added). Is it possible to decouple ‘activity in context’ and represent it as an ‘outcome’ in the dissemination activities or final reports of the Umeå projects? Should we freeze conversations in the form of audio-visual DVDs? Or is this reductionism a betrayal of the TRUTH (cf. Bowman’s epigraph)? Or, from a scientific perspective, is the commodification of knowledge an attempt to relaunch the meaning-less Anglo-American behaviourism, empiricism and logical positivism that lost its market appeal in the 1970s? Finally, as scientist-developers we face a further dissemination problem. Is the freezing of conversations enough? Does it satisfy the modernist expectation that research outcomes should include context-free generalisations (i.e. laws) applicable in other situations? Or, in the case of a development project, does it satisfy the modernist expectation that outcomes should include culture-free products that can be marketed in the global economy? To solve these problems, we have turned to economic history, theories of practice, systems theory, theories of knowledge acquisition, constructivism and discourse analysis. This paper summarises how we have defrosted two frozen ideologies and repackaged them in our analyseis of on-line conversation. Industrialising the Learning Society The dis-association of processes from products - or means from ends - has a long history in education. It is discussed by Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics written around 320BC. Saugstad identifies this (dis)association in the following words: 'Today knowledge is understood primarily as a product, as something you have (principally on paper or in a computer)'. In turn, she relates the subsequent separation of processes from products with the decoupling - or alienation - of human activity. Aristotle did not make this separation. Rather, Saugstad suggests, he perceived knowledge as 'a competence, as something you are or something you do' (2002, p. 378). One current manifestation of the decoupling of human activity is the notion that technology is merely a delivery system for knowledge produced elsewhere. To this extent, the history of educational technology is implicated in the history of control engineering - the organisation of delivery systems. Early chapters in this history include F. W. Taylor's reorganisation of iron mills in Pennsylvania, USA and the introduction of moving production lines into the Ford Motor Company before the First World War. New delivery- , steering- or drive-systems were developed to increase production. Taylor described these procedures in terms of '[work]shop' or 'scientific’ management (Taylor, 1947), while later commentators described these developments as taylorism or fordism. Subsequent chapters in this history of production engineering in include the genesis of Operations Research (OR) during the Second World War; the creation of Total Quality Management after the Second World War; and the establishment of the New Public Management, a post-keynesian innovation, in the 1980s. New Public Management introduced industrial and commercial thinking into one of the largest public sectors: education. Its international impact on education took three forms: (1) the promulgation of theories about education and economic performance by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); (2) the re-engineering and re-tooling of education systems along lines endorsed by the OECD; and (3) the development of cross- national testing programmes to assess this 'reinvention' of production (Power, 1999, p. 41; see also Bonnet, 2002 and Lohmann, 2002). As indicated, re-engineering included a feedback component, in the form of auditing or quality assurance procedures. This shift in educational production highlighted the importance of outputs. The current Chancellor of the Swedish Universities, Sigbrit Franke noted this new development in the early 1990s. She claimed that while behaviourist or empiricist models of evaluation had given way to more 'process oriented models in the 70s', the fortunes of product evaluation 'revived in the late 80s and 90s' (quoted in Rekkedal, 2002, p. 35). These late-twentieth century innovations consolidated the separation of process from product. Education practices were labelled using a vocabulary drawn from industrial production; and educational policy was infected with determinist and utopian assumptions about the advancement of social progress. New technologies would, in themselves, deliver a golden future. It is no accident, perhaps, that Designing Tomorrow's Education (2000), a report from the European Commission, had the subtitle: Promoting innovation with new technologies. The implications of this decoupling of human activity from technology were profound. The worst case scenario was that teachers and teaching would disappear from 'tomorrow's education'. They would be replaced by 'technologically based learning environments' and a ‘learning’ rather than a ‘teaching’ paradigm (Bélisle, Rawlings, & van Seventer, 2001, p. 15). From this perspective, the learning (or information) society has a one-dimensional, technological foundation. The association of re-engineering and auditing can be discerned in European Commission documents. The prioritisation of products is explicitly linked to auditing practices, for instance, in eEurope 2005: an information society for all (2002). Under the heading 'Benchmarking', it indicates that 'the rationale behind these indicators is to focus on output' and that outputs are 'the final objectives of policy, not the policy itself' (p. 19). Moreover, the same document even reduces processes to frozen products: 'the detailed analysis of good practice should result in templates or guidelines' (p. 18). One of the unintended consequences of the new public management is that the world of learning is further decoupled from the 'activity in context' of teachers and teaching. Technology and Practice The industrialisation or technologisation of the learning society is underpinned by a mythology of the autonomous and disembodied tool. A tool becomes autonomous when it can be used anywhere, anytime; and it becomes disembodied when its use does not require the mediation of a knowing user. The technologisation of the learning society assumes that learning environments are technical systems that deliver learning. By analogy with fast food, they deliver fast knowledge. The world of elearning, therefore, is reduced to the delivery of McKnowledge. There is, however, a contrary perspective. Tools can also be seen as prostheses, extensions of the human hand and mind. Tool-based production is, therefore, a socio-cultural system. This feature of production engineering was highlighted more than 70 years ago when a Harvard Business School professor, Elton Mayo, studied social relations and industrial output at the General Electric Company's Hawthorne (Chicago) works between 1927-32. His key finding was that the social dimension of workplace activity also has a major impact on productivity. Indeed, Mayo’s insight launched the so-called 'human relations' school of business management. The tension between technical and socio-cultural perspectives on delivery took a new turn about 20 years later: the word medium (plural media) was substituted for tool. This lexical innovation strengthened the sense of delivery as transfer. It was taken up in educational technology and in the Multimedia Unit of the Director General for Education and Culture - the Brussels agency that funds and supervises the Umeå project on internetbased assessment. This new stance, that media are not so much delivery systems as communication systems, derives from communication theory and, in particular, the work of Claude Shannon published during the 1930s and 1940s in the Bell System Technical Journal. As Romiszowski suggests in The Selection of Use of Instructional Media (1988), Shannon's general idea was that communication is a linear, delivery process 'from some transmitting source (which maybe a human being or an inanimate object) to the receiver of the message (which in our case is the learner)' (Romiszowski, 1988, p. 8). In fact, Shannon was aware of the tension between technical and cultural (or meaning-full) communication. On the one hand, he wrote: The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is, they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or entities. (Shannon & Weaver, 1963, p. 3) Yet, as an applied mathematician, Shannon discounted the problem of meaning: 'the semantic aspects of the communication', he wrote, 'are irrelevant to the engineering problem' (p.3, emphasis added). The problem of meaning, however, did not go away. By the 1980s, however, even Romiszowski acknowledged its existence. He was aware, for instance, of Marshall McLuhan's insight to the effect that 'the medium is the Message' (1964). Yet, Romiszowski seems to have held to Shannon's original engineering perspective: in the context of education or training, we have ample evidence that it is the content and how it is transmitted that is the key factor in the communication/learning process. (1988, p.8). Romiszowski, that is, held to the earlier view that instruction is a delivery system. It is, he claimed, a 'three-phase process of [1] establishing precise and useful objectives, [2] planning study methods and [3] testing them' (p.6, cf. Tyler, 1949). Closed and Open Systems In fact, Romiszowski's work seems to have taken another direction. He incorporated Norbert Wiener's new ideas about Cybernetics that had also come to prominence in the 1940s (Wiener's Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine was first published in 1948). Romiszowski's notion of an educational medium combined Shannon's model of linear communication with Wiener's insight that delivery (in humans, animals and machines) could also be analysed as a 'two-way communication system' (1988, p. 6; see also Noble, 1984, pp. 47-76). Further, such feed-forward and feed-back requires multiple channels. From an historical perspective, then, Shannon's medium became Wiener's media. This cybernetic view influenced the European Commission. For instance, the Educational Multimedia Task Force, established in 1995, identified media with: educational products or services which could be accessed via television sets or computers…and offering a high level of interactivity' (Bélisle, Rawlings, & van Seventer, 2001, p. 4, emphasis added). Nevertheless, Shannon's ghost did not entirely disappear from the educational machine. His original work had not only posed the problem of meaning, it also identified another issue that, to this day, haunts communication theory: the problem of external sources of noise (or interference). High fidelity (i.e. faithful) communication requires that noise be reduced to a minimum. Romiszowski, for instance, recognised two general sources of noise. It originates from 'either party' (i.e. transmitter or receiver) or from an unknown number of 'external sources' (p. 5; see also, Juarrero, 1999). In practice, however, Romiszowski seems to have ignored the second source of noise, in much the same way that he discounted the importance of meaning. At this point in the history of ICT, the late 1980s and early 1990s, Romiszowski and others (e.g. Laurillard, 2002/1993) followed Shannon and designed closed or, following the usage of Campbell & Stanley (1963), quasi-closed instructional systems, representing them as sets of activities linked by arrows (see also Romiszowski, 1987). This is a reductionist stance. If instructional systems are subject to external interference, they cannot be closed systems. Rather, they are open, living, socio-cultural systems (cf. von Bertalanffy, 1973) . The proliferation of feed-forward and feed-back channels on the one hand, and the randomness of noise, on the other, creates new sets of circumstances. In turn, 'new tools' foster 'new pedagogical practices' (Bélisle, Rawlings, & van Seventer, 2001, p. 7) that revolve around noise control and the management of feedback. Put another way, instructional systems must be seen in context - as pedagogic (i.e. socio-cultural) systems. In summary: the turbulence of the last 70 years has failed to create shared understandings about ICT. The field is a junkyard of discarded jargon, mantra and acronyms. Yet, somehow, salvation is always just beyond the horizon. This manic-depressive conjuncture, also known as 'policy hysteria' (Stronach & Morris, 1994), is illustrated, for instance, in the call for papers for the 2003 conference of the European Distance Education Network (EDEN): elearning is perceived either as new ICT media and pedagogies making up the emergent flexible learning environments, or as the new paradigm of knowledge acquisition with related competencies in the information society. (Listserve message, 11th December 2002, emphasis added) The first - or depressive - part of this quotation looks back to the dualistic legacy of ICT (informatics/pedagogy); while the second part - the manic new paradigm - indicates a way forward towards the information society. The same roller-coaster, mountain and valley scenario can also be seen in the Educational Media Task Force report. In the 1990s, 'Learning and not the curriculum nor the teaching activities' were to be the 'core element of all educational multimedia enterprises' (Bélisle, Rawlings, & van Seventer, 2001, p. 16, emphasis added). Paradigms of Knowledge Acquisition By the end of the 1990s, three ideas had come together: (1) the notion of delivery (taken from communication theory); (2) the significance of feedback in control systems (taken from cybernetics); and (3) the pervasive impact of socio-cultural 'noise' (also taken, ultimately, from communication theory). A remarkable document , the European Commission's Educational Multimedia Task Force Report, embraces these developments. The significance of this document is four-fold. (1) It takes a self-critical and reflective stance (see epigraph: 'Obviously….') on elearning policy; (2) it recognises that educational technology is culturally embedded (see epigraph: 'educational technology participates….'); (3) it suggests that the learning society should be based on a constructivist view of learning, rather than a technological concept of delivery; and (4) it is the only EC document that we have been able to find which recognises that elearning can be steered by (at least) ' two approaches in learning theory' (p. 32) - behaviourist and constructivist. The authors recognise that the initial integration of computers into teaching and learning followed a 'behaviourist approach'. Knowledge was seen as 'externally mediated information' which a teacher 'transmits to a learner'. At that time, learning was identified with 'acquiring existing knowledge'. Since the 1970s, however, a 'constructivist epistemology' has gradually become 'dominant', one that takes into account 'the complex cognitive processes which learning involves' (p. 33). The Report summarises these developments and, significantly we feel, links knowledge acquisition to multimedia, cybernetics and constructivism: In the multimedia learning environments developed, technology was not only a means of transmitting and storing information but also, if not mainly, a means of facilitating interaction with information [cybernetics], that is, generative processing, relating new information to prior knowledge [constructivism], activating appropriate schemata, interpreting new information and inferring new knowledge. (p. 33, emphasis added) The Task Force report also acknowledged the significance of internal and external noise. The unacknowledged significance of external noise, including the knowing user, is highlighted in its assertion that, hitherto, developing multimedia learning environments had been a 'technologically driven activity' where the 'main actors' - teachers, trainers and learners at all levels - were 'not really involved'. Accordingly, the Report suggested that the subsequent process of 'integrating technology' into practice has proved more complex than 'developing technology'. (p. 25, emphasis added). The strongest EU expression on socio-cultural knowledge acquisition can be found in the 2002-2006 framework document for the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Community (n.d.). Research in Technology Enhanced Learning, (the title of the document), should follow a strategy based on the 'inseparability of pedagogy and technical and organisational aspects' of learning (emphasis added). A similar view is expressed in Priority 7 of the Sixth Framework Programme – ‘Citizens and governance in a knowledge- based society’: Different manifestations of knowledge and its uses should be addressed from a multidisciplinary perspective, bringing together approaches which emphasise different aspects. These aspects are linked to information, belief, culture, norm, gender, rule, regulation, didactics and learning, opinion, rationality and its different manifestations in codified, tacit, narrative, embedded and embodied forms, and processes of individual, social, organisational and institutional action as well as individual and collective learning. (European Commission, 2002a, p. 4) This is the same insight that has emerged in the Umeå projects - that a conversation is an 'activity in context'. Constructing Inseparability The Umeå folkbildning project attempts to study the integration of the communication inheritance of ICT with the pedagogic inheritance of more than 100 years of Scandinavian adult education (Korsgaard, 2001). Likewise, the Internet-based Assessment (IBA) project has had to come to terms with the troubled history of testing (see Roos, 2003). In both cases, the pedagogic inheritance is prioritised. There is a shared assumption that the so-called medium (ICT) should be subordinate to the messages - or purposes - of adult education and educational assessment. One perspective on this last problem is to see the Umeå projects in terms of three metaphors: communication, participation and acquisition. The communication metaphor reaches back to Shannon's insights of the 1930s and 40s; while the participation and acquisition metaphors came to prominence with the differentiation of constructivist and behaviourist conceptions of learning in the 1950s and 60s. The key difference between the last two metaphors is that acquisition relates to knowledge while participation relates to knowing. Sfard elegantly elaborates this distinction. The acquisition metaphor: Brings to mind the activity of accumulating material goods. The language of 'knowledge acquisition' and 'concept development' makes us think about the human mind as a container to be filled with certain materials and about the learner as becoming an owner of these materials. (1998, p.5) The participation metaphor, on the other hand, is: conceived as a process of becoming a member of a certain community. This entails, above all, the ability to communicate in the language of this community and act according to its particular norms. The norms themselves are to be negotiated in the process of consolidating the community. While the learners are newcomers and potential reformers of the practice, the teachers are the preservers of its continuity. (Sfard, 1998, p. 6) These two perspectives can be reconciled, however, if knowledge acquisition is seen as an 'activity in context'. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge. Such knowledge is also embodied, possessed, even owned. But, as a commodities, the value of acquired knowledge depends upon its context of use. Pierre Bourdieu recognised this more than 30 years ago. His discussion of the ‘mode d’acquisition et modalité de l’utilisation’, with reference to ‘l’inégale distribution entre les différents classes socials du capital linguistique scolairement rentable’ accepted that knowledge or knowing valued in one context may have a different value in a contrary set of social relations (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970, p. 144-5). In an acquisition context, learning is a substantive, a noun as in 'I have learning'. In a participation context, however, learning is a verb, as in 'I am learning'. Participative learning, therefore, is endless. Like literacy or feminism, it is always 'in the making' (cf. Johns, 1998, hooks, 1984). It is a process of being and becoming. It takes place in a particular context and, since it is always 'in the making', it is directed towards future contexts (cf. Engeström's distinction between action and activity; in Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki, 1999, passim). The participation metaphor, therefore, supports a non-deterministic viewpoint. Technology does not create social change. Rather, human beings acquire knowledge through their engagement with learning environments that, in the broadest sense, are also educational technologies (for a general discussion of technology, see Nordkvelle, 2002). To return to the ideas of Taylor and Mayo, a learning environment is a delivery system. Knowing is a state of mind, ‘something you are’ that is manufactured (literally: hand-made) through the medium of both material (i.e. prosthetic) and socio-cultural (i.e. human) elements. For this reason, 'technology enhanced learning' necessarily assumes the inseparability of the pedagogical, organisational and technical aspects of teaching and learning. This reconciled view of learning is summarised in the claim, made earlier, that learning is a side-effect of doing. It is further elaborated in Lave & Wenger's Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (1991). Learning, they suggest, is an 'integral constituent' of 'engagement in social practice' (p. 35). It arises from activity which involves 'the whole person'; it takes place 'in and with the world'; and it is a social practice where the agent, activity and the world 'mutually constitute each other' (p.33). Discourse as learning in the making This attention to learning 'in the making', through 'engagement in social practice' is central to folkbildning, flexible learning and the net university in Sweden. In these contexts, the preferred social practice is conversational (samtal in Swedish, conference in early modern English). Indeed, the interactive basis of such learning is symbolised in the name of a web platform created for this purpose - Ping Pong. When face to face conversation is transferred online (i.e face to interface), the simplest form of communication is univocal. It comprises message-posting in a conference milieu (see, for instance, Hamilton, Dahlgren, Hult & Söderström, 2002). Sometimes, however, message posting evokes a response. It becomes dialogic; and, to investigate this interaction, more complex forms of cybernetic, or discourse analysis are needed (cf. Söderström, Dahlgren, Hamilton & Hult, 2002). Another approach to the analysis of interaction is to regard messages as 'utterances' - in the sense embraced by Mikhail Bakhtin. A conversation comprises utterances that, to varying degrees, respond to earlier utterances. Put another way, a conversation draws on a heteroglossia, a pool of different ideas that, when exchanged, foster learning. According to Bakhtin every utterance has a double significance. It is both univocal and dialogic. It is an expression of a 'unitary [common] language' used to conduct the conversation and, at the same time, it builds on the 'social and historical' differences embedded in the different voices that activate the heteroglossia (1981, p. 272). Bakhtin's contemporary, Yuri Lotman, offered a similar analysis of conversation. He described conversations as multi-authored texts rather than as multi-voiced heteroglossia (see Bakhtin, 1994, for a discussion of Lotman). In a cultural system, he suggests, texts 'fulfill at least two basic functions: to convey meanings adequately, and to generate new meanings'. He continues: The first function is fulfilled best when the codes of the speaker and the listener most completely coincide and, consequently, when the text has the maximum degree of univocality. The second function, to generate new meanings, arises from the problems of noise or interference raised in the earlier work of Shannon: A text ceases to be a passive link in conveying some constant information between input (sender) and output (receiver). Whereas in the first case a difference between the message at the input and that at the output of an information circuit can occur only as a result of a defect in the communication channel and is to be attributed to the technical imperfections of this system, in the second case such a difference is the very essence of a text's function as a 'thinking device'. What from the first standpoint is a defect, from the second is a norm, and vice versa. Of course, the mechanism of a text must be organised differently in the second case. (Lotman, 1988, pp. 34, 36-37) Combining Shannon and Lotman, an educational conversation is a noisy thinking device. It is a social practice that makes possible the distribution and re-distribution of knowing. Each utterance is both a performance and the product of an earlier performance. Performance and product come together. Their combination, in conversation, provides new opportunities for students to participate in knowing (or learning) and to acquire knowledge (or learning). At the same time, this unity of knowing and knowledge, learning (as a verb) and learning (as a noun) gives teachers, like all educational technologists, the opportunity to reflect on learning environments as both texts and thinking devices. Summary and Conclusions This conference paper explores epistemological tensions that have arisen in the work of two research and development projects that focus on elearning. In general, tensions arose in the attempt to reconcile project aspirations with frozen educational ideologies that occur in the intellectual baggage of ICT. These tensions include the separation of means from ends and the separation of the act of knowing from the acquisition of knowledge. The reconciliation of these problems is possible, however, if teaching and learning are regarded as socio-cultural processes where human conversation builds on the mediation of knowing users - teachers as well as learners. The analysis in this paper, like all acts of knowing, is unfinished. It has been difficult to research the historical transition from IT to ICT, and to appreciate the differences between informatics and pedagogics. Likewise, it has been difficult to trace documents that illustrate these changes in the European Commission's policies and programmes. Many policy documents are available on-line, and listed in appendix A of the Comission’s staff working paper: elearning: Designing tomorrow’s education (European Commission, 2002b). Yet, it is still difficult to clarify which programmes generated the documents, which documents have been seminal or, indeed, whether there is a common EU perspective on elearning as the reconciliation of communication, acquisition and participation. Two further problems relate to the rhetorical form of this paper. Much attention has given to the educational use of metaphors taken from industrial production. Such a strategy, like treating knowledge as a 'product', may raise 'more questions than it solves': Although universities are undoubtedly involved in some kind of production, the nature or essence of what they produce can at best be expressed metaphorically; from this it follows that it is difficult to evaluate such an enigmatic product, and equally difficult to optimise its production, the technology of which is far from clear. (Czarniawska & Genell, 2002, pp. 456-457) A further problem with the rhetoric (i.e. plausibility) of this argument is that it only runs to 6000 words. The problem, however, is not that data or ideas may have been ignored but, rather, that these omissions have also shaped the form - or performance - of the argument in this paper. Despite Bowman, the ACT may not be the TRUTH. For example, it has not been possible to compare the 1993 and 2002 editions of Diana Laurillard's Rethinking University Teaching. In the second edition, she combines a (quasi)-closed model of informatics with an open model of education. Did she, for example, hold the same view in 1993? Finally, there are many lines of inquiry that are untouched in this paper. If 'technology enhanced learning' is inseparable from the pedagogical, technical and organisational aspects of instruction, how does the argument of this paper apply to earlier historical epochs (e.g. the invention of the alphabet, zero, or moveable-type printing)? And in what sense is it reasonable to describe the advent of ICT as a revolution - an issue raised, like the problem of the ‘downturns in the ICT sector’, in the EU Working Paper (European Commission, 2002b, p. 5; see also Grafton, 2002)? From a socio-cultural perspective, technology has always been part of the problem and part of the solution. Or, as Marshall McLuhan chose to describe the process/product enigma: 'the content of a medium is always another medium' (1964/1997 p. 151). 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Educational theory and practice in an Aristotelian perspective. Scandinanvian Journal of Educational Research, 46 (4), 373-390. Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27 (2), 4-13. Shannon, C.E. & Weaver, W. (1963). The Mathematical Theory of Communication (corrected version of the 1949 edition). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stronach, I., & Morris, B. (1994). Polemical notes on educational evaluation in the age of 'policy hysteria'. Evaluation and Research in Education, 8(1 & 2), 5-19. Söderström, T., Dahlgren, E., Hamilton, D., & Hult, A. (2002c). Catching communication on the net. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the European Educational Research Association, Lisbon, September. Available at http://alfa.ped.umu.se/projekt/folkbildning/publikationer.html Taylor, F.W. (1947). 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Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_uwobxxuka5anpb637e5rhxdhyq	----	International Journal of Science and Business 1 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By Kolawole’s Problem Solving (KPS) Method as a Tool for Quality Teaching and Evaluation in Open and Distance Education AUTHOR(S): OLOFIN, SAMUEL OLUWASEYI (Ph. D) And FALEBITA, OLUWANIFE SEGUN (Ph.D.) Abstract The focus of this paper is on the problem of appropriate teaching in the open/distance education and the need to practically employ effective evaluative tools for improving the academic achievement of learners involved in these modes of education. This paper introduced KPS method that was formulated on the basis of well stated assumptions as a viable tool at this period of economic recession for checkmating possible challenges capable of being encountered, so as to maximize the opportunities available in open/distance education. The e-module was designed in various packages using the 5-steps of KPS. The teaching/evaluative verbs for each of the ability levels in the packages were coded into the following passwords i.e. ‘D,I2,R3,E,C2,T2, D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2, S3,C3,R,I,P,T3, A,P,P,R,A,I,S.E2’. Experimenting by juxtaposing KPS with that of the conventional method on 120 selected learners in a quasi-experimental design yielded an empirical data that shows KPS method as a better teaching/evaluative tool than the conventional method. The paper recommends that KPS method should be incorporated into the curriculum of the nation’s open/distance educational system as one of the veritable teaching/evaluative tool for improving the academic achievement of all categories of learners. CJAR Accepted 1 June 2020 Published 7 June 2020 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3884304 Volume: 1, Issue: 3 Page: 86-95 YEAR: 2020 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 2 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International Keywords: Teaching, Evaluation, Open and Distance Education, Kolawole’s Problem Solving (KPS), Author(s): OLOFIN, SAMUEL OLUWASEYI (Ph.D.) SCIENCE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, EKITI STATE UNIVERSITY, ADO – EKITI, EKITI STATE, NIGERIA. AND FALEBITA, OLUWANIFE SEGUN (Ph.D.) SCIENCE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, EKITI STATE UNIVERSITY, ADO – EKITI, EKITI STATE, NIGERIA. About Author Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 3 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International Introduction Development and sustainability of nations’ technological, scientific and economic breakthroughs is absolutely impossible without adequate investment in human capacity development is obviously the bedrock of increased productivity and economic development of such nation. This is possibly the reason why most developed nations often greatly invest in the intellectual capacity of their citizenry in order to astronomically improve their economy. As a result of advanced nations’ awareness of the indispensable role of education in fostering nations’ development, a tangible portion of their financial resources if often devoted to the provision of quality teaching and learning, both at the conventional educational (formal classroom) level and the non-conventional educational (open & distance) level. The current sophisticated world operates on decisions. Decisions are regularly being made at the local, national and international levels, having to do with people, individuals and groups. The role of measurement procedures in educational process is basically to provide valid data/information upon which reasonable decisions can be made. Evaluation involves making decisions on how well learners have learned a given content or how far the objectives earlier set have been qualitatively achieved. Data obtained from measurement procedures are often used for assessment. Moreover, evaluation is a major activity in the teaching-learning process without which the process becomes vague, meaningless and invalid. It is carried out for determination of worth only. Consequently, it is the domain of assessment to obtain correct data, organize and convert such measurement data (obtained on specified variables) into interpretable form. Evaluation, therefore, encompasses both tests and measurement to obtain information that could thereafter be used for making decisions about students, curricula, programmes, instructional strategies and educational policies. Evaluation involves the addition of value judgement to the determination of worth of the obtained data. It is the quantitative (measurement), qualitative (non-measurement) or both descriptions of samples behaviour plus viable judgement. It is clear that there is likelihood of continuous production of poorly performing learners whenever appropriate assessment is not being carried out and reported because of the tendency of educators to unknowingly use ineffective and wrong procedures continually. There is need for valid teaching and evaluation in open and distance education for the outcome of this kind of non-conventional educational to be realistic, reasonable and acceptable globally. Distance education is a mode of delivering education and instruction, often on an individual basis, to learners who are not physically present in a traditional classroom setting. Distance learning provides access to learning when the source of information and learners are separated by time and distance or both. Open education is a wider concept in comparison with distance education because it encompasses all forms of education and training (Komba, Komba, & Sekondo, 2006). This system of education can be defined as one in which the restrictions placed on learners are under constant review for removal whenever possible. Here, openness is considered paramount with regards to learners’ intake, participation, progress, achievement and completion. Possible barriers include the student’s economic circumstances socio-cultural factors, academic qualifications instructional methodologies. Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 4 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International The benefit of open and distance education in comparison with conventional educational include their potential for expanding, access to education, flexibility reduction of the huge cost of education, etc. However, for these two non-conventional types of education to function maximally, there is dire need for introduction of an empirically-proven assessment/evaluation technique through which instructions communicated to learners could be appropriately and evaluated. The unimaginable dwindling performance of learners in academic programmes in Nigeria has become an issue of great concern to stakeholders in the educational sector in recent times. It is obvious that the continuous poor performance of learners in examination is an indicator of the diseased (or unhealthy) status of the education of learners; it makes sense to seek lasting solution to the problem. It is unfortunate the most brilliant teachers having great mastery of their subject’s matter while teaching couldn’t properly link such with appropriate evaluation process. In other words, even though Nigeria is blessed with qualified teacher having great mastery of their subject’s contents and sometimes appropriate instructional methodology, yet many of these teachers often find it extremely difficult to construct appropriate standardize tests. Several strategies have been advocated for improvement of teaching and evaluation in this problematic segment of the globe, yet the problem has remained largely unsolved. Consequent upon the aforementioned the development of a proactive problem-solving method capable of being adopted for the complete overhauling of the system seems necessary. In response to this, Kolawole Problem Solving method KPSM, {which had been internationally published and globally certified for usage by leading education experts across the globe} was postulated. Kolawole’s Problem Solving (KPS) method by its peculiar design takes care of the possible teaching and learning problem. The most unique feature of KPS method is that while the teacher can use it for teaching and evaluating the students, (Kolawole, Oladosu & Ajetunmobi, 2013), the learner can also simultaneously use if for learning and evaluating himself (or herself) as shown in figure 1 Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 5 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International Figure 1: General Theoretical Framework of Kolawole’s Problem Solving (KPS) Model THE BASICS OF KPS METHOD Step 1: ‘IKTT’ the Problem/Topic: Here the assessor/evaluator should adequately make effort to identify all relevant keywords, terms and terminologies (KTT) associated with the problem/topic upon which questions would be formulated. In evaluating the learners evaluative verbs including identify, mention, etc. of relevant keywords/terms and terminologies (KTT) that are tangential to problem/topic should therefore, be used. Identification of the topic/problem via KTT, PASSWORDS and DOMAIN Identify problem/topic DIRECT the problem/topic DEVECQUIT the problem/topic SCRIPT the problem/topi c APPRAISE the problem/topic Keywords (K) Terms (T) Terminologies (T) Keywords (K) Terms (T) Terminologie s (T) of the problem/Topi c Keywords (K) Terms (T) Terminologie s (T) of the problem/Topi c Keywords (K) Terms (T) Terminologie s (T) of the problem/Topi c Keywords (K) Terms (T) Terminologie s (T) of the problem/Topi c PROBLEM/TOPIC EVALUATION/APPRAISAL TOPIC FAILED Problem Unsolved TOPIC PASSED Problem Solved Teach Learn Evaluate Solve Teach Learn Evaluate Solve Teach Learn Evaluate Solve Teach Learn Evaluate Solve Teach Learn Evaluate Solve Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 IKTT, PASSWORDS and DOMAIN D, I2, R3, E, C2, T2 D,E,V,E,C,Q2,U,I,T2 S3,C3,R,I,P,T3 A,P,P,R,A,I,S,E 2 Evaluate Evaluate Evaluate Evaluate Evaluate PROGRESS Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 6 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International Step 2: ‘DIRECT’ the Problem/Topic via {D,I2,R3,E,C2,T2}: In teaching and evaluating students at this ability level, the verbs that can be used include: Define, Identify, Indicate Recognise, Relate Regulate, Enumerate, Categorize, Classify and Solve all Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic or equivalent verbs or synonyms of the problem/topic Step 3: ‘DEVECQUIT’ the Problem/Topic via {D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2}: The verbs to be used for teaching and evaluating students at this level include: Discuss, Explain, Verify, Expatiate, Criticize, Compose, Compare Query, Understand, Inquire, Transform all Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic or equivalent verbs or synonyms of the problem/topic Step 4: ‘SCRIPT’ out the Problem/Topic via {S3,C3,R,I,P, T3}: The verbs for teaching and evaluating students at this level include: Solve, Simplify, Sketch, Calculate, Compute, Construct, Read, Interprete, Plot, Tabulate and Transform all Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic or equivalent verbs or synonyms of the problem/topic. Step 5: ‘APPRAISE’ the topic via {A,P,P,R,A,I,S,E2}: The evaluative verbs for evaluating students’ ability at this level include: Apply, Preview, Predict, Review, Assess, Induce, Summarize, Estimate and Examine all Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic or equivalent verbs or synonyms of the problem/topic Application of KPS method as a tool of Teaching and Evaluation in Open and Distance Education 1) Teaching: Teaching (formal academic instruction) under the guidance of teachers have been reputed to be the major tool for shaping the minds of learners worldwide. Since education experts have agreed that excellent performance of learners mainly depends on the effectiveness and appropriateness of the teaching method in the classroom settings there is a dire need to find a suitable replacement for the hitherto used traditional/conventional method that had been empirically proven to be ineffective. KPS method was found suitable for teaching all kinds of formal schools subjects. It is unfortunate that teachers (in schools) often teach without adequately identifying and explaining relevant keywords, terms and terminologies contained in the topic. Furthermore, they failed in translating and interpreting these keywords, etc. Also, they failed in the application of the topic to solve problems and synchronizing teaching, learning and evaluation. KPS method compensates for the aforementioned anomalies by ensuring that no teacher using KPS method would teach any topic without adequately identifying and explaining the meaning of relevant keywords, terms and terminologies that are tangential to the topic, as well as applying the topic appropriately in solving both the familiar and unfamiliar problems. Since in the open/distance education the teaching – learning process is often carried out using a combination of both the conventional/traditional method and e- method, KPS method is made applicable to both i.e. Going via the conventional method or e-method, each of the modules may have 3 or more packages/topics as the course content for a contact session will be divided into four modules. Each of the packages/topics as a sub-unit of the module would be developed and used for the provision of appropriate instructions on any concerned topic. The 1st slide/unit of each package/topic will be used for identification of relevant keywords, terms and terminologies (IKTT). The 2nd slide/unit of the package/topic will DIRECT the problem, the 3rd slide/unit of the package/topic will DEVECQUIT the Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 7 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International problem, the he 4th slide/unit of the package/topic will SCRIPT out the problem while the 5th slide/unit of the package/topic will APPRAISE the problem. This same procedure will be adopted if the course lecture is in book writing. The students will be examined at the end of each package and also at the end of each module (i.e. each module may be programme to run for one month or more). At the end of the contact session (i.e. after covering all the modules), a revision will be done combining all the modules treated, whereby the revision follows the 5steps of KPS. The aforementioned detail is illustrated in a tabular form as follows: Table 1: E-method/Conventional Method (incorporating KPS method) Package/ Topic 1 1st slide/unit 2nd slide/unit 3rd slide/unit 4th slide/unit 5th slide/unit Password IKTT D,I2,R3,E,C2,T 2 D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2 S3,C3,R,I,P,T3 A,P,P,R,A,I,S .E2 Behaviour Objective Involved To elicit identification of relevant keywords, terms and terminologies To DIRECT the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic To DEVECQUIT the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic To SCRIPT out the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic To APPRAISE the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic Package/ Topic 2 1st slide/unit 2nd slide/unit 3rd slide/unit 4th slide/unit 5th slide/unit Password IKTT D,I2,R3,E,C2,T 2 D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2 S3,C3,R,I,P,T3 A,P,P,R,A,I,S .E2 Behaviour Objective Involved To elicit identification of relevant keywords, terms and terminologies To DIRECT the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic To DEVECQUIT the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic To SCRIPT out the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic To APPRAISE the keywords, terms and terminologies of the problem or topic . . Package/ Topic n 2) Evaluation: Even though the nation’s open and distance education programmes are blessed with countless highly qualified, hardworking and proficient instructors, yet instructions/materials from these instructors (via both the print-media, electronic-media or even face-to-face contact) have not been able to produce acceptable level of performance in various subjects for most learners in external examinations because most of these materials lack the ability to properly connects teaching and appropriate evaluation (which ought to be the case in every normal educational setting). It is unfortunate that while the tests conducted locally by teachers (i.e. Teacher-made Tests) often have poor psychometric properties (i.e. not valid, reliable or dependable), standardized tests (or examinations) designed and conducted by external examining bodies are always having adequate psychometric properties (i.e. valid, reliable and dependable). KPS method is a viable tool for correcting these anomalies (i.e. invalidity, unreliability and undependability) associated with the earlier mentioned ‘Teacher- made Test’ in as much as the set of distinct passwords used for teaching and learning i.e. M O D U L E Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 8 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International IKTT, D,I2,R3,E,C2,T2, D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2, S3,C3,R,I,P,T3, and A,P,P,R,A,I,S.E2 is to be equally used in the test construction, as well as assessing and evaluating the students. Consequently, the probability of performing excellently by most learners is enhanced. In order to correctly apply KPS method to Test Blueprint construction, a 2-way grid mapping subject’s content with ability levels, in which the test construction allocates appropriate number of items/questions into each cell of KPS method Ability Levels which sequentially employs the password ‘D,I2,R3,E,C2,T2, D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2, S3,C3,R,I,P,T3, A,P,P,R,A,I,S.E2’ in formulating the tests (Kolawole, 2013a; 2013b, Kolawole, 2010). Table 2: KPS Method Test-blueprint Evaluation Model SUBJECT CONTENT COGNITIVE LEVELS ‘D,I2,R3,E,C2,T2’ Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic ‘D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I, T2’ Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic ‘S3,C3,R,I,P,T3’ Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic A,P,P,R,A,I,S.E2 Identified Keywords (K), Terms (T), Terminologies (T) [IKTT] of the problem/topic Total Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 . . . Total Total To correctly apply KPS method to item-writing for assessment/evaluation purposes, the item-writer identifies all relevant keywords, terms and terminologies associated with the concerned topic (or group of topic), subject matter and/or problem under investigation; and thereafter ‘D,I2,R3,E,C2,T2, D,E,V,E,C3,Q2,U,I,T2, S3,C3,R,I,P,T3, and A,P,P,R,A,I,S.E2’the aforementioned appropriately Statement of the Problem The problem necessitating this paper is poor performance of Open and Distance education learners in public examinations, which is believed by many to be associated with the use of invalid and unreliable teaching and evaluative tool by their instructors prior to such examinations. To proffer realistic solution to the aforementioned problem, the development of a highly effective problem-solving method’s and evaluative tool such as KPS method’s is inevitable in as much as experiences have shown that appropriate use of well-constructed teaching plan and test blueprint underlying this device often enhances high content validity of the concerned test. Unfortunately most Nigerian teachers always construct their testing instruments without previously constructing a reasonable Test’s Blueprint. However, since Test’s Blueprint is a two-way grid that maps behaviour objectives with the contents, any test constructed without such Blueprint is in reality unreliable and invalid or not useful for the purpose for which it is designed. However, KPS method is by its peculiar design deliberately equipped for simplifying the art of ‘test construction’ greatly for all the test’s constructors. There is need, therefore, to determine the degree of effectiveness (or otherwise) of KPS method as teaching and evaluative tool on learners’ performance. Purpose of the Study The purpose of the study was to examine the difference between the mean performance of learners taught and evaluated using the conventional method and KPS method Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 9 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International Ho1: There is no significant difference between the mean performance of learners taught and evaluated using the conventional method and KPS method. Methodology This study employed quasi experimental design. The sample used comprises 120 selected learners from Ekiti State, who were selected using multistage sampling procedure. The instrument used was titled ‘Mathematics Achievement Test’ (MAT) having a validity coefficient of 0.78 and a reliability coefficient of 0.82. The experimental group was adequately taught specific topics for 12 weeks using KPS teaching and evaluative method (i.e. in modules and packages) while the conventional group was taught same topics using conventional method and evaluated by conventional (or traditional) evaluative tool. Pre-test was administered prior to treatment and post- test immediately after treatment. Results Hypothesis 1: There is no significant difference between the mean performance of learners taught and evaluated using the conventional method and KPS method. Table 3: t-test analysis of the performance of learners taught and evaluated using the conventional and KPS methods Group N Mean SD df tcal ttable Result Conventional (Control) 60 44.93 13.96 118 16.76 1.66 * KPS (Experimental) 60 74.25 9.165 *(mean result significant at 0.05 level) As shown in Table 3, the comparison of students’ performance in the conventional and KPS method group revealed that the t value, tcal (16.76) is greater than the ttable (1.66), implying that significant difference exists between students’ performance in the two groups. Consequently, the null hypothesis 1 is rejected. As such, KPS method is more effective that the conventional method. Discussion The outcome of this study succinctly revealed that KPS method is more effective than the conventional method in improving learner’s performance in school’s subjects. The possible reason advocated for this high effectiveness of KPS method is simply its inherent ability to always appropriately connect (or link) teaching, learning and evaluation in one integral whole, since the same distinct ‘passwords’ used for teaching learners are equally used in the construction of the tests that are to be used for regularly assessing and consequently evaluating the learners. As such the probability of excellent performance by most learners is greatly enhanced. Conclusion A total overhauling of the nation’s educational system is a necessity for transforming Nigeria into one of the 20 leading economy of the world in as much as education is the pivot upon which the development of every nation’s depends. To ensure that this is possible within the shortest possible time frame, steps should be taken to identify an effective teaching and evaluative tool capable of being used for reduction of the astronomical failures, non-coping and dropout rates of learners in open/distance education in the nation. This paper is an eye-opener for widening the horizon of open/distance education managers to the fact that KPS is an effective teaching and evaluative tools for encouraging, developing and sustaining excellent performance of learners in the open/distance education. Recommendations On the basis of the outcome of the study presented in this paper, it is clear that the KPS method is more effective than the conventional method. As such it is recommended that KPS method should be formally introduced into the nations’ open and distance education to improve Volume: 1, Issue: 3, Year: 2020 Page: 86-95 10 Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research (CJAR.EU) Email: editor.cjar@gmail.com editor@cjar.eu Website: cjar.eu Published By TWCMSI - International learners’ performance therein. Moreover, conferences, seminars and workshops on practical applicability of KPS method should be held regularly for the nation’s open/distance educators, instructors & learners in order to improve learners’ performance in the different school’s subjects REFERENCES Kolawole, E.B. (2010). Principles of Test Construction and Administration (Revised Ed.). Lagos: Bolabay Publications Kolawole, E.B. (2013a). Kolawole’s Modulus Testing and Administration as Antidote to Examination Malpractice and Invalid Testing in Nigeria. Webpub Journal of Education Research, 1(2), 9 – 13. http://www.researchwebpub.org/wjer Kolawole, E.B. (2013b). Kolawole’s Problem Solving Method (KPS): A Panacea to Mathematical and Life’s Problems. Standard Journal of Education and Essay, 1(8), 131 – 141. http://www.standresjournal.org/journals Kolawole, E.B., Oladosu, C.T. and Ajetunmobi, O. (2013). Comparability of Effectiveness of Problem Solving Methods on Learners Performance in Mathematics. Unique Journal of Educational Research, 1(2), 012 – 019. http://www.uniqueresearch journal.org/UJER Komba, D.A., Komba, W. & Sekondo, C. (2006). TCU Guidelines foe Evaluation, Recognition and Accreditation of Programmes Delivered Under Open, Distance and Electronic/ICT mode. A Report submitted to TCU Cite this article: Author(s), OLOFIN, SAMUEL OLUWASEYI (Ph. D), FALEBITA, OLUWANIFE SEGUN (Ph.D.), (2020). “Kolawole’s Problem Solving (KPS) Method as a Tool for Quality Teaching and Evaluation in Open and Distance Education”. Name of the Journal: Commonwealth Journal of Academic Research, (CJAR.EU), P, 86- 95. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3884304 , Issue: 3, Vol.: 1, Article: 9, Month: June, Year: 2020. Retrieved from https://www.cjar.eu/all- issues/ Published by AND ThoughtWares Consulting & Multi Services International (TWCMSI) http://www.researchwebpub.org/wjer http://www.standresjournal.org/journals http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3884304 https://www.cjar.eu/all-issues/ https://www.cjar.eu/all-issues/ http://www.twcmsi.org/ 
work_uxz4dzjvizhojpsvfrrm7pdgma	----	An Action Research Model for the Management of Change in Continuing Professional Distance Education This is a repository copy of An Action Research Model for the Management of Change in Continuing Professional Distance Education. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/702/ Article: Nunes, J.M.B. and McPherson, M.A. (2003) An Action Research Model for the Management of Change in Continuing Professional Distance Education. Innovations in Teaching And Learning in Information and Computer Sciences (ITALICS), 2 (1). ISSN 1473-7507 eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. mailto:eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ This is an author produced version of a paper published in Innovations in Teaching And Learning in Information and Computer Sciences (ITALICS). This paper has been peer- reviewed but does not include the final publisher formatting. White Rose Repository URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00000702/ The publisher formatted paper is available at: http://www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/pub/italics/issue3/nunes/008.html White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository eprints@whiterose.ac.uk AN ACTION RESEARCH MODEL FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DISTANCE EDUCATION Miguel Baptista Nunes Department of Information Studies University of Sheffield Regent Court, Sheffield, S1 4DP j.m.nunes@sheffield.ac.uk Maggie McPherson Department of Information Studies University of Sheffield Regent Court, Sheffield, S1 4DP m.a.mcpherson@sheffield.ac.uk ABSTRACT This paper proposes an action research model as basis for the management of change in continuing professional distance education (CPDE). The model proposed emerged from the need to manage a complex change process from traditional paper-based distance education to e-learning. In order to illustrate and support the model proposed, this paper describes and discusses such a change process in a CPDE Masters programme. The Educational Management Action Research (EMAR) model conjugates pedagogical thinking, curriculum design and organisational context. This model facilitates dialogue of all parties engaged in the design and delivery of CPDE. This enables educational managers to effectively lead change in their courses. Keywords Continuing Professional Distance Education, Action Research Model, Change Management, 1. INTRODUCTION The quest for successful management of change in educational environments has become a focus of activity for many educationalists, educational managers and researchers. The assumption underlying much of this activity is that if change can be understood and controlled, then strategies can be developed and success will ensue. A driving force behind the attention being paid to ‘change’ is the idea that the ability to handle and sustain change and innovation is central to success in improving teaching and administration. This concept is particularly applicable to the management of Continuing Professional Distance Education (CPDE) programmes in IT and IS because of constant changes in this field. Consequently, educational managers are looking for the ‘best’ way to manage change which, for the most part, emerges as a series of steps or ‘recipes’ to be followed to create an efficient, effective, successful educational setting. This stance is often challenged by both research and empirical findings. This particularly applies to change processes related to the introduction of new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into learning and teaching in distance education: “Technology in itself does not change or improve teaching and learning. Attention to management processes, strategy, structure, and most importantly roles and skills, are the key to successfully introducing technology in university teaching and learning.” [1] Therefore, no simple template or checklist can hope to predict and resolve the complex interactive processes involved in this type of change process [2]. A different type of framework is needed, based on empirical and research evidence, which can support educational managers “to provide opportunities to investigate perspectives and rehearse and test responses to them, thus reducing misunderstandings, friction and conflict within team environments” [2]. At the core of such a framework is the collection of feedback from administrators, tutors and learners prior to, during and after course delivery, so as to adapt solutions to specific teaching and learning needs. Thus, action research provides an ideal approach to the management of change, which involves a close collaboration between practitioners and researchers over a matter that is of genuine concern to them [3]. This type of research embodies the principles of pragmatism applied to research and change by providing an approach for knowledge creation, reflection and application in action [4]. However, while there are examples of successful deployment of action research in universities, these are rare, difficult to create and hard to sustain [4]. This situation is probably due to the lack of a specific framework to support the change process within Higher Educational environments, since traditional action research only provides us with generic constructs [5] [6]. This paper proposes an educational model that can be used as a specific action research framework. It is grounded on the principle of practitioner action research as the guide for everyday work and professional life [5]. 2. EDUCATIONAL ACTION RESEARCH Action research is a pluralist research approach that is based on the assumption that, when studying complex human activity systems, the mere recording of events and formulation of explanations by an uninvolved researcher is inadequate in and of itself. Conversely, action research proposes that those who have previously been designated as “subjects” should participate directly in research processes [5] and that those processes should be applied in ways that benefit all participants directly. Therefore, action research is more than the traditional interpretative research in the sense that the researcher is directly involved in the research setting and in the experience itself. More specifically, the model proposed by this study draws on the spiral framework illustrated in Fig. 1. Inquiry results from spiral research cycles, starting with a process of identifying a problem area – a pre-step often based on the previous experience in the field of the researcher. The actual cycle comprises Diagnosis (data gathering, analysis and representation), Action Planning, Action Taking, and Action Evaluation [6]. Diagnosing Taking Action Planning Action Evaluating Action Cycle 1 Fig 1 Spiral of Action Research Cycles (Coghlan and Brannick, 2001:19) Cycle 2 Diagnosing Taking Action Planning Action Evaluating Action Cycle 3 Diagnosing Taking Action Planning Action Evaluating Action 3. THE EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT ACTION RESEARCH (EMAR) MODEL In order to support sustained and effective change when introducing ICT within a CPDE environment, this research team found it necessary to develop an appropriate action research framework. The Educational Management Action Research (EMAR) model, proposed in Fig. 2, emerged from research and facilitation of this change process over a four-year period. EMAR aims to enable course improvement, tutor development, management strategies maturation and infrastructure evolution. The EMAR model combines the spiral approach discussed above and earlier framework proposals by both Goodyear [7] and Kahkar [8]. These initial frameworks, although extremely useful, were always considered as being only a starting point for discussion and as a first attempt to build a general CPDE change management framework. In fact, and as pointed out by the authors themselves, these initial proposals incurred the danger of oversimplifying complex relationships and processes [7]. Crucially, these first attempts did not accommodate global evaluation phases and mechanisms for continuous improvement, which are required by CDPE programmes [9]. This type of programme always requires an action research framework that supports the continuously changing requirements and needs of both industry and adult professionals. The awareness of this need for persistent improvement led several authors to express the opinion that any course development must not only meet the objectives of how students learn, but must also take into account the students' motivations, priorities and preferences [10]. The introduction of e-learning adds to this complexity. “Online teaching represents a shift from a model of efficiency to a model of quality” [11]. In order to support this need for persistent improvement, educational action research must be understood as a cyclical process, as stated above. This cycle consists of diagnosing, action planning, action taking and action evaluation. However, these are easily understood generic steps, but not directly adaptable to the context of educational practice. Therefore, there is the need for an action research educational model, specifically designed to support educationalists in their daily practice and research. Fig 2 is intended to address this issue. Note that diagnosis in this case is the identification of a learning need that gives rise to development or improvement of a particular course. Once this has been identified, a suitable pedagogical model has to be specified and an appropriate educational setting designed. This corresponds to action planning. The next phase of our action research framework encompasses course delivery in the designed educational setting. This corresponds to action taking. Formative evaluation during the delivery, summative evaluation at the end of each module and follow-up evaluation to assess the impact of the course are then used to improve the pedagogical model and redesign the educational setting: action evaluation. From this action evaluation, new needs may be identified that then trigger new cycles. The pedagogical model adopted for any CPDE programme is usually proposed by the curriculum designer and the course team. Different models would impact on the design of the educational setting, that is, the corresponding tutoring strategies, learning tasks and activities, learning outcomes, support mechanisms and ICT technologies to be used. Fig. 2 - The EMAR CPDE Model Action Evaluation Philosophy Learning Models Pedagogical Tactics Pedagogical Strategy Tasks Course Learning Activities Learning Outcomes Course and Programme Evaluation Educational SettingPedagogic Model A ct io n P la n n in g A ctio n T a kin g Organisational Context The educational setting depends on the curriculum design for particular courses within the organisational context and according to a particular pedagogical model. Curriculum design is a process by which the course aims and objectives, content, delivery mode and assessment procedures of a course are decided, taking into consideration different factors that affect the whole programme, such as: the student and his/her knowledge about the subject; the specific nature of the subject matter; the subject matter expert and the way she/he does things; the method and media of delivery [12]. This process of curriculum design determines the syllabus, the content materials, the learning tasks, the resulting learning activities and the ICT learning environment. The conjunction of these five factors forms the educational setting. The fundamental contention of the action researcher is that complex social processes can be best studied by introducing changes into practice and observing the effects of these changes [13]. Therefore, the most important part of any educational action research model is evaluation. Evaluation is the collection, analysis and interpretation of information about any aspect of a programme of education and training, as part of a recognised process of judging its effectiveness, its efficiency and any other outcomes it may have [14]. 4. EMAR IN CONTEXT As stated above, the EMAR model was developed in the context of a change process from a traditional paper-based distance education program into an e-learning mode of delivery. This was the initial trigger for a process that started in 1998, when pressures from both industry and students made this change inevitable. 4.1 The MA in ITM The MA in Information Technology Management (ITM) is a flexible part-time CPDE programme that aims to develop more qualified and experienced IT managers and consultants. The programme was designed to prepare IT and Information Systems (IS) managers to bridge the substantial gap that exists between professional systems developers and potential users within organisations. Bridging this gap is fundamental to solving the problems that arise from the introduction of IS in the workplace. Students enrolling on the MA are required to have a relevant first degree or a minimum of three years experience in the IT/IS field. Conceived in the early nineties, the programme initially did not require access to online facilities and relied solely on paper-based materials and supporting face-to-face (f2f) day schools. However, as a consequence of PC boom and the fast development of the WWW, the course team was soon under pressure to incorporate aspects of e-learning in the course delivery. The opportunity to introduce an ICT component into the MA in ITM arose when the University decided to adopt WebCT as its VLE. WebCT is a tightly integrated system facilitating the creation of web-based educational environments. It adopts a virtual classroom metaphor, composed by a number of ICT tools, which allow educators to build e-learning collaborative environments. Thus, all students need to make use of ICT now and it is a requirement to have access to computer facilities that include all the standard desktop processing, as well as access to the Internet. 4.2 The Change Process The EMAR model was developed to facilitate the change process undertaken by the MA in ITM. This process is now completed with all materials and student support being undertaken through e-learning. Rather then just replacing paper-based materials by web pages, the current setting for each MA in ITM module offers: the corresponding and continuously revised course materials in pdf format; additional web-based materials and links; all module related administrative and organisational information; all the problem-based learning materials and case-study notes; both synchronous and asynchronous computer mediated communication (CMC) tools; private group discussion and presentation areas. This constitutes a Rich Environment for Active Learning (REAL) [15] and therefore a much more complex educational setting than the previous combination of paper-based and postal correspondence. Although the f2f day schools still exist, an important part of tutor and peer discussion now occurs online and is supported by the REAL. The design, development, installation and delivery to the students constituted an iterative change process that required a maturing understanding of all the issues involved. These implied early successes and failures that had to be facilitated by the programme co-ordinator and involved the co-operation of the course team, the students and the support services of the university. With the support of the EMAR model as an action research framework, this change process resulted in tangible benefits for all parties involved. However, more importantly, because an action research approach was taken, several other research projects emerged from the change process, and ultimately ensured the final success. 4.3 EMAR in Practice 4.3.1 Networked Information and Communication Literacy Skills (NICLS) As a consequence of the change process described, tutors and students were compelled to engage with new learning environments and new methods of learning without being properly equipped with the basic skills required to be successful in an online networked learning environment. In truth, because these students are IT professionals, they were expected to be able engage in e-learning without being properly trained in basic low-level skills such as the use of computer mediated technology, online etiquette, web navigation, web searching, etc. In fact, they were not prepared. Being a "techie" is not a synonym of being a good e-learner. Consequently, this initial misconception resulted in under-use of both online materials and communication resources. Having identified this as a problem and also having acknowledged that the team’s initial assumptions were incorrect, an independent project was launched to address this deficit. This resulted in the identification and classification of a core set of basic skills, coined Networked Information and Communication Literacy Skills (NICLS) [12]. These are not only required to succeed in online learning environments, but also an important aspect of daily online activity. Facilitating the acquisition of NICLS by continuing professional adult students is particularly crucial. In the future, these basic literacy skills will be addressed and acquired at lower levels of the educational system. It could even be argued that a new generation of learners will soon emerge from schools possessing most of what we consider to be NICLS [12]. However, students currently enrolled on university programmes (both on-campus and distance education) are still equipped with traditional literacy skills based around the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic). In order to address this problem, an NICLS induction module was developed and introduced that resulted in better prepared students and a maximisation of the online resources offered by the VLE [16]. 4.3.2 Virtual Social Space (VSS) During a second iteration of the cycle further problems were then identified, which were related with both the nature of e-learning distance education and the modular architecture of WebCT. Distance education has not been very conducive to the building of strong learning communities and therefore often results in feelings of isolation and disorientation in students. Web based learning addresses and minimises this problem through the use of CMC. However, WebCT has a modular architecture that forces students to jump from one course module to the next. These course modules are normally insulated subject areas and with no direct connection between them. Consequently, students lose the holistic view of the course and the building of a course/learning community is made extremely difficult. Additionally, they lose contact with previous course materials and tutors as they progress through the programme. There was also no opportunity for interaction with students from other modules. Therefore, the team identified the need for a unifying component that connects all members of a programme for the duration of their studies and eventually after their graduation. This unifying component, coined a Virtual Social Space (VSS), was also developed as an independent project [17]. It now serves as a reinforcement for online social skills and allows the technology to become more ubiquitous in students’ learning experiences [18]. 5. CONCLUSIONS Action research is highly appropriate to the development of e-learning, where experience suggests that significant modifications to the traditional paradigm of higher education supply are required. The EMAR model has proved an invaluable action research and change management tool. Its usefulness was of such crucial importance, that the team is now using EMAR as a management tool, in order to address the continuing needs for persistent change in e-Learning and IT [9]. Nevertheless, it is important to reflect whether this model can be applicable to other CPDE courses, as a generalisation from one single case study. Scientific facts are rarely based on single experiments and theory extension must be based on a multiple set of experiments, which have replicated the same phenomenon under different conditions. Hence, at this point in time, the model cannot be considered as definitive. Further studies are required to establish whether the EMAR model is applicable in similar educational settings. It is therefore assumed that the model will evolve and change according to the fluid needs, requirements and learning approaches of CPDE. 6. REFERENCES [1] Wills, S. and Alexander, S. Managing the Introduction of Technology in Teaching and Learning. In Evans, T and Nation, D. (eds) Changing University Teaching: Reflections on Creating Educational Technologies. London: Kogan Page Ltd, 56-72. (2000) [2] Fox, R and Herrman, A. Changing Media, Changing Times: Coping with Adopting New Educational Technologies. In Evans, T and Nation, D. (eds) Changing University Teaching: Reflections on Creating Educational Technologies. London: Kogan Page Ltd, 73-84. (2000) [3] Eden, C. and Huxham, C. Action Research for Management Research, British Journal of Management, 7(1), 75-86. (1996) [4] Levin, M. and Greenwood, D. Pragmatic Action Research and the Struggle to Transform Universities into Learning Communities. In Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: Sage Publications, 103-113 (2001) [5] Stringer, E. Action Research (2nd Edition). California: Sage Publications, Inc. (1999) [6] Coghlan, D. & Brannick, T. Doing Action Research in Your Own Organisation. London: Sage Publications, Ltd. (2001) [7] Goodyear, P. Pedagogical Frameworks and Action Research in Open and Distance Learning, Lancaster Univ.: CSALT, Working Paper 99-4-1, http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/edres/csaltdocs.nsf (1999) [8] Khakar, D. Guidelines for Evaluation of the Framework. In Wills, C.; Quirchmayr, G.; Pernul, G. & Khakhar, D. (eds.) Evaluation of Frameworks for Open and Distance Learning, Socrates Project Report 3, 56605-CP-1-99-SE-ODL-ODL. (2000) [9] McPherson, M. and Nunes, J. An Action Research Model For Persistent Improvement Of Continuing Professional Distance Education (CPDE) Programmes. In Proceedings of the 2nd EDEN Workshop: Research and Policy in Open and Distance Learning, 21-23 March 2002. Hildesheim: Germany. (2002) [10] Fraser, S. Open Learning: the Challenges Ahead, UniServe Science News, Volume 6, http://science.uniserve.edu.au/newsletter/vol6/fraser.html. (1997) [11] Harasim, L., Hiltz, S.R., Teles, L., and Turoff, M. Learning Networks: A Field Guide to Teidge, MA: MIT Press. (1995) [12] Nunes, J.M.; McPherson, M. & Rico, M. Instructional Design of a Networked Learning Skills Module for Web-based Collaborative Distance Learning. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Web-Based Learning Environments 2000), Porto, Portugal: Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 5-6 of June 2000, 95-103. (2000) [13] Baskerville, R. Investigating Information Systems With Action Research, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2(19), http://cis.gsu.edu/~rbaskerv/CAIS_2_19/CAIS_2_19.html (1999) [14] Thorpe, M. Evaluating Open and Distance Learning. Harlow, Essex: Longman Group UK. (1990) [15] Grabinger, S. and Dunlap, J. Rich Environments for Active Learning: a Definition In Squires, D.; Conole, G. and Jacobs, G. (eds.) The Changing Face of Learning Technology. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. (1995) [16] Nunes, J.M.; McPherson, M. & Rico, M. ‘Design and Development of a Networked Learning Skills Module for Web- based Collaborative Distance Learning’, In Proceedings of 1st ODL International Workshop 2000, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Centro de Formación de Postgrado, Valencia, Spain, 19-21 July 2000, 117-131. (2000) [17] Gilchrist, D. All work and no play? The Design and Development of a Social Student Support System for the MSc Information Systems Students, MSc Dissertation, Sheffield, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield. (2000) [18] Baptista Nunes, J.M.; McPherson, M.; Firth, C. & Gilchrist, D. “All Work and No Play? The Design and Development of a Virtual Social Space (VSS) to Support Distance Learning Students”. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2002), 3-6 December 2002. Auckland, New Zealand. (2002) Introduction Educational Action Research The Educational Management Action Research (EMAR) Model EMAR in Context The MA in ITM The Change Process EMAR in Practice Networked Information and Communication Literacy Skills (NIC Virtual Social Space (VSS) Conclusions References 
work_uyybefvre5achbxiyk6gathefq	----	RESEARCH ARTICLES A Comparison of the Acceptability and Effectiveness of Two Methods of Distance Education: CD-ROM and Audio Teleconferencing James E. De Muth, PhD, and Ruth H. Bruskiewitz, MS University of Wisconsin-Madison Submitted February 9, 2005; accepted April 22, 2005; published February 22, 2006. Objectives. To fulfill a need for convenient and effective continuing education for pharmacists throughout Wisconsin by developing a pharmacy continuing education program using 2 different methods for distance education: audio teleconferencing and CD-ROM. Methods. Eighty pharmacists were recruited from a 2003 University of Wisconsin distance education program, 47 of whom participated in the course using the traditional audio teleconference method, and 33 of whom participated using a home study CD-ROM containing the same material presented in the teleconference. Volunteers were required to complete a pretest, a first posttest immediately following completion of the continuing education course, a second posttest 1 month following the conclusion of the course, and an evaluation. Results. The CD-ROMs were a more acceptable method for distance education than audio telecon- ferencing and resulted in better retention of the course information. Conclusion. These study results can help coordinators of continuing pharmaceutical education programs to determine the most effective and acceptable method for future distance-education opportunities. Keywords: distance education, continuing education, audio teleconferencing, CD-ROM instruction INTRODUCTION From 1968 to 2001, Extension Services in Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Phar- macy used the Educational Teleconference Network (ETN) to provide distance-education experiences for pharmacists in Wisconsin. ETN utilized an amplified telephone signal to share information among groups of individuals assembled at various distant locations throughout the State. 1 ETN provided a relatively cost- effective and efficient method for the delivery of continu- ing education (CE) to an average of 421 pharmacists each year for the annual fall pharmacy CE offering, at an av- erage of 72 sites throughout Wisconsin. These averages are basedonenrollments andsites fromthelast 15years of ETN programming. These annual enrollments repre- sented 15 % to 20% of the registered pharmacists in Wis- consin. Advantages of ETN included: (1) convenience for pharmacists; (2) a relatively inexpensive delivery method for program developers: (3) a flexible means for reaching sites in states adjacent to Wisconsin; and (4) the availabil- ity of at least one listening location in each of the 72 counties in Wisconsin. Each Tuesday evening during the 8-week program, a prerecorded lecture was broad- cast on a designated phone line. An open microphone, live question-and-answer session followed each broad- cast. Pharmacists were able to access the annual program over the ETN system; most from within 10 miles of their home or workplace. Due to increased costs to maintain the system and decreased usage by other University departments, the State abandoned the ETN system in June 2002. The loss of the ETN system has provided Extension Services in Pharmacy with a unique opportunity to fulfill its mission to provide CE opportunities to pharmacists in Wisconsin regardless of their proximity to a listening lo- cation. Live programs held in Madison and Milwaukee continue to serve the areas of the state where pharmacists are concentrated; however, ETN traditionally provided pharmacy continuing education for the remainder of the State. Thus, alternative methods of delivery to distant portions of Wisconsin were sought. 2002 Fall Teleconference Study To continue offering the teleconference format for pharmacists after the abandonment of the ETN system, Extension Services in Pharmacy initiated a conference call, using a State-operated system (WisLine), as an al- ternative delivery system in fall 2002. This delivery sys- tem was similar to the previous teleconference system and Corresponding Author: James E. De Muth, PhD, University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy, 777 Highland Ave., Madison, WI 53705, Tel: 608-262-2422, Fax: 608-262-2431. E-mail: jedemuth@pharmacy.wisc.edu American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 1 making the changes virtually transparent to pharmacist participants. The 8-lecture broadcast, ‘‘An Update on Drug Interactions,’’ was originally planned for 72 listen- ing locations (1 per county); however, due to budget con- straints and security issues that required an aide to be present at each listening location, most of the county sites were not available for evening broadcasts. To compensate for the loss of these public sites, several private sites, in- cluding hospitals, were recruited to provide listening locations. At the time of the first WisLine broadcast in September 2002, 16 public sites (out of the original 72 county sites) and 16 private sites were available. To help meet the needs of Wisconsin pharmacists un- able or unwilling to attend one of the 32 available sites, a CD-ROM was produced containing the same course material as that broadcast over the WisLine system. The CD-ROM contained PowerPoint slides with a voice-over lecture track for each presentation. Because the course was originally marketed with the option of attending at one of the original 72 listening locations, 67 pharmacists outside a reasonable driving distance of the 32 remaining available listening sites were offered the option of either a full refund or the CD-ROM version of the course. With- out exception, all of those pharmacists chose to take the course using the CD-ROM method rather than obtain a re- fund. A CD-ROM, course workbook, final examination, and course evaluation were mailed to 67 pharmacists prior to the first broadcast. Of the 350 pharmacists who origi- nally registered for the WisLine program, 283 continued to participate via the audio teleconference, using course workbooks containing copies of the speakers’ slides and alivequestion-and-answersessionfollowingeachlecture. CD-ROM technology, similar to online educational programming, offers the advantage of participation at any time and any location (ie, at work or at home). Also, like traditional home study courses, online or CD-ROM pro- gramming can be completed at a pace that is comfortable for the individual learner. Numerous studies have looked at online instructional materials versus face-to-face in- structional programs and the findings may be applicable to CD-ROM programs verses live teleconferences. Stud- ies comparingface-to-face instructionand onlinelearning have found no significant differences in effectiveness of learning for college students and younger learners. 2-5 Other studies have evaluated the benefits of digital in- struction for health professionals, including effectiveness as measured by changes in pretest and posttest measure- ments.6-10 However, only 1 study could be identified that compared face-to-face instruction with computer-based training for practicing health professionals.11 In that par- ticular study, there were no significant differences in either students’ acceptance of or the effectiveness of the 2 methods. No studies were found that compared audio teleconferencing with asynchronous digital formats. In a separate study of pharmacists participating in the 2002 program, CD-ROM technology was compared with the audio teleconference system broadcast. 12 Course evaluationsfor pharmacistsparticipatingin the traditional audio-teleconference program (n 5 212) were compared with those pharmacists opting for the same course mate- rials on CD-ROM (n 5 67). For both groups, the average response rate was 82%. Teleconferencing and CD-ROM technologies were rated the same on the majority of the evaluation questions. Differences identified included: (1) the audio quality was rated higher on the CD-ROMs than for the teleconference, which involved telephone line transmission (p , 0.05); (2) the lectures recorded on CD-ROM were rated as more effective than the lectures via audio teleconference (p , 0.005); and (3) the same course content presented on CD-ROM was perceived as more beneficial than by teleconference (p , 0.005). In contrast, the pharmacists’ median response when asked the value of using 2-way audio teleconferencing for ques- tion-and-answer sessions to clarify points of the lecture (not available to CD-ROM learners) was ‘‘uncertain’’. 2003 Fall Teleconference Study Based ontheresultsofboth thecourseevaluationsand the previously reported 2002 study, along with the expe- riences of using this dual system of providing continuing education to Wisconsin pharmacists, it was decided that the same 2 methods would be offered for the 2003 fall program. However, in advance of marketing the program, listening sites were recruited throughout Wisconsin and a CD-ROM program was immediately prepared for those unable or unwilling to attend the teleconference sites. The course brochure offered pharmacists the choice of either attending the traditional teleconference or completing the CD-ROM program, regardless of their geographical loca- tion or proximity to a listening site. The 2003 course, A Review of Selected New Drugs in the Beginning of the 21st Century, continued the tradi- tional format of 8 lectures. Both groups of pharmacists (CD-ROM and teleconference) had access to the live question-and-answer session. Pharmacists receiving the CD-ROM format were given a toll free number and ap- proximate times to call, enabling them to join the telecon- ference participants for each of the question-and-answer sessions immediately following each of the 8 lectures. Extension Services in Pharmacy successfully recruited and made available to pharmacists a total of 37 potential listening locations. When the course began, pharmacists participated at 28 listening locations and attendance at these locations ranged from 2 to 13 pharmacists. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 2 In addition to the presentation of the same course material using 2 different delivery systems, a more rigor- ous study was designed and executed to evaluate not only the acceptability of CD-ROM home study courses as compared to audio teleconferencing (similar to the 2002 study), but also the effectiveness of the 2 delivery meth- ods in improvingpharmacists’ knowledge.The objectives of this study were to: (1) develop and present a pharmacy continuing education program using 2 different methods for distance education; (2) evaluate the acceptability of the 2 delivery systems; (3) measure and compare the amount of cognitive gain using the 2 delivery methods; and (4) examine the impact of selected demographics on acceptability and cognitive changes. METHODS The identical pharmacy continuing education pro- gram was offered using either a home study CD-ROM (with optional access to the live question-and-answer par- ticipation) or an audio teleconference program with a live question-and-answer session following each lecture. Par- ticipation in the live question-and-answer session was also optional to teleconference participants since they could leave the location prior to the start of the ques- tion-and-answer session. All course participants were re- quired to complete a posttest and an evaluation form. Additional requirements for study volunteers were the completion of a pretest and second posttest. Pharmacists who registered for the course were asked to volunteer for the study and were offered a 15% discount on course tuition as an incentive to volunteer. The study was sub- mitted to the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences InstitutionalReviewBoard,whereitreceivedexemptstatus. To measure cognitive change, pharmacists were pre- sented with 2 parallel examinations of course materials before and after participation in the course (a pretest- posttest design with one of the parallel tests serving as the pretest and the second parallel test serving as the post- test). Development of the 2 examinations consisted of obtaining 10 questions from each lecturer, for a total of 80 questions. These questions were administered to a vol- unteer group of 9 Madison hospital pharmacists who did not register for the course; the difficulty of each question wasevaluatedbytestingthesevolunteers.The2easiestand the 2 most difficult questions for each lecture were elimi- nated and the remaining 6 questions per lecture were ran- domly divided into the pretest and posttest questions, resulting in at least 3 questions for each lecture. Two ques- tions were randomly selected from the 16 most difficult questions to complete the 25-question pretest and posttest. The extent of each pharmacist’s participation in the program was taken into consideration. Only pharmacists reporting participation in a minimum of 7 lectures were included in the study. The volunteer pharmacists were classified into 2 categories based on course format partic- ipation: audio teleconferencing or CD-ROM. Assessment of the pharmacist’s satisfaction with both the delivery system and course content required that a course evalua- tion form be completed and returned at the end of the program. Pharmacists’ acceptance of each delivery sys- tem was assessed using a series of 5-point Likert scale questions. Effectiveness of the 2 delivery systems was assessed by measuring change in pharmacists’ knowledge (posttest vs. pretest scores). Figure 1 illustrates the time- line for the study methodology. Data were analyzed using Minitab software (Release 12, Minitab Inc., State College, Penn). In most cases, the evaluation results reported in the tables are presented as means, for ease of comparison. However, since the eval- uation statements were scored on a 5-point ordinal scale, statistical analysis required the use of non-parametric pro- cedures, primarily the Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal- Wallis tests. For cognitive test results, parametric 2-sided t tests and analysis of variance tests were used. Where chi- square tests were performed on a 2 x 2 contingency table, the Yate’s correction for continuity was used. 13 Unless otherwise specified, all tests were performed with a 95% level of confidence (p # 0.05). RESULTS A total of 297 pharmacists and other health profes- sionals enrolled in the course: 172 chose the audio tele- conference and 125 participated via CD-ROM. There were 270 evaluations returned (156 from teleconference participants and 114 from CD-ROM users), representing a total response rate of 90.9%. Since study participants volunteered to take an addi- tionalexamination(thepretest),thefirstinquirywastode- terminewhetherthestudyparticipantsdifferedsignificantly Figure 1. Timeline of Study Methodology. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 3 from the non-study participants with respect to demo- graphics or evaluation results. No significant differences were found based on the demographic information obtained on the evaluation form: academic degree, bach- elor of science (BS) vs. doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) or advanced degree (p 5 0.912); years of pharmacy practice (p 5 0.700); practice setting, institutional vs. retail (p 5 0.466); practice position, management vs. staff (p 5 0.219); for teleconference participants, the distance trav- eled to listening location, above vs. below the median miles (p 5 0.276); and for CD-ROM participants, pre- vious participation in an ETN program (p 5 0.208). In addition, there were no differences in responses to all 15 evaluation statements discussed below (p values varied from 0.063 to 0.97). Thus, for analysis of method accept- ability, all of the usable 270 evaluations were considered for the 2 delivery methods (course evaluations) and only the study participants (n 5 80) were used for evaluating the effectiveness (test results) of the CD-ROM method compared to the teleconference format. Demographics The majority of the pharmacists participating in the 2003 distance education experience had BS degrees (89.3%), held staff positions (73.3%), were from insti- tutional settings (61.8%), and had 20 or more years of practice experience (60.8%). For those choosing the tele- conference option, the average roundtrip traveling dis- tance to the 28 listening locations was 14.1 miles (ranging from less than 1 mile to 100 miles roundtrip each night). These variables were evaluated to determine any relationships among the demographics. There was a sig- nificant relationship between academic degree and years of practice experience (x 2 5 33.03, p , 0.001), with 51.8% of the advanced degrees held by pharmacists with 10 or less years of experience. All other comparisons among the various demographic variables showed statis- tical independence. Also, the vast majority (92.0%) of those choosing the CD-ROM option had previously par- ticipated in at least 1 audio teleconference program. Table 1 compares the demographics for those who chose the CD-ROM delivery method with those who chose telecon- ference delivery method. Demographically, there were no significant differences between the 2 volunteer groups based on the delivery system chosen, except for the num- ber of years of professional practice. Pharmacists choos- ing the CD-ROM format had significantly fewer years of practice thantheirmoresenior counterpartswhochose the audio teleconference (Table 1). From a list of possible motives, participants were asked to choose their top 3 reasons for participating in the distance-education program. Results were weighted by 3 for the first choice, 2 for the second choice, and 1 for the third choice. Based on pharmacists’ top 3 reasons for attending continuing education programs, the most pop- ular reason was to enhance their general pharmacy knowl- edge. Of the 252 pharmacists responding to this section of the survey, 97.2% chose enhancing knowledge as one of the top 3 reasons for participating in continuing educa- tion. Fulfillment of continuing education requirements Table 1. Comparison of Demographics Between Pharmacists Participating in a Continuing Education Course Delivered by Teleconference and CD-ROM Teleconference, No. (%) CD-ROM, No. (%) P* Highest academic degree BS 132 (92.3) 93 (85.3) 0.076 Advanced Degree (MS, PharmD, etc) 11 (7.7) 16 (14.7) Total years of pharmacy practice 10 years or less 18 (12.5) 21 (19.8) 0.066 11-20 years 31 (21.5) 28 (26.4) 20-30 years 53 (36.8) 40 (37.7) 311 years 42 (29.2) 17 (16.0) Years - Mean (6SD) 25.3 (10.2) 20.9 (10.7) 0.001 Employment setting Institutional 83 (63.4) 56 (59.6) 0.565 Retail 48 (36.6) 38 (40.4) Employment position Management 37 (28.2) 23 (24.5) 0.528 Staff 94 (71.8) 71 (75.5) *Statistical tests used were 2-sample t test for continuous outcome (years) and chi-square test for discrete outcomes (with Yate’s correction for 2 x 2 designs) American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 4 (83.7%) was second among the top 3 reasons. Education as part of their professional responsibilities (73.8%) was third, followed by gathering information in more depth or detail (25.8%), networking opportunities (9.1%), getting help with a specific problem (2.7%), and development of a specialty pharmacy practice (2.7%). With respect to the order of importance, these results were similar to the find- ings in a similar study of Wisconsin pharmacists and their attitudes toward the availability and acceptability of various distance-education delivery systems. 14 When reasons for attending responses were divided by the method of delivery chosen, the results were almost iden- tical between the 2 groups. One obvious difference was that no one who enrolled in the CD-ROM version chose ‘‘network and/or meet with colleagues’’ as a reason for participating, whereas this response represented the fifth most popular reason for teleconference participants. Evaluation of the Presenters As measured over the last 5 years, there has been little variability in the pharmacists’ opinions of the overall value and effectiveness of the speakers for those partici- pating in the audio teleconference (Table 2). There was more variability with respect to the depth of the presenta- tions (F 5 3.30, p 5 0.04), but there were no significant differences with respect to the value of the presentations (an overall median response of 4 5 ‘‘valuable’’) and the effectiveness of the lecturers to present their course mate- rials (overall median response of 4 5 ‘‘effective’’). As mentioned previously, in 2002 the pharmacists felt that the lecturers were more effective using CD-ROMs (p , 0.005). However, in 2003 there were no significant differ- ences between the teleconference and CD-ROM respond- ents with respect to the composite evaluations for all 8 speakers, even though the mean response was slightly higher for the CD-ROM participants (p 5 0.33). There was no significant difference between teleconference and CD-ROM participants with respect to their evaluation of either the value of the presentations (p 5 0.18) or the depth of the presentations (p 5 0.26). Due to variability in speaker style and each speaker’s comfort with distance education, individual lecturers were not evaluated in this study;onlyacompositescoreforall8lecturersisreported. Acceptability and Effectivness Table 3 summarizes participants’ responses to a series of 15 evaluation questions. Most were general questions forbothdeliverysystems,butsomewerespecificforeither the teleconference or CD-ROM method. For this study, effectiveness was measured by evaluating the change in the pharmacists’ scores (posttest vs. pretest scores). Vol- unteers were required to complete and return the pretest prior to receiving any of the course materials to prevent the review of course materials prior to taking the pretest. Par- ticipants were required to take the posttest after complet- ing the course. However, when the posttest was returned for grading, it was discovered that an error had been made in preparing the posttest materials. The pretest and postt- ests both contained the same test questions, instead of the posttest containing a parallel set of test questions. The study investigators decided to mail the volunteers a second posttest (consisting of the alternate set of questions) 1 month following the conclusion of the course. Since many pharmacists completed the final examination as they lis- tened to the lecture (via either teleconference or CD- ROM), often treating it as an open-book examination, it was felt that this second posttest might actually provide a better assessment of the pharmacists’ learning. As seen in Table 4, results from the later test (labeled ‘‘Second Posttest’’) were slightly lower than the immediate final examination results (labeled ‘‘First Posttest’’). Limitations The primary limitation of the study was the use of self- selecting subjects based on either convenience or personal learning styles. Ideally, volunteers would be randomized intothese2typesofdistance-educationprograms.Asecond limitation is the unequal samplesizes, with more volunteers participating in the teleconference format. Appropriate sta- tistics were used to adjust for unequal sample sizes. DISCUSSION Acceptability of the Methods Although not statistically significant (Table 3), the overall course evaluation ratings given by pharmacists in the CD-ROM group were higher (median of 5 5 ‘‘very Table 2. Comparison of Five Years of Teleconference Speaker Evaluations Mean Response (SD)* Year n Value Effectiveness Depth 1999 457 4.12 (0.68) 3.89 (0.77) 3.37 (0.5) 2000 389 4.14 (0.81) 3.92 (0.86) 3.33 (0.7) 2001 347 4.05 (0.74) 3.92 (0.73) 3.39 (0.54) 2002 244 3.98 (0.86) 3.80 (0.88) 3.49 (0.58) 2003 156 4.03 (0.85) 3.89 (0.84) 3.46 (0.73) Statistical Comparisony F 5 2.21 p 5 0.11 F 5 1.01 p 5 0.37 F 5 3.30 p , 0.04 Based on 5-point Likert scales: value (1 5 not valuable to 5 5 very valuable), effectiveness (1 5 not very effective to 5 5 very effec- tive), and depth (1 5 too shallow, 3 5 about right, 5 5 too deep) yIdeally, a non-parametric test would have been performed on this information, but original data were not available; only previously reported means and standard deviations were available American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 5 satisfied’’) than those given by pharmacists in the telecon- ference group (median of 4 5 ‘‘satisfied’’) with respect to: (1) the subject matter of the course; (2) the value of the handout materials to complement the lectures (both groups received the same workbooks with copies of the speakers’ slides); and (3) the audio quality of each method. With respect to the audio quality, although the mean rating was lower for the CD-ROM, the median rat- ing was higher. Almost 10% of CD-ROM users were dissatisfied with the audio quality of the CD-ROMs, com- pared to only 2% of teleconference participants who were dissatisfied with the audio quality of the teleconference. Poor audio quality was also the major complaint made by the CD-ROM study group. It is possible that one batch of CD-ROMs was produced at a lower audio quality and this should be monitored more closely for future programs. Specific evaluation questions designed for CD-ROM users found that the video quality of the CD-ROM and the user friendly nature of the CD-ROM program were ‘‘very satisfactory’’ (each median 5 5). At the same time, attendees at the 28 sites were ‘‘satisfied’’ (median 5 4) with the physical facilities at their listening locations. They were also ‘‘satisfied’’ with the value of the ques- tion-and-answer sessions in clarifying lecture points or providing additional information related to the course. Only 24 of the CD-ROM course participants indicated that they took advantage of the optional live question- and-answer sessions following each lecture. Those par- ticipating in the sessions provided a median response of 4, indicating a similar level of satisfaction with the question- and-answer sessions among both CD-ROM users and teleconference participants. Since the 2 groups (teleconference and CD-ROM) of users were similar with respect to demographics (Table 1), it was not surprising to find similar responses (medians of 4 5 ‘‘agree’’) when asked if the material covered in the course was directly applicable to their professional prac- tice. Also, both groups considered the course material to be fair/balanced and not commercial in nature (medians of 5 5 ‘‘strongly agree’’). However, there were several significant differences in the pharmacists’ responses to other questions that were related to thedelivery methodused in thestudy.CD-ROM participants (1) were more likely to find the course ‘‘very Table 3. Response to Evaluations Completed by Participants in a Pharmacy Continuing Education Course Teleconference, Mean (SD) CD-ROM, Mean (SD) P* Responses based on a 5-point Likert Scale (5 5 very satisfied, 1 5 very dissatisfied) The subject matter of the course 4.34 (0.59) 4.47 (0.63) 0.093 The value of the handout material to complement the lectures 4.40 (0.64) 4.40 (0.75) 0.990 Audio quality 4.30 (0.68) 4.24 (1.03) 0.620 Video quality of the CD-ROM — 4.60 (0.51) — The CD-ROM program was user friendly — 4.75 (0.47) — The physical facilities at your listening location 4.41 (0.64) — — The technique as a means of obtaining ‘‘in depth’’ continuing education 4.26 (0.71) 4.59 (0.59) ,0.001 The value of the question session in clarifying certain points in the lecture and providing further information 3.98 (0.73) — — Responses based on a 5-point Likert Scale (5 5 strongly agree, 1 5 strongly disagree) Overall, I found this teleconference (or CD-ROM) course to be very worthwhile 4.29 (0.61) 4.61 (0.52) ,0.001 As a result of this program, I have a greater understanding of the some of the significant newer drug therapies 4.27 (0.50) 4.46 (0.50) 0.004 The material covered in this course was directly applicable to my professional practice 4.16 (0.65) 4.20 (0.70) 0.514 The program was presented as a fair and balanced discussion and was not commercial in nature 4.55 (0.51) 4.64 (0.50) 0.143 The stated objectives for this course were achieved 4.27 (0.55) 4.47 (0.55) 0.002 My personal objectives in attending the course were fulfilled 4.26 (0.58) 4.48 (0.55) 0.002 I enjoyed the CD-ROM technology, but would have preferred to attend the live teleconference program. (for those attending a previous ETN teleconference) — 2.17 (0.90) — *Results are reported as mean 6 SD for purposes of comparisons, but statistical evaluation involved the Mann-Whitney U test since the Likert scales represented ordinal scales. Data reported in the text refers to the median responses used in the Mann-Whitney test American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 6 worthwhile’’; (2) felt they had a greater understanding of the significant new therapies discussed in the course; and (3) had a greater sense that their personal objectives were fulfilled. For all 3 questions, the median response from CD-ROMuserswas‘‘stronglyagree,’’comparedtotheme- dian response from teleconference users of ‘‘agree’’. Although the response from the CD-ROM groups was statistically significant, both groups gave a median response of ‘‘agree’’ to the question about the course achieving the stated objectives. Also, when asked if the particular delivery method used in the study was satisfactory as a means for obtaining ‘‘in depth’’ continuing education, the CD- ROM users provided a median response of ‘‘very satis- fied,’’ whereas their audio teleconference counterparts’ responded they were ‘‘satisfied’’. Finally, 82 of the CD-ROM users (72%) indicated that they had previously participated in at least 1 audio teleconference program. When asked if they would have preferred to have taken the teleconference version of the course instead of the CD-ROM version, only 4.8% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. Conversely, 67.0% disagreed or strongly disagreed, indicating a preference for the CD-ROM format. Effectiveness of the Methods As seen in Table 4, there were no significant differ- ences in any of the test scores when comparing the 2 de- livery systems (teleconference vs. CD-ROM). The pretest scores for both groups were almost identical, averaging around 45% (p 5 0.76). Correspondingly, the 2 groups showed similar average scores on the first posttest (p 5 0.28) and the second posttest (p 5 0.065). Although not statistically significant, the pharmacists using the CD- ROM seemed to retain the course materials better than their colleagues receiving the teleconference, as evi- denced by the second posttest scores of 83.0% and 77.9%, respectively. Significant differences were observed when the in- dividual pharmacists’ scores were compared among the pretest and 2 posttests. All pharmacists had a significant increase in the knowledge scores on the first posttest, with teleconference pharmacists increasing 47.8% (p , 0.001) and CD-ROM pharmacists increasing 49.9% (p , 0.001). As mentioned earlier, the second posttest may have been a better measure of cognitive change because it was not available for pharmacists during the presentations, having been mailed after the first posttest was received from each group. On the second posttest, there was still significant improvement in performance over the pretest by both groups (p , 0.001), but the CD-ROM pharmacists showed an average 38.4% increase on their scores, while telecon- ference pharmacists showed a 32.5% improvement. Al- though the difference was not statistically significant, the scores suggest that the CD-ROM format was more effec- tive than the teleconference format in terms of partici- pants retaining information presented in continuing pharmacy education programs. CONCLUSION The use of either audio teleconferencing or CD-ROM technology appears to offer acceptable and effective methods for providing continuing education to pharma- cists over a wide geographical area. Based on evaluation results, the CD-ROM users tended to be more satisfied withthedeliverymethodforobtainingin-depthinformation. Also, they expressed greater satisfaction with the course meeting itsstated objectives, as well as fulfilling theirper- sonalobjectivesinparticipatinginthecourse.Bothmethods were equally effective in increasing knowledge, as mea- sured by differences in the pretest and posttest scores. Table 4. Results on Examinations by Teleconference or CD-ROM Participation* Teleconference Participants, (n 5 47) CD-ROM Participants, (n 5 33) Significance Pretest scoresy 45.5 (12.7) 44.6 (12.1) t 5 0.31, p 5 0.76 Posttest scoresy (immediately after program) 93.2 (6.37) 94.6 (4.34) t 5 1.09, p 5 0.28 Second posttest scoresy(one month later) 77.9 (13.1) 83.0 (11.29) t 5 1.88, p 5 0.065 Changes in test scoresz Posttest - pretest 147.8 (14.6) 149.9 (12.3) t 5 22.4, p , 0.001 t 5 23.2, p , 0.001 Second posttest - pretest 132.5 (15.0) 138.4 (13.4) t 5 14.8, p , 0.001 t 5 16.5, p , 0.001 *Results reported as mean 6 SD y2-sample t tests comparing teleconference and CD-ROM participants zPaired t tests comparing individual posttest-pretest scores American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 7 These study results can help course coordinators de- termine the most effective and acceptable method for future distance-education opportunities. 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American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2006; 70 (1) Article 11. 8 
work_uzfji3jmzvgp3dauvwx3le4nxm	----	TF_Template_Word_Windows_2007 Participatory Educational Research (PER) Vol. 5(2), pp. 67-79, December, 2018 Available online at http://www.perjournal.com ISSN: 2148-6123 http://dx.doi.org/10.17275/per.18.12.5.2 Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining to Their Roles and Competencies in Distance Education: A Qualitative Case Study Mehmet Kara * Department of Computer Technology, Amasya University, Amasya, Turkey Volkan Kukul Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Amasya University, Amasya, Turkey Recep Çakır Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Amasya University, Amasya, Turkey Article history Received: 05.09.2018 Received in revised form: 22.10.2018 Accepted: 23.10.2018 The purpose of this study is to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions of instructors pertaining to their roles and competencies in distance education. Case study research design was adopted within the study. The participants, nine instructors in a public university delivering the courses in fully distance programs, was selected by using typical case sampling strategy. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations on distance courses. The collected data were analysed through constant comparison analysis. The qualitative analysis revealed instructors’ conceptions of roles, competencies, and misconceptions in distance education. Roles included planning and delivery. Planning sub-theme covered the roles of environmental / technical planning and instructional design. Delivery sub-theme covered the roles of lecturing, evaluation, guidance, motivation, and material development. Participants’ conceptions of competencies included ICT competency, communication skills, and subject expertise. Finally, the study findings identified the misconceptions of the instructors. The identified misconceptions were identified as use of the same materials with face-to-face education, sufficient materials, lack of role for interaction among students, ineffectiveness of distance education, having the same roles with face-to-face education, and impossibility of distance collaboration among students. The findings imply that the instructors’ conceptions of roles and competencies are based on their experience in both face-to-face and distance education and this base unsurprisingly caused misconceptions regarding teaching in distance education. Key words: Distance Education, Instructor Roles, Instructor Competencies, Conceptions, Misconceptions * Correspondence: m.kara@live.com Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining... M. Kara, V. Kukul & R.Çakır Participatory Educational Research (PER) -68- Introduction Distance education is independent of time and place, and often teachers and students are at different times and places to participate in teaching process. It is a theoretical and systematic education system in which students, teachers and teaching materials come together through different communication technologies (Moore, & Kearsley, 2004). The use of distance education system increases proportionally with developing technology. Distance education, which is now a necessity of the age, is a system preferred for people of all ages to be educated without having to go to an educational institution. Distance education provides people with many advantages, some of them are the followings:  Getting flexible education as independent of time and place  Education according to individual differences  To be able to learn according to their own learning speed  Rich with multimedia support and therefore more efficient and effective education  To be able to learn from subject experts  Providing lifelong learning  Contribution to equality of opportunity in education (Umurhan, 2008; Kaya, 2002). Historically, distance education, which began with correspondence education in the United States in the 1800s, has improved and provided the opportunity to reach large audiences with the development of technology. Especially with the spread of the internet, there have been innovations in distance education processes (Gülbahar, 2009). According to Gülbahar (2009) distance education processes take place in different places, require special instructional design and techniques, communicate with different technologies and require specific institutional and managerial structuring. In recent years, the number of distance education classes and the number of students have showed an increasing acceleration (Belcheir, & Cucek, 2002; Özcan & Yıldırım, 2018). Distance learning programs are becoming more and more popular in the all over the world as technological developments create new opportunities. There are examples indicating the demand for distance learning opportunities in the world. For example, there are currently 85 accredited distance education institutions in the United States that offer various degree programs and some non-degree courses or programs. Moreover, there are more than 100,000 students at Hong Kong Open University in China, and 130,000 registered students at Universidad Nacional de Education in Spain. All of these numbers clearly show that distance learning practices have a global acceptance and popularity worldwide (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015). In Turkey as all over the world, due to the increasing use of internet technology, universities have shown interest in distance education applications. Many universities in Turkey offer distance education programs for graduate, undergraduate degree, and certificate programs (Özcan & Yıldırım, 2018). These numbers are increasing day by day with the increase and proliferation of distance education. Due to the increase in the number of students, the number of faculty members needed is also increasing in distance education. Instructor awareness, experience, and knowledge about distance education structure, and their contribution to distance education are crucial factors (Koloğlu, 2016). Koloğlu, (2016) investigated the factors that most encouraged faculty members to participate in distance education. These factors are reported as enabling communication technologies to be used effectively, providing access to a new audience that cannot reach on campus, providing leisure time thanks to the independence of the venue, and Participatory Educational Research (PER), 5(2);67-79, 1 December, 2018 Participatory Educational Research (PER) -69- providing flexibility for the students. Faculty members offering distance education courses also carry out courses in face-to-face education. Belcheir and Cucek, (2002) reported that faculty members spend more effort for development of distance education courses than face-to-face courses. Additionally, apart from the spent effort and time, financial difficulties are seen as a deterrent to the teaching of instructors in distance education. The perceptions of the instructors involved in distance education affect the quality of education. Belchier and Cucek (2002), in their study with 254 instructors teaching in distance education founded that the main motivators of instructors for offering course are new experience to learn, support for students, and administrators’ request. In distance education, instructors are one of the most important factors of students’ motivation and success. Teaching staff have a central role in achieving the optimal level of education and achieving learning objectives in it. They are actively involved in the processes of design and delivery. Studies in the literature show that the roles of instructors in distance education have differences from face-to-face education. When the roles of instructors in distance education are examined in the literature, distance education demands specific roles as appropriate with its context although there might be similar roles with traditional education (Berge, 2008; Kara, 2018). The roles in the literature are defined and categorized with various terminologies such as content developer, guidance, technical consultant, manager, and so forth (Aydın 2005; Goodyear et al., 2001; Kara, 2018; Williams, 2003). For example, Berge (2008) described the roles of teachers in distance education as pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical. Similarly, Williams (2003) identified 13 instructors’ role in distance education settings. Besides, Aydın (2005) conducted a study to determine the role and competence of the instructors in Turkish context. He concluded that the instructors have eight important roles in distance education. He labelled them as content expert, process facilitator, instructional designer, advisor, technologist, evaluator, material producer, and administrator. Moreover, According to İncik and Tanrıseven (2012) the instructors have also academic roles in distance education. Some of those are to develop himself/herself in a professional way; to have a common attitude; to have a labor; to have a motivation; and to show a democratic approach. There are several example studies in the literature identifying instructor roles in distance education settings (e.g. Bawane & Spector, 2009; Easton, 2003; Guasch, Alvarez, & Espasa, 2010; Heuer & King, 2004). The terminologies, as mentioned, classification, and prioritization of the defined roles might vary depending on the context and participant perspectives. On the other hand, each of these instructor roles identified in the literature requires a single or multiple competencies, or some roles require some common competencies (Kara, 2018). Teacher competencies are defined as the knowledge, skills and attitudes that teachers need to have in order to perform the teaching profession effectively and efficiently (Turkish Education Association, 2009). In the previous studies, the competencies were classified according to utilization context, roles, or the characteristics of the skills (Bawane & Spector, 2009). Whatever approach is adopted, in order to fulfill the above-mentioned roles, teaching staff should have these competencies. The relevant literature consists of several studies identifying and prioritizing instructor competencies in distance education (e.g. Aydın, 2005; Darabi, Sikorsky, & Harvey, 2006; Goodyear et al., 2001; Varvel, 2007; Williams, 2003). According to Kara (2018), although various instructor roles and competencies can be found in the relevant literature, the priority or importance of each role and competency varies depending on the context of distance education. Aydın (2005) states that, instructors have to overcome certain potential barriers in distance learning processes to effectively create Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining... M. Kara, V. Kukul & R.Çakır Participatory Educational Research (PER) -70- learning environments using technological tools. Therefore, they must have different qualifications than face-to-face educational environments. Lecturing in distance education environment alone is not enough, instead teachers have many synchronous and asynchronous responsibilities. In order to increase the quality and efficiency in distance education, it is of great importance that the instructors are aware of these responsibilities. For this sort of awareness, continuous professional development of the instructors are a necessity for quality assurance. These programs are required to be focused on empowering and encouraging the instructors to be active learners so that they can take the responsibility of their own learning through the reflections on their practice by avoiding techno-centric and one-size-fits-all approaches (Baran, Correia, & Thompson, 2011). For this reason, it is a determinant factor on the quality of distance education practices how instructors constructed their knowledge of teaching and learning at a distance. Specifically, how they constructed their knowledge about their roles and competencies in distance education drives their practices. In this context, the aim of this study is to reveal the conceptions and misconceptions of the instructors pertaining to their roles and competencies in distance education. The current study particularly sought to answer the following research questions:  What are the conceptions of the instructors pertaining to their roles and competencies in distance education?  What are the misconceptions of the instructors, if any, pertaining to their roles and competencies in distance education? Method Research Design The current study aimed to explore instructor conceptions and misconceptions of their roles and competencies in distance education settings. Based on this aim, qualitative case study research design was employed. Creswell (2007, p.73) defines case study as a qualitative methodology to investigate an issue through one or multiple cases in a delimited system and describes it as a research design in which multiple sources of data are used to describe a case and case-based themes over time. The present study is an instrumental case study, in which a single case is selected and investigated (Cresswell, 2007, p.74). In this study, distance education context of a public university was chosen as the case and the role and competency conceptions of the instructors practicing in distance education programs of this university were investigated as the issue. Semi-structured interviews and observations were used in the study so as to describe the case in detail. Participants Typical case sampling strategy, a type of purposeful sampling strategies in qualitative inquiry, was selected to determine the participants. This means that the participant instructors are the typical representatives of the other instructors in the identified case since typical sampling strategy “highlights what is normal or average” (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p.28). The participants of the current study are the nine instructors offering distance education courses at undergraduate and graduate levels. The participants have the titles of professor (N=2), assistant professor (N=1), and instructor (N=6). They deliver the courses in the distance education programs of classroom teaching, the internet and network technology, electrics, child development, elderly care, and medical documentation and secretariat. One of Participatory Educational Research (PER), 5(2);67-79, 1 December, 2018 Participatory Educational Research (PER) -71- the instructors delivers Turkish language course in distance education programs, which is a common compulsory course in all programs. Four of them have a degree on education while the rest of them have the degrees from other disciplines. Their experience in teaching distance education range from one to six years. Considering these characteristics of the participants, the required variation in terms of teaching field, teaching level, educational background, and experience was provided so as to ensure that the participants are the typical instructors of distance education. The sample size was determined relying on the conceptual saturation in the qualitative data analysis. The participants were named from I1 to I9 to keep them anonym through these unique pseudonyms assigned to each of them. Context of the Study In Turkey, the courses in distance education programs are delivered as fully online via Learning Management Systems (LMS). However, face-to-face sessions are delivered in the courses requiring practice such as some courses in Electrics and Mechatronics programs. The instructors are assigned to the courses by the head of the departments. They are responsible for the design, delivery, and assessment of the courses. In the university where the study was conducted, instructional materials are delivered to students on the LMS as online in video and text-based formats. Synchronous course activities are conducted on the Web Conferencing System integrated to the LMS in the form of weekly lessons. All asynchronous course activities are similarly conducted on the LMS. The used LMS also have such components as forum, messaging tools, announcements, exams, and so forth. Traditional exams and alternative evaluation methods such as portfolio, projects, and collaborative or individual assignments can be used for evaluation. Yet, the mainstream way of evaluation is multiple choice exams. Students have to attend two exams per semester; a mid-term and a final exam. The mid-term exams are conducted as online on the LMS while final examinations are conducted on the campus as paper and pencil. The instructors in the target university have not participated in any sort of in-service trainings except the individual trainings on the LMS usage. Instruments The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations on the distance courses of the participants. Both interview and observation forms were developed by the researchers based on the relevant literature on instructor roles and competencies in distance education. The questions in the interview schedule were about the instructor roles and competencies. A total of 13 questions were asked. Both schedules were reviewed by the two professionals, having a doctoral degree, from the department of computer education and instructional technology and revised based on their recommendations. Data Collection Procedure The interviews and observations were conducted concurrently in the spring semester of 2018. Firstly, the identified instructors were invited for participation via phone calls by informing them about the purpose of the study. The interviews were conducted in their offices in diverse schools of the university upon their requests. The interviews were recorded with the permissions of the participants and then transcribed for analysis. The durations of the interviews ranged from 10 to 15 minutes. Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining... M. Kara, V. Kukul & R.Çakır Participatory Educational Research (PER) -72- Data Analysis The qualitative data were analysed in three phases; organization of the data, reduction of the data through coding, and representation of the data in terms of tables and discussion as described by Creswell (2007, p.148). These phases, as Creswell (2007, p.150) elaborated, were not linear, but rather create a spiral in an interrelated manner. In the first phase, the data were transcribed into the text format and each incident was named through the pseudonyms. In the second phase, the transcripts were numerous times read by the researchers. The data were reduced into the data segments by coding through constant comparison analysis method. The codes were interpreted relying on the field notes and the memos taken by the researchers during the data collection and analysis and their dimensions and properties. Hybrid naming was used to label the codes. In other words, the labels were derived both from the collected data and the relevant literature. Based on these interpretations, the codes were classified as the themes by comparing them within and between the incidents. In the final phase, the codes and themes were illustrated through the tables and described and discussed by paying special attention to the context because description of the study context has a key role in case studies (Creswell, 2007, p.151). Throughout the three phases of the data analysis, the researchers kept memoing and used them to refine the tentative codes and themes extracted from the data. Trustworthiness of the Study Trustworthiness of the study was ensured by following the guidelines of Lincoln and Guba (1985). Credibility was ensured through prolonged engagement of the researchers in the study context, triangulation, and peer debriefing. First of all, the researchers spent sufficient time in the study context so as to understand the setting and create the best rapport with the participants. Then, the interview data were triangulated through the observation on distance courses. Peer debriefing was also employed to avoid researchers’ potential bias on the research problem. For this purpose, the data were coded by another professional of computer education and instructional technology, holding a doctoral degree in the same field, based on the guidelines of Garrison et al. (2006) on negotiated coding approach. An agreement percentage of 84.21 was achieved. As Garrison et al. (2006) described, the codes were actively discussed among the coders and a consensus was achieved on the final version of them. Transferability of the findings was provided through the in-depth descriptions of the codes and themes within the study context. Finally, as for confirmability, researchers adopted a reflective attitude toward the study problem throughout the study procedure. Findings The findings were classified under three main categories; conceptions of roles and competences, and misconceptions. For each theme, the frequency of the codes were presented. In addition, the descriptions of each code were supported with the quotations from the interviewee responses. Conceptions of Roles Instructor roles were defined in this study as the acts of the instructors that they play to deliver distance course. Two sub-themes were extracted from the participant responses. Their responses during the interviews pertaining to their roles were based on their experience in both face-to-face and distance education. Participatory Educational Research (PER), 5(2);67-79, 1 December, 2018 Participatory Educational Research (PER) -73- Table 1. Role Conceptions of the Instructor Roles in Distance Education Sub-Theme Conceptions of Roles f Planning Environmental/Technical Planning 3 Instructional Design 3 Course Delivery Lecturing 7 Evaluation 3 Guidance 3 Motivation 2 Material Development 2 The first role conception of the instructors is planning. Planning covered environmental/technical planning and instructional design. The participants justified the need for planning by underlining the varying factors that might influence the synchronous lessons such as low student participation, low student motivation, and possible technical problems. Selecting the most appropriate synchronous lesson time is, for example, an action taken to improve student participation as part of the planning. An instructor, for instance, stated this role as follows: “As an instructor, first of all, preparation of course settings… Taking the required actions by instructors… These are the fundamental responsibilities of an instructor. …Besides, by distance education, we mean an approach in which we have limited interaction. But, when you achieve students integration into the system, you might have a more participatory and effective lesson. Thus, she/he should be prepared for this, too. ” I4 The second role conception of the participants is delivery. Delivery sub-theme included lecturing, evaluation, guidance, motivation, and material development. The first role conception is lecturing synchronously. The mainstream way of teaching at a distance in this case is presentation in all courses followed by demonstration and practice in applied courses. In this regard, synchronous lecturing is perceived by the instructors as the most central role. Guidance code both includes the guidance on the distance education system and the guidance on the course. In spite of the availability of the guidance for the distance education system on student guides, the participants think that students still need instructor guidance. The other code is motivation. The instructors believe in that students at a distance need further motivation than the ones in face-to-face education considering that they are working adults and studying at a distance is more challenging than face-to-face education. The participants finally stated evaluation and material development as their usual roles. An instructor summarized below their delivery roles: “Our top responsibility is to deliver the content of a course in conceptually exact manner. Then, the applications of them… I mean supporting understanding through both visual and experiments. Even, physically conducting these during the finals when students are here…” I9 Conceptions of Competencies The instructor responses indicated that there are three important competencies required for distance education. These competencies are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competency, Communication skills, and Subject Expertise as given at Table 2. Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining... M. Kara, V. Kukul & R.Çakır Participatory Educational Research (PER) -74- Table 2. Conceptions of the Instructor Competencies in Distance Education Conceptions of Competencies f ICT Competency 5 Communication Skills 3 Subject Expertise 2 The most commonly stated competency by the instructors is ICT competency. They believe in that ICT competency is a survival and the most fundamental competency to deliver distance courses. By ICT competency, they mostly referred to the required knowledge and skills for Learning Management System (LMS) usage. An instructor explained the need for this competency as follows: “Technology, first of all, is important. Entering a course by accessing to the site (LMS) by an instructor is quite important. He/she is required to be able to enter the system. She/he is required to be able to change lesson times as needed. He/she is required to be able to answer the questions of the students. He/she is required to have a technological background at a certain level. ” I3 The secondly stated competency is communication skills. Some of the instructors have a thought that this competency is a requirement so as to facilitate interaction process in distance education settings considering communication challenges they faced. Subject expertise is the last competency stated by some of the interviewees. An instructor explained both of the competencies as follows: “I think they, firstly, need to have good communication skills. All in all, knowledge sharing with the students is conducted via communication. Communication is the first. I think competency in his/her field is the second.” I5 Misconceptions The participant responses showed that instructors have some misconceptions regarding distance education. A total of six misconceptions were extracted from the interviewee responses. These misconceptions are presented in Table 3 as follows. Based on the participants’ responses during the interviews, it was concluded that the instructors base these misconceptions on their experience in both face-to-face and distance education. The findings regarding the misconceptions further showed that they constructed the misconceptions through their trial-and-error approach since they learned how to practice in distance education settings by their own efforts. Table 3. Misconceptions of Instructors in Distance Education Misconceptions f Use of the Same materials with Face-to-face Education 8 Sufficient Materials 7 No Role for Interaction among Students 7 Ineffectiveness of Distance Education 6 Having the Same Roles with Face-to-face Education 4 Impossibility of Distance Collaboration among Students 3 The most commonly observed misconception regarding distance education is the thought that the same materials with face-to-face education are used. The participants stated almost the Participatory Educational Research (PER), 5(2);67-79, 1 December, 2018 Participatory Educational Research (PER) -75- similar thoughts in this regard. Only one of them stated that she uses more visuals so as to facilitate student understanding. In this respect, the use of the same materials imply the second misconception that the materials they used in distance education, also they use them in face-to-face education, is sufficient for distance education. The observations on distance courses revealed that they all use text-based materials without any or limited guidance or directions for supporting student autonomy. Similarly, the materials also lack of interactive properties. Even an instructor stated that she uses more detailed materials in face-to-face education and limited materials in distance education. An instructor stated both of these misconceptions as follows: “Same. I use exactly the same (materials in both face-to-face and distance education). …There is no need for difference between them. The topics are the same. If we share videos to facilitate student understanding in distance education, we even show them (in face-to-face education).”I9 Another misconception of the instructors is that they think that they do not have a role for interaction among students. The participant instructors stated that the existing interaction among students are adequate and there is no need for them to spend any effort to encourage or improve this interaction. The statements of the participants supporting this misconceptions is as follows: “We do not need to do it. They (students) already interact with each other. They have their own groups. They are in contact with each other for the courses.” I5 The next misconceptions is the participant instructors’ belief that distance education is ineffective. In fact, this is a result of the other misconceptions. Some of the instructors think distance education ineffective because of the communication problems or because some of them believe in that it is impossible to interact with students in distance education as do they in face-to-face education. For example, a participant think that distance education is ineffective because of the communication limitations and they state the similar ideas as follows: “I do not think that it has the same effect ratio. Communication factor with our students is one-way in distance education. I do not think that it is so effective.” I2 The belief that they have the same roles with face-to-face education is the other misconception of the instructors. The instructors think they have the same roles in both distance education and face-to-face education such as delivering synchronous lessons and evaluation. This misconception might be observed in an instructor’s statement below: “As I said earlier, all of them are the same. Whatever instructional responsibilities are in face-to-face education is required to be the same. In addition to this, communication problems are the responsibility of an instructor. She/he needs to do recovery process.” I1 The final misconception of the instructors is about online collaboration. Some of them believe in that online collaboration is impossible. They think that the geographical distance makes collaborative activities impossible since collaboration requires physical meetings. For this reason, they stated that they prefer individual activities, instead. For example, an instructor stated her thoughts on online collaboration as follows: Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining... M. Kara, V. Kukul & R.Çakır Participatory Educational Research (PER) -76- “It is a problem that they meet, they contact the by sharing responsibilities from various cities. For this reason, I avoid assigning collaborative works.” I2 Discussion This study aimed to investigate conceptions and misconceptions of the instructors in term of their roles and competencies in distance education. The findings revealed three themes; namely, conceptions of roles, competencies, and misconceptions. The first theme created is the conceptions of their roles. In terms of their roles, the findings indicated that the participant instructors have very broad conceptions of their roles based on both their experience in face-to-face and distance education. Planning was particularly underlined by them mainly due to the complexity, challenges, and uncertainties, for which they need to spend more effort in distance education settings than face-to-face education to deal with them. The planning covered the issues of configuration of physical environment, and technological tools, and instructional design for improving student participation such as setting the optimal synchronous lesson times and the most appropriate delivery method, but not design for materials. The second role is course delivery. They perceive this role same as the one in face-to-face education with a difference that technology is used for delivery. The roles regarding planning and course delivery are underlined by the previous studies defining instructor roles in distance education with diverse terms (e.g. Aydın, 2005; Bawane & Spector, 2009; Varvel, 2007; Williams, 2003). However, the findings of the present study indicated that the instructors do not pay attention on other roles such as social, managerial or advisor roles. The reason behind the generality of instructor perceptions on their roles is likely the lack of their knowledge and skills regarding distance education and its pedagogy. The second theme is the conceptions of their competencies. The competency conceptions of the instructors are very broad. The competencies they stated are Subject Expertise, ICT competency, and Communication skills. Subject expertise is a natural conception expected from all instructors regardless of the delivery medium. On the other hand, the instructors believe in that distance education demands the competencies of ICT and communication skills so as to deal with all sort of instructional problems and communication challenges specific to distance education settings. Similar to the instructor roles, the literature on instructor competencies in distance education previously underlined the ones found out in the present study with various terms (e.g. Guasch et al., 2010; Darabi et al., 2006; Varvel, 2007; Williams, 2003). The findings of the present study illustrated that the instructors constructed their competency conceptions based on their experience and challenges in their own practices. The final theme created is the misconceptions of the instructors. The findings of the study revealed that the instructors filled in the blanks in their broad conceptions of the roles and competencies with the misconceptions that they constructed based on their experience in their trial-and-error efforts. The observed misconceptions are the belief that use of same materials with face-to-face education, sufficient materials, lack of role for interaction among students, ineffectiveness of distance education, having the same roles with face-to-face education, and impossibility of online collaboration among students. These findings confirmed the notion that learning by trial-and-error causes the instructors to have negative conclusions about distance education (Fang, 2007). Furthermore, as pointed out by Baran, et al. (2011), a techno-centric approach with a perspective of one-size-fits-all causes the replication of the traditional approaches in distance education. The use of the same materials and efforts to perform the same roles in both distance and face-to-face education, for example, are the indicators of the replication of the traditional approaches in distance education. As stated Participatory Educational Research (PER), 5(2);67-79, 1 December, 2018 Participatory Educational Research (PER) -77- earlier for their conceptions, these misconceptions are also the natural result of the lack of prerequisite knowledge and skills for the instructors to practice in distance education context. Therefore, the study findings suggest continuous professional development starting prior to acting in distance education because the more the instructors engaged in professional development activities, the more they have awareness (Gonzalez-Sanmamed et al., 2014). The findings also imply that the professional development programs are required to be based on the notion that a critical reflection and practice of the instructors so as to transform their teaching in distance education is a necessity by adopting them as adult learners (Baran, et al., 2011). Therefore, the findings identified in this study suggest active reflection of the instructors on their conceptions and practices for improvement. Conclusion This case study revealed the conceptions of the instructors in terms of their roles and competencies and misconceptions regarding distance education. Their conceptions of roles and competencies are based on their experience in both face-to-face and distance education. This base unsurprisingly leads to misconceptions regarding teaching in distance education. The main reason behind the instructor conceptions on their roles and competencies and misconceptions is the unavailability of professional development programs and learning by trial-and-error, consequently. The study findings showed that particularly the lack of prerequisite knowledge regarding distance education pedagogy causes instructor misconceptions by basing their conceptions on face-to-face education. For this reason, instructor support for both professional development and their active reflection on their meaning making process is a continuing necessity for the construction of their conceptions by encouraging them to avoid the frameworks of the traditional approaches. Recommendations for Future Research and Practice The study has several limitations. First of all, it was conducted with the participation of the instructors in a university. Multiple case studies might be conducted in different contexts with multiple stakeholders. Secondly, the findings of the study are descriptive. The prescriptive studies focusing on the design for professional development studies aiming to improve teaching practices and to transform instructor conceptions might be conducted based on the needs assessment. Particularly, the study findings suggest further research on instructor reflections on their conceptions and practices as they participate in professional development studies from a critical perspective. The study certainly has implications for practice. Firstly, trainings for instructors, particularly pertaining to distance education processes and pedagogy, are required to be provided before instructor recruitment so as to base their meaning making process on the correct conceptualizations. The professional development efforts in various fields such as pedagogy, andragogy, technology integration, and social aspects are recommended to be continuously available for instructors. Instructor reflections on their practices are also a recommendation of this study for them and professionals to transform the practices and conceptions. References Aydın, C. H. (2005). Turkish mentors’ perception of roles, competencies and resources for online teaching. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 6(3), 58-80. Conceptions and Misconceptions of Instructors Pertaining... M. Kara, V. Kukul & R.Çakır Participatory Educational Research (PER) -78- Baran, E., Correia, A. P., & Thompson, A. (2011). Transforming online teaching practice: Critical analysis of the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers. Distance Education, 32(3), 421-439. Bawane, J., & Spector, J. M. (2009). Prioritization of online instructor roles: implications for competency-based teacher education programs. Distance Education, 30(3), 383-397. Belcheir, M.J. & Cucek, M. (2002). Faculty perceptions of teaching distance education courses. Research Report. Boise State Üniversitesi. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED480925.pdf Berge, Z. L. (2008). Changing instructor’s roles in virtual worlds. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 9(4), 407-414. Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches (2 nd Ed.). Sage. Darabi, A. A., Sikorski, E. G., & Harvey, R. B. (2006). Validated competencies for distance teaching. Distance Education, 27(1), 105-122. DEAC, Distance Education Accrediting Commission. (2017). Directory of accredited institutions. Retrieved from https://www.deac.org/Student-Center/Directory-Of- Accredited-Institutions.aspx Easton, S. S. (2003). Clarifying the instructor's role in online distance learning. Communication Education, 52(2), 87-105. Fang, B. (2007). A performance-based development model for online faculty. Performance Improvement, 46(5), 17-24. Garrison, D. R., Cleveland-Innes, M., Koole, M., & Kappelman, J. (2006). Revisiting methodological issues in transcript analysis: Negotiated coding and reliability. The Internet and Higher Education, 9(1), 1-8. González-Sanmamed, M., Muñoz-Carril, P. C., & Sangrà, A. (2014). Level of proficiency and professional development needs in peripheral online teaching roles. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(6), 162-187. Goodyear, P., Salmon, G., Spector, J. M., Steeples, C., & Tickner, S. (2001). Competences for online teaching: A special report. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(1), 65-72. Gök B. (2007) Uzaktan eğitimde görev alan öğretim elemanlarının uzaktan eğitim algısı. Unpublished master’s thesis, Gazi University, Ankara. Guasch, T., Alvarez, I., & Espasa, A. (2010). University teacher competencies in a virtual teaching/learning environment: Analysis of a teacher training experience. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 199-206. Gülbahar, Y. (2009). E-ögrenme. Ankara: Pegem Yayıncılık. Heuer, B. P., & King, K. P. (2004). Leading the Band: The role of the instructor in online learning for Educators. The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 3(1), 1-11. Kara M. (2018). Influential factors on faculty performance in distance education. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Kaya, Z. (2002). Uzaktan Eğitim. Pegem Yayıncılık. Koloğlu T. F. (2016) Öğretim elemanlarının uzaktan eğitime bakış açıları ve hazırbulunuşlukları: Ordu üniversitesi örneği. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar. Lincoln, Y. S. & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Sage. İncik, E. Y., & Tanrıseven, I. (2012). Eğitim fakültesi öğretim elemanlarının ve öğretmen adaylarının öğrenci merkezli eğitime ilişkin görüşleri (Mersin üniversitesi örneği). Mersin Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 8(3), 172–184. Miles, M. B. & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Source Book (2 nd Ed.). Sage. https://www.deac.org/Student-Center/Directory-Of-Accredited-Institutions.aspx https://www.deac.org/Student-Center/Directory-Of-Accredited-Institutions.aspx Participatory Educational Research (PER), 5(2);67-79, 1 December, 2018 Participatory Educational Research (PER) -79- Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2004). Distance Education: A Systems View (2nd Ed.). USA: Wadsworth Publishing. Özcan, H. & Yıldırım, S. (2018). Administrators’ perceptions of motives to offer online academic degree programs in universities. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19 (1), 327-341. Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., & Zvacek, S. (2015). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (6th ed.) Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Turkish Education Association (2009). Öğretmen yeterlikleri özet rapor: Öğretmene yatırım, geleceğe atılım. Retrieved from ted.org.tr. Umurhan, H. (2014). Öğretim elemanlarını uzaktan eğitime teşvik eden unsurlar: Gazi üniversitesi örneği. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Gazi University, Ankara. Varvel, V. E. (2007). Master online teacher competencies. Online journal of distance learning administration, 10(1), 1-41. Williams, P. E. (2003). Roles and competencies for distance education programs in higher education institutions. The American Journal of Distance Education, 17(1), 45-57. 
work_v3xizkwehrgzngvhfxb6z2fcna	----	Microsoft Word - Chao_MS.doc Send Orders for Reprints to reprints@benthamscience.net 96 The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, 5, 96-102 1874-4443/13 2013 Bentham Open Open Access The Design and Realization of Distance Education System Based on the Power Line Carrier Chao Lv* Computer Information Center, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing 100029, China Abstract: Characterized by extensive coverage, easy connection and huge application potential, power line carrier com- munication has gained increasing attention and become a research hotspot in recent years. This paper started by an intro- duction of the power line carrier communication technology, and then compared it with other networking methods, finally practical power line networking project was proposed. Based on the advantages of power line communication technology, the hardware system was formatted applying four-tier B/S architecture. The computer distance education system was es- tablished using ASP technology in the premise of effective protection of network security. Study shows that the power line communication network is a reliable network education resource, of great significance to promote distance education. Keywords: Power Line Carrier, Communication Technology, Distance Education, Design. 1. INTRODUCTION OF POWER LINE COMMUNI- CATION TECHNOLOGY Power Line Communication (PLC) technology is a means of communication to transmit data and voice signals using low-voltage power line, referred to as PLC technology. In PLC system, the high frequency signal carrying informa- tion is loaded onto and transmitted by the power line, and separated through a dedicated power line modem, finally transmitted to the terminal device. PLC system mainly ap- plies for data transmission within the scope of a transformer, extracting the electrical signal from the power line with the power line modem [1]. With the growing demand for high- speed Internet broadband communication, PLC technology will become one of the most competitive and potential broadband networking ways. Power line Internet users need a special modem (PLC Modem) when the Internet connects to the distribution room of user-residential building via fiber-optic cables. The top of this modem data cable is a conventional power plug. What the user has to do to achieve Internet is: connect computer's network card and the modem, plug modem into the power outlet, and then connect to the PLC master device of build- ing distribution transformers by the power line, now the con- nection of “the last mile” is completed [2]. 2. ADVANTAGES OF POWER LINE COMMUNICA- TION TECHNOLOGY The main advantages of transmitting data by PLC are: extensive coverage, convenience, no wiring, permanent on- line, low construction cost, short installation period, and re- alizing the “four –in-one” of data, voice, video and electric power without re-building network. *Address correspondence to this author at the Computer Information Center, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing 100029, China; Tel: 1369306766; E-mail: lcrabbit@163.com 2.1. Low Cost PLC is a “No New Wires” technology which takes full advantage of existing low-voltage distribution network infra- structure without any wiring, thus greatly reducing the line investment, saving cost, and avoiding some problems ob- tained from laying network line such as the destruction of the academic buildings and public facilities due to trenching and through-the-wall holes, as well as saving manpower [3]. PLC technology can provide high-speed Internet services to schools with much lower cost, which adds a new option for the "School-to-School" project, and helps speed up the IT application in education. 2.2. Permanent Online PLC as a communication channel can flexibly achieve “plug and play” without cumbersome dialing process. It is always online as long as the power supply is being plugged. This characteristic of power line allows for building fire- proofing and anti-theft security monitoring system at school and improving IT application. 2.3. High Data Transfer Rate As for the technical properties, ADSL downlink speed is 8MB / s, HFC (Hybrid fiber coaxial cable) is 10MB / s, and the PLC transmission rate can reach 10M to 45Mbps (even 200Mbps in the future), totally a rival to ADSL and HFC. Compared with the telephone dialing and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), PLC speed is even higher [4, 5]. The original power lines only transmit electric power rather than information, so the PLC can enjoy the entire signal bandwidth. While ADSL and HFC both need to take into account the telephone, television signals, which will be af- fected in the case of network congestion. 2.4. Extensive Coverage At present, China has the world's second longest power transmission lines. Power lines of 500KV and 330KV have The Design and Realization of Distance Education System Based The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, Volume 5 97 reached to 25094.16km, Power lines of 220KV have reached to 107348.06km, and total to 310000km plus 110KV lines, nearly eight laps around the earth [6]. For each school, the electricity network is ready, and it does not need to re-build, where every classroom and every office have wire sockets. Even if in remote, outlying areas, accomplished first are still power lines. All of these make civilian power lines the world's most popular, most extensive coverage network, which is an advantage that telephone and cable TV cannot match. 3. DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF THE SYSTEM 3.1. Progressiveness Principle The progressiveness principle can make distance educa- tion system relatively keep pace with era, in order to prolong the life cycle of the entire system as much as possible. 3.2. Expansibility Principle Taking into account the medium-term and long-term ex- pansion of the system, the system should adapt to the future needs of remote teaching and learning in the network archi- tecture, network applications, network management, system performance, and other aspects. 3.3. High Reliability Principle In the design, the distance education system based on PLC technology, the reliability points such as human- computer security, long-term stable operation should be given top priority, to ensure the personal safety and system security during the use of the system. Upon the above reli- ability requirements being satisfied, the program should be optimized to reduce equipment investment as far as possible [7]. 3.4. Economically Practical Principle The design of the system should focus on economics and practicality, reduce overall cost, and seek the perfect union of the progressiveness and economics, making the distance education system more cost-effective. 4. POWER LINE NETWORKING PROJECT 4.1. Comparison of Power Line Networking and Other Networking Methods (Table 1) 4.2. Feasibility Analysis Power line networking technology is primarily inserting a communication device (power line communication access device) into the output of the power line of the transformer on the user’s end. The device can be connected to the mains via the twisted pair, wireless, XDSL, cable and optical fiber, to provide users with data, voice and multimedia services. Within the communication equipment, high-frequency net- work signal and low-frequency electrical signal are coupled to the power line of the user, and thus the communication network, the power distribution and the Customer Premise Network are connected. The electrical power wiring can be used to realize a home LAN: by connecting the computer, printer, telephone and fax machine and other equipment with ordinary power outlets. The great advantage of power line network is low cost. Power line networking re-uses existing wiring directly and does not need extra wiring such as telephone lines or fiber optic cables, thus greatly reducing the investment of network construction. The equipment installation is simple, conven- ient, time-saving and flexible, especially suitable for network modification or extension. Table 1. Comparison of Power Line Networking and Other Networking Methods Power Line Network Network Cabling Wireless XDSL Network Bandwidth 10M～45M 100M 11M 12M Network Transmission Me- dium Power line Twisted pair Wireless transmission Telephone line Indoor Wiring Unnecessary Necessary Unnecessary Need to install a divider at the indoor phone end, otherwise, Internet and phone calls cannot be achieved simultaneously Communication Reliability good good Bad, equipment distance is difficult to control, can not penetrate reinforced concrete wall good Client Device PLC network card Ordinary network card Wireless network card XDSL MODEM Client Moves Can be moved to wher- ever the power is avail- able Cannot be moved freely Can be moved freely Cannot be moved freely Construction Period 2-3 days 30 days 7 days 7 days System Investment Low High High High 98 The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, Volume 5 Chao Lv Using power line communication, users do not have to worry about the security of the electricity owing to the enough technical assurance, and the product will not cause any harm to the human body. In addition, the network secu- rity is guaranteed because of the encryption. Internet connection via PLC allows flexible extension of the user ports, especially, this program does not need to con- sider the increasing or decreasing impact of the user on inter- face of the device, and the computer can be moved to any location without breaking the Internet. PLC technology enables a higher communication speed. The 14Mb / s chip of Intellon Corporation has reached the practical level, the European standard chip has reached 45Mb / s, and the speed can even reach 200Mb/s through equipment upgrade in the future. What the user has to do to achieve Internet is: connect computer's network card and the modem, plug modem into the power outlet, and then connect to the PLC master device of building distribution transformers by the power line, now the networking is completed. Through the above analysis, we believe that the power line networking is feasible. A typical PLC system network- ing is shown in Fig. (1). 4.3. Power Line Networking Project Let’s assume that there is a four-layer teaching building with ten classrooms on each floor and the users who are on line at the same time are not so many. The users need to be given the functions like browsing the internet, downloading the resources and so on. 4.3.1. Teaching Building Power Line System Distribution (Fig. 2) 4.3.2. Power Line Networking Topological Graph It adopts the PLC network bridges which will be installed on the first floor and the third floor. Each PLC network bridge can output four channels of high-frequency data sig- nal. Through the ordinary civilian wires, the signal will be sent to the other two layers. The whole building will be cov- ered just by two sets of PLC network bridges. One ethernet cable will be dragged from each network bridge to the net- work center in the teaching building and be connected with the switchboard to connect the whole power line network with the outer internet. The structure of the whole system is simple and it is con- venient to do installation. During the construction time, there is no need to run through the walls or dig the burrows to lay Fig. (1). Typical PLC system networking. Fig. (2). Teaching building power line system distribution. The Design and Realization of Distance Education System Based The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, Volume 5 99 the lines. In the corridors and in the rooms on the each layer, it is unnecessary to horizontally lay any lines. When the us- ers in each classroom are going to use the internet, what they only have to do is just plugging in the power resource of the PLC modem to any of the power sockets, and plugging the other end into the computer’s USB port. Thus, the network of the whole building is linked. The topological structure of the network in the teaching building is shown in Fig. (3). 4.3.3. The Working Drawing of Power Line Network (Fig. 4) In the distribution box on each floor, it will use the power lines which can transmit the signals and the filters with the Qualcomm magnetic core to couple the data signal with the power supply line in each classroom. In the whole construc- tion progress, there is no need to change or add any equip- ment on the distribution line. 4.4. Contrastive Evaluation Power line networking: 11 thousand Yuan (take example of configuring 20 PLC modems, as it is convenient to move, so the fixed installation is not needed). Comprehensive wiring and networking: 22 thousand Yuan (count in 40 information points, not considering the destruction to the internal decoration of the building during the construction time of comprehensive wiring). In conclusion, the best advantage of using the power line networking is that the investment of the equipment is far lower than that of other networking methods, and there is no need to worry about the destructive construction work made by the other networking methods. Especially when reforming and expanding the original computer network, or when doing digi- talized transformation to the other networks (such as two-way television education system, video monitoring system and so on), the advantage of power line networking technology is incomparable to the other networking technology. 5. THE DESIGN OF DISTANCE EDUCATION SYS- TEM BASED ON THE POWER LINE COMMUNICA- TION TECHNOLOGY 5.1. System Architecture of Distance Education System This system uses B/S (Browser / Server) architecture. In this architecture, the user interface is achieved through the Fig. (3). Teaching building networking topological graph. Fig. (4). The working drawing of power line network. 100 The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, Volume 5 Chao Lv WWW browser, part of the business logic achieved at the front-end to, but the main business logic on the server end. B/S architecture is divided into two kinds: the two-tier and three-tier. The two-tier architecture is composed of the browser and the Web server. In this architecture, the web page is static, incapable to change dynamically according to the user’s action. The three-tier architecture is composed of the browser, web server and database server. Using the three- tier architecture, data generation and data performance are integrated into a dynamic page, which makes the dynamic page become very large. In addition, the application per- formance and logic processing are mixed together, which brings many difficulties to the development and maintenance of Web application system [8]. To fix this problem, the ap- plication performance can be separated from logic process- ing to form a so-called four- tier architecture, as shown in Fig. (5). Web server (namely the layer where the dynamic page is) is mainly responsible for the application perform- ance, while the application logic layer is mainly responsible for the logic processing of application. 5.2. The Function of Distance Education System The distance education system based on power line communication technology is established using ASP tech- nology, whose main function modules are shown in Fig. (6). 5.2.1. User Management Module The main operations of the user management module in- clude user creation, user login, user authorization and user change, user logout. User creation: it needs the unit or the individual who uses distance education system to do application, and the manager will record the personal data and create a user’s account and save it in the server. The user’s account includes a unique username and a password that is related. User authorization and user change: Through this opera- tion, the manager will authorize the study material to the new users who are in need. In this way, the users who log in the study system can directly use their own authorized re- sources. User authorization (namely resource authorization) is not only a kind of user management operation, but also a kind of resource management operation. In the distance edu- cation system, adopting the policy of resource access control based on the role can simplify the authorization operation and be convenient for resource management. User login: a user with the legal account can enter into the distance education system by inputting his own username and password on the login screen. The teacher’s or student’s browser client Web server Online learning system Database server URL HTML Fig. (5). System architecture of distance education system. Fig. (6). The function of distance education system. U se r m a n a g e m e n t m o d u le S e cu rity m a n a g e m e n t m o d u le L e a rn in g re so u rce m a n a g e m e n t m o d u le O n lin e le a rn in g m o d u le O n lin e e xa m in a tio n m o d u le L o g m a n a g e m e n t m o d u le The Design and Realization of Distance Education System Based The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, Volume 5 101 User logout: After user finishes the learning tasks, he does logout actions to delete the user account from the server. User logout means that the life cycle of the user is over. 5.2.2. Security Management Module In the network environment, security management is very important. In the design of distance education system, secu- rity management function should be provided. The system uses the software function to set up different limits of author- ity, such as system administrator privileges, teacher privi- leges and student privileges, etc., and the new student can become an official student only after his registration was confirmed by the relevant departments, and then can get the relevant information. The double host isolation firewall adopted by the system is shown in Fig. (7). When it is work- ing, configuring access rules that meet the security strategy on the firewall can check the data that go through the internal and external network and prevent the unauthorized access from going through the firewall. When sending data between the realtime system and the non-realtime system, it adopts routing mechanism and uses the high speed data bus among the interface computers to make connection and transmission and prevents the users in the company and a few external personnels who successfully pass through the firewall from using the non-realtime system to attack the realtime system. 5.2.3. Learning Resource Management Module In the network environment, various kinds of resources are coexisting in the distance education system and are con- stantly changing. The system will provide the administrator or the authorized user a unified platform and fulfill the man- agement of the resource information. The main administra- tive operations designed here include registering, modifying, deleting, inquiring and authorizing the resource objects, etc [9]. Among them, the operation of authorizing the resource objects exclusively belongs to the administrator; the opera- tion of registering, modifying and deleting the resource ob- jects belongs to the administrator and the teacher; the opera- tion of inquiring the resource objects belongs to all the users. 5.2.4. Online Learning Module Online learning module is used for students to choose learning content, download the schoolwork, ask questions to the teacher, discuss with the teacher and other students in real time, read bulletin, complete and submit schoolwork online, query schoolwork correcting status and test scores, and so on. 5.2.5. Online Examination Module Online examination module is used for the assessment, results query, selecting the databank of examination ques- tions to generate papers automatically and preforming papers for assessment. 5.2.6. Log Management Module In order to guarantee the normal operation of the system and accurately solve various kinds of system problems that may meet, having a good log management is very important. In the progress of using the system, error message, warning message and other messages may be caused because of some reasons. These messages are very important, so they shall be written in a file, which is called the function of log manage- ment [10]. In the education system, the log is indicated with a text file. Each line in the file is a message. Each message mainly consists of the time when the message generates, the server name that generates the message and the specific con- tent of the message. Through managing and checking the log files, we can better maintain the system and guarantee that various kinds of application are running normally. 5.3. The Realization of Software System The development of B/S structural system is mainly ap- plied to the ASP technology. ASP comprehensively uses the traditional HTML file, ActiveX script language and the ActiveX component technology [11]. It executes the script and applies the ActiveX service component at the server side. When the user is working, the screen browsed through the browser is the result returned by the ASP interpreter after its execution, which is applicable to any kinds of browsers. ASP interpreter (ASP.DLL) is integrated in the ISS server in the form of ISAPI application program. The database access component, ADO (ActiveX Data Object), the built-in component in the ASP is applied to ac- cess the database. ADO includes multiple objects like Con- nection, RecordSet and so on. Generally, it is through the Connection to make connection with the database, and some- times, it can directly use the RecordSet to access the data- base according to the need. Before using the ASP component, it shall create this component at first, and then, it can invoke the ASP component and access its attributes. 6. CONCLUSIONS This paper analyzes the advantages of power line com- munication technology, and then compares it with other net- working methods, finally practical power line networking Fig. (7). The double host isolation firewall. 102 The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal, 2013, Volume 5 Chao Lv project is proposed. It is proposed that hardware system can be developed using four-tier B/S architecture, and PLC- based distance education system can be established applying ASP technology, in consistence with progressiveness, expan- sibility, reliability and practicality principles. The distance education system can help achieve learning resources man- agement, user management, online examinations and other functions. In the vast non-central areas and the rural areas, the PLC has certain advantages, which is of great signifi- cance in promoting distance education. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was financially supported by Beijing munici- pal universities academic innovation team project (RCQJ- 02120207). REFERENCES [1] Q.S. Qi, “Power Line Communication Technology and Applica- tion”, China: China Electric Power Press, 2005. [2] C. Lv and Y. Peng, “The Application of Power Line Communica- tion Technology in Campus Network Construction”, The 9th Inter- national Forum of Educational Technology, pp. 275-279, 2010. [3] L.H. Ma, “Analysis and Application of Power Line Communica- tion (PLC)”, Jisuanji Yu Xiandaihua, vol. 4, pp. 42-44, 2003. [4] Z.P. Zhang and Y.Z. Zhao, “Comparison of communication method based on low power line carrier”, Electronic Design Engi- neering, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 26-28, 2010. [5] L.X. Wu, W. Zhang and Z.S. Hou, “Power line access technique and AN. s development”, Telecommunications for Electric Power System, vol. 11, p. 1-4, 2001. [6] H.T. Chen, “Application in broadband access of PLC”, Journal of Beijing Technology and Business University, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 52- 55, 2005. [7] C. Lv, “Design and Realization of Power Line Modem with Func- tion of Protocol Conversion”, M.S. thesis, Department of Educa- tional Technology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China, 2005. [8] S.H. Zhang and Y.Z. Zhu, “The 4-tier Browser / Server Architec- ture and Its Scheme”, Application Research of Computers, vol. 9, pp. 21-22, 2002. [9] Y. Wang, S.H. Shi and S.J. Gong, “Web-based Intelligent Distance Education System”, E-Education Research, vol. 8, pp. 33-36, 2005. [10] F.Y. Liu, “The Portal Designing of Distant Learning System Base on Grid”, M.S. thesis, IT Engineering College, Central South Uni- versity, Hunan, China, 2006. [11] G.Z. Zhang, and K. Yang, “Application of ASP. NET Technique in Rural Distance Education System”, Journal of Anhui Agricultural Sciences, vol. 35, no. 9, pp. 2820-2821, 2007. Received: August 13, 2013 Revised: August 28, 2013 Accepted: August 28, 2013 © Chao Lv; Licensee Bentham Open. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. 
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Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_varfb3ahe5acpjng4c5hoxjn5u	----	Trends and Issues in Distance Education: International Perspectives, 2nd Edition 44 Performance Improvement, vol. 53, no. 1, January 2014 ©2014 International Society for Performance Improvement Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/pfi.21392 TRENDS AND ISSUES IN DISTANCE EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES, 2ND EDITION Edited by Lya Visser Yusra Visser Ray Amirault Michael Simonson reviewed by Ryan Watkins Good books on broad topics are hard to find. The second edition of Trends and Issues in Distance Education does a great job of meeting this challenge by offering chapters on far- reaching international trends that can have practical influence on the decisions that readers must make at the local level. From e-learning in manufacturing companies in Malaysia to various models for supporting learners who are at a distance, the book is a valuable resource for when performance issues lead you beyond the boundaries of the traditional training classroom. Trends and Issues in Distance Education: International Perspectives, 2nd ed. (2012; ISBN: 978–1–61735–828–9) is published by Information Age Publishing (paperback). FROM E-LEARNING to m-learning and from Brazil to Mozambique, distance education comes in many shapes and sizes today. This diversity has advanced the field in many directions over the last decade, yet it has presented an important challenge for those who are considering distance education to improve performance. Namely, how do you keep up with the global trends and issues that are defining the next generation of distance education options? The four editors of Trends and Issues in Distance Education recognized this challenge, and in response cre- ated a book that presents international distance education in a truly broad spectrum. This breadth is balanced with a writing style that illuminates practical applications that designers, developers, and other professionals can apply in a variety of contexts—including situations that do not cross international borders. The result is a very readable book that explores the theories, technologies, models, and approaches to distance education in its many forms, with a consistent focus on improving practice. With more than 30 international authors from five con- tinents, the 21 chapters of the book are as diverse as they are interesting. The authors as well as the editors are experts in a great variety of distance education settings, ranging from university teaching to corporate training to distance educa- tion, as a means to help prisoners and refugees find focus on a career in the future. Although all of the chapters are in English, 11 different native languages are represented. All this diversity comes together to create a unique book in a publishing landscape that typically offers a very limited, and often U.S.-centric, perspective on distance education. DISTANCE EDUCATION Distance education, from e-learning to m-learning to virtual schools to massive open online courses,1 is B O O K R E V I E W C o l u m n E d i t o r : A n n e B l a k e , P h D 1Massive open online courses are one of the latest trends in distance education. Performance Improvement • Volume 53 • Number 1 • DOI: 10.1002/pfi 45 often characterized by the unique qualities of its dis- tinctive applications. For example, e-learning may be characterized in the United States by the all-too-common low-interaction animated slideshow types of e-learning that are now found in many organizations, whereas in other parts of the world e-learning can be character- ized by instructor-led modules that promote learner-to- learner interactions. In both cases, these are just samples of the variety and diversity of e-learning approaches that can be found around the globe. One result of this tendency in characterizing distance education is that those who are familiar with how, for example, e-learning or virtual schools are typically done in one country, may not be aware of how other distance education technologies and models are used effectively in other countries. For professionals working to improve learner performance, this frequently means that we have limited knowledge of the options that are available. International trends can, however, play an important role in informing and shaping our perspectives on what is possible when considering distance education in its many forms and as solutions to local performance chal- lenges. Lessons learned about how to engage learners in China can, for instance, improve the design of e-learning modules in Chicago. The diversity of distance education models and appli- cations can nevertheless make any legitimate discussion of trends and issues seem stretched far too thin. Conversely, narrow explorations of specific e-learning technologies, such as learning management systems, frequently do not offer broad enough perspectives to apply across a variety of contexts. Fortunately, the second edition of Trends and Issues in Distance Education does a wonderful job of striking a useful balance. While truly international in its authors and topics, the editors have worked hard to maintain a practical focus that allows readers to identify important lessons that they can apply, even if they are not working on an international scale. The book provides numerous perspectives on distance education that highlight key trends and issues that can guide practice. The book often puts these trends in won- derful juxtaposition to illustrate the variety of forms that distance education can take and the numerous options that should be considered when trying to create effective performance solutions. Take, for example, chapter 7 on virtual schools, coauthored by Tom Clark and Zane Berge. This chapter is contrasted by chapter 8 on interactive radio instruction, coauthored by Jennifer Ho and Hetal Thukaral. Virtual schools are, for example, frequently at the forefront of distance education in terms of using Internet-delivery technologies for both student learning and instructor preparation. This is then contrasted by an insightful look at interactive radio instruction as a time-tested media for effectively delivering learning on a large scale in develop- ing countries. And from each chapter, readers are able to find ideas that can improve practice well beyond these two specific applications of distance education. Throughout the book, there are many trends that will interest readers. In chapter 3, “Trends and Issues Facing Distance Education,” by Brent Wilson, the majority of these trends are aggregated into five broad categories. Trend 1: Advancing Forms of Knowledge “The information revolution is changing how we rep- resent, share, and formalize new knowledge” (p. 41). Knowledge now exists in many forms outside of the text- book and instructor. From the wisdom of crowds that can come from Web 2.0 technologies to open access journals, where you can find “knowledge” is expanding quickly. Trend 2: Assessing Learning Achievement While growth in distance education has not always been justified by evaluation findings, the assessment of learn- ing and its application is becoming a major focus of the field. In K-12 education, the assessment of distance edu- cation including virtual schools, online courses, and so on, now resembles that of traditional classroom environ- ments with a large focus on standardized tests, especially in the United States. For corporate distance education, e-learning, m-learning, and more, the assessment of learning is also frequently supplemented with concerns of application in the workplace and return on investment. Trend 3: Making Learning Convenient and Accessible “Accessibility, convenience, and availability are the hall- mark of distance education, often cited as the very raison d’etre for its adoption” (p. 43). And yet, these characteristics also challenge the field in terms of the commodification of learning, with both the advantages and disadvantages With more than 30 international authors from five continents, the 21 chapters of the book are as diverse as they are interesting. 46 www.ispi.org • DOI: 10.1002/pfi • JANUARY 2014 that come along with a marketplace approach to learning. It is hard to deny, however, that the trends are all point- ing toward learning that is on demand and accessible to people regardless of their current location. Trend 4: Reaching All Learners Equity in access and quality of education is an essential issue for the growth of distance education in its many forms. “Distance education can be consciously appropri- ated at reducing the difference in access and achieve- ment” (p. 45). This is as true for its application in national education systems as it is for e-learning in corporations. Whereas equity of access to learning is often at the fore- front in conversations of K-12 and higher education, the issues of providing access to employees regardless of their location is an emerging issue for organizations. For example, when employees telecommute or work in satellite offices, are they at a disadvantage in terms of access to learning and associated promotion oppor- tunities compared to those working in central offices? The technologies, models, and experiences described throughout Trends and Issues in Distance Education can offer practical resources for reaching and supporting all of your learners. Trend 5: Engaging Learners Through Media and Designed Experience Last, and potentially most relevant to many performance technologists, a primary trend discussed throughout the book is the application of new media to create designed experiences that engage learners. Social media, wikis, 3D technologies, and many more applications of media- driven tools are expertly integrated into the chapters. At the same time, important topics for applying these tools such as new media literacy and learner support are inter- woven throughout the book to provide a rich context for how distance education can be successful. As with any book, for all its strengths, Trends and Issues in Distance Education does have some weaknesses. For example, section 1, which includes chapters 1 through 6, offers a collection of thoughtful perspectives on the past, current, and future of distance education, but it does not adequately apply these to the fast-growing sub- fields of corporate e-learning and m-learning. Likewise, essential literature on the instructional design of distance education materials, including instructional media, is not included in several chapters where it would seem to logi- cally fit. Regardless of these shortcomings, the book makes a significant contribution that will broaden your perspec- tives on what distance education is, what it can achieve, what trends are defining its future, and how valuable les- sons from around the globe can be applied within your context. CONCLUSION It is easy to lose touch with the many options for sup- porting learning outside of the traditional classroom when we get too focused on one technology or delivery model. While books on specific tools such as Captivate, HTML5, e-learning, or m-learning are valuable resources, it is important to also stay informed of the global trends that are shaping the field of distance education and pro- viding insights into the solutions to local performance challenges. The second edition of Trends and Issues in Distance Education is a valuable guide to understand- ing these trends and finding lessons that can guide your practice. RYAN WATKINS is an associate professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is an author of 11 books and more than 95 articles on needs assessment, e-learning, and perfor- mance improvement. His recent books include A Guide to Assessing Needs, published by the World Bank, which is available for free online at www.needsassessment.org. He coedited the Handbook for Improving Performance in the Workplace, Vol. 2, which won a 2011 ISPI Award of Excellence. His articles are frequently cited in the performance improvement literature, making him the fourth most cited author of journal articles in the field. He is also the developer of www.WeShareScience.com, a free place to learn about current research across a variety of disciplines and home of the 5-Minute Science Fair. He has been a member of ISPI since 1995, and frequently presents at conferences and local chap- ters. He may be reached at rwatkins@gwu.edu 
work_vayjhg2dw5dfxo67i76ghm54w4	----	HAJD23(02).book(HAJD_A_385612.fm) The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education, 23: 71–87, 2009 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 0892-3647 print / 1538-9286 online DOI: 10.1080/08923640902854405 HAJD0892-36471538-9286The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education, Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2009: pp. 1–23The Amer. Jrnl. of Distance Education Success in Distance Education: Do Learning Styles and Multiple Formats Matter? LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATSBATTALIO John Battalio Boise State University Abstract: Using data collected from 120 students enrolled in nine sections of an undergraduate technical communication course, this study found a number of statisti- cally significant associations between students’ learning styles, as defined by the Index of Learning Styles, and nine measures evaluating both academic performance and student preference. The study also measured student performance in collaborative and self-directed versions of the course, as well as full and summer sessions. Reflective learners were found to be the most successful online learners, excelling in collabora- tive, as well as self-directed versions of the course. Sequential learners also outper- formed global learners. Learning styles were not a significant factor in summer-session courses. As early as 1983, Moore found a positive relationship between field indepen- dence and student learning in independent study environments. Since then, interest in the relation between success in distance education and learning styles more generally has widened, as demonstrated by the meta-analysis by Allen et al. (2002). Comparing student satisfaction in online vs. traditional courses, the researchers postulated the influence of learning style in distance education. Recent publications supporting this influence include the following: • A compatible learning style as a factor responsible for student readiness (Eastmond 2000, 349); • A relationship between students’ personality traits, such as extrovert, introvert, sensing, and thinking, and success in distance education (Irani et al. 2003; Soles and Moller 2001); • Introverts excelling over extroverts in a videoconference-based learning environment (Offir, Bezalel, and Barth 2007); Correspondence should be sent to John Battalio, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive MS 1525, Boise, ID 83725-1525. E-mail: jbattali@boisestate.edu 72 BATTALIO • Online success of reflective and global learners, even though course interac- tivity should have favored active learners (Mehlenbacher et al. 2000); • Enhanced problem-solving ability of field-independent learners when aided by visuals (Angeli and Valanides 2004); • The comfort of convergers and accommodators in online environments. The researchers concluded that students should be able to participate in computer-mediated conferencing as their learning styles require (Fahy and Ally 2005); • The success of convergers and assimilators in a Web-based, rather than instructor-based, course (Manochehri and Young 2006). However, other researchers (see, e.g., Ahn and Ahn 2000; DeTure 2004; Dille and Mezack 1991; Ingebritsen and Flickinger 1998; Neuhauser 2002) have not found such relationships between learning style and success in online learning. Although Schellens and Valcke (2000) did not find any relationship between learning style and academic success, they did find that students accommodated their learning styles to different learning environments, a con- clusion supported by Aragon, Johnson, and Shaik (2002), whose research demonstrated that appropriate delivery methods can level the field. The con- flicting results even within studies reporting a relationship between learning styles and student outcomes should also be noted. For instance, even though Childress and Overbaugh (2001) found no relationship between learning style and final course grade, they did find a relationship between field-independent learners and final-exam performance. In their study of the variables affecting the outcomes of online courses, Benbunan-Fich and Hiltz (2003) called for research into the relationship between student learning styles, the selection of delivery mode, and student success. Similarly, Allen et al. (2002) proposed providing courses in multiple formats in order to accommodate multiple learning styles. Because a number of studies have already compared the effects of learning styles in online- versus live-course formats (see, e.g., Aragon, Johnson, and Shaik 2002; Manochehri and Young 2006; Neuhauser 2002), I chose a different approach to evaluate the influence of student learning styles in distance education. In addition to studying the general effects of learning styles on course outcomes, I evaluated the influence of collaborative versus self-directed versions and full versus summer sessions. If the relationship between learning style and online delivery mode can be clarified, instructors will be better able to design effec- tive courses, and administrators will be able to provide more useful guidance to prospective online students. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which student learning styles are associated with success in online learning environments, particularly when controlling for the amount of collaboration available to students. Comparisons were made between the success of students enrolled in either of two different versions of an online undergraduate technical LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATS 73 communication course, one a fully collaborative version, the other a self- directed version. Success was measured by several components of students’ grades, interactivity with the course software, interaction with classmates, and student satisfaction surveys. Because the nine sections of the course from which data were collected were taught during both 16-week full and 8-week summer sessions, this additional factor was included in the study. LEARNING STYLES INSTRUMENT The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) (Felder and Soloman 1991) is a 44- question survey based on a learning style model formulated in 1988 by Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman. It was developed by Felder and Barbara A. Soloman in 1991. The validity and reliability of the index have been verified by a number of studies (see Felder and Spurlin 2005; Litzinger et al. 2007; Zywno 2003). This particular instrument was chosen for the current study for several reasons. First, because the instrument was created specifically to give insights for use in educational settings (Felder and Silverman 1988), it is appropriate for a study of distance education. Second, it is based on several theories and incorporates other learning style modeling (Moallem 2007). Third, the report- ing of learning styles is detailed enough for the coding of student learning style information as categories across four learning scales, which allows the use of categorical data analysis. The index measures students’ learning style preferences on four scales, which in turn have two learning dimensions for each scale: active-reflective, sensing-intuitive, visual-verbal, and sequential- global. It also determines whether the respondent has a strong, moderate, or low preference on each of these scales and in which dimension the preference appears. Thus, the scales with their diametrically opposed dimensions may be envisioned as a continuum, for instance, from strong to moderate to low pref- erence along the left side of the scale to low to moderate to strong preference along the right side. Figure 1 shows sample ILS results in which learning pref- erences for each scale are plotted, giving four learning style measurements for the person evaluated. Figure 1. Sample Results From the Index of Learning Styles (ILS). Figure created by John Battalio. ILS Instrument Copyright © 1991, 1994 by North Carolina State University (authored by Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman). 74 BATTALIO Of the eight dimensions defined by the index, four of them appear to describe learning styles that are compatible with online learning, which by its nature privileges those who are self-directed, independent, and goal-oriented and would appear to prefer courses that are noncollaborative and independent in nature: • Reflective learners—those preferring to think quietly about information rather than being interactively engaged with persons or learning activities. Unlike active learners who prefer social interaction, reflective learners should theoretically prefer working online because the environment itself favors self-directedness. • Intuitive learners—those preferring discovery, innovation, and abstractions rather than the factual, example-based, concrete learning of sensing learners (see Dille and Mezack 1991). Because of the orientation toward self- directed learning, online students must be the masters of their own learning, even in very organized, instructor-centered courses, by making sense of the variety of materials made available online and integrating these materials into a unified whole. Thus, these learners would be more comfortable man- aging their own learning. • Verbal learners—those who get more out of words than from visual representations. By its very nature, an online course is reading inten- sive, and, because students manage their online course through a Web interface or e-mail in-box, reading is an integral part of the online course. Of course, a Web interface does add a significant visual compo- nent that may inhibit verbal learners, as shown by Becker and Dwyer (1998). However, twenty-first-century technology has permeated our lives such that today’s students, whether visual or verbal learners, should be reasonably comfortable in Internet environments (Battalio 2007). • Global learners—those who learn in large jumps by seeking out the “big picture” rather than learning in the traditional, sequentially organized col- lege course. Theoretically, sequential learners would prefer a live class in which the instructor leads the class through course materials and discus- sions, whereas global students should be more comfortable filtering through a series of online course materials in order to make the interconnections they need to put their work in perspective. METHOD The Online Course Data were gathered for this study from online versions of English 202 Techni- cal Communication, a three-credit service course. To allow the study of the LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATS 75 influence of the four learning dimensions described above, two versions of English 202 were created using Blackboard: • A collaborative version, in which students collaborated on assignments and were given these assignments on Blackboard on a weekly basis. For short weekly assignments, students worked with different groups for each assign- ment. For the two longer proposal and report assignments, students were given the option to form their own groups, up to three persons per group. For grouping students into weekly groups and for those students who did not form groups for the longer assignments, I used the random-number function in Microsoft Excel to assign students to preferably three-person groups, four if necessary. • A self-directed version, in which students had access to all assignments at once and completed assignments on their own, although they did work under deadlines for completing assignments. That is, students who did not submit an assignment by a stated deadline did not receive credit for that assignment. While pilot testing this methodology, I learned that such dead- lines were necessary to minimize the number of students not completing the course. Half of the student data come from collaborative sections and half from self-directed sections. Some sections were taught during the regular 16-week semester and some during 8-week summer sessions. Of these sections, 72 students (60%) took the course during the full semester, 48 (40%) during summer ses- sions. Consequently, it was possible to compare students’ learning styles not only with their overall learning success but also with the two types of learning environments as well as summer versus academic year courses in order to determine if one learning environment was more favorable to a specific learn- ing style than another environment. Coursework consisted of the following assignments, all available on Blackboard: résumé, ethics, instructions, proposal, and report assignments; 12 additional weekly assignments based on textbook readings; quizzes on textbook chapters; and 50-question pre- and posttest examinations, the latter of which was the final exam for the course. All handouts were also available on Blackboard as well as a class e-mail function. The collaborative version also used Blackboard’s discussion board for use during collaborative assign- ments. Here, students posted comments about weekly discussion topics and submitted drafts in progress of their collaborative written assignments. Students were able to work together in other ways, but the majority of their work had to be posted to the discussion board. For each major collaborative assignment, students submitted forms evaluating their group members and explaining in log form their own participation in the assignment. Content for all sections followed the same organization and structure except that, for sum- mer session courses, students began working on the proposal assignment 76 BATTALIO earlier in the session so that they would have sufficient time to complete the proposal and report assignments. Student Sample The data collected for this study came from a convenience sample of students enrolled in nine sections of the course during 2006 and 2007. From these nine sections, usable data were obtained from 120 of these undergraduate students. The university is a metropolitan university with a nontraditional-age student population; consequently, the average age of the students sampled in this study is somewhat higher than the traditional university: 51% were over 26 years of age. Of this group, 30% were 26 to 35; 16% were 36 to 45. The data set con- tained students from 38 different majors. Of these majors, the largest number (33%) were from engineering programs, 8% from biology, and 7% from English, with the remaining 52% scattered among the remaining 33 majors. Regarding students’ computer experience, all but 9% had previously used Blackboard. A total of 92% considered themselves at least average computer users. The student sample as a whole had varying amounts of experience with Internet communication: 83% said they used e-mail, 50% instant messaging, and 40% Web discussion boards, with smaller numbers of students having used chats, Listservs, Web conferencing, and Internet groups. For 41%, this was their first Internet class. No additional technology training was provided the students. Information was gathered about students’ backgrounds from a demo- graphic survey given at the beginning of the course and from student informa- tion available to all instructors as part of the course enrollment process. The survey asked students about their Internet, Blackboard, and general computer experience; current employment status; distance from campus; age range; and reason for taking the course online. There were no significance differences at the p < .05 level in the Internet, courseware, or computer experience; hours of employment; travel distance; age; or grade point averages between students in the sample, whether control- ling for version or session. Although the visual-verbal learning scale had significantly more females (Pearson X2, d.f. = 1, p = .0004, n = 120), this sex bias does not affect the study’s conclusions because there were no significant associations between visual-verbal learners. The low 1:3 ratio of verbal-to- visual learners in the sample may have contributed to these results. Procedures Instruments. The following three instruments were administered to each stu- dent enrolled in the course. Students took these instruments online through Blackboard. Response rates for the two surveys were 93% or above. LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATS 77 1. Index of Learning Styles (described previously): The explanatory (inde- pendent) variable. This was administered the week prior to the beginning of the course. 2. Demographic survey: Given the first week of the course. This 11-question survey obtained information about students’ background and experience. Questions dealt with their computer experience, prior experience using Blackboard courseware, Internet usage, knowledge of specific types of technical documents, current employment status, travel distance to cam- pus, and age range. These questions were worded to obtain categorical responses, for instance, travel distance (<30 minutes, 31–60 minutes, etc.), employment status (full-time, part-time, etc.), and so forth. The final ques- tion asked students to list their main reason for taking the course online. 3. End-of-semester course opinion survey: Given the last week of the semes- ter. This 21-question survey measured student satisfaction with the course by determining the extent to which it met their needs and soliciting opin- ions about course content and procedures. A four-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree was used. Measures. Data were collected for the following nine measures, which are the response (dependent) variables. • Quiz grade average: Students took reading quizzes at the completion of each text chapter assignment. These timed quizzes consisted of ten objec- tive questions, such as multiple choice, multiple answer, matching, ordering of information, true/false, and so on. The questions came from a database and were given to students in random order. Quizzes could be taken only once and were graded by Blackboard. • Posttest improvement: As a means of assessing student learning, students were given pre- and posttests on course content. The same test material was given for both tests. However, the questions were given to students in ran- dom order each time, and students did not know that they would be retested on the same information at the end of the semester. The test consisted of fifty objective questions in the same question format as described for read- ing quizzes. Students were given fifty minutes to complete the test, which could be taken only once. The test was also given during the pilot testing of the course and was modified as required. • Final exam grade: The results from the posttest described earlier were used as the students’ final exam grade. • Semester grade: Quiz averages, final exam grades, and the grades from the written assignments mentioned earlier under “The Online Course” were the basis of this grade. The two major written assignments, the proposal and formal report, made up 50% of the semester grade. • Document quality: The proposal was used as the writing sample for assess- ing the quality of student writing because it was one of the two major 78 BATTALIO writing assignments in the course and its argumentative quality required students to demonstrate more rhetorical skills than required by the other writing assignments in the course. The assessment was based on the follow- ing criteria: comprehensiveness in content, evidence, and sourcing; format- ting and document design; written clarity and conciseness; factual accuracy and honesty; grammatical and mechanical correctness; and professional appearance. For consistency, a multilevel grading sheet was used. This grading sheet was also available to students on Blackboard when the assign- ment was made. The learning styles of any of the students were not known until after the course was completed. Each student received a numerical grade for the proposal. • Blackboard courseware usage: Blackboard courseware provides summary and daily statistics for the number of times students access the course site each day, as well as summary and daily statistics for the number of times students access each content, group, and forum area. This data set provides the total number of times each student accessed the course site during the semester. • Amount of interaction: Because there was no collaboration in the self- directed versions, data were collected for the fifty-seven students enrolled in the collaborative version of the course. The amount of interaction for each student is an average of three sources: (1) the percentage of each student’s posts to the discussion board. This percentage was based on the average of the number of each student’s discussion board posts and the number of his/ her group posts as reported by Blackboard; (2) the percentage of his/her vis- its to the courseware’s group area. This percentage was based on the number of times each student accessed the group area as reported by Blackboard; and (3) the percentage of his/her participation in written assignments, which was derived from an average of the total number of hours spent on the proposal and report assignments as self-reported in each student’s activity log. • Satisfaction: The following statement from the student opinion survey was used to gauge each student’s overall satisfaction with the course: “I am sat- isfied with my decision to take this course via the Internet.” Answers were given on a four-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. • Collaborative preference: In order to gauge each student’s preferences for collaboration, the following statement was included on the opinion survey: “I prefer classes in which I work on my own, rather than interacting with others.” Answers were given on a four-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Analysis. Categorical data analysis was performed using SAS, version 9.1. In order to take advantage of the natural ordering in the data, data sets were coded in the following manner: • For the explanatory (independent) variable, that is, for each of the four learning style dimensions for each student: low, moderate, or strong. This LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATS 79 coding takes advantage of the incremental changes in learning style from the strongest rating on the left end of each scale to the strongest rating on the right end, as shown in Figure 1. • For the response (dependent) variables: • Grade-related data: low, mid, or high; • Courseware use and amount of student collaboration: low, mid, or high; • Preference data: strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree. The study was interested in the specific relationship between a learning style and a measure; that is, each hypothesis was evaluated with a single test. The specific hypothesis tested was that the subject’s learning style was not predictive of that measure. The level of significance was set at 0.0167 to account for the testing of the three learning scales for each measure. As noted above, the initial run showed that there was an insufficient sample of verbal learners to test this learning scale further. Mantel-Haenszel X2 statistics are used for reporting individual table results. When controlling for ILS, version, and session, statistics are reported as Row Mean Scores Differ (ANOVA) because of the ordinal nature of the data. In the data sets for three measures (posttest improvement, courseware usage, and document quality), the three response levels were not equally spaced because some data fell below the lowest level cutoff; consequently, modified ridit scores are reported for these three measures. Where table cell sizes were inadequate, Fisher’s exact tests were used. Where continuous response variables were available, nonparametric statistics were obtained using Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests where applicable. Correlations are reported as Somers’s d C|R statistics because the data are ordinal and contain a distinct response variable. Loglinear modeling was not appropriate because the data sets contain a clear response variable (Stokes, Davis, and Koch 2000). Logistic regression was not used because of insuffi- cient sample size. Measures were obtained of associations for the above contingency table data, that is, for associations between each learning scale (e.g., active vs. reflective) and each of the nine response variables for which data were col- lected. In addition, because student data were collected from two different versions (collaborative and self-directed) and sessions (full and summer), additional statistics were run to control for these variables. Finally, similar sta- tistics were obtained for each individual learning dimension, that is, active, reflective, sensing, intuitive, and others. Data were analyzed from a number of perspectives. First, associations were noted between the two dimensions on each of the four learning style scales and the measures studied, for instance, if there was a significant associ- ation between the quiz grades of active versus reflective learners. The version in which the student took the course was reviewed to see if quiz grades were significantly different between active and reflective learners depending on 80 BATTALIO whether they took the collaborative or self-directed version. The same was done for course session. Finally, each learning dimension was studied individ- ually to see if the version students took mattered, that is, if reflective learners taking the self-directed version had significantly higher grades than did reflec- tive learners in the collaborative version. RESULTS Reflective learners appear to have been more successful in the online course, and adapted to it better, than any of the other learning dimensions tested. The significant results are summarized below and shown in Table 1. Reflective learners: Final exams and posttest improvement of reflective students were significantly higher than active learners in one or more of the conditions studied. Reflective learners used course management software and interacted online significantly more than their active counterparts. Most nota- bly, even in the collaborative version, reflectives interacted more than their active counterparts. As expected, reflective learners preferred working alone more than did active learners. This was the case for those taking the full- session and self-directed courses but interestingly not for those in the collabo- rative version. Active learners: Significant positive associations among active learners were found only when comparing their performance with active learners in the other version or session. Among active learners themselves, those collaborating had significantly better semester grades than active learners in the self- directed version, but used the software in the self-directed version signifi- cantly more than those collaborating. No significant associations were found between active learners and their collaborative preferences. Sequential learners: Posttest improvement of sequential learners was significantly higher overall than that of global learners and, when controlling for version, was significantly higher in the self-directed version. DISCUSSION Given this sample of 120 students, data suggest that learning styles are associ- ated with student success in distance education. Learning style preference may also be a factor in student participation and in student attitudes about their online experience. As shown in Table 1, students with reflective learning styles were the primary beneficiaries of this learning preference. Noteworthy is that reflective learners taking the full session course did significantly better than active learners on their posttest measure, which was a good indicator of student learning because it measured the difference between students’ pre- and posttest exam scores. Reflective learners also preferred 81 T ab le 1 . L ea rn in g S ty le A ss oc ia ti on s (p ≤ . 01 67 ) A ss oc ia ti on s L ea rn in g sc al e M ea su re P ro b d A S E C L 9 8. 33 % B y le ar ni ng s ca le A ct iv e vs . re fl ec ti ve a F in al e xa m * 0. 00 97 ( n = 9 1) 0. 49 18 0. 13 85 0. 16 03 –0 .8 23 4 A ct iv e vs . re fl ec ti ve a P re fe rr ed w or ki ng a lo ne ** < 0 .0 01 b ( n = 1 13 ) 0. 38 05 0. 09 17 0. 16 10 –0 .6 00 0 S eq ue nt ia la v s. g lo ba l P os tt es t im pr ov em en t* 0. 00 59 ( n = 9 1) 0. 32 12 0. 10 95 0. 10 66 –0 .5 35 9 L ea rn in g sc al e by s es si on F ul l R ef le ct iv e A m ou nt o f in te ra ct io n 0. 01 67 b ( n = 3 1) 0. 45 38 0. 16 80 0. 05 17 –0 .8 55 8 F ul l R ef le ct iv e P os tt es t im pr ov em en t 0. 01 61 ( n = 7 1) 0. 31 03 0. 12 12 0. 02 03 –0 .6 00 4 F ul l R ef le ct iv e P re fe rr ed w or ki ng a lo ne ** 0. 00 30 b ( n = 6 9) 0. 44 76 0. 11 46 0. 17 34 –0 .7 21 9 L ea rn in g sc al e by v er si on C ol la b R ef le ct iv e A m ou nt o f in te ra ct io n 0. 01 02 ( n = 5 7) 0. 37 10 0. 12 88 0. 06 27 –0 .6 79 3 C ol la b R ef le ct iv e C ou rs ew ar e us e* 0. 00 49 ( n = 5 9) 0. 40 21 0. 12 47 0. 10 37 –0 .7 00 5 S el f- d R ef le ct iv e P re fe rr ed w or ki ng a lo ne ** 0. 00 27 b ( n = 5 8) 0. 52 21 0. 11 49 0. 24 72 –0 .7 97 0 S el f- d S eq ue nt ia l P os tt es t im pr ov em en t* 0. 01 47 ( n = 6 0) 0. 34 16 0. 13 14 0. 02 72 –0 .6 56 1 W it hi n a le ar ni ng d im en si on A ct iv e: c ol la b S em es te r gr ad e 0. 01 61 ( n = 5 3) 0. 34 19 0. 13 80 0. 01 17 –0 .6 72 0 A ct iv e: s el f- d C ou rs ew ar e us e* 0. 00 81 ( n = 5 3) 0. 38 89 0. 13 20 0. 07 30 –0 .7 04 8 a D ir ec ti on o f th e as so ci at io n. b F is he r’ s ex ac t te st . *p < .0 1. * *p < .0 01 . 82 BATTALIO working alone (p = .0001). But interestingly, a moderately strong correlation (d = 0.5221) was found only for reflective learners taking the self-directed version. Yet these learners interacted significantly more than their active learner counterparts, even in the collaborative version of the course. Reflec- tive learners required to collaborate apparently were able to adapt to that envi- ronment as well and were successful academically regardless of version. Similarly, Mehlenbacher et al. (2000) found that their reflective learners were more successful in their interactive Web environment than were active learners. These results may mirror the observation by Palloff and Pratt (2007) that an online presence may alter one’s personality. They suggest, for instance, that introverts may be able to establish social presence more easily online, thus becoming more extroverted; the opposite, in turn, for extroverts. Dille and Mezack (1991, 29) reasoned that internally oriented students “per- ceive events as contingent upon their own behavior” and thus would be more willing than other learners to persevere in unfavorable circumstances—for instance, in collaborative assignments—in order to achieve success. Two other research studies may provide further insight into these reflective learn- ers’ unexpected collaborative efforts. Even though Lee and Lee (2006) found that extroverts interacted significantly more in threaded discussions than introverts, they also suggested that introverts may be prompted to contribute to discussions in which extroverts participate actively. Similarly, Ke and Carr-Chellman (2006) found that their solitary learners valued collaboration for the purpose of sharing perspectives with classmates, but were uncomfort- able having to rely on their peers’ efforts and time commitments. Perhaps the reflective learners in this study collaborated more in order to compensate for what they believed to be insufficient participation and effort by their active- learner peers. The only significant associations found for active learners were those in which comparisons were made among themselves, and the results were what one would expect for active learners. Semester grades of active learners in the collaborative version were significantly better than those of these same learn- ers in the self-directed version. Regarding courseware use, active learners in the self-directed version used it significantly more than did these learners col- laborating. This result may demonstrate the extent to which active learners rely on their fellow students for information about their courses, referring to class materials only as a last resort, which supports these students’ categoriza- tion as active learners. Although Mehlenbacher et al. (2000) found global learners to be more successful online, this study found the opposite. Sequential learners signifi- cantly outperformed global learners in posttest improvement (p < .01), a good measure of academic performance. Perhaps the course organization and/or software interface may have enabled sequential learners, identified as prefer- ring a traditional, sequentially organized environment, to be successful, reflecting the findings by Aragon, Johnson, and Shaik (2002) of the importance LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATS 83 of delivery method in offsetting learning-style differences. However, that no significant associations favored global learners appears noteworthy. Finally, that there were no significant associations regarding course sat- isfaction deserves comment. Particularly given the high level of statistical significance for reflective learners’ preference for working alone, one would expect that reflective learners in the self-directed version would be signifi- cantly more satisfied than active learners in this version. At the least, one would expect to find significant negative associations among active learners in self-directed versions and reflective learners in collaborative versions. However, students’ responses to course satisfaction may not have had as much to do with the course itself as with the fact that the online format satis- fied other, perhaps more immediate, personal needs. Students’ reasons for taking the course online mirrored those reported in many other studies. Most often mentioned were busy schedule (32%), flexibility (10%), time savings (10%), less travel (9%), and convenience (4%). That the course satisfied these needs perhaps overrode whatever feelings of dissatisfaction that may have been caused by the presentation, content, or outcomes of the course itself. Felder and Soloman (n.d.) acknowledge that people tend to share at least some of the characteristics of the active, reflective, sensing, and intuitive learning dimensions identified by their index. This sharing may explain the failure of the study to find significant associations between sensing and intui- tive learners, but makes the contrast between reflective and active learners even more striking. Even though the other four learning dimensions may not share this kind of interconnection, there are likely to be circumstances, for instance, where global learners having a reflective orientation are more easily able to relate new bits of information to a larger understanding than can global learners with active-learner inclinations. Finding the interconnections among the scales is a more difficult task and one beyond the scope of this study because the data needed to test the interconnections among all eight dimen- sions would require a much larger student sample. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study have shown significant associations between stu- dents’ learning styles and success in distance education and offer insight into the relationship between learning style and mode of delivery. Consider- ing the numerous associations found between reflective learners and the measures studied, this type of learner appears to be the greatest beneficiary of the online environment. Reflective learners were more successful aca- demically than their active counterparts. Even in the collaborative version, these learners, whose preference for working alone reflects a major charac- teristic of their learning style, still participated in these collaborative classes 84 BATTALIO and used the course software significantly more than did active learners. Consequently, it appears that these learners are able to adapt well in either context and thus may be the most successful online learners. It should be noted that, although correlations in the study were in the low to moderate positive range, the number of associations favoring reflective learners sup- ports these conclusions. Because sequential learners improved significantly more than global learners on their posttest grades, these results may indicate an advantage for these online learners as well, though to a lesser degree than for reflective learners. There were three instances where significant associations were found in full-session courses. Logically, the more time students have with course materials, the better they will absorb course content, thus enabling them to demonstrate a greater level of learning. The only pattern continued to be the presence of reflective learners in all of these associations, which mir- rors the rest of the study’s findings. Enrolling in full versus summer session courses does not appear on its own to advantage any of the learning styles tested. Whatever the association between student learning style and success in distance education, Allen et al. (2002, 92) describe the main issues: (1) identi- fying students “who work better in a noninteractive or other environment and tailoring the educational procedures to the style that would best serve the student” and (2) determining the appropriate match between the student and the particular instructional format. Given the results of this study, offering both collaborative and self- directed versions of the same course would appear useful. Active learners made significantly higher semester grades in the collaborative version, whereas reflective learners overwhelmingly preferred working independently. Thus, making available these two versions for each Internet course would seem advantageous, particularly if student satisfaction is a major consider- ation. However, given the ability of reflective learners to adapt to an interac- tive environment, a collaborative version would appear to be a reasonable alternative. The additional work required to maintain both iterations would not seem justified for summer session courses given that no significant associ- ations were found. In concluding their meta-analysis, Allen et al. (2002) pointed out the administrative problems in accommodating learning-style differences because “current diagnostic tools and the implementation of this [diagnosis] as a general procedure and the subsequent effects are currently unknown” (92). The results reported here indicate that a learning-style instrument identifying students’ reflective-active and sequential-global preferences would be one such tool in both determining the match between student and instructional format and measuring students’ potential success in distance education. LEARNING STYLES AND MULTIPLE FORMATS 85 REFERENCES Ahn, J., and M. Ahn. 2000. The relationship between learners’ personality types to their performance in computer-mediated distance education. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunica- tions 2000 (1): 1805. Allen, M., J. Bourhis, N. Burrell, and E. Mabry. 2002. Comparing student satisfaction with distance education to traditional classrooms in higher education: A meta-analysis. The American Journal of Distance Education 16 (2): 83–97. Angeli, C., and N. Valanides. 2004. 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work_vb6bbllejrhu7bdmk67wgc2vq4	----	10.11648.j.ijeedu.20160501.12 International Journal of Elementary Education 2016; 5(1): 8-16 Published online January 9, 2016 (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijeedu) doi: 10.11648/j.ijeedu.20160501.12 ISSN: 2328-7632 (Print); ISSN: 2328-7640 (Online) The Potential Impact of Online/Distance Education for K-12 Special Education Students: A Meta-Analytic Investigation Karen H. Larwin 1 , Matthew J. Erickson 2 1 Department of Educational Foundations, Research, Technology and Leadership, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, USA 2 Department of Special Education, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA Email address: khlarwin@ysu.edu (K. H. Larwin), matthew.erickson@sru.edu (M. J. Erickson) To cite this article: Karen H. Larwin, Matthew J. Erickson. The Potential Impact of Online/Distance Education for K-12 Special Education Students: A Meta- Analytic Investigation. International Journal of Elementary Education. Vol. 5, No. 1, 2016, pp. 8-16. doi: 10.11648/j.ijeedu.20160501.12 Abstract: The present meta-analysis is a comprehensive investigation of the effectiveness of online/distance educational opportunities on student achievement specifically for students with disabilities in grades K-12. An overall effect size of d = - .015 was calculated from 7 studies for a total of 54 different effect size measures, based on a sample of data from n = 24,031 participants. These results suggest that the achievement level of the typical students with disabilities did not differ from the achievement of students in the control group. However, further investigation indicates that students with disabilities experiencing online/distance education performed better than comparable students with disabilities who were in traditional face-to-face classrooms. Study demonstrates that sub-categories can be used to further the understanding of how the use of online/distance education could serve as one solution for shrinking the achievement gap for exceptional individuals. Implications and limitations are discussed. Keywords: Online Education, Online Learning, Distance Education, K-12, Special Education, Meta-Analysis 1. Introduction “Online courses and blended courses (combining online and face-to-face) have been used for more than a decade” in education (Francescucci & Foster, 2013). As technology is developed to enhance the learning experience for students, schools are continually exploring strategies to implement new learning tools. These technological advancements have provided the opportunity for asynchronicity to transition from the norm for content delivery in online courses, now, combined with some synchronous tools, such as instant messaging software for feedback or questions, the virtual classroom more closely mimics the experience of face-to- face classroom interaction (Francescucci & Foster, 2013, Graham, 2013). Distance education courses were initially designed to support educational opportunities to students who were limited due to geographic location or lifestyle to attend a face-to-face educational setting. The availability of online learning tools has provided flexibility and the opportunity to complete course requirements from nearly any location. According to Burton and Goldsmith (2002, p. 3), “the increased ease of communication between participants, greater equality of participation in the discussion, anonymity of participants, reduction in bias, ability to recruit diverse population, and the ability to address more controversial topics” are some of the advantages to distance education. In contrast, perceived disadvantages exist within the distance education arena. The “underrepresentation of the overall population because only internet users are included, loss of verbal cues during communication, potential privacy and confidentiality concerns, and a high no-show rate among participants agreeing but failing to participate in online forums” tend to be ongoing shortcomings in the online setting (Burton & Bruening, 2003, p. 320). As technologies advance, some of these concerns are challenged with the development of emoticons and abbreviations to augment the lack of nonverbal and paraverbal cues in an online environment (Schneider, Kerwin, Frechtling, & Vivari, 2002). 1.1. Choice Expenses incurred by both colleges and universities, which ultimately impact the student in the form of fees and opportunity costs make the establishment of distance education models a financial risk. “Students would be attracted to less burdensome options if institutions were to International Journal of Elementary Education 2016; 5(1): 8-16 9 offer more flexible approaches to study that have a lower cost of provision and hence lower fees” (Yuan, Powell, & Oliver, 2014, p. 5). The purchase, development, and implementation of online learning tools which include, a learning management system (LMS), as well as content storage and retrieval systems, email communication, document drop boxes, grade inquiries, discussion boars, learning objects and content, as well as online testing capabilities make the appearance of an online program intimidating to construct. However, these features are both attractive and welcomed changes to today’s students who embrace the opportunity to work with technology to create a flexible mode of delivery. The introduction and implementation of online components into course delivery benefits both the schools, because of reduced costs, and the learner, through greater flexibility and convenience (Sadaghiani, 2011). 1.2. Student Achievement A comprehensive review and meta-analysis conducted by Means, Yoyama, Murphy, Bakia, and Jones (2009) that focuses on online learning studies in North America, found that on average, students perform better when part, or all of their learning takes place in an online environment compared with students who are in traditional face-to-face conditions. When exploring what the differences are between distance education and traditional face-to-face educational programming for students, research conducted by Means et al. (2009), as well as Zhang, Zhou, Briggs, and Nunamaker (2006) suggest that the interactions between the instructor and student are ultimately what impacts learning. No significant difference is found when online quizzes and non- interactive video are available to students, however, simulations that prompt learner response and reflection yield positive outcomes. Just as in traditional face-to-face classrooms, when the instructional content limits the response requirements and does not tap in to higher order thinking skills, the output produced by the student is limited and not challenged. In an online synchronous or asynchronous setting, or in a face-to-face setting, the greatest outcomes can be reached when students are provided with an opportunity to interact and think critically. However, some research suggests that distance education yields no notable impact on student achievement. Early blended offerings consisted of a traditional classroom approach with the addition of asynchronous online content. As technologies developed, both asynchronous, as well as synchronous, live online content was infused into instructional practices; however few studies control for the differences between treatment groups. Francescucci and Foster (2013) conducted a study that investigates the impact of teaching a blended course using a virtual, interactive, real- time, instructor-led (VIRI) classroom, on student engagement, performance, and satisfaction. Using an experimental design with a pre and post semester questionnaire, for ninety students at a large urban university, the study found no statistical differences in student performance between the control and the treatment groups. The various features offered in blended courses make it difficult to compare outcomes. According to the results, the only statistical difference was between the groups is student interest in their courses. Francescucci and Foster find that fewer than 2 in 10 students express dissatisfaction with their participation in a VIRI course. Likewise, Yong and Ping (2008) conducted a case study that included 14 academically at-risk primary students that were engaged in academic related tasks in an after school program that was mediated by a 3-D Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE). The results of this study found no significant difference in the students’ academic performance; however, the students were found to be more engaged in the learning tasks and had acquired a range of information and communication technology skills. This unique opportunity enticed students to be interested in specific content areas and engaged them in learning using technology. Studies utilizing online lectures and the face-to-face time, for interactive discussion, report significantly positive outcomes in student achievement (Dowling, Godfrey, & Giles (2003). However, Burton and Goldsmith (2002) suggests the most significant factor that influenced the distance educational experience centered on “the importance of the role of faculty in facilitation successful online courses through effective communication with their students, presence online, and timely assessment of student work throughout the course” (p. 2). Flexibility in online courses, discipline necessary to be successful, and the importance of communication among students as a means to enhance the online learning environment and the importance of student- focused support systems to foster a positive online learning experience were also listed as factors that emerged as significant to online learning environments. The individualized student-focused support systems and the flexibility provided by online /distance opportunities can provide promising options for students with disabilities. A study conducted by John Richardson (2009) analyzed the role of being disabled as a factor in the attainment and experiences of over 2,300 distance-learning students awarded post-secondary degrees in the United Kingdom. Richardson’s study highlighted problems at the collegiate level regarding disclosure of student disabilities in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The findings suggest that the attainment and overall experience of graduates who reported disabilities that they had not previously declared to the university were similar to those of graduates without a disability (Richardson, 2009). Little research expands the investigation regarding the impact of online/distance education to the K-12 academic arena for students with disabilities. According to Habib, Berget Sandnes, Kahn, Fagernes, & Olcay (2004) there has been “an increased focus on compensating for disabilities and ensuring universal access to the learning environment of students” (p. 574). Virtual learning environments have the “potential to extend equitable access to high-quality education to students from high-need urban and rural districts, low-achieving students, and students with 10 Karen H. Larwin and Matthew J. Erickson: The Potential Impact of Online/Distance Education for K-12 Special Education Students: A Meta-Analytic Investigation disabilities” (Spitler & Repetto, 2014, p. 4). The virtual environment provides a delivery model that is suited perfectly to address the unique needs of at-risk learners that can “use technology tools as they gather, arrange, and present information to others to engage in inquiry, critical analysis, and synthesis in connecting the curriculum, with real- world problems” (Peterson & Bond, 2004, p. 347). Students who have been distracted or deterred from learning due to their traditional school environment are “offered a welcomed break from the monotony of classroom instruction and have the opportunity to make choices about his or her learning” in virtual environments (Sivapunniam, 2009, p. 286). In a recent report about the academic achievement of 4-12 grade online students in Pennsylvania demonstrated that students with disabilities performed significantly below students in the same online learning environments who were not identified as disabled (Larwin, 2013). This is consistent with other research examining the performance of students in different online learning environments, when examining achievement across those identified with and without disabilities (Englert, Zhao, Dunsmore, Collings, & Wolbergs, 2014; Izzo, Yurick, Nagaraja, & Novak, 2010; Savi, Savenye, & Rowland, 2008). These results of all of these studies support the trend reported in national data suggesting that the achievement gap between students with and without disabilities is growing, in spite of many interventions intended to minimize these differences (NAEP, 2013). However, one study, Bodzin, Waller, Santoro, & Kale (2007) suggests that students with disabilities actually performed better than students without, in an online biology course. While this research was limited to n = 89 students, the findings suggest that the use of online curriculum can positively benefit student with disabilities when implementing an individualized student-focused approach to learning. A better measure of the impact of online/distance learning for students with disabilities comes from research comparing student with disabilities in online learning environments relative to students with disabilities in traditional settings. A paucity of empirical research exists which examines this contrast and the few research studies that do exist present somewhat mixed results. Research by Englert et al., (2014) and Izzo, et al. (2010) both revealed mixed findings on the performance of students with and without disabilities, across a number of different measures of student knowledge. Both of these researchers examined the use of online learning environments to support a blended learning environment. Conversely, both Englert, Wu, & Zhao, (2005) and Kim et al. (2006) found that students with disabilities in the online learning environment performed significantly higher on achievement measures than their peers receiving face-to-face instruction on the same content. These studies suggest that students benefited from the flexibility of the online learning opportunities. In light of the mixed findings on the limited existing research, it is difficult to draw clear-cut conclusions about the impact of online/distance instruction on the achievement of students with disabilities. A meta-analysis of these studies would be an appropriate and effective approach to synthesizing and integrating the conflicting results from the existing quantitative research. This approach would provide a general measure of the impact of online instruction on student achievement for students with disabilities that might otherwise be obscured by the conflicting results. It also would be beneficial to an overall understanding of the impact of online instruction on students with disabilities by investigate how the impact on student achievement is affected by grade level, core discipline area, measurement type, and year of the investigation. The present project conducts such a meta-analysis. 2. Method 2.1. Overview of Meta-Analysis The analytical method of choice for this study is a meta- analysis. A meta-analysis is a methodological approach in which data from multiple sources can be quantitatively synthesized in an effort to determine the overall effect of the phenomena of interest. Glass, McGaw, & Smith, (1981) described meta-analysis as “Analysis of analyses”. The purpose of the current meta-analytic application is to synthesize the data collected from multiple studies examining the impact of distance education participation by students identified as “special education”. This analytic approach will make it possible to determine the significance of multiple variables against an outcome variable, specifically student achievement for the current investigation. Glass et al. (1981) explains that a meta-analysis allows for studies with smaller sample sizes to be combined, thus, producing a much larger sample size. This in turn will increase the statistical power and reliability of the estimates (Larwin, 2005). Following the guidelines set forth by Glass et al. (1981), three steps were followed in conducting this meta-analytical study. First, existing research studies are collected to analyze against the outcome variable within each study. The studies collected fit the established parameters of the investigation, as well as, match the data of the specific research topic. It is likely that publication bias will be discovered while performing and analyzing the relevant studies. However, in order to minimize bias an exhaustive search was conducted for all available studies. Next, the studies were reviewed, described, classified and coded. An important aspect of this step involves measurement consistency. Studies were coding by two different researchers, in order to establish rater agreement, which is essentially a score of homogeneity for the ratings. This process creates reliability of the coding processes in the data, and is found to be reliable in the classifications more than 95% of the time. Lastly, the analysis was conducted which included computing an overall mean effect size measures, including each individual mean effect size measure for each research variable being studied. Once all the effect size measures were International Journal of Elementary Education 2016; 5(1): 8-16 11 calculated, the results were analyzed, interpreted, and reported as findings. More specifically, a singular effect size measure was computed for all of the studies followed by individual effect size measures for each of the moderator variables. 2.2. Research Questions The purpose of the current study is to examine the achievement of student’s identified as “special education” who are participating in online learning (Treatment Group) relative to students who do not fit into this grouping. This “treatment” group’s achievement will be compared to the achievement of student’s identified as “special education” who do not participating in online learn (Control Group A). Additionally, treatment group student achievement will be compare to students’ who are participating in online learning, but who are not identified as “special education” (Control Group B). In order to examine the multiple variables against the outcome variable of student achievement, data from the studies will be meta-analyzed to examine the following primary research questions: 1. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the control groups? 2. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the Control Group A? 3. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the Control Group B? 4. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the control group moderated by the student’s grade level (elementary, middle school, high school)? 5. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the control group moderated by the discipline area of the learning (mathematics, reading, science, writing, technology)? Secondary research questions will include: 6. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the control group moderated by the achievement measure used (local or state exam)? 7. Is academic achievement of the treatment group students different from the achievement of students in the control group moderated by the year of the study (2005-2013). 2.3. Sample of Studies The studies for the current investigation will be found using electronic search engines at Youngstown State University. Specifically data bases such as: Academic Search Complete, ERIC, EBSCO, and Dissertation Abstracts. Searches will include data generated between 2005 and 2014. The search descriptors included such statements as: online education and special education students, distance education and special education students, and students with disabilities and technology. Summaries, abstracts, and table of contents of articles were reviewed in order to select which studies to examine more thoroughly. The inclusion criteria for the current investigation are: 1. Research studies that include students with disabilities in grades preK-12; 2. Research studies that include online learning or distance education; 3. Research studies that include comparison group members; and, 4. Research that include some form of student achievement data. Articles were coded in an effort to address all proposed research questions. Student achievement data is used in the metric provided in the research, or it was decomposed for inclusion as needed. All the calculations for this investigation will be computed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (2009, CMA), a program designed for specifically conducting meta-analytic investigations. 3. Results The initial search for studies relating to search key words and phrases revealed a total of 69 studies. After eliminating studies that did not focus on school-age students from Kindergarten through twelfth grade which included data from some form of achievement data, sixteen studies met the selection criteria. After setting the selection criteria to perform an analysis that specifically provides comparison data on student achievement data, seven studies met the criteria for analysis. These seven studies provided a total of fifty-four different effect-size measures, which include a total data sample size of n = 24,031 participants. The primary and secondary questions were used to identify the moderators that were coded and analyzed using CMA to determine if there was any significant effect of the characteristics of distance education on the student achievement of students with disabilities, and if so, what is the level of the effect across the various levels of the moderators. Specifically, the analyses examines (1) the achievement results for students with disabilities in online classes relative to all other student data, (2) the achievement results for students with disabilities in online/distance classes relative to the achievement results of similar students with disabilities in traditional face-to-face classes (Control Group A), and (3) the achievement results for students with disabilities in online/distance classes relative the achievement results for students in online/distance classes who are not identified as “special education” (Control Group B). 3.1. Descriptive Analysis of Effect Sizes The primary purpose of this meta-analytic investigation was to investigate the impact online/distance education for students with disabilities on student achievement across a number of moderators. A comprehensive review of the 12 Karen H. Larwin and Matthew J. Erickson: The Potential Impact of Online/Distance Education for K-12 Special Education Students: A Meta-Analytic Investigation literature produced seven studies that met the inclusion criteria. The effect size measures within the study range from -1.41 to 3.10, yielding a grand mean overall effect size measure d = -.015, p < .848, a non-significant negative effect according to Cohen’s (1992) guidelines for effect sizes. Cohen (1992) suggests the following guidelines most appropriate for use in social sciences interpretation of effect sizes: an effect size greater than 0.5 is considered large, an effect size at least 0.3 is considered medium and an effect size less than 0.1 is considered small. This result (d = -.015 ) indicates that the there is no significant difference between the achievement results for students with disabilities in online classes relative to all other control group students achievement results, across the research studies included in this analysis. This effect size measure (d = -.015) indicates that negligible differences between these two groups of students. Twenty-eight of the 54 effect sizes (51.8%) that were used in this study were negative which implies that control group students performed better, whereas thirty-one (48.1%) were positive indicating students in the treatment group performed better. The analyses also reveals that 37 (68.5%) of the 54 effect size measures had a mean effect size of 0.5 or greater, an effect on student achievement according to Cohen (1992) were considered large. The results of additional analyses are presented in Table 1. Table 1. Overall Moderators and Level Results. Variables and Categories Number of Effect Size Measures With-In Groups Effects Mean Effect Size Comparison -.034* Special Ed Online vs Special Ed Traditional (Treatment Group vs Control Group A) 24 .497* Special Ed Online vs Non-Special Ed Online (Treatment Group vs Control Group B) 30 -.561* Core Discipline -.093* Mathematics 9 -.718* Reading 13 -.461* Science 11 -.111 Writing 15 .545* Technology 6 .300 Grade Level -.619* Elementary 26 .162 Middle School 9 -.812* High School 19 -.501 Assessment Measure Type -.190* Local 35 .373* State Testing 19 -.752* Publication Year -.619* 2005 2 1.548* 2006 5 .842 2007 22 .207 Variables and Categories Number of Effect Size Measures With-In Groups Effects Mean Effect Size 2008 2 .750 2010 8 -.338 2011 4 -.711 2012 4 -.621 2013 7 -.832 As indicated in Table 1, analyses examining if there is a differential impact on student achievement when examining the studies comparing (1) special education students using online instruction relative to special education students who did not utilize online instruction, to the existing research that compared (2) special education students using online instruction relative to non-special education students also using online instruction, indicate that there is a significant difference across these two groups (p > .05). Specifically, results indicate that students with disabilities perform significantly better in online/distance learning classes than similar groups of special education students in traditional face-to-face instruction on measures of student achievement (d = .497). This suggests a large positive impact for the use of online/distance education for students with disabilities. Conversely, students with disabilities perform significantly poorer in online/distance learning classes comparatively to similar groups of students who are not identified as special education but who took the same online/distance learning classes (d = -.561). More importantly is more comprehensive examination of the impact online of education for students with disabilities relative to Control Group A and Control Group B separately. Analysis of Control Group A studies reveals the greatest positive impact of online educational delivery for students with disabilities is indicated with a large significant effect in both reading (d = .936 ) and writing (d = .535) achievement. Additionally, results indicate that a positive effect is seen across all grade levels, with data for students in elementary school showing a large significant effect (d = .630). Also notable are large positive significant effects that are revealed for each data publication year from 2005-2008. Analysis of Control Group B studies reveals the greatest positive impact of online educational delivery for students with disabilities is indicated with a large significant effect in technology course (d = .895) achievement. However, results indicate that a negative effect is seen across all grade levels, with data for students in middle school showing a largest significant effect (d = -.774). This finding suggests that students who are not identified as special education are performing better in the online/distance delivery educational mode when compared to students identified as special education. Also notable are large negative significant effects that are revealed for each data publication year from 2008-2013. The complete results for the comparisons for both Control Group A and Control Group B are presented in Table 2. International Journal of Elementary Education 2016; 5(1): 8-16 13 Table 2. Grouped Moderators Effect Size Measures. Control Group A (Special Ed Not Online) Control Group B (Non- Special Ed Online) Variables and Categories Number of Effect Size Measures Mean Effect Size Number of Effect Size Measures Mean Effect Size Core Discipline Mathematics - - 9 -0.718* Reading 4 0.936* 9 -0.821* Science - - 11 -0.158 Writing 15 0.535* - - Technology 5 0.191 1 0.895* Grade Level Elementary 18 0.630* 8 -0.740* Middle School 1 0.494 8 -0.774* High School 5 0.194 14 -0.225* Measure Type Local 24 0.408* 11 0.077 State Testing - - 19 -0.752* Data Publication Year 2005 2 1.548* - - 2006 5 0.844* - - 2007 12 0.426* 10 -0.048 2008 1 0.478* 1 0.895* 2010 - - 4 -0.763* 2011 4 0.157 4 -0.720* 2012 - - 4 -0.644* 2013 - - 7 -0.820* 3.2. Publication Bias Publication bias is a concern when performing a meta- analysis, and a criticism of the meta-analytic approach (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004). Publication bias occurs when studies that find positive significant results for the effect being investigated are more likely to be published than studies that do not find significant findings therefore making it more likely that these studies will be included in meta- analytic investigations. Publication bias has the potential of inflating the effect size estimates (Hedges, 1986). Egger’s Test of the Intercept was used to further assess the presence of publication bias in the current investigation. For the current investigation, Egger’s test reveals that the intercept is 3.96, CI95 [2.97, 4], .95with t (52) = 8.02, p = 0.001. The significant results indicate that publication bias is a concern with the current group of research studies. However, visual examination of the data reveals that bias is in a negative direction, in that a preponderance of the effect size measures included in this investigation revealed negative effects, as seen in Figure 1. In the absence of any bias, the effect size measure points are evenly scattered within the plot. As indicated in Figure 1, a group effect size points are forming a funnel effect in the negative hemisphere, approximately between zero and negative one. This type of bias while significant, does not bias the results in a positive direction. Figure 1. Funnel Plot of Precision of Effect Size Measures. 4. Discussion The current investigation sought to examine the impact on online/distance learning on students with disabilities. This investigation examined this impact by meta-analyzing existing research on the academic achievement of disabled students in various online learning conditions relative to similar disabled students receiving the same instruction in a traditional face-to- face delivery, as well as to similar non-disabled students who were receiving the same online instruction. Results suggest that students with disabilities participating in online/distance education performed significantly better on many academic measures when compared to similar disabled students receiving the same instruction in a traditional format. Conversely, students with disabilities performed significantly poorer than non-disabled students participating in the same online/distance education delivery. 14 Karen H. Larwin and Matthew J. Erickson: The Potential Impact of Online/Distance Education for K-12 Special Education Students: A Meta-Analytic Investigation The first finding of this investigation suggests that students with disabilities may benefit from online/distance education options. The results are derived from a research sample of n = 3558 students with disabilities. These findings indicated that students with disabilities in the online/distance learning sections outperformed at all grade levels and in all topic areas (reading, writing, and technology). These effect size measures are significantly large, suggesting elevated performance levels of 15 to 33 percentile points (Cohen, 1992). This is the first known study to demonstrate a large significant effect for students of disabilities in online learning environments using meta-analytic techniques. Unfortunately, there is no known existing research that compares the performance of these two groups in mathematics or science. The second finding validates the existing research on the academic achievement of students with disabilities relative to other students (NAEP, 2013). The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) describes the educational achievement levels of students with disabilities as “dismal”. The achievement gap that has traditionally existed between disabled students and other students, according to the 2013 report is growing. The findings of the current investigation support the supposition. Students identified as disabled performed significantly lower than their non-disabled counterparts across all grade levels and in all core curricula areas. While this is not the focus of this investigation, there are implications from these findings for those who develop and deliver online education to disabled populations. Since the first finding of this research suggests that students with disabilities in the online/distance learning environment are excelling over the students with disabilities who are in comparable face-to-face environments, this suggests that online/distance learning opportunities offer students with disabilities a learning environment that is more conducive to their personal challenges. Meehan, Cowley, Schumacher, Hauser, & Croom (2003) research suggests that with less time dedicated toward administrative routines, and more time dedicated on instruction student-led activities, effective management and monitoring techniques, that achievement gaps can be reduced for students with disabilities. Online/distance educational opportunities can provide students with these needed educational benefits. Bodzin, et al. s (2007) study purported contradictory findings. This research demonstrated that students with disabilities in their population performed better on the online learning component of their biology classes. However, their use of online/distance education was used to supplement information in a blended delivery format. The moderator of grade level followed the same pattern as the first and second research findings. Non-disabled students demonstrated small to large significantly higher effect size measures over students with disabilities in the same online/distance education classes across all grade levels. Consistently, students with disabilities in online/distance education demonstrated small to large significantly higher effect size measures over students with disabilities in the similar face-to-face sections. This same pattern of results was demonstrated across the core curriculum areas. Unfortunately, there is very little rigorous research on the effectiveness of online learning focused on K-12 students and even less research on the impact online instruction for students with disabilities (Graham, 2013; Meehan, et al., 2003; NCD, 2004; USDE, 2010). According to the USDE report, most of the research found that adult learners performed better in the online instructional arenas; and online instruction in which there was ongoing collaboration and monitoring by the facilitator – as opposed to independent learning – demonstrated the greatest impact. It also suggests that the five studies on the efficacy of online instruction, four of which included blended instruction, provided promise for this delivery in the K-12 arena. Also notable are the results regarding form of measurement. For the comparison between the type of achievement results of students with disabilities, online and not online, local achievement results demonstrated a moderate significant effect. For the same comparison between the achievement of students with disabilities online relative to students with no disabilities online, results suggest a large significant effect found with state level achievement measures. While it may be argued that state level achievement measures are likely more standardized measures, these are not often considered to be a good measure of student achievement (Thomas, 2013). Secondly, many students with disabilities do not consistently participate in state level measures, with our without accommodations (NCD, 2004). Limitations There were number of limitations associated with this research study. A number of individual studies are small for the current sample of studies. Although this might have occurred as the result of an insufficient computer literature search strategy, that was not the case for the current investigation. The literature search process was thorough and exhaustive and turned up a number of additional empirical research studies not included in the past meta-analytic reviews of this subject area. As indicated above, the result is that there are relatively few studies that look at online learning within the K-12 arena and with students with disabilities. Another limitation of the present study is associated with meta-analytic studies in general. It can be the case with the meta-analytic approach that it is difficult to break categories down enough to examine as much information as possible without creating too much overlap in the results. Although these overlaps in categories can be used as a form of “triangulation” and a reliability check, they can also cause redundancy and useless repetition. However, a benefit to the meta-analytic process is that synthesize data from a number of studies on the same topic provides for larger sample sizes than are generally found in single studies. These larger sample sizes increase the reliability of the research findings (Glass, et al. 1981). Also with the meta-analytic approach, the meta-analytic researcher is at the mercy of the authors who have conducted research in the area. The researcher has International Journal of Elementary Education 2016; 5(1): 8-16 15 to rely on the authors or individual researchers to report results accurately, describe the studies well, report statistics appropriately, and respond to inquiries about their research if there are any questions or discrepancies. The current state of education for students with disabilities demands action. According the most recent nation reports, the gap that exists between students with and without disabilities is growing, in spite of efforts to create a more conducive educational environment for this population of exceptional individuals (NAEP, 2013). The results of the current investigation provide some hope to the dark cloud that hangs over the impact of special education today. With increasing options for online and blended curriculum, today like no time in history, educators and parents are equipped with choices that can maximize the learning of students with disabilities. As the results of this meta-analytic study, based on a sample of data from 3,558 students with disabilities, demonstrates, online and blended opportunities can be used to supplement and enhance the educational experiences of students with disabilities, potentially increasing their overall performance as much as 13-33 percentile points. These kinds of results would eliminate half of the currently existing achievement gap existing between the achievement results of students with and without disabilities (NAEP, 2013). While more research is needed, across all arenas of K-12 online instruction (Graham, 2013), and across different core areas of instruction, this research provides insight to one readily available medium of educational delivery that can disproportionally impact our exceptional individuals. References [1] Bodzin, A. M., Waller, P. L., Santoro, L. E., & Kale, D. (2007). Investigating the use of inquiry and web-based activities with inclusive biology learners. The American Biology Teacher, 69(5), 273-279. [2] Burton, L. J. & Bruening J. E. (2003) Technology and methodology intersect in the on-line focus group. Quest, 55 (4), 315-327. [3] Burton, L, & Goldsmith, D. (2002). Students’ experiences in online course: A study using asynchronous online focus groups. Report presented to the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium. Retrieved from http://www.ctdlc.org/ResourceDocs/evaluation/StudentExperi ence.pdf [4] Cohen, J. (1992). “A power primer”. Psychological Bulletin 112 (1): 155-159. New York University. Retrieved December 18, 2012 from http://web.vu.lt/fsf/d.noreika/files/2011/10/Cohen-J-1992-A- power-primer-kokio-reikia-imties-dyd%C5%BEio.pdf [5] Comprehensive Meta-Analysis. (2009). Retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.metaanalysis.com [6] Dowling, C., Godfrey, J. M., & Gyles, N. (2003). Do hybrid flexible delivery teaching methods improve accounting students’ learning outcomes? Accounting Education, 12, 373– 391. [7] Egger, M., Smith, G. D., Schneider, M., & Minder, C. (September 1997). "Bias in meta-analysis detected by a simple, graphical test". BMJ, 315 (7109): 629–624. [8] Englert, C. S., Wu, X., Zhao, Y. (2005). Cognitive tools for writing: Scaffolding performance of students through technology. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 20(3), 184-198. [9] Englert, C. S., Zhoa, Y., Dunsmore, K., Collings, N. Y., & Wolbres, K. (2014). Learning Disability Quarterly, 30(1), 9- 29. [10] Francescucci, A., & Foster, M. (2013). The VIRI classroom: the impact of blended synchronous online course on student performance, engagement, and satisfaction. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 43(3), 78-91. [11] Glass, G. V., McGaw, B., & Smith, M. L. (1981). Meta- analysis I social research. London: Sage Publications. [12] Graham, C. R. (2013). Emerging practice and research in blended learning. In M. G. Moore (Ed.), Handbook of distance education (3rd ed., pp. 333–350). New York, NY: Routledge. [13] Habib, L., Berget, G., Sandnes, F. E., Sanderson, N., Kahn, P., Fagernes, S., & Olcay, A. (2012). Dyslexic students in higher education and virtual learning environments: An exploratory study. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2012.00486.x. [14] Hedges, L. V. (1983). A random effects model for effect sizes. Psychological Bulletin, 93, 388-395. [15] Hunter, J. E., & Schmidt, F. L. (2004). Methods of meta- analysis: Correcting error and bias in research findings (2 nd edition). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hillsdale, NJ. [16] Izzo, M. V., Yurick, A., Nagaraja, H. N., & Novak, J. A. (2010). Effects of a 21 st -Century curriculum on students information technology and transition skills. Career Development for Exceptional Individuals. 33(2), 95-105. [17] Kim, A., Vaughn, S., Klingner, J. K., Woodruff, A. L., Reutebuch, C. K., & Kouzekanani, K. (2006). Improving the reading comprehension of middle school students with disabilities through computer-assisted collaborative strategic reading. Remedial and Special Education, 27(4), 235-249. [18] Larwin, K. H. (2005). The impact of computer-assisted instruction on student achievement in post-secondary statistics education: A meta-analysis. (Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Kent State University). [19] Larwin, K. H. (2013, April). Examining academic impacts of online education on special education populations: 2010-2013 results from publically Pennsylvania State Educational Data. Presentation to the Western Pennsylvania school administrators. [20] Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2009). U. S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation of Evidence- Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Washington, D. C. [21] Meehan, M. L., Cowley, K. S., Schumacher, D., Hauser, B., & Croom, N. D. M. (2003, July). Classroom environment, instructional resources, and teaching differences in high- performing Kentucky schools with achievement gaps. Charleston, WV: AEL, Inc. 16 Karen H. Larwin and Matthew J. Erickson: The Potential Impact of Online/Distance Education for K-12 Special Education Students: A Meta-Analytic Investigation [22] NCD (2004). Improving Educational Outcomes for Students with Disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.educationalpolicy.org/pdf/ncd.pdf [23] NAEP (2013). Policy Insider: Council for Exceptional Children. Retrieved from http://www.policyinsider.org/2013/11/naep-results-show- wide-achievement-gaps-between-students-with-without- disabilities.html [24] Peterson, C., L., & Bond, N. (2004). Online compared to face- to-face teacher preparation for learning standards-based planning skills. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, (36)4, 345-347. [25] Richardson, J. T. E. (2009). The attainment and experiences of disabled students in distance education. Distance Education, 30(1), 87-88. [26] Sadaghiani, H. R. (2011). Using multimedia learning modules in a hybrid-online course in electricity and magnetism. Physical Education Research, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.7.010102. [27] Savi, C. O., Savenye, W., & Rowland, C. (2008). The effects of implementing web accessibility standards on the success of secondary adolescents. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 17(3), 387-411. [28] Schneider, S., Kerwin, J., Frechtling, J., & Vivari, B. (2001). Characteristics of the discussion. in online and face-to-face focus groups. Social Science Computer Review, 20(1). 31-42. [29] Spitler, C., Repetto, J., & Cavanaugh, C. (2013). Investigation of a Special Education Program in a Public Cyber Charter School, American Journal of Special Education, doi: 10.1080/08923647.2013.754182, 27(1), 4-15. [30] Sivapunniam, N. (2009). Virtual realities: a blended learning approach to bridge the gap between diverse ESL learners. Retrieved August 28, 2014, from http://www.ukm.my/solls09/Proceeding/PDF/nackeeran.pdf [31] Thomas, E. (2013) A meta-analytic investigation examining effective characteristics of professional development in k-12 education since the inception of the no child left behind act of 2002. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Youngstown State University). [32] U. S. Department of Education (2010). Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta- Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Retrieved from www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html. [33] Yuan, L., Powell, S., & Oliver, B. (2014). Beyond MOOCs: Sustainable online learning in institutions. Center for Educational Technology, Interoperability, and Standards. Retrieved from http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2014/898 [34] Yong, T. L., & Ping, L. C. (2008) Engaging academically at risk primary school students in an ICT mediated after school program. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 24(5), 521-539. [35] Zhang, D., Zhou, L., Briggs, R. O., & Nunamaker, J. F. (2006). Instructional video in e-learning: Assessing the impact of interactive video on learning effectiveness. Information and Management, 43, 15-27. 
work_vcuq3jfekbdndicrh7apvgbtya	----	DSpace DSpace niet meer beschikbaar Wegens de overgang naar het nieuwe onderzoeksinformatiesysteem PURE is DSpace niet meer beschikbaar. Er wordt op dit moment hard gewerkt aan het valideren van de onderzoeksoutput in PURE. Na validatie wordt de researchoutput getoond via https://research.ou.nl Let op, niet alle onderzoeksoutput zal worden getoond in PURE, dit is mede afhankelijk van het beleid binnen de verschillende faculteiten. Heeft u vragen, dan kunt u een e-mail sturen naar het PURE support team pure-support@ou.nl t.a.v. Katrine Bengtsson, Pure-co&oumlrdinator. 
work_vcz2mxepmvcfxni5jouxg6hhau	----	[PDF] Distance education on digitization: evaluation of an application in Turkey | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.1108/AP-11-2011-0049 Corpus ID: 32735130Distance education on digitization: evaluation of an application in Turkey @article{Yilmaz2013DistanceEO, title={Distance education on digitization: evaluation of an application in Turkey}, author={B. Yilmaz and {\"O}zg{\"u}r K{\"u}lc{\"u} and Yurdag{\"u}l {\"U}nal and Tolga Çakmak}, journal={Aslib Proc.}, year={2013}, volume={65}, pages={336-357} } B. Yilmaz, Özgür Külcü, +1 author Tolga Çakmak Published 2013 Computer Science, Engineering Aslib Proc. Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a distance education program in the field of digitization which was carried out in Turkey in 2011. In total, 805 people, comprising librarians, archivists and museum specialists, applied for three certification programs. The paper evaluates the distance education in terms of content and organization on the basis of participants' opinions and determines how and to what extent the education has changed the awareness of participants on… Expand View via Publisher bby.hacettepe.edu.tr Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 2 Citations View All Figures, Tables, and Topics from this paper figure 1 table I table II table III table IV View All 5 Figures & Tables Librarian Europeana Digital recording Awareness Sampling (signal processing) Theory Library (computing) Content management system Information management Public library Reflection (computer graphics) Email Entity 2 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Problems and Decision in the Field of Distance Education Safiullin Lenar, Fatkhiev Artur, Saipullaev Ullubi, Bagautdinova Nailya Computer Science 2014 16 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Global Information Educational Resources: Methodological Issues Safiullin Nail, M. Elvira, Safiullin Lenar, Saipullaev Ullubi Business 2015 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 32 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE SCHOOLS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY K. Umemoto Engineering 2009 14 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Towards exploring a global scenario of e-learning in library and information science schools Md. Shiful Islam, S. Kunifuji, T. Hayama, Motoki Miura Computer Science 2011 16 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Education for Digitization: How Do We Prepare?. C. A. Perry Political Science 2005 18 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Educating future digitizers: The Illinois Digitization Institute's Basics and Beyond digitization training program Amy Lynn Maroso Engineering, Computer Science Libr. Hi Tech 2005 11 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Distance Education in Library and Information Science Discipline: The Valdosta State University Case W. Koehler, V. Blair Engineering 2003 5 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed E-Learning in LIS Education: Case Study of SHPT School of Library Science Jyoti Bhabal Engineering 2008 6 View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed Student Achievement in Online Distance Education Compared to Face-to-Face Education Namsook Jahng, Don H. Krug, Z. Zhang Psychology 2007 102 PDF View 2 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed e-learning support for LIS education in UK G. Chowdhury, S. Chowdhury Computer Science 2006 7 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Overcoming Isolation in Distance Learning: Building a Learning Community through Time and Space N. Croft, Alice Dalton, M. Grant Engineering 2010 79 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Digitization Education: Courses Taken and Lessons Learned M. Dahlström, Alen Doracic Computer Science D Lib Mag. 2009 15 Highly Influential PDF View 3 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 ... Related Papers Abstract Figures, Tables, and Topics 2 Citations 32 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_vex43kf2izf2fho5s5t24jghce	----	A study on the relationship between pre-service teachers’ information literacy skills and their attitudes towards distance education Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1648–1652 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com * Soner Mehmet Özdemir; Tel: +90-318-357-2486 / 1379; fax: +90-318-357-2487 Email address: ozdemir.soner@gmail.com World Conferences on Education Sciences 2009 A study on the relationship between pre-service teachers’ information literacy skills and their attitudes towards distance education Soner Mehmet Özdemira* Oktay Akba a, Recep Çakırb a Faculty of Education, Kırıkkale University, Kırıkkale 71450 Turkey b Faculty of Education, Middle East Technical University, nkara 06531 Turkey Received October 08, 2008; revised December 25, 2008; accepted January 06, 2009 Abstract This paper presents the relationship between pre-service teachers’ information literacy skills and their attitudes towards distance education. Two questionnaires were administered to 235 pre-service teachers enrolled in the department of primary school teaching, the department of science teaching and the department of Turkish language teaching at Kırıkkale University in Turkey in order to examine their attitudes and their literacy skills. Results of this study show that there is no significant relationship between participants’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance learning. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Information literacy; distance education; preservice teachers; attitude. 1. Introduction Education is a lifelong activity. Various factors such as the global economy, competitive environment, professional mobility and individuals’ development needs require that education is, more than ever, a lifelong process (EURYDICE, 2001). In addition, many studies have proven that technology is an important component of modern-day education. For example, Pierson (2001) stated that integrating technology tools into teaching and learning programs is an inseparable part of good teaching. Yıldırım (2000) also claimed that teachers should obtain appropriate technological competence during their pre-service education to meet their future students’ needs. Lifelong learning is a fact to which all modern education systems give importance. Lifelong learning processes also include distance education, in which educational technologies play an important role. 1877-0428 © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.291 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Soner Mehmet Özdemir et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1648–1652 1649 1.1. Distance education Generally, teaching in schools has been delivered face to face. However, today individuals not only need face-to- face education, but also may need to develop themselves by way of distance education. In addition, individuals’ information literacy levels have an important effect on the success of distance education. Students, managers, workers, housewives, retired people, teachers and teacher candidates are some of the groups that may need to benefit from distance education. One of the groups that benefits from distance education facilities and that has high information literacy is university students. According to McIsaac and Gunawardena (1996), distance education delivers education to students who are not physically present at the site of education delivery. They also claimed that interaction between students and teachers increases in distance education. Moreover, most distance education courses rely on technologies which are either already in place or are being considered for their cost-effectiveness. Distance learning programs have played an increasingly important role in the achievement of universities’ goals in recent years, and the trend seems likely to continue (Dewald, Crane, Booth, & Levine, 2000). 1.2. Information literacy The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) characterized information literacy as a set of abilities which allow learners to recognize when information is needed and to use information efficiently. They also assumed that information literacy is increasingly important because of the rapid expansion of technology-based information resources (ACRL, 2000). On the other word, information is now widely available via multiple media. Therefore, ACRL (2000) defines the information literacy standards for individuals as follows: 1. Students are able to determine the level of information 2. They are able to access the needed information effectively 3. They can evaluate information and its sources critically 4. They are able to integrate selected information into their knowledge base 5. They are able to use information effectively to reach a particular aim 6. They are able to understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding given information 7. They are able to use of information ethically and legally More recently, Akkoyunlu (2008) stated that individuals who have information literacy skills motivate themselves in lifelong learning. Therefore, students in higher education should acquire information literacy skills to progress in their learning. In addition, successful distance education courses should consider participants’ information literacy skills to improve instruction (Akkoyunlu, 2008; Dewald et al., 2000). 2. Method The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between pre-service teachers’ information literacy skills and their attitudes towards distance learning. The survey method was used in the study, which refers to the explanation of events or facts that took place at any time in any group of participants or study sample. 2.1. Participants The present study was conducted using a sample of pre-service teachers attending the Faculty of Education in Kırıkkale University. The sample consisted of 235 pre-service teachers enrolled in Kırıkkale University, Faculty of Education, and Department of Elementary Education in Fall 2008. Of the participants, 84 were in the science teaching department, 82 were in the primary school teaching department and 69 were in the Turkish language teaching department. 1650 Soner Mehmet Özdemir et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1648–1652 2.2. Instruments In the study, data were collected through two instruments. These were 1. Information Literacy Scale prepared by Aldemir (2004), and 2. Distance Education Attitude Scale developed by A ır, Gür and Okçu (2008). 2.2.1. Information literacy scale This is a Likert-type scale composed of 35 items. It is reported that the steps such as identifying the need for information, searching, obtaining, using and transmitting information, and assessment of the process were taken as bases for developing the scale. As the scale was developed to identify the information literacy level of pre-service teachers, it was used in its original version. The scale was administered to 235 pre-service teachers, and exploratory factor analysis was conducted to find the sub-factors of the scale. During the factor analysis, the varimax rotating technique was used. As a result of this rotating operation, a six-factor structure was found. In analyzing the structure of the factors, factor one was named “identifying the need for information”, factor two was “searching for information on the Web”, factor three was “searching for information at the library”, factor four was “assessment of the process”, factor five was “interpretation of the information”, and factor six was “doing homework”. Factor loadings of the items in the scale were seen to be between .390 and .824. Total variance explained by these six factors is reported as 56%. Furthermore, one item was extracted from the scale since it supports more than one factor. The Cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be 0.92. 2.2.2. Distance education attitude scale The Distance Education Attitude Scale is a Likert-type scale composed of 21 items. A ır, Gür and Okçu (2008) reported that the scale consisted of six factors and the Cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient of 0.83. This scale was administered to 235 pre-service teachers and an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify sub- factors of the scale. A one-factor structure composed of 16 items was found as a result. Rotation was not administered during the factor analysis. Factor loadings of the items in the scale were found to be between .390 and .824. The Cronbach-alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.81. 2.3. Data Analysis The data were analyzed using SPSS. The mean ( Χ ) and standard deviation (S) were calculated in analyzing the data. Moreover, Pearson’s Moments Multiplication Correlation Coefficient was calculated to find out the relationship between the participants’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance education. Whether there was a significant relationship between the two was tested at the .05 level of significance (p). 3. Findings Findings regarding the relationship between the participants’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance education are included in this section. Participants’ mean scores of their information literacy levels are illustrated in Table 1. Soner Mehmet Özdemir et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1648–1652 1651 Table 1. Information literacy level of the pre-service teachers Dimensions of information literacy N Χ S Identifying the need for information 235 3.76 .60 Searching for information on the Web 235 3.79 .85 Searching for information at the library 235 4.04 .70 Assessing information 234 3.96 .65 Interpreting information 234 4.08 .63 Doing assignments 235 4.08 .62 TOTAL 235 3.95 .67 As seen in Table 1, pre-service teachers’ information literacy levels were quite high ( Χ =3.95). The information literacy levels of the participants was highest in relation to the dimensions of “doing assignments” ( Χ =4.08) and “interpreting information” ( Χ =4.08). On the other hand, their literacy levels were lowest in “identifying the need for information” ( Χ =3.76) and “searching for information on the Web” ( Χ =3.79). Table 2 shows the attitude of the pre-service teachers towards distance education. Table 2. Preservice teachers’ attitude towards distance education N Χ S Attitude towards DE 234 2.59 .51 As seen in Table 2, pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards distance education was in the medium range ( Χ =2.59). Thus, it can be said that the attitude of the average pre-service teacher is “neutral” regarding distance education. Results of the Pearson Moments Multiplication Correlation Coefficient, indicating the relationship between pre- service teachers’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance education, are given in Table 3. Table 3. The relationship between participants’ information literacy level and distance education Attitude towards DE Identifying the need for information Assessing information Doing homework Searching for information on the Web Searching for information at the library Interpreting information Attitude towards DE (r) p N 1.000 ,234 .055 ,401 234 -.095 .149 234 -.010 .882 234 -.001 .985 234 -.125 .055 234 -.096 .142 234 According to the findings in Table 3, there is no significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance education. Moreover, the relationship between the scores regarding assessing and interpreting information and attitude towards distance education was not significant. In addition, it can be asserted from the table that there is no significant relationship between participants’ searching for information on the internet or library and their attitudes towards distance education. 4. Conclusion This study examined pre-service teachers’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance education. According to the data obtained, pre-service teachers’ information literacy levels were high across not only sub-dimensions of the scale but also across the overall scale. The participants’ information literacy was lowest 1652 Soner Mehmet Özdemir et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009) 1648–1652 in relation to the dimensions “identifying the need for information” ( Χ =3.76) and “searching for information on the Web” ( Χ =3.79). The research carried out by Aldemir (2004) demonstrated that prospective teachers regard themselves less proficient in sub-dimensions like “identifying the need for information” and “accessing information by using technological instruments”. Also Erdem, Yılmaz and Akkoyunlu (2008) found that pre-service teachers have a strong self-efficacy belief regarding their information literacy. The findings of the study also revealed that the average pre-service teacher’s attitude towards distance education was “neutral”. This finding indicates that the participants have generally undecided attitude regarding distance education. The results of the study conducted by A ır et al. (2008) showed that their participants had a “positive” attitude towards distance education. In the present study, pre-service teachers’ neutral attitudes towards distance education can be explained by the fact that they believe in the efficiency of face-to-face education and they have not taken a course regarding distance education before. The findings of the study indicate that there is no significant relationship between pre-service teachers’ information literacy levels and their attitudes towards distance education. In other words, this finding suggests that neither low, medium nor high levels of pre-service teachers’ information literacy significantly affect their attitudes towards distance education. Distance education entails that individuals involved in the process be responsible for their own learning, and that they motivate and direct themselves as needed. Akkoyunlu (2008) established a relationship between information literacy and lifelong learning, and stated that those having skills of information literacy and lifelong learning motivate, direct and empower themselves. The reason for the nonexistence of a significant relationship between information literacy and attitude towards distance education in this study might be that the literacy dimensions other than “identifying the need for information” and “searching for information on the Web” are perceived as part of face-to-face education processes. On the other hand, some researchers (Dewald et al., 2000) have highlighted that information literacy skills should be taken into consideration when distance education courses are designed and implemented. References ACRL (The Association of College and Research Libraries). (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Chicago, Illinois. A ır, F., Gür, H., Okçu, A. (2008). Özel Okullarda ve Devlet Okullarında Çalı an lkö retim Ö retmenlerinin Uzaktan E itime Kar ı Tutumlarının Belirlenmesi. 8. Uluslararası E itim Teknolojileri Konferansı. Anadolu Üniversitesi. Eski ehir. Akkoyunlu, B. (2008). Bilgi Okuryazarlı ı ve Ya am Boyu Ö renme. 8. Uluslararası E itim Teknolojileri Konferansı. Anadolu Üniversitesi. Eski ehir. Aldemir, A. (2004). Ö retmen Adaylarının Bilgi Okuryazarlı ı Düzeyleri Üzerine Bir Ara tırma: Sakarya Üniversitesi Örne i. Hacettepe Üniversitesi. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü. Yayımlanmamı Yüksek Lisans Tezi. Ankara. Dewald, N., Crane, A., S. , Booth, A., & Levine C. (2000). Information Literacy at a Distance: Instructional Design Issues. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 26, (1), 33–44. Erdem, M., Yılmaz, A., Akkoyunlu, A. (2008). Ö retmen Adaylarının Bilgi Okuryazarlık Özyeterlik nançları ve Epistemolojik nançları Üzerine Bir Çalı ma. 8. Uluslararası E itim Teknolojileri Konferansı. Anadolu Üniversitesi. Eski ehir. EURYDICE. (2001). Basic indicators on the incorporating of ICT into European education systems- facts and figures. European commission. Brussels. McIsaac, M.S. & Gunawardena, C.N. (1996). Distance Education. In D.H. Jonassen, ed. Handbook of research for educational communications and technology: a project of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. 403-437. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Pierson, M. E. (2001). Technology practice as a function of pedagogical expertise. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33,(4), 413- 430. Yıldırım, S. (2000). Effect of an educational computing course on preservice and inservice teachers: A discussion and analysis of attitudes and use. Journal of Research on Computing in Education. 32, (4), 479-495. 
work_vfkojfyesrf2jkmxbzi2yldk6e	----	User Experience Design of History Game: An Analysis Review and Evaluation Study for Malaysia Context | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2018070103 Corpus ID: 52277899User Experience Design of History Game: An Analysis Review and Evaluation Study for Malaysia Context @article{Yue2018UserED, title={User Experience Design of History Game: An Analysis Review and Evaluation Study for Malaysia Context}, author={W. S. Yue and Simin Ghavifekr}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2018}, volume={16}, pages={46-63} } W. S. Yue, Simin Ghavifekr Published 2018 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Userexperience(UX)anduserinterfacedesignofaneducationalgameareimportantinenhancing andsustainingtheutilisationofGameBasedLearning(GBL)inlearninghistory.Thus,thisarticle providesadetailedliteraturereviewonhistorylearningproblems,aswellaspreviousstudieson userexperienceingamedesign.Futurestudiesoneducationalhistorygameswillbenefitfromthis systematicreviewandanalysisofcurrenteducationalhistorygames,asthisarticleexaminesin… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 3 CitationsBackground Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper User experience design 3 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Lessons Learned In Game Playing Activities Using Playtesting In A Game-Based Learning Approach M. H. Yatim Computer Science 2019 1 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Student’s Opinions on Online Educational Games for Learning Programming Introductory Roslina Ibrahim, N. A. Rahim, Doris Wong Hooi Ten, R. Yusoff, N. Maarop, Suraya Ya'acob Computer Science 2018 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Educational Games Quality Framework for Learning Islamic History in Primary School Roslina Ibrahim, R. Yusoff, Norziha M. M. Zainudin, Nilam Nur Amir Sjarif, Yazriwati Yahya Sociology 2019 PDF View 2 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 17 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency User Experience of Educational Games: A Review of the Elements V. Nagalingam, Roslina Ibrahim Computer Science 2015 18 Save Alert Research Feed Designing user experience for mobile game-based learning N. Shiratuddin, Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon Computer Science 2011 International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr ) 2011 20 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Design and evaluation of history Digital Game Based Learning (DGBL) software N. A. M. Zin, W. S. Yue Computer Science 2013 17 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Evaluating user experience of adaptive digital educational games with Activity Theory E. Law, X. Sun Computer Science Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 2012 93 Save Alert Research Feed The Design Principles for Flow Experience in Educational Games K. Kiili, S. Freitas, S. Arnab, T. Lainema Computer Science VS-GAMES 2012 145 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Digital game-based learning (DGBL) model and development methodology for teaching history Nor Azan Mat Zin, W. S. Yue, A. Jaafar Computer Science 2009 88 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Relationship between learning styles and genres of games M. Khenissi, Fathi Essalmi, M. Jemni, Kinshuk, S. Graf, N. Chen Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2016 27 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Development and Validation of Game Interface with Culture Questionnaire: Graphic and Animation Ratna Zuarni Ramli, N. Sahari, N. A. M. Zin, N. Othman, S. Osman Computer Science 2013 3 Save Alert Research Feed A case study of the in-class use of a video game for teaching high school history W. Watson, C. Mong, C. A. Harris Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2011 209 Save Alert Research Feed An update to the systematic literature review of empirical evidence of the impacts and outcomes of computer games and serious games E. Boyle, Thomas Hainey, +7 authors J. Pereira Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2016 469 PDF Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 3 Citations 17 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_vfocrxhe4rfyjfxoin2pmp744u	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 387 849 CS 509 062 AUTHOR McHenry, Lynnea; Bozik, Mary TITLE Communicating at a Distance: A Study of Interaction in a Distance Education Classroom. PUB DATE Apr 95 NOTE 31p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Central States Communication Association (Indianapolis, IN, April 19-23, 1995). PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Classroom Communication; Communication Research; Computer Assisted Instruction; *Distance Education; Electronic Classrooms; Higher Education; High Schools; *Interactive Television; *Student Attitudes; *Teacher Student Relationship IDENTIFIERS Fiber Optics; *Interactive Teaching; *lowa; Research Suggestions; Technology Integration ABSTRACT Iowa's first-in-the-nation statewide fiber-optics telecommunications network is bringing both excitement and concern to educators. One application of the fiber-optics network is the offering of college courses through live, interactive television instruction. The teacher in the origination site classroom is linked with students in one or more remote site locations through a 2-way audio and video system. A study explored the communication that takes place between the persons and the classrooms during one of these college courses, specifically examining what it is like to be a student participant in an interactive television classroom. A college classroom with 20 students served at the origination site; four remote high school classrooms (with between one and five students in each room) served as the receive sites. Classroom observation and individual group interviews were guided by three research questions: (1) what are the influences on the communication that takes place between the actors? (2) how does technology influence the interaction in the classrooms? and (3) does the distance have any other effects on communication in or between classrooms? Results took the form of five primary communication themes: expectations of and problems with technology; problems associated with distance; perceptions of nontraditional students; encouraging the use of technology; and encouraging student interaction. Further exploration is needed in communication-related areas such as classroom climate, apprehension, interaction, feedback, and learning styles. (Contains 12 references.) (TB) *********Ai.;,A*A-******************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. * **************************************************************** a Communicating at a Distance COMMUNICATING AT A DISTANCE: A STUDY OF INTERACTION IN A DISTANCE EDUCATION CLASSROOM A paper submitted for Central States Communication Association Communication Education Division PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY PhLL \Z, THE ED0CATIOt4AL RESOURCES 5c-npy A .N "ET:TTP,FIRIC,, July 1, 1994 by Lynnea McHenry Hawkeye Community College Waterloo, IA 50704-8015 (319) 296-2320 and Mary Bozik University of Northern Iowa Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0357 (319) 273-2048 1 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educationai and Improeernent EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) vfius daemon( ems bean reproduced as racyrad trom th perlion or (Xpantzatton Oncortattng 0 Mrnor chanos have Peen made to trepeove reprOduCtton Quehty Points of vow of optnions stated en thif 1:10Cu- men) clo nol nftsssarrly reorasent OERI posttion or poncy Running head: COMMUNICATING AT A DISTANCE 4d BEST COPY AVAILABLE a Communicating at a Distance 2 Abstract Iowa's first-in-the-nation statewide fiber-optics telecommunications network is bringing both excitement and concern to educators. Ultimately, the network is intended to link the state's major learning centers, libraries, and government agencies, providing all Iowans with access to these resources through high quality data, voice, and interactive video transmission. One application of the fiter-optics network is the offering of college coursc.s through live, interactive television instruction. The teacher in the origination site classroom is linked with students in one or more remote site locations through a two-way audio and video system. This research explores the communication that takes place between the persons and the classrooms during one of these college courses. It explores -- from the students' perspectives -- what it is like to be a participant in an interactive television classroom. Classroom observation and individual and group interviews were guided by three research questions: 1: What are the influences on the communication that takes place between the actors? 2: How does technology influence the interaction in the classrooms? 3: Does the distance have any other effects on communication in or between the classrooms? Communicating at a Distance 3 Communicating at a Distance: A Study of Interaction in a Distance Education Classroom "Ready or not, here it comes!" reads the headline of the Iowa State Education Association's ISEA Communique news publication (ISEA, 1993, October). What has come to Iowa is "the nation's first statewide fully interactive video fiber-optic network" (p. 1) . According to the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) promotional brochure, the network "is designed to provide all Iowans with ready access to the rich resources of our state's major learning centers, libraries and government agencies.... Everyone in Iowa will be within 20 minutes of an ICN end user site" (p. 1). As of Spring 1994, the backbone of the system is complete, with all 99 counties hooked into the network through 54.high schools, the state universities, community colleges, and two private colleges. The ldst phase of construction will eventually include 400 schools and libraries (Hartman, p. 1). Background Although Iowa is the first state with such an extensive fiber-optics network, it is not the only one to explore distance learning through technology. According to Mary Anderson, Research Consultant to the Iowa Star Schools Project, "Some form of fiber-optics distance education is either ongoing or under construction in 11 states" (personal communication, July 13, 1994). Other systems, using satellite and microwave transmission, have been in place to varying degrees across the nation. The United States Congress Office of Technology 4 Communicating at a Distance 4 Assessment (1989) reported that "virtually every State is interested in using telecommunications to serve education, actively planning for distance education, already administering a statewide plan or system, or has local distance learning projects in place....States are also beginning to look beyond their borders to share resources and respond to national programs" (U.S. Congress, 1989, p. 155). Vice President Gore, speaking to communication industry leaders in January of 1994, "restated the administration's desire to ensure that all consumers, including poor and rural Americans, will have access to the educational opportunities and information on the superhighway" (Vice President Gore, p. 4). Developments in distance learning are being driven by a number of factors. Some of the most obvious, for secondary schools, are the state-mandated curriculum changes and increased requirements for graduation, mandates to better serve both rural and urban underserved populations, and dwindling financial resources. "Increased standards have forced schools to find ways to offer more extensive and intensive curriculum. Small and rural districts unable to meet the standards fixed by states have traditionally been forced to consolidate. Today technology provides an alternative" (U.S. Congress, 1989, p. 111). Trying to meet increased educational needs with decreasing resources has served as an impetus for developing this technology. "The cost effectiveness of distance learning is that a teacher can reach a number of students -- ten, twenty, even thirty -- in several different districts while teaching once; Communicating at a Distance 5 whereas the same teacher would not be able to teach three or four students in one location at a time, five or ten times over. The cost of such time and travel would be prohibitive" (Rezabek, 1988, P. 1). In order to address these issues, colleges are also turning to live interactive television instruction to increase the number and types of course offerings than would otherwise be available. Live instruction through a telecommunications system can be "the next best thing to being there." In some cases, it is even better than being there (that is, the origination site of the instruction) because of the distance the student would have to travel. Accessing education through a technological system can provide the benefits of a college education to those whose geographic or economic situation would otherwise make that education impossible. As the system evolves, hundreds of questions remain to be answered. This research explores the communication that takes place in and between the classrooms and persons in one of these college classrooms. As the various entities examine the future of the fiber-optic system, it will be essential not only to encourage input from educators, but from students. This research explores the students' perspectives -- aiming to discover from a learner's point of view, what it is like to be a participant in the interactive television classroom. The study was designed to allow students to share what worked well for them and to tell us what we, as educators, can do to make it work better. Communicating at a Distance 6 Review of the Literature Duning, et al. (1993) use the term "interactive educational telecommunication system" to describe "a system that allows for some form of two-way communication between users, most often as real time communications" (p. 273) . In this research the communication takes place through a two-way video and audio fiber-optics network. The teacher in a home classroom is linked with students in four remote sites. The communicative significance of this context is highlighted by the emergenc'e of a major pedagogical concern with the role of interaction in distance education. This concern for interaction is a recurrina theme in the literature. "Quality distant education is participation of the to-face instruction. purposefully designs dependent upon the interaction and learners, similarly as in traditional face- It is essential that the distant educator this essential ingredient into the instructional program" (Kruh & Murphy, 1990, p. 6). In an analysis of audio teleconferencing, Garrison (1990) concluded that "...education, whether it be at a distance or not, is dependent upon two-way communication. There is increasing realization in the educational community that simply accessing information is not sufficient....information must be shared, critically analyzed, and applied in order to become knowledge" (p. 13). "As live interactive video instruction grows throughout the country there is increasing interest in the value and necessity for instructor-student interaction" (Threlkeld, Behm, & Shiflett, Communicating at a Distance 7 1990, p. 80) . In an attempt to answer the question, "Is the level of student interaction related to student course outcomes or attitudes?" Threlkeld examined data from a study of high school students taking university college credit courses via a one-way video and two-way audio Instructional Television Fixed Services (ITFS) network through California State Polytechnic University. Students were divided into two categories based on responses to a questionnaire. "High interactors" were those who said they interacted with the instructor one or more times per week and "low interactors" ,:gere those who said they interacted less than once per week. "Thcse students who described themselves as more interactive during the live, televised classes are students who tended to perform better in the class, like the course more, and feel more a part of the class than do low interactors. While these results do not suggest causation, they do suggest interaction is highly related to those positive performance and attitudes" (Threlkeld et al., 1990, p. 81). Threlkeld also reports on a survey of assistant superintendents in 400 school districts who were surveyed about their perceived needs for distance learning in their districts. Out of the seven characteristics of importance, the average rating of the 240.respondents placed "the ability for live on-air interaction with an instuctor" second only to "the need for adequate library sources" (Threlkeld et al., 1990, p. 82). Behm (Thr,alkn.ld et al., 1990) surveyed three groups of students taking distance learning courses through San Diego State University: high school students, corporate professionals in the Communicating at a Distance 8 workplace, and elementary and secondary teachers viewing graduate courses via home cable television. All three groups had the capability of live, talk back interaction. Behm found that the adult learners did not rate the importance of interaction as highly as the high school students. "Although these results contradict the generally held view that, at the least, the ability to interact during class is of great importance to all distance education students, the results support the view of Phillip Swain of Purdue University. Swain reported...that interaction%or the ability to interact is only important if instructors are well versed in its use and the conveyance of the particular subject matter is enhanced by interactive teaching methods" (Threlkeld et al., 1990, p. 83). In Behm's study, adult learners rated prompt feedback on homework and exams as more critical for success of a distance learning program. Student perceptions of distance education have generally been found to be favorable. At Paducah Community College, in Kentucky, "entering freshman might now...work all the way through the doctoral level on one community college campus..." (O'Hara & Patton, 1992, p. 5) through such a system in cooperation with Murray State University and the University of Kentucky. Both "student and instructor attitude surveys were carefully reviewed and found to be uniformly positive" (O'Hara & Patton, p. 3). O'Hara & Patton do not give the details, but state that their "research indicates that students at remote sites perform as well or better than those at the primary teaching sites, and they Communicating at a Distance enjoy all the benefits of the classroom without the hassles of commuting" (1992, P. 7). Similar results are reported in The Eastern Iowa Community College District's (EICCD) Televised Interactive Education (TIE) Evaluation Report for the 1990-1991 school year. "As in the previous year, academically there is no significant difference between the performance of origination versus remote site students. Learning is effectively taking place" (Kabat, 1991, 54). Methodology 9 p Particioants and setting The setting for this research is a college classroom which serves as the origination site, and four remote classrooms in high schools in the surrounding area, known as receive sites. A college level course is being taught via live interactive television instruction. The origination site has approximately 20 students. The four receive sites have between one and five students each. The students include a range of several who have come directly following high school to some who are returning after a many-year hiatus from classroom learning. The course is being taken for college credit. Those at the receive sites are likely to be from rural communities and a higher percentage of them are older students. The majority of the receive site students were female and approximately two-thirds of the origination site students were female. Most students at the origination site did-not know the class was to be taught on the telecommunications system when Comnunicating at a Distance IC they registered. Students at the remote sites were aware they were be learning via television, but none had previously taken a course in this manner. The instructcr is located in the origination site classroom. Three cameras are located here. One is directed at the instructor, another at the students in the classroom, and a third is above a large, wide podium on which objects or papers can be displayed. The third camera functions as an overhead projector with the additional advantage that three dimensional objects can also be shown. The instructor controls which camera will be displayed on the television monitors in both the origination and receive sites. In addition to the three camera angles at the origination site, the instructor may select any of the remote site classroom cameras to be displayed on the television monitors. This is done by touching the appropriate box on a touch-screen computer on the podium, beside the instructor. A small monitor is embedded in the podium to show the instructor which camera shot is being sent to the remote sites. Two monitors at the front of each classroom display the same view. One monitor at the back shows the remote site where a student is currently speaking or last spoke. Whenever a student at a remote site speaks, his or her classroom is displayed on the back monitor. The instructor can touch the screen to have that site appear for all monitors, or may initiate any site to be shown at any time. Students at all sites are equipped with table microphones. In larger classes, two students generally share one microphone. Communicating at a Distance 11 In order to be neard at all sites, students must push a button on the microphone before speaking. The instructor wears a lapel microphone which can be turned on or off. Procedure As an ethnographic study, this research focuses on the group members and their own interpretations of their experiences in the classrooms. Observations in the classrooms and interviews with students helped to refine the research focus, but the following research questions served as an initial guide. RQ1: What are the influences on the communication that takes place between the actors? RQ2: How does technology affect the interaction in the classrooms? RQ3: Does the distance have any other effects on communication in or between the classrooms? Research methods included participant observation and interviews. In addition, documents were examined to validate information. Observations were conducted over a.five week period, during the middle of the semester. Seven class periods were observed, two from receive sites and five from the origination site. The intention was to observe and describe the communication that would take place between 1.) the instructor and st'Idents at the origination site; 2.) the instructor at the origination site and the students at the receive sites; 3.) the students at the origination sites and the students at the receive sites; 4.) the students at any one of the receive sites and anoth:r receive site; and 5.) between any of the students within Communicating at a Distance 12 any one site. The observations also served to identify areas that would be appropriate to explore during interviews. On the first visit, which was at the origination site, the primary researcher was introduced by the teacher. The researcher briefly explained that the purpose of the research was to find out what communication was like in a course being taught on the system. Brief interviews were conducted on an informal basis before and after class sessions. Additionally, several individual and small group structured interviews were conducted to cross check perceptions.% Eighty-six % of the receive site students were formally interviewed as were 26% of the origination site students. These included interviews with one, two, or three students at a time. Open-ended questions were also asked in an attempt to pursue topics considered important by the interviewees. General interview topics included 1.) the interviewee's opinions and observations concerning communication in the course and 2.) the subject's perceived problems with communi.cation and technology. The later interviews and observations served to cross check information collected earlier. After completion of the interviews and observations, the data were examined and common elements and patterns emerged. Differences in demographics appeared. Whereas the origination site student make-up included a wide range of ages, the receive site students were generally older. Of the receive site students interviewed, all had a break in their education, many for several years. Some frustration with the younger students was expressed by more than one older student. 1 3 Communicating at a Distance 14 Jill: I think it's exciting that the college is doing this. It's "Frontierland." Everything is gcing to be technology- based. It's going to change the face of the world. Mike: We'll be sitting in a room with virtual reality. They could put the chair on a ball and we'd control it! Jill: If people don't like it, it's just because it's new. Mike: There's no way to perfect it without using it. Mike was asked why he didn't always use the mic and he gave two reasons. Sometimes he just didn't want everyone to hear and other times it was "too much trouble" to reach for the mic. He sits in a spot where a mic is not directly in front of him. He thought technology should be advanced enough that mics could just be on all the time. Students at the receive sites also expressed tolerance for problems with technology with responses such as "They're learning too." One of them explained what using a mic is like at a remote site. Beth: There's a delay of about three seconds. If the teacher starts talking before I'm done, I can't hear what's being said. Beth is the only person at her site. She explains. Beth: At first it was intimidating, but you get used to it. They've taught me how to turn the system off and on. Now, I think it would even be worth more money to be able to take classes here. Two negative comments came from two origination site students. Bob, who had taken telecommunication courses at 1 4 Communicating at a Distance 13 One common theme appeared to be a tolerance for the newness of the system. Problems with the technology were not uncommon, but there was not a great deal of frustration expressed over it. Other problems.with distance did appear however, as all the receive students interviewed expressed concern over the timely transfer of written materials, assignments, and/or tests. One issue of particular interest, during the observations and in the analysis of the data, was whether there was equal interaction with the instructor from the remote students compared to students in the origination site classroom. This led to questions aimed at whether this was an important issue from the students' point of view. An attempt was made to identify ways in which the instructor encouraged interaction. Results Five primary communication themes emerged and are described using the students' own words, followed by an explanation of what each includes. "Frontierland": Exnectations of and problems with technology The first two interviewees were Jill and Mike, who were interviewed together. Jill was the most vocal female in the origination site, interacting with the teacher more often.than any other female. Mike usually interacted with the teacher at least once during each class period, often more. About half his comments were made without using a microphone. Both are young but have had some college experience and both sounded excited about the system. Communicating at a Distance 15 another college, said "I don't like it. It's too impersonal." Sharon said, "I hate it. I have to wait to speak." Bob was never observed interacting with the instructor and Sharon interacted only once or twice. During three of the seven observations, there was an initial problem with the audio transmission of a receive site. Students at the receive sites could not be heard, or a whining feedback made it impossible to hear. In the first two instances, the problem was quickly solved. In the third a technician was not immediately available, so the teacher did not try to use the audio again for the receive site until the end of class at which time the problem had been resolved. Before proceeding with class the teacher had the students wave their hands at the remote locations to indicate they could hear. One other technological limitation surfaced. Sara: Once I was talking to the teacher to get a question answered after class, but the system cuts off at a certain time. I think I got it mostly answered but the teacher wasn't done. "How long will it take?": Problems associated with distance When the class discussed turning in a project, two concerns surfaced. The instructor was unable to tell the students how long it would take for their projects to arrive, so there seemed to be a problem with deadlines for sending them in. Another concern was where to find appropriate resources. The teacher suggested college libraries, but there was apparently no method in place for students to check out material via long distance. 1 6 Communicating at a Distance 16 All students interviewed at the receive sites indicated a problem with receiving or sending paperwork. Janet: We're not getting the literature. It could be organized better. Sara: Not having the material is a problem like tests. They went over it in class and it was hard to remember how we answered the questions. Beth: Getting our test scores was a problem. The teacher offered to show them on the screen but some didn't want the rest o.f the class to know. In another class, the teacher let us grade our own. "These young kids": Perceptions of non-traditional students Non-traditional students expressed a perception of differing goals between themselves and the younger learners. This was especially evident in an observation at one of the receive sites. At this site the adult learners occasionally interacted with the teacher by using the mics, but interacted with one ancther frequently without them. An interview question confirmed that this was typical. In this dialogue, Sam, the most vocal origination site student is arguing with the teacher about how many chapters will be covered on the next test. Janet, Bill, and Karen are non- traditional students at the receive site. Students at the origination site are apparently complaining but students at the receive site can't hear what is being said. The teacher and other students do not hear any of the interactions between the remote students unless indicated: (with mic). 1'1 Communicating at a Distance 17 Janet (to researcher) : We get frustrated... Bill: I've yet to finish a book in a college class. Janet: These young kids. Teacher: If you want to complain, do it on the mic. Sam: That's not fair. [A belch is heard.] That was the kid next to me that burped. It wasn't me... Bill: Shut up and quit arguing. Welcome to college. Teacher: Do you want... Janet: That guy argues over everything. Karen: (with mic) Let's take a vote. (to Janet: Can they hear me?) [There had been problems with audio earlier.] Janet: (to Karen) Yeah. Do it. Karen: (with mic again) Let's take a vote. Teacher: Yes. Let's just see how far we get. Karen: If we didn't argue so much we could just keep going. In a later int. -iew with Janet, she said they get frustrated because "these young kids" intentionally try to get the teacher off track. "We're here to learn." Her perceptions were confirmed in a subsequent interview with Sam, when he said taking a class on the system meant "I can goof off to more people." A non-traditional student in the origination site had similar perceptions. Carol has a family and works nights. She said, "I feel a little bit out of place -- with the kids in the back making jokes -- they just don't realize." _Is Communicating az a Distance 18 "Use the mic!": Encouraaina the use of technolocv "Use the mic" was a phrase used by both an apparently frustrated student and on numerous occasions, by the teacher. At a receive site, a student couldn't hear a ouestion that was beina asked. Although she said, "Use the mic" she did not use hers, so her comment was not heard at the origination site. During an interview with another receive site student, she said, '"What does bother me is when they don't use the mics. Before class the other day we heard the girls talkina about how they don't like tc use them7. but they don't realize how important it is to us." Many of the receive site students felt the teacher encouraged the origination site students to use their mics. One of them said, "The teacher won't answer them until they do." However, during one observation a particular instance was noted where ten interactions with the instructor were made during a ten-minute period only two of those were with a microphone. Although that ratio was not the norm for the entire class period, it may indicate that students at the remote sites miss more than they realize. When students were asked why they didn't use their mics, one said that it wasn't worth the trouble of reaching for it and that sometimes he didn't want everyone to hear. He said, "I'm a blurt it out kind of guy." Where he sat, three people were actually sharing a mic. Of the five other students who interacted most frequently two males generally shared one mic, one male had his own, and the two females each had her own. One of these is Communicating at a Distance 19 Carol, a night worker who felt a little out of place. She said, "At first I was kind of scared, but I decided I was going to take this seriously. Sometimes I dcn't use it and (the teacher will) say to. I don't use it as much as I should." The one female who said she "hated it" because she felt she had to wait rarely interacted. The male who said he didn't like the system said that in regular classes he talks "a lot," but this was "too impersonal" and he was never observed interacting. Another concern was how the receive site students felt about using their microphones. When a student at a remote site presses the mic and speaks, the classroom where they are located appears on the monitor at the back of the class. The teacher could touch the computer screen to display that class on all monitors, but this teacher rarely did so. So, when receive students spoke, their voices were heard but they were not seen. Some students would simply ask a question or make a response, others would preface it with the teacher's name. Beth explained what is was like speaking from a receive site. Beth: I feel I might be interrupting someone else. In my other class on the system, the teacher will ask a particular person, so everyone isn't hopping in at the same time. It would be easier to raise your hand. When you're verbally interrupting it seems rude. If they slow down or pause I'll ask if it seems like a good spot. "I won't tell your parents": Encouraging student interaction As in a traditional classroom the teacher can set the tone for how much interaction he or she expects of the students. Communicating at a Distance 20 During one observation, the teacher encouraged students to talk by saying, "Come cn, you're not being taped. I won't tell your parents." This encouraged response from the origination site classroom. One response also came from a remote site. When examining interaction between students at each site an attempt was made to get a feel for classroom "community." Did the students feel any connection with those at the origination site? At the main site, there was a cluster of three students (one male and two female) who often carried on conversations with each other during the instructional period. Two males who sat together were the most vocal in the class and interacted with each other as well. Two females who sat together interacted with each other but rarely with the teacher. Other than these three clusters, there did not seem to be much interaction between students. In the classes observed, the students did little talking with one another before class. The teacher would arrive one or two minutes before air time and would display each remote site on the monitor at the back to make sure they were on the system and would usually say something and ask them to respond. The teacher would then lecture, occasionally ask for response, then remain after class to be accessible for questions from the origination site students. During a final observation, interactions with the teacher during a 50 minute period were counted and recorded. Thirteen students were present at the origination site. Six of them interacted at least once. There were 21 interactions with a 21 , Communicating at a Distance 21 microphone (nine from one student) and eight interactions without a microphone. There were no interactions with any of the remote sites that day. This was fairly typical of past observations except that remote sites in the past had at least one interaction per site. One other exception was the first observation where the number of interactions was much higher overall. In reviewing the data, this might be attributed to the topic being more relevant to student experiences. Each of the remote sites observed had a different classroom climate. At one, the students rarely interacted with one another. When asked if this were typical, Sara confirmed that "we don't talk to each other much. We usually get there just in time and have to leave right away." At the other remote site, the students seemed to have developed quite a comraderie. They interacted frequently with each other as evidenced by the earlier dialogue of Janet, Bill, and Karen. Janet confirmed in an interview that this was typical. There was no indication of classroom community developing inclusive of all sites. Only one interaction was observed between students at separate sites when Sam said "Hello" to one of the receive site students. Jill's comment that she felt she could greet a receive site student on the street was not echoed by any one else. Following are some typical comments concerning how well the students feel they know each other. Carol: I don't really feel any connection with the remote students at all. I think it would be hard on them. 2 2 Communicating at a Distance 22 Sam: I can talk to anyone. I may not know their names though. Beth: I don't feel I know the people at the main site at all. That's one thing you don't get. To get to know people. When the other sites are speaking we usually don't get to see them I don't know who's who. I can't say "What's your name?" on the mic every time someone talks.- I'd like to see the other people talking more, but I realize it's extra work for the instructor. Janet: You're not going to get as much out of class 30 miles away. You're not goThg to get to know them. Because the teacher decides which camera is displayed on the classroom monitors, he or she controls how much the students see of each other. During observations, the teacher showed the originEtion site classroom to all sites only once and never showed the remote sites on the front monitors. The teacher was not observed using any techniques to encourage discussion between sites or between students within each site. The teacher occasionally called a student by name at a receive site, but usually referred to the sites by the name of the town and did not call any students in the origination site by name during the observations. Discussion The primary goal of this research was to explore communication from students' perspective of what it is like to learn in a live interactive television classroom. As is true of more traditionally taught courses, student experiences will vary Communicating at a Distance 23 with the subject being taught, the personality, experience, and teaching methods of the instructor, and the student make-up of the class. Even though classrooms, students, and teachers will vary, the experiences shared by the learners in this course can tell us a great deal.about what we will need to do to create a learning environment via fiber-optic technology. As stated in the literature review, teachers have not yet learned to tap into the potential of the system (ISEA, October 1993) . As they dc it will be important to keep in mind the needs and issues of importance to students. Technical problems in this "Frontierland" are a student concern. Although most expressed a tolerance during this initial phase of "getting the bugs out," that tolerance may wear off once the system has been in place. The problems of not having audio or getting screeching feedback were quickly corrected when a technician was available. It seems a necessary expense for the origination site to always have someone available for this purpose. The problem of not having enough time on the air to discuss questions after class with remote site students cannot be solved by increasing air time. As he system fills with classes, there will not be any extra time available. However, teachers can encourage students to call them with questions. To allow for equal access to the teacher, a toll-free number could be offered so that lower income students or those who live farther away are not at an economic disadvantage. 2 4 Communicating at a Distance 24 One student said the technology made the class too impersonal but wasn't able to elaborate enough to understand what he meant. It is possible his previous telecommunications course at another institution had been a negative experience that prejudiced him against this one. His view, however, seems consistent with any class where the teacher never calls a student by name, which was true of this one. His comment serves as an excellent reminder that students need to feel a personal connection. Problems with distancaalso surfaced as students complained about not having handouts before class and not getting tests back before the class discussed them. Fax machines add expense, but are essential if we are truly committed to serving student needs. E-mail capabilities would add another avenue for more timely student-teacher interaction. The use of library resources can also be a problem associated with distance learning. If we are concerned about equal access as the literature suggests we should be, then we cannot disadvantage rural students by denying them equal access to resources. We may believe we are providing equitable technology, by putting all students within 20 miles of a learning center. But, it is not truly equitable if we are not providing them with the same resources. Since this statewide system eventually plans to Include libraries and government agencies this problem may eventually be solved. In the meantime, teachers need to be aware of this potential problem when giving assignments. 26 Communicating at a Distance 25 As some needs are specific to the rural populations, others seem to be of special concern to the non-traditional students. Students who were returning to their education expressed that they were "there to learn" and got frustrated when the topic got off course or when younger students goofed off or argued with the teacher. There were some older students in the origination site classroom, but it appears that this population will be increasing as more telecommunication courses are offered, if the students in this study are an indication. All of the remote site students interviewed in this study were adults returning to education. Most of them, as well as the non-traditional student interviewed at the main site, expressed some frustration over "these young kids." Although this may occur in traditional classrooms, it is one of the issues that telecommunication teachers need to be aware of as a concern of this increasing segment of the student body. Another frustration expressed by remote students was when the origination site students didn't use their microphones. One student said he sometimes didn't use it because he didn't necessarily want everyone to hear. But, another reason was that it wasn't worth the trouble of reaching for it. He usually shared the mic with two other people and during one of the observations there were no mics at his table at all. Though it might be better to have a mic for each student, the cost factor is likely prohibitive. However, the instructor can see that the seating and placement of mics is arranged so no more than two students are sharing one microphone. If it is placed between 26 Communicating at a Distance 26 them, the sharing should not be a problem. The teacher may get tired cf saying "use your mic" but realizing how important it is to the remote students should be an incentive. One instructor at the institution has traveled to a remote site for at least one class period and originated from there instead. This not only gave the remote students a chance to meet the teacher but gave the usual origination site students an opportunity to discover what it was like to be in the remote site position. This appears tc be an effective way to increase student awareness of the importance of using the mics. The teacher plays an integral part in the encouragement of using the microphones, and also interaction in general. The literature review indicated interaction is essential (Pelton, 1990; Kruh & Murphy, 1990;), though not as much so for adults (Threlkeld, 1990). If interaction is to take place, the teacher must encourage it. It seems likely that students who feel they know each other would be more inclined to interact. The teacher controls what will be seen on the monitors. If the students rarely see one another (as was true in this class) it's no wonder that they didn't feel they knew each other. When students at the origination site spoke, they were rarely transmitted on the monitors and none was called by name. When the receive sight students spoke, their classroom was rarely seen. Their names were rarely used except at the beginning of class when checking the system. One remote student said, "...it's more work for the teacher to show us who's talking." It's also more work to 2 '1 Communicating at a Distance 27 memorize students' names. But, research on classroom climate and immediacy would indicate it is worth the effort. The issue of interaction also needs further exploration. Is it true that interaction is not important to adult learners, or are other issues just more urgent? Is interaction important across all subject areas? Can all subject areas even be successfully taught over the system? This study only touches on the subject of classroom community and the effect that technology and distance have on a personal classroom climate.' Should remote students be required or encouraged to visit the main campus? Should teachers be expected to visit or transmit from remote sites? Would these things foster classroom community? Summary Fiber-optics technology brings both new opportunities and new concerns to the classroom. Numerous studies have researched various aspects of communication in educational settings. It remains to be seen, however, whether results of research from a traditional classroom will hold true for the interactive television classroom. Results of this study indicate that further exploration is needed in communication-related areas such as classroom climate, apprehension, interacticn, feedback, and learning styles. The use of telecommunication technology alters classroom climate. Classrooms, particularly at the reMote sites, may be composed of only one or two students. Some students will never meet one another and will not even see one another unless the 28 Communicating at a Distance 28 teacher is intentional about displaying all classrooms on the monitors. Will it be possible to foster classroom community in these situations and is classroom community an important issue in mediated classrooms? Teachers who find value in cooperacive learning strategies and group projects will find this situation to be a challenge. Remote students will not be interacting face-to-face with the instructor. Will students who are uncomfortable with technology be discouraged from interacting? Or could technology actually encourage apprehenSive students to be more expressive since they are not face-to-face? Frustrations were expressed in this study by students concerned about the promptness of feedback. Is this a problem common to distance learning? All remote students in this study were nontraditional students. Is this true of other college courses being taught over the telecommunications system? Will the branching out of educational access result in a more diverse student population? If either of these is true, will teaching and communication strategies be affected? A key gu,..stion in further research will be: How much of what we have concluded to be true of communication in the traditional classroom will hold true when students are separated by distance and linked together by technology? 2 9 Communicating at a Distance 29 References Duning, B. S. , Van Kekerix, M. J. , & Zaborowski, L. M. (1993). Reaching learners through telecommunications. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Garrison, D. R. (1990) . An analysis and evaluation of audio teleconferencing to facilitate education at a distance. The American Journa' of Distance Education, 4(3), 13-24. Hartman, H. (1994, March 20) . Fiberoptics unites schools. The Des Moines Register, p. 1. Iowa Communications Network-(ICA). (1993). Information highways of the future. (Available from Iowa Public Television, Educational Telecommunications, P.O. Box 6450, Johnston, IA 50131.) Iowa Distance Education Alliance (IDEA). (1993, May). Partnerships for interactive learning through telecommunications in Iowa's elementary and secondary schools. (84.203B Star Schools-Special Statewide Network) Iowa State Education Association (ISEA). (1993, October). ISEA Communique, 31,(2), p. 1. (Available from the Iowa State Education Association, 4025 Tonawanda Drive, Des Moines, IA 50312) Kabat, E. J. (1991, August). The Eastern Iowa Community College District's (EICCD) Televised Interactive Education (TIE) evaluation report. Eastern Iowa Community College District: District Office of Academic Affairs and Planning. 30 Communicating at a Distance 30 Kruh, J., & Murphy, K. (1990, October). Interaction in teleconferencina: the key to aualitv instruction. Paper presented at the Annual Rural and Small Schools Conference, Manhattan, KS. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 329 418) O'Hara, L. & Patton, S. (1992) . A rural communiversitv: teaching developmental throuch graduate courses via two-way video. Paducah, Kentucky: Paducah Community College. Rezabek, R. J. (1988). Teleteaching handbook: A handbook for teachers using microwave or ITFS interactive instruction. Fort Dodge, IA: Arrowhead Area Education Agency. Threlkeld, R. M., Behm, R. J., & Shiflett, M. (1990, August). Live and interactive: Is it really important? In C. C. Gibson (Ed.). Echoes from the future: Challenges for new learning systems. Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 340 353.) U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. (1989, November). Linking for learning: A new course for education (Report no. OTA-SET-430). Washington D. C.: U.S. Government Printing Office Vice President Gore unveils information highway plan. (1994, January 12) . The Des Moines Register, p. 4). 31 
work_vhg2hea7dbgl5lo37atyjuxuwi	----	Distance-education in Foreign Language Teaching: Evaluations from the Perspectives of Freshman Students Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.487 ScienceDirect IETC 2014 Distance-education in foreign language teaching: evaluations from the perspectives of freshman students Dr. Emrah Ekmekçi Ondokuz Mayıs University, School of Foreign Languages, Kurupelit Campus,Samsun, Turkey Abstract This study investigates distance education students' level of satisfaction and evaluations about distance English courses. To this end, a Likert-type questionnaire was applied to 72 students attending a distance education program. In addition, semi-structured interview was employed so as to verify the data gathered from the questionnaire. The results of the study revealed that a great majority of the students were satisfied with the distance education English course stating that the content, format, reading and grammar sections of the course were sufficient, but synchronous courses, listening, speaking, and writing sections were not satisfactory and sufficient both in quality and quantity. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. Keywords: Distance Education; Distance Language Learning; Student Satisfaction;Educational Technologies; Synchronous Course 1. Introduction The power of computers and the internet in the current century enables all learners to study at their home without having to attend a regular face-to-face course or school. In other words, recent developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have brought about various improvements facilitating people's lives. Learners who are unable to attend classes for one reason or another can study at their own pace independent from time and place. They can take various courses for a diploma, certificate, or a degree via distance education in a more flexible and interactive atmosphere. There is no doubt that these developments in educational technologies have spread to Dr. Emrah Ekmekçi. Tel.: 0362 312 19 19 - 6224 ; fax: 0362 457 60 91. E-mail address: emrah.ekmekci@omu.edu.tr © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.487&domain=pdf 391 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 online or distance language learning and teaching field. Opportunities to learn languages through online or distance education are presented each passing day by private courses, colleges, schools, institutions, textbook companies, and universities. Accordingly, some of the universities in Turkey offer distance education programs in associate, undergraduate, and graduate degrees. A great number of students enroll in distance learning programs in all levels, and try to complete the programs successfully. In the process of distance education in different programs, students take various courses depending upon their majors. Actually, students' thoughts and perceptions about these courses and whether these courses meet their needs or not are of great importance for the success and motivation of the students. A number of research (Sampson, 2003; Beare, 1989; Hilgenberg and Tolone, 2000; Jones, 1992; McCleary and Egan, 1989; Garrison, 1990; Holmberg, 1989) highlights satisfaction of students about distance education programs. However, there is rare research (Lambert, 1991; White, 2006; Rashid, Khokhar and Tahir, 2013; Işık, Karakış, and Güler, 2010) on students' satisfaction and needs about language courses through distance education. This study, therefore, investigates students' satisfaction and needs about English course in a distance education program in the associate degree level offered in a state-funded university in Turkey. 2. Review of literature 2.1 What is distance education? In a general sense, distance education, some call it open learning, mainly serves learners who cannot attend face- to-face courses or programs for one or another reason. Learners stay at home or office and follow the course, do the assignments, and interact with each other and the teacher via internet. In other words, they take the responsibility of their own learning, which means that learner autonomy is of great importance. Sampson (2003:104) defines distance learning as "... a mode of delivery (independent learning at a distance through the means of self-study texts and non- contiguous communication)". As Holmberg (1989:24) states, people prefer distance education for "the convenience, flexibility and adaptability of this mode of education to suit individual students' needs". Actually, distance education appears in the educational field as a new technique because of the increasing demand for these flexible and convenient aspects. Ohler (1991:22) emphasizes two aspects of distance education: "how it can change our approach to learning and how it can change us". In fact, what Ohler focuses on is related to innovation in education. Distance education mainly rises due to learners' needs for lifelong learning. The rapid spread of distance education in the world not only offers learners and teachers great opportunities but also brings a lot of challenges. Learners are unsupervised, self-directed, independent, and expected to be more autonomous. This freedom brings many questions together such as Does it lead to low-quality education? Are the materials developed by specialized teachers used effectively as in face-to-face courses in distance education? Who controls the materials? and so on. Besides these negative opinions, some researchers state that students are not alone in the process, but they are in a constant interaction between teachers and their peers. Although there appears opposition to distance education, it seems to continue to catch the attention of educators, teachers, and learners in the future. 2.2. Relevant studies Research about distance language education courses in general focuses mainly on the effectiveness of teaching language skills, technological aspects in language teaching, and autonomous learning. For instance, Sole and Hopkins (2007) contrast two approaches to distance language learning on the basis of providing practice in four language skills, designing appropriate assessment strategies, and learners' contribution to the educational context. They analyze distance educational philosophies of two universities clarifying some similarities and differences. They conclude that each university provide learners with good quality language courses, however, the writers point out that institutions wishing to carry out distance language courses need to reconsider their medium and long-term consequences about technology. Similarly, Lampert (1991) mentions the lack of innovative development in distance language courses and states that individual language learning needs remain unmet. He maintains that in order to compensate for these disadvantages, upper-level skill instruction should be attached importance, more flexible modules must be produced, and less commonly taught courses must be included in the distance education programs. 392 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 In another study, White (2006) presents a critical overview of the distance language teaching and learning field. She states that distance language learning is conceptualized as the development of technology-mediated language learning opportunities. She maintains that there is a shift from the delivery of the content to facilitating transactions between, learners, teachers, and native speakers. She emphasizes the importance of independent learner concept, but this is also replaced by collaborative learning community through distance education. Research on the attitudes of the students towards distance language learning is limited. Glisan, Dudt, and Howe (1998), in their study about two aspects of distance language learning: achievement and attitudes, found that distance programs could have a positive effect on achievement and attitudes. Similarly, Rashid, Khokhar, and Tahir (2013) analyze learners' attitude towards printed word in distance education. They conclude that the distance education makes the learner learn through the medium of the printed word and other technological tools. They maintain that the printed word provides real teaching by itself and it can be used as a substitute for the textbook. Another study which focuses on learners' attitudes towards distance learning is by Işık, Karakış, and Güler (2010). They examine post-graduate students' attitudes towards web-based distance learning. They make use of a questionnaire and a demographic survey to gather the data. The results of their study indicate that there is a general positive attitude towards distance learning. Female students' attitudes are found to be more positive compared to males. The researchers maintain that most of the students find feel more comfortable in distance learning although some express boredom during the activities on the web. 3. Method 3.1. Participants The study was administered to 72 distance learning associate degree program freshman students attending a state- funded university in Turkey. They took all courses through distance education during 2013-2014 academic year. They had asynchronous courses for each lesson every week during the year. They also followed synchronous courses organized by the Distance Education Centre of the university. Synchronous courses were offered each week by the instructors of the lesson. English courses during the academic year were taught by four instructors who were specialized in their field. 3.2. Data collection and analyses Data were collected through a Likert- type questionnaire including 20 items which would be answered by the students on the base of six quality descriptive words: 1- Excellent, 2- Very Good, 3- Good, 4- Fair, 5- Poor, 6-Very Poor. The questionnaire was inspired, compiled, and redesigned by the researcher from the course evaluation form available on the University of Washington web page. The data gathered through the questionnaire were entered to Microsoft Excell and then transferred to SPSS 20 package program. The reliability coefficient o f the questionnaire was found to be ,736 for 20 items. Factor analyses of the questionnaire revealed 5 dimensions explaining 93,504 % of the total variance. In order to verify the quantitative data, semi-structured interview was administered to randomly selected 20 students and the results were quantitized with the help of categorization and coding systems. 4. Results In this part, findings about the data gathered through the questionnaire and semi-structured interview are presented. Percentage of the students' attitudes towards the distance language learning course is given by employing the tables in the first section. The second section deals with the findings about the semi-structured interview with the help of the related graphs. 4.1 Results of the questionnaire Students' attitudes towards the English Course are presented in Table 1 below. As it is emphasized below, the first statement was responded positively by almost all of the students. Their overall evaluations about the course 393 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 range from good to excellent. The course content also was evaluated positively by all of the students. However, It is striking that the organization of the course was evaluated as 'Fair' by half of the students. This evaluation of the students indicates that proportion of the course components, asynchronous and synchronous parts need to be revised. Clarity of the course objectives were also criticized by most of the students as 'Fair' or 'Poor'. Effectiveness and usefulness of writing, listening, and speaking skills in the course were criticised negatively by most of the students. The reading sections were relatively perceived as positive and useful. These results show that the way of presenting language skills in the course should be improved to a great extent. Table 1. Course Related Attitudes _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Statements EX VG G F P VP _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. The English course offered via distance education as a whole was: 25 % 50% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. The course content was: 12,5% 25% 62,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. The organization of the course was: 12,5% 37,5% 50% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Clarity of the course objectives was: 25% 37,5% 37,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 5. Usefulness of reading sections in the course was: 37,5% 37,5% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 6. Usefulness of writing sections in the course was: 12,5% 12,5% 50% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. Usefulness of listening sections in the course was: 12,5% 25% 37,5% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 8. Usefulness of speaking sections in the course was: 12,5% 25% 37,5% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ EX: Excellent VG: Very Good G: Good F: Fair P: Poor VP: Very Poor Table 2 deals with the findings about the instructor related attitudes. The contribution of the instructor to the course was evaluated as 'Good' or 'Very Good' by 87,5 % of the students. This result shows the confidence of the students in the instructor, which was verified with the results of item 13 as well. The feedback issue was evaluated as positive by half of the students and as negative by the other half. This finding also indicates the existence of a problem regarding providing feedback. The instructor's abilities and his/her approach to the students having different skill levels were also appreciated by most of the students. Table 2. Instructor Related Attitudes _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Statements EX VG G F P VP _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 9. The instructor's contribution to the course was: 37,5% 50% 12,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 10. Feedback provided by the instructor was: 12,5% 37,5% 37,5% 12,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 11. The instructor's overall abilities of conveying information were: 12,5% 50% 12,5% 12,5% 12,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 12. Tailoring of instruction to varying student skill levels was: 37,5% 25% 25% 12,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 13. Confidence of the students in 394 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 instructor's knowledge was: 50% 50% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ EX: Excellent VG: Very Good G: Good F: Fair P: Poor VP: Very Poor The following table indicates the attitudes towards the synchronous courses. As it is seen in Table 3, overall effectiveness and quality of these courses was appreciated by all students. This may be attributed to the nature of distance education programs since the students have the unique opportunity to meet and interact with the instructor and their peers during synchronous courses. This result was also verified with the percentage of the students' involvement in these courses. Item 16 deals with instructor's help during the synchronous courses. 62,5 % of the students thought that instructor was helpful during the process. The most interesting result of this dimension of the questionnaire is that a great majority of the students found the time allotted for the synchronous courses to be insufficient. This result indicates that the duration and number of the synchronous courses need to be increased. Table 3. Synchronous Courses Related Attitudes _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Statements EX VG G F P VP _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 14. Effectiveness and quality of the synchronous courses were: 37,5% 37,5% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 15. Time allotted for the synchronous courses was: 12,5% 37,5% 25% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 16. Instructor's help during the synchronous courses was: 25% 37,5% 12,5% 12,5% 12,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 17. Your involvement in the synchronous courses was: 75% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ EX: Excellent VG: Very Good G: Good F: Fair P: Poor VP: Very Poor The fourth dimension of the questionnaire was about assignments related attitudes. Half of the students thought that the assignments were not clear enough. 75 % of the students were not aware of their responsibilities. These results indicate that the assignments in this distance language course should be re-designed and revised. Since the learner autonomy in distance education courses is of great importance, students' responsibilities and requirements should be well-defined. Table 4. Assignments Related Attitudes _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Statements EX VG G F P VP _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 18. Clarity of the assignments was: 50% 37,5% 12,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 19. Clarity of students' responsibilities and requirements was: 25% 50% 25% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ EX: Excellent VG: Very Good G: Good F: Fair P: Poor VP: Very Poor The last dimension of the questionnaire was about grading system related attitudes. The findings reveal that 85,5 % of the students were not content with the grading system. This may be attributed to multiple-choice exam type as summative assessment. The course does not allow formative assessment for instructors and this leads to students' displeasure at the grading system. 395 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 Table 5. Grading System Related Attitudes _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Statements EX VG G F P VP _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 20. Grading Techniques were: 12,5% 25% 62,5% _____________________________________________________________________________________________ EX: Excellent VG: Very Good G: Good F: Fair P: Poor VP: Very Poor 4.2. Results of the Semi-structured Interview In the semi-structured interview, three main questions were posed to 20 randomly selected students. The findings about the interview are presented in the following figures. Q-1: Did the course meet your expectations? Figure 1. Interview Results about Course Expectations As it is clear in Figure 1 above, 60% of the students thought that the course met their expectations. This percentage corresponds to 12 students in number. On the other hand, 25% of the students said 'No' stating that the course was not effective enough to meet their expectations. 15% of the students was not sure about whether the course met their expectations or not. Q-2: What three things did you like most about this course? Figure 2. Interview Results about Students' Perceptions of the Course In the semi-structured interview, students were expected to say three things they liked most about the course. 40% of the students thought that they liked 'flexibility' of the course most. 35% of the students stated that they enjoyed synchronous courses most, while 25% thought that they liked the notion 'independence' the distance course 396 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 created. These results revealed that removing time and place limitations in the course seemed to please the students. Synchronous courses also had a positive impact on students. Q-3: What three things did you like least about this course? Figure 3. Interview Results about Students' Perceptions of the Course As for the things the students liked least about the course, the figure above indicates the details. 40% of the students stated that they did not like the assignments in the course. Similarly, the other 40% thought that exams were among the things they liked least. 20% complained about time limitation in the synchronous courses. These results indicate that grading system and assessment techniques in the distance education English course need to be revised. 5. Discussion and conclusion Both quantitative and qualitative findings gathered through the questionnaire and semi-structured interview indicate that distance English course generally meets students' expectations. However, some skills such as listening, speaking and writing are evaluated as weak parts by most of the students. It is considered that presenting and integrating language skills in face-to-face language courses needs to be planned well beforehand. When it comes to distance language learning courses, it is more challenging. The negative perceptions of students about effective teaching of language skills may be attributed to this challenge. Providing feedback is another issue which is negatively evaluated. This may be because of the time limitation in the synchronous courses as synchronous courses provide students with almost the only opportunity to get feedback from the instructors. Assignments, grading techniques and clarity of students' responsibilities are also criticized by most of the students. Semi-structured interview verifies these results since almost half of the students state that assignments and exams are among the ones they like least about the course. Actually, it seems to be difficult to organize assignments in distance language courses, but when it is planned well, the reactions will be probably better. The study yields not only negative aspects but also some positive findings about the distance English course. For instance, a great majority of the students enjoy distance English course since it enables them to follow the lesson independent from time and place. This flexibility can be regarded as one of the main strongest aspects of the distance course. This study deals with only one distance education program in a one state-funded university. A wider and more comprehensive study can be conducted by comparing two or three programs with more students in the further research. It is hoped that this case study will give some hints about the nature of distance language courses and their improvements for the following programs. References Beare, P. L. (1989). The comparative effectiveness of videotape, audiotape, and telelecture in delivering continuing teacher education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 57-66. Garrison, G. R. (1990). Understanding distance education: A framework for the future. London: Routledge. Glisan, E. W., Dudt, K. P. & Howe, M.S. (1998). Teaching Spanish through Distance Education. Foreign Language Annals, 31(1), 48-66. Hilgenberg, C., & Tolone, W. (2000). Student perceptions of satisfaction and opportunities for critical thinking in distance education by Holmberg, B. (1989). Theory and practice of distance education. New York: Routledge. 397 Emrah Ekmekçi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 176 ( 2015 ) 390 – 397 interactive video, The American Journal of Distance Education, 14(3), 59-73. Işık, A. H., Karakış, R. & Güler, İ. (2010). Postgraduate students’ attitudes towards distance learning. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9 , 218–222. Jones, T. (1992). IITS students' evaluation questionnaires for the fall semester of 1991. A summary and report. (ERIC document Reproduction Service No. ED 345716). Lambert, R. D. (1991). Distance Education and Foreign Languages. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,514 ,35-48. McCleary, I. D., & Egan, M. W. (1989). Program design and evaluation: Two-way interactive television. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(1), 50-60. Ohler, J. (1991). Why distance education? Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,514 ,22-34. Rashid, M., Khokhar, A. G. and Tahir, A. A. (2013). Learner's Attitude towards Printed Word in Distance Education. Journal of Educational Research, 16(1), 106-111. Sampson, N. (2003). Meeting the Needs of Distance Learners. Language Learning & Technology, 7(3), 103-118. Sole, C. R. & Hopkins, J. (2007). Contrasting Two Approaches to Distance Language Learning, Distance Education, 28(3), 351-370, DOI: 10.1080/01587910701611369. White, C. (2006). Distance learning of foreign languages. Language Teaching, 39, pp 247-264 doi:10.1017/ S0261444806003727. https://www.washington.edu/oea/pdfs/course_eval/FormI.pdf. Retrieved on August, 28, 2014. 
work_vj4nh22xjnewxdkbfzskvlekaa	----	56 Applied Computer Science, vol. 15, no.3, pp. 56–64 doi:10.23743/acs-2019-21 Submitted: 2019-07-12 Revised: 2019-08-03 Accepted: 2019-09-12 distance education, online examination, authentication, assessment, Biometric system Hamid JAN[0000-0003-2065-8515]*, Beena HAMID** THE APPLICATION OF FINGERPRINTS AUTHENTICATION IN DISTANCE EDUCATION Abstract Currently the distance education has obtained a wider ever acceptance. One of the main tasks of distance education is the process of checking student’s knowledge by online examination. To conduct a fair examination and prevent unauthorized users to appear in the examination, different biometric technolo- gies are used; we in this paper implement a fingerprint biometric system for distance education students and found by survey that the students are com- fortable with fingerprint biometric system. 1. INTRODUCTION The invention of computer technology has changed our lives and found new directions. The ways of communication and getting information through Web is another change for people. Distance education through web technology or online education is the new way of getting education emerged from World Wide Web (Alavi & Leidner, 2016; Takahashi, Abiko & Negishi, 2006). These technologies are very attracting and interesting but also face various threats, especially when tests are conducted online. (King, Guyette & Piotrowski, 2009) studied and come to the conclusion that 73.6% of the students think that cheating is easy in the online exam as compared to conventional exam. These were the students selected for the sample. * Sarhad university of Science & Information Technology, Landi Akhund Ahmad, Ring Road, Peshawar 25000,Pakistan, hod.csit@suit.edu.pk ** Jalya Khan Institute of Modern Sciences, Ghani Khan Road, Shaheedan Salarabad, Charsadda 25000, Pakistan, beenhamidjan@gmail.com http://acs.pollub.pl/pdf/v15n3/5.pdf http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2065-8515 57 Distance learning is a modern form of education and is the interaction of the teacher and students with each other at a distance or on internet (King, Guyette & Piotrowski, 2009). It provides the learning process different from the conventional form of education. The problems of distance learning can be divided into two groups: pedagogical problems and technical problems. In this paper, we considered only technical problems, in particular, the problem of identifying the true user during Examination. The place of the student and the teacher is different in online examination, because communication is done through the Internet. As the distances increases between teacher and student, the chances of committing negligence increases, and revealing the wrong actions of the students is quite difficult. To avoid such unfair means, the actions of the students must be continuously supervised during the examination. In supervising the first move may be the use of an authentication method, that is, the identification of the student, which is the right person who is eligible for the exam occasionally a student who has been registered in the exam is different from the student who wrote the exam. Therefore, authentication plays a role in determining the correct user. A new method to authenticate people based on their biometrics has become known for many years (Green & Romney, 2005; Frischholz & Dieckmann, 2005). William (2002), for example, explains that biometric data are unique physical characteristics of a person, such as fingerprints, iris, face, fingerprints, etc. Biometric fingerprint systems are very common and are known for their accuracy, ease and proven record (Aggarwaltt, Rathat, Jeat & Bollet, 2008; Ali, Ali, Shahzad & Malik, 2006; Ratha, Connell & Bolle, 2001). However, like any other biometric system, fingerprints also represent several threats and risks to the authentication process (Maltoni, Maio, Jain & Prabhakar, 2003). Education should not be thought as distance or conventional, unless it is associated with assessments and exams. Student assessment is an important part of the education and training system. First, it is important to know that how much knowledge is required for a student and secondly the students themselves need to know about their knowledge. The most tried assessment procedure due to its clarity is the use of MCQs type exam. The interactions of students with online materials and the collection of all infor- mation for examination from such material are very helpful. It is also handy to support the examiner in his work. 58 2. RELATED WORK Althaff et al. (2009) offers a unimodal approach that ensures the security of online exams by using facial recognition techniques. They use the methods of discrete casino transformation (DCT) and Karhunen-Loeve transformation (KLT) to capture the facial image functions, and then compare these results with facial recognition. This method can be further extended by comparing faces with a protected image. Agulla et al. (2008) provides uniform protection technologies using biometric authenticity of the Internet. This method uses biochecker software, which is handy for verification of images on user side. Visualize user images and handy for user behavior monitoring. The drawback of this method is that you need powerful servers to run this software. Hsieh & Leu (2011) provides unimodal technique for implementing a unique authentication method based on passwords. This method supply independent passwords based on location and time of a mobile user. By using this password only, the application on mobile device can be accessed, such as Internet banking. This helps in reduction the risk of intrusion. This method can be used during the student authentication process. Taiwo Ayodele et al. (2011) offered an automatic learning method that prevents theft, impersonation of exams online. This method shows the student's behavior during the exam, thus avoiding negligence. Apampa et al. (2010) Proposes a multiple-step approach to the model, presenting authentication methods to initiate a student session and follow-up student monitoring while the examination is in progress. To authenticate, the student has three options, i.e by face recognition, by passwords or by tokens. After authentica- tion the student is continuously check through the webcam. If some unfair means or risks are identified, the student will be asked to authenticate again. Nasser Modiri et al. (2011) offered a multimode technique, in which the system is designed to conduct distance examinations in secure domain. To do this, the student provides user-id and passwords at the time of registration and then the student su- pervision is done through the webcam. It assists to monitor students' behavior during the examination. 3. METHODOLOGY OF FINGERPRINT AUTHENTICATION The working diagram of scanner that was used in fingerprint Authentication (Maltoni, Maio, Jain & Prabhakar, 2003) is shown in figure 1. 59 Fig. 1. Fingerprint authentication system 60 The fingerprint consists of the following two types of features: 1. The Global Features: They are core and delta. The core is the inner most point and delta is the location where three ridges meet. 2. The Local Features: The lines on fingerprint are called Ridges and the spaces between them are called valleys. These ridges form different patterns and are called minutiae points. The most common minutiae points are ridge bifurcation and ridge ending. With the help of local and global features of fingerprint, we can differentiate users. The global and local features of finger prints are shown in figure 2. Fig. 2. Local and Global features of fingerprints Students will be able to appear in exam online. Each student will be given access to a computer in the classroom, connected to the server. The internet connection will not be available during exam. The student will authenticated first through biometric system by matching his fingerprints. Once the student is recognized by the system, the system allows him to complete the exam. The test of the student is send for checking to the teacher electronically and the system also send the copy of test to the printer for student. Once the student is recognized by the system, his identity will be known and now the student can be punished, if found using unfair means in the examination. There are many advantages and disadvantages of conducting exam online. The ability to track the actions of a student identified by system, allows us to constantly evaluate him and giving student the best experience. Any online activity can be vulnerable, so a reliable security policy will be required. Fingerprint Biometrics appears again as a way of reducing the likelihood of threats. 61 4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION During the examination, 100 students were verified on fingerprint biometric system. The detail of these student were presented in figures 3,4 and 5. Most of them are in the range from 17 to 30 years old, Students of Computer Science at Comwave College Islamabad, a Distance Learning Centre of SUIT. Students in Computer science Department mostly come after completing twelve years of schooling. Almost all (91.3%) are men. All of them were enrolled in the different subjects. The purpose of the experiment was to analyze the attitude of students towards a new tool for controlling access to e-learning. 80% of students think that fingerprint registration is a very easy or easy way to use online courses. Those who welcome the use of fingerprint biometric system said they look more secure, it’s simple and faster than other access tools. Those who oppose fingerprint biometric system consider that the password is sufficient. The data in Table 1 clearly supports the choice of a fingerprint biometric technology. Tab. 1. The choice of best Biometric System Biometric Choice Frequency %age Cum.% Fingerprint 80 80.0 80.0 Face 5 5.0 85.0 Iris 13 13.0 97.0 Voice 2 2.0 100.0 Total 100 100.0 Fig. 3. The Age of Students 62 To find about the ease of use of a new fingerprint interface, students find it very easy or easy to use (80.0%) (see Table 2). Tab. 2. The opinion poll of students Opinion Frequency %age Cum.% Very Easy 45 45.0 45.0 Easy 35 35.0 80.0 Difficult 17 17.0 97.0 Useless 3 3.0 100.0 Total 100 100 Fig. 4. The Level of Education Fig. 5. Total enrollment of Students in Each Subject 63 Students were analyzed for their level of knowledge about biometric system and to what extent they have used it. Many students were new to these methods and hardly have used biometric systems (see Table 3). The main challenge of survey was whether the students think the fingerprint biometric system verification appropriate for accessing online courses. The students were divided into two groups. The group one contains those who accept the fingerprint verification and the group two includes those who did not accept it. Two- dimensional analysis of tree segmentation to assess which category is supported by many students is applied. Tab. 3. Knowledge of Students about Biometric System Knowledge Frequency %age Cum.% Expert Level 1 1.0 1.0 Intermediate Level 11 11.0 11.0 Elementary Level 15 15.0 26.0 no Knowledge 74 74.00 100.00 (Total) 100 100.00 Two questions were asked from the students. Question no. 1 was: “What do you think about the verification via fingerprint to access online courses?”. 77% students think that verification via fingerprint is very easy while 23% students think that verification by such method is very difficult. Question no. 2 was: “Which one of the biometric technologies would you select?”. The total students in favor of biometric technology were seventy seven (77). Seventy (70) students selected Fingerprint Bio- metric technology while the other seven (7) students selected the other technology. 5. CONCLUSION A fingerprint matching technique based on local features of fingerprints was used for verification and registration. The technique performed well when tested for online examination. The students were keen to use the biometric system for online learning. The students think that it is a faster and easy way to verify and register for online courses. Most of the students have never used the biometric system and have very little knowledge about biometric systems. Eventually the fingerprint biometric system was implemented in the distance education online examination and introduce a new way of conducting examination in distance. 64 REFERENCES Aggarwaltt, G., Rathat, N. K., Jeat, T. Y., & Bollet, R. M. (2008). Gradient based Textural Characterization of Fingerprints. In 2008 IEEE Second International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applica- tions and Systems (pp. 1–5). Arlington, VA. doi:10.1109/BTAS.2008.4699383 Agulla, E. G., Rifón, L. A., Castro, J. L. A., & Mateo, C. G. (2008). Is my student at the other side? Applying Biome tric Web Authentication to E-Learning Environments. 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Online exams and cheating: An empirical analysis of business students ’views’. The Journal of Educators Online, 6(1), 1–11. Maltoni, D., Maio, D., Jain, A. K., & Prabhakar, S. (2003). Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition. London: Springer. Modiri, N., Farahi, A., & Ketabi, S. (2011). Providing security framework for holding electronic examination in virtual universities. In The 7th International Conference on Networked Computing and Advanced Information Management (pp. 73–79). Gyeongju. Ratha, N. K., Connell, J. H., & Bolle, R. (2001). An analysis of minutiae matching strength. In: J.Bigun & F. Smeraldi (Eds.), Audio- and Video-Based Biometric Person Authentication. AVBPA 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (vol. 2091). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. doi:10.1007/3-540-45344-X_32 Takahashi, Y., Abiko, T., & Negishi, E. (2006). An Ontology-based System for Network Security. 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work_vj6rlyabzzhwni4l4rqggjukh4	----	Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Downloaded 2021-04-06T01:40:29Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. Title A Delphi study on collaborative learning in distance education:The faculty perspective Author(s) O'Neill, Susan; Scott, Murray; Conboy, Kieran Publication Date 2011 Publication Information O'Neill, S,Scott, M,Conboy, K (2011) 'A Delphi study on collaborative learning in distance education: The faculty perspective'. British Journal Of Educational Technology, 42 :939-949. Link to publisher's version http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01132.x Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/3265 DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01132.x https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/ A Delphi Study on Collaborative Learning in Distance Education: the Faculty Perspective Susan O’Neill, Murray Scott and Kieran Conboy Susan O’Neill is a PhD student at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, National University of Ireland Galway. She is currently pursuing a PhD in stakeholder management in information system development projects. Her research interests include collaborative learning, e-learning, collaborative networks, stakeholder management and open innovation. Murray Scott is a lecturer in information systems at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, National University of Ireland Galway. His main research interests lie in IS success, e-government and e-learning information systems. He is currently pursuing a PhD in IS Success and eGovernment. Dr. Kieran Conboy is also a lecturer in information systems at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, National University of Ireland Galway. His research focuses on agile systems development approaches as well as agility across other disciplines. He is also associate editor of the European Journal of Information Systems. Address for correspondence: Murray Scott, Business Information Systems Department, J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, National University of Ireland Galway. Email:Murray.Scott@nuigalway.ie Abstract This paper focuses on the factors which influence collaborative learning in distance education. Distance education has been around for many years and the use of collaborative learning techniques in distance education is becoming increasingly popular. Several studies have demonstrated the superiority of collaborative learning over traditional modes of learning and it has been identified as a potential solution to some of the weaknesses of traditional distance education courses. There are a rapidly growing number of technologies in use today and educators and practitioners face an increasingly difficult challenge to successfully implement collaborative learning in distance education; precipitated not only from technical advances but also from wider social and organisational concerns. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the factors that influence collaborative learning in distance education, by eliciting the opinions of an expert panel using a Delphi survey. The aim was to produce an integrated list of the most important implementation factors and to investigate the role technology is perceived to contribute. The findings identified seventeen of the most important factors; these factors cover a range of themes including course rationale and design, instructor characteristics, training, group dynamics, the development of a learning community and technology. The potential of technology however does not seem to be fully realised and newer technologies such as multi-user environments would seem to be of limited use in practice according to the expert panel. Introduction There is an increasing interest in using collaborative learning (CL) techniques in distance education (DE) courses. Collaborative learning emerges through the interaction of individuals with other individuals; knowledge is created though these interactions as individuals ‘exercise, verify, solidify, and improve their mental models through discussion and information sharing’(Leidner and Jarvenpaa, 1995). When students work together collaboratively, they not only learn themselves, but they are also contributing to the development of the group (Salas, Kosarzycki, Burke, Fiore and Stone, 2002). Working in groups is not just a valuable way of learning but also develops the abilities for cooperative work, which is essential in the modern working place. Distance education is a broad term that refers to delivering a curriculum to learners who are not physically present on campus. Recent technological advances, along with changing learner demographics have triggered a significant rise in the popularity of this type of education. Incorporating collaborative activities into modern distance education courses should produce graduates who can work effectively and efficiently with others, while also understanding the role of modern information technologies in collaboration, communication and knowledge creation. As distance education has evolved, it has become inextricably linked to technology (Garrison, 1985) and as such information systems involving communication and information technology have become the underlying core of current and future DE innovations and trends (Lockwood, 2001). Technologies that promote communication and interaction can add value to the learning process by enabling the development of higher-order thinking skills, increased involvement, interest and motivation and overall the attainment of higher learning outcomes (Piccoli, 2001). Although emerging technologies offer a vast range of opportunities for promoting collaboration, distance education programs face challenges that may influence the implementation of these technologies (Beldarrain, 2006). It is also important to make a distinction between ‘collaboratively usable applications and collaborative technology’ (Lipponen and Lallimo, 2004). The use of technology therefore is more than a mere supporting infrastructural component, but at the same time is not the only influencing factor and the organisational processes and human interactions surrounding it are also of crucial importance in the implementation of CL in DE. A number of studies have investigated the factors which are relevant to CL in DE, mostly focusing on specific areas of interest, for example; CL and computer supported groups (Brandon and Hollingshead, 1999); student preferences (Beyth-Marom, Chajut, Roccas and Sagiv, 2003); social interaction (Kreijns, Kirschner and Jochems, 2003); issues with CL in DE (Bernard, Rojo de Rubalcava and St-Pierre, 2000); computer supported collaborative learning (for examples see Beldarrain, 2006; English and Yazdani, 1999; Silverman, 1995); success factors of CMC technologies (Tolmie and Boyle, 2000); system characteristics (Pituch and Lee, 2006) and emerging themes in distance learning (Salas et al., 2002). The literature reviewed indicated that several factors impact CL in DE, although each independent study considered only a limited number of factors. The aim of this research was to produce an integrated list of the most important factors, with the aim of establishing the key issues involved in the implementation of CL in DE. Research Method A Delphi survey was chosen for this study, as it is a data collection method that is designed to elicit and organise the opinions of a panel of experts through iterative, controlled feedback. The framework used was based on non-parametric statistical techniques, as outlined by Schmidt (1997), and aimed to answer the following research questions: RQ1: What are the most important factors that influence the effective use of collaborative learning in distance education? RQ2: What is the perceived role of technology in this form of education? Panel Description Rather than focus on a homogenous group (such as lecturers) a cross section of expertise was sought to ensure that the factors identified considered a range of perspectives and not just the views of a particular group. The panel selected was composed of 18 panellists from three geographical regions: Ireland, USA, and UK. They represented collaborative learning through three distinct groupings; nine programme directors using collaborative learning in distance education courses; five lecturers who are currently using collaborative learning techniques in distance education courses; and four academics with experience in the area of computer supported collaborative learning. Twelve universities were represented: Carnegie Mellon University, (United States); Middlesex University, (United Kingdom); New Jersey Institute of Technology (United States); National University Ireland, Galway (Ireland); Oscail, Dublin City University (Ireland); Penn State University (United States); University College Cork (Ireland); University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom); University of Leicester (United Kingdom); University of Hawaii (United States); University of Limerick (Ireland); and The Exploratorium, San Francisco (United States). Criteria used in selecting the participants were based on their involvement with collaborative learning, distance education and computer supported collaborative learning. The average number of years experience in the area of Collaborative Learning was 7-10 years, with 50% of the panel having over 11 years experience. The panel were also highly qualified in the field of distance education with the average number of years experience 7-10 years and 44% of the panel having over 11 years experience. The average number of CL courses managed or taught was 4-7, as was the average number of DE courses managed or taught. The selected participants are considered to be well informed, leading authorities in their field by their colleagues, supervisors and peers. Overall the panel can be considered highly qualified and well equipped to provide opinions on the factors relating to CL in DE, as qualified by the following section. Forty six experts were invited to partake in the study, based on a preliminary identification process. The invitation provided details of what the study would entail and the expected amount of time that would be needed; the survey took place in June/July 2008. As the commitment was quite intensive (4-6 surveys over a period of 6-8 weeks) the acceptance of eighteen candidates to partake was considered significant and in line with suggestions from the literature; Delphi group size depends on group dynamics rather than statistical power and panels of 10-18 experts are recommended (Okoli and Pawlowski, 2004). During the study two panel members dropped out, leaving a panel of sixteen who completed all stages of the study. Survey Rounds Following the approach used by Kasi et al. (2008) rather than have the panellists participate in a brainstorming session, a list of potential factors was developed by reviewing the literature and extracting those which had been previously identified as important to collaborative learning and distance education. The purpose of the list was to provide the panellists with a structured instrument to begin the Delphi process and contained 28 factors for the initial ratification and discussion (see Appendix for factors discussed in the survey). Detailed instructions of the task involved were provided along with definitions and a glossary of terms relating to the factors. This was to ensure that the panel all had the same understanding of the factors that were being discussed and there was no confusion over semantics. Each participant was asked to select the factors that they deemed to be important to CL in DE and to provide details of any additional factors that they considered to be important. In order to gain a snapshot of the technologies currently in use by the panel they were also sent a short survey and were asked to identify those technologies that they currently used for CL initiatives. The results of the initial survey involved the panel eliminating 9 factors from the original list and adding a further 26. The additional items were reviewed and a new consolidated list of 45 factors was developed. As the target size for the ranking of the factors was around 20 items (Okoli and Pawlowski, 2004) a second survey was required to narrow down the consolidated list. Each panellist was asked to select (but not rank) at least 10 of the most important factors (Schmidt, 1997). The results of this second survey provided a list of the 17 most important factors which influence the successful use of collaborative learning in distance education. The first of the ranking rounds was then sent out. The aim of this phase was to determine the level of consensus on the ranking of the relevant factors. The ranked lists were measured using Kendall’s W coefficient of concordance, as it is recognised as one of the best ways for measuring non-parameter rankings (Okoli and Pawlowski, 2004; Schmidt, 1997). The values of W range from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating no consensus, and 1 indicating perfect consensus. The value of W obtained from this first ranking round was 0.148, which suggested weak agreement on the rankings and thus a second ranking round was necessary. As suggested by Okoli and Pawlowski (2004) the second ranking round was listed in order of the mean ranks obtained in the first round. Each expert was asked to revise their rankings for each item, again asking them to explain their rankings and revisions. The response to the second ranking round indicated that the majority of panellists did not wish to change their opinion, with only four of the panel members revising their rankings. However, a number of additional comments were obtained and Kendall’s W improved to 0.221. At this stage it was decided that further ranking rounds would not be required. The original impetus behind the Delphi method was to seek consensus, as expert consensus was believed more likely to be accurate than an individual forecast. Today, consensus is less important for many investigators; with a useful by-product being crystallisation of reasons for dissensus (Armstrong, 1989). Dissensus, or lack of agreement has been identified as a valid outcome (Armstrong, 1989; Skulmoski, Hartman and Krahn, 2007) as it highlights areas of differences in opinion and enables a deeper understanding of the issues involved. With the diverse perspectives of the panel, and the subjective nature of education, the lack of consensus on the rankings of the factors was considered appropriate. The panel had agreed on the most important factors, the lack of strong consensus was on the priority, or ranking, of these factors. Results This study identified the top 17 of the most important factors from a comprehensive list of 54. The following table provides the results of the final ranking round and outlines the factors in ranked order, along with their mean rank and interquartile range (IQR). Rank Description Mean Rank IQR 1 Instructional design of the activity, activity structure and assessment needs to promote CL 5.80 7.00 2 Tutor teaching style should encourage involvement and participation 6.20 4.00 3 The development of a learning community should be encouraged and nurtured 6.47 8.00 4 The technology used should be accessible to all participants 6.47 10.0 5 Tutor should assume facilitator role 6.67 7.00 6 Personalised, detailed and quality-controlled feedback on assessment work should be provided 7.20 7.00 7 An appropriate rationale for collaborative learning should be developed 7.47 9.00 8 Tutors should be trained for their role 7.53 8.00 9 Promotive interaction should be encouraged within groups 9.13 4.00 10 Group work should promote positive interdependence 10.00 7.00 11 Learning environment should be user friendly and kept simple 10.47 9.00 12 Prior design of collaborative tasks is essential: i.e. design for learning, then e-moderate for participation 10.60 7.00 13 The development of teamwork skills should be explicitly built into the instructional design 10.93 8.00 14 Technology used should enable multiple means of communication 11.07 8.00 15 There should be lots of opportunity for social communications in the early part of the course 11.27 4.00 16 Technology used should enable asynchronous communication 11.87 8.00 17 Tools should support multiple learning styles 13.47 5.00 Table 1 – Results of Delphi Ranking Round The IQR shows the range of opinion on the ranking of the factor; the higher the IQR the greater the range of opinion. The opinion of the panel was varied and the above table highlights the areas which caused most disagreement on the ranking. For example, the factor ranked number 7 has a high IQR of 9.00. Comments on this factor were varied and tended to either come with a very high or very low ranking. Those who ranked it highly deemed it to be ‘Absolutely critical’ as there is ‘‘No point in doing collaborative work for its own sake – rationale must be linked with learning outcomes & tasks must be relevant/substantial & enable students to acquire deeper understanding / knowledge of course content + experience of teamwork etc’. The reasoning behind its low ranking by some of the panel was that ‘This should be obvious’ or ‘not developed, should be known already’. By exploring these comments it was apparent that the priority given to the factors was based on expert perspectives and individual contexts. This dissensus among the panel is discussed in more detail in the conclusion section. The technology questionnaire sent out with the Delphi study (June/July 2008) provides a snapshot of the technologies in use for CL in DE. This questionnaire obtained details of the percentage of the panel which currently use the technology, along with their perception of its perceived usefulness to CL. The following table provides a summary of the results. Technology % of Panel using this technology Average Rating VLE / Online Forums / Bulletin Boards 100% Extremely Useful Chat Functions / Synchronous Discussion 94% Moderately Useful Computer / Audio Conferencing / VoIP (e.g. Elluminate, Skype) 83% Moderately Useful Collaborative document tools (e.g. Google docs, Word comment) 78% Extremely Useful Email / Email List Server 72% Moderately Useful Wiki Spaces 67% Moderately Useful Social Networking Software (e.g. Ning, del.icio.us, wiki, facebook) 61% Limited Usefulness Blogs 56% Moderately Useful Calendars, Agendas or Schedules 56% Moderately Useful Voting 50% Limited Usefulness Multi-User Virtual Environments (e.g. Second Life) 44% Limited Usefulness Podcasting 44% Moderately Useful Group conferencing (with synchronous audio / video) / Video Conferencing 40% Limited – Moderately Useful Table 2 – Results of Technology Snapshot questionnaire Discussion of Findings Course rationale and design In line with the literature (Brandon and Hollingshead, 1999; English and Yazdani, 1999; Kennedy and Duffy, 2004; Tolmie and Boyle, 2000) course rationale and design is considered highly important. Personalised, detailed and quality-controlled feedback on assessment work should be provided as it is also seen as of high importance. The literature also suggests that the rationale behind the use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies is considered important (Tolmie and Boyle, 2000): however this study did not find it to be a high priority, perhaps because in DE it is necessary to use CMC technologies. While there are a number of suggestions around course content discussed in the literature (Bernard et al., 2000; Brandon and Hollingshead, 1999; Silverman, 1995), course subject matter was not found to be particularly important by this panel of experts. Instructor Characteristics The role of the tutor, or instructor, is significant to CL, with ‘teaching style’ considered to be a ‘most important influence’ on involvement and participation (Salas et al., 2002). The expert panel would seem to agree with this as one of the highest-ranking factors directly related to instructor teaching style, suggesting that it should ‘encourage involvement and participation’. Learner-centred courses require the instructor to assume a facilitator role, and again this is suggested as important in the literature (Bernard et al., 2000; English and Yazdani, 1999; Silverman, 1995). The panel concurs with this agreeing that the tutor should assume a facilitator role, and also receive training for the role. Support, both technical and institutional, is not deemed to be as high a priority and did not make it to the final list of factors. Learning Community It would also seem that, in line with the literature (Hiltz, 1998; Kreijns et al., 2003), the encouragement and development of a learning community is considered highly important to the effective use of CL in DE. While there should be opportunity for social communications in the early part of the course, this is not viewed as high a priority. The importance of the group to collaborative learning has been regularly discussed (for examples see (Brandon and Hollingshead, 1999; English and Yazdani, 1999; Hiltz, 1988; Kreijns et al., 2003; Tolmie and Boyle, 2000) and the results of this study would seem to concur, at least with regard to the importance of promotive interaction and the fact that group work should promote positive interdependence. However, other aspects deemed important in the literature, for example, group size (Kreijns et al., 2003; Tolmie and Boyle, 2000) were not supported by this panel. This may be due to fact that the technology available today allows large groups to work quite well. As one panellist pointed out ‘perhaps bigger groups enable the work to be sustained when some of the group are inactive for long periods’. Group interpersonal skills (Kreijns et al., 2003) were also not deemed to be of major importance, while individual accountability (Brandon and Hollingshead, 1999) was seen as important but not ‘most important’ and did not go through to the final list. Student Characteristics Student characteristics are regarded as important in the literature with Bernard et al. (2000) suggesting that that ideally ‘developing a profile of the learner’s knowledge, skills and experience, as well as their perceived needs’ will aid in the design and implementation of effective DE courses. Learner differences involve both the way that students will interact with the technology as well as affect the degree to which they will participate in online collaboration activities (Salas et al., 2002). However, the panel did not concur with the literature; they did not consider student characteristics an important factor in the effective use of CL in DE. It was agreed that while students may have a preference for certain learning styles these can be overcome and adapting learning styles to suit course requirements is part of the learning experience itself. Role of Technology Five technology based factors are among the most important factors. Accessibility to the technology has been highlighted as important in the literature (Bernard et al., 2000) and this has been upheld by the panel, placing this factor in the top five. The lower ranking of the technology factors would seem to be due to the fact that it is deemed a supporting role and less critical than good design and tutor characteristics. While not considering the technology unimportant, the point was made that: ‘with a good plan, and buy-in from teachers, the technology should not matter. Of course there is a need to match the technology to the task – but perhaps we are getting to the position that we are doing this in what seems like an intuitive and natural way. The technologies are (relatively) mature and powerful, so we can achieve our ends with a range of different technologies’. While the above comment recognises that the technologies are now relatively mature and powerful, it would seem that technology is not being fully utilised. One factor that had a wide discordance concerned the ability of technology to cater for different learning styles. While the majority of the panel did not consider this to be a high priority, one panel member fully supported this and felt that the rest of the panel was overlooking it. ‘Tools need to reflect the multiple styles for learning and not assume that students should adapt to purely linguistic ones. This doesn’t mean we have to test and understand every student’s primary learning style, only that we have to design environments that appeal to multiple styles in a variety of ways’. Alavi and Leidner (2001) point out that ‘the role of IT in enabling individualized learning methods, while not new, has received strikingly little attention’; this study supports this view and further indicates that the potential of IT has still not been recognised in practice. The potential of technology to provide an individualised, effective learning environment is not recognised or utilised by the majority of this panel of experts. A recent study (Menchaca and Bekele, 2008) identified that ‘the availability of multiple tools added flexibility to the learning environment’ which helped ensure a successful DE programme, as did the use of technology tools that appeal to multiple learning styles. Perhaps as more research identifies the usefulness of these technological tools they will be utilised more fully in practice. Perceived usefulness of CL technology It would seem that virtual learning environments, including online forums and bulletin boards are of most use to collaborative learning in distance education. The entire panel uses this technology and it received a high level of support on its usefulness. Collaborative document tools are also considered ‘extremely useful’ by the panel, with 78% of them using this technology. The majority of the technology is considered ‘moderately useful’ including audio conferencing and email, even though these had a high percentage of use. It is interesting to note that some of the newer technologies such as multi-user virtual environments and group conferencing appear to have limited usefulness in practice, although recent research into these technologies show a promising outlook (Ketelhut, Nelson, Clarke and Dede, 2010; Salmon, 2009). Conclusion This paper has explored the factors which are deemed to be important to the implementation of CL initiatives in DE courses. Its findings highlight the most important factors which should be considered along with providing a snapshot of the technologies involved. It would seem that in practice, there is suboptimal use of technology in this educational environment. In particular, newer technologies such as multi-user environments, group conferencing and social networks are perceived to be of limited usefulness. These technologies have the potential to enable collaborative learning to take place over distance and as such their perceived lack of usefulness is of concern. If these technologies are to be fully optimised as an enabling factor in collaborative distance education then their educational benefits need to be more strongly highlighted to practitioners. Dissensus on the rankings of the factors While the panel did agree on the most important factors, there was only weak agreement on the rankings of these factors. This lack of agreement highlights the diverse views and opinions of the experts. It would seem that opinions and rankings are based on the context in which the collaborative learning is taking place and the perspectives of the individual experts. Some considered certain factors to be ‘obvious’ and thus not worth ranking highly while others took the opposite approach and ranked the obvious ones as high priorities. Another possibility, for the dissensus, may be that the extensive experience of the panel led to them being less likely to change their opinions based on others views; this may also be why the new technologies have received little support – those who are running successful CL programmes may see little reason to change from the technology and/or practices which they are currently using. However, the purpose of this research was to gain an understanding of the factors from diverse perspectives and as such the lack of strong consensus on the ranking is appropriate. Dissensus is a valid Delphi outcome as it can provide an understanding of the varied opinions on the factors being discussed. The study has highlighted that the use of collaborative learning in distance education is likely to be context specific and while certain factors are always important, the priority of this importance is not necessarily consistent. Future research in specific contexts is encouraged by the authors to explore this further. Implications for IS Research While the study established that technology is among the most important factors, it also highlighted the fact that it is viewed more as a supporting infrastructure than actually adding value to the collaborative learning in more innovative ways. In particular, the use of technology to support multiple learning methods is an area that is not currently optimising the potential of technology. Further research into the role of technology in collaborative learning might consider how the technology is being used and why it is not being fully utilised in practice. The perceived usefulness of the technologies could also be further explored, in particular the lack of support for some of the newer technologies. The fact that Multi-User Environments are used by less than 50% of this panel, along with the suggestion that it is of limited use warrants further research. As these new technologies can actually enable collaborative learning to take place, rather than just support it, it is important to establish why they are not being considered particularly useful in practice. Comparison of the technologies used with the factors identified was not an objective of this study. Further research could investigate how specific technologies are used to support the factors identified in order to understand how the technologies in use are judged to support the important collaboration factors. Also, as an exploratory study, this research did not attempt to determine how these factors influence CL in DE; further research could aim to establish how these factors affect the success of CL in DE. As with any Delphi study, the results are based on a limited number of subjects. While these subjects were chosen following rigorous guidelines, one must be cautious in generalising. The sample is relatively diverse in terms of perspectives on CL in DE and this diversity may have influenced the lack of consensus on the priority of the items. Further research could be carried out with panels of similar perspectives to determine if the results would hold. Implications for practitioners The panel of experts utilised in this Delphi study are highly experienced and their combined knowledge has provided a useful guide to the most important factors in this growing area of education. These factors can be grouped into specific areas - course rationale and design; instructor characteristics; learning community; assessment; support and training; group dynamics and technology – to provide practitioners with a focused approach to consider when undertaking this type of project. Overall the study provides a practical guide for those considering implementing collaborative learning in distance education, along with some motivation for future research for the IS community regarding the suboptimal utilisation of technology in practice. References Alavi, M. and Leidner, D. E. (2001) Research commentary: Technology-mediated learning - A call for greater depth and breadth of research, Information Systems Research, 12 (1), pp. 1-10. Armstrong, M. (1989) The Delphi Technique, Princeton Economic Institute, NJ. Beldarrain, Y. (2006) Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration, Distance Education, 27 (2), pp. 139-153. Bernard, R. M., Rojo de Rubalcava, B. and St-Pierre, D. (2000) Collaborative online distance learning: Issues for future practice and research, Distance Education, 21 (2), pp. 17. Beyth-Marom, R., Chajut, E., Roccas, S. and Sagiv, L. (2003) Internet-assisted versus traditional distance learning environments: factors affecting students' preferences, Computers & Education, 41 (1), pp. 65-76. Brandon, D. P. and Hollingshead, A. B. (1999) Collaborative learning and computer-supported groups, Communication Education, 48 (2), pp. 109-126. English, S. and Yazdani, M. (1999) Computer-supported cooperative learning in a Virtual University, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 15 (1), pp. 11. Garrison, D. R. (1985) Three Generations of Technological Innovations in Distance Education, Distance Education, 6 (2), pp. 235-242. Hiltz, S. R. (1988) Collaborative learning in a virtual classroom: highlights of findings, Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work ACM, Portland, Oregon, United States, pp. 282-290. Hiltz, S. R. (1998) Collaborative Learning in Asynchronous Learning Networks: Building Learning Communities, WebNet 98 World Conference of the WWW, Internet, and Intranet Proceedings, Orlando, Florida, November 7-12, 1998. Kasi, V., Keil, M., Mathiassen, L. and Peterson, K. (2008) The post mortem paradox: a Delphi study of IT specialist perceptions, European Journal of Information Systems, 17 (1), pp. 62-78. Kennedy, D. and Duffy, T. (2004) Collaboration - a key principle in distance education, Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 19 (2), pp. 9. Ketelhut, D. J., Nelson, B. C., Clarke, J. and Dede, C. (2010) A multi-user virtual environment for building and assessing higher order inquiry skills in science, British Journal of Educational Technology, 41 (1), pp. 56-68. Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P. A. and Jochems, W. (2003) Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: a review of the research, Computers in Human Behavior, 19 (3), pp. 335-353. Leidner, D. E. and Jarvenpaa, S. L. (1995) The use of Information Technology to enhance Management School Education - A Theoretical View, Mis Quarterly, 19 (3), pp. 265-291. Lipponen, L. and Lallimo, J. (2004) Assessing applications for collaboration: from collaboratively usable applications to collaborative technology, British Journal of Educational Technology, 35 (4), pp. 433-442. Lockwood, F. (2001) Innovation in distributed learning: creating the environment, In Innovation in Open and Distance Learning - Successful Development of Online and Web-based LearningKogan Page Limited, London, pp. 14. Menchaca, M. P. and Bekele, T. A. (2008) Learner and instructor identified success factors in distance education, Distance Education, 29 (3), pp. 231-252. Okoli, C. and Pawlowski, S. (2004) The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications, Information & Management, 42 (1), pp. 15-29. Piccoli, G. (2001) Web-based Virtual Learning Environments: A research framework and a preliminary assessment of effectiveness in basic IT skills training, Mis Quarterly, 25 (4), pp. 25. Pituch, K. A. and Lee, Y. (2006) The influence of system characteristics on e-learning use, Computers & Education, 47 (2), pp. 222-244. Salas, E., Kosarzycki, M. P., Burke, C. S., Fiore, S. M. and Stone, D. L. (2002) Emerging themes in distance learning research and practice: some food for thought, International Journal of Management Reviews, 4 (2), pp. 135-153. Salmon, G. (2009) The future for (second) life and learning, British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), pp. 526-538. Schmidt, R. (1997) Managing Delphi Surveys using NonParametric Statistical Techniques, Decision Sciences, 28 (3), pp. 11. Silverman, B. G. (1995) Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Computers & Education, 25 (3), pp. 10. Skulmoski, G., Hartman, F. T. and Krahn, J. (2007) The Delphi Method for Graduate Research, Journal of Information Technology Education, 6 (1), pp. 21. Tolmie, A. and Boyle, J. (2000) Factors influencing the success of computer mediated communication (CMC) environments in university teaching: a review and case study, Computers & Education, 34 (2), pp. 119-140. Appendix – Consolidated List of Factors Factor   Factor  Description   Initial  List   Validated     Final   F1   Students should have prior experience of collaboration technology √         F2   Promotive interaction should be encouraged within groups √   √   √   F3   Students learning style should be conducive to group-work √         F4   Tutor should assume facilitator role √   √   √   F5   Tutor teaching style should encourage involvement and participation √   √   √   F6   Group members should have adequate interpersonal skills √         F7   Technology used should enable synchronous communication e.g. MSN chat and teleconferencing √         F8   An appropriate rationale for collaborate learning should be developed √   √   √   F9   Group work should promote individual accountability √   √     F10   Course content should encourage interaction with both tutor and peers √   √     F11   Tutors should have institutional support for their role √   √     F12   The technology used should be accessible to all participants √   √   √   F13   Course subject matter should include problem based tasks √   √     F14   A consistent user interface should be provided √         F15   The development of a learning community should be encouraged and nurtured √   √   √   F16   Pre-course evaluation of learner profiles and learner needs should be carried out √         F17   Tutors should prepare students to work collaboratively √   √     F18   Social environments should be provided for non-project communication √   √     F19   Course subject matter should encourage opinion diversity √   √     F20   An appropriate rationale for use of Computer Mediated Communication technologies should be developed √   √     F21   Technology used should enable asynchronous communication e.g. e- mail and bulletin boards √   √   √   Factor   Factor  Description   Initial  List   Validated     Final   F22   Effective technical support should be provided to both tutors and students √   √     F23   Group work should promote positive interdependence √   √   √   F24   Students learning style should be conducive to sharing information with others √         F25   Group size should be kept small (e.g. 4- 5 students) √         F26   Course subject matter should be discussion based √         F27   Tutors should be trained for their role √   √   √   F28   Group processing discussions should be encouraged √   √     F29   Tutor should monitor group collaborative behaviour   √     F30   Technology used should enable multiple means of communication   √   √   F31   Multiple tools are necessary, to appeal to diverse learning styles, to support collaboration in multiple formats   √     F32   Technology should support multiple learning styles   √   √   F33   Course subject matter should be delivered in multiple formats/strategies including but not limited to discussion based.   √     F34   At least one opportunity for face-to-face interaction with the group   √     F35   Tutor interaction with the group should be limited so that they do not bias the Collaborative Learning   √     F36   Student’s interaction or participation should be weighed such that they are graded by their contribution to the group   √     F37   Collaborative tasks should promote the alignment of the individual goals of students with the collective goals of the group   √     F38   Students should be encouraged to negotiate task activities regularly to remain engaged.   √     F39   Group grades should be allocated for collaborative effort   √     F40   Marks should be allocated for the process (or milestones during the process)   √     F41   Software should be intuitive to use   √     Factor   Factor  Description   Initial  List   Validated     Final   F42   Technology should provide layers of interaction e.g. can go from browsing or uploading to being an intensive user   √     F43   Data should be collected and made useful e.g. tag clouds, trends   √     F44   Prior design of collaborative tasks is essential: i.e. design for learning, then e- moderate for participation   √   √   F45   Instructional design of the activity, activity structure and assessment should promote Collaborative Learning   √   √   F46   Students should be assessed based on their collaboration and willingness to help others   √     F47   Students and tutors should be constantly reminded of the (online) presence of the other members of the community   √     F48   There should be lots of opportunity for social communications in the early part of the course   √   √   F49   Individual grades should be allocated to collaborative tasks   √     F50   Learning environment should be user friendly and kept simple   √   √   F51   Group members should sign a group contract   √     F52   There should be personalized, detailed, quality-controlled feedback on assessment work   √   √   F53   Students should have the opportunity once or twice a year to meet with their lecturers in a tutorial   √     F54   The development of teamwork skills should be explicitly built into the instructional design   √   √   
work_vkihpyoelfdlhljgmm5sud6q5a	----	Problems and Decision in the Field of Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCETR 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.088 ScienceDirect WCETR 2013 Problems And Decision In The Field Of Distance Education Safiullin Lenara*, Fatkhiev Arturb, Saipullaev Ullubic, Bagautdinova Nailya d a b c d Kazan Federal University, Kazan, 420008, Russia Abstract Article is devoted to actual problem of modern education - to distance learning. The main objective of article - to prove and reason distance learning as new form of education. The article gives analysis of forms of education, gives main directions of development of distance learning are, and shows differences of distance learning from the traditional. It allocates problems solved by students and teachers in distance learning. It is shown that efficiency of distance learning is defined by use of pedagogical technologies which underlie design and implementation of remote courses. The conclusion that distance learning can be considered as independent form of education because possesses essential differences which can't be implemented in a traditional form is drawn © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCETR 2013. Keywords: distance learning, open university, information technology 1. Introduction Distance learning, having arisen at the end of the 20th century, enters 21 century as one of the most effective and perspective systems of specialists training. Emergence and active distribution of remote forms of education is an adequate response of education systems of many countries to processes of integration occurring in the world, movement to information society. Consortia of the leading universities representing a wide range of remote educational services are created in Europe and North America. So, DE association unites in its structure five thousand educational institutions in the USA. UNESCO conducts work on the organization of the virtual distributed university training in which will take place in virtual space, regardless of moving and borders, without restrictions * Corresponding author: Safiullin Lenar Tel: +7 (904) 665–6310 E-mail address: lenar_s@mail.ru © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCETR 2013. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.088&domain=pdf http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.088&domain=pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 112 Safi ullin Lenar et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 on time. In Russia and many other countries remote forms of education weren't applied on a large scale until recently because of a number of the objective reasons - generally because of insufficient development and a wide circulation of technical means of new information and telecommunication technologies. Now technical preconditions for wide use of distance learning in education are created. Moreover, lag of implementation of DE ideas from the opportunities provided by technical means became noticeable. Obstacle for the wide introduction of DE systems is absence of developed techniques of the DE organization, including structural, methodical and organizational decisions. The purpose of this review is attempt to systematize various aspects of this problem and to consider versions of decisions on a number of questions, arising in the course of development of DE systems and preparations for carrying out remote occupations. Relevance of DE development is obvious to all countries of the world. For example, according to Department of Education of the USA only 43% of students of higher education institutions of this country are younger than 25 years, only a quarter - youth of 18-22 years. Other part of students - adult people burdened with family and business cares. Internal forms of university education are rather problematic for them. Distance learning meets the requirements of modern life, especially, considering not only transportation costs, but also expenses on the organization of all system of resident studies. That's where raising interest to DE, and not only university one comes from. The early seventies can be considered as a reference point in development of open remote education in the world. The seventies are marked by active process of creation of higher educational institutions, universities of new type. Geographical distribution of higher educational institutions in the world, offering distance learning now, is given in fig. 1. It shows that in countries of the Middle East and Central America development of DE lags much behind other regions. Thus in these countries level of education of the population is the lowest. Fig.1. Geographical distribution of higher educational institutions offering distance learning in the world Special relevance of DE systems creation in Russia today is caused by a number of factors. Among them are huge territories and a concentration of the scientific and technical centers in large cities, formation of new requirements of population towards contents and technologies of education, development of market economy, population shift strengthening, etc. Development of DE in Russia will allow not only to provide population of our country with access to quality education, but also will give Russia chance to take certain place in the world market of educational services. As to potential market of educational services of DE actually in Russia, according to experts it estimates, for regular forms of education, about 1,5 million students a year. It is lower bound, and by optimistic estimates about 3 million people can be users of DE systems within professional educational programs in the country. DE system is needed by the following groups of the population in Russia: pupils of high schools in rural areas, in settlements, the small cities; managers of various level; heads of regional governing bodies; redundant army officers; the dismissed and redundant persons registered in the Federal employment service; persons, wishing to get 126 121 68 3 240 237 6 54 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 113 Safi ullin Lenar et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 a second higher education or to complete retraining; the persons, wishing to increase the qualification in any field of knowledge; persons with limited freedom of movement: disabled people; the Russian-speaking population in CIS countries and foreign countries. 2. DE technique DE is especially effective for the following categories of trainees: the most capable students who already possess essential knowledge and want to complete educational program in a short time; trainees who want to combine study with a business activities; the trainees, wishing to execute special educational programs consisting of courses, provided by various educational institutions, including educational institutions of different countries; the trainees who have been geographically isolated from educational resources required by it; the persons, wishing to change profession; the persons who haven't got finished educations in youth; persons who prepare for entrance to college or university; the persons, seeking to find opportunity to fill the gaps in separate courses; mobile students; children of foreign workers, military or constantly migrating families; the trainees having physical, physiological or emotional problems; special students, that is those who seriously is engaged in art, with sports and doesn't wish to interrupt education. The main idea of of distance education technique is creation of the educational information environment including computer information sources, electronic libraries, video and audio collections, books and manuals. Component of such educational environment are both trainees, and the teachers which interaction is carried out by means of modern telecommunications. Such educational environment gives to trainees unique opportunities for acquiring of knowledge both independently, and under the guidance of teachers. While developing training courses emphasis is placed on independent work of trainees their collective creativity, carrying out mini researches of various level. A large number of tasks for individual study is provided, with possibility of receiving consultations daily. World experience of distance education shows that at such organization of educational process, interaction of trainees and teachers on individual basis happens much more often and more effectively, than at other forms. "The ideal model" of DE represents integrated environment, with role definition of various components - methodical, organizational, pedagogical and technological - such, as printing materials, broadcasting, television and use of computers. 3. Economic expediency of DE The system of developing distance learning is economically expedient both for the state budget, and for trainees, in particular with transition to the international level. Use of high-quality training programs, materials, information resources by the widest range of trainees reduces training cost. Possibility of concentration of intellectual and financial resources on creation of widely duplicated high-quality training materials and programs causes high level of professionalism of the trained that is economically sound for each state. Due to the absence of "walls" in open educational institutions maintenance costs of buildings and hostels are reduced. Expenses on moving to study and accommodation place are absent or significantly cut down. Opportunity to combine production activity and training, make training of that part of population which can't or doesn't want to interrupt a production activity economically possible. DE development is necessary not only to educational institutions of new type, but also to traditional universities. First, to expand the range of provided services and to solve economic problems. Secondly, to sustain competition from other, nonconventional developers of training courses both from their region, and from other regions and even the countries. DE divisions at traditional universities work, as a rule, at the principles of self-sufficiency. Achievement of effect of economy from the scale of rendering remote educational services can make significant income. 114 Safi ullin Lenar et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 4. DE organizational models Analysis of university education development in the world shows that under the influence of modern computer and telecommunication technologies, and also in the course of formation in education of market relations new models of university are formed. Traditional education and some main types of institutional forms (organizational structures) of distance learning unite. These are such institutional forms, as DE divisions at traditional and open universities, consortia of universities, teleuniversities, virtual classes, virtual universities. DE divisions at traditional universities. Traditional universities around the world are of great importance for development of new system of university education. Being the educational centers in which the leading experts are concentrated, traditional universities possess considerable potential to become the centers for development of modern remote university courses. Development of DE special divisions at traditional universities is at the heart of it. Such DE divisions can develop and deliver, first, remote courses within the university, especially when university buildings (units) are located at considerable distance or there are branches in different cities; secondly, develop remote courses for the market of educational services. Let's consider university of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and university Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) as examples of implementation of such model. Need of DE development at university of Ulster is connected with its structure: it was formed by merge of several educational institutions and consists of four separate university territories, remote one from another at distance more than 72 miles. Merge of several institutions in one on the one hand, means rationalization of process of training as the same course can be given in different campuses. On the other hand, reading one course in different places meant, for example, that the professor of university has to make 1740 miles between campuses each semester. It stimulated development of the DE methods. The growing pressure upon universities from the government with the requirement of increase of efficiency of expenses of training which put existence of the courses developed for a small number of listeners into question was other incentive. Development of the DE methods allowed to include people from different places in group of listeners of a course and by that to collect group of a sufficient size. Thus, the need of using DE methods in University of Ulster was realized generally under pressure of economic facts. The resort of University of Victoria to DE sphere was also connected with economic problems - in the early eighties the university became object of serious financial restrictions while demand for education at university and postuniversity levels constantly increased. Besides specifics of Canadian province where in the huge territory small city and rural communities are widely separated, called for the DE development. In the sixties in the province tuition by correspondence had a certain development at which interaction between teachers and students was carried out by materials sent on a surface mail. However introduction of telecommunication technologies stimulated their application, and in the late seventies at Victoria's University the first experiment on use of satellite communication in DE was made. In the early eighties in the province the special organization was created - Management of open training - for assistance to higher educational institutions in development and distribution of the educational programs by means of artificial satellites and cable television. Characteristics of these decisions are presented in table 1. Тable 1. DE technologies Case technology Network technology Text and workbooks (TWB) at the courses, united in a portfolio (case) according to the training program: printing training material and tests according to each section of a course. Network electronic library: placement of TWB in computer network, web sites with a training material and tests. Intramural lessons with the tutor of training center: introductory seminar, intramural consultations 1-2 times a week, total seminar, check tests by tutors. Independent studying of web sites material, sending of tests to the tutor by e-mail. Consultations with the tutor by means of phone, fax, e- Consultations with the tutor by e-mail: student 115 Safi ullin Lenar et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 mail. has the right to ask tutor 5 questions, answer period of tutor - 3 days. Intramural examination in training center. Remote and open universities. These educational institutions of new type develop, in many respects leaning on model of part-time education, upgrading it on the basis of use of modern computer and telecommunication technologies. Universities of part-time education at which training was carried out until recently on the basis of printing materials, often have developed infrastructure, rich pedagogical and organizational experience of training at distance which are used for development of new system of university DE. Along with printing materials in educational process more and more place is taken by audio-and video disks, radio - and telecommunications. Examples of such educational institutions were already reviewed above - UNED in Spain, Open university of Great Britain and the International DE center "LINK" in Russia. Thus, the consortium of universities unites and coordinates activity of several universities on the basis of modern information technologies. It is possible to tell that the consortium of universities carries out broker communication between students and traditional universities for distance learning. The consortium of universities can provide both courses of higher school, and postgraduate courses, programs of the continued education and training courses for entrants. The most important thing is that the consortium of universities gives a chance to receive degrees and certificates of those universities which are included into consortium remotely. Such institutional model is extremely actual for many countries as it allows to unite educational resources of many traditional universities. Considerable experience in development of this institutional form of university DE is accumulated in Australia, where Open learning of Australia (Open Learning Australia - OLA) successfully functions. It is the consortium of eight traditional universities giving opportunity to all Australians to study courses of these universities using not only printing materials and mail, but also new information technologies. OLA now offers 150 university training courses covering such subject domains, as art, social sciences, business, technologies and applied researches. 5. Conclusion and suggestion 1. Modern world education is characterized by the following tendencies:evolution of knowledge in the main source of cost in information society; education becoming the most important factor of overcoming of backwardness in development of a majority of mankind; transformation and expansion of concept of education. Education ceases to be identified only with formal school and even high school training; transition from the concept of functional preparation for the concept of development of the personality; concept of continuous education and development of education of adults; transformation of knowledge into goods and development of the market relations in education; integration of educational systems and transition of education to category of universal priorities. 2. The listed tendencies define main directions in development of new educational system which is focused on implementation of high potential of computer and telecommunication technologies. Technological basis of new information technologies allows to implement one of the main advantages of new educational system - training at distance else called, distance learning. 3 . Distance learning is a new form of the educational process organization, based on the principle of student independent training with the help of developed information resources. The environment of training is characterized by that students generally are remote from the teacher in space and/or in time, at the same time they may at any time endorse a dialogue by telecommunication. DE systems are economic for the state, educational institutions and trainees owing to the following major factors. Use of high-quality training programs, materials, information resources by the widest range of trainees reduces training cost. Possibility of concentration of intellectual and financial resources on creation of widely duplicated high-quality training materials and programs causes high level of professionalism of the trained that is economic for all society. 116 Safi ullin Lenar et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 Due absence of "walls" in open educational institutions maintenance costs of buildings and hostels are reduced. Expenses on moving to study and accommodation place are absent or significantly cut down. Opportunity to combine a production activity and training, make economically possible training of that part of population which cannot or does not want to interrupt production activity. The main problem of remote education is lack of high-quality methodological support. However a number of researchers separately allocates its organizational and technical problems: development of the uniform standard (format) of storage of training information resources; ensuring efficiency of communication of teachers and students; creation of remote education process control facilities; development of effective planning of educational process (curricula); effective representation of training material; ensuring of collaboration of pupils; ensuring remote access to information resources. The methodical opportunities implemented in remote education: flexibility of educational process structure, allowing to consider requirements and communication within course and thematic conferences both "vertically" (center periphery), and "horizontally" (between removed trainees, both in e-mail mode, and in conference mode); efficiency increase (speed, completeness and, the main thing, objectivity) checks of student activity and learning control, thanks to cross checks easily realized in networks; basic expansion of available information funds and methods of access to them; interests of trainees and rates of their advance on studied material; possibility of practical use of the materials received on networks or generated during distance learning in current educational activity. Key tendencies of remote education development: simultaneous expansion (variety growth) and rapprochement of technologies; changes in the relations between teachers and students; changes of relations between educational institutions; emergence of steady traditions. Possible strategy of remote education development: 1) development of interaction between educational institutions (a demand of new approaches to programs development as remote education is able to extend out of limits of distinctions between intramural and correspondence course and even preparation and retraining of personnel) 2) working out of the organization and management of remote education development for more flexible use of new technological capabilities according to the needs of specific programs (priority of multienvironmental approach) 3) definition of purposes and prospects of remote education, width and depth of introduction of distance learning 4) development of model of interaction, reflection of potential relations with high school, technical schools, with business and industry, and also other educational institutions of the region, all state and other countries References Barbour, M., Archambault, L., DiPietro, M. 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(2010) A combinational incremental ensemble of classifiers as a technique for predicting students' performance in distance education // Knowledge-Based Systems 23 (6) , pp. 529-535. Li, P. (2013) Effect of Distance Education on Reference and Instructional Services in Academic Libraries // Internet Reference Services Quarterly 18 (1) , pp. 77-96. Panasyuk M.V., Pudovik E.M., Sabirova M.E.. (2013) Optimization of regional passenger bus traffic network // Procedia Economic and finance. Volume 5, pp. 589-596. Larionova N.I., Varlamova Yu.A. (2013) The Trends of Household Economic Behavior in International Comparison 117 Safi ullin Lenar et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 131 ( 2014 ) 111 – 117 // Procedia Economic and finance. Volume 5, pp. 737-746. McKee, T. (2010) Thirty years of distance education: Personal reflections // International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 11 (2) , pp. 100-109. Melnik A.N., Mustafina O.N. (2013). 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work_vnixtekwwbdp5kfwqq7brrdpmm	----	Distance education: Has technology become a threat to the academy? Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 1999,31 (2), 197-207 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Distance education: Has technology become a threat to the academy? DOUGLAS B. EAMON University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, Wisconsin Recent discussions regarding technology-assisted distance education have given rise both to en- thusiastic predictions about how this form of instruction will transform higher educational institu- tions and to widespread fears about the threats that this technology poses to the student-teacher re- lationship and to the profession of university teacher in general, A review of opinions regarding distance education and computer technology in academia suggests a continuum of positions, rang- ing from the expectation that dramatic and even cataclysmic changes will lead to the eventual dis- solution of the university to an envisioning of only minor changes in the academy's objectives and methods. In the present paper, this continuum is used as an organizing scheme to present the posi- tions of several well-known advocates for and against the use of distance education and information technology. It is argued that the accreditation process will ultimately determine the degree to which distance education replaces traditional classroom instruction and that this process can be influenced by faculty involvement in decisions about the use of technology in the classroom. Recent speculation about the effect that technology- particularly distance education technology-will have on the teaching profession has prompted a debate about the role of technology in the classroom and the future of the university in a technologically enhanced learning en- vironment (Massy & Zemsky, 1995; Neal, 1998c; Noam, 1995; Postman, 1995a, 1995b). Noam (1995) and Massy and Zemsky (1995) argue that the university and its fac- ulty will come under severe economic pressure to increase productivity-measured by courses taught and degrees granted-and that the result will be a radical transforma- tion of the academy andthe role of faculty. These argu- ments have been adapted and extended by others, who are often from the private sector, to include the position that the teaching function of the university will be completely replaced by "knowledge industries," which will deliver needed "just-in-time" knowledge to workers who will have no formal university training ("Barnstorming with Lewis Perelman," 1997; Perelman, 1993). Others believe that the teaching function ofthe university cannot be replaced by any existing technology because teaching involves more than simply conveying information to students. In their view, teaching is primarily the passing of culture from one generation to the next through mentoring, role modeling, socialization, guidance, individual interac- tion, and group activity-all of which require physical proximity (Noam, 1995; Postman, 1995a, 1995b; Rada, Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to D. B. Eamon, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, White- water, WI 53190 (e-mail: eamond@uwwvax.uww.edu). 1996). According to this group, technology will continue to playa role but will not replace the function of the teacher in the educational process. In this paper, I consider these positions and suggest that the teaching role of faculty can be preserved even while technology and distance education are introduced and ex- panded, provided that faculty exercise their influence on the accreditation process and become more fully engaged in the decision making that controls the introduction of technology into the university. VIEWS OF THE IMPACT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY ON THE ACADEMY An informal examination of papers related to the use of computers in teaching published over the last 10 years in Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Comput- ers, the journal in which the proceedings of the Society for Computers in Psychology (SCiP) are published, might lead one to conclude that those who develop and use tech- nology for classrooms have shown little interest in the long-term consequences ofadopting technology except in how it has solved particular problems or aided the teach- ing of a particular concept or course. These articles sug- gest that members of the SCiP tend to be unabashed sup- porters oftechnology. The articles do not contain a single analysis of a possible "downside" to applications of tech- nology in the teaching of psychology. Although surveys have reported analyses of the use of computers in teaching (see, e.g., Eckerman, 1991; Hornby & Anderson, 1994) and the availability of computers (see, e.g., Hornby & An- 197 Copyright 1999 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 198 EAMON derson, 1994), none have considered the potential impact of computers on the profession. Of course, this is not sur- prising, given that SCiP's mission is to "increase and dif- fuse knowledge of the use of computers" in psychology. However, it is the responsibility of those who promote the use of technology to address the fears of their colleagues rationally and to assess them fairly. When we do, we may find that their fears and concerns are not unfounded. Concerns of Faculty: Distance Education and VIrtual Universities Many faculty and faculty organizations harbor a dis- trust of distance education technology. They distrust the impact of technology on the university, and they espe- cially distrust how the technology will affect their class- rooms, their interactions with students, and their job se- curity (see, e.g., Honan, 1995; Monaghan, 1998). Many see technology as a threat. Even some administrators, in- cluding the recently appointed president of the Univer- sity of Utah (a member of the Western Governors Uni- versity virtual university consortium), have voiced strong disapproval of pressures to implement distance educa- tion at the expense of traditional instruction (Biemiller, 1998). These individuals are often technologically knowl- edgeable-not backward-looking Luddites or myopics. They are not even opposed to technology. But they do feel that the role ofthe teacher, and particularly the char- acter of the student-teacher relationship, might be af- fected in unpredictable and mostly adverse ways by the technology. They are particularly concerned about distance educa- tion or distance learning (these terms are commonly used interchangeably) and the virtual university-an entity that purports to replace the classroom-teaching and degree- granting functions of traditional universities, but that it- self has no classrooms, no library, no dormitories, no stu- dent union, no performing arts center, no buildings, and few or no full-time faculty. Virtual universities made pos- sible by distance learning technology are enrolling more and more students. An example is the Open University in the United Kingdom. It is one of 11 megauniversities that each enroll more than 100,000 students; together, these universities enroll more than 3,000,000. The Open Uni- versity expects to award its 200,000th bachelor's degree this year (Daniel, 1998). Phoenix University enrolls more than 50,000 students (Leatherman, 1998). Many traditional universities are opening distance education courses, sometimes in fear of losing their students to the virtual universities (Robinson, 1997). More than half of United States colleges and universities offered distance education courses in 1995, and that number is surely larger now. Distance education has been around for a long time. The Distance Education and Training Council, founded in 1926, reported that approximately 100 million Amer- icans have taken distance study or correspondence courses (Robinson, 1997). Therefore, it is unlikely that these fac- ulty are responding so much to the term distance in dis- tance education as they are to what is meant by the term education. Modern Distance Education: Synchronous and Asynchronous Distance learning may have a long history in teaching and academia, but the power and reach of computer com- munication presents the vision of a change that is unpar- alleled in history. Modern distance education is techno- logically enhanced education, and it is distinctly different from the distance education represented by correspon- dence courses and televised lectures. It is possible to carry on synchronous instruction with full audio and video communication between a teacher and a student who are separated by thousands of miles. At Rensselaer Polytech- nic Institute, students who are enrolled in "studio" classes see the instructor or other students on their computer screen. Each student's screen is synchronized to the in- structor's commands to change pages, launch video or audio clips, or run animations. Although students link to a wide variety of pages and sites in their exploration of topics, the instructor's presentation of new material auto- matically replaces the student's screen, resynchronizing the class and "bringing back" students who have followed links to other material (Wilson, 1997a). Using asynchronous communication, students select multimedia-based class sessions, communicate with the teacher and other students, and gain access to other course material at their own convenience. Students receive in- structional material and instruction by signing on to a World-Wide Web site, where they receive readings, as- signments, quizzes, and tests, and where they can ask ques- tions of the instructor and receive answers bye-mail, fax, or telephone. Although few universities now have this technology in place, it is only a matter of time before vir- tual universities around the world "ramp up" to these ca- pabilities. Students otherwise unable to obtain an education have an opportunity to do so with this technology. In many in- stances, instructors and students find the experience both academically demanding and intellectually rewarding. Studies indicate that student performance in technology- based classrooms does not differ from that of students in traditional classrooms (Russell, 1998). Advantages and Benefits of Distance Education Many writers have examined the advantages and bene- fits of technology and distance education (see, e.g., Han- tula, 1998; Matthews, 1998). Among the advantages and benefits commonly included are the following: 1. Students and teachers do not have to be present in a classroom in order for instruction to occur. 2. Content, as "just another form of data," can be made available at "little or no cost to the user" (Matthews, 1998, p. 50). 3. Delivery of content can be customized to the needs and schedules of the students. DISTANCE EDUCATION: A THREAT TO THE ACADEMY? 199 4. Instructional materials tend to be based on learner outcome. 5. Distance education is inherently collaborative. 6. Competition among institutions of higher education is facilitated. 7. Courses can be made available more easily to hand- icapped, minority, and nontraditional students. 8. Students can exert more active control over the con- tent, personalizing it to suit their particular needs, interests, and learning styles. 9. Content can be delivered as needed, at the site where it is required. However, not all faculty regard these to be advantages. They ask, for example, what, if anything, is lost when students and teachers are not together in the classroom? Some critics of distance education regard one-to-one student-teacher interaction as the heart of teaching. Is instructional content just "data," or does instruction also involve problem solving, mentoring, and acculturation? How are these conveyed in a distance education environ- ment? Many faculty have expressed concern about how distance education and technology will affect their in- teractions with students and their roles as professors. For example, some York University faculty members formed picket lines and carried signs reading "Televisions don't teach, people do" and "Clone sheep, not Internet courses" (Young, 1997). Other examples of faculty resistance and concern are cited below. Distance Education and the "Computer as Tool" Metaphor Castellan (1988), Butler (1988), and others have sug- gested that it is useful to regard the computer and com- puter software as tools that may be used (or abused) in the instructional process andthat may be evaluated according to various criteria, such as how they display information to the student, how adequately they may be integrated into the course, and how successfully they facilitate in- struction. One reviewer of this paper observed that com- puters "make bad teachers but great tools for learning." Although it might be useful to consider software or an Focus on Faculty Productivity • University is Dead individual distance education course in this context, my purpose here is to discuss the potential ramifications of distance learning for the academy in general, rather than to consider particular implementations. In this broader sense, distance education is not just a tool; it is a new way of doing things-indeed, a new way of thinking about education-in much the same way that Skinner's teaching machine (Skinner, 1968) was not just a tool, but an im- plementation of a broad-based psychological theory that went far beyond the machine itself. My purpose here is not to evaluate distance education, but to consider some views about how it might affect the future of the univer- sity and what, ifanything, we as educators can do about it. Distance education, unlike any particular classroom- based technological innovation, gives rise to the possibil- ity of a radical transformation of the social and intellec- tual role of the classroom teacher within the institution and, in some scenarios, the replacement ofthe teacher and the institution itself(see, e.g., "Barnstorming with Lewis Perelman," 1997; Prowse, 1995). Divergence of Opinion About the Impact of Technology and Distance Learning Attitudes about the impact of technology and distance learning can be seen along the continuum shown in Fig- ure 1. At one end are those who have concluded that the consequence of the availability of large numbers of courses supported by information technology and distance learning will result in the end ofthe university as we know it. At the other end are those who believe that the univer- sity will not only survive, but thrive, with or without the new technology. The former might be called management technophiles and the latter, teacher advocates, for reasons that will become clear. In the middle is a widely divergent group of those who anticipate that technology may result in changes in the university, perhaps including a shift in focus toward the university's functions that are more closely associated with socialization, acculturation, and mentoring. This group regards technology and distance learning as useful enhancements that may ensure the sur- vival of the university. Perelman, Drucker, Prowse Massy & Zemsky, Noam, Hawkins, Gilbert Wilson, Neal, Postman Figure 1. Continuum of attitudes about the impact of technology and distance learning. 200 EAMON To be sure, this continuum is an oversimplification. Views of the role and impact of distance education and technology are as varied as the individuals who possess them, and no one-dimensional representation can encom- pass them all. But what emerges from this attempt to lo- cate the views of these writers along a continuum is yet another continuum paralleling the first that appears to capture a second component oftheir writings: the role of the faculty and the student in the educational process. To a remarkable degree, those who believe that the future of the university is bleak and that distance education and tech- nology will ultimately replace-or become-the teacher tend to regard the student-teacher relationship as an ar- tifact oftraditional "handicraft" approaches to instruction. Those who expect that the university will continue in its current role, however, agree that one-to-one student- teacher interaction, mentoring, and socialization are es- sential functions ofthe university. Not uncommonly, writ- ers who envision dramatic changes in the university (or its ultimate demise) also are those who most forcefully promote distance education as a "solution" to problems (real and imagined) faced by the university-that is, they see the solution to the university's problems as its demise. However, writers who see the continuation of the univer- sity in a form much like today's often regard distance ed- ucation as suitable only for "training" and not for educa- tion (Tannenbaum, 1999). Neal (1998a) further observes that very often those who are the most forceful advocates of distance education are entrepreneurs, college admin- istrators, or government officials who have a personal or professional stake in its promotion, whereas those who ex- hibit the most skepticism are more likely to be classroom teachers. The divergence ofand conflict between these at- titudes and observations deserves analysis. In the following section, a sampling ofauthors who are at various positions along the continuum are briefly quoted in order to clarify their position and to provide a flavor of the intensity of the arguments offered. A SELECTION OF VIEWS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY From the Perspective of the Management Technophile Management technophiles focus on productivity in the university and especially on faculty productivity. They believe that the university in its current configuration is dead. The logic is simple. The teaching function of un iversi- ties is to make knowledge available to students. The pri- mary means of doing this in the past have been lectures and individual mentoring (handicraft education) (Noam, 1995). But such methods are labor intensive and, for that reason, very expensive. As information technologies be- come more and more sophisticated, it will become pos- sible to design effective instructional materials that are entirely or nearly entirely computer based, which will be available to students in their homes or workplaces through computer communication links. When this happens, the cost savings through economies of scale will lead to the abandonment of the expensive lecture method and its complete replacement by computer-based delivery sys- tems, which most likely will be developed and distributed by private sector "knowledge industries." With no need for classrooms, blackboards, or the physical props neces- sary to shore up the lecture, the buildings of the univer- sity, the faculty, and much of the administrative staff will become obsolete. The role of the faculty member will ei- ther disappear entirely or be so altered as to become un- recognizable. More extreme technophiles argue that what is taught in the classroom will not be relevant anyway be- cause it will be outdated before students graduate; young people could just as well forgo formal higher education altogether. Knowledge, up to date and immediate, could be sought and obtained through distance education as needed, and just in time ("Barnstorming with Lewis Perelman," 1997). These analyses are based on the assumption that our society will not tolerate the continuing "inefficiencies" of the present labor-intensive higher education system. Costs of tuition are going up at a more rapid pace than is inflation, but the "product" remains the same. Increases in educational productivity are regarded as concomitant with increases in the amount of instructional material made available to students and with increases in the "throughput" of the instructional system. Lewis Perelman. Among the more extreme scenarios are those presented by management consultants. Lewis Perelman, author of School's Out (1993) and proponent ofjust- in-time learning, talks about the university as being a part ofthe "knowledge management" business ("Barn- storming with Lewis Perelman," 1997). Perelman said in 1997 that he believed that education was in a "metastable" situation and would experience a "systems break" within years or even months. The change, Perelman said, will be sudden, not incremental. Even virtual universities are irrelevant, according to Perelman, because they are also educational institutions that try to sell the same product: courses and diplomas. The knowledge industry should instead focus on the production of expertise, delivered just in time through computers. As a college president, he would abandon the campus buildings and "go virtual, but not go virtual just to become a more efficient diploma mill ... but focus on what ... the market wants, which is know-how." Perelman further said "and probably I would drop the name university or college-because the new business ... is not an educational institution" ("Barn- storming," 1997, p. 25). Attempting to reform the university is futile: "Reform" is an evolutionary, incremental, long-term pro- cess ... and that's why it is a waste of time. Long before the reform of the educational system comes to any con- clusion, the system itself will have collapsed. [It will] segue from bankruptcy ... to a form of discretionary en- tertainment. (p. 24) DISTANCE EDUCATION: A THREAT TO THE ACADEMY? 201 Perelman also thinks that members of the "Nintendo/ PC generation" have brains different than ours. We don't know exactly how they are different, but there is absolutely no question that they are different. One would assume that their brains are wired in ways that are much more adaptive and facile to function in that kind of environment. (p. 22) Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker, the well-known manage- ment expert, has reached a similar conclusion (Lenzner & Johnson, 1997). Because university costs continue to rise without visible improvement in content or quality, Drucker thinks that in 30 years universities will be relics, to be re- placed by private sector competitors. Michael Prowse. The financial media appear to be particularly enamored of this view. Michael Prowse, a fea- ture writer for the Financial Times, seems almost gleeful as he skewers professors: "They are selling a product that is ridiculously expensive and ill-suited to the needs of a rapidly-changing economy" (Prowse, 1995). Following Perelman, he challenges the whole notion ofacademic de- grees: Higher degrees serve a function akin to that of the exotic plumage of birds: they are primarily a means of attracting attention .... Simple tests of cognitive ability can be ad- ministered in less than 30 minutes. Such tests ... are a better guide to job performance than academic degrees. (p. 16) Like Drucker, Prowse believes that universities are out- dated, particularly in their beliefthat the accumulation of a stock of knowledge serves a worthwhile purpose for suc- ceeding in life: But in a rapidly changing world this is inefficient. ... The better strategy is to wait until we need particular knowl- edge or skills and then obtain them electronically.... peo- ple would not spend years preparing for employment. They would begin work early-perhaps in their mid-teens. (p. 16) Of course, it is employers, not college professors, who demand that employees have some stock of knowledge. And that is a good thing; on what other basis would one decide what sort of "particular knowledge or skills" is appropriate for solving a problem? If the problem-solving and decision-making literature in psychology has taught us anything, it is that we must have a basic store of know1- edge before we can know what information we need in order to solve the immediate problem before us (see, e.g., De Groot, 1965; Reitman, 1976). Conclusion. Management technophiles assume that (1) it is useful and appropriate to regard universities as "knowledge industries" whose primary function is the transmission of knowledge to students; (2) as currently configured for this task, universities are inefficient and outmoded, largely because their faculties are inefficient and have not improved their productivity and much of what faculties have to offer is useless or obsolete by the time students graduate anyway; (3) the rapid expansion of information technology (IT) will enable marketplace challenges to universities from a private sector knowledge industry, to which universities will be unable to respond; and therefore, (4) the university in its present form will cease to exist. Underlying these assumptions is the further assumption that it makes sense to analyze the university using the techniques developed for analysis ofprivate sec- tor for-profit enterprises. Moderate Views: The University Will Be Substantially Changed Writers in the middle of the continuum differ from management technophiles in that they generally agree that the knowledge obtained in the university is worth- while. They accept that the problems that the academy faces are economic. Universities, as currently structured, are simply not cost effective or efficient. These writers show varying degrees ofsympathy for the functions of the university that are not easily measured by "simple tests of cognitive ability." Massy and Zemsky. The heart of Massy and Zemsky's (1995) analysis is their view that the survival ofthe acad- emy requires an increase in its productivity. IT provides a means to increase productivity. Technology is capital; faculty is labor. Although technology might require large start-up investments, capital investment is less expensive than labor in the long run because it offers opportunities for economies of scale. The same course could be made available to thousands of students-anywhere, anytime. The incremental cost of adding students grows smaller as the number of students grows larger. Revisions, which are relatively inexpensive, would enable the course to be taught year after year. As the capital-labor ratio increases, universities will become more productive. As Massy and Zemsky (1995) observe, The "career" of a workstation may well be less than five years, whereas that of a professor often exceeds 30 years. Workstations don't get tenure, and delegations are less likely to wait on the provost when particular equipment gets "laid off." (p. 9) Massy and Zemsky (1995) envision two scenarios that universities might adopt. In the first, a nonadaptive busi- ness-as-usual scenario, higher education institutions try to maintain their monopoly over the knowledge base, re- sisting the substitution of capital (IT) for labor (faculty). In this scenario, the universities "simply add IT on to their existing operations," retaining traditional courses, academic calendars, teaching expectations, and so forth. The consequences will be that "continuing financial pressure due to state funding limits and tuition resistance will increase pressure on the core, leading to an eventual 'meltdown,' defined as loss of vibrancy, failure of fac- ulty renewal" (p. 14). Other information providers in the private sector will cherry pick the knowledge base and exploit it using IT- based delivery systems. The consequences will be differ- ent for different types of universities. The major losers 202 EAMON will be research-based universities, which will be at a com- petitive disadvantage in comparison with ~the~ hi.gher education institutions, and undergraduate institutions, whose students will find other, cheaper sources of educa- tion delivery systems in the private sector. In an alternative adaptive scenario, universities re- structure and reengineer to adopt an IT-based perspective. "Faculty correct the research-teaching bal~ce and work together to optimize the use ofIT. ... Teaching and learn- ing quality and learning productivity improve" (Massy & Zemsky, 1995, p. 15). This might lead to either of two outcomes. In one, faculty remain fully employed, although redeployed, and the university prospers. In the other, the demand for educational services does not expand, so fac- ulty employment declines in spit~ of the subst!tution of capital for labor. This would require further. adJustme~ts but would still be better than the nonadaptive scenano. Eli Noam. In his important article "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University" (1995) Eli Noam pre- dicts that the functions oftraditional universities will be replaced as their financial base is eroded and their role in intellectual inquiry is reduced: The ultimate providers of an electronic curriculum will not be universities ... but rather commercial firms. Text- book publishers will establish sophisticated electronic courses taught by the most effective and prestigious lec- turers .... we may well have in the future a "McGraw-Hill University" awarding degrees or certificates, just as tod~y some companies offer in-house degree programs.... It IS likely that commercial publishers will assemble an effec- tive and even updated teaching package, making the tra- ditional curriculum at universities look dull by compari- son, just as "Sesame Street" has raised the expectations of pupils for a lively instructional style. (p. 248) The success of the McGraw-Hill Universities will de- pend on whether their programs are valued by the students whom they serve, by the employers of those students, and by society. And they are working hard to be success- ful. Videos featuring the "Greatest Lectures by Ameri- ca's Superstar Teachers" are available, distributed by a company advertising itself as "your private university, staffed exclusively by a 'dream team' of America's best lecture professors" (Noam, 1995, p. 248). Like Massy and Zemsky (1995), and unlike the manage- ment technophiles, Noam (1995) appreciates the uni- versity and sees opportunity for corrective change that will preserve it: True teaching and learning are about more than informa- tion and its transmission. Education is based on mentor- ing, internalization, identification, role modeling, guid- ance, socialization, interaction, and group activity. In these processes, physical proximity plays an important role. Thus, the strength of the future university lies less in pure information and more in college as a community; less in wholesale lecture, and more in individual tutorial; less in Cyber-U and more in Goodbye-Mr.-Chips College. Technology would augment, not substitute, and provide new tools for strengthening community on campus. (p. 249) Brian Hawkins. Brian Hawkins is president and CEO of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit group that promotes IT in education. He views distance learning as most important in training, but he believes that schools that adopt dis- tance learning as a source of income are naive. He also believes that distance learning courses should be consis- tent with the mission of the school (Talking with Brian Hawkins, 1998). He does not expect the demise of the residential college within the next 50 years, but he does expect the number of schools to shrink c~nsider~bly. Hawkins thinks that the bachelor's degree Will remain as the goal of students, but his predicted future is not one in which "everybody takes 28 courses on line and that's a college education for everybody" (p. 21). Steven W. Gilbert. Steven Gilbert is Director, Tech- nology Projects, at the American Association for Higher Education. He also runs AAHESGIT, an Internet dis- cussion group with more than 6,500 subscribers. Gilbert believes that IT will transform teaching and learning, but he is not an uncritical advocate. He observes that no form of distance education or technology has proven so much more effective or less expensive than traditional teaching as to become a complete replacement for it (Gilbert, 1996). Gilbert's commentary on his discussion list consis- tently acknowledges that faculty-student interactions form a critical part of the educational experience, and although he continues to promote IT and distance education, he does so with the understanding ofa teacher committed to student learning. He does not support change for the sake of accommodating technological developments. Conclusion. Views in the middle of the continuum range widely. They commonly assume that productivity is a legitimate and important criterion by which to eval- uate universities and university faculty; IT can improve productivity; and, because of their greater efficiencies, private sector knowledge providers will threaten the pre- sent near monopoly of academia in the knowledge in- dustry. Yet although the consequences of these th~e.ats may be serious, they are ameliorated by the recogrution that the proper role of faculty goes beyond simply con- veying information to students; and therefore, !t. is pos- sible for the academy to stake out a central position that will enable it to continue into the future, even ifit is sub- stantially altered. From the Perspective of the Teacher Advocate Teacher advocates challenge the dismal future pre- dicted by the management technophiles and believe that moderates overstate the case. They believe that universi- ties provide a valuable period of socialization for young people-when the values of the culture are passed to a new generation-and they believe that technology can- not and will not provide a substitute for personal student- DISTANCE EDUCATION: A THREAT TO THE ACADEMY? 203 teacher interaction (Rada, 1996). Society places great value on the mentoring and acculturation functions ofthe university and is unlikely to allow universities or a knowl- edge industry to ignore them. Further, universities rep- resent a huge current investment that will not be aban- doned easily. The university can and will change, but not disappear; faculty will accommodate and even embrace technology and distance education but not give up their core values, because society will continue to demand that universities provide them. Some teacher advocates wel- come technology, but they want to be the masters of it, deciding when, where, for what purposes, and under what circumstances the technology is used. Jack WIlson. Jack Wilson is dean of Continuing and Undergraduate Education at Rensselaer Polytechnic In- stitute, whose studio courses I have described above. One of the primary reasons why these courses are successful, Wilson says, is precisely that they provide an experience similar to that of a real classroom (Wilson, 1997a). The oft-expressed fears that the one great teacher of eco- nomics, psychology or physics will teach all the classes in the respective discipline or that a Web site could somehow replace an educated professor, profoundly misunderstands the way people learn. Learning is about a "conversation" amidst resources.... It may be the end of "teaching," but it is far from the end of learning at the university. (Wilson, 1997b, p.15) Ed Neal. The Director of faculty development at the Center for Teaching and Learning of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Ed Neal objects to forcing technology upon faculty. Faculty are slow to adopt new technology simply because they are not convinced that using it will improve students' learning, and they are put off by the stridency of advocates of technology and dis- tance learning: "Adopt now, or die!" seems to be the prevalent sentiment. ... many of those who are urging the immediate adoption of technology are not teachers, but people with a profes- sional stake in the outcome, such as software developers or college administrators who believe that technology will allow more students to be educated for the same amount of money. (Neal, 1998c, p. B5) According to Neal, research on student outcomes often focuses on the students' reactions to the technology (stu- dents like it) or on secondary characteristics (students worked in small groups), rather than on basic questions such as "What did the students learn, and how well did they learn it? Did they simply acquire factual information, or did they learn to analyze, synthesize, and exercise crit- ical judgement about the subject matter?" Neil Postman. Neil Postman has been one of the most persistent critics of attempts to substitute technology for teaching in the classroom. His book Technopoly (1993) is an attack on the "disintegrative power" of technology in control of society. In it, he says that school is the "princi- ple instrument for correcting mistakes and for addressing problems that mystify and paralyze other social institu- tions" (p. 185). Elsewhere, he says that The role that the new technology should play in schools . . . is something that needs to be discussed without the hyperactive fantasies of cheerleaders.... Schools are not now and have never been largely about getting informa- tion to children.... The goal of giving people greater ac- cess to more information faster, more conveniently, and in more diverse forms was ... largely solved, so that for al- most a hundred years there has been more information available to the young outside the school than inside. That fact did not make the schools obsolete, nor does it now make them obsolete. (Postman, 1995b, p. 378) Conclusion. Teacher advocates reject the argument that the for-profit business model should be applied to the university and often reject the appropriateness of"knowl- edge as product" measures of productivity (e.g., number of courses or students taught) as criteria by which uni- versities should be measured. They assume that univer- sities serve a role beyond just conveying information to students, including socialization, acculturation, and men- toring; society values these functions beyond "efficiency" as measured by private sector institutions, and society will measure the effectiveness of universities, not the private sector alone; and one-to-one student-teacher interaction is central to the inculcation of these values and goals, to the instructional process in general. WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE? The preceding snippets represent widely ranging atti- tudes about the role of technology and the possible impact of distance education on the academy. The factors that will determine the future role of distance education and technology in the academy will depend in large part on the relative influence of teachers and their students in com- parison with the influence of private sector initiatives that are based on quite different assumptions. In this context, it is useful to examine who is pressing for the introduction of IT in the classroom and what agencies exert control over them. Sources of the Push for IT and Distance Education Neal's observation that many ofthose who most force- fully encourage the adoption of technology in the class- room are not themselves classroom teachers suggests an examination of the sources of the push for technology. What is their interest in pressing technology into the classroom? What other sources ofpush can be identified? Four groups supporting the introduction of technol- ogy were discussed in the Task Force on Technology in Higher Education's (1995) report to the American Feder- ation of Teachers. Students. Students commonly come to the university with considerable experience with computers; many of them own their own computers. They know that computer skills will be important, if not required, for their careers, 204 EAMON and they expect to be provided with access to computers and with hands-on training in using them. Nontraditional students, who often live offcampus and work during much of the day when regular classes are offered, are seeking to upgrade their education through distance education. They need distance education technology in order to accommo- date the course work into their busy schedules. Even students on campus frequently prefer to take dis- tance education courses rather than to sit in the class- room. For example, of the 609 students enrolled in the University of Colorado's distance education courses, more than 500 were taking regular classroom courses as well (Guernsey, 1998). Some students also think that dis- tance education courses will be easier than classroom courses. The private sector. As Neal suggests, one ofthe main sources of the push for more technology in education comes from the private sector. Colleges and universities are not likely to be successful in the development and marketing of commercial course material because they have little experience in private sector enterprise, and they tend to react too slowly to the market. Privately owned virtual universities, however, stand to benefit immediately from increasing enrollments in their courses. Commercial technology-producing interests- hardware and software producers, on-line communications firms-are trying to open wedges into what promises to become a huge market. They offer incentives and bargain basement "academic" pricing on many of their products to universities. They know that a professor's choice of soft- ware very commonly becomes preferred or even required software for his or her students. Businesses also want uni- versities to provide students with experience using soft- ware and, in general, to become technologically proficient. College administrators. As pressure from legislatures to reduce costs and increase efficiency intensifies, ad- ministrators sometimes see technology as a way out of the money crunch. The chancellor of the University of Maryland system argued for the elimination of regulations that stipulate faculty involvement in teaching distance education courses (Committee C on College and Univer- sity Teaching, Research, and Publication ofthe American Association of University Professors, 1996). Some think that faculty productivity increases made possible by the infusion ofdistance education technology might provide tantalizing increases in instructional "yield" (Robinson, 1997). In addition, a common response ofad- ministrators is to implement management practices de- rived from business-for example, from total quality man- agement. A particularly pernicious manifestation of such intrusion of management techniques into the academic environment is the "student as customer" metaphor, in which the student's preferences are allowed to determine what constitutes adequate faculty performance. A major concern of many faculty is that administrators, perhaps operating at a system-wide or statewide level, will covertly set in place new technologies without public dis- cussion or faculty involvement. Faculty. College professors are among the most so- phisticated computer users in the world. The number using computers for research, computation, e-mail, classroom software, and multimedia continues to grow at a very rapid rate. Many faculty have experience not only in using the software but in creating it. Almost all universities pro- vide their faculty free access to the Internet; the number of messages delivered per month may exceed 15,000,000 (Task Force on Technology in Higher Education, 1995). An annual survey of campus computer use in 1996-1997 revealed that 32.8% of all college courses use e-mail, and 24.8% of all classes draw on resources available on the Internet. Some form of multimedia resources is used in 13.4% of all college courses (Green, 1997). Add to these reasons the highly critical assessments of faculty and faculty workloads, such as the recently re- ported statements by James F. Carlin, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, that "profes- sors should teach more than 12 hours a week," that "meaningless research should be banned," and that 50% of research outside the hard sciences is "a lot offoolish- ness." Carlin was also reported to have said that tenure was "an absolute scam" that turns faculty jobs into sinecures, as well as increases tuition costs ("A Take-No- Prisoners Approach," 1997). These views add to the pressure to increase faculty pro- ductivity, particularly to increase the number of student "customers" for each faculty member. Distance education may appear to be a relatively inexpensive alternative to a faculty member in every classroom. Accreditation Whatever students find on the Internet outside their academic endeavors, the information they are presented for instruction should be appropriate and relevant to the subjects for which the students will later claim credit. The degree should be real evidence of accomplishment, not something purchased with money and with no intellec- tual effort. Accreditation bestows on institutions the acknowledg- ment that the college awarding the degree is responsible, that the course of study meets certain minimal expecta- tions, and that those who graduate can be expected to per- form at a level comparable to those who have graduated from other institutions that offer similarly named degrees. Relatively few accreditation agencies have achieved the level ofdistinction that enables graduates from institutions endorsed by them to present their credentials to nearly any employer with assured approval. Preeminent among those that do meet this standard is The North Central Associa- tion of Colleges and Schools. Universities undergo accreditation examinations on a regular basis. A university undergoing examination is vis- ited by a group of faculty members and other experts from outside that university who examines the academic prepa- ration ofthe faculty, degree requirements, course content, facilities, and student achievement, among other factors, and renders its judgment. DISTANCE EDUCATION: A THREAT TO THE ACADEMY? 205 Government bodies usually insist that all government- supported institutions meet the accreditation standards ofthe appropriate accreditation agencies. Failure to do so may result in funding cutbacks or even elimination ofthe suspect programs. Federal student loans are available only for attendance at accredited schools (Robinson, 1997). Accreditation, then, is the key, not only to the students who are graduates of the university, but also to the finan- cial support of investors in private universities, including virtual universities. Although many distance education programs have received accreditation, the issue continues to be a focus of debate. The North Central Association ofColleges and Schools issued a set of "Guidelines for Distance Education" that includes specifications regarding curriculum and in- struction, evaluation and assessment, library and learn- ing resources, student services, and facilities and finance. According to some observers, the lack of libraries was the Achilles heel of distance education (Robinson, 1997). The Key to the Future Just as accreditation is the key to the financial future of virtual universities, the key to the future of residential colleges and their faculty is the extent of faculty in- volvement and control of the use of technology. In most instances, faculty are instrumental in determining the course offerings, requirements for majors, and course con- tent. But faculty governing bodies have rarely acted to ensure that faculty members who represent a diversity of views are involved in decision making about technology. Commonly, computer (or technology) advisory commit- tees are made up almost entirely of technology enthusi- asts (Neal, 1998b). The American Association of University Professors insists that technology be used to "enhance the flexibil- ity of teaching and to free both students and teachers to communicate with each other when it is most useful and appropriate, not to put further barriers between students and learning and to make the experience more imper- sonal" (Committee C on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication of the American Association of University Professors, 1996, p. 67). The recommendations of the American Federation of Teacher's Higher Education Program and Policy Council provide a blueprint and a call to action for ensuring that technology and distance education are appropriately im- plemented. Most crucially, the faculty must become in- volved in technology issues, including assessing the costs and benefits of major technological purchases; providing access and training in new technologies; maintaining ed- ucational quality; controlling workload, compensation, jurisdiction, and staff levels; and protecting intellectual property rights (Task Force on Technology in Higher Ed- ucation, 1995). In order for this to happen, campuses must have an open process for making decisions about technology. Four key questions should form the basis for all decision's regard- ing the introduction of technology, and faculty must be involved in each. First, does the technology make sense educationally? With some exceptions, research on technology suggests that there is no significant difference between classes taught using technology and classes taught using tradi- tional methods (Russell, 1998). To the extent that quality of education depends on a richness of personal commu- nication, distance education should not supplant tradi- tional classroom student-teacher interactions. Faculties must retain responsibility for and control over the in- struction provided by any mode of distance education. The amount of credit awarded, transfer credits, and other curriculum decisions must be made by faculty who review and evaluate the courses through the customary proce- dures at the institution. Distance learning courses should be taught only by faculty who are appointed and evaluated through a traditional consultative process with the rele- vant department's faculty. Such courses should include substantial student-faculty and student-student interac- tion. In-person meetings should be possible; e-mail com- munication should be a minimum requirement. Distance education should be offered only when campus-based courses are impractical-for example, when students are unable to reach campus, or when equivalent courses are unavailable on campus. Only a limited number of credits toward the degree should be awarded for distance educa- tion courses. While distance education courses have their place, they should not be allowed to entirely supplant campus-based instruction: "All of our experience as ed- ucators tells us that teaching and learning in the shared human spaces of a campus are essential to the undergrad- uate experience and cannot be compromised too greatly without rendering the education unacceptable" (Task Force, 1995, p. 16). Second, does the technology make sense financially? Is there a realistic cost-benefit analysis? Technology is not likely to increase productivity that is measured by dollar savings, at least in the near term. The cost of de- veloping multimedia materials can be staggering. One of the most consistent findings of studies of the responses of administrators to technology and distance education is that they vastly underestimate the costs (Green, 1997). By one estimate, it takes 300 hours to create a single hour ofmultimedia instructional material. Just to move a course to the World-Wide Web is estimated to take 18 hours of effort for each hour of instruction (Boettcher, 1998). The cost of courseware development is estimated to be about $50,000 per hour of instruction, or about $3,000,000 per course (Twigg, 1996). What instructional improvement could be anticipated if that money were directed to other instructional support? The cost of technology goes far beyond its purchase price. Hardware may become obsolete within a few years and must be replaced. Well-developed distance education support includes not only computers and line costs, but also switching centers, dedicated stu- dios, control rooms, and media storage. Unfortunately, 206 EAMON most campuses still buy this equipment on an ad hoc basis, which further compounds the problem. Third, will all students and faculty have access to the new technology and know how to use it? Substantial in- equities exist in the distribution oftechnology. Both stu- dents and faculty should have access to appropriate tech- nology, as well as to training in its use. But they should not be forced to use it, nor should their choice not to use it affect their continuing employment possibilities or salaries. Those who do choose to use the technology should have access to training programs. Finally, are the rights of the faculty and professional staff protected? Too often, distance learning programs exist on the margins of the curriculum. They are fre- quently developed on an experimental basis by part-time or adjunct faculty. These instructors need to be brought into the regular curricular assignment process. Faculty control over course content and credits awarded should be maintained for distance education courses. This control should provide for class size limitations for distance learn- ing courses; workload credit adjustments for faculty en- gaged in distance learning, including adjustments for preparation time, office hours, and so forth; faculty con- trol of all grading and examinations for their distance ed- ucation courses; special pay arrangements for telecourses, which take a great deal of time to develop; faculty rights, negotiated in advance, to the materials they develop for distance education and telecourses (a particularly tricky issue, because often the development of such courses re- quires considerable expense by the institution, which then may lay claim to the product); and more credit for the development of technology-related materials in tenure and promotion evaluations. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Distance learning plays a significant, growing role in higher education. The effect that this technology will have on the university is uncertain and the source of much speculation and concern. Views about the future ofthe uni- versity vary widely. Management technophiles believe that the university will be replaced by more efficient pri- vate sector knowledge industries usingjust-in-time infor- mation delivery. Teacher advocates argue that teaching is much more than the presentation of knowledge and re- quires individual student-teacher interactions; they be- lieve that the socialization and acculturation functions of the university will ensure that society demands its preservation. Many faculty members feel that the way they teach, as well as their very jobs, are threatened. Accreditation is the key that will determine the extent to which private sec- tor knowledge industries replace the teaching function of the universities. Faculty members must become in- volved in the decision-making process that controls the introduction of technology and distance education in order to ensure the quality of instruction. We must focus the attention ofadministrators, other faculty members, and the public on questions regarding how, when, and under what circumstances distance education technology may be introduced and what consequences might follow its introduction. REFERENCES BARNSTORMING WITH LEWIS PERELMAN [Interview]. (1997, March/ April). Educom Review, 32, 18-26. BIEMILLER, L. (1998, October 9). University of Utah president issues a pointed warning about virtual universities. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A32. BOETTCHER, J. (1998). How much does it cost to develop a distance learning course? It all depends ... Syllabus, 11(2), 56-58. BUTLER, D. L. (1988). Selection of software in the instructionallabora- tory. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 20, 175-177. CASTELL AN, N. J., JR. (1988). Comments on applications of micro- computers in teaching. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 20,193-196. COMMITTEE C ON COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY TEACHING, RESEARCH, AND PuBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (1996, May/June). The uses of technology in college and university instruction. Academe, 82(3), 66-71. DANIEL, J. (1998, April). Knowledge media for the mega-university. Syllabus, 11(8), 20-22. DE GROOT, A. D. (1965). Thought and choice in chess. The Hague: Mouton. EcKERMAN, D. A. (1991). Microcomputers in undergraduate laboratory training in psychology. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 23, 91-99. GILBERT, S. (1996). Making the most ofa slow revolution. Change, 28 (2), 10-23. GREEN, K. (1997). Use of technology in college instruction expands [On line]. Available: http://www.uth.tmc.eduiut..general/adminjin/ planning/ltwg/survey.html GUERNSEY, L. (1998, March 27). Distance education for the not-so- distant. Chronicle ofHigher Education, p. A29. HANTULA, D. A. (1998). The virtual industrial/organizational psychol- ogy class: Learning and teaching in cyberspace in three iterations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 30, 205-216. HONAN, W. (1995, April 4). Professors battling television technology. The New York Times, p. E2. HORNBY, P. A., & ANDERSON, M. D. (1994). Computer use in psychology instruction: A survey of individual and institutional characteristics. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 26, 250-254. LEATHERMAN, C. (1998, October 16). University of Phoenix's faculty members insist they offer high-quality education. Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. AI4-AI6. LENZNER, R. & JOHNSON, S. (1997, March 10). Seeing things as they really are. Forbes, pp. 122-128. MASSY, W., & ZEMSKY, R. (1995). Using information technology to en- hance academic productivity. Washington, DC: Educom. MATTHEWS, D. (1988, September/October). Implications for state higher finance policy. Educom Review, 133,48-57. MONAGHAN, P. (1998, June 19). University of Washington professors decry governor's visions for technology. Chronicle of Higher Edu- cation, pp. A23-A26. NEAL, E. (I 998a). Faculty skepticism and judgement vs. laziness. AA- HESGIT Internet Discussion List [On-line Serial] 73. Available: gopher://list.cren.net:70/0RI 05727-1 I 7890-/archives/aahesgit/ log9804 NEAL, E. (l998b). Techies vs.? teachies (cont.). AAHESGIT Internet Discussion List [On-line Serial], 134. Available: gopher://list.cren. net:70/0RI05727-117890-/archives/aahesgit/log9806 NEAL, E. (I 998c, June 19). Using technology in teaching: We need to ex- ercise healthy skepticism. Chronicle ofHigher Education, pp. B4-B5. DISTANCE EDUCATION: A THREAT TO THE ACADEMY? 207 NOAM, E. (1995). Electronics and the dim future of the university. Sci- ence, 270,247-249. PERELMAN, L. (1993). School's out: Hyperlearning, the new technol- ogy, and the end ojeducation. New York: William Morrow. POSTMAN, N. (1993). Technopoly. New York: Knopf. POSTMAN, N. (1995a). The end oj education: Redefining the value oj school. New York: Knopf. POSTMAN, N. (l995b, October 9). Virtual students, digital classroom. The Nation, 264, 377- 382. PROWSE, M. (1995, November 20). Endangered species. Financial Times, p. 16. RADA, R. (1996). The evolution of the university and the information superhighway [On line). Available: http://www.eecs.wsu.edul-radal research/papers/noam.htm ROBINSON, P. (1997). Technology & higher education 1996-1997. Washington, DC: Higher Education Department of the American Federation of Teachers. RUSSELL, T. (1998). The "no significant difference" phenomenon [On line). Available: http://teleeducation.nb.calphenom/ REITMAN, J. (1976). Skilled perception in Go: Deducing memory struc- tures from inter-response times. Cognitive Psychology, 8, 336-356. SKINNER, B. (1968). The technology ofteaching. New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts. A TAKE-No-PRISONERS ApPROACH TO CHANGING PuBLIC HIGHER ED- UCATION INMASSACHUSETTS (1997, December 5). ChronicleoJHigher Education, p. A16. TALKING WITH BRIAN L. HAWKINS [Interview). (1998, September/ October). Educom Review, 33(5), 18-21. TANNENBAUM, R. (1999, January/February). Education or training: Reflections of a life in computing. Educom Review, 34(1), 10-15. TASK FORCE ON TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION (1995). Teaming up with technology: How unions can harness the technology revolu- tion on campus. Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers. TwIGG, C. (1996). Academic productivity: The case for instructional software [On line). Available: http://www.educom.edulprogram/ nlii/keydocs/broadmoor.html WILSON, J. M. (I 997a, March/April). Distance learning for continuous education. Educom Review, 32 (2),12-16. WILSON, J. M. (1997b, March/April) Will the ivory tower survive the electronic village? Educom Review, 32 (2), 15. YOUNG, J. (1997, October 3). Canadian university promises it won't re- quire professors to use technology. Chronicle ojHigher Education, p. A28. (Manuscript received November 5,1998; revision accepted for publication February 4, 1999.) 
work_vqks4c2harcjvkbd36654nesnu	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_vv5pd42yl5cghmvet2facwlkb4	----	ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 100 (2014) 154 – 165 DOI 10.3813/AAA.918695 A Qualitative Approach to Evaluation of Perceived Qualities of Audio and Video in a Distance Education Context DanNyberg, JanBerg LuleåUniversity ofTechnology. Piteå,Norrbotten, Sweden. [dan.nyberg, jan.berg]@ltu.se Summary This study presents a qualitative method for collecting and analysing data to describe audio and video quality. Used in the social sciences, arts, and humanities, this approach relies on phenomenology and hermeneutics and uses interviewsandquestionnaires toassess theaudioandvideoqualityofmasterclasses inclassicalmusic taught via the Internet. Although this study is only exploratory, it provides evidence that themethod could successfully be used to gather descriptions of perceived qualities. PACS no. 43.71.Gv, 43.72.Kb, 43.75.Cd, 43.75.St 1. Introduction There are numerous contexts inwhich evaluation of audio quality may be performed and several evaluation meth- ods have been developed over the years. Although each method has its ownmerits, specificmethodsmay bemore suitable in specificcontexts.Whenanewcontext emerges, these methods need to be evaluated, refined, and consid- ered. Existing methods, however, mainly rely on experi- mental data that comes from carefully manipulated situ- ations to control experimental variables. Exclusively re- lying on experimental data may not actually reflect the reality that the experiment aims to represent, i.e. the ex- periment’s ecological validity may not be sufficient. The concept of ecological validitywas addressed byBrunswik [1] and later discussed by Gibson [2] who elaborated on examples relating to visual perception (e.g. drawings and how well they represent reality). For reproduced sound, Guastavino et al. [3] suggested that listening tests should be designed to match the aim of the study through gener- ation of stimuli that enable subjects to “treat the test sam- ples as potentially familiar experiences through cognitive processes elaborated in actual situations”. Consequently, due to the risk of not attaining a sufficient level of eco- logical validity, there are situations where alternatives to experimental studies should be considered. Thus, relying onlyonexperimentaldatacanbean issuewhenbothaudio and video qualities are of interest and/orwhen other qual- ity aspects are involved. In addition, most of these meth- odswork by quantifying the listener’s experiences, an ap- proach that limits the type of data collected. Received 3September 2012, accepted 13October 2013. This limitation is imminent in the context of distance education over the Internet, which involves audio, video and real-time interaction. This becomes significantly im- portant in distance music education (MED). Here the re- search has increased over the last ten years [4, 5]. Typi- cally, a MED teacher located at one school teaches a stu- dent located at another school via the Internet, often by means of a video conferencing system [4, 5]. Several findings regarding teaching possibilities and at- titudes have been made in earlier research. Greenberg’s white paper on video conferencing-based distance educa- tion [6] shows that teachers have to adopt their teaching to accommodate; this involves e.g. interactivity betweenpar- ticipants and teaching strategies that have to be matched with the technology. Work by Masum et al. [4] in the project “MusicGrid” adds to this by noting that teaching musicoverdistance requiresboth frequent demonstrations and continuous feedback during the lessons. Findings by [4, 6] also indicate that participants become quickly adapted and comfortablewith the system.Both [4, 6] con- clude that distance education can be cost effective and al- lows users to access more learning experiences without travelling.Shepard [5] takesamore technicalviewandex- plains the need of striving to have high quality audio and video, bidirectional transmission and easy-to-use system in a MED situation. Shepard also gives indications that conferencingsystemsusingMPEG-2encoderanddecoder canwork if used right. Research efforts have also been made by Woszczyk et al. [7] to establish a transparent systemfor connecting two physical locations via a shared electronic virtual space for musical practice. However, few studies specifically focus on how MED students and teachers perceive the audio quality of a particular system. Woszczyk et al. [7] con- clude that inaddition toaudioquality, other factors suchas 154 © S. Hirzel Verlag · EAA Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 100 (2014) image size of video, tactile/haptic response (low frequen- cies transmitted via separate channels to simulate floor vi- brations) and synchrony between audio and video are in- volved in creating a transparent MED system. They also found thatwhen asynchrony between audio and video oc- curs, participants often only focus on themusic. This paper presents a selected qualitative method for data collection and data analysis that is commonly found in the social sciences, arts, and humanities and applies these methods to evaluate audio and video quality as it is perceived by teachers and students in a non- experimental distance education setting (specifically in a real-life clas- sicalmusic course conducted via the Internet). The terms audio and sound quality will be used inter- changeable during the course of this paper. The term non- experimentalmeans that the researcherhasnocontrolover the parameters such as choice of participants (other than inviting students already enrolled in the classes), where the study took place, transmission quality between the lo- cations, andchoiceofequipment.The term real-lifemeans that the lessons in the classicalmusic course are authentic lessons in which the researcher does not intervene. These qualitative methods are used because the study was con- ducted in non-experimental and real-life conditions. Al- though the results from such a studymay be used to eval- uate the quality of audio equipment, this issuewas not the targetof this study.Rather, this study intends to investigate what type of data a researcher can collect by using these qualitativemethods and to show the applicability of these methods in the field of perceptual quality. 2. Earlier research on perceived audio and video quality Asstated in the introduction,MEDinvolvesmore thanone perceptual qualitymode (e.g. auditory, visual and tactile). Previous research on the quality of perceived audio, which is one of the modalities under investigation, shows that it has been successfully evaluated. These data collec- tionmethodsoftendealwith rating scales [8, 9, 10, 11,12] and descriptive analyses and use the subject’s own vocab- ulary to evaluate the perceived audio quality [13]. What all thesemethods have in common is that they all are con- ducted in laboratory settings and follow an experimental paradigm. Toole [8] as well as Gabrielsson and his co- workers (e.g. [9]) conducted research that comprised lab- oratory experiment using subjects as evaluators of sound quality, inmoreparticular, the soundqualityof loudspeak- ers was evaluated by means of rating scales. The exper- imental paradigm has since then been a predominant ap- proach for audio quality evaluation through subjective as- sessments. Bech and Zacharov give a comprehensive re- viewof different approaches in their book [10]. Since then, several recommendations have been devel- oped to evaluate subjective audio quality with the use of rating scales, for an example ITU-R BS.1116-1 [11] and ITU-R BS.1534-1 [12]. The former focuses only on as- sessment of small impairments of audio quality, while the latter focuses on assessment of intermediate audio qual- ity. There has also been research employing subjects’ own vocabulary in order to find an appropriate descriptive ter- minology that may be used for subsequent quantification of perceived audio characteristics [13, 14]. There are also a variety of methods designed to evalu- ate perceivedvideoquality.Thesedata collectionmethods range from scales [15, 16] to interpretation-based estima- tionsof imagequality [17]orboth [18].Theseapproaches, however, only look at onemodality. In multimodal research, the focus shifts since both au- dio and video are involved in a MED situation. In the multimodal field, several approaches are used to evalu- ate multimodal quality. Some of the approaches use a mixed-methodsapproachwherebothnumericanddescrip- tive data are analysed. For example, Strohmeier et al. [19] used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate multimodal quality perception of audio andvideo, inspired by sensory evaluation methods; they used the method Open Profil- ing ofQuality to understandquality perception. TheOpen Profiling of Quality contained three parts: a method they call psychoperceptual evaluation (the subject uses rating scales to evaluate perceived audio quality); sensory pro- filing (collecting individual quality attributes); and exter- nal preference mapping (constructing links between the psychoperceptual result and the sensory profiling). Using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), they analysed thepsychoperceptual eval- uation and sensory profiling, respectively. Jumisko-Pyykkö et al. [20] used a qualitative approach to evaluate audio-visual quality by combining a single-sti- mulusmethod, forqualityevaluation,withsemi-structured interviews, to establish quality evaluation criteria. The data analysis combined a qualitative analysis based on grounded theory and a quantitative statistical analysis, Bayesian modelling. Jumisko-Pyykkö et al. [21] also ap- plied an entirely qualitative approach (semi-structured in- terviews) and compared the qualitative results with quan- titative results in order to understand the relationship be- tween produced and experienced quality in the context of interactive audio-visual systems. The analysis used here also followed the grounded theory approach. This qualita- tive approach showed that itwaspossible to collect 13dif- ferent categories of quality criteria from the subjects and that these categories were related to the quantitative re- sults. This is an indication that a qualitative method can complement quantitativemeasurements in order to under- standmultimodal quality. Other researchers have employed single-method ap- proaches [22, 23, 24, 25] in multimodal quality research. BeerendsandDeCaluwe[22] tested the influenceofvideo quality on perceived audio quality (and vice versa) using a nine-point absolute category rating scale. The data anal- yses were made using ANOVA. Bech et al. [24] analysed the interactionbetweenaudioandvisual factors in thecon- text of a home theatre system. The experiment collected numeric data from rating scales using defined attributes with anchors and the datawere analysed usingANOVA. 155 ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities Vol. 100 (2014) All methods presented above have shown to be well suited for the intendedpurposes anddeliveredvaluable re- sults; however, thesemethods aredesigned for experimen- tal or laboratory contexts and some of the methods could be hard to adapt to a real-life situation (non-experimental situation) such as the MED situation. One cannot control all parameters involved in an MED situation, contrary to the experimental research presented above. Clearly, labo- ratory testing cannot completely account for the real life situations found in distant learning MED, a situation that is relatively unstudied and may require new methods to develop a complete picture of its usefulness. 3. A qualitative approach When considering a suitable method in a relatively new, non-experimental, and multi-modal context, such as mas- ter classes in classicalmusic over the internet, another ap- proachmay be required that uses qualitativemethods that focus more on describing and understanding the experi- ence than on quantifying it. An example of viewing sound quality from a some- what different angle has been suggested by Blauert and Jekosch [26]. They present a perceptionism view of the world, a view that relies on the belief that all knowl- edge is based on sensory perception. This view allowed them to create a layer model of audio quality based on the amount of abstraction involved for each judgment of audio quality. The model enabled them to show the sit- uation dependence of different audio qualities based on the degree of abstraction. One of their findings, the qual- ity called“Aural-communicationQuality”,which involves thehighest amountof abstraction, canbe investigatedwith psychological and cognitive tests in real cases such as in tests of usability, comprehension and dialogue qual- ity. The situation dependence in their model relates well to the previously discussed concept of ecological valid- ity, which further strengthens the argument for consider- ing non-experimental studies outside the laboratory when assessing audio quality in certain contexts. This example indicates that it is possible to adapt and employ methods used inotherfields, in this casepsychology, but also in the humanities and social sciences. Since MED also focus on usability, anddialogue,methods related to thosediscussed byBlauert and Jekosch are of interest. The following sections initially present the implications ofusingaqualitativeapproachandsomequalitativepoints of departure, followedbyhowdata collection andanalysis methods may be applied in the MED context, given the qualitative approach. 3.1. Implications of using a qualitative approach When researchers use qualitative methods, they need to consider the possible limitations of such an approach. In qualitative research the question of validity focuses on the employment of the “reduction” process (analysis) that leads toa result andnotwhether thedatacanbe replicated, a commonview issue in thefieldof audioquality research. The qualitative research focuses on howclearly the analy- sis is conducted and described by the researcher and how well the descriptions of the data relates to the collected data. In hermeneutics for an example the hermeneutic cir- cle comes into play, see [27, 28] and in phenomenology, bracketing, phenomenological reduction and horizontali- sation are the major methods employed, see [28, 29]. All thesemethodsaredesigned tounderstand thedata andcre- ating a description of the collected data. One implication of qualitative research is that two re- searchers do not produce exactly the same results when faced with the same task. This poses no problem, how- ever. That is, competent and skilful researchers produce results easily recognized by other researchers. Each ex- ploration/study should bring a different perspective on the phenomenon under study and each perspective creates a more comprehensive picture of the phenomenon [27]. 3.2. Qualitative points of departure Empirical phenomenology and hermeneutics, approaches frequently used in psychology [27, 28], are suitable points of departure for evaluating audio and video quality in a distance education context such as MED conducted via the Internet. Empirical phenomenology has the following goal: To understand the general psychologicalmeaning of some particular human way of being-in-a-situation [. . .] through a number of descriptions of this way of being-in-a-situation from people who have lived through and experience themselves as so involved [27, p.40]. Moustakas, agreeingwithTesch[27], states thatonecan determine the underlying structures of an experience by interpreting the description of a situation where the expe- rience occurs [28]. As for hermeneutics, Moustakas sum- marizes it thisway: [R]eading a text1 so that the intention and meaning behind appearances are fully understood [28, p.9]. ThisviewagreeswithTesch’sexplanationofhermeneu- tics [27]. Hermeneutics looks at human experience by studying the lifeworld2 in order to form a whole, includ- ing a description of experience. Interpretation of an expe- rience shows what is hidden behind a phenomenon [28]. This understanding means that an empirical phenomeno- logicalandhermeneuticdeparturemayhelpevaluateaudio quality, video quality, and their interaction in order to ex- tract, interpret, and describe the experience of the persons involved in aMEDsituation. Other researchers havealreadyappliedgrounded theory in the form of semi-structured interviews to evaluate the perception of audio-visual quality [20, 21] (as discussed 1The term “text” in a hermeneutic sense is very wide and incorporates human action, interview transcripts, and texts [27]. 2Lifeworld is a translation from German, Lebenswelt: ”All the imme- diate experiences, activities, and contacts that make up the world of an individual or corporate life” (New Oxford American Dictionary). 156 Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 100 (2014) Table I.Top:Questionnaire 1.Bottom:Questionnaire 2:Questions inbold are “yes” and“no”questions and the subject couldonlygive a “yes” or “no” answer. The remaining questions are presented as open-ended questions in the questionnaire. TheX indicates towhich category of persons the questions are directed. 1 What are the positive aspect/aspects of distantmusical learning, based on this occasion? 2 What are the negative aspect/aspects of distantmusical learning, based on this occasion? 3 Explain the sound quality in this carried out lesson. Nr Teacher Student Both Question 1 X Did you change your teachingmethods on this occasion? 2 X Inwhatway did it change? 3 X Inwhatwaywere you able to interact, by speaking and singing/playing,with the teacher/student? 4 X Can you perceive the teacher’s instructions clearly? 5 X If “Yes”, describe in your ownwords the perceived sound. 6 X If “No”, describe in your ownwords the perceived sound. 7 X Can you perceive the music examples from the teacher clearly? 8 X If “Yes”, describe in your ownwords the perceived sound. 9 X If “No”, describe in your ownwords the perceived sound. 10 X Inwhatway did the communication between you and the teacher/studentwork? 11 X What could further enhance the lesson? 12 X Are there any positive aspectswith the use of distance learning? 13 X Are there any negative aspectswith the use of distance learning? 14 X What could be improvedwith the technology based on this lesson, according to your opinion? 15 X What could be improved in the teaching, based on this lesson, according to your opinion? in section2).Theaim in these caseswas to collect andun- derstand the unknownunderlying characteristics ofmulti- modal qualitywhen evaluated quantitatively, Grounded theory, an approach that is often found in so- ciology, generates a theory fromdata [30, 31].When con- ductinggrounded theory research, a researcher shouldcol- lect data on a particular subject/topic before developing theories and hypotheses about it rather than developing theories and hypotheses before collecting data [27]. Grounded theory has similarities to the proposed ap- proachabove,aswewant thedata togive information tous about a phenomenon (in this case audio and video quality and interactionbetween teacherandstudents), butourpur- pose is not to generate a theory or a hypothesis about the phenomenon; ratherour focus is todescribe theperception ofwhat is experienced in this specific context. 3.3. Collection of data The twodata collectionmethods used, questionnaires and interviews, can be applied post the MED situation, thus they do not influence student-teacher interaction. Both these methods are often found in qualitative research. In- terviews are used in phenomenology research and to some extent inhermeneutics [27,28,32].Compared tonumeric- baseddata collectionmethods, bothquestionnaires and in- terviews can provide detailed descriptions of how audio and video quality are perceived, separately and together. Similarly, questionnaires have been used in earlier studies [33, 34, 35, 36] with good results. Open-ended question- naires can gather many responses from the subjects and give anoverviewof thefield under study.Of course, ques- tionnaires can contain questions where the responses are quantitative, e.g., by using scales, lines, checkboxes, etc., but such approaches are not considered here as they rep- resent a methodology outside the scope of this paper. In- terviews provide insight into how subjects experience the learning environment–audio, video, and student-teacher interaction. This approach also allows more flexibility in data collection because follow-up questions can be asked [32],which is not possiblewith questionnaires.Collecting descriptive data from interviews could be beneficial when the researchfield is relatively unexplored [20]. The data collection is designed in the following way: The design can be seen as a funnel, with broad questions at first (Questionnaire 1), secondlymorenarrowquestions (Questionnaire 2) still remaining open with but with cer- tain focus points and thirdly interviews with participants in order to investigatingwhat particular users perceive. In the following sections it is shown how these data collec- tionmethods are applied in aMEDcontext. 3.3.1. Using questionnaires Two sets of questionnaires were distributed during sev- eral MED sessions. Their design was partially influenced by previous studies on distance learning [4, 5]. As parts of the questionnaires included broad and/or open-ended questions, no pre-tests were considered. Questionnaire 1 is a brief questionnaire containing a set of open-ended questions regarding positive and negative aspects of the MED sessions as well as audio and video quality aspects. Based on the answers collected from the first question- naire, seeTable I, a secondmore elaborated questionnaire was designed (Questionnaire 2), see Table I. In this re- spect, Questionnaire 1 partially serves the function of a pilot test. Questionnaire 2 had more specific open-ended 157 ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities Vol. 100 (2014) questions and twoyes and no questions that led to follow- up questions (“if Yes, please describe . . .”, “if No, please describe . . .”).Questions1and2 in thequestionnairewere designed to capture the teachers’ perspective and ques- tions 4–9were specifically designed for capturing the stu- dents’perspective.A totalof15questionswereused in the questionnaire. This new set of questions was designed to encourage the participants to reflect on whether they per- ceived the audio quality and video quality as good or bad and why they perceived the qualities in these particular ways. The questions were designed to capture a compre- hensible view of the participant’s perception of the over- all quality of the MED system and the participant’s ex- perience. Data from Questionnaire 2 were systematically analysed (described below). 3.3.2. Using interviews As a next step, personal semi-structured interviews with the participants in theMEDsituation (students and teach- ers) were used to further shed light on the results from the questionnaire and obtain an even more individual de- scription of the experience of perceived quality. An inter- viewguidecombiningbothopen-endedandcircumscribed questionswasused toguideboth the interviewerand inter- viewee to obtain the descriptions of the users’ experience [28]; see Table II for the questions used in the interview guide.Thequestion asked from the interviewguide varied depending onwhether the intervieweewere a teacher or a student. 3.4. Analysis of the collected data A phenomenological and hermeneutical approach is used as the point of departure for the analysis. The analysis focuses on describing the user’s perception of audio and video quality as well as the interaction between teachers and students. This sectionpresents the data analysismeth- ods. 3.4.1. Using questionnaire analysis An ad-hoc analysis is used on the data and includes theme analysis and meaning categorization analysis [32, 37]. In the themeanalysis, themesaresearchedfor in thecollected data [37].The themeanalysis is accomplishedbyfirst list- ingall thecollectedanswersundereachquestionand read- ing all the answers for similarities and common answers [23].This part of the analysis is analysedhermeneutically. The meaning categorization analysis is an analysis that is inspired byVerbal ProtocolAnalysis [38]. Each answer is codedandcounted according to its identifiedproperties. The verbal protocol analysis requires an algorithm or de- scription on how to handle each verbal unit [38, 39]. Berg [14, 39] categorised the data into descriptive features and attitudinal features. Each category was then divided into two subsets. For descriptive features, the units were di- vided intounimodal (only audiomodality) andpolymodal (other sensory modalities). The attitudinal features were divided in the samewaybut into emotional/evaluative atti- tudes or attitudes related to naturalness. The current anal- ysis, however, differs from Berg’s approach: each answer Table II. Questions used in the interview guide. Translated from Swedish. • Howwas the lesson/master class? • On the topic of user freedom – Did you feel limited in your practice? * Is it the technology? * Is it the distance between you and the teacher/ stu- dent? * Is it the lack of presence by the teacher/student? * Is it the communication that poses problems? – If you feel free in your practice * What is it thatmakes you feel free in your practice? * Canyoudo the things that youwant to do? * Towhat extent does the feeling of freedomexist? • Could you complete the master class without being af- fected by the technology/systemused? • Did you perceive the technology as a hindrance or as a tool? • What worked and what didn’t work during the master class? – Technology * Was it good? * Was it bad? * What could be improved? Describe them – Pedagogics * Was it good? * Was it bad? * What could be improved? Describe them • Howdid you perceive the sound quality? – Canyou compare it to a known format/media? • Howdid you perceive the sound and video quality? • If you exclude the video, how did you perceive the sound quality? • If you exclude the sound, how did you perceive the video quality? • Did you perceive any “delay/latency” between the sound and video? – If yes,which camefirst according to you? – Did this delay pose any problem for you? to the open-endedquestions for both its descriptive and its attitudinal featureswas analysed as each answermay con- tain both. Both the descriptive and attitudinal features of each answer were interpreted based on the context (each question) from which they were taken. The sorting pro- cesses were conducted in the following way: Sorting 1– eachanswerwassortedafter its interpreteddescriptive fea- tureusing the labels below; e.g., if the answerwere related to audio quality, it was given a sound quality-related label (Sqr); and Sorting 2–each answer was sorted after its in- terpreted attitudes, i.e., positive, negative, both, or blank. The following labelswere usedwhen sorting each answer into its respective topic and attitude: 158 Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 100 (2014) Sorting 1. Descriptive features: Sound quality related (Sqr), video quality related (Vqr), sound and video qual- ity related (Sqr&Vqr), communication related (Com) (“communication” here refers to speaking and interaction among the participants), teaching related (Tch), technol- ogy related (Tec), teaching and communication related (Tch&Com), and diverse statements (Div). Sorting 2. Attitudinal features: positive (+), negative (-), positive and negative (+ &-), and attitudes that contained no positive or negative statements (blank). Consequently, sorting 1 in the meaning categorization analysis provides an overview of the number of answers on each perceived quality. The second sorting (Sorting 2) provides anoverviewof the answers’ attitudes (sorting2): positive, negative, both, or blank (general statements). 3.4.2. Using interview analysis The interviewdatawere analysed using an approach com- monly used in phenomenology studies [27, 32], mean- ing condensation [32]. One or several persons can do this type of analysis. When looking at the data from a phe- nomenological point of view, the interviewer and/or re- searcher must set aside his/her pre-understanding of the phenomenon to obtain objectively rich and clear descrip- tions of the phenomenon under study [32]. This is re- ferred to as “bracketing”. The bracketing started during thedesignof the interviewquestionsby formulatingopen- endedquestions to facilitate the subjects’owndescriptions of their experience and continued throughout the analysis process. Meaning condensation concentrates the uttered mean- ing intomore essentialmeanings andcontainsfivegeneral steps: Step 1–reading the interview to obtain an overview of its content, establishing a sense of the whole; Step 2– creating units of meaning (the answers) as the interview subject expresses them; Step 3–creating themes that dom- inate the units ofmeaning; Step 4–asking questions to the units ofmeaning based on the research purpose; and Step 5–creating a summary of the interviews’ central themes andpresenting theminonedescriptive statementper inter- view [27, 32]. The steps of the interviewanalysis used the original method as a baseline for the analysis. The steps used in our analysis are listed below: 1. Transcribing the interview (transcriptionmethods used were structured in colloquial language [32]); 2. Creating units ofmeaning of each transcribed answer; 3. Creating themes; 4. Sorting the units’ answers into corresponding themes; and 5. Summarizing each theme in the text for each interview. All stepsof the evaluationmethodarepresented in ablock diagram in Figure 1. Each step (block) is followed by its result. 4. Evaluation of perceived qualities of a master class The qualitative approach presented in section 3 was de- veloped to evaluate perceived audio quality during real Figure 1. The steps and the results for each step used in the eval- uationmethod. MED situations while considering the perceived video quality and interaction between the teacher and student. The MED situations were real master classes in classi- cal music taught over distance and connected via video conferencing systemsandan IPnetwork (Public Internet). That is, the teacher was at one location and the student at another. This section presents the results from the qualita- tive approach. The study was conducted under non-experimental con- ditions.Measurementsof latencybetween the locationand audio and video were not possible due to inaccessibility tomeasurement equipment.Table IIIprovides information aboutwhat equipmentwas used at each location. 4.1. Participants The master classes were conducted in Oulu (Finland), Helsinki (Finland), Piteå (Sweden), Olos (Finland), and Rovaniemi (Finland) on several occasions during the au- tumn and winter of 2009 and spring and autumn of 2010. The instruments/ensembles used in these master classes wereviolin,Frenchhorn, cello, and stringquartet. Singing was also a part of some classes. The participants in the study were college/ conserva- tory/ universitymusic students and teacherswhowere re- cruited by means of invitations trough their home institu- tions. Hence, they may be regarded as experienced per- formers compared to the general public as well as to mu- sic students at preceding levels of the education system. Their participation was voluntary. In the beginning of the study (Questionnaire1and2, seebelow), teachersandstu- dents directly involved in actively singing or playing their instruments as well as students observing the players par- 159 ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities Vol. 100 (2014) Table III. Tablewith the equipment for each location. Location Equipment All locations TandbergMXPEdge 95 video confe- rencing systems, 50-52 inchLCD television screens Piteå 2xNeumannKM184microphones (occasionally aMicrotechGefell UMT70smicrophone) 2xGenelec 1030A speakers Helsinki 2xNeumannTLM-103microphones 2xGenelec 8030A speakers Olos 2xNeumannTLM-103microphones 2xGenelec 8030A speakers Oulu 2xNeumannTLM-103microphones 2xGenelec 8030A speakers Rovaniemi TVspeakers 1xClockaudio limitedC600microphone ticipated. In a later step (Interviews), only active teachers and students partook. 4.2. Procedure The stepsused for evaluationof themaster classeswere as follows: 1. Questionnaire 1 (Brief); 2. Questionnaire 2 (Extended); 3. Ad-hoc analysis of the questionnaires; 4. Interviews; and 5. Analysis of the interviews (meaning condensation). Both questionnaires were completed and the interviews were conducted after each lesson so as not to interrupt theperformanceof the teachers and students.The timebe- tween the closing of the master class and the distribution of questionnaires and/or conducting the interviewswas no longer than one hour. During the first master class, Questionnaire 1 (three open-ended questions) was distributed to obtain a general overviewof the participants’ experiences: their evaluation of the overall sound quality and their evaluation of their overall distance learning experience. A total of six ques- tionnaireswere collected. From this information, a second questionnairewasdesignedanddistributed tocollectmore detailed descriptions from the participants. The question- naires were distributed to all participants (teachers, stu- dents, and observers participating in the master classes). A total of 22 questionnaires were collected over a period of three master classes. The participants were allowed to complete the questionnaires at home for later submission. Hence, the time used by the participants for completion of the forms differed from less than one hour up to sev- eral days. The use of questionnaires is outlined in section 3.3.1. After thedistributionof thequestionnaires, a total of six interviews were conducted by the first author: two inter- viewswith students participating in themaster classes and thismasterclass studyandfour interviewswith twomaster class teachers. Both students had previous experience of master classes and some experience with virtual distance communicationbuthadnoperviousexperiencewithMED situations before this project. Both teachers had some ex- perience of MED situations previous to this project. The interview followed theprinciples outlined in section3.3.2. One of the teachers was interviewed three of the four times in order to collect additional information from each session.The responseswere recordedonanaudio recorder and later transcribed. The second teacherwas interviewed via e-mail and several follow-up e-mails were sent to en- courage further reflection on topics deemed interesting by the interviewer. This e-mail correspondence can be com- parable to a regular interviewbecauseof thenatureof ask- ing follow-upquestions to inquire interesting leads aswell as asking for clarification on certain answers. 4.3. Analysis Thequestionnairedataand interviewdatawasanalysedby using the traditional data analysismethods that goes along with phenomenology and hermeneutics, presented in sec- tion 3.4. For simplicity, one person did the coding and meaning condensation, as the hermeneutical point of ori- gindoesnotpreclude theuseofasingle interpreter (coder) provided that this person is aware of his/her possible pre- conceptions and prejudices.Although, later in the process an investigator triangulationhas alsobeenapplied, i.e. dif- ferent evaluators to review the findings in order to reduce potential bias [40]. 4.4. Results from the analysis 4.4.1. Questionnaire analysis (ad-hoc analysis) The first part of the analysis, finding major trends, gave fourmajor themes/trends.Quotations are translated toEn- glish and originate from Swedish, English and Finnish. The sound quality-related trend contained statements on theperceptionof thesound.Several answers stated that the instruction and music examples played from the teacher/ studentwere perceived as good and clear: “Goodnatural sound”. “Sound was very clear; there were no problems un- derstandingwhat the teacher said”. The sound and video quality-related trend included the perception of an asynchrony between audio and video: “The delay could be shorter”. “The sound and the picture should be in the same time”. The teaching-related trend showed that the participants thought that the distance master classes offered more op- portunities for participating inmaster classes and that they offered the opportunity to play in front of different teach- ers. This trend alsomeant travelwas not required: “The teachingwas excellent”. “Youdon’t have to travel far away to get lessons”. Thecommunication-related trendcontained theperception of having a hard time communicating with the student or the teacher and playing togetherwith the teacher: 160 Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 100 (2014) “It ismore difficult to communicatewith the teacher”. “There shouldbeaclear signal to the students so that theywould knowwhen to stop playing”. The second part of the ad-hoc analysis – meaning cate- gorisation analysis (Table IV) – shows the total number of responses of the categories. The purpose of the cat- egorisation is to outline the major trends/distribution of collected questionnaire answers. Table IV also shows the distribution of the received answers: the results show that the most frequently occurring responses are positive and are related to teaching. The second largest quantity of re- sponses is positive and related to sound quality. The third largest quantity of responses does not contain any inter- pretedattitudesofpositive,negative,both,orgeneral state- ments (blank). These qualities are related to sound and video quality. The data also show that positive attitudes are most common. The second most common attitude is general statements without any positive/negative or both attitudes in theanswers.The thirdmostcommonattitude is negative and the fourthmost common contains both posi- tiveandnegativeattitudes.Thisanalysisdoesnotallowfor more detailed analysis more then showing rough chunks ofdata andmajor trends.As shownbyRaimbault [41] one runs the risk to overlook certain patterns by looking at the data only from one perspective. Since this research is ex- ploratory, the choice of only looking at the major trends is a conscious decision made by the authors in order to discovermajor tendencies in the teachers and students re- sponses. 4.4.2. Interview analysis (meaning condensation) The descriptive texts collected from each interview (step 5, Interview analysis) are summarized in this section into corresponding themes, i.e., making one descriptive text/ description for each themebasedonall six interviews, one person three times and three other persons, one time each. This strategy is done tomaintain the richness of the infor- mation in the collected data. A total of three themes were created. Perceived audio and video quality The teachers perceive that the video quality is good and works for distancemaster classes. The teachers could also imagine how the sound of each instrument sounded live, based on experience, even though the instruments did not sound natural during the master class. One teacher per- ceived the sound quality as “metallic” and “boring”, but with significant direct sound, no room sound, and good dynamics.The same teacher compared the sound to ahigh fidelityMP3.One teacherperceivedadelaybetweenaudio and video, with the audio leading. With respect to sound quality, one teacher found it hard to distinguish between the system’s limitations and the student’s limitations al- though the teacher could distinguish this difference in a later master class. One teacher could easily see the stu- dent’s playing technique, but could not evaluate it because the soundwas difficult to hear. Table IV. The number of responses in each category from the meaning categorisation analysis from the extensive question- naire survey.Theboldnumbers show the categories attaining the largest number of statements in total and for each attitude. Descriptive Attitudinal features features + - +&- Blank Total Tch 35 4 3 1 43 Sqr 17 4 8 7 36 Sqr&Vqr 3 4 5 14 26 Diverse 6 3 1 8 18 Com 4 5 1 7 17 Vqr 2 1 0 6 9 Tec 0 5 0 1 6 Tch&Com 2 0 0 1 3 Total 69 26 18 45 Both students compared the video quality as equal to or better than aYouTube clip.One student couldonly see the main features but not the contours or the proportions of the image.One student perceived the audio quality as “far away, distant, and a littlemuddy” and compared the audio to a YouTube clip. In addition, the same student found it hard to understand the teacher’s voice. One student com- pared the sound quality to aMP3 coded sound, but worse than a movie although the student could distinguish be- tween a normal spoken voice and a softly spoken voice. One student perceived the delay between audio and video as strange. Perceived problems and possibilities The delay between audio and video and the locations are perceived as a problem thatmakes it hard to communicate with the teacher/student. Small details in themusic disap- peared. Not knowing what is sent to the other locations, both related to video and sound quality, is perceived as a problem. During a distance master class, it is also hard to perceive the playing technique used by the students and how the students control their muscles. Distance learning is also problematic formusic classes because it is difficult for teachers to evaluate their students’ playing techniques andmuscle control. Several topics –controlling tempo, intonation, articula- tion, and phrasing–were adequately dealt with during the classes. According to one teacher, if the delays between audio and video were short and the teachers were aware of it, the delay could be less problematic. Both teachers perceived the technology in an overall positive light. One student and one teacher state that there are indirect bene- fits of distancemaster classes since they providemeans to connectwith teachers/studentswithout traveling. Perceived differences and similarities between regular and distance master classes The perceived similarities were meeting with the student personally and discussions with the student. In addition, fromapedagogicpointofview, thedistant learningmaster classwas similar toa regularmaster class.Twodifferences 161 ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities Vol. 100 (2014) were identified: correcting playing techniquewas difficult and verbal explanations rather than hands-on demonstra- tionswere required toexplainnewpositions to the student, a situation that requiredmore time. In addition, creating a relationship with a teacher/student during distance mas- ter classes was more difficult than during a regular mas- ter class. One teacher also stated that a physical/personal contact establishedbefore starting longperiodsofdistance lessonswould be helpful. 5. Discussion 5.1. The results Seen together, the ad-hoc analysis and the meaning con- densation analysis provided an overview of what type of trends/themes exist in the data and how the perceived au- dioquality relates to theperceivedvideoquality and to the interaction between the users. The results from this study can be seen in the following points: • The subjects could complete themaster classeswithout major difficulties. • The audio and video quality was not optimal but suffi- cient. • There was a lack of synchrony between audio and video. • Therewas a perceived delay between locations. • Teachers had to adapt their teaching to accommodate for the systemused. • MEDis perceived as cost-affective. • Participants can access more teaching and learning ex- perienceswith less travelling. These results confirm previous research findings on sev- eral counts.Masum et al. found that teachers and students found the tools (system used) comfortable [4]. This find- ing coincides with the authors’ results; the subjects could complete themaster classeswithout anymajor difficulties. The authors’ results also indicate that the perceived au- dio and video quality in the system is not optimal but is sufficient for this type of music education. There are also problemswith lackof synchronybetweenvideoandaudio and latency between the locations, but the subjects’ state- ments indicate that they can work around these problems andmanageaMEDsituationsuccessfully.Woszczyket al. also report similar results [7]. The results also align with previous research when it comes to teaching. To conduct successful teaching with the use of video conferencing systems, the teacher needs to adapt the content to handle the pedagogical situation [6]. In addition, it is cost-effective to bring teachers and teaching experiences to a large population of students [6]. Clearly, videoconference systems also allow teachers to trainand teach inplacesother than theirhome location [4]. These previous results all coincide with the results from the current study. The implications of these findings will be discussed the section 5.2. The subjects’ initial attitude towards using such a sys- temcould be a bias that affected the results. That is, a stu- dentmay have entered the studywith a preconceived idea about distance learning. Such preconceived attitudes need to be considered when dealing with subjective responses. Before the study, based on their experience of soundqual- ity, the authors expected the subjects to be negative about the sound quality; however, the results did not indicate this. Another possible bias, which may be connected to the positive attitudes collected, is that all the participants volunteered to participate in the study, showing they had an initial interest in MED; that is, the participants were self-selected on some level. 5.2. The methodology Using qualitative methods including analysis shows a po- tential for arriving at a set of data that can be usablewhen evaluating several perceived qualities in one system. This method, with post questionnaires and post interviews, al- lows the participants to complete their task without in- terruptions and encourages the subjects to use their own words to describe their experience. This approach helps create a broad picture of what is happening in the study. Thismethod also allows for a simultaneous description of what is perceived and what is affected even if there are more parameters affecting the perceived total quality than just theaudioquality.Comparing thismethod toother sub- jective assessment methods of audio quality proposed by other studies [10], onecouldnot sayaparticularmethod is better than another method because they collect different setsofdata;however, somesubjectiveassessmentmethods [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15] have predetermined verbal descrip- tors and factors that aim at a defined part of the perceived quality. The approach in this paper enables the subjects to reflect on what they have perceived with few restrictions. Thus, the information can shed light onbroader aspects of the perceived quality. This broad approach makes it pos- sible to discover unexpected and possibly important fac- tors, related either to audio quality or to other qualities that affect how a specific situation or implementation is perceived. Hence, factors outside the audio domain may also be considered. On the topic of analysis, the data presented in Table 1 do not say anything in detail about the content of the re- sponses; the data only show the distribution of answers, which demonstrates that simple quantitative observations can also bemade using thismethod.A difficultywith this categorisation/numeric summaryaswithall categorization methods is that one can choose other categories and thus get a different distribution of the answers. In this study, the blank category refers to that no attitudinal response could be discovered. Consequently, blank responses may indicate that no strong emotionswere evoked in thosepar- ticular cases and possibly that the responses were more of a descriptive character. The lack of further detailed in- formation, e.g. in subcategories, is a result of the chosen approach [41]. 162 Nyberg, Berg: Evaluation of perceived qualities ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 100 (2014) Byusingopen-endedquestions in aquestionnaire, a va- riety of answers can be elicited. This strategy can be an advantage if a participant gives an answer that sheds light on a new area that the researcher has overlooked, or it can be fruitless if the participants “don’t know” or do not evenanswer thequestion.Open-endedquestionsuseddur- ing an interview can encourage the interviewee to answer freely while still allowing the interviewer to guide the in- terviewee into interesting topics if they arise. In the lat- ter situation, the interviewer needs to be very responsive to follow-up possibilities and needs to understandwhat to ignore. Such a strategy, of course, is a source of bias that has tobeconsideredcarefully.Researchersusingquestion- naires and conducting several interviews during an evalu- ation processmust be aware that the data size quickly be- comes large and is hard tomanage and time-consuming to analyse. As stated in section 3.3 the study design can be seen as a funnelmoving fromat set of broad answers collected from the questionnaires 1 and 2 to more detailed answers in the interviews.This designwasused since thequestion- naires worked similarly to a pilot study to facilitate nar- rower questions and topics in the interviews. In the meaning condensation of the interviews, each unit of meaning was categorized into themes. This divi- sion made the answers more clear and provided a better overview and a better understanding of the interviewed subject’s perception. The study includes repeated inter- viewswithone teacher.Thiswillunavoidablycreate learn- ing effects that affect the response. Learning effects was not studied separately as the major trends were in focus this time.However, for future studiesof themethod’schar- acteristics, thismaybe of interest. As all data collection was done after the completion of the event, this collection method relies on the subject’s memory. When answering questions after an event rather than during it, some shift in the recollection of perceived sensations may occur. This shift can be a disadvantage compared toothermoredirectmethodsused for ratingand assessing. Small differences between sessions may not be captured,as theywouldbeharder todetectwhenoneexpe- rience is compared to anotherwith a time gap in between. Further studieswith thesemethodsmight be enhanced by a stimulated recall approach by means of video record- ing the master classes allowing the subjects to watch and comment and thus facilitating the subject to recall what happened during themaster class. Because thestudywasconductedduringarealMEDsit- uation, some other limitations did arise. One limitation of themethodology is that in thisparticularcaseonlyoneper- sonconducted the coding.Aspointedout, thehermeneuti- cal approach does not disqualify a single interpreter from doing the coding, provided that this person is aware of his/her possible preconceptions. Though, in several appli- cationsmore thanonepersonperforms codingof the data. In the current study, the findings were discussed among the authors in order to reduce the potential bias andwhen using a phenomenological or hermeneutical approach for the analysis, the methods used requires the researcher to beawareofhis/herownpreconceptionsandprejudicesand exclude them during the analysis. The author performing the analysis was aware of this possible bias (examples in section5.1) during thedesignofquestionsaswell asunder the analysis of the results. As can be seen in section 4, Table III, the equipment was changed occasionally between different locations and sessions. This can, of course, result in a bias, but the pri- maryfocuswasnot to linkasetofexperiences toparticular equipment, but to evaluate the perceived audio and video quality in anecological valid situationduring livedistance master classes. Another restriction was the unavailability ofmeasuring thedelaybetween the locations andbetween audio andvideo.This couldhave shed some light onwhen delaywas present andwhen the delaywas not present. As indicated, the approach used in the current study yields different information compared to most of the pre- viously used methods that evaluate audio quality. Hence, this method cannot be used interchangeably with exist- ing methods to obtain the same type of data. However, by adding information that is not available from other methods, this approachwill increase the knowledge of the subject’s experience. The results may also be used in an exploratory way as a means of observing what subjects perceive as noticeable, which in its turn can be used to develop evaluation scales used in existing methods. The rich verbal data resulting fromaqualitative approachmay provide a more holistic representation of an audio event, improving our understanding of how the event is expe- rienced. For further research on qualitative research ap- plied on perceived sound and video quality the method and frameworkof introspection (examiningonesowncon- scious thought and feelings [42]) might be fruitfully ap- plied. See [42]. The high correspondence between the results from this study and the studies quoted in section 5.1 can be seen as a successful triangulation and a verification of that the method employed in this study enables the extraction of results thathavepreviouslybeen found in similar contexts. In addition, the method allows for unexpected features to be discovered e.g. the interaction influence on perception of audio and video quality, making the audio quality for an example good enough. Themethod is shown also to be potent for extracting similar data from real-life situations asdataextracted fromexperimental conditions.Altogether this strengthens and encourages future development and use of this type ofmethods. Acknowledgement This work is part of the Vi R Music project and was par- tially financed by the European Union program Interreg IV A Nord. The authors would like to thank all the par- ticipants, students, and teachers who participated in the surveys and interviews. A thanks also goes to colleagues, technicians, and staff members who made this work pos- sible. 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work_vwelc3vwkjbnheq2vtq5eo37km	----	245 Educational Innovations and Applications- Tijus, Meen, Chang ISBN: 978-981-14-2064-1 On the Construction of Philosophy System of Learning Baohua Liao1,a, Lizhen Li1,b and Shufang Ding1,c 1Xiangnan University a369611974@qq.com, b147011094@qq.com, c85835793@qq.com Corresponding author: Lizhen Li, 147011094@qq.com Abstract Learning is not only an individual experience activity, but also a common practice activity with some regularity in today's society, and it is the basic motivation to continuously promote the development and progress of human society. The cognition of the regularity of learning is deepening with the development of the times and social progress. Under the condition that learning has become a ladder to promote social progress and lifelong learning has become a consensus, especially under the condition that artificial intelligence has ever influenced human behavior, questioning the nature and regularity of learning and exploring the construction of a philosophy system of learning will be conducive to promoting lifelong learning and forming a positive force to promote social development, with typical ethical significance. This article will discuss from three aspects: why the philosophical system of learning is needed, why it can be constructed and how it can be constructed. Keywords: learning, the philosophy of learning Learning is not only an individual experiential practice, but also a common regular practice in the society nowadays, as well as the basic motivation for the progressive development of human society. We learn and deepen our knowledge of the regularity of learning along with the development of the times and the social progress. Today, learning becomes a ladder for the social progresses, lifelong learning becomes a consensus, especially artificial intelligence has unprecedented effects on human behavior, on this background, it will help more people develop the habit of lifelong learning to pursue the nature and regularity of learning and explore the construction of a philosophical system for learning, which is a positive force for social development, and has typical ethical significance. The philosophical discussion about learning has come into being when learning gets concerns as a kind of social activity, and it has been in various civilizations. For example, Confucius is the pioneer who made a systematic summary of learn and created his own learning philosophy in the history of Chinese. (Zhang Hua, "Learning Philosophy"). However, as a special philosophical study, it began in the beginning of 20th century and developed fast in the 1980s and 1990s. This article will, in three aspects, discuss the philosophical system of learning: why it is need, why it can be constructed, and how it is constructed. It should be noted that the so-called learning refers not only to learning at school, but also to any activities that help the social individuals consciously obtain subjective information and experience from the objective and form rational judgments or get practical skills. The so-called philosophical system first refers to the thinking and exploration of learning at the view of philosophy; secondly it refers to what learning consists of, the value of learning, the understanding of the regularity of learning in the philosophical sense; thirdly it refers to the intrinsic logical connection among what learning consists of, the value of learning and the understanding of the regularity of learning. I. why it is needed to build a philosophical system of learning? A. It is needed for deepening the understanding of the regularity of learning. In a general sense, philosophy is a worldview and methodology. Therefore, people always analyze and grasp the essential characteristics and regularity of the complex social practice activities with the help of philosophical views, such as reform philosophy, educational philosophy and so on. Thus, when quoting the so-called XX philosophy, people tend to be cautious and generally apply them to the social activities with certain characteristics or the organized social activities. And the “learning”, that seem to be an individual activity in the traditional view, has be given new meaning in the new era. Learning is no longer just an individual matter, especially unlike the past when it was only the privilege of the certain special classes. It becomes an universal phenomenon in the whole society and the basic motivation for the continuous development and progresses of individuals, organizations and society. We constantly deepen our understanding of the regularity of learning along with the development of society. Under the new conditions, we need to learn the regularity of the learning of the sages in the view of philosophy. The traditional learning is often based on the accumulation of knowledge, which had probably been the case since the sages passed their knowledge to their students. Learning is accumulating knowledge, which is not only learning about the indirect experience, but also learning about the direct experience, such as the proverb “ learning from time to time ” advocated by Confucius, the eastern sage, while the model of "reading thousands of books and traveling thousands of miles" is considered to be the most successful basic learning model. After Confucius, the Confucian has always emphasized applying the knowledge, and learning while practice (in some eras, due to the negative effects by the Chinese imperial examinations, learning was isolated from practice). Chair Mao, the great man, also emphasized that we learned from both learning and practice. However, under the era that is featured with Internet networking, informationization and digitization, learning has beyond our old cognition, for example, the nature of learning, the value of learning, the ways to learn, the methods of learning, the efficiency of learning and the evaluation of effects, etc. we have different standard from the traditional one for them. It is of important and realistic significance to re-examine learning and its regularity in the view of philosophy. https://doi.org/10.35745/ecei2019v2.063 Table I Expert Evaluation Value Analysis Table No. Competency training course Conservative value Optimistic value Single value Geometric mean M Test value Consensus value Ranking Min Max Min Max Min Max Ci Oi ai Mi Zi Mi-Zi Gi S1 Science 4 7 7 9 6 8 5.17 8.18 6.85 3.01 0.00 3.01 6.68 6 S2 Technology 2 9 7 9 5 8 4.72 8.06 6.60 3.34 2.00 1.34 7.40 4 S3 Engineering 4 8 7 9 6 8 4.87 8.29 6.52 3.42 1.00 2.42 7.29 5 S4 Mathematics 4 7 6 10 5 9 5.02 8.15 6.22 3.13 1.00 2.13 6.52 7 S5 Leadership and execution 5 9 8 10 6 9 6.29 9.20 7.40 2.91 1.00 1.91 8.31 1 S6 Innovation 5 9 9 10 7 9 6.89 9.54 7.87 2.65 0.00 2.65 8.22 2 S7 Ethics and law 5 9 9 10 7 9 6.39 9.43 7.64 3.04 0.00 3.04 7.91 3 Conclusion Seven training courses in the field are analyzed in Table 2, where S5 - leadership and execution ability course is the most important (8.31), followed by S6 - innovation ability course (8.22), and ethics and law course (7.91) ranks the third. 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Shen, Urban Green Space Suitability Evaluation Based on the AHP-CV Combined Weight Method: A Case Study of Fuping County, China, Sustainability, vol. 10, p. 2656, 2018. [8] H.-L. Liu and W.-L. Hsu, The application of FAHP for outsourcing project management of public parking lots, ICIC Express Letters, vol. 8, pp. 745-752, 2014. [9] H. Sackman, Delphi assessment: Expert opinion, forecasting, and group process: DTIC Document, 1974. [10] M. C. Holden and J. F. Wedman, Future issues of computer- mediated communication: The results of a Delphi study, Educational technology research and development, vol. 41, pp. 5- 24, 1993. [11] J. W. Murry Jr and J. O. Hammons, Delphi: A Versatile Methodology for Conducting Qualitative Research, Review of Higher Education, vol. 18, pp. 423-436, 1995. [12] H. Linestone, The Delphi technique: Handbook of Future Research, 1978. [13] G. Rowe, G. Wright, and F. Bolger, Delphi: a reevaluation of research and theory, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 39, pp. 235-251, 1991. [14] A. Ishikawa, M. Amagasa, T. Shiga, G. Tomizawa, R. Tatsuta, and H. Mieno, The max-min Delphi method and fuzzy Delphi method via fuzzy integration, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, vol. 55, pp. 241-253, 5/10/ 1993. [15] I. S. Chang, Y. Tsujimura, M. Gen, and T. Tozawa, An efficient approach for large scale project planning based on fuzzy Delphi method, Fuzzy sets and systems, vol. 76, pp. 277-288, 1995. [16] T.-B. Jeng, Fuzzy Assessment Model for Maturity of Software Organization in Improving its Staff's Capability, master degree, Department of Information Management, School of Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei City, 2001. 246 Educational Innovations and Applications- Tijus, Meen, Chang ISBN: 978-981-14-2064-1 B.Nowadays, the artificial intelligence (AI) has unprecedented effects, which will be continuous stronger, on human behaviors, it is of great ethical meaning to further explore the philosophical cognition of learning and construct a philosophical system of learning. The artificial intelligence (AI) has been developed deeply and used in a wide range, and that has been the current trend, so learning has a new meaning for human evolution. We don't want to be defeated by what we create. In terms of the relationship between man and machine, in fact, we always have the most basic consensus that the machine created by man must serve for man, not for taking place man. That is why human ethics exists. The reason why machines can replace man in some activities is because the machines are more precise and stable under certain given conditions, which satisfies the human interests. But the machines do pose challenges for humans. Humans must evolve on their own. There are two aspects of the direction of human evolution: one is about material, that is, the further self-optimization of the physiological structure which is line with the law; the other one is spiritual, that is, the ability to change themselves and the objective environment through continuous learning. Therefore, it is necessary and a must to study the regularity of this traditional activity which is also new, and we need to face it in this unprecedented era. II. why can we build a philosophical system of learning? The construction of the philosophical system of learning comes from the interaction between subjective and objective conditions when we are learning and practicing. To judge whether a thing needs to be and can be understood in the view of philosophy, it should be based on the following situations: First, the thing affects human behavior extensively and profoundly, that is, the so-called necessity; second, the thing itself is of some kind of inner Logic whose internal regularity can be known and used by people, that is, the so-called possibility; third, people can subjectively recognize it and try to explore it, that is, the so-called requirements of subjective cognition. A.The previous research has laid a solid foundation for the construction of the philosophical system of learning. Both in the East and West, many philosophers have made in-depth researches and elaboration on learning. In modern times, along with the development of industrial civilization, the western scholars should make in-depth observation and practice of learning from the perspective of education in response to the social needs, and make profound discussion on the value of learning, the ways to learn, the methods of learning and the nature of learning. In modern China, Chinese have a strong complex of saving the country with education and rejuvenating the country with talents, and the discussions on learning from the perspective of education are very common. In the contemporary era, especially in the era of Internet networking, informationization and digitalization, the discussions on "new learning", especially from the perspective of philosophy, have gradually attracted the attention of more scholars, which provides a sufficient academic reference and reference for the discussion of the construction of the philosophical system. B.The universality of learning provides objective conditions for exploring the construction of the philosophical system of learning. At present, the situation, where learning has become the common driving force to the development and progress of human society, not only calls for us to think positively, and learn the learning activities in the view of philosophy, so as to better guide our learning and practice; but also because of the ubiquitous learning activities, it is possible to be realized to study and construct the philosophical system of learning. III. how can we build a philosophical system of learning? The essence of learning is the process or conscious behavior of self-inputting information, processing information and outputting information by the learning subjects out of their own needs. This is not only about acquiring the knowledge and skills, but also the process of self-realization. The philosophical system of learning should be studied in the aspects of the value of learning, what is learning about, the classification of learning, the scope of learning, and the learning laws. A. The value of learning. Value refers to the purpose of the objective and subjective behaviors. The value of learning is the purpose of learning activities by the learning subject. The value of learning has different aspects which are mainly about: on one hand, because the needs of the learning subject can be satisfied, that is, the individual value of the so-called learning subject; on the other hand, the needs of the learning subject can be satisfied, and that also satisfies the needs of organizations or society and even the country, because in terms of social values, the society consists of individuals. The learning activities of the learning individuals are generally good to the benign development the society, especially to the deep exploration and discoveries of the essential attributes of human beings. In terms of individual value, there are two theories: the instrumental value of learning and the purpose value of learning. The so-called instrumental value of learning is that learning is no more than a tool and means for learning subjects to get in better social class; the so-called purpose value of learning is that learning is to free the learning subjects and realize a better life. The discussions on the value of learning not only help the learning subjects to develop correct and scientific values of learning, so that make them study consciously and on their own initiatives, but also help the learning activities and learning subjects to get more attention from individuals to organizations to society and even the country, and help guarantee and realize the learning rights and the learning conditions. B.What is learning about. That refers to the learning subjects and objects, methods and the environment for learning (including technical conditions, etc.) We can ’ t understand learning activities more thoroughly, study them and gain a better understanding of the factors and regular characteristics that affect the 247 Educational Innovations and Applications- Tijus, Meen, Chang ISBN: 978-981-14-2064-1 effects of learning, unless we make it clear that what is learning about. And by doing so, we can make better guides for our learning and practice. As to the learning subjects, since nowadays learning has become a basic approach to self-change, self-building and self-improving, so the learning subjects can refer to not only individuals and organizations (so-called learning organizations), but also the society (so-called constructing a learning society). We need to understand the different learning subjects, so that we make better learning organizations and construct a better learning society. And that is of great significance to the benign development of the society and individuals. The object of learning, that is, what we learn, is the objects which the conscious learning of the learning subjects is about, including various knowledge, skills, and various information; and all knowledge, skills and information except that of the subjects, also the process of the interaction between the learning subjects and objects, and what they have made. It should be noted that the process of learning is not only about the input, processing and output of the external information, but also about the improvement of the subjects in subjective cognizance . We should try to understand the learning objects, not only for understanding "what to learn", but also for a better understanding of "why to learn". As to the learning tools,they refer the technical tools that can assist learning and make learning easier. Learning tools are often the methods to facilitate learning and improve learning efficiency, including the information carriers that is helpful for learning , and the input and output auxiliary carriers. The former includes typical traditional books (newspapers) and modern electronic books (newspapers, films and television), while the latter typically refers to the traditional learning tools and various electronic products in modern sense. The environment for learning is the one in which the learning subjects study. It is the micro environment for learning (including the teaching environment and the self-learning environment), the macro-background of policies, economies and cultures, and the scientific and technological conditions having effects on learning. Studying the environment for learning can be a reference for constructing a more favorable micro- environment for learning and a good macro- environment for learning , in-depth discussion and analysis, and a good micro- and macro-environment for individuals or organizations and even for the country. C.The classification of learning. It is beneficial to a better understand of the nature of learning and make use of the regularity of learning. There are different perspectives on the classification of learning, if look at it from the perspective of the subjects of learning, it can be individual learning and group learning; from the perspective of learning methods, it can be independent learning and learning at school, while learning at school can be passive indoctrination learning and active research learning; from the perspective of the subjects' learning approaches, it can be learning from the indirect experience (based on textbooks) and learning from direct experience (based on practical experience), non- media learning (ie, learning in the traditional ways) and media learning (new implantable learning) and so on. What is emphasized here is non-media learning and media learning. Today, the development of brain science, neural network science, bionics and AI technology make it possible to realize media learning, the so-called new implantable learning. However, media learning is not based on the subjective and objective cognition and logical judgment by humans, nor is it subject to the subjective emotions of human beings, but based on the artificial intelligence program operations out of the control of human, which makes ethical risks inevitably exist. D.The concept of learning. It is also the scope of learning, mainly including learning attitude, learning motivation, learning cycle, learning method, learning evaluation, learning efficiency, and learning effect, etc. learning attitude. Attitude is a man ’ s continuous mental tendency to the objective things based on value judgments, and is the reflection of values in the specific choices. Learning attitude is the continuous continuous mental state of learning based on the individual value judgment. Learning attitude decides the continuous learning state of the learning subject. A good learning attitude helps the learning subject overcome difficulties in studies and get better results in learning. Learning motivation. Learning motivation comes from how the learning subject think of studies, and is also influenced by the learning subject's confidence in studies. The clearer the perception of learning ’ s value is, the more possible it can be realized, the stronger motivation the learning subject has; the stronger the learning subject ’ s confidence is; the stronger motivation the learning subject has. And visa versa. Learning cycle. It is the staged learning of the learning subject, and a basic period for evaluating the learning effects or self-evaluation. Different evaluation requirements different learning cycles, which should be based on the learning situation of the learning subjects as possible as it can. The scientific and orderly learning cycles will help the learning subjects to go into a better learning state and improve the learning effect. Learning methods. There is no specific learning method that is suitable for everyone. But we know the basic rules of learning. For example, do repetition properly, that is, if you do so in line with the forgetting curves, you can memory what you have learned better; for example, do proper practice and apply what you have learned, if you do so, you can not only consolidate your memory, but also encourage yourself to think deeply and make the learned knowledge systematized, sorting your knowledge into different modules . Learning evaluation. Learning evaluation is to evaluate the effectiveness of learning activities, which is carried by the learning subject or the teachers or other third parties (including the stakeholders) to influence the learning subject ’ s behavior. There are two types of learning evaluation: closed-loop evaluation and open evaluation. The former is usually carried by the learning subject or the teachers; while the latter is usually carried by other third parties (including the stakeholders). Learning efficiency. It is the ratio of the learning cost, including that of time and money, and the learning effects in a certain learning cycle. Learning effects. It is the knowledge acquired by the learning subject after a certain learning period, as well as the maturity for the learning subject in B.Nowadays, the artificial intelligence (AI) has unprecedented effects, which will be continuous stronger, on human behaviors, it is of great ethical meaning to further explore the philosophical cognition of learning and construct a philosophical system of learning. The artificial intelligence (AI) has been developed deeply and used in a wide range, and that has been the current trend, so learning has a new meaning for human evolution. We don't want to be defeated by what we create. In terms of the relationship between man and machine, in fact, we always have the most basic consensus that the machine created by man must serve for man, not for taking place man. That is why human ethics exists. The reason why machines can replace man in some activities is because the machines are more precise and stable under certain given conditions, which satisfies the human interests. But the machines do pose challenges for humans. Humans must evolve on their own. There are two aspects of the direction of human evolution: one is about material, that is, the further self-optimization of the physiological structure which is line with the law; the other one is spiritual, that is, the ability to change themselves and the objective environment through continuous learning. Therefore, it is necessary and a must to study the regularity of this traditional activity which is also new, and we need to face it in this unprecedented era. II. why can we build a philosophical system of learning? The construction of the philosophical system of learning comes from the interaction between subjective and objective conditions when we are learning and practicing. To judge whether a thing needs to be and can be understood in the view of philosophy, it should be based on the following situations: First, the thing affects human behavior extensively and profoundly, that is, the so-called necessity; second, the thing itself is of some kind of inner Logic whose internal regularity can be known and used by people, that is, the so-called possibility; third, people can subjectively recognize it and try to explore it, that is, the so-called requirements of subjective cognition. A.The previous research has laid a solid foundation for the construction of the philosophical system of learning. Both in the East and West, many philosophers have made in-depth researches and elaboration on learning. In modern times, along with the development of industrial civilization, the western scholars should make in-depth observation and practice of learning from the perspective of education in response to the social needs, and make profound discussion on the value of learning, the ways to learn, the methods of learning and the nature of learning. In modern China, Chinese have a strong complex of saving the country with education and rejuvenating the country with talents, and the discussions on learning from the perspective of education are very common. In the contemporary era, especially in the era of Internet networking, informationization and digitalization, the discussions on "new learning", especially from the perspective of philosophy, have gradually attracted the attention of more scholars, which provides a sufficient academic reference and reference for the discussion of the construction of the philosophical system. B.The universality of learning provides objective conditions for exploring the construction of the philosophical system of learning. At present, the situation, where learning has become the common driving force to the development and progress of human society, not only calls for us to think positively, and learn the learning activities in the view of philosophy, so as to better guide our learning and practice; but also because of the ubiquitous learning activities, it is possible to be realized to study and construct the philosophical system of learning. III. how can we build a philosophical system of learning? The essence of learning is the process or conscious behavior of self-inputting information, processing information and outputting information by the learning subjects out of their own needs. This is not only about acquiring the knowledge and skills, but also the process of self-realization. The philosophical system of learning should be studied in the aspects of the value of learning, what is learning about, the classification of learning, the scope of learning, and the learning laws. A. The value of learning. Value refers to the purpose of the objective and subjective behaviors. The value of learning is the purpose of learning activities by the learning subject. The value of learning has different aspects which are mainly about: on one hand, because the needs of the learning subject can be satisfied, that is, the individual value of the so-called learning subject; on the other hand, the needs of the learning subject can be satisfied, and that also satisfies the needs of organizations or society and even the country, because in terms of social values, the society consists of individuals. The learning activities of the learning individuals are generally good to the benign development the society, especially to the deep exploration and discoveries of the essential attributes of human beings. In terms of individual value, there are two theories: the instrumental value of learning and the purpose value of learning. The so-called instrumental value of learning is that learning is no more than a tool and means for learning subjects to get in better social class; the so-called purpose value of learning is that learning is to free the learning subjects and realize a better life. The discussions on the value of learning not only help the learning subjects to develop correct and scientific values of learning, so that make them study consciously and on their own initiatives, but also help the learning activities and learning subjects to get more attention from individuals to organizations to society and even the country, and help guarantee and realize the learning rights and the learning conditions. B.What is learning about. That refers to the learning subjects and objects, methods and the environment for learning (including technical conditions, etc.) We can ’ t understand learning activities more thoroughly, study them and gain a better understanding of the factors and regular characteristics that affect the 248 Educational Innovations and Applications- Tijus, Meen, Chang ISBN: 978-981-14-2064-1 thinking and behaviors. It is a measure for the knowledge, quality and ability of the learning subject after the learning period, and it is measurable. References [1] Edited by Hunan Opera Research Institution, Hunan local opera series(4th serie), Hunan: Hunan literature and art publishing firm,1990, pp.418. [2] X.Z.Zhou, The research on local opera in higher education , Wuhan ： World Publishing Corporation, Issue No. 3, 2013, pp.106. [3] J.P.Zhou and Guoping Wang, Selected articles on the history of Suzhou University, Suzhou: Suzhou university press, 2008, pp.437. [4] F.Ke, The heritage and development of Kunqu Opera in modern society, Beijing ： Culture and Art Publishing Firm, 2014, pp.205. [5] F.Kuyumcu,, The Importance of "Art Education" Courses in the Education of Prospective Teachers, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Issue No. 51, 2012, pp. 474-479. [6] (French) written by Baudrillard, Edited by Zhiming Lin. The system of Objects, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing Firm, 2001, pp.223. [7] H.Y.Zhang, Urban image and urban culture-comparison of urban image in domestic and in overseas, Nanjing: Southeast University Press, 2004, pp.132. [8] Y.U.Weimin, The possibility of developing Kunqu Opera in modern society, researches on art and culture, 2011, pp.139-161. [9] Uzunboylu, & İşlek, Evaluation of Art Education in Terms of Content Analysis[J]. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Issue No. 136, 2014, pp.370-380. 
work_vwktw7b5wjek3guwl4g7yhclrm	----	[PDF] Applying Semantic Agents to Message Communication in e-Learning Environment | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2008100102 Corpus ID: 14656152Applying Semantic Agents to Message Communication in e-Learning Environment @article{Wang2008ApplyingSA, title={Applying Semantic Agents to Message Communication in e-Learning Environment}, author={Ying-Hong Wang and C. Lin}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2008}, volume={6}, pages={14-33} } Ying-Hong Wang, C. Lin Published 2008 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. e-learning has become an important issue in the practice and research recently. A tool or system of distance learning should provide automatic functionalities to decrease the overload of instructors and students compared with the traditional learning style. In this paper, we present an English chat room system in which students can discuss course contents by interacting with teachers and students. First, the novel mechanism provides Learning_Angel Agent and Semantic Agent that act as… Expand View via Publisher mail.tku.edu.tw Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 5 Citations View All Figures, Tables, and Topics from this paper figure 1 table 1 figure 3 table 3 figure 4 table 4 figure 5 table 5 figure 6 table 6 figure 7 table 7 figure 8 figure 9 View All 14 Figures & Tables Intelligent agent Chat room Syntax error 5 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Text mining in education Rafael Ferreira Leite de Mello, M. Ferreira, A. Cavalcanti, E. Costa, C. Romero Computer Science Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Data Min. Knowl. Discov. 2019 11 Save Alert Research Feed The Effects of Communicative Genres on Intra-Group Conflict in Virtual Student Teams J. Hsu, Huey-Wen Chou Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2009 11 Save Alert Research Feed Factors Related to Students' Performance of Hybrid Learning in an English Language Course S. Wichadee Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2014 10 Save Alert Research Feed Grid Technology for Smart Organizations Gergely Sipos, P. Kacsuk Computer Science 2006 1 Save Alert Research Feed A Grid-Based Clustering Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Ying-Hong Wang, Yu-Wei Lin, Yu-Yu Lin, Hang-Ming Chang Engineering 2013 5 PDF Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 43 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency An intelligent semantic agent for e-learning message communication Ying-Hong Wang, W. Wang, Chih-Hao Lin Computer Science 19th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA'05) Volume 1 (AINA papers) 2005 8 PDF Save Alert Research Feed A multimedia database supports English distance learning Ying-Hong Wang, C. Lin Computer Science Inf. Sci. 2004 8 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Automating repeated exposure to target vocabulary for second language learners D. Wible, C. Kuo, F. Chien, Nai Lung Taso Computer Science Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies 2001 8 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Learning to Generate Semantic Annotation for Domain Specific Sentences Jianming Li, L. Zhang, Y. Yu Computer Science Semannot@K-CAP 2001 2001 45 PDF View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed A multimedia distance learning system on the Internet H. Tsang, L. Hung, S. Ng Computer Science IEEE SMC'99 Conference Proceedings. 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat. No.99CH37028) 1999 12 Save Alert Research Feed A Framework for Collaborative Learning in Dynamic Group Environments K. Kanev, S. Kimura, T. Orr Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2009 17 Save Alert Research Feed World Wide Web - Course Tool: An Environment for Building WWW-Based Courses M. W. Goldberg, S. Salari, P. Swoboda Computer Science Comput. Networks 1996 136 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed How "useful" is multimedia on the WWW for enhancing teaching and learning? S. K. Adhvaryu, I. Balbin Computer Science Proceedings. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (Cat. No.98TB100241) 1998 5 View 1 excerpt, references background Save Alert Research Feed Yahoo! as an ontology: using Yahoo! categories to describe documents Yannis Labrou, Timothy W. Finin Computer Science CIKM '99 1999 233 Highly Influential PDF View 9 excerpts, references background Save Alert Research Feed OWL Web ontology language overview D. McGuinness Computer Science 2004 4,201 PDF Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... Related Papers Abstract Figures, Tables, and Topics 5 Citations 43 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_vxl5w3yyqjfghgxx2jqunecbva	----	An Empirical Study on Distance Education and Job Match sustainability Article An Empirical Study on Distance Education and Job Match Fengliang Li * and Liang Wang Institution of Education, Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing 100084, China; wangliangnl@163.com * Correspondence: dagger@tsinghua.edu.cn Received: 24 November 2019; Accepted: 10 January 2020; Published: 15 January 2020 ���������� ������� Abstract: Job match has always been the focus of educational research. However, current empirical studies are limited to the analysis of face-to-face education, and there’s no empirical study focusing on the job match of distance education. To fill the gap in this research field, this study analyzes the distance learners in China to demonstrate the relationship between distance education and job match by using the data from a nationwide household survey. The empirical results involve two significant findings. Firstly, distance learners and face-to-face learners have no significant difference in job match. This study attempts to explain this with the human capital theory, that is, distance learners and face-to-face learners have no difference in obtaining their specific human capital, so they both prefer to work on a position characterized by job match. Secondly, job mismatch has no significant negative effect on the income of distance learners. This study attempts to explain this with the screening theory, that is, though distance education would improve the learners’ specific human capital, it still acts as a diploma signal, to some extent, in China, thus making it impossible for the specific human capital obtained by distance learners to transform into a superiority in income. Keywords: job match; distance education; income; specific human capital 1. Introduction Distance education refers teaching and planned learning in which the teaching typically occurs in a different place from learning, requiring communication through technologies, as well as special institutional organization [1]. Distance education has a long history and involves a huge number of students. For example, in a study in 2013, there were more than 21 million distance education learners in developing countries alone [2]. In China alone, distance higher education operates on a huge scale to provide crucial support to China’s move to make higher education more accessible to the populace [3]. At present, China’s distance higher education only offers junior college and undergraduate programs. As of 2017, China’s distance higher education had produced more than 1.78 million graduates in total, with the graduates receiving a junior college degree or a university degree through distance education representing much higher than 15% of the total number of junior college and university graduates in the same year. (Data from 2017 graduate statistics from China’s national educational statistics network. University and junior college degrees are conferred in three ways: Regular institutions of higher learning, adult teaching, and online teaching. In 2017, a total of 11.606562 million graduates received their university and junior college degrees, with 177.7905 million (or 15%) of them receiving their university and junior college degrees through online teaching. Adult teaching is increasingly using distance learning, so the total proportion of students in distance education is much higher than 15%). Compared with traditional face-to-face education, distance education has its distinct features. Most distance learners are adults with some working experience, and distance education is regarded as a low-grade form of education in many countries, especially in developing countries [4–8]. These features of distance education might affect the learner’s employment. Sustainability 2020, 12, 619; doi:10.3390/su12020619 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability http://www.mdpi.com http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/619?type=check_update&version=1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su12020619 http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 2 of 10 Surprisingly, though the job of a distance learner might be particular, and the number of graduates of distance higher education is so large, fewer empirical studies focus on the job of distance education learners. According to the employer assessment data for graduates of the Open University, UK, distance education helps learners gain high motivation and high coordination skills, etc. [9]. That said, studies have found that employers are seemingly not willing to recruit graduates of distance education [9–11]. Job match is an important proposition in the field of employment research. Job match refers to whether an individual is working on a job that matched his/her skills or education; if the work does not match his/her skills or education, it is called job mismatch [12,13]. A job match or mismatch will have effects on the job of a graduate. For example, studies have found that job mismatch will have a significant negative effect on the income of a traditional face-to-face learner [12–14]. By using the data of a household survey in China, this study will select laborers with a junior college degree and a university degree to make an empirical analysis of the job match of distance learners and demonstrate the relationship between distance education and job match, so as to fill the gap in this study area. This study seeks to explore two questions: Through a comparison with traditional face-to-face learners, (1) is job match more likely to happen for distance learners? And (2) does job mismatch have a significant negative effect on the income of a distance learner? In the following sections, this paper will introduce the theories and literatures related to job match and describe the study design before presenting the hypotheses based on the data applied. Finally, the paper will present the results from the data analysis followed by a discussion with recommendations. 2. Literature Review Many theories have attempted to explain job match. The human capital theory regards education as an important human capital, which can improve an individual’s productivity, thus improving the individual’s income [15]. Human capital is categorized into general and specific human capital, with the former applied in many jobs and the latter in specific jobs [16]. According to the human capital theory, professional learning helps learners gain specific human capital. Hence, when a learner fails to work in a job that does not match his/her learning, this results in the loss of specific human capital, and might lead to a decrease in his/her income [17]. Furthermore, when learners are trained in professional disciplines such as medical sciences and engineering, they gain more specific human capital, which increases their access to, and makes them more likely to choose, positions characterized by job match. Otherwise, they will suffer a greater loss of income [18]. The screening theory discusses the economic functions of education from the perspective of information asymmetry, emphasizing the signal and screening functions of education. It holds that learners seek more education to display their possession of high productivity to potential employers. Therefore, the function of education is more to distinguish and screen out the high-productivity people to make the best use of an individual’s skills. As such, education has a strong signal function [19]. In accordance with the screening theory, there should be no difference of productivity (i.e., no difference of income) between workers with major-job match and those with major-job mismatch [17]. Many studies in the literature have examined the issue of job match, mainly covering two areas. The first involves the factors that significantly affect an individual’s job match and the second, the relationship between job match and income. For example, Boudarbat and Chernoff found that demographic (e.g., sex) and socioeconomic characteristics (e.g., family background) have no significant effect on the job match of an individual [20]. On the other hand, an individual’s level of educational attainment, academic records, and specialized major, (e.g., “Health Sciences”) among other considerations, will significantly increase the probability that he/she will work on a position characterized by job match. This observation was shared by other studies that found learners’ choice of subject disciplines that contained more specific human capital to have a significantly higher probability of experiencing job match [12,13,21,22]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 3 of 10 Other studies have focused on the influence of job match on an individual’s income. Neuman and Ziderman found a 10% increase in income among graduates of vocational education in Israel, compared to their peers who graduated with qualifications in general education [14]. However, no significant difference in income was found for graduates with job-mismatch, regardless of their training. Grubb studied the labor market of university graduates in the US and found that job match had brought higher income for those who graduated with both Baccalaureate and Sub-Baccalaureate degrees had greater income [23]. In Egypt, Arabsheibani found that graduates of medical sciences, sciences, and social sciences, could significantly improve their starting salary with job match, lending support to the finding that majors with a higher degree of specialization had a greater effect on improving one’s income, with medical sciences leading the way, followed by sciences, and social sciences [18]. However, there are studies that suggest that job mismatch would not necessarily reduce one’s income. Chung found that, when the job industry was controlled, graduates who experienced job-mismatch in Hong Kong did not experience a significant decrease in their income [24]. In Australia, Miller and Volker found that the starting salary of graduates of economics was no different from those in the sciences even though the former were not working jobs related to economics [25]. This was supported by Li, Ding, and Morgan who examined the labor market in China and found that only male graduates of engineering enjoyed higher starting salaries resulting from job match while graduates of other majors, both male and female, did not [26]. Although many studies have found that learners of highly specialized majors enjoy a greater probability of job match and that job match could significantly improve an individual’s starting salary or income, it appears that research on job match has not reached a consensus, as the conclusions and findings are hybrid. Furthermore, many studies in the literature, including those mentioned above, focused on the face-to-face learners, with little evidence discussing the job match of distance education learners. It can be found from the history of distance education, however, that distance education plays an important role in the development of the higher education of many countries [2,27]. At present, the majority of studies on job match have addressed the face-to-face learners. This presents an incomplete picture of the research topic given the huge proportion of distance education learners in higher education. In face-to-face education research, job match has a positive effect on individuals [28]. Furthermore, job characteristics have a significant relationship between attitudes towards distance education [29]. So, it is necessary to explore the relationship between job matching and distance education. This study will focus on the relationship between distance education and job match as well as the effect of job match on the income of distance learners. This study explores the job match of distance education learners, and the results hold the potential to help scholars and policy makers understand the role of and importance of distance education as a viable study mode for tertiary education. 3. Research Design and Data 3.1. Research Hypothesis In accordance with the human capital theory, distance learners and face-to-face learners should have no significant difference in the human capital obtained if they have met the graduation requirements. Pursuant to this logic, distance learners will obtain as much specific human capital as face-to-face learners as long as they have graduated with relevant majors in their courses of study. Therefore, face-to-face learners and distance learners should experience equal opportunity to obtain a job match in the labor market. However, this is predicated on the assumption that distance learners, as well as face-to-face learners, could obtain specific human capital in equal measure. However, if distance learners obtain less specific human capital than face-to-face learners, they will be more likely to experience job mismatch. It is generally known that in many developing countries, distance education is regarded as inferior in quality to face-to-face education [4,5,7,8]. For this Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 4 of 10 reason, distance learners will have a significantly higher probability of being assigned to a position characterized by job mismatch than traditional face-to-face learners regardless of the majors in which the former have graduated in. Therefore, the teaching quality and effect of distance education on the learners’ job match can be examined through the extent to which distance education would significantly increase the probability of an individual experiencing job mismatch. In case the teaching quality and effect of distance education on learners’ job match is as good as that of face-to-face education, learners will obtain as much specific human capital as face-to-face learners. Then, distance learners and face-to-face learners should have no significant difference in the probability of job match. On the contrary, if the teaching quality and effect of distance learning on learners’ job match is more inferior, distance learners will obtain less specific human capital and suffer a significantly lower probability of job match. This study will use data from China’s labor market and be guided by the specific human capital framework, which has been used in previous research to explain China’s distance higher education [30]. In addition, this study will use learners’ satisfaction with distance learning to measure their perception of quality in distance education [31]. As a result, this paper expects that face-to-face learners and distance learners in China could obtain the same amount of specific human capital. From here, the first hypothesis was formulated for this study. Hypothesis 1. No significant differences in job match probability would be found for distance education learners and face-to-face learners. According to the human capital, job mismatch will have a significant negative effect on an individual’s income. According to the screening theory, job mismatch will not significantly pull down individuals’ income. However, some studies have found that job mismatch will have a significant effect on the income of face-to-face learners, and will reduce an individual’s job satisfaction and working enthusiasm [32–34]. As job match in face-to-face education has a positive driving effect on an individual’s income [33,35,36], this study presents the second hypothesis: Hypothesis 2. Job match would also have a significant positive effect on the income of distance learners. It is important to note that, though there are different theories addressing job match, this study makes an empirical analysis for distance learners’ job match, not for the purpose of verifying the relative greater explanatory power of a theory. Rather, this study intends to refer to relevant theories and analytical frameworks to empirically analyze whether distance education is an influential factor for job match, and whether job match will affect the income of distance learners, so as to fill the gap of distance education in this study area. 3.2. Data Source Data for this study were taken from the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS2014), a national comprehensive household survey administered by the Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS), Peking University in 2014. (The website of CFPS: http://opendata.pku.edu.cn/dataverse/CFPS) This data is free and accessible to anyone by application. The data of the CFPS were obtained using a strict sampling design and is representative nationally. The CPFS2014 consists of 37,147 valid adult samples in total and measuring variables, such as the highest level of educational attainment, mode of education, major, job code, income, sex, age, job characteristics (including industry and staff size of the organization served), and the residential region of individuals. The mode of education may indicate whether a sample received his/her academic credential through face-to-face learning or distance learning. Namely, “distance education” is a dummy variable. If an individual received his/her highest degree through face-to-face education, “distance education” is assigned a value of 0. Otherwise, it is assigned a value of 1. http://opendata.pku.edu.cn/dataverse/CFPS Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 5 of 10 Job match refers to whether an individual is working on a job that matched his/her skills or education [12,13,21]. Using the major and job code, together with other job characteristics, this study was able to assess the job match status of the sample. The match of major with job is assigned a value of 1, and mismatch, 0. When determining job match or mismatch, this study discusses each sample in a manner of panel discussion. Value assignment only follows the consensus reached by the panelists. Together with distance education and job match, income was used to assess the influence of job match on the income of distance learners by controlling other variables. In this study, an empirical analysis was carried out for individuals who had received their academic credentials through distance learning in China. However, only academic credentials at the university and junior college levels are awarded through distance learning. Accordingly, this study only included participants whose highest educational level was a university degree or junior college diploma. The total number of sample cases at undergraduate or junior college levels were 967. After deleting sample cases with missing values of the mode of education, major, and job code, 876 cases were selected for data analysis. Through the analysis of the 876 cases, the study found that the average age of distance learners was higher than that of face-to-face learners. The proportion of distance learners with work experience was also higher than that of face-to-face learners. These findings highlight the characteristics of distance education. 4. Method In this study, a probit model with stepwise regression was employed for data analysis. This model is ideal in cases where the dependent variable is a dummy variable and the function is subject to normal distribution [37]. In the probit model, the core variable is the dummy variable of distance education. Taking reference from previous studies, a series of control variables were introduced into the model: Gender, age, urban or rural area, no working experience during learning (with samples having working experience as the control group), university degree (with samples holding a junior college degree as the control group), a dummy variable of different majors, industry, public sectors (with samples in private sectors as the control group), and the staff size of the organization served. This study will apply the function of semi-logarithm to test Hypothesis 2, which is extensively applied in the field of economics to explore the influence of education on an individual’s income [25]. A semi-logarithm function is used to get the natural logarithm of an individual’s income as a dependent variable, while independent variables are not expressed with a logarithm. It is thus clear that the dependent variable in Hypothesis 2 is a continuous variable. Hence, this study will use multiple linear regression for analysis. In the multiple linear regression, job match is a core independent variable used for analyzing whether job match could significantly increase an individual’s income. In already existing studies, the independent variable, as one of the influential factors for income, typically consists of an individual’s educational background, work experience, and the square of work experience, among others. In a specific study, work experience and its square are often replaced with an individual’s age and its square [38]. This study will also include these variables and control variables mentioned in Hypothesis 1 in the multiple linear regression equation, and will exclude any eventually insignificant control variables using the stepwise regression method. This study will analyze the influence of job match on the income of face-to-face learners and distance learners, respectively. Table 1 is a brief statistical description of all the core variables in this study. Table 1. A brief statistical description of the core variables. Name of Variable Mean Standard Deviation Sample Size Distance education 0.25 0.43 876 Job match 0.52 0.50 876 University degree 0.42 0.49 876 Natural logarithm of income 10.13 0.98 730 Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 6 of 10 5. Empirical Results Hypothesis 1 mainly explores the influence of distance education on job match. The dependent variable is a dummy variable of job match, using the probit model. The core independent variable is “distance education”, also a dummy one, with face-to-face learners as its control group. In the stepwise regression analysis, this study always controls the core independent variable (“distance education”) within the regression equation, with other control variables to be subject to stepwise regression analysis. Table 2 shows the regression result of the probit model. From Table 2, the coefficient of “distance education” is negative, but not significant. This indicates that when other factors are controlled, distance learners are more likely to suffer job mismatch than face-to-face learners; although, this difference is not statistically significant. This supports Hypothesis 1 in this study. Such an empirical result shows that, in China, distance learners can obtain as much specific human capital as face-to-face learners, which is consistent with the previous empirical finding that distance learners have the same educational satisfaction as face-to-face learners [31]. Table 2. Analysis of influential factors in job match. Independent Variable Coefficient Standard Error Distance education −0.05 0.13 No working experience during learning −0.23 * 0.11 Age −0.01 * 0.006 Economics 2.99 *** 0.37 Science of law 2.42 *** 0.45 Education 3.15 *** 0.39 Sciences 2.12 *** 0.39 Engineering 3.05 *** 0.36 Agricultural science 1.58 *** 0.49 Medical science 3.18 *** 0.39 Management 3.30 *** 0.37 Constant term −2.09 *** 0.40 Pseudo R2 0.31 N 876 The dependent variable is a dummy variable of job match. “***” means p < 1%, “*” means p < 10%. Table 2 also shows that variables such as having “no working experience during learning”, “age”, and the dummy variables of some majors also significantly affect the job match of individuals. The coefficient of “no working experience during learning” is significantly negative, indicating that individuals with work experience during their schooling years are more likely to work in a position characterized by job match than those having no work experience during learning. work experience means a greater familiarity with the labor market, making it is easier to find a job characterized by job match. After other factors are controlled, job match shows a significant negative correlation to age, suggesting that age has a direct impact on an individual’s job mismatch. In terms of majors, graduates of economics, management, science of law, education, sciences, engineering, agricultural sciences, and medical sciences are more likely to experience job match than those in philosophy, literature, history, and other majors, consistent with existing empirical findings showing that graduates in a major containing more specific human capital have significantly higher probability to experience job match [12,13,20–22]. In addition, the university degree is not included in the final regression equation, showing that the level of educational attainment would not significantly affect the probability of job match. Table 3 shows the multiple linear regression results of job match and an individual’s income. From Column 1, the coefficient of “job match” is significantly positive, indicating that, for face-to-face learners, when other factors are controlled, job match has a positive income effect. However, the result of Column 2 reveals that the coefficient of “job match” is not significant. This suggests that, for distance learners, after other factors are controlled, the income effect of job match is not significant. This rejects Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 7 of 10 Hypothesis 2 in this study. What needs to be explained here is that this paper tried to add relevant variables of the labor market (staff size of the organization, industry, and sector) to the regression equation; however, these variables did not enter the final stepwise regression equation, meaning that the labor market status does not change the final empirical results. Table 3. Multiple linear regression of job match and individual income. Independent Variable Column 1 Face-to-Face Learners Column 2 Distance Learners Age 0.29 *** (0.03) 0.11 *** (0.04) Square of age −0.003 *** (0.0004) −0.001 * (0.0006) Job match 0.20 *** (0.07) −0.07 (0.12) University degree - 0.38 *** (0.13) No working experience during learning - −0.30 ** (0.12) Constant term 4.62 *** (0.53) 7.78 *** (0.75) Adj-R2 0.20 0.26 N 547 183 The dependent variable is the natural logarithm of an individual’s income. The value in brackets is a standard error. “***” means p < 1%, “**” means p < 5%, “*” means p < 10%. Certainly, it is important that this study does not to infer the causality among distance education, job match, and income, but it is also important to reveal the statistical relationship among them. The final empirical results support Hypothesis 1 and reject Hypothesis 2; that is, the empirical results reveal that distance learners and face-to-face learners have no significant difference in job match, and job match does not significantly increase a distance learner’s income. 6. Discussion In this study, Hypothesis 1 was supported, suggesting that the mode of study (distance learners or face-to-face learners) has no significant difference in job match. In addition, the results of this study provide support to the human capital theory, which posits that, since there is no difference between distance learners and face-to-face learners in obtaining their specific human capital, both types of learners would prefer to work in positions characterized by job match instead. Hypothesis 2 was not supported, suggesting that distance education in China was equally efficient in producing graduates who are comparatively just as productive as those who had completed their degrees via the traditional face-to-face courses. As such, distance learners would not suffer a significant decline in their income even if they were to work in a position characterized by job mismatch. In recent years, debates on human capital theory and screening theory have focused on the relevance of job match in assessing the effectiveness of education on job search. This study provides empirical support for the validity of the human capital theory and screening theory through the study of distance education and job match. However, due to the inability to make a causal inference in this study, it could not account for the lack of significant differences between distance and face-to-face learners on the probability of working on a position characterized by job match, nor could it account for why the effect of job match on an individual distance learner’s income was not significant. Future research could delve into the relationship between distance education and job match. In addition, the results of this study could only represent a Chinese sample; thus, it would be useful and informative to have comparative studies involving participants from different countries and regions in future research. 7. Conclusions Since the 1980s, research on job match has been the focus of educational research. Existing empirical studies have mainly addressed the influential factors of job match as well as the influence of job match on an individual’s working enthusiasm, productivity, and income. However, current Sustainability 2020, 12, 619 8 of 10 empirical studies are limited to the analysis of face-to-face education, often ignoring the role of distance education in generating graduates for the job market. This study tested two hypotheses using nation-wide household survey data. Two significant findings were found in this study. First, no difference was found in job match between distance learners and face-to-face learners. Second, job mismatch would not have a significant negative effect on the income of distance learners. Based on the above empirical findings, this study attempts to make the following recommendations on the future development of distance education: Firstly, distance education should be promoted as a viable option for tertiary study. This notion has been supported in recent literature, which suggests that distance education possesses qualities comparable to face-to-face education. The empirical results demonstrate the convergence between face-to-face and distance education since distance learners have the same probability of job mismatch with face-to-face learners, which means that, in China, distance learners can obtain as much specific human capital as face-to-face learners. Unfortunately, distance education is still regarded as an inferior form of education in many developed countries. It is hoped that the growing popularity of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and OER (Open Educational Resource) worldwide would act as catalysts to the acceptance and enhancement of distance learning in the years to come. Secondly, providers of distance education shall collect the distance learners’ behaviors in the labor market so as to improve distance education [39]. 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work_vxz4g6uxlzesnh46gpisgg32lu	----	200 BOOK REVIEW MEASUREMENT IN DISTANCE EDUCATION Written by Amy J. Catalano Dr. Mehmet KOKOC ORCID: 0000-0002-1347-8033 Fatih Faculty of Education Trabzon University Trabzon, TURKEY ISBN 9781315229447 (eBook) 9781138714465 (Paperback) 9781138714472 (Hardback) Publication Date 2018 Publication Formats Print and eBook Publisher Routledge Publishing/Taylor & Francis INTRODUCTION The growing interest in distance education technologies bring together a critical question on whether online and distance learning is as effective as face-to-face learning. This skepticism requires employing best approaches and robust instruments to evaluate online and distance education (Lowenthal & Davidson-Shivers, 2019). Researchers and instructional designers examine learning process in distance education for building better online learning experiences. To ensure the quality of distance education, institutions basically emphasis on well-designed course, effective technologies, online instructors with high competence, and effective learning outcomes. What is important at this point is to evaluate efficacy of distance education using robust and valid instruments, scales and measurements. In this respect, the book titled Measurements in distance education: A Compendium of instruments, scales, and measures for evaluating online learning by Catalano (2018) has set out to provide a large manual including more than fifty instruments, scales and questionnaire with useful description on their psychometric properties. The author of the book is Amy J. Catalano. Dr. Catalano is currently an Associate Professor of teaching, learning and technology at Hofstra University, United States of America. Her recent studies have encompassed psychometric evaluation of instruments. The book aims to be an organized guide to assist novice and experienced researchers in the field of distance education in using reliable and valid instruments, scales, and measures that are suitable to their research questions. Its intended audience are anyone interested in understanding assessment of distance education and learning. The main thesis of the book is that post- secondary institutions become engaged in distance education increasingly and assessing the quality of distance programs with appropriate instruments is very important for them. Thus, the book is a collection of many measures applicable distance learners to evaluate distance education and teaching, online learning experience of learners and online instructors. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE October 2019 ISSN 1302-6488 Volume: 20 Number: 4 Book Review 2 201 REVIEW OF THE BOOK The overall structure of the book takes the form of five chapters, including, besides the introduction and index, chapter on “engagement and satisfaction” (Chapter 1), “student readiness to learn online and self- efficacy” (Chapter 2), “evaluation of the distance education teaching and learning environment” (Chapter 3), “student learning and behaviors” (Chapter 4), and “student achievement, retention, and attrition” (Chapter 5). Considering the structure of the book, Catalano’s The Measurements in distance education seems to be a well-organized and useful book. In the five chapters of the book, the author presents a range of prominent themes related to effectiveness and efficiency of online and distance learning. The book begins with an introduction section in which the author explains the goal and rationale of the book, criteria for inclusion and search strategy, most commonly used metrics of validity and reliability. The introduction section provides useful description of reliability and validity concepts that should be considered to review whether a scale is reliable and valid. The sections on instruments follow an organized format, starting with source, purpose and description of the scale; details on development and validation of the scale; scale items if accessed. Prefaces of the chapters apart from the fifth chapter have explanations of concepts related to the instruments. The first chapter includes 11 instruments assessing engagement and satisfaction. It defines engagement based on Dixon (2015, p.2) as “the extent to which students actively engage by thinking, talking, and interacting with the content of a course, the other students in the course, and the instructor”. While the author emphasizes importance of engagement in online courses success, there is only two engagement scale presented in the chapter. Interestingly, three social presence scales are included in the chapter due to being associated with satisfaction and engagement. This chapter could be more informative if the author argues for a clear distinction among social presence, engagement and satisfaction. The following scale is about online student connectedness which is related to student feelings leading to drop-out. Most instruments in the chapter are satisfaction scales about perceived satisfaction with course content, learning environment, learning experiences, interactions and support services. The second chapter includes 16 instruments assessing student readiness to learn online and self-efficacy. In this chapter, the author states that there are many instruments measuring online readiness, which are developed based on different perspectives and for various populations. It is pointed out that student readiness encompasses self-efficacy in context of online learning. Thus, the concept of student readiness is paired with the concept of self-efficacy by the author. Most instruments in the chapter are online learning readiness scales measuring student competencies for successful online learning. It is remarkable that readiness scales have been developed considering various learning context and technologies such as internet, e-learning, computer-supported collaborative learning, self-regulated online learning and mobile learning. In addition, there are two scales about teacher readiness and online learning self-efficacy/satisfaction in the chapter. The author emphasizes possible risks of using readiness scales for not at-risk online learners as discouraging learners’ participation in distance education. The third chapter includes 17 instruments assessing evaluation of the distance education teaching and learning environment. The instruments represented in the chapter focus on measuring students’ perception of critical factors which are playing important role in effective online learning and teaching. Some of these scales can be used to measure the evaluation of distance education environment with pedagogical and technological elements as a holistic perspective, while others examine evaluation of distance education environment by considering specific educational concept and learning contexts based on different theoretical frameworks. The author put emphasis on online constructivism learning environments as a followed path when classifying scales in evaluation of the distance education. Thus, the scales titled COLLES, CMLES and OCLES are included in the third chapter as measures on evaluation of constructivist online learning environments. Similarly, COI survey based on social constructivist model is described with detail information. It is remarkable that there is only a scale measuring competencies and tasks for teaching online in the third chapter. 202 The fourth chapter covers 11 instruments assessing student learning and behaviors. Most of the instruments included in this chapter are intended to be used to assess students’ attitudes toward online learning. Two scales of technology acceptance focus on students’ intention to accept and use online learning technologies. Using these scales can provide meaningful results to researchers and learning designers to assist students in learning and support sustainable learning. In the fourth chapter, there are specific scales measuring enjoyment, misbehavior, learning styles and critical thinking skills of students in context of online learning. In addition, a scale that can be used to examine how students use digital technologies and social media in online learning is described here with full text of the items. The last chapter includes five instruments assessing student achievement, retention and attrition. Interestingly, it doesn’t begin with an introduction of the chapter and description of the relevant concepts. Most instruments in the chapter are about retention and attrition of students in higher education. These instruments aim to identify students at risk of drop out. Apart from these, an online learning achievement questionnaire is provided in the chapter. This questionnaire encompasses factors that predicts students’ achievement such as confidence in online skills, desire for interaction with others, self-management of learning and beliefs about distance education. The most appealing feature of the book is that it provides detailed information needed by researchers related to development and validation of the instruments including their psychometric properties. Considering description of the instruments in the book, the reader can choice appropriate data collection tool to use in their research. When the scales provided in the book are taken into consideration based on their purpose and published years, it is noticed that there is an association between measurements in distance education, online learning context and technologies. The scales developed based on constructivism, social learning, community of inquiry, computer-supported collaborative learning, massive open online courses, content and learning management systems confirm this inference. A possible explanation for this might be that widespread use of new technologies and triggering role of the pedagogical models have an effect on emergence of new measurements in distance education. CONCLUSION The book could be beneficial for researchers to assess and evaluate impact of open and distance learning courses on individual differences of learners and essential elements to success in distance learning. Also, it provides valuable collection of valid instruments and scales that can be used to answer critical questions on efficiency of learners’ learning experiences, teaching experiences and online learning design. It is hoped that the instruments and scales in the book will be of interest to researchers, online learning designers, instructional designers and practitioners in the field of distance education. Nonetheless, the reader should bear in mind that the book is based valid measures identified following the specific search strategy by the author. In conclusion, my recommendation to researchers and especially PhD candidates in the field of distance education is that you should benefit from the book as a starting point to select appropriate data collection tools after deciding on your research problems. In addition, the book could be a source of information to researchers, who intent to develop new instruments, to help them know what is developed before they begin instrument development. 203 BIODATA and CONTACT ADDRESSES of AUTHOR Dr. Mehmet KOKOC, is currently a researcher in the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology at Trabzon University, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Education and Instructional Technology from Hacettepe University. He teaches undergraduate-level instructional technology courses and graduate-level educational measurement and statistics courses. Dr. Kokoc’s research interests primarily focus on learning analytics, cognitive profiling, video use in e-learning, social media in education, open and distance learning. He is also broadly interested in excessive use of digital technologies such as social media and professional development of teachers. Mehmet KOKOC Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon University Address: Trabzon University Fatih Campus, F Block 3rd Floor, 61330, Trabzon, Turkey Phone: +90 462 4551582 E-mail: kokoc@trabzon.edu.tr REFERENCES Catalano, A. J. (2018). Measurements in distance education - A compendium of instruments, scales, and measures for evaluating online learning. London: Routledge. Dixson, M. (2015). Measuring student engagement in the online course: The online student engagement scale (OSE). Online Learning, 19(4). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24059/olj.v19i4.561 Lowenthal, P. R., & Davidson-Shivers, G. V. (2019). Strategies used to evaluate online education. In M. G. Moore & W. C. Diehl (Eds.), Handbook of distance education (pp. 415 –427; 4th ed.). Routledge. 
work_w46yzxovrza3rcoyoyii52niey	----	The role of learning styles in second language learning among distance education students 1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.167 Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1169–1173 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com WCES-2010 The role of learning styles in second language learning among distance education students Mahdi Moenikiaa *, Adel Zahed-Babelanb aPayame Noor University, Ardabil, Iran bUniversity of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Daneshgah street, Ardabil, Iran Received October 29, 2009; revised December 7, 2009; accepted January 15, 2010 Abstract This paper reports on a research done to study learning styles and their roles on the second language learning of the students of Payame Noor University (PNU), Ardabli center, Iran. The statistical population involved all of the Ardabil Payame Noor University English language students (N = 457). From these, 112 students are selected as sample via random sampling. The questionnaire memletics is used to collect data about learning styles with using Cronbach's alpha ( =0.81). Students' scores in TOEFL exam including 4 sections (listening, writing, structure, reading) are taken as a criterion for second language learning. Data analyzed by using ANOVA test. Findings showed that: Listening, writing, structure and reading mean scores of students with different learning styles was different significantly. Keywords: Learning styles; second language learning; distance education. 1. Introduction Language learning strategies are the often-conscious steps or behaviors used by language learners to enhance the acquisition, storage, retention, recall, and use of new information (Oxford, 1990; Rigney, 1978). Strategies can be assessed in a variety of ways, such as diaries, think-aloud procedures, observations, and surveys. Research both outside the language field (e.g., Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983) and investigations with language learners (see reviews by Oxford 1989; Oxford & Crookall, 1989; Skehan, 1989) frequently show that the most successful learners tend to use learning strategies that are appropriate to the material, to the task, and to their own goals, needs, and stage of learning according individual differences. Cognitive approach is one of the important theories of learning which emphasizes the individual differences in learning. In this theory, the importance of individual differences in learning is recognized (Loo, 2004). Learning styles indicate that how a learner perceives, interacts with, and responds to the environment. In fact, learning style is a criterion for individual differences (carson, & longhini, 2000). Kolb (1984) defines learning styles as the ways through which people produce concepts, rules and principles which directs them in new situations (cited * Mahdi Moenikia. Tel.: +989143511017; fax: +98-0451-5513005 E-mail address: m_mahdi52@yahoo.com © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1170 Mahdi Moenikia and Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1169–1173 in Loo, 2004) and Peirce (2000) defines learning style as the way student prefers in learning materials (cited in Seif, 2001). In summary, learning style is a group of interrelated characteristics in which the general is larger than the specific i.e. learning style is Gestalt in which internal and external operations are derived from individual's neural biology. It combines his personality and growth and shows them as a behavior (Keefe & Ferrell, 1990). Language learning styles and strategies appear to be among the most important variables influencing performance in a second language. Many investigations is necessary to determine the precise role of styles and strategies, but even at this stage in our understanding we can state that teachers need to become more aware of both learning styles and learning strategies through appropriate teacher training. Teachers can help their students by designing instruction that meets the needs of individuals with different stylistic preferences and by teaching students how to improve their learning strategies (Oxford, 1990). Moreover, the identification of learner's learning styles helps educational planners and teachers provide learners necessary educational support and supplies (Anderson, & Elloumi, 2004) because learning styles are influential factors in learners' learning. Individuals acquire learning styles and techniques according to their individual differences like other abilities through experience (Seif, 2001). Kolekston and Morel (1988) believe that matching between teaching and learning activities with educational goals are especially valuable when dealing with fresh students in the university or dealing with those who are less prepared for learning (cited in Moenikia, Alipour, & Ghaderi, 2009). Therefore, the least educational decline and the most influential learning take place when the learning style is in harmony with lesson goals. But, mismatching of lesson goals with learning styles is also valuable because students can learn how to learn using new methods and they can develop their potential abilities in different fields. Lindsay (1999) found that the harmony between learning style and teaching style increased academic achievement and satisfaction with learning. It is emphasized in most of researches that individual preferences of the teacher and educational planners in presenting topics should be based on the learners' learning styles because learning styles can influence the efficiency of educational materials, their models, and methods (Montgomery & Grout, 1998; Goold & Rimmer, 2000). Therefore, it is better to make the content of electronic learning include activities appropriate for various learning styles so that learners can choose suitable activities based on their preferred style. As mentioned before, most of specialists believe that information should be presented in different ways to become adaptable with individual differences in processing information and to be transferred easily to the long term memory. Information should be presented textually, orally, and visually as far as possible to make feasible better coding. According to the dual coding theory (Paivio, 1986), information acquired through different methods (textual and pictorial) are processed better in comparison with the information presented in one way (textual). Dual encoded information is processed in different parts of brain and leads to more coding (Anderson, & Elloumi, 2004). In foreign language, style learning is very important. In this background had done many researches, but in some researches learning style seems that two dimensions. The first fundamental dimension of cognitive style is a verbal- imager structure which reflects the process of mental representation or thinking. The existence of this style dimension in groups of learners was first suggested by Galton (1983) and James (1980). Class – based research in SL lessons has also suggested that students who are verbalizes often achieve good pronunciation, which is easily transferable to new topics. They tend to enjoy activities which emphasize discussion. On the other hand, visual learners have been indentified as students who are typically proficient in pattern recognition and emphasize meaning in language work. They do, however, seem to experience varying levels of difficulty with pronunciation (Banner, & Rayner, 1997). As earlier mentioned, there are different classifications for learning styles. One of these new classifications is seven-style classification (www.memletics.com) based on memletics. From this point of view individuals may have these learning styles: Visual (spatial): These people prefer using pictures, imageries, and spatial perceptions. Aural (auditory- musical): These people favor using sounds and music. Verbal (linguistic): They prefer using words in speaking and writing. Physical (kinesthetic): They favor using body, hands, and tactile sense. Logical (mathematical): They prefer using logic, reasoning, and systems. Social (interpersonal): They favor learning in groups or with other people. Solitary (intrapersonal): They prefer to work alone and to be a self reader. Mahdi Moenikia and Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1169–1173 1171 In this view, people often have one or two preferred prominent styles although they use other styles, too. An important point is that it is possible to make learners' learning styles appropriate to the educational materials and use the tools to present them through necessary education. Therefore, learning styles of male and female students in high school are studied and the prominent styles are identified in this research. Moreover, the effect of learning styles on second language learning is studied. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The statistical population involved all of the Ardabil Payame Noor University English language students (N = 457) in 2008-9 academic year. From these, 112 students (40 male and 72 female) are selected as sample via random sampling. 2.2. Materials The instrument of this research is a learning style questionnaire with 70 items. The reliability this instrument by using Cronbach's alpha calculate ( = .81). Ten questions are assigned to each style. Participants choose one of alternatives 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 for each question. Students' scores in TOEFL exam including 4 sections (listening, writing, structure, reading) are taken as a criterion for second language learning. 2.3. Procedure Research method was pos facto. The questionnaire was distributed among participants and gathered data was analyzed by using ANOVA test. 3. Results As a result of the analysis of the data concerning the learning styles - gender of the students are presented in Table 1. Table 1. Percentage of participants according to sex / learning style Learning stylegender verbal solitary social aural physical visual logical Total Male 15 27.5 12.5 25 2.5 7.5 10 100 Female 27.8 1.4 16.7 31.9 11.1 6.9 4.2 100 Total 23.2 10.7 15.2 29.5 8 7.1 6.3 100 According to Table 1, from females 31.9 % were aural and 27.8 % of them were verbal. But 27.5 % of male were solitary and 25 % of them were aural. Table 2. Mean scores of students' language skills based on learning style verbal solitary social aural physical visual logical listening 11.5 10.1 16.2 16.5 13.8 11.2 13.7 writing 16.3 12.9 11.3 12 13.2 12.6 13.3 structure 11.6 11 14.8 10.7 11.4 16.6 11.1 reading 16.8 13.7 16.2 11.4 12.3 12.8 11.8 According to Table 2, among the students with aural and social learning style, mean score of speaking is high. Among the students with verbal learning style, mean score of writing is high. Among the students with visual and social learning style, mean score of structure is high. And among the students with verbal and social learning style, mean score of reading is high. 1172 Mahdi Moenikia and Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1169–1173 Figure 1. Profile of students’ means score in for skills based on learning styles The comparison of mean score of students with different learning styles via analyzes of variance (ANOVA) presented in Table 3. Table 3. Test of between subject effects Skill source sum of squares type III df mean square F sig listening Between Groups Within Groups Total 691.7 451.2 1142.9 6 105 111 115.2 4.3 26.8 .000 writing Between Groups Within Groups Total 370.2 565.2 935.4 6 105 111 61.7 5.3 11.4 .000 structure Between Groups Within Groups Total 203.5 413 616.5 6 105 111 33.9 3.9 8.6 .000 reading Between Groups Within Groups Total 570.8 548.6 1119.5 6 105 111 95.1 5.2 18.2 .000 Depend variable: students’ language skill According to Table 3, in comparing the listening score of students with different learning styles, the obtained F (6,105) = 26.8, P < .01 is significant. It can be concluded that the listening score of students with different learning styles is different. In comparing the writing score of students with different learning styles, the obtained F (6,105) = 11.4, p < .01 is significant. It can be concluded that the writing score of students with different learning styles is different. In comparing the structure score of students with different learning styles, the obtained F (6,105) = 8.6, p < .01 is significant. It can be concluded that the structure score of students with different learning styles is different. In comparing the reading comprehension score of students with different learning styles, the obtained F (6,105) = 18.2, p < .01 is significant. It can be concluded that the reading comprehension score of students with different learning styles is different. These differences is examined two by two by using post hoc test (LSD) and comparison indicated that: listening mean score of students with social and aural learning style from other students was significantly high (p < .01). Writing mean score of students with verbal learning style from other students was significantly high (p < .01). Students with social learning style were high mean score of structure from other students significantly (p < .01). 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 verbal solitary social aural physical visual logical listening w riting structure reading Mahdi Moenikia and Adel Zahed-Babelan / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 1169–1173 1173 Reading comprehension means score of students with social and verbal learning style from other students was significantly high (p < .01). 4. Discusstion Findings of present study showed that students with different learning styles in four skills (listening, writing, structure, and reading) differed from each other. So, students with verbal learning style on speaking, is better from other student, student with verbal learning style have good progress in writing from other student, student with social learning style have good progress in structure from other student, and then, student with verbal and social learning style have high progress in reading from other student. At least social, verbal and aural learning styles have suitable performance in second language learning. These results are in compliance with the findings of Ashmore (1980), Loo (2004), and Riding (1991) in based on success of verbally people in good pronunciation and easily transferable to new topics. So these results are in compliance with the findings of finding of Banner and Rayner (2000) in based on success of socially persons in communicative, words learning and using admit this findings. As there are students having different learning styles in the classroom setting, second language learning programs should be designed in such a way as to cater to the different styles. Designing learning experiences according to learning styles contributes to fulfilling the objectives. References Anderson, T., & Elloumi, F. (Eds.). (2004). Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca, CA: Athabasca University. Brown, A.L., Bransford, J.D., Ferrara, R., & Campione, J.C. (1983). Learning, remembering, and understanding. In J.N. Flavell & E. M. Markham (Eds.), Carmichael's manual of child psychology. New York, NY: Wiley. Slavin, R.E. (1991). Educational psychology,( 3rd ed.). Prentice: Hall International. Moenikia, M., Alipour, A., & Ghaderi, E. (2009). Study of learning styles and their roles in the academic achievement of the students of Payame Noor University. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE, 10 (2), 17–28. Loo R. (2004). Kolb's learning styles and learning preferences: is there a linkage? Educational Psychology, 24(1), 99-108. Carson, Joan G., Longhini, Ana (2002). Focusing on learning styles and strategies: A Diary study in an immersion setting. Language Learning, 52(2), 401- 438. Seif, A. (2001).Educational psychology: Learning and education. Tehran: Agah. Goold, A., & Rimmer, R. (2000). Factors affecting performance in first-year computing. SIGCSE Bulletin, 32(2), 39–43. Lindsay, E.K. (1999). An analysis of matches of teaching style and the uses of education technology. The American Journal of Distance Education, 13(2), 113–119. Montgomery, S., & Grout, L. (1998). Student learning styles and their implications for teaching. Michigan: Centre for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT), University of Michigan. Banner, G., & Rayner, S. (1997). Teaching in style: Are you making the difference in the classroom, Support for Learning, 12(1), 15–18. Riding, R.J. (1991). Cognitive styles analysis. Birmingham: Learning and Training Technology. Keefe, J. W., & Ferrell, B. G. (1990). Developing a defensible learning style paradigm. Educational Leadership, 2, 57–61. Oxford, R. (1990). "Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know." New York: Newbury House/ Harper & Row. Oxford, R., & Crookall, D. (1989). Research on six situational language learning strategies: Methods, findings, and instructional issues. "Modern Language Journal," 73(4). Skehan, P. (1989). Individual differences in second language learning. London: Edward Arnold. Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations. New York: Oxford University Press. Rigney, J. W. (1978). Learning strategies: A theoretical perspective. In H.F. O'Neil, Jr. (Ed.), "Learning strategies," 164–205. New York: Academic Press. James, W. (1980). The principles of psychology. London: Macmillan. Galton, F. (1983). Inquiries into the human faculty and its development. London: Macmillan. 
work_w4bdhoiwcvet3gu3gj5tqxtkxa	----	Comparing distance education and conventional education: observations from a comparative study of post-registration nurses Tim Duffy,* lain Gilbert,* David Kennedy* and Poon Wai Kwong** *University of Paisley **Online Education, Hong Kong email: david.kennedy@paisley.ac.uk This retrospective study presents a comparison of assessment results achieved by distance- learning students and classroom-based students undertaking the same module in a degree course. The purpose of the comparison is to provide some objective measurement of the quality of distance education in relation to conventional classroom-based education. The authors have selected three groups of students, who have all undertaken the same module in the B. Sc Health Studies degree programme offered by the University of Paisley. One group (in Paisley) undertook their studies by means of conventional classroom-based education, the second (in Hong Kong) by supported distance learning with face-to-face contact in the form of tutorials, and the third (in a geographically dispersed group in the United Kingdom and other countries) by supported distance learning with no face-to-face contact. The results obtained by these three groups of students were analysed. Because of the differences in the size of the groups, the Kruskal- Wallis 1- Way Anova test was applied to validate the face value findings. The authors include findings from the literature comparing distance education with conventional education and from cross-cultural studies to present their data in context. Analysis of the assessment results showed that students from all three groups were successful in their studies, but the students studying by distance learning obtained significantly higher end-of-module results than their classroom-based colleagues. This latter finding reflects the conclusion that other investigators have reached In their discussion the authors identify educational, cultural and personal factors that may help to explain their findings. A limitation in the study is that it concerns only one module in the degree programme. The research now moves on to comparing students who have undertaken the whole degree programme by the means described Introduction In the United Kingdom, the university with the highest number of students is a distance education university (HESA, 2000). The higher education sector can clearly deliver 70 Alt-J Volume 10 Number I distance education. However, in the current ideological and financial drive towards increasing the distance education component of higher education, one of the key questions is this: is the quality of the distance education offered in higher education equivalent to the quality of its classroom-based education? This paper reports a study carried out in the University of Paisley, which attempts to shed some light on this question. It makes a specific comparison of the results achieved by classroom-based students and distance-learning students undertaking the same degree course. All the students under comparison study the same module material and undertake identical assessments. But they study in different modes and in different locations in the world: some based on the campus in the town of Paisley and undertaking the course by conventional classroom-based learning; others geographically dispersed - with the majority living in Hong Kong - and accessing the course by distance learning. One indicator of the quality of learning and teaching is the results that students achieve in assessable coursework. Accordingly we have phrased our research question in the following terms: do post-registration nurses studying by distance learning achieve the same assessment results as colleagues undertaking the same module by conventional classroom-based study? Comparing distance education and classroom education Peterson (2001) states that scholars of distance learning fall into two main camps. The first camp argues that distance learning is an opportunity for those that could not usually attend university to participate in tertiary education; that it promotes lifelong learning; and that 'the experience of an online course can be as rich and fulfilling as the experience of a traditional course'. They argue that more diverse populations of students with different learning styles can benefit from online courses. The second camp argues that in distance learning the focus is on teaching rather than on learning, and that the claims of flexibility are not reflected in present distance learning courses. They argue that students are frustrated, not just by the feelings of isolation but by lack of feedback from their teachers and difficulty in understanding written instructions given to them (Peterson, 2001). Ng (2001) highlights a number of issues relating to problems of delivering distance learning. He noted that social cohesion with the group of students was not good and that communication between students was limited and focused mainly on personal rather than academic issues. Several students in his study felt anxiety about using electronic (email) communication. Edwards, Hugo, Cragg and Peterson (1999) assert that 'research generally shows no significant difference in educational outcomes [that is, course achievement and satisfaction with instruction] between courses taught through distance education and those offered in the regular classroom'. Such a conclusion is a typical one from the research looking at differences in educational outcomes associated with conventional classroom-based education and distance education. The issue of 'significant difference' is one that Russell (1999 and 2002) and McGreal (2002) have both tackled by assembling annotated bibliographies of comparative research studies. The authors of this present study have carried out a meta-analysis of thirty-seven studies that specifically deal with online education and which are reported in either Russell's No 71 Tim Duffy et a! Comparing distance education and conventional education Significant Difference or McGreal's Significant Difference annotated bibliographies. The meta-analysis is restricted to research reported in the decade 1992-2002. The findings from this meta-analysis are presented in Table 1. This meta-analysis shows that most studies have focused on academic performance as their means of comparing the effectiveness of online distance education with conventional classroom-based education. The majority (16 studies out of 31) have found that there is no significant difference in the academic performance of online students when compared with on-campus students. However, a significant number of studies (13 out of 31) find that students in online courses outperform conventional students in terms of academic performance measured by examinations. A majority of studies found that the quality of learning and the participation in learning is also higher in distance education. In the area of student satisfaction, the picture is reversed. A significant number of studies (four out of seven) report that the on-campus students are more satisfied with their courses than the online students. Focus of the research reported Academic performance measured by examinations, tests or grades Student satisfaction with the course Quality of learning and learning outcomes achieved Student participation in the course Retention rates Pass rates Faculty evaluation of the course Number of studies 31 7 5 2 2 2 2 Number of studies reporting no significant difference 16 3 2 0 0 0 1 Number of studies finding in favour of online education 13 0 3 2 1 1 1 Number of studies finding in favour of conventional education 2 4 0 0 1 1 0 Table I: Meta-analysis of research studies reported in the 'No Significant Difference' and 'Significant Difference' annotated bibliographies We might, then, summarize a decade of literature comparing the effectiveness of classroom-based education and distance education in the following terms: distance education involving online support is at least as effective as classroom-based education in terms of academic performance measured by examination, and in several cases more effective. It seems to promote a higher level of student participation. But it does not obtain such high student satisfaction ratings as classroom-based education. This summary needs to be qualified. In 1999, Phipps and Merisotis conducted a review of the contemporary literature on the effectiveness of distance learning for the American Institute of Higher Education Policy (IHEP). Their overall conclusion agrees with the meta-analysis presented above, although they report more positive studies on student 72 Alt-J Volume 10 Number I satisfaction. But they add a caveat: 'The most important problem is that the overall quality of the original research is questionable and thereby renders many of the findings inconclusive' (Phipps and Merisotis, 1999: 18). One of the limitations of the research that they identify, for example, is that many of the studies focus on part of a course, rather than a whole educational programme. That is a charge that the authors of this paper recognize may be laid against their own study. Educational culture in Hong Kong and Scotland It is appropriate to set the study reported in this paper in its educational and cultural context. There are two main educational backgrounds to be aware of: the British (that is, the distinct Scottish and English) educational backgrounds of the on-campus students and of the distance-learning students who are supported directly from the university with no face-to-face teacher contact; and the Chinese educational background of the distance learning students who live in Hong Kong and who have some face-to-face contact with their teachers. Because of its colonial history, the educational culture in Hong Kong is derived from two distinct traditions, Chinese and English. The Chinese tradition holds a 'deep reverence for learning, a predilection for the integration of knowledge and delight in formal reasoning' (University Grants Committee, 1996). The English tradition is concerned with a far more pragmatic approach to learning. Both systems have moved away from elitist traditions toward more inclusive, mass higher education systems. Li Yixian (1992) observes that most students in Hong Kong study solely for the purpose of obtaining a degree and, consequently, to improve their chances in the labour market. This aligns with the assertion made by Sumner (2000) that distance education is frequently 'instrumental' and 'serves the system'. The Scottish dimension of the degree programme probably spans both the English and the Chinese philosophies. In the Report of the Scottish Committee to the National Inquiry into Higher Education, Garrick detected a 'strong belief in Scotland in the value of education, partly for its own sake and partly to overcome economic or social disadvantage' (Garrick, 1997). Background to the study The University of Paisley first offered its B.Sc. in Health Studies in 1991. This course was specifically designed to meet the demand from health care personnel with a desire to upgrade their professional qualifications to degree status. It aimed to do this by offering a flexible, part-time mode of study while offering credit for prior accredited learning. To date more than one thousand students have graduated through the conventional on-campus delivery programme. These students have been health professionals, mostly nurses, working in the West and Central Belt of Scotland. In 1995 further flexibility was built into the delivery when this programme was also made available by computer-supported distance learning. At the time of writing (January 2002), over 800 students have graduated through the distance-learning programme. Those 73 Tim Duffy et a\ Comparing distance education and conventional education students have been health professionals, mostly nurses, and the bulk of them are working in Hong Kong. With the advent of the new Hong Kong Hospital Authority in 1992, the bachelor's degree became the preferred route for a Registered Nurse to advance to the status of Nursing Officer. Large numbers began to seek opportunities to further their studies. The majority of them preferred distance learning, from either Australian or United Kingdom universities. Paisley University was the only UK university with a presence in Hong Kong that offered a degree in Health Studies. The main overall distinction we draw in this paper is between the conventional classroom- based delivery and the distance-learning delivery. However, within the distance-learning delivery, there are two main variations in the support given to students. One version incorporates some face-to-face support from an on-site tutor. This is the pattern of delivery for our students in Hong Kong. The other version involves no face-to-face contact but relies solely on computer-mediated support by teachers based in the university. This is the pattern of delivery for our students who are dispersed throughout the United Kingdom or situated in Norway or Switzerland. In summary, the three forms of course delivery are: 1. on-campus delivery, in conventional classroom-based format; 2. supported distance learning using networked learning, with optional face-to-face contact; 3. supported distance learning using networked learning, with no face-to-face contact. This paper focuses on one module within the B.Sc. Health Studies programme - 'Professional Practice and Teaching'. This is a module that enables health professionals to study, and apply in practice, educational principles which are applicable in their clinical practice when teaching patients or junior colleagues. We have selected this module because all the students in the groups that we will consider have undertaken the same generic assignment. We can use the mean scores achieved by each group as an outcome measure to make reliable comparisons between the groups. The different forms of course delivery This section gives an outline of the three modes of delivery of the module 'Professional Practice and Teaching' with a particular focus on the following aspects: • the actual mode of delivery; • the processes of student support; and • the assessments which the students undertake. Mode of delivery The conventional on-campus delivery of the module is taught over a period of twelve weeks (one semester). The class meets for two hours one evening per week. The main approach to teaching the module is the modified lecture. Within the lecture there are exercises focused on the development of specific teaching skills. The distance-learning students receive core material in the form of printed booklets. They also receive that same material as an electronic document, in hypertext format. It is 74 Alt-J Volume 10 Number I important to note that the course content for the distance-learning students is identical to the course content for the classroom-based students. The distance-learning version of the course is a development of the lecture-based version, and is not an alternative course. The distance- learning material incorporates interactive features, exercises and self-assessment questions. Student support Support for the on-campus students Within the timetable for the conventional on-campus delivery there are embedded two classes, which are entitled 'tutorial support'. These classes occur the week before the assignments are due. In all, four hours in the module are designated for student support. Ongoing tutorial support was usually given immediately after the taught classes, lasting anything up to an hour. The learners were informed of the availability of individual tutorial support during the day, but this service is seldom used. Occasionally telephone tutorial support was requested and given. Support for all distance-learning students Within the distance-learning approach there are two different modes for supporting the student, one in which there is face-to-face contact, and one without. In both modes, communication between the students and the teacher and between the students and each other is maintained by an 'electronic campus'. This is a virtual learning environment that supports email, asynchronous (delayed time) and synchronous (real-time) discussion and a repository of relevant documents and articles. Students have access to their tutor throughout the module, and should have an answer within twenty-four hours of making an enquiry. Support for distance-learning students who have only online contact In the no-face-to-face contact mode, as exemplified by the United Kingdom mode of delivery, the support the students received - and gave to each other - was carried out online. Email correspondence between the teacher and the students during the module consisted of both general messages addressed to the whole student group and individual messages for individual students. The teacher initiated 24 general messages in the eight weeks of the module. These messages communicated information that all the students required. The number of messages sent by the teacher to individual students ranged from 14 to 24 messages. These messages concerned specific issues about which the students wished to consult their teacher. The average number of exchanges was 43 exchanges, or 86 separate messages over the eight weeks of the module (each exchange involves a communication and a response). Students and the teacher participated in five discussion forums and six teleconferences. In the forums, key topics related to the module and requiring in-depth exploration were discussed online. Participants were free to contribute to this discussion at any time within the week and participation was voluntary. At the end of the week, the discussion was summarized by the teacher and the summary archived as an educational resource. In the teleconferences, which are real-time discussion events, a topic was agreed in advance and participants shared their views by keyboard conferencing. The major difference between the Hong Kong and the United Kingdom-based distance learning groups was the greater use of electronically mediated discussion by the United Kingdom students. 75 Tim Duffy et al Comparing distance education and conventional education Support for distance-learning students who have online contact plus additional face-to-face contact Distance-learning students in Hong Kong had the benefit of face-to-face contact in the form of tutorials. Attendance at these was variable. These students also used email to send questions or messages once they had identified an issue. This obviated the need to wait until the next available face-to-face tutorial. On average, the teacher received ten emails per week. Mes- sages typically concerned administrative information such as the dates for course commence- ment and assignment release, as well as information on the scheduling of face-to-face tutorials, topics for discussion and any preparation that was necessary for participation in these. As most of the students were nurses working shifts, it was often difficult to arrange suitable times to be online together. An attempt was made to arrange teleconferences for the students, but only three students responded online. Forum discussions are not dependent on synchronicity, but the Hong Kong students were noted to be reluctant to respond to the question set for the forum. Ng (2001) similarly found Hong Kong students to lack social cohesion as a group, to demonstrate limited communication with each other and to show anxiety about computer-mediated communication. There was also a tendency for the students to demand answers from the teacher rather than engage in discussion, the 'instrumental' approach that we have alluded to already from Sumner's (2000) study. Assessments The assignments used in the assessment process were identical for all students taking this module. The assignments involve the students in carrying out a learning needs assessment in their places of work and, on the basis of their analysis of learning needs, delivering an appropriate lesson. They must also evaluate the lesson that they have delivered. Students made use of different support mechanisms in preparing to submit their assign- ments. In the distance-learning mode that included face-to-face support, students participated in tutorials allowing them to raise questions and receive guidance. Emails to the teachers increased in frequency in the run-up to the submission date. Some students preferred to page the teacher, allowing them to talk directly with the teacher on the phone and receive an immediate answer to their enquiries. In the distance-learning mode that excluded face-to-face contact, discussion forums were suspended in the period when assignments were due. Teleconferences continued, as they are a good means by which students can access teachers for last-minute guidance. Some students were entirely independent in the preparation and submission of their assignments. Others made full use of the tutor, by submitting one-page drafts of their ideas foT comment, or sections of their proposed assignments for comment. Although these means of support are different in the forms of communication they employ, they are equivalent in effect. Analysis of the outcomes from assessments This study seeks to identify what difference, if any, exists between student performance, as measured by the marks awarded to students from their assignments, and the different delivery modes that have been described. 76 Alt-] Volume 10 Number I Method Earlier in this paper we identified three different modes of delivery of this course. For the purposes of this analysis, four student groups are identified and their marks presented. The reason for this increase of groups from three to four for analysis is that one of the groups (the Hong Kong distance-learning student group) comprises two types of student: indigenous Chinese students and expatriate British students. Treating the marks gained by these students separately may enable us to elucidate the influence of culture. The four groups identified for the purpose of comparison are: 1. Chinese students in Hong Kong studying by distance learning and supported from Hong Kong (group 1, n=85); 2. British students in Hong Kong studying by distance learning and supported from Hong Kong (group 2, n= 15); 3. British students in the United Kingdom studying by distance learning and supported from Paisley (group 3, n=17); 4. British students studying in a classroom-based environment and supported on campus at Paisley (group 4, n=37). Results During the module, students submit two pieces of coursework for assessment - a learning needs assessment that they have carried out and an account and evaluation of a teaching Group Number Mean score Group I (Chinese, distance learning, Hong Kong) Group 2 (British, distance learning, HK) Group 3 (British, distance learning, UK) Group 4 (British, classroom-based, UK) Table 2: Assessment results for the four groups of students: mean scores for the module 'Professional Practice andTeaching' session that they have conducted. For each of these groups, the average mark for the two pieces of assessed coursework was calculated. The comparison of the mean scores achieved by each of these groups is presented in Table 2: It is clear, from the scores presented in Table 2, that these students are successfully meeting the demands of the assessments in this module. The pass mark is 40 per cent and the mean score for each group is well in excess of that. At face value, the scores presented in Table 2 indicate that British students studying by distance learning, either in Hong Kong (group 2) or in the UK (group 3), are achieving the highest scores in this module. Their average scores are almost the same. British students studying on campus (group 4) and Chinese students studying by distance learning in Hong Kong and supported from Hong Kong (group 1) have achieved identical scores in this module. 77 85 15 17 37 61 74 72 61 77m Duffy et al Comparing distance education and conventional education Because of the disparate sizes of the groups from which we have derived these mean scores, we then subjected our data to analysis using the Kruskal-Wallis test. When all four groups were considered together, this test confirmed the statistical significance of the difference across group means (H = 45.4163; significance, p < .01). The differences between the pairs Groups Compared 1 and 2 1 and 3 1 and 4 2 and 3 2 and 4 3 and 4 H-value from Kruskal-Wallis 26.6573* 19.1488* 0.3869 0.6012 24.2715* 18.7099* Table 3: Comparisons of the mean scores achieved by the four groups of students, using Kruskal-Wallis. *p<.0l of groups were then analysed. Application of the Kruskal-Wallis test allowed us to distinguish those face value comparisons between groups which can be substantiated statistically from those which cannot. These comparisons are presented in Table 3. From the analysis presented in Table 3, we can state the significant findings as follows: • British students studying by distance learning in Hong Kong achieved a significantly higher average mark than their Chinese counterparts. • British students studying by distance learning in the United Kingdom achieved a significantly higher average mark than Chinese students studying by distance learning in Hong Kong. • British distance-learning students, whether based in Hong Kong or in the United King- dom, achieved a significantly higher average mark than British classroom-based students. Discussion It is important to avoid simplistic cause and effect conclusions about these findings. There are several factors to consider, and we outline these here. The language of instruction The language of instruction for this degree programme is English. This is the first language of the British students in each of the modes of delivery of this course. It is, however, a second language for the Chinese students. For most of them their first language is Cantonese or Mandarin. So, in our comparison of results, we have to bear in mind that our Chinese students are studying the module material and constructing their assignments in a foreign language, while the British students are studying in their mother tongue. However, we cannot jump to conclusions about the effect of studying in a language that is not the student's first language. Some of the Hong Kong students completed their basic nursing training in Hong Kong Government Schools of Nursing where the language of instruction was English. Moreover, the Hong Kong-based students have to possess an equivalent level of competence in English as the on-campus students in the United Kingdom. Their competence in English is further attested by the internal moderators of their assessable coursework and by the external examiners. 78 Alt-J Volume 10 Number I Cultural differences between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom The pattern of social interaction in a society - and particularly the interaction between students and teachers - is an aspect of culture that impinges on the educational experience. We have already noted that Hong Kong students were reluctant to raise questions and to engage in discussion in the public domain of the online forum. Ip, Lee, Lee, Chou, Wootton and Chang (2000) have detected a negative disposition towards critical thinking among Chinese undergraduate nursing students. However, this reluctance is not unique to the Chinese students. The United Kingdom-based students also showed reluctance at times to participate in online discussions. This reticence is, in fact, a widespread and common aspect of online education. There is, perhaps, among the Chinese students a greater respect for the status and knowledge of the teacher. However, our discussions with other teachers in Hong Kong indicate that this is fading fast. Moreover, Fung and Carr (2000) found that the image of the Hong Kong students as passive and tutor-directed is not borne out. Hong Kong students are rapidly becoming the same as students in the United Kingdom and USA in terms of treating their teachers as sources of information who are open to challenge. This approach was evident in the response of the Chinese students to their teachers when they required help with preparing assignments. The Chinese students made heavy demands on their teachers as the date of submission approached, contacting their teachers by phone, pager and email. This matches exactly the pattern of communication that occurs on campus when the submission of an assignment draws near. The role of personal ambition and drive The prospect of promotion by means of obtaining a degree is a strong motivator for the Chinese students in Hong Kong. Our discussions with the students and their tutors in Hong Kong make it clear that that is their major rationale for undertaking the degree. The appeal of a British degree is also a significant factor in their choice of programme. However, the British students in Hong Kong are working within the same health care system. They benefit in the same way as their Chinese counterparts from the possession of a relevant degree. Their motivation is likely to be the same. But their marks are significantly higher. Something more than personal ambition and drive lies behind the differences in results that we have found. Different values placed on higher education There is a contradiction in what we have found in terms of the different values placed on higher education in Britain and Hong Kong. On the one hand, we have reported the traditional Chinese reverence for learning, compared with the pragmatic British attitude to learning. On the other hand, we have identified that our Chinese students are more likely to be motivated by the pragmatic prospects of promotion and enhanced salary than our British students. In fact there is probably a levelling factor to consider - the influence of the profession in which these students are working. It is mandatory for nurses in the United Kingdom to keep their knowledge up to date and to provide evidence of this. In Hong Kong, such updating is not mandatory, but most large Hong Kong hospitals require their nursing personnel to study for Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) points and to achieve a 79 Tim Duffy et al Comparing distance education and conventional education minimum number of CNE points each year. It is likely that these mechanisms to ensure continuing professional education override the different values placed on higher education by the two cultural groups that we are considering. Variations in mode of delivery There is a significant difference in the results obtained by students undertaking this module in its different modes of delivery. The average marks obtained by students in the distance learning programme are 61 (group 1), 74 (group 2) and 72 (group 3). This gives an average mark over these groups of 69. This is significantly higher numerically than the average mark of 61 for the classroom-based students. But it is not significantly higher in terms of grade. Both of these marks lie within the B+ grade in the University of Paisley grading scheme; in fact, they are the lower and upper boundaries of that grade. We can say that students studying this module by distance learning obtain marks that are significantly higher than the marks obtained by students studying the module by attendance on campus, but that the difference does not extend as far as a difference in grade. Variations in teacher input due to variations in class numbers The last factor we consider in our discussion is the input of teachers to these groups, particularly in the light of the different sizes of the groups the teachers are working with. On campus, the average class size in the B.Sc. Health Studies programme is twenty students. The mean score these students are achieving in their assignments for this module is 61 per cent (see Table 1). In the Hong Kong distance-learning mode, the average number of students per tutor group is 20 students. When we aggregate the marks gained by all the students studying by distance learning in Hong Kong (that is, both Chinese and British students), we see that these students are achieving a mean score of 68 per cent in their assignments. The average class size for the United Kingdom-based distance-learning students in this study is nine students. The mean score these students are achieving in their assignments is 72 per cent. These results would at least indicate that the increased contact that students have with their teacher - due to both the means of delivery of their course and their class numbers - leads to increased scores in assignments. Conclusions Both our distance-learning and our classroom-based modes of delivery are enabling students to complete the module 'Professional Practice and Teaching' successfully. When we compare the average marks obtained by those undertaking the degree by distance learning and those undertaking it on campus, we find that the distance-learning students are obtaining significantly higher marks than the classroom-based students. That differ- ence, though numerically of statistical significance, does not stretch to a grade difference. On average, then, our distance-learning students and our classroom-based students in this module are obtaining the same overall grades. The term 'distance learning' is no more a unitary term than the term 'classroom-based learning'. In both these modes of delivery there are widely different practices. In the module we have considered here, distance learning encompasses independent learning enhanced by face-to-face tutorials and computer-mediated distance learning with no face- to-face tutorials. We have tried to identify these differences using the average scores 80 Alt-J Volume 10 Number I achieved and the results indicate that the entirely online form of computer-mediated distance learning is associated with the highest scores in the module under consideration. This is the first stage of our research. It has been a retrospective study. The next step is a prospective study. This forthcoming study will focus on only two modes of delivery, classroom-based study and supported distance learning with no face-to-face contact. Once again the independent variable will be the common assessment, which all students in the study will undertake. However, the role of culture, existing professional background and motivation in the lives of the students who are undertaking this degree programme will continue to influence our findings. Acknowledgement The help of Mr David McVey, writer of distance-learning material, in preparing this manuscript is acknowledged by the authors. References Edwards, N., Hugo, K., Cragg, B. and Peterson, J. (1999), 'The integration of problem- based learning strategies in distance education', Nurse Educator, 24 (1), 36-41. Fung, Y. and Carr, R. (2000), 'Face-to-face tutorials in a distance learning system: meeting student needs', Open Learning, 15 (1), 35-46. Garrick, R. (1997), 'The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education: Report of the Scottish Committee, Chapter 2, section 2.4'. Available from: http:llwww.keds. ac.uk/ncihel Higher Education Statistics Agency. (2000), Higher Education Statistics for the United Kingdom, 1998/99, Cheltenham: HESA, Table 1, 8. Ip, W. Y, Lee, D., Lee, I., Chau, J., Wootton, Y and Chang, A. (2000), 'Disposition towards critical thinking: a study of Chinese undergraduate nursing students', Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32 (1), 84-90. Li Yixian (1992) 'On the characteristics, strong points and shortcomings of education in Hong Kong: a mainland Chinese educator's view of education in Hong Kong', in G. A. Postiglione (ed.), Education and Society in Hong Kong: Toward One Country and Two Systems, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. McGreal, R. (2002), 'Significant difference'. Available from: New Brunswick: Tele- Education, http://teleeducation.nb.calsignificantdifferencelindex. cfm Ng, K-C. (2001), 'Using e-mail to foster collaboration in distance learning', Open Learning, 16 (2), 191-200. Peterson, P. W. (2001), 'The debate about online learning: key issues for writing teachers', Computers and Composition, 18, 357-70. Phipps, R. and Merisotis, J. (1999), What's the Difference? A Review of Contemporary 81 Tim Duffy et al Comparing distance education and conventional education Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education, Washington, Institute for Higher Education Policy. Available from: http:llwww.ihep.org/Pubs/PDF/Difference.pdf Russell, T. (1999), The No Significant Difference Phenomenon, Chapel Hill, NC: Office of Instructional Telecommunications, North Carolina State University. Russell, T. (2002), 'The "No Significant Difference" phenomenon'. Available from: http://teleeducation. nb.ca/nosignificantdifferencelindex.cfm Sumner, J. (2000), 'Serving the system: a critical history of distance education', Open Learning, 15 (3), 267-85. University Grants Committee (1996), 'Higher education in Hong Kong; a report'. Available from: http://www.ugc.edu.hk/hervw/chapte16.html 82 
work_w5jjbm5o3faaze3vppoj5zxru4	----	Microsoft Word - 4-Analysis and Enlightenment of the Present Situation of Rural Distance Education Research in China US-China Education Review B, July 2018, Vol. 8, No. 7, 312-320 doi: 10.17265/2161-6248/2018.07.004 Analysis and Enlightenment of the Present Situation of Rural Distance Education Research in China PANG Feng Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China LU Kaili  Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China In order to comprehensively and accurately understand the research status of rural remote education in China, find out problems and deficiencies, and make clear the future development direction. This paper used the methods of word frequency analysis, content analysis, and social network analysis to study rural remote education literature. The results showed that the research content in rural remote education mainly focuses on “Rural Remote Engineering”. The researchers are mainly concentrated in the normal university, and there are few studies in cooperation with other institutions. The method of “qualitative and critical” is often adopted in the research methods. The service object of the study focuses on the basic education. This shows that the research content of remote education in rural China is relatively concentrated, the research lacks cooperation and communication, and the research method is relatively single. Keywords: rural remote education, word frequency analysis, research progress, research status Introduction Since 2003, the use of modern remote education to promote the development of rural remote education has attracted the attention of relevant departments of the state in China, and relevant policies have been formulated. Such as in July 2003, the central organization department issued a “rural party cadres modern distance education pilot work plan”, clearly pointed out that with the aid of modern distance education, education and training of rural party members and cadres, in September the same year, the state council held a national work conference on rural education, issued “the decision of the state council on further strengthening rural education work”, decided to clearly put forward “the implementation of modern distance education project of rural elementary and middle schools, promote the high quality education resources sharing between urban and rural areas, and improve the quality and efficiency of the rural education”. In the report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, it was also clearly put forward that “strengthening the construction of teachers’ ranks and focusing on improving the quality of rural teachers”, encouraging social forces to start education, developing remote education and continue education, and building a learning society of learning for the whole people and lifelong learning. With the continuous advancement of rural modern remote education work, the research on rural remote education has become an important issue concerned at present. PANG Feng, M.D., lecturer, Information Center, Nanjing Forestry University. LU Kaili, Ph.D. candidate, National Engineering Research Center for E-Learning, Central China Normal University. DAVID PUBLISHING D RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 313 In recent years, China’s research on rural remote education mainly focuses on the modern remote education project of rural primary and secondary schools (hereinafter referred to as the “rural remote engineering”). For example, Yang and Jia (2013) used questionnaire survey and literature analysis to analyze the construction and application status of “rural remote project” in Ningxia region. L. X. Xiao, Chen, and Y. D. Xiao (2015) evaluated and analyzed the current situation of rural remote education by means of investigation. Using the data collected by questionnaire survey and field interview. X. H. Yang, P. Yang, Hao, and Kang (2010) summarized the construction and application status of modern remote education project for rural party cadres in Zhejiang Province. However, there are few studies on the overall development of rural education in China. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of the current research status of rural distance education in China, this article from the rural distance education research focuses on the content and change, research institutions, research methods, to the service object of study and analysis, in order to make clear the current rural distance education research in China development present situation, to discover the existing problems, to help researchers to grasp the future research direction in this field, and to promote the benign development of the rural distance education. The Method In this paper, lexical frequency analysis, content analysis, and social network analysis were used to study the relevant literature of rural remote education. Word frequency analysis is a bibliometric method to determine the research focus and development direction of a certain field by using the frequency level and frequency variation of keywords in a certain period (Ma, Zhou, & Guo, 2009). The key words of the rural remote education paper were quantitatively analyzed to understand the key research content of rural remote education, the content of increasing attention, and the content of decreasing attention. Content analysis is a research method to objectively and systematically quantify and describe the obvious communication content. It is to perform technical treatment on a single sample, decompose the content into several analysis units, evaluate the objective facts displayed by the units, and make quantitative statistical description (Li, 2003). This paper uses content analysis to analyze the research method and service object of rural remote education paper. Social network analysis is a kind of social structure and social relations research methods of sociology, its visual form is a set of points, between point and point of attachment of graphics, among them, the point according to the basic unit of sociological analysis, such as individual, group, or community, feature point refers to features that are characteristic of the unit, between attachment, exist some relationship between said point (Liu, 2004). Through the analysis of the social network of the rural remote education paper, this paper analyzes the relationship between research contents and different types of research institutions. The statistical tools adopted by the institute include Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS) 19.0, SATI 2.9, and Ucinet 6.0. Sample from Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) (see http://www.cnki.net), select China outstanding master’s dissertations full-text database and Chinese Ph.D. dissertation full text database and seven domestic education technology and the remote education journal papers as sample source, “SU = rural distance education”, “SU = far engineering”, or “SU = rural modern distance education”, the retrieval time for December 31, 2017, a total of the retrieved 253 papers, eliminate meetings, interviews, advertising, and so on do not meet the requirements of this study, a total of 12 papers of obtain 241 valid theses. Among them, 141 journal articles and 100 degree papers were published. The specific distribution is shown in Table 1. RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 314 Table 1 Research Paper Statistics Name Paper number Number of valid papers E-education research 25 25 China educational technology 64 59 Distance education in China 39 34 Open education research 3 2 Modern distance education research 8 7 Modern distance education 12 12 Journal of distance education 2 2 Excellent academic degree thesis 100 100 Total 253 241 Research Status Analysis Total Paper Analysis The distribution of 241 valid articles by year is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Distribution of research papers. As can be seen from Figure 1, since the research on rural remote education started in 2003, the research on rural remote education has been developing rapidly. Since 2009, China has ushered in a high tide of research on rural remote education, China is implementing a series of major projects of rural distance education in this period, from 2003 to 2010, The state council proposed the implementation of “Rural Remote Engineering”. Rural primary schools have satellite teaching vision, teaching CD player equipment and complete sets of teaching CD, and rural middle schools have computer classrooms. Since 2004, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, and other departments have jointly implemented “The Sunshine Engineering”. From 2003 to 2012, the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Finance, and other departments implemented the “Trans-Century Young Farmers’ Scientific and Technological Training Project” (Wei & Lu, 2015). Research Content Analysis In order to analyze the research content in the rural remote education research field, this study used the literature measurement method to make statistics on the keywords in the paper samples, and then analyzed the statistical results to find the key research content in this research field, the research content with increased RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 315 attention, and the research content with decreased attention. The research is carried out based on the following hypothesis: Most keywords in this research field can accurately highlight and summarize the main research content of the paper (Wei, 2010). Therefore, we can analyze the research content by analyzing the keywords and the relationship between keywords. Based on the frequency of keywords in this paper, the authors find the key content of rural education research. If a study is focused, the more frequently keywords appear, and vice versa. For the frequency of occurrence of large keywords, we call high-frequency keywords. The authors extracted keywords and eliminated those words with ambiguous expression connotation, such as “research”, “development”, “thinking”, “enlightenment”, etc., counted the frequency of keywords and ranked them by frequency from large to small. High- and low- frequency word threshold is calculated by the formula of high- and low- frequency word threshold proposed by Qinglan Sun1 (2004), the author selected keywords with frequency not less than five (26 in total) as high-frequency keywords, and the specific situation is shown in Table 2. Table 2 High-Frequency Keywords High-frequency keywords Frequency High-frequency keywords Frequency Rural remote engineering 63 Education informatization 8 Remote education 35 Education project 8 Rural remote education 29 Teaching resources 7 Teacher training 21 Primary and secondary schools 7 Modern remote education 17 Basic education 7 Teaching mode 17 Three models 6 Rural education engineering 15 School training 6 Sustainable development 13 Performance technology 6 Educational strategy 12 Education technology 6 Rural primary schools 12 Teacher professional development 6 Information technology 9 Optimization strategy 5 Rural education 9 Online education 5 Education resources 9 Broadcasting education 5 High-frequency keywords represents the research contents can be regarded as the key research content of the rural distance education in China, “rural remote engineering” and “the sunshine engineering” refer to in the study of rural distance education for the research project; “remote education” and “education technology” refer to the two closely related research areas; “teaching mode” and “educational strategy” refer to the study of teaching; “teacher training” and “teachers’ professional development” refer to the studies of teachers’ professional development; “the education resources”, “teaching resources”, and “three models” refer to the studies of resource construction; and “basic education” and “rural primary schools education” refer to their attention to rural basic education. Other contents, such as “performance technology” and “sustainable development”, are also relatively concerned. The total frequency was 738. According to the calculation formula of threshold value, select frequency of not less than four keywords as high-frequency keywords. The period from 2003 to 2010 is early and the period 1 Sun Qinglan proposed the high frequency and low frequency word threshold formula, T = D , T stands for the threshold of high- and low- frequency values, and D is the number of keywords. RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 316 from 2008 to 2018 is late. Frequency of standard keywords = (Frequency of keywords/Total) × 2000. High-frequency keywords are 29 in the late stage. Low-frequency keywords are 234 in the early stage. The same keywords are six. Standard keywords = Frequency of late-stage standard keywords  Frequency of early-stage standard keywords. Table 3 Keywords of Rising Keywords Frequency of late-stage Frequency of early-stage Difference value Education resources 16 5 11 Teaching application 11 5 6 Online education 11 5 6 School training 14 9 5 Teaching strategy 8 5 3 Three models 8 5 3 “Teaching application”, “online education”, “school training”, “teaching strategies”, and “three models” have been improved. “Education resources” has the highest attention. High-frequency keywords are 23 in the late stage. Low-frequency keywords are 296 in the early stage. The same keywords are seven. Standard keywords = Frequency of early-stage standard keywords  Frequency of late-stage standard keywords. Table 4 Keywords of Dropping Keywords Frequency of late-stage Frequency of early-stage Difference value Teaching mode 27 5 22 Three models 23 3 20 professional development 23 5 18 Application performance 18 3 15 Learning resources 14 3 11 IP resource 14 3 11 Teacher learning resource 14 3 11 “Teaching mode”, “three models”, “teacher professional development”, and “application performance”, “learning resources”, “application performance”, “learning resources”, “IP resource”, “teacher learning resource” had fallen, and “teaching mode” is most obvious. Institutional Analysis The authors only selected 141 journal articles for analysis, and divided the research institutions that publish journal papers into five categories: comprehensive university, normal university, radio university, e-educational education hall, and other institutions (such as primary and middle schools, enterprises, television stations, and government agencies). The majority of researchers are from normal universities, accounting for 68.8% of the published papers. There are also researches from radio and television universities, accounting for 14.9%. Although a small number of researchers from e-educational education hall, primary and middle schools, television stations, and government agencies participated in the research, but results are less. In ord analysis b comprehen have coope Table 5 Research I Research ins Comprehens Normal univ Radio unive E-education Other institu Research M The au methods of empirical. multidiscip experiment and empiri Table 6 Research M Research me Qualitative a Quantitative der to unders y using soc nsive univers eration, and th Institutions Ta stitutions sive universities versity rsity al education ha utions Method Ana uthors analyz f Xu Hui and Qualitative plinary, whil tal method, a cal categorie Methods Tabl ethods and speculative e and empirical RURAL stand the rela cial network ities, normal hey worked t able s all alysis ze the journal d Ji Chengjun and critica e quantitativ and multidisc s. le e Percep Histori Compa Multid Survey Case st Experi Multid DISTANCE ationship bet analysis rel universities, together many Number 13 97 21 8 2 Figure 2. Co l articles. Thi n, divided int al thinking ve and empi ciplinary rese ptive ical arative disciplinary y research tudy imental disciplinary EDUCATIO tween the dif lations of co , electronic e y times. Othe ooperation netw is paper refers to two catego is divided rical researc arch (Xu & J Number 89 5 4 5 21 13 2 2 N RESEARC fferent types ooperation, s education, rad er institutions work diagram. s to the classi ories: qualitat into percep ch is divided Ji, 2004). Th Percentag 63.1 3.5 2.8 3.5 15.0 9.2 1.4 1.4 CH IN CHINA of research statistical res dio university are very few Percentage (%) 9.2 68.8 14.9 5.7 1.4 ification of h tive and spec ptive, histori d into survey he authors cla ge (%) Num 103 38 A institutions, sults showed y, and other w cooperation ) higher educati culative, quan ical, compar y research, assify it into Total mber Perc 73.0 27.0 317 the authors d that only institutions . ion research ntitative and rative, and case study, quantitative entage (%) RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 318 In the research field of rural remote education in China, the qualitative and speculative categories accounted for 73.0%, while the quantitative and empirical categories only accounted for 27.0%. This shows that most of the rural remote education studies use qualitative and speculative methods, lacking quantitative and empirical analysis. As for qualitative and speculative research, it mainly focuses on perceptive speculation (63.1%), while in quantitative and empirical research, the main part (15.0 %) is investigated, which indicates that remote education in rural China attaches more importance to the research of perceptive speculation relying on subjective experience. Service Object Analysis The research object shows the field of the topic and the scope of the research result. The service object of the study shows the generation and achievement of the research problem (S. G. Li, Sun, & H. M. Li, 2008). This study divided the service objects into basic education, adult education, teacher education, party member education, other education, social organization, and others. Figure 3. Service object distribution diagram. Rural remote education research serves basic education with a percentage of 51.1%. Secondly, teacher education accounted for 18.4%. The total percentage of papers serving education objects is 91.5%. The percentage of papers serving social organizations was very small, with a percentage of 4.3%. Research shows that the rural distance education, most of these are related to education, basic education is the focus of attention, the reasons for this phenomenon may be associated with a series of engineering in China, such as modern distance education project of rural elementary and middle schools, rural party cadres modern distance education project, sunshine project for the training of rural labor transfer, and rural primary and middle schools modern distance education project lasted the longest time. Conclusions and Implications Since 2003, rural remote education in China has experienced rapid development, especially the modern remote education project in rural primary and middle schools, which greatly promoted the research and practice of rural remote education in basic education. Remote education in rural China is attracting more and RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 319 more attention. Through word frequency analysis, content analysis and social network analysis of rural remote education research papers, the following conclusions and implications can be drawn from their research status: The Research Mainly Focuses on the Rural Remote Engineering, Which Lacks More Extensive Research Research show that the teaching model, three kinds of mode, teachers’ professional development, application performance, learning resources, IP resources, and teacher learning resource center are the core content of the research field, research core change into teaching resources, teaching application, online education, teacher training, teaching strategies, model, however, a research has focused on modern distance education project of rural elementary and middle schools, special education, adult education, and vocational education are the lack of research. Relevant national departments should formulate corresponding policies to encourage researchers to conduct more extensive and in-depth research on rural remote education. The Research Institutions are Mainly Normal Universities and Radio Universities, Different Types of Research Institutions Lack Communication and Cooperation Through the analysis of the research institutions, it found that the research institutions are mainly normal universities and radio universities; the research institutions also include comprehensive universities and audio-visual education centers. However, the lack of communication and cooperation between the research institutions may be detrimental to the comprehensive and in-depth development of this field. It is worth noting that excellent dissertation has also taken this field as the research object of choice, which will promote the development of remote education research. In general, relevant researches of different types of research institutions have promoted the research of rural remote education, and strengthening the interaction, collaboration, and cooperation among different types of research institutions may be an important way to further promote the research of rural remote education. The Research Method is Simple and Lacks Empirical Support According to the statistical findings of the research methods, researchers mainly adopt qualitative and critical thinking, and sensory critical thinking occupies the most places. Comparative, historical, and multi-disciplinary critical thinking is rarely adopted. In the quantitative and empirical research results, researchers mostly use investigation research and case study, lacking experimental research and multidisciplinary research. Researchers should adopt quantitative and empirical methods to make up for the lack of empirical support in rural education research. The Service Objects Studied are Mainly in the Field of Education, and Mainly Serve Basic Education There are many research achievements serving basic education. The reason may be that China pays attention to the development of rural basic education. There are also some research achievements serving teachers education, because teachers’ ability is the key factor for the development of basic education. The proportion of adults’ education and party member education is relatively small; it is possible that these types of education have not been paid attention by researchers. Therefore, there is great potential for further research on rural remote education. Researchers should actively pay attention to basic education and teacher education, as well as adults’ education, party members’ education, and others. References Li, K. D. (2003). Education technology research methods. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press. RURAL DISTANCE EDUCATION RESEARCH IN CHINA 320 Li, S. G., Sun, W. H., & Li, H. M. (2008). Content analysis of education excellent master’s thesis in technology in the last five years. E-Education Research, 177(1), 30-35. Liu, J. (2004). Introduction to social network analysis. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Ma, Y. H., Yue Zhou, Y., & Guo, J. (2009). The emphasis and evolution of education technology research in China from 2002 to 2008: Analysis and discussion based on word frequency statistics. China Educational Technology, 194(6), 14-17. Sun, Q. L. (2004). The boundary division of high frequency and low frequency words and the method of word frequency estimation. Information Science, 126(4), 28-32. Wei, S. P. (2010). Research progress survey and analysis of education technology (remote education) in 2010. Journal of Beijing Radio and Television University, 65(5), 24-30. Wei, S. P., & Lu, Q. L. (2015). Analysis on the development status and characteristics of rural modern education in China. Modern Education Technology, 72(6), 31-33. Xiao, L. X., Chen, H., & Xiao, Y. D. (2015). Western rural primary and middle school modern remote education project status evaluation analysis. Journal of Teaching and Management, 613(3), 35-37. Xu, H., & Ji, C. J. (2004). Status and analysis of higher education research methods. Higher Education Research in China, 123(1), 13-15. Yang, X. H., & Jia, W. (2013). A study on the evaluation of benefits of modern remote education engineering application in rural primary and middle schools from the perspective of stakeholders. E-Education Research, 246(10), 52-57. Yang, X. H., Yang, P., Hao, J. H., & Kang, C. (2010). Research on construction and application of modern remote education project for rural party cadres in Zhejiang Province. E-Education Research, 202(2), 56-60. 
work_w5pdtt3epjgufl3j2bfldt2aei	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_w775ruzdqbadlprtqpvttw66te	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_wd6nqbuthfefhdnxa2njjyneam	----	Microsoft Word - SBIE2019Deller.doc Automatic Group Formation for Large Classes in Distance Education Deller J. Ferreira1, Matheus R. D. Ulmmann2 1Instituto de Informática – Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG) Alameda Palmeiras, Quadra D – 74690-900 – Goiânia – GO – Brazil 2Instituto Federal da Bahia (IFBA), Campus Barreiras. R. Gileno de Sá Oliveira, 271 - Recanto dos Pássaros – 47808-006 – Barreiras – BA – Brasil. deller@ufg.br, matheusullmann@gmail.com Abstract. In this work, a group formation method was developed for distance education environments involving large classes, such as Moocs, in order to facilitate interactions between students. Group formation principles are applied as an attempt to meet the dichotomy that exists between the collective, which involves the formation of an on-line learning community on a massive scale, and the individual, with different interests, previous knowledge, expectations and profiles. The formation of groups is automatic, using an algorithm based on the particle swarm method and considering three criteria: level of knowledge, interest and leadership profile. Resumo. Neste trabalho, um método de formação de grupo foi desenvolvido para ambientes de educação a distância envolvendo grandes turmas, como Moocs, a fim de facilitar as interações entre os alunos. Os princípios de formação de grupo são aplicados como uma tentativa de atender à dicotomia existente entre o coletivo, que envolve a formação de uma comunidade de aprendizagem on-line em grande escala, e o indivíduo, com diferentes interesses, conhecimentos prévios, expectativas e perfis. A formação de grupos é automática, utilizando um algoritmo baseado no método de enxame de partículas e considerando três critérios: nível de conhecimento, interesse e perfil de liderança. 1. Introdução Indiscutivelmente, a adoção em massa da Internet nos últimos anos está promovendo uma mudança educacional e cultural nunca vistos antes e essa revolução digital está contribuindo de certo modo para mudar os processos de ensino e aprendizagem de forma significativa e irreversível [Harris et al. 2013]. A conectividade crescente têm aberto novos caminhos para a aprendizagem diariamente, e essa influência da conectividade provendo acesso ao conhecimento digital difundido em diversas novas ferramentas presentes na web irá redefinir o que entendemos como educação e aprendizagem [Harris et al. 2013]. Cursos a distância podem possuir como característica o tamanho da classe muito grande, podendo atingir um enorme gama de alunos. No entanto, a escalabilidade maciça de cursos on-line, também trazem desafios significativos para o ensino, desenvolvimento e gestão do curso. Em particular, uma grande escala torna difícil para os alunos interagirem, dada a grande quantidade de estudantes. A falta de interação e sentimentos de isolamento têm sido atribuídos como razões para os alunos matriculados desistirem dos cursos antes do seu término [Chandrasekaran et al. 2015]. DOI: 10.5753/cbie.sbie.2019.1936 1936 Anais do XXX Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (SBIE 2019) VIII Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (CBIE 2019) O problema de evasão é ainda maior nos Moocs (Massive Online Open Courses). Os críticos dos Moocs argumentam que uma porcentagem muito pequena de alunos realmente completam a maioria dos Moocs, que o seu modelo pedagógico deixa muito a desejar quando comparado a experiências educacionais que permitam a interação estreita entre professores e alunos, e que eles são em grande parte compostas por estudantes que já possuem um nível de educação elevado [Robinson et al. 2015]. No entanto, essas interações podem ser melhoradas por meio de uma formação de grupos eficiente, compensando de certo modo a falta de interação com o instrutor. Uma experiência eficaz de aprendizagem em grupo é influenciada por alguns fatores, dentre eles estão a atitude do estudante para buscar conhecimento e aprender, interações com outros alunos e dinâmica de grupo [Claros and Leovy Echeverria 2015]. No entanto, os ambientes de educação a distância se destacam pela falta de serviços relacionados com a interação social, e sem esses serviços dificilmente experiências de aprendizagem colaborativa são oferecidas [Claros and Leovy Echeverria 2015]. Cursos a distância abarcam uma diversidade entre os alunos, abrindo um espaço para um número cada vez maior de participantes de diferentes localidades, idades e backgrounds [McAuley et al. 2010], de um modo que os objetivos dos participantes tendem a ser distintos, bem como seus processos de aprendizagem e motivação. Princípios de formação de grupos são propostos neste trabalho como uma tentativa para atender a dicotomia que existe entre o coletivo, que envolve a formação de uma comunidade online de aprendizagem em uma escala maciça, e o individual, com diferentes interesses, conhecimentos prévios e expectativas. Uma formação de grupo, onde alunos possuem o mesmo interesse, permite que os alunos dentro de um grupo sigam seus próprios caminhos de aprendizagem, interesses e objetivos. Por outro lado, nesse mesmo grupo pode haver heterogeneidade com respeito a outros aspectos, gerando diferentes pontos de vista e, consequentemente, uma melhor construção do conhecimento. A formação de grupo proposta aqui tira vantagem da diversidade entre os alunos e ao mesmo tempo torna gerenciável os diferentes interesses entre os alunos, além de incorporar o conceito de liderança distribuída. [Harris et al. 2013] entendem que a liderança distribuída consiste em uma distribuição social da liderança, onde cada função de liderança é implementada sobre o trabalho a ser desenvolvido e dividida entre os participantes do grupo, de modo que a tarefa seja realizada por meio da interação e ação coletiva. A liderança distribuída é abordada na formação de grupo com o objetivo de prover suporte na coordenação das atividades do grupo. Os grupos são heterogêneos em relação ao nível conhecimento e homogêneos a respeito dos interesses, ou seja, os grupos possuem alunos com diferentes níveis de conhecimento, mesmos interesses. A liderança distribuída também é implementada por três diferentes perfis de líderes em cada grupo. Cada aluno recebe orientações das ações de coordenação a ser exercida por ele de acordo com seu perfil de liderança. Com relação à técnica computacional utilizada na formação de grupo, os grupos são formados por meio do algoritmo Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Ao longo dos anos a otimização por enxame de partículas (PSO) tem sido utilizada para solucionar diversos problemas do nível de complexidade NP-difícil, como é o caso do 1937 Anais do XXX Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (SBIE 2019) VIII Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (CBIE 2019) problema de formação de grupos, [Wang et al. 2009, Chen et al. 2010, Rosendo and Pozo 2010, Pierobom et al. 2012, Jarboui et al. 2008a, Jarboui et al. 2008b, Lin et al. 2010, Dascalu et al. 2013, Dascalu et al. 2014]. Os resultados destes estudos indicam que é possível resolver problemas NP- Difíceis de forma eficaz e eficiente utilizando PSO. Desse modo, nesse trabalho optamos por utilizar o algoritmo PSO, não só pela capacidade de resolver problemas de alta complexidade, mas também pela possibilidade de combinação e adição de critérios apenas modificando a função de aptidão [Pedersen and Chipperfield 2010]. Um método envolvendo a aplicação de questionários, a formação de grupo e instruções de como cada líder deve agir para coordenar as atividades foi desenvolvido. Um estudo de caso foi realizado para a avaliação do impacto educacional dos grupos formados. No estudo de caso as discussões on-line foram examinadas pelo método de análise de discurso proposto por [Newman et al. 1995]. Os resultados do estudo de caso evidenciaram que os grupos formados pelo algoritmo proposto obtiveram os melhores resultados nas interações quando comparados com os grupos formados aleatoriamente. O presente trabalho está dividido da seguinte forma, a seção 2 apresenta uma fundamentação teórica referente ao processo de formação de grupos na aprendizagem colaborativa. Em seguida, na seção 3, é apresentado o método utilizado para a formação de grupos em um curso a distância. Logo após na seção 4, um estudo de caso é apresentado. A seção 5 contém os resultados e discussões, e posteriormente, na seção 6 são apresentadas as conclusões. 2. F u n d a m e n t a ç ã o T e ó r i c a Na literatura, muitos estudos têm documentado os benefícios de aprendizagem em grupo especialmente em termos de motivação, engajamento e conclusão dos cursos. [Arendale and Hane 2014] perceberam que discussões em grupo estudo eram de extrema valia para a aprendizagem eficaz dos alunos e uma melhor retenção. No estudo de [Holliday and Said 2008] foi percebida uma melhor retenção e conforto na aprendizagem. [Davidson and Kroll 1991] identificaram um aumento da compreensão de conceitos e melhorias quanto à atitude e motivação de alunos. Um aspecto que pode ser levado em conta na formação de grupos em aprendizagem colaborativa é o interesse dos membros do grupo, visto que o interesse tem o potencial de alterar o envolvimento dos indivíduos na aprendizagem [Linnenbrink-Garcia et al. 2012]. Nesse sentido muitos serviços vêm sendo implementados com vistas a reunir pessoas com interesses comuns [Karamolegkos et al. 2009]. Nesse sentido, com o intuito de promover interações virtuais que promovam a construção do conhecimento, os membros de um grupo devem compartilhar o máximo de interesses em comum, ou seja, deve-se maximizar o grau de interesse comum dentro de cada grupo[Karamolegkos et al. 2009]. Níveis de conhecimento distintos e interesses comuns dos estudantes são dois critérios que comprovadamente formam grupos com interações profícuas [Lin et al. 2010]. Estudos indicam que formação de grupos com base em conhecimento distintos e interesses comuns pode incentivar melhores discussões durante o período de aprendizagem [Yang 2006]. Um outro critério usado nesta pesquisa na formação de grupos é a liderança distribuída. O conceito de liderança distribuída consiste na divisão de tarefas ou processos entre vários líderes [Harris et al. 2013]. Este conceito de liderança dentro de 1938 Anais do XXX Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (SBIE 2019) VIII Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (CBIE 2019) grupos, sejam eles de trabalho ou de estudo, se faz importante, pois além de valorizar os indivíduos da equipe, busca eliminar padrões de comportamento que geralmente estão presentes em equipes com um só líder, como autoritarismo, imposição da vontade dominadora do líder, questionamentos por parte dos liderados sobre as tarefas a serem executadas e quem deve assumir o papel de liderança. Nesse contexto, a formação automática do grupo utilizando o algoritmo PSO é necessária, pois quando existe uma demanda muito grande de estudantes, considerando simultaneamente os três critérios de agrupamento supracitados, a formação ideal se torna praticamente impossível sem o uso de recursos computacionais, ou seja, um problema NP-difícil [Lin et al. 2010]. A seguir abordaremos o método de formação de grupos introduzido nesta pesquisa. 3. Método de Form aç ão de Grupo e sua A plicação Os grupos são formados de acordo com a Figura 1, uma série de questionários são aplicados para os usuários a fim de se verificar o nível de conhecimento e a identificação do interesse de cada aluno, além de verificar o perfil de liderança de cada aluno. A partir dos resultados o algoritmo PSO começa a composição dos grupos de acordo com os critérios estabelecidos, que são compor grupos compostos por seis integrantes com os mesmos interesses, com diferentes níveis de conhecimento e que cada grupo tenha um par de alunos com o mesmo perfil de liderança para cada perfil. As fases do método proposto para formação de grupos em educação a distância são apresentadas a seguir. Fase 1 - Questionário Preliminar A primeira fase do método é o preenchimento de um questionário por parte dos estudantes. Este questionário possui perguntas sobre conhecimentos prévios relacionados ao conteúdo da disciplina a ser ministrada, os interesses e perfis de liderança. F i g u r a 1 . D i a g r a m a p a r a f o r m a ç ã o de g r u p o s Cada pergunta referente ao nível de conhecimento possui um valor ponderado correspondente a cada resposta, este valor será utilizado para calcular o nível para cada aluno. Para realizar esse cálculo a equação 1 é utilizada. NC =Q1+Q2+ (Q3+Q4+Q5)/3 +Q6 (1) 1939 Anais do XXX Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (SBIE 2019) VIII Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (CBIE 2019) Onde Q1, Q2 e Q6 são as questões mais importantes e Q3, Q4 e Q5 são semelhantes. Com esta equação podemos obter nove níveis de conhecimento distintos. O questionário de interesses foi subdividido em cinco categorias por semelhança, no entanto, para resolução por parte dos alunos, são criados três grupos de afirmativas com relativamente o mesmo número de questões de cada categoria, porém elas são alocadas de forma aleatória. Os alunos devem selecionar pelo menos duas afirmativas de cada um dos três grupos de questões. Após a seleção por parte dos alunos, a equação 2 calcula qual a categoria que cada aluno pertence. Ci = ( Seli / Toti ) . 100 (2) Onde Ci representa a categoria i, Seli indica o número de questões selecionadas da categoria i pelo aluno e Toti indica o número total de questões pertencentes a categoria i. O resultado desta equação é a porcentagem de questões marcadas em cada categoria. A categoria atribuída ao aluno será a que possuir a maior porcentagem. Em caso de empate entre os valores, será designada uma categoria aleatória dentre as que obtiveram a mesma nota. O terceiro questionário a ser respondido preliminarmente pelos alunos diz respeito aos perfis de liderança. O questionário utilizado foi desenvolvido por [Northouse 2014]. A soma das respostas das questões indicam qual é o perfil de liderança para cada aluno. Fase 2 - Formação dos Grupos Na segunda fase do método, a partir dos dados do questionário o algoritmo proposto calcula a solução ótima de formação de grupos. Fase 3 - Interação dos Alunos Na fase 3 os alunos saberão a qual grupo pertencem, qual perfil de líder lhe foi atribuído e receberão um texto explicando como cada líder deve interagir dentro do grupo. 4. Estudo de C a s o Este estudo de caso tem como objetivo avaliar a eficiência do método proposto para colaboração em grupo. a. Identificação dos Alunos e Plataforma de C o m u n i c a ç ã o Os alunos participantes do estudo estavam cursando a disciplina de Introdução a Computação. A matéria utilizada para realização dos exercícios pelos alunos foi a linguagem de programação C. Os alunos pertenciam ao primeiro período do curso de Agronomia. Para a primeira parte do estudo foram gerados grupos aleatórios, onde os próprios alunos definiam quais seriam os grupos. As tarefas deveriam ser desenvolvidas em um grupo do Facebook criado por eles mesmos, totalizando cinco grupos. Na segunda parte do estudo foram criados ao todo 11 grupos, sendo seis com liderança distribuída perfeita (LDP), onde foram separados dois alunos de cada perfil para cada grupo e o PSO posteriormente os agrupou. Quatro grupos possuíam liderança distribuída designada (LDD), onde o perfil de liderança foi designado 1940 Anais do XXX Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (SBIE 2019) VIII Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (CBIE 2019) aleatoriamente para cada aluno, pois existiam muitos alunos com perfis iguais. E um grupo com liderança distribuída escolhida (LDE), que foram aquelas pessoas que não responderam ao questionário e decidiram posteriormente participar da atividade. Os 11 grupos deveriam acessar um Mooc, criado pelos pesquisadores e desempenhar tarefas de acordo com seu perfil de liderança. b. Análise de D i s c u r s o [Newman et al. 1995] propuseram um modelo de análise de conteúdo contendo dez categorias para codificação. Para este estudo foram utilizadas nove categorias: relevância, importância, novidade, justificação, ambiguidades, avaliação crítica, trazendo conhecimento, vinculando ideias e utilidade prática. Depois de categorizar as mensagens, as subcategorias, que podem ser vistas em [Newman et al. 1995], positivas e negativas devem ser contadas para que uma razão de pensamento crítico seja calculada através da formula, razão x = (xP - xN)/(xP + xN), que converte as contagens para o intervalo de -1 (pensamento crítico superficial) até 1 (pensamento crítico profundo). Isto foi feito para produzir uma média independente da quantidade de participação, refletindo apenas na qualidade das mensagens. 5. R esultados e D i s c u s s õ e s Cada grupo foi analisado de acordo com as categorias de [Newman et al. 1995]. Após as categorizações das postagens dos alunos a formula da razão apresentada na seção 4.2 foi utilizada e os resultados são apresentados, em ordem alfabética por categoria, na tabela 1. Tabela 1 . Razões das Categorias de Newman Categorias Aleatório LDE LDD LDP Ambiguidades 0,44 0,20 0,92 0,93 Avaliação crítica 1,00 1,00 0,82 0,87 Importância 0,66 0,29 0,58 0,68 Justificação -0,20 0,20 0,54 0,59 Novidade 0,44 0,38 0,70 0,75 Relevância 0,60 -0,21 0,42 0,60 Trazendo Conhecimento 0,96 1,00 1,00 0,99 Utilidade Prática -0,86 -1,00 0,30 0,39 A primeira categoria analisada é a categoria ambiguidades. Nesta categoria a liderança distribuída perfeita (LDP) obteve as melhores notas em relação aos outros grupos, porém muito parecido com a liderança distribuída designada (LDD), o que demonstra uma certa similaridade entre os dois conjuntos de grupos. A segunda categoria é a avaliação crítica. A LDP continuou a apresentar valores maiores em comparação com o conjunto de grupos LDD. No entanto, os outros conjuntos, formados por grupos aleatórios, conseguiram a nota máxima. Isso pode ter ocorrido devido a baixa interação destes dois tipos de grupos, ocasionando, de forma isolada, uma avaliação positiva que culminou em uma nota alta. A categoria importância e a categoria relevância são as que obtiveram mais 1941 Anais do XXX Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (SBIE 2019) VIII Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação (CBIE 2019) ocorrências em comparação com as outras. Em nosso estudo de caso, percebeu-se que nessas duas categorias a liderança distribuída perfeita conseguiu uma vantagem considerável em relação aos outros conjuntos de grupos. Para a categoria relevância, o grupo aleatório conseguiu igualar o valor da LDP. Isso se deve ao fato de que os alunos, desenvolveram um trabalho cooperativo e não colaborativo, ou seja, dividiram os exercícios e cada um resolveu o que foi escolhido, deste modo, cada resolução é um ponto relevante na conclusão do trabalho, resultando então em poucos pontos sem relevância. A quarta categoria é a justificação. Esta categoria é representada essencialmente justificação ou não de uma resposta a um problema, ou seja, se o aluno explicou uma resolução de um exercício ou apenas informou a sua resposta. Como podemos ver, o conjunto de grupos aleatórios, aqueles que dividiram as questões pelos integrantes, apenas informaram as respostas. Já o conjunto de grupos LDD e LDP se preocuparam mais em justificar as suas respostas. A categoria novidade diz respeito as informações novas que cada grupo traz para ajudar na resolução dos problemas. Nesta categoria o pior grupo foi o da liderança distribuída escolhida, isso pode se dar ao fato de que a pessoa destinada a busca de informações não possuía aquele perfil de liderança escolhido, porém este fato cabe investigação futura. De fato, a LDP continuou com melhores resultados perante os outros agrupamentos, seguido de perto pela LDD. Na categoria trazendo conhecimento todos os agrupamentos obtiveram valores semelhantes. Isso socorre porque as pessoas não tiveram aversão sobre o conhecimento trazido pelos outros colegas, pelo contrário, as pessoas achavam positiva a interação onde uma pessoa que possuía um conhecimento maior sobre o assunto e o compartilhava com os colegas de grupo. As categorias utilidade prática e vinculando ideias estão de certo modo ligadas. A utilidade prática define que discutir a utilidade de novas ideias e as relacionar com uma situação familiar é um ponto positivo, enquanto não comentar a busca de ideias de outra pessoa, deixando-a falando sozinha, é um ponto negativo. E a categoria vinculando ideias é justamente a categoria que lida com as ideias trazidas, vinculando- as a outras ideias. A partir disto, percebemos que, para uma interação mais consistente, a utilidade prática se torna bastante importante, pois apenas buscar ideias e não utilizá- las faz com que a interação se torne pobre. 6 . C o n c l u s õ e s Neste trabalho foi apresentado um método para formação Automática de grupos em EAD, com base nos critérios de nível de conhecimento, interesse de cada aluno e liderança distribuída, utilizando o algoritmo PSO. Essa ferramenta permite a formação de grupos a partir de um grande número de alunos envolvidos no contexto de EAD, provendo uma melhoria na qualidade das interações e avanço do conhecimento evidenciados pelo estudo de caso realizado. Para validação do método foi realizada a análise de discurso das interações feitas pelos alunos em seus grupos de discussão, utilizando as categorias de análise propostas por [Newman et al. 1995]. Os resultados indicaram que o método se adapta muito bem no contexto de EAD. Os grupos formados pelo algoritmo conseguiram resultados superiores na maioria das categorias analisadas quando comparados aos grupos formados aleatoriamente. Essa pesquisa contribui para área de informática na educação permitindo que em turmas grandes à distância, nas quais o professor não é capaz de interagir com todos os alunos, dada a enorme quantidade de alunos, os alunos sejam capazes de interagir em grupos de forma produtiva. 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work_wdpgmxdw5fhf5kmvxywsgb4qza	----	http://www.rw.org.za Open Access Reading & Writing - Journal of the Reading Association of South Africa ISSN: (Online) 2308-1422, (Print) 2079-8245 Page 1 of 10 Original Research Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. Authors: Epimaque Niyibizi1,2 Emmanuel Sibomana3 Juliet Perumal1 Affiliations: 1Department of Educational Leadership and Management, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa 2Department of Humanities and Language Education, School of Education, University of Rwanda-College of Education, Kigali, Rwanda 3The Wellspring Foundation for Education, Kigali, Rwanda Corresponding author: Epimaque Niyibizi, niyibizi.epimaque1973@ gmail.com Dates: Received: 06 June 2018 Accepted: 21 Jan. 2019 Published: 07 May 2019 How to cite this article: Niyibizi, E., Sibomana, E. & Perumal, J., 2019, ‘Learning to teach writing through a distance education programme: Experiences of Rwandan secondary school English teachers’, Reading & Writing 10(1), a206. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw. v10i1.206 Copyright: © 2019. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Introduction and background to writing through distance education Globally, various studies show that writing has received more emphasis in the literature on language teaching than reading, speaking and listening (Ciobanu 2011; Dornbrack & Dixon 2014; Hedge 1993; Ralfe 2009; Shin 2006), but with relatively low priority in the field of teacher education for English as a second language (ESL) (Norman & Spencer 2005; Shin 2006; Uysal 2007). However, it remains an overlooked area of investigation in relation to pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and L2 (second language) teachers’ classroom writing, which continues to be an under- appreciated component of teachers’ knowledge’ (Hlas & Hildebrandt 2010:5). Ur (2004) notes that communicative writing activities are less common in teaching materials compared to those related to the other language skills. Research in Africa also shows that limited proficiency in English is observed in different parts of Africa, not only with regard to writing skills but also other language skills. Moreover, Williams (2011) and Kamwangamalu (2000) observe that the majority of African people still experience poor proficiency in English. Such a situation was observed in Malawi and Zambia (Williams 1996, 1998), in South Africa (Makalela 2015), in Anglophone African countries as a whole (Samuels 1995) and in Rwanda (Niyibizi 2015; Samuelson & Freedman 2010; Sibomana 2016a; Williams et al. 2004), to name but a few. Apart from English-speaking countries, poor proficiency is also observed in African countries that used Portuguese as an international language (Heines 1992) and those countries that use French (Kasanga 2012). It is evident that poor proficiency in English is likely to be a common phenomenon in different parts of Africa, and probably in different parts of the world. Background: Writing is among the most important skills, and globally it has received more emphasis in literature on language teaching than reading, speaking and listening. However, a paucity of studies is observed in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in contexts where English is being taught as an additional or foreign language, as is the case in Rwanda. Research shows that learners who can write well in different genres and for different purposes tend to do well in all curriculum subjects and subsequently beyond school education. The key challenges are the inadequacy of materials and teachers’ inability to teach writing well, especially through distance education programmes. Objectives: This study investigates the effectiveness of materials used at the University of Rwanda-College of Education’s Distance Education programme to train high school teachers on writing pedagogy for English teaching. Method: The study adopted a qualitative approach to report on the findings from textual, document analysis of distance education materials, argumentative essays and focus group discussions with 80 of 599 in-service teachers, who responded to designed and redesigned sections on writing pedagogy. Results: The findings indicate that teachers’ knowledge and skills in both writing and writing pedagogy are not addressed effectively by the materials designed. This negatively affected the quality of their own writing abilities and those of their students. Conclusion: The article recommends reconceptualisation of distance education materials to equip in-service teachers with propositional knowledge and procedural knowledge on writing pedagogy. Keywords: Writing pedagogy; distance education; English teachers; procedural knowledge; University of Rwanda’s College of Education. Learning to teach writing through a distance education programme: Experiences of Rwandan secondary school English teachers Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. http://www.rw.org.za� http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9371-0874 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1118-7435 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7329-5389 mailto:niyibizi.epimaque1973@gmail.com mailto:niyibizi.epimaque1973@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.206� https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.206� http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.4102/rw.v10i1.206=pdf&date_stamp=2019-05-07 Page 2 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access The situation is unlikely to be any different in the Great Lakes Region, including Rwanda. A closer look at the education system shows that, similar to other countries, Rwanda also has the pressing need to have well-qualified teachers, who are proficient in foreign languages like English. The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which resulted in the death of many teachers, exacerbated the already existing problem of teacher shortage in terms of numbers and quality when schools reopened in 1995. In 1999, for example, a survey found that up to 65% of secondary school teachers were underqualified (Rwanda Ministry of Education 1999). The problem of effective training of English teachers until 1994 was the result of a lack of colleges that focussed on the training of English teachers per se. Consequently, there were very few qualified teachers of English before 1994. The problem was compounded when English became the medium of instruction for all subjects at all levels of education, from 08 October 2008, when the Rwandan Government modified the then trilingual policy (Kinyarwanda, English and French as media of instruction) which was in effect in all Rwandan schools and replaced it with English as the sole medium of instruction for all subjects, from primary school up to university level (Ministry of Cabinet Affairs 2008). The implementation of the new policy commenced at the start of the 2009 academic year, where all subjects were to be taught in English, while all other languages such as French, Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili were taught as subjects (Rwanda Ministry of Education 2009). In an endeavour to revitalise the education system, the Government of Rwanda created the Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) in 1999. This institution is now known as University of Rwanda-College of Education (UR-CE). Its primary mission was to address the shortage of qualified teaching staff at the secondary school level (Mukamusoni 2006), by offering on-campus teacher education and in- service teacher professional development through a distance education (DE) programme. This DE programme uses printed self-study materials (modules) as the main teaching and learning resource. Since its inception, the target population of this programme has included high school teachers of English. This article draws from a larger study which investigated the role of the UR-CE’s self-study materials in addressing the professional development needs of secondary school English teachers in Rwanda (Sibomana 2014). It reports on the findings from a textual analysis (Bezemer & Kress 2008; McKee 2005) of English module content, the mediation of this content or how the content is captured and represented in these materials. It also investigates the responses of selected teacher-learners of English to both the UR-CE DE materials and to a redesigned version of a section in the UR-CE DE pedagogy module. The section focusses on knowledge and skills related to writing and pedagogy on writing. The motivation to focus on teaching writing stems from the recognition of the importance of writing skills in schools, in academic, as well as in social and professional achievements (Norman & Spencer 2005; Ralfe 2009). Leki (2001) contends that teaching learners to write well constitutes an essential part of education. Writing is at the centre of assessment, because extended writing constitutes 25% of the marks in the secondary school English national examination in Rwanda (Niyibizi et al. 2018). Hence, teaching writing is or should be one of the priority areas for teachers of English in Rwanda, and as such demands attention. The study This article is premised on a larger study which investigated the role of DE materials in addressing the professional development needs of high school English teachers in Rwanda (Sibomana 2014). More specifically, this article investigates the writing pedagogy as taught to secondary school English teachers who were following the UR-CE DE programme. The programme consisted of English, French and Education. The study sought to answer the following research questions: • How do Rwandan secondary school English teachers mediate the content on teaching writing as explained through DE? • What shortcomings do English teachers observe in the writing pedagogy module and what improvements do they suggest? • Which approach, when considering the product-, process- genre- and integrative approaches, do they perceive to be more effective in teaching writing through DE? Literature on writing pedagogy Writing as a difficult skill for English as a foreign language practitioners According to some scholars (e.g. Shin 2006; Tangpermpoon 2008), writing is the most difficult skill for developing learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) or ESL. This is because it requires a certain amount of L2 background knowledge. It can be an anxiety-generating activity and learners may not enjoy it (Tsui 1996). These are some of the factors that complicate the teaching of writing, especially in ESL and EFL classrooms (Antoniazzi 2005; Tangpermpoon 2008), and which may have contributed to the teachers’ neglect of teaching writing, causing it to become the ‘Cinderella’ of the four language skills in the history of language teaching (Ciobanu 2011). Evolution of writing pedagogy approaches The history of writing pedagogy has been characterised by successive approaches to writing, each with strengths and weaknesses. Historically, when teaching writing, teachers used to focus on the final product of learners’ writing activity; they focussed on the product approach, at the expense of what learners do to produce it, which involves the process approach (Tsui 1996). More recently, there has been a shift of focus to writing as a process of developing organisation as well as meaning (Richards & Smit 2011; http://www.rw.org.za� Page 3 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access Tsui 1996) or ‘the making of meaning out of chaos’ (Zamel 1982:199). Instead of emphasising the qualities of the final product, the process approach emphasises the skills that learners can develop at the different writing stages, which may facilitate their writing. After all, as McCormick (1986, in Antoniazzi 2005) argues: … if the piece of writing gets better but the writer has learned nothing that will help him/her [sic] on another day on another piece, then the conference (or the exercise, or the corrections) was a waste of everyone’s time. (p. 36) In addition, the feedback and input received at the different stages of the writing process are likely to improve learners’ ability to communicate (Scheckle 2009), as well as the quality of the product of writing itself (Zamel 1982). These are some of the benefits of the process approach. However, critics of the process approach argue that it is difficult to assess, does not necessarily lead to a good end product (Ivanic 2004), fails to take into account the cultural and political dimensions of writing (Peterson 2012) and views the writing process as one universal process rather than as plural processes (Breuch 2002). Another comparatively recent approach is the genre approach (Hyland 2007; Kim 2006). This approach has its origins in a critique of the process approach, pointing out that the latter does not deal sufficiently with the linguistic knowledge that learners require to write texts with particular generic features, for example, a set of instructions or a narrative (Kim 2006; Ralfe 2009). The proponents of the genre approach argue that the process approach is not sufficiently concerned with the knowledge and skills required to develop and process ideas during the planning and drafting stages. They also argue that it has a very restricted view of writing, as it presumes that writing proficiency develops only through the repetition of the same writing procedures irrespective of the nature of the texts (the genre) being written (Kim 2006). For them, the form of a text will be determined by its social function and context, and therefore, the practical processes of writing are only a small part of the writing event (Ivanic 2004). However, the genre approach is also not without its shortcomings. For example, Ivanic (2004) points out that the approach overlooks accuracy and content in favour of ‘appropriacy’ (which she views as controversial) for specified purposes in the specified social contexts. The above three approaches (product, process and genre) are sometimes considered different and separate, and this confirms that: … a good piece of writing which achieves its purpose is the successful product of a process, and part of that process will have been an introduction to the appropriate genre. Thus, all three approaches should be taken into consideration. (Ralfe 2009:156) Currently, scholars in the field of writing pedagogy advocate an integrated approach combining the reciprocal strengths of each of the three writing approaches (Tangpermpoon 2008). Effectiveness of using an integrated approach in teaching writing Teachers need a certain level of knowledge about writing to effectively apply the different approaches discussed above. It should be noted that, while second, additional or foreign language teachers should be able to use the language proficiently (Hlas & Hildebrandt 2010), the in-service teachers enrolled in the UR-CE DE programme are still in the process of learning and mastering English skills, including reading and writing pedagogy. Referring specifically to writing, Hlas and Hildebrandt (2010) argue that teachers need to be precise in their writing, because most of their written texts are meant for learners. In other words, teachers need both propositional knowledge and procedural knowledge (Bertram 2011; Carr 1995; Wagner 2002) related to writing and writing pedagogy. They also need theoretical knowledge on how to write and how to teach writing on the one hand, and practical abilities to write and teach writing effectively on the other (Muller 2012). In addition, the pedagogy used in (language) teacher education needs to be effective and enjoyable as, among other factors, the ability to teach writing effectively depends on teachers’ own writing experiences as learners (Dornbrack & Dixon 2014; Pardo 2006). Hence, various scholars tend to view the integrative approach as more effective than other individual approaches. Methodology and analytical framework This article adopted a qualitative design, focussing on writing pedagogy as taught to a cohort of secondary school teachers. Qualitative design was dictated by the fact that document analysis was used as the main source of data, based on the content which was selected from one module (Module 7) that focusses on writing pedagogy to empower teachers with knowledge and skills to teach writing. This module was one of the UR-CE DE materials for 559 teachers who followed the programme combining French, English and Education. The mediation of the content was selected on the specific section page of the selected module. Textual analysis, according to McKee (2005), focusses on an understanding of likely interpretations of texts by people who consume them, leading to implications of such interpretations. This article focussed on a section in the pedagogy module (Module 7) that is aimed at developing UR-CE DE. A sample of 80 in-service English teachers participated in the study covering the document analysis, argumentative essays and focus group discussions. They were selected from all the four provincial centres in Rwanda, among the cohort of 599 teachers who followed the UR-CE DE programme in 2010– 2013. Their performance, which was based on both high and low achieving categories, was taken as a basis for selection. Hence, 20 in-service teachers (10 with the highest marks and 10 with the lowest marks in the pedagogy module (Module 7) were selected in each province, making a total of 80 participating teachers. Hence, eight focus group discussions http://www.rw.org.za� Page 4 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access were organised in total. There were two focus groups in each of the four provinces, with each group consisting of 10 students. They were selected using a purposive sampling technique (Maxwell 1997; Tongco 2007) based on their performance in assignments and examinations. This number seems relatively small compared to 599 in-service teachers who were studying the French–English–Education combination, but it would have been difficult to work with a larger number for document analysis, argumentative essay and focus group discussions. The textual or document analysis was conducted in two phases. The first phase consisted of the English teachers’ critical analysis of the selected section on writing pedagogy in Module 7. They pointed to limitations which may have negative pedagogical implications in teaching writing. In the second phase, the authors redesigned the section that was analysed based on the findings from the participating teachers’ feedback from phase one. The redesign was informed by what DE scholars consider as aspects of good self-instructional materials, which also helped in addressing the shortcomings identified in phase one section in Module 7. These aspects of good self-instructional materials include four components, namely: (1) anticipatory and constructive feedback to learners on their learning progress (Kintsch 2009; Lockwood 1998; Moll 2003); (2) activities that engage learners in active learning (Lockwood 1998; Phillips 2007, Rowntree 1992); (3) a conversational/interactive style (Abedi & Badragheh 2011; Mishra & Gaba 2001; Richards 1995); and (4) a ‘teaching through questioning’ strategy (Duron, Limbach & Waugh 2006). It is to be clarified that feedback here refers to comments and observations made by designers of DE materials on learners’ work such as assignment and other learning activities, as well as on learners’ progress. Feedback is recognised as ‘an assistance mechanism, a key factor for successful learning, offering support to the learning process’ (Ypsilandis 2012:169). In line with good self-instructional materials, examples of DE materials that have received recognition for their quality were used to inform the redesign of a section of the UR-CE Module 7 that focusses on the teaching of writing. Such quality reference DE materials are (1) Theory and Practice of English Language Teaching, (2) Language, Literacy and Communication and (3) Language in Learning and Teaching (LILT). All these three materials have won awards in recognition of their high quality and effectiveness as distance teacher education materials, as highlighted in Reed (2010). In this regard, in 2000, Theory and Practice of English Language Teaching won the inaugural NADEOSA (National Association of Distance Education Organisations of South Africa) award for excellence. The Language, Literacy and Communication won the 2004 NADEOSA award for excellence while LILT has been highly commended by the NADEOSA awards committee (Reed 2010). Regarding the writing pedagogy approach, the authors redesigned the section by adopting an integrated approach and took the DE in-service teachers through the process of producing a good argumentative essay for practical activity. After the redesign, the section was given to a group of 80 participating teachers to study as learning material. The 80 teachers were then interviewed in focus groups of 10 each. They critically reflected on both the section in the UR-CE pedagogy module and the redesigned section, based on their experiences with the UR-CE DE materials, and how they helped them in teaching writing in their own classes. They were given argumentative essays in the redesigned section as well. It should be noted that UR-CE DE in-service teachers are equipped with general teaching skills and knowledge (KIE 2009), but with limited proficiency in English like many other Rwandan university students (Kagwesage 2012; Niyibizi, Makalela & Mwepu 2015; Niyibizi et al. 2018; Sibomana 2016b) despite being teachers of language subjects. Their reflections on textual analysis, argumentative essay and focus group discussions were transcribed and, for those participants who chose to respond in Kinyarwanda or French, their responses were translated into English. The analytical framework was guided by aspects of quality DE materials on writing skills development and writing pedagogy, as drawn from quality materials mentioned above. Such analysis was also supplemented by descriptive and interpretive approaches (Elliot & Timulak 2005) for the participants’ responses. Research findings The findings from the textual analysis of the UR-CE DE materials, the redesigned section and the focus group discussions with 80 in-service English teachers present new insights into the development of their pedagogical knowledge to teach writing. Findings on the section on writing pedagogy in University of Rwanda-College of Education’s distance education module 7 Textual analysis established that the writing pedagogy section in Module 7 provides in-service teachers with general information about writing, such as what writing is, the techniques for teaching writing and difficulties in writing; however, general reference to writing pedagogy is very limited. For instance, the selected section on writing pedagogy in Module 7 includes texts entitled ‘Techniques for teaching writing skills’, ‘difficulties in writing’ and ‘functional writing’, which are reproduced in Table 1. The textual analysis of this section revealed that, despite its suggestive title of techniques for teaching writing skills, the section provides very little practical guidance on how to teach writing, as it does not give teachers advice on teaching methods or approaches. Rather, it only lists activities in which learners could be involved in the development of their writing, without any indication of how teachers should initiate these. Bearing in mind that the section is designed for in-service teachers who do not have a pedagogic background (KIE http://www.rw.org.za� Page 5 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access 2009), this section on writing pedagogy is likely to be of very little help to them. Similarly, in the text about difficulties in writing, the shortcoming is that these in-service teachers are not given any examples of how to assist their learners to organise their ideas. This explains that ‘procedural knowledge’ (Carr 1995; Muller 2012) or ‘knowledge-how’ is backgrounded and sometimes ignored. From the analysis on functional writing, the textual analysis revealed that the module designers do not provide clear guidance to teachers on how to help their learners to undertake the tasks. It is unlikely that the instructions in the above paragraph will enable the teachers to teach their learners as to how to write functional texts or to develop grammatical and organisational skills. Hence, from this analysis, we contend that presenting learners with an example of a text does not provide sufficient guidance for the learners to be able to write a text in the same genre. Rather, teachers need genre-specific knowledge and skills in order to present and discuss model texts in such a way that their learners can also produce texts similar to these. We also claim that this section on writing pedagogy is likely to be of very little help to teachers. The teachers’ responses to questions about the UR-CE materials seem to support this claim, as illustrated in the excerpts from focus group discussions. Teachers’ responses to the section on writing in the University of Rwanda-College of Education’s distance education materials Before elaborating on the participants’ responses, it is important to note that UR-CE DE in-service teachers have limited experience with writing and the teaching of writing. Indeed, research has indicated that Rwandan university students, in general, have limited exposure to writing in English, thus resulting in poor English writing skills (Glatthaar 2014; Mutwarasibo 2013; Sibomana 2014), and Rwandan in-service teachers, in particular, share the same experience (Niyibizi 2015; Sibomana 2016). This implies that even the in-service teachers, who were studying for the diploma, are still at a disadvantage. Therefore, they indicated that they had high expectations regarding writing and writing pedagogy from the UR-CE DE materials. However, they indicated that these expectations were not fully met in Module 7. Rather, their responses expressed disappointment regarding the section on writing pedagogy, as is evident in the following excerpts: ‘My opinion on this section on teaching writing at high school is that the content is purely theoretical … I haven’t seen any example that can inspire a teacher [in teaching writing]. It implies that expecting changes in our teaching habits as a result of reading these modules is an illusion.’ (Teacher 3, male, senior 2) ‘Reading these modules will not have a considerable change on our teaching habits especially because no practical examples were provided.’ (Teacher 1, female, senior 1) ‘As an in-service teacher, I have gone to university to study how to teach writing to other people. But when I arrived there, the module shows me the types of writing, but on how to teach writing in the classroom there is little. That is a very big problem. You can read and finish the whole UR-CE pedagogy module without understanding how to write an essay or how to teach it.’ (Teacher 10, male, senior 2) Some participants indicated that, in addition to not helping them develop their knowledge and skills for teaching writing, the section does not address their own writing knowledge and skills. Teacher 6 expressed this as follows: ‘In this module, there is nothing you can consider that can help you in teaching writing, because here they are telling us in the introduction in few words what writing is, only that, and types of writing and objectives. But they are not telling us how can you start when you want to write an essay, what can you do?’ (Teacher 6, female, Senior) These remarks suggest that the section neither helps participants to develop their writing skills nor does it indicate to them as to how to proceed in helping learners to develop writing skills. Their responses imply that the designers of Module 7 left or omitted critical information on writing pedagogy practices. Findings on the redesigned section The redesigning of the section was informed by the findings from textual analysis and by recent research on writing pedagogy, particularly the integrative approach to teaching writing (Clarence-Fincham et al. 2002; Ralfe 2009). Adopting an integrative approach, the redesigned section added information on writing stages, such as choosing a topic, pre- writing, drafting, revising, proofreading and publishing. TABLE 1: Section on writing pedagogy. Techniques for teaching writing skills Difficulties in writing Functional writing When teaching writing skills, you should encourage integration of the basic language skills. The four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing should not be treated in total isolation of each other even when the writing skill is the main focus. You can involve learners in the following activities (cf Raimes 1986): (1) Composing: This is essay writing, and it can be in the form of narrative, argument, discussion, description and exposition. (2) Functional writing: Examples of these are letters (formal and informal), minutes, reports, recipes, dialogues and memoranda. (3) Presenting information in different forms or from different angles. (4) Dictation to improve spelling, use of punctuation marks and capitalisation and also to sharpen listening skills. (5) Rewriting a given text using one’s own words (paraphrasing). (6) Taking and making notes from spoken and written sources. (7) Summary writing. (8) Writing dialogue. (9) Using a short narrative to write a similar story (Module 7, p.113). Some learners experience difficulties in understanding what is expected in continuous writing. Hence, they need help with the choice, planning and arrangement of content, which we refer to as content organisation. Let the learners know that a good writer plans and organises before they start writing. Learners may have ideas, but if those ideas are presented in a jumbled way, thereby causing incoherence, they may pose difficulties of comprehension to the reader (Module 7, p.110, emphasis in the original). It goes without saying that you need to develop both learners’ grammatical and organisational skills. You can help them by presenting them with examples of the type of the genre you want them to read or learn to write. If you want them to write official letters or minutes, you can ‘have them study real examples to discover facts about construction, and specific language use, which is common in that genre’ (Harmer 2001:259). (Module 7, p. 112). Source: University of Rwanda-College of Education’s Module 7, pages 110, 112 and 113 http://www.rw.org.za� Page 6 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access Practical examples were provided by taking the participants through the process of writing a coherent, cohesive and logical argumentative essay. To model the writing process, the section used a topic that is relevant to the participating in-service teachers’ context because, as Peterson (2012) suggests, writing should not be separated from the social context in which the act of writing takes place. Thus, for example, the topic: It is better to study in a boarding school than in a day school is topical and context- relevant because the Government of Rwanda is currently phasing out the boarding school system in order to use the money saved to build more day schools and increase access to free basic education. Therefore, teachers are likely to identify with the topic, which is in line with the sociocultural approach to language teacher education. According to this approach, the content of a teacher education programme and related mediation should be linked to the contexts in which the teachers work (Freeman & Johnson 1998; Johnson 2006; Johnson & Golombek 2011; Perumal 2012, 2013). The illustrative example in the process of writing, which was modelled for participating, focussed on clustering, as one of the strategies for gathering ideas. It was a practical example of the main parts of an essay (introduction, body and conclusion), which starts with clustering, as one of the stages of the writing process that begins with a key word or central idea placed in the centre of the page (or the blackboard) around which learners write down all their ideas associated with the topic, using individual words or short phrases (Ralfe 2009). Figure 1 illustrates how this process appears in the redesigned section. This diagram shows that clustering is different from a list because the words or phrases are in a pattern which shows connections between the ideas. Clustering can take the form of a diagram or a mind map (Ralfe 2009). It draws from a process theory of composition which focusses on writing as a process with a series of recurring stages rather than a product (Murray 2003). This integrative approach is in line with what is advocated in the literature on teaching writing; before we know how to teach writing, we must first understand how we write (Zamel 1982), because teachers who do not have any understanding of what good writing looks like are often ill-equipped to teach it (Tulley 2013). In fact, teachers who cannot write well may have poorly developed ideas of what writing processes are (Uysal 2007). Hence, such teachers may not understand problems involved in writing (Pardo 2006). Furthermore, the section adopted a teaching through questioning approach (Duron, Limbach & Waugh 2006; Ur 2014), which consisted of asking the participating teachers to carry out practical activities at each stage in the process of writing an essay, providing feedback and building on it (feedback) to present subsequent content. Table 2 includes the redesigned section, where the questioning approach was applied to the mediation of clustering. By including the practical activity, the redesigned section aimed both to provide the participating teachers with a model of an argumentative essay and to help them to produce their own essays and have practical tips on how to teach it. Thereafter, they were interviewed on such practices. We argue that comparing the redesigned section with the one provided by Module 7 designers offered them a platform to reflect on their knowledge and skills regarding writing and teaching writing. Findings on teachers’ responses to the redesigned section The data from the interviews with the eight teachers indicated that they responded as ‘satisfied customers’ (Reed 2005) regarding the value of the redesigned section in helping them to become effective writers and to teach writing effectively. They all indicated that the section took them through the writing process, leading to a well-written argumentative text (product) and indicated to them (through practical examples) how to teach writing. For instance, teachers indicated that: ‘The section prepares the reader to be a teacher in such a way that even the learner who will be taught by this teacher will say, “I have learned something”.’ (Teacher 21, male, senior 4) TABLE 2: Redesigned section on writing pedagogy, with examples on feedback and clustering process. Variable Summary of feedback Explain how you can help your pupils brainstorm ideas to argue for or against the following statement: ‘It is better to study in a boarding school than in a day school’. You can ask pupils to draw a vertical line down the middle of a piece of paper and to write the words ‘A boarding school’ as a heading for the left-hand column and ‘A day school’ for the column on the right. Ask them to write everything that they can think of about ‘A boarding school’ and about ‘A day school’ in the respective columns. They should just write without worrying too much about the relevance of their ideas or the correctness of the language they use. Some of their ideas are likely to include the following: • A boarding school: Eating and sleeping at school, more opportunities and time to study and socialise with other pupils, appropriate learning facilities (computers, electricity, etc.), serious regulations and supervision by school staff, separation from the family, expensive. • A day school: Daily walk to and from school, less time to study and socialise with other pupils, more time with one’s family, less supervision, doing home chores after school, study on one’s own after school. Subsequent teaching Now, ask pupils to re-examine the ideas that they have written to check whether they are relevant to the topic. Only relevant ideas should be kept and used in writing the essay. Then they should classify (arrange) the ideas on each type of school into two categories (advantages and disadvantages), putting each idea into the category to which it belongs. This will help them in the drafting phase. Normally, pupils should list more ideas in favour of the position that they wish to support. For instance, if they wish to argue that studying in a boarding school is better than studying in a day school, they should have more advantages and fewer disadvantages for a boarding school than for a day school. A boarding school Example: Watching TV Example: Ea�ng together Example: Computers and Internet connec�on Idea: More learning Examples: Electricity, chalkboards, etc. Example: Playing together Idea: More opportuni�es to socialise Ideas Ideas FIGURE 1: An example of a cluster in the redesigned section. http://www.rw.org.za� Page 7 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access ‘As a teacher, if I get this document, and I go and enter the class with this document, it is enough. With this section, I can teach writing effectively.’ (Teacher 7, female, senior 2) Another teacher expressed his appreciation of the redesigned section in the following words: ‘I was really surprised when I saw this section. I thought that if we had seen this section before, we would have been devoting more time to teaching writing … If we were not on school holidays, I would immediately prepare a lesson on writing because I realised that … in fact, I would like to ask you for a copy of this section so that we can use it because we have found the modules not helpful regarding teaching writing … If it were possible, this section should be incorporated in the modules for future UR-CE DE intakes.’ (Teacher 38, male, senior 1) These comments suggest that the participants found something important in the redesigned section, something that responded positively to their needs with regard to their own writing knowledge and skills, and to teaching learners how to write. In contrast to what they said about the section in the UR-CE Module 7, the participants indicated that the redesigned section is practical and shows how the different parts of an essay are written, how they are linked together and how to write and teach writing step by step. While writing pedagogy scholars (e.g. Sheridan 2009; Turner 2007) are critical of this linear approach to writing, we suggest that it is a way to start, especially with EFL teachers whose knowledge of English is limited. Moreover, Hedge (1993) indicates that the process approach is not necessarily linear but a recursive activity in which the writer moves backwards and forwards between drafting and revising, with stages of re-planning in between. The teachers also pointed out that the redesigned section provides practical and relevant examples to illustrate the methodological steps, techniques and stages of teaching writing from the beginning to the end and encourages reflection on what one reads. Some participants expressed their views as follows: ‘In the redesigned section, the teacher has a role in the teaching/ learning process, but s/he is also mindful about the role of the learner and the difficulties this one may face in finding answers for the questions.’ (Teacher 12, male, senior 3) ‘It avoids confusions by providing a step by step procedure of conducting a writing lesson ... it also gives detailed examples, uses diagrammes and a model of a lesson plan to illustrate the process of teaching writing.’ (Teacher 5, female, senior 2) As the remarks of Teacher 5 imply, the redesigned section addressed some confusions and misunderstandings that they had about teaching writing. In commenting on the lessons learnt from the redesigned section, Teacher 44 indicated that he learnt that writing, in all its stages, should not be taught in one period (which is different from what he used to do) and that learners need to have a say in choosing topics to write about. Teacher 15 said that after reading the redesigned section, he realised that teaching writing is not as difficult as he imagined. He felt that he needed to stop focussing on grammar and start teaching writing more often in his class. Teacher 38 learnt how to choose a topic, both for his learners and for himself. Teacher 7 learnt that good writing needs to be planned and written in stages. These views suggest that the participants preferred the redesigned section to the section on writing pedagogy in Module 7. However, some participants were critical about the lack of theoretical information on how to approach the learning/ teaching activities in the redesigned section. The lack of this information may have been a reason why some participating teachers used the activities for assessment rather than learning purposes. For instance, Teachers 1 and 18 pointed out that they read the entire redesigned section first (without answering the activity questions) and answered the questions later without re-reading the content to see how much they had learnt. By approaching the activities in this way, these teachers missed some important points, because the presentation of content in this section builds on activities and related answers and feedback. In other words, the learner needs to complete the activities to (better) understand subsequent content. Discussion The responses to the two sets of materials suggest that the teachers interviewed, who are working in an EFL teaching context and who have limited experience of writing in English, lack some of the writing knowledge and skills needed both to produce well-written texts and to teach their learners to do the same. Findings from focus group discussions indicated that almost all 80 participating teachers responded positively to materials that offered explicit (step- by-step) guidelines for their own writing development and for teaching writing to secondary school learners, together with explanations for the guidelines suggested. This finding supports the argument forwarded by Uysal (2007) that when teachers of writing are provided with a writing course in which they practise writing themselves, their practices may change. Indeed, ‘teachers who have not experienced meaningful writing projects themselves may not appreciate the writing problems their students face’ (Kennedy 1998, in Uysal 2007:2) and may have few resources to draw on in their teaching (Leki 2001). Thus, foreign language teachers’ basic writing skills, which serve as a foundation for the development of writing pedagogy, should not be taken for granted. Courses which are aimed at developing teachers’ own writing skills and knowledge are as important as those aimed at developing their ability to teach writing to their learners. The participants’ responses also suggest that these teachers prefer materials or approaches that actively engage them in activities that are aimed at helping them to learn, especially when the knowledge and skills being developed are directly applicable to classroom tasks such as teaching writing. Active and practical learning activities are particularly important in teacher education programmes if trainers of teachers want to http://www.rw.org.za� Page 8 of 10 Original Research http://www.rw.org.za Open Access adopt active and learner-centred teaching approaches in their classes, given that teachers tend to teach by replicating the practices of their own teacher training classrooms (Freeman & Johnson 1998; Lortie 1975; Murdoch 1994; Singh & Harris 2010). Furthermore, the responses suggest that these teachers value materials that show understanding of the context in which they operate. This finding is in line with the sociocultural approach to language teacher education, which has been referred to earlier. If such attention to context is absent from teacher education programmes, there is a risk of producing teachers who may know what to teach but who, according to Johnson and Golombek (2011:2), do not have ‘the essential procedural knowledge to confront the realities of the classroom’. This may lead to their knowledge and skills being ‘disconnected in any substantive way from the practical goal- directed activities of actual teaching’ (Johnson & Golombek 2011:2). Therefore, context-based learning activities and integrative approaches in teacher education programmes are important because they are likely to help teachers to enact culturally and contextually the responsive writing pedagogies (Pardo 2006). University of Rwanda-College of Education distance education materials, like the section copied from Module 7, do not contain such activities and this constitutes one of their weaknesses. Conclusion The findings discussed in this article indicate that a distance teacher education programme may fall short of some of its targeted goals. The three research questions that were posed for this study: (1) How do Rwandan secondary school English teachers mediate the content on teaching writing as explained through DE?; (2) What shortcomings do English teachers observe in the writing pedagogy module and what improvements do they suggest?; (3) Which approach, when considering the product-, process- genre- and integrative approaches, do they perceive to be more effective in teaching writing through DE? were answered, as revealed in the findings from the document analysis, textual analysis, argumentative essays and focus group discussions with the participating teachers. The striking finding is the kind of mismatch between the writing goals stated in the module and the pedagogical practices in learning how to teach writing. For instance, despite UR-CE’s stated intention of helping its students ‘to improve their general knowledge as well as their academic and professional education’ (KIE 2009:1), the analysis of the materials, the responses of selected teachers to these materials and the pedagogically oriented redesigned section suggest that this goal has not been met. It appears that the existing material, specifically Module 7 on English writing pedagogy, does not empower these teachers to become effective writers and teachers of writing. Indeed, some of the participants indicated that their DE materials do not provide them with writing experience. We argue that failure to meet the goal of enabling English teachers to become effective writers and teachers of writing is a cause for concern given the central role of writing in national examinations in English and in most other subjects. We suggest that the UR-CE DE materials be reconceptualised so that a revised version combines propositional knowledge with procedural knowledge (Fantl 2012; Meadows 2013). We also suggest that these two types of knowledge be more carefully mediated to both teachers and the designers of DE materials and that the revised version be aligned to the demands of the school curriculum and the national examination. This article reports on a case at the Rwandan university, but designers of distance learning materials for English teachers in contexts other than Rwanda may find it helpful to use the findings reported in this article to inform a review and redesign of their materials. Acknowledgements Competing interests The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. Authors’ contribution The author contribution is related to conceptualising the theoretical and methodological sections of the article. All authors co-authored through rewriting, editing and revising the article. References Abedi, M. & Badragheh, A., 2011, ‘Distance education in developing countries’, Journal of American Science 7(4), 295–301. Antoniazzi, M.I.C., 2005, ‘Pre-writing in EFL’, Revista Enfoques Educacionales 7(1), 35–49. Bertram, C., 2011, ‘What does research say about teacher learning and teacher knowledge? Implications for professional development in South Africa’, Journal of Education 52, 3–26. 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work_weybcmhwfrbxjg66ovl5lypkna	----	Credibility Evaluation of Online Distance Education Websites (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 356 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Credibility Evaluation of Online Distance Education Websites Khalid Al-Omar Department of Information Systems King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Abstract—Web credibility is becoming a significant factor in increasing user satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. Web credibility is particularly important for people who cannot visit an institution for one reason or other and mostly depend on the website, such as online distance education students. Accordingly, universities and educational websites need to determine the types of credibility problems they have on their websites. However, far too little attention has been paid to providing detailed information regarding the types of specific credibility problems that could be found on university websites in general, and specifically, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The aim of this paper is to study and analyze the credibility of university websites that offer distance education courses in the KSA. A total of 12 universities in Saudi Arabia were considered, which include 11 affiliated and one private university. The analysis of the data represents the level of credibility of distance education websites. Results reveal that in Saudi Arabia, distance education websites are reliable, but violate basic credibility guidelines. Keywords—university websites; credibility; trustworthiness; online trust; website design; Saudi Arabia; distance education I. INTRODUCTION The World Wide Web (WWW) helps academic institutions distribute their messages and increase their services across the globe. Unfortunately, until now, the available technologies do not guarantee whether the web content on the Internet is reliable, up to date, and standardized, since web publishing does not involve the different stages of reviewing and filtering, as print sources do [1]. Consequently, trusting the information on websites is vital, especially for people who cannot visit an institution and depend mainly on the website—for example, online distance education students. To ensure that students join their online distance education programs and not go elsewhere, universities should be certain that their websites are aesthetic, usable, and credible. Therefore, deanships of e-learning and distance education websites at universities require reliable web-based information. II. WHAT IS WEB CREDIBILITY? Credibility is one of the most important characteristics of any user interface. Credibility is defined as believability [2, 3] or trustworthiness of information found on the web, which means the level to which users trust the content in a website [1]. In other words, it explains why people believe the information provided by some websites but not others. Credibility offers the ability to change user attitudes and behaviors. It can make users comfortable interacting with the website, registering their personal information, and then returning again [2]. The vast majority of researchers identify two key components of credibility: ―trustworthiness‖ and ―expertise‖ [4]. Trustworthiness is defined by the terms truthful and unbiased, whereas ―expertise‖ is defined by terms such as knowledgeable and competent. The trustworthiness dimension of credibility captures the perceived goodness or morality of the source, while the expertise dimension of credibility captures the perceived knowledge and skill of the source. Highly credible websites will be perceived to have high levels of both trustworthiness and expertise. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: First, there is an overview of web credibility, presented in Section 2; then, a brief description of distance education in the KSA is given in Section 3. In Section 4, e-learning website selection is discussed, and then in Section 5, there is a brief description of relevant previous studies and a literature review. In Section 6, objectives of this work are presented, and in Section 7, there is a hypothesis. Section 8 presents the methodology used, Section 9 presents and discusses the results of this research, and website evaluation using automated tools is presented in Section 10. In Section 11, tool-based results are provided; in Section 12, there is a discussion of these results; and in Section 13, suggestions are offered. Finally, conclusions and future work are discussed in Section 14. III. A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION IN THE KSA In the present day, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has witnessed growth in the number of universities in the country. Consequently, universities are facing huge competition as far as bringing in more students, with the competition being even higher for distance education programs, since the structure of online learning gives students full control over the time and place for their study. Therefore, more than ever before, the credibility of websites in higher education is becoming an increasingly important area to consider. The aim of this paper is to study and analyze several aspects related to the credibility of distance learning websites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. According to the Ministry of Higher Education in the KSA, there are 35 universities in Saudi Arabia. There are 25 government universities, 10 private universities, and one university focusing exclusively on graduate education and research—King Abdullah University of Science and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 357 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Technology (KAUST). A total of 293,665 (140,415 male and 153,250 female) students were enrolled in higher education for the 35 universities in 2014. In addition, 740 students were enrolled in KAUST (488 male and 252 female). TABLE I. NUMBER OF ESTABLISHED UNIVERSITIES IN THE KSA Year of Establishment No. of Government Universities No. of Private Universities Percentage Before 1960 1 0 1 Between 1960 and 1970 4 0 4 Between 1970 and 1980 3 1 4 Between 1980 and 1990 0 0 0 Between 1990 and 2000 1 1 2 Between 2000 and 2010 16 6 22 After 2010 1 2 3 Total 26 10 36 IV. E-LEARNING WEBSITE SELECTION Among the 36 universities, only 11 government universities have been authorized by the Ministry of Higher Education to offer distance education courses ranging from bachelor’s to master’s degree. On the other hand, only one private university (the Arab Open University) has been accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education (see Table 2). However, the number of e-learning students enrolled is not an indication of credibility, since the location of the university affects the number of enrollees. TABLE II. NUMBER OF ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS IN THE KSA 2014 No University Male Female Total 1 King Abdulaziz University (KAU) 1,959 1,909 3,868 2 Islamic University in Madinah 700 0 700 3 IMAUM 5,156 3,733 8,889 4 King Faisal University (KFU) 5,911 6,901 1,2812 5 TAIBUAHU 1,530 1,713 3,243 6 Taif University (TU) 2,014 1,041 3,055 7 Jazan University (JAZANU) 876 810 1,686 8 Aljouf University (JU) 199 66 265 9 Najran University (NU) 1,005 977 1,982 10 University of Dammam (UD) 957 1,241 2,198 11 Saudi Electronic University (SEU) 4,490 2,771 7,261 12 Arab Open University 1,914 2,340 4,254 Currently, there is a huge demand for online distance learning in the KSA. Mainly, there are two main factors that influence online learning. First, the KSA is a large country with very few universities open compared to its size. Second, the KSA government encourages its employees to get an advanced degree to become eligible for promotion to a higher position. However, the main reason that causes more demand for distance education programs is the acceptance of online distance learning by the Ministry of Civil Service. Therefore, the demand for a place to study online learning at the university is still much more than is available. Thus, every academic year, thousands of students are left out of universities [5]. As a result, many universities have recently been offering distance education learning programs. As such, sooner or later, deanships of distance learning programs will face increasing pressure to enhance the credibility of their websites. V. LITERATURE REVIEW In recent years, factors affecting the credibility of websites have been the subject of many research projects, such as social networking sites [6], mobile website interfaces [7], e-learning, e-government [8, 9], and e-commerce (e.g. [2, 6, 10-12]). BJ Fogg’s team at the Stanford Web Credibility Project conducted a remarkable study to investigate which design elements positively or negatively influence credibility. Fogg et al. conducted a large-scale online survey of more than 1,400 participants, both from the U.S. and Europe, evaluating 51 different website elements. In this study, they identified five elements that have a positive effect on the credibility of a website: real-world feel, ease of use and usefulness, expertise, trustworthiness, and tailoring [2]. Two of these credibility elements, ease of use and tailoring, closely relate to usability [13]. Also, the researchers found that the two factors hurting credibility were ―commercial implications‖ and ―amateurism.‖ Based on these findings, Fogg et al. [2] proposed seven guidelines to create highly credible websites, which they expanded on further by setting up the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility [14]. Furthermore, Fogg et al. conducted a study with more than 2,500 participants to shed light on what leads people to believe, or not believe, what they find online [15]. Participants evaluated the credibility of two live websites on a similar topic (health). They concluded that the design of the site was mentioned most frequently, followed by comments about information structure and information focus. Also, in this study authors shared participants’ feedback in the top 18 areas that people noticed when evaluating website credibility. VI. OBJECTIVES The main objective of this study is to examine the web credibility of e-learning and distance education deanships websites at universities in the KSA, compare the online distance education websites of universities in the KSA, and then offer suggestions for the design of an ideal online distance education website for a university to increase the site’s credibility. VII. HYPOTHESES Hypotheses applied for the study were:  A majority of the universities in Saudi Arabia have hosted websites on the Internet.  The university websites are heterogeneous in their structure and content.  Most of the websites do not follow established guidelines. http://www.iu.edu.sa/en/AboutIU/Pages/default.aspx (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 358 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org  The majority of the universities in Saudi Arabia have serious issues with web credibility. VIII. METHODOLOGY The first part of our evaluation methodology was intended to evaluate the credibility of the e-learning websites of Saudi universities by using the self-evaluation method. The data for this study was collected through this method [15], which included the following:  Designing a checklist from previous research [1, 2].  Evaluation of the websites. 1  Data collection.  Analysis and interpretation of data. The credibility evaluation methods conducted by human involvement can assess only the external attributes of the website rather than its internal attributes. External attributes depend on the website and its usage, while the internal attributes of the website depend on how the website has been designed and developed [16]. The internal attributes of the website can be assessed and evaluated using automated tools. Both internal and external attributes are required. In this study, the total size of the website, total size of images, percentage of images in the total size, and the download times were collected. Slow websites gave an indication that the website was uncertain. However, the external attributes of the website were assessed and evaluated by self-evaluation. IX. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION Among the 36 universities, only 12 have been authorized by the Ministry of Higher Education to offer distance education courses ranging from bachelors’ to masters’ degrees. In this study, all 12 universities were considered, evaluated, and analyzed. However, there has been a phenomenal growth of e- learning and distance education in Saudi Arabia universities since 2009 (Table 3). TABLE III. YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT OF E-LEARNING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION DEANSHIPS AT UNIVERSITIES IN THE KSA No University Year of Establishment Gregorian Hijri 1 King Abdulaziz University (KAU) 2002 1423 2 Islamic University in Madinah 1961 1381 3 IMAUM 2007 1428 4 King Faisal University (KFU) 2009 1430 5 TAIBUAHU 2005 1426 6 Taif University (TU) 2011 1432 7 Jazan University (JAZANU) 2009 1430 8 Aljouf University (JU) 2007 1428 9 Najran University (NU) 2011 1432 10 University of Dammam (UD) 2010 1430 11 Saudi Electronic University (SEU) 2011 1432 12 Arab Open University 2002 1423 1 www.websiteoptimization.com In 2011 Saudi Electronic University (SEU) became the first government educational institution specializing in distance education in the KSA. SEU is offering both graduate and undergraduate degree programs. All the universities agreed that students should attend campuses for the final test. However, not all authorized universities provide complete full-distance education programs (see Table 4). There are two universities that have adopted the Blended System in e-teaching: Saudi Electronic University (SEU) and Arab Open University in the KSA. Students at SEU have to attend 25% of classes in the form of direct lectures, and another 25% as virtual classes. The rest (50%) are distributed among educational forums and following up on the digital learning content. Students at the Arab Open University in the KSA have to attend 25% in the form of direct lectures, and the rest (75%) are distributed among educational forums and following up on the digital learning content. TABLE IV. WAY TO STUDY DISTANCE EDUCATION AT UNIVERSITIES IN THE KSA No University Learning Style 1 King Abdulaziz University (KAU) Distance Education 2 Islamic University in Madinah Distance Education 3 IMAUM Distance Education 4 King Faisal University (KFU) Distance Education 5 TAIBUAHU Distance Education 6 Taif University (TU) Distance Education 7 Jazan University (JAZANU) Distance Education 8 Aljouf University (JU) Distance Education 9 Najran University (NU) Distance Education 10 University of Dammam (UD) Distance Education 11 Saudi Electronic University (SEU) Blended Learning: 25% as direct (face-to- face) lectures 25% as virtual (online) classes 50% participating in the course 12 Arab Open University in the KSA Blended Learning: 25% as direct (face-to- face) lectures Table 5 shows that all government universities have their URL with ―edu.sa,‖ and just a single private university used ―.org‖ for their university URL. TABLE V. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY URL EXTENSION URL .edu.sa .org Number of Universities 11 Government Universities 1 Private University X. WEBSITE EVALUATION USING AUTOMATED TOOLS Credibility assessment methods that are conducted by human involvement (users and experts) can assess only the external attributes of the website (such as the usability of the website) rather than its internal attributes (such as webpage speed analysis). Testing website download speed and the size of the webpage is definitely essential, since it influences the usability and credibility of any website. The data obtained might not be accurate, but is used only to represent the extent and the level of website download speed and size of the http://www.iu.edu.sa/en/AboutIU/Pages/default.aspx http://www.iu.edu.sa/en/AboutIU/Pages/default.aspx (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 359 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org webpage possessed by the university websites in Saudi Arabia. The webpage analyzer 0.98 is a free tool from Website Optimization utilized to measure the website performance tool and webpage speed analysis to improve a website’s performance. In this study, the total size of the website, total size of images, percentage of images in the total size, and the download times have been collected. Table 6 shows that the expertise factors for websites help users gain more credibility. The majority (83 percent) of the e- learning university websites offer information in the English language. Unfortunately, 95 percent of the English content provided is not exactly the same as the Arabic content. Using a language other than English in the e-learning university websites is rarely found. Besides, one can rarely find information about research activities or research articles on the site. On the other hand, 67 percent of the e-learning university websites appear on the first page of Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. While the majority of the universities have information about ―research activities,‖ some of them provide the ―project titles‖ as well. TABLE VI. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY EXPERTISE FACTORS Expertise factors Total (Percentage) n=12 The site offers information in more than one language (e.g. English and Arabic). 10 (83) Information about research activities is given. 3 (25) Research articles available in the site authored by students and faculty (IR). 3 (25) The site appeared on the first page of Google search engine results 8 (67) Yahoo search engine results 8 (67) Bing search engine results 8 (67) URL matches the name or acronym of the institute. 12 (100) The site is large (e.g., not less than five pages). 12 (100) TABLE VII. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY EASY-TO-USE/NAVIGATION FACTOR Website classification by easy-to- use/navigation factor Total (Percentage) n=12 The site lets users search for past content (i.e., archives). 9 (75) The site looks professionally designed. 10 (83) The site is arranged in a way that makes sense to users. 6 (50) The site takes a long time to download. 4 (33) The site is difficult to navigate. 5 (42) Navigation path. 9 (75) Site map is given. 1 (8) Search facility available. 8 (67) Active and inactive links are clearly visible. 0 (0) It is easy to navigate logically according to the broader category. 6 (50) The site has a picture gallery. 8 (67) It has thumbnail-size or full-size pictures. 4 (33) Homepage link is available on all subpages. 7 (58) Table 7 shows that the majority of the websites look like they have been professionally designed (83 percent), and allow users to search past content (75 percent). However, half of the e-learning university websites in Saudi Arabia have proper structure and logically arranged content (50 percent). Unfortunately, it comes as a surprise that even large websites fail to make active and inactive links clearly visible. The structure of the website and its navigation plays a major role in website credibility, so it is odd to note that only one university website provides navigation tools such as a site map. The ―validity‖ factor helps to evaluate the importance and role of a website. Table 8 shows that all the websites (100 percent) are maintained without any internal or external advertisements and can ―distinguish between link and line of statement‖ clearly. Also, half of the universities associate with other renowned institutions or organizations. Unfortunately, more than half of the websites (58 percent) maintain a dead link. Further, the top credibility criterion, ―when the site was updated,‖ is found among the universities in Saudi Arabia on the main page, whereas it is rarely found for other pages in the website. Also, even large universities do not provide information about the students’ achievements, or provide students’ records. TABLE VIII. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY VALIDITY FACTOR Validity factor Total (Percentage) n=12 Association with other renowned institutions/organizations is mentioned. 6 (50) Information about students’ achievements or records is given. 4 (33) The site is maintained without any dead links. 7 (58) Able to distinguish between link and line of statement. 12 (100) There is information about when the site was updated. 5 (42) Calendar of events is given. 7 (58) The site is maintained without any internal/external advertisement 12 (100) TABLE IX. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY RELIABILITY FACTORS Reliability factors Total (Percentage) n=12 History of the university is mentioned. 10 (83) Information about affiliation or accreditation is mentioned. 7 (58) There is a link to send the complaint. 12 (100) There is a link to send feedback. 12 (100) Head of Departments and other faculty information is provided with their qualifications. 6 (50) The site displays photos of offices or staff members 5 (42) Information about ISO Certification is provided. 3 (25) The site has copyright registration, and the information about same is given. 12 (100) Postal address is given. 12 (100) Telephone number with STD code is given. 12 (100) Contact e-mail ID is given. 12 (100) (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 360 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Table 9 explains that almost all the universities provide the contact details, history, copyright information, ―feedback‖ feature, and give users the ability to make a complaint through their website. Only 50 percent of the universities provide information about ISO Certification. Table 10 shows that all the websites have graphics or pictures (100 percent), and in the majority (92 percent) of the websites, the background and text color match. Unfortunately, 42 percent of the websites do not have a responsive web design. The responsive design of the websites is important since many websites do not fit into a one-page display. In addition, not all websites provide information about the screen resolution and browser compatibility. Furthermore, in half of the websites, the site’s page format is followed in all the subpages. TABLE X. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY DESIGN FACTOR Classification of websites by design factor Total (Percentage) n=12 There are graphics on the site. 12 (100) There is animation on the site. 7 (58) The background and font color matches. 11 (92) Number of visitors is given. 2 (17) View resolution is suggested. 0 (0) Browser compatibility is suggested. 1 (8) Responsive web design. 5 (42) The site’s page format is followed in all the subpages. 6 (50) XI. TOOL-BASED RESULTS In this part of the evaluation, automated assessment tools were used to assess website credibility. The results obtained from the WebPage Analyzer are presented in Table 11. TABLE XI. CLASSIFICATION OF WEBSITES BY WEBPAGE SIZE AND DOWNLOAD SPEED Name of the university Total size of the websit e Total size of the images Percen- tage of images in total size Download time at 56K connectio ns KAU 18857 81 930851 55 393.63 IU 30131 13 451273 98 949.76 IMAUM 28450 1 61956 6 61.10 KFU 10174 85 734151 19 212.18 TAIBUAH U 97412 4 789597 74 212.74 TU 21552 86 125019 0 44 441.35 JAZANU 31268 33 458363 99 969.56 JU 24613 88 227385 7 72 514.35 NU 45799 8 448225 11 93.88 UD 25289 54 203900 3 84 525.42 SEU 629 0 0 0.53 The web optimization’s WebPage Speed Report has the connection rate starting from 1.44 Mbps to 14.4K. According to the usability guidelines [17], the optimal download time for a homepage is 10 seconds. So, for better download speed, it is suggested to design 45 kb to 55 kb–sized homepages. Table 14 shows that only Arab Open University falls in the <10 seconds category, and only two universities fall under the >100 seconds category. Other homepages of universities in Saudi Arabia fall under the > 200 seconds category. Saudi Arabia has pictures, which occupies nearly 70 to 98 percent of the overall website size. XII. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Table 12 presents a summary of the score for each of the 12 university websites. For the ―design‖ factor, only the SU and KAU website scored more than half of the total, where the rest scored half or less. The SEU, NU, KAU, and IU university websites achieved the highest score (61 percent) for the ―easy to use‖ factor, where the rest of the websites scored less than half. This indicates that half of the university websites have usability problems in their websites. On the other hand, most university websites achieved a high score on ―reliability factors.‖ The JU university website scored the lowest for both the ―validity‖ and ―expertise‖ factors, followed by the NU university website. Three university (KAU, KFU, and SEU) websites achieved full marks in the expertise area. TABLE XII. CREDIBILITY SCORE University Design factor (8) Easy to use (13) Reliability factors (11) Validity factors (7) Expertise (9) KAU 6 7 10 7 9 IU 3 7 9 4 7 IMAUM 3 4 8 6 6 KFU 4 3 8 4 9 TAIBUAHU 3 2 7 5 7 TU 3 6 10 4 4 JAZANU 3 4 7 4 3 JU 3 2 6 1 0 NU 3 8 8 3 3 UD 4 5 7 2 6 SEU 6 8 10 7 9 Figure 1 shows the overall scores for each of the 12 university websites. A maximum score of 564 could be achieved, as 47 criteria for each website. The SUE website received the highest score (40), followed by KAU (39). The least credible was the JU website (12). The rest of the university websites achieved half of the score or above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design http://www.iu.edu.sa/en/AboutIU/Pages/default.aspx (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 361 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org Fig. 1. Overall scores Figure 2 reveals that, in general, the ―easy to use‖ factor is the most violated web credibility factor among Saudi Arabia universities, followed by the ―design factor.‖ The reliability factor achieved the highest score (75%) among Saudi Arabia universities. Fig. 2. Percentage of each credibility factor scored by the universities XIII. SUGGESTIONS 1) A majority of the university websites in Saudi Arabia do not provide any information about students’ achievements or records. Hence, it is mandatory in the future to show student records. 2) A majority of the university websites in Saudi Arabia are not updated regularly and do not indicate the date of the last update. Doing so will add more credibility to the site. 3) E-learning university websites should associate their websites with other renowned institutions and organizations such as The National Center for e-Learning and Distance Learning. This association will be a value added to the website, which will increase its credibility. 4) Many websites do not fit into a one-page display, which is necessary given the large number of different devices used to access websites. Therefore, universities’ website designs should have a responsive layout. This design will be a value added to the website, which will increase its credibility. 5) The structure of the website and its navigation plays a major role in website credibility. Therefore, universities should provide a site map, navigation path, and internal search engine, which will be a value added to the website, thereby increasing credibility. 6) The page format for the university websites should follow the same style in all the subpages, since this will help prevent user confusion and add credibility to the website. 7) The university websites should focus on maintaining their websites without any dead links, since such links will strongly undermine the websites’ credibility. 8) Normally a website will have many links; therefore, it is critical to help users distinguish between active and inactive links. This approach will be a value added to the website, which will increase its usability as well as its credibility. 9) University websites should make navigation easier by providing a site map, and the internal search engine will be a value added to the website, which will also increase its credibility. 10) Providing more than one language can help enhance the credibility of the websites. However, users sometimes switch from one language to another, so it is critical to make the websites look the same in all languages. XIV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK The purpose of the current study was to examine the web credibility of distance education websites in Saudi Arabia universities. The results of this investigation show that university websites are reliable and are designed well, but violate basic usability, accessibility, and credibility guidelines. Therefore, university websites in Saudi Arabia should be required to be evaluated periodically using established criteria such as usability, accessibility, and credibility. Consequently, this will help the universities improve their websites to meet users’ needs. The current study should be repeated using the user evaluation method. This approach will contribute to understanding how Saudis perceive website credibility. Another possible area of future research would be to investigate which usability and accessibility factors impact negatively on web credibility. REFERENCES [1] R. Babu, A. N. Kumar, and S. Gopalakrishnan, "Credibility of university websites in Tamil Nadu," DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, vol. 29, pp. 16-28, 2009. [2] Fogg, J. Marshall, O. Laraki, A. Osipovich, C. Varma, N. Fang, et al., "What makes Web sites credible?: a report on a large quantitative study," in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 2001, pp. 61-68. [3] S. Tseng and B. Fogg, "Credibility and computing technology," Communications of the ACM, vol. 42, pp. 39-44, 1999. [4] B. Fogg, T. Kameda, J. Boyd, J. Marshall, R. Sethi, M. Sockol, et al., "Stanford-Makovsky web credibility study 2002: investigating what makes web sites credible today," Report from the Persuasive Technology Lab, available online at http://captology. stanford. edu/pdf/Stanford-MakovskyWebCredStudy2002-pre% lim. pdf, 2002. 39 30 27 28 24 27 21 12 25 24 40 33 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 S co re Website Overall Scores [VALUE]% [VALUE]% [VALUE]% [VALUE]% [VALUE]% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Design Factor (8) Easy to use (13) Reliability factors (11) Validity factors (7) Expertise (9) P e rc e n ta g e o f sc o re Web Credibility Factors Percentage of each credibility factor scored by universities (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 12, 2016 362 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org [5] Al-Shehri, "E-learning in Saudi Arabia:'To E or not to E, that is the question'," Journal of family & community medicine, vol. 17, pp. 147- 150, 2010. [6] L. Song, J. Lai, and J. Li, "Identifying Factors Affecting Individual Perceived Credibility on SNS," in Proceedings of the The 3rd Multidisciplinary International Social Networks Conference on SocialInformatics 2016, Data Science 2016, 2016, p. 2. [7] K. Oyibo, Y. S. Ali, and J. Vassileva, "An Empirical Analysis of the Perception of Mobile Website Interfaces and the Influence of Culture," in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Personalization in Persuasive Technology (PPT’16), Salzburg, Italy, 2016. [8] M. A. A. Rashid, M. N. A. Othman, and M. Z. Othman, "Website Quality as a Determinant of E-government User Satisfaction Level," in Regional Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (RCSTSS 2014), 2016, pp. 157-168. [9] Z. Huang and M. Benyoucef, "Usability and credibility of e-government websites," Government Information Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 584-595, 2014. [10] N. Wathen and J. Burkell, "Believe It or Not: Factors Influencing Credibility on the Web," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 53, pp. 134-144, 2002. [11] Alsudani and M. Casey, "The effect of aesthetics on web credibility," in Proceedings of the 23rd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Celebrating People and Technology, 2009, pp. 512-519. [12] J. F. George, G. Giordano, and P. A. Tilley, "Website credibility and deceiver credibility: Expanding Prominence-Interpretation Theory," Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 54, pp. 83-93, 2016. [13] J. Nielsen, "Usability 101: Introduction to usability," ed, 2003. [14] B. Fogg, "Stanford guidelines for web credibility: A research summary from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab," Stanford University. Retrieved August, vol. 10, p. 2011, 2002. [15] B. Fogg, C. Soohoo, D. R. Danielson, L. Marable, J. Stanford, and E. R. Tauber, "How do users evaluate the credibility of Web sites?: a study with over 2,500 participants," in Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for user experiences, 2003, pp. 1-15. [16] Brajnik, "Automatic web usability evaluation: what needs to be done," in Proc. Human Factors and the Web, 6th Conference, 2000. [17] J. Nielsen, "Designing web usability: the practice of simplicity New Riders Publishing," Indianapolis, Indiana, 2000. AUTHOR PROFILE Dr. Khalid Hamad Alomar: Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Faculty of Computing & Information Technology, King Abdul-Aziz University, major in software engineering and Human Computer Interaction. Currently, Dr. Khalid is a vice dean of the Technical Affairs of E-learning and Distance Education at King Abdul-Aziz University. 
work_wfai3kqiuvb4diobbsikfqd5ou	----	IRMJ01mcmanus Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 59 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT In this paper we present the evolution of a collaborative courseware generating system that is featured by XML-based course structure representation, JSP-based dynamic courseware presentation, and WebDAV-based collaborative courseware authoring. While the first system implementation employs a proprietary design using a self-defined XML DTD to represent the course structure, the second and the third system implementation take an open-standard- oriented approach, which are respectively SCORM 1.1 and SCORM 1.2 conformant. In the latter two implementations, all learning resources contained in an existing Java course are re-designed according to the SCORM 1.1 and SCORM 1.2 Content Model and further annotated with corresponding SCORM metadata. In addition, the course structure is re-constructed utilizing SCORM 1.1 Content Structure Format and SCORM 1.2 Content Packaging Specification. The evolution of the collaborative courseware generating system is motivated by our efforts to improve the reusability and interoperability of learning resources. Keywords: eXtensible markup language, Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, Java Server Pages, Sharable Content Object Reference Model Towards Open Standards: The Evolution of a Collaborative Courseware Generating System Changtao Qu and Wolfgang Nejdl, University of Hannover, Germany INTRODUCTION Since the summer semester 1999, the joint CS1 course “Introduction to Java Pro- gramming” (Info1 for short) has been shared among three German universities and one university in Italy. During the past three years, we have been successively working on three system implementations of Info1 with the purpose of exploring effi- cient approaches to improving the reusabil- ity and interoperability of learning re- sources. While the first system implemen- tation employs a proprietary design using a self-defined XML (eXtensible Markup Language) DTD (Document Type Defini- tion) to represent the course structure, the second and the third system implementa- tion take an open-standard-oriented ap- proach, which are respectively SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) 1.1 (ADL Technical Team, 2001) 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ������� INFORMATION SCIENCE PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the journal, International Journal of Distance Education Technology, 1(3), edited by Qing Li and Weijia Jia. Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Publishing. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 60 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. and SCORM 1.2 (ADL Technical Team, 2001a) conformant. In the latter two imple- mentations, all learning resources contained in Info1 are re-designed according to the SCORM 1.1 and SCORM 1.2 Content Model and further annotated with corre- sponding SCORM metadata. Also the course structure is re-constructed utilizing SCORM 1.1 CSF (Content Structure For- mat) and SCORM 1.2 CP (Content Pack- aging) Specification. In the following we will present these three system implemen- tations of Info1, showing its evolution to- wards open standards. GENERAL DESIGN In Figure 1 we illustrate the general infrastructure of the collaborative courseware generating system. In general, the system is constructed from a WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) based courseware authoring module and a JSP (Java Server Pages) based courseware publishing engine. The standard data inter- face between both is XML. Although the general infrastructure is commonly shared by all three system imple- mentations, there are several essential dif- ferences between them. First of all, the three system implementations are differ- ent in how they represent the course struc- ture using XML. This essential difference clearly marks the system’s evolution to- wards open standards. Moreover, the dif- ferent representations of the course struc- ture also determine the reusability of the JSP-based courseware publishing engine that is responsible for dynamically present- ing the XML-based course structure on the Web. In Figure 2 we firstly illustrate a com- mon module of all three system implemen- tations: the WebDAV-based courseware authoring module. It is used to support col- laborative courseware authoring in three system implementations. The courseware authoring module comprises a WebDAV-based courseware repository used to store course script files, and an XML file used to represent the course structure. The latter also serves as the standard data interface between the courseware authoring module and the courseware publishing engine in order to cleanly separate course content from the courseware presentation. The WebDAV- based courseware authoring module is shared by all three system implementations of Info1, which can enable geographically dispersed authors to collaboratively accom- plish the courseware authoring process. WebDAV (Goland, Whitehead, Faizi, Carter, & Jensen, 1999) is an IETF speci- Figure 1: The General Infrastructure of the Collaborative Courseware Generating System WebDAV- based courseware authoring module JSP-based courseware publishing engine XML-based course structure representation WebDAV-based courseware authoring module Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 61 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. fication originally designed to add interoperability and collaborative capabili- ties to the Internet. It provides sets of ex- tensions to the HTTP protocol that allows geographically dispersed users to collaboratively edit and manage documents directly on the remote server. The current functionalities of WebDAV include: (1) lock- ing mechanism, used to prevent the “over- writing” of changes in a distributed, multi- user authoring environment; (2) namespace manipulation, used to manage document repository on the remote server; (3) prop- erty manipulation, used to handle XML- based metadata of documents; and (4) col- lections, used to create sets of related docu- ments and to retrieve listing of their mem- bers. Utilizing WebDAV, the courseware authors can “in-place” (directly on the re- mote server) implement most activities needed for collaborative courseware authoring, e.g., editing course script files stored in the courseware repository, ma- nipulating repository’s namespace, utilizing locking mechanism to prevent the “over- writing,” or manipulating properties of a specific course script file in order to ex- change ideas and opinions among authors. In fact, according to our practical experi- ence, the WebDAV-based courseware authoring module has greatly improved the efficiency of the courseware authoring pro- cess (Qu, Gamper & Nejdl, 2001). THE FIRST SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION: PROPRIETARY DESIGN The first system implementation of Info1 adopted a self-defined XML DTD to represent the course structure. In Fig- ure 3 we illustrate this XML DTD. In the DTD definition, several self- defined XML elements, e.g., “CourseUnit,” “CourseElement” are adopted to describe the course structure. Also the metadata of the course scripts (e.g., URIs or URLs) are described in these elements in the form of “attributes.” Although principally this is a proprietary approach to representing the course structure, we can still achieve a certain reusability of the courseware pub- lishing engine based on this DTD. Actu- ally, all courseware represented using the above XML DTD can be directly rendered by the JSP-based courseware publishing engine without the need of any re-configu- ration process. Here we refer readers to our previous publication (Qu, Gamper & Figure 2 : The WebDAV-Based Courseware Authoring Module To publishing engine XML-based course structure WebDAV-based course script repository 62 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Nejdl, 2001) for a more detailed descrip- tion of the courseware publishing engine designed in the first system implementa- tion. THE SECOND SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION: SCORM 1.1 CONFORMANT DESIGN Although we have achieved certain reusability of the courseware publishing engine thanks to the inherent flexibility of XML, the first system implementation has two notable drawbacks. First, it is propri- etary. On the one hand, the course struc- ture represented using the self-defined XML DTD cannot be directly rendered by other courseware publishing engines. On the other hand, the courseware publishing engine bound to the self-defined XML DTD cannot be re-used to generate other courseware represented using other XML formats. Second, the metadata of learning resources contained in Info1 are not anno- tated and managed in the first system implementation, which makes it very diffi- cult to reuse and exchange learning re- sources between our partner universities. Therefore, in order to achieve more interoperability, especially in order to find an efficient way to reuse and exchange learning resources, we decided to shift to an open standard: SCORM 1.1 in the sec- ond system implementation. The SCORM 1.1 was released by ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) in January 2001. One of the most important features of SCORM is its good compatibil- ity with other learning resource specifica- tions. The SCORM 1.1 smartly references IMS Learning Resource Metadata Speci- fication (IMS, 2001a) (in SCORM 1.2, also IMS Content Packaging Specification (IMS, 2001)) and IEEE LOM (Learning Object Metadata) (IEEE LTSC, 2001) as well as other specifications and further in- tegrates these specifications with one an- other to form a more complete and easier- to-implement model. With regard to metadata sets, the SCORM 1.1 is down- Figure 3: Self-Defined XML DTD <!ELEMENT Courseware (Title, Author+,Description?, CourseUnit+)> <!ATTLIST Courseware xmlns:courseware CDATA #FIXED “http://www.kbs.uni-hannover.de/Courseware”> <!ELEMENT Title (#PCDATA)> <!ATTLIST Title pic CDATA #IMPLIED > <!ELEMENT Author (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT Description (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT CourseUnit (Overall,Location?, CourseElement*)+> <!ATTLIST CourseUnit name CDATA #REQUIRED url CDATA #REQUIRED> <!ELEMENT Overall (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT Location EMPTY> <!ATTLIST Location uni (all|Hannover|Dresden|Hildesheim|Bozen) #IMPLIED> <!ELEMENT CourseElement (#PCDATA)> <!ATTLIST CourseElement name CDATA #REQUIRED url CDATA #REQUIRED > Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 63 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. wards compatible with IEEE LOM 3.5 and IMS Metadata Specification 1.1. Regard- ing Content Structure representation, it de- fines SCORM 1.1 CSF, which itself is de- rived from AICC CMI CSF (AICC, 2001). The SCORM 1.1 also defines a Content Model consisting of three components: Raw Materials, SCO (Block), and Course. Together with the metadata specification and CSF, the Content Model can enable the reuse and exchange of learning re- sources at different aggregation levels. More importantly, the SCORM 1.1 also provides a RTE (Run-Time Environment) that offers a standardized way for SCO (Sharable Content Object)-based learning resources to communicate with an LMS (Learning Management System) through the use of common API. During the devel- opment process, the RTE can provide us with the beneficial guidance to the system implementation. In general, the SCORM 1.1 conformant design of the second system implementation consists of four tasks: (1) Adapting existing learning re- sources into the SCORM 1.1 Content Model. The learning resources contained in Info1 include not only some self-made “internal” materials, but also lots of “exter- nal” learning resources that directly exist on the Web. According to the SCORM 1.1 Content Model, these “internal” and “ex- ternal” learning resources are reasonably designed as Raw Materials, SCO (Block), and Course in the second system imple- mentation, as depicted in Figure 4. During the system design, we’ve given a special consideration to the differ- entiation between Raw Materials and SCOs. While each course unit of Info1 can be naturally designed as an SCO and all its underlying raw materials (e.g., figures, tables, etc.) can be naturally designed as Raw Materials, the “external” resources have to receive more attention while being adapted into the SCORM 1.1 Content Model. Because the SCO represents the lowest level of granularity of learning re- sources that can be tracked by an LMS using the SCORM RTE, and also the SCO itself must be independent of learning con- text, we intentionally designed all “exter- nal” learning resources as Raw Materials in order to retain some reasonable learning context between “external” resources and SCOs (course units) ( Qu & Nejdl, 2002). Additionally, we have also organized sev- eral SCOs into higher aggregations (Blocks), which can further facilitate the Figure 4: The SCORM 1.1 Conformant Info1 Block Raw Materials Raw Materials Course SCO 64 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. reuse and exchange of learning resources at different aggregation levels. (2) Representing the course struc- ture using SCORM 1.1 CSF. The SCORM 1.1 employs CSF to aggregate learning resources into a cohesive unit of instruction, e.g., course, lesson, and mod- ule, etc. In comparison to the use of self- defined XML DTD in the first system implementation, representing the course structure using SCORM 1.1 CSF consti- tutes the key to our shift from proprietary design to open-standard-oriented develop- ment. On the one hand, the CSF-based course structure can be now directly ren- dered by any other SCORM 1.1 conformant courseware publishing engines; on the other hand, our courseware publishing engine implemented in the second system imple- mentation can be now re-used to generate other SCORM 1.1 conformant courseware. In Figure 5 we illustrate the SCORM 1.1 CSF-based course structure representation of Info1. It could be directly rendered by any SCORM 1.1 conformant courseware publishing engines. (3) Annotating and managing learning resource metadata. In order to facilitate the reuse of learning resources, all learning resources contained in Info1 are annotated with SCORM 1.1 metadata on the basis of three aggregation levels (Raw Materials, SCO (Block), and Course). Dur- ing the metadata annotation process, we’ve paid special attention to the metadata’s compatibility with other popular specifica- tions while still retaining 100% compatibil- ity with the SCORM. The SCORM 1.1 Metadata Information Model is broken up into nine categories: General, Lifecycle, Meta-Metadata, Technical, Educational, Rights, Relation, Annotation, and Classifi- cation. Besides complying with all guide- lines provided by the SCORM “best prac- tice” for each category, we applied the ACM Computing Classification System (http://www.acm.org/class/1998) in the “Classification” category, which fits very well to describe learning resources at the “ontology” or “terminology” level. Also in the “Relation” category, the relationships between three aggregation levels are de- scribed using “HasPart,” “IsPartOf,” etc., which nicely reflects the course structure at the “metadata” level. In addition, in order to effectively manage the learning resource metadata, we choose a native XML database: Apache Xindice (http://xml.apache.org/xindice) to store SCORM metadata Application Pro- Figure 5: The SCORM 1.1 CSF-based course structure representation of Info1 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 65 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. files. As a so-called native XML database, Apache Xindice provides a natural way to store, retrieve, update, search, and discover SCORM metadata. In Xindice, all metadata Application Profiles are stored in their origi- nal XML format without the need for any pre-processing. The search and update of metadata can be easily accomplished, tak- ing advantage of W3C XPath language and XUpdate language from XML:DB Initia- tive. (4) Constructing the SCORM 1.1 RTE. The SCORM 1.1 RTE actually serves as the new courseware publishing engine in the second system implementa- tion. It takes the SCORM 1.1 CSF as the input and then dynamically generates the courseware presentation on the Web. In Figure 6 we illustrate the infrastructure of the SCORM 1.1 RTE. The SCORM 1.1 RTE is constructed on a JSP&Servlet-enabled Web server: Apache Tomcat 3.2.3. On the server side, a JSP component is used to dynamically render the SCORM CSF-based course structure into the navigation menu depicted in the left frame of Figure 4. Additionally, on the server side there are also several Java Servlet components responsible for controlling actual sequencing of SCOs, han- dling the communication between RTE and SCOs (e.g., getting and setting Data Model), and managing the persistence of Data Model. On the client side, a non-face Java Applet is implemented as the SCORM RTE API Adapter and embedded in the left frame of Figure 4. This API Adapter Applet provides the communication to the RTE server-side Servlet components for Data Model persistence management. Note that on the client side, the SCOs cannot make direct communication with the RTE server to call API functions. All calls from SCOs must take the API Adapter as a broker and use client-side JavaScript. Moreover, all learning context existing within an SCO must be managed by the SCO itself using embedded client-side JavaScript. THE THIRD SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION: SCORM 1.2 CONFORMANT DESIGN At the beginning of October 2001, we began to develop the third system imple- mentation inspired by our desire of pursu- ing more openness and interoperability of the collaborative courseware generating system. The third system implementation is based on the SCORM 1.2, released by ADL in October 2001. In comparison to the SCORM 1.1, the SCORM 1.2 has sev- eral important improvements. Regarding metadata specification, the SCORM 1.2 sits on a higher level than SCORM 1.1, offer- ing downwards compatibility with IMS 1.2.1 (instead of IMS 1.1 in SCORM 1.1) and IEEE LOM 6.1 (instead of LOM 3.5 in SCORM 1.1). With regard to the Con- tent Structure representation, the SCORM 1.2 deprecates SCORM 1.1 CSF and pro- vides a CP specification which is derived Figure 6: The Infrastructure of the SCORM 1. 1 RTE API CSF-based course structure Learning resource repository JSP and Java Servlet Apache Tomcat 3.2.3 Web server API Adapter (Java Applet) SCO JavaScript Web browser Data persistence 66 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. from the IMS CP specification 1.1.2. As a matter of fact, the use of SCORM 1.2 CP enables a new functionality of the collabo- rative courseware generating system. That is, on the basis of the SCORM 1.2 CP, learn- ing resources contained in Info1 can be physically packaged and unpackaged. This will greatly facilitate the exchange of learn- ing resources between different LMSs. In general, in order to shift the sec- ond system implementation to the third one, we have to fulfill four tasks: (1) Transferring learning re- sources from SCORM 1.1 Content Model to SCORM 1.2 Content Model. Since the SCORM Content Model remains almost untouched from version 1.1 to 1.2, except for several nomenclature changes, the transferring process is relatively straight- forward. (2) Representing the course struc- ture using SCORM 1.2 CP. The SCORM 1.2 CP extends the latest IMS CP specifi- cation with several additional SCORM-spe- cific elements, particularly in the “organi- zation” section where SCORM 1.2 Con- tent Structure is located. By means of such sort of extension, the SCORM 1.2 CP can effectively define the structure and the in- tended behaviour of a collection of learn- ing resources along with the 100% down- wards compatibility with the IMS CP. In comparison to the second system imple- mentation, in which the course structure is represented using SCROM 1.1 CSF, rep- resenting the course structure using SCORM 1.2 CP in the third system imple- mentation can achieve more interoperability thanks to the higher popularity of IMS CP. More importantly, because the course structure is now self-contained described in a SCORM 1.2 CP Application Profile, including all descriptions of dependency and relationships existing between learning re- sources, not only those “internal” resources existing physically in a package and de- scribed by URI, but also those “external” resources existing on the Web and described by URL, all learning resources in Info1 can now be exchanged between different LMSs based on the SCORM 1.2 CP, either par- tially or as a whole. Such sort of exchange, namely, importing, exporting, aggregating, or disaggregating packages of learning re- sources, makes it feasible to reuse the learning content at various aggregation lev- els. Figure 7: The SCORM 1.2 CP Application Profile of Info1 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 67 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. As an example, in Figure 7 we illus- trate the SCORM 1.2 CP Application Pro- file of Info1. Based on this CP Application Profile, Info1 can be not only physically packaged and unpackaged, but can also be dynamically presented on the Web by any SCORM 1.2 CP (also IMS CP) conformant courseware publishing engines. (3) Annotating and managing learning resource metadata. Because IEEE LOM, the cornerstone of SCORM 1.2 metadata specification, has experienced considerable changes from version 3.5 to version 6.1, all SCORM 1.1 conformant metadata generated in the second system implementation have to be modified accord- ing to the SCORM 1.2 metadata specifi- cation in the third system implementation. Fortunately, since the SCORM Content Model remains almost unchanged from version 1.1 to 1.2, we only need to concen- trate on the syntax changes during the transferring process. In addition, regarding the metadata management, the architec- ture of Apache Xindice-based metadata repository need only several slight modifi- cations. (4) Constructing the SCORM 1.2 RTE. Since the RTE definition remains unchanged from SCORM 1.1 to SCORM 1.2, all implemented functionalities in the SCORM 1.1 RTE can be directly trans- ferred to the SCORM 1.2 RTE implemen- tation. However, since the course struc- ture is now represented using SCORM 1.2 CP, we need to modify the “parser” JSP in order to handle the SCORM CP Applica- tion Profile. Also the new functionality of SCORM 1.2, namely, physically packag- ing and unpackaging learning resources based on the SCORM 1.2 CP Application Profile, needs to be developed. CONCLUSIONS In Table 1 we list a brief comparison between three system implementations. The evolution of the collaborative courseware generating system is actually motivated by our efforts to improve the reusability and interoperability of learning resources. From the proprietary design in the first system implementation to the SCORM-based development in the second and the third system implementation, our system always evolves towards open stan- dards and has become increasingly open and interoperable. Currently the exchange of learning resources based on the second and third system implementation has been Table 1: A Comparison Between Three System Implementations 1st Version 2nd Version 3rd Version WebDAV-based collaborative courseware authoring Yes Yes Yes Course structure representation & courseware publishing engine Non- interoperable Interoperable with SCORM 1.1 CSF and AICC CMI CSF Interoperable with SCORM 1.2 CP and IMS CP 1.1.2 Metadata annotation and management N/A Conformant with SCORM 1.1, IMS 1.1, and LOM 3.5 Conformant with SCORM 1.2, IMS 1.2.1, and LOM 6.1 Exchange learning resources N/A Yes, based on SCORM 1.1 Content Model Yes, based on SCORM 1.2 Content Model Physically package & unpackage learning resources N/A N/A Yes, based on SCORM 1.2 CP or IMS 1.1.2 CP Courseware interactivity N/A Yes, based on SCORM 1.1 RTE Data Model (AICC CMI Data Model) Yes, based on SCORM 1.2 RTE Data Model (AICC CMI Data Model) 68 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 1(3), 59-68, July-Sept 2003 Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. already underway between several Ger- man universities and institutions. Also the SCORM 1.1 and SCORM 1.2 conformant metadata repositories are now being inte- grated into an e-learning peer-to-peer net- work, Edutella (http://edutella.jxta.org), with the purpose of further improving the reusability and interoperability of learning resources. REFERENCES ADL Technical Team (2001). SCORM V1.1. http://www.adlnet.org ADL Technical Team (2001a). SCORM V1.2. http://www.adlnet.org AICC (2001). CMI 001-AICC/CMI Guidelines for Interoperability V3.5. http://www.aicc.org/ Goland, Y. Y., Whitehead, E. J., Faizi, A., Carter, S., & Jensen, D.(1999). HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring- Changtao Qu is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the Learning Lab Lower Saxony, University of Hannover, Germany. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering respectively from Tianjin University, P. R. China in 1990 and Harbin Institute of Technology, P. R. China in 1995. His current research interests include learning management system, distributed computing, and the Semantic Web. Contact Mr. Qu at: Learning Lab Lower Saxony, University of Hannover, Expo Plaza 1,D-30539, Hannover, Germany. Email: qu@learninglab.de. Wolfgang Nejdl has been Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Hannover since 1995, after being Associate Professor of Computer Science at the RWTH Aachen (1992-1995). In 1988, was Visiting Researcher at Stanford University, in 1992 to Xerox PARC, 2001 and 2002 again at Stanford University. The Institute for Information Systems/ Knowledge Based Systems headed by Dr. Nejdl does research in the areas of artificial intelligence, adaptive hypermedia systems, as well as metadata-based learning repositories and peer-to-peer systems. Dr. Nejdl has published more than 140 conference and journal publications in these areas and has been a member of numerous program committees and editorial boards in these areas. He is member of two ESPRIT Networks of Excellence in the areas of artificial intelligence and the Semantic Web. He is Director and Founding Member of the Learning Lab Lower Saxony (L3S), a unique German competence center focussing on learning technology research, with members from five universities. Contact Dr. Nejdl at: Learning Lab Lower Saxony, University of Hannover, Expo Plaza 1,D-30539, Hannover, Germany. Email: nejdl@learninglab.de. WEBDAV. RFC 2518 IEEE LTSC (2001). IEEE LOM Working Draft 6.1. http://ltsc.ieee.org IMS (2001). IMS Content Packag- ing Spec. V1.1.2. http://www.imsproject. org IMS (2001a). IMS Learning Re- source Metadata Spec. V1.2.1. http:// www.imsproject.org Qu, C., Gamper, J., & Nejdl, W.(2001). A Collaborative Courseware Generating System based on WebDAV, XML, and JSP. in Proc. of the 1st IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Madison, USA. Qu, C., & Nejdl, W.(2002). Towards Interoperability and Reusability of Learn- ing Resource: a SCORM-conformant Courseware for Computer Science Edu- cation. in Proc. of the 2nd IEEE Interna- tional Conference on Advanced Learn- ing Technologies, Kazan, Russia. 
work_wfsfvrsu4jdelkuuhd77tnedju	----	Journal of Research on Technology in Education 363 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. JRTE, 41(4), 363–391 K–12 Distance Educators at Work: Who’s Teaching Online Across the United States Leanna Archambault Arizona State University Kent Crippen University of Nevada, Las Vegas Abstract Due to the current proliferation of virtual schools, a growing number of teachers are facing the challenge of teaching online. This study examines the demographic nature and experiences of K–12 online teachers. Findings show that online teachers are experienced in the traditional classroom, as indicated by their years of experience and the level of their advanced degrees. These teachers seek a better means to engage with students, a greater sense of community, and the ability to teach without the constraints of traditional teachings, such as a bell schedule or issues of classroom management. Data also suggest that aspects of teaching online, such as the number of classes/students, student motivation, and lack of support, can be overwhelming at times. Through this study, we are able to gain a better understanding of the educators them- selves, including specific advantages and challenges of teaching in an online environment. (Key- words: Distance education, online education, virtual schooling, teacher preparation, K–12) INTRODUCTION Although modes and methods of teaching remained much the same during the 20th century, the development of recent technology has vastly changed the way we communicate, learn, and engage with one another. As a result, the 21st- century educational landscape has also been altered. One of these changes has been the addition of online distance education, specifically the proliferation of virtual schools in K–12 settings. These programs allow students to complete en- tire levels of schooling via the Web. In the case of virtual high schools, students are able to earn their diplomas through online distance education programs. Clark (2001) defined a virtual school as “an educational organization that offers K–12 courses through Internet or Web-based methods” (p. 1). To incorporate this mode of education, various formats have emerged from a variety of sources, including state, local, private, and nonprofit agencies. The extent of online content offered within these types of schools varies. Although certain virtual schools have been created to include curriculum that is entirely online, others have incorporated specific distance education courses that are offered in addi- tion to their traditional classes held in “brick and mortar” buildings (Roblyer & Marshall, 2002–2003). In all of their various inceptions, virtual schools can be viewed as part of the online distance education movement in which the Internet is used to provide 364 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. education to students. Virtual schools offer an organized set of courses leading to the completion of various grades, using the Internet as the primary means of communication. According to Russell (2004), “They emerged in the closing years of the 20th century, and can be understood as a form of schooling that uses online computers to provide some or all of a student’s education” (p. 2). Schools have the option of joining a larger nonprofit organization, such as Vir- tual High School Global Consortium (VHS, http://www.govhs.org), founded in 2001, while others develop courses either on their own or as part of other entities, such as an independent school district, a state-sponsored school, or a virtual charter school. Because virtual schools are mostly sponsored by states or local educational agencies, implementation varies widely, including the amount to which students complete learning activities via the Web. Due to different implementation models, many terms have emerged to describe different types of online distance education within virtual schooling, including “e-learning,” “hybrid courses,” “asynchronous learning,” and “Web- based learning,” adding to the confusion of researching this particular field. However, in a recent report regarding online distance education, Allen and Sea- man (2006) developed specific definitions: Online:• Course where most or all of the content is delivered online. At least 80% of seat time is replaced by online activity. Blended/hybrid: • Course that blends online and face-to-face delivery. Between 30 and 79% of the content is delivered online. Web-facilitated: • Course that uses Web-based technology to facilitate a face-to-face course. Between 1 and 29% of the content is delivered online. Various examples of online education can be found under each of these mod- els. For example, Arizona Virtual Academy, now run as part of the nationwide online distance education provider, K12, offers a completely online learning experience for students from grades K–12. For the 2006–2007 school year, Arizona Virtual Academy served 3,046 students from across the state of Arizona (Arizona Department of Education, 2008). Students attend this program full time and can complete their grade levels online. Similar programs are found in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Other programs, such as Odyssey Charter School in Las Vegas, Nevada, combine online learning experiences with a requirement of meeting face-to- face in a blended or hybrid approach. In this model, the Web is used to deliver a majority of the content, but students also meet with their teachers at their home for grades K–7, or, for upper grades (8–12) they attend a one-day-a-week, 4-hour course on campus. With the hybrid model, the student is still enrolled full time in the program but attends the course in a combination of online and face-to-face formats. Finally, many schools have seen the growing trend of online education and have begun to offer a portion of their face-to-face courses online in either a Web-facilitated or blended model. Typically, students participating in these Journal of Research on Technology in Education 365 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. programs receive a majority of their instruction in a face-to-face environ- ment but have a portion of their class online. For example, part of Texas Tech’s Outreach and Distance Education program offers standalone online content to K–12 students to supplement their traditional school curriculum. Within each of these models, K–12 online education has emerged as a grow- ing and legitimate form of schooling in the 21st century. To date, research in this area has focused on student characteristics, student achievement, and predictive measures for student success in online environments (Cavanaugh, Gillan, Kromrey, Hess, & Blomeyer, 2004; Rice, 2006; Roblyer & Marshall, 2002–2003). Little is known about the population of educators who teach on- line, their characteristics, preparation, and whether or not they differ from the general population of those who teach in traditional settings. The current study surveyed K–12 online teachers from across the nation to describe the popula- tion of those teaching in online environments. These teachers were surveyed with regard to general demographic information including age, race, gender, ethnicity, educational background, and years of teaching experience. Online teachers were also asked open-ended questions regarding their overall experience and how they came to teach in an online environment. Using a survey meth- odology, this study gathered data to begin examining the population of K–12 online distance educators. Current Status of Distance Education in the K–12 Setting To understand the scope of virtual schools, it is helpful to gain an overall picture of the current status of online K–12 education in the United States. In a national survey of 2,305 public school districts in the 50 states and District of Columbia, Setzer, and Lewis (2005) found that during the 2002–2003 school year, approximately one third of public school districts (36%) had students enrolled in online distance education courses. Of the total enrollments in online distance education courses, 68% of students attended high schools, 29% attended combined or ungraded schools, 2% attended middle or junior high schools, and 1% attended elementary schools (Setzer & Lewis, 2005). In fact, the most recent national data show that, of a survey of 867 school districts, 69.8% of the districts reporting had at least one student who had taken an online course in 2007–2008, with an additional 12.3% planning to have at least one student take an online course within the next three years. (Picciano & Seaman, 2009). According to the researchers, “These data clearly reflect that the vast majority of American school districts are providing some form of online learning for their students and more plan to do so within the next three years.” (Picciano & Seaman, 2009, p. 9). An estimated 600,000–700,000 K–12 public school students were engaged in online learning in 2005–2006, and this figure increased to approximately 1,030,000 students during the 2007–2008 school year (Picciano & Seaman, 2007, 2009). This represents a 47% increase in enrollments in two years, and these figures are expected to increase as more school districts explore the potential advantages of offering online classes, including addressing growing student populations, dealing with the challenges of limited space, scheduling conflicts, failed courses, and meeting the needs of 366 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. specific groups of students by allowing them to take courses for credit recovery or Advanced Placement, and/or courses that are beyond a limited geographical area (Setzer & Lewis, 2005). The proliferation of distance education programs in K–12 settings has resulted in the emergence of virtual schools. These programs, such as Arizona Virtual Academy, which offers K–12 online, allow students to complete entire levels of schooling via the Web. In the case of virtual high schools, students are able to earn their diplomas via online distance education programs. Virtual schools have been in existence since the proliferation of the Internet in the mid-1990s, and they continue to grow at a significant pace, with 72% of school districts planning to expand distance education courses in the future (Setzer & Lewis, 2005). With the growing population of K–12 online students and teachers, it remains to be determined if the characteristics of this group of teachers differ from the notion of what it means to be a teacher in a traditional classroom. The current understanding of what teachers should know and be able to do is based on a traditional classroom setting. However, as the number of virtual schools increase, so too do the number of teachers entering the field of online distance education. Research that focuses on teachers’ knowledge of content, pedagogy, and technology as it pertains to teaching in an online environment is going to become increasingly central to the quality of K–12 online distance education and how teacher education programs address the needs of this group of educators. This study describes the population of those teaching in K–12 online environ- ments through data collected via a national survey. Although a variety of types of virtual schools exist, this study focused primarily on those schools that are sanctioned by states, either through a charter, local education agency, univer- sity, or state program. These schools fall under jurisdictions similar to their traditional counterparts, and therefore are required to hold teachers to the same state licensing and highly qualified standards. Although states have a great deal of discretion in setting these requirements, they must include a college degree, demonstration of subject-matter knowledge, and meeting any state licensure/ certification requirements (No Child Left Behind Act, 2001). Online teach- ers who met these criteria were surveyed with regard to general demographic information including age, race, gender, ethnicity, educational background, and years of teaching experience. Through the gathering of these data, the current study sought to answer the following research questions: What are the demographic characteristics of those teaching in online K–12 distance education programs in the United States? What are online educators’ overall impressions and experiences with teaching in a virtual environment? METHODOLOGY The population surveyed consisted of teachers throughout the United States who taught or had previously taught at least one online class with K–12 stu- dents in a state-sanctioned virtual school. This study focused on teachers from Journal of Research on Technology in Education 367 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. virtual schools sponsored by states, universities, lead educational agencies (LEAs, such as individual school districts), or virtual school consortia. A non-random purposeful sample was used to gather as many online teacher responses as pos- sible. This technique is described by Patton (1990) as the process of selecting specific information-rich cases from which the investigator can learn significant information central to the research. In this case, criterion sampling was used to select participants based on predetermined characteristics—specifically, educators who currently teach at least one class in a state-sanctioned K–12 virtual school. To find e-mail addresses of K–12 online teachers, the researchers conducted searches for specific state-sponsored schools identified by Keeping Pace with K–12 Online Learning (Watson, 2005; Watson & Ryan, 2006), an annual report on K–12 online learning in the United States. Typically, these schools have faculty/staff links on their Web sites that list the names and e-mail addresses of the teachers, administrators, and staff at that particular location. We collected a total of 2,262 e-mail addresses from K–12 online teachers from state- and university-sponsored virtual schools. Because an appropriate instrument measuring the intended variables did not exist in the literature, and many of the questions were of a general demographic nature, we developed a questionnaire (see Appendix A, page 387). The variables measured in the survey consisted of general background information such as educational level, number of years of teaching experience (both in traditional as well as online environments), and basic demographic information (e.g., age, gender, and ethnicity) (see Appendix). The survey also captured qualitative data by asking open-ended questions, including: Describe the career path that led you to teaching online. Was this type of • teaching always a goal? What led you to your current position? • Describe your overall experience with teaching online K–12 students. • Data gathered from these open-ended questions allowed the researchers to more fully describe this particular teaching population and the unique chal- lenges they face. Of the of 2,262 e-mail addresses that we gathered, 413 bounced back as undeliverable. Forty-eight of these e-mail addresses had typographical errors that we corrected and resent successfully. As a result, we deployed the survey to 1,795 online teachers employed at virtual schools from across the nation using Dill- man’s (2007) Tailored Design survey methodology. We gathered a total of 596 responses from 25 different states, representing an overall response rate of 33%. Participants represented the following states: Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Califor- nia, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Caro- lina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Of these states, the majority of responses came from Pennsylvania (14.4%), Idaho (13.6%), Arizona (10.2%), and Nevada (9.1%). The next section describes data gathered from this study, followed by a discussion of findings and their implications. 368 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. RESULTS Participants were predominantly female, with 456 responses (77%) versus 139 (23%) male, and were between the ages of 26 and 35 (201, 34%) and 36 and 45 (172, 29%). The mean age range was 36–45 (Figure 1). In addition, 534 (91%) of respondents were white/Caucasian, 16 (3%) were Hispanic, 11 (2%) were black/African American, 7 (1%) were Asian/ Pacific Islander, 13 (2%) were of mixed racial background, 3 (<1%) were Na- tive American, and 16 (3%) were of another background, including those who indicated that they preferred not to answer the question regarding race. Education Level Although 37 respondents (6%) did not indicate a response for the area of their bachelor’s degree, 559 (92%) reported having a bachelor’s degree. Ex- amining the areas of their bachelor’s degrees revealed that, of the K–12 online teachers who responded to the survey, 5 (1%) had bachelor’s degrees in early childhood education, 77 (14%) were in K–12 education, 89 (16%) were in elementary education, 127 (23%) were in secondary education, and 261 (47%) indicated a particular content area (Figure 2, page 369). Of the content areas that were reported, major areas included English (including literature), science (including biology, botany, chemistry, and zoology), social studies (including American Studies, history, and political science), and mathematics. Of the K–12 online teachers who responded to the survey, 380 (62%) indi- cated that they had earned a master’s degree, and 7 (2%) reported they were cur- rently working toward their master’s degrees. Of the 62% with master’s degrees, 148 (48%) were education (M.Ed.) degrees, including those in curriculum and instruction, while 73 (19%) reported having a degree in a particular content area, such as mathematics, science, social studies, or English. Interestingly, 50 Figure 1: Percentage of Respondents by Age Journal of Research on Technology in Education 369 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. (13%) had master’s degrees in educational technology, and 3 participants (<1%) indicated having a master’s degree in distance education. It may be that those involved in teaching online have a stronger interest in issues related to educa- tional technology and that this background better prepares them for teaching in an online environment. Another major area for graduate degrees held was edu- cational leadership/administration, with 34 (9%) teachers (Figure 3, page 370). Only 18 respondents (3%) indicated that they had earned a doctoral degree in education, administration, or the content areas of science or public affairs. One individual reported earning a doctoral degree in online education, and another person reported having a doctorate in life studies. Eight K–12 online teachers (1%) indicated that they were currently working on their doctoral degrees. In addition to undergraduate and graduate degrees, 43 participants (7%) indicated that they had additional certifications in a variety of teaching areas, including administration, special education, and content areas such as English, science, and social studies. Two respondents (<1%) stated that they had specific certifications in online teaching. Five teachers (1%) indicated that they had two master’s degrees related to education, and one (<1%) had three master’s degrees including an MEd, an MA in administration, and a master's of business admin- istration (MBA). K–12 Online Teachers In analyzing the major roles of those who responded to the current study, 318 (54%) stated that they were regular full-time teachers, and 212 (36%) reported that they were part-time teachers who also taught either at another Figure 2: Bachelor Degrees by Content Area 370 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. online school or in a traditional, face-to-face environment. Thirty-five (6%) reported having another role in addition to teaching within their school, such as an administrator, curriculum specialist, instructional designer, or staff devel- oper. Three (<1%) indicated that they were “combined” teachers or long-term substitutes. Twelve (2%) indicated an “other” response representing primarily additional roles they had within the school such as customer service, mentor, learning coach, or special education facilitator (Figure 4). Teaching Field We also gathered data about online teachers’ main teaching fields (Figure 5, page 373). Traditional subjects that were reportedly taught online were evenly distributed among mathematics (80, 13%), science (84, 14%), language arts/ reading (101, 17%), social studies (86, 14%), and humanities (69, 12%). These major fields accounted for 74% of responses (Figure 5, page 373). Teach- ing fields classified as “other” accounted for 26% of responses and included elementary, all subjects, special education, PE/Health, business, computers, or a combination of two or more major areas, such as language arts combined with mathematics. Within the “other” category, K–12 online teachers reported teaching all sub- jects (6, 4%), elementary classes (54, 36%), business (16, 11%), computers (13, 9%), special education (16, 11%), a combination of fields (12, 8%), and PE/ health (19, 13%). Additional fields represented by 14 teachers (9%) included mentoring, driver’s education, study skills, and agriculture. Grade Levels Taught K–12 online teachers reported the specific grades they taught online. The majority of online teachers surveyed reported teaching at the high school level Figure 3: Master’s Degree by Content Area Journal of Research on Technology in Education 371 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. (grades 9–12), followed by middle school grades 6 through 8, and finally those at the elementary level (PK–5) (Table 1, page 372). Five individuals indicated that they taught prekindergarten. This was an unexpected finding, as it would seem that there would be a minimum age for being able to engage with cur- riculum via the Web. The number of elementary school students taking online courses continues to expand, but it was not anticipated that students younger than 5 would be engaged in online learning. However, it should be noted that these individuals represented schools from four states that provided special education courses, so this number may reflect the level of content rather than the age of the students being taught. Specific Classes Taught Online Specific classes reportedly taught online within the field of English/language arts include American literature, British literature, composition, writing, jour- nalism, publications, mythology, science fiction/fantasy, and creative writing. Mathematics courses were made up of pre-algebra, algebra I and II, geometry, precalculus, calculus, trigonometry, and consumer mathematics. Online courses taught within the field of social studies consisted of U.S. government, politics, civics in cyberspace, world history, geography, economics, and global studies. Science classes included general science, physical science, life science, biol- ogy, marine biology, environmental science, physics, astronomy, earth science, chemistry, biotechnology, and anatomy. Elective courses consisted of a variety of foreign languages (e.g., Spanish, German, Latin, Chinese, and French) as well as business law, art and music history/appreciation, driver’s education, computer applications, and study skills. Figure 4: Teaching Role by Assignment 372 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Years of Teaching Experience K–12 online teachers responding to the survey had an average of 14 years of teaching experience in both traditional and online environments. The mini- mum number of years of experience was 1 year, and the maximum number was 50 years. Experience specific to the current school, representing online teaching, was lower, with an average of 4 years. The minimum was 0 years of experience (the 2007–2008 school year was the first year of teaching online). The maxi- mum number of years of experience was 32, although it was noted that this number also included years of experience with distance education as well as online distance education. Comparison of Teaching Field and Educational Background This study found that the vast majority of the online teachers responding (485, 87%) were teaching classes specifically related to the areas they reported for their educational background. Ten percent of teachers (55) were outside their area of expertise, and 3% (18) of responses did not provide enough detail to make a determination. The highest rates of online teachers educated within their field included those in the area of language arts (78, 14%), followed closely by those in social studies (76, 14%) and science (74, 13%). Another 56 online educators (10%) were teaching within their field in the humanities, including foreign language and the arts. In contrast, 55 online teachers (10%) indicated that they taught in a field other than one in which they were prepared. This was particularly evident in the area of mathematics, which represented 45% of those teaching outside their field. It appears that the ongoing struggle Table 1: Percentage of Teachers by Grade Level Taught Grade Level Taught Number of Respondents Percentage of Total Prekindergarten 5 <1% Kindergarten 78 3% 1st 81 3% 2nd 81 3% 3rd 93 4% 4th 141 6% 5th 100 4% 6th 122 5% 7th 154 6% 8th 185 7% 9th 352 14% 10th 382 15% 11th 403 16% 12th 376 15% Journal of Research on Technology in Education 373 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. for traditional schools to find qualified math teachers is also felt by online schools. These findings could be related to the current era of No Child Left Behind (2001) and the push for educators to become highly qualified in the areas in which they teach. It is likely that virtual schools also feel the impact of this requirement, especially those that are overseen by states and school districts, which are funded by public dollars. Nature of K–12 Online Schools and Classes We also gathered data about the characteristics of K–12 online school and the nature of specific classes as part of the current study. The majority of partici- pants (223, 38%) reported teaching at a state-sanctioned, state-level virtual school, with 132 (31%) teaching at a virtual school operated in conjunction with a lead educational agency. Additional responses included virtual school consortia (64, 11%), a private virtual school (47, 8%), and other virtual school (53, 9%). Those that selected “other” responded that they worked at a virtual charter school, a school that encompasses elements of a state-level and district- level virtual school, or a nationally accredited online school (Figure 6, page 374). The nature of the online classes was captured through a variety of elements, including the number of online classes taught, the format of those online classes (the amount of instruction taking place online), and the extent to which instruction happened in real time (synchronous) versus offline. A total of 467 respondents (80%) indicated that all of their classes were taught online, whereas 38 (7%) taught half of their courses online and 50 (9%) taught less than half of their courses online. The remaining respondents indicated that none of Figure 5: Main Teaching Field 374 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. their courses was currently taught online, although correlating these responses with those from the first question found that, although these teachers did not currently teach online, they had done so in the past. These online teachers had moved on to mentoring online teachers, helping students as a content-area learning coach, serving in an administrative role, or teaching as independent contractor on an as needed basis. In examining the amount of instruction taking place online, 80% reported teaching their entire class online, with the majority of face-to-face instruction replaced by online activity. Hybrid classes with 30–79% of the class taught online were reported by 7% of online teachers. Finally, 13% indicated that their classes were Web-facilitated, with 1–29% of instruction taking place online. In addition, 81% of online teachers reported that their instruction took place asynchronously, as there was no specific time that their students were required to be online to receive instruction. Twelve percent of online teachers responded that there were certain specific times when their students had to be online to receive brief instruction, whereas 6% stated that instruction took place synchro- nously and that their students were required to login at predetermined times to receive complete instruction. Number of Students and Classes Taught K–12 online teachers responding to the survey reported teaching an aver- age of 97 students. However, there was a wide variance in responses, from no current students to up to 2,000 students. Although 2,000 seems rather large, this number was indicated by a teacher who also served as a guidance counselor who taught such classes as character education, career exploration, Figure 6: Classification of K–12 Online Schools Journal of Research on Technology in Education 375 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. and academic development. It may be that this individual counted all of the students with whom she came into contact, resulting in a larger number than what would be expected. Several teachers also indicated that the number of students they taught varied or was difficult to determine. One teacher indicated that the number of students she taught was impossible to determine because her students enrolled at any point in time and worked at their own pace. In reviewing the wording of the question regarding the number of students, the intention was to seek the number of current students per teacher. However, the question asked, “What is the number of students you teach online? Count each student only once.” As such, it lacked a specific timeframe (i.e., number of students per quarter, semester, year), and this may have resulted in some confu- sion. Despite this, one theme related to this item was the large volume of stu- dents that online teachers are being asked to serve. Because there are no physical constraints, such as the number of desks that would fit in a typical classroom, online teachers are being asked to take on larger numbers of students, and this has the potential to impact the quality of the class, as one teacher noted in her response: “I teach 210–250, though fewer would be far more effective.” In addition to the number of students, 152 (28%) reported teaching one group of students, whereas 121 (22%) taught seven or more groups of stu- dents. Eighty-nine (16%) taught two groups of students, 64 (12%) taught three groups of students, 57 (10%) taught four classes, and 32 (6%) taught five classes, and 37 (7%) taught six classes. In addition to the groups of students taught online, surveyed teachers also reported the primary author of the content used to teach online, selecting as many sources as appropriate. A total of 219 (38%) responding K–12 online Figure 7: Percentage of Online Content Authorship 376 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. teachers indicated that they were the authors themselves, whereas 240 (42%) reported using a content provider such as Apex Learning, K–12 curriculum, or Virtual High School. A curriculum specialist was cited as the primary author by 114 (20%) of online teachers, whereas 92 (15%) cited a colleague. Forty-two (7%) selected “other” as the primary author, and this included collaborations among various individuals such as the teacher together with a curriculum spe- cialist or colleague. Other sources indicated included Web resources, traditional texts, online consortiums, and textbook publishers (Figure 7, page 375). In addition to basic descriptive information that was gathered as part of the current study, online teachers were also asked to describe their overall experi- ence with teaching online in an open-ended format. Participants were presented with the sentence starter “My experience with online teaching can be described as…,” from which they could begin their answer. We gathered a total of 495 responses; however, 13 (3%) of these responses discussed the nature of the par- ticipant’s position, covering aspects of how long and in what roles the teacher had taught rather than a descriptive narrative of his/her experience. Because these data were captured by previous questions in the survey, we discarded responses that were not of an impressionistic, descriptive nature. We then coded the remaining 482 responses according to overall impression, including positive and negative aspects of teaching K–12 online distance education. Overall, 305 (63%) comments were positive toward their online teaching experience, and 38 (8%) were negative. Comments that were characterized as having both positive and negative elements accounted for 139 (29%) of responses. The majority of K–12 online teachers reported having a positive overall ex- perience and shared a number of benefits, including not having to deal with the Figure 8: Percentage of Responses to Overall Positive Experience Percentage of Total Journal of Research on Technology in Education 377 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. frustrating aspects of the traditional classroom such as classroom management. Within the positive category, there were 26 distinctions (59%) with overall impressions such as positive, rewarding, good, enjoyable, wonderful, fulfilling, great, excellent, and exciting. For example, one teacher described her experience as “wonderful,” citing the ability to work with student individually and to actu- ally “teach”: My experience with online teaching can be described as wonderful! I love teaching online. I am able to work with students on an individ- ual level. I can assist them at the level they need. Also, the organiza- tion I work for believes that the student is at the center of all we do. Teacher training is amazing. I now expect so much more of myself and other educators. I wish all teachers could experience a situation like this. We are able to teach! What a great feeling. Another teacher discussed her overall experience as being positive and explains that she loves everything about her position, including not having to worry about classroom management: My experience with online teaching can be described as...100% positive! I love every aspect of this job. Online school is not for every student (or teacher) but is wonderful for those of us it fits. Online school requires much more discipline on the part either of the stu- dent or the parent (who we call the learning coach). All classroom management problems and discipline problems have been taken out of my hands. I can only encourage, offer limited incentives, and in- form. So the student/parent must be the source of motivation. Figure 9: Percentage of Responses to Overall Negative Experience D e s c ri p ti o n Percentage of Total Not as Good as Face -to-Face Terrible Formal Too Much Work Overwhelming Disappointing Negative Difficult Frustrating Challenging 378 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Figure 8 (page 376) displays the percentage of positive comments by catego- ry for the open-ended question “Describe your overall experience with teaching online K–12 students.” Other teachers did not have a favorable experience with online teaching and expressed their frustration with the overwhelming nature of the position. This was described by one individual as “disappointing”: My experience with online teaching can be described as disappoint- ing due to lack of support, the number of errors in the curriculum, lack of student discipline to complete assignments at an appropriate time, low pay, difficult programs and lack of technical support, the number of different classes (5) made it difficult to prepare effec- tively, poor student effort to improve, lack of support from student’s schools, no little parent involvement, lack of application to AP Ex- ams in May. Another teacher described the experience as “challenging,” in a frustrated tone: My experience with online teaching can be described as...chal- lenging. I don’t believe that the role of an online teacher has been defined at this time. For example, high school teachers are often expected to carry student loads far and above that that would be allowed in a traditional classroom––especially at the high school level––because the technology can replace certain roles a traditional teacher fills. However, individualized communication with these stu- dents is disproportionate to the time a traditional teacher spends in communication. Other negative categories coded from the primary data included challenging, frustrating, difficult, negative, not as good as face-to-face instruction, overwhelm- ing, formal (inflexible), and terrible. Figure 9 (page 377) displays the percentage of negative comments by category for the open-ended question “Describe your overall experience with teaching online K–12 students.” Four categories have elements of both positive and negative characteristics, and this “mixed” distinction accounted for 29% of responses. The four catego- ries included challenging but rewarding (74, 56%,) learning experience or learning curve (42, 30%), mixed (17, 13%), rollercoaster (i.e., ups and downs) (4, 3%), and similar to face-to-face teaching (2, 1%). “Challenging but rewarding” was a phrase used by many of the K–12 teachers to express both their concern about the position, including that it was time consuming and not suited for all students, as well as the perceived benefits, such as the ability to work one on one with students and to get to know them and their families better than they would in a traditional classroom. This was exemplified by one teacher’s response: My experience with online teaching can be described as...challeng- ing and rewarding. I have the opportunity to work with families Journal of Research on Technology in Education 379 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. who have an interest in their child’s education. I have found that to be refreshing. I also work with inner city students without worrying about teaching and living in the inner city. I find working with them to be very rewarding. There are many challenges though. I work harder now than ever before. No two years are ever the same. Other respondents in this category expressed their overall experience with K–12 online distance education as “mixed” or a “mixed bag,” again reflecting an overlap between positive and negative reactions. However, the value judgments are missing in this category. It simply denotes a mix between advantages and disadvantages of online teaching. For example, one teacher explains: My experience with online teaching can be described as a mixed bag. I have taught remedial to AP courses, so I have run the gamut. The motivated students do well, the unmotivated do not and are harder to contact than in face to face school. Otherwise it is pretty much the same. Also I have far more one on one time with my online stu- dents than with my face-to-face kids. Another category having both positive and negative elements is learning experience. This classification has beneficial aspects, such as growing and gain- ing confidence in one’s skills. It also has challenging characteristics including becoming frustrated, especially with having to learn various types of technology. On the positive side, one teacher writes: My experience with online teaching can be described as a learning experience! I have learned so much about computers/software/trou- ble-shooting. I would have never thought I could do so much on a computer. If you had asked me 8 years ago to even try to complete some of the work I now do I would have been flabbergasted! So, I learn and the students learn and we try to keep it educational, but still fun. This is a great teaching environment for teachers who are self-motivated, willing to learn, and who are good with doing a lot of work independently. On the down side of learning experience, another teacher explains: My experience with online teaching can be described as...a learning experience. I’ve experienced difficulties with an online textbook and had students experience technical difficulties, but I’m learning a lot. Other teachers in this category describe their learning experience as a “learn- ing curve”: My experience with online teaching can be described as a steep learning curve. The teaching skills/practices are basically the same. It is the technology and software that have been a challenge to learn. I find it a terrific opportunity to try new ideas with my students be- cause the computer opens up a whole new world to them. Many of them (3rd & 4th graders) are better at it than I am! 380 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. The term rollercoaster was used by a few teachers to describe the highs and lows of the online classroom. Teachers reporting that this characterized their overall experience described it as having its ups and downs and used the analogy of a rollercoaster to convey this sentiment: My experience with online teaching can be described as...a roller- coaster. Just like in face-to-face teaching the students are always ups and downs that come along. Our virtual classes have rolling enroll- ment which makes creating a group dynamic with classroom interac- tions a challenge. Many of my students are at-risk and just getting them to enter the course and continue working is a challenge, but I know the ones that do make it through that is one more student that I helped to be successful instead of dropping out. Finally, two individuals described K–12 online teaching as being similar to that of the traditional, face-to-face classroom. They highlighted the pros and cons and saw similar issues that a teacher has to face in both environments: My experience with online teaching can be described as very similar to the traditional teaching experience: students still have the same issues, colleagues are still helpful and cooperative, and administrators are still harried and demanding. Differences are: online students are more prone to procrastination––I had to develop new methods for keeping them moving; plagiarizing is easier for students––I have to be more aware of the possibility of copying and pasting; technical problems are more of an issue––students are directed to technical help either at their local school or the virtual high school staff; stu- dents think a computer-based course will be easier––I have an exten- sive syllabus that dispels that notion at the outset. DISCUSSION There are many similarities between K–12 online teachers responding to the current study and a national sample of 63,135 traditional teachers from across the United States (Strizek, Pittsonberger, Riordan, Lyter, & Orlofsky, 2006) responding to the National Center for Educational Statistics’ School and Staff- ing Survey. According to these data, the average age for a traditional teacher in the United States is 42.5. Of responding traditional teachers, 25% were male and 75% were female. In terms of racial background, traditional teachers are 83% Caucasian and 17% minorities, a group that is comprised of 8% African American, 6% Hispanic, 2% Asian, <1% Native American, and <1% mixed racial background. These demographic data are consistent with those reported by K–12 online teachers. The areas in which online teachers differed from their traditional counterparts included full-time versus part-time employment, years of experience, and levels of education. Ninety-one percent of traditional teachers taught in regular, full-time posi- tions, whereas only 3% taught in part-time roles and the remainder taught in combined and substitute positions (Strizek et al., 2006). This is compared with 54% of surveyed online teachers in full-time positions and 36% working in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education 381 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. field part time. In addition, 18% of traditional teachers had three or more years of teaching experience, and 82% had four or more years of experience. With online teachers, this figure was even more pronounced, with 10% teaching for three years or fewer, and 90% having four or more years of experience. Interest- ingly, online teachers responding to the current study who worked in a full-time capacity had an average of 12 years of both face-to-face and online teaching experience, with 3.9 years of online teaching experience. Those teaching online in a part-time role had an average of 16 years of overall teaching experience and 4.3 years of online teaching experience. Another area in which those surveyed from traditional teaching environ- ments as opposed to online ones differed was level of education. Although the attainment of bachelor’s degrees was identical by percentage (92%) for both groups, online teachers reported a higher incidence of master’s degrees, at 62% versus 41% of traditional teachers. Also, 13% of online teachers reported having degrees and certifications beyond or in addition to a master’s degree, as opposed to 7% of traditional teachers (Strizek et al., 2006). The similarities and differences in demographic characteristics between traditional and online teachers tell only one part of the story. A more detailed profile is achieved by closely examining the open-ended responses provided by respondents to the current study. Although many cited the ability to stay at home with their children as the predominant reason for becoming involved with online teaching, 14% expressed their desire for a new and innovative way of teaching and a better way to connect with students. This, combined with 5% who were overwhelmed with the demands of traditional teaching and 3% who felt that online teaching was the future of education, depicts a portrait of online teachers who have taught in the traditional classroom and find online teaching a better way to engage with the content and students. Many of these teachers see themselves as pioneers in a growing, ever-changing, and still developing field. One teacher summarized: My experience with online teaching can be described as fulfilling. I really feel that I can help each student individually. This is extremely challenging in a traditional classroom. I also enjoy the pioneering at- mosphere in which we are helping create a new vision of education, a wonderful opportunity to explore the new and growing area of online education. My experience began as just a job, but has grown into a career which I have become passionate about. I feel that I am making a positive difference in the lives of the students that I come in contact with as I am able to help them achieve their educational goals. Another 3% of online teachers reported that they were retired, and 2% reported that they were planning to teach online during their future retirement from the traditional classroom. This was a surprising result and represented the most seasoned and experienced teachers among the sample, with up to 40 years of traditional teaching. These individuals want to continue in the field that they 382 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. love while being able to have the flexibility to enjoy their retirement, includ- ing travel. They also can continue to make connections with students, which is particularly rewarding. One retiree wrote: My experience with online teaching can be described as very good. We have lots of support and a couple of training type sessions per year. There is far less stress because we lack face to face interaction and that seems to free both sides to be more open. Students still try to pull off some plagiarism and cheating, but usually I can catch that. I love that my time is free and as a retired person, I can walk the dogs etc and still make a little money working in the field I love. I am particularly happy when I “connect” with a student and do a little encouragement and/or career counseling. From the comparison to their traditional counterparts, as well as an examina- tion of their open-ended responses for becoming involved with online distance education, it seems that those teaching in online environments are surprisingly experienced in the traditional classroom, as indicated by their years of experi- ence and their levels of advanced degrees. The profile of an online teacher, as depicted from this study, includes those who are seeking a means to engage with students, parents, and content via the Internet in order to meet a variety of needs including a greater sense of community; a better, albeit different, connec- tion with students and parents; and the ability to teach without the constraints of a bell schedule or having to contend with issues of classroom management. From the descriptions of their experience with online teaching, they also appear to be innovative, adventurous, and willing to take on a challenge. Three percent of respondents expressed that they wanted to pursue online teaching to be able to combine their love of technology and teaching, and two specifically believed that their experiences with online teaching had made them better face-to-face teachers, as expressed in this comment: My experience with online teaching can be described as exciting and challenging. Science is one of the most difficult courses to teach in an online environment. It is also probably the most criticized by content face to face teachers. I have had to be more creative with my instruction as well as how I create my assessments. My online in- struction has made me a more effective face to face teacher. The profile of an online teacher built from the current study consists of those who are willing and eager to pursue a new and innovative way of teach- ing that poses a unique set of benefits, especially being able to directly create and adapt content for use with students. This could explain the higher level of education, as these individuals seek out challenge and champion the learning process related to education, content-related areas, educational technology, and even distance education. In addition, in searching for a new way to engage, interact, and connect their content with students, this may imply that teachers had reached the pinnacle of their traditional teaching and sought a different Journal of Research on Technology in Education 383 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. challenge that also afforded them more flexibility, along with a greater focus on actual teaching. This could also account for the additional years of overall teach- ing experience for K–12 online teachers responding to the current study. Implications This study has important implications for the field of online distance educa- tion and its teachers as well as for programs of teacher education who are pre- paring tomorrow’s educators for the online classroom, whether they realize it or not. The latest prediction is that, in 6 years, 10% of all high school classes will be offered online, and by 2019, this figure will increase to 50% (Christensen & Horn, 2008). This is happening for a variety of social, economical, and political reasons. From the current study, data support that the vast majority of online teachers are coming from traditional classrooms. Thirty-six percent are work- ing in the field part time, and many are teaching both face-to-face as well as online classes. It seems logical that teachers who have a solid foundation in their content and pedagogical knowledge may have an easier transition to the online classroom. This is a consideration that virtual schools will have to make in their hiring processes. Many major virtual schools such as K12 require 3 years of teaching experience in a specific content area as well as state certification and high qualifications. As the number of students in online classrooms continues to expand, the need for prepared teachers will become increasingly important. Although teachers are currently coming from the traditional classroom to teach in online settings, as the demand for online teachers increases, more educators will be recruited directly from undergraduate programs. Currently a majority of teacher education programs address teaching with technology in a single, isolated technology course (Hargrave & Hsu, 2000; Kay, 2006). This lone technology course is already stretched wide to cover a multitude of technology-related topics as they pertain to quality teaching. It is unlikely that this type of course, or undergraduate programs as a whole, are addressing the needs of those who will go on to teach in online environments. This puts a huge burden on the virtual schools themselves, which must then provide professional development to get teachers up to speed with the nuances of teaching in an online environment. Although the majority of teacher candidates will go on to teach in traditional, face-to-face classrooms, they may at some point in the future find themselves teaching an online class. Data from this study suggest that face-to-face teaching is a prerequisite for teaching online, and those who teach both online and face- to-face classes report that their skills from online teaching enhance and improve their traditional classrooms. Updating teacher education programs so that they address not only pedagogical issues in traditional environments, but also aspects of online pedagogy, how classroom management changes in an online setting, and how best to use modern technological tools to convey content and assess student understanding should be the aim of leading and innovative colleges of education. 384 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Limitations Although a tremendous amount of data can be gained via a national quan- titative study, a survey is inherently limited by its items and scales. There are specific questions that could have been asked differently, others that could have been added, and those that could have been omitted. For example, the ques- tion regarding age would have been more precise if respondents were asked to enter their specific age or year of birth, and the item regarding the number of students needed to specify a period of time. Although the researchers took every measure to minimize instrument error, it inevitably affects the accuracy of the measured variables. This is the restrictive nature of a one-time survey, and subsequent questionnaires will be informed by these results. Also, because respondents’ e-mail addresses were gathered via the Web, there could be a bias in those schools that decide to publish their teachers’ infor- mation as opposed to those that do not. To combat this, we contacted large consortium groups and, after some confusion, they were allowed to participate. The goal was to cast a wide net among K–12 online teachers to gather as many responses as possible. However, because the study relied on self-report data gathered via an e-mailed survey, there are inherent accuracy issues for which the researchers cannot directly verify the precision of the responses. As with all methods of data collection, Internet surveys have their own dis- advantages (Fowler, 2002), including not having a personal contact associated with the administration of the survey and no incentive to encourage participa- tion. This potentially resulted in a lower response rate (33%) than would occur with other types of surveys. The response rate significantly limits the researchers’ ability to generalize to the overall population of K–12 online teachers. This lim- ited ability to make generalizations is a primary limitation of the current study. Accordingly, it should be noted that the reporting of results from the current study reflected a sample of K–12 online teachers and does not necessarily reflect the population as a whole. Areas for Future Research Although this study gathered a large amount of data from a cross-section of K–12 online teachers, there is still a tremendous amount of research to be done regarding this relatively new and burgeoning field. The current study examined the characteristics of the teachers themselves and did not focus on the content of their courses, including course management systems (if any), instructional and interaction methodologies, or assessment strategies used with the classes. These are areas for future study, as there appears to be a disparity between vir- tual schools that allow their teachers to create their own content and those that use materials developed by a content provider, colleague, or curriculum special- ist. From the qualitative data, the teacher’s experience in relation to how much control they had to change their course(s) seemed to be an issue. In particular, a negative aspect that was noted was the inability to change errors within provider content, whereas a positive characteristic was the ability to be creative when creating content. This would be an interesting area to explore, including who provides content, how it is created and adopted, and the instructional strategies that are used along with specific content. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 385 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Another area for future research is how the experience of traditional classroom teachers impacts their online teaching. The question of whether or not online teachers should first be required to teach in a face-to-face classroom is also of concern. This could involve how online teachers conceptualize the domains of content and pedagogy, whether or not years of face-to-face teaching experiences lead to the blending of these domains, and how this might impact successful online teaching. The hiring and evaluation of online teachers is a growing area for further policy research. In addition to the preparation provided by teacher education programs, professional development for online teachers continues to be a major need and area for research. This includes what types of professional development related to content, pedagogy, and technology for teaching in an online environment are the most beneficial, and how the needs of K–12 online teachers compare to those in the traditional classroom. It also has the potential for evaluative research that measures the effectiveness of various types of professional devel- opment and offers a set of principled practices for the training of K–12 online teachers. CONCLUSION The field of K–12 online distance education is continuing to expand and grow, specifically through the proliferation of virtual schools throughout the United States. Increasingly, a growing number of educators find themselves teaching in a virtual classroom without walls. Until this study, there was a lack of data concerning the population of educators who teach online, their char- acteristics, and how they compared to the general teaching population. The purpose of this study was to describe those who teach in K–12 online environ- ments through data collected via a national survey. A total of 596 K–12 online teachers representing 25 states responded to the survey. The gathered data were analyzed to describe a sample of K–12 online teachers from across the United States. Results indicated that the survey respondents were a group of moti- vated, innovative individuals who were eager and willing to learn and valued the opportunities and advantages that online distance education can provide. This includes being able to connect with their content and students in a more individualized manner, without the constraints and management issues that go hand in hand with a face-to-face classroom. These teachers share similar characteristics to the general teaching population in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity, but they have increased experience and education levels. It is evident through this study that K–12 online teachers are highly experienced, educated, enthusiastic about teaching online, and on the forefront of the 21st-century classrooms of tomorrow. Contributors Leanna Archambault is an assistant professor in educational technology with- in the College of Teacher Education and Leadership at Arizona State University. Her research interests include various aspects of online education, particu- larly with regard to K–12 teacher preparation and the nature of technological 386 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in online environments. (Address: Arizona State University, College of Teacher Education and Leadership, P.O. Box 37110, Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100; E-mail: leanna.archambault@asu.edu) Kent Crippen is an associate professor of science education and technology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and serves as associate director of UNLV’s Center for Mathematics and Science Education. His current research involves the design and implementation of Web-based learning systems with a focus on cognitive scaffolds to support self-regulated learning. (Address: University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, P.O. Box 453005, Las Vegas, NV 89154-3005; E-mail: kcrippen@unlv.nevada.edu) References Allen, E., & Seaman, J. (2006). Making the grade: Online education in the United States. Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium. Arizona Department of Education (2008). Arizona Virtual Academy School report card. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www10.ade.az.gov/Re- portCard/SchoolSummary.aspx?id=79705&ReportLevel=1 Cavanaugh, C. S. (2004). Development and management of virtual schools: Issues and trends. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing. Cavanaugh, C., Gillan, K. J., Kromrey, J., Hess, M., & Blomeyer, R. (2004). The effects of distance education on K–12 student outcomes: A meta-analysis. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Christensen, C. M., & Horn, M. B. (2008). How do we transform our schools? [Electronic version]. Education Next, 13–19. Retrieved May 9, 2008, from http://media.hoover.org/documents/ednext_20083_12.pdf Clark, T. (2001). Virtual schools: Trends and issues. Phoenix: WestEd/Distance Learning Resource Network. Dillman, D. A. (2007). Mail and Internet surveys: The tailored design method (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Fowler, J. (2002). Survey research methods (3rd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hargrave, C. P., & Hsu, Y. (2000). Survey of instructional technology courses for preservice teachers. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 8(4), 303–314. Kay, R. H. (2006). Evaluating strategies used to incorporate technology into preservice education: A review of the literature. Journal of Research on Technol- ogy in Education, 38(4), 383–408. Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Picciano, A. G., & Seaman, J. (2009). K–12 online learning: A 2008 follow-up of the survey of U.S. school district administrators. Needham, MA: Sloan Consor- tium. Picciano, A. G., & Seaman, J. (2007). K–12 online learning: A survey of U.S. School District Administrators. Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium. Rice, K. L. (2006). A comprehensive look at distance education in the K–12 context. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 38(4), 425–448. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 387 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Roblyer, M. D., & Marshall, J. C. (2002-2003). Predicting success of virtual high school students: Preliminary results from an education success prediction instrument. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 35(2), 241–255. Russell, G. (2004). Virtual schools: A critical view. In C. Cavanaugh (Ed.), Development and management of virtual schools: Issues and trends (pp. 1–25). Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing. Setzer, J. C., & Lewis, L. (2005). Distance education courses for public elementary and secondary school students: 2002–03. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Smith, R., Clark, T., & Blomeyer, R. L. (2005). A synthesis of new research on K–12 online learning. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Strizek, G. A., Pittsonberger, J. L., Riordan, K. E., Lyter, D. M., & Orlofsky, G. F. (2006). Characteristics of schools, districts, teachers, principals, and school libraries in the United States: 2003–04 schools and staffing survey (NCES 2006- 313 Revised). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved May 28, 2008, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006313 U. S. Department of Education. (2001). No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Retrieved August 30, 2008, from http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/ index.html Watson, J. (2005). Keeping pace with K–12 online learning: A review of state-level policy and practice. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Watson, J. & Ryan, J. (2006). Keeping pace with K–12 online learning: A review of state-level policy and practice. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Appendix Virtual School Teacher Survey Instructions: The following survey items are intended to gather information about your background and preparation as an online educator. Please select the response that best describes your current teaching situation. 1. Do you currently teach at least one class in grades K–12 online? Yes No 2. In which state do you currently teach? ____________________________ 3. What is your gender? Male Female 388 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. 4. What race/ethnicity do you consider yourself? White/Caucasian Black/African American Asian or Pacific Islander Native American or Alaskan native Mixed racial background Other __________________ 5. What is your age group? 21–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 55 and above 6. How would you classify the school in which you currently teach? Virtual school operated by a local education-based agency (i.e., a school district) State-sanctioned, state-level virtual school Virtual school consortia, such as Virtual High School (VHS) University-based virtual school Private virtual school Other ____________________ 7. How do you classify your main assignment at THIS school (i.e., the activ- ity at which you spend most of your time) during this school year? (Check one only.) Regular full-time teacher Regular part-time teacher Regular combined teacher (i.e., your assignment requires you to provide instruction at more than one school, but you work the most hours at this school) Long-term substitute (i.e., your assignment requires that you fill the role of a regular teacher on a long-term basis, but you are still considered a substitute) Other staff who teach regularly scheduled classes (e.g., adminis trator, library media specialist or librarian, support staff, other professional staff including counselor and social worker) Other (specify) ________________ 8. Which best describes the way YOUR classes at this school are organized? (Check one only.) Journal of Research on Technology in Education 389 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. All of my classes are taught online. About half of my classes are taught online. Less than half of my classes are taught online. None of my classes are taught online. 9. Which of the following best describes the format of your online classes? (Check one only.) My class is taught online, with at least 80 to 100% of face-to-face contact replaced by online activity. My class is hybrid, with both online and face-to-face instruction. Approximately 30 to 79% of the class is delivered online. My class is Web-facilitated, in which Web-based technology is used to facilitate a face-to-face course. Approximately 1-29% of the content is delivered online. 10. Which of the following describes the format of your online teaching? There is no specific time at which my students are required to be online to receive instruction. There are certain specific times when my students must be online to receive brief instruction. My students must login at predetermined times to receive com plete instruction. 11. Considering your most recent FULL WEEK of teaching at THIS school: What is your main teaching field? Mathematics Science Language Arts/reading Social Studies Humanities (i.e. Art, Foreign Language) Other (Specify) ____________________ 12. Which specific courses do you teach online?___________________ 13. Considering the content of your class(es), who is the primary author? You A fellow colleague (i.e., another teacher) Curriculum specialist Software company Outside online content provider (i.e., Apex Learning, Virtual High School, etc.) Other _______________________(please specify) 390 Summer 2009: Volume 41 Number 4 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. 14. What is the total number of classes you teach online? If you teach 2 or more classes of the same subject (e.g., Chemistry 1) to DIFFERENT GROUPS OF STUDENTS at this school, count them as separate classes (e.g., if you teach chemistry to 2 classes of students and physics to 2 classes of students, you would report 4 classes of different groups of students). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 or more 15. What is the number of students you teach online? Count each student only once. ________ 16. Including this school year, how many years have you been employed as a teacher? (Include years spent teaching both full and part time, in both public and private schools.) ________ 17. Including this school year, how many years have you been employed as a teacher at THIS school? ________ 18. Which grades do you currently teach at this school? (Check all that apply.) Prekindergarten Kindergarten 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 19. Do you hold the following degrees or certificates? For each degree or certificate held, please list your major and minor fields of study. If you completed more than one degree or certificate at a level or had a double major or minor, please provide information for all fields of study at that level. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 391 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Degree or certificate If yes, record your: Major field(s) of study (Record all that apply) Bachelor’s degree(s)? Master’s degree(s)? Doctorate degree(s)? Other degree(s)? (specify) 20. Describe the career path that led you to teaching online. Was this type of teaching always a goal? What led you to your current position? 21. Describe your overall experience with teaching online K–12 students. 
work_wlr3xeh7vjaolh5prggcwendha	----	D is ta n c e e d u c a tio n D o c to ra l program fo r nurses as o ffe r e d by th e U n ive rs ity of South A f r i c a ( U N I S A ) VJ Ehlers, PhD, Department of Advanced Nursing Sciences, UNISA Conference paper p rese n te d a t the In tern a tio n a l N etw ork f o r Doctoral E ducation in N ursing (IN D E N) at the Royal College o f M edicine in L ondon on 2 7 J u n e 1999 B a c k g ro u n d In fo r m a tio n U n isa The purpose o f this article is to p ro v id e b rie f overview s o f distance education, the developm ent o f the U niversity o f South Africa (U nisa) and the D ep artm en t o f A d v an ced N ursing S ci­ ences at this university. D o cto ral p ro g ram s as offered by this D epartm ent w ill be discu ssed in som e detail. D istance ed u ­ cation courses are offered th ro u g h o u t the w orld, but doctoral program s, esp ecially in the field o f N ursin g Sciences, are not offered by all distance edu catio n institutions. There are nu m erous form s o f and d efinitions for distance ed u ­ cation. T h ey all have only one thing in com m on, nam ely the physical d istance betw een the students and the teachers, and usually the absence o f students from classroom s and even from entire u n iv e rs ity c a m p u se s. P y m (in R e in e rt & F ry b a c k 1997:42) aptly described d istan ce edu catio n as “ ...a se t o f teaching a n d learning stra teg ies f o r c o n n ectin g p e o p le who have learning needs with the resources required to m eet those needs". D istan ce education has been offered in m any form s for nearly 150 years (R ow ntree in R einert & Fryback 1997:42). In 1873 the U niversity o f the C ape o f G o o d H ope, later to be renam ed the U niversity o f S outh A frica (U nisa), m odelled after the U niversity o f L ond o n as it ex isted at that tim e, was founded. Initially this U n iv ersity acted solely as an ex am in ­ ing body, b ut com m enced teaching external students by m eans of correspondence m ethods in 1946. Students can w rite their ex am in atio n s at m ore than 4 5 0 ex ­ am ination centers th ro ughout the w orld. D u rin g 1998, U nisa conferred a total o f 12 402 d iplom as and degrees, including 400 M asters’ and 83 D octoral degrees, o f w hich three w ere awarded by the D epartm ent o f A dv an ced N u rsin g Sciences. The D e p a r t m e n t o f A d v a n c e d N u r s i n g S c ie n c e s , U n i s a This D epartm ent w as estab lish ed du rin g 1975, adm itting its first stu d en ts du rin g 1976 an d b o a stin g its first g rad u ates during A pril 1978 g raduation cerem onies. T he D epartm ent offers undergraduate and d ip lo m a distance ed u catio n courses only to registered professional nurses w ish in g to obtain post basic qualificatio n s in H ealth S ervices M anagem ent, N u rs­ ing E d u c a tio n , C o m m u n ity H ealth N u rsin g , O ccu p atio n al Health N ursin g and G erontological N ursin g by pursuing un­ dergraduate degree and/or dip lo m a courses. T his D epartm ent fulfils the South A frican Nursing C o u n cil’s (SA N C ’s) require­ m ents, enabling the successful candidates to register their ad­ ditional qualifications with the SANC. A t post graduate level the D epartm ent offers a research based M aster’s degree (for students possessing H onours degrees), a course content M a ste r’s degree com prising five papers and a research dissertation (for students w ithout H onours degrees) and a M a ste r’s degree specializing in Clinical N ursing Care - only available to students w orking in selected services where preceptors can be provided. D uring 1999 the total num ber of students registered for the different courses were: C O U R S E C O M P L E T E D R E G : 1999 D iplom as in A dvanced N ursing Sc 1 118 6 8 6 BA Cur 7 391 2 831 M A Cur 69 368 D Litt et Phil 25 37 (Statistics obtained from U n isa’s Bureau for M anagem ent In­ form ation: June 1999) D is ta n c e e d u c a tio n D L it t et Phil p rog ram as o ffe re d by the D e p a rtm e n t o f A d v a n c e d N u rsin g S c ie n c e s , U N IS A I n tr o d u c tio n The distance education (D L itt et Phil) doctoral program has been offered by this D epartm ent since the 1980s - instituted to m eet the need for further education by the successful M as­ te r ’s students. A need for doctoral program s in nursing was also identified by the nursing services in the Republic o f South A frica (R SA ) w ho required nurse leaders prepared at doc­ C u r a t i o n is D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 0 toral level, especially for policy form ulations. The first suc­ cessful candidate graduated during 1984. The total num ber o f successful candidates until the end o f 1998 am ounted to 25. D uring 1999 the students registered for the D Litt et Phil degree were 37 - from the RSA (17), Botsw ana (4), Lesotho (4), M alaw i (1), Sw aziland (5), Z am ­ bia (1), Zim babw e (3) and the U nited States o f Am erica (1 w ho moved to New York from B otsw ana during his studies). The fields in w hich these 37 students w ere conducting their research could be categorized as falling into: Students select their ow n fields o f research usually in accord­ ance with needs perceived by their em ployers, o r their coun­ tries’ identified health and/or nursing care priorities. A d m iss io n re q u ire m e n ts Any student w ishing to be adm itted to the D Litt et Phil pro­ gram should be in possession o f a M a ste r’s degree or equiva­ lent qualification. The underlying rationale for this adm is­ sion requirem ent is that the D Litt et Phil student should pos­ sess in-depth knowledge about the prospective field of research and should be capable o f conducting independent research. T he prospective student needs to subm it a detailed academ ic record together w ith a research proposal, outlining the title, topic, purpose, scope, m ethodology and feasibility o f the pro­ posed research. This is a research-focused program , with the aim o f preparing nurses who can contribute to the develop­ ment o f nursing know ledge and theory in general. C andi­ dates can em bark on research activities striving to develop the clinical science underlying nursing practice provided they w ork in areas w here such research is feasible, where the em ­ ployers support the specific field o f research and where pre­ ceptors might be available. The decision as to the topic and title o f the research rests with the student. T he subm itted proposal is review ed by the D epartm ent’s Re­ search and Ethics C om m ittee and a prospective prom oter can volunteer to be appointed. D epending on the field o f research a co-prom oter can be appointed from w ithin the D epartm ent o f A dvanced N ursing Sciences, or from any other relevant departm ent such as A nthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Education, Law, Public A dm inistration or Business M anage­ ment. In certain cases co-prom oters can be appointed from o th er universities o r any o th er relevant institutions. T his approach seem s to be supported by authors from other coun­ tries, such as B aker (1995:62) who proclaim s “F aculty fro m oth er disciplines a n d sufficien t support s ta ff are needed to enhance the nursing research effort, strengthen the educa­ tional program, especially the cognate courses a n d electives, a n d generally ensure a quality enterprise ”. If the proposal is accepted, the prom oter and the co-prom oter appointed, then the student can proceed w ith his/her reg is­ tration for the D Litt et Phil degree at Unisa. D u r a tio n o f c o u rs e T he m inim um duration is two years, but m ost students re­ quire m ore than fo u r years to com plete their research and subm it their theses for exam ination. A fter a period o f four years has elapsed, the prom oter needs to subm it a w ritten m otivation as to w hy the student should be allow ed to regis­ ter for periods exceeding four years. Annual re-registration depends on progress reports subm itted by the prom oter(s). The rationale underlying this requirem ent is that inform a­ tion changes rapidly and students who take too long to com ­ plete their research and their theses run the risk o f presenting outdated data. M ost students are full tim e em ployees occu­ pying dem anding positions w hich leave lim ited tim e for pur­ suing their doctoral studies. M ainly those students who can m anage to ob tain study leave ranging from six to tw elve m onths m anage to com plete their doctoral research and the­ ses w ithin five years. O r g a n iz a t io n o f c o u rs e : role o f s tu d e n t a n d o f p ro m o te r(s) The D Litt et Phil program contains no prescribed course work. The Departm ent o f A dvanced Nursing Sciences offers research w orkshops w hich all m asters’ and doctoral students are en ­ couraged to attend, but attendance is voluntary. Each stu­ dent is expected to dem onstrate the ability to do independent research and to m ake a contribution to the field. Nursing Education 1 2 Psychiatric N ursing 2 Reproductive H ealth 8 Prim ary H ealth Care 1 Health Services M anagem ent 7 Clinical N ursing 1 Home Nursing 3 C aring 1 Health Education 3 The prom oter and jo in t prom oter are appointed in accord­ ance w ith their research interests and expertise, taking their respective academ ic responsibilities into account. The D Litt et Phil degree as offered by the D epartm ent o f A dvanced Nursing Sciences, U nisa, w ould seem to be sim ilar to the D Phil degree offered in the U SA , as d escrib ed by G orney- Fadim an (1981:654). In cases where students register at Unisa from foreign countries, these students are encouraged to con­ duct research in their respective countries, and co-prom oters are appointed from the countries concerned if at all possible. In this way students are encouraged to conduct research m ean­ ingful and applicable to their ow n countries, the research ca­ pacities o f the countries concerned are developed, and the members o f staff can know ledge and expertise about the health care situations in a num bers o f different countries. The initial role o f the student really am ounts to reading and com piling the chapters o f the proposed thesis. R egistered doctoral students can access the U nisa library by m eans o f the U nisa W eb-page, by fax, telephone or by e-mail. Once the stu d en t’s registration has been p rocessed the U nisa li­ brarian will com pile a list o f available literature, based on keyw ords supplied by the student, using a variety o f com pu­ ter retrieval system s. This is supplied free o f charge to the student, who then selects those items deem ed relevant to the particular research. B ooks can be borrow ed and photocopies o f articles obtained free o f charge from the U nisa library (the student only pays for the return postage o f the books). N a­ tional and international interlibrary loan facilities can also be utilized - free o f charge. 1 4 3 C u r a t io n is D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 0 The student is expected to su b m it ch ap ter-b y -ch ap ter fo r re ­ view and com m ents by both th e p ro m o ter and co-prom oter. T he fu n d am en tal role o f the p ro m o te r is to “p ro m o te” the stu d en t’s quality o f w ork so th at it reaches the outstanding quality o f w o rk dem anded fro m d octoral theses. A t U nisa, a D L itt et P hil degree w ill only be aw arded if it is regarded as being at the level o f attaining a d istinction (75% o r m ore) in A LL resp ects, academ ic co n trib u tio n , edito rial and technical standards and research m erit. U sually students com pile the first three ch ap ters and the re­ search instrum ents p rio r to c o n d u c tin g th e actual research. Statisticians are consulted o n ce th e research in stru m en t has been com piled, as to the feasib ility o f its co m p u terized statis­ tical analyses. T he pattern a d o p te d by m o st students im ply that C hapter 1 provides the gen eral b ack g ro u n d inform ation and rationale for conducting the specific research , C h ap ter 2 reviews literature relevant to the research , C h ap ter 3 discusses and justifies the research m eth o d o lo g y adopted, then the re ­ search findings are analyzed an d d iscu ssed in tw o or m ore chapters follow ed by the fin al c h a p te r co m p risin g the lim ita­ tions, co n c lu sio n s an d re c o m m e n d a tio n s o f th e research . Should the student have d e v elo p ed a m odel o r a course fo r a specific group o f nurses, this n eed s to be tested prio r to sub­ m itting the thesis fo r ex am ination. A bibliography con tain ­ ing accurate d etails o f all referen ces used throughout the th e­ sis m ust be included. T he research instrum ents, letters re­ questing and gran tin g perm issio n fo r conducting the research, and any o th e r docum ents relev an t to the research should be attached as appendages. (Those students w ho em bark on quali­ tative research approaches m ay follow d ifferen t procedures). After d a ta co llectio n , statistician s and c o m p u te r operators analyze the data and provide the student w ith com p u ter p rin t­ outs. It is up to the student to interpret the statistical fin d ­ ings and to obtain statistical, ty ping as w ell as editorial ex ­ pertise to p resen t an acceptable thesis. E ditorial assistance is a req u irem en t as m ost students present their theses in E n g ­ lish w hich m ig h t be their second or even third language. The students need to inform the u niversity in w riting by specified dates should they co n sid er h an d in g in their theses for e x am i­ nation. T h e pro m o ters need to approve each stu d en t’s ap p li­ cation. S ubsequent to such approval, exam iners are appointed. E x a m in a t io n No form al exam ination is co n d u cted . (U ntil the beginning of the 1990s each doctoral c a n d id ate w as subjected to an oral exam ination by internal and e x tern al exam iners, but this was discontinued due to financial and tim e constraints). Four bound copies o f the co m p leted th esis are subm itted for exam ination by the prom oter, c o -p ro m o te r and at least tw o additional ex tern al ex am in ers fro m tw o d ifferen t u n iv ersi­ ties. In the case w here a co -p ro m o te r had been appointed from a field o th er than n u rsing, at least one external ex am ­ iner will be ap p ointed from th e sam e field. T he four ex am in ­ ers subm it th eir independent rep o rts to a non-exam ining ch air­ person w ho prepares a co m b in ed report fo r the exam ination com m ittee. T h e e x a m in e rs’ rep o rts need to specify w hat contributions the thesis co u ld m ak e tow ards the science o f nursing. E ach ex am in er needs to in d icate w heth er the thesis can be accep ted unam ended, w h e th e r specific aspects require am endm ents or w hether it should be rejected. E xam iners are also encouraged to indicate w hether the thesis, or parts thereof, w ould be suitable for publication. N o m ark is allo­ cated, and no distinctions can be aw arded, because a D Litt et Phil degree is accepted as being w orthy o f a distinction. Should there be m arked differences am ong the exam iners, an additional exam iner m ight be appointed, or the student could be offered an oral exam ination opportunity, or the exam ina­ tion co m m ittee m ay decide to o ffer the student one m ore chance to am end the thesis. In the case o f m inor am end­ m ents the prom oter and co-prom oter need to inform the com ­ m ittee when the candidate had fulfilled the specifications, but in the case o f m ajor changes/im provem ents the thesis needs to be resubm itted for re-exam ination by four or m ore exam in­ ers. C urrently publications in scholarly journ als are not required, prior to aw arding the D Litt et Phil degree, but this possibil­ ity is being investigated. Students are encouraged to publish relevant aspects o f their theses, and w here applicable, pro­ m oters and/or co-prom oters act as co-authors. Publication in accredited jo u rn als and peer review s prior to subm itting the thesis for ex am ination purposes could add another dim en­ sion to the quality assurance aspect o f the distance education D Litt et Phil program . In this w ay the research results could also be dispersed to a w ider academ ic forum. A d v a n t a g e s a n d D is a d v a n ta g e s o f a d is ta n c e e d u c a t io n d o c to r a l p ro g ra m T he m ajor p erso n al advantage fo r the student o f pursuing this distance education D Litt et Phil program is the ability to continue w ith h is/h er life and w ork obviating fam ily disrup­ tions by relocating to a university city, o r even to a different country. S im ilarly the health care services are not disrupted by the absence o f num bers o f senior personnel. Students w ho continue w ith their jo b s w hile pursuing their studies are m ore likely to rem ain in their countries once they have ob­ tained their doctoral qualifications than those who relocate to other countries o r continents for study purposes. Because the students rem ain w ithin their com m unities, their fields o f re­ search are u su ally relev an t to th e ir specific c o m m u n ities’ needs. Ironically the very advantage o f being able to continue with o n e ’s w ork and life w hilst pursuing doctoral studies, is also its m ajor disadvantage. This is th e case because the studies are then sim ply ju s t added on top o f all the other responsibili­ ties, w hilst students w ho relocate to universities to pursue full tim e doctoral studies, need not fulfil their jo b obligations during this period, and som etim es other persons fulfil their fam ily obligations as well. Thus the students pursuing d is­ tance education courses can be expected to take m uch longer to com plete their studies than those w ho pursue full tim e stud­ ies at residential universities. Students who have m ade sub­ stantial progress w ith their studies are encouraged to apply fo r study leave, ideally once they have collected and analyzed th e ir data. S tu d y leav e d e fin ite ly en h an ces the stu d e n ts ’ chances o f achieving success, although a num ber o f students have m anaged to com plete their studies w ithout any study leave w hatsoever. A nother disadvantage is the “d istan ce” involved in distance 1 4 4 C u r a t i o n is D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 0 education. A lthough students are encouraged to m eet their prom oters personally, this is not alw ays possible. Telephone, fax and e-m ail contacts are encouraged. T hese can all be problem atic in A frica w here even e-m ails often function by land lines w hich are disrupted every tim e any length o f co p ­ per wire “goes m issing” . Postal services, including door-to- door deliveries can be expensive, unreliable and it can take weeks for a posted chapter to reach the prom oter, and weeks to return. Postal delays can be dem otivating for m any stu­ dents, but item s w hich get lost in the post are the m ajor p rob­ lems delaying progress. The answ er w ould seem to send all com pleted chapters by e- mail. D eciphering e-m ail attachm ents sent from different parts o f the continent using different program s pose challenges to both students and prom oters. H ow ever, as m ore and more Internet cafes are being established throughout Africa, this possibility is becom ing a reality - at least for students living and w orking in areas w ith access to the Internet, and with reliable electricity supplies. B ecause o f the distance betw een the prom oter and the stu­ dent, and because neither o f them is involved solely in re­ search, m uch o f the excitem ent inherent in successful research might never be actualized. T he student and the m entor can never be fully im m ersed in research, and m ight not “ ... expe­ rience the excitem ent o f know ledge building, an excitem ent that com es fro m seeing one p roject lead to another in an evolv­ ing program o r research” (K eller & W ard 1993:266). S tu­ dents follow ing distance education D L itt et Phil program s might not have the advantage o f w orking w ith m ore senior researchers nor o f teaching m ore ju n io r researchers. In this way the opportunity to learn from both ju n io r and senior co l­ leagues m ight be severely lim ited. A nother potential d isadvantage o f offering solely distance education D Litt et Phil courses, relate to the prom oters in­ volved. Because o f the distance, and thus the lack o f students on cam pus, the pro m o ters’ academ ic schedule can easily b e­ com e overloaded w ith any num ber o f “invisible” doctoral stu­ dents, in addition to undergraduate and other structured post­ graduate distance education courses. U nder these circum ­ stances the doctoral candidate’s quality o f guidance depends solely on the quality o f the responses supplied by the pro­ m oter and jo in t prom oter. “The fo c u s o f the research do cto r­ ate should be on research, a n d it shou ld be b u ilt around re­ search-productive fa c u lty m em bers w ho m entor students in their p a rticu la r areas o f research. Research doctoral p ro ­ gram s should carefully lim it the num b er o f students adm itted to study a n d assure that a ll students w ill have the opportu­ nity to becom e co m p eten t beg in n in g researchers w ho w ill continue on into productive research/teaching careers" (Grace 1989:269). The necessity to lim it the num ber o f distance education students m ight be m ore obscure than in the case o f face-to-face teaching situations. H ow ever, it w ould definitely seem to be in the interest o f both the students and the faculty m em bers that the total num ber o f students should be lim ited to m anageable proportions for the faculty in general and for each specific prom oter. “F aculty costs n e e d to be identified because w ithout time f o r the appropriate m entoring o f stu ­ dents, perform ance o f students w ill suffer. Student advisem ent a n d dissertation s u p e n ’ision require fa c u lty tim e a n d space considerations, as w ell as the individual intellectual output o f f a c u l t y m e m b e r s ” (G e rm a in , D e a tric k , H a g o p ia n & W hitney 1994: 121). C o n c lu s io n & R e c o m m e n d a tio n s T he D epartm ent o f A dvanced N ursing Sciences, U niversity o f South A frica, does have the infrastructure and the ex p er­ tise to offer D Litt et Phil distance education program s. S tand­ ards are m aintained by selecting candidates who have acquired a M a ste r’s or equivalent degree and w ho m anaged to subm it an acceptable research proposal. Prom oters and co-prom ot- ers m onitor each stu d en t’s progress and obtain subject spe­ cific expertise, such as statistical consultants w henever deem ed desirable. P ro m o ters’ annual progress reports can be used to prevent students m aking unsatisfactory progress from re-reg­ istering year after year. A t least tw o external exam iners are appointed to exam ine each thesis, in addition to the stu d en t’s appointed p rom oter and co-prom oter. The m ajor advantage o f distance education program s is that the students can con­ tinue w ith their life and w ork uninterruptedly but the m ajor disadvantage is that the students need to focus on their stud­ ies in addition to all th eir other jo b and hom e related resp o n ­ sibilities. Students w ho have m ade substantial progress and w ho m anage to obtain study leave seem to be able to finalize their theses w ithin shorter periods o f tim e than those w ho do not succeed in getting any study leave. Further research w ould seem to be needed to establish the specific needs o f students and to provide m eaningful support structures enabling m ore students to finish their research p ref­ erably w ithin four or five years. Further research w ould seem to be w arranted to investigate the successful doctoral can d i­ d a te s’ professional and academ ic activities subsequent to ob­ taining the D L itt et Phil degree. H ow ever, the D ep artm en t o f A dv an ced N ursing S ciences, U nisa, w ould need to seriously reconsider its role, function, m ission and vision to provide m eaningful learning ex p eri­ ences for its increasing num ber o f postgraduate students, e s­ pecially the doctoral candidates. O ne w ay in' w hich this d e­ partm ent attem pts to m eet this challenge is by h aving a per­ son responsible for coordinating the postgraduate stu d en ts’ affairs. It m ight require that specific persons be appointed specifically for postgraduate students, w hilst others concen­ trate on the undergraduate students. “Priority’ given to g ra d u ­ ate education decreases com m itm ent to undergraduate stu ­ dents a n d p rogram s ... grow th in nursing science requires re- conceptualizing the d is c ip lin e ” (B aker 1995:63). D istance education doctoral program s can definitely help to increase the num ber o f nurses on the A frican continent w ith doctoral qualifications. T hese nurses, assum ing leadership roles in m any A frican countries, can determ ine the future o f A frica’s nurses and m idw ives and the standard o f health care received by their patients/clients to a m arked extent - esp e­ cially if their num bers could increase substantially. A ny e f­ fort to increase the num ber o f successful doctoral candidates can result in enhanced health care for A frica’s people. The ultim ate contribution o f any doctoral nursing program m ight need to be ju d g e d by its actual and potential co n trib u ­ tion tow ards the nursing profession’s developm ent. Enabling nurses to do independent research at doctoral level, m ight be 1 4 5 C u r a t i o n is D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 0 o f pivotal im portance for the future ex p an sio n o f the pro fes­ sion. A lthough the distance e d u catio n D L itt et Phil program offered by th e D ep artm en t o f A d v an ced N ursin g Sciences, U nisa, does have its disad v an tag es, at least it does seem to succeed in p ro m o tin g a n u m b er o f nurse le a d e rs’ research cap acities in a n u m b er o f A frican countries. “A profession n o t ro o ted in system a tic research is a self-contradiction, a m yth, ra th er than a reality... The sile n t revolution in all the p ro fessions cam e a b o u t as a result p rim a rily o f know ledge enlarged through re se a rc h ” (M erton in M urp h y 1981:646). Lis t o f re fe re n c e s BAKER CM 1995: W hen to beg in a d octoral program in nursing. Intern a tio n a l N u rsin g R eview , 42(2):61-64. G ER M A IN C P; D E A T R IC K J A ; H A G O P IA N G A & WHITNEY FW 1994: E v alu atio n o f a P hD Program : p av ­ ing the way. N ursin g O utlook, M a y /Ju n e 1994: 117-121. G O R N EY -FA D IM A N M J 1981: A s tu d e n t’s perspective on th e d o c to ra l d ile m m a . N u r s in g O u tlo o k , N o v e m b e r 1981:650-654. v G R A C E HK 1989: Issues in d o cto ral edu catio n in N ursing. Journ a l o f P rofessional N u rsin g , 5(5):266-270. K E L L E R M L & W A R D S E 1 9 9 3 : F u n d i n g a n d socialization in th e d octoral p ro g ram at the U n iversity o f W is c o n s in -M a d is o n . J o u r n a l o f P r o fe s s io n a l N u r s in g , 9(5):161-266. M U R P H Y J F 1981: D octoral ed u catio n in, of, and for n u rs­ ing: an h is to r ic a l a n a ly s is . N u r s in g O u tlo o k , N o v e m b e r 1981:645-649. R EIN ER T B R & F R Y B A C K PB 1997: D istance learning and n u r s in g e d u c a tio n . J o u r n a l o f N u r s in g E d u c a tio n , 36(9):421-427. SIM SE N BJ; H O L R O Y D E & S E L L IC K K 1996: P o st­ g raduate e d u c a tio n ex p ec ta tio n s: a su rv ey o f H o n g K ong graduate nurses. J o u rn a l o f A d v a n c e d N ursing, 24:827-835. Statistics o b ta in ed from U n isa ’s B ureau for M an agem en t Inform ation (J u n e 1999). UNISA C A L E N D A R 1999. Part 8 . Pretoria: U nisa. P o s ts c rip t: A ll persons interested in doctoral education for nurses should access the follow ing Internet address: h ttp://w w w .um ich.edu/~inden This organization’s Web page is based at the U niversity o f M ichigan’s N ursing Faculty. B row sing through the contents and accessing specific inform ation will enable the users o f this W eb-page to becom e fam iliar w ith, and to access ad ­ dresses, o f m ost universities offering doctoral program s for nurses throughout the w orld. All the papers presented at the 1997 and 1999 c o n fe re n c e s (in c lu d in g th is one) can be accessed from this W eb-page. (Professor Shaké Ketefian, the C hairperson o f IN D E N , granted perm ission for the publica­ tion o f all conference papers appearing at this Internet site, because this W eb-page does not operate as any form al publi­ cation o f academ ic papers. It strives to provide a service to all nurse academ ics throughout the w orld). IN D EN would w elcom e new m em bers and all academ ic institutions offering doctoral program s in nursing could benefit from becom ing active m em bers and sharing in its lively e-m ail correspond­ ence, as well as participating in its biennial international co n ­ ferences w hich are planned to coincide w ith those o f the In­ ternational C ouncil o f N urses (ICN ) as far as possible. The 2001 IN D E N conference will probably precede the ICN co n ­ ference in C openhagen 10-15 June 2001. Inform ation will be published at this W eb-site. P rofessor Shaké Ketefian, the C hairperson o f INDEN, can be contacted directly at the follow ing e-m ail address (but kindly indicate “IN D EN E nquiries” as the subject o f the e-m ail to facilitate the answ ering process): ketefian@ umich.edu 1 4 6 C u r a t i o n is D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 0 http://www.umich.edu/~inden mailto:ketefian@umich.edu 
work_wmtc66pt5ra3lpquthpvufj7ja	----	Mining Learning Behavioral Patterns of Students by Sequence Analysis in Cloud Classroom | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2017010102 Corpus ID: 22262154Mining Learning Behavioral Patterns of Students by Sequence Analysis in Cloud Classroom @article{Liu2017MiningLB, title={Mining Learning Behavioral Patterns of Students by Sequence Analysis in Cloud Classroom}, author={Sanya Liu and Zhenfan Hu and Xian Peng and Z. Liu and H. Cheng and Jianwen Sun}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2017}, volume={15}, pages={15-27} } Sanya Liu, Zhenfan Hu, +3 authors Jianwen Sun Published 2017 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. In a MOOC environment, each student’s interaction with the course content is a crucial clue for learning analytics, which offers an opportunity to record learner activity of unprecedented scale. In online learning, the educators and the administrators need to get informed with students’ learning states since the performance of unsupervised learning style is difficult to control. Learning analytics considered as a key process is to provide students and educators with evidence-based, analytical… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 5 Citations View All Topics from this paper Behavioral pattern Massive open online course Unsupervised learning Sequence analysis Online machine learning Reinforcement learning 5 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency A Data-Driven Student Model to Provide Adaptive Support During Video Watching Across MOOCs Sébastien Lallé, C. Conati Computer Science AIED 2020 2 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Developing the Students' Thinking and Learning Skills in the Instrumental Lesson Rossella Marisi Psychology 2019 1 Save Alert Research Feed A Peer-Assessment Mobile Kung Fu Education Approach to Improving Students' Affective Performances Fon-Chu Kuo, Jun-Ming Chen, Hui-Chun Chu, Kai-Hsiang Yang, Y. Chen Psychology, Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2017 3 Save Alert Research Feed Recommendation system design for college network education based on deep learning and fuzzy uncertainty J. Wu, Qiuju Feng Computer Science J. Intell. Fuzzy Syst. 2020 1 Save Alert Research Feed Learning Behavioral Differences Among Students and Ethical Issues in a University Cloud Classroom System Zhi Liu, H. Liu, H. Zhang, Sannyuya Liu Psychology 2019 1 Save Alert Research Feed References SHOWING 1-10 OF 12 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency EXPLORING THE BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS IN PROJECT-BASED LEARNING WITH ONLINE DISCUSSION: QUANTITATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS AND PROGRESSIVE SEQUENTIAL ANALYSIS Huei-Tse Hou Computer Science 2010 64 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Exploring the behavioral patterns of learners in an educational massively multiple online role-playing game (MMORPG) Huei-Tse Hou Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2012 104 Save Alert Research Feed A case study of online instructional collaborative discussion activities for problem-solving using situated scenarios: An examination of content and behavior cluster analysis Huei-Tse Hou Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2011 61 Save Alert Research Feed Exploring the behavioral patterns of an online knowledge-sharing discussion activity among teachers with problem-solving strategy Huei-Tse Hou, Y. Sung, K. Chang Psychology 2009 93 Save Alert Research Feed Mobile guide system using problem-solving strategy for museum learning: a sequential learning behavioural pattern analysis Y. Sung, Huei-Tse Hou, C.-K. Liu, K. Chang Computer Science J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 2010 69 Save Alert Research Feed A Usability Evaluation of a Blended MOOC Environment: An Experimental Case Study. A. Yousef, M. Chatti, U. Schroeder, Marold Wosnitza Computer Science 2015 76 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Temporality matters: Advancing a method for analyzing problem-solving processes in a computer-supported collaborative environment M. Kapur Computer Science Int. J. Comput. Support. Collab. Learn. 2011 77 Save Alert Research Feed The Sequential Analysis of Group Interaction and Critical Thinking in Online Allan Jeong Psychology 2003 292 PDF Save Alert Research Feed A Guide to Analyzing Message–Response Sequences and Group Interaction Patterns in Computer‐mediated Communication Allan Jeong Computer Science 2005 95 PDF Save Alert Research Feed The Effects of Gender Interaction Patterns on Student Participation in Computer-Supported Collaborative Argumentation Allan Jeong, Gayle V. Davidson-Shivers Psychology 2006 50 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 5 Citations 12 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_wq4bcvusdvhtrfrmpeoszs7ixy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_wwo24ey3unewrpkbrtcb4r2vsm	----	Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Michael Simonson, Charles Schlosser, and Dan Hanson The American Journal of Distance Education Vol. 13 No.1 1999 Abstract Theories guide the practice and research of distance education. Traditionally, theories of distance education have been derived from classical European or American models based on correspondence study. Recently, telecommunications systems have significantly altered the practice of distance education in the United States and have produced a uniquely American approach to this field. This has created the need for a new theory to guide the practice of distance education. This theory, called Equivalency Theory, is described and compared to the historical theories of distance education. Theory helps us bear our ignorance of fact. G. Santayana, The Sense of Beauty Introduction Many cringe at the thought of a discussion of theory. This need not be the case. Theory is important to the study of distance education because it directly affects the practice of the field. Traditionally, theories of distance education have come from sources external to America. Recently, though, the field of distance education in the United States has matured to the point where indigenous definitions and theories have begun to emerge, most notably, theories based on the American system of education. Local control, classroom teachers, small classes, rapport between teacher and students, and highly personalized instruction are important characteristics of the American system of education. As advanced communications technologies become available, many educators have begun to advocate the need for forms of distance education that retain tradition al aspects of American education while taking advantage of the opportunities offered by telecommunications systems. This paper will discuss both the need for theory and several tradition al theoretical approaches that have influenced the field. A distance education theory based on the American practice of education will be presented. The paper's purpose is to provide a summary and synthesis of the significant theories supporting the practice of distance education and to propose a new, uniquely American theory of distance education. The Need for Theory Although various forms of distance education have existed since the 1840s and attempts at theoretical http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (1 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. explanations of distance education have been undertaken for decades by leading scholars in the field, the need for a theory of distance education has been largely unfulfilled until recently. Holmberg (1986) stated that theoretical considerations give distance educators a touchstone against which decisions can be made with confidence. In 1988, Holmberg reiterated the need for theory, stating that, One consequence of such understanding and explanation will be that hypotheses can be developed and submitted to falsification attempts. This will lead to insights telling us what in distance education is to be expected under what conditions and circumstances, thus paving the way for corroborated practical methodological application. (p. 3) As early as 1972, Moore expressed concern about the progress of distance education being hindered by lack of attention to what he called the 'macro factors'. Moore indicated that there is a need to describe and define the field of distance education, to discriminate between its various components, and to identify the critical elements of the various forms of learning and teaching. Keegan (1995) reaffirmed the continued need for a theory of distance education by stating that a firmly based theory of distance education is one that can provide the touchstone against which , financial, educational, and social can be made with confidence.. Theory would thus cease to be an ad hoc response to a set of conditions arising in crisis situations of problem-solving, characteristic of the field of education. In a general sense, theory is taken to mean a set of hypotheses logically related to one another for explaining and predicting occurrences. Holmberg (1985) stated that, the aim of the theoretician is to find explanatory theories; that is to say, the theories which describe certain structural properties of the world, and which permit us to deduce, with the help of initial conditions, the effects to be explained. (p. 5) Holmberg (1995, 4) further defined theory as, "a systematic ordering of ideas about the phenomenon of a field of inquiry, and an over-arching logical structure of reasoned suppositions which can generate testable hypotheses." He suggested that distance education has been characterized by a trial and error approach, with little consideration given to a theoretical basis for decision-making, and that the theoretical underpinnings of distance education are fragile. Most efforts in this field have been practical or mechanical and have concentrated on the logistics of the enterprise. Holmberg and Keegan (1986) both consider distance education as representing a distinct form of education, the latter concluding that it is parallel to and a complement of conventional education. However, Shale (1988) countered that all that constitutes the process of education when teacher and student are able to meet face-to-face also constitutes the process of education when teacher and student are physically separated. In his landmark work, The Foundations of Distance Education (1986), Keegan classified theories of http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (2 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. distance education into three groups: theories of independence and autonomy, theories of industrial ization of teaching, and theories of interaction and communication. A fourth category seeks to explain distance education through a synthesis of existing theories of communication and diffusion as well as philosophies of education. Each of these major categories will be discussed in the following sections. Theories of Independence and Autonomy American Theory of Independent Study. Wedemeyer, a professor from the University of Wisconsin, considered the independence of the student as the essence of distance education (Keegan 1986). This was reflected in Wedemeyer's preference for the term "independent study" for distance education at the college or university level. He was critical of contemporary patterns of higher education, believing that outdated concepts of learning and teaching were being employed. Wedemeyer felt that these concepts failed to utilize modern technologies in ways that could alter an institution. He set forth a system of distance education that includes ten characteristics which emphasize learner independence and the adoption of technology as a way of implementing it. According to Wedemeyer, the system should: 1. Be capable of operating any place where there are students---even only one student------twhether or not there are teachers at the same place, at the same time; 2. Place greater responsibility for learning on the student; 3. Free faculty members from custodial-type duties so that more time can be given to truly educational tasks; 4. Offer students and adults wider choices (more opportunities) in courses, formats, and methodologies; 5. Use, as appropriate, all the teaching media and methods proven effective; 6. Mix and combine media and methods so that each subject or unit within a subject is taught in the best way known; 7. Cause the redesign and development of courses to fit into an articulated media program; 8. Preserve and enhance opportunities for adaptation to individual differences; 9. Evaluate student achievement simply, not by raising barriers regarding the place, rate, method, or sequence of student study; and 10. Permit students to start, stop, and learn at their own pace. Wedemeyer proposed the separation of teaching from learning as a way to break education's "space-time barriers." He suggested six characteristics of independent study systems: 1. The student and teacher are separated. 2. The normal processes of teaching and learning are carried out in writing or through some other medium. 3. Teaching is individualized. 4. Learning takes place through the student's activity. 5. Learning is made convenient for the student in the student's own environment. 6. The learner takes responsibility for the pace of learning, with freedom to start and stop at any http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (3 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. time. Wedemeyer noted four common elements of every teaching-learning situation: a teacher, a learner or learners, a communications system or mode, and something to be taught or learned. He proposed a reorganization of these elements that would accommodate physical space and allow for greater learner freedom. Wedemeyer believed that the development of the student-teacher relationship was key to the success of distance education. Wedemeyer's approach is a classical and American application of correspondence study to distance education. European Theory of Independent Study. Formulated in the early 1970s, Moore's theory of distance education is a classification method for distance education programs. Shaped in part by Moore's adult education and university extension experience, it examines two variables in educational programs: the amount of learner autonomy and the distance between teacher and learner. For Moore (1994), distance education is composed of two elements, each of which can be measured. The first element is the provision for two-way communication (dialog); some systems or programs offer greater amounts of two-way communication than others. The second element is the extent to which a program is responsive to the needs of the individual learner (structure); some programs are very structured while others are more responsive to the needs and goals of the individual student. In the second part of his theory, Moore addresses learner autonomy. He notes that in traditional school settings learners are very dependent on teachers for guidance and that in most programs, conventional and distance, the teacher is active while the student is passive. In distance education, there is a gap between teacher and student, so the student must accept a high degree of responsibility for the conduct of the learning program. The autonomous learner needs little help from the teacher, who may be more of a respondent than a director. Some adult learners, however, require help in formulating their learning objectives, identifying sources of information, and measuring objectives. Moore classifies distance education programs as "autonomous" (learner-determined) or "non- autonomous" (teacher-determined) and gauges the degree of autonomy accorded the learner by answering the following three questions: ● Is the selection of learning objectives in the program the responsibility of the learner or the teacher (autonomy in setting objectives)? ● Is the selection and use of resource persons---of bodies and other media---ted decision of the learner or the teacher (autonomy in methods of study)? ● Are the decisions about the method of evaluation and criteria to be used made by the learner or the teacher (autonomy in evaluation)? For Moore, the answers to these questions determine the type of distance learning program. This information can be used to categorize the program and even provide direction as to how the program functions. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (4 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. Theory of Industrialization of Teaching After examining a research base that included an extensive analysis of the European distance teaching organizations of the 1960s, Peters (1988) proposed that distance education could be analyzed by comparison with the industrial production of goods. Peters stated that from many points of view, conventional, oral, group-based education was a pre-industrial form of education, implying that distance teaching could not have existed before the industrial era. Based on economic and industrial theory, Peters proposed the following new categories (terminology) for the analysis of distance education: ● Rationalization: the use of methodical measures to reduce the required amount of input of power, time, and money. ● Division of labor: the division of a task into simpler components or subtasks. ● Mechanization: the use of machines in a work process. Peters noted that distance education would be impossible without machines. ● Assembly line: a method of work in which workers remain station ary while objects they are working on move past them. In traditional distance education programs, materials for both teacher and student are not the product of one individual. ● Mass production: the production of goods in large quantities. Because demand outstrips supply at colleges and universities, there has been a trend toward large-scale operations. ● Preparatory work: determining how workers, machines, and materials can usefully relate to each other during each phase of the production process. The success of distance education depends on a preparatory phase. ● Planning: the system of decisions that determines an operation prior to its being carried out. ● Organization: creating general or permanent arrangements for purpose-oriented activity. Organization makes it possible for students to receive predetermined instructional units at appointed times. ● Scientific control methods: methods by which work processes are analyzed systematically, particularly by time studies, and in accordance with the results obtained from measurements and empirical data. ● Formalization: the predetermination of the phases of the manufacturing process. In distance education, all the points in the cycle must be determined exactly. ● Standardization: the limitations of manufacture to a restricted number of types of one product to make these more suitable for their purpose, cheaper to produce, and easier to replace. ● Change of function: the change of the role or job of the worker in the production process. The original role of knowledge provider as lecturer is divided into those of study unit author and marker. ● Objectification: the loss, in the production process, of the subjective element that had previously determined work to a considerable degree. In distance education most teaching functions are objectified. ● Concentration and centralization: because of the large amount of capital required for mass production and the division of labor, there has been a movement toward large industrial concerns with a concentration of capital, a centralized administration, and a market that is monopolized. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (5 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. Peters concluded that for distance teaching to be effective, the principle of division of labor is a critical element. In his theory of industrialization, the teaching process is gradually restructured through increased mechanization and automation. Peters noted the following: ● The development of distance study courses is just as important as the preparatory work that takes place prior to the production process. ● The effectiveness of the teaching process is particularly dependent on planning and organization. ● Courses must be formalized and expectations from students standardized. ● The teaching process is largely objectified. ● The function of academics teaching at a distance has changed considerably vis@vis university teachers in conventional teaching. ● Distance study can only be economical with a concentration of the available resources and a centralized administration. According to Peters, when decisions about the process of teaching and learning are made, the industrial structures characteristic of distance teaching should be taken into account. Holmberg noted that while this was admittedly an incomplete theory, it was not devoid of explanatory power; it did, in fact, indicate essential characteristics of effective distance education. In 1995, Holmberg significantly broadened his theory of distance education. This comprehensive theory is divided into a number of parts encompassing the theory just stated previously and the belief that distance education serves diverse, individual learners who cannot or do not want to make use of face-to- face teaching. Distance education thus promotes students' independence and freedom of choice. Society benefits from distance education's provision of, on the one hand, liberal study opportunities for individual learners, and, on the other, professional/occupational training. Distance education is an instrument for recurrent and lifelong learning and for free access to learning opportunities and equity. According to Holmberg, distance education is characterized by the following statements: ● All learning concerned with the acquisition of cognitive knowledge and cognitive skills, as well as affective learning and some psychomotor learning, is effectively provided for by distance education. ● Distance education is based on learning as an individual activity. Learning is guided and supported by noncontiguous means. ● Distance education is open to behaviorist, cognitive, constructivist, and other modes of learning. ● Personal relations, study pleasure, and empathy between students and those supporting them (tutors, counselors) are central to learning in distance education. Feelings of empathy and belonging promote students' motivation to learn, influencing learning favorably. ● While it is an effective mode of training, distance education runs the risk of leading to mere fact learning and reproduction of accepted 'truths'. However, it can be organized and carried out in such a way that students are encouraged to search, criticize, and identify positions of their own. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (6 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. On one level, Holmberg's expanded theory represents a description of distance education. On a deeper level, it is a theory from which hypotheses are generated and that has explanatory power by identifying a general approach favorable to learning and to the teaching efforts conducive to learning. A Synthesis of Existing Theories Perraton's (1988) theory of distance education is composed of elements from existing theories of communication and diffusion as well as philosophies of education. It is expressed in the form of fourteen statements, or hypotheses. The first five of these statements deal with the way in which distance teaching can be used to maximize education: ● You can use any medium to teach anything. ● Distance teaching can break the integuments of fixed staffing ratios that limit the expansion of education when teacher and student are in the same place at the same time. ● There are circumstances under which distance teaching can be cheaper than orthodox education, whether measured in terms of audience reached or of learning. ● The economies achievable by distance education are functions of the level of education, size of audience, choice of media, and sophistication of production. ● Distance teaching can reach audiences not reached by ordinary means. The following four statements address the need to increase dialog: ● It is possible to organize distance teaching in such a way that there is dialog. ● When a tutor meets distance students face-to-face, the tutor's role changes from that of communicator of information to facilitator of learning. ● Group discussion is an effective method of distance learning to bring relevant information to the group. ● In most communities there are resources that can be used to support distance learning to its educational and economic advantage. Perraton's final five statements deal with method: ● A multimedia program is likely to be more effective than one which relies on a single medium. ● A systems approach is helpful in planning distance education. ● Feedback is a necessary part of a distance learning system. ● To be effective, distance teaching materials should ensure that Students undertake frequent and regular activities over and above reading, watching, or listening. ● In choosing between media, the key decision on which the rest depend concerns the use of face- to-face learning. Perraton's fourteen statements characterize his theory, which is actually a synthesis of information drawn from many sources. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (7 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. Equivalency Theory The impact of new telecommunications technologies on distance education is far-reaching. Real-time television systems, such as the Iowa Communications Network (Simonson and Schlosser 1995), permit learners and instructors to see and be seen, hear and be heard, in almost the same way as in the local classroom. Keegan (1995) suggested that electronically linking instructor and students at various locations creates a virtual classroom. He continued by saying that, The theoretical analyses of virtual education, however, have not yet been addressed by the literature: Is virtual education (interactive, live televised instruction) a subset of distance education or to be regarded as a separate field of educational endeavor? (p. 18) Education at a distance should be built on the concept of equivalency of learning experiences. The more equivalent the learning experiences of distant learners are to those of local learners, the more equivalent will be the outcomes of the educational experiences for all learners. This approach to distance education advocates designing a collection of equivalent learning experiences for distant and local learners, even though they may be different for each student. The objective of the nstructional designer of distance education is to provide for appropriate, equivalent learning experiences for each student. This theory is based on the following definition of distance education as, formal, institutionally-based educational activities where the learner and teacher are separated from one another, and where two-way interactive telecommunication systems are used to synchronously and asynchronously connect them for the sharing of video, voice, and data-based instruction. (Simonson 1995) In elaborating on this theory, Simonson (I 995) states that it should not be necessary for any group of learners to compensate for different, possibly lesser, instructional learning experiences. Students should have learning experiences that are tailored to the environment and situation in which they find themselves. Thus, those developing distance education systems should strive for equivalency in the learning experiences of all students, regardless of how they are linked to the resources or the instruction they require. There are several key elements to Equivalency Theory; they are the concepts of equivalency, learning experiences, appropriate application, students, and outcomes. Equivalency. Central to this theoretical approach is the concept of equivalency. Local and distant learners have fundamentally different environments in which to learn. It is the responsibility of the distance educator to design learning events that provide experiences with equal value for learners. Just as a triangle and a square may have the same area and be considered equivalent even though they are different geometrical shapes, the experiences of the local learner and the distant learner should have equivalent value even though these experiences might be very different. Learning Experience. Second in importance is the concept of learning experience. A learning experience http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (8 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. is anything that happens to the student to promote learning, including what is observed, felt, heard, or done. It is likely that different students in various locations, learning at different times, may require a different mix of learning experiences. Some may need a greater amount of observing while others require a larger dosage of doing. The goal of instructional planning is to make the sum of experiences for each learner equivalent. Instructional design procedures should attempt to anticipate and provide the collection of experiences that will be most suitable for each student or group of students. For example, if library resources are important to a course or unit, then library resources should be available. This does not mean that distant learners in a university research course will need access to a modern research library. It does mean that the educational equivalent of the resources of the library should be as readily available to the distant learner as they are to the local learner, whether electronically, through collaborative agreements with local libraries, or through the delivery of library resources to the distant student. Appropriate Application. The idea of appropriate application implies that learning experiences suitable to the needs of the individual learner and the learning situation should be available and that the availability of learning experiences should be proper and timely. In other words, learning experiences that are made available to either distant or local learners should allow delivery of instructional ideas that fit the expectations and facilities available to them; desktop video conferencing should not be expected of learners accessing Web-based information by modem. Simiarly, collaborative learning strategies are not appropriate when an individual learner is isolated unless an equivalent, technology-based collaboration is arranged. Students. Students are the ones involved in the formal, institutionally based learning activity---the course or unit of instruction. Students should be defined by their enrollment in a course, not by their location. They necessarily seek institutionally-based education, sanctioned by a recognized and accredited organization. Outcomes. Finally, the outcomes of a learning experience are those obvious, measurable, and significant changes that occur cognitively and effectively in learners because of their participation in the course or unit. Outcomes consist of at least two categories: those that are instructor determined and those determined by learners. Instructor-determined outcomes are usually stated as course goals and objectives and identify what learners should be able to accomplish after the learning experience that they could not accomplish prior to participating in it. Learner-determined outcomes are less specific, more personal, and relate to what the learner hopes to accomplish as a result of participation. Equivalent learner- determined outcomes are identified when students enroll in follow-up courses or apply newly learned skills to job or course situations. Once again, the concept of equivalency is central to the widespread acceptance of distance education. If teachers, learners, and the public in general identify learning at a distance as the equivalent of what they consider to be traditional learning, then distance learning will become mainstream, at least in America. If equivalency is not what the public perceives, then distance education will continue to be peripheral to the field of education. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (9 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. The equivalency approach is generally supported by Shale (1988), who argued that distance education is not a distinct field of education. Keegan (1995) supports this idea, stating that, This new approach to distance education based on virtual classrooms requires a substantially different theory upon which to base practice than the traditional view of distance education as it has been practiced in the past. The study of virtual and electronic classrooms is an important and complex field, still in its beginnings, with a unique contribution to make to educational knowledge. (p. 19) The equivalency approach is uniquely American. It is based on core values held almost sacred in American education, such as the use of regular classroom teachers to facilitate the teaching and learning process, local control, small class size, rapport between teacher and learner, and personalized learning. Most importantly, equivalent distant learning relies heavily on the use of modem and powerful interactive telecommunications systems to be successful. Evaluating Theories Keegan (1986) suggested that the theoretician had to answer three questions before developing a theory of distance education: Is distance education an educational activity? Is distance education a form of conventional education? and Is distance education possible, or is it a contradiction in terms? Is distance education an educational activity? Keegan answered that while distance education institutions possess some of the characteristics of businesses rather than of traditional schools, their educational activities are dominant. Distance education is a more industrialized form of education. Keegan pointed out that the theoretical bases for distance education were within general education theory. Is distance education a form of conventional education? Keegan stated that because distance education is not based on interpersonal communication and is characterized by a privatization of institutional ized learning (as is conventional education), it is a distinct form of education. Therefore, while the theoretical basis for distance education can be found within general education theory, it cannot be found within the theoretical structures of oral, group-based education. However, Keegan stated that virtual systems based on teaching face-to-face at a distance constituted a new field of study. He indicated that a theoretical analysis of virtual education still needs to be addressed. Is distance education possible, or is it a contradiction in terms? Keegan points out that if education requires intersubjectivitya shared experience in which teacher and learner are united by a common zeal then distance education is a contradiction in terms. Distance instruction is possible, but distance education is not. Again, the advent of virtual systems used in distance education challenge the traditional answer to Keegan's question. Central to Keegan's concept of distance education is the separation of teaching acts in time and place http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (10 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. from learning acts. Successful distance education, he believes, requires the reintegration of the two acts. Possibly the emphasis on making learning experiences equivalent for learners would contribute to the reunification of teaching and learning as simultaneously occurring acts. Equivalency theory should be evaluated by applying Keegan's criteria, as well as others, to determine if it is an approach to distance education that is appropriate. Summary The changing and diverse environment in which distance education is practiced has inhibited the development of a single theory upon which to base practice and research. A variety of theories have been proposed to describe traditional distance education. They include theories that emphasize independence and autonomy of the learner, industrialization of teaching, and interaction and communication. These classical theories emphasize the notion that distance education is a fundamentally different form of education. Recent emerging theories based on the capabilities of new interactive telecommunications-based audio and video systems suggest that distance education may not be a distinct field of education. Both the utilization of existing educational theory and the creation of equivalent experiences for the distant and local learner are emphasized. Classical distance education theorists need to address the changes to distance education facilitated by new technologies. Advocates of the new theories must consider the relationship of these to the traditional strengths of distance education. For example, the new theories' focus on face-to-face instruction eliminates the advantage of time independent learning that traditional theories of distance education value. The debate of these theoretical issues will only increase in the face of continued technological change. An environment in which technology, society, economics, politics, and approaches to learning are all in transition suggests that theories, definitions, and the practice of distance education will continue to be contested. This theme of change will both challenge and motivate distance educators and researchers as they strive to understand and develop effective ways to meet the needs of learners around the world. References Holmberg, B. 1985. The feasibility of a theory of teaching for distance education and a proposed theory. ZIFF Papiere 60. ERIC, ED 290013. _______. 1986. Growth and structure of distance education. London: Croom Helm. _______. 1988. Guided didactic conversations in distance education. In Distance education: International perspectives, ed. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 114-122. New York: Routledge. _______. 1989. Theory and practice of distance education. London: Routledge. _______. 1995. The evolution of the character and practice of distance education. Open Learning 10 (2): 47-53. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (11 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. Keegan, D. 1986. The foundations of distance education. London: Croom Helm. _______. 1995. Distance education technology for the new millennium: Compressed video teaching. ZIFF Papiere IO 1. ERIC, ED 3 89-93 1. Moore, M. G. 1972. Learner autonomy: The second dimension of independent learning. Convergence Fall:76-88. _______. 1994. Autonomy and interdependence. The American Journal of Distance Education 8 (2): 15. Perraton, H. 1988. A theory for distance education. In Distance education: International perspectives, ed. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 34-45. New York: Routledge. Peters, 0. 1988. Distance teaching and industrial production: A comparative interpretation in outline. In Distance education: International perspectives, ed. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 95113. New York: Routledge. Shale, D. 1988. Toward a reconceptualization of distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 2 (3): 25-35. Simonson, M. 1995. Does anyone really want to learn at a distance? Tech Trends 40 (5): 12. Simonson, M., and C. Schlosser. 1995. More than fiber: Distance education in Iowa. Tech Trends 40 (3): 13-15. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/simons99.htm (12 of 12)4/15/2008 11:04:13 PM www.uni-oldenburg.de Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al. 
work_wyimi6kqxfhs7mrub7rq4rjesy	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_x4gv4ounuvhgrfyvwrbhzgxqdu	----	Author accepted manuscript April 2016 1 Learning through engagement: MOOCs as an emergent form of provision Authors Sukaina Walji Corresponding Author University of Cape Town (UCT) Private Bag Rondebosch 7700 Tel: +27 21 650 4067 Sukaina.Walji@uct.ac.za Andrew Deacon University of Cape Town Tel: +27 21 650 5034 Andrew.Deacon@uct.ac.za Janet Small University of Cape Town Tel: + 27 21 650 4469 Janet.Small@uct.ac.za Laura Czerniewicz University of Cape Town Tel: + 27 21 650 5036 Laura.Czerniewicz@uct.ac.za Disclosure: The authors have no conflict of interests with regards to authorship of this paper. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 2 Abstract Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a new form of educational provision occupying a space between formal online courses and informal learning. Adopting measures used with formal online courses to assess the outcomes of MOOCs is often not informative because the context is very different. The particular affordances of MOOCs shaping learning environments comprise both scale (in terms of numbers of students) and diversity (in terms of the types of students). As learning designers we focus on understanding the particular tools and pedagogical affordances of the MOOC platform to support learner engagement. Drawing on research into learner engagement conducted in the broader field of online learning, we consider how learner engagement in a MOOC might be designed for by looking at three pedagogical aspects: teacher presence, social learning and peer learning. Keywords: MOOCs, online learning design, peer learning, student engagement, teacher presence Author accepted manuscript April 2016 3 Introduction MOOCs occupy an “in-between” space – neither traditional formal course nor online textbook – providing an opportunity for large numbers of people to become engaged through forms of social interaction. Yet simply using a platform that promotes social learning is, of course, not enough for engaged learning to happen. Drawing on research into learner engagement conducted in the broader field of online learning, we consider how learner engagement in a MOOC might be designed for by looking at three pedagogical aspects: teacher presence, social learning and peer learning. We explore learner engagement in two MOOCs developed at the University of Cape Town as a way of interpreting and analysing how people respond to learning design choices and are likely to be learning through this engagement. Our focus is specifically concerned with the roles of educators, how cohorts of learners respond and how individual learners engage with each other. Our interest is in exploring what constitutes engagement in a MOOC and what factors encourage MOOC participants to engage in order to support their learning. Lack of engagement on MOOCs may be due to factors such as connectivity, digital skills, time zones and institutional power dynamics. As learning designers, our focus is rather on understanding the particular tools and pedagogical affordances of the MOOC platform to support learner engagement. MOOCs provide opportunities for pedagogical exploration especially because their place in the non-formal part of the higher education landscape (Figure 1) does yet do not threaten formal course provision whether online or face-to-face (Czerniewicz et al, 2014). Nonetheless, the space is a fast evolving one and with a number of MOOC variants emerging, MOOCs may come to be potential threats to traditional offerings in the future should alternative forms of certification prove to be acceptable to employers (de Freitas et al., 2015). It is therefore an opportune moment to be studying engagement. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 4 Figure 1: Higher education course provision landscape Designing MOOCs MOOCs and formal online courses Learners approach MOOCs differently than if they are taking a formal registered course. As MOOCs are not formal online courses resulting in the award of credits, they require no upfront payment, nor do they have a requirement for prior learning or qualifications, and learners who enrol may have a very wide range of motivations for joining a course and their conception of what might constitute success for them will similarly vary. While for some learners completing the course in order to be eligible for a certificate may constitute success, for others it might be to sample materials for general interest or audit a course to learn one or two new things with no intention of completing the course (Liyanagunawardena et al., 2015). A recent study analysing 86 MOOCs offered by MIT and Harvard on the edX platform indicated that some 39% MOOC learners were in fact other educators who were interested in learning how another educator taught a subject or just to experience how to teach and design for an online environment (Ho et al., 2015). Author accepted manuscript April 2016 5 Attributes of MOOCs The particular affordances of MOOCs shaping learning environments comprise two aspects: the scale (in terms of numbers of students) and the diversity (in terms of the types of students). These aspects constrain possible learning designs and shape how students might engage, but these aspects also provide opportunities that leverage the affordances of scale and diversity. Adopting measures used with formal online courses to assess the outcomes of MOOCs is often not informative because the context and objectives are typically very different. Suggesting successful learning in MOOC should be measured as completion means all MOOCs perform poorly, which is not necessarily the case. MOOC designers and educators have sought other indicators and measures for what might constitute a successful MOOC. Book publishers, television producers and public lecture presenters would use sales, views and attendees in much the same way MOOCs used enrolment as a show of interest or engagement. Such indicators capture many possible motivations. Identifying some of the main reasons for why participants enrol in MOOCs then becomes an important focus. Understanding these indicators in context allows for course design teams to work with educators to develop strategies for designing MOOCs, as well as assisting institutions to decide what sort of courses and topics might be particularly suitable for MOOCs. There are additional measures too that are more similar to those of formal courses. In addition to completion rates, Yuan and Powell (2013) suggest issues of quality, sustainability, awarding of credit and pedagogy of MOOCs as major concerns. While completion and pedagogy relate directly to learning design, the remainder are much more strongly linked to external decisions and are beyond the scope of this paper. Quality assurance is clearly needed to ensure that they conform to effective practice (Jona and Naidu, 2014), but such processes exist outside the design of individual courses. Engagement as a lens We use the term “engagement” to describe the willingness and extent to which people are active in a MOOC as displayed through their interaction with the content and people in the course. Student engagement can be seen a measure of “the investment of time, effort and other relevant resources by both students and their institutions intended to optimise the student experience and enhance the learning outcomes and development of students, and the Author accepted manuscript April 2016 6 performance and reputation of the institution” (Trowler, 2010, p.3). This could encompass multiple activities such as students studying a subject, obtaining feedback, taking part in active and collaborative learning, interacting with educators and other students with an understanding that greater levels of engagement lead to a richer learning experience (Robinson & Hullinger, 2008). Student engagement is considered to be one of the “primary components of effective online teaching” (Dixson, 2010, p.1), is seen as important for retention (de Freitas et al., 2015) and enhances the quality of the overall student experience. We acknowledge the term ‘engagement’ encompasses a range of dimensions and understandings incorporating behavioural, psychological and socio-cultural aspects of learner and institutional experiences (Kahu, 2013; Hew, 2014; Trowler, 2010). Learning design for MOOCs For course designers, the particular characteristics of open participation enabled by MOOCs leads to issues of scale and participant heterogeneity; there is a difference in designing for a small group of known students with similar backgrounds and designing for diverse participants and to a massive scale. Specific implications of this manifest in considering the role of the teacher and the constraints or opportunities afforded by scale. Rather than seeing MOOCs as inferior to to formal online courses, we explore what makes MOOCs unique and what affordances MOOCs have that formal online courses do not. Specifically our focus is on the “massive” in terms of numbers enrolled and “open” in terms of open to diverse types of participants. Knox (2014) contends that that “massiveness is more than simply large enrolment numbers” and that it constitutes “not only something unprecedented in education, but also something of significant value to continued work in an educational domain that is becoming increasingly global in its capacity and reach” (p. 165), while Stewart suggests that this massiveness has the potential to expose students to the practice of networked learning (Stewart, 2013). Building on these two perspectives, we are interested in exploring what it is that MOOCs could do well through careful design, that cannot easily be achieved in formal online courses. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 7 Methods Two courses are used as for case studies to observe learners’ digital experience while learning online and we purposefully look for evidence where our attempts at promoting learner engagement through learning design succeeded or fell short of the intention. We have used a mixed methods approach, although our primary lens is a thematic analysis of the online discussion forums. MOOC research looking for generalised learners’ engagement has used learner activity data, often referred to as clickstream data to calculate measures such as completion and drop-outs (Veletsianos, Collier and Schneider, 2015). While this provides a high level view of learner behaviour, to gain a deeper understanding of what learners do and say we must look more closely to learners’ voices as legitimate evidence to understand engagement. There are multiple ways in which a learner could be engaging including vicarious learning, direct learning from others, implicit learning knowledge sharing and conversational learning (Ferguson et al., n.d.) and understanding how and why learners engage in particular activities provides a more nuanced view of how learners experience MOOCs. Observation helps us achieve this aim as it enables rich description and the opportunity to draw inferences about someone’s perspectives that could not be obtained by relying on for, example, interview data (Maxwell, 2005). In our case observation enables us to draw inferences of learners’ actual experiences in real time, that is while they were participating in the MOOC. Since the courses are online we cannot directly observe the learners physically, rather we are seeing what they do online. We use four sources of data to explore how learners engaged and responded to the course’s learning design: ● Platform activity data (for example, the impact on participation of sending emails from educators), ● Interviews with the educators, ● Learner post-course surveys ● A selection of in-course comments from learners themselves left in the course discussion spaces. We are particularly looking for evidence of how the learners experience and engage in the learning process in their own words, and use other sources of data to draw out, confirm or Author accepted manuscript April 2016 8 inform learners’ responses to design. Thus we use the learning analytics data to confirm what is typical and help highlight what is unusual in how learners engage. While the learning analytics data do not provide evidence of the experiential aspects of learning, they can provide some clues of how to make sense of our observations of learners. In addition, we we have coded the online discussions from the forums for indicators of our three key concepts: teacher presence, social learning and peer learning. We differentiated negative and positive comments, and extracted comments that garnered significant ‘likes’, as this indicates broader agreement among the learner community for that view, whether positive or negative. We see negative comments as a form of engagement and as learning designers are keen to understand the difficulties and confusion that learners may experience. Case study: Designing for engagement in MOOCs The two MOOCs studied were six-week courses run on the FutureLearn platform during 2015, ‘Medicine and the Arts’ and ‘What is a Mind?’. Medicine and the Arts: Humanising Healthcarei is an interdisciplinary course introducing the emerging field of medical humanities. Convened by an anthropologist (Associate Professor Susan Levine) and a medical doctor (Professor Steve Reid), the course assembled 16 disciplinary experts across health sciences, social sciences and the arts to bring their perspectives into dialogue about six topics selected by the lead academics. The course was run twice during 2015 and data from both runs is included in this paper. What is a Mind?ii led by neuroscientist, Professor Mark Solms, explored scientific and philosophical concept related to understanding human minds. The course brings in perspectives from a range of disciplines, to explore four specific aspects of the mind - subjectivity, intentionality, consciousness and agency. The course ran in the first quarter of 2015 and again in November 2015. Data from both runs is included in this paper. Discussion Teacher presence Teacher presence significantly influences learner motivation in online and distance education (Anderson & Dron, 2011; Ross et al., 2014). Effective online instruction requires teachers to be actively involved in their students’ learning (Dixson, 2010). In traditional online and Author accepted manuscript April 2016 9 distance learning, a number of models might be deployed to enable the presence of a teacher in synchronous and asynchronous modes such as virtual small tutor groups, virtual tutorials, call centres and discussion forums with teachers signalling presence through leaving comments on discussions, interacting with groups of students virtually, posting feedback as replies to student input and giving assessment feedback. In MOOCs, learners do not expect direct interaction with the educator due to the large numbers of enrolled learners and the informal enrollment. This lack of direct supported instruction is commonly cited as a limitation of MOOCs as high quality effective learning spaces and is seen as a contributor to non completion rates and drop-outs. A study from the University of Edinburgh’s Elearning & Digital Cultures MOOC indicated that many participants felt adrift and confused as to where the teaching was (Knox, 2014) and such negative student feedback has been reported in a study of a number of connectivist MOOCs (Kop et al., 2011) However various strategies have been deployed to enhance the sense of teacher presence (Hew, 2014) or at least provide proxies for the teacher in MOOCs. One of the earliest strategies has been establishing the presence of the educator through the use of video lectures. MOOC videos usually take the form of short “talking head” lectures, screencasting, dynamic drawing, animations or a combination of styles. The effect of these more intimate ‘tutorial’ style videos is to bring the instructor to life in the eyes of the learner rather than the learner being a bystander. Many MOOC video styles exist and learners react in different ways to the different styles, with indications that authentic, dynamic and short lectures engage learners so that they keep watching (Guo et al, 2014). Our experience with Medicine and the Arts and What is a mind? supports this research that short videos proved engaging, with learners responding to the videos by leaving comments focussing on the personality and style of lecturing of the lead educator with whom they felt an individual connection as illustrated in the comments below: Very grateful for access to such a terrific course. Great to have Prof Solms' direct, enthusiastic robust/muscular teaching style and nuanced, humane approach. I did always feel as though he was addressing each of us individually. Learner A Author accepted manuscript April 2016 10 I don't think it would be possible for a better teacher/lecturer/enthusiast than Dr Mark! He has made the course absolutely fascinating, and his sense of humour has enhanced his teaching. Learner B Some learners responded directly to the educator as if they were having a conversation as in this case: you express mystification as to why you always think that the artist of the Blombos cave etching was female. Well the etched lines quite evidently spell out an XX pattern. Can you have repressed the obvious Freudian allusion?! Learner C The presence of the educator is also signalled in less direct ways in the MOOC platform interface, so that small picture icons of the educators appear whenever they leave a comment as well as a role label denoting their status, while the quiz feedback text is written as if it were from the educator. This deliberate strategy of writing instructional text from the point of view of the educators using the first person “we”, use of their first names and pictures are platform design features to help learners feel a sense of connection with the educators. With the Medicine & the Arts MOOC, this was particularly important as this MOOC comprised some 18 different presenters with the two lead educators in the position of convening, hosting and synthesising the learning. Many MOOCs deploy course mentors/facilitators to interact with learners to provide more expert facilitation. In both of our courses, senior students at Master’s and PhD level with subject matter knowledge were employed to provide facilitation in the course discussion spaces and in the case of What is a mind? to select participant questions for the lead educator to respond to. Learners appeared to appreciate the presence of the course mentors, sometimes calling on them directly in course discussion spaces, and using the platform social-media conventions to “follow” comments made by the mentors. Many learners recognised the limited engagement of educators but seem to be aware of the MOOC format constraints: So appreciative that all these highly busy people have given the time to share their experiences with us - thank you. Learner D Another example of enabling instructor presence at scale was deployed in the ‘What is a Mind?’ course where each week learners were invited to pose questions and queries in an Author accepted manuscript April 2016 11 ‘Ask Mark’ forum. The pedagogical purpose of this activity was to enable learners to pose any misconceptions or questions that emerged as they worked through the week’s content and activities with a commitment that the instructor would respond to a selection of questions by recording answers as a video, which was posted on the course website at the beginning of the following week. This activity elicited considerable engagement, first on the part of the learners who not only submitted questions but also commented on and augmented fellow learners’ questions and in some cases answering some of the questions. Learners also responded positively to the videos recorded by the educator with some rating this one of the the best feature of the course and in relation to other MOOCs: The triumphant feature, as so many of your students remarked, was the "Ask Mark" videos. The process of filtering and consolidating the questions for the instructor to reply to was far superior to various open line exchanges employed by other MOOC's. Learner E Totally brilliant answers, it is especially great to be on a course where the participants questions are really listened to. Learner F Although the ‘Ask Mark’ strategy was deliberately designed to respect the limited time the educator had, this limitation was turned into a positive feature in that the role of others in posing questions, in selecting the question, filming, editing and uploading videos allowed a rich interaction with learners and increased engagement. Regular course communication between learners and the instructor via digital communication channels enables a virtual link between educators and students in online learning. Dixson (2011) in a study to ascertain what engaged students in online courses, found that while there was no particular pedagogical activity that engaged students the different ways of communicating between student and instructors and between students during the course led to higher levels of student engagement. In a MOOC, channels of communication are not individualised but weekly email announcements from the educator summing up course developments and looking ahead to what was coming up proved to be motivating. In both courses these emails are clearly motivating students to return to the course on a weekly basis (Figure 2). Author accepted manuscript April 2016 12 Figure 2: Heatmap for the ‘What is a Mind?’ course showing patterns in steps completed. An e-mail announcement is sent at the start of every week. One can observe the impact of these weekly emails on learner behaviour. Establishing teacher presence in MOOCs in the absence of direct instruction involves finding innovative and practical ways of making the most of an academic’s limited time, amplifying what interaction is possible and providing a number of proxies. This is “light-touch” teaching at scale which we speculate might provide learners with a sense of confidence even in the absence of direct contact from the lead educator. Social learning While there is less teacher involvement in MOOCs when compared to traditional university courses, the teacher involvement is far greater when compared to say educational books or Author accepted manuscript April 2016 13 television. It is this “in-between” publishing space that MOOCs are helping explore how large numbers of people can become engaged through online forms of social interaction. We use the term ‘social learning’ here to distinguish this from design choices that are centred on the educator and peers. The FutureLearn platform reflects a social constructivist approach to learning and its design, which is based on Laurillard’s conversational framework (2002), encourages a learning approach based on conversations between participants (Ferguson and Sharples, 2014). On MOOC platforms, there are opportunities to use social media, which we also include here as it is used to engage with others outside the course. We focus on how learners have engaged socially, seen either as general behaviour patterns within the platform or engagement outside of the platform. The implicit premise is that learners and learning benefit from engaging with others through conversations and interactions. Social learning is not focusing on any new or specific strategies in online learning design, but we highlight some manifestations in a MOOC format that merits analysis. These may lead to better insights for designers given the constraints of the MOOC format. When a learner watches a video, reads an article or responds to an activity prompt they can often post a comment in that “step” or respond to other learners’ comments thus initiating a conversation. Of all the learners on the course who visit one or more steps, about 40% post a comment at least once. Figure 3 shows the total number of comments made by learners over the 42 day duration of the ‘What is a Mind?” course. The first few days had the highest number of comments, many of which were learners introducing themselves. The different patterns in each bar are used to indicate the week of the step in which the comment was posted. We interpret that some people worked through the course quickly and had started engaging with material for the second week on the first day while some discussions continued for longer than 7 days. Overall the pattern of engagement is strongly driven by the course calendar as was depicted in Figure 2. Monday has the largest number of postings, as people receive e-mail reminders indicating the course design is helping people ‘learn together’. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 14 Figure 3: Comments posted per day for the duration of the course, with different patterns representing comments for the distinct weeks into which the course is organised. Visits and comments show strong patterns in behaviours, preferences and ambivalence to discussions. Post-course surveys (see Figure 4) indicates the mode with the highest overall positive rating is video, followed by resources such as readings and external links, then quizzes while there is greater ambivalence towards what peers have contributed. Based on the different course runs this suggests there are typically 5% to 15% of learners who would prefer not to read comments by others or avoid contributing to discussions. Further, a high proportion of people do not respond to this question, likely because they do not engage with comments at all or are indifferent. This is substantiated by written survey remarks where people have expressed their dislikes and mistrust of peer comments. This is a useful observation for learning designers promoting social learning strategies. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 15 Figure 4: The responses from the post-course survey for the question ’How did you feel about learning on FutureLearn’. Nonetheless we found clear indications that some learners were exhibiting high levels of generosity and expending energy to find and post resources for other learners in the comment spaces, for which other learners voiced their appreciation: I've really enjoyed hearing about such a variety of topics but have actually found the comments made by other participants to be just as, if not more at time, interesting. Learner G While the number of learners fully participating as social learners was around 40% (where a learner has posted a comment at least once), the presence of this core group had a significant impact on the learning environment, enabling vicarious learning by others. The presence and contributions of fellow learners can encourage engagement and broaden perspectives for learners. Courses cannot go into depth on all aspects of a topic and intentionally invite learners to contribute their experiences and perspectives: I realize this course was tentative in juxta-positioning two extreme subjects ie hard and soft science. The lack of arts representation may reflect the lack of support for Author accepted manuscript April 2016 16 arts in medicine as it were. However the wealth of comment indicates there are many intelligent and insightful people who will build on the foundation this course has provided and take it further. Learner H Another thanked a fellow learner for filling a perceived gap in the course: Thank you. I had been thinking that the arts were being lost in this week's talks. But by bringing in Pinter and the Aborigines' 'Songlines' you have brought us back to the course title, 'Medicine and the Arts'. Learner I Learners also engaged socially outside of the FutureLearn platform in a number of ways: sometimes in response to prompts from the course designers to share artefacts to social media websites, while other times learners share without prompting. In ‘What is a Mind?’ learners were invited to post images of the mind that resonated with their understandings to Padlet (an online bulletin board). There are just over 50 individual images, with nearly three times as many references to these in the discussion comments showing strong engagement with this activity. While we can see social learning happening in the course as a whole, the experiences of individual learners, from their perspective, can be quite different. Some learners remark how they might get overwhelmed by comments or avoid reading them completely. For many learners it is not feasible to engage with all the comments or to continue to return to the forum. Thus generally learners are getting a partial view of the social learning taking place. When we attempted to analyse the data more from an individual's’ point of view, slightly different perspectives emerged. For example, just over 10% of learners started in the first week and were still visiting the course six weeks later. It was much more likely that learners had a much shorter time to engage on the course. Of the total learners that visited at least one step, 42% only spent one day visiting the course. As Figure 2 also shows, some learners had completed the course on the first day. For learning designers when designing for social learning, strategies for social engagement over a sustained period of time may be difficult to maintain as learners’ time on the course appears to be short and concentrated. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 17 Peer learning Peer learning and peer teaching, where MOOC participants interact with each other around core course content, teach others and review each other's’ assignments, has been heralded as a significant innovation in online learning allowing for personal interaction at scale. Aside from the affective benefits of active participation, open enrollment results in large numbers of participants, including people with high levels of expertise. This may include other educators but also professionals, practitioners, students and in the case of the Medicine and the Arts MOOC many patients. MOOC audiences are generally well-educated (for example, 83% of participants on the Medicine and the Arts course went to university or college), and attract highly qualified or expert individuals who may step into a peer educator role. In the second run of Medicine and the Arts during the week on the topic of heart transplants a participant posted a comment wondering whether scientists would be able to create hearts from stem cells in the near future. A few posts later, another participant responded from a position of considerable expertise: I was part of Prof Christiaan Barnard's first and second "Twin/Double" heart transplant teams... . Given that experience - of what is possible - I believe it will be a stem-cell heart will be achieved; in a while! Learner J One of the lead educators on the Medicine and the Arts course was particularly struck by the ‘democratic’ nature of the space - without many of the clues about status from face-to-face encounters (such as age, gender, appearance, language and so on), the virtual shared classroom immediately broke down the barriers of authority: MOOCs are a ...sort of levelling platform, ... an undergraduate and a postgraduate and a senior experienced person are all on the same level in a MOOC. So everyone’s comments ... carry equal weight. (Interview with lead educator) This dynamic was both an enabler - allowing people who might normally be silenced to participate and a constraint on learning. On the enabling side, the MOOC learners accept the limitations of engagement by the educators and often take on ‘teacherly’ roles. Part of the reward of engaging in learning in a MOOC can be the flattened teacher-student relationship. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 18 There is still an expectation that the lectures and content will provide new knowledge and learning, but there seems to be more shared responsibility for learning. In discussion initiated by the educators about the definitions of Medical Humanities, a medical doctor posted a well- formulated response with stimulating questions for other participants - which received the highest number of ‘likes’ on the course - a clear signal of other learners’ acknowledgement of the intellectual credibility of a peer learner. Many are interpreting "medical humanities" as a way of making modern medicine more humane, because it is allegedly technology-bound, hyperspecialised and distant from the actual people and their problems. As a junior doctor I can say that this should be only part of the field's aim, also because - let's not forget - technology, drugs and specialisation are a great advance to medicine. Learner K The comments sections were well utilised and those participating demonstrated appreciation for the inputs of other learners - acknowledging them directly or actively soliciting comments from peers. I am still confused .. I can't say that Animals have no brain by these examples. What to do...? Learner L On the other hand, in some instances, there was some frustration expressed about the differing levels of engagement, especially on the part of some educators who compare the MOOC unfavourably to mainstream postgraduate classroom teaching. For instance, one of the guest presenters on Medicine and the Arts was concerned about what a “thin little slice, that the MOOC cuts, you know, across a domain of topics” (interview with educator), with few readings compared to a university credit-bearing course. We observed that often discussions remained at a superficial level, with students bringing in personal anecdotes to illustrate a point or departing from the topic. Yet seemingly superficial conversations have a value in providing affective and emotional support and given the varied backgrounds, knowledge, language levels, ages of participants, this is not surprising to find. We saw examples of learners making personal connections and arranging to take discussions to other private spaces. https://www.futurelearn.com/profiles/716249 Author accepted manuscript April 2016 19 Most major MOOC platforms offer a “peer review” feature for assignments where student assignments are read and commented on by a fellow learner rather than the course academic or teaching assistants, as might be the case in a formal online course. Learners are scaffolded to give peer feedback through the provision of a rubric. The pedagogical value of peer review lies in both the opportunity to read and learn from reviewing another’s work as well as getting feedback from someone else. Peer review assignments were used in both courses and MOOC participants could see who has reviewed their work, in order to build up personal exchanges. In addition to the visibility of the peer reviewer’s identity, we designed the peer review activities so as to allow broader public peer review by inviting learners to share their assignments with others taking the course as well as with their designated peer reviewer. This was a deliberate design strategy to give learners who might have received an indifferent or sparse review the opportunity to get feedback from a broader group of learners. We noticed the lack of anonymity encouraged constructive engagement and direct responses between learners.The majority of the comments were remarkably positive. The tone of much of the interaction was a mixture of teacher-style feedback, along with a cohort consciousness of a shared experience: I was at university 30 years ago and no such thing as peer assessment then. I was a little apprehensive about this for this assignment because we presumably come from very different starting points… . But reading the comments on this discussion virtually everybody who commented found the experience of marking and of receiving feedback to be helpful to their understanding of the topic. Learner M This was a very useful exercise in reviewing other people’s work. So many different creative points of view to take on board as well as sharpening the critical skills needed to evaluate the texts and content. Learner N While peer review assignment offers opportunities for learners to receive constructive feedback we have found limitations of the process, especially in situations where participants have very different backgrounds, prior knowledge and language skills. https://www.futurelearn.com/profiles/1136799 Author accepted manuscript April 2016 20 Alfonso thank you for reviewing my assignment. Could I ask that you perhaps write it in English as I do not understand Spanish (?). Learner O Some learners expressed disappointment with their peer review feedback although this was sometimes mitigated through the social learning features: I must state that the reviewer of my assignment was totally distracted by his own verbosity and seems to have been looking for some extra space to write another essay of his own. Not once was anything I wrote even referred to. Learner P I don’t agree with this kind of assignment, to give your opinion on other adult´s work.The interpretation is something personal and should be respected.I do not feel well doing something that I am not sure enough. I worked uncomfortably not convinced on what I was doing and I apologize for criticising the work of my course mates because I am not the educator to do such a thing. Learner Q Such shared experiences were reflected on by other students, and a variety of responses making sense of this new learning space were discussed: MOOCs such as this attract many thousands of students and much of the feedback has to come from fellow students. In my experience the most valuable learning from FutureLearn courses comes from student to student interaction. Inevitably, some responses will cause offence and distress. It is our duty to try to prevent this in our interactions. Learner R It is a given that the composition of a virtual classroom in a MOOC course is fundamentally different to a standard credit-bearing university class; there is enormous diversity - age, nationality, language, life and work experience, culture, disciplinary background - and this represents both the potential and limitation of the mode. If well-conceived, being able to harness the diversity through tools which allow for peer teaching and peer learning is one of the most powerful potentials of MOOCs not possible in formal online learning. However we found both positive and negative attitudes to peer reviews suggesting that careful design of the activity is required to engage learners, accept that some reviews will be sub-standard and respect learners’ time in submitting and reviewing the assignments of others through pacing and selective use of the peer review mode. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 21 Our review of the platform analytics and in particular the attrition rates that track when participants did not proceed to the next stage of the course (Figure 5), suggests that the regular pattern of seeming non-engagement is attributable largely to people’s competing demands on time rather than any particular design flaw in the course. This interpretation is backed up by the importance of the weekly course emails that saw spikes of activity and the end of week step that seemingly marked a closure for students even thought they could have proceeded through the MOOC. Figure 5: The proportion of learners continuing to the next step in the ‘What is a Mind?’ course. Overall the proportion continuing is above 95%. For the first step (1.01) about 10% did not continue Conclusion Learner engagement is a challenge to design for in MOOCs. In conventional courses and assessments it is often easier to provide evidence for engagement and learning as it is much clearer how people are responding and what they are expected to achieve. In MOOCs people are not expected to engage if they choose not to; they may simply be curious or be very selective in what they take from the course. Designing for engagement in MOOCs not only Author accepted manuscript April 2016 22 acknowledges students’ differing motivations but also leverages the massiveness and diversity of students attracted to promote valued and diverse forms of engagement. In observing learner interactions and then interpreting these interactions through the lenses of three well-known pedagogical concepts - teacher presence, social learning and peer learning - we are able to probe for richer meaning than analytics are able to provide; this helps inform the design decisions to enhance or amplify engagement given the affordances of the MOOC format. Most visible in our study are a comparatively small core group of learners actively and deeply participated in all these sharing practices; their behaviour enabled ‘vicarious’ learning and enhanced the entire learning experience for the broader community. We also considered what might be inhibiting further such participation. The vast majority of signups have low participation and we identified some characteristics of these people, such as never returning. This may be a feature of a cohort based learning design model at scale. Further research may involve creating instruments to delineate specific features of teacher presence, social learning and peer learning to enable comparison across different courses and surveying learners to gauge perceptions and practices. The online curriculum landscape is presently shifting and coalescing; it has not yet settled into rigid structures which determine and shape learners’ virtual practices. This study makes a contribution to showing how learning designers can exploit the opportunities which presently exist to develop different strategies for supporting learner engagement in innovative ways. Notes on contributors Sukaina Walji is a project manager and learning designer based at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Andrew Deacon is a learning designer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Janet Small is a course developer based at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 23 Laura Czerniewicz is the director of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT), a unit in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Author accepted manuscript April 2016 24 References Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011). Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(3). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890/1826 Czerniewicz, L., Deacon, A., Small, J., & Walji, S. (2014). Developing world MOOCs: A curriculum view of the MOOC landscape. Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies, 2(3). 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Student engagement literature review. York: Higher Education Academy. Retrieved from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/studentengagementliteraturereview_1 .pdf Veletsianos, G., Collier, A. and Schneider, E. (2015). Digging deeper into learners' experiences in MOOCs: Participation in social networks outside of MOOCs, notetaking and contexts surrounding content consumption. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46, 570–587. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12297 Yuan, L., & Powell, S. (2013). MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education - A white paper, JISC CETIS (Centre for Educational Technology & Interoperability Standards). Retrieved from http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667 http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/ross_0314.pdf http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/ross_0314.pdf http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/ross_0314.pdf http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/ross_0314.pdf http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/studentengagementliteraturereview_1.pdf https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/studentengagementliteraturereview_1.pdf http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667 Author accepted manuscript April 2016 27 Appendix A According to the licensing conditions of the FutureLearn platform, the authors of the comments quoted in the text are listed below: Learner A Sue Davies Learner G Liffey Speller Learner M Robert Wilson Learner B Althea Stevens Learner H Sylvia Thompson Learner N Terry Chinn Learner C Neil McLellan Learner I Judith Thomas Learner O Alda Smith Learner D Michael Pasternak Learner J Jonathan Smith Learner P Donal Buckley Learner E Neil Carson Learner K Andrea Mazzella Learner Q Maria de las Mercedes Quintana Learner F Lisa Byford Learner L Padma Kala Learner R David Lillystone Figure captions Figure 1: Higher education course provision landscape Figure 2: Heatmap for the ‘What is a Mind?’ course showing patterns in steps completed. An e-mail announcement is sent at the start of every week. One can observe the impact of these weekly emails on learner behaviour. Figure 3: Comments posted per day for the duration of the course, with patterns representing comments for the distinct weeks into which the course is organised. Figure 4: The responses from the post-course survey for the question ’How did you feel about learning on FutureLearn’. Figure 5: The proportion of learners continuing to the next step in the ‘What is a Mind?’ course. Overall the proportion continuing is above 95%. For the first step (1.01) about 10% did not continue. i https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/medicine-and-the-arts ii https://futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/medicine-and-the-arts https://futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind 
work_x7acba3m5zb4xlq3uqtgtbv4yi	----	D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education, Vol. 28, No. 2, August 2007, pp. 149–161 ISSN 0158-7919 (print); 1475-0198 (online)/07/020149–13 © 2007 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc. DOI 10.1080/01587910701439217 Distance Education in Bhutan: Improving access and quality through ICT use Sangay Jamtshoa* and Mark Bullenb aSamtse College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan; bBritish Columbia Institute of Technology, Canada Taylor and Francis LtdCDIE_A_243803.sgm10.1080/01587910701439217Distance Education0158-7919 (print)/1475-0198 (online)Original Article2007Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.282000000August 2007SangayJamtshojon@baggaley.com Since 2004, the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Samtse, Bhutan, has made systematic efforts to introduce information and communication technology (ICT) for learning support into its distance teacher education program. This article describes the early experiences of using ICT for distance education in Bhutan by teachers and students with relatively limited ICT background. It discusses the challenges of providing student support for a distance teacher education program in Bhutan and it explores the use of ICT for student support. The article also reports an assessment of student perceptions and readiness for ICT use, the introduction of a learning management system and regional study centers as ICT access points, and the experiences and challenges encountered in the process of ICT introduction in its early stages. The use of ICT by distance students based on log data from the learning management system Moodle™ and regional study centers are discussed, as well as the challenges of ICT use under infrastructure and technological support limitations. Introduction Bhutan is a small, landlocked country in southern Asia, between China and India. Its population is 634,982, and it covers 38,394 square kilometers (Royal Government of Bhutan, 2006). It has one of the world’s smallest and least devel- oped economies. Agriculture, forestry, and hydroelectric power provide the main sources of income for 90% of the population. International agencies are currently supporting a number of educational, social, and environmental programs. In 2003, the higher education sector in Bhutan was reorganized through the creation of the Royal University of Bhutan bringing together eight higher education institutes and * Corresponding author. Samtse College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan, Bhutan. Email: sjamtsho@email.com D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 150 S. Jamtsho and M. Bullen two teacher education institutions, including the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Samtse, which is on the southern border of Bhutan with India. Recently, the NIE was renamed as Samtse College of Education (SCE, 2007). In 1995, the SCE augmented its regular campus-based programs with a distance teacher education program (DTEP). This was in response to the need to provide greater access to teacher education, for the Bhutanese primary school teachers in all regions of the country who wanted to upgrade their credentials. These teachers have a Primary Teaching Certificate (PTC), which is a 2-year program that they undertake after completing their middle secondary school education (Grade 10). The DTEP is a 5-year version of the 3-year Bachelor of Education for Primary teachers (BEdP). The program is delivered using printed study guides and an annual 1-month compulsory residential session at the beginning of each level of the program. During the residential school, orientation, tutorials, and learning materi- als are provided. Examinations of the previous level are also conducted during this period. There are approximately 2,000 primary school teachers with only a PTC, of which 10% are currently enrolled in the DTEP (figures taken from NIE statistics, 2006). This means that there are over 1,500 primary teachers who will soon need upgrading. The DTEP students live in all parts of the country, mainly in primary and community schools in rural and remote locations. Many of these schools do not have road access. Bhutan’s rugged terrain and bad weather in both summer and winter often create roadblocks that make accessibility very difficult. Many students have access to a telephone service, however, regarded as an effective but often underestimated medium for student support (Simpson, 2000). According to an informal survey conducted during the DTEP’s residential school in early 2005, 74% of the students have access to a telephone at home. Seven regional study centers around the country provide Internet access and basic facilities such as printing, telephone and fax, to provide asynchronous modes of communication of benefit to students who do not have ready access to computers and the Internet (Gyatsho, Daker, Galey, & Jamtsho, 2005). These centers are located in schools identified as education resource centers. A teacher from each of these schools has been trained as coordinator. Besides serving as access points for information and communication technology (ICT) support services, these centers are designed to provide students with “the support and friendship of other people in addition to what can be provided through machines or the written word” (Mills, 1996, p. 85). It is hoped that these centers will grow into environments for activities such as peer tutoring, faculty visits, arranging for local teacher coaches, and group work in the near future. The design and provision of effective student support services has been one of the DTEP’s greatest challenges, however. In this article, student support services refer to “activities beyond the production and delivery of course materials that assist in the progress of students in their studies” (Simpson, 2000, p. 6). Such activities involve interactions between the instructors or tutors and students, between students, and the provision of information and resources to promote learning. There D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education and ICT in Bhutan 151 is a growing recognition and acceptance, in Bhutan as in distance education (DE) the world over, that knowledge is a means rather than an end in itself. The learner is seen as an active shaper of learning, while the teacher may be seen as a guide rather than the owner of knowledge (Gaskell, Gilmartin, & Kelly, 2005; Louw & Engelbre- cht, 2006; Miller, 1996; Oliver & McLoughlin, 2001; Sweet, 1993). Boot and Hodgson (1987) distinguished between “dissemination” and “development” approaches to DE, and in Bhutan increasing importance is being attached to the development approach, which emphasizes active participation and communication for the students’ intellectual and personal growth, as opposed to more passive tradi- tional information distribution models, which generate more passive learning roles. It has been envisioned that the DTEP will “provide opportunities for students to express, reflect and share their experiences as practitioners … provide context relevant teacher education by relating theory and practice” (NIE, 1998, p. 2). The traditional DTEP infrastructure allows very little room, however, for this type of knowledge construction drawing on the students’ wide experiences. The program’s traditional approach has been more like the “dissemination model” in which the primary concern is that of transmitting knowledge, skills, and values. The DTEP staff has come to regard this as a serious mismatch between the program’s objectives and activities. Thus, the usage of ICT in the DTEP (primarily the telephone) has mainly been for administrative support and information dissemination functions rather than for academic support, for example, discussion of students’ study-related problems. This shortcoming is compounded by scheduling problems arising from the fact that many DE students and tutors are in full-time employment as classroom teachers. Apart from a limited use of telephonic communication and postal mail, the residential school is the only major opportunity that students have to interact with their instruc- tors or tutors, and receive services such as tutorials and academic counseling. The month-long annual residential school is divided among numerous activities, includ- ing face-to-face interaction sessions, examinations, and accessing essential resources from the library. With the emphasis more on delivery, hardly any time is available for such support activities. Even if enough time were available, not all support problems can be anticipated during the residential school. Any support provided during the school therefore tends to be one-off and not necessarily timely. Problems usually arise when the students begin to study on their own, and are generally very difficult to anticipate during the residential school; and communicating with the learners after the school is largely restricted to the telephone and postal mail, which may take at least 2 weeks to arrive in each direction. In such cases, even the promptest response can take a month or longer. Hence, provision of timely guidance and support constitutes one of the biggest challenges. The DTEP, therefore, runs the risk of being an isolating experience involving one-way knowledge transmission alone (Paul & Brindley, 1996; Simpson, 2000). While the DTEP has been successful in making teacher education more widely accessible to Bhutanese teachers in general, concerns have been expressed about this lack of interaction between students and instructors outside the yearly residential D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 152 S. Jamtsho and M. Bullen session. The print-based nature of the program and the geographic isolation of many of its teachers have meant that, after the residential session is complete, students are virtually on their own for the rest of the year. Although collaborative learning methods are known to enhance understanding (Bruffe, 1999), the traditional deliv- ery method of the DTEP does not facilitate this approach. The use of ICT- supported methods, however, can increase interaction and the use of collaborative learning approaches. Until recently, the technological infrastructure of Bhutan made the use of ICTs impractical. Since the introduction of TV and the Internet in 2000, however, considerable progress has been made in improving the country’s ICT systems, and the door has been opened to the greater use of ICTs to enhance the DTEP’s interactive element (NIE, 2003). The NIE’s leaders felt that, enhanced by ICTs in this way, the quality of the DTEP could be improved for teachers around the country in need of professional upgrading. By 2003, the expanded use of ICT for student support for the DTEP was regarded as a viable option for several reasons: 1. The advent of ICT, notably computer-mediated communication (CMC) affords numerous possibilities of interaction, particularly in an asynchronous mode—a significant move away from the traditional delivery mode. CMC here refers to “any form of organized interaction between people, utilizing comput- ers or computer networks as the medium of communication” (Romiszowski, 1997, p. 32). CMC’s use has been reported as facilitating numerous aspects of learning that might otherwise be missing from distance-based programs, for example, social construction of knowledge, reflective thinking, and develop- ment of higher order thinking skills (Murray & Mason, 2003). It has the potential to increase service access and quality, interaction among students, and to provide access to resources that were previously inaccessible (Brigham, 2001). With CMC, it becomes possible to provide continuous and sustained learner support. Students can remain connected with their instructors and each other throughout their course, communicating at convenient times. It allows for interaction amongst students through conferencing and discussions. It has the potential to facilitate interaction and dialogues that are both valued and enjoyed—qualities advocated as essential for any effective student support system (Tait, 1996). 2. In today’s information-driven society, it becomes very important to empower students to be self-directed knowledge “navigators” on the information super- highway (Skagen, Blaabjerg, Torras, & Hansen, 2006). Teachers also need to be educated on how to help their students in the ICT context. The introduction of CMC therefore not only helps the students to succeed in their DTEP studies, but also prepares them to help themselves and their peers for the increasingly complex information society. The progress made in Bhutan’s ICT infrastructure development since the beginning of the millennium has made it possible for the SCE to consider ICT (e.g., increasingly accessible Internet services) as providing viable student support in DE. D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education and ICT in Bhutan 153 The Project (2003–2007) The first stages in fulfilling the DTEP’s development objectives have been made possible in a 4-year project funded from 2003 to 2007 by the International Develop- ment Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. The project’s overall goals were to improve the quality and access to DE in Bhutan, by: (a) developing and pilot-testing an appropriate ICT-based distance teacher education system in terms of learning support and accessibility; (b) assessing whether the use of ICT improves the quality and access of the distance teacher education system; (c) formulating recommendations from the research findings for national teacher education policy; and (d) examining learning satisfaction and access to the ICT-supported distance teacher education from gender perspectives. The project consisted of three phases: 1. Preparation. In the first phase, the prior quality and accessibility of the DTEP was assessed. This assessment confirmed a decision to design an ICT-supported distance teacher education system. 2. Intervention. As a result of Phase 1, an open-source learning management system, Moodle™, was installed on the SCE’s server, and tutors were trained in how to use online technology in support of learning. Online learning activities have been designed for four modules: Sound & Speech (EFC 305); Teaching Strategies (EDN 335); Teaching of Social Studies (PCS 371); and Teaching of Science (PCS 381). These modules were pilot-tested in 2005. In addition, a computerized student information management system and online program- related information were developed. 3. Data collection and analysis. The final phase of the project evaluated the effective- ness of the online learning in these pilot modules, and assessed whether the use of web-based ICT improved the quality of, and access to, the distance teacher education system. This phase also examined learning satisfaction and access to the system from gender perspectives. The project has had the following secondary goals of determining: (a) the impact, if any, of the implementation of an ICT-supported learning support system on access, learner satisfaction, and persistence; (b) how tutors use the system and their perceptions of it; and (c) whether any gender or geographic differences exist in students’ responses to the ICT-supported learning support system. Data have been collected from the following sources using a variety of techniques and instruments: (a) Semistructured interviews with tutors. Interviews were conducted with 12 of the 33 tutors (36%) to determine their perceptions of the use of ICTs in the DTEP. D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 154 S. Jamtsho and M. Bullen A stratified sample was selected on the basis of geographic location (urban, rural, remote) and gender. Interviews used a semistructured protocol and were conducted face-to-face by an interviewer who was independent from the College. The interviewer used the protocol as a guide to ensure that key issues were covered, and conducted the interviews in a conversational manner so as to allow issues and themes to emerge. (b) Semistructured interviews with students. Similarly, semistructured interviews were conducted with a representative sample of the students. A stratified sample was selected based on gender, geographic location, and level of study. Interviews were conducted with 25 of the 190 students (13%). The same semistructured, conversational approach was used as in the interviews with the tutors. (c) A questionnaire was developed including demographic items, and 5-point Likert- type attitude scales to gauge opinions about the DTEP, its ICT-based support, and how it could be improved. The questionnaire was mailed to all 33 tutors and 190 students with stamped, self-addressed envelopes. Responses were obtained from 13 (39%) tutors and 107 (56%) students. The results were compiled using the SPSS statistical software. (d) Web server log files. Log data from the Moodle™ system were used to determine frequency and times of use by students and tutors. This information was used in triangulation with the data on student and tutor perceptions gathered from the questionnaires and interviews. (e) Student records. Data from the SCE’s student records were used to determine final student grades and completion rates. These data were used in developing the DTEP’s learning support system in relation to two main dependent variables: (a) the efficiency of the learning support (i.e., the satisfaction expressed by distance students as a result of the implementation of the online learning activities); and (b) students’ ease of access to the learning support (i.e., the ability of qualified Bhutanese students to enrol in and complete the DTEP, regardless of their geographic location within the country). Project Results 1. Student Perceptions of ICT Use and Accessibility The first step in analyzing the feedback data was to understand the students’ views on the quality of learning support and the program’s ICT uses. It was very clear from the survey responses that there was a need to enhance learning support services for the distance-based program. Only 63% of the students felt that the residential school was sufficient to dispel any doubts or problems related to their distance study; and only 55% indicated that adequate means existed for them to consult their course tutors at times of need. One serious area of concern for the students was the turnaround of assignments with appropriate feedback from the D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education and ICT in Bhutan 155 tutors. While 70% agreed that the feedback from their tutors on their assignments helps them improve, only 27% agreed that the feedback was timely. Besides wish- ing for assignments to be promptly returned with helpful feedback, another impor- tant form of support that students like to receive is a selection of supplementary reference materials. Only 14% of the students reported that they had reasonable access to such materials during their distance-based study. Less than half of the sample (43%) reported that they had opportunities to interact with other students during the program. Types of ICT were explored as means to improve the DTEP in these respects. Eighty-one percent of the student sample agreed that the program should make use of ICTs; and 78% felt that the Internet should be used to facilitate interaction and support, even though only 35% reported that they had easy access to a computer. (A subsequent survey during the 2006–2007 residential school session has revealed that this figure has since risen to 78%.) More than 80% of the students believed that supplementary radio and TV programs as well as prerecorded audio and videotapes will be helpful to them, while 69% wanted supplementary materials on CD-ROMs. Ninety-five percent of the respondents responded positively to the idea of using regional centers for student support services. The findings of the survey and inter- views confirmed the need for additional reference material and for prompt feedback on student work, as means to improve the students’ assignment work. 2. Implementing ICT Use for Learning Support The baseline survey also indicated student preferences for a wide range of ICT use for student support. It was clear that introducing multiple ICTs simultaneously was not feasible, given the resources that would be required, and that it would be difficult to manage. For these reasons, a systematic and gradual approach to ICT introduction was required. In addition to the enhancement of already existing tele- phone and fax services, the use of CMC was seen as potentially most helpful in meeting the important goal of emphasizing context-relevant teacher education through reflective practice. The open-source learning management system (LMS) Moodle™ was initially introduced into four of the DTEP’s course modules, and has gradually been expanded for use in all the course modules. A DTEP website was launched to provide information on institutional regulations, course descriptions, and assignments, as well as links to course resources. Email accounts for the faculty and students were created. Analyses of the Moodle™ server log data and the regional study center logs provided useful insights into the students’ uses of CMC. The use of the LMS gener- ally peaked around the due dates for completion of activities and assignments. The frequency of students’ use of it was also higher in the first half of the year than in the latter half, probably owing to a decline in the medium’s novelty. Technical glitches experienced during the latter half of the year with the SCE’s server and with the LMS software may have discouraged students in making the often time-consum- ing trip to the regional study centers. D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 156 S. Jamtsho and M. Bullen Despite high expectations of interaction on the LMS’s discussion forums, these facilities were little used by the students. This may be because none of the courses required or systematically encouraged the students to engage in them. The conferences were mainly left available for students to post queries or socialize on a voluntary basis. It is apparent that successful use of discussion forums requires a learning culture nurtured by systematic preparation. As a new kind of learning environment, CMC takes time for students to get used to it. Other deterring factors were no doubt limited access to the Internet and the slow speeds of available bandwidth. More detailed study of this is in progress with the students, which should provide a clearer picture. Email was effectively used by students to communicate with their tutors and to send in assignments as attachments. Regional study center logs indicated that many students make use of the Internet for surfing for resources and downloading them. By contrast, very few students used the fax and telephone facilities at the regional study centers. For most students, phone calls are usually more conve- niently made from home and in the evenings. Students would also prefer to use email rather than fax to submit their assignments—except in the case of a few students in very remote locations with no access to computer or word-processing facilities. Submitting work by fax tends to be cumbersome and unreliable, especially when the documents are several pages in length. The preferred choice of many remote students continues to be the postal service, unless little time is left before a submission date. The results suggest that students found the ICT-based learning support of some value overall, and that it improved the quality of their learning experience. It also emerged, however, that there are significant barriers to be overcome in seeking full integration of ICT into the DTEP. For example, in terms of improving their ability to obtain support, students said that the ICT system enabled easier assignment submission, and made it easier to obtain tutor feedback. This is clearly due, in part at least, to technical difficulties, notably lack of Internet access and technical support, and low bandwidth. As a further reason, some students also cited the complexity of using online methods generally. Although the SCE is connected to a 128 kbps leased line, students tend to be connected at a speed ranging from 33 to 56 kbps. This did not present a serious problem in the early months of the project, but Internet speed then began to deteriorate, making it very difficult for students as well as the faculty to use it. Suspecting this to be due to the bottleneck created by too many people trying to access the SCE, the DTEP site was subsequently moved to the web-hosting facilities of the Internet service provider, Druknet. Since then, there has been some improvement in connectivity speed. Currently, the SCE is connected by a 256 kbps VSAT leased line, with plans to upgrade it to 512 kbps in the near future. The use of online technology may also be helped by Bhutan Telecom’s introduction of free Internet subscriptions from April 2007, and tariff reductions for various services. Comparison of men and women in the samples did not indicate any meaningful differences in terms of their frequency and type of use of the system, nor in terms of D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education and ICT in Bhutan 157 their ratings of the system’s support functions (e.g., downloading study materials, submitting assignments, and communicating with tutors). The system’s impact on student performance and persistence was difficult to measure. The results show no significant impact on student completion rates. These have been relatively high since 1998, averaging over 80%, and it would have been surprising if the limited implementation of the ICT support system had exerted any direct impact on completion. One may expect a future impact on final grades if the system succeeds in increasing access to resources and timely feedback from tutors. Issues Raised by the Project 1. Technical Support A major factor to be taken into consideration by organizations introducing ICT facil- ities for the first time is the availability of technical support. Occasional technical glitches may be inevitable, and there always seem to be limitations to the extent that institutional technical personnel can solve problems. This may be more the case in small institutions located in rural settings, as in case of the SCE, situated in Samtse on Bhutan’s southern border. Due to its remote location and the lack of qualified technical personnel in the area, relatively minor problems sometimes took several days to fix. Replacing or repairing problematic hardware could take weeks. The best of efforts put into the design of the learning support system in the end amounts to little in the face of poor infrastructure and inadequate technical backup. 2. ICT Infrastructure in Bhutan An equally serious problem faced in implementing ICT-based methods in the DTEP has been the need to adapt them to Bhutan’s limited technical infrastructure. Collaboration between educators and agencies such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Information and Communications, and the Royal University of Bhutan, while not always easy, may bring about speedier and more efficient changes in educational ICT in the country. The teachers and students in SCE programs have to access their online support from learning centers or Internet cafés, which are sometimes a considerable distance from their homes and schools. The practical implications of this for the DTEP’s project are that ICTs must be introduced gradually, and learning activities that use them must take this limited access into account. It is impractical, for example, to have the kinds of ongoing, asynchronous online discussions that are common in distance-based courses in developed countries. This activity requires an ongoing level of participation (Bullen, 1998) that is currently not possible in Bhutan (see the Appendix). Initially at least, therefore, traditional educational media should be used more intensively to enhance instructor–student and student–student interaction, and to provide access to learning resources by supplementing and enhancing a print-based DE program. This may be a more effective way of moving students with limited D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 158 S. Jamtsho and M. Bullen experience of information technology towards an ICT-based learning culture. Currently, students and instructors only interact during the month-long residential session at the beginning of the academic year. For the rest of the year there is no opportunity for interaction. By using the communication tools in the Moodle™ LMS, learners are able to contact their instructors and fellow students for clarifica- tion on points of instruction. It is hoped that, as the Internet becomes more accessi- ble, this kind of communication will lead to the development of a virtual community in the DTEP. The Moodle™ LMS will be used to distribute information and resources; the students will be directed to relevant online resources; and selected readings will be posted in PDF for download. 3. The Need for Training The crucial need is seen for all members of the DTEP, staff and students, to be trained in the effective usage of ICTs in course delivery and student support. The study has indicated that the extent to which students and tutors use ICT is dependent on their levels of ease and comfort with it. In November 2004, a group of tutors was trained in how to develop online support for their print-based modules. In January 2005, this group of tutors trained another group of tutors. By the project’s completion in 2006, most of the DTEP tutors had been introduced to the key issues related to developing online support and the use of Moodle™. LMS training was first conducted for the faculty, and then for the students. In addition, computer literacy classes have been introduced for the distance students, with emphasis on the use of CMC methods for student support. Manuals have been developed for both tutors and students. Coordinators of the regional study centers have been trained in basic skills required for ICT management and coordination. There are also plans to explore and gradually introduce a wider range of audiovi- sual materials, including radio and audiotaped instruction, as well as supplemen- tary TV and video materials, as long as their “value-added function” can be justified. 4. Resistance to Change Finally, perhaps the most inevitable hurdle of all—resistance to change—has to be overcome. Attempting to implement an ICT-based education program encounters various types of resistance. Even in countries with highly developed ICT infrastructures that have adopted the “e-culture” in their personal, leisure, and financial spheres, there is still a resistance to e-learning methods, and a preference for traditional face-to-face approaches. It should be no surprise, therefore, that attempting to use e-learning in a developing country such as Bhutan, where diffusion of the Internet is still restricted to a small elite, generates resistance. The use of ICT in education deviates from Bhutan’s traditional modes of teaching and learning, and tends to undermine the traditional perception of the teacher as an authority figure. D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education and ICT in Bhutan 159 Conclusions The current facilities for educational ICT development in Bhutan have distinct limi- tations. Certain ICT methods—CMC, for example—have the potential to promote a valuable “developmental” model of learning, but are subject to numerous technical problems, including difficulty of access, bandwidth, and lack of adequate technical support. In order to overcome these technological, infrastructure, and support problems, small institutes with limited resources, such as the SCE, are likely to benefit from establishing links with, and enlisting the support of, the local telecom department and ISPs. Despite these infrastructure-related shortcomings, the project has shown that uses of ICT such as email for faster assignment submission, and the Internet for providing additional resources, add clear value to DE support in Bhutan. Achieving other important benefits such as collaborative activities and knowledge construction through CMC will require systematic efforts that encour- age, support, and require learners to participate. Overall, it is expected that the current project will lead to greater learner satis- faction in the DTEP, and ultimately to deeper learning owing to the teacher– student and student–student interaction and collaboration afforded by online communication methods. It is anticipated that increases in learner satisfaction will derive from improvements in course module completion rates. The ICT- supported DTEP will help the distance students to learn the skills of ICT usage, which is a fast-growing aspect of today’s world. The program can help them to be more effective teachers as well as consumers of the wide variety of information sources available on the Internet. Experience gained by faculty in various aspects of ICT use during this research and development project will be applied in the design and development of course materials for conventional SCE programs in, for example, preservice and inservice teacher education, thereby providing wider access to them. At the broad institutional level, the insights gained from the DTEP project will be used to help develop ICT-supported policy, effective ICT- based teaching and learning strategies, and ICT-supported management and networking systems. Acknowledgements The project reported in this article was conducted with financial support from the Pan Asia Networking (PAN) Program Initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Notes on Contributors Sangay Jamtsho is Lecturer at the Samtse College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan. Mark Bullen is Associate Dean of the Learning and Teaching Centre at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver, Canada. D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 160 S. Jamtsho and M. Bullen References Boot, R., & Hodgson, V. (1987). Open learning: Meaning and experience. In V. Hodgson, S. Mann, & R. Snell (Eds.), Beyond distance teaching: Towards open learning (pp. 5–15). Milton Keynes: Oxford University Press. Brigham, D. (2001). Regents College: Converting student support services to online delivery. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1(2). Retrieved February 3, 2007, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/23/365 Bruffe, K. A. (1999). Collaborative learning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bullen, M. (1998). Participation and critical thinking in online university distance education. Journal of Distance Education, 13(2), 1–32. Gaskell, A., Gilmartin, K., & Kelly, P. (2005). Towards a networked learning community: Using ICTs to enhance learning support. Indian Journal of Open Learning, 14(3), 225–234. Gyatsho, T., Daker, S., Galey, K., & Jamtsho, S. (2005). ICT supported distance teacher education in Bhutan (Interim Technical Report). Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre. Louw, A., & Engelbrecht, E. (2006). Integrating information and communication technologies effectively into a distance education learning environment. In S. Garg, S. Panda, C. R. K. Murthy, & S. Mishra (Eds.), Open and distance education in the global environment: Opportunities for collaboration (pp. 80–93). New Delhi, India: Viva Books. Miller, G. (1996). Technology, the curriculum and the learner: Opportunities for open and distance education. In R. Mills & A. Tait (Eds.), Supporting the learner in open and distance learning (pp. 34–42). London: Pitman. Mills, R. (1996). The role of study centers in open and distance education: A glimpse of the future. In R. Mills & A. Tait (Eds.), Supporting the learner in open and distance learning (pp. 73–87). London: Pitman. Murray, P. J., & Mason, R. (2003). Computer-mediated communication (CMC)3: State of the art. Brazilian Review of Open & Distance Learning. Retrieved February 3, 2007, from http:// www.abed.org.br/publique/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?UserActiveTemplate=2ing&infoid= 610 & sid=73 National Institute of Education (NIE). (1998). Distance education program handbook. Samtse, Bhutan: Distance Education Unit. National Institute of Education (NIE). (2003). ICT supported distance teacher education in Bhutan to enhance learning support and access (Project Report). Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre. Oliver, R., & McLoughlin, C. (2001). Using networking tools to support online learning. In F. Lockwood & A. Gooley (Eds.), Innovations in open and distance learning (pp. 148–159). London: Kogan Page. Paul, R., & Brindley, J. (1996). Lessons from distance education for the university of the future. In R. Mills & A. Tait (Eds.), Supporting the learner in open and distance learning (pp. 43–55). London: Pitman. Romiszowski, A. J. (1997). Web-based distance learning and teaching: Revolutionary invention or reaction to necessity? In B. H. Khan (Ed.), Web-based instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Royal Government of Bhutan. (2006). Results of population and housing census of Bhutan, 2005. Thimphu, Bhutan: Office of the Census Commissioner. Samtse College of Education (SCE). (2007). Student handbook 2007. Samtse, Bhutan: Author. Simpson, O. (2000). Supporting students in open and distance learning. London: Kogan Page. Skagen, T., Blaabjerg, N., Torras, M., & Hansen, T. (2006). Empowering students through information literacy in the physical and virtual classrooms: Cross-institutional collaboration between library and faculty and between two Scandinavian university libraries. Paper presented at Creating Knowledge IV, Copenhagen, Denmark. Retrieved February 3, 2007, from http://www.ck-iv.dk/papers/ D ow nl oa de d B y: [C an ad ia n R es ea rc h K no w le dg e N et w or k] A t: 17 :2 9 1 A ug us t 2 00 7 Distance Education and ICT in Bhutan 161 SkagenBlaabjergTorrasHansen%20Empowering%20students%20through%20information% 20literacy.pdf Sweet, R. (1993). Student support services: Directions for change. In Student support services: Towards more responsive systems (Report of the Symposium on Student Support Services in Distance Education, pp. 1–40). Vancouver, Canada: Commonwealth of Learning. Tait, A. (1996). Conversation and community: Student support in open and distance learning. In R. Mills & A. Tait (Eds.), Supporting the learner in open and distance learning (pp. 1–40). London: Pitman. Appendix Since this article was written, the first author has expanded on the technical difficul- ties of online education in Bhutan, in a personal communication with colleagues including the current editor (J.P.B.). The following descriptive passage is reprinted here with the author’s permission (Jamtsho, February 2007). … I have to admit that [Internet] access is still our main concern, although it is improv- ing every year … Even if one has access, connectivity can be very poor. This week I experienced [this] in Phuntsholing. After one hour, I still couldn’t send one email. It wasn’t so bad the last time I used the Café. So not surprisingly this mail is coming to you from Jaigaon, on the Indian side of the border town. During the pilot phase, we had Moodle™ installed on our server at Samtse, but then lightning struck and we were down for over a month. Then the suggestion from the techies was to have Druknet [the ISP] host it. Even after moving it there, it went down on a number of occasions … [I]t always took numerous requests to have it up and running but almost always with some problems in the features available on Moodle™. Technical support from Druknet has been rather less than what we would have liked. So we decided to explore possibilities of hosting it elsewhere where we may receive better support and service. However, we have not been very successful so far. These are but some of the difficulties we are faced with. Despite this, for every student who has a terrible experience … I do believe we have twice as many who find learning very convenient and effective because we have provided this new avenue through use of ICT. I do, however, suspect that we are quite far from achieving the ideal situation that many seem to expect almost immediately after we introduce something new. Anyway, we try our best and hopefully we will have fewer people having that kind of experience in future … 
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work_xfum3hom2rcqlgbd6efb225vhm	----	jdet2010-derntl-revision Revealing student blogging activities using RSS feeds and LMS logs Michael Derntl University of Vienna Research Lab for Educational Technologies Rathausstrasse 19/9 A-1010 Wien Austria michael.derntl@univie.ac.at ABSTRACT: Blogs are an easy-to-use, free alternative to classic means of computer- mediated communication. Moreover, they are authentically aligned with web activity patterns of today’s students. The body of studies on integrating and implementing blogs in various educational settings has grown rapidly recently. However, it is often difficult to distill practical advice from these studies, since the application contexts, pedagogical objectives, and research methodology differ greatly. This paper aims to make a further step towards an improved understanding of employing blogs in education by presenting a follow-up case study on using blogs as reflective journals in an undergraduate computer-science lab course. The paper includes lessons learned and adaptations following from the first-time application, the underlying pedagogical strategy, and a detailed analysis and discussion of blogging activity data obtained from RSS feeds and LMS logs. Keywords: Blogs, Web 2.0, Computer science education, Log file analysis, Reflective journaling derntl Text Box This is the author's preprint of the paper: Derntl, M. (2010). Revealing student blogging activities using RSS feeds and LMS logs. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 8(3), 16-30. DOI: 10.4018/jdet.2010070102 INTRODUCTION Blogs are a convenient and increasingly popular means of introducing Web 2.0 for educational purposes into the classroom. Teachers with a passion for learner- centered education have recognized the educational potential of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, social bookmarking, or blogs, which offer accessible, easy-to-use and cheap (Rosenbloom, 2004) means of collaboration, expression, communication, reflection and many more creative, spontaneous facets of participation and knowledge building (Yuang, 2008) in the off-campus space. Essentially, a blog is a personal web page that is updated periodically by the blogger through posting (typically short) hypertext entries. These entries are presented in reverse-chronological order to visitors, who are typically allowed to post comments to blog entries. Most blogs are hosted on publicly available, free blog hosting services that provide state-of-the-art features such as offering permalinks, maintaining blogrolls, downloading web feeds for content syndication, and enabling personalization of the blog page using all sorts of visual layouts and gadgets. The success of blogs can largely be attributed to the social power and the simplicity of blog technology (Blood, 2004) and process: a new personal blog is only few mouse clicks away, and posting a new blog entry is as convenient as sending an email. As a form of communication supporting highly diverse personal motivations (Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004), blogs have been successful on the Web for over a decade now; it is accepted that in the educational context blogs as a tool have inherent value beyond mere provision of information (Hall & Davison, 2007), e.g. for collaborative production and exchange of learning resources (Tomberg & Laanpere, 2008). It is also evident that participation in the blogosphere—either as a reader or as a contributor—is an integral part of the daily lives of the current generation of students (Wong, Vrijmoed, & Wong, 2008). Nonetheless, it appears that in educational settings we are still in a phase of collecting experiences. There are numerous studies and theoretical investigations available in the literature on successes and failures of integrating blogs into web-based or hybrid course environments (Kim, 2008). Previously reported uses of blogs in education include, for instance, the facilitation of collaborative learning by having students publish their work in a blog and receiving comments, feedback as well as support by peers and teachers (e.g. Berman & Katoma, 2007; Chang & Chen, 2007; Chang, Chang, & Chen, 2008; Hall & Davison, 2007); or offering the students a means of reflection on their work on assignments, the obtained results, and their learning process and progress (e.g. Carroll, Calvo, & Markauskaite, 2006; Lin & Yuan, 2006; Xie, Ke, & Sharma, 2008). For instance, this can be used in overarching e-portfolio scenarios (Chuang, in press) or simply as a “spontaneous and authentic” (Ray & Coulter, 2008) alternative to classic means of web-based communication. Some reports also deal with failed first-time introduction of blogs (e.g. Divitini, Haugalokken, & Morken, 2005) – as with any other new technology, building up expertise requires time, resources, and thorough reflection of lessons learned. We need to go beyond the novelty of using blogs in education and towards building a solid foundation of successful practice based on research (West, Wright, Gabbitas, & Graham, 2006). It is not easy to identify those foundations and handy pieces of practical advice in the current body of academic papers on student blogging. This paper aims to take a further step in improving the current situation by reporting results of quantitative analysis of blogging and LMS (Learning Management System) log data during the application of student blogs in a computer science lab course. We present empirical observations of relationships between blogging behavior and student academic performance, as well as a model of blogging activity within the course community. The model aligns different variables of blog participation (e.g., visiting peers, commenting, and posting blog entries) and empirically investigates relationships in the variables using obtained log and feed data. The paper is structured as follows. In the next section we describe the context of the course in which blogs were employed. This is followed up in Section 3 by a presentation of design details of the blog portal, which we implemented as an extension to our LMS to provide a seamless integration of blogging activities into the LMS. In Section 4 we present findings obtained from quantitative analysis of collected data and align the observed blogging activity variables in a correlation model. In the last section, we discuss the findings and present a conclusion and outlook on further work. STUDY CONTEXT Course Description The context of this study is a module on software architectures and web technologies in the third semester of the computer science bachelor study at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna. The module was held in winter term 2008 (i.e., from begin of October, 2008 to end of January, 2009); it consisted of a lecture course (2hrs per week) and a lab course (2hrs per week) running over the whole semester. While the lecture was used to present subject matter, the lab course was used for hands-on practice through team projects and individual assignments. The lab course was organized into several parallel groups, of which two were held by the author and are thus under investigation here. The lab groups were designed in a blended learning style, with weekly on-campus group meetings in the computer laboratory serving as “synchronization points”, i.e. they were used for distributing and explaining new assignments, for presenting and discussing team project deliverables, for presenting solutions to individual assignments, and for solving any emerging subject-related and assignment-related problems and difficulties. However, most of the student workload on the assignments was due outside of the lab meetings. For handling these web-based activities we employed our home grown learning management system CEWebS (Mangler & Derntl, 2004). Integration of Blogs Since this course was held every year for the last five years, we basically had a good estimation of which tasks and assignments would cause “trouble” for students. However, since the CS curriculum at our institution underwent some significant changes in 2007, the teacher had to make several adaptations to the course structure and content. To get a clearer picture of issues students are dealing with during their striving for solutions at home and on campus, the teacher decided in 2007 to use student blogs in the context of the lab groups. Generally, the pedagogical design options for introducing blogs are seemingly unlimited; yet they can be classified into three—mutually not exclusive—categories: group blogs, teacher blogs, and student blogs (Weller, Pegler, & Mason, 2005, p. 63). In the case at hand the intent was to have students document their tasks, problems, solutions, failures, opinions, and feedback on exercises. The teacher participated as an observer and did not keep an own teacher blog. This case study (Derntl, 2008) was only partially successful: while student feedback on the pedagogical aspects of the blogging experience was generally positive, there were some severe drawbacks regarding the blogging tool that was built into the LMS: • There was an option of flagging blog entries as private, which would prevent them from being read by students’ peers. In fact, the design flaw was that “private” was the default setting, and students had to assign a public flag during submission of a new entry to make it visible to peers. • The tool did not offer any of the fancy community-building features that almost every up-to-date blogging service offers, such as commenting, trackback, embedding media, polling, customization, etc. This additionally impeded the community building power of blogs. In the light of these issues the aim for the 2008 instance of the course was to put more explicit emphasis on reflective issues, i.e. problems encountered, solution approaches, peer support, reflection on learning process and progress. This time the teacher also joined the community as an active blogger instead of being a read-only participant like in 2007. The blogging guidelines as communicated to students and published on the LMS blog portal were as follows: “Use your blog to reflect on your problems, insights, and contributions during and after your task-related activities (project work, individual tasks) for the lab course. For example, you could ask yourself the following questions: What causes/caused me problems (and why)? Which solutions have I found/tried that could also be useful for my colleagues? Where was I unable to find a solution (and why)? What am I contributing to the team project? How do/did I approach the current problem? etc. – The minimum requirement is one blog entry per person per assigned task.” Students were explicitly told that blogging behavior may be used as input by the teacher to improve their final grade; it was also made clear that there would not be any adverse effect on their final grade based on their blogging behavior. So the requirement of posting at least one entry per person per assigned task as set forth in the above blogging guidelines was not strictly enforced by the teacher. Additionally, there was no explicit requirement to post comments to peer blogs, even though the teacher verbally expressed during the semester that this would facilitate the building of a virtual community and offer possibilities of supporting peer students and giving them feedback. Note that the teacher did not put any emphasis on the fact that their blogging behavior would be subjected to data analysis. To facilitate students in building up confidence in this communication channel, the teacher explicitly committed himself to provide a high level of quality of service for bloggers by promising to handle blog entries with equal attention as emails and forum posts. However, there were no a-priori promises made regarding the blogging frequency of the teacher. As an additional measure, the LMS internal blogging tool was discarded and it was decided to host the student blogs on Blogspot.com (also known as Blogger, see http://blogger.com or http://blogspot.com), a free blog hosting service offered by Google. Blogspot.com comes with all the state-of-the-art features like maintaining a blogroll, personalization of the blog page, using trackbacks, posting comments, etc. To achieve a smooth integration of blogging activities into the course LMS, an LMS extension was implemented, which acted as a portal to blogging activities in the course (described in more detail in the next section). Students The students were third-semester undergraduates of the computer science bachelor study at the University of Vienna. The two groups (Group A and Group B) under study in this paper had NA = 24 and NB = 19 participating students, respectively, for a total of N = 43 with 19% females and a mean age of 24.11 years (SD = 2.91). The distribution of participants into two groups was not part of the study design; it was due to regulations at the University of Vienna, where each lab group may have a maximum of 25 participants. At the beginning of the course only 7% of the students did not know what a blog was; 40% of the students have already been reading other blogs at least once a month; and about 27% already had experiences with keeping an own blog. THE BLOG PORTAL In general, there are two ways of hosting blogs in educational contexts: (a) within an LMS that offers a blogging tool, e.g. Moodle, or (b) outside of the LMS on an externally hosted blogging site such as Blogspot.com. In our case, the decision was to host the blogs externally to exploit all state-of-the-art blogging features as mentioned above. However, since the LMS was the platform for all other web-based course activities, hosting the student blogs externally created one critical problem: exploiting blog community features would require each student to create his/her own complete blogroll on Blogspot.com or in some other external web feed reader application. This would create entry barriers for each individual student and might be perceived as being too cumbersome to manage and too detached from the course LMS. In light of studies which revealed that easy-to-use technology does play a major role for the success of employing blogs (e.g. Du & Wagner, 2006; Hsu & Lin, 2008), an LMS extension that served as the blog portal was implemented. The main page of this portal as displayed in Figure 1 included several sections (the alphabetic item numbering below matches the section numbering in Figure 1). A. Blogging instructions: A brief paragraph outlining the blogging guidelines, which were also orally communicated in the early lab meetings. B. Own blog: Displays a hyperlink to the own blog on Blogspot.com. In the student view of the portal—which was otherwise identical to the teacher view— this section also included a link to the teacher’s blog. Essentially, obtaining the URL to student blogs on Blogspot.com was the only obstacle to getting the blogging activities started in the course. Students who visited the portal for the first time were presented a form that advised them to create a new blog on Blogspot.com and to supply the URL to their newly created blog. To ensure a synchronized start of blogging activities in the course, the teacher dedicated parts of one early lab meeting to demonstrate how to create a blog on Blogspot.com, how to use the blog portal, and to explain the blogging guidelines. C. Blog feed: At three-hour intervals, the RSS (Really Simple Syndication; see Winer, 2003) feeds of all student blogs on Blogspot.com were automatically downloaded. These feeds were backed up for analysis and the 20 most recent blog entries extracted from the RSS feeds were listed in this section of the portal. For each blog entry in this list the display included: title of the blog entry, author’s name, author’s lab group number, date and time, and the number of comments posted to the blog entry. The purpose of this list was to stimulate blogging activity by showing peers’ blog entries and comments. A click on a blog entry title would redirect the user to the blog entry on Blogspot.com. D. Blogging charts: This section was divided into two subsections. The subsection on the left-hand side displayed a list of top-10 bloggers in terms of number of blog entries. The idea was to stimulate some competition for appearing in this prominent spot. Since it would have been easy to claim a top position on this spot by posting huge numbers of non-sense entries (actually, such a case did not occur), this list was complemented by a blogger ranking determined through peer rating: the subsection on the right-hand side displayed the list of the own top-rated peer blogs (aka. “favorites”), or alternatively a list of the overall top-rated blogs as voted by peers. These lists were updated using AJAX requests each time a user rated a peer blog by clicking the respective rating (between one and five stars) in the blogroll (section E). E. Course blogroll: Displayed a list of students in each lab group; the names were hyperlinks to the blogs on Blogspot.com. This section was intended to enable easy access to all peer blogs. Figure 1: Screenshot of the LMS blog portal (anonymized). All hyperlinks pointed to a proxy page, which first recorded the click in a log file and then immediately redirected the user to the target location. This way, the blog portal was able to log each portal visit and also each click on a hyperlink within the portal (including the timestamp, user, and relevant link-related information such as target blog, target entry, etc.). Thus the log files provide a comprehensive record of all actions taken on the blog portal. Unfortunately the actions on the actual blog hosting site Blogspot.com were technically impossible to record. The portal logs should still be able to serve as a representative record of blogging activities in the course. BLOGGING ACTIVITY ANALYSIS This section presents results of the analysis of LMS portal log data as well as blogging activities on Blogspot.com as obtained from the RSS feeds. To operationalize the concept of “blogging activity” we used several observable variables including number of blog entries, number of comments received, number of comments posted, and relevant log data from the blog portal page, including frequency of portal visits and visits to peer blogs and blog entries. Based on those data it was possible to distill each student’s blogging activity profile. In this study the focus was on quantitative data related to student blogging activities in the course and the actual blog contents were not considered for analysis. Descriptive data Table 1 shows descriptive blogging statistics for all students of Groups A and B. Table 1. Blogging and blog portal descriptive statistics. Total Group A Group B whole group per student mean (s.d.) whole group per student mean (s.d.) whole group per student mean (s.d.) Blogspot.com Blog entries posted 425 9.88 (6.5) 276 11.50 (7.0)* 140 7.84 (5.4) Avg. entry length – 825 (659) – 939 (709)* – 613 (533) Comments received a 254 5.91 (8.4) 199 8.29 (9.1)** 55 2.89 (6.5) Comments posted b 139 3.23 (6.1) 123 5.13 (7.46)** 16 0.84 (2.3) Portal Page visits 2,320 53.95 (84.2) 1,819 75.79 (104.4)** 501 26.37 (34.3) Peer entry visits 1,914 44.51 (81.4) 1,590 66.25 (102.0)** 423 17.05 (27.7) Peer blog visits 638 14.84 (16.2) 396 16.5 (17.6) 242 12.74 (14.5) *p < .1, **p < .05 … significance of difference of means between Group A and B a including teacher comments; b excluding teacher comments The table shows that each student on average posted close to 10 blog entries. The average blog entry was 825 characters long, i.e. about the length of a typical paper abstract. A total of 254 comments were posted to the student blogs, that is .6 comments per entry. The blogs and blog entries were accessed through the portal 638 and 1,914 times, respectively. The portal had a total of 2,320 page visits by students of both lab groups. During the blogging period (102 days) the student community posted an average of 4.17 entries per day. However, as evident from the plot in Figure 2, blog posting activities were not distributed evenly over time; instead, they followed a rather ragged pattern of ups and downs. Students had Christmas holidays of 16 days, where only one entry was posted per day on average. Also, the last two weeks at the end of the semester were reserved for final project meetings between the teacher and individual project teams; during this period the blogosphere was rather “quiet.” Posting activities peaked on days close to assignment deadlines and lab meetings. In the days on or before lab meetings (26 days) more than 50% of all entries were posted (averaging 8.2 entries per day). This means that the teacher’s workload with reading blogs and facilitating bloggers also peaked on those days. This knowledge is valuable to teachers intending to adopt blogs as a technology for learning journals, as they will need to reserve some time to be spent in the course blogosphere shortly before and after days with meetings and/or deadlines. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 10 /2 1/ 20 08 10 /2 8/ 20 08 11 /4 /2 00 8 11 /1 1/ 20 08 11 /1 8/ 20 08 11 /2 5/ 20 08 12 /2 /2 00 8 12 /9 /2 00 8 12 /1 6/ 20 08 12 /2 3/ 20 08 12 /3 0/ 20 08 1/ 6/ 20 09 1/ 13 /2 00 9 1/ 20 /2 00 9 1/ 27 /2 00 9 Blog entries Lab meetings Deadlines Christmas holidays Project team meetings Figure 2. Blog posting activities over time. Each dot represents the number of blog entries (vertical axis) posted on that particular day (horizontal axis). The other variables displayed in Table 1 also show substantial variance, which may be illustrated by a few simple facts: • 12% of the students contributed almost two thirds of all comments to peer blogs; • 28% of the students contributed two thirds of all blog entries; • 20% of the students accounted for half of all visits made from the blog portal. This kind of skewed distribution of few heavy contributors, some active contributors, and a vast majority of lurkers is typical of online communities, and has been described by Nielsen (2006) as the “90-9-1” rule of participation inequality. Blogging and lab score Correlation analysis using Pearson’s coefficient r shows that there is a significant positive correlation between the overall score students received for assignments and the number (r = .65, p < .01) and average length (r = .30, p < .05) of their blog entries. Figure 3 visualizes the relationship between lab score and number of entries posted per student. The plot is divided into four sectors, divided on the horizontal axis by the threshold for achieving a positive grade (i.e. at least 50% lab score) and on the vertical axis by the average number of blog postings per student (i.e. 9.88). While the data points do expose considerable scatter, it is evident that the top-left sector of the plot is empty. This essentially means that all students who posted more than the average number of blog entries did finally receive positive grade. The same finding was obtained from blogging data in the previous year (Derntl, 2008). There may be several reasonable explanations for this repeated observation. One would be that students who achieve higher scores for their assignments presumably invest more time and effort into solving their assignments. This additional effort spent should produce more ideas, issues, solutions and other information to blog about. The blogging guidelines (see the section on study context) advised students to post one blog entry per assignment. Even though the guidelines were not enforced (there was no scoring of blogging activities), better students tended to demonstrate more compliance. Rank correlation analysis using Spearman’s rho showed that better students also more frequently visited their peers’ blogs (rho = .47, p < .01) and posted more comments to peer blogs (rho = .50, p < .01). Thus, high-performing students tended to be more active in the blogosphere both actively (posting blog entries and comments) and passively (visiting peer blogs). 0 10 20 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 Lab score B lo g en tr ie s po st ed r = .65, p < .01 M = 9.88M = 9.88 Figure 3. Plotting students’ lab scores vs. their average number of blog entries. Previous use of blogs Based on a survey distributed at the end of the course (n = 31), We also tested whether previous experience with and knowledge about blogs had an effect on blogging activities. Previous experience with reading other blogs and keeping an own blog, respectively, did not have any significant effect on the number of blog entries posted by students. Only two students did not know what a blog was at the beginning of the course—too few to calculate meaningful statistics. Blogging as a duty vs. voluntary activity? In the survey we also asked students whether blogging was perceived as a voluntary activity or as a duty, both at the beginning of the course and towards the end of the course. While students who perceived blogging as a duty did contribute fewer blog entries than those who voluntarily blogged, the difference was not statistically significant. However, as a confirmation of the generally positive perception the teacher sensed in the student community about the blogging experience, Figure 4 shows the shift of perception of blogging as a duty vs. voluntary activity based on a pre-post comparison. It shows that 10 students (i.e. one third of the survey sample) began to blog on a voluntary basis after starting off with experiencing this activity as a duty imposed by the teacher. Only one student, who perceived blogging as a duty at the beginning of the course, quit blogging during the semester. Only one student, who started blogging voluntarily, considered the activity as a duty at the end of the semester. 6 22 3 15 12 4 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Voluntary Duty Didn't blog At the beginning Towards the end 1 0 10 1 0 0 19 0 5 10 15 20 25 Voluntary ! Duty Voluntary ! Didn't blog Duty ! Voluntary Duty ! Didn't blog Didn't blog ! Duty Didn't blog ! Voluntary No change Figure 4. Pre-post comparison of blogging as a duty vs. voluntary activity. Peer-visit networks Individual blogging activities in a course take place within a community of peers. Students may be curious about what their peers are blogging, post comments to their peers’ entries, and maintain blogrolls of their favorite peer blogs. To shed some light into such a community, Figure 5 displays the network of peer blog/entry visits in Groups A (left) and B (right). Each node in these graphs represents a student, whereby the size of the node grows in proportion to the number of blog entries posted by the student that is represented by the node. The thickness of the connecting edge between two nodes indicates the number of visits to the target peer’s blog and/or entries via the blog portal. The figure reveals a substantial difference in the number of peer connections in Groups A and B, which was already indicated in Table 1. Even though Group A had five students more than Group B, this could not fully explain the disproportions in the two group networks. To test this, the top five bloggers were removed from Group A data; even after this change there were still more than double as many peer visits in the network of Group A as compared to Group B. Note that in this figure, all inter-group peer visits were removed to keep the figure clear and focused on intra-group interaction; of course, it was possible to visit the blog of a student of the other group, but the majority of interactions—face-to-face and online—happened within the groups. The figure is mainly intended to demonstrate that the size of a student group is not the only determining factor in the peer-visit network of a student blogger group. It is suggested that there are other factors of importance, such as the presence of a critical mass of active bloggers. Figure 5. Networks of peer blog visits in groups A (left) and B (right). Model of correlations among observed blogging activity variables To achieve a better understanding of student blogging communities and their differences, we created a model that aims to explain the relationships between various variables of activity within a blogging community based on correlations between variables. The model, which is shown in Figure 6, is also intended to reveal spots in the community that offer teachers opportunities for facilitating and supporting blogging activities. Instructor Peers Self .959* .824*Comments received Comments received Comments posted Comments posted Blog entries posted Blog entries posted Peer visits received Peer visits received .725* .853* .808* Other factors (personal, technological, …) Other factors (personal, technological, …) Figure 6. Correlations between log data variables. (*p <.01) The main variables contributing to an active community of bloggers in the model are: number of comments and entries to blogs as well as number of comments received; all these can be observed directly on the blog hosting platform. The number of visits by peers to the own blog cannot be obtained from Blogspot.com, since this site does not offer access to any visitor traffic statistics. However, these figures can be estimated based on blog visits made through the blog portal. The correlation effects as indicated by arrows in Figure 6 are explained as follows: • Students who frequently posted to their blog tended to post more comments than students who posted less frequently, since both actions are similar forms of active participation. The data reveal a significant correlation between these two variables (Spearman’s rho = .72, p < .01). • The more comments students received by peers, the more peer visits they attracted. This is obvious since—as described in the section on the blog portal—the portal displayed the number of comments of each blog entry in the list of recently posted entries. It should be safe to assume that (a) entries with comments attract more visits than those without any comments, and (b) this relationship is bidirectional, since each additional visitor will increase the chance of a comment being posted. This bidirectional relationship is confirmed by available data (rho = .82, p < .01) • Received comments also significantly stimulate the own blog posting activities (rho = .81, p < .01). This relationship is unidirectional, since the reverse direction (influence of blog entries on comments received) is transitively covered in the model via the “peer visits received” variable (i.e. only a visitor can post a comment). • There should be a strong relationship between blog posting and peer visits, since each blog entry appeared (at least for some time) on the RSS feed of the 20 most recent entries on the blog portal. Actual data reveal an extraordinary high correlation coefficient of rho = .96 (p < .01). This correlation model reveals a spot that may be used by teachers / facilitators to spark and sustain blogging activity: “comments posted” is the only variable within the student community that is actually under co-control by teachers. From the student point of view, this effect is less obvious, since the blog portal did not reveal who commented on an entry; it merely showed how many comments were posted, which is anonymous until the blog entry is actually visited. So keeping external factors constant, the obvious way to facilitate bloggers would be to make inspiring comments to their blog entries. The model can also be used to try to explain the strong differences in activity within the communities of Group A and B evident from Figure 5. According to the model, the primary seeds for activity within a student blogger community are comments and peer visits. Table 1 shows that commenting and posting in Group B was significantly less frequent than in Group A. However, there were additional factors which were subjectively obvious to the teacher. For instance, in Group A there were a handful of active, motivated bloggers who kept the activity at a high level and demonstrated how useful blogging can be in supporting reflection and personal exchange. Without such bloggers, it might as well be impossible to spark and sustain blogging activity in the student community. Of course, in reality there will be many more factors—motivational, technological, social, and personal—which contribute to individual blogging and community activity. Several researchers have tried to explain student blogging behavior based on such factors. Du and Wagner (2006) propose a weblog success model based on content value (e.g., type of information, presentation, posting volume), technology value (e.g., tool characteristics), and social value (e.g., visitors, commentators, blogroll). In relation to this model, the model in this paper clearly focuses on observable, quantitative measures of social value in combination with number of postings (content value). Another research model was recently presented by Hsu and Lin (2008): it shows that the intention to blog is dependent on factors of technology acceptance, knowledge sharing, and social influence. However, this model is primarily concerned with user intentions as surveyed through questionnaires, and it does in contrast to our model not deal with statistics of actual blogging activities. In an effort to explain blogging activities based on personality traits, Guadagno et al. (2008) found that people who are open to new experience and who score high on the neuroticism scale are likely to blog. As one would expect, active learners (in terms of the Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model; Felder & Silverman, 1988) tend to contribute more postings to the blogosphere than reflective learners (Derntl & Graf, 2009). Since the models discussed above show a range of different factors explaining blogging intentions and behavior, the obvious limitation of our model is that it does not consider personal and technological factors. Our model focuses on observable participation—that is, viewing, posting and commenting. Follow-up studies will have to investigate the impact of additional factors in our model. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER WORK In this paper a case study of using blogs in a blended computer-science lab course on software architectures and web technologies was presented. Blogs were intended as a medium for reflecting on ideas, issues, assignments, and other things of relevance, as well as a tool for virtual community building. The blogs were hosted on Blogspot.com, a free blog hosting service, and integrated into our LMS by extending it with a blog portal, which downloaded RSS feeds of student blogs and displayed the recently posted blog entries and the course blogroll. One limitation of the present study is the very specific nature of the study context, i.e. an undergraduate lab course in computer science. This context may exhibit peculiar characteristics and student behavior that may not be shared by other subjects or disciplines or course styles. Therefore, the conclusions drawn here need to be considered in the light of this specific context. To draw more universally applicable generalizations, the study needs to be reproduced in different contexts. Analysis of blog usage using RSS feed data from Blogspot.com and log data obtained by the blog portal showed quite diverse patterns of blogging activity. There were considerable differences in individual blogging activities, i.e. posting entries to the own blog as well as visiting and commenting peer blogs. It was discovered that students with higher academic performance tended to post more blog entries and comments, and they also tended to visit their peers’ blogs more frequently. Similar results were found in a previous study in a similar context (Derntl, 2008). Thus, observed blogging activities seemed to be a good indicator of student performance, which could help teachers and facilitators in identifying “blog lazy” students as potential drop-outs and/or low performers. Another finding was that blogging activities followed a ragged pattern, with peaks occurring close to approaching lab meetings and assignment deadlines. In analyzing the network of peer blog visits in the two different lab groups under study, there was a significant difference in frequency of peer visits, which could not be solely attributed to different group sizes. A model of correlations between important variables of blogging activity was devised to help reveal the relationships between those variables within a network of student bloggers. Correlation analyses showed that there was a circle of interdependence between receiving comments, visiting peer blogs, and posting to the own blog. This circle includes a spot that may give teaching staff opportunities to spark blogging activities, i.e. comments to student blog entries. These findings may have strong ties to the peer blog information that were chosen to be displayed within the blog portal page. Further research is required to substantiate this proposition. Reflecting on the experience from the teacher’s perspective, the blogs provided an unexpectedly rich source of insight into students’ learning processes, including hints about difficult stages in problem-solving processes, sharing of personal successes and significant events encountered during the course, information about issues with teamwork, deadlines, and assignment descriptions, as well as valuable feedback on the course in general. Potential adopters should however be aware of the fact that reading the blogs and considering their contents may consume some significant share of those days where blogging activities typically peak (i.e. on or before meeting days and assignment deadlines). Therefore teachers aspiring to adopt blogs in a similar way as presented in this study need to make sure to allocate some time on each of those days exclusively to reading blogs and dealing with issues raised in the blogs. It may help to seek the help of a tutor for facilitating the bloggers. Most importantly, engaging as a facilitator of student bloggers appears to only make sense when the teacher is genuinely interested in what students are doing and thinking in their role as students and as human beings. Therefore, educators need to exhibit some degree of openness toward these virtual interpersonal experiences; those who see the teacher primarily in the role of a permanently busy and thus mostly unavailable expert who is only accessible through proxies like tutors and assistants may have difficulties experiencing and enjoying the moments of immediateness and connectedness in the blogosphere. To obtain more qualitatively grounded conclusions from student blogging activities and to overcome the narrow observation-based activity focus of the model proposed in this paper, future research will address analysis and categorization of blog content, i.e. entry, comments, and personalized appearance of the blog page. The goal is to achieve a better understanding about who blogs, and why particular bloggers (or course sub-groups) have the capability of spawning high-activity communities of student bloggers. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported by the “Technology Enhanced Learning” project (SP395001) funded by the University of Vienna. I would like to thank those colleagues who attended and commented on my presentation of an earlier version of this manuscript at ICWL 2009. Their valuable suggestions, along with the anonymous reviewer comments, contributed significantly to shaping and improving the manuscript. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my students who contributed to making this blogging experiment a most enjoyable experience. REFERENCES Berman, S., & Katoma, V. (2007). An e-learning framework based on semantic weblogs. Proceedings of Third Advanced International Conference on Telecommunications (AICT'07), Morne, Mauritius, pp. 33-37. Blood, R. (2004). How blogging software reshapes the online community. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 53-55. Carroll, N. L., Calvo, R. A., & Markauskaite, L. (2006). E-Portfolios and Blogs: Online Tools for Giving Young Engineers a Voice. Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET '06), Ultimo, Australia, pp. 1-8. Chang, Y.-J., Chang, Y.-S., & Chen, C.-H. (2008). Assessing peer support and usability of blogging technology. Proceedings of 2008 International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology, Busan, Korea, pp. 184-189. Chang, Y.-J., & Chen, C.-H. (2007). Experiences of Adopting In-class Blogs in the Teaching of Hands-on Computer Laboratory Courses. Proceedings of Seventh IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2007), Niigata, Japan, pp. 447-448. Chuang, H.-H. (in press). Weblog-based electronic portfolios for student teachers in Taiwan. Educational Technologies Research and Development. Derntl, M. (2008). Employing Student Blogs as Reflective Diaries in a Lab Course. Proceedings of International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age, October 13-15, 2008, Freiburg, Germany, pp. 96-102. Derntl, M. & Graf, S. (2009). Impact of learning styles on student blogging behavior. Proceedings of Ninth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2009), Riga, Latvia, pp. 369-373. Divitini, M., Haugalokken, O., & Morken, E. M. (2005). Blog to support learning in the field: lessons learned from a fiasco. Proceedings of Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2005), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, pp. 219-221. Du, H. S., & Wagner, C. (2006). Weblog success: Exploring the role of technology. Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 64, 789-798. Felder, R. M., & Silverman, L. K. (1988). Learning and teaching styles in engineering education. Engineering Education, 78(7), 674-681. Guadagno, R. E., Okdie, B. M., & Eno, C. A. (2008). Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 1993-2004. Hall, H., & Davison, B. (2007). Social software as support in hybrid learning environments: The value of the blog as a tool for reflective learning and peer support. Library & Information Science Research, 29, 163-187. Hsu, C.-L., & Lin, J. C.-C. L. (2008). Acceptance of blog usage: The roles of technology acceptance, social influence and knowledge sharing motivation. Information & Management, 45, 65-74. Kim, H. N. (2008). The phenomenon of blogs and theoretical model of blog use in educational contexts. Computers & Education, 51, 1342-1352. Lin, H. T., & Yuan, S.-M. (2006). Taking Blog as a Platform of Learning Reflective Journal. Proceedings of International Conference on Web-Based Learning (ICWL 2006), Penang, Malaysia, pp. 38-47. Mangler, J., & Derntl, M. (2004). CEWebS - Cooperative Environment Web Services. Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Knowledge Management, June 30-July 2, Graz, Austria, pp. 617-624. Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Why we blog. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 41-46. Nielsen, J. (2006). Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html Ray, B. B., & Coulter, G. A. (2008). Reflective practices among language arts teachers: The use of weblogs. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 8(1), 6-26. Rosenbloom, A. (2004). The Blogosphere. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 31- 33. Tomberg, V., & Laanpere, M. (2008). Towards Lightweight LMS 2.0: A Blog-Based Approach to Online Assessment. In P. Dillenbourg & M. Specht (Eds.), Third European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2008, Maastricht, The Netherlands (pp. 431-436). Berlin: Springer Verlag. Weller, M., Pegler, C., & Mason, R. (2005). Use of innovative technologies on an e- learning course. The Internet and Higher Education, 8(1), 61-71. West, R. E., Wright, G., Gabbitas, B., & Graham, C. R. (2006). Reflections from the Introduction of Blogs and RSS Feeds into a Preservice Instructional Technology Course. TechTrends, 50(4), 54-60. Winer, D. (2003). RSS 2.0 Specification. Retrieved November 26, 2009, from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Wong, C., Vrijmoed, L., & Wong, E. (2008). Learning Environment for Digital Natives - Web 2.0 Meets Globalization. In J. Fong, R. Kwan & F. L. Wang (Eds.), Hybrid Learning and Education, First International Conference, ICHL 2008, Hong Kong, China (pp. 167-177). Berlin: Springer. Xie, Y., Ke, F., & Sharma, P. (2008). The effect of peer feedback for blogging on college students' reflective learning processes. The Internet and Higher Education, 11(1), 18-25. Yuang, Y. R. (2008). Learning by blogging: Warm-up and review lessons to facilitate knowledge building in classrooms. In P. Díaz, Kinshuk, I. Aedo & E. Mora (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (pp. 574-575). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society. 
work_xgmiqzoyxzeszl7hvxwgrsy2s4	----	Generations of Distance Education: Technologies, Pedagogies, and Organizations Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 1183 – 1187 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.613 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW HORIZONS IN EDUCATION INTE2012 Generations of Distance Education: Technologies, Pedagogies, and Organizations Kumiko Aoki* Open Universtiy of Japan, 2-11 Wakaba, Mihama-ku, Chiba, 261-8586 Japan Abstract Distance education has often been discussed in terms of generations as its forms and methods have been evolved over years. Most often, generations of distance education has been discussed in terms of the dominant technologies it utilizes in teaching and learning. There has been another attempt to classify distance education into generations in terms of its dominant pedagogy. This paper proposes the discussion of distance education in terms of its organizational structure, and proposes a new organizational structure for distance education in which a division of labor can be observed across institutions. Keywords: distance educaiton; ICT, educational technologies, pedagogies, educational organizations, generations * Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 43 298 3250; fax: +81 43 298 3250. E-mail address: kaoki@ouj.ac.jp © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 1184 Kumiko Aoki / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 1183 – 1187 1. Introduction The term “distance education” may sound somewhat outdated nowadays as in today’s technologies of education, its “distance” nature no longer matters as much as before. What matters more nowadays is “flexibility” and “distributed” aspect of teaching and learning using technologies. However, still “distance education” exists as a field of research and practice and many educational scholars and practitioners identify themselves as those in the field of “distance education.” There have been numerous attempts to classify distance education in the past. Most of them classify distance education in terms of dominant technologies used. Distance education and technologies are considered inseparable as in order to reach students at a distance, one must use certain tools or technologies to do so. While technologies of instruction have been examined closely, the organizational transformation those technologies necessitate tends to be overlooked. In changing the mode of instruction or the educational model of distance education, an institution must also rearrange or transform its organizational structure to enable and effectuate such changes. Actually many distance education institutions fail to transform themselves to adapt to the changes and stay behind in adopting new technologies and methods of teaching and learning. 2. Generations of Distance Education 2.1. Technological Perspective The history of distance education tells us the evolving use of technologies. Bates(2005) as well as Peters (1994) mentioned that distance education had gone through three stages. The first generation of distance education refers to those which mainly utilize written and printed texts and postal services for delivering such texts in the forms of books, newspapers, and manuals. It is so-called print-based correspondence education. In this stage, the interaction between teachers and students was usually limited to correspondence, meaning hand-written texts that were sent via postal mail. It is difficult to gauge the extent of student learning in this mode as student evaluation is usually summative and left at the end of the course. The second generation is characterized by the use of radio and television as instructional media in addition to print materials. This generation is often referred to as the “industrial mode” of distance education with highly specialized division of labor in producing and delivering instructional materials and the potential to educate thousands of students at once. Many open universities in the world including British Open University, Anadolu University’s Open Educational Faculty in Turkey, Korea National Open University and the Open University of Japan also started as this second generation institutions. When those institutions were started, broadcasting media such as television and radio were selected as the mediums of instruction as they could easily reach mass audience and it matched the mission of open universities to expand educational opportunities. All of those institutions began as national initiatives and the respective national government was heavily involved. In the case of the Open University of Japan (OUJ), it was given a television and radio station by the government for the purpose of providing lifelong learning opportunities to the citizens. The third generation of distance education utilizes information and communication technologies (ICT) to provide interaction in addition to content delivery. There are two aspects of interactivity in the use of ICT: the interactivity between the learner and the content as seen in interactive multimedia learning materials in CD-ROM as well as on the Web and the interactivity between teachers and students and among students. The latter interactivity makes the fourth generation of distance education, in my opinion. 1185 Kumiko Aoki / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 1183 – 1187 The third generation of distance education allows personalization of content depending upon learners’ learning preferences. Taylor (2001)suggested five generations of distance education: First, the Correspondence Model based on print technology; Second, the Multi-media Model based on print, audio and video technologies; Third, the Tele-learning Model, based on applications of telecommunications technologies to provide opportunities for synchronous communication; Fourth, the Flexible Learning Model based on online delivery via the Internet; and Fifth, Intelligent Flexible Learning Model based on the interactive nature of the Internet. As this model was originally suggested before social media and Web 2.0 came into scenes, it is understandable that this model does not include the emerging generation of distance education, which utilizes Web 2.0 extensively. 2.2. Pedagogical Perspective Criticizing those classifications based on technologies, Anderson and Dron (2010) suggests three generations of distance education in terms of its dominant pedagogy: the cognitive-behaviorist pedagogy, the social-constructivist pedagogy, and the connectivist pedagogy of distance education. According to Anderson and Dron, the first generation, the cognitive-behaviorist pedagogy, is characterized by the thinking that learning means some behavioral changes instigated by learning stimuli, and was the dominant thinking in computer-assisted instruction and instructional systems designs. The second generation of distance education pedagogy, the social-constructivist pedagogy, was originated in the work of Vygotsky and Dewey, and focuses more on learning instead of teaching. In this pedagogy, human interaction (student-teacher and student-student) is emphasized, which makes it costly for an institution to adopt. The third generation, the connectivist pedagogy of distance education, is built around networked connections and based on the learners’ ability to actively participate in networked communities of their choice. As Anderson and Dron state that, “Connectivism is built on an assumption of a constructivist model of learning, with the learner at the centre, connecting and constructing knowledge in a context that includes not only external networks and groups but also his or her own histories and predilections,” the connectivisit pedagogy does not seem significantly different from the social-constructivist pedagogy, but it may be significantly different from other paradigms of teaching and learning in terms of the degree of control an institution has over students’ learning. In the previous paradigms of distance education, the role of institutions in designing and evaluating students’ learning is quite large while in the connectivist model where learners rely upon existing networked communities to develop their own net presence, the role educational institutions play in individual learning may be reduced to credentialing what students have learned. 2.3. Organizational Perspective So far the evolution of distance education has been classified into generations in terms of its dominant technology and its dominant pedagogy. Here it is suggested that distance education can be classified into three organizational models. The first organizational model of distance education is the “supplementary model,” where distance education is supplementary or complementary to traditional education, which targeted those who were excluded from traditional education for some reasons and needed some “access and equity” in their lives (Terry Evans, 2008). As the distance education programs are supplemental to on-campus programs, the institutional investment in offering the distance educational programs is minimal and usually managed by a special office called “extension programs,” “external study,” 1186 Kumiko Aoki / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 1183 – 1187 “independent study,” etc. It also has been called “independent study,” “self-directed learning,” and “non- traditional and open education” (Saba, 2011). After the introduction of the Internet in distance education, many existing educational institutions have taken this supplementary model as its core and started to offer dual mode (online and off-line) of teaching and learning. In many such institutions, a division specialized in helping schools and departments offer distance education classes and courses has been established and schools and departments have started to expand their student base beyond on-campus students. The second generation of distance education is the industrial model discussed earlier. The industrial model has been associated with mass education where hundreds or thousands of students learn in the same program using the same content and the same method. In order to enable this, the institution has to have a division of labors within the institution; hence, it becomes the “industrial” model of production and delivery of courses. Those institutions who utilize educational broadcasting such as radio, television, telecommunications satellites and cable television must organize themselves into this model as it is labor intensive to produce such educational broadcasting programs and it requires different skillsets and expertise to do so. The drawbacks of this organizational model are: difficulty of responding to changing needs of learners, inflexibility of adopting new methods and content, and large organizational overhead. The third and emerging model of distance education is the “ad hoc model,” in which institutions may play one part in the whole process of learners’ learning in various ways. In this model, the beauty of utilizing technologies should be realized in providing individualized learning programs and structures responsive to individual learners’ needs instead of one size-fits-all system. However, in order to achieve this, it becomes too costly for one institution to offer all the diverse programs and systems depending on diverse learners’ needs. Hence, an institution may offer services covering some part of the whole learning process of a learner. For example, one institution may offer learning content while another institution may offer tutorials and student support. Yet, some other institution may offer evaluation of learning and credentialing of what students have learned. It’s a division of labor across institutions to meet the demands of learners being arranged by an ad hoc institution based on learning goals students want to achieve. This third organizational model is still emerging, and has not yet been seen beyond experimental bases. As discussed above, there are many different models (whether it is termed as “generations” or not) of distance education and it is usually the case that evolving from one generation to another, or transforming itself from one model into another requires tremendous institutional efforts. It is so much easier to start anew rather than transforming one institution into that of a different generation or model. 3. Conclusions In today’s world, distance education has been becoming more complex and multi-faceted as time has gone by with added features and technologies. Educational institutions which have been created before the times of technological availability of today have to restructure themselves in order to benefit from those technological advances. With those technologies, now it is possible to achieve the ideal learning environment for a learner, that is customizable according to the individual learner’s needs and preferences. For that end, educational institutions have to reconsider the meaning of their own existence to equip learners’ with the skills needed today and in the foreseeable future. 1187 Kumiko Aoki / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 1183 – 1187 References Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2010). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(3), 80-97. Bates, T. (2005). Technology, e-learning and distance education: RoutledgeFalmer. Peters, O. (1994). Distance education and industrial production: A comparative interpretation in outline (1973). Otto Peters on distance education: The industrialization of teaching and learning, 107- 127. Saba, F. (2011). Distance Education in the United States: Past, Present, Future. Educational Technology, 51(6), 11. Taylor, J. C. (2001). Fifth generation distance education. e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST), 4(1), 1-14. Terry Evans, M. H., David Murphy (Ed.). (2008). International Handbook of Distance Education. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 
work_xhfwantvpndtffzzwijdcu7cqm	----	Microsoft Word - TMDE-070521.doc Adoption of Technology-Mediated Distance Education: A Longitudinal Analysis Zafer D. Ozdemira,1 • Jason Abrevayab a Farmer School of Business, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056 b Department of Economics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 ozdemir@muohio.edu, abrevaya@eco.utexas.edu Research Revised: March, 2007 Abstract We investigated the factors that facilitated the fast adoption and utilization of Technology-Mediated Distance Education (TMDE) among higher education institutions. Our analysis was based on a rich data set on the utilization of TMDE between the 1997-1998 and 2000-2001 academic years. The analysis showed that size, public/private status, and location significantly predicted its actual adoption. Being in an urban location negatively affected enrollment in the courses at the undergraduate but not at the graduate level. While the intent to adopt TMDE correlated significantly with actual adoption, many schools that were not interested in TMDE in 1997-1998 adopted it by 2000-2001. Interestingly, late adopters utilized certain technologies as frequently as early adopters, such as synchronous Internet-based instruction and the use of CD-ROMs. Keywords: Technology-Mediated Distance Education; E-Learning; Online Learning; Adoption 1 319 Upham Hall, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, USA. Tel: +1 513 529 8397; fax: +1 513 529 9689; e- mail address: ozdemir@muohio.edu. 1 1. Introduction Recent developments in IT and the commercialization of the Internet have allowed many higher education institutions to reach distant audiences. According to the Sloan Consortium’s survey of over 2,200 colleges and universities, nearly 3.2 million students took at least one online course during the fall 2005 term, a substantial increase over the 2.3 million reported the previous year. The additional 800,000 students is more than twice the number added in any previous year. Enrollment at the largest U.S. online college, University of Phoenix Online, rose to around 125,000 students by 2004. Business Week ranked the online college 22nd in its 2004 Info Tech 100 list and stated that it was among the top 10 most profitable IT firms [4]. In addition to cyber-universities, over 400 “brick-and-mortar” institutions (including Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and Pennsylvania State University) offer master’s programs completely campus-free. Such activities have made higher-education publishers more attentive to the online market; for example, McGraw-Hill Education, the third- largest U. S. college publisher, formed an Online Learning division in June 2004 to take advantage of the growing interest in online courses. We examined various aspects of the adoption of TMDE across U.S. higher education institutions. The majority of research in this field has previously focused on analysis at the student level, attempting to understand the critical enabling role of IT in learning environments [1], [19], [20], [21], [24], [26], [28], [37], [38], [41]. Alavi and Leidner [2] noted the lack of studies that focus on the organizational and program levels. Along these lines, Ozdemir et al. [25] built an economic theory to predict the types of institutions that should be most interested in adopting TMDE and empirically tested their (static) theory using a cross-sectional data set. 2 2. Research Framework Our research was an adopter study [13] where the typical approach is to “survey organizations in some population of interest to capture data about (1) the characteristics of those organizations and their adoption contexts and (2) the timing and/or extent of adoption of one or more innovations.” We used a data set to examine the adoption of TMDE in the U.S. higher education sector. Perhaps the most notable difference of this sector is its extensive heterogeneity among market participants in terms of their resources, market reach and focus (e.g., research universities versus liberal arts colleges), and governance and mission (e.g., public versus private institutions). 2.1. Factors Influencing Adoption and Post-Adoption Behavior The literature on adoption of IT provides factors likely to influence the adoption of TMDE. The two behaviors have generally been modeled as being influenced by the same set of factors that lead to initial use [17], [31], [34], [35]. We followed the same approach, although we did allow the factors to have varying effect on the two types of behaviors. Among the factors, the most significant include organizational characteristics, organization and technology fit, and technology and external environmental fit, all of which were included in our framework (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Factors affecting the adoption and assimilation of TMDE 3 Organizational Characteristics Organization and Technology Fit Technology and External Environment Fit Adoption Behavior Post-Adoption Behavior Organizational Characteristics. Prior research has consistently shown a positive relationship between organization size and innovativeness [27]. The most common reasons for this include economies of scale [18], slack resources [12], access to outside resources [3], and ability to bear adoption risks [15]. Size should also be important in our context because larger institutions are more likely to have the technology infrastructure that is essential for providing TMDE. Therefore, we included institutional size (total enrollment) as a control and expected it to have a positive relationship with both adoption and post-adoption behavior. Organization and Technology Fit. An organization with a high propensity to innovate may still lag in adoption if the innovation does not fit its needs, strategies, resources, or capabilities. The literature on the diffusion of IT support the importance of characteristics that capture the relative fit between innovation and organization [5], [8], [29]. In higher education, public/private status can be a proxy for the fit between an organization and a technology. Generally, private institutions are smaller and tend to specialize in the provision of undergraduate teaching, whereas public institutions are larger and tend to have a broader set of goals and objectives. Consequently, the priorities and cost structures of the two kinds of institutions can vary 4 substantially [7]. As financial support from state governments has dwindled in the past decade, many public institutions have experienced significant revenue constraints [32]. In addition, public institutions aim to serve the citizens in their states by making educational opportunities more affordable and making courses available at multiple convenient locations. Another issue is that private institutions have had smaller classes and have provided a higher quality of education. For example, Zemsky and Oedel [39] found that students’ with academic achievement and/or educational aspirations were more likely to select a private institution. Ehrenberg [11] suggested that private institutions with ample resources and excess student demand may have been less responsive to the growth in demand for higher education because of an interest in maintaining endowment per student and, hence, quality. However, it may be relatively harder for private institutions to provide quality education using TMDE, although courses provided via TMDE can still be of high-quality. Indeed, Zhang et al. [40] reported that in an e-learning environment that emphasized learner-centered activity and system interactivity, allowed remote learners to outperform traditional students. In summary, we expected that public institutions would adopt TMDE earlier and use it more than would private institutions. Technology and External Environment Fit. Technology characteristics, the external environment, and the fit between the two may also impact adoption decisions. We took these factors into account in two ways. First, we considered the heterogeneity of institutions and educational programs. Doctoral/research institutions, master’s/regional institutions, and schools that took two-year (or less) to graduate faced very different technological constraints and external environments when adopting TMDE. For example, doctoral/research institutions have more advanced technological infrastructures, compete for students nationally and internationally, 5 and emphasize research. We thus performed our estimations for different types of institutions separately. Second, we considered the effect of geographical location. Organizations in different locations faced heterogeneous markets for labor, third-party services, and complementary technological inputs. Normally, those that are located in urban locations are expected to innovate more. 2.2. Intention-to-Adopt versus Actual Adoption Our second analysis was initiated to determine whether the intention to adopt TMDE correlated with actual adoption. The institutions in our data set were interviewed in the 1997-1998 academic year about their intent to adopt TMDE, and were interviewed again in 2000-2001 academic year about the extent of their adoption. This longitudinal information allowed us to control for intention-to-adopt when estimating the actual adoption behavior and see whether institutions actually followed through with their previously announced plans. The intention-to- adopt and actual adoption considered here are loosely related to TAM. The relation is loose because the original TAM [9], [10] and its subsequent modifications are based on psychological theories focused on the individual, whereas our unit of analysis is the institution.2 We assumed that the institutions had intended to adopt TMDE based on a cost-benefit analysis. Thus, the announced intent in the 1997-1998 academic year and the actual adoption in 2000-2001 should be highly correlated if there was little uncertainty on the forecast of costs and benefits. We defined the Actual Net Benefit of adopting TMDE as: Actual Net Benefit = Forecasted Net Benefit – Forecast Error 2 We thank an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on this issue. 6 The forecast error depended upon the uncertainty about cost, demand, competition, and fit between the technology and the institution. In our setting, the three-year time difference between the observed intent and actual adoption was long, especially given the rapid technological advances during that period. We therefore expected Forecast Error to be high. 2.3. Utilization of Specific TMDE Technologies TMDE can be offered using several technologies; they can be classified as audio/video (one- and two-way interactive video, one- and two-way audio, one-way live and prerecorded video) and computer-based (CD-ROM, synchronous and asynchronous Internet-based applications). Computer-based technologies such as Internet-based applications are newer and potentially more effective tools than audio/video technologies. For this study, institutions were considered to have adopted TMDE as long as they used at least one of these technologies to offer TMDE courses. Obviously, this approach may not fully reveal the underlying adoption process because adopting schools may differ in the technology they utilize. Therefore, we also employed a finer level of analysis to investigate differences among early and late adopters of TMDE.3 While the fixed cost to set up the infrastructure has substantially decreased lately, the marginal cost of enrolling new students is low for both. Therefore, if an early adopter had already established the necessary infrastructure and support in the form of qualified personnel and a distance education office, it was likely to continue using older technologies even after newer ones became available and economical. Its TMDE infrastructure and support would also help in the adoption of newer technologies. On the other hand, a late adopter was more likely to 3 We called institutions that had adopted at least one TMDE technology by the 1997-1998 academic year “early adopters,” whereas “late adopters” were those that had not adopted any but did by 2000-2001. 7 jump into the new computer-based technologies. Therefore, we expected some inertia in early adopters, but technology “skipping” by late adopters. 3. The Data Our analysis was based on confidential data obtained from two nationally representative surveys of distance education undertaken by the NCES. Part of the Postsecondary Education Quick Information System (PEQIS) of NCES, the surveys reported the number of TMDE courses (if any) offered at each institution, the number of students enrolled in them, and the number of degrees offered via TMDE in the 12-month 1997-1998 and 2000-2001 academic years [21], [36]. We shall refer to these surveys with their starting year. A total of 5,353 (4,175) U.S. institutions were initially eligible for the 1997 (2000) PEQIS panel. The NCES stratified each panel by instructional level (four-year, two-year, less-than-two-year), control (public, private), highest level of offering (doctor's, master's, bachelor's, less than bachelor's), and total enrollment; it sorted institutions within each strata by region (Northeast, Southeast, Central, West), whether the institution had a relatively high minority enrollment, and whether research expenditures exceeded $1 million; it allocated them to the strata in proportion to the aggregate square root of total enrollment; and it sampled institutions within each stratum with equal probabilities of selection. The selected 1997 (2000) PEQIS panel consisted of 1,612 (1,610) institutions, 1,487 (1,500) of which participated, resulting in a 92 (93) percent response rate. A total of 1,149 institutions responded to both PEQIS surveys. We supplemented the PEQIS data with institutional characteristics such as public/private status, Carnegie classifications [6], an urban indicator, and enrollment levels, which we obtained from the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). 8 IPEDS is the core postsecondary education data collection program for NCES and was built around a series of interrelated surveys that collected institution-level data in such areas as enrollments, program completions, faculty, staff, and finances. Of the 1,149 schools that responded to both PEQIS surveys, 21 schools either did not have any institutional information in IPEDS or had zero enrollment in 1997 or 2000. Eliminating these resulted in a panel (longitudinal) data set with a cross-sectional sample size of 1,128. The final sample includes institutions at the four-year, two-year, and less-than-two-year level, public and private colleges, and universities that award associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. The variety of institutions reflected the exceptionally complex nature of the U.S. higher education sector and its multitude of products [23]. To manage this variety, some of the analysis was considered for individual categories of schools, including doctoral/research institutions, regional/master’s universities, and two-year or less-than-two-year schools. Of the 1,128 schools in the sample, 163 were doctoral/research institutions, 222 were regional/master’s universities, and 386 two-year or less-than-two-year schools. The third and final data source was the 2000 U.S. News & World Report rankings, which were used as proxies for education quality of doctoral/research and master’s/regional universities. Published in 1999, the rankings indicated where each school stood within its Carnegie category and were based on several criteria including selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, retention rates, and alumni giving. U.S. News & World Report ranked doctoral/research institutions into four tiers but did not rank them within each tier except at the top, “Tier 1.” Therefore, the tier information (rather than more precise rankings) were used as the proxy for education quality for doctoral/research institutions. In contrast, master’s/regional institutions were not tiered, but rather classified and ranked by region. Thus, we constructed a 9 binary variable indicating whether a master’s/regional university was surveyed by U.S. News & World Report. Named “Tier 1” for ease of exposition, this variable also conveyed information about institutional quality since the surveyed institutions were touted as the best within their region and category. 4. Empirical Analysis 4.1. Summary Statistics Table 1 presents definitions of the variables. The last nine items are the TMDE technologies considered here: six types of audio/video technologies and three types of computer-based technologies. The audio/video technologies are characterized by being “one-way” or “two-way,” with video technologies being either “interactive,” “live,” or “pre-recorded.” The three possible computer-based technologies were Internet (synchronous), Internet (asynchronous), and CD- ROM. Table 2 reports sample averages of the relevant variables for the 1997 and 2000 samples. Standard deviations are reported in parentheses for the non-indicator variables, and the last column reports p-values associated with a two-sided test of equality between the 1997 and 2000 averages. Overall, the percentage of institutions that offered at least one TMDE course increased from 59.5% to 73.8% percent over the three-year period. Interestingly, the 14 percentage-point increase in TMDE adoption was quite close to the percentage of institutions (17%) that, in 1997, reported an intent to adopt TMDE within three years. The average number of TMDE courses (per institution) increased from 22.6 to 48.3. In 1997 (2000), 15 (35) undergraduate and 7 (12) graduate courses were offered per institution, respectively. Six of the nine technologies saw increased usage in 2000, most notably the ones that were Internet-related. In 1997, 13% and 10 37% percent of institutions used synchronous and asynchronous computer-based instruction via the Internet, respectively, as the primary mode of instructional delivery in at least one course; these numbers jumped to 36% and 68%, respectively, in 2000. Table 3 provides a cross-tabulation (1997 versus 2000) of TMDE offering and intent behavior among the 1,128 institutions. About two-thirds of the universities that planned to adopt TMDE in 1997 actually adopted by 2000. However, of the 192 schools that had reported an intent to offer TMDE by 2000, a subset of 32 not only did not follow through but also changed their reported intent in the second survey. Perhaps the most interesting finding was that roughly a quarter of the schools that did not offer TMDE courses in 1997 and did not plan to adopt in the next three years did adopt by 2000. This highlights the speed at which diffusion of TMDE occured among the institutions that had no plan to adopt. One could argue that the Department of Education should survey higher-education institutions more frequently. 4.2. Adoption and Post-Adoption Behaviors In our context, adoption behavior refers to adoption by 1997, while post-adoption behavior is measured by the change of TMDE usage between 1997 and 2000 for the that adopted TMDE by 1997. A probit model was used to estimate the effects of various factors on the probability of offering at least one TMDE course by 1997. Table 4 provides the results for the sample of 1,128 schools as well as for doctoral/research institutions, regional/master’s universities, and two-year or less-than-two-year schools. For each sample, the model specification includes total enrollment, the public indicator variable, and the urban indicator variable. Tier variables are also included for the first two categories of schools for which information was available. (Since “Tier 4” is the excluded category, the estimates on the other three tier variables should be interpreted as differences from “Tier 4.”) The probit estimates reported in Table 4 corresponded to a given 11 variable’s marginal effect on the probability of a 1997 TMDE offering, evaluated at the mean values of all the explanatory variables.4 For instance, in the full-sample results, an urban institution is 10.9 percentage points less likely to have offered a TMDE course in 1997 than a non-urban institution, holding total enrollment and public status constant. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. Not surprisingly, institutional size is a significant predictor of TMDE adoption for all types of institutions. Also, the effect of being a public school is consistently positive and significant for all three institutional categories. The probability of offering at least one TMDE course in 1997 increased by almost 40 percentage points if a school was public, with the most pronounced positive increase (65 percentage points) observed for two-year (or less) schools. Finally, urban status correlates significantly (and negatively) with TMDE adoption in the overall sample. For each of the three categories of schools, the estimated effect of urban status remained ouegative but lost statistical significance (presumably due to lower sample sizes). We find similar results at the undergraduate and graduate levels. With respect to post-adoption behavior, we included only schools that offered at least one TMDE course in 1997 and we then performed a regression analysis of the change in TMDE enrollments between 1997 and 2000. The results are reported in Table 5. The model specifications and the breakdown of institutions into categories were identical to the analysis of adoption behavior. We found that an increase of 1,000 in total enrollment was associated with an expected increase of 66 in TMDE enrollment. The enrollment in TMDE courses increased less at public universities. The coefficient for urban indicator was significant, indicating that enrollment in TMDE courses increased less in universities located in an urban setting. 4 These probit marginal effects were computed using the dprobit command in the Stata statistical software package. The same marginal effects are also reported in other probit regressions that follow. 12 The results differ to some extent across the categories of institutions. None of the coefficients were significant for doctoral/research institutions except for the Tier 3 dummy, whereas all coefficients were significant for regional/master’s universities and two-year or less- than-two-year schools. We observed a slowdown of adoption at public schools in the latter two categories of schools. In fact, the expected net change in TMDE enrollment at a regional/master’s university surveyed by U.S. News & World Report was significantly negative if the school was also public and located in a large city. At the undergraduate level, the pattern of change in TMDE enrollment during the three year period was similar to the overall change. The coefficients were significant and had the same sign as previous analyses. At the graduate level, TMDE enrollment increased by approximately 400 for all types of institutions. The coefficients for size, public status, and urban indicator were still in the same direction but not significant. Also, the urban indicator was a significant predictor of the increase in TMDE utilization at the undergraduate level but not at the graduate level. 4.3. Intention-to-Adopt and Actual Adoption Table 3 shows that the intention to adopt TMDE was not a good predictor of actual adoption. In the current analysis we included only institutions that did not offer any TMDE course in 1997. Probit regressions were used to estimate the determinants of TMDE adoption in 2000 within this sample and the results are shown in Table 6. To see the association between intent-to-adopt and actual adoption, an indicator variable for the intent in 1997 (Intention97) was included in the regressions. Two specifications were considered: one with only the indicator variable and one that also included interactions of this variable with the other explanatory variables (total enrollment, public indicator, and urban indicator). 13 Similar to the results for the 1997 adoption decision , the estimates for institution size and the public indicator in Table 6 were both positive and statistically significant, although the estimated effect of the urban indicator was not statistically significant. Interestingly, the expressed intention to offer TMDE courses in the three-year period after 1997 increased the probability of adoption in 2000 by 29 percentage points. When the intention indicator variable interacted with the other covariates, we found that size loses its importance for institutions that expressed an intention to adopt (a combined effect of 0.010, as opposed to 0.028 in the first specification). Furthermore, the effect of the intention to adopt on the actual adoption behavior was lower for institutions located in urban areas. In other words, among the schools that had intended to adopt TMDE by 2000, those that were located in large cities were less likely to adopt than those that were not. According to the regression results that include the interaction terms, the coefficient for the public indicator was higher at the undergraduate level. Compared to their private counterparts, public universities were more interested in TMDE at the undergraduate level. The expressed intention to adopt was significant at the undergraduate level but not at the undergraduate level. Also, schools that intended to adopt TMDE in 1997 were less likely to adopt the innovation at the undergraduate level if they were located in large cities. The positive effect of size for these schools was lower than that for others. 4.4. Adoption of specific TMDE technologies Since the summary statistics provided only a limited view of the utilization of the various available TMDE technologies, we considered comparisons between: (i) 1997 and 2000 utilization rates of “early adopters” (i.e., those institutions that had already adopted TMDE by 1997), and (ii) 2000 utilization rates of “early adopters” and “late adopters” (i.e., those 14 institutions that adopted TMDE by 2000 but did not by 1997). These comparisons are shown in Tables 7 and 8, respectively, with utilization rates for each technology and a p-value for the two- sided test of equality between the two respective rates. According to Table 7, the technologies that found increased utilization among early adopters included: one-way live video, one-way and two-way audio transmission, synchronous and asynchronous Internet-based instruction, and CD-ROM. The largest increases occurred for the computer-based technologies (Internet and CD-ROM). Note that the period of our study coincided with the period during which computers were adopted at a large rate by U.S. households. According to U.S. Census Bureau, the rate of computer ownership increased from 36% to 56% and Internet access increased from 18% to 50% between 1997 and 2001 (see Figure 2) [33]. Essentially, Internet use had rapidly become synonymous with computer availability by the end of this period. We believe that the relative shift from audio/video technologies to computer-based technologies in delivering TMDE occurred due to such unprecedented changes in the society. Figure 2. Households with a computer and Internet access: 1984 to 2003 (in percent) 15 Table 8 shows that early and late adopters utilized three technologies with similar frequency in 2000: two-way audio transmission, synchronous computer-based instruction via the Internet, and CD-ROM. The other six technologies exhibited statistically significant differences in utilization rates between early and late adopters. In fact, the early adopters were significantly more likely to utilize each of these six technologies. In certain cases (such as one-way pre- recorded video), the greater utilization by early adopters suggested a degree of inertia in the way TMDE courses were delivered. On the other hand, early adopters also had more experience with TMDE technologies and greater ability to adopt many technologies at once, which would be a possible explanation for the higher utilization rates of technologies such as asynchronous Internet-based instruction. 4.5. Goals of TMDE Adoption Since public indicator was significantly positive in many of our analyses, we further investigated the reasons for increased levels of TMDE adoption among public institutions using the responses to the questions in the 2000 survey that inquired about the goals of the adopting institutions and 16 the barriers as perceived by non-adopting institutions. The adopting institutions were asked the importance they attribute to a set of eight goals in utilizing TMDE; these included reducing per student costs, making education more affordable and accessible, increasing enrollments, improving course quality, and meeting the needs of local employers. Institutions rated these goals as being unimportant, somewhat important, or very important. After coding “not important” with zero and the other two with one, we compared the responses among public and private institutions as well as early and late adopters (see Table 9). We found that, among the institutions that had adopted TMDE, public institutions were significantly more likely to try to achieve all these goals. This showed why the public indicator was so significant in our analyses and highlighted the different objectives of public and private institutions. In addition, we found that early adopters were more concerned with reducing per student costs, making education more accessible, improving course quality, and meeting the needs of local employers. We also analyzed the barriers that non-adopting institutions considered as being relevant and found that the most important were “lack of fit with institution’s mission” (64%), “lack of perceived need” (45%), “program development costs” (45%), and “concerns about course quality” (43%). As technology improves and more institutions adopt TMDE, the second and third barriers may disappear. One wonders whether progress will occur to a point at which institutions will be forced to change their “mission.” 5. Discussion and Conclusions We studied, in a longitudinal fashion, the organizational factors that are associated with the adoption and continued utilization of TMDE. We found that public universities adopted TMDE earlier than private pnes. The high level of importance that public institutions placed on 17 increasing enrollments and providing affordable education may have spurred their early adoption. TMDE reduces the need for physical facilities. For example, the Ohio State University recently redesigned its core statistics course by reducing the time spent in class and offering components online, allowing the administration to register 150 more students in the class [30]. Interestingly, private institutions outpaced public institutions with their adoption between 1997 and 2000, decreasing the gap that existed in 1997. Recent work on IT adoption suggests that the set of factors that influenced the acceptance and initial use of an innovation could differ from those that affect post-adoption behavior [16]. We find partial evidence supporting this claim since the sign of the relationship between public status and the extent of actual usage of the innovation (TMDE) reversed after initial adoption. Other factors have similar associations with adoption and post-adoption behaviors. A consistent finding is that universities located in large cities are less likely to utilize TMDE. Typically, attending universities in rural parts of the U.S. requires most students to either temporarily relocate to the campus or incur significant travel-related expenses. An important benefit of TMDE is that it allows students to reduce travel-related expenses. In contrast, universities in large cities attract many of their students from the residents of the city. Since these students need not relocate upon admission, they do not have this advantage of TMDE. We note that this result is corroborated in other contexts involving the adoption of the Internet. We found that TMDE had spread fast among U.S. higher-education institutions between 1997 and 2000, those offering at least one TMDE course increased from 59 to 74 percent. The diffusion was so fast-paced that even a quarter of the institutions that did not offer TMDE courses in 1997 and did not plan to adopt in the next three years did actually adopt by 2000. 18 Finally, the Internet was a major factor in the fast-paced TMDE adoption. More than 80 percent of the schools that adopted TMDE between 1997 and 2000 used an Internet-based technology for at least one course. Also, late adopters used a certain set of TMDE technologies (including sophisticated technologies such as synchronous computer-based instruction) as frequently as the early adopters. 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Variable definitions Variable Definition Institutional Variables Urban indicator Whether the schools is located in a city with population above 250,000 Tier i Whether the school is included in Tier i {1,2,3,4} by U.S. News & World Report in 2000 Variables on TMDE Adoption TMDE Whether the school offered TMDE courses Intent For a school that did not offer TMDE courses, whether it expressed the intention to do so in the next three years Total TMDE enrollment Total enrollment in credit-granting TMDE courses (includes duplicated counts of students) Undergraduate TMDE enrollment Total undergraduate enrollment in credit-granting TMDE courses (includes duplicated counts of students) Graduate TMDE enrollment Total graduate enrollment in credit-granting TMDE courses (includes duplicated counts of students) Total TMDE courses Total number of credit-granting TMDE courses offered Undergraduate TMDE courses Total number of undergraduate credit-granting TMDE courses Graduate TMDE courses Total number of graduate credit-granting TMDE courses Variables on TMDE Technologies Two-way interactive video Whether two-way interactive video was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course One-way video / Two-way audio Whether one-way video with two-way audio was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course One-way live video Whether one-way live video was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course One-way prerecorded video Whether one-way prerecorded video was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course Two-way audio Whether two-way audio transmission was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course One-way audio Whether one-way audio transmission was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course Internet (synchronous) Whether synchronous computer-based instruction via the Internet was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course Internet (asynchronous) Whether asynchronous computer-based instruction via the Internet was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course CD-ROM Whether CD-ROM was used as the primary mode of instructional delivery in any TMDE course 24 Table 2. Summary statistics Variable 1997 2000 p-value Institutional Variables Public indicator 0.61 0.61 Urban indicator 0.23 0.23 Total enrollment (in 1000’s) 7.45 (8.11) 7.81 (8.45) Undergraduate enrollment (in 1000’s) 6.33 (6.78) 6.66 (7.15) Graduate enrollment (in 1000’s) 1.11 (2.22) 1.15 (2.26) Tier 1 --- 0.11 Tier 2 --- 0.05 Tier 3 --- 0.05 Tier 4 --- 0.04 Variables on TMDE Adoption TMDE 0.60 0.74 Intent 0.17 0.08 0.00 Total TMDE enrollment 698 (1,592) 1,373 (2,873) 0.00 Undergraduate TMDE enrollment 559 (1,387) 1,132 (2,519) 0.00 Graduate TMDE enrollment 139 (582) 240 (842) 0.00 Total TMDE courses 22.6 (53.2) 48.3 (78.3) 0.00 Undergraduate TMDE courses 15.3 (31.6) 35.4 (59.6) 0.00 Graduate TMDE courses 7.3 (29.4) 12.6 (39.3) 0.00 Variables on TMDE Technologies Two-way interactive video 0.36 0.43 0.00 One-way video / Two-way audio 0.11 0.11 0.95 One-way live video 0.05 0.08 0.00 One-way pre-recorded video 0.34 0.36 0.19 Two-way audio 0.03 0.08 0.00 One-way audio 0.04 0.10 0.00 Internet (synchronous) 0.13 0.36 0.00 Internet (asynchronous) 0.37 0.68 0.00 CD-ROM 0.05 0.24 0.00 Sample size 1,128 1,128 25 Table 3. The adoption profile of institutions 2000-2001 1997-1998 Offered TMDE courses Did not offer, but planned to in the next three years Did not offer, and did not plan to within the next three years Total Offered TMDE courses 648 (57%) 12 (1%) 11 (1%) 671 (59%) Did not, but planned to offer in the next three years 123 (11%) 37 (3%) 32 (3%) 192 (17%) Did not, and did not plan to offer within the next three years 65 (6%) 41 (4%) 159 (14%) 265 (24%) Total 836 (74%) 90 (8%) 202 (18%) 1128 (100%) 31 Table 4. Adoption behavior: The probability of offering at least one TMDE course in 1997 * Significant at 10 percent level. ** Significant at 5 percent level. Overall Undergraduate Graduate Doctoral/Research Institutions Master’s/Regional Institutions Two-year (or less) Schools Total enrollment (in 1000’s) 0.04** (0.00) 0.03** (0.00) 0.10** (0.01) 0.01** (0.00) 0.02** (0.01) 0.02** (0.01) Public indicator 0.39** (0.04) 0.46** (0.03) 0.40** (0.04) 0.21** (0.09) 0.15* (0.08) 0.65** (0.08) Urban indicator -0.11** (0.04) -0.11** (0.05) -0.13** (0.06) -0.02 (0.04) -0.13 (0.09) -0.07 (0.08) Tier 1 -0.09 (1.00) -0.06 (0.08) Tier 2 -0.04 (0.06) Tier 3 0.03 (0.04) n 1,128 1,087 553 163 222 386 Log-likelihood -512 -513 -278 -40 -116 -160 32 Table 5. Post-adoption behavior: Regression of change in TMDE enrollment between 1997-1998 and 2000-2001 academic years, given that schools offer TMDE course(s) in 1997-1998 * Significant at 10 percent level. ** Significant at 5 percent level.  Nine schools that adopted TMDE in the 1997-1998 academic year did not report their TMDE enrollment either in that academic year or in 2000-2001. Hence, change in TMDE enrollment can only be calculated for 662 schools (rather than the 671 schools in Table 3). Overall Undergraduate Graduate Doctoral/Research Institutions Master’s/Regional Institutions Two-year (or less) Schools Constant 920** (288) 870** (320) 392** (165) 1,642 (1,063) 1,667** (704) 5,784** (233) Total enrollment (in 1000’s) 66** (17) 88** (22) 41 (51) 49 (44) 180** (79) 112** (26) Public indicator -550 (369) -757* (431) -156 (247) -609 (1,427) -2,270** (868) -5,524** (127) Urban indicator -772** (301) -723** (299) -301 (212) -664 (645) -1,705** (749) -914* (544) Tier 1 -1,469 (1,092) -1,302** (553) Tier 2 -995 (621) Tier 3 -1,745** (586) N 662 602 283 134 159 268 R2 0.05 0.07 0.01 0.08 0.10 0.14 33 Table 6. Intention-to-adopt and actual adoption: The probability that an institution offers at least one undergraduate TMDE course in 2000-2001 academic year, given that it did not in 1997-1998 * Significant at 10 percent level. ** Significant at 5 percent level. Overall Undergraduate Graduate Without Interaction Terms With Interaction Terms Without Interaction Terms With Interaction Terms Without Interaction Terms With Interaction Terms Total enrollment (in 100’s) 0.03** (0.01) 0.05** (0.01) 0.03** (0.01) 0.04** (0.01) 0.06** (0.02) 0.08** (0.02) Public indicator 0.34** (0.06) 0.34** (0.09) 0.38** (0.06) 0.42** (0.08) 0.17** (0.07) 0.27** (0.09) Urban indicator 0.01 (0.06) 0.12 (0.08) -0.01 (0.06) 0.08 (0.08) -0.02 (0.07) 0.03 (0.09) Intention97 0.29** (0.05) 0.46** (0.07) 0.22** (0.05) 0.37** (0.07) 0.08 (0.06) 0.24** (0.09) Intention97*Enrollment -0.04** (0.02) -0.03* (0.02) -0.07 (0.04) Intention97*Public indicator 0.04 (0.130) -0.05 (0.12) -0.18 (0.11) Intention97*Urban indicator -0.24** (0.08) -0.20* (0.09) -0.09 (0.14) N 457 457 470 470 272 272 Log-likelihood -240 -232 -241 -236 -171 -169 34 Table 7. Utilization of specific technologies by the early (1997) adopters. 1997 Mean (early adopters) 2000 Mean (early adopters) p value Audio/video technologies: Two-way interactive video 0.61 0.62 0.70 One-way video / Two-way audio 0.18 0.16 0.39 One-way live video 0.08 0.12 0.01 One-way pre-recorded video 0.57 0.54 0.30 Two-way audio 0.05 0.10 0.00 One-way audio 0.06 0.14 0.00 Computer-based technologies: Internet (synchronous) 0.22 0.48 0.00 Internet (asynchronous) 0.63 0.90 0.00 CD-ROM 0.09 0.32 0.00 Table 8. Comparison of technology utilization between early (1997) and late (2000) adopters. 2000 Mean (early adopters) 2000 Mean (late adopters) p value Audio/video technologies: Two-way interactive video 0.62 0.34 0.00 One-way video / Two-way audio 0.16 0.06 0.00 One-way live video 0.12 0.05 0.00 One-way pre-recorded video 0.54 0.26 0.00 Two-way audio 0.10 0.11 0.76 One-way audio 0.14 0.09 0.03 Computer-based technologies: Internet (synchronous) 0.48 0.42 0.12 Internet (asynchronous) 0.90 0.83 0.01 CD-ROM 0.32 0.27 0.15 35 Table 9. Fraction of institutions that considered various goals for adopting TMDE as “important” (2000 survey) Goals of adopting TMDE Public Institutions Private Institutions p value for equality of means Early Adopters Late Adopters p value for equality of means Reducing institution’s per student costs 0.65 0.50 0.00 0.64 0.54 0.02 Making educational opportunities more affordable for students 0.79 0.67 0.00 0.78 0.73 0.24 Increasing institution enrollments 0.94 0.90 0.06 0.94 0.91 0.23 Increasing student access by reducing time constraints for course taking 0.96 0.90 0.00 0.96 0.90 0.01 Increasing student access by making courses available at convenient locations 0.95 0.85 0.00 0.94 0.89 0.03 Increasing the institution's access to new audiences 0.97 0.91 0.00 0.96 0.94 0.16 Improving the quality of course offerings 0.91 0.78 0.00 0.90 0.82 0.01 Meeting the needs of local employers 0.85 0.61 0.00 0.82 0.72 0.01 
work_xhhu6kuwxrh7ldxkie2bkggb5y	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_xjku3htivfdnfasiv7srvub7zy	----	A Computer-Assisted Approach to Conducting Cooperative Learning Process | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2008010104 Corpus ID: 802125A Computer-Assisted Approach to Conducting Cooperative Learning Process @article{Tsai2008ACA, title={A Computer-Assisted Approach to Conducting Cooperative Learning Process}, author={Pei-Jin Tsai and G. Hwang and Judy C. R. Tseng and Gwo-Haur Hwang}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2008}, volume={6}, pages={49-66} } Pei-Jin Tsai, G. Hwang, +1 author Gwo-Haur Hwang Published 2008 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. Cooperative learning has been proven to be helpful in enhancing the learning performance of students. The goal of a cooperative learning group is to maximize all members’ learning, which is accomplished via promoting each other’s success, through assisting, sharing, mentoring, explaining, and encouragement. To achieve the goal of cooperative learning, it is very important to organize well-structured cooperative learning groups, in which all group members have the ability to help each other… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 25 CitationsHighly Influential Citations 1 Background Citations 3 Results Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Computer science 25 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency The Study on Evaluation of Team Grouping Method using Cooperative Education Program H. Kim, S. Kim, Myung-Gwan Kim Computer Science 2010 1 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Applying Learning Diagnosis Diagram in Computer Aided Instructions: Research, Practice and Evaluation YuLung Wu Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2010 2 Save Alert Research Feed A Research of Applying Learning Diagnosis Diagram in Online Learning Diagnosis Y. Wu Computer Science 2012 1 Save Alert Research Feed Does cooperative e-learning improve graduate student project outcomes? K. Strang Computer Science 2013 9 Save Alert Research Feed Educational Benefits of Multimedia Skills Training Tsungjuang Wang Computer Science 2009 2 Save Alert Research Feed Constructivism in Synchronous and Asynchronous Virtual Learning Environments for a Research Methods Course K. Strang Computer Science Int. J. Virtual Pers. Learn. Environ. 2011 10 Save Alert Research Feed Educational Benefits of Multimedia Skills Training Tsungjuang Wang Computer Science 2009 International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology - Spring Conference 2009 38 Save Alert Research Feed Longitudinal effect of a computer-based graduated prompting assessment on students' academic performance Rencheng Zhang, Hui-Min Lai, Po-Wen Cheng, Chin-Pin Chen Psychology, Computer Science Comput. Educ. 2017 6 Save Alert Research Feed Teaching Virtual Online Courses in an Era of Negative Student Reviews: Mixed Methods Controlled Experiment and Feedback K. Strang Psychology 2019 2 Save Alert Research Feed Using Indices of Student Satisfaction to Assess an MIS Program Earl Chrysler, Stuart Van Auken Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2006 6 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 26 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Dynamic Task-Oriented Online Discussion for Student Learning: A Practical Model Byron Havard, J. Du, Anthony Olinzock Computer Science Int. J. Inf. Commun. Technol. Educ. 2005 7 Save Alert Research Feed Training Faculty for Diversity Infusion in the IT Curriculum G. Trajkovski Psychology 2006 3 Save Alert Research Feed Encyclopedia of Distance Learning R. Knight, K. Whittington, W. Ford, J. Jenkins Computer Science 2005 283 Save Alert Research Feed Ontology-Based Multimedia Authoring Tool for Adaptive E-Learning L. Deng, H. Keh, Yi-Jen Liu Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2010 7 Save Alert Research Feed A Practical Software Architecture for Virtual Universities Peifeng Xiang, Y. Shi, W. Qin Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2006 7 Save Alert Research Feed Distinctive Distance Education Design: Models for Differentiated Instruction R. Fuller, Gary Kuhne, Barbara A. Frey Engineering 2010 20 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Cognitive Profiling in Life-Long Learning P. Rogers, Bemidji 2008 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Technologies Shaping Instruction and Distance Education: New Studies and Utilizations M. Syed Engineering 2009 13 Save Alert Research Feed WEBCAP: Web Scheduler for Distance Learning Multimedia Documents with Web Workload Considerations S. Habib, M. Safar Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2008 6 Save Alert Research Feed Online and Distance Learning: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications A. Smith Computer Science 2008 173 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 25 Citations 26 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_xl2rxbbr25a2zoruots2c7u57q	----	untitled 스트 스硏究：第 22 卷 第 4 號 2014 □ 원 저 □ 221 책임 자: 박 숙, 서울시 종로구 학로 86 󰂕 110-791, 한국방송통신 학교 자연과학 학 간호학과 Tel: 02-3668-4746, E-mail: anywayyoung@knou.ac.kr 수: 2014년 11월 10일, 심사: 2014년 11월 20일 게재승인: 2014년 11월 30일 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복간의 계: 간호학사 특별편입과정 학생을 심으로 한국방송통신 학교 자연과학 학 간호학과 박 영 숙 Perceived Stress Type, Physical Symptoms and Happiness of Nurses: Based on RN-BSN Learner of Distance Education University YoungSuk Park Department of Nursing, Korea National Open University, Seoul, Korea The purpose of this research was to investigate perceived stress type, physical responses of stress and happiness of nurses in Bachelor of Science in Nursing. This study was a cross-sectional survey and the participants were 272 registered nurses in state of Bachelor Nursing Program of an distance education university at five cities in Korea. The data were collected from September to November, 2013 and were analyzed by using the SPSS 21 program. The instruments of this study were Perceived Daily Life Stress Scale, Physical Symptoms Scale, and Happiness Scale etc. Facing task dimension of stress type was higher than interpersonal dimension of nurses. Economic problem, academic problem, future problems and values problems were higher sequentially among facing task stressors. Family relationships were the highest among interpersonal stressors. Headache related symptoms were the first highest and sleep related symptoms were the second highest among physical symptoms. Nurses in a little happiness were 41.2%, nurses in unhappy were 2.9% and nurse in neither this nor that were 15.8% of the participants. Perceived stress, physical symptoms, and happiness of nurses showed significant correlation. Perceived stress and happiness were significantly different among the classified groups according to their physical symptoms of nurses. Nurses should be careful of their physical symptoms and specific intervention programs for screening and management are needed to improve their health and happiness. (Korean J Str Res 2014;22:221∼230) Key Words: Distance education, Nurses, Stress, Happiness, Physical symptoms 서 론 1. 연구의 필요성 일반 으로 간호사는 스트 스가 많은 직업으로 인식된 다. 간호사들은 감염질환, 생물학 험 발암 물질, 심 리 요구, 교 근무 등 직업상 건강을 하는 험들에 스트 스硏究：제 22 권 제 4 호 2014 222 노출되어 있으며(Ratner et al., 2009; Kikuchi et al., 2014), 스 트 스가 많아 간호사의 건강에 부정 인 향을 수 있 다(Augusto Landa et al., 2008; King et al., 2009; Ko YK, 2009; Kang MJ et al., 2010; Wu et al., 2010). 간호사의 지각된 스트 스와 신체 정신건강에 한 국내 연구들(Lee WH et al., 2006; Kim JH et al., 2010; Shin MK et al., 2011)은 간호사들의 스트 스가 이들의 건강상태 와 하게 연 되어 있음을 잘 보여 다. Kim JH et al.(2010)은 종합병원 간호사들의 건강에 한 주 인 자 가평가가 정 이었던 것과 달리 심리사회 스트 스의 잠재 험군 54.6%, 고 험 스트 스군 41.7%, 우울 경 향은 61.3%이었으며, 규칙 인 식사나 운동, 여가활동, 충 분한 수면 등 건강행 수행정도가 낮았다고 보고하고 있 다. Lee WH et al.(2006)은 임상간호사 40.8%의 우울성향과 우울과 지각된 스트 스, 정신 ㆍ육체 피로간의 유의 한 정 상 성을 보고하면서 우울과 지각된 스트 스 모 두 미국이나 한국의 일반여성에 비해 히 높아 임상간 호사를 한 통합 인 정신건강 리 로그램 개발이 시 함을 제언한 바 있다. Park JK et al.(2010)도 간호사들이 다른 여성 직종에 비해 다양한 근골격계 질환과 증상, 련된 험요인을 경험하는 것으로 보고하고 있다. 이러한 연구들은 간호사들의 건강을 보다 극 으로 리하고 유지하는 체계 인 방안들이 필요한 상황임을 반 해주는 것으로, 간호사에 한 조직 차원의 극 인 건강 리는 업무수행능률, 직무몰입, 질 간호에 한 동기를 향상시키고, 사고발생 험을 감소시킴으로써 상자에게 질 간호를 제공할 수 있다(Kim JH et al., 2010). 뿐만 아니라 최근 31.2%에 이르는 신규간호사의 이직률 (Kang AR, 2014a)을 경감시키고, 근무하기 힘들어 꺼리는 직업이라는 인식과 실을 환시킬 수 있는 방안이 될 수 있을 것이다. 한 최근 정심리 에서 많은 심이 모아지는 행복 차원에서도 요한 의미를 찾을 수 있다. 한국인의 행복결정요인에 한 Kim SK et al.(2008)의 연구 에서 건강과 일은 한국인의 행복에 향을 미치는 주요 두 역이었으며 Nam MH et al.(2013)의 연구에서는 간호사의 건강행태, 이직의도 등이 간호사의 행복지수에 향을 미 치는 것으로 확인된 바, 간호사를 한 극 인 건강 리 는 문직 간호사 개인의 행복에도 정 인 향을 미칠 것으로 추정된다. 국외 연구들에서도 간호사의 스트 스와 건강상태를 우 려하는 연구들(Augusto Landa et al., 2008; King KA et al., 2009; Ratner et al., 2009; Wu et al., 2010; Lim J et al., 2011)이 보고되어 왔다. Ratner et al.(2009)은 캐나다 간호사의 단 자료를 분석한 결과 간호사의 질병 혹은 상해 련 결근 률이 다른 직종에 비해 83%가 더 높았고, 간호사의 55.8% 가 간호사 일이 상당히 혹은 매우 스트 스가 높은 것으로 인식하고 있었으며, 졸이상 다른 여성 직장인에 비해 허 리문제, 과체 과 비만, 신체 활동부족, 야채와 과일의 불충분한 섭취 등 건강을 하는 요인들이 많았다고 보 고하 다. 국 20개 병원의 여자 간호사 2,613명을 상으 로 횡단 조사연구를 수행한 Wu et al.(2010)도 간호직은 스트 스가 높은 직종으로 업무요구에 응하고 직무스트 스를 감소시키기 한 직업건강교육과 직업훈련 로그 램들이 필요하다고 하 다. 미국 오하이오 주의 간호사 1,000명을 무작 추출하여 조사한 King KA et al.(2009)은 지각된 직무스트 스가 높고 신체만족도가 낮은 간호사들 이 식이문제 험이 유의하게 높았음을 지 하면서 간호 사들에게 건강한 생활방식을 교육하고 지지하는 건강 로 그램들의 개발을 제언하 다. 이상과 같이 국내외 연구들 이 간호사를 한 극 인 건강 리지원을 제언해 왔으 나 여 히 이에 한 구체 인 로그램의 개발과 용은 미흡한 수 에 머물러 있는 것으로 악된다. 더구나 최근 의료기술의 격한 변화와 발달, 의료소비 자들의 지식과 다양한 욕구 등 의료 환경의 변화는 간호사 들의 계속교육을 통한 문성 향상을 강하게 요구하고 있 다. 우리나라 3년제 간호 학에서 문학사를 취득하고 간 호사 국가시험을 통과한 간호사들이 다양한 공으로 학 사학 를 취득해 오다가 한국방송통신 학교의 학부과정 에 간호학과가 1991년 교육부 설치인가를 받아 1992년부 터 운 된 이후 간호학 공의 학사학 취득자들이 크게 증가하게 되었다. 한국방송통신 학교 간호학과는 문 학에서 취득한 학 을 인정하여 3, 4학년의 2년간 총 72학 으로 운 되고 있으며, 다양한 매체를 통한 온라인과 오 라인 교육을 병행하는 블랜디드러닝의 원격교육기 으로 2014년 2월 기 30,886명의 졸업생들을 배출함으로써 (Statistics Information, 2014) 간호사들의 간호학 학사학 취득 과 문성 향상에 기여해왔다. 이외에도 1992년 독학사제도, 1996년 간호사 학사학 특별과정(RN-BSN), 2006년 학 인정 제도, 2008년 공심화과정이 도입되어 다양한 방식으로 간 호사의 학사학 취득을 지원해왔다(Lee TW et al., 2014). 국외에서는 간호사의 교육수 을 학사학 수 으로 높 여야 한다는(Blegen et al., 2013) 주장과 함께 2020년까지 학 박 숙：간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복간의 계: 간호학사 특별편입과정 학생을 심으로 223 사학 간호사의 비율을 50%에서 80%까지 증가시킬 것을 권고하고 있으며(Institute of Medicine, 2011), 국내에서도 간 호 학의 4년제 일원화 정책이 추진됨에 따라 2016년에는 체 85개 문 학 70개 학(82.4%)에서 4년제 과정 이 운 되고(Korean Accreditation Board of Nursing Education, 2014), 2011년 5월 19일 간호교육이 4년제로 일원화할 수 있는 법 근거가 담긴 고등교육법 개정으로 문 학에 ‘수업연한 4년제 간호과’가 도입되어 2017년까지 3년제 간 호과가 4년제로 환될 정이다(Lee TW et al., 2014). 이러한 시 상황과 요구에 따라 많은 간호사들이 계 속교육을 통해 학업을 병행해 왔으며, 이들의 문직 자아 개념, 자기효능감, 직무만족도, 문성, 환자결과 등에서의 향상이 밝 지고 있다(Choi J et al., 2009; Kim YI, 2010; Blegen et al., 2013). 그러나 이러한 정 인 측면과 더불어 학사학 과정에 있는 간호사들의 스트 스가 가 되며 (Choi J et al., 2009; Kim YI, 2010; Nam MH et al., 2013), 특히 문 학 졸업 간호사가 학이나 학원 졸업 간호사보 다 신체 증상이 유의하게 높고, 간호사들의 신체증상과 순 환기, 소화기, 호흡기 등의 장애가 스트 스와 유의한 상 성이 있어(Shin MK, 2011), 계속 교육을 받고 있는 간호사 들의 건강 상태를 할 수 있음에도 이러한 측면은 간과 된 경향이 있으며 련 연구도 부족한 실정이다(Zuzelo, 2001). 따라서 이들 간호사들의 건강이 받는 조기 징후 로서 다양한 스트 스유형과 신체증상에 1차 인 을 두고 방 이고 극 인 에서 건강상태와 행복간의 계를 규명하기 한 연구들이 수행될 필요가 있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 문학사를 취득한 간호사 에서 간호학사 특별편입과정에서 학업을 진행하고 있는 간호사 들의 지각된 스트 스유형 정도, 신체증상과 행복의 특성 들을 비교 분석함으로써 간호사들이 자신의 건강과 행복을 하는 조기 신호들을 보다 명확하게 인식하고 극 으 로 건강과 행복을 향상시킬 수 있는 다각 인 방안들을 모 색하는데 기 자료를 제공하고자 본 연구를 수행하 다. 2. 연구목적 본 연구는 간호학사 특별편입과정에서 학업을 진행하고 있는 간호사가 지각하는 스트 스유형의 정도와 신체증 상, 행복의 특성을 비교 분석함으로써 이들 간호사들이 경 험하는 스트 스반응에 한 인식을 향상시키고 행복과의 계를 악함으로써 보다 극 으로 건강문제를 방하 고, 건강과 행복을 향상시킬 수 있는 효과 인 정책과 로그램을 개발하기 한 기 연구로 수행되었으며, 구체 인 목 은 다음과 같다. ⦁ 상자의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상과 행복의 특 성을 악한다. ⦁ 상자의 행복 정도를 악한다. ⦁ 상자의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복의 상 성을 확인한다. ⦁ 상자의 신체증상 정도에 따른 집단간 지각된 스트 스 유형과 행복 정도를 비교한다. 재료 및 방법 1. 연구설계 본 연구는 횡단 조사연구로서 간호학사 특별편입과정 에 있는 간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복 정 도의 특성을 악하고 이들 간의 상 성과 신체증상에 따 른 스트 스유형과 행복 정도의 차이를 검증한 상 성조 사연구이다. 2. 연구대상자 및 자료수집 본 연구의 상은 일개 K국립원격 학의 2년 간호학사 특별편입과정에서 학업 인 간호사로 국 13개 지역캠퍼 스 5개 지역을 무작 로 선정하 고, 이들 지역 학에 출석수업을 신청하여 교실강의에 참석한 학생들을 상으 로 2013년 9월부터 11월까지 조사하 다. 국립원격교육기 인 K 학은 TV, 인터넷, 모바일 등을 통한 원격교육 (70%)과 출석수업의 교실강의나 실시간 방향으로 이루 어지는 상강의의 면 면 교육(30%)으로 운 되고 있으 며 학부과정은 총 22개 학과로 이루어져있다. 이 간호 학과는 3년제 문 학에서 간호학 문학사를 취득한 후 간호사 국가시험에 합격하여 우리나라 간호사 면허증을 소지한 자를 3학년 편입학조건으로 3, 4학년 총 2년 과정 의 간호학 공 학사과정을 운 하고 있다. G power 3.1.2 program을 이용하여 유의수 .05, 통계 검정력 .95, 효과크기 0.2로 상 성 분석을 한 정 표본 의 크기는 총 262명으로 측되어 본 연구 참여에 동의한 278명을 상으로 자료를 수집하 으며, 이 응답이 부 실하거나 결손자료를 제외한 272 (96.5%)명의 자료가 최종 분석에 활용되었다. 자료 수집은 연구자가 수업 시작 에 본 연구의 목 , 연구방법과 차, 주의사항 등에 해 충분히 설명한 후 스트 스硏究：제 22 권 제 4 호 2014 224 작성하도록 하여 당일에 수거하 고 약 15∼20분 소요되 었다. 본 연구의 윤리 고려 측면에서는 참여자의 권리를 보호하기 해 익명을 사용하 고 헬싱키 선언에 입각하 여 연구 목 , 연구 윤리와 연구 과정에 한 정보를 미리 제공하고 연구 참여와 자료 사용에 해 동의한 경우 서면 동의서를 받았다. 한 참여자들의 자료는 연구이외의 목 으로는 사용하지 않을 것을 약속하 으며, 연구 도 참 여를 원하지 않거나 자료 사용 여부에 해 언제라도 거부 할 수 있음을 알려주었다. 3. 연구도구 1) 지각된 스트레스유형: 스트 스유형은 개인이 스트 스로 지각하는 스트 스요인을 의미하는 것으로, 본 연 구에서는 학생이 일상생활 속에서 경험하는 생활사건의 경험빈도와 각 사건이 얼마나 요하게 지각되었는지의 요도를 측정한 Chon KK et al.(2000)이 개발한 3 척도의 50 문항을 본 연구 상자에 맞게 수정 보완 한 후 사용하 다. 본 연구에서는 이성, 친구, 가족, 교수와의 계, 인 계 차원, 학업, 경제, 장래, 가치 문제, 당면과제 차원으 로 분석되었으며, 수가 높을수록 지각된 스트 스정도 가 높음을 의미한다. Chon KK et al.(2000)의 연구에서 각 하 부요인의 Cronbach’s α=.75∼.88, Park YS(2014)의 연구에 서 .79∼.94이었고, 본 연구에서는 .83∼.95로 나타났다. 2) 신체증상: 신체증상은 스트 스사건이나 요인의 자 극에 따른 결과로 나타나는 인간의 다양한 신체 스트 스반응을 의미하는 것으로 본 연구에서는 Hahn DW et al.(1992)이 개발하고 Kang HJ et al.(2010)이 수정한 도구를 사용하 다. 본 도구는 심 계, 수면, 소화, 두통 증상의 4개 하부 요인으로 구성되며 체 24문항 5 척도로 수가 높을수 록 신체증상이 많은 것을 의미한다. Kang HJ et al.(2010)의 연구에서 체문항의 Cronbach’s α=.83, 하 척도는 .84 ∼.91, 본 연구에서는 체문항 .95, 심 계 .93, 수면 .93, 소화 .89, 두통 .90으로 나타났다. 3) 행복: 행복은 매일 느끼는 주 인 안녕감, 좋은 삶, 삶에 한 만족 등을 포함하는 총체 인 개념으로, 행복은 정 인 감정(즐거운 삶), 극성(참여하는 삶)과 의미(의 미있는 삶)로 구성된다(Seligman et al., 2006). 본 연구에서는 Lyubomirsky et al.(1999)이 개발한 평소 느 끼는 비교 지속 이고 속 인 행복정도의 주 인 일반행복도를 수정하여 사용하 다. 이 도구는 총 4문항의 7 척도로서 수가 높을수록 행복 정도가 높음을 의미한 다. Lyubomirsky et al.(1999)의 연구에서 학생의 1개월 후 검 사-재검사 신뢰도 Pearson’s r=.85∼.90, 다른 행복도구와의 수렴타당도 Pearson’s r=.52∼.72, 본 연구에서 Cronbach’s α =.76으로 나타났다. 4. 자료분석방법 수집된 자료는 연구목 에 따라 SPSS WIN 21.0을 이용 하여 분석하 다. 상자의 일반 특성 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복 특성은 빈도와 백분율, 평균과 표 편차 등 의 기술통계를 사용하 으며, 연구도구의 내 신뢰도는 Cronbach’s α계수를 이용하 다. 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복 간의 상 계는 Pearson 상 계분석을 실시하 고, 신체증상에 따른 평균차이의 검정은 일원다변량분산분석 을 이용하 다. 결 과 1. 대상자의 일반적 특성 및 직업관련 특성 본 연구 상자의 일반 특성 연령은 평균 30.71로 21∼30세가 61.3%로 가장 많았으며 여자가 97.4%, 기혼이 64.3%, 종교는 58.8%가 있었고, 경제 상태는 보통이 69.5% 로 가장 많았다. 건강상태는 보통이 52.9%, 나쁘거나 매우 나쁜 경우가 21.4%이었고, 좋거나 매우 좋다고 지각하는 상자는 25.4%이었다. 91.5%가 직업이 있었으며 이 병 원간호사가 85.3%로 가장 많았고 그밖에는 보건교사나 지 역사회에 근무하는 경우이었다. 직장에서의 업무 부담감 은 43.0%가 약간 부담, 7.4%가 매우 부담된다고 하 고, 직장에 한 만족도는 만족하거나 매우 만족은 30.8%, 불 만이거나 매우 불만은 32.7%이었으며, 29.0%는 보통이라 고 응답하 다(Table 1). 2. 대상자의 스트레스유형, 신체증상 및 행복 간호사의 스트 스유형에서 인 계 차원은 최소 0 에서 최고 52 으로 평균 12.95이었으며, 당면과제 차원은 최소 0 에서 최고 76 으로 평균 26.75로 나타났다. 스트 스 총 은 최소 0 에서 101 으로 평균 39.57이었다. 스트 스유형들의 문항평균은 당면과제 차원 0.99, 인 계 차원 0.56으로 당면과제 차원의 스트 스가 인 계 차원의 스트 스 보다 더 높게 지각하는 것으로 나타났다. 당면과제 차원의 스트 스요인 에서는 경제 요인이 박 숙：간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복간의 계: 간호학사 특별편입과정 학생을 심으로 225 Table 1. General characteristics of participants (N=272). Characteristics Categories N (%) M±SD Min Max Age 21∼30 31∼40 ≧41 166 (61.3) 79 (29.0) 27 (9.4) 30.71±6.37 23.0 52.0 Gender Female Male 267 (97.4) 6 (2.2) Religion Yes No 160 (58.8) 112 (41.2) Marriage Yes No etc 175 (64.3) 96 (35.3) 1 (.4) Economic status Very good Good Average Bad Very bad No response 4 (1.5) 50 (19.4) 189 (69.5) 25 (9.2) 3 (1.1) 1 (.4) Health status Very good Good Average Bad Very bad No response 15 (5.5) 54 (19.9) 144 (52.9) 51 (18.8) 7 (2.6) 1 (.4) Job Yes No 249 (91.5) 23 (8.5) Job type Hospital nurse School nurse etc. None 232 (85.3) 17 (6.2) 23 (8.5) Job burden Never Little Just so so A little Very Much No response 9 (3.3) 14 (5.1) 92 (33.8) 117 (43.0) 20 (7.4) 20 (7.4) Job satisfaction Very satisfied Satisfied Average Unsatisfied Very unsatisfied No response 14 (5.1) 70 (25.7) 79 (29.0) 74 (27.2) 15 (5.5) 20 (7.4) 문항평균 1.73으로 가장 높았으며, 학업, 장래, 가치문제 순 으로 스트 스가 높았다. 인 계 차원의 스트 스요인 에서는 가족 요인이 문항평균 0.62로 가장 높았으며, 이 성 혹은 배우자, 친구, 교수 문제 순이었다. 신체증상은 총 이 최소 0 에서 최고 70 으로 평균 20.29이었으며 심 계, 수면, 소화, 두통 증상의 4개 하부 요인에서 두통 련 증상이 문항평균 1.20으로 가장 높았으 며, 수면 련 증상 1.10, 소화 련 증상 0.88, 심 계 증상 0.51로 나타났다. 행복은 총 이 최소 7 부터 최고 27 으로 평균 20.35, 문항평균 5.09이었으며(Table 2), 문항평균 수에 따른 빈 도분석에서 ‘굉장히 불행한’ 상자는 없었으며, ‘불행한’ 상자는 2명(0.7%), ‘조 불행한’ 상자는 6명(2.2%), ‘보 통이다’는 43명(15.8%), ‘조 행복한’ 상자는 112명(41.2%), ‘행복한’ 상자는 101명(37.1%), ‘굉장히 행복한’ 상자는 8명(2.9%)으로 나타났다. 스트 스硏究：제 22 권 제 4 호 2014 226 Table 4. Comparison of perceived stress type and happiness according to physical symptoms (N=272). Variables Lower group a) (n=74) Middle group b) (n=126) Upper group c) (n=72) F Scheffe’s test M±SD M±SD M±SD Perceived stress type 32.58±16.12 37.06±17.33 51.69±17.04 25.10 d) c) ＞ a) , b) Interpersonal stress 10.41±7.73 11.83±8.80 17.72±9.27 14.60 d) c) ＞ a) , b) Facing task stress 22.18±9.93 25.17±10.17 34.00±10.18 27.63 d) c) ＞ a) , b) Happiness 21.22±2.43 20.88±3.04 18.53±3.38 18.61 d) c) ＜ a) , b) a) lower 25% group, b) middle 50% group, c) upper 25% group of physical symptoms, d) p＜.001. Table 3. Correlation among perceived stress type, physical symptoms and happiness (N=272). Variables Perceived stress type Physical total sx Cadio vascular sx Sleep related sx Digestion related sx Headache related sx Happiness Perceived stress type 1 .418 a) .396 a) .352 a) .347 a) .326 a) −.299a) Interpersonal stress .895 a) .336 a) .341 a) .262 a) .289 a) .242 a) −.174a) Facing stress .931 a) .424 a) .393 a) .378 a) .339 a) .346 a) −.353a) Physical symptoms .418 a) 1 .864 a) .795 a) .912 a) .817 a) −.320a) Happiness −.299a) −.320a) −.246a) −.343a) −.252a) −.269a) 1 a) p＜.001. Table 2. Perceived stress type, physical symptoms and happiness of participants (N=272). Category (Number of items) M±SD Min Max Mean of items Perceived stress type Interpersonal dimension (23) 12.95±9.08 0 52 0.56 Romantic relationship (6) 3.47±3.06 0 13 0.58 Friend relationship (5) 2.76±2.36 0 12 0.55 Family relationship (6) 3.73±3.24 0 17 0.62 Professor relationship (6) 3.05±2.77 0 13 0.51 Facing task dimension (27) 26.75±11.07 0 76 0.99 Academic problem (7) 9.11±3.69 0 21 1.30 Economic problem (7) 5.10±3.80 0 21 1.73 Future problem (8) 7.78±3.77 0 22 0.97 Values problem (5) 4.77±2.75 0 14 0.95 Total (50) 39.57±18.41 0 101 .79±.37 Physical symptoms Cardiovascular sx (8) 4.08±5.34 0 23 0.51 Sleep related sx (4) 4.39±4.31 0 16 1.10 Digestion related sx (8) 7.07±6.31 0 29 0.88 Headache related sx (4) 4.80±4.02 0 16 1.20 Total (24) 20.29±17.11 0 70 0.85±.71 Happiness General happiness (4) 20.35±3.15 7 27 5.09±.79 3. 대상자의 스트레스유형, 신체증상, 행복간의 관계 간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형과 신체증상의 상 계 r=.418 (p＜.001)이었으며, 신체증상의 하부 요인에서 심 계(r=.396, p＜.001)가 가장 높았고, 수면, 소화, 두통 증 상 순으로 유의한 상 계를 나타냈다. 반면 지각된 스트 스 유형과 행복의 상 계 r=−.299 (p＜.001)이었으며, 신체증상과 행복의 상 계 r=−.320 (p＜.001)이었다. 행 복은 신체증상의 하부요인에서 수면증상과 상 성(r= −.320, p＜.001)이 가장 높았고, 두통, 소화, 심 계 증상 순으로 유의한 상 계를 나타냈다(Table 3). 4. 신체증상의 상, 중, 하 집단의 스트레스유형과 행복 정도 비교 연구 상자의 신체증상에 따라 하 25%, 간 50%, 상 25%의 세 집단으로 분류하여 세집단간 스트 스와 행 복정도를 비교한 결과, 상 집단의 총 지각된 스트 스정 도는 평균 51.69로 가장 높았으며, Scheffe’s test에서 간집 단 37.06, 하 집단 32.58과 통계 으로 유의한 차이(p ＜.001)를 보 다. 상 집단의 인 계 차원 스트 스유 형은 평균 17.72로 가장 높았으며, 간집단 11.83, 하 집 단 10.41과 유의한 차이(p＜.001)를 나타냈다. 당면과제 차 박 숙：간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복간의 계: 간호학사 특별편입과정 학생을 심으로 227 원 스트 스 유형은 평균 34.00으로 가장 높았고, 간집단 25.17, 하 집단 22.18과 유의한 차이(p＜.001)를 보 다. 행복정도는 상 집단에서 평균 18.53으로 가장 낮았으 며, 간집단 20.88, 하 집단 21.22로 두 집단과 유의한 차 이(p＜.001)를 나타냈다(Table 4). 고 찰 간호사가 스트 스가 많은 직업이라는 인식이 상당히 많은데도 이러한 특성의 결과로 간호사의 건강이 받 을 수 있다는 측면은 간과되어 큰 진 을 보이지 못하는 실정이다. 더구나 간호사의 스트 스 연구는 주로 직무스 트 스를 심으로 수행되어 왔으며 간호사가 일상생활에 서 경험하는 사회 , 개인 스트 스와 이로 인한 스트 스 반응 는 스트 스로 인한 향에 해서는 간과되어 왔다(Lim J et al., 2010). 따라서 본 연구는 간호사가 지각하 는 스트 스유형, 신체증상 그리고 행복의 특성들을 확인 하고 그 계를 분석함으로써 간호사의 건강과 행복 향상 에 한 인식을 환할 기회를 제공하고 이를 한 다양한 방안들을 모색하고 개발하기 한 기 자료를 제공하기 해 수행되었다. 본 연구 상자들은 특히 학업을 병행하고 있는 간호사 로서 스트 스가 더욱 가 될 수 있는 상황에 있는 경우로 평균 연령은 30.71세이었으며, 97.4%가 여자 간호사로서 기혼 64.3%, 경제수 은 보통이 69.5%이었고, 직업이 있는 경우가 91.5%로 이 병원간호사가 85.3%로 가장 많았다. 이들 간호사들의 지각된 스트 스유형 정도와 특성을 확 인한 결과, 인 계 차원의 스트 스유형은 평균 12.95, 당면과제 차원의 스트 스유형은 평균 26.75, 체 총 은 평균 39.57로 나타나 Park YS(2014)의 연구에서 인 계 유형의 여자 학생 평균 15.34보다는 낮고, 남자 학생 12.61보다 높았으며, 당면과제 차원에서는 여자 학생 36.10, 남자 학생 34.37보다 낮았고, 체 총 에서도 여 자 학생 51.44, 남자 학생 46.98보다 낮았다. 지각된 스 트 스 유형들의 문항평균에서는 본 연구에서 당면과제 차 원의 경제 요인이 문항평균 1.73으로 가장 높았고, 학업, 장래, 가치 문제 순으로 지각된 스트 스정도가 높았던 반 면 남녀 학생은 모두 학업스트 스가 가장 높았으며, 장 래, 경제, 가치 문제 순으로 나타난 에서 차이를 보인다. 이는 일반 학생들이 본 연구 상자들보다 스트 스를 더 높게 지각하며 특히 학업이나 장래에 한 스트 스가 가장 높은 스트 스유형이었던 반면 본 연구 상자는 경 제 요인의 스트 스가 가장 높았고 두 번째로 학업스트 스가 높아 학업을 병행하는 성인 학습자이자 직장인의 특성을 잘 반 해주는 것으로 생각된다. 한 인 계 차 원에서는 본 연구 상자들이 가족 요인이 문항평균 0.62 로 가장 높았고, 이성이나 배우자, 친구, 교수 문제 순이었 던 반면 여자 학생은 교수와의 계가 가장 높았고, 가 족, 이성, 친구 순이었고, 남자 학생은 이성과의 계가 가장 높았고, 교수와의 계, 가족, 친구 순으로 나타난 결 과와 차이를 보 다. 이는 일반 학생이 미혼이 부분인 반면 본 연구에서는 기혼 여성이 많았던 것에서 나타난 차 이이며, 교수와의 계 스트 스가 었던 것은 본 연구 상자들이 원격 학 학생들로 교수와의 직 인 면이 은 것에 기인한 결과로 생각된다. 따라서 학업을 병행하 는 간호사의 경우 일반 학생과는 달리 여성 직장인의 특 성을 극 으로 반 하여 직업을 잘 유지하면서 보다 효과 으로 학업을 병행할 수 있도록 한 학습량 등 다 양한 학습방법과 지원 략이 필요할 것으로 보인다. 한 간호교육자와 간호 리자들은 이들의 가족스트 스를 경 감하기 한 실질 인 교육 지원 로그램들을 제공할 필요가 있다. 당면과제 차원의 스트 스유형이 인 계 차원의 스트 스유형 보다 높았던 결과는 Park YS(2014)의 연구에서 당 면과제 차원(남 1.26, 여 1.34)이 인 계 차원(남 0.55, 여 0.66)보다 스트 스 지각정도가 2배 이상 높았던 결과, Lindsey et al.(2011)의 연구에서 여자 학생이 즉시 할 일이 무 많은 것에서 가장 스트 스가 높았던 결과, Lee EH(2004)의 연구에서 우리나라 학생들이 학업, 장래 진로문제로 인한 당면과제 스트 스가 가장 높은 것으로 나타난 것과 유사한 결과로서, 일차 으로 스트 스 리 로그램에서 당면과제 문제들에 한 효과 인 리가 핵심요인으로 구성되어야 함을 시사해 다. 즉 원격교육 안에서도 직장, 가정, 학업의 여러 과제들 속에서 보다 효 과 인 교육 학습 방법과 략들을 개발하여 용하는 노력들이 필요하다. 다시 말해 정확하고 한 학업에 한 조언과 지도, 융통성 있는 교과과정 운 , 컴퓨터 기술 향상 등이 이들의 학습을 보다 용이하게 할 수 있으며, 환 자간호에 미치는 정 인 직ㆍ간 향을 고려할 때 간호사의 계속교육에 한 근무기 의 경제 지지 등의 계속교육 장려정책과 략(Zuzelo, 2001; Duffy et al., 2014)이 보다 극 으로 도입되어야 한다. 스트 스硏究：제 22 권 제 4 호 2014 228 신체증상은 두통 련 증상이 가장 높았으며, 수면 련 증상, 소화 련 증상, 심 계 증상으로 나타나 간호사들 이 특히 자신의 두통증상이나 수면증상들을 건강상태를 할 수 있는 기 징후로 인식할 필요가 있음을 시사해 다. Holmes et al.(1967)이 지난 1년간 각 개인의 생활변화 단 로 측정한 스트 스 정도가 경도일 경우 2년 내 건강 변화가능성이 35%, 등도 스트 스인 경우는 50%, 심한 정도인 경우는 70%이었다고 보고한 것처럼, 스트 스의 장기화는 다양한 질병발생 등 건강상태를 심각하게 할 수 있다. 한 Kim YI et al.(2010)의 연구에서 간호사들 은 자신이 건강한 편이라고 응답한 경우가 60.0%이나 운 동을 하지 않는 경우가 60.2%, 평소 간 이상의 피로 도를 느끼는 경우가 74.8%이었으며, Kim JH et al.(2010)의 연구에서는 간호사들의 주 인 건강지각 정도가 높았던 반면에 규칙 인 식사와 운동, 여가활동 등의 건강 련 행 정도는 낮고 외래 진료경험이나 사고경험은 많은 것으 로 나타났다. 더구나 임상간호사들이 지각하는 스트 스 수가 미국 성인여성이나 한국의 년여성보다 더 높고, 육체 피로도가 항암요법 2일 후 환자의 평균피로도보다 약간 높고 만성 인 액투석보다 훨씬 높게 나타났다고 한 Lee WH et al.(2006)의 보고는 본 연구와 같이 신체증상 에 한 경각과 조직 차원의 다양한 로그램의 개발과 활성화가 필요함을 지지해 다. 한편으로 스트 스 반응으로 인한 신체증상이 특히 여 자에게 더 높고(Wilson et al., 2005; Grant, 2013), 우리나라에 서는 감정을 신체 으로 표 하는 경향이 있으며, 상실에 한 분노, 갈등 등이 결국 자신에게로 향하게 된 개심 을 극복하지 못한 것이 우울증의 원인이 되기도 한다(Min SK, 2009). 따라서 여자 간호사들이 자신의 신체증상을 우 울증, 불안 등 정신건강을 하는 경고 징후(alarm sign)로 인식하여 조기에 리할 수 있는 다양한 교육 재 로그램들이 개발되어 쉽게 활용될 수 있도록 하여야 한다. 본 연구에서 간호사의 일반행복도는 평균 20.35, 문항평 균 5.09이었으며, 문항평균 수에 따라 굉장히 불행한 상자부터 굉장히 행복한 상자로 분류된 결과를 보다 간 략하게 기술하면 연구 상자의 40.1%는 굉장히 행복하거 나 행복한 집단, 41.2%는 조 행복한 집단, 15.8%는 불행 하지도 행복하지도 않은 집단, 2.9%는 굉장히 불행하거나 불행한 집단으로 재분류할 수 있다. 즉, 불행하지도 행복하 지도 않은 집단이나 굉장히 불행하거나 불행한 집단에 해 당되는 18.7%의 간호사가 행복증진 로그램이 가장 필요 한 1차 상으로 생각되나 보다 극 인 에서 보면 조 행복한 집단 41.2% 역시 로그램의 용 상 이 되는 것이 바람직할 것으로 사료된다. 본 연구의 학업을 병행하는 간호사의 일반행복도는 한 국 정심리연구소에서 성인 500명을 상으로 조사한 일반 행복도의 평균 수 4.75, 미국 성인의 평균 수 4.8에 비해 (Woo MS , 2012) 높게 나타났다. 반면 Nam MH et al.(2013)이 2012년 OECD에서 제시한 행복지수를 활용하여 병원간호 사의 행복지수를 주거환경, 소득, 일자리, 공동체, 교육, 환 경, 시민권한, 건강, 삶의 만족, 직업-삶의 균형의 11가지로 측정한 결과 체평균이 5 만 3.03으로 OECD 평균 에 못 미치는 것으로 보고하고 있어 향후 다양한 간호사를 상으로 다양한 측정도구를 사용한 반복연구를 해볼 필 요가 있다. 간호사의 지각된 스트 스와 신체증상, 행복간의 계에 서 스트 스와 신체증상(r=.418, p＜.001), 신체증상과 행복 (r=−.320, p＜.001), 스트 스와 행복(r=−.299, p＜.001)은 뚜렷하게 유의한 상 성을 나타냈다. 특히 스트 스와 신 체증상이 행복과 역상 성을 보이고 있어 스트 스와 신 체증상이 많을수록 행복 수 이 낮은 것으로 확인되었다. 한편으로 스트 스는 신체증상 심 계 증상과 상 성이 가장 높았고, 수면, 소화, 두통 증상 순이었으나 행복 은 신체증상 수면증상과 상 성이 가장 높았고, 두통, 소화, 심 계 증상 순으로 나타나 다소 차이를 보 다. 한 간호사들이 경험하는 신체증상에서 신체증상 수 의 상, , 하 집단의 분류는 본 신체증상도구의 개발자가 도구의 해석을 수가 높을수록 경험하는 신체증상이 많 다고 해석하는 것 이상의 지침을 제시하지 않아 본 연구에 서 사용한 도구에 한 Kang HJ et al.(2010)의 연구에서 주 요 변인을 각 상, 하 25%의 집단으로 분류하여 비교한 것 을 참조하 다. 그러나 본 연구에서는 일반 인 기술통계 에서 상 인 크기에 해 분석하고 해석하는 사분 수 (quartiles)를 활용하여 각 상, 하 25%와 나머지에 해당되는 간 집단의 세 집단으로 분류하여 비교하는 것이 본 연구 결과의 활용과 용 측면에서 보다 많은 정보를 제공해 수 있을 것으로 사료되어 상, 하 각 25%와 간 50% 집 단 간의 스트 스와 행복 정도를 비교하 다. 그 결과 신 체증상을 가장 많이 경험하는 상 25%집단이 체 스트 스, 인 계 차원, 당면과제 차원에서 모두 다른 두 집 단보다 유의하게 높았고, 행복도는 유의하게 낮았다. 이러 한 결과들은 신체증상을 쉽게 간과하지 않고 스트 스, 행 박 숙：간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복간의 계: 간호학사 특별편입과정 학생을 심으로 229 복, 건강 리에 있어서 요한 조기 징후로 인식하여 컨트 롤게이트 지표로 활용할 수 있는 가능성을 보여 결과로 생각된다. 따라서 이를 활용하여 간호사를 한 단계 이 고 통합 인 다양한 스트 스, 건강, 행복의 자가 리 증진 로그램들을 개발하여 그 효과를 평가하는 추후 연 구들을 제언한다. 최근 매년 국 의료기 병상 수는 6% 증가하고 있으나 의료기 에 재직하는 간호사의 비율은 매년 평균 4%에서 1% 로 어들고 있는 상황으로(Kang AR, 2014b), 본 연구는 간호사 근무환경의 획기 인 개선 지원 방안들이 시 한 실정에서 필요한 기 자료로서 의료 인력의 효율 인 지원과 조직 인 리 차원에서 유 용하게 활용될 수 있을 것이며, 궁극 으로 간호사의 건강 과 행복 수 의 향상에 기여할 것으로 기 한다. 참 고 문 헌 Augusto Landa JM, López-Zafra E, Berrios Martos MP et al. 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Soc Indic Res. 스트 스硏究：제 22 권 제 4 호 2014 230 = 국문초록 = 본 연구는 일개 국립원격 학의 간호학과 학생을 상으로 간호사의 지각된 스트 스유형, 신체증상, 행복의 특성과 이들 간의 계를 검증하 다. 우리나라 5개 도시에 거주하는 총 272명의 자료를 분석한 결과, 당면과제 차원의 스트 스가 인 계 차원의 스트 스 보다 더 높게 나타났다. 당면과제 차원에서는 경제 스트 스가 가장 높았으며, 학업스트 스, 장래문제, 가치 문제의 순으로 지각된 스트 스 정도가 높았다. 인 계 차원의 스트 스에서는 가족 계요인이 가장 높았으며, 이성 배우자 계가 두 번째로 높게 나타났다. 학업 인 간호사가 지각하는 신체 증상은 두통 련 증상이 가장 높았으며, 수면 련 증상이 두 번째로 높게 나타났다. 한 신체증상정도에 따라 상, , 하 집단으로 나 어 지각된 스트 스 정도와 행복정도를 비교하 을 때 신체증상이 가장 높은 상 집단이 , 하 집단에 비해 유의하게 스트 스정도가 높고, 행복정도는 낮게 나타났다. 간호사의 행복정도는 행복도 불행도 아닌 ‘보통이다’는 15.8%, ‘조 행복한’ 상자는 41.2%, ‘행복한’ 상자는 37.1%, ‘굉장히 행복한’ 상자는 2.9%이었 으며, 스트 스, 신체증상, 행복 간에 유의한 상 계를 나타냈다. 간호사의 건강과 행복을 향상시키기 해 이들의 신체증상들을 스크리닝하여 조기에 재하는 로그램들을 개발하여 용할 것을 제언한다. 심단어: 원격 학, 간호사, 스트 스, 행복, 신체증상 46(2):137-155. Min SK (2009) Modern psychiatry (5th ed.). Seoul: Iljogak. Nam MH, Kwon YC (2013) Factors influencing happiness index of hospital nurses. J Korean Acad Nurs Adm. 19(3):329-339. Park JK, Jang SH, Kim DS et al. 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work_xlse7bviajhpvnco2u2nlbyo7a	----	Embodied Head Gesture and Distance Education http://www.diva-portal.org This is the published version of a paper presented at 2nd International IBM Symposium on Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering, 26–30 July 2015, Las Vegas, United States. Citation for the original published paper : Khan, M S., ur Réhman, S. (2015) Embodied head gesture and distance education. In: 6th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2015) and the Affiliated Conferences (pp. 2034-2041). Procedia Manufacturing http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2015.07.251 N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-109205 2035 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 1. Introduction In teaching and learning process, the role of teacher is undeniably vital and his/her presence stimulates the social, emotional and cognitive interactions especially when it comes to cross-cultural communication and education [5, 31]. The researchers agreed that in cross-cultural education, face-to-face interaction and communication deliver the best experience in developing skills, knowledge and competence [3, 4]. But, the recent technological advancements have given birth to online or distance education setting where text, audio and video forms of interactions are mostly used. These forms of distance education setting have greatly benefited the education process [6]; however when it comes to pragmatics, prosody, and non-verbal behavior based communication, which are considered important components of emotional and cognitive presence of teacher, are not being fully addressed using internet based text, audio and video communication [2]. The emotional and cognitive based embodied presence of a teacher not only assists with planning, conducting, intervening in teaching process but also improves the student’s ability to relate and create meaning from the taught contents [7,8]. It has been reported that teacher’s behavioral cues such as facial expression, eye contact, proximities, direction of attention, postures and gestures, have significant impact on student performance and improves teacher’s influential role [9,10,12]. The most common computer mediated distance education is based on standard audio-video conferencing system. These video conferencing systems based distance educational setting are considered economical and motivational for students but are restrictive when it comes to non-verbal communication [1,2,32]. In face-to-face learning, head gesture (and eye contact) conveys a serious communicative messages especially where speech is ambiguous, hard to hear and/or understand [11,13]. Recently, researchers have proposed various robotic-agent based solutions to narrow the gap between face-to-face learning and computer based distance learning. These robotic-agents based distance learning is also termed as robot-mediated learning. These robotic-agents improve the instructional effectiveness while presenting an embodied presence of a teacher in distance educational setting (see [19]). It is reported that this inclusion can provide an effective blend of human-behavioral cues and computer-mediated standard video- conferencing systems. This embodied presence increases with social behaviour of robotic-agent which is directly related to its movements [28]. Human head movement is very important in general conversation and in-class communication, tutor’s head movements repersent the contextual information as well as an integral part of a deictic gestures [26] . Despite the influential role of the head gestures in teaching and learning, very little research has examined gesture’s role in the robot-mediated learning process. In this work, we present experimental studies that investigate the role of embodied head gesture (and eye contact) developed for a robotic agent in distance learning scenarios. For these experimental studies, we have used our embodied telepresence system (ETS) which represent the head gesture of a human tutor in distance education setting. We provide a comparison study on learning experience using ETS and standard video conference system. Through such scenarios we want to test our hypothesis that ‘robotic agent with expressive head gesture (i.e., mimic the human head movement) can improve the students learning process and hence have positive impact on their performance’. 2. Background The massive growth in communication technologies, in last two decades, has impacted on distance education and training, which is expressively different from the traditional classroom interactions. It is estimated that more than 6.7 million students are registered in online distance education [14]. During in-class interaction, people exchange non-verbal cues, facial expressions, gaze direction, bodily gestures, and tone of the voice to create presence and perform various interaction patterns to aid information transmission. It is believed that nonverbal cues accomplish two distinct purposes 1) a direct passage of information from one person to another; 2) the ‘integrational aspects’ of the communication process [18]. The ‘integrational aspects’ contains all the non-verbal physical manifestations of information exchange that regulate the interaction process and keep the conversation going and providing semantic meaning as well as relation to larger contexts. The most dominant form of computer mediated communication is based on the standard video conferencing software which is often described as a medium that is limiting in non- verbal cues and social context [15,16,17]. Considering these limittaions, researchers are proposing the robotic and 2036 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 animated agents which would be assiting the remote students and may offer computer medicated education with flavour of human tutor’s beahvioural cues. Recently, Robotic-agents, also known as educational assistive robots (EAR), have been used to interact with students in order to help them develop educational skills both in distance education and in-class setting [19, 20]. However, the effectiveness of these robot agents is not only measered by the task performance but also its social behaviour which is perceived and understood by its interacting parnters [21, 22]. Hence, the perception of social behaviour of a robotic-agnet is directly related to its movements which also repersents the contextual information. Therefore, the design and modeling of robot-agent’s mechincal part movements (eyes, head, arm, etc.) must be approached carefully. When it comes to educational assistive robots in distance education, it is highly desirable that their head movement (and hence eye contact) must ‘look like’ or ‘similar’ to human tutor head-gesture; as human gestures which are considered very cruial in social interactions as well as teaching and learning settings [9-11]. In- class setting, tutor’s head movement communicates levels of gaze, physical proximity, and other behaviors indicative of interactivity. This feedback communicates relevant information to synchronize rhythm between participants as well as provides the contextual information [23-27]. In this work, we study the role of head movements of educational assistive robots due to its significance in face- to-face settings. For these experiments, we have used our robotic agent namely; Embodied Tele-presence System (ETS). ETS is a three degree-of-freedom tele-robot which mimics the human neck movements; i.e., ETS embodies the remote participant head-movements to give more levelheaded presence and can be perceived by his collaborators as being equally present by gaze direction and by head embodiment. For more details about ETS design and functionality see [28]. 2.1. Hypothesis For the following studies, we want to see how the head-gesture will affect the focus of attention and improve the learning experience of remote participants for distance education. We felt that the remote participants will be more interested-in and adaptively engaged by embodied head gesture based interactions as compared to standard video conferencing based distance education setting. Therefore, we consider the following two hypothesis; H1: Participants will have positive reaction towards ETS, which will increase over time. H2: Participants engagement with ETS in real time will improve participants’ attention and involvement hence motivate them toward learning. Fig. 1. a) Human head orientation modelling used for head pose estimation and designing a 3 DOF neck/head robot; (b) Embodied Telepresence System (ETS)- our educational assistive robot. 2037 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 3. Embodied telepresence system (ETS): Modeling head gesture The simulation of head gesture through ETS consists of two modules; software module and hardware module. In software module, the pose of the human head is estimated with a constraint that the human head is a 3 DOF rigid object which has yaw, pitch and roll movements as shown in Fig. 1(a). We have used our geometric head pose estimation (GHPE) algorithm which estimates the head pose through a standard webcam of the computer. The implementation of GHPE algorithm is done in VC++ and the details of this algorithm can be found in [29]. The hardware module of ETS consists of a 3 DOF neck/head robot for exhibiting the real head movement. We named this robot as Embodied Telepresence System (ETS) as shown in Fig. 1(b). The design of ETS consists of three servo motors attached in a configuration to give all three degrees of head motion (yaw, pitch and roll). The tablet PC is used to present the audio and video of the person. We have used ETS in a distance education scenario where tutor’s head gestures are presented to the students through the combination of software and hardware modules of the ETS. The deployment of the ETS system in real distance education scenario is explained in section 3.1. 3.1. System deployment The ETS system is deployed for a distance education setting where we have two sites: a student site and a tutor site as shown in Fig.2. The left column in Fig.2 shows the tutor site and the right column shows the student site. At tutor site, we have two computer screens; where one screen displays the lecture slides and the other shows a real- time video stream of the student. Here at tutor site, a webcam based GHPE algorithm is installed to estimate the head gesture of the tutor. At student site, we have an ETS which could be used to present the audio-video and head gesture of tutor during lecture. The similar lecture slides are also being presented on the computer screen of the student and is controlled by the tutor. The real time deployment of the system consists of following steps: Audio-Video communication is setup between the tutor and student site through Video-over-IP software (i.e. Skype). Wireless data communication is done through Xbee wireless transceiver. The GHPE algorithm is used to calculate the Yaw, Pitch and Roll angles of the tutor. The pitch and roll angles are mapped directly to ETS to present the head gesture of the tutor at student site; where, the Yaw angle decides where the tutor is looking, i.e. is he looking at lecture slides or at the student video. Based on the provided angles to ETS-controller, it turns toward the lecture slides or toward the student at student site- ‘showing’ eye-contact and head gesture. ETS controller generates PWM signals to perform these yaw, pitch and roll movements. The whole system performs real time communication with 25 frames per second. Fig. 2. Application scenario: one-to-one distance education setting; the left is a ‘tutor site’ and the right side depicts the remote student participant with educational assistive robot. 2038 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 Fig. 3. Real experimental setting: one-to-one distance education setting; the left is a ‘tutor site’ with two screen and head gesture estimation algorithm installed and the right side depicts the remote student participant with one screen and a Embodied Telepresence (ETS). 4. Experimental studies The goal of the experimental studies are to investigate the effectiveness of our novel distance education scenario where the distant located student is assisted by the tutor’s head gestures, gaze and focus of attention. Furthermore, this study focuses on the effects of head gestures in distance education over time. 4.1. Participants and procedure Ten students (5 boys and 5 girls) were recruited from the campus of Umeå University, Sweden, ranging in the age of 15 to 23. All the students were directly involved in distance education and they have the basic knowledge of mathematics. Furthermore, we have hired one mathematics teacher to deliver a lecture on triangulations. A training was given to the teacher to make him familiar with the ETS and head gestures based distance education setting. All the students plus the teacher were told about the purpose of the experiment. The experiment was setup according to the system deployment steps. The real experimental setup is shown in Fig. 3. The experiment was run 10 times for 10 students; where teacher delivers a lecture for 5 minutes on triangulations for each student. There are two scenarios for this experiment; one where teacher delivers a lecture through simple skype conversation for 2.5 minutes and the other where teacher delivers a lecture through ETS for the next 2.5 minutes. The order of these sessions was random; i.e., some students took skype lecture first and other ETS base lecture. At the end of the experiment there was informal interview and each student was given a questionnaire to fill in questions related to our hypothesis. 4.1. Questionnaire Our modified subjective questionnaire was adopted from a previously developed questionnaire; i.e., studies related to distance education by [30]. We have selected the following most important questions which are directly related to our experiment. The questionnaire used Likert style 7-point rating system, which scales from 1 to 7. The value 1 represents strong disagreement (negative) and 7 represents strong agreement (positive). The questions in the questionnaire are: 1) Motivation toward learning: Does movement capability of the educational assistive robot (ETS) motivates you to learn more during online lecture? 2) Monitoring participants: Do you feel to be monitored by your tutor during lecture? 3) Trust: Does the gaze direction of tutor helps to build trust during lecture? 4) Understanding: Does ETS help you to understand more as compare to traditional online teaching method? 2039 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 5) Disturbing: Do you feel disturbed by the ETS? (1 = disturbed and 7 = not disturbed at all) 6) Track: Can you keep a track of the lecture? 7) Welcome and Comfortable: Is ETS welcoming and comfortable during teaching? 8) Time: Do you forget the role of technology over time? 9) Physical Presence: Do you feel the physical presence of the tutor at your site? All these questions are compared with the traditional online teaching method (i.e. through video-over-IP software). 5. Results and discussion The questionnaire results were analyzed by calculating the means and standard deviations of the ETS vs Skype systems used in distance learning scenario. Table 1 shows the mean questionnaire response for all the questions on 7 point Likert scale. The results are graphically shown in Fig. 4, where red bars show the ETS based user-responses and the blue bars show the Skype based user-responses. If we compare the standard deviation of ETS with Skype, we see a large variation for ETS as compared to Skype only setting. The less variation in case of Skype can be due to the fact that the students were ‘used-to’/aware of the traditional distance learning methods and were previously using them. But it was the first time they experienced distance learning through ETS, hence large standard deviation as compared to Skype setting. However, if we compare the mean values of the questionnaire, it can be seen that ETS setting outperform Skype-only setting in every question except in Disturbing. The students found that the ETS based scenario (μ= 4.5) is unusual which can be more disturbing as compared to Skype-setting (μ= 5.0). This was expected as movement based interaction are sometime distracting but with time (μ= 5.9) students forget the role of technology and showed the ‘feeling’ of physical presence (μ= 6.3) of the tutor when using ETS. The students felt to be monitored (μ= 6.0) as the ETS sometime moves toward the computer screen and sometime makes an eye contact with the student. One of the student mentioned that ‘now he feels the influence of the teacher during lecture….’ Because of monitoring/influence and head gesture, students felt motivated to learn and these non-verbal cues help them to understand better. There was more excitement in students as they found this learning method is more fascinating. The trust factor through ETS learning was also high as compared to skype-only based communication. The students keep an equal track of the lecture with both system. Finally, the students found ETS welcoming and comfortable and they showed willingness to buy this product in informal interviews. Based on these results, it can be confidently said that our both hypothesis holds for the setting i.e., H-1-- Participants have positive reaction towards ETS, which increases over time. Furthermore, H-2 – participants’ engagement with ETS in real time enhances participants’ attention and involvement hence motivate them toward learning. Table 1. Statistical Analysis of survey questionnaire. Questions ETS Skype Mean (μ) Std. dev. (σ) Mean (μ) Std. dev. (σ) Motivation 5.7 0.7 4.1 0.6 Monitoring 6.0 0.5 3.8 0.2 Trust 4.6 1.1 3.9 0.9 Understanding 5.0 0.9 4.0 0.5 Disturbing 4.5 1.3 5.0 0.5 Track 6.2 0.5 6.1 0.4 Welcome/comfortable 6.5 0.3 4.5 1.0 Time 5.9 0.9 4.2 0.7 Physical Presence 6.3 0.6 4.0 0.2 2040 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 6. Conclusion and future direction Most of the traditional methods for online teaching are limited to standard audio-video and text based communication. These methods have limited ability to transmit certain nonverbal cues. In this paper, we have proposed a novel scenario for distance education by introducing educational assistive robot named embodied telepresence system (ETS). ETS is a physical representation of the tutor at student site, where head gestures of tutor are mapped to ETS. Furthermore, ETS imitates a shift in its focus of attention according to the tutor’s focus of attention. Our user study shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach in distance education scenario. The results suggest that the nonverbal cues provide a vital feedback such as head nod, head shake etc. and these cues are useful supplement to audio-video communication. Our hypothesis upheld on the basis of experimental results i.e. the robotic agent with expressive head gesture improves the learning process and have a positive impact on the student performance. The present study is subject to limitations that should be addressed in future research. The present study focused on a small number of university students in Sweden with little cultural diversity, therefore future research is required to determine whether the same results would be obtained in distance education environments with learners of different ages, gender, grade, intellectual level, and diverse cultural background. Similarly, future research is needed to determine whether the proposed ETS based online learning environment foster/affect the two way presence with positive affect on student learning outcomes. References [1] S. Yarosh, K. M. Inkpen and A. Brush, “Video playdate: toward free play across distance,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2010. [2] D. Szafir and B. Mutlu, “Pay attention!: designing adaptive agents that monitor and improve user engagement,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2012. [3] D. Batchelder and E. G. Warner, Beyond Experience: The Experiential Approach to Cross-Cultural Education., ERIC, 1977. [4] K. Cushner and R. W. Brislin, Intercultural interactions: A practical guide, Sage publications, 1995. [5] H. L. Dreyfus, On the internet: Thinking in Action, Routledge, 2008. Fig. 4. Mean Questionnaire Score. 2041 Muhammad Sikandar Lal Khan and Shafi q ur Réhman / Procedia Manufacturing 3 ( 2015 ) 2034 – 2041 [6] M. Merryfield, “Like a veil: Cross-cultural experiential learning online,” Contemporary issues in technology and teacher education, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 146-171, 2003. [7] C. F. Aust, “Face-to-Face Communication outside the Digital Realm to Foster Student Growth and Development,” in Teaching, Learning, and the Net Generation: Concepts and Tools for Reaching Digital Learners, CH5, IGI Global, 2012, p. 74. [8] D. M. Christophel, “The relationships among teacher immediacy behaviors, student motivation, and learning,” Communication education, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 323-340, 1990. [9] W.-M. Roth, “Gestures: Their role in teaching and learning,” Review of Educational Research, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 365-392, 2001. [10] J. R. Nelson and M. L. Roberts, “Ongoing reciprocal teacher-student interactions involving disruptive behaviors in general education classrooms,” Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 27-37, 2000. [11] R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein, Nudge, Yale University Press, 2008. [12] J. A. Fredricks, P. C. Blumenfeld and A. H. Paris, “School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence,” Review of educational research, vol. 74, no. 1, pp. 59-109, 2004. [13] R. B. Church, S. Ayman-Nolley and S. Mahootian, “The role of gesture in bilingual education: Does gesture enhance learning?,” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, pp. 303-319, 2004. [14] I. E. Allen and J. Seaman, Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States., ERIC, 2013. [15] A. Feenberg, “The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing,” Mindweave: Communication, computers, and distance education, pp. 22-39, 1989. [16] J. Wuther and J. 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J. van Breemen, “Design guidelines and tools for creating believable motion for personal robots,” in the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2007), 2007. [22] M. Saerbeck and C. Bartneck, “Perception of affect elicited by robot motion,” in The 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human- robot interaction, 2010. [23] A. T. Dittmann and L. G. Llewellyn, “Relationship between vocalizations and head nods as listener responses,” Journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 79, 1968. [24] J. Lemke, “Meaning-making in the conversation: Head spinning, heart winning, and everything in between,” Human Development, pp. 87- 91, 1999. [25] C. Pelachaud, V. Carofiglio, B. De Carolis, F. de Rosis and I. Poggi, “Embodied contextual agent in information delivering application,” in the first international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems: part 2, 2002. [26] C. Goodwin, Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers, Academic Press, 1981. [27] L.-P. Morency, C. Sidner, C. Lee and T. Darrell, “Contextual recognition of head gestures,” in 7th international conference on Multimodal interfaces, 2005. [28] M. Khan, H. Li and S. Rehman, “Embodied Tele-Presence System (ETS): Designing Tele-Presence for Video Teleconferencing,” in HCI International 2014, 2014. [29] M. Khan, S. Rehman, Z. Lu and H. Li, “Head Orientation Modeling : Geometric Head Pose Estimation using Monocular Camera,” in Proceedings of the 1st IEEE/IIAE International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Image Processing, 2013. [30] P. Youngblood, F. Trede and S. Di Corpo, “Facilitating online learning: A descriptive study,” Distance Education, vol. 22, pp. 264--284, 2001. [31] R. M. Lehman and S. C. Conceicao, Creating a sense of presence in online teaching: How to 'be there' for distance learners, John Wiley & Sons, 2010. [32] M. Khan and S. 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work_xnsppgg5nbaftnz6bffdwr2loa	----	A Green Touch for the Future of Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.565 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW HORIZONS IN EDUCATION INTE2012 A green touch for the future of distance education M.Banu Gündoğana, Gülsün Ebyb* aInstructor, Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey bAssociate Professor, College of Open Education, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey Abstract This paper aims to draw attention to the sustainability of distance learning in terms of the design process based on learner characteristics and technology usage. Distance learning has become a cyberized system owing its presence to developments in digital technologies. Technological developments solve some immediate problems but also have the risk of leading to even greater ones. To ‘sustain’ is not only about keeping up, supporting or maintaining continuity but also is about nourishing, cultivation and acknowledgement. 21st century incentives in all fields of human endeavour have replaced sustainability measures in their plans and actions as a necessity for meeting the needs of the present and future generations. Green engineering and design perspectives state the importance of carrying out an inventory of all the materials and energy used in the design process and assessing all the environmental discharges resulting from the product’s manufacture, use, and disposal. Being cyberized or virtual does not leave distance education apart; still it is a product designed to serve actual human beings and alike every design, the process has inputs, outputs and unfortunately, produces waste. Unless managed properly, waste is harmful; to avoid possible harms and to be able to respond both to current and future demands and expectations, distance education has to include ecological and sustainable perspectives to its vision. This study outlines the historical background of sustainability, lists the green engineering and green design perspectives from literature and expresses a green touch for sustainable distance education within these perspectives. Keywords: sustainable distance education; future of distance education * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 312 210 3680; fax: +90 312 210 7986. E-mail address: banug@metu.edu.tr © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 790 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 1. Introduction The future is undefined, yet inevitable. Thoughts and actions towards future tend to be hopeful and every organism, including us humans, struggle for permanence and progress rather than to corrupt. There have been numerous incentives in our history which represent this hopeful struggle. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, specifies both individual rights and governmental determinations on promoting social progress and better standards of life for current and future generations. The Bill of Rights for the Planet, declared in 2000, is concerned with the health of the environment where human life takes place and advocated the rights of the planet we live in, the Earth. 21st century initiatives envisioning the future are still based on permanence and progress and the necessity for the wholeness of individual, social, governmental and environmental actions and understandings are underpinned. Education has been one of the common needs of humans. As stated in Article 26 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to education… Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit”. 21st century education incentives, alike all fields of human endeavour, have to care for meeting the needs of the present and future generations. The new digital age has introduced such technological marvels that were never thought possible before and as John Sener states, “Education is entering the age of cybersymbosis - irretrievably dependent on digital technologies. This is not a fad, a niche, or even a trend; it is education's future” (Sener, 2011). In terms of education, distance education can be defined as a result of the struggle for permanence and progress. Initially relying on postal services, it was a provision for accessing learning where the source of information and the learners were separated by time and distance. It has now become a cyberized system owing its presence to developments in digital technologies. The contribution of developing technologies together with the increasing demand due to changing living and working styles have enforced distance learning from being a supplementary solution to a unique system. It is a system; a group of independent but interrelated elements comprise a unified whole to accomplish a predefined goal. The goal is to deliver education to students who are not physically “on site” in a traditional classroom or campus by allowing self-determined, independent and interest-guided learning. It is unique; the learner is real and has real needs, the learning environment is virtual. This system could be successful if it becomes being continuous in space or time, hindering interruptions or disconnections, namely it has to be sustained. To ‘sustain’ is not only about keeping up, supporting or maintaining continuity but also is about nourishing, cultivation and acknowledgement. Kim (1998) explains the term as “the search for providing the best of all possible worlds for people and the environment both now and into the indefinite future”. To provide the best solutions for meeting the needs of the present and future generations, the sustainability provisions have to be an integral part in the design and delivery policies regarding distance education. The following sections present the milestones of sustainability, summarize the green engineering and green design perspectives from literature and express a green touch for sustainability, aiming an optimistic contribution to the future of distance education. 2. Milestones of Sustainability Sustainability definitions have held the Earth - our planet and the Human - our lives as focal points for a long period of time. The concept itself has been a human concern from the earliest civilizations to the present, but has become popular at the post-World War II period when technology had become the determinant of economic growth and innovations like plastics, synthetic chemicals and nuclear energy were changing production and life styles. Popular books such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962) 791 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 and The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich (1968) raised public awareness on the fact that there were environmental costs to be paid for obtaining material benefits and the quality of the environment was linked closely to economic development. Consumption of natural resources and the harm made by technology were major concerns. In 1972, The Limits to Growth Report and the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment started a wave of governmental regulations for concerns about environmental issues and with the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, the society was recommended to act as a whole with the awareness of the fact that current patterns of resource consumption and environmental degradation could not continue as they were. Brundtland Report was the first report to use the term "sustainable development" and defined it as: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The report agreed that technological developments may solve some immediate problems but also stated that these developments had the risk of leading to even greater ones. As to reach a coherent path, the report underlined the fact that sustainable development had to be understood as a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change all collate in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. Taking these steps further, The Bill of Rights for the Planet, developed and presented by William McDonough Architects for EXPO 2000, aimed to outline priorities which would be taken into consideration by designers, planners, government officials and all involved in the built environment. The aim of setting these principles were declared as follows: “For the development and improvement of humankind, it is imperative to renew a commitment to living as part of the earth by understanding development and growth as processes which can be sustained, not exploited to impractical limits” (McDonough, 2000). Following these milestones, there has been increasing attention focused on the challenges of sustainability. Hargroves and Smith (2005) have sorted the common sustainability principles from the work and publications by different authorities as follows: dealing cautiously with risk, uncertainty and irreversibility, ensuring appropriate valuation, appreciation and restoration of nature, integration of environmental, social and economic goals in policies and activities, equal opportunity and community participation, conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity, ensuring inter-generational equity, recognizing the global dimension, a commitment to best practice, no net loss of human or natural capital, the principle of continuous improvement and need for good governance Anastas and Zimmerman (2006) state that changes can be made through innovations in science and technology to mutually benefit the environment, the economy, and the global society. They further state that “Most popular constructs of sustainability are in agreement that there are three major aspects- environmental, economic and societal. Inherently, if an action is not advancing each of the three pillars of sustainability it could not be viewed as advancing sustainability overall. Therefore, the difficult questions are involved with the short-term versus long-term consequences of actions, regional versus global, and known consequences versus unforeseeable consequences”. Green engineering and green design are terms which offer paths to realize the goals of sustainability in practice. 2.1. Green Engineering and Green Design 792 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 Green Engineering is the design, discovery, and implementation of engineering solutions for sustainability (Anastas and Zimmerman, 2006) and Green Design is intended to develop more environmentally benign products and processes (Hendrickson et.al.,1999). The Principles of Green Engineering presented by Anastas and Zimmerman (2006) represent a reflection of those engineering techniques that are being used to become more sustainable. The authors describe their intention in forming these principles as follows: “While there are significant, creative, and important examples of engineering solutions that are being developed, they are neither comprehensive nor systematic. The 12 Principles should be thought of not as rules, laws or inviolable standards. Instead they are a set of guidelines for thinking in terms of sustainable design criteria that, if followed, can lead to useful advances for a wide range of engineering problems” (Anastas and Zimmerman, 2006). The principles of Green Engineering are as follows: Principle 1 - Designers need to strive to ensure that all material and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently non-hazardous as possible. Principle 2 - It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed. Principle 3 - Separation and purification operations should be a component of the design framework. Principle 4 - System components should be designed to maximize mass, energy and temporal efficiency. Principle 5 - System components should be output pulled rather than input pushed through the use of energy and materials. Principle 6 - Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse or beneficial disposition. Principle 7 - Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design goal. Principle 8 - Design for unnecessary capacity or capability should be considered a design flaw. This includes engineering "one size fits all" solutions. Principle 9 - Multi-component products should strive for material unification to promote disassembly and value retention - (minimize material diversity). Principle 10 - Design of processes and systems must include integration of interconnectivity with available energy and materials flows. Principle 11 - Performance metrics include designing for performance in commercial "afterlife". Principle 12 - Design should be based on renewable and readily available inputs throughout the life- cycle. Hendrickson et.al. (1999) outline three general goals for green design in pursuit of a sustainable future: (1) Reducing or minimizing the use of non-renewable resources, (2) Managing renewable resources to insure sustainability and (3) Reducing, with the ultimate goal of eliminating, toxic and otherwise harmful emissions to the environment, including emissions contributing to global warming, and identify the objective of green design as to pursue these goals in the most cost-effective fashion. The authors give special importance to the fact that the application of green design involves a particular framework for considering environmental issues, the application of relevant analysis and synthesis methods, and a challenge to traditional procedures for design and manufacturing. Some Green Design Methods and Tools listed by the authors are as follows: Conducting mass balance analysis based on measurements of inflows, inventories, and outflows (including products, wastes and emissions). Paying attention to green indices and ranking systems which attempt to summarize various environmental impacts into a simple scale by providing rudimentary guidance in choosing materials, components, or process alternatives that have reduced environmental impacts. Designing for disassembly and recycling; making products that can be taken apart easily for subsequent recycling and parts reuse. 793 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 Including risk analysis in design as a means for tracing through the chances of different effects occurring. Using material selection and label advisors through which designers can select the most environmentally preferred material among alternatives. Integrating full cost accounting methodologies; management information systems that reveal the cost of decisions about materials, products, and manufacturing processes to the company. The application of green design principles rely heavily on managerial and institutional support since designers are specialists who cannot be expected to be environmental experts capable of estimating the environmental and sustainability implications of their decisions. Especially mass balance analysis and full cost accounting methodologies need to be defined and provided by the management which also means that the institution itself has to plan and act towards sustainability and moreover green design (Hendrickson et.al. 1999). In terms of materials selection, Graedel and Allenby (2002) recommend designers to choose abundant, non-toxic, nature familiar rather than man-made materials which have an existing recycling infrastructure. They also advise to minimize the number of materials used in a product or process and use recycled materials where possible. Green design principles stress the need to consider the systems effects of design decisions. In designing a new product or service, reducing waste with the ultimate goal of eliminating it, is found important. Life Cycle Assessment, a systematic analysis of the environmental effects of a new product or process, is common to both green design and engineering perspectives. This necessitates defining a system boundary, carrying out an inventory of all the materials and energy used and assessing all the environmental discharges resulting from the product’s manufacture, use, and disposal within the defined boundary. Regarding the disposal process, the design choices on recycle, reuse or beneficial disposition becomes important. Within this framework, after completing its intended usage the product or process could be an input in; a closed-loop, which refers to the re-use of the product or service for the same function and an open loop, which refers to the re-use of the product or service in a different function, typically with lower quality requirements (Hendrickson et.al. 1999). 3. The Need for Sustainability in Distance Education 21st Century is the age of digital literacy. Information is located, organized, received, evaluated, and analyzed mostly using digital technology. Technological forces affect culture and human behavior. When introduced in 2001 by Marc Prensky, the term digital native defined the ones born into the digital age, and digital immigrant referred to ones who adopted technology later in life. These terms aid in understanding the issues of teaching digital literacy; technology has changed the way today's students read, perceive, and process information and today's educators need to find effective teaching methods for the digital natives. The 21st Century Fluency Project, uses the term fluency particularly to emphasize an alteration regarding digital literacy; literacy defines to have knowledge or competence whereas to fluency describes the demonstration of mastery- doing unconsciously and smoothly. The fluencies of a digital citizen are given in Fig. 1 and the project states that these fluencies are not about technical prowess, they are critical thinking skills, and they are essential to living in this multimedia world. 794 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 Fig.1. Fluencies of a 21st Century digital citizen Solution fluency is the ability to think creatively to solve problems in real time by clearly defining the problem, designing an appropriate solution, applying the solution then evaluating the process and the outcome. Creative Fluency is the process by which artistic proficiency adds meaning through design, art and storytelling. It regards form in addition to function, and the principles of innovative design combined with a quality functioning product. Collaboration fluency is team working proficiency that has reached the unconscious ability to work cooperatively with virtual and real partners in an online environment to create original digital products. Media Fluency is firstly, the ability to look analytically at any communication media to interpret the real message, how the chosen media is being used to shape thinking, and evaluate the efficacy of the message and secondly, to create and publish original digital products, matching the media to the intended message by determining the most appropriate and effective media for that message. Information fluency is the ability to unconsciously and intuitively interpret information in all forms and formats in order to extract the essential knowledge, authenticate it, and perceive its meaning and significance. Evidently, current learners of distance education are mostly digital immigrants and in the near future they all will be digital citizens. This is where the importance on envisioning sustainability regarding distance education becomes important. Current distance education planning and solutions need to support present needs but while doing so, have to create a care taking vision for its future generations- the digital citizens. Distance learning has already become a cyberized system but technological developments have the risk of leading to greater problems while solving immediate ones. Thus, there is a need for a supplementary vision; a vision which not only integrates technology but also an overall systems view of the planning process. Distance education is a designed product and service and alike every design, the process has inputs, outputs and unfortunately, produces waste. Unless managed properly, waste is harmful; to avoid possible harms and to be able to respond both to current and future demands and expectations, distance education has to include Green Engineering and Green Design perspectives to its vision. 4. A Green Touch to Distance Education 795 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 Sustainable development has been the search for protection and preservation of the environment not only for current generations but for the future ones as well. Sustainable development strategies lead shareholders to be more attentive to the concerns of all stakeholders and thus to convey the expectations of society as well as the environment of the company (Amann et al., 2009). Weybrecht (2010) states that these strategies have created huge competition not only between organizations and firms, but also between countries and societies; the importance of inclusion of sustainability is a publically acknowledged necessity. Green engineering and green design visions offer paths to realize the goals of sustainability in practice. They have resulted from the recognition of the consumption of natural resources and the harm made by technology. The main focus is on cleaning up past pollution and ongoing waste streams (Hendrickson et.al.,1999). Considering the right factors, and building in the right parameters as design criteria, green engineering and green design visions stress the importance of: assessing the life cycle of products and processes, including their afterlife period using renewable and readily available inputs throughout the life-cycle selecting all material and energy inputs and outputs to be as inherently non-hazardous as possible choosing materials, components, or process alternatives that have reduced environmental impacts designing for disassembly and recycling and preventing waste The contribution of developing communication technologies together with the increasing demand due to changing living and working styles have enforced distance learning from being a supplementary solution to a unique system. It is unique; the learner is real and has real needs, the learning environment is mostly virtual. We have to recognize the fact that in the near future all distance learners will be digital citizens of a world we can’t yet even imagine. The distance education system to serve the digital citizens must take into account their fluencies and this is where sustainability becomes significant. Following sections propose definitions and a green touch for sustainable distance education by linking distance education principles, fluencies of digital citizens and green engineering and design perspectives. 4.1. Inputs and Outputs With reference to distance education principles, context, learner needs, goals, characteristics and the local learning environment can be defined as inputs whereas active and effective learning can be defined as outputs in terms of sustainability. The team working and creativity fluencies of digital citizens add interaction and collaboration as an input and generating innovative products as an output. From the instruction part, managing interaction and collaboration necessitates the provision of feedback which also is an input unit. Fig.2 presents the inputs and outputs of a sustainable distance education system as described above. Fig.2. Inputs and Outputs of Distance Education 796 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 4.2. The Energy The energy with which inputs would be transformed to outputs are the institutional strategies. It is important for any institution to possess both a technology plan and a human infrastructure to ensure that appropriate technical requirements are established and learners and learning facilitators are supported in their use of these technologies. The natural resources of distance education, namely the learners, facilitators and content have to be used without depleting them. The main focus needs to be on preventing waste. Fig.3 presents the energy component of a sustainable distance education system. Fig.3. The Energy Component for Sustainable Distance Education 4.3. Designing Learning Materials Distance education has the ability to provide access to unlimited information via communication technologies, yet has to shape this information so that the learner receives it in coherence with its intended aim. Once designed, the learning materials and environment become real products for which life cycle assessment has to be conducted. These products need to be designed for disassembly and recycling in order to be renewable and readily available inputs. Fig.4 presents the design process as an input for a sustainable distance education system. Fig.4. The Design Process for Sustainable Distance Education 797 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 4.4. Waste Waste is anything is unwanted or useless; it is a loss through carelessness, inefficiency, or ignorance. Ignoring environmental effects during the product design and production stages resulted in environmental damage caused by careless consumption of natural resources and the inefficient dumping of hazardous waste. Recognizing this damage, green engineering and design perspectives proposed actions towards cleaning up past pollution and ongoing waste streams. Being mostly cyberized or virtual does not leave distance education apart; still it is a product designed to serve actual human beings and alike every design, the process has inputs, outputs and unfortunately, produces waste. Unless managed properly, waste is harmful; to avoid possible harms and to be able to respond both to current and future demands and expectations, a sustainable distance education design needs to integrate waste prevention. Every distance education is unique regarding its components and goals, thus the concept of waste has to be redefined in the planning stage of each system. Considering the right factors and building in the right parameters as design criteria, green engineering and green design visions stress the importance of reducing waste with the ultimate goal of eliminating it. A sustainable distance education at first hand, must be caring, efficient, or aware towards its resources; the learners, facilitators and content information. If not, then dissatisfied learners and/or facilitators, dropouts and out of date information would be wastes. In terms of both hard and software, due to rapid developments, technology itself has the tendency to be waste. Although designers of a distance education system are not expected to be environmental experts capable of estimating the environmental and sustainability implications of their decisions, managerial and institutional support integrating green engineering and design perspectives would provide a reference area at least by forcing product life and after life analysis into the design process. Within this framework, all resources and outputs can be planned as different quality inputs after completing their intended usage. 5. Conclusion Sustainability is a multi-scale study with many frames of reference and application context ranging from the planet Earth to economic sectors. As all 21st century incentives, current distance education planning and design has to integrate sustainability as a necessity for meeting the needs of the present and future generations. Distance education has become a cyberized system owing its presence to developments in digital technologies but in terms of sustainability, it can no longer rely on advances in technology or the increasing ‘consumer’ demand; the inputs, outputs, energy and wastes have to be defined and managed so that the system can be sustained for an indefinite period without damaging its own environment, without depleting resources and has to be renewable. This study defines the inputs as learner characteristics, content, learning materials and environment, outputs as active and efficient learning and energy as the institutional strategies. Understanding the characteristics of learners in the near future, namely the digital natives, is important for the design process. Since every distance education is unique regarding its components and goals, the concept of waste has to be redefined for each system. Green engineering and design principles focusing on efficient use of resources and provisions for reducing waste with the ultimate goal of eliminating it would be a reference for designers in creating sustainable distance education systems for future generations. Our planet has always offered us colorful resources. Now, in turn, we owe a green touch to our descendants. 798 M.Banu Gü ndoğan and Gü lsü n Eby / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 789 – 798 Acknowledgements This study was funded through a scientific research project titled Application of Ecological Design Principles to Open and Distance Learning (Project No: 1103E050) carried out at Anadolu University, Turkey. References Amann, B., Caby, J., Jaussaud, J. & Pineiro, J. (2009). Shareholder activism for corporate social responsibility: law and practice in the United States, Japan, France and Spain , in D McBarnet, A Voiculescu & T Campbell (eds), The New Corporate Accountability -Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law (pp. 336 -64). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Anastas, P.T. and Zimmerman, J.B. (2006) The Twelve Principles of Green Engineering as a Foundation for Sustainability. In M. A. Abraham (Ed.) Sustainability Science and Engineering: Defining Principles (pp.11-32). New York, Elsevier B.V. Graedel, T.E. and Allenby, B.R (2002) Industrial Ecology, New York, Prentice Hall Hargroves, K.C. & Smith,M.H. (Eds.) (2005) The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st Century. London: Earthscan. Hendrickson, C., Conway-Schempf, N., Lave, L. and McMichael, F. (1999) Introduction to Green Design, Green Design Initiative, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://gdi.ce.cmu.edu/gd/education/gdedintro.pdf Kim J. and Rigdon B. (1998) Introduction to Sustainable Design. National Pollution Prevention Center for Higher Education, Ann Arbor. McDonough, W. (2000) Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/from_principles.htm Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20- %20part1.pdf The Brundtland Commission. (1987). Our Common Future, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. United Nations. Published as Annex to General Assembly document A/42/427 The 21st Century Fluency Project, Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://www.fluency21.com/fluencies.cfm Weybrecht, G. (2010). The Sustainable MBA - The Manager's Guide to Green Business,John Wiley & Sons, England. 
work_w7ejd7lvgbeu7fz7tvym3l2i5e	----	DX203068_1_0001.tif This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Ebrahimzadeh, Issa Title: The development of distance education in Iran : with special reference to the planning and management of Payam-E-Noor University. General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact collections-metadata@bristol.ac.uk and include the following information in your message: • Your contact details • Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL • An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN IRAN WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT OF PAYAM-E-NOOR UNIVERSITY ISSA EBRAHIMZADEH A thesis submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. in the School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences April 1997 ABSTRACT According to the 1996 census Iran has a population of about 60 million with more than 7 million people in the higher education age group (18-24). About 1/3 of this group are seekers of higher education. For this reason Iranian policy makers and planners are engaged in exploring appropriate ways of providing higher education for this large and growing population, in a relatively short time and with constrained resources. The establishment of Payame Noor University as a distance education organisation in 1987 was a result of these efforts. In 1990, only three years after its establishment, PNU enrolled more students than any other state university in Iran, and it reached mega-university scale within seven years of its establishment. It is now among the twelve mega-universities of the world and is the largest state university in Iran. This dissertation examines the evolution of distance education in Iran, based upon original fieldwork data collected as part of a detailed case study of PNU. It analyses the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of PNU - given its mega-university status and declared enthusiasm for the industrialisation of teaching and learning - in the light of a framework derived from Peters' (1967, 1994) industrial theory. Specific attention is given to an evaluation of planning and management processes in operation at PNU from the industrial perspective, and with regard to an analytical framework derived from Hodgkinson (1991, 1996) and educational management models (bureaucratic, collegial, political and ambiguity) articulated by Bush (1994). The analysis identifies factors which have contributed to the development and evolution of distance education in Iran and examines how national macro policies and PNU's micro policies have influenced expansion. The dissertation argues that the development of distance education in Iran is primarily motivated by issues of social demand, access, cost and human resource development. It is argued that external factors have had the most profound impact upon the development of the university. Conflict and problems are identified relating to policy making and implementation, the government and the university, and industrial, academic and administrative cultures. These issues, it is proposed, are to be expected of any new system which shares the characteristics of educational and industrial institutions. In concluding the advantages and limitations of the industrial model of distance education are examined. It is further argued that the application of any theory as a framework for a distance education institution that has origins in a different cultural setting must take close account of the socio-cultural contexts of education in different types of historical civilisations. This process needs greater consideration in PNU and national ideo-political and socio-cultural perspectives must be more carefully taken into consideration if policy makers and planners attempt to adopt any more pre- existing models to the local context. II A CKNO WLED GEMENTS This dissertation has been possible through the support and encouragement of many people verifying the belief that knowledge is the production of collaboration. My sincerest thanks to them all. My supervisors Dr. Michael Crossley and David Oldroyd have been a constant source of guidance and encouragement and have always been forthcoming with helpful structure, criticism and comments. The final product is due in no small measure to their careful and critically supportive tutoring. I offer them my sincerest gratitude. I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of all my informants who willingly shared their valuable experience and knowledge with me. My thanks also to all my colleagues in Payame Noor University for their sincere collaboration. I am thankful to my wife Susan, my daughters Sepideh, Sanam and Sahar, and my son in law Dr. Nabavi for their patience and support. And finally my sincerest thanks to Alan Lockett who patiently read the whole dissertation and helped me in developing the ability to write correct English. III AUTHOR'S DECLARATION I hereby confirm that the work presented in this dissertation is mine, and that it has not been submitted for a degree or an award at any other university. Signed.................Date ...... Iv 19 19 19 20 21 25 26 27 29 30 31 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRA CT II A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS I" A UTHOR 'S DECLARA TION IJ TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ki LIST OF TABLES XII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS XIII CHAPTER ONE 1 Introduction I Introduction 1 Rationale for the Study 2 Aims of the Study 3 Research Questions 4 Theoretical Literature and Analytical Framework 5 Industrial Theory 6 Management Theory 7 Hodgkinson's Analytical Framework 9 Research Design 11 Research Process 11 Methodology 11 Case Study and Qualitative Research 12 In-depth Interviews 13 Document Analysis 14 Observation and Reflection on Experiential Knowledge 15 The Fieldwork Report and Energent Themes /6 Anticipated Problems 16 Sign flcance of the Study 17 Structure of the Study 17 CHAPTER TWO Distance Education Concepts and Theories Introduction Historical Perspectives on Distance Education Distance Education and National Education Systems First Generation Distance Education (the pre-Fordist mode) Second Generation Distance Education (the Fordist mode) Third Generation Distance Education (the post-Fordist mode) Mega-universities Definitions of Distance Education Problems in defining distance education V 62 62 62 62 62 63 64 64 65 66 67 71 74 76 77 79 80 81 82 84 85 86 87 88 89 91 93 95 97 103 103 103 103 Similarities and differences 33 What distance education is 34 The characteristics of distance education 37 Contradiction of Terms 41 Theories of Distance Education: An Overview 44 Theory of Autonomy and Independence 46 Theory of Interaction and Communication 50 Theory of Industrialisation 52 Planning 53 Rationalisation 53 The Division of Labour 54 Assembly Line 54 Mass Production 55 Centralisation 56 CHAPTER THREE Planning and Management of Distance Education Introduction Models for Implementing Distance Education Models of Distance Education as a Method of Instruction Print-Based Models Audio-Based Models Video-Based Models Computer-Based Models Models of Distance Education as a Broad System A Systems Model of Distance Education A Transactional Model of Distance Education Distance Education and Educational Models Policy Making and Planning in Distance Education What is Planning? Models of Planning The Social Demand or Socio-cultural Model The Manpower or Human Resource Development Model The Planning of Distance Education The Management of Distance Education Monitoring Analytical Framework for the Management of Distance Education Models of Educational Administration and Management The Bureaucratic Model The Collegial Model The Political Model The Ambiguity Model The Search for an Over-arching Analytical Framework The Concept of Administration CHAPTER FOUR Research Methodology Introduction Definitions of Case Study VI 155 155 155 156 156 157 157 158 159 159 160 160 161 161 162 162 162 163 164 165 165 166 168 169 170 172 Types of Case Study 107 Types of Case Study in Terms of Discipline 108 Types of Case Study in Terms of End Product 109 Strengths and Limitations of Case Study Strategies 112 Case Study and Qualitative Research: Epistemological Issues 116 Research Design: Payame Noor University, A Case Study 122 Phases of the Research Process 123 The Pre-fleldwork Phase 123 The Fieldwork Phase 126 The Post-fieldwork Phase 127 The Development of The Research Questions 128 Selection of the Case 130 Data Collection Techniques 131 In-depth Interviews 134 Document Analysis 139 Observation Combined with Reflection on Experiential Knowledge 141 The Case Study Data Base 144 Data Analysis 145 Data Analysis Process 147 The Presentation and Interpretation of Data in the Islamic Context 148 Writing up 152 Limitations of the Study 152 Ethical issues 154 CHAPTER FIVE The Context and Development of Distance Education in Iran Introduction Country profile Geographical situation History Population Economy Educational System Primary Education Guidance Schools High Schools Higher Education Distance Education in the New Education Policy The Development of Distance Education in Iran Historical Perspective Fourth Development Plan ABU Correspondence Faculty Disciplines and Degrees Method of Teaching Evaluation System Establishment of the Free University of Iran (FUI) Instructional system of FUI The Academic Programmes The Preparation of Course Material and the Integrated Media Package Regional Study Centres VII Critiques of Early Distance Education in Iran: Evaluation and Concluding Comments 173 Cultural Revolution 175 The Establishment of Payame Noor University 178 Original Rationale 178 Renewed Interest in Distance Education 181 Legal Status of PNU 181 Aims and Objectives of PNU 183 Organisational Structure of PNU 184 A Comparison of the Organisational Structure of PNU with Conventional Universities in Iran 185 Recruitment and Training of Academic and Supportive Staff 188 Regional and Local Study Centres 188 The Process of the Establishment of Study Centres 189 The Duties of Regional Centres 192 The Duties of Local Centres 193 The Instructional System of PNU 194 Printed Study Materials 195 Development of Self-study Materials 196 Individual and Group Tutorial Sessions 197 Face to-face Residential Classes 198 Television Programmes 200 Audio-visual Cassettes 202 Laboratories and Experimental Kits 203 Programmes of Study 204 1. Formal Degree Programmes 204 2. Associate Degree Programme 205 3. Equivalent Degree Programmes 205 4. General Degree Programmes 206 5. International Degree Programmes in Persian Language and Literature 207 6. Non-degree Programme 208 Student Characteristics 208 Evaluation system 213 Continuous Assessment 213 Final Assessment 214 Financial Issues 215 Budgeting Process of the University 217 Financial Monitoring 218 Planning to Increase the Income Resources of PNU 219 International Collaboration' 220 Planning for Using an International Network 221 CHAPTER SIX 223 The Planning and Management of PNU: A Critical Analysis 223 Introduction 223 Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations of PNU 223 Philosophical Foundations 223 New Chancellor and New Policy: Towards a Mega-university 225 Theoretical Framework of PNU: The Industrial Model in Action 228 PNU and Industrial Theory 229 Rationalisation 230 The Division of Labour 231 Division of Labour in the Teaching-learning Process 232 Division of Labour in the Materials Production Process 236 VIII Mechanisation 239 Mechanisation of Teaching-learning Processes 239 Mechanisation of Material Production 242 Assembly Line 245 Mass Production 248 Dilemmas of an Industrial Model 249 Dilemmas of Comparisons with Industry 249 Dilemmas of International Transfer 250 Dilemmas of Technical Skills 252 Dilemmas of Organisational Principles 252 Dilemmas of Administration Culture 253 Dilemmas of Feedback 254 Policy Making and Implementation at PNU 255 Policy Making 256 Planning Process 256 The Problem of Rapid Development 261 Two Different Models of Planning: Conflict Between Macro and Micro Policy 263 Management Process 275 Background 275 Management at PNU The Test of Various Models 277 Participation Process 280 Conclusion 286 CHAPTER SEVEN 290 Conclusion: Cultural Context, Mega-universities and Industrial Theory 290 Introduction 290 Iran: The Context for Distance Education 290 Socio-political Issues and Priorities 290 Prospects for Distance Education 292 Payame Noor University (The Message of Light): The Industrial Model in Practice 295 Characteristics and Impact 296 PNU as a Mega-university 296 Organisational Structure 297 Cost-effectiveness 298 Growth and Management 299 Mega-universities: Problems and Potential, Learning from the Iranian Experience 300 Government Force 301 Policy Making and Implementation Issues 302 Dilemmas of Two Different Models for Planning at Two Different Levels 304 Contingent Planning 305 Cross-functional Issues 307 Dilemmas of Industrialisation 307 Further Reflections on the Industrialisation of Education in Iran: Dilemmas of International Transfer 31/ Two Theoretical and Analytical Frameworks: dilemiTlas of application 317 Methodological Issues 3/9 Case Study Research in Developing Countries: Strengths and limitations 320 Recommendations for Future Planning, Management and Research 322 Quality of Services 322 Participative Management 322 Conclusion: Towards the Third Generation of Distance Education 323 Ix REFERENCES 326 Appendix 1 342 Detailed JIeldworlc questions 342 Appendix 2 347 Case study of PNU Key Informants and interviews Guide 347 Appendix 3 349 Inlerviews Timetable 349 Appendix 4 350 The Organisational Chart of Payame Noor Universty 350 x LIST OF FIGURES Title Page Figure 1.1 Hodgkinson's Model of Leadership 10 Figure 2.1 Relationship of Distance Education to Other Forms of Education 44 Figure 2.2 Control and Educational Transaction 50 Figure 3.1 Distance Education Models Classified by Medium of Instruction 66 Figure 3.2 A Systems Model of Distance Education 68 Figure 3.3 A Systems Model Without Linking Intermediaries 70 Figure 3.4 A Systems Model With Linking Intermediaries 71 Figure 3.5 A Transaction Model of Distance Education 72 Figure 3.6 Models of Distance Education and their Theoretical Basis and Relationship to the Educational Models 76 Figure 4.1 Research Design: Case Study of PNU in Iran 124 Figure 4.2 Data Gathering Techniques and Covering of Multiple Sources of Evidence 133 Figure 4.3 Data Analysis Process 148 Figure 5.1 The Process of Course Production at PNU 197 Figure 5.2 Budget Process at PNU 219 Figure 6.1 Division of Labour in the Teaching-learning Process at PNU 235 Figure 6.2 The Process of Printed Materials Production 238 Figure 6.3 The Dynamics of Flexible Planning Required in a Mega-university (balance of forces) 272 Figure 7.1 Contradictory Forces in the Mega-University of PNU 309 XI LIST OF TABLES Title Page Table 2.1 The Modes of Production and Corresponding Stage of Distance Education 29 Table 3.1 Differentiating Aspects of AdministrationlManagement 98 Table 5.1 Stages of Education in Iran 159 Table 5.2 ABU Total Numbers of Students and Graduates 166 Table 5.3 Statistical Details on FUI in 1980 172 Table 5.4 Total Participants in Entrance Examination in Relating to Total Admission at State Universities 179 Table 5.5 The Comparison of PNU and Conventional Universities Organisational Structure 186 Table 5.o Classification of Study Centres in Terms of the Number of Students and Staff 187 Table 5.7 Development of Local Study Centres at PNU 190 Table 5.8 Classification of Study Centres in Geographical Regions 191 Table 5.9 Face-to-Face Residential Classes in Each Semester 199 Table 5.10 Educational TV Programmes Produced and Broadcast 202 Table 5.11 Distribution of Students Based on Their Age at PNU in 1995 209 Table 5.12 The Distribution of Students in Various Fields of Study 210 Table 5.13 The Development of New Fields of Study 211 Table 5.14 Trends in Enrolments 211 Table 5.15 Tuition Fees at PNU (in US $) in 1995 216 Table 5.16 The Budget of PNU (in US $) 217 XII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AAOU ABU BOB BT CMC DE DPI EMC FUI GPA ICCE ICDE ICDL 1DB IEC IRIB LM MCHE NEAO OAAE PBO PLLES PNU PPC SCCR UNESCO Asian Association of Open Universities Aburaihan Brooni University Budget and Organisation Bureau Board of Trustees Computer Mediated Communication Distance Education Development Plan of Iran Educational Media Centre Free University of Iran Grade Point Average International Council for Correspondence Education International Council for Distance Education International Centre for Distance Learning Islamic Development Bank International Extension College Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Learning Materials Ministry of Culture and Higher Education National Educational Assessment Organisation Organisation of Administrative Affairs and Employment Planning and Budget Organisation Persian Language and Literature for External Students Payame Noor University Printing and Publishing Centre Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation XIII CHAPTER ONE Introduction Introduction Higher education is assumed to have a great deal of potential to increase human resource quality, raising it to a point where it can initiate and sustain essential economic, social and cultural development. Accordingly, Iranian higher education policy makers have adopted two basic planning strategies: the expansion of existing universities and the establishment of new universities. In developing the latter strategy they decided to establish a distance education university under the name of Payame Noor University (PNU). This means the Message of Light. PNU's initial progress has shown that distance education holds great potential in Iran for the expansion of higher education opportunities to a wider range of people. A second attraction of distance education is that it is believed to be more cost-effective, allowing more places to be made available at less cost than conventional face-to-face provision. As the only higher level distance education institution in the country, the future of the PNU is important to the whole educational community in Iran. This dissertation examines the development of distance education in Iran, focusing specifically upon the growth and evolution of PNU, and a critical analysis of its plarming and management strategies conducted with reference to an analytical framework derived from the relevant international literature. Rationale for the Study University level distance education has expanded rapidly throughout the world to meet unprecedented increases in the social demand for higher education. In Western countries distance education universities were often originally intended to help certain disadvantaged groups to take part in higher education. (See, for example, Holmberg, 1983; Sewart, et al. 1983; Keegan, 1993 and 1994). In developing countries such as Iran the situation is even more critical. Iran is faced with many problems in providing higher education for those who seek it, and in training skilled and specialist manpower. This is the basic reason why the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education developed a distance education university as an alternative to conventional universities - in order to enhance the number of qualified specialists in many branches of the socio-economic system. At the same time, Iranian educational policy makers and planners intend to open up increased access to the professions for a wider section of the existing workforce in a short period of time, without students and employees having to be present on a full time basis at university. This system of education, it was argued, could provide more flexible educational opportunities and a more realistic basis for meeting the nation's needs. In the first five years of PNU's operation, the number of its students increased so dramatically (from 8118 in 1987 to 66458 in 1992) that they made up a considerable percentage (approximately 25%) of all students in Iranian universities. Indeed, student enrolment now exceeds (160,000 in 1996) earning PNU the status of a mega- university (Daniel, 1995). The country's higher education experts thus now believe 2 that PNU has become a permanent part of national higher education. Distance education at PNU has, however, not to date, been studied formally and there are few other studies of university level distance education in Iran. There is therefore much. we can learn from both the national and international experience that can contribute to the future of distance education in the country, and to the more general and theoretical literature on distance education itself. This study represents an attempt to contribute to the improvement of distance education within Iran by providing well grounded knowledge and insights for the future development of PNU. The research also aims to contribute to the critique and further development of theoretical ideas that have an influence upon the future of distance education systems beyond national boundaries. The study is important personally because my own experience from 1977 to 1993 in distance education in Iran provides an experiential foundation for the research. I was involved in distance education in the capacity of the Head of the Academic Office of the Correspondence College; Head of the Department of Education and Department of Guidance and Counselling in the School of Psychology and Education at Allameh Taba Tabai University; Vice-chancellor of Assessment and Student Affairs, Chancellor's Academic Adviser and Secretary of University Council at PNU. It will therefore be possible, in the future, for me to play a key role in the further development of distance education in my country. Aims of the Study The main aims of the study are as follows: 1. To critically review the international literature relating to theories and models of the planning and management of distance education with particular reference to Peters' (1994) Industrial Model; 3 2. to document the development of distance education in the higher education sector in Iran from an historical perspective; 3. to develop a detailed case study of PNU as a mega-university; 4. to conduct a critical analysis of the planning and management of PNU in the light of the related international literature; 5. to draw out implications from the study for the future improvement of distance education policy and practice in Iran; 6. to relate the findings of the PNU case study to the broader theoretical literature on distance education. The case study itself documents the factors and processes which led to the establishment of PNU, and the elements and issues that continue to shape its development. It also examines the strategies that the PNU has adopted, in the light of the related international literature. Research Questions Five main questions arise from the rationale and aims of the study, and these provide the focus for the research: 1. What are the origins, assumptions, theoretical orientations and objectives of PNU? 2. How has the university developed and what are its main characteristics? 3. How have the planning and management strategies of the university developed and what are their strengths and limitations? 4. What lessons can be learnt from the PNU experience that have relevance for higher education policy and practice in Iran? 4 5. What can the PNU experience contribute to the international and theoretical literature on distance education? The broad research que3tions provide the basic structure for a more detailed fieldwork interview schedule for use with key informants adapted from case study questions developed by the International Extension College (IEC) (Dodds and Mayo, 1992). These detailed questions are presented in Appendix 1. The adoption of this schedule facilitates comparisons between the PNU and other case studies carried out by fEC personnel. Theoretical Literature and Analytical Framework Searching the ever increasing literature on distance education and selecting key sources as a main reference point was a challenging task. The development of such a substantial body of literature on distance education in less than twenty years is a significant indicator of the field's importance in itself. To structure the review, materials were classified into two main categories related to the aims of the study: 1. theoretical perspectives on distance education; 2. the planning and management of distance education. Key references then formed the core of a critical review initially focused upon the concepts, definitions, theories and the planning and management of distance education. In particular, Sewart et al's (1983) work on international perspectives in distance education, Keegan's (1980, 1993 and 1994) works on definitions, theoiy and practice and Daniel's (1995) work on Mega-universities were adopted as main reference points for scholarship. Many different definitions of distance education are reviewed in chapter two but more specific attention is given to the characteristic features of distance education. How far 5 does it differ from other mediated forms of teaching-learning methods? Is distance education an irmovative method of teaching-learning or a new system of education? Those definitions considered are therefore categorised into two different groups: definitions which were proposed by those who identify distance education as an innovatory method of teaching-learning, and definitions proposed by those who deal with distance education as a new system of education. This analysis leads on to the distinction between distance education and concepts such as correspondence education, independent study and open learning. Industrial Theory Further analysis was enhanced by reviewing three well known theories of distance education, namely autonomy and independence theory, interaction and communication theory, and industrial theory. While the first two theories are helpful in understanding distance education systems, the third perspective was seen to be especially useful as a theoretical framework for the detailed analysis of PNU - given its mega-university status and declared enthusiasm for the industrialisation of teaching and learning. Indeed, there are considerable similarities between the operating systems of PNU and other mega-universities and industrial organisations in terms of mass production (of graduates and of study materials), division of labour, the assembly line, the application of technology etc. The principles of industrialisation strategies are often applied in both the teaching-learning process and the administrative operations of these very large universities. For these reasons Peters' (1994) industrial theory was seen to provide the most appropriate framework for the analysis of the theoretical underpinnings of PNU, and for developing improved understanding of its functions and problems as a mega-university. The framework itself is outlined in Chapter Two, 6 but at this stage it should be noted that Peters' arguments implicitly underline the fact that distance education must be carefully pre-planned, prepared and organised, and that there is much division of labour, a growing array of technology to work with, and. the necessity for formalised evaluations. He therefore states that: People become aware that these and other features of distance study are structurally the same as those that can be found in an industrialised production process. Explicitly, these ideas are expressed by using the image of a teacher in the classroom working like a craftsman, as opposed to a teacher being a part of a complicated teaching-learning system organised like an industrialised process. The catch-phrase 'industrialised form of instruction' helps to recognise structural elements which are typical in distance study (Peters, 1994: 216-217). Although the multiple roles and industrial features of distance education make it very sophisticated and more complex than conventional educational provision, the potential of distance education to ensure cost effective higher education on a large scale remains one of its great advantages. This in turn, generates a process of educational administration that requires administrative skills that are akin to those of an industrial enterprise (Keegan, 1986). Management Theory The critical review of existing literature extends in Chapter Three to give more specific attention to models of planning and management related to distance education. In this respect Rumble's (1986) book on the planning and management of distance education, Paul's (1990) material on the management of open universities, Hodgkinson's (1991) work on educational leadership, and Bush's (1986 and 1994) books on theory and practice in educational management are adopted as main references, along with other related journal articles. These sources help to elicit the perceptions and perspectives of those involved more closely in educational 7 management in general, and in the planning and management of distance education in particular. In the light of the literature reviewed it became clear that many writers are seeking ways of enhancing the systematic, and theoretically grounded, planning and management of distance education. In doing so, they have suggested key models for planning and management. These models are also classified into two categories: a) models of distance education as a teaching-learning method and b) as a broader system of education. Consideration of these models yielded insights for drawing out more general principles for the planning and management of distance education. Given the focus of the present study, and the limitations of the relevant distance education material, it was decided to consider related literature in the more general field of educational management. Models of management, including the bureaucratic, collegial, political, and ambiguity models were, therefore, critically reviewed, to help establish an overarching framework for analysis of distance education universities' management processes. In doing so, it became apparent that Hodgkinson (1991) provides a useful framework for the analysis of the management of any educational institution, and this can also be applied for analysing the complicated management of distance education institutions. Two theoretical frameworks (Peters, 1994 and J-Iodgkinson, 1991) are therefore adopted in this study - with Hodgkinson's drawing attention to the close relationship between policy making and policy implementation; the major conceptual and analytical concepts around which the study is organised. While a central function of any educational system is to ensure that students are taught according to a curriculum, distance education systems also have another function, that is the preparation, production and distribution of learning materials. This means that 8 distance education institutions have two core characteristics: academic and material production (manufacturing). It is therefore argued that distance education universities almost uniquely represent the tendencies of two orientations - the professional. autonomy of university academics and the bureaucratic demands of large publishing houses and service organisations. The inherent conflict between these two features has major implications for how such universities can be managed (Paul, 1990: 30). These issues indicate that the nature of distance education requires simultaneous attention to the planning and management of both academic and manufacturing missions. Hodgkinson 's Analytical Framework Hodgkinson's (1991) model as shown in figure 1.1 was found to be especially helpful for the PNU study - and in keeping with the dissertation's aims and rationale. Again, the detailed theoretical discussion follows in Chapter Three but here it is pertinent to provide a basic outline of core concepts only. In this model leadership, which is vital for success of any institution, is a key concept 'encompassing both administration and management' (Burns, 1978:2). Hence, leadership involves both policy making and policy implementation and brings the components of the organisation together to ensure the effective functioning and support structure for students and faculty alike. Philosophy is seen by Hodgkinson as the first stage in the dynamic process of policy making, and leadership is, in fact, 'philosophy-in-action' (Hodgkinson, 1983). Here philosophy means organisational values, its theoretical framework and reasons for being. At the top level of administration, the vision and mission of the organisation is formulated by philosophical means such as imagination, intuition, hypothesis, argument, dialectic, logic, value analysis and clarification. 9 Policy implementation 1ising 1 Figure 1.1 Hodgkinson's Model of Leadership Leadership Administration Management Policy making • . .[Philosoh] 'I, [Planning j 'I, L Po1iticsJ (Adapted from Hodgkinson, 1991) Following this stage of the model, in this study PNU's original assumptions and philosophies are first analysed in the light of industrialisation theory to document the theoretical underpinnings and organisational strategies of the university. The research then continues to analyse PNU in the light of Hodgkinson's subsequent stages. The second stage, Hodgkinson believes, is bringing the philosophy into action. Planning is preparation for action. Politics is the final stage of policy making in this model. Politics here rLlates to the choice of appropriate strategies and the allocation of necessary resources to realise the plan. It is the task of management to bring these politics into the managerial stage by mobilising them. This is, in fact, policy implementation which can be evaluated by monitoring the whole function of an organisation. Through monitoring, managers evaluate the performance of various functions of the institution. In addition, as already indicated, the management 10 processes of PNU are analysed with reference to four of Bush's (1994) management theories. Research Design A research design is at best a compromise between the aims of the study, the resources available and the feasibility of the area of study. This research design, is adapted from a model provided by Yin (1994), and further structured by reference to industrial theory and the policy making and implementation components, featured in Hodgkinson's (1991) model (figure 1.1) as applied to the PNU. The research design is presented in diagrammatic form in figure 4.1 (Chapter 4). Considerable effort was made to make this design as clear and realisable as possible. Research Process The research process as shown in figure 4.1 included three distinct phases: pre- fieldwork, fieldwork and post-fieldwork. The details about each of these phases and the methodological issues faced during each phase are discussed in Chapter Four, along with a consideration of how serious research problems were dealt with in practice. Met/i odology Selecting specific research strategies, epistemologies and methods from many, each of which can reveal something different about the phenomenon under study, is a challenging issue. Harnmersley (1992:196) thus states that: It is not fruitful to think of social research method in terms of contrasting approaches, each involving a comprehensive and harmoniously integrated range of components all the way from epistemological assumptions right through the specific research techniques. The methodological decisions we face in social research are more complex than this. 11 It is argued here that methodological decisions depend upon what the researcher wants to know, how the problem is defined, the goals and circumstances of the research, arid above all the nature of the phenomenon under study. In developing every research. strategy something will inevitably be gained and something sacrificed. One can only weigh up each strategies' benefits against their limitations and select accordingly. As Merriam (1988:3) has pointed out: Naturalistic inquiry, which focuses on meaning in context, requires a data collection instrument sensitive to underlying meaning when gathering and interpreting data. Humans are best suited for this task- and best when using methods that make use of human sensibilities such as qualitative interviewing, observing, and analysing. Nonprobability forms of sampling, are consistent with the goals and assumptions of [the case study] paradigm as are specific ways of ensuring for validity and reliability. Case Study and Qualitative Research Since a main goal of this study involves the documentation and interpretation of PNU's mission, and the analysis of its planning and management processes and theoretical underpinnings, a largely qualitative case study strategy was developed. Case study research, it is argued, is ideal for understanding and interpreting, educational phenomena. Case studies are also judged to be a most important way to assemble information relating to the design, implementation, and impact of educational programmes. Dodds and Mayo (1992:5) argue that: case studies can address questions of great interest to planners and administrators. Why and for whom were particular initiatives taken, how were such initiatives implemented; at what cost; and with what result? The answers to such questions can assist decision makers to improve both the performance of existing programmes and the design of new ones. Apart from these reasons, the uniqueness of the present subject of study and the nature of the research questions made the case study a preferred strategy for collecting varied data and documenting the institutional aspects of PNU with regard to the political, 12 economic and cultural forces that have modelled it over time. A detailed methodological rationale is given in Chapter Four but it should be noted here that this case study of PNU applies three main methods: 1) in-depth interview 2) document. analysis 3) observation. In-depth Interviews One of the principal research traditions of the case study is the gathering of oral evidence by interview. To portray insiders' views about policy making and policy implementation at PNU, and for the collection of more basic and first hand data, in- depth interviews were applied. Interview sessions were arranged with key informants to gather data, firstly about policy making at PNU. These main informants who were selected by judgmental sampling included the Minister of Culture and Higher Education, PNU's Chancellor, Vice-chancellor of Academic Affairs, Vice-chancellor of Assessment and Student Affairs, Vice-chancellor of Research, Vice-chancellor of Finance and Administration (see Appendix 2). There was a plan to interview other influential and knowledgeable people such as former chancellor and vice-chancellors of PNU if they were accessible. In practice I could interview only one previous vice- chancellor of the university. Interviews were subsequently continued with regard to policy implementation. As well as this, the General Directors of the Educational Plarming and Curriculum Bureau, Student Evaluation and Academic Services, the Production of Learning Materials, Print and Publishing Centre and the Manager of the International Collaboration Office were interviewed. Appendix 2 gives detailed information about the focus of specific interviews drawn up to match informants with relevant topics related to their experience. The match was made on the basis of the informants' special knowledge of the particular topic(s) and the nature of their 13 involvement with PNU or with national higher education in general. From this interview guide relevant questions that were compiled previously, and presented in Appendix 1, were used as an agenda or aid-memoir during the interviews. From that. pool, individual agendas were prepared for each interviewee covering the issues to be discussed during each session. Document Analysis Document analysis was another key method adopted for analysing the history of distance education in Iran in general, and the background of PNU in particular. In this respect, an effort was made to use accessible national and institutional documents. Concerning the first group, access was gained to the Iranian Third and Fourth National Development Planning documents in the higher education section before the revolution and, to higher education documents of the First and Second Cultural and Socio-economic Development Planning Phase of Iran after the revolution. National and provincial educational Journals and other general local newspapers and publications concerned with the field of distance education were also examined. Related to the second group, the documents mentioned below were of specific value: . minutes of the meetings of the University Council; . minutes of the meetings of the University Administrative Council; . minutes of the annual meeting of regional study centre Principals; • documents for university planning; • documents relating to university budget and financing, and finally; • all other information and statistical documents of PNU related to the study. 14 Observation and Reflection on Experiential Knowledge Triangulation is considered as a strength in much social research. For this purpose, observation methods were also applied both to gain further information about specific contexts, and to strengthen the broad picture and generate more reliable conclusions. As Hammersley and Atkinson (1989:199) point out: .what is involved in triangulation is not the combination of different kinds of data per se, but rather an attempt to relate different sorts of data in such a way to counteract various possible threats to the validity of our analysis. In this study, unstructured observation was used to collect supplementary data that help qualify and interpret other sources. This was particularly 'suitable for the study of managerial meetings which regularly bring together the same group of people' (Johnson, 1994;54). I was able to attend four such meetings (Meetings of the Administrative Council, Regional Study Centre Principals, Vice-chancellors of the University and the International Collaboration Committee) during fieldwork in 1995. The researcher's previous experiential knowledge at PNU, and in other distance education institutions in the country, provided a great opportunity for enhanced understanding of the informants and for general observation around the university. This knowledge also helped to identify which documents were suitable for study and how they could be accessed, when and where the data could be collected, and above all how the data could be validated. During the course of the research, notes on the circumstances and content of the meetings were made. In other words, it can be said that this study had many insider researcher advantages (Louisy, in Crossley, and Vulliamy, 1997). 15 The Fieldwork Report and Emergent Themes The ordering and categorising of the data collected was carried out both in the field and following my return to the UK. One important point here was the decision about the timing and form of analysis applied to the collected data. If this work was left totally until after the fieldwork had been done, it might be found that some vital questions for the analysis had not been asked. As recommended elsewhere (Burgess, 1988; Merriam, 1988; Johnson, 1994) in order to avoid the danger of making disproportionate use of the more striking or memorable research material and neglecting to balance this with other apparently humdrum data, all research materials, however collected, were recorded. Firstly, they were classified into the two broad categories relating to policy making or policy implementation derived from Hodgkinson. Then each of these data sets were allocated sub-categories based on more detailed questions and themes emerging from the fieldwork. For example, a most prominent theme to emerge from the data relates to the conflict between the unique socio-political context of Iran and the complex organisational culture necessary for a rapidly growing mega-university. Anticipated Problems Prior to undertaking the fieldwork a number of basic problems were anticipated. These included possible difficulties in securing the agreement of informants' co- operation, the dangers of over-familiarity with the case under study, the impact of the previous relationship of the researcher upon the informants and, potential problems relating to the presentation and interpretation of critical data in an Islamic context. The ways in which each of these problems were dealt with are also discussed in detail in Chapter Four. 16 Significance of the Study A study of the only distance education university in Iran (PNU) designed to reveal the perceptions, perspectives and problems of policy makers and planners has much to offer the international distance education community eager to learn about the experiences of rare mega-universities. Daniel, (1995) has recently popularised the concept of the mega-university and while his publication draws attention to the achievements and problems of such universities, PNU is not represented in his review. Moreover, this case study helps to 'test' Peters' (1994) industrial theory in action, in one mega-university in an Islamic country. In this respect it is argued that the study makes an original and challenging contribution distance education theory and to Iranian studies. In documenting the development of PNU, and its planning and management processes, the research makes a further contribution to the existing literature about the management of distance education in Iran from which policy makers and planners both within the country, and in the wider international community, can draw to inform improved policy making and policy implementation. Structure of the Study Distance education as a subject of specialist study has only appeared in the recent decades on the international agenda. In Chapter Two the study begins with a brief history of distance education and a critical review of the international literature on concepts, definitions and theories. This is followed in Chapter Three by a review of the literature on models of planning and management in distance education. 17 Arguments for adopting a largely qualitative, case study approach, and the research strategies and teclmiques associated with it, are presented in Chapter Four. The need for a clear understanding of the economic and socio-cultural background of the setting under study provides the rationale for Chapter Five, which examines the context within which distance education in Iran has developed. The detailed description and history of PNU is presented here in a framework derived from the characteristics of Peters' (1994) industrial model. The more analytical part of the case study is then presented in Chapter Six with reference to Peters' industrial theory and to Hodgkinson's analytical model. In Chapters Five and Six, the first three broad questions of the research are therefore addressed. The final chapter deals with the last two research questions and considers the practical and theoretical lessons which can be learned from the study for the future of distance education in Iran, for the international literature on distance education and for our understanding of mega-universities and management in this specialist field. 18 CHAPTER TWO Distance Education Concepts and Theories Introduction Distance education has expanded dramatically around the world during the last two decades. This is in response to a variety of demands for education in general, and for higher education in particular, which exerts pressures on political systems. Even though conventional education systems have expanded enormously, these are often unable to meet social demand. Since resources are limited in many countries, a massive expansion of those systems is not possible. In addition conventional systems suffer from certain rigidities which prevent some sections of society from gaining access. This raises the question of inequality of educational opportunities. In many developing countries it has been found that expansion has led to the dilution of educational standards, resulting in problems of low quality. Thus the twin concerns of the policy makers in these countries are: providing wider opportunities and maintaining the quality of education. It is in this context that distance education is seen to be an effective alternative, that is, potentially, within the reach of anyone who wants to have access to it (Perraton, 1982). This chapter, briefly reviews the history of distance education and considers its development relating specifically to Peters' (1967, 1994) work on Industrial Theory. 19 Key concepts are discussed and distance education is defined with reference to its main characteristics. Consideration is also given to how theories of distance education are reflected in administration and management processes, and in the various administrative models adopted. Historical Perspectives on Distance Education Distance education is a fairly new term that has only gradually become accepted. A kind of formal recognition occurred in 1982 when the International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE) changed its name into the International Council for Distance Education (ICDE). This change of name illustrates the fact that the basic origin of distance education is in the field of correspondence education, known and practised since at least the latter part of the Nineteenth Century (Holmberg, 1986). In the Nineteenth Century correspondence education was developed primarily for commercial or altruistic reasons to provide alternative access to formal education and training. It was made possible by the development of cheap and reliable postal services, improved printing, and the general advances in learning reflected in book publishing, the foundation of libraries, the development of charity schools, debating societies, scientific clubs, working men's colleges and institutes, all of which made the emergence of home study practicable and desirable. The first correspondence programme was started in the United Kingdom in 1840 by Isaac Pitman to teach shorthand (Rumble, 1986). As the 19th century drew towards its close a number of universities began to establish departments to teach students by correspondence, and by the end of the century correspondence education was widely practised, and accepted to a greater or lesser extent as a valid means of studying. This acceptance paved the way for developments in the twentieth century. 20 In the years that followed further correspondence schools and colleges were established by private individuals who were motivated by a mixture of altruism and commercial acumen. The fact that some of those who set them up were motivated more by a desire to make money than a desire to teach led, from the early twentieth century, to the establishment of bodies designed to accredit and regularise the activities of correspondence schools and colleges. Among these were the US National University Extension Association (established in 1915), the US National Home Study Council (1926) and the Association of British Correspondence College (1955). Distance Education and National Education Systems The Twentieth Century has seen further growth in the commercial correspondence sector as well as in the adoption of correspondence and distance teaching systems by professional associations (e. g. The American Association of Medical Record Librarians, etc.) and latterly, for in service training purposes within large companies (e. g. British Telecom), and in-service teacher training within both developed and developing countries. It has also been marked by diversification away from reliance upon the traditional media used in correspondence courses (notably printed lessons and question papers, and written assignments from students which are marked by tutors) to incorporate other media, including broadcasting, audio-visual materials and computers. Since the 1970s distance education has thus emerged as a valued component of many national education systems in both developed and developing countries. The creation of a large number of distance education universities throughout the world is a clear example of the extent to which distance education has been successfully integrated 21 into national systems. This success ensured that, sooner or later, distance education would be adopted as an instrument of state education policy. Australia was the first country to do this on a large scale to meet the needs of a dispersed population of school-aged children. It was followed by the massive expansion of correspondence education in the former Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. It is not the aim of this study to provide a detailed history of the development of distance education world-wide. What is interesting here are the underlying factors that have led to the adoption of distance education as an instrument of national education policy: the pursuit of egalitarianism, modernisation theories, rural development and community education strategies, continuing education and the need for increased training in many professional contexts. In the early part of this century distance education most interested those governments which were faced by the problem of educating a population scattered over vast distance, and it continues to be recognised as a means of overcoming the problem of providing educational opportunities to those who are socially, economically and geographically disadvantaged. For example, one of the most important objectives of PNU in Iran, is the provision of higher education for those who are in remote and deprived areas of the country; while those of the Costa Rican Universidad Estatal a Distancia suggest that the university will provide a solution to the problems facing the agricultural and working population who have the ability to enter a university but who, for economic, social or geographical reasons could not enrol in the existing universities (Rumble, 1986:49). Distance education can also serve the needs of housewives, particularly in Islamic countries, and those who are kept at home, for instance sick or handicapped persons, and long term prisoners. 22 At the higher education level in Iran, for example, PNU was established in part to help meet a vast demand for university education which could not otherwise be met. The Allamah Iqbal Open University in Pakistan, similarly, has as one of its objectives the provision of facilities to the masses for their educational uplift (Asian Association of Open Universities AAOU, 1989). In reviewing international experience, Holmberg (1986) argues that the reasons for founding distance education universities and incorporating them into national education policy are mainly: . the need felt in many countries to increase the availability of university education generally; • realisation that adult people with jobs, family and social commitments constituted a large group of prospective part-time university students; • a wish to serve both individuals and society by offering study opportunities to adults, among them disadvantaged groups; • the need to provide in many professions with further training at an advanced level; • a wish to support educational innovation; • a belief in the feasibility of an economical use of educational resources by mediated teaching. The latter probably was - and still is - the main reason for the establishment of much distance education, in addition to the need to respond to the daily increasing demand for university education in developing countries. Furthermore, distance education's potential makes it attractive for educational planners and policy makers, although the effectiveness of distance education in the cognitive domain is seldom challenged. 23 Since distance education has often been regarded as a product of the industrialisation era, and as an industrial form of education, there is a tendency among distance education practitioners to identify a historical relationship between industrial evolution and the development of distance education systems. These views relate in part to the different types of distance education systems and provide a useful typology which can be helpful in the comparative analysis of these systems in developed and developing countries. Academic teaching alone seems to have remained largely unscathed by industrialisation -with the exception of distance education (Peters 1994). This form of education has, from the start, had a special relationship with industrial principles and has tended to conform with the industrial production process. Keegan (1990:74) asserts that: All forms of human life have been heavily influenced by the industrial revolution. Only traditional forms of education in schools, colleges and universities have remained outside it - except for the phenomenon of education at a distance. Peters (1967) gives this as the reason why distance education cannot be analysed in the same terms as conventional education. If this is the case then any change in the industrialisation process may change the process of distance education. Hence, to consider the relationship between industrialisation and distance education, the historical development of the economic and educational system must be analysed (Fames, 1993). It is argued that the factors leading to the adoption of particular industrial methods may lead to similar methods being applied to distance education. Broadly speaking, there were two distinct periods in terms of the industrialisation of production process: pre-industrial and industrial. The pre-industrial mode of production is the symbol of the old era. The work process in this era was initially characterised by the individual craft production, the use of 24 simple tools and craftsmen's trade. In this period craft methods of teaching-learning were used by teachers with personal interaction between teacher and the elite body of students. They were the knowledge craftsmen who had noticeable autonomy over• what was taught. The industrial mode of production is the symbol of a new era. In this period individual work, as was traditional in the craftsmen's trades, changed at an early stage to a production based on the division of labour and later to the development of assembly line and mass production. The use of simple tools was increasingly restructured by mechanisation and later, automation (Peters, 1967). The industrial era itself is characterised by three different periods, namely pre-Fordist, Fordist and post-Fordist (Badham and Mathews, 1989), each of which represent different modes of production even though over time they exist in varying proportions. It is argued that comparing the modes of production with the various generations of distance education provides a useful view of their shared characteristics and possible futures (Fames, 1993) First Generation Distance Education (the pre-Fordist mode) The pre-Fordist mode of industrialisation was characterised by the factory system, involving large numbers of workers in unskilled jobs with little responsibility and repetitive processes. The need for some skilled and educated craftsmen, managers and professionals grew but the proportion was still small. The first generation of distance education was born in this period of industrialisation. The advantages of rapid postal services and the network of railways gave rise to the proliferation of correspondence education as the first generation of distance education. This was basically a single media teaching-learning method. The production of study materials in this mode was in Fames' (1993) words, 'something of a cottage industry'. 25 The arrival of radio created another basis for the development of this generation, but it remained mainly reliant on printed materials and, occasionally, local meetings. These courses were not subject to standardised examinations. Second Generation Distance Education (the Fordist mode) Industrial production shifted from mechanisation to automation in the Fordist period. The level of technology and productivity improved. This improvement led to mass production and mass consumption which in turn brought about standardisation of products. Collinicos (1989:134) describes Fordism as: .the large-scale use of dedicated machinery suitable only for a particular model; the Taylorist 'scientific management' of labour, and flowline assembly of product. The division of labour and breaking the work process down into a number of simple operations made the production of complex products possible. Many of these complex products helped deal with basic chores and opened up new opportunities for leisure and learning. Similarly, as the demand for education increased, the number of schools rose and the teaching-learning process was divided up between a range of teachers specialising in different subjects and levels. Regarding the development of mass higher education Sewart (1990) explains that students are processed by different specialists as if they are raw material on a production line. He states: We have seen then, in mass higher education, an assembly line approach in which the product representing studentship is assembled by a number of specialists, many in narrow academic disciplines but some also in 'supports areas' which are at least as critical to the attainment of the final objective of successful completion of undergraduate studies. Mass higher education has acquired the characteristics and management approaches of large scale industry (Sewart, 1990:6). 26 The second generation of distance education uses a combination of multi-media, correspondence and face-to-face approaches. While such systems exemplify the Fordist mode of industriali3ation, some aspects of their functions come closer to the pre-Fordist model of production. Second generation distance education, as explained by Nipper is: multi-media distance teaching, and has been developed since the late 1960s, integrating the use of print with broadcast media, cassettes and - to some degree - computers. Feedback processes are very similar to those of 'first generation' systems but include telephone counselling and some face-to-face tutorials. The main objectives of the first and second generation systems have been the production and distribution of teaching-learning material to learners (Nipper, 1989:63). This second generation distance education is described by Peters (1967) as an industrial mode of education. Third Generation Distance Education (the post-Fordist mode) Flexibility, greater variety of products and services, greater choice for consumers, advanced and diversified technology, and automation characterise the post-Fordist mode of industrialisation. post-Fordism is consumption-led. Computer-based distribution systems allow retailers to avoid overstocking that was one of the main problems of Fordism; it also makes possible the targeting of products on specific groups of consumers... New technology - such as flexible manufacturing systems- no longer needs to be dedicated to a particular model and can be adapted to a variety of different purposes... The new methods no longer require the mass of semi-skilled machine minders of Fordism, but a smaller multi-skilled core workforce (Callinicos, 1989:134). Flexibility, the main feature of the post-Fordist mode, also characterises third generation distance education. It is possible that a post-Fordist system of mass higher education will emerge where students can study in mixed mode by taking some courses taught face-to-face, perhaps supported by open learning materials or franchised to a college, as well as through distance taught courses from the same or 27 different institutions. Students might study in different modes, that is to say they could transfer their courses from distance mode to conventional and switch from part time to a period of full-time study and vice versa. For example, there is a flexible rule in Iran to give an opportunity to the students of conventional universities to take some courses from PNU at a distance and for PNU's students to take some courses taught face-to-face at conventional universities. Third generation distance education, as Rumble (1989) describes it, moves away from the capital intensive (and costly) development of mass-produced instructional materials, towards replacement by bought-in materials acquired at much lower cost. He further explains that: The savings generated could be used to teach and counsel students through CMC [computer mediated communication] systems ... [with the adoption of CMC] there should be more scope for personal involvement on the part of students in the development of personally meaningful projects ... greater autonomy in the choice of routes toward the achievement of learning objectives, and more discussion and real interactive dialogue in the process. ... The role of academics would change again, becoming closer to the traditional role of academics in conventional universities, but with a subtle and important difference: they would be conference moderators and personal advisors, not lecturers and seminar leaders (Rumble, 1989:248 cited in Fames, 1992). According to Rumble (1989: 248) 'we are on the threshold of the third generation distance education systems combining access to mass-produced information with real interactive communication'. We may be able to develop post-Fordist third generation distance education which emphasises 'a more decentralised, democratic, participatory, open and flexible' (Campion, 1990:59) system with a high level of teacher and student responsibility. Fames (1992:15) notes that: In [western] society generally post-Fordist modes of production and consumption are becoming more widespread but many people are excluded or participate only on the periphery. Similarly in education only a small proportion of adults enjoy flexible teaching and learning, while increasingly large numbers receive only limited or no training which restricts their autonomy. 28 Table 2.1 summarises the relationship between modes of production and stages of distance education. Table 2.1 The Modes of Production and the Corresponding Stage of Distance Education Mode of production Stages of distance educational development Pre-industrial Pre-distance education, independent learning form books Industrial, pre-Fordist First generation single media DE Fordist Second generation multi-media DE Post-Fordist Third generation computer-based open and DE, ________________________ networks of opportunity Adapted trorn Fames, 1992 Mega-universities The development of distance education is described above with reference to its history, the technologies it has used and the pedagogical situations it creates. This provides a useful basis for reviewing the nature and status of some of the largest distance education universities that have enrolled over 100,000 students and have recently been named mega-universities (Daniel, 1995). Mega-universities are, to a large extent, the product of technological development, the use of technology in the teaching-learning process and the industrialisation of education. The policies of widening access to higher education, the availability of public TV and radio, the use of telecommunication technology and the enrichment of correspondence education by the integration of other media have allowed distance education universities to expand their organisations and enrol a maximal number of students in their various programmes of study in various disciplines (Daniel, 1995). The size of the student body in these kinds of universities became, therefore, the most important criterion for distinguishing mega-universities from other distance education universities. 29 Daniel (1995:15) defines a mega-university as 'a distance-teaching-institution that has over 100,000 active students each year in tertiary education courses.' This definition includes three basic criteria: distance teaching, higher education and size. These criteria which are restrictive rather than distinctive can be helpful in the grouping of some distance education universities together that individually and collectively have achieved a double breakthrough. By simultaneously increasing the number of students dramatically, and lowering costs sharply, they have created a rare discontinuity in the evolution of higher education. Daniel (1995:15) argues that: The change they have introduced is of kind rather than degree. Crucially this development could help to satisfy some of the burgeoning demand for tertiary education in the next century at a cost that individuals and governments can afford. PNU in Iran met these criteria in the academic year of 1994-95. Definitions of Distance Education As already noted after the creation of the name of the ICDE, there were still doubts about using the term distance education instead of correspondence education. Distance education was therefore used by many as synonymous with modern correspondence education. The reason why the term distance education has come into more general contemporary use is that the word correspondence is felt to be associated exclusively with written materials, whereas audio-visual means and often radio, TV, computer, telephone communication and other media nowadays supplement the written materials in what is accepted as distance education. The interpretation of the Association of British Correspondence Colleges (Keegan, 1980), thus reserves the term correspondence education for study which relies eitirely on printed courses and communication in writing. 30 Distance education is thus a term that has gradually become recognised as a broader concept than correspondence education and is seen as learning supported by: 'those teaching methods in which because of the physical separateness of learners and teachers, the interactive, as well as the pre-active phase of teaching, is conducted through print, mechanical, or electronic devices' (Moore, 1975:4). Sometimes, particularly in the USA, "independent study" is used as a synonym. Wedmeyer (1981) claims that independent study, a term now used in the USA as generic for the several kinds of distance education and non-traditional learning systems that include correspondence study, is more precise than distance education. In addition, this term has significance with respect to learning theory, and has historic continuity in the USA. However, the term distance education represents not only the teaching process but also learning, and has potential in that it can be considered a wider, more inclusive term, for example as an educational system rather than only as a method in the teaching and learning process. Problems in defining distance education Since there are various disagreements over the concept of distance education, there are also a number of problems in attempting to define it. It is certainly not restricted to the notion of mere geographical distance from the main campus or regional study centres. Although, initially, distance methods may have arisen in some countries because of students' difficulties in travelling to conventional institutions, it would be acceptable to say now that distance in the physical sense is not a major necessary defining feature of this form of educational provision. Indeed, a high proportion of students enrolled in distance education institutions live in densely populated urban areas close to the physical location of these institutions. It is clear that the use of the 31 term 'distance' in this sense indicates the nature and degree of separation of teachers and learners in the educational process. That is what is proposed by Moore (1983) in the expression 'transactional distance'. However, the use of Moore's expression may give rise to other problems; for example the bringing in of other concepts like self-directed programmes and individual tutorial programmes. Rumble makes a useful observation about this problem by arguing that: .using these dimensions [distance] the most distant programme would be one in which there was neither dialogue nor structure - an example would be a wholly self-directed programme of individual reading. At the other end of the continuum, the least distant programme would be one in which there is a high level of dialogue, with little pre-determined structure, -for example, an individually tailored tutoiial programme. Most of what are commonly called distance education programmes fall somewhere between these two extremes - they have a measure of dialogue, as well as being more or less highly structured (Rumble, 1986:8). A further factor which deserves attention is the great diversity of practices, systems and projects that are commonly covered by the term distance education. Granted, all of them have their defining elements. The many forms of distance education as it is now known have evolved from a wide variety of different sources. In some, where the traditional correspondence colleges have remained strong for a hundred years, they still have their basic models (postal tuition combined with printed or cyclostyled course materials), which have often been adopted relatively unchanged by many publicly financed institutions. In others where, notably in Latin America, radio broadcasting organisations were among the pioneers of distance education, this is reflected in the structure of many current systems where there is less emphasis on print and individual correspondence teaching and more on locally organised listening groups. 32 Thus, the problem in trying to give a comprehensive definition of distance education lies in identifying the common features of different institutions that range from correspondence based institutions to universities using communication technology to reach distance students. Similarities and differences Some specialists believe that consideration of the similarities and/or differences in various kinds of distance education systems, and differences between distance education and conventional education, can help us to identify the main elements or characteristics of distance education and so reach an acceptable definition. Others prefer to consider its nature as a teaching-learning process. Consideration of differences is useful in getting at what distance education is not. This means that making distinctions between what is called distance education and what is not, is necessary for definition. For instance, Peters (1973) uses this method in an attempt to define the relationship between teacher and taught in distance education. He characterises this relationship as being controlled by technological rules (and not social norms as in face-to-face teaching), maintained by emotion-free language (and not interactional speech), based on a limited possibility of analysing students' needs and giving them direction (not on expectations built on personal contact), and achieving its goal by efficiency (and not through personal interaction). On the other hand, there are many forms of what may be considered the opposite of conventional or face-to-face education that are not distance education, such as: education by letter, printed education, teaching kits, audio-visual aids, radio and television, programmed learning, private study and computer-based study. 33 All of these are recognised as indirect informal education and each of them (as will be shown later) lacks one or more of the main characteristics of distance education. On the other hand there arc certain forms of education which have some similarities to distance education that are not identical with it, such as: independent study, open learning, off-campus studies, extension programmes, university without walls, experimental and the external degree. These distinctions and similarities merit attention because of their importance in the definition of what is excluded and what is included. What distance education is Although there are many different ways to answer this question, it is preferred to do this by description of the nature of distance education. Is distance education a different method of teaching or learning or both? Is it an educational system that encompasses all of the process of education? There is no general agreement. Some specialists identify it as an innovatory method of teaching from the teacher's point of view; and of learning or studying from the student's point of view. For example: Distance education may he defined as the family of instructional methods in which the teaching behaviours are executed apart from the learning behaviours, including those that in a contiguous situation would be performed in the learners' presence, so that communication between the teacher and the learner must be facilitated by print, electronic, mechanical or other devices (Moore, 1973); Distance education is the various form of study at all levels which either does not imply the physical presence of the teacher appointed to dispense it in that place where it is received or in which the teacher is present only in occasion or for selected tasks(Keegan 1980); The term distance education covers the various forms of study which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in lecture rooms on the same premises, but which, nevertheless, benefit from the planning, guidance and tuition of a tutorial organisation (Holmberg 1981); 34 Distance education is learning while at a distance from ones' teacher - usually with the help of pre-recorded packaged learning materials. The learners are separated from their teachers in time and space but are still being guided by them (Rowntree 1992). It can be seen that each one of these definitions describes the nature of distance education from a methodological point of view (it is a teaching or learning method...), laying emphasis on: • learners being at a distance from the teacher for most or all of the time during the teaching-learning process; • planning, guidance and teaching being important components of a distance education programme; • being based on non-contiguous communication without excluding the possibility of face-to-face education. There are some other definitions that deal with distance education as an innovatory teaching-learning system which involves all elements of an educational system, regardless of the method of teaching or learning. For example Peters(1967) attempts to give a definition which is apt in pointing to the specific characteristics of the new form of teaching-learning process, thus structurally separating them from conventional forms of teaching-learning. This definition is as follows: Distance study is a rationalised method - involving the division of labour- of providing knowledge which, as a result of applying the principles of industrial organisation as well as the extensive use of technology, thus facilitating the reproduction of objective teaching activity in any numbers, allows a large number of students to participate in university study simultaneously, regardless of their place of residence and occupation (Peters, 1967:125). This definition shows that within the complex overall distance education activity, one area has been exposed to investigation which had regularly been omitted from traditional didactic analyses. Contrary to other definitions, new concepts are used here to describe new facts. it is suggested that distance education is an industrialised form of education and has its own laws of didactical structure, great teaching 35 potential that presents new opportunities to both teachers and students which have not been fully studied. Anyone professionally involved in education, Peters maintains, must presume the existence of two forms of education which are strictly separable: conventional education based on personal communication and distance education based on industrialised and technological communication. Although there have always been those who have objected to such a presentation (such as Australian practitioners who deny any differences between two kinds of education systems because of their extension mode of distance education in many traditional universities and colleges), we can still reasonably consider it as an alternative system to conventional education. If one believes that the designing, planning and managing of the process of learning and their efficient administration are the most important tasks of an educational system, and the definite products of this system are the pre-identified knowledge, skills, attitudes and insight of learners, one will be more likely to favour the type of approach to explanation outlined below: unlike conventional education which is teacher-centred, distance education is student-centred which relies on the students as the most important element in the teaching-learning process. It means that the students' aptitudes, capacities, previous knowledge and needs are addressed as far as possible. In distance education, teaching methods are scrutinised and students' behaviours are identified in advance. The process of delivery of learning materials is of great significance, different in that in the conventional system it is the teacher who forms the students' behaviours through regular attendance in classroom. In contrast in distance education students do not usually attend classes and their behaviours mainly depends on the administrative methods and activities of distance education institutions (Ebrahimzadeh 1 992a). Whereas in conventional education the teacher teaches, in distance education the institution teaches (Daniel, 1993:106). Taking this into consideration, distance education learning materials are designed in such a way, as Rowntree (1992) noted, as to: • enable more people to learn by economising on the amount of teacher time required; use a variety of media appealing to different learners; • enable learners to study how, when and where they choose; 36 • enable them to work at their own pace; • set learning activities in the learner's home, community or work place; and • give learner's responsibility for their own progress. Viewing the teaching-learning process in the distance education system instead of centring only on the teacher's activities, it is organised in a systematic way which is done by means of other institutional intermediaries. This makes it different from other traditional approaches. This difference includes not only the process of learning and/or behaviour of the students, but also the staff who should help students through their learning to be independent and self-reliant. This shift from shaping the student's behaviour to organising and structuring the learning process changes distance education from a method of teaching to an industrialised system of education (Ebrahimzadeh 1 992a). The essential challenge of this system is to set up institutional processes to carry out on a larger scale the function of instructional planning, delivery and assessment that the classroom teacher is able to perform on a small scale in such a flexible manner (Daniel 1993). However, the industrialised characteristic of distance education relies on its potential to mass produce and distribute learning materials, as well as the logistical aspects of administering and co-ordinating the activities of a dispersed population of students and tutors. The characteristics of distance education Since 1970, the popularisation of distance education has been accompanied by attempts to map out its main characteristics distinguishing a clear border line between distance education and conventional education. Perhaps one of the first of these developed by Delling (1975) identified eight dimensions of distance education (society, the student, the distance, the information carrier, the study aim, the study matter, the learning result and the supporting organisation) by means of which, it should be possible to describe the whole distance education process. Although he 37 was able to distinguish some characteristics of distance education, there were still some great problems that remained unsolved. Holmberg's (1977) studies on distance education in Germany constituted another attempt to pin-point the tasks of this new field of education. He explained through his guided didactic conversation theory what occurs in distance education. The most important contributions to discussion of the character and essence of distance education were made during the 1980s. Here is not the place to explain all of them, but the debate's main characteristics can be established by consideration of definitions which have been previously discussed. An analysis of all the definitions proposed by Peters (1967), Moore (1973), Holmberg (1977), Keegan (1980), and Rowntree (1992) shows that some basic characteristics can be identified which are essential for any comprehensive definition. Holmberg (1981) identifies eight characteristics for distance education: 1. The main general characteristic of distance education is that it is based on non-contiguous communication. 2. The learners are at a distance from the teachers. 3. Pre-produced courses, which are usually in printed form supported by other media. 4. Organised two-way communication takes place between the student and a supporting organisation. 5. Distance education caters for individual study... in whatever society, for whatever purpose, by whatever means, under whatever ideology, the essential object in educating process is learning by individual learners.., the methodology or strategies employed are only incidental to these ends. 6. Distance education can be and often is a form of mass communication. 7. Distance education is an industrial type of teaching and learning. 8. Organised distance education is a mediated form of guided didactic conversation. Four of the eight characteristics noted by Holmberg (1-4) are entirely descriptive in character, two also concern application (5-6) and the final two (7-8) include 38 interpretations aimed at elucidating the essence of distance education. Keegan (1986), similarly, identifies seven characteristics which he regards as being essential for any distance education 3ystem. These are: 1. The separation of teacher and student. 2. The influence of educational organisation. 3. The use of technical media. 4. The provision of two-way communication. 5. The absence of group learning, with students taught largely as individuals (while retaining the possibility of occasional seminars). 6. Participation in most industrialised form of education. 7. The privatisation of learning (in that learning occurs away from the group). Keegan's point of view has provoked discussion in Australia. There Bàâth questions whether two of the alleged characteristics of distance education listed by Keegan are in fact typical. This objection concerns the inclusion of occasional face-to-face meetings and the participation in an industrialised form of education among the main elements of distance education. He points out that high quality distance education can be provided entirely at a distance in courses where there is no possibility of additional face-to-face meetings. He further argues that although most distance education can be characterised as industrialised education, there certainly are forms of distance education that cannot be described in this way. This objection seems to be understandable from the viewpoint of an Australian specialist, because the vast majority of Australian distance education systems are an extension of conventional universities with a small-scale form. This is not the place to debate whether distance education should be integrated within or separated from conventional face-to-face programmes (Perry 1976, Daniel and Smith 1979). It is worth noting that Iranian experience has shown that the integration of distance education with conventional education creates a strong tendency for it to be 39 assimilated into and affected by the conventional system. But the industrialisation characteristic of distance education is not dispensable. There is some scepticism about the absence of group learning and the privatisation of learning as a main characteristic of distance education because learning is an individual process and it will occur whenever and wherever, whether away from the group or within the group. Hence these two characteristics cannot be essential for any distance education. However, the other five of Keegan's characteristics are essential. As a result of the above discussion it can be concluded that: distance education is an industrialised system of education which is organised to structure the process of learning by an institution rather than teacher; it involves selection and implementation of appropriate strategies for the utilisation of technical media in order to provide two-way communication which is aimed at facilitating the student's independence and aiding assessment of their learning results. A brief consideration of this definition shows that the managing or supervising of the learning process and the preparing of facilities based on the needs and capacities of learners by an institution are more important than teaching method. Nevertheless, the selection and carrying out of appropriate strategies not only involves various teaching methods and using various media which may include print, audio-video, TV, radio and computer, but also extends to distance learning materials, which may be supplemented by direct teaching provided through tutorials, telephone contact or residential sessions. Finally, in this definition the object of evaluation and assessment (final stage of education or teaching-learning process) is not neglected since the student's assimilation of the concepts, skills, knowledge and attitudes which are presented in the distance learning materials is evaluated by their producers or 40 tutors employing several modes of evaluation to verify the learner's competence and also by students themselves. Furthermore, this useful definition incorporates the main characteristics of distance education reviewed previously. Contradiction of Terms There are at least five terms that may be confused with the concept of distance education. There follows an attempt to describe these terms and to show their differences from distance education. Correspondence education: as discussed beforehand, this term is not a suitable synonym for all kinds of distance education. Keegan (1980) states that communications theory experts tell us that words get tired and if they do then 'correspondence study' [or education] is a tired word. It is a correct designation of that subgroup of the print-based area of distance education in which student contact is not encouraged. It should continue to be used only for such programmes. Independent study: is the term used in the USA particularly in higher education. Wedmeyer (1977) as a proponent of this term writes that: independent study consists of various forms of teaching-learning arrangements in which teachers and learners carry out their essential tasks and responsibilities apart from one another, communicating in a variety of ways for the purpose of freeing internal learners from inappropriate class p acing or patterns or providing external learners opportunity to continue learning in their own environments and developing in all learners the capacity to carry on self- directed learning, the ultimate maturity required of the educated person. In several European countries such systems are grouped under the term of distance education. 41 Offering this definition he feels that the term independent study has the capacity to involve a wide range of activities which usually appear in distance education. Keegan (1980) responding to this argues that there are three reasons for rejection of this term as generic: - the normal understanding of independent study implies a different relationship to an educational institution; - the ideal in distance education is not necessarily independence but as Daniel writes, 'interaction and independence: getting the mixture right'; - in the USA an "independent student" is one who sets up an individual study programme on a contract basis during an interview with a faculty member. The contract may include periods of normal lectures, unguided study or distance programmes. Open learning: is a term used to describe courses flexibly designed to meet individual requirements. It is often applied to provision which tries to remove barriers that prevent attendance at more traditional courses (Lewis and Spencer, 1986). Open learning is a state of mind rather than a method with particular characteristics. It can be arranged to enable people to learn at a time, place and pace which satisfies their circumstances and requirements. The emphasis is on opening up opportunities that both aim to assist learners in gaining access to knowledge and skills they would otherwise be denied and to give learners the optimum degree of control over their learning. As can be seen, open learning empowers the individual to negotiate content, mode, length and time of study. Since the essence of open learning is philosophical rather than administrative (Keegan, 1980), it reflects a different and more flexible attitude towards education than that often associated with conventional teaching and learning. Open learning may be offered in conventional face-to-face institutions or through distance education. To call an educational provision "open" is to contrast it to one that is closed. Education can, however, be open or closed in many quite 42 different ways. Some are open only in a special sense, while others provide freedoms in more significant dimensions - in admission, selection of courses, individual adaptation of the curriculum and time, goal selection and evaluation (Wedmeyer, 1977). The term is confusing unless the context indicates the dimension of openness that is to be understood. Openness is the main feature of open learning as an innovative method that distinguishes it from other learning and teaching methods. It seems that the use of open learning as a synonym for distance education has arisen since the Open University was established in the UK. Although some ambiguity in institution's names is inevitable, it is not appropriate to use open learning as a general synonym for distance education. Distance teach lug and distance learning: these terms have been more commonly used by the Open University in the UK. Teaching at a distance or learning by distance is only half the process of distance education, nor is distance teaching or distance learning a synonym for distance education alone. At the conceptual level there is a clear distinction between distance education and these two terms. But we are witness to the fact that both concepts are used as if they were interchangeable with distance education. This misuse of two concepts is based on neglect of their main meaning. Distance learning or teaching must be considered in contrast with direct learning or direct teaching. That is, in direct teaching we have to provide face- to-face tuition leading towards assignment and assessment, whereas, in distance teaching or learning the presence of learners in a special place is not necessary. In these processes the main role of instruction relies on distance learning materials. It is 43 also possible to apply various media and even direct teaching can be provided through tutorials to supplement them. For this reason we can say distance learning or teaching constitutes a method for transferring concepts, skills and knowledge by distance through the distance education system and that their influence relies on the quality of learning materials more than educational administration. It can be justly claimed that both distance teaching and learning are important means involved in the actualisation of distance education. A suitable term for both together is distance education (Keegan, 1988). Finally, it is useful to mention that distance education is sometimes described as the opposite of face-to-face education. There are many forms of what may be considered in contrast with face-to-face education that are not distance education (Keegan, 1986) according to our definition of distance education, as can be seen in figure 2.1. Figure 2.1 Relationship of Distance Education to Other Forms of Education Education Direct traditional Indirect education face-to-face education Independent study Distance Private study Education Education by letter Printed education Teaching kits Audio-visual aids Radio and TV. Programmed learning Computer aided learning Adopted from Keegan (1986) Theories of Distance Education: An Overview While there is no final agreement on the definition of distance education, it is evident from the literature that distance education has, in some respects, managed quite well without any one clear theory to call its own. Practitioners, for example, often claim 44 that they are interested only in practice. This arises partly from suspicion of theoreticians that try to over simplify education and of those who try to restrict it to theory which is neutral with regard to ends but exhaustive with regard to means. But as the field matures questions about the theory of distance education do not go away. As Perraton (1981 and 1983) points out, the lack of an accepted theory has weakened distance education because there is a lack of identity, a sense of belonging to the periphery and the lack of a touchstone against which decisions on methods, on media, on financing, on student support, and when they have to be made, can be made with confidence. The words of the American theorist, Wedemeyer (1974:3), published two decades ago, also highlight this when he argues that: • it is unfortunately true that the failure of distance education to develop a theory related to the mainstream of educational thought and practice has seriously handicapped the development and recognition of this field. Moreover, as Evans and Nation point out (1992:46): The distance education community was [ and still is] able to respond relatively uncritically to new models for practice, but it is not very keen to engage with critical debate, theory or, to a lesser degree, to do research. Theories are most helpful when they provide fresh insight on events and problems. They can identify new ways of understanding practice and lead to a significant reduction in the theory/practice divide. They cannot then be dismissed as unnecessary and irrelevant to the needs of practitioners. As Landers and Myers (1977) stress, there is nothing more practical than a good theory. Of the serious attempts that have been made to theorise in this sub-field most of the useful work has arisen from the practical experience of distance education. For this reason the work of the few major theorists in the field, for all its strengths, remains impoverished by too close an identification with practice. It is, nevertheless, to a 45 review of this material that we now turn. What can be expected of a theory of distance education has been well expressed by Keegan (1990: 5): A theory is something that eventually can be reduced to a phrase, a sentence or a paragraph and which, while subsuming all the practical research, gives the foundation on which the structure of need, purpose and administration can be erected. A firmly based theory of distance education will be one which can provide the touchstone against which decisions - political, financial, educational, social- can be taken with confidence. Such a theoretical basis would replace the adhoc way of responding to 'crisis' situations which normally characterise this field of education. Holmberg, quoting Popper's concept of theory, also writes: 'the task of scholarship is on the one hand theoretical, to bring about understanding and explanation, and on the other hand practical, to provide for application or technology' (Holmberg, 1991:149). According to I-Ioltnberg (1989:167-168), educational theories should: • have internal consistency as a logical system; • establish functional relationships between the teaching and the outcomes of learning; • be capable of generating specific hypothesis and predictions; • be expressed in such a away that research data capable of possibly refuting (falsifying) the theory can be collected. Using this concept and fiamework, the existing theories of distance education are grouped under three headings by Keegan: 1. theory of autonomy and independence. 2. theory of interaction and communication 3. theory of industrialisation. Each of these theories is critically reviewed below. Theory of Autonomy and Independence In two useful articles Delling (1975 and 1976), taking up an extreme position, describes distance study as an artificial, dialogue learning opportunity in which the physical distance between the learner and the helping organisation is bridged by an artificial signal carrier. Delling tends to reduce the role of the teacher and of the 46 educational organisation to a minimum by emphasising the autonomy and independence of the learner. Wedemeyer's (1974) work also falls into this category but owes much to the philosophy of Carl Rogers (1969), which in turn is based upon the individualism of American society. Wedemeyer's writing on distance education (for which he tries to popularise the term 'independent study') has two theoretical bases: a democratic social idea and a liberal educational philosophy. Wedemeyer argues that nobody should be denied the opportunity to learn because he or she is poor, geographically isolated, socially disadvantaged, in poor health, institutionalised or otherwise unable to place him or herself within an institution's special environment for learning. He also considers that 'independent study' should be self-pacing, individualised and goal-free: the student should be free to pace his/her learning according to their circumstances and not be bound by any mechanisms of the institution; the student should be free to follow any of several ways for learning; the learner should have freedom in the selection of goals, the activities that will lead to these goals and to the evaluation of achievements. Moore's (1984) work with Wedemeyer at the University of Wisconsin has led to further conceptualisation about a family of instructional methods in which teaching behaviour is executed apart from the learning. The separation of learner and teacher led Moore to the analysis of on-campus independent study and his concept of learner autonomy. From this basis he has developed a theory of independent study based on the variables 'apartness' and 'learning autonomy'. Moore (1993) believes that to define independent study only in terms of distance is a mistake. He argues that the autonomy of the learner is an equally important variable 47 in correspondence study and other forms of distance education and he proposes a classification of educational programmes by the use of the two variables of 'distance' and 'autonomy'. In this he recognises that learners vary in the extent to which they are able to exercise autonomy. There are, he argues, programmes with much autonomy and dialogue, and programmes with less. A programme with high learner autonomy, Moore holds, may be as damaging as one with low autonomy. The problem is to match programmes to learners so that each learner has an opportunity to develop their own individual learning for personal growth. It is true that distance education in the final analysis, is education. The assumption is that education is based upon two-way communication. Quality of education is reflected in the nature and frequency of communication between teacher and student. This theory attempts to minimise the role of the teacher and educational organisation by emphasising the students' autonomy and independence. The process of education (conventional or distance) most simply characterised as an interaction or transaction between student and teacher for the purpose of identifying, understanding and confirming worthwhile knowledge. Social values and beliefs are critically analysed and integrated into individual perspectives such that a new consciousness will emerge. The idal for a distance education system is to adopt a structure and to design learning material that would maximised a student's independence, but it does not mean that would minimise the interaction between teacher and learner. It is argued here that the excessive emphasis on independence by autonomy and independence theory comes from over-emphasising the physical separation of the teacher and learner as a main characteristic of distance education. It seems that it is 48 only the morphological characteristic of this system. Shale and Garrison (1990:25) argue that: [This] perpetuates an undue emphasis for the form that distance education takes and neglects the critical issue that distance education should be about 'education" with the morphological constraints arising from distance being simply a physical and therefore methodological constraint. Although conceptual ambiguities will be reduced considerably by regarding distance education as education at a distance, the challenge still remains to clarify what is meant by autonomy and independence. Presumably what Wedemeyer means by independent study is that it should be 'self-pacing, individualised and goal-free and not to be bounded by any mechanisms of institution...' (see page 47). If it can be so, then it cannot be distance education (see figure 2.1). As Moore states, defining independent study only in terms of distance is a mistake (see page 47). There are many other elements which are structurally more important than 'distance' for a distance education system. Moreover many years of study may be necessary before a learner is competent enough to set objectives and study methods or to take part in evaluation (Verduin and Clark 1991:125). The quality of an educational system is more concerned with 'encouraging students critically to analyse differing perspectives, thereby constructing personal meaning and validating that understanding by acting upon it through communicative acts' (Garrison, 1993:15). The quality of communication on the other hand, is dependent upon using more exclusive control for the complexity of an educational transaction. Figure 2.2 below makes clear this kind of control which is neglected by autonomy and independence theories. 49 Figure 2.2 Control and Educational Transaction Content nto' Communication / ,.;; TeacherControl ' Independence ,' Communication Content Garrison arid Baynton (1987) (in Garrison, 1993:15) Control, defined as the opportunity to influence educational decisions, goes beyond the rather simplistic view of independence as a freedom to study, to the selection of objectives and the choosing of content by the students without consideration for interaction. Here control is achieved in a complex and dynamic interaction between teacher, student and curricula at the micro level and shared in an inherently collaborative process. Garrison (1993) proposes that control is based on the interrelationship between independence (as in the self directed learner), proficiency (as in the ability to learn independently) and support (characterised by the resources available to guide and facilitate the educational transaction). This, in turn, is interpreted within the larger relationship between teacher, student and content. Theory of Interaction and Communication Holmberg (1983 ) has proposed the guided-didactic conversation as the concept that best characterises distance education. This, he suggests, identifies procedures which are intended to be effective in facilitating learning. These procedures would include 50 course writing in a conversational style in which a careful structuring of content and language distinguishes distance study materials from the normal style of textbooks. According to Holmberg's theory of distance education, study in a distance system is self-study, but it is not private reading, for the student is not alone. Students benefit from having a course provided for them and also from interaction with the tutors and other supporting staff in a distance education institution. The guided didactic conversation can either be real (by correspondence, by telephone and personal contact) or simulated (conversational style of authors of distance learning materials, students' internalised conversation by study of a text). Bth's (1980) name has also been associated with notions of two-way communication in distance education. Throughout the 1 970s he undertook a series of research projects on the possible forms of two-way communication in education at a distance: on the possibility of providing interaction within materials by means of exercises, questions or self-check tests and on the central role of the tutor in providing communication with the student by mail, telephone, computer or face-to- face meetings. Sewart (1983) has summarised his interaction and communication theory of distance education as a continuity of concern for students' learning at a distance. He challenges the notions that the package of study materials can carry all the functions of the teacher out, suggesting that, even if they could, materials would become infinitely expensive as they would have to reflect the complex interactive process that operates between the teacher and individual students. In this way Sewart considers the situation of student learning at a distance to be quite different from that of conventional students, because of the absence of swift feedback and of the peer 51 group as a constant benchmark. The provision of advice and support for students in a system of learning at a distance poses, for him, almost infinitely variable problems. This creates the need for an advisory and supportive role to be played by distance education institutions, in addition to the more obvious provision of a teaching and learning package. Theory of Industrialisation Otto Peters is the pioneer of this theoretical perspective. He starts out from the position that distance education is distinctive and new. Hence the analysis of distance education in terms of conventional instructional theory has proved unsuccessful and unproductive. One must therefore seek another basis of analysis. His extensive research on distance education institutions of every kind in the 1 960s led Peters to propose the hypothesis that distance education could best be analysed in comparison with the industrial production process. He proposed new categories for the analysis of distance education, borrowing from economic and industrial theory. From his point of view, industrialisation is the symbol of a new era in the development of human life which is fundamentally different from all previous ages. It has influenced all aspects of human life except traditional academic teaching, which seems to have remained unaffected by industrialisation, with the exception of distance education. From the start this form of education has been consistent with the principles of industrialisation. Peters (1973:3 10) states that: Whoever is professionally concerned with education today must acknowledge that there exist two clearly differentiated forms of teaching: traditional face-to- face teaching based on interpersonal communication and industrialised teaching based on technical and pre-fabricated forms of communication. Peters' application of industrial theory to distance education led him to the conclusion that it was the most industrialised form of education and that 52 consequently some elements of industrialisation theory have parallels in distance education. These are: the importance of a planning phase; rationaliation, the division of labour, meclianisation, an assembly line, mass production and centralisation. These elements and their application to distance education are briefly described from Peters' point of view and the theoretical perspective forms a key part of the framework adopted for the analysis of PNU in Iran. Planning The industrial manufacturing process needs considerable, comprehensive and detailed planning. Similarly, in the setting up and development phase of a distance education system, planning plays an important role. Moreover, the development and production of study materials in such a system, the combining of the teaching- learning process with other media, and the objectification of the teaching-learning process need to be planned in a way that clearly predetermined objectives are achieved in the most effective manner. Ration alisation In industry, rationalisation means taking into account all rationally guided measures for achieving desired outputs with a lower input of energy, time and money. Peters (1994:111) declares that: the introduction of lectures to larger groups of students, the use of printed books and the specialisation of university lecturers were considerable steps towards the rationalisation of the academic teaching process. In distance education there are ways of thinking, attitudes and procedures which only established themselves in the wake of an increased rationalisation by the industrialisation of the teaching-learning and production processes. The division of teaching-learning into various specified processes, the use of media in teaching and 53 learning, the use of technical equipment in the production of study materials and new formal mechanisms for quality control can be regarded as results of such rationalisation designed to save teachers' and students' time and energy. The Division of Labour According to Peters, industrial production requires long-term planning, high development costs and a relatively stable product. This complex mode of production also needs standardisation for keeping prices within mass purchasing power. The production of complex products is achieved by breaking the process down into a large number of simple operations each being done by a worker on a production line. Peters (1994:113) argues that: The division of labour is the main prerequisite for the advantages of this new form of teaching [distance education] to become effective. The principle of the division of labour is thus a constituent element of distance teaching. The function of academics in distance education has considerably changed in comparison with the functions of academics in conventional universities. For instance, the two basic functions of the academic, namely the transmitting of knowledge and information and, guidance and counselling, were allocated to two different groups of academics or departments. As in the industrial manufacturing process, in distance education, on the account of the division of labour, more people can be involved in the teaching-learning process. Assembly Line The assembly line is characterised by the travelling of work-pieces whilst the workers remain at their places. The efficiency of an assembly line is largely dependent upon the level of mechanisation or automation. 54 The formal similarity between distance education and the industrial production process again becomes evident to Peters here. In the development of study materials the manuscript is passed from the writer to the other members of a course team, and after specific changes is passed further down the publication production line. Study materials are printed on a large scale, stored and sent to the students. In this way, in both cases, the production process and the teaching-learning process, time, energy and money are, ideally, saved (Peters, 1967). Mass Production The development of industrialisation in the Fordist period and improvements in the application of technology in the production process brought about mass production and mass consumption, with students as the consumers of education. The large demand for higher education, particularly in developing countries, led some planners to create large scale operations, or, in Daniel's (1995) words, mega-universities, to respond to this demand appropriately. It is therefore understandable that: various governments see distance teaching, on account of its similarity with the mass-production process, as a means of providing very large groups of students more adequately with academic teaching than conventional methods would allow (Peters, 1994: 115-116). Apart from profitability, the mass production of study materials and graduates led many distance education institutions to improve the quality of courses and, ultimately, the efficiency of graduates. Moreover, statistics prove that the number of those enrolled in areas near distance education universities is higher than areas located far from them. According to the principle of mass production, this gap between two areas will be filled up by providing equal opportunities for the dwellers of deprived areas 'just as industrial mass production has assimilated consumer patterns' (Peters, 1994) which might not otherwise have been achieved. 55 Centralisation The investment required for mechanised mass production involving the division of labour has therefore led to large industrial concerns with a concentration of capital, and centralised administrations. From an economic point of view, large distance education institutions (i. e. mega-universities) can cater for a very large number of students. It is, therefore, beneficial to create a large central organisation that crosses the traditional division of the responsibility in universities between academic matters and educational administration. At the end of his comparison between distance education and industrial institutions, Peters (1994: 125-126) declares that: It was not a purpose of this comparative interpretation to pass judgements on the industrial structures which have been shown to apply to distance teaching. Presumably, the striking advantages of these structures, from a point of view of educational policy and organization, are also connected with important educational disadvantages ... They can be detected and remedied more easily, when the industrial structures characteristic of distance teaching are recognized and taken into account of when the appropriate educational decisions are taken. In the early 1 980s Peters' explanation of distance education as an industrial form of educational practice stimulated many people in the field to adopt, or to recognise in their own practice, an industrial model of distance education. Peters (1989) contends that distance education, in its present form, is a product of the industrial society. The successfulness of this system is related to its compatibility with the principles and values of the industrial society. He follows the same argument to describe how distance education must now change to address the changes in industrial society as we enter a post-industrial or post-modern era. In industrial societies, there has been much discussion regarding the propounding of 56 changes and whether distance education responds to these changes or not. Amundsen states that: This shift is already apparent in many sectors of the society and is reflected in, among other things, the emergence of new, more individualized technology, more decentralized decision-making, and personal values that focus on quality of life, self-realization, self-expression, and interdependence ... (Arnundsen, 1993 :62). Thus, the problem is not whether distance education responds to these transformations or not. The problem is how distance education should respond and contribute to these changes. Peters (1993) himself, realising the nature of post- industrial society, and the necessity of the accordance of distance education with this society stresses that: In a postindustrial society the traditional industrial model of distance teaching will no longer satisfy the new needs of new types of students with their particular expectations and values which, seemingly, not only differ from those of the students in the industrial society but are in many cases even the exact opposites of them (Peters, 1993:57). He emphasises that this requires increased telecommunication between participants that enables them to have different sets of goals and objectives and rely more on self- directing and self-controlling leading to greater autonomy. Peters thus believes that the shift from industrial to post-industrial distance education will be a Copernican one. Although Peters (1989) denies that the comparison between distance education and the industrial production process forms a theory for distance education, his point of view has long been considered as a theory of distance education by practitioners (Bãáth, 1981, Willen, 1981, and Keegan 1990). 57 This way of viewing instructional industrialism brings about some criticism in the sense that industrial theory is regarded as a hindrance to theoretical and practical progress in distance education. For example Evans and Nation argue that: [Industrial theory] is a limited and limiting approach and its theoreticians just do not seem to be aware of the substance of competing approaches ... Practitioners, researchers, and theorists in open learning and distance education need to be aware of the broad range of theories available to them in educational theory and social theory more generally. We seek to demonstrate the power of social theories which allow theoreticians, researchers and distance educators to understand the full implication of human agency (Evans and Nation, 1989:58). They go on to point out that since industrial theory relies on behaviourism, it ignores the humanist aspect of the educational process, and that there are many things to learn from humanistic approaches and from the social sciences for all those who are interested in taking account of the human agency in theorising about distance education. We, nevertheless, owe much to Peters for the introduction of a useful theoretical presentation. Peters is right to draw attention to the fact that the mass production and distribution of study materials, as well as the logistical features of administering and co-ordinating the activities of scattered populations of students and tutors, involves the application of principles from the industrial sector. The skills of productionloperations management are needed to ensure that materials are developed, produced and delivered on time to learners. Rumble states that: Explanations of these processes tend to be couched in the language of 'classical management' ... which emphasise organisational structures embodying 'rational' working arrangements designed to operate in predictable fashions (Rumble, 1986:14). It is clear that the application of such principles in an educational institution can be problematic. This is because it is not always easy to match the course development activities which are relatively creative, to an inflexibly scheduled production system. 58 Secondly, many educators, used to a high degree of autonomy in their daily work, resent the loss of autonomy that is implicit in such regularised and task differentiated systems. This can be a stressful environment for some. Rumble argues: This raises problems of interpersonal behaviour both within the productive group and between groups that require a more human- relations approach to management if understanding is to be achieved. Also the 'packaging' of knowledge which the quasi-industrial nature of many aspects of distance education practice implies also raises problems for many educators, most notably for those who believe that the educational process should focus on the personal needs of the student, and that this is something distinct from the training approach implicit in packaging (Rumble, 1986:14). Furthermore, there is a crucial difference between educational and other subsets of administration such as industry, trade, and commerce. All of the latter know with some clarity what determines an effective organisation, and evaluative criteria are built in through rational measures of profit. In education, however, no such clarity of ends and means exist. Hodgkinson remarks that: The educational enterprise does not always know where it is going, or what it is actually accomplishing, or even how to do what is supposed to be its primary task- the teaching-learning process. From an objective stand-point it is not at all clear to what extent teaching methodology is traditionalised ritual as opposed to scientific technology (Hodgkinson, 1991:62). Criticism of industrialisation theory by western experts of distance education is understandable because western society has now passed or is passing through the industrial era. The principles of industrialism are - in all likelihood - already in the process of fading out. It is also now more appropriate in such contexts to investigate whether there are new affinities between distance education and the post-industrial work process. Peters has tried to deal with these criticisms by raising doubts as to whether western nations have indeed yet transformed to a post-industrial era. He states that 'the "new era" [post-industrialism] will still remain largely a matter of the future' (Peters, 59 1993:4 1). Perhaps the change from industrial technology to new technology will be as fundamental as the change from the craftsman's technology to industrial technology. Here it is argued that in developing countries the problem remains very different from that in western, developed countries. It is also argued that the application of industrial theory to the study of distance education systems in developing and transitional economies can still be very useful. The study of distance education in transitional countries such as Iran, for example, can be greatly enhanced by the critical application of industrial theory. Because such countries often remain in the pre-Fordist or Fordist stage of industrialisation. Peters' perspective may be the most appropriate for analysis. Another advantage of this framework is its relevance for the study of large-scale organisations, or mega-universities, that have benefited from, and relied upon, a mass production strategy. For the mega-universities, among them PNU, it is particularly important to consider the compatibility of industrial structures in dealing with very large numbers of students and the production of study materials on mass. Many have enhanced the quality and attractiveness of their study materials and expanded the boundaries of the distance education and training by using the principles of industrialisation. In contrast to industry, the main processes and products of education concern the interactive nature of humans. Thus, the distance education process cannot be analysed merely by industrial criteria alone. Its procedures are distinctively different and may be problematic on the three counts of ends, means, and evaluation. But it is argued that if distance education institutions, particularly mega-universities, are clear 60 about where their compatibility with industry lies, a theoretically informed analysis should be helpful. Moreover, the characteristics of distance education and elements of various theories do not exist as an abstraction, and attempts are, therefore, made here to relate these characteristics and theoretical perspectives to models for the planning and management of distance education - thus revealing how practitioners have tried to design appropriate organisational systems for distance education. The next chapter considers these latter issues in greater depth. 61 CHAPTER THREE Planning and Management of Distance Education Introduction This chapter reviews the existing literature relating to models for implementing distance education, and to the relationship between these models and theories of general educational management. By focusing upon the planning and management of distance education relevant literature on educational planning in general is also reviewed. The chapter thus extends beyond Peters' industrial theory, to complete the overarching framework applied in the subsequent analysis of the case study of PNU. Models for Implementing Distance Education Literature in this field demarcates different models for the implementation of distance education and these help us understand distance education's organisational nature. A number of classifications exist and these are summarised below. The most comprehensive are those proposed by: a) specialists who believe that distance education is a method of instruction, and b) specialists who consider it as a broader system of education. Models of Distance Education as a Method of Instruction Four different types of model are presented in the first group: these relate to the medium upon which learning is based. Before discussing the characteristics of each 62 model it is necessary to point out that changes to the application of technology reflects significant shifts in the conceptualisation and practice of distance education. Moreover, there exists a complex mix of technologies and media that makes it difficult to classify distance education models in terms of one medium or another. One of the most important criteria influencing the choice of technology is the control over the medium available to the students. The use of transitory technologies alone, such as radio and television broadcasts, is not sufficient to support the learning process. However, the value of permanent technologies such as books, audio and video cassettes, and computers lies not just in their ability to allow students to view or listen to material at more convenient times. They also enable learning from other media to be much more effective. Another factor which influences an institution's use of media is the extent of access to a particular medium by the students. This means that whatever technology is used, it must be available in nearly every home at a realistic cost. Different models of distance education in this category can be identified by their choice of media as the basis for the learning materials. Print-Based Models By far the majority of distance education programmes are print-based. The teaching strategy of the UK Open University, for example, is approximately 80% print-based, 10% broadcasting (radio and television) and 10% face-to-face seminars and summer schools (Keegan, 1986). The main material of study at PNU in Iran likewise is about 90% printed materials, 8% face-to-face class meeting and 2% broadcasting of TV and audio-visual cassettes (Zohoor et al., 1991). This is a dominant characteristic of many distance education institutions elsewhere. A real disservice has been done to the field by the over-emphasis of eye-catching terms like the 'University of the Air'. Educators, 63 administrators, and politicians, in both developed and developing countries should realise that the vast majority of distance education courses are printed-based and will remain so, especially where financial resources are limited. An exception to this may be with populations for whom literacy is a problem but courses are required. Audio-Based Models Courses in which the educational content is carried by audio-cassettes or transmitted over the radio and to which printed materials are peripheral have in some cases been used by distance educators. They are frequently cost-effective, can be used by people with literacy problems and may be a particularly adaptable and successful method for teaching languages. Video-Based Models Distance education can be classified as video-based when the courses are broadcast on television or contained on video-cassettes. Some printed materials containing background, further reading and assessment procedures may be supplementary. Video cassettes can contain short, unlinked sequences, with activities following each sequence, and feedback provided on the activity, either on the cassette itself, or in notes. Video cassettes in particular lend themselves to group use, because of the need for interpretation and discussion of video examples. This can increase the activity and participation of the learners. Furthermore, they can be stopped and replayed allowing time for students to think, discuss and take notes. The development of cable television and the possibility of home ownership or rental of VCRs make this an area of great potential in some cultures. A variant of both video and audio-based programmes emphasises the educational use of satellites. Daniel (1978) presented an evaluation of the first attempt at satellite- 64 based programmes to the 11th world conference of the International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE) at New Delhi. Well made educational TV programmes are good for publicity. They are also excellent for providing information and demonstrating skills because they can show actions and places that cannot be seen in any other way. To support deep learning, the aim of producers of educational TV is generally to enable students to observe evidence; to analyse it; to develop an argument from it; and to draw conclusions (Coe, 1990). But broadcast TV is ephemeral and students cannot follow up programmes effectively. It also represents a one way communication. Thus, educationally it falls short when the goal is conceptual development. For this reason, according to the majority of distance education specialists, video tapes are much better, educationally, than broadcast TV. Computer-Based Models Increasingly computers can be used as the medium on which distance education programmes are based. With regard to the computer, perhaps the most promising and dominant application is computer-mediated communication which combines telecommunication technologies with computer capabilities to provide distinct methods of interacting educationally at a distance. The computers' capability for processing and controlling the flow of information may also be used for computer assisted learning off-line. Computer-mediated communication represents a qualitative advance in facilitating interaction at a distance and, therefore, represents an important communication teclmology for distance education (Garrison, 1993). Since there is so little experience with this type of medium many educational questions exist regarding how and when to use it. On the other hand, using the computer as an instructional medium is not yet widespread both in developed and developing countries. Figure 3.1 65 summarises the classification of these models with reference to their medium of instruction. Figure 3.1 Distance Education Models Classified by Medium of Instruction [Distance Educationi _,j, 'l' 'L' 'I, Print- base di IAudio-basedl rvideo -based } rcomputer-based Distance study Audio cassette Video cassette courses Courses by newspapers 'I, Courses by bradio Courses by I Courses by television I satellite Source: Keegan (1986) Models of Distance Education as a Broad System Reasoning that distance education is nothing unless it is a new method of teaching and 'there is nothing uniquely associated with distance education in terms of its aims, conduct, students, and other activities'(Garrison, 1989:8), has led to a critical reaction from many distance education practitioners. They suggest that distance education should be considered as exploratory, evolutionary and innovative in nature, and a discipline in its own right (Sparks, 1983, Gough, 1984, Holrnberg, 1986). If we deal with distance education as these scholars suggest, it assumes the status of a new system of education with its own aims, students, methodology, management, and other components. From this point of view there are two models in the literature both of which display characteristics of Peters' industrial theory. These are described below under the sub-headings of the System Model and the Transaction Model. 66 A Systems Model of Distance Education The systems view of distance education is proposed by Kaye and Rumble(1981), based on the concepts developed by Miller and Rice (1967) for analysing organisations as open systems which exist by exchanging materials with their environment. The activities carried out by such an organisation are divided by Miller and Rice into three categories: • operating activities: the specific import, conversion and export process which define the particular nature and role of the enterprise; • logistical activities, which ensure the supply of necessary resources for the proper functioning of the enterprise (recruitment, training, purchasing etc.); • regulatory activities, which ensure the overall co-ordination and control of all processes within the enterprise, as well as its links with the outside environment. The operating activities which are characteristic of distance education enterprises can thus be grouped into two major subsystems which reflect the separation of teacher and student (or teaching and learning activities) to which reference has already been made. The 'materials subsystem' covers the design, production and distribution of mediated learning materials. Materials development embraces the activities of curriculum planners, teachers, contents experts, instructional designers, media producers and other transformers (e.g. editors, graphic designers) who help in the production of media products. The output of their activities are prototype materials which through the materials production process, are turned into finished products, in single or multiple copies, in print, audio-visual, and/or computer software form. These materials can then be packaged together as a course and are then distributed to all the 67 students and tutors involved in the course, through direct delivering, mailing, broadcasting, or data transmission facilities. The student subsystem is separate in systems terms from the material subsystems, involving different activities, personnel and resources, all of which are basically concerned with facilitating the students' learning activities and managing their instruction. It admits students to the institution, allocates them to the courses, local centres and tutors and counsellors, collects fees, ensures that they receive course materials, assesses their progress, issues certificates, and maintains their records. The point of contact between the two subsystems occurs when the students receive the learning materials and start to use them. Figure 3.2 shows a systems model of distance education. Figure 3.2 A systems Model of Distance Education Materials Student subsystem subsystem Materials Admission development course allocation Materials Allocation to production services etc. Materials Study distribution Assessment Certification Source: Rumble, (1986:17) 68 The value of this simple systems model is that it clearly identifies the principal activities involved in running a distance education enterprise, as well as the inter- relationships that exist between them. It underlines the importance of the quasi- industrial process that characterises the production and distribution of materials and lays stress on the specialisation of tasks and division of labour. It defines the difference between an educational publishing organisation (which would only require a material subsystem) and a distance education institution (which must also provide an appropriate student subsystem). It also helps pinpoint the activities which are independent of students numbers (e.g. course development) and which are therefore susceptible to economies of scale, and is hence a useful starting point for financial modelling. Finally, it underlines the fact that, theoretically and in practice, different groups and organisations can collaborate in providing distance education systems, each perhaps taking on responsibility for different activities, or clusters of activities, within each subsystem. But this model seems to neglect certain fundamental aspects of distance education. In distance education the goal of linking materials to learning is at the centre of the organisational structure. In conventional education the intersubjectivity between teacher and learner - that is necessary to the teaching-learning process -is automatically set up. In distance education this intersubjectivity is lacking and there can be no guarantee that anything will happen once learning materials have been developed and dispatched to the students (Keegan, 1980). Administrators of distance education systems who consider that distance education is merely a marginal or peripheral part of traditional education often forget to provide this link. They make the mistake of thinking that once the learning materials have 69 been developed and dispatched the job is done and learning will occur. In distance education there is no basis for assuming this unless a successful linking system is provided. For instance if the point of contact between the two subsystems (learning materials and students in figure 3.2) is taken into consideration, and the link between the two subsystems is not made clear then a broken system will be present (see figure 3.3). Figure 3.3 A systems Model Without Linking Intermediaries Organisational tasks Learning materials producers ________________ link? Develop learning materials : Learning material dispatch to students Student learning activities Receive learning materials [ Learning process Quality, quantity and status of learning As can be seen, the question on the student learning activities, particularly on the quantity, quality and status of learning remain in need of solution. This means that we need some linking elements to bring the two subsystems together so that their connecting function enable the whole system to work appropriately. Utilising these connecting elements will let the system convert from a broken to an integrated form as shown in figure 3.4 below: 70 Figure 3.4 A systems Model With Linking Intermediaries Learning Materials Linking Students (L M) sub-system Intermediaries sub-system LM______________ I Counsellorsce_jj Tutors I Evaluators I Dialogue and I Learning Communication J activities: QualityL M Feedback system - Quantity and• Developed I • Produced ____________________I Student I Status • Dispatched - services of learning Organisational tasks Students learning activities-_J A Transactional Model of Distance Education A rather different systems perspective is obtained by viewing distance education from the sometimes competing perspective of the principal 'actors' involved in the process, and the relationships or transactions between them. In conventional education, the transactions of the vast majority of the learners are with individual teachers who may give personal advice on course choice, help with administration problems, and generally monitor the progress of the learners. These transactions usually take place within the physical boundaries of the institution. In distance education, however, the situation is quite different. Learners have three principal types of transaction to maintain, and each of these has a different site within the system (see figure 3.5). Transactions with the learning materials - reading, viewing, listening, manipulating, selecting, interpreting, assimilating, synthesising, and so on; the place of these interactions is generally the students' home, work place and maybe a regional study centre. 71 Figure 3.5 A Transactional Model of Distance Education Administration and management I Tutor Developers! I producers I I I Counsellor management management I Materials I I Learner Tutors J J Counsellors ntAdmin- Administration and Management Source: Rumble (1986) Transactions with 'intermediaries' such as tutors, counsellors and others who are there to help in interpreting and using the course materials and to promote group discussion and interaction with other learners; the place of these interactions varies; local study centres or occasional residential sessions for group work, laboratories, classes, the home or place of work for exchanges by post, telephone, or other communication devices. Transactions with the institution or at least with the student services division and to deal with administrative and general queries and problems. These are of necessity often impersonal, having to be carried out at distance and may be perceived by students as problematic (the unfeeling bureaucracy of the faceless institution etc.). However, the institution may at times deal with students on an individual basis through personal counselling services and the faceless bureaucracy may be humanised to the extent that such services are available (Henri and Kaye, 1985:125). 72 Beyond this circle of transaction in which the learner participates is a complex set of invisible (to the student) activities and interactions which are necessary for providing, co-ordinating and maintaining learning resources, the network of intermediaries, and student services. These activities were outlined above (course and student subsystem, figure 3.2). The principal agents responsible for these activities are: • educators and subject-matter experts responsible for selecting, organising and developing the content and curriculum of a particular course. • 'transformers' of various kinds, who work with the subject-matter experts in developing and producing the specific media products which make up the learning resources. These include editors, graphic designers, media producers, educational technologists, and computer software programmers. • managers responsible for planning, the formulation of policy, organisation and staffing, co-ordination and control; • evaluators concerned with monitoring the functioning of the system, providing and analysing information for decision-making and recommending necessary corrective actions. In some cases these will be specific individuals based in an evaluation or management information unit, in others evaluation may be done by managers and educators as a normal part of their work (Rumble, 1986:22-3). Viewing distance education systems in instructional terms emphasises the human relations aspects of management, in contrast to the systems approach which tends to stress the 'rational aspects of management. The strength of this model lies in its recognition of the special nature of the teaching- learning relationship in distance education, determined by the physical separation which it involves. The description of tutors, counsellors, etc., as 'intermediaries' captures this perfectly. The importance of this cannot be overstated: any successful approach to distance education must focus on the nature of interaction between student and teacher and the implications of this for system design; it is not enough to attempt a straightforward 'transfer' of a conventional course to a distance education model, hoping to rely on an efficient production and delivery system. Failure to 73 recognise this and to consider the crucial balance between independence and support can be a recipe for failure. Distance Education and Educational Models This section considers the extent to which the seven basic characteristics of distance education (see Chapter Two) are affected by the general model of education underpinning a particular distance education system. By a 'general model of education' we mean a coherent and organised body of concepts and ideas, based on a particular world view or philosophy, from which prescriptions for principles and methods of teaching and learning can be derived. A number of different classifications of educational models exist. Those proposed by Bertrand (1979) are employed here. The framework he developed divides educational models into three categories: Institution-centred Models, Person-centred Models and Society-centred Models. The main features of institution-centred models lie in maximising the effectiveness and the efficiency of educational practice. Bertrand groups here, under the heading of systematic models, those m3dels which basically treat learning as the processing, storage and retrieval of new information (what Rumble (1986) calls information processing models). Bertrand also includes Skinner's (1968) behavioural approach in this group. Person-centred models on the other hand analyse education from a humanistic perspective, putting the main emphases on individual growth, on the 'meaningfulness' and the personal significance of learning experiences, and on the motivation of the learner. Carl Rogers' (1969) model for non-directive teaching represents the best known application in this area. 74 Finally, Bertrand's third category covers models which are based on social action and interaction approaches, where the main role of educational activity is to bring about change in society and the social structures of institutions. According to existing literature the majority of distance education systems established so far in many countries, particularly at the tertiary level, conform to institution- centred models in which the primary focus is on increasing the efficiency of the institution as a purveyor of mass education. An over-riding concern appears to be that of making the systems as efficient and cost-effective as possible; educational planners, operational staff, media producers, instructional designers and evaluators are often assigned key roles in institutional structures. Learning material writers, tutors, counsellors are assigned to the roles of intermediaries between the teaching system and its learners. The very reliance of distance education on the use of media and communication technologies can be said only to have served to strengthen the temptation to apply educational models of the information-processing variety to the design of specific institutions. However, all distance education systems need not be of the institution-centred type. It is possible to design person- and society-centred models. What is important is that the philosophy of education or main purpose of design of the system should be made explicit. In other words, if basic assumptions and philosophies are not clearly defined at the starting stage, considerable misunderstandings can arise in later stages. Designing a distance education system based on a particular model will thus need particular types of organisation, planning, and management. For instance, designing a distance education institution based on the systems model will need the careful application of the principles of industrialisation theory, the basic elements of the 75 institution-centred educational model and the principles of bureaucratic organisational theory. Figure 3.6 reflects a models of distance education and their theoretical basis. Figure 3.6 Models of Distance Education and their Theoretical Basis and Relationship to Educational Models Theories of Distance Models of Distance Educational Education Education Models Independent theory Communication and Interaction theory Media-based model model Transaction model Media based model Transactional model Institution-centre Social-centred Generally, the educational models which underlie the design of specific projects or institutions are not made explicit in the terms used above. Usually, and in the best of cases, choices will be made from among the whole range of different models, in such a way as to suit the particular curriculum, learners and situation. However, it is possible to design distance education based on all of the above mentioned models. What is important is that the dominant world view in the society and philosophy of education should be taken into account so that provision suits the context. Policy Making and Planning in Distance Education Policy making and planning are inextricably related to administrative activities whereby ideas are translated into action (Hodgkinson, 1991). There was a time when policy making and planning was perceived as an exclusive right of governments. The move towards institutional autonomy, particularly in higher education, led to the increased involvement of higher education institutions and university managers in the 76 policy making and planning processes of their institutions. An emphasis on proactive rather than reactive management and the potential benefits of more effective resource management, staff deployment and the possibility of evaluation follow the use of systematic planning in education. What is Planning? In common usage, planning is preparation for action, but in special usage there are many definitions of planning. Here the term is used to represent a continuous process of determining policy, priorities and decisions for the future actions of the educational system with regard to economic and political realities. Hence, planning is a political and economic rather than an educational process. It is essential to bring about desired changes in educational institutions, to improve their effectiveness and functional efficiency (Reddy, 1986). Apart from sustaining educational effectiveness and organisational efficiency, planning, as a generic process, provides continuous direction for distance education. There are, however, many criticisms of educational planning in developing countries. The critics argue that educational planning is often confined only to formal education and tends to maintain the existing system (Mutua and Nitmaswa, 1988). Planners are also criticised for not giving due consideration to change and for not being flexible enough. Wallace (1991:188) argues that: Flexible planning is, perhaps, an oxymoron. Flexibility implies the ability to respond rapidly to changing circumstances while the notion of planning suggests the formulation of a design which will lead to a sequence of pre-specified changes over time. A model of strategic planning which will guide action in schools [and universities] in the current context, where some aspects may be turbulent while others remain stable, must therefore address a tension between two contradictory influences. 77 For an educational institution, planning is essentially a matter of spanning or mapping the route between the perceived present situation and the desired future situation. Existing plans can rapidly be modified as circumstances change without having need to re-plan from scratch (Wallace, 1991) because a logical plan has already considered likely changes. The effectiveness of the process is largely dependent upon the clarity of the situational analysis and the skill in translating the ideas into the real outcomes. This view places planning at the heart of the management process, in which it moves management away from a reactive into a proactive approach and from a response based on expediency into a value-driven approach which is founded on consent and consensus (West-Burnham, 1994). When institutional planning is at the mercy of national political policy change, the response can often only be reactive. However, institution autonomy may increase the scope for planning, remembering that plans are intentions which may have to be modified in response to internal and external changing circumstances. West-Burnham (1994:84) states that: The combined effects of institutional autonomy, public accountability, formula- based funding ... mean that failure to plan is no longer an option. The world will not be in the future as it has been in the past. Planning is a process that has to be rigorously managed. It is generally organised through individuals and groups participating in various roles. At one extreme, as Wallace and McMahon (1994) remark, a manager may make a unilateral decision and at the other, all staff may be invited to complete a questionnaire on their preferences for the development of the institution. They further argue: Participation in planning procedures also varies along a dimension from shared decision-making, through consultation on idea and preferences, to being informed about decisions made by others (p. 18). 78 In a centralised institution like PNU the actions of headquarters have a key influence on the degree of participation that is allowed to others. Study centres, for example, may have a role in the development planning of the university and in the decision making process, since they are in position to set some of the parameters for participation. Models of Planning In the field of education, particularly in developing countries, there are many limitations on human resources. They have, therefore, to plan their activities at national, sectoral, regional, local and institutional levels in order to reduce waste in resources and provide a cost-effective education. Models of planning emphasise different factors. Some deal with education an essential element for society's cultural development, for the promotion of knowledge and for the development of the individual. Some address the manpower objectives for each sector of the economy. Each has something to say about what may be observed on the ground, yet their assumptions are divergent. They have all been used in many countries and each has been the subject of criticism. A key factor is the degree of rationality, feasibility and conformity of the model with the cultural, economic and political circumstances of a country. On the basis of what has been discussed in the previous section about models of distance education, it is possible to identify two main models of educational planning each of which has a special relevance. Whilst these issues cannot be discussed in detail here, the relevant points from each are outlined. 79 The Social Demand or Socio-cultural Model In this model education is regarded as a form of consumption that directly satisfies human needs and desires. There is a rational economic basis for social development although the return to individuals emerges as greater than the return to society as a whole. In order to meet private demand for education, governments have to respond appropriately. Given that the cost of the education is borne by the government, it can be argued that there is a presumption of an underlying mechanism whereby students and their families arrive at their educational decision in the light of market signals or mechanisms. If not, the social demand model represents a free-for-all. The social demand model has often been used in connection with the planning of higher education. For example it was featured in Iran before the revolution and in the first development plan of the country after the revolution. One consequence of the implementation of this model was the rapid expansion of higher education in Iran. The need for some degree of shift in higher education towards the study of the physical and teclmological sciences was largely ignored because it was difficult to forecast what would be the students' study interests and plan accordingly. Consequently, many experts from the PBO in Iran recommended the application of alternative planning models to incorporate economic factors in the process and consider the rate of return. The proponents of the social demand approach argued that it did not ignore the economic and manpower needs of country, because students would study the labour market before deciding about their field of study. The problem is, when they graduate they resist taking middle-level jobs which society needs to be filled. Jobs are available but not the jobs they want. Only in the long term do such candidates accept these jobs. The critics, therefore argue that where a university place costs about one hundred 80 times more than a primary school place, slow change is not acceptable. In the long run, the scarcity of resources and shortage of manpower in Iran lead the planners to adopt a planning model that gave a high priority to the attainment of the optimum allocation of resources. For this reason national planners in contemporary Iran changed their strategy and employed the manpower model. The Manpower or Human Resource Development Model Human resource development represents another strategy to achieve an optimum allocation of resources by looking at education as an investment. This model which has been used in the majority of developing countries, is based on the attempt to forecast the future demand for educated manpower. Given the length of time taken to provide society with the correct size of workforce to meet its economic needs for different manpower levels (low, middle and high), such forecasts may have to be made for some years (in a long horizon perhaps for fifteen or twenty years). This is one of the major problems inherent in the manpower planning approach, since in the meantime economic needs and labour market conditions may change significantly. From the point of view of many developing countries, this approach, nevertheless, has obvious attractions. Many of nations are suffering from a shortage of skilled manpower and investment resources. Their often blind faith in the power of education to solve most developmental problems, leads them to expand their educational systems largely as they exist. The result in many countries has been a rapid rise in investment in education beyond their financial capacity; and the intensification of the movement of people from rural to urban areas. For this reason many planners were critical of the manpower planning approach in developing countries for largely ignoring the needs of rural areas. Another important criticism of this model is that it 81 limits educational planning to strictly economic ends and ignores the social and political aims of education. It is argued that economic growth is not the only aim of education, it is not an end in itself but a means to a higher goal. In line with this view, the International Commission of the Development of Education (1972), entitled its report 'Learning to be' and concluded that the aim of education is human fulfilment which, to the members of the commission, implied far more than the achievement of economic satisfaction. Nevertheless, manpower planning is still widely used in some form or another in the higher education sector world-wide. Economists are not able to measure with any accuracy the contribution of education to economic growth. It is assumed that investment in human capital, principally via education, can make an important contribution to economic development, but providing precise information and guidance to help in decision making is needed but problematic. The Planning of Distance Education Many contemporary planners argue that distance education can be an effective system within the reach of anyone who wants to have access to it (Perraton, 1982). If this is the case, and distance education institutions are to provide high quality instruction to learners, they need to be systematically planned and scientifically managed. Unlike conventional universities, distance education universities have dual characteristics: relating to academic and material production process. In this sense distance education is an especially complex system and involves especially elaborate planning at a variety of levels. Thus, a fundamental distinction, as Rumble (1986) points out, should be made between strategic planning, operational planning and annual budgeting. At the strategic level realisable long-term prospects (up to ten to twenty years), are the focus. At the operational level which is concerned with the medium-term (up to five 82 years) institutional aims consistent with the funds available are the focus. Financial forecasting is extremely difficult, either because governments are not able to predict confidently their medium and long term financial prospects, or because they are in a situation of economic instability where inflation is high (such as the case of Iran) and a long term view becomes increasingly hard to sustain. Finally, the budget level is concerned with the detailed financial plan for the institution for realising immediate objectives normally during one year. Planners need also to pay particular attention to the political climate in which the institution has to operate in order to ensure that those responsible for the allocation of resources have a good understanding of the institution's mission and needs. The planning process outlined above may appear rational in theory. In practice it is likely to be difficult to follow. The external environment is unpredictable and 'Keeping track of the external influences likely to affect the future of a distance education system ... is a major task' (Rumble, 1986:154). The internal environment may be more predictable. Internal factors and agents are involved in the process of identifying required results by specifying the indicators of success. An idea is worthless unless there are the means to convert it into focused action. These actions are carried out through the internal agents. Planning is not necessarily a top-down process. It is an all-embracing process which needs the involvement of senior, middle and front line managers and teachers. The practicability of a plan depends, either directly or indirectly, upon the extent and amount of the involvement of all those involved in implementation. West- Burnham (1994:90) argues that planning does not necessarily require a hierarchy in terms of status; this is particularly true in professionally staffed organisations [e.g. distance education institutions] but is increasingly found in total quality businesses wheie all staff have a shared sense of involvement and commitment. 83 Participative planning is often argued to be particularly important for mega- universities. Daniel (1995:81) thus observed that: there seems to be some correlation between the success of a mega-universities and the level of participation of staff in governance. This is not surprising, for knowledge-based industries work best with management processes based on teams and consensus rather than on hierarchy and authority. The planning process is thus seen from this perspective as an opportunity for development, communication, team-building, integration and enhancing the effectiveness of distance education institutions. The Management of Distance Education It is the function of management to translate plans into action. Although Hodgkinson (1991) prefers the term 'leadership' to cover both policy-making and policy- implementation here we use the term 'management' to cover both processes. The management of higher level distance education is different from the management of conventional universities. As has already been mentioned, in conventional education the teacher teaches, in distance education the institution teaches (Daniel, 1993). This is the radical difference. Educational materials have to be produced on a large scale and distributed to thousands of students scattered in different locations. Also the technological dimension of distance education is very sophisticated. Distance education institutions are similar to industrial institutions involving such technology at the production stages, and incorporating features of constant monitoring (Peters, 1994). Viewed as a system, as Kaye and Rumble (1981) indicate, distance education institutions can be analysed in terms of an integrated system of operating, logistic and regulatory subsystems (see figure 3.2). The operating subsystem converts system inputs (new students and pre-existing course materials) into outputs. The main outputs 84 of the distance education system are courses and educated pupils. The function of the logistic subsystem is to procure and replenish inputs through activities such as the purchase and maintenance of equipment. The regulatory subsystem is at the core of the system. It facilitates co-ordination of various activities of the institution and relates the organisation to its environment. Kaye and Rumble (1981) describe planning, control and evaluation as the underlying process in this subsystem. Distance education universities must have management systems that support three outcomes: good learning materials, effective student service and efficient logistics. These systems are the basis of a viable management structure, organisational design, and monitoring and evaluation. This industrialisation process of educational administration, it is argued, requires administrative skills that are akin to those of an industrial enterprise. Monitoring In view of the peculiarities in distance education systems, monitoring has a very significant role to play in them. Monitoring is an essential dimension of both the planning and management process. Distance education is a highly integrated system and there is a close interrelationship between the various subsystems and between the activities. Every activity has to be undertaken according to schedule. It is through monitoring that the management watches the performance of various subsystems in the institution. From the beginning the need and significance of monitoring has been realised and accepted in distance education. Though most distance education institutions undertake this function, the process varies from institution to institution. Some use sophisticated computer-based monitoring systems, while others use manual systems. There is considerable interest in the development of performance indicators both as an aid to management and as a means of monitoring the overall performance 85 of an institution and permitting comparisons with the other educational institutions. In industry there are a number of key measures which can be applied in distance education as performance indicators to measure effectiveness and efficiencies Reddy (1986) has suggested the following questions, the answers to which can lead to performance indicators for managers in planning the monitoring system: 1. Why it is being planned? 2. What aspect of programme will be covered? 3. Who/which agencies will be responsible for generating and analysing feedback information? 4. How will the feedback information be obtained? 5. When and how frequently will the feedback information be obtained? 6. Who will establish the accuracy of information? How will it be established? 7. Who will use the information and initiate the corrective action? 8. How much information is needed? How fast it is needed and what cost will be incurred? There will be alternate choices for each of the questions raised above. Monitoring is therefore, undertaken in the fields of course creation, production and delivery, tutorial services, effectiveness of instructional materials and media, student evaluation, etc. Monitoring also includes a review of the corrective action taken in response to feedback. It is distinguished from evaluation where judgements are made about quality and effectiveness of project performance (Reddy, 1986). To conclude, monitoring is considered as a link between planning and control. Analytical Framework for the Management of Distance Education In the light of the literature reviews undertaken above and in Chapter Two, it is clear that many writers call for systematic, and theoretically grounded planning within the administration and management of distance education. This is, perhaps, essential if we are to avoid the repetition of past mistakes and the generation of familiar problems. Given the administration and management focus of the present study, and the 86 limitations of the relevant distance education literature, it is therefore now appropriate to consider the potential of the related literature in the more general field of educational administration and management. Models of Educational Administration and Management Although the management of educational institutions has been the subject of many studies in recent years, most of these studies have been related to educational management in general, less to higher education and even less to distance education. We will use selected generic models to analyse the management of higher level distance education. Most of the models of educational management that will be presented here possess three major characteristics, as Bush (1986: 16-17) remarks: 1. Theories [or models] tend to be normative in that they reflect beliefs about the nature of educational institutions and the behaviour of individuals within them when, for example, practitioners or academics claim that decisions in school are reached following a participative process, they may be expressing normative judgement rather than analysing actual practice. 2. Theories tend to be selective in that they emphasise certain aspects of the institution at the expense of other elements. The espousal of one theoretical model leads to the neglect of other approaches. Schools and colleges are arguably too complex to be analysed through a single dimension. 3. Theories of educational management are often based on, or supported by, observation of practice in educational institutions. The approaches developed initially for industrial or commercial organisations have been adapted, with varying success, for application to schools and colleges. Many models or theories have been discussed by different writers on educational management. These perspectives overlap along several different dimensions. The models vary in the extent of their applicability to different types of institutions. It is nevertheless useful to review the major models which have been suggested to explain how institutions of higher education are administered and managed. For the purposes of analysis, the bureaucratic, political, collegial and ambiguity models identified by Bush (1986, 1994) are considered in detail. 87 The Bureaucratic Model Bureaucratic theory is associated strongly with the work of Max Weber (1947) who remarks that bureaucracy is the most efficient type of management. Bureaucracy is an almost inevitable consequence of increasing size and complexity. Using this model as a methodological tool against which to measure a modern university, it is clear that universities exhibit many of the characteristics of bureaucratic organisations (Paul, 1990: 31). The main features of a bureaucratic model are as follows: • a hierarchical authority structure with formal chains of command between the different positions in the hierarchy; • a goal-orientation organisations pursue those goals determined by their official leaders; • a division of labour with siaff specialising in particular tasks on the basis of expertise; • decisions and behaviour are governed by rules and regulations rather than personal initiative, • decisions are made through a rational process involving definition of problems, assessment of possible solutions and choice of the most appropriate solution to fit the organisation's goals; • the authority of leaders is a product of their official positions within the organisation; • leaders are accountable to the organisation's sponsoring, or governing body (Bush, 1994: 36). This model quite effectively characterises the operation of many distance education universities - their registry, student service, library systems, and personnel and financial offices; their research infrastructure, and the organisation and administration of the academic programmes. In terms of goals, bureaucratic theory specifies organisations as goal-seeking entities, which ignore or understate the contribution of individuals within the organisations. This is important for the major teaching and research function of a university as well as to its policy development. On the other hand, faculty members' claim to academic freedom and professional autonomy are 88 direct challenges to the hierarchical authority of office which is the hallmark of bureaucracy. A tension arises because academics' authority is derived not from the formal office but from her or his professional and personal education and expertise. Furthermore , the bureaucratic model is more appropriate in stable conditions but it is less valid in situations of rapid change. In changing and dynamic organisations such as distance education universities there may be little opportunity to engage in a rational process of choice. In practice, however, much of human behaviour is irrational and this inevitably influences the nature of decision-making in education. It is therefore often said that hierarchical bureaucratic approaches are most appropriate for the processes of planning, budgeting, and managing course production where line authority and system integration are important factors, but they are not as applicable to processes such as course development, teaching, and research. Any attempt to understand a distance education institution's management thus requires sensitivity to the two dimensions of the operation (production and academic). The Co1Iegial Mode! The collegial model is increasingly advocated as the most acceptable approach to manage universities, particularly in western countries. This model originated within the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge universities. The main features of the collegial model are as follows: • they assume an authority of expertise in contrast to the positional authority associated with the bureaucratic models. Professional authority occurs when decisions are made on an individual basis rather than being standardised; • they stress a common set of values shared by members of the organisation These common values are expected to lead to shared organisational objectives; • they assume that decisions are reached by a process of discussion leading to consensus (Bush, 1994:38-39). 89 Considering these features, most major academic decisions must be made by an academic council. Faculties are usually left to their own devices when it comes to research, teaching and evaluation of students, and any concerns about performance or standards tend to be dealt within an open and collegial fashion. Distance education universities are more complex institutions compared with conventional universities, and are frequently expected to do more with fewer resources, and to be more financially accountable and responsible. As a result, the collegial model, where it has been applied, has been abandoned or modified in times of financial crisis. Paul states that: This model is appropriate when there are common problems to be solved or when it is more important to get consensus and commitment than necessarily to find the most expeditious or cost-effective response to a particular concern. However, when quick decisions are necessary, when there are clear conflicts of interest between competing parties or when unpopular decisions which are difficult to sell to the whole constituency are required, it is not a very effective way of trying to solve problems (Paul, 1990:33). Furthermore, a suitable social and cultural basis is necessary for using this model in universities' management. For example, in developing countries with less experience in decision-making by democratic means, it is often difficult to get consensus in many concerns. My experience in PNU shows that when there was an effort to get the consensus and commitment of faculties, the problem often remained unsolved or was solved too late. Decision-making by consensus often led to conflict rather than agreement. Nevertheless, as Paul (1990) says, the collegial model is integral to university management and governance because it best lends itself to professional, as opposed to administrative, authority. 90 The Political Model Political theories characterise decision-making as a bargaining process. Their main assumption is that the members of organisations engage in political activities to pursue their interests. In contrast to the ideal form of the collegial model, the political model adopts the view that conflict is a natural phenomenon and an inevitable feature of universities. The relevance of the political model to educational institutions specially universities is now being given increasing recognition by both academics and practitioners. Within education this perspective is often referred to as 'micropolitics' (Bush, 1989:69). Glatter claims that micropolitics represents an essential perspective: The language of power, coalitions, arenas, contests, bargaining, negotiations, interests, ambiguity and so on seems very helpful in distinguishing rhetoric from reality [ ... ] in drawing attention to the different purposes which different individuals, groups and institutions have and the various ways they set about attaining them [ ... ] the approaches which may be broadly termed the micropolitical perspective are essential to an understanding of educational administration and management (Glatter, 1982:161). Baldridge (1971:234) who was not satisfied with either the bureaucratic or collegial models, without denying their importance and fundamental place in a modem university, concludes that: they are not useful in explaining how decisions are made in the universities with which he was familiar. The bureaucratic model is weak in dealing with non-formal power and its stress on structure over process. While aimed more at the process of decision-making, the collegial approach and its emphasis on consensus failed to explain or deal with conflict. He thus borrowed from sociology and political science in proposing a political model of decision-making, one which recognised the predominance of power groups. Citing conflict theory, community power theory and an informal groups approach, Baldridge's political model emphasises policy-making by analysing factors of the social context, identifying how 91 interest groups explain their causes, how these feed into the legislative process, and hence how policy is developed and executed. The political model has the following major features: • it tends to focus on group activity rather than the institution. Interaction between groups is in the heart of this model; • political theory is related with interests and interest groups,. their different objectives, leading to conflict between them; • this model proposes that the goals of organisations are ambiguous and contested; • decisions are made after a complex process of bargaining and negotiation; • the concept of power is central to political theory. The decision-making process is likely to be determined finally according to the relative power of participating individuals and groups. There is no question about the usefulness of this model which may be seen both at the departmental level and institutionally, in analysing and understanding much of what goes on in a distance education university. More recently, pressure for accountability and productivity have introduced new and strong stockholders, notably government and industry, so that funding is increasingly allocated to specific goals, and traditional norms of collegiality and autonomy have been confronted directly by those who provide most of the institution's resource base. In annual seminars of the PNU's regional study centre managers we realised that, in spite of their long distance from each other and their scattering through the country, they have notable unanimity among themselves and they attempt to influence central campus authorities, including the university chancellor and vice-chancellors, in the decision-making process and the adoption of certain policies. This is an interest group with power that influences directly the formal decisions of top managers. They have been able to establish agreement among themselves and form an alliance because of their common interests and problems. Recognising this kind of phenomenon is possible by using the political model. 92 Despite this capability, the political model suffers from the same limitations as the bureaucratic and collegial models in that it explains only part of a university's functioning. It is most effective only when combined with other models to address both the structure and process of university management and administration. The Ambiguity Model One of the most appealing analytical approaches for those who have tried to understand uni\'ersities is the ambiguity model, sometimes referred to as 'organised anarchy' (Cohen and March, 1974). This model stresses ambiguity of goals, fluid participation by individuals in the decision-making process, and lack of clarity as to means. These ambiguities and uncertainties challenge traditional forms of management. This model challenges rational theories of choice which presume pre- existent goals in such rapidly changing times. Paul (1990) explains this by stating that today's university presidents have difficulties in dealing with the many interest groups, hidden agendas and natural inertia of prevailing social structures. In examining such regular decision-making tasks as planning the budget, developing educational policy, and ruling on academic tenure and planning, Cohen and March demonstrate considerable insight and imagination in suggesting how one can lead in such an ambiguous environment. They suggest that goals should be treated as hypotheses, intuition as real, hypocrisy as transition, memory as an enemy and experience as theory (Cohen and March, 1974:226, cited in Paul, 1990). These concepts appeal to those who have experience in university governance. But Millet (1980) suggests that Cohen and March have failed to distinguish between the overall direction of the university and problems of priority within the faculties. He argues that the faculties, not the president, are the managers of learning processes and denies the 93 vagueness of the university's goals. He states that it is the priorities and methodologies within the overall goals that lead to conflict (Millet 1980:184). Paul (1990) remarks that Millet like Cohen and March are focusing basically on the management of the academic sector and of faculty governance then, he adds: The modern university is a much more complex institution of which this is only one, albeit the key, part, and hence neither the collegial nor organised anarchy model is a completely satisfactory representation. Furthermore, pressures for more accountability, for diversification of funding and for opportunity for younger academics during periods of retrenchment, have challenged collegial modes of decision-making, especially where they have been perceived as too slow or cumbersome in responding to an ever-changing environment (Paul, 1990:38). Distance education universities are rapidly expanding and changing particularly in their initial stage of operation. On the other hand, these universities are a kind of 'professional client-serving' organisation. The students often demand inputs into the process of decision-making, especially where it has a direct influence on their educational experience. Professors and tutors are expected to be responsive to the students' perceived needs other than acting under the direct supervision of hierarchical superordinates. The requirement that professionals make individual judgements, and do not necessarily operate according to managerial perceptions, leads on to the view that distance education universities can correctly be portrayed as 'organised anarchy'. Enderud argues that: large and complex, multipurpose, rapidly expanding or otherwise changing organisations are anarchic [ ... J so are organisations with high degree of professionalisation among their rank and file, service-producing organisations probably fit this picture better than good-producing enterprises do (Enderud, 1980:236). Distance education institutions which try to be more open, in a period of change may experience difficulties in interpreting the various messages being transmitted from the environment. This kind of uncertainty over the significance of external signals, as 94 Bush (1986) says, adds to the ambiguity of the decision-making process inside the institution. Analysing the management and decision-making process of distance education institutions in such situations will be more appropriate if it is based on the ambiguity theory because decisions in this situation are usually unplanned. The bureaucratic perspective assumes that when problems arise, possible solutions are formulated and the most appropriate solution is chosen. The advocates of the ambiguity approach claim that this logical sequence rarely occurs in practice. Problems, solutions and participants' interaction and choices somehow emerge from conditions of ambiguity such that there are no criteria for making the connections. Hence, as Bell (1980:190) observes the ideal solution and its related problem may not be linked. The ambiguity model stresses the advantages of decentralisation while centralised organisation is recommended by the most practitioners of distance education as an appropriate form for administration and management, despite their complexity and their dispersed regional study centres. The Search for an Over-arching Analytical Framework The four theories discussed above provide important insights into university management. They also provide perspectives from which the management of distance education systems can be analysed and then compared and contrasted with that of conventional educational systems. All of these models are uni-dimensional. Indeed, elements of each model may be identified as present in the same institution, at the same time, depending on circumstances. Each model individually is partial and selective but taken together they may represent a powerful means of analysing and understanding events and situations in education. We can examine whether particular 95 management and leadership models or theories are more or less appropriate in distance education systems than others, and whether distance education systems on balance exhibit different features from those found in conventional educational institutions. Distance education systems particularly mega-universities, clearly exhibit some features not found in conventional universities which make their management qualitatively different (Kaye and Rumble, 1981:177). The question arises whether traditional forms of academic management can be applied to a distance education system. For this reason some experts (e.g. Ellstrom, 1983 :236) recommend the syntheses of two or more theories in providing a more comprehensive analysis or explanation of distance education institutions. But this means the establishment of another model and it is not clear whether any can have universal acceptance. One answer, then, as Paul (1990) suggests, lies in not yet another organisational model, but in the concept of leadership. He argues that: Today's challenges place a very high premium on institutional leadership, that which develops a clear and coherent sense of direction and a comprehensive and value-driven way of getting there. It represents the practical application of what has been learned about leading people in other settings, notably the corporate world, informed by what the various models of universities as organisations tell us about the practical requirements of that milieu. It is leadership that can encompass a number of management and governance styles, a sense of purpose and direction that will provide meaning for and integration of the various activities and functions throughout the institution (Paul, 1990 :67). Strong leadership will be able to bring the organisational components together and give integrity to the institution for ensuring the effective function and entire support structure for students and faculty alike. While much more attention is paid here to the various techniques of administration and management, leadership, which is vital for success of any institution, involves a 96 lot more than technique. 'Leadership' is an ambiguous term encompassing both administration and management 'with more than hundred definitions' (Burns, 1978:2). Hodgkinson while confirming this point states that: It is a truism that no educational administrator would freely admit to not being a leader. On the contrary, the administrator would tend to conceive of the role of leader simply by way of definition [ ... ] the term can then be used synonymously with administration. Administration is leadership. Leadership is administration. (Hodgkinson, 1983:195) This definition can be helpful for our purpose in adding to Peters' theory in devising a framework to analyse distance education administration and management. If leadership is administration then what is the administration? The Concept of Administration Figure 1.1 sets out the framework for the observations which follow. The difference in usage between administration and management, is to some extent a matter of semantic convention. Management is both subtended from and subsumed by the larger concept of administration (Hodgkinson, 1991:51). This is because administration systematically embraces and generates the management and is hierarchically superior and prior to management. This is not a value judgement and does not mean that the former is somehow better than the latter. Hodgkinson argues that organisations can persist longer without administration than they can without management and on this criterion management would represent the better set of functions. Value judgements can, of course, be made if the criteria are specified. (Hodgkinson, 1991:51). Table 3.1 illustrate the systematic distinction between the activities more properly ascribed to administration and those more properly ascribed to the lower systematic level of management. 97 Table 3.1 Differentiating Aspects of Administration/Management Administration Management Art Science Policy Execution Values Facts Generalism Specialism Strategy Tactics Philosophy Action Upper ranks Lower ranks Qualitative Quantitative Reflective Active Human Material Top management Middle management Deliberation Details Source: Hodgkinson (1991) This table shows that the distinction lies in organisational functions. The more one is involved with matters such as ends, aims, policies, strategies, and philosophy of the organisation, the more one is engaged in administration. Likewise, the more one is involved with matters like implementation of policy, execution and operational decision-making, the more one is engaged in management. Administration, therefore, can be defined as 'the general form of human behaviour which seeks to achieve ends through organisational means. As these means are specified they give rise to technology and to the management of technology' (Hodgkinson, 1991). Because of commonality of problems encountered and strategies adopted in administration (Barnard, 1972), it can be described as a generalism in contrast to the increasingly specialist requirements of management. Management has been defined as an 'activity involving responsibility for getting things done through other people' (Cuthbert, 1984). A major function of management in any education system is to ensure that students are taught in accordance with determined curriculum. In distance education systems, management has also to ensure that the study materials required by the students are created and reached them on time. 98 This means that distance education systems have - in terms of management - two features: academic and manufacturing. One of the biggest challenges for such institutions is the management of professionals, a task usually carried out by fellow professionals who may or may not have training or experience in management. Paul argues that: Faculty autonomy is compromised by the course team concept and by the visibility of the course package. Such routinised functions as course production, the distribution of course materials and individualised students' tracking and records system impinge directly upon rather than merely support the teaching and learning process in the institution. Hence [distance education and] open universities almost uniquely represent the strongest tendencies of both orientations - the professional autonomy of university academics and the bureaucratic demands of a large publishing house and service organisation. The inherent conflicts between these orientations have major implications for how such institutions can be managed (Paul, 1990:30). According to the above definition of administration and management it can be pointed out that in contrast with administration, management demands a special knowledge or training. Hence it could be said that anyone, in principle, can do administration but not anyone, either in principle or in practice, can do management. Despite this, most senior managers tend to regard themselves, without self-conscious analysis, as administrators rather than managers. In one sense it should be understood that management and administration are inseparable. In the analysis of these processes attention should be paid to this relationship, because analysing management without any attention to administration may take us away from a comprehensive analysis. Indeed, whatever is done by managers is nothing unless translating the strategy, policy and planning - outcomes of administration - into action. The nature of distance education requires emphasis simultaneously, on the joint focuses of administration and management of the entire organisation. The working 99 days of any educators in distance education are occupied with both kinds of activities at different times. Furthermore, all organisation members of whatever section and whatever rank, from time to time find themselves engaged in administrative acts, while administrators often find themselves engaged in strictly managerial tasks. In this light, it can be seen that classroom teaching in conventional education, tends toward the managerial end of this spectrum, but in distance education, teaching has particular feature in which administrative and managerial activities are so related to each other that they can never be divorced. In addition, in contrast to other fields of administration, educational administration is distinctively different and problematic on the three counts of ends, means, and evaluation. Yet these very difficulties, as Hodgkinson states, are the source of peculiar leadership opportunities: the opportunity to discover, clarify and defend the ends of education, to motivate towards those ends, the opportunities to discover means and invent process, since the prevalent state of pedagogic science permits rather than constrains, and opportunity to create and establish morally grounded evaluation and legitimate it for all the participants in the great co-operative educational project (Hodgkinson, 199 1:62-63). All of which means that educational leadership/administration is specially difficult, specially challenging and specially moral. Hodgkinson (1991) suggests a realistic model for understanding and analysing this complex process. From his point of view the first stage in the dynamic and never ending process of administration is philosophy and administration. In fact, he defines the entire process of leadership as philosophy- in-action (Hodgkinson, 1983). Philosophy means to him organisational values and reasons for being. The ideas are formulated by philosophical means such as imagination, intuition, speculation, hypothesis, argument, dialectic, logic, rhetoric, value analysis and clarification at top level administration. Then, this idealistic 100 administration level is translated into the plan. The next stage is interring the plan into the political process and selling it to those who finally control the necessary resources to realise the plan. Thereby, the level of idea has shifted to the level of people (policy making). Afterward, the whole process at the people level, moves toward the mobilising of the resources necessary to realisation of the plan. Motivation of the human resources of the organisation to the collective purpose in this phase, makes the process more managerial rather than administrative but is still within the field of art and politics other than science. After accomplishing this, organisational means influence ends and events occur not merely in the realm of idea and people but also in the realm of things. The final phase of this dynamic process is monitoring, includes formal supervision, auditing, accounting, reporting and evaluation (policy implementation). In systems theory, the monitoring stage feeds back to the philosophy phase and the dynamic cycle of policy -making, administration, policy implementation and management is completed. Hodgkinson (1991) states that: This total process can be conceived as the general field of leadership. It may be embodied in a single person or it may be parcelled out into several specialities dependent on complexity of the organisation and its tasks. It is dynamic and recurrent and continuous with the cycle repeating and overlapping with the other cycles initiated at various points in the organisational history. The principle is always the same: a movement from ideas to things or events via the mediation of people. That is the intellectual realm modifies the reality realms of the physical or natural world by human action. The central problem of administration, then, becomes the motivation of this action and, more precisely, since administration is always of a collective, it is to reconcile the self-interest of the individual organisational member or client with the collective interest of the organisation (Hodgkinson, 1991:64-65). Hodgkinson's perspective, in combination with the other models discussed above, it is argued, enables us to better understand the close relationship between the leadership 101 (administration) and management of distance education institutions on the one hand, and the interrelatedness between the theory, policy, strategy, planning, tactics and monitoring of these institutions on the other hand. The dynamic nature of this model is also compatible with the conceptual framework provided by Peters and the industrial nature of distance education systems. Together these perspectives and theoretical models provide a framework for the subsequent analysis of the origins evaluation, planning and management of PNU. In the next chapter, however, further details of the case study research strategy are provided. 102 CHAPTER FOUR Research Methodology Introduction The first part of this chapter examines the perspectives that underpin the methodological strategies adopted for the study. Definitions of types of case studies, their strengths and limitations with regard to this study, and their relationship with qualitative approaches to research are considered. It further examines epistemological issues regarding the choice of research strategy. The second part of the chapter justifies the choice of a case study strategy for the PNU research presented here, and describes the methods used in preparing for and in carrying out the fieldwork. I-low data were collected in practice and the procedures of data analysis are discussed in the light of their relevance and appropriateness to the research aims and questions introduced in Chapter One. Definitions of Case Study The research strategy adopted for this dissertation emphasises a largely qualitative approach built around one detailed case study of a higher education institution in Iran. This choice was influenced by the research rationale that is discussed at length here. An in-depth examination and improved understanding of the case under study, that is 103 of PNU and its evolution, has the potential to elicit key issues influencing the planning and management of distance education in this distinctive organisation. Moreover, critical reflection upon this case, it is argued, can contribute to the development and critique of broader theoretical principles and to enhanced awareness of issues of concern to others in this field. While the case study is a well known strategy in social science research, there is little consensus on what constitutes a case study. One set of problems arises when we look at research methods in terms of contrasting approaches involving different epistemological assumptions. Another problem is that many social science textbooks have failed to consider the case study as a formal research strategy of the same order as others (Yin, 1994). Furthermore, the confusing of case studies with etimography or the techniques of participant observation has served to increase the lack of clarity and appreciation of its full potential. First of all it is helpful to point out what a case study is not. Case study as a research strategy is not the same as casework, case method, case record or case history. Casework denotes 'the developmental, adjustment, remedial, or corrective procedures that appropriately follows diagnosis of the causes and maladjustment '(Good and Scates, cited in Merriam, 1988:15). Case method is an instructional technique or a teaching method that has become very popular in law, medicine, and business. 'In teaching, case study materials may be deliberately altered to demonstrate a particular point more effectively. Case history, which tries to trace a person, group, or institution's past, is sometimes part of a case study research strategy. Most definitions of 'case study' have merely repeated the types of topics to which case study has been applied. Such definitions thus cite the topics, including 104 individuals, organisations, processes, programmes, institutions and even events as the major focus of case studies. For example Merriam(1988:9) notes that: case study is an examination of a specific phenomenon such as a programme, an event, a person, a process, an institution, or a social group. However, citing topics is inadequate as a means to establish a comprehensive definition. From an historical point of view, Platt traces the practice of doing case studies back to the conduct of life histories, the work of the Chicago School of sociology, and case work in social work. The case study strategy, in her view, begins with: • . a logic of design ... a strategy to be preferred when circumstances and research problems are appropriate rather than ideological commitment to be followed whatever the circumstances. (Platt, 1992:42). One might ask what this logic of design is. To Yin (1994) it means consideration of the technical features of this strategy. The technical definition from his point of view begins with the scope of case study: 1. A case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context, specially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident. 2. The case study inquiry copes with the technically distinctive situation in which there will be many more variables of interest than data points, and as one result relies on multiple sources of evidence, with data leading to coverage in a triangulating fashion and as another result benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis (Yin, 1994:13). This technical definition suggests that the case study as a research strategy comprises an all encompassing method - with the logic of design incorporating specific approaches to data collection and to data analysis. In this sense, as Stoecker (1991) argues, the case study is not either a data collection tactic or merely a design feature alone but a comprehensive research strategy. 105 Case study can be further defined by its characteristics. While the number of characteristics cited varies from source to source, there appear to be four main characteristics common to all case studies: these are captured by the terms particularistic, descriptive, heuristic, and inductive ( Helmstadter, 1970; Wilson, 1979; Guba and Lincoln, 1981; Stake, 1981, 1995; Hoaglin eta!. 1982; and Merriam, 1988). Particularistic means that case studies focus on a particular phenomenon or situation. This specificity of focus makes it an especially good design for the study of every day practical problems. 'Case studies are problem-centred; small scale and entrepreneurial endeavours' (Shaw, 1978:2). Descriptive means that the end product of a case study is a rich, thick description of the phenomenon under study. Thick description is a term taken from anthropology and refers to the complete, literal description of the incident being investigated. It also means to Guba and Lincoln (1981:119), 'interpreting the meaning of ... descriptive data in terms of cultural norms and mores, community values, deep-seated attitudes and notions, and the like'. Heuristic means that case studies illuminate the readers' understanding of phenomenon under study. They can bring about the discovery of new meaning, previously unknown relationships and variables, or confirm what is known. 'Insights into how things get to be the way they are can be expected to result from case studies'(Stake, 1981:47). Inductive refers here to the fact that the form of reasoning employed in case studies is largely based on inductive reasoning. In relation to this Merriam(1988:16) concludes that: 106 Qualitative case study can be defined as an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a single entity, phenomenon, or social unit. Case studies are particularistic, descriptive, and heuristic and rely heavily on inductive reasoning in handling multiple data sources. The nature of this particular research design is inextricably linked to certain philosophical assumptions. Comparison of the technical definition of Yin with the definition of Merriam shows that the origins of case study strategy are embedded in the growing body of literature on qualitative research. This does not mean that case study equals qualitative research or that someone who selects the case study strategy cannot use quantitative data. Yin (1994:14) states that not only can case studies include quantitative data, but they may even consist entirely of such material. For this reason both definitions indicate the use of multiple data sources including both the qualitative and the quantitative. The logic of this strategy for research in social and applied sciences such as education derives from perspectives that attempt to understand how all parts of a phenomenon work together to form a whole. This understanding, Patton writes: .is an end in itself, so that it is not attempting to predict what may happen in the future necessarily, but understanding the nature of the setting ... The analysis strives for depth understanding (Patton, 1985:1). The selection of data collection techniques, the way of organising and interpreting or analysing the collected data, and notions of validity, reliability, and generalisability of findings related to these core principles and assumptions are invariably linked to the investigators own world view and philosophical orientation. Types of Case Study Every discipline hinges on research activity to expand its knowledge base. There are many disciplines that use the case study research strategy for such purposes. This strategy may be modified according to the nature of the discipline and its problems, and the kind of knowledge expected. Hence there are various types of case studies 107 according to disciplinary orientation. Case studies can also be differentiated in terms of their end product. Yin(1994:38) distinguishes between four types of case study using their specific design as a criterion for divergency. Types of Case Study in Terms of Discipline The case study in education more often focuses either on individual students in seeking to understand specific issues and problems, or on practice, policy making and the management of educational institutions. Investigation of these issues requires a design that often draws upon a variety of disciplines including anthropology, history, sociology and psychology, both for theoretical orientation and for techniques of data collection and analysis. Indeed Crossley and Vulliamy (1984:193) state that: The ethnographic case study of a single community or culture has been central to anthropological enquiry ... However, studies of schools from such a perspective have proliferated during the last [two] decades. Culture thus, remains a unifying construct of educational ethnography (Goetz and Le Compte, 1984) and whatever the unit of study an ethnographic case study is characterised by its socio-cultural interpretations in context. A second type of case study that can be found in education is the historical. This type of case study employs documentary techniques by emphasising primary source materials. The historical case study in education has tended to involve description of institutions, programmes and practice as they have evolved in time. In discussing types of case study Bogdan and Bikien (1982:59) introduce historical organisational case studies as one form common in educational research; 'these studies focus on a specific organisation and trace its development'. The key to historical case studies, Merriam (1988) says, is the notion of investigating the phenomenon over a period of time. 108 A third type of case study is the psychological case study which employs concepts, theories, and measurement techniques from psychology in studying educational problems. The focus of this type of research is typically on the individual and constitutes a way of investigating some aspect of human behaviour. In education a case study of an individual, programme, event or process might well be informed by psychological concepts. Finally, the fourth type of case study that is employed in education intensively is the sociological case study. This type focuses on the constructs of society and socialisation in the investigation of educational phenomena. Goetz and Le Compte (1984:28) have suggested some topics that can be studied by case studies drawing upon sociology. Examples could involve the study of the social structure of educational institutions, the effect of role sets on teachers' interactions with students, the actual versus the hidden school curriculum, and the relationship of schooling to equalities and inequalities in society at large. Thus sociology along with other disciplines can be seen to have influenced the theory and method of case studies in education and have much to offer future research. What distinguishes a case study approach in education overall is a focus on questions, issues, and concerns broadly related to teaching and learning. The setting, delivery system, curriculum, student body, and theoretical orientation may vary widely, but the general arena of education remains central (Merriam, 1988:27). Types of Case Study in Terms of End Product Case studies have also been classified into three major types according to the nature of their outcome. That is the end product of a case study can be primarily descriptive, interpretative or evaluative. 109 A descriptive case study presents a detailed account of areas of education where little research has been conducted. Innovative programmes and practice are often the focus of descriptive case studies in education. Such studies can form a data base for future comparison and theory building. Lijphart, however, (cited in Merriam, 1988:27) argues that descriptive case studies are 'a-theoretical' and move in a theoretical vacuum; 'they are neither guided by established or hypothesised generalisations nor motivated by a desire to formulate general hypotheses'. In summary, then, in this kind of case study, whatever the area of inquiry, basic description of the phenomenon being studied comes before hypothesising or theory testing. An interpretative case study, like the descriptive type, includes rich, thick description. In this variety of case study the researcher gathers as much data about the issues under study as possible with the intent of explaining or theorising about the phenomenon. Rather than just describing, for example, what was observed or what was reported in interviews, the researcher might take all the data and develop a typology, a continuum, or categories that conceptualises different approaches to the task. The level of conceptualisation in interpretative case studies may range from suggesting relationships among variables to constructing a theory. The model of analysis is inductive. Because of the greater amount of analysis in this type of case study some researchers call them analytical or in Yin's words exploratory case studies. Shaw (1978), however, argues that analytical case studies are differentiated from straightforward descriptive case studies by their complexity, depth, and theoretical orientation. Evaluative case studies involve description, explanation, and judgement. They have been termed illuminative evaluation (Parlett and Hamilton, 1976), responsive 110 evaluation (Stake, 1967; Patton, 1980), naturalistic evaluation (Guba and Lincoln, 1981), and qualitative evaluation (Stake, 1981, Goetz and Le Compte, 1984). Yin notes that case studies have a distinctive place in evaluation research. He writes; There are at least five different applications. The most important is to explain causal links in real-life interventions that are too complex for the survey or experimental strategies. In evaluation language, the explanation would link the programme implementation with programme effects. A second application is to describe an intervention and real-life context in which it occurred. Third, case studies can illustrate certain topics within an evaluation, again in a descriptive mode - even from a journalistic perspective. Fourth, the case study strategy may be used to explore those situations in which the intervention being evaluated has no clear, single set of outcomes. Fifth, the case study may be a 'meta-evaluation' - a study of evaluation study (Stake, 1986; Smith, 1990). Whatever the application, one constant theme is that programme sponsor- rather than research investigators alone- may have the prominent role in defining evaluation questions and relevant data categories (Yin, 1994:15). Case study evaluations of educational issues became extremely popular in western nations in the late 1970's and have been 'the genesis of much educative and basic research since then' (Goetz and Le Compte, 1984:30). It is worth mentioning that the existence of a typology of case studies does not imply that the boundaries among various types - or the occasions when each one is to be used - are always clear and sharp. For example, sometimes drawing a boundary line between descriptive or explanatory and interpretative or exploratory case studies is difficult enough. Even though each of them may be explained in terms of their distinctive characteristics, there are large areas of overlap between them. In employing the terms and concepts emerging from the above discussion, the present research is based upon a case study research strategy that is largely qualitative in nature, and descriptive, interpretative and analytic in type. The basic fieldwork was carried out within PNU in Iran during the year 1995. 111 Strengths and Limitations of Case Study Strategies Case study as a distinctive strategy for research has, like other strategies, its own strengths and limitations. These strengths and limitations are inherently related to the rationale for selecting the strategy as the most appropriate design for addressing the research aims. For example, the predictive nature of the findings is a strength of experimental research strategies; but if someone needs information about the characteristics of a phenomenon, more detailed description may be needed. Thus, the limited predictive power of case studies is not seen as a major limitation for such works because prediction should not be the research priority. Another important consideration in assessing the strengths and limitations of various research strategies is to identif' the type of research questions being asked. For example, 'how' and 'why' questions are likely to favour the use of case studies. Thus, the question of how the planning and management strategies of PNU have developed and what their strengths and limitations are might be addressed by either a survey or a through a multi-method case study. The survey might examine the planning model, documenting the practitioner's reasons for selecting or developing this model, largely by using statistics and quantitative information. On the other hand, the question also relates to the factors and processes which influenced the planning of PNU, and elements and issues like the political, economic and cultural forces that have modelled its management, and shaped the university's development. This means that some 'how' and 'why' questions need clarification that could generate important insights and help improve our understanding. This is the moment that, Yin (1994:9) argues, the qualitative dimensions offered by case study have a role to play, because how and why 112 questions are being asked about a contemporary set of events over which the researcher has little or no control. In investigating a social unit which is complex and consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon, there are few better alternatives to the in-depth case study. It is an appropriate design for educational research and has proved particularly useful for studying educational innovations, for evaluating programmes, and for policy analysis. This is another reason for the application of the case study strategy to the present study. Yin states that: Case study's unique strength is its ability to deal with a full variety of evidence - documents, artefacts, interviews, and observation - beyond what might be available in the conventional historical study. Moreover, in some situations such as participant observation, informal manipulation can occur. (Yin, 1994:8) Case study is often better able to assess social changes than other research strategies and offers insights that can illuminate meanings and expand the readers' experience. These insights 'can be construed as tentative hypotheses that help structure future research' (Merriam, 1988:32) Although the case study is seen by many as a valuable strategy for some kinds of inquiry, some critics have, nevertheless, viewed it as a less desirable form of inquiry than others. Perhaps, the greatest concern has been over the potential lack of objective rigour of case study research. This critique may be effectively countered if the researcher is careful to develop a systematic and rigorous research design and takes care not to allow biased views to influence the direction of the findings and conclusions. A second common concern relates to the scientific generalisability of case study findings. 'How can you generalise from a single case?' is a frequently heard question. The answer is not a simple one (Yin, 1994). It is true that scientific facts are rarely based on single experiments; they are usually based on a multiple set of 113 experiments, which have replicated the same study under different conditions, but with the same approach. Yin (1994:10) argues that this tactic, 'can be used with multiple-case studies but requires a different concept of the appropriate research design'. Nevertheless, the real business of the case study, as Stake states, is not generalisation but particularisation. We take a particular case and come to know it well, not primarily as to how it is different from others, but what it is, what it does. There is emphasis on uniqueness, and that implies knowledge of others that the case is different from, but the first emphasis is on understanding the case itself (Stake, 1995:8). The findings of case studies are thus more effectively generalisable to theoretical propositions and not to populations or universes. This can be seen as analytical rather than statistical generalisation (Yin, 1994). This is also congruent with the basic philosophy of much qualitative research. Another criticism about case studies is that they can take a long time to carry out and they can result in massive documents. This criticism may be relevant to much of the ethnographic research that has been done but all case studies do not require a long time in the field. They can take many forms and need not depend solely on ethnographic or participant observer data. In case study one can use many other techniques to achieve a high quality end product depending upon the topic of study. Yin (1994:78) introduces six sources of evidence for case studies: documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant observation and physical artefacts. The case study, for example, frequently uses a chain of evidences gleaned from interviews, documents and observation to create explicit links between the main questions of research, the collected data and the conclusions drawn. This incorporation of data sources can increase reliability because it involves triangulation. Some other limitations also remain to be considered. Guba and Lincoln (1981:377) 114 note that 'case studies can over simplify or exaggerate a situation, leading the reader to erroneous conclusions about the actual states of affairs'. Since in case study the researcher is the primary instrument of data collection and analysis, the amount of description, analysis or summary material used is basically up to the researcher. For this reason, case study is also limited by the sensitivity and integrity of the investigator (Merriam, 1988). Reliance upon the researcher as the primary instrument for data collection and analysis can, on the one hand, produce brilliant insights about a phenomenon, while, on the other hand, lead to a pedestrian or even fraudulent analysis. This is what Guba and Lincoln (1981:378) refer to as the 'unusual problems of ethics'. They note that 'an unethical case writer could so select from among available data that virtually anything he wished could be illustrated'. It is true that by custom case study researchers are privileged to assert what they find meaningful as a result of their investigation. But the key interpretations to be pursued are not solely the researcher's own. These are the informants' interpretations as well. The reliability and trustworthyness of interpretations is more important than whose interpretations are presented or emphasised. The researcher, Stake (1995:99) argues, is the agent of new interpretation, new knowledge, but also new illusion. He tries to extend the elegant intricacy of understanding but there is always, in Stake's (1995:12) words, the 'infinite void still lying just beyond'. Indeed, this is an ethical dilemma. As Stake emphasises: To draw so much attention to interpretation may be a mistake, suggesting that case study work hastens to draw conclusions. Good case study is patient, reflective, willing to see another view of the case. An ethic of caution is not contradictory to an ethic of interpretation (Stake, 1995:12). Despite these limitations, it is argued that case study is one of the most effective strategies for social science research especially when 'how' and 'why' questions are 115 being posed. It is also most appropriate when the researcher is dealing with many variables and has little control over events. The methodological issues that the researcher considered when planning this study were therefore most complex. Indeed, it was necessary to consider the likely effect of the selected strategy together with others, realising that it is often not fruitful to think of research strategies in terms of competition, because each case study can involve a comprehensive and integrated range of different components. Compared with other research strategies, I therefore found case study more appropriate for this study in the light of the specific research aims and questions. The decision to adopt this approach for the study of PNU was, therefore, made in full awareness of the complexity of qualitative case study and of the debate on its limitations. Case Study and Qualitative Research: Epistemological Issues Epistemological debates about positivistic and non-positivistic research have gone on since at least the second half of the nineteenth century. At that time quantification was seen as a key advantage of the natural sciences. There was, likewise, a strong tendency to apply natural science methodology to the emergent social sciences. The advocates of this school of thought argued that control of nature encouraged them in the belief that they should eventually be able to control the social world in the same measure. The influence in anthropology was also evident: Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown all took the natural sciences as a paradigm for their approaches to the study of 'primitive' societies; though as in the case of Blumer and other Chicago sociologists this was tempered with ideas about the distinctiveness of social phenomena (Hammersley, 1992:167). Advocates of qualitative methods have, even themselves, sometimes regarded the natural sciences as exemplary; thus Thomas and Znaniecki, two of the most influential 116 advocates of case study and life history methods in the 1920s and 1930s comment on: 'the marvellous result attained by rational techniques (that is, by science and technology) in the sphere of material reality' (cited in Hammersley, 1992:167). The experience of social scientists, nevertheless, draws attention to the fact that there are many differences between natural phenomena and social phenomena or human behaviour. Merriam argues that: Naturalistic inquiry, which focuses on meaning in context, requires a data collection instrument sensitive to underlying meaning when gathering and interpreting data. Humans are best suited for this task (Merriam, 1988:3). In terms of natural science methodology, the researcher is seen as a keen outside observer of natural phenomenon and detachment of the researcher from the subject under study (natural phenomenon) is not only possible but also in some sense necessary. The acquisition of knowledge about such kinds of phenomenon, and the better understanding of them, does not require a close relationship with the researcher. By contrast, in social life, the phenomenon and context are not always distinguishable. Thus, understanding of social events, human behaviour, and our interactive social world, needs both a close relationship and sympathy with the subject of the study. In other words: A social researcher cannot be a senseless mirror that reflects only the face of the phenomenon. If so, he/she can not attain the real expected results. The same detachment between social researcher, society, and human being is, therefore, not possible (Ebrahimzadeh, 1992b:43). Realisation of these issues helped bring about a growth in the use of qualitative perspectives and methods. Hence, in the past thirty years, qualitative approaches to research have moved from a marginal situation in many applied social sciences, such as education and health, towards a much more central position. There is considerable debate, however, about the extent to which positivistic strategies can be used in 117 conjunction with qualitative methods in a single research study. Many argue that research methodologies 'should not be arrayed hierarchically' (Yin, 1994), and draw attention to the existence of a complex of assumptions and arguments, some of them in conflict, and a range of strategies and tecimiques that have advantages and disadvantages for particular goals and in particular circumstances. Crossley and Vulliamy (1997:4), for example, state that 'epistemological differences shape a researcher's overall strategy and approach, irrespective of what data collection techniques are adopted'. Moreover, the disadvantages of adopting one methodology rather than another may be tempered through a combination of different methods or even methodologies, thus improving the potential reliability and generalisability of results. Many professional researchers have sought to do this and, at the same time, they have sought to modify current methodological thinking about qualitative research in a variety of ways. They have tried, then, to establish a sort of subtle realism as an epistemological basis for their research. This may be seen as having made the task of appraising the validity of qualitative research findings clearer. This is because, as Hammersley (1992) notes, assessing the validity of the results of qualitative studies in terms of their relevance to or integration with practice - the criterion which most critics emphasise - can be more problematic than assessing their validity on the basis of subtle realism. However, few have argued explicitly against the possibility of such criteria. They accept that social reality is mind-constructed and that there are multiple realities (Smith, 1984:383). In the light of this assumption the reality of the phenomena studied can be dependent on the researcher's perception and interpretation of it. This assumption is congruent with the constructivist point of view in which the 118 world we know is a particularly human construction. That is, what we know of reality is only what we have come to believe, not what we have verified outside our experience. How case study researchers should contribute to their readers experience depends on their notion of knowledge and reality. Stake argues that: We may conceive of three realities. One is an external reality capable of stimulating us in simple ways but of which we know nothing other than our interpretations of those stimuli. The second is reality formed of those interpretations of simple stimulation, an experiential reality representing external reality so persuasively that we seldom realise our inability to verify it. The third is a universe of integrated interpretations, our rational reality. The second and third, of course blend into each other (Stake, 1995:100). This means that each human being has her/his own version of second and third realities and these are ever changing. The aim of research, Stake believes, is not to discover the first kind of reality because it is impossible, but to construct a clear reality of the second kind and a more sophisticated rational reality (the third type), specifically one that can withstand disciplined scepticism. Although it may be true that human beings have multiple ways of perceiving and interpreting reality, this does not mean that there are multiple realities, as constructivists emphasise. In the external world, every entity in itself has its own unique reality which different people perceive differently. Because of this Stake observes: Science strives, to build a universal understanding. The understanding reached by each individual will of course be to some degree unique, but much will be held in common. .. .We seek the well-tuned reality, one bearing up under scrutiny and challenge (Stake, 1995:102). He says that following a constructivist view of knowledge does not require the researcher to avoid delivering generalisations. In his view constructivism justifies the inclusion of a substantial quantity of narrative description in the final report of a case study-based piece of research. 119 Since the assessment of findings of qualitative (and all other) investigations necessarily involves judgement there is always a potential challenge to their truth. This is further pointed out by the fact that the personal construction of reality of every informant is not equally important either epistemologically or socially. But Stake (1995: 102) asserts that 'people have ways, not infallible but practical ways of agreeing on which are the best explanation. So do philosophers'. For this reason Rorty (1984) suggests that the aim of inquiry should be solidarity rather than truth. The problem with this is that the issue of whether some claim is treated as true or trustworthy is determined by our judgement as to the balance of our interests, whether the desire for solidarity with those we currently disagree with outweighs our desire for solidarity with others and our other preferences. Personal civility or political ideology may call for respecting every view and solidarity, but the results of case study research do not. It is not, Hammersley (1992:29) remarks, a convincing epistemology. 'Widespread development over the last twenty five years of qualitative research has been a product of epistemological criticism' (Crossley and Vulliamy, 1997).These epistemological debates among philosophers have not been, and are not today, a dialogue between only two positions; the arguments are more diverse and complex (Hammersley, 1992). Thus, contrary to Rorty, there is no escape from epistemology. It can be concluded that the principle of relativity is strong in qualitative case study. Researchers contribute uniquely to the study of the case and audiences derive unique meanings. These and other differences are relative to the purposes of the study, the immediate situation of the case, and the circumstances of the audience. Hence, some researchers have suggested that to put an end to this kind of debate, one should simply select a combination of methods or techniques, do one's research and leave the 120 philosophical battle to the philosophers (Miles and Huberman, 1984). A combination of methods is, in fact, a form of triangulation that can enhance the validity and reliability of one's study. But, as Merriam (1988:2) has noted, 'troubling problems arise' when one is trying to reach conclusions across studies conducted from different paradigms. Obviously, we make our assumptions about what is knowable and under what conditions this can be reliable knowledge. What is important here is the finding and determining those conditions. The sociological theory of phenomenology gives good support in this respect by emphasising understanding the actions of people on the basis of their active experience of the world (Burgess, 1984). It depends on, as Stake (1995:103) indicates: How much the researcher participates personally in the activity of the case, how much he poses as expert, how much is neutral observer and critical analyst, and perhaps more important than those how much will the researcher be her/himself? Therefore to understand how people construct their reality, as King (1979:3) recommends, we really need to get inside the skin of other people. It is argued that such an approach can contribute to the construction of theory by bringing to bear on the local knowledge gained the interplay of academic insights and researchers working on selected problems or topics, by means of comparative analysis using different disciplines (King, 1979:15). This theoretical perspective supports a predominately qualitative case study strategy to research in the social sciences. To examine the potential of this strategy for the present study and overcome the traditional criticism, I have sought to create an appropriate research design that will maximise the quality of outcomes. This design includes logical sequences, as Yin, (1994) suggests, that link the collected data to the main questions of the research. Such sequences, whether 121 explicit or implicit, strengthen every research investigation, and this case study is no exception. Effort has also been made to minimise the inevitable limitations, thus enhancing the validity of the research. Research Design: Payame Noor University, A Case Study A research design is at best a compromise between the aims of the study, the resources available, and the feasibility of the area of the study. The main purpose of the research is: to help to avoid the situation in which the evidence does not address the initial research questions. In this sense a research design deals with a logical problem and not a logistical problem (Yin, 1994:20). Designing case study research was a real challenge to the researcher because there were few set procedures or protocols - such as in quantitative kinds of research - to be followed step by step. In the literature, of course, there are guidelines and the experience of others to help, but it is not always a simple matter to gauge the correct way to proceed. Decisions have to be made as to what precisely constitutes the case, how data will be collected, who will be interviewed, what documents will be read and so on. These procedures are usually far from routine. One pitfall to be avoided, Yin(1 994:19) recommends, is to consider case study designs as a subset or variant of the designs used for other strategies. He covers new methodological ground, describing a basic set of research designs for doing single and multiple case studies. Although this model is not a complete one and, as Yin himself states, 'needs to be continually modified and improved in the future', in its present form it is, nevertheless, helpful in aiding the design of more rigorous and methodologically sound case studies. 122 The design for the present case study, therefore, was adapted from Yin (1994), in the light of the contribution that this study seeks to make towards our improved understanding of the process of policy making and policy implementation in PNU as the only distance education university in Iran. The components of this design are presented graphically in figure 4.1. This figure shows the operational procedures of pre-fieldwork, fieldwork, and post-fieldwork phases as well as the relationship between and the sequences of these procedures. The research process as shown in figure 4.1 included three distinct phases: pre- fieldwork, fieldwork and post-fieldwork. Before discussing the operational procedures in detail it is worth outlining each of those phases below. Phases of the Research Process The Pre-fleidwork Phase It is hard to say at which point a research study actually began. Before research begins, the researcher is inevitably socialised into a field or discipline with its own vocabulary, concepts, and theories (Goetz and Le Compte, 1984). One begins to think like a member of the field and to view the area of research through its own 'glasses'. This means that traditionally the literature review constitutes the real start of the research. It is argued that the review of literature affects the nature of the questions raised, which in turn influences the research design and strategy, which then influences the conclusions drawn. This does not, of course, mean that the researchers start to review literature with a blank mind. Conversely, while they may have identified their own problems and questions, the review should enable the researcher to formulate their research design, to clarifij their questions and, especially for qualitative researchers, to avoid the danger of adopting overly pre-conceived ideas. 123 I1 I? I leD I I Jr B CD 0 CD & CD CD - CD CD C CD 0 'C 0 0 CD 0 B 2. CD . CD C< B CD pCD a C0 -.rD C-< '<CD B -i CDCD, j X 0. CD CD .-., o CD ' DD 0 DD - = -.CDD CD • . H CDCDCD C - CD CDODD CD C B' ' . C D C D CD 0 OCDD r11c_0 DD< 0 - 2.D__________ '' C a a a C 9 C 0 CD CaD 00 CD CD (ID 0. C -' C, .-, ,,2.0 9 °a ' a r<1 ) L I 4:. DID CD © -n C' ..C'O - CD = CD 0 Z'< r, CD t0o C, CD CD-C C a' rn CC CD DD C CO CD 0 CD DD D I' C 2, a C C This latter point is specially pertinent with regard to qualitative research ( see Crossley and Vulliamy, 1997). Researchers should have the opportunity to make critical and corrective contact in the context with those who know the subject. Hence, attempting to view social phenomenon through the eyes of the people being studied has to be consistent with a qualitative research strategy that acknowledges relatively open- ended approaches, guided by 'foreshadowed problems' (Malinowski, 1922), rather than one which has been pre-determined in advance. Malinowski claims that we can distinguish between arriving with closed minds and arriving with an idea of what to look for. Acquaintance with the problem is not identical with being burdened with preconceived ideas ... but the more problems the researcher brings with himlher into the field, the better he/she is equipped for the work. Preconceived ideas are pernicious in any scientific work, but foreshadowed problems are the main endowment of a scientific thinker, and these problems are first revealed to the observer by his/her theoretical studies. (Malinowski, 1922:9) The procedures adopted for the literature review for this study have been explained in Chapter One. While it is argued that the literature review can help the researcher to generate a research problem, Burgess (1984) argues that the relationship between the methodological training of researchers and their personal experience in the area of research can help them to do so too, and enable them to design a programme of research. Literature on research methodology was, therefore, extensively reviewed with a view to clarifiing research strategies and techniques because: knowing what research designs have been used before with what success, can save an investigator from wasting time and money (Merriam, 1988:63). The review of the literature on case study and qualitative research in particular helped the researcher to justify the adoption of the case study strategies for the study of the PNU, the only distance education university in Iran. The philosophical and 125 epistemological position taken thus helped determine the choice of the data collection techniques of in-depth interview, documentary analysis and observation. This also facilitated the collecting of thick and rich data which can help readers to relate research findings to their own experience. The choice of the case for study, as mentioned earlier, was motivated by uniqueness, typicality, accessibility, and familiarity with the setting. The Fieldwork Phase Gaining access to the study site is fundamental to the success of any research process. This access normally affects relations between the researcher and the researched and ultimately the type of information one is likely to obtain. Since the researcher was involved in the management of PNU and known personally to almost all staff, entry into the field was easily accomplished. Then, the broad scope of the study, its methodology, and the potential contribution of the results of the study to the future of the university were discussed with the key informants individually. A copy of the research proposal was also distributed to those who were interested. With regard to presenting the study, Burgess recommends that: a clear indication should be given of those aspects of the setting on which you intend to focus and those individuals with whom you intend to work more closely. In particular, attention should be drawn to the implication of your work for the setting and those within it (Burgess, 1984:50). During this procedure the researcher gained their permission to have the interviews tape-recorded. The main fieldwork was conducted over a period of about nine weeks (during 30th of September and 16th of November 1995). The original plan for the fieldwork was revised so as to meet the requirements of the situation. For example, the re-allocation of four full days to participate in the Regional and Local Study Centres Principals' 126 seminar in Ghazvin was necessary. Also archival work and attendance at meetings for observation purposes had to be re-scheduled to fit in with, when and where it was possible to do this. Furthermore some days had to be left free for changes in meetings and interview schedules. The fact that as an insider-researcher, I was known in my former role within the university had the potential to inhibit some of the informants. Some assumed that I already had greater knowledge of events and procedures than was in fact case. Thus there was a risk that some information would not be shared. This is what Stake (1995) calls the 'reversal of the situation' against which insider researchers are frequently cautioned. There was no intention to take things for granted or overlook situations that at first sight might appear familiar. The use of the semi-structured interview technique with an interview guide was helpful in dealing with this situation and in discussing the necessary issues with the informants. Documentary materials were also used to fill the gaps and corroborate these findings. The Post-fieldwork Phase The analysis of the data was the central task during this stage of the study. The methods of data analysis were informed by the approach to qualitative data analysis supported by authors, such as Hammersley and Atkinson (1989), Miles and Huberman (1991), Bogdan and Bikien (1992), Vulliamy and Webb (1992) and Stake (1995). They argue that qualitative data analysis is an ongoing process which begins in the pre-fleidwork phase and continues in the field through to the post-fieldwork phases. The process approach, that is the creation of an interactive relationship among data collection, analysis, conclusion drawing and writing up, adopted for this study improved the quality work overall - and the findings as such are presented in detail in 127 the chapters five and six. This was further enriched by revisiting the relevant literature. The Development of The Research Questions As stated in Chapter One, this study has its origins in the problems that the researcher encountered during his work at PNU as a Vice-chancellor. It also stems from the experience gained when the researcher was a member of a group which was enjoined to prepare a new plan for establishing and developing a distance education university based on the previous experience of the Free University of Iran, as well as the Correspondence College of Abureyhan Biroony University where the researcher had worked as a lecturer and in an administrative capacity for ten years. These official positions provided me with numerous opportunities to attend meetings seminars, and conferences in and beyond the country on issues related to distance education. Most of these meetings indicated that policy makers and practitioners of distance education in Iran, as well as in some other Asian countries, did not pay sufficient attention to the importance and unique requirements of distance education. For example, the operation of the first two higher level institutions of distance education in Iran were suspended after the revolution, partly because of the lack of awareness of higher education policy makers about its importance, irrespective of political reasons. This prompted me to examine the PNU as the only distance education university in Iran to provide a more theoretically informed critique of its overall mission and planning and management. The generation of the research questions outlined in Chapter One, therefore, has resulted from the interaction or juxtaposition of personal experience with insights from a critical review of the international literature on distance education generally 128 and on its planning and management in particular. This juxtaposition, it is argued, invariably creates new insights and questions. The first stage of the literature review turned out to be perplexing and challenging to the mind. For example, much of the literature on distance education states that distance students are self-directed and independent, therefore they can manage and evaluate their own learning. However, my own experience revealed that the majority of them in my university did not know how to take control of their learning. In another case the literature on planning and management emphasised the role of preliminary planning in distance education institutions for ensuring their future efficiency. We had started our operation at PNU without such planning in the initial phase of operation, apparently without problems. These issues led me to a consideration of distance education theories and other relevant literature. This yielded more insights and created an opportunity to evaluate personal experience in the light of the international literature. This process extended my research plans from an almost intuitive feeling for the problem to the form of the question: What happened in the planning and management of my university's early days of operation and why and how? This in turn, helped me to rationalise the study and establish other relevant questions, as well as confirming my choice of research strategy. Glaser and Strauss (1967:3) declare that the researcher 'must have a perspective that will help him see relevant data and abstract significant categories from his scrutiny of data'. Now this perspective was clearly in my mind as I decided to frame the investigation in terms of questions rather than hypotheses. Thus, research questions were, firstly, framed within the wider context of the subject of study, then they were translated to a more detailed fieldwork schedule adapted from case study questions 129 developed by the International Extension College (IEC) (see Appendix 1). The fieldwork was, therefore, not approached from a position of total ignorance of the relevant international literature or from knowledge of the Iranian distance education system. During the early stage of fieldwork a number of issues were identified in relation to which I thought some of the original questions might need to be changed or improved. It is hoped that other aspects of this university will be studied by other researchers, and that the findings of this study will pave the way for them as well as prepare the ground for future comparative studies. Selection of the Case As stated earlier, the nature of the research questions led me towards a largely qualitative approach to case study as an appropriate research strategy. What makes the inquiry a case study is 'the decision to focus an inquiry around an instance' (Adelman et al 1983:2). This instance or case (PNU) had, in fact, already been chosen on the basis of its familiarity and accessibility to the researcher. The selection, methodologically, was not based on any form of sampling, because the case is the only one in the country. The selection problem related rather to decisions on sampling the sub-cases or units of analysis within the main case. There were, potentially, many units of analysis which could be chosen. This selection, Yin (1994) argues, 'is related to the way the initial research questions have been defined'. Appropriate units of analysis, therefore, were selected with reference to the research questions. In this respect the use of Peters' (1967) theory and Hodgkinson's (1991) leadership model helped the researcher to identif' and define the units of analysis and ways of dealing with the research questions. Two major units, then, were 130 identified for analysis, namely policy making (planning process) and policy implementation (management process) at PNU. Hammersley says that: as the number of cases [or units of analysis] is reduced the amount of data that can be collected on each [unit] is increased, and the chance of there being error in the information probably reduces too. (1992:186). This is why some researchers have a tendency to shift from a survey to a case study strategy. Of course, this is relative to the relationship between resource demands and the resources available. However, as Hammersley (1992:187) observes, with lavish resources we would be able to maximise the detail and accuracy of the information available. This is not possible without reducing the units of analysis. The other dimensions along which selection of the units of analysis was made in the case included time and context. With regard to time, the first consideration was the logical distribution of the whole fieldwork time among the activities based on their importance and demands on time. Secondly, how long it is necessary to spend on interviews, observation, field notes, and primary analysis of data. As regards context, attendance at the seminar of the regional and local study centres' Principals held in Ghazvin (located 85 miles west of the capital city, Tehran) from the eighth to tenth of October 1995 was arranged. Participation in this seminar created an exceptional opportunity for the researcher to meet all regional and local study centre principals and to hear their experience at first hand. Data Collection Techniques Data are, in fact, no more than ordinaiy bits and pieces of information found in the environment. Whether or not a piece of information becomes data in a study depends on the interest and perspective of the researcher and the aim of the research. The 131 nature of this study made the intensive use of qualitative data necessary. Qualitative data consist of: Detailed descriptions of situations, events, people, interactions, and observed behaviours; direct questions from people about their experience, attitudes, beliefs and thoughts, and excerpts or entire passages from documents, correspondence, records, and case histories (Patton, 1980:22). Three main techniques were adopted to collect the data. These are in-depth interviews, document analysis, and observation combined with reflection on experiential knowledge based on intensive immersion in the setting prior to the period of fieldwork. The great value of case study, it is argued, is its employment of multiple sources of data that can come to hand by using multiple techniques of data gathering. The use of multiple techniques of data collection is a form of triangulation (Denzin, 1970; Mathison, 1988; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1989; Yin, 1994) that is valuable in presenting a substantial body of findings leading to interpretation. The problem of triangulation, Stake argues, is complex 'because so many qualitative researchers subscribe a little bit or a lot to an epistemology called constructivism (Stake, 1995:108). According to this epistemology, which was discussed previously in this chapter, there are multiple perspectives or views of the case that need to be presented but, as Stake (1995) argues, there is no way to establish, beyond contention, the best view. Being accurate in presenting things and logical in interpreting the meanings of those things is the only way of avoiding such conflicts. We need, therefore, certain procedures through which the researcher and his/her readers alike may establish the validity of the data gathered. Qualitative research have no all purpose term for this procedure. 'Some spoke of "corroboration" or, somewhat loosely, of "cross validation" or of multiple validation procedure, to ensure the dependability of a field study finding' (Miles and Huberman, 1991:234). Webb et al. (1965) employ the term 132 triangulation for this procedure which comes from the field of surveying. It implies that three elements of a triangle are known. Triangulation in qualitative research requires additional information, which may be data from an actual third source, or information about the trustworthiness of two sources drawn from other data. This somewhat resembles detective work. When a detective collects fingerprints, hair samples, alibis, eyewitness accounts and so on, a case is being made that presumably fits one suspect far better than others. Four kinds of triangulation are presented by Patton (cited in Yin, 1994:92): data, methodological, theory and investigator triangulation. Methodological and data triangulation are used to obtain the needed confirmation, to increase credence in the interpretation, and to demonstrate commonality of the assertions, of this study. Methodological and data triangulation combine dissimilar techniques such as interview, documentation, and observation to study the same unit. Figure 4.2. indicates the techniques for gathering data and convergence of multiple sources. Figure 4.2 Data Gathering Techniques and Convergence of Multiple Sources of Evidence ents/ \PthInteZ (the case) Observation The rationale for this strategy, Denzin (1970:308) argues, is that the flaws of one method are often the strengths of another. The opportunity to use multiple techniques and/or multiple evidence allows the researcher to address a broad range of data about 133 the case under study. Thus any findings or conclusions are likely to be more convincing and accurate, enhancing the validity and reliability of the study. For instance, at the field site of the PNU, I found what appeared to be a harmony or co- ordination among the various bureau of the university. Most informants I talked with made this claim, and occasionally my observation confirmed this. But when I considered the meeting minutes of the university's general directors and the students' reflections in local and national journals and newspapers I realised that there are few unproblematic administrative links among the various sections of the university. Details of each main method or techniques are now considered. In-depth Interviews In-depth interviews are a common means of collecting qualitative data which is used extensively by case study researchers. In any research an interview is a 'conversation with a purpose' (Webb and Webb quoted in Burgess, 1982:107). 'If viewing means perceiving, then the term "interview" refers to the act of perceiving as conducted between two separate people' (Brenner et al, 1985:148). Interviewing, then, provides a basis within which people can interpret the world around them from their point of view which in turn paves the way to mutual understanding. It can also allow the researcher to understand the respondent's personal perceptions of the issues as they relate to the case under study. There are three basic approaches to collecting data through interviews. One of them is the structured interview, which involves more structured questions, along the lines of a formal survey. It is often used, therefore: .when a large sample is to be surveyed, when hypotheses are to be tested, or when quantification of results is important (Merriam. 1988:78). 134 The other two approaches are used when the sample is not too large and an in-depth knowledge is required. These two are: the unstructured, open-ended and semi- structured interview. The unstructured open-ended interview is where the researcher can ask key informants for the facts of a matter as well as the informant's opinions about events (Yin, 1994). This type of interview is particularly useful when the researcher does not know enough about the phenomenon under study to ask relevant questions. Thus the interview is essentially exploratory. One weakness of the unstructured open-ended interview is that it requires a great amount of time to get systematic information. Hence, it is rarely used as the sole means of data collection. The semi-structured interview is often used where certain information is desired from all informants. This interview 'may still remain open-ended and assumes a conversational manner' (Yin 1994:85) but is guided by a list of questions or issues derived from the case study protocol. Thus the topics and issues to be covered are specified in advance, in outline form. This is a practical but flexible approach, within which the researcher is able to decide about the sequence and wording of questions in the course of the interview. This format allows the researcher to respond to the situation at hand, to the emerging world view of the respondent, and to new ideas on the topics (Merriam, 1988:74). For these reasons, the semi-structured interview was adopted as a main tecimique for data collection in this inquiry. Written guidelines were based on issues identified from the detailed questions for the research. These guidelines (see Appendix 2) helped to increase the comprehensiveness of the data and make data collection more systematic for each informant in a single session of interview. Furthermore, 'logical gaps in data can be anticipated and closed' (Patton, 1987). 135 Tripp (cited by Rudduck in Burgess, 1988:112-13) is critical of this technique arguing that the single interview affords only limited opportunity for the informants, given the strangeness of the interview situation to formulate responses that represent the meaning they would like to acknowledge. The single interview, Tripp says, suits the person whose views are already well-formulated and rehearsed. However, he suggests a strategy that might help to equalise the status of the views offered and proposes a series of discussions that would allow time for the informant to develop and reflect on the ideas offered, and would enable the informant to take some responsibility for potentially significant areas of experience (that the informant might remain silent about) to be recognised and explored. The implication is that only unstructured open- ended interviews should be used. Tripp's point is persuasive and worthwhile, but it has its own limitations especially for the present study which has employed condensed fieldwork and therefore imposes time constraints. In practice, the semi-structured interviews used have started without any notable problems. The fact that the interviewer was known to all informants but two helped him to dispense with the use of some of the conventional prescriptions recommended in the literature. Reference was made earlier to the pooi of questions compiled as an interview guide for the researcher's own use (see Appendix 1). From this pool separate agendas were prepared for each informant, covering the issues that would be discussed during the interview (see Appendix 2). Patton confirms that: The interview guide provides topics or subject areas about which the interviewer is free to explore, probe, and ask questions that will elucidate and illuminate that particular subject. ... the interview guide simply serves as a basic checklist during the interview to make sure that all relevant topics are covered (Patton, 1987:112). 136 In all cases but one, where the pencil/paper technique was used, interviews were tape recorded. The informant who did not wish to be tape recorded, asked also to be given an aide-memoir so as to guard against impromptu discussion. Though it was not th research policy to give an aide-memoir to any informants, there were three other informants who asked for this too. I had to do so, otherwise they would not have agreed to be interviewed. Thus, a number of basic questions which were worded quite precisely were handed to them, reserving more flexibility for the interviewer to probe and freedom in determining when it was appropriate to ask questions in greater depth, or even in venturing into whole new areas of inquiry that were not originally included in the aide-memoir. Some of the informants considered the study important to the PNUs future, especially because it was the first one carried out in the university. They tried to provide an honest and critical perspective and give their first hand information. In contrast, some others were not relaxed with the tape-recorder. In spite of my attempts to create a friendly atmosphere they spoke formally and sought to terminate the interview. I realised that their perspective was artificially positive and they were not critical. To tackle this problem I decided to change tactics and use a more informal approach (in offices, corridors, self-service lunch hail and so on) wherever opportunities came to hand. I used my previous knowledge and experience to 'open the door' and used indirect approaches to stimulate discussion. This tactic was time consuming but successful. In such conversations informants were more critical, more open, and more explicit. Patton comments on this strategy stating that: This approach is particularly useful where [the interviewer] can stay in the situation for some period of time, so that he or she is not dependent upon a single interview to collect the information needed. ... the strength of the informal conversational approach is that it allows the interviewer to be highly 137 responsive to individual differences and situation changes. Questions can be individualised to establish in-depth communication ... (Patton, 1987:110). A major problem concerned thinking through the ethics of the situation. I-low should informants be informed that their comments would be used as a source of data? In practice they were told that their comments were very important for my study and I asked them if I was permitted to use their comments as a source of data. Fortunately, all of them agreed to the proposal. They had no objection, perhaps for the very reason that all information would be oral and not recorded in their presence. But in all conscience I was anxious to avoid improper use of what I learned. I apologised to all of them, there was no chance of avoiding this little intrusion. I had planned to have a single session of interviews with each informant. The data collected by interview was reviewed to identify areas of ambiguity or uncertainty and to ensure that all necessary data had been collected. This period of study was a critical time of reflection and elaboration. As Patton (1987:140) stresses, it is a time of quality control to guarantee that the data obtained will be useful, reliable, and valid. Another session of interviews was, therefore, arranged for those who had further information or who had not been able to explain everything in a single session. Additional sessions were also arranged when a new insight was attained during the course of interview and in reviewing the data. This tactic helped to removed many ambiguities and helped to cover the areas requiring further investigation. Each formal interview session lasted on average seventy-five minutes, except for two one of which lasted over two hours, and the other about three hours over two and three sessions respectively. The interviews took place at suitable times in informants' offices where it was most convenient for them. Overall, twelve informants were formally interviewed. The detailed information about 138 the focus of specific interviews drawn up to match informants with relevant topics related to their experience and the date of interviews is given in Appendix 2 and 3. The last point to bear in mind is that the familiarity of the researcher with the site of study and his informants raised a potential problem in that they might remain silent about some important points to avoid discussing issues they believed I already knew about. This risk was countered by simulating ignorance and adopting the position of a naive outsider. It seemed that this was a more natural way to proceed for an insider researcher. Generally speaking all of the informants were co-operative. Some of them were even pleased to share their experience with the researcher and to have their story known. The atmosphere of all of the interviews (with minor exception) was therefore relatively relaxed and quite friendly. Document Analysis A document has been defined in the broad sense as any communication (Guba and Lincoln, 1981) or as official and semi-official records (Holsti, 1969), public records, physical traces (Webb et al, 1981), and artefacts (Goetz and Le Compte, 1984). In this study documents have been defined as written materials (Fetterman, 1989) and have been chosen as a second major source of data. The usefulness of documents is not related to any implicit accuracy or lack of bias but is based on their stability, in that they can be reviewed repeatedly. Yin (1994:8 1) notes the overall value of documents in case study research by emphasising their explicit role in corroborating and augmenting evidence from other sources. Documents may yield both qualitative and quantitative information. What is important in document analysis is understanding that: It was written for some specific purpose and some specific audience other than those of case the study being done. In this sense the case study investigator is a 139 vicarious observer, and documentary evidence reflects a communication among other parties attempting to achieve some other objectives (Yin, 1994:82). Identifying these considerations helps the researcher to avoid being misled by documents and to be critical in interpreting the contents of such documents. Congruency between documents and the research problems depends on flexibility in constructing the problems and related questions. Such a view is particularly relevant to the present case study which has used document analysis as one of the main techniques. Permission to access relevant documents was gained from the Chancellor of the University during the first meeting of the researcher with him. This permission from the highest authority of the university facilitated gaining access to all primary source documents necessary for the study. The documents were collected both before and after the gathering of oral evidence by interview. Key documents include those that are relevant to the establishment of the university such as papers on the original rationale for initiation, the original educational objectives, the university's legal and constitutional status and organisational and administrative structure. Some other documents, such as minutes of meetings, were considered during and following the interviews in the light of informants' comments or recommendations. Other relevant sources were considered in order to gain additional data or confirm evidence for specific details obtained by other means. Consideration of some documents before the interviews helped me in the refinement of the interview guide as well as with the preparation for the interviews, by providing initial insights into the perceptions and perspectives of informants. This knowledge was useful in formulating probes to explore or challenge in more depth some of the views which might be expressed during the interviews. There were also some 140 questions in the pooi of the detailed questions (see Appendix 1) which might be answered merely by document analysis. As well as using this technique to corroborate other techniques, it was used as the main means of studying certain problems such as, financial budgeting, organisational rules, and so on. Efforts were also made to study national development planning documents in the higher education sector at the library of the Planning and Budget Organisation (PBO) of Iran. Details are available in the list of references presented at the end of the dissertation. National and provincial educational journals and newspapers as well as university newsletters were examined at the central library of the PNU in order to find further relevant information. Consideration of these documentary sources yielded historical and statistical data as well as the opportunity to see PNU through the public eyes. They also helped to strengthen the reliability and validity of data gained from interviews. Observation Combined with Reflection on Experiential Knowledge Observation was the third main technique for data collection applied in this study. I use 'observation' without any adjective because of its unique characteristics in this study. That is, it was neither purely direct nor participant observation, as they are considered in the literature. In fact I observed every situation of potential interest during the course of the fieldwork both directly and in a participatory capacity. To some extent this may have been viewed as the normal activities of one involved in the management of the university, as if had resumed my previous work. Here, observation is a research tool that serves to formulate research purposes in the field, and to check or control the validity and reliability of the data gathered by other techniques. This is what Vulliamy lays stress on in declaring that 'what people say in 141 interview can be checked out by observation of their practice' (Vulliamy et al, 1990:150). Observation was carried out in an informal and unstructured form throughout th fieldwork to gain a new and/or clearer perspective about what really was going on in the university, so as to confirm or contradict issues that arise either in the literature or within with reference to the interviews undertaken in the university. My previous experiential knowledge and familiarity with the case helped to provide a conceptual framework for determining what to observe. Goetz and Le Compte comment on this in stating that: The data begin to emerge as the ethnographer interacts in the daily flow of events and activities, and the intuitive reactions and hunches that ethnographers experience as these factors coalesce (Goetz and Le Compte, 1984:112). The researcher's previous position at the university gave legitimacy to participation in or attendance at the meetings of the Chancellor with the Vice-chancellors of the university, academic board, administrative and finance committee, and fortnightly meeting of General Directors. The researcher was also invited by one of the Vice- chancellors to participate and play a role at two occasional meetings. My perspective in observing events around the site was based on insights gained from personal experience as well as the related literature, thus enhancing the quality of data, and hence the quality of research outcomes. The questions of who, where, and what should be focused on were matters which were resolved during the fieldwork. I had some pre-determined subjects to focus on. These were managers' meeting sessions at various levels, and university council sessions, which were held occasionally, but unfortunately none took place during the course of fieldwork. The taking of notes at these meetings, sessions, and other places in the university was followed up with 142 document analysis or through subsequent elaboration and explanation by committee members. The shift from the classic form of observation and a limiting of the use of it, however, is deliberate, firstly because of a desire to minimise the incidental bias that might emerge from my familiarity with the case as an insider researcher, and secondly because of the intensity of the fieldwork and time constraints. However, this reflects 'the dominance of researcher's eye' (Stenhouse, 1982) that can scan the area and capture the significant moments like a camcorder no matter how limited these opportunities may be. In the process of observation there were long periods where nothing of great relevance to the issues in question occurred and I could find nothing to open up the case in any depth. In this attempt to capture some new angle in the interpretation and gain some fresh insight that could not be grasped through other means. I did eventually find some key clues that might influence subsequent analysis. Every effort was made to avoid interpreting the relationships along the way, wary that moving too soon to that level of thinking might challenge the objectivity of the study. Terminating the data collection was extremely difficult. It was, indeed, an ongoing process that could have been extended indefinitely. There were always some people to be talked to, some more documents to be consulted, and something more to be observed. This phase ended only because of the expiry of allotted time, not out of any feeling that fieldwork was complete. A decision has to be made at some point to end the data collection phase and proceed to organise findings for intensive analysis. The fieldwork started in 30th of September 1995 and ended in 16th of November 1995. 143 The Case Study Data Base In many case studies, the distinction between an independent data base and the case study report has not been clearly identified. That is, the case study data are synonymous with the evidence presented in the case study report' (Yin, 1994:95). Some critics consider this as a major shortcoming of case study research. Stenhouse (1978:33) argues that, in spite of the considerable interest in the qualitative case study, the lack of a separate data base often detracts from the credibility of such studies. Yin (1994), who advocates the case study strategy, suggests that it is better that case study researchers establish an independent data base which is retrievable for others. This data base or 'case record' (Stenhouse, 1978, 1982) can serve as a grounding for the researcher's own reportage and 'as a resource for communal use by the community of educational researchers' (Stenhouse, 1978:33). It can also help to increase the reliability of the case study (Yin, 1994). One initial problem faced in establishing a data base for this case study was the language of the data. Written documents and interview recordings were all in Persian and would have required translation into English. This means that the researcher would have had to spend excessive amounts of time transcribing and translating the interviews and the documents and some of the field notes which were taken in Persian. The researcher would also have had to make extensive editorial changes to make these materials presentable. This is recommended by at least one author (Patton, 1980:3 03), but it may influence the result of the study because translating and editing may change the character of the data. It was decided, therefore, to translate and transcribe the interviews and make a summary of those key documents that were consulted. In doing so efforts were made to protect the originality of data. 144 Data Analysis Data analysis consists of 'examining, categorising, tabulating, or otherwise recombining the evidence' (Yin, 1994:102) to address the initial questions and aims of a study. Since a general analytical framework is in place, and the basic priorities for what and why to analyse have already been determined (see Chapter One). The initial analysis of data (Stainback and Stainback, 1988) started during data collection, indeed, it was an ongoing part of data collection. This analysis yielded immediate insights in the field which, as Bogdan and Biklen (1992:154) argue, leaves the researcher in a good position to do final analysis. In the beginning stage of data analysis unitising the data, as Lincoln and Guba (1985:344) state, is important to identify units of information that would sooner or later serve as the basis for analytic categories. In this stage all the data were like grocery items which could be categorised into numerous categories. The best way forward was seen to involve returning to the research proposal to follow the analytical framework of the study. There were two main themes at this level, namely policy making and policy implementation: these included theoretical underpinnings, and the planning and management and monitoring strategies of the university. These main themes were assigned the letters of'A' for the first and 'B' for the latter and Al, A2,... or Bi, B2... for their sub-categories, the relevant units of data being amenable to allocation to each of these categories. The next step involved sorting the data into these main themes. For this purpose, using a setting/context code (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992), each informant was given an alpha-numeric code which identified the informant and provided the number of the interview and the year of fieldwork, for example, MRH-1-1995. The documents 145 which were consulted were given a number and the letter A, B or AB based on their contents. For example, document 3-AB indicates that document number three contains some information about policy making (A) and policy implementation (B). The third stage was identifying the units of data. To establish the units of data, the research questions were used as an appropriate guide which were well matched with the main themes and fairly comprehensive categories, each of which could be further sub-divided according to the given sub-questions. Thus, the pre-fieldwork stage of the study and the process which led to the formulation of research questions and selection of key issues and themes was helpful in bringing order, structure and meaning to the data. The interview transcripts, documents and field notes were then, read through several times. The content was examined carefully in seeking significant themes and factors that emerged relating to the theory, planning, and management of PNU. Then, the content of each interview transcript was categorised under the specific topics or subjects as a unit of data. An alpha-numeric code was allocated to each unit of data, which identifies the number of unit, the number of interview, and the topic and I or subject of the unit; for example, 1-1 -A2 indicates that the first unit from the interview one about the subject of theoretical underpinning of PNU comes under the topic of policy making. The data, were thus allocated to specific codes and categories using the 'cut and paste' technique. Some information in data which did not fit neatly into any of the categories was classified under 'general information' for subsequent use. The categories were flexible and were modified as further data analysis occurred. All the study files are retained as separate confidential documents. 146 Data Analysis Process The process of focusing, selecting, coding and transforming the raw data made it possible to establish a categorised data base for analysis. That is, the large amount of unorganised data were reduced into a manageable and analytically meaningful body of data. Data reduction, it is argued, is a logical part of data analysis in qualitative research because processing of large amounts of data is very difficult and time consuming. Miles and Huberman (1991:21) remark that: Data reduction is a form of analysis that sharpens, sorts, focuses, discards, and organises data in such a way that final conclusions can be drawn and verified. During the processing of data new ideas and themes emerged in my mind. Writing these ideas down and deciding which data in which form should be referred to in justifing ideas or possible conclusions was helpful in presenting the findings. Anals sis of the document-based data concurrently with the interview-based data and field notes. developed a logical chain of data which led me to reach overall conclusions that were. anal ytically speaking, greater than the sum of that data. A further re jew of the literature on particular themes and issues which were seen to he re1e ant to the emergent and analytical themes but which had not been considered or re ieed in-depth in the pre-fleldwork became necessary at this stage. Vulliamy and \Vebh explain the s alue of such a later literature review during the course of data analssts \ hen writrng up, such secondary literature is usually intcrweaved with extracts 1mm the ra data to deselop and refine the analysis, rather than appearing as a separate resie of the hterature before a discussion of the collection and anah sr the data (Vulham and Webb, 1992:221). In partiular the contemporary international literature on planning for change and fleuble planrnng e-re found to he useful in understanding and analysing the 147 fieldwork data and in supporting the findings. It was also helpful in linking the findings to current theoretical development and to heighten their generalisability. While a largely ethnographic route was taken to data analysis in this study, the size of the case, the amount and the type of the collected data were such that computerised treatment and analysis of data was not seen to be necessary. The data analysis process was, therefore, based on creating an interactive relationship or dialogue between the activities of data collection, analysis of data in the field, coding of collected data for final analysis, the drawing of conclusions, and the composition of the final report. This was predominately derived from the data so the data analysis process was largely inductive. The process, as shown in figure 4.3. formed an interactive cyclical process which served to verify the conclusions. Figure 4.3 Data Analysis Process Data ( Data reduction collection ) (Coding of data) Writing up \ ,/Drawing final report /4 ( conclusions Initial analysis of data Final analysis Adopted from Miles and Huberman (1991). The Presentation and Interpretation of Data in the Islamic Context The greatest problem that I faced in analysing this research data and drawing conclusions related to political and philosophical issues. This has profound implications for the epistemological orientation. It was the researcher's aim to make the final report faithful to the context and the broader Iranian society; and to produce a 148 report to the larger world that addresses not only the researchers' interests, but also the interest of those studied (Denzin and Lincoln, 1993). According to the dominant philosophy on social sciences in my country, the existence of human beings has two aspects: the spirit, which is eternal and the essence of the existence of the human beings, and the body. From this perspective humans have therefore, two main means for their perception of the world: wisdom, which is the main power of the spirit, and experience, which is obtained by means of the bodily senses such as hearing and sight etc. This belief is grounded in the Islamic philosophy which has a dualistic view of the world and of human beings. On the basis of this world view, our world consists of spiritual and material things. The spiritual aspects of the world- that really exist- must be known by wisdom because they are not open to experience. Thus it is only the material world that can be studied by empirical/experimental methods. The subjects of the study of social sciences are, from this perspective, the individual and social behaviour of humans in general. Human behaviour as a whole typically is seen as psycho-biological, which cannot be understood by using only positivistic methods. This is why many social researchers in Iran are interested in using qualitative methods. This methodological orientation is valued not only because of its strengths in studying social phenomenon but also because of its responsiveness to ideology. After the Islamic revolution in Iran almost everything became coloured by Islamic ideology. Apart from its influence on the daily life of the people, it strongly influenced the academic community in Iran so that this community is now divided into two distinctive groups. One of these emphasises the importance of Islamic ideology in social science research and the other does not. Qualitative methods and approaches 149 are, therefore, being employed in this ideologically-oriented enquiry framework as a major strategy in various areas of social research. This first group represents the majority of the Iranian social research community. Hence, any conclusions and interpretations from social research must be based on respect for the Islamic philosophy and epistemology. The second group also uses qualitative strategies but not in the same ideologically driven way as the first group. In Islamic philosophy the final link in the chain of cause and effect goes back to God and there is no exception in the case of social phenomenon because society is, from this point of view, a natural entity and nature is created by the God. From this perspective the social sciences are overshadowed by metaphysics. The new generation of the Iranian religious intellectual community has started to think about the essence and nature of the society. They argue that in Islamic philosophy every existence has its own essence or nature and God is only the creator of things not the giver of the nature or essence of those things. A phenomenon or thing has only its own unique nature. Therefore, they cannot have another religious nature as well and if they do not have a religious nature, why should we explain them from a religious point of view? We have sociology or psychology of religions but can we have religious social sciences, that is, can there be a substantially Islamic or Christian sociology, psychology, or science. Nowadays, we are certainly witnessing the publication of an increasing number of books and articles in Iran, under the title of Islamic sociology, Islamic psychology, Islamic economy, education, management and so on. This argument is important here because it may create acceptability problems if 'scientific' studies can be accused of positivism and/or secularism, in a very religious community. Further discussion of this issue goes beyond the scope of this chapter, 150 however, given this situation it is important that the researcher should remain faithful to his religious society on the one hand, and to the wider academic community on the other. There is thus a real intellectual challenge involved in creating an acceptable accord between an experience-based and wisdom-based interpretative paradigm, between science and ideology, and social sciences and metaphysics. When the international academic community changed their point of view about the natural world they applied a scientific world view to their social world. This is in turn changed their views about the society and the individual and as a result about sociology, psychology, economy and politics. Hence metaphysical perspectives on social phenomena were abandoned and researchers started to ask more 'how' questions about the phenomenon rather than 'why' questions. This major shift helped to bring about the introduction of the social sciences and contemporary approaches to rigorous empirical research. In Iran this shift is much less influential, and the application of scientific analysis to social issues remains problematic. This generates many problems for the present writer. However, since the main strategy of this research was largely qualitative, and both the researcher himself and the informants belong to the Islamic society, some interpretations are influenced by insights which obtain in an Islamic context. Nonetheless, the constructivism which underpins the epistemological orientation of this study, still presents a cross cultural challenge. Every effort has, therefore, been made to respect Iranian world views while, at the same time emphasising the accuracy of data, systematic interpretation and the consistency of reasoning in drawing conclusions. 151 Writing up The final stage of the analysis of the data included the composition of this report and the discussion of the findings. Writing the final report was not separated from the analysis process but seen as a simultaneous activity. Writing up, as Marshall and Rossman (1995:119) state, 'is central to the process' in qualitative research. The themes of the analysis which were a basis for categorising the raw data, also contributed to the eventual organisation of the report. Writing up the findings of the study was an attempt to synthesise two processes: linking the findings to the aims of the study and to the theoretical literature in earlier sections of the report. The focus shifted from analysis of the particular case to discussion of the processes and characteristics of distance education at the higher education level with reference to a wider theoretical framework. The overall study can, therefore, be considered as the writer's attempt at, as Burgess (1984:83) remarks, 'blending personal experiences with theories and data in order to make some contribution to [an] understanding of the social world'- in this case, the world of distance education in Iran in the first instance- and the world of distance education in developing countries at the university level more broadly. The findings are now presented in detail in the following chapters. Firstly, however, the context for the development of distance education in Iran is outlined to provide background information needed for a fuller understanding of the report itself Limitations of the Study Since this research was done in the university where the researcher is working, it was assumed that many of my colleagues would co-operate with me. This co-operation also facilitated data collection. Asking all people to contribute their time and 152 knowledge to the research should be carefully agreed with them. Nonetheless, because this research was planned to include interviewing, the opportunity to arrange this without undue difficulties was a real point in favour of insider research. Familiarity with the complex interrelationships between individuals, groups, and departments in the university might, however, have made it difficult to see the wood for the trees! Therefore, more care needed to be taken to identify the particular issues which were the subject of study, especially where the researcher may feel that he already knows the answer to a question or problem which the research was exploring. As Johnson (1994: 11) points out 'Systematic research explores its subject in an even-handed way, and does not rule out the possibility of genuine enlightenment along the way'. Despite their advantages, case studies occasionally may be biased, either by the intensity of a researcher's previous relationship with an institution or programme or by lack of such associations. In the first situation, the danger is that a researcher's familiarity with an institution or programme and its leaders may lead to an overly appreciative view of their fulfilment difficulties. Such an identification can also result in 'benefit of the doubt' judgements regarding future programme performance. On the other hand, the outside researcher typically lacks the information and experience essential to keep particular tendencies or personalities in perspective. Furthermore, arriving relatively late on the scene, at a time when memories may have declined and significant aspects of an institution's history may have been forgotten, he or she may also end up relying too heavily on the recollections and opinions of current institution leaders (Dodds and Mayo, 1992:5). To counteract such potential biases, it was planned to combine different professional perspectives and different levels of association with PNU. Moreover, this research 153 was being carried out single-handedly, hence, there ere many tasks to do in the field individually. In dealing sith this problem, it as planned to spend existing time carefully. In this manner, the first priority was gi en to intervie s and obser\ ation and, in view of the fact that some documents were not alloed to be taken out of the uni\ ersity. other documents or statistics were brought to later consideration. Ethical issues Although all informants were assured of anonymity and confidentiality most of them did not insist on this and one even asked for his comments to be quoted with his name attached ( though this was not done). Nevertheless, due to uniqueness of the uni\ ersitv. there remains a possibility of informants being revealed in spite of all effirts to conceal them. This is a possible ethical limitation and one that is of major importance. That is to say, it is possible for people at PNU, and even elsewhere, to identify the informants by their points of views and comments. For this reason the case study record is produced only as a confidential document in order to reduce the chances of revealing informant names. A similar resolution was reached by Louisy 1993) in her case study of higher education in St. Lucia. The context for distance education in Iran and the descriptive report of the research findings is presented in the next chapter. This provides background information needed for a fuller understanding of the more analytical chapters that follow. I 53 CHAPTER FIVE The Context and Development of Distance Education in Iran Introduction This chapter examines the context within which distance education in Iran has developed and discusses the factors which have contributed to its development. The case study then documents PNU's origins, institutional mission, aims, legal status, organisational structure and instructional characteristics. The governance and financial frameworks within which PNU carries out its mandate of providing for the distance education needs of the Iranian community at the tertiary level are also explained. After outlining the instructional components and the types of programmes, the chapter focuses on students' characteristics and mechanisms for the assessment of their progress. This information is derived from all sources of original data collected during fieldwork and from additional documentary material studied. This is presented largely as an historical narrative - the first of its kind to be written on the PNU. In the following chapter more theoretically informed analysis is carried out in the light of the earlier reviews of the distance education and educational management literature. The structure for this chapter is based upon the structure of the detailed fieldwork questions, derived from the work of Dodds and Mayo (1993) and presented in (Appendix 1). I 55 First, however, it is useful to consider very briefly the geographical, historical and socio-economic profile of the country to provide the background information needed for a fuller understanding of the discussion that follows. Country profile Geographical situation Iran is an Islamic Republic located in south western Asia. It has an area of 636,300 square miles (1,648,000 square kilometres, sixteenth in size in the world) and is bounded in the north by the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Republic of Turkmenistan and the Caspian Sea, in the east by Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the west by Turkey and Iraq, and on the south by the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. Iran also controls about a dozen islands in the Persian Gulf. More than 30% of its 4,865 mile boundary is sea coast (391 miles in the north on the Caspian and the rest in the south at the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea). Since about 90% of the Iranian land area is situated on a plateau and more than half of the country is covered by mountains, Iran is considered a mountainous country. Numerous mountains and vast plains have given rise to various ecological attributes in Iran. It is mild and wet in the north, cold and dry in the west, mild and hot and dry in central regions, and hot and wet in the south. A large part of the country comprises of desert lands, the biggest of which are Dasht-i Kavir and Dasht-i Lut in central and south-eastern Iran. Annual precipitation in desert regions like Yazd is about 50 mm., while it is more than 2000 mm. in Anzali in the northern region. Generally speaking, Iran is affected by the Mediterranean system which is marked by rain or snow fall starting in mid autumn and long dry summers. 156 History The Iranian civilisation was founded by the Medians who established the largest empire of their time in Iran about 6000 years ago. The largest of the Persian empires were those of the Achaemenians, the Parthians and the Sasanids. Some of them ruled in a great part of the Asian continent for over 450 years. Since then there have been over 20 ruling dynasties in Iran. The biggest events that shaped Iranian history have been the arrival of Islam to Iran 1400 years ago and the invasion by Mongols 800 years ago. Nevertheless, Iran never lost its strength and splendour. In 1979 the monarchy was abolished in Iran and since then the countrys government has been an Islamic Republic whose affairs are run independently according to the people's vote. Population According to 1996 census Iran had a population of about 60 million with less than half under 14 years of age and more than 7 million aged 18-24 years. The rate of population growth has recently fallen to 1.47%. In the academic year 1995-96 Iran had 20 million school pupils in the primary and secondary sectors. As far as employment is concerned, 29% of the population are working in the agricultural sector, 25% in the industrial sector and 42% in the service sector. According to the 1994 census the literacy rate was 82.60% which means that 17.40% of Iranian people (age 6 and over) were still illiterate. 61% of the population are urban dwellers and the rest live in the rural areas. More than 90% of Iranian people are Aryan of whom nearly 60% are Persian, 30% Azerian and 5% Kurdish. 4% of the Iranian people are of Arab origins. 98% of the people of Iran are Muslims and 91% of them are followers of the Shia sect. The other 2% consist of Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews. The official and academic language 157 of Iran is Persian. The Azeri Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic and some other languages are also in use as regional languages. Iran's government is an Islamic Republic with a constitutional law that includes 175 clauses. According to the constitutional law, the highest ranking decision making position in the country is that of spiritual leader (an Ayatollah) who is elected by an Assembly of Experts. After the leader, an elected president is the country's highest ranking official. The president implements the constitution and chairs the executive body. There is also a parliament with 270 elected MP's including those representing religious minorities like Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews. Economy Iran has a growing market economy and efficient communication media and postal service but the telephone network is not yet fully extended to the rural areas. Iran produces various types of agricultural products like wheat, rice, potato, sugar beet, cotton, etc. Products such as dates, pistachio, fresh and dried fruits, caviar, flowers and medicinal plants are among the country's agricultural exports. Thanks to its geographical location, Iran has rich mineral resources of copper, aluminium, lead, chromite etc. In recent years extensive efforts have been undertaken for the exploration and utilisation of mines facilitating the export of mineral products. Industrial products made in Iran include various types of vehicles, home appliances, petrochemical products, iron and steel, of which a large amount is exported. Iranian handicrafts, including rugs and carpets, tapestry, miniatures, ceramics and so on are produced for both domestic use and export. The main figure in Iran's exports is that of oil. Iran is an OPEC member. Iran's oil industry became independent in 1950. In recent years Iran has been exploring, extracting, refining and shipping its oil 158 independent of technological assistance by other countries. With natural gas resources of about 17 thousand billion cubic feet, Iran is one of the world's biggest gas-rich countries. Educational System Iran has achieved a common structure of education throughout the country. This requires five years of primary school, three years of guidance school, three years of high school, and one year of pre-university school. Throughout these twelve years efforts are being made to promote uniformity in all aspects: Table 5.1 Stages of Education in Iran Age Stage Class 6-10 Primary 1-V 11 - 13 Guidance school VI - VIII 14 - 16 High school VIX - VXI 17 Pre-university VXII Education is compulsory until class five and free at all stages including higher education. Primary Education Efforts are being made to achieve universalisation of education until the age of 10 (primary stage). The rapid increase in primary school enrolment became apparent in 1990 when the dangers of ignoring family planning became evident. Although the government is very serious in its efforts to achieve universal primary education, places at primary school are only gradually becoming available for all and there remain children living in remote and deprived areas where there are no primary schools. The government has recently taken steps to address the needs of these children by establishing small schools in which the holders of a high school diploma teach as their 159 compulsory military service. But by far the most difficult problem to solve relates to provision for economically disadvantaged children in rural areas. These children are needed to help their parents at home or on farms. Guidance Schools According to official statistics, 74.7% of primary leavers enrol into the guidance schools. Since universal primary education is a top priority, the expansion of guidance schools has not been able to keep up with demand. This level of education, therefore, suffers from a shortage of instructional spaces and skilled teachers. Thus, most of these schools are being used as double-shift schools. High Schools 69.9% of guidance school leavers enrol in high schools. The most notable feature of this stage is that even after eleven or twelve years of schooling the vast majority of students do not acquire the competence to understand their cultural and socio- economic environment. The relationship between the high school curriculum and the job market is not as good as it should be. Jobs requiring high school education are not available at the same rate of high school graduation. The vocationalisation of the high school stage is therefore a major plank of the current educational policy in Iran's Second Development Plan (1994-99) (PBO, 1994) because of the shortage of middle skilled technicians in the country to fill the gap between high skilled and low skilled workforce. Not surprisingly, almost all leavers are interested in enrolling at university. On the other hand, there are not sufficient places available in universities to respond to the large numbers of applicants. 160 higher Education There are more than sixty national and private universities and seventy three other higher education institutions (UNESCO, 1992). All universities are under the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education (MCHE) while, since 1989, seventy two medical universities, have been under the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education (MHTME). As regards higher education, it is stated by national leaders that the quality and employability of university graduates is affected because arts and humanities are offered as linear programmes of study unrelated to real life, and science courses are designed essentially to explain concepts without supportive arrangements in the form of laboratory apparatus. Technical education also suffers from almost obsolescent machinery and equipment and lack of possibilities for research and training in respect of new technologies. Distance Education in the New Education Policy The emphasis of the new education policy on the national education system is on access, equity and impact. This policy was introduced in 1994 and redefines the role of education as a vehicle of human resource development in the country; to prepare the people to meet the challenges of the rest of this century. Among the various new approaches that have gained acceptance in recent years is the concept of distance education. This started out in the country in the form of correspondence courses in the 1970s but these were terminated in 1980. The new policy has begun to revive and build upon this system as a cost-effective way of meeting increasing demands for higher education. 161 The Development of Distance Education in Iran Historical Perspective Planning for modern development in Iran was begun in 1950 when the first Seven Years Development Plan of Iran (DPI) was produced. Special attention was not given to education in general or to higher education in particular in this plan, nor in the second one; a policy that was criticised by the compilers of the third DPI. In the third DPI (1964-68) attention was, to a certain extent, paid to educational affairs in which the provision of elementary education for 60% of the age group (6-10), increasing opportunities in secondary schools and improving the quality and quantity of higher education was proposed (Planning and Budget Organisation of Iran, (PBO) 1969, pp. B-H). Fourth Development Plan The higher education system in Iran has been faced with a variety of problems since the early sixties. Generally speaking, the most critical issues during this period have been the shortage of places at Iranian universities, the shortage of qualified academic staff at these institutions, the inadequacy of teacher training courses for under qualified or unqualified teachers, the insufficiency of material resources at the advanced institutions, and the ever-increasing pressure of student numbers. During the Fourth Development Plan (1969-73), therefore, a faster development of education, improving quality at all levels, increasing the number of students, and the establishment of a more desirable balance between the educational system and needs for skilled manpower were projected (PBO, 1969:238). Clearly, the traditional higher education system was not able to address these demands effectively and a modest 162 expansion and development of the system was by no means a feasible solution to existing problem. Under such circumstances, The Institution for Research and Planning in Science and Education entered the scene. In the late sixties, the experts of this institute carried out a comprehensive study to consider the feasibility of creating a distance education system in the hope of providing new services for under qualified and unqualified teachers and other government employees working in deprived or geographically isolated sectors. After two years, the various needs were identified, priorities were assessed and the material and human resources were considered. As planning proceeded it was decided to create a new correspondence faculty at Aburaihan Birooni University (ABU). ABU Correspondence Faculty As a result of these deliberations, the first Iranian Correspondence Faculty began its operation in 1971. The main goals of this new faculty were: • Improving the qualification and efficiency of young staff who work in rural areas or remote urban areas. • Providing higher education opportunities for people who were unable to further their studies at conventional universities (Prospectus of ABU 1972). Consideration of these goals shows that this new programme was fundamentally different from the conventional one. Some of the key differences include the: • expansion of higher education opportunities to underprivileged people; 163 • encouragement of young people to work in rural areas and recognition of the obligation to provide good services to the people who live in remote areas; . creation of possible opportunities for applying their new knowledge in real life. Disciplines and Degrees There were seven different fields of study at the Correspondence Faculty of ABU leading to the associate and bachelor degrees as indicated below: 1. Associate degree in management of Postal Services for post office staff 2. Associate degree in management of Banking for bank staff 3. Bachelor degree in Persian Language and Literature for rural high school teachers, and/or managers who had more than three years experience in these areas. 4. Bachelor degree in Elementary education for the same groups and rural schools supervisors. 5. Bachelor degree in Rural Economy and Co-operation for staff of rural co- operation companies, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Economy. 6. Bachelor degree in a combination of Physics-Mathematics for those groups of teachers who taught basic sciences in the rural areas. 7. Bachelor degree in a combination of Chemistry-Natural sciences for the same groups. This faculty was then divided into two: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Faculty of Sciences. In 1976, the Regional Centres Unit was set up at the 164 headquarters of the university which was responsible for the establishment and administration of local centres throughout the country. The applicants were required to be government employees and were to be allowed to choose only one field of study in one region. They were screened through the National Entrance Examination held once a year. Those who passed the examination were asked to provide sufficient evidence to show that the courses they intended to choose were relevant to their professional background, and for which there was a local demand. Method of Teaching The method of teaching was an amalgamation of correspondence and conventional methods with special emphasis on autonomy through the use of printed self- instructional texts. One of the most important characteristics of these materials was their clarity and simplicity to promote student learning. These were supplemented by some instructional media, weekend tutorial sessions which were arranged by the central organisation in the regional study centres and summer residential classes using the facilities of other institutions based in Tehran (the capital city) or various regions. The main part of the summer sessions was devoted to operational courses, laboratory activities and final examinations. Guidance and problem solving by correspondence and telephone were used occasionally. Evaluation System During the term, students received a monthly questionnaire for each course which was to be filled in and sent back to their tutors. These would then be returned to students with some directions and suggestions for their future studies after being considered and evaluated by tutors. The result of these evaluations made up 25% of their final mark for each course, while the other 75% was based on a final examination which 165 would be taken at the main campus or in the regional study centre. The conditions of higher education in the country at that time, the domination of traditional thought of the Iranian academic community and the lack of sufficient supplementary sources in terms of both media and related technology led the practitioners of the Correspondence Faculty to develop this model. Despite the prevalence of tradition, this was nevertheless an innovation in the country's higher education. Hence, there was some opposition in the form of the undervaluing of ABU degree quality. The satirical term of "the under the blanket degree" was prevalent and, unfortunately, still remains in use. In 1980, the ABU's Correspondence Faculty terminated its operation. This was due to Iran's cultural revolution, as a result of which all universities and higher education institutions stopped their activities for a short period. Below is some statistical information documenting its size and operation in 1980. Table 5.2 ABU Total Number of Students and Graduates Total No. of students 5037 No. of graduates Associate degree BA degree BSc. degree ________________ 1779 1305 818 No. of full-time staff Academic Supporting ________________ 56 64 Source of Finance National Budget Sum of annual budget US $ 2142857 in_1980 _________________________________________________ Source: ABU annual report on Correspondence Faculty, 1980 Establishment of the Free University of Ira,, (FUI) In the early seventies, the Institute for Research and Planning of Science and Education, which was partly impressed by the achievements of the Correspondence Faculty at ABU, and partly interested in innovatory educational schemes abroad, arranged some visits to Europe to draw up a report on the potential advantages of an 166 autonomous distance education institution. The results were satisfactory. In 1972, the overall planning strategy for the establishment of the Free University of Iran (FUI) was devised, and then preliminary planning, including preparations for the supply of study materials, necessary forecasts for the provision of specialist staff, together with the rectification of instructional shortages with the use of audio and visual technology, and development of necessary systems, all led to the admission of the first group of about 1,400 students in February 1977. The teacher training programme was given priority and designed in module form - a combination of physics-chemistry, physics- mathematics, and biology-geology. As a whole, 700 students entered these programmes at 14 local study centres. The same number of students entered the Public Health programme which was given the second priority. The FUI had been designed to address the most critical needs, such as ever-increasing demand for higher education while holding the costs to society within acceptable bounds, the need to accommodate a demand for higher education no longer limited to specific socio-economic and age groupings, and the need to provide highly skilled manpower in areas critical to national integration and development. Specifically, the stated objectives of this innovative university were: To help develop required manpower and specialised skills according to national priorities. To expand opportunities for Iranians to pursue higher education. • To raise the quality of higher education in a variety of fields. • To carry out research on educational techniques and methodology related specifically to the FUI teaching system (distance education). 167 To provide continuing education for those seeking further education or retraining. To provide general education programmes designed to raise the overall level of public awareness (çwospectus of FUI, 1977). It was, therefore, the intention of the FUI to provide the vehicle whereby as many Iranians as possible might seek and acquire the further education they desired, irrespective of sex, age, creed, profession, social status, or place of residence and with minimal disruption of the daily activities and responsibilities attendant to the individuals' present role in society. Instructional system of FUI The instructional system of the university had evolved in direct response to its goals and objectives. Briefly stated, the FUI was a distance teaching, multimedia university, offering an integrated educational package which included specially designed text books and printed course materials, nationally broadcast radio and TV programmes, home experimental kits and audio-visual materials and equipment. These elements were specifically designed to supplement, complement and enhance the study programme of the students, both at home and at the study centres. The university contended that the multimedia approach could contribute considerably to a more meaningful educational experience and facilitate the learning process of students who must of necessity "learn at distance". Decentralisation and the provision of higher education opportunities for the widely dispersed population of Iran required that the FUI course units be self-instructional, and that they provide a means of self evaluation. Since the programmes were developed in accordance with national manpower demands, the courses (where 168 possible) were inter-disciplinary (providing a broader range of individual skills) and were taught according to the principles of competency-based learning. In addition to the above methods, the FUI employed a nation-wide network of regional administrative and local study centres which performed a variety of functions in relation to the needs of both students and the central administration. Such a network had been seen as an essential factor in the successful operation and development of the university. Two of a centre's most important functions were to maximise the availability of support systems (including tutorial and guidance services for the students individually) and to increase the actual contact and communication between the students and the university. The Academic Programmes One of the fundamental tasks undertaken in the early stages of the development of the FUI was academic programme planning: the design of that group of academic activities which would lead to the attainment of a specific academic degree within the framework of the objectives laid down by the university. The academic programmes had been arrived at through co-ordination and in co- operation with those governmental planning bodies whose responsibility it was to determine the national requirements and priorities which reflected both the need for and response to the country's growth and progress. These requirements and priorities were further defined in the form of specific objectives which in turn formed the basis for the development of the actual courses. Each programme included research, operational and executive activities, each of which went through the following developmental phases: 169 . Needs assessment e.g. need for Maths and Science teachers at the secondary school level. • Stabilising principles regarding the aims of the programme and thereby defining the required competencies. • Identification of the aims and objectives of the programmes in order that priorities might be determined. • Analysis of aims in order to obtain competencies regarding each aim and analysis of competencies in order to obtain specific objectives regarding each competency. • Determination of instructional procedures and content required to achieve each objective (the documents of curriculum development of FUI, 1974). Thus, for each unit instructional objectives, criteria for achieving the objectives, assessment modes, suggested concept/topic outlines for designing modules, the identification of designers' resource materials, trainee resource materials and learning stages had been determined. This process revealed five areas of primary importance and resulted in the development of degree programmes in Teacher Training, Health Sciences, Rural Development, Technicians' Training and a non-degree General Education Programme. The Preparation of Course Material and the Integrated Media Package Course materials were produced at the FUI's headquarters by a team of experts. This team included subject matter specialists, educational technologists, curriculum developers, media producer-directors, editorial assistants and graphic designers. The media package which would be used to take the university educational software to its 170 students consisted of texts and printed materials, TV Programmes, radio programmes, audio-visual and slide-tape programmes and experimental kits for the science, health and technical training programmes. The media mix was determined in such a way that the lion's share of material to be taught was carried via text. However, through the use of a systems approach and curriculum development techniques the FUT courses were designed as integrated multimedia packages in which every medium was expected to perform a specific but related task. Depending on the nature of the course, the media might be used with either a unique or a complementary function. In particular, in relation to the needs of a university which was teaching at a distance and with limited human resources the multimedia approach was expected to perform several important functions: To provide a self-educational vehicle for those who were not officially enrolled in the university programmes; . To reduce the sense of isolation and depersonalisation inherent in a distance teaching system; To provide motivation, pacing and a means of immediate visual demonstration for the students (the documents of curriculum development of PUT, 1974). The broadcast media of PUT were produced in co-operation with the former National Iranian Radio Television's Educational Division. But all the other media production such as 16 mm films, video and audio cassettes, slide and photo series and slide tape programmes were the responsibility of the Broadcasting and Media Centre of the FUI (this centre was well equipped and unparalleled in the country at that time). 171 FUI radio and TV programmes would be broadcast via the former National Iranian Radio and TV, during the early morning, evening, and late at night in regularly allotted FLJI time slots. Each programme would be broadcast at least twice. The complete set of these programmes was also available for students to review at the media library of each regional study centre. Regional Study Centres Regional study centres had a modular structure designed for flexibility and future expansion. Each accommodated 100 students initially. This was where the real interface between the students and the university occurred. All the carefully laid plans, all the systems that had been developed and all of the materials that had been produced would be put to the test by the students who came to these study centres. The study centre would also provide them with the following facilities: a reference and multimedia library (for film slide, and video programme viewing), health and science laboratories, tutorial sessions, and an amphitheatre for seminars, presentations and examinations. Centres were open until late in the evening, six days a week. Tutors would provide tutorial and guidance sessions, monitor exams and assist with laboratory experiments and clinical procedures. A librarianitechnician trained by the FUI was on duty at all times to assist the students in their use of the library and the audio-visual materials. Table 5.3 Statistical Details on FUI in 1980 Number of enrolled students 3181 Number of graduates -- Number of full-time academic staff 426 Number of full-time supporting staff 758 Financial source national budget Sum of annual budget in 1980 $28,364,285 Annual report ot FU!, l9W 172 Critiques of Early Distance Education in Iran: Evaluation and Concluding Comments The activities of FUI and Correspondence faculty of ABU were not formally evaluated so, unfortunately, there is no systematically collated evidence to refer to at present. The following evaluative findings, however, are derived from some of the informants who were interviewed during the fieldwork for the present study and from insights gained from available planning documents, and the researcher's own experience. Overall, it is argued that the activities of ABU correspondence faculty and FUT showed that the application of effective distance education methods can contribute much towards the development of an efficient system of higher education to satisfy the demand for skilled and trained manpower in Iran. It also showed that despite some opposition, distance education can provide quality education outside the conventional lecture room. The opponents of the ABU correspondence system and opponents of FUI criticised the fact that they had been used to bring education, through print, radio or TV to students who would rarely attend classes. They thus ignored the importance of the role of teachers and face-to-face tutorials. In contrast, the executive committee of both universities put forward the view that people can only learn and/or develop themselves. They cannot be developed by another. They oppose, in Freire' s v'.ords, 'the banking concept of education' and also oppose the position that "learning is a valuable possession, held by the teacher or shut within the covers of a text book, that can be acquired provided the student listens or reads diligently and respectfully" (Dore, 1976, cited in Sewart et al., 1983:35). Instead, the supporters of distance education, stressed the importance of dialogue and self-learning. It is the human ability to act deliberately for a self-determined purpose, that leads to the expansion of one's own consciousness and the possibility to change ones' environment and society. 173 Criticism of the new system by the opposition, it is argued, was based upon lack of adequate knowledge about distance education and on contrary political or philosophical views concerning traditional education. Nevertheless distance education has been shown to have the following advantages for the country: 1. Both universities emphasised the rightful extension of educational opportunities and possibilities to remote and deprived areas. 2. Both insisted on applied aspects of instruction and knowledge although by different means. ABU trained state staff and in-service teachers only, based on a curriculum which was borrowed from conventional systems. FUT designed its own curriculum development by a consideration of needs, determination of priorities and job analysis. It can be said that ABU concentrated its efforts on existing employees whereas FUI focused on future employees. 3. Applied technology in the ABU was not as varied as in the FUI. However the use of complex technology such as computer terminals, TV programmes, audio-visual cassettes etc. by FUI required considerable expense, which caused an increase in the volume of investment and recurrent expenditure. It also led to a dependence by the FUI on the importation of technology and materials. Hence its critics, who opposed foreign influence, could see just reason for their attacks. 4. The ABU was faced with serious problems because of the shortage of qualified faculty members and the dramatic increase in the number of students. It also had considerable difficulty preparing distance learning materials and its supplementary equipment. The FUI on the other hand prepared efficient, high quality learning materials, using its qualified and well trained human resources and other experts such as instructional designers, educational technologists and editors, most of whom had 174 been educated or trained in England and America. The FUI also prepared high quality supplementary materials and established a confident repository for them for future use. They are still being used by other universities and the PNU today. 5. The ABU was basically a conventional university with a correspondence faculty inside it. Hence this faculty faced organisational and administrative problems. The integration of distance learning with conventional education showed that whereas distance learning should be treated as an innovation vis-à-vis the conventional system, in practice a strong tendency often develops for it to be assimilated into and absorbed by the latter. Bates (1990:11) points out that dual mode institutions which teach campus and offers courses at a distance 'have a harder struggle in providing courses due to a lower priority being given to distance teaching'. In contrast, the FUI, because of its relative independence and taking advantage of the occasion of increasing oil incomes in the years of 1975-78, started to develop its regional study centres and draw up ambitious plans. Because of the absence of an appropriate basis for technical and human mobilisation, along with the financial problems of the late 1 970s, these could not be properly realised. 6. Despite all of these problems the early Iranian distance education institutions (ABU and FUI) introduced a cheaper and popular higher education system into the country that impacted on other countries in that area as well. Eventually, the operation of both universities was suspended in 1980 by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR) as part of the cultural revolution in Iran. Cultural Revolution The universities played a considerable role in the triumph of the Islamic revolution. Most of the revolutionary groups, including the clergy, had their bases at the 175 universities (the establishment of the Friday prayer in Tehran University is symbolic of those times). After the victory of the revolution there was serious competition and even battle among the various revolutionary groups to control the universities. The revolutionary government, therefore, put an end to this battle and suspended all the universities' activities for a while in order to revive advanced education in the country. At the same time, the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR) was established in 1980. SCCR started to adapt the structure of the existing universities and institutions, and to develop new curricula particularly in social and human sciences based on the cultural and social needs of the country and especially based on Islamic values. It assigned specific tasks to the planners of the High Council of Planning. Consultants, and other experts, were invited to participate in considering the written submissions. Academic staff of the state universities were appointed to consider, review, revise or replace old courses in various fields with new ones. Certain courses on religious studies, ideology and philosophy of Islam and other religions were included in all programmes as compulsory for all students. As a result of these deliberations, some private higher education institutions which were already nationalised were iierged with state. e.rsite.s acc cce.e.s. e. these new settings was Allameh Taba Tabaee University which was established by the integration of the FUI and ABU along with eight other higher education institutions. A group of distance education practitioners including, the researcher, made an effort to prevent the Council from inserting distance education institutions into a conventional university setting but the council argued that the previous regime was trying to prevent students from being together in a campus because of their political force. The council viewed the government as a popular government, and the students 176 as the supporters, hence they did not wish to scatter them all over the country. At this stage it was argued that the country did not need a distance education system. Unfortunately a considerable number of the students of FUI and ABU could not finish their education because of their special circumstances of being bound up with the distance learning system. One of my informants explained this issue from the following revealing point of view: The decision was protested at by some experts indicating that this system [distance education] had no correspondence to conventional systems but I think the actual purpose of this policy was the destruction of this system (DBM - 3 - 95). When I asked for more details the informant explained that: One of the important reasons for this policy was political. As you know most of the faculty members of FUI belonged to the left-wing political groups [Left was a label which was stuck on all political groups that follow Marxism, Communism and socialism without distinguishing any differences between them]. The reason was that this group had been banned by the Shah's regime from teaching and face-to-face communication with the students in conventional universities. Transferring them to FUI was a better solution to avoid their criticism in lecture rooms, manipulation of public opinion and decreasing their direct influence on students. It is my personal belief that a great number of such people had been employed at FUI. Islamic Republicans who came to power after revolution believed that left-wing groups were divergent from the Islamic revolution. The majority of these groups at FUI were opposed to the cultural revolution. The policy makers in the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, therefore, found the termination of FUI's activities a good solution to the problem (DMB - 3 - 1995) It can be said that such a policy brought about firstly, greater control of the government over the universities, and secondly, banishment of the anti-Islamic revolution groups or individuals from the university under the banner of 'reduction of overheads' after inserting many universities and higher education institutions into the existing universities or the establishing of a new university. However, the problem was not properly resolved. Great promises by the revolutionaries created great expectations among the people. The argument that talent and competence are today's 177 distinguishing factors replacing yesterday's family and ancestral standing, created an ever increasing demand for education at all levels and accelerated the race to enter university, as the attainment of decent jobs and changing of social positions were now dependent upon higher education. The ignoring of family planning, population growth and its distribution were other dimensions of new problems. Limited capacities in conventional universities to absorb the number of secondary school graduates and limited financial resources were other factors that led the SCCR to review its decision and rethink a proposal for the establishment of a new distance education university which had been submitted in 1985 by a group of experts. The Establishment of Payame Noor University Original Rationale A rapid increase in the demand for higher education in Iran and very slow growth in the numbers of university places has become a major national problem. Today there are about 7,400 potential students per 100,000 population in the age group 18 - 24 in Iran, and some 1,700 students per 100,000 population. According to UNESCO's targets this should be at least 2,000 to 2,500 students The number of participants in the National Entrance Examination (the main gate to higher education in the country which is held once a year) increased by about 216 percent between 1983 - 1988, whereas the number of students admitted shows a 173 percent increase over the same period. Table 5.4 shows the number of participants and admitted students from 1983 to 1988. 178 Table 5.4 Total Participants in Entrance Examination in Relation to Total Admissions at State Universities Years Total participants Total admission Admission percentage 1983 366,752 32,600 8.9 1984 351,263 35,858 10.2 1985 442,507 44,475 10 1986 586,086 61,816 10.5 1987 554,502 64,050 11.6 1988 604,528 65,120 10.8 source: MCHE, 1989 These admission percentages were still far from the growth rate of the demand. In other words, considering the potential numbers of students, there should have been an enormous increase in the number of places. Zohoor et al (1992:230) state that: Studies of findings of the previous National Entrance Examination justify the fact that about one third of these applicants are potentially capable of furthering their studies at tertiary level. Thus, there exists a demand for almost 300,000 vacancies at the post-secondary level. In contrast, the total available places including both state universities and non-profit institutions are approximately 200,000 which is clearly less than demanded. Considering the potential numbers of students, there should have been at least a 50% increase in the admissions quota in order to absorb all of them. It is clear that an expansion in quantity was not to be achieved at the price of quality. The country was in need of a new approach. Considering the rapid expansion of school systems, and the swift population growth, the current priorities for higher education are to maintain a quality delivery system, to provide adequate resources and to respond to the enormous increase in the demand for higher education by establishing new universities and academic staff in the years ahead. The achievement of these goals by traditional approaches will be very difficult. 179 Furthermore, existing universities and higher education institutions are generally located in areas where different kinds of potential students do not have access to them due to work and family responsibilities or geographical restrictions. Access to these universities is limited to those who are financially capable of meeting the high expenses of their education. However, despite their competency, people with job and family commitments, poor applicants, and residents of remote areas are often deprived of these educational opportunities. On the other hand, those who are capable financially and intellectually of pursuing their education in such areas, have to move to the large cities. The economic system and population texture of small cities, towns and rural areas are disturbed by the immigration of students to large cities. This is because during their study, they become adapted to living in these cities and experience shows that they have no desire to return to their home towns. The consequence of this immigration is that the large cities gradually become over populated with a skilled and specialised work force whereas other areas suffer from the lack of a skilled work force. Large cities are faced with numerous unemployed graduates while remote areas are starved of them. Another national problem is that the natural resources of the country are situated in inaccessible and deprived regions with a bad climate. The authorities are obliged to cover high expenses in order to convince efficient and skilled experts to work in such sites for a short time. Despite the remarkable costs involved, these efforts have not brought about the expected results and effected rapid economic development, partly due to constant changes in personnel. Finally, the country has to bear the burden of decreasing gross national production, to strive to control rapidly expanding inflation, to look for ways of finding new 180 accommodation, to overcome unavoidable social problems, and to deal with the development of sub-cultures within the urban cultures. Renewed Interest in Distance Education Iranian higher education policy makers have, therefore, concluded that distance education as an innovatory system, is potentially capable of covering remote regions particularly small towns and rural areas by means of modern technology, new educational media and practical instructional methods. Although this system cannot be a remedy for all problems, the potential for rapid expansion in the scale of operation and the potential cost effectiveness of distance education justified investment in the system. In this way a great number of applicants are seen to benefit from the opportunities offered, which it is now believed will form a basis for the social, cultural and economic development of the country. Under such circumstances, there is a genuine need to make use of distance education as a complementary alternative to the existing higher education system. However, it was not until the mid eighties that the potential of distance education and the part it was capable of playing in national development became thoroughly evident. Eventually, the idea of distance education appeared again in the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education (MCHE), and in 1987 Payame Noor University was born. PNU began its operation on a main campus in the north-east of Tehran, with its beautiful Iranian architecture, which lies on the attractive fringe of the Alborz mountains. Twenty eight local study centres have also been retained from previous distance education institutions. Legal Status of PNU The legal status of the university was provided in the 94th (18th November, 1986) and 97th (16th December, 1986) sessions of the SCCR. The fundamental law of PNU was 181 legalised by adopting some amendments to, and revising the 99th (22nd November, 1988) and 100th (29th November, 1988) joint sessions of Commissions one and two of the SCCR. Important articles of that law are as follows: Article 1. In order to fulfil the distance education system, the central organisation of Payame Noor University is established in Tehran and its study centres are set up in different cities in the country. Article 2. The university is a legal body of the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education and in view of administration and financial rules would be run in accordance with especial regulations which will be approved by the Board of Trustees. Article 3. The main bodies of the university are as follows: a. Board of Trustees. b. Council of the University. c. Chancellor of the University. Article 5. Duties and authorities of the board of trustees are as follows: a. Making the general policy of the university b. Approving the basic principles of development plan of the university and making decisions for the termination of the activities or abolition of disciplines or units of the university. c. Preparing the annual budget of the university and proposing it to the related bodies. d. Determining the amount of annual tuition and approving the financial, trading, administration, and employment regulations. e. Approving the organisation chart of the university. f. Approving financial activity statements and annual account balance of the university g. Approving the beneficial regulations attributable to products of the university including Payame Noor University Press, Broadcasting Centres, etc. h. Accepting or refusing of donations from private persons, bodies, or foundations in monetary and non-monetary forms. i. Approving the internal rules of the university. j. Assessing and evaluating the quality of education in the university. k. Putting forward the proposal of the dissolution of the university to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR) for approval. Article 6. The University Council is composed of the chancellor, vice-chancellors, deans of faculties, one representative of regional centres, two representatives of local study centres, and two representatives of faculty members. The duties and authorities of the Council are as follows: • Proposing the policies and the development plans of the university to the Board of Trustees. 182 • Proposing student admission capacity for each programme of study to the Board of Trustees for approval and • Proposing all the cases that are relevant to the achievement of the objectives of the university to the Board of Trustees for approval. It is worth mentioning that the Board of Trustees handed some of its authority such as approving the internal and instructional rules and regulations, over to the University Council to accelerate the activities of the university. Article 7. The Chancellor of the university is the representative of PNU for external interactions with other national and/or international organisations, associations, and societies. He/she is also responsible for all the administrative affairs. Article 12. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) will assign some of the radio and television broadcasting times to the university teaching programmes. Note: The broadcasting expenses have to be met by the IRIB and the production expenses have to be covered by PNU Article 14. The university will award Associate and Bachelor Degrees. Note: The university graduates may participate in the entrance examinations of the conventional universities and if accepted, they can continue their education towards higher degrees (Constitution of PNU, 1986 and 1988). Aims and Objectives of PNU The objectives of the university are as follows: • Promoting cultural and scientific qualification in the society. • Offering a chance to people who live in remote areas and continuing their studies. • Creating opportunity for people with family and work commitments who are notable to continue their studies at conventional universities. • Providing instruction to applicants to acquire technical, vocational, professional, and educational qualifications. • Using all possible facilities for the development of higher education in the country. • Presenting degree-level courses to teachers and as a result, solving the problem of shortages of qualified teachers in schools. 183 • Arranging short and long term updating courses and public training to keep people informed of the latest technical and scientific achievements. • Accelerating economic and social developments by means of cultural promotion (UNESCO 1992 and PNU's Prospectus, 1995). Organisational Structure of PNU At the initial stage of the operation of the university, there was no clear organisational structure. Therefore, the design of the organisation of PNU needed to be deliberately considered. The unique feature of the university as the only distance education institution in the country, called for a background study of the system, data collection, identification of demands, and organisational needs followed by the implementation of a tentative organisational structure. This was carried out by the Organisation Committee comprising the organisational experts and counsellors of PNU. The committee arranged numerous meetings with the administrators and authorities of the university and its regional centres. At the same time, a comparative study was made between the organisational structure of conventional and distance education systems. The result of these activities was the design of the Master Organisational Chart, and the Book of Organisational Positions for PNU, which were submitted to the Organisation of Administrative Affairs and Employment (OAAE) for final approval. OAAE, in turn, made the necessary adjustments and adaptations so that everything would fit and conform to the national regulations, and organisation standards for public institutions. This process took OAAE the best part of a year during which the Organisation Committee of PNU was regularly invited by OAAE to elaborate the problematic areas or to justify the various issues. 184 Finally, the master organisation chart and the detailed organisational bodies of PNU were approved by OAAE in 1992, and were officially reported to the university for implementation. This led to PNU's workings based on a tentative organisational chart created by its initial managers, for some five years. This period of time was sufficient to gain valuable experience about the organisational demands on the university and to use the experience obtained in discussing with OAAE experts to justify the unique nature of the university and its fundamental differences with conventional universities. Now PNU as a state university operates under the MCHE and, as already mentioned, has three main bodies at the policy making level: the Board of Trustees, the Council of the University, and the Chancellor of the University. The Minister of Culture and Higher Education is the president of the Board of Trustees. The Chancellor who is also a member of the Board of Trustees, is nominated by the Minister of Culture and Higher Education, approved by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, and appointed by the aforementioned minister. The Chancellor has four vice-chancellors namely for Academic Affairs, Administration and Financial Affairs, Student Affairs and Research. Appendix 4 shows the organisational chart of the university. A Comparison of the Organisational Structure of PNU with Conventional Universities in Iran The organisation of PNU is unique in Iran's higher education system. This is explained by its exclusive role in distance education. There are in fact four organisational bodies at PNU which are entirely different from conventional ones. 1. The section for compiling and preparing of study materials in the Academic Vice- chancellor's Office. 2. The educational media centre and test bank department in the Academic vice- chancellor's office. 185 3. The existence of regional and local centres in the organisational body of the PNU each of which replicates the headquarters on a small scale. These regional organisations in effect guide, lead and control the local study centres which are under them. The local study centres are in charge of administrative, educational, research, cultural, developmental, and financial affairs. 4. The Technical Management and Development Plans Office, in the Headquarters which is responsible for planning, leading and controlling the construction activities at both the main campus and the regional and local study centres. These units along with other organisational parts of PNU are peculiar to distance education. In contrast, conventional universities warrant a different organisational structure owing to the face-to-face components of teaching. Inevitably though there are some similarities in the management of both systems with those relatively similar duties pertaining to both types of organisation. Table 5.5 shows the similarities and differences between PNU and conventional universities in terms of organisational structure. Table 5.5 The Comparison of PNU and Conventional Universities Organisational Structure The general organisational structure of Iranian universities PNU conventional Univ. Office of chancellor, Vice-chancellor, planning curriculum, development, 1 research, international co-operation, administrative and financial affairs, + + - faculties* , computer services**, sports Regional and local study centres, educational media centre, bureau of text 2 production, study materials distribution, publishing house central, regional and + local libraries, assessment and student affairs, regional and local centres - — development planning 3 Management of student services, students welfare (accommodation, self-service + etc. ) broad administrative, financial and educational organisations within the - faculties____________ __________________________________ * Regardless of the term faculty which is used in both systems, there is a significant difference in terms of activities and duties. Faculties at PNU are responsible for the development of the learning materials, planning and producing educational resources, as well as monitoring the quality of education, central supervised examinations, and establishing co-ordination among the departments in the main campus and departments of the regional and local centres. However, faculties at conventional universities play almost the same roles as the regional centres of PNU do. ** Computer services are exclusively provided for data collection and students records at conventional universities. In contrast, at PNU as well as those services, the computer network plays the role of data 186 base and/or bank. That is, to say existing the computer network is an efficient component of the educational system (Askarian and Yazdanifard, 1995). As well as these differences, PNU has its own definition for some academic and non- academic positions. For example, the term of 'academic staff which is used in both the conventional and distance education system, carries considerable differences in the nature of its activities and duties at PNU. Academic staff at PNU are responsible for the development of self-study texts, occasional tutorial sessions, face-to-face weekend classes, and collaboration with study centres rather than solely teaching in lecture rooms or joining a research team. Academic staff at the study centres of PNU play almost the same role as those in conventional universities. The approved ratio of academic staff to students at PNU is 1/38 (one academic for every 38 students) which is much greater than that of 1/15 in conventional universities. But at present this ratio is 1/134 (Bureau of Budget and Organisation of PNU, 1995) which means that the university suffers from a shortage of full-time academic staff and tries to compensate by using traditional university academics as part timers and contract staff. The ratio of students to supportive staff is also greater than is found at conventional universities. This is determined by the size and type of study centre. Table 5.6 shows this classification. Table 5.6 Classification of Study Centres in Terms of the N umber of Students and Stali Type of No. of No. of centre students supportive ________ _____________ staff A upto750 52 B 751-1250 64 C 1251-1750 74 D 1751-2250 82 E over 2250 88-100 187 Recruitment and Training of Academic and Supportive Staff Both academic and supportive staff are recruited in line with national regulations for staff. The process of recruitment of academic staff is more involved than is the case for supportive staff. First of all, each applicant must fill out the university's application form and send it to the university along with her/his curriculum vitae then they are invited for an interview by the appropriate department. The selected people are introduced to the recruitment committee of MCHE. This committee makes the final decision and informs the result to the university. Because of the shortage of qualified applicants there is serious competition among the universities for recruitment. MCHE, therefore, allocates a share for each university annually. This differs slightly for PNU, because the group tutorials and face-to-face classes are held at weekends and national holidays. The academic staff of conventional universities which are situated in each region are, therefore, able to co-operate with the local centres. Since most new academic staff are not familiar with distance education each department arranges one or two induction sessions for them before they start their work. They also arrange some occasional seminars for academic staff in each programme for exchanging personal experience and solving the more common and acknowledged problems. One example is the monthly session under the name of 'being familiar with distance education' for all staff in headquarters. Regional and Local Study Centres The organisational structure of PNU as shown in appendix 4 is a pyramid form so that the chancellor is at the top after the Board of Trustees and four vice-chancellors' 188 offices operate under the chancellor's office. The domain of the vice-chancellors expands with regard to the development of the university's regional and local centres. Furthermore, the regional and local centres operate on the basis of the predetermined policies of headquarters with minor variation. The present duties of regional centres are planned to be codified. The interaction of these centres with the headquarters is also centralised. That is to say the centres mainly operate in accordance with the rules of the headquarters. The Process of the Establishment of Study Centres Thanks to the nature of the distance education system, its relative independence in Iran and the fact that this system is basically student-centred, it can cover a large population of students over a large geographical area. There is a relation between the dispersion of cities and the number of study centres. Study centres of PNU are mainly set up in line with the formation of the Board of Founders in the target cities. The Board of Founders consists of the authorities of a city including the Governor, Mayor, General Director of education along with the trustees and well-known persons of the city (MHH 11- 95). The university provides a list of initial needs for founding these centres. The list includes ensuring an appropriate building or ensuring the necessary resources for making a building according to the standards of the university, ensuring expenditure for three years, providing necessary equipment such as personal computers and printers, copy machines, office furniture, laboratory facilities if necessary and so on. Introducing at least two academics to take the responsibilities for the instructional programmes is one of the important preconditions of this stage. The Board of Founders undertakes to meet these initial needs and report to the university's headquarters. This is the contribution of the people to the development of PNU throughout the country. This being done the university gains the approval of the Council for Development of Universities and Higher Education Institutions to establish certain study centres. The Board of Founders usually remains active for a couple of years or more, and their activities may 189 give a positive or negative impact Yet, it may be necessary for a study centre to keep in touch with the Board of Founders for a long time (MHP-10-95). The regional and local study centres are administered by principals appointed by the Chancellor of the university. PNU started its operation with 28 study centres which remained from the two previous distance education institutions. It now has some 120 regional and local study centres which indicates a dramatic increase in a very short time. Table 5.7 presents the development of PNU's study centres. Table 5.7 Development of Local Study Centres at PNU Years 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 No.of 28 30 43 62 73 89 118 120 centres As the number of the centres increases so their administration, control and co- ordination become more complex. Originally there was no special unit to act as a controlling agent at headquarters. Numerous problems were therefore created as a result of rapid development and the disparity among centres. Askarian and Yazdanifard (1995:85) two of PNU's practitioners have some recommendations to solve this problem: The principle of division of labour, classification of duties and the principle of organising dictate the following items for the achievement of the objectives of the system: 1. On the basis of specific factors, the centres must be classified within the regions. 2. The description of duties of the centres and regions must be specified in order to avoid interference and extra activities and to save the time and to use the financial resources properly. 3. There must be clear procedure for the interactions among the regional and local centres and the staff managers. 4. Appropriate and balanced authorities and responsibilities are required to be entrusted to the centres. 190 These recommendations by two practitioners of PNU served as an acceptable solution to the problem. That is to say the issues of the continuous supervision and control throughout the headquarters resulted in the division and classification of the local centres and the creation of the regional centres as a middle level management to be in charge of the supervision and co-ordination of administrative affairs. On such a basis, two or more neighbouring provinces (there are twenty five provinces in Iran) were classified as a region while considering their geographical location, the number of centres and the distance between them, the number of students and the revision of the previous programmes of the study. Reconsideration of the previous distance teaching institutions in the country revealed that the regional centres should operate as a bridge or mediator between headquarters and local centres. Accordingly the regional centres were given the role of co-ordinators, guides and advisors. It was, therefore, argued that middle level management at the regional centres would deal with most administrative problems of the centres that call for immediate decision making thereby maintaining a balance and co-ordination and reducing the direct interaction between the centres and headquarters. Table 5.8 presents the regional centres, their geographical coverage and student population in 1995. Table 5.8 Classification of the Centres in Geographical Regions Regions No. of No. of Study Students* Percent __________ provinces Centres population __________ 1 3 13 10125 9.40 2 2 13 11741 10.91 3 2 11 17145 15.93 4 4 17 9372 8.71 5 3 12 9229 8.57 6 3 10 6740 6.26 7 3 14 9800 9.12 8 1 11 11921 11.09 9 2 12 13826 12.85 10 2 7 7708 7.16 Total 25 120 107607 100 * excluding non-degree and international students. 191 The Duties of Regional Centres Since the regional centres as new organisational bodies were not predicted in the master organisational chart of PNU, clarification of duties and the range of activities of regional centres became necessary. Hence, the duties of the heads of regional centres were clearly defined. These centres have been allowed to set forth their main issues and address urgent problems at middle level management. The implementation of this policy reduced the administrative challenges of the headquarters and provides an opportunity for them to spend more time on fundamental issues. The duties of regional centres are now as follows: to supervise the implementation of educational, administrative and financial policy of headquarters in local centres; • to hold regional meetings to set forth proposals in the relevant committee in order to resolve educational, administrative and financial problems which are solvable at region or local level.; • to evaluate the quality of booklets, instructional guides and texts submitted by tutors, on specialist committees and dispatching the selected works to the related faculties at the headquarters for reconsideration and approval; to study and advise the sabbatical leave and scholarships awarded to the academics of the local centres, and to submit the measures taken to the office of vice- chancellor, research; • to recruit the academic staff for local centres according to the current rules of the university; • to encourage the academics and students to research and co-operate with the office of the vice-chancellor of research; 192 . to distribute the study materials, instructional media and laboratory equipment or materials which have been dispatched from the headquarters; and finally . to control any construction and works, development and maintenance of the buildings of the study centres with co-ordination of the headquarters (Approved by the Board of Trustees, 1992). The Duties of Local Centres to implement the university's plans concerning educational, administrative and financial concerns at the centres; . to encourage the academics, students and local scholars to research in relevant areas and local problems; . to execute the general rules and regulations as well as the approved educational regulations under the supervision of the chancellor and vice-chancellors of the university; . to establish co-ordination between educational and non-educational programmes; . to organise the council of the centre in order to deal with the educational, research, student, administration and finance, and development problems at the centres; . to have continuous collaboration with the regional centres and to participate in the meetings held at the council of the region; . to organise the student services such as registration, tutorial sessions, and face-to- face classes, to administer the mid-term and final supervised examinations and to keep records of the students; and ts consider the admission capacity of centres with the co-operation of the regional centres (Approved by the Board of Trustees, 1992). 193 These changes in the organisational structure of the university show the tendency of the headquarters at PNU to promote the decentralisation of its largely centralised organisation. Yet, the domains of the Vice-chancellor's offices are also expanding with respect to the development of the regional and local centres. In terms of job description the present organisational features of PNU are mainly centralised at the headquarters. The duties of regional and local centres indicate that they have still to function on the basis of the predetermined policies and regulations of the headquarters except in minor cases. There is little place for their own creativity and personal initiatives. Recently some steps have been taken to establish some study centres in neighbouring countries. The study centre of PNU in the United Arab Emirates, for example, is now at work and the study centres of Afghanistan and Republic of Azerbaijan will start their operations very soon. The Instructional System of PNU Distance education differs from other modes in terms of the methods it employs for mass education. In conventional systems it is the teacher who forms the learning behaviour of the students through the regular attendance in classroom, and following the face-to-face teaching-learning methods. In contrast, the learning behaviour of students, in distance education, depends largely upon the administrative methods of the organisation, quality of study materials and tutors and course writers. The replacement of teacher with the self-study materials represents the significance of such materials. Therefore, the university is in charge of planning, supporting and provision of instructional services for students who are themselves responsible for their learning at distance. 194 The language of study at PNU is Persian. English language is also used as a second language. The major component of instruction is printed materials representing more than 90% of the instructional package. Personal and group tutorial sessions, weekend face-to-face classes, television programmes for only some science courses, audio and video cassettes, laboratories and experimental kits for some science programmes are also available. Each of these components is discussed below. Printed Study Materials Printed study materials are divided into three types: self-instruction text, reference books and study guides. Reference books are usually recommended by tutors as a supplementary source and are available in book shops. Study guides are compiled by the PNU's experts for each programme of study. Printed self-instruction texts are the major instruction component and the most suitable core around which other media is designed at PNU. These materials are required to be developed according to the national curriculum for every discipline arid national syllabuses for every course of higher education. As a result, part of the task of designing a given course has already been done. One of the informants of this study argues that: The advantage of the existence of national standardised syllabuses for PNU is that the course production bureau benefits from the whole national potential of academic staff in terms of optimisation of the process of course development (MHB-6-95) However, the background of these academics and their conservative tendency towards traditional pedagogy can affect the quality of their writings and co-operation with the university. For this reason, PNU usually arranges some orientation meetings for them and has published a special guide book entitled 'How to Write Self-study Texts'. The policy of the university is to convince the course writers from conventional universities that their familiarity with the art of writing self-study texts will have 195 a positive impact on their approach to teaching at their own universities, and will eventually promote the quality of the educational system of the university in general. (MHB-6-95). Although the development of course materials has a short history, there is an increasing tendency among the professors of conventional universities to co-operate with the PNU's course development teams. PNU tries to use their full potential, particularly their highly qualified professors for writing, editing and evaluating its self-study texts. A few years ago they used to spend all their time only at conventional universities. This can be viewed as a major contribution of the PNU to the Iranian academic and higher education community. The publishing of hundreds of books and articles would never have been possible if PNU had not existed. PNU has raised the rate of payment for writing or editing to a high level because this type of investment is vital for the development of quality texts. This is another contribution of PNU to the academic community. Development of Self-study Materials Self-study materials are developed by course teams of various departments and delivered to the bureau preparing and compiling study materials. The first draft of course is prepared by one or more well known specialist(s) in the related field. This draft is assessed by the university. If it is acceptable the writer(s) will be invited to join the pertinent course team which includes an educational teclmologist, editor, illustrator, designer of laboratory activities and if it is necessary, a television director and producer. The educational technologist co-operates closely with the course writer(s) in clarifying the objectives, methods of delivery for independent study, and choosing the appropriate audio-visual aids. The illustrator, in turn, furnishes the text with drawings, graphical designs and pictorial representations intended for 196 elucidation. The joint action of the director and producer of radio and television programmes the course writer(s) and the educational technologist result in the production of audio tapes, video tapes, slides and film strips. The editor considers the clarity, choice of words and pictures, and writing style of the text according to the university's standards of self-study materials. Finally, the role of the laboratory designer is to devise the activities that are to be done in the laboratory. Then, the final draft is typed by computer services and delivered to the printing and publishing centre of the university. Figure 5.1 presents the process of the course production. Figure 5.1 The Process of Course Production at PNU Writer (s) Self study text, 1Aessmeh1t i _Jourse team Studyguides, ___________ ____________ Booklets, etc. Production and distribution Educational I I Graphical I I Technical I Editing1 I Type Design Design Setting I setting Over the eight years from 1987 to 1995 about 850 books were generated, a total of more than three million copies (Printing and Publishing Centre (PPC), 1995) published by the publishing house of the PNU. Individual and Group Tutorial Sessions Regional and local study centres of PNU are usually open six days a week except Saturdays (the national weekend in Iran is Thursday and Friday). The academic staff at study centres are encouraged to devote more time to individual or group tutorial sessions. The students can come to them for solving their problems and for appropriate counselling individually or in groups. These face-to-face contacts of tutors and students provide a special opportunity for students to ask tutors to explain 197 difficult points and to answer their questions as well as providing social interaction and developing mutual friendly relationships which are crucial for isolated students. The young and unemployed students are the major users of these services. The students also have the option to contact the tutors by telephone and/or letters in order to further enhance their comprehension of the study materials. Face to-face Residential Classes Another mode of learning of great significance for PNU is weekend or public holiday face-to-face residential classes. These classes are arranged to compensate for the limitations of study materials and create social interaction opportunities between students and staff, and the students themselves. At these face-to-face group sessions students can raise questions regarding the materials, or discuss their points of view about the course with their tutors or each other. Alternatively, the tutors themselves may choose to initiate discussion on a topic from the course material for enrichment purposes. There is the flexibility to arrange additional session(s) for those students who need it. There is generally a relation between the course weight, difficulty and whether the course has TV programming or not, and the numbers of class meetings in an 18 week semester. Two class meetings are normally arranged for each credit unit of general and basic courses. Up to four class meetings are organised for every credit unit of specialised courses (see table 5.9) but these are not a fixed rule. The courses that turn out to be difficult in nature such as mathematics and physics etc. may have more classes. It is usually in the first semester of offering the course that it becomes clear whether such a measure should be taken or not. 198 Table 5.9 Face-to-face Residential Classes in Each Semester Type of course Group Group Personal Personal course weight Tutorials Tutorials Tutorials Tutorials (units) Hours per Hours per Hours per Hours per semester semester semester semester With TV Without TV With TV Without TV _________________ __________ programmes programmes programmes programmes General& 1 1 2 0 3 Education 2 2 4 0 6 (teacher Training) 3 3 6 0 9 Basic 2 2 4 4 8 3 3 6 6 12 _________________ 4 4 8 8 16 Specialised I 2 2 6 6 6 3 3 9 9 9 ________________ 4 4 12 12 12 Specialised 11 2 2 8 8 8 3 3 12 12 12 ________________ 4 4 16 16 16 Source: Zohoor et ai., 1991 A valuable common practice in the university is to assign the authors of the text books to participate in the class meetings at a study centre at least for one semester. The course writers, in this way, find an exceptional opportunity to recognise the defects in their arguments, the appropriateness or the level of difficulty of the text, its mistakes and gaps. The students, in turn, let the course writers know whether their books gave all relevant information and expected facts in a comprehensible way and provide actual teaching by sufficient explanations, exemplification and repetitions or otherwise. Personal observation of the courses as well as comments and criticism from the students and tutors of the study centres gradually forms a foundation for the revision of these courses before being reprinted and offered in the subsequent semesters. The members of academic staff at regional and local centres are by no means sufficient for running tutorials (there are one or two academic staff for each discipline in each centre and the target is four per discipline). Each centre is responsible for 199 recruiting the academics of conventional universities which are located in the region as part time or contract academics. This can be more convenient for them because the group tutorials are held at weekends and national holidays when they are free of obligation to their own universities. Both regional and local centres are relatively successful in providing the necessary academics for running the group and individual tcria1s. There were no reports or evidence as regard to the lack of co-operation bet'een sti.dj centres and other local higher education institutions. The management of these tutorials is thoroughly decentralised even within the local centres (SAM-4- 95). Thus, the planning, organising, leading and controlling of all the activities related to tutorials is the responsibility of the centres. Television Programmes Television programmes are used as another component of instruction. These programmes help to make the education more stimulating and help the students to understand the subjects in a more practical way. The programmes are produced only for a few science courses that require either observation or elaboration of practical activities. The Educational Media Centre (EMC) which works under the office of Vice-chancellor for Academic Affairs is in charge of producing of these programmes. According to PNU's foundation rules as approved by SCCR (article 12) these programmes must be produced in co-operation with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and PNU. IRIB is then committed to produce and broadcast the educational programmes of PNU during the academic year. The production expenses have to be covered by PNU and the broadcasting expenses should be met by IRIB. The High Council of Co-ordination and Planning was set up to co-ordinate these activities. It consists of the Chancellor, Vice-chancellor of academic affairs, General 200 Director of EMC from PNU and the Educational Programmes Manager of IRIB. This council is mainly concerned with the production aspects and timing of the programmes. The experts and educational producers of IRIB are generally familiar with distance education and some of them had been involved in producing the educational programmes of the FUI. The programmes are produced with the assistance of the academic staff of PNU and are broadcast in the early afternoon (from 3.30 to 5 p.m.) and late at night (from 11.30 to 12.30). Most of the students have TV sets, but they may be at work in the early afternoon and unable to watch the programmes or too tired to watch television late at night. Apart from the problem of the time of broadcasting, the technical quality of produced programmes was not satisfactory to the university. Although eminent academics of PNU and conventional universities presented these programmes the technical quality of the programmes seemed to be not as good as their contents. Moreover, there appeared to be no direct relation between broadcasts and the progress of the students doing that part of the course (MKI-I-8 -95). This means that, the programmes were not broadcast with respect to the progress and pace of students. In other words they were occasionally broadcast later than the university's semester time table. On the other hand, PNU was not able to resolve the problem because they had a low degree of executive discretion in the process of production and broadcasting. Despite this, IRIB recently has insisted on making sure all expenses, including the production and broadcasting cost, are fully met by PNU. This has increased the cost of production to such an extent that PNU has decided to terminate its co-operation with IRIB (MKH-8-95). The produced programmes are now available on video cassettes at study centres for students. The whole range of 201 programmes which are produced and broadcast in the academic year of 1994-95 are listed in table 5.10. Table 5.10 Educational TV Programmes Produced and Broadcast Name of the No. of the time total time programme programme (minutes) (hours) Basics of Math. 12 30 6 Mathematics I 12 30 6 Mathematics II 12 30 6 Algebra I 16 30 8 General chemistry I 14 30 7 General chemistry II 8 30 4 Analytical chemistry 12 30 6 Physics I 8 30 4 Chemistry-physics 16 30 8 Statistical methods 7 30 3.5 Basics of computer 17 30 8.5 Total 134 30 67 In 1995 a plan was put underway at PNU to establish its own educational television network. In this respect the authorities of MCHE and PNU have signed a protocol costing US S 50 million with Russian authorities for the establishment of this network and use of their satellite facilities to broadcast PNU's programmes to the whole country as well as some neighbouring countries to be implemented within the next five years. 45% of the required capital is to be granted by the Islamic Development Bank following negotiations held in 1995 (Ettelaat, No. 314, 17th August, 1995). Audio-visual Cassettes After terminating the agreement between PNU and IRIB, audio-visual cassettes became a most important component of PNU's instructional method. At present, EMC is producing audio and video programmes for some courses with its modest facilities to compensate of these shortages. The EMC has twelve staff: producer-director, graphic designer, animators, cameramen, calligrapher, photographers, and electronic technicians. Steps are being taken to set up four studios: two video studios, one audio and one dubbing studio at the main campus. This centre has produced several 202 programmes on Geology, Geography and Biology. It also dubbed several scientific video programmes which have been produced in other countries into Persian. The centre also reproduced the audio and visual programmes which have remained from FUI. Students can either buy or borrow these cassettes for a limited time or can use them in the media centre of study centres. A typical media centre at each regional or local centre has a TV room with capacity for 20 people to watch a programme together; an audio-visual lab with five separate TV booths and two separate audio booths; a command room which is used as an archive as well and in which control panels are installed. There are also ten video recorders in the room which is linked to all the classrooms. It is, therefore, possible to play ten different tapes simultaneously for ten classrooms. The fourth room belongs to the technical staff who are in charge of the maintenance and repair of the equipment. The tapes are also duplicated in this room. Setting up of these media centres started in early 1994, and is continuing until all study centres have one. Five of these media centres are active now and the others are under way (Alimohammadi and Hemmat, 1995). Laboratories and Experimental Kits 14 regional and local study centres are offering four programmes of study in applied physics, biology, chemistry and geology, and one local study centre offers an environmental health programme. Each of these centres has the related laboratory facilities for basic courses. Laboratories are open at weekends and on national holidays and operate according to a predetermined time table which has already invited students. The main laboratory activities for students takes place in summer sessions. Some more specialised laboratory-based courses used to be done at conventional universities or other research institutions during weekends, public and 203 school holidays or at other times when their laboratories were not in use. Conventional universities are committed to assist the study centres and PNU has to pay all the expenses of such activities to these universities. In practice, however, it is difficult to arrange laboratory activities at the right time and place. There is, therefore, some irregularity in offering laboratory-based courses. These can be postponed until having access to better equipped laboratories in the region. However, the students must complete the required laboratory-based courses for graduation. The home experimental kits which were designed to provide the equipment and materials for some simple experiments required for a course, can be borrowed for a limited time and students have to pay for consumed materials or damaged equipment. Careful consideration was taken of the students' environment and limited access to certain chemical materials, a strong emphasis being placed on the complete and self- contained nature of the kits' design and assembly. Programmes of Study At present there are six types of programmes which are presented in the fields of: Science and Technology including applied physics, biology, chemistry, computer engineering (software), environmental health, geology, and mathematics; Business and Management including accountancy, business administration, public administration, and statistics; Social Sciences including education, English language, geography, Islamic theology, Persian literature and language, physical education, psychology, and sociology. These six programmes are as explained below. 1. Formal Degree Programmes These programmes are offered to those who pass the National Entrance Examination held annually by the National Educational Assessment Organisation (NEAO). The 204 period of study for these students is seven to twenty semesters depending upon their progress and pace of study. Each academic year in Iran includes two semesters (Autumn and Spring) with a total of eighteen weeks (sixteen to seventeen teaching weeks and one or two examination week(s). A credit system is used based on one credit for every eighteen hours of teaching and examinations per semester. This system actually, is used for all other types of programmes. A total of 130-36 credit units are required for a Bachelors Degree. The degree is equal to those awarded by conventional universities. If the graduates are in employment they are assigned a new job in their original place of work to suit both their newly acquired speciality and the needs of the unit. Unemployed students will find a suitable job according to their new academic qualifications. A considerable number of these kind of graduates become secondary school teachers. When they are assigned a new job, they will be treated and paid as equal to conventional university graduates. 2. Associate Degree Programme This programme is offered at associate degree level and only in environmental health. A total of 65 to 70 credit units are required for this degree. The target students of this programme are in-service adults and secondary school graduates who are working for local environmental health service organisations. The admission is granted to those who pass the National Entrance Examination. 3. Equivalent Degree Programmes These programmes were initiated in 1992 to launch special degree programmes exclusively for employees of public and private sectors on the basis of their demands at each region. The applicants are required to be secondary school diploma holders and sit for a specific entrance examination held by the university with the co-operation 205 of NEAO nation-wide. The applicants must also submit a formal recommendation from their employers. Although the course syllabuses are the same as those for formal degree programmes, the awarded degree is recognised as the equivalent of formal degree only by the sector in which they work as full or part timer employees. The purpose of these programmes is to develop the participants' skills and knowledge, and as a result their professional positions. Currently, there are 62 regional and local centres that offer these programmes. The enrolment rate for these programmes should not exceed one third of that of formal degrees. 4. General Degree Programmes These programmes were first launched in early 1993 in four fields of study including mathematics, biology, Persian literature and language and education at Bachelors Degree level. The programmes are the most flexible ever offered by a university in Iran. Applicants are required to be secondary school graduates with an acceptable grade point average (GPA) in their written examination which is specified by PNU annually. In 1995 it was 13 (65%) out of twenty in mathematics, 14 (70%) in natural sciences and 15 (75%) in other subjects. One important change in admission policy is that applicants no longer need to attend the national entrance examinations. This policy of admission as now employed at PNU is the first in the history of Iranian higher education. The admitted students will study conditionally for one semester. If they succeed in the final examination of the first semester they will be able to continue their studies, otherwise they will be withdrawn. The study centres despatch the relevant study materials to the students who must study independently and are entirely responsible for their studies. Unlike the formal 206 programmes, group tutorials and face-to-face- weekend classes are not included in these programmes but they can borrow audio and video cassettes from the study centres. They will be charged if they wish to attend such classes. Every student can choose five to twenty credit units in each semester at the end of which a supervised examination is arranged. They should, in fact, join their peers in the other programmes for the same examinations. The minimum passing score is 10 (5 0%). However, the average of all scores at each semester should not be less than 12 (60%). The maximum period of completion of this programme is 10 years. These students have to pay for services which they receive 5. International Degree Programmes in Persian Language and Literature This programme is designed for international students as well as Iranian people who are residing abroad. The program is presented by the faculty of Persian Language and Literature for External Students (PLLES). The faculty initiated its activities in 1990. Persian language and literature is offered at four degree levels including Associate of Arts (A.A), Bachelors of Arts (B.A), Master of Arts (M.A) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). The entrance examination for this programmes is held at Iranian embassies throughout the world. All the programmes are correspondence courses that rely heavily on self-study text books. On some occasions, group tutorials may be arranged in the main campus both for solving the students' learning problems and familiarising them with Iranian culture and society. However, the numbers of students are kept to a minimum level because of the difficulty of contacting all the students and delivering the study materials on time. The university is trying to solve the problem of distance by means of electronic mail or other alternatives. The associate degree programme is 207 exclusively for international students. In 1995 there were 96 students from 30 countries with only one of them being at PhD. level. 6. Non-degree Programme This programme is the only open one in the PNU. It offers as a life-long education to provide a learning opportunity at tertiary level for all adults after basic education. The aim of this programme is described as 'to achieve an integrated and coherent nation, enhancing the level of education, helping people to build a better society and improve their quality of life'. Everybody who can read and write is able to enter this programme, and choose any courses they like from among hundreds of courses, which are offered through the other programmes in PNU. These students can select one or two course(s) during one semester and have to pay all costs much as equivalent programmes' students do (Rls 60,000 Approximately. US $ 20 per course). They use the same facilities as other students and sit for the same examinations. Non-degree students receive an attendance certificate. About ten thousand learners are using this programme throughout the country. Student Cli aracteristics The students of PNU can be categorised based on the above programmes. In other words, there are six categories of students at the university and their chief characteristics are discussed below. Military service is compulsory in Iran for all men over 18 years old. The university students, however, are exempt from this service as long as they are studying at a university. They will serve in an officer capacity rather than as a soldier after graduation. This is one powerful reason for the great demand for higher education in the country. PNU's students were not exempt from the military services at the outset 208 of the university's existence. Furthermore, the target students for PNU in its start-up phase were public and private employees who usually had finished their military service. Between 50 to 80 percent of PNU's capacity has been allocated to in-service teacher training and provision for other government employees. The other 20 to 50 percent must be shared by private employees and unemployed students. Hence, many young students (aged 18-24) did not initially wish to study at PNU. The average students' age at PNU was, therefore, 33 years in 1989. In order to expand the university's geographical coverage particularly in remote and deprived areas, the parliament of Iran subsequently approved that the PNU's students were able to apply for a deferment of military services like conventional students. Once approval of this laws was confirmed it dramatically changed the composition of the student body in terms of sex and age. With regard to sex the ratio of male and female students changed from 40% female and 60% male in late 1989 to 33% female and 67% male in 1992. The proportion of female students has not met its previous peak yet. This was 39% female in 1995. With regard to age, the average students' age reduced from 33 years in 1989 to 26 in 1995. Table 5.11 shows the distribution of students in terms of their age. Table 5.11 Distribution of Students Based on Their Age at PNU in 1995 Age group No. Of Percent __________________ students* ________________ 17-20 9,534 8.86 21-25 43,995 40.88 26-30 27,336 25.40 31-35 15,411 14.32 36-40 7,165 6.68 41-45 2,551 2.37 46-50 417 0.38 5 1-55 78 0.07 56-60 6 0.005 61 and over 4 0.003 Not indicated 1110 1.03 Total 107,607 100 * excluding Non-degree and international students 209 As well as these changes, the entrance of so many young students changed the learning atmosphere of the university and may also have helped reduce the withdrawal rate from the university (SAM-4-95). Before implementation of that policy, 61% of the students were full-time public employees, 19% were private employees and 20% were non-employees. These figures changed slightly after the policy, but later the number of employed students increased when the general and equivalent degree programmes were inaugurated. The study field of the Persian language and literature attracts the largest proportion of students and the lowest proportion belongs to environmental health students. Although programmes like public administration, accountancy, and business administration have come on later than others, they have been welcomed by students who are working in both public and private sectors. Table 5.12 indicates the distribution of students in terms of their field of study in 1995. Table 5.12 the Distribution of Students in Various Fields of Study Rank Field of study No. of Percent _________ ________________________________ students * 1 Persian Language and Literature 23,686 22.00 2 Education 21,636 20.21 3 Public Administration 19,385 18.00 4 Accountancy 11,511 10.70 5 Social sciences 7,459 6.93 6 Mathematics 6,675 6.25 7 Geography 5,430 5.05 8 Chemistry 3,378 3.14 9 Geology 2,239 2.10 10 General Biology 1,931 1.79 11 Business Admin. 1,061 0.98 12 Islamic Theology 761 0.70 13 English Language 576 0.54 14 Statistics 565 0.52 15 Psychology 506 0.47 16 Applied Physics 424 0.39 17 Computer Engineering 160 0.15 _________ (software) ________________ ____________ 18 Physical Education 116 0.10 19 Environmental Health 98 0.09 Total 107,607 100 * excluding Non-degree and international students 210 During the period 1987-1995 the number of students and fields of the study consistently increased at the university. In the first academic year of its operation (1987-88), PNU enrolled only 5,000 students in 4 fields of study at 28 local study centres. By the end of the 1994-95 academic year, that is to say in less than one decade, the number of students exceeded about 100,000 in 19 fields of study at 120 regional and local centres. Table 5.13 shows the development of study fields from 1987 -95. Table 5.13 The Development of New Fields of Study Academi Science and Business and Social Total No. Increased c technology management sciences of rate (%) year_____________________ _____________________ ___________________________ study fields ____________ 1988-89 Mathematics - Education & 4 - _________ & Chemistry _____________________ Persian literature ____________ 1989-90 Biology & - - 6 50 ________ Geology ___________________ ________________________ ___________ ___________ 1990-91 Applied Physics Accountancy Sociology & 11 91 ________ ___________________ & Public Admin. Geography ___________ ___________ 1991-92 - - Theology, psychology & 14 27 ________ ___________________ ___________________ English_language ___________ ___________ 1992-93 - Statistics - 15 7 1993-94 Environmental - Physical 17 13 ________ Health ___________________ Education ___________ ___________ 1994-95 Computer Business - 19 12 engineering Administration _________ (software) I _____________ ____________ Such swift development has never before been seen in Iranian state higher education. The total enrolment of students during the academic years of 1988-95 is presented in table 5.14. Mega-university status (over 100,000) was reached in 1994-95. Table 5.14 Trends in Enrolment Academic No. of Increased rate Enrolment Ratio to years students * ( % ) state conventional ___________ ___________ ________________ universities ( % ) 1988-89 8,118 - 3.3 1989-90 16,493 103 6.2 1990-91 32,523 97 11.6 1991-92 51,958 60 17.8 1992-93 66,458 28 21.7 1993-94 82,020 23 23.8 1994-95 107,607 31 27.2 Excluding Non-degree and international students 211 The PNU's share of students' enrolment shows how important is the role played by this university in responding to national demand for higher education. In concluding my research I was interested in students' attitudes to the university. Thus I alTanged an informal discussion with a small group of students (40 in total) at Tehran Study Centre. This dialogue revealed a variation in attitude between the older and younger students. Older students do not view the university as a viable alternative to conventional universities. In their opinion studying in a distance education university with only a few face-to-face classes is not very interesting. This university, they believe, consisted of an older student body composed mostly of teachers, government employees or private work force, employees engaged in independent study over a period of years to earn a degree to improve their vocational positions. They are supposed to carry all the responsibility for their own learning and must put up with any difficulties. Furthermore, they have to study alone. This group believed that there is no better alternative than face-to-face class-based education. In contrast, the young students, most of whom are unemployed, have a more positive attitude to the university. They view the PNU as an innovative system in the country which creates an exceptional and great opportunity for them. They think that PNU was their saviour from the long queue of university enrolment. They are also able to study when and where they want and above all in their home cities with their families. But they have a strong tendency to be in study centres for many hours and ask for individual and/or group tutorials - something that tutors do not like so much. They argue that we feel we are students when we are in class or study centres!' (Apparently despite their positive attitude to the university they are still thinking in conventional terms). For the sake of these challenges and to reduce pressure on the students, PNU 212 provides more group tutorial sessions (up to 6 or 8 sessions in a semester) particularly for mathematics and natural science students. The majority of participants in these additional classes are those young and perhaps unemployed students. The university which employs mostly academic staff of conventional universities as part timers realised that traditional expansion could not continue because of financial problems. The policy, therefore, was reconsidered and a new policy was implemented for group and individual tutorial sessions (see table 5.10) in order to reduce the expenses and lead the students towards more independent study (Zohoor and Alimohammadi, 1992). Unfortunately, the students' study habits have not been studied and it was not the aim of this research to do that. But this discussion with the students showed the value of arranging more group tutorial sessions for new students because of their dependent study background and the need to lead them gradually to more independent study methods. This dialogue also suggested that women have more of a tendency to be autonomous learners than men. Evaluation system The evaluation system of the PNU consists of two main parts: continuous assessment and final assessment. Continuous Assessment As mentioned already, the courses at PNU are mainly based on self-study texts, which are developed for the purpose of individual instruction. The texts are normally divided into separate units. There is a self-assessment section at the end of each unit that helps the students evaluate their achievements by themselves, correct their errors and motivates them to pursue their studies. Apart from this the tutors at study centres are allowed to arrange a mid-term examination or ask students to do a project or prepare a 213 paper and br to give a take-home assignment at regular intervals. The headquarters does not monitor these evaluations which make up 25% of students' total scores. Final Assessment The final assessment of students is seen as the most important task of the university in order to keep the quality of education at the expected level. For this reason the process is centralised so that the exam of any particular subject should have the same quality and the same level of difficulty. The Test Bank of PNU is responsible for preparing and standardising the tests and questions with the collaboration of the departments at headquarters. These tests or questions are written by the academic staff both at the main campus and study centres, usually two months before the end of semester. These tests or questions are sent to the test bank and kept in a tests archive. The questions for final examination are chosen usually by text writers or an academic staff member in the main campus based on the importance of each unit of the texts. The test bank collects, duplicates, and distributes the questions to all centres one day before the examination date. The administration of the examinations is supervised by an observer from the headquarters with the co-operation of study centres. This is a delicate task which calls for a great degree of precision in planning and organising. The university uses its full academic potential to supervise the examinations. However, the exam sheets are graded by the tutors at study centres. Whenever there are doubts or protests from the students or tutors about the questions or accuracy of grading or administration procedure, the case(s) is reported to the headquarters. Such cases are considered by a special committee and the result is reported to related persons or study centres. The result of the supervised final examinations makes up 75% of the total score in any subject. 214 Financial Issues The universities and other higher education institutions in Iran can be classified into three groups in terms of the financial resources. . State conventional universities and research institutions whose financial resources come mostly from the national budget (about 95%) and from their educational services or research activities (about 5%); • private conventional universities, higher education institutions and research institutions who derive their budgets from their educational and research services, tuition fees and a very small government contribution; and PNU as the only distance education university in the country, having two different financial resources: governmental and non-governmental. The governmental resources consist of a proportion of the national budget, presidential aid or loans and some other public resources which may be allocated if meeting with the approval of parliament. These resources make up nearly 50% of the current and capital expenses of the university. According to the law of the Iranian second Cultural and Socio-economic Development Plan, PNU will be able to use the national budget until the end of this plan, that is in 1999 but beyond then it must be financially self-sufficient. The other public or governmental resources will be available where justified given the approval of parliament just for capital expenses (MRH- 1-95). The non-governmental resources which make up about 50% of the expenditures coflSlSt of: 2 5 I. Students tuition fees which are determined annually by the University Council and are approved by the Board of Trustees. As shown in table 5.15 these tuition fees form a main portion of the university's revenues. Table 5.15 Tuition Fees at PNU (in US $)* in 1995 Academic year Fixed fee Fees Per Credit Unit Practical Theoretical 1987-91 20 2 2 1992-93 25 3 2 1993-94 28.5 2.85 2 1994-95 30 6 3 * One US Dollar = 3,000 Iranian Rials Despite the low rate of this tuition, students have some difficulties in payment. Firstly, for psychological reasons. Education in Iran at all levels is free and PNU is known as a state university and the students of state universities are not supposed to pay tuition fees. Secondly, for economic reasons that is, the majority of students are from deprived regions with low family incomes or they are government employees with limited incomes. Hence, the university is not able to increase the fees very much and has to rely on government subsidies, otherwise it may lose considerable numbers of students. II. Sales profits from study materials. These profits are still low because most of the users of these materials are students and there is a special reduction for students. Furthermore, the university always, as with other publishing agencies, faces the shortage of paper which despite the large demands for its study materials is not able, therefore, to increase its production. III. Donations from people, agencies, and/or foundations. Acceptance or rejection of these donations depend upon the approval of the Board of Trustees. 216 In 1995, about 3.7 1% of the total national budget was allocated to higher education (MRH-l-95). The unit cost of higher education according to MCHE statistics in conventional universities was three times more than in distance education. More precisely the unit cost for social sciences and non-technological fields of study in conventional universities was about $ 857 per student per year but it was about $ 300 at PNU. 50% of this amount ($150) is paid by the government and the rest must be obtained by the university itself. Thus while PNU is still in its investment stage of life its unit costs are 1/3 of that of conventional universities. Consequently it spends less money for the same level of education. An overview of PNU's budget (table 5.16) and the number of the students (table 5.12) is the best way to understand the cost effectiveness of PNU. Table 5.16 The Budget of PNU (in US S.) Academic Year 1988-89 1989-90 1990-91 1991-92 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 Budget_________ ___________ ___________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ Current Budget 857,142 1,300,000 1.547,000 2,500,000 4,590,000 8,203,125 3,672,333* Development - - 237,500 937,500 125,000 6,290,625 3,200,000 Budget__________ ___________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ _____________ Total 857,142 1,300,000 1,784,500 11,875,000 4,715,000 14,493,750 6,872,333 source: budget and Organisatton bureau of PNU * The government cut the current credits of PNU in this year (this will be discusses in the next chapter) and the figure is related to PNU's own incomes. Budgeting Process of the University The Budget and Organisation Bureau of the university (BOB) is the responsible organisation for forecasting revenues and expenditures of PNU and preparing the annual budget. The BOB sends specific forms to the faculties, departments and study centres to collect the necessary information about their financial needs. These needs should be clearly justified by each department and study centre. After classifying and analysing this information the proposed plan for the budget is prepared for the following year to present for approval by the Board of Trustees. If the proposed 217 budget meets the approval of the board it will be sent to the Planning and Budget Organisation (PBO) in October every year. PBO considers the proposed budget in the light of the national financial priorities and submits it to the Council of Ministers along with the whole national proposed annual budget. The council considers it in the light of national macro-economy and the long term development plan of the country. Finally it is presented to the parliament by the President. In the process of auditing the budget at the parliament, the experts of the PBO, and other organisations are invited to justify and support their proposed bill if it is necessary. Eventually the proposed budget bill is approved by parliament and is submitted to the president to notify the state organisations. The PBO notifies the allocated funds to state organisations for implementation. The BOB invites the principals of study centres on a regular basis to reach an agreement on the budget allocation for each centre. The annual activities of each centre are outlined and the detailed budget of the university is ultimately prepared. At all the stages of the implementation of the budget, the university is responsible for obtaining the revenues sufficient to cover its expenditure. Figure 5.2 shows the process of the preparing and implementation of the budget law at the university (financial year in Iran, begins in March and ends in February). Financial Monitoring All PNU's revenues must be deposited with the Treasury General account and are withdrawn by PNU according to budget allocation committee regulations. This strategy is taken to maintain the balance between government receipts and payments during the financial year and the balance between revenues and expenditures. 218 Financial Management Vice-chancellor, Financial Affairs Figure 5.2 Budget Process at PNU P130 Proposed national budget (Nov.) Council of Ministers _______ Notified for ______ rPN U I implementation Law notified last week of year Annual budget bill (March) ved annual President Budget law (Feb.) Chancellor Study Centres Faculties ._.._9PartmeniJ PNU should spend the allocated budget including both the governmental budget and its own incomes according to the National Council of Accounts being under the parliament regulations. Controlling and supervising the payments and receipts, and comparison of the payments with the progress of the plans is the responsibility of the Financial Management of the university which, in turn will be controlled by the Ministry of Economic and Financial Affairs. The operational control of the various units of the university is done by the experts of PBO with co-operation of BOB at PNU to ensure that the funds are allocated appropriately and are spent in order to attain the determined aims of the university. Planning to Increase the Income Resources of PNU After termination of the war between Iran and Iraq in 1988, the country was required to be reconstructed. Iran is still in an economic crisis due primarily to the drastic decline in oil price as the main income resource of the country, economic sanctions, 219 demolition of industrial and agricultural institutions, and tolerance of the heavy expenditure of the war. These and other social, cultural and political factors brought about greater problems for the country. These problems inevitably affected higher education and PNU. Decreasing the government share of the PNU's budget affected its development rate. Recently PNU realised that it should, therefore, not rely too heavily on government funds in order to keep its development process steady (HAA-5-95). There is a danger of a decline in the number of students if the tuition fees are increased on the one hand, and the need for more funds on the other. Hence, the university must think about other methods such as increasing the production of study materials, which are in great demand in the book market, so decreasing the costs, and finally finding other resources (HAA-5-95). Other measures include offering non- degree open courses and making contracts with other public or private organisations to provide a special course for their employees to improve their skills and knowledge, and encouraging the community to contribute to the university's activities by donation. It remains to be seen how fully these efforts will succeed in the future. International Collaboration' PNU is the youngest university among the higher education institutions of Iran; and is among the younger distance education universities in the world. It has faced many challenges with its internal problems, preparation for rapid development, issues of sustainability, and need for stronger financial support. Opinions were therefore formed and positions taken to strengthen the international collaboration between the PNU's top managers on the one hand, and between PNU and the International Collaboration Office of MCHE on the other hand. International collaboration, unfortunately, is closely concerned with political issues and our politicians-irrespective of the reasons - 220 were suspicious about this sort of collaboration. For this reason, first of all it was decided to arrange some visits to and from the distance education universities or institutions in Asia. It was during a visit from the Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan in 1989 that the Iranian delegation proposed considering the membership of PNU to the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU). One year later PNU became a member of AAOU. Then, PNU actively participated in all AAOU conferences and contributed to the exchange of experience among members by presenting its own experiences. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, PNU has signed a protocol with Russian authorities concerning the use of their satellites to broadcast university television programmes to cover all the country as well as some neighbouring countries in which the Persian language is spoken. While the initial stages of this plan have so far been financially met by the Rial currency budget, PNU now needs to equip its science laboratories and set up a studio for the production of audio - visual learning materials. The university has asked, therefore, for a loan of 100 million US dollars from the Islamic Development Bank (1DB). The Bank is now considering this request. Planning for Using an International Network To date, PNU has not established a mutual agreement with the other distance education universities world wide for the exchange of experiences. It is, however, trying to establish a data network to connect with other international agencies and/or distance education universities. In this respect it is proposed to use the Academic Data Network (ADN) facility which was recently set up by the Data Communication Centre (DCC) of the Ministry of Communication. PNU is authorised to use this centre for co- operation and collaboration and has been allocated a data code. The data network of 221 Iran which is called Iran PAC is also connected to ADN. The network is, therefore, connected to other international databases such as Compu Serve, Mintelnet, BTX, Dialogue, Orbits, STN, etc. It is intended to connect the main campus of PNU as well as regional and local study centres to the Iran PAC. This will enable the university to have access to an international network that can communicate with its study centres. Moreover, the university will then be able to serve other institutions in Iran which are connected to the Scientific Data Base Platform (SDBP). This is a part of the agreement between PNU and the Ministry of Communication (see Askarian, 1995). Iran PAC is not only connected to internal organisations and educational institutions of all levels but also to international networks such as Trans Pac in France, DATEX-P in Germany, IPSS in UK, Venus-P in Japan, HINET-P in South Korea, Sprit Net in USA and in several other countries. Iran has, consequently, access to international data bases in other countries in many different fields of speciality. It began planning for the creation of a data base which is mainly connected to public institutions and universities, and access to scientific sources on the international scale. The historical, geo-political, demographic, economic and socio-cultural contexts in which distance education in Iran has developed and within which it is expected to grow and to flourish, are complex. It gave rise to the organisational structure, level of enrolment, problems of staff recruitment, institutional capability and, potentially restrictive intellectual and professional environment for distance education. The chapter which follows, analyses the theoretical framework of PNU, its policies and, the planning and management models which it has adopted in response to these challenges. 222 CHAPTER SIX The Planning and Management of PNU: A Critical Analysis Introduction This chapter analyses the philosophical and theoretical foundations of PNU in the light of a framework derived from Peters' (1967, 1994) industrial theory of distance education reviewed in Chapter Two. The planning and management processes of the university, as documented in Chapter Five, are also evaluated from this perspective, and with regard to the analytical framework provided by Hodgkinson's (1991) model and other relevant theoretical perspectives derived from the educational management literature reviewed in Chapter Three. Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations of PNU Philosophical Foundations From the previous chapter it can be seen that during the setting up of the PNU many of those involved remained uncertain about the concept of distance education, its methods, models and theories. Some ambiguity also existed relating to the meanings they chose to use for concepts and models in distance education, and this inevitably effected their ability to direct progress (see Chap. 3 pp. 75-76). The choice of a system, Keegan (1993:114) argues, does not imply that it is the best, but that the 223 strategies and tools provided are judged to be competently developed and relevant to the initiative. The founders of PNU first considered a range of potential concepts, methods and models in the light of: 1. their previous experience, 2. the factors which led to the suspension of earlier distance education in the country, 3. popular opinion about distance education and, finally, 4. the international literature (minutes of meeting of the first session for making decisions on distance education, April, 1986). Determining a conceptual framework and building upon existing theoretical models for practice in Iran was a cautious and challenging philosophical activity. Major mistakes could potentially damage the whole higher education system along with the cherished dreams of many practitioners. As a result, the new organisation was conceived as a modest starting point for distance education in the Iranian higher education sector, in the hope that the new experience and infrastructural development would eventually influence the conventional system. Gradual growth was envisaged over the first decade of its life, to be followed by expansion (minutes of meeting of the second session for making decisions on distance education). It was from this premise that PNU began as a distance education institution based primarily upon the production of written material and regular face-to-face contacts. The residential teaching component led to far-reaching and favourable comparisons with campus- based study. This was advantageous because the idea was - and it still is - supported by the general educational and social traditions. Taking existing traditions and attitudes into account was thus of vital importance for the initial stability and reputation of PNU. This foundation then led the university to base its initial methods, systems and study regulations on the then current traditions of the conventional universities. 224 Consequently PNU first developed a small-scale, high quality philosophy, even though the country's tangible needs required a large-scale approach to meet the demand for mass access. The relative success of PNU at the first small-scale stage motivated the MCHE to suggest expansion. But shifting from the small to large scale required more time to be spent on planning. The Minister of Culture and Higher Education acknowledged that the new university should take the experience of FUI into account. This required a great deal of time to be spent on careful planning but did not produce a model to recruit enough students to establish a firm presence quickly enough to gain wide- spread support. PNU was, therefore, rapidly under pressure from the Ministry to admit more students to more programmes of study. In 1988 the Minister arranged a meeting of PNU's authorities with the then Prime-minister so as to strengthen government support. They recognised the shortage of human and material resources at PNU and the Prime-minister (Mr. Moosavi) donated four million dollars to the university as reasurement. The planning team then prepared themselves to take a large step in the development of the new university but, unfortunately, this was the last year of the Moosavi government. The situation is explained in my own diary as follows: A new government has come to power. We all have an ambiguous feeling about the future of the university. Rumours have spread about changing the Chancellor of the university. Now we understand why the Minister was insisting on the rapid development of the university (5th September 1989). New Chancellor and New Policy: Towards a Mega-university PNU nevertheless received strong political support from the new government in 1989 and more especially from the new Minister of MCHE. The initial support of the existing students, combined with political, social and financial support and emerging public credibility, enhanced the self-confidence of PNU's managers. The new 225 Chancellor emphasised the policy of the new government regarding the expansion of the university. For this reason, as well as the high unit-costs of small-scale distance education, it became necessary to reconsider the initial philosophy of the university. This was also a great opportunity for reconstruction of national distance education after seven years of suspension. The original plans therefore needed not just tinkering with but a complete rethink. The planners were now, in fact, looking for a model which could be better attuned to both university growth and society's needs. The conservative spirit disappeared. Due to the Ministry's policy in seeking increased access to higher education and the potential cost-effectiveness of PNU given the ever- increasing number of applicants, PNU's initial step-by-step expansion strategy gave away to rapid expansion (Zohoor, et al., 1991). Within a very short time by 1990 a new preliminary plan had been established, increasing the number of programmes of study, the number of students and the geographical coverage of the university (see Chapter Five). The university changed its previous philosophy and shifted development towards becoming a large-scale organisation. The year 1990 was undoubtedly a turning point in the history of the PNU. It was in this year that the number of students rose by 97% (see table 5.14) and that the fields of study increased from four to eleven. The real use of industrial types of teaching-learning processes was begun for the first time. It was argued that while learning by individual students must be seen as the central aim of the educational process, a large-scale industrial approach to education should be adopted. It was also argued that when society could see that its needs for higher education were being met this way, attitudes would also change to distance methods (the third minutes of meeting of University Council). Preparing distance study systems 226 and organising student services for only a small group of students was now recognised as wasteful of time and resources. Providing study materials for a large group of students, it was recognised, made greater economic sense and could enhancc professionalism at all stages of the course development process through specialisation and division of labour (Rumble, 1986). PNU's study centres also expanded rapidly with the noticeable financial contributions of local authorities (see table 5.7). The number of students rose sharply (see table 5.14) as indicated above, and programmes expanded from one to five as fields of study increased to nineteen in a very short time (see table 5.13). Holmberg (1981) points out that there need be no discernible qualitative differences in outcome between small and large scale institutions but that quantitative benefits are significant. Thus the emergence of one of the world's newest mega-universities began to take shape in Iran. Zohoor (1992) commented on these shifts made at PNU and concluded that: Initial reports about the result of such shifting confirmed that the new philosophy which was inspired by industrial thought was working well since no substantial problems were reported (Zohoor, 1992). Senior administrator also voiced similar sentiments during an interview with me mentioning that: There was in fact no need for radical changes in the nature of work except for the production of the same course materials on a larger scale and the expansion of student services (DMB-3-95). Nonetheless, the findings of this research indicate that the radical change in the philosophy of PNU, leading to rapid growth, brought about significant managerial problems in practice which deserve greater recognition if quality is to be achieved. 227 Before we look at these detailed findings it is pertinent to reconsider the nature and potential of the large-scale industrial model chosen by the architects of PNU. Theoretical Framework of PNU: The Industrial Model in Action Theoretical justification is inevitably required for any new form of education which sets out to provide an alternative to that of conventional provision. Many of the informants of this study justified the philosophical orientation of PNU by reference to the 'mass production' nature of industrial theory. The new philosophy of mass education necessitated an innovative framework to enable the university to respond appropriately to a rapid growth situation. First of all the mass production of study materials which are vital for distance education was proposed. There was an urgent need to arrange new course teams, to further mobilise the publishing house and establish an active assembly line. Deliberations on such issues led PNU's managers to think seriously about the intrinsic characteristics of industrial production, which in turn led them to the adoption of their conception of industrial theory as the main framework for planning. The study reveals that their initial endeavours in this direction were made primarily in reaction to crisis situations which had resulted from the sudden change of policy. Thus one informant stated that: We considered this theory [industrial] to provide a more applicable and practical way to run our new policy. I believe that industrial theory is a promoter of our activities in the present conditions of the university. I personally consider all my activities based on this theory (DMB-3-95). Another informant declared: We take industrial theory as an appropriate framework at least as far as the study material production is concerned. We are also trying to put some elements of communication theory into our instructional process (HSS-2-95). 228 This informant was the only one who talked explicitly about communication theory but since distance education first emerged with the development of communication technology in the industrial revolution, industrial and communication theory can be seen in operation in the majority of distance education universities. Communication theory emphasises two-way communication between teacher and learner, through dialogue and debate. Garrison emphasises the importance of this and argues that: The reality is that new and current technologies are hierarchically combined to increase technological capacity and choice in designing effective distance education. A clear differentiation [should be] made between technologies capable of supporting two-way communication and media that only send messages one way (Garrison, 1993:17). In the light of the present analysis it is argued that the technologies which are used at PNU largely emphasise one way communication, although some elements of two way communication are central to activities such as individual guidance and counselling and group face-to-face meeting. More pertinently, however, industrial theory in distance education came to occupy an influential position in the l980s and stimulated many practitioners to recognise its elements in their own practice. This study demonstrates that the founders of PNU also claim that the theoretical framework for this university was largely based on the industrial model. This characterisation also explains their efforts to structure their work processes accordingly, with a growing use of technical equipment to work with, the division of labour and systematised evaluation procedures. To what extent the PNU actually reflects industrial theory in practice is now considered in more detail. PNU and Industrial Theory According to Peters (l993a) the main elements of industrial theory are: rationalisation, the division of labour, mechanisation, the assembly line, and mass 229 production. Each of these elements were observed in practice during the PNU fieldwork, but the extent to which they functioned effectively deserves closer analysis. Ration alisation At the early stage of industrialisation the tradition of individual work changed to a mass production process based on the division of labour. Scientific discoveries were increasingly evaluated in terms of practical use and cost effectiveness, as Peters (1967) stated, to achieve the best possible result in view of the steady development of economic and technical process. In other words, to achieve maximum output with the least input of power, time and money. These changes led in turn to the increased importance of preparatory phases of project development which necessitated systematic planning and organisation. The application of this rationalisation process to the practical example of PNU suggests that, if the industrial model had been well applied the mission, goals and strategies of the university should have been carefully articulated in advance. In practice, however, there is evidence that while decisions about the university's broad organisation, its main instructional components, the development and production of study materials, and so on were made the university was rapidly placed under pressure from the government to begin operating as soon as possible. Thus, the founders did not have enough time to spend on detailed and careful pre-implernentation planning. There is evidence to suggest that they prepared a preliminary plan to deal with immediate issues, but they had little time for thinking about planning for the future. However, despite their own misgivings, they did not challenge the idea of rapidly increasing the number of students and fields of study because they had no intention of repeating the FUI experience. In the absence of detailed pre-implementation planning 230 it is therefore not surprising that various critical problems raised their heads. The development and production of study materials, for example, assumed crisis proportions because of the shortage of material resources, lack of planning and. unforeseen issues. The quality of education was thus seriously threatened initially, and a rescue plan for this turbulent time had to be prepared (discussed in more detail later in this chapter). As one informant remarked: We had a really critical situation. Thus, wherever we started to act we actually worked based on rationalisation of mass production. For example we were arranged simultaneously in sixteen course teams to produce sixteen self- instruction texts. It was, of course, very difficult because our facilities were really limited compared with the former FUI. Moreover, the arrangement of course teams was too hard because the number of academic members who are able to write academic texts is limited and I think it will be so for the next few years (DMB-3-95). To a large extent these early years were relatively poorly planned and political forces played a leading role in shaping the new university despite a growing awareness of the nature and demands of the industrial model. The Division of Labour This principle of industrialism has played an important role in social science theories from the beginning of this century and Peters (1967) used this principle for analysing distance education in his theory. He states that in distance education the teaching process is based on the division of labour and is detached from the person of the university lecturer. The division of labour and the objectification of the teaching process allow each work process to be planned in such a way that clearly formulated teaching objectives are achieved in the most effective manner. Specialists may be responsible for limited areas of each phase (Peters, 1967:111). The application of the division of labour becomes especially evident when a distance education institution makes use of technology in its teaching process. This will makes 231 it possible for the transfer of knowledge and skills from one specialist to a theoretically unlimited numbers of students. This principle is applied at PNU both in the development and production of study. materials, and in teaching -learning processes. Division of Labour in the Teaching-learning Process The shift in the location of study from the campus to the work place and home, was a fundamental change which can be characterised by the move from a pre-industrial to an industrial era. What is involved in changing the location of the study from 'school' to home? Primarily this change means distance educators need to individualise instruction. It might be thought that this shift is a social change but it is not only social but also technical. An important consequence of this socio-technical change was the separation of curriculum from pedagogy, production from delivery, course development from research and lecturers from students (Peters, 1967). These separated tasks need to be done by specialists through the use of rigorous division of labour for the better running of the large-scale industrialised form of education. At the outset, due to the small scale of its operation there was not a visible division of labour in PNU's teaching-learning process. The development and production of a limited number of self-study texts, support materials and the distribution of these materials was relatively easy. Furthermore, running tutorial and face-to-face sessions and the assessment of students progress by a limited group of academic and non- academic staff was not a complex process. However, when the number of students, study centres and programmes of study was growing swiftly and the number of academic staff remained limited, PNU changed its methods of teaching and increasingly applied the principle of the division of labour in the teaching-learning 232 process to enable the university to use its limited human resources to the best effect. One informant noticing this said: It was impossible for the academic administrators to function within the previous framework. The fact is that the development of those semi-specialised and specialised courses demanded the recruitment of subject specialists who could write self-study texts at headquarters or could run tutorial and counselling affairs in the study centres (MHB-6-95). Moreover, the use of division of labour in the teaching-learning process helped the university to overcome the shortage of skilled staff at tertiary level in Iran. As another informant pointed out: Through the division of labour, the issue of the shortage of academics was resolved relatively quickly. There were sufficient academic staff at conventional universities based in the same cities within which PNU has a study centre (AHA-7-95). The important point in the utilisation of the division of labour, as Wilson (1990:15) argues, is making the right decision to fill the right job with the right people. The importance of good bureaucratic organisation becomes evident here. Such an organisation would be able to co-ordinate the separated teaching-learning functions so that most phases of this process can take place without the intervention of high level specialists. For this reason the teaching-learning process was divided into three parts each of which has its own subdivisions at PNU: the development of study materials; tutorial and counselling; and evaluation. The first part of job is done at the headquarters with the co-operation of the departments and faculties. The other two roles are carried out in study centres which are allowed to recruit tutors they require. This reflected a remarkable change in the teaching-learning process of PNU from the individual teaching activity of teacher in pre-Fordist mode to the Fordist mode of industry based on division of labour. As documented above, PNU was successful in recruiting the academic staff of conventional universities for administrating its face- 233 to-face residential classes and tutorial sessions and assessment processes, but the recruitment of academics for writing the study materials still remains to be solved. As one informant pointed out: While numerous course-teams were set up and a considerable number of texts were prepared and published, the process of course development was so complicated and time consuming that the output of the course-teams did not meet the demand. The main reason is the scarcity of specialists who could write self-study texts (SAM-4-95). Although the university sent an invitation letter to almost all the academics at conventional universities for co-operation as part-time or contract staff for text writing, and the payment was relatively high, the number of academics who answered this invitation was limited (Zohoor and Alimohammadi, 1995). In practice, limited access to specialists also made the use of the division of labour in the teaching-learning process difficult, particularly in regional and local study centres. Because the nature of help available was generalistic rather than specialist it was difficult to solve all the learning problems of students in these centres. Course materials were the product of a team of specialists and, as Morgan (1993:77) pointed out, it would be unreasonable to expect every tutor appointed to mirror this range of abilities in supporting students through their study. For this reason students asked for more face-to-face classes and sometimes pushed the managers of study centres to invite the authors of texts to solve their learning problems (AHA-7-95 also see Chapter Five). Despite these problems it was largely the division of labour which enabled the PNU to deal with its rapid expansion and to respond to its large number of students. The whole teaching-learning process which was split into various areas of responsibilities at PNU is illustrated in figure 6.1 234 Figure 6.1 Division of Labour in the Teaching-learning Process of PNU Transmitting knowledge Course Text books and information team * Teaching-learning process Assessment* * Students Tutoring and counselling * See its combination in figure 5.2 ** See the procedure in Chapter 5 J group and individual Tutors I tutorial sessions As can be seen, specialist course writers and tutors do not act autonomously. Each of them is a member of team which is functioning as a teaching-learning system. This is a clear result of the division of labour. They could not work without the rest of the university (Peters, 1989). This process, however, created a serious critical debate between old and influential academics who saw it as fostering fragmentation and compartmentalisation of the teaching-learning process, and the advocates of it who took the view that this process facilitated the teaching-learning process. One informant, for instance, argued that: The participation of academic and supporting staff at study centres in mid-term and final examination marking the examination sheets, distribution of study materials, arrangement of tutorial and face-to-face class meeting and other activities in the framework of the division of labour helps the academics in the smooth running of teaching-learning procedures(SAM-4-95). The advantages of this specialisation, and the division of labour, for PNU, as at least three key informants emphasised were the: • effective use of specialists' time and knowledge in order to make the planned teaching-learning process more operational; • involving of middle level academic staff and students in the correction and revision of the study materials; 235 • freeing of professors and tutors from unnecessary time consuming activities (DMB-2-95, SAM-4-95, and DAL-12-95); • improving of the quality of teaching because of the contribution of the experts among whom the work has been divided (Peters 1989:6). Division of Labour in the Materials Production Process As in the teaching-learning process, the principle of the division of labour was not fully utilised at PNU in materials production during its starting phase because, as in the industrial production process, the number of human resources and the level of their previous training was too low. As PNU's experienced and trained human resources were developed and its functions were expanded, the potential of the division of labour improved to such an extent that, at present, its material production process can be seen as a Fordist mode of production. In response to its rapid expansion PNU adopted the division of labour right through to the publication process; from the production to distribution of study materials. One of the informants of this study thus pointed out: In Printing and Publishing Centre (PPC) we are following the industrial management principles. The division of labour and planning for production have more importance in our work processes. In fact, by using these principles we have been able to produce 850 books totalling 3,600,000 copies during a six years period [1988-1994] with only 113 technical and administrative staff (MKA-9-95). The production of study materials which are the major component of instruction at PNU is as important as the development of them. The effectiveness of the teaching- learning process is particularly dependent upon the very careful planning of production so that the study materials meet the students on time. Despite the remarkable achievements referred to above, PNU is still suffering from a shortage of printed materials and the ineffective distribution of them to meet deadlines. One informant explained the reason for these problems by saying that: 236 Full utilisation of the division of labour needs skilled technicians and other resources. Despite the need for more technicians and skilled staff PPC was able to increase its outputs. At present, each technician or staff has to deal with several different activities (MKA-9-95). This comment, however, was criticised by another of the key informants of this study who believed that the problem was not only because of the shortage of staff or technicians it was also because of organisational and managerial factors and limitations. The same informant further argued: In my opinion PPC has firstly an instructional role in the distance education system. Hence, it must operate under the related Vice-chancellor's office. Secondly the existing staff of PPC should be rearranged in order to be more efficient. I believe that PPC can be more efficient than it is (DMB-2-95). With regard to the first point made by this informant, it must be noted that the mere fact that PPC produces study materials does not prove his point of view. There are two distinct organisational sub-systems for two different functions of the university namely production and academic. The main reason why these two sub-systems have separated is because it is argued that the production sub-system should be administrated according to industrial management principles and the latter according to educational management theory. There are, of course, some contradictions between the functions of the two sub-systems that may end in managerial problems. This study suggests that the resolution is not to be found in bringing them together, but in good leadership. The role of strong leadership in such complex organisations becomes evident here. Supporting the second point made by this informant, Peters argues that: If we analyse our society in its present state of development we can already discern definite developments breaking away from industrialism. More and more enterprises of the car industry, for instance, are giving up production at assembly line and are establishing small work groups in which each group member is no longer engaged in one activity but rather in a variety of activities in a craftsman fashion (Peters, 1993 :40). 237 Training a multi-skill workforce can be a practical resolution to the problem of the shortage of skilled personnel, and in keeping down their training expenses in a developing country like Iran. Using the limited workforce efficiently at the Printing and Publishing Centre of the PNU is a good example of this. The previous informant was confident that the PPC was on the right path and working well. We applied standards determined by industrial management. This process is used in all the duties and activities at PPC. But the expansion of the university was so fast that not only PPC but also the other sections of PNU could not cope with its expansion rate (MKA-9-95). My own observation showed that the principle of the division of labour was applied relatively well at PPC, and the problem was not in the production line but in the development process of study materials. The best reason has been given by Abdipour (1995:141) who observed: Presently, all the printed materials of PNU are produced by PPC. Moreover, the centre accepts the orders from the other organisations to fill the vacant capacity of the centre. The process of the production and distribution of study materials is shown in figure 6.2. This figure illustrates the division of labour and assembly line at PPC. Figure 6.2 The Process of Printed Materials Production Manuscript Distribution Typesetting j 4'PhotograPhj 4'MOnt' [PrintiIig\ ('iiding 238 Mechai,isation The mechanisation and automation of work processes became necessary when the need for mass production became evident. Distance education institutions use varying degrees of mechanisation in different countries. Some developing countries use dependent machines which belong to the first stage of industrialisation and some others, like PNU, are using semi-automatic and automatic machines which are best characteiised by the second phase of industrialisation (Fordism). Mechanisation of Teaching-learning Processes Division of labour is a precondition for the mechanisation of work processes in teaching-learning and material production. As mentioned earlier, education at PNU is primarily printed-based. Print itself is, of course, a technology but PNU does not rely entirely on printed materials. It also uses other media, such as television and audio- video cassettes along with other instructional technology. Nevertheless, from its students' perspective, the greater part of their study, and at least their perceived main resource for assignments and examinations is based on the printed text book. One of the students in an interview with the reporter of 'Bashir' (a weekly magazine) complaining about delay in receiving his study materials states that: Our main resource of study in this university [PNU] is self-study texts. We could not make ourselves ready for final examination in the end of semester because we received those books in the last few weeks of the semester (Bashir, 29th December, 1992 see also Keykan, 26th December, 1993 and Resalat, 21st January 1994 daily news papers). The mechanisation of the teaching-learning process and the release of this process from the constraints of the traditional work of individual teachers made the mass education and mass production of graduates possible at PNU. An informant declared: The experiences of the two correspondence faculties of ABU as well as those of FUI [see chapter 5] provided a firm foundation for the utilisation of educational technology and designing quality study materials for this new industrial form of education. The media chosen were self-study texts for independent study, 239 personal and group tutorials, TV programmes, multimedia libraries, audio and video cassettes and experimental kits (MKH-8-95). A number of factors become clear when the mechanisation of the teaching-learning process is analysed. These include learners being largely removed from the conventional constraints of schools and the dynamics of group-learning, in favour of greater independence and taking greater responsibility for their own learning arrangement within the course. However, the value of these factors is dependent upon the quality of the educational interaction that is employed through the mechanisation process. Because the delivery of most parts of a teacher's activity is done over the media does not remove the significance of two-way communication. While there is almost an infinite variety of ways in which technology can be used for the mechanisation of teaching-learning processes, several relatively distinct approaches can be adopted to establish two-way communication which have pedagogical importance. Bates has expressed a similar view by stating that: Despite a widespread belief.., that there are no significant pedagogic differences between media (for instance, a lecture delivered by television is just as efficient as if delivered face-to-face), shifting even the same medium (e.g. from television) from one technology to another (e.g. from broadcast to video cassette) has significant pedagogic implications (Bates, 1993 :216). One of the experts of the Educational Media Centre (EMC) of PNU during a private conversation with the researcher declared that his own experience reveals that adopting a media without paying attention to the pedagogical consequences may create unexpected issues in teaching-learning process, particularly for students, that may not be solved easily. Moreover, using technical media required skills that seemed to academics to be too complex and time consuming. They believed that the teaching services of professors, and the support services of counsellors and tutors cannot be mechanised. Despite such 240 criticism PNU, like other mega-universities inevitably employed the principle of mechanisation in order to utilise the advantages involved in the economics of large- scale operations. In addition they were able to employ the best academics throughout the country for co-operating with its course teams (see Chapter 5 p 196). One of the informants who has no doubt about the advantages of this approach explained that: We have had some problems with high level specialists who did not like co- operating with young educational technologists and/or educational designers but later they realised the advantages of using these technology in teaching-learning process. They discussed the methods of teaching at distance with these professors and the fact that they are able to access to thousands of students at one time. The professors also realised the advantages of carefully planning and preparing their teaching materials before giving to students (DMB-2-95). Indeed, mechanisation of the teaching-learning process, as Peters (1967) believes, made it possible for the student to learn and learn from their study materials many times without using the energy and time of the teacher. He argues in another place: distance study is not possible without mechanical devices, for example, the letter plus the communication media of the post office, printed matter, radio and television, audio and video cassettes or the computer for the marking of assignments or computer-based tuition representing the highest level of mechanisation, namely automation (Petres, 1989:5). One of the informants stated that: Through the application of the media [mechanisation of teaching-learning process] PNU has been able to offer a variety of courses for a student population that never could be met by any other means. Our trial and error activities for mechanisation of the teaching-learning process paved the way for fruitful and effective teaching-learning procedure not only at PNU but also at the other universities in the country.(MKI-J-8-95). Nonetheless, mechanisation of the teaching-learning process gave reason for some critics to criticise the employment of this approach by PNU, for example: While this university over-emphasises technical devices, it does not have sufficient media and human resources to use them efficiently. In addition this technological optimism among the managers of the university is baseless. The mechanisation of education has in turn some negative side effects, to which they have closed their eyes (Harnshahri, Daily News, 23 January, 1994). 241 But the advocators argue that the application of this approach means that thousands of students from deprived and remote areas have access to scarce human resources such as specialist and qualified professors. At PNU there is a computer centre which is characterised by the full automation of the work process such as registration, the recording of unit credits chosen by students, recording students' files and examination results, financial matters and so on. There are also additional facilities and modern means of communication (e.g. telephone, e- mail and computer network) in use but only for running the current administrative affairs. However, the mechanisation of the complex teaching-learning process still needs much work. Mechanisation of Material Production One of the roots of distance education systems is embedded in printed materials. This type of process uses the advantages of the written text to remove the time and space restrictions from the educational process. In the early stage of the development of distance education, written and printed materials were the only means of instructional interaction between teachers and students. The production of these materials was by a craftsmen mode in that time. But when the scale of operation of distance education systems expanded the use of the craftsmen mode was given up and the use of machines became necessary. Nowadays, many academics and thousands of students in large-scale universities, particularly in mega-universities, participate in teaching- learning events by using printed materials as a substitute for instructional conversation. Peters (1993:62) comments on this by stating that: The pattern of the 'writing teacher' which has taken the place of the 'talking teacher', today still determines distance education teaching in practice, in spite of all the technological procedure for the development of teaching materials. 242 Mass production is by its nature the only possible way to respond to large groups of students, and mass production cannot take place without the use of machines and the mechanisation of the production process. PNU proceeded to the industrial production of its printed materials well before reaching the mega-university level. The production of supplementary materials such as television programmes and video cassettes has not yet reached mass production level. The reason for this is explained by one informant: The production of television programmes needs high level and almost complicated technology to which PNU has no access. We have to rely on IRIB's experts and technological facilities. Unfortunately, they did not give enough priority to PNU's programmes in both production and broadcasting. Consequently, the university terminated its co-operation with the IRIB and is going to establish its own TV studio but it needs much more investment which is beyond the financial capacity of the university. For this reason the procedures is slow (SAM-4-95). The establishment of this studio was under way during the field work (see Chapter 5 for more details). As we documented in Chapter Five the EMC has produced audio and video programmes for some courses but the level of technology is not as high as it needs to be. Duplication of the produced programmes is accomplished by simple machines like those used in home. One of the experts of EMC explained: The lack of professional equipment is the greater obstacle for mass production of audio-visual cassettes. We are working with home video and audio appliances (MKH-8-95). Despite these problems, as well as those discussed in Chapter Five, and despite a general movement away from broadcasting among the distance education universities (Bates, 1982), PNU is trying to establish its own broadcasting centre with the technological help of Russia and the financial help of the Islamic Development Bank (see Chapter 5). When I asked one of the key informants for the reason for this ambitious plan he remarked that: 243 By broadcasting our TV programmes to the general public, PNU will provide an opportunity to a larger audience than its students for learning and help in the cultural development of the people nation wide (HSS-2-95). Daniel (1995:9) argues that: broadcasting requires mega-universities to be clear about the outcomes they wish to achieve. This will be equally true for the newer forms of broadcasting, through satellite and cable. If the sole purpose of using audio-visual media is to enhance the learning of registered students it is better to make them available as audio cassettes and video cassettes. In my experience, the use of audio and video cassettes may be more practical, easy to produce and cheap. Furthermore, academics feel they have more control over the making of these cassettes and students find them convenient and informal: like a personal tutorial with the course author (Daniel, 1995). PNU uses various degree of mechanisation in the production of printed materials. For instance, while PPC uses automatic machines for laser typesetting, lithography, photography, montage and copy, other phases of production such as printing, binding and distribution are done by semi-automatic or dependent machines. The process of study material production in itself is an industrial process built into the whole teaching-learning process as an integral part. Industrial production, in turn, is a complex task that needs to be precisely planned and based on the principle of standardisation. Standardisation reduces the number of components or materials required to provide the range of products that are sent to students. This allows costs to be reduced. In this regard, an informant asserted: The production managers must always consider the goals of the university and know about the placement of operational system, production planning and project control. I think in this respect we have no problem. The capacity of the PPC to handle this was a key element in making the decision to have a rapid expansion of the university. But level of technology being used in production has important role in making decision about production. Generally speaking, with regard to study material production, the level of mechanisation of the work process at PNU is comparable with the second stage of industrial evolution [Fordism] (MKA-9-95). 244 It is important to note that the informant sees the provision of mass education in a mega-university as conditioned by the mass production of study materials. The expansion of PNU indicates how important the material sub-system, which covers the design, production and distribution of learning materials, is in the logistical activities of the university. As the result of the mechanisation of material production, particularly of printed materials, PNU has had a significant influence on improving other higher education courses and attracting many other readers than its own students. Assembly Line As industrialisation developed into the Fordist phase, a system of mass production, involving the division of labour and the mechanisation of work process led to the setting up of an assembly line for the production of complex products. The similarity between distance education processes and the industrial production process is particularly noticeable here (Peters, 1967). The assembly line characteristics of PNU, like the division of labour and mechanisation, can be divided into two parts: one for the production of study materials and the other for the teaching-learning process. The assembly line concept is a very important and visible process in distance education. In the development of study materials at PNU, for example, there is an assembly line followed by the course team for the development of study material (see figure 5.1). However, there is evidence to suggest that the course teams are not arranged well at PNU and each area of responsibility has not yet been clearly distinguished. Hence there are always some grey areas in its assembly line. As one informant points out: In most cases we were not able to bring all the members of course teams together. They were, therefore, working individually. That is to say when the writer finished his/her job the manuscript is passed by the writer to the university and then it is sent to editor, educational technologist and other 245 specialists so that specific alterations and changes are made at each area of responsibility. Thus, they are working as a team while they do not meet each other. This is actually a distance course team! I think it is still the best way for our circumstances. Now the study material crisis is controlled and the production line is working relatively well (DMB-3-95). Harry, eta!. (1993:112) explain that: The development of courses may be considered from at least two perspectives: in relation to the logistical arrangements necessary for the development and delivery of courses, and in relation to pedagogical factors to be borne in mind in the creation of materials. In terms of logistics, the best-known means ... is probably the course team method introduced by the UK Open University. This involves a co-operative process resulting in materials which are the product of a team rather than a series of individuals. The process at PNU, as explained by the informant above, is closer to the series of individuals model -with all its related disadvantages. There is an invisible assembly line in PNU's teaching-learning process. Initially, the two basic functions of academic staff, namely transmission of knowledge and information, and counselling and tutoring are separated. The first part of the job is carried out by the materials produced by the course team and the second part is done by tutors. The regular and final assessment of performance is not usually carried out by the course writer or those academics who have the main role in running the course during the term. Each of these areas has its own assembly line (Chap. 5 p. 197). In Peters' words the rationalisation effect is achieved by the fact that the limited number of university teachers and thousands of students do not have to meet in one place in order to participate in teaching events. Instead of sending students to learning places, the learning materials are transported to the students which saves time, energy and money, and makes the system cost effective. The assembly line in factories is based on a 'push system' in which those responsible for each area of responsibility pass the work to the next area when finished. In this way the assembly line works effectively. 246 The assembly line at PNU for both materials production and teaching-learning processes works less on the basis of the push system than on the basis of a 'pull system'. That is to say that instead of waiting for the pieces of work to come to them in due course, it is the next level or the university authorities on behalf of them, that tend to pull the work from one area of responsibility to the next. For example, the educational technologist or the Bureau of Course Production must pull the manuscript from the writer to send it to the editor. That said, the 'pull system' can accelerate productivity if it is employed properly and does not indicate only a delay in action in the previous area of responsibility. Having a related point one informant argued that: Obviously various offices in the development and production line of study materials do not work coincidentally. Very often, a decision which is made in an office creates a problem for other offices - even though it is a good decision at that area of work (MHP-lO-95). This informant, in response to my question, 'What then is the Co-ordination Council of Managers for'? declared that: At the sessions of this Council only general issues are set forth for discussion. The participants usually stay silent about existing disharmony and do not propound their main problems because more likely they do not want to be accused of being a weak manager (MHP-lO-95). However, the study of the minutes of the meeting of these sessions did not confirm this comment. For example in the third session of this council (2nd, March, 1993) there was a discussion about the existence of disharmony among the various areas of the production line leading to their finding a solution for the co-ordination of various sections in the production line including a flow chart to show how this co-ordination should be done. Executive problems clearly existed in their assembly line and there is much to suggest that there remains much room for improved efficiency of all such processes throughout PNU. 247 Mass Production Mass production, which is accepted as a structural characteristic of an advanced industrial society by modern sociologists, occurs in a consumer society where a large quantity of standardised goods require industrial production to make them generally accessible. Mass production by its very nature needs mass consumers. If one equally rids the term 'consumer' of its negative cultural connotation, one can speak of a student as a consumer of academic education (Peters, 1967:115). If so, and if increased numbers are of importance then we can safely say that PNU's rate of production is on the mass production scale (see Chapter 5 p. 197). We can also say that the graduation rate of PNU is on the mass production scale. Hence, PNU, like other distance education institutions, is - in both an academic and manufacturing sense- a mass production institution. The rule of demand and supply holds true here as well. Peters (1989:5) argues that: [We cannot ignore] the advantages of mass production and capitalise on the economics of large-scale operation which enable [mega-universities] to employ the best teachers and experts in the market. The Iranian government approved the establishment of PNU on account of its similarity to the mass production process and its potential to admit very large groups of students. From the economic point of view all suppliers try to satisfy their consumers. Hence, the mass production of study materials and the distribution of them throughout the country forced the compilers of these materials to analyse the requirements of students as well as other users far more carefully than their peers in conventional universities. This, it is argued, improved the quality of the courses (see Chapter 5). Greater and more equal access to higher education is also now possible irrespective of the geographical location of students. 248 In the following sections a more detailed analysis of the dilemmas experienced by PNU in adopting an industrial model for higher education are explained, beginning with those concerned with cross cultural transfer. Dilemmas of an Industrial Model Dilemmas of Comparisons with Industry Comparison of an industrial system and an educational system can be problematic. It is not always easy to match the elements of industry to the educational process because: 1. The presence of multiple goals or multiple outputs poses a problem for the interpretation of production (teaching-learning) techniques used by educational institutions. 2. It is quite likely that production functions in education are not uniform for students of different personality and different abilities. And in terms of the management of two systems. 3. The educational managers at all levels lack knowledge of the production set for obtaining particular outcomes. 4. Substantial management discretion does not exist over which inputs are obtained and how they are organised in educational production. 5. In contrast with industrial institutions, as Levin, (1976) points out, there is little or no competition among educational institutions. As mentioned already, the manufacturing feature of distance education at PNU has much conformity with industrial production processes. With regard to PNU's academic role and characteristics, however, there are many differences. An academic member of staff for example, is used to a high degree of autonomy in their daily work 249 compared with an engineer in a factory. Furthermore, it is argued that the administration of a distance education system requires more of a human relations approach to understand the personal needs and interests of staff as well as students (Rumble, 1986). Almost all industrial institutions have clear criteria for their organisational effectiveness, evaluation and rational measures of profit. However, in education there is no such clarity. Dilemmas of International Transfer Peters (1989) argues that distance education in its present form is a product of industrial society and thus its success depends upon its conformity with the principles and values of the industrial society in which it is set. Social structure in industrialised society today, it is argued, is based on individualism and much emphasis is placed on self-directing and self-identity because, as Jarvis (1993:167) argues: ... 'as society has become more complex and so much information is transmitted to people, so there has emerged a contrasting emphasis upon individualisation' (see also Amundsen, 1993). In such contexts individuals: feel themselves, to be able to follow their own interests, in their own ways and to some extent be self-directed. Moreover, industrial society has been shaped by scientific discoveries which in turn led the society towards formalised and standardised work processes. Each of these steps led to a change in social organisation's functions. Hence, the ways of thinking, attitudes, life style and in general the culture conformed to the rationale of industrialisation. One of the outstanding features of distance education institutions in the present day is their variety in spite of their many similarities. The differences that exist among distance education institutions are conditioned by specific cultural, philosophical and technological characteristics of their host countries. These evolutionary processes are 250 also under way in developing countries. They are now actually moving from the first stage of industrialisation (pre-Fordist) to the second stage (Fordist). So, for the moment they appear to have pre-Fordist and Fordist systems running alongside one another, in parallel or even in close interconnection with each other, rather than one replacing the other. The culture of many developing nations is mainly affected by social values that have a collective feature. Individual values do not have primary importance in this collective culture. Such a culture structures social relations across local and personal contexts of interaction. In industrial societies this sort of interaction is replaced by impersonal expert systems which restructure them across the global context (Giddens, 1990, and Jarvis, 1993). The backbone of the industrial system in developing countries has taken an evolutionary path that mainly relates it to collective culture and traditional systems for the production and distribution of goods and the evaluation and application of knowledge. For this reason much of what is produced does not often meet the industrial standards. Knowledge is not employed sufficiently in industrial institutions to make their work process more efficient and easy. One of the greatest challenges that developing countries like Iran face, is thus the articulation of the relationships between the world of learning and the world of work. While the same principles of industrial production are used as a means for formal reports by non-specialists bureaucrats, the rationalisation of industrialism often does not work as effectively in these countries. Thus, even though PNU tries to apply industrial theory, and its operational procedures appear to correspond to the Fordist mode of production, as we have demonstrated there are many factors which serve to hinder effective implementation. For example, PNU's assembly line in both the teaching-learning process and the materials production process has always suffered from the lack of 251 harmony between the different areas of responsibilities and been threatened with a shortage of academic staff for text writing. The shortage of human and material resources, mechanisation and/or automation, and the problems encountered in the use of appropriate technology are another dimension of this issue. Dilemmas of Technical Skills The use of modern equipment requires technical skills involving the use of knowledge, methods and techniques. As the level of mechanisation changes and/or modern technology has been employed, a change in the mode of operation is required (Peters, 1994). But the work force in the production line at PNU have not been able to change themselves accordingly. Beyond the fact that mankind is not able to change as fast as the technology is changed, there are other reasons why, in Iran, workers are not able to do so. As one informant pointed out: The majority of PNU's work force on the production line have a pre-industrial conception of the nature of their work. They are, therefore not able to adjust themselves to an industrial process of work' (MHP-lO-95). This is not only a problem at PNU, it is also a problem for many other industrial organisations in the country. Dilemmas of Organisational Principles The organisational structure of the university as explained by other informants is, also, not fully compatible with the principles of industrial theory. Although we work on the basis of industrial theory, in fact, we have not succeeded in the approval of our suggested organisational chart at Organisation of Administrative Affairs and Employment (OAAE). They made lots of changes in our original pattern which had been designed according to our circumstances. They had to make their decision on the basis of a fixed framework and rules. Our suggested pattern did not have many similarities to their existing pattern. I remember that one of the OAAE members was arguing that the proposed structure of PNU's organisation is not similar to any other university in the country, so it has very little chance to meet the final approval of OAAE. They consider our justifications very far from the general rule of country's organisations. I was witness of your own efforts in this respect but finally as you 252 know they approved an organisational structure for the university which did not have much conformity with our mission and particularly with the theoretical underpinnings of the university. For example Publishing House which I consider as an instructional mean in this system, is not directly under the control of the related Vice-chancellor's office, which creates, in fact, a break in the course production chain. However, we are following this theoretical framework despite these sorts of problems (DMB-3-95). The explanation of these processes by this informant relates mainly to classical management which, as Rumble (1986:104) observes, emphasises organisational structure, whereas in the quasi-industrial nature of PNU what is needed are the skills of productionloperation and industrial management, ensuring that study materials are developed and produced for the students on time. Only one of the informants in this study claimed that he had previous experience in industrial management. Salter (1960:13) defines three levels of technological knowledge that relate to production: • basic principles of physical (or behavioural) phenomena; • application of these principles to production (engineering level), and • the level that relates to day-to-day operation. Since production and academic sub-systems are administered by academic staff at PNU, the lack of knowledge in the management of the production sub-system is a noticeable problem. The informant who had some experience of industrial management argued that: Educational managers do not have and in some sense do not need such kind of knowledge. For this reason neither their managerial experience nor trial and errors yields much insight to the educational managers on the nature of the production set (DAL-l2-95). Dilemmas ofAdministration Culture Another problem relates to the administrative culture of the university. The administrative and financial authorities at the university are currently trying to control all of the university including the instructional process by controlling expenditure. 253 This can be disruptive to the teaching-learning process and many argue that this is now a problem faced by all the universities in Iran and probably in other countries. Dilemmas of Feedback Finally, at PNU there are currently few effective feed-back control systems, which have critical importance in an industrial process. For example, with regard to the quality of graduates, managers justif, the assumption that PNU's graduates possess the same qualifications as other universities' graduates, arguing that they are being treated and paid the same by employers. This may be true because of the rule of the OAAE regarding the equality of degrees no matter from which university it has been gained. Another case is made on the basis of the number of PNU's graduates who have successfully passed the national entrance examination for post-graduate studies (almost all of the informants of this case study believed that it was a good indicator for quality of education at PNU). As far as quality control in industrial production is concerned, hitherto a considerable number of PNU's graduates are teaching at guidance schools and secondary schools and there has been no evaluation of their performance. Quality control systems for the teaching-learning process are accomplished by using standard guidelines for face-to-face classes, marking assignments and final examination sheets, and supervised examinations (see Chapter 5 pp 213-14). The more amelioration in industrialisation the more improvement in the control of quality. For example, quality control in the first division of the teaching- learning process (transmitting of knowledge and information) was done better than in other divisions (figure 6.3). Since the process of the production of study materials is more industrialised than that of the teaching-learning process, the quality control system over study materials is 254 also more efficient. However, quality control in industrialisation requires more standardisation. Hence, all the points in the production line of the study materials from writing to printing and binding are standardised by the university. But the standardisation of the teaching-learning process is a complicated enterprise which requires more time and energy. The quality of the content of study materials is controlled firstly, by course teams secondly, by students and tutors in the study centres and finally, by the whole group of academics involved (see Chapter 5 p 199). 'The reaction of these control groups to the content of courses is registered in order to improve the effectiveness of study materials'(MHB-6-95). In addition, PNU recently commissioned a small team of experts to evaluate and analyse scientifically the effectiveness and success of its three randomly chosen self-study texts. Unfortunately I could not gain access to the final report of this evaluation. Policy Making and Implementation at PNU Having examined the philosophical foundations of PNU and considered the relevance and effectiveness of the industrial model for the analysis of distance education in PNU and Iran, the organisational structure and the process of policy making and policy implementation will now be analysed. This part of the analysis is informed more by Hodgkinson's model of leadership which was first outlined in Chapter One (figure 1.1) and discussed in Chapter Three. The model logically separates policy making (philosophy, planning and politics) process from policy implementation (mobilising, management and monitoring) processes. The administrative and management processes of policy making and implementation are located within organisational sub- systems. However, these processes are strongly constrained by national policy arising from outside the university as discussed below. 255 Policy Making As discussed in Chapter Five, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR) is the main policy maker for educational and cultural affairs at all levels nation-wide. Hence the universities are the passive implementors of the macro policies which are made by this Council. The Council also develops the national higher education curriculum. The universities do not need, therefore, to be involved in broader policy making and curriculum development. They can make only micro policies for the better implementation of the macro policies of national higher education and for the best delivery of programmes. This system has its own advantages and disadvantages. One of the notable advantages of this for PNU is the acceleration of the development of study materials. Another is the increased possibility of exchanging quality study materials between PNU and other conventional universities, as well as in using their academics in writing the courses and tutoring the students. The planning process at PNU is completely different from conventional universities in Iran and this is discussed below. Planning Process Keegan (1980) in his article on the definition of distance education states that: The distance education system has daily pre-occupations with lead times, deadlines, print runs, job schedules, type-faces, warehousing, delivery and dispatch and planning decision on educational priorities that must take place two, three years before teaching takes place. Planning would be an essential element if distance education is viewed as an industrialised form of education. The characterisation of distance education as an industry implicitly underlines the fact that '... distance study must be carefully pre- 256 planned, prepared and organised' (Peters, 1994:216). 'In distance teaching too, success depends decisively on a preparatory phase' (ibid., 117). These sorts of recommendations are very often found in distance education literature (e.g. Reddy, 1986; Rumble, 1986 and Villarroel, 1988). Planning is a continuous and comprehensive process of determining the policy priorities and making decisions for future actions (see Chapter Three). The lack of comprehensive planning in this field can generate many problems. For example the planning committee of the Sukhothai Thammathirate Open University in Thailand spent three years in its planning stage to formulate an open university project (Chaya-Ngam, 1986). As revealed here, the situation in Iran was very different. The re-establishment of a distance education university in Iran after the cultural revolution was a response to an ever increasing demand for higher education which was gradually becoming a political problem in the society. The decision to develop this university was, therefore, largely based on political factors as well as the educational needs of society. PNU was expected to start its operation as soon as possible. Thus, those who were in charge of setting it up were not given the necessary time to conduct a needs analysis, and identify the target students. Perhaps more importantly, they were not given enough time for preparatory planning. Such activities are time consuming but as Jennings (1988:120) points out, 'in politically motivated change efforts, speed is of the essence' since politicians are very often concerned with meeting their own targets to impress to the public. This pressure for rapid innovation is found in other developing countries. For example, the preparation committee of the Universitas Terbuka (open university) in Indonesia was given only nine months to establish and operate (Setijadi, 1986). The state government in Andhra Pradesh, India, had also taken the decision to establish an open 257 university there before it set up a committee for the preparation of a project proposal (Committee on the Establishment of an Open University, 1982 cited in Rumble, 1986:87). It is argued here that one of the main reasons why innovations often fail in third world countries, is because innovators or their supporters try to achieve far-reaching change within a most unrealistic time. A period of between five to ten years is regarded as a long term. Bearing in mind the fate of FUI in Iran, and being understandably concerned as to how best to make a new start led the PNU's initial managers to plan their activities rapidly, and instead of thinking about the long-term future, they focused on immediate needs in the next academic year. There were only two and a half months to prepare everything. The former Chancellor of PNU, with a little irony, characterised the situation by stating: Everything was promising as the system was so devised as to follow the step-by- step strategy for its development (Zohoor, et. al., 1991). A committee was set up to design the organisational structure and another for course production. According to the national curriculum of higher education there are between eight and ten basic courses carrying twenty to twenty four unit credits which are compulsory for students in every field of study. It was a great advantage to start with five disciplines simultaneously because all students in different fields of study could use the same course and study materials. Therefore, the course production committee plarmed to develop eight self-study texts for these basic courses during the available time. Another consideration which had to be taken into the account was the quality of any new texts. Quality had to be mauntained, despite the time constraint, to prevent undue criticism. 258 The organisation committee on the other hand had to design a new organisation for which there would be inevitable criticism given the precedent of the FUI. As Holrnberg (1981) pointed out there are several ways of operating this type of education particularly when serving a large number of students. PNU was an independent distance education university and needed its structure, functions and procedures to be sufficiently clearly defined. This in turn needed sufficient planning time. As already documented, PNU's founders took a pragmatic line and set up a temporary and tentative organisation in order to run daily affairs. The design of the ongoing organisation of the university awaited further consideration, which lasted about five years. Reintroducing a distance education system in such conditions, in such a short time, presents many additional difficulties. There were many different processes involved that needed to be carefully synchronised. This situation was perplexing to those involved since little time was available and this turbulent time called for more flexibility. Much advice available in the literature (e.g. Keegan, 1980; McCunne, 1986 Reddy, 1986; and Rumble, 1986) was of little help because it related to relatively stable environments. However, in the case of PNU, the situation was entirely different. It was, in Carison's (1975) words, a 'wild organisation' which had to struggle for its survival. 'Support for them is closely tied to quality of performance Wild organisations are not protected at vulnerable points as are domesticated organisations' (p.191). There were consequently great tensions for the managers who were seeking to employ different style and strategies. Illustrating this point one of the informants of the present study was clear that the university was under external pressure and managers were intent on trying to protect their operation from external 259 interference. He considered this situation as a characteristic of third world countries arguing: I personally believe that in the countries like ours you cannot find a stable environment to plan for the long term. Major policy for higher education is made in the SCCR the majority of whose members are politicians. In such conditions where the country considers economic limitations and shortage of financial resources, you cannot think about long term planning which needs huge investment with very high risk. Hence, in my opinion you must start the operation and go ahead step by step. We were aware of principles of planning for a distance education system based on industrial theory but we did not have the required resources (DMB-3 -95). Similarly the former chancellor of PNU who has a long experience in Iranian higher education, in an informal discussion with the researcher remarked that: In our country the manager must not wait for everything to be ready. This moment may never arrive. So, I had a strategy: 'operate then justify'. You should put the politicians in a position where the task has been done. Then, they would have to support you because you have something to show to them. It is worth noting that it was he who designed and implemented the rapid development plan of the university based on this philosophy. The result of interviews with five other informants confirm that such flexible planning enabled the managers to respond rapidly to environmental changes. They thus prepared a detailed implementation schedule for one semester for the development, production and distribution of the study materials as well as for the implementation of the student administrative and teaching system. Our rationale for this flexible stage by stage planning and implementation was that we would be able to control the situation and to consider various ways to achieve the objectives and to choose the best. Moreover, in this manner we would have the opportunity to correct or change our direction when and where it was necessary and prevent the organisation from the extensive influence of wrong decisions. I think this was a successful approach and we do not see any reason for changing it. (DMB-3-95). Despite these arguments, the majority of principals of study centres at their seminar in Ghazvin (October, 1 995) were not satisfied with this planning approach, arguing that 260 they could not change front line action in the same way as others changed direction at headquarters. In conversation in the hotel where we stayed most complained that they never felt stability in their work process because they were working on the basis of a plan which might change in the next few days or next month. They believed that it was not fair for the accelerating of managerial affairs and considered the present situation of the university as a crisis which had gradually become out of control. The Problem of Rapid Development Flexible planning itself may not be the real cause of criticism. In the light of this study it is argued that it was rapid development that created the biggest problem. This was unrealistic for available resources and beyond the managerial capacity of the university, which was suffering from shortages of academic and support staff, along with financial and material resources. The relationship between the number of students, offered programmes, the number of study centres, and the recruitment and training of the work force of the university was inappropriate. The academic and non-academic staff were too pressed for time with limited resources to meet the needs of a young, inexperienced, rapidly expanding distance education system (Zohoor, et al., 1991). Rumble (1986:141) argues that: As long as resources are plentiful, institutions can expand and the untrammelled proliferation of programmes and activities can proceed broadly unchecked. This proliferation of programmes and activities certainly happened rapidly at PNU beyond acceptable limits. There is evidence to show how the planners of the university hoped any increase in the number of students would increase the university's revenue. They would then be able to ensure the necessary financial resources for expansion. In practice this assumption did not hold true. The increasing rate of tuition fees no longer kept pace with the ever increasing rate of inflation and 261 the state resources did not increase according to their prediction. This generated major problems for the organisation at this stage of its development - but the rapid increase in numbers helped to establish a visible foundation. There are, as Rumble points out, three approaches to the development of distance education institutions: 1. To mount a small pilot project, evaluate the result, and then decide whether or not to expand the system to a major project. 2. To implement a full-scale project immediately, and 3. To adopt an incremental approach in which the basic infrastructure is fully implemented from the start but volumes rise year by year [as the human and material resources are increased] (Rumble, 1986:99). PNU tried to pursue the third approach but, as discussed above, did not wait for an increase in its resources before major expansion. By 1994 it came under external and internal pressure, this time to stop its rapid development. The former Chancellor of the university believed that having a university with problems was much better than not having one at all. This comment supports the view expressed earlier that the rapid development of the university, without regard for its existing and potential resources was, largely, due to political reason. Typically, this sort of development is necessarily relatively unplanned. The target for the university was to grow to overall 200,000 students in 120 study centres by the year 2000 (Zohoor, et a!. 1992). However, the number of students had already risen to 200,000 (PNU's statistics, 1997) in the academic year (1996-97) and the number of study centres reached the target figure in 1995. A glance at tables 5.7, 5.13, and 5.15, indicates that the university developed much faster than had been predicted. Planners ignored their existing plan and operated on political expediency which created many problems. Obviously, a multitude of problems had to be solved in the second year [of the rapid development of the university]. Providing student services, the preparation of study materials with limited budget in a short period was a tough task (DAL- 12-95). 262 While planners usually try to establish a balance between planning for the maintenance of existing programmes and planning for development this became skewed at the early PNU very much in favour of development. The criticism of middle level management and principals of study centres is also understandable viewed in the light of the problems they faced by rapid change, for while they were able to predict the probable shifts or changes in headquarters policies, they were not able to predict how, when and what kind of change would occur. This in turn created an uncertain and relatively anxious environment at work. Thus, rapid development and rapid change have left both the university's policy makers and managers less able to understand the issues they faced and less able to see how their actions might improve the present condition. Wallace (1991: 185) argues: Planning for development and maintenance encompass strategic tasks, concerned with overall policy, and more detailed planning of each initiative. Decision making lies at the heart of both policy making and detailed planning and is frequently associated with other sub-processes such as consultation, negotiation, and giving information about decisions taken. Since any effort directed towards logical planning involves decision making and decision making is a managerial task, this process and research findings about this are discussed in the light of different management models later in this chapter. To put this into context, however, first it is worth examining the conflict between the macro educational policy of the country and the micro policy of the university. Two Different Models of Planning: Conflict Between Macro and Micro Policy The policies which are made by the SCCR are communicated to the Planning and Budget Organisation (PBO) to be implemented in the five year development plans of Iran. In doing this the manpower model of educational planning along with the cost- 263 benefit approach, is widely used by the experts of PBO in the country's macro plan for development. Iran has been affectionately referred to over a number of years by its citizens as a 'lucky country', but is now experiencing severe economic difficulties. The government, in defending its economic policy, tries to place the blame for the country's present economic woes on outside factors (e.g. war, decline in oil prices by western countries, economic sanctions, the rise in prices world wide, etc.). The high rate of inflation, high unemployment, low productivity - in combination a recipe for economic disaster - have caused most Iranian politicians, particularly those in government, to reflect on where it all went wrong and how it might be corrected. In such depressing circumstances, a scapegoat must be found. The finger of suspicion has been pointed, in recent times, at a variety of supposed culprits; unproductive people, merchants, trade agencies, employers, those who have sacrificed national interests for self interest. Public institutions, such as the educational system in general and universities in particular, are also seen to use a large percentage of the country's Gross National Product (GNP) without demonstrating cost efficiency. Thus, critics argue that it is the fault of universities that our industry has failed to keep up with the advances of technology and has failed to ensure quality control of its products. Universities have already lost control of their own curriculum development through the new policy of the SCCR, which developed the national curriculum for higher education. The prevailing socio-economic condition of the country has further influenced decisions related to the allocation of resources. The government has tried, therefore, to 264 allocate key resources to deal with national priorities. In this regard the PBO decided to emphasise two aims in national educational planning: 1. to minimise the unemployment rate in the country (PBO, 1992 p. 0.1) 2. to minimise the cost of education (ibid. pp. 7.2, 7.18-24). With regard to the implementation of this policy, in 1993 the PBO decided to allocate the state budget to the universities on the basis of per-student expenditure. This was an incentive to PNU and other state universities to start to increase their enrolments as fast as the development of their study fields would allow in order to acquire a greater share of the governmental budget. The result was a maj or quantitative expansion of all universities at the price of quality. In addition to this PNU has striven for economies of scale and sought to expand its enrolment to take full advantage of these economies. The separation of the course production process from course delivery and student services at PNU has also made it possible to expand student enrolments as far and as fast as the market will allow. The dramatic increase in the number of students throughout the country (from 165,000 in 1979 to 1,300,000 in 1996, [MCHE, 1996] ) has of late made it clear to policy makers in Iran that they should stop the quantitative development of the universities in favour of quality and give greater weight to the vocational and technical, to science and technology rather than to subjects such as literature, art, history, music, and social sciences- the fields which PNU's educational programmes are largely concentrated on. In other words, from 1993 the changing needs of the economy, suggested the change of the type of programmes offered, fields of study and quality of the opportunities provided. Implementation of this policy by the government created big problems for PNU. Changing the curriculum and shifting from social sciences to natural sciences 265 and technology was not an easy task. The university needed more investment in the development and production of study materials and recruitment of new academic staff There was a paradox. 'The government made this change as a condition for allocating the budget' (MRH- 1-95), and in turn this change needed a larger budget. The implementation of this policy was thus very difficult at PNU. The result was a cut in the government share of budget which was 50% of its total budget. The government, in fact, used a 'power-coercive' (Chin and Benne, 1969) strategy to force PNU to follow its policy by political and economic pressure. Their rationale for this decision as explained in parliament was that this university would create a problem of graduate unemployment for the country if allowed to continue to expand (Newsletter of PNU, 1994:3). With so much of the budget effectively committed well in advance of the normal budget setting timetable for the production and delivery of study materials, major difficulties arise. Rumble (1986:159) believes that distance education systems can be particularly vulnerable to sudden cut-backs in expenditure. Such institutions, therefore, need to pay particular attention to the political climate within which they have to operate (p.160). As a result of this PNU was, in practice, compelled to reduce its expenditure by thrift, austerity and saving in recent years. Although the university experienced an economic crisis for a while (until the resolution of the problem by the parliament under the pressure of more than one hundred thousand students from more than 200 cities) its managers learned a good lesson for their future action. The austerity policy is still continuing at PNU. Establishment of new study centres has stopped and the admission of students for literature and educational sciences has reduced or fixed. Within a short period, the 266 climate of concern for all things that cost money created an imperative for change and reform. The government has redefined the country's educational system as an instrument which must better serve the labour market, but this has created financial instability in the university, precisely to force it into the market and to make it responsive to labour market (Cowen, 1996). The government also made it clear that it expected value from the state educational system for every Rial spent on education. Educational administrators were expected to provide evidence of value for money in terms of quantifiable outcomes, without considering that some of the most highly valued outcomes of education are not measurable in such a way. Bear (1986:6) muses that: How do you put a mathematical or economic weight on ... developing a love for reading ... on valuing qualities like loyalty, self-control, and human affection? We have always known that the outcomes of education are difficult to quantify reliably, and that some of the most deeply valued things about education lie too deep for tears. Moreover, there is debate on the extent to which the development of educational systems precedes the growth of an economic system (Archer, 1 982).The position argued here is that the use of purely economic criteria for the evaluation of educational outcomes is a danger for the quality of education. In such an econo- political atmosphere worthwhile values can be sacrificed in favour of economic and political expedients. Furthermore, prescribing a high degree of economic rationality in such a pejorative sense fails to connect adequately with the reality of planning in higher education institutions, because critical comments are premised on the idea that universities are like factories which can be managed and improved by that kind of rationalities. Indeed, much of the collective effort of policy makers is currently aimed at making university reality conform to economic models. They then bemoan, as Wise 267 (1983) has noted, the fact that the universities fail to conform to the model. As one of the case study informants argues: In my opinion the university has two main functions: the production of knowledge and the consumption of knowledge. The first function is carried out by research and the second by instruction. Unfortunately in our country the first function of the university is often neglected. This is the transfer of ready knowledge which has great importance. Worse than this is that our economic specialists are viewing every thing -even education- from their visible and measurable benefit points. They criticise the universities for soaking up considerable amounts of national resources to produce graduates in fields unrelated to the labour market. We should use our limited resources to respond to the needs of society for manpower. They want, therefore, the universities to be passive users of their policies and plans. I am opposed to that point of view for two main reasons. Firstly, Islam conceives of life-long education as a basic right of mankind based on their own interests. Secondly, university is not a job centre. University should not think about graduates' jobs but rather their abilities and efficiencies. I think if the students acquired the necessary qualifications at the university they would not be unemployment. I always worry about the quality and efficiency. Investment in job creating activities is the function of other organisations. I believe that in planning for higher education we should take economic measures into account as a variable among many other social and cultural variables (HSS-2-95). The ideology underlying this informant's position is strongly based on his religion. But from the economists' point of view it is based on the free enterprise logic of consumer choice and economic self interest. Because this informant pointed out: Entrance to the university is not easy in our country. The students should pass a difficult competitive national entrance examinations, in such circumstances they themselves must think about their fields of study which directly associated with their future jobs (HSS-2-95). In a society like Iran, principles such as self-interest and individual mobility which are derived from the market economy are heavily weighted in favour of newly affluent groups who now experience an unusual amount of power and influence in a society which is characterised by deep economic, social and political inequalities. In these circumstances, any effort to defend universities as sites that have a fundamental 268 connection to the idea of human rights and social mobility is being systematically rejected (Giroux, 1985:58). The experts of PBO argue on behalf of the government that PNU should move in the direction of the macro plan of the country and should be loyal to its aims. But the university argues that 'we should be loyal to all of the university's aims, not just one or two of them which are selected by PBO experts' (HSS-2-95). The university considers itself as a social service institution that must pay due attention to the scientific, social and cultural development of the people in deprived areas. Providing higher education in the deprived areas of the country was a revolutionary idea, and in some sense a dream, which nobody believed could become true in the near future. It is the intention of the country's policy makers to use the potentiality of PNU to create higher education opportunities for people who lived in remote and deprived areas. Indeed PNU is now on the way of bringing this vision to reality (MRH-1 -95). Nevertheless, from the government point of view this university has been expanded without pro-rata increases in its resources, and so it has problems in ensuring its financial resources. PNU has tried to use the political powers of those MPs who are from the cities in which PNU has study centres to ensure its required budget. The Minister of Culture and Higher Education, in his speech in the Ghazvin seminar (October, 1995), made it clear that the government discussed the issue at the parliament and the parliament is now aware of and responsive to the government's problems, hence PNU cannot put the government under the pressure of parliament. For this reason: PNU is recommended to stop its rapid development. From the government point of view this university developed much faster than it had been determined in the first and second development plan of the country. Hence, the university must 269 keep its student numbers fixed at 120,000 but develop its study fields and programmes during the remaining years of second plan [i.e. 1999]. (MRH-1-95) This recommendation supported the direction of the new policy of changing the existing study fields in favour of science and technology, and vocational training because: According to the statistics of PBO 70% of degree holders in arts and humanities are working in sections unrelated to their specialities or are unemployed. I have recently studied a report that chemical and agriculture engineers are not able to find appropriate jobs. (MRH-1-95). PNU has, to date, ignored these recommendations and as mentioned earlier, increased its students' number up to 160,000 in 1996 - but the dilemma remains. Theoretically speaking, the country's macro educational plan has followed a combination of the manpower and cost-benefit model while the university has followed the social demand or socio-cultural model in its micro planning. It should be repeated again that the main justification for the existence of this distance education system is that it was set up to serve people living in remote and deprived areas who find it difficult, and often impossible to continue their education at conventional universities. It is argued, therefore, that it is imperative that this system gives an appropriate response to the demands of the target people and makes direct contact with its target audience. However, the recent growth can be seen to have created too much expectation among the people, and any inability of the university to satisfy these expectations will create political problems in itself. This is partly why the government now wants to stop PNU's rapid development. The Minister of MCHE emphasised this policy of the government in the Ghazvin seminar (October, 1995) by saying: I strongly recommend to PNU's managers to correct their policies, eliminate some of their study fields and replace them with new ones which the country 270 needs. Continuing the existing policy is impossible. I personally would not support the existing policy of the university at PBO and parliament. Rumble (1986:154) points out, distance education systems are particularly vulnerable to external influences. PNU was lucky to have the great advantage of public opinion on its side compared with its predecessor, and hence it solved this political problem temporarily but it still has to fight to get the necessary resources. Changed priorities, however, now mean that PNU must change its own policy, and some formal academic programmes, in favour of increased vocational and professional training and the creation of new science and technology programmes. PNU's planning is again based on institutional expediency, whereas strategic planning should be based on what West-Burnham (1994:80) calls a value-driven approach, which is founded on agreement and consensus. Micro level planning in a mega- university like PNU, which covers almost the whole country, must not be confused with macro planning at the national level. It is argued that the planners should always keep in their minds the fact that PNU is a state university and is still using a governmental budget. It needs, therefore, to establish harmony between its institutional interests and national interests. In other words, planning at PNU should be a three dimensional activity in which the influence of each of the dimensions must be synthesised to achieve realistic and implementable results (see figure 6.3). This diagram is designed to help clarify the complexity of planning in this mega- university with a nation-wide student body in Iran. Both institutional (micro) and national (macro) policy are themselves complex. Each can be seen as made up of three interfacing factors. 271 Figure 6.3 The Dynamics of Flexible planning Required in a Mega-university (Balance of Forces) Long-term planning (strategic plan) Mid-term planning (operational plan) short-term planning (annual budget) Industrialistitutional theomission University's micro-policy Academic issues PoliticalIslamic ideology National issues -policy Socio-economic issues The two schemes interact to produce a complex balance of factors which change through time. In the long term as the case study has illustrated, the force of national policy factors tends to be more influential than those factors within the universities. Making a balance between the two levels of policy and taking into consideration 272 pedagogical issues as well as institutional values, managerial issues is quite complex. Synthesising them into formulating ideas and the translation of these formulated ideas to a practical and, flexible short, mid and long-term plan is an even more complex process. Moving from the level of idea to the level of people (Hodgkinson, 1991) (i.e. execution of the plan), institutional governance, operational flexibility and industrial dynamism are still greater issues to the managers of mega-universities. Daniel (1995:16) argues that: close involvement with national policy may constrain the development options of the mega-universities. On the other hand, it may give the institutions greater opportunities than most universities enjoy to influence government policy on a range of issues. This mutual influence should be taken into account in the planning and management of these universities. The problem for PNU's managers was to bridge the implementation gap between national macro-policy and university's micro-policy in its planning processes, as systematically illustrated in figure 6.3. If they do so they will reduce the tensions between headquarters and line managers on one hand, and between the university and government on the other hand. The analysis of the minutes of meetings of Boards of Trustees and University Council indicate that PNU's managers simplified the process and applied a bureaucratic approach in the planning process. They planned with long horizons but operate with short horizons. This was clearly problematic. Short-time frames in planning, in principle, must be flexible to be responsive to the changing of both external and internal circumstances. At PNU there is a rapid reaction to internal changes as this informant explained. In any manner, we can control and modify the internal elements in response to the new policy of the university and we had done so hitherto. For example we modified our course production line and production planning very fast to improve the quality of education in the university but rapid and right respond to 273 external changes was too difficult. We planned based on our policy and priorities at the university in the light of national policy but this plan had to meet the approval of the PBO and then the parliament in the frame of national higher education planning which is in turn in the frame of national development planning. Therefore, it is natural that there should be some conflicts and contradictions between the three levels of planning. If these external agents could understand our circumstances we would have no problem in internal. changes (HSS-2-95). This widely held view indicates that PNU has the expectation that the macro policy should be harmonised with the university's policy. Such an accommodation is very difficult if not impossible to achieve, even if micro planning has been well thought out. Institutional planning is normally influenced by the national policy not vice versa. However, increasing institutional autonomy increases the scope for micro planning. As one informant comments: As long as PNU uses the government budget, it has to follow the government policy. If it became self-sufficient it could follow its own bearing in mind that it is a state university and it may have to modify its plans in response to national circumstances (MRH-1-95). Yet, only the flexibility of the university's plan in response to the macro policy of higher education and effects to improve quality will ensure continuing support and investment. The findings of this study indicate that even at a time of scarcity PNU was able to react rapidly to the sudden change of environment (e.g. by creating new programmes of study and making drastic reductions in its expenditure without noticeable reductions in the quality of its services). Nevertheless, where implementation processes are predominantly 'top-down' we must be mindful of the political context within which such changes are promoted. The tension between the national and institutional policy formulation processes has been the theme of this section. We now consider the processes whereby these policies 274 were implemented. Models of educational management reviewed in Chapter Three will be applied to these processes in an attempt to unravel their complexity. Management Process Background Before the revolution the management of higher education institutions was -like other institutions- based on a rigid top-down bureaucratic model in which authority was conferred from the first ring (usually the Shah or his representative) of a recognisable chain of authority. Regulations and procedures were predetermined and roles clearly specified. It was rarely possible to find any autonomous managers in a university or any departments of a university. This rigid hierarchical structure of universities was demolished after the revolution. The students who had played a crucial role in the victory of the revolution considered themselves more eligible to control the universities and fit to appoint the managers in a so-called democratic way, which created a perplexing situation for academic and non-academic staff The lack of democratic experience in the country and the predominant feeling of freedom led the universities towards disorganised anarchy and chaos, which gradually became reformulated. Broadly speaking, after the revolution there were three distinct phases in the management of Iranian universities: 1. The practice of democratic management (19 79-81). This phase can be characterised by the participation of the students in the decision making process, the creation of councils and committees in which all members, including representatives of academics and non-academic staff and students with equal voting rights, concentrated on securing certain minimal conditions for organisational survival and flexibility. The councils and committees were strongly 275 dominated by different ideo-political groups and there were no strong central authorities to set up the goals and control the current procedures. 2. Movement towards a hierarchical model with amalgamation of democratic approaches (1981-88). This phase can be characterised by the establishment of . a new institution in universities for the first time, namely Jihad of the University (in Islamic culture 'Jihad' means holy war but in this sense it means fighting against non-Islamic values in the universities), which is involved mostly in policy making and likely decision making processes, and the Islamic Association of Students which is involved in decision making and sometimes in the policy making process at the universities. These two institutions still exist at the university level. 3. A tendency towards the reduction of the particlpation of the Jihad and Islamic Association in policy and decision making processes, and the conferring of more authority on the universities to make them more independent (1989 to date). These deliberations were in fact a remarkable change in the management of the universities after the revolution in Iran (PBO, 1992). Sayyari (1994:28) portrays the management of the universities in Iran: In the first decade of revolution, universities in Iran did not have a stable management process and most of the managers were experiencing management capacity for the first time. They were therefore working on the basis of a trial and error approach. This sort of management was very expensive and vulnerable. The pre-assumption which was, unfortunately, accepted was that since they are specialists and followers of the Islamic ideology then, they are best managers ... Plurality of policy and decision making agents, the incongruence of authorities and devices with the missions and responsibilities, and the ambiguity of the area of responsibilities and the participation range of political or interest groups in the administration of the universities made it difficult for anybody who intended to carry out any particular plan. At present, the general context of the management process in Iran in almost every institution and at every level is dominated by political purposes. If one makes his/her 276 decisions in the light of the political main-stream one is considered as a good manager or at least he/she is not faced with any objection from external powers. One has inevitably to follow the ideological and political direction of the government without such acquiescence one can not be considered as a successful manager. In most cases receipt of the needed financial resources is dependent upon this conformity to political direction. The existence of evident or hidden political relationships can be promoters and facilitators of the allocation of budget and the approval of the plans (Sayyari, 1994:31). It is naive to think that politics would not play a central role in decision making, but these tendencies, as Paul (1990:117) points out, should be modified by the central values from within the institution which purport to drive the institution. From the above, it can be seen that management of higher education institutions throughout Iran will have similar administrative features. Thus PNU inevitably faces many of the same managerial problems as conventional institutions. There are, however, many differences between PNU and other universities in the nature of the tasks as that are to be actually performed. Clearly PNU as a distance education system exhibits a range of features not found in conventional universities which make its management qualitatively different (see table 5.5). Even so it is very much influenced by the conventional practice of management in higher education in the country. Management at PNU: The Test of Various Models As mentioned in Chapter Three, most of the literature about educational management is related to educational management in general and less to distance education. Moreover, this literature is rich in its implications for small-scale organisations. Not all this literature is useful in analysing the dynamics and relationships between 277 organisations and their environments. The implications are particularly complicated in this study which concentrates on a very large-scale distance education university that achieved the rank of a mega-university (Daniel, 1995) when its student body exceeded 100,000 in 1995. Its size and context requires careful application of generic models. The analysis, therefore, is made on the basis of insights which have been derived from a selection of models of educational management (Bush, 1994). Many models of educational management assume that the main elements of decision making in an institution are internal. But the prime impetus of PNU's operation has largely come from external factors and, as discussed earlier, massive changes occurred under external pressures. The responses of PNU to these external pressures and their influences on the decision making process created many problems. As the findings of this study reveal, these responses to these problems were not proactive and rationally planned. Consequently, heavy political conflicts emerged as the university attempted to find a rational way to establish a balance between outside political pressures and institutional interests. The problem for the Chancellors of PNU contrasted sharply with those of the first Vice-chancellor of the UK Open University. If the first Vice-chancellor of the Open University had problems with democracy in the implementation of policies that were otherwise democratically formulated, he had at least a freedom to listen to everyone and ultimately make up his mind and take his own decision (Perry, 1987:215). But the higher education environment and circumstances in Iran did not allow the three previous Chancellors of PNU to use their own managerial power. They have often, in varying ways, been challenged to attempt to run the university in accordance with their own personal experiences and institutional values as opposed to external factors. 278 The conflict between government and university policies has at times resulted in an unsatisfactory situation for both sides. During the interviews for the present study it became clear that there were significant differences in attitudes and approaches between the managers of the PNU in relating to these circumstances. These differences arise from the highly politicised environment. One of the key informants, for example, believes that decisions should be made consultatively. It is for this reason that we have many councils and committees at the university. The councils of academic, research and scholarship, student affairs, financial and administrative affairs, and above all the university council are the best means of policy and decision making for the university. (HSS-2-95). But another informant believes that participation in these councils and committees is in a sense a waste of time. I do not have so much time to spend in meetings, which are just talking places. You can not make a proper decision in such committees. Although I am always seeking for good advice I am essentially pragmatic. Managers should know their responsibilities and get on with them. I know some of my colleagues accuse me of being a dictator but I think my approach is fairly accurate and works well. (DMB-3-95). Another argues that working in a predominantly political environment mostly brings about frustration. We have institutional rules but we are operating with some kind of hidden rules. These are not properly written down and changes take place through external interference (MHP- 10-95). This point of view has an affinity with those exhibited by principals of study centres as mentioned earlier (see p.263). As well as the hidden rules which were asserted by this informant, I observed that there was a hidden organisational structure besides the approved organisational chart. In order to confirm this observation I put the matter up for discussion with another informant. In confirming this he explained the reason: Certainly there are some sort of organisational relations which are working well but they are not anticipated in the formal organisation of the university. They have been created based on organisational needs and necessities. Actually, the 279 existing organisation has some defects in its accordance with the industrial feature of the university. So, it is compensated by an informal or in your words hidden organisation which we hope will meet the approval of related authorities in the future revision of PNU's organisational structure (SAM-4-95). Observation of the internal activities of managers and meetings showed that this ambiguous and unstable situation was also partly the result of both the rapid expansion of the university and the over-reaction of the government (sudden budget cut). These issues are understood by top managers but remain confusing for the middle level managers. Hence, their behaviour and contributions seemed to be rather different from those displayed at the Ghazvin seminar and other meetings which I participated in. It is argued that these differences in behaviour will remain until they become aware of these issues. Line managers had felt excluded from the process and had no real sense of ownership of the plans emerging from the senior managers at headquarters. They want to be responsive to the students' perceived needs as front line managers. This is the characteristic of a large, complex, multipurpose, rapidly expanding and changing university. Participation Process In an attempt to overcome the above mentioned problems, the Vice-chancellors of the university arranged a committee with principals and line managers at the seminar- in which I was participant observer- to adjust the existing five years plan for the university and prepare a short-term annual operating plan. The dialogue in this committee helped both sides to reduce the ambiguities and consequently the tensions by clarifying in greater detail the goals, roles and functions of the study centres. However, it was evident after the seminar that the principals of the study centres were still uncertain that the decisions made in this committee would be carried. 280 Consideration of the minutes of meetings of the University Council indicated there was a consensus among Council members on the planning process based on policies which were mainly made by the former chancellor of the university. There was also an intention to invite the heads of departments and the principals of the study centres.to participate in the planning process and to discover their preferences by sending them a questionnaire. But at that time it was believed by the principals of the study centres that a small group of top managers made critical decisions at headquarters. As one informant put it: We were asked to give our preferences, not to give our approval. I cannot say we were actually consulted about the plan which we were going to implement (AHA-7-95). These consultations by questionnaire were, in fact, what Wallace and McMahon (1994) refer to as 'bounded consultation' within which they were asked to give their opinions and preferences about student enrolment and the needs of the study centres for the development plan of the university. Almost all of the chancellors' policies and suggestions for planning were, however, approved with only very small changes or editorial amendments. The perception of the study centres principals was that their opinions were only partially taken into account. I put these findings up for discussion with two influential academic staff They argued that the reason was clear: the chancellor is the representative of the government and the overall impression of the council members is that he is aware of government policy. In reality this was not accurate and, indeed, in 1994 the chancellor was obliged to resign because of the conflict between his policy and government policy with regard to the university's future. He thus writes, in his resignation letter, to the Minister of Culture and Higher Education I would like to make these points clear that: 281 1. the main goal of this university is 'Promoting cultural and scientific qualifications in the society by offering a chance to people who do not have access to traditional universities for any reason; 2. it is the mission of the government to provide the possibilities of higher and continuing education for everybody who is interested in or needs it; 3. the expansion of this system is vital to address that goal and mission, and planning for this does not merely mean providing alternatives to. unemployment. Higher education is not limited to the satisfying the labour market or to providing only for the present needs of society. We should not neglect the ideal goals. In other words the development of distance education must not follow the short term economic and manpower policy of the government (Newsletter of PNU, 1994). This resignation enhanced the influence of external politics on PNTJ's organisational culture which in turn increased the ambiguity of approach and uncertainty at many levels of university's hierarchy. Managers understood that there had been a serious value conflict which led to political differences over the policy employed in managing the university. It is evident from the above value conflict that the predominant managerial culture of the university was competitive and political showing some signs of organised anarchy (Cohen and March, 1974). The coming of the new chancellor onto the scene brought about new ambiguities. In the ceremony introducing him, the Minister of Culture and Higher Education announced that he had come to implement the new policy at the PNU (Newsletter, 1994). But the organisational structure of PNU had already been shaped and any attempt to develop and implement reform policy was a more complex and difficult task. Observations during fieldwork confirmed that as a newcomer he was mostly collegial in his behaviour. Most major decisions were made in university council and academic committees. Heads of department and other academic members, felt increasingly involved. This kind of decision making is appropriate for solving common or academic problems when time has no significant importance. However, when time is of the essence, when we refer back to the industrial features of the 282 university and when quick decisions are necessary, many would argue that collegial decision-making is not very effective (Paul, 1990). When the two functions of the university (academic and industrial) are taken into account, it is clear that the connection between these two functions is very difficult. Academic decision-making appears to be best served by a collegial approach, whereas the industrial function is better served by a bureaucratic, line management approach. In order to managing the complexity of a mega-university, some balance must be found between these two approaches. Most managers, as they explained in their interviews, find themselves in a changing situation, where conflict of values and purposes occur and issues interfere or interact with each other. The complexity, uncertainty, instability and uniqueness of PNU have made it necessary for leaders and policy makers as well as practitioners to be particularly thoughtful and in some sense artful, in dealing with this university's procedures and problems. The implementation of a compulsory thrift policy had already provided conflicting priorities. Whose definitions of needs and priorities should determine the direction and level of funding? Usually, these priorities appear in the bill of budget of PNU which is prepared by BOB (see figure 5.3). BOB collects its data from all sections and departments of the university. It also collects information relating to their needs and priorities, but finally it is this bureau that uses these data for distinguishing and determining the priorities. Faculties, academics and, in general, all instructional practitioners have always complained of the procedure. In fact, it is the financial managers of the university who determine the priorities and actually control the course production process and thereby the teaching- learning process. They have established an administrative sovereignty (DMB-3- 95). 283 This kind of interventions between organisational tasks ends often to the distortion of the link between organisational activities and the learning activities of students (see figure 3.4). The observation of the decision making process confirmed the points which had already been made evident during interviews and document analysis. There is, indeed, a competitive and political model dominant in the policy making process and planning, and a bureaucratic and hierarchical model in the implementation and decision making process. There is also a clear tendency to make use of the collegial model by the new chancellor of the university to take a positive and leading role in planning developments but this is not welcomed by the line managers. They fear an erosion by collegial processes of their bureaucratic power. The management process of the university is also overshadowed by ambiguity when the external influences are strong and become evident when implementation matters are discussed at management meetings (minutes of meetings of the Co-ordination Committee of Managers, sessions 1, 2, 3 and 5). The necessity of an effective bureaucracy for handling the production processes of the university on the one hand, and seeing this model as a battle ground for academic procedures and the personal ideals of academic members on the other hand, has always been a potential area for conflict in the management of distance education universities among them PNU. This is even more difficult to tackle if we add the political and value conflicts to the situation. One informant believes that: The chancellor of the university as the representative of the government must be sensitive to the political context and create an acceptable balance between its institutional interests and the political expectations of the government (HSS-2- 95). Another informant argues: The expectations of the government are often coloured by ideological issues. The government expects that the whole educational system in the country must 284 operate based on the Islamic ideology. Not only has this ideology not been clearly defined but also its conformity with educational management is obscure. (SAM-4-95) According to Hodgkinson (1991), administration is, in fact, philosophy in action. When the managers are not clear about the philosophy, and in our case ideology, how will they be able to translate it into a plan and then sell it to those who must realise the plan? Unfortunately, there is not any operational background for this and all attempts are tentative and based on trial-error. There is clearly a gap between the previous knowledge and experience of managers and the present ideological and political environment of PNU. Furthermore, the lack of explicit definition or explanation for these ideo-political factors which have affected the managerial processes of universities through the agency of politicians has increased the ambiguity and uncertainty in policy making and its implementation. One of the previous managers of PNU thus explained that: Most managers at the different levels of policy and decision making at the university have failed to recognise these ideo-political trends and/or have ignored them. This has happened not only at PNU but also at the majority of universities in the country. Hence at present there is real tension between universities and the government's policy makers (DAL-12-95). The harsh criticism of the spiritual leader of Iran and his severe order for more Islamisation of the universities in his meeting with the Minster of Culture and Higher Education along with the Chancellors of universities (Ettela' at, 6th June, 1996) is a sign of the existence of this tension. As a result the implementation of macro policy at PNU has been tinged with ideo-political naivity. A university like PNU which has a nation-wide function should be sensitive to public opinion, otherwise it would fail in its mission. 285 Conclusion The function of distance education institutions is different and more complex than that of most conventional institutions and there is an interrelationship between, for instance, logistics, organisation, costs and pedagogical issues. This means that we need to analyse the distance education system as a special organisation and that various theories of management and organisation are needed to understand the nature and importance of the various functions of distance education. The PNU can be properly viewed as an unparalleled organisation among the other traditional higher education institutions in the country. It is an industrial organisation in tenns of mass production of study materials and the industrialisation of the teaching-learning process. It is at the same time an educational organisation because its main actors are teachers, curriculum developers, instructional designers, course writers and so on, who are often working in a team and are in direct and/or indirect contact with students. Hence, there is no single overarching theory for the analysis and explanation of the management processes of such a university (see Chap. 3 p. 95). Instead, as outlined, in figure 6.3 is the balance of forces both internal and external which characterise the planning and management of this complex mega-university. A central theme in the analysis of the case study has been the interplay between the macro policy and micro policy environments. The force of Iran's particular national ideology and political system has been instrumental in creating ambiguity and uncertainty in the planning and management of PNU. In addition, the expected internal conflict of values and priorities between the academic and industrial functions has been documented. 286 In the real life of the university each of the four managerial models from Bush (1994) - bureaucratic, collegial, political and ambiguity - has its own contribution to make to a fuller and deeper understanding of the administration of the distance education system in general and mega-universities in particular. This research has made it clear that in PNU as a mega-university, most managers are interested primarily in better handling of current affairs and making a better future for their institution. They are not driven by any single management theory. For example, Ljosâ as the head of another distance education institution, takes these issues into account and declares that: I am interested in the optimal operation of the system, in the people involved in running it, in financing and cost effectiveness, in its external contacts and alliances, in its visions for the future and its development in order to serve future students. Ljosá (1993:18 1), Alternatively, one of the informants of this research comments on this issue by stating that: When I want to make a decision I consider the situation and the nature of the problem. Sometimes I make it very quickly just based on my previous experience. I do not care about internal or external reactions. Some other times I spend perhaps more than one month on an issue to get a consensus. Sometimes the reports come to me in such a way that the decision has already been made and only needs my confirmation. We are working as a part of an industrial system and I think every decision is made in its related area of responsibility (DMB-3-95). The point of view of this informant is linked to elements of each model. More than most informants, he was aware of the contingent nature of decision-making. Whether one adopts a bureaucratic or collegial approach to policy making and implementation depends on the situation. Hoyle (1986:108) summarises the contingency theory of leadership as follows: the effective leader takes into account four sets of forces when deciding what actions to take. These are: forces in the leader, forces in subordinates, forces in the situation (e.g. type of organisation, the nature of the task and the availability of time) and forces in the environment. 287 From the data analysed, there is little doubt that these four forces were active during the evolution of PNU as a mega-university. The macro policy environment contributed to the ambiguity and political imperatives with which PNU's managers had to struggle. The differential nature of the tasks of manufacturing the programmes and the tasks of education led to the application of, and conflict between, bureaucratic and collegial approaches to decision making. Ultimately, as the resignation of one Chancellor illustrated, the force of the environment was greater than that of any individual leader. The complex interplay of forces and the problem of balancing their impact makes it difficult to see a simple pattern in the development of universities. However, as is often the case in the evolution of organisations, the earlier stages of ambiguity and political tension gradually moved through a quasi-collegial environment of middle managers and study centres principals into the present predominantly bureaucratic approach. The tension between the conflicting forces can never be fully eradicated. The particular nature of a mega-university with its large scale industrialisation of production and teaching-learning process almost necessarily requires the primacy of the bureaucratic approach to planning and management. Nevertheless, it is worth reiterating Paul's (1990:188) words again when he states that 'the success of open universities depends on leadership ... and integrity without rigidity'. Flexible and contingent planning and management are also needed if forces are to be balanced in the policy making and implementation process. The framework of Hodgkinson, with its emphasis on leadership as 'philosophy into action' and the interpretive power of Bush's bureaucratic, collegial, political and ambiguity theories of management seem 288 appropriate in illuminating the complex and rapid evolution of this particular mega- university. In the final chapter consideration is given to what PNU can do to improve its own planning and management process and what others can learn from the experience and from the research conducted here. 289 CHAPTER SEVEN Conclusion: Cultural Context, Mega-universities and Industrial Theory Introduction In this concluding chapter the major themes and issues that emerged from the fieldwork are reconsidered with reference to the analytical frameworks and concepts derived from the two main bodies of theoretical literature reviewed in Chapters Two and Three. Iran: The Context for Distance Education At the broadest level the case study of the mega-university of PNU in Iran demonstrate the importance of external socio-political factors when seeking to understand the policies, management and educational strategies, theories and models adopted. Socio-political Issues and Priorities The main target of the first and second Iranian development plan after the revolution was structural change in the cultural, social, economic and political realms (PBO, 1988 and 1994). The conversion of the previous unjust ethos of development to one more characterised by justice for the majority of deprived people has required the conscious participation of the nation as a whole in the process of development. Iranian development, therefore, starts with people, their education and their potential. People 290 are the primary and ultimate focus of all development plans both as contributors and beneficiaries (Sharma, 1986). During the last two decades primary and secondary education has expanded at a much faster rate than tertiary education in Iran. Prior to the creation of PNU the conventional higher education system provided only limited opportunities for deprived and other disadvantaged groups. This case study demonstrates that PNU was set up under conditions in which Iranian higher education was suffering from a shortage of both financial resources and academic staff The frustration of hundreds of thousands of young people and adults who could not pass the national entrance examination (the only gateway to higher education in Iran), and those who found themselves barred from higher education, led to a public outcry in the Iranian press for increased opportunities in higher education. Hence, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR) (the only high level policy and decision maker in educational and cultural affairs in the country) approved the establishment of a new distance education university. This was to provide opportunities for all those who were competent enough but were prevented from pursuing regular academic studies. In addition to these reasons, there was a growing awareness on the part of educationists, policy makers and planners, of the potential cost-effectiveness and practicability of distance education to provide more equitable educational opportunities for men and women, particularly in the remote and deprived areas of the country. The ever increasing demand for primary and secondary education had also outstripped the supply of trained teachers and untrained, unqualified and under- qualified teachers had been put into service, particularly in rural and remote urban 291 areas. Distance education was thus seen as a way of providing affordable in-service training for teachers on a large scale, by the optimal use of available resources, existing physical facilities and academic staff time. It can be concluded that the emergence of distance education in the country was due not so much to its openness and capability to overcome the limitations of time and space but mostly to its low unit cost, ready accessibility (Walker, 1993) and potential for reducing the political pressure of the hundreds of thousands of young people who were eager for higher education. Prospects for Distance Education The establishment of PNU was faced with initial political and educational opposition. The political opponents remembered the experience of the FUI and the political stance of its academics. In addition, many did not believe in the efficiency of distance learning methods and did not think it advisable to invest national capital in this system. PNU's educational opponents had other reasons. As well as challenging the quality of this system they held to a traditional pedagogical point of view regarding education. Many could not accept that education could be delivered effectively outside conventional classes or lecture rooms. Reflecting this, for example, PNU received a harshly critical letter from one professor in one of the oldest universities of the country. This was in response to an invitation for collaboration which had been sent to all universities throughout the country. In this letter he emphasised that: We are still suffering from the wounds of FUI in our higher education body. We have not forgotten the undervaluing of our university education by FUI yet, now we are witnessing a re-establishment of that university under the new name by its previous practitioners (January 1988). It was not only external critics that were trying to defend conventional methods of education but also some of PNU's new academic staff were and remain, unconsciously 292 followers of conventional approaches. For example, the tutor of Persian language and literature in the Ardekan Study Centre in an article titled 'Four Years Effort of Persian Literature Department', writes: On the study centre's own initiative, face-to-face conventional classes are organised for all programmes of study on all days of the week instead of limited number of weekend tutorial sessions. With this initiative the students of this study centre felt they are really students because they are participating in traditional classes and learning how systematic university education is. These attempts removed the thought of distance education and autonomous learning from the brains of the students and they understand the meaning of higher education (Jalali, 1992: 12). The authorities of the university stopped them from pursuing this but it is obvious from this example how difficult it is for such kinds of thought to be eliminated. The nature of distance education has never been regarded as a serious problem by the PNU's pioneer managers. A strong leadership team and diplomatic management played an important role in creating early confidence and stability. The political and financial support of the Prime Minister of Iran (Mr. Moosavi) of that time also played a basic part in the establishment of PNU's fundamental programmes. It is worth reiterating that the Prime Minister donated four million US dollars to PNU for its capital expenses in 1988. In 1990, that is only three years after setting up, PNU then enrolled more students than any other state university in the country, and it reached mega-university scale (Daniel, 1995) only seven years after its establishment. In this maimer PNU became a pioneer in removing traditional barriers to the development of higher education in Iran. It is in many ways a radical - compared to other universities in the country - and innovative structure based on a new degree organisation, credit points, new categories of academic staff and new tasks for professors and lecturers. Over the past ten years, there has thus been increased interest and participation in distance education in Iran. This study demonstrates that this is attributable to social 293 changes as well as to the increased acceptance of the quality of this mode of education. The increased esteem for distance education is related, at least partly, to the greater sophistication of systems that allow increased flexibility of the time and place of learning when supported by the effective use of study materials and new technologies. Generally speaking, this study demonstrates that distance educators have a greater tendency to adopt new methods of teaching than do conventional educators. In this sense PNU has moved forward at a faster pace than mainstream education in the country. However, the changes in methodology and advances in learning materials are now being utilised by some academics in conventional universities, with the result that distance education and conventional universities are drawing closer together in Iran. These two systems now have converged to a point where they exchange students and understand each other better. Such integration will be especially significant in terms of materials design and student learning activities. According to the second Iranian development plan (1994-99) substantial growth in the percentage of the work force employed in the service industries of education, health and community services, finance, construction, business services, manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and fishing is expected (PBO, 1992). Education and training requirements in expanding areas will be enormous compared with the last decade. Without a massive increase in capital and recurrent expenses it is doubtful whether mainstream education will be able to respond rapidly enough to meet these needs. More and more people who are already in employment are also finding that advances in technology are so fast that they cannot acquire appropriate skills through on the job experience. These people need to be able to upgrade their skills without leaving their job and going back to full-time campus-based education. Night time campus-based 294 study is another alternative, now offered extensively by conventional universities but many find distance education more appropriate and more convenient. Major reasons for such support identified in the present study consist of: 1. The need to upgrade qualifications, while retaining employment, in response to social, economic and technological changes in a country recovering from eight years of war. 2. The convenience and flexibility of distance education as opposed to campus-based and evening study. 3. The changing status of women in Iranian society that have added to the growth of tertiary education in general and distance education in particular. In 1995 women comprised about 39% of PNU students but only about 26.8% of the campus-based students were women. Distance education allows them to study without undue disruption to family commitments. 4. The application of the same curriculum, the same academic semester system and the same unit credit system as conventional universities. 5. Improved social respectability of distance education and of PNU because of the remarkable success of its graduates in national entrance examinations for post graduate studies offered by conventional universities. Payame Noor University (The Message of Light): The Industrial Model in Practice In the Islamic culture knowledge is considered as a light which helps its owners to find the best way of life. The only distance education university in Iran sends this message throughout the country. The main aim of PNU is 'higher education for everyone, everywhere, at anytime'. This characterises its main mission which was 295 discussed in Chapter 5. Here we reflect upon what the case study reveals and what has been achieved, with reference to the theoretical literature reviewed earlier. Characteristics and Impact PNU as a Mega-universily PNU was established in 1987. Thus, from an historical perspective it originated when western nations were pioneering what many now call the third generation of distance education (see Chapter Two pp. 26-27). PNU nevertheless reflects the second generation models by applying a rigorous pacing system and other large scale, mass production methods. Study materials are centrally distributed according to time tables set by the various departments, and work schedules are not related to the progress or wishes of individual students. Students are expected to submit pre-specified assignments during the semester in predetermined periods only and they must sit the supervised final examination on the appointed date. The tutorials and face-to-face sessions are held at study centres on weekends only but tutorials and counselling sessions are available during the week. As noted above, these characteristics best represent a second generation distance education system. Notwithstanding the fact that PNU has succeeded in introducing a systematic and centralised distance education system leading to degree qualification; it does exhibit a few specifications of modem third generation distance education organisations. These include course flexibility and students interchange with conventional universities; but PNU would have a long way to go to represent the third generation and to benefit from its advantages of individualised study based on openness and effective didactic two-way communication that allows each student a high degree of autonomy. The present characteristics of PNU are therefore more suited to a centralised, mass industrial 296 culture and the organisation is more like the German Fernuniversitat (see Holmberg, 1989). Such an industrial model is, however, most appropriate for contemporary Iran where uniformity and centralised decision making are favoured. Organisational Structure The organisational structure of PNU (appendix 4), its administrational features, functions and its overall taxonomy indicate that it has many characteristics of the systems model of distance education (figure 3.2). It is an industrial institution and there are clearly distinguished student services and study material production sub- systems which are administrated through the two different Vice-chancellor Offices. The university was primarily established as a purveyor of mass higher education for those who live in deprived and remote areas. In practice it has incorporated many new students into one large institution to receive study materials and supporting services. The students are largely passive recipients of what the university provides for them. They have only limited freedom to choose specific courses from a range on offer. The students' activities depend entirely upon the administrative policy and function of the university (see Chapter 5), and, as Rumble (1986:28) remarks, distance education systems with these objectives and characteristics are more likely to be institution- centred. Large scale distance education and Mega-universities require special organisational structures (Rumble and Keegan, 1982; Rumble, 1986; Daniel, 1995). In the case of PNU, however, the original organisational pattern proposed was formulated in the light of national fixed rules and conventional framework by experts from the Organisation of Administrative Affairs and Employment (OAAE). The OAAE made many changes in the proposed organisational structure of PNU which was submitted 297 for final approval. They believe that this structure should conform to the national regulations and organisational standards for other public institutions. They therefore approved an organisational structure for PNU which did not have much conformity with its dual characteristics. This reflects a pyramid form in which most executive powers are concentrated at headquarters (see appendix 4). In practice the swift increase in the number of students, programmes and fields of study, and regional and local study centres made the continuous supervision and monitoring of the academic and administrative processes through headquarters more problematic. This resulted in few clear and systematic organisational relations between regional and local study centres and the central organisation of the university. Hence, the monitoring of organisational relations, reporting levels and the domain of supervision remains complicated and difficult to operate. There are, therefore, some informal, but influential chains of organisational relationships that have been created of necessity for effective practice. Moreover, an understanding of these issues is important for any further analysis and planning. Cost-effectiveness One of the most significant factors in making the decision to establish PNU was the fact that the unit cost of this mode of higher education was perceived to be lower than that in conventional higher education. The cost-effectiveness of this system is indebted to an industrial structure which has been applied to both material production and teaching-learning processes. According to this case study, at present PNU is operating at about one-third of the unit cost per student for conventional universities in Iran. Originally the government set a ratio of one full-time academic staff member to 38 students for PNU, as compared to one to 15 in conventional universities. With 298 the PNU ratio now at one to 134, the economies of scale are larger than anticipated. Not surprisingly the basic question underlying the strategies that PNU has adopted for admission policy is how to maximise economies of scale in this mega-university. Unlike other Iranian universities PNU now derives a substantial proportion of its revenue in the form of the student fees which are set by the university. Growth and Management All of the key managers of PNU who were present at its setting up knew each other and were familiar with its fundamental law and legal status, mission and policies. Furthermore, the original operational scale of the university was not too large. It was working on the basis of the step-by-step development policy outlined in Chapter Six. Hence, initial planning for operations and decision making was not too problematic. In 1990 when the university renounced its step-by-step policy in favour of rapid expansion, however, the managers found it more difficult to control the situation. The political motives which led to the establishment of PNU became an even more influential factor in the process of rapid development. The rapid expansion and the impetus towards mega-university status was probably partly based on capitalistic ideas that suggest that only the strongest and largest organisations survive irrespective of the quality of the services (as an internal motive), and partly upon political pressure from the government (as an external factor). The need for large scale investment for rapid expansion ensured the strong control of the state and a relationship between the government and university which brought about the many problems and conflicts discussed in Chapter Six. Conflict arose when the university, understandably, resisted attempts to fit it into the country's conventional higher education system and the government insisted on its compatibility with a 299 national policy originally initiated for conventional higher education systems. This conflict led to a temporary financial crisis, following cuts in government funding, and this demonstrated how political factors play a crucial role in the provision of distance education. Moreover, politically motivated projects are more likely to be vulnerable to external influences and political changes (Baldridge, 1971 and Rumble 1986). The use of a power-coercive (Chin and Benne, 1969) tactic by the government to force PNU to follow its policy is an example of this sort of vulnerability. A similar situation may have led to the failure of some other institutions, but in the case of the PNU this did not happen. One of the main reasons for this was the relatively strong leadership of at least two of the Chancellors of PNU who had a good relationship with influential politicians. They also used up much of their personal credit in establishing a balance between external and internal pressures. The use of personal credit and relationship, it is argued, is not always likely to meet with success but, as the findings of this research indicate, personal credit and connections with influential politicians can play a crucial role in the success of managers in Iran (see also Sayyari, 1994:3 1). Secondly, the early leaders of PNU had public opinion on their side and were supported by those MPs who were from the cities in which PNU had study centres. This experience further highlights Rumble's (1986:61) comment about the crucial importance of political factors and leadership in large scale distance education systems. Mega-universities: Problems and Potential, Learning from the iranian Experience A case study examines the issues relating to ordinary practice in a single real-life case. It is, therefore, difficult to generalise from one case study without risk (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994:239). Nevertheless, reviewing the problems and potential of the mega- university of PNU suggests that, if the similarities of mega-universities are taken into 300 account, there are some broader lessons to be learnt from its experience. These lessons may contribute to current thinking on distance education and its planning and management in both the national and wider international areas. When PNU gave up its slow development strategy it faced serious problems. Rapid expansion needed rapid changes and a focus on innovation. This process involved challenging values and new risks. Reaching mega-university size, rapid changes constantly created new issues and new opportunities and decisions to make. Key issues of broad interest emerging from the present study are next outlined below. Government Force The case study reveals that on two occasions PNU was strongly forced to change strategy by the Iranian government. The first time was related to rapid expansion and pressure to enrol more students in more fields of study, so improving the cost- effectiveness of the system. The second intervention was to stop the rapid expansion policy of the university. Irrespective of the fact that expansion was well beyond the capacity of PNU's staffing levels, PNU needed much more investment and by the time it became a mega-university the government could not meet its financial needs. Consequently, PNU also wished to reduce its enrolment. There is a basic paradox here. Improving cost effectiveness necessitates enrolling more students and this in turn needs more money than the government can afford. The available evidence suggests that the government has supported PNU only partly in pursuit of equality of higher education opportunities. A second rationale was to decrease the public outcry for increased higher education opportunities and to provide a mechanism for social control in order to enhance political stability. 301 Policy Making and Implementation Issues Policy making in PNU is carried out in the University Council whose members are largely academic staff. These policies which are often made in a collegial and democratic way are more akin to academic objectives. They have less influence upon the administrative and industrial processes of the university. Choice of policies is often based on assumptions regarding who is going to implement them. Major decisions for the implementation of policies are made largely by executive managers in step with administrative expediencies. Although the majority of these are academic staff, their crucial role in the decision making process leads to a situation in which the instructional staff feel policies are not implemented properly and their academic power is threatened. The findings of this study confirm findings of Snowden and Daniel (1980). Since these two groups of staff must normally support each other but tend to act on functional divisions, the implementation of many policies is faced with difficulties. Management of a complex dual function (academic and materials production) distance mega-university is not an easy task. Academic affairs may traditionally be run on a consensual and collegial approach, but it can be argued that materials production is better served by a bureaucratic hierarchy. In other words, the bureaucratic model (necessary for the industrialisation of teaching-learning and materials production processes) contrasts with the collegial system (necessary to ensure the professional autonomy of academic staff). From another perspective we could argue that industrial systems are also necessary to ensure effective course development and presentation while academic systems are necessary for flexibility in course creation and presentation. Potential conflict between contrasting systems thus needs especially 302 careful management in distance education. Furthermore, academic tasks cannot be separated from the operational, administrative and logistical services that support them (Rumble, 1986). Finally the influence of external ideo-political culture in Iran (the force of Islamic ideology) generates other distinctive problems for the internal organisational culture. This interface is a challenging area for the management of a mega-university and one that is more complex and challenging for the managers of PNU given the political and values context within which they have to make their decisions. For this reason, PNU has distinctive difficulties to face in providing quality services. This study has highlighted some of the dilemmas faced in finding an appropriate balance between contrasting theoretical models of management. In relation to the implementation of Islamic ideology the first step requires consideration of how spiritual and religious concepts can be translated into educationally achievable objectives, and how implementation can be improved. Answers to these questions are important for two reasons. First, they provide useful information about the limits of government initiated policies. In practice the extent to which universities meet the new goals reflects how well the balance of interests, values and power has worked out within the higher education system, along with their administrative capacity to implement policies. Second, a better understanding of the problems faced in implementation can lead to the resolution of conflict and to an improvement in operation. PNU's key managers were aware of the fact that the rational planning implied by the industrial model needed to take place after political compromise has been secured, but they believed that reaching the mega-university 303 size would reduce risk taking and political challenge. In practice, however, conflict remained. Indeed, these are new issues for the very first mega-university of the country. Neither the government nor the managers of PNU have previous experience of these kinds of issues. Yet, it is very difficult to establish the balance needed among these contradictory forces. This study presents a model in figure 7.1 that represents the various factors and forces in the Islamic context. This, it is hoped, will help decision makers gain a clearer understanding of the dilemmas they face - and this, in turn, may contribute towards improved progress. How this may be used is discussed in the following sections. Dilemmas of Two Different Models for Planning at Two Different Levels The first development plan of Iran applied a social demand model to national educational planning. The model was suitable for PNU. However, the rationalisation of the higher education system in the country led to major changes in the process of national policy making and educational planning. The most important of these changes was the application of a manpower approach in educational planning within the second development plan of Iran. In order to effect this change acotiaex cotUct arose between the national macro planning model and the university's micro planning which was still geared to the social demand approach. The government expected all universities in the country to apply the new model in their micro strategic planning but PNU continued to use the social demand approach for two main reasons: firstly, it was argued that, PNU would be cost-effective only if it kept to its mega-university size and operated on a large scale based on the mass production principle of industrialisation; secondly, mass production requires mass 304 demand. There is, indeed, a mass demand for PNU's educational services in the country. The study has revealed how some critics thought PNU was opposed to the government policy and how they tried to prevent the university from retaining the social demand approach. Yet, the policy makers within PNU had another point of view. They considered social demand as a rational approach for a mega-university like PNU because of its nature. This, they argued, did not mean the university was opposed to the government policy. These two different points of view, each of which was considered logical by their promoters, gave rise to an argument between PNU and the government. The argument in turn brought about an unstable environment inside the university and compelled PNU to adopt contingent planning so as to enable the managers to response to sudden changes appropriately. Contingent Planning The literature on distance education consistently argues that the industrial characteristics of such systems require them to be carefully pre-planned, prepared and organised years before teaching takes place (Reddy, 1986; Rumble, 1986; Smith, 1987; Villarroel, 1988; Peters, 1994 and Daniel 1995). Since the decision on the establishment of PNU was largely made on political grounds to reflect the immediate needs of society, teaching was expected to start to operate as soon as possible. The founders of PNU were not, therefore, given enough time for planning. They had only two and a half months to prepare for operation and instead of thinking about the long term future they focused on immediate needs. The furthest ahead they looked at this stage, was six months (i.e. one academic semester). Surprisingly, in contrast to numerous recommendations from the literature, their compulsory flexible and contingent planing was so successfully realised that a number of key informants from 305 this case study remain advocates of this approach. They argue that this approach helped them to respond rapidly and appropriately to an unstable environment, to control the situation and to correct or change directions when things were going wrong. The literature on flexible planning supports their argument, for example, Wallace and McMahon (1994:1) comment on this by stating that: incremental or step- by-step planning gives the flexibility rapidly to modify existing plans and create new ones whenever changing circumstances dictate the need. Nevertheless, the advantages of flexible planning do not justify the elimination of long term planning. The lack of connection to long-term aims may result in the loss of coherence and consistency of activities. It is for this reason that Wallace and McMahon (1994:1) argue in favour of an approach to planning which protects short- term flexibility and the environmental stability that is necessary for effective planning for long-term coherence. The present situation of PNU calls for the development of a planning model and structure that might place it a few steps closer to the third generation of distance education, within which flexibility is the main characteristic. In this respect the present study has helped to identify possible conflicting areas in policy making, planning and management, and to show how these conflicts could be removed or reduced (see Chapter Six, pp. 272-75). These findings could also prove helpful for other conventional universities throughout the country as they try to meet the demand for further education and in-service training emerging from the execution of the national development plan. Even though PNU's managers eventually prepared a long-term plan for the university, they later returned to a more flexible approach. This time it was not, of course, 306 because of the imposed circumstances, but because they considered this approach to be successful experience (see Chapter 6 p. 260). Cross-functional Issues There are some cross-functional processes in PNU that create a complicated situation particularly for middle managers and ultimately for senior managers. This cross- functional process can be observed in course development and the production process more than in other areas. Course development is the responsibility of several different sections (see figure 5.1) each of which could blame the other for delays and problems. Because tasks and jobs have not been well defined or specialised, co-ordination among them is difficult. The related Vice-chancellors set up various committees and prepared many guidelines for resolving these cross-functional problems, but according to the findings of this case study these committees and guidelines were less effective than anticipated (see Chapter Six, p. 247). This is considered as an additional barrier for the industrialisation of materials production along with the dilemmas which are discussed below. Dilemmas of Industrialisation The industrialisation of education in PNU brought about two major changes in the traditional tasks of academic and non-academic staff. The first was a drastic change in the autonomy, specialist roles and status of academics because of mechanisation, the division of labour and the specialisation of the various stages of the teaching-learning process. This was a radical change and an attack on the traditional authority of professors, which gave rise to strong criticism from the academic community of the country. Criticism focused on the technological optimism of the system, the 307 fragmentation of the teaching-learning process and adoption of innovative methods and media with undue attention to their pedagogical consequences. The second, change involved conflict between academic and administrative staff. This was less radical but more complex. While the ideal ratio for academic and administrative staff in a mega-university is open to discussion, a large cadre of staff in this type of university is, inevitably, administrative, including specialists and professionals such as educational technologists, instructional designers, audio-visual producers, editors, print designers, librarians and so on. Distance education thus required a shake up of power within the traditionally accepted organisational structure. Both of these changes influenced the nature of participation and substituted more direct intervention by new specialists and professionals in the academic and administrative processes. The success of policies, plans and decisions depends, to a large extent, upon the extent and amount of the involvement of all participants (see Chapter 3 pp. 83-84). This required PNU to change its organisational structure from a Fordist hierarchy to a flat hierarchy more typical of the post-Fordist mode of organisation. Whilst an overall view of the needs of the university relates to academic management, the new demands are essentially atomistic and/or technocratic. Thus, one side of the participation coin consists of academic and semi-academic specialists, and the other side of administrative staff The mega-university issues discussed above are bound up inextricably with each other. Controversies relating to policy making and implementation, challenges to some academic traditions, rapid expansion of the university, conflict between industrial and academic culture, between the academic and administrative, between 308 university and government policy and so on, all seem complicated and insoluble at first sight. But it is not so. Before going on to further reflect on industrial theory and the dilemmas of international transfer let us summarise these contradictory forces in figure 7.1 to provide a clearer representation of the situation. Figure 7.1 Contradictory Forces in the Mega-university of PNU Islamic ideology dustrial Educational Model PNU Model Peters' Industrial Model Level of ( idea 1 Government / policy Level of (macro) / people ( contingency (Le el of\ University idea policy (micro) Level Hodgnson's ) situation people ) Model Bureaucratic Level of industrial things mang. Industrial culture '...Quantitative Collegial academic Level of mang. things _- Academic culture, QuaitatrQ./" Political forces As can be seen in figure 7.1 these seemingly contradictory factors are, in fact, different approaches within a new system. This new system, i.e. the mega-university, 309 shares the characteristics of educational and industrial institutions. Mega-universities are new and rare in the world. It can be said that they are the first of their kind among distance education institutions. For this reason there is no well grounded practical or theoretical background for the management of these mega-organisations. Despite considerable similarities between the operation systems of the mega-universities (Daniel, 1995: 20), each of them has also adjusted to the political, economic, socio- cultural and educational circumstances of the countries in which they are operating. In mega distance education universities, educational and industrial concerns as well as academic and administrative issues are interwoven in every part of the system. Therefore, the analysis of their management process is particularly complicated and the existing management literature falls short of the mark. There is no single overarching theory that is appropriate to guide the management of such a university. In the real life of PNU, for example, each of the four models presented by Bush (1986, 1994) makes its own contribution to functioning and understanding of this particular mega-university. Most of its managers are not driven by a single management theory and their decision-making has a contingent nature (see Hoyle, 1986). Hence, instead of a special theory various perspectives of management and organisation have to be included in any comprehensive theoretical analysis of the management of distance education (Ljosá, 1993:187). In the light of this case study in Iran it is argued that the role of leadership in this unique and complex organisation, in co-ordinating the national policy with those generated by academics and administrative personnel within the university, is crucial. The formulation of such policy cannot be an individual task. It requires constant teamwork that needs effective leadership. This must be able to create an efficient 310 pattern for policy and decision making, and a workable distribution of power between academic and administrative staff for creating a co-operative atmosphere for all participants. One important point, emerging from both theory and practice, is that the middle and front line managers should have a real sense of participation in decision making and a sense of ownership of the university's plan. This group of managers in PNU, however, have not had such a sense. A second key point is that some senior managers in PNU, like some managers of conventional universities in the country, appear to be overstating their need for stability, leading to a reluctance to change their own principles. This is out of keeping with the dynamic nature of a mega-university. Those who wish to consider the future of PNU will have to determine how far it must differ from conventional systems and how far change is acceptable and essential for its survival. Conflict between the university and government is soluble only by a more careful consideration of the issues which have particular importance for both sides. Further Reflections on the Industrialisation of Education in Iran: Dilemmas of International Transfer The interpretation of distance education as an industrialised form of teaching and learning is not unique. This perspective reflected the social and economic success of the modern industrial era and much social science carried out in the 1970s and l980s. (Shale, 1987). Peters' analysis is still one of the few fundamental contributions to the theory of distance education, although this theory largely belongs to sociology rather than education (Ljosâ, 1993). Analysing the teaching-learning process from an industrial point of view is only a small part of a larger picture (Peters, 1994). Peters argues that: Industrialisation has changed and will go on changing our lives fundamentally whether we like it or not. . . .People think in different ways and have developed 311 attitudes not known by their grandparents. It is unlikely that education can resist this process. We will probably have to face even greater changes of this kind in education if we are seriously to strive for egalitarian educational systems. In the same way as it will not be possible to feed, clothe and house nearly everyone in developing countries properly without industrialisation, so it will not be possible to provide education (1994:198-99). To a certain extent Peters would seem to be right, but this is certainly not the whole truth. The industrialisation of the production of food, clothes or any other goods is entirely different from the industrialisation of education. Industrialisation of education jars against the socio-cultural context of education in developing countries. The process of industrialisation in Iran, for example, has been faced with some serious socio-cultural problems. Many argue that industrialisation is the product of western societies whose culture is largely based philosophically on materialism, socially on humanism, educationally on naturalism and methodologically on positivism. Most of these cultural characteristics are in conflict with the major cultural features of developing countries in general and the Islamic countries in particular. From their point of view a western model of industrialisation has three cultural specifications: 1. The relationship between humans and nature is based on the dominance of the former over the latter. This has led to the abuse of natural resources and the destruction of the environment. Industrialised education meets the needs of industrial companies by providing a highly skilled workforce for them and the best consumers for their products. 2. Human relationships in these industrial societies are based on ruthless competition and extreme individualism. Such a relationship has seriously damaged the social fabric and alienated the society from close human relations and empathy. This occurrence has brought about different consequences in different contexts. For example: 312 . hidden struggles and collusion between political parties as part of the democratic procedure in a political context; . desolation of small businesses and industries in favour of large firms and industries, and the development of consumerism, potential and actual conflict between employers and employees in an economic context; • the decline in religious, moral and family values, and unrestrained and free sexual relations as part of individual freedom and human rights in a social context; • and finally, the competition of the majority of pupils and students with elites in all levels, and the conversion of knowledge and technology to an instrument of power for controlling the common people by elites at a national level, and other nations at an international level, in an educational context. 3. The detachment of the human from pure love- the love of nature and the love of the human- has jeopardised the future and rooted everything in the present. The positivistic belief in the 'here and now' has led to a destructive use of unrenewable natural resources. These cultural characteristics are explicitly or implicitly in contradiction with the native culture of most developing countries. Many such nations are aware of the danger of the transformation of this culture. Western individualistic features are in conflict with their own collectivist culture. They also recognise that industrialisation requires specialist knowledge and technology for which industrial countries are not ready to transfer the control of. Their problem is getting to grips with the mysteries of these technologies and incorporating the ability to create and/or use them appropriately in their own circumstances. Industrialisation requires drastic changes in social and cultural structure which the people in developing countries do not like and hence resist. The cultural problems that 313 PNU has faced in the industrialisation of its teaching-learning and materials production processes also reflect such problems at the broadest level. This reflects Iran's efforts to find an innovative way to create native technology that can be absorbed into its strongly religious, moral and family based society. Iranian leaders believe that the advanced technology of the west could be a facilitator of economic development but they argue that it lacks moral content. They therefore seek to combine technology with Islamic moral content so that education can be more in keeping with Islamic society. The industrialisation of distance education in the West has been successful because of its compatibility with the organisation, principles and values of industrial societies (Amundsen, 1993). Now western nations are seeking new ways for the development of distance education to make it match changes in industrial society as a post- industrial or post-modern era emerges (Peters, 1993a). Developing countries, however, are still struggling to match the principles and values of industrialism with their own societies. There is a basic difference here. The industrialisation of distance education is the product of industrial society, but the developing countries have to accommodate the benefits of industrialised distance education to a different society, with a different culture, which is not in tune with those principles and values. When Peters (1967) was analysing distance education based on industrial theory he never faced this substantial problem. This theory had its roots in western culture and was quite congruent with the organisational structure of Fordist mode distance education in Germany. In Iran, for example, most of the skilled workforce have originally come from rural areas and are more attuned to the demands of work for small manufactures rather than for a complex industrial enterprise. They have been trained in terms of 314 technical skills but such training courses have not changed their basic attitudes. Major change in social attitudes and values requires a movement away from a traditional culture -and this is questionable issue in itself Without this, people are not able or willing to give up their habits and accommodate the industrial culture. Another prominent issue, in addition to cultural transmission, relates to the concept of the independence or autonomy of learners. The independence of learners is concerned with the opportunities given to them and the ability to use these opportunities. These depend upon the interrelationship between teachers as the supporters of learners and the facilitators of the learning process, and learners as self-directed individuals. While the ideal model for the industrialisation of the teaching-learning process requires such an interdependent relationship, in the PNU case this is currently not happening in practice. The reasons for this include the fact that both professors and students have a traditional concept of teaching and learning. This requires the former to teach in the classroom using specialist knowledge, and the latter to absorb, again in the classroom, knowledge and skills from these specialists. Professors do not like their professional authority to be broken down, their teaching process to be fragmented into specialised parts, and their traditional role to be limited to that of a subject-matter specialist within a course team. Likewise, students do not ee that tactmt \g possible (and this is perhaps more important) outside the traditional campus-based framework. The radical change from conventional instructional methods, through industrialised distance education is, therefore, not universally welcomed by professors or students. For this reason, as mentioned in Chapter Five, students occasionally forced PNU study centres to arrange more face-to-face classes for them. And, as 315 •discussed in Chapter Six, the application of the division of labour has also been resisted by the academic staff The last point is related to the role and nature of the workforce in any industrial institution, including distance education universities. One problem at PNU is that, while there are many specialist and skilled people at the top and many skilled and semi-skilled workers at the bottom of the pyramid of manpower, there is a shortage of middle specialists (e.g. very skilled technicians, educational technologists, instructional designers radio and TV programme producers etc.) to bridge the gap between these two groups. Thus, the proper application of the division of labour and setting an efficient assembly line in teaching-learning and materials production is very difficult. Each of the issues discussed above have their own implications for all dimensions of the industrialisation process in developing countries. Without taking each into consideration the industrialisation of distance education would not be successful. It may be argued that these issues have little to do with the academic conception of industrial theory, but the application of any useful theory requires success in a practical context. The present research has tested Peters' (1967) theory in practice in the contact of PNU. In the light of this it is argued that the adoption of any theory as a framework for a distance education institution or, in broader sense, for a national education system, must be based on a deep understanding of the relationship between education and society in different types of historical civilisations. More specifically, when applying a theory that has origins in a different cultural context, a critical stand point must be adopted, and national ideo-political perspectives and socio-cultural contexts must be 316 carefully taken into consideration as planners and policy makers adapt pre-existing models to the local context. Two Theoretical and Analytical Frameworks: dilemmas of application Recognition of the two different functions of the mega-university of PNU led the researcher to use two different analytical frameworks. The first is Peters' (1967, 1994) industrial model which is helpful in describing the significant characteristics of a distance education system as an industrial mega-organisation. The second is Hodgkinson's (1991, 1996) model of leadership which draws attention to the close relationship between policy making and policy implementation, and the dynamic role of good leadership in bringing the components of an organisation together for efficient functioning. The combination of these two analytical frameworks for the analysis of the mega-university of PNU proved to be most effective. It is argued that this dual analytical framework enabled the researcher to identify and understand many key issues that have long concerned PNU managers and policy makers (see figure 7.1). The adoption of an industrial model by PNU has certainly played a leading role in the popularisation of higher education in Iran. We have discussed in detail in Chapter Six how PNU applied the principles of industrial theory to both its teaching-learning and materials production processes. When their activities are considered from Hodgkinson's point of view, functional problems relating to industrial theory (as the philosophical underpinning of the university) are apparent. Formulating micro policy and designing strategic plans for the university based on an industrial model requires an industrial system with a large scale bureaucratic organisation. On the other hand the implementation of policy and the successful realisation of plans requires flexible, academic management. In practice applying industrial theory with PNU personnel was 317 problematic. The mobilisation of the material resources and motivation of the human resources of the university on the basis of an industrial division of labour conflicted with the existing academic autonomy of professors, and their preferred flexibility for the teaching-learning process. Some serious issues, therefore, emerged in the process of moving from the realm of people to the realm of things. If the total process of moving from ideas to things (see figure 7.1 and Chapter Two) is conceived as administration of the university and administration is 'philosophy-in-action' (Hodgkinson, 1991, 1996), there should be less contradiction or incongruence between the philosophy being adopted and the actions being taken. This reveals a most significant problem in the application of industrial theory to an educational organisation when viewed from Hodgkinson's point of view. Industrial theory could not bridge the gap between policy making and policy implementation in the context of PNU. Moreover, the evaluation of the effectiveness of this theory requires clear and measurable indicators. In this mega-university, however, there are, as yet, few such measurable evaluative indicators. Thus, the formal evaluation of the efficiency of the university, in terms of its industrially based operation remains problematic. The most obviously industrialised operation of a mega-university is reflected in the development of study materials. The production and delivery of study materials, nevertheless, supports the teaching-learning process and this too is highly industrialised at PNU. This remains controversial because the combination of industrial concepts and theories with education challenges traditional views and models of education. Critics continue to argue that the principles of industrial theory cannot easily be applied to strictly educational processes (Rumble. 1986; Evans and Nation, 1992; Ljosâ, 1993). 318 Even if we accept the arguments made by Peters (1994: 195-208) in replying to his critics and accept his assumption that distance education is an industrial enterprise we should still argue that education is a service industry with characteristics of such industries (Ljosà, 1993). New insights from service industry theories can, therefore, be useful for the analysis of this dual feature organisation. Most of the criteria of a service industry such as intangibility, connection of production and consumption of services and participation of the customer in the production process (see Chapter Five p. 199 for the participation of students in the production and revising process of study material in PNU) are, as Ljosâ (1993:185) argues, applicable to distance education. Furthermore, distance education is a student-centred system and service theories are user-centred. Ultimately, this raises the question of whether it is possible to provide an industrial mass education system which is sensitive enough to the individual needs of students. This points again to the future potential of third generation models - but this, and further consideration of the potential of service industry theories as an analytical framework, is left for future researchers to explore in depth. Methodological Issues The methodological issues which the researcher considered in the designing of this research were also complex. The case study was considered an appropriate strategy for this research given the specific aims and questions of the study. This case study strategy is largely qualitative in nature and interpretative/analytical in type. The case study in education often focuses on practice and policy making or on the management of educational institutions. Another key form of case study in education, as Bogdan and Biklen (1992) point out, focuses on a specific organisation and traces its development. The focus of this case study includes both of these types. 319 Case Study Research in Developing Countries: Strengths and limitations The strengths and limitations of qualitative research and case study are discussed in detail in Chapter Four. Here we focus on its broader potential and limitations in Iran and the developing world. First of all, case study has much potential to use a variety of data collection techniques such as interviews, documents, observation and artefacts (Yin, 1994:8) to create and/or strengthen the linkage between research questions, theory, the data collected and the conclusions drawn. One major limitation of this research strategy is that often the researcher is the primary instrument of data collection and analysis. On the other hand such reliance can provide vivid insights into the phenomena under study, which emerge from the interaction and dialogue between researcher and the subject. Case study research, has much to offer developing countries as a strategy for analysing and interpreting educational phenomena. The potential of this strategy to combine qualitative and quantitative methods has attracted many researchers - and one of the notable advantages of case study is its ability to deal directly and systematically with the real life of the case under study. One of the limitations of quantitative and experimental research is ignoring the cultural context of the phenomena under study. The validity of positivist strategies in social research is also criticised by many social researchers in Iran because according to Islamic culture, positivist methods reify social phenomenon and neglect their complexity. In these research strategies the process of research is being led by researcher's pre-assumptions or predetermined hypothesis about the social phenomenon and/or individuals behaviour. This consequently reduces the opportunities of recognising or discovering the complicated network of social relationships or relationship between attitudes and behaviour in their 320 real context. It is important in qualitative research to have a participative role in understanding the phenomenon. There are often no predetermined hypotheses, no predetermined remedies (Yin, 1994) and, more importantly few limitations on the nature of the end product. After more than a decade, the value of the arguments of Crossley and Vulliamy (1984) for the greater use of case study in comparative and international education is being increasingly recognised. The importance of local contextual factors being taken into account in detailed fieldwork further strengths the argument for case study research. Knowledge produced in this way could make a great contribution to the field of international and comparative education (Crossley and Vulliamy, 1995) because it can reflect the insights of both external perspectives and internal understanding of the situation. The literature in the field of post-modernism, for example, (Cowen, 1996) has a strong connection with this line of argument recognising the importance of cultural differences in educational research. Increased respect for cultural factors should also play a central role in developing the awareness of researchers in developing countries about the potential of qualitative research in general and case study research in particular. In Iran, for example, there is a widely supported view that suggests the need to move away from quantitative and experimental research in social sciences. But as Crossley and Vulliamy (1995:8) indicate, 'there remains much to be done if the potential of qualitative research is to be fully realised' in many developing countries. Quantitative approaches to social sciences, particularly in applied areas like education are still dominant throughout the developing world. It is argued here that the present case study, which carried out in Iran which has a strongly religious, socio-cultural context, will help to pave the way for further 321 applications of case study strategies and qualitative research in education in this nation. Recommendations for Future Planning, Management and Research Quality of Services Distance education has often been seen as a student-centred system within which students are encouraged to undertake independent study. The problems and innovative solutions which have emerged in this system particularly relating to teaching-learning processes remain open to more investigation. Providing sustained support for students as they have to study independently and struggle with what has been called the hardest way yet devised to earn a degree (Mills and Paul, 1993:129) requires quality services for students. If it is accepted that quality should be defined according to students' perception, then understanding what they think about the quality of services provided for them is very important. This is an area of new research that PNU needs to carry out. The findings of such studies would help the university to identify more successful strategies to support students. This is a critical aspect of quality management in any mega-urnverslty. Participative Management The large scale of the operation of PNU as a mega-university and the geographical distribution of its study centres requires careful consideration of the concepts of centralisation and decentralisation. While the study centres should be empowered to make their own decisions on local issues they must still leave some essential decisions to be made in headquarters and they should follow policies that are centrally made. In the light of the PNU case study it is argued that organisational relationships in this mega-university should be based on two main principles: 1) maximum centralisation 322 in. policy making, strategic planning and evaluation and 2) maximum decentralisation in policy implementation operational planning and local issues (Ebrahimzadeh, 1992a). In this way the middle and front line managers will be better able to use their talents and creativity, and to play a more effective role in the organisation. This approach could also create more opportunities for senior managers to control policy making, to monitor policy implementation at any level, and to enhance their managerial and leadership capabilities which could result in an improvement of the efficiency of the university. The findings of this study thus strongly support Rumble's (1986:178) argument that distance education systems are in some ways more managerial than conventional systems. Hence, strong leadership is a more important factor, not only from a hierarchical aspect but from the participation point of view. The participation of staff in the governance of a mega-university, it is argued, is crucial. Daniel (1995:81), for example, notes that: There seems to be some correlation between the success of mega-university and the level of participation of staff in governance. This is not surprising, for knowledge-based industries work best with management processes based on team work and consensus rather than hierarchy and authority. This could provide a useful starting point for future research on the governance of mega-universities. Finding a conceptual and theoretical model which takes different conceptions of management into account would build well upon the present study and could contribute to the identification of more reliable ways for the planning and management of me ga-universities. Conclusion: Towards the Third Generation of Distance Education In conclusion it is argued that as a mega-university PNU now needs to move carefully towards the application of the third generation of distance education strategies. The 323 development of the national telecommunication infrastructure and the possibility of using the electronic information network in the various study centres would make this possible. In this regard linking students, course writers and tutors to each other as well as to students by telecommunications would be a major step. Daniel (1995:86) observes that: The knowledge and media promise to insert the two missing links see figure 3.3 in the chain of distance learning: easy communication with the rest of the academic community and ready access to libraries and resources. This will needs more investment and allocation of funding for growth. However , it is evident that new resources are not going to be allocated at least through the usual route of government funds. The question arises how PNU could draw the government's attention again to the importance and necessity of such changes. While part of the answer is to be more effective and better understood by the government, it is more likely to lie in the way that PNU increases its revenue by any available means and seeks for cheaper and more effective solutions. This in turn will need careful planning and attention to the needs and realities of an Islamic culture that is more collectivist rather than individualist. Thus, the transfer of new third generation models to a very collectivist culture will again need a search for the most compatible aspects of third generation models which enhance individual autonomy in the learning process. The use of technology can provide personal support for students but will present new challenges to teachers who will be under the pressure of innovative methods and the need for rapid change. This could start with a limited number of courses as part of existing programmes with a flexible and open approaches. The lead medium for this mode of distance education is electronic 324 communication and the computer network, but print materials and other resources remain important. 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What changes have taken place in the institution's objectives since its foundation? - What was [or still is] the university relationship to existing educational institutions? - Was the university expected to play a temporary or permanent role in the national educational system? - What form of technical and financial assistance was provided to the university during its start-up phase? Which agencies, domestic or foreign, provided such assistance? University Characteristics - What are the university's major components (written materials, radio/television broadcasts, audio/video cassettes residence courses, tutorial sessions, etc. ); and what instructional role(s) do they play? - How was each component designed, distributed and maintained? 342 - What institutions and groups are responsible for developing and maintaining each of the components? - How are learners contact sessions organised? With what frequency, and with what kind of support? - Have feedback procedures been developed to monitor the university's instructional process and components? If so, with what frequency are they employed? - What changes have occurred in the design and use of media components, in the use of contact sessionlstudy group meetings, and in feedback procedures since the university was established? -What evidence is there of effective coverage by the various media and of regular use of the media by students (completion of correspondence assignments, listening to radio/audio, viewing televisionlvideo, attendance at contact sessionlstudy groups)? - How satisfied are students with the quality of the services and study facilities provided by the institution? Learners' Characteristics - Who are the learners (in of their age, sex, geographical location, marital status, previous education and work experience, career aspiration, etc. )? What changes, if any, have taken place in the student body over the years? - What have the enrolment statistics been over the years? In what courses has there been significant growth or decline in enrolments? - How are students recruited and enrolled? Are there formal entry requirements? What differences, if any, are there in recruitment patterns for different courses or programmes? 343 - Approximately how many hours per week are learners expected to participate in the programme? When, where, and how do they study? What is known about their study habits? - Do learners receive formal credit or other tangible rewards for participating in the programme? - What are and have been, students completion rates (i.e. what percentage of students who enrol complete their courses) and, where appropriate, examination pass rates? Administration, Management and Financial Issues - What is the university's legal and constitutional status? What is its relationship to the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education? - What is the university administrative structure? What agencies are involved; and what are their specific responsibilities? - How are project staff recruited and trained? To what extent do those who have received training remain with the system? - Is there evidence that training has benefited the project? What additional training may now be required? - What changes, if any, have taken place in the legal status or in the administrative structure since the university started? - What administrative or organisational problems has the university faced? - What are the major benefits and restrictions resulting from the university's legal status and administrative structures? - How satisfied have students been with the efficiency of administrative services (enrolment, delivery of course materials, return of assignments, examinations, etc.)?. 344 Costs and Finance - What resources were required to launch the university? What are its current resource requirements? - What is the unit cost (per student) of instruction? How does this vary from course and programme? How has it changed over time? - To what extent does the university depend on government vs. private financing; on external funding; on contributions from learners? - How are learners contributions, if any, collected (registration fees, sale of materials, etc.)? - To what extent has the university become financially self-sufficient? Has it developed any innovative means of support? International Collaboration and Support - What kinds of technical assistance has the university received? In what ways has the university benefited from such support? What technical assistance is it receiving now? - What contacts have existed in the past, and exist now, between this university and other distance education institutions or projects? What benefits have been derived from such contacts? - What has been the nature and value of networking activities conducted by other international agencies? Impact and Sustainability of the University - Has the university ever been formally evaluated? If so, what indicators and/or measures of impact (on the individual student, on the community as a whole) were employed? 345 - What are the university's major achievements shortcomings in the minds of its key constituencies and critics e.g. learners, administrators, donors, etc. ? - How do such achievements and shortcomings compare with those of traditional universities operating in the country? - To what extent have the university's major components been institutionalised? In other words, have they found a permanent "institutional niche" within the nation? - Has the university produced discernible ripple effects on other educational institutions, either in the country or abroad? (Adapted from Dodds and Mayo, (1992), International Extension College IEC) 346 Appendix 2 Case study of PNU Key Informants and Interviews Guide Informants Nature of involvement Case study focus Topics of discussion during the ________________________ __________________________ ____________________ interview Minister of Culture Responsible for Place and role of Government policies and strategies and 1-ligher Education Government policy on PNU in the for higher education at distance higher education national higher education, strategies and policies for education dealing with increasing the number of students and reduction of high unit ________________________ __________________________ ____________________ costs Chancellor of PNU Responsible for Theory, Views on PNU's philosophical policy making and planning and and theoretical framework, aims and policy implementation management of objectives, planning and in PNU PNU and its main management, finance and budgeting, characteristics achievements, shortages and difficulties, and international _____________________ _______________________ __________________ collaborations Vice -chancellor of Responsible for Planning, and Views on PNU's aims, objectives, Academic academic planning management policies, mission, academic preparation of learning university's, management and planning, role of the materials and characteristics and university in national higher instructional media sustainability of education, university's major the university components, learning materials and instructional technology, and _____________________ _______________________ __________________ international collaborations Vice-chancellor of Responsible for the management of Views on enrolment and registration, Assessment and evaluation of students, publishing house, learning support issues (residential Students Affairs publication and and learning and tutorial sessions, the use of media distribution of learning material )role of regional study centres, and materials production university's achievements and ________________________ ___________________ shortages Vice-chancellor of Responsible for finance Administrative Views on management underpinnings Finance and budgeting, organisation, and management, of PNU, financial resource of PNU, Administration administration and and costs and unit costs of instruction, financial Affairs management of PNU finance issues support of university's programmes and regional study centres, staffing issues, and managerial and ______________________ ________________________ ___________________ administrative issues Vice- chancellor of Responsible for studies Scientific support Research on distance education, the Research and research on of university's role of study centres development distance education, programmes, planning of the university criteria for continuing education, continuing the establishment of regional study planning for education, impact centres achievements and shortages of development of regional and sustainability PNU in these missions study centres, and, of university and central library development of regional study ________________________ centres General Director of Responsible for internal Evaluation of Evaluation of university's Planning and planning, and learning materials instructional efficiency and learning Curriculum curriculum broadcasting, and materials, internal planning teaching methods broadcasting of university's programmes and their feedback, and achievements and problems in these __________________________ ___________________________ missions General Director of Registration, Assessment of students' progress, Students Evaluation graduation, credits Registration rates, graduation rates, and Academic Students Services, and students course completion rates in various Services affairs fields 347 General Director of How learning materials are designed, Developing and preparation of learning Learning materials produced, distributed and Compilation of materials maintained? print materials, Learning Materials audio/video cassettes, radio/television broadcasting Manager of International PNU's Nature of PNU's relationship and International relationship and international collaboration with other distance Collaboration Office collaboration relationship and education universities, agencies, and collaborations institutions. How PNU has benefited with other that relationships and collaborations? universities and ________________________ __________________________ agencies ________________________________________ 348 Appendix 3 Interviews Timetable 1995 Informant Date of Interview Minister of Culture and Higher Education 8th Oct. Chancellor of PNU 3rd and 14th Oct. Vice-chancellor of Academic 2nd Oct., 18th Oct. And 1st Nov. Vice-chancellor of Assessment and Students 16th Oct. Affairs_______________________________ Vice-chancellor of Finance and 23rd Oct. AdministrationAffairs _________________________________ Vice-chancellor of Research 6th Oct. General Director of Planning and 12th Oct. Curriculum______________________________ General Director of Students Evaluation and 6th Nov. academicServices _________________________________ General Director of Developing and 12th and 29th Oct. Compilationof Learning Materials ________________________________ Manager of International Collaboration 12th Nov. General Director of Print and Publishing 8th Nov. Centre___________________________________ Former Vice-chancellor of PNU 28th Oct. 349 C) 3 C) C) -' 0) - 'C a rh z RC I •- 3!. :T . , 3. g• g = I I II 1 cI :"i 31 i I )3II I L_I I 3.1 I! I I i I • 1I I I . - =0.11 I = ;'i I, I ••;-i r I - I 0= •o a '-I C) 0 a 0 -q I l.^I I I 0jj gi 1=1,0.1 cn )) I log I r3- I 133rn1 I I III I •>ci -q I Ia;:;..I .•] .• I I I • ' I -,t.4 I I I 0'I i 3C)>•3 I I . - I Ac' I ____ ____ I I i• I 0, i1C) I ° iir -i C) 'C 0 S c:I. 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work_xnvie3ojzzh3rlakyusufexfcy	----	EMERALD_AAOUJ_AAOUJ624193 169..178 Rethinking the rationale of open and distance education: a case of the UK Open University Hanmo Jeong Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how the introduction of new technologies has affected student support at the United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) particularly focusing on face-to-face tutorials and online tutorials, what this impact implies for open universities and in what direction the innovations toward the sustainability of open universities should proceed. Design/methodology/approach – Research on the historical development of UKOU and a literature review was conducted. Findings – The rationale behind the foundation of UKOU has been to provide higher education to those who have time and physical constraints. There is no doubt that the introduction of advanced technologies has played a significant role in the growth of the university. However, when the university attempted to replace face-to-face tutorials with online tutorials on the basis of its purpose, a number of students and faculty members opposed the decision even though online tutorials fit within its original objective. This paper suggests that face-to-face tutorials have become the essence of the university through the process of identifying the university in the past and the university’s identity may need to be distinguished from the rationale. Originality/value – This paper emphasizes the necessity of rethinking the Open and Distance Education rationale and, on the basis of past studies on UKOU, offers a unique perspective about the changes that have taken place at the university. Keywords Open university, Human dimension, Face-to-face tutorial, Online tutorial, Open and distance education rationale Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction One of the objectives for Open and Distance Education (ODE) has been to provide learners with an opportunity to study regardless of geographical, socio-economic or other constraints, (Moore and Tait, 2002, p. 22), that is, to provide openness with respect to teaching and learning to all potential students. Open universities all over the world are representative ODE institutions and are based on this specific objective. The United Kingdom Open University (UKOU), inter alia, is an ODE institution and is representative of those universities. Since its establishment in 1969, UKOU has contributed to the widening of opportunities in higher education in the UK through the introduction of various technologies in its teaching. Fifty years after being founded, UKOU is now introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to change with the times, a move which is consistent with the ODE rationale and should guarantee more flexible and cost-effective learning. Zimmerman (2016), the secretary of UKOU, described this change as a transition from “a university of the air” to “a Asian Association of Open Universities Journal Vol. 13 No. 2, 2018 pp. 169-178 Emerald Publishing Limited 2414-6994 DOI 10.1108/AAOUJ-06-2018-0019 Received 10 June 2018 Revised 25 January 2019 Accepted 25 January 2019 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/2414-6994.htm © Hanmo Jeong. Published in Asian Association of Open Universities Journal. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode The author would like to express the deepest gratitude to the advisor Dr Toru Iiyoshi for his informative comments and discussions. I also would like to thank. Dr James for organizing my field trip and offering valuable information. Gracious thanks should also go to Marlies Gabriele Prinzl for her inspiring advice and proofreading. 169 Open and distance education http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode university of the cloud.” The former can be interpreted as the university of the past, while the latter can be interpreted as the university of the future. Namely, if “the air” stands for broadcasting that requires students to “attend” at airtime, “the cloud” signifies a network system that contains a vast amount of information and is accessible anytime and anywhere. It is obvious that “a university of the cloud” is more likely to make its objective a reality. Nevertheless, when UKOU attempted to replace face-to-face tutorials with online tutorials, concerns arose with respect to this change. Through a study on UKOU, this paper describes how the introduction of new technologies have affected student support at UKOU specifically, what this impact implies for open universities more generally and in what direction innovations toward the sustainability of open universities should proceed. 2. Technologies and openness In the 1960s, Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, considered radio and TV as a powerful medium of communication, which was too precious to be used solely for entertainment (Daniel, 1995, p. 11). This thought led to the establishment of a new kind of university in 1969, in which students did not have to go to the university and could instead learn at home through radio and TV: UKOU Although most of the teaching and learning at UKOU were supposed to be done remotely, the creation of a regional structure was considered to maintain direct contact with students (Perry, 1977, p. 44). Consequently, regional offices were set up all over the country from the very beginning. These offices have the function of managing Associate Lecturers (ALs), who are charge of teaching students in tutorial classes, assessing their work and providing feedback, securing venues for tutorials and supporting student learning via the phone or (in more recent decades) e-mail. In 2014, the number of regional offices was 13, and then decreased to 6 in 2018. The introduction of new technologies has given rise to fundamental changes in the educational system including teaching and learning activities in OU. The media used in ODE can be divided into correspondence tuition, the mass media, personal media, telecommunications and the knowledge media (Daniel, 1995, p. 10). Among these, the mass media, such as radio and TV, is what enabled the establishment of UKOU. However, there were some disadvantages to the mass media as broadcast time was fixed and students were required to “attend” classes at a specific hour. From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, personal media, such as audio or video cassettes, and personal computers, were introduced. These media allowed students to be free from time and physical constraints. Telecommunications, such as telephone and fax, also started to be used for tuition. Then, from the 1990s until today, UKOU introduced the knowledge media, which indicates a combination of telecommunications, television and computing (Daniel, 1995, pp. 116-120). Daniel, the Vice-Chancellor in 1990s, especially took notice of the use of personal computers with internet access. He predicted that by 2004, 95 percent of the students would have internet access (Daniel, 1996a). With the development of the media over the decades, UKOU has continued to grow. In 1971, when the first students were admitted to UKOU, student enrollment was 25,000, which increased to about 70,000 in 1985 and to 150,000 in 1995. The growth continued until 2010, when numbers peaked at 210,000. The introduction of new technologies has also had an effect on cost-effectiveness (Daniel, 1996a; Bell et al., 2017, p. 99). Following the Second World War, the Conservative Party handed over the reins of power to the Labour Party. Then, the Labour Party promoted several policies in the context of social democracy, such as industrial nationalization and the establishment of the National Health Service. In the same vein, the idea of UKOU was suggested. Unfortunately, only a year after the university was established, the Conservative Party came back into power. Because the foundation of the university was an unwelcome decision for the Conservative Party, which conformed to economic liberalism, the university faced a risk of being shut down. However, when the party attempted to close UKOU, Margaret Thatcher, the then Educational Secretary, ironically insisted on saving UKOU 170 AAOUJ 13,2 against her party members’ wishes. The reason was that she found the university cost-effective (Daniel, 1996b, p. 70; Weinbren, 2015, p. 12). This historical background describes that one of the significances of UKOU was closely related to its cost-effectiveness, a feature that is connected to the introduction of new technologies. The teaching and learning at UKOU is becoming more flexible and cost-effective these days. Since 2014, UKOU has gradually introduced the so-called Group Tuition Policy (GTP). Under this policy, the dozens of students that take the same module and the several ALs in charge of that class form a group, the so-called Cluster. One characteristic of the “Cluster” is that it does not take into account students’ places of residence. Previously, students participated in face-to-face tutorials based on their place of residence and ALs were equally assigned on the basis of location. Therefore, there was no concept behind students and ALs being artificially grouped into a “Cluster,” with students and ALs naturally forming a learning community. On the other hand, since the “Cluster” does not take the place of residence into account, it is difficult for students living in different and more distant regions to participate in face-to-face tutorials. Thus, building a learning community based on the place of residence also has been challenging. Along with this change, in November 2015, the council of UKOU decided to close seven of its regional offices, mainly in England, because the introduction of the GTP reduced the number of residence-based face-to-face tutorials and the rationale for having regional offices was essentially eliminated. As UKOU’s branch of the University and College Union tried to advocate for a vote of no confidence with regard to the Vice-Chancellor (resigned on April 13, 2018), the GTP is predicted to be canceled in the future. However, the closure of regional offices already took effect in February 2017 and the number of face-to-face tutorials also continued to decrease meanwhile. These changes in part have to do with cost-cutting. Since the academic year 2011–2012, the UK government’s subsidy for higher education has dropped dramatically, and tuition fees for British universities have increased three- or fourfold. The rise in tuition fees has particularly affected the number of part-time students, which has fallen by approximately 300,000 people in a period of four years since 2011–2012 (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2016). With the respect to UKOU, 75 percent of all students were part-timers, meaning that the university suffered a heavy blow. Prior to the tuition fee rise, student enrollment in 2010–2011 stood at about 210,000. As of 2014–2015, the number decreased to 140,000 students, dropping by 33 percent. As a consequence, the ODE institution ran a deficit of £16.9m and £10.5m in 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 (Swain, 2015), respectively. In such a situation, it seems appropriate to rethink on the cost-effectiveness of face-to-face tutorials. To keep offering tutorials, it is necessary to pay the rent for the regional offices and venues, as well as the salaries of the staff involved. In spite of that, the decision regarding reducing the number of face-to-face tutorials is likely to be natural. The concept of telecommunication has existed since the past and there have been discussions about replacements (Lammie, 1975; Matthews, 1999; Randle, 1999), but they were not enough to completely eliminate face-to-face sessions for many reasons, including the slow communication speed for synchronized online conferencing. Nowadays, with the development of ICT, this particular problem has been resolved almost completely. Unless the whole reason is related to the financial state of the university, it was natural for UKOU to make such a decision, which allowed them to be more “open,” substantializing the ODE rationale more effectively and providing students with an opportunity to study regardless of geographical, socio-economic or other constraints. However, the change would be more appropriate for an online learning environment and, therefore, has faced opposition from students, who prefer a “less open” environment for learning. 3. Tutorials and openness Even though face-to-face tutorials have existed from when UKOU first launched, it is no exaggeration to say that the tutorials have been at risk throughout the entire history of 171 Open and distance education the university. Reductions of face-to-face tutorials have occurred at least four times, including the current one. Evidence for the first reduction is found in an article entitled “Why there is no future for face to face tuition,” which was published in UKOU newspaper Sesame in 1975 (Lammie, 1975). As the number of courses had increased from 76 to 145, the average student population for each course decreased. Also, the sites where tutorials were held were spread out all over the country. Inevitably, travel distances especially for tutors increased, so it became difficult to maintain the number of face-to-face tutorials. Besides, the huge difference in enrollment numbers in popular courses and less popular ones was another problem. In 1984, the number of face-to-face tutorials was reduced due to financial reasons. Margaret Thatcher, by then the Prime Minister, demanded great accountability from universities and cut off government grants for institutions of higher education. At that time, the level of dependence of universities on governmental grants was 80–90 percent, greatly influencing universities including UKOU. Specifically, 76 percent of UKOU students attended more than one tutorial and 80 percent of those who passed their course(s) did so. (Student Research Centre, 1986, p. 16). The impact of the reduction may thus have been huge. In addition, the possibility that the reduction of tutorials offered affects student retention was suggested for the first time. Perry (Taylor, 1980) argued to insist that tutorial cut-backs are likely to result in an increased drop-out rate from foundation courses, with Perry writing in his work OU a personal account by the first Vice-Chancellor that “the class tutorials undoubtedly played a part in the success rate by diminishing the drop-out from foundation course” (p. 113). Although face-to-face tutorial had seen cut-backs several times, these cuts were basically always in terms of the frequency of the tutorials offered. The thought that face-to-face tutorials could be replaced with something else entirely never occurred in those days, even when they were supplemented with different kinds of student support. It concerned the burden caused by long-distance travel for tutors and students, and not the elimination of the face-to-face tutorials (Lammie, 1975). Also, the Student Research Centre was not able to suggest any other method to replace face-to-face tutorials, even though utilizing more letters and telephone counseling to facilitate students’ learning was advised. That is to say, the term “face-to-face tutorial” was considered equivalent with “tutorial” or “tuition.” In 1999, only a few years after the introduction of the internet, the then Vice-Chancellor of the university, suggested the possibility of replacing face-to-face tutorials with online ones. However, articles published in Sesame, such as Matthews’s “Fears that face-to-face tuition may suffer from move to computers,” indicate that students were worried rather than excited about the possible change (Matthews, 1999). It was the first time that face-to-face tutorials were compared with another method of tutorials. One student’s view about the pending change, expressed in UKOU newspaper was as follows: I value tutorial support very highly. To me it is the most important thing in UKOU after the quality of the written material. At its best (and most of my tutors have been very good) a tutorial provides clarification of tricky points in the course, revision and often new slants on the material which adds intellectual excitement. At second and third level tutorials are already very few – just four for several of the courses I have done. On-line support would be no substitute and would be welcome only in addition to the existing provision. I would welcome the ability to e-mail my tutor, both out of consideration for him/her and to enable me to express my query clearly. I would also support the recommendations in the report (Sesame, 192). I write this in my 6th UKOU year and in proud possession of a computer (and therefore not a Luddite). (Fielden, 1999) As indicated at the end of the quote, this student was neither a novice user of technology nor unconditionally opposed a new-type tutorial. Nevertheless, the student’s perception toward online tutorials appears to be as a sort of supplementary lesson. This view was not merely a 172 AAOUJ 13,2 minority opinion. The then Pro-Vice Chancellor Diana Laurillard was quoted as saying, “[W]henever students are asked which teaching methods they would like more of, face-to-face tutorials always appear at the top of the list” (Matthews, 1999). New technologies, such as personal computers and the internet, were not popularized enough. According to an investigation of UKOU, only 39 percent of students had access to a computer or the internet and students that were older than 44 and female students turned out to be less convinced about the change, leaving the distinct possibility that particularly these students would likely feel alienated (as cited in Matthews, 1999). In addition, the investigation that most students did not only own a computer but have access to the internet may mean students’ digital literacy was remarkably lower than those of today. The situation is different now. In 2014, the year that UKOU initiated the GTP, the penetration rate of computers in the UK had reached 85 percent, compared to 32 percent in 1999 (Statista, 2018b). The penetration rate of internet access had grown to 91.6 percent (Statista, 2018c). Internet speed had drastically increased by about 535 times (Ofcom, 2015, p. 9; Statista, 2018a), allowing students to communicate with tutors and other students at a much greater ease even through video conferencing with high-quality video and audio. Furthermore, the ownership rate of mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs has marked a steep growth over recent years (Ofcom, 2017, p. 10). Based on these data, it can be inferred that students’ perceptions of online tutorials have become more positive. The decision for the latest reduction was made in this status quo. However, there have been constant debates about changes within and outside the university. The University College Union conducted a signature-seeking campaign against the closure of the regional offices, which involved approximately 7,000 people (confirmed on April 19, 2016, now closed). Mass media, including the BBC, the Guardian and Times Higher Education, also provided thorough coverage of the changes, possibly because they were related to labor issues. For example, approximately 500 staff lost their employment because of the shutdown of regional offices (Sellgren, 2015). The redundancies included employees that had played an essential role in offering face-to-face tutorials, such as AL Services staff (mainly responsible for securing venues for face-to-face tutorials) and Staff Tutors (responsible for managing ALs). Moreover, there was one more consequence effected by the change. It also constituted a change of the form of the university. In an interview, Tony Coughlan, a tutor who worked at the Bristol Regional Office, described the change as follows: There was an excitement and sense of being part of a learning community. It was thrilling and really motivating. You don’t get that so much online. There is a sense when you are part of a community that you aren’t alone. If you are feeling a bit wobbly and thinking of throwing in the towel, you see lots of other people in the same position and it helps you carry on. (Swain, 2015) Coughlan found that when students felt a sense of being a part of a learning community, it resulted in motivating and sustaining their learning. In his opinion, this sense could be obtained from a learning environment that allowed students to meet face-to-face more so than online. Technology has played an important role in realizing the ethos of ODE. By introducing new technologies, students could enjoy the benefits of a more flexible learning environment and lower tuition fees, which stayed at the same level or at least increased more slowly than fees at regular universities. However, Coughlan questioned whether the quality of learning would be the same. For him, the most developed technology in ODE could create a gap between an ideal and a learning effect when trying to replace the face-to-face learning environment. A survey of students’ attitudes about face-to-face tutorials and online tutorials was conducted, targeting students who had studied in a range of undergraduate modules held in October 2012, excluding language courses, in which the requirement for synchronous voice 173 Open and distance education interaction is specialized (Goodfellow, 2014). Of the number of students contacted, 626 of 3,910 responded. As the number of respondents is small compared with the number of students enrolled at the university, generalizing the results is difficult. However, Goodfellow (2014) may be worth citing as it is among the few publicly available surveys on students’ attitudes toward tutorials in UKOU. One of the key findings is as follow: More students agreed with the other proposed benefits of face-to-face tutorials than agreed with the other proposed benefits of online tutorials. There are indications that online tutorials are not perceived to deliver the benefits of engagement in discussion about course topics, understanding how to get good marks in TMAs, getting to know other students, and encouragement to keep going, to the same degree that face-to-face tutorials do. (Goodfellow, 2014) The above quote describes that more students still expect and feel that face-to-face tutorials are more advantageous to them. In addition, other elements like “getting to know other students” or “encouragement to keep going” seem to underpin what Coughlan argued. However, it should be noted that most students, as Goodfellow also observed, found online tutorials also helpful as much as face-to-face tutorials are – the difference is not seen as considerable (86 percent vs 92 percent). Also, it turned out that there were still a few students who could not attend any of face-to-face tutorials due to lack of time, tutorial schedule and its location. The percentage of these students were 11, 9 and 13 percent (duplicates allowed). What is certain is that the provision of online tutorials appeals to students who cannot afford to attend face-to-face tutorials and students who are still unable to attend those tutorials because of geographical and time constraints are not few in number. In this respect, online tutorials appear to be OU like, based on the ODE rationale. 4. “A real university” and openness The question of whether UKOU is “a real university” seems to have been asked frequently. Keegan and Rumble (1982, pp. 246-247) determined that the university is recognized as a genuine university on the following grounds: credit transfer between the university and conventional universities is available and the chief executive officer of UKOU is a member of the national committee of the head of universities in the country. However, UKOU underwent a process to identify itself as a new type of university that had never existed before. In 1986, the Student Research Centre attempted to demonstrate the importance of face-to-face tutorials in terms of the human dimension, i.e. students being directly in touch with the university, or making personal contact with its staff and other students and not feeling alienated from the university. One of the reasons why the human dimension was regarded as important was to convince people that even a different, new kind of university was equal to conventional ones. In the 1960s, higher education was still the exclusive realm of the elite and had only just started to be become more popular. When UKOU was founded, there was no university that utilized the same teaching methods and/or accepted students without any requirements in the way that UKOU did. These features became a target of criticism as the validity of the establishment was questioned (Brittain, 1969; Rumble and Keegan, 1982, p. 216), requiring UKOU to demonstrate that, though being a novel type of university, it was nevertheless equal to “real universities.” One of representative examples that reveals the efforts made was the decision to adopt the regalia and ceremonials of existing universities in spite of opposition from those who believed these trappings should be swept away (Perry, 1977, p. 47). However, as for the educational process, UKOU could not copy any of the existing universities as its own teaching methods and students’ learning processes constituted an experiment distinct from what all other academic institutions were doing. The OU had to find its own way to be “a real university.” As a result, researchers on UKOU concluded that “students’ sense of being a member of ‘a real university’ (not a correspondence college), which makes personal contact 174 AAOUJ 13,2 with them in a variety of ways, is not just an enjoyable by-product of the educational process but intrinsic to it” (Student Research Centre 1986, p. 14). Face-to-face tutorials and summer schools can be cited as examples for achieving this, as they offered, in addition to their educational purposes, an experience of learning at “a real university” to students. Perry (1977, p. 117) argued that the subject matter studied during a summer school does not necessarily need to be directly related to and be integrated with the subject material of the rest of the course taken but that students’ physical presence is most important. Providing face-to-face tutorials had not been planned from the beginning. The university found that hiring high-quality tutors in all regions was possible and then changed its policy to offer such tutorials over and above correspondence tuition as a form of remedial education (Perry 1977, p. 112). Perry described the change as follows: Thus the very size of the foundation [tutorial] classes was allowed to erode the principle of relying solely upon teaching at a distance. It was erosion that was welcomed by students and part-time staff alike, and by a large number of the full-time academic staff. (p. 113) It is worth noting that the change ended up highlighting the significance of physical presence even though the university was established as a higher education institution with precisely the opposite premise: distance learning. This dual-mode structure can be seen as the result of the compromise with “a real university.” The process of establishing the structure is not merely to imitate traditional universities, but a way to identify a new type of university in itself. Nowadays most forms of student support, including tutorials, have become technically possible and the old system is now being replaced. As Goodfellow (2014) noted, both types of tutorials had high satisfaction rating from students. However, there was the only consideration on how to be more “open,” while the consideration on what identifies a university has been insufficient. Students and faculty members of UKOU not welcoming the replacement of face-to-face tutorials with online tutorials, as described in earlier literature (Lammie, 1975; Fielden, 1999; Matthews, 1999; Randle, 1999; Swain, 2015) may be a signal of opposition to the change of the nature of UKOU. Kerr (2001) suggested that there have been three different types of universities in history so far: the academic cloister (e.g. University of Oxford), the research organism (e.g. University of Berlin), and the city of intellect (e.g. University of California). None of those types are defined as a university teaching and recruiting students the same way as UKOU. In addition, Fallis (2007, p. 219) insisted that the university has always been a “place.” That is, the physical presence of an academic institution has historically been the inherent essence of what constitutes a university. It is important to note that none of these qualities are in inadequate to illustrate what UKOU is. The process of defining what the university is still in progress. 5. Conclusion Today, high-speed internet and high-performance network devices such as computers, smartphones and tablet PCs, are used widely. Considering this fact, introducing more online tutorials and diminishing face-to-face tutorials is likely to be effective in terms of realizing the ODE rationale behind. Furthermore, technological advances could also help improve its financial status through the growth of the number of students. Online tutorials have more advantages for realizing the objective of UKOU. According to a study on students’ attitude toward face-to-face tutorials and online tutorials, the satisfaction ratings were almost the same for both (86 vs 92 percent). From this perspective, it can be argued that the reduction of face-to-face tutorials contributes to the essential mission of the university. However, when UKOU decided to introduce more online tutorials and thus reduce the number of face-to-face tutorials, those opposed to the change argued that face-to-face tutorials provide an important sense of being part of a learning community. In other words, students and tutors are worried about UKOU becoming a “university of the cloud.” This means that the issue 175 Open and distance education requires a consideration from a different point of view, rather than considering it as merely a controversy over face-to-face vs online. The introduction of face-to-face tutorials was not originally planned. It only came about when UKOU found that hiring high-quality tutors in all regions was possible and then adopted those as remedial education. Later, the university found that direct contact with students, such as through face-to-face tutorials, constituted one of the most important methods to strengthen human connections to give students a sense of being a member of a “real university.” Ultimately, the university introduced a dual-mode system, going against the original ODE rationale, and this system transformed into what UKOU is now. This system also forms a fundamental idea of open universities. This can be seen as a process of creating the identity of a new type of university. The question which is posed by the current issue between face-to-face vs online is not only about comparing the effectiveness between two modes of education, but also about how open universities define themselves going forward. Raggatt (1993) was concerned about UKOU having to compete with an increasing number of universities that utilize distance education modes. Indeed, the ODE market is no longer unique to open universities (Garrett, 2016, p. 41; Tait, 2018, pp. 15-16) . As more competitors have been emerging, e.g., in the form of Open Educational Resources, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as well as distance learning courses being now also offered at traditional universities, the long-term sustainability of open universities has been questioned. MOOCs provide a particular threat. Although students cannot obtain a full degree with these courses, they can acquire certificates, digital badges, MicroMasters and/or Nanodegrees. All of these take a comparably short time to acquire, yet give proof of their holders’ specific skills, meaning they can be used advantageously for employment. Such certifications will especially appeal to those already working and seeking continuous education. 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Corresponding author Hanmo Jeong can be contacted at: jeong.hanmo.65m@kyoto-u.jp For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com 178 AAOUJ 13,2 https://economist.com/international/2012/12/22/learning-new-lessons https://economist.com/international/2012/12/22/learning-new-lessons Rethinking the rationale of open and distance education: a case of the UK Open University 
work_xspcuoheebcanfcwjy3d64nvem	----	aktualni_1_14.indd 93 Матеріали наукових конференцій Proceedings of scientifi c conferences Дистанційне навчання, відоме також як дистанційна освіта, сьогодні не є новим навчальним явищем. У минулому столітті кабінетне листування перетворене на телеконференцію, а нині воно видозмінилося до ви- користання Інтернету та сучасних Web-технологій. Така технічна еволюція останніх років охопила всі галузі суспільства й сприяла виникненню нових підходів у ви- кладанні у вищій школі. Сучасні знання потребують мо- дернізації освітніх технологій і методів їх упровадження. Мета роботи Вивчення моделей дистанційного навчання та розгляд доцільності використання дистанційної освіти у вищих медичних навчальних закладах. Сучасний етап розвитку української вищої школи характеризується дуже інтенсивним взаємопроникнен- ням освітніх методик західної школи в українську та навпаки. Завдяки цьому протягом останніх п’яти років у вітчизняних періодичних виданнях усе частіше пору- шують питання про інтенсифікацію освітніх технологій, що пов’язана із залученням новітніх технологічних ресурсів. Ідеться про використання електронних під- ручників і часописів, мультимедійних презентацій, но- вітніх комп’ютерних програм контролю за поточним чи кінцевим рівнем знань студентів. Відзначене є сучасною трансформацією класичних методів навчання. Поряд із тим, не меншої уваги потребує питання про головний вид інновацій в організації професійної освіти, а саме про застосування методів дистанційного навчання (ДН), його складові, перспективи і можливості. З огляду на це питання щодо визначення загальних дидактичних особливостей курсу ДН є найбільш актуальним у галузі підготовки медичних працівників. Багато спеціалістів зі стратегічних проблем освіти дистанційну форму навчання називають «освітньою системою ХХІ сторіччя», і сьогодні на неї зроблено ве- лику ставку [6]. По-перше, завдяки тому, що результати суспільного прогресу, котрі раніше були зосереджені в галузі технологій, нині концентруються і посідають УДК 378.018.43:[378.4:61]]-048.23 Н. Г. Гончарова, О. В. Кірсанова, А. О. Свєтлицький Реалізація моделей дистанційного навчання у вищих медичних навчальних закладах Запорізький державний медичний університет Ключові слова: новітні технології, дистанційна освіта, дистанційне навчання, моделі навчання, комп’ютерні телекомунікації. Комп’ютерна технологічна революція останніх років охопила всі галузі суспіль- ства і сприяла виникненню нових вимог у вищій школі України. Новим знанням необхідні нові методи впровадження. Порушено актуальне питання, що пов’язане з обміном, об’єднанням і узагальненням науково-педагогічного досвіду впровадження інноваційних технологій у навчальний процес вищих медичних навчальних закладів. Методична значущість такої роботи визначається високими темпами впровадження дистанційного навчання у процес підготовки студентів-медиків. Розглянули п’ять сучасних моделей дистанційного навчання, обґрунтували доцільність застосування методик дистанційної освіти у вищих медичних навчальних закладах. Реализация моделей дистанционного образования в высших медицинских учебных заведениях Н. Г. Гончарова, Е. В. Кирсанова, А. А. Светлицкий Компьютерная технологическая революция последних лет проникла во все сферы общества и способствовала возникновению новых требований в высшем образовании Украины. Новым знаниям необходимы новые методы внедрения. Затронут актуаль- ный вопрос, связанный с обменом, объединением и обобщением научно-педагогического опыта внедрения инновационных технологий в учебный процесс высших медицинских учебных заведений. Методическая значимость работы определяется высокими темпами внедрения дистанционного обучения в процессе подготовки студентов-медиков. Рассмотрели пять совре- менных моделей дистанционного обучения, обосновали целесообразность применения методик дистанционного образования в медицинских вузах. Ключевые слова: новейшие технологии, дистанционное образование, дистанционное обучение, модели обучения, компьютерные телекоммуникации. Актуальные вопросы фармацевтической и медицинской науки и практики. – 2014. – № 1 (14). – С. 93–96 The implementation of distance education models in higher мedical schools N. G. Goncharova, E. V. Kirsanova, A. A. Svetlicky The computer’s technological revolution over the last years has entered all spheres of human society and has given new guidelines in the education requirements. New knowledge requires new adoption methods. The article solves actual problem associated with the exchange, association and generalization of scientifi c and pedagogical experience of innovative technologies in the educational process of higher medical schools. Methodological signifi cance of the work is determined by the high rate of distance learning use in the process of medical students training. The article discusses fi ve current models of distance learning and the expediency of distance education in higher Medical schools is explained. Key words: the newest technologies, distance education, distance learning, the models of learning, computer telecommunications. Current issues in pharmacy and medicine: science and practice 2014; № 1 (14): 93–96 © Н. Г. Гончарова, О. В. Кірсанова, А. О. Свєтлицький, 2014 Матеріали наукових конференцій 94 Proceedings of scientifi c conferences © Н. Г. Гончарова, О. В. Кірсанова, А. О. Свєтлицький, 2014 відповідне місце в галузі інформацій. По-друге, штучно створений інформаційний простір, який має всі ознаки телекомунікаційного, є місцем спілкування та обміну цією інформацією і знаннями. Динамічний прогресив- ний рух науки зумовлює надшвидкі темпи старіння професійних знань і заохочує до постійного їх удоско- налення. У зв’язку з цим дистанційна форма навчання відкриває можливості побудування різнопрофільних систем безперервного самонавчання та обміну інфор- мацією для широкого кола користувачів, незважаючи на часові та просторові пояси, вік і соціальний статус. Дуже пластична ДН може адекватно реалізувати одну з найголовніших конституційних потреб людини – право на освіту й отримання інформації. Отже, логічно вважати дистанційну освіту (ДО) надефективною системою під- готовки та безперервної підтримки високого кваліфіка- ційного рівня спеціалістів. Що ж слід розуміти під ДН? Аналізуючи джерела фахової літератури, ми дійшли до висновку, що, як і будь-яка система навчання, ДН має схожі з класичною освітою цілі, зумовлені соціальним замовленням, зміст, що визначений чинними програмами для певного типу навчального закладу, методи, організаційні форми та засоби освіти [1]. При цьому останні три компоненти мають пряму залежність від кейс-технологій (наприклад, комп’ютерних телекомунікацій у комплексі із друкова- ними засобами, компакт-дисками тощо). Не слід плутати ДО із заочною освітою. ДН відрізня- ється наявністю постійної, систематичної та ефективної інтерактивності. Варто розглядати ДН як нову форму навчання, а ДО – як нову форму освіти. Згідно з за- гальними положеннями, ДН базується на подібних до очної освіти цілях і складових і не має нічого спільного із цілковито автономною системою. З іншого боку, ДН декларує іншу технологічну форму подання матеріалу і взаємодії викладача і студента та студентів між собою. Дидактичні принципи організації ДН (принципи науковості, розвиваючого навчання, системності та систематичності, активності, наочності, диференціації та індивідуалізації навчання тощо) [3] також схожі із такими очного навчання, але їх реалізація відмінна і зале- жить від специфіки нової форми навчання, можливостей інформаційного середовища Інтернету та якості його послуг. Як і інші форми навчання, ДН включає педаго- гічну складову й етап педагогічного проектування, коли на першому місці – завдання створення електронних підручників, курсів, комплексів електронних засобів навчання; розробка педагогічних технологій організації навчального процесу в мережі. Опитування щодо доцільності залучення ДО в освітню систему медичних працівників, в якому взяли участь викладачі кафедри нормальної фізіології, дало змогу вирізнити наступні цілі ДН: 1) підвищення кваліфікації практикуючих лікарів і провізорів; 2) професійна підготовка та перепідготовка викладачів медичного університету; 3) підготовка студентів з окремих навчальних дисци- плін до складання модульних контролів; 4) ліквідування прогалин у практичних знаннях, на- вичках та уміннях, на нашу думку, навряд чи може бути використане майбутніми лікарями для опанування нави- чок, адже такий дистанційний підхід зацікавлює лише в аспекті демонстрації уміння викладачів; 5) базовий курс за робочою навчальною програмою для студентів, які з різних причин не мають змоги про- тягом деякого часу відвідувати семінари, практичні заняття та лекції; 6) додаткова освіта за суміжними спеціальностями (наприклад, майбутній лікар хоче отримати додаткову освіту косметолога тощо); 7) підготовка школярів старших класів до випускних тестових екзаменів, що є профільними при вступі до медичного університету. Узагальнення відомостей багатьох статей [1,3,5] допомогло визначити найбільш поширені види ДН: інтерактивне телебачення, глобальні або регіональні комп’ютерні телекомунікаційні мережі з різними ди- дактичними можливостями залежно від типу технічних конфігурацій (текстових файлів, мультимедійної пре- зентації, відеоконференцій), поєднання технологій ком- пакт-дисків і мережі Інтернет. Переваги інтерактивного телебачення пов’язані з можливістю безпосереднього ві- зуального контакту студентів і викладача, які знаходяться на різних територіальних і часових відстанях. Деякі методисти вважають, що такий вид ДН, хоч практично і тиражує звичайне заняття, побудоване за традиційною методикою чи з використанням сучасних педагогічних технологій, але з успіхом може бути застосований для демонстрації унікальних методик, лабораторних до- сліджень, коли студенти та викладачі стають свідками й учасниками практичного втілення сучасних знань, методів, новітніх інформаційних технологій, а також беруть участь у дискусіях [4,9]. Не викликає сумніву, що ця форма ДН інтерактивна й може бути цікавою в системі підвищення кваліфікації лікарів чи підготовки майбутніх медичних фахівців, але висока вартість самої технології обмежує її широке використання. Досвід застосування комп’ютерних телекомунікацій у режимі електронної пошти, телеконференцій, інфор- маційних ресурсів у регіональній мережі та мережі Інтернет наочно демонструє фінансову доступність, а отже і поширеність для більшості студентів такого способу ДН. Інший спосіб ДН припускає використання компакт-дисків як базового електронного підручника. Маємо успішну практику використання електронних підручників Artur C. Guyton, John E. Hall «Text book of Medical physiology» та K. Sembulingam, Prema Sembulingam «Essentials of Medical Physiology» англо- мовними студентами у мережах віртуальної бібліотеки університету та приватного комп’ютера. Такий підхід розкриває необмежені дидактичні можливості для вищої 95 Матеріали наукових конференцій Proceedings of scientifi c conferences медичної освіти та підвищення кваліфікації провізорів і лікарів за рахунок високої інтерактивності, значного обсягу інформації, мультимедійності, що дозволяють оптимізувати процес ДН. Які моделі ДН [4,9,11] є найпривабливішими для ви- щої медичної освіти? Модель типу екстернату завжди орієнтована на вимоги вишів і призначена для студентів, які з різних причин не можуть відвідувати очні навчальні заклади. На нашу думку, такий підхід у медичному уні- верситеті буде привабливим тільки в окремих випадках (наприклад, тривала хвороба), але й у такому випадку – лише тимчасово. Друга модель – ДН на базі одного університету. Систе- ма призначена для студентів, які навчаються на відстані: заочно (відкриті форми навчання) або дистанційно, тобто на основі новітніх технологій (наприклад, комп’ютерних телекомунікацій). Така модель завжди становить певний інтерес для студентів заочного відділення, наприклад, фармацевтичного або факультету виробництва косме- тологічних засобів. Поряд із цим викладачі нашої ка- федри мають досвід дистанційного проходження курсів підвищення кваліфікації з педагогічної майстерності і відзначають їхню високу ефективність та економічність. Третя модель заснована на співпраці кількох вищих навчальних закладів або коледжів у будь-яких районах країни чи за кордоном, формується на єдиній програмі заочного ДН для цих закладів, за головними дисципліна- ми. Такий шлях у підготовці сумісної програми робить її якіснішою та дешевшою і відкриває можливість будь- якому громадянину країн співдружності отримати будь- яку освіту, не залишаючи місце проживання. Зважаючи на активне поширення Болонської системи навчання, вважаємо цю модель однією з найперспективніших і таких, що підтримується студентством. Четверта модель – автономні освітні заклади, що ство- рені спеціально з метою відкритого або дистанційного навчання, де студенти можуть отримати освіту за різни- ми напрямами. Ці заклади спеціалізуються на створенні мультимедійних курсів, що повністю оплачуються орга- нізаціями, в яких працюють курсанти. Найбільшим поді- бним закладом є Лондонський відкритий університет, на базі якого навчаються студенти не тільки Великобританії, але й інших країн Європейської співдружності. П’ята модель – навчання за автономними освітніми системами, коли процес навчання представлений відео- записами, аудіопрограмами та додатковими друкованими посібниками. Медичних освітян такий підхід приваблює поширенням і популяризацією серед молоді здорового способу життя, профілактичних програм здоров’я та іншої корисної інформації, як, наприклад, це подає ранкова радіопрограма студентського містечка нашого університету, котра успішно працює вже не один рік. Щодо дидактичних особливостей курсу ДО, то вони, безумовно, стосуються нового розуміння та корекції цілей упровадження ДО, і перш за все – за рахунок стимулювання інтелектуальної активності студентів за допомогою визначених цілей навчання та застосування матеріалу, в опрацюванні та відборі якого активну участь бере студент. Поділяємо погляди авторів [5,6,7,11], які серед ди- дактичних принципів, котрі пов’язані з комп’ютерними технологіями, визначили першочергові: активність, самостійність, поєднання колективних та індивідуальних форм праці, мотивація, зв’язок теорії із практикою, ефективність. З огляду на ці принципи, засоби на- вчального призначення у освітньому процесі ДО мають забезпечити можливість індивідуального підходу до студента, контроль його роботи з аналізом помилок і зво- ротним зв’язком on-line, самоконтроль і самокорекцію навчально-пізнавальної чи практичної діяльності, візуальну демонстрацію навчальної інформації, моде- лювання й імітування процесів і явищ, виконання про- ведення лабораторних робіт та експериментів в умовах віртуальної реальності, прищеплення вмінь ухвалення оптимальних рішень, підвищення інтересів до процесу навчання. Європейські освітяни розробили й реалізували головні підходи до ДН [8], що можуть бути використані у вищих навчальних закладах України. Зокрема, передбачено психологічне тестування студента перед початком ДН для розробки індивідуального підходу до навчання, а також подання навчального матеріалу у структурова- ному вигляді, що дає змогу отримати систематизовані знання з кожного тематичного модуля. Важливе місце в цьому процесі належить програмі навчання, що включає інформацію про систему ДО, методи ДН; біографічну інформацію про викладача; технологію будови та цілі навчального курсу; критерії завершення навчання; години телефонних консультацій чи зв’язку через систему Skype on-line; опис екзаменів, проектів письмових робіт; інструкції до практичних робіт тощо. Електронний підручник також є важливою складовою ДН, він поділений на незалежні тематичні модулі, кожен з яких подає цілісне уявлення про окреслену тематичну галузь і сприяє індивідуалізації процесу навчання. Не можемо не погодитись із авторами статей [10–12], які відзначають пряму залежність ефективності ДО від викладача, що виконує роботу зі студентом в Інтернет- мережі. Зокрема, з тим, що цей викладач має бути універсально підготованим, тобто володіти сучасними педагогічними й інформаційними технологіями та бути психологічно готовим до роботи зі студентами в новому навчально-пізнавальному мережевому середовищі. На жаль, сьогодні ми не маємо закладів, котрі займались би підготовкою фахівців подібного класу. Залиша- ються відкритими питання про якість і композицію інфраструктури інформаційного забезпечення студентів у мережі, організації і здійснення оцінювання знань «дистанційних» студентів. Висновки Зважаючи на викладені факти, можна зробити висно- вок про необхідність створення та поширення в Україні ДО як невід’ємного фактора розвитку кваліфікованого, інтелектуального й високопрофесійного суспільства і зокрема потребу широкого залучення ДН у галузь медичної освіти. © Н. Г. Гончарова, О. В. Кірсанова, А. О. Свєтлицький, 2014 Матеріали наукових конференцій 96 Proceedings of scientifi c conferences Список літератури 1. Михальченко М. Освіта і наука: пошуки нових парадигм модернізації / М. Михальченко // Вища освіта України. – 2001. – № 2. – С. 14–23. 2. Околесов О.П. Системный подход к построению электрон- ного курса для дистанционного обучения / О.П. Околесов // Педагогика. – 1999. – № 6. – С. 50–56. 3. Олексенко В. Ефективні шляхи вдосконалення змісту і форм підготовки спеціалістів ВНЗ / В. Олексенко // Вища освіта України. – 2004. – № 2. – С. 66–70. 4. Пидкасистый П.И. Компьютерные технологии в системе дистанционного обучения / П.И. Пидкасистый, О.Б. Ти- щенко // Педагогика. – 2000. – № 5. – С. 7–12. 5. Полат Е.С. Дистанционное обучение: каким ему быть? / Е.С. Полат, А.Е. Петров // Педагогика. – 1999. – № 7. – С. 29–34. 6. Педагогика : учеб. пособ. для студ. пед. учеб. завед. / В.А. Сластенин, И.Ф. Исаев, А.И. Мищенко, Е.Н. Шиянов. – 4-е изд. – М. : Школьная Пресса, 2002. – 512 с. 7. Сайт учителя информатики Александровой З.В. [Элек- тронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа: http: //aida.ucoz. ru.publ/9-1-0-76. 8. Слєпкань З.І. Наукові засади педагогічного процесу у вищій школі : навчальний посібник / З.І. Слєпкань. – К. : Вища школа, 2005. – 239 с. 9. Соколов В.М. О подходах к оптимизации объема запомина- емого содержания обучения / В.М. Соколов, О.И. Ваганова // Проблемы теории и практики подготовки современного специалиста : межвузовский сборник научных трудов. – Н.Новгород : НГЛУ им.А.Н. Добролюбова, 2004. – Вып. 2. – С. 285–292 с. 10. Шахмаев Н.М. Технические средства дистанционного обучения / Н.М. Шахмаев. – М. : Знание, 2000. – 276 с. 11. Katia Passerini. A developmental model for distance learning using the Internet / Katia Passerini, Mary J. Granger // Computers and Education. – 2000. –№ 34. – Р. 1–15. 12. Haertel G., Means B. & Penuel W. (2008). Technology tools for collecting, managing, and using assessment data to inform instruction and improve achievement. In L. Smolin, K. Lawless, & N., Burbules (Eds.), NSSE yearbook 2007, Information and communication technologies: Considerations for teachers and teacher education. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education. Відомості про авторів: Гончарова Н.Г., к. мед. н., доцент каф. нормальної фізіології, Запорізький державний медичний університет, E-mail: edelweiss57@ukr.net. Кірсанова О.В., к. мед. н., доцент каф. гігієни та екології, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Свєтлицький А.О., к. мед. н., асистент каф. анатомії людини, Запорізький державний медичний університет. Надійшла в редакцію 27.01.2014 р. УДК 615.11.4 В. А. Жук, Ю. М. Пенкин Использование технологий радиочастотной идентификации (RFID) в фармацевтических информационных системах Национальный фармацевтический университет, г. Харьков Ключевые слова: радиочастотная идентификация, радиометки, информационные системы, фармация. Представлена характеристика основных элементов инновационной технологии радиочастотной идентификации, получившей название RFID. Преимущества RFID по отношению к штриховому кодированию определяют актуальность ее внедрения в фармацевтическую практику Украины. Проведен анализ возможных приложений радиочастотной идентификации в бизнес-процессах фармацевтической отрасли. Використання технологій радіочастотної ідентифікації (RFID) у фармацевтичних інформаційних системах В. А. Жук, Ю. М. Пєнкін Наведено характеристики основних елементів інноваційної технології радіочастотної ідентифікації, що отримала назву RFID. Переваги RFID стосовно штрихового кодування визначають актуальність її впровадження у фармацевтичну практику України. Здійснено аналіз можливих застосувань радіочастотної ідентифікації в бізнес-процесах фармацевтичної галузі. Ключові слова: радіочастотна ідентифікація, радіомітки, інформаційні системи, фармація. Актуальні питання фармацевтичної і медичної науки та практики. – 2014. – № 1 (14). – С. 96–98 Radio frequency identifi cation (RFID) technology appliance in pharmaceutical information systems V. А. Zhuk, Yu. M. Penkin The innovate technology of radio frequency identifi cation (RFID) basic elements’ characteristics are given in the article. Advantages of the RFID over the barcoding determine the urgency and topicality of its implementation into Ukrainian pharmaceutical practice. The analysis of possible RFID’s applications to business processes in pharmaceutical fi eld has been carried out in the article. Key words: radio frequency identifi cation, RFID, information systems, pharmacy. Current issues in pharmacy and medicine: science and practice 2014; № 1 (14): 96–98 © В. А. Жук, Ю. М. Пенкин, 2014 
work_xsr6wprnfzhfvhxw5urqscsz3m	----	simul03.pdf APPLICATIONS Visual Interactive Simulation for Distance Education Juan de Lara Manuel Alfonseca Department Ingeniería Informática Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Ctra. De Colmenar, km. 15, 28049 Madrid, Spain Juan.Lara@ii.uam.es The authors discuss the necessity of multiple flexible output forms in an educational Web simulation environment. Ideally, such an environment should allow the creation of visual, interactive simulations and their integration in thepagesof theWebdocumentbeingconstructed.Asasuitablecandidate for this, theauthorsproposetheirsystemtogeneratedocuments for theWebthatconsistsof three layers: continuous simulation language OOCSMP and its associated language layers SODA-1L and SODA- 2L.OOCSMPandSODAarecompiled intoJavaappletsandHTML/VRMLpagesbyacompilercalled C-OOL.Differentoutput formscanbecombinedtosolveandshowtheresultsofasimulationproblem. The authors propose a procedure to guide the construction of educational courses on technical or scientific subjects with their tools. This procedure is used to enhance an existing educational Web course with a new page showing the simulation of a robot arm Unimation PUMA260. Keywords: Object-oriented continuous simulation, Web-based simulation, visual interactive simula- tion, virtual reality, tools for distance education, Web engineering 1. Introduction The growing acceptance of the Internet in the present so- ciety makes it an ideal framework for distance education. The new technologies and techniques offered by this en- vironment, as well as the possibility of reaching a huge audience, is forcing a large number of disciplines, such as computer simulation and educational sciences, to rethink their traditional philosophies and techniques [1]. One of the advantages of using the Internet as a means for distance education is that it offers common communication proto- cols and standards. This allows people access to informa- tion from heterogeneous platforms using a Web browser, which can have installed extensions to interact in a richer way with the HTML pages. These extensions are called plug-ins. Some of the plug-ins that we use to make avail- able interactive simulations in the Internet are the Java Vir- tual Machine (http://java.sun.com) and VRML browsers (http://www.web3d.org/Specifications/VRML97). Virtual reality (VR) immerses the users in a 3-D en- vironment, where they can actively interact with vir- tual objects and explore the virtual world. Its advan- tages, such as new possibilities of interaction and more realistic and pleasant learning, are turning VR into a valuable tool for distance education [1, 2] (see also | | | | | SIMULATION, Vol. 79, Issue 1, January 2003 19-34 ©2003 The Society for Modeling and Simulation International DOI: 10.1177/0037549703253455 http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/knowledge_base/ education.html). In the case of simulation, it reduces the semantic gap between the real system being simulated and the output obtained from the simulation, providing realistic visualization and richer interaction possibilities. Sometimes virtual reality simulations are embedded in games in which the students have to cooperate for the completion of complex tasks, such as in Scholz-Reiter et al. [4]. Without such realistic visualization and using only tables and graphics, it is sometimes difficult to relate the data obtained in a simulation with the behavior of the real system. For example, in the case of the simulation of a robot arm, it may not be easy to relate the angle values of the different joints to the real configuration of the robot. Visualizing the movement of the robot arm in a realistic way can improve understanding of the simulation model. If the simulation environment makes it possible to see different output forms at a time, then one can combine the VR output—to visualize the behavior of the system—with other outputs such as tables or 2-D graphics for a more ac- curate visualization of the quantities of interest. Nowadays, the use of VR is not restricted to high-performance systems [5]; even personal computers are able to run browsers for a (limited) VR language called VRML. This language al- lows describing interactive 3-D objects and worlds and was designed to be used on the Internet. The VRML97 stan- dard defines an external Application Programming Inter- face (API) that makes it possible to control VRML objects from external programs, thus facilitating the integration of VRML panels with other output forms written in Java. at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca Some educational environments facilitate learning by making the user interact with simulations dealing with the subject of study [6]. The use of simulations in education presents positive aspects [7] if the student cannot access the real system or if experiments with the real system are expensive (such as in the case of the robot arm), difficult, or just impossible (such as if we try to simulate the move- ments of the planets of the solar system; see Section 4). The simulation of the main characteristics of the system inside educationalenvironments,especiallyiftheseenvironments are provided with multimedia [8] and VR elements, can be a good complement to laboratory experimentation. There is a need for tools to help in the construction of educational interactive simulations that integrate different views of the simulation results with other explanations, possibly in the form of multimedia elements. Usually one would like to organize several of these simulations in a logical way to form educational materials such as courses. Thus, an authoring tool to assist in the construction of these materials should help in the tasks of building simulations, arranging and synchronizing the (multiple) output forms, embedding them in HTML pages, arranging the pages to form a course, and so forth. Moreover, very often the con- structor of such documents is not an expert programmer in Java, VRML, HTML, and related Web technologies. Thus, it is desirable to hide these technical details from the course designer. In addition, the use of a high-level description for simulations, pages, and documents can reduce notably the time needed to build these materials, augment their main- tainability, and reduce the time spent in testing [9]. Our aim is to provide such an environment to build Web documents containing interactive, multimedia simulations. Although there has been recent interest in the special needs of constructing applications for the Web (Web engineer- ing), very little can be found in the current literature about the engineering of Web applications with a strong compo- nent of simulation. In this paper, we give a unifying view of our previous work with a Web-engineering perspective. We also present some extensions of our environment that al- low the easy integration of (Java-based) simulation applets with (VRML-based) virtual reality worlds and multimedia elements, as well as the integration of all these elements in documents accessible from the Web. The description of the simulation and the output forms is made using a declarative high-level simulation language (designed by our group) called OOCSMP. Other language layers (SODA-1L and SODA-2L) allow including simulations in document pages and arranging the pages to form educational courses, inter- active articles, and presentations. We also show a proce- dure that can be used when building Web documents with our tools, and we illustrate the use of this procedure and the proposed tools by enhancing an existing educational course. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the problems and alternatives found in Web-based continu- ous simulation, together with the motivations of this work; Section 3 presents the basic architecture of our system; and Section 4 shows the extensions introduced to handle vir- tual reality. In Section 5, we provide a procedure to follow whenbuildingdocumentswithourtools.Section6presents an example of the use of these extensions (the simulation of the PUMA270 robot arm) together with the inclusion of this model in an existing course, following the proce- dure presented in the previous section; Section 7 describes related research; and Section 8 gives the conclusions and future work. 2. Web-Based Simulation: Problems, Alternatives, and Motivations There are several ways of accessing simulations through the Internet [10]. The first one is known as the thick server approach. In this case, the simulation programs execute at the server and are programmed in any language ac- cessible through the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). This is not a good approach with interactive simulations, in which the user experiments during the simulation ex- ecution, trying to answer “what if” questions. In these experiments, the user is supposed to stop the simulation, change some parameters, and resume the simulation. In the thick server approach, these interactions may lead to long delays and inconsistencies due to Internet latencies: the user may try to interrupt the simulation long before the server receives the signal to stop. However, for nonin- teractive simulations, this can be a suitable approach (see, e.g., the GPSS Web simulator of the University of Magde- burg at http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/∼hv/classes/MS/GPSSH/ webgpssh.html). In opposition to thick servers, the thick client approach serversdonotrunthesimulations:theyaredownloadedand executed locally. This approach has the danger of client in- compatibility or virus transmission and is not appropriate if the simulations are to be integrated with other services offered through the Web, such as cooperative learning sup- port, learning guidance, and so forth. To solve these diffi- culties, in the pure navigation approach, the Web browser becomes the common access point to all the simulations. These are executed in the client machines as Java applets, possibly using other plug-ins. Java has many interesting properties (e.g., “write once, run everywhere”) that pro- vide client independence. This is our approach. Other ways to integrate simulation and Web services [11] are distributed execution [12] and distributed mod- eling [13, 14]. In the distributed execution of continuous simulation models in the Internet, one cannot use tradi- tional ways of fine-grain parallelization (such as solving a set of equations in parallel by assigning one or a few elements of the resulting equation matrix to each node in the network). A coarse-grain parallelism should be ex- ploited due to Internet latencies. One approach is to express the model as a collection of objects that interact, group the objects that interact more frequently, and place them in the same machine. Objects in different machines will interchange messages through the network, possibly using 20 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION remote method invocation techniques [12]. This approach is similar to that taken by the High-Level Architecture (HLA) (see http://www.dmso.mil) for the parallel execu- tion of discrete simulation models. On the other hand, for distributed modeling, when a group of designers collabo- rate in the modeling phase, current approaches take ideas from the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) community. To reduce the effort required to build the simulation models in Java, one has two alternatives [15]. On one hand, a library can be provided containing predefined classes, which may be used by the programmer to build the model. In this case, the model builder programs directly in Java [16]. On the other hand, a special-purpose simulation lan- guage can be used, together with a compiler to translate the models into Java code. Some simulation languages are provided with compilers and environments able to trans- late models into Java—among them, GPSS, DEVS, and OOCSMP. This is our approach and has the advantage of simplifying the modeling process because simulation languages are higher level than regular programming lan- guages, provide more powerful constructs, and are easy to use for nonprogrammers. These simulation languages are well known in the simulation community, and one may have access to a great number of models and libraries. A general-purpose language such as Java is more flexible but requires a higher level of expertise. Something similar happens with the increasingly popular system for graphical design, Flash (http://www.macromedia.com). This system is extremely powerful for graphics and animation, but one would have to code the simulation numerical solvers by hand. As stated in the introduction, it is often desir- able to integrate several simulations in a Web doc- ument. Again, one has two alternatives: doing it by hand (creating the HTML pages and embedding the ap- plets inside the pages manually; for examples, see [17] and a virtual enginnering/science laboratory course at http://www.jhu.edu/virtlab/virtlab.html) or using an inte- grated environment for the creation of the simulations and the document pages. The second alternative is our ap- proach. Creating the document pages by hand usually re- quires skill and expertise in HTML programming. More- over, if the simulations make use of VRML plug-ins, ar- ranging them in the HTML page may not be straightfor- ward. In addition, it could be useful to show some sim- ulation data (such as initial variable values) in the Web page outside the applets. Using the first approach means that if one changes the simulation, the Web pages must be changed too. Three kinds of Web documents could be enhanced by interactive simulations [9]. The first kind, educational courses on technical or scientific topics, consists of a num- ber of HTML pages containing simulations, possibly en- riched with multimedia elements. It may be desirable to control the degree of interaction of the student with the sim- ulations by adding interaction capabilities in a progressive way [18]. Scientific interactive articles also offer the possibility of taking advantage of visual, interactive simulations: when a simulation model is described, a real executable model may be added with which the reader can experiment. The simulation can incorporate further explanations of the re- sults by the author of the article, synchronized with the simulation execution. It must be noted that nowadays, al- most all scientific journals have Web servers through which electronic versions of the papers are made available. Presentations describing simulation models and their execution are also good candidates for Web-based simula- tion techniques. In these documents, the slides should be HTML pages. When a simulation model is described, a Java applet may be added, so that the audience can see the execution. These presentations can also be published in the Web and seen by the readers using a Web browser. Typical presentation systems, such as PowerPoint, are not platform compatible and do not allow the execution of interactive simulations inside the slides. Our approach is unique in the sense that it provides an integrated environment for the construction of the three types of documents. Simulations are specified in a high- level language called OOCSMP and may use different out- put formats, including VRML panels and multimedia el- ements (images, videos, or text) that can be synchronized with the simulation by means of language primitives. The pages in which these simulations are placed are specified using another language layer (SODA-1L), which can ac- cess information in the OOCSMP models, thus solving the problem of maintaining separate simulations and doc- ument pages. Controlling the way in which the pages are arranged to form articles, presentations, or courses is done in another, higher language layer called SODA-2L. Our system has been designed for reusability (not only of OOC- SMP models but also of SODA pages), maintainability (in Section 6, we show how to extend an existing educa- tional course), easy testing, standardization of the user in- terfaces, and so forth. The use of higher level languages in- creases notably the productivity of the document designer and avoids the need to know lower level languages such as Java, HTML, or VRML. To our knowledge, no other available tool can be used to build educational materials for the Web with a strong component of visual interac- tive simulations with these characteristics. On one hand, some of the existing tools are very good for graphics but lack powerful constructs for simulation (this is the case for Flash and Authorware). On the other hand, none of the ex- isting simulation tools allows the seamless integration of simulations in educational materials for the Web. 3. The Integrated Simulation System: OOCSMP, SODA-1L, and SODA-2L The lower layer of our integrated system is OOCSMP (http://www.ii.uam.es/∼jlara/investigacion), an object- Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 21 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca oriented extension of the continuous simulation language CSMP [19], which we began to develop in 1997 [20]. This language is very suitable for models that can be expressed as similar interacting components and has extensions to solve partial differential equations (using finite elements or finite differences methods and structured or unstructured meshing techniques), manage discrete events, produce dis- tributed simulations, and perform agent-based simulation [21]. A compiler called C-OOL (Compiler for the OOC- SMP Language) has been developed for the language. C- OOL is able to generate Java programs or applets, plain C++, or C++ programs that use the Amulet library [22]. To make this approach useful for education, different output forms can be combined in the simulations. The C- OOL compiler provides a user interface that allows the student to answer “what if” questions and to interact with the simulation. The simulation results are presented as they are being calculated. The user interface can be configured by means of compiler options to adapt to the characteristics of the user by restricting or enhancing the possibilities of interaction, such as allowing the user to create new simula- tion objects at runtime [23] or preventing the modification of some parameters. A typical Java user interface generated by our compiler consists of a main panel and several additional windows. The panel has a maximum capacity of nine output forms, in a 3 × 3 grid, but if not all locations are used, the grid automatically becomes as compact as possible. The panel also contains several scroll-like objects to adjust the sim- ulation final time, the time step, and the current time, plus several buttons to view/modify the values of the parame- ters and state variables of the simulation objects and the global variables. Another nine windows can be displayed with different graphical representations. A scheme of the user interface is shown in Figure 1. Each graphical output form can be placed in one or more of the nine panel positions or in a separate window. The types of graphical outputs available in OOCSMP include animated 2-D graphics (for 1-D functions and vectors); 3-D plots for matrices; iconic plots, which represent with icons the time-dependent values of variables (the number of visible icons in the same class is proportional to the value of the variable they represent); graphical representa- tions of the equations in the model; outputs for agent-based simulation [21]; plots of the grid used to solve a partial differential equation; maps of isosurfaces; and a listing of variable values. Some of them are also input forms, such as the MGEN tool, which allows the user to interactively define a partial differential equations problem, including the domain, mesh, conditions, and the equations [18]. An example of all these outputs can be found at the OOCSMP homepage (http://www.ii.uam.es/∼jlara/investigacion). The other two layers of the system address the integra- tion of the simulation applets with the HTML pages of the Web documents [9]. They are called SODA-1L (Simula- tion Course Description Language–1st Level) and SODA- 2L (Simulation Course Description Language–2nd Level). The SODA-1L level provides a set of instructions that de- scribe document pages containing hypermedia elements not available in plain HTML, such as simulations, 2-D graphics for functions, 3-D graphics, and maps of isosur- faces. SODA-1L is at a higher language abstraction level than OOCSMP because the models defined in OOCSMP can be treated as hypermedia elements from the SODA- 1L viewpoint. SODA-1L deals mainly with the contents of thepages.Detailsabouttheirappearance(whicharemostly common to all the document pages) are left to SODA-2L. At this level, one can group several of the SODA-1L pages to form an educational course, a presentation, or an arti- cle. SODA-2L provides primitives to add navigation links, headers, and footnotes; create and place indexes; and so on. They can be embedded in the resulting HTML pages or added as frames. At this level, one usually adds interface details common to all the pages, which makes the SODA- 1L pages easy to reuse. Figure 2 shows the organization of all the language layers. The system has been used for educational pur- poses: several courses containing simulations on ecol- ogy, gravitation, partial differential equations, and elec- tronics [24] can be accessed at the OOCSMP homepage (http://www.ii.uam.es/∼jlara/investigacion). The system hasgreatlyimprovedourproductivityincreatingandmain- taining these courses, as we do not need to program the nu- merical methods, the simulation user interfaces, the graph- ical outputs, or the HTML of the documents: all these ele- ments are provided or generated by the system and can be accessed using declarative, high-level constructs. 4. Adding VRML Panels to the Simulation System As stated in the introduction, the use of VRML panels in simulations reduces the gap between the presentation of the results and the real behavior of the system, making the simulations much more realistic and pleasant to the stu- dent. In OOCSMP, it is possible to combine VRML panels with the other output forms or with multimedia elements. The VRML panels in our system also permit a richer in- teraction with the model during the simulation execution. For example, one can set hyperlinks in the VRML objects, which can be used to explain the role of the object in the simulation or to show additional data when the user clicks on them. We have used these possibilities in a simulation of the solar system in such a way that when the user clicks on one of the planets, its name, mass, radius, and other data are shown. VRML browsers also have controls to rotate the world, move away or nearer, change the viewpoint, and so forth. This permits the user to choose the most appropriate view of the simulation. The OOCSMP VR extensions make it easy to assign a VRML node to each OOCSMP object. In the case of the simulation of the solar system, we can model each planet as an OOCSMP object of class Planet and assign to it 22 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION Figure 1. The scheme of a typical user interface for experimentation Figure 2. The three language layers used to generate simulation-based documents a VRML node with its 3-D appearance. Another instruc- tion (VRMLworld) assigns OOCSMP objects as dynamic components of a virtual world. Attributes of the OOCSMP object control properties of the VRML object (displace- ment, rotation, center of rotation, size, or color) in such a way that when the attribute changes, the visual appearance of the VRML world also changes. This instruction can be used in three ways, depending on where it is placed. At the end of a class or a model, the simulation engine will modify the property of the corresponding VRML object at every time step. For example, in the case of the simula- tion of the solar system, the VRMLworld instruction inside the OOCSMP Planet objects links the displacement of the VRML node with the position of the planet calculated by the simulation. If the instruction is placed at the end of the main model, it can have a VRML file as a parameter. The contents of this file will be added to the virtual world generated by the simulation but will not be controlled by the simulation engine (they will be static elements of the virtual world). Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 23 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca In the case of the solar system, this feature can be used to maketheSunappearintheVRMLworld,assumingthatthe position of the Sun is not computed by the simulation and is placed by default at (0, 0). If the instruction is placed in a discrete event handler, when that event occurs, the corresponding property will be modified. When compiling the model with C-OOL, one Java file and one VRML file are generated. The VRML file contains all the VRML objects declared in the model. The compiler assembles the VRML instructions associated with every OOCSMP object and also the static VRML elements de- clared outside OOCSMP classes. The Java applet contains the simulation logic, the simulation controls, and the other graphical output forms, if any has been selected. The Java applet allows the user to start and stop the simulation, change the model parameters, and so forth and commu- nicates with the virtual world by means of the External Authoring Interface (EAI). Proprietary technologies such as Netscape’s LiveConnect [25] are widely used [2, 26], but we think our solution is more appropriate because ad- ditional libraries are not needed: our solution is compat- ible with Internet Explorer, and communication between the Java applet and the virtual world is done directly from the program, rather than indirectly through JavaScript. Figure 3 shows the working scheme of all these com- ponents, including a graphical Web browser, a VRML97- compliant plug-in such as CosmoPlayer, and a Java Vir- tual Machine plug-in that understands at least Java 1.1 code. The generated Java programs use a graphical and numerical Java library placed in the server (for develop- ing purposes, it can be placed in the client). When the user accesses the simulation page, the VRML code, the Java applets, and the necessary Java classes are down- loaded from the server and executed locally. The simu- lation engine, embedded in the Java applet executed in the client, keeps the Java-based outputs and the VRML outputs synchronized. For that purpose, it has to obtain a handler to the VRML plug-in through the EAI and explic- itly perform the updating of the VRML nodes, depend- ing on how the simulation variables influence each VRML node (through displacement, rotation, etc.). Figure 3 also shows a simulation of the inner solar system, using a 2-D (Java-based) output form and a VR panel (based on VRML). This simulation can be found on the Internet at http://www.ii.uam.es/∼jlara/investigacion/ecomm/solar3. html. An alternative to using VRML would be to implement the VR panels directly in Java, using technologies such as Java3D (http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D) or Shout 3D (http://www.shout3d.com). The advantage of using VRML is that it is an Internet standard faster than Java, and it is easier to find libraries of VRML objects to use in the simulations (see the Web3D Repository at http://www.web3d.org/vrml/vrml.htm). The advantage of using Java for 3-D modeling is that only the Java Virtual Machine is needed to run the models (without any VRML plug-in), and it can be better fitted with the simulation en- gine (Java applets) generated by our compiler. We deem the advantages of using VRML greater. 5. Procedure to Generate Web Documents To carry out a certain activity—such as creating documents for the Web based on visual interactive simulations—one not only has to provide the tools to perform it but also has to propose a procedure showing the best way to do it (i.e., a sequence of activities, their relationships, and their in- puts and outputs). Figure 4 shows the procedure we follow when we construct a Web document with our system. This procedure is an improvement to the one presented in de Lara and Alfonseca [9]. 1. The first step is a manual activity, in which we plan the organization of our documents, deciding how many pages the document will have and which mod- els are going to be placed in each page. The output of this step is a plan or a scheme for the Web doc- ument, containing descriptions of the models to be included in the pages. The next steps are performed using our tools. 2. In the second step, we make high-level represen- tations of the systems under study, using nota- tions such as Forrester system dynamics, statecharts, block diagrams, UML class diagrams, and so forth. Thenotationandthedegreeofformalityinthis phase depend on the nature and complexity of the system to be simulated. This step is also necessary in software engineering for the same reason as in modeling and simulation: one needs high-level representations of the systems to better understand them and to tackle their complexity. If the model is simple, it will be written on a sheet of paper and translated by hand into OOCSMP code in the next step. In harder cases, an automatic tool such as AToM3 [27] can be used. This is a meta-modeling tool that accepts a descrip- tion (meta-model) of the formalism one is going to use and automatically generates a tool to process models in the described formalism. It is also pos- sible to define model manipulations, such as code generation, for other tools. In this way, we have de- fined transformations of some modeling formalisms into OOCSMP, such as causal block diagrams [28] and statecharts. The input to this activity is the plan of the Web document and, in particular, the descrip- tion of the models in each page. The outputs of this activity are the models, expressed in an appropriate high-level modeling formalism. 3. In the third step, we code the models in our object- oriented continuous simulation language, OOC- SMP. The models should be coded as OOCSMP classesinsuchawaythattheycanbereusedthrough- out the Web document. Sometimes, the OOCSMP 24 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION Figure 3. Using a virtual reality (VR) panel from a simulation: Inner solar system example code can be generated automatically from higher level models by using AToM3 or other customizable modeling tools (most tools supporting UML classes allow one to define templates for code generation). If this is the case, the generated code may have to be completed or modified by hand. The inputs to this activity are the models, described in a high-level formalism. The outputs of this activity are the OOC- SMP files. 4. In the fourth step, and for each page in the document, we build the models to be included in the page. Usu- ally, this means instantiating some of the classes, creating objects, and connecting them. The input to this activity is one of the OOCSMP files generated in the preceding step, and its output is a modified OOCSMP model adapted to the particularities of the page. 5. In the fifth step, the model is validated. The inter- face generated automatically by our compiler makes this testing process easier. For this step, we usu- ally choose a simple output form, such as a listing of variable values, or 2-D graphics of some vari- ables against time. If the model is not correct, we go back to the preceding steps (Step 2 or 3) to cor- rect the model. The input to this activity is the OOC- SMP model, and its output is the validated OOCSMP model. 6. Once the model has been validated, we select the output forms to be displayed. As we saw in previous sections, several output forms can be combined in a single model and placed in different positions in the user interface. The input to this step is an OOCSMP model, and the output is the model extended with appropriate output forms. 7. The next step is an optional activity to include and synchronize multimedia elements (if any) in the model. The inclusion of multimedia elements in the simulations makes the learning process more pleasant to the students. Explanations may be made richer than those that can be provided with simple static HTML text. The learning process is further improved if the explanations are synchronized with what is happening in the simulation. OOCSMP provides the possibility to include mul- timedia elements in the simulation, combined with other output forms. The multimedia elements avail- able are image panels, dynamic text panels, video panels, and audio sequences. These multimedia ele- ments can be synchronized with the simulation ex- ecution. In this way, appropriate explanations are Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 25 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca Figure 4. Our process to construct simulation-based Web documents given to the student in the appropriate moment. Synchronization is done by specifying conditions in the simulations that trigger the execution of a given multimedia element. These conditions can be any valid OOCSMP expression. The multimedia el- ement stops its execution when the associated con- dition is no longer true. If several conditions are true for the same panel, the last specified element is pre- sented in the panel. The input to this step is an OOCSMP model, and its output is the model extended with multimedia elements. 8. The next step tests the suitability of the output forms and the correct synchronization of the multimedia el- ements. The input to this step is an OOCSMP model provided with graphical outputs and/or multimedia elements, and its output is a validated OOCSMP model. If there are more models to be included in the current document page, the process goes back to Step 3 for each of the other models. Otherwise, we go to Step 9. 9. Step 9 uses the SODA-1L layer to describe the con- tents of the page and call the OOCSMP simulations produced in the preceding steps. SODA-1L makes it possible to include in the pages some elements not directly available in plain HTML, such as 2-D or 3-D graphics, maps of isosurfaces, and so forth. The inputs to this step are the models to be included in the page and the scheme of the page created in Step 1. The output of this step is one of the pages in the document. If there are more pages in the doc- ument, the process goes back to Step 3; otherwise, we continue with the final step. 10. This step is performed using the SODA-2L lan- guage. Here we have to create a script indicating the type of document (educational course, presentation, 26 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION or article) and define common appearance elements, such as backgrounds, font types, headers, footnotes, frames, and so forth. We can also indicate if we want to generate an index and how the references (if any) should be tracked. One important issue is that we can also specify the navigation throughout the doc- ument, so that, if we later decide to change the order of the pages, the SODA-1L pages remain unchanged and only the SODA-2L script has to be modified. 6. An Example: Enhancing an Existing Course with the Simulation of a Robot Arm Using VR As an example of using the procedure and tools presented earlier, in this section we enhance an existing educational course with new pages. This will also show that our tools allow for the easy maintenance of the documents: when a new page is included, all the navigation links, indexes, and so on in the course are regenerated automatically. We will enhance the course with a page containing a simulation of the robot arm Unimation PUMA260 [29]. Robotic simu- lations can be interesting in the sense that industrial robots are so expensive that sometimes a university department cannot afford to buy one, and experiments with VR simu- lation may be a valid alternative. If the simulation can be accessed from the Internet, the student can also experiment at home. To build this page, we will follow the procedure in Figure 4, assuming that Step 1 (planning the course) has been performed before. 6.1 Step 2: Modeling Phase In this step, we can make (several) models of the system using an appropriate formalism. The objective is to under- stand the dynamics of the system and, in our case, to plan the implementation. In this case, we use some of the UML diagrams described in Booch, Rumbaugh, and Jacobson [30]. To model physical systems, the UML diagrams can becomplementedbysimulationformalisms,suchaspartial differential equations (PDEs), ordinary differential equa- tions (ODEs), and so forth. In robotic and mechatronic simulations, it is useful to use UML notations and map the models into an object-oriented simulation language such as OOCSMP. Figure 5 shows two of the UML diagrams that we have used for our problem (a class and a collaboration diagram). The diagram to the left is a structural diagram used to describe the system architecture. Basically, we have a class named PUMA260 (which represents the robot) containing four joints, the last one with a manipulator able to rotate through two different axes. Some of the robot attributes are its position (P X, P Y , and P Z), the rotation degrees performed by each J oint (G1 . . . G4), and three rotation matrices (ROTX, ROTY, and ROTZ). In the methods sec- tion, the public interface allows rotating one of the joints a number of degrees (methods ROTATE1 . . . ROTATE4). The first argument of these methods gives the order in which each rotation has to be performed. The other public meth- ods are GETANGLE1 . . . GETANGLE4, which return the angle value of each joint. The Joint object is assigned a VRMLObject (a VRML file with the Joint graphical appearance) whose initial po- sition is given by (X0, Y 0, and Z0). The public interface defines the INITIAL method, which performs initial calcu- lations, and the ROTATE method, which performs a rota- tion of the joint, given a rotation matrix. All the joints in the robot are connected to the next joint, except the manip- ulator, which is last. By encapsulating joints in objects, we can use them not only to describe PUMA robots but any other kind of robot. The diagram to the right is a behavioral model, used to understand the flow of method invocations in the system. One could have an arbitrary number of these diagrams, with each one modeling a different situation. In our case, we show the behavior of the system when the main simu- lation invokes a rotation on the robot (method labeled 1). In particular, in the example shown, we wish to rotate the second joint by π/2 degrees. When a PUMA260 object receives this message, it checks if the order parameter is appropriate—that is, if the number of rotations performed is equal to parameter ORDER minus 1. If this is the case, it invokes on itself method ROT2, which in turn invokes method ROTATE on the appropriate joint, using the appro- priate rotation matrix (each joint is able to rotate through a different axis). When the Joint object receives this mes- sage, it performs the necessary operations and passes the message to the next joint connected to it until the manip- ulator is reached. This is repeated at each time step until the joints reach the desired rotation angle and then the next rotation can be executed. 6.2 Step 3: Coding the Model In this step, we have to map the model produced by the pre- vious step into the OOCSMP code. Using automatic tools, it is possible to automatically generate part of the OOC- SMP code from the UML class diagram. The diagram may be completed with the OOCSMP code for the methods in the form of notes. As an example, Figure 6 shows a scheme of the OOCSMP code for the Joint class. TINVERSE is an OOCSMP function to invert a transformation matrix, using a well-known and more efficient algorithm than the usual inversion [31]. Details about the algorithms used to handle transformation matrices can also be found in Foley et al. [32]. 6.3 Step 4: Adapting the Model to the Page In this step, we create the main simulation models using the classes built in the previous step. This usually means creating instances of the classes, parametrizing the objects, and calling the appropriate methods inside the main simu- lation loop. Figure 7 shows the model for this page. It is a Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 27 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca Figure 5. Modeling the robot arm using UML: (a) class diagram and (b) collaboration diagram CLASS Joint { Joint connected * Pointer to the next Joint of the robot VRMLobject ob := ‘‘artic1.wrl’’ * VRML file containing the physical shape DATA X0 := 0, Y0 := 0, Z0 := 0 * Initial displacement of the joint DATA M[4;4], M[;] := 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 * Initialization of local coordinate matrix DATA INVM[4;4], X[4;4], XINV[4;4] * Auxiliary matrixes INITIAL * Initial section M[0;3] := X0 M[1;3] := Y0 * Initialize M with displacements M[2;3] := Z0 TINVERSE(INVM, M) * Calculate inverse 2VRML * Convert matrix notation to fixed angles notation Tx := M[0;3] * Obtain displacements Ty := M[1;3] Tz := M[2;3] GRY:= ATAN2(-M[2;0],SQRT(M[0;0]*M[0;0]+M[1;0]*M [1;0]) * Obtain angle around y axis GRZ:= ATAN2(M[1;0]/COS(GRY), M[0;0]/COS(GRY) ) * Obtain angle around z axis GRX:= ATAN2(M[2;1]/COS(GRY), M[2;2]/COS(GRY) ) * Obtain angle around x axis INSW(1, , VRMLworld MOVE, Tx, Ty, Tz ) * Displace in VR world INSWW(1, , VRMLworld ROTATE, 1, 0, 0, GRX) * Rotate around x in vrml world INSW(1, , VRMLworld ROTATE, 0, 1, 0, GRY) * Rotate around y in vrml world INSW(1, , VRMLworld ROTATE, 0, 0, 1, GRZ) * Rotate around z in vrml world ROTATE R[;] * Apply a transformation matrix INSW(connected, , X := connected.M**INVM ) * Propagate the transformation INSW(connected, , TINVERSE (XINV, X) ) INSW(connected, , connected.ROTATE ( (X**R)**XINV ) ) M := R**M * Apply the transformation INSW(connected, , TINVERSE (INVM, M)) * Calculate the inverse, if necessary 2VRML } Figure 6. Declaring joints as OOCSMP objects 28 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION very simple model that creates the robot and, in the main simulation loop (DYNAMIC section), makes it perform ro- tations on its second and third joints. Note how, although both rotations are included in the main simulation loop, they are not performed by the robot at the same time. The order in which they should be per- formed is given by the first parameter of the method to rotate. As we explained in Figure 5b, before performing a certain rotation, the robot must check if all the previous ones (with lower order numbers) have been completed. 6.4 Step 5: Validating the Model In this step, we check that the previous model is correct by compiling it and observing the output. When we compile Figure 7, C-OOL generates a VRML file containing the PUMA robot, which includes the code for the four joints. This file is the result of assembling the VRML files that contain the description of each Joint object. The compiler also produces three Java files, one for the Joint object, one for the PUMA260 object, and another for the main simulation model. The validation is an iterative process in which we try rotations for each Joint object. 6.5 Step 6: Deciding Type and Position of the Output Forms In this step, we complete and add output forms to present the user with richer information. In our example, we add a static VRML object to the VR panel (described in file “tool.wrl,” the cone in Figure 9) and add a 2-D plot to the right of the 3-D panel to show the angles of the joints. The modifications to Figure 7 are shown in Figure 8 (the first six lines remain unchanged). It can be observed that some methods of the PUMA260 object (GETANGLE1 to GETANGLE4) are invoked to get the angles of the joints, which are plotted in the 2-D graphic (line 12). A picture of a moment of the simulation is shown in Fig- ure 9. The top window to the right (it pops up by clicking on the p button in the main panel) can be used to change some parameters of the robot, such as joint angles, veloc- ity, position, and so on. Notice that the VRML panel has controls that permit the user to explore different viewpoints of the simulation visualization. The simulation and the visualization processes are ex- ecuted in different threads, as each output form creates its own thread. The synchronization of the simulation engine with the Java-based output forms is straightforward as the simulation engine only has to send update messages to the output forms at each communication interval. This is set in the simulation model (variable PLdelta; see line 13 in Figure 8) as sometimes we are not interested in updating the output forms at each time step, or it would be too costly. In the example in Figure 8, we update the output forms at each time step—that is, variables delta and PLdelta have the same value. 6.6 Step 7: Adding Multimedia Elements In this step, we can include multimedia elements in the model. The multimedia elements available in OOCSMP are image panels, dynamic text panels, video panels, and audio sequences. In this example, we add a text panel de- scribing to the student the movements the robot is perform- ing. We synchronize different texts with the robot move- ments in the simulation. Figure 10 shows the modifications to be done to Figure 8. Line 12 now locates the plot of the joint angles at the center of the main panel of the user interface. Line 13 adds the dynamic text panel below the plot panel. The first explanation is shown when the angle of the second joint is smaller than π/2 and is stored in a text file named “explain_2nd_joint.txt.” The second expla- nation appears when the first condition is not met and is expressed using the DEFAULT keyword. 6.7 Step 8: Testing Outputs and Multimedia In this step, we check if the outputs and multimedia ele- ments synchronize as planned. If this is not the case, we go back to Step 6 (if it is a problem with the output that does not affect the multimedia elements) or to Step 7 (if it is a problem with a multimedia element). 6.8 Step 9: Describing the Course Page with SODA-1L In this step, we describe the course page in which the sim- ulation is going to be embedded using the higher level language layer SODA-1L. Figure 11 shows an excerpt of the necessary SODA-1L code to describe this page. The listing shows how to use SODA-1L to define the page ti- tle (line 7), some textual explanations (lines 8-10), a table with a caption and images (lines 12-15), and how to in- vokethepreviouslydefinedOOCSMPmodel(line18).The MODEL instruction has some parameters to customize the user interface that C-OOL generates for the simulation. In the example, we are only setting the height and width of the simulation applet (400 × 400). General options to control the appearance of the user interface of all the simulations in a document can be provided in the SODA-2L script (which may be overwritten for particular models, such as in this case). The last line in Figure 11 is a macro (defined in file “macros.csm,” included in line 5) that creates some text and a link to the OOCSMP and SODA source files needed for the page. 6.9 Step 10: Including the Page in the Course Once we have described the page with SODA-1L, we can insert it in the course. For this purpose, the only thing we have to do is to modify the previous SODA-2L script by adding a reference to the page and recompiling the script. The recompilation updates the pages affected by the inser- tion and generates the necessary applets for the OOCSMP Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 29 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca [1] INCLUDE ‘‘Puma260.csm’’ [2] TITLE PUMA260 robot simulation [3] PUMA260 p() [4] DYNAMIC [5] p.ROTATE2 ( 1, PI/2.0 ) [6] p.ROTATE3 ( 2, -PI/2.0 ) [7] TIMER FINTIM:= 60, delta := 0.1, PLdelta := 0.1 Figure 7. Using a PUMA robot [7] a1 := p.GETANGLE1 [8] a2 := p.GETANGLE2 [9] a3 := p.GETANGLE3 [10] a4 := p.GETANGLE4 [11] VRMLworld ‘‘tool.wrl’’ [12] PLOT a1, a2, a3, a4, TIME [13] TIMER FINTIM := 60, delta := 0.1, PLdelta := 0.1 Figure 8. Adding outputs to Figure 7 Figure 9. A moment in the execution of the previous model 30 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION [12] PLOT [C], a1, a2, a3, a4, TIME [13] TEXTPANEL [S], a2 <= PI/2.0, ‘‘explain_2nd_joint.txt’’, [14] DEFAULT, ‘‘explain_3rd_joint.txt’’ [15] TIMER FINTIM := 60, delta := 0.1, PLdelta := 0.1 Figure 10. Adding dynamic textual explanations to the models [1] * 1st page of the robotics subsection of the applications page [2] * AUTHOR Juan de Lara [3] * EMAIL Juan.Lara@ii.uam.es [4] * DATE 7/6/2002 [5] INCLUDE ‘‘macros.csm’’ [6] INCLUDE ‘‘styles.csm’’ [7] TITLE An introduction to robotics [8] DESCRIPTION The word robot comes from the czech word robota which [9] DESCRIPTION means work. The Webster dictionary defines a robot as ‘‘an automatic [10] DESCRIPTION device which performs functions usually assigned to human beings’’. [11] ... [12] TABLE [1;2], [C,80], [13] ‘‘\IMAGE ‘robot22.jpg’’’, [14] ‘‘\IMAGE ‘arm1.jpg’’’, [15] ‘‘A PUMA-560 robot, courtesy of MONASH University and Georgia Institute of technology’’ [16] DESCRIPTION A robot is usually composed by a chain of rigid elements connected by joints. [17] ... [18] MODEL [400;400], [C], ‘‘puma.csm’’ [19] SHOWSODA Figure 11. A scheme of the SODA-1L code for the page models, thus making the maintenance process easy. An excerpt of the modified SODA-2L script is shown in Fig- ure 12. In this script, we specify the authors’ data (lines 2-4), declare that we are building an educational course in opposition to presentations and articles (line 7), select the default options for the compilation of the simulation mod- els (line 8), and give a list of the pages in the course. In this script, we can define some variables (such as AUTHOR, EMAIL, etc.) that can be used in the pages described with SODA-1L. When this script is compiled by C-OOL, it generates HTML files for each page of the document using the ap- propriate formatting styles and compiles the simulations, generating the Java and the VRML files. This recompila- tion implies that if a new page has been inserted into a course or a presentation, the links in the other pages are updated automatically. 7. Related Research Hopkins and Fishwick’s rube [33] is a similar approach to the ideas presented here. The idea of the system is to pro- mote personalization in dynamic model structural repre- sentationandbridgethegapbetweenartsandcomputersci- ence. The authors can provide 3-D metaphors onto which simulations can be mapped. These metaphors are specified in VRML. Rube is based in the multimodeling tool OOPM [34], which describes a model by connecting components, and each one of them can be described in a different for- malism. In OOCSMP, we are currently working on higher modeling layers whereby one can create models described in different formalisms (by using AToM3 [27]), which can then be mapped onto OOCSMP. With respect to the visual- ization, our tools also allow a very easy interaction between 2-D and 3-D Java outputs, multimedia, and VRML outputs. Most current approaches for building educational, in- teractive materials for the Internet are based on a di- rect programming in HTML, Java, and VRML. This low-level programming is precisely what we wanted to avoid with the work presented in this paper. As ex- plained in Section 2, the use of an integrated environ- ment for the design of these documents (both simula- tions and pages) offers many advantages: courses are easier to create, modify, reuse, test, and so on. For ex- ample, Roccetti, Salomoni, and Bonfigli [17] proposed an educational environment that can combine simula- tions written directly in Java and VRML. In a virtual engineering/science laboratory course at Johns Hopkins University (see http://www.jhu.edu/virtlab/virtlab.html), we find a similar approach: some small courses in different subjects are presented. The courses pages contain simula- tions written directly in Java and HTML, respectively. By Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 31 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca [1] * SODA-2L script for the course on Robotics [2] AUTHOR Juan de Lara, Manuel Alfonseca [3] EMAIL Juan.Lara@ii.uam.es, Manuel.Alfonseca@ii.uam.es [4] WEBADDRESS http://www.ii.uam.es/∼jlara, http://www.ii.uam.es/∼alfonsec [5] INCLUDE ‘‘macros.csm’’ [6] INCLUDE ‘‘styles.csm’’ [7] COURSE ‘‘A course on Robotics’’ BACKGROUND =‘‘WHITE’’ [8] SIMULATIONS --noFrame --noScaleWindow --noLeyenda --WIDTH= 500 --HEIGHT= 400 [9] PAGE ‘‘index.csm’’ [10] PAGE ‘‘intro.csm’’ [11] ... [12] PAGE ‘‘puma_page1.csm’’ [13] ... Figure 12. An excerpt of the SODA-2L script coding the simulations directly in Java, one may use output forms more adapted to the problem than by using a prede- fined output form provided by a high-level language. The disadvantage is that coding the simulation and the output forms directly in Java requires more effort. Other approaches rely on the use of proprietary technologies to describe and execute the simulations. In Budhu [35], a course on civil engineering con- taining interactive multimedia simulations is presented. The course is based on Authorware and Flash (see http://www.macromedia.com). These are very powerful tools for graphical design, in which the user can design films and animate objects using the ActionScript language (a language in the style of Java). Our aim is not to compete with these well-established tools in which the focus is on general graphical design. In our system, the focus is on pro- viding powerful constructs for simulation (blocks to solve PDEs,ODEs,etc.)andtocomplementthesewithvisualiza- tion and multimedia facilities. The graphical capabilities of Authorware and Flash are much higher, but if one tries to build an advanced simulation course with these tools, all the numerical methods to solve PDEs (finite element methods, finite difference methods, mesh generation tech- niques, etc.) and ODEs (Runge-Kutta, Adams, Simpson, etc.) would have to be coded by hand using ActionScript. We provide these libraries, which can be accessed using OOCSMP constructs in a declarative way. Moreover, if the user really needs efficiency in the simulations (rather than building an educational course), the C-OOL compiler can be used to generate C++ code (instead of Java) as we provide a C++ version of all the numerical libraries. In Schmid [2], in the context of the DynaMit project (http://dynamit.esr.ruhr-uni-bochum.de), a Web- based learning framework was built that allows building tutorials, exercises, and virtual experiments. The system reliesonplug-inssuchasMATLAB/SIMULINK/MAPLE, VRML, Graphics, and the ToolBook Neuron. Our aim was to develop a system in which models are easily integrated with the document pages, allowing for the easy mainte- nance of the documents and the reuse of models and pages. A side effect of using a compiler able to generate Java code for the simulations is that the simulation user does not have to download and install a plethora of different plug-ins to execute the simulations. With respect to the robotic applications, the Depart- ment of Electrical Engineering and Information Technol- ogy of the University of Hagen has developed several (very impressive) VRML simulations of robots and has in- cluded them in a course on robotics (see http://prt.fernuni- hagen.de/pro/richodl/richodl.html and http://www.geo- cities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/8585/robot/robot.html). These simulations have been coded directly in VRML and Java. We provide a high-level simulation language, com- bined with other layers, to describe the course pages, with no need to program in Java and HTML. By building these simulations directly in Java and VRML, the level of cus- tomization is greater, but the effort required is bigger. 8. Conclusions and Future Work In this paper, we have presented a simulation system that, starting from a high-level description of the models, is able to generate programs executable from the Internet. The programs can combine different output forms, including multimedia elements, VRML panels, and other Java-based outputs. The system makes easy the integration of such simulations in Web documents such as courses, articles, or presentations. It has been used mainly for educational purposes. Some simulations generated with it have been used in a university course that is being taught through the Internet. OOCSMP is also being used as a modeling and simulation tool in a predoctoral course on simulation taught at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. As an example of the use of VRML panels, the simu- lation of a PUMA260 robot has been presented. The use of VRML makes the simulations more realistic, being a good complement to the laboratory classes. In fact, some- times it can be the only possible alternative because ex- periments with the real system would be expensive (such as in the case of the robot) or impossible (such as in the case of the solar system). A procedure to build documents for the Web containing simulations has been followed to 32 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from VISUAL INTERACTIVE SIMULATION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION embed the PUMA260 simulation in an existing educational course. The system and the procedure improve productiv- ity and emphasize important points in Web engineering, such as maintainability, easy testing, and standardization of the user interface. By using the system, the course de- signer avoids having to program in low-level languages such as Java, HTML, or VRML, thus reducing drastically the developing time and the effort to integrate the applets with the VRML models. We are currently working on an OOCSMP interpreter [18] that would allow the student to change dynamically the simulation model during execution. In our example, this means that the student would be able to plan the robot actions.Inthefuture,wewanttoworkonaplanningsystem for the robot, which would be able to generate OOCSMP code. The simulation could also be improved by adding sensors to the robot to detect and manipulate physical ob- jects or to make it more realistic, bearing in mind forces, accelerations, and so forth. Currently, it is possible to add new objects during the simulation execution [23]. For example, in the case of the simulation of the inner solar system, it would be possible to add a new planet at runtime. But this is not possible if we are using a VRML panel. The system could be extended to allow this (the EAI interface permits creating new VRML nodes from strings, for example). It would also be interest- ing to extend OOCSMP to define actions to happen when the user manipulates the simulation objects in the VRML world. This would require linking the simulation variables from the VRML world to the simulation engine. Currently, they are linked in one direction only, from the simulation engine to the VRML world. A further step would be the extension of our tool to build virtual laboratories in which the students can make ex- periments and appear as avatars. Ideally, this environment should permit interaction and communication between stu- dents in a way similar to cooperative learning environ- ments. Among other things, this would require immersing all the simulation controls inside the VRML world, even those at present in the Java panels. In this direction, we are currently working on integrating our system with the FACT framework [36], which allows the construction of collaborative applications, analysis of the learning process, and collaborative tutoring. Together with the Modeling Simulation and Design Lab at McGill University, we are working on a graphical envi- ronment (called AToM3) for the construction of the simu- lations and Web documents. The approach we are taking is using meta-modeling [27] to define the formalisms we are interested in and, from this meta-information, generating a tool to process that formalism. We are also planning to incorporate the possibility of designing VRML worlds or at least allow an easy interaction with some VRML devel- opment tool. Additional examples and courses generated with our system can be found at the OOSMP homepage (http://www.ii.uam.es/∼jlara/investigacion). 9. Acknowledgment We thank all the anonymous referees and Jean-Sebastien Bolduc for their accurate and constructive comments that greatly improved the paper. This work has been spon- sored by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCYT), project number TIC2002-01948. 10. References [1] Page, E. H., A. Buss, P. A. Fishwick, K. Healy, R. E. Nance, and R. J. Paul. 2000. “Web-based simulation: Revolution or evolution? ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation 10 (1): 3-17. [2] Schmid, Ch. 1999. A remote laboratory using virtual reality on the Web. SIMULATION 73:13-21. [3] de Lara, J., and M. Alfonseca. 2000. Using simulation and virtual reality for distance education. SIIE’2000, November, Puertollano, Spain. [4] Scholz-Reiter, B., W. Echelmeyer, T. Hamann, and J. Hoheisel. 2002. Games for engineering education. Proceedings of 16th European Simulation Multiconference ESM’2002, Darmstadt, Germany, pp. 391-4. [5] Bryson, S. 1996. Virtual reality in scientific visualization. Communi- cations of the ACM 39 (5): 62-71. [6] Bredeweg, B., and R. Winkels. 1998. Qualitative models in interac- tive learning environments: An introduction. Interactive Learning Environments 5:1-18. [7] deJong,T.,ed.1991.Computersimulationsinaninstructionalcontext [Special issue]. Education and Computing, Vol. 6. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. [8] Schank, R. C., and C. Cleary. 1995. Engines for education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. [9] de Lara, J., and M. Alfonseca. 2001. Constructing simulation-based Web documents. IEEE Multimedia, January-March, 42-9. [10] Lorenz, P., H. Dorwarth, K. C. Ritter, and T. J. Schriber. 1997. To- wards a Web-based simulation Environment. Proceedings of the 1997 Winter Simulation Conference, Society for Computer Simu- lation, pp. 1338-44. [11] Fishwick, P. A. 1996. Web-based simulation: Some personal obser- vations. Proceedings of the 1996 Winter Simulation Conference, Coronado, CA, pp. 772-9. [12] Alfonseca, M., J. de Lara, and H. Vangheluwe. 2001. Web-based simulation of systems described by partial differential equations. Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, Arlington, VA, pp. 629-36. [13] Bajaj, C., and S. Cutchin. 1997. Web based collaboration aware synthetic environments. Proceedings of the TeamCAD Gvu/Nist Workshop on Collaborative Design, pp. 143-50. See also SHAS- TRA Web page at http://www.ticam.utexas.edu/CCV/projects/ shastra [14] Bidarra, R., E. Van Den Berg, and W. F. Bronsvoort. 2001. Interactive facilities for collaborative feature model- ing on the Web. Proceedings of the 10th Portuguese Con- ference on Computer Graphics, Lisbon, Portugal. See also http://www.cg.its.tudelft.nl/∼eelco/publications.html [15] Kuljis, J., and R. J. Paul. 2001. An appraisal of Web-based simula- tion: Whither we wander? Simulation Practice and Theory 9:37- 54. [16] Healy, K. J., and R. A. Kilgore. 1997. Silk: A Java-based process simulation language. Proceedings of the 1997 Winter Simulation Conference, Atlanta, GA, pp. 475-82. [17] Roccetti, M., P. Salomoni, and M. E. Bonfigli. 2001. A design for a simulation-based multimedia learning environment. SIMULA- TION 76 (4): 214-21. [18] Alfonseca, M., J. de Lara, and G. Montoro. 2002. Teaching partial-differential equations through the Internet: An interactive Volume 79, Number 1 SIMULATION 33 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from de Lara and Alfonseca approach. Proceedings of the 16th European Simulation Multiconfer- ence, ESM’2002, Darmstadt, Germany, pp. 395-9. [19] IBM Corp. 1972. Continuous System Modelling Program III (CSMP III) and Graphic Feature (CSMP III Graphic Feature) general in- formation manual. Ontario, Canada: IBM. [20] Alfonseca, M., E. Pulido, R. Orosco, and J. de Lara. 1997. OOC- SMP: An object-oriented simulation language. ESS’97, Passau, pp. 44-8. [21] Alfonseca, M., and J. de Lara. 2002. Simulating evolutionary agent colonies with OOCSMP. Proceedings of the 17th ACM Sympo- sium on Applied Computing (SAC’2002), AI and Computational Logic, March, Madrid, Spain, pp. 11-5. [22] Myers, B. A., E. Borison, A. Ferrency, R. McDaniel, R. C. Miller, A. Faulring, B. D. Kyle, P. Doane, A. Mickish, and A. Klimovitski. 1997. The Amulet v3.0 reference manual. Technical Report No. CMU-CS-95-166-R2 and Human Computer Interaction Institute Technical Report No. CMU-HCII-95-102-R2, Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. [23] Alfonseca, M., J. de Lara, and E. Pulido. 1999. Dynamical object generation during the execution of continuous simulation mod- els. Argentine Symposium on Object Orientation 1999 (ASOO 99), September, Buenos Aires, Argentina. [24] Alfonseca, M., J. de Lara, and E. Pulido. 1999. Semiautomatic gen- eration of Web courses by means of an object-oriented simulation language. SIMULATION 73:5-12. [25] Leonardo, L. 1997. Using Netscape LiveConnect: Special edition. Indianapolis, IN: Que Corporation. See also Netscape ftp site: ftp.netscape.com in pub/sdk/plugin/windows/oct_21_97 [26] Hartman,J.,andJ.Wernecke.1996. The VRML 2.0 handbook: Build- ing moving worlds on the Web. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. [27] de Lara, J., and H. Vangheluwe. 2002. AToM3: A tool for multi- formalism modelling and meta-modelling. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2306:174-88. See the AToM3 homepage: http://atom3.cs.mcgill.ca/ [28] de Lara, J., H. Vangheluwe, and M. Alfonseca. 2002. Using meta- modelling and graph grammars to create modelling environments. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 72 (3). Also presented in the Graph Transformations and Visual Modelling Techniques (GT-VMT) workshop at the 1st International Con- ference on Graph Transformations, October, Barcelona, Spain. Available: http://www.elsevier .nl/locate/entcs/volume72.html [29] Fu, K. S., R. C. Gonzalez, and C. S. G. Lee. 1987. Robotics: Control, sensing, vision, and intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill. [30] Booch, G., J. Rumbaugh, and I. Jacobson. 1999. The unified mod- elling language user guide. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. See also the UML homepage at http://www.uml.org [31] Craig, J. J. 1989. Introduction to robotics. 2d ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. [32] Foley, J. D., A. van Dam, S. K. Feiner, and J. F. Hughes. 1993. Computer graphics principles and practice. 2d ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. [33] Hopkins, J. F., and P. Fishwick. 2002. The rubeTM methodology for 3-D software engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2269:368-80. [34] Lee, K., and P. Fishwick. 1999. OOPM/RT: A multimodeling methodology for real-time simulation. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation 9 (2): 141-70. [35] Budhu, M. 2001. Enhancing instructions using interactive multime- dia simulations. SIMULATION 76 (4): 222-31. [36] Mora, M. A., and R. Moriyón. 2001. Collaborative analysis and tutoring: The FACT framework. Proceedings of the IEEE In- ternational Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’01), Madison, WI, pp. 82-5. Juan de Lara is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department of the Escuela Politécnica Superior (Higher Poly- technical School) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he teaches software engineering. He received his PhD in com- puter science from this university in 2000 with a thesis on Web- based simulation, which received a special award for the best thesis presented at the school. He also holds a technical engi- neering degree in computer science (1994, top of the class award) and an engineering degree in computer science (1996). He has published more than 50 technical papers in areas such as Web- based simulation, agent-based simulation, software verification, and multiparadigm modelling. In the latter area, he collaborates with the Modelling Simulation and Design Lab (headed by Pro- fessor Hans Vangheluwe) at McGill University, where he spent one year doing postdoctoral research. Manuel Alfonseca holds a doctorate in electronics engineering (1972) and computer science (1976), with both degrees obtained from the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid. He teaches and does research at the Department of Computer Science of the Univer- sidad Autónoma of Madrid, where he is director of the Higher Polytechnical School. Previously, he was a senior technical staff member at the IBM Madrid Scientific Center, where he worked from 1972 to 1994. He is a member of the SCS, the New York Academy of Sciences, the IEEE Computer Society, the ACM, the British APL Association, the IBM TEC, and the Spanish Associa- tion of Scientific Journalism. He has published papers and books on computer languages, simulation, complex systems, graphics, artificial intelligence, object orientation, and theoretical com- puter science, as well as popular science and juvenile literature. 34 SIMULATION Volume 79, Number 1 at Universidad Autonom de Madrid on August 14, 2009 http://sim.sagepub.comDownloaded from 
work_xvg65yh6nfeelgzo7q62d5mabe	----	Does Family Matter? A Phenomenological Inquiry Exploring the Lived Experiences of Women Persisting in Distance Education, Professional Doctoral Programs Volume 13, 2018 Accepted by Editor Simona Scarparo │Received: May 31, 2018│ Revised: October 1, November 7, 2018 │ Accepted: December 10, 2018. Cite as: Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J., Sosin, L. S., & Spaulding, L.. (2018). Does family matter? A phenomenologi- cal inquiry exploring the lived experiences of women persisting in distance education, professional doctoral programs. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 13, 497-515. https://doi.org/10.28945/4157 (CC BY-NC 4.0) This article is licensed to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. When you copy and redistribute this paper in full or in part, you need to provide proper attribution to it to ensure that others can later locate this work (and to ensure that others do not accuse you of plagiarism). You may (and we encour- age you to) adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any non-commercial purposes. This license does not permit you to use this material for commercial purposes. DOES FAMILY MATTER? A PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY EXPLORING THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF WOMEN PERSISTING IN DISTANCE EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DOCTORAL PROGRAMS Amanda J. Rockinson- Szapkiw* University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA dr.rockinsonszapkiw@gmail.com Lisa S. Sosin Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, USA lssosin@liberty.edu Lucinda Spaulding Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, USA lsspaulding@liberty.edu * Corresponding author ABSTRACT Aim/Purpose The qualitative study aims to examine the lived experiences of women persist- ing in the distance; professional doctoral degrees as they seek to integrate and balance their family of origin and current family system with their development as scholars. Background A vital reason many women choose not to drop out of their doctoral programs is that they experience conflict between their identities as women and scholars – a conflict between “the enduring sense of who they are and whom they want to become” (Cobb, 2004, p. 336). A supportive family is a salient theme that arises in studies on doctoral persistence, with many researchers noting that the family is essential in helping women navigate the doctoral journey (e.g., Lott, Gardner, & Powers, 2009; Tinto, 1993). Methodology This qualitative study employed Moustakas’ (1994) transcendental phenomeno- logical approach through a purposive sampling of eleven women who are en- rolled in distance education, professional doctoral programs at two universities in the southern United States. Contribution This study furthers the existing research by demonstrating that family is inti- mately tied to the scholarly identity development and persistence of women enrolled in distance education, professional doctorate programs. While previous research has shown that family support is a factor promoting doctoral persis- https://doi.org/10.28945/4157 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ mailto:dr.rockinsonszapkiw@gmail.com mailto:lssosin@liberty.edu mailto:lsspaulding@liberty.edu Does Family Matter? 498 tence, previous studies have not examined how women integrate and balance their family of origin and current family system with their development as scholars while persisting in a doctoral degree. Findings Findings highlighted that the doctoral journey is marked by personal fulfillment and struggle. Women’s development and persistence are influenced by familial support, choosing to continue or discontinue family of origin patterns, and dif- ferentiation from the family. Recommendations for Practitioners To support women’s persistence and scholar identity development, the universi- ty can facilitate discussions and provide opportunities that explicitly orient fami- lies to the rigors of doctoral training. The university can host family webinars, create family orientations, offer family counseling, and develop family social media groups. Recommendations for Researchers This study is an essential step toward understanding the role of the family in the doctoral persistence of women. The study provides a foundation for further research with women who are divorced, never married, or identify as LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual). Further study should focus on women enrolled in various disciplines and residential programs. Impact on Society If women are to succeed in doctoral programs, the academic institution cannot ignore the role of the family in persistence. Future Research The role of the family in doctoral persistence for men and residential students needs to be explored. Experience of women in distance education and residen- tial programs should be compared to highlight differences and similarities. Keywords distance education, women, doctoral education, work-family balance, work- family borders, persistence, family of origin, family system INTRODUCTION Doctoral students develop from students to scholars, whereby they begin to develop a value of re- search, engage in conducting research (e.g., develop a research agenda, do action research to inform practice, disseminate their research to scholars and practitioners), and cultivate relationships with scholars in the field (Gardner, 2008; Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2018). This identity development is a factor influential in their likelihood to complete their doctoral programs (Gardner, 2008; Walker, Golde, Jones, Bueschel, & Hutchings, 2008). Unfortunately, attrition rates among doctoral students have been documented to range from 30% to 70% (McAlpine & Norton, 2006; National Science Founda- tion, 2015; Terrell, 2005). These rates are often reported the highest during the dissertation phase where the focus is on students’ movement from being consumers of knowledge (i.e., students) to crea- tors of knowledge (i.e., scholars) (B. Anderson, Cutright, & Anderson, 2013; J. D. Baker, 2014; V. L. Baker & Pifer, 2011; V. L. Baker, Pifer, & Flemion, 2013; Gardner, 2008; Stevens-Long, Schapiro, & McClintock, 2012). Given the grim persistence rates, especially during the dissertation phase, the goal of this qualitative study is to shed light on this critical period and explore the role of contextual fac- tors, specifically the family, in the scholarly identity development process, which is influential in doc- toral persistence. Work-family (WF) serves as the theoretical framework that brings together the doctoral degree and the family to reveal the interactions between the two domains (e.g., Ashforth, Kreiner, Clark, & Fu- gate, 2007; Clark, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996). This qualitative study highlights the influence of interac- tions between the doctoral degree and family, both current family system and family of origin, on particular strategies and experiences associated with the final stage of the doctoral degree program. The family of origin is defined as the family in which the student was raised; the current family sys- Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 499 tem is defined as a family with biological, marital, and adoptive ties in which one engages in activities with to maintain the familial system (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Moreover, in the study, we focused on women enrolled in distance education, professional doctoral programs. Stimpson and Filer (2011) noted that balancing the degree and family “is a particularly difficult issue for female graduate students as they face more difficulty balancing family commit- ments, academics, work, and personal lives, as well as have less satisfaction in their ability to balance work and life” (p. 69). This balancing challenge is partially attributable to women’s roles as wives, mothers, and daughters (Rockinson-Szapkiw, Spaulding, & Lunde, 2017; Stimpson & Filer, 2011). Ample research has documented that the family has both positive and adverse effects on women’s likelihood to develop as scholars and persist (Johnson, Batia, & Haun, 2008; Mason, Goulden, & Frasch, 2009; Rockinson-Szapkiw et al., 2017). Although family plays a role in identity development and doctoral persistence for all women pursuing doctoral degrees, the medium of the degree may influence how a woman’s family influences her de- velopment and persistence. Many distance education, doctoral students work on their coursework and dissertation within the home. School and home are not physically separated as they are for resi- dential doctoral students. The lack of physical separation may exacerbate stress and negatively affect women. Although there are advantages associated with distance education programs, especially the flexibility, there may also be some disadvantages that could influence how women experience the interaction between their families and degree programs. There is no doubt that the interaction with family for all doctoral students is complex; distance education students, like remote workers (Eddle- ston & Mulki, 2017), may experience additional complexities that need to be further explored so that higher education faculty and administrators can better support them. FAMILY: A FACTOR IN SCHOLAR DEVELOPMENT AND THE DECISION TO STAY OR LEAVE Over the past few decades, there has been rapid growth in distance education doctoral programs (Baker, 2014). Given the convenience and flexibility of these programs, many obstacles that once kept women from pursuing doctoral degrees have been removed. Before the emergence of distance education, women’s options were often limited. Relocation for doctoral studies was often not an op- tion for women due to employment (especially if a single mother or family breadwinner), a spouse’s employment, school-aged children, or dependence on family support networks (Lyonette, Atfield, Behle, & Gambin, 2015). Distance education has afforded many women the opportunity to integrate their roles and responsibilities as moms, daughters, and wives with that of being doctoral students, when historically they may not have had the opportunity to do so. Women now represent over 60% of the population pursuing distance doctorate degrees (National Science Foundation, 2015). While women are pursuing doctoral degrees, a large number of women are leaving their programs (McAlpine & Norton, 2006; National Science Foundation, 2015). The largest number leave during the dissertation phase; they often never fully develop as scholars (Johnson et al., 2008; Rockinson- Szapkiw et al., 2017). While many women attribute persistence to family support (Lott, Gardner, & Powers, 2009; McCallum, 2016; Rockinson-Szapkiw, Spaulding, Swezey, & Wicks, 2014), many wom- en attribute their poor scholarly identity development and degree progression to the challenges asso- ciated with balancing their doctoral programs with their families (Dabney & Tai, 2013). For example, nine female residential Ph.D. students in Brown and Watson’s (2010) qualitative inquiry identified three primary stressors in their doctoral journeys. These stressors included (a) the conflict between their roles as mothers and students, (b) the consistent balancing act of home and academic responsi- bilities, and (c) time for academics being slighted by family demands and responsibilities. In numer- ous qualitative studies, women report feeling stress as their roles as wives, daughters, and mothers are in constant competition with responsibilities of the doctoral program (Oswalt & Riddock, 2007; Rockinson-Szapkiw et al., 2017; Smith, Maroney, Nelson, Abel, & Abel, 2006). In some cases, the Does Family Matter? 500 stress of family responsibilities experienced during the doctoral program is related to poor well- being. According to female Ph.D. students at a Swedish university (N =12), their well-being is inti- mately tied to their performance of the balancing act required among their roles (Schmidt & Umans, 2014). The unsuccessful balancing of the degree on top of maternal, spousal, family of origin, and financial duties often results in dissatisfaction and psychological and health issues leading women to depart from their doctoral programs (Johnson et al., 2008; Mason et al., 2009). Further evidence exists that woman’s volition to become a scholar and obtain a doctoral degree wanes as it appears to become incompatible with being a woman, having children, and maintaining familial responsibilities that have been traditionally attributed as women’s work (Mason et al., 2009). Normative gender roles tend to associate men more strongly with work and academics, while women are strongly associated with the family. The family may advise women to quit when studies, especially the dissertation, interfere with a woman’s responsibilities as a wife or mother. Dissimilarly, male stu- dents’ social networks encourage the family to make sacrifices for the student to persist in the face of adversity (Carter, Blumenstein, & Cook, 2013). External pressure and negative repercussions associ- ated with gender roles can leave women feeling conflict and shame. For example, Lynch (2008), in interviewing 30 residential, graduate student mothers, found that the roles of mother and student are often in conflict, and women tend to confront this conflict with dropping out or using practices in- cluding “maternal invisibility” and “academic invisibility.” In social situations, women believe that they must downplay their doctoral degrees to “preserve their status as a ‘good mother’” (Lynch, 2008, p. 597). On the other hand, in the doctoral program, they believe they need to hide the fact that they are daughters, mothers, and wives. Women “believe that their status as a mother will detract from the perception that she is a ‘serious student’” (Lynch, 2008, p. 596). When being a woman scholar seems impossible as the roles and responsibilities of each appear too incompatible, women, according to Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. (2017), fail to develop as scholars and often drop out. In sum, there is attrition of women during the doctoral program, especially during the dissertation phase, and the conflict between the women’s development as a scholar, degree responsibilities, and family roles and responsibilities appears to be a principal reason. Alternatively, family support is a reason many women persist. Although there is a growing body of literature documenting that the family can hinder and support degree completion, the goal of this study is to examine women’s expe- riences with their current families and families of origin. This study examines how the interactions between the doctoral degree and family influence the scholarly identity development and the persis- tence of women enrolled in a distance, doctoral program. WORK-FAMILY LITERATURE Work-family (WF) literature has been applied to women and how they balance their work and their family, namely their current family system. The concepts within the WF theories are salient for wom- en in doctoral programs. Research has begun to demonstrate that the strategies women use to inte- grate and create a balance between work and family begin in their doctoral program and post- doctoral experiences (Moors, Malley, & Stewart, 2014). A women’s work-life balance is associated with the decisions she makes about her career-related be- haviors and persistence. WF balance has been defined in a number of ways. More recently, Green- haus and Allen (2006) defined work-family balance as “the extent to which an individual’s effective- ness and satisfaction in work and family roles are compatible with the individual’s life priorities” (p. 513). Similarly, Voydanoff (2005) proposed that work-family balance is “a global assessment that work resources meet family demands, and family resources meet work demands such that participa- tion is effective in both domains” (p. 825). Women’s WF balance is dependent upon the success they feel in the division of time and attention to each domain (Clark, 2002; Friedman & Greenhaus, 2000). In the WF border theory (Clark, 2000) and boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2007; Nippert- Eng, 1996), theorists note that how a woman constructs, negotiates, and holds boundaries (e.g., level of flexibility and permeability) with time, space, and people profoundly effects a woman’s “satisfac- Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 501 tion and good functioning at home and work, with a minimum role conflict” (Clark, 2000, p. 751). Clark notes that women achieve balance by setting different levels of flexibility and permeability be- tween work and family. Some find allowing little flexibility and permeability helpful (e.g., segmenters), while others prefer high flexibility and permeability between work and family (e.g., integrators). Moreover, gendered messages, especially from families, and role constraints for women can affect how women see themselves, behave, integrate their work and family, and experience work-family bal- ance. For example, Eagly and Karau (2002), in their incongruity model of prejudices, purported indi- viduals can face social repercussions when engaging in stereotype-incongruent social roles (e.g., a women’s engagement in a traditionally masculine career). For example, research has documented the existence of the “maternal wall,” whereby a woman who becomes a mother is inhibited in her career promotion (Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2008). Negative perceptions of others and repercussions for participation in a stereotype-incongruent social role can have a profound impact on one’s percep- tion of self, identity development, behavior, and decisions (Steele, 2010). Thus, the Work-Family framework and literature illuminate the importance of studying the interaction between the family and degree domains, for how a woman develops as a scholar and persists in the program may be in- fluenced by the boundaries set and the balance between the family and degree. The literature further highlights the importance of considering the prejudices and stereotypes, or lack thereof, that the family holds as influential in the woman’s belief about her ability to develop as a women scholar and how she chooses to integrate and balance the degree and family. PURPOSE STATEMENT AND DESIGN Thus, in this study, we (i.e., the three authors) aim to answer the following research questions. (1) How do women enrolled in the distance education, professional doctoral programs describe their development as scholars and persistence? (2) How do women enrolled in the distance education, pro- fessional doctoral programs describe the intersection of their degree and their family systems? (3) How do women seek to integrate and balance their family of origin and current family system with their doctoral development and persistence? Recognizing that “students are central to the doctoral undertaking; yet, theirs is the voice that is least heard” (McAlpine & Norton, 2006, p. 6), we deemed it imperative to give voice to women who are doctoral students. Thus, we selected Moustakas’ (1994) transcendental phenomenological approach as the phenomenological design seeks to understand the lived experience of a group of people, women persisting in is distance education, professional doc- toral programs. Epoche, the process of setting aside biases by bracketing personal experiences, is central to this design and was employed. While the idea of epoche is controversial and researchers cannot remove all personal biases (Jones, Torres, & Arminio, 2006), we attempted to recognize per- sonal beliefs and ideas that could have potentially deleterious effects. Before and throughout the data collection and analysis process, we engaged in individual journaling about personal experiences rele- vant to the phenomenon being studied and discussed personal experiences and biases in regularly scheduled meetings with one another. R ESEARCH ERS’ IN TEREST Personal interest is an encouraged impetus for phenomenological inquiry (Moustakas, 1994) and ac- knowledgment of experiences and biases is central to epoche. Thus, personal interests are disclosed here prior to discussing the study methods. We are women who journeyed through doctoral pro- grams and engaged in the struggles and joys surrounding the process of transforming from students to scholars. While each of our stories is unique, we all found that our families played a salient role in our identity development as scholars and our doctoral persistence. For example, I, the first author, recognize the role my father played in helping me envision whom I see myself as a woman scholar. At the age of three, my father, a university faculty, would take me to his college lectures. Before class, he would lift me up in his arms and let me arrange his lecture notes. He would whisper, “You could be a brilliant scholar one day. My little girl can do anything she sets her mind to.” He helped me envi- Does Family Matter? 502 sion a “picture” of myself as a woman scholar. He followed this verbal sentiment with a genuine commitment to assist me in pursuing a doctoral degree and publishing. Moreover, as women employed in higher education and mentors to women in distance education, doctorate programs, we have a keen interest in investigating and fostering their persistence, helping them envision themselves as successful women scholars. Thus, we are committed to giving voice to women in these doctoral programs to tell their stories in a manner that has theoretical and practical significance for them, their families, and the faculty working with them. Acknowledging that (1) women in distance doctoral programs are sorely understudied, (2) women are marginalized within specific doctoral programs within certain disciplines (e.g., Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield, 2011; Moors et al., 2014), and (3) distance education doctorates are often not esteemed as highly as tradi- tional doctorates in the ivory tower (e.g., Adams & De Fleur, 2006), we sought to advocate for these women in distance doctorate programs. METHOD PARTICIPAN TS AN D SETTIN G For the transcendental phenomenological study, a purposeful sample of women was drawn from four distance education, professional doctoral programs across two universities in the southern Unit- ed States. Both universities are fully accredited by the Southern Association of College and Schools. The women selected for participation in this inquiry were delimited to those pursuing distance educa- tion, professional doctorates. Invitation to participate was extended via e-mail to doctoral candidates. Doctoral candidates were defined as individuals who completed a comprehensive exam and were working on the dissertation. Recent graduates (e.g., those who completed the program less than six months from when the invitation was sent) were also included. The invitation explained the study and asked those who were interested in participating to complete an online informed consent and questionnaire. The online questionnaire was used to determine eligibility to participate and to collect information on the doctoral journey and family systems. Eighty-one potential participants were sent invitations, and fifty-five candidates responded to the online questionnaire. All fifty-five were eligible for participation based on the purposeful sampling criteria: (a) current enrollment in dissertation coursework and finalizing chapters 4 and 5 of their dissertation or recently graduated (i.e., to delimit to those persisting), (b) evidence of transition from student to scholar (e.g., published an article, pre- sented at a national conference or workshop, or conducted research to inform practice in the profes- sional setting), (c) ability to identify a current family system (e.g., individuals who identified them- selves as single were excluded), (d) ability to identify and define self as a scholar, and (e) willing to discuss how family influences scholar development and persistence. As noted, we focused on those in distance education programs defined as programs that required at least 80% of the coursework be taken via a web-based medium. The sampling of participants for interviews and family map activity was based on maximum variation regarding age, ethnicity, marital status, ages of children, and disci- pline. Interestingly, all eligible respondents (n = 55) identified as heterosexual, so the variation of sexual orientation was not considered in the maximum variation sampling strategy. All had children. Very few identified themselves as divorced, and none identified themselves as single. This was not surprising given that the population sampled was primarily heterosexual and married. This is also consistent with what is known about the doctoral population; they are women, married, and have children (Offerman, 2011). Initially, five participants who completed the survey were contacted via email and asked to participate in a family map activity and interview. Sampling continued until themes within the data collected were repeated. Within the ninth and tenth interviews and family map activity, no new themes and codes were appearing to emerge (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006; O’Reilly & Parker, 2012; Walker, 2012). Thus, the sample contained eleven women. Table 1 outlines the participants’ demographics, marital status, employment status, and program of study. All eleven women were doctoral candidates Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 503 (n = 6) or recent graduates (n = 5) at the time of the interview. By the time that the findings were written, all with the expectation of one participant had graduated. In the findings, each participant is assigned a pseudo name. Table 1. Participant Information (N = 11) Pseudo Name Race Age Marital Status Have Children Occupation Employment Status Program of Study Sandra W 30-39 Married Yes Educator Full time C&I Micah AA 30-39 Married Yes Educator Full time IDT Jade W 40-49 Married Yes Educator Full time IDT Kate W 50-59 Divorced Yes Administrator Full time EL Charlotte AA 30-39 Married Yes Educator Full time C&I Corine AA 40-49 Married Yes Administrator Full time EL Keisha W 40-49 Married Yes Educator Full time EL Candra W 40-49 Married Yes Consultant Full time C&I Beatrice AI 50-59 Married Yes Educator Full time C&I Nadine W 40-49 Married Yes Counselor Full time CES Molly W 30-39 Married Yes Educator Full time EL Note. EL = Educational Leadership; C&I = Curriculum and Instruction; CES = Counselor Educa- tion and Supervision; IDT= Instructional Design & Technology; W=White; AA= African-American; AI= American Indian DATA COLLECTION Data triangulation, the corroboration of three data sources, was used to increase trustworthiness and ensure a rich understanding of the phenomenon (Creswell, 2015). As previously described, partici- pants completed the online questionnaire, answering questions related to their demographics, doctor- al journeys, and family systems. The online questionnaire used multiple choice, multiple selection, and open-ended questions. In these questions, women described their sexual orientation, family make- ups, children’s ages and presence in the home, if applicable; scholarship behaviors (e.g., conducted research, publications, presentations, workshops, etc.), and articulated research agendas. As noted, the online questionnaire answers enabled the purposeful sampling of the eleven women who were con- tacted to complete a family map and participate in an individual interview. The questionnaire re- sponses were also used in structural coding to provide information about familial contexts. The fami- ly map was a document that consisted of a Venn Diagram with intersecting circles. Circles represent- ed personal beliefs, family of origin beliefs, current family system beliefs, and spouse/partner’s be- liefs. On the family map, participants were asked to notate beliefs that each system or person held that were relevant (i.e., hindered or contributed) to their development as a scholar and the assump- tions that influenced their persistence. Beliefs held by multiple persons or systems were notated where the circles overlapped. Guided by the doctoral literature and WF theory, interview questions asked about significant factors related to scholarly identity development, persistence, how the family Does Family Matter? 504 and degree were integrated, and strategies used to maintain a balance and borders between the family and the degree. Interviews lasted between 60 and 150 minutes. Participants were asked each question from the interview protocol and clarifying questions were asked after participants completed their answers to each question. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were then compared to the audio files to ensure accuracy. To establish trustworthiness further, participants agreed to follow up interviews or e-mail contact or member checking (review of data and interpreta- tions to ensure accuracy) as needed throughout the study (Creswell, 2015). DATA ANALYSIS To analyze the data sources, Moustakas’ (1994) transcendental phenomenological procedures for data analysis were employed. We reviewed each survey answer, transcript, and family map, line by line, for “textual meanings and invariant constituents of the phenomenon” (Moustakas, 1994, p. 97). Single words and phrases descriptive of and relevant to each woman’s experience of persistence and schol- arly identity development within the context of the family were highlighted. A document was created with all the highlighted words and phrases. Once compiled in one document, we individually pro- ceeded to reread and group the common words and phrases to form identifiable themes. For exam- ple, one of us quickly saw that all participants described a strong sense of pride in their development as scholars. The identified themes were discussed and were then developed into a coherent textual description of what the women experienced. We then followed the same process – reading, highlight- ing, grouping, and identifying themes relevant to, “How did the experience of the phenomenon come to be what it is?” (Moustakas, 1994, p. 98). The themes were developed into a structural de- scription of the contexts and conditions that led to women’s development as scholars, and ultimately, their persistence (Moustakas, 1994). At the various stages of analysis, coding and themes identified separately were discussed and then collaboratively refined through a series of meetings. During the discussions, the textural and structural descriptions were refined and then synthesized to collabora- tively develop agreed-upon descriptions and the essence of the phenomenon of study (Moustakas, 1994), that is, developing as a scholar leading to the successful completion of a doctoral degree with- in the context of the family. FINDINGS By examining the family maps and survey data and listening to the participants’ narratives, we dis- cerned several family elements attributed to participants’ development as scholars and doctoral per- sistence. The identified themes describe 1) how women persisting in their doctoral degree describe their development as scholars within the context of the family systems, and 2) how the family of origin and current family system influence the development, resulting in their persistence. In align- ment with the literature, women described their development as a “Two-Sided” Coin. Continuing or discontinuing family of origin patterns; differentiation, segmenting and integrating; and accepting family support and involvement were themes that emerged to explain how participants as scholars had persisted with their families. T H E T WO-SIDES OF “WH AT” PARTICIPAN TS EXPERIEN CE The women (N = 11) in the study perceived their identity as a scholar as one of the most salient di- mensions of themselves during and immediately following their program. The participants used terms such as “Mother-Scholar,” “researcher,” and “intellectual women” when they were asked to describe themselves. For all, identifying as a scholar was a source of strength and pride, and the de- velopment as a scholar was liberating and resulted in multidimensional growth. Consistent with pre- vious research on doctoral student identity development (Cohen, 2011; Stevens-Long et al., 2012), the women explained that becoming a scholar resulted in increased confidence, intellectual capacity, and independence. Behavior and emotional changes were identified as Jade described, “I found my- self counting down the hours until I could go to the library to do my research. I found myself want- Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 505 ing to spend more time at the library instead of at home. The doctoral degree helped me to create more balance in my life and growing beyond my family. I was not just a mom and wife anymore.” Emotional dependence for many shifted from family members to colleagues as Kate explained, “When I accomplish something, I find myself Skyping with my peers to share the joy. My husband used to be the only person I shared this stuff with.” Micah discussed that amid a family crisis, she called her dissertation chair for emotional support, I had my dissertation defense hanging over my head that week. And, then my mom called to say my brother died. I remember saying “ok” and hung up. I immediately called my disserta- tion chair because I felt like she was the only one who could understand the delicate balance between wanting to grieve my brother while still staying on track with my dissertation. However, with the pride and liberation, also came internal and external struggle as the women at- tempted to make sense of who they were as “independent” scholars in light of being nurturing, warm, other-oriented mothers, wives, and daughters. The internal struggle was twofold. First, an in- ternal struggle arose as these women sought to intersect these two “important parts of me” and de- fine for themselves what it meant to be women scholars. Some of the women explained that they needed to redefine what it meant to be a woman, as definitions held, often ingrained in childhood, were insufficient, archaic, and inconsistent with whom they were becoming or had become as schol- ars. Jade explained the second struggle related to the time and attention she had to devote to being a mother and a scholar, I like the term, Motherscholar to describe the essence of who I am. It is just sometimes hard to reconcile both these areas of me. … I find conflict, tension, and guilt within myself as I find it hard to prioritize both. Spending sufficient time and attention on my dissertation and with my kids do not seem possible. I am Motherscholar, but I am still trying to figure out how these two parts of me can interact better. Again and again, these women used words such as “guilt” and “tension” to explain how they strug- gled to devote time, attention, and space to their families as well as their degree and development as scholars (e.g., going to training, writing, etc.). While internal struggle ensued, so did external struggle. Family members’, namely those within the family of origin (i.e., mothers, fathers, siblings), comments and behaviors regarding the enactment of stereotype-incongruent behaviors (e.g., Eagly & Karau, 2002) evoked hurt, trauma, injury, and a “deep sense of sadness.” Micah summarized this struggle that most of the women had, both know- ingly and unknowingly, Being a scholar and a woman are intertwined with the core of my being. But as I say this, I cringe because it makes me feel abnormal sometimes. I do not want to be abnormal. Or, maybe I want others to see me as a good mother and a good student. I can hear my mother say [she mimics her mother’s voice], “How can you sit on your computer and miss your daughter’s game? That is not how I raised you. I raised you to be a good mother.” While I am growing into who I am as a scholar and learning how it fits with who I am as a wife and mother, the struggle is real. Others’ perceptions of me sometimes hurt deeply. “H OW” PARTICIPAN TS IN TEGRATED AN D BALAN CED FAM ILY The textual description highlights the joys and struggles women experienced as they developed as scholars and persisted in their doctoral programs. The structural description outlines “how” these women integrated and balanced their family and degrees in their scholarly identity development and persistence. Does Family Matter? 506 MAKE A PURPOSEFUL CHOICE TO CONTINUE OR DISCONTINUE FAMILY OF ORIGIN PATTERNS The majority of women in this study developed as women scholars in light of their family of origin. The women did this by purposefully choosing to (a) continue family of origin patterns that affirmed the scholar identity, and/or (b) discontinue family of origin patterns that did not. CON TINUE PATTERNS The women talked about the direct influence that the familial values and rules, instilled in childhood, of “hard work,” “learning,” and “failure is not an option” made in their development as a scholar and their persistence. Many relayed stories about the intimate connection between their development as a scholar and the role modeling of a significant woman (e.g., mother, relative). Because of experi- ence with women who balanced multiple roles and responsibilities, an internal template, or working model, was formed that provided a map for how “to make it all work.” Participants, like Charlotte, attributed a mother’s example as influential in her view of herself as an “independent female” and a reason that she could easily integrate her role and responsibilities as a wife and mother with that of a scholar. Charlotte explained how she continued the family pattern of “female independence,” As far as being independent, I learned that from several women in my family… my mom . . . I saw her struggle as a single parent, a college student, and working full-time. I saw her struggle, but she did it. She graduated. She was young, but she showed grit and independ- ence. And, I have to say that [independence] I saw her model as a female, that I adopted, is the main characteristic that motivated me to pursue this degree and persist. Like Charlotte, Sandra noted that she sought to emulate her mother’s example. Sandra’s mother was a “stay at home” mother, and Sandra believed her mother’s choice to stay at home was central to her development. Moreover, her mother taught her that staying home and devoting time to her children did not mean giving up other parts of herself; she watched her mother engage in educational and entrepreneurial endeavors while being a “stay at home” mom. She expressed a desire to continue the familial pattern and saw earning a doctoral degree as a means to do so. She purported, “I want to stay at home with my kids. . . . I really don’t want to try to get tenure…I do not want to work full-time at the university or college or anything. I want to keep teaching and learning. This is how I see myself as a scholar.” Sandra’s assumptions and definitions of herself as a scholar and desire to integrate her role as a mother and scholar were connected intimately to what her mother modeled. Participants also skillfully and intentionally discontinued family of origin patterns that did not sup- port their scholarly identity development as women. When a significant family member supported the termination of patterns, a strong affinity and attachment to the family of origin tended to be maintained. For example, Nadine explained how her mother’s encouragement to break a family “tra- dition” helped her to envision herself as a woman who could be a mother, wife, and scholar, My mom really fought for my right as far as being able to do things that aren't just traditional for a woman in my family. In my family, as a girl, you go to [high] school. You then get mar- ried then, you have kids. That's just all you do. She wanted me to go further … And, that has made me consciously choose to go as far as I can in education while still being a good mom and wife. She is part of the reason finishing this degree is important. Nadine’s mother, albeit not a role model of scholar development and persistence herself, still provid- ed a “map of the possibility of persistence” by having a vision for her daughter’s future that differed from her own. This “visioning” appeared to have fueled Nadine’s ability to successfully develop as a scholar, which ultimately gave rise to her persistence. Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 507 DISCON TIN UIN G PATTERN S Others did not experience or readily receive support from the family of origin in choosing to discon- tinue patterns incongruent with academic identity conceptualizations. However, indicative of their valuing of a family member(s) and their scholar identity, they were able to “sit with this relational complexity.” Instead of denying themselves the opportunity to develop as a scholar, failing to persist, they evaluated what could remain openly communicated and purposefully refrained from sharing that which would not be celebrated. Chandra provided an example of discontinuing a family of origin pattern: For me, as a woman, my dad would say, “You’re just a dumb old girl...” I discontinued that belief. It doesn’t matter what your anatomy is if you are a male or female. There is no . . . you can’t do this because you’re a girl … I think we [self and husband] have intentionally downplayed that distinction between gender roles in opposition to the strong gender roles our parents modeled. Later in her interview, Chandra explained how intentionally changing her beliefs about women was necessary as she pursued her various degrees, especially her doctoral degree, and pursued scholarly activities such as publishing an article. She noted that she never told her father she was pursuing her doctoral degree, as he would find it unacceptable for a woman to do so. Keeping her academic identi- ty invisible was what she deemed necessary to avoid a contentious relationship with her father, “No changes in my relationship overtly occurred because I kept the fact I was getting a doctorate hidden.” Molly’s father had a similar belief. On her family map, she wrote, “Dad told friends that he would never pay for my college. Not a woman’s role.” In her interview, she related, “My dad wanted me to get married and have children and stay in the house.” Molly chose not to allow her father’s belief about women and education to deter her from continuing her education. Unlike Chandra who hid her degrees from her father, Molly informed her father of her decision to pursue a bachelors, mas- ters, and doctoral degree. She would spend time discussing with her father his “archaic and stereo- typed views.” Consequently, he “definitely softened . . . I think that my dad is now on board …. He came to my defense and agreed that I turned out all right. I think he was proud.” Both Molly’s and Chandra’s stories, as well as the others, illustrate this dynamic process of choosing to continue or discontinue family patterns to develop as a scholar: (a) balancing family attachment (maintaining in- timate connection with her family of origin) with (b) differentiating or separating (cognitive, emo- tional, and behavioral separateness) from the family of origin as needed to persist. Unfortunately, to maintain family attachment, which all the women communicated was highly relevant, some women saw the bifurcation of their personally defined self as a woman scholar and whom they presented to their family of origin, and even current family system, as necessary. Differentiate from the family by segmentation or integration In reference to their development as scholars and doctoral persistence, the women shared that differ- entiation was central to the process. The concept of differentiation described by these women is sim- ilar to the idea of Bowen’s (1978) concept of differentiation in family systems theory. That is, the women needed to maintain a connection with their families while also having the individual autono- my to grow and develop in their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. On the family maps, this idea was denoted by adjectives such as “personal,” “mine,” and “my own place.” During the interview, Charlotte explained, “It’s [the doctoral degree] an independent thing that I still needed to do for me. . . . The doctorate is my thing. It’s about me growing as an individual.” Chandra concurred, “I view myself as an intelligent being who can have goals and aspirations apart from me, that don’t include my children and my husband. . . I feel like that doctoral process is my own thing ... It’s like my own safe place . . . allows you to be you.” On the other hand, participants also recognized that their development and persistence required re- latedness and connectedness with family. Beatrice highlighted the interplay between the relatedness to Does Family Matter? 508 and autonomy from family, “My husband’s acceptance and support in this degree is important, but this degree is something personal. I maintain a connection with my family and share the process with them, but this process has been about my own growth and fulfillment.” Beatrice further explained that she, her husband, and her children maintain connectedness as she actively chooses to integrate her family into her degree-related activities. She asked her children and husband to research topics and read on similar interests. She explained that her husband, who also taught at the college level, often acted as a colleague, finding articles for her and helping her transcribe interviews for her disser- tation. However, Beatrice's husband and children also encouraged her to seek friendships in the aca- demic community and attend educational events that helped her grow as a scholar. While some women, like Beatrice, chose to integrate and actively share their development and degree activities with their family to maintain connectedness, other women chose to segment their family and academic lives to maintain familial connectedness while simultaneously developing as scholars. Chandra explained, I will say because of my energy level and quirky sleeping pattern, it never affected him [hus- band]. I did that in parentheses, as I know it affected him. I would work on my dissertation until 2 am and tried to make sure it did not significantly interrupt my family . . . I didn’t want my studies to infringe upon my role as wife, mother, or [other] responsibilities. I’m just too responsible to let that happen. … I didn’t think that I needed to hide it from [my family], but it was for my own peace that I kept things separate. Corinne also articulated that she chose to separate her “academic life” from “mommy and wife life.” She created an office where she could be work on her dissertation and “be my academic self.” She left her “academic self ” in the office when she spent time with her family, which is consistent with ideas found in WF border theory (Clark, 2000). Clark found that women set up boundaries with the desired level of permeability and flexibility between family and work to create the desired balance, “satisfaction and good functioning,” with her family and work, or in this case academics (Clark, 2000, p. 751). In the same way, these women made personal the intentional decision about the degree of permeability and flexibility to allow (i.e., how to integrate or segment) between the family and degree to maintain both autonomy and connectedness with the family to develop as a scholar and persist. Accepting familial support While almost every woman shared Nadine’s sentiment “I am fiercely independent,” they also all rec- ognized the necessity of accepting their family’s support. Three subthemes emerged to describe this acceptance, including understanding the family’s value of the degree, developing support and negoti- ating roles, and having a family as a priority and motivation. Understanding the family values the degree. Most of the women in the study identified the fami- ly’s value of the degree and the alignment between family values and the degree as essential to the development as a scholar and persistence. This is similar to the construct of familial integration, “the degree to which the candidate’s sense of connectedness with family members is met while pursuing the doctorate” and “the ‘fit’ between the degree and family values” (Rockinson-Szapkiw et al., 2014, p. 196). Each participant readily identified the necessary role encouragement and communication of “high value of the doctoral degree” played, as Molly denoted on her family map. Others noted on their family maps that “integrity,” “hard work,” “personal discipline,” or “finishing what you started” were encouraged. For others, their spouses or children “showed interest” in their degree and disserta- tion work, regularly asking questions and engaging in dialogue. Three of the women told stories of how their husbands encouraged them to become womenscholars. Molly explained, [my husband] does hold some traditional views, as I do too – comes from my childhood and what I think a woman should be doing. I remember times when I could not seem to find a balance, so I told my husband I needed to sacrifice my degree goal and give up my writing. He said, “No way. We will do what we need to figure this out. You can be a great mom and Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 509 academic. So, I think [my husband] has probably been the biggest influence on that - me be- ing a mom and scholar. Developing support networks with defined roles. Many of the women noted that roles and re- sponsibilities in the household in the current family system were negotiated and defined. For some women, who were married, they shared household responsibilities equally. For others, domestic re- sponsibilities remained “the female domain,” but they knew their husband would help when needed. Most of the women stated that managing the household was a “family” or “team” effort and re- quired family adaption and flexibility. Support ranged from receiving emotional support (e.g., “My husband accepts me for who I am,” “My kids tell me they are proud”) to physical support with do- mestic and child-related responsibilities. The women in the study described that their spouses and children adapted to their ebbing and flowing needs through the process, providing more intensive support and extended hours of babysitting when needed. Regarding explicitly negotiated roles, several of the participants discussed the importance of having a spouse who is confident in his personhood and embraced the difference between them. Corinne shared, “I am working on my doctorate, and he has a high school diploma. He never seems fazed by it. For some men, it would shatter their ego. It is because he is so content in his life…So he looks at me and says, ‘Well, I am glad you are getting your doctorate.’” Others credited their spouses with en- couraging them to be women scholars, “He hasn’t tried to change who I am as an independent wom- an” and “He has never been threatened by me. He encourages me to be an academic and values who I am as a wife and mother. He never belittles me or makes me hide.” Using family as motivation and keeping them a priority. Family and motherhood served as a central reason to finish the doctoral degree. In discussing her persistence during the interview, Be- atrice stated, “I want to set an example for my kids and grandkids. There are many factors here. It’s more than just about me. It’s about my grandkids and my own kids.” Chandra echoed, “It’s just been really fun to watch her [daughter] watch me. I want her to know that she, being a female, can pursue a doctorate in education.” However, not one participant prioritized scholarly development, and ulti- mately, persistence in the doctoral program, over family and more specifically motherhood. Nadine once believed that pursuing an education was the most important goal in her life. However, in the process of building a family and simultaneously pursuing her doctoral degree, she concluded, “My greatest calling is my family. Even though school is important, failure as a wife and mother is not an option.” Others concurred, “My first role is a mom.” DISCUSSION The theoretical conceptions and the literature for this study were useful for exploring the develop- ment and persistence of women in the dissertation phase of their doctoral programs. The work- family framework illuminated the importance of the interaction between the family and degree do- mains in how a woman develops as a scholar and persists in the doctoral program. Significant in this study was that family of origin and current family systems play a significant role in women’s scholarly identity development and doctoral persistence. As prior researchers suggested (Cohen, 2011; Lott et al., 2009), the women in this study found deep reflection on the family of origin beliefs, norms, and values necessary for their development and per- sistence. Reflection resulted in identifying “external formulas” or assumptions from the family of origin and deciding how to integrate them with “internal foundations” (Baxter Magolda, 2001, pp. xviii-xix) to construct an identity as a women scholar. Upon reflection, the women consciously chose to continue the family of origin patterns that supported their development and persistence in the doctoral program. In continuing family of origin patterns, they spoke of their need and desire to maintain an intimate connection with family members (e.g., having and providing secure attachment with one another; functioning as a “safe haven” for one another, taking care of the needs of family members). They spoke of their need for the family to tolerate, and, ideally, encourage their scholarly Does Family Matter? 510 identity development as women. Participants reported that having a role model or “cheerleader” from the family of origin provided a template for envisioning that it was possible to develop as a scholar and succeed in their doctoral programs. Alternatively, evaluation of family patterns also re- sulted in the choice to discontinue familial patterns that discouraged or inhibited development. When the choice to discontinue a pattern was difficult, when it was met with no support from family mem- bers or resulted in hiding the scholarly self-necessary to maintain family attachment, women experi- enced a deep sense of grief and loss. Scholarly identity development and doctoral persistence were also made possible by members of the current family system. Consistent with the research of Dabney and Tai (2013) and Spaulding and Rockinson-Szapkiw (2012), women in this study echoed that development as a scholar is an arduous process and requires personal and family member “sacrifice,” “communication,” and a “system of support” (p. 214). Central was the family, enabling the women to differentiate. Similar to the theoreti- cal literature on adolescent identity, women’s identity development in a doctoral program is intimately associated with the ability to separate from the family (S. A. Anderson & Sabatelli, 1990). These find- ings are consistent with Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. (2017) and others (e.g., West, 2014) who explained that scholarly identity development is supported or hindered by the process of differentiating from the family, or “the separating of one's intellectual and emotional functioning from that of the family” (p. 10). Family value of the degree, family support, family adaption, and clearly negotiated roles were also essential to development and persistence. While some women in this study had spouses willing to take on more non-traditional or supportive roles, other women reported that their negotiated roles and division of labor remained mostly traditional, a finding consistent with prior research (Lyonette et al., 2015; Rockinson-Szapkiw, Spaulding, & Knight, 2015). The theme of motherhood and family as a motivation to develop and persist was not surprising given the fact that all participants were mothers and described motherhood as significant. Just as some of the participants were encouraged by their mothers to continue their education, participants were acutely aware that they too were role models for their children. This awareness fueled their decision to model, especially for their daugh- ters, what it meant to be a woman scholar and persist in a doctoral program. This finding is con- sistent with prior research suggesting that “becoming a role model for their children was an im- portant factor” (Lyonette et al., 2015, p. 2) for women who enroll in higher education. IMPLICATIONS Results from this study provide numerous implications for doctoral students and their families, facul- ty, administrators, and other higher education personnel. Spousal support and negotiated roles were significant factors associated with development and persistence, suggesting partners need to have candid conversations about responsibilities and roles. There needs to be an awareness that if the wife is returning to school, role reversal in the relationship or differentiation is a likely occurrence and may result in marital stress. Partners thus also need to develop strategies to address and manage the added stress and be prepared to grow and develop together. The university can be central in helping facilitate discussions such as these at the beginning of the doctoral program by explicitly orienting families to the rigors of doctoral training and emphasizing the role of the family in growth and persistence. The university can host family webinars, create fami- ly orientations, offer family counseling, and develop family Facebook groups. In addition to orienting families to the nature of the doctoral journey, doctoral orientation should promote the discussion and profound reflection on the impact of family of origin roles, values, and beliefs on present family functioning. It is also important to underscore the significant role faculty mentorship plays in model- ing how women can balance their families as they develop as scholars and persist (Bair, 1999; Rockin- son-Szapkiw et al., 2017). Findings from this study demonstrate that while some women have strong role models to emulate and fathers who encouraged them to develop as scholars, some women do not. It is crucial for universities to ensure women across ethnicities are well-represented on the facul- Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 511 ty to ensure that students have role models allowing them to envision themselves (or their spouses) as capable of successfully being scholars and persisting. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH This study was narrow in focus and has limitations. The study relied on volunteer respondents who were informed about the focus of the study before consenting to participate. It is likely that individu- als feeling elevated levels of stress, whether academic, professional, or personal, may not have chosen to participate in the study due to the required time commitment, meaning the sample was not neces- sarily reflective of the population from which it was drawn. Participation was also elicited from a lim- ited number of distance education, professional doctorate programs. While this limited the scope of the research, it also highlighted a critical area. The growth of distance education has been instrumen- tal for women desiring to develop their academic identity and pursue a doctoral degree; this popula- tion has been understudied. So, this study provided voice and illuminated their struggles. However, the role of the family in doctoral persistence for women in residential programs needs now to be explored and even compared with the findings of this study to highlight differences and similarities. This study is also an essential step toward understanding the role of the family in the doctoral persis- tence of women. With most of the participants being married and all identifying as heterosexual women, more in-depth research is needed with divorced or never married participants, as well as with men, and with individuals identifying as LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual). Further, with this study focused on women enrolled in the social sciences (education and counseling), more research is needed to understand the experiences of women in other fields including the humanities, creative and performing arts, and the sciences, espe- cially given the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. A quantitative measure needs to be developed that examines how women integrate and balance their family and academics so examina- tion of this in relation to other variables (e.g., personality, marital status, etc.) can be investigated. While findings of this study extended McCallum’s (2016) research on the role of family in the Afri- can American doctoral students’ decisions to enroll in the programs, interestingly, McCallum found that parental expectations, which were influential in African American students’ decisions to pursue a doctoral degree, differed by culture, socioeconomic status, and gender. This study’s findings did not illuminate this idea; thus, McCallum’s (2016) work coupled with others suggests that in-depth investi- gation into culturally distinguishing factors in future investigations may be warranted as a further study on the role of the family in this area is conducted. CONCLUSION A vital reason many women students choose not to persist in a doctoral program is that they experi- ence conflict between whom they define themselves as women and the emerging identity as a scholar – a conflict between “the enduring sense of who they are and whom they want to become” (Cobb, 2004, p. 336). A supportive family is a salient theme that arises in studies on doctoral persistence, with many researchers noting that the family is essential in helping women navigate the doctoral journey (e.g., Lott et al., 2009; Tinto, 1993). This study furthers the existing research by examining how women integrate and balance their family systems as they develop as scholars and persist in their doctoral degrees. While previous studies have focused on the support of current family systems in doctoral persistence, this study examined not only the role of the current family but also the family of origin, which had not been previously examined. Thus, further support is given to the fact that the role of the family in the study of persistence should not be ignored. If women are to develop as scholars and persist, a greater focus on integrating the family into the doctoral journey is also needed. Does Family Matter? 512 REFERENCES Adams, J., & DeFleur, M. H. (2006). 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The Journal of Higher Education, 79, 388–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2008.11772108 https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112446106 https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-01-2018-0011 https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480714565106 https://doi.org/10.28945/3671 https://doi.org/10.28945/2049 https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v9.23059 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1939.2006.tb00002.x https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1939.2006.tb00002.x https://doi.org/10.28945/1589 https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713611402046 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2005.06.003 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00178.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00178.x https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2008.11772108 Rockinson-Szapkiw, Sosin, &Spaulding 515 BIOGRAPHIES Amanda J. Rockinson-Szapkiw, EdD, PhD, is an Associate Professor for the Instructional Design and Technology (IDT)Program at the Uni- versity of Memphis (UofM), where she serves as the coordinator of the EdD program. Prior to her appointment at UofM, she served as an As- sociate Professor and chair of Research and Doctoral programs for a pri- vate institution in Central Virginia. Dr. Rockinson-Szapkiw’s research has focused on persistence and identity development of distance doctoral students and the advancement of women in higher education. This article was originally developed as part of Dr. Rockinson-Szapkiw’s dissertation for her PhD in counselor education and supervision. Lisa S. Sosin, PhD, is the Director of the PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision Program and professor with the Center for Counselor Education and Family Studies at Liberty University. Dr. Sosin has over 30 years of clinical and teaching experience in the field of professional counseling and clinical psychology. Dr. Sosin's primary research interests include the integration of creativity, spirituality, and counseling, doctoral student persistence, qualitative research related to counseling practice, and emotion regulation. Lucinda Spaulding ,PhD, is an Associate Professor in Liberty’s School of Education and serves as the Administrative Chair for Research in the doctoral program. Dr. Spaulding’s research has focused on persistence of doctoral students, resilience in children and youth, specific learning disa- bilities and methods of best practice, and the history of special educa- tion. Does Family Matter? A Phenomenological Inquiry Exploring the Lived Experiences of Women Persisting in Distance Education, Professional Doctoral Programs Abstract Introduction Family: A Factor in Scholar Development and the Decision to Stay or Leave Work-Family Literature Purpose Statement and Design Researchers’ Interest Method Participants and Setting Data Collection Data Analysis Findings The Two-Sides of “What” Participants Experience “How” Participants Integrated and Balanced Family Make a Purposeful Choice to Continue or Discontinue Family of Origin Patterns Continue Patterns Discontinuing Patterns Differentiate from the family by segmentation or integration Accepting familial support Discussion Implications Limitations and Future Research Conclusion References Biographies 
work_xwyjp6uyoravxjnzhbamsrm2s4	----	Technology in Distance Education: A Global Perspective to Alternative Delivery Mechanisms | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jgim.2002040105 Corpus ID: 957102Technology in Distance Education: A Global Perspective to Alternative Delivery Mechanisms @article{Hunter2002TechnologyID, title={Technology in Distance Education: A Global Perspective to Alternative Delivery Mechanisms}, author={M. Hunter and P. Carr}, journal={J. Glob. Inf. Manag.}, year={2002}, volume={10}, pages={50-54} } M. Hunter, P. Carr Published 2002 Computer Science J. Glob. Inf. Manag. Technology is providing a positive impact on delivery mechanisms employed in distance education at the university level. Some institutions are incorporating distance education as a way to extend the classroom. Other institutions are investigating new delivery mechanisms, which support a revised perspective on education. These latter institutions are revising their processes for interacting with students, and taking a more “learner centered†approach to the delivery of education. This article… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 12 CitationsBackground Citations 3 View All Tables and Topics from this paper table 1 Asynchronous I/O Interaction 12 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency In Love and War: Blended Learning Theories for Computer Scientists and Educationists Esyin Chew, D. Turner, N. Jones Psychology 2010 18 Save Alert Research Feed A Rural Multi-Purpose Community Centre in South Africa Jonathan Trusler, J. Belle Geography 2005 4 Save Alert Research Feed Complex network perspective on collaboration in the ICT standardization T. Ali-Vehmas Engineering 2016 6 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Reducing Ethnocentrism in International Business Students with an Online Multicultural Supplement Udo Fluck, Shawn Clouse, Nader H. Shooshtari Sociology 2007 14 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Socrates in Earpods? The iPodification of Education T. Brabazon Medicine 2006 13 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Global Information Management Research: What have we Learned in the Past Decade? F. Niederman, Hadi Alhorr, Yung-Hwal Park, Carri R. Tolmie Sociology, Computer Science J. Glob. Inf. Manag. 2012 15 Save Alert Research Feed Villains and Victims: Image Schematic Role Relationship Theory in Narrative Analysis R. Klopper Psychology 2011 1 Save Alert Research Feed Ten Lessons that Internet Auction Markets Can Learn from Securities Market Automation J. C. Westland Economics, Computer Science J. Glob. Inf. Manag. 2000 10 Save Alert Research Feed Reconceptualising an e–Learning framework for South African public sector training P. Mkhize Engineering 2012 View 3 excerpts, cites background Save Alert Research Feed A BLENDED LEARNING MODEL IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BLENDED LEARNING IN UK AND MALAYSIA Esyin Chew Engineering 2009 9 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-6 OF 6 REFERENCES Can Information Technology Help Managers Plan Globally? A. Usoro Economics, Computer Science J. Glob. Inf. Manag. 2001 8 Save Alert Research Feed Soviet influences on Latvian attitudes toward information technology M. Ishman Economics 1998 2 Save Alert Research Feed Journal of Global Information Management Journal of Global Information Management 2001 Journal of Global Information Management Journal of Global Information Management 1998 igi-global.com/article/can-information-technology-help-managers/3550 igi-global.com/article/can-information-technology-help-managers/3550 igi-global.com/chapter/consequences-disruptive-technology/63845?camid=4v1a igi-global.com/chapter/consequences-disruptive-technology/63845?camid=4v1a Related Papers Abstract Tables and Topics 12 Citations 6 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Learn More → Resources DatasetsSupp.aiAPIOpen Corpus Organization About UsResearchPublishing PartnersData Partners   FAQContact Proudly built by AI2 with the help of our Collaborators Terms of Service•Privacy Policy The Allen Institute for AI By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Dataset License ACCEPT & CONTINUE 
work_xx4yffofqfcl7nkoojxqfk6oli	----	Reza_cvips08.pdf Abstract—The Master’s of Public Health (MPH) degree is growing in popularity among a number of higher education institutions throughout the world as a distance education graduate program. This paper offers an overview of program design and development strategies that promote successful distance delivery of MPH programs. Design and development challenges are discussed in terms of type of distance delivery, accreditation, student demand, faculty development, user needs, course content, and marketing strategies. The ongoing development of a distance education MPH program at Utah State University will be used to highlight and consider various aspects of this important but challenging process. Keywords—Public health, course content, distance education, higher education, graduate students. I. INTRODUCTION HE Master’s of Public Health (MPH) degree is experiencing increased demand throughout the world as the need and expectation for high quality public health services continues to grow.[1] Public health services in many countries, however, are experiencing these greater demands even as resources for public health are diminishing.[2] As such, it is important to find more effective educational strategies that can reach a broader audience in raising the competence levels of public health workers. In many public health disciplines, new methods that go beyond traditional classroom experiences are needed to help current practitioners and new students carry out core public health functions, update skill areas, and perform surveillance of health objectives.[3] Distance education delivery methods are accordingly being evaluated as possible avenues for brining MPH training to diverse populations of public health workers (targeting both pre-service and in-service students) who may otherwise not have access to training.[4-7] Distance education strategies have been evaluated for content delivery in a large number of public health disciplines, including epidemiology,[8, 9] maternal and child health,[10, 11] public health nutrition,[3, 5] preventive medicine,[1, 12, 13] occupational hygiene,[14] and tobacco control.[15] These evaluations have taken place in culturally, economically, and geographically diverse settings, including countries such as Manuscript received April 30, 2008. S. R. Hawks is the Executive Director of the Southeast Region of Utah State University’s Regional Campuses and Distance Education network located at 125 W 200 S, Moab, UT 84532 USA (phone: 435-259-7432; fax: 435-259-8423; e-mail: steve.hawks@usu.edu). Mexico,[16] Brazil,[17] and other Latin American countries;[18] Hungary,[19] Poland,[20] and other European countries;[18] and in the United States,[21] and Australia.[9] Throughout the U.S., a large number of institutions are beginning to offer the MPH degree via distance education methods. While some of these programs are accredited through the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), many are not. The Health, Physical Education and Recreation (HPER) Department at Utah State University (USU) is currently in the early stages of developing an MPH program in community health education for distance education delivery through USU’s Regional Campus and Distance Education division.[22] The goal of this paper is to review a meaningful process that USU might follow in designing and developing a distance education MPH program. Key points from this process will then be outlined for consideration by others who are involved with the design and delivery of MPH distance education programs. II. EFFECTIVENESS OF MPH DISTANCE EDUCATION DELIVERY In a 2000 publication, Birnbaum and Greenhalgh argued that we “should proceed with caution and systematic evaluation” as we move toward the delivery of distance education programs which offer both “rewards and pitfalls.”[23] Perhaps in response to this call for caution and systematic evaluation, a number of rigorous evaluations have since demonstrated the effectiveness of distance education methods for delivering high quality MPH instruction in a number of disciplines, and in a variety of settings. Distance education MPH programs in particular have been shown to positively impact student academic achievement, career success, knowledge, attitudes, practices, and satisfaction.[21] In most cases the outcomes achieved through distance education are comparable to traditional face-to-face, on- campus, programs.[7, 9] A. Student Achievement A study that compared graduates from a traditional MPH program against students from a distance education MPH program found that course grades and grade point averages were similar for both programs.[5] The authors concluded that distance education strategies were suitable for delivering an MPH curriculum.[5] An Australian study of distance education instruction found that completion rates and grades did not differ between on- and off-campus programs. Qualitative data confirmed that distance education was as successful as on- Design and Development of an MPH Program for Distance Education Delivery Steven R. Hawks T PROCEEDINGS OF WORLD ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 31 JULY 2008 ISSN 1307-6884 PWASET VOLUME 31 JULY 2008 ISSN 1307-6884 439 © 2008 WASET.ORG World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:2, No:5, 2008 512International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 2(5) 2008 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10275 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :2 , N o: 5, 2 00 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 02 75 http://waset.org/publication/Design-and-Development-of-an-MPH-Program-for-Distance-Education-Delivery/10275 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10275 campus teaching in providing clinical epidemiology programs at the postgraduate level.[9] B. Career Success One study found that 75% of graduates from a distance education MPH program in the U.S. had developed new professional affiliations and 31% experienced job promotions.[21] A similar study found that all graduates from a distance education MPH program experienced advancement in the workplace.[5] C. Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices A study that evaluated the impact of a satellite training program for public health professionals concluded that the broadcast created a statistically significant gain in knowledge, improved attitudes about the importance of public health activities, and follow-up actions that were recommended in the broadcast.[24] Another study found that a year-long web- based program targeting maternal and child health workers resulted in higher levels of self-efficacy and perceived skill level in performing functions covered in the training module.[11] A third study concluded that a distance education MPH program led to strengthening of knowledge, perspective, skill, technical facility, confidence, and job performance.[7] D. Student Satisfaction A study conducted at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that 97% of graduates from a distance education MPH program would recommend the program to others, and 75% said that their overall opinion about the program had increased since graduation.[21] Other studies have also reported high levels of student satisfaction for MPH programs delivered via distance education.[7, 24] Different delivery modes for distance education MPH programs that have been evaluated include: web-based courses,[10] video courses,[15] satellite broadcast,[24] internet,[4] and computer conferencing.[19] In general, distance education MPH programs using these delivery modes have been found to be accessible, affordable, acceptable, and appropriate for working professionals, and in most respects equivalent to residential programs.[7] Based on these types of findings, several authors have argued that distance education will be a key component of MPH program delivery in the future, especially if we are to meet the demand for a more competent public health workforce in an age of diminishing resources.[1, 2, 7, 14, 15, 17] III. THEORY AND DISTANCE EDUCATION Equivalence theory represents an approach to distance education that is built on the concept of ‘equivalence of learning experiences’ between local learners and distant learners.[25] This theory posits that the more similar the learning experiences, the more similar the outcomes. Given advances in technology that provide various modes of distance learning, this theory may be an appropriate beginning point for considering the design and development of an MPH curriculum for distance delivery. Equivalency theory has five key elements that can inform curriculum design: Equivalency—learning experiences should be designed that provide experiences with equal value for learners; Learning Experience—students in different locations at different times may require a different mix of learning experiences; Appropriate Application—availability of learning experiences should be proper and timely; Students—students should be defined by their enrollment in the course rather than their location; and Outcomes—outcomes should be similar for learners regardless of location. IV. CURRICULUM DESIGN PROCESS A number of steps have been identified for the successful design of distance education MPH programs that have been evaluated and found to be effective.[3, 16] Common steps include: market analysis, student analysis, program infrastructure, faculty analysis, and the development of the plan of study. A. Market Analysis The first step in designing an MPH program is a thorough market analysis that identifies unmet public health training needs for a given geographic location, and the level of student demand for training that can address those unmet needs.[3] Data collection during this stage would likely include an assessment of public health workforce readiness, and an TABLE I DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MPH DISTANCE CURRICULUM Equivalency Theory 1. Equivalency 2. Learning experiences 3. Appropriate application 4. Students 5. Outcomes _____________________________________________________________ Curriculum Design Process _____________________________________________________________ 1. Market analysis 2. Student analysis 3. Program infrastructure 4. Faculty analysis 6. Plan of study _____________________________________________________________ Plan of Study for MPH in Community Health Education NCHEC Requirements CEPH Requirements _____________________________________________________________ 1. Health needs assessment 1. Biostatistics 2. Program planning 2. Epidemiology 3. Program implementation 3. Environmental health 4. Program evaluation 4. Health administration 5. Administer health ed Programs 5. Social/Behavioral Sci. 6. Serve as a health ed Resource Person 7. Communicate and advocate for health ed PROCEEDINGS OF WORLD ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 31 JULY 2008 ISSN 1307-6884 PWASET VOLUME 31 JULY 2008 ISSN 1307-6884 440 © 2008 WASET.ORG World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:2, No:5, 2008 513International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 2(5) 2008 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10275 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :2 , N o: 5, 2 00 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 02 75 http://waset.org/publication/Design-and-Development-of-an-MPH-Program-for-Distance-Education-Delivery/10275 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10275 analysis of available training and educational programs already in place. Much of this data might be available through local public health departments. In the case of Utah State University’s proposed MPH program, focus groups and student interest surveys will also be conducted at established distance education sites throughout the state. B. Student Analysis Once it has been determined that public health training needs can be met through a distance education MPH program, and that student demand is sufficient to support the program, a detailed analysis of student needs is warranted.[3, 16] It is the purpose of USU to establish a distance education MPH program that focuses on community health education. The challenge will be to identify student training needs (both in- service and pre-service) based on professional profiles and interests. Again, this will be accomplished through focus groups and student surveys at regional distance education sites. C. Program Infrastructure An important and challenging step is to assess and design an appropriate program infrastructure that takes into consideration available distance technologies, cost of delivery, availability of student support services (recruitment, registration, advising, mentoring, supervising, etc.), course scheduling and sequencing (that can accommodate student needs), faculty workloads, and other functions that will support the program. Utah State University already has a well established distance education infrastructure that utilizes web- based instruction and interactive video conferencing, and that has numerous student support systems already in place. Conceptualizing an appropriate infrastructure that solves course scheduling challenges, faculty workloads, and student mentoring and supervision will require close collaboration between the originating department (HPER) and the Regional Campus and Distance Education system at Utah State University. D. Faculty Analysis An important step in designing the program infrastructure is an analysis of faculty resources available to support the program.[16] Training will be required for faculty to successfully transition from teaching on campus to teaching via distance technologies. Distance education often is more time intensive for courses that require supervision and mentoring. Implications for travel requirements, travel time, and travel cost must be calculated and considered. As this process unfolds at USU, there is reluctance among some faculty to get involved with distance education, and there are uncertainties as to how faculty workloads will be impacted and equitably managed. E. Plan of Study The plan of study involves the establishment of specific courses, schedules, and timelines that meet program objectives within the constraints of distance delivery and student needs.[3, 16] The nature of the course content will often be guided by professional standards and accrediting bodies as discussed below. V. PLAN OF STUDY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH The accrediting body for public health schools and programs in the U.S. is the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) (www.ceph.org). The credentialing body for individual certification in community health education is the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC) (www.nchec.org). In combination, these organizations provide an overview of curriculum expectations and desired learner skills that can guide the development of a plan of study for graduate education in public health. Based on CEPH criteria, all MPH programs, regardless of discipline, are expected to cover five core areas of knowledge and practice: epidemiology, biostatistics, environmental health sciences, health services administration, and social and behavioral sciences. Additionally, students specializing in health education must be able to demonstrate proficiency in seven core responsibility areas: health needs assessment, program planning, program implementation, program evaluation research, program administration, health education resource, advocate for health education. VI. CHALLENGES Numerous challenges must be addressed in designing and successfully delivering a distance education MPH program. Specific challenges cited by MPH distance education planners include the potential difficulty in attracting sufficient enrollment numbers over time to justify the initial and ongoing expense of developing and initiating a program.[17] Others have found that distance education delivery demands intensive resources to sustain and support.[8] It has been found that not all students are well suited for distance learning, which may require a higher level of motivation, and that field support of students is a key to success which places high demands on academic staff.[8] Many of these challenges can be anticipated and addressed in the design process. VII. CONCLUSION It seems clear that distance delivery of MPH programs represents an important avenue for addressing workforce training needs in public health. While such programs require careful planning and may incur higher resource costs, the end result is a broader dissemination of training that will help support the growth and development of public health professionals that would otherwise not have access to such training. This paper has attempted to outline some of the key considerations and strategies for designing and developing a successful distance education MPH program. ACKNOWLEDGMENT S. R. Hawks thanks the Regional Campus and Distance Education division of Utah State University for generous support in the preparation of this manuscript. PROCEEDINGS OF WORLD ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 31 JULY 2008 ISSN 1307-6884 PWASET VOLUME 31 JULY 2008 ISSN 1307-6884 441 © 2008 WASET.ORG World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:2, No:5, 2008 514International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 2(5) 2008 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10275 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :2 , N o: 5, 2 00 8 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 02 75 http://waset.org/publication/Design-and-Development-of-an-MPH-Program-for-Distance-Education-Delivery/10275 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/10275 REFERENCES [1] D. S. Lane, "A threat to the public health workforce: evidence from trends in preventive medicine certification and training," Am J Prev Med, vol. 18, pp. 87-96, Jan 2000. [2] N. M. Shalauta, T. A. Burke, L. J. Gordon, B. S. Stern, and N. L. Tran, "An examination of the educational needs for environmental health and protection," J Public Health Manag Pract, vol. 5, pp. 1-12, Nov 1999. [3] J. M. Dodds, B. A. Laraia, and E. T. Carbone, "Development of a master's in public health nutrition degree program using distance education," J Am Diet Assoc, vol. 103, pp. 602-7, May 2003. [4] M. Jimbo, "MPH through the Internet," Fam Med, vol. 34, pp. 724-5, Nov-Dec 2002. [5] B. A. Laraia, J. M. Dodds, S. Benjamin, S. J. Jones, and E. T. Carbone, "Can distance education prepare future public health nutritionists? A case study," J Nutr Educ Behav, vol. 40, pp. 34-8, Jan-Feb 2008. [6] S. Schwimmer, "An anecdote of distance learning," Clin Perform Qual Health Care, vol. 7, pp. 36-7, Jan-Mar 1999. [7] K. E. Umble, S. Shay, and W. Sollecito, "An interdisciplinary MPH via distance learning: meeting the educational needs of practitioners," J Public Health Manag Pract, vol. 9, pp. 123-35, Mar-Apr 2003. [8] M. Patel, "Distance learning in the public health workplace," Pac Health Dialog, vol. 7, pp. 68-70, Sep 2000. [9] C. J. Treloar, "Evaluation of a national and international distance education program in clinical epidemiology (691)," Med Educ, vol. 32, pp. 70-5, Jan 1998. [10] B. Polhamus, A. Farel, and A. Trester, "Enhancing technology skills of maternal and child health professionals," Matern Child Health J, vol. 4, pp. 271-5, Dec 2000. [11] A. Steckler, A. Farel, J. B. Bontempi, K. Umble, B. Polhamus, and A. Trester, "Can health professionals learn qualitative evaluation methods on the World Wide Web? A case example," Health Educ Res, vol. 16, pp. 735-45, Dec 2001. [12] L. S. Khonsari and P. J. Fabri, "Integrating medical informatics into the medical undergraduate curriculum," Stud Health Technol Inform, vol. 39, pp. 547-51, 1997. [13] C. J. Mackenzie, "Community medicine: education and practice," P N G Med J, vol. 26, pp. 48-54, Mar 1983. [14] J. H. Vincent, "Graduate education in occupational hygiene: a rational framework," Ann Occup Hyg, vol. 49, pp. 649-59, Nov 2005. [15] S. T. Leatherdale, S. Viehbeck, C. Murphy, C. Norman, and A. S. Schultz, "The tobacco control community of tomorrow: a vision for training," Can J Public Health, vol. 98, pp. 30-2, Jan-Feb 2007. [16] [16] "[Curriculum design of the Master's in Public Health program via the inservice education system. The Working Group of the Innovation Program in Health Systems and Professional Training]," Salud Publica Mex, vol. 37, pp. 63-74, Jan-Feb 1995. [17] P. M. Buss, "[Health promotion and health education at the school of governance in health, National School of Public Health, Brazil]," Cad Saude Publica, vol. 15 Suppl 2, pp. 177-85, Nov 1999. [18] "Lessons learned in a European-Latin American collaboration for developing postgraduate education in public health," Eur J Public Health, vol. 11, pp. 227-30, Jun 2001. [19] "Computer communication for international collaboration in education in public health. The TEMPUS Consortium for a New Public Health in Hungary," Ann N Y Acad Sci, vol. 670, pp. 43-9, Dec 17 1992. [20] D. Szosland and A. Marcinkiewicz, "Modern technology in lifelong learning of occupational medicine," Int J Occup Med Environ Health, vol. 17, pp. 411-6, 2004. [21] M. V. Davis, W. A. Sollecito, S. Shay, and W. Williamson, "Examining the impact of a distance education MPH program: a one-year follow-up survey of graduates," J Public Health Manag Pract, vol. 10, pp. 556-63, Nov-Dec 2004. [22] L. D. Woodhouse, M. E. Auld, W. C. Livingood, and L. A. Mulligan, "Survey of accredited master of public health (MPH) programs with health education concentrations: a resource for strengthening the public health workforce," Health Promot Pract, vol. 7, pp. 258-65, Apr 2006. [23] D. Birnbaum and T. Greenhalgh, "Emerging distance degree programs," Clin Perform Qual Health Care, vol. 8, pp. 60-4, 2000. [24] K. M. Peddecord, P. Holsclaw, I. G. Jacobson, L. Kwizera, K. Rose, R. Gersberg, and V. Macias-Reynolds, "Nationwide satellite training for public health professionals: Web-based follow-up," J Contin Educ Health Prof, vol. 27, pp. 111-7, Spring 2007. [25] M. Simonson, C. Schlosser, and D. Hanson, "Theory and distance education: A new discussion.," Am J Distance Ed, vol. 13, pp. 60-75, 1999. 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work_xxsgt7wbpfg6fff2fgbwnzwune	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_y4keussm3jcf7couills6m3ibu	----	[ 203 ] Enhancing the learning outcome of university distance education: an Australian perspective Jeff Cooke Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia Irene Veach Faculty of Business Administrative Executive, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia States that Central Queens- land University (CQU) is one of seven universities authorized by the Australian government as a provider of distance education. Lack of affordable network infrastructure over vast areas of Australia cur- rently requires that paper- based study material be emphasized. At CQU, the Division of Distance and Continuing Education (DDCE) is responsible for the produc- tion and initial distribution of learning materials and stu- dent/lecturer paper-based interface management, e.g. tracking of assignments and response timeliness, a quality issue. Study material content is the responsibility of the lecturer, with quality reviews being performed by the origi- nating faculty departments. Integration of the Internet into unit delivery is being trialed in ad hoc ways by various lectur- ers, particularly in the Busi- ness Faculty. Forms a progress report of one such pilot programme in a post- graduate information systems offering. With respect to the QIP, a revised unit assessment survey was conducted. Prelim- inary indications are that the innovative utilization of the Internet reported may be a significant substitute for traditional paper-based deliv- ery while providing a superior learning environment much preferred by students. Addi- tionally, lecturers find it far more efficient to maintain the relevance of perishable mater- ial in courses, especially those which are information system or information technology- based. International Journal of Educational Management 11/5 [1997] 203–208 © MCB University Press [ISSN 0951-354X] Background Traditional delivery of distance education at Central Queensland University (CQU) has revolved around a very mature and highly- honed structure developed over several years. The learning “package” typically consisted of, but was not limited to, the following materials: • Unit Profile; • Study Guide; • resource book of readings; • references to appropriate journals and books; and • all integrated with a set textbook. Development of the content and integrating links of this package begins and ends with the lecturer in charge of the unit. The process of this development is managed by the Divi- sion of Distance and Continuing Education (DDCE) according to a common structure which has been professionally developed utilizing generally accepted learning meth- ods and models (DDCE, 1997). Quality assur- ance of the process itself is excellent, as evi- denced by the steady improvement in ratings (currently middle third) achieved in the bian- nual Australian Tertiary Education Quality reviews (Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 1995). Paper-based unit feedback is explicitly solicited from each student as a quality mech- anism which is used to adjust future offerings in unit content, form, and substance. These unit feedback surveys are a component of the quality improvement programme (QIP), but frequently are received too late for the lec- turer to effect change in the very next produc- tion of the study material package. It is our judgement that the current paper-based model of distance education course delivery as exhibited/practised at CQU has evolved to a plateau unlikely to be improved on. Evolutionary forces The amount of data and the associated pro- cessing thereof to produce an information product is growing at an ever increasing rate. It has been stated (Synnott, 1987) that the amount (new) of world information generated is doubling every five years. At this pace it is no wonder that many so-called information societies are overwhelmed by the choice, staggered by the amount, and confused at the real conflict of facts. In some university courses, distance educa- tion material is judged partly on the quantity of high quality paper-based material. This may include voluminous readings, sometimes encompassing two volumes of reproduced, appropriately copyright acknowledged, mate- rial. This is in addition to set readings in the prescribed text. The reading workload using this distance education model is consider- able, albeit precisely metered and objectively probed via lecturer-developed questions and answers at regular way points in the learning cycle. Students were then encouraged to per- form the (lecturer) provided self-assessment with respect to their grasp of the paper-based material. Clearly students were required to read and absorb a great deal of information. In the distance education mode, there was no direct student-student interaction unless a teleconference was performed or a workshop scheduled. Either of these activities were voluntary, and usually resulted in very poor participation rates. Furthermore, student- lecturer interaction was typically accom- plished, albeit on rare ad hoc instances, by students phoning the lecturer, post mail, or e-mail in those instances where students had access. Customer-driven business requirements are also changing. Intensified global competi- tion has increased the pressure on business to respond quicker and develop new and inno- vative ways to compete successfully in the marketplace. Business process re-engineer- ing (Turban et al., 1996) has become a fre- quent solution to these increased pressures. Business as well as student customers must work smarter rather than harder. Increas- ingly this means being better informed with the requisite quantity and quality of informa- tion to do their job. A strategy to meet market needs is different from one which exceeds market needs. An appropriate balance in resource expenditure is required in each case in order to produce the desired output. Out- puts, whether they be product or service, [ 204 ] Jeff Cooke and Irene Veach Enhancing the learning outcome of university distance education: an Australian perspective International Journal of Educational Management 11/5 [1997] 203–208 need this balance. Time becomes an increas- ingly valued commodity and must be judiciously apportioned to address the most critical factors for success. We are all experiencing, to a greater or lesser extent, information overload. More than focus is required. Relevance, particu- larly in the information systems arena, is even more important, with the view that information is becoming more susceptible to a “use by date”. Potential student and lecturer impacts We assert that heavy reliance on paper-based learning material can become a limiting factor in the learning process. Today’s com- petitive environment puts increased pressure on students to be very selective in their time utilization. Many times students accomplish this by excising over 80 per cent of the read- ing material, especially if a psychological threshold of “too much” is reached on the opening of a multi-kilogram study material package. This in addition to a set text! Lecturers too are time pressured. The lead time for revision, update, or complete rewrite of the distance education package continues to increase. In fact, over the last three years the average lead time required for production of unit material at CQU has increased from one semester to over two semesters. This is in spite of the fact that more word-processing resource and technology standardization has been applied to the production process. Not only has the production lead time become longer, increased quantities of available infor- mation requires increased lecturer time to research and develop quality updates and revisions. This is particularly true in the disciplines requiring a significant informa- tion systems or information technology com- ponent. Moreover, few lecturers would dis- agree that units in information systems require constant attention in order to ensure their relevance. However, as unit material production lead times lengthen, it becomes more difficult to maintain currency, rele- vance, and requisite quality of the distance education product. A new approach is required. Trial solution of an enhanced learning package Trial solution A trial solution addressing these evolution- ary forces and alleviating potential student and lecturer time compression was piloted in 1995/1996. The centrepiece of this trial was the design of a new distance education “pack- age” which integrates with the Internet. An evolutionary rather than a revolutionary approach was taken, realizing that too great a change from the highly developed paper- based model was imprudent. The package now integrates three major items. First, a single text eschewing the thrust of the unit is chosen which is no more than 18 months older than the semester in which the unit will be offered. This practically trans- lates into a text book with a latest print date being within one year of the offering. This is important, not only for relevance in an infor- mation science-related discipline, but also from an image point of view. Over 95 per cent of our mature age postgraduate students (customers) are currently employed, or on educational leave from a business or govern- ment enterprise. Perception of the relevance of learning material is many times equated to the dates associated with each piece of the integrated package. In particular, journal and text references are considered very perish- able. We believe that addressing this rele- vance factor is an important consideration in course marketing. Second, a single Unit Profile was developed which addresses both the on-campus as well as the distance education student’s participa- tive learning requirements. The Unit Profile contains: 1 the lecturer’s introduction and statement of learning objectives; 2 the assessment criteria; 3 assignment requirements and exam structure; 4 the weekly schedule; 5 Internet proficiency requirements (e.g. instructions about the use of a “list man- ager” and how to subscribe to it; and 6 the required format and associated process by which weekly class interaction is to be accomplished via the MIS (manage- ment impact statement) and the EMIS (electronic management impact statement, adapted from the MIS of Reynolds, (1992)). Item 5 is particularly important because it lays out the requirement to have Internet access, including a compliance statement to that effect electronically transmitted to the lecturer before close of business (cob) on Fri- day of week 1. Since the weekly schedule requires the submittal of an EMIS, compli- ance must not be delayed. This weekly EMIS (Appendix 2) assignment is in addition to set readings from the prescribed text book. Items 5 and 6 are new to the CQU Faculty of Busi- ness distance education process, and, the weekly schedule now contains an assessable [ 205 ] Jeff Cooke and Irene Veach Enhancing the learning outcome of university distance education: an Australian perspective International Journal of Educational Management 11/5 [1997] 203–208 participation requirement centring on the MIS or EMIS. This is also new. Third, the Study Guide provides complete detail on form, content, and the integrative process required for executing the weekly MIS (utilized by on-campus students) or EMIS (utilized by distance education stu- dents). The form (e.g. format) and content of the EMIS is similar to that of the MIS. The major difference between the two is that the MIS is focused on the prescribed textbook chapter for the week, with the requirement for it to be developed utilizing Microsoft Power Point and presented in front of the class through an Epson 3000 projector. The on-campus face-to-face class participation and topic integration discussion is maxi- mized because all students are interacting in a real time exchange. The lecturer facilitates this process and encourages lateral thinking excursions by injecting appropriate “what-if ” scenarios. Albeit the presentations are focused, no two classes are the same because this format does not restrict the outcome a priori. Students are encouraged to focus their EMIS on current information system or information technology topics, particularly those which have no particularly clear solu- tion path. Examples include, but may not be limited to, societies’ access to information, censorship, copyright and proprietary intel- lectual issues, electronic commerce and gov- ernments’ desire to apply transborder taxes, etc. The distance education electronic “face- to-face” class participation and topic integra- tion discussion is maximized because all students are interacting through a seamless electronic interface exchanging ideas in “near” real time. By “near” real time we specifically mean that the student assigned to find and develop the topic(s) for the week places his/her researched work on the list processor for “broadcast” to all students by cob Wednesday. All other students must com- ment by offering brief, yet insightfully devel- oped constructive criticism and/or “what-if ” responses by Sunday evening for that week’s presentation. The students themselves fuel and facilitate this process by injecting appro- priate “what-if ” scenarios and providing thoughtful judgements based on actual expe- rience, beliefs, or observation. This encour- ages additional lateral thinking excursions which usually results in very provocative outcomes. Albeit the weekly EMIS presenta- tion had a particular view based on the value structure, experience, and observations of the initial focused effort of the student assigned for the week, subsequent class participation and differences of view almost guarantee lively and thoughtful responses with the weekly conclusion not known a priori! The Unit Profile and Study Guide for unit 21608 together now consists of 24 pages. This is a considerable reduction from the 142 pages in 1995. Furthermore, the book of readings characteristic of the paper-based version of this unit delivered in 1995 has been elimi- nated and replaced with the EMIS/MIS requirement. For unit 21608, this has resulted in the elimination of two volumes containing 440 pages. The form and content of the Study Guide has been changed completely. Distance education enhanced package Process delivery mechanism In order to manage the unit 21608 distance education delivery process, the Majordomo list processor (Chapman, 1992) is used for managing the list established exclusively for the students of this unit. Majordomo is an automated list management programme “which frees the lecturer from dealing with most of the administrivia usually associated with managing mailing lists such as adding users, dropping users, etc.” (Chapman, 1992). EMIS development procedure The EMIS is the mechanism which encapsu- lates the procedure by which all students get involved in selecting and commenting on current topics of the day. Topics must be obtained from Internet sources (a prelimi- nary list of Universal Record Locater (URL) addresses are provided in the Unit Profile to get the student started) and are required to be relevant to the theme of the unit. The unit theme and additional guidance are explicitly supplied in the paper-based Unit Profile and Study Guide. There are no other restrictions. The lecturer produces a student responsi- bility list from the CQU Student Records System for each week in the semester. For each week a particular student is assigned responsibility to seek out three information science (systems or technology) topics with a potential enterprise management impact. Each of these articles should not exceed one screen (24 lines) of text. The student then cuts and pastes the selected article, along with its source and “publication” date, to a newly composed e-mail in preparation for transmis- sion to the unit electronic class list. The stu- dent then exercises critical thinking skills by addressing the important point of the article, by incorporating his/her views and then extrapolates them to a reasonable future scenario. This student-prepared management impact summary incorporates analysis [ 206 ] Jeff Cooke and Irene Veach Enhancing the learning outcome of university distance education: an Australian perspective International Journal of Educational Management 11/5 [1997] 203–208 according to each presenter’s particular knowledge, experience, background, and value structure. The framework for this EMIS follows that of Turban et al. (1996) (Study Guide explains) and is required to be within the framework of either re-engineering, global perspective, technology, or other. Appendix 2 is a reproduction of the EMIS instructions excerpted from the 21608 Study Guide for II/96. Results After two semesters’ operation in the trial mode, with fine tuning of both the Unit Pro- file and the associated Study Guide, it appears that several benefits/improvements have been achieved. First, full participation students achieve a greatly enhanced learning experience more closely aligned to a seminar-type environ- ment. Interaction is greatly increased. Since interaction is all electronic, and void of visual (e.g. face-to-face) queues, comments are more freely provided, albeit in a respectful and thoughtful manner. Written responses demon- strate a great deal of thought and very careful crafting. Appendix 1 reports the student survey comments addressing this aspect. Second, a more concise distance education package which greatly reduces the amount of paper-based material has been achieved. This results in a much shortened lead time for changes, updates, or rewrites with respect to the DDCE production schedule. The “perisha- bility” of the package has been reduced. Third, lecturers are able to delay the choice of textbook in order to accommodate the setting of the best available textbook which may also be the most recent. Conclusions It is our judgement that information systems learning from an enterprise management view is enhanced by integrating the commu- nication (e-mail) capability provided by the Internet with paper-based material. Further- more, development of a balanced integration of electronic and paper-based material as a distance education package is recommended for consideration by other disciplines. Additional improvements in the develop- ment of quality distance education “pack- ages” may be expected as Internet browsers, complete with search engines, become more readily available through Internet access providers. Currently, rural Australia and other less populated areas of the world are not economically well served in this regard. References Chapman, B. (1992), Majordomo Mailing List Manager, version 1.92. Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (1995), Report on 1994 Quality, Vol. I, March, p. 14. Division of Distance and Continuing Education (1997), Creating Materials for Flexible Learning, Central Queensland University Press. Reynolds (1992), Information Systems for Man- agers, West Publishing, St Paul, MN. Synnott, W.R. (1987), The Information Weapon, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. Turban, E., Mclean, E. and Wetherbe, J. (1996), Information Technology for Management, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. Appendix 1. Survey results Student feedback was generally very posi- tive and there was reasonable consensus that the weekly MIS and EMIS achieved a greatly enhanced learning outcome. A sig- nificant number of students made positive comments about the interaction and synergy outcomes via the MIS (internal students) and EMIS (distance education students). The following quotes come directly from student unit evaluations: • I like the electronic interaction between students and lecturer. • The EMIS are very good. I enjoyed the variety of comments, the differing view- points and approaches to topics. This has shown me (sic how) to value and explore the breadth of understanding available, and what can emerge from a research team. Each person brings something new to the session, as long as they are not fettered by too tight a definition of what to learn and how to respond. • Lack of criticism and a time and place for humour among the serious considerations. • Overall this subject has helped to (slowly!) develop a “business perspec- tive” to issues, as well as an IT one or my own personal ideas. The discussion tak- ing place between students emphasized the different viewpoints on topics. • I believe that the EMIS format gives distance education students a far greater opportunity to participate in a manner more similar to actual classroom condi- tions. The format encourages participa- tion and interaction between students. • As a distance education student it is inter- esting to read the responses of other stu- dents to the weekly assessment questions. • Opportunity to get better acquainted with the net and its possibilities. • E-mail between myself and the other students has been pleasant and enter- taining, and quite different from any other form of contact I have experienced. [ 207 ] Jeff Cooke and Irene Veach Enhancing the learning outcome of university distance education: an Australian perspective International Journal of Educational Management 11/5 [1997] 203–208 Appendix 2. Study guide (excerpted), unit 21608, Information Systems Management This Study Guide is a component of the study package for 21608 Information Systems Management. The complete study package contains … • Unit Profile • Study Guide (this document) • Internet addresses (contained in the Unit Profile) required by all students in order to effect unit compliance and has been specifically developed by Jeff Cooke for a CQU course of study. This production of the 21608 Study Guide will provide a new and improved learning experience congruent with the explosion of information and technology available via the Internet. It requires a level of student disci- pline which is regularly and consistently applied. Previous support to the Australian in-country and overseas distance education information technology student consisted of voluminous printed material. The material in such a package quickly became outdated and increasingly more difficult to produce and maintain. Information is like vegetables ... it is perishable. In order to keep within the information technology “use by date”, this unit requires each student to accomplish an/a: 1 weekly interaction with the Internet, WWW, appropriate printed material, or all three to obtain current information for presentation or to contribute to weekly presentations by providing constructive feedback electronically or class comment directly; 2 analysis, integration and presentation of the information obtained electronically and/or from printed material according to a weekly schedule explained in this Study Guide; 3 presentation of an analysis in a manner outlined in this Study Guide and in the appropriate format for peer review, com- ment, and constructive feedback. Presentation instructions for distance education students The requirements are very similar to those for on-campus students except for the modifi- cations required to achieve the same results electronically. Specifically, the following instructions apply: Developing weekly Electronic Material Impact Summar y (EMIS) Commencing week 2 and each week there- after through and including week 13, one or two students will be required to prepare an EMIS for the following week. The weekly assignment is determined from the class list that I will supply electronically. (The stu- dent’s attention is directed to paragraph 2 on page 7 of the Unit Profile which requires electronic compliance.) The assigned presenter(s) choose an Inter- net e-mail or WWW source(s), and from this source(s) choose three current topics from which to summarize what you believe is the key point and present them electronically to the entire class via this unit’s list server. These will be the three most important elec- tronic articles in the weekly electronic source as you perceive them. Include in your elec- tronic summary arguments for or against each article. Why do you believe the article is important? Categorize each article into one of the following categories: 1 global perspective; 2 emerging technology; 3 business process re-engineering; or 4 other. Each (there are three) EMIS is limited to two electronic screens (24 lines each) for each article. One screen for re-displaying each article, and one screen for your analysis. This is a total of six screens. I must stress that the relative importance of each point is determined individually by each presenter. You exercise judgement on the key points based on your knowledge, experience, skills, and value systems. In essence, you will have exercised critical thinking skills in making the assessment of how the material may impact you. Some student presenters will tend to defer to the original author’s or reporter’s view as the default starting point, particularly when you have little or no skill or experience base on which to exercise professional judgement. However, students are encouraged to make judgements by synthesizing from a knowl- edge base being acquired as the unit progresses. Employing this approach will give you the opportunity to build and exercise your elec- tronic presentation and selling skills. These skills are particularly useful for individuals planning to be the future change agents and thought leaders in information systems management. Overview of weekly class presentation format for distance education students First, identify three electronic articles each of which fit within a typical VDU (visual display unit) screen (e.g. approximately 24 lines). Then copy and paste the electronic article into the body of your e-mail message. Explicitly identify each article, including its source. Your well-developed response or view- point (e.g. approximately 24 lines) follows [ 208 ] Jeff Cooke and Irene Veach Enhancing the learning outcome of university distance education: an Australian perspective International Journal of Educational Management 11/5 [1997] 203–208 each pasted article. Clearly and explicitly identify yourself and your response so the reader is clear that this portion of the EMIS is your original work. Repeat this procedure for each of the electronic articles. Send your work as an electronic message (again, there are three of these for each pre- senter) to the unit list processor (ULP, e.g. subject-21608 as designated in the Unit pro- file) NLT (no later than) cob (close of busi- ness) Wednesday. Any student may respond via the ULP and offer constructive criticism of your electronic “analysis report”. The class electronic feedback should be where additional ideas and extrapolative comments come out. Again, each piece of feedback must explicitly identify: 1 the student making the contribution; and 2 which of the three EMIS you are addressing. It is a strict requirement that each student actively participate and contribute via the ULP NLT Sunday evening of that week’s presentation. I must emphasize that the Majordomo list manager in OPEN list form (which is the parameter which I have set for this unit) does not identify the sender of any e-mail messages. This means that each contributor (e.g. weekly assigned student) and every participator needs to identify in their reply who they are and which (1, 2, or 3) of the EMIS they are responding to. I will file elec- tronic copies by week for ALL electronic traffic, for unit administration and Quality Improvement Program requirements. The weekly presenter monitors and responds to this activity electronically as required until commencement of a new week on Monday, when the cycle repeats with a new presenter. • Make it a personalized view. What is your point and why do you think that it is important? This may or may not correspond with the original author or reporter’s view that is expressed in the electronic material. Your view is what’s important here. • The student presenter must employ a “pro- fessional” approach which makes it effort- less for the reader to delineate between the article you have chosen and your response to and categorization of the electronic arti- cle. Amateurish, sloppy organization is prohibited. Class electronic discussion – Limited to each week’s material and must be posted to the list server NLT 1800 Sunday at the close of each week. It a strict requirement that each stu- dent actively participate and contribute. 
work_y4m35p2anrapbgp6whqeu4iwsy	----	A Study of the Predictive Relationships Between Faculty Engagement, Learner Satisfaction and Outcomes in Multiple Learning Delivery Modes | Semantic Scholar Skip to search formSkip to main content> Semantic Scholar's Logo Search Sign InCreate Free Account You are currently offline. Some features of the site may not work correctly. DOI:10.4018/jdet.2011100105 Corpus ID: 1754827A Study of the Predictive Relationships Between Faculty Engagement, Learner Satisfaction and Outcomes in Multiple Learning Delivery Modes @article{Yen2011ASO, title={A Study of the Predictive Relationships Between Faculty Engagement, Learner Satisfaction and Outcomes in Multiple Learning Delivery Modes}, author={Cherng-Jyh Yen and M'hammed Abdous}, journal={Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol.}, year={2011}, volume={9}, pages={57-70} } Cherng-Jyh Yen, M'hammed Abdous Published 2011 Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. The confluence of technology convergence, market forces, and student demand for greater access is reshaping higher education institutions. Indeed, the convergence of technological innovations in hardware, software, and telecommunications, combined with the ubiquity of learning management systems, is reconfiguring and strengthening traditional teaching and learning delivery modes (Amirault & Visser, 2009; Harasim, 2006; Laurillard, 2008). In the current context, one in which universities are… Expand View via Publisher igi-global.com Save to Library Create Alert Cite Launch Research Feed Share This Paper 16 CitationsBackground Citations 8 Methods Citations 1 View All Topics from this paper Information science Librarian Library science Subject matter expert Turing test Display resolution Selectivity (electronic) Experience Definition Confluence Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link Web page Game theory Jones polynomial Kerrison Predictor Jones calculus OS-tan 16 Citations Citation Type Citation Type All Types Cites Results Cites Methods Cites Background Has PDF Publication Type Author More Filters More Filters Filters Sort by Relevance Sort by Most Influenced Papers Sort by Citation Count Sort by Recency Perceived learning as a mediator between institutional factors, instructor immediacy behavior, learner characteristics and course satisfaction among undergraduate distance learners Azadeh Amoozegar Psychology 2017 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Student Engagement: A Principle-Based Concept Analysis Jean S Bernard Psychology, Medicine International journal of nursing education scholarship 2015 13 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Using eLearning, blended learning and digital literacy to improve student engagement and retention A. D. Plessis, C. Young, Pieter Nel Engineering 2015 1 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Intentional learning with technological proxies: Goal orientations and efficacy beliefs José Hanham, J. Ullman, J. Orlando, J. McCormick Psychology 2014 12 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Comparative Analysis of an Online and a Traditional MSW Program: Educational Outcomes S. Cummings, Kate M. Chaffin, C. Cockerham Psychology 2015 31 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed The perceptions and experiences of e-learning within undergraduate healthcare education : a case study Michael D. Brownsell Medicine 2016 View 1 excerpt, cites methods Save Alert Research Feed Comparing Delivery Approaches to Teaching Abnormal Psychology: Investigating Student Perceptions and Learning Outcomes W. Goette, J. Delello, A. Schmitt, J. Sullivan, A. Rangel Psychology 2017 2 View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed An Exploratory Study of Levels of Interaction Occurring with Graduate Students in an Online Literacy Course. Tina Selvaggi Psychology 2016 1 PDF View 1 excerpt, cites background Save Alert Research Feed Student Perceptions of Online Resources as Predictors of Performance in a Hybrid Classroom: Exploratory Findings from a Large Engineering Economics Course Kellie S. Grasman, Dan Cernusca, Suzanna Long Engineering 2013 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Meta Communication Concept and the Role of Mass Media in Knowledge Building Process for Distance Education U. Demiray, Nurdan Oncel Taskiran, R. Yilmaz Computer Science 2012 5 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 ... References SHOWING 1-10 OF 28 REFERENCES SORT BYRelevance Most Influenced Papers Recency Using Course Maps for Easy Classroom to Computer Transition S. J. Etter, Lisa T. Byrnes Computer Science 2005 2 Save Alert Research Feed Advanced Methods in Distance Education: Applications and Practices for Educators, Administrators and Learners K. E. Dooley, J. Lindner, L. Dooley Computer Science 2005 48 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Dynamic Advancements in Teaching and Learning Based Technologies: New Concepts E. Ng, N. Karacapilidis, M. Raisinghani Computer Science 2010 20 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Aligning learning with industry requirements Jocelyn Armarego Engineering 2007 3 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Distance Learning and University Effectiveness: Changing Educational Paradigms for Online learning M. Moallem Sociology, Computer Science J. Educ. Technol. Soc. 2004 31 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Adapting Information and Communication Technologies for Effective Education Lawrence A. Tomei Engineering 2007 38 Save Alert Research Feed Advancing Education with Information Communication Technologies: Facilitating New Trends Lawrence A. Tomei Engineering 2011 23 Save Alert Research Feed Information Systems and Technology Education: From the University to the Workplace G. Lowry, R. Turner Political Science 2007 40 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Distinctive Distance Education Design: Models for Differentiated Instruction R. Fuller, Gary Kuhne, Barbara A. Frey Engineering 2010 20 PDF Save Alert Research Feed Online Operation Guidance of Computer System Used in Real-time Distance Education Environment A. He Computer Science Int. J. Distance Educ. Technol. 2011 5 Save Alert Research Feed ... 1 2 3 ... Related Papers Abstract Topics 16 Citations 28 References Related Papers Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up About Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. 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work_y6tcdeyrtjhd7azt32ubrpgece	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_y6uuak6tffdohey2hne5hlxswy	----	Using Web 2.0 Technologies for Collaborative Learning in Distance Education—Case Studies from an Future Internet 2012, 4, 216-237; doi:10.3390/fi4010216 future internet ISSN 1999-5903 www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet Article Using Web 2.0 Technologies for Collaborative Learning in Distance Education—Case Studies from an Australian University Kristin den Exter *, Stephen Rowe, William Boyd and David Lloyd Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, East Lismore NSW 2480, Australia; E-Mails: stephen.rowe@scu.edu.au (S.R.); william.boyd@scu.edu.au (W.B.); david.lloyd@scu.edu.au (D.L.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mails: kristin.denexter@scu.edu.au; Tel.: +61-414-223-139; Fax: +61-2-6621-2669. Received: 8 December 2011; in revised form: 8 February 2012 / Accepted: 2 March 2012 / Published: 7 March 2012 Abstract: This paper explores the use of Web 2.0 technologies for collaborative learning in a higher education context. A review of the literature exploring the strengths and weaknesses of Web 2.0 technology is presented, and a conceptual model of a Web 2.0 community of inquiry is introduced. Two Australian case studies are described, with an ex-poste evaluation of the use of Web 2.0 tools. Conclusions are drawn as to the potential for the use of Web 2.0 tools for collaborative e-learning in higher education. In particular, design and integration of Web 2.0 tools should be closely related to curriculum intent and pedagogical requirements, care must be taken to provide clear guidance on both expected student activity and learning expectations, and there is a clear need to develop, support and encourage strong interaction both between teachers and students, and amongst the students themselves. Keywords: Web 2.0; asynchronous tools; synchronous tools; collaborative learning; distance education; Web 2.0 community of inquiry; conceptual model; blogs; wikis OPEN ACCESS Future Internet 2012, 4 217 1. Web 2.0 Technologies for Collaboration in Distance Education ―Digital technologies are for education as iron and steel girders, reinforced concrete, plate glass, elevators, central heating and air conditioning were for architecture. Digital technologies set in abeyance significant, long-lasting limits on educational activity.‖ [1] ―We need to explore what new and wonderful kinds of learning asynchronous environments make possible.‖ [2] Web 2.0 is a term introduced in 2004 by Tim O‘Reilly, who described Web 2.0 as ―the era when people have come to realize that it‘s not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web‖ [3], and more recently suggested that ―Web 2.0 is all about harnessing collective intelligence‖ [4]. Despite widespread use of the term, an accepted definition of what Web 2.0 means is not easily found. According to Alexander and Levine, microcontent (where authors create ―chunks‖ of content each containing a primary idea or concept) and social media (where the structure is organised around people, not directory trees) are two essential features that distinguish Web 2.0 projects and platforms from the rest of the web [5]. In this paper, we take a broad definition, suggesting that Web 2.0 technologies are ―second generation‖ world wide web technologies and applications, such as wikis and blogs, where internet users can edit, create and/or collaborate on web content easily using both synchronous and asynchronous tools. Numerous papers have highlighted the contribution Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis and blogs, can make towards online social interaction [6–12] and collaborative learning [13–18]. Teachers and educators are realising that ―wikis facilitate collaborative finding, shaping, and sharing of knowledge, as well as communication, all of which are essential properties in an educational context‖ [15]. In order to visualise some of the factors and interactions required for the successful integration of Web 2.0 tools for collaborative learning, we have developed a conceptual model (Figure 1). The conceptual model is a visualization of the links between student, teacher and the use of Web 2.0 tools for collaborative learning. The conceptual model also illustrates possible negative influences on the system, for example time pressure or a lack of structure and design for the use of Web 2.0 tools in conjunction with the curriculum. The student is implicated heavily in terms of knowledge creation, both individual and collective knowledge creation. For this to be a reality, pedagogy and design of Web 2.0 tools as part of the curriculum must be given ample consideration, while further teacher guidance and presence is essential (Figure 1). Liu et al. [11] expect that ―over the next two to three years we will see examples of Web 2.0 applications in all phases of teaching and learning [and that] further discussion should consider how to design Web 2.0 tools more effectively and how to integrate them into teaching and learning‖. In this paper, the use of integrated Web 2.0 tools in higher education for problem-based collaborative learning is examined. Two case studies are presented, where asynchronous tools such as discussion boards, blogs, and wikis have been used, in conjunction with synchronous tools such as Elluminate Live! to develop collaborative approaches for distance education in an Australian university context. We have a particular focus on the use of wikis in the integrated context of Web 2.0 tools. Future Internet 2012, 4 218 Web 2.0 tools, are used in the higher education context because they can: help engage students in their learning while providing social interaction with their peers in the learning process; enable students to work at the conceptual level of understanding on authentic projects where they can solve problems, discover relationships, discern patterns, and develop a deep understanding of content; and collaboratively build knowledge of students mediated by user-generated (either student or teacher) design; allow students and teachers opportunities for reflection; and, ultimately, cultivate communities of practice (Table 1). Figure 1. Conceptual model of a Web 2.0 community of inquiry, illustrating relationships between teacher, student and the integrated use of Web 2.0 tools. Table 1. Opportunities for learning with Web 2.0 tools in higher education. Publication Engage: Web 2.0 tools help students engage with learning Social interaction: Web 2.0 tools support social interaction in the learning process Conceptual understanding: Web 2.0 tools enable students to work at conceptual level of understanding Critical thinking: Web 2.0 tools enable students to develop critical thinking Construct collaborative knowledge: Web 2.0 tools enable students to collaboratively build knowledge Construct individual knowledge: Web 2.0 tools enable students to build their own knowledge [8] ● [9] ● ● ● ● ● [10] ● ● [13] ● [14] ● ● ● [17] ● [18] ● [19] ● ● ● [20] ● ● ● Future Internet 2012, 4 219 Table 1. Cont. Publication Engage: Web 2.0 tools help students engage with learning Social interaction: Web 2.0 tools support social interaction in the learning process Conceptual understanding: Web 2.0 tools enable students to work at conceptual level of understanding Critical thinking: Web 2.0 tools enable students to develop critical thinking Construct collaborative knowledge: Web 2.0 tools enable students to collaboratively build knowledge Construct individual knowledge: Web 2.0 tools enable students to build their own knowledge [21] ● [22] ● ● [23] ● ● [24] ● ● ● ● [25] ● ● [26] ● ● ● Learners develop socially when they collaborate with their more capable peers [28]. Many authors see interaction as central to the educational experience and as a primary focus of online learning [6,28]. Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, facilitate communication via asynchronous interaction design options. In the online environment, participants can maintain engagement in a community, in the educational context a community of learners, when and where they choose [28]. Van Aalst looked at an asynchronous Web 2.0 tool called ‗Knowledge forums‘ for high school collaborative work, and discusses the importance of social dynamics, social infrastructure, social interactions for knowledge creation [29]. From this study, Van Aalst identified, as one of the leading factors separating the group discourses, the social interactions needed to develop a sense of community [29]. 2. Weaknesses and Challenges in the Use of Web 2.0 for Collaborative Learning Liu et al. describe a lack of quantitative research on the effectiveness of Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning, suggesting most papers measured teacher and student preferences for using Web 2.0 tools. They state that, ―while some research studies reported that instructors and students liked using of blogs, wikis, and podcasting, the few comparison studies found no significant difference in learning outcomes when using these tools compared with an alternative instructional method‖ [11]. Despite this lack of quantitative research on the effectiveness of Web 2.0 tools, a range of issues for students working with a wiki can be identified from the literature (Table 2). These include issues around: content, for example students not feeling comfortable editing or deleting others work; process, including adequate time to participate, and student accountability for participation; guidance and protocols, the need for clear instructions, explanations, and rules for use; the need for teacher presence; issues associated with students who maybe unprepared for collaborative learning; and, finally, issues around wiki design and congruence with educational philosophy (pedagogy) (Table 2). Future Internet 2012, 4 220 Table 2. Problems and challenges for the use of Web 2.0 tools by students in higher education. Publication Content: Issues editing & deleting, commenting on peer work. Process: Accountability of students for participation; Student role versus the role of the tutor/lecturer. Guidance: Inexperience, poor past experience & fear. Teacher presence: Need for teacher/ instructor participation . Solitary learners: Student unprepared for shared authoring & group work experience. Design & pedagogy: Scaffolding; Pedagogic potential needs to match tool design, task authenticity. [8] ● [9] ● ● [19] ● ● ● ● [20] ● [21] ● ● [22] ● ● ● [23] ● ● ● [24] ● ● ● [30] ● ● ● ● [31] ● ● ● [32] ● [33] ● ● [34] ● [35] ● [36] ● [37] ● [38] ● [39] ● ● Cole reports on a failed attempt at using wikis to engage students in their own learning, and found the reasons for non-adoption by students included: academic pressure from other courses (educational constraints); ease of use concerns (technical constraints); issues of self-confidence (personal constraints); and a total lack of interest [21]. Cole reflected that better design, suggesting scaffolding of the wiki in the course, may be needed to promote the use of wikis for collaborative learning in this instance [21]. Wood et al. provide an explanation of the use of scaffolding to support learning [40]. There exists a large body of literature on the importance of teacher guidance and presence to the outcomes of online learning (for example, [16,28,30,33,40-43]). Reynard makes the point clearly that: ―… technology is only the tool and must be handled well by the teacher if the desired results are to be realized. Wikis are truly powerful tools to support collaboration; however, teachers are the central engager and the one who keeps the process moving forward. As students see their progress, they will continue to participate and even become energized as contributors in the process.‖ [30] Future Internet 2012, 4 221 The importance of teaching presence for adult learners in online learning environments is strongly argued by Ke [32]. One conclusion Ke makes is that, ―in spite of a common understanding that online learning gears towards a more independent and self-regulated learning, adult students have identified instructors who demonstrated high presence online as the key to learning satisfaction‖ [32]. Douglas and Ruyters found that clarity in terms of explanations and requirements for the use of online tools, as well as teacher facilitation were required to ensure learning activities were successful [42]. They suggest ―developing student protocols to enhance communication online, allowing students the opportunity to ―play‖ and rehearse and experiment with the tools, providing an exemplar and teacher modeling to scaffold learning and finally ensuring that there is a teacher presence in the online environment to validate and encourage student interactions‖ [42]. This finding is supported by Augar et al. [43], who describe a wiki used as an ice-breaker for students to familiarize themselves with Web 2.0 tools. Issues of interaction, both social and cognitive have also been found factors for students adjusting to online learning [33]. Garrison and Cleveland-Innes suggest that because of this, students are not always prepared to engage in critical discourse, especially if this is in an online learning environment [33]. For some authors, ―the extent to which instructors will choose to engage students in collaborative learning remains a moral issue … one grounded in each instructor‘s own beliefs about teaching‖ [34]. It might seem obvious, but it is necessary to state, that if collaboration and/or collaborative knowledge creation is not a clear goal, then Web 2.0 tools are probably not the best technology to adopt in any situation, including education. In fact the use of wikis outside of the collaborative context may prove problematic [22,35]. The educational philosophy underpinning the curriculum plays an important role in the choice of which Web 2.0 tools to use for distance education. In addition to design, structure and leadership are critical elements to be considered to allow online learners to ―take a deep and meaningful approach to learning‖ [28]. Thompson and Absalom reported that ―the inherently collaborative nature of social web technologies cannot be separated from the complex, ever-evolving and potentially disruptive process of identity formation, which co-occurred as students engaged in the co-creation of Web 2.0 enabled texts and artefacts‖ [18]. Elgort et al. considered students‘ and lecturers‘ views on using wikis in the context of course group work, and found that ―the use of wikis was not enough to counteract some students‘ preference for working alone rather than as part of a team‖ [22]. They found that distance students may choose to use wikis in order to feel less isolated, and on-campus students also felt that it was a good way to get to know other members of the class [22]. According to them, distance students also looked for other ways of compensating for the lack of face to face contact, such as self-initiated audio conferencing sessions [22]. The remainder of this paper examines two cases where Web 2.0 technology has been used for distance education in an Australian higher education. In both courses wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies were used to facilitate collaborative learning. Online collaboration was required in order to fulfill pedagogical objectives for authentic, problem-based learning, and the development of critical thinking skills. A brief overview of each course is presented, followed by a discussion about what these courses tell us about the use of wikis in the context of distance education from the students and teacher perspective, and in light of the literature presented earlier. Future Internet 2012, 4 222 3. Two Case Studies Using Web 2.0 Technologies for Distance Education As late as 2008, Bonk and Zhang were curious to ―see how instructors and institutions take advantage of (Web 2.0) interactivity … (and) to watch learner reactions‖ [44]. This section describes two cases in an Australian University where Web 2.0 tools were used to facilitate collaborative learning. The Web 2.0 tools included asynchronous tools such as blogs, discussion boards, and wikis, integrated with synchronous tools such as Elluminate Live!. Three of the authors were directly involved in the design, and delivery of the units described in the two case studies. Rowe was the Unit (subject) Assessor for Case 1, Advanced Financial Accounting, Lloyd was the Unit Assessor for Case 2 PCRM, and den Exter was the Associate Lecturer in Case 2. The evaluation of Web 2.0 tools for collaborative learning that follows is an ex-poste evaluation, and these cases are contrasting examples of early adoption in the use of integrated Web 2.0 approaches for collaborative learning at Southern Cross University. For these reasons, we have taken a predominantly qualitative approach to evaluation. Where possible, quantitative data provided by the Blackboard learning management system is also used. All relevant student comments have been drawn upon and summarized in relation to the use of Web 2.0 tools for each case. The comments made by students were made as part of their own individual (private) reflection blogs, which, although were assessment requirements of the unit (subject), were not graded in terms of the content. Students were encouraged to voice their experience, their opinions, what they liked and what they did not like about the use of Web 2.0 tools. 3.1. Case Study 1, Advanced Financial Accounting Case 1, Advanced Financial Accounting (AFA), is an optional unit available in the Advanced Accounting major of the Bachelor of Business offered by the Southern Cross University Business School. Enrolments are typically small, facilitating a close working relationship with individual students who are nearing the end of their degree. 15 students enrolled in 2008. There were 5 withdrawals and 10 grades were awarded for successful completion of the unit. AFA has been offered entirely online since 2003, and utilises an ever-evolving range of asynchronous (discussion forum, blog, wiki) and synchronous (Elluminate Live!) Web 2.0 technologies accessed using the University Learning Management System (LMS) (Figure 2). Apart from some background readings and case study material, the LMS site at the beginning of the teaching session is, by design, a blank slate. Content is developed and created as a direct result of student engagement in their learning. There are non-compulsory weekly live online meetings scheduled for 2 h (7.30–9.30 pm). These meetings were recorded and available for attendees to review, or non-attendees to view. There were seven assessment tasks to be attempted for the unit. There is no final examination. The nature of the advanced units is expressed thus in their Unit Information Guide: ―Rather than learning about how to process numbers, you focus on problems, alternatives, and deciding what numbers to use. … You will have the opportunity to work alone, to work with colleagues … The idea is to collaboratively learn, but individually utilise and present what you are learning.‖ Future Internet 2012, 4 223 Figure 2. Timeline for Case 1 (AFA), showing the use of Web 2.0 tools over the teaching session. External Auditor, Henry and Jeffrey are names for the three student groups engaged in this learning activity. Four assessment tasks had prescribed due dates, and three required students to make choices about when they completed the task. The latter were to offer flexibility for students, to cater for the myriad of constraints they need to deal with in their workloads. Four tasks were worth 10% each, the remaining three worth 15%, 20% and 25% respectively. One of the assessment tasks required students to maintain a personal Learning Reflection Blog (LRB, 10%). This was the only assessment task that was private between the student and the unit assessor; all others were public for all enrolled students in the unit to see. The online class and the reflective blog provided direct synchronous and asynchronous lines of support from the unit assessor (one public and one private). The introductory task (10%) was due in Week 2, and was designed to have students use a blog, a wiki and a discussion forum. By the end of Week 2, the Introductory Activities had been completed by 11 of the 15 enrolled students, and 8 had attended a live online meeting. This meant that those students who had completed the introductory task and attended weekly online meetings had been exposed to all the technologies they were required to use for the unit by the end of Week 2. The following is a typical initial LRB contribution at the beginning of the session: ―After reading the Unit statement and the Unit Introduction, I felt a little uneasy about the subject as it noticeably differs from all the other units I have studied so far at uni, particularly as nothing of the unit content seems to have been set down at the start. But after working through the introductory activities I do feel more comfortable, particularly as I now understand how the unit will form as the semester progresses. It is also good that the unit seems to further encourage collaboration and simulates a small classroom sort of situation, where everyone is encouraged to interact, as opposed to other external units which feel more isolated.‖ Future Internet 2012, 4 224 There were two case studies among the assessment tasks. Both case studies are designed to demonstrate the challenges of exercising professional judgment in the application of accounting standards for financial reporting purposes when there is conflicting and incomplete information available. The first case study (15%) is due by Week 4, and requires individual contributions to a case wiki about specific financial reporting decisions. The weekly contributions are discussed in the live online meetings to make the variation in interpretations transparent and the basis for development of individual arguments on the wiki. Final individual decisions are submitted using a word template during Week 4, collated ready for comparison during the live online session. Students have the option to resubmit their template based on meeting discussion, reflection and individual formative feedback offered. This case highlights one possible design of a task using wikis to construct collaborative knowledge (individual sharing of interpretations and professional justifications) to enable the construction of individual knowledge (the template showing final individual judgments). The design also highlights the integration of parallel asynchronous technologies (the LRB) and the synchronous technology (live online sessions) into the learning process. The remainder of this report focuses on the second case study (20%), which involves a group component and a final individual decision. The ambiguity introduced by the collaborative nature of the discussion informing individual submissions from the first case study is now transferred into a group task. The case study (Grey Paints) requires students to self-select into one of three groups–External Auditor (―Auditor‖ from here on), Henry, Jeffrey (Figure 2). Each group takes one of three perspectives for evaluating the operations of a company in the first year of a succession plan being implemented, that saw a son (Jeffrey) take over running the business from his father (Henry). The third independent perspective is the external auditor, tasked with reviewing the results of the first year under Jeffrey‘s stewardship. Alternative accounting interpretations can be justified from each perspective. After hearing and discussing each perspective, individuals had to decide whether they believed Jeffrey had performed better by the end of the first year than Henry had when he handed over the running a year earlier. Students self-select into a group on a first-in, first-served basis using the discussion board and takes place by Week 3 (11 March). Four enrolled students had withdrawn prior to the due date and one withdrew after nomination but prior to groups being settled. This meant that at the time nominations closed each group had the following members: Auditor (5), Henry (4) and Jeffrey (1). One of the students in the Auditor group agreed, during our first class discussion (11 March), after nominations closed, to move to the Jeffrey group to even numbers up, and another student ended up moving from the Auditor group to Jeffrey due to extenuating circumstances later in the process (25 March). One student in the Henry group did not participate at all (though did complete the other assessment tasks). This meant the final effective number of participants in each group was Auditor (3), Henry (3) and Jeffrey (3). Table 3 shows the variation in extent to which each of the technologies were accessed and used for each group up until the due date for the task. What is clear is the variation in extent to which groups engaged with each technology across the allocated time for the assignment. Future Internet 2012, 4 225 Table 3. 2008 Grey Paints Case Group Activity Summary. Tool & Activity Use (up to due date) Group Auditor Henry Jeffrey Discussion Forum posts Nominations 5 5 1 Organisation/general 17 5 4 Total 22 10 5 Elluminate attendance Class breakouts 2 0 2 Self-organised 3 3 4 Group presentation 1 1 1 Total 6 4 7 Group Wiki contributions Number of pages created 22 11 8 Number of page saves 303 160 33 Number of lines modified 1991 6530 1102 Number of days accessed 9 11 9 Individual Blog contributions Progress posts 35 14 11 Final decision/reflection post 3 3 3 An examination of dates for contributions made by technologies indicates that the Auditor group engaged earliest. They were also very active during the semester study break. The Auditor group was scheduled to present a week earlier (1 April) than the Henry and Jeffrey groups (8 April). The Henry and Jeffrey groups did not substantially engage outside of online meeting discussions until after the Auditor group had presented their perspective. Based on the group activity and group presentations, each individual had one week to post their final decision about whether they believed Henry or Jeffrey had performed ―better‖. This was their individual decision based on the persuasiveness of each group perspective and the independent input from the external auditor. One student decided neither deserved to win; two chose Jeffrey, with the remaining six choosing Henry. Those in the Henry group remained loyal (all three); only one remained loyal in the Jeffrey group, with the other two being persuaded to the Henry perspective; and the independent auditor group were split one for Jeffrey, one for Henry and one for neither. The final marks awarded reflect the group element and the individual element. Group mark out of 15 varied as follows: 13 (Auditor), 13 (Henry), 12 (Jeffrey). Individual marks out of 5 for Auditor (3 × 5 each); Henry (1 × 5, 1 × 4, 1 × 2) and Jeffrey (2 × 5, 1 × 1). The one student who did not participate in the Henry group received 0 for both components. 3.2. Case Study 2, Principles of Coastal Resource Management Case 2, Principles of Coastal Resource Management (PCRM), is a 2 nd year undergraduate unit of 73 students, taught for the first time in 2011 as a session-long online unit (Figure 3). All students were treated as distance education students, even if normally enrolled on-campus. The course utilises a Future Internet 2012, 4 226 range of Web 2.0 tools, including the use of computer-based scenarios, wikis and blogs (Figure 3). In PCRM wikis were used to: provide support to the problem/project based learning scenario (the Chaucer Bay Council and Free-for-all wiki); and encourage collaboration on the final assessment task–environmental impact assessment (team wikis). These tools were employed to provide authentic, problem/project based teaching/learning experiences for developing higher order thinking and problem solving skills. In Week 5 of the semester students assume the role of Coasts & Estuaries Officer (for the fictional Chaucer Bay Council). The two lecturers (Lloyd and den Exter) became Council Managers. Figure 3. Timeline for Case 2 (PCRM) showing the use of Web 2.0 tools over the teaching session. A highly structured, un-editable wiki, the ―Chaucer Bay Council Wiki‖ (Figure 4), guided students through the scenario-based learning problem from Week 5 to Week 12 (Figure 4). The idea was to immerse the students in their new role, and help them understand the what, why and how of a wiki, using instructions and links to other resources for new wiki users. These guides and resources were also provided in the class free-for-all wiki, where students were encouraged to create a page, introduce themselves, and upload photos. Students were expected to use the two guide wikis and then, in groups of 3–4 assigned by staff, create their own group wiki collaboratively, based on a brief, without being prescribed any structure or content. This was a major assessment exercise for students worth 40% of their marks. Blogs were used throughout the unit to promote self-reflection and reflective thought processes; each blog was worth 5%. One blog exercise asked students to reflect on their experience working with their team collaborating on wikis. Two synchronous Elluminate Live! meetings were conducted over the learning scenario for staff to trouble-shoot any issues students were having. Site statistics show usage of some of the Web 2.0 tools by students. The ―Chaucer Bay Council Wiki‖ was accessed a total of 1183 times by students between 20th June 2011 and 20th September 2011 (average 16 hits per student). Fifteen students did not access the Chaucer Bay Council Wiki at all, and these students either withdrew or did not successfully complete the unit. One student accessed the Chaucer Bay Council Wiki a total of 78 times (this same student also received the highest mark for the subject). Future Internet 2012, 4 227 Figure 4. The Home page of the ‗Chaucer Bay Council Wiki‘ wiki used in PCRM to situate students in their scenario-based learning approach, and provide introductory resources on how to use wiki‘s. Students created their own wikis, according to their own design, for their major group work. Team wikis, those wikis created by the student groups with an assignment brief, but without a pre-defined structure, were accessed a total of 5205 times by students (average 70 hits per student) over the Session, with one student (the top performing student mentioned before) accessing their team wiki 503 times (only slightly fewer times than the Associate Lecturer (tutor) who accessed this content area a total of 535 times over the same period). How students used the free-for-all and team wikis as well as group pages incorporating file exchange and discussion boards is summarised in Table 4. The usage and hit rates suggest active engagement from students with the wiki environment. Thirteen of the fifteen groups submitted their collaborative work using wiki structure. Three groups uploaded a file for download into the wiki. One group chose to present their collaborative output both as a wiki, and as an embedded file for download. Of the thirteen teams to submit using wiki structure, five used hyperlinking, five used embedded graphics, and four teams included embedded tables. Despite a list of fourteen potential non-engagers (based on LMS site activity in the lead up to Week 5) only five groups experienced problems around participation, with six students designated as non-participators. Staff allocated each group one potential non-engager, despite this one group Future Internet 2012, 4 228 experienced two drop-outs. The average grade for the group work was 75.5% and team grades ranged between 65% and 96.3% (Table 4). The teacher in charge of marking this assignment reflected that the quality of the group work exceeded previous years‘ individual efforts. Table 4. The use of Web 2.0 tools in PCRM by students. The ―Free-4-all‖ row shows usage of the ―Free-for-all‖ wiki; wiki students equals the number of students contributing to each wiki per team. Db students showing the number of students contributing to the discussion boards per team. File exchange shows the number of documents posted by each team to the learning management systems file exchange. Db shows the number of posts made by students in each teams group discussion board. One teacher was present in all wikis. Wiki Pages View Edit Deleted Student Teacher File exchange Db posts Db students Grade % Free-4- all 16 988 49 na 15 1 na na na na Team 1 12 2775 431 3 4 1 0 27 4 96.3 Team 2 4 137 21 0 4 1 3 27 4 76.3 Team 3 1 68 37 1 2 1 6 53 3 75.1 Team 4 1 62 12 0 3 1 0 5 3 65.0 Team 5 5 151 28 1 4 1 0 12 4 65.0 Team 6 4 441 75 0 4 1 0 40 4 65.0 Team 7 46 1438 328 0 4 1 22 108 4 90.0 Team 8 6 299 67 0 4 1 0 32 4 67.5 Team 9 7 197 22 0 4 1 0 4 3 70.0 Team 10 2 86 6 1 1 1 12 35 4 96.3 Team 11 12 899 179 4 4 1 0 14 4 67.5 Team 12 4 216 26 1 2 1 0 32 2 70.0 Team 13 5 615 55 6 3 1 1 26 4 72.5 Team 14 4 602 82 0 4 1 0 23 4 86.3 Team 15 3 41 3 0 2 1 12 9 3 68.8 TOTAL 132 9015 1421 17 64 1 56 447 54 Communication between group members in PCRM was a common theme in the students‘ reflection blogs and clearly some groups were more successful at communicating than others: ―A couple of issues presented themselves during the process, mainly stemming around the lack of real conversation, and human contact. Working in this type of situation is difficult when trying to manage timeframes. When working as a group face to face, you are able to throw ideas around straight away, but the problem we had was that it took a few days before you found out the opinions of others.‖ ―This project has been a challenge with some of us being in different areas and timezones. There has been the same effort applied by all in the group at different times, due to this, and overall this has been a success. Personally I have found this project to be similar to the ones I have been involved in within my professional life in remote areas where there is little personal interaction and the life of the project being decided by emails and other electronic communications that I have never personally met.‖ Future Internet 2012, 4 229 Students in PCRM commented on authenticity and the social interaction as a positive experience: ―As this is potentially a task I would be doing in my employment after university, I found it of great value. Overall this assessment task has been very useful, not only academically but also to get to know some other students within the environmental sector.‖ And from another student: ―The EIA group assessment was a very interesting assignment as we were placed in a real working scenario. I liked the aspect that we had a deadline to meet and that we all had to work with each other to produce a thorough, informative Environmental Impact Assessment.‖ Student reflections in PCRM show that many found that using a wiki based scenario was a ―great concept‖, allowing for important collaborative learning that they do not often experience. Some internal students did not like the online group work, noting the different work habits of internals versus external students, and feeling that the online group nature of the assessment was too challenging. Project management (workflow), timing, time pressures and student roles and groups dynamics provided challenges with some groups better than others at organising themselves: ―It is frustrating that even with every attempt I made to organise things so we could assist each other and have it up in ample time for editing that this was not achieved by everyone‖. Content management was also a concern with some students unable to edit or delete others work: ―At one stage I found myself a little hesitant to change too much of someone else‘s work or add something that maybe wasn‘t right however I was fine with editing or having people change/add to my page‖. However, other students enjoyed the collaboration (―on the wiki which was constantly updated and edited by the group‖) while others reported finding the editing options easy and pleasing: ―I found editing and adding to the Wikis very easy and pleasing. I liked how the tools were literally at your fingertips and any time that you found the motivation or inspiration to add to the wiki.‖ 4. Discussion ―The purpose of an educational experience, whether it is online, face-to-face, or a blending of both, is to structure the educational experience to achieve defined learning outcomes. In this context, interaction must be more structured and systematic. A qualitative dimension is introduced where interaction is seen as communication with the intent to influence thinking in a critical and reflective manner. Some have argued that in higher education, it is valuable and even necessary to create a community of inquiry where interaction and reflection are sustained; where ideas can be explored and critiqued; and where the process of critical inquiry can be scaffolded and modelled. Interaction in such an environment goes beyond social interaction and the simple exchange of information. A community of inquiry must include various combinations of interaction among content, teachers, and students.‖ [28] Web 2.0 technology has been widely adopted for education, and in many instances been successfully used. However, students are still finding this approach unfamiliar, as demonstrated in both the AFA and PCRM cases. As one student in a discussion board says: ―I have not used Wiki before … how do I do it?‖. Another jokingly responds, ―You are not alone, I have never encountered a Wiki. (Is Future Internet 2012, 4 230 that a bit like a Wookie but with a higher pitched voice?)‖. It seems wikis are still new to many university students, even in a second year subject in 2011. In PCRM, students initially found the technology challenging, but gained confidence with experience: ―Being a wiki first time user, the EIA assignment presented itself with many challenges. Looking back on the exercise there are certainly many ways our group, including myself, could have implemented the use of the wiki devise more effectively … Once over the initial scare of how to operate the wiki and frustration with tables and inserting pictures to display the wiki as wanted. There was the realisation that the wiki is an easy to navigate, successful communication instrument that can be implemented in various settings.‖ Despite this unfamiliarity with Web 2.0 tools, both cases described here show that asynchronous tools such as wikis, blogs, file exchanges, discussion boards, and synchronous communication tools (e.g., Elluminate Live!) can be successfully integrated for collaborative learning amongst distance education students in both small and large groups. The role of Web 2.0 tools for knowledge creation, critical thinking and reflection has been discussed elsewhere (e.g., [14,20,45–48]); Wenger et al. [49] discuss technology and its role of in support of communities of practice. We focus in the remainder of this paper on what we have learnt from our case studies in terms of the student-teacher roles, and examine whether it is better to take a structured versus an emergent approach to design. Jackson et al. argue that ―it is important not to rely entirely on emergent design forms, but to provide strong guidance in site structure, layout and information design to students and knowledge workers‖ [23]. Meishar-Tal and Gorsky state that ―teachers and instructional designers determine the nature of collaboration; that is, the division of labour, role-taking and the activities to be carried out‖ [19]. We ask to what extent should they? Does it depend on the nature of the exercise and the reason for using the Web 2.0 technology in the first place? The ―uneditable and highly structured‖ design of the demonstration wiki for the PCRM case contrasts markedly with the more emergent design and use of the wiki for the AFR case. However, the student wikis themselves (the assessment task) in PCRM represent more of an emergent approach. The assessment task for PCRM was more stand-alone and less integrated with other assessment tasks than in AFR. The PCRM task was worth 45% (including the final blog reflection), whereas the AFR task was worth 20% (including the final blog reflection). The end products were also quite different, although neither were tightly prescribed. For PCRM, students had to produce a written report constructed using the functionality of the wiki. For AFR they needed to debate, organise and prepare for a 30 minute group presentation during a regular weekly online meeting, and use the collaboratively constructed knowledge as the basis for their final individual decision, contributed privately on their LRB. Another point of variation in design was the approach to initial support and guidance for students about how to use wikis. This was set up in two ways in PCRM in Week 5 at the outset of the scenario-based learning exercise, by the provision of the Chaucer Bay Council wiki, which was used throughout the learning scenario to give student structure and guidance, and a discrete free for all or sandpit wiki for students to experiment with around an exemplar page: ―At first I found this exercise difficult and frustrating as I had trouble using the Chaucer Bay wiki, however after running through the web pages a few times it became more clearer‖. Future Internet 2012, 4 231 In AFR, students started using wikis in Week 1, and continued to do so across the semester, with the content being developed and drawn on for weekly online class meetings. The use was thus much more dynamic and integrated into unit activity and tasks. The success of this early engagement in AFR is captured in this Learning Reflection Blog (LRB) contribution during Week 1: ―The introductory activities gave me an insight as to what the unit would entail. It made us communicate and socialise in a sense with the other students enrolled in the unit. This made the unit seem and feel more personalised as being ‗online‘ made it seem it would be an impersonal experience. However, this was not the case and it was interesting to see what background everyone in the course had. They also had us using the internet to research early on and of course getting to know what a wiki was and how to use one.‖ The different ways that the activity of each group in each unit is reported also speaks to design issues. In PCRM, the site statistics feature of the Learning Management System (LMS) was used to show activity within and across wiki groups. This shows access to various areas of LMS where wiki activity occurred, but little about the development of the content itself. In contrast, the AFR activity is reported from the Assessing Wiki feature of the LMS, and shows proportional indicators of content development (lines and pages created, modified and saved as well as the number of days wiki activity took place). Ideally, both sources would have been captured for both units; this is a lesson we take from the analysis presented here. What the collection of activity statistics from both units highlighted was the need to recognise that group activity involves more than just the wiki if it is to be evaluated in a meaningful way. The numbers alone tell such a small part of the process and outcome of the tasks. For PCRM contributions using the File Exchange and discussion board features provided a clearer picture of individual involvement in the group activity. In the more emergent AFR case, discussion forum posts were most prevalent during initial and preparatory stages. The use of breakout rooms in weekly online meetings and self-organised online meetings provided further practice and familiarisation with technologies also used for their group presentation. The supplementary value of regular blog contributions has already been mentioned. Both cases, more or less structured, point to the importance of recognising the range of activity and interaction that occurs off-wiki. The wiki really is the repository of evidence for what was organised and created elsewhere in a variety of ways. One other important difference is the integrated role of the weekly online meetings in AFR as another opportunity for reflection and debate of alternative perspectives across the period of the case. This was important in two ways. First, it provided a synchronous supplement between (student) groups rather than just allowing within-group discussion. Second, it was a synchronous supplement to the asynchronous dialogue with the unit assessor on the private LRB. A key part of learning is to facilitate and foster time for student reflection and permission to explore and acknowledge differences that may or may not be resolvable. This range of channels for ongoing dialogue provided the permission and safety to discover alternative perspectives and explore potential resolutions. This following two extracts from final LRB contributions by AFR students sum up the value of the integration for student learning: Future Internet 2012, 4 232 ―At the beginning of the semester I was a bit apprehensive towards the online structure of this unit, having had 4 years of textbooks and study guides it was more a case of familiarity and a fear of the unknown. The format of assignments was also a new concept to me and one that I was unsure of at first, particularly with choosing our own topics for the presentation and working with other students for the Greys case. However, I now appreciate that this format allowed us to think for ourselves and, as in life, there is not always a lot of structure and guidance but it will usually be provided if asked!‖ ―The weekly Elluminate sessions were a great way to interact with the other students, especially in regard to the group assessment tasks. In the beginning they were a bit slow because no one was very talkative (including me). Throughout the semester I became more comfortable and confident using the microphone and becoming more involved in each session.‖ In PCRM, student groups were expected to work in a more independent, self-regulatory way in their team wikis. Elluminate Live! meetings were held twice over the six week scenario-based exercise to offer the students troubleshooting support. Another distinction can be made around the use of blogs. PCRM used a number of discrete blog tasks for reflection and assessment, whilst in AFR the LRB was open all semester for students to reflect on anything to do with their learning along the journey. The AFR blog was thus much more open-ended and, because it was private, offered a direct asynchronous connection with the unit assessor across the semester. During the period of the AFR case 39% (60) of the total number (154) of LRB posts were added. Just over half of these were from the Auditor group members, with the remainder evenly split between Henry and Jeffrey group members. This seems to demonstrate an important supplementary channel of communication for group members to clarify and resolve progress in their own minds. The following LRB contribution offers a valuable insight into how a student can benefit from the unstructured emergent nature of the AFR case(s). This student was one of the quieter students (measured by activity), but the contribution indicates a good deal was happening in the observation of and (seemingly limited) involvement in the case activity—perhaps what some online literature would term a lurker or solitary learner: ―But as I progressed in the unit especial with Greys Group and the resubmission of Duncan case, I realised that we actually do have all the materials needed, we were just not guided there, we had to look for it ourselves. I like that we are not learning specific topics that relate to specific standards, I also very much enjoyed the group work and learnt heaps from it especially how to apply the standards and that just stating this relates or complies with this particular standard is not enough, you have to actually say and understand why, because you might be challenged on it, as the case with the presentation of Jeffery and Henry‘s group.‖ In PCRM, while some students found the use of a fictional setting (Chaucer Bay) confusing [50], and others would have liked more of a defined structure for the assignment, student reflection suggests that the scenario, and the unstructured nature of the team wiki project gave the assessments authenticity and taught the students about group process, and team dynamics as much as did about the topic of environmental assessment: Future Internet 2012, 4 233 ―I also initially had difficulty understanding what the assignment actually asked and questioned how I was going to communicate with 3 people I had never met before? … Overall I felt the assignment was a healthy challenge and that I gained some valuable skills which I can use in future similar scenarios. The assignment helped me the think outside of the box in ways of determining answers, I feel that I now look at a question in numerous ways. It showed me how different everyone thinks and sets out an assignment or just a simple task.‖ 5. Conclusions Our case studies illustrate the flexibility of designing an integrated Web 2.0 community of inquiry can lead to significant learning opportunities for distance education students, not just in terms of content but also because of the interaction between teachers and students and students themselves. How the system is designed depends on many factors including the time available for both teacher and student, the pedagogical goals and curriculum. The flexibility, and relative ease of use, of many Web 2.0 tools, especially when used in an integrated way presents almost unlimited opportunities to facilitate collaboration with distance education students. Our case studies confirm the potential for the use of Web 2.0 for distance education, the important role of teacher guidance, clear instruction and the need to match the design of Web 2.0 learning systems with pedagogical goals and the student-teacher context. Whether this means the design approach is more structured or more emergent also relates to pedagogical goals, but also may depend on the size of the class, and the time available for teachers. For an emergent approach to be successful, as demonstrated by the AFA case study, the teacher needs to be present throughout, facilitating the journey, and Web 2.0 tools tightly integrated, offering students flexibility and an opportunity to contribute when and where appropriate over time. Initial activities provided the guidance needed, and increased student confidence around the use of Web 2.0 tools. The PCRM case study shows that initially using a tight structure, and model wikis, can also provide the guidance needed for students to successfully move into a more emergent approach. Our findings suggest that it may be more useful to view structure and emergence as a gradient, than as a choice that must be made. Interaction is critical to the Web 2.0 community of inquiry, interaction between teachers and students, the students themselves, and for both teachers and students with the Web 2.0 environment. The design of the Web 2.0 environment clearly has a key role to play outcome of the interaction. The two case studies described here, like much of the current literature available, present the voice of early adopters and the report on the experience using the voice of students. This qualitative benchmarking is useful in its own right. However, empirically testing hypotheses around social interactions and learning outcomes, using carefully designed tests with control groups, would be a fruitful area for further research. Further investigation into the best use of the LMS reporting systems, in order to compare the outcomes of different curriculum and tool designs, is also needed to learn as much as possible from our applied use of virtual Web 2.0 environments and the social interactions that take place within them. A final note from a PCRM student on the use of wikis suggests that their use will perhaps become the norm for collaboration over distance: Future Internet 2012, 4 234 ―The wiki was excellent and a great way to work together as a team without the luxury of face to face contact … I cannot imagine attempting group work in any other way now that we have this technology available to us.‖ Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the Teaching and Learning and Flexible Learning Delivery Services units at Southern Cross University for their expertise and support in the design and delivery of the case study units described in this paper. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments. References 1. McClintock, R. The Educators Manifesto: Renewing the Progressive Bond with Posterity through the Social Construction of Digital Learning Communities. Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College, Columbia University: New York, NY, USA, 1999. 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Netw. 2003, 7, 68–88. 48. Garrison, D.R.; Anderson T.; Archer, W. Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. Am. J. Distance Educ. 2001, 15, 7–23. 49. Wenger, E.; White, N.; Smith, J.D.; Rowe, K. Technology for communities. Available online: http://waterwiki.net/images/9/97/Technology_for_communities_-_book_chapter.pdf (accessed on 2 March 2012). 50. Boyd, W.E. Teaching Cultural Diversity to Environmental Science University Students: Humanities-Science Culture Clash and the Relative Effectiveness of Three Exercises Confronting Socio-Cultural Images and Values. In Geodiversity: Readings in Australian Geography at the Close of the 20th Century, Kesby, J.A., Stanley, J.M., McLean, R.F., Olive, L.J., Eds.; School of Geography & Oceanography, Australian Defence Force Academy: Canberra, Australia, 1999; pp. 213–223. © 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/pdf/augar.pdf http://waterwiki.net/images/9/97/Technology_for_communities_-_book_chapter.pdf 
work_yagoiutabfbsdif5wcyu6ion34	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_yb5sqo5nivej3mw37t4assnoxu	----	Knowledge of professional healthcare providers about sickle cell disease: Impact of a distance education course hematol transfus cell ther. 2 0 1 9;4 1(1):62–68 w w w . r b h h . o r g Hematology, Transfusion and Cell Therapy Original article Knowledge of professional healthcare providers about sickle cell disease: Impact of a distance education course Katy Karoline Santos Diniz ∗, Adriana Silvina Pagano, Ana Paula Pinheiro Chagas Fernandes, Ilka Afonso Reis, Leonardo Gonçalves Pinheiro Júnior, Heloísa de Carvalho Torres Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 9 March 2018 Accepted 20 June 2018 Available online 20 July 2018 Keywords: Sickle cell disease Healthcare provider Knowledge Health education a b s t r a c t Objective: To assess the impact of the distance education course “Sickle Cell Disease: Primary Health Care Line” on knowledge acquisition of professional healthcare providers. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a quantitative approach at the Edu- cational and Support Center for Hemoglobinopathies (Cehmob-MG), state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2016. One hundred and fifty-three out of 300 professional healthcare providers were invited to participate in the proposed distance course. Of the participating professional healthcare providers, 72 (47%) successfully concluded the course (Group A), whereas 81 (53%) did not complete their course assignments and did not meet the minimum requirements for regular attendance (Group B). Knowledge acquisition was assessed with the Knowl- edge of Sickle Cell Disease Instrument, DFConhecimento, applied using the web tool eSurv. Univariate analysis by Poisson regression was employed to assess the influence of sociode- mographic variables on the DFConhecimento score and to select variables to compose the initial multivariate regression model (p-value < 0.20). The analysis was performed in the statistical programming environment R. Results: The average score was 9.76 for Group A and 6.54 for Group B. The two groups were considered statistically different (p-value < 0.05) for all items with the proportion of correct items being greater in Group A. Professional healthcare providers who concluded the course had a significantly higher DFConhecimento score (45%) when compared to those who did not successfully conclude the course. Conclusion: Participation in a distance education course on sickle cell disease had a posi- tive impact on the acquisition of knowledge about the disease by professional healthcare providers. o Bra © 2018 Associaçã by Elsevier Editora Lt ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: katykarolinesd@gmail.com (K.K. Diniz). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.htct.2018.06.004 2531-1379/© 2018 Associação Brasileira de Hematologia, Hemoterapia open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecom sileira de Hematologia, Hemoterapia e Terapia Celular. Published da. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). e Terapia Celular. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an mons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.htct.2018.06.004 http://www.rbhh.org http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.htct.2018.06.004&domain=pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ mailto:katykarolinesd@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.1016/j.htct.2018.06.004 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ther I C h I c c a d s o h l o u d l t t e c k c C t ( p a c t e a e p s b c n i c e L p M T c p o H t T hematol transfus cell ntroduction onsidered a public health problem, sickle cell disease is a ereditary condition of great importance globally and in Brazil. t predominantly affects the Black population and presents linical manifestations within the first years of life with reper- ussions on morbidity and mortality.1,2 Despite technological nd scientific advances to improve the prognosis of sickle cell isease, its management persists as a challenge for profes- ional healthcare providers, since it involves complex aspects f diagnosis, treatment and prevention of complications.3–5 Studies point to insufficient knowledge of professional ealthcare providers about important aspects of the quality of ife of people with sickle cell disease, such as growth and devel- pmental consultations, immunization, school performance, se of folic acid, prophylactic antibiotic therapy, complications ue to vaso-occlusion, transfusions, prevalence of iron over- oad, strokes in children and screening of stroke risk using ranscranial Doppler ultrasonography.2,6–9 In order to improve he quality of care provided to people with sickle cell dis- ase and to reduce morbidity and mortality rates, there is a lear need to develop educational interventions to increase nowledge of professional healthcare providers about sickle ell disease.3,10–12 To that end, a distance education course entitled “Sickle ell Disease: Primary Health Care Line” has been offered by he Educational and Support Center for Hemoglobinopathies CEHMOB-MG) of the state of Minas Gerais since 2010. The urpose of the course is to build competence of profession- ls and to improve the quality of care for people with sickle ell disease.2,3 Distance education is considered an important tool in he dissemination of up-to-date knowledge and information, specially in emerging countries. Its educational resources llow interaction, shared experience, improvement of knowl- dge in different health areas and can affect a large number of rofessionals in different regions of the country. In addition, tudies have demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach y educational interventions targeting professional health- are providers.13–16 Despite the relevance of distance courses, o studies were found in the literature that investigate the mpact of distance education on the management of sickle ell disease. This study aims to evaluate the impact of the distance ducation course “Sickle Cell Disease: Primary Health Care ine” on knowledge acquisition by professional healthcare roviders. ethods his is a cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach arried out from April to June 2016 at the Educational and Sup- ort Center for Hemoglobinopathies (Cehmob-MG) in the state f Minas Gerais. The distance education course “Sickle Cell Disease: Primary ealth Care Line” aims at promoting an educational strategy o improve knowledge within a virtual learning environment. he course workload is 95 h over three months with follow-up . 2 0 1 9;4 1(1):62–68 63 sessions managed by tutors with expertise in sickle cell dis- ease. The course content is divided into modules dealing with topics related to health surveillance actions targeting children, adolescents and adults, management of acute events, sickle cell behavior and other hemoglobinopathies (Table 1). Con- tent is developed through student engagement in case study analysis, discussion forums and group activities with debate and reflection on the provision of professional care, leading to knowledge construction and proposals to improve the quality of care for people with sickle cell disease. To recruit participants, local and regional authorities are contacted and alerted as to the relevance of build- ing professional competence to deal with the disease. As a result, authorities delegate healthcare providers working with sickle cell disease (physicians, nurses, dentists, social assis- tants, psychologists, physical therapists, physical educators, dieticians and others) to take part in the course. Other profes- sionals wishing to participate in the course are also welcome. During the period from 2010 to 2016, 2446 professionals were selected to participate in the Cehmob distance education course. Of these, 1171 (48%) successfully concluded the course obtaining a minimum score of 70% for course work and atten- dance. The remaining 1275 (52%) did not obtain the minimum score or dropped out of the course. The present study used a database of all professional healthcare providers for the selection of prospective partici- pants. In April 2016, an invitation to participate in this study with a brief explanation of the research, and an informed consent form was sent by email to 300 randomly selected pro- fessionals among those enrolled in the course. As the study aimed to assess participants who successfully concluded the course as well as those who did not, 150 professionals were randomly selected from each group. Of the invitees, 153 (51%) accepted to participate in this study; 72 (47%) had successfully concluded the course (hence- forth referred to as Group A) and 81 (53%) had not met the minimum requirements for course completion (Group B). Participants were requested to answer a questionnaire applied using the web tool e-Surv. This questionnaire comprised three sections: (1) sociodemographic data: sex, education, city of residence, and professional category; (2) details of professional performance: type of health service in which the participant worked and the number of years working in healthcare services; and (3) the DFConhecimento instrument (Attachment 1). Thirteen multiple-choice ques- tions were included about the disease covering: 1. Newborn screening program; 2. Sickle cell disease; 3. Sickle cell anemia genotype; 4. Sickle cell trait; 5. Clinical manifestations; 6. Acute events; 7. Conditions favoring red blood cell hemolysis; 8. Signs of sickle cell disease; 9. Medications; 10. Prophylaxis; 11. Ado- lescence; 12. Pregnancy; and 13. Prevention of leg ulcers. The DFConhecimento instrument was constructed and val- idated by the study authors from May 2015 to April 2016 at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Instrument content validation was carried out by 11 experts in instrument validation and in sickle cell disease that made up a panel of experts. The instrument presented an average content validity index of 0.88. Regarding the reliability analysis, the instrument presented satisfactory indexes. Cronbach’s alpha presented a value of 0.818, indicating a high internal consistency. The 64 hematol transfus cell ther. 2 0 1 9;4 1(1):62–68 Table 1 – Modules, units and aims of the distance course “Sickle Cell Disease: Primary Health Care Line”. Module Unit Aim Getting familiar Course introduction To get familiar with the virtual learning environment and tools 1. Monitoring children with sickle cell disease Active search, prophylaxis, immunization Understanding risks of sickle cell disease and the need to identify the disease in primary healthcare for planning monitoring by all professional healthcare providers 2. Managing acute events Acute splenic sequestration, infection, pain crisis, stroke, cholecystitis, acute chest syndrome Learning about acute events and establishing protocols for dealing with them at basic healthcare units and referral 3. Monitoring adolescents and adults with sickle cell disease Pregnancy, puberty Understanding special needs of adolescents and adults with sickle cell disease. Identifying risks in pregnancy 4. Caring for patients with sickle cell disease and other Hb AS—sickle cell trait; Hb CC—hemoglobin C Acquiring advanced knowledge about sickle cell disease and other hemoglobinopathies to plan guidelines for instruction and follow up hemoglobinopathies 5. Discussing healthcare promotion strategies End of course assignment intraclass correlation coefficient between the test and retest presented a value of 0.67 [95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.55–0.76], indicating that the temporal reproducibility is acceptable. The instrument presents dimensions composed of items compatible with themes indicated as priorities for knowledge on sickle cell disease by the health professional (diagnosis, treatment and prevention of complications).17 The DFConhecimento instrument scores were calculated with 1 being assigned for correct answers and 0 for incorrect answers (range: 0–13). The qualitative variables—sex, educa- tion, training category, number of years working in healthcare services, type of health service and previous experience assist- ing patients with sickle cell disease—are summarized using absolute and relative frequencies. The scores obtained with the instrument are summarized as mean, median, standard deviation (SD) and interquartile range. The Fisher exact or chi-square tests were used to analyze the homogeneity of groups in relation to sex, education, professional category, professional performance and number of years working in healthcare services. A level of significance of 5% or more (p- value > 0.05) indicated evidence of homogeneity.18 The chi-square test with a level of significance of 5% was adopted to compare the proportions of correct answers between Group A and Group B. The qualitative variables are presented using absolute and relative frequencies.18 The Poisson regression model was used to study the influ- ence of factors—having completed the course, sex, academic training, training category, number of years working in health- care, type of healthcare service and previous experience assisting patients with sickle cell disease.19 Univariate analy- sis allowed the selection of factors that potentially influenced the knowledge score with a level of significance equal to 25% being considered at this selection stage. Using the selected variables, univariate analysis employing a generalized linear Poisson model was employed to verify the direct influence of distance education on the scores of the professionals and con- firmed whether other characteristic variables of the sample had a significant influence on their knowledge. Thus, mul- tivariate Poisson regression models were fit with backward elimination being used to select the variables of the final model. A significance level of 5% was adopted for backward Exercise on planning educational actions about sickle cell disease as a joint task by a team of family healthcare providers elimination.17 All analyses were performed using the statisti- cal software R (R core team). The project was approved by the Research Ethics Commit- tee Involving Human Beings of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (decision No. 1.717.975). The agreement of the subjects to participate in the study was recorded by means of the informed consent form available in the initial menu of the electronic questionnaire on the website e-Surv. Results Of the participants of the study, 127 (83%) were female, 82 (54%) only studied to degree level, 88 (58%) were nurses, 52 (34%) had worked in healthcare services for more than nine years, 118 (77%) had previously provided care to sickle cell disease patients and 134 (90%) work in municipalities in the State of Minas Gerais (Table 2). The groups under study were considered homogeneous in all analyzed variables. Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics of the knowledge scores according to the situation of the professionals in rela- tion to concluding the course. It can be observed that Group A had higher mean and median scores than Group B. Scores ranged from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 13 points. The mean score was 9.76 (SD: 2.62) for Group A and 6.54 (SD: 3.22) for Group B. Table 4 presents a comparison of proportions of correct answers between Group A and Group B. There was a significant difference (p-value < 0.05) for all the questions with the propor- tion of correct answers being significantly higher among those who completed the course. The mean percentage of correct answers of subjects in Group A (75.0 ± 2.6%) was higher than the results of Group B (50.6 ± 3.2%). In the univariate analysis (Table 5), the following variables were selected: Group (A and B), academic training, health service type and previous experience assisting sickle cell dis- ease patients; variables were considered possible significant influences when p-values were <0.25. A significant difference regarding the knowledge score (p-value < 0.001) was observed between Group A (average score was 49% higher) and Group hematol transfus cell ther. 2 0 1 9;4 1(1):62–68 65 Table 2 – Sociodemographic characterization of the professionals who answered the DFConhecimento instrument stratified depending on course completion. Sociodemographic characteristic n (%) p Group A Group B Total Sex Female 59 (82) 68 (84) 127 (83) 0.909a Male 13 (18) 13 (16) 23 (17) Education Degree 13 (18) 29 (36) 42 (27) 0.141b Specialization 40 (56) 42 (52) 82 (54) Master’s degree 10 (14) 8 (10) 18 (12) Doctorate degree 6 (8) 2 (2) 8 (5) Professional category Nursing 40 (56) 48 (59) 88 (58) 0.765a Others* 32 (44) 33 (41) 65 (42) Number of years working in healthcare services Up to 4 years 14 (19) 30 (37) 44 (29) 0.110a From 5 to 8 20 (28) 19 (23) 39 (25) 9 years or more 29 (40) 23 (28) 52 (34) None 9 (13) 9 (11) 18 (12) Type of health service Primary healthcare 32 (44) 41 (53) 74 (48) 0.706a Others** 40 (56) 40 (57) 79 (52) Previous experience assisting patients with sickle cell disease No 13 (18) 22 (27) 35 (23) 0.252a Yes 59 (82) 59 (73) 118 (77) a Chi-square test. b Fisher’s exact test. ∗ Others: biomedicine (2); physical education (1); pharmacy (7); physiotherapy (2); health management (3); manager (1); medicine (12); nutrition (8); odontology (4); pedagogy (1); psychology (5); social work (18); occupational therapy (1). ∗∗ Others: Technical references and projects of the state and municipal health departments (27); hospital (15); educational institution (10); emergency care unit (7); blood center (7); laboratory (3); social work department (5); social control (1); does not work in the health area (4). Table 3 – Descriptive analysis of scores. Scores Mean SD Min. 1st quartile Median 3rd quartile Max. Total 8.1 3.1 0 6 8 11 13 Group A 9.8 2.6 0 8 10 12 13 Group B 6.5 3.2 0 4 6 9 13 SD, standard deviation; Min., minimum; Max., maximum. Table 4 – Proportions of correct answers of professionals who answered the questionnaire and completed the course (Group A) and those that did not (Group B). Questions Total (n = 153) Group A (n = 72) Group B (n = 81) pa n (%) n (%) n (%) Q1 118 (77.1) 62 (86.1) 56 (69.1) 0.013 Q2 131 (85.6) 67 (93.1) 64 (79) 0.013 Q3 123 (80.4) 65 (90.3) 58 (71.6) 0.004 Q4 115 (75.2) 65 (90.3) 50 (61.7) 0.000 Q5 59 (38.6) 38 (52.8) 21 (25.9) 0.001 Q6 105 (68.6) 64 (88.9) 41 (50.6) 0.000 Q7 73 (47.7) 47 (65.3) 26 (32.1) 0.000 Q8 61 (39.9) 35 (48.6) 26 (32.1) 0.037 Q9 59 (38.6) 37 (51.4) 22 (27.2) 0.002 Q10 82 (53.6) 46 (63.9) 36 (44.4) 0.016 Q11 104 (68) 63 (87.5) 41 (50.6) 0.000 Q12 92 (60.1) 54 (75) 38 (46.9) 0.000 Q13 111 (72.5) 60 (83.3) 51 (63) 0.005 Mean 95 (62.1) 54 (75) 41 (50.6) 0.000 a Chi-square test. 66 hematol transfus cell ther. 2 0 1 9;4 1(1):62–68 Table 5 – Univariate analysis using the Poisson regression model. Variable ̌ EP(ˇ) Exp(ˇ) 95% CI p Group A 0.40 0.06 1.49 1.32–1.69 <0.001 B – – – Sex Female – – – Male 0.10 0.09 0.91 0.76–1.09 0.291 Education Degree – – Specialization 0.16 0.08 1.17 1.00–1.37 0.047 Master’s degree 0.28 0.11 1.32 1.06–1.64 0.015 Doctorate degree 0.44 0.14 1.55 1.17–2.04 0.003 Training category Nursing – – Other 0.02 0.07 1.02 0.89–1.17 0.764 Number of years working in healthcare None – – Up to 4 years 0.07 0.12 1.07 0.84–1.36 0.593 From 5 to 8 years 0.12 0.12 1.13 0.89–1.44 0.321 9 years or more 0.25 0.12 1.29 1.02–1.62 0.033 Type of health service Primary healthcare – – Other 0.08 0.07 1.09 0.95–1.24 0.227 Previous experience assisting patients with sickle cell disease No – – Yes 0.15 0.08 1.16 0.99–1.37 0.075 95% CI: 95% confidence interval. B. There was a significant difference (p-value < 0.005) between training levels. On average, compared to participants with just a degree, those with a specialization presented 17% higher scores; with a master’s degree or taking a master’s degree had scores 32% higher; while those with a doctorate degree had scores 55% higher. There was a significant difference (p- value = 0.033) in the number of years working in healthcare, since the knowledge score for professionals who had worked nine years or more was on average 29% higher than the score of those who had never worked in healthcare. There was no significant difference between mean scores when compar- ing variables such as gender, professional category, type of healthcare service and whether they had dealt with sickle cell disease patients previously. Table 6 presents the results of the Poisson regression model adjusted using the variables: group, academic training, health service type and previous assistance to patients with sickle cell disease (initial multivariate model). The final multivariate model was reached after step-by-step elimination of non- significant variables (p-value > 0.05) from the initial model (Table 6). The analysis of the final model shows that Group A maintained a significant difference, presenting on average 45% (95% CI: 28–64%) higher scores than Group B, even when this comparison is adjusted by the level of training. There was also a significant difference (p-value = 0.029) in the means of the knowledge score of professionals with different levels of aca- demic training; those with a doctoral degree had, on average, 34% (95% CI: 3–73%) higher scores when compared to profes- sionals just with graduation. For the levels of specialization and master’s degree, no statistically significant differences were observed in the score in relation to the level of gradu- ation. Discussion The characteristics of the sample studied related to the vari- ables of gender, professional category and specialization were similar to those observed in other studies with professional healthcare providers. In those, most of the professionals were female, with a nursing background and some level of specialization.16,20 A favorable aspect of this study, observed in the characterization of the sample, is related to the graduate and higher education groups, which were considered homo- geneous in all the variables analyzed. In the individual evaluation of the items of the DFCon- hecimento instrument, the proportion of correct answers for the whole instrument were on average 75% higher among the participants in Group A. This average was higher than that observed in a study carried out in the United States (65%) that investigated knowledge about sickle cell disease among physi- cians and nurses of emergency services who participated in a workshop that included ten lectures given by specialists in the area. The participants answered an electronic question- naire of multiple-choice questions prepared by the authors of the study before the beginning of the lectures and after the event.7 The results of DFConhecimento, verified by the descrip- tive analysis of the scores and by the generalized linear Poisson model, showed that members of Group A had signif- icantly more knowledge about the disease after the course compared to Group B. A similar result was obtained in a randomized study carried out in the northern part of the State of Minas Gerais, aimed at assessing an educational program about sickle cell disease that targeted commu- nity healthcare agents and nursing assistants working in primary healthcare. Participants in the study showed knowl- edge acquisition by improvements in their performance during the assessment (p-value < 0.001).21 Studies verified a significant positive impact on knowledge of professional healthcare providers after being submitted to an interven- tion in other health domains using the method of distance 14–16 education. The positive impact of the distance education course about sickle cell disease on the professionals who completed the study suggests that this educational strategy can be hematol transfus cell ther. 2 0 1 9;4 1(1):62–68 67 Table 6 – Results of multivariate analysis (adjustment of the generalized linear Poisson model). Variables Initial model Final model ̌ EP(ˇ) Exp(ˇ) 95% CI p ̌ EP(ˇ) Exp(ˇ) 95% CI p Group A 0.37 0.06 1.44 1.27–1.64 <0.001 0.37 0.06 1.45 1.28–1.64 <0.001 B – – – – – – – – – – Education Degree – – – – – – – – – – Specialization 0.08 0.08 1.09 0.94–1.26 0.280 0.11 0.07 1.12 0.96–1.29 0.143 Master’s degree 0.15 0.11 1.16 0.94–1.44 0.179 0.20 0.10 1.22 1.00–1.50 0.056 Doctorate degree 0.20 0.14 1.22 0.92–1.61 0.161 0.29 0.13 1.34 1.03–1.74 0.029 Number of years working in healthcare None – – – – – – – – – – Up to 4 years 0.16 0.12 1.17 0.93–1.48 0.173 – – – – – From 5 to 8 years 0.13 0.12 1.14 0.90–1.45 0.280 – – – – – 9 years or more 0.21 0.12 1.24 0.99–1.56 0.068 – – – – – Type of health service Primary healthcare – – – – – – – – – – Other 0.08 0.07 1.08 0.94–1.24 0.259 – – – – – Previous experience assisting patients with sickle cell disease No – – – – – Yes 0.07 0.08 1.07 0.92–1.25 0.390 – – – – – i p i k d p o a a e t w p o t B t k r p i a p p g C D k s w a C T r 95% CI: 95% confidence interval. ntroduced in the context of all professional healthcare roviders working in the healthcare network. Thus, it is mportant that this strategy includes content related to nowledge deficits of professional healthcare providers as escribed in the literature: content that addresses patho- hysiological complications, transfusion, prevalence of iron verload, stroke in children, clinical manifestations as well s the management of sickle cell disease.2,7,9,10,12 The results obtained from the professionals in this study nd reported in the literature show that a deficit of knowl- dge about sickle cell disease exists and persists despite the echnical-scientific advances and the availability of guidelines ith recommendations for professional practice. However, the ositive impact on the knowledge about sickle cell disease f professionals after participating in educational interven- ions was confirmed in recent studies with North American, razilian and Mexican professionals with different educa- ional levels using qualitative and quantitative methods of nowledge assessment.2,10,22–24 This study fills a gap highlighted in a previous study, which ecommended including physicians and nurses in educational rograms on sickle cell disease.21 Because this educational ntervention seeks to improve the knowledge of profession- ls in respect to sickle cell disease using technology, its strong oint is the viability of reproducing this study with more articipants and with geographical expansion to represent a reater proportion of professionals.15,16,25 onclusion istance learning courses have a positive impact on the nowledge acquired by professional health providers about ickle cell disease. It is essential to include professionals ho assist sickle cell disease patients in similar educational ctions. onflicts of interest he authors declare no conflicts of interest. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.htct.2018.06.004. e f e r e n c e s 1. Cordeiro RC, Ferreira SL. Experiences of illness among individuals with sickle cell anemia and self-care strategies. Acta Paul Enferm. 2014;27(6):499–504. 2. Gomes LM, Vieira MM, Reis TC, Andrade-Brabosa TL, de Caldeira AP. Understanding of technical education level professionals regarding sickle cell disease: a descriptive study. Online Braz J Nurs. 2013;12(2):482–90. 3. Gomes LM, Pereira IA, Torres HC, Caldeira AP, Viana MB. Access and care of individuals with sickle cell anemia in a primary care service. ACTA Paul Enferm. 2014;27(4):348–55. 4. da Fonseca SF, Amorim T, Purificação A, Gonçalves M, Boa-Sorte N. Hemoglobin A 2 values in sickle cell disease patients quantified by high performance liquid chromatography and the influence of alpha thalassemia. Rev Bras Hematol Hemoter. 2015;7(5):296–301. 5. Silva Filho IL, Ribeiro GS, Pimenta-Bueno LM, Serpa MJ. The frequency of �-globin gene haplotypes, �-thalassemia and genetic polymorphisms of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, factor V Leiden and prothrombin genes in children with sickle cell disease in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rev Bras Hematol Hemoter. 2010;32(1):76–8. 6. Gomes LM, de Andrade Barbosa TL, Vieira ED, Vieira LJ, Castro KP, et al. Community healthcare workers’ perception of an educational intervention in the care of patients with sickle cell disease in Brazil. Mediterr J Hematol Infect Dis. 2015;7(1):e2015031. 7. Tanabe P, Stevenson A, DeCastro L, Drawhorn L, Lanzkron S, Molokie RE, et al. Evaluation of a train-the-trainer workshop on sickle cell disease for ED providers. J. Emerg. Nurs. 2013;39(6):539–46. 8. Reeves SL, Fullerton HJ, Dombkowski KJ, Boulton ML, Braun TM, Lisabeth LD. Physician attitude, awareness, and knowledge regarding guidelines for transcranial Doppler screening in sickle cell disease. Clin. Pediatr. 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work_ye46b5tnhvg4bfmeq2cyjr2p5i	----	ANALYSIS OF THE APPLICATION OF DISTANCE EDUCATION IN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE STATE OF AMAZONAS 1Amarildo Marinho de Vasconcelos Júnior, 1Tamires Cardoso Neo, 1Bruno Pereira Gonçalves, 1Aline Mary Moreira de Melo Gomes, 1Jean Mark Lobo de Oliveira, 1Victor da Silva Almeida and *2David Barbosa de Alencar 1Academic Department, University Center FAMETRO, Amazon-Brazil 2Institute of Technology and Education Galileo of Amazon (ITEGAM), Brazil ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT No teaching method has evolved as much as distance education, in the state of Amazonas this would not be different, especially in higher education. Distance Education is a modality where the student is separated from the teacher and uses several communication technologies around all his learning. The methods used were bibliographic, documentary and quantitative. The researched environment was the capital city of Manaus and the municipality of Maués, with the application of the closed questionnaire aimed at higher education students. Our objective was to question certain nuances as their benefits and challenges for those who study Distance Education in the different locations of the State of Amazonas. The result was the realization that among its many advantages in the execution of education, time is considered the main one, and the loss of deadlines its greatest disadvantage, besides the concept of distance education is already well known by university students. Thus, it is well known that with the passing of time and with the progress of the state's modernization, distance education is gradually becoming the most practical means of teaching. Copyright © 2020, Amarildo Marinho de Vasconcelos Júnior et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INTRODUCTION Distance Learning or Distance Education emerged as a correspondence course in the year 1728 with a focus on a tachygraphy course. In Brazil, this type of teaching emerged in 1904 for a typing course. This teaching method was only recognized in 1996 as teaching at all levels (undergraduate, basic and technical education). In addition, this teaching has become an ascent due to the evolution of technology. In Amazonas, this modality has been growing in private, public and federal institutions of higher education. Aimed at offering initial and continuing education courses, Distance Education with the use of information and communication technologies is an aggregating element for education. Distance Education is a modality where the student is separated from the teacher and uses several communication technologies around all his learning. This modality is regulated by specific legislation and can be implemented in Education. Distance Education has received different denominations in different countries, such as: study or education by correspondence; study at home; external studies and among others. The individual who studies or graduated from Distance Education has the same chance in the job market as the one who studied regularly, that is, in the face-to-face mode. It is worth mentioning that the diploma obtained in a Distance Education course is worth as much as the one obtained in a face-to-face course. Before, when the course was not so well known, the distance education professional has already been very discriminated and criticized because of the way he graduated. But today, all that is a thing of the past. The Distance Education modality is not so different from the face-to-face modality, because to enter a college at a distance it is necessary to participate in the selection process as well as in the face-to-face modality and after the process, if the student is approved the same is waiting for the beginning date of the course or as I can say, the beginning of classes. Distance Education is a form of strategy that educational institutions have adopted as a source of advantage in the competitive educational market, in addition to presenting economic advantages in view of maximizing the ISSN: 2230-9926 International Journal of Development Research Vol. 10, Issue, 06, pp. 37013-37019, June, 2020 https://doi.org/10.37118/ijdr.19218.06.2020 Article History: Received xxxxxx, 2019 Received in revised form xxxxxxxx, 2019 Accepted xxxxxxxxx, 2019 Published online xxxxx, 2019 Available online at http://www.journalijdr.com Citation: Amarildo Marinho de Vasconcelos Júnior, Tamires Cardoso Neo, Bruno Pereira Gonçalves et al. “Analysis of the application of distance education in university education in the state of amazonas”, International Journal of Development Research, 10, (06), 37013-37019. RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS Article History: Received 19th March, 2020 Received in revised form 28th April, 2020 Accepted 11th May, 2020 Published online 29th June, 2020 Key Words: Higher Education; Distance Education; State of Amazonas. *Corresponding author: David Barbosa de Alencar profits of the institution. In this way, places of difficult access, such as the interior of Amazonas, are being devoured with innumerable proposals of Distance Learning and this teaching model has stimulated the creation of a government program that allows the access of these students in classrooms without them leaving their municipality or riverside community. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW Theoretical reference is an explicit text of theoretical concepts that helps in the understanding of conceptual guidelines that provide the basis for the construction of arguments that support the study (SAKAMOTO; SILVEIRA, 2019). In this study, it is argued about the application of distance education in university education in the State of Amazonas and the opinions of its users. Distance Education: The word e-learning encompasses various meanings. Distance education, distance learning, open distance education, among others. According to Pino (2017, p. 33), it says that there is a wide repertoire of definitions for "distance education" and, as technologies evolve, many of these definitions are reworked, he also reports, that some authors focus on the modality's own technical specificities. Carvalho (2017), states that this modality, brought opportunity to several people who did not have time to study in person and/or weekly, much of this is due to the practicality of e- learning to be able to be seen outside a place reserved as an institution and to have flexible schedules for students, thus, the relationship is virtual, where on one side is the student willing to obtain knowledge and on the other, the teacher ready to contribute to the intellectual formation of the student. At first, the history of e-learning in Brazil, as far as it is known, its expansion occurs in the same period in which communication media, such as radio and television, expand in the country. A chronological historical context is observed and the main milestones of Distance Education in Brazil are the following: 1904 - A professional course in correspondence typing is announced in the Brazil newspaper in the first edition of the classifieds section. 1923 - Henrique Morize and Edgard Roquette Pinto created Rádio Sociedade do Rio de Janeiro, and offered some courses in French, Portuguese, Forestry, French Literature and others. 1934 - Edgard Roquette Pinto offers the services of the Radio for a project of the Municipal Department of Education of the Federal District, making it possible for students to have previous access to leaflets and lesson plans. 1939 - The Monitor Institute was founded in São Paulo, offering professional distance learning courses by correspondence. 1941 - The Brazilian Universal Institute was created, becoming the second institute to offer distance learning courses by correspondence. In that same year the first University of the air appeared, which remained until 1944. 1947 - The new Air University appears with the sponsorship of some private institutions (SENAC, SESC and others) with the objective of offering commercial radio courses, lasting until 1961. 1959 – The Basic Education Movement, a milestone in non- formal education in Brazil, emerges. 1962 – It is founded in the city of São Paulo the Occidental School, of American origin, focused on the area of electronics. 1961 – It was created in Brazil the National Education Framework Guidelines Act. 1967 – The Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration starts its activities in public education, using the methodology of teaching by correspondence, moreover, in that same year the Padre Landell de Moura Foundation creates its nucleus of E-learning. 1970 – The Minerva Project, a partnership of the Ministry of Education, Father Landell de Moura Foundation and Father Anchieta Foundation, with the goal of using radio in adult education and inclusion, maintained until 1980. 1974 – The Padre Reus Institute is created and courses for elementary school begin on TV Ceará. 1976 – Originated the National Teleducation System. 1979 - The University of Brasilia creates courses broadcasted by newspapers and magazines, which in 1989 is transformed into Centro de Educação Aberta, Continuada, a Distância and released Brazil E-learning. 1981 - The International Center for Regular Studies was founded at the Anglo-American School, which offered primary and secondary distance education. 1983 - SENAC develops a series of radio programs for professional guidance in commerce and services, called "Opening Paths." 1991 - The program "Jornal da Educação - Edição do Professor" is incorporated to TV Escola, becoming a milestone in distance education. 1992 - The Open University of Brasília is created. 1995 - The National Center for Distance Education is created, as well as the Municipal Secretary of Education of Rio de Janeiro, creating MultiRio, which offers elementary education through television programs and printed material. That same year the TV School Program was created. 1996 - The Department of Distance Education was created by the Ministry of Education, with a policy that favored democratization and the quality of Brazilian Education. In addition, this year is considered the official landmark of the emergence of Distance Education in Brazil. It is in this year that the EaD began to be recognized as a modality of education of all levels provided for in Article 80 of the National Education Guidelines and Bases Law, No. 9,394, of December 20, 1996. 2000 - UniRede is formed, a consortium that currently gathers 70 Brazilian public institutions, offering undergraduate, graduate and distance learning courses. In the same year, the Center for Distance Education of the State of Rio de Janeiro also appears. 37014 Amarildo Marinho de Vasconcelos Júnior et al., Analysis of the application of distance education in university education in the state of amazonas 2002 - CEDERJ is incorporated into the Rio de Janeiro Center for Higher Distance Education Sciences Foundation. 2004 - The Ministry of Education implements several initial and continuing education programs for public school teachers through the EaD. 2005 - The Open University of Brazil is created, a partnership of MEC, states and municipalities. 2005 - E-learning was regulated by Decree 5.622, of 19 December 2005. 2006 - Decree No. 5.773 of May 9, 2006 comes into force, providing for the exercise of the functions of regulation, supervision and evaluation of higher education institutions and undergraduate and graduate courses in the federal education system, including E-learning. 2007 - Decree nº 6303 of December 12, 2007, which amends the provisions of Decree nº 5622, establishing the Guidelines and Bases for National Education, comes into force. According to the MEC (2017), in this period the EaD modality has grown strongly in the country, following the progress of the technological and communication means. According to INEP (2015), a survey was carried out which shows that there are 1,473,000 distance-learning courses offered in the country, which have grown 10% per year since 2010. Currently, there are more than 1.3 million students enrolled, with a 50% growth between 2010 and 2015. It is well known that distance learning has become an increasingly present mode of education in everyone's life. Zawacki-Richter and Anderson (2015, p.10) state that, "distance education has been seen as a business, profit and exploitation opportunity by so-called diploma factories. Much of this is due to the practicality of e-learning being able to be seen outside of a reserved place as an institution and having flexible hours for students. Characteristics and Satisfaction of the Student in Higher Education to E-learning: Distance Learning – E-learning comprises several courses, open to candidates from basic education, higher education, vocational education and others. The target audience of e-learning are usually people with restricted available time or other routine activity. According to Paixão (2019), the same emphasizes that e-learning is a modality where teacher and student interact physically separated in space and time. Thus, this modality contains some outstanding features such as: willpower and willingness to learn from the student, flexibility of schedules, calendar with dates and deadlines for activities (face-to-face or virtual) more succinct. In e-learning, the student is the main responsible for his learning, because he is the central element of the teaching- learning process and must stick to a new conception in the learning process. Kuhn, Hofler e Silva (2017) use the satisfaction of e-learning users as a synonym for the performance of the learning experience, where the behavior of instructors who, in distance learning courses, play a crucial role in the dynamics of the course, integration and motivation of students. Thus, both student and teacher need to be connected in the same language in order to achieve learning success. It is worth noting that a good structure should also be considered relevant in this context. Marcuzzo, Gubiani, Lopes and Regio (2015) still highlight that satisfaction seems to be an effective tool for the study of the behavior of such students, in addition to presenting a relevant contribution to institutional assessments, thus demonstrating an alternative path for such improvements in the quality of higher education in relation to e-learning. Thus, it is the duty of the educational institution to offer resources that are pleasing to the student and that make him/her satisfied with its structure. Distance Education in Amazonas: In the State of Amazonas, as well as in Brazil, the e-learning offers not only practicality and flexibility, but also allows low-income people to study even if they are in more distant regions. The e-learning modality has conquered great space in Amazonas. In a survey conducted by Andrade et al. (2020), 87.5% of students study in private institutions. This significant is a reflection of the movement of the mercantilization of education that has been intensifying in recent years and occupying more and more spaces, especially in the interior of the State, where it is not common a good physical structure to receive public and private institutions and higher education. In addition, e- learning offers attractions such as: more accessible value, flexibility and the promise of a diploma identical to that offered by face-to-face courses (ANDRADE et al., 2020). This study provides a comparison between the city of Manaus and the city of Maués, both located in Amazonas, in relation to distance learning, difficulties and resources that both offer. The e-learning in the State of Amazonas has had an increase in the last years due to the improvement of technology with the advent of smartphones and the more stable access to the Internet that has made possible new means of use of Distance Education. Another measure adopted that favored the EaD in the State was the publication in the Official Gazette - DOU by the Ministry of Education - MEC, where Ordinance No. 1,428, establishes that the courses of graduation in person, can offer up to 40% (forty percent) discount in classes at distance, replacing the previous limit that was 20% (twenty percent) (BRAZIL, 2018). Distance Education Centre of the Federal University of Amazonas: The Center for Distance Education, is a supplementary accredited body that has been working since 2006 at the Federal University of Amazonas for continuing education, undergraduate and graduate courses in the distance learning modality offered in some municipalities in the interior and capital of the State of Amazonas, Roraima and Acre in which the form of entry is through a formal vestibular. The center offers in virtual learning environments the courses of Public Administration, Visual Arts, Biology, Agricultural Sciences and Physical Education (undergraduate) and Municipal Management, Public Management, Health Management, Teaching Philosophy, Media in Education and Mathematics (postgraduate) where the face-to-face meetings are weekly or biweekly. The e-learning model applied at the Federal University of Amazonas aims to change the student's attitude towards his activities, which in fact needs to exercise his autonomy, where the "virtual spaces" facilitate the practice of learning. The municipalities in the State of Amazonas, where the educational center offers its courses, are called Polo (coordinated by a teacher to support the activities). Each Polo receives a kit consisting of 30 (thirty) computers, a printer, a wireless router and an antenna and uses the virtual environment called Virtual Activities Environment for the classes. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three types of research were addressed for this case study in order to identify its emerging aspects in relation to the 37015 International Journal of Development Research, Vol. 10, Issue, 06, pp, 37013-37019, June, 2020 Distance Learning method and a material for doing opinion research. Bibliographical Research, which is based on scientific studies, will be used for the construction of knowledge and for the development of research that it will address: E-learning, Higher Education, Center for Distance Education and the State of Amazonas. Documental Research will be used through non-scientific information, with data taken from public agencies and journalistic columns, but with data referring to the subject addressed. In the quantitative research will be applied the multiple choice questionnaire that will contain 14 closed questions, with the purpose of evaluating the knowledge of students of Higher Education about the e-learning. The material to be used in the quantitative research will be Google Forms in the creation of questionnaires and in the formulation of graphs. Google Forms is a free service for creating online forms. Besides being a free tool, it is compatible with any browser and operating system. When designing the questions asked in the survey, we try to investigate more about the subject matter and the effects it has on people. The research tool will be applied in higher education universities and after the data collection, the information will be analyzed and put into graphs to identify the percentage of satisfaction with the e-learning. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS This work is characterized by quantitative research, since the author presents through graphs the statistical results of his analyses. The research instrument used was a questionnaire with 14 (Fourteen) closed questions, directed to students of the Universities of Higher Education of the State of Amazonas in order to collect data about the satisfaction of distance learning. The questionnaire (Attachment A) was applied to students electronically by the Google application known as Google Forms, which assists in creating online forms and graphs with the survey results. In the elaboration of the questionnaire questions, we tried to analyze the application of e-learning in university education in the State of Amazonas and the opinions of its users. The sample corresponded to 114 (one hundred and fourteen) university students from the State of Amazonas who have already studied or are studying using the e-learning method, corresponding to almost 100% of the sample, as shown in Figure 1 and 2. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 1. Introducing students' knowledge to Distance Learning Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 2. Displays the percentage of students who have taken some type of e-learning course The first graph indicates that 99.1% of those interviewed said they knew the e-learning, and less than 0.9% were unaware of this type of education, while the second graph indicates that 83.3% of the sample had already taken some type of course in this modality and 16.7% had not. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 3. Presents the student's geographical location Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 4. Presents the type of Institution in which the student studied Distance Learning In graph 3, it is understood that a large part of the participants, about 88.6% are students from the capital, and only 11.4% are students from the interior of the State (graph 3). While Graph 4 shows that the majority of the participants belong to Private Institutions, about 91.2% and only 8.8% are from Public Intuitions. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 5. Displays the quality of the platform used by students in E-learning Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 6. Shows the time the student tends to study their Distance Education course 37016 Amarildo Marinho de Vasconcelos Júnior et al., Analysis of the application of distance education in university education in the state of amazonas In Figure 3, we saw Graph 5 that points out the quality of the e-learning platform, where 43% of the interviewees believe to be 43% Median, 42,1% Good and 14,9% Bad. While Graph 6 indicates that students tend to study their Distance Learning course more at night, being about 72,8% at night, 14% in the morning, 13,2% in the afternoon. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 7. Displays the type of electronic equipment used in EaD studies Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 8. Displays the type of methodology used in e-learning In Figure 4, the question referred to the platform used to watch e-learning, where 68.4% of the sample pointed to the Computer as a form of access and 30.7% to the smartphone. The Tablet did not receive any score. About the methodology used, Graph 8, points out that 76.3% of students use the Virtual Environment and 23.7% the Virtual Presence. Graph 7, shows that even with the popularization of the cell phone, most of the people who study e-learning attend the classes in the computer and only a quarter of the interviewed students make the Distance learning by the Virtual Presential method. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 9. Shows whether the student has support in answering questions about the e-learning course Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 10. Displays the curricular weight of e-learning In Figure 5, Graph 9, where the interviewees indicate whether there is support for clearing doubts from the e-learning course, where 81,6% of the students confirmed that they have support and 18,4% do not have this service. Graph 10 shows if the students consider the e-learning with the same curricular weight as the face-to-face course, where 52,6% consider the modality with the same level of 47,4% the students do not consider. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 11. Presents the practicality of the e-learning course. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 12. Shows the best advantage over e-learning In Figure 6, Graph 11, 55,3% of those interviewed believe that e-learning is more practical than face-to-face courses and 44.7% do not. As for graph 12, the students indicate that the Time factor is the best advantage of e-learning, corresponding to 48.2% of the sample, 20.2% point to Mobility, 16.7% accuse the Cost and 14.9% of the students indicate the Versatility. In Figure 7 the chart points out the biggest disadvantage of e-learning courses, 55.3% of the interviewees consider the Lack of Internet, and 44.7% of the students consider the Loss of deadlines. According to reports described by some students, it occurs many times the non-receipt of the 37017 International Journal of Development Research, Vol. 10, Issue, 06, pp, 37013-37019, June, 2020 e-mail informing about the activities and due to this condition, they end up losing the deadline for the delivery of the exercises. Graph 14 asked if the proposed e-learning course was satisfactory, where 74.6% of the interviewees answered yes and 25.4% of the students did not. Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 13. Presents the great disadvantage in relation to the e- learning Source: Authors, (2020). Graph 14. Presents the satisfaction of e-learning The distance learning model breaks paradigms in relation to the way it is taught. In the course of the survey, it is notorious that students from different locations share similar problems with each other. Despite these difficulties, they do not fail to continue their studies. However, the efficacy of e-learning can be proved more and more by the growth of courses offered, new proposals from the Government and researches with students of this modality such as this proposal of analysis of application of distance education in university education in the State of Amazonas. Conclusion As seen in the development, the questionnaire was executed in a part of the territory of the state of Amazonas in the municipalities of Manaus and Maués, the distance learning studies were observed only in private institutions and in the Distance Learning Center, which gave an estimate of how the online studies are being in these regions bringing how the students are seeing this type of method today. According to the results, distance learning has become known and studied in higher education, students already have some knowledge on the subject, and 83,3% of those interviewed have already done and criticized for its improvement, with the results, it was found that among its many advantages in the execution of teaching, time with 48,2% is considered the main one, which is more used at night, tends to be more widely used in computers even if the advent of smartphones and tablets has already reached the state. Distance learning still has much to improve in the region, especially considering the modernization that is taking place in the state, considering factors such as mobility, cost, and time. There are those who do not find the study at such a useful distance or in such a degree of relevance as the face-to-face study, besides the fact that the method has certain flaws, such as the lack of internet that depending on the location can be caused by several factors, from financial issues to the lack of energy, to the loss of time due to distraction, forgetfulness or lack of communication of the students with the institution that provides the e-learning. However, with recent events, e-learning has become the best way to maintain studies in the midst of this time of crisis. Acknowledgments To my family, where my emotional support comes from, my character formation and to whom I owe a lot. To my parents (Maria Wiliam and Raimundo) who encouraged my study; to my husband (Estaife) - who helped me for so many dawns to help me with the reading of books, magazines and scientific articles; my brothers and sisters - Ray Bruno, Neo Antônio, Liliane, Lidiane and Tanizes - those where I rest my laughter and conversations thrown away; my nephews and nieces - Maike Henrique, Beatriz, João, Vinicius, Bianca, Maria Izabel, Mirela, Luna Vitória, Hazaff, Hadassa and Alicia - my great supporters in this journey of great challenges. To all who directly or indirectly participated in this sublime moment of my life. Words will always be limited to describe the gratitude I feel. I sincerely thank my father Amarildo Marinho, from whom I inherited my name and character, my mother Antônia Elzanira, who morally educated me, and my brother Giuliano da Silva for all the emotional support to do this work. I thank the institution Centro Universitario Fametro for the preparation and support in the project and Professor Bruno for the guidance. REFERENCES ADERSON, Terry; WILEY, David. Online Distance Education - building a Research Agenda. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283584058_Ed ucacao_a_distancia_online_construindo_uma_agenda_de_ pesquisa>. Access on: 17 March 2020. AMORIM, Maria Fasura de. The importance of distance learning in Professional Education. Available at: <http://portalrevistas.ucb.br/index.php/raead/article/viewF ile/3218/2232>. ALVES, Lucinéia. Distance Education: concepts and history in Brazil and the world. Available at: <http://www.abed.org. br/revistacientifica/Revista_PDF_Doc/2011/Artigo_07.pdf >. BRAZIL. Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education: Law nº 9.394/96 - 24 of dec.1996. It establishes the guidelines and bases of national education. Brasília, 1998. Available at: http://portal.mec.gov.br/seesp/arquivos/ pdf/lei9394 _ldbn1.pdf> Access on: 16 March 2020. BRAZIL, Decree No. 9.057, May 25, 2017. Regulates Art. 80 of Law No. 9.394, of December 20, 1996, which establishes the guidelines and bases of national education. Available at: < http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2015- 2018/2017/Decreto/D9057.htm#art24>. Access on: 20 April 2020. Center for Distance Education - CED. Available at: <http://ced.ufam.edu.br/ >. Access on: 18 March 2020. 37018 Amarildo Marinho de Vasconcelos Júnior et al., Analysis of the application of distance education in university education in the state of amazonas Distance Education - Ead: An Analysis of its Advantages and Challenges in the Perception of Mossoroans. Available at: https://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1234567 89/136159/102_00085.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y >. Access on: March 22, 2020. INEP. Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira. Census of Higher Education. Available at: <http://portal.inep.gov.br/censo-da-educacao- superior>. Access on: 18 March 2020 MARCELL, Rodiney. "Learning in ODL"; Brasil Escola. Available at: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/ educacao/ aprendizagem-ead.htm. Access on April 3, 2020. MEC. Ministry of Education. Available at: <http://portal.mec.gov.br/ultimas-noticias/212-educacao- superior-1690610854/49321-mec-atualiza-legislacao-que- regulamenta-educacao-a-distancia-no-pais>.Accessed May 15, 2020. PEREIRA, Maria de Fátima Rodrigues; MORAES, Raquel de Almeida; TERUYA, Teresa Kazuko. (Orgs) Distance Education (EaD): critical and practical reflections. Uberlândia: NavegandoPublações, 2017. Available at: <https://www.ead.unb.br/arquivos/livros/ead_reflexoes_cr itica_praticas.pdf >. Access on: March 31, 2020. Pino, Adriana Soeiro. Distance Education: Pedagogical Proposals and Trends in Undergraduate Courses. Available at: <https://bibliotecatede.uninove.br/ bitstream/tede/1708/2/Adriana%20Soeiro%20Pino.pdf >. Access on: May 15, 2020. RIGHETTI, Sabine. In the darkness of the forest, the image of the teacher A technological solution for high school in the Amazonian landlocked communities. Available at: <https://repositorio.enap.gov.br/bitstream/1/3976/1/Na%2 0escurid%C3%A3o%20da%20floresta%20a%20imagem %20do%20professor-AM.pdf >. Access: 29 April 2020. SHITSUKA, Ricardo. An action-research in a distance learning subject in a bachelor's degree course in information systems. Available at: <https://ojs.ccsa.ufrn.br/index.php?journal=rcc&page=arti cle&op=view&path%5B%5D=1116>. SOUZA, Joyce Bezerra de. Distance education for youth and adult education: a proposal for social insertion. Available at: <https://www.fundaj.gov.br/images/stories/epepe/ V_EPEPE/EIXO_10/JoyceBezerradeSouza-CO10.pdf>. ******* 37019 International Journal of Development Research, Vol. 10, Issue, 06, pp, 37013-37019, June, 2020 
work_yeuudcrbq5g6jobkxuzwe5euya	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_yhxpj66bubgwpfidtm6npyg55q	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... Profile Dashboard Logout Login Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Archive Editorial Board Contact Indexing Conferences Indexes and Platforms Scopus Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) Anadolu University © Contact   ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri   Anadolu University © Contact ULAKBİM Dergi Sistemleri 
work_yjhfvwllevd6jes25m2dmfyyze	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_ykz5ij3sgzgv7d4h4ra5uivlmm	----	carter96.PDF In: Open Learning, February 1996 (pp 31 - 40) Do media influence learning? Revisiting the debate in the context of distance education by V. Carter In this article Vicki Carter, Instructional Programmer at The Pennsylvania State University, reviews the academic literature of distance education which has considered, whether the media and technologies of education affect the learning which takes place. She finds that the conventional answer, especially from a North American perspective, is in the negative, despite a minority who assert the contrary. While the author argues in conclusion for the second of these positions, she suggests that the frames of reference used by distance education have been too narrow, and that valuable insights can be found in the fields of neurology and mass communications, as well as in feminist approaches to the situated nature of knowledge. For over a decade there has been an ongoing debate about whether or not media do, might, or ever will influence learning. Found for the most part in the research and publications associated with educational technologies and instructional systems, two main protagonists in this recurring discussion have been R.E. Clark and R.B. Kozma. Clark's analogy of media as vehicles delivering groceries (i.e. instructional methods)but having no influence on nutrition (i.e. learning) has often been referenced in distance education literature. The overriding position of distance educators towards this debate has favoured Clark's 'mere vehicle' view toward media influence on learning. Moore (1993), in his call for greater attention to course design, instructional development, and student learning styles, pointed out that the media of communication have received considerable scrutiny both within and without the field. However, this attention has not been directed toward learning influence, but instead toward media's efficiencies and effectiveness associated with factors such as time, cost, and availability (Holmberg 1981). Do media merely deliver content, or are they capable of influencing learning? After being relatively quiescent for the past few years, this controversy has recently returned to the forefront. While familiar dialogues are continuing, new and different perspectives are also surfacing. Once more these issues are being argued for the most part within the venue of instructional systems (for example, see the issue of Educational Technology Research and Development, 1994, Volume 42, Number 2). The ramifications and complexities involved in this debate, however, are significant and meaningful for distance and adult educators. Distance educators in particular often find themselves located in technology-intensive situations, involved in the planning, design, or facilitation of courses employing a variety of media. In order to consolidate the thinking and highlight various elements associated with media influence on learning, this paper will first review the opposing outlooks of Clark and Kozma. Second, the recent deliberations of Jonassen, Campbell, and Davidson will be introduced. Next, the positioning of distance education research with regard to this topic will be summarised, and finally additional perspectives associated with learning influence of educational technologies will be presented. The counterpoint of Clark and Kozma R.E. Clark (1982; 1983; 1985; 1991; 1994) has declared that educational technologies and media _________ p 31 deliver content but have no influence on learning. As early as 1982, Clark asserted the learning- via-media question was a 'dead issue' but was perpetually resuscitated even 'in the face of overwhelming evidence that the generic question' had no validity (p.60). Since the early 1980s Clark has persevered in his exploration and evaluation of research and data related to this question. In 1994 his stance was a definitive proclamation that media will never influence learning. Clark has used his own research as well as data from other studies to support his position that economies of cost and speed, but not learning, resulted from different delivery technologies (Clark 1994; Lumsdaine 1963). As Schramm (1977) explained, methodology and content provided via a medium, not the category or type of medium, were the variables contributing to learning. According to Mielke (1968) and Clark (1994), in any well-designed comparison studies which contrast a variety of media treatments, no substantial differences in learning outcomes should be expected. In Clark's view this 'negative' research - i.e., finding no apparent differences when dissimilar media were compared in learning situations - has been largely ignored. It has also been Clark's standpoint that too often delivery technologies were muddled with instructional technologies and methodologies, thereby confounding the outcomes of comparison studies. According to Clark's updated explanation of his position in 1994, media or delivery technologies provided access to instructional methods and strategies in a timely and productive manner, while instructional design technologies made it 'possible to influence student achievement' (p.23). For educators who believe they have found evidence that a specific medium must be present to cause learning, Clark has suggested a supplemental question. His challenge was for researchers to determine if there were 'other media or another set of media attributes that would yield similar learning gains' (1994, p.22). This 'replaceability' issue was of critical importance to Clark's argument against media being causal in learning. His claim was that if one treatment could be replaced by another and yet achieve similar results, 'the cause of the results [was] in some shared (and uncontrolled) properties of both treatments' (1994, p.22). Clark has stated 'any necessary teaching method can be delivered to students by many media or a variety of mixtures of media attributes - with similar learning results'. Opposing viewpoints, due largely to 'invalid but intuitively appealing beliefs,' have been and will continue to be disproved by extant studies and adequate ongoing research. Moreover Clark has maintained that in neglecting to differentiate between methods and media, educators experienced confounding problems and generated waste while continuing to explore avenues of research he described as 'triumphs of enthusiasm over substantive examination of structural processes in learning and instruction' (1994, p.27). On the other hand, Kozma (1991; 1994) has preferred to regard method and media as integral and connected, believing that learning consists of relationships among cognitive, social, and affective processes as well as multiple aspects of the environment. Conceding that studies comparing the effects of media have been inconclusive and flawed, Kozma (1994) has proposed educators involved with media look instead toward the future and ask if an influential relationship between learning and media will exist. Kozma (1994) spoke of a requisite immediacy to explore, even forge, a critical connection between media and learning. Part of this urgency was due to the current ubiquity of interactive delivery technologies and the imminence of other forms of delivery. For example, the majority of Americans will soon be able to access voluminous multimedia databases through interactive video, not only in schools and businesses as some of the population have already been doing, but also direct to personal residences (Stix 1993). In addition to the exigencies being generated by technological innovation, Kozma (1994) construed learning as occurring in harmony with, and because of, a particular combination of methods, technologies, and initiatives undertaken by a learner within an existing environment. In terms of researching potential connections between media and learning, Kozma described systemic methods and augmented analysis techniques in order to better define and judge media effects on learning. In his argument Kozma has maintained that a refraining of the media / learning question was necessary, saying foundational assumptions relating to educational technology were being re-examined. Rather than asking 'do media influence learning' Kozma has offered the following question instead: 'in what ways can we use the capabilities of media to influence learning for particular students, tasks, and situations' (p.1994, p.18)? ________________ p 32 Restructuring: Learning with media Jonassen, Campbell, and Davidson (1994) have responded to the exchange of views described above by seeking to restructure it in a holistic fashion. Referring to recent and sweeping changes in the science of learning psychology brought about through advancements in cognitivism and constructionism, these researchers contend that Clark, Kozma, and others have been debating the wrong issue. Clark's hypothesis that learning was located in methods directing the process of learning was viewed by this trio as narrow and out-of-step with contemporary thought. And in their view Kozma, while acknowledging the place of context in learning, has failed to consider the functions and contributions of media - as opposed to via media - within learning contexts. Rather than focus on instruction or media, Jonassen et al. have postulated that researchers and practitioners consider instead the attributes of the human being involved in a mediated learning process, a process they illustrated as being surrounded by a fusion of conveyances, teachers, instructional design, the environment, the learning context, and the social context. Within this process, learning was contingent upon context and situation. Media and technologies were part of this context, not just deliverers of context and content. While both agreeing and disagreeing with different aspects of Clark and Kozma's positions, Jonassen et al, restructured previous discussions by presenting alternative points of view at both a macro and micro level. At the macro level they contended that learning was situationally dependent and context based, and that the learning environment 'affects the experiences of the learner and therefore defines the content of the knowledge constructed' (1994, p.31). The macro approach was substantiated by visiting the new fashioned theories of phenomenology, constructionism, quantum mechanics, and chaos. At this macro level, contemporary thinkers viewing learning processes have seen cognition as distributed among learners and their multi- strata environments. Media constituted a part of this learning context. The result, as paraphrased by Jonassen et al. was that 'cognition migrates outward into the surround. Problems, relevance, and meaning migrate inward' (p.33). Technologies assisted in the construction of learning and researchers and practitioners must explore the effects of cognition with media and technology and not continue to investigate the results of technology. At the micro layer Jonassen et al. contemplated the human processing system, conceptualising this system as having both strengths and weaknesses in its attempts to construct knowledge. In the deliberations of this team, design was seen as 'a matter of supporting and utilizing the best the human information processing system has to offer in an effort to capitalize on its inherent strengths and minimize its weaknesses' (1994, p.32). In other words, media were regarded as tools, but as tools which enabled cognitive resources. Appropriate selection and inclusion of educational technology media nurtured and ameliorated cognitive processing. Gibson's (1979) 'affordances' as means of thinking about mediated learning was an important concept cited by Jonassen et al. (1994). Environmental affordances were, in ecological terms, what was offered to or furnished to an animal or human being. Technology supplied a plentiful collection of manageable and exploitable attributes or affordances. The mediation sequence influencing learning and achievement was accomplished by the progression of 'media afford attributes, which afford cognitive learning activities which afford thinking which affords learning' (Jonassen et al. 1994, p.37). Jonassen et al. considered media not solely as vehicles delivering messages or providing knowledge, but as environments functioning as affordances which furnished, enhanced, and provided communication. Media were facilitators aiding in the construction of knowledge and were deemed part of an inclusive design, i.e., 'as intellectual partners in the knowledge construction process' (p.38). Distance education's perspective on media influence on learning Where in this debate is the field of distance education situated? Most of the literature reviewed for this paper would indicate distance education has accepted, for the most part, the premises of Clark. And for distance educators, the issues of media influence on learning have been overshadowed by the field's proprietary quarrels over whether or not mediated education and distance education were equivalent in quality and effectiveness to traditional, face-to-face, proximate classroom education. Therefore when studies involving media were undertaken, comparisons were often between conventional classroom instruction and instruction at a distance rather than between different media or media attributes (Verduin and Clark 1991). ____________ p 33 Distance education literature has also been interested in a debate similar to the one involving Clark and Kozma. There has been another concurrent and ongoing give-and-take among Clark and other researchers, especially Kulik and Kulik. These studies have tended to highlight achievement efficiencies gained by using educational technologies. Several of the studies, among them Kulik, Bangert, and Williams (1983) and Kulik, Kulik, and Bangert-Drowns (1985), purported to compare a variety of mediated versus traditional instructional formats and found mediated instruction more effective. Not surprisingly, Clark (1985) has claimed these studies also contained a large amount of confounding evidence, and furthermore that the sizes of the effects were insignificant. In their work, Verduin and Clark (1991) remarked upon a comprehensive collection of media comparison studies. Primarily they did so to examine the value and effectiveness of mediated instruction, and not to examine media influence on learning. The comparisons introduced by Verduin and Clark supported equivalence of effectiveness between traditional and mediated instruction. Stone's (1990) discussion of non-interactive television's effectiveness was again directly concerned with the legitimacy of the distant versus the traditional classroom. Stone referred to the debate over media influence as less germane than that of promoting faculty ownership and participation in distance education. Bok (1985) reported on computer-assisted instruction, indicating learning improvements disappeared when both preparation time and instructor were the same for an experimental and a conventional class. Lewis commented on the unfinished theory-building occurring in adult learning, an activity necessitating additional evaluation 'before the increased efficacy of computers can be touted' (1989, p.616). For the most part when media and learning questions were asked, further explorations were not encouraged. Schramm reproached educational researchers for posing 'relatively useless questions about the media of instruction' (1977, p.14), the time wasted on researching whether or not media differed in their information conveying capacities, and unrealistic expectations for uncovering any straightforward means for selecting educational media. Reiser and Gagne (1983) indicated media transmission of information did not vary in any meaningful way. Winn (cited in Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena 1994) considered delivery techniques involved in providing information to have minimal effect on how content was understood. Duning (1987), describing the spectrum of non-print delivery modes, stated modes or combinations of modes altered both distance and traditional education, teaching, and learning, but then went on to describe these modes as vehicles. After examining television instruction, Whittington concluded that as a medium this technology transmitted communication and had 'no intrinsic effect, for good or ill, on student achievement' (1987, p.55). Two other studies addressed media and learning but were similarly constrained in outlook. In a rare technologically-oriented article within the field of adult education, Kizzier and Lavin (1993) placed media squarely in the middle of their research agenda, but cited Clark's opinion that mediated instructional strategies did not influence the effectiveness of instruction. Gunawardena (1992), although having both described and illustrated a learner-centred model similar to Jonassen et al. (1994), viewed each component (instructor, media, content, etc.) as separate entities. These entities each affected the learner but were not only disconnected from each other but also existed separately from any social and environmental context. Clark and Angert (1981) found designers often did not select media on a systematic or model- driven basis, leading them to postulate that designers were absorbed in the logistics of technology rather than design considerations. Wagner (1990) described a model of instructional design developed by Dick and Carey. This model was a 10-step prescriptive approach starting with goal determination and ending with a summative evaluation. In the model, selection of media occurred in the seventh step, a placement which would indicate minimal consideration of media as causal in learning or as a part of the learning context. In a definitional piece on interaction, Wagner questioned why educators placed 'limits on their own horizons' by continuing to perpetuate the view that technologically-mediated instruction substituted for 'the real thing' (1994, p.8). Wagner followed those moderately progressive thoughts, however, by stating well- designed instruction was 'more likely to bring about a desired change in human learning and performance than [was] technology, regardless of the types of technology used' (pp.8-9). Many of the foregoing examples indicated non-unexpected concerns with transmission or delivery ___________ p 34 of content. Most of the literature found media did not influence learning and discouraged further inquiry on the topic. As representative of the viewpoints expressed by distance education theorists, this body of literature did not describe or support, as Jonassen et al. suggested, an enlightened learner-centred approach nor did it consider media to be embedded within a learning context. Although the preponderance of thought in distance education was in accord with Clark, there were a few divergent thinkers. For example when Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena (1994) discussed the addition of learner-interface to the learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner- learner interactions previously defined by Moore (1989), they expressed disbelief that the efficacy of the communication provided by technology in the learning environment would be unaffected by the media employed. Hillman et al. stated unequivocally 'evidence suggests that learner-interface interaction does affect learning' (1994, p.33). Granger pointed out there was 'as yet no body of literature making controlled comparisons of learning effectiveness achieved through different configuration of media' (1990, p.168). Granger's perspective on distance education emphasised contextual linkages in terms of understanding and strengthening of those linkages. One of the critical questions for Granger was how distance educators went about designing courses 'which render themselves amenable to individuation contextually and pedagogically' and how these designs could be accomplished 'in ways that take advantage of new learning technologies' (p.168). Granger believed, as Jonassen et al. also believed, in focusing on the individual learner situated within a particular learning context. As the above citations signify, distance education research and literature does contain some discussion of media influence on learning. A few of these references indicated distance educators have begun to look at the issue from alternative perspectives. Nevertheless, the standpoint of distance educators was best summarised by Verduin and Clark’s (1991) assertion that the field would agree there was no difference in the effectiveness of different media treatments, stating it would seem 'inevitable that Clark's view will be the more widely accepted one as time goes by' (p.96). The logical continuation of that perspective, and in consideration of the overwhelming basis for this in the documents reviewed, most distance educators did not believe that media technologies influenced learning while much of the literature in the field neither addressed nor considered this aspect of distance education to be especially important, The prevailing point of view was that the media comparison studies already completed have freed distance educators to concentrate on other arenas, and distance education research had 'moved to other areas of study' (Threlkeld and Brzoska 1994, p.46). Widening the lens: additional dimensions In addition to the Clark and Kozma debate and the critique of Jonassen et al. what other perspectives serve to develop enquiry into this topic and bring to distance education an awareness of its criticality? Lirt4ng the area of neurological research and mass communications, Simpson (1994) disagreed with Clark's claim that it was content, not media, influencing learning. Simpson asserted the very existence of content was dependent on media because without media, content 'could not be represented or communicated' (1994, p.75). Simpson's study as well as other theories of communication found a likelihood that permanent biochemical organisation of neural groups in the brain facilitated critical thinking and creativity. Acts of writing, and it follows acts of interaction with technological media also, may actually alter the brain's biochemical structure thereby affecting short- and long-term learning. In addition, studies of television by Solomon (1984) and Locafis, Charuhas, and Banvard (1989) produced evidence that passive media, such as television, were less likely to cause these biochemical changes. Because of the passive attributes of some media, the brain’s natural learning processes were restricted. Several other research projects indicated the more interactive the media were, the more probability that leaming would occur due to the active environment being provided, or in other words an environment able to be manipulated. Simpson concluded interactive technologies combined symbolic representations into a form of symbolic language resembling the functioning of the brain. He felt neurological evidence should be considered when studying media influence on learning and there 'should be no artificial separation of content and medium when it appears ... the two are interrelated' (1994, p.80). Norton, writing on computer technology in education, described the computer as metaphor, dis- ___________ p 35 course, and method. These three different concepts of media were far from a view of educational technologies as mere vehicles. Media, in this case computers, were seen as metaphors for symbol systems. Symbol systems assumed a significant role in constructing knowledge, and different systems varied as to the kinds of awareness and understanding they made possible (1992a). In terms of discourse, computers and components such as software, databases, hardware, and other attributes mediated forms of meaning by 'delimiting the dynamic between collective knowledge and individual thought' (1992b, p.39). As media exposed, described, and circumscribed individual and collective views of the world they altered habits, abilities to enquire, and the very means of enquiry. Computers as discourse, according to Norton, were different forms offering 'alternative sets of possibilities for knowing' (1992b, p.41). Instead of separating method and delivery, Norton ('L992c) saw computers as method. In her discussion of computers as method, Norton presented four 'animating ideas' including problem-centred (versus learner-centred or instructor-directed) approaches, a goal of structure and process which viewed content as the vehicle, teaching disciplines actively as a way to think about problems, and carefully selecting discourse in instructional settings by basing discourse choices on relevance. A final animating idea illustrated the importance of bringing these constructs together, because 'any technology that is used to structure, process, and communicate knowledge must be understood as a discourse form with the potential to affect what we know and how we know it (1992c, p.43). Other experts and media critics have considered the significance of media and epistemology saying, for example, 'definitions of truth are derived, at least in part, from the character of the media of communication through which information is conveyed' (Postman 1985, p. 17). In examining theories of knowledge historically, different means of communication have been valued differently while various forms of media have required accommodations in terms of learning and ways of knowing. And so, because humans 'learn what they do,' often the content of instruction was the least important element of learning. Media provide frameworks for information; they have formed and moulded the culture of learning. Growth happens not only from the inside out but also from the outside in, and when ideas and information are mediated the media employed related formidably to how an idea, or the truth of an idea, was perceived (Bruner 1966; Dewey 1963; Postman 1985). Some authors saw media, like books, as 'texts' which must therefore be regarded as replete with forms of power, contradictions, political structures, and sanctioned, legitimate, official knowledge. As such these texts presented possibilities for 'reading' in other meanings and values, transforming the intentions and practices of pedagogy and andragogy. Media necessarily involved struggles for meaning; they were the same as educational textbooks in that they did not simply and transparently convey knowledge and information. Instead media engendered examination ideologically in terms of the construction o f consciousness and subjectivity (Apple 1993; Fiske 1986). Outside of the arenas of the qualitative, empirical, and linear are other forms of research and enquiry. Clark's (1994) assertion that a belief that media do influence learning resulted from overly enthusiastic intuition was in direct opposition to some feminist theories, for example, which value different ways of knowing, questioning and researching. Clark's statement was a clear example of devaluing and de-privileging certain categories of theory-building. In higher education, rational, analytical, empirical, positivistic research projects are usually embraced; subjective, intuitive, and sometimes qualitative ways of knowing are often not as valued (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule 1986). For example, feminist theorists, some in science (specifically genetics) have encouraged interactionist and dynamic objectivist approaches to research, seeking to examine if and how knowers and phenomena related to each other and were intricately inter-dependent (Keller 1984; Longino 1993). In his critical approach to education, Giroux (1992) has encouraged educators to consider the process of creating symbolic representations because this process specifically incorporated a need for textual, visual, and other representational analyses within a pedagogical structure. As previously described, Simpson and Norton also were engaged with symbolic representation and language. According to Giroux, the important question was how learners 'engage such representations in the practice of comprehension and significance' (1992, p.247). Writing specifically about technology, Wajcman believed technology was a 'form of ____________ p 36 knowledge' which shaped a 'set of human activities' (1991, pp.14-15) related not only to ways of knowing but also to ways of doing. Hawkridge (1991), another author writing on technology in education, helped substantiate a need to embrace alternative means of enquiry by describing two key values held by educational designers. Hawkridge wrote that designers ascribed importance to 'insistence upon knowledge derived from ,rational' or theoretical sources rather than practice or intuition, and upon dividing teaching into design and execution phases' (p.107). These two values, Hawkridge admonished, tended to hide goals of managing or controlling others; they also sustained and privileged traditional forms of research and enquiry. Clark (1994) described both media and method as technologies. Simon (1992) viewed school itself as a political-cultural technology. As part of his text on pedagogy as a form of cultural politics, and teachers as cultural workers, Simon reflected on technology. He commented that a common way to think of technology was as a vehicle or a means to an end. However, as education incorporated technologies 'such modes become the frames within which a particular ordering of the real [was] required and particular forms of productive work [were] structured and governed' (p.42). As Simon explained, because all technologies or media produced, created, regulated, and organised, they could not be viewed simply as means, or as Clark has said 'mere vehicles'. Chaos theory supports alternative viewpoints such as Simon’s and feminist theorists. Non-linear feedback and open boundaries link systems 'with almost unimaginable complexity' (Briggs and Peat 1989, p.154) to the surround. Working with non-linear models, designers do not attempt to control through quantification and mastery of causality, but rather to build on 'intuition about how a system works and how to 'interact with it more harmoniously' (p. 1 75). Believing intuition was the key to being able to understand and make changes to very complex systems, Senge (cited in Briggs and Peat 1989) nonetheless cautioned that modelling and intuition often generated discouragement. Because modelling, insight, and intuitive processes were essentially dynamic and infinite, researchers and practitioners hoping for or assuming eventual reductionist solutions accommodating mechanical changes tended not to persevere in the use of these processes. As other thinkers within the field of distance education confronted these topics they illuminated a need for further interrogatory activity. Edwards concluded that current developments in society, distance education, and media literacy called for revisiting how 'to engage the specific desires of learners which are cultivated through the use of those media' (1994, p.16). Walker (1993) expressed concern with distance educations narrow perspective on the significance of context, stating one outcome of the influence of instructional design and educational psychology was separations. Disconnecting curriculum, pedagogy, production, delivery, course development, and research were 'not simply abstract or distant from the action' and these actions had 'serious consequences for students' (p.23). Walker felt media were not only contextual but a requisite ingredient of content. Curriculum and education were, as well, always and necessarily mediated and educators themselves were located inside the media. Evans and Nation believed that 'pedagogy and technology are - and always have been - fundamental and inseparable elements of education' (1993, p.198). On a simplistic level educational technologies were tools, but more importantly they were composed of knowledge, values, and practices which contributed to both development and use of those tools. Conclusion This brief synopsis has presented only the surface of an extremely complex and controversial issue. In his recent deliberations concerning media influence over learning, Clark (1994) has declared media will never influence learning. Despite this clearly inarguable stance, Clark's findings, reasoning, and assumptions remain unresolved. Although Clark (1991) has self- described his viewpoint as unpopular, most citations in the distance education literature indicated his positioning was mainstream. Distance education, according to its base of literature, would regard Kozma's (1994) suggested initiative to forge a relationship between media and learning with considerable scepticism. Distance education as a field of study is clearly not resonating with the ideas of situational or contextual learning. The field has not as yet embraced even 'scientific' neurological evidence such as Simpson's findings let alone intuition or other non- _____________ p37 mainstream forms of enquiry. Distance education literature has limited representation of feminist theory, critical pedagogy, or postmodern critique. Evolution and effects of new forms of media were 'discussed but rarely critically analyzed in terms of broad social and political contexts' (Evans and Nation 1993, p.204). Distance educators are not unconcerned about individual learners, effective and empowering course designs, student readiness to learn, and other praiseworthy goals of pedagogy and andragogy; this concern is evident in the written and spoken words of distance educators. Nevertheless, today's research agendas in distance education can be viewed as limited and mired in the conventional. Non-traditional research techniques and methods have found minimal favour within the field and some experts have argued that issues and effects of technology have been over-emphasised to the detriment of other important research questions, Yet potentially negative effects of some educational technologies heavily in use today argue for proactive research initiatives on these topics in order to understand the issues and caveats involved in the potential for media influence on learning, be that influence positive or negative. Viewing alternative forms of research as complementary approaches to traditional studies remains largely untenable within educational research in general. Opening the question of media influence on learning in any form, let alone nontraditional methods of enquiry such as those mentioned above, is not yet present in mainstream distance education thought. The question of whether media influence learning, however, is neither trivial nor unimportant. Media are implicated in epistemology, ways of knowing and sense making, and a search for knowledge, Is it not incumbent upon educators, especially distance educators who are inevitably embroiled in the arrival and dispersement of new educational technologies, to be open to exploring and integrating a variety of ways of knowing? Such receptive acts are what distance educators already hope for and expect from colleagues who study, adopt, and integrate new ways of teaching and learning, i.e., teaching and learning from a distance. While continuing to concentrate on the various subsystems and components of distance education, must the field not also attempt to perceive education holistically? A danger in not further investigating the specific question of media influence on learning is for distance education to miss critical opportunities for enriching their understanding of the learning process and the social construct of reality. 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work_ymgg7ip5cravfcviiq3lgkflli	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 436 149 IR 019 774 AUTHOR Smaldino, Sharon; Simonson, Michael TITLE Instructional Design for Distance Education. PUB DATE 1999-02-00 NOTE 6p.; In: Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers Presented at the National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT] (21st, Houston, TX, February 10-14, 1999); see IR 019 753 PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Distance Education; Educational Environment; *Educational Planning; Educational Technology; Higher Education; *Instructional Design; Instructional Development; Instructional Improvement; Teaching Methods IDENTIFIERS Learning Environment ABSTRACT This paper discusses instructional design for distance education. The first section summarizes principles of instructional design systems, including the systematic process, considerations related to planning for instruction, and issues associated with the separation of the instructor and students. Issues to address in the planning process are discussed in the second section, including who the learners are, what the essential content is, and what teaching strategies and media to use. The third section addresses the learning environment, focusing on technology and resources. How to determine the quality of the instruction is considered in the final section, including reflection on the action or activity and examining the instructional event in terms of what worked. (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY S Zenor TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) N N cr- 0 INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION Sharon Smaldino University of Northern Iowa And Michael Simonson Nova Southeastern University U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Orrice or Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Instructional design is critical to distance education and planning for effective teaching is needed for learning to occur. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on the planning process. The instructional design process organizes and systematizes planning. It is essential to consider elements such as the content, the learner, the strategies for teaching, and the means for assessing the learning experience. By following through with this process, the instructor will find that teaching at a distance is an exciting and dynamic experience. One that will be welcomed by both the instructor and the learners. Analysis Learners Content Environment Design Strategies Media Se- Evaluation Learner Assessment Instruction Evaluation 11P- Adapted from Dick & Carey,The Systematic Design of Instructioo 1996 The instructional design process considers all aspects of the learning environment, following a well organized procedure that provides guidance to even the novice distance instructor. Viewing the instructional environment as a system, fosters a relationship among and between all the components of that system - the instructor, the learners, the material, and the technology. When this procedure is followed, attention is drawn to considering the components of the system. Especially when planning for distance education, the instructor must make decisions that will affect all aspects of the distant instructional system (Moore & Kearsley, 1996). Focusing on the distant system will help the instructor plan for effective learning experiences and the instructor will have a greater opportunity for developing a balanced distant learning experience. Principles of Instructional Design Systems Systematic Process With the goal of student learning in mind, an instructor can consider the components of a successful learning system (Dick & Carey, 1996). The interaction of the components - learner, content, method/material, and environment - provides results in creating the type of learning experience necessary for student learning. These components must interact both efficiently and effectively to safeguard quality learning experiences. There should be a balance among the components, none can take on a higher precedence over the others. This equal interaction of the system's components safeguards that the instruction will reach the goal of student learning. Planning for Instruction at a Distance The planning and organization for a distance education course is multifaceted and must occur well in advance of the scheduled instruction. To eliminate trial and error preparation, distance learning faculty should consider the following: Courses previously taught in traditional classrooms may need to be retooled. The focus of theinstruction shifts to more visual presentations, engaged learners, and careful timing of presentations of information. As traditional classroom materials that have been used during instruction are revised, considerations for illustrating key concepts. or topics, using table, figures and other visual representations need to be made. Activities that encourage interactivity need to be incorporated. Planning for interactivity helps learners. Not only does the instructor have to plan for interaction, but students may require training to participate actively in these types of distant interactive activities. Activities that allow for student group work need to be well planned. This helps construct a supportive social environment. For example, the instructor could present case studies related to theories and concepts covered in the course, then groups of students, perhaps in different sites, could discuss case study questions and reach consensus on a solution to the problem. Technical problems can occur, so alternatives for the class must be considered. If equipment fails,it is important for students to have projects and assignments independent of the instructor and alternative means of communication (e.g., fax, phone, e-mail). Prior discussion of the plan for technology failures with students will eliminate confusion and loss of productive class time (Herring and Smaldino, 1997). In addition to considerations related to planning for instruction, there is also a need to examine issues associated with the separation of instructor and some or all of the students. Time constraints for class delivery, lack 215 BEST Copy AVM A BLE direct contact, visualization of the materials, and planning for interaction requires a reconsideration of classroom dynamics. Often instructors use visual cues, such as student facial expressions, within the traditional classroom or conversations with students after class to decide quickly to adjust the instructional approach for a course. These cues give instructors insights that help them personalize the instruction for the students and insure a quality learning experience for all. Teaching at a distance eliminates many of these cues. Alternative approaches to on-going evaluation of instruction must be incorporated. If instructors ignore this area of preparation, and plan to teach as they always have, they will feel frustrated. Likewise, students may feel alienated and will begin to "tune out" the instructor. The instructional development process should be based on the unique characteristics and needs of students, meshed with the teaching style of the instructor and the course goals and content. Interaction should be maximized, visual potential of the medium should be explored, and time constraints addressed. Issues to Address in the Planning Process Who are the Learners? Taking the time to learn about the learners in the class yields a more productive learning environment. Along with the general information about the learners, an instructor needs to know more specific information about the students in the class. Factors such as whether the students are from urban or rural areas, age range, grade range, and educational background can have a marked impact on the levels of interaction among students. The instructor may have to plan more carefully for the types and levels of interaction to ensure a quality learning experience for all members of the class. The cultural, social, and economic backgrounds of the students is also important information for the instructor (Willis, 1994). Educational expectations of learners can also influence the quality of the learning experience. The attitude and interest students bring to the class will impact the learning environment. Thus, an instructor who is interested in creating a quality learning experience for all members of the class, with the ultimate goal of learning as the outcome, will be certain to account for these variables in planning. Students who are less social may find the distance education environment more comfortable for them. Students may become more expressive because of the perception of privacy and the informative nature of mediated communication. They may perceive the increased and varied interactivity and immediate feedback as a positive input to their interface with the learning experience. Additionally, students can benefit from a wider range of cognitive, linguistic, cultural, and affective styles they would not encounter in a self-contained classroom. The emphasis should not be on the inherent efficiency of the distance learning, but on the values and services offered to students through their exposure to others (Herring & Smaldino, 1997). Relationships can be fostered, values can be expanded, and a shared purposes or goals can be developed. To be effective, an understanding of the target audience is necessary. Willis (1994) suggested the following questions be asked prior to development of distance-learning environments: What are student ages, cultural backgrounds, interests and educational levels? What is the level of familiarity of the students with the instructional methods and technological delivery systems under consideration? How will the students apply the knowledge gained in the course, and how is it sequenced with other courses? Can the class be categorized into several broad subgroups, each with different characteristics? What is the Essential Content? The content of a course needs to reflect articulation within the curriculum. It is essential to examine the nature of the content, as well as the sequence of information. In any distance learning environment, one particular issue, that of time constraints, impacts other planning areas. Time constraints refer to the actual on-line time for delivery, which is often limited and non-flexible. The issue of limited time makes it necessary to closely examine the essential elements of the course content. The instructor needs to balance content with the limited time for learning activities and possibly remove extraneous, nonessential information. Generally speaking, the scope of the content for a course needs to be sufficient to ensure the entire learning experience will lead to the desired outcomes. Concepts, knowledge, and specific skills need to be identified (Dick & Carey, 1996). Supporting information or knowledge is important to the scope of content analysis. Follow-up and applications of the content should be considered. It is important to remember that no matter which media are used, the trend is to reduce the "amount" of information delivered and to increase the "interactive value" of the learning experience (Herring & Smaldino, 1997). Thus, the instructor may need to "throw out" content that had been included in a traditional presentation of a course. Or, the instructor may need to reconsider means of "delivery" of the information through alternative means, such as additional reading, booklets designed specifically for the tasks, links to special sites, etc. 216 3 bEbf COPY MALABLE . What Teaching Strategies and Media to Use? Successful teaching at a distance places the recipients' needs before organizational convenience and at the center of planning and decision making. The individual needs of the learners are brought to the forefront in education that uses electronic technology, because separation of learners from the instructor requires students to take more responsibility for learning. Consequently, the learner's opinions and needs play a more important role in decision making than is usual in an instructor-centered environment (Macfarlane & Smaldino, 1997). It is oversimplified to suggest that there is one better way to teach at a distance. In any given content area there are several potential ways of providing a quality learning experience for the students (Heinich, Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino, 1999). What is essential in deciding which strategy or strategies to employ is the issue of engaging the learner. The one thing that has been repeatedly demonstrated through research is that lecture, or the "talking head," approach is the least successful strategy to employ in distance education (Schlosser and Anderson, 1996). The instructor needs to focus on selecting instructional strategies that engage the learners in active learning. To do this, the instructor may need to de-emphasize the "informative" part of the instruction for more "discovery" of information. The emphasis on keeping the learners engaged in learning ensures that students will be "in tune" with the class. For the selection of media there are several models often used (Dick & Carey, 1996). One common theme with all of these models is the learning context, which is the content, the intended outcome, and the nature of the students. Practical considerations such as available resources for creating media and the technologies for delivery of instruction also play a hand in the selection process. Mainly, though, goals and objectives should be the primary influence on the selection of media. McAlpine and Weston (1994) have delineated a set of criteria for selecting media, whether they are commercial media or media developed specifically for a particular course. The first item on the list is to match the medium to the curriculum or content. Also included are related items such as accuracy of information, motivational quality, engagement quality, technical quality, and unbiased nature of material. These should be considered in selecting media in order to match student needs to the strategies employed. Visuals provide a concrete reference point for students, especially when they are engaged in a non-televised learning experience. Providing visuals, even if they are lists of concepts and ideas; can help students. Visuals also help learners by simplifying information. Diagrams and charts often can make it easier to understand complex ideas. A visual that breaks down a complex idea into its components, can show relationships that might be otherwise confusing to students. Also, preparing visuals that serve as mnemonics can assist student understanding. And, visuals help students in their study. They can use them to prepare for tests and other means of assessing their learning. Finally, there are two very important additional issues to be raised. First is that of copyright. No matter what technologies are incorporated in the distance environment, the instructor needs to respect the copyright restrictions that might apply. For example, in a televised class, the instructor may not be able to use a video without first obtaining permission to display it to the class. In a Web-based class, the instructor may have to have permission to post a journal article. An instructor needs to be responsible to obtaining copyright permissions where appropriate. The second issue is that of access. The instructor cannot assume that all students at a distance have equal access to resources. Students may not have the technologies available. Also, students may not have the facilities at hand. The instructor needs to be certain that all students have similar learning experiences, including the materials. For example, if the instructor wishes students to use certain books or journals for outside reading, it is important to check with the local library to be sure theses materials are available. What is the Learning Environment? Educators are familiar with classroom settings. They are comfortable with using the space available to enable learning to take place. But it is when the classroom shifts into a distance learning setting that the environment becomes a challenge to the instructor. There are several important elements to address within the distance learning environment. Technology. The type of setting, be it place or time shifted, will influence planning decisions. Environments that are place-shifted are those that are synchronous but are not in the same location (e.g. a live video-based distance class). Those that are time-shifted are asynchronous, where students access the class at different times. Assessing the use of the technologies in a distant setting is essential. In any distance learning environment the technology becomes the element of most concern for the instructor. There are several issues associated with technology when teaching in a distance learning mode. First is the basic operation of the equipment. In a televised distance learning setting, switching between sites is usually a simple procedure, but it does require time to acquire the finesse to operate the switching buttons smoothly. Second, using 217 4 additional cameras in the classroom can create some concern for the instructor. The overhead camera needs to be focused and materials lined up to ensure that learners in all sites can see the material. Third, the instructor should always consider what the student should be viewing during the lesson. Is it better to see the instructor, the visuals, or other students? When a instructor has had experience with teaching with the equipment, these decisions become automatic, making learning the foundation for the decisions made (Herring & Smaldino, 1997). In an Internet-based learning environment, the instructor should be concerned with the layout of the courseware and the types of resources available to the students at the distant sites. The instructor needs to be certain materials are designed in a way that is intuitive for the various types of learners. Further the instructor need to be concerned about student access to the appropriate hardware and software to be successful in connecting to the courseware. And, the instructor should be concerned that the students can complete the tasks expected of them. Finally, the instructor needs to be certain they understand the terminology being used. It is essential the instructor be prepared with alternatives for each lesson in case of problems. What will the students do during the lesson time if the technology is not operating properly? The instructor and students need to be prepared for times when the entire technology system is not working properly. Pre-planned contingencies should continue the learning process even though the technology is malfunctioning. Alternative lessons must always be ready, but hopefully never needed. And, students need to be prepared to know what to do with those materials. They must be designed to be used without instructor intervention. Resources The second element to consider in the instructional environment is the resources available to students. What materials will they have at hand? What materials will be available in libraries and laboratories? Will students have access to resources for easy communication with the instructor? How to Determine the Quality of the Instruction? In the instructional design process, formative evaluation becomes an important aspect. Two questions need to be considered. The first relates to reflection on the action or activity: "Is this approach going to work?" (Schon, 1987). To be an effective educator, it is important to consider what can happen within an instructional event. All experiences, both those considered to be positive or negative, have some element of surprise. It may be expectations were not achieved; it may be a serendipitous event led to an altogether different, but pleasant, outcome. Whatever the nature of the event, it is essential to reflect upon what has happened. Reflection may take the form of critical assessment of the events, satisfying curiosity about the nature of those events (Macfarlane & Smaldino, 1997). Reflection may consider the success of the learning situation. It brings the instructor into a state of knowing about the learning event. It is now possible to move into the second question of the formative evaluation process, that of considering how to improve the situation. The second question then is, "How can I make this better?" The instructor needs to examine the instructional event in terms of what worked and what appears to have been a problem. The second phase of the formative evaluation is concerned with helping the instructor ensure a more successful educational experience for students. The instructor needs to consider not only issues such as the learning task, the instructional materials, and the teaching strategies, but also where the technology may have played a role in the instruction. When examining effective instruction, it is important to look at the role technology plays in instruction. The instructor should consider the elements of technologies and their effect on the students. If a problem occurs with the lesson because of the hardware components of the system, what was the nature of the problem? Was the problem because of a temporary interference with the transmission? Was weather or some other non-controllable issue causing problems with the transmission? Can the hardware be improved? Can things be done to the interactive instructional classroom to aid instruction in the future? If a problem does not relate to hardware, then what was the problem? Perhaps students needed to be better informed about how to use the equipment. It may be that students needed preparation for the lesson. Perhaps the instructor needed to prepare other types of handouts or manipulatives to ensure that the students could accomplish the tasks. Maybe the instructor needed to select an alternative teaching strategy to improve interactivity and student outcomes. Because so many different factors effect the interactive learning environment, reflective teaching practices play an even greater role in developing of effective teaching practice. To consider what has transpired and how to change it creates a dynamic educational experience for both the instructor and the learners. Formative evaluation is essential for successful interactive distance learning experiences. It is important for the instructor to think about handouts within the context of the planning process. The types of handouts will vary according to the age of the students and the content of the course. But, it is important that the instructor realize that when planning a distant course, handouts become an essential communication link with students. Therefore, the instructor needs to invest time and energy in creating quality handouts for students. 218 5 Even within a traditional class, the instructor is concerned with getting materials to the students. Often papers and books are distributed at the beginning of the class period. But, when teaching at a distance, this is not as easy as it might seem. Often the majority of the class is at a distance and distribution of materials becomes a logistical nightmare. An instructor needs to consider: (a) getting the materials to the distant sites on time. A distribution network must be established for getting tests and other materials to those remote sites. The technology can be useful in transferring materials; (b) communicating with the students. The effect of separating instructor and students does affect this communication; (c) time delays in material transfer. Students may have to wait a longer time than normally expected to receive written feedback. Instructors may elect to use other forms of telecommunications with students to facilitate this feedback. Summary The instructional design process provides the framework for planning. It is essential that the instructor take the time to plan and organize the learning experience prior to implementation when engaged in teaching at a distance. The instruction will be at a standard that is acceptable in all venues. The students will be engaged and the instructor will be satisfied. Planning make the difference in a successful learning environment. References Dick, W. and Carey, L. (1996). The systematic design of instruction. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Heinich, R., Molenda, M., Russell, J. and Smaldino, S. (1999). Educational media and technologies for learning. Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall. Herring, M. and Smaldino, S. (1997). Planning for interactive distance education: A handbook. Washington, DC: AECT Publications. Macfarlane, C. & Smaldino, S. (1997). The electronic classroom at a distance. In R. Rittenhouse & D. Spillers (Eds.), Modernizing the curriculum: The electronic classroom. Springfield, MO: Charles Thomas Publishers. McAlpine and Weston (1994). The attributes of instructional materials. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 19-30. Moore, M. and Kearsley, G. (1996). Distance education: A systems view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Company. Schlosser, C. & Anderson, M. (1993). Distance education: Review of the literature. Ames, IA: Research Institute for Studies in Education. Schon, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Josey-Bass. Willis, B. (1994). Distance education: Strategies and tools. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. BEST COPY AVAILABLE 219 U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) National Library of Education (NLE) Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) NOTICE REPRODUCTION BASIS ERIC This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release (Blanket) form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing all or classes of documents from its source organization and, therefore, does not require a "Specific Document" Release form. This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission to reproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, may be reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Release form (either "Specific Document" or "Blanket"). EFF-089 (9/97) 
work_ymyytsbf7fh7tikhljtgnkdjma	----	DOCUMENT RESUME ED 313 026 IR 014 080 AUTHOR Naidu, Som TITLE Faculty Invoivement in Instructional Materials Development for Distance Study at the University of the South Pacific. PUB DATE 87 NOTE 16p. PUB TYPE Journal Articles (080) -- Reports Research /Technical (143) JOURNAL CIT Distance Education; v8 n2 p176-89 1987 EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PCO1 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Cooperative Planning; *Distance Education; Foreign Countries; Instructional Design; Instructional Development; *Material Development; Questionnaires; *Services; *Teacher Attitudes; Teamwork; Time Management IDENTIFIERS *University of the South Pacific (Fiji) ABSTRACT As a regional institution serving the needs of 11 different island nations of the South West Pacific, the University of the South Pacific (USP) is, along with its on-campus face-to-face teaching activity, deeply committed to and reliant on distance study methods. Both of these activities at the university are the principal responsibility of a single body of teaching staff. This investigation, through the means of a structured questionnaire, studied the involvement of members of the university's teaching staff in instructional materials development for distance study. It inquired into the time they spent on such activity, their levels of satisfaction witn the materials they produced, their preferences with regard to teaching and instructional materials development strategies, and their views on how the process of instructional development at the university could be improved. Responses revealed a rather unsatisfactory picture with requests for more time for materials development, better coordination and planning, greater consultation among colleagues, and adequate support services in instructional materials development for distance study. There was concern and consensus about the need for instructional materials developers to be adequately familiar yith the USP region and the students for whom the materials are intended. Some respondents 'suggested that course writers, prior to developing instructional materials, be allowed to spend time in the region becoming familiar with the local learning context. Among the less frequently mentioned suggestions was that prospective course writers be sent abroad for short-term training courses in distance education and instructional materials development for distance teaching. (Author/GL) *********************************1.************************************* * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** Faculty involvement in instructional materials development for distance study at the University of the South Pacific. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY U s DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION O$hCe 04 Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERIC1 *This document has been reproduced as received born the person or organization originating it o Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction Quality Points of view °, opinions stated thiS docu mein do not neceSSariky replesent ott,CdP OEM position or pohCY Som Naidu Som Naidu TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERICI" As a regional institution serving the needs of eleven different island nations of the South West Pacific. the University of the South Pacific is, along with its on-campus face-to-face teaching activity. deeply committed to and reliant on distance study methods. Both these actvities at the Uni- versity are the principal responsibility of a single body of teaching staff. This investigation, through the means of a structured questionnaire, studied the involvement of members of the University's teoching staff in instructional materials development for distance stud). It enquired into the time they spent on such activity, their levels of satisfaction with the materials they produced, various preferences and their views on how the process of instructional materials development at USP could be improved. Responses recen ed revealed a rather unsatisfactory picture with a cry for, among other things, more time, advance planning, greater consultation among colleagues and adequate support services in instructional materials de% elopment for distance study. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF STUDY The University of the South Pacific (USP) was established in 1968 on the recommendation of a Higher Education Mission to the South Pacific set up by the Governments of the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Aus- tralia to servicv the post-secondary education needs of what are now eleven independent states of the South West Pacific region. These are the Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands, the Fiji Islands. Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Republic of Nauru, Vanuatu, Niue, Tokelaus, the Kingdom of Tonga and the Independent State of Western Samoa. %lot As a regional institution its mandate comprises the 'maintenance, advancement and dissemination of knowledge by teachir g, consultancy and research and the provision at appropi late levels of education and naming responsive to the well-being and needs of the communities of the South West Pacific region' (USP Charter). The largest efforts of the uni- versity towards fulfilment of its mandate are currently directed towards the facilitation of face-to-face teaching on-campus and distance study opportunities in a variety of degree and sub-degree programmes, The teaching of these programmes both on-campus in the face-to-face mode 176 Laurie J. Meinties Mimics are better momated in an enx ironment that is supportRe Lhallengmg, and satisl mg rather than one LL Inch rs smml eoerciL e anti threatening) is iduals Lk ill ewrose sell-direLtion and self-L.01mo! in the sen iLe 01 ohrectiL es to LLhiLli the> are committed t he infLreme is that a rheor 1 en ironment encourages higher leek of genuine «)mmitment 17 Here', and Blanchard (1982) Virmrcemeitt of 01 cam animal Whirl row Chapter 12 18 Here and Blanchard. 1982. p 273 19 Hunkins 1980, pp 50 51 Hunkms.(1980) pages 50 and 276 21 Hunkms. 1980 pp 58 59 22 Hunkms. 1980. p 16 The full quote is 'The LLaLs m LL hch LLe clop school pro- gram. (e g curriLulum and instruLtional plans). and boss sw implement, maintain, and adjust these programs (the aLtual school eweriences) must result from procedures that are ss stemanc and consistent procedures thm must he delineated prior to the arriL al of stud,:nts in Llassrooms One of the most difficult problems faced hs our distanLe education LLork is the undue pressure, from the PAC admimstration, to mole post-haste into ness course, There seems to he Ler little appreciation of just hors much time and etlort is required for the proper deL elopment of distance courses 24 Hunkins, 1980. p 380 (See also p 54 I SOM NAIDU COI ICORDIA UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SIR GEORGE WILLIAMS CAMP' 1455 D. MAISONNEUVE BLVD. WEST MONTREAL 113G 1M11 CANADA 175 Som Naidu and off -campus in the distance mode is the responsibility of the regular teaching departments within the Schools of the University. This arrange- ment, however, does not always find favour with most faculty members. since it frequently involves quite heavy demands on their own time and other departmental resources as well. Particular concern is expressed regarding the availability of sufficient sisible rewards for participation in distance teaching activity especially. A majority of the faculty therefore tend to des ote a greater proportion of their time and energy to traditional face-to-face teaching. research and publication work, because it is this that offers them greatest potential for personal and professional development, Distance teaching activity tends to be relegated to a low priority position on staff time-tables. This triggers off a range of problems for other people involved in the production of instructional materials in print or other forms. As a member of one of these groups of people, this researcher became especially interested in the implications of the importance to regular faculty of the adoption of dis- tance teaching activity, especially in an integrated system. This studs was born out of this interest. THE N1ETHOD OF STUDY A questionnaire was used as the principal data gathering des ice. It con. tained. apart from an introductory section on reles ant personal informa- tion such as age, sex and work experience of respondents. a \ariety of questions on essentially three areas on the subject. These were: faculty familiarity with the USP context which included know ledge about the USP region. its student community and the prescribed R !es of the University; faculty participation in distance teaching actisity as opposed to their other forma! (academic as well as administratise) work commitments at USP. Faculty were also asked here to identify their preferences with regard to teaching modes; faculty ins olvement in the development of instructional materials for distance study at USP w Ilia included. Inter aim. an indication of faculty preferences with regard to instructional materials development strategies. The questionnaire was initially conceised in three parts. each focused on one of the foregoing concerns. A trial run resealed that each needed con- siderable pruning and incorporation into one single questionnaire A single questionnaire therefore with 25 items including one open-ended question was constructed the final \ ersion of which was ready for administration around the middle of November 1984. Since this final edition of the questionnaire was confined to the investigation of' faculty participation in distance teaching and their ins ols ement in instructional materials development for distance study, it was administered only to the teaching staff of the University which included full-time teaching faculty. academic staffof the Institutes and laboratory assistants. 4 177 Distance Education Vol 8, Nc 2,1987 The investigation was confined to the following three Schools and five Institutes of the University namely; the School of Humanities (SOH); the School of Social and Economic Development (SSED); the School of Pure and Applied Sciences (SPAS): the Institute of Education (10E); the Insti- tute of Social and Administrative Studies (1SAS); the Institute of Mineral Resources (1MR); the Institute of Natural Resources (1NR); and the Insti- tute of Pacific Studies (IPS). The University's School of Agriculture and Institutes away from its Laucala Campus were not included in the investi- gation. The reason for their exclusion from the investigation was limited time mailable before which completed questionnaires had to be returned. Moreover the numbers of potential respondents left in this instance were so few that even if their completed questionnaires were returned on time, it was felt that they would not have significantly, altered trends in the findings. The questionnaires were distributed to the respondents via the internal mailing system of the University. Copies of the questionnaires accom- panied by a standard covering letter with names of respondents were placed in the mail boxes of staff with the assistance and permission of the School's Administrative Assistant personnel. It was estimated that alto- gether between the three Schools and the five Institutes there were about a hundred eligible respondents at work at the time of investigation Nos. ember 1984. By mid-February 1985, 65 completed questionnaires were received back from the respondents. DISCUSSION OF RESEARCH This paper is confined to a discussion of only the last aspect in the ques- tionnaire i.e. 'faculty involvement in the development of instructional materials for distance study at USP'. In the main. this section enquired into the extent of respondents' participation in the instructional materials development process; time they were able to des. ote to this activity time they would have preferred to have the degree to which they were satisfied with the materials produced; whether they would have preferred to work full-time or part-time; as part of a team or individually; and on forms of assistance they would hate preferred in the instructional materials development process. Respondents were also given an opportunity to suggest ways of improving the instructional material, development process. Faculty responsibility for instructional materials development Respondents were required to indicate at the outset whether they had, since thee~ appointment at USP. been responsible for the development of any instructional materials for use by ektension students. Thirty-seven (58.7%) of the 63 respondents reported having had such responsibility while 26 (41.3%) said that they had not. There were two missing cases An attempt was made to get further insight into the characteristics of these respondents. Residential and professional status did not seem to hake any thing to do with faculty responsibility for instructional materials 178 0 Sorn Naidu Table 1: Responsible for instructional materials development. Response Number of Percentage respondents Yes 37 58.7 No 26 41 3 Total 63 100 development but job location did. For example. 90.5% (19 out of 21) of the respondents from SOH (the School of Humanities) had indicated Invol ement in instructional materials development whereas only 23.8% (5 out of 21) of the respondents from SPAS (the School of Pure and Applied Sciences) had indicated any such involvement. From SSED (the School of Social and Economic Development) 70.6% (12 out of 17) of the respondents had indicated being involved in instructional materials development. These figures indicate that faculty from SOH and SSED were. by far. more involved in instructional materials development than those from SPAS or from the Institutes of the University. Participation in distance teaching usually involves input in instructional materials de\ elopmeni but not always. For example. nine out of 37 people who had claimed being responsible for instructional materials development had not been involved in extension teaching at USP. On the other hand three out of the 26 V. ho had not had any responsibility for instructional materials development had been involved in extension teaching one of whom had three years. the other two years and the third one year's extension teaching experience. But. overall (75.7%) it was obsen ed that those who had been involved in extension teaching at USP had also been responsible for instructional materials development of some sort While a larger percentage of respondents had been involved in the development of instructional materials of some sort for distance study at USP. it is likely that some of them may have done more than the others in this regard. For example. on faculty responsibilities for courses in the extension mode it was discovered that. of the 65 respondents. 36 were able to claim some form of contribution to extension work during the period in question but there were 29 others who were unahl:. to make any such claim. With regard to instructional materials development, some of the faculty could have merely been 'mot\ ed in preparing introductory booklets and tests etc. for extension students. while others may ha% e developed the complete set of materials for an entire course including. sometimes. a v ideo component as well. Faculty time required to carry out these occupations would have naturally varied. 179 Distance Education Vol. 8, No. 2, 1987 In order to get an idea of the amount of time a faculty member would have characteristically spent on the development of instructional materials for distance study, respondents were asked to estimate the total number of hours they had spent on such work if they were 'principally' responsible for the development of a 'complete' set of ,materials for an extension course. These specifications were necessary otherwise a range of estimations would have emerged. Respondents were to take into account time spent on planning, research and gathering resources, writing and proof-reading. Forty-one of the 65 respondents in the study did not respond to this question implying that only 24 of the respondents could claim 'principal' responsibility for the development of instructional materials for extension teaching. The following times were recorded. Table 2: Time spent on instructional materials development. Total number of hours spent 19 60 100 160 232 400 20 86 112 175 280 470 40 90 114 188 290 500 45 100 135 200 315 560 The times estimated by respondents indicated no particular trends. There is only one duplicate score, i.e. 100. The range indicated though is par- ticularly interesting since, while on the one hand some members of the faculty seem to have been able to develop a 'full set of materials' in as incredibly little as 20 hours i.e. approximately three working days, others took a more realistic time of 500 hours i.e. approximately a full semester. From these estimates it is impossible to point at any norm. However in them certain other things are implicit. Firstly, it is possible that respon- dents derived some confusion from, and hence, various interpretations of, the meaning of the phrase 'principally responsible for the development of a complete extension course'. For example, the writing of a course around published textbooks and writing up all the essential materials fora course, such as a Course Book. Study Guide, etc. all from scratch, could have been taken to mean the same thing hence the varying times. Yet it was e latter that was being specifically referred to in the question. Further it s possible that the response time was only the time that the faculty 'ember could a /lord for the development of materials for his extension course. He or she would probably have lik c a lot more time, such as one full year perhaps. Respondents were given an oPportunity to indicate this preference as well. Assuming a full-time allocation of25-40 hours per week, they were asked to estimate the total number cf weeks they would require to develop thoroughly the ..7omplete set cf materials for a semester-long extension course. The fol.owing preferences were indicated. 180 P.. Som Naidu Table 3: Time preferred for instructional materials development. Total estimated number of weeks .. Number of Percentage respondents 3 I 19 4 7 13.5 5 4 7.7 6 8 15.-4 7 4 77 8 6 11.5 10 1: 21.2 14 3 5.8 15 3.8 16 I 1.9 18 I i9 20 I 1.9 25 I 1.9 26 I 1.9 40 I 1.9 Total 5' 100 Filly-two of 65 respondents in the study responded to this question. Most of them seem to have considered anything between four to 15 weeks quite sufficient i.e. from one month to about one full semester. These figures are context F peak: and cannot be taken to reflect and trends or norms. Each faculty member's estimation is possibly derived from, inter alia, his or her own confidence, expertise, resource base and conception of what a 'complete set of materials for an extension course' included of what they understood by 'develop thoroughly'. The figures otherwise clearly show what a good number of faculty at UM' at the time considered to he a realistic time allocation for a thorough development of a full set of materials for an extension course. On the question of the time faculty members were able to devote to the development of instructional materials, it was likely that perhaps that was all the time they had available for this work. If this was so, then many are likely to suggest that the materials they were able to produce could have been much better if they had more time. Such an enquiry was made where respondents were required to indicate on a scale from 'very' to snot at all' the degree of their personal satisfaction with the materials they were able to produce in the time that was available The following was obseiked. 181 Distance Education Table 4: Degi ee of satisfaction with materials produced. Vol. 8, No 2, 1987 Levels of satisfaction Number of respondents Percentage Very satisfied 8 25.8 Quite satisfied 15 48.4 Somewhat satisfied 8 25.8 Not at all satisfied 0 0 Total 31 100 Only 24 responses should have been recorded, since this question, in closely following the enquiry on the time faculty were able to spend on instructional materials development, was in fact referring to that instance in particular and where only 24 responses were recorded. But 31 respon- ses were actually recorded. It seems that a few others who had developed some materials but had not carried any 'principal' responsibilities per se, also decided to respond. Nobody was 'not at all' satisfied. Naturally staff would not let anything go out if they were 'not at all satisfied' with it, we hope. Almost 50% of those who re,,Tanded (48.4% exactly) claimed they v'ere 'quite' satisfied. The rest went either way 25.8% claimed they were 'very satisfied' and the other 25.8% claimed that they were only 'somewhat' satisfied. Other faculty preferences regarding instructional materials development The University of the South Pacific's integrated approach to higher edu- cation means that the same core of academic and administrative staff per- form several responsibilities concurrently. While many actually prefer to work in an integrated approach, keeping a finger in every pie so to speak, many others would rather do one thing at a time and there are others to whom the mode of operation really does not matter. In this investigation respondents were also asked, if they were to develop study materials for a semester-long course for offer by extension, whether they would prefer to do it full-time (relieved of other teaching duties) or part-time, along with some teaching as well. The following preferences were indicated. While it is posible to conclude from these indications that there was a mach greater preference, at least in this instance, for a full-time approach to instructional materials development, a good number of respondents chose to operate part-time I would imagine on the condition that the time span was much longer. Yet, on the other hand, to some insignificant number of respondents the approach really did not matter. 182 Z.1 Som Naidu Table 5: Preferences on commitment to instructional materials develop- ment process. Preferences Number of respondents Percentage Full-time 32 53.3 Part-time 19 31.7 No special preference 9 I 5.0 Total 60 100 In developing instructional materials for distance study, respondents were also asked to indicate which strategy they would have preferred to be working in, such as being part of a 'Course team' or working individually. The following preferences were indicated. Table 6: Preferences on approaches to course development. Course team approach 23 37.7 Individual approach 12 19.7 No particular preference 26 42.6 Total 61 100 Reasons for holding these preferences were not explored in this study but it is believed that several factors ranging from personal to institutional characteristics may have influenced such thinking. The indication by 42.6% of the respondents for no particular preference could have been derived from no particular established or popular work patterns in this regard at USP. Instructional materials development processes at UK' have depended largely on the 'availability of time and human resources rather than very many professional considerations. It could also in seen as a reflection of respondents' own experience in instructional materials development. Having had little substantial experience in this regard, many were unlikely to have cultivated any particular tastes and were therefore prepared to experiment with any approach. 16 183 -A Distance Education Vol 8, No. 2, 1987 The indication by 37.7% of the respondents (a fairly large percentage) for a course team approach was probably a reflection of knowledge of the successful use of this approach elsewhere in the world such as the United Kingdom Open University and to some extent at USP itself, especially in the Department of Education in the School of Humanities. Respondents may have also felt that a team approach was a realistic and more practical approach in view of faculty time constraints and workloads at USP. This latter reason could also be offered in support of the 19.7% who chose to be working individually for, when time and resources are scarce, it may seem probably better for one person to get on with the job rather than dilly- dally in a team approach. Supporters of an individual approach could have also been people with greater self-confidence in a range of produc- tion related skills in instructional materials development. Hence the other factor in instructional materials development is the availability of suitable support services such as audio/visual/graphics assistance and editorial help etc. Usually sLch assistance is limited due mainly to financial constraints but where they are available, their use is somewhat dependent on course writers' perceptions of what goes into instructional materials design. Believers in a team approach, for example, are likely to draw upon numerous kinds of expertise available, while those who see instructional materials development for distance teaching as no different from preparation for face-to-face teaching on-campus are likely to take everything on themselves. Then again, course writers are likely to differ depending on their own experiences, skills and confi- dence levels on the value and use of particular forms of support skills available to them. For example, the inexperienced course writer may pli ce high value on Instructional Design assistance while the little-more- seasoned one would probably be content with just some proof-reading assistance only. To get some idea of how faculty at USP perceived instructional materials development for distance teaching, respondents were asked to specify which one of a number of design expertise resources they would like to have to assist them in developing instruct:onal materials for distance teaching, if the resource were available. The expertise included skills in the use of graphics; selection and use of suitable teaching strategies; use of audio/visual media and editing and proof-reading. The idea behind the requirement that respondents specify any one of the skills was to induce them into examining all of them carefully and making a choice. The skills chosen would reflect to some extent how a certain group of USP faculty perceived instructional materials development for distance teaching and, if there was any significant support for any one or two, then it would sug- gest the need for strengthening of resources in that regard at the Univer- sity. First, this is what was observed. A majority of the respondents preferred assistance with graphics work, editalg and proof-reading skills which are synonymous with production work( and which are usually not found amongst University teaching staff, per se, except amongst those who are involved in media and communica- 184 11 .1 Som Naidu Table 7: Assistance preferred in instructional materials development. Expertise Number of Percentage most desirable respondents Use of graphics 18 32.1 Selection and use of suitable teaching strategies 11 19.6 Use of audio/visual media 6 10.7 Editing and proof-reading 21 37.5 Total 56 100 tion related subjects. Graphics work, editing and proof-reading in addi- tion are time-consuming tasks and academics who are likely to consider these tasks as more cosmetic than anything else would rather leave them o other people with varying amounts of input from themselves. A rela- vely smaller number of respondents saw skilled assistance in the use of dio/visual media of particular importance in the instructional terials development process. In the case of the University of the South ific the use of audio/visual materials is also limited by lack of appro- te equipment, excepting audio playback facilities, at the study centres student homes. t ti au m Pac pria and Skille i.e. In 19.6% have in to have which t someone more exp in another probably f draw such on paper) developmen backed up by were availabl likely to draw Nevertheless, t such assistance among some this d assistance in the selection and use of suitable teaching strategies, structional Design expertise, was not particularly popular either. of the respondents saw this as more desirable. Several factors could fluenced this statistic. In the main, faculty teaching statTare likely considered selection of teaching strategies their own domain hey should be determining for themselves and their students, not else's from some other department who was not necessarily any ert than themselves. In the event of such expertise being resident department, such as in the Extension Services at USP, faculty and it all the more inconvenient and somewhat humiliating to ssistance from someone else not specifically qualified (at lease nor significantly more experienced than themselves on the t of instructionat materials for their course. If such expertise, paper qualifications and an ongoing research commitment. e and resident in their own department. faculty would be upon it more readily and with less doubt implicit in the act. he fact that approximately 20% of the respondents saw as more desirable than other skills implied that at least skill was deficient or in demand. 1. 4: 185 Distance Education Vol. 8, No. 2, 1987 The foregoing faculty preferences are only an indication of some of the conceptions held. These need further exploration and substantiation. For the time being, it seems faculty prefer to see Instructional Design exper- tise, such as that being made available by Extension Services, to be con- fined to 'book production' work, namely, graphics illustration, editing and proof-reading iunctions. Determination of suitable teaching strate- gies would better remain the responsibility of personnel resident in the teaching departments themselves, if possible, specifialy those recruited for thei7 expertise and research commitment in the theory and practice of instructional technology. On improvement of the instructional materials development process Towards the end of this investigation respondents were requested to ex. ress their views on how the process of developing instructional materials for distance teaching at USP could be improved. Of the 65 respondents in the entire study 41 (63.1%) took this opportunity to make comments. It is assumed that those who refrained from making comments either ..id not feel qualified to do so possibly because of no distance teaching and/or instructional materials development experience or simply did not feel like expending their _energies and time to make detailed comments. Some -,..::pondents had categorically stated the former as a reason for their inability to respond. Who were the people that took the time to respond at length on this criti- cal component of distance teaching activity at USP? Were they largely members of faculty who had been involved in Jistance teaching and/or instructional materials development for distance teaching? Were they from those enthusiastic and innovative persons w'io readily dispense their views with regard to anything or were they incitea a. 'sorts of people? If it was discovered that only those assoicated with distance teaching in some form had made the effort to comment, then one could assume that there was no significant overall concern amongst r.culty for improving the instructional materials development process Al USP. However, if other people had made the effort as wet!, then one could assume that there was probably a general concern amongst faculty in this regard. Firstly, with regard to rest ,indents' association with distance teaching activity, it was discovered that of the 41 who had taken up the invitation and made a comment 31 (75.6%) had been involved in the development of instructional materials for distance teaching at USP. While the remain- ing 10 (24.4%) could not claim any such involvement in instructional materials development, it is not possible to preclude them from having had any other form of association with distance education activity. How- ever of the 24 who had not taken up the invitation in the questionnaire to express their views 16 (72.7%) had not registered any involvement in the development of instructional materials for distance study at USP the eight others had. While these percentages tend to suggest that the respon- dents' participation in distance teaching ane/or instructional materials development for distance _:udy seen. to have ;nfluenced their tendency to make a comment, they were not conclusive enough to suggest that this influence was in fact significant. 186 13 el Som Naidu It is also likely that respondents' level of familiarity with the overall aims of the University (and more specifically its policy on its teaching modes) may have influenced their tendency to make a comment. So these were observed and it was discovered that 35 (85.4%) of the 41 respondents who had made comments had indicated greater familiarity with USP's overall aims. On the other hand of the 24 who had not made a comment 19 (79.2%) claimed equally greater familiarity as well and so thwarted any chance of a positive association being derived from the foregoing percen- tage. With regard to respondents' familiarity with USP's dec: , .ed policy on its teaching modes, no significant associations were visible between this and their tendency to comment or not. Only 25 (61%) of the 41 who had made a comment indicated greater familiarity, while those who hadn't made a comment were equally divided. Other more easily quantifiable characteristics of respondents and non- respondents to the item were examined as well. No particular associations were noticeable between respondents' residential categories, their profes- sional status and their tendency to comment. The distributions here were more a reflection of the sample. On their job locations, however, it was noticed once again, that a greater pe centage of respondents from SOH and SSED than SPAS had made the effort to comment. Foi example, of the 22 respondents from SOH, 17 (77.3%) had commented and five (22.7%) had not. From SSED of the 17 respondents, 10 (58.8%) had comented and 7 (41.2%) had not. Whereas from SPAS, of the 22 respon- dents only 12 (54.5%) had made comments and 10 (45.5%) hat not. It seemed, then, that greater experience and/or association with distance teaching did at least induce respondents to make a comment on the instructional materials development process at USP. This conclusion is lent further support by the observation that, overall, those who had made comments had greater numbers of years of distance teaching experience at USP than those who had not. Respondents' comments or, the improvement of the instructional materials development process t aried. Some were brief while others were lengthy and comprehensive. Some were very supportive of the current system, while others were not so satisfied with it. On the t .hole a wide array of suggestions were received, while there were some common areas as well. Comment summarised One frequent comment was on time. More than a dozen of the respon- dents emphasized the importance of having adequate time for the development of instructional materials for distance teaching. It was sug- gested that a minimum of one complete semester be allocated to the development of all the instructional materials for a distance study course. Many believed as well, that instructional materials development should be a full-time commitment and that undesirable interference in it from clumsy bureaucratic structures, as well as on-campus commitments, must be eliminated. 14 187 1 Distance Education Vol. 8, No. 2, 1987 The second greatest concern of respondents was the need for consultation in the development process. Views on this stressed that, while principal responsibility could lie with one or two individuals, there was immense merit in a team input, which would for a start serve to ease up the load of individuals, keep a check on content and compatibility of style etc. as well as bringing together a variety of ideas and experiences to the process. Greater consultation across disciplines, departments and, above all, with Extension Services and its components was absolutely essential towards the improvement of the instructional materials development process in distance teaching. Thirdly, there was concern and consensus amongst respondents on the need for developers of instructional materials to be adequately familiar and versed with both the key characteristics of the USP region and the students for whom the materials were meant. It was felt that too few course writers had adequate grasp of the learning environment of their students. Some suggested that course writers, prior to developing instruc- tional materials, be allowed to spend time in the rzgion becoming familiar v ith the local learning contexts. Fourthly, there was consensus amongst responeints on the need for ade- quate resource materials. Respondents stressed the importance of having adequate reference materials in the library and sample packages of dis- tance learning materials as well from other institutions for course writers to consult. Fifthly, there was consensus amongst respondents on the need for plan- ning. It was stressed that better co-ordination and planning of time and manpower are essential in the development of instructional materials. Too often poor planning of time and staff allocation resulted in shoddy course packages. Plan well ahead for these commitments they said! The sixth area of general concern was the availability of support services for instructional materials development such as graphics work, typing, editing and proof-reading. While there were some requests that were fair- ly general in this regard, there were others that specifically preferred to have assistance in graphics work, typing, proof-reading and editing. There were a few requests for 'Course Developers' in Extension Services with specific subject expertise, such as in the Natural Sciences, to assist the Science faculty in its distance teaching efforts. There were several other less-frequently-mentioned suggestions and requests as well. One of these was t1-:. suggestion that prospective course writers be sent abroad on short-term training courses in distance educa- tion and instructional-materials-development for distance teaching. Another suggestion was that the University ought to encourage the attachment of seconded staff with appropriate expertise from other insti- tutior^ to its own teaching departments, though such a strategy was strongly opposed in this same study by some others on the grounds that these so-called 'consultants/experts' from abroad had no real understand- ing of the realities of the USP region and were therefore ineffective. There was a strong suggestion that faculty who undertook to develop instruc- 188 15 Som Naidu tional materials for distance study ought to first, possess a sold grasp of their subject matter and secondly, be committed to producing the best possible materials. Once produced for the first time, these materials ought to be on a trial-run ofat least two years. Towards ensuring a better effort from course writers it was suggested that there should be adequate staffing, both to develop instructional materials in the first instance and also to effectively implement them. The latter meant more local face-to-face tutorial assistane:; and increased summer sessions, especially in the Natural Science subjects with laboratory work components. One suggestion for coping with the staffing situation was to allocate staff face-to-face teaching responsibilities in one semester and distance teaching responsibilities in another, so that staff had ample time to devote to each mode. The other suggestion was to reduce on-campus teaching commitments of staff who were involved in developing instruc- tional materials for distance study. On a more fundamental note it was suggested that a basic improvement in the instructional materials development process at USP would be to first recognise that it was a professional activity which required specific skills and training. There was also the suggestion that the institution ought to seek to give equal prominence to distance teaching in its mainstream functions rather than relegating it to the next best spot. CONCLUSION These were the responses and observations of staff 21/2 years ago. Today the University of the South Pacific has declared an even greater commit- ment and reliance on distance study methods in the fulfilment of its objectives. While the actual processes of instructional materials develop- ment for distance study have not changed very much since 1984 i.e. the year of this study, there have been some improvements since then. It would certainly be worthwhile recording current trends and perceptions of staff in this regard to see how these have dev,:loped. SOM NAIDU CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT CF EDUCATION SIR GIORGI WILLIAMS CAMPUS 1455 De MAISONNEUVE ILVD. WEST MONTREAL H30 1MS CANADA 189 
work_yn5uebhpfvaezlvt73k7z3zjbu	----	Microsoft Word - iji_2013_1_8.doc International Journal of Instruction January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 e-ISSN: 1308-1470 ● www.e-iji.net p-ISSN: 1694-609X A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills of Distance Education Tutors Irshad Hussain Assoc. Prof., The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan irshad.hussain@iub.edu.pk The researcher conducted present study with the objectives to a). evaluate attitude of learners towards academic and tutoring skills of distance education tutors, b). assess the opinion of distance learners about assessment and evaluation skills of their tutors and c). examine reflection of learners on scaffolding skills of distance education tutors. The population of the study consisted of learners of pre-service teacher education (B.Ed semester spring 2010) programme of Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad. The sample of the study was taken through the convenient sampling technique from three regions of Allama Iqbal Open University situated in the Punjab Province. A questionnaire was designed using a five-point (rating/Likert) scale to elicit the reflection of (600) learners. However, the response rate was 78% (468) of the total sample. Interview schedule was also used as a research tool for collecting qualitative data from (50) respondents in five groups. The researcher analysed data quantitatively and qualitatively. The study concluded that the overall reflection of distance learners on andragogical skills of their tutors was positive. Apparently they were satisfied with andragogical skills of their tutors. They asserted that their tutors had academic and tutoring skills (consisting of encouraging, guiding & facilitating –emboldening and enabling skills), assessment & evaluation skills, and technical and social skills. However, tutors needed training to use social websites, Skype and mobile phone conferences and online discussion. Keeping in view the conclusion of the study, the researcher recommended short and long term training of tutors to use information and communication technologies appropriately. Key Words: Andragogy, Andragogical Skills, Distance Education, Study Centre, Tutors INTRODUCTION Education is one of the fundamental human rights but due to scarce opportunities, fewer resources and innovations and trends, the traditional or formal system calls for an alternate to guarantee it appropriately. Therefore, distance education emerged to address the issue and it was (and is) recognized as an alternative to the formal system of education and imperative because of its flexible nature. According to Hussain, Adeeb, Rahmani & Safdar (2008) distance education appears to be eliminating gender 124 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 inequalities and social discrimination particularly in developing countries like Pakistan. It is generally observed that it provides wider access to all irrespective of gender, age and caste & creed. It promotes opportunities of continuing education by providing second chance to those who left after completing certain level of education and/or dropped out at any stage (Hussain, 2005; Rashid, 2003). In knowledge society of 21st century, it has become a viable source of imparting knowledge, professional skills and attitudes to live and work in the competitive world. Therefore, it seems necessary for distance education institutions to ensure quality education. According to Rashid (2003) different factors are said to have an impact on quality of distance education –self instructional material, student support services, tutor and tutors’ training, media and technology, learners’ profile & needs and socio-cultural and economic conditions of the country. However, quality of education appears to be directly linked with the quality of instruction. In distance education, the quality of instruction generally depends upon tutors and tutors’ training. Hussain (2008; 1999) asserted that a trained tutor exploits innovative strategies and techniques for effective instructional delivery for success of learners and ultimately a distance education programme. Tutoring in distance education is a skilful activity aiming at coaching distance learners to achieve higher grades. According to him a good tutor develops academic liaison with learners to addresses learning problems and issues. The learners feel pleasure and academic satisfaction; they value efforts of their tutors and may idealize to follow them. Therefore, a tutor is regarded as one of the basic components and backbone of distance education system. Therefore, all efforts and activities for making a distance education programme successful depend upon professional skills of tutors –helping distance learners to learn. Characteristics of Distance Learners and Andragogical Skills Distance learners seem to be unique with their diverse potential, intellectual capacities, mental faculties and experience of life. They have their own concept of and about learning. Nevertheless, different researchers (Hussain, 2005; Merriam, 2001; and Rashid, 2000) assumed distance learners to be adults who are self-regulated, self- directed and self-motivated to learning. Adults are assumed to be mature intellectually and socially having their own concept and experience of life and learning formally or informally. They play different roles in the society. Therefore, they need to be treated as adults in instructional process. A distance education tutor must consider their traits and needs for developing a healthy professional and productive relationship with them. That’s why it seems necessary for a tutor to be equipped with certain professional skills and competencies called andragogical skills to help adults learn. Andragogical skills may be regarded as professional competencies and ethics to help adults learn (Rachal, 2002). Andragogical skills, as the term indicates, stem from the basic principles of andragogy and its assumptions. Knowles (1970, p. 51) coined the term andragogy and asserted that “truly artistic teacher [tutor] conscientiously suppresses what he knows his students ought to learn in favor of helping his students learn for themselves what they want to learn.” Similarly, Van Gent (1996) advocated for selecting an appropriate approach to Hussain 125 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 teach adults and Zmeyov (1998) viewed andragogy to be a suitable approach as it determined basic activities for learners and teachers in planning, realizing, evaluating and correcting adult learning appropriately. Likewise, Bellamio (2006) affirmed the significant benefits of a workshop based on Malcolm Knowles’ andragogy by stating that it helped Italian human resource development professionals in improving their influence within their corporations. Being adults, distance learners have their unique traits and learning styles. A successful tutor always addresses their personal traits and learning styles in instructional process at a distance. Adults learn through involvement and hands-on practice with some assistance by their tutors. Kearsley (1996) explained the term andragogy and stated that instruction for adults needs to focus more on process and less on the content being taught. Therefore, different techniques and strategies which involve adults in learning process are said to be useful and significantly effective. These strategies along with others include case studies, role play, simulations, and preparing portfolios. Tutor or adult educator thus assumes a role of mentor and facilitator to help them learn. It is necessary for a tutor to know (having a tutoring skill) how to help (facilitate) distance learners (who are adults). O’Rourke (2003) identified three core skill groups required for effective tutoring in Open and Distance Learning (ODL). These groups include academic (consisting of guiding and enabling skills), supportive and administrative skills of a tutor. Similarly, the study conducted by Suanmali (1981) suggested some skills for adult educator/ tutor. A tutor must be capable of making [distance] learners independent. For this purpose s/he should help them by (i) using learning resources appropriately, (ii) defining their learning needs, (iii) taking responsibility for their learning, (iv) organizing [academic resources] for their own learning, fostering learners’ decision- making and choices; encouraging them for judgment and integration, facilitating them in posing problem and finding its solution, providing supportive to learning environment, and exploiting experiential methods. In the same way, Bragar & Johnson (1993) identified five principles of adult learning – learning is a transformation and it takes time to occur; it follows a continuous cycle of action and reflection of the learners; effective learning takes place by addressing learners’ issues; it becomes significantly effective through interactive techniques; and, it becomes most significantly effective in supportive and competitive learning environments. Morland (2003) added that business trainers, coaches, and instructional designers needed to understand the dynamics of andragogical model and /or principles of adult learning. Review of Related Studies Different researchers and practitioners of adult and distance education conducted studies on various aspects of andragogical approach and revealed interesting results. Some of the related studies were reviewed and are given below. 126 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 The study conducted by Cassity (2005) on non-traditional college students explained that respondents reflected their experiences thoughtfully in their academic writings. According to Henschke (2008) these findings reflected the framework of “theories of Malcolm Knowles' andragogy concept and Timothy Quinnan's articulation of the nontraditional student as postmodern phenomenon with process, post-process, and feminist composition theory, as well as with the critical theories of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and Bell Hooks” (p. 63). The study of Nelson (2005) revealed that five African American women empowered themselves even with lack of traditional learning environments/venues. It concluded that women were self-taught and supported Malcolm Knowles' theory of andragogy. Gross (2006) found (at the University of Bamberg, Germany) that respondents were interested to exploit andragogy in their advanced studies for the reason of social learning and development. Henschke (2006) found it to be a key factor compelling learners and higher education institutions to focus more on lifelong learning. The learners of higher education institutions are adults and objective oriented which makes them aware of their learning and success. Likewise, Wie (2003) believed that andragogical principles guaranteed learners’ success and quality of adult education. Akande and Jegede (2004) used andragogical methods to improve adult computer literacy skills in Nigeria. The experience revealed that adults participated actively and these methods were significantly appropriate for promoting computer literacy among adults. It is also used in other areas as well. Isenberg (2005, 2007) developed and tested a 'Virtual Health Coach' Internet program based on andragogical principles related with Internet technology. The experience was quite successful as participants reported their satisfaction in dealing with their health issues. Such skills can also be used successfully to help individuals in some disastrous and other problematic situations of practical life. Likewise, the study of Toman (2005) found andragogical approach more effective than those consisting of one-way information flow in crisis situations like severe wildfire etc. Rationale of the Study A tutor, in system of distance education is the person who guides and directs learners to improve their knowledge and learning skills. S/he is regarded as a pillar of study contacts between subject matter and learners which is usually lacking in pre-packed courses. Apparently, a tutor communicates with a diverse community of learners who learn through self-directed study. Self-directed learners need assistance and mentoring to set right pace of their learning. Tutor provides support and guidance to them by developing academic liaison. It helps them achieve higher grades and motivation to further learning. However, tutors need feedback for improving and re-designing andragogical strategies to address individual differences and intellectual diversity of learners. Being direct beneficiaries, the distance learners can provide right information about their tutors’ andragogical skills. They can help in selecting appropriate tutoring experiences Hussain 127 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 according to their diverse potential. The available studies appear limited in their nature and scope to address the phenomenon under study. Therefore, learners’ reflection on tutors’ andragogical skills seems appropriate to be studied. Objectives of the Study The present study was conducted with following main objectives: a. To evaluate learners’ attitude towards academic and tutoring skills of distance education tutors b. To assess distance learners’ opinion about assessment & evaluation skills of their tutors and c. To examine learners’ reflection on scaffolding and emboldening skills of distance education tutors METHOD The present study was descriptive in nature and conducted with the purpose of studying learners’ reflection on andragogical skills of distance education tutors. It was a mixed- methods study and explored different dimensions of the problem qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The researcher considered survey approach to be appropriate and adopted it collect the data from respective respondents. The study was delimited to the pre-service teacher education programme (B.Ed semester spring 2010) of Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad. Therefore, the population of the study was comprised of learners from the above mentioned programme. The sample of the study consisted of 600 learners who were conveniently from three regional campuses situated in Punjab Province. A questionnaire was designed using a five-point (rating/Likert) scale to collect quantitative data. However, an interview schedule was used to collect qualitative data from the respondents. For interview, the focus group technique was used. The quantitative data were collected with help of data collectors and the response rate was 78% (468) of the 600 total learners. However, the researcher himself collected qualitative data from 50 learners. The interviews were conducted in groups each consisting of ten learners. He analysed the data quantitatively and qualitatively as given below. Data Analysis and Results of the Study Analysis and Results of Quantitative Data The quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire prepared on a five-point (rating/Likert) scale. The data were coded to analyse in terms of percentages through Ms Excel Programme. The values with their respective percentages are presented in tabular form given below. Table 1: Learners’ reflection on tutoring and academic skills of tutors Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) Andragogical Area SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors help learners to develop Knowledge 211 (45.1) 167 (35.7) 3 (0.6) 36 (7.7) 51 (10.9) Tutors help learners to apply knowledge 188 (40.2) 139 (29.7) 0 0.0 65 (13.9) 76 (16.2) 128 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 Tutors have subject knowledge 191 (40.8) 203 (43.4) 2 (0.4) 32 (6.8) 40 (8.5) Tutors communicate in an effective manner 141 (30.1) 234 (50.0) 4 (0.9) 56 (12.0) 33 (7.1) Tutors provide feedback in proper way 82 (17.5) 102 (21.8) 2 (0.4) 159 (34.0) 123 (26.3) Tutors know academic criteria 124 (26.5) 167 (35.7) 4 (0.9) 97 (20.7) 76 (16.2) Tutors ensure available resources 99 (21.2) 161 (34.4) 3 (0.6) 118 (25.2) 87 (18.6) Tutors assist learners in self-directed learning 199 (42.5) 187 (40.0) 3 (0.6) 53 (11.3) 26 (5.6) Tutors counsel with learners 136 (29.1) 203 (43.4) 4 (0.9) 68 (14.5) 57 (12.2) The data given in table 1 explains learners’ reflection on academic and tutoring skills of their tutors including mastery in their respective subject areas. According to the data majority of distance learners (80.8%) were of the opinion that their tutors helped them in developing new knowledge through different activities. The respondents (70.9%) also affirmed that tutors assisted them to apply the new knowledge in practical situations by blending information. with situations. It is necessary for distance education tutors to have mastery over the subject area. It is regarded indispensable for instructional effectiveness. Distance education tutors were competent in their respective subjects as 84.2% of the respondents affirmed it. Similarly, Communication is an art and one of the basic components of instructional process. The respondents (80.1%) were of the opinion that their tutors were good in communicating the contents in an effective manner by using its innovative approaches. They (62.2%) acclaimed that their tutors were aware of academic criteria of the varsity and they (as reported by 55.6% of the learners) ensured available resources to meet academic standards. The learners (82.5%) also affirmed that their tutors assisted them to learn through self-directed study by providing counselling services to them. They (72.5%) were of the opinion that tutors did so for blending information with their life experiences. However, 60.3% of the learners wished for feedback of their tutors on their academic work properly, which was reported by data to be lacking. Table 2: Learners’ reflection on skills of tutors to encourage and facilitate them developing learning skills Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) Andragogical Area SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors enable learners to make their own learning choices 102 (21.8) 168 (35.9) 2 (0.4) 101 (21.6) 95 (20.3) Tutors promote supportive learning environments 213 (45.5) 188 (40.2) 2 (0.4) 39 (8.3) 26 (5.6) Tutors encourage problem-based learning 171 (36.5) 221 (47.2) 3 (0.6) 26 (5.6) 47 (10.0) Tutors assign learning activities and group work to their learners 117 (25.0) 196 (41.9) 2 (0.4) 91 (19.4) 62 (13.2) Tutors encourage students’ reflection on learning 167 (35.7) 141 (30.1) 0 0.0 89 (19.0) 71 (15.2) Hussain 129 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 Table 2 points out the reflection of distance learners on emboldening skills of their tutors. According to the data 57.5% of the respondents were of the opinion that their tutors enabled them to make their own learning choices. They (85.7%) appreciated the democratic attitude of their tutors by stating that they enjoyed academic freedom and their tutors promoted supportive learning environments. Majority of the respondents (83.7%) asserted that their tutors encouraged problem- based learning by exploiting constructivist approach. Knowledge is constructed by active involvement of the learners. The respondents (66.9%) apprised that their tutors offered earning activities and assigned group work to them for knowledge construction. The learners (65.8%) affirmed that their tutors encouraged their reflection for developing communication skills and confidence among them. Table 3: Learners’ reflection on tutors’ attitude helping them make learning meaningful Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) Andragogical Area SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors relate learning activities with learners’ experience 189 (40.4) 156 (33.3) 4 (0.9) 70 (15.0) 49 (10.5) Tutors help learners to identify relevant resources 164 (35.0) 199 (42.5) 0 0.0 84 (17.9) 21 (4.5) Tutors encourage interest groups 103 (22.0) 178 (38.0) 4 (0.9) 94 (20.1) 89 (19.0) Tutors guide learners to use resources appropriately 187 (40.0) 234 (50.0) 0 0.0 47 (10.0) 0 0.0 Tutors exemplify concepts from real life 131 (28.0) 192 (41.0) 4 (0.9) 79 (16.9) 62 (13.2) Tutors associate new knowledge with previous one of learners 108 (23.1) 201 (42.9) 2 (0.4) 85 (18.2) 72 (15.4) Table 3 expresses learners’ reflection on their tutors’ attitude in helping them make learning meaningful. Relevance of prior academic experience with learning activities leads toward new knowledge. The data indicated that 73.7% of the respondents were of the opinion that their tutors linked learning activities with their prior academic experiences and it helped them to construct new knowledge. Similarly, 77.5% of them affirmed that tutors helped them in identifying the relevant academic resources required by them. In academic settings interest groups are considered necessary for sharing learning activities with group members. It was asserted by 60% of the respondents that their tutors encouraged interest groups to discuss and share study plans and achievements in broader perspective. The data also reflected appreciative attitude of distance learners towards counselling skills of their tutors as 90% of them affirmed academic the guidance of their tutors in using educational resources appropriately. They (69%) appreciated the professional expertise of their tutors as they explained difficult concepts and themes with examples from real life situations. Likewise, 66% of the responses indicated that tutors associated new knowledge with previous one of the learners for their maximum understanding & comprehension. 130 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 Table 4: Learners’ reflection on tutors’ assistance in removing their learning difficulties Andragogical Area Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors probe into learners’ academic difficulties 127 (27.1) 215 (45.9) 0 0.0 78 (16.7) 48 (10.3) Tutors are keen to listen their students 112 (23.9) 187 (40.0) 3 (0.6) 101 (21.6) 65 (13.9) Tutors discuss learners’ difficulties openly 116 (24.8) 202 (43.2) 4 (0.9) 77 (16.5) 69 (14.7) Tutors use questioning technique 126 (26.9) 159 (34.0) 2 (0.4) 86 (18.4) 95 (20.3) Tutors summarize concepts comprehensively 127 (27.1) 155 (33.1) 5 (1.1) 97 (20.7) 84 (17.9) Tutors get learners’ feedback 75 (16.0) 89 (19.0) 4 (0.9) 187 (40.0) 113 (24.1) Table 4 reveals learners’ attitude towards assistance provided by their tutors in eliminating their learning difficulties. According to the data, the distance learners agreed to state that tutors were positive to eliminate their academic difficulties. The respondents (63.9%) were of the opinion that distance education tutors welcomed learners’ queries for quenching their academic thirst. Similarly, 83% of the learners asserted that their tutors showed keenness to listen to them and probe into their learning difficulties. The learners (68%) reported that tutors discussed their difficulties openly to find the solutions. Questioning is considered as one of effective investigative techniques. The respondents (60.9%) reported that their tutors used questioning technique in identifying and removing learning difficulties of the learners. They (60.2%) appreciated the efforts of their tutors to make them understand difficult concepts by summarizing them comprehensively. However, learners (64.1%) wished their tutors to get their feedback on tutoring skills, methods of instructional delivery and scaffolding techniques. Table 5: Learners reflection on their tutors’ assessment and evaluation skills Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) Andragogical Area SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors mark assignments and return within due time 204 (43.6) 234 (50.0) 0 0.0 18 (3.8) 12 (2.6) Tutors give comments on assignments 166 (35.5) 187 (40.0) 4 (0.9) 87 (18.6) 24 (5.1) Tutors indicate strong parts in assignments 166 (35.5) 187 (40.0) 4 (0.9) 87 (18.6) 24 (5.1) Tutors indicate weaker parts in assignments 173 (37.0) 112 (23.9) 0 0.0 99 (21.2) 84 (17.9) Tutors adopt problem-based assessment style 199 (42.5) 122 (26.1) 0 0.0 83 (17.7) 64 (13.7) Tutors direct learners towards academic activities 131 (28.0) 168 (35.9) 4 (0.9) 93 (19.9) 72 (15.4) Tutors’ comments support learners to improve learning 147 (31.4) 164 (35.0) 0 0.0 68 (14.5) 89 (19.0) Hussain 131 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 Assessment and evaluation are considered to be basic components of any educational endeavour. The data given in table-5 indicates the reflection of distance learners on assessment and evaluation skills of their tutors. The learners (93.6%) affirmed that their tutors marked and returned the assignments within due roundabout time duration. The respondents (68.6%) further asserted that tutors adopted problem-based assessment style. Tutor marked assignments are considered to be the basic components of students’ level of learning and its reflection. The respondents (85.5%) were of the opinion that tutors helped them to improve the work by giving comments on tutor marked assignments. The learners (75.5%) stated that tutors mentioned strong parts of assignments and 60.9% of them stated that they also indicated the weaker parts of the assignments to improve their academic writing and communication skills. The learners (66.5%) viewed comments on tutor marked assignments to be supportive in enhancing their learning and they (63.9%) appreciated tutors’ attitude of directing them towards academic activities. Table 6: Learners’ reflection on technical skills of their tutors Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) Andragogical Area SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors use composed handouts 169 (36.1) 152 (32.5) 2 (0.4) 79 (16.9) 66 (14.1) Tutors communicate through e-mail 77 (16.5) 53 (11.3) 0 0.0 164 (35.0) 174 (37.2) Tutors use social websites for communication 98 (20.9) 67 (14.3) 4 (0.9) 127 (27.1) 172 (36.8) Tutors use Skype conferences 53 (11.3) 61 (13.0) 6 (1.3) 207 (44.2) 141 (30.1) Tutors promote group interaction through conference call facility 90 (19.2) 52 (11.1) 8 (1.7) 197 (42.1) 121 (25.9) Tutors use web blogs to promote academic interaction 38 (8.1) 56 (12.0) 7 (1.5) 201 (42.9) 166 (35.5) Tutors moderate online discussion 34 (7.3) 28 (6.0) 8 (1.7) 187 (40.0) 211 (45.1) Table-6 shows reflection of distance learners on technical skills of their tutors. The data appraised the opinion of distance learners by asserting that their tutors were computer literate. The learners (68.6%) stated that tutors used computerized/composed handouts in tutoring through distance education. A small number of respondents (27.8%) asserted that tutors used Internet –electronic mail. Similarly, 35.2% of the respondents reflected that tutors use social networking websites like face-book, LinkedIn, web blog and Google groups for communication with learners. Technology is used to initiate and maintain group interaction at a distance. The learners (30.1%) affirmed that their tutors promoted group interaction through conference call facility on mobile phones. Modern technologies are also be used for enhancing group interaction and communication. Skype is one of such technologies and 24.3% of the respondents stated that tutors used Skype for communication. Likewise, 20.1% of them affirmed that their tutors used web blogs and 13.3% appraised the online discussion 132 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 initiated by their tutors. It was evident that tutors had lower expertise, interest and/or access to the technology. Table 7: Learners’ reflection on social skills of their tutors Responses (Percentage is given in parentheses) Andragogical Area SA A UNC DA SDA Tutors develop academic relationships 127 (27.1) 206 (44.0) 4 (0.9) 76 (16.2) 55 (11.8) Tutors observe to promote courtesy among learners 155 (33.1) 187 (40.0) 4 (0.9) 76 (16.2) 46 (9.8) Tutors practice professional honesty 113 (24.1) 196 (41.9) 8 (1.7) 69 (14.7) 82 (17.5) Tutors adopt accepted social norms 204 (43.6) 234 (50.0) 0 0.0 18 (3.8) 12 (2.6) Tutors have respect for others 127 (27.1) 192 (41.0) 3 (0.6) 66 (14.1) 80 (17.1) Tutors are positive towards others 140 (29.9) 173 (37.0) 5 (1.1) 75 (16.0) 75 (16.0) Table 7 indicates the opinion of distance learners towards social skills of their tutors. Social skills are considered essential for smooth and successful life. The learners (71.1%) asserted that their tutors developed academic relationships with them and advised to promote the same in their community. The respondents reported different social skills of their tutors with some degree of variation. The learners (73.1%) asserted that tutors observed courtesy, 66% described professional honesty of their tutors. Likewise, majority (93.6%) of the respondents stated that tutors adopted accepted social norms and values, 68.1% revealed the respect of tutors which they had for others and 66.9% commended their positive attitude towards others to inculcate these traits among learners. Analysis and Results of Qualitative Data The researcher collected qualitative data by using focus group interview technique. An interview schedule (prepared on the same parameters as that of the questionnaire) was used to collect relevant information from the respondents (total 50 learners). The respondents expressed their reflections and opinions freely on different aspects of tutoring and andragogical skills of their tutors. The interview/qualitative data revealed remarkable and factual information which is summarized below. i. Academic and Andragogical Skills The learners’ reflected on academic and tutoring skills of their tutors in an elaborative and professional manner. They spoke high about their mastery in their respective subject areas. A prominent majority of distance learners acclaimed, “Our tutors helped us develop new knowledge and applying it practically –blending new information with our life experiences. They use latest and innovative communication approaches for effective learning. They help us to overcome learning difficulties and how to consult self-instructional materials for self-directed study”. Hussain 133 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 The distance learners appeared to be satisfied with available resources to meet their academic demands and learning needs according to the varsity standards. The learners asserted that their tutors provided counselling services to them but they wished to have proper feedback on their academic work from their tutors. ii. Encouraging and facilitating learners to develop their learning skills The distance learners reflected on emboldening skills of their tutors in an appreciating way. They were of the view that their tutors enabled them to make their own learning choices. They asserted, “Our tutors are true professionals and they believe in academic freedom and independent choices of study. However, they assist us in developing learning skills –by appreciating our academic achievements and helping us to overcome major shortcomings. They involve us in learning activities and advise us to share academic work with others”. The learners asserted that their tutors encouraged problem-based learning by offering learning activities & assigning group work to them. They also affirmed that their tutors encouraged them to reflect on different aspects of distance learning for developing communication skills and confidence among them. iii. Helping and facilitating learners to make their learning meaningful Meaningful learning makes learners capable enough to make its appropriate use practically. The distance learners’ explained that their tutors were keen on helping and facilitating them making their learning effective and meaningful. They helped them draw conclusions and inferences from precedents and examples. They stated, “Our tutors help us relate learning activities with our academic experience and assisted us to identify relevant resources. Our tutors adopt humanistic approach and keep in view our personal profiles. They help us associate new knowledge with previous one. They encourage us to formulate interest groups to discuss and share study plans and achievements in broader perspective”. The learners were of the view that their tutors facilitated them in locating and using educational resources appropriately. Apparently, the distance learners were satisfied with academic coaching and facilitation endeavour of their tutors. iv. Enabling and helping learners to deal with and remove obstacles The qualitative data reported positive attitude of distance learners towards their tutors’ assistance in eliminating their learning difficulties and scaffolding them. A group of the respondents was of the voice, “Our tutors welcome us and listen to solve our learning difficulties and academic problems. They discuss our study problems openly and guide us to overcome these problems in an effective way. They try to explore our problems in different ways and usually they use questioning technique”. In spite of all above, the distance learners asserted that tutors rarely considered it necessary to have feedback on their tutoring and mentoring skills & styles for appropriate instructional delivery and scaffolding. The learners wished if their tutors 134 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 took into account constructive criticism and comments on andragogical skills for their improvement and perfection. v. Assessment & Evaluation Skills Assessment and evaluation are considered to be basic the components of all educational endeavours. Assessment and evaluation are assumed to be the art of measuring learning and learning achievements of learners in educational institutions. The more a tutor is adept in assessing and measuring learning achievement the more accurately learning is measured. The learners appeared to be praising for assessment and evaluation skills of their tutors by asserting, “Tutors specify the parts of our assignments where we achieve and/or loose marks. Our tutors help us to improve and re-submit the weak assignments. Tutors involve us in activities and evaluate through problem-based assessment approach. The comments of tutors on our work encourage us and create motivation to learn”. The learners appreciated their tutors’ helpful and facilitating attitudes which lead them towards academic activities. Seemingly, learners were appraising their tutors’ ability of evaluating and reporting the strengths and weaknesses in learners’ academic work. However, learners wished to have positive response of their tutors to addressing their queries related with their studies and academic demands. vi. Technical Skills Technical skills of educational practitioners are considered to be an integral part of one’s professional competencies. Distance learners apparently agreed that their tutors were computer literate. A reasonable number of learners asserted, “Our tutors used computers for presentation in the classroom. They also provided us computerized handouts. They used electronic mail and face-book for communicating with us. However, they rarely used other technology-based communication systems like conference call through mobile phones and Skype, web blogs and online discussions”. Obviously, distance learners were less satisfied with expertise of their tutors to use latest information and communication technologies to promote and enhance communication and group interaction. Their assertion indicated lower expertise of tutors, their interest and/or availability of the technology. It might have created problems for innovative learners. They wished their tutors to be equipped properly with such skills of using latest communication technologies in distance education. vii. Social Skills The learners pointed out that their tutors practiced accepted social values. They appreciated and commended their mannerism and behaviour. They were of the voice, “Tutors are welcoming and positive to us. They feel pleasure to discuss academic issues and problems with us. They are always kind to us and meet with smiling face. They accommodate us even when they are busy”. It was evident from the opinion of distance learners that their tutors observed social skills satisfactorily. The learners explained that tutors observed courtesy, practiced Hussain 135 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 professional honesty, adopted social norms and values with respect for others. They advised learners to develop and observe the same social traits in their lives. DISCUSSION ON RESULTS OF THE STUDY It was a unique study with its distinctive nature. It revealed interesting and some remarkable results by addressing andragogical skills of distance education tutors. The study affirmed that learners were satisfied with academic and tutoring skills of distance education tutors as their reflection on such competencies including mastery in their respective subject areas was reported to be positive (table-1 &i). It coincides with the assertion of O’Rourke (2003) who identified three core skill groups required for effective tutoring in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) including academic, supportive and administrative skills of a tutor. Similarly, learners valued the emboldening and facilitating skills of their tutors. The learners reported that tutors enabled them to make their own learning choices and enjoy academic autonomy by promoting supportive and conducive to learning environments. The learners affirmed that their tutors encouraged their reflection for developing communication skills and confidence among them (table-2 &ii). The distance learners’ explained that their tutors were keen on helping and facilitating them making their learning effective and meaningful. They helped them draw conclusions and inferences from precedents and examples (Table-3 &iii). These results correspond to the recommendations of Suanmali's (1981) study that a tutor must have the ability of minimizing dependency of learners, helping them use learning resources, defining their learning needs, taking responsibility for learning, organizing for their own learning, fostering their decision- making and choices, encouraging them for judgment and integration, facilitating them in posing problem and finding its solution, providing supportive to learning environment, and exploiting experiential methods. The quantitative and qualitative data reported positive attitude of distance learners towards their tutors’ assistance in eliminating their learning difficulties. In spite of all above, the distance learners stated that their feedback on tutoring skills was gives less importance rather it would be useful for tutors. (table-4 & iv). These results relate to the third of the five principles of adult learning identified by Bragar & Johnson (1993) that effective learning takes place by addressing learners’ issues. Assessment and evaluation are considered to be the basic parameters of quality education and all educational endeavours depend upon them. Apparently, learners reported (quantitatively as well as qualitatively) that their tutors were capable of assessing and evaluating their learning and learning achievements (table-5 &v). These results partially relate to the assessment skills of a distance education tutor as suggested by Mitra (2008) that a distance education tutor should have the ability to assess and convey the strengths and weaknesses in learners’ work. The present time is the age of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The educational professionals using ICTs are aware of innovations and latest developments in their subject area or area of specialization. They can access to use right information at the right time. Distance education tutors need to be equipped with technical skills of 136 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 using ICTs properly. Distance learners apparently agreed that their tutors were computer literate, but they rarely promoted group interaction through conference calls on mobile phones, Skype, web-blogs, and online discussions indicating their lower expertise of using these technologies and/or less interest. The learners wished if their tutors were equipped properly with skills of using latest communication technologies in distance education (table-6 & vi). These results also partially coincide with recommendations of Hussain (2005) and Mitra (2008) indicating that distance education tutors may be capable enough to exploit ICTs in teaching learning process. It was evident from the opinion of distance learners that their tutors practiced social skills satisfactorily. They advised learners to develop and practice social skills like courtesy, professional honesty and accepted social norms and values in their lives (table-7 &vii). These findings relate to the aspirations of Adeeb, Rahmani, Hussain and Nadeem (2009) that a university teacher should be equipped with appropriate social norms & values and behave like an educational leader to inculcate the same among learners and to bring about positive change in the society. CONCLUSION The study concludes that the overall reflection of distance learners on andragogical skills of their tutors was positive. Apparently they were satisfied with andragogical skills of their tutors. They affirmed that their tutors had academic and tutoring skills (consisting of encouraging, guiding & facilitating –emboldening and enabling skills), assessment & evaluation skills, technical, and social skills. However, tutors need training in developing skills of using social websites, Skype and mobile phone conference, and online discussions. RECOMMENDATIONS • The researcher recommended that proper short term and long term training of distance education tutors may be organized to equip them with technical skills of using Information and communication technologies in distance education • Tutors’ manual may be developed by distance education institutions for newly registered tutors. • A large scale study may be conducted to evaluate learners’ reflection on andragogical skills of their tutors and find out their training needs REFERENCES Adeeb, M.A., Rahmani, S. H., Hussain, I., & Nadeem, A. (2009). Teaching as Profession. A Module for Training University Teachers; Islamabad. National Academy for Higher Education (NAHE) Akande, J. O., & Jegede, P. O. (2004). Andragogy and computer literacy:The Nigerian perspective’. The African Symposium: An on-line educational research journal, 4(2), http://www2.ncsu.edulncsulaernlarkives2.html. Bellamio, D. (2006). Personal Interview and Conversation Surrounding His Impetus for Having Knowles' book; The adult learner: A neglected species’, 4th edition, Translated into Italian. Near Milano, Italy, September 21, 2006. Hussain 137 International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 Brager, J., & Johnson, K. (1993). Adult learning: New research on continuous learning in the business environment; Atlanta, OA: American Society for Training and Development Annual Conference. Cassity, K. (2005). Bringing lived cultures and experience to the WAC classroom: A qualitative study of selected nontraditional community college students writing across the curriculum; Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Hawaii, United States Hawaii. Retrieved June 27, 2008, from Dissertations & Theses: A &I database. (Publication No. AA T 3171037). Gross, M. (2006). Why do people decide to study andragogy and what happens during their studies? A qualitative research study. In Papers presented at the ilk Standing International Conference on the History of Adult Education (IESVA), Bamberg, Germany: September 27-30, 2006. Henschke, J. A. (2008). A Global Perspective on Andragogy: An Update’." In Proceedings of the Commission on International Adult Education [CIAE] Pre- Conference, American Association for Adult and Continuing Education [AAACE] Conference; Boucouvalas, M. [Ed]. VoL 1, pp. 43-94. 2008. Henschke, 1. A. (2006). Comparing Personal Learning and Educational Institution Elements Required in Various Countries for a Re-Orientation toward a Focus on Lifelong Learning; In Papers presented at the Conference of the International Society for Comparative Adult Education (ISCAE) Bamberg, Germany: September 24-27, 2006. Hussain, I. (2008). Assessment of Learning Achievement of Adult Literacy Centers’ Graduates in District Ghotki. A Paper Presented in the National Conference on School Education; Organized by Faculty of Education, University of Sindh, Hyderabad, Pakistan in collaboration with Higher Education Commission (HEC) Islamabad, November 26-27, 2008. Hussain, I., Adeeb, M.A., Rahmani, S. H., & Safdar, M.A. (2008). “Distance Education as a Strategy for Eliminating Gender Disparity in Pakistan” (2008). Presented at “Fifth-Pan Commonwealth-Forum on Open Learning.” organized by the Commonwealth of Learning and University of London, at the Institute of Education (IOE), July 13-17, 2008. http://www.wikieducator.org/images/8/86/PID_609.pdf. Hussain, I. (2005). A study of emerging technologies and their impact on teaching learning processes. An unpublished PhD thesis. Islamabad, Allama Iqbal Open University Hussain, I. (1999). A study of problem faced by distance education tutors in Bahawalpur Region. An unpublished M.Phill thesis, Islamabad, Allama Iqbal Open University. Isenberg, S. K. (2005). The experience of applying principles of andragogy to internet technology; Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. 138 A Study of Learners’ Reflection on Andragogical Skills … International Journal of Instruction, January 2013 ● Vol.6, No.1 Isenberg, S. K. (2007). Applying andragogical principles to internet learning; Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press. Knowles, M. S. (1970). The modern practice of adult education: Andragogy vs. pedagogy; Chicago: Association Press/Follett. Kearsley, G. (2004/2007). Theories. Andragogy (M. Knowles); Retrieved January 14, 2005, http://tip.psychology.orglknowles.html. Merriam, S. B. (2001). Andragogy and self-directed learning: Pillars of adult learning theory; The New Update on Adult Learning Theory, San Francisco: Jossey Bass, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, Imel, S., Editor in Chief, no. 89,3-13. Mitra, S. (2009). Manual for the Tutors of Learning Centers in Open Schools; Canada, Commonwealth of Learning [Retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- sa/3.0 on June 13, 2011] Morland, D. V. (2003). How to teach adult learners. ROI (Return on Investment) Learning Services Professional Guidelines Services’, Down linked from an andragogy Google search. Date Retrieved: November 10, 2004. Nelson, N. (2005). Musical odyssey: The cultural identity and education of five African American women; Ph. D. Dissertation, Walden University, United States Minnesota. Retrieved June 23, 2008, from Dissertations & Theses: A&I database. (Publication No. AAT 3182622). O’Rourke, J. (2003). Tutoring in open and distance learning: A handbook for tutors; Canada, Commonwealth of Learning Rachal , J. R. (2002). Andragogy’s detectives: A critique of the present and a proposal for the future; Adult Education Quarterly, Vol. 52 No. 3; 210-227 Rashid, M. (2003). Adult education in comparative perspective; M.Phill Study Guide, Islamabad, Allama Iqbal Open University Rashid, M. (2000). Concept and Methods of Distance Education; Islamabad, National Book Foundation Suanmali, C. (1981). The core concepts of andragogy; Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University Teachers College, New York City, Dissertation Abstracts International, University Microfilms no. 8207343. Toman, E. (2005). Communicating the wild land fire message: An investigation of agency outreach starategies. Ph. D. Dissertation, Oregon State University, United States -Oregon. Retrieved June 23, 2008, from Dissertations and Theses: A&I database. (Publication No. AA T 3194155). VanGent, B. (1996). Andragogy. In A. C. Tuijnman (Ed.)., The International Encyclopedia of Adult Education and Training (pp. 114-117). Oxford: Pergamon. Wie, A. L. (2003). Improving adult learning; Hogskolen Nesna: Socrates Education and Culture. 
work_ypszkbazlvcvhphmvjtcpno2we	----	AJDE_SharmaTietjen 1 EXAMINING PATTERNS OF PARTICIPATION AND MEANING-MAKING IN STUDENT BLOGS: A CASE STUDY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Priya Sharma and Philip Tietjen The Pennsylvania State University Abstract The power of social media lies in its ability to easily connect people and ideas, and in being able to rapidly promote the spread of information via online networks. The ability to explicate one’s ideas, engage in discussion, and refine one’s thinking based on feedback is a fundamental precept of socio-constructivist and collaborative learning, and one that is key to the Web 2.0 ecology. Similar designs can be implemented in more formal educational contexts to support learners to engage in reflective discourse with peers. This paper reports on the use of blogs in an online course over multiple semesters and analyzes the quality and quantity of interaction between course participants. We use a combination of social network analyses and discourse analysis to show the patterns of participation and the quality of participation over two iterations of the course. We identified that patterns of participation were consistent with the course design and that blogs offer a viable medium to engage students authentically in Web 2.0 practices and to support meaning making and collaborative learning. Based on the data, recommendations for integrating social media in formal course designs are suggested. INTRODUCTION Online education is well established as a mode of post-secondary education. Since the early 2000s, universities across the United States have experienced a continuing increase in the number of students taking courses online (Allen and Seaman 2013; Radford 2011). As online learning has grown and matured, teachers and learning designers have sought to identify methods and tools that could more effectively leverage the unique affordances offered through the emergent technologies and tools associated with the World Wide Web. The advent of Web 2.0 re-popularized and refocused attention on terms such as collaboration, participation, networked learning, and students as producers of knowledge (Ryberg, Buus, and 2 Georgsen 2012); however, these aspects of interaction have long been the focus of work in computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) (e.g., Stahl 2006) and networked learning (Goodyear et al. 2004). But, social software (Alexander 2006) such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, and user generated content have been adopted and integrated into mainstream life to such an extent that they have been embraced as exciting new tools capable of promoting engagement and collaborative learning (Davies and Merchant 2009; Richardson, 2010). Efforts to integrate such technologies and practices into education have proven challenging (Dohn, 2009; Ertmer, et al. 2011; Brodahl, Hadjerrouit and Hansen 2011) because of conceptual and practical differences in applying principles of Web 2.0 into education. For example, one problematic assumption was that students would as easily and eagerly apply these tools in a classroom environment in order to achieve specific learning objectives as they did for recreational purposes (Crook 2011; Smith, 2012; Bennett and Maton 2010). What much of this research uncovered was that the challenge laid not in the technical infrastructure but rather in creating the conditions for a vibrant social ecosystem that encouraged learners to see learning and knowledge construction as a distributed enterprise (Kreijns, Kirschner, and Jochems 2003; Moore 2004). In this paper, we use a case study approach to examine data from two iterations of a graduate, online course offered at a North American higher education institution in attempt to unpack some of the opportunities and challenges inherent in using Web 2.0 tools to support learning. Especially, we examine the ways in which uses of Web 2.0 within educational contexts support student interaction and meaning making in ways that are consonant with the practices of Web 2.0, with a focus on identifying important aspects of course/environmental design that impact student interaction and meaning making in the course. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND CONTEXT DESIGN Social Web Technologies The change from a static, consumer-driven web to a more participatory web was heralded by a large number of social software components (Alexander 2006), which allowed users to participate in increasingly connected communities through blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and similarly designed tools. Tools such as blogs and wikis offer the potential for supporting constructivist learning (Jonassen 1991)activities through social affordances that expand the opportunities for participation. With blogs, individuals can compose posts, as well as comment, 3 link, personalize, and interact with broader audiences outside the immediate classroom and therefore enhance the authenticity of the learning. In addition, this type of dialogue can also be seen as a form of collaborative learning, where learning occurs through a negotiation of meaning and co-construction of knowledge (Lazonder et al. 2003). Successful collaborative learning can be described by the amount of interaction and reflection taking place, including students’ engagement in explaining and justifying their thinking through argumentation to reach mutual agreement (Iannou et al. 2014; Lazonder et al. 2003). Research on the use of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis in higher education have primarily focused on aspects other than collaborative learning. For example, the application of blogs in educational contexts have been explored for their capacity for building community (Bartholomew, Jones, and Glassman 2012; Chen and Bonk 2008), reflective thinking (Xie and Sharma 2011; Xie and Sharma 2013) and engagement (Cakir, 2013; Junco, et al., 2010). Similarly, researchers have explored the use of wikis for promoting collaborative knowledge building (Donne, 2012; Bonk, et al., 2009; Larusson and Alterman 2009; Moskaliuk, Kimmerle, and Cress 2009), professional development (Lai and Ng 2011.; Benson, Brack and Samarwickrema 2012) and international or cross-cultural collaboration (Ertmer, et al., 2011; Twu, 2009). Collaborative Learning and Meaning Making Our work falls within the broader area of CSCL, and is based on the assumption that collaboration can support learning (Lazonder, Wilhelm, & Ootes, 2003), whereby meaning is negotiated and knowledge is jointly constructed. Interaction between participants is key to collaborative learning and examination of such interaction can afford useful insights into the process of learning. The practices of Web 2.0 are closely linked to engaging and sharing in communities, establishing social identity and roles, and moving beyond purely information sharing types of activities (e.g. Dohn 2009). Meaning making is also identified as central to the research agenda of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (Koschman 2002). More specifically, the principal focus is on “... the practices of meaning-making in the context of joint activity and the ways in which these practices are mediated through designed artifacts” (Koschmann 2002, 20). An important element in this definition is the mediating role that tools play in the meaning making process. In contemporary learning environments where computers or web-based tools are often used to support collaborative learning, students can use the affordances of these tools to leverage the collective knowledge of the group in tackling learning-related challenges. In addition, these 4 tools present students or members of the group with affordances for interacting with the contributions of others through creating links, tags (keywords) and comments that others can build on. In digital environments such as blogs, these visible forms of interaction provide visible “documentation of how learners *do* something” (Koschmann 2002, 21). As learners in a group grapple with a given learning related challenge, this documentation reveals the processes they used to make meaning of it. DESIGN OF CONTEXT We implemented blogs in two semesters of a course in emerging technologies and learning. The course, designed primarily for practicing or in-service teachers and trainers, was geared towards helping them gain familiarity and proficiency with applying social web technologies in teaching and learning. The two sections were taught by two different instructors, and although the course goals and objectives across the two sections were generally the same, each instructor had the flexibility to tailor some of the assignments and course content in the way that appeared most appropriate for that particular implementation of the course. A brief summary description of each course section is described below. In integrating the use of Web 2.0 tools, our design maps onto various activities or practices that are identified as being an integral part of Web 2.0 usages (Dohn 2009), including distributed authorship, active, multi-way communication, collaboration, and taking place on the WWW. By integrating blogs into the course, we provided tools that allowed students the affordance to build skills related to two aspects: one, the individual skills of reflection, clarification, and organization (Lazonder et al. 2003), and the collaborative skills of co-constructing and negotiating meaning (Iannou et al. 2014). As such our designs were consistent with the intersubjective epistemological view of learning in CSCL (Suthers 2006) where interpretations of knowledge can be created individually as well as jointly via interaction, and whereby “the process of meaning-making is itself constituted of social interactions” (318). Design of Section A This section of the course was conducted during the summer of 2013. In general, this section featured several major assignments that integrated Web 2.0 tools (e.g., blog, social bookmarking, wiki, podcast). 12 students were enrolled in the course and they produced 147 posts and 437 comments. In this section, all blog posts were centralized into one main course 5 blog rather than each student creating and maintaining their own blog. The majority of the content for the blog posts was produced by student reaction to the readings, guided by various instructor provided question-prompts. Each week, students were required to write a minimum of one post and two comments on other students’ posts. Overall, blogging represented a significant component of the overall course grade (30%). Design of Section B This section was conducted during fall semester 2013. Student work in the course was based on blogging in response to provided texts, commenting on peers’ posts, curating blog posts, using a social bookmarking tool for commenting, participating around focused questions and debates in discussion boards within the course LMS, writing an individual policy paper and a personal learning/teaching statement. The data for this section consisted of blog data from 15 students, including 147 blog posts and 673 comments. Blogging and commenting accounted for 45% of the total grade within the fall section. Students each set up an individual blog, and posted at least one blog post in response to instructor prompts on specific weeks. In addition, they were asked to respond to at least two peers’ blog posts with comments. Students were also assigned to blog groups of 4-5 wherein they were asked to read and respond primarily to their blog groups although they were encouraged to read and respond to as many peers as possible. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY Our main research questions were: (1) what are the patterns of participation visible in two sections of the same online course? (2) what kinds of meaning-making are exhibited in the two sections? The focus of our study was to examine and describe the patterns of participation in the two sections of the course, as well as describe the types of meaning making that occurred. Thus, we chose a multiple case study design (Yin 2009) as our research framework. In this case, the two cases were the summer and fall sections of the emerging technologies and learning course, and the cases were chosen because while they dealt with the same content, there were differences in the design and structure of the interactions, such that they might offer opportunities for theoretical replication (Yin 2009). 6 Within each course, the data were analyzed using two different methods. To answer our first research question regarding patterns of participation, we used social network analysis (SNA) to examine and map interactions between participants in each version of the course. To answer our second question, we used discourse analysis to code the blogs and comments. Two researchers first coded 5 blogs and all associated comments together until they agreed on the code application. They then individually coded 5 more blogs and came back to discuss and refine their code application again. The researchers then independently coded all blogs and comments within one course section. ANALYSIS Level 1: Patterns of Participation Social network analysis (SNA) allows the mapping and examination of relationships in a network (Knoke and Yang 2008), and offers various metrics for identifying the ways in which information flows and is shared, as well as how to identify prominent nodes and gatekeepers in the network. Our goal in using SNA was to identify the ways in which participation could be mapped in the different course designs, with a special focus on looking at how connections between students themselves and the instructor might have differed. We used measures of centrality (which refers to the role or prominence of individuals in the network) and density (which relates to the overall network of connections between individuals in the group) to further explore the ways in which the groups functioned. Communications between students (i.e. posts and comments) were coded within a matrix and sociograms and measures of centrality were generated using UCINET software. Level 2: Quality of Participation In identifying a coding scheme for the qualitative phase of our study, we carefully evaluated the coherence between our theoretical framework and the coding scheme, identified a meaningful unit of analysis, and established processes to reach inter-rater reliability (De Wever et al. 2006) in order to perform a rigorous content analysis. Our selection of the coding scheme was influenced by the theoretical framing of the activity as having an intersubjective epistemology, where it was important to look at interpretations at the individual and group level. Of the many coding schemes available, we selected Arvaja’s (2012) scheme for analyzing meaning making in online discussions. This framework proposes meaning making as occurring on two levels: first, through the type of discourse, and second, by the way in which those types of discourse were 7 manifested through a range of epistemic activities. Figure 1 presents a visualization of Arvaja’s analytical approach. FIGURE 1: Analyzing Meaning Making in Online Discussions (adapted from Arvaja 2012) At the individual level, Arvaja proposes three types of meaning making activity – Applying, Forming or stating a conception, and Critiquing. At the group level the types of discourse include: Elaboration, Sharing, and Using others as personal resources for enhancing one’s personal understanding (103). Elaboration discourse occurred when “…students were developing the philosophical knowledge or ideas presented by others … by offering a different perspective, critique, or new knowledge [and] thus elaborating others’ thoughts and ideas” (97). The second type of discourse, Sharing occurred when students “…shared experiences or conceptions on some phenomena …In sharing experiences, students often built their thoughts on several students’ thoughts …” (99-100). Arvaja also identified epistemic activities or types of conversational moves that characterized the discussions for Elaboration and Sharing and suggested that the focus of analysis was “...on how the students built their contributions on one another’s ideas and thoughts and by what means they advanced their shared meaning making and understanding of the phenomenon under discussion rather than on what they constructed through the discourse.” (93) 8 Epistemic activities associated with Elaboration discourse, for example, included moves such as “asking for clarification,” “reasoning or developing ideas further” and “giving new knowledge” (103). Similarly, epistemic activities associated with Sharing discourse included moves such as “giving one’s own example” and “sharing criticism by repeating, rephrasing, or summarizing” (103). The third type of meaning making discourse, Others as resources for enhancing one’s personal understanding, focuses on how students made explicit connections or links to previous discussion board postings: “... in the third way of meaning making, ideas and thoughts presented in the other students’ writings and discussion postings were explicitly pointed to as resources for enhancing one’s personal understanding” (Arvaja 2012, 97). Table 1 presents further details about the coding scheme for meaning making with examples. Discourse Epistemic Activity Description | Example Elaboration Asking for clarification Poster requests clarification on concept or idea raised by the course reading or curricular material Example: “What I would like to ask you is how you use and what benefits you see when using Pinterest” Answering clarification Poster answers request for clarification articulated by previous student regarding concept, idea or course-related activity. Example: “To answer your question for commenters. I would try to us [sic] AR for instances where visual representation matters …” Challenging others’ ideas Poster challenges another to substantiate or defend their interpretive position. Example: “The focus should indeed be on the process, but why not the product at the same time?” Giving new knowledge Poster adds a qualitatively new element added to the discussion -- either by bringing in a resource that was not part of the original discussion or that comes from a completely different disciplinary perspective. Example: You can go to the link I suggest you below and create your own badges. Giving new perspective Poster continues to talk about the same topic but provides a completely new way of looking at it. Example: “I feel like it is not so much the teachers and maybe ever not the schools that are not ready, but the government.” 9 Discourse Epistemic Activity Description | Example Reasoning or developing ideas further When poster appears to be engaged in sense-making or reflections clearly intended for readers of the blog. They stay on the same topic or issue but they dig more deeply or elaborate further. Example: “This could be made easier by collaborative learning through web 2.0 tools. I might be going out on a limb here, but it could be a more authentic form of assessment. I'm thinking more middle-high school here.” Sharing Agreeing on conception Poster agrees with another’s perspective or interpretive position Example: “I do agree with R--- [student] that the way we teach now turns a lot of students away from schooling and the use of technology could motivate them.” Giving one’s own example When the poster uses examples from personal experience or context and/or disciplinary knowledge Example: “I can answer your last question since I am in a new position and we are implementing the Google Chromebook platform ...” Sharing criticism Poster agrees with critical perspective articulated by other students Example: “My initial reaction to the badge system was similar to your ideas …” Others as resource -- Poster makes clear reference to a previous comment or poster and how it helped them to better understand conceptions, ideas, or theories, or how it clarified or added to their understanding. Example: Your quote: “I, along with many of my students, ... made me think about my own interactions TABLE 1: Coding Scheme for Meaning Making ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS Level 1: Patterns of Participation Social network analyses performed on data from the two sections of the course show some interesting differences. Figure 2 shows a sociogram from the summer section of the course, while Figure 3 shows a sociogram from the fall section of the course. The visual cues offered by the sociograms suggest that interaction among the participants is quite well distributed across the network in the summer section, with the instructor (represented by PRT) occupying as 10 prominent a role in the network as many other student participants. On the other hand, the fall section is clearly demarcated by cliques (generated by student participation in blog groups) and the role of the instructor (P) seems to be more prominent than that of other participants. The average degree, or the average number of connections made by participants in the summer and fall section seem to be relatively close, however the density of connections in the summer semester is much more than that of the fall. These numbers indicate that the design of blogs to be central vs. individual had different kinds of impact in terms of network behavior, but as well in the role of the instructor as indicated in the sociograms. Another metric that we examined was the average number of posts per person and comments per person. These numbers are displayed in Table 2. These numbers do not indicate huge differences in participation by individuals in each section; however, there is a clearly marked difference in the overall connectedness or density of the network in section A. Term Summer (Section A) Fall (Section B) Average Degree 9.75 8 Density 0.65 .4 Posts per person 12.25 .9.8 Comments per person 36.4 44.8 TABLE 2: General participation and SNA metrics 11 FIGURE 2: Sociogram of section A FIGURE 3: Sociogram of section B 12 Level 2: Quality of Participation As indicated above, the qualitative analysis of this study was geared towards examining in what ways the student blog posts revealed instances of meaning making and to do this, we adapted Arvaja’s (2012) analytical scheme. This was done by first identifying the type of discourse (e.g., Elaboration) and then second, the type of epistemic activity by which the discourse was exhibited (e.g., reasoning or developing ideas further, asking for clarification). Our qualitative data corpus consisted of 12 blogs, 147 posts and 437 comments. In analyzing for type of discourse, Elaboration showed the highest frequency (n=701) (See Figure 4). Interestingly, this finding echoes Arvaja’s (2012) findings, who also found Elaboration to be the most common discourse. Following Elaboration discourse was Sharing (n=594). The third type of discourse, Using others as resources for enhancing personal understanding, ranked considerably lower; however, as noted earlier, Arvaja created this as a somewhat distinct type of discourse in that, unlike Elaboration and Sharing, it had no corresponding subset of epistemic activities and therefore, its total frequency count should be viewed with that difference in mind. After coding the data for discourse type, we then coded it on the more granular level of epistemic activity (see Figure 5). The code that showed the highest frequency was a form of Elaboration discourse, “Reasoning or developing ideas further” (n=424). The next two codes that showed the highest frequencies were a form of Sharing discourse, namely, “Agreeing on conception” (n=346) and “Giving one’s own example” (n=224). Much less dominant were the epistemic activities of “Sharing criticism” (n=6), “Challenging others’ ideas” (n=22) and “Giving new knowledge” (n=43). This latter finding also echoed Arvaja’s (2012) study, which also found little evidence of students “challenging each others’ ideas” (99). 13 FIGURE 4: Discourse Frequency FIGURE 5: Epistemic Activities Detailed Discourse Analysis 0! 100! 200! 300! 400! 500! 600! 700! 800! Elaboration! Sharing! Others as resources! 0   50   100  150  200  250  300  350  400  450   Agreeing  on  conception   Giving  one's  example   Sharing  criticism   Answering  clari=ication   Asking  for  clari=ication   Challenging  others'  ideas   Giving  new  knowledge   Giving  new  perspective   Reasoning  or  developing  further   Elaboration   Sharing   14 Due to space constraints, we present only two excerpts to illustrate the detailed discourse analysis. The analysis of each of these excerpted examples consists of three elements: a brief statement of the context, the quoted excerpt and analysis. (Note: excerpts have not been edited for spelling, syntax or grammar.) Example 1 The initial student blogger or “Initial Poster” (IP) writes a blog post in response to a text by education scholar, Chris Dede, who explores how a Cartesian view of learning may be challenged by a more contemporary, Web 2.0-oriented philosophy that implies a “fluid epistemology.” The IP concludes her blog post with a question for any interested respondents to take up, which is how the first Responding Poster (RP) chooses to begin her post. The excerpt of this conversation is presented below. IP: I think that I personally am in full agreement of the idea of a fluid epistemology. … I'd like you to consider this question posed by Dede 2008. "But can a Web 2.0 view of knowledge, expertise, and learning overcome these problems?" (standardized testing, not being prepared for reality etc) What do you think? RP1: I struggle to answer Dede's questions you ended with, "But can a Web 2.0 view of knowledge, expertise, and learning overcome these problems?" I think as teachers, we know we need to move towards a Web 2.0 view of knowledge and we can all clearly see the benefits. … RP2: I might be going out on a limb here, but it could be a more authentic form of assessment. I'm thinking more middle-high school here. Analysis This first example illustrates the epistemic activity of Reasoning or developing ideas further. This happens by the way in which the comments extend and build on an open-ended question posed by the IP. In the first comment, the RP1 openly describes her “struggle” to answer the question posed by another student. By beginning her post in this way, she publicly shares her reasoning and related intellectual struggle with any subsequent readers or visitors to the blog. In addition, by sharing this struggle in the social context of the blog, she invites others to reflect and comment on it, which would not be possible if she were writing this within the enclosed, private space of a word-processing document. RP1 then shares her thinking on the question posed by the IP by asserting that “…need to move towards a Web 2.0 view of knowledge” and that once they do, they will “clearly see the benefits.” In response to RP1, a subsequent post by RP2 also shows a willingness to use the blog as a place to test thoughts and ideas that may be seen as a little risky or not fully formed - “I might be going out on a limb here, …” More specifically, RP2 extends the depth of RP1's comment by suggesting that one of the benefits of a "Web 2.0 15 view of knowledge" could be its impact on assessment, namely that it could offer a more "authentic form." Example 2 The excerpt below comes from a blog post in which the IP is responding to course readings that describe the capacity of Web 2.0 technologies for enabling the crowdsourcing of knowledge. IP: One of the topics brought up in Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age reminded me of a book that I have read. Brown discussed the idea that not one person is the expert when it comes to learning within the context of Web 2.0. Brown says that the real expert is the “community mind.” The Wisdom of Crowds: … by James Surowiecki is a fascinating read. The book highlights many examples proving that large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant those elite few are. RP: Your point from the article about the “community mind” is very interesting as well as the book suggestion. In science, a popular topic right now is Citizen Science (see [inserts link… For instance, if we wanted to catalog the numbers of a particular songbird because its numbers were decreasing, a web site could be created for citizen scientists to report on sightings of that bird. In astronomy, citizen scientists discovered two new planets! (see [inserts link]). This is also exciting for small colleges like my own, because we have very limited resources to use for undergraduate research. But in this way, we can have students learn some basic scientific research processes while sharing in a much larger project. … … IP: [Name of student]-Thank you for sharing your knowledge about this topic. After doing a little research on it and exploring the resources you have shared, it is amazing to me how activities and experiments can take “many forms”. What a great way to make “real-life connections” for your students! … Analysis In this excerpt, meaning making emerges through three types of epistemic activities: Giving new knowledge, Giving one’s example, and Others as resources. In responding to the IP’s post, the RP uses the IP’s phrase “community mind” as a basis for expanding the conversation into what she sees as the related phenomenon of Citizen Science. The RP not only provides a definition of Citizen Science but also contributes hyperlinks to external websites that contain additional details. In doing this, the RP gives new knowledge to the group by bringing in a resource that was not previously part of the original discussion. A second type of epistemic activity occurs near the end of the RP’s comment, where she further explains why the topic of Citizen Science became relevant to her as a professional educator. This happens by giving a personal example from the context of her professional workplace (“This is also exciting for colleges like my own …”). In doing this, the RP uses the experience gained from a different context to and applies it as a tool for making further sense of the connection between the IP’s blog post and her 16 responsive comment. The third type of epistemic activity surfaces in the form of “Others as resources” In this case, the IP refers back to a resource contained within a previous comment by the RP. More specifically, the IP describes how these resources initially shared by the RP have helped her in two ways: first, by using it as a spark for further learning about the topic of citizen science; and second, as a means of forming a new insight about its impact on the teaching and learning of science (“it is amazing to me how …”). DISCUSSION Our intent in this study was to examine patterns of participation and quality of meaning making in two sections of an online course in emerging technologies and learning. We used SNA for analyzing the patterns of participation and discourse analysis to identify quality of meaning making. The SNA of the two courses suggested that interaction among the participants were different with one section showing very dense network structure, where almost all students were connected with each other, with the instructor playing a role that was very similar to those played by the students. In the other course, the student interaction was more cliquish with the instructor playing a more prominent role in network and in connecting participants to each other. Both of these analyses are consistent with the design of the course sections in that one section was geared for open participation while the second course had assigned groups for blogging and commenting. What appears interesting in this regard is that both courses showed types of participation that are consonant with the practices of Web 2.0, such as active, multi-way interaction, and bottom- up participation (Dohn 2009). This same interaction can also be considered from the perspective of social presence (Garrison et al. 2001), which is highly correlated with quality of cognitive presence or ability to construct meaning through sustained communication (Lee 2014). However, differences in the configuration of the networks illustrate some considerations for design: integrating a single class blog opens opportunities for participation to everyone and reduces the overall prominence of the role of the instructor. This type of participation suggests that information and ideas can flow more openly throughout the entire community and the gatekeepers or weak links that control flow of information are fewer. In contrast, multiple blogs with blog groups develop very strong cliques of participation, where interaction between groups of participants is much stronger and much deeper within the clique, but also pushes the instructor to a role of centrality (Knoke and Yang, 2007) both in being connected to many individuals in the networks as well as acting as information broker. 17 In terms of quality of meaning making, the overall analyses suggest that a majority of the students engaged in high levels of Sharing and Elaboration discourse. By elaborating, students are encouraged to clarify their understandings and reorganize the material to make it understandable to others (Lazonder et al 2003), which results in benefits for both posters and commenters. A significant portion of the epistemic activities associated with the discourses were related to reasoning or developing ideas further, giving one’s own example, and agreeing on conception. The detailed excerpts presented illustrate how the learners use these types of epistemic activities to make meaning. As this occurs within the context of a blogging environment, the meaning making that happens is publicly articulated; it creates opportunities for one to build on another. As they build on one another’s contributions, students also build knowledge (Scardamalia and Bereiter 2006). In Excerpt 1 there are two RPs who use the blog as a space for openly reflecting on the difficulty associated with tackling a question related to the course reading. By sharing this struggle in the social context of the blog, it shows how blogs can be used to promote reflection (Xie and Sharma 2011). Excerpt 2 features a noteworthy illustration of students using resources provided by others as resources for meaning making. As Arvaja (2012) noted, this type of meaning making activity occurs when “… students explicitly express that the other students individual writings or postings had helped their own understanding by giving them a new perspective or clarifying their thoughts" (102). In this example, the IP explicitly refers back to a resource on the topic of Citizen Science that was previously provided by an RP. This interaction with the resource suggests that she is not only reading the post but strategically acting on it. In addition, the resources provided by the RP help the IP realize new perspectives on Citizen Science such as the multiple ways in which the production of scientific knowledge can take place (e.g., “it is amazing to me how activities and experiments can take “many forms”) and (2) contexts for authentic learning (e.g., “What a great way to make ‘real-life connections’ for your students!). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH Nearly ten years since the time when Tim O’Reilly first coined the term “Web 2.0” and seven years since education researchers Brown and Adler (2008) envisioned a congruence between a Web 2.0 perspective and Dewey’s “Productive Inquiry,” the question is no longer whether educators will integrate social web technologies into their learning environments but how. As discussed above, research suggests that insufficient attention has been given to the social 18 dimensions that are key to building distributed, peer-centric learning networks. Rather than focusing exclusively on cognitive learning outcomes, this study has examined interactive and social components from two different perspective: patterns of participation (SNA) and discursively negotiated meaning making. The combination of macro-level analyses, such as SNA, that examine structures of participation and roles, along with micro-level analysis of discourse that illustrate the dynamics and granular details of thee interactions provides information that can shape course design and activity design in multiple ways. For example, instructors can make specific choices about blog design based on their preference for type of student interaction and role for a specific learning goal. In addition, making sociograms and participation metrics available to students can present interesting opportunities to provide feedback and learning analytics data to help student learning. From the micro-level perspective, identifying the types of discourse that are most prominent can allow designers and instructors to focus on providing prompts for types of discourse that might be most pertinent or valued in a specific context and community. 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work_yqwff3enzjfifbgsgwcmndpzgm	----	Microsoft Word - column3.doc JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY Online at http://www.jot.fm. Published by ETH Zurich, Chair of Software Engineering ©JOT, 2003 Vol. 2, No. 6, November-December 2003 Cite this column as follows: Won Kim, Timothy K. Shih: “Distance Education: The Status and Challenges”, in Journal of Object Technology, vol. 2, no. 6, November-December 2003, pp. 35- 43. http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2003_11/column3 Distance Education: The Status and Challenges Won Kim, Cyber Database Solutions, Austin, Texas, USA Timothy K. Shih, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Tamkang University, Taiwan Abstract In the mid-1990s, the rise of the Internet and Web technology provided a renewed impetus to distance education. Just as the rise of the Internet and Web technology led to the subsequent dot com bubble and bust, the promise of a revolution in education and society that distance education was thought to hold turned out to be overblown. However, just as the use of the Internet and Web technology is taking root in commerce, governance, mass communication, etc. after the dot com bust, the use of the Internet and Web technology in distance education is expected to take root and deliver benefits to education and society over the long haul. In this article, we examine the current status of distance education, some key lessons learned from distance learning to date, and what it will take to make distance education successful both from technology and sociological perspectives. 1 INTRODUCTION Today the concept of distance education is fairly well-understood, and the potential importance of distance education in the future of education is also generally acknowledged. With advances in multimedia and communication technologies, distance education is being adopted by corporations as well as universities. The idea is not really new. One may regard 1922, when Thomas Edison invented motion picture and boldly predicted that motion picture would replace textbooks in education, as the starting point of the history of media technologies for learning. Although Edison’s prediction has not exactly come to pass, video tapes were used by the US army during World War II for the training of soldiers. Television broadcasting became one of the pioneering technologies for distance education. In the early 1970’s, Computer Based Training (CBT) and Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) became important applications of mainframe computers. The primary ideas behind CAI and CBT led to today’s distance education in the early 1990’s through the use of multimedia technology and the Internet. Distance http://www.jot.fm http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2003_11/column3 DISTANCE EDUCATION: THE STATUS AND CHALLGENGES 36 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY VOL. 2, NO. 6 learning, distance education, cyber education, remote classroom, and e-Learning are similar concepts. About five years between the late 1990s and the early 2000s marked the period of dot-com bubble. During this period, the tsunami of investment money chasing after just about any concept attached to the Internet and Web technology and the lack of experiences with early uses of the Internet and Web technology created a sense of euphoria and an imminent revolution in the way people work, live, interact, and communicate in a borderless world where online virtual entities replace offline counterparts and where all online contents are free for all. During this same euphoric period, many predicted that distance education would make traditional offline schools and universities obsolete, just as many predicted that online newspapers, libraries, bookstores, etc. would make their traditional offline counterparts disappear. Such predictions have not come true and are not likely to come true in the foreseeable future. Many students who took early online courses for academic credit did not get much out of the courses, partly because they tended to cram near the end of a semester, there were no human instructors to seek answers to questions, and the course materials were not adequate. Some cyber universities have sprung up that offered college degrees. However, employers and the society have been slow to accept them as equivalent to the degrees conferred by traditional universities. These are but a few lessons learned from distance education thus far. Despite the bust of dot coms, the use of the Internet and Web technology has been steadily taking root, without the crazy expectations and predictions of the dot-com bubble period, in commerce, governance, entertainment, news media, communications, etc. The Internet and Web technology are now providing entirely new or effective additional means for organizations to communicate and conduct transactions with their customers or constituents. A sober assessment of the capabilities that advances in communication and multimedia technology can enable, along with an examination of the lessons learned from distance learning endeavors during the past several years, should similarly make it possible for distance learning to complement traditional in-class learning and make education richer and more valuable to students, both in schools and corporations. In the remainder of this article, we will first review a general operational model of distance education, then the current status of distance education. Next, we will examine technological and sociological challenges that distance education needs to overcome to fully realize the potential of distance education. 2 AN OPERATIONAL MODEL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION The fundamental elements of distance education are shown in Figure 1. They include policies, people, and technologies. These are the essential components which affect the development of distance learning programs. On the policy side, the evaluation criteria for distance learning programs affect the instructional quality and performance of students, which in turn influence how much VOL. 2, NO. 6 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY 37 potential employers trust distance education. The granting of the credit, diploma or degree is an important consideration for students to take courses or join a virtual university. If the government or a university sets a high standard, fewer students will enroll. Thus standard evaluation criteria should be established. The overall evaluation may include teaching evaluation and a review of course contents and curriculum, as well as student performance evaluation. The standardization of courseware format and platform (e.g., SCORM) will ease the exchange of course materials. It is time-consuming to create high quality distance learning courseware. Courseware exchange has become one of the possible solutions to reduce the load on courseware designers. Each courseware has a copyright associated with it. An interesting policy issue is who owns the intellectual property (IP). In some cases, the IP belongs to the university (traditional or virtual), and corporations or corporate training businesses. This is definitely different from the IP associated with traditional textbooks, which belong to the publishers. The IP issue is different depending on different institutes and countries. Moreover, just as traditional universities have different focuses and strengths, the focuses of virtual universities are different. Other policy issues are related to sociological behaviors of students, such as how an individual trusts a friend in the virtual world. Figure 1: Elements of Distance Education On the people side, several types of experts are involved. To create distance learning courseware, education professionals, engineers, and art designers need to work together. Distance learning platforms are maintained by an engineer or an instructor. The administrator reviews and manages courses as well as the curriculum schedule. An instructor can maintain the distance learning platform, as well as managing the schedule. Policy People Technology Criteria for Credit/Diploma/Degree Courseware/Platform Standards Intellectual Properties Classification of Virtual Universities People/Sociological Considerations Artist Engineer Administrator Student/Customer Education Professional WWW Internet/Internet II Education Theory Intelligent Methods Software Engineering DISTANCE EDUCATION: THE STATUS AND CHALLGENGES 38 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY VOL. 2, NO. 6 Various technologies are brought together to create, maintain and run distance education programs. With advances in the capacity of the Internet (and Internet 2), distance education programs can make increasing use of multimedia contents (such as video and animation). Web technology allows the installation, update and viewing of course materials. Video streaming technologies are used in video conferencing systems to support online discussions. It is possible to use education theory to develop distance learning resources and quantitative analysis of student performance. 3 CURRENT STATUS OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Supporting systems or tools used in distance learning programs can be divided into two types: • Traditional tools: videotape (S-VHS), cable/public television, tele-conferencing, hardcopy textbook. • More advanced or recent tools: CD-ROM titles, Web browser, whiteboard, chat room, Real player, video broadcasting, satellite video conferencing, broadband video conferencing, audio conferencing, student assessment tool, and administration system. Note that hardcopy textbooks are still widely used, even if it is possible to publish their electronic versions on the Internet. Proprietary communication tools are available to support online discussions, either in a limited bandwidth and asynchronous environment (e.g., chat room) or in a broadband real-time communication facility (e.g., video conferencing). A few integrated systems such as WebCT are commercially available that provide functions ranging from administration, courseware creation and management, communication, assessment, and sometimes even course contents. There are three venues for distance education programs: regular and continuing education programs in traditional universities, distance learning portals, and virtual universities. In a traditional university, most courses taught in the classroom are, at least in principle, feasible for distance learning, except those that require lab experiments and physical presence (e.g., physical education, music and arts). There are a number of virtual universities. The University of Phoenix (http://www.phoenix.edu) and Athabasca University (http://www.athabascau.ca) are two of the largest virtual universities in the USA and Canada, respectively. The University of Phoenix is one of the earliest virtual universities. Among the 134 campuses, the University of Phoenix serves more than 174,000 students in 2003. The university also provides help with US federal financial aid and private loans. With the large number of enrollments, the University of Phoenix is also one of the earliest successful examples of virtual university. Athabasca University is supported by the Canadian government. More than 77,000 students are enrolled in 2003. Virtual universities allow students to take advantage of the flexibility in time and location. Students who are employed on a full-time basis are able to complete higher level education without jeopardizing their jobs. Software systems and student evaluation methods in virtual universities are similar to those used in traditional universities. VOL. 2, NO. 6 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY 39 E-learning portals are another venue for distance learning. E-learning portals help small to medium size companies to offer employee training or customer service on the Internet. (Large corporations often develop and run their own employee training programs.) Courses on practical subjects, rather than on theoretical subjects, are typically offered by e-learning portals. In some cases, customized course contents can be built to satisfy the needs of individual companies. Often, e-commerce facilities are incorporated into an e-learning portal to provide additional services (e.g., book buying). Examples of e-learnig portals include click2learn (http://home.click2learn.com), CyberU, Inc. (http://www.headlight.com), Learn.com, Inc. (http://www.learn.com), SmartForce (http://www.smartforce.com), SmartPlanet, Inc. (http://www.smartplanet.com), and THINQ (http://www.thinq.com). Although different distance learning programs have different business models and target audiences, in terms of interactions between students and instructor (and among students), distance learning can be divided into asynchronized and synchronized learning. Self-regulatory learning is a basis of asynchronized learning. Asynchronized distance learning, adopted by most e-learning portals, rely on students who can study independently. The advantage it offers to students is flexibility. Students set up their own study goals and time tables. With the assistance of a semi-automatic administration system, students study the course materials, take exams, and receive assessments. The administration system may restrict the time period in which a student can access particular (portions of) course materials. Following the social constructivism and the scaffolding theory, this type of system builds a strong scaffold (i.e., with more hints) to help students in the beginning. As time passes and goals are achieved, the scaffold may be decreased or removed, leading to a gradually more independent style of study. A major drawback of asynchronous learning is the lack of real-time interaction, which tends to reduce the chance of just-in-time answers and team collaboration. Intelligent software systems may improve asynchronized learning. For instance, a student monitoring system may review individual performance via some norm-referenced evaluation strategies and advise them of their performance. On the other hand, synchronized distance learning requires an advanced network infrastructure for video conferencing. In traditional universities with separate campuses, synchronized distance learning can help bridge the physical separation of the campuses. Online lectures can be broadcast, with bi-directional communication channels that allow real-time multi-point interactions. Collaboration and question-answer sessions are easily implemented. However, course materials still need to be online. The combination of synchronized and asynchronized approaches will force students to follow their study schedule and allow flexible interactions and discussions. 4 TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION To ensure the successful operation of distance education systems, computer facilities and network infrastructures must be integrated with appropriate software systems. The current distance learning platforms allow both synchronous and asynchronous discussions. An http://home.click2learn.com http://www.headlight.com http://www.learn.com http://www.smartforce.com http://www.smartplanet.com http://www.thinq.com DISTANCE EDUCATION: THE STATUS AND CHALLGENGES 40 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY VOL. 2, NO. 6 advanced technology (and methodology) is needed to help the instructors or administers to minimize cheating in exams. Technologies will be a part of the solution to the issues of motivating both the students and instructors. Below we highlight several important research issues from the technology perspective. These issues require researchers from education and information technology fields to work together. Some of the issues have been partially solved, while several issues related to intelligent technology remain open: • Instance hints and intelligent tutoring: While a student is navigating an online course, an intelligent agent may analyze her behavior, and provide useful suggestions in real-time, for example, by guiding her through different learning topologies. • FAQ summarization and automatic reply: It is time-consuming for an instructor to answer students’ e-mails. An auto-reply system should be able to use information retrieval techniques to summarize frequently asked questions, and reply to new questions with answers to past questions. • Unbiased examination: It is difficult to ensure proper behavior of students when administering online examinations without a human monitor. A surveillance tool can randomly take a snapshot of students’ screens. • Individualized quizzes: Some distance learning systems are able to generate different test questions for different students according to difficulty levels. This type of system should ensure unbiased examinations. • Online supervision of chat room discussions: Chat room discussions can be assigned points in student’s performance. An intelligent agent can be implemented to grade chat room participations. Misleading or irrelevant conversations can be reported to the instructor. • Universal and mobile accessibility: Students and instructors should be able to access distance learning websites from any location with any of a variety of different devices, such as PDA or cellular phone. Wireless communication techniques may be incorporated into distance learning systems. • Remote lab and simulation: Domain-specific remote labs connected to the Internet need to be developed to support online experiments. If remote labs are not available, online simulation tools (i.e., virtual lab) should be provided. 5 SOCIOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION Some of the sociological issues are difficult, more difficult than technological issues, to solve. The motivation of students is one of the key factors that will determine the success of a distance learning program. Mostly, adult working individuals take distance education for professional growth. They all want to get something out of a distance education program. They want to learn something practical today and apply them at work tomorrow. Some of them want to receive diplomas or at least course credits. To such students, acceptance by the employers (industry and government) of the course credits and diplomas is very important. The (presumed) quality of education (and diplomas awarded) depends on assessment of the educational institutes, as well as the quality of VOL. 2, NO. 6 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY 41 instructions. It takes many years and concerted efforts before a traditional university is established, and the same will be the case for cyber universities. It may make sense for different cyber universities to differentiate themselves from other cyber universities and traditional universities by carving out their own niches in terms of fields and course curriculum. Evaluation of cyber universities (and distance education programs within traditional universities) must include student performance, instructor performance, course materials and curriculum. It is important then that there be comprehensive and objective evaluation criteria for all these measurable aspects of distance education. Some studies suggest that college education influences and shapes how students speak, think, and behave. Social behavior will be different in a virtual environment; and education received solely in distance learning may put the students at a disadvantage. It appears that the best education is the conventional in-class education augmented by distance learning for a part of the overall curriculum. For example, students may establish a base of their social networking and a starting point for studying and learning in college. Most classes they take in college may be the traditional in-class variety, while others may be either purely online or a combination of in-class learning and distance learning. After graduation, they may take from e-learning portals training courses that either their employers encourage them to take, or from cyber universities or continuing education programs in traditional universities courses they consider interesting or necessary for professional growth. There are some additional interesting sociological considerations for distance education. Will there be a threat from “the super professor” and “the super university?” Since there is no geographical limitation in distance learning, will there be a professor who teaches, say calculus, so well that all freshmen take her course? Is it possible that a particular institute becomes so popular that all students receive credits from it? How will professors react to these possibilities? Another consideration is from the student’s view. If students seldom see each other, how does the social life in universities change? 6 EPILOG Distance learning is still in its infancy today. This is due to the limitations of network infrastructures, experiences, manpower, effective policy, and acceptance from the employers. Currently, distance learning is primarily limited to colleges and corporate training. Secondary and elementary schools have not adopted it. Sometimes synchronized distance learning is used between two countries. However, due to time differences and limitations of network infrastructures, international collaborations are rare. However, the potential of distance education cannot be ignored. As pointed out in the study “The No Significant Difference Phenomenon” (http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference/), if student performance has no difference between traditional and virtual universities, convenience and flexibility of distance learning certainly become a significant and, sometimes, compelling advantage. http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference/ DISTANCE EDUCATION: THE STATUS AND CHALLGENGES 42 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY VOL. 2, NO. 6 Technical and sociological challenges may take a long time to be adequately solved. However, a few practical observations can help make a distance learning program more successful. Courses on practical subjects and subjects of recent interest will increase enrollment. A good distance learning program should also motivate and help the instructors. Generally, the load on an instructor teaching a distance learning course is higher than that for a traditional course. Appropriate rewards should be given to the instructors. Moreover, most instruction designers are not natural-born art designers. Art designers should be brought in to help instruction designers to develop attractive course materials. As new technologies unfold, some interesting trends in distance learning may evolve as well. Some of them are summarized below. • Virtual Reality-based communication and situated learning use augmented panorama and real-time communication technologies in a distance learning CAVE. Students can feel and experience the outdoor facilities inside the classroom. • Wireless communication to access encyclopedia and e-books will be available. Mobile students can participate in a lecture, use online references, or read class notes. • By making use of game technologies in education, it may be possible to attract students and to increase their attention and motivation. REFERENCES http://www.phoenix.edu http://www.athabascau.ca http://home.click2learn.com http://www.headlight.com http://www.learn.com http://www.smartforce.com http://www.smartplanet.com http://www.thinq.com http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference/ http://www.phoenix.edu http://www.athabascau.ca http://home.click2learn.com http://www.headlight.com http://www.learn.com http://www.smartforce.com http://www.smartplanet.com http://www.thinq.com http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference/ VOL. 2, NO. 6 JOURNAL OF OBJECT TECHNOLOGY 43 About the authors Won Kim is President and CEO of Cyber Database Solutions (http://www.cyberdb.com/) and MaxScan (www.maxscan.com) in Austin, Texas, USA. He is also Dean of Ewha Institute of Science and Technology, Ewha Women's University, Seoul. Korea. He is Editor-in- Chief of ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (http://www.acm.org/toit), and Chair of ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (http://www.acm.org/sigkdd). He is the recipient of the ACM 2001 Distinguished Service Award. Timothy K. Shih is a Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at Tamkang University, Taiwan, R.O.C. He is also a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM. Dr. Shih is the founder and co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, published by Idea Group Publishing, USA. Dr. Shih’s publications and services can be found at http://www.mine.tku.edu.tw/chinese/teacher/tshih.htm. http://www.cyberdb.com/ http://www.acm.org/toit http://www.acm.org/sigkdd http://www.mine.tku.edu.tw/chinese/teacher/tshih.htm 
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work_yux5mr6h4fen3op4mirgw4zeoy	----	Factors Affecting the Development and Use of Learning Objects Susan D. Moisey, Mohamed Ally, and Bob Spencer Centre for Distance Education Athabasca University This study explored barriers and facilitating factors affecting the de- velopment and use of learning objects in developing instructional ma- terials and their use in supporting individualized learning. Over a two-month period, students in a graduate-level instructional design course developed instructional materials incorporating learning ob- jects or developed learning objects in selected areas or disciplines. Qualitative analysis was conducted to explore students’ experience and examine the skills and knowledge required to develop and use learning objects successfully. Through this analysis, three facilitating factors and nine barriers were identified. The authors conclude that the successful development and use of learning objects will be promoted by overcoming the barriers and strengthening the facilitating factors identified in this study. Learning objects are often seen as a way to reuse previously developed in- structional materials, not only to enhance learning but also as a means to re- duce development costs. Most of the literature to date, however, has fo- cused primarily on various technical aspects related to the storage, retrieval, and reuse of learning objects. For example, much has been writ- ten about what a learning object is or is not, about issues of granularity or how large or small a learning object should be, and about metadata and how to tag learning objects to assist in locating appropriate ones for the instruc- tional task at hand. In terms of defining a learning object, many definitions have been pro- posed. The Learning Technology Standards Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) in their Learning Objects 143 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION, 20(3), 143–161 Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Correspondence should be sent to Susan D. Moisey, Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, Alberta, T9S 3A3, Canada. E-mail:susanh@athabascau.ca D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 Metadata (LOM) standard document (IEEE 2002) provided an expansive definition of learning objects, defining them as “any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning” (1). Wiley (2002) proposed a somewhat narrower definition, defining a learning object as any digital resource that can be reused to support learning. Further refinements to the definition have been added; for example, Sosteric and Hesemeier (2002) included the no- tion of context, defining a learning object as “a digital file (image, movie, etc.,) intended to be used for pedagogical purposes, which includes, ei- ther internally or via association, suggestions on the appropriate context within which to utilize the object” (13). Noting the shortcomings of ear- lier definitions, Sicilia and García (2003) added two other characteristics: that learning objects are “digital entities,” and the requirement of a “metadata record” that describes the potential contexts in which the learning object may be used. Ally (2004) added still another facet to the definition—that of learning outcomes—proposing a more specific defini- tion of learning objects as “any digital resource that can be re-used to achieve a specific learning outcome” (87). In addition to defining a learning object, several authors have also dis- cussed features of learning objects that need to be considered to design an effective learning tool. For example, Ally (2004) suggested that a learning object should include a prelearning component to prepare the learner for the information, an interaction component to enable the learner to process the materials at a high level, and a postlearning component to check for mastery and allow for practical applications. Longmire (2000) recom- mended that students should be able to select and customize learning ob- jects based on their needs and learning styles to build a personalized learn- ing sequence. Hamel and Ryan-Jones (2002) advised that learning objects should be able to stand alone as an independent segment of instruction, be independent of instructional context, and use generic information as much as possible. Wiley (2000) noted that users should be able to revise learning objects without affecting other learning objects. Finally, learning objects must be designed so that they can be reused many times without becoming obsolete (Barritt 2002). In terms of granularity of a learning object, the literature suggests a ten- sion between increasing the educational value of a learning object and maxi- mizing its reusability (Littlejohn 2003). Larger learning objects tend to have high educational value but low reusability because of their size—the finer the granularity, the greater the potential for reusing the learning object in differ- ent learning situations. Granularity can be considered in various ways, such 144 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 as the amount of instructional time required to complete the learning object, the amount of learning achieved, and the amount of content covered. At- tempts have been made to specify what constitutes the optimal granularity of a learning object. For example, Polsani (2003) recommended that granular- ity be limited to a single concept or a small number of related concepts; Hamel and Ryan-Jones (2002) recommended that the granularity of a learn- ing object be at the level of a single educational objective. Quinn (2000), however, recommended that granularity should be at a level where instructionally different, individualized choices could be made. He claimed that designing learning objects at a fine level of granularity requires a differ- ent instructional design approach in which the components of the instruc- tional process are designed separately and for stand-alone use and ques- tioned if this was a good direction for educators to take. The lack of specificity that characterizes the definition and granularity of learning objects is also evident in tagging and metadata creation. At present, the IEEE’s LOM standard is the only officially approved standard for learning object metadata; however, many initiatives have been created to catalogue digital objects and have developed systems or “standards” (e.g., CanCore, SCORM) for their identification and retrieval. Metadata re- cords commonly take one of these alternate formats as they are easier to use or considered more suitable for educational purposes. Metadata is comprised of domain-specific elements and qualifiers. It functions like an entry or card in a library catalogue and includes searchable “access points” such as title, author, date, location, and subject (Friesen, Roberts, and Fisher 2002). Examples of descriptors in the IEEE LOM metadata model include the contributor role, technical requirements, interactivity type, difficulty, and intended end user, among others (Learning Technology Standards Committee 2002). A comprehensive metadata record enhances the usability of a learning object—the more complete the metadata, the greater the likelihood that the learning object will be found and reused. Hamel and Ryan-Jones (2002) recommend that, to be easily located and ultimately reusable, learning objects should be tagged with metadata that provide descriptive information about the object such as format, size, de- livery requirements, authorship, ownership, version number, instructional role, instructional characteristics, and type of interactivity. Quinn (2000) de- scribed different categories of educational tags for learning objects. The first category, interactivity type, covers flow of information between resource and user. The second category, learning resource type, describes specific types of resource such as exercise, simulation, questionnaire, diagram, fig- ure, graph, index, slide, table, narrative text, exam, or experiment. Another 145 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 category is interactivity level, which may range from very low to very high. Other categories of tags Quinn identified included end users (teacher, author, learner, manager), context of use (an open vocab- ulary, but examples include primary education, secondary, higher education, different university levels, technical schools, etc.), typical age range, diffi- culty (again, a range from very low to very high), typical learning time, a text description of the resource, and a language choice from the international standard codes. (15) Far less has been published to date on the actual development or repurposing of learning objects for their use in online or other forms of de- livery. In a recent case study, Krauss and Ally (2005) examined the process of designing and evaluating a learning object to help students understand the principles in a course. Their study analyzed and documented the pro- cess of designing a learning object and evaluated the outcome of applying instructional design principles for the development of learning objects. Re- sults revealed that the learning object was rated highly in the areas of con- tent quality, learning goal alignment, and motivation; however, interaction, usability, feedback, and adaptation were identified as areas for improve- ment. In other recent studies, several authors have noted the complexities of developing learning objects. For example, Metros (2005) commented on how technologically challenging it is for faculty to develop quality learning objects. Petrinjak and Graham (2005) noted that transforming existing edu- cational content into learning objects with a semantic structure requires a major effort from educators. Investigating whether or not transferring learning objects from online repositories facilitated course production, Wilhelm and Wilde (2005) concluded that the transfer of certain qualities and features from learning objects to a new course context was difficult, costly, time-consuming, and technically difficult. The results of Wilhelm and Wilde’s study underscore the importance of developing learning ob- jects so they can be seamlessly integrated into existing and new courses. Another recent study exploring the reuse or repurposing of learning objects (Koppi, Bogle, and Bogle 2005) found that learning objects appear to work better in certain subject domains, such as the sciences, and noted that re- positories are populated with learning objects in these disciplines. The au- thors suggested that the lack of development and use of learning objects in other domains, such as the arts and social sciences, might be attributed to the difficulty of defining content into specific segments in the development of learning objects in these disciplines. 146 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 The purpose of this study was to identify barriers and facilitating factors that affect the development or repurposing of learning objects for instruc- tional purposes, thereby adding to our understanding of the issues and pro- cesses for developing quality learning objects. Method The study involved twenty-seven graduate students enrolled in the Mas- ters of Distance Education (MDE) program at Athabasca University. All were senior-level students, having completed at least four previous courses in the program. Most were employed in the teaching or training sector. Many had extensive experience as a teacher or instructor; however, few had previous experience in the design and development of distance education materials, particularly Web-based instructional materials. Students were registered in the master’s level course, MDDE 604: In- structional Design and Program Evaluation in Distance Education. In this project-based course, students progress in a stepwise fashion, applying the instructional systems design process. Over a two-month period, partici- pants engaged in the analysis, design, and development phases of the in- structional systems design process, either developing a learning object or integrating one or more learning objects into an instructional unit. Students had the choice of either developing a new Web-based learning object or developing an instructional unit (in a sense, a larger or higher level learning object), which contained one or more existing learning objects. In the former case, students were advised to aim for a medium level of granular- ity, developing an object that comprised about twenty to twenty-five screens of material, which would take learners about fifteen to thirty minutes to com- plete. In the latter case, students were advised that their learning materials should comprise about twenty pages of print in a paper-based format, which would take learners approximately one hour to complete. Regardless of their choice, all materials developed were required to be in digital format, that is, able to be accessed via a computer or the Internet. On completion of the pro- ject, students were encouraged, but not required, to complete a metadata re- cord for their learning object and to enter it into the Athabasca Digital Li- brary (ADLIB) learning object repository. Students were asked to keep a learning journal to record and reflect on the process and experience of using learning objects to produce instruction. Then, as part of their course assignments, they were required to write a four- to six-page essay discussing their experience with learning objects and the barriers or problems they encountered, as well as any resources that 147 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 facilitated the process. They were instructed to integrate excerpts from their learning journal into their essays. These essays, which formed part of the data analyzed in this study, were submitted to the instructor for grading and feedback at the same time as their learning objects or instructional units were submitted. In preparation for data analysis, essays were cut and pasted into a separate file, and any identifying information was removed. While students were working on their assignments, an asynchronous computer conference on the topic of learning objects was conducted. The conference topic was stated as follows: What are the key things to remember when you are using learning ob- jects to create instructional materials? In your search for learning ob- jects, what helpful resources did you find? What particularly good ex- amples of learning objects have you found? What difficulties or barriers have you encountered? Once the course was completed, a transcript of the conference postings was obtained and redacted, that is, identifying information was removed to ensure the anonymity of participants. The redacted transcript formed part of the data analyzed in this study. Data Collection and Analysis As noted previously, two forms of data were analyzed. They were com- prised of the following: 1. Essays discussing the students’ experiences in their development and use of learning objects. These essays included excerpts from students’ learning journals but not the actual journals themselves. 2. A transcript of students’ conference postings and responses. Two researchers independently analyzed the essay and transcript data using manual and open coding techniques to identify common themes. Units of analysis were as follows: 1. Individual postings, in the case of the conference postings. 2. Excerpted paragraphs, for the essays. Although there was marked agreement between the two researchers re- garding the categories into which conference postings or paragraphs from 148 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 the essay assignments should be assigned, there were occasional areas of difference. In these circumstances, differences were discussed until con- sensus was reached as to the category in which the particular posting or paragraph in question belonged. Data also included the students’ instructional products themselves. These were categorized according to subject area and whether the student had developed a stand-alone learning object or an instructional unit that in- corporated existing learning objects. Given the straightforward nature of the task, one researcher completed this categorization. Results and Discussion Students developed a total of twenty-seven learning objects in a variety of disciplines. The topics of the learning objects were categorized into four major areas: postsecondary education (primarily the college sector), K–12 (elemen- tary, junior high, and senior high school levels), workplace learning (primarily corporate training, but also including the public service and the military train- ing sector), and health education. Topics are presented in Table 1. Of the twenty-seven assignments submitted, eight involved the creation of new learning objects. The remaining nineteen assignments were pre- sented in the form of a study guide (or higher level learning object), which included one or more existing learning objects. Facilitating Factors In the analysis of conference postings and essay assignments, compara- tively few factors facilitating the development and/or use of learning ob- jects were identified. Based on the analysis, facilitating factors took three main forms: stand-alone exemplars of good learning objects, recom- mended Web sites containing skill-related information, and evaluation-re- lated resources suggesting how to assess instructional materials. Exemplars. Good examples of learning objects were identified as models that students could emulate or as indicators of how a high-quality learning object should appear. Students visited repositories, most for the first time, and were generally excited by what they found. Several reported how they had spent hours searching the sites and completing the activities of some of the outstanding objects. The repositories listed here were repeatedly cited as excellent sources of learning objects: 149 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 • MERLOT (http://www.merlot.ca) learning repository. • Portal for Online Objects in Learning (POOL) (http://www. edusplash.net)—a resource developed by Simon Fraser University. • Campus Alberta Repository of Education Objects (CAREO) (http://careo.ucalgary.ca). • Learn Alberta (http://www.learnalberta.ca—Use login “guest” and password “guest” to access). This site was identified as an excellent source of learning objects for K–12. • University of Wisconsin’s Online Resource Center (http://www. wisc-online.com). • Good examples of learning objects on literature were noted at the Web site http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us. • The Web site http://telus2learn.com was identified as containing “great LOs related to the K–12 Alberta curriculum. The nice part is that this site was developed by a group of teachers.” 150 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS Table 1. Topics of Learning Objects Postsecondary Education K–12 Workplace Learning Health Education Art—elements of design Language arts—genres Excel spreadsheets Preparation for CT-scanning Writing composition Mechanics of writing Using mail merge Chronic disease management Mechanics of writing Mathematics (2 projects) Travel claims Nursing process Learning theories Our planet earth Sales techniques Transport nursing Instructional design (2 projects) Understanding free trade NATO operations planning process Music theory Fire fighters breathing apparatus Anatomy and physiology Student loans Child development Using Dreamweaver 2 new learning objects 3 new learning objects 2 new learning objects 1 new learning object 7 used existing learning objects 3 used existing learning objects 6 used existing learning objects 3 used existing learning objects Note. Topics in italics indicate new learning objects. D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 • The Owl & Mouse Educational Software site (http://www. yourchildlearns.com/owlmouse.htm) was identified as a source of in- dividual interactive activities that could be integrated into lessons. Online resources. Online resources were another facilitating factor identified in the analysis of conference postings and essay assignments. These were recommended Web sites containing information to assist with learning object design and development. For example, URLs that provided direction in the following areas were identified: • How to use Dreamweaver. • How to assess literacy levels of textual materials. Several resources were cited as good resources providing information on how to develop learning objects themselves. Some of these resources are listed here: • One useful informational resource was “The Instructional Use of Learning objects” (http://www.reusability.org). • Another resource, “Learning Objects 101: A Primer for Neophytes” (http://online.bcit.ca/sidebars/02november/inside-out-1.htm), by Glenn Millar (a former MDE student), was identified by numerous students as a practical guide for constructing learning objects. • For the development of technical skills, W3Schools (http:// www.w3schools.com) was identified as an excellent source of free online tutorials for technical training (e.g., use of html, xhtml, cascad- ing style sheets). Evaluation assistance. Another facilitating factor was the availability of resources to assist with the evaluation of learning objects to determine their suitability for use. The peer evaluation component of repositories, such as the MERLOT repository, was identified as an asset in this regard. So too was the Learning Object Analysis Sheet (http://www. alivetek.com/learningobjects); several students reported that they used this tool to assess various learning objects to determine which one(s) to use in their instructional unit. 151 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 Barriers Far more categories of barriers than facilitating factors were identified. The analysis revealed numerous barriers to the development and use of learning objects. These barriers were wide-ranging, involving nine major categories. These categories are presented in the following sections. Definitional. The initial barrier that most students faced was to deter- mine a precise definition for the term learning object. The plethora of asso- ciated terms—knowledge object, educational object, information object, and so forth—made students wonder if they were on the right track in de- veloping or using something that would truly meet the requirements of a learning object. Moreover, the variation among definitions and the variety of critical characteristics of what constituted a learning object created great debate. The requirement for metadata or a digital format was questioned. Are learning objects found only in repositories, or may they be found in other sources? Is metadata a requirement for something to be considered a learn- ing object? Is digital format a requirement? As one student pointed out in the computer conference, “a book online is a learning object, whereas a book in a library is not.” The excerpted entries from their learning journals included in students’ essay assignments confirmed the confusion that nearly all of the students experienced in this regard. Still another student re- marked in an analysis of the learning journal entries, “I was becoming in- creasingly concerned that the two learning objects I intended to use to de- velop my unit on *** were not actually LOs. They were not tagged with metadata. I had not found them in a repository, but in a website.” For the purposes of this study, Ally’s (2004) definition of a learning ob- ject was adopted—“a digital resource that can be re-used to achieve a spe- cific learning outcome” (87)—as students were created new learning ob- jects or used existing learning objects in the development of instructional materials designed to produce a learning outcome. For pedagogical rea- sons, the definition proposed by Sicilia and García (2003) was considered too restrictive due to its requirement for metadata. The rationale for this de- termination was based on two primary reasons: (1) metadata was not a re- quirement for the learning objects students developed, as the focus of the course was on the application of instructional principles and students were not provided with instruction on how to develop metadata for their learning objects; and (2) without this requirement, a broader array of potential learn- ing objects were available to students for repurposing into their instruc- 152 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 tional materials. However, had this requirement been present, students would have been advised to complete the metadata as the learning object was being developed, as Hamel and Ryan-Jones (2002) recommend. Work involved and skill deficits. The process of developing learning objects was not an easy one, as evidenced by a review of students’ postings in the computer conference and essay assignments. A common theme was the amount of work involved in creating a learning object or using learning objects in the design of flexible instructional materials. One student com- mented, “Although it is somewhat ‘easier’ to reuse something that exists, rather than building it from the ground up, the exercise of repurposing the learning object can be challenging. It is similar to some of the home reno- vation shows. The contractors comment that it would have been easier to level the house and start over rather than incorporating an addition into the current structure.” Another prevalent theme in the postings and journal entries was the diffi- culty students were experiencing in the application of instructional design principles to the development of their learning objects. All of the students had been introduced to instructional design theories and concepts in a pre- requisite course, but few had previously applied the instructional design process even though many students had extensive experience in educa- tional settings. Many comments were also made about the difficulty of translating classroom techniques to online learning. Other more specific instructional design skills were also mentioned, such as how to accommo- date learning styles. Still another barrier was “limited technological prow- ess,” as one student termed it. Another theme was the difficulty that many students experienced in moving from classroom-based instruction to that of individualized self-in- structional materials. The attempt to translate in-class teaching techniques to the online environment was clearly a stretch for many students as evi- denced by the postings they made in the computer conference. However, over time, students appeared to realize the unique benefits of online learn- ing. Indeed, as one student commented about the debate waging over how to translate in-class teaching to learning object design, “[faculty] infer that they would like their online students to have the same opportunity as their face-to-face students, I want my face-to-face students to have the same op- portunity as my online students.” Although it can be argued that the skills required for developing new learning objects differ from those required for repurposing existing objects or aggregating them into a learning module, there are nonetheless common 153 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 skills as well. Both require the application of instructional design princi- ples, such as identifying learning outcomes, determining an appropriate in- structional strategy based on the cognitive level of the learning outcomes, incorporating interaction to promote active learning, and ensuring that suit- able and adequate assessment is in place. Primarily the additional skills re- quired for the development of new learning objects involved technical skills related to Web page design and programming. Structure of repositories. Some students reported difficulty navigat- ing the repositories and locating learning objects within it. For instance, MERLOT was described as a “maze.” Another found the visual organiza- tion and layout to be cluttered and busy. Broken links were noted as a diffi- culty in accessing learning objects. Lack of learning objects in some disciplines. Another barrier identi- fied was a lack of learning objects in certain disciplines or for some objec- tives. Although it was acknowledged that learning objects are new and the development of repositories is in its infancy, the willingness to use learning objects in developing instructional materials was hampered by this factor. Time and resources are required to stock repositories with a sufficient in- ventory of learning objects in less popular areas. Quality of learning objects in repositories. Lack of visual design quality was identified as a barrier affecting the use of learning objects. Poor formatting was noted; for example, one student said, “Some of these mate- rials looked like they were created with an old typewriter and a Gestetner,” but further noted, “Taking the time to input and correct errors will pay off for someone in the long run.” Lack of instructional content was another barrier cited. One student noted, “In surveying many websites, there is little content associated with the look and feel of instruction.” Another noted that some learning objects are “flashy, but don’t teach.” One student advised the following: When searching for a learning object for the unit on ****, it was easy to be lured by LOs that were flashy, colorful and visually appealing. The issue that arose was trying to keep the LO in perspective and re- membering that learning was the goal in choosing an appropriate learning object. A learning object that is cool and fun may have little instructional value, and so it is important to keep the learning objec- tive at the forefront when choosing a LO. 154 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 Granularity. The size of the learning object was identified as a con- cern. Students noted that some learning objects were extremely small, for example, a photo or table of figures. On the other hand, some were so large that they could not easily be integrated into a lesson. With regard to the size of the objects they were developing, students were not sure what consti- tuted a “medium level” of granularity. More precise definition is required in this area. Metatagging and cataloguing in repositories. One of the major rea- sons for developing learning objects is their ability to be reused (Sicilia and García 2003). Proper tagging or cataloguing is required for learners, in- structors, and instructional designers to easily locate and retrieve learning objects from the repositories in which they are housed. Although there are many implementations of the IEEE LOM standard, there is no consensus on the content of metadata or the form in which it should be represented. When students in this study raised questions about which system of metatagging was best to use, they were advised to use CanCore due to its ease of use and also because CanCore was the format used in the ADLIB learning object repository. Despite encouragement to the class to complete the metadata for their learning objects (this was an optional activity), only one student developed metadata for her learning object. She attempted to enter the learning object and metadata into the learning object repository but was not able to log on properly or download the learning object. Unfortunately, none of the learn- ing objects designed in the course were entered into a learning object re- pository—a significant loss of learning excellence! Copyright and intellectual property. Copyright was a frequently men- tioned concern. Some students noted that because they were working on a course assignment, copyright was not so important (“fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study”). However, if they were going to use their learning materials beyond the course, copyright would have to be ad- dressed. Other related concerns were deep linking (i.e., linking to a part of a Web site beyond the home page) and ownership of the materials. Two stu- dents commented that their learning objects were to be used only in their organizations and therefore were not public property. Attitudinal barriers. Attitudinal barriers was the final category of fac- tors identified from the analysis of conference postings and essay assign- ments. Based on this analysis, factors tended to fall in two areas. One was a 155 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 reluctance or unwillingness to share—a sort of proprietary feeling or pos- sessiveness on the part of the author. For example, as one student noted, “In my heart of hearts I want to share and collaborate. But the skeptic in me makes me wonder who is making money off me?” The second appeared to be a lack of confidence. For example, some expressed concern that no one would find his or her learning object useful; others were embarrassed over the quality of the learning object they had created, feeling it was not refined enough to be put into the repository. This observation is further supported by the fact that when students were given the opportunity to enter their learning object into ADLIB, the learning object repository at Athabasca University, none of them did so. Nonetheless, the benefit of using learning objects was clearly evident in students’ postings and essay assignments. One student commented on the reusability of learning objects, providing a rationale for developing a video-based learning object as follows: “[Building a learning object is] like buying a pair of shoes you can wear to many functions. … Using the basic economic principle of economies of scale, the more use that you can get out of an object, the more that you are willing to spend to develop or buy it.” Similarly, the value of learning objects was clearly understood and ap- preciated by the class in general, as evidenced by one student who summed up the future of learning objects as follows: The vision is bold, exciting, and daunting. It implies collaboration rather than competition and a pooling and sharing of common knowl- edge and learning tools for the benefit of learners and societies. Rather than isolated educators creating and recreating content, these individuals and learners can come to a central hub where like-minded colleagues build and maintain LOs that facilitate learning. In a world where nations have limited resources yet have entire populations re- quiring life-long education and training, this translates into an acces- sible, cost effective, and efficient use of learning resources. Conclusions and Recommendations This study explored the experience of student educators in their attempts to develop or use learning objects within the context of a graduate-level course on instructional design. Factors were identified that supported or fa- cilitated the development and use of learning objects, as well as factors that tended to hinder or inhibit their use. To promote the successful develop- 156 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 ment and use of learning objects, facilitating factors need to be supported and sustained and barriers reduced or overcome. The approach of looking at barriers and facilitating factors has its deriva- tion in the behavioral sciences and Lewin’s (1951) Force Field model. This theory postulates that people function in a relative equilibrium, in a balance between positive and negative forces. Removing negative forces, instead of or in addition to adding positive forces, can help promote change. In terms of promoting change, therefore, further consideration of the barriers and fa- cilitating factors identified in this study shows that factors can be catego- rized into three separate categories: 1. Organizational factors—those within the context of educational in- stitutions, such as factors pertaining to professional development and faculty support, as well as the creation of an organizational cul- ture that promotes the development and use of learning objects. 2. Learning object-related factors—those pertaining to learning ob- jects themselves and the structure of repositories. 3. Theoretical factors—those pertaining to theory-related factors that affected learning object development and use. Within the context of educational organizations, much can be done to fa- cilitate the development and use of learning objects. Barriers pertaining to lack of time and skill deficits need to be addressed. Professional develop- ment to support the enhancement of knowledge and skills relating to the de- velopment and use of learning objects is required. Providing educators with appropriate development tools and resources will also facilitate the development and use of learning objects. In addition to providing training and tools, organizations should provide recognition for learning object development. Recognition of learning ob- jects development as a valid academic achievement is required. Educators involved in the development of learning objects appear to be experiencing similar difficulties to those involved in the development of distance courses, in which faculty are often not recognized for course development in performance assessment and promotion. Learning objects are even less understood and are even more likely to be unrecognized. Greater recogni- tion of learning object development as a legitimate academic activity would facilitate the production of learning objects and assist with populat- ing repositories. Factors pertaining to learning objects and learning object repositories need to be addressed. Better ways of identifying superior learning objects 157 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 are required. Peer review and methods of evaluating learning objects are needed. Although the students in this study identified existing evalua- tion-related resources as a facilitating factor, more are needed in this area. The instructional design of learning objects is also a consideration. Ped- agogically sound learning strategies, in which learning is the outcome, should provide underpinnings to support the development and use of learn- ing objects. It is important to develop sound instructional design models for teachers and instructors who do not have the instructional design training to develop quality learning objects. Lack of consensus on how to tag or catalogue learning objects is another problem to be addressed. Several systems for tagging learning objects have been proposed. Most conform to the IEEE LOM standard (IEEE 2002); however, the system proposed by the IMS Global Consortium (http://www.imsglobal.org) provides a larger, more comprehensive collec- tion of specifications. One of the simplest systems is the CanCore profiling system, which consists of eight main categories, fifteen subcategories, and thirty-six elements. CanCore is a subset of the IEEE LOM standard (which includes seventy-six data elements) and is easier to implement, making it more suitable for educators (Friesen, Roberts, and Fisher 2002). Ideally, there should be one agreed-on standard for metadata and the fields to be specified. Moreover, to complete the specified fields in a con- sistent manner, a dictionary or lexicon of terms is required to describe the content of the learning object. Such standardization of descriptors will help to alleviate difficulty in locating appropriate learning objects to integrate into instructional materials. More involvement of educators in the develop- ment and revision of learning objects standards is also required as they are familiar with the learning process and are the ones using the learning ob- jects when developing instruction and interacting with learners. Finally, repositories themselves need to be designed to be user friendly and organized with the neophyte user in mind. Finding and accessing learn- ing objects should not interfere with the instructional design process. It is important that educators use their time and energy developing instructional materials rather than locating learning objects. Moreover, when users expe- rience difficulty using a repository, it may result in frustration and reduce their motivation to access and incorporate learning objects in their future instructional activities. The third category of barriers affecting the development and use of learning objects relates to the discipline itself. The abundance of defini- tions, some of them so broad as to be unusable, creates confusion. The plethora of terms—learning object, knowledge object, information object, 158 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 instructional object, course work object—reflects the need for a more pre- cise definition of learning object. This lack of definitional precision and of theoretical groundwork is perhaps the most pressing problem facing the de- velopment and use of learning objects. Recommendations for Further Research Further research is required into the issues affecting the development and use of learning objects as well as the processes involved in creating quality learning objects. Based on the findings of this study, the research described in the following is recommended: 1. The relatively small sample size of this study (twenty-seven subjects) is recognized as a limitation. Further research with a greater number of par- ticipants would serve to confirm the findings of this study. 2. This study used two sources of data: essays discussing students’ ex- perience developing and using learning objects and a transcript of the post- ings and comments in a conference discussion. Further studies using addi- tional sources of data (e.g., learning journals, interviews) would be useful to determine if additional or different themes may emerge as well as to pro- vide triangulation of the themes identified in this study. 3. This study involved both the development of new learning objects and the retrofitting of existing learning objects into an instructional unit. Further studies should examine these areas individually to determine the specific processes and skills required for each area. 4. Additional areas for further research were also suggested in students’ comments. For example, students noted that examples of high-quality learn- ing objects facilitated their process of developing and using learning objects. Determining the characteristics of these exemplars would be worthy of study. Similarly, determining the characteristics of helpful resources for evaluating learning objects is also an area requiring further investigation. 5. Further research using Lewin’s (1951) Force Field theory and focus- ing on change is encouraged, as this theoretical framework may provide a promising perspective for studying ways of promoting learning object de- velopment and use. Acknowledgment This research was funded in part by CANARIE and Industry Canada as part of the eduSource project. Their contribution is gratefully acknowl- edged. 159 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 References Ally, M. 2004. Designing effective learning objects for distance education. In Online education using learning objects, ed. R. McGreal, 87–97. London: Routledge Falmer. Barritt, C. 2002. Learning objects and ISD. Performance Improvement 41 (7): 28–32. Friesen, N., A. Roberts, and S. Fisher. 2002. CanCore: Metadata for learn- ing objects. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 28 (3): 43–53. Hamel, C., and D. Ryan-Jones. 2002. Designing instruction with learning objects. International Journal of Educational Technology 3 (1). Avail- able online at http://www.ao.uiuc.edu/ijet/v3n1/hamel Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). 2002. The learning object metadata standard. Available online at http://ieeeltsc.org/ wg12LOM Koppi, T., L. Bogle, and M. Bogle. 2005. Learning objects, repositories, sharing and reusability. Open Learning 20 (1): 83–91. Krauss, F., and M. Ally. 2005. A study of the design and evaluation of a learning object and implications for content development. Interdisci- plinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects 1:1–22. Learning Technology Standards Committee. 2002. Standards for learning object metadata. Available online at http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/ files/LOM_1484_12_1_v1_Final_Draft.pdf Lewin, K. 1951. Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers. New York: Harper & Row. Littlejohn, A. 2003. Issues in reusing online resources. Journal of Interac- tive Media in Education. Available online at http://www-jime.open. ac.uk/2003/1 Longmire, W. 2000. A primer on learning objects. Learning Circuits: ASTD’s Online Magazine All About E-Learning. Available online at http://www.learningcircuits.org/mar2000/primer.html Metros, S. E. 2005. Visualizing knowledge in new educational environ- ments: A course on learning objects. Open Learning 20 (1): 93–102. Petrinjak, A., and R. Graham. 2005. Creating learning objects from pre-authored course materials: Semantic structure of learning ob- jects—design and technology. Canadian Journal of Learning and Tech- nology 30 (3): 33–46. 160 DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 Polsani, P. (2003). Use and abuse of reusable learning objects. Journal of Digital Information 3 (4). Available online at http://jodi.ecs.soton. ac.uk/Articles/v03/i04/Polsani Quinn, C. 2000. Learning objects and instructional components. Educa- tional Technology & Society 3 (2): 13–20. Sicilia, M., and E. García. 2003. On the concepts of usability and reusabil- ity of learning objects. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 4 (2). Available online at http://www.irrodl.org/con- tent/v4.2/sicilia-garcia.html Sosteric, M., and S. Hesemeier. 2002. When is a learning object not an ob- ject: A first step towards a theory of learning objects. International Re- view of Research in Open and Distance Learning 3 (2). Available online at http://www.irrodl.org/content/v3.2/soc-hes.html Wiley, D. 2000. Learning object design and sequencing theory. Unpub- lished Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. ———. 2002. Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy. In The instructional use of learning objects, ed. D. A. Wiley, 1–35. Bloomington, IN: Agency for Instructional Technology. Wilhelm, P., and R. Wilde. 2005. Developing a university course for online delivery based on learning objects: From ideals to compromises. Open Learning 20 (1): 65–81. 161 MOISEY, ALLY, SPENCER D o w n l o a d e d B y : [ E B S C O H o s t E J S C o n t e n t D i s t r i b u t i o n ] A t : 1 7 : 1 2 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 9 
work_yx32mlbvt5cxne2gxkwz55rh5a	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_zagaixn7vrexdbpadw3zko2rje	----	NEWJGIMfront 18 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ABSTRACT This paper presents a distributed virtual reality environment for children called EVE— Environnements Virtuels pour Enfants. The virtual environment architecture is reactive agents based. The FCM-like dynamic action planning mechanism assures agent’s adaptability to its environment changes. This virtual environment supports cooperation among members of a dispersed team engaged in a concurrent context. By the means of their avatars, special cases of agents, users are allowed to interact and to give decisions using cooperative mechanisms. A user-friendly interface enables teachers to create their own stories that fit with children’s pedagogical requirements and generate new virtual environments according to the teacher’s specifications. The implementation is based on DeepMatrix as environment server, VRML and Java as languages and Cortona VRML plug-in from ParallelGraphics. It is actually running on the Internet: http://eve.enib.fr Keywords: autonomous reactive agents, distributed virtual reality, fuzzy cognitive map, virtual environment Educative Distributed Virtual Environments for Children Dorin-Mircea Popovici, ENIB/CERV, France and OVIDIUS University of Constanta, Romania Jean-Pierre Gerval, ISEN, France Pierre Chevaillier, ENIB/CERV, France Jacques Tisseau, ENIB/CERV, France Luca-Dan Serbanati, OVIDIUS University of Constanta, Romania Patrick Gueguen, Ecole Kroas Saliou, France INTRODUCTION Learning to read is a difficult but im- portant task for a child. It takes time and supposes a constant effort from its part. Like many other school activities, reading involves child’s capacities as attention and memory, knowledge (of letters) and know- how as searching and discovering the word’s sense in a given context. Small ca- pacity in attention and incapacity to rein- vest in a new task of already known no- tions are just some examples of obstacles in a child’s learning process. More, a task failure can generate a fear from the child’s part concerning particular notions, or no- tions related with the unaccomplished task. At the beginning of primary school, some children have not achieved all the necessary acquisitions to basis tasks. For example, some have difficulties to place in order a set of labels in order to construct simple sentences. And this may have mul- tiple causes; the child has not well memo- rized the oral sentence, is not able to realise a correspondence between the oral sen- Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 19 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. tence and the written one, or, is not able to coordinate the spatial distribution from left to right with temporal succession of already pronounced words. In order to avoid the initial difficulties to accumulate and to pro- duce a child’s discouragement, part of the activity in primary schools is organised around small groups of children, rather than individual work. More, when we talk about learning at childhood age we are usually using a story metaphor, because narrative lends itself to active exploration of a do- main through challenging and enjoyable problem-solving activities, which is essen- tial for learning. On the other hand, the informal con- text in which the child learns reading has well evolved in the past three decades. New technologies such as Internet, multi- media, and virtual reality are now parts of our children’s everyday life. For this rea- son, it is not surprising that educators grow their interest in distance learning and dis- tributed education, and try to use these types of media in their lessons. Our paper presents a distributed non- immersive virtual environment (VE), called EVE: Environnements Virtuels pour Enfants (Virtual Environments for Children), which helps primary school children learn to read. Based on a story reconstruction, it offers children a pleasant approach to learning by means of two games that implement emu- lation and cooperation. In the following, after a brief state- of-the-art of educational computer aided environments for children, we present the EVE project from a pedagogical perspec- tive. Next, we will make some consider- ations from an architectural point of view and we give some insights concerning the implementation of our project. Finally, we will make some conclusions based on the experience obtained during the project and we end with perspectives of our work. BACKGROUND With ever-increasing computational processing power, the rapid growth of the World Wide Web, and the ongoing construc- tion of a digital communications infrastruc- ture, the creation of distributed (immersive), multi-participant VEs running on the Internet starts to prove its usefulness in child education. These learning experiences may come in many forms. Educational quiz-like or puzzle-like kids’ games for ABC activi- ties such as reading, reading comprehen- sion, math, writing, and so forth, and digital libraries, such as QueryKids (Druin et al., 2003), are some examples of multimedia- supported learning environments. The cre- ativity, encouragement, and great motiva- tion supported by interactivity in a social context permits passive children to become active. More, these experiences realise cultural enrichment of a child’s knowledge (Pantelidis, 1995). Dedicated Web sites, like “J@rdin des jeunes branchés” (J@ardin, 2004), provide online learning activities that are combined with games and information for elementary school projects as a help to navigate on the main Web sites. Much of the appeal for applying VR in education is derived from the observa- tions of educational theorists (Bruner, 1986; Piaget, 1929) who have stressed the value of actualizing learning through making it more real for students. Learning is facili- tated through the construction of concepts built from the intuitions that arise out of their direct experience of the environment. The opportunities for young users to visit places and interact with events that distance, time, or safety concerns would normally prohibit, the greater understanding of concepts through the creation of multi-modal meta- phors or representations and the ability to 20 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. scale and manipulate these representations (Winn, 1993; Youngblut, 1998) are the ma- jor benefits of applying VR in educational environments. In the early 90s, narrative-based sys- tems such as Oz (Bates, 1992; Mateas, 1997) or Virtual Theatre (Hayes-Roth & vanGent, 1997) have been mainly devel- oped for the purpose of entertainment. They propose story contents asking the users, particularly children, to accomplish some tasks. CityGame (Volbracht, Domik, Backe- Neuwaldand & Rinkens, 1998) studies children’s’ ability to find physically and mentally one’s way in the 2D and 3D envi- ronments. Round Earth (Johnson, Moher, Ohlssoon & Gillingham, 1999) and QuickWorlds projects (Johnson, Moher, Leigh & Lin, 2000) look at the issues in- volved in the use of projection based VR systems with children, specifically in the well known ImmersaDesk (Johnson et al., 2002) or CAVE VR theatres. The effec- tiveness of multiple representations in en- hancing education in elementary school is investigated. NICE (Roussos et al., 1999) imple- ments a persistent virtual garden in which children may collaboratively plant and har- vest fruits and vegetables, cull weeds, and position light and water sources to differ- entially affect the growth rate of plants. Their interactions constitute the story of the garden. KidsRoom (Bobick et al., 2000) is another interactive narrative for children. Using images, lighting, sound, and computer vision action recognition technology, a child’s room was transformed into a story- based world for play. Objects in the room became characters in an adventure, and the room itself actively participated in the story, guiding and reacting to the children’s choices and actions. Through voice, sound, and image the KidsRoom entertained and provoked the mind of the child. Systems as Storykit (Montemayor et al., 2000), Teatrix (Prada, Machado & Paiva, 2000), Puppet (Marshall, Rogers & Scaife, 2002) or GhostWriter (Robertson, 2002) go further and evaluate the use of VE and computer mediated communica- tion technology in the domain of teaching children story writing skills. Based on im- provisation as a social and perceptual ex- perience, the children are expected to in- teract with each other, playing the roles of different characters, as in GhostWriter. In Puppet, children are allowed to play mul- tiple roles in an interactive narrative: audi- ence, actor, scriptwriter, and editor. They are able to both “dive in,” taking on the role of a character in the drama, and to “step out,” reasoning about a character’s emotional states and goals, as well as re- flecting upon their own character dialogue recorded while playing with the system as scriptwriter. While in Storykit children cre- ate physical immersive story environments using low-tech construction materials such as cardboard, glue, paper and ink pens, as well as high-tech smart objects, in Teatrix they are doing the same using a set of pre- defined scenes and a set of predefined characters. These characters may act on behalf of the children or autonomously. Each child will expect the story to evolve in reaction to her character’s actions. So, their characters must act in a believable way, in order for the story creation envi- ronment to engage the children in an en- tertaining experience, which can meet the child’s cognitive needs to interpret, under- stand and interact with the world in terms of stories. As we can see, there are several VR environments that are applied specifically to elementary children learning. Based on a story metaphor, they encourage children Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 21 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. to be co-constructors of narration, promot- ing in this way the deep, connection-build- ing, meaning-making activities that define constructivist learning; or suppose the children’s participation as actors. In the environment we present in the following, we have adopted a story-based approach too. Unlike the mentioned projects, we ask the children to discover a proposed story, based on a set of images that are distributed in a virtual school. Each image is described by a sentence. At its turn, the sentence is constructed using five labels. In order to discover the story, the children have to reconstruct the sentences and after that to cooperate in order to pro- pose a logical order of discovered images. This way, they learn reading by playing. EVE PROJECT: GENERAL DESCRIPTION The EVE project has started in 1998. Initially funded by the Fonds Francophone des Inforoutes (Francophone Information Highway Fund), EVE has involved nine partners (universities, primary schools and SMEs) from three countries: France, Mo- rocco and Romania. Since 2000, EVE is used by elementary schools from partners’ countries as a supplementary tool in teach- ing children to read. More, in November 2003 an experience between France and Japan was realised. Children from the pri- mary school Kroas Saliou (Plouzané, France) cooperated with children from Ootsukadai elementary school (Yokosuka, Japan). The target of the project is twofold: 1. To implement new cooperative working environments. 2. To initiate new products development such as pedagogical software for pri- mary school children. On a pedagogical point of view, the main goal is teamwork. Children from dif- ferent classrooms and countries are in- volved in cooperative work. They have to achieve a common task together, hoping that this will encourage curiosity and re- spect in a multicultural framework, at a children’s level, and not only. On a technical point of view, the EVE project implements distributed virtual real- ity technologies. Software had been devel- oped using Virtual Reality Modelling Lan- guage (VRML) and Java languages. From both perspectives, we can de- fine our project as a NICE-like one, being narrative, constructionist and collaborative. Even if it does not consume a lot of re- sources, like KidsRoom, it can offer to its young users great satisfaction because of their capability to transfer the virtual expe- riences in the real world and vice-versa. Actual use of virtual environment is put into the context where social patterns outside the desktop are considered. In our case the social dynamics and physical pres- ence even meant that the kids achieved an efficient cooperation in the classroom when they come to learn how to use the soft- ware and interact. Pedagogical Aspects The primary pedagogical goal is to instil in children the capacity to read and understand a text. If for the reading and phonemes association from six to 18 months are necessary, for text understanding the child needs a much longer period of time. The latter understanding may become more profound and subtle. Very often children become able to read without knowing what they are read- ing. And this represents a problem in all learning processes. How can we resolve a 22 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. problem in math if we are not able to read and understand its content? If the children are enthusiasts at the beginning, this state of spirit is calmed down with the time passing because of the long time interval necessary to learn, by the dif- ficulties met and by the mixture between them. It is strongly necessary that teach- ers adopt a proper strategy in order to di- versify and refresh children’s interest. De- spite the diversity of existed and used edu- cational tools such as books, libraries, mov- ies, theatres, educational games, and so forth, the learning process seems to be to repetitive. And this takes place in the child’s life, full of other activities, such as sports, playing an instrument, TV, video games, holidays… The child need of diversity does not stop at the school’s doors, and our day schools are plugged into this evolution. Two Games The EVE application has been devel- oped in order to help primary school chil- dren to learn reading. It offers children a pleasant approach to learning by means of two games that implement emulation and cooperation. This way, EVE is involved into the VR-based education current, being a source of educational diversity and rich- ness. The Labels’ Game This first game is a self-training step according to a global learning method of reading, based on the label’s game. The target of this first game is to build sentences. A picture illustrates each sentence, in or- der to suggest to the children the message of the sentence (Figure 1). The child must discover the sentence using a disordered set of words and moving words to the right places. In case of doubt, the child can hear the sentence by clicking on the appropriate icon. When the sentence is correct the child wins the picture. The child must win three pictures before being able to join the sec- ond game. Three children are working con- currently in three different virtual rooms, as orange, green and blue ones (Figure 2). The order in which the children finish their rooms is the same order they will have the right to express themselves in the next step. More, the first one will be allowed to start the second game. And this motivates them more. Let’s Find Out the Story Several studies suggest that coopera- tion between children in virtual environ- ments has a positive effect on learning (Johnson et al., 1999). It is not very un- usual that performances that were expected without results in a child-adult context may Figure 1: The Labels Game Figure 2: The Virtual Environment Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 23 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. appear in a children’s cooperative context. This is why collaborative learning is one of the most important requirements of our tech- nology. Within a group of children, each child contributes with its knowledge in the group’s knowledge, more or less easily ac- ceptable by the others participants in its group. In the framework of the second game, the spirit of the concurrence adds to the team spirit because of the cooperative con- text we propose to children. This time the children will meet each other in the com- mon virtual room (Figure 2). Each child owns a personal avatar. The team of three children must now build a story. For this, they have to place the previously won pic- tures in a logical order. According to the order they have finished their rooms, they are allowed to move and propose positions for images. By viewing the moving of the selected images by the other children, the children are sure that they cooperate and they all have the same goal; even if they are in a neighbouring room, school or in a foreign country. A special mechanism is needed in order to avoid conflicts: for example if two children want to move the same picture to two different positions. We have chosen to implement a voting mechanism (Figure 3): • A child moves a picture to a chosen po- sition and requests a vote from the oth- ers. • The two other children tell him if they agree or not. They are voting (green stands for yes, red for no). • According to the vote result, the chosen position for the picture will be accepted or not. When the team has finished building the story two cases may appear: 1. Pictures order is wrong. Badly placed pictures are removed and the team must start again to build the story. 2. Pictures order is right. An agent comes in the virtual common room and tells the story to the children. This way, the success or the failure of the second game becomes a team re- sult. Interactivity EVE supposes the ability of a child to find physically and mentally one’s way in the 3D space. Spatial orientation is an im- portant ability for understanding, interpret- ing and developing the world in which the children live. Children are given tasks of Figure 3: The Second Game — Voting Mechanism Figure 4: Avatars’ Behaviour 24 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. navigation and orientation inside the envi- ronment through intersecting paths in or- der to make them interact. The experienced children with three-dimensional computer games have certainly influenced the behaviour of the subjects. One important result was that chil- dren often focused on the navigation tools (mouse and direction buttons) rather than on their tasks. More, they love to play “hide- and-seek” and are eager to see what chil- dren in other rooms are doing. The appli- cation lets them to perform this task, be- cause emulation concept is the basis of the first game. According to this fact, two mechanisms have been implemented: • a scoreboard, which indicates the num- ber of pictures that each child has won, • a teleporting device, which enables the child to view what happens in other rooms. A first idea when developing the EVE project was to implement a chat that en- ables children to discuss and explain their choices, especially during the second game. Previous experiments demonstrate that this choice was not suitable for the inexperi- enced in reading and writing learners. Ac- tually, teachers are the main users of the chat! By the mean of an avatar ’s behaviours (Figure 4) we increase the re- alism of the virtual representations of chil- dren playing in the virtual world and induce a better communication between children. We have chosen to implement behaviours for avatar actions as Walk, Standby, and used in children communication as “Hello!”, “Help me!”, “Thank you!”, “I agree,” “I disagree,” Laughing, Smiling, and “Good Bye!” These previous lists are not exhaustive and should be easily com- pleted according to current experiments with teachers and children. The child may select behaviour, which will be broadcasted (gesture and sound) to other children through it’s the child’s personal avatar. In order to increase the interactivity level, some of the subjects suggested popu- lating EVE with more elements to interact with. Agents in EVE In the very first stages of our project we have limited the number of children able to participate in a working session to three, according to the number of partner coun- tries involved into the project. This was a strong constraint for children. Even the teacher proposed a certain story to play, children love some stories more than oth- ers, and usually there are more than three children that want to play the same story in the same time. So, in order to give to chil- dren the freedom to use the environment we have chosen two solutions. The Local Version In the local version of EVE, the task is basically the same except that there are no other children to participate in the vot- ing mechanism. This means that the child has to complete all the three rooms in or- der to have access in the common, but empty, second room. Walking through the environment enables children to get use of the VRML plug-in functionalities before starting a distributed working session with other children. This way, a story may be used by as many children as possible. Using Virtual Agents Cooperation is an important concept of our technology. Suppose that the chil- dren are currently playing in EVE and for some unexpected cause a child is deter- mined to quit the game. In such situations, the game cannot continue because normally Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 25 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. there is nobody to take the released place. In order to avoid this type of blocking, we have introduced a new user type, the vir- tual agent, which coexists within the envi- ronment and acts in the absence of a child. Doing so, the child can quit the game with- out affecting its flow, its role being switched to the corresponding virtual agent. Based on virtual agents the number of users restriction falls. In other words, there are still only three children able to move labels and to vote in the same story, but we do not block the participation of other children as before. This way, the child is able to start alone a distributed working session, based on the cooperation with the existing agents. When there is another child who wants to participate, it is accepted as the second child, and the two children will continue the game. Finally, when the third child arrives in the environment it is ac- cepted and the team is completed. From now on, all the other children will be ac- cepted just as simple participants; they can- not express themselves by voting but they are allowed to cooperate (i.e., move labels) with others. More, as in real life, the teacher and parents are represented in the environ- ments, based on their special agents. They are the main users of the chat. While the parent’s associated agent is not different from the child’s ones from a behavioural point of view, the teacher’s one is. As we will explain more in detail later, the teacher’s agent is able to assist the child in its game. And he or she will do this by tell- ing the sentence or even the whole story. Cultural Exchange Another dimension of EVE project is the cultural one. The proposed story-based metaphor facilitates the possibilities both for teaching familiar material in new ways, and presenting completely new material. So they are potentially of great value to education. In order to facilitate and so to encour- age the multi-cultural exchanges, we have extended EVE to support multi-language working sessions. This way, children can start learning foreign languages, or at least having a first contact with them, using the proposed stories. For the moment, in EVE we have stories in French, English, Roma- nian and even in Japanese (Figure 5). Children & Teachers Together into an Interdisciplinary Team Children can play an important role in creating new technologies for children Figure 5: Cultural Exchange through Language 26 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. (Druin, 1999). Therefore, we have estab- lished a geographically distributed team of computer scientists, educational research- ers, visual artists, primary school children and their teachers. During discussions among teams’ members, children and teachers gave a strong feedback concern- ing stories’ subjects, their graphic repre- sentation and audio support. More, the chil- dren were involved, at their demand, in audio and graphical support of stories’ cre- ation process. This way, we were able not only to understand the children’s impact onto designing process, but we have also understood how the new technologies can impact children as users, and even as cre- ators of these technologies. In addition, the integration of primary school teachers as environmental and peda- gogical designers has permitted us to realise a balance between technical and pedagogical aspects of our project. DESIGNING CONSIDERATIONS For the development of EVE as edu- cational application, we have considered technological, domain specific, pedagogi- cal and psychological aspects. First and foremost we have considered that in order to develop an application for real use in classrooms, we need an extendable sys- tem as a platform. And there is no single technology that fits all the application and educational needs. More, pedagogic and didactic skills were needed to adapt the application to the user requirements. Be- cause the primary school children are the most part of our users, we have reduced at minimum the necessary skills to be trained or enhanced, like spatial abilities, but we have considered a number of psychologi- cal aspects. All these considerations have influenced content design, user interface’s design and concepts for evaluations. The Environment The VE consists of a set of rooms that creates a simple maze (Figure 2). The environment wall’s textures are based on real images from the Kroas Saliou primary school; wall paintings made by children, or on traditional French, Romanian or mo- rocco images. Doing so, children have found the environment familiar, when even from architectural point of view it was not so. Visibility and accessibility aspects were taken into account also. As the three chil- dren have chosen one colour to log in EVE, orange, green or blue, we have use the same login colour in order to highlight the rooms through which they have to pass. More, we have matched the rooms’ dimen- sions with the children’s avatar ones. Cooperation is basically supported by directly embodying the users in the VE us- ing different avatars, and providing them with different inter-user communication facilities such as a set of predefined behaviours. As constructivism underlines (Mantovani, 2001), learning takes place when learners can build conceptual mod- els that are both consistent with what they already understand and with the new con- tent. In order to ensure the successful ad- aptation of old knowledge to new experi- ence, we have provided some flexible learn- ing directions. The first one is the integra- tion of different types of information and educational support other than 3D repre- sentation (such as audio annotations and images). More, we have defined specific tasks to the children through interaction. Participants are able to move their avatar around the rooms using the arrow keys and/or using the mouse. They are able to Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 27 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. pick up objects (labels, images or speak- ers) in the VE by click-and-drag or just click them. Participants can communicate with each other using a chat channel. The Story A story is defined by an ordered set of nine sentences. As previously mentioned, a picture illustrates each sentence. A sound file is also linked to the sentence in order to enable children to hear the sentence. A sentence is defined by an ordered set of words. As it is presented, (Figure 1), a pic- ture is associated to each word. The story data model is presented hereafter (Figure 6). According to this data model, which is really simple, we have chosen to implement this model using a simple directory struc- ture. The Users’ Interfaces Another challenge was to provide teachers with a user-friendly interface (Fig- ure 7) that enables them to build their own stories. Using this tool, teachers can cre- ate stories that fit children pedagogical re- quirements all along the school year. Teach- ers can also involve children in designing new stories for their friends. For each sentence, the teacher will choose: a gif file (the picture) and a wav file (the sound), and write the text of the sentence. When this job ended, the teacher saves the story on the server. Before pro- ceeding to data transfer, the application automatically: • Generates a gif file for each word tak- ing into account word length in order to use the best character font size; • Transforms each wav file into an mp3 file in order to reduce the amount of data. The teacher can clear the interface, and load or delete a story from the server previously created. A new virtual world that implements the new story is generated when the teacher decides to publish its story. On the server side, symbolic links to the virtual world are created in the new story direc- Figure 6: Story Data Model Figure 7: Story Interface — TOP (the left), BOTTOM (the right) 28 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. tory structure. At the same time, an e-mail is sent to a moderator. A special interface (Figure 8, left) has been implemented that enables the mod- erator to view the story and to hear sen- tences. The moderator will read the new story and decide whether he or she accepts it or not according to its content. The last interface (Figure 8, right) enables children or teachers to choose a virtual world. The list of all published sto- ries is shown on the left upper corner of the page. The user: • Chooses a story in the list; • May click on the picture to view all pic- tures; • Can press a button to read sentences— sentences disappear when the mouse is released. This interface enables the teacher to read the story before he or she starts work- ing with the children. VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT’S ARCHITECTURE In EVE, we consider that the virtual environment is populated by virtual entities that correspond to objects populating the real world. In our vision, the “meaning” of each virtual entity is its associated object in the real world. As we know, in order to model an object in the real world some es- sential properties of the object should be used. They will make up the object’s mean- ing from the modeler’s point of view. In the virtual environment, for each property of the real object the modeler considers essential will be an attribute of the virtual entity with its informational shape, so the real object’s property is for us the meaning of the attribute associated shape. In the following, a virtual entity, briefly called entity, is the set of all infor- mational shapes, as introduced in Popovici, Serbanati and Harrouet (2003), which com- plete its meaning (Figure 10). By using vari- ous criteria, we can structure the set of entities within the virtual environment. For example, the entities can be specialised in receptors and effectors. A receptor is a stimuli detector in an informational space, while an effector realises shape modifica- tions by means of the entity’s actions in the virtual environment. The entities may be grouped in order to produce complex ag- gregations, themselves entities. In the fol- lowing section the agent as an aggregation of entities is presented. Agent’s Architecture In our approach, a virtual agent is a complex entity in the virtual environment able to perceive, decide, and react based Figure 8: Moderator’s Interface (the left) and the Child’s One (the right) Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 29 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. on its profile, internal structure, and tasks. Users’ avatars are particular cases of vir- tual agents. In order to realise the agent’s setting in situation into the virtual environment we have followed the immersion, the interac- tion and the autonomy principles (Tisseau & Harrouet, 2003). For this, we were in- spired by the human perception mecha- nisms (Hefco, 1997), as Herrero uses (Herrero & Antonio, 2002). Our approach uses perception and emission fields of the entities, which are generalisations of me- dium, nimbus, aura, and awareness notions as they were introduced in Benford and Fahln (1993). The entities are supposed to populate a multi-dimensional informational space. This space is called virtual envi- ronment and it is viewed as the union of all entities’ fields. The interactions between agents are of cause-effect type: any change of the agent’s state represents a possible cause and may be followed by a stimulus emis- sion. In our approach, the stimulus contains information regarding the agent state (Popovici, Serbanati & Gerval, 2003). All the agent’s actions are followed by stimuli emissions. Our virtual agents are autonomous in the measure of their adaptability to their dynamic environment. For this, they have to be able to perceive the environment changes, to decide and to react accordingly (Figure 9). A more detailed view of the agent’s architecture is given in Figure 10. During the virtual agent’s life, its state is given by the values of its attributes that are the generators of its structure. The structure’s variations are produced by the effectors and are perceived by means of the receptors, under the form of stimuli. These modifications may be triggered by the reception of an external stimulus such as a change in environment followed by emission of internal stimuli. The receptors from perception mod- ule generate perceptions based on these stimuli. The resulting perceptions will be further used by the decision component, which is responsible for effectors’ activa- tion. In their turn, effectors, founded in the action module, may operate structural modi- fications followed by stimuli emissions, or may trigger themselves specific stimuli. This way, the agent’s life cycle is com- pleted. Information concerning the agent’s objectives and abilities, as well as its world model, is stored in its knowledge base. This is the only component which is modifiable not by the means of the agent’s effectors but the decider one. The problem that arises concerns the dynamical aspect of the agent’s environ- ment. In such an environment, the agent’s decision based upon its actions may become obsolete between the moment the decision is made and the moment the action is ap- plied. And this is due to the fact that in this time interval the agent’s action selection mechanism does not update the activated action context. In order to eliminate this inconsistency we use a dynamical FCM- like action planning mechanism, based on agent’s perception, situated at decision level. Figure 9. Agent’s architecture. Figure 9: Agent’s Architecture 30 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Agent’s Decider Module Using fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM), instead of the hierarchical task networks (HTN) (Cavazza, Charles & Mead, 2002), we are able to ensure the agent’s adapt- ability to environment changes. A FCM is an influence graph having as nodes ele- ments of a set of concepts (Kosko, 1997). Concepts may be sensorial concepts (if they express perception values), internal con- cepts (for knowledge or decisional values), or driving concepts (for actions/objectives values) that the agent possesses (Parenthoen, Reignier & Tisseau, 2001). The environment perturbations de- tected through the agent’s receptors will represent imposed values of sensorial con- cepts. This way, each time the FCM is com- puted, the agent’s behavioural (re)activation is realised. Let us consider the following FCMs, associated to the agent that plays the role of the tutor in EVE (Figure 11). Here, the sets of FCM concepts are “obstacle left,” “obstacle right,” “child far,” “child close,” “good answer” and “bad answer” as sen- sorial concepts, “motivation to approach” and “need to assist” as internal concepts, and “turn left,” “turn right,” “approach” and “assist” as driving concepts. “Advice,” “valid sentence” and “valid story” are also driving concepts but, as we shall see in the next section, they are used in “assist” ac- tion plan. This means that they are not in- { 1..* receptor and 1..* effector } Group (f ro m Str ucture) Entity (f rom Structure) 1..* +component 1..* Attribute (f rom Structure) Shape (f rom Structure) 1..* +shape 1..* 1..* +attribute 1..* Stimulus (f rom En vi ro nmen t) Action (f rom Action) Effector (f rom Action) 1 ..* 0.. * 1 ..* 0.. * m odify 11 launch Receptor (f rom Perception) 0..*0..* receive FCM (f rom Decision) Knowledge (f ro m Kn owle dge ) 0..* +capability0..* AnaliserDecidor (from Decisi on) commandli sten 1..*1..* 0..*0..* use/update Objective (f rom Action) Agent 0..*0..* 0..*0..* 1..* 1..*1..* 1..* Avatar T T T T T T Figure 10: Inside View of the Agent’s Architecture Figure 11: Parts of the Tutor’s FCM Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 31 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. volved in the decisional process but the behavioural one. In our model, not only the agent’s objectives are viewed as fuzzy goals (El- Nasr, Yen & Ioerger, 2000), but also the action plans. This is because they all have corresponding driving concepts in the decider’s fuzzy maps. An action with its corresponding driving concept greater than a specific value is called active; otherwise the action is called inactive. An action’s plan may include differ- ent “routes” the agent can follow in order to complete the action. Even if it is unique, the plan’s execution can provide different solutions for the corresponding action, de- pending on the current context. For example, in order to assist the child, the tutor can tell a sentence, or recall a grammar rule, or highlight the error. An- other way to assist the child is to tell a sen- tence and highlight the error, and then to recall a grammar rule, depending on the child responses. We use three behavioural operators, “all,” “first of” and “sequence” in an action plan expression. To briefly de- scribe them, let us denote by wait the ac- tion with any arbitrary effect (i.e., any set of resulting stimuli) on the agent’s state/ structure and which is by default accom- plished, and by none the action that is never accomplished. We will denote by A the set of an agent’s actions, by A* the set A- {wait}, and by Time a linear temporal struc- ture assumed to be discrete for the sake of simplicity. We define the ALL pattern by means of the binary operator “all” ⊗:A2→A with the following semantic: we say that an ac- tion A res =A 1 ⊗A 2 is completed, and so the associated context is validated if ∃t 1 >t 0 ∈Time for which both A 1 and A 2 are completed in the moment t 1 . Here t 0 de- notes the moment of parallel activation of the actions. Its associated FCM is given in Figure 12. Here, the set of FCM’s concepts will correspond to the action’s components, actions themselves. For each of the agent’s effectors there will be one action that the effector controls. This means that an acti- vated action will not activate its influenced actions (i.e., the actions activated by the current one in the FCM) until the corre- +1 +1 +1/2 +1/2 A1 A2 Ares started effectori effectorj Ares completed Figure 12: ALL Pattern’s FCM +1 +1 +1 +1 A1 A2 Ares started effectori effectorj Ares completed Figure 13: FOF Pattern’s FCM +1 +1 +1 A1 A2 Ares started effectori effectorj Ares completed Figure 14: SEQ Pattern’s FCM 32 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. sponding effector completes its job. In Fig- ure 12, we have associated the effector i to the action A 1 and the effector j to the action A 2 . With ALL pattern we can ex- press parallel cooperative actions (non-se- quential). Using the same FCM structure but with different influence values we obtain another binary operator, the “first of” ⊕:A *2→A, which gives us the FOF behavioural pattern. Its semantic is the fol- lowing: we say that an action A res =A 1 ⊕A 2 is completed if ∃t 1 >t 0 ∈Time and ∃j=1,2 such that A j is completed at the moment t 1 and ∀k=1,2, and A k is not completed be- fore, that is, at any moment t, t 0 <t<t 1 (Fig- ure 13). In this case, the context consists in the first accomplished action’s effect. We use the FOF pattern when parallel con- current actions (non-sequential) are needed. When an order between the plan’s actions is needed, we can use yet another pattern, the “sequence” one (SEQ), de- fined by the operator Θ:A2→A. We say that an action A res =A 1 ΘA 2 is completed if ∀j=1,2 ∃t j >t 0 ∈Time and t j >t j-1 with the property that A j is completed starting with the t j and A j+1 is activated at t j +1 (Figure 14). Here t 0 represents the moment of the activation of the action A 1 . In other words, the actions are activated and completed in the indicated sequence. By constraining the action(s) comple- tion into a time interval, we obtain the bounded versions of the above defined ALL, FOF, and SEQ operators, as van Lamsweerde suggests (Lamsweerde & Letier, 2000). We have found useful, in the action’s plan expression, the use of n-ary extensions of these binary operators. The action’s activation corresponds with forcing A res started concept to 1 in the action’s plan. This means that the execu- tion of the action’s plan produces the acti- vation of component actions. In their turn, the corresponding effectors will be trig- gered. If a component action fails, the whole plan fails in the case of ALL and SEQ pat- terns. By contrary, if the failed action par- ticipates in a FOF pattern, the plan is still active, and another action is waiting to suc- ceed. In the case of use of bounded ver- sion of above-mentioned operators, the action plan is ended if the plan is accom- plished in the specified time interval, or stopped otherwise. More, at any moment, if the action’s context became non-valid, the action is stopped. Based on the action’s plan, we are able to obtain different evaluations of its accomplishment level, either by counting its completed actions or by the means of the objective completed concept value. The greater this number, the greater may became the objective/action priority from the agent’s perspective. The action’s corresponding FCM convergence to a fixed-point attractor as- sures the action’s accomplishment or fail- ure, depending on the value of completed concept at this point. In our notation, we can express our tutor agent’s global objective as O=ALL (AC,F,ASC), where we have noted by AC the “avoid collision,” by F the “follow the child” and by ASC the “assist the child” objective. According to the proposed operators semantic, the tutor will evaluate and then activate the three objectives, based on their corresponding values in the FCM. If there are some concurrent actions with similar effects, then they are let to cooperate; otherwise the action with lower priority is made inactive. In our case, the only concurrent actions may be AC and F. For this, the value of the corresponding driv- ing concept for AC, respectively for F, is Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 33 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. given by the inverse of the distance to the object the tutor will try to avoid, respec- tively the child the tutor is following. After the currently active action will be accom- plished, the rest of the actions will be re- evaluated and activated accordingly. We have to remind that the associ- ated effectors control the values propaga- tion through a fuzzy plan. This makes them different than but as simple as classical FCMs. IMPLEMENTATION Virtual environment and its compo- nents have been developed with Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) ISO standard. Users may view 3D contents with a Web browser and a VRML plug-in. The actual implementation is using Cortona VRML plug-in from ParallelGraphics. The environment distribution is based on the DeepMatrix software (Reitmayr, Carroll, Reitmeyer & Wagner, 1998) from GEOMETREK. This software enables users to enter 3D Web sites where they can interact with other users and objects. DeepMatrix implements client-server ar- chitecture. On the server side, all messages are broadcasted in the same order to all cli- ents. We have refined the proposed imple- mentation from GEOMETREK, by intro- ducing a filtering and pseudo-dead reckon- ing mechanism, which permit a more friendly and flexible connection of young users. On the client side, interfaces have been implemented in Java language with a special attention due to the fact that users are viewing the HTML pages with Internet Explorer and running the Microsoft Virtual Machine. The use of External Authoring Interface (EAI) permits the client to achieve complex tasks by connecting the VRML Web browser plug-in with a Java applet within the same Web page (Figure 15). The Java applet loads VRML content into the plug-in and adds avatar represen- tation to the virtual world. The plug-in up- dates the Java applet about users’ position and orientation in the virtual world. There is one more type of informa- tion that is published between all the cli- ents of a virtual world on DeepMatrix server, the other shared information, like pictures, sounds, and strings. Generally, everything is declared as shared node in VRML files. By doing this, we can reach an optimised solution for a distributed vir- tual environment, with non-shared informa- tion downloaded locally. VR Agents The virtual agents were designed on an approximate-body approach (Thalmann, 2000), which frequently provides position and orientation information to remote hosts, taking into account a minimal set of joint points. Their geometrical structure com- ponents were implemented in VRML us- ing a PROTO structure. Behaviours were designed with the 3DStudioMax software, and then exported to VRML format. The resulting code was finally inserted into the agent’s PROTO structure. The environment dynamics is per- ceived by the agent itself through its Per- ception module (Figure 9). Based on VRML sensor-like components, this mod- ule uses VRML eventIn mechanism in or- der to transmit the detected stimuli to the agent’s decisional module. And because the agent itself has VRML components in the VRML environment, using these sensors it is able to realise the exteroception as well as the interoception. Once the decision is made by the agent’s Decisional module, which was implemented using Java 34 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. classes, it sends execution commands to its Action module. This time, we are using the VRML eventOut mechanism in order to activate the agent’s behaviours (Figure 15). The implemented behaviours are walk, turn left, turn right, standby, look at, laughing, drag/drop object, greetings such as “Hello!”, “Good Bye!”, “Help me!”, “Thank you!”, “I agree” and “I disagree”. These VR agent’s atomic actions form agent’s capabilities and are used in the ac- tion plan realisation. The child may select a behaviour, which will be broadcasted (ges- ture and sound) to other children through its personal avatar. In order to assure the EVE’s agents adaptability to their dynamic environment we are using the following plans: AgentGoal=ALL(Play,AvoidCollision,Help) Play=SEQ(Room 1 Completed,Room 2 Completed) Room 1 Completed=ALL(Sentence 1 ,Sentence 2 ,Sentence 3 ) Sentence i =SEQ(ALL(Label 1 ,…,Label 5 ),Valid_Sentence i ) Label k =action to place the Label k into a label socket from agent’s walls. Valid_Sentence i =is an example of requested action (which depends on other agents’ ac- tions), in our case on tutor decision on pro- posed Sentence i , which is part of tutor’s Assist plan. Figure 15. Client-server architecture Figure 15: Client-Server Architecture Figure 16: Virtual Tutor in EVE Environment Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 35 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Room2Completed=SEQ(ALL(Img 1 ,…Img 9 ),Valid_Story) Img i = action to place the Image i into an image socket from common room green wall. Valid_Story=is another tutor action which par- ticipate as requested action in a fuzzy plan. AvoidCollision is considered as an atomic action. For its corresponding FCM and use of other atomic actions (Figure 11). Help=FOF(Ask_for,Give) Ask_for = explicit demand of other agents to help the current one in its task. Give = SEQ(Approach,Label) means that the agent will try to approach to the agent who has sent the Ask_for demand. After that, it will try to place a Label into the right socket. This time, the action plan components are demanded actions for all the other agents, except the agent asking for help. This is the most frequent situation in which the cooperation between agents ap- pears. Once an agent sends the Ask_for help demand, all the agents in its environ- ment will receive this demand under the form of an external stimulus and will acti- vate their Give action plan. Due to the environment’s dynamic (agents positions, access paths, obstacles, etc.), only one of these agents will succeed to accomplish this task. The other agents will be informed about this and they will skip the Give plan and will decide on the next action accord- ing to environment context. This way, we have eliminated the obsolete agent’s ac- tions due to environment changes during the time interval between agent’s action decision and action completion. More, using virtual agents we are able to ensure the persistence of the game. Let us suppose that there is a child who wants to quit the game before its end. In this case, without a virtual agent who takes the child’s place, the game will be blocked. But using a virtual agent, the child can quit the game without affecting its flow, its role being switched to the corresponding virtual agent. Virtual Tutor Because of the number and distribu- tion of children that are playing the game, the teacher is unable to assist them all the time. More, some children may need addi- tional assistance from their teacher. For this, we have introduced the virtual tutor in EVE environment (Figure 16). The role of virtual tutor is not to substitute the real teacher but to encourage the child to test the environment even in the absence of its real teacher. A virtual tutor is basically a virtual agent which has as objective to assist the child in its training. He or she can do this by recalling one sentence the child has to reconstruct or the whole story. He or she can do all this at user’s demand or he/she can decide to act based on user actions (label’s erroneous movements). More, he is able to move, avoid collisions, salute, con- firm or infirm user’s choices. The tutor’s plans are extension of those described in the previous subsection: TutorGoal=ALL(Goal,AvoidCollision,Assist) Assist=SEQ(Approach,FOF(GiveAdvice,Valid_ Sentence,Valid_Story)), (Fig.11). GiveAdvice=FOF(Say_sentence, Say_story), depending on the assisted agent actions, the tutor will give some suggestions. In the tutor’s Goal plan, the actions like RoomCompleted, Sentence or Label are requested actions for the existing agents. The teacher may use the virtual tutor’s avatar and so it will be able to realise re- mote assistance for the children using EVE. In this case, the virtual tutor’s behaviour will be much more complex from a deci- sional point of view, because there will be 36 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. a real person who interacts, but will still follow the actions plan. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK In this paper we have presented a virtual environment specially dedicated to pedagogical purposes. This virtual environ- ment is accessible with a standard Web browser and VRML plug-in without any specific or additional software. The appli- cation is successfully in use as a comple- ment of traditional learning exercises in primary schools from France, Morocco, Romania and Japan. Such exercises already exist using scissors and paper. But the dif- ference here is twofold: • Children get an immediate validation of their works; for example an animal ap- pears when the sentence is correct; • Children do not realise that they are working; in fact they feel as if they were playing together. Experiments have pointed out that games increase children’s motivation, and new technologies such as virtual reality in- crease children’s autonomy. More, they are able to take over the virtual world and to move into the virtual space. For example, after a short time of practice, children have transposed into the virtual world one of their real games: “hide-and-seek”. The coopera- tive work demonstrates that children in a multicultural framework are able to work together if they comply with common rules. It is important to remember that a com- puter is only a machine, which is pro- grammed to provide positive encourage- ments and congratulations so that children can consider it as a friend. On the one hand, it encourages children to be more active so that they dare answer something; it enables children to make the exercise as many times as necessary. On the other hand, it enables children to go faster and then in- crease the number of exercises. The second game (Figure 3) is meant to help with text understanding and logic. Generally children have difficulties read- ing and to correcting themselves. They of- ten make the same mistakes. Here, it is impossible because they have to change something if they are wrong; they have to build a new reasoning. This points out that our application contributes to increasing the ability of children to reason by themselves. On a pedagogical point of view, planned for the primary courses, EVE is now adaptable for older children. The teacher may pass from a text comprehen- sion to grammar or syntax studies. More, new applications should be developed in other domains of interest such as: foreign languages, geometry, algebra, and others. A special benefit of the authoring tools lies in the fact that the teacher can easily cre- ate new exercises. Especially, the teacher can design exercises that fit with children’s interest. Consequently, it strengthens children’s attention to exercises contents. As stories are shared between classrooms or schools, it increases the quantity of ex- ercises teachers can propose to children. On a technical point of view, current experiments will help us to design and implement new avatar behaviours accord- ing to end users’ needs. We are also work- ing on a more sophisticated mechanism, which is the integration of streaming audio and video into the virtual world. This should increase the performance of children’s co- operative work. A new direction would be to use a platform independent interface, ARéVi. Doing so, we could reach a total independence together with a higher per- formance in 3D rendering. More, we are interested in emotional and social aspects Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 37 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. of agents’ behaviour. Validation of critical action plans, like cyclic ones, is one of our priorities. For short term, we intend to let the EVE’s tutor assist more children in the same time, to participate into the voting mechanism, or even to make some mis- takes in order to supplementary test the children, as a higher level of children’s pedagogical evaluation. To conclude, we believe that virtual reality is likely to enable the development of new products that will help children and teachers in their tasks of learning and teach- ing through friendly interfaces. Finally, co- operative experiments pointed out that such cooperative work introduces a kind of sub- liminal target, which is: “training children in learning democracy”. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to the Intergovern- mental Agency of the Francophonie, which funded the EVE project in the framework of the Francophone Information Highway Fund, the Brittany Regional Council, which funded this work in the framework of the MEGALIS Project, and the Hewlett- Packard Company. Thanks are also due to primary schools Kroas Saliou, Plouzané, France, Dan Barbilian, Constanta, Roma- nia, El Khalil, Casablanca, Morocco, and Ootsukadai elementary school, Yokosuka, Japan, and companies Virtualys, Brest, France, Impromex, Constanta, Romania, and TBE MAROC, Rabat, Morocco in- volved in the project. 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Deepmatrix - An Open Technology Based Virtual Environment System. Robertson, J. (2002). Computer games - For better or for worse? i3 Magazine, Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 39 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 12, 32-34. Roussos, M., Johnson, A., Moher, T., Leigh, J., Vasilakis, C., & Barnes, C. (1999). Learning and building together in an immersive virtual world. Presence, 8(3), 247-263. Thalmann, D. (2000). Challenges for the research in virtual humans. Workshop Achieving Human-like Behavior in In- teractive Animated Agent, Barcelona, Spain. Tisseau, J., & Harrouet, F. (2003). Autonomie des entités virtuelles. In P. Fuchs (Ed.), Le traité de la réalité virtuelle, 2, 85-124. Les Presses de l’Ecole des Mines, Paris. Volbracht, S., Domik, G., Backe- Neuwaldand, D., & Rinkens, H. (1998). The ¨City Game¨ an example of a vir- tual environment for teaching spatial ori- entation. Journal of Universal Com- puter Science, 4(4), 461-465. Winn, W. (1993). A conceptual basis for educational applications of virtual reality. Technical Report TR 93-9. Youngblut, C. (1998). Educational uses of virtual reality technology. Techni- cal Report IDA Document D-2128. Dorin-Mircea Popovici is a PhD student in Computer Science at “Politehnica” University at Bucharest, and a lecturer at OVIDIUS University (Constanta, Romania). His PhD subject con- cerns the space modeling in virtual universes. He is interested in computer graphics, computa- tional geometry, virtual space modeling, virtual physiology and multi-agent environments. Since 2003, he has been an associated researcher at CERV as manager of EVE project. Jean-Pierre Gerval obtained his Doctorate in Automation from the University of Valenciennes in France (1987). He has been project manager at the “Institut d’Informatique Industrielle” in Brest (1988-2003) and associate professor of Computer Sciences at the “Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Brest” (1993-2003). He is currently head of the Computer Sciences Depart- ment at the “Institut Supérieur de l’Electronique et du Numérique” in Brest. His research interests include distributed virtual reality and virtual environments especially dedicated to pedagogical applications. Pierre Chevaillier is a professor assistant in Computer Science and works at the CERV. He works on the use of the multiagent paradigm to design digital simulations where users have to play an active and collaborative role. He is the leader of the MASCARET project and focuses its research activities on the interaction and organisational facets of heterogeneous multiagents systems (where both artificial and human agents are involved). Jacques Tisseau is a professor in Computer Science and is head of LI2/ENIB and CERV. His domains of interest are entity’s autonomy in virtual environments, and “in virtuo” experimen- tation in the modeling processes. Luca-Dan Serbanati is a professor of Computer Science at the Ovidius University of Constanta and an IT adviser, teacher, and mentor for industry in Italy. He is the author of the book Integrating Tools for Software Development, where multi-facetted models for the software pro- cess are introduced. Serbanati received a PhD in Computer Science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest. His research interests address systems model-driven analysis and design, formal models, distributed systems, and software development paradigms. 40 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2(4), 18-40, Oct-Dec 2004 Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Patrick Gueguen is a primary school teacher. He is the headmaster of Plouzané Primary School, France. One of his main targets is to open his school and encourage children to use new technologies. He takes part in the pedagogical aspects of EVE project, being involved in it from its beginning. 
work_zcpbggzc2vgaxej6ujrailpnxa	----	Strathprints Institutional Repository Gerrard, W. and Gerrard, C. (2002) The provision of distance education within the HE sector - some areas for concern. Industry and Higher Education, 16 (6). pp. 379-386. ISSN 0950-4222 Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright c© and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http:// strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to Strathprints administrator: mailto:strathprints@strath.ac.uk http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/ http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/ http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/ mailto:strathprints@strath.ac.uk http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/ Gerrard, W. and Gerrard, C. (2002) The provision of distance education within the HE sector - some areas for concern. Industry and Higher Education, 16 (6). pp. 379-386. ISSN 0950-4222 http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/3745/ Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in Strathprints to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the url (http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk) of the Strathprints website. Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to The Strathprints Administrator: eprints@cis.strath.ac.uk http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/2815/ Provision of distance education within the HE sector Areas for concern Bill Gerrard and Catherine Gerrard Abstract: This paper presents a summary of the � ndings of a recent survey of the way in which UK higher education institutions (HEIs) are offering distance education (DE) courses, the types of courses being offered, and their modes of delivery. From analysis of the � ndings of this survey, it is apparent that the emphasis of HEIs is very much on the exploitation of available teaching technology in the delivery of DE courses. However, teaching at a distance is quite different from face-to­ face teaching, and the evidence suggests that many HEIs fail to implement any meaningful academic staff training for the new role of DE tutor. The authors consider the dif� culties this presents to academic staff who are required to move from face-to-face teaching to online facilitating. The paper concludes with an examination of the current provision of staff development and training within UK HEIs and suggests the type of academic staff training required if DE courses are to become truly core activities. Keywords: distance education; staff development; e-tutoring; e-facilitating Dr Bill Gerrard is Deputy Director of the Interface Studies Unit, University of Strathclyde, 40 George Street, Glasgow G1 1QE, UK. Tel: +44 141 548 3618. E-mail: w.gerrard@strath.ac.uk. Catherine Gerrard is Distance Learning Adviser, Centre for Learning and Teaching, University of Paisley, High Street, Paisley PA1 2BE, UK. Tel: +44 141 848 3714. E-mail: gerr-d10@paisley.ac.uk. The Open University (OU) has been the main provider of distance education (DE) in the UK since its inception in 1964.1 The OU is the only single-mode higher education institution (HEI) in the UK and its model of delivery has developed over the past thirty years in line with advances in communications and information technology (CIT). It has evolved from its original format of textbooks supported by television broadcasts to the current situation, in which printed materials are supported by online Web-based activities. Discussion groups are also established via electronic bulletin boards to enhance the student learning experience and to create dialogue, an essential ingredient of learning. What is often regarded in DE circles as the ‘� rst generation’ of distance education was the correspondence course – that is, learning from the written word in textbooks. The ‘second generation’, in the 1970s, saw a new role for the written word with a INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 379 mailto:gerr-d10@paisley.ac.uk Provision of distance education within the HE sector move away from the textbook to specially-written workbooks that incorporated a more questioning approach to learning through the inclusion of interactive activities that were much more focused on the student. However, the educational process was still based on a one-way transmission of ideas rather than on two-way communication. The ‘third generation’ of distance education, which introduced many-to-many communication through the use of computer conferencing, eradicates what Nipper (1987) referred to as ‘social distance’. Learners’ ideas, knowledge and experiences could now be shared. The entry of networked computers into distance education emphasizes the central role of the student, whose learning potential is fully harnessed only when he or she is actively involved in the learning process. OU teachers and students are now seen as partners in the learning process, with tutors sharing their knowledge experiences and feelings rather than directing study in an authoritarian way. In reaching the third generation, the OU has brought its traditional structures with it, thereby avoiding any possibility of courses being technologically driven. By emphasizing the student as central to the learning activity, it has made the same move that many commercial companies have had to make to remain competitive and survive – the move from product-led to customer-driven. Over the last decade, increasing numbers of UK universities have begun to offer their campus-based courses on a distance learning basis. However, it became apparent to the authors that not all of these universities had adopted the OU’s approach in delivering their DE courses, and this paper discusses the major � ndings of a preliminary report on research that is currently in progress. The paper offers an up-to-date picture of the way in which UK HEIs are offering DE courses, the types of courses being offered, and the mode of delivery within HE establishments. Essentially, in this survey, we were trying to discover how universities, whose main business has traditionally been the delivery of campus-based courses, were now organizing and delivering their DE courses and what effect this was having on their existing staff. To this end, 110 UK HEIs were surveyed by means of a Web-based questionnaire designed to gather information on the number of traditional HEIs offering DE programmes, the delivery methods they used, and the reasons why they had decided to offer DE courses. Questions relating to their justi� cation for the associated � nancial investment and resources involved in offering DE courses were also posed within the questionnaire. Analysis of this survey is continuing, but a representative sample of 20 responses has been analysed and provides the following overview of the current UK DE offerings. Survey results There are many arguments as to whether distance education is a discipline in its own right or whether it is simply a different mode of what we regard as ‘traditional’ higher education. This paper does not present these arguments: whether one agrees with the former or the latter of the two views, there can be little doubt regarding the way in which distance education should be approached. This is best described by Moore and Kearsley (1996, at p 2): Distance education is planned learning that normally occurs in a different place from teaching and as a result requires special techniques of course design, special instructional techniques, special methods of communication by electronic and other technology as well as special organisational and administrative arrangements. [Emphasis in original] Institutions offering DE courses Basically, all UK universities have gone down the road of offering courses by DE. All broadly indicate that, prior to the development of their courses, their research had shown that online teaching was consistent with current market demands. That is, they were aware of a movement away from campus-based courses towards distance education and of the tendency towards lifelong learning, widening access to education and continued professional development. Rationale for provision of DE courses The most popular responses from HEIs when asked their reason for moving into DE were, in order of popularity, (1) opportunity to exploit current teaching technologies; (2) increase accessibility to courses offered; (3) develop a global presence; (4) keep up with shifts towards social inclusion; (5) increase returns on existing resources; and (6) keep up with other HE institutions and maintain a competitive position. Levels of courses offered There appears to be a split between the pre-1992 and the post-1992 institutions in the level of DE courses offered. Pre-1992 institutions predominantly offer postgraduate diplomas and degrees, whereas post-1992 institutions tend to offer undergraduate degree courses as well. INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 380 Provision of distance education within the HE sector Target markets The main target markets for DE courses offered were, in order of popularity: (1) the international market; (2) the postgraduate market; (3) the full-time employed; and (4) mature undergraduate students (aged 23 or over). Decision making and duration of course development The decision to provide courses by DE tended to be in� uenced in broadly equal measure by central university management, individual academic departments, and individual academic staff members. Around half the responses indicated that institutions were taking between 6 and 12 months to develop their DE course. The other half indicated that the period was 12–24 months. Media used Institutions were equally split between delivering totally online (Web-based materials) and a combination of providing printed materials backed up by online facilities. All indicated that they employed an online computer-mediated discussion board facility for tutor–student interaction. CIT used Responses indicated that all institutions had introduced some form of Web-based conferencing platform and were either developing or already had in place a virtual learning environment. Around 50% of the respondents also indicated that they had been involved with an industrial partner for the provision of the associated technology. Full-time staff involved in DE provision When considering the total number of full-time academic, support and administration staff involved in delivering the DE courses, around two-thirds of the respondents indicated a range of 10–20, with the remaining responses indicating 30 or more. Twenty per cent said that they had a dedicated team providing DE courses, but the vast majority indicated that staff were involved in DE provision in addition to their existing workload. Full-time academic staff time Of those full-time academic staff involved in the provision of DE courses in addition to their existing duties, responses indicated that they spent around 20–25% of their time on DE-related work. However, all indicated that their involvement took up almost 100% of their time when their DE course was initially launched. Full-time staff development for DE provision When asked whether they had received any development or training for their new role, 80% of academic staff indicated that they had received limited training in how to use the technology. Only 5% answered that they had received any development or training in how to teach in the online environment. Perceived quality of DE learning experience The learning process is a social process that needs to take place in an environment where learners can interact. When asked how well this need was met by their DE course, 25% of respondents indicated that they felt the experience was similar to that of campus-based students. Around 50% considered that it was better and 25% that it was signi� cantly better. Assessment of DE course students On the question of how DE students were assessed, responses were evenly split between examinations that required the physical attendance of the student and online assessment submitted by e-mail. Academic partnership in DE provision Around 75% of respondents indicated that they had entered into some form of partnership with another academic institution for the provision of their DE course. Discussion Several of the � ndings from the preliminary analysis of the survey relate to the extent to which collaboration is taking place in the production of DE courses and the types of markets that are being targeted. However, this paper will address two key areas that raise concerns regarding their effect on the quality of learning experiences being achieved in DE courses: (1) the emphasis placed by management on the exploitation of available teaching technologies, and (2) the failure of many HEIs to implement any development or training for academic staff members who are taking on the new role of online tutor. The exploitation of available technology The huge stampede into the DE market over the last few years by many universities seeking to increase student numbers and generate further income has meant that a large number of lecturers have been thrust into the role of DE tutor. These academics have received little or no training in how to cope with the special demands of DE students and how to teach effectively in the online INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 381 Provision of distance education within the HE sector environment. They are often persuaded by management to take on the role on the basis that: � they already lecture on the subject and have plenty of notes; � students will not exactly be knocking on their door – a few e-mails is really all they will have to deal with; � it is just a matter of tidying up their existing lecture notes and sending them to students; � they just need to � nd a ‘techie’ to help them set up a Website; and � it’s about facilitation - they do not actually have to teach, only to facilitate students’ learning. It would appear, therefore, that the adoption of distance learning by many ‘traditional mode’ universities is based on � nding ways of presenting lectures and tutorials via various types of technology without much changing the function or content of the lecture. In many cases, it is seen as a ‘repackaging exercise’ and this view leads to the perception in many HEIs that any change in the role of the teacher mainly requires greater and more thorough planning and preparation of lectures rather than an adoption of new skills. It also means that distance learning is viewed as a technological process, and such perceptions have made it easy to forget that it is not technology that teaches students, but teachers. Recent advances and the improved availability of CIT have, without doubt, expanded the possibilities for the development of DE courses in most academic disciplines. However, doing something technologically because it can be done and placing the emphasis on the medium rather than the message, does not provide an enriched learning experience for the student. Distance education has many facets, including the technology employed; the organization of the course; the attitude of the tutor; the relationship between tutor and student, tutor and organization and student and student; and the experiences that students will bring with them to the course. We have to try to understand how all these facets work together and in� uence each other. If we were to talk about distance education from the standpoint of one particular aspect, for instance the technology, then we would end up with a view that DE was biased towards computing. From the information provided by our survey, it seems that the majority of HEIs have adopted this type of technological perspective when preparing and planning their distance education programmes. New computer mediating technologies do have an important role to play in learning and teaching, and if used properly are not a threat to the teaching process. They can indeed enhance the relationship between teachers and learners through the communication facilities that they provide. However, from the survey results it is clear that training for academics is concentrated in showing them how to use the technology rather than how the technology can be used to enhance the teaching and learning process. Bates (1997) argues that, if the new communication and information technologies are to play a central role in university teaching, each institution needs to develop a set of strategies for change that will amount to no less than a restructuring of the university. Included in his list of twelve organizational strategies for change is ‘faculty training’. Bates suggests that: . . . the use of technology needs to be accompanied by some major changes in the way faculty are trained and that teaching with technology is not something that can be easily picked up along the way. (Bates, 1997, at p 4). Bates asserts that the most common form of training given to academics consists of showing them how to use the technology rather than how the technology can be used to aid the teaching and learning process. This is consistent with the responses received from our questionnaire. Technological advances can make it easy to forget the fact that ‘technology does not teach students, effective teachers do’ (Whitesel, cited in Palloff and Pratt, 1999, at p 350). It is when educational institutions and traditional lecturing staff ignore this message that students end up enrolling on courses from which they cannot learn effectively. However, although distance education is still a relatively new area for universities and their staff, newness alone does not make a case for training. We need to look more closely at why training may be needed, who needs training and what kind of training they might need. Why we need DE staff development and training It would not be possible to present any one view of the traditional teaching role, because there are many different conceptions of that role among educators. Ljoså (1998) makes the point that there is not one uniform role for a teacher, but rather a range of possible roles, depending on historical and cultural traditions, institutional characteristics, conceptions of teaching and learning, individual experience and type of teacher personality. Now, when we read about the role of the teacher, there is a great deal of talk about paradigm shifts and technological revolutions taking place in teaching. We read about ‘e-moderating’, ‘e- tutoring’, ‘facilitation’, etc, and we read about the need for major shifts from the teacher’s teaching to the learner’s learning. But what does all this mean for the traditional face-to-face teacher? If we look at the distance learning guidelines provided by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 382 Provision of distance education within the HE sector Education (QAA) 2 we will see that ‘Guideline 1: System design – the development of an integrated approach’, states that an institution should: . . . identify the processes and range of tasks involved in designing programmes of study, in designing and preparing learning materials and in delivering programmes to students studying at a distance, recognising that these processes and tasks are not the same in important respects as those applying in institution-centredteaching . . . So what steps are universities taking to ensure that teaching staff receive the necessary training and support in order to learn these new processes, skills and undertake these new tasks? When asked whether they had received any training for their new role of online facilitator, 95% of respondents answered ‘No’. Most face-to-face lecturing staff felt that they were totally unprepared for their new role and had been left to pick up the skills ‘along the way’. According to Salmon (2000), online teaching and learning changes the scope and the competencies we require of academics and lecturers. It changes what we actually do with students. Salmon suggests that online teachers (the people she calls ‘e-moderators’) do not themselves have enough training to make the online teaching environment successful for productive learners. She makes the point, supported by our survey results, that where training is provided it concentrates on the use of the technology rather than on the role of the online teacher. Teaching online is promoted by many writers as a new and different experience from teaching in a classroom. It requires a different set of skills and a different pedagogy, neither of which can be developed quickly or easily. In the online world, the teacher is no longer at the front of the class, and the links that have traditionally existed between teacher and student are broken. This means that teachers have to think more about how students learn, how they will receive information; they have to become more concerned with the process of learning and with facilitating learning A recent study by Hara and Kling (1999) suggests that, although there is much information available for those institutions wishing to offer DE courses (on issues relating to course design, learner support, infrastructure and media), this information is not being used effectively enough. In their study, Hara and Kling followed a group of eight graduate students participating in a distance education course at a major US university. The study examined closely the frustrations that the students experienced in the online class. The researchers found that students experienced a high degree of frustration and that it originated from three major sources: technological problems, minimal and untimely feedback from the instructor, and ambiguous instructions on the Website and in e-mail communications. The researchers attributed this to the fact that . . . an inexperienced face-to-face teacher misperceived the kinds of pedagogical shifts required for on line teaching. (Hara and Kling, 1999, at p 27). Hara and Kling concluded by stressing the importance to educators of taking this necessary shift seriously and of not underestimating it. However, Palloff and Pratt state that, unfortunately, the latter may be the case: The shift to online learning poses enormous challenges to instructors and their institutions. Many faculty and administrators believe that the cyberspace classroom is no different from the face-to-face classroom and that approaches used face-to-face will surely work online. Many further believe that all that is needed to successfully teach online is to ‘convert’ the course material. (Palloff and Pratt, 1999, at p 349). According to Rogers, in the stampede to place courses online educators may be overlooking the dif� culties of structuring and leading a Web-based course and ignoring an important observation: . . . a good face-to-face lecturer may not be necessarily a good online tutor. (Rogers, 2000, at p 23). Though the course materials will carry the majority of what learners are to learn, it is the tutor who will have the responsibility of evaluating whether students are actually gaining in their knowledge of the subject. Thorpe states, Such evaluation will be achieved by learners and tutors speaking, arguing, presenting their views, etc, hence the ability of tutors to stimulate learners towards an active rather than passive learning process is vital. (Thorpe, 2000, p 71.) A review of the literature on theories of learning highlights the importance of the relationship between teacher and student in distance education courses. For example, Morgan (1997) discusses a study by Llaurillard that found that the approach that students took to learning depended on their perceptions of the learning environment. Programmes of study that had poor student–teacher relationships tended to reduce the quality of learning. Learners who had a good relationship with their teacher, and who were aware of the demands of their programme of study, adopted a much deeper approach to their learning. Who needs training? We have talked much in this paper about the need for training for distance educators, but who can be included in this category? In distance education in particular there is a great range of job titles and many individuals have multiple roles. Thus there may be INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 383 Provision of distance education within the HE sector many categories of staff for whom some sort of common training in DE may be necessary. It is important to remind readers at this point, therefore, that this paper is concerned only with the need for training for teaching staff. When taking up their � rst lecturing post, many lecturers have no idea, beyond what they have experienced themselves, of how to teach or, in many instances, of how people learn. They just stand up and do it. Some may try to model themselves on someone they thought was a good teacher, from whom they feel they learned well, and each will have his or her own opinions of what makes a good teacher. According to Lentell (1994), this model of teaching is being challenged by . . . a growing awareness of students’ learning needs and learning processes, the role of tutors in the mediation of learning and the increasing emphasis on clients, customers and total quality management in production and delivery. In the world of distance education, the teacher is unable to stand up in front of a class; the link that once existed between teacher and students is broken. This means that the teacher must think more about how people learn. As noted above, in DE there needs to be emphasis on the process of learning rather than on the process of teaching. Teaching activities now need to promote the facilitation of learning – ‘facilitator’ is a term that is much in vogue, but what does being a facilitator involve? From teacher to facilitator Becoming a facilitator involves a major shift from the ‘conventional’model of the teacher. The teacher is no longer the sole source of information, as students can now discuss experiences, share information and exchange ideas with other students through online conferencing facilities. According to Beaudoin (1996), this can be create a dif� cult and threatening situation for teachers, because they themselves are products of classroom-bound education and their professional image is that of the traditional teacher at the front of the class and at the centre of the learning process. In exploring the instructor’s changing role in distance education Beaudoin makes the point that the teaching function is not becoming obsolete but that: . . . teachers must now recognise the role of instructional technology as a learning resource. (Beaudoin, 1997, at p 2) Here, the role of teacher and student is seen as a partnership when allied with the technology. In discussing what can be done to aid traditional lecturing staff to acquire the skills necessary to become effective distance facilitators, Beaudoin points out that commitment from all levels, and from top administration in particular, is essential. HEIs need to provide ongoing training that deals with how to teach at a distance and not merely how to manipulate new instructional technology. One of the main tasks for the facilitator is to promote self-directed study in learners – hence, teachers must be aware of their ‘new’ role if students are indeed to become successful independent learners. However, according to Thorpe (2000), students too have to be made aware of their new role in this learning process. Once the tutor’s role becomes that of a ‘facilitator of learning’ and not that of a conventional ‘teacher’, the responsibility for learning is shared among all participants in a DE course. What kind of training is needed? Assuming that teachers know what they expect their learners to be able to do at the end of a course, they will have to adopt and foster new methods of teaching–learning conditions that shift the focus on to how students learn. They will also need to know how technological resources can be used to facilitate learning and to enhance their own effectiveness. To support quality assurance, traditional lecturing staff will need training to facilitate learning through online discussions. Such training is vital if staff are to gain the skills necessary to identify discussion threads, analyse the interaction, keep students on the right track and ensure that they are actually learning what they are supposed to learn. Staff also need training in identifying those students who are not participating, encouraging peer support and enabling students to be critical of each other’s contributions. However, according to Beaudoin (1996), the majority of academics in most HEIs remain resistant to, or ignorant of, the computer as an instructional tool. Sherry (1996) suggests that tutors progress through a three-stage model of survival, mastery and impact, and that it could take two years to change their focus from being anxious about themselves and their new online environment to using the technology to their advantage, sharing ideas more freely and increasing student motivation: . . . educational change takes time, a great deal of support, and peer networking and guidance. (Sherry, 1996, at p 13) Jenkins (undated) states that she had no specialist training for distance education and, analysing what she feels she missed, she highlights speci� c skills for the tasks of course evaluation and the preparation of self- study materials – skills that she had to learn on the job. Jenkins says, I made plenty of mistakes which might have been avoided if I had received training, but these were not serious and I got on INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 384 Provision of distance education within the HE sector reasonably well. On looking back, however, I can see a major shortcoming. She explains that the major shortcoming was that she was working without a frame of reference. She had no concept of distance education and, without an organizing framework, her work lacked direction and was less focused than it might have been. Essentially, Jenkins had brought her existing expertise into an area where she had to acquire new skills and grasp the context in which both old and new expertise had to be applied. She suggests that training for newcomers to distance education should include induction into distance education as well as the acquisition of additional technical skills. She further suggests that it is not enough to assume that these skills can be acquired on the job, on the basis that: � for most lecturing staff, distance learning work is done in addition to existing duties and DE is too complex an educational process and requires too much time for it to be happening ‘on the side’; and � the nature of DE is such that mistakes made at the design stage can only be recti� ed later at great cost – hence staff involved in the preparation of DE courses should be well informed. Salmon (2000) suggests that training and induction for academic staff to help them become successful online tutors should re� ect a � ve-stage process that can only be accomplished through the online environment. Her � ve stages are: � access and motivation – at this stage student expectation of the tutor is very high; � online socialization – building an online community; � information exchange – in which students start to share information and ideas; � knowledge construction – students relate new knowledge to what they already know; and � development – the stage at which learners become responsible for their own learning. Salmon reminds us that that it is ‘by experiencing the learning that the meaning is constructed’. Thus she suggests that the best way to learn to e-moderate is through the environment itself. But how does this theory � t with the earlier suggestion of Bates (1997) that online tuition cannot be picked up along the way? Taking Baker and Lund’s (1997) contention that engaging in re� ective and interactive activities (especially those leading to explaining, justifying and evaluating problem solutions) is very important to learning processes, it is clear that training should not happen in a vacuum but should be set in context. Thus it is important to avoid both giving academics a training programme that introduces them to online teaching before they have actually experienced the online environment and requiring them to ‘pick up’ the skills needed for online learning along the way while they are deeply engaged in their new role. DE training programmes, therefore, should give lecturers what they need when they need it. In most instances, lecturers will learn from their experience of the online environment and with the help and support of a training programme will gradually adopt their own style. Need for management commitment One of the main questions that has to be asked in relation to training for DE is whether senior management is committed to the DE concept? Is distance education to be treated as a core activity or is it going to be seen as peripheral activity – as something that happens on the sidelines but is not really taken seriously? If DE is regarded as a core activity, then institutional support for staff development is likely to be forthcoming and the associated need for additional resources is likely to be understood. Sadly, it seems that in many instances universities have adopted a ‘suck it and see’ policy in relation to distance education. The need for cost-cutting has led many HEIs to latch on to online work as a cheap way of reaching more learners and to assume that people who can teach face-to-face can also teach online. It is this management attitude that has forced academics to learn new methods of course design and delivery on top of their existing duties and often with little support and no extra resources. This approach, combined with organizational expectations that require them to work to a deadline, can have detrimental effects on a staff member’s con� dence and self-esteem and can ‘lead to discouragement and demotivation’ (McGuire, 1988, at p 7). Indeed, most HEIs seem to ignore the fact that training can produce and foster commitment and that it should be seen as an investment, not a cost. The high-street customers’ response to poor service is generally to withdraw their custom and buy elsewhere. Universities’ consumers are no different, and it is important to note that, in DE in particular, students consider themselves to be paying customers. Staff development, therefore, is not only necessary because the role of the traditional university lecturer has been expanded to include that of online tutor; it is also a necessary response to the new expectations of students. In the world of open and distance education, students are purchasers of services. If they are not INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 385 Provision of distance education within the HE sector served ef� ciently they will, in all likelihood, take their custom elsewhere. Summary This paper has considered the rapid growth of DE within UK higher education institutions and has described the ways in which the majority of HEIs are responding to the challenge of becoming dual-mode institutions. Most UK institutions are exhibiting a desire to move away from standard lecture-based pedagogy and are placing greater emphasis on engaging students in the DE learning process. However, our survey evidence suggests that HEIs have approached the DE question by adopting a technology-led solution. We have found that the most common form of training given to academics consists in showing them how to use the technology rather than how the technology can be used. The need for training has long been recognized in the business sector – its purpose being to impart new knowledge and skills to employees who are required to perform new tasks. HEIs however, seem slow to respond to the idea that, in offering distance education courses, their staff may have to acquire new skills, competencies and attitudes to meet the challenges that this new kind of teaching presents. Having looked at the present role of the teacher, this paper has presented a case for training for traditional lecturing staff based on the views of many writers who have either taken on the role of DE tutor or conducted studies into it. It is clear that there is a need for face-to­ face educators to take seriously the challenges that DE presents and to recognize that the processes and tasks required for DE study programmes are not the same as those for traditional face-to-face teaching. Notes 1 See http://www.open.ac.uk. 2 http://www.qca.ac.uk/public/dlg/contents.htm References Baker, M., and Lund, K. (1997), ‘Promoting re� ective interactions in a CSCL environment’, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, No 13, September, pp 163–174. Bates, A. (1997), ‘Restructuring the university for technological change’, paper presented at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Conference:‘What Kind of University?’, 18–20 June, London. Beaudoin, M. (1996), ‘The instructor’s changing role in distance education’, The American Journal of Distance Education, Vol 4, No 2, pp 21–29. Hara, N., and Kling, R. (1999), ‘Students’ frustrations with a Web-based distance education course’, First Monday, Vol 4, No 12, retrieved 29 January 2001 from http://www. � rstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_12/hara/. Jenkins, J. (undated), Strategies for Collaborative Staff Training in Distance Education, H804 Online Study Guide, http://www-icdl.open.ac.uk/icdl/database/fulltext/lit02/ 2560.htm. Lentell, H. (1994), ‘Professional development: staff development in distance education. Who says it is a good thing?’, Open Praxis, Vol 1, 1994, pp 29–30. Ljoså, E. (1998), ‘The role of university teachers in a digital era’, paper presented at EDEN Conference, Bologna, 26 June, http://www1.nks.no/eurodl/shoen/eden98/ ljoså/html McGuire, S. (1988), ‘Learning the ropes: academics in a distance education university’, Journal of Distance Education, Vol III, No1, Spring. Moore, M., Kearsley, G. (1996), Distance Education: A Systems View, Wadsworth, New York. Morgan, A. (1997), Improving Your Students’ Learning: Re� ections on the Experiences of Study, Open and Distance Learning Series, IET, Kogan Page, London. Nipper, S. (1987), paper presented at the Second Symposium on Computer Conferencing, University of Guelph, Ontario, June (updated version – http://www.icdl.open.ac.uk/ mindweave/chap5.html). Palloff, R., and Pratt, K. (1999), ‘Making the transition: helping teachers to teach online’, paper presented at the 15th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, Madison, WI. Rogers, D. (2000), ‘A paradigm shift: technology integration for higher education in the new millenium’, Educational Technology Review, Vol 6, No 3, pp 19–27. Salmon, G. (2000), E-Moderating: The key to Teaching and Learning Online, Kogan Page, London. Sherry, L. (1996), ‘Issues in distance learning’, International Journal of Education Tecommunications, Vol 1, No 4, pp 337–365. Thorpe, M. (2000), Learner Support – Planning for People and Systems, H804, Implementation of Open and Distance Learning, Block 3 Study Guide, http://www.gca.ac.uk/ public/dlg/contents.htm INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION December 2002 386 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/0266-4909^28^2913L.163[aid=3864072] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/0266-4909^28^2913L.163[aid=3864072] http://www.open.ac.uk http://www.qca.ac.uk/public/dlg/contents.htm http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_12/hara/ http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_12/hara/ http://www-icdl.open.ac.uk/icdl/database/fulltext/lit02/2560.htm http://www-icdl.open.ac.uk/icdl/database/fulltext/lit02/2560.htm http://www1.nks.no/eurodl/shoen/eden98/ljosa/html http://www1.nks.no/eurodl/shoen/eden98/ljosa/html http://www.icdl.open.ac.uk/mindweave/chap5.html http://www.icdl.open.ac.uk/mindweave/chap5.html http://www.gca.ac.uk/public/dlg/contents.htm http://www.gca.ac.uk/public/dlg/contents.htm http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/0892-3647^28^294:2L.21[aid=2712741] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/1077-9124^28^291:4L.337[aid=1988311] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/0892-3647^28^294:2L.21[aid=2712741] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/1077-9124^28^291:4L.337[aid=1988311] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=/1077-9124^28^291:4L.337[aid=1988311] 
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work_zfowohuxbfayzeu765h7vcvsfm	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. Volkan YUZER ADDRESSING LEARNER CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN MOOC DESIGN AND DELIVERY: STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES OF EXPERTS Pages 1 - 25 Meina ZHU, Najia SABIR, Curtis J. BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? REVISITING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION Pages 176 - 191 Murat CINAR, Murat EKICI, Omer DEMIR USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO EXPLORE POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING READINESS IN MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM AND TASK-CENTERED ACTIVITY Pages 192 - 205 Malini THIAGRAJ, Abdul Malek ABDUL KARIM, Arsaythamby VELOO CONTENT ANALYSIS ON THE GRADUATE THESES DONE ABOUT FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL IN TURKEY Pages 206 - 222 Omer NAYCI TURKISH ADAPTATION OF THE TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE SCALE AND AN EXAMINATION OF ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCEIVED LEARNING Pages 223 - 253 Gulten KARTAL DESIGNING E-LEARNING IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL Pages 254 - 271 Soleiman AHMADY, Zohrehsadat MIRMOGHTADAIE, Nahid ZARIFSANAIEY, Johan THOR EFFECTIVENESS OF VIRTUAL VS. NON-VIRTUAL TEACHING IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANIAN UNDERGRADUATE EFL STUDENTS Pages 272 - 283 Javad AKBARI, Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI, Azizeh CHALAK RSS English Turkish English ... 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work_zjrk4ejvnbhb7jbtrv53hvpieu	----	Microsoft Word - E.Shahamatnia.doc 11 Abstract—Simulations play a major role in education not only because they provide realistic models with which students can interact to acquire real world experiences, but also because they constitute safe environments in which students can repeat processes without any risk in order to perceive easier concepts and theories. Virtual reality is widely recognized as a significant technological advance that can facilitate learning process through the development of highly realistic 3D simulations supporting immersive and interactive features. The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence of virtual reality’s use in chemistry instruction as well as to present an integrated web-based learning environment for the simulation of chemical experiments. The proposed application constitutes a cost-effective solution for both schools and universities without appropriate infrastructure and a valuable tool for distance learning and life-long education in chemistry. Its educational objectives are the familiarization of students with the equipment of a real chemical laboratory and the execution of virtual volumetric analysis experiments with the active participation of students. Keywords—Chemistry, simulations, experiments, virtual reality. I. INTRODUCTION EACHING chemistry either at school or at university constitutes a challenging task requiring a theoretical approach on specific chemical concepts as well as a deep study on specific phenomena through the conduction of experiments in specially equipped laboratories. However, the total number of chemical experiments carried out at a school/university laboratory is usually limited due to safety factors, lack of appropriate infrastructure and equipment, restrictions in terms of time and space availability, poor accuracy on account of significant experimental errors involved in final results etc [1]. Despite of this fact, experiments constitute an integral part of the chemistry instruction, as they play an essential role in the comprehension of theory and the acquisition of a wide range of skills and abilities [2]. Hence, an alternative educational approach is required to address the aforementioned problems Manuscript received May 31, 2007. J. Georgiou is with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Egnatia , GR-54124,; Phone: +30 (2310) 996228; Fax: +30 (2310) 996228; Email: georg@auth.gr. K. Dimitropoulos is with the Macedonia University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Egnatia 156, GR-54006,; Phone: +30 (2310) 891-898; Fax: +30 (2310) 891-290; Email: dimitrop@iti.gr. A. Manitsaris is with the Macedonia University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Egnatia 156, GR-54006,; Phone: +30 (2310) 891-898; Fax: +30 (2310) 891- 290; Email: manits@uom.gr. and provide a cost-effective solution for secondary education as well as a valuable complementary or distance learning tool for university students. Virtual reality technology has been widely proposed as a significant technological advance that can offer a novel form of education. Especially in the case of chemistry, the potentials of virtual reality technology can facilitate learning process surpassing major restrictions characterizing traditional educational methods. Its primary objective is to provide highly realistic and believable simulations of chemical procedures within a fully-immersive, interactive and three-dimensional virtual world. The educational benefit of these applications is the active participation of students in learning process, since researches have shown that humans remember only 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, but retain up to 90% of what they learn through active participation [3]. Moreover, students can observe or carry out virtual chemical experiments, which are either difficult or even impossible to be performed in a physical laboratory e.g. high-speed chemical activities that do not allow observation and reliable measurement of results (explosions, issues of chemical kinetics etc), extremely slow or complex chemical processes, experiments involving health risks for students and teachers (e.g. radiations), processes requiring expensive consumables or devices not available in a conventional laboratory etc [4]. Recently a lot of research efforts have been made aiming to take advantage of the potentials that virtual reality and Web technologies offer at chemistry instruction, such as CSU Chemlab [5], VRLUP [6] and Lab 3D [7], which deal with hygiene, safety and biochemistry issues respectively. Furthermore, in [8] a virtual reality application is presented aiming to familiarize post-graduate students with the facilities of a large-scale chemical plant, which are not otherwise easily accessible to students, and provide them the opportunity to conduct a series of virtual experiments. Specifically, three modules are presented: i) Vicher I dealing with industrial methods of handling the decay of catalysts and heterogeneous catalytic mechanisms, ii) Vicher II, dealing with non- isothermal effects in catalytic reactions and iii) Safety, which allows students to walk through a chemical pilot plant to evaluate the hazards and safety systems. Moreover, many applications have been recently developed using simple 3D models for the efficient teaching of chemistry in secondary education, such as VR-Assisted Chemistry Education [9], High School Chemistry Educational and Virtual Reality [10] etc. However, it should be pointed out that the term “virtual” is A Virtual Reality Laboratory for Distance Education in Chemistry J. Georgiou, K. Dimitropoulos, and A. Manitsaris T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 617International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 12 also used by a large number of applications without exclusively implying the use of virtual reality technology. In most of these cases, the term is used to indicate that experiments are not executed in a real laboratory, but in a computer. Many applications belong to this category, such as the Oxford Virtual Chemistry [11], the Model Science Software [12], the IrYdium project [13], the Crocodile Chemistry [14] etc. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of this category in comparison with virtual reality systems are: lack of immersion feeling, limitations in interaction and navigation, not realistic representations of models in three dimensions etc This paper aims to study and underline the benefits and impacts from the use of virtual reality technology in chemical education as well as to present a novel virtual reality environment, which faithfully reproduces a real chemistry laboratory in three dimensions. The proposed system takes advantage of virtual reality potentials and recent advances in Web technologies to provide both a complementary educational tool and a distance learning application for students of chemical engineering. The fundamental goal of the application is to transfer via internet each student into an interactive virtual world, which simulates a real educational process. Initially, students can navigate in the virtual lab and interact with its equipment to acquire the required experience and familiarity with a chemical laboratory. Subsequently, the second step of the application involves the simulation of volumetric analysis experiments with the active participation of students in the experimental process. Specifically, the virtual experiments supported by the proposed system concern: i) volumetric analysis of acid from base and vice versa, ii) volumetric reduction-oxidation and iii) complexometric neutralization and water hardness estimation. The interactive features of the application allow students to conduct virtual experiments considering all the parameters that may affect the final experimental results. The main advantage of this educational approach is that students can repeat the same procedure without any limitation, study and compare the results in order to perceive easier each one of the experimental processes. Finally, the application contains relative educational material such as theory, exercises, tests etc constituting so an integrated educational tool for distance learning in chemistry. In the next Section the role of Web in distance learning is presented, while in Section II the main educational benefits from the use of virtual reality technology in Web-based education are highlighted. The virtual laboratory application is described in Section III and the familiarization function is presented in Section IV. Finally, the volumetric analysis, volumetric reduction-oxidation and complexometric neutralization and water hardness estimation experiments are analyzed in detail in Section V, VI and VII respectively, whereas conclusions are outlined in Section VIII. II. ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION The term “distance education” is mainly used to imply the physical distance among teachers and learners. Traditional distance education practices aim at the substitution of face-to- face instruction using various communication means, such as mail, video or audio tapes, educational programs on TV, teleconferences etc and rarely, in some special cases, a limited number of meetings. The advent of the World Wide Web has changed radically the area of distance education providing a new form of learning, widely known as online education [15] (or alternatively e-learning). The main advantage of Web is that it provides a suitable platform for the development of distance learning tools, which directly connect learners with teachers and relative educational sources [16]. This form of communication involves the use of simple text as well as the transmission of voice, image and video. Specifically, the main advantages of Web-based distance education are: Space independency: Learners are able to participate in the learning process from any place, even from their own home simply using their personal computers. Time independency: The simultaneous participation of teachers and learners is not a prerequisite in online education. Learners choose when they are ready to study the educational material and determine the time needed to assimilate the learning content. That is, students can repeat processes and revise the content of an online application without any time limitations, adapting so the learning process to their personal needs. Low cost: The total cost required for the training of a large number of learners at universities, schools, enterprises and so on is significantly reduced by the use of Web-based learning applications. On the other hand, the cost corresponding to users-learners is usually limited to the price of a conventional PC. Easy access: The main advantage of online learning is free and easy accessibility via Web. Furthermore, in most cases the connection with other external educational sources (e.g. libraries) is also possible. Simultaneous participation of a large number of learners: Web allows the participation of a large number of trainees in the learning process, something that is hardly achieved with traditional distance learning methods. Considering also that Web constitutes the largest and the most powerful global network, in which millions of computers are connected to, one can easily understand its enormous potentials in distance education and the dissemination of knowledge as well. Non-isolated learners: Traditionally in distance education, learners are considered isolated from the other members of the learning community studying the learning material on their own. On the contrary, in online education, Web promotes the cooperation between learners and teachers as well as the creation of learners’ groups with common educational objectives. This capability is possible due to the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 618International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 13 synchronous or asynchronous communication [17] supported by Web technologies. Equal opportunities to all participants: As it has already been mentioned the learning process is adapted to the personal abilities of each learner. Hence, while in a real learning process it is a common phenomenon some students not to be able to follow the learning rhythm, in online education Web provides equal opportunities to all participants regardless of their abilities, as they have as much time as they really need to study the learning material. Simulation of a real learning process: Web allows the creation of learning conditions that are usually developed in a real classroom. For this purpose various pedagogical methods such as behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, collaborative learning etc [18][19] can be applied. Attractive environment: The use of multimedia technology (video, sounds, 3D graphics etc) engages students attention and creates a pleasant learning environment [20]. In general, the potentials of Web shift the centre of learning process from teachers to learners. This simply means that learners acquire an active role and determine the development of the learning process. These features are further enhanced by the use of virtual reality technology in online education as described in the next section. III. VIRTUAL REALITY IN DISTANCE EDUCATION Virtual reality has introduced a new form of education allowing students to experience situations, instead of simply reading or hearing about them [21]. Its use in online distance education set the base for the implementation of interactive systems offering to students the ability to broad their knowledge without any help from their teachers [22]. The interactive functionalities supporting virtual reality environments reinforce the active participation of students and thus they are not any more regarded as simple passive observers, but as active members of the learning process, in which they can either discover or even produce new knowledge. An educational virtual environment can be defined as one or more virtual worlds that offer multiple educational functionalities to each user-student [23]. Within these virtual worlds, students can navigate, interact with virtual objects and study the educational material, which can be either a 3D model or even text, image, sound or video. Besides, it is widely recognized that virtual reality technology engages students’ attention and turns learning into pleasant and entertaining process. In short, three are considered to be the main features of these applications: immersion, interactivity and representation in three dimensions. Generally, the use of virtual reality technology in Web provides a new framework for distance education, since it can be regarded as the extension of internet in third dimension. This capability allows the development of Web-based virtual learning environments, which are approachable by all internet users. The most practical use of virtual reality is in training and simulations. However, there are many applications aiming to reproduce a learning process of a real classroom. These applications allow students to interact with information in a physical sense beyond the conventional interaction supported by typical two-dimensional Web pages. In the next section a Web-based virtual reality application for the simulation of chemical experiments is presented. IV. THE VIRTUAL LABORATORY The virtual lab constitutes a combination of hypermedia and virtual reality features. For the development of Web-pages, the Microsoft FrontPage software was used, whereas virtual worlds were created using VRML and 3D Studio Max software. The proposed system is, in essence, a hypermedia application and, thus, it is a collection of HTML pages, which constitute the base of the application. A common prototype was followed for the designing of all HTML pages, while the VRML worlds are embedded and presented always at the centre of the HTML pages. In order to present virtual worlds properly, the installation of a plug-in, the Cortona VRML of Parallel Graphics, at the user’s browser is a prerequisite. The virtual lab has been designed for a resolution of 1280x1024 and a 32 bit depth of color. These are the minimum specifications of the application, which requires only the existence of conventional equipment without any support from peripheral virtual reality devices that increase the cost of the application and, consequently, restrict the number of potential users. Fig 1. The main page of the application. Apart from the virtual worlds of the lab, the main page (Fig. 1) of the application contains links that allow trainees to have access to relevant theory issues, solved and unsolved exercises, diagnostic tests as well as questions answered or not based on [24] [25]. This educational material has been used so that the application can play an integrated educational role by helping trainees-users to acquire the required theoretical background, raise questions and give answers or interpretation about the experimental results and phenomena. Moreover, the virtual worlds of the proposed application provide the following educational functionalities: World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 619International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 14 • Familiarization with the equipment of a chemical laboratory • Execution of virtual experiments V. THE FAMILIARIZATION FUNCTION One of the fundamental objectives of the proposed application is the familiarization of users-students with the equipment of a real chemical laboratory. This function is of great importance especially for students without any previous experience in a real chemical laboratory, due to the reasons described in the introduction of this paper. To this end, the first function supported by the system allows students to navigate within the virtual world and manipulate its equipment through the interactive functionalities of VRML language. This function should be always performed before the execution of virtual experiments, as the familiarization of students with the lab’s equipment is a prerequisite for the next stage of the application i.e. the correct execution of virtual experiments. Fig. 2. The virtual laboratory. More specifically, students are routed to the virtual lab through the main page of the application. The Web-page containing the virtual environment is divided in three parts, each of which performs a different role in the learning process. The first part contains the title of the applications and hyperlinks, which allow users to either return to the main page or approach the help manual of the application. The goal of this manual is to make the use of the application easier and to provide sufficient guidance for the execution of experiments. The existence of a help manual is considered a prerequisite for the development of a user-friendly application. The second part of the page contains the virtual world (Fig. 2), in which students are able to navigate in order to learn the equipment of the lab and the use of each one of the chemical instruments. Through this function students will also learn how to navigate within the virtual world using the keyboard or the mouse of their computer. This supported function is of great importance especially for students who are not experienced with 3D technology and virtual reality environments in general. Every time students locate the cursor of their mouse on a virtual object, the shape of the cursor changes inciting them to select the object. The result of this selection is the appearance of a brief description of the object, which explains its function, and a smaller 3D model corresponding to the selected object so that learners observe it from different angles of view. The description of the object as well as its 3D model appears at the third part of the screen, which is always located at the bottom of the page (Fig. 3). Fig. 3. The third part of the page contains the 3D model of the model and a brief description explaining the use of the chemical instrument. The virtual lab appearing during this function is exactly the same with the labs used for the simulation of the chemical experiments. However, each experiment is executed in different virtual workbenches and requires the use of different chemical instruments. The main advantage of this designing approach is that students have access to all the equipment that is to be used for the conduction of virtual experiments and thus students are already familiar with their function. The next stage is the simulation of the experiments. Specifically, the application supports the simulation of three chemical experiments: i) volumetric analysis of acid from base and vice versa, ii) complexometric neutralization and hardness estimation, iii) volumetric reduction-oxidation. VI. THE VOLUMETRIC ANALYSIS EXPERIMENT The main goal of this virtual experiment is the concentration estimation of an unknown solution of acid or base through a neutralization reaction. Specifically, the application supports two different methods for the estimation of the final point of the process (Fig. 4): • Using a pH-meter • Observing the color change of an index. At first, students should prepare the lab, before the execution of the experiment. With this function, the application aims to simulate all the experimental process reinforcing so the feeling of presence within the chemical lab. The workbench includes the burette’s base, the burette itself, the pH-meter, several conic bottles, washing bottles and other chemical instruments. Above the workbench, there are five bottles containing solution of acetic, sulphuric, phosphoric, hydrochloric and oxalic acid. Additionally, there are five more bottles containing solution of ammonia, calcium hydroxide, sodium bicarbonate, sodium hydroxide and sodium acetate. At the edge of the workbench there are also five small bottles containing various indices, such as thymole blue (base), thymole blue (acid), blue bromothymole, methyl red and phenolopthalane. In the next stage, students should form the topologic arrangement for the execution of the experiment. During the experimental process students follow well-defined instructions and specific steps, while results can be observed either World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 620International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 15 visually through the change of the index’s color or using the pH-meter. The chemical instruments needed for the experiment are a conic bottle, a burette, a mixer and a pH- meter. Firstly, students should place the burette and then the electric mixer exactly under the burette. Subsequently, the conic bottle is placed above the mixer and under the burette, so that the solution contained in the burette to be easily added. A. Using pH-meter for the estimation of the final point Firstly, sufficient volume of the solution (acid or base) is introduced in the conic bottle. This means that students should choose one of the bottles containing these solutions, using their mouse, and add a specific amount of solution in the conic bottle. Specifically, each click on the bottle of the solution corresponds to 1ml. Subsequently, 50ml of acid or base are introduced into the burette and the electric mixer is used (students should turn on the mixer clicking on it) for the efficient mixing of the solution in the conic bottle. Students then click on the virtual pH-meter to introduce its electrode in the conic bottle. Each time they click on the burette, 1ml of the solution is added in the conic bottle and at the same time the corresponding value of pH is presented on the screen of the pH-meter. Fig. 4. The pH is presented on the screen of the pH-meter. The process completes when the pH value remains almost constant at the equivalent point The whole process involves a gradual introduction of the acid or base solution from the burette to the conic bottle. The titration process (volumetric analysis) has been completed when the pH value remains almost constant, after its sudden change to the equivalent point (Fig. 4). The equivalent point can be graphically estimated by the titration curve, as shown in Fig. 5. These graphs are presented in the third part of the HTML page and they present the change of pH with regards to the added volume. The use of these graphs allows the accurate estimation of the equivalent point. (a) (b) (c) Fig. 5. The equivalent point can be graphically estimated by the graphs shown in the third part of the HTML page. B. Using index for the estimation of the final point In this case the estimation of the equivalent point is based on the change of the solution’s color in the conic bottle. The equipment needed for this experiment (the conic bottle, the burette and the mixer) is placed appropriately, as described in the previous section. Again, the solution contained in the burette is gradually introduced into the conic bottle, while the resultant solution is mixed during the whole process. Clicking on the bottle of the index, we add the appropriate amount of index to the solution. The process is completed when the color of the solution (Fig. 6), within the conic bottle, has changed (the color depends on the index used). (a) (b) Fig. 6. The process is completed when the color of the solution has changed Fig. 7. The equation of gram-equivalent, as shown in the third part of the HTML page. Based on the equation of Fig. 7 and knowing the initial volume and the normality of the solution of acid or base, as well as the volume of the solution consumed (burette’s indication), we can estimate the normality of the unknown solution of acid or base. VII. COMPLEXOMETRIC NEUTRALIZATION AND WATER HARDNESS ESTIMATION The objective of this experiment is the measurement of Ca2+ World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 621International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 16 and Mg2+ concentration and the final estimation of water hardness. This can be achieved through the conduction of three experiments. The EDTA is not a standardized substance, thus, in the first experiment, the concentration of EDTA solution (NEDTA) is titrated with a standardized Ca 2+ solution, which is produced by dissolving CaCO3 in HCl, using as index Calcon, with pH=12, and adding 4F of . In the second experiment, water is titrated with EDTA in the presence of Calcon index (pH=12) with NaOH. From this process the Ca2+ concentration in the water (eqCa2+/L) is estimated. In the third experiment, water is titrated with EDTA, in the presence of EBT index, with pH=10,5 adding NH3-NH4Cl buffer solution. From this process the (eqCa 2++ eq g2+)/L concentration in the water is accumulatively estimated and, consequently, the concentration of Mg in water (eq Mg2+)/L can be found by simply subtracting the resultant concentration of Ca2+ estimated in the second experiment. The learner executes the experiments following faithfully the experimental process performed in a real laboratory. Hence, the workbench should be prepared appropriately before the execution of the experiments. Above the workbench, there are bottles containing various agents. Specifically, the large bottles contain EDTA solution, MgCL2 solution, standardized calcium solution (CaCl2) and water, whereas the small bottles contain NaOH, EBT index, Calcon index and NH3-NH4Cl buffer solution. Subsequently, students should form the topologic arrangement and execute the experiments following specific steps provided by the application. The final result can be observed either visually or numerically. At first the burette, the mixer and a conic bottle are placed at the workbench exactly as described in the previous section and shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 8. The chemical apparatus used for the experiment A. The fist experiment Sufficient amount of Ca2+ solution (CaCl2) is introduced into the conic bottle by clicking on the corresponding bottle (each mouse click corresponds to 1ml of CaCl2). For the attainment of the final reaction, the presence of an alkaline environment is considered as a prerequisite. To this end, the addition of 5ml NaOH 4N is also required. Subsequently, students should click on the Calcon’s bottle to add this index to the solution so that the completion of the reaction to be easily perceptible by the change of the color (from red-violet to blue). Furthermore, 50ml of EDTA are introduced in the burette and the electric mixer is turned on for the efficient mixing of the solution in the conic bottle. (a) (b) Fig 9. a) The color of the solution before the reaction and b) the color has changed from red to blue indicating the completion of the process. The titration process is performed with gradual addition of EDTA from the burette to the conic bottle. After the completion of the process the color of the solution has changed to blue as shown in Fig 9. The experimental process can be repeated introducing different amounts of standardized Ca2+ (CaCl2) solution. Based on the equivalent equation (Fig 7) of the reacting solutions and knowing the volume and the normality of the Ca2+ solution used as well as the volume of the EDTA solution consumed, we can estimate the normality of the EDTA. B. The second experiment Clicking on the second bottle, we can place it on the mixer (under the burette) removing at the same time the first one used in the previous experiment. 50ml of water (by clicking on the tap) and appropriate amount of 4F NaOH are added so that the value of pH to be increased to 12. Moreover, Calcon index is added to the solution by clicking on the corresponding bottle as well as EDTA from the burette, while the solution is mixed at the same time. The color changes from red to blue indicating the completion of the reaction. The experimental process is finished with the cleaning of the workbench. Similarly with the previous experiments, the volume and the normality of the EDTA solution are known as well as the corresponding volume (50ml) of the water. Hence, it is straightforward that the normality of Ca [eqCa2+ /L] in the water can be easily estimated from the equation of Fig. 7. C. The third experiment In this experiment, the gram equivalent equation of Fig. 7 is used for the estimation of the water’s normality in Ca and Mg, and consequently the accumulative concentration of [eqCa2+eq g2+] / L. By subtracting the concentration of Ca estimated in the previous experiment, we can find the concentration of magnesium (eq g2+ / L). World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 622International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 17 D. Water hardness estimation For the water hardness estimation the accumulative concentration of [eqCa2+eq g2+] / L is considered equal to eqCaCO3/L. The equivalent concentration of CaCO3 and consequently the hardness of water is given by the following equation: (gr/L CaCO3)=(eq CaCO3/L)x . CaCO3=(eq CaCO3/ L)x50= 50 ([eqCa2+ eq g2+] / L (1) or 50x103 ([eqCa2+ eq g2+] / L ) mg/L CaCO3 (2) However, 1 F = 10 mg/L CaCO3. Hence the water hardness can be defined as: 5x 103 ([eqCa2+ eq g2+] / L ) F (3) VIII. VOLUMETRIC REDUCTION-OXIDATION In this experiment, the unknown amount of Fe2+ is estimated according to the volumetric reduction oxidation technique. The lab contains the burette and its base, water bottles and other chemical apparatus. Above the workbench there are four bottles containing KMnO4, H2SO4, Fe2SO4 and oxalic acid respectively, as shown in Fig 10. Fig 10. Four bottles are placed above the workbench The equipment needed for this experiment is: two conic bottles, a burette and a mixer. After their placement at the workbench, the lab is ready for the execution of the experiment. Initially, the titration of oxalic acid (standardized solution) with KMnO4 solution is carried out and then performing new titration we can estimate the concentration of Fe2+ in a FeSO4 solution. The final point is estimated by the color change of FeSO4 from the redundancy of KMnO4, which is used as an index. Firstly, KMnO4 of unknown quantity is introduced in the burette and then a known quantity of oxalic acid is added to the conic bottle located under the burette. For the execution of the reaction, the addition of specific amount of H2SO4 2M as well as the heating of the solution is required. The titration takes place while the solution is heated up and moved circularly until its color to become constantly violet. The volume of KMnO4 consumed is estimated using burette’s indication. The normality of KMnO4 can be estimated using the equation of Fig. 7. Subsequently, unknown quantity of FeSO4 is introduced in the second conic bottle, which is placed under the burette. Moreover, certain quantity of H2SO4 2M is added and the solution is heated up. The same process is followed until the color of the solution to become violet. The volume of KMnO4 consumed in titration is calculated and knowing its normality we can estimate the quantity (mgram) of Fe using the equation of Fig.11. Fig 11. The equation, shown in the third part of the HTML page, gives the mgrams of Fe. IX. CONCLUSION In this paper a novel Web-based virtual learning environment for the simulation of volumetric analysis experiments was presented. The proposed application takes advantage of the recent advances on Web and virtual reality technologies in order to reproduce conditions of a real learning process in a chemical laboratory and enhance learning through a real-time interactive simulation of volumetric analysis experiments. The virtual laboratory presented in this paper constitutes a cost-effective solution for both schools and universities without appropriate infrastructure and a valuable tool for distance learning and life-long education in chemistry. The use of virtual reality technology turns learning into an entertaining and easily comprehensible process, while Web provides free access and use to all internet users with a complete time and place independency. Finally, the application allows the familiarization of non-experienced students with the equipment of a chemical laboratory and the execution of virtual experiments without the need of teacher’s presence. In other words, students have the main role in the learning process as they can repeat each experiment as many times as they really need in order to perceive better the chemical procedure, adopting so the learning process to their personal abilities and needs. REFERENCES [1] D. Sokoutis, “Simulation of thermo chemistry experiments”, Proceedings of 2nd Conference Information and Communication Technologies in Education, 2003, Syros. [2] A. Papas, Student-Centric Instruction, 1998, 4th Edition, Gutengerg, Athens. [3] E. Dale, Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching, 3rd Edition”, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969. [4] N. Kalogeropoulos, and X. Karatzas, “Real or virtual laboratory ? The case of volumetric analysis in chemistry”, 2nd Meeting in Intra-School Education on Information and Communication Technologies, 2002, Thessaloniki. [5] CSU Chemlab, [Online], Available: http://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au/chemistry/release/ [6] VRLUP, [Online], Available: http://www.vrupl.evl.uic.edu/ [7] Lab 3D, [Online], 2002 Available: http://www.frontiernet.net/~imaging/virtual_chemistry_lab.html World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 623International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 18 [8] D. Schofield, E. Lester, and J.A. Wilson, “Virtual reality interactive learning environments”, International Engineering Education Conference, 2004, Wolverhampton. [9] VR-Assisted Chemistry Education, [Online], 2003 Available: http://www.vrmedialab.dk/pr/studerende/projekter/rapport 9sem1022.pdf [10] High school chemistry educational and virtual reality, [Online], 1996 Available:http://www.hitl.washington edu/projects/learning_center/ [11] Oxford Virtual Chemistry, [Online], 1996 Available: http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/vrchemistry [12] Model Science Software [Online], 1997 Available: http://modelscience.com/ [13] The Irydium project virtual lab [Online], 2000, Available: http://ir.chem.cmu.edu/ irproject/ [14] Crocodile Chemistry [Online], 2006 Available: http://www.crocodile- clips.com/chem.htm [15] L. Harasim, Shift Happens Online Education as a New Paradigm in Learning, Internet and Higher Education, No. 3, 2000, pp.41-61, [16] K. Papanikolaou, M. Grigoriadou and E. Gouli “The contribution of Web in the renewal of educational practices in education”, Issues in Education, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2005, pp. 23-57 [17] V. Steiner, "What is distance education?", Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development”, [Online], 1996 Available: http://www.fwl.org/edtech /distance.html [18] F. Modritscher, “eLearning theories in practice: A comparison of three methods”, Journal of Universal Science and Technology of Learning, 2006, pp.3-18. [19] O. Conlan, “The multi-model, metadata driven approach to personalized eLearning services”, Phd Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Dublin. [20] . Kokkos, A. Liontarakis, X. Matralis and X. Panagiotakopoulos, “The educational material and the new technologies”, Hellenic Open University, Open and distance learning, Vol. 3, Patra, 1999. [21] J.E. Rudin, “Using virtual reality in education”, In Proceedings of STC, Education, Training and Research, 1995, pp. 55-58. [22] A. Manitsaris, T. Kargidis and K. Barbatsis, “Design and development of a dynamic hypermedia educational system”, Journal of Information Technology Impact, Vol 2, Issue 3, 2001, pp.105-116 [23] C. Bouras, and T. Tsiatsos, T., “Building educational virtual environments”. In Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, 2002, pp.547-548 [24] S. Liodakis, Analytical Chemistry: Issues and Problems, Papasotiriou, Athens, 2001. [25] P. Tzimou-Tsitouridou, Laboratorial Exercises for Qualitative Analytical Chemistry, AUTH, Thessaloniki, 2000. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences Vol:1, No:11, 2007 624International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(11) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , E du ca ti on al a nd P ed ag og ic al S ci en ce s V ol :1 , N o: 11 , 2 00 7 w as et .o rg /P ub li ca ti on /1 42 03 http://waset.org/publication/A-Virtual-Reality-Laboratory-for-Distance-Education-in-Chemistry/14203 http://scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/14203 
work_zoir2rtmn5f45ityewpacgxkgu	----	56 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. AbstrAct The evolution of the World Wide Web service has incorporated new distributed multimedia conference applications, powering a new generation of e-learning development and allow- ing improved interactivity and prohuman relations. Groupware applications are increasingly representative in the Internet home applications market, however, the Quality of Service (QoS) provided by the network is still a limitation impairing their performance. Such applications have found, in multicast technology, an ally contributing for their efficient implementation and scalability. Additionally, considering QoS as a design goal at the application level becomes crucial for groupware development, enabling QoS productivity to applications. The applica- tions’ ability to adapt themselves dynamically according to the resources availability can be considered a quality factor.Tolerant real-time applications, such as video conferences, are in the frontline to benefit from QoS adaptation. However, not all include adaptive technology able to provide both end-system and network quality awareness. Adaptation, in these cases, can be achieved by introducing a multiplatform middleware layer responsible for tutoring the applica- tions’ resources (enabling adjudication or limitation) based on the available processing and networking capabilities. Congregating these technological contributions, an adaptive platform has been developed integrating public domain multicast tools, applied to a Web-based distance learning system. The system is user-centered (e-student), aiming at good pedagogical practices and proactive usability for multimedia and network resources. The services provided, including QoS adapted interactive multimedia multicast conferences (MMC), are fully integrated and transparent to end-users. QoS adaptation, when treated systematically in tolerant real-time applications, denotes advantages in group scalability and QoS sustainability in heterogeneous and unpredictable environments such as the Internet. Keywords: e-learning; multicast; groupware; QoS adaptation IntroductIon Technology has been a strong catalyst for educational innovation and improvement, espe- cially when the World Wide Web is involved. The next generation Internet needs techno- logical support to accommodate promising new applications, such as interactive real-time Qos Adaptation in Multimedia Multicast conference Applications for E-Learning services Sérgio Deusdado, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal Paulo Carvalho, Universidade do Minho Braga, Portugal Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68, October-December 2006 57 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. multimedia distribution. Predictable bandwidth availability and capacity solvency imply QoS management to regulate resources in heteroge- neous environments. Actually, increasing the network capacity through advanced network and media technology is not per se a ubiquitous and definitive solution to overcome the network capacity problem. Historically, the users have always managed to consume the entire system capacity soon after it was enlarged (Ferguson & Huston, 1998). IP Multicasting techniques (Deering, 1998; Kosiur, 1998; Moshin, Wong, & Bhutt, 2001; Thaler & Handley, 2000) are attractive solutions for this capacity shortage problem as bandwidth consumption is reduced when network resources are shared. On the other hand, the QoS support (Moshin, Wong, & Bhutt, 2001) should be, in a first instance, inherent to applications in order to integrate conveniently enhanced real-time multimedia applications in the present Internet, barely QoS aware and increasingly heterogeneous. With the advent of wireless and mobile networks, heterogeneity is likely to subsist; envisioned applications should merge QoS ad- aptation and multicast in a proactive utilization of resources. Applications should be designed with adaptation in mind; they need to employ built-in mechanisms that allow them to probe the conditions of the network environment and alter their transmission characteristics accordingly (Miras, 2002). Self-adaptive applications, in the sense of proactive behavior for transmission of continuous media in multiparty applications, are a well-accepted solution due to the correct integration of new services in today’s Internet (Deusdado, 2002; Li, Xu, Naharstedt, & Liu, 1998). E-learning, as a component of flexible learning, encompasses a wide set of applica- tions and processes which use available elec- tronic media to deliver vocational education and training. It includes computer-based learning, Web-based learning, virtual classrooms and digital collaboration (Eklund, Kay, & Lunch, 2003). Our work aims to integrate interactive multimedia e-learning applications in a proac- tive fashion taking into account the available network resources and QoS sustainability. In this way, our motivation is to offer improved learning experience based on ultimate technol- ogy with QoS warranties. The system architecture proposed in this article includes an adaptive module based on Java applets and embedded Javascript, respon- sible for assessing the existing operating condi- tions, by collecting metrics reflecting the client’s end-system performance (e-student’s host), the current network conditions and relevant multi- cast group characteristics. The collected data are subsequently computed weighting parameters such as the available bandwidth at the client side, the round-trip time between the client and the e-learning server, the client’s current CPU load and free memory. The obtained results are used for proper multicast applications scheduling and parameterization in a transparent way. MotIvAtIons Basically, e-learning services are used to promote connections between people (e-stu- dents) and training resources (Steeples & Jones, 2002). E-learning research is wide and growing in importance, especially in higher education. Several institutions are developing interactive Web-based learning systems, integrating rich media streaming which may compromise net- work performance. The design of e-learning systems should consider QoS as mandatory for successful learning experiences, selecting the appropriate technologies and applications, and regulating proactively the information and communications technology (ICT) resources utilization (Allison, Ruddle, McKechan & Michaelson, 2001). The Multicast Backbone (MBone) is a network overlaying the global Internet designed to support multipoint applications. MBone tools comprise a collection of audio, video and white- board applications that use Internet multicast protocols to enable multiway communications (point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multi- point), satisfying most of the needs of group communication, such as e-learning services. Using these applications by common e-students drives recurrently to poor QoS satisfaction due 58 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. to the heterogeneity of resource conditions and the applications’ inability to assess available conditions and adjust internal parameters before conference initiation. Without regulation, Real- time Transport Protocol (RTP) traffic floods the network capacity insensitively, forcing network congestion in certain cases or inhibit- ing better performance. A coherent behavior of an application without adaptation is difficult in today’s Internet. Public domain multicast applications used in this article, vic (McCanne & Jacobson, 1995), rat (Hardman, Kirstein, Sasse, Handley & Watson, 1995) and Java Media Framework (JMF) (JMF 2.0, 1999) were designed with no QoS “sensors,” so the communication dynamics is not automatically interdependent of end-sys- tems or network conditions. Effectively, such applications allow preparameterization to adjust critical parameters such as throughput, number of frames per second, video and audio encoding formats and so forth. Adaptation, in these cases, can be obtained by introducing a multiplatform middleware layer responsible for tutoring the applications’ resources (adjudication or limi- tation) based on the available processing and networking capabilities (Miras, 2002). Common interactive real-time applica- tions are fault-tolerant but suffer from QoS constraints; low-latency requirements and reliability are cumulative to achieve conference success. The diagram in Figure 1 attempts to illustrate the QoS tolerance, in terms of delay and packet loss, for generic interactive audio and video applications. The main motivation of this article is to provide adaptive behavior to applications used on both sides of multimedia conferencing, focusing essentially on multicast members that initiate audio and/or video transmission. The underlying idea is to launch automati- cally MMC applications with proper audio and video codecs, bandwidth allocation inference and other parameters that affect sustainability and scalability during an e-learning session. Our emphasis is on the concept of “interactive Figure 1. QoS tolerance for generic audio and video applications (Miras, 2002) audio/video streaming interactive video interactive audio delay packet loss | | | | 150ms 200ms 300ms 400ms 2-3% 6-7% desired acceptable | 8-10seg Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68, October-December 2006 59 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. e-learning services,” relegating the concept of “e-learning course” to a secondary goal, which will be considered in future work. Most prominent related work on friendly multimedia transmission over the Internet, based on a combination of system and network QoS feedback implementing equation-based adap- tation is summarized in Bouras and Gkamas (2003) and Vandalore, Feng Jain, and Fahmy (2001). systEM’s ArchItEcturE For multicast video distribution to het- erogeneous users in an e-learning session, we assume that a class server (e-tutor’s system) should be distributed and platform independent, considering inclusively multitutoring. Thus, a class server should connect to an e-learn- ing server (Web server) and be submitted to adaptation as a regular new sender. The QoS requirements for the class server, operating in a centralized fashion, may justify the need of layered multicast (Johanson & Lie, 2002; Liu, Li & Zhang, 2004), enhancing the service’s ad- aptation. However, this work aims at integrating e-students with heterogeneous equipment when they transmit audio and video to the group, as it happens in a conventional classroom. If a client (e-student) wants to interact and multicast video then the system’s architecture will be integrated with fair adjustments attending both to the con- nection to the server (e-tutor) network and to the hardware processing capabilities. Client’s adaptation should not depend on the other group members because they are transient, and consequently stability of transmissions could be very poor. As the involved applications are character- ized by an intensive use of host and network resources, the purpose of the middleware plat- form is to achieve by computation, on a scale of five differentiated modes, the proper integra- tion of new multicasting members. Within this thematic, it means implementing an adaptive learners’ participation in e-learning sessions by starting MMC applications transparently, with their functionality optimized for the current operating conditions. To clarify these aspects Figure 2 illustrates the system architecture. As shown, three applets, operating sequentially and interdependently, are responsible for monitoring and assessing QoS conditions, inferring, announcing and/or editing computed adaptation parameters. The process culminates with the initiation of MMC applications, depending on the host and network profiles and covering eventual end-user explicit requirements. Audio and video encoding formats, frame rate and other quality metrics may be chosen ac- cording to the resources’ availability, providing coherent, friendly and fair participation in the network load balance. After monitoring sustain- able network QoS with repeated measurements during approximately 15 seconds before media transmission, the Round-Trip Time (RTT) and bandwidth are calculated using a moving average. In addition, system’s status variables, such as processor load, free memory, processor performance and so forth, are acquired, taking advantage of operating system facilities. The system is multiplatform as the in- cluded applets differentiate the most popular operative systems (Windows and Unix), invoking appropriate inner services to obtain instant measures for the processor’s load and free memory. The collected data constitutes another input to compute an adaptation index. Different compilations were produced for com- mon browsers. All of the adaptation process is transparent, however, regarding the experimental nature of this work, each phase allows interaction with the user, providing technical information or even accepting user preferences. To achieve this goal, applets and HTML forms interchange data using Sun’s Liveconnect technology. AdAptIvE Qos FrAMEwork In the proposed framework, QoS man- agement is performed individually for each new conference member and occurs before the transmission’s start, such that MMC applica- tions are launched adaptively facing the previous QoS sensing period conditions. QoS variability during the conference is not used to dynami- 60 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. cally readapt the applications. If an e-student experiences lack of QoS while conferencing, the membership process should be restarted. Corroborating this practice, MMC applications, especially vic, are not stable enough. In fact, if some critical adjustments are made on-the-fly, the result is often the collapse of the application. Nevertheless, dynamic adaptation is currently a subject of study within group communication applications (Layaida & Hagimonte, 2002; Tusch, Böszörményi, Goldschmidt, Hellwagner & Schojer, 2004). Considering the applications’ specific- ity and type of traffic generated, adaptability only includes interactive audio (rat) and video (vic) applications and services. The heuristics regarding the choice of applications’ QoS pa- rameters emerged from experimental results and scientific references in this matter (Wu, Hou, Zhu, Zhang, & Peha, 2001). For instance, video Figure 2. System’s architecture Operating System E-learning System - Services Multicast multimedia conference applications Middleware Applet Applet Applet Vic  Rat  Multicast applications adaptator (audio and video) Available resources monitor Parameter visualization (edition is still possible) Properties and available processing resources Client’s System Available bandwidth and elapsed round-trip time Multicast Capable Network Client’s QoS profile Application’s QoS profile Application’s QoS profile Information Adaptation HTML Forms LiveConnect LiveConnect LiveConnect Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68, October-December 2006 61 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. conference users typically require better audio quality than video quality (Bolot, Crépin, & Garcia 1995). The success of video conferencing communication also depends on factors such as received frames per second, image quality, resolution, size and illumination. For this work, the representative param- eters of vic and rat used to modulate QoS are presented in Table 1. The values for these parameters, deriving from a mathematical expression that generates an adaptation mode based on the sustainable QoS level, compose a set of adjusting direc- tives determining the applications’ behavior. Each adaptation mode indexes the respective set of adjustments, which will then be passed to the application. Since QoS scale varies from mode 1 to 5, when the obtained result is under or over this range it will be assigned to the nearest limit. Equation (1) determines the adaptation mode to be applied: M = (int) (b/(rtt/2) + FM/p) *k (1) where 1, M = QoS adaptation Mode (Table 2); b = Bandwidth (kbps); rtt = Round-Trip Time (ms); FM = Free Memory (MB); p = Processor load (%); k = 1/50 - constant to scale the result (1 to 5). For vic (version 2.8), the video encoding formats H.261 (ITU-T H.261, 1993) and H.263 (ITU-T H.263, 1998) were those who revealed best performance for e-learning purposes, lead- Table 1. vic and rat QoS parameters used to adjust applications’ profile. Rat -f format Indicates audio encoding format: l16, pcm, dvi, gsm and lpc Vic -b kbps Sets the maximum bandwidth slider (kbps) Vic -c dither On a color-mapped display, uses the algorithm indicated by dither (e.g., ed, gray, od, quantize) to convert to the available color palette Vic -f format Indicates the video encoding format: h261, h263, jpeg, nv, ... Vic -F fps Sets the maximum frame rate (fps) Table 2. Set of parameters for different QoS adaptation modes ADAPTATION MODE MAXIMUM BANDWIDTH FRAME RATE VIDEO CODEC COLOR AUDIO CODEC 5 1 Mbps 30 fps H.261 Yes L16 4 512 kbps 25 fps H.261 Yes PCM 3 256 kbps 20 fps H.261 Yes DVI 2 128 kbps 15 fps H.263 Yes GSM 1 64 kbps 10 fps H.263 No LPC 62 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Figure 3. E-learning system screenshots and MMC’s adaptation HTML forms based on avail- able QoS 2. Registration, authentication and mainte- nance of educational agents. 3. Multicast sessions maintenance and scheduling. 4. Access to asynchronous material such as video on demand, slide presentations and other multimedia resources. 5. Interactive multimedia multicast confer- ences with QoS adaptation. 6. Other multicast tools for shared work- space. 7. Discussion spaces such as forum and multicast chat room. ing to low loss ratios and high reliability. H.263 is especially appropriate for low bandwidth environments. E-LEArnIng sErvIcEs And FEAturEs The developed distance e-learning system presents numerous features providing distinct service levels, such as: 1. Virtual academy, Web-based with refined usability, integrating authentication and services for the e-learning community. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68, October-December 2006 63 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. This information system incorporates online databases structuring courses, students, tutors and sessions’ data. These resources were developed using MySQL/PHP. A Web site congregating all developed application component prototypes is available at www.esa. ipb.pt/multicast. Certain processes for assessing hardware performance require user’s explicit authoriza- tion, allowing extended security privileges to applets in order to perform system’s inspection and collecting substantial data used by subse- quent applets of the control path. The security certificates used in this work are not provided by official entities, but generated by applet compilation tools for testing. Although the adaptation process is totally transparent, effectively, the users may edit QoS parameters suggested by the system. If editing occurs, correctness and validation are assured by embedded Javascript code for parsing purposes. All MMC applications need to be previ- ously installed and accessible through the com- mand line interface, configuring the PATH envi- ronment variable properly. If we want to transmit audio or video the required equipment must also be ready. Gathering these basic requirements it is possible to participate in e-learning sessions, having adapted QoS in a transparent way, with great usability. Figure 3 integrates a system’s screenshots, illustrating step by step, when a QoS adapted video conference is selected from the “Services” menu. pErForMAncE study Applications that use voice, video streams or multimedia must be carefully managed within an IP network to preserve their operational integrity. Beyond routing improvements, QoS in a multimedia conference needs primarily to deal with several sources with different characteristics, shifting large amount of traffic competing for network capacity. MMC applica- tions may easily absorb all network resources and the subjective quality sensed by users, would remain poor if the available resources are used indiscriminately. As mentioned ear- lier, the adaptation purpose, with e-learning in mind, was to integrate MMC applications with QoS conscience, preserving resources in order to maintain conference quality and improve scalability. In order to test the framework, different scenarios were simulated and the corresponding resources’ consumption verified considering the QoS limitations associated with each QoS mode defined in Table 2. For video conferenc- ing, regarding e-learning purposes, it is widely accepted that reference values correspond to “Maximum quality, few action scene.” Band- width consumption in vic default mode is 128 kbps. When adaptation is requested, the differ- ent adaptation modes use the values charted in Figure 4. For instance, the best quality mode consumes around 400 kbps, allowing better image and motion. Different equipment was also tested in order to validate the rank of the defined adap- tation modes. We observed that modern high performance equipment tends to be neutral; in this case adaptation will be influenced overall by network conditions, but with mobile computa- tion in mind, PDAs and cellular phones, CPU performance should not be relegated. The experimental results were obtained varying the number of new multicast members transmitting voice and video, considering that all the multicast group members are multimedia receivers and transmitters capable using Any Source Multicast (ASM) technology via vic and rat applications. Due to the limited number of multicast monitoring tools publicly avail- able, we use embedded applications resource meters and the Multicast Monitor (www. multicastmonitor.com) to collect and handle the resulting data. The e-learning system, more concretely the tested prototype showed good performance indicators that validate the architecture model proposed. Because video traffic is quantitatively more representative of resource consumption, it was analyzed preferentially. Figures 4 and 5 exhibit the levels of resource consumption for each QoS mode considered. Here, the overhead introduced by middleware to prepare applica- 64 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. tions is marginal as it occurs before transmis- sion time. QoS adaptation, when treated systemati- cally in tolerant real-time applications, denotes advantages in group scalability and QoS sus- tainability in heterogeneous and unpredictable environments such as the Internet and Mbone. Figures 6, 7 and 8 illustrate a comparison be- tween two simulated sessions, the first without QoS adaptation and the second including adap- tation managed by the developed middleware layer. The results show that scalability increased, but equally important is the fact that applications may benefit from resource availability that does not occur when using the default applications configuration. When the available resources decrease, the system allocates them to critical parameters. For instance, while the frame rate should not be below 10 fps, the image quality may be poor or monochromatic if the contents are correctly perceived. Limiting bandwidth to applications, not only with explicit parameterization but also choosing the right encoding format for e-learn- 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 1 2 3 4 5 Adaptation Modes C P U O cc up at io n . Pentium II 333 MHz 192 MB RAM Pentium III 700 MHz 256 MB RAM Pentium IV 1700 MHz 256 MB RAM Figure 4. BW needs for each QoS mode Figure 5. CPU needs for each QoS mode 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1 2 3 4 5 Adaptation Modes A ve ra ge t ra ns m is si on r at e (K bp s) Default quality, few action scene Default quality, action scene Maximum quality, few action scene Maximum quality, action scene Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68, October-December 2006 65 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. bandwidth resources distribution with adaptation 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 3 0 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 3 5 3 6 3 7 3 8 m em bers av ai la bl e ba nd w id th (k bp s) Figure 6 . Linear bandwidth distribution using applications’ defaults, no adaptation is used. Figure 7 . Increasing the number of active group members using adaptation to distribute network resources. bandwidth resources distribution without adaptation 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 3 0 3 1 3 2 m em bers av ai la bl e ba nd w id th (k bp s) adaptation mode for each new multicast active member 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 555 5 0 20 40 60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 3 0 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 3 5 3 6 3 7 3 8 m em bers adaptation expression result (1) adaptation mode (Table 2) Figure 8. QoS mode adopted by the system facing the available resource conditions ing sessions, allows efficient resource utiliza- tion and proactive usability, avoiding network overload and congestion. If the network load remains high, it is easier to recover if adapta- tion is used. The experience with Mbone showed that e-learning groups tend to be small, usually less than 20 members. Effectively, e-learning communities, as in traditional training methods, need a tutor, who is mainly an educational agent 66 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. and not necessarily a learning technologist. Indeed, questions related with communication technologies will not constitute pedagogical limitation if intelligent QoS management au- tonomy is provided natively or by middleware to applications. E-learning conferencing specificity requires appropriate video encoding formats able to achieve low loss ratio and fast recov- ery from congestion. We compared H.261 and Motion JPEG (ITU-JPEG, 1992) performance in experimental sessions, using a modest PC (PIII 0.7GHz - 256 MB RAM). The results were penalizing for MJPEG, where loss was about 30%, in opposition to 1% for H.261. concLusIon And dIscussIon The goal of this article was, in one topic, to foster “ecological” practices in the Internet when using MMC’s applications in e-learning services. The proposed system integrates public domain multicast applications for synchro- nous media communication, being supervised by a middleware based QoS management framework, intending to preserve the QoS of critical parameters for e-learning session’s specificity. As main contributions, this work: 1. Provides an integrated e-learning environ- ment based on interactive multimedia services with proactive QoS; 2. Improves the usability of MMC applica- tions; and 3. Allows the development of end-to-end QoS-aware multimedia conferences, coordinating resources from network, end-system processing equipment and applications. Middleware adaptation is a solution that suits the present state of Internet and the require- ments of new multimedia distributed applica- tions. We use a middleware layer to manage QoS adaptation in interactive audio and video applications coordinating resource demand, monitoring and adjudication. Substantive results were obtained in group scalability, QoS sustain- ability and proactive resource utilization. Comprising multiple sources (even unau- thorized ones), ASM involves high complexity and may compromise the success of e-learning conferences. Future work includes the use of Source-Specific Multicast (SSM) (Holbrook & Cain, 2004) in order to overcome this limitation. The development of new multilayer video encoding formats could also increase the flexibility when using QoS adaptation. When cumulative layers are transmitted avoiding redundancy, using different SSM groups or channels, adaptation can be performed in a transparent way in order to achieve efficient resources utilization (Johanson & Lie, 2002; Liu, Li & Zhang, 2004). EndnotE 1 rtt and/or p values will be, if necessary, assigned to 1 to avoid division by zero. To prevent incongruence, the maximum bandwidth allowed cannot exceed the de- tected value (b), otherwise the computed mode will suffer cyclic decrements while the excess remains and M>1. rEFErEncEs Allison, C., Ruddle, A., McKechan, D., & Mi- chaelson, R. (2001). The architecture of a framework for building distributed learn- ing environments in advanced learning technologies. WI: IEEE Press. Bolot, J., Crépin, H., & Garcia, A. (1995). Analysis of audio packet loss in the In- ternet. France: INRIA. Bouras, C., & Gkamas, A. (2003). Multimedia transmission with adaptive QoS based on real time protocols. International Journal of Communications Systems. Deering, S. (1998). Multicast routing in internet- works and extended LANs. In Proceed- ings of ACM SIGCOMM (pp 55-64). Deusdado, S. (2002). Integração Adaptativa de Aplicações Multicast para Conferência Multimédia. Unpublished master thesis, Universidade do Minho. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68, October-December 2006 67 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Eklund, J., Kay, M., & Lynch, H. (2003). E- learning: Emerging issues and key trends. Australian Flexible Learning Framework, Australian National Training Authority. Ferguson, P., & Huston, G. (1998). Delivering QoS on the Internet and in corporate networks. John Wiley & Sons. Hardman, V., Kirstein, P., Sasse, A., Handley, M., & Watson, A. (1995). RAT, Robust Audio Tool. Retrieved July 27, 2006, from http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mul- timedia/software/rat/ Holbrook, H., & Cain, B. (2004). Source- specific multicast for IP. Unpublished manuscript. ITU-JPEG. (1992). JPEG Standard, Informa- tion Technology- Digital Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images- Requirements and Guidelines, Recommendation T.81, ITU. ITU-T H.261. (1993). ITU-T Recommendation H.261, Video CODEC For Audiovisual Services At p x 64 kbits. ITU-T H.263. (1998). ITU-T Recommendation H.263, Video Coding For Low Bitrate Communication. JMF 2.0 (1999). JMF- Java TM Media Frame- work API Guide, Sun Microsystems, JMF 2.0 FCS. Johanson, M., & Lie, A. (2002). Layered encoding and transmission of video in heterogeneous environments. ACM. Kosiur, D. (1998). IP multicasting: The com- plete guide to interactive corporate networks. John Wiley & Sons. Layaida, O., & Hagimonte, D. (2002). Dynamic adaptation in distributed multimedia ap- plications. INRIA. Li, B., Xu, D., Naharstedt, K., & Liu, J. (1998). End-to-end QoS support for adaptive applications over the Internet. Unpublu- ished manuscript, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Liu, J., Li, B., & Zhang, Y. (2004). An end-to- end adaptation protocol for layered video multicast using optimal rate allocation. IEEE Transactions On Multimedia, 6(1). McCanne, S., & Jacobson, V. (1995). vic: A flexible framework for packet video. In Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia Conference. Retrieved July 27, 2006, from http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mul- timedia/software/vic/ Miras, D. (2002). A survey of network QoS needs of advanced Internet applications. Unpublished manuscript, University Col- lege London. Mohsin, M., Wong, W., & Bhutt, Y. (2001). Sup- port for real-time traffic in the Internet, and QoS issues. Unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Dallas. Steeples, C., & Jones, C. (2002) Networked learning: Perspectives and issues. Lon- don, UK: Springer. Thaler, D., & Handley, M. (2000). On the aggregatability of multicast forwarding state. IEEE INFOCOM. Tusch, R., Böszörményi, L., Goldschmidt, B., Hellwagner, H., & Schojer, P. (2004). Offensive and defensive adaptation in distributed multimedia systems. Com- SIS, 1(1). Vandalore, B., Feng, W., Jain, R., & Fahmy, S. (2001). A survey of application layer techniques for adaptive streaming of multimedia. Real Time Imaging, 7(3), 221-235. Wu, D., Hou, Y., Zhu, W., Zhang, Y., & Peha, J. (2001). Streaming video over the In- ternet: Approaches and directions. IEEE Transactions on Circuits System Video Technology,11(3) 282–300. 68 Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 4(4), 56-68-75, October-December 2006 Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Sérgio Deusdado received his MSc degree in computer science from the University of Minho, Portugal in 2002. Since 2004, he has been a PhD student in the Department of Informatics, at the University of Minho, Portugal. He is currently lecturer in computer science at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança in Portugal. His research interests include internetworking, groupware, e-learning, information theory and bioinformatics. Paulo Carvalho was graduated in 1991 and received his PhD degree in computer science from the University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, United Kingdom, in 1997. He is currently assistant professor of computer communications, Department of Informatics, at the University of Minho, Portugal. His main research interests include broadband technologies, multiservice networks and protocols, traffic characterization and modelling and mobile networks. 
work_zopmnzvldneovctjhyopxpw2eq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. 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Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_zqbre2zbzralrbfozq7jg2uhou	----	Computer And Instructional Technologies Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes Regarding Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 661 – 666 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.125 WCETR 2011 Computer and instructional technologies preservice teachers’ attitudes regarding distance education Alpaslan Durmusa*, Sinan Kayaa aFaculty of Education, Ahi Evran University, Abstract The purpose of this research is to analyze the attitudes of Computer Education and Instructional Technology Education Department 1., 2. and 3. grade students regarding the distance education (ARDE), in terms of gender, class level and knowledge level related to distance learning. As a data collection instrument, personal information form and Distance Education Attitude Scale have been used. According to analysis results, the attitudes of the preservice teachers regarding distance education are between undecided and positive. However, it has been determined that class level differentiates ARDE points and third grade students’ ARDE points are significantly higher than first grade students. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords Distance Education,attitude, teacher candidates 1. Introduction In the present day, reaching information, evaluating, organizing, using information and sharing it with other individuals have gained importance. Depending on this importance, it is necessary for individuals to use every kind of tools that will enable them to reach information in a learning-teaching environment, and use and share digital information processing and network systems provide us new opportunities in teaching and learning (Valenta, Therriault, Dieter and Mrtek, 2001). Perhaps the most prominent of these opportunities is distance education. Distance education methods gained importance at the end of the 20. century. The need to provide the sustainability of learning, and technological innovations in communication that increase fast have featured distance education in educational applications (Garrison and Randy, 2000). The United States of America Distance Education Association defined distance education as an environment, which is realized in a way to include all types of technology and learning, in which teacher and student are in physically different places and in which the student gains knowledge and skills (Bower and Hardy, 2004). Y system, in which teacher and student that are in different places physically interact (they realize teaching-learning activity) through technology (TV, video, computer, written materials, and etc.). According to another definition, distance education is a teaching form, in which the learner and teacher are in different time periods and places and * Alpaslan Durmus. Tel.: +90-386-211-4348 ; Fax: +90-386-211-4326 E-mail address: adurmus@ahievran.edu.tr Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 662 Alpaslan Durmus and Sinan Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 661 – 666 Moore and Thompson on the other hand, have stressed that the most important characteristic of all of the methods used in distance education is enabling the communication between student and teacher by written or electronic environment; and underlined that electronic environment can be network structure provided by television, cassette, cables or satellite, fiber communication, teleconference, video conference or different combinations of these. In short, distance education is a concept that defines an education application, in which student and teacher can be separated in environment, time or both. A large portion of the researches done have shown that distance education can be as effective as face-to-face education, besides easing learning effectiveness (Moller, 1998). Developing technologies provide with a chance to individuals in very different locations to gain new professional that distance education brought to education cannot be denied. However, realization of change and development in education area depend on a number of factors. One of the most important factors is the teacher. For the teachers to perform change in education institutions, they need to accept change before everything (Oral, 2004). According to the researches done, it is being seen that the attitudes of preservice teachers towards distance education is in a level the generalization of distance education, Computer and Instructional Technologies Teachers have an important role. Because, CEIT teachers will be an agent of change, who will generalize usage of distance education technologies, in the institutions they are assigned. When viewed from this perspective, identifying the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers towards distance education is important in terms of disseminating distance education. 2. Purpose of the Study The general aim of this study is to analyze the attitudes of Computer Education and Instructional Technology Education (CEIT) preservice teachers towards distance education. Within the framework of this general aim, answers to the questions below have been searched. 1. What are the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education? 2. Do the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education change significantly according to gender? 3. Do the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education change significantly according to class level? 4. Do the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education change significantly according to their knowledge related to distance education? 3. Method This study is a descriptive study, which is intended to locate the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education and to determine from which factors these are affected from (Kaptan, 1998). 3.1 Data Collection Instruments In the research, personal information form prepared by the researchers and distance education attitude scale knowledge level related to distance education and whether distance education was taken before or not take place. Dista distance education (ARDE). In the scale, there are 14 positive, 7 negative, 21 items in total. Scale reliability r (2007) with Cronbach Alpha method was found to be 0,835. In the study done however, reliability coefficient has been calculated as 0,795. The lowest point that can be taken from the scale is 21, whereas 105 is the highest. 663Alpaslan Durmus and Sinan Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 661 – 666 3.2 Research Group Study group has been composed of first, second and third grade student, who receive education in Ahi Evran University Faculty of Education Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT) department in 2010- 2011 academic year. Distribution of participants in terms of class and gender is seen in Table 1. Table 1: Distribution of the Study Group According to Class and Gender Gender Grade Female Male Total f % f % f % 1 27 26.0 13 12,5 40 38,5 2 16 15,4 17 16,3 33 31,7 3 15 14,4 16 15,4 31 29,8 Total 58 55,8 46 44,2 104 100,0 4. Findings Findings regarding four sub-problems about the purpose of the study are given below in order. What are the attitudes of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education? The average of CEIT preservice teachers attitude points towards distance education is shown in Table 2. Table 2: Attitude Points of the Participants towards Distance Education N Ranj Min. Max. Median SD UEYT 104 46 45 91 66.45 66.00 8.88 As seen in Table 2, average attitude point of the participants (n=104) is =66,45. As seen in Figure 1, when the average attitude point 66,45 is assessed over five, it has been calculated as point 3,32. According to this, attitudes of preservice teachers towards distance education are between undecided and positive, however in a level close to undecided. Figure 1: Presentation of Attitude Total Point Average Do the attitude point averages of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education differentiate according to gender? Distribution of CEIT preservice teachers’ attitude point averages towards distance education according to gender, and t test results regarding whether the difference between point averages is significant or not have been given in Table 3. 21 42 63 84 105 1 2 3 4 5 66.45 – 3.32 664 Alpaslan Durmus and Sinan Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 661 – 666 Table 3: t-Test Results Regarding the difference between ARDE Point Averages According to Gender Gender N Mean( ) SD t Sig. Female 58 66.25 9.13 0.248 .805 p>0.05 Male 46 66.69 8.65 According to Table 3, attitudes of CEIT students that take place in the sample do not show a significant difference according to their gender (p> 0.05). Do the attitude point averages of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education differentiate according to class level? Distribution of ARDE point averages of CEIT preservice teachers according to the level of class, in which they receive education, has been submitted in Table 4. Table 4: ARDE point averages of CEIT preservice teachers according to the classes that they receive education Grade levels N SD 1 40 63.10 9.58 2 33 67.33 8.26 3 31 69.83 7.14 Toplam 104 66.45 8.88 According to Table 4, DEAS point average of CEIT first grade students is lowest ( =63.10), DEAS point average of third grade CEIT students is highest ( =69.83). Variance analysis results regarding whether the difference between averages is significant or not are presented in Table 5. Table 5: Variance test results of ARDE points according to class levels Sum of squares df Mean squares F Sig. Mean Difference Between groups 830.633 2 415.316 5.744 .004 p<0.05 1-3 Within groups 7303.127 101 72.308 Total 8133.760 103 According to Table 5, attitudes of CEIT students towards distance education differentiate according to the class, which they receive education. Analysis results show that there is a significant difference between the ARDE points of first grade and third grade [F(2-101) =5.74, p<.01]. According to the results of the Scheffe test, which has been done in order to find between which group or groups the difference of classes is, ,t has been found that the ARDE points of third grade students ( =69.83) is higher than first grade students ( =63.10). Do the attitude point averages of CEIT preservice teachers regarding distance education differentiate according to their knowledge levels related to distance education? Distribution of ARDE point averages of CEIT preservice teachers according to their knowledge levels related to distance education is given in Table 6. Table 6: ARDE point averages of CEIT preservice teachers according to Knowledge Level Regarding Distance Education Knowledge Level Regarding Distance Education N SD No Information 11 69.54 8.80 Moderate Level 59 64.62 8.88 High Level 34 68.61 8.38 Toplam 104 66.45 8.88 According to Table 6, ARDE point averages of CITE preservice teachers, who do not have knowledge about distance education, is highest ( =69.54). ARDE point averages of those who have moderate level of knowledge 665Alpaslan Durmus and Sinan Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 661 – 666 about distance education is lowest ( =64.62), ARDE point averages of those who have high level of knowledge is in middle level ( =68.61) Variance analysis results regarding whether the difference between averages is significant or not are presented in Table 7. Table 7: Variance Analysis results of ARDE points according to Knowledge Levels about Distance Education Sum of squares df Mean squares F Sig. Between groups 461.206 2 230.603 3.036 .052 p>0.05 Within groups 7672.553 101 75.966 Total 8133.760 103 According to Table 7, attitudes of CEIT students regarding distance education do differ according to their knowledge level about distance education (p>0.05). 5. Conclusion and Discussion ARDE points of CEIT 1., 2. and 3. grade students have came out between undecided and positive, close to undecided. This situation overlaps with the results of the study done by situation might originate from not being able to provide good samples regarding distance education to CEIT preservice teachers. Analyzing good distance education samples as part of field courses or realizing the courses with well prepared distance education environments may form a positive influence on the attitudes of the students. When the variance analysis results are examined in order to analyze the relationship between attitude points of preservice teachers regarding distance education and their knowledge level about distance education; a significant difference between the ARDE points of preservice teachers could not be found. It can be said that preservice teachers not having knowledge about distance education forms a positive expectation towards distance education. However, it can be said that the usage or presentation of not good samples in some of the courses they took during their undergraduate education affect the attitudes of preservice teachers towards distance education negatively. Attitudes of preservice teachers devoted to distance education differentiate according to the class level they receive education in. Analysis results have shown that ARDE points of third grade preservice teachers are significantly higher than first grade preservice teachers. It can be stated that the education CEIT preservice teachers received affect their attitudes towards distance education positively. References . . Gazi -145 . . Anadolu mler Dergisi, 5(1), 131-147, Bower, B. L. & Hardy, K. P. (2004). From correspondence to cyberspace: changes and challenges in distance education. New Directions for Community Colleges, 128, 5–12. , S. (2005). V Garrison, R. (2000). Theoretical challenges for distance education in the 21st century: a shift from structural to transactional issues. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning: 1, 1. Kaptan, S. (1998). a ve istatistik teknikleri. (2001). . 150, http://yayim.meb.gov.tr/dergiler/150/karahan _izci.htm (Access Date:19.05.2011). Moller, L. (1998).Designing communities of learners for asynchronous distance education. Educational Technology Research and Development, 46(4), 115-22. Moore, M.G. and Thompson, M.M., 1990. The effects of distance learning. A summary of literature. Research Monograph vol. 2, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA American Center for the Study of Distance Education (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED330321). Oral, B. (2004 - 666 Alpaslan Durmus and Sinan Kaya / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 28 (2011) 661 – 666 Valenta, A., Therriault, D., Dieter, M. and Mrtek, R. (2001). Identifying student attitudes and learning styles in distance education. JALN, 5 (2), 111-127. Ö . 653-663. 
work_zub2gzvhgvf43kr557mswvbdbi	----	The Effects of “Live Online Coures” on Students’ Achievement at Distance Education Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.512 E-mail address The Effects of “Live Online Course” on Students’ Achievement at Distance Education aIstanbul University, Hasan Ali Yucel Education Faculty, Computer Education & Instructional Technology, Istanbul, Turkey Abstract Keywords: 1. Introduction Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 348 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 2. Methods 2.1. Purpose of the research 2. 2. Participant and procedure 3. Findings Live Online Course Followers Rarely Live Online Course Followers Frequently 349 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 3.1. Live Online Course Followers Rarely (LOCFR) Findings Live Online Course Followers Rarely 350 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 NE*: Not Entered Average Score**: 30% Midterm + 70% Final / Make-Up Score LOCFR: Live Online Course Followers Rarely 3.2. Live Online Course Followers Frequently (LOCFF) Findings Live Online Course Followers Frequently 351 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 NE*: Not Entered Average Score**: 30% Midterm + 70% Final / Make-Up Score LOCFF: Live Online Course Followers Frequently 352 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 353 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 5. Conclusion References , Jaln The American Journal of Distance Education The American Journal of Distance Education The American Journal of Distance Education Educational Technology Review Fin Dev 354 Ozgur Yilmaz / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 55 ( 2012 ) 347 – 354 Turkish Online Journal Distance Education Machine Mediated Learning Journal of Educational Computing Research Educational Technology Research and Development The American Journal of Distance Education 
work_zyhs7p474rcdnd4l7uovlsz3bq	----	Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education » Journal » DergiPark Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education EN Turkish English Submit Article Send Reviewer Request Aim & Scope Author Guidelines Ethical Principles and Publication Policy Last Issue Editorial Board Contact Archive ... Login ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Indexing Conferences Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education ISSN 1302-6488 | Period Quarterly | Founded: 2000 | Publisher Anadolu University | TR Dizin Citation Count Dear TOJDE contributors, article submissions to TOJDE are suspended until June 2021 due to escalating number of submissions. When the submissions are opened, it will be announced here and the submission button will be activated. Thank you for your sympathy and interest in TOJDE.  Dear Readers, TOJDE is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic distance education journal. Although distance education has now a history of over 150 years, with the unprecedented developments in digital technologies and new paradigms, there has been an ever-increasing demand for experts and expertise in distance education.  An understanding of the complex world of distance education today clearly requires a reliable knowledge of the current state of art and data-driven projections of future. As such, it requires an ability to identify trends and persistent problems as well as establishing a relationship between particular needs, solutions to problems, and goals to be achieved. Aligned with these, TOJDE is intended to provide readers with scholarly and academic perspectives and research in the field of distance education. Dr. T. Volkan YUZER, Editor in Chief Issues 2021 Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Issue: 1 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 2019 Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Issue: 1 2018 Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Issue: 1 2017 Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Special Issues 2020 Volume: 21 Issue: Special Issue-IODL Archive LOCKSS Last Issue Volume 22 - Issue 2 - Apr 1, 2021 FROM THE EDITOR Pages 0 - 0 T. 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BONK, Annisa SARI, Shuya XU, Minkyoung KIM TEACHERS’ TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION AND DISTANCE LEARNING ADOPTION AMIDST THE COVID-19 CRISIS: A REFLECTION FOR THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE Pages 26 - 41 Imam Fitri RAHMADI INVESTIGATION OF PARENTS’ OPINIONS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 42 - 57 Engin DEMIR, Cennet GOLOGLU DEMIR IDENTIFYING FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTION TO USE IN DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEMS Pages 58 - 80 Rahmi BAKI, Burak BIRGOREN, Adnan AKTEPE ADAPTATION TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY FOR PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pages 81 - 93 Sumardi SUMARDI, Dyah NUGRAHANI SATISFACTION OF OPEN EDUCATION STUDENTS ABOUT THE LEARNING MATERIALS OF MATHEMATICS Pages 94 - 111 Nevin MAHIR, Fikret ER, Bunyamin DEMIR, Namik Kemal ERDOGAN, Harun SONMEZ, Rusen YILMAZ THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY IN GRADUATE VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS Pages 112 - 125 Ceyhun KAVRAYICI AN INNOVATIVE WAY OF DESIGNING BLENDED LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH IN HIGHER EDUCATION Pages 126 - 146 Ahmet Berk USTUN, Monica Walsh TRACEY EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE COURSES BASED ON THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL Pages 147 - 163 Denizer YILDIRIM, Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU IMPACT OF QUALITY ANTECEDENTS ON SATISFACTION TOWARD MOOC Pages 164 - 175 Nour Awni ALBELBISI, Ahmad Samed AL-ADWAN, Akhmad HABIBI MEDICATION OR BAND-AID? 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work_zxhgeumsubby5f5ptwaxpsjn3m	----	Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Based on a Videoconferencing Platform – QoE Analysis Journal of Information Technology Education: Research Volume 14, 2015 Cite as: Malinovski, T., Vasileva-Stojanovska, T., Jovevski, D., Vasileva, M., & Trajkovik, V. (2015). Adult students' perceptions in distance education learning environments based on a videoconferencing platform – QoE analysis. Jour- nal of Information Technology Education: Research, 14, 1-19. Retrieved from http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol14/JITEv14ResearchP001-019Malinovski0565.pdf Editor: Lynn Jeffrey Submitted: January 31, 2014; Revised: November 15, 2014; Accepted: December 22, 2014 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Based on a Videoconferencing Platform – QoE Analysis Toni Malinovski, Tatjana Vasileva-Stojanovska Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia tmalin@nbrm.mk tatjanav@nbrm.mk Dobri Jovevski Primary School Ilinden, Kriva Palanka, Republic of Macedonia dobri.jovevski@gmail.com Marina Vasileva and Vladimir Trajkovik Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia vasileva_marina@yahoo.com trvlado@finki.ukim.mk Abstract Distance education learning environments provide tremendous convenience and flexibility, allow- ing busy, mobile adult learners to engage in education while coping with their limited resources in terms of time, energy and finances. Following a student-centered approach this study investi- gates adult students’ subjective perceptions while using distance education systems based on a videoconferencing platform as Quality of Experience (QoE). Based on a literature review, socio- logical behavior and expectations, we have constructed a structural equation model (SEM) illus- trating relations among different variables that can predict positive levels of adult students’ QoE, thus providing guidelines for proper development. We have tested the model using a survey of 198 primary education school teachers involved in a videoconferencing-based learning program for teacher enhancement. Results show a good fit to the model developed. The analysis showed that adult students’ QoE is directly influenced by appropriateness of teacher-student interaction and ease of participation, as well pre- dicted by students’ motivation to attend similar trainings. Additionally, we found that variances in technical quality did not directly influence their QoE from the learning sessions. Keywords: Quality of Experience, adult students, distance education, lifelong learning, videoconferencing, structural equation modeling. Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is per- missible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission. mailto:tmalin@nbrm.mk mailto:tatjanav@nbrm.mk mailto:dobri.jovevski@gmail.com mailto:vasileva_marina@yahoo.com mailto:trvlado@finki.ukim.mk mailto:Publisher@InformingScience.org Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Introduction Continuous education is important to individuals, institutions and society as a whole, especially due to the accelerated changes in modern living in the past few decades. When we refer to educa- tion, we mostly think about children and the young population, instructed by adults. But the adult population is also interested in the pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional rea- sons. Adults, as non-traditional students, are engaging in different activities to continue their edu- cation through various forms of learning that provide them with adequate knowledge in a specific area of study. Some of these forms include self-learning, attendance at lectures, training, confer- ences, workshops, etc. Terminology related to adult education has changed over time, indicating a shift in educational perspectives and teaching practices. ‘Continuing education’, as used in the literature, consists of all learning activities, formal and informal, by which individuals seek to upgrade their knowledge, attitude and competencies (Jarvis, 1995; Smith, 2005; Stone, 1986). Currently accepted terminology referred to as ‘lifelong learning’ indicates a change from educa- tion to learning and incorporates learning from every aspect of our lives – social relationships, environment, society and culture (Field, 2006; Tight, 2002). There are differences between adults and other types of students, since adults have more life experience and have already gone through the process of standard education. They are usually motivated by the latest trends promoted by society, their wish to advance in their profession, re-career, satisfy job requirements, or acquire new skills and knowledge for personal reasons, which are all built on their past learning experi- ence and practice (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 1998). On the other hand, as life becomes more complex, different education forms and models have to be developed for better integration of the educational process in modern society. During the last decade, the pace of technological change has increased so quickly that it has significantly affected every area of modern living. Recent technological developments have introduced world-wide collaboration, social networking, virtu- alization of resources and participants, videoconferencing, on-line/off-line e-learning, etc. into the learning process (Brady, Holcomb, & Smith, 2010; Garrison, 2011; Lawson, Comber, Gage, & Cullum-Hanshaw, 2010; Longworth, 2013). Distance education has created new opportunities for information and knowledge transfer, separating the teacher, as a source of information, and the students through time and space. Adult students have to find a proper balance between growing demands at work and in their per- sonal life. Their learning activities have to compete with limited resources that adults generally possess in terms of time, energy and finances (Eastmond, 1998; Giancola, Grawitch, & Borchert, 2009). The distance education methodologies and solutions can successfully meet these demands and promote wider adaptation of e-learning in adult population. Having in mind that adult learn- ing process builds on previously acquired knowledge, skills and attitude of individuals (Stone, 1986), the success of adult distance learning practices is closely dependent on adults students’ beliefs, satisfaction and expectations from the delivery methods (Donavant, 2009). Hrastinski (2008) has investigated the importance of the communication media (asynchronous and synchro- nous) as key in transforming the focus on e-learners as individuals to e-learners as social partici- pants during lifelong learning. Levenberg and Caspi (2010) have explored elementary school teachers’ perceptions of learning in formal/informal online and face-to-face learning environ- ments and found that the medium makes a difference in perceived learning in informal environ- ments, but not in formal ones. In like manner, different researchers have focused on learning technologies for adult education and the success of the learning process (Eastmond, 1998, Le- Noue, Hall, & Eighmy, 2011; Mason, 2006). Still, due to the different nature of adult students, additional research is required that follows a student-centered approach (Hannafin, Hill, Land, & Lee, 2014; Knowles et al., 1998; Weimer, 2013), especially focusing on adult students’ satisfac- tion and quality expectations from the distance learning environments. Hence, better understand- ing of students’ experiences is vitally important to the educational process and the learning ex- perience itself plays an important role in learning outcomes. 2 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik Purpose of the Study This study is one of few attempts to investigate adult students’ subjective expectations while us- ing interactive distance learning systems (based on videoconferencing technologies) in terms of Quality of Experience (QoE). In the last few years, QoE (“Quality of Experience”, 2011) has emerged as a fully user-oriented approach which focuses on the social element, users’ subjective expectation and evaluation of systems’ delivery and performance (Kalliris, Dimoulas, Veglis, & Matsiola, 2011; Kist & Brodie, 2012; W. Wu et al., 2009; Zhang, Xu, & Cheng, 2011). Further- more, videoconferencing-based educational systems provide tremendous convenience and flexi- bility for adult students, while bridging the distance between the teacher as a source of informa- tion and the students. Such interactive learning activities can meet the demands of adult students since they closely resemble face-to-face educational environments and can make students feel like participants rather than isolates (Lawson et al., 2010; Murphy, Rodríguez-Manzanares, & Barbour, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide empirical research on videocon- ferencing-based learning environments for adult population, while predicting or explaining the determinants that influence students’ positive experiences during the learning process. Through a literature review on adult education and existing models for technology acceptance, we propose a model which takes into account complex correlations among different factors that influence stu- dents’ positive QoE and ideally describes technology independent guidelines. With this quantita- tive QoE analysis, we can help readers understand the nature of adult students while using video- conferencing for lifelong learning, promote improvement of practice and provide valuable infor- mation to all stakeholders of distance education institutions during evaluation of their educational systems. This study systemically analyzes a wide array of factors that can predict higher levels of students’ QoE that inevitably determine perceived learning environments that encourage deeper approaches, structured to improve the quality of student learning (Trigwell & Prosser, 1991). Literature Review In an attempt to differentiate ‘the art and science of teaching adults’ as opposed to ‘the art and science of teaching children’, Knowles (1980) has developed a theory of ‘andragogy’ for any form of adult learning in contrast to ‘pedagogy’. The andragogical model, as conceived by Knowles, was premised on four crucial assumptions of adult learning: (1) self-concept in which adults move from dependency to self-directedness; (2) experience which guides adults in their learning activities; (3) readiness to learn as internal motivation to attend subjects that have imme- diate relevance to their job or personal life; and (4) orientation to learning which indicates a shift from content-oriented towards problem-centered learning. Additionally, motivation to learn was added later as fifth assumption, since he had recognized that adults respond better to internal ver- sus external motivators. In like manner, another influential theory on adult education, referred as ‘experiential learning’ (Kolb, 1984), stressed the necessity to approach adults differently than young students due to the central role that experience plays in the learning process. Over the years, the Internet has emerged as the latest vehicle through which institutions can de- liver credit and noncredit distance education courses, while allowing a variety of asynchronous (two-way communication involving time delay between transmission and receipt) and synchro- nous (interactive communication) activities (Bower & Hardy, 2004; Bouhnik & Carmi, 2012; Murphy et al., 2011; Somenarain, Akkaraju, & Gharbaran, 2010; Yamagata-Lynch, 2014). In his theory of transactional distance, Moore (1997) hypothesized that, in the hands of progressive teachers, teleconferencing gives opportunity not only to reduce distance but also to increase au- tonomy of learners. Other researchers have also identified videoconferencing as a new dimension of interaction and communication that was previously unavailable in online learning environment (Gill, Parker, & Richardson, 2005; Lawson et al., 2010; Taylor, 2009; Y. Wang & Chen, 2007). 3 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Adult distance education possibilities do not differ from the ones available to young population. Still, differences may arise as result of different motivating factors, preferences, strategies to- wards learning, already accumulated information and life experience, which adults tend to trans- fer into their learning situations (Eyitayo, 2013; Knowles et al., 1998; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991; Richardson, 2013). Therefore it is important to understand adult students and their subjec- tive experience from the learning environment. According to Moore and Kearsley (1996), “most distance education students are adults between the ages of 25 and 50. Consequently, the more one understands the nature of adult learning, the better one can understand the nature of distance learning” (p. 153). To some extent, Knowles (1980) used his assumptions and proposed a pro- gram-planning model for designing, implementing and evaluating education experience with adults. Based on adult learning theories, Cercone (2008) examined the characteristics of adult learners and provided an analysis of how these characteristics influence the design of an online learning environment. According to Fidishun (2000), factors that motivate adults, for example increased self-esteem, job satisfaction, quality of life, etc., can be built into online environments through different educational methods. But still, empirical research that provides guidelines for educational development while predicting adult students’ behavior and overall experience from different distance learning environments is almost nonexistent. On the other hand, researchers have explored the social aspect and used the theory of reasoned actions (TRA) (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) to provide information for users’ acceptance of modern technologies. Based on this theory, they have addressed factors influencing perceived ease of use and usefulness of technology, users’ attitude toward using and intention to use technology, while applying the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989) or ex- tended TAM to the use of different technological solutions (Liu, Chen, Sun, Wible, & Kuo, 2010; Ng, Shroff, & Lim, 2013; Saadé, Nebebe, & Tan, 2007; Sahin, & Shelley, 2008; X. Wu & Gao, 2011). Having in mind the lack of literature that explores adult students’ behavior, if we approach adult students the same as any distance education practitioner and reuse the variables of technol- ogy acceptance models aligned with adult learning theories, we can provide results that explain their nature and subjective experience. In the same context, different studies have already demon- strated QoE as a more holistic evaluation than mere narrowly focused end-user experience (Kal- liris et al. 2011; Molnar, Hava-Muntean, & Cristea, 2009; W. Wu et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2011). Gong, Yang, Huang and Su (2009) have defined a QoE model that focused on the relation- ship between the technical and QoE parameters that consisted of five factors: availability, usabil- ity, integrality, retainability and instantaneousness. Malinovski, Lazarova and Trajkovik (2012) have focused on the social aspect regarding learner-content interaction in distance learning activi- ties and proposed a model where easy usage and adaptability of the system predict students’ ex- perience while using online learning portals. Still, despite these isolated efforts to define QoE models, many issues regarding identification of influencing factors in distance learning environ- ments remain unanswered and require significantly more research. Research Model and Hypotheses There are different factors that influence the success of a videoconferencing-based educational system, like ease of use, quality and synchronization of video/audio signals, integration with col- laboration tools, proper teaching approach, student subjective experience, etc. In the case of adult students, some factor may be more influential than others, since they are inclined towards a prac- tical and reflexive approach to knowledge (Knowles, 1980), while the age span could lead to dif- ferent attitudes towards new technologies and motivation for their use in practice (Milheim, 2007; Selwyn, Gorard, & Furlong, 2005). In this study, we have incorporated the advances made via the technology acceptance models, have moved beyond mere acceptance, and tried to evaluate simi- lar and different variables that can influence a higher level of adult students’ positive QoE. Since distance education and technology are closely connected, we have adopted ‘ease of use’ and ‘atti- 4 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik tude’ of TAM and combined them with adult students’ motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic) influ- enced by the assumptions related to motivation in adult learning theories (Fidishun, 2000; Knowles, 1980; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991). The technical performance of distance educational systems, especially the interactive ones, depends on infrastructure level (transport infrastructure, network-based Quality of Service (QoS), etc.) and application level (web-content, conferencing services, application-based QoS, etc.). Since our approach is student-centered, we have also in- cluded a technical performance variable, but constructed as students’ perception of the perform- ance and delivered services. Having in mind that during sociological and behavioral research multi-item measures are more adequate than single-item measures (Nunnally, 1978), each of the explored key factors that affect adults students’ QoE was formulated as latent constructs, meas- ured via several observed variables. In like manner, we have formulated QoE as adult students’ perceived experience for natural feeling, increased efficiency and productivity, and overall satis- faction from the learning process. Thus, we have defined nineteen (19) observed variables that represent relevant indicators underlying the domain of each construct (Table 1). Table 1: Latent constructs and their observed variables (indicators) CONSTRUCT INDICATOR DESCRIPTION EASY Easy1 Students’ think it was easy to follow the lesson through VC Easy2 Appropriateness and simplicity of teacher-student interaction Easy3 The degree to which students were able to easily understand the content Easy4 The degree to which the technological solution fitted learning requirements ATTITUDE Att1 Acceptance of VC during the lessons Att2 Beliefs regarding possibility to bridge the distance between the teacher and the students Att3 Attitude towards new interactive technological solutions for learning MOTIVATION Motiv1 Level of motivation to attend VC based classes in the future Motiv2 Beliefs to recommend and motivate others to attend similar classes Motiv3 Level of motivation for attendance to satisfy job requirements Motiv4 Level of motivation to use the recorded VC session for learning TECHNICAL Tech1 Students’ perceived quality of the video signal Tech2 Students’ perceived quality of the audio signal Tech3 Beliefs regarding proper audio/video synchronization Tech4 Students’ perceived level of proper functioning of the equip- ment QoE QoE1 Perceived experience for the comfort during learning and in- creased efficiency QoE2 Perceived experience for increased possibilities for learning and productivity QoE3 The degree to which students think this type of learning is inter- esting and enjoyable QoE4 Overall experience during distance learning enhanced with VC Note. VC = videoconferencing 5 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments The presented observed variables were further used in a reflective measurement where a change in a latent construct variable must precede a variation in the indicator, thus providing a measure for the construct (Churchill, 1979). Furthermore, the selected latent constructs provide sufficient information for a reliable QoE analysis, model development and testing of hypotheses regarding adult students’ perceptions in distance educational systems based on a videoconferencing plat- form. This research focuses on the cognitive level while abstracting the actual technical setup and util- ized tool for videoconferencing. Still, following a student-centered approach, it researches the technical behavior and proper functioning of the equipment as a perceived experience by the in- volved adult students. Therefore we have formulated the following hypotheses that describe the possible connections between the research constructs, organized in a manner that can be further illustrated as a research model: Hypothesis 1: Students’ perceived technical quality and proper functioning of the system influ- ence students’ ease of participating in the learning sessions and understanding of the content (H1a); and influence students’ acceptance of videoconferencing and interactive technologies for learning (H1b); Hypothesis 2: Students’ perceived technical quality and proper functioning of the system influ- ence positive level of students’ QoE for increased efficiency, productivity and successful distance learning process. Consistent with prior studies (Lee, Cheung, & Chen, 2005; Liu et al., 2010, X. Wu & Gao, 2011), we believe that relationships among the latent construct, which reflect on ease of use, motivation and adult students’ acceptance of interactive technologies, can demonstrate significant strengths. Hence, we have formulated the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 3: Ease of participation and learning, appropriate teacher-student interaction influence students’ acceptance of videoconferencing (H3a); as well influence students’ motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) to participate in videoconferencing classes, to use the recorded sessions for learning and recommend similar classes to other (H3b); Hypothesis 4: Adult students’ motivation to use videoconferencing based systems influence their attitude towards these interactive technologies. The presented hypotheses formulate the relationships between research constructs as determinants that altogether influence a higher level of students’ experience. Since QoE is the desired outcome variable, we have reviewed the nature of each construct and referred indicators and formulated the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 5: Adult students’ QoE, while participating in distance learning environments based on videoconferencing platforms, is directly influenced by the appropriateness of teacher-student interaction and ease of participation (H5a); is influenced by students’ attitude towards videocon- ferencing technologies and acceptance of the new learning methodology (H5b); and is also pre- dicted by students’ motivational factors (intrinsic and extrinsic) to attend videoconferencing clas- ses (H5c). Based on the above proposed hypotheses and theoretical variables, we have developed our re- search model that explains the natures of adult students and illustrated relationships between all factors that influence adults students’ QoE in distance education learning environments based on a videoconferencing platform. Figure 1 illustrates the proposed model with hypotheses and com- plex relationships between the researched latent variables. 6 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik The proposed model has one exogenous variable (TECHNICAL), since we have assumed that it is influenced by factors outside of this model that are coming from the application and network- ing level. This variable is acting as a predictor for EASY, ATTITUDE and QoE (endogenous var- iables). According to the researched hypotheses, this model also illustrates a causal relationship for the outcome of the remaining latent variables: EASY, ATTITUDE, MOTIVATION and QoE. Therefore, it focuses on factors influencing adult students’ QoE in distance learning environments based on a videoconferencing platform, which is subjective opinion and would be difficult to quantify and measure otherwise. Figure 1: Hypothesized model illustrating adult students’ perceptions in distance learning environments based on a videoconferencing platform. Methodology Interactive distance educational systems, especially ones based on videoconferencing platforms, are designed to bridge the distance between the teacher as a source of information and the stu- dent. There are different systems and tools that offer this type of education, but the success of the learning process is closely dependent on students’ subjective experience, influenced by different factors. Having in mind the different nature of adult students, we have proposed a research model and discussed casual relationships between the identified factors that influence adult students’ QoE in similar environments. Participants To test the model of this study, we have researched a distance education program that provides continuing education for primary school teachers in Macedonia. Thus, we involved teachers who were part of a learning program for the professional development of government officials and educators towards new approaches to teaching with the use of technology. Hence, we were able to work with a representative group of adult students who covered wide age span, live in large cities or villages, have different technological backgrounds and have been participating in dis- tance education for some period. The involved participants chose to participate in this distance education program since they were intrinsically motivated to increase their professional compe- tencies and upgrade their knowledge to satisfy the latest trends in primary education for better use of technology (as extrinsic motivators). The collected demographical information from the in- 7 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments volved 198 participants indicated 43.88% female and 56.12% male in the adult student popula- tion, 34.34% of age 25-34 years, 39.39% of age 35-44 years, 23.23% of age 45-54 years and 3.04% of age 55-64 years, reflecting the typical population of adult students interested in continu- ing education. 74.24% of these students live in smaller and bigger cities, while 25.76% live in different villages, thus representing urban and rural environments. During the evaluation period, 58.59% had already participated in similar distance educational courses (most of the students at- tended several learning sessions), while 41.41% had taken such a course for the first time. Design This educational program covered more than twenty learning sessions, taught by ten different teachers, with 6-12 participants in each session. The program provided different courses designed to offer students an integrated learning experience in which they could enhance their knowledge regarding the latest educational trends and participate in collaborative activities. In each learning session, the teacher was placed at one site and was linked over the internet to a group of students in different locations (small classrooms) or individual students participating from their home. Each site had a proper teacher/student camera and sound system, a display with a live picture of the teacher and/or a student participating in a conversation and an interconnecting device to the videoconferencing platform. The students participating from their home connected with a web browser over the internet while using their own computers equipped with a camera and speakers. After each learning session, the teacher provided a link to an online questionnaire for student feedback regarding each particular course. These surveys contained necessary demographic ques- tion, control information, as well questions regarding the proposed measurements in this study. They were able to grade the observed indicators on each question on a scale from 1 to 6, where 1 is strongly disagree and 6 is strongly agree. Data Analysis Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a multi-equation technique and a powerful way of testing the credibility of models (Bollen, 1989; Byrne, 2001) that include multiple dependent and inde- pendent variables, and inclusion of measurement errors in the analysis. Due to the sociological and behavioral nature of our research, we have used SEM to test the hypothesized model while using the data set from students’ responses to see if the proposed theory matches the research da- ta. Having in mind that SEM can be an iterative process, the initial model can be refined and re- vised if such changes are justified theoretically (J. Wang & Staver, 2001). Therefore, during this QoE analysis, we have explored minor corrections and alternative models so the research data could adequately fit an ultimate model aligned with the research purpose and sound theories. Research Findings Descriptive Statistics The adult distance education program that was researched in this study lasted approximately one year. During this period, we got a satisfactory 85% usable survey response rate (n=198 responses) from the involved adult students and stored the dataset in a central database for further research and analysis. Before we could submit the research dataset for factor analyses, proper univariate statistical anal- ysis was conducted to examine the nature of the gathered data. This examination included meas- ures for mean score, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of the observed variables that provided initial results and reliability of indicators, since any value outside the acceptable range could produce inaccurate calculations. 8 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik Table 2 lists descriptive statistics of the observed variables with the necessary measurements. Table 2: Descriptive statistical information regarding the observed variables and their reliabilities (n=198) INDICATOR MIN/MAX MEAN STD. DEVIATION SKEW KURTOSIS Easy1 4/6 5.49 0.703 -1.025 -0.278 Easy2 4/6 5.48 0.658 -0.895 -0.315 Easy3 4/6 5.35 0.723 -0.638 -0.851 Easy4 4/6 5.25 0.681 -0.364 -0.836 Att1 4/6 5.61 0.520 -0.763 -0.711 Att2 3/6 5.42 0.755 -1.082 0.352 Att3 4/6 5.64 0.569 -1.303 0.731 Motiv1 4/6 5.79 0.465 -2.191 4.171 Motiv2 4/6 5.74 0.495 -1.701 2.054 Motiv3 4/6 5.57 0.572 -0.960 -0.068 Motiv4 4/6 5.67 0.524 -1.239 0.529 Tech1 4/6 5.22 0.748 -0.388 -1.124 Tech2 2/6 5.16 0.845 -0.926 1.156 Tech3 3/6 5.16 0.809 -0.653 -0.242 Tech4 4/6 5.24 0.719 -0.389 0.996 QoE1 5/6 5.63 0.484 -0.549 -1.717 QoE2 4/6 5.64 0.521 -1.023 -0.080 QoE3 4/6 5.53 0.539 -0.514 -0.947 QoE4 4/6 5.67 0.494 -0.966 -0.461 As shown in Table 2, the descriptive results demonstrate the lowest mean scores on all technical indicators, while the measurements for motivation and QoE report the highest mean scores. All results have low standard deviations, which confirms that these responses were constructive in nature. From a statistical point of view, to evaluate the normality of the survey’s data, we need to look at the absolute values for skewness (skew > 3.0 indicates an extremely skewed value) and kurtosis (kurtosis > 8.0 indicates a problem). These parameters were also satisfactory, which en- sures that the survey’s data is relevant (Curran, West, & Finch, 1996) and can be used for further analyses. Reliability of the Constructs The reliability and internal consistency of the construct was examined using a Cronbach's alpha test, which is widely accepted to indicate the degree to which a set of indicators measure a single latent construct (Table 3). As a rule of thumb, alpha values for constructs higher than 0.70 repre- sent good internal consistency (Nunnally, 1978), having in mind that high values do not mean that the scale is unidimensional. 9 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Table 3: Reliability results for the latent constructs (n=198) CONSTRUCT NO. OF ITEMS CRONBACH'S ALPHA EASY 4 0.892 ATTITUDE 3 0.712 MOTIVATION 4 0.888 TECHNICAL 4 0.952 QoE 4 0.823 As shown in Table 3, the results show that the reliability for all constructs highly exceeds the al- pha threshold level of 0.70, except for ATTITUDE which is close to the border level. Even though this is still satisfactory for surveys, it indicated that this construct could be further revised, if necessary, to improve the proposed model. Measurement Model Before the structural model is developed, which will test the proposed hypotheses and model fit against the dataset gathered from students’ responses, a measurement model is needed which re- lates measured (observed) variables to latent constructs. This model will provide factor loadings between the latent variables and proposed observed indicators, with included errors of measure- ment. The standardized factor loadings estimates should be 0.5 or higher, and ideally 0.7 or high- er (Nunnally, 1978). Figure 2 illustrates the measurement model according to the research data, tested for factors loading and reliability of measures. As shown in Figure 2, results from the measurement model show that all factor loadings on indi- cators and their respective constructs are above the ideal value 0.70, with the exception for Att2 which loads with 0.57. This model gives us preliminary information about possible factors that could influence adult students’ QoE as well as presenting correlation values among construct that indicate relevant relationships between them. Furthermore, we assessed the measurement model for convergent validity and looked into two additional measures: average variance extracted (AVE) and composite reliability (CR) for each construct, which were derived from the factor loadings. A good rule of thumb suggest an AVE of 0.50 or higher indicating adequate convergent validity (values less than 0.50 indicates that on average, there is more error remaining in the items than there is variance explained by latent structure), while CR should be at least 0.70 (values be- tween 0.60 and 0.70 may be acceptable provided that other indicators of a model’s construct va- lidity are good). Guided by the results for factor loadings in the measurement model and the Cronbach's alpha test for each constructs (data presented in Table 3), we have chosen to test if exclusion of Att2 from the proposed model could provide better results and revise the initial model. In addition, we have further inspected the measurement model for satisfactory values for stan- dardized residual covariances and modification indices. We have noticed that Easy4 and e4 have the highest value for modification indices with some of the other factors (Hair, Anderson, Tat- ham, & Black, 1998) and thus considered to also remove Easy4 for better model fit results. Table 4 reports CR and AVE values for each construct within the initial model (with Att2 and Easy4) and revised model (without Att2 and Easy4). 10 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik The results in Table 4 show that the refinement of the referred constructs produced better results for convergent validity, especially since AVE of the ATTITUDE construct had increased above 0.50 and the CR value was closer to 0.70. Thus we concluded that the revised measurement mod- el reported adequate factor loading and convergent validity. During SEM, the validity of the measurement model proved the design, proposed methodology and measurement instruments. Further QoE analysis, through the development of a structural model, could illustrate how the latent variables (constructs) influence each other, especially students’ QoE as a desired outcome. Figure 2: Measurement model. Table 4: AVE and CR of each construct for the initial and revised measurement model CONSTRUCT CR - INITIAL MODEL CR - REVISED MODEL AVE - INITIAL MODEL AVE - REVISED MODEL EASY 0.876 0.896 0.689 0.714 ATTITUDE 0.624 0.678 0.471 0.508 MOTIVATION 0.870 0.871 0.681 0.682 TECHNICAL 0.971 0.971 0.841 0.841 QoE 0.716 0.716 0.538 0.538 Structural Equation Model The main purpose of this study is to distinguish proper determinants that correlate with each other and can predict students’ QoE during an interactive videoconferencing learning session, with the focus on an adult population. Following our research methodology, we created a hypothesized model illustrating relevant observed and unobserved variables. Through a dataset gathered from the evaluation of students’ perceptions of a targeted research adult group, this model was tested and refined through the measurement model, which is important in every social research since each study can be missing information and have hidden variables. A structural equation model addresses the complex relationships among underlying constructs and attempts to account for these confounding variables while including measurement errors into the model. During the development of this model, we followed the hypothesized model (Figure 1), but also examined the possible model fitted to the dataset gathered from adult students’ re- 11 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments sponses. During examination of the results, we noticed that the hypothesized path between TECHNICAL and QoE (the path that also demonstrated a low correlation value within the meas- urement model) reported p>0.05 and diminished the required values for model fit. Therefore it led us to the conclusion that the proposed Hypothesis 2 is not supported. Hence, we decided once again to refine the model and drop the path between these constructs towards an ultimate model. The rejection of Hypothesis 2 is logical since adult students’ QoE during distance education may not be directly influenced by the technical behavior and systems parameters when they operate within acceptable levels. Having in mind the structure of the hypothesized model, the refinement made during the meas- urement model analysis and initial model fit parameters, the ultimate model (revised structural model) proposed in this study is shown in Figure 3. The structural equation model produced the following values for the necessary indicators: Figure 3: Results of the structural equation model during adult students’ perceptions in a distance education learning environment based on a videoconferencing platform (*p<0.001; **p<0.01; ***p>0.05).  CMIN = 357.278, df=111, CMIN/df = 3.219 (according to Marsh and Hocevar (1985) a relative chi-square as low as 2 or as high as 5 indicated a reasonable fit);  GFI = 0.914 (goodness of fit index which should exceed 0.9 for a good model (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1984));  CFI=0.923 (comparative fit index where, according to Hu and Bentler (1999), values > 0.9 indicate a very good fit);  RMSEA = 0.05 (root mean square error of approximation, where smaller values below 0.08 are preferable (Browne & Cudeck, 1993)). These values indicate proper model fit and alignment between the ultimate model (Figure 3) and collected data. The hypothesized model that included the path between TECHNICAL and QoE 12 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik (according to Hypothesis 2) produced values for GFI=0.834 and RMSEA=0.09, which are slight- ly below desired indicators, proving that the model correction was justified. Discussion The purpose of this study is to broaden our understanding of the nature of adult students while using videoconferencing for lifelong learning and predict or explain the determinants that influ- ence their positive experiences during the learning process. The research results show that the QoE construct is significantly determined by EASY (β=0.66, p<0.001) and MOTIVATION (β=0.54, p=0.003) with a coefficient of determination R2 of 0.64. This indicates that the desired outcome variable for QoE can be strongly predicted when adult students participate in distance learning process based on an interactive videoconferencing platform. Therefore we can conclude that Hypotheses 5a and 5c are fully supported and reveal influencing factors that can be consid- ered specific for adult students’ QoE while engaging in similar distance educational activities. Even though it is inappropriate to generalize that the adult population is intimidated by the tech- nological advancements or unwilling to participate in online learning (Donavant, 2009), the re- sults have demonstrated that ease of participation and motivation to learn in similar environments are the main determinants for adult students’ QoE. Additionally, if we follow Fidishun’s (2000) assumptions and focus on factors that motivate adults and embrace them into the online environ- ments through different educational methods, we can increase the level of adult students’ positive experience. The findings have a number of implications for practice, especially for the stake- holders of the educational institutions that include videoconferencing-based learning environ- ments for an adult population, which can help them to properly determine relevant factors that can improve the educational process. Furthermore, indirectly, the factor loadings on EASY and MOTIVATION indicate to what extent their factors play a role in a higher level of positive students’ QoE. For example, the high factor loading between EASY (unobserved variable) and Easy2 (observed variable) of 0.96 suggests that appropriateness and simplicity of teacher-student interaction predicts perceived QoE from the learning session. These finding complicate but do not contradict Schmidt and Moust’s (1995) SEM analysis that emphasizes the importance of teacher-student communication and a positive learning atmosphere. Furthermore, the results show that adults prefer environments that closely resemble face-to-face education, since their orientation to learning shifts from content-oriented towards problem-centered learning (Knowles, 1980), which can be maximized through interactive discussions. In like manner, since Motiv1 and Motiv2 regressed higher on MOTIVATION as op- pose to Motiv3, we can conclude that adults respond better to internal versus external motivators, which correlates with Knowles’s (1980) theory of andragogy. Path coefficients illustrating correlations between the other constructs, show strong connections between EASY and ATTITUDE (β=0.71, p<0.001) and EASY and MOTIVATION (β=0.62, p<0.001) thus fully supporting Hypotheses 3a and 3b, and a significant influence between TECHNICAL and EASY (β=0.68, p<0.001) thus supporting Hypothesis 1a. The system’s per- formance and proper audio/video parameters showed a direct effect on students’ ease of participa- tion in the learning sessions and their interaction with the teacher. On the other hand, the easy usage influenced adults’ motivation to use similar distance education systems and their general attitude and acceptance of these interactive technologies. Students’ motivation also has a positive effect on general attitude and acceptance as reported with the path between MOTIVATION and ATTITUDE (β=0.57, p<0.001), thus fully supporting Hypothesis 4. These findings correlate with Davis et al.’s (1989) TAM model, which states that perceived ease of use influences user atti- tudes, while explaining additional latent relationships that were presented in this study. The ob- tained results are very important since early identification of relevant variables could provide the 13 Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments means to increase the likelihood of positive students’ experiences in similar learning environ- ments. Hypotheses 1b and 5b were rejected in this study, since we found no direct statistically significant effects between TECHNICAL and ATTITUDE (p>0.05) and ATTITUDE and QoE (p>0.05). Therefore, these results oppose the importance of attitude towards using technology in the tech- nology acceptance model (Lee et al., 2005, Ngai, Poon, & Chan, 2007; X. Wu & Gao, 2011), since adult students’ attitude towards the new technologies failed to predict their QoE. Bearing in mind that we also rejected Hypothesis 2, this study has shown that adult students’ QoE can be abstracted from the technological setup and system behavior, with a limitation for per- formance within acceptable levels (based on the technical observed variables). Since adults dem- onstrated intuitive understanding of content based on their personal experience and life histories (Jordan, Carlile, & Stack, 2008), it is justifiable that variances in technical quality does not di- rectly influence their QoE from the learning sessions. Conclusion The adult population engages in different lifelong learning activities through a variety of forms of learning experiences that include self-directed learning, lectures, conferences, seminars, work- shops, etc. This type of students tends to be specific in their nature since they cover a wide age span, and have different life experiences and motivation for learning than traditional students in- volved in standard state educational programs for primary/secondary schools, universities, post- graduate studies, etc. Due to limitation of resources and possibilities, adult students can be con- sidered as a target group that may directly benefit from the advantages of distance learning solu- tions. This study researched adult students’ QoE during distance learning activities in a form of interac- tive and collaborative training that utilize systems based on a videoconferencing platform. Even though distance education and technology are closely connected, we have tried to abstract the technological layer, focusing on social behavior and the cognitive level of this learning process. We have identified several variables, like ease of use and students’ motivation, that can ade- quately explain and have the ability to predict the level of positive QoE. A structural equation model was proposed, tested, and validated while most of the causal relationships between the re- search constructs were well supported. The results showed that 64% of adult students’ QoE in a distance education learning environment based on a videoconferencing platform was explained by the proposed model. This quantitative QoE analysis helps adult readers interested in similar distance education activi- ties to understand the social aspect and factors influencing their positive level of QoE from the learning process. At the same time, it provides relevant input for the stakeholders of distance edu- cation institutions to understand that students’ experience is vitally important to the educational process and has to be considered as a relevant factor for their future development and proper posi- tioning in the distance learning area. In our future work, we will continue to use the proposed methodology while expanding the scope of work in different directions. We plan to evaluate adult distance learning virtual environments based on self-learning materials, prerecorded audio and video segments as a form of learner- content interactions, as well evaluate different collaborative solutions as a learner-learner interac- tion. We will use the model presented in this study and conduct further analyses while trying to predict students’ QoE in these environments. 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(1991). Improving the quality of student learning: the influence of learning context and student approaches to learning on learning outcomes. Higher education, 22(3), 251-266. Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Wang, J., & Staver, J. R. (2001). Examining relationships between factors of science education and student career aspiration. The Journal of Educational Research, 94, 312–319. Wang, Y., & Chen, N. S. (2007). Online synchronous language learning: SLMS over the Internet. Innovate, 3(3), 1-7. Wu, X., & Gao, Y. (2011). Applying the extended technology acceptance model to the use of clickers in student learning: Some evidence from macroeconomics classes. American Journal of Business Educa- tion (AJBE), 4(7), 43-50. Wu, W., Arefin, A., Rivas, R., Nahrstedt, K., Sheppard, R., & Yang, Z. (2009). Quality of experience in distributed interactive multimedia environments: Toward a theoretical framework. Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (pp. 481-490), New York, NY, USA. Yamagata-Lynch, L. C. (2014). Blending online asynchronous and synchronous learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 15(2). Zhang, D., Xu, Y., & Cheng, C. (2011). A QoE assessment system in distance education. Engineering, 3(1), 90. Biographies Toni Malinovski completed his Master Degree in Computer Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University - Skopje, Macedonia in 1998. His major research interests include distance education, rich communica- tion media, QoS, QoE, videoconferencing and distributed systems. Works at National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia and holds the position as IT senior advisor. He is author and co-author of several pa- pers published in international journals, international and national con- ferences. Tatjana Vasileva-Stojanovska has graduated at the Faculty of Natural Sciences in 1994. She received her Master Degree from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology in 2000. Her research interests are focused in distance education, intelligent agents, neuro-fuzzy systems and fuzzy logic control systems. She works at the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia holding the position of senior programmer. 18 Malinovski, Vasileva-Stojanovska, Jovevski, Vasileva & Trajkovik 19 Dobri Jovevski graduated in 2000 at the Faculty of Education “St. Kli- ment Ohridski” Skopje in the St. Cyril and Methodius, University of Skopje, Macedonia, as a teacher for an elementary school. He is em- ployed as a school teacher in Primary school “Ilinden”, Kriva Palanka, Macedonia. The most important part of his professional work is placed on innovative and creative teaching the students to become a natural learning process, and students effectively and efficiently master the skills of the 21st century. As an associate he has participated in making several digital contents for students in early classes. Marina Vasileva completed her Master Degree at the Pedagogical Faculty, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, Macedonia in 2011. She is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University - Skopje, Macedonia, with research activities that focus on didactic aspects for the development of educational contents which utilize ICT. Works at Primary School “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje and also holds the position as IT teacher for students at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, Macedonia. Vladimir Trajkovik received his PhD Degree at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, Macedonia in 2003. Currently he is a Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at the same university. His research interests include: information systems analyses and design, distributed computer systems, distance educational systems, multi-agent systems, ICT-based collaboration systems and mo- bile services. He has over 100 publications in various international con- ferences and international journals. Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Based on a Videoconferencing Platform – QoE Analysis Toni Malinovski, Tatjana Vasileva-StojanovskaFaculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia tmalin@nbrm.mk tatjanav@nbrm.mk Dobri JovevskiPrimary School Ilinden, Kriva Palanka, Republic of Macedonia dobri.jovevski@gmail.com Marina Vasileva and Vladimir TrajkovikFaculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia vasileva_marina@yahoo.com trvlado@finki.ukim.mk Abstract Introduction Purpose of the Study Literature Review Research Model and Hypotheses Methodology Participants Design Data Analysis Research Findings Descriptive Statistics Reliability of the Constructs NO. OF ITEMS Measurement Model Structural Equation Model Discussion Conclusion References Biographies 
work_zlbq23lcxndzrdips5mb7ifoya	----	The Pennsylvania State University  The Graduate School  College of Public Affairs  EVALUATION OF STRATEGIC LEADER COGNITIVE  DEVELOPMENT  THROUGH DISTANCE EDUCATION  A Thesis in  Public Administration  by  Susan R. Myers  Copyright 2007 Susan R. Myers  Submitted in Partial Fulfillment  of the Requirements  for the Degree of  Doctor of Philosophy  May 2007 ii  The thesis of Susan R. Myers was reviewed and approved* by the following:  James T. Ziegenfuss  Professor of Management and Health Care Systems  Thesis Advisor  Chair of Committee  Steven A. Peterson  Professor of Politics and Public Affairs  Director, School of Public Affairs  Robert F. Munzenrider  Associate Professor of Public Administration  Steven A. Melnick  Associate Professor of Education  *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii  Abstract  This study investigates the effects of graduate level distance education in the  cognitive development of strategic level leaders.  Strategic leaders as public  administrators use cognitive skills to provide vision, direction, and purpose for  organizational development.  Distance education programs contribute to strategic  leader cognitive development with minimal disruption to their professional and  personal environment since the curriculum is accessible through online delivery  means.  Both quantitative and qualitative measures such as a survey instruments, focus  groups, and individual interviews were used to evaluate leader cognitive development  through distance education.  Senior military officers enrolled in the U.S. Army War  College (USAWC) Class of 2007 Distance Education Program completed the  Modified Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) survey instrument at the beginning and  the end of the first year of the program.  The MCPA survey quantitatively and  qualitatively measured respondent preference for differing levels of cognitive  complexity.  The MCPA survey is based on Elliot Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory (SST)  that links cognitive capability to strategic, general, and production levels of  leadership.  The MCPA survey predicts strategic leader potential providing there is no  intervention in the cognitive growth over time.  This study incorporated a paired t­  test, and correlation analysis to evaluate changes in the respondents’ level of  cognitive complexity as a result of completing the first year of the distance education  program.  The quantitative and qualitative data indicated there was significant increase  in leader cognitive development for respondents that completed the first year of the  distance education program.  The data indicated that online networks, application of  the program material to the respondents’ experience, and discourse through the  forums supported leader cognitive development.  USAWC provides instruction for  over 300 senior leaders each year through distance education.  This study contributes to the body of public administration theory and practice  by demonstrating that leaders develop strategic level cognitive skills through distance  education programs.  These findings are important to officials who are considering  the role of distance education in the professional development of future strategic level  leaders in public administration.  Further research is needed to determine how  distance education programs can be used more effectively for leader cognitive  development. iv  Table of Contents  List of Figures……………………………………………………………………vi  List of Tables…………………………………………………………………….vii  Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………viii  Chapter 1. Introduction………..…….……..………………………..…..1  Strategic Leader Development through Distance Education  Cognitive Development of Military Leaders through Distance Education  Purpose and Overview of Study  The Organizational Setting  Conclusion  Chapter 2. Literature Review and Conceptual Framework …...……..….......23  Overview of Leadership Theory  Characteristics of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development  Strategic Leader Development as an Open System  Roles of Strategic Leaders in Organizations  Stratified Systems Theory (SST): A Strategic Leadership Model  Conclusion  Chapter 3. Methodology……..……………………………….….......…..62  Overview of Army War College Distance Education Program  Distance Education System and Evaluation Requirements  Research Question  Participants and Instruments  Research Procedures  Limiters and Delimiters of this Study  Conclusion  Chapter 4. Results and Analysis………………………………..…….……….…95  Overview of Study Results and Analysis  Demographical Data  Quantitative and Qualitative Data Results and Analysis  Analysis of Control Group  Triangulation of the Data  Analysis of Data Using an Organizational Subsystems Model  Conclusion  Chapter 5. Recommendations and Conclusion..……………………………....138  Overview of Study Recommendations and Conclusion  Contributions of Study to Leadership Theory and Practice  Summary of Findings  Recommendations for Future Research  Concluding Remarks v  Appendix A.  Research Instruments………………………………………...….162  Modified Career Plan Appreciation Survey  Focus Group/Interview Questions and Reporting Format  Appendix B. IRB Approval ………………………………………….………….176  Appendix C. Approval for Use of MCPA Survey Instrument (Stamp personal  correspondence, 2005) ……………………………….…………………………..178  Appendix D. Data Tables ………………………………………………………..179  References……………………………………………………….……….…….…192 vi  List of Figures  1.1  Model of Strategic Leader Development through Distance Education……...16  2.1  Strategic Leader Characteristics and Performance: A Research Model .……38  2.2  Open Systems of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance  Education ……………………………………………………………………….…...40  2.3  Organizational Subsystems that Impact Strategic Leader Cognitive  Development through Distance Education ……………………………………...…..42  4.1  A Model of Organizational Subsystems that Affect Strategic Leader Cognitive  Development through Distance Education ………………………………………...126  5.1  A Model of How Distance Education Contributes to Strategic Leader  Cognitive Development…………………………………………………………….145 vii  List of Tables  2.1  Doctrinal Leadership Framework of Competencies by Leadership Levels.…29  2.2  Comparison of Leadership Models…………………………………….…….31  2.3        Leader Development Model ………………………………………………..47  2.4  Institutional Stratums of Leadership Domain and Responsibility……….…..52  .  2.5  Institutional Stratums of Leadership Domain ………..…………….….……55  3.1  Department of Distance Education Curriculum Schedule…………………...67  3.2  Summaries of MCPA Survey, Focus Groups and Interview Protocol……….71  3.3  Overview of Study Instruments and Data Sources………………….……….76  3.4  MCPA Survey Responses to Levels of Organizational Leadership..………..79  3.5  Comparison of MCPA, Focus Group, and Interview Protocol………………84  3.6  Research Design Milestones…………………..………………..…….…...…89  3.7  Administration of Focus & Individual Interviews…………….……………..91  4.1  Demographics of the Treatment and Control Group…......……..…….……..99  4.2  Correlation Analysis of Demographic Factors……………..………………101  4.3  Summary of MCPA Survey Pre and Post Test Treatment Group  ……..….107  4.4  Summary of MCPA Phrase Sets for the Control Group………….………...110  4.5  Analysis of Qualitative Data………………………………………………..112  4.6  Summary of Triangulated Study Data ……………………………………..122  5.1  Revised Institutional Stratums of Jaques’ Leadership Responsibility and  Domain Based on Contemporary Organizational Structure ……………………….141  5.2  Contributions of Distance Education to Strategic Leadership….…………. 142  5.3  Examples of Cognitive Development as a Result of Distance Education.…147  5.4  Strategic Stratums of Leadership Domain and Responsibility…….…..…...151 viii  Acknowledgements  It is with gratitude that I acknowledge the men and women that serve in the  U.S. military and especially the U.S. Army War College Distance Education students  that supported and participated in this research.  Special thanks to my family and  colleagues at the U.S. Army War College for their support and guidance.  I would like  to acknowledge Dr. Charles Krupnick for his editorial support, the Army War College  Librarians, and Mrs. Sally Brooks for their assistance in gathering references and  data.  Dr. Craig Bullis, Dr. Diane DiClemente, Dr. Thomas Williams, Dr.Harry  Yarger, and Dr. Jeffrey Groh provided technical support.  I am especially indebted to  Dr. James Ziegenfuss for his mentorship as my committee chairman and teacher.  I  would like to acknowledge the memory of Dr. Rupe Chisholm who served as my  initial advisor and Dr. Beverly Cigler who served as my advisor through the  comprehensive exam process. 1  Chapter 1 Introduction  Frederick C. Mosher addressed the need for public leaders to pursue  professional development and found that governments allow universities and  professional educators to determine the criteria and choices in producing future  professionals (Mosher 1982).  Distance education is one of the venues that educators  are using in delivering professional development programs to prepare leaders for  future roles such as contending with complexity and long term planning requirements.  Leaders are increasingly using distance education programs to pursue professional  development opportunities, but there are few studies that have assessed how well  distance education programs are contributing to strategic leader development.  Strategic leaders are defined in this study as those who are in the highest level  of leadership in organizations and are responsible for formulating organizational  visions, leveraging resources, and overseeing policy performance.  Leaders at the  strategic level shape the organizational culture and values that are important in  developing global and national interests and partnerships.  Strategic leaders in public  organizations like the military, scientific, and educational institutions encourage  cognitive skill development for visioning to anticipate and manage change.  Cognitive development is defined as mental skills such as reasoning, intuition,  and perception that help to acquire knowledge.  Strategic leaders use their cognitive  skills to process complex information into meaningful concepts that contributes to  learning, evaluation, and integration.  The environment at the highest levels of  organizations requires that strategic leaders contend with volatility, uncertainty,  complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) .  Strategic leaders need to have a broad 2  education and experience in order to create visions that have long term implications  in policy making.  Distance education programs are helping to develop strategic  leaders’ cognitive competencies by exposing them to complex course materials and  case studies.  It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs to  determine the best ways to prepare leaders for future strategic level challenges.  Distance education programs are an increasingly popular way for busy and  resource constrained senior leaders to develop cognitive thinking skills through  informational and technical networks and sources.  Studies in peer reviewed journals  have found that informational sources, simulations, and writing requirements in  distance education programs contribute to development of cognitive skills such as  reasoning, perception, and intuition.  New technologies are being incorporated into  distance education programs such as threaded discussions to facilitate group  discussions.  Online educational systems contribute to the way strategic leaders  develop cognitive thinking skills and execute decision making processes because  leaders increasingly managing information through electronic systems.  The field of distance education is defined as the acquisition of knowledge  through technological systems at locations outside of classrooms.  Dr. Michael G.  Moore’s definition of distance education is used in this study since it encompasses  many of the terms and ideas from a variety of academic studies.  Moore advocates  that "Distance education is planned learning that normally occurs in a different place  from teaching and as a result requires special techniques of course design, special  instructional techniques, special methods of communication by electronic and other  technology, as well as special organizational and administrative arrangements" 3  (Moore 1996).  Clark and Mayer found that distance education helps leaders to be  better informed and contributes to their ability to perform .  This study is designed to  examine how distance education course design, and organizational systems contribute  to strategic leader cognitive development.  Many strategic leaders use distance education programs to develop cognitive  thinking capabilities because these programs provide leaders access to quality  educational course material and learning networks .  Distance education programs are  thought to enhance leader cognitive skills such as perception, intuition, and reasoning  because online networks and forums enable leaders to apply a diverse body of  knowledge to their professional experiences.  Leaders learn from extensive networks  of graphics and text in distance education programs and then integrate this new  knowledge with existing knowledge in their long term memory.  When leaders apply  their long term memory to their experience, they develop ways to perform strategic  level tasks such as visioning.  Leaders and educators are continuously evaluating and  refining graduate level distance education programs to improve programs and  enhance leader cognitive development.  Research studies about distance education suggest that some online  educational programs are contributing to strategic leader professional development by  expanding knowledge through technical and informational networks (Lape and Hart  1997; Rahm and Reed 1997; Pacey and Keough 2001).  Distance education networks  provide both hierarchical and lateral forms of communication that are important in  developing strategic leader knowledge for policy making and management.  Future 4  strategic leaders need access to a wide variety of information networks to synthesize  patterns of development that support long term planning and decision making.  Strategic leaders are often drawn to distance education for professional  development because of the accessibility to academically rigorous programs, the self­  directed, adult learning style, and the opportunity to develop collaborative networks.  Adult learners tend to be practical problem solvers that are motivated by professional  advancement and find online instruction matches their learning style.  Graduate level  distance education professionals are generally older with extensive college and work  experience.  The population of respondents in this study are senior military officers  and the majority have graduate degrees as well as diverse professional career  experiences.  This study specifically examines the cognitive development of senior  military officers enrolled in the Army War College Distance Education Program.  The intent of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge of leadership  literature concerning the efficacy of distance education in the cognitive development  of strategic leaders.  This study may help identify how distance education programs  contribute to strategic leader cognitive development.  The field of strategic leader  cognitive development through distance education is relatively new since many  graduate level distance education programs have been accredited only recently.  Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance Education  There are limited numbers of studies about leader cognitive development  through distance education programs and some of the studies have some contradicting  findings.  For example, some studies find that higher education distance education 5  programs are not as widely accepted by administrators as traditional education  programs because of the lack of personal interaction (Schuhmann, Cawley et al.  2000).  Other studies find that distance education programs are as effective as  traditional education programs in student cognitive development (Gunawardena,  Wilson et al. 2003).  Traditional education programs seem to be favored over online  education programs by many strategic leaders despite the growing number of online  programs. Public administrators generally have limited experience and understanding  of distance education programs since many of the programs began after their formal  education was completed.  Although there are many graduate level distance education  programs today; additional research data and experience with course delivery,  assessment techniques, and feedback systems is needed to continue to enhance leader  development.  Public and private organizations are increasingly using distance education for  strategic leader professional development because these systems are accessible and  utilize diverse educational methodologies that facilitate learning and discovery.  The  Department of Defense offers a number of distance education programs to promote  professional development from the lowest to the highest levels of leadership.  Distance education programs also contribute to higher rates of personnel recruiting  and retention because many of the distance education programs are free or subsidized.  Students that successfully complete the U.S. Army War College Distance Education  program of study are awarded a Master of Strategic Studies degree at no cost to the  student. 6  Military senior service colleges are also promoting intergovernmental  professional development with enrollments that include a variety of governmental and  international agencies.  The Army War College, for example, offers strategic studies  through a distance education program that has an enrollment of nearly 450 students  each year.  Students are selected to attend the Army War College from a variety of  federal agencies such as the State Department and foreign governments in addition to  the U.S. uniformed services.  The shared distance education experience contributes to  intergovernmental and international partnerships that are important to long term  strategic relations because of the growing numbers of civil­military interactions.  The body of leadership literature and research studies suggests that distance  education aids in the development of strategic leader cognitive abilities on a global  basis.  Extensive online information networks available through distance education  programs extends the ability of students and faculty to interact in a wide range of  issues (Jacobs and Jaques 1990; Bass 1998; Avolio 1999; Cranton and King 2003;  Heikkila and Isett 2004).  Distance education programs are evolving with the  development of new technologies such as simulations and interactive media.  Additional studies are needed to evaluate the effect of distance education systems in  strategic leader development so that public administrators can develop plans for  future professional development.  This study incorporates several theories, models, and frameworks that are  described in Chapter 2.  Elliot Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory (SST) associates  strategic leader cognitive capacity and the ability to contend with increasing  complexity and long term planning capabilities at least ten years in the future.  Dr. 7  Gillian Stamp worked closely with Elliot Jaques to develop the Modified Career Path  Appreciation (MCPA) survey instrument.  The MCPA is used in this study as a  measure of individual leader cognitive development as a result of completing the first  year of the distance education program.  The development of leader cognitive skills  results from a complex interaction of individual, organizational, and environmental  factors.  Leader cognitive development is an open system consisting of inputs,  processes, and outputs.  Leaders are exposed to environmental factors that contribute  to cognitive development.  This study incorporates the use of the organizational  model of subsystems to assess how culture, psychosocial, structural, technical, and  management contributes to strategic leader development.  Examination of  organizational subsystems provides some insights into how individuals interact with  systems and organizations.  This study evaluates how organizational subsystems  contribute to strategic leader professional development.  Another model that is pertinent to this study is the Leader Development  Model that illustrates the roles of institutional education, operational experience, and  self­study in leader development and performance.  Institutional education includes  formal curriculum programs that are offered both in residence and online in  universities.  Operational experience includes developmental assignments that  prepare leaders for higher levels of responsibility.  Self study programs include  specialized material that individuals pursue to develop specialized skills.  This model  is explained in greater depth in the next chapter. 8  Distance education creates new ways to build professional networks and  promote quality interactions among faculty and students through a variety of online  educational tools and feedback systems.  Diverse learning experiences such as  simulations, video displays, and interactive tools contribute to strategic leader  cognitive development.  Distance education allows larger numbers of leaders to take  part in online collaboration for problem solving and networking because the  classroom space is not constrained.  Some strategic leaders have a greater propensity  to dialogue with classmates through electronic media than face­to­face traditional  classroom settings because there are fewer distractions and it is more suited to their  personalities.  Distance education systems help to expand leader dialogue because of online  communication networks between students who are from different ethnic or gender  backgrounds (Moore and Anderson 2003).  Online distance education enhances the  ability of strategic leaders to span organizational boundaries because of diverse  networks and participants.  These networks replicate many aspects of public  administration in requiring leaders to use multidisciplinary themes and approaches to  organizational design, management, and policy.  Student networks span a large  number of federal and international organizations as Army War College Distance  Education students are located all over the world.  Strategic leaders are often limited in the amount of time they can devote to  educational opportunities because of professional and personal demands. Distance  education systems generally allow strategic leaders the opportunity to complete  course material when their schedules allow.  A flexible approach to education and 9  professional development promotes learning and collaboration because participants  can focus on material that suits their needs and interests.  This type of education  system supports adult learning models that suggest senior leaders learn more when  they apply new knowledge to past experience.  Further analysis and discussion of the role of distance education programs in  strategic leader cognitive development is needed to evaluate trends and patterns in the  program materials and processes.  Recent research studies indicate that there are no  significant differences in the learning effectiveness between traditional and distance  education systems however; distance education programs are not as widely accepted  as traditional education programs (Gunawardena, Wilson et al. 2003; Williams 2003).  Some researchers found that the online environment that promotes dialogue and  collaboration is important to student learning and motivation (Berge and Schrum  1998).  Future research and studies that measure leader cognitive development will  help in determining the aspects of education that are effective in leader cognitive  development.  Distance education allows public administrators a variety of  professional development experiences that are accommodating of strategic leader and  organizational needs.  Public institutions offer a number of professional development systems such  as seminars, certificate, and degree granting programs.  Professional development  programs are important to preparing leaders for higher levels of responsibility and  result in leader commitment to institutions (Yukl 1998; Piotrowski and Rosenbloom  2002).  Strategic leaders are more visible and require decisions that are abstract  because of changing and conflicting information.  Despite the fact that strategic 10  leaders have less personal control over events, they are fully accountable for results  (Shelton 2001).  Distance education programs provide senior leaders flexibility and  accessibility to higher education programs that can be tailored to their strategic leader  duties and responsibilities (Bass 1998; Argyris 2004).  One of the greatest challenges for public strategic leaders is making time for  professional development despite increasing workloads and a constantly changing  environment.  Distance education is a way for busy professionals to access  educational systems with minimal disruption to their professional and personal needs  and requirements.  The following describes how the Army as a public agency  manages and supports the strategic leader professional development program through  distance education.  Cognitive Development of Military Leaders through Distance Education  Increasing numbers of strategic leaders are using distance education for  cognitive development because these systems offer collaborative and informational  networks in the work place.  The quality of distance education and growth in these  programs is also increasing exponentially because of greater visibility, accessibility  and improved quality of program materials.  This study focuses on the Army War  College (AWC) distance education program of instruction because of its orientation  toward cognitive development of strategic military leaders.  The AWC distance  education program is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the  Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and is similar to other public and  private educational programs.  Students that successfully complete the program are 11  awarded a Masters of Strategic Studies degree. Because of the similarity of the Army  War College curriculum to other graduate school programs, this study may have  application for other public and private organizations that pursue strategic leader  professional development.  The Department of Defense and other public agencies such as the Office of  Personnel Management are increasingly using distance education because it is  accessible and cost effective.  Interestingly, the Department of Defense is using  distance education programs more extensively at the lower levels of leadership.  Some of this practice can be attributed to the fact there are many more leaders at the  lower levels of organizations than the strategic level.  Developing leader cognitive  capacity to prepare and educate future strategic leaders in the development and  employment of land power in joint, multinational, and interagency environments is  the core Army War College mission (Department of the Army 2004).  Leader  development in the Army is often associated with institutional training and education,  operational experiences and self­development such as evaluating conceptual capacity  and growth potential (Jacobs 1998).  The Army War College fulfills the need to  professionally develop strategic leaders through either a one year resident or two year  non resident instruction.  Non resident instruction at the Army War College is known  as distance education.  The AWC Distance Education Program parallels resident  instruction in the way it shares learning objectives, many readings, and writing  requirements.  The main difference in the programs is that the majority of the distance  education course work takes place through online readings, activities, and discussion  venues instead of the face­to­face resident program seminars. 12  Army War College resident courses utilize several online instruments to  assess and provide feedback on leadership attributes.  Instruments include: a  Personality Profile; Biodata Leadership; Team Roles, Handling Conflict and the  Strategic Leadership Development Inventory and the Modified Career Path  Appreciation (MCPA).  Army War College distance education students do not  currently have access to leadership assessment tools such as the MCPA to evaluate  their cognitive capacity.   Many major institutions outside the Army are using  learning centers and online assessment instruments to evaluate employee performance  and to provide insights for individual improvement and development.   Public  organizations such as the Office of Personnel Management and private firms such as  Arthur Anderson and General Electric assess managers and leaders as a means for  professional development and promotion (Collins and Porras 1994).  The Army  personnel command is also considering utilizing other types of assessment  instruments in addition to the officer evaluation reporting system.  In the mid 1980s, the Army Research Institute asked experienced researchers  to evaluate senior leader development (Jacobs and Jaques 1990; Markessini 1993).  Gillian Stamp developed a procedure called the Modified Career Path Appreciation  (MCPA) survey instrument to evaluate and predict rate of growth of individual  capability to handle increasing leadership responsibility.  The MCPA was also used to  test a theory of organization structure and adult development based on Jaques’  Stratified Systems Theory (SST).  Predictions of potential were made for  approximately 200 men and women of European and African origins working in  several multinational organizations (Stamp 1988).  Follow­up studies conducted over 13  a period ranging from 4 to 13 years evaluated the level the individual performed and  were correlated to the level of predicted potential for performance.  In the early 1990s, the Army War College initiated a program for resident  program students to use the MCPA and a variety of instruments to evaluate cognitive  skills, personality traits, and leadership traits to provide feedback for professional  development.  Students were administered the MCPA at the beginning and end of the  Army War College resident program.  Preliminary analysis of the MCPA survey  instrument data indicated a relationship between the Army War College educational  process and growth of conceptual and cognitive skills (Stamp 1988; Jacobs 1998;  Bullis 2003).  Researchers found that the Army War College resident program had a  significant impact on student strategic leader cognitive capacity such as intelligence,  analytical reasoning, creativity, and integrative complexity skills (Zaccaro 2001;  Bullis 2003).  Many strategic leaders use feedback and assessments like the MCPA survey  instrument to evaluate their individual transformation from organizational to strategic  level leadership.  Measuring leader cognitive growth supports similar studies in  evaluating the effectiveness of  distance education in professional development of  leaders (Beer 1980; Schwartzman 2003).  The intent of this research design is to  evaluate whether completion of the Army War College curriculum through distance  education increases cognitive capacity and builds executive leadership skills (Yukl  1998; Moore and Anderson 2003; Watkins and Kaufman 2003).  In this study, the  MCPA survey instrument and other data sources are used to measure the change of  distance education students’ cognitive capacity to deal with complexity and long term 14  planning requirements.  This is the first study completed that measures and analyzes  the development of strategic leader cognitive development through distance education  at the Army War College.  Purpose and Overview of Study  The purpose of this study is to determine if completion of the first year of the  Army War College distance education program results in significant leader cognitive  development for officers enrolled in the distance education program.  The Army War  College serves as one example of the few public institutions that utilize accredited  distance education programs for strategic leader development.  This study uses a  mixed methods approach of quantitative and qualitative data to determine how  distance education supports the development of strategic leadership skills.  This study incorporates a mixed methods approach that utilizes quantitative  and qualitative measures to gain a comprehensive assessment of factors that  contribute to strategic leader cognitive development through distance education.  Quantitative data is collected in this study by using a valid and reliable measure, the  Modified Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) survey instrument developed by Jaques  and Stamp to evaluate the impact of distance education in strategic leader cognitive  development.  The MCPA survey measures individual capacity to deal with  complexity in relation to the ability to perform skills required at various  organizational levels.  Jaques and others posit that strategic leaders need cognitive  skills to contend with increasing complexity and long term planning.  Stamp  developed procedures to predict the rate of individual cognitive growth in handling 15  increasing complexity and long term planning which are considered strategic  leadership roles and responsibilities.  She used these procedures to test Jaques’ theory  about the importance of organizational structure and cognitive development to the  success of strategic leaders.  This study uses qualitative data such as respondent interviews and focus  groups to address if and how distance education programs are effective in developing  strategic leader cognitive and long term planning skills.  Qualitative data also helps to  explain quantitative data and the way leaders use distance education programs for  professional development.  The qualitative data in this study was examined using the  organizational subsystem model to determine if culture, psychosocial, structural,  technical, and management subsystems contribute to strategic leader development.  This mixed methods approach provides a rich body of data.  The data and findings  contribute to the body of leadership literature about the role of distance education in  strategic leader cognitive development (Rahm and Reed 1997; Cranton and King  2003; Seth 2003).  Figure 1.1 depicts a model of strategic leader cognitive development through  distance education and illustrates the network of organizational subsystems that  contribute to this process.  The organizational subsystems that are analyzed in this  study include cultural, psychosocial, structural, technical, and management networks.  Open systems are defined as a system of independent activities that draw energy from  the environment.  The inputs, processes, and outputs in this open system  illustrate the  interactions of the organizational subsystems and the environment (Katz and Kahn  1978).  This study focuses on the development of leader cognitive skills but also has 16  some implications for interpersonal and technical leader attributes since leaders  contend with multiple organizational subsystems.  The inputs of the open system in this study are represented by strategic leader  attributes of cognitive, interpersonal, and technical skills and this study is limited to  evaluating cognitive skills.  Leaders that take part in the distance education programs  are exposed to cultural, psychosocial, structural, technical and managerial subsystems  that are discussed in Chapter 4.  The desired result or outputs of the distance  education open systems model in leader cognitive development are improved  cognitive and long term planning strategic leader skills.  The research question for this study is: Do U.S. Army War College students  increase their cognitive skills by completing the First Year of the Army War College  Distance Education Program?  Answering this question will serve to advance public  administration theory in several ways.  For example, this study is one of the first to  address the contribution of distance education to strategic leader cognitive  development.  This study is noteworthy because strategic leader cognitive  Inputs: Leader Attributes   Process: Distance Education      Outputs: Strategic Leader Attributes  Organizational Subsystems  Cognitive  Skills  Technical  Skills  Increased Strategic  Leadership  Cognitive and  Long Term  Thinking Skills  Cultural  Structural  Management  Psychosocial      Technical  Figure 1.1 A Model of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development  Interpersonal  Skills 17  development through distance education is a relatively new field of study.  Evaluating  the success of strategic leader cognitive development through distance education is an  initial step in creating new strategies for future professional development.  The Organizational Setting  The Department of Defense has four military service schools for senior  executives.  The intent of these programs is to provide a broad overview of strategic  leadership responsibilities for policy making, management, and organizational design.  The following mission statement of the college explains the institutional setting for  this study:  To prepare selected military, civilian, and international leaders for the  responsibilities of strategic leadership; educate current and future leaders on  the development and employment of military power in a joint, multinational  and interagency environment; conduct research and publish on national  security and military strategy; and engage in activities that support  Department of Defense strategic communications (Department of the Army  2004).  The organizational setting for this study is an accredited post graduate  educational program for military strategic leaders that takes place at Carlisle  Barracks, Pennsylvania.  The academic organization is designed and resourced for  post­graduate education and research.  The students of the distance education  program have diverse work experience in different levels and types of government  organizations.  Each year, over 450 distance education students are selected to  participate in the Army War College Distance Education Program.  Senior military  officers are selected for the program based on their performance records. 18  The Army War College is an ideal site to conduct this study since it has a  formal history of over a hundred and fifty years of strategic leadership education and  development.  Research subjects in this study are comprised of military officers from  various professional backgrounds in addition to war fighting such as administration,  legal, medical, information management, engineering, education, and business.  The  population of the research subjects associated with military universities is  predominately male, Caucasian ethnic background, and a graduate level of education.  This study is limited to military officers because of the small number of  civilian students that are part of the Army War College distance education student  population.  Many of the respondents have served in a number of military and civilian  career fields that facilitate interagency and in some cases international partnership.  Many of the study respondents have little experience with distance education or  computer learning and this program is their first extensive experience with online  course material.  The Army War College Distance Education Program is part of an Army  professional development program for senior leaders to prepare for future duties and  responsibilities at the strategic level.   Some of these duties include serving as  Commander of coalition forces and regional commands that require effective civil­  military coordination.  Strategic leaders in the military serve with many different  types of organizations all over the world and such as joint military staffs, interagency  and international organizations like the Department of State, NATO, and the United  Nations. 19  Students complete five courses during the first year of the USAWC distance  education program including: Strategic Leadership; International Relations and the  Use of Power; National Security Policy and Strategy; War and Military Strategy; and  Department of Defense Organization, Planning, and Strategy.  Students are typically  required to complete two essays in each course and participate in one forum (an  online threaded discussion).  All course requirements are evaluated and students are  provided with formal feedback by faculty members.  The Army War College has  integrated current and emerging battle simulations and technologies into the  curriculum with the intent of creating realistic experiential learning environments to  enhance the development of critical thinking skills .  Strategic level leaders in the military have important roles in contending with  complex civil­military relationship; they require cognitive, interpersonal, and  technical competencies.  Military doctrine defines strategic leadership as “the skillful  formulation, coordination, and application of ends (objectives), ways (courses of  action), and means (supporting resources) to promote and defend national interests” .  The Army War College distance education program develops strategic level  competencies by providing access to a wide variety of subject matter such as strategic  leadership, international relations, national security policy, and military strategy.  Distance education informational networks provide strategic leaders’ tools for  collaborative decision making in their Army War College studies and in future  endeavors such as planning, developing, and overseeing public policies of national  and international interest. 20  Public Administration scholars like Robert Behm, Frederick Mosher, and  others have written about the importance of professional development programs for  senior military leaders that work with civilian organizations to formulate and  overseeing public policy.  Samuel Huntington posits in his work on civil­military  relations that professional development should consist of a broad, liberal, and cultural  background to impart specialized skills and knowledge of a profession (Huntington  1981).  Morris Janowitz in his work on professional soldiers argues that the military  as a profession should be educated to carry out the values of the society it represents.  The Army Distance Education Program supports the ideals of these scholars by  providing students a broad array of strategic level literature with both military and  civilian frameworks and case studies.  This methodology helps develop cognitive  skills that use a balanced and critical approach to national security studies.  Distance education professional development programs provide military  members opportunities to gain insights to both military and civilian organizational  values and culture through readings and online interactions.  Access to a wide range  of information through distance education is especially important for military  members who can be somewhat isolated from civilian organizations.  The distance  education program is a means to integrate military and civilian academic experiences  and approaches to strategic issues.  In this study, respondents were able to  immediately apply what they learn in a distance education program to their  professional and personal experience.  The application of the curriculum material to  the respondents’ experience contributed to their cognitive development. 21  Conclusion  This chapter provided an overview of the study purpose, background, and  methodology. The study of strategic leadership through distance education is of  growing importance to the field of public administration because of the increasing  need for leader professional development.  Distance education is accessible and  provides some unique ways for strategic leaders to develop cognitive, interpersonal,  and technical competencies. Chapter 2 is a review of literature that focuses on the  research question of how distance education contributes to the cognitive development  of strategic leaders.  The literature review links theories of strategic leader  development with theories of distance education as applied to professional  development for public administration.  Professional development through distance  education is creating new networks and systems for policy making, management, and  organizational design.  Chapter 3 presents the research methods and explains how mixed methods  were used in the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data for analysis and  reporting.  This chapter also describes the participants, materials, and research design  procedures used in this study.  Chapter 4 is an overview of the data analysis and  findings that were a result of the mixed methods approach to the study that  incorporates both quantitative and qualitative analysis.  Collection of multiple forms  of data and analysis allow for triangulation of findings that support and add to  previous studies.  This chapter also denotes the limiters and delimiters of this study  that need to be considered for future studies.  Chapter 5 presents conclusions,  contributions of the study to theory and practices as well as recommendations for 22  future research.  Appendices of the study include the bibliography, research  instruments, data and supporting documentation.  In summary, this study is designed to evaluate how distance education  contributes to strategic leader cognitive development and to help fill gaps in the  strategic leadership literature.  Developing strategic leader competencies through  distance education is a dynamic field because of the evolving role of public  administrators in a technically sophisticated and networked global environment.  This assessment supports the continued and increased use of distance education as a  practical and effective means of strategic leader development. 23  Chapter 2 Literature Review  This review of leadership literature is an overview of conceptual and  theoretical frameworks that link strategic leader cognitive development with distance  education and public administration.  Strategic leadership describes the roles and  attributes that are required for an organization to gain and maintain competitive  advantage and to make sense of ambiguity (Jaques and Clement 1991; Zaccaro 2001;  Jacobs 2002).  Distance education is playing an increasingly important role in  strategic leader cognitive development through course content, informational  networks, and communications systems that increase capacity for both individual and  organizational learning.  Strategic leader professional development helps to ensure  leaders are kept informed of changing public administration functions such as  anticipating policy change, evolving organizational structures, and management  systems (Brewer, Selden et al. 2000).  This literature review is organized to examine both individual and  organizational theories and frameworks about strategic leadership characteristics and  cognitive development through distance education.  The first part of the literature  review examines individual aspects of cognitive development in leadership theory  such as conceptual, behavioral, and contingency models.  The second part of the  literature review examines organizational aspects of cognitive development such as  open systems, leader development, and stratified systems theory.  Both individual and  organizational aspects of leader cognitive development are important to evaluating  the role of distance education in the professional development of strategic leaders. 24  Strategic leaders are generally proactive and work indirectly with other  leaders or organizations to sort through problems with a clearly articulated vision.  Effective leaders are able to create a culture that supports achievement of  organizational goals (Jacobs 2002).  Strategic leaders often work in multinational  environments and have the responsibility for managing the relationship between the  national resources and policies (Markessini 1993; Jacobs 2002).  They create future  capabilities by managing joint and combined relationships or systems in order to meet  contingencies such as systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared  vision and team learning (Senge and Carstedy 2003).  Strategic leaders use systems thinking for examining similarities in different  issues to generalize learning from systems.  Personal mastery of cognitive skills is a  result of growth of values, beliefs, and principles that systematically guide behavior  and decision making (Mintzberg 1994; Jacobs 2002).  Methods for extending  cognitive skills through distance education are important for building effective teams  and managing complexity.  For example, distance education programs support policy  analysis by providing access to multiple perspectives and source documents that give  strategic leaders a broad spectrum of ideas and approaches for decision making,  reform, and governance.  Strategic leaders envision future organizational roles and  capabilities that are networked through computer systems.  Networked systems are  effective ways to build consensus and commitment to learning and to improve  programs through forum discussion (Bryson 1995).  An organizational systems approach to problem solving through distance  education is important to evaluating the properties that make systems similar to one 25  another and make it possible to generalize learning.  Organizational subsystems such  as values or culture, psychosocial, technical, structural, and management subsystems  provide insights to the way that leaders develop cognitive skills and competencies.  These subsystems provide strategic leaders a multidisciplinary way to evaluate  distance education as a means for cognitive development.  Strategic leaders need to balance structured and less structured approaches to  developing expertise in organizational, management, and policy by using a large  variety of information sources and networks (Simonson and Buck 2003).  Extending  discourse, collaboration, and participation through distance education systems  promotes leader competencies with a variety of informational sources.  Diverse  informational sources provide strategic leaders a broad array of  knowledge and  critical thinking of issues that is necessary for strategic level decision making  (Heineman, Bluhm et al. 1995; Fischer 2003).  The organizational subsystems model  incorporates a number of ways to evaluate factors about strategic leader cognitive  development.  The cultural subsystem includes physical and visible behavior patterns,  language, rites and rituals (Ziegenfuss 2002).  Psychosocial subsystems evaluate  personality, attitudes, perceptions, motivation, communication and learning.  Strategic leaders increase their knowledge of technical subsystems through distance  education in using evolving hardware and software that links informational and  personal networks  (Jaques and Clement 1991; Zaccaro 2001; Jacobs 2002).  Structural subsystems are the way strategic leaders understand and develop  organizational authority and power such as delegating and reporting systems. 26  Managerial subsystems include design, planning, stewardship, communication,  evaluation, coaching, controlling and evaluating organizations.  These subsystems  give strategic leaders new perspectives for professional development that supports  policy making and resource management (Lape and Hart 1997; Hanna 2003).  The organizational subsystems model provides a framework to examine and  evaluate the contribution of elements from subsystems to distance education systems.  Cognitive development allows more complex ways of thinking and feeling, a deeper  sense of self and an increasing perception of the world (London and Maurer 2004).  Several public leadership theories link strategic leader cognitive development and  distance education.  Theories, models and frameworks help to explain leadership  theory, strategic leader characteristics and institutional responsibility.  Capacity to  think creatively and systematically about complex issues contributes to cognitive  development (Jacobs 2002).  Overview of Strategic Leadership Theory  There are many ways practitioners and theorists define leadership as a  multidisciplinary field of study .  Strategic leadership is the process of creating and  translating an organizational vision into a strategy or reality (Hellriegel, Slocum et al.  1995; Goleman, McKee et al. 2002).  Leaders draw on various sources of power and  skills such as visioning, empowerment, communication, and self understanding to  gain authority and enable others to achieve goals.  Various models such as behavioral,  contingency, attribution, and transformational models examine leader traits, behavior  and contingencies to help explain the multifaceted aspects of strategic leadership 27  attributes such as cognitive, social, and problem solving skills (Zaccaro 1996; Jacobs  2002).  Behavioral models help to explain leader action such as consideration and  initiating structure that foster organizational performance and goal attainment  (Zaccaro 1996; Ziegenfuss 2002).  Contingency models emphasize the importance of  situations and contingencies such as the group environment or acceptance of the  leader, task structure, and position of power.  Attribution models suggest that a  leader’s judgment is influenced by their insights and frame of reference based on  schooling, experience and self­study.  Transformational models evaluate how leaders  utilize personal sources of power such as idealization and intellect to focus on the  individual and heighten subordinate motivation.  The evolution of leadership theory is associated with the use of technological  capability such as networks and online tools to develop cognitive capacity, fit, and  performance (Frederickson 1971; Passmore 1988).  Developments in the digital  environment are dramatically changing the dynamics of decision making and  communications because online networks and simulations can model leadership  decision making outcomes (Paparone 2004).  Stogdill and Bass analyzed over 250  studies of leadership traits.  Their synthesis of the studies indicates that strategic  leaders have a number of attributes and competencies (Stogdill and Bass 1974;  Macgregor 2003).  Strategic leaders tend to be more intelligent, dependable,  insightful, persistent, self confident, have capacity for absorbing stress, willingness to  tolerate frustration, and have the ability to influence the behavior and organize groups  (Stogdill and Bass 1974).  Researchers at Ohio State University found that strategic 28  leadership behaviors such as consideration of others and initiation of structure  contributes to the achievement of group goals (Likert 1961; Katz and Kahn 1978;  Hellriegel, Slocum et al. 1995; Bass 1998).  Contemporary leadership theories examine many individual traits that are  associated with a continuum of strategic leadership styles such as transformational,  transactional, leading or managing by exception, and laissez­faire leadership.  Transformational leadership is attributed to the influence of leader intellect, influence,  individualized and inspirational attributes (Burns 1978; Bass 1998; Bass, Jung et al.  2003).  Transactional leadership is associated with hierarchy and assumes managerial  control with contingent reward for carrying out goals.  An example of leading or  managing by exception is when leaders monitor mistakes and direct corrective action.  Laissez­faire leadership is a state where leaders are absent from decision processes  and responsibility is ignored (Bass and Avolio 2003).  Strategic leader cognitive  development is associated with transformational leadership rather than transactional,  leading by exception, or laissez­faire leadership.  Leadership styles vary according to the leader’s personal attributes like their  cognitive capacity, interpersonal, and technical skills.  Leadership traits are also  impacted by environmental and organizational subsystems such as culture,  psychosocial, structural, technical, and management.  Many public organizations  emphasize the importance of followers accepting strategic leaders based on their  performance rather than drawing power from positions (Army 1999; Shinseki and  Hesselbein 2004).  Most public organizations are service­oriented where power is  attributed to results, favorable outcomes, and performance in managing critical 29  resources.  Bureaucracy is a form of hierarchical power and computer networks are  causing organizations to operate in a less hierarchical manner.  The following table  integrates various aspects of leadership traits and competencies at the strategic,  operational, and production levels in organizational structure. This study focuses on  the traits and competencies of the strategic level leader because strategic leaders  influence operational and production level leaders.  Table 2.1 Doctrinal Leadership Framework of Competencies by Leadership  Levels (Army War College 2005).  Interpersonal  Conceptual  Technical  Influencing  Strategic  Communicating,  Negotiating,  Consensus  Building  Envision  Deal with  Uncertainty  Develop  Frames of  Reference  Leverage  Technology  Translate  Political Goals  Strategic  Planning  Evaluate  Assess  Organizational/  Operational  Understanding,  Supervising,  Communicating  Establish  Intent  Filter  Information  Understand  Systems  Maintain  Critical Skills  Resource  Management  Predict 2 nd /3 rd  Order Effects  Plan &  Preparation  Execute  Assess  Production/  Direct  Counseling &  Communicating  Reasoning,  Creative, &  Reflective  Thinking  Know  Personnel and  Equipment  Plan &  Check  Provide  Feedback 30  The overlapping themes in leadership theories, models, and frameworks  include assessment and development of strategic skills and behaviors for creating and  sustaining organizational vision, performance, and development (Quinn 1988;  Markessini 1993).  Strategic leadership focuses on the highest levels of organizations  that typically have responsibility for comprehensive programs with extensive  resources for policy making and management.  Strategic leaders also interact and  have responsibility for developing subordinate leaders at the operational and  production levels.  The highest level of leadership in most organizations is strategic  level leadership.  Strategic leadership is multifaceted and typically includes the roles  and responsibilities of establishing organizational culture or values, policy  development, resource allocation, and decision making.  Table 2.2 compares several major leadership models by attributes, variables  and limitations of each model.  Specific roles and expectations of leaders are based on  their personal development and experience.  This table helps to explain the dynamics  of leadership theories and practice that highlights traits, behavior, attribution,  transformation, and contingency.  The field of leadership is multidisciplinary in  nature and has broad implications to future individual and organizational  development.  Few research studies evaluate the development of leadership cognitive  skills through distance education.  The literature on leadership explains that cognitive  skills are traits are vital to each of the leadership models because knowledge and  conceptual skills are engaged through traits, behavior, attribution, transformation, and  contingencies. 31  Table 2.2 Comparison of Leadership Models  Traits  Behavior  Attribution  Transformation  Contingency  Model  Model  Model  Model  Model  Intellect,  Social Skills  Motivation  Experience  Consideration  (Trust,  respect)  Initiating  structure  (roles)  Judgment based  on leader  knowledge of  employee  Idealized,  Intellectual,  Individualized,  and  Inspirational  Skills  Characteristics  of leader, role,  position of  power, and  structure  of  organization  Limitation of  Models  Does not fully  consider  environmental  influences &  interpersonal  interactions  Lacks  consideration  of  environmental  factors  Leader may  have limited  knowledge  based on traits  and/or  information  sources  Span of  control and  influence to  sustain  heightened  interest &  motivation  Fails to  consider  changes in  leader  characteristics,  position,  organizational  structure and  environment  Characteristics of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development  Strategic leadership can be described as a dynamic process that is oriented  toward complex problems involving inter­organizational solutions or a system within  systems (Selznick 1984; Paparone 2004).  Strategic leaders contend with broad and  complex issue networks that are constantly changing, such as the ability to integrate  multiple planning efforts.  Strategic leadership orientation affects interpretations and  the way issues are evaluated and acted upon.  For example, trust and accountability  are some of the prevailing organizational values for dealing with “wicked” problems.  Wicked problems are problems that have many competing public interests, such as  the need for organizations to account for public spending.  Strategic leadership is a 32  process involving lifelong learning and understanding multiple vantage points as  strategic leaders evaluate how both internal and external organizations function in  order to anticipate future requirements (Heifetz 2004; Reed, Bullis et al. 2004).  Development of cognitive intelligence in strategic leaders is important to  understanding how leadership roles change in the strategic domain because  organizations are constantly changing.  Cognitive intelligence is regarded as the sum  total of all mental abilities or the repertoire of a person’s knowledge and skills at a  given time such as intellectual, critical and creative thinking (Jensen 1987).  Strategic  leaders rely on their intellectual capacity to provide organizational vision and  guidance.  Intellectual ability is thought to provide for creative and critical thinking  and an array of mental abilities to put ideas together or separate them for analysis  (Behn 1985; Jaques 1986; Heineman, Bluhm et al. 1995).  Another important  attribute of strategic leadership is critical thinking because leaders need to consider  secondary and tertiary effects of the decisions.  Critical thinking is an attempt to clarify meaning through the evaluation of  evidence (Martinelli 1987).  Creative thinking is important to developing  organizational visions and establishing unique ways to solve complex problems.  Distance education facilitates intellectual, critical, and creative thinking by expanding  strategic leader access to larger networks of information and people (Pacey and  Keough 2001).  Public organizations are increasingly using computer networks for  critical and creative thinking, problem solving and information sharing.  For example,  many public organizations seek collaborative solutions to issues by promoting public  review and comment through on line bulletin boards. 33  Strategic level leadership attributes enable organizations to learn and discover  while navigating through complexity and chaos.  Complexity is according to Elliott  Jaques “a function of the number of variables, the rate at which they are changing,  and the extent to which they are interwoven” (Jaques and Clement 1991).  Capacity  for strategic leadership increases with maturation of cognitive capacity or the ability  to develop critical and creative thinking skills (Markessini 1993).  The art of  facilitating strategic leadership skills involves evaluating the rate of growth of the  leader’s cognitive skills that can be used to predict the capacity to handle increasing  responsibility or managerial potential (Stamp 1988).  Utilizing leadership assessment  systems to measure the impact of distance education on strategic leadership cognitive  development may help to predict the potential for future strategic leader competencies  (Stamp 1988; Jacobs and Jaques 1990; Bass 1998).  Strategic leaders recognize competing values and understand personal  commitments that are tied to organizations in determining future visions and missions  (Burns 1978; Quinn 1988).  In determining a vision, public leaders learn how to  address conflicts in the values people stand for and the reality that they face (Heifetz  2004).  Strategic leaders use their cognitive abilities to assess and find ways to  achieve the organizational vision with limited resources.  They anticipate change and  seek out innovation on a global scale by using  distance education to span new  boundaries and establish networks to expand their conceptual abilities (Jacobs 2002;  Kilfoil 2003).  Measuring and evaluating the impact of distance education in developing  strategic leader cognitive capacity is important because cognitive capacity is essential 34  in handling the complexity found at high organizational levels.  Strategic leaders are  thought to need a high level of concept abstraction, capacity to parallel process or  cross­link mental models, and the capacity to do integrative thinking (Jacobs and  Jaques 1990).  Knowledge is thought to be deep, abstract, and contextualized so  experts can make decisions quickly by recognizing patterns .  A comprehensive review of leader cognition results in over 2,000 references  that contain approximately 20 theories and models (Markessini 1993; Zaccaro 2001).  Theories concerning leader cognition are diverse and according to Markessini there  are at least five distinct theoretical groups: comprehensive composite models;  network models; hierarchical taxonomies; typologies of cognition; and cognitive task­  analysis models (Markessini 1993).  This study incorporates aspects of hierarchical  taxonomies with Jaques’ theory and typologies of cognition through the use of the  Modified Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) survey instrument.  The scientific community does not have a widely accepted, comprehensive  theory of  leadership learning principles (Markessini 1993).  There are disagreements  about the role of leader intelligence, critical and creative thinking, evaluation and  mapping ability.  Cognition involves the combination of intelligence, thinking skills,  evaluation and mapping elements into meaningful patterns.  Leaders are able to  create, manipulate, and interpret those combinations into an operational map (Jaques  1986).  With greater cognitive power, the leader’s model of reality is more extensive  and complex (Markessini 1993).  This study of cognitive skills focuses on the Army  War College distance education students.  However; many of the principles from this  study can be used to evaluate civilian professional development organizations such as 35  public and private university distance education systems, fellowships, and other  professional development programs.  Many strategic leadership course curriculums  use similar leadership theory and case studies.  Strategic leaders are expected to have multiple cognitive competencies in  many facets such as business, military, technical, and political arenas.  Leaders at the  strategic level use their knowledge to create change to establish and accomplish the  institutional vision.  Strategic leaders have in depth knowledge of political, economic,  diplomatic, informational elements of national power and know how to adapt to  change and uncertainty (Army 1999; Bullis 2003).  Leaders at the highest level in  organizations define organizational vision and purpose (Barnard 1968; Zaccaro  1996).  Strategic leader responsibilities in all professions include effective  communication skills and detailed knowledge of multidisciplinary subjects to  influence decision making.  In relating an organization to the external environment,  strategic leaders scan boundaries to incorporate external resources.  Leaders at the  strategic level have access to a wide audience and use a variety of case studies with  online networks (Passmore 1988; Chisholm 1996; Laubacher and Malone 2003).  Jaques’ theories center on the ability of strategic leaders to contend with increasing  levels of complexity and to develop plans or visions that span a ten year period of  time (Jaques and Clement 1991).  Study of strategic leadership for senior military officers is important in  understanding their role in contributing to national security (Shambach 2004).  Some  of the attributes associated with strategic level leadership are: that strategic leadership 36  is indirect and involves long term planning; that it requires boundary­spanning and  environmental engagement; and that strategic leadership is built on network  development and consensus building (Markessini 1993; Ziegenfuss 1996; Freedman  2003; Kilfoil 2003).  These attributes of strategic leadership has been found to be  linked with the capability for long term planning and cognitive complexity.  Data  from research studies suggests that executives have the capability to plan and  envision with many different types of organizations over long periods of 10 to 15  years (Jacobs and Jaques 1990; Donahue 2004).  The majority of strategic level  military officers plan in an 8­12 year time frame which is normal considering the  tremendous change and complexity of government organizations and systems (Stamp  1988; Jaques and Stamp 1990; Markessini 1993).  Strategic leaders constantly span boundaries to evaluate change and determine  the effects of environmental engagement in organizational members and structure.  Public administrators engage and interact with external agencies such as corporations  and international agencies (Jacobs 1998; Macgregor 2003). More than 88% of all  strategic leaders rate network development as important to their roles because  networks provide greater sources of information (Pettigrew and Fenton 2000; Senge  and Carstedy 2003).  Consensus building is not rated as highly as network  development but has a significant impact on the way strategic leaders think and act.  Many senior leaders are adept at fostering social and political relationships that are  conducive to consensus building.  Today and in the future, interpersonal relationship  building is being accomplished online and through collaborative processes like  distance education programs (Zaccaro 1996). 37  Frames of reference are the complex mental models that are required to  understand interdependencies and linkages in organizational causal maps.  Strategic  leaders use frames of reference to ensure that the vision and direction of the  organization fits with environmental change (Katz and Kahn 1978; Hamel and  Prahalad 1993).  The Army Research Institute’s extensive leadership studies indicate  that strategic level leaders need the ability to contend with longer time frames, to  interact with external constituents, to develop networks and consensus, and to  develop complex cognitive maps (Schwartzman 2003; Williams 2003; Reed, Bullis et  al. 2004).  Strategic leader characteristics are a determinant of the type of educational  systems that are best suited for their professional development.  For example, leaders  with high conceptual capacity generally desire an autonomous educational  environment like distance education that allows for self directed research (Boyatzis,  Cowen et al. 1995; Moore and Kearsley 1996).  Strategic leaders utilize computer  networks that have many types of informational and educational sources to maximize  organizational adaptation and performance.  Leaders in the Department of Defense  promote distance education as a means for preparing organizational members for  environmental and organizational change.  Strategic leaders have the ability to use the  expansive properties of distance education systems to enhance their conceptual  capacity, interpersonal skills, knowledge, and temperament to learn.  Figure 2.1 illustrates the relationship of strategic leader characteristics and  performance requirements for achieving complex and long term planning.  This  model illustrates how the strategic leader characteristics are important for increasing 38  performance requirements, organizational adaptation, and performance.  Top level  leaders must be capable of dealing with and communicating abstract concepts in a  way that most people can understand.  Figure 2.1. Strategic Leader Characteristics and Performance: A Research  Model (Zaccaro, 1986).  Strategic leaders generally have highly developed interpersonal skills,  knowledge, and temperament that contribute to achieving high standards of  excellence.  Long term planning time frames, boundary spanning, network  development, and an organizational frame of reference provide strategic leaders the  means to adapt and maximize organizational performance.  The preceding model is  an example of how individual leadership models are linked with organizational  leadership models.  Aligning strategic leader capability and skills with the right level  Strategic Leader  Characteristics •  Conceptual Capacity •  Flexible integrative  complexity •  Interpersonal skills •  Knowledge •  Temperament  Strategic Leader Performance  Requirements •  Long term work and planning  time frame •  Boundary spanning and  environmental engagement •  Network development and  consensus building •  Development of causal map  or organizational frame of  reference  Strategic Leader Development  and Education  Organizational Adaptation and  Performance: Maximization of  Return from Environment 39  of performance is instrumental in ensuring effective performance and congruity in  professional development (Mohrman and Cummings 1989; Bass 1998).  Strategic Leader Cognitive Development as an Open System  Strategic leaders employ systems thinking in organizational learning and  cognitive development through holistic approaches to problems that understand  interrelationships, processes, indirect effects and logic.  Systems analysis provides a  framework for evaluating public administration and specifically strategic leadership  elements of organizational design and management.  Theories about open systems  evaluate how the environment and technology impacts organizations.  Open systems  also help to systematically evaluate values, technology, structure, psychosocial and  management subsystems (Bertalanffy 1968; Katz and Kahn 1978; Chisholm and  Elden 1993).  Strategic leader cognitive development systems like distance education  programs are organizational systems to evaluate strategic leader cognitive  development.  These systems are comprised of inputs, processes, outputs, and  feedback loops.  Inputs are the skills or systems such as the initial state of the leader.  Processes are the means that are employed in achieving an outcome or performance.  Outputs are the outcomes or the result of distance education in developing strategic  leaders. Feedback loops operate within a context or environment that creates updates  to system operating environments (Jacobs 2002).  All systems tend toward  equilibrium that is less energy demanding and evolves to higher levels of  performance. 40  Figure 2.2.  Open Systems of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through  Distance Education  Inputs that are essential for cognitive development of strategic leaders through  distance education include attributes such as quality education and operational  experience.  Processes are a means for organizational analysis to evaluate  organizational subsystem variables such as distance education culture, structure, and  management on strategic leader development.  Outputs are the results of the process  in shaping strategic leaders such as the networks that distance education utilize to  expand global learning.  Feedback systems provide a means to use developments  from the distance education process such as increased cognitive skills to improve  leadership attributes.  Most organizations and individuals no longer function as what von  Bertalanffy describes as closed systems or organizations that have no interaction with  the environment and technology (Bertalanffy 1968).  Global connections between  people and organizations are increasingly an open system that is also a primary means  Inputs  Processes  Strategic  Leader  Capabilities:  Complex,  Cognitive &  Long Term  Thinking Skills  Outputs  Feedback/ Redesign  Strategic  Leader  Attributes:  Education,  Experience,  Initiative  Distance Education  Organizational Subsystems:  Culture  Psychosocial  Structural  Technological  Management & Leadership 41  of communication and learning.  Leaders that interact with a variety of sources of  information and communication are better able to stay informed of change and  innovation.  Strategic leaders are like open systems in the way that they constantly  scan boundaries and incorporate use of developing organizational systems such as  distance education programs to improve performance management.  Feedback is an  important aspect of the open system processes, adjustments, and adaptations that  strategic leaders make in adapting to the changing environment.  In open systems,  feedback helps to improves processes and outputs.  An example of feedback in  distance education is course surveys that help administrators and educators improve  or redesign curriculum to meet student needs and requirements.  Distance education organizational subsystems that are part of the process in  open systems for developing strategic leader cognitive skills and includes the need  for: culture, psychosocial, structural, technological, and management subsystems.  Each of the subsystems is considered to be internal to organizational performance and  part of the integrated distance learning system.  Strategic leaders consider these  subsystems in balancing shifting priorities and to broaden their insights to  environmental change.  Organizational subsystems as illustrated in the following diagram serve as a  framework in this study for strategic leaders to consider many dimensions of distance  education systems (Jacobs, 2002; Ziegenfuss 2002).  The feedback and redesign  process also integrates changes from the environment into the system.  Open systems  are dynamic and aid in helping strategic leaders to transform both individually and  with their organizations. 42  The framework in Figure 2.2 provides a comprehensive means to evaluate  subsystems in strategic leader cognitive development through distance education.  This framework spans a continuum of the multidimensional factors that contribute to  strategic leader cognitive development and is part of the analysis part of this study.  The subsystem framework and descriptions are a means to organize and explain the  quantitative and qualitative data associated with strategic leadership cognitive  development theory and practice.  Figure 2.3 Organizational Subsystems that Impact Strategic Leader Cognitive  Development through Distance Education (Ziegenfuss 2002).  Organizational subsystem frameworks serve as a systematic way to triangulate  quantitative assessments from the survey instrument as well as the qualitative focus  group and individual interviews.  The MCPA survey instrument is limited in that it  assesses primarily organizational structure, leadership, and management.  Qualitative  CULTURE  Autonomy  Personal Networks  Complexity  PSYCHOSOCIAL  Interpersonal relations  Ethics  Uncertainty and Risk  LEADERSHIP &  MANAGEMENT  Long Range Planning  Guidance & Frameworks  Communication &  Feedback Mechanisms  STRUCTURE  Organization  Rules, Systems,  Methods, Procedures  TECHNOLOGY  Effective/Efficient  Informational Tools  Evolving 43  results from this study address how cultural, psychosocial, structural, technology and  subsystems in distance education contribute to strategic leader development.  The  multidimensional aspects of the organizational subsystem frameworks are important  to ensuring a thorough analysis as well as identifying gaps and overlapping factors  that impact strategic leader cognitive development through distance education.  The culture subsystem includes the goals and values of strategic leader  development through distance education such as utilization of technology for  maximum learning potential.  Culture is also the type of environment for strategic  learning such as higher education institutions that support cognitive development  through discovery and flexible course scheduling (Cranton and King 2003; King and  Lawler 2003).  Organizational members look for ways to identify and reinforce their  membership through cultural systems such as non attribution policies in academic  institutions so members can share ideas without being taken out of context.  This is  especially important with distance education where the audience for idea and  information exchange is not as controlled as in an institutional setting.  The psychosocial subsystem is the dynamics of individuals and group  interaction such as behavior, motivation, status, roles, and relationships.  Psychosocial aspects of distance education are shaped and supported in the way that  faculty and administrators interact with strategic leader students to aid in self  discovery.  Strategic leaders generally like to work on their own and have high  motivation for learning (Jacobs 2002; Shambach 2004).  The role of faculty members  is important in encouraging students to interact and learn from their individual and  collective experience. 44  The structural subsystem is the degree of formalization, standardization and  specialization in organizations such as establishing policy and procedure.  Strategic  leaders have experience with various organizational structures.  They are aware of  social requirements such as the value of the interaction of students and faculty to  promote strategic leader learning and understanding.  Distance education is a system  that allows strategic leaders to learn in a less formal environment where students have  greater control over scheduling and development of course requirements.  The technical subsystem refers to the knowledge to design, develop,  distribute, and support professional development products and services such as the  types of video or simulations used in courses.  Strategic leaders need exposure to  diverse and complex systems to promote learning and to mirror environmental change  (Jaques and Stamp 1995; Jacobs 2002).  The distance education program provides a  number of different types of curriculum materials that can be downloaded such as  text, videos, and interactive mediums.  Increasing numbers of students are  downloading text and video files that they can review while traveling or commuting.  High quality technical systems are instrumental to the support and confidence of  strategic leaders who expect high standards of performance.  Development of technological systems in distance education is promoting  strategic leadership by creating networks for critical and creative thinking.  New  educational systems such as simulations and threaded discussions allow leaders to  synthesize a large quantity of information.  The new science of leadership is about  sustaining and creating knowledge relationships among networks.  These networks  are where strategic leadership is dispersed and distributed to members based on their 45  value to the organization (Paparone 2004).  Evolving ideas about strategic leadership  skills and organizational structure are associated with changing environmental and  technological conditions such as globalization.  The managerial subsystem integrates the organization with the environment to  include distance education goal setting, design, evaluation, and control processes.  Strategic leaders have well developed managerial attributes that include stewardship,  communication, and evaluation of distance education systems.  Strategic leaders are  more likely to use feedback systems and reflective thinking to manage and assess  distance education systems (Berge and Schrum 1998; Jacobs 2002).  These skills are  important to the way strategic leaders synthesize complex ideas.  Organizational subsystems are important to the overall design and  implementation of distance education systems for strategic leaders because the  subsystems provide networks to help reinforce learning.  For example, the culture of  academic institutions is to promote learning and administrators are concerned about  the psychosocial subsystems or how students feel about the education process.  In  addition to these five subsystems, strategic leaders also take into consideration the  external systems of an organization or the forces outside the boundaries of the  organization (Ziegenfuss 2002).  External systems that impact distance education and  strategic leadership such as economics, politics, and globalization are instrumental to  understanding the way that leaders develop their cognitive abilities.  The  interrelationships among the systems indicate there are trends and important  information points for analysis of strategic leader cognitive development through  distance education . 46  Roles of Strategic Leaders in Organizations  Strategic leaders need to have cognitive skills, appropriate knowledge, skills,  and leadership experience of large organizations to manage complexity (Burns 1978;  Jaques and Clement 1991; Drucker 2002).  Organizational structures are made up of  layers or stratums that correlate leader roles and capability in planning over various  time spans.  Levels of complexity correspond with primal, rational, developmental,  and metaphysical management such as childhood and adolescence; daily business  discourse; the conceptual world of management; and universal order that transcends  the corporate world (Jaques and Clement 1991).  The highest strata or strategic  leadership is concerned about setting and sustaining public and corporate vision and  culture.  Strategic leader development is important for effective public administration  because strategic leaders guide the vision, organizational structure, and performance.  Large organizations have multiple levels of leadership that need to be  integrated to ensure effectiveness and legitimacy (Fernandez 2005).  Strategic leaders  make choices within the context of the situations that occur and are anticipated in the  future based on experience and their knowledge.  Legitimacy of power is measured in  the leaders’ accountability to others (Vinzant and Crothers 1998).  These leadership  skills are especially important in the military which the public has entrusted the  security of the nation.  Complex situations such as the national security requires both  military and civilian strategic leaders to have complex cognitive skills for planning  and decision making (Jaques and Stamp 1990; Bass and Avolio 2000). 47  The leader professional development model depicts how leaders use a  combination of institutional, operational, and self development programs. Leadership  attributes such as intellect was considered to be a result of institutional training and  education however; experiential assignments and self development programs are  increasingly important in addressing specific leader needs.  Institutional training and  education includes the formal educational programs that are part of academic  programs and institutions.  Operational assignments and experiential learning often  provides leaders practical, real world implications of leader development.  Self  development programs are the actions leaders take to increase specialized knowledge  and competencies as a result of educational study  Table 2.3 Leader Development Model (U.S. Army, 2006)  Types of Leader  Institutional  Assignments &  Self Development  Development  Training & Education    Experiences  Examples of  Development  Programs  Resident &  Distance Education,  Certificate  Programs  Developmental  Assignments  Specialized Study,  Professional  Reading  This study is limited to leader development in institutional education however;  the model shows the linkage of distance education between the three modes of leader  development. For example, distance education often serves as a linkage between  institutional education, experiential assignments and self development since much of  our learning and work environment is linked with computer systems.  There are a  number of ways that leaders use both formal and informal systems to further their 48  cognitive development such as formal education programs, certificate, and  information briefings that are distributed through distance education.  Expansion of  this model could be considered in future studies to illustrate other means of strategic  leader cognitive development beyond institutional education.  Distance education is in some organizations considered to be self  development.  However; institutional distance education provides interaction with  informational and personal networks that goes far beyond self development.  Strategic  theorists develop strategic concepts that integrate elements of history, power, and  national security.  Strategic practitioners develop and execute plans that employ both  military and civilian organizations to accomplish the strategic ends, means, and ways.  In distance education, strategic leaders use online resources to increase their ability to  handle complex and uncertain environments.  Effective organizations are a result of  the ability of leaders, theorists and practitioners to coordinate, formulate, implement,  and evaluate new strategies to adapt to complex and rapidly changing environments  (Ziegenfuss 2002).  Army doctrine advocates a hierarchical approach to leadership where strategic  leadership shapes organizational culture.  Strategic leaders in the Army establish  force structure, allocate resources, communicate strategic vision, and prepare for  future roles (Army 1999; Shinseki and Hesselbein 2004).  Strategic leaders are  developed by concentrating on interpersonal, conceptual, and technical competency  sets through learning and experience.  Military educational institutions like the Army  War College are developing ways to assist strategic leaders in developing strategic  level cognitive capacity (Holzer 1999; Murray 2000; Heikkila and Isett 2004). 49  Zacarro defines cognitive leader capacities as intelligence, analytical reasoning,  flexible integrative complexity, cognitive skills,  and creativity (Zaccaro 1996;  Zaccaro 2001).  Effective strategic leaders understand how to develop a vision that articulates  the application of ends (objectives), ways (courses of action) and means (resources)  to accomplish national interests (Freeman 2003).  The Army War College curriculum  is designed for students to gain insights into strategic thinking and decision making  through the examples of strategic leaders, strategic theorists and strategic  practitioners (Shambach 2004).  Strategic leaders integrate vision with resources for  organizations to coordinate ends, means, and ways.  Strategic leadership studies indicate that cognitive problem solving skills are  defined in terms of skill application of superordinate cognitive functions.  Cognitive  leadership capacity is a measure of  individual ability to effectively use information  processing, inductive and deductive reasoning (Jaques and Stamp 1990; Zaccaro  2001).  For example, leaders with low cognitive complexity are most comfortable  with simple tasks and concepts that can be completed within a year.  Leaders with  high cognitive complexity have the ability to process complex concepts over a long  time frame (Jaques and Clement 1991; Markessini 1993; Heikkila and Isett 2004).  Strategic leader cognitive complexity is associated with strategic level tasks  that in some cases may take in excess of twenty years to plan and develop depending  on the individual’s experience and environment (Kanter 1995; Prahalad 1998).  Many  strategic leader skills are a result of educational and operational experiences that are  important in building cognitive capacity and problem solving skills (Hall 2002; 50  Heifetz 2004).  A combination of experience, cognitive capacity, and personality  characteristics tend to favor individuals for strategic level leadership (Jaques and  Stamp 1995; Gunawardena, Wilson et al. 2003).  Strategic leadership skills can be  developed through a number of means such as direct personal interaction and online  interaction.  Researchers are finding that cognitive development through online  learning to be as effective as traditional educational experiences (Bass and  Steidlmeier 1992; Schwartzman 2003).  The Army strategic leadership construct is grounded in hierarchical  organizational structure because it is thought that this structure helps to facilitate  accountability and control.  Most organizational hierarchical structures are defined as  strategic, operational, and production levels.  Elliott Jaques’ Stratified Systems  Theory (SST) evaluates how leader cognitive skills are a product of combing  organizational elements into meaningful patterns.  Leaders at various levels in  organizations have different skills and abilities in translating mental representations  of systems into operational maps of reality based on their educational and experiential  background.  Strategic leaders have frames of reference that are oriented toward their  experience and the external environment.  Jaques defines cognitive power as “the  mental force a person can exercise in processing and organizing information and in  constructing that map” (Jacobs and Jaques 1990).  Strategic leaders must be able to  guide an organization to contend effectively complexity and long term planning such  as realizing second and third order effects of decision­making as well as cause and 51  effect chains.  Examples of cause and effect chains are the rules and outcomes of  policies developed by strategic leaders that address specific issues in organizations.  Stratified Systems Theory (SST): A Strategic Leadership Model  Elliot Jaques and others found that the highest levels of organizational  leadership rely on increasingly sophisticated or strategic cognitive capabilities.  Cognitive capabilities are important for decision making and interpersonal  relationships that set a common direction for organizational members (Jaques and  Clement 1991).  Jaques’ model delineates seven stratums of leadership that can be  categorized within three categories of strategic, operational, and production levels of  leadership.  Jaques’ seven levels of organizational leadership structure correspond to  Mintzberg’s theory of divisional management (Mintzberg 1989).  Most organizations  distinguish between strategic, managerial, and production levels of leadership.  Complexity increases at each succeeding level in organizations because of the  increasing levels of uncertainty.  The level of uncertainty associated with problem  solving increases at higher levels of leadership.  Higher levels of uncertainty are  linked with increasing cognitive ability in complex decision making such as  predicting future strategies.  Jaques uses the stratums of leadership domain and responsibility model to link  leader planning time span with their age as illustrated in Table 2.4 that shows the  potential growth of leaders based on the leader’s ability to plan measured in time.  The individual potential is based on no interruptions to the individual’s cognitive  development as a leader (Jaques and Stamp 1990) .  The second line (darkest line on 52  the chart) from the top of the chart, leaders that are 20 years old in stratum IV  management or operational positions have the potential to achieve stratum VII at  approximately 65 years of age.  Table 2.4 Institutional Stratums of Leadership Domain and Responsibility  (Jaques 1991).  Stratum  Civilian/Military  Responsibilities  Time Span  20 years old  Age in Years  40 years old  60 years old  VII: Strategic  CEO/Combatant  Command  Creates Policy  20+ yrs  VI: Strategic  Corporate  Leader/ Corps  Command  Applies Policy  10+ yrs  V: Top  Management  Division  Command  Directs Complex  Organizations  5+ yrs  IV: Middle  Management/  District Leader/  Brigade  Command  2+ yrs  III: Lower  Management/  Battalion  Command  1+ yrs  II: Production  Manager  Team/Platoon  Leader  3+ months  I: Production/  Tactical  Individual/Small  Group Leader  < 3 months 53  Stratified Systems Theory (SST) offers insights to individual leadership  development and roles within organizational structures that are important to growth,  succession and innovation.  SST describes the increasing complexity of leadership  duties and roles in an organization that includes several levels of leader performance.  The performance levels include direct or production level of performance; operational  or mid level performance; and strategic level performance (Jaques 1986).  Organizational modes of operation may include directing operating systems at  the production level; general operation of complex systems at an operational level;  and strategic mode of operations for the development or deployment of complex  systems.  Organizational structure emphasizes the need for conceptual skills,  flexibility, and competence in each successive level of the organization (Jaques and  Stamp 1990; Jacobs 1998).  This research design focuses on the top level of the table  or the strategic level of leadership.  The interaction of strategic leaders with other  levels in the organization is important in evaluating cognitive development,  communication, and performance.  Table 2.5 illustrates an integration of the structure of Jaques’ Stratified  Systems Theory to assess leadership attributes of large scale organizations (Jaques  1986).   The table includes a comparison of civilian and military leadership levels in  organizations to illustrate the roles and functions at each institutional level.  Not all  organizations have seven stratums or levels of leadership that are depicted in the table  but most organizations have production, operational and strategic levels of leadership.  This study focuses primarily at the strategic level of leadership however, strategic  leaders interact frequently with operational and production level leaders. 54  The various levels of leadership depicted in Table 2.5 help to differentiate and  evaluate the degree of strategic leader roles and responsibilities.  This research design  focuses on the top domains of military and civilian leadership or stratums IV – VII  that are the top two levels (military strategic levels of leadership that are Army  Brigade level and above).  Strategic leadership Stratums IV­VII are the levels that the  majority of general officers and CEOs perform.  The table describes the time frames,  tasks, domain, and level of responsibility typically associated with each stratum.  Strategic, managerial, and production levels of civilian organizational  structure are similar to the military strategic, operational, and tactical levels of  leadership as shown in Table 2.5.  This study focuses on the strategic level of  leadership however, interactions occur between the different levels of leadership.  The organizational relationship between the levels of leadership is especially  important with the flattening of organizational structure due to increasing interaction  of military and civilian agencies.  Globalization is causing civilian and military operations to become  increasingly integrated to accomplish the diverse roles and missions such as  reconstruction and delivering humanitarian aid.  These roles and missions require that  leaders have knowledge of many different types of organizational structure for  effective operations such as contractors that are supporting military operations in Iraq.  For example, strategic level military leaders interact with all levels of international  governments, non governmental organizations, and multinational corporations. 55  Table 2.5 Institutional Stratums of Leadership Domain and Responsibility,  Adapted from Level and Type of Capability in Relation to Executive  Organization, (Jaques 1991).  Stratum Time  Span  General Task  Requirements  Domain  Military/Civilian  Military Level of  Command  VII  20+ yrs  Creates Policies  Strategic  Combatant Command  Army  VI  10+ yrs  Applies Policy  Corps  V  5+ yrs  Direct Complex  Systems  Operational /  Management  Division  IV  2+ yrs  Allocates to units  Brigade  III  1+ yrs  Develops and  executes policy  Tactical/  Production  Battalion  II  3+ months  Directs work;  Solves problems  Company  I  < 3  months  Hands on  Platoon/Section  The top section of Table 2.5 depicts the strategic level of leadership that  accomplishes long range planning and interfaces with the external environment.  The  middle level of leadership depicted in the table is the operational or organizational  leadership section that is responsible for mid range planning, work coordination and  resource allocation. The bottom section of the table is the tactical or production layer 56  where mission requirements are executed and evaluated.  This research focuses on the  top level of the table or the strategic level of organizational leadership.  Some academics are critical of SST theory because several research studies  indicate that strategic leaders make better decisions when they have greater access to  information and developmental systems such as distance education (Paparone 2004).  Organizations are also becoming less hierarchical and have transitional structures to  adapt to change although most organizations continue to operate with strategic,  operational and production levels of leadership.  Further research is needed to fill the  gap in public administration literature about the complex nature of cognitive  development through technological systems such as distance education (Yukl 1998;  Heikkila and Isett 2004).  Stratified Systems Theory (SST) helps to explain how military leadership  creates conditions for effective organizational relationships.  Strata of leadership  positions are related to levels of work, responsibility, and complexity.  Understanding  the various dimensions and potential of leaders provides insights about the level of  complexity an individual can generate and the capabilities that leaders prefer in their  roles.  SST examines leader growth, capability to act in a leadership role that  includes taking responsibility at increasingly complex levels (Jaques and Stamp  1995).  Cognitive capacity is an important measure of strategic leader capability to  perform higher levels of work because it measures the individual capacity for  complexity over time (Jaques and Clement 1991; Heikkila and Isett 2004).  SST  assumes that bureaucratic organizations need a requisite number of managerial levels 57  because work at each successive level is thought to be qualitatively different from the  other levels.  The theory also assumes that individuals are different in the capacity to  carry out work at successive organizational levels and self directed means such as  distance education (Lewis 1996).  Public administrators need multidimensional  leadership attributes such as intellectual, social and problem solving skills because of  the complexity of public needs and issues.  For example, public managers have to  carefully balance political, legal, and budget considerations in public planning and  decision making because public sector leaders face greater scrutiny than their private  sector counterparts.  There are several links between Jaques’ leadership studies in the fields of  mental complexity and cognitive development.  For example, some research suggests  that personal leadership development is a series of successive stages of cognitive  restructuring that requires assessment and feedback of individual and organizational  performance (Piaget 1965; Cummings and Worley 2001).  Piaget found that behavior  is a means of adapting to the environment utilizing mental organizations or schemes  that individuals use to represent the world for equilibrium (Piaget 1965; Huilt and  Hummel 2003).  Schemes are reflexes to control behavior and are developed through  assimilation or transforming the environment and accommodation which is changing  cognitive structures to adapt to the environment (Huilt and Hummel 2003).  More  recent research findings indicate that leaders demonstrate potential for higher level of  performance capacity based on their individual conceptual skills and way of acting  (Jaques and Stamp 1995; Zaccaro 1996; Bass and Avolio 2000; Donahue 2004). 58  Conceptual skills include professional competence, conceptual competence,  and socio­political awareness (Jacobs and Jaques 1990).  Professional competence is  the ability of the officer to perform his or her duties including capabilities such as  technical competence, quickness in understanding new situations, and knowing how  the institution functions (Markessini 1993).  Strategic leaders are generally quick  learners, provide sound organizational guidance, and have high professional  competence in understanding complex situations.  These leaders effectively use  resources to accomplish the mission and have the expertise in understanding realistic  quality standards and keen sensitivity.  Cognitive competence assesses the breadth and depth of the leader’s frame of  reference and vision as well as their comfort level in developing long range plans and  objectives (Jacobs 1998).  Individuals with cognitive competence understand how  they fit in the larger picture and are able to see all sides of a problem as well as  separate the trivial from the important.  Socio­political awareness is especially  important for strategic military leaders in evaluating the sensitivity to political issues  and interests beyond the military.  Strategic leaders need to develop a wide range of  competencies to compete in political arenas to secure support and commitment such  as direct and indirect networks .  Bureaucratic organizations like the Army generally have more supervisory  levels than the work actually requires which creates redundancies in leadership roles.  Environmental changes are creating new forms of organizational structure that  challenge future strategic leaders to think creatively (Collins and Porras 1994).  SST  assesses and predicts individual ability to perform at different levels of conceptual 59  complexity in organizations based on the individual’s cognitive skills and age.  Strategic leaders need cognitive skills to anticipate and adapt to environmental  changes such as crisis, organizational restructuring, and cultural change.  Strategic leaders think and lead in a way that encourages others to commit to  an organizational vision based on shared language, participation, and common  meaning.  For example, Combatant Commanders in military organizations have  similar roles as State Department Ambassadors in providing resources to carry out  national security policy decisions.  The AWC distance education program facilitates a  common educational experience for State Department and military strategic leaders to  integrate their ideas and experiences in long term planning for national strategy and  security.  Strategic leaders determine span of control, types of operations, planning  horizons, and the extent of influence on global and national perspectives.  The highest  organizational level leaders need cognitive capacity for complexity and long term  planning to perform strategic level duties and responsibilities.  The Modified Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) survey instrument was  developed by Gillian Stamp based on Jaques’ model to measure individual capacity to  deal with complexity and to determine potential for future leadership (Jacobs and  Jaques 1990).  The leadership growth rate is the rate at which individuals will  increase in capacity to handle complexity over time, absent any intervention.   This  growth rate is of particular interest in determining leader potential for serving as  future strategic leaders. Cognitive growth is found to be accelerated by diversity of  individual experience and higher education such as the Army War College distance  education program (Jacobs and Jaques 1990; Hall 2002). 60  The statements in the MCPA survey instrument are designed to assess  individual capacity for complexity in leadership roles that are a result of experience.  The six sets of statements in the MCPA provide respondents a choice ranging from  low to high complexity.  A range of choices measures the extent to which an  individual is comfortable with unstructured, complex, or open ended scenarios.  The  MCPA is predictive of an individual’s potential for growth over time in capacity to  deal with complexity that exists at higher level organizations (Stamp 1988; Jaques  and Stamp 1990; Jaques and Stamp 1995).  The details about how the MCPA survey  instrument was utilized in this study is explained in detail in the following  methodology and analysis chapters.  Conclusion  As a relatively new and developing field of professional development,  distance education is making increasingly important contributions to strategic leader  cognitive development as it relates to public administration.  Previous studies and  theories on leader cognitive development focus primarily on traditional educational  programs and operational levels of leadership.  This study is grounded in Elliot  Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory and the MCPA survey instrument that has been  utilized in previous studies that evaluated the potential of leaders in both military and  civilian organizations.  The SST theory and MCPA survey instrument have not been  previously used in leadership studies pertaining to strategic leader cognitive  development through distance education. 61  The literature on strategic leader leadership and professional development is  derived from a multidisciplinary field of study.  However, there is a gap in the  literature concerning leader cognitive development through distance education.  Leadership theory is evolving because of the development of new online educational  and experiential systems that  prepare future leaders for increasing levels of  complexity and responsibility.  Literature pertaining to strategic leader cognitive  development indicates that higher levels of education and diversity of experience are  important to evaluating environmental and technological changes (Kanter 1995; Hall  2002).  This study is designed to address some of these gaps in the literature and  provide some insights based on research about distance education professional  development systems that contribute to leader cognitive development. 62  Chapter 3 Methodology  This chapter presents an overview of the study methodology by identifying  the research question, the participants, survey materials, research design, and study  time line.  The intent of this study is to determine if the Army War College Distance  Education program contributes to the cognitive development of senior leaders and  what aspects of the program are important.  This study uses mixed methods with both  quantitative and qualitative data as a way to examine the multidimensional aspects of  strategic leader development.  The mixed methods process offers a balanced and in  depth analysis of strategic leader cognitive development.  Mixed methods also  supports triangulation of the data and provides the researcher a process to combine  the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the research (Patton 1990; Creswell 1998;  Denzin and Lincoln 1998).  In this study the investigator uses data from surveys,  focus groups, and individual interviews to evaluate and triangulate patterns of  responses.  Creswell emphasizes that combined qualitative and quantitative designs  encourages better understanding of the concepts being explored through triangulation  with several sources of data.  Denzin defines triangulation as “the combination of  methodologies in the study of the same phenomenon” (Denzin 1978).  Multi­data  approaches to analysis achieve broader and often better results.  Triangulation of data  includes a mixture of measuring direct reports, feelings, and behaviors from the  respondents’ experience with the distance education program primarily from the  survey instruments, focus groups, and individual interviews. 63  The qualitative tradition of inquiry for this research is a case study that  examines distance education programs as bounded systems.  A bounded system is  limited by time and place, such as the specific study of the Class of 2007 at the Army  War College analyzed in this work.  This case study investigates the success of  student cognitive development at the Army War College, with its cultural, physical,  political, historical, and social environment (Creswell 1998).  Qualitative research serves to explore human or systems problems by  analyzing words, data, and reports that provide detailed views of respondents in a  natural setting.  In this study, the investigator triangulated data from participant  responses to the survey instruments, focus groups, and individual interviews but also  examined trends from online threaded forum discussions and written requirements.  These multiple sources of data provide patterns and trends about the way respondents  approached their distance education experience.  The respondents’ performance in the  program written and forum requirements provided the investigator some insights  about the importance of these requirements to leader cognitive development.  Quantitative research in this study uses validating survey instruments such as  the strategic leadership course survey and the Modified Career Path Appreciation  (MCPA) survey instrument.  The strategic leadership course survey was administered  after the first course in the distance education program and was designed for  respondents to assess how the curriculum, course objectives, online materials, and  evaluative requirements contributed to their development as strategic level leaders.  The MCPA survey was administered at the beginning and end of the first year of the  program and assessed respondent understanding of the transition from managerial 64  positions at the organizational level to responsibilities requiring indirect leadership  competencies at the strategic level.  The investigator triangulated data from the course  survey, MCPA survey instrument, focus groups, and individual interviews.  Results  served to identify and explain the unique elements of the distance education process  that contributed to strategic leader cognitive development.  An ethnographic audit was used in this study as an element of the research  design that involves prolonged observation of the group.  The fundamental activities  of ethnographers to gather evidence through fieldwork, document respondent  viewpoints, and collect verbatim statements from respondents.  The investigator  observed the respondents over a fifteen month period during their participation in the  distance education program.  As a member of the distance education program faculty,  the investigator observed as well as interviewed, members of the study group  (Creswell 1998).  The ethnographer observed the respondent behavior and inquired  about the meaning of the behavior by studying the course curriculum, student course  submissions, and surveys (Passmore 1988; Martin and Frost 1996; Weick and  Westley 1996; Creswell 1998).  This study provides an overview of the Army War College culture and  community with a detailed description of the distance education program course  content, methodology, and the respondents’ demographic background.  Patterns and  trends in the respondents’ cognitive growth as a result of completing the distance  education program are highlighted by their comments in the study surveys and  interviews.  This work was accomplished through action research since the 65  investigator took part in the formal instruction and evaluation of the respondents’  course work.  The ethnography of this study seeks to establish a holistic perspective of the  cognitive development of strategic leaders through distance education.  This research  design required considerable time with students and faculty members in order to  understand fully the culture of strategic leader development through distance  education.  An important step of the research process was to audit the distance  education program and to examine the organizational environment.  The audit was  accomplished by evaluating respondent performance records of written and online  forum requirements, reviewing course surveys, and talking with the respondents in  the focus group and individual interviews.  The auditing process provided some  insight about the respondents’ behaviors, values and assumptions about the distance  education process that are presented in Chapter 4.  The following section is an  overview of the Army War College distance education program and the systems that  are used to evaluate leader cognitive development.  Overview of the Army War College Distance Education Program  The mission of the Army War College (AWC) is to prepare selected military,  civilian, and international leaders for the responsibilities of strategic leadership; to  educate current and future leaders on the development and employment of land power  in a joint, multinational and interagency environment; to conduct research and publish  on national security and military strategy; and to engage in activities that support the  Army’s strategic communications efforts. AWC provides both resident and 66  nonresident instruction.  The resident program is a full time, ten month graduate  school program and the nonresident or distance education program is a part time, two  year program.  Only 300 officers are selected each year for the resident program  while the non resident education program can accommodate over 400 students each  year.  The non resident program is called the Distance Education Program and is  administered by the Department of Distance Education (DDE).  The DDE program parallels the resident program but is conducted primarily  online.  Two summer resident courses are part of the program, however.  The resident  courses take place after students have completed the first five courses in the first year  and again upon completion of five more courses in the second year of the program.  The summer resident courses are two weeks in duration and are designed to facilitate  student and faculty communications as to well as reinforce curriculum objectives  through lectures about strategic leadership topics such as ethics, globalization, and  civil­military roles.  This case study focuses on the first year of the distance education  program.  The first year of study in the Army War College Distance Education Program  commences in June and ends with the completion of the first resident course the last  two weeks of June in the following year.  The online study consists of courses in  Strategic Leadership, International Relations and the Use of Power, National Security  Policy and Strategy, War and Military Strategy, and Department of Defense  Organization and Strategy.  The following table and section is a summary of the  courses that are in the first year of the Army War College Distance Education  Program and a detailed explanation of each of the courses.  The first year of study is 67  designed to prepare the student for strategic leadership roles and responsibilities and  challenges the student with strategic level issues, critical thinking skills, and graduate  level writing skills.  Table 3.1 Department of Distance Education Curriculum Schedule  Course 501  Course 512  Course 522  Course 532  Course 541  Strategic  Leadership  International  Relations and  the Use of  Power  National  Security Policy  and Strategy  War and  Military  Strategy  DoD  Organization,  Planning and  Strategy  Starts: 1 June  Ends: 1  August  Starts:1 August  Ends: 1 October  Starts: 1  October  Ends: 1  December  Starts:  1  December  Ends: 15  February  Starts: 15  February  Ends: 30  April  Topics:  Leadership  Skills,  Environment,  Application  Topics:  International  Relations  Theory,  Transnational  Interests  Topics: U.S.  Foreign and  Security Policy,  Sources of  Influence,  Policy Models  Topics:  Military  Element of  Power,  Evolving  Nature of War  Topics: Joint  Strategic  Planning,  Programming,  Budgeting  System  The Strategic Leadership course is a foundational course in the distance  education program and provides students an overview of strategic level leadership  theory and practice.  The course focuses on differentiating between strategic and  operational or tactical level, of leadership and the importance of values­based ethical  behavior, decision­making, and contending with a vulnerable, uncertain, complex,  and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. Students are required to evaluate leadership  competencies and skills at the strategic level.  Historical case studies provide students  the opportunity to assess the strategic level leadership competencies and critical  thinking skills of a strategic level leader. 68  The International Relations and Use of Power course places ideas about  international relations in a historical context as well as evaluating prominent realist,  constructivist, and liberal schools of international thought.  Students are required to  analyze the roles of various actors in the international system such as states,  organizations, and multinational corporations.  The course focuses on the post­Cold  War period and an integrated globalizing world that must also contend with  instability, insurgencies, and terrorism.  Transnational problems are reviewed to  evaluate challenges applicable to security and the use of diplomatic, informational,  economic, and military power.  The National Security Policy and Strategy course examines the formulation  and execution of U.S. foreign and security policy and makes the connection between  theories of international relations and domestic sources of influence.  Various policy  making models and several case studies of foreign and national security policy  provide students insights to the policy process.  The U.S. national security policy  formulation procedures are reviewed with emphasis on the interagency process and  the organization and operation of the National Security Council.  The War and Military Strategy course is a study of the military element of  power and emphasizes the permanent yet evolving character of war.  The readings  and online forum discussions focus on how conflict shapes strategic thought and  military practice.  The course includes both classic and contemporary ideas on war  and the formulation of military strategy with readings such as Clausewitz, Colin  Gray, and Sun Tzu. 69  The Department of Defense Organization, Planning, and Strategy course  provides students with an understanding of the interrelationships of the Joint Strategic  Planning System, the Joint Operations Planning and Execution System, and the  Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System.  Students examine the effects of the  Goldwater­Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 on the Department of  Defense.  Students also receive an overview of the Army and Department of Defense  Acquisition System providing a study of weapon and equipment development and  fielding.  Upon successful completion of the five first year courses, students were  required to participate in the two week, First Resident Course at the Army War  College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania from 19­29 June 2006.  Students  participated in seminar discussions, lectures, and conducted research on topics of  strategic interest.  The lectures covered topics that were complementary to the  program curriculum such as diplomatic, economic, informational and military issues.  The Class of 2007 had lectures and discussions by several renown speakers such as  Dr. Silliman, Director of the Duke Law School and former Air Force Judge Advocate  General who spoke about ethical issues surrounding military operations in Iraq and  former Congressman Lee Hamilton who spoke about the role of Congress in security  affairs.  After the lectures, students had the opportunity to interact with the speakers  during a thirty minute question and answer period.  Most lectures were followed by  seminar discussion periods where students could discuss important points from the  lectures in small groups. 70  The seminar discussion periods help students to think critically and to enhance  their understanding of issues from the lectures.  Distance education students were also  able to develop face­to­face relationships with their peers enhancing their online  communications.  The resident course also allows students to meet personally with  the college faculty, staff, and take advantage of services such as library, computer,  and wellness programs.  Several social events were conducted during the first resident  program so that students could develop interpersonal relationships with fellow  students and faculty members.  Distance Education Program Curriculum and Evaluative Requirements  Table 3.2 is a summary of the curriculum systems and evaluation standards  that were used in the Army War College Class of 2007 program.  Curriculum  readings, videos, and other online activities are the core material to support lesson  and course objectives.  Each course draws from a variety of resources including  books, journal articles, and online data sources to provide students a variety of  perspectives on selected topics.  Interactive modules and simulations provide  opportunities for students to evaluate and test aspects of the course material.  The  interactive modules provide students the opportunity to gain in depth analysis of  specific course themes.  Simulations allow students to test course doctrine and themes  in a variety of scenarios in order to gain insights of second and third order effects of  decision making and role playing.  These dynamic and diverse curriculum materials  and systems are used in many different types of distance education programs. 71  The evaluation criteria for each of the five courses of study are generally  based on a requirement for students to complete two written requirements and  participate in a course forum.  The written requirements are related to the course  learning objectives and the responses to the topics are limited to 1500 words in  length.  In addition to the written requirements, students are required to participate in  a week long course forum which is a threaded discussion that centers on the course  subject and readings.  Students are required to post entries on a daily basis  summarizing an assigned topic that is linked to the course readings.  Forums provide  students the opportunity to share their perspectives and detailed discussion of course  topics and issues.  Online discussions and writing requirements contribute to distance  education student learning and motivation  (Berge and Schrum 1998).  Table 3.2 Distance Education Program Systems  System  Description and Purpose  Curriculum Readings and Videos  1200 pages of online reading per  course and video materials from  lectures, journals, etc.  Learning Modules and Simulations  Assess student understanding and  comprehension; support role playing  and future studies  Written Evaluation Requirements  Two written 1500 word requirements  focusing on course readings and issues  Forum Evaluation Requirements  5­7 day interactive discussions for  students on course topics; faculty  facilitation and evaluation of  participation 72  Students are required in forums to synthesize course readings and to use  critical thinking to formulate their concepts.  Students make the forum entries into  designated online folders that are used as a system of exchanging and tracking  discussion about course topics.  The students overwhelmingly enjoy the forums more  than the written requirements because the “online discussion” is less structured than  written requirements although the total time involved is about the same as the written  requirements.  Evaluation criteria for forum discussions are generally less rigorous  than written requirements and students are rewarded for their contributions to the  discussions.  The writing and forum requirements were evaluated by the faculty as a  means to assess respondent understanding of the program objectives.  Standards for student performance are defined in the Army War College  policy for written submission and oral presentations.  Students are expected to be  actively involved in the seminar learning process of contributing as well as listening  and challenging ideas.  Written requirements are expected to be presented at the  graduate level that synthesizes and analyzes sources instead of description and  opinion.  Students are given numeric evaluations for writing and forum requirements  (Level 1­5) that are similar to alphabetic grades with a grade of 1 meaning failure to  meet standards; 2 meaning incomplete work; 3 means meets standards; 4 means  exceeds standards; and 5 means outstanding.  A grade of 1 or 2 requires students to  resubmit their requirements and students that receive three failing evaluations are  placed on academic probation.  Evaluation focuses on content, organization, and style with content being  weighted most heavily in the final evaluation.  Feedback on student progress is 73  provided in comments on each student submission and students are encouraged to  contact faculty members to discuss their performance.  An academic feeder report is  prepared by the faculty for each student and is included in the student’s file for  inclusion in the academic evaluation report that is prepared at the end of the distance  education program.  The academic evaluation report becomes part of the students’  official personnel file.  Research Question  The research question for this study is:  Do U.S. Army War College students  increase their cognitive skills by completing the first year of the U.S. Army War  College Distance Education program?  Participants  This research design was directed at approximately 426 military and civilian  students that were selected for the Class of 2007 Distance Education (DDE) program.  The attrition rate in the Class of 2007 was approximately 30 percent or 130 students  in the first two months of the program primarily due to the heavy time commitment  required of the program.  This study focuses on the military population of 285  students that completed the first year of the distance education program.  The Class of 2007 experienced a 32 percent level of attrition as a result of a  combination of personal, academic, and professional conflicts. Some of the reasons  students leave the distance education program are because of conflicting professional  and personal responsibilities such as frequent travel, deployments, illness, or family 74  issues.   In some cases the students find the academic requirement and time  commitment to be overwhelming.  Military students in the distance education program were selected by a  Department of Army board based on their demonstrated performance of duty and  potential for increased responsibility.  Over 70 percent of distance education students  were comprised of reserve component officers who have a wide variety of leadership  skills and competencies because of their civilian and military vocations.  Attending  the Army War College was a means to accomplish military educational requirements  for promotion to higher levels of leadership and selection for strategic level  leadership positions.  The purpose of the distance education program was to prepare  senior officers for strategic leadership roles and responsibilities.  This study population was comprised of military officers and the  demographics are presented in Chapter 4.  The civilian student population response  was limited to less than five respondents and was not included in the data.  The  predicted response rate to the survey instrument was approximately 50 percent or  approximately 150 student respondents. The response rate to the first survey was 125  students or 44 percent of the military student population.  The second survey response  rate was 67 students or 24 percent of the total student population. The paired t­test  and final analysis is based on the 67 respondents from both the pre and post test  surveys.  This response rate was thought to be representative of the respondent  population because the demographical data was similar to the entire study population;  i.e. the student body is fairly homogenous.  The control group was comprised of five 75  students who deferred or disenrolled at the beginning of the distance education  program (within the first course or first month of the program).  Instruments  This study employed a mixed methods approach of collecting and analyzing  quantitative and qualitative data.  The qualitative data collection and analysis were  based on survey instruments, focus group, and individual interviews to achieve broad  and rich results.  The quantitative data consisted of the MCPA survey and the  Strategic Leadership Course Survey Report.  The MCPA survey instrument uses nine  different phrase sets or statements to assess leader cognitive development.  It has been  used in a number of studies and is currently used in several other senior service  colleges and other organizations to examine strategic leader cognitive development  (Jacobs and Jaques 1990).  The Strategic Leadership Course Survey Report presents  data concerning student satisfaction with the course curriculum, materials, and  evaluative requirements.  Studies have found that student satisfaction and affinity  with education programs contributes to the adult learning process and cognitive  development (Holzer 1999).  This report provides insights to the students’ perceptions  of the effectiveness of the course materials, participation in online forums, and  evaluation of written and forum requirements.  The qualitative data was derived primarily from respondent focus group  discussions and individual interviews.  The intent of the discussions and interviews  was to get respondents to explain their responses to the surveys and describe their  experiences with the distance education program.  The focus groups and individual 76  interviews were designed to help explain the survey data and provide some insights  about the effects of distance education in the strategic leader cognitive development  process.  Each of the data sources provided different perspectives to help illuminate  how the distance education program contributes to strategic leader cognitive  development.  Table 3.3 is an overview of the primary instruments that were used in  this study.  Table 3.3 Overview of the Primary Study Instruments and Data Sources  Instruments  & Data  Sources  MCPA Survey  Instrument  Course  Survey  Focus Group  Interviews  Individual  Interviews  Description  Measures  Leader  Cognitive  Skills  Measures  Student  Satisfaction  with Course  Group  Assessment of  Leader  Cognitive  Development  through  Distance  Education  Individual  Assessment of  Leader  Cognitive  Development  through  Distance  Education  Type of Data  Scientific &  Interpretive  Scientific &  Interpretive  Interpretive  Interpretive  Quantitative measures  The investigator used the MCPA survey instrument to measure Army War  College student cognitive development at the beginning and end of the first year of 77  the distance education course.  The correlation coefficient in the MCPA survey  instrument is 0.79 which is the predicted rate of growth of capability and the level of  responsibility in four different organizational settings (Stamp 1988).  The construct  validity of the MCPA survey instrument is based on studies that include multinational  oil and chemical companies as well as previous studies with general officers and a  study with the British Army Staff College (Stamp 1988; Jaques and Stamp 1990).  In this study, differences in the measures of the MCPA survey instrument at  the beginning and the end of the distance education program indicate the impact of  the Army War College Distance Education curriculum on cognitive development of  the respondent population.  The MCPA survey included questions to establish  demographic parameters such as rank, education level, branch of service, gender, and  ethnic group.  A copy of the questionnaire is included in Appendix A.  The MCPA survey instrument identified the respondents’ current capacity to  contend with complexity.  The measures of capacity correlate to the levels of  complexity found at various levels in the organizational structure.   For example,  strategic leaders need to develop attributes associated with a strategic level of  leadership task complexity as denoted in Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory (Jaques  and Stamp 1990).  The results of the MCPA survey instrument provided an indication  of the individual ability to handle strategic levels of complexity and the potential to  perform his/her duties adequately  (Stamp 1988; Jacobs and Jaques 1990; Jaques and  Stamp 1995).  For example, the Stratified Systems Theory helps to predict the level of  cognitive complexity respondents will be in the future based on the respondent’s age  and level the respondent is placed as a result of the response to the MCPA survey. 78  The growth rate is the rate at which the individual will increase capacity to handle  complexity over time, absent further intervention (Jaques and Stamp 1995).  Everyone grows cognitively over time, but respondents grow cognitively at different  rates based on their cognitive skills and experience.  Cognitive growth can be  enhanced by educational and developmental experiences such as completion of the  Army War College Distance Education Course (Markessini 1993; Hall 2002;  Schwartzman 2003).  The MCPA survey instrument consists of nine phrase sets that evaluate leader  cognitive capacity such as how they use information to perform tasks and achieve  outcomes.  Phrase Set 1 evaluates guidance and framework to accomplish work;  Phrase Set 2 evaluates types of information and tools; Phrase Set 3 evaluates the rules  used in decision making; Phrase Set 4 evaluates the type of approach strategic leaders  take in performing tasks; Phrase Set 5 evaluates the method strategic leaders use to  evaluate problems and issues; Phrase Set 6 evaluates the procedure strategic leaders  use to accomplish a task; Phrase Set 7 evaluates how strategic leaders deal with gaps  of information and knowledge; Phrase Set 8 evaluates how strategic leaders develop  various solutions; and Phrase Set 9 evaluates the way strategic leaders accomplish  solutions.  The analysis of the data pertaining to the nine different phrase sets is  presented in Chapter 4 and provides some insights to multidimensional aspects of  how strategic leaders contend with leadership roles.  The nine phrase sets provide a  diverse assessment of leader competencies that are especially important at the  strategic level. 79  Table 3.4 MCPA Survey Responses to Levels of Organizational Leadership  Phrase Set 1 Responses  Level of Organizational Leadership  1. Work to a complete set of instructions  Production or Tactical Level  2. Work within a given framework  Production or Tactical Level  3. Work with connections even if  particular links are unclear  Operational Level  4. Work in abstracts and concepts  Operational Level  5. Work with a minimum of  preconceptions  Strategic Level  6. Define the horizons of work  Strategic Level  The phrase sets in the MCPA survey instrument evaluate the respondents’  ability to work at one of the six organizational levels ranging from the lowest level of  production or tactical leadership to the highest strategic level of leadership.  The  phrase set responses were listed in random order on the MCPA survey instrument in  order to assess the respondents’ preference.  The survey responses were evaluated  using a scoring key that rank orders the responses of the instrument from Level 1 to 6  that is illustrated in Table 3.4.  Levels 1 and 2 responses are associated with the  lowest production level of leadership that have direct and short term leadership roles,  such as shift leader or team chief.  Level 3 and 4 responses are associated with  operational level of leadership with increasingly complex responsibilities over longer  periods of time, such as department head or project manager.  Level 5 and 6  responses are associated with strategic level leadership roles and responsibility, such  as the visionary roles of corporate presidents and agency directors. 80  The ordering of the survey instrument responses by level of leadership  described in the previous section allowed the investigator to measure the change in  the responses over time.  The following responses to the MCPA phrase sets were  presented in random order to the respondents.  The investigator used a key to code  the responses.  The order of the responses assisted the investigator in determining the  affinity of the respondent to the various levels of thinking as production,  organizational, or strategic level of leadership.  In this study, the responses to the  survey were on average at the organizational and strategic level of leadership.  The  data were then evaluated by the investigator to determine the respondent affinity to  various levels of leadership cognitive thinking and decision making skills.  The  analysis of the quantitative data was extended to evaluate overlaps with qualitative  data.  Each of the Modified Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) phrase sets has six  different statements that were mentioned in the previous section.  Respondents  selected one of the six statements (based on their level of cognitive capacity) that  described the thinking skills needed to perform at the strategic, operational, and  production levels of organizations.  MCPA survey statements are a measure of how  individuals think about work, the conditions in which they like to work, and or the  kind of work they like to do.  The MCPA survey instrument correlates the extent to  which individual respondent cognitive development has kept pace with their cohorts.  The survey also projects the respondents’ potential for future growth as a strategic  level leader. 81  Respondents were also asked to describe their time horizons or the planning  factors that they use for the future as measured in years as their final question in the  MCPA survey instrument.  The statement responses were scored together with the  time horizon to determine the trend of the cognitive development of the population.  The data provided some insights about levels of complexity and long term cognitive  thinking skills respondents developed as a result of the first year of the Army War  College distance education program.  The MCPA survey instrument provides space after each phrase set for  respondents to explain their phrase set selections and how it may relate to their  distance education experience.  The narrative explanations provide some qualitative  data that was useful in data analysis and research findings.  The data derived from this  section of the survey instrument were considered in the qualitative analysis along  with the data from focus groups and individual interviews.  The respondents’  explanation in the surveys, focus groups, and interviews resulted in some overlapping  themes that are discussed in the next chapter.  The statements in the nine MCPA phrase sets were presented to the  respondents in scrambled order.  The statements that were oriented to lower levels of  leadership were direct in nature, concrete, and oriented to production or operational  level leadership.  The statements oriented to higher levels of leadership were abstract,  descriptive of low structure, and oriented to the strategic level of leadership.  The set  of responses measure the extent to which individuals were comfortable with  unstructured and complex situations which are the more complex frames of reference  associated with higher leadership positions.  The MCPA was predictive of an 82  individual’s potential for growth over time and capacity to deal with complexity at  higher levels of organizations (Jacobs and Jaques 1990).  The MCPA survey instrument provides a measure of three dimensions that are  important for success in dealing with unstructured complexity at the highest levels in  organizations.  The three dimensions are the ability to contend with abstract concepts;  cross­reference from one type of problem dynamic to another; and use both rigorous  analytical and evaluative integrative logic.  The ability for strategic leaders to use  both analytic and integrative logic is essential because of the nature of the complex  time frames that occur at the strategic level of leadership.  Analytic skills enable leaders to envision what needs to happen despite  turbulence; integrative skills enable leaders to create a picture of what conditions are  necessary in providing direction.  The MCPA is an indicator of the probable  individual level of complexity and a predictor of the individual’s developmental  ceiling.  Correlations with other measures in the battery suggest that someone who  has a high MCPA score is more tolerant of ambiguity, is intellectually inquisitive, and  thinks reflectively (Jaques and Stamp 1990).  The Strategic Leadership Course Survey is another instrument that was  designed so students could assess the course curriculum and provide feedback about  how the course contributed to their development as strategic level leaders.  The  strategic leadership course survey was posted in the online course materials from  May­August 2006 and consisted of twenty questions evaluating the course  curriculum, online materials to include readings, videos, and forums, and the overall  level of satisfaction of the respondents with the course.  The results of the survey 83  were compiled into a report that assessed student opinions of the respondent  population.  Analyses of the data from the strategic leadership course survey are  presented in Chapter 4.  Qualitative Measures  This study also used standard qualitative (ethnographic) research techniques  to gather data.  The first step in this data collection process was to prepare a detailed  interview protocol that is synopsized in Table 3.5.  The interview protocol was  designed to provide additional details about the ways students respond to the MCPA  survey instrument phrase sets.  The focus group and interview questions were developed by the investigator  to further assess the respondents’ responses in the MCPA survey instrument about  their experience in the distance education program.  The intent of the focus groups  and interviews was to allow the respondents’ to explain their survey selections and to  discuss how the distance education program contributed to their cognitive  development.  The qualitative data was useful in explaining how distance education  information networks, experiential learning, and forum discourse contributed to the  significant quantitative findings from the MCPA survey instrument.  The interviews and focus groups were two way conversations between the  investigator and respondents that required specific questions to be asked of the  respondents and the investigator listening to patterns in responses.  The investigator  conducted the focus groups and interviews and collated the data to produce findings  that were grounded in specific responses or episodes pertaining to the respondent’s 84  experience with the distance education program.  The qualitative data was extensive  because of responses from the numerous pre and post survey entries, as well as the 10  interviews, three focus groups, analysis of online forum transcripts, and course  surveys.  Field notes were taken for all interviews and focus groups.  Respondents  were selected through a homogeneous and typical case sample methodology with  every effort made to ensure a representative sample (Creswell 1998).  Table 3.5  provides a comparison of the MCPA survey instrument, focus group, and individual  interview questions used by the investigator to evaluate and measure respondent  cognitive development through distance education.  Table 3.5 Comparison of MCPA Survey, Focus Groups and Interview Protocol  MCPA Survey Phrase Set Themes  Focus Group and Interview Themes  1. Guidance and Approach to Tasks  2. Ways Leaders Use Information/Tools  3. How Leaders Approach Rules  4. Ways Leaders Approach Tasks  5. Methods Used to Accomplish Tasks  6. Procedures in Solving Issues  7. Approach to Gaps in Knowledge  8. How Leaders Derive Solutions  9. Results of Leader Actions  1. How has time invested in the  Distance Education (DDE) program  contributed to your cognitive  development as a leader?  2. What aspects of the DDE program  challenges and support your cognitive  thinking skills?  3. How might you describe any changes  in your ability to contend with complex  situations that can be attributed to the  DE program?  4. Did you participate in any other  professional development or educational  programs this past year?  5. What implications do you think a  deployment had on your cognitive  development? 85  Long Term Planning Time Frame  (years)  6. How did you determine your long  term planning time horizon?  Challenges of strategic leaders and  distance education students  7. What are the greatest challenges for  strategic leaders?  8. What are your greatest challenges as a  DDE student?  Ways to make the survey process and  DE program better.  9. How helpful was it to explain your  selections in MCPA survey instrument?  10. What would you change about the  DDE program to better prepare for  strategic leadership roles?  The investigator is a member of the Army War College Distance Education  faculty and has had access to many aspects of program development and  implementation.  Subject matter expertise is important in putting into context the  findings and challenges of collecting and presenting data without bias.  The  investigator’s colleagues provided technical and subject matter expertise as annotated  in the Acknowledgements.  Research Procedures  The data for this study was collected throughout the first year of the Class of  2007 that commenced in May 2005 and ended in late June 2006.  The first set of data  collected was through the MCPA survey instrument pretest that was administered in  the first month of the distance education program in May 2005.  The second set of  data was collected through the Strategic Leadership Course survey instrument that  was administered from June to September 2005.  The third set of data was collected  from the MCPA survey instrument post test that was administered at the end of the 86  first year of study in May 2006.  The fourth and fifth sets of data were the focus  group and individual interviews that were conducted in June 2006.  The investigator obtained Army War College and The Pennsylvania State  University approval through their internal review processes.  The respondents were  provided directions explaining the voluntary nature of their responses to the survey,  focus groups, and interviews.  The research results were used only to assess the  effectiveness of the Army War College Distance Education Program.  Only aggregate  results of the instrument were reported to ensure respondent confidentiality.  Informed consent forms were presented and received from the respondents  prior to the distribution of the survey instrument.  To ensure confidentiality, the  MCPA instrument was distributed to students in the Class of 2007 both through mail  and an AWC website.  This procedure also served as a means for increasing the  response rate because the class had at least two opportunities to respond to each  survey.  Reminders were sent to the students every two weeks as a means to increase  the participation rate.  The survey was placed on a secured intranet site that required  the respondents to use their secure access to log on and complete the survey.  Upon receipt of the completed survey instrument, the researcher created a  Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) data base to analyze the  quantitative data and a word processing procedure to organize the qualitative  responses. The MCPA survey instrument was scored by evaluating the mean of the  six possible responses to each of the nine phrase sets.  This process was completed (at  the beginning and end of the first year of the distance education program) to measure  changes in the respondents’ cognitive capacity.  The collective choices suggested the 87  level cognitive capacity at which the respondents liked to operate and their propensity  for future service at strategic leadership levels that required increased cognitive  capacity.  The surveys were coded by the respondents with their AWC log on numbers  to prevent duplication and to track responses.  When the online survey instruments  were received by the investigator, the assessment results were kept secured and  confidential by using secure Army War College internet sites.  Copies of the mailed  surveys were secured in locking filing cabinets to ensure respondent confidentiality  and anonymity.  Respondents were notified in the survey instrument about the focus group and  individual interviews that were scheduled during the first resident course.   The  respondents were reminded of the interviews a second time when the arrived at the  Army War College for the first resident session to help promote participation.  The  focus groups and individual interviews were designed to add to data from the survey  instrument and provide additional insights about their distance education experience.  The focus groups consisted of 6­8 students from the population of students that met to  discuss questions and issues presented in the interview protocol located in Appendix  A.  The intent of the focus groups and individual interviews was to explore exactly  how the distance education program contributed to strategic leader cognitive  development.  The investigator facilitated the focus group and interview sessions that  took place in the Army War College seminar rooms and library conference room.  These separate sessions allowed the facilitator to provide respondents a comfortable  setting for the interview process. 88  The interviews commenced with personal introductions followed by specific  questions such as “what aspects or materials of the first year of the distance education  program were helpful to you as a leader?”  The investigator ensured each member of  the focus group had the opportunity to speak about their personal experience with the  distance education program by calling on each member of the group by name.  The  focus group and individual interview sessions were at least 40 minutes in duration  and longer in some cases.  Respondents were eager to share their experiences and  thoughts about the distance education program and their development as a leader.  After the focus group and individual interview, the investigator compared these  results with the survey results.  The narrative explanation of each phrase set selection in the survey instrument  was evaluated by the investigator to determine if there were any patterns or trends in  student cognitive development.  Survey instrument responses were compared with  interview and focus group responses.  The overlap of some of the data indicated  triangulation or multiple forms of overlapping, diverse pieces of evidence and  perspectives.  Triangulation in this study was evaluation of quantitative and  qualitative data for overlapping themes in order to overcome bias and seek a holistic  explanation of how distance education contributes to leader cognitive development.  There is greater validity in the findings using multiple forms of evidence and  perspectives (Eden and Huxham 1996).  During the first resident course, the investigator presented a noon time briefing  to interested students on some general findings from the study such as the significant  quantitative data and themes from the qualitative data.  The purpose of the briefing 89  was to give the students an overview of the study results as well as allow them to ask  questions.  Over 100 members of the class attended the briefing which was also  broadcast into the seminar rooms by the Army War College broadcasting system.  The briefing attendees were given the opportunity to ask questions about the research  methodology and findings.  The study events took place as scheduled and the  investigator was able to achieve the study milestones.  Table 3.6 summarizes the major milestones of this study as described in this  chapter.  The milestones served as a way to anticipate and review the major events in  the study such as tracking survey responses and scheduling the focus groups and  interviews.  The investigator provided quarterly updates to the dissertation chairman  to keep him apprised of progress in the study.  Table 3.6 Research Design Milestones  Action Item  Start Date  Actual/Projected  Completion Date  Post and Mail Research  Letter and Consent Form  15 May 2005  15 June 2005  Email 1 st MCPA Survey  to Students  15 June 2005  30 July 2005  Analyze Data from  Course Survey  1 October 2005  30 November 2005  Email 2 nd MCPA Survey  to Students  9 February 2006  1 May 2006  Analyze Survey Data  1 May 2006  30 May 2006  Conduct Focus Group  and Individual Interviews  19 June 2006  29 June 2006  Brief Students on  Research  19 June 2006  30 June 2006  Complete Analysis of  Focus Group Data  1 July 2006  1 July 2006  Complete Thesis  1 August 2006  1 September 2006  Doctoral Defense and  Thesis Submission  15 September 2006  30 November 2006 90  Summary of Data Administration  The majority of empirical studies on strategic leadership are studies with  samples that primarily use interview methods (Stamp 1988; Markessini 1993).  The  interview method is a common approach to strategic leader research but has limited  internal validity (Rossi, Freeman et al. 1999; O'Sullivan, Rassel et al. 2003).  Most of  the previous studies were small, limiting the application of inferential statistics and  resulting in conclusions based primarily on descriptive analysis.  The intent of the  focus group and interview data in this study was to maximize validity and reliability  by comparing the quantitative data from the MCPA instrument with qualitative data.  Focus groups provided qualitative data through interviews that involved  questioning of several individuals simultaneously in an informal setting.  Group  interviews offered the advantage of being inexpensive, data rich, flexible, and  cumulative (Patton 1990; Krueger 1994).  Focus groups have high face validity and  capture the dynamic nature of group interaction as well as allowing flexibility for the  investigator to explore unanticipated issues that may not be identified in the survey  (Krueger 1994).  Table 3.7 is a summary of how the surveys, focus groups, and interviews were  administered in this study.  The table denotes the number of iterations of each of the  protocols, size of the protocol groups, and some remarks about the demographic make  up of the protocol population.  The intent of this table is to illustrate the diversity of  data that was collected and analyzed in this study as a means to evaluate a continuum  of quantitative and qualitative data.  Extensive use of multiple sources of data 91  provided an in­depth picture of how informational networks, experiential use of the  course material, and the forum discussions contributed to leader cognitive  development.  Table 3.7 Administration of Survey, Focus Groups and Interviews  Protocol  Application of Protocol  Size of Groups  Remarks  Quantitative:  MCPA Survey  Instrument  Pre Test: 130  Respondents  Post Test: 67  Respondents  Individual  Survey Sent to  Entire Course  Population of 285  Quantitative:  Student Survey  Report  234 Responses or  (61%): Survey  Followed Strategic  Leadership Course  Individual  98% Satisfaction  that course  contributed to  professional  development  Qualitative:  Individual and  Focus Group  Interviews  10 Individual  Interviews;  3 Focus Group  Interviews  10 respondents  3 focus groups  Cross Section of  Respondents from  Population  Qualitative:  Forum  Transcripts  2 Strategic  Leadership Forums  40 respondents  Assessment of  Forum Dialogue  The investigator used qualitative observation of student participation through  writing assignments, forum dialogue, and online surveys to triangulate the findings  and build an in­depth picture of the case.  The investigator’s experience as a distance  education faculty member provided ethnographic insights of student performance  through program communications and evaluations that added to the context to the 92  study findings.  Distance education systems provide many different forms of rich  observational data such as trends and patterns from surveys, forums, focus groups,  and individual interviews that are presented in Chapter 4.  These quantitative and  qualitative sources of data provided a holistic overview of the distance education  system and illustrate how the different aspects of the program relate to each other.  Delimiters/Limiters  This study evaluates the cognitive development of leaders enrolled in the  Army War College distance education program and are projected to serve in a variety  of challenging strategic level organizations.  The diversity of Army War College  Class of 2007 respondent population is delimiting in that it replicates some civilian  functions such as joint or interagency staffs.  For example, respondents in this study  have diverse experience with civilian, federal, and international agencies such as the  State Department.  On the other hand the study is limiting in the way the population  of the study respondents are solely military officers.  The first limitation is related to the size and homogeneity of the study  population.  This limits generalization to other educational institutions and programs.  Only 67 or 24 percent of the Class of 2007 responded to both the pre and post survey  so the results of the data must be interpreted with caution.  The Army War College  distance education program population is also fairly homogenous. Ninety­four  percent of students are male Caucasians, and 70 percent have some graduate level  educational experience.  Most other graduate level distance education programs have  much greater percentage of females and are more ethnically diverse. 93  The second limitation is that the mission, vision, and strategic goals of the  Army War College are different from most graduate level distance education  programs offered at public universities and colleges.  Officers are selected for the  Army War College based on their professional rather than academic background and  performance.  Army War College admissions requirements are not tied to the  Graduate Record Examination or review of undergraduate academic records.  All  officers are required to have a bachelor’s degree however; the lack of the students’  academic background inhibits their participation in forums and requires considerable  instructor guidance to complete written course requirements.  The Army War College  is, accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools that also  accredits public universities and colleges in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and  surrounding states.  The third limitation of this research is the inability to provide students  feedback on their completed survey instrument because the feedback would have  helped the students focus on their strengths and weaknesses.  The Army War College  adopted a policy in 2005 to move the leadership feedback program from the college  to the Army Physical Fitness Readiness Institute (APFRI) that is also located at  Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.  The relocation of the Army War College Leadership  Feedback program during this study was a result of an institutional change of policy  that subsequent to this study provides detailed feedback to students on the results of  the survey instrument.  Specialized APFRI staff members were not available to  provide individual respondents feedback.  However; the respondents were given an  overview of the research findings by the investigator during the first resident course. 94  The feedback to the individual students may have contributed to the respondents’  knowledge and ability to develop specific aspects of their cognitive thinking skills.  The fourth limitation of this study was that many respondents reported in the  individual and focus group interviews that they had participated in other professional  development programs.  The majority of the respondents indicated that these were  generally short term and related to their specific civilian careers, such as equal  opportunity, or accounting analysis.  These student experiences may have impacted  the outcome of this study in comparison with other graduate level studies.  It was also  difficult to make comparisons between the study respondents and typical graduate  students because of the unique and diverse background of military officer  professional experiences and assignments.  Conclusion  This chapter presented an overview of the ethnographic procedures used to  collect, analyze, and triangulate data along with explanations of why the procedures  and methods were selected and implemented.  This overview includes a synopsis of  how the case study was developed, the research question, selection of participants and  materials, the research design procedures, plus limiters and delimiters of the study.  This information is important to understanding the context and the conditions in  which the study was designed and conducted so the methods can be duplicated.  The  final part of the chapter identifies delimiters and limiters that may contribute or  distract from the overall outcome of the study such as the homogeneity of the study  population. 95  Chapter 4 Analysis and Results of Study Data  The purpose of this chapter is to present the data and analysis from this study.  Both the quantitative and qualitative data indicate there was significant change in  student cognitive development as a result of the completion of the first year of the  Army distance education program.  These findings caused the investigator to ask  what the reasons for the significant changes were and what aspects of the distance  education program can be attributed to the change?  The investigator concluded that  the increase in leader cognitive thinking skills was the result of three major factors:  use of distance education organizational subsystems (networks), the application of the  program material to the respondents’ leadership experience (experiential), and use of  online forum discussions in developing the respondents’ thinking skills (discourse).  The first part of this chapter is an overview of the results and triangulation of  the quantitative and qualitative data from the surveys, focus groups, and individual  interviews.  The second part addresses organizational subsystems (networks) in the  cognitive development of strategic leaders.  The third part is a summary of the results  and analysis of the study data.  This study called for the measurement of the cognitive development of the  respondents before and after “treatment” which is defined as the completion of the  first year of the Army War College (AWC) distance education course of study.  The  MCPA Survey instrument was used to gather some of the data.  The MCPA  quantitative data was evaluated using a paired t­test to examine leader cognitive  development as a result of completing the distance education program.  The  investigator also analyzed the MCPA post data with the respondent population 96  demographic data.  Statistical analysis indicated a significant change in the  respondents’ cognitive development following completion of the first year of the  distance education program.  The pre­treatment data was a measure of student  cognitive capacity prior to respondents starting the distance education course.  Post­  treatment data measured cognitive capacity upon completion of the first year.  Qualitative data from the surveys, focus group, and individual interviews also  resulted in some significant findings.  Correlation of the treatment and demographic  data did not indicate there was relationship between gender, ethnic group, age, or  educational experience and strategic leader cognitive development.  This finding may  be attributed to the fact that the study population was fairly homogenous.  In addition to the MCPA survey, a strategic leadership course survey was  administered and measured respondent satisfaction with the online curriculum  materials and evaluative requirements.  Studies have found that student satisfaction  with distance education materials contributed to their cognitive development.  The  results from the course survey indicated that respondents found the online  informational networks, the ability to exchange ideas in the forums, and applying  what they had learned to their personal experience significantly contributed to their  cognitive development.  The respondents’ comments from the surveys, focus groups,  and individual interviews indicated that informational networks, forums, and  application of the distance education program to their personal experience contributed  to their cognitive development.  Qualitative data was collected from focus group and individual interviews  while the students were attending the first resident course at the end of the first year 97  of the distance education program.  The investigator was able to conduct face to face  interviews in addition to the online surveys which provided a personal way to confirm  the triangulation of the data.  The focus groups and individual interviews gave  respondents the opportunity to explain and provide specific examples about how the  distance education program contributed to their cognitive development.  Rigorous  collection and analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data such as respondent  comments in the survey instruments, focus groups, and interviews which were the  primary sources of data were used to triangulate and analyze the study findings.  Other data such as the forum transcripts and respondent academic records  provided some additional insights.  This data along with the focus group and  individual interview data were analyzed with regard to patterns and trends from the  data and organizational subsystems such as culture, structure, technology,  management, and psychosocial networks.  Triangulation indicated a pattern in the  data that distance education program networks, application of course concepts to  respondent experience, and forum discussions contributed to respondent cognitive  development.  Demographical Data  The Army War College Distance Education Class of 2007 initially had a  population of 426 students however; there were only 295 remaining in the program at  the end of the first year.  Over 131 students deferred or disenrolled from the distance  education program.  Of the 295 students remaining at the end of the first year, 10  were civilians but only 4 of the 10 responded to the pre test survey.  The investigator 98  decided to limit the study to military officers since so few of the civilian students  responded to the survey, so this study is based on a population of 285 students.  The  attrition of the class was attributed primarily to increasing military deployments and  personal issues.  Students faced many competing demands on their time because of  professional and personal needs such as changes in work load, family dynamics, and  retirement.  In the population of 285 military students, 27 percent of the military members  hold the rank of Colonel and 73 percent hold the rank of Lieutenant Colonel;  approximately 94 percent are males and 6 percent females; 90 percent of the  population is Caucasian and 10 percent of other ethnic background.  Over 70 percent  of the population holds post graduate degrees and 28 percent only undergraduate level  degrees.  The population of the class and the study respondents is fairly homogenous  and somewhat different than most distance education programs that tend to be  predominately female and younger in age.  This demographic finding is noted in the  section that discusses limitations and delimitations of the study.  The respondent or treatment population consisted of 67 military students or 24  percent of the military student population who responded to both the first and second  MCPA survey instrument.  The MCPA survey instrument was provided to every  member of the Class of 2007 and several steps such as monthly online news updates  and personal phone calls were taken to notify and remind students to respond to the  survey.   The population of the study respondents is demographically representative  of the entire population in the Army War College Distance Education Class of 2007 99  based on rank, gender, ethnic, and educational background.  Demographic data  pertaining to the treatment group and the control group is depicted in Table 4.1.  Table 4.1 Demographics of Total Population, Treatment and Control Group  Gender of  Population  Gender of Treatment  Group  Gender of Control  Group  269 Males  (94%)  56 Males  (84%)  9 Males (90%)  16 Females  (6%)  11 Females  (16%)  1 Female (10%)  Highest Level of  Education  in  Population  Highest Level of  Education Treatment  Group  Highest Level of  Education  Control  Group  79 Bachelor’s  Degree (28%)  15 Bachelor’s  Degree (22%)  3 Bachelor’s  Degree (30%)  206 Graduate  Degree  (72%)  52 Graduate  Degree (78%)  7 Graduate  Degree (70%)  Ethnic Background of  Study Population  Ethnic Background of  Treatment Group  Ethnic Background of  Control Group  250 Caucasian  (88%)  116 Caucasian  (89%)  9 Caucasian  (90%)  18 African­  American  (6%)  8 African­  American (6%)  1 African ­  American  (10%)  10 Asian  (4%)  5  Asian  (4%)  8 Hispanic  (3%)  1 Hispanic  (1%)  The control group consisted of 5 respondents that completed both the pre and  post surveys.  The results of the control group are interpreted with caution since they  are not necessarily a reflection of the entire class.  The demographics of the control 100  group is similar to the entire Class of 2007 Distance Education Program with the  exception that the control group has 8 percent less respondents with post graduate  degrees than the treatment group.  This finding indicates that respondents with  graduate level of education had greater success in the first year of the distance  education program.  This finding was also evident in the increased quality of the  respondents’ that had graduate level experience in the written and forum  requirements.  This study evaluated demographic identifiers such as gender, ethnic group,  and level of education to determine whether there was any correlation of these factors  to strategic leader cognitive development.  Demographic identifiers helped to  determine trends and aspects of distance education systems that may be important to  future professional development in public administration.  Leadership literature posits  that individuals having interest in feedback and professional development generally  have a higher degree of success at the strategic level of leadership .  The results of the correlation analysis are shown in Table 4.2 and indicate  that there was no significant correlation between the demographic variables and  strategic leader cognitive development.  The lack of significance (p<.05) may be  attributed to the fact that the respondent population in this study was fairly  homogenous.  The demographic data suggests that students with graduate level  educational experience had greater success in completing the first year of the  distance education program in this study.  This finding is inferred from the fact that  a larger population of respondents with graduate level education successfully  completed the first year of the distance education program. 101  Table 4.2  Correlation Analysis of Demographic Factors  Demographic  Factor  Age  Gender  Ethnic Group  Education  Level  Pearson  Correlation  Coefficient  0.68  0.41  0.51  0.35  Course Survey Findings and Analysis  This section presents the results of the Strategic Leadership Course Survey  and the MCPA survey instrument.  The purpose of the course survey was to assess  student understanding of the program materials with regards to the curriculum, online  materials, and evaluative requirements.  The course survey was posted on 17 May  2005 and closed on 19 September 2005 so that students could respond after they  completed the strategic leadership course requirements.  The response rate for the  Class of 2007, Strategic Leadership course survey was 61 percent based on 386  submissions and 234 responses.  The opinions, attitudes, and perceptions of the entire  population are reflected in terms of the response rate .  The course curriculum, online  materials, and the curriculum evaluative requirements were highlighted in the survey  report found in Appendix D.  The overall satisfaction level of the curriculum by the students was 89 percent  in the five courses that comprise the AWC distance education first year program.  One respondent replied that “Despite the challenging course readings, the high quality  of the distance education program encouraged me to spend additional time and effort  in completing the program requirements.”  The quality of the respondent performance 102  increased throughout the first year of the program which was evident in the improved  quality of forum discussions, papers, and grades.  One respondent found that “the  evaluative requirements for the courses were important in helping to shape his  thoughts, understanding, and ability to communicate as a strategic leader”.  The survey found that curriculum themes effectively addressed human  dimensions of strategic leadership, international relations, the fundamental nature and  evolving character of war, and how conflict shapes strategic thought and military  practice.  One respondent found that “the high quality of the course material has  given me new insights about strategic leader cognitive competencies such as  visioning, frame of reference development, and problem management.”  Respondents  remarked in the surveys, focus groups, and interviews that the distance education  program improved their ability to perform visioning, frame of reference management,  and problem management skills.  In the distance education curriculum, visioning the future is the capability to  formulate and articulate strategic aims and key concepts to shape the future  environment.  Frame of reference development is defined in the Army War College  Strategic Leadership Primer as “a knowledge structure of the strategic world or the  dynamic representation of significant factors in the strategic environment.”  (Shambach 2004).  Frame of reference serves as a basis of observation and judgment  of the strategic leader’s environment.  Problem management is contending with  strategic problems and issues that are competing, have manifold implications, and  potentially catastrophic outcomes if not resolved carefully. 103  One respondent’s perceptions of the online materials were that “the materials  were thoughtfully developed segments well suited to the course objectives.”  Respondents overwhelmingly found the online materials and networks useful in  helping to synthesize and apply leadership principles from program materials.  Another respondent remarked that he “gained a greater knowledge and understanding  of complex issues by having the opportunity to discuss issues with my peers and by  applying the concepts from the course material to my work.”  The ability of the  respondents to apply the program material to their experiences as leaders was  significant to their development as strategic leaders.  The evaluated curriculum requirements such as the essay writing requirements  and forum discussions helped respondents understand the course material, although  some of the respondents found that the writing and forum requirements were  challenging. One respondent said that the course was “difficult and challenging but I  have to say I learned quite a bit.”  Respondents described their development as  strategic leaders as a result of completing the distance education program that  included complex curriculum themes, large quantity of readings, and rigorous writing  and forum requirements.  The diverse program materials and requirements were designed to  accommodate both audio and visual learning preferences.  A few respondents felt  there should be some modifications to the curriculum such as “reducing course  readings and written requirements.”  One respondent recommended that the faculty  “reduce the amount of reading and add more video lectures.”  Another respondent  indicated that “the online readings were very important to my understanding of the 104  nature of strategic leadership roles in solving complex issues and conducting long  term planning requirements.”  These conflicting accounts of respondent experience  with the program material are attributed to the differences in respondents’ learning  preferences.  Some respondents preferred course readings and others preferred audio  and visual materials.  Respondents were overwhelmingly satisfied that the course material, forums,  and writing requirements contributed to their professional development, demonstrated  by a 93 percent satisfaction rate.  One respondent stated that he was “putting into  practice some of the critical thinking skills presented in the leadership course  curriculum.”  Another respondent wrote that “the institutional themes of strategic  vision, human dimensions of strategic leadership, and ethics best contributed to my  development as a strategic leader.”  The majority of respondents in this study had the opportunity to apply the  concepts from the distance education program to their experience as leaders.  Respondents experienced frame of reference development or increased knowledge as  a result of intergovernmental strategic level case studies such as the requirement to  develop future national security strategy.  One respondent stated that “The distance  education program teaches you to see the big picture and apply specific leadership  principles.”  Another respondent stated “I like moving beyond the requirement and  finding solutions to larger issues.”  These findings indicated that respondents  developed cognitive skills for contending with strategic level issues as a result of  completing the distance education program requirements. 105  The Army War College faculty continuously surveys students and reviews the  curriculum materials as a means to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the  distance education program course curriculum.  The findings from this study indicate  that the combination of informational networks, experiential applications of course  materials, and exchange of ideas through the forums contributed to strategic leader  cognitive development.  One respondent claimed that he was “better equipped to  handle the increasing challenges of strategic leader responsibilities as a result of the  distance education experience.”  MCPA Survey Findings and Analysis  The following section is a summary of the data results from the Modified  Career Path Appreciation (MCPA) Survey Instrument pre and post tests. The first  MCPA survey instrument or pretest was available to the students from 19 May to 1  August 2005 at the beginning of the Distance Education Program.  The post survey  was made available to students between 15 February and 1 May 2006 toward the end  of the first year of the distance education program.  The treatment group was  comprised of the respondents that successfully completed the first year of the distance  education program.  The control group consists of respondents that did not complete  more than one course in the first year of the distance education program.  The method that the students used in responding to the survey changed  between the pre and post test responses from responding by mail to responding  online.  Approximately 80 percent of the 130 students responded to the first survey  through a mailing of the survey instead of the online version.  Although the 106  investigator assumed that larger numbers of students would respond to the online  survey; pre stamped and preaddressed mailing envelopes were mailed along with the  survey to encourage greater participation.  Only 50 percent of 67 students responded  to the second survey using the online instead of alternate mailing system.  A paired samples t­test procedure was used to compare the first and second  MCPA survey instrument responses and to provide a measure of leader cognitive  development.  The results of the paired samples t­test showed that the means of the  post test populations were higher in every phrase set measure in comparing the pre  and post test.  The differences in the measures were attributed to the effects of the  distance education program in leader cognitive development.  Three of the nine phrase set responses were found to have significant  differences from pre to post testing as noted with asterisks in Table 4.3.  The phrase  sets that had significant differences in cognitive development were those phrases that  addressed the way that strategic level leaders use information, approach tasks, and  achieve results.  These findings indicated that the respondent cognitive development  was likely a result of the distance education program requirements because  respondents had for example, increased their ability to use words, ideas, and theories  as tools.  The data also indicated that the significant increase in cognitive  development of the treatment group occurred over the ten months of the first year of  the distance education program.  There may, however, be some mitigating factors that  contributed to this finding, e.g., other forms of professional development and  experiences such as certificate programs. 107  Table 4.3  Summary of the MCPA Survey Pre and Post Test Treatment Group  Responses  Phrase Set Themes  (Statements of how  leaders approach and use  information)  Pre Test Response  (MCPA Measure of  Leadership)  Post Test Response  (MCPA Measure of  Leadership)/Significance  (2­tailed)  1: Guidance/Frameworks  to approach tasks  2: Use of  Information and  Tools  3: Implementation of  Rules  4: Ways Leaders  Approach Tasks  5: Methods Leaders Use  in their Approach to Tasks  6: Procedures that Leaders  Use in Solving Issues  7: How Leaders Approach  Gaps in Knowledge  8: How Leaders Work to  Derive Solutions  9: Results of Leader  Actions  3.7  3.8  4.1  3.9  4.0  4.1  4.4  4.3  4.6  4.1/ .128  4.4 /.006 *  4.3/ .318  4.4 / .010 *  4.4/ .099  4.1/ .368  4.5/ .797  4.5/ .545  5.2 / .005 *  * denotes significance  p<.05  The data from the pre test indicated that the respondents’ approach to  leadership tasks prior to starting the distance education program were on average, 4.0  or the operational level of leadership.  This finding is consistent with the fact that  many of the respondents had recently completed operational leadership assignments 108  that had shorter term and less complex planning requirements.   The post test survey  indicates an improvement in cognitive leader skills in all phrase sets and the average  for the nine phrase sets was 4.4 or closer to the strategic level of leadership.  Five of  the nine phrase sets increased from levels between 3.7 and 4.6 in the pretest  (operational level of leadership) to levels between 4.1 and 5.2 in the post test  (strategic level).  This finding indicates that the respondents’ increased their cognitive  capacity while enrolled in the distance education program.  It was not possible in this study to control for outside factors that may have  contributed to the respondent cognitive development.  The majority of respondents in  this study indicated in the interviews that they had completed other professional  development opportunities concurrent with the distance education program (as a  result of their civilian careers), such as certified public accountant and equal  opportunity training.  One of the respondents was enrolled in a doctoral program in  addition to the distance education program.  Some of the respondents were deployed  to a war zone that created online access problems and at times limited participation in  the online aspects of the program.  Analysis of Control Group Data  Analysis of the control group data in Table 4.5 indicated that there was no  significance in the respondent cognitive development as measured by a paired t­test  of the pre and post test survey instrument responses.  The control group initially  consisted of 10 officers selected for the Distance Education program that completed  the pre test survey but disenrolled from the distance education program before 109  completing the first course.  Only five of the ten officers responded to the second  survey and hence limited analysis of those officers who did not complete the first year  of the distance education program but responded to the pre and post survey.  The  population of the control group was about 2 percent of the 285 students from the  Class of 2007 that completed the first year of the distance education program.  These  results must be interpreted with caution since they are not necessarily a reflection of  the entire population of the Class of 2007 Distance Education Program.  Although the data for the control group indicates some cognitive growth, the  findings were not significant.  Cognitive growth can be attributed to the fact that  people develop their thinking skills as a result of the aging process.  A finding of no  significance indicated that the control group respondents did not experience  statistically significant development in cognitive thinking skills that were measured  by the MCPA survey instrument.  The data indicated that there was some development of cognitive thinking  skills which is most likely attributed to the fact that the control group population  continued to mature and was exposed to cognitive thinking experiences outside the  distance education program.  For example, one of the respondents is a high school  teacher who is continuously developing her cognitive skills as a result of her  profession.  All of the control group members were serving in both military and  civilian professions as a result of their status as reserve component officers.  The  respondents in this study were able to use their experiences from a wide variety of  professional experiences. 110  Table 4.4  Summary of the Control Group MCPA Survey Responses  Phrase Set Themes  (Statements of how  leaders approach and use  information)  Pre Test Response  (MCPA Measure of  Leadership)  Post Test Response  (MCPA Measure of  Leadership)/  Significance (2­  tailed)  1: Guidance/Frameworks  to approach tasks  2: Use of  Information and  Tools  3: Implementation of  Rules  4: Ways Leaders  Approach Tasks  5: Methods Leaders Use  in their approach to Tasks  6: Procedures that Leaders  Use in Solving Issues  7: How Leaders Approach  Gaps in Knowledge  8: How Leaders Work to  Derive Solutions  9: Results of Leader  Actions  3.2  4.2  4.0  3.4  4.2  4.0  4.8  3.4  4.8  3.4/ .866  5.0 / .495  4.4/ .670  4.6 / .284  5.0/ .338  4.8/ .405  4.8/ .495  4.2/ .338  4.8 / .070  The fact that only ten respondents that participated in this study deferred or  disenrolled from the distance education program indicates that the study population  had greater success in the program than the total population of students.  Studies have  found that respondents that participate in leader development programs generally  have a higher level of commitment and persistence to educational programs (Garvin 111  1993; McDaniel 2002; Schwartzman 2003).  The investigator noted that respondents  who completed the first year of the program generally had also completed online  administrative and academic records as opposed to those students who deferred or  disenrolled from the program.  This finding infers that students who successfully  pursue professional development opportunities generally make a greater effort to  maintain their administrative and academic records.  Patterns and Themes from Qualitative Data  This section presents a summary of the evaluation of the qualitative data from  the narrative portion of the MCPA survey instrument, focus groups, individual  interviews, course surveys, and the investigator’s personal experience as a member of  the distance education faculty.  The three focus group and ten individual interviews  took place during the Distance Education Class of 2007 resident course that was held  at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania from June 19­26, 2006.  The focus  groups consisted of 8­10 respondents who volunteered to take part in interviews  conducted by the investigator.  The focus groups and individual interviews were  comprised of questions pertaining to the responses from the MCPA survey instrument  and the respondents’ experiences in the distance education process.  A copy of the  questions is located in Appendix A.  The focus groups and interviews allowed the  investigator to personally discuss with the respondents the importance of access to  multiple informational sources (networks), application of the program material to the  respondents’ leadership experiences (experiential), and online forums (discourse). 112  Qualitative data from the MCPA survey instrument were derived from the  narrative portion of the survey where respondents explained their phrase set  selections.  In the narrative portion of the post test MCPA survey, respondents were  asked to address if their distance education experience had an impact on their  professional development as strategic level leaders.  The qualitative data from the  MCPA surveys were organized and analyzed by examining trends and patterns from  the data according to the nine survey phrase sets.  A summary of the analysis is found  in Table 4.5 and the complete analysis is located in Appendix D.  The results of this  analysis created a rich and detailed account of respondent cognitive development as a  result of their distance education experience.  Table 4.5  Analysis of MCPA Survey Pre and Post Qualitative Data  Phrase Set  Pre­Test Themes  Post­Test Themes  Phrase Set 1: Guidance  and Frameworks  Desire for some structure,  initiative, creativity &  freedom to collaborate and  discover  Distance education  informational networks  and forums contribute to  theoretical frameworks  Phrase Set 2: Information  and Tools  Desire to multitask,  develop new relationships,  courses of action, and gain  access to information  Discourse with other  students helped to  develop skills for critical  thinking  Phrase Set 3: Rules  Desires guides and ethical  standards but notes the  need for revision of rules  for currency; anticipate  2 nd and 3 rd order effects  Applying rules to various  situations requires broad  analysis; experiential  evaluation promotes  understanding and  effectiveness of rules  Phrase Set 4: Approach  Evaluating a broad  spectrum of systems to  determine efficiencies and  effective methods; apply  new knowledge  Acquired broader base of  knowledge through  informational  networks  that promote different  ways to strategically  examine issues 113  Phrase Set 5: Method  Analyze and visualize new  approaches; create picture  of problem;  ID underlying  issues  Determine how parts  relate to the whole;  examine procedures and  experiment by applying  concepts to experience  Phrase Set 6: Procedure  Works with established  timelines and processes;  experiment & Assess Risk  Appreciation of  complexity; desire for  creativity and flexibility;  need to facilitate  transformation  Phrase Set 7:  Gaps  Gaps are opportunities to  develop skills and learning  as a result of new  information and knowledge  Gaps facilitate thinking,  awareness; opportunity to  shape events & promote  creative thinking  through learning and  experience  Phrase Set 8: Solutions  Options & alternatives  support creative problem  solving; evaluate  experiences  Evaluation of multiple  solutions & ability to see  unintended consequences;  anticipate future events  Phrase Set 9: Results  Leaders contend with  conflicting solutions and  evolving situations;  leaders need options  Need for contingency  plans to adapt for the  future and multiple ways  to present information to  promote understanding  The patterns of data indicated that informational networks, discourse in the  forums, and experiential application of the distance education curriculum materials  were instrumental to increasing respondent cognitive development.  For example, one  respondent found that “experience in working with multiple forms of technology and  communication aided me in organizing and addressing complex issues such as  examining the diplomatic, informational, military and economic aspects of national  security.”  Respondents found that the combination of accessing informational  networks, the ability to discuss the findings with their peers, and then apply the  knowledge to a case study or their personal experience was a powerful way to  increase their cognitive skills. 114  Quantitative and qualitative data indicated that respondents gained confidence  in the use of informational networks and theories as tools for analysis of strategic  level planning.  One respondent claimed that “finding linkages and connections  between ideas and theories through the course readings and writing requirements is  rewarding and likely to lead to better and more comprehensive solutions.”  Another  respondent found that “the distance education program materials provided me with  the opportunity to work within a framework but also the freedom to seek additional  sources and complete course requirements at my own pace.”  Informational networks allowed students to explore broad topics  synchronously that encouraged them to visualize strategic issues and relationships.  Respondents indicated that the distance education program enabled them to “consider  multiple perspectives such as conflict and change in different mediums such as  readings, forum interaction, and simulations.”  This finding follows studies that found  distance education group projects may take longer to come to consensus in online  classrooms in comparison to face­to­face classrooms, but distance education students  are able to redirect themselves without outside intervention.  The distance education program readings, writing, and forum requirements  encouraged creative thinking and application of strategic leader cognitive attributes  such as problem management and visioning.  One respondent explained that “the  distance education program writing requirements encouraged me to synthesize many  sources of information which helped improve my skills of association.”  Respondents  expressed increased confidence in using and applying information and knowledge to  formulate strategy and policy as a result of participating in online forums.  Another 115  respondent found that “the distance education forums developed his critical thinking  skills as a result of having to synthesize and discuss the course readings.”  Respondents also found they had a broader base of knowledge or cognitive  ability for strategic level analysis as a result of participating in the forum discussions.  For example, students were required in the national security policy and strategy  course to apply concepts relating to the use of diplomatic, informational, military, and  economic factors in addressing national security issues such as the strategic planning  for Operation Iraqi Freedom.  One respondent stated in the MCPA survey instrument  narrative section that “I like to examine broad topic areas and the distance education  program permits exploration of strategic topics because of the access to multiple  informational networks.”  Case studies encouraged respondents to apply higher level  cognitive skills to evaluate interagency policy roles in strategic level security  assessments and decision making.  Qualitative data from the first phrase set of the MCPA survey indicated that  respondents used multiple informational networks for strategic level decision making  and policy development.  One respondent indicated that he “preferred working with  frameworks that provided some structure but allow flexibility in considering new  environmental and organizational dynamics.”  It is important for leaders at the  strategic level to span organizational boundaries in order to gain more comprehensive  outlooks on issues.  Qualitative responses in the data further explained that the  distance education program provides access to extensive course readings, websites,  and forums in working through complex course requirements.  A respondent  indicated that she “liked having the opportunity to consider many different sources of 116  information to consider various solutions since strategic level issues are constantly  changing.”  Another respondent found that he enjoyed “having some structure in the  course curriculum such as the lesson objectives and course requirements that served  as a guide but allowed for creativity and discovery.”  The distance education program emphasized the need for strategic leaders to  develop creative and critical thinking skills in contending with complexity and long  term planning requirements.  The variety of instructional materials such as course  videos and interactive segments were important so that each student had the  opportunity to learn to the greatest extent possible.  Interestingly, some distance  education students were much better at completing forum requirements that involved  threaded discussions than completing the written papers.  Informational networks and  forum discussions about strategic leadership issues such as visioning provided what  one respondent said was “latitude for discovering new ways of thinking and problem  solving.”  The Army War College distance education program encouraged students to  develop strategic level thinking skills such as how to develop relationships among  organizations to achieve national security objectives.  Course readings included case  studies and exercises where the respondents had the opportunity to examine and  analyze reports regarding ethical conduct in time of war.  Students were required to  read a variety of reports and to identify appropriate skills and competencies such as  ethical reasoning needed to prevent detainee abuses at detention facilities like Abu  Ghraib.  One respondent found that the application of curriculum theoretical readings 117  to case studies to be “extremely beneficial in understanding the context of strategic  leader roles and responsibilities.”  The course readings, forums, and writing requirements on ethics helped  respondents develop strategic leader cognitive thinking skills.  In the writing and  forum requirements, respondents were required to develop and defend strategic level  policies such as detainee interrogation at a national and international level.  Respondents indicated that “the forums provided a means to work issues  collaboratively that resulted in greater understanding of complex issues and cases.”  Some of the forums allowed students to formulate and test ideas that they presented in  the written requirements.  One respondent remarked that “forum discussions  broadened my perspectives of issues because I could draw on the experiences of  several professionals who took part in the forum discussions.”  In this study it was not  unusual to have forum participants deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and  Germany checking into forums from remote sites.  The distance education program forum discussions helped students understand  the magnitude of their responsibilities as a strategic level leader through sharing their  experiences with their peers.  One respondent remarked that “the forums encouraged  diverse dialog and consensus that helped me understand and develop  interrelationships in the course material.”  Forum discourse provided respondents  opportunities to formulate and test ideas with each other and faculty members that  were useful in developing a frame of reference for observation and judgment.  Some  respondents expressed the importance of the forums to feeling connected to other  students and helped them “develop the ability to recognize alternate points of view.” 118  Summary of the Qualitative Data  This study includes qualitative data from focus groups, individual interviews,  and the respondents’ written comments from the MCPA survey instrument explaining  their responses to the phrase sets.  Each of the data sources provides some unique  perspectives about the respondents’ experience with distance education that are  summarized in the following table.  The following section describes the highlights  from the focus groups, individual interviews, and comments from the MCPA survey  instrument data sources.  The focus group data themes indicated that forums helped respondents’ build  confidence with course material understanding because of the exchange of  information with peers and faculty members.  Respondents found that this distance  education programs enhanced their online connectivity with informational and  personal networks so they were not learning completely on their own.  They  sometimes experienced challenges with accessing online materials and found that  they needed clarification on the meaning of some of the curriculum material.  Respondents found that faculty feedback was important to the learning process in  helping clarify and reinforce program writing requirements.  Data themes from the individual interviews indicated that the online forums  helped respondents’ build knowledge and understanding through synthesis of  informational sources.  They found that the writing requirements promoted  understanding of curriculum themes as a result of synthesizing a variety of sources  and being able to apply the material to their personal experiences.  Most of the 119  respondents found the distance education program to be challenging in that it required  well developed analytical skills of complex theories from the course readings.  The MCPA survey instrument narrative data indicated that respondents found  that they developed knowledge in the distance education program as a result of  interacting with peers and faculty members.  The curriculum required development of  critical thinking skills, the ability to synthesize a large volume of readings, and apply  this knowledge to their personal experience.  The broad spectrum of course  curriculum provided the respondents an in depth perspective of global issues and  events such as how the military contends with diplomatic, informational, and  economic factors.  Distance education curriculum requirements gave respondents the  opportunity to examine strategic level issues such as programming resources for  national security.  The data from the focus group, individual interviews, and MCPA narrative  sources of data helped to compliment the quantitative data in the triangulation of the  data.  The qualitative data indicates a pattern of respondent cognitive development as  a result of access to informational sources, discourse in the forums, and immediate  application of the course material to their personal experience.  This data also helped  to explain the significance in the quantitative data such as the way and approach  leaders use to access information as well as how they derive results.  The following  section provides additional insights about the crosswalk or triangulation of the  multiple data sources and the study findings as well as the recommendations for  future research. 120  Triangulation of Data  The investigator collated the quantitative and qualitative data to determine  the overall trends and patterns from the surveys, focus group, and interview  responses.  Three main trends emerged that indicated respondents found that 1)  distance education informational networks, 2) forum discussions, and 3) experiential  application of the course material significantly contributed to their cognitive  development.  For example, respondents’ evaluated and synthesized a large number  of curriculum and information sources in the forums and written requirements.  The  findings from this study are consistent with previous studies that indicate  academically rigorous distance education programs are effective in developing  leaders cognitively .  The findings from the data extend Jaques’ and Zaccaro’s theories about leader  cognitive development by addressing how distance education systems contribute to  strategic leader cognitive development.  Previous studies and theories only focused on  traditional educational programs for leader development because distance education  has only recently become a more common form of professional development.  Online  informational networks, forum discussions, and experiential opportunities provide  distance education program students new ways to acquire and apply knowledge.  The interview data indicated that respondents found that the distance  education programs developed their ability to sort through large quantities of  information to develop their knowledge and understanding of complex information.  One respondent found that “distance education contributed to my ability to contend  with complexity through informational networks and gives me a long term 121  perspective of my roles and responsibilities as a strategic leader.”  This finding is  especially important because distance education program graduates are generally  assigned to strategic level leadership positions that require them to contend with  complex and diverse information sources for long term planning.  The data indicated that the respondents found that distance education  materials and online technological processes expanded their ability to perform  complex thinking skills.  Respondents found that the distance education program  encouraged them to think more about the use of technology in their future roles and  responsibilities (in shaping long term visioning and policy implementation).  One  respondent found that he “needed to develop understanding of informational sources  and technology beyond the curriculum materials.”  Table 4.6 illustrates the relationship of the quantitative and qualitative data to  the increase in cognitive development of the three phrase sets that had significant  statistical results.  Interestingly, the quantitative changes in the phrase sets are similar  to the changes in the qualitative data.  For example, respondents found that they were  more comfortable in using information such as networks as tools.  Respondents also  found that they could transcend tasks through use of information and personal  networks and they found a greater acceptance for conflict and nonpermanent  solutions.  The ability of the respondents’ to apply the knowledge from their distance  education curriculum to their personal experience helped to reinforce their  understanding of strategic leader roles and responsibilities.  For example, one  respondent found that “applying the strategic leadership competencies from the 122  curriculum materials to my profession gave me greater insights about the difficulties  of strategic level planning”.  Table 4.6 Summary of Triangulated Quantitative and Qualitative Data from  Significant MCPA Phrase Sets, Individual, and Focus Group Interviews  MCPA Phrase  Set  & Theme  Pre Test Response  Numerical and  Qualitative Response  Post Test Response  Numerical and  Qualitative Response  Synopsized  Qualitative  Responses from  Respondent Focus  Groups and  Interviews  Phrase Set 2:  Ways Leaders  Use Information  MCPA Survey  Measure 3.8:  Operational Level of  Leadership that  compares merits of  options  MCPA Survey  Measure 4.4:  Operational Level of  Leadership that uses  words, ideas and  theories as tools  Distance education  writing requirements  and forums facilitate  synthesis of complex  material  Phrase Set 4:  Leaders  Approach to  Tasks  MCPA Survey  Measure 3.9:  Operational Level of  Leadership  MCPA Survey  Measure 4.4:  Operational Level of  Leaders that  transcends tasks and  relationships between  tasks  Distance Education  encourages  exploration: Expands  knowledge and  networks  Phrase Set  9:  Leaders  Achieving  Solutions  MCPA Survey  Measure: 4.6  Operational Level :  Develop alternative  approaches  MCPA Survey  Measure: 5.2:  Strategic Level of  Leadership that  accepts conflict and  nonpermanent  solutions  Distance Education  promotes creative and  critical thinking.  Alternate courses of  action are considered.  Phrase Set 2 was a measure of the way that respondents use informational  networks.  Respondents became increasingly confident in using words, ideas, and  theories as tools.  This was illustrated in one respondent remark that “the distance  education writing requirements and forums facilitated greater understanding of the  complex course readings.” 123  Phrase Set 4 was a measure of the way leaders approach tasks and one  respondent found he could “transcend the relationships between tasks in order to gain  a more holistic approach to planning and analysis.” Strategic level leaders need a  holistic and comprehensive approach in the way that they think about tasks in order to  contend with broad policy issues.  An example is using diplomatic, informational,  economic, and military means in developing national security strategy.  Phrase Set 9 was a measure of how leaders achieve solutions.  The data  indicated that respondents increased their capacity for accepting conflicting and  nonpermanent solutions.  A respondent reported that “there is rarely one view which  is universally accepted and the distance education program encourages exploration of  issues through informational networks, forum discussions, and application to personal  experience.”  The application of new knowledge to their personal experiences helped  the respondents build skills to contend with increasing complexity and long term  planning requirements.  The qualitative patterns of responses in this study indicated that respondents  found informational networks, forum discussions, and experiential learning facilitated  their cognitive development.  The forum discussions and informational networks  contributed to the synthesis of complex theories because respondents had the  opportunity to discuss and compare their ideas with subject matter experts, their  peers, and faculty.  One respondent remarked that “the distance education program  promotes creative and critical thinking in addressing course requirements that links  the course readings with ideas presented in the forums and my personal experience.” 124  Another respondent remarked that “the diversity of course materials and learning  methodologies allowed me to try new ways of evaluating and analyzing issues.”  A second example of the data triangulation in this study can be found in the  Phrase Set 2 responses that illustrated respondents used multiple sources of  information as a result of their distance education experiences.  The pre test survey  response indicated that only 38 percent of students desired to work at a strategic level,  most likely because the military organization is highly structured and hierarchical.  The post survey indicated that 64 percent of the respondents desired to work at the  strategic level and used multiple sources of information for planning and decision  making.  Qualitative responses in the interviews and focus groups indicated that  respondents gained confidence in their leadership cognitive attributes. One  respondent claimed that “the distance education program helped me to ratify my  leadership style and situational understanding.”  This ratification of respondent  leadership was also evident in their retention in the program.  In summary, students that made the effort to participate in this study had a  higher rate of successful completion.  More than 85 percent of the population that  responded to both the pre and post test MCPA survey instrument completed the first  year of the distance education program.  The attrition rate of the Class of 2007 was  over 30 percent in the first year of the program; the enrollment fell from 425 to less  than 300 students.  Leadership theory that posits leaders who take a positive and  proactive approach to performance feedback have a higher level of cognitive  development. 125  The qualitative data from the survey instruments, focus groups and individual  interviews indicated growth in respondents’ cognitive skills and leadership  competencies.  Multidimensional online mediums of course readings, writing  requirements, and online forums assisted respondents in developing cognitive skills to  synthesize complex material.  One student noted that he “developed skills of  association so that he was able to consider complex theories and evaluate second and  third order effects of his decisions.”  Another respondent shared that he “appreciated  the opportunity to consider and reflect upon the nature of strategic leadership” and  third respondent found that “I could relate better with strategic level issues and  discussions as a result of course readings and discussions.”  The combination of  acquiring new knowledge through multiple informational networks and immediately  applying the knowledge to personal experience illustrated the effectiveness of  distance education programs in strategic leader cognitive development.  Analysis of Data Using the Organizational Subsystems Model  Distance education programs are comprised of organizational subsystems such  as cultural, psychosocial, structural, technical, and management networks.  This  section illustrates how focus group and individual interview data were analyzed using  the model of organizational subsystems.  These subsystems provide some insights  about the significance of each of the individual subsystems as well as the interactions  between the subsystems.  Figure 4.1 illustrates the relationships between organizational systems in the  cognitive development process.  The findings from this study indicated a link 126  between the cultural values of respondent collaboration and motivation to complete  course requirements with their feelings or psychosocial attributes of support by their  peers and faculty members.  One respondent commented that “the distance education  program teaches you how a variety of tasks are related to each other.”  Organizational  subsystems are important to the adult education process of sharing personal examples  of how leaders apply new knowledge to their personal experiences.  Figure 4.1 A Model of Organizational Subsystems that Affect Strategic Leader  Cognitive Development through Distance Education  Using multidimensional frameworks for analysis helps to illustrate overlaps  and gaps in knowledge of leader cognitive development.  Figure 4.1 illustrated that  there are integrating factors between each of the subsystems illustrated with arrows to  show interactions.  For example, both cultural and psychosocial systems evaluated the  way respondents behaved and felt in participating in distance education programs.  Cultural  Forums promote  respondent  collaboration and  shared values  Psychosocial  Peer Partnership with  varied experience and  interests for Creative  and Critical Thinking  Management  Assess 2 nd & 3 rd Order  Effects, Multifaceted  Analysis, Long Term  Planning  Structural  Expand networks of  information sources  and contacts; less  structure facilitates  discovery  Technical  Use of forums and  simulations for  analysis; ready access  to multiple sources for  greater analysis 127  One respondent volunteered that “feedback and interaction with classmates and  faculty was instrumental to my understanding of course material and concepts.”  Respondents consistently expressed their desire for opportunities to interact  with fellow students and faculty members at the beginning and throughout distance  education programs.  In most cases, respondents sought feedback and guidance in  completing course requirements through email inquiries and phone calls.  For  example, the investigator had over 50 inquiries from respondents pertaining to course  requirements.  One respondent stated in the course survey that he found “a greater  level of competency with the technical aspects of the program such as accessing  research data bases through discussions with faculty and fellow students.”  Cultural elements include physical, behavioral, language, and values.  In this  study, respondents contended with a culture that has a high degree of academic rigor  because of the requirements of a master’s degree graduate level program.  The  master’s degree that is awarded upon completion of the entire distance education  program serves as a tribute to shared values and high motivation of the students in  completing strategic level educational requirements.  One respondent found that the  distance education graduate program “provides informational and decision making  tools for increasing my ability to contend with a wide spectrum of strategic leadership  issues.”  Despite the geographical separation between students and faculty in the  distance education programs, the respondents found that “the distance education  provides opportunities to gain insights from peers and faculty as well as the ability to  focus thought and anticipate future requirements.”  The psychosocial and behavioral 128  aspects of the distance educational environment are somewhat constrained because of  the limited communication and interaction of students and faculty.  However, many  respondents found that the communications networks allowed them to be creative in  expressing their ideas, e.g., sharing links to favorite sources and references for course  requirements.  Learning is a social activity that is strengthened with carefully facilitated  instruction in which the faculty design primarily written communication for feedback  and encouragement to online students.  Faculty and students are partners in learning.  Effective communication is crucial for successful distance education programs.  The  combination of course surveys and forum feedback sessions allowed respondents the  opportunity to identify issues related to their learning experiences.  One respondent  remarked that “most faculty members were responsive and available to work issues  and support student needs.”  Distance education literature indicates that responsive  and timely faculty feedback contributes to student cognitive development through  distance education (McDaniel 2002).  Strategic leader studies indicate that leaders develop unique and complex  language because of the need for boundary spanning requirements such as  interagency and international relationships.  Unique online language skills are often a  result of relationships and access to informational sources.  For example, strategic  leaders contend with a wide range of organizations and relationships in their roles.  Educational systems help to develop effective use of unique acronyms and language  skills (Schwartzman 2003).  One respondent confirmed in an interview that “distance 129  education programs helped me develop effective communications skills such as the  way I articulate my vision and organizational mission.”  Psychosocial subsystems include personality, attitudes, learning, motivation,  communication, and group dynamics.  In distance education, course value is one of  the most important predictors of the way respondents perceive the quality of  instruction.  The strategic leadership course survey report found that respondents had  high value for the Army War College distance education program.  Value is  especially important for adult learners that are eager to apply what they learn to their  experience.  One respondent found “the quality of the AWC distance education to be  excellent and relevant to her experience as a leader.”  Trends in the data indicated that  respondents were applying the new knowledge about strategic leadership to their  professional and personal experiences.  These findings helped validate some of the  course curriculum such as the continued need for strategic planning, negotiations, and  consensus building.  Studies have found that faculty members that demand high quality work  receive higher evaluations for their teaching and are thought to be most effective  (Moore and Anderson 2003).  It is important for faculty members to remain visible to  students by participating in discussions, involving everyone in the learning activities,  and providing feedback.  The quality of communication between faculty and students  and student participation in the threaded forum discussions were important to the  perceptions and attitudes of the distance education learning process.  For example,  forum participation either increased or decreased as a result of faculty feedback,  prompting students to consider additional ideas, questions, or controversial topics. 130  In one case, forum participants provided few entries about how leaders  contend with ethical issues until the facilitator questioned the participants about  applying the course readings to their personal experience.  For example, respondents  were required to apply ethical principles to case studies pertaining to how soldiers  should treat detainees in time of war.  This technique provided a way for the forum  participants to relate what they were learning about ethics to their professional  experience.  The exercises of having students relate the topic of ethics to their  personal experience resulted in a rich assessment of how to contend with various  ethical issues.  One respondent found this learning technique effective because “I  could apply the ethical concepts to what I knew about the case and gave me a new  perspective from a strategic point of view.”  In the forum discussions, respondents were expected to make daily entries  which required synthesizing course readings and providing examples of application of  the material.  One respondent found that “the readings on strategic leadership  competencies gave me insights about the roles and demands of strategic level leaders.  Faculty evaluation of student participation in forums contributed to the facilitation of  good group dynamics and a positive attitude for learning because students found that  there were incentives and consequences associated with participation.  For example,  students that presented different views of an issue in their online discussions from a  variety of sources were generally given higher evaluations than students that present  only one side of an issue.  One student found that forums “encouraged me to interact  with my peers and the dialogue helped to confirm what I thought about the readings.”  Online discussions tend to be more scholarly than face­to­face discussions because 131  respondents have to formalize their thoughts in writing and document their sources  that become a permanent entry.  Classroom seminars tend to discuss various issues  without citing sources to the same degree that is accomplished online.  One student  remarked that “I could not say anything that came to mind when making forum  entries because I knew my peers and faculty members would scrutinize the entries.”  Technology subsystems include the product design, production, distribution,  support, and service recovery of distance education systems.  On line course materials  and methodologies such as forums or threaded discussions provide what one  respondent said were “new ways of learning through technology.”  Forum discussions  can be viewed by a large number of the student population and faculty so students are  generally more thoughtful about how they present their ideas in a forum.  Online  forums typically have a formal record of proceedings in contrast to seminar  discussions which are more of a facilitated discussion of ideas.  Forum and seminar  discussions are becoming increasingly sophisticated as faculty members gain  experience with various methods of questioning encouraging students from many  different locations to participate in discussions.  Students have recently acquired the ability to download curriculum materials  to personal data devices that allow them to access and collaborate with their peers  without having to be tied to a computer.  Downloading curriculum materials allowed  some respondents to share curriculum material with other organizations and  individuals that do not have online access to the program.  Expanding the application  of the program curriculum to groups outside the Army War College may help to  develop inter­organizational technological and informational networks. 132  Structural subsystems in distance education include formalization,  standardization, specialization, authority, policies, and procedures.  The distance  education program evaluated in this study is fairly regimented, and specialized  because of the nature of higher education accreditation.  For example, respondents in  this program had to complete essay writing requirements that were similar to other  graduate level programs to ensure evaluation of their learning and comprehension.  The regimentation and structural requirements in distance education program courses  and lessons seemed to provide students assurance in an online environment that is  less certain than residential learning.  One respondent remarked that she “liked having  some structure in the course curriculum but the latitude to research and discover new  concepts.”  Respondents found that there is a high degree of comfort with the distance  education program structure because each course had a standardized format of course  directives and lesson plans.  Faculty members provided students feedback on every  written and forum requirement in the program in the form of a numbered grade and  narrative comments.  The evaluated requirements gave students specific guidance as  well as official notification that they were either meeting or failing to meet program  objectives.  Timely feedback and frequent communication is especially important in  distance education to help compensate for the lack of one­to­one communication.  In  this graduate level program, students were expected to contact faculty members if  they needed clarification in completing course requirements.  Students that took the  initiative to seek clarification and communication with faculty members generally did 133  well in completing the course requirements.  One student responded to the survey in  the following way, “The distance education program faculty provided me with timely  feedback and the opportunity to work within a set framework while allowing freedom  to complete tasks as I see fit.”  In the cases where deficiencies were identified by  course evaluators, timely feedback allowed respondents to make corrections that  contributed to the successful completion of course requirements.  Respondents that had a record of unsatisfactory performance were assigned  faculty mentors to provide additional feedback.  Mentors provided dialogue and  specific feedback on written requirements beyond what the evaluators provide in their  assessments that in most cases contributed to successful course completion.  One  respondent remarked that “timely faculty feedback and mentoring support were  instrumental to my success in the distance education program.”  Distance education programs, policies, and procedures generally mirror face­  to­face education programs since both programs share the same accreditation  standards.  Well developed policies and procedures are important in developing  quality distance education programs because online communications often takes the  place of face­to­face communications.  Respondents had several avenues in the  distance education program to ask questions of administrative personnel through  email, phone contact, and some personal visits.  One respondent remarked that he  “liked having the ability to use a variety of means to communicate my ideas and  concerns.”  Personal contacts seem to help reinforce respondent academic  performance in the distance education program because respondents developed a 134  greater capacity for visualizing and understanding complex issues through personal  dialogue.  Managerial subsystems include the way organizations design, communicate,  and evaluate distance education program.  Distance education programs have unique  curriculum designs that are focused on allowing students to navigate complex course  material with limited interaction between faculty and peers.  Both quantitative and  qualitative data from this study indicated the importance of effective communication  and evaluation in respondent completion of program requirements.  Some respondents seemed to perform better in the distance education program  based on their educational background and motivation.  Respondents with graduate  level education had a higher completion rate than those that had no graduate level  educational experience.  Over 85 percent of the respondents from the second survey  hold a graduate level degree and only 15 percent hold only an undergraduate degree.  The educational status of the respondent population varies significantly from the  general population of the Class of 2007 at the beginning of the year and the end (30  percent with undergraduate degrees and 70 percent with graduate degrees).  In summary, the organizational subsystems helped to identify factors in the  distance education program that significantly contributed to development of strategic  leader cognitive competencies.  The strong culture (shared beliefs and values) in  distance education programs is evident in the respondent professionalism and  persistence in completing the program requirements.  Psychosocial subsystems such  as student perceptions and beliefs are being transformed through distance education  as a result of forum and faculty communications.  The excellent group dynamics and 135  motivation of the students to learn and apply strategic leadership attributes is  contributing to their effectiveness and reinforcing the value of professional  development.  One student stated in the survey that “the distance education process  exposes me to a number of evocative thinkers and helps to ratify or amend my  leadership style and situational understanding.”  The structural systems provided a  framework for respondents to transcend or create a more holistic approach to  visioning and problem management as a result of drawing from online course  materials and forum discussions.  Technical and management subsystems allowed  leaders to use technical skills such as monitoring informational sources and  participating in simulations exercises that test their theories.  One student found that  “distance education systems teach that complex issues are dynamic and managing  change is as important as managing problems.”  The organizational subsystems  framework was instrumental in organizing the data to evaluate patterns and to show  linkages between the subsystems that contributed to the increased ability of leaders to  contend with complexity and long term planning.  Conclusion  Data in this study were analyzed through a mixed methods approach of  quantitative and qualitative data that found distance education networks, experiential  opportunities, and forum discourse significantly contribute to leader cognitive  development.  Quantitative data from the MCPA survey was triangulated with  individual and focus group interviews.  The qualitative data provided some additional  insights about the transformational nature of cultural, psychosocial, structural, 136  technical, and management subsystems in strategic leader cognitive development.  The organizational subsystems framework illustrated the importance of relationships  between the subsystems that were not addressed in the quantitative portion of the  MCPA survey instrument.  This study found that strategic leaders are able to significantly develop  cognitive thinking and long term planning skills with access to academically rigorous  distance education systems.  Change in the strategic leader environment requires that  leaders continuously monitor and develop informational networks through  educational experiences.  Distance education programs enable strategic leaders to  monitor change through advanced technological systems and to apply new theories  and tools immediately to the issues and challenges that are part of their evolving  organizational roles and missions.  Respondents indicated greater comfort with their  cognitive skills as a result of being required to develop and apply strategic level  competencies such as visioning, negotiating, and boundary spanning in their  academic and professional experiences.  The study data confirms Jaques’ theory that strategic level leaders require  higher cognitive and long term thinking skills to contend with complexity and long  term planning.  The data in this study indicates that respondents significantly  increased their cognitive thinking skills through a academically rigorous distance  education program.  This finding can be attributed to the fact that the distance  education program exposed respondents to complex material and required them to  consider many implications in decision making. 137  This study also confirmed that better educated students are generally better  prepared and more highly motivated to complete the distance education experience.  Seventy percent of the respondents that had masters and doctoral degrees were found  to be more successful in their pursuit of professional development opportunities such  as keeping current with leadership literature, networks, and practices.  Higher level  education and competency with adult learning skills is important in distance  education programs that require students to perform most of the learning on their  own.  Respondents found that “feedback in course requirements helped to reinforce  my understanding and confidence in learning through distance education systems.”  Over 70 percent of respondents expressed their increased comfort with complexity  and long term planning skills as a result of their distance education experience.  One  respondent found that “the distance education program emphasized looking at issues  from different perspectives and focused on flexibility and change.”  In summary, distance education programs tend to be highly collaborative and  effective because of the interrelationships of organizational cultural, psychosocial,  structural, technical, and management subsystems.  Effective communication,  feedback, analysis, and evaluation systems promote discourse and experiential  learning.  The combination of student feedback through the MCPA survey instrument  and course surveys provided some rich data concerning the importance and value of  networks, experiential learning opportunities, and discourse in forums in the cognitive  development of strategic leaders. 138  Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations  The purpose of this chapter is to summarize the conclusions and  recommendations for future studies.  The first part of this chapter presents the  contributions to leadership theory and practice in the field of Public Administration.  The final part presents some and recommendations for future research and concluding  remarks.  The original goals of this study to evaluate leader cognitive development  through distance education were accomplished.  The investigator triangulated  quantitative and qualitative data and found that completion of the first year of the  distance education program significantly contributes to leader cognitive development.  The significant findings in the data indicated that respondents increased their  cognitive development through organizational subsystems (networks), application of  their new knowledge to experience (experiential), and communication through online  forums (discourse).  This study advances leadership theory and practices concerning distance  education as these relatively new programs are just beginning to be assessed.  The  mixed methods approach used in this study allowed the investigator to analyze a wide  range of individual and organizational systems critical to the cognitive development  of strategic leaders.  This study indicates that there are a number of organizational  and individual factors that contribute to leader cognitive development through  distance education.  Some of these factors were the way that respondents used the  online networks, applied the curriculum to their experience, and used discourse in the  online forums to reinforce their understanding of the program material. 139  The previous chapter illustrated that distance education programs provide  leaders access to large networks of readings and informational sources that expanded  the respondents’ conceptual frameworks.  Respondents learned how to critically  evaluate informational networks and sources as well apply new knowledge to  strategic level issues as a result of complex course requirements.  Online forums  enhanced leader cognitive and long term planning skills through collaboration as  leaders learned from each others’ experiences.  Respondents used the online forums  to build and reinforce their knowledge and understanding of strategic leadership  principles such as formulating national security policies.  Forums and the program  writing requirements promote critical thinking skills such as assessing and critiquing  current and former strategic level leaders such as the Secretary of State and the  Secretary of Defense.  When leaders apply the distance education informational  networks to their experience they reinforce and build their cognitive capacity.  This  experiential learning process also provides feedback to the respondents in the form of  additional knowledge that increases strategic leader cognitive skills and  competencies.  It may also help compensate for the shortfall of interpersonal  experiences in distance education.  Contributions of the Study to Leadership Theory and Practice  There are several contributions to leadership theories and practice.  The first  contribution is that distance education programs contribute to strategic leader  cognitive development.  Previous leadership theories and practices related to leader  cognitive development have been limited to the study of resident educational 140  programs.  This study extends Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory and Zacarro’s  Strategic Leader Model by adding distance education as one of the ways that strategic  leaders develop increased levels of cognitive capacity.  Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory and Zacarro’s Strategic Leader Model  explain that leader cognitive development is associated with individual attributes,  organizational structure, and processes.  Jaques further differentiates leadership  cognitive skills with the strategic, operational, and production organizational levels.  Table 5.1 illustrates that the strategic level is the highest level of the organizational  structure (e.g. a CEO or agency director).  The organizational level is the operational  or middle management level (division manager) and the production level leader  works with individuals to accomplish tasks and solve problems.  The three organizational levels of leadership help distinguish strategic leader  cognitive attributes needed to perform roles and responsibilities in public  organizations.  This study was limited to assessing cognitive development of strategic  level leaders through distance education however; the study has implications for the  operational and production levels since the three levels interact in most public  organizations.  It is important to consider the interaction and distinction between the  strategic, operational, and production levels since strategic leaders have oversight for  all levels of organizational leadership.  Distance education programs could support  leader development at all three levels by extending program readings and forum  discussions to entry (production) and mid career (operational) education programs.  Expanding the program materials to multiple levels in an organizational structure will  help facilitate understanding of the mission and objectives. 141  Table 5.1 Revised Institutional Stratums of Jaques’ Leadership Responsibility  and Domain Based on Contemporary Organizational Structure  Stratum & Long Term  Planning Horizon  Leadership Requirements  Examples of Leaders  Strategic Level  +10 Years  Creates and Applies Policy  Directs Complex Systems;  Monitors the external  environment  Department Secretary  Federal Agency  Directors  Operational Level  5­10 Years  Allocates resources and  Executes Policies  Field Agency or  Organizational  Director  Production Level  < 5 Years  Directs work and solves  problems  Shift Leader/ First  Line Supervisor  The significant increase in strategic leader cognitive thinking skills was  attributed in this study to the way distance education programs expand leader  informational networks through readings, online collaboration, discourse in online  forums, and experiential learning processes (Passmore 1988; Moore 2003).  These  findings may be applicable for the organizational and production levels of leadership  because most leaders contend with multiple informational networks.  The data found  that online educational networks and forums increased the respondents’ ability to  exchange information and experiences that had implications for all levels of  leadership.  Zacarro’s strategic leader model associates leader characteristics with  competencies and performance requirements.  Findings from the study show that the  distance education program increases leadership competencies and performance in  the way that respondents are encouraged to think about the second and third order  effects of strategic level decisions.  For example, respondents found that exposure to  new technologies in distance education encouraged them to think about future uses of 142  technology as well as consideration of the second and third order effects of leader  decision making roles.  One respondent found that he was able to “increase my  confidence in technological systems as a result of completing the distance education  program requirements”.  Table 5.2 Contributions of Distance Education to Strategic Leader  Characteristics and Performance (Adapted from Zacarro’s Model, 2001).  Development of Strategic Leader  Characteristics through Distance  Education  Development of Strategic Leader  Performance through Distance  Education  Expanding knowledge and capacity  through informational networks  Encourages consideration of second and  third order effects of decisions  Threaded discussions (forums) promote  discourse and critical thinking  Promotes long term thinking &  planning  Writing requirements are designed to  require students to synthesize complex  material  Broadens leader perspective to consider  global issues  Respondents overwhelmingly found that the distance education course  material contributed to their cognitive development through the broad spectrum of  readings that contribute to understanding complex subject matter.  The strategic  leader course survey and respondent interviews highlighted how the wide range of  curriculum materials, activities such as the forums, and evaluative requirements  significantly contributed to the development of strategic leader cognitive skills such  as visioning.  Respondents are responsible for developing organizational visions that  provide a linkage with the mission, resource allocation, and assessment standards.  For example, strategic level Army Commanders develop a vision when they take over 143  as leader of organizations to inform personnel what they expect to accomplish during  their tenure.  Distance education evaluative requirements were designed to encourage  respondents to seek out and synthesize multiple sources of information.  The  respondent dialogue and synthesis of the course material encouraged reflection and  communication of complex ideas.  These skills support Zacarro’s theory that strategic  leaders need to develop the capacity to perform strategic level roles such as  formulating policy and strategic planning.  The second contribution is that distance education promotes leader cognitive  development of organizational cultural, psychosocial, structural, technical, and  management subsystems or networks.  Culture, psychosocial, structural, technical,  and management factors found in the population of respondents such as their  commitment, discipline, and respect for each other in completing and sharing insights  from course requirements.  Distance education networks are sets of effective  organizational subsystems such as the technological skills and structural skills to  navigate through online course curriculum material and forums.  Distance education networks provided respondents in this study access to  extensive informational sources and forums that facilitated greater cognitive capacity  and application of complex, strategic level concepts.  As a result of completing the  distance education program, respondents were better able to think about long term  and implications of their decisions.  For example, respondents completed a program  requirement in which they identified leadership attributes that were instrumental in  contending with the global strategic environment in the year 2010. 144  Systematic aspects of strategic leader cognitive development resulted from  internal and external environmental change e.g. technological developments.   The  organizational subsystems help to explain increased leader cognitive skills as a result  of interactions from cultural, psychosocial, structural, technical, and management  networks.  For example, respondents indicated that distance education program  helped them to think critically about how institutional policies (structure) and  networks (cultures) contribute to national and global strategies.  One respondent  found that “evaluating strategic level policies such as the failure to deploy sufficient  numbers of military units to suppress insurgent attacks in Iraq is important for future  strategic decision making.”  Figure 5.1 illustrates the process or system of leader cognitive development.  Leadership attributes are categorized as cognitive, technical, and interpersonal  attributes.  This study focused on the cognitive attributes.  Respondents added to their  cognitive leadership attributes through a number of technical and structural networks  such as the course readings, curriculum requirements, and online information sources.  Respondents used various online and personal contacts to compare and contrast  organizational best practices.  Cultural and psychosocial factors such as values in the  discipline to participate and camaraderie were evident in the way respondents’ shared  ideas through discourse in the forums.  Respondents managed their cognitive  development through completing course requirements and through experiential  learning by applying the course material to their personal experience.  The distance education development process includes feedback systems such  as assessment of course written requirements, forums, and surveys that resulted in 145  improvements to the distance education process (such as curriculum changes).  The  feedback loop illustrates that leader cognitive development is a continuous learning  process.  Strategic leader development is a result of respondents leveraging online  systems such as networks, experiential learning, and discourse through forums.  These systems result in developing leaders with greater cognitive and long term  planning skills.  Figure 5.1 Model of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance  Education  ^­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­^­­­­Feedback/Redesign Loop­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­  The third contribution of this study is illustrated in the model of leader  professional development.  The leader development model consists of three modes of  professional development: institutional, experiential, and self development.  Distance  education programs are effective in supporting organizational professional  Timeline  Summer 05  Summer 06  Leader Attributes  Distance Education Program  Strategic Leader  (Inputs)  (Process)  (Outputs)  Interpersonal  Skills  Cognitive  Skills  Technical  Skills  Culture       Structural  Management  Psychosocial    Technical  Increased Strategic  Leader  Cognitive Capacity  And Long Term  Planning Skills  Distance Education  facilitates cognitive  development through  + Networks  + Experiential  + Discourse 146  development initiatives by exposing leaders to networks of informational systems that  promote continuous learning.  This finding is important as organizations face  increasing resource constraints and growing demands for professional development  requirements.  Distance education systems allow leaders to immediately apply new  concepts to their organizations and to use the experiential learning to reinforce  cognitive development.  The combination of institutional learning, experiential  application, and self development allows leaders to test and validate new cognitive  skills in anticipating future requirements and solving challenging issues.  The Professional Development Model highlights the importance of distance  education to institutional leader development and the linkage of distance education to  experiential learning and self development.  Institutional education and training  development includes the formal curriculum structure, forums, and written  requirements such as distance education programs.  Leadership development creates  networks and sources of information and knowledge that support experiential  learning.  In this study, respondents could immediately apply the course material to  their personal experience since most of the students are enrolled in the distance  education program on a part time basis.  The forums provided a means to discuss their  learning experiences.  For example, respondents found the multicultural curriculum  materials to be especially helpful in helping respondents contend with understand  future multinational security planning.  Their learning experiences were a result of the  curriculum materials in the institutional program and their duties while deployed  overseas. 147  Table 5.3 Examples of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through  Distance Education in the Professional Development Model  Types of  Leader  Professional  Development  Programs  Institutional  Education and  Training  Development  Experiential and  Operational  Development  Self Development  Examples of  Distance  Education  Professional  Development  Programs  Online Curriculum  Sources  Forums  Writing  Requirements  Case Studies  Interactive  Modules  Simulations  Specialized  Information  Sources and  Networks focused  on specific skills  and competencies  Distance education promotes experiential learning by providing historical case  studies and requirements for the respondents to apply doctrine to the development of  national security policies (e.g. a case study that discussed the ethical treatment of  foreign detainees).  Leaders in this study were able to apply new knowledge from the  distance education program immediately to their professional lives as leaders in  industry or of deployments overseas in support of national security.  Respondents  were serving in duty positions that required them to develop strategic level policies  and strategies having national and international implications, such as establishing  future military force structure.  Other examples include respondents developing  strategic level leadership skills through distance education while serving as life cycle  project managers of major weapon systems and key planners on joint military staffs.  Leadership literature emphasizes the need for lifetime learning.  This study  illustrates how online leader curriculum encourages lifetime learning.  Experiential  development includes the application of formal instruction to case studies,  simulations, and interactive module to illustrate multidimensional aspects of a system 148  or organization, or developmental assignments like serving as an executive assistant.  Self development is the acquisition of specialized skills and knowledge to focus on  specific leadership attributes such as negotiations or strategic planning.  The linkage of institutional, experiential, and self development through  distance education is reinforced in theoretical and practical applications.  Distance  education programs expand institutional professional development opportunities  beyond traditional, face­to­face programs to networked and experiential learning  processes.  Respondents consulted with their classmates in addition to former  professional contacts to develop a broad sense of how the Army is changing  approaches strategic level issues such as development of future force structure and  weapon systems.  Findings from this study indicate that the online networks,  experiential applications, and forum discourse significantly contribute to developing  strategic leader cognitive skills needed to develop organizational visions, policy and  allocate resources.  Summary of Findings  Respondents in this study found that distance education systems encouraged  them to develop greater knowledge through informational and personal networks,  experiential application, and discourse.  The informational networks increased the  respondents’ ability to perform strategic level leadership tasks such as long term  planning and policy making.  Distance education facilitates development of strategic  level thinking skills because the program requires students to access, process, and  apply a wide variety of informational networks such as joint military, interagency, 149  and international policy sources.  Many of the case studies require respondents to  develop coalitions and partnerships with International Government Agencies, and  Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs).  Informational networks support professional development systems and allow  leaders flexibility to balance professional and personal requirements.  Online systems  contribute to leader development of cognitive skills such as learning through role  playing simulations that can replicate many different types of organizational scenarios  and structures.  Leaders can gain insights to hypothetical scenarios such as supporting  military operations with varying levels of personnel and equipment.  One case study  required respondents to anticipate a shortfall of military forces as a result of engaging  in several international incidents.  This distance education program improved the respondents’ ability to perform  complex functions such as long term planning, boundary spanning, and network  development which are vital for strategic level policy and decision making.  Respondents found that the distance education program emphasizes critical thinking  and looking at issues from many perspectives.  Cognitive models and taxonomies in  distance education programs such as role playing support the development of  strategic leader mapping ability, reasoning ability to include problem solving, and  critical thinking skills.  In one exercise, respondents were required to role play  positions in the National Security Council in developing future security policy to  contend with development of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea.  Respondents  were able to relate real world events while developing their cognitive skills and  understanding of the curriculum materials. 150  Leader Cognitive Development  This study found that successful completion of an academically rigorous  distance education program increases leader cognitive capability.  One respondent  found that the program “increased my confidence to choose quality informational  sources in evaluating international policy development as a result of reading a variety  of online sources.”  These findings were supported with both quantitative and  qualitative data through pre and post test data analysis that indicated the increased  ability of respondents for cognitive complexity and long term planning requirements.  Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory and the MCPA survey instrument provided insight  into the cognitive development of strategic leaders and were also useful in  determining sub culture preferences such as organizational structure, cultural,  psychosocial, and management systems (Passmore 1988; Ziegenfuss 2002).  For  example, the findings of significant growth in respondent cognitive development in  this study illustrated that most respondents selected higher order or strategic level  decision making tools for performing tasks.  For example, respondents found that  they were increasingly comfortable with using theory and ideas as tools for decision  making.  The pretest was administered prior to the respondents starting the distance  education program and the respondents scored at Level Three and Four responses in  the MCPA survey instrument which was the organizational level of leadership.  Level Four in organization leadership is indicative of the operational level leadership  with a relatively short planning time span.  According to the data, respondents’  MCPA scores increased from Level Four to Level Five which is considered strategic 151  level of leadership by the end of the first year of the distance education program.  Table 5.4 illustrates differences between strategic and operational leader  responsibilities.  Table 5.4 Strategic Stratums of Leadership Domain and Responsibility (Jaques  1991).  Stratum  Civilian/Military  Responsibilities  Planning  Time Span  Level 6: Strategic  CEO/Regional  Commander  Creates Policy  20 + years  Level 5: Strategic  Corporate Leader/ National Command  Applies Policy  10+ years  Level 4: Operational/  Management  Regional Leader/ Brigade Commander  Directs Complex Organizations  5+ years  Level 3: Operational/  Management  District Leader/Battalion Command  2+ years  The control group was unfortunately a very small population of students that  did not complete the distance education program and had no significant change in  cognitive thinking skills as measured by the paired t­test.  The lack of change in the  control group findings were in contrast to the significant change in the treatment  group that had significant change in cognitive skills as measured by the paired t­test.  Qualitative responses provided insights to the psychosocial and cultural  aspects of the respondents’ cognitive development such as their increasing comfort in  using complex theories and ideas as tools for visioning, policy development, and 152  evaluation.  A pattern of responses from the surveys and individual and focus group  interviews addressed the question about how distance education networks,  experiential applications of the course material, and forum discussions significantly  contribute to strategic leader cognitive development.  Respondents found that they  had an increased frame of reference for understanding joint and international  organizational requirements as a result of studying and discussing a variety of case  studies.  Distance education program materials gave respondents exposure to complex  networks and ideas which increased their comfort level for uncertainty.  The strategic  leadership courses for example, included a written requirement for students to read a  number of articles from different publications and assess their own leadership  attributes based on future needs and requirements.  The data from this study indicates that the AWC distance education program  increased the respondent’s ability to think holistically and conceptually as a result of  having to use different mediums such as online forums to consider strategic level  issues such as national security.  Leadership theory indicates that increasing critical  reasoning and thinking skills increases the leader’s ability to effectively perform their  roles and responsibilities.  Critical thinking skills are important to the strategic leader  development process because of the need for leaders to consider many different  aspects and implications about issues in strategic level decision making.  Distance  education facilitates critical thinking of strategic issues because of the online access  to multiple informational networks and the exchange of ideas through forums.  For  example, in this study respondents were required to use critical thinking skills to  evaluate how international leaders perceive United State security interests. 153  Respondent Satisfaction with Distance Education Curriculum Materials  The distance education course surveys had a 90 percent satisfaction level of  the respondents with the program attributed to the quality of curriculum materials and  that respondents could apply the material to their personal experiences.  Respondents  found that the distance education course requirements helped them in shaping their  thoughts and understanding of the subject material such as strategic vision, human  dimensions of strategic leadership, and ethics.  Respondents acknowledged in  interviews the importance of developing online informational and personal networks  to support cognitive skills needed for future leadership roles and responsibilities.  One  respondent found that his interaction with fellow classmates “gave me a much  broader perspective for international issues.”  Studies about leader cognitive development have found that students take  more responsibility for their learning as they gain experience with online education .  Respondents found that time management and effective communication skills were  instrumental to completing the distance education program successfully.  Establishing  effective communications with other students and faculty to reinforce respondent  knowledge through discussion and feedback was a common theme throughout the  focus group and individual interviews.  These findings are being integrated in student  handbooks, orientations, and curriculum guidelines so that future distance education  students think about how former graduates scheduled time and managed the course  resources to successfully complete course requirements.  A student orientation  program is being developed at the Army War College in part from the findings from 154  this study to enhance future distance education students’ preparation for utilizing the  technical networks and feedback systems for addressing course requirements.  Distance education students in this study were older and had more  professional experience than the average graduate student.  The respondents’  increased age and experience may have contributed to a high satisfaction with the  distance education learning environment.  Distance education programs promote adult  learning through experiential and Socratic means because students are able to  immediately apply the concepts to their experience.  Many distance education  students are part time students that are completing course requirements in addition to  fulfilling their roles and duties as professionals.  Respondents that started the distance education with a graduate level of  educational background had a higher level of success in this study.  This was evident  in the findings that show that 78 percent of the respondent population that  successfully completed the distance education program had a graduate level  educational background.  This is in comparison to the initial population of students of  which only 72 percent had graduate level degrees.  Leaders that develop extensive  cognitive development generally have the ability to effectively utilize self directed  systems like distance education to gain additional knowledge necessary for solving  complex issues.  Respondents in this study found that they developed greater comfort  in planning over longer time periods as a result of having to contend with long term  policy issues such as the future security posture of the Middle East.  The field of distance education is evolving with the development of new  programs and systems to support leader cognitive development.  This study helps to 155  fill the gap in leadership literature about the contribution of distance education  programs to leader development.  However, further studies are needed to consider the  many aspects and facets of leader cognitive development that the literature describes  as technical, interpersonal, and cognitive skills.  Respondents found that course curriculum materials such as the “Strategic  Leadership Primer”, videos, forums, and lectures were valuable in the development of  strategic leadership competencies.  Additional research is needed to fully explore the  effectiveness of distance education and organizational systems in supporting leader  cognitive development.  There are some limitations such as non­universal access to  high speed internet connections restricting access to some of the online materials.  The competencies of contending with increasing complexity over long periods  of time are especially important for public administrators that are faced with  substantial ambiguity and uncertainty as a result of changing environmental  conditions.  The leadership literature indicates that a significant challenge for public  administrators is to maximize the value of distance education systems for future  professional development opportunities.  Professional development is one of the top  priorities of strategic level leaders because of the need to prepare for evolving  environmental developments. Online education programs minimize travel cost and  students can immediately apply the concepts they learn to their professional  experiences.  Cognitive development contributes to the ability of strategic leaders to  communicate complex issues effectively and to manage problems that have many  different stakeholders and solutions (Markessini 1993; Heikkila and Isett 2004). 156  Recommendations for Future Research  This section recommends how future studies of cognitive development could  be directed to contribute to public administration leadership literature.  The first  recommendation is that this study should be extended to determine the long term  effects of distance education on cognitive development.  Additional assessments of  respondent cognitive development should be measured at the end to the second year  of the Army War College Distance Education Program and at periodic increments in  the future.  It is important to determine the long term effects of distance education by  incorporating career assignments to determine other factors that may contribute to  strategic leader cognitive development.  The second recommendation is that this study should incorporate a larger and  more diverse population of respondents to form a better idea of how demographic  factors contribute to leader cognitive development.  This study population was fairly  homogenous because the population of senior military officers has very little  diversity.  A larger and more diverse sample would help to compare how several  different treatment and control groups respond from distance education programs.  The population should include both military and civilian students to include more  diverse age groups, gender, and ethnic backgrounds.  This study should be expanded to evaluate the impact of distance education in  the development of operational and production level leadership because all three  levels of leaders interact in most organizations.  Expanding the study to consider  production and operational levels of leader cognitive development may have some  implications for the way that strategic level leaders are educated.  Many organizations 157  are becoming less hierarchical and thus interrelationships among organizational  leaders and members are becoming more important.  Leaders at all levels in  organizations increasingly need the same types of communications and thinking skills  since they interact on a regular basis.  The third recommendation is to use additional quantitative and qualitative  survey instruments to examine interpersonal and technical competencies in addition  to cognitive strategic leader competencies.  Utilizing a variety of different survey  instruments and interview questions to measure leader cognitive development may  provide additional insights into the effectiveness of distance education.  Survey  instruments that assess strategic leader development such as 360 degree assessments  incorporate insights from subordinates, peers, and superiors and provide  multidimensional feedback to the respondents about leadership development.  The  investigator should also control for external factors such as other educational or  experiential development experiences which was not possible in this study.  Public  administrators and researchers need to determine the most important parameters of  the leader development process such as cognitive, interpersonal, and technical  competencies.  Future studies should be tailored to evaluate competencies based on  organizational priorities and goals.  Although the MCPA provides some feedback on leader cognitive potential,  the question of senior Army officer potential for strategic level leadership is closely  linked to performance evaluations.  Performance evaluations are presently limited to  supervisor assessment of individual performance and leadership.  Future studies  should consider assessing leader potential to effectively perform tasks associated with 158  increasing complexity and long term planning skills.  This study examined leader  cognitive development through an educational process.  It would be beneficial to  examine how effective these educated leaders are in applying their knowledge to  organizational settings.  Strategic skills in can be evaluated in a number of ways  including the contribution to organizational performance.  There are also a number of  survey instruments and methodologies available (e.g. the 360 degree survey) to  examine various aspects of leader cognitive development.  Additional work is required to develop the predictive qualities of the MCPA  in terms of assessing individual and collective potential for the highest levels of  leadership as a result of a distance education program.  Future studies should also be  designed to evaluate the impact of course content in the cognitive development of  respondents.  An objective of future studies should be to substantiate cognitive  development with respondent performance in both academic and practitioner settings.  For example, supervisors could use feedback from the MCPA instrument in  developing and measuring professional development programs tailored to skills and  competencies. The MCPA survey instrument identifies nine leader cognitive skills  such as the way leaders use guidance, information, approach rules, and seek results.  This planning typology offers a way to further substantiate the relationship between  strategic leader cognitive development and performance by identifying specific  strengths and weaknesses in leader cognitive attributes.  Future studies involving the MCPA survey instrument could include feedback  to respondents by trained administrators that have experience with the survey  instrument and theory.  The intent is to determine if there is even greater cognitive 159  development as a result of the feedback.  Leadership literature indicates that the  feedback process is important to leaders for evaluating and internalizing the attributes  needed for professional development.  The MCPA survey instrument provides some  detailed insights to leader development in relation to other leaders.  Leadership  feedback may cause adverse results if the respondents are not educated properly on  the meaning and limitation of the instrument.  The fourth recommendation is that the data from this distance education study  should also be compared with a similar study with a traditional graduate education  program.  This data will determine whether there are similarities or differences in the  types of institutional professional development programs and strategic leader  cognitive development.  Greater analysis in comparing the programs is important  because organizations are increasingly using distance education and a combination of  distance and resident education programs.  Comparisons and contrasts of the  programs will provide insights into what types of curriculum materials or topics are  more effectively taught through distance and/or resident type instruction.  By extending the study beyond the distance education program, the post  graduate data may provide some additional insights about how respondents apply  their distance education experience to their professions.  Longitudinal studies provide  additional insights to the data and trends in the data that are important to determining  long term impacts and trends of the distance education curriculum and processes in  strategic leader cognitive development.  It is important to determine if the data  concerning cognitive development over the long term is similar to the finding at the  end of the first year of the program.  Longitudinal studies may provide some 160  additional data about other factors such as experiential assignments and self  development programs contribute to strategic leader cognitive development.  Concluding Remarks  Strategic leader cognitive development through distance education is evolving  as technology creates new ways to deliver information and to work collaboratively at  a distance.  Ongoing development of distance and traditional education systems are  resulting in effective development programs.  Annual review of distance education  programs will allow administrators to assess and update leadership theory and  practice and would also allow faculty members and students opportunities to  collaborate on evolving technological systems.  The evolution of technology systems is creating greater access to educational  media and information sources that are important to the leader development process.  The development of technology systems are diversifying the way that distance  education can be used to adapt to a changing environment .  This study illustrates how  strategic leaders need to develop skills continually to assess information from the  myriad of sources and continue to deploy effective technologies within organizations.  The findings from this study contribute to the body of knowledge about how  distance education supports the development of strategic cognitive leadership skills in  the field of public administration.  Studies on strategic leader cognitive development  through distance education should be expanded because of the numerous  developments in the field of technology.  Studies about distance education programs 161  are important because these programs are increasingly becoming more main stream in  leader professional development programs.  The institutional landscape of higher education and professional development  is evolving with a shift toward decentralization as instruction for leaders is becoming  more self­directed with a greater emphasis on strategic leader competencies .  The  multidisciplinary aspects of leadership literature illustrates the importance of using a  combination of methods such as online surveys and interviews to assess the  development and performance of future leaders.  Students and practitioners of  organizational culture and management should find this study useful because it  illustrates leader cognitive development in theoretical and practical ways.  The field  of public administration will benefit from continued studies that examine how both  distance and traditional education programs contribute to leader cognitive  development. 162  Appendix A: Survey and Focus Group Letters and Instruments  15 May 2005  MEMORANDUM FOR Department of Distance Education (DDE) Class of 2007  SUBJECT:  Research Survey  1. Please complete the enclosed consent form and return the form to my office at:  U.S. Army War College, Room A332, 122 Forbes Avenue, Carlisle, PA  17013­5243.  Once I have received your consent form I will send you the Modified Career Path  Appreciation (MCPA) survey as part of a research project in evaluating strategic  leader development.  A prepaid, addressed mailing envelope is enclosed for your use.  The purpose of this research is to look at the impact of the DDE course on increasing  cognitive capacity and to determine the feasibility of a distance education leadership  feedback program.  The MCPA is an instrument designed to assess cognitive  potential or the kinds of thinking skills needed to perform effectively as strategic  leaders.  2. The MCPA assesses your capacity to deal with complexity and predicts your future  strategic organizational level of leadership.  The MCPA is part of a battery of  individual assessment instruments that resident course students find useful and is also  administered to students at the National Defense University.  A potential progress  data sheet and feedback will be provided to you upon request when you complete the  final survey.  The data sheet indicates your response in comparison to your peers as  well as an indication of your level of development that may be useful to your personal  leadership development planning.  3. It takes approximately 10­15 minutes to complete the survey and your participation  is important for future development of the DDE leadership feedback program.  Please  follow the instructions that are provided with the instrument.  The survey  participation is voluntary and the results will be kept confidential.  Your participation  in this survey data is part of my doctoral research with Penn State University and the  Army War College.  Thank you in advance for your participation and if you have any  questions, please contact me at (717) 245­3577, DSN 242­3577 or by email at  Susan.R.Myers@Carlisle.Army.Mil.  SUSAN R. MYERS  COL, EN  Director of Leader Management Studies  Department of Distance Education 163  Informed Consent Form for Social Science Research  The Pennsylvania State University  Title of Project:  Evaluation of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through  Distance Education at the U.S. Army War College  Principal Investigator:  Susan R. Myers, Graduate Student  Penn State, Harrisburg Campus  Department of Public Affairs  777 Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057­4849  (717)  948­6058; susan.r.myers@carlisle.army.mil  Advisor:  Dr. James Ziegenfuss  Penn State, Harrisburg  Department of Public Affairs  777 Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA  17057­4849  (717)  948­6053; jtz1@psu.edu  1.  Purpose of the Study:  To explore the impact of the Army War College distance  education course of study in the cognitive development of strategic leaders.  2.  Procedures to be followed:  You will be asked to complete this consent form and  mail to my office at the following address: COL Susan Myers, Room C336, 122  Forbes Avenue, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013.  Once I have received your consent  form  I  will  send  you  the  Modified  Career  Path  Appreciation  (MCPA)  survey  instrument  and  ask  you  to  complete  the  survey  instrument.    I  will  provide  a  preaddressed mailing envelope for you to return the survey to my office.  You are  asked  to  complete  the  MCPA  survey  instrument  at  the  beginning  and  again  toward the end of your first year program of studies.  Another copy of the survey  will be sent to you with course 541 material. The completed surveys will serve as  data points to measure if there is change in cognitive development associated with  completion of the program of studies.  You may also be asked to participate in a  focus group to discuss the survey instrument when you attend the resident course  next summer.  The focus group will consist of 8­12 students and the purpose is to  discuss  the  survey  instrument  as  it  pertains  to  your  strategic  leadership  educational experience at the Army War College.  3.  Discomforts and Risks:  There are no risks in participating in this research beyond  those experienced in every day life.  Some of the questions are personal and might  cause discomfort.  4.  Benefits:    You  might  learn  more  about  your  cognitive  development  by  participating  in  this  study  and  your  strengths  and  weaknesses  in  developing  strategic leader attributes.  This research might provide a better understanding of  ORP USE ONLY:   IRB# 21018 Doc. #1  The Pennsylvania State University  Office for Research Protections  Approval Date:  5/11/05 – J. Mathieu  Expiration Date:  5/9/06 – J. Mathieu  Social Science Institutional Review Board 164  the  value  of  the  War  College  distance  education  program  and  the  information  could help to make the program better.  5.  Duration:  It  will  take  about  15  minutes  to  complete  the survey  questions  each  time  or  a  total  of  30  minutes.    The  focus  group  will  last  approximately  30  minutes.  6.  Statement of Confidentiality:  You will be asked to provide the last four numbers  of your social security number only to track the survey submissions.  If you speak  about the contents of the focus group outside the group, it  is expected that you  will  not  tell  others  what  the  individual  participants  said.    Only  myself,  the  investigator and my advisor listed on the previous page will know your identity.  The data will be stored and secured in a secure file in my office at the Army War  College,  Carlisle  Barracks,  Pennsylvania.    Upon  completion  of  this  research,  I  will strip the  identifiers (the  last  four numbers of  your social security  number)  from  the  data.  The  Office  for  Research  Protections  and  the  Social  Science  Institutional  Review  Board  may  review  records  related  to  this  project.    No  personally identifiable information will be shared in the event of a publication or  presentation resulting from the research.  7.  Right  to  Ask  Questions:  Please  address  questions  about  this  research  and  the  consent form to COL Myers at (717) 245­ 3577, or see me in Room C336, Army  War  College,  122  Forbes  Avenue,  Carlisle,  PA  17013.    If  you  have  questions  about  your  rights  as  a  research  participant,  contact  The  Pennsylvania  State  University’s Office for Research Protections at (814) 865­1775.  8.  Compensation:  Participants will not receive any compensation for participating in  this research.  9.  Voluntary Participation:  Your decision to be in this research is voluntary and you  can stop at any time.  You do not have to answer any questions you do not want to  answer.  You must be 18 years of age or older to take part in this research study.  If you agree to take part in this research and the information outlined above, please  sign  your  name and  indicate  the date below.  You  will  be provided a copy  of  this  signed and dated consent  form  for  your records upon request. Thank  you  for  your  support.  ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­  ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­  Participant Signature  Date  ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­  ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­  Person Obtaining Consent  Date 165  Modified Career Program Assessment (MCPA) Survey Instrument  Please enter the last four numbers of your Army War College DDE Log in  Number (for tracking purposes only): __________  Please enter your age: ____________  Please enter your gender (Male/Female): __________  Please enter your ethnic group (White; Black; Hispanic; Asian; Other):  ________  Please enter your grade/ rank (GS 14; LTC/05; COL/06): _______________  Please enter your total years of government service: ___________  Please enter your professional specialty (Engineer, Administrator, Infantry,  and Logistician): ____________  Please enter the largest organizational level that you have led (less than  2,000 personnel; 2­6,000 personnel, 6­30,000 personnel): ______________  Please enter the highest organizational level that you desire to lead (less  than 2,000 personnel, 2­6,000 personnel, 6­30,000 personnel):  ____________  Please enter your highest level of civilian education (undergraduate,  graduate, post graduate): _______________________  Instructions  In the MCPA you will be given nine phrase sets of statements.  Each  statement is a possible way you could think about your work, or conditions in  which you like to work, or the kind of work you like to do.  In each set of  statements, pick the one you feel is most characteristic of you – the one you  like most, and then pick the one least characteristic of you – the one you like  least.  Place the number indicating the “most liked” and “most disliked”  phrases.  After you have picked the ones you most and least agree with, you  will be asked to explain why those were your choices.  After you have  completed all nine phrase sets, you will asked to describe your time horizon  (the span of time that you define in your personal life in weeks, months or  years for the near term, mid term and far term).  The final question addresses  the extent your comfort level in dealing with VUCA (volatility, uncertainty,  complexity, and ambiguity). 166  Please return the completed survey to COL Susan Myers at  Susan.Myers@Carlisle.Army.Mil  or you can print and mail to me at: United  States Army War College, COL Susan Myers, Room 336, Root Hall, 122  Forbes Ave., Carlisle, PA 17013.  Thank you for your participation.  Phrase Set I  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Define the horizons of the work  2.  Work with connections even if particular links are unclear  3.  Work to complete set of instructions  4.  Work with a minimum of preconceptions  5.  Work in abstracts and concepts  6.  Work within a given framework  Explain your selection:  Phrase Set II  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Do one thing at a time  2.  Use works, ideas and theories as tools  3.  Focus on one part of the task at a time  4.  Compare the merits of alternative options  5.  Establish new relationships between previously unrelated materials  6.  Coordinate by drawing together a number of separate strands  Explain your selection:  Phrase Set III  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Look for the intent of the rules  2.  Make sure the rules fit  3.  Use the rules as guides to action  4.  Follow the rules  5.  Work with the rules  6.  Redefine the rules  Explain your selection: 167  Phrase Set IV  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Span a broad spectrum and also focus in detail on certain aspects  2.  Follow instructions carefully  3.  Transcend the task  4.  Take a systematic approach  5.  Look for relationships between the current task and other tasks  6.  Approach each task in own right  Explain your selection:  Phrase Set V  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Figure out the right sequence of tasks  2.  Consider the context of the problem  3.  Do first things first  4.  Break up the problem into separate parts  5.  Analyze problems by searching for underlying issues  6.  Create an overall picture of the problem  Explain your selection:  Phrase Set VI  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Allot a specific amount of time to each task  2.  Expect that a task will be transformed while it is in progress  3.  Transform the task  4.  Develop a plan with a clear sequence of steps  5.  Handle ambiguity by developing opposing points of view  6.  Follow a set procedure  Explain your selection: 168  Phrase Set VII  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  See gaps as the most interesting part  2.  Stop if there is a problem  3.  See gaps in knowledge as interruptions to work  4.  Know that new information creates new gaps  5.  See gaps as pauses in the process  6.  See gaps in knowledge as missing pieces of a jigsaw  Explain your selection:  Phrase Set VIII  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Rely mainly on previous experience  2.  Resolve problems by choosing between alternatives  3.  See the solution as the beginning of anew problem  4.  Seek to develop an original solution  5.  Expect to be told what to do  6.  Expect that the problem will resolve itself in time  Explain your selection:  Phrase Set IX  Item Number Most Liked : ______  Item Number Most Disliked: _______  1.  Conflicting solutions must sometimes be accepted  2.  Hold a solution while developing an alternative approach  3.  Most problem solutions are straightforward  4.  There are no permanent solutions  5.  Go back to the beginning if the thread is lost  6.  Options should be discarded  Explain your selection: 169  Personal Time Horizons  Most people have defined unique time horizons in their personal lives.  As  you define them in your personal life –not how the military defines them – how  long in weeks, months or years are NEAR TERM, MID TERM, and FAR  TERM.  NEAR TERM  MID TERM  FAR TERM  ___________  __________  __________  Final question:  One of the goals of the AWC experience is to help prepare you to operate  effectively in the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous)  environment.  To what extent do you believe that your comfort level with in  dealing with a VUCA external environment has increased during your time at  the US Army War College?  (Please place the number for the statement that  best reflects your opinion on this line _______).  1.  Increases dramatically – I am much more comfortable dealing with  VUCA.  2.  Increased somewhat – I feel a little more comfortable now than a year  ago.  3.  Did not increase at all – I arrived here already comfortable dealing with  VUCA.  4.  Did not increase at all – I didn’t like VUCA when I arrived and still do  like it.  5.  Other (please explain).  Thank you for completing this survey.  Please verify that you have  answered all nine Phrase Sets and the Personal Time Horizon Estimates.  If you have questions about this project, please contact COL Susan  Myers, (717) 245 ­3595 or email at Susan.Myers@Carlisle.Army.Mil. 170  MCPA Phrase Scoring Key  Phrase Set 1  1. Work to a complete set of instructions  2. Work within a given framework  3. Work with connections even if particular links are unclear  4. Work in abstracts and concepts  5. Work with a minimum of preconceptions  6. Define the horizons of the work  Phrase Set 2  1. Do one thing at a time  2. Focus on one part of the task at a time  3. Co­ordinate by drawing together a number of separate strands  4. Compare the merits of alternative options  5. Establish new relationships between previously unrelated  materials  6. Use words, ideas and theories as tools  Phrase Set 3  1. Follow the rules  2. Work within the rules  3. Make sure the rules fit  4. Use the rules as guides to action  5. Look for intent of the rules  6. Redefine the rules  Phrase Set 4  1. Follow instructions carefully  2. Approach each task in its own right  3. Take a systematic approach  4. Span a broad spectrum and also focus in detail at certain  aspects  5. Look for relationships between the current task and other tasks  6. Transcend the task  Phrase Set 5  1. Do first things first  2. Break up the problem into separate parts  3. Figure our the right sequence of tasks  4. Create an overall picture of the problem  5. Look for underlying issues  6. Consider the context of the problem  Phrase Set 6  1. Follow a set procedure  2. Allot a specific amount to time to each task  3. Impose a procedure to reduce uncertainty  4. Handle ambiguity by developing opposite points of view  5. Expect that a task will be transformed while in progress  6. Transform the task 171  Phrase Set 7  1. Stop if there is a problem  2. See gaps in knowledge as interruptions to work  3. See gaps as pauses in the process  4. See gaps in knowledge as missing pieces of a jigsaw  5. See gaps as the most interesting part  6. Know that new information creates new gaps  Phrase Set 8  1. Expect to be told what to do  2. Rely mainly on previous experience  3. Expect that the situation will resolve itself in time  4. Resolve tasks by formulating alternatives  5. Seek to develop an original solution  6. See the solution as the beginning of a new problem  Phrase Set 9  1. Most problem solutions are straight forward  2. Options should not be discarded  3. Go back to the beginning if the thread is lost  4. Hold a solution while developing an alternative  5. There are no permanent solutions  6. Conflicting solutions must sometimes be accepted 172  Face­to Face and Focus Group Interview Protocol  Introduction  The purpose of the study is to evaluate strategic leader cognitive  development through the first year of the Army War College Distance  Education program.  The focus of the study is to determine what factors of the  distance education process such as policy, management and organizational  behavior are most important to strategic leader cognitive development.  This  evaluation will facilitate a blueprint of the Army War College strategic leader  development through distance education process.  This blueprint establishes  a foundation for future strategic leader development programs through  distance education.  This interview is to focus on specific attributes of strategic leader  development such as what it means to you in the context of your current and  future roles and responsibilities as a strategic leader.  It is important to  understand what this means in context of the mission, goals and objectives of  the Army War College; how you manage and develop strategic leadership  skills; the obstacles faced trying to develop strategic leadership skills; and the  opportunities that facilitate strategic leader cognitive development. The results  from these interviews will help develop and blueprint for future policy,  management and organizational behavioral systems for strategic leader  professional development programs through distance education.  In order to ensure the interview relates terms in similar contexts, the following  definitions provide a common understanding about strategic leader cognitive  development through distance education.  The Army War College defines  Strategic Leadership as skillful formulation, coordination, and application of  ends (objectives), ways (courses of action) and means (supporting resources)  to promote and defend the national interests.  Strategic leaders provide  vision, focus, command and leadership skills, inspires other to think and act,  and coordinates ends, ways and means.  Strategic leader cognitive  development is the knowledge and skills to perform strategic leader functions  of creating complex systems, organizing and acquisition of major resources,  creating policy over a 10 plus year time span. Growth rate is the rate the  individual will increase in capacity to handle complexity over time, absent  intervention explicitly intended to increase growth rate.  Strategic leader  cognitive thinking skills is the ability to deal with abstract concepts; cross­  reference from one type of problem dynamic to another and use both rigorous  analytic and integrative logic (Jacobs and Jaques 1990).  Distance Education is planned learning that normally occurs in a different  place from teaching and as a result requires special techniques of course  design, instructional techniques, methods of communication, organizational  and administrative arrangements (Moore and Kearsley 1996). 173  Introduction Question: Name and strategic leadership goals.  1.  What aspects of the program challenge and support your cognitive  development?  2.  What course material has been most helpful for dealing with complex  thinking skills and situations?  3.  How might you describe change in your comfort level to contend with  more complex situations that you can attribute to the AWC DDE  program?  4.  Did you participate in any other professional development or  educational programs this past year?  5. What implications do you think a deployment may have had on your  education and cognitive development?  6. How did you determine your personal time horizon (far term)?  7. How might you describe the relationship of your personal time horizon  to your experience with the AWC DDE program?  8. From your experience as a senior leader, what do you see are the  greatest challenges for strategic leaders?  9. What would you change about the AWC DDE program to better prepare  you for strategic leadership roles and responsibilities?  10. What survey questions were more difficult than others in determining  what phrase sets you liked best?  11. How helpful was it to be able to explain your selection in each phrase  set?  12. What are your biggest challenges as a distance education student?  13. How can we make this research process better?  14. Summary: Do you have anything else that you would like to add? 174  Face­to Face & Focus Group Interview Reporting  Information about the Interviewee & Focus Group  Date of Interview  Location of Interview  Number and Description of  Participants  Moderator & Assistant Moderator  Contact Information  Responses to Questions  1. How has the Distance Education program impacted your development as a  strategic leader?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes  2. What aspects of the course materials and educational process were helpful  and not so helpful?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes  3. What are your greatest challenges as a strategic leader?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes 175  4.  What are your greatest challenges as a Distance Education student?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes  5. Did you participate in any other type of professional development programs while  enrolled in this DDE program?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes  6. What are your questions and interests about this study?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes  7.  Will you participate in future Distance Education programs and feedback  programs?  Brief Summary/Key Points  Notable Quotes 176  Appendix B: Internal Review Board Approval  From:  Mathieu, Jodi [SMTP:zjc2@psu.edu]  To:  Myers, Susan R. COL USAWC; srm264@psu.edu  Cc:  jtz1@psu.edu  Subject:  IRB# 21018 ­ "Evaluation of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance Education"  Sent:  5/11/2005 3:48 PM  Importance:  Normal  Hi Susan,  Your research project was approved as of today.  You may begin your research.  An  approval letter will be mailed to you shortly.  Attached is(are) the approved IRB consent form(s) with the approval stamp. Please  ensure that this consent form is used to enroll new participants.  Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.  Thank you, Jodi ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jodi L. Mathieu, CIP IRB Administrator - Social Science Office for Research Protections The Pennsylvania State University 212 Kern Graduate Building University Park, PA 16802 Telephone: 814-865-1775 Fax: 814-863-8699 http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/ Myers ­ #21018 (5­11­05)).doc 177  REPLY TO  ATTENTION OF  DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY  UNITED STATES ARMY WAR COLLEGE AND CARLISLE BARRACKS  Office of the Dean of Academics  Colonel Susan R. Myers  Penn State, Harrisburg Campus  Department of Public Affairs  777 Harrisburg Pike  Middletown, PA 17057­4849  Dear Colonel Myers:  The U.S. Army War College received your request to engage in research  on “Evaluation of Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance  Education.”  Approval was recommended by the USAWC Institutional Review Board to  administer your study to selected USAWC students.  However, in accordance  with standard and customary research procedures, your subjects may  withdraw at any time from this research effort without reason, cause, or  explanation.  A copy of this approval will be forwarded to Dr. Clay Chun, Chairman,  Department of Distance Education.  The point of contact for this action is Dr. Anna Waggener, Director,  Institutional Assessment, U.S. Army War College, commercial 717­245­3365  or e­mail Anna.Waggener@carlisle.army.mil.  Please contact her if you have  further questions.  Sincerely,  William T. Johnsen, Ph.D.  Dean of Academics  CARLISLE, PENNSYLVANIA  17013­5217 178  Appendix C.  Permission to Use the Modified Career Path Appreciation Survey  Instrument  From:  Gillian Stamp [SMTP:gillian@bioss.com]  To:  Susan.Myers@carlisle.army.mil  Cc:  Subject:  RE: Research at the Army War College  Sent:  4/14/2005 12:42 PM  Importance:  Normal  Dear Susan,  Please accept my apologies for not replying. I have not been able to access  this email address for eight weeks and only managed to sort it out today.  The IP of MCPA is with Bioss International and as a Director I am happy to  give you permission to use it in your research.  I look forward to hearing how it all goes.  with best wishes,  Gillian 179  Appendix D. Study Data  Table 1: Initial Qualitative Responses to MCPA Pre­Test Survey and Analysis  MCPA Survey  Question  Analysis of Response Data  Respondent Reply  Phrase Set 1. Guidance  and Frameworks  Responses evenly distributed  between production,  organizational and strategic  leadership levels  Lowest mean & mode of all  questions which can be  attributed to military  bureaucracy and structure  “I prefer working within  given frameworks and like  to know limits but not  getting complete  instructions as it limits  initiative”.  “I like to work toward a  vision or future event with  measurable results”.  “Working within a  framework is comfortable  and defining the horizons  entails understanding of  the unknown”.  Phrase Set 2.  Information and Tools  Majority of responses were in  the operational, then strategic  levels  Lowest mode which can be  attributed to educational focus  of military officers to  compare merits of alternative  options  “I like multitasking  environments and  connecting the dots to see  the big picture and then  align resources to support  it”.  “I like exploring  alternatives to make  systems work better and  tackling many tasks at one  time”.  “I like to compare the  merits of alternative  options”.  Phrase Set 3. Rules  Responses were primarily in  the higher operational and  strategic levels however;  respondents had the highest  rate of dislike for the strategic  level response perhaps  because they misunderstood  the question.  “”Rules are guides to  action; the most important  element is intent…”  “By determining intent of  rules I can determine how  they apply to a given  situation”. 180  Military culture promotes  using rules as guides and  examining the intent  “Rules are guides but not  absolutes; redefining rules  is subject to  interpretation”.  MCPA Survey Question  Analysis of Response Data  Respondent Quotes  Phrase Set 4. Approach to  Tasks  Majority of responses were  concentrated in the  operational level  Responses mirror military  education and practices for  broad spectrums and  systematic approaches  “”Spanning a broad  spectrum and focus in  detail on certain aspects is  expected of leaders at our  grade”.  “I like the big spectrum ad  recognize that I can not  deal with everything”.  “Following a systematic  approach helps me to be  thorough and transcending  the task does not actually  complete the task”.  Phrase Set 5. Methods in  Analyzing Issues and  Problems  Responses were  predominately at the  operational and strategic  levels  Responses focus on  evaluating the overall  picture of the problem and  underlying issues  “I like to visualize the  problem then  conceptualize the solution  through a series of steps”.  “Creating a picture of the  problem requires vision”.  “You have to analyze  underlying issues to  understand the problem”.  Phrase Set 6. Procedure  Most responses span the  operational and strategic  levels  Army policy and  procedure is generally  highly structured  “I expect tasks to  transform while in  progress and do not hold  myself to set time as I  work until the task is  complete”.  “Procedures need to  evolve with problems” 181  “Developing a plan with a  clear sequence of steps is  the way I approach tasks”.  MCPA Survey Question  Analysis of Response Data  Respondent Quotes  Phrase Set 7. Gaps in  Knowledge  Majority of responses were  in high operational and  strategic levels  Military officers are  accustom to working with  multifaceted “jigsaw”  types of organizations that  are creating new  information and gaps  “I am an info junkie and  information is always  welcomed to help fill in  holes”.  “I like the process of  creativity and know  knowing the solution up  front does not bother me”.  “Gaps are potential  problems and we must  work them hard to clear up  uncertainty and  ambiguity…”  Phrase Set 8. Solutions  Responses were primarily  in the high operational and  strategic levels.  Military decision making  models focus on resolving  tasks by formulating  alternatives.  “I resolve problems by  looking at alternatives”.  “Choosing between  alternatives brings  closure”.  “Evaluating alternative  solutions increases the  likelihood of selecting the  best resolution for a  particular problem”.  Phrase Set 9. Decision  Making  Strongest responses of all  survey instrument  questions at the strategic  level.  Changes in the  environment make  problem solving and  decision making an  ongoing process.  “Solutions change as  resources change in  availability”.  “Always look for better  ways to solve a problem”.  “Everything changes and  we must lead change”. 182  Table 2. Interviews and Focus Groups  Question  Interview  Focus Group  1. How has time invested  in DE contributed to your  development as a strategic  leader?  Challenge in juggling  many responsibilities  DE program gives me  tools to look at world  issues with better  understanding  Broadened perspectives of  strategic leadership issues  and environments –  appreciation for  complexity, uncertainty,  ambiguity  Given me “coup de oeil”  to focus thought and  anticipate future  requirements  Greater depth and  flexibility in thinking  skills; Need for balance  Helped me sort through  and prioritize broad array  of information  Greater thought and  understanding about long  term thinking  Opportunity to gain  insights from peers and  faculty that have other  insights  Increased networks of  information and personal  contacts  DE program helped me  understand technical,  cognitive, and  interpersonal skills  required at the strategic  level as well as filling  knowledge gaps.  Summary: DE provides  tools for greater  knowledge with a long  term perspective.  I have greater  understanding of DOD  processes and international  relations theory.  The program encouraged  me to develop a broader  perspective that is more  acute and long term  A little early to tell.  I  expect the investment of  the DDE program to be  fully realized in the near  future.  My eyes have been opened  to a whole new side of the  military and I look at  things in a new  perspective. 183  Question  Interviews  Focus Groups  2. What aspects of the  program challenge, assess  and support your cognitive  thinking skills?  (Course  material that is most  helpful for developing  thinking skills).  The rigor: academic pace,  methodology and review  along with faculty  feedback that broadens  learning.  Allowed students to  contribute from their  strengths and experience  Forced to study subjects  that are not in “comfort  zone” but needed for  higher level leadership.  Getting to know faculty  and students on a more  personal basis  Course material about  leadership, how DoD  works, and global issues to  help fill in the gaps.  Writing requirements and  forums required formalize  thoughts and ideas in  context  Exposure to new  technology and graduate  level literature as well as  forum discussions.  The classics on war from a  strategic leader perspective  such as Sun Tzu and  General Slim  I found the course work to  be informative but not as  much as law school.  Summary: course  materials and  methodologies such as the  forums create new ways of  learning through  technology.  Some of the sources are  challenging and I needed  to develop my  understanding beyond the  materials.  The forums are  especially helpful in  building my knowledge  and understanding.  Program requires me to  stretch my thought process  and comprehension.  The program has been  challenging and the  reading, forums, and  writing requirements  developed my ability to  strategically analyze  complex issues. 184  Question  Interview  Focus Group  3. How might you describe  any changes in your ability  to contend with complex  situations that can be  attributed to DE program?  Understanding of what the  strategic leader faces.  Knowledge is power and if  you act, the environment  also acts creating  resistance, adaptation.  Time management and  greater ability to anticipate  complex future  requirements over longer  time periods  Steady progress generally  yields success and to stay  on the offensive by  adapting your plan.  Ability to synthesize  information from a  number of sources  Exposure to new ideas  gave me a greater comfort  level.  Importance of discussion  with peers and experts  Experience in contending  with multiple forms of  technology and  communication.  I am more aware of  questions to ask.  Summary: Better  understanding of strategic  level issues through  distance education  experience.  I feel more confident in  understanding  international relations  theory.  Much greater comfort in  contending with strategic  level issues.  I’ve realized that I need to  take more time to break  complex issues into parts  to look at various aspects  of problems.  I look at the long term  impacts from my  decisions. 185  Question  Interview  Focus Group  4. Did you participate in  any other professional  development or  educational programs this  past year?  Continuing Education for  Certified Public  Accountants.  Professional development  courses, some formal  education; Experiential  development assignments;  Deployment  Annual DoD and Army  Training Requirements.  Yes but not to the extent  that this course required.  Technical updates to  professional requirements  in field of Human  Resource Management.  Institutional (courses) and  Self Development (reading  and researching)  Personal professional  reading program.  I completed the Master’s  Degree in Strategic  Intelligence and found a  degree of overlap of  course material.  Summary: Many students  engaged in other forms of  professional development.  I completed a National  War College course this  year that was similar in  content to the DDE  program of study.  No  Yes but it was very simple  in terms of content.  I finished my dissertation  for  a PhD is business  administration and  professional development  in the logistics field. 186  Question  Interview  Focus Group  5. What implications do  you think a deployment  may have had on your  cognitive development?  I have not deployed to a  war zone but have taken  part in shorter missions  that have a profound  impact on my leadership  development because of  the myriad of tasks and  responsibilities.  Limited access to course  material;  Lateness in receiving  mailed materials;  Emotional events with  separation and  death/injury  Did not deploy during this  course.  Many different  distractions  Deployment to Iraq  contributed to my  cognitive thinking because  I was exposed to a broad  array of situations some of  which had strategic  implications.  Lots of learning in a short  time because of unique  requirements and exposure  to strategic issues  Deployment requirements  challenged the balancing  act of professional and  operational requirements  I deployed to Iraq and my  professional horizon  extended significantly.  Summary: Deployments  contribute to cognitive  development because of  the complex and rapidly  changing conditions.  I had two deployments that  enhanced my cognitive  skills.  Significantly since I was  assigned to a multinational  unit this past year.  Critical.  I was a Battalion  Commander in Iraq which  gave me some insights to  the challenges that  strategic leaders face in a  high conflict environment  as well as second and third  order effects of decision  making.  My deployment distracted  me from doing my best  work in the program. 187  Question  Interview  Focus Group  6. How did you determine  your personal time  horizon?  I tend to plan in 5 year  block because I feel like it  has some certainty and  relevancy to what I can  influence. I try to remain  flexible for the  unexpected.  Approach to professional  and personal requirements  I try to plan at least 10  years in advance.  Comparison with my  spouse showed great  differences as hers is near  term of weeks.  Linked to level of  responsibility and type of  assignment  Long term planning is  linked to what I think I can  influence and beyond 10  years is unrealistic to me.  How I think and how I am  expected to think at the  strategic level  Higher order thinking  requirements drove longer  term time horizons.  Summary: Timelines are  linked to professional and  personal goals.  DDE  experience increased  comfort in long term  planning.  I have always looked in  terms of five and ten years.  Based on key milestones  in my professional and  personal experience.  I am single and have a  great deal of flexibility in  planning my time.  I always ensure that I  schedule personal time in  order to have a balanced  life. 188  Question  Interview  Focus group  7. What are the greatest  challenges for strategic  leaders?  Anticipating future major  contingencies and being  able to manage large scale  operations as well as  overcome resource  constraints without major  harm to large populations.  Overcoming VUCA,  resource constraints  Prepare for future  requirements.  Balancing requirements  and resources  Identifying and managing  knowledge gaps especially  with the profound changes  in technology.  Developing international  cultural competencies  since we are globally  linked.  Monitor global changes  and determine how to  build coalitions to support  and protect interests.  Anticipating change,  dealing with ambiguity.  Summary: Challenges for  strategic level leaders  include anticipating  change and need for  increasing ability to  contend with complexity.  Gaining an understanding  of issues and the  temptation to avoid  problems.  It is easy to just  work on issues that we  have a higher comfort  level .  Need to focus further out  in time and inter­rationally  with other parameters.  Getting others to think at a  strategic level and work  together as a team.  It is  important to have a diverse  group of team members  and ideas to represent the  entire spectrum of the  population.  Keeping up with the ever  changing world. 189  Question  Interview  Focus Group  8. What are your greatest  challenges as a DDE  student?  To invest the time required  to synthesize the large  quantity of information  and complete quality  assignments.  Time Management,  Understanding the  requirements,  Completing reading and  writing requirements  Carve out time to complete  course requirements and  be able to internalize what  I am learning.  Having time to complete  the reading; Distractions at  work and home  Being able to  communicate my ideas  effectively and to use  faculty feedback to  improve my learning.  Understanding and  Completing requirements  on time  Balancing professional and  personal needs.  I do better in learning with  groups of people  interacting than writing  papers or having to work  on my own.  Summary: Challenges for  DDE students include time  management, balancing  professional and personal  requirements and  communication skills.  Time management and to  ensure the course enhances  my skills.  Time management and  procrastination.  Trying to get use to a new  way of learning since this  was my first experience  with online learning.  Finding time to balance  work, course requirements,  Reserves and personal  time. 190  Question  Interview  Focus Group  9.  How helpful was it to  be able to explain your  selection in each phrase set  of the MCPA survey?  I found it to be helpful  because I had to gather my  thoughts, test my answer  and explain ambiguities  such as “why do I feel this  way?”  Somewhat helpful  Enabled me to be able to  reflect about my  educational experience and  to put thoughts into  context.  Very helpful – helped to  reinforce my selections  Selecting the responses  was difficult to some  degree because several  responses were appealing.  Explaining my response  helped me to understand  my needs.  Somewhat helpful in  synthesizing my thoughts  and ideas.  Summary: It was helpful  to explain selections and  have the opportunity to  reflect and synthesize  ideas.  I had no issues.  Helpful from the  standpoint that it allowed  me to reflect on important  aspects of my learning  experience.  Very helpful but it was  hard finding time to  analyze and reflect. 191  Question  10.  What would you  change about the DE  program to better prepare  for strategic leadership  roles and responsibilities?  I trust the AWC leadership  compiles what I need to  learn.  A General Officer  mentor is deployed to  Kuwait concludes that  75% of his job is strategic  leadership doctrine from  the course.  Introduction to program,  instructors and evaluators  at the beginning of the  program.  Conduct quarterly focus  groups at various sites so  that students get more face  to face discussion and  interaction with faculty.  Evaluate application of  concepts to experience.  More flexibility on word  count and responses to  requirements.  More person to person  time and feedback.  Do more experiential  lessons so students gain  better insights of strategic  level issue resolution.  Encourage students to  pursue and share  mentoring experiences  with strategic level  leaders.  I would recommend more  biographical readings like  Slim with an application  of certain leadership.  More personal interaction  between faculty and  students.  Summary:  Recommendation for  increased personal  interaction and case studies  in the DDE program.  More opportunities to  interact personally and  expanding the forums.  This is more in line with  the way the Army operates  and we should educate as  we fight.  More access to live  lectures and video over  readings.  The forums  offer a good way to share  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CurriculumVitae  Colonel Susan R. Myers  Department of Distance Education  (W) 717­245­3577  United States Army War College, Box 473  (H) 717­258­1536  122 Forbes Avenue  FAX: 717­254­4570  Carlisle, PA  17013  Susan.Myers@Carlisle.Army.Mil  Education  Ph.D. Penn State University, Harrisburg, PA: 2007  M.S., Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA:  2003  MBA, National University, San Diego, CA: 1990  B.S., Penn State University, University Park, PA: 1980  Publications and Presentations:  Dissertation: “Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance Education”  (2006).  Middletown, PA: Penn State, Harrisburg.  “Strategic Leader Cognitive Development through Distance Education”, International  Leadership Association Conference, 1 November 2006  “Strategic Leader Cognitive Development”, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA 19  June 2006.  “Leadership Feedback and Stress Management”, U.S. Army Military Academy, 29  April 2006.  Courses Taught  Strategic Leadership  Fundamentals of Strategic Thinking  Ethics  Organizational Behavior  Strategic Planning  Professional Employment  Professor, Leadership Studies, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA 2002­present  Commander, US Army Engineer Battalion, Ft. Leonard Wood, MO 2000­2002  Executive Officer, First Brigade, US Army 78 th Division, Edison, NJ 1998­2000  Director, Base Realignment & Closure Office, Ft. Leonard Wood, MO  1997­1998  Chief, Total Army Schools System, Ft. Sill, OK  1994­1997  Student, Command & General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, KS 1992­1993  Project Manager, US Army Engineer District, Los Angeles, CA  1988­1990  Operations Officer, US Army Recruiting Battalion, Los Angeles, CA 1987­1988  Commander, C Company, 94 th Engineer Battalion, Darmstadt, Germany   1985­1987  Plans Officer, US Army Engineer Division, Europe, Frankfurt, Germany  1983­1985  Platoon Leader & Executive Officer, Engineer Support Company, Ft. Hunter Leggett,  CA, 1980­1983